Low vaccination rates in counties that are whiter and more conservative could be impairing Texas ability to quickly reach herd immunity for COVID-19.

Texas counties that are poorer, whiter, less-educated and where former President Donald Trump won a larger than average share of the vote have vaccinated a smaller share of their population than the state average, a Houston Chronicle analysis found.

In the 144 Texas counties that meet these criteria, about 29.4 percent of people aged 16 and older have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Statewide, the average is 33 percent.

If residents in those counties were vaccinated at the same rate as the state average, more than 100,000 additional Texans wouldve received at least one dose.

In Liberty County, just a shade over 20 percent of residents have received at least one dose of the vaccine, one of the lowest rates in the state. Whats more, as Harris County residents have begun flocking to rural counties for easier access to vaccines, state data shows that providers in Liberty County  a rural patch between Houston and Beaumont  have put 27 percent more shots in the arms of Harris County residents than they have in residents of their own county.

Meanwhile, in the 22 counties where Joe Biden won a majority of the vote  places that tend to be both more diverse and educated  an average of about 45.6 percent of eligible Texans have received at least one dose of the vaccine.

The vaccination gap between whiter, more conservative counties and the state average may not be cause for concern for the states vaccination efforts yet, said Rice University health economist Vivian Ho, but there is a potential for it to widen over the next two to three months.

MORE COVID NEWS: Heres what doctors expect in Houston as the fourth COVID wave slams the East Coast

As more vaccines become available, that gap is going to widen, because theres still excess demand for vaccines in our cities, where the majority of the population lives, she said. If, for instance, only 50 percent of people in these outlier counties are vaccinated, they will continually be subject to superspreader events that will overwhelm the weakest components of the states health care infrastructure.

While polls have consistently shown that white Republicans are more hesitant about the vaccine, the Chronicles analysis used voting and demographics data, as well as the states own vaccine data, to show that race and political affiliation are tied to lower vaccination rates.

The Kaiser Family Foundations COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor found that nationwide, white, rural Republicans were the groups most likely to say they werent getting the vaccine at all. More locally, a University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll in February found that 59 percent of Texas Republicans either were reluctant to get a shot or would refuse one.

While attention has been focused on Trump supporters, theres also been worry among some that white evangelicals, a massive demographic that largely overlaps with the counties in the Chronicle analysis, will slow the nations path to herd immunity.

In Montgomery County, where only 27.6 percent of adults have received at least one dose of the vaccine, one religious leader said hes heard many people voice skepticism.

I know that exists here in Montgomery County because I see it on my social media, said Jeff Berger, pastor of First Baptist Church in Conroe. Thats part of the curse of living in this age. Social media, the 24-hour news cycle, the different echo chambers  it gives free rein to voices that push out this conspiracy-type rhetoric, and there are certain people who just get addicted to that content.

Berger said that his congregation included a few vocal skeptics of the pandemic early on but that churchgoers have been generally receptive to safety precautions. The virus killed two First Baptist members, which Berger said made the reality of the pandemic hit home at his church.

The fact that everybody now knows somebody whos had it has helped them see that this is real, he said of his congregation.

White evangelicals have a history of vaccine skepticism dating back decades, said Kira Ganga Kieffer, who researches vaccines and religious movements at Boston University.

But COVID-19 has been particularly worrisome because of how politicized its become, she said. Whereas hesitancy toward other vaccines, such as the one for HPV, have often been rooted in moral concerns, todays skeptics have been fueled by a mix of culture war rhetoric and the proliferation of online conspiracies.

MORE HEALTH NEWS: 14 years later, has the HPV vaccine made a difference in Texas?

She also noted that, historically, the idea of government-mandated vaccinations has fueled hesitancy in a variety of communities, including those that are predominantly white and evangelical.

Such concerns have been bubbling in recent weeks, as some conservative politicians have said Biden planned to institute vaccine passports. A White House spokesperson denied that was the case on Tuesday, the same day Gov. Greg Abbott announced a statewide ban of vaccination passports.

A lot of (skepticism) is coming from a distinct and real strong distrust of authority and of the government in general, and a go-at-it-alone, individualistic worldview, Kieffer said. Thats not new, but Id say its been really hyped up, and Trump really tapped into that anti-establishment, anti-authority mentality.

Craig Matson is among those who say they will likely not take the vaccine. The 70-year-old Boerne resident questioned the severity of the virus, comparing it to the flu. He was suspicious of numbers reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as the major vaccines.

If people choose to take a COVID-19 vaccine because they believe that is their best protective option, they ought to have the freedom to do so, he added. Medical freedom is important on both sides of this issue.

Kendall County, where Boerne is located, voted for Trump at a greater rate than the state as a whole and has a higher share of white residents than the state.

On average, support of Trump, coupled with higher shares of the white population, regardless of other factors, is the strongest link to lower vaccination rates, the Chronicles data analysis found. In whiter counties where support for Trump was stronger, an average of 30.2 percent of residents have gotten at least one shot, lower than the states average.

Theres also a positive correlation between education and vaccination rates, regardless of political affiliation. This can be seen in Kendall County, which is wealthier and more educated than the state averages, and where more than 40 percent of residents have received at least one dose of the COVID vaccine.

Across the state, health officials are searching for ways to reach and vaccinate people who are reluctant to do so.

State health officials are trying to think through the last mile, said Dr. David Lakey, a member of the Texas COVID-19 Expert Vaccine Allocation Panel. People who are hesitant to get vaccinated may not go to mass vaccination sites or hubs but may go to providers they trust.

On HoustonChronicle.com: There is light shining out of the tomb. Despite darkness, chaplains are hopeful ahead of Easter

In Public Health Region 4/5 North  a group of counties in the northeastern part of the state, around Tyler  officials are working with faith-based communities and hosting vaccine fairs to vaccinate more people in the region with the states lowest average rate. They have also been conducting home visits as part of these efforts to bring vaccines to homebound people.

Ron Nichols, emergency coordinator for Chambers County, said having well-known, local paramedics dole out doses has helped assuage some residents concerns. Nichols said demand for vaccines was initially high but has begun to plateau in recent months because people either are waiting on the single-shot vaccine from Johnson & Johnson or have distrust rooted in misinformation.

There are a lot of people who just dont understand, dont know or dont trust the process, he said. The Facebook misinformation machine has been running rampant.

Hesitancy has also affected the states allocations of vaccine doses. The counties that are whiter, more Trump-friendly, poorer and less educated have been allocated proportionally fewer vaccine doses, according to the Chronicles analysis.

I think hesitancy plays into demand and then demand plays into the allocation, Lakey said. If there is a community that is more hesitant, they go through vaccines slower and therefore they would be shipped less vaccine.

Lakey said he believes that shifting away from allocating vaccine doses to larger providers and sending more to smaller providers will dispel some of the hesitancy.

Leighanne Cobb, 67, was among the skeptics in Chambers County. The retired, Trump-voting Southern Baptist said she had read conspiracies about people being microchipped through the vaccine. More than anything, she was concerned by what she felt was a rushed rollout of the vaccines.

I felt like it got pushed along too fast, she said. Eventually, she and other family members sought out the opinions of medical professionals.

Cobb received her second dose on Tuesday, as did her elderly father.

I feel perfectly fine, she said.

jordan.rubio@chron.com

robert.downen@chron.com
SAN DIEGO, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- While honeybees are responsible for more than one-third of the world's food source, they're seen mostly as dangerous pests.

One San Diego restaurant owner and chef is hoping to change that perception with the installation of a modified beehive in her Kensington neighborhood restaurant.

Vick Vannucci. Chef and Owner of Pachamama in San Diego, CA

Philanthropist and Pachamama founder Vick Vannucci shares her love of food by caring for other living beings, the culmination of which will arrive this summer when customers are greeted by working honeybees.

"It's an unbelievable opportunity to educate the community," Vannucci said. "Without bees, we don't have any food, and without food, we don't exist."

Earlier this year, she teamed up with Bee Leaf USA Founder and beekeeper Travis Wolfe to come up with a concept that honors her values of education, integrity and sustainability.

Wolfe said the idea aligns perfectly with the organization's core purpose to reconnect humans to nature through safe and sustainable beekeeping.

"Together, we're embarking on an educational journey to shift the negative paradigm associated with bees," Wolfe said. "After years of chasing this passion, it's incredibly rewarding to see someone willing to take it to the next level while supporting bees in the right way."

While the use of honeybees has been incorporated into local hotel restaurant models, Wolfe believes that Pachamama will become the only stand-alone restaurant with a sustainable on-site beehive that also has an educational aspect for customers and elevates food and drink quality.

"I don't know of a project like this being done yet, even on a national level," Wolfe said. "It's a one-of-a-kind honeybee installation that will provide a unique learning experience."

Wolfe said the estimated 40,000 to 80,000 bees will be transferred from a nearby sanctuary and are expected to produce at least four gallons of honey within a year.

The hive's entrance will be on the roof of the restaurant, allowing bees to enter and exit through a portion of the building, directed away from the public right of way, allowing them to safely forage and pollinate the neighborhood.

Pachamama & Bee Leaf USA partnered with Tecture Inc., a design and architecture studio in Barrio Logan to design, build and install the modified beehive.

The installation is made with heavy-duty glass that respectfully emulates the actual reality of honeybees in nature, while giving them the best chance at long-term survival.

"I opened Pachamama with the sole purpose of helping the community and planet in a small way," Vannucci said. "This is my humble attempt at helping the planet."

The modified beehive is also built to standards in full compliance with the county's Department of Agricultural Weights and Measures with the design adapted to assist the bees in harvesting honey while protecting the human population from unnecessary exposure.

"At the end of the day we need to change," Vannucci said. "I feel if we can change as a company we're showing people everywhere they can change too."

Head over to 3737 Adams Avenue to experience Pachamama or visit: www.whoispachamama.com or www.vickvannucci.com.

Related Images

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Vick Vannucci

Vick Vannucci. Chef and Owner of Pachamama in San Diego, CA

SOURCE Pachamama
The Young Democrats of America (YDA), the youth wing of the US Democratic Party, recently completed a visit to the city of Dakhla, Western Sahara and have called on investors to tap into the regions unexploited economic potential.



The YDA delegation held talks with the General Director of the Regional Investment Center (CRI) to identify investment opportunities in several productive sectors.



Mounir Houari, director of the CRI of Dakhla-Oued Eddahab, presented to members of the American Democratic Party the various investment opportunities in various sectors such as renewable energies, promotion of seafood, aquaculture, services and shops, as well as tourism.



Houari revealed that the CRI also supports young entrepreneurs, especially women who want to create small and medium-sized companies.



A cooperation agreement was signed in order to boost relations in various fields, in the years to come, between the members of the two youth groups.



There are many opportunities for investors to come and invest in Dakhla and share these resources with Africa, YDA President Joshua Harris-Till said.



YDA were invited by the youth of the Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM) for a four-day visit to Dakhla last week.



The leader of the youth of the American Democratic Party said the recognition by the United States of the full sovereignty of Morocco over Sahara is only a first step.



There is still work to be done.



American investments must take place in Dakhla, he insisted.

Harris-Till also highlighted the importance of the socio-economic dynamics and the leading projects under way in the region for the future of the young people in the southern city.



There is a real potential here for young people to have a prosperous environment and I think this is something extremely important, added the head of this delegation who visited a pilot agricultural farm in the region.



Heather Brown, a member of the American Democratic Party, said that the authorities have a strategic vision on how this region could develop in the future, noting that this vision will allow Dakhla to be an important port platform for all of Africa.



Brown, who already visited Dakhla over 10 years ago to attend the ceremony for the presentation of the largest flag in the world, said she was impressed by the socio-economic development and the quality of infrastructure in Dakhla, assuring that the United States will continue to be a partner and a friend of Morocco.

Source: Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Australia shouldn't open up the borders to any more countries until the national coronavirus vaccine rollout in completed, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk says.

The state government is in talks with airlines to restart direct flights from New Zealand to regional tourism destinations as soon as the travel bubble opens on April 19.

Ms Palaszczuk is keen for cross-Tasman tourism to resume, but she's wary about opening the international borders to more countries.

Australia shouldn't open up the borders to any more countries until the national coronavirus vaccine rollout in completed, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk says

She says the vaccination drive should be completed before travel bubbles are set up with other countries amid speculation about renewed travel to and from Singapore, South Korea and Japan.

'If the federal government's looking at in opening up our borders to to other countries I think New Zealand is is a good first step, but I don't think we should be opening up to any other country until we have the vaccine rollout complete,' the premier told reporters on Wednesday.

Health Minister Yvette D'Ath said Queensland has about 14-days' supply of the AstraZeneca vaccine and seven days of the Pfizer jab.

The state received 25,000 Pfizer doses on Thursday and was told there would not be another delivery for a fortnight.

Ms D'Ath said the government isn't stockpiling the vaccine, but holding a contingency in place with additional supplies uncertain.

'We can use it as quickly as we can, and run out and wait for that next delivery, but we are mindful that at this stage we have no confirmation there'll be another Pfizer delivery within the fortnight,' she said.

Health Minister Yvette D'Ath said Queensland has about 14-days' supply of the AstraZeneca vaccine and seven days of the Pfizer jab

Queensland reported six new cases of COVID-19, all in hotel quarantine, on Wednesday.

The state's hospitals are treating 73 active cases after an outbreak triggered a three-day lockdown of Greater Brisbane last week.

Authorities also announced that a dual Papua New Guinean-British national - Mal 'Kela' Smith, the 77-year-old former governor of PNG's Eastern Highlands province - had died from COVID complications in Redcliffe Hospital on March 29.

Mr Smith served as a helicopter pilot in the Australian Defence Force and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for gallantry during a medevac operation in the Vietnam War in 1970.

The state received 25,000 Pfizer doses on Thursday and was told there would not be another delivery for a fortnight

He founded the Pacific Helicopter Group and was also chair of the Goroka Hospital Board.

Mr Smith then founded the Kela Foundation in 2017 to support underprivileged and disadvantaged communities.

Central Province Governor Robert Agarobe said it was very sad his 'dear friend' had died.

'My aviation life with Malcolm Kela Smith was a Love and Hate relationship as competitors and we had our moments however, we were best of friends who shared more then a few beers togather (sic) and assisted each other in times of need when it came to work,' he wrote on Facebook.

'We both had the out most (sic) respect for each other as brothers and Aviators.

'A THOUGH (sic) BUGGER, A TRUE AVIATOR AND A LEGEND.'
Nifty futures on the Singapore Exchange traded only 6 points up at 14,751 around 8.35 am, indicating a flat start for the benchmark indices in Wednesday's session.

Here are the top stocks that are likely to be in focus today:

New Listing: The shares of Barbeque Nation will debut on the bourses today. The Rs 453-crore public issue was subscribed 5.98 times during March 24-26.

RIL, Airtel: Reliance Jio Infocomm said it had signed a definitive agreement with to acquire the right to use spectrum in the 800-megahertz (MHz) band in Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, and Mumbai circles through spectrum trading.

Inox Leisure: The company said will raise up to Rs 300 crore through issue of securities either by way of public issue, rights issue or private placement but not limited only to QIP.

Max Financial: Diversified Max Group has sold a 13 per cent stake in Max Life Insurance Company to Axis Bank, which will now be a co-promoter of the insurer.

Tata Steel: The company said it has achieved the highest ever quarterly crude steel production of 4.75 million tonnes with a 3 per cent quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) growth in Q4FY21. For the full year FY21, the production was lower by 7 per cent year-on-year (YoY) primarily due to the disruption caused by COVID-19 pandemic in 1HFY21.

Long Products: TSLP ( Long Products) said it has achieved the highest-ever quarterly crude steel production of 1,86,000 tonnes with a growth of 19 per cent YoY and 7 per cent QoQ on the back of debottlenecking at steel melting shop and arcing.

Max Healthcare Institute: The company board has approved incorporation of a wholly owned subsidiary to provide range of diagnostic services including pathology lab services to retail and non-captive customers as well as third party Hospital Lab Management.

Reliance Infra: HDFC sold 42.40 lakh shares of Reliance Infrastructure, representing 1.61 per cent stake at Rs 41.47 per share via bulk deal on Tuesday.

Cholamandalam Investment: Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Company said it is one of the companies participating in a consortium - Vishwakarma Payments Pvt. Ltd, which has applied for a New Umbrella Entity (NUE) license for retail payments with RBI. FSS, Zoho, Zerodha, RazorPay, Ujjivan and Airpay are also part of the Vishwakarma Payments consortium along with Chola.

Somi Conveyor Beltings: The company said it has secured major orders worth Rs 30.68 crore from March till date.

Wockhardt: CARE Ratings has assigned Wockhardt's proposed non-convertible debenture issue of Rs 200 crore a rating of 'BBB-, with a stable outlook.
A U.S.-made F-16V fighter jet with its armaments is on display during an exercise at a military base in Chiayi, southern Taiwan, on Jan. 15, 2020. (Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images)

Taiwan Says May Shoot Down Chinese Drones in South China Sea

TAIPEITaiwan has spotted Chinese drones circling the Taipei-controlled Pratas Islands in the South China Sea and may shoot them down if they stray too close, a government minister said on Wednesday, a move that could dramatically increase tensions with Beijing.

Speaking at parliament, Lee Chung-wei, who heads the Ocean Affairs Council under whose purview the Coast Guard falls, said that they had recently spotted Chinese drones circling the Pratas, though they have not flown over the islands.

They have never entered our restricted waters and airspace, theyve just flown around them at a certain distance, Lee said.

While China does not recognize Taiwanese claims of sovereignty, its aircraft and ships generally stay outside Taiwans restricted zone, which extends 3.7 miles from its coast.

Asked how the Coast Guard would react if a Chinese drone entered that restricted zone, Lee said they had rules of engagement.

After it enters it will be handled under the rules. If we need to open fire, we open fire.

The Pratas lie at the top end of the disputed waterway, and have become a relatively new source of intrigue between Chinese-claimed Taiwan and Beijing.

In recent months Taiwan has complained of repeated Chinese air force activity near the islands, which Taiwans Coast Guard only lightly defends though there are periodic deployments of marines. There is no permanent civilian population, only occasional visiting scientists.

A projectile is launched from a Taiwanese-made Thunderbolt-2000 multiple rocket system during the annual Han Kuang military drills in Taichung, Taiwan, on July 16, 2020. (Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images)

In October, Hong Kong air traffic controllers warned off a Taiwanese civilian flight flying to the Pratas on a routine weekly supply run, forcing it to turn back.

The Pratas, the closest Taiwan-controlled territory to Hong Kong, have also taken on extra significance since anti-government protests began in the Chinese-run city.

Taiwan has intercepted at least one boat close to the Pratas carrying people fleeing from Hong Kong trying to make their way to Taiwan.

Taiwans other main South China Sea island is Itu Aba, also known as Taiping Island, which is part of the Spratly archipelago.

Lee said they have not spotted Chinese drones there.

Apart from China and Taiwan, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam also have competing claims for islands and features in the South China Sea.

U.S. Warship Transits Taiwan Strait Amid China Tensions

The guided missile destroyer USS John S. McCain conducted a routine transit of the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday, the U.S. Navy said, as China sent more fighter jets into Taiwans air defense zone and a Chinese carrier group drilled near Taiwan.

The Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS John S. McCain prepares to depart from dry dock at Fleet Activities Yokosuka after an extensive maintenance period in Yokosuka, Japan, on Nov. 27, 2018. (Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Tyra Watson/U.S. Navy/Handout via Reuters)

The ships transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific. The United States military will continue to fly, sail, and operate anywhere international law allows, the U.S. Navy said in a statement.

By Yimou Lee and Ben Blanchard
RABAT, Morocco (AP)  Moroccan authorities decided Wednesday to enforce a night-time curfew during the holy month of Ramadan because of a recent rise in COVID-19 cases, as scientists announced the discovery of a new, local variant of the virus.

Many Moroccans voiced their anger over the decision on social networks, describing it as another blow to many businesses already struggling to survive, as well as to family gatherings that are a central part of the holiday.

While the North African kingdom has had one of the region's most successful vaccination programs so far, it is also seeing a growth in coronavirus infections, especially in Casablanca, the largest city.

A curfew from 8 p.m to 6 a.m has been in place since December, and the Moroccan government decided Wednesday to extend it through Ramadan, which starts April 13 in Morocco.

Because observant Muslims don't eat or drink in the daytime during Ramadan, cafes and restaurants depend on nighttime business that's now off-limits because of the curfew.

Countries around the Mideast imposed some virus restrictions and curfews for Ramadan last year, and several are considering, or renewing restrictions, this year.

Morocco has reported more than 499,000 Covid-19 infections with 8,865 deaths.

The kingdom has administered the highest number of inoculations in Africa so far  8.3 million doses for a population of 36 million people since vaccinations began Jan. 29. The per-person vaccination rate is higher than in some European countries that started a month earlier, but concerns are rising that Morocco's vaccine supplies are drying up and the rate could slow.

Morocco is using vaccines from AstraZeneca and Chinas Sinopharm. Millions more doses are expected eventually from both companies as well as from the global COVAX program to provide vaccines to low and middle-income countries.

Meanwhile, the Moroccan government's National Scientific and Technical Committee for COVID-19 announced the discovery of a new variant of the virus first detected in the southern city of Ouarzazate. It was not immediately clear if it is linked to the recent spike in infections in the kingdom.

Story continues

The new variant can be classified as 100% Moroccan," said professor Azzedin Ibrahimi, member of the committee and director of the biotechnology laboratory at the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy in the capital Rabat. He said Sunday that it was detected as part of a study conducted by Moroccan researchers into the spread of various variants.

___

Follow all of APs pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic, https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
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Amazon, Uber, and Netflix are industry leaders and well-respected in their segments. With models that comprehensively embrace technology and online business, these companies are models for how consumers prefer to do business. Unfortunately, digital solutions for automotive have lagged near the back of the pack, leaving the industry open to disruptors like Tesla and Rivian to capitalize. OEMs and dealers have a challenge ahead to bridge the divide between traditional means and digitalized options that better engage and satisfy the consumers.

Customers are Going Digital Already

Research compiled by Star Automotive & Mobility experts identified that more than four in five car shoppers in the UK start their automotive retail experience on their mobile device. With an adoption rate of around 90 percent in developed countries, smartphones are a preferred method for car shoppers to begin their journey.

The attraction to digital solutions in automotive is evident in ridesharing provider Uber. The completely digital mobility option provided nearly 11 billion rides in the first quarter of 2020 alone. Tesla's direct-to-consumer model elicited around 368,000 sales in 2019, all digitally without the traditional dealership, proving that consumers have already embraced an online system.

Traditional Automotive Retail Solutions have Lost Appeal

Notably, dissatisfaction for the traditional dealership template has lost its luster. Star Automotive experts remark in the report Reimagining the Future of Automotive Retail that "56% of millennials would rather clean their house than negotiate with a car dealer". It reinforces Cox Automotive data that, rather than enjoying the process of shopping for a car, two in three consumers feel there's room for improvement.

CX Takes Priority

The traditional automotive shopping experience emphasizes finding the right car at the best price. It begins with a needs and wants assessment, continues into a test drive, culminates in a sales agreement, and is finalized with financing. However, the process that centers around the need for a vehicle no longer resonates as well with shoppers, and it has been eclipsed with a desire for a superior customer experience.

In the latest Star Automotive & Mobility blog Innovating Automotive Retail: the 5 biggest challenges shaping the future, consumers want the time commitment to buy a new vehicle cut in half from 4 hours to 2 or less. Reimagining the showroom as a Brand Experience Center is attractive to the majority of shoppers, alleviating the pressure a typical salesperson is trained to exert on buyers. Although driven by a millennial worldview, the consumer-centric experience is one all demographics can appreciate.

Mobility-as-a-Service on the Rise

Digitalization is pushing the boundaries with automotive retail solutions that defy traditional car ownership. Where OEMs and dealers have operated within an established lifecycle of vehicle purchase, maintenance, and nurturing until the next purchase, mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) upends the model. In fact, it's predicted that "95% of U.S. car miles will be traveled in self-driving, electric, shared vehicles by 2030", according to thinktank RethinkX.

Partnerships are being developed constantly between carmakers and mobility providers. Waymo and Jaguar, Cruise and General Motors, Aptiv and Hyundai, and several others have undertaken projects to change mobility options including last-mile transportation, connected cars, V2X infrastructure, and more. Electrification is widely seen as a game-changer, making many MaaS providers viable with low-cost operational and maintenance costs.

More directly, ridesharing has increased in adoption with availability in 93 countries, accounting for more than 900 cities. Helsinki-based Whim networks taxis, rental cars, and public transport to streamline end-to-end transportation cost-effectively.

The ability to move from A to B intelligently without owning a car is destined to impact auto retail and car ownership much more than it already has.

Reimagining the Relationship with Automotive Retail

OEMs and dealers have a challenge ahead as they face a transportation metamorphosis. EV adoption has been relatively slow-moving but is gaining momentum, and it's certainly a precursor for a dynamic shift in automotive retail. It's become clear that customers desire a change in how the industry operates, from connected vehicles and mobility options to the car-buying experience itself. Consumers expect better, but how is the industry responding?

An immersive shopping experience is an excellent step. Manufacturers like Audi have been using VR headsets for virtual walkarounds and test drives since 2016, and both Porsche and Jaguar Land Rover provide the VR/AR experience.

Offering direct-to-consumer sales from the major carmakers would put them on ahead of Tesla for convenience in automotive retail solutions by providing consumers the option of either fully online or in-person shopping. Dealers and OEMs would have the advantage with their dealer network already in place for a better maintenance and repair experience for owners.

Most importantly, by focusing on the customer experience rather than product, dealers and carmakers can better understand what it is the consumer wants in the evolving digital age, aiding in brand loyalty for whichever direction the industry goes.
A DeKalb Jackson Water District employee has been charged with credit card fraud and identity theft.

DeKalb County Sheriff Nick Welden said Jessica Kay Hosch, 33, of Rainsville, faces three counts of fraudulent use of a credit/debit card and three counts of identity theft.

Investigators say Hosch, while working at the office in Ider, took credit or debit card numbers when customers paid their bills and used them to make online purchases. At least two of the victims live in DeKalb County, Welden said. More charges are possible.

Welden thanked the water district for its cooperation with investigators.

Working these types of crimes are extremely difficult for our investigators due to the difficulty in obtaining evidence, he said.

All customers of the DeKalb Jackson Water District are being asked to check their bank statements for fraudulent charges. Those affected can call the DeKalb County Sheriffs Office at (256) 845-3801.
The ports in the county of Constanta were closed on Wednesday because of the dense fog, agerpres.ro confirms.

The INFOTRAFIC center from the General Inspectorate of Romanian Police informs that, in the southeastern Constanta county, due to the thick fog, maneuvers were halted in the ports of Constanta Nord, Constanta Sud-Agigea and Midia.
A 37-year-old man wanted in the 2016 San Diego death of a woman he was dating has been added to the U.S. Marshals 15 Most Wanted list, the federal law enforcement agency announced Monday.

Raymond "RJ" McLeod is the first person to debut on the list with a hefty $50,000 reward for information directly leading to his arrest. San Diego prosecutors have charged him with murder in the death of Krystal Mitchell, a 30-year-old mother of two.

The international manhunt for McLeod  he was last seen four years ago in Guatemala  had made headlines and been featured on true-crime shows. The case was also set to be featured Monday on America's Most Wanted.

McLeod had just started seeing Mitchell  they lived in the same Phoenix-area apartment complex  when they came out to San Diego to visit one of McLeod's friends, a married man with a new baby.

On June 10, 2016, the friend went into the guestroom of his Mission Gorge apartment and found Mitchell dead amid signs of a struggle.

McLeod was gone. So was Mitchell's new car. Authorities believe McLeod fled to Mexico and into Central America.

Mitchell's mother, a former police officer, is thrilled about the decision to add McLeod to the Marshals list of 15 most wanted fugitives.

"I am very hopeful. Going top 15 means that the case is not going to fall to the bottom and be buried," Josephine Funes Wentzel said Monday.

Wentzel has doggedly dug for tips about McLeod's whereabouts. Using social media, she was able to tracked down sightings of the heavily tattooed bodybuilder in Belize in 2016, and the following year in Guatemala.

McLeod is White and about 5 feet 11 inches tall with brown hair and hazel eyes. A bodybuilder, he weighed about 245 pounds when he went into hiding. He also has several tattoos, including skulls and symbols, on his chest and arms.

Authorities said the former Marine may be going by RJ, Matt or Mateo, and may have grown a beard.

The reward poster from the U.S. Marshals office notes that he has a history of domestic violence  he's suspected of abusing two previous wives  and is a heavy drinker. At a 2018 news conference about the case, authorities said McLeod might be in expatriate communities on the coast, and was known to go to nightclubs.

This article is written by Teri Figueroa from The San Diego Union-Tribune and was legally licensed via the Tribune Content Agency through the Industry Dive publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@industrydive.com.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 19:03:57|Editor: huaxia

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HANOI, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The 14th National Assembly (NA) of Vietnam, the country's top legislature, on Wednesday relieved 13 cabinet members from their posts.

A resolution was adopted by the top legislature with an approval rate of 94.58 percent to relieve Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Trinh Dinh Dung and 12 other cabinet members from their posts at the ongoing 11th session of the 14th NA, Vietnam News Agency reported.

The Minister of National Defense Ngo Xuan Lich, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Pham Binh Minh, and the Minister of Finance Dinh Tien Dung, who was appointed secretary of the Hanoi Municipal Communist Party of Vietnam Committee on April 3, were also among the relieved.

Following the adoption of the resolution which came into force immediately, Vietnamese legislators listened to and debated on a nomination list to the posts proposed by Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh. The deputies will vote on new cabinet members on Thursday morning.

On Wednesday morning, the lawmakers also cast secret ballots to elect a few other senior officials, including chairpersons of the NA's committees, the secretary general of the NA and the state auditor general.

On Monday, the NA elected Nguyen Xuan Phuc as the new Vietnamese president and Pham Minh Chinh as the new prime minister. Enditem
SELBYVILLE, Del., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Based on Global Market Insights Inc.'s report, the ASEAN Livestock Disinfectant Market was estimated at $135 million in 2020 and is slated to exceed $185 million by 2025, registering a CAGR of 6% from 2021 to 2025 owing to raising awareness about the benefits of maintaining health and hygiene of livestock sheds. The report provides a thorough analysis of the main investment avenues, major winning strategies, drivers and opportunities, wavering industry trends, market estimations as well as size, competitive scenarios.

Global Market Insights Inc.

Livestock disinfectants are chemicals used to prevents the spread and occurrence of diseases by killing various pathogens, bacteria, and viruses. These disinfectant chemicals are also used as antiseptics on various livestock including swine, poultry, aquaculture, and ruminants.

Request for Sample Report: https://www.gminsights.com/request-sample/detail/5022

Covid-19 Synopsis:

The COVID 19 outbreak has led to increased concern about hygiene maintenance in livestock sheds which should raise the ASEAN livestock disinfectant market share. Furthermore, COVID 19 has hampered the supply of livestock disinfectants.

The aquaculture livestock to lead the trail by 2025:

Aquaculture livestock was valued at $8.30 million in 2020 and expected to surpass USD 11 million by 2025 pertaining to its ability to control algae growth, infectious microorganisms, and odor-causing bacteria in water. Rising demand for seafood products along with rebuilding the population of endangered species represents ample growth opportunities for the livestock disinfectant market for aquaculture. Moreover, swine livestock should grow at a CAGR of over 6.15% by end of 2025 owing to the rising demand for the product to disinfect dirty surfaces in swine barns.

ASEAN Livestock disinfectant market size from iodine product should surpass USD 50 million by 2025. Rising demand for cleaning products with low toxicity is expected to trigger demand for iodine as a disinfectant in animal farming applications. Moreover, the glutaraldehyde product segment is likely to surpass USD 10.55 million by 2025 owing to its rising demand from poultry for disinfecting equipment and processing premises.

Request for customization of this report: https://www.gminsights.com/roc/5022

Malaysia to rule the roost throughout the forecast period:

Malaysia's livestock disinfectant market should register over 5% gains by 2025 on account of the rising consumption of pigs and chickens. Developing cattle production market along with the increase in the number of chicken livestock is anticipated to trigger product demand. Beef consumption in Malaysia is expected to grow owing to rising consumer spending on meat products along with government policies on establishing new animal farms which should stimulate the livestock disinfectant market growth.

Leading market players:

The ASEAN livestock disinfectant industry share is competitive and includes manufacturers such as Lanxess AG, CID Lines, Virox Animal Health, GEA Group AG, Evans Vandoline, TheseoGroup, Laboratoire M2, KrKa Slovenia and Evonik Industries.

Related Reports:

Surface Disinfectant Market Future Business Strategies and Competitive Analysis - 2026

Transparent Ceramics Market Future Business Strategies and Revenue Impact Analysis - 2025

About Global Market Insights Inc.

Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider. Offering syndicated and custom research reports, growth consulting and business intelligence services, Global Market Insights, Inc. aims to help clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data that aid in strategic decision making.

GMIPulse, our business analytics platform offers an online, interactive option of exploring our proprietary industry research data in an easy-to-use and dynamic manner. Clients get to explore market intelligence across 11 top level categories and hundreds of industry segments within them, covering regional, company level and cross-sectional statistics that make our offering a stand-out for decision makers.

Contact Us:

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Corporate Sales, USA

Global Market Insights, Inc.

Phone: 1-302-846-7766

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ASEAN Livestock Disinfectant Market Outlook - 2025

SOURCE Global Market Insights Inc.
Achieving universal healthcare, while being a noble pursuit, is not without challenges, especially amid the coronavirus pandemic. To do that, global cooperation is essential.

Nitin Kapoor

Around this time last year when Covid-19 first affected communities globally and in Vietnam, as a resident in Vietnam, I remember following the Vietnamese governments daily briefings and feeling so moved when it was announced: central quarantine at government facilities would provisionally be free for all.

Foreign visitors and expats would only have to pay for hospital fees if they tested positive with coronavirus, and everyone would be treated equally and with dignity. At peak periods, there were easily more than 50,000 people in quarantine at different locations, so the costs that the government was shouldering must have been significant.

At the time, I was living and working in Ho Chi Minh City alone, away from my wife and two daughters who remained in the U.K. due to travel restrictions for an additional few months. I could sympathize with other foreigners in a similar situation, battling with the danger and uncertainty amidst the pandemic without a physically present support system. And hence the humane and inclusive policies enacted by the Vietnamese government, such as this temporary one, provided crucial support for vulnerable groups and deserve praise across the world.

As the theme of the World Health Day today is "Building a fairer, healthier world," I have been reflecting on how governments and businesses alike play critical roles in ensuring the accessibility and fairness of healthcare.

The World Health Organization (WHO), the specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for international public health, was officially founded on this day in 1948. Its constitution affirms that "the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition."

Healthcare for all, or universal healthcare, is a noble pursuit that is not without challenges, as weve seen highlighted during Covid-19. We live in an unequal world where access to healthcare is oftentimes dependent upon ones socioeconomic conditions. Although the world as well as Vietnam have seen great improvements in key health indicators in the last few decades, there are opportunities to better ensure health equity.

A medic holds a box of AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine vials. Photo by AFP/Alain Jocard.

In the recently published report on the "Sustainability and Resilience in the Vietnamese Health System," authored by the Health Strategy and Policy Institute (HSPI) - Vietnam Ministry of Health, as part of the Partnership for Health System Sustainability and Resilience (PHSSR) between the World Economic Forum, London School of Economics and AstraZeneca, health experts acknowledge efforts of the Vietnamese government and Ministry of Health to expand universal health coverage, and present several practical policy recommendations to strengthen Vietnams health system.

As Vietnam has a fast aging population and non-communicable diseases (NCD) which account for 77 percent of all deaths, as WHO reported in 2018, the government recognizes that the key to building a sustainable health system is enhancing disease awareness, prevention, and early detection through primary healthcare.

The last five years have seen multiple government initiatives implemented to shift healthcare from hospital-based to primary healthcare at the grassroots level, which includes service providers at the district and commune levels. This direction is seen as the right way forward and deserves larger investments.

When we have a robust, well-funded grassroots health network, a mom having a sick child living in the countryside can simply bring him to a nearby health clinic for treatment, instead of traveling a few hours to an upper-level hospital. The accessibility gap between different regions will begin to close.

The report also outlines the fair health financing policies that are in place to provide support where people most need it. For example, in 2020, 90.85 percent of Vietnams population have been covered by social health insurance and are entitled to fairly comprehensive benefit packages. The Law on Health Insurance stipulates that vulnerable groups such as people living in poverty or ethnic minorities, etc. are covered 100 percent for medical examinations and treatments. However, private health insurance and other financial mechanisms need to be encouraged to reduce the pressure on state budget.

This leads to another main takeaway from the report about the importance of public-private partnerships (PPPs). "Its aim is to simultaneously reduce burden on the public sector and ensure broad access to quality treatment in the context of growing healthcare needs," the report writes.

As a leader of AstraZeneca Vietnam, I see PPPs as the backbone of our business to enable the sharing of diverse and complementary resources towards a mutual goal  achieving better health outcomes for more patients  in a shorter time. Im heartened to see many governments, organizations and businesses coming together for the common good during Covid-19, despite the divisive tendency of crises.

While we continue to partner with the Ministry of Health, British and Swedish Embassies and healthcare institutions to reduce NCD burden and promote sustainability in local communities through the Healthy Lung Program, Young Health Program, Green Energy for Health, our Covid-19 vaccine, developed in cooperation with the University of Oxford, has provided protection from this deadly virus for more than 100 million people in more than 100 countries, through bilateral deals or Covax, regardless of their income level.

So, if our collective goal is to build a fairer, healthier society in a post-Covid era, cross-sectoral, cross-border cooperation is more important than ever. As no one is safe until everyone is safe, we all share the responsibility to care for one another.

Each gesture, program or policy that demonstrate kindness and equality will go a long way in not only ensuring vital care for the communities they serve, but inspiring others to do their part in times of hardships.

*Nitin Kapoor is the chairman and general director of AstraZeneca Vietnam. The opinions expressed are his own.
(Alliance News) - Pharos Energy PLC on Wednesday reported a swing to a loss and a drop in revenue in 2020 as low oil prices hit the exploration and production company.

The company made a pretax loss of USD241.2 million, after a pretax profit of USD11.7 million in 2019. Revenue fell 25% to USD142.0 million from USD189.7 million.

Shares were down 2.3% to 23.90 pence in London.

Low oil prices and an impairment charge were the key drivers of the loss, Pharos said. The company recorded a USD198.1 million impairment on its Vietnam and Egypt assets, because of the reduction in long-term commodity prices.

Pharos started an intense cost-cutting programme as a result, reducing executives' wages by a quarter and shutting its London office in 2020. It further cut executive pay this month, and plans to complete a redundancy programme this year.

Pharos expects production of up to 10,600 barrels of oil per day this year, down from 11,373 last year. 42% of forecast production from April to December is hedged at an average price of USD50.60 per barrel. The company said it is focusing on near-term development drilling in Vietnam and Egypt, which both have the potential to generate free cash flow.

The reinstatement of the dividend will be kept under regular review, Pharos said, after payouts were suspended in May.

By Ivan Edwards; ivanedwards@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
TIPPECANOE COUNTY, Ind. (WLFI) - The Indiana House Election and Apportionment Committee heard a controversial bill on Tuesday that would change absentee voting and election protocol. Senate Bill 353 would put more steps in place for someone to vote absentee or by mail. It also takes power away from those who can influence voter expansion and change election dates and locations.

"If it's not broken then don't fix it," said State Senator Ron Alting. "I think Indiana did a pretty good job."

Indiana is one of 47 states proposing legislation that would add more restrictions to voting in the name of election security. Indiana lawmakers have also proposed several bills that would make voting more accessible, but many of those bills died in January. Senator Alting does not support Senate Bill 353 in any capacity.

"In my opinion its voter suppression," he said. "Particularly those with economic distressed areas and people of color."

The bill requires an absentee ballot application to include the driver's license number or last four digits of the person's Social Security number. If a person is registered with their driver's license, but requests an absentee ballot with their Social Security number, it would reject your application.

It also "Prohibits the Indiana election commission from: (1) instituting, increasing, or expanding vote by mail or absentee vote by mail; and (2) changing the time, place, or manner of holding an election." And would take the powers out of the governor's hands to change an election day during a declared disaster emergency.

"There has always been fraud there will always be fraud," said Andrew Downs, a political science professor at Purdue Fort Wayne. "The question is what do we do to make sure that the system is secure as possible without inhibiting voting."

Downs said all the states proposing different voter restriction bills is a reaction to the false claims that the election was fraudulent. And while Indiana may have had a safe election, this bill could be seen as further protection for the future. He said another way to look at this bill is putting absentee voting and in-person voting on the same playing field. Currently, you need a photo ID to vote in person, but there is no further identification requirements when voting by mail.

"We know from research that if you expand or make it easier for people to vote that does help voter turn out to go up a little bit, and if you restrict it it only makes it go down a little bit," he said. "So all of these changes only make little changes at the margin in terms of turn out."

Tippecanoe County Clerk Julie Roush doesn't see requiring the ID numbers in absentee voting as a voter suppression and she supports that part of the bill, especially if it is applied to people who are voting from abroad.

"If you're a registered voter in Indiana we already have, for the most part, one of those ID's," she said. "If a problem comes up where your ID's don't match, we're going to get in contact with you to figure it out."

She agreed with Downs that his bill would be an equalizer to in-person and absentee voting. She said it would also help prevent third parties from circulating your personal identification numbers in the mail. She said any political group can pre-fill out absentee ballot applications with all of your personal information and mail it to you so all you have to do is sign it and mail it back to request your ballot. Roush said it's dangerous to have these applications floating around in the mail with that kind of information.

She also can support taking power away from the Indiana Election Commission because the people on the commission are appointed, and are not elected by the people. However, Roush and Alting both strongly agree that the governor's power to make decisions should not be taken away.

"The governor is going to seek advice," she said. "They are going to go to the Indiana election commission, they are going to go to the secretary of state, they are going to go to the Indiana election division before they make that ruling."

"They would have to call in 150 people of the legislature to address an election and it would take a month before anything would happen, and then the election would be over," said Sen. Alting. "Most of the constituents that I represent would say during this last election, our governor did a fantastic job on opening up the election so that every citizen had the right to vote."

Sen. Alting said that he has been fighting such legislation for his entire career as a State Senator. He voted against SB 353 when it was on the Senate floor in March and he said he will continue to oppose the bill so long as it reads as it does.

Roush agreed that the state of Indiana did a phenomenal job in supporting and working with local election officials during this pandemic. She said the state made common sense adjustments to fit the needs of the pandemic and that they did not have any "knee jerk" reactions. She also agreed with Sen. Alting's point that relying on the state legislature to make these kinds of decisions would probably take too long, and it's better to have a single elected official, like a governor, making those calls.

If this bill passes and is signed by the governor, Downs recommends that people get their registration identification figured out. He said you can call your local clerk's office and they can tell whether you registered with your driver's license or your Social Security number.

The House Elections and Apportionment Committee did not actually vote on the bill Tuesday. The committee is expected to make that vote later this week. However, Thursday is the deadline to get all bills out of committee.
(Newser)  A Navy medic who shot and wounded two US sailors before he was killed by police on a nearby Army base was a laboratory technician assigned to a Naval medical research center on the base, according to his service record and a military official. Fantahun Girma Woldesenbet, 38, and the two men he shot Tuesday at a government-leased military warehouse were all assigned to Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, authorities have said. Employees at Nicolock Paving Stones, a business in the same office park as the warehouse, assisted one of the wounded sailors, Navy Hospitalman Casey Nutt, after he fled the scene of the initial shooting. Nutt was released from a hospital on Tuesday evening, authorities said in a news release. Police found the other wounded sailorNavy Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Carlos Portugal, 36in the warehouse, the AP reports. He remained in critical condition on Wednesday.

story continues below

Authorities said they have no information about a motive yet. Woldesenbet worked in the Naval Medical Research Center's Biological Defense Research Directorate at Fort Detrick, a Navy spokesman said Wednesday. Woldesenbet's service record says he enlisted in September 2012 and reported to his most recent position in August 2019. Woldesenbet was awarded a Good Conduct Medal, a National Defense Service Medal, and a Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, his record shows. It lists his rank as Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class. The warehouse is in the Riverside Tech Park, an office park several miles from the Army base. Woldesenbet shot the sailors with a rifle, officials said. He then drove to the base, where he was shot after pulling a weapon when he was stopped, Army officials said. Woldesenbet lived at an apartment building in Frederick, a few miles from the site of the shooting. Police cordoned off the apartment Tuesday, and a neighbor reported seeing officials escorting his wife and children from the building.

(Read more shooting stories.)
The United States is closely watching events in Zimbabwe, following what U.S. State Department Spokesperson Ned Price called troubling moves.

On March 17, the Vice President of the Movement for Democratic Change Alliance, or MDC Alliance, Tendai Biti and other MDC Alliance members were stripped of their elected seats in Zimbabwes Parliament.

This means that since March 2020, parliamentary maneuvers supported by the Zimbabwean government have led to the ouster of 39 MDC Alliance MPs, as well as 81 local elected officials. These actions, said Spokesperson Price in a statement, subvert the will of voters, further undermine democracy, and deny millions of Zimbabwean citizens their chosen representation.

On March 3, President Joe Biden renewed for another year targeted sanctions against certain members of the Government of Zimbabwe and others who undermine Zimbabwes democratic processes or institutions. In a notice to the U.S. Congress renewing sanctions first put in place in 2003 by Executive Order 13288, President Biden wrote that the actions and policies of the those sanctioned had contributed to the deliberate breakdown in the rule of law in Zimbabwe, to politically motivated violence and intimidation in that country, and to political and economic instability in the southern African region.

As the ousting of MDC Alliance members continues in Zimbabwe, Spokesperson Price declared that the United States is also monitoring efforts by the government to dismantle the MDC Alliance through the arrest and detention of its leaders and diversion of its assets. In addition, he wrote, the United States notes the governments selective enforcement of COVID-19 regulations to indefinitely postpone by-elections and prohibit MDC Alliance gatherings, while permitting internal elections and gatherings for the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union  Patriotic Front, (ZANU-PF) party and its allies to go forward.

The ZANU-PF is misusing the levers of government to silence critics, neutralize opposition, and entrench its political power over the Zimbabwean people, said Spokesperson Price. We call on the Government of Zimbabwe to comply with its obligation to respect the freedoms of expression and association enshrined in Zimbabwes constitution and its international commitments.
The global production of sheep's milk is one the rise, in the vast majority of cases used to produce cheese. However, a relatively large amount of milk is needed to produce it, so science is looking for ways to increase its yield; that is, to obtain more cheese using less milk.

Immersed in this task, a team from the Department of Animal Production at the University of Cordoba, led by Professor Ana Garzon, has collaborated with the University of Leon in the search for genetic parameters affecting the cheese production of milk from Churra sheep, one of the oldest and most rustic breeds on the Iberian Peninsula.

After analysing traits related to rennet and milk properties (pH, milk yield, fat and protein content) in a sample of more than 1,000 sheep, the research team found a low to moderate heritability of these traits, suggesting that their improvement can be achieved through genetic selection. In addition, the need to consider milk pH at the beginning of the coagulation process as a characteristic to be taken into accountas a selection index for the improvement of Churra quality was confirmed, as it will augment the 'cheesemaking capacity' of the milk from this breed.

The team,formed by Ana Garzon andthe researchers Antonio Figueroa and Javier Caballero-Villalobos, comprise the Dairy Laboratory, where the milk samples of this work were analysed, measuring their pH; the physical-chemical parameters of the milk, such as its proteins, fats, and lactose; and technological parameters, such as coagulation time and curd hardening speed; with the aim of providing information for the selection of values to be included in the genetic selection scheme of the Churra breed in order to obtain ewes that give milk with a higher yield in terms of cheese production.

The UCO Dairy Laboratory | The science that cares for milk

This service, part of the UCO's Department of Animal Production, has been working since 2003 on the study of the composition, quality and technological parameters of ruminant milk with the aim of transferring knowledge to the livestock sector to improve milk quality, productivity and yields.

The Dairy Laboratory specialises in the study of the Manchega breed, which is the most important class of sheep in terms of product quality and economic weight in the sector. In this regard, the search for a faster, cheaper and more efficient method to measure the quality of milk according to its composition is one of their main lines of research, as they are trying to determine whether chromaticity can provide information sufficient for the livestock sector to evaluate milk quickly and cheaply.

They are also striving to solve the problem of water retention in curd, which reduces the milk'syield, thus requiring a lot of milk to obtain cheese. In their latest work, they develop mathematical models to achieve more efficient milk for cheese production. Finally, they analyse the correlation between the health of the sheep's udder and these coagulation parameters of the milk slated for cheese production.

In short, this work directly transfers the science carried out in the Laboratory to the livestock sector, which benefits from improvements in the quality and efficiency of its dairy farms.

###
Getty said he has not committed any crime and has not been charged with wrongdoing, but his challenger, former Trustee Richard Gatz Jr., said he had gotten into the race because of all the corruption going on.
Photo: The Canadian Press

Provincial governments are grappling with how to bring the third wave of COVID-19 under control, as the more virulent variants of the virus begin to dominate and younger, healthier people are getting very sick, very quickly.

From Ontario and Quebec to British Columbia and Alberta, fear of the variants is growing as swiftly as the caseloads, particularly for young people who might still think the virus won't hit them that hard.

"This is a reminder that COVID-19 can impact people of all ages, and severe illness can occur at any age," said Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada's chief public health officer.

Provincial health officials report increasing numbers of hospital admissions of younger patients who soon need intensive care, she said Tuesday. "Many of them deteriorate quite quickly and have to be admitted to the ICU."

Tam said there were on average 6,100 new cases of COVID-19 a day over the last week, and 31 deaths, up from 4,600 new cases and 26 deaths a week earlier.

But the hospitalization numbers concern her the most, and the share of hospitalized patients who need critical care is growing fastest.

In the last week, the number of people in hospital with COVID-19 rose four per cent to an average of 2,400 people a day, she said. At the same time, the number of people in ICU grew by 18 per cent to 780 people.

That means about one in every three patients hospitalized with COVID-19 now need critical care. In mid-January, when hospitalizations during the second wave of the pandemic peaked at 4,775, about one-fifth, or 880 people, were in the ICU.

Several jurisdictions are reporting that a majority of patients in hospital are under age 60, and physicians across the country are increasingly taking to social media to drive home this is not a virus that attacks just the weak or the old.

"Younger people think they are invincible," tweeted Dr. Kevin McLeod, an internal medicine specialist in Vancouver. "That feeling quickly fades when we are blasting you with 100% oxygen ... and all you really hear is a team debating pros and cons of intubating you and hooking you up to a ventilator."

There is increasing pressure on provinces to get vaccines to younger, essential workers faster, in industries where it's known the virus is spreading and workers can't stay home.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke with Ontario Premier Doug Ford Tuesday. A summary of the conversation provided by the Prime Minister's Office said they both agreed that it is important to keep working together on the vaccine rollout.

It also said they "both supported maintaining a Team Canada approach to protect the health and safety of Canadians."

Public sniping between Ontario and Ottawa over the vaccine supply and delivery grew in recent days with Ford blaming slow delivery of vaccines for uneven distribution, and federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu taking to Twitter to point out how many doses Canada had delivered versus how many provinces had injected.

Hajdu said Tuesday she was only offering up facts. About 6.7 million jabs have been administered, out of more than 10 million doses distributed. But as much as 15 per cent of those doses were received by provinces only in the last few days.

Canada was nearing the six million mark for the number of people vaccinated with at least one dose Tuesday afternoon.

Tam said vaccines are helping but warned they aren't a panacea and, with the variants exploding, there is still a need to limit interactions and to wear masks.
The approximately 700 Manitobans who own a battery electric vehicle likely do not need financial help to pay for parking. People who paid the higher sticker price of an EV can presumably find a toonie or two to feed a parking meter.

The approximately 700 Manitobans who own a battery electric vehicle likely do not need financial help to pay for parking. People who paid the higher sticker price of an EV can presumably find a toonie or two to feed a parking meter.

Allowing them to park for free at city lots and street meters, as is currently proposed by one city councillor, is more like a public signal that the Winnipeg pioneers of EV vehicles deserve respect.

While the vast majority of Winnipeg drivers continue to express personal hesitation about making the switch from internal-combustion engines  commonly voiced reasons are that EVs are initially expensive, and charging stations are scarce  some drivers of commendable conviction are blazing the trail toward this sustainable form of clean energy.

Winnipeg City Coun. Kevin Klein would like the city to offer people who drive electric vehicles free parking for five hours at city parking lots and street meters. (Mikaela MacKenzie / Winnipeg Free Press files)

Coun. Kevin Klein (Charleswood-Tuxedo-Westwood) proposes that Winnipeg show its gratitude to these EV drivers in a small but tangible, way. Its one of many recent proposals from this councillor, who has made obvious efforts to raise his public profile since Mayor Brian Bowman announced he will not run for re-election. Mr. Kleins pitches in past weeks have included a tax rebate for backyard composters, prioritizing police officers and bus drivers for COVID-19 vaccinations, and giving hotels a grant worth half the taxes they pay.

Amid his blitz of ideas, the proposal related to electric vehicles is one that would seem to deserve traction. In a motion that will be debated Friday at a meeting of the Assiniboia community committee, he asks the city to consider a permit process that would let eligible EVs park for free for five hours at city parking lots and street meters.

Its the least this city can do to catch up to other jurisdictions that are doing much more.

Winnipeg has about half as many public chargers available as Edmonton, and less than a third of whats available in Quebec City. This shortage of chargers will be eased to a small degree, owing to the federal governments February announcement that it will install 31 additional Level 2 chargers in Manitoba.

Winnipeg has about half as many public chargers available as Edmonton, and less than a third of whats available in Quebec City. (Mikaela MacKenzie / Winnipeg Free Press files)

The notion of giving EV drivers free parking is already common in other countries such as Norway, where EVs are also allowed to drive bus lanes.

One would think Manitoba would be a poster province for clean transportation, given that this province has among the lowest electricity rates in North America. Manitoba Hydro says an EV that travels 15,000 kilometres per year would use about the same amount of energy as an electric water heater, with the driver paying only $0.02 per kilometer driven.

But while the provincial government in Manitoba says the right things about moving to clean energy, words dont pay for vehicles. Manitoba Conservation and Climate Minister Sarah Guillemard has said lowering emissions from the transportation sector is a priority, but while she awaits a report from an advisory council on how to proceed, other provinces already offer financial incentives to prospective EV buyers. Quebec offers up to $8,000 and British Columbia offers $3,000, alongside the additional federal grant of $5,000 for fully-electric purchases.

Its a tribute to Manitoba EV owners that even while getting scant support from their governments, they decided to plug in and do right by the environment. Someone has to model how to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions; someone has to become the harbinger of a better way to drive.

Giving them a break on parking meters is a bit like giving them a trophy: its not worth much financially, but its recognition of an admirable achievement.
People walk past a sign warning to wear masks after California lifted its regional stay-at-home orders during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Encinitas, (Photo : REUTERS/Mike Blake)

California will fully reopen its economy on June 15 if COVID-19 hospitalizations are low and stable, and vaccine supplies are plentiful enough for everyone over the age of 16 who wants to be inoculated, Governor Gavin Newsom said on Tuesday.



The move to end pandemic restrictions in the most populous U.S. state comes as California continues to ramp up its vaccination efforts, with about 360,000 doses administered per day and 7.5 million people fully vaccinated.



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"We can now begin planning for our lives post-pandemic," Newsom said. "We will need to remain vigilant, and continue the practices that got us here - wearing masks and getting vaccinated - but the light at the end of this tunnel has never been brighter."



If cases are low and vaccines readily available, businesses will be allowed to reopen fully, but they will still be expected to mandate mask-wearing and encourage people to become vaccinated, Newsom said.



California was one of the first states to shut down its economy as the pandemic began last year, and at one point had the tightest restrictions in the country. Some other states, including Texas, have already lifted most of their restrictions, but California would be the largest to do so.



Newsom, a Democrat, faces a likely recall election at a date yet to be set or affirmed, fueled by a combination of Republican activism and frustration over restrictions.



The announcement of plans to reopen the world's fifth largest economy in just over two months also comes as states including Michigan and Florida are seeing a resurgence of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, linked to contagious new variants of the coronavirus as well as efforts to loosen restrictions.



In the bellwether county of Santa Clara, the center of the state's Silicon Valley technology hub, officials last week warned that the fight against the pandemic was "precarious," and said that the decline in case rates was stalling.



California has reported nearly 3.6 million cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and nearly 59,000 deaths, state records show. It reported 2,112 new cases on Monday.


Hong Kong: Three veteran Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, including well-known publisher Jimmy Lai, have pleaded guilty to taking part in an unauthorised rally that led to violence between police and participants. The charges carry prison terms of up to five years.

Lee Cheuk-yan, ex-legislator, and Yeng Sum, a former chairman of the Democratic Party, were released on bail after the guilty pleas on Wednesday. Lai was returned to jail as he was already being held on other charges related to his outspoken opposition to Chinas crackdown on civil liberties in the former British colony.

Jimmy Lai pictured leaving a court in December last year. Credit:Bloomberg

Walking out of the courthouse in Wanchai district, Lee said that despite pleading guilty, he and the others saw no fault in their actions.

Today we plead guilty to the charges, but we have done no wrong. This is an act of civil disobedience. We want to reclaim our right to demonstration and we affirm the right of people, that we have the right to come out to march, Lee said.
WASHINGTON  Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., was one of President Donald Trumps most vocal allies during his term, publicly pledging loyalty and even signing a letter nominating the president for the Nobel Peace Prize.

In the final weeks of Trumps term, Gaetz sought something in return. He privately asked the White House for blanket preemptive pardons for himself and unidentified congressional allies for any crimes they may have committed, according to two people told of the discussions.

Around that time, Gaetz was also publicly calling for broad pardons from Trump to thwart what he termed the bloodlust of their political opponents. But Justice Department investigators had begun questioning Gaetzs associates about his conduct, including whether he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old that violated sex trafficking laws, in an inquiry that grew out of the case of an indicted associate in Florida.

It was unclear whether Gaetz or the White House knew at the time about the inquiry, or who else he sought pardons for. Gaetz did not tell White House aides that he was under investigation for potential sex trafficking violations when he made the request. But top White House lawyers and officials viewed the request for a preemptive pardon as a nonstarter that would set a bad precedent, the people said.

Aides told Trump of the request, though it is unclear whether Gaetz discussed the matter directly with the president. Trump ultimately pardoned dozens of allies and others in the final months of his presidency, highlighting his willingness to wield his power to help close supporters and lash out against the criminal justice system.

In recent days, some Trump associates have speculated that Gaetzs request for a group pardon was an attempt to camouflage his own potential criminal exposure.

Either way, Gaetzs appeal to the Trump White House shows how the third-term congressman sought to leverage an unlikely presidential relationship he had spent years cultivating.

Few Republicans in Congress became more closely associated with Trump during his presidency than Gaetz. Though he had initially supported his fellow Floridian Jeb Bush in the 2016 Republican primary race, Gaetz latched his political fortunes to Trump during the campaign and found stardom in the Republican Party, becoming one of Trumps greatest defenders.

This account of Gaetzs dealings with the Trump White House is based on interviews with four people briefed on the exchanges about his pardon request and other Trump confidants. A spokesperson for Trump declined to comment.

Gaetz has denied having sex with a 17-year-old or paying for sex. A spokesperson denied that he privately requested a pardon in connection with the continuing Justice Department inquiry.

Entry-level political operatives have conflated a pardon call from Rep. Gaetz  where he called for President Trump to pardon everyone from himself, to his administration, to Joe Exotic  with these false and increasingly bizarre, partisan allegations against him, the spokesperson said in a statement. Those comments have been on the record for some time, and President Trump even retweeted the congressman, who tweeted them out himself.

Although Gaetz had little formal power in the House, where he remains a backbencher, he offered Trump what he craved and what Republican congressional leaders would not always offer: fierce loyalty and a taste for bare-knuckle political combat.

In his memoir published last fall, Firebrand: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the MAGA Revolution, Gaetz recalled his first one-on-one phone call with the president in late 2017. Trump had seen Gaetz on Fox News attacking Robert Mueller, the special counsel, and thought he had heard an ally.

I need warriors, you know what I mean? the president told him.

Gaetz knew precisely. Though he came from the more conservative Florida Panhandle, the young congressman shared Trumps taste for boasts, particularly about sexual exploits, and a knack for self-promotion. Neither was particularly impressed by the trappings of traditional power in Washington, and both were sons of powerful men. Gaetzs father, Don Gaetz, was the president of the Florida Senate and a wealthy businessman, and Trumps father was a successful real estate developer in New York.

After Democrats took back the House in 2018 and began cranking up pressure on the Trump administration, Gaetz emerged as a standout in what he called the warrior class of lawmakers who made it their mission to protect the president.

The president has called me when I was in my car, asleep in the middle of the night on my Longworth Office cot, on the throne, on airplanes, in nightclubs, and even in the throes of passion (yes, I answered), Gaetz boasted in his book.

When Democrats called Michael Cohen, the presidents former fixer, to testify against him in early 2019, Gaetz threatened to reveal what he said were extramarital affairs by Cohen. Democrats accused him of witness intimidation and the Florida Bar, of which Gaetz is a member, investigated.

Gaetz brought the first impeachment investigation into Trump, later that year, to a halt, albeit briefly, when he led dozens of Republican lawmakers into investigative hearing rooms and refused to leave.

Trump publicly singled out Gaetz, saying he was a great talent, young, handsome, thanking him for his advocacy on the presidents behalf and predicting Gaetz was going places.

Gaetzs rise caught the Republican establishment off guard.

He was not on peoples radar until he started showing up next to Trump at rallies, said Alex Conant, a Republican political strategist and a former senior aide to Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.

The president would see him on Fox, defending the president, which was a good way to get close to the Trump White House, Conant added. A lot of members tried to do that. Matt Gaetz did exceptionally well.

Gaetz embraced his role after the president lost last years election, trying to discredit the result and overturn it in Congress. He also privately and publicly attacked Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, a leading Republican critic of Trumps incitement of the Capitol rioters.

But by then, federal investigators were asking witnesses about Gaetzs ties to a 17-year-old girl whom investigators believed had sex with Gaetz and was paid, people close to the investigation have said. The interviews grew out of a case the Justice Department began making last summer against a local Florida tax collector who has been indicted on a range of charges, including sex trafficking of a minor. He has pleaded not guilty and is set to go to trial this year.

Two weeks after Trump lost reelection, Gaetz called on him to pardon everyone before he left office or they would be targeted by the radical left.

He should pardon the Thanksgiving turkey, Gaetz said of Trump on Fox News. He should pardon everyone from himself to his administration officials to Joe Exotic if he has to, Gaetz added, referring to the gun-toting zoo owner in the Netflix series Tiger King who was convicted in a murder-for-hire plot.

Gaetz added, You see from the radical left a bloodlust that will only be quenched if they come after the people who worked so hard to animate the Trump administration with the policies and the vigor and the effectiveness that delivered for the American people. He later tweeted the clip.

Shortly after Trump left office, Gaetz publicly floated the idea of quitting Congress to defend Trump in impeachment, but Trumps advisers showed no interest.

Since the existence of the investigation was publicly revealed last week, Trump and his close allies have mostly remained silent. Trumps advisers have urged him to stay quiet and sought to distance the former president from Gaetz.

Though Trump wielded his clemency power in self-serving ways unlike any other president, a blanket pardon for Gaetz would have stood out because it failed to specify the crimes being pardoned and lacked the public healing justifications for rare such past exercises of the pardon authority, said Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor who tracked Trumps pardons.

If Trump had granted it, which he didnt, Goldsmith said, the pardon would have on some dimensions been the most audacious of his many audacious pardons.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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What is going on in the Senate, in the case of Stephen Odey and Rt. Hon. Jarigbe Agom Jarigbe, is an illegality taken too far. The Senate President is wrong and should retrace his steps to avoid bringing the institution of the legislature to disrepute.

It is obvious that from the judgements of the Appeal Court and the Supreme Court that Stephen Odey is no longer the senator Representing Cross River North, in the Senate.

It is a known fact that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has obeyed the judgement of courts and issued a Certificate of Return to Rt. Hon. Jarigbe Agom Jarigbe (MHR), which automatically invalidates the Certificate of Return earlier issued to Stephen Odey, after the by-election.

The fact that the apex court has ruled on who was the authentic candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the Cross River North senatorial election is incontrovertible. The candidate remains Rt. Hon. Jarigbe Agom Jarigbe, as affirmed by the Supreme Court judgement which struck out the appeal filed by Stephen Odey, challenging the decision of the Appeal Court.

The appeal was struck out due to a defective Notice of Appeal, on February 25.

We should be reminded that Stephen Odey sought to be joined as an interested party to the suit and his request was granted at the Appeal Court. He went ahead and appealed the judgement of the Appeal Court at the Supreme Court.

He sought some reliefs from the apex court, including his affirmation as the authentic candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in the December 5th, 2020 Senate by-election for Cross River North. The appeal of Stephen Odey at the Supreme Court was considered as Incompetent and subsequently struck out. However, Stephen Odey now claims that he was not part of the suit, which is an unfortunate attempt to approbate and aeprobate at the same time.

The man who took the appeal to the Supreme Court was Stephen Odey and not John Alaga, who was however one of the respondents at the Supreme Court. Chief John Alaga lost his case at the Trial Court and the Appeal Court. The appellant at the Supreme Court was Stephen Odey, who lost the case to the respondents. On that note, the subsisting verdict of the Trial and Appeal Courts have been affirmed and yet to be upturned. They cannot be upturned because the judgement of the Supreme Court is final and infallible. This is the truth that is incontrovertible.

It is not the duty of the Senate to look at court judgements or interpret court judgements. The clerk of the Senate is supposed to verify the Certificate of Return issued by INEC and document the elected senator, in line with the Certificate of Return (latest in time) for swearing in. The Senate Presidents duty is to act in line with the advice of the Clerk of the National Assembly, on the basis of the legal brief and advice of the legal department of the Nigerian parliament.

It is worthy of note that with the evidence before us, the legal department and the Clerk of the National Assembly have advised the Senate President to swear in Rt. Hon. Jarigbe Agom Jarigbe, in obedience to court judgements, INEC compliance and the issuance of a Certificate of Return to Jarigbe, and in total compliance with the rule of law.

The questions are: Is the Senate President competent to interpret judgements of courts, or question the actions of INEC? Can the Senate President possibly ask for the results of an election, before swearing in an elected senator, after a Certificate of Return has been issued to an elected senator? So why should the Senate President dwell on court judgements and the interpretation thereof, when there is a valid and authentic Certificate of Return Issued?

What is going on in the Senate, in the case of Stephen Odey and Rt. Hon. Jarigbe Agom Jarigbe, is an illegality taken too far. The Senate President is wrong and should retrace his steps to avoid bringing the institution of the legislature to disrepute.

The general public should advise Barrister Daniel Bwala, who has been hallucinating on this issue, to accept defeat, instead of prevaricating and coming up with half-truths. These are issues that would have been canvassed in court. At this point, it is too late to cry wolf. It is professional misconduct to attempt impugning and criticising a judgement of the Supreme Court, which is final and infallible.

The Case of Hon. (Mrs) Dorathy Mato V. Hon Iorwase Herman Hembe (2017) is a locus classicus on who the authentic candidate of a party is. Hembe was declared winner by INEC but the Supreme Court gave the victory to Dorathy Mato, who took over the seat in the House of Representatives in 2015. Both Hon. Herman Hembe and Hon. Dorathy Mato were members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the suite was a pre-election matter.

It is the party that contests elections and not the candidate. Rt. Hon Jarigbe Agom was declared winner of the PDP primary election, monitored by INEC, in line with section 85, 86 and 87 of the electoral act.

Rt. Hon Jarigbe Agom campaigned and took part in all stages of the election but Stephen Odey was erroneously declared winner. Many thanks to the judiciary, the last hope of our democracy. Rt Hon Jarigbes victory has been affirmed by the judgment of the Supreme Court.

The citations of Barrister Daniel Bwala are academic and inconsequential at this point. They can only apply in future litigations, if admissible. The Supreme Court is final and infallible.

Omang Omang, a practising lawyer, writes from Cross River.
A school district in Bergen County will switch to all-remote instruction for the high school at least through the end of the week after 24 students tested positive for COVID-19.

In a letter to parents, Superintendent Brett Charleston said 14 students had tested positive since their return from spring break with an another 10 students testing positive on Tuesday.

With these additional positive cases, Glen Rock High School will transition to remote instruction from April 7 to April 9, Charleston said in the letter.

The district will revisit the need to extend the quarantine over the weekend and communicate out to all stakeholders only if a decision is made to continue the quarantine for the high school, the superintendent said, adding that he expected a decision to be announced by 3 p.m. on Sunday.

Schools in the district were on spring break from March 29 to Friday. Contact tracers believe the students were exposed to COVID-19 outside of the school, Charleston said.

We must all do our part to ensure the health and safety of our students, staff and community, Charleston said. Our actions today can have a positive impact on school, activities, spring sports, events and milestone evens, such as prom and graduation, for the remainder of the school year.

Charleston said there is no change in schedule for the districts remaining schools, which will continue to have in-person instruction. The superintendent also cautioned against get togethers during the all-remote period.

This is not an invitation for students to spend time with each other outside of school as we have determined with confidence that COVID-19 is spreading outside of our schools in non-school related social settings, Charleston said.

We encourage our students to do their best to remain socially distant and wear masks when outside of school, Charleston said.

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.
Facebook and the Fact Checkers

Commentary

Recently, Facebook took down Lara Trumps interview with former President Donald Trump, warning that Trumps content was banned on the platform. In doing this, Facebook made a new escalation in its censorship project.

First, Facebook took the position Trump could not post because his claims of election fraud, leading up to the events of Jan. 6, posed a clear and present danger to the peaceful transfer of power. Second, Facebook said Trump could not post at all, in a sense implying that even his future posts might pose a similar danger.

Now Facebook has taken it a step further by taking the position that even interviews with Trump conducted by others cannot be posted. Trump, lets remember, is still the leading figure in the Republican Party, the most prominent voice of opposition, and a potential candidate in the 2024 presidential race. And Facebook and other media platforms even seem bent on erasing Trump from history, as if America had a 44th president (Obama) and now a 46th president (Biden) but number 45 has been removed from public view.

Ive had my own issues with Facebook, which Id like to explore here, because they show how Facebook operates in flagging or restricting content. Ive never been banned from Facebook, but I have been flagged, demonetized for periods of time, and had to endureas I seem to be enduring nowsome form of reduced distribution. This means Facebook limits who can see my posts.

And why? Last October I got demonetized because I posted a clip of Biden saying that Antifa was merely an idea. This was a direct quotation from Biden, from his debate with Trump. Facebook said that the clip was missing context. But what context? Biden didnt say anything else about Antifa that I excluded. The clip was in no way deceptively edited. Even so, Facebook penalized me for posting it.

Right now Im facing reduced Facebook distribution for a handful of posts that the platform has decided constitute misinformation or, again, missing context. In one of them, I am faulted for posting a clip from my daily podcast in which I say that Kamala Harris is descended from a slave ancestor, Hamilton Brown, who owned five plantations and was one of the largest slaveowners in Jamaica.

Im the one who broke this story. I got it from Kamala Harriss own father, Donald Harris, who claimed the slave ancestor in an article he wrote posted on Jamaica Global Online, a Jamaican website. I was also able to locate a genealogical tree that shows the Harris lineage.

When I first posted about this, my account was challenged by Nikole Hannah-Jones, writer of the 1619 Project, and historian Kevin Levin. Neither disputed Harriss lineage, but they blasted me for ignoring the common practice of rape on the plantation. This, they implied, is how Kamala Harris got her white slaveowning ancestor.

But these two critics were too lazy to check the genealogy I provided, showing that the grandson of the slaveowner, also named Hamilton Brown, had married a free woman of color named Jessian Prince, and this is the couple that gave birth to Christiana Brown, Donald Harris grandmother and Kamala Harris great grandmother. Rape on the plantation had nothing to do with it.

Chagrined, Hannah Jones deleted her tweet and Levin apologized for his mistaken attack on me. In effect, both of them acknowledged that my original post was right. Kamala Harris is in fact descended in a straight line from one of the largest planters in Jamaica, the man who gave his name to a whole town in Jamaica.

So how could Facebook claim I was mistaken? Facebook apparently takes its cue from so-called fact-checking sites. I decided to consult two prominent ones to see what they say. Politifact seems to confirm my account completely but then mysteriously concludes, In the end we dont have enough documentation. Evidently a genealogical chart and Kamala Harriss own fathers testimony does not seem to be enough.

If this seems strange, even stranger is what Snopes says on the subject, reviewing the exact same evidence but then declaring the claim unproven. Then it adds this, Even if it is the case that the Harris family, by way of Christiana Brown, are descendants of Hamilton Brown, those who seek to attack or undermine Harris for the wrongdoing of a man who died almost 200 years ago should first gain a better understanding of the complicated, traumatic histories of black families in the United States.

This is, of course, tendentious editorializing. Snopes seems to be covering for Harris here. So my conclusion is that these fact-checking sites are themselves untrustworthy. Had the same lineage applied to Trump, for instance, they would have been more than satisfied to confirm and broadcast his slaveholder lineage.

Im not sure whether Facebook, in relying on partisan and tendentious fact-checking sites, is itself being duped by them, or whether Facebook has chosen to work with these sites so that they can provide ideological cover for Facebook removing or flagging content that is factual but that nevertheless disrupts Facebooks ideologically-preferred narrative.

Facebook and other social media platforms always strike the pose that they are combating disinformation. But this claim itself strikes me as disinformation. If I post on Facebook that 2+2=5, will I get flagged? Probably not. How about if I post that Napoleon won the Battle of Waterloo? Thats false, but will I get demonetized for it? Almost certainly not.

What this means is that Facebook isnt hunting down errors or misrepresentations per se. They are hunting down conservative claims that are damaging to the lefts ideological narrative. In the case of Kamala Harris, the narrative is she is a historical victim. As a black woman, shes a twofer, having endured a lineage of both racism and sexism. The slaveowner Hamilton Brown ruins that tale of victimhood.

Im not saying Facebook doesnt have the right to regulate its own platform. Im saying that they are doing it in an unfair and deceptive manner. They are taking facts and treating them as disinformation. They are relying on disinformation to invalidate truthful statements. In an Orwellian inversion, lies become truth and truth becomes lies.

How tragic it is that platforms that once symbolized freedom and open inquiry have now become frightening cauldrons of restriction, repression, and censorship. The very people who said they would save us from Orwells Big Brother have become Big Brother.

Dinesh DSouza is an author, filmmaker, and host of the daily Dinesh DSouza podcast.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
He wrapped filming on the latest series of Saturday Night Takeaway over the weekend.

And Ant McPartlin was enjoying some downtime as he headed out with fiancee Anne-Marie Corbett to walk their pet dogs on Wednesday.

The presenter, 45, bundled up against the chilly weather as he headed out, hours after it was revealed his best friend Declan Donnelly's home was targeted by a 'professional' burglar gang.

Time for a walk: Ant McPartlin was enjoying some downtime as he headed out with fiancee Anne-Marie Corbett to walk their pet dogs on Wednesday

Ant cut a casual figure in a green windcheater jacket as he stepped out with his wife-to-be Anne-Marie and their beloved dogs.

The Britain's Got Talent host braced the surprisingly cold weather during the outing, with Anne-Marie wrapped up in a thick green padded coat.

His outing comes just hours after it was revealed that Dec's 5million home was targeted by a 'professional' burglary gang while the TV star was asleep upstairs with his wife and young daughter.

Wrap up warm: The presenter bundled up against the chilly weather as he headed out with his wife-to-be

Relaxed: Ant cut a casual figure in a green windcheater jacket as he stepped out with his wife-to-be Anne-Marie and their beloved dogs

Police rushed to the star's West London home shortly after 1am on Tuesday following a 999 call.

Dec, his wife Ali, 43, and their daughter Isla, two, were all asleep upstairs in the seven-bedroom home.

The suspects had botched an attempt to rip open the iron gates at the front of the property - which was purchased by Dec for 1.9 million in 2006, and fled in a car shortly before officers arrived.

Shocking: His outing comes just hours after it was reported that Ant's presenting partner Declan Donnelly's 5 million home was targeted by a 'professional' burglary gang

Nippy: Britain's Got Talent host Ant braced the surprisingly cold weather during the outing, with Anne-Marie wrapped up in a thick green padded coat.

The Donnellys were only aware that the burglars - understood to have been a 'professional' gang - targeted their home when the police told them.

A source told The Sun: 'Dec and Ali weren't disturbed. The first they realised anything was amiss was in the morning.'

'The robbers couldn't force the gates open and that's what made them give up, and flee.'

Met Police officers conducted inquiries along the street today and forensic checks were carried out.

The force confirmed that the suspects left the scene prior to police arriving and there was no evidence to suggest they gained access to the house.

To be wed: Ant's engagement to Anne-Marie was announced on New Year's Eve after he popped the question in a romantic Christmas Eve proposal

Costly: It's thought that the presenter may have paid up to 200,000 for the ring after designing the piece himself

Ant's engagement to Anne-Marie was announced on New Year's Eve after he popped the question in a romantic Christmas Eve proposal.

It's thought that the presenter may have paid up to 200,000 for the ring after designing the piece himself.

Tobias Kormind, managing director of Europe's largest online diamond jeweller 77 Diamonds, said: 'It's a very romantic design that harks back to an older style.

'A ring with a diamond of similar quality currently on our website is priced at 125,000. A traditional Mayfair jeweller might charge up to 200,000.'

And the ring is certainly bigger than the one the I'm a Celebrity presenter gave his ex-wife Lisa Armstrong, from whom he split in 2018 after a 12-year marriage.
The US has Metals Problem - Lithium, Graphite, Copper, Nickel Supplies

Years of neglecting its critical metal supplies is catching up with the United States, as demand for the raw materials needed to build a new green economy that rejects fossil fuels gears up.

US President Joe Biden just announced a $2.3 trillion infrastructure spending package aimed partially at shifting the US transportation system from gas and diesel-based to battery-powered, and more support for renewable energies such as wind and solar over carbon-based sources like natural gas.

The plan is big on promises and appears to benefit many sectors, but details are scant on how the country will source the metals needed for repairing and replacing traditional blacktop infrastructure, and minerals that will feed a brand new mine to battery supply chain.

This article takes a deep dive into the US metals problem and how it might work with its northern neighbor to address it.

$2.3 trillion for infrastructure

Bidens long-anticipated infrastructure build-out finally became public knowledge this week. The $2.3 trillion spending proposal, announced Wednesday, is aimed at making the United States more productive by for example investing in public transportation to make it easier for Americans to commute to work, and rural broadband that improves workplace technology.

It focuses more on long-term goals as opposed to the recently passed $1.9 trillion covid-19 relief bill, underpinned by economic recovery, and getting people back to work. Funding will be over eight years.

Out of $621 billion allocated to transportation infrastructure, $174B will be made available for helping companies to make electric vehicles, and to build 500,000 charging stations across the country. Bidens proposal also calls for shifting the federal fleet, including the Postal Service, to fully electric vehicles, and mandating that federal buildings only use clean energy sources.

A new clean electricity standard would force utilities to wean themselves entirely from carbon-emitting sources by 2035.

The plan also calls for $100 billion to improve the electrical grid system, including construction of higher voltage transmission lines, made up of copper or aluminum.

Mining over oil

What does Bidens $2.3T infrastructure package mean for US mining? The president has said he supports domestic production of metals needed to make electric vehicles, solar panels and other green technologies, and reportedly backs bipartisan efforts to foster a domestic supply chain for lithium, copper, rare earths, nickel and other strategic materials that the US imports from China and other countries.

On the other hand, the Democratic Party has up to now been no friend to the mining industry. During his campaign for president, Biden was firmly against dropping the ban on uranium mining close the Grand Canyon, and on his first day in office, shut down the Keystone XL pipeline that, part-way through construction, was being built to send Alberta oilsands crude to US Gulf Coast refineries, thereby relieving the glut of oil in North America that has been depressing the price of Western Canadian Select. Allowing the pipeline to go ahead would have been a major boon to Canadian producers.

Will Biden take a similar approach to new mining projects that could adversely affect the environment? It seems likely the left-leaning president would defer to his environmentalist base, rather than risk losing their support, even though, ironically, the exploration for and extraction of battery and energy metals is necessary for advancing his climate agenda.

In-demand metals

More clean energy means more solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and lithium-ion batteries, both for EVs and grid-scale storage. For some materials, like silicon, supply is plentiful, but for others, such as the rare earth neodymium for wind turbines, lithium, cobalt, graphite and nickel for batteries, and copper for just about everything involved in wiring, the supply chains will need to shift.

Thats because for most of the metals used in clean energy and electrification, the United States relies on imports.

Since the days of Donald Trumps presidency, the US has been planning to reverse its dependence on foreign rivals especially China, which currently has the largest EV market and dominates the global battery supply chain.

Under an executive order issued by Trump, a report was published by the Interior Department in 2018, highlighting 35 minerals that are critical to the US national and economic security, 14 of which are 100% dependent on imports.

The current president, too, is aware of Americas vulnerabilities. In late February, the Biden administration announced it would conduct a government review of US supply chains to seek to end the countrys reliance on China and other adversaries for crucial goods.

For example, about 85% of the worlds neodymium is concentrated in a few Chinese mines, and most of the worlds cobalt production comes from the politically unstable Democratic Republic of Congo.

This would be a natural step to take should the US wish to achieve its ambitious climate goals, and many, including those on Wall Street, are predicting that a change in US administration will finally set off a battery boom. About 30% of an electric cars cost goes towards its battery, which requires metals such as lithium, graphite, and cobalt  all on the US critical minerals list.

A glance at the US Geological Surveys mine production data, shows how little of these materials the United States mines.

For example, in 2020 (and earlier) the only lithium production in the United States was from Albemarles Silver Peak brine operation in Nevada. While the actual amount was withheld by the company, it certainly comes nowhere close to the top three producers, Australia (40,000 tonnes), Chile (18,000t) and China (14,000t). As for current identified lithium resources, the USGS notes these have increased substantially due to continuing exploration, but out of the 86-million-ton total, only 7.9Mt has been found in the US, and 2.9Mt in Canada.

No natural graphite, needed to make spherical graphite used in the EV battery anode, was mined in the US in 2020. The worlds inferred resources of recoverable graphite exceed 800 million tons, but domestic sources are relatively small, states USGS.

US mines only produced 16,000 tonnes of nickel last year compared to 760,000t in Indonesia, 320,000t in the Philippines, and 280,000t in Russia, the top three Ni miners. Canada managed to output 150,000 tonnes.

Its hard to imagine the US being able to fulfill its new clean energy agenda without either a significant increase in critical metal imports that frankly may not be possible in current market conditions or executing a home-grown strategy to explore for and mine them in North America.

2020 world lithium production. Source: USGS

2020 world graphite production. Source: USGS

2020 world nickel production. Source: USGS

Copper crunch

As we at AOTH have written, among all of the metals, none is more critical than copper, even though the red metal is never categorized as such.

Mainstream media and the large mining companies are finally catching on to what we have been saying for the past two years: the copper market is heading for a severe supply shortage due to a perfect storm of under-exploration/ lack of discovery of new deposits, clashing with a huge increase in demand due to electrification and decarbonization.

Yet it appears the US did not get the memo.

It is interesting to note that, even though in 2020 copper exports to China were surging, along with prices, as the country sopped up millions of pounds of cheap copper rendered less expensive by the pandemic, in the United States copper production actually fell. According to the USGS, output decreased by 5% to an estimated 1.2 million tons. (about a fifth the production of top producer Chile)

2020 world copper production. Source: USGS

One of the problems with copper is its difficult to find in large enough amounts close to surface, where its economical to extract. It also takes many years to bring a copper deposit into production, especially in places like the United States and Canada where miners face strict permitting regulations that can cause delays. According to Bloomberg Intelligence, the average lead time from first discovery to first metal has increased by four years from previous cycles, to almost 14 years.

Recent research by BI reveals the mining industry needs 10 million tons more copper to meet much higher demand from the clean power and transportation sectors.

To do so requires spending up to $100 billion, to head off what could be an annual supply deficit of 4.7Mt by 2030, according to estimates from CRU Group. The shortfall could rise to 10Mt, per year, if no new mines are built. Closing the gap would mean the equivalent of building eight new copper mines the size of Chiles Escondida, the biggest in the world.

Failure will be measured in the price of copper, which is bound to go up, subject to the natural laws of supply and demand.

Increasing technical complexity and approval delays could lead to a dearth of shovel-ready projects in 2025-30, Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Grant Sporre and Andrew Cosgrove wrote in a report this week. The authors added:

After Chinas State Reserve Bureau mopped up all of the excess copper from 2020s Covid-19 slowdown, the market now looks fundamentally tight, with our analysis pointing to at least two years of deficits. With these shortages, alongside investor interest in coppers decarbonization credentials, we think a price above $8,500 a ton is well supported.

1-year spot copper price. Source: Kitco

Competition from China

One of the reasons Biden is so keen on a large infrastructure spend, including actions to tackle climate change, is to compete with China, whose share of spending on clean tech research and development has outpaced the US.

Its not only R&D though, where the US trails, but in something more basic, and that is the actual building blocks of a green economy.

The world, as mentioned, is heading for a supply shortage in copper, just as the States is going to need one hell of a lot of it. Will that still be possible, with China moving to lock up supply?

We dont know for sure, but recent developments are concerning. Data compiled by Bloomberg shows as the rest of the world went into lockdown last year, China went on a copper buying spree. Analysts say the amount of copper imported points to Beijing not only diverting the shipments to industrial use but stockpiling it.

The country imported 6.7 million tons of unwrought copper in 2020, a third more than 2019, and 1.4Mt more than the previous annual record. In fact, as Bloomberg notes, The year-on-year increase, alone, is equivalent in scale to the entire annual copper consumption of the U.S.

The disconnect here is astonishing. As US mines slowed their output of the red metal, largely due to crimped demand and lower prices owing to the economic slowdown, China took the opportunity to buy low. Traders and analysts quoted by Bloomberg reckon that Chinas State Reserve Bureau bought between 300,000 and 500,000 tons during the price slump.

This is nothing new to those who have been following Chinas shrewd lock-up of much of the worlds metal.

In the early 2000s, Chinese companies spent about $5 billion buying more than a dozen copper mines and deposits, from Afghanistan to Zambia. In 2007, Chinalco paid C$840 million for the mineral rights to a huge copper deposit in Peru called Toromocho, at the time said to be worth $50 billion. Building the mine meant moving the town of Morococha, pop. 5,000.

Another major Chinese copper buy happened in 2016, when Freeport McMoran agreed to sell its majority stake in the DRCs Tenke copper project, to China Molybdenum (CMOC) for $2.65 billion  reducing the US copper miners debt but handing the Chinese company one of the worlds prized copper assets, as Reuters states.

China, of course, already has a monopoly on rare earths mining/ processing, produces the most lithium and cobalt, and dominates the graphite market.

Most observers see the US losing the EV battery race to China and Europe despite the United States making some progress in developing lithium deposits in California, Arkansas and Nevada, and new battery plants being built in Georgia, Ohio and Colorado.

According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the countrys share of global battery production will fall from 8% currently to 6% in 2025.

This could be a problem for the litany of automakers that are switching gears, so to speak, to EVs. Relying on imported batteries could mean paying more for them, than if they were produced domestically. The logistics are also a challenge, in shipping large, heavy battery packs, which can weigh up to 1,000 pounds each.

If we want to have a domestic supply chain for batteries in North America, now is the time you have to press the accelerator, states Sam Jaffe, managing director of Cairn Energy Research Advisors, a consulting company in Boulder, CO. The conversation should be mine to car, not just battery to car.

Instead, the Bloomberg article notes, the US has treated security of supply as a peripheral concern.

China has been looking at vulnerabilities in its supply chain from top to bottom for a while, and growing its strategic reserves, the news outlet quotes David Lilley, a veteran copper trader. I dont think the West has even begun to think about it. There is still a casualness here about raw material supply.

Casual indeed.

CRU Group estimates a trillion dollars spending on infrastructure could necessitate an extra 6 million tons of steel, 110,000 tons of copper, and 140,000 tons of aluminum annually.

Will the US be able to magically ramp up its copper production by 10%? Or will it have to import more copper at higher prices than if it had done the smart thing and bought/ stockpiled it last year? These are the kinds of questions Washington should be asking.

Canada can help

Fortunately, there is still time, and hope, that the United States and Canada can get it together and put aside some prized metal assets of their own before China and other trade competitors  after all, the whole world is going green and wanting access to these commodities  gobble them all up.

In January of 2020, the Canadian and US governments announced the Joint Action Plan on Critical Mineral Collaboration. The agreement would increase production and establish supply chains for numerous critical minerals the US is dependent on for imports.

For example, according to Natural Resources Canada, the country has more than 15 million tonnes of rare earth oxides, including the generally more valuable heavy REEs, that could be developed into mines, to help meet US demand.

Ottawa recently released a critical minerals list like the list of 35 published by the US in 2017  the difference being that Canadas list is more like a catalogue than a wish list, of the metals it has in stock and considers essential.

The 31-metal catalogue includes not only cobalt, graphite, lithium, and rare earths, which usually appear in such lists, but copper, nickel, and zinc  base metals thought to be fundamental to building a green energy future.

Earlier this year, the governments of Ontario and Canada announced a plan to each spend $295 million to help Ford upgrade its assembly plant in Oakville to start making electric vehicles.

At the recently concluded PDAC conference in Toronto, Francois-Philippe Champagne, Canadas minister of innovation, science and industry, told Invest in Canadas CEO Ian McKay that Canada is uniquely positioned to be a global leader in EV manufacturing.

Canada offers renewably generated electricity, a skilled workforce, a stable and predictable jurisdiction to operate in, the rule of law  a commodity very much in demand these days  and an abundance of the critical minerals needed for the batteries that power electric vehicles.

People are now placing more value on supply chains, which are moving from the global to the regional and switching from efficiency to resiliency, Champagne said. Canada offers enormous opportunities not just for auto manufactures but the whole ecosystem, with significant investment being made by auto manufacturers and the Canadian government.

Critics of greater collaboration between the United States and Canada would argue that all we have so far are lists of critical minerals. There is yet no government funding to support exploration. However, Canadas minister of natural resources, Seamus ORegan, told CIM magazine recently that establishing the list in an important step for Canada, especially as it can send a message about the countrys intentions and priorities, especially reaching net zero emissions by 2050, to investors.

ORegan notes Canada already supplies 13 of the 35 minerals on the US list, and we have the potential to supply more.

PDAC President Felix Lee also weighed in, telling CIM:

Its important to remember that here in Canada we are an enormous country, and the mineral wealth is incredible, and a good part of it remains untapped. The critical minerals list really gives us a chance to start to focus our geoscience programs, our government geoscience programs, on those minerals and metals that countNot only can we inform our geoscience programs, we can also further inform our land-use decisions through the use of this list. Plus, if we have an idea where certain minerals and metals exist, we can drive everything else.

Empty platitudes? Maybe. But at least critical minerals and supply insecurity are now on the US and Canadian governments radar, after being off it for decades.

Our mineral exploration sector doesnt need public money to succeed in finding new deposits that will go a long way towards addressing global supply shortages but having government on side during the often-long road from discovery to production can certainly help with permitting new mines, as demand for green energy/ transportation metals goes bonkers.

By Richard (Rick) Mills

www.aheadoftheherd.com

rick@aheadoftheherd.com

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Over the weekend, personal data of upwards of 533 million worldwide Facebook users - including an estimated 1.5 million Irish users - was published online.

The information included phone numbers, Facebook IDs, names, locations, birthdates, and email addresses.

In a statement, the Data Protection Commission (DPC) said: A dataset, appearing to be sourced from Facebook, has appeared on a hacking website this weekend for free and contains records of 533 million individuals.

A significant number of the users are EU users. Much of the data appears to been data scraped some time ago from Facebook public profiles.

"Previous datasets were published in 2019 and 2018 relating to a large-scale scraping of the Facebook website which at the time Facebook advised occurred between June 2017 and April 2018 when Facebook closed off a vulnerability in its phone lookup functionality.

"Because the scraping took place prior to GDPR, Facebook chose not to notify this as a personal data breach under GDPR."

How to check if your personal data was leaked from Facebook?

A reputable website - haveibeenpwned.com - lets you check whether your email address or mobile number is part of the leak.
A one-year-old boy is now fighting for his life after being shot in the head during a road rage shooting in Chicago on Tuesday, according to officials.

The boy was reportedly in a car driven by his grandmother when shots were fired at around 11 a.m. along the Lake Shore Drive, ABC News reported.

Cmdr. Jake Alderden of the Chicago Police Department's 1st District said that multiple shell casings were recovered across those two blocks along the expressway.

"At this time, it appears that they are completely unknown to each other and there was a dispute possibly over somebody not letting somebody into a lane of traffic," Alderden said as reported by New York Post.

A driver, who witnessed the road rage shooting, noted that a lady appeared and said she was trying to get into the car next to her, and her baby has been shot.

Authorities found a gun in the grandmother's car. However, it was not clear if it was fired. The second vehicle reportedly involved in the shooting incident fled the scene. But one person was also being questioned in connection with the shooting incident.

READ NEXT: Chicago Shootings Leave 2 Dead, 14 Hurt, Including Police Sergeant Shot in Face

Violence in Chicago

Police said that Wind City has been experiencing one of the most violent years in its history, according to The Sun report. This was not the only shooting that took place this week.

Seven people were shot on Monday night during a fight that escalated the city's South Side. At around 11:10 p.m., gunfire erupted, and shots were exchanged.

The victims include a 39-year-old woman who was shot in her abdomen and left arm. Also, a 28-year-old was shot in the torso, and a 44-year-old man was shot in his right arm, Fox News reported.

A 31-year-old man also walked into a hospital with a gunshot wound to his leg, but now in good condition. Other victims reported were two men, ages 34 and 21, with gunshot wounds to their right foot.

Despite the number of victims with gunshot wounds, no arrests have been made. Thirty-four people were shot, and eight people were killed in Chicago over the holiday weekend.

Chicago police released crime statistics for 2020 showed an increase in gun violence, murders, and carjacking compared to the previous year.

But police reported a 20 percent decrease in thefts and sexual assaults and a nine percent decrease in burglaries.

Police said that compared with the 2019 data, shootings and murders jumped more than 50 percent, NBC Chicago reported.

Other major cities in the state also recorded a spike in shootings and murders in 2020. Police connected this sudden uptick to the challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic and periods of civil unrest.

"This has been a year that has presented numerous challenges to law enforcement, and I am proud of the way Chicago police officers have risen to the occasion," Supt. David Brown said in the report.

Authorities said that 2020 closed out with a total of 3,261 shootings citywide and 4,033 shooting victims. There were also 769 murders, as compared to 2019's 495.

READ MORE: Chicago Postal Workers Plan to Halt Delivery Service After Mail Carrier Was Shot

WATCH: Nearly 2-Year-Old Wounded In Road Rage Shooting on Lake Shore Drive - From WGN News




New Delhi, April 7 : The Congress has alleged that there is vaccine shortage in the country as many states have complained about the issue including Maharashtra which has the highest number of Covid cases.

Addressing a press conference in New Delhi on Wednesday, Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera said the government did not plan the supply chain and logistics, the health minister is missing and there should be an all party meet on the issue.

Khera said that "it is therefore imperative that the government engages with the civil society, stakeholders and calls routine all party meets. But, instead the Health Minister, Dr Harsh Vardhan, has been missing in action for almost a month now." Khera alleged that "there is dilly-dallying on the vaccine approval and regulatory protocols that has held back many globally accepted and approved safe vaccines from entering the Indian market. This leads to over dependence on limited vaccines, thereby delaying the nationwide vaccination programme." The Congress demanded that diversification of vaccines based on their globally proven track record must be looked at immediately. But why is the government by not bridging the innovation gap and insisting on local trials in the time of a pandemic, making it even more difficult for various vaccine manufacturers to enter India? He asked, "Why did the government not plan the nuances of the vaccine logistics and supply chain in advance to ensure that there were no shortages of vaccines subsequently?"

He said the government has repeatedly spoken about there being vaccine hesitancy that has resulted in vaccine wastage or less number of people being vaccinated; it just seems like this regime has made it a habit to blame the common citizens of India.

"When there is a national vaccination drive of a new vaccine, the first thing that the government should have done is work on engaging with stakeholders, citizen's networks to ensure that "vaccine safety and necessity" awareness was created on the ground at the village level," he said.

The Congress attacked the police for high-handedness in various parts of the country and exorbitant challans being issued in Delhi.
Arkansas lawmakers on Tuesday made the state the first to ban gender confirming treatments and surgery for transgender youth, enacting the prohibition over the governors objections.

The Republican-controlled House and Senate voted to override GOP Gov. Asa Hutchinsons veto of the measure, which prohibits doctors from providing gender-confirming hormone treatment, puberty blockers or surgery to anyone under 18 years old, or from referring them to other providers for the treatment.

Opponents of the measure have vowed to sue to block the ban before it takes effect this summer.

Hutchinson vetoed the bill following pleas from pediatricians, social workers and the parents of transgender youth who said the measure would harm a community already at risk for depression and suicide.

The ban was opposed by several medical and child welfare groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The measures sponsor referred to the procedures as experimentation and compared the restriction to other limits the state places on minors.

They need to get to be 18 before they make those decisions, Republican Rep. Robin Lundstrum said.

Hutchinson said the measure went too far in interfering with parents and physicians, and noted that it will cut off care for transgender youth already receiving treatment. He said he would have signed the bill if it had focused only on gender confirming surgery, which currently isnt performed on minors in the state.

The law will take effect in late July at the earliest. The American Civil Liberties Union said it planned to challenge the measure before then.

This is a sad day for Arkansas, but this fight is not over  and were in it for the long haul, Holly Dickson, ACLU of Arkansas executive director, said in a statement.

The override, which needed only a simple majority, passed easily in both chambers, with House voting 72-25 in favor and the Senate 25-8.

The ban was enacted during a year in which bills targeting transgender people have advanced easily in Arkansas and other states. Hutchinson recently signed legislation banning transgender women and girls from competing on teams consistent with their gender identity, a prohibition that also has been enacted in Tennessee and Mississippi this year.

Hutchinson also recently signed legislation that allows doctors to refuse to treat someone because of moral or religious objections.

The foundation established by the family of Bentonville-based Walmarts founder on Tuesday raised concerns about the recent measures targeting LGBTQ people.

This trend is harmful and sends the wrong message to those willing to invest in or visit our state, Tom Walton with the Walton Family Foundation said in a statement released before the override vote.

One lawmaker opposed to the measure compared it to the anti-integration bills Arkansas Legislature passed in 1958 in opposition to the previous years desegregation of Little Rock Central High School.

What I see, this bill, is the most powerful again bullying the most vulnerable people in our state, Democratic Sen. Clarke Tucker said before the vote.

Andrew DeMillo of The Associated Press wrote this story.
RALEIGH, N.C., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Curi, the premier provider of products, services, and experiences for physicians, today announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire healthcare data analytics and advisory company Arrowlytics. Building on an existing five-year relationship between the two organizations, the acquisition will strengthen Curi's suite of advisory services for physicians and their practices by adding a data-driven solution to help their businesses thrive.

Arrowlytics' leading solution, Aspire, helps healthcare organizations by consolidating and converting their data into knowledge. The Aspire platform pulls critical data from disparate sources into one system, allowing practices to monitor and improve results across a variety of performance categoriesfrom online reputation management, to practice growth and optimization, and beyond. Coupled with consultative support from a team of seasoned healthcare industry experts from both Arrowlytics and Curi, the solution will allow practice leaders to make more informed decisions to assess, adjust, and ultimately grow their business.

"Running a medical practice gets more challenging every year, and we have been proud to help our member physicians and their practices navigate these challenges for more than four decades," said incoming Curi CEO Jason Sandner. "At Curi, we are always looking for new ways to support our members, and bringing the team and solutions from Arrowlytics into the Curi family will allow us to offer new data-centered solutions and services to the healthcare leaders that we serve."

The Arrowlytics Aspire platform will support the advisory products and services that Curi has been actively developing with input from its member community for yearsfrom enhancements to risk management, to health policy guidance, to practice retirement plan solutions, to well-being offerings, and more. The offering will be especially valuable in light of the numerous financial and operational challenges that practices are facing during this period of transition in service delivery models.

"Arrowlytics was created by a team of healthcare industry veterans to help healthcare organizations optimize their businesses, so they can focus on caring for their patients," said Arrowlytics CEO Steve Hendrick. "We look forward to continuing our commitment to this effort as part of Curi, a company that shares our dedication to supporting physicians and their practices."

The transaction between Curi and Arrowlytics closed on April 1, 2021. For more information, visit curi.com/aspire-platform.

About Curi

Curi (curi.com) is the premier provider of products, services, and experiences for physicians and those who support them. From professional liability and other lines of insurance, to wealth management and advisory services, the companybuilt by doctors for doctorshas been passionately curious about identifying new ways to meet the ever-evolving needs of physicians since it was founded as Medical Mutual Insurance Company of North Carolina in 1975.

SOURCE Curi

Related Links

http://curi.com


Kevin Rudd has been mistaken for an Uber driver by a group of young revellers during a night out with his family, but he drove them to their destination anyway.

The former prime minister's daughter, Jessica, said that the situation unfolded after her father dropped her off at a restaurant for dinner during torrential rain in Noosa, on Queensland's Sunshine Coast.

Four people from Melbourne who had been drinking at the venue since lunchtime thought Mr Rudd's vehicle was their Uber as the 63-year-old drove slowly down the road looking for a parking spot.

Pictured: Former prime minister Kevin Rudd, who gave young revellers from Melbourne a lift in Noosa

Mr Rudd's daughter Jessica (pictured together) said she thought she saw a group of people pile into her father's car

Ms Rudd said she was momentarily confused when she glanced back at her dad's car.

'I thought I saw some people pile into his car, told myself it wasn't - must be a similar-looking Uber,' she wrote on Twitter.

'It wasn't. It was Dad's car.'

Mr Rudd told the group he did not work for the rideshare company, but they asked him for a lift to Hastings Street - the town's main road - and offered to pay him.

'I thought I saw some people pile into his car, told myself it wasn't - must be a similar-looking Uber,' she wrote on Twitter (pictured)

Jessica Rudd (pictured) said she glanced back at her dad's car and felt momentarily confused

Instead of explaining to the group that he was Australia's 26th prime minister and reiterating that he wasn't an Uber driver, he drove them to their destination.

'Took them half the ride to discover who their driver was,' his daughter said.

Social media users joked about the former PM moonlighting as an Uber driver.

'That Rudd bloke must be doing it tough - he's driving a bloody Uber in Noosa,' one user wrote.

Another said: 'Wait for the headline tomorrow... "Kevin Rudd fallen on tough times, is now an Uber driver".'

'Not gonna lie - if I got into a car and it was Kev, he'd literally have to drag me out,' someone else said.

Pictured: Kevin Rudd with his wife Therese on their 39th wedding anniversary in Noosa

On Wednesday morning, Mr Rudd took to Twitter to confirm the situation.

'Guilty as charged,' he wrote.

'Four young Melburnians getting drenched in a Queensland subtropical downpour at Noosa last night with no Uber in sight.

'So what's a man to do? Good kids. I hope they've had some fun up here.'

Kevin Rudd was the prime minister from December 2007 to June 2010, and again from June 2013 to September 2013 before he retired from politics.

He and his wife Therese bought a home in Noosa in 2020.
Kim Kardashian West

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Its official  Kim Kardashian West is a billionaire, according to the most recent reports by Forbes.

Kardashian West  worth $780 million in October 2020  has crossed the billionaire line, thanks to KKW Beauty and Skims. According to Forbes, she also received cash for reality television and endorsement deals, and a number of smaller investments.

Those smaller investments include her three properties in Calabasas, California. Also, her shares of Disney, Amazon, Netflix and Adidas (that Kanye West gifted her for Christmas a few years ago).

However, Kim is not slowing down. The reality star and entrepreneur recently filed trademark applications to launch something in the skin care space potentially. According to reports, the documents submitted on March 30 noted a total of 19 filings for various goods and services under SKKN By Kim.

If you thought Kim was the only one pushing for more territory in the beauty space, think again. Momager Kris Jenner filed a trademark for a beauty brand for Kris Jenner Skincare, Kris Jenner Skin and Kris Jenner Beauty back in February. It seems the whole family is going to give you your best skin yet. Surely, only time will tell.

If you liked this post, check out This baby shampoo and lotion set on Amazon is loved by parents and has a 4.8-star rating.

More from In The Know:

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The post Official billionaire Kim Kardashian has a skin care brand on the way appeared first on In The Know.
A sinkhole five meters deep has opened up in Chuong My District after a local resident drilled into an unstable area to find groundwater.

The incident was confirmed by Hoang Minh Hien, deputy chairman of the Chuong My Peoples Committee on Wednesday.

The sinkhole opened around 5:00 pm on Tuesday along Provincial Road No. 419s section through Quang Bi Commune, according to Dang Dinh Luc, a Quang Bi resident.

The cavity, which spreads over 10 square meters, invaded the living room of one house and harmed the facades of four other houses on the side of the road.

Authorities in Quang Bi Commune, Chuong My District, Hanoi cordon off a sinkhole on Provincial Road No. 419, April 6, 2021. Photo: Anh Cuong / Tuoi Tre

Vu Van Manh, chairman of the Quang Bi Peoples Committee, the incident stemmed from the decision of Dang Dinh Nham, a local resident, to drill a well, which caused the ground to snap when the drill reached 47 meters underground.

Seeing fractures, the drilling workers quickly notified the neighborhood to evacuate before the collapse took place.

Responding to the incident, the Quang Bi Peoples Committee promptly cordoned off the scene, evacuated 20 households, and sealed off parts of the Provincial Road No. 419 to ensure commuters safety.

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Name: Ravs Kaur

Company: Uplevel

Job title: CTO

Date started current role: January 2019

Location: Seattle

Ravs Kaur, Chief Technology Officer, is responsible for leading Product and Engineering at Uplevel. Prior to Uplevel, she spent a decade in the Developer Division at Microsoft building tools to make the every-day lives of developers easier. Following her time at Microsoft, she was at Tableau and led the core Visual Analytics teams to help people discover and share their insights through data. She brings together her empathy of developers, passion for data, and experience with engineering leadership challenges in her current role at Uplevel to build the product she always wanted for her own teams.

What was your first job? I grew up in an Indian household where it wasnt common to hold a job in high school  they wanted us fully focused on our studies. My first job was in college in Michigan where I was a C++ consultant at a university helping students with their homework and assignments on C++. It was really fun to see a student get unblocked when I helped them to solve a problem.

Did you always want to work in IT? No, not at all. I actually wanted to be a doctor. During my final years in high school, I enrolled in biology classes and realised it was not my cup of tea. I took my first CS class in college and knew right away it was a better fit.

What was your education? Do you hold any certifications? What are they? I graduated from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor with a bachelors degree in computer engineering. I did my first two years at Oakland University in Michigan.

Explain your career path. Did you take any detours? If so, discuss. I started off with an internship at Microsoft during my senior year of college and joined full-time job once I graduated from college. I started off as a software development engineer in test building automation frameworks. While I was officially in that role, I was able to take on many other responsibilities, including product development, product management, feature specing, UX design, and more. When I moved into a management role while at Microsoft, I realised that I loved leading teams and watching people grow. After Microsoft, I took a position at Tableau and worked on the first version of storytelling with data. Overtime, I transitioned into a management role overseeing product managers and software developers in the visual analytics space. Two years ago, I took a leap and jumped into the start-up world as the CTO of Uplevel.

What type of CTO are you? Im a CTO that naturally gravitates towards customer needs and the business problems at hand. I want to use technology to solve those problems. In my experience, sometimes CTOs tend to start with technology. I like to start with the customer first. I love building teams that are mission-driven to solve problems with real impact.

Which emerging technology are you most excited about the prospect of? Im really excited about the prospects of machine learning and AI, especially the impact that it can have on education, healthcare, and even agriculture. I think the promise of helping people gain insights from data that are then transformed into knowledge and wisdom is very exciting. Im most excited about giving everyday people (without extensive data science knowledge) the ability to leverage insights and access learnings that come about because of the technology.

Are there any technologies which you think are overhyped? Why? I also think that AI is one of the technologies that has been most overhyped. Because of that, I dont think we are thinking enough about the possible negative side effects of these new technologies. For example, we love the use of technology in healthcare to more accurately make a diagnosis or predict health risk, but there may be consequences to our privacy, more harm done due to incorrect outcomes, or even loss of jobs unless we think through all the transformations that are needed. In addition, AI has shown that it can disrupt our social fabric and we should think very responsibly about the uses and the implications.

What is one unique initiative that youve employed over the last 12 months that youre really proud of? In the past year, Ive been part of the team that has built and launched Uplevel to the world. Ive been able to take my love for data and teams and put that into a product. Were on a mission to enable all engineers to do their best work. And we know they cant do that without clear insights into why things are getting in their way.

Are you leading a digital transformation? If so, does it emphasise customer experience and revenue growth or operational efficiency? If both, how do you balance the two? Uplevel is a team of only 20 people and two years old, so thankfully we dont need a digital transformation. But we are constantly thinking about the way we build and sell. We are always trying to balance the customer experience, our revenue growth and being operationally efficient. At this point in our company lifecycle, we are putting the most focus on delighting our customers and their users.

What is the biggest issue that youre helping customers with at the moment? Removing roadblocks from the day to day lives of developers. Our customers are engineering teams. As software development has evolved, customers now expect continuous innovation and improvement. Teams now work in short milestones. When one ends, another immediately begins. Because of this, everyone is trapped in meeting hell. Priorities are always moving. The roadblocks sometimes seem endless. Our product helps teams manage this new normal and find ways to make work effective and productive.

How do you align your technology use to meet business goals? At this point in our company, our business goals are in line with our technology use. When we are discussing technology, we are always asking what is the problem that we are trying to solve? - this helps ground our technology decisions in what is best for the business.

Do you have any trouble matching product/service strategy with tech strategy? As a small team we have huge aspirations that we know we cant get to as fast as we want. So we are constantly trying to balance the speed at which we deliver with the inevitable tech debt that we accumulate. As mentioned above, we are always putting our customers and business goals at the forefront of every technical discussion, so we try our best to keep them aligned.

What makes an effective tech strategy? An effective tech strategy creates alignment on how technology will be used to solve customer and business problems. It touches not just on the technology but also on the process, people, and systems that are all involved. You have to consider emerging trends, the talent you have, and the support and infrastructure in place. You have to think through how our business and product strategy will evolve and account for that. All that said - its important to try and keep it simple.

What predictions do you have for the role of the CTO in the future? I think that the CTO of the future will have to think much broader than just about technology. They will have to think not just about the use of technology but about the effects on society at a broader level. Future CTOs will also have to get much more serious about data privacy and the implications for how someone might use a product in a way that wasnt the original intention.

What has been your greatest career achievement? When I look back on my career, I feel that my greatest achievement has been to learn and adapt as I have taken on new roles throughout my career. Ive been able to take lessons learned along the way and implement those into each new role. Most recently, translating the Uplevel product idea from powerpoint slides and turning it into an actual product that people use is very high on that list.

Looking back with 20:20 hindsight, what would you have done differently? I wish that I had held a stronger line when deciding to accumulate more tech debt. It always comes back to haunt you. Its really hard when youre trying to find product market fit and you want to iterate quickly. But it inevitably causes you to slow down later.
As of Tuesday night, 1,710 people in Illinois were hospitalized with COVID-19, with 353 patients in intensive care units and 142 patients on ventilators. The seven-day average of total hospitalizations is 1,530, the highest since an average of 1,539 was recorded Feb. 23.
Sharon Osbourne and Sheryl Underwood's "The Talk" drama continues.

After a few weeks after their heated on-air discussion and the aftermath, Underwood has finally talked about the entire ordeal on her three-part podcast titled "Sharon Walks Away."

In the podcast, she addressed their intense exchange on the Mar. 10 episode of "The Talk," where Osbourne started defending Piers Morgan after his controversial Meghan Markle statements.

She revealed that none of her questions came from executives. Since she was a moderator in the conversation, Underwood wanted to discuss the topic without being perceived as "attacking."

Underwood also discussed her previous relationship with Osbourne, claiming she "automatically fell in love with her because I just like her."

However, she revealed that people called her up to warn her about Osbourne's lousy behavior.

Underwood said, "I had heard things, and I got phone calls of this and that, and so what I said to those people, I said, 'Thank you for the information.'"

She added, "Because listen, in this business, you've got all types of personalities, right?"

READ ALSO: Sharon Osbourne Believes She Has Been 'Hung Out To Dry' After Doing Her Job on 'The Talk'

Since Sharon Osbourne's exit from "The Talk," Sheryl Underwood claimed she hasn't talked to her former co-host and even claimed that the British red-head didn't reach out to apologize. This is something Osbourne has recently hit back on, claiming her ex co-host was trying to ruin her reputation.

Sharon Osbourne Shows Receipts

Sharon Osbourne isn't backing down from a fight. Sheryl Underwood's claim on her podcast claimed that the 68-year-old didn't contact her since their fall out was Underwood's way of "ruining" her reputation.

Meanwhile, Osbourne claims that she had "proof" that she did reach out to her.

She shared text messages with a date stamp of Mar. 12 to the Daily Mail and told the outlet, "I not only sent these messages to Sheryl, but I apologized to her in person in her dressing room."

She went on to ask what Underwood was trying to do to her and then added, "Why are you trying to destroy my reputation? Just be honest. Tell me."

In the text messages, not only did Osbourne sent one lengthy text on Mar. 12, but she also sent one on Mar. 15 and Mar. 18.

The Mar. 12 text said, "I consider you a genuine friend. If you want to talk on the phone over the weekend, I'm here. Once again, from the bottom of my heart, I'm sorry," but it was left unanswered.

Three days later, she sent another text to the comedienne, saying, "I'm just reaching out because I want you [to] know I'm thinking about you. If you are willing, can we talk before Wednesday? Big kiss."

Another three days have passed, and Sharon Osbourne sent another and what seemed to be the final message to Sheryl Underwood that said, "Sheryl, I am thinking about you. Hope you are well. Sending my love."

Read the full text messages here.

READ MORE: Sharon Osbourne Gives the Spotlight Up For Daughter Kelly After Dramatic 'The Talk' Exit

See Now: Famous Actors Who Turned Down Iconic Movie Roles
I once worked with a guy who didn't take vacation weeks. Instead, he took vacation days.

Just Fridays. Twenty a year. Counting certain holidays, he worked four-day weeks for nearly half the year.

Unusual? Sure. But here's where it gets interesting: On his five-day weeks, he worked at a normal pace.

On four-day weeks, his Wednesdays and Thursdays were different. He avoided certain meetings. He bailed on certain calls. He didn't linger, didn't gossip, didn't spend any "bonding" time with other employees: On those days, he kicked ass.

He didn't want to spend the Monday after a short week having to catch up for missed time--so he made sure he was as productive in those four days as he normally was in five.

While my coworker's motivation may have been different, the outcome was the same as that of a widely publicized experiment conducted by Perpetual Guardian, a New Zealand trust management company. Perpetual trialed a program where they paid employees their regular salary while only requiring four-day workweeks.

The result? A surprising 20 percent gain in employee productivity, and a not-so-surprising 45 percent increase in self-reported employee work-life balance. Eventually, the company made the policy permanent.

And why not? After all, why is a five-day workweek the norm? As Adam Grant points out, the five-day workweek is a human invention. Same for the eight-hour workday.

It's arbitrary. Sure, there are reasons for the five-day workweek, but mostly it's just a longstanding practice.

Some have started to experiment with shorter workweeks. ZipRecruiter says the number of job postings that mention four-day workweeks is up 300 percent over the last three years. Even governments are dipping a toe in the shorter workweek waters: Spain is considering a proposal to encourage companies to offer a four-day week.

But wait, there's (not really) more: While four-day workweek job postings are definitely up, they still make up less than 1 percent of all job postings.

As for the Spanish proposal, it includes subsidizing companies that offer four-day workweeks, assumedly to offset lost productivity. (If you're an employee trying to convince your boss to go to four-day workweeks, maybe leave that tidbit off your list of justifications.)

Why? Because most leaders still manage by hours worked, not by results.

Like Bill Gates, who memorized employee license plates so he could look in the parking lot to see when people got to work, and when they left.

Eventually he realized that managing by results was much more effective, and a much better use of his time. (That's especially true where remote work is concerned; ask anyone who has learned how to game their Slack status dot.)

Want to experiment with four-day workweeks? Want your employer to experiment with four-day workweeks?

First, take a step back and create meaningful performance metrics. Set meaningful targets for tasks, projects, and deliverables. Determine what needs to get done.

Start managing by outcomes, not hours. Because to make it work, your employees will definitely have to increase per-hour productivity. (Working less hours at the same output level will simply mean less gets done, not the same. And definitely not more.)

Consistently manage by outcomes and your employees will then have a genuine incentive to be more efficient and effective while working. If I know I get Mondays off as long as I work hard every Tuesday through Friday, I'm a lot more likely to kick ass.

Then, showing the flag by putting in long hours--yet accomplishing relatively little--won't be necessary. Being at work, but not working, won't be necessary.

Because those behaviors won't be rewarded.

Your employees aren't productive just because you expect them to work five days a week. (Nor are they productive just because you expect them to work 10- or 12-hour days.)

Like butts in seats, days or hours worked is a terrible proxy for productivity.

Decide what needs to get done. Give people the freedom, authority, and most importantly the focused time--by cutting out unnecessary meetings, calls, etc.--to get those things done.

Only when desired outcomes are clear, and people are given the means to achieve those outcomes, will they not need to work as many hours. That's the only way they'll be more engaged. More efficient. More refreshed, recharged, and happier about their work-life balance.

Which will make them even more engaged and productive.
MINNEAPOLIS  Officer Derek Chauvin had his knee on George Floyds neck  and was bearing down with most of his weight  the entire 9 1/2 minutes the Black man lay facedown with his hands cuffed behind his back, a use-of-force expert testified Wednesday at Chauvins murder trial.

Jody Stiger, a Los Angeles Police Department sergeant serving as a prosecution witness, said that based on his review of video evidence, Chauvin applied pressure to Floyds neck or neck area from the time officers put Floyd on the ground until paramedics arrived.

That particular force did not change during the entire restraint period? prosecutor Steve Schleicher asked as he showed the jury a composite of five still images.

Correct, replied Stiger, who on Tuesday testified that the force used against Floyd was excessive.

Chauvin attorney Eric Nelson countered by pointing out what he said were moments in the video footage when Chauvins knee did not appear to be on Floyds neck but on his shoulder blade area or the base of his neck. Stiger did not give much ground, saying the officers knee in some of the contested images still seemed to be near Floyds neck.

In other testimony, the lead Minnesota state investigator on the case, James Reyerson, agreed with Nelson that Floyd seemed to say in a police body-camera video of his arrest, I ate too many drugs.

But when a prosecutor played a longer clip of the video, Reyerson said he believed what Floyd really said was I aint do no drugs.

Chauvin, 45, is charged with murder and manslaughter in Floyds death May 25. Floyd, 46, was arrested outside a neighborhood market after being accused of trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill. A panicky-sounding Floyd struggled and claimed to be claustrophobic as police tried to put him in a squad car, and they pinned him to the pavement.

Bystander video of Floyd crying that he couldnt breathe as onlookers yelled at Chauvin to get off him sparked protests and scattered violence around the U.S.

A protesters waves a Black Lives Matter flag across the street from the Hennepin County Government Center, Wednesday, April 7, 2021, in Minneapolis where testimony continues in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin continues. Chauvin is charged with murder in the death of George Floyd during an arrest last May in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)AP

Nelson has argued that the now-fired white officer did exactly what he had been trained to do over his 19-year career, and he has suggested that Floyds drug use and his underlying health conditions are what killed him, not Chauvins knee, as prosecutors contend. Fentanyl and methamphetamine were found in Floyds system.

Breahna Giles, a state forensic scientist, testified Wednesday that pills found in the SUV Floyd was driving contained methamphetamine and fentanyl. Remnants of pills discovered in the back of the squad car also were found to contain methamphetamine. Earlier testimony revealed that one of those pills contained DNA from Floyds saliva.

Earlier, Nelson asked Stiger about uses of force that are commonly referred to by police as lawful but awful. Stiger conceded that you can have a situation where by law it looks horrible to the common eye, but based on the state law, its lawful.

Nelson has argued, too, that the officers on the scene were distracted by what they perceived as an increasingly hostile crowd of onlookers.

But Stiger told the jury, I did not perceive them as being a threat, even though some bystanders were name-calling and using foul language. He added that most of the yelling was due to their concern for Mr. Floyd.

Nelsons voice rose as he asked Stiger how a reasonable officer would be trained to view a crowd while dealing with a suspect, and somebody else is now pacing around and watching you and watching you and calling you names and saying (expletives). Nelson said such a situation could be viewed by a reasonable officer as a threat.

As a potential threat, correct, Stiger said.

Chauvins lawyer noted that dispatchers had described Floyd as between 6 feet and 6-foot-6 and possibly under the influence. Stiger agreed it was reasonable for Chauvin to come to the scene with a heightened sense of awareness.

Stiger further agreed with Nelson that an officers actions must be judged from the point of view of a reasonable officer on the scene, not in hindsight. Among other things, Nelson said that given typical emergence medical response times, it was reasonable for Chauvin to believe that paramedics would be there soon.

In other testimony, Stiger said that as Floyd lay pinned to the ground, Chauvin squeezed Floyds fingers and pulled one of his wrists toward his handcuffs, a technique that uses pain to get someone to comply, but Chauvin did not appear to let up.

In this image from video, witness Senior Special Agent James Reyerson of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension testifies as Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill presides Wednesday, April 7, 2021, in the trial of former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin at the Hennepin County Courthouse in Minneapolis. Chauvin is charged in the May 25, 2020 death of George Floyd. (Court TV via AP, Pool)AP

Then at that point its just pain, Stiger said.

Prosecutors stopped and started videos during the testimony from Reyerson, the state investigator, in an attempt to show the jury how long Chauvin held his position. Reyerson testified that Chauvins knee was on Floyds neck for two minutes after Floyd stopped talking, and for two minutes after he ceased moving.

Stiger was asked by prosecutors whether Chauvin had an obligation to take Floyds distress into account as the officer considered how much force to use.

Absolutely, Stiger replied. As the time went on, clearly in the video, you could see that Mr. Floyds ... health was deteriorating. His breath was getting lower. His tone of voice was getting lower. His movements were starting to cease.

So at that point, as a officer on scene, he continued, you have a responsibility to realize that, OK, something is not right. Something has changed drastically from what was occurring earlier. So therefore you have a responsibility to take some type of action.

___

Amy Forliti, Steve Karnowski and Tammy Webber of The Associated Press wrote this story. Webber reported from Fenton, Mich.

Find APs full coverage of the death of George Floyd at: https://apnews.com/hub/death-of-george-floyd
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Through this partnership, Jet It will provide funds and awareness to help support HeartGift's mission of providing access to care for children born in developing countries with congenital heart defects and very little access to care. Since inception, HeartGift has provided life-saving heart surgery to 500 children from 35 countries with medical partners Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital, Dell Children's Medical Center and other children's hospitals in San Antonio, New Orleans and abroad. For the children HeartGift serves, just one surgery can save their life, but it is not available where they live geographically. By bringing children to the United States for medical care, or bringing care to the children closer to their homes, hearts are mended with just one surgery and the children have the opportunity to live a full life without limitations. Every surgery is 100% free to the children and families served. "We are grateful to Jet It for their support of the work that we do," said Christy Casey-Moore, HeartGift CEO. "It is only through generous contributions like this that we are able to carry out our mission of providing life-saving heart surgery to children who would not have access to this care otherwise."

Founded in 2018, Jet It has raised more than $750,000 for various children's charities. "I am personally drawn to HeartGift as I myself was born with a congenital heart defect," said Jet It Founder and CEO Glenn Gonzales. "Fortunately my defect self-corrected, but the children that HeartGift serves are not so lucky. We enjoy partnering with children's charities as children are not choosing their circumstance, and deserve every opportunity at a full and healthy life."

About HeartGift

HeartGift provides life-saving heart surgeries to children from around the world where specialized medical treatment is either scarce or nonexistent. With 1 in 100 babies born with a congenital heart defect (CHD) globally each year, we have the ability to impact a child's life and provide a lifetime of freedom from this disease. In industrialized countries such as the United States, the corrective surgery is accessible and provided to those in need, regardless of financial capacity or geographic location. In developing countries, this care is simply not available. In 2000, HeartGift was founded to address this disparity and since inception, it has served 500 children from 35 countries, with chapters in Austin, Houston, San Antonio, and New Orleans. For more information, visit: heartgift.org.

About Jet It

Jet It, a North Carolina based hybrid ownership aviation company offers fractional ownership of HondaJet aircrafts in North America. Their sister company, JetClub operates in Southeast Asia. In 2020, founders of Jet It and JetClub, Glenn Gonzales and Vishal Hiremath were approached by Harvard Professor Gary Pisano to perform a case study of their private aviation business model based on days rather than hours. At Jet It, owners have their own personal flight crew for $1,600 an hour with a 24/7 full concierge service. The innovative business model allows customers to purchase portions of a $6 million HondaJet in increments ranging from one-tenth to one-half. For more information, visit: gojetit.com.

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The Armenian authorities are afraid of promulgating the results of their own probe into the circumstances behind the Four-Day Artsakh War of April 2016 because it will clearly show that Nikol Pashinyan and his team have deceived the people for the past five years. This is what former defense minister, representative of the Republican Party of Armenia Artak Zakaryan told reporters today.

If the results are made public, they will have to admit that the Republican Party of Armenia isnt to blame for anything, that soldiers didnt fight with shovels and that supplies were provided, starting from food and ending with arms, and that Azerbaijan pleaded peace four days after the launch of the aggression. After the Four-Day Artsakh War, Aliyev declared that he was being forced to recognize Artsakhs independence. After the war in September-November 2020, Aliyev informed that Zangezur will become a corridor that will link the Turkic world. This is thanks to Nikol Pashinyan. Nikol achieved the goal through lies and brainwashing, Zakaryan said.

According to him, the biggest problem of the Republican Party of Armenia was that the political party never talked about its achievements, and unlike the incumbent authorities, which present their minimum duties as great achievements, this was a duty for the political party. He also reminded that Armenia was meeting its objectives, growing and establishing relations at the same time and that the political party never set the objective to praise itself.
(Newser)  A West Virginia man will spend eight months in confinement for helping his wife fake her own death. Rodney Wheeler called 911 on May 31, 2020, to report that his wife had fallen from a steep cliff some 1,400 feet above West Virginia's New River. After days of searching, authorities found Julie Wheeler, 44, who was to be sentenced for federal health care fraud two weeks later, hiding in a closet in her Beaver home. Authorities said the couple planned to go into hiding. For his role in the schemewhich involved planting a shoe and cellphone at the base of the cliffRodney Wheeler, 48, was sentenced Monday to two months in federal prison, to be followed by six months of home confinement, and three years of supervised release, per the Washington Post. He faced up to five years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to obstruct justice during a hearing in January.

story continues below

Rodney Wheeler "repeatedly gave false statements to state and federal investigators," according to the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of W.Va. It notes he also posted false information on Facebook, saying he was "heartbroken and lost" but "holding out hope" that his wife would be found safe, per People. "Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers," he added. Helicopters, rappelling experts, and hundreds of volunteers took part in the search before state troopers found Julie Wheeler in her closet. Julie Wheeler, the owner of a home health care business, was sentenced in February to one year and one day behind bars for faking her death, to be served after a 42-month sentence for overbilling a Veterans Affairs program for spina bifida care, handed down in July. She was ordered to pay almost $290,000 in restitution and, like her husband, faces three years of supervised release. (Read more faked death stories.)
 Flash

Another 2,379 people in Britain have tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases in the country to 4,364,529, according to official figures released Tuesday.

The country also reported another 20 coronavirus-related deaths. The total number of coronavirus-related deaths in Britain now stands at 126,882. These figures only include the deaths of people who died within 28 days of their first positive test.

Over the last week, there have been 212 deaths within 28 days of a positive coronavirus test. This shows a decrease of 45.2 percent compared to the previous seven days.

One death was recorded in London according to the Public Health England dashboard.

Last Tuesday, 4,040 people tested positive and 56 deaths were reported.

More than 31.6 million people have been given the first jab of the coronavirus vaccine, according to the official figures.

Earlier Tuesday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said during a visit to AstraZeneca's Macclesfield factory that Britain should continue rolling out the AstraZeneca vaccine despite concerns about occasionally reported cases of blood clots.

Johnson said the current advice of Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), Britain's medicines regulator, is to "keep going out there, get your jab, get your second jab" and "we need to keep that going".

The vaccines are already "starting to have a beneficial effect on the trajectory of the disease", said Johnson, noting the falling number of cases and deaths in the country.

Johnson on Monday confirmed that from April 12, non-essential shops will reopen and pubs and restaurants will reopen outdoors as Britain moves to step two of the roadmap out of the COVID-19 lockdown.

Meanwhile, hairdressers and barbers as well as gyms can reopen, along with zoos, theme parks, libraries and community centers.

However, experts have warned that despite progress in vaccine rollout, Britain is "still not out of the woods" amid concerns over new variants and the third wave of pandemic on the European continent.

To bring life back to normal, countries such as Britain, China, Russia, the United States as well as the European Union have been racing against time to roll out coronavirus vaccines.
Like pretty much everything else in life, haute couture and everyday fashion are a matter of taste. Thats why many designs from Versace or Louis Vuitton, though impeccable in theory and execution, never appeal to a large section of the public, who might even go as far as to describe them as hideous or tacky. But Armani stands in a category of its own , and its all thanks to CEO Giorgio Armani himself.Armani is one of the richest men in the world ($7.7 billion, in case you want to put an exact number on it), and he is also quite the experienced yacht designer, having contributed to his own megayachts, Mariu and Main. The latter, a $60 million vessel, is the living, breathing example of elegance materialized, a gorgeous combination of muted gold with dark velvety green and somber navy, surprising materials, and the most unique layouts in the industry.That said, Armani is bringing that experience to a new project with The Italian Sea Groups flagship brand Admiral Yachts . The project was announced some days ago and, for whatever reason, kept intentionally shrouded in mystery. The only details made public are that it will measure 72 meters (236 feet), be ready in early 2024, and, based on one render released, have a stunning silhouette in gold.This agreement, of which I am extremely proud, is a further confirmation of our way of being able to realize unique projects with Made in Italy brands of excellence that share our values, Giovanni Costantino, founder and CEO of The Italian Sea Group, says . Armani is synonymous with timeless elegance and sophistication and its stylistic vision will also increase our stylistic sensitivity. The new motor yacht, which combines technology and excellence in design with the distinctive features of Armani and its deep identity will give us great satisfaction.On the upside, the early 2024 completion date means that it wont be long until more details are made public. This project will be the one to keep an eye out for.
The never-ending onslaught of cyber attacks against government is pushing the state of North Dakota to take proactive action on several fronts, including the education space and working with the public to understand these threats The states cybersecurity strategy, which was accelerated by the passing of Senate Bill 2110 in February 2019, has focused largely on giving the North Dakota Information Technology Department (NDIT) authority on cybersecurity matters for the states 400 public entities. In the past year, the strategy has broadened with targeted initiatives, such as a statewide awareness campaign, incorporating efforts to make individuals more resilient against cyber attacks.In the education space, there was a significant effort to install anti-malware software on 45,000 Chromebooks used by students throughout the state, announced on Jan. 19, 2021. Prior to this undertaking, protective software needed to be installed to each device manually, but now school districts can manage the deployment centrally.As described by Steve Palmer, K-12 information systems security analyst for NDIT, this project has been in the works since August 2018, and will decrease the risk that exists anytime these laptops leave the schools. All of this comes at no cost to schools.Palmer stressed the importance of securing these devices as distance learning continues to shape the education space. NDIT will also be working with administrators and teachers to provide training or help if needed while implementing the software, Palmer noted.In addition, NDIT is also increasing cybersecurity awareness for the general public with a new tool it announced Dec. 10, 2020. Tony Aukland, cybersecurity education and public awareness manager, said the defend.nd.gov program provides free online cybersecurity risk assessment to citizens, who are increasingly responsible for their own online security.Chief Information Security Officer Kevin Ford said the department has received positive feedback about the platform.Defend.nd.gov provides a range of tools, resources and opportunities that empower organizations and citizens in North Dakota to defend against cyber attacks and significantly impact our safety and privacy, said Ford.The free tool, created by SecurityStudio, allows individuals to learn about potential security risks while instructing them on how to secure mobile devices and Wi-Fi, back up data, authentication and even physical security. It also provides a report with recommended actions to individuals that can further decrease risks. Aukland said cyber criminals arent generally after top-secret data as much as they are valuable personal information, highlighting the importance of protecting it.The most overarching effort might be the Joint-Cybersecurity Operations Command (J-CSOC), which will allow North Dakota to partner with other states to share intelligence. The multistate partnership will help cement best practices and establish a secure technical method of sharing this type of intelligence to work together with other states to counter threats. Currently, there is no such mechanism in place.The project will be developed and operationalized through a series of phases. When paths are proven, outreach will begin to expand the J-CSOC and involve other states.
NEW YORK, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Advertising Division (NAD) of BBB National Programs determined that Verizon Communications, Inc. provided a reasonable basis for the comparative performance claim that its 5G Ultra Wideband provides the "Fastest 5G in the World." NAD concluded that Verizon's evidence was a good fit for the claim, and that the challenged television commercial clearly and conspicuously discloses that Verizon's 5G Ultra Wideband is "available only in parts of select cities." The claim at issue was challenged by AT&T Services, Inc.

It was not disputed in this proceeding that Verizon's 5G Ultra Wideband is, at present, in fact, the world's fastest or that the challenged commercial adequately limited the "fastest 5G in the world claim" to Verizon's 5G Ultra Wideband network. In this proceeding, NAD considered whether consumers' ability to connect to Verizon's 5G Ultra Wideband 0.5% of the time rendered the comparative speed claim of so little consumer relevance as to warrant precluding Verizon from making the claim.

NAD determined that the data in the record provided a reasonable basis for a truthful, narrowly tailored comparative speed claim. The Opensignal reports of actual Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband users demonstrated that by October 2020 Verizon customers located in parts of 55 cities with 5G capable devices could, in fact, connect to Verizon's mmWave service, thereby taking advantage of the "fastest 5G in the world."

Indeed, Verizon's 5G Ultra Wideband is available to all Verizon customers with 5G-capable devices when they are in the specific parts of the cities where it has launched. While these Verizon customers may have only accessed its 5G Ultra Wideband network 0.5% of the time, this data is relative and must be considered against the overall 5G usage at the time. During the relevant time period, 5G smartphone users were still spending the vast majority of time connected to older mobile technology and by October 2020, overall, 5G usage (regardless of spectrum) was only at 21.4%.

Further, NAD concluded that the challenged commercial clearly and conspicuously discloses that Verizon's 5G Ultra Wideband is "available only in parts of select cities" and is in the process of "rolling out" in cities across the country, thereby allowing viewers to determine the consumer relevance of Verizon's speed for themselves. Absent clear evidence that a product innovation has no consumer relevance, NAD is extremely reluctant to recommend that an advertiser discontinue its promotion and, on the record in this case, found no compelling reason for doing so.

Finally, NAD acknowledged AT&T's concern that with Verizon's launch of its nationwide 5G low band service there exists the potential for consumer confusion between its nationwide 5G and 5G Ultra Wideband services with respect to Verizon's "fastest 5G in the world," claim. Thus, NAD advised that, going forward, Verizon carefully craft its comparative 5G performance claims to make clear that "fastest 5G in the world" refers only to its 5G Ultra Wideband.

In its advertiser statement, Verizon stated that it is "pleased that NAD found the claim Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband is the 'Fastest 5G in the World' to be truthful and accurate."

All BBB National Programs case decision summaries can be found in the case decision library . For full text of NAD, NARB, and CARU decisions, subscribe to the online archive .

About BBB National Programs: BBB National Programs is where businesses turn to enhance consumer trust and consumers are heard. The non-profit organization creates a fairer playing field for businesses and a better experience for consumers through the development and delivery of effective third-party accountability and dispute resolution programs. Embracing its role as an independent organization since the restructuring of the Council of Better Business Bureaus in June 2019, BBB National Programs today oversees more than a dozen leading national industry self-regulation programs, and continues to evolve its work and grow its impact by providing business guidance and fostering best practices in arenas such as advertising, child-directed marketing, and privacy. To learn more, visit bbbprograms.org.

About the National Advertising Division: The National Advertising Division (NAD) of BBB National Programs provides independent self-regulation and dispute resolution services, guiding the truthfulness of advertising across the U.S. NAD reviews national advertising in all media and its decisions set consistent standards for advertising truth and accuracy, delivering meaningful protection to consumers and leveling the playing field for business.

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Georgia tragedy brings awareness to spa sex trafficking industry, how churches can help exploited women

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As last months shootings at three Georgia massage parlors gained national media attention, an advocacy group says the tragedy presents an opportunity for churches to raise awareness and help the women being trafficked by illicit massage businesses nationwide.

Illicit businesses masquerading as massage parlors or spas are the second-largest reported form of human trafficking in the United States. With 9,000 establishments across the country, it's a booming $2.8 billion industry for those who prey on vulnerable women, the advocacy group Street Grace has warned.

Street Grace, a faith-based organization that seeks to eradicate sexual exploitation, released a report last year detailing the breadth of the illegal massage businesses in Georgia. The report was published months before national attention turned toward the mass shooting at three Atlanta-area massage parlors by a man who told authorities that he sought to eliminate temptations as he battled sex addiction.

Street Grace President and CEO Bob Rodgers told The Christian Post that they know for a fact there is a nationwide trend among massage parlors and spas operating furtively to offer illegal sexual services under the guise of a legitimate business. Many of them exploit vulnerable women.

These businesses often have tinted windows, concealed parking places, late business hours and a bell to ring before entry.

Though massage parlors are often legitimate, these businesses are sometimes a front for brothels, sex trafficking and illegal sexual activity. Rodgers warned that they fly under the radar.

They are really hidden in plain sight, Rodgers stressed.

They look like they are a legitimate business. They provide cover for the people that would visit them with less than pure intentions because its two doors down from the grocery store. Its next to the drugstore and in between the Hallmark card shop and the beauty salon or nail salon. And so, people just dont pay attention. It gives cover to what in our research is overwhelmingly men who visit these spas, and some, if not a large extent, have less than pure intentions. And they are going there for inappropriate sexual activity.

Street Grace published a report in 2020 focused on illicit massage businesses in Georgia and calculated data from the user-generated reviews on RubMaps.ch and video surveillance.

The report estimated there to be between 1,025 and 1,320 customers each day who visit illicit massage businesses in Georgia. And the annual gross revenue from these businesses is estimated at over $42 million. Nearly 1,100 unique individuals are believed to be victimized annually in the state.

Rodgers said the tragic Atlanta shooting targeting massage parlors brought to light the reality of the illicit massage businesses.

On March 16, Robert Aaron Long, 21, killed eight people in a shooting rampage of three massage parlors. Six of the eight victims were Asian women, and the two others were white, a male and a female.

Long told police he saw women who worked at the spas as temptations he needed to eliminate, referring to his sexual addiction.

He alone is responsible for his evil actions and desires, Longs church said in a statement at the time. The women that he solicited for sexual acts are not responsible for his perverse sexual desires nor do they bear any blame in these murders. These actions are the result of a sinful heart and depraved mind for which Aaron is completely responsible.

Police have not indicated whether the shooting victims were sex workers or human trafficking victims, USA Today reported.

The Washington Post reported that Gold Spa, one of the businesses attacked, had been the subject of prostitution stings by the Atlanta Police Department. The newspaper obtained police reports indicating that police conducted seven undercover stings at Gold Spa and made 10 arrests during a two-year period from 2011 to 2013.

Despite the tragedy, Rodgers believes good will come from the situation since more people are now aware of the reality of illicit massage businesses.

It is a shame, but it is often true that tragedy breeds awareness, Rodgers said. And so, when the Robert Kraft situation came to light, there was a spike in awareness and peoples interest.  Our attention spans are relatively short. And then something like [the Atlanta shooting] that is obviously a horrific tragedy and lives were lost, it was just completely unnecessary. [And] it does draw attention to [this industry].  Good will come from it. I hate that it takes a tragedy sometimes, and that was completely unnecessary. But good, I believe, will come from this.

Rodgers explained how traffickers often lure young Asian women to the U.S. with the promise of a better life and the ability to support their families back home.

They get here, and they immediately find out they are here on false pretenses. They were misled, he said.

Traffickers then use a series of physical threats and deception to trap them, he said. The women are often in debt bondage after accumulating high debts during their passage to the U.S., which forces them to engage in illicit activity to earn money.

They are made to believe speaking to law enforcement will lead to deportation, and traffickers sometimes threaten to harm their family members if they come forward.

The exploited women are often placed in a situation where they have no choice but to respond and comply, he added.

There are people [from all kinds of backgrounds]  [who] may not be held in handcuffs, but they are held in servitude and bondage and psychological bondage in these situations where they are forced to exploit themselves and perform acts that they would not have any interest to do and would not do in any other circumstances, Rodgers shared.

An estimated 40 million people are subjected to some form of modern-day slavery as of 2016, according to the Global Slavery Index. And 71% of all enslaved victims are women.

The most powerful form of bondage is not of ropes and chains, Rodgers detailed. That doesnt really occur that much in the U.S. Its the guilt and the shame that come along with all of this that is so powerful with keeping people from coming forward about this.

To be considered sex trafficking, a situation must include either force, fraud or coercion.

A New York Times article published in March 2019 explained how tens of thousands of mainly foreign women or immigrants are trapped in an underground crime network and a modern form of indentured servitude where they are forced or coerced into performing illegal acts in the shadows at illicit massage parlors.

Many women are forced to work in this industry to pay for enormously high debts accumulated against them by traffickers.

Business regulation loopholes allow traffickers to manage criminal human trafficking networks under the guise of massage parlor businesses. Many of these businesses do not have an actual person listed on their business records at all to avoid blame, according to the Polaris Project.

When law enforcement agencies conduct raids and shut down illicit massage businesses, spa owners re-open elsewhere. The owners often have employees live at the business and spend only a few months at a spa before sending them off to another state to work, The New York Times reported.

The Polaris Project, the organization behind the National Trafficking Hotline, noted that victims of massage parlor trafficking are often immigrants from China or South Korea. They often carry debts or are under extreme financial pressure, speak little English, have no more than a high school education or are mothers.

When criminal prosecution does occur, the victims of human trafficking or massage therapists are charged while the traffickers escape punishment.

In reality, the laws governing business registration are almost tailor-made for massage parlor traffickers to hide behind, the Polaris Project stated in a report.

The Church, Rodgers said, can play an essential role in fighting for this industrys victims.

Ashleigh S. Chapman, a human rights lawyer and founder of Engage Together, an organization that helps churches fight human trafficking, told CP in a February interview that churches are uniquely positioned to make a difference in the fight against human trafficking.

Rodgers said local churches should be supportive of law enforcement and understand their role in the process of investigating and uncovering the illicit massage industry.

He said Christians should become more involved in the legislative process and join city councils to guide laws that can make it improper for such businesses to exist.

Ultimately, the Church must provide hope to those trapped in this industry since the women exploited are often hopeless and see no way to escape.

From a Christian perspective  [those exploited by the illicit massage industry] are people who are in the most likely of circumstances to be without hope, Rodgers explained. We think of all the different things we can do as the Body of Christ. But what we have to bring more than anything else, we have to give hope.

People are often not motivated to change unless they see something that is hopeful, encouraging, something they feel like is better, safer and can lead them to a different place, he added. I think one of the things that is so dark about the illicit massage business  is that theres just such a loss of hope and sense of discouragement and helplessness.

The Street Grace report offered policy recommendations to address exploitation in the illicit massage industry and remove some of the loopholes that allow the industry to thrive.

Suggestions include the mandatory display of business licenses, a record of all activities conducted at massage businesses, mandatory business hours and a complete list of all the establishments services. Raising awareness about the issue is also essential.
The company now has a combined total of 21 targets at the Mt Oxide Project site that feature in forward exploration plans.

Castillo's exploration potential at Mt Oxide comes at a time when there is an impending global supply deficit of copper.

s ( ) ( ) ( ) geology team plans to return this month to the flagship Mt Oxide Project within the Mt Isa copper belt in Queensland following the wet season.

Within the next few weeks, a geophysical survey will be undertaken at the Big One Deposit that will focus on extending known mineralisation and uncovering additional anomalies.

Once these results are known, the drilling team will complete the campaign at Big One then move across to the Arya Prospect to test several sizeable bedrock conductors.

Recent forensic work by the geology team has identified several more anomalies within proximity to Arya and the bedrock conductors will be tested.

Pipeline of copper-focused exploration

Managing director Simon Paull said: Behind the scenes, our geology team has been flat out readying for a resumption of exploration work at the flagship Mt Oxide Project.

The board is targeting to have drilling teams back to site as soon as practical to complete work at the Big One Deposit then commence at the Arya Prospect.

Holistically, with 21 targets across the Mt Oxide Project, CCZ now has a significant pipeline of copper-focused exploratory work ahead, coinciding with an impending global supply deficit.

More recently, the Queensland Governments Department of Resources granted the final key tenement (EPM 27440)  directly north of the Big One Deposit that expands the core Mt Oxide Project footprint by around 23% to 980 square kilometres.

Within the newly granted ground are five well-profiled targets (Crescent, Pancake, Flapjack, The Wall and Johnnies) that are prospective for IOCG, Mt Isa style and shear-hosted copper mineralisation.

New targets

Ongoing forensic work by CCZs geology team identified an incremental 11 targets across the Mt Oxide Project which are prospective for various styles of copper-gold mineralisation.



As such, on a combined basis, there are now 21 viable targets across the Mt Oxide Project for copper mineralisation which delivers a pipeline of development work ahead and enhances forward exploration potential.

Once the geophysical survey has been complete and reconciled, the next phase of the drilling campaign will commence.
Editors note: In the coming weeks leading up to the 93rd Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday, April 25, Time Warp will feature stories related to films nominated this year or other local connections to the annual film event.

1968: The Trial of the Chicago 7 takes the viewer back to the turbulent times of the late 1960s when a group of political activists planned to protest at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Later, the group was arrested and charged, forever becoming known as the Chicago 7.

Originally, there were eight co-defendants  Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, Lee Weiner, John Froines and Bobby Seale  but as the trial moved forward, Seale was removed from the case.

Over the years, three men associated with this case visited Scranton to lecture at local colleges and universities. The first to visit was David Dellinger on Sept. 28, 1970. The longtime pacifist also was the co-chairman of the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. His talk was held at University of Scrantons Long Center and was sponsored by the universitys lecture series committee. The lecture was free and open to the public.

Second to visit was political and social activist Abbie Hoffman, who spoke before 700 students at University of Scrantons student center on Oct. 14, 1986. During his hour-long talk, Hoffman spoke on a variety of topics, such as the United States invasion of Nicaragua in 1912, the Vietnam War, the CIA, South Africa, the Star Wars program and televangelists Jimmy Swaggart and Jerry Falwell.

He said the 1912 invasion of Nicaragua was the heyday of Yankee imperialism and called the Vietnam War an illegal, stupid, unwinnable war caused by a bully country picking on a small country. He reminded those in attendance that Dr. Edwin Teller, the father of the Star Wars program, inspired the role of Dr. Strangelove in the film of the same name.

During a press conference following the lecture, an unidentified man asked Hoffman, who was also known as a jokester, if he ever changes his mind. Hoffman responded, I changed my underwear.

The third visit was from Bobby Seale on Feb. 3, 2000. Seale was the surviving founder, former chairman and national organizer of the Blank Panther Party. His lecture was part of Penn State Worthington Scrantons campus lecture series. Seale spoke about how his desire to learn more about African and African American history as a young man led him to form the Black Panther Party with Huey P. Newton, and that the history not taught in schools inspired him.

Seale also addressed why members of the party carried guns during peaceful protests of the Oakland Police Department.

Peaceful protesters were being jumped on and shot up in the early and late 60s, he said. Racists got away with killing us. Hueys argument was, if peaceful protesters were exercising their rights, then we dont support the politicians who send the police down to take those rights away. Thats where we were coming from. Thats what the guns were about.

In the film, John Carroll Lynch plays Dellinger, Sacha Baron Cohen portrays Hoffman, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays Seale. The film is nominated for six Academy Awards: best picture, Sacha Baron Cohen for best supporting actor, Aaron Sorkin for best original screenplay, Phedon Papamichael for best cinematography, Daniel Pemberton and Celeste for best original song for Hear My Voice and Alan Baumgarten for best film editing.

Old Forge native Mia Cusumano, meanwhile, played an integral role in The Trial of the Chicago 7. Part of the casting team for the film, Cusumano is nominated with her coworkers in the Artios Awards, presented by the Casting Society of America, in the category of big budget  drama film. The Artios ceremony will be held virtually on Thursday, April 15.

BRIAN FULTON, library manager, oversees The Times-Tribunes expansive digital and paper archives and is an authority on local history. Contact Brian at bfulton@timesshamrock.com or 570-348-9140.
Copenhagen, April 7 : Danish authorities have started the gradual reopening of the country amid the pandemic with the 'Corona passport', which will officially document a negative Covid-19 test taken within the last 72 hours, a previous infection during the past two to 12 weeks, or a completed vaccination course.

The passport, which can be downloaded and shown by an app onto a smartphone or alternatively printed out from the website of health portal Sundhed.dk, was introduced on Tuesday by the Danish Health Authority, Xinhua news agency reported.

"We are pleased to deliver the solution that contributes to the gradual reopening of Denmark. We have been working hard under high pressure lately. So it is great to be able to say that we are ready to start," Morten Elbaek Petersen, CEO of Sundhed.dk, said in a statement.

The initial beneficiaries of the passport will be a number of liberal professions, such as hair salons and driving schools.

However, customers are still required to use a face mask when they present their valid "corona passport".

Children under 15 years are exempt from the requirements.

Sundhed.dk expects a huge application for the passport from people eagerly seeking to resume their "pre-Covid" lives, said Petersen.

"I would also like to say that at times you have to expect waiting time and queues, as we anticipate a great deal of pressure on the system. This can also be the case with the website and app if many people log on at the same time." According to a poll conducted by Danish news agency Ritzau on Tuesday, 67 per cent of those surveyed think a "corona passport" is a good idea, while 16 per cent said that it was a bad idea.

The Danish government on March 23 announced a phased reopening plan after lengthy negotiations between the government and the majority of parliamentary parties.

According to the Statens Serum Institut (SSI), Denmark registered 520 new Covid cases and two more deaths in the past 24 hours.

To date, the country has reported 234,317 cases and 2,432 deaths.
Protesters have tried to blockade a rail construction site at the controversial Carmichael coal mine project in central Queensland.

The group of health workers called Health On The Frontlines is protesting the mine due to the impacts of coal mining and climate change on human health.

A group of about 20 people tried to block vehicles entering a rail construction site off the Gregory Hwy on Wednesday morning.

Protesters have tried to blockade a rail construction site at the controversial Carmichael coal mine project in central Queensland

Bravus said the attempted blockade had not affected work at the Carmichael mine and rail project.

'Police have been notified and are on their way,' the company told AAP in a statement.

University of Queensland Associate Professor Liza Fitzgerald said climate change was the number one public health issue for the current generations and those to come.

'I have to do his protest as a role model for my daughters and my students - we cannot have any more climate destruction, we cannot have more coal coming out of the earth,' she said in a statement.

The group of health workers called Health On The Frontlines is protesting the mine due to the impacts of coal mining and climate change on human health

UQ senior research assistant Troy Combo also took part in the protest.

Mr Combo, a Bundjalung man, said he was protesting climate change and the impacts on Indigenous health.

'I know that for aboriginal people, health and wellbeing and connection to country are inseparable,' he said in a statement.

'So to hear about native title being extinguished here made me realise the need to come to the frontline and address climate change directly.'

Frontline Action on Coal, which is promoting Wednesday's protest, noted that the The Australian Medical Association had declared climate change a health emergency in 2019.
By Yao Yunzhu

Since the 1990's, China and the U.S. have had extensive conflicting interests in military and broader security issues. However, if the purpose is to map out a cooperation list, I will venture the following suggestions:

First, intensifying strategic competition has given rise to a shared interest: prevention of military conflict resulting from misjudgment, accident or inadvertent events at the operational level. Such a military conflict runs the risk of escalation to a larger scale and higher intensity.Now that both countries can little rely on strategic trust to avoid a crisis, they must improve the existing crisis management regimes, including updating the code of behavior in close encounters in the air and at sea, regulating the use of communication channels and clarifying protocols and procedures when emergencies do occur. This may be the most important area in which the two militaries can work together.

Second, given that China and the U.S. have the responsibility of maintaining world peace and regional stability, they must discuss, negotiate and eventually agree upon a relationship of strategic stability. For that purpose, they need to first explore a conceptual construct of what that means  how it draws upon and differs from what the U.S. and Soviet Union had during the Cold War. The U.S.-Soviet strategic stability was based on a balance of nuclear arsenals and focused on crisis stability and arms race stability. A framework for strategic stability for the U.S. and China might have to be more extensive and inclusive.

Given the nature of China-U.S. military relations, the architecture for strategic stability should not only cover the size and composition of nuclear arsenals and defense/offense balances but should also explore the ways and means of preventing cyberattacks on nuclear facilities and nuclear command, control and communication systems (NC3), as well as assets in space.Currently, there are studies in academia and the policymaking community in both countries looking at how peaceful coexistence can happen, what military balances would aid stability and what kind of military posture is needed to both satisfy their security requirements and avoid an arms race.In any case, the Cold War concept of mutual assured destruction (MAD) should not be the only option. There have been studies and discussions raising concepts such as mutual denial or mutual vulnerability, which need further exploration on both sides.

Third, China shares interests with the U.S. in the area of international arms control. U.S. President Joe Biden ranks arms control as a policy priority and extended the New Start Treaty with Russia for another five years immediately after he took office. The Trump administration had tried to force China into disarmament negotiations with Russia, which was neither fair nor practical. China is and will continue to be opposed to such coercive behavior.However, China and the U.S. have ample room to cooperate in bilateral and multilateral frameworks on arms control, including reducing their reliance nuclear weapons for national security and promoting a political consensus to minimize the utility of nuclear weapons use in the P5 framework. Both countries should call for a joint P5 statement that Nuclear war cannot be won and should never be fought, which presidents Reagan and Gorbachev made decades ago.Considering that President Biden has promised to seek a sole-purpose nuclear policy during his presidential campaign, and that China has a long-held no-first-use policy, both sides can work together for the adoption of a no first use or sole purpose policy by all nuclear-armed states.

At the same time, both should continue to cooperate on nonproliferation issues, as they did in the past, seek a peaceful solution of the DPRK nuclear issue and keep the Iran nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) intact.Even when both countries are less inclined to cooperate during a period of heightened strategic competition, nonproliferation remains a common interest and cooperation a necessity for regional and global peace.

Last, China and the U.S. can and should engage each other in setting up standards, rules and norms for emerging technologies involving space, cyber, artificial intelligence and so on  especially on whether or how such technologies should be used for military purposes. Exclusion of each other from this process could have grave consequences.
Good morning, Bay Area. Its Wednesday, April 7, and Oaklands guaranteed income program is facing headwinds. Heres what you need to know to start your day.

California will retire its color-coded pandemic blueprint on June 15 and allow almost all activities and sectors of the economy to reopen at or near full capacity  assuming the state continues to meet aggressive vaccination goals and hospitalizations for COVID-19 remain low. Read our Q&A for more details.

The announcement Tuesday by Gov. Gavin Newsom signals a dramatic shift in the states restrictive pandemic response. It was also politically risky for Newsom, who is facing a recall campaign. As senior political writer Joe Garofoli writes, if another spike in infections forces California back into lockdown, many people will be looking for someone to blame.

Meanwhile, the tiers arent gone yet. California hit a key milestone Tuesday of 4 million coronavirus vaccination shots administered in low-income communities, triggering an adjustment that allowed three more Bay Area counties  Costra Costa, Sonoma and Napa  to move into the second-least-restrictive orange tier.

More coronavirus updates:

 Newsom vows to keep Coliseum vaccination site open, says state will match supply.

 For the unvaccinated, this might be the most dangerous time in the pandemic.

 S.F. supervisors pass right to re-employment for some workers laid off during the pandemic.

 S.F. isnt the only city seeing a major pandemic exodus, according to Zillows Mover Report.

Around the Bay

Shelby Knowles / Special to The Chronicle

 From Heather Knight: Golden Gate Parks main drag has been closed to cars during the pandemic. The fight over its future is heating up.

 SFUSD decisions: S.F. school board votes unanimously to reopen to all students for full days in the fall. Also: In another unanimous vote, the board reversed its decision to rename 44 schools, citing frivolous litigation.

 New details: Victim in alleged anti-Asian attack at S.F. bar was punched by a retired pro boxer, witnesses say.

 Civil rights complaint: Family of Tyrell Wilson sues Danville over fatal police shooting. Previously: Video shows Danville police officer shoot homeless Black man.

 Plan faces backlash: Oaklands guaranteed income program caught up in debate over race and equity.

 Latest legal salvo: PG&E hit with criminal charges in Sonoma County over 2019 Kincade Fire.

Pandemic real estate

Golden Gate Sotheby's International Realty

Whats the difference in real estate in some of the Bay Areas most expensive ZIP codes? Annie Vainshtein looked at what $3 million  whats considered the beginning of the luxury housing market in the Bay Area  will buy in Berkeley and Palo Alto.

The two homes show how internal pandemic migration in the region has changed the market  and how the profile of a typical new home buyer in the two cities is changing.

Bay Briefing is written by Taylor Kate Brown, Anna Buchmann and Kellie Hwang and sent to readers email inboxes on weekday mornings. Sign up for the newsletter here, and contact the writers at taylor.brown@sfchronicle.com, anna.buchmann@sfchronicle.com, and kellie.hwang@sfchronicle.com.
VANCOUVER, BC, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Equinox Gold Corp. (TSX: EQX) (NYSE American: EQX) ("Equinox Gold" or the "Company") has completed its acquisition of Premier Gold Mines Limited (TSX: PG) (OTCPK: PIRGF) ("Premier"), adding Premier's interest in the construction-ready Hardrock Project in Ontario, Canada, the producing Mercedes Mine in Mexico, and the Hasaga and Rahill-Bonanza exploration properties in Ontario to the Company's existing portfolio of gold assets. Going forward, Hardrock will be called the Greenstone Project, a name that is well recognized in the region and supported locally. In connection with the acquisition, the spin-out of i-80 Gold Corp. ("i-80 Gold"), a newly created company holding Premier's gold projects in Nevada, USA, was also completed. Equinox Gold is a 30% shareholder of i-80 Gold.

Christian Milau, CEO of Equinox Gold, stated: "With Mercedes and Greenstone in our portfolio, Equinox Gold now has eight operating mines and one of the largest gold reserves in our peer group, all in the mining-friendly jurisdictions of Ontario, California, Mexico and Brazil. We also have a strong, near-term growth profile with construction of our Santa Luz mine underway, Greenstone construction targeted to start in 2021, and significant expansion projects at Los Filos and Castle Mountain. We look forward to developing Greenstone with Orion as our partner, integrating Mercedes into our portfolio of producing mines and being a substantial and supportive shareholder of i-80 Gold."

Ewan Downie, CEO of i-80 Gold and former CEO of Premier Gold, stated: "Premier shareholders will benefit from the combination with Equinox Gold and its financial capacity to advance development of our flagship Greenstone Project. It was a tremendous honour working with the Premier team for nearly 15 years, participating in numerous exploration and development successes, and I am thankful for the support of this group and our shareholders. We now look to the future and the public launch of i-80 Gold next week, with the objective of creating a go-to, Nevada-focused mining and development company."

Premier's common shares are expected to be de-listed from the Toronto Stock Exchange ("TSX") within two to three business days. Premier shareholders will receive 0.1967 of an Equinox Gold common share for each Premier share held. Each Premier warrant and option will become exercisable for Equinox Gold common shares, as adjusted in accordance with the exchange ratio. Premier shareholders will also receive 0.4 of a share in i-80 Gold for each Premier share held. The common shares of i-80 Gold are expected to be listed for trading on the TSX within three to four business days with the ticker symbol "IAU".

Premier shares held in a trading account will update automatically to reflect the receipt of Equinox Gold shares and i-80 Gold shares, generally within two weeks of closing. Premier shareholders who hold physical share certificates or DRS Statements must submit a Letter of Transmittal to Equinox Gold's transfer agent, Computershare Investor Services Inc., to receive their Equinox Gold shares. Additional information regarding the process of receiving Equinox Gold shares is available on Equinox Gold's website at www.equinoxgold.com. Information about the process to receive i-80 Gold shares can be obtained by contacting i-80 Gold by email at [email protected] or by phone at 1-888-346-1390. The transfer agent for i-80 Gold is TSX Trust Company.

While Equinox Gold holds 30% of the shares of i-80 Gold, Equinox Gold shareholders will not receive i-80 Gold shares and i-80 Gold will be a separate, independent company with a management team that will include certain former Premier Gold executives.

Equinox Gold has also completed the associated non-brokered private placement of subscription receipts at a price of C$10.00 per subscription receipt for gross proceeds of C$75 million. Certain of the Company's executives and directors subscribed for C$40.4 million of the private placement. With the acquisition of Premier complete, holders of the subscription receipts will receive one share of Equinox Gold for each subscription receipt held.

With completion of the acquisition of Premier by Equinox Gold, the escrow release conditions in respect of i-80 Gold's $80.4 million subscription receipt financing completed on March 18, 2021 have now been satisfied. Each of the 30,914,614 subscription receipts of i-80 Gold issued will be automatically converted, with no further action on the part of the holder, into one common share and  of one common share purchase warrant of i-80 Gold. The net proceeds of the financing have been released to i-80 Gold. For further information on the subscription receipt financing, refer to the Premier March 18, 2021 news release.

About Equinox Gold

Equinox Gold is a Canadian mining company with eight operating gold mines, construction underway at a ninth site, a multi-million-ounce gold reserve base and a clear path to achieve more than one million ounces of annual gold production from a pipeline of development and expansion projects. Equinox Gold operates entirely in the Americas with properties in Canada, the United States, Mexico and Brazil. Equinox Gold's common shares are listed on the TSX and the NYSE American under the trading symbol EQX. Further information about Equinox Gold's portfolio of assets and long-term growth strategy is available at www.equinoxgold.com or by email at [email protected].

Equinox Gold Contacts

Christian Milau, Chief Executive Officer

Rhylin Bailie, Vice President, Investor Relations

Tel: +1 604-558-0560

Email: [email protected]

i-80 Gold Contacts

Ewan Downie, Chief Executive Officer

Matthew Gollat, Executive Vice President

Tel: +1 888-346-1390

Email: [email protected]

Cautionary Notes & Forward-looking Statements

This news release includes certain statements that constitute "forward-looking statements", and "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws collectively "forward-looking statements". These include statements regarding the expectations of the officers and directors of Equinox Gold and i-80 Gold (the "Companies") following completion of the acquisition of Premier and the spin-out of i-80 Gold. When used in this news release, words such as "will", "clear path", "strong", "expected", and similar expressions are intended to identify these forward-looking statements as well as phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "should", "occur" or "be achieved" or the negative connotation of such terms. As well, forward-looking statements may relate to future outlook and anticipated events, such as the timing regarding de-listing of Premier's shares and listing and trading of i-80 Gold's shares; Equinox Gold's ability to realize the synergies anticipated with the acquisition of Premier; the strategic vision for Equinox Gold and its ability to successfully advance its development and expansion projects and achieve its growth objectives; the strengths, characteristics and potential of i-80 Gold; the strategic vision for i-80 Gold; the ability of i-80 Gold to successfully advance its projects; and the availability of funds and future cash requirements for the projects of both Equinox Gold and i-80 Gold.

Although the Companies believe that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements and information are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements since the Companies can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. The Companies caution that forward-looking statements and information involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results and developments to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release and the Companies have made assumptions and estimates based on or related to many of these factors. Such factors include, without limitation: fluctuations in gold prices; fluctuations in prices for energy inputs, labour, materials, supplies and services; fluctuations in currency markets; the potential for labour-related disruptions and unplanned delays or interruptions in scheduled construction, development and production, including by blockade; operational risks and hazards inherent with the business of mining (including environmental accidents and hazards, industrial accidents, equipment breakdown, unusual or unexpected geological or structural formations, cave-ins, flooding and severe weather); inadequate insurance, or inability to obtain insurance to cover these risks and hazards; employee relations; relationships with, and claims by, local communities and indigenous populations; Equinox Gold's and i-80 Gold's respective abilities to obtain all necessary permits, licenses and regulatory approvals in a timely manner or at all; changes in laws, regulations and government practices, including environmental, export and import laws and regulations; capital, decommissioning and reclamation estimates; the potential for legal restrictions relating to mining including those imposed in connection with COVID-19; the potential impact of COVID-19 on operations; risks relating to expropriation; and increased competition in the mining industry; the ability of Equinox Gold and i-80 Gold to work productively with their respective joint venture partners; and Equinox Gold's ability to realize a benefit from its investment in i-80 Gold. Additional risk factors are identified in Equinox Gold's MD&A dated March 19, 2021 and its Annual Information Form dated March 24, 2021, both for the year ended December 31, 2020, which are available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on EDGAR at www.sec.gov/edgar; and in Premier's MD&A dated March 31, 2021 and its Annual Information Form dated March 31, 2021, both for the year ended December 31, 2020, which are available on Premier's profile on SEDAR. Forward-looking statements are based on information available at the time those statements are made and/or management's good faith belief as of that time with respect to future events and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual performance or results to differ materially from those expressed in or suggested by the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date those statements are made. While the Companies consider these assumptions to be reasonable based on information currently available, they may prove to be incorrect. Accordingly, readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on the forward-looking statements or information contained in this news release. Except as required by applicable law, the Companies have no obligation to update or to publicly announce the results of any change to any forward-looking statement contained or incorporated by reference herein to reflect actual results, future events or developments, changes in assumptions or changes in other factors affecting the forward-looking statements. If the Companies update any one or more forward-looking statements, no inference should be drawn that the company will make additional updates with respect to those or other forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement.

SOURCE Equinox Gold Corp.

Related Links

www.premiergoldmines.com


When Will Joe Biden And Kamala Harris Push For Federal Cannabis Reform?

In a recent report Vice President, Kamala harris has come forth to address the concern of federally legalizing cannabis. Harris went on to say that Bidens administration is not making federal cannabis reform an imidate priority. Even though federally legalizing cannabis was one of her many campaign promises it has yet to happen a bigger focus is set on helping those in crisis from the coronavirus pandemic.

Vice President Harris had an interview with The San Francisco Chronicle and was asked about her stance on cannabis policy and stated "we haven't yet taken that on". Despite the campaign, pledges to act on better reform like decriminalization and expunging prior marijuana records.

"Honestly, right now, we've been focused on getting people food, helping them stay in their apartments or in their homes, getting kids back to school, getting shots into arms," she said. "That has been all-consuming."

This recent discussion on the matter is the first time that anybody from the Biden Administration has openly spoken about anything marijuana-related since back in November. However, now that the administration has made the pandemic the big focus Biden has also been helping to fix an array of other issues. For example, the president is working to help with many other campaign pledges as well. Furthermore, it seems as if federal cannabis reform has now become less of a priority.

Those who are in support of marijuana reform have stated that cannabis policy and coronavirus relief are not mutually exclusive. For instance, federally legalizing marijuana would allow more states to initiate tax and regulation systems for cannabis. In addition with more states going legal on top of ending marijuana prohibition more jobs would be created for those in need of work. Not to mention higher revenue which can help with economic recovery.

When Will Cannabis Be Federally Legal In The United States?

Back in 2020 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stood in defense of the House Democrats. This was done because the House added language into COVID a package that would defend banks who work with cannabis businesses. Due to cannabis still being federally illegal banks can be penalized for serving the cannabis industry. Nancy Pelosi went on to say cannabis "is a therapy that has proven successful."

As well by being able to protect banks that take on legal cannabis clients it would allow for marijuana businesses to access the banking system. Which essentially means they would have a safe place to keep their money in what is currently an all-cash business. Also with relying on an all-cash setup it makes people more susceptible to catch covid.

Ending cannabis prohibition would all lower the number of unwarranted police altercations. Which can also lead to spreading the covid even more.

Yet even with this logic, the Vice Presidents recent remarks on the matter display that cannabis reform is not an immediate concern.

[Read More]

Will Bidens Administration Take Cannabis Reform More Serious?

Moving forward it seems that the presidents stance on the adult use of cannabis is still the same. Not long ago the press secretary of the White House shed some thoughts on the subject. Jen Psaki said The Biden Administration has encountered issues after staffers of the White House were fired or reprimanded for previous cannabis use.

Currently, it seems as Vice President has taken on the same stance for cannabis as Joe Biden. Now at one point, Harris did sponsor a comprehensive legalization bill during her time in the Senate. However, since taken her role as Vice President she has grown quiet on the subject. She also made a bit of a switch in her approach going from legalization to decriminalizing in midst of her campaign. All in all the new administration allowing cannabis reform to take a back seat has advocates upset.

Yet with the White House not taking action at the current time Congress is working to establish federal cannabis reform. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is stepping up and taking action to see that federal cannabis reform becomes a reality. Once Chuck Schumer heard the administrations stance on cannabis he said he will do it with or without them. Also, House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler has set a goal to reintroduce the MORE Act, as well.

The post The Biden Administration Is Not Making Federal Cannabis Reform A Priority appeared first on Marijuana Stocks | Cannabis Investments and News. Roots of a Budding Industry.(TM).

COMTEX_383998180/2683/2021-04-06T14:22:24

Is there a problem with this press release? Contact the source provider Comtex at editorialpr@comtex.com.
2020

Dr. Mary Dana Hinton

Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters

2020 Commencement Speaker



Mary Dana Hinton became the thirteenth president of Hollins University on August 1, 2020. An active and respected proponent of the liberal arts and inclusion, her leadership reflects a deep and abiding commitment to educational equity and the education of women. For six years Hinton served as the president of the College of Saint Benedict (Saint Bens) in Saint Joseph, Minnesota, and was named President Emerita upon her departure. Under her leadership, Saint Bens put into action a collaborative strategic plan and dynamic vision to guide the institution through 2020. During her tenure, the college completed a $100 million comprehensive fundraising campaign, exceeding its goal. Hinton also led the process to implement a $43 million campus facilities update, enabling Saint Bens to provide premier facilities for teaching, learning, and womens leadership development. Since taking office at Hollins, Hinton has focused on advancing critical conversations around inclusion, identity, and equity on the campus. In October, the university brought together more than 550 students, faculty, staff, alumnae/i, and trustees to explore themes of race and racial justice during Hollins first annual Leading Equity, Diversity, and Justice Day. In addition, she has launched the Hollins Imagination Campaign. Its goal is to create a path forward in which the university will embrace and amplify its mission, capitalize on its legacy of courage, and prepare for a transformative and thriving future. Hinton is a member of the board of directors for the American Association of Colleges and Universities, Interfaith Youth Core, Saint Marys School, and the University Leadership Consortium. Hinton chairs the AAC&U Presidents Trust and is also a member of the Lumina Foundations Quality Credentials Task Force. In July 2021, she will begin serving a three-year term as an at-large board member with the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU). She speaks frequently in the U.S. and abroad on topics related to the liberal arts and inclusion, and she founded the Liberal Arts Illuminated Conference. Hinton teaches in the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education doctoral program in higher education management and the CIC Presidents Institute New President Program.

Jenn Smith

2020 Honorary Doctor of Journalism





Jenn Smith (she/her) joined The Seattle Times Education Lab as the engagement editor in fall 2020. Her work entails building community-based networks, projects and reporting that center promising approaches to some of the most persistent challenges in public education. She is passionate about mentoring aspiring journalists, including the members of Ed Lab's Student Voices cohort and the company's summer interns. She is dedicated to examining barriers to economic and social equity, and in elevating the stories of people from communities who have historically been underrepresented in or marginalized by media organizations. Smith previously spent 15 years producing award-winning reporting and projects with The Berkshire Eagle, a daily news publication. During her tenure there, she focused on education reporting and serving as its community engagement editor. She served as a regular guest on The Roundtable and The Media Project programs of WAMC Northeast Public Radio and WTBR 89.7 FM's Good Morning, Pittsfield. She was the 2018 Hardman Journalist-in-Residence at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. She also volunteered for various community projects and organizations, and visited K-12 schools and colleges to promote and develop in people media literacy, leadership and journalism skills. Smith is a member of the national Education Writers Association and the Asian American Journalists Association's Seattle chapter. She traveled to Pakistan in 2014 as a fellow with the International Center for Journalists U.S.-Pakistan Professional Partnership Program. Additionally, shes earned journalism scholarships to train with the Poynter Institute, Hechinger Institute on Education and The Media, and Columbia University. She is an alumna of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. 2021 Ty Allan Jackson

Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters

2021 Commencement Speaker





Ty Allan Jackson is an award-winning childrens book author, literacy advocate, and captivating motivational speaker. In 2011 he founded Big Head Books, LLC, now Ty Allan Jackson, LLC, a literacy organization that aims to introduce children to the joys of reading. Ty travels around the country inspiring children and educating adults about the impacts of illiteracy. A three-time TedX presenter, Ty believes that literacy is the foundation for a successful life and promotes it with humor and enthusiasm. Tys work as an author and literacy advocate earned him the Massachusetts inaugural Martin Luther King Jr. Content of Character Award, as well as citations from the Massachusetts Governor, Senator, and the House of Representatives. Tys books have been featured on CNN, NBC Nightly News, The Steve Harvey Show, PBS and countless other media outlets. In 2012, Tys books were gifted to former First Lady Michelle Obama by his hometown mayor. He is the co-founder of the Read or Else movement, which has raised awareness about illiteracy, helped donate thousands of books to children in homeless shelters or underfunded schools, and facilitated opportunities for imprisoned parents to film themselves reading books to their children. Jackson is also the cofounder of Danny Dollar Academy, a revolutionary financial literacy program created for elementary school students to learn the basics of finance, entrepreneurship, and economics. The program is based on his best-selling childrens book Danny Dollar Millionaire Extraordinaire: Lemonade Escapade. Throughout the program, students learn the principles of credit, debit, banking, entrepreneurship, marketing and more.

B. Stephen Boyd

Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters





B. Stephen Boyd is the CEO of Boyd Technologies in Lee, Mass., and a co-founder and Board Chair of the Berkshire Innovation Center (BIC). As an advisor and frequent speaker on economic development, he is often focused on collaboration and building value through partnerships that align entrepreneurs with vision, talent, strong teams and breakthrough technologies.

As the CEO of Boyd Technologies, Mr. Boyd has grown every segment of the companys business in year over year sales and new customer acquisitions since he was appointed. He has transformed the companys design and service platforms with expertise that focus them purely on the advancing healthcare market. As a contract design and manufacturer of medical devices and a liquid formulation, mix and fill provider; the Company produces many of the single-use assemblies and bioprocessing supplies used in drug discovery and for the production of many therapeutics and vaccines distributed around the world. However, in the spring of 2020, Boyd marshalled additional services to the aid of frontline workers in desperate need of PPE with pivots to make N95 respirators, surgical masks and rapid testing components used in the fight against COVID19.

As a commissoned Advisor to the Baker-Polito Administration Mr. Boyd has served on the Economic Development Planning Council & the Strategic Steering Committee for the Department of Higher Education as well as the Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative and the Manufacturing Emergency Response Team (M-ERT) for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He is a graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont and an avid skier, dad and husband.

As the Co-founder and Board Chair of the Berkshire Innovation Center, Boyd was asked by Gov. Deval Patrick and Pittsfield Mayor Daniel Bianchi to create the Center and to lead the $14.2M public/private initiative with grant funding from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center. In 2014 he established the BIC, as a charitable organization, to support regional economic development and job growth while also combating community deterioration. The Center promotes collaboration between industry, government and academia in order to spark innovation and the diverse sustainable growth of technology enabled companies, start-ups and ideas. Since its inception the BIC has provided access to technical programing, equipment, training and networking for thousands of residents, students and workers throughout the Berkshires.
MINSK -- The criminal case of Belarusian opposition member Paval Sevyarynets, who has been in custody in Minsk since June on a charge of taking part in mass protests in the country's capital, has been moved to a court in the eastern city of Mahilyou.



The politician's wife, Volha Sevyarynets, told RFE/RL on April 7 that her husband is expected to be transferred from a detention center in Minsk to Mahilyou for the trial. The date of the trial remains unknown.



No reason for the move was given but many believe that the authorities took this decision to try to lower the profile of the proceedings by making it harder for journalists and the international community to follow. Mahilyou is almost 200 kilometers (120 miles) east of Minsk.



Sevyarynets, a co-chairman of the non-registered opposition Belarusian Christian Democratic Party, is one of dozens of activists and politicians who were detained in Minsk and several other cities across Belarus during rallies in June last year. At these events, hundreds of demonstrators were collecting signatures necessary to register candidates other than the authoritarian incumbent, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, for an August 9 presidential election.



Sevyarynets' detention has been prolonged several times since his initial arrest.



If convicted, he faces up to eight years in prison.



Relatives and colleagues of several other jailed opposition activists -- including Yauhen Afnahel, Andrey Voynich, Paval Yukhnevich, Maksim Vinyarski, Iryna Shchasnaya, and Dzmitry Kazlou -- said earlier that they will be tried along with Sevyarynets in Mahilyou.



Lukashenka, who has ruled the country since 1994, was declared the winner in the election, which was widely viewed as rigged in his favor.



Thousands of citizens took to the streets to protest the results, saying Lukashenka's challenger, Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, actually won the vote.



Tsikhanouskaya left Belarus for Lithuania after the election for security reasons, while Lukashenka has directed a brutal postelection crackdown in which almost 30,000 people have been detained, hundreds beaten, several killed, and journalists targeted.



Lukashenka, who has run Belarus since 1994, and other top officials have been slapped with sanctions by the West, which refuses to recognize him as the legitimate leader of the country.
Qantas to Add Cairns and Gold Coast to Auckland Direct Flights

Qantas and Jetstar will soon restart flying to all of their pre-pandemic New Zealand destinations while also launching two new routes direct from Auckland to Cairns and the Gold Coast when the two-way Trans-Tasman bubble opens later this month.

The national carrier said this would provide travellers with more options for holidays in Queensland and New Zealand.

It will also boost the number of trans-Tasman flights, which had sunk to less than 3 percent capacity at the height of the pandemic.

The two-way travel bubble will allow the airline to resume operations at 83 percent capacity.

The announcement comes after Australia and New Zealand announced that a two-way safe travel zone, or a travel bubble, will start from April 19 between the two countries.

Qantas Domestic and International CEO Andrew David said restarting the flights would help reconnect families and friends and rebuild the airline groups international network.

Hopefully, stories of missed weddings and birthdays on either side of the ditch will now be a thing of the past, David said.

We know Australians are keen to head overseas again, so we expect strong demand for flights to New Zealand, and there are many Kiwis who cant wait for a winter escape to warmer weather in Australia.

Qantas and Jetstar will operate up to 122 return flights per week across the Tasman Sea on 15 routes, offering more than 52,000 seats each week.

Travellers who book flights before July 31 will be allowed unlimited flight date changes if their travel is before Feb. 28, 2022.

Frequent flyers will be able to use points on every seat on every Qantas and Jetstar flight for the first three days of sales as a Classic Flight redemption.

Prior to the pandemic, Qantas usually operated direct flights to Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Queenstown in New Zealand and ski season flights direct flights from Brisbane and Melbourne to Queenstown.

The new daily service from the Gold Coast to Auckland will mark Qantas first-ever international flights from Gold Coast Airport.

The new Cairns-Auckland route will launch in early June, operating three days per week. Flights will initially operate for eight weeks until late July, and Qantas will look to add more flights beyond this period if there is demand, the airline said.

Jetstar, the Qantas Groups budget airline, will initially operate flights to Auckland from Melbourne, Gold Coast, and Sydney. It will resume all of its pre-pandemic routes from mid-year.
Johnson will lead medical and behavioral health management and have oversight for all clinical activities, including pharmacy, quality management, and the proper provision of services to members. He will be responsible for setting clinical strategic goals and direction, overseeing policy and program implementation, and developing clinical practice standards. In addition, he will be responsible for ensuring an integrated approach to the physical and behavioral health of members, including those with needs related to Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).

Johnson is a distinguished healthcare thought leader with over 20 years of experience leading the implementation of integrated services and use of clinical resources and optimizing health outcomes for members. Johnson has been recognized for his strengths in managing and evaluating programs to ensure continuous quality improvement and compliance with regulatory standards.

Johnson joins Cardinal Innovations after recently serving as Molina Healthcare, Inc.'s CMO, based in Columbus, Ohio. Before this position, he served as CMO for Virginia Premier Health Plan in Richmond, Virginia. Earlier in his career, John served as WellCare Health Plan Inc.'s Senior Medical Director, and Medical Director for Anthem, Blue Cross Blue Shield Of Georgia, both based out of Atlanta, Georgia. Prior to his managed care roles, Dr. Johnson served as West Atlanta Internal Medicine's Founder, Medical Director and Practicing Physician.

Johnson also brings an outstanding record of military experience, serving in the United States Army Reserves for the Medical Command as a Medical Corps Colonel.

Johnson's broad experience in the healthcare industry, alongside his passion for community service and focus on integrated care will further Cardinal Innovations' mission to improve the health and wellness of members and families across North Carolina.

SOURCE Cardinal Innovations Healthcare
AMMAN, Jordan  King Abdullah II of Jordan broke his silence Wednesday night over the unusually public rift with his half brother, Prince Hamzah, justifying the steps he had taken to curb his brothers contact with the outside world, while asserting that the princes sedition has been nipped in the bud.

In an open letter addressed to the Jordanian people that was read by a newscaster on television, King Abdullah wrote that Prince Hamzah had committed to put Jordans interest, Constitution, and laws above all considerations, according to an official translation of the letter released by the royal palace.

The king added: Hamzah today is with his family, in his palace, under my care. The prince had claimed that he was under house arrest. He has not been seen in public since the rift became public this past weekend.

On Sunday the Jordanian government accused Prince Hamzah, a former crown prince, of having plotted to undermine the security of the country. Several aides and associates of the prince were arrested and the prince himself was ordered to refrain from making public comments or communicating with people outside the royal family.
Former Moreton Bay Regional Council mayor Allan Sutherland has been accused of manipulating the council into conducting upgrades to a road on which he owned a block of land.

Mr Sutherland was charged with two counts of misconduct in relation to public office in December 2019. His case returned to the Brisbane Magistrates Court on Wednesday, but he did not attend.

Allan Sutherland became Moreton Bay mayor in 2008. He was suspended when he was charged and later quit. Credit:Robert Shakespeare

Crown Prosecutor Sarah Farnden told the court the alleged offences occurred in 2017 and 2018. The exact period was December 2017 to December 2018, according to court documents.

The allegation is that the previous mayor had some land on Paradise Road and ... he was manipulating the council in order to have a Paradise Road upgrade done to it, Ms Farnden said.
[April 07, 2021] Leidos Completes Delivery of Seahawk Vessel to U.S. Navy

RESTON, Va., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Leidos (NYSE:LDOS), a FORTUNE 500 science and technology leader, announced today that it has completed delivery of a cutting-edge autonomous vessel to the U.S. Navy, known as Seahawk. The Office of Naval Research awarded Leidos the cost-plus-fixed fee contract to build the vessel, with an approximate value of $35.5 million, in December 2017. Work was principally performed on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. "As technology continues to accelerate and adversaries become more sophisticated, our customers must constantly evolve," said retired Rear Adm. Nevin Carr, Leidos Vice President and Navy strategic account executive. "We are honored to provide this latest technological advancement to America's sailors who fight to keep the seas open and free." Seahawk is a long-range, high-availability autonomous surface vessel with a composite triaran hull. This medium-displacement unmanned surface vehicle (MDUSV) will enhance capabilities for naval operations. Like Leidos' MDUSV Sea Hunter, Seahawk is substantially larger than other U.S. Navy USVs and has significantly increased capabilities compared to smaller USVs in terms of range, seakeeping and payload capacity. Seahawk is designed to operate with little human involvement, thus providing a forward-deployed and rapid-response asset in the global maritime surveillance network.



"We didn't just put an autonomous navigation system onto an existing ship," said Dan Brintzinghoffer, Leidos Vice President for Maritime Solutions. "Every mechanical and electrical system on Seahawk has unique configurations designed to run for months at a time without maintenance or a crew." The trimaran's displacement (fully loaded) is 145 long tons. This includes 14,000 gallons of fuel that can power the twin diesel engines for a substantial length of time. Seahawk's upgraded design follows an evaluation of over 300 lessons learned from Sea Hunter. These upgrades were based on joint evaluations by Leidos and the Navy and include upgraded electrical systems, a payload mounting system and test operator control station.

Seahawk will join SURFDEVRON in San Diego, California. About Leidos Leidos is a Fortune 500 information technology, engineering, and science solutions and services leader working to solve the world's toughest challenges in the defense, intelligence, homeland security, civil, and health markets. The company's 39,000 employees support vital missions for government and commercial customers. Headquartered in Reston, Va., Leidos reported annual revenues of approximately $12.30 billion for the fiscal year ended January 1, 2021. For more information, visit www.Leidos.com. Media contact:

Melissa Lee Duenas

571.526.6850

Duenasml@leidos.com View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/leidos-completes-delivery-of-seahawk-vessel-to-us-navy-301263568.html SOURCE Leidos Holdings, Inc.

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TORONTO, April 7, 2021 /CNW/ - The Gairdner Foundation is pleased to announce the 2021 Canada Gairdner Award laureates, recognizing some of the world's most significant biomedical research and discoveries. During these challenging times, we believe it is important to celebrate scientists and innovators from around the world and commend them for their tireless efforts to conduct research that impacts human health.

2021 Canada Gairdner International Award

The four 2021 Canada Gairdner International Award laureates are recognized for seminal discoveries or contributions to biomedical science:

Dr. Daniel J. Drucker, MD

Professor, Department of Medicine, University of Toronto; Senior Scientist, Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Sinai Health, Toronto, Ontario

Dr. Joel Francis Habener, MD

Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Director, Laboratory of Molecular Endocrinology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA

Dr. Jens Juul Holst, MD, DMSc

Professor, Department of Biomedical Sciences and group leader, Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research, The Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

Awarded "For research on glucagon-like peptides that has led to major advances in the treatment of Type 2 diabetes, obesity and intestinal disorders."

The Work:

The independent and collaborative work of Daniel Drucker, Joel Habener and Jens Holst enhanced our understanding of how our gastrointestinal organs function and created new classes of drugs for the treatment of metabolic disorders, specifically type 2 diabetes, obesity and short bowel syndrome.

Drucker, Habener and Holst discovered hormones called glucagon-like peptides (GLP-1 and -2) which control the levels of Insulin and glucagon which work together to maintain healthy sugar levels. They elucidated their biology and physiological function and played critical roles in the design and testing of therapies informed by their initial and subsequent discoveries

These three scientists are awarded for a combined body of work with significant impact on the field of diabetes and short bowel syndrome but are also recognized for their individual discoveries that underpin the translational results.

In the 1970s, Holst recorded intestinal surgery patients experiencing insulin spikes and drops in blood sugar after meals, leading him to conclude that an incretin, subsequently identified as GLP-1, along with insulin and glucagon was responsible for the glucose-induced gastrointestinal stimulation of insulin secretion that caused the changes in blood sugar levels.

Around the same time, Habener used pancreatic cells from anglerfish to demonstrate that glucagon and somatostatin were encoded in the pancreatic cells as larger, precursor hormones. During additional mammal studies he discovered two new hormones related to glucagon which are known as GLP-1 and GLP-2.

Drucker, a fellow in Habener's lab in the 1980s, outlined the processing of proglucagon and the biology of GLP-1 action on insulin-producing cells, which led to the development of multiple types of treatments for type 2 diabetes. Together with Holst, working mostly in people, they showed that when food is ingested, GLP-1 is released into the bloodstream from cells in the gut increasing insulin release and suppressing glucagon.

Work from their labs and others led to the development of novel therapeutics to control insulin secretion in Type 2 diabetes based on understanding the action of GLP1 and its metabolism by the enzyme, DPP4, leading directly to the development of the DPP-4 inhibitors for diabetes therapy.

Drucker discovered the first actions of GLP-2 as a gut growth factor and both Drucker and Holst extensively characterized its mechanisms of action in animals and humans. The first GLP-2 analogue (teduglutide) was approved for clinical use in the treatment of short bowel syndrome in 2012.

The Impact:

Together, Drucker, Habener and Holst made major contributions to endocrinology and changed the treatment of metabolic and gastrointestinal diseases. Their work is both basic and translational, a true example of bench to bedside research.

GLP-1 therapies have been effective in the treatment of type 2 diabetes and more recently, as a treatment of obesity to reduce appetite. Drucker and Holst's research on the function of GLP-2 and its role as an intestinal growth factor helped develop treatments for short bowel disease, decreasing the need for feeding tubes to provide nutrition in children and adults with the condition.

To date, over 100 million people with type 2 diabetes have been treated with a GLP-1 analogue or a DPP-4 inhibitor.

Dr. Mary-Claire King, PhD

American Cancer Society Professor; Department of Medicine and Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA, USA; Affiliate Member, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA, USA

Awarded "For transforming cancer genetics and oncology with the discovery of inherited susceptibility to breast cancer due to mutation of the BRCA1 gene."

The Work:

Dr. King's first breakthrough was in molecular evolution and population genetics. Her research as a PhD student suggested that the differences between humans and chimpanzees are due to a small number of mutations affecting gene regulation and the timing of gene expression, rather than accumulation of differences in protein-coding sequences.

King's work evolved to focus on proving the existence of inherited susceptibility to breast cancer and identifying BRCA1 as the first gene responsible for it. Her group studied families in which many women developed breast or ovarian cancer. First, based on mathematical modeling, King hypothesized that severe inherited mutations in a single gene could be responsible for breast cancer in some women. At the time, this hypothesis was considered far-fetched and very unlikely.

Then based on this hypothesis, King proved the gene's existence by mapping the still-hypothetical gene to a specific chromosomal location. She named the gene BRCA1. The idea was no longer far-fetched and an international "race" of four years ensued to clone the gene.

After the gene was cloned, King and her colleagues developed and deployed next-generation sequencing strategies to identify mutations in BRCA1 and its sister genes responsible for multiple forms of inherited cancer. She and many others have applied the same approach to identification of genes with major impact on other complex diseases.

The Impact:

Dr. King's discovery has transformed the diagnosis, drug development, and treatment of inherited breast and ovarian cancer. The identification of BRCA1  and subsequently BRCA2  has made it possible to diagnose whether a woman in an affected family is at extremely high risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer, enabling her to pursue preventative treatment.

King's passion for gene discovery integrated tools from genetics, statistics, mathematics, epidemiology, molecular biology, genomics and clinical medicine. Her revolutionary approach to gene discovery has had an impact on many other diseases, ranging from prostate cancer to inherited hearing loss to schizophrenia. King is also a pioneer in the development of DNA sequencing for the identification of victims of human rights' violations.

2021 John Dirks Canada Gairdner Global Health Award

The 2021 John Dirks Canada Gairdner Global Health Award laureates are recognized for outstanding achievements in global health research:

Dr. Yi Guan, MD, MMedSci, PhD

Chair Professor in Emerging Viral Diseases, Daniel C K Yu Endowed Professor in Virology, School of Public Health, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong; Director, State Key Laboratory for Emerging Infectious Diseases, The University of Hong Kong; Director, Joint Institute of Virology (Shantou University-The University of Hong Kong), Shantou University, Shantou, China; Director, Guangdong-Hong Kong Joint Laboratory of Emerging Infectious Diseases, Shantou University, Shantou, China.

Dr. Joseph Sriyal Malik Peiris, MBBS, FRCPath, DPhil (Oxon), FHKAM (Path), FRCP, FRS

Professor and Chair in Virology, The University of Hong Kong; Honorary Consultant Microbiologist, Queen Mary Hospital, Hong Kong; Co-Director, WHO H5 reference laboratory and SARS reference laboratory, HKU; Co-Director, WHO reference laboratories providing confirmatory testing for COVID-19, The University of Hong Kong.

Awarded "For significantly contributing to understanding the origins and options for control of newly emerging infectious disease outbreaks in Asia, notably zoonotic influenza and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)."

The Work:

Drs. Guan and Peiris began collaborating at The University of Hong Kong in the aftermath of the H5N1 avian flu outbreak in Hong Kong. They initiated seminal studies of the underlying causes of H5 virus pathogenicity, the evolution of the H5N1 virus, and developed a highly effective monitoring and surveillance program of avian and swine influenza strains. Through their research Guan and Peiris established that live poultry markets in southern China and Hong Kong were the source of the virus spreading to humans, where it exhibited up to 60% lethality in infected persons. This work led to the temporary closure of the live poultry markets and cessation of animal to human transmission. Their subsequent work established new protocols for periodic live poultry market closures, emptying markets of poultry overnight to reduce virus amplification within these markets and the appropriate use of poultry vaccines to protect both poultry and people in Hong Kong from H5N1 infections. They have made major contributions towards understanding the emergence, transmission, epidemiology and pathogenesis of highly pathogenic avian influenzas including H5N1, H9N2, H6N1, H7N9, H5Nx and others and have provided evidence-based options for control of avian influenza viruses in Asia.

In 2003, following the emergence of novel coronavirus, SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) in China, Peiris led the team that first identified the virus responsible for the syndrome, the SARS-CoV-1 coronavirus, elucidating its pathogenesis, transmission, and quickly developed a diagnostic test which was then shared internationally. Meanwhile, Guan's team identified the human infectious source and zoonotic interface of SARS in the wild animal markets in Guangdong, China in 2003 and identified the human infectious source of MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) in Saudi Arabia in 2015. Guan's research accelerated advocacy of the closure of wild game animal markets, averting a potential recurrence of SARS in 2004.

The Impact:

Guan and Peiris' investigations into the emergence and evolution of animal influenza H5 strains (and other H and N subtypes) and their role in identifying the SARS coronavirus, mode of transmission, risk factors, virus infectivity and period of infectivity, and identifying the original animal source were critical in the successful response to the outbreak.

In the case of SARS, which was causing up to 10% lethality in infected persons, their open sharing of information with the World Health Organization (WHO) and broader international community directly resulted in the rapid control of the disease. The establishment of the role of wild game animal markets in the transmission of the virus was pivotal in the decision by local Guangdong authorities to discontinue such markets to prevent future outbreaks of this or another emerging zoonosis. The isolation and characterization of the causative agent of SARS as a novel coronavirus and quick development of a diagnostic test of the virus in humans directly influenced public health policy to effectively monitor and control the spread of the disease.

Guan and Peiris' comprehensive strategies for surveillance, monitoring, identifying the human infectious source, investigation, diagnosis and control of emerging infectious disease outbreaks continue to provide critical guidance and insight for countries throughout Asia and the world, including the 2009 swine flu pandemic, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), and the COVID-19 pandemic.

2021 Canada Gairdner Wightman Award

The 2021 Canada Gairdner Wightman Award laureate is a Canadian scientist recognized for outstanding leadership in medicine and medical science throughout their career:

Dr. Elizabeth Eisenhauer, OC, MD, FRCPC, FRSC

Professor Emerita, Departments of Oncology and Medicine, Adjunct Professor of Oncology, Queen's University; Innovation Lead, Kingston Health Sciences Centre

Awarded "For investigation of new cancer drugs and delivery approaches, leading change in cancer clinical trials and establishing new standards of cancer treatment that have impacted patients around the world."

The Work:

Dr. Eisenhauer's research has transformed the fields of cancer clinical trials and cancer drug delivery. Her fundamental contributions to the clinical evaluation of new anti-cancer agents, as well as cancer research strategy and clinical trials development, have been critical in the development of new treatments for ovarian cancer, malignant melanoma and brain tumours. She is credited with developing new methodologies for the delivery of Taxol, one of the most important cancer drugs in the world, which maintained the drug's efficacy and reduced toxic side effects to cancer patients. This shorter, safer method to deliver the drug has become the international standard, transforming the experience and outcomes of millions of patients worldwide.

Dr. Eisenhauer's extraordinary contributions extend to impactful national and international leadership roles including the founding in 1982 and subsequent direction of the Investigational New Drug Program (IND) of the National Cancer Institute of Canada Clinical Trials Group (NCIC-CTG), now the Canadian Cancer Trials Group. Dr. Eisenhauer also co-led the Methodology for the Development of Innovative Cancer Therapies International Task Force where she developed recommendations for the design and endpoints for trials of novel targeted cancer agents. As well she led the creation of the first collaborative cancer research strategy for Canada in her role as co-Chair of the Canadian Cancer Research Alliance, convened the first Summit to create a Tobacco Endgame for Canada and was inaugural Expert Lead for Research in the Canadian Partnership against Cancer.

The Impact:

Dr. Eisenhauer's commitment to the advancement of cancer therapy, supportive care and prevention is unparalleled. Her extensive research contributions and leadership within the field of cancer care in Canada have influenced and advanced the conduct of clinical trials internationally. Her work has expanded the understanding of therapeutic interventions and has led to new standards of cancer treatment for patients in Canada and around the world.

About the Gairdner Foundation:

The Gairdner Foundation was established in 1957 by Toronto stockbroker, James Gairdner to award annual prizes to scientists whose discoveries have had major impact on scientific progress and on human health. Since 1959 when the first awards were granted, 394 scientists have received a Canada Gairdner Award and 92 to date have gone on to receive the Nobel Prize. The Canada Gairdner Awards promote a stronger culture of research and innovation across the country through our Outreach Programs including lectures and research symposia. The programs bring current and past laureates to a minimum of 15 universities across Canada to speak with faculty, trainees and high school students to inspire the next generation of researchers. Annual research symposia and public lectures are organized across Canada to provide Canadians access to leading science through Gairdner's convening power.

SOURCE Gairdner Foundation

For further information: Sommer Wedlock, Executive Vice President, Mobile: (647) 293-6785, [email protected]; Kelty Reid, Manager, Communications & Operations, Mobile (416) 988-7078, [email protected]

Related Links

http://www.gairdner.org


U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers detain a man during an operation in Escondido, Calif., on July 8, 2019. (Gregory Bull/AP Photo)

Texas, Louisiana Sue Biden Admin for Its Alleged Refusal to Take Custody of Criminal Illegal Immigrants

Attorneys general from Texas and Louisiana on Tuesday took the Biden administration to court alleging that it is refusing to take custody of illegal immigrants convicted of serious crimes after the administration set rules narrowing its immigration enforcement priorities.

The states are seeking to block two Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memorandums issued early in the administration that established interim enforcement priorities. These priorities include narrowing immigration enforcement to three categories: individuals who have been engaged in or suspected of terrorism or espionage; immigrants who crossed into the United States illegally on or after Nov. 1, 2020; and individuals convicted of an aggravated felony.

The attorneys general argue that the memoranda failed to prioritize detention of criminal aliens with final orders of removal, criminal aliens convicted of drug offenses, or criminal aliens convicted of crimes of moral turpitude.

The result of implementing the two memoranda, the lawsuit argues, has led to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rescinding detainer requests related to incarcerated criminal aliens, not issuing detainer requests for illegal aliens subject to mandatory removal, and the release of such individuals from federal detention facilities in Louisiana and Texas.

As a consequence, dangerous criminal aliens are being released into local communities, the lawsuit (pdf) argues.

The states say the refusal to detain criminal aliens who have committed drug offenses of crimes of moral turpitude violates federal law. To ensure public safety, the states have taken measures to keep some of the criminal aliens in custody in response to the situation at the expense of state taxpayers, they said.

President Bidens outright refusal to enforce the law is exacerbating an unprecedented border crisis. By failing to take custody of criminal aliens and giving no explanation for this reckless policy change, the Biden Administration is demonstrating a blatant disregard for Texans and Americans safety, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement.

Law and order must be immediately upheld and enforced to ensure the safety of our communities. Dangerous and violent illegal aliens must be removed from our communities as required by federal law.

ICE officers apprehend fugitive criminal aliens for alleged involvement in the illegal narcotics trade, in Boston, Mass., on Nov. 4, 2019. (ICE)

The states are asking the court to declare parts of the memoranda unlawful, block the enforcement of part of the memoranda, and force federal authorities to take custody of the criminal aliens.

The White House and ICE press offices did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times request for comment.

The first memo (pdf) was issued on Jan. 20 and acted as interim guidelines for DHS agencies to follow while a review of policies and practices concerning immigration enforcement took place. The guidelines essentially focused all enforcement actions to the three categories as well as issue a 100-day pause on deportations.

At the time the department justified its decision, saying that DHS cannot respond to all immigration violations or remove all persons unlawfully in the United States due to limited resources.

Rather, DHS must implement civil immigration enforcement based on sensible priorities and changing circumstances, the memo stated.

The second memo (pdf) was issued on Feb. 18 as additional guidance to the Jan. 20 memo and also required ICE officers to obtain pre-approval from managers to arrest some illegal immigrants if they do not fall within the three categories. The Feb. 18 memo is expected to last for three months in which DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is expected to issue new enforcement guidelines for the department.

By focusing our limited resources on cases that present threats to national security, border security, and public safety, our agency will more ably and effectively execute its law enforcement mission, ICE Acting Director Tae Johnson said in a statement at the time.

The 100-day suspension on deportations order has been blocked by a federal court indefinitely after Paxton sued the Biden administration. The judge found that the Lone Star state would be harmed by the moratorium.
Mumbai, April 7 : Actor Amit Sadh on Wednesday uploaded what will possibly be his last post on Instagram. In the post, he informed fans that he is leaving social media for good. In a long note, the actor said that in these tough times of pandemic, he doesn't feel right about spamming people with trivial posts.

"I am going offline. The recent events have made me reflect on whether I should be posting my pictures and reels. Especially when my city Mumbai and the entire state is under strict Covid restrictions, the whole country is going through a difficult time. I believe my post and reels of gym sessions, the silly things I do, will not heal or entertain anyone. This is not a criticism to anyone. I personally feel the best way to be sensitive about the situation is to pray and hope for the things to get better," he wrote in the post.

In his post he also urged people to help those who are in need, especially daily wagers.

Amit ended his three-para post by thanking fans and assuring them that he is not abandoning them. The actor also requested all his fans to take care of themselves, help the needy, give people salaries on time and be safe.
Amid political tensions in Myanmar, Russia on April 6 said that sanctions against authorities in Burma were futile, extremely dangerous and could ultimately push the country towards civil conflict. Since February 1 coup, Myanmar has been embroiled in protest against the military government, which has responded with increasingly totalitarian surveillance and censorship measures in addition to the violence that has left more than 500 dead and thousands arrested. The cup and the subsequent crackdown has led to Western sanctions on the military and its lucrative business.

However, according to Interfax news agency, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that a course towards threats and pressure, including the use of sanction tools against the current Myanmar authorities, is futile and extremely dangerous. The ministry added that in fact, such a line contributes to pitting the sides against each other and ultimately pushing the people of Myanmar towards a full-scale civil conflict. Further, the Kremlin voiced concern over the rising number of civilian deaths in Myanmar.

Aftermath of military coup

Tens of thousands of people have been protesting against the military, demanding the restoration of democracy in Myanmar. Security forces have failed to bring the widespread demonstrations under control and the junta has ordered the use of force against peaceful protesters, killing more than five hundred people since February and arresting thousands of others. The killings of civilians have drawn international condemnation, with multiple diplomatic missions to Myanmar releasing statements and calling out the army in Burma to follow international standards of military professionalism.

But Myanmars military, on the other hand, issued multiple arrest warrants against the celebrities who have voiced support for the anti-coup protests. It released a wanted list against the countrys actors, actresses, musicians, social media influencers, bloggers, and other artists in acclaimed fields who have been using their fame and popularity to assemble demonstrators, dismantling what the armed forces described as stability of the nation.

The list, according to The Associated Press, carries at least 20 names with mugshots, location, hometown, and links to their social media handle. Separately, Myanmars armed forces run Myawaddy TV broadcasted a wanted list with at least 60 renowned names on it, including some of the recognizable directors and producers of the Myanmar film industry.

(Image: AP)
NEW YORK, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Against all odds and after weeks of planning, "Operation Zion" was launched as an El Al Boeing 787 Dreamliner chartered by Jewish National Fund-USA (JNF-USA)  dubbed "JNForce One"  took-off from New York's J.F.K. Airport with 241 exuberant teens from across the U.S. on board bound for the organization's Alexander Muss High School in Israel (High School in Israel).

JNF-USA High School in Israel students prepare to depart New York's JFK Airport JNF-USA High School in Israel students arrive at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel

Twelve months ago at the onset of the Pandemic, JNF-USA took on the unprecedented responsibility of airlifting hundreds of American teens from its High School in Israel, in addition to students from other organizations back to the U.S.

"There was so much fear of the unknown back then, yet over the past year, we not only adapted to a new reality  we embraced it and brought a new generation of Jewish teens into our JNF-USA family. Now we are thrilled to charter a flight back to Israel with the next generation of Jewish leaders on board," said JNF-USA President Dr. Sol Lizerbram. "These students never gave up hope that JNF-USA would bring them to Israel for a transformative experience that comes from them taking their general academic studies in addition to the experiential journey that High School in Israel provides  and today, we fulfilled that promise. We were determined to make this happen because we know that our People's next David Ben Gurion, Theodore Herzl, and Golda Meir are on that flight."

JNF-USA worked closely with the relevant Israeli government ministries, health authorities, El Al, and Ben Gurion Airport to gain special permission for the students to enter Israel. It is believed that this is the first and only group of American teens to enter Israel since travel restrictions were imposed.

High School in Israel President and alum, Ron Werner said: "Last week, we concluded the festival of Passover  a story about our People's unrelenting desire to reestablish a homeland in Israel for them, their children, and their children's children. Today, our children are continuing that dream and returning to our Promised Land, the land of Israel and the nation of the Jewish people. Like the 31,450 alumni who have come before them, these teens will have the time of their life in Israel while pursuing academic excellence that sets them up for success in college."

Flight LY004 landed at Ben Gurion Airport on April 6 at 1:31 PM where the students were greeted by High School in Israel madrichim (leaders) who will oversee the students' wellbeing during their strict two-week quarantine period.

High School in Israel Head of School, Dr. Mark Shinar said: "It is with a great deal of excitement and gratitude that we welcome these students to Israel and to High School in Israel just after Passover. What seemed, just a few weeks ago, to be the impossible, suddenly became a reality when our dedicated professionals from both Israel and the U.S. moved mountains to ensure that our students would finally, after months of being unable to enter, be allowed to come to Israel to begin their spring academic semester. Together, we will study 4000 years of Jewish History and utilize this amazing country as a living classroom."

High School in Israel's Summer Semester is already sold out and places on the Fall Semester are filling fast. To join the wait list or for more information visit amhsi.org or contact Rabbi Greg Litcofsky at [email protected] or 212.879.9305 x250. Students can access up to $7,500 in tuition support through DREAM ISRAEL (jnf.org/dreamisrael).

MEDIA CONTACT

Stefan Oberman

212-879-9305 x 222

[email protected]

SOURCE Jewish National Fund-USA

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LOS ANGELES, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- "Carlabs.ai, the leading provider of AI-powered digital assistants, expands its offering to the almost 18,000 franchised dealers in the U.S. through a newly established Dealer Direct platform," said John Ruble, Chief Revenue Officer.

Positive Customer Impact

CarLabs' OEM clients benefit from the Carlabs.ai platform, and now Carlabs.ai is expanding its omnichannel AI assistants to dealers. With it, dealers can manage their customers' entire life-cycle 1:1, at scale, with intelligent and highly engaging conversations through Smart Chat, Email, SMS, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger.

The Dealer Direct solution platform is available immediately. It uses a dealer's DMS/CRM technology to provide relevant and timely one-to-one communications between the dealership and their customers and prospects.

CarLabs.ai, headquartered in Calabasas, California, created the auto industry's first AI-powered, conversational engagement platform to successfully implement and personalize sales and customer service via chat, email, SMS, WhatsApp, and social channels. CarLabs is an AWS Advanced Technology Partner conversational platform that allows consumers to interact directly with an automotive brand's data and digital assets as if they were talking to a human. It was featured at the Facebook F8 conference and won the 2019 Frost & Sullivan Technology Innovation Award for Advanced Automotive Conversational Platform.

To learn more, visit www.carlabs.ai and follow us on LinkedIn , Twitter , Facebook , and YouTube .

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

For more information, press only:

Kevin Keegan

805.907.9428

[email protected]

Website www.carlabs.ai

SOURCE CarLabs.ai

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Deputy Secretary General and Political Director of the European External Action Service Enrique Mora, right, leaves the Grand Hotel Wien where closed-door nuclear talks with Iran took place in Vienna, Austria, Tuesday, April 6, 2021. AP



Iran and world powers held what they described as "constructive" talks on Tuesday and agreed to form working groups to discuss the sanctions Washington might lift and the nuclear curbs Tehran might observe as they try to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.



European intermediaries have started shuttling between Iranian and U.S. officials in Vienna as they seek to bring both countries back into compliance with the accord, which lifted sanctions on Iran in return for curbs to its nuclear programme.



Former U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018, prompting Iran to steadily overstep the accord's limits on its nuclear program designed to make it harder to develop an atomic bomb - an ambition Tehran denies.



Tuesday's talks included a meeting of the remaining parties to the original deal: Iran, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia in a group called the Joint Commission that is chaired by the European Union. The United States did not attend.



While neither Washington nor Tehran say they expect any quick breakthroughs from the talks, both they and the EU described the early exchanges in positive terms.



"Constructive Joint Commission meeting. There's unity and ambition for a joint diplomatic process with two expert groups on nuclear implementation and sanctions lifting," said EU chief coordinator Enrique Mora said on Twitter.





In this file photo US State Department spokesman Ned Price speaks during the daily press briefing at the State Department in Washington, DC, on February 25, 2021. AFP-Yonhap
At 24 feet (7.3 meters) across each, Lucys two solar panels underwent initial deployment tests in January 2021. In this photo, a technician at Lockheed Martin Space in Denver, Colorado, inspects one of Lucys arrays during its first deployment. These massive solar arrays will power the Lucy spacecraft throughout its entire 4-billion-mile, 12-year journey through space as it heads out to explore Jupiters elusive Trojan asteroids.Credit: Lockheed Martin

NASA's Lucy spacecraft has successfully completed thermal vacuum testing of both solar panels, the final step in checking out these critical spacecraft components in preparation for launch this fall.

Once the Lucy spacecraft's solar panels are attached and fully extended, they could cover a five-story building.

Lucy, the 13th mission in NASA's Discovery Program, requires these large solar panels as it will operate farther from the Sun than any previous solar-powered space mission. During its 12-year tour of the Trojan asteroids, the Lucy spacecraft will operate a record-breaking 530 million miles (853 million km) from the Sun, beyond the orbit of Jupiter.

"The success of Lucy's final solar array deployment test marked the end of a long road of development. With dedication and excellent attention to detail, the team overcame every obstacle to ready these solar panels," said Matt Cox, Lockheed Martin's Lucy program manager, in Littleton, Colorado. "Lucy will travel farther from the Sun than any previous solar-powered Discovery-class mission, and one reason we can do that is the technology in these solar arrays."

The solar arrays, manufactured by Northrop Grumman in Goleta, California, will be supplying power to the spacecraft and its instruments throughout the 12-year mission. The solar panels need to supply around 500 watts, about equivalent to the energy needed to run a washing machine. Despite this relatively modest need, the solar panels must be large as they need to operate so far from the Sun.

"At about one hour after the spacecraft launches, the solar panels will need to deploy flawlessly in order to assure that we have enough energy to power the spacecraft throughout the mission," said Principal Investigator Hal Levison of the Southwest Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "These 20 minutes will determine if the rest of the 12 year mission will be an success. Mars landers have their seven minutes of terror, we have this."

Solar array deployment tests occurred between December 2020 and February 2021 in the 29-foot-by-65-foot (8.8-meter-by-19.8-meter) thermal vacuum chamber at Lockheed Martin Space, where the spacecraft is currently undergoing assembly, launch, and testing operations.

Though when folded up the solar panels are a mere 4 inches (10 cm) thick, once expanded each solar panel has a diameter of nearly 24 feet (7.3 meters). What is more, the solar arrays can't support their own weight of 170 pounds (77kg) each in Earth gravity, so a special precision weight offload device is employed inside the chamber for additional support.

"In spite of their complexity and size, the mechanical deployment of the arrays executed flawlessly, said Donya Douglas-Bradshaw, Lucy project manager from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "The ingenuity and innovation of the team is truly remarkable!"

These key tests bring the spacecraft one step closer to launch readiness. The Lucy spacecraft will be shipped to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida this summer to ready it for launch when its window opens in the pre-dawn hours of Oct. 16, 2021.

Southwest Research Institute's Hal Levison and Cathy Olkin are the principal investigator and deputy principal investigator of the Lucy mission. Goddard provides overall mission management, systems engineering and safety and mission assurance. Lockheed Martin Space is building the spacecraft. Lucy is the 13th mission in NASA's Discovery Program. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Discovery Program for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C.



Please follow SpaceRef on Twitter and Like us on Facebook.
Joining Inkbox's impressive roster of collaborations, the latest collection designed with BTS inspires a new wave of creativity and connection all over the world. Shoppers are invited to explore 11 special temporary tattoos channeling the energetic pop-disco vibe of "Dynamite". Customers will be able to spot iconic elements from the single's artwork, with designs featuring retro flowers, shooting stars, the recognizable "Dynamite" sign, and seven unique silhouettes starring each band member. As a bonus "gift" to enthusiastic shoppers, every order will include 1 of 3 special edition 8x10 "Dynamite" collectible prints, inserted in the specially designed BTS packaging (sourced from 100% sustainable materials). Individual tattoos in the collection retail for $16-$20 USD, with the complete set available for purchase at $130 USD.

"Inking a deal with a partner as iconic as BTS is incredibly exciting for the Inkbox community," said Inkbox CEO and Co-founder, Tyler Handley. "Our brand is all about self-expression and inclusivity, and we think BTS celebrates those same valuesmaking this the perfect mash-up for our customers."

As the leader and innovator of its industry, every Inkbox tattoo is made with the brand's patented For Now Ink, giving customers a premium quality alternative to forever ink. The semi-permanent technology mimics the appearance and feel of a genuine tattoo, with a longer lasting solution than generic brands, keeping designs visible for 1-2 weeks. Once applied, the tattoo's lines develop into a dark blue or black color over the first 24 hours, gradually fading away as the skin exfoliates. Customers can rest assured knowing that every tattoo is skin-safe, waterproof, and cruelty-freecreating a safe, unique way to express oneself.

The BTS Dynamite collection will be available to shop starting Apr 14, shipping worldwide from www.inkbox.com . To stay up to date all Inkbox launches and partnerships subscribe to the email newsletter, and follow Inkbox on Instagram , Twitter, and TikTok.

About Inkbox

Inkbox is a direct-to-consumer semi-permanent tattoo brand for young adults who want to express their individuality in a bold way. Inkbox's For Now Ink applies in 1-2 minutes and develops in the skin over 24 hours. The result is a tattoo that lasts 1-2 weeks, fading as the skin naturally regenerates. In addition to offering 9,000+ pre-designed catalog tattoos designed by the world's most popular contemporary artists and tattoo artists, the brand also offers Freehand Ink and the ability to create custom tattoos.

Since inception in 2015, Inkbox has progressively made its mark on culture, with the likes of Chrissy Tiegen, John Legend, Emma Chamberlain and Vanessa Hudgens all spotted wearing its tattoos. The company has also launched notable collaborations with Rupi Kaur, Post Malone and Kurtis Conner.

Headquartered in downtown Toronto, where it operates the permanent tattoo studio Inside Out, Inkbox now employs 120+ employees whose mission is to support and celebrate the stories of their customers and artists.

About BTS

BTS, an acronym of Bangtan Sonyeondan or "Beyond the Scene," is a Grammy-nominated South Korean group that has been capturing the hearts of millions of fans globally since its debut in June 2013. The members of BTS are RM, Jin, SUGA, j-hope, Jimin, V, and Jung Kook. Gaining recognition for their authentic and self-produced music, top-notch performances, and the way they interact with their fans, BTS have established themselves as "21st century Pop Icons" breaking countless world records. While imparting a positive influence through activities such as the LOVE MYSELF campaign and the UN 'Speak Yourself' speech, the band has mobilized millions of fans across the world (named ARMY), topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart three times in 2020 alone, performed multiple sold-out stadium shows across the world, and been named TIME's Entertainer of the Year 2020. BTS has been nominated for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance for the 63rd Grammy Awards and recognized with numerous prestigious awards like the Billboard Music Awards, American Music Awards and MTV Video Music Awards

For media enquiries, email [email protected], download our press kit here

SOURCE Inkbox Ink Incorporated

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Gearhart to focus on growing Trading and Markets services

Jeff Gearhart

Jeff Gearhart joins Oyster Consulting

Jeff Gearhart joins Oyster Consulting

RICHMOND, Va., April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Oyster Consulting , a financial services consulting firm, announced today that Jeff Gearhart has joined the Strategic Planning and Execution team to focus on growing the firms Trading and Markets services.



With over 30 years in the financial services industry, Jeff Gearharts leadership experience in Capital Markets and broker-dealer businesses bolsters Oysters knowledge base and expertise. Having held senior positions, including business line COO, CFO, business development and product management roles, Jeff knows the issues and challenges facing Oysters clients and can partner with them through the decision making and execution process.

Prior to joining Oyster, Jeff served as Managing Director for BNY Mellon in the capital markets and securities finance businesses. In addition to serving as the Head of the Broker-Dealer for BNY Mellon Capital Markets, LLC, he led numerous initiatives to improve trading, sales processes, operations processes and operating margins, expand products and services, and mitigate risk.



Having Jeff on the team solidifies Oysters expansion into the Institutional and Capital Markets client segment. His experience also strengthens Oysters Clearing Advisory, Strategic Planning and Conversion services. We are very proud and excited to have him on board, said Pete Bowman, Managing Director of Oysters Strategic Planning and Execution team.

I am excited to join the team of professionals at Oyster Consulting, said Gearhart. I look forward to leveraging our combined experience and knowledge to partner with our clients and help them grow their business.

ABOUT OYSTER CONSULTING

Oyster Consulting provides consulting, outsourcing and software solutions to the financial services industry. Our experienced industry practitioners add more value than career consultants and help us approach each client with unbiased information and practical solutions to meet their challenges.

Story continues

CONTACT

Pete Bowman

Managing Director, Strategic Planning & Execution Team, Oyster Consulting LLC

(804) 965-5400

Pete.Bowman@oysterllc.com

www.oysterllc.com

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/a0e1d181-3812-4c0b-bcfb-ed0862721c47








A California prosecutor filed 33 criminal charges Tuesday accusing troubled Pacific Gas & Electric of inadvertently injuring six firefighters and endangering public health with smoke and ash in a 2019 fire blamed on its equipment.

The nation's largest utility denied that it committed any crimes even as it accepted that its transmission line sparked the blaze.

The Sonoma County district attorney charged the utility with five felony and 28 misdemeanor counts in the October 2019 Kincade Fire north of San Francisco, including recklessly causing a fire that seriously injured six firefighters. Among the unidentified firefighters were a member of an inmate fire crew and at least two out-of-state contractors, one of whom suffered second- and third-degree burns to his legs and torso.

Fire officials said a PG&E transmission line sparked the fire, which destroyed 374 buildings and caused nearly 100,000 people to flee as it burned through 120 square miles (311 square kilometers). It was the largest evacuation in the county's history, prosecutors said, including the entire towns of Healdsburg, Windsor and Geyserville.

Pacific Gas & Electric denied that it committed any crimes even as it accepted that its transmission line sparked the October 2019 Kincade Fire

The charges and related enhancements accuse the company of destroying inhabited structures and emitting air contaminants 'with reckless disregard for the risk of great bodily injury' from toxic wildfire smoke and related particulate matter and ash, thereby endangering public health. They allege that the utility failed to maintain facilities including transmission lines, among the numerous related misdemeanor charges.

District Attorney Jill Ravitch said she and other investigators went to the fire's ignition site as soon as it was safe, and since then have been working with state and independent experts to determine the cause and responsibility for the blaze.

Ravitch said the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection reported to her office in July that the fire was sparked when a cable on a transmission tower broke in high winds and caused an electrical arc when it touched the tower. That caused molten material to drop into the dry vegetation below and ignite a fire that took 15 days to contain, she said.

She said her office's own investigation included interviews with dozens of witnesses, search warrants and reviewing hundreds of thousands of pages of documents. Prosecutors also consulted with other law enforcement and regulatory agencies and independent experts.

The Sonoma County district attorney charged the utility with five felony and 28 misdemeanor counts in the fire north of San Francisco

PG&E said in a statement that it accepts the findings that its transmission line in the Geysers Geothermal Field northeast of Geyserville caused the fire 'in the spirit of working to do whats right for the victims,' though it hasn't seen the report or evidence from state fire investigators.

'However, we do not believe there was any crime here,' the company said in a statement. 'We remain committed to making it right for all those impacted and working to further reduce wildfire risk on our system.'

Tuesday's charges are latest in a series of similar problems for the utility that serves more than 16 million people across much of Northern California.

PG&E's alleged criminal negligence in the Sonoma County wildfire occurred while the company was mired in a bankruptcy triggered by a series of deadly infernos that were ignited by the utilitys crumbling equipment during 2017 and 2018.

The most lethal, in Butte County, wiped out the entire town of Paradise in the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in Californias recorded history. PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 felony counts of involuntary manslaughter for the fire last June.

Although PG&E's then-chief executive Bill Johnson appeared in court to enter the guilty pleas before some of the surviving families, no one from the company went to prison. Instead, the company paid the maximum penalty of $4 million.

Fire officials said a PG&E transmission line sparked the fire, which destroyed 374 buildings and caused nearly 100,000 people to flee as it burned through 120 square miles (311 square kilometers)

In this Oct. 10, 2019, photo, a helicopter drops water near power lines and electrical towers while working at a fire on San Bruno Mountain near Brisbane

PG&E emerged from bankruptcy protection shortly after those guilty pleas and settlements to cover the damages caused by its fraying grid. The settlements include a $13.5 billion fund for wildfire victims that recently started distributing some of the money to help people rebuild their lives.

State investigators last month said a Northern California wildfire that killed four people and destroyed more than 200 buildings last year was sparked when tree branches came into contact with the utility's power lines. The wind-driven Zogg Fire blazed through rural communities in Shasta and Tehama counties last September and October.

The Sonoma County wildfire also raised the hackles of a federal judge overseeing PG&Es ongoing criminal probation for a 2010 explosion in its natural gas lines that blew up a neighborhood in San Bruno, a suburb south of San Francisco.

U.S. District William Alsup, who has repeatedly lambasted PG&E for its shoddy maintenance of its equipment, is considering ordering changes that could result in the utility being forced to turn off its power lines during dry and windy conditions even more frequently than it has in recent years.
As its reopening approaches on April 30, details about how to get Disneyland tickets and how to make theme park reservations are slowly starting to come together. We now know when park tickets will go on sale, and what rides will and wont be operational on opening day. And now that Orange County has moved to the orange tier  and California Gov. Gavin Newsom has announced when the tier system could be ending altogether  we know a lot more about what Disneylands reopening will look like. In short: In some ways there will be more than expected (but given that the Matterhorn will be closed, in some ways, less).

Up until last week, Disneyland was moving forward with preparations to open in the red tier, which would have restricted total attendance to 15% and not permitted any indoor dining whatsoever. Under those restrictions, indoor rides were allowed to have 15% capacity, but with no indoor queues. With Orange Countys new tier designation, those capacities can go up, per the guidance that went into effect on April 1. Total park attendance can be 25%, and indoor rides can also have 25% capacity.

Outdoor rides can have larger, unspecified capacities, but all rides must have plexiglass dividers in places where guests will pass each other. Guests must maintain 6 feet of social distancing and wear masks at all times. Though Disneyland has not announced mask-free relaxation zones where people can remove masks, Walt Disney World has implemented, and is still using, these areas now.

What's especially exciting about Disneyland opening in the orange tier is that indoor dining is back on the table, so to speak. Indoor restaurants can operate at 25% capacity. Outside of theme parks, restaurants in the orange tier can host 50% capacity, or up to 200 guests. This includes Downtown Disney restaurants like Ralph Brennans Jazz Kitchen. Splitsville Luxury Lanes, the bowling alley and restaurant in Downtown Disney, can also reopen  per the orange tier guidelines, bowling alleys can be open at 25% capacity.

Food at Disneyland recently published a list of everything that will and wont be open at Disneyland on April 30. While most of the food options are quick service, walk-up establishments like Red Rose Taverne in Fantasyland and Ronto Roasters in Star Wars: Galaxys Edge, some arent. River Belle Terrace and Cafe Orleans in New Orleans Square are both full-service establishments with large patios, which can now have guests inside, as well. Plaza Inn, with its iconic fried chicken, will be serving a modified menu, which likely just means that guests will no longer be able to walk up to the buffets or serve themselves anything.

Many restaurants, like Blue Bayou, wont open when Disneyland does. Though the churro carts will be operational, carts serving the parks iconic Mickey pretzels and turkey legs wont be. Dole Whip, without question, will be available.

More restaurants will undoubtedly open when Orange County is able to jump to the yellow tier, but some things like character meet and greets still wont be offered, likely indefinitely. The same goes with live shows. The city of Anaheim has indoor live theater and performances listed as awaiting further guidance in their reopening guidelines.

When Orange County does move up, theme park capacity will be capped at 35% capacity. When the tiered reopening system is scrapped June 15 (provided the state's case and hospitalization figures remain low), there could be other restrictions implemented on theme parks at that point.

Even with no restrictions, its unlikely that Disneyland will immediately return to full capacity. When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that the state could return back to business as usual at the end of September, meaning no restrictions on theme park capacity or anything else, Walt Disney World did not make any immediate changes to its limitations on guests. It is still not operating at its full, pre-pandemic capacity. Many Disney World restaurants and hotels are still closed as part of the resorts phased reopening. The parks have frequently been hitting reservation capacity of late, especially during spring break season.

Theres a good chance Disney will keep attendance below the state-mandated restrictions during the initial phased reopenings of its Anaheim theme parks, Brady McDonald wrote for the Orange County Register. Disney has been focused on rebuilding visitor confidence and reinforcing comfort levels as travelers adjust to the new normal in the pandemic era.

One thing seems very likely when the California tier system ends: that Disneyland could once again allow out-of-state visitors into the parks, something that has been a major point of contention among Disney fans since the state issued its first theme park guidance.
With plants and trees blooming, many Connecticut residents are deep in the throes of spring allergy season with all of the sneezing, sniffling and watery eyes that happen this time of year.

Some of those allergy sufferers are considering getting a vaccine to protect themselves against COVID-19  and they have a lot of questions, doctors say.

The question of Is it safe to get the vaccine or will my allergies put me at risk? is the No. 1 question Ive gotten the last couple months, said Dr. Philip Hemmers, head of the department of allergy and immunology at St. Vincents Medical Center in Bridgeport.

People are concerned, echoed Dr. Kenneth Backman, chairman of the section of allergy at Bridgeport Hospital.

In addition to worrying about whether their allergies put them at risk for side effects from the COVID vaccines, some patients also wondered whether their allergy medications might have dangerous interactions with the vaccines. But experts said most allergy sufferers  including those who take medications  should not have any problems with the vaccine.

According to the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, the only contraindication is a history of a severe allergic reaction to any of the vaccine components, including sensitivity to PEG (polyethylene glycol) and/or polysorbate, which cross reacts with PEG. Its safe for people with most other allergies, including those to food and environmental triggers, experts said.

Even someone with a life-threatening food allergy is not at risk for the vaccine, Hemmers said.

An allergic reaction happens when the bodys immune system has an extreme response to a substance, such as dust, pollen or a certain food. The College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology reports that more than 50 million Americans suffer from allergies every year, and allergies are the sixth-leading cause of chronic illness in the United States.

One common form of allergies is allergic rhinitis, commonly called hay fever, which is often seasonal and more prevalent in the spring, summer and fall. Many people take medications for their hay fever, and Hemmers and Backman both said theres little concerns about interactions between most of these medications and the COVID vaccine.

For instance, antihistamines that people take to combat the watery eyes and other symptoms of seasonal allergies are fine. Oral steroids, such as Prednisone, arent necessarily harmful in combination with the vaccine, but Backman recommends that people on those medications speak to a doctor before getting the shot.

They may make the vaccine less effective, he said.

Hemmers said being on a steroid isnt a reason to not get (the vaccine) and its pretty unlikely it will have a significant effect on efficacy. It should still work.

There are some precautions for people taking allergy medications. For instance, the College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology cautions getting the vaccine on the same day as an allergy shot. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends a minimum of 14 days before or after administering other vaccines, such as the flu shot.

In general, though, allergy sufferers should be fine to get the vaccine, Hemmer said. Of all the people who have asked questions about the vaccine, only one has opted not to get it, because of a possible allergy to one of the vaccine components, he said.

A lot of people have needed additional assurance from me, but most have eventually decided to get the vaccine, he said.
An employee of the DeKalb Jackson Water District is charged for identity theft and using other people's credit cards.

Jessica Kay Hosch, 33, of Rainsville was arrested on Monday. She was an employee of the water board in Ider.

According to the DeKalb County Sheriffs Office, she would obtain the credit or debit card numbers when customers would pay their bills and then use them to make online purchases. It says two of the victims live in DeKalb County.

Hosch is charged with three counts of fraudulent use of a credit/debit card and three counts of identity theft, but the sheriffs office says more charges are possible.

The department asks customers of the DeKalb Jackson Water District to check their bank statements and if you find any fraudulent charges to call the office at 256-845-3801.

DeKalb County Sheriff Nick Welden said of the arrest: I just want to thank our Investigations Unit for the great job they did on this investigation. Working these types of crimes are extremely difficult for our investigators due to the difficulty in obtaining evidence. We very much appreciate the cooperation of the DeKalb Jackson Water District during this investigation. We have an amazing team that work day and night to catch thieves like this.

Always keep a check on your bank statements and if you notice anything out of the ordinary, please contact your financial institution immediately. And, as always, call us if you need us.
DARC say CW is most popular mode Germany's DARC have released statistics for 2020 showing the breakdown of the DARC Community Logbook (DCL) by mode, it says CW made up 51% of all contacts



A translation of the DARC post reads:



Unlike the recently published Club Log statistics, according to which amateur radio apparently only takes place in FT8, the survey by transmission type for the DARC Community Logbook (DCL) says something different:



In roughly the same comparison period, 51% of the DCL QSOs were in CW, 35% in SSB, 12% in FT8, 1% in FT4 and 1% in RTTY.



This roughly corresponds to the distribution of the contacts for the special calls DF7 / DP7 / DK7DARC, DM3RSV and most recently DL21EURO.



Further information on the DCL can be found at:

https://www.dxhf.darc.de/~dcl



Source DARC https://darc.de/



DARC give no indication as to how many QSOs their Community logbook actually recorded during 2020.



The popular Club Log records around 66 million QSOs each year and recently published an analysis of their statistics which gives a totally different view of mode activity, see

https://g7vjr.org/2021/03/club-log-activity-report-2021-update/
Moscow, April 7 : Russian President Vladimir Putin considers military presence in the Arctic as an absolutely necessary element of the country's military construction, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

The Arctic continues to be an important region with strong economic potential, and Russia has extensive plans for its development that are being consistently implemented, Xinhua news agency quoted Peskov as saying at a daily briefing on Tuesday.

On Monday, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said that the US Department of Defence is "very closely" monitoring Russian military activities and infrastructure build-ups in the Arctic.

In response to Kirby's remark, Peskov said that Russia also keeps in mind the US presence in the Arctic.

Last month, the Russian Navy conducted the "Umka-2021" comprehensive Arctic expedition in the Franz Josef Land archipelago, during which three nuclear-powered missile submarines broke thick ice and surfaced from the Arctic Ocean for the first time in its history.

The submarines shattered 1.5-metre-thick ice and ascended to the frozen sea surface at the same time in an area with a radius of 300 metres.

More than 600 military and civilian personnel, and about 200 pieces of military and special equipment and weapons are involved in the expedition.
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland responds to a question during a news conference in Ottawa, on Nov. 30, 2020. (The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld)

Budget 2021 Preview: Balancing Pandemic Support, Growth Spending While Keeping Debt Manageable

Hard to unwind some COVID-19 response programs as economy heals, says budget watcher

News Analysis

A key dynamic for the April 19 federal budgetthe first in over two yearswill be how the government expects to balance economic support, as the pandemics third wave intensifies, with the $70 billion to $100 billion it earmarked in stimulus spending last fall.

In response to COVID-19, the feds launched a number of programs to support businesses and Canadians that were meant to be temporary. Unwinding them could prove unpopular, and at stake is how much of those programs become permanent, said Macdonald-Laurier Institute senior fellow Philip Cross, a former chief economic analyst at Statistics Canada.

What Ill be looking for in this budget is how much of this temporary spending increase due to the pandemic is used as leverage, as an excuse to increase spending permanently, Cross told The Epoch Times. He says there is a risk of that happening with some of the temporary measures in addition to those that will be part of the three-year stimulus program.

I would think, frankly, that some of the expansion of the coverage of employment insurance is going to be permanent, Cross said.

No details were provided in the economic statement last fall on how the up-to-$100 billion would be spent, and as such it was not factored into any projections for deficits and the debt.

The feds are expected to spend it on child care, universal pharmacare, and the green economy.

Canadas fiscal watchdog, the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO), is projecting a 202021 deficit of $363.4 billion, or 16.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP)already the highest since tracking of this metric began in 196667. That estimate, released March 31, only accounts for the measures announced in the economic statement last fall and doesnt factor in the three-year stimulus spending.

The PBO warns that there is a risk the countrys debt would no longer be sustainable if new programs introduced in the budget require more borrowing and become permanent.

Promising Forecasts

Where the countrys finances and economy go hinges on progress combatting the pandemic. The signs looked good in late March, given the amount of money Canada and the United States have spent to dig out of the crater.

The PBO expects GDP to reach pre-pandemic levels later this year.

In its fall fiscal update, the feds introduced the notion of fiscal guardrails, linked to improvements in the labour market, to guide when it would begin unwinding pandemic response programs.

The PBO said it projects almost all of the ground lost in the labour market due to the pandemic will be made up by the end of 202122, the first year in which the earmarked stimulus would be implemented.

This would again suggest that the size and timing of the $70-to-$100 billion for stimulus may be mis-calibrated.

But Cross says that as the COVID-19 pandemic intensifies across Canada, progress in the labour market could be temporary.

As long as the pandemic is here, that has to be priority one, two, and three, and all these other things are just going to have to wait, Cross said.

The Conference Board of Canada had some promising projections for the Canadian economy in its two-year economic outlook released March 30without factoring in any additional federal stimulus.

It expects growth of 5.8 percent in 2021 and 4.0 percent in 2022.

It said the economy has already recovered close to 80 percent of the jobs lost due to the pandemic-induced recession in 2020.

Canadians also increased their savings by $5,100 on average last year, according to the Conference Board, and some of those savings will be spent this year and next.

A full recovery to pre-pandemic levels of spending is expected to be reached by early 2022, stated the Conference Board.

And given the massive U.S. government spending, the Conference Board expects a sharp rebound in that economy, which will boost exports in Canada.

Long-Term Prosperity

When it comes to building long-term prosperity, a key component is capital spending, which boosts the countrys productivity.

Canadas economic output is about $66 billion short of where it was pre-pandemic, said Trevin Stratton, the Canadian Chamber of Commerces chief economist, in a March 24 statement.

Productivity was also flagging pre-pandemic, added Stratton, saying, Government spending and pent-up consumer demand alone will not resolve these issues. Our recovery plan must focus on unlocking business investment.

In a financial post oped, Jack Mintz, Presidents Fellow at the University of Calgarys School of Public Policy, said federal and provincial governments have undermined growth with excessive regulation and costs to business, along with heavy taxation of entrepreneurs and skilled labour.

Canada is not very appealing to investors these days, Mintz said. The real challenge facing Canada is to address our woefully inadequate investment performance. Nothing else is as important to our long-run prosperity.
The Russian ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, will most likely not return to Washington in the near future, although the solution to this issue depends on the willingness of the U.S. to show a desire to normalize relations with Moscow, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said.

"This is not a question of the coming days," Ryabkov said, asked whether any dates for a possible return of Antonov to the United States had been determined.

"The timing will be determined depending on what steps follow by Washington on the bilateral track. We expect that they will still be able to show a desire at least for a relative normalization of our relations and will take some noticeable steps in this regard," Sputnik cited the deputy prime minister as saying.

Earlier, US President Joe Biden said in an interview with ABC News that Russian President Vladimir Putin would "pay a price" for alleged interference in US elections. In addition, Biden answered in the affirmative when asked whether he considered Putin a "killer."

After that, the Russian ambassador to the United States was invited to Moscow for consultations to analyze further actions in the context of relations with the United States. During consultations in Moscow, Antonov held meetings at the Foreign Ministry, both houses of parliament, as well as with Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov.
The President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, on Wednesday, 7th April 2021, cut the sod for the construction of the five million cedi (GH5 million) Ghana Award House, a new administrative building for the Head of State Award Scheme.



Speaking at the sod-cutting ceremony, President Akufo-Addo explained that since its inception in 1967, the Head of State Award Scheme has challenged and touched the lives of many young Ghanaians, with some 750,000 young people participating and benefitting from the Scheme.



I have always been excited about the work being done by the Award Scheme, and that is why I continue to urge them to ensure that as many young Ghanaians as possible benefit from it. To achieve this ambitious target, a befitting administrative office for the Scheme will be required. The provision of a Ghana Award House, to serve this purpose, is my commitment towards driving the agenda of the Award Scheme, the President said.



Once completed, the Ghana Award House project will be a two-storey office block, with a two hundred (200) capacity conference room, and training facility designed to house the National Secretariat of the Head of State Award Scheme.



It will be constructed at a cost of five million cedis (GH5 million), and it will help drive growth, impact, and the effective and efficient delivery of the Award Scheme to all young people in Ghana and beyond.



The President noted that the completion of the Ghana Award House project will put Ghana ahead of many of the countries running the Duke of Edinburghs International Award, and will mean that Ghana will be the second country in Africa, after the Presidents Award of Kenya, and one of the few countries globally, to have its own administrative office.



He also announced that, in support of the operation of the Award Secretariat, its operational cost will be borne by the Office of the President, under the direct supervision of the Chief of Staff.



Vehicles are also to be allocated to the Secretariat for its use. In addition to the one-million-cedi contribution to this project, Government pledges to do what it can to ensure that the project is completed in the next thirty-six (36) weeks, he added.



President Akufo-Addo called on individuals, corporate bodies, especially in the construction industry, to join hands and bring this project to fruition, explaining that they can donate bags of cement, blocks and other building materials in support of this project.



Together, we can help make this project a reality. I thank all who have contributed consistently towards the success of the Award Scheme. Now is not the time to rest on our oars, but to help realise the vision of an Award Scheme that is truly self-sustaining, the President added.





Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 03:11:44|Editor: huaxia

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RABAT, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Morocco and Colombia on Tuesday signed four agreements to enhance cooperation in a number of areas, the official news agency MAP reported.

The agreements were signed during a video conference between Moroccan Minister of Foreign Affairs Nasser Bourita and his Colombian counterpart Claudia Blum.

The first two agreements concern the reciprocal implementation of open-air market, operating licenses for airlines, fees and customs duties, and visa-free travel for short stays, the report said.

The third agreement is related to the cooperation in the fight against drug trafficking, while the last one deals with the South-South cooperation in higher education, it said.

The two ministers also discussed the bilateral partnership as well as regional and international issues, the report added. Enditem
After initially denying reports of an affair, Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill on Wednesday afternoon told AL.com that he had an inappropriate relationship with a 44-year-old woman and will not make an anticipated run for the U.S. Senate.

I will obviously not be a candidate for the United States Senate nor will I be seeking any other elected position in 2022, because I think its important to me to make sure that I become the man that I have been before and that I am working to put myself in the position to be the leader that I have been before, as a husband, as a father, as a friend and as an elected official, Merrill said.

Merrill, who was elected Alabamas secretary of state in 2014 and re-elected in 2018, is term limited from seeking a third term in 2022.

With the end of my term coming up in January of 2023, I have been presented with a variety of options for where my path in public service could lead, a statement from his office read. I have decided that I will not be a candidate for any office in 2022.

In an interview with AL.com on Wednesday morning, Merrill denied having had an affair and accused Cesaire McPherson of stalking and harassing him.

McPherson declined to answer questions on the record Wednesday, instead providing a recording and a short statement.

I dont want to say anything other than heres the proof that John Merrill is a liar, she said. Heres the true John Merrill.

See also: Merrill denies calling Black people coloreds, Democrats want resignation

McPherson provided Al.com with a recording of an October 2020 conversation between her and Merrill, who is a Republican. In the 17-minute recording, Merrill and McPherson discuss various sexual acts they performed during dozens of romantic encounters that McPherson says took place between November 2017 and November 2020. During the conversation, Merrill seems to try to end his relationship with McPherson, who was reluctant to break off the affair. He told her they had met for the last time and that he was seeking help from the Lord to stay away from her.

After being played a portion of the recording Wednesday, Merrill, who is married with two children, told AL.com theres no excuse for his extramarital relationship.

Its clear that I had an inappropriate relationship with her, and it is not something that I am proud of or something that is something that  Im very disappointed in myself. Im also disappointed that I allowed my family to be embarrassed by this action, he said. And its something that I certainly will always regret because of the pain that it has caused my family.

McPhersons allegations were first made public yesterday on the right-wing web site National File.

Early in the call, McPherson asks Merrill, the last time that we had sex, thats the last time ever? Merrill responded, well, it was a pretty good day. McPherson asks again if thats the last time ever and Merrill says its supposedly the last time ever.

McPherson goes on to ask Merrill in explicit detail about sex acts she says they engaged in on multiple occasions and about specific locations.

He told her later in the call he hoped to draw strength from God to resist continuing their affair.

I am not able to stay away from you, so thats the reason why I have to have help in order to do that  the help is coming from the Lord, Merrill said.

You already went against your marriage  So youve already done it, you cant take that back, you cant change it, McPherson said.

See also: Ivey says Merrill made poor decisions and bad choices

Cant take anything back. Cant change anything. All I can do is what I can do from today forward, he responded.

In 2015, Merrill was involved a separate scandal after a woman alleged that she performed oral sex on him in 2010. He denied the encounter went that far, but admitted in an interview with AL.com that he and the woman kissed and that she unbuttoned his shirt, took off his belt and fondled him.

Merrill chairs the Republican Secretaries of State Executive Committee and was widely expected to run for U.S. Senate in Alabama in 2022. His campaign featured Merrill for Senate marketing materials as of Wednesday afternoon and his campaign manager has listed himself as working for Merrill for Senate on social media.

Mo Brooks, the congressman from North Alabama, has announced that he plans to run for the Senate seat that will be left open by the retirement of longtime Sen. Richard Shelby next year. Lynda Blanchard, a Montgomery businesswoman and former ambassador to Slovenia, has also announced plans to run.

Merrill made headlines in 2019 for stating in a town hall that homosexual activities and wife swap shows are driving moral decline in America. Throughout his time as secretary of state, he has repeatedly drawn the ire of voting rights advocates and Democrats for policies as being antithetical to free and fair elections.

Born in Wedowee in 1963, Merrill grew up in Heflin before attending the University of Alabama, where he was president of the Student Government Association for the 1986-87 school year. He completed two congressional internships then held a series of roles in marketing, business development and community relations from 1988 to 2015.

Merrill was elected to the state House of Representatives in 2010, remaining in the legislature through the end of 2014, when he was elected as secretary of state. He was reelected in November 2018, and his current term in office officially ends in January 2023.

Late Wednesday, after having listened to a portion of the recording, Merrill reflected on what it had cost him and those around him.

I hope someone can use me as an example of how they have the opportunity to accomplish things, but because of poor choices and poor decisions in things, it can result in a negative impact for a lot of people that you did not intend to impact, Merrill said. Thats because I exercised poor choices and poor discipline. Maybe some good can come out of this for somebody else.
With their focus set to prevent the widespread evictions, the San Diego County's Board of Supervisors voted to impose additional eviction protections for tenants on Tuesday.

The said action puts a limit on eviction to tenants who are an imminent health or safety threat or were not able to pay their rents. The law set by the country went beyond the statewide protections which allows 'just cause' evictions for things like lease violations. But in order for the action to have its full imposition, there is a second vote requirement which was set on May 4.

According to The San Diego Union-Tribune, the vote of 3-2 passed after Supervisor Nora Vargas, the person behind the initially set emergency ordinance changed it to a non-emergency item, which only requires three votes to pass. But the non-emergency item requires another public hearing approval to take effect.

Moreover, the ordinance states that a landlord cannot evict a tenant if they are planning to rehab the property or they will be moving into it themselves. Both of the said eviction reasons are allowed under the current law.

In addition, Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer proposed amendments that allow evictions for repeated and prolonged nuisances. She also mentioned that the amendment will allow individuals who own two or fewer homes to evict renters if they want to move back into the property. Both of the amendments mentioned by Lawson-Remer will be tackled and refined in the next meeting of Supervisors.

ALSO READ: Governor Abbott Prioritizes Personal Freedom Over Vaccination Proof, Bans Vaccine Passports

Meanwhile, the action was opposed by a local landlord group, the Southern California Rental Housing Association. The group argued that good residents in the area would be suffering because of the problematic neighbors.

However, Vargas argued the state laws did not go enough for people as they can still be evicted for simple things like remodeling or renovation. She pointed out that laws have loopholes and evictions are still happening in San Diego County which is for her is alarming. Vargas added that tenants are still being evicted during this global health crisis.

Furthermore, not less than 200 individuals called into the meeting, which included renters, community activists, and even some small landlords. Many callers stated that they are still facing the threat of eviction despite the imposed state protections. But landlords also shared their side and stated that they had made enough sacrifices for months, especially during the pandemic. Landlords also argued that the additional eviction protections would mean added financial burden on their end.

Art Moses, one of the small landlords in the county, shared that he has already worked with his tenant throughout the COVID-19 pandemic after she lost her source of income. He added that the county was not creating a solution but rather a situation wherein small landlords would be out of business.

Moses added that the maintenance cost in sustaining the need of the property has not decreased that's why he does not understand why the board is considering the additional eviction protection.

Also, Supervisor Jim Desmond stated that the majority of individuals who called into the meeting shared that they are currently facing the threat of eviction because they have lost their jobs and cannot pay their rent. He mentioned that the state law already prevents the eviction of tenants who have an income loss because of the pandemic that's why he wants additional consultation for the ordinance.

RELATED ARTICLE: California Lawmakers Push New Gun Tax Amid Surge in Mass Shootings

WATCH: Struggling Tenants Call For Debt Relief, Extended Eviction Protections - FOX 5 San Diego
Ukraine signed a contract with Pfizer for the supply of 10 million doses of its coronavirus vaccine, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskiy said.

"I am deeply grateful to @AlbertBourla that after our conversation he kept his word and did everything to help the citizens of Ukraine in this difficult time of the pandemic," Zelenskiy said on Twitter.

Ukraine has lagged behind other European countries and has so far relied on a single batch of 500,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines from India received in late February and 215,000 Sinovac doses from China in late March, Reuters reported.

Ukraine is tightening lockdown restrictions in the worst-hit areas as coronavirus cases have soared in recent weeks after a winter lull. The capital Kyiv imposed a strict lockdown from April 5, restricting public transport and closing all schools and kindergartens.
Raipur, April 7 : Three days after the deadly attack on security forces in Chhattisgarh's Bijapur district, the Maoists in a communique has declared that the missing CRPF commando is in their 'safe custody' and they are ready to release him only after an interlocutor will be appointed to talk to them.

Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee of the outlawed CPI (Maoist) also made it clear that the CoBRA (Commando Battalion for Resolute Action) commando Rakeshwar Singh Manhas, who went missing after the April 3 attack, will be in safe custody till the process of appointing an interlocutor is completed.

Constable Manhas of the 210th CoBRA battalion, an elite unit of CRPF, had gone missing during the fierce gun battle with a platoon of over 300 People's Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) in Chhattisgarh's Bijapur district in which 22 security personnel were killed and 31 were injured. Over 1,000 security personnel of CRPF and Chhattisgarh's District Reserve Guard (DRG) and Special Task Force (STF) took part in the operation. The gun battle took place on Saturday noon near Tekulgudem village under Tarrem police station.

The Maoists have, however, not raised any formal demands for the release of the commando.

In the two-page letter in Hindi issued on Wednesday, the banned outfit mentioned that they are ready to hold talks with the government but "the government is not honest".

The state police as well as other agencies are verifying the authenticity of the statement, purportedly issued by the outlaws.

The banned outfit also admitted that four of its cadres were killed in the gun battle and one is missing. Calling their killed associates as comrade, the group said Odi Sunny, Padam Lakhma, Kowasi Badru and Noopa Suresh were killed in the shootout in which 22 security personnel also lost their lives.

The Maoists also claimed that their comrade Madvi Sukka is still missing as they could not found the body.

Citing intelligence inputs, the CRPF and the state police had earlier said that more than 12 Maoists were killed in the operation and over 16 received grievous injuries. "All the injured Maoist cadres were learnt to be taken into two-three tractor towards Jabbamarka and Gomguda region in the area." The CPI (Maoist) statement also claimed that 24 security personnel were killed in the "encounter".

"As many as 2,000 police personnel had reached near Jiragudem village to execute a major attack (on Saturday). To thwart them, PLGA (Peoples' Liberation Guerrilla Army) retaliated during which 24 security personnel were killed and 31 others injured. We have caught a policeman (CoBRA commando) at the spot while others escaped," said a statement purportedly written by Maoists and being circulated on social media on Tuesday.

It said the government should first announce names of interlocutors and the jawan will be released later. He will remain safe in our captivity till then, it said.

The letter was issued in the name of 'Vikalp', spokesperson of the Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee of Maoists-- the group has been instrumental in executing various deadly attacks in the region.

The ultras also claimed to have seized 14 weapons, 2,000 cartridges and other materials from the encounter site.

The Moists also issued photographs with the statement showing the robbed arms and ammunition.
Unless Senate Democrats end the legislative filibuster, many in the party have argued, President Joe Bidens bold agenda will forever be blocked by Republicans, headed by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has long stood athwart anything proposed by the opposition party, stop sign in hand.

Suddenly, though, Democrats, thanks to a ruling from the bodys parliamentarian, should be able to advance at least most of the next two phases of Bidens program, his two-part plan to rebuild our nations infrastructure, without the need for even a single Republican vote.

Biden would be wise to seek support from some GOP senators, but if they intend to do nothing but fold their arms and stand in the way of progress, it will be great to be able to go it alone.

What freed things up is this: Elizabeth MacDonough, The Senate parliamentarian, the person charged with ruling on disputes over the often-arcane rules of the body, has sided with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumers interpretation of a rule that will allow Democrats to move certain measures forward with a simple majority vote.

In other words, in the 50-50 Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris available to cast the deciding vote in the event of a tie, Democrats should now be able to act on some of their preferred bills without fear of Republicans using a procedural maneuver requiring 60 votes. And that will make all the difference.

According to the rules, only bills that pertain to the budget and that meet specific requirements can be passed with a simple majority vote. This means that Senate Democrats dont suddenly have free rein. But it provides them with great flexibility, at least over the near term. And thats huge.

Further, it will take pressure off Democrats when it comes to non-budget matters, too, perhaps, if one opts for a truly optimistic view, even inspiring a bit of bipartisanship going forward.

Suppose, to suggest something wild, that Democrats seek Republican buy-in on a proposal that would trade border security for a path to citizenship for the so-called dreamers. Or what about trying to craft a Democratic-Republican compromise on some gun-control measures -- universal background checks, say?

Biden will be meeting next week with lawmakers from both parties in the hope of finding a bit of common ground.

Heres hoping he is successful.

Other editorials:
[April 07, 2021] Pioneer US Closed-End Funds to Redomicile to Maryland

The Board of each of Pioneer Diversified High Income Trust (NYSE American: HNW), Pioneer Floating Rate Trust (NYSE: PHD), Pioneer High Income Trust (NYSE: PHT), Pioneer Municipal High Income Advantage Trust (NYSE: MAV) and Pioneer Municipal High Income Trust (NYSE: MHI) (each, a "Fund") announced today that it has voted to redomicile the Fund from a Delaware statutory trust to a Maryland corporation (in each case, the "redomiciling"). Each Fund's name will change in connection with the redomiciling, as follows:







Current Name New Name Ticker Symbol (Not Changing) Pioneer Diversified High Income Trust Pioneer Diversified High Income Fund, Inc. NYSE American: HNW Pioneer Floating Rate Trust Pioneer Floating Rate Fund, Inc. NYSE: PHD Pioneer High Income Trust Pioneer High Income Fund, Inc. NYSE: PHT Pioneer Municipal High Income Advantage Trust Pioneer Municipal High Income Advantage Fund, Inc. NYSE: MAV Pioneer Municipal High Income Trust Pioneer Municipal High Income Fund, Inc. NYSE: MHI

Amundi Asset Management US, Inc. will continue to serve as each Fund's investment adviser following the redomiciling. There will be no change to a Fund's investment objective and strategies, portfolio management team, policies and procedures or the members of the Board overseeing the Fund as a result of the Fund's redomiciling. For each Fund, the redomiciling will be effected through a statutory merger of the current Delaware statutory trust with and into a newly-established Maryland corporation formed for the purpose of effecting the redomiciling. For each Fund, each outstanding share of beneficial interest of the Delaware statutory trust will be automatically converted into one share of common stock of the Maryland corporation. There will be no tax impact to a Fund or its shareholders as a direct result of the Fund's redomiciling. It is anticipated that each Fund's redomiciling will be consummated mid-April. Following each Fund's redomiciling, the rights of shareholders will be governed by Maryland General Corporation Law and the Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws of the Fund. Each Fund's Board has adopted a resolution to cause the Fund to be subject to the Maryland Control Share Acquisition Act (the "Control Share Act") following the redomiciling, as reflected in each Fund's Bylaws. The Control Share Act protects the interests of all stockholders by generally providing that any holder of "control shares" acquired in a "control share acquisition" may not exercise voting rights with respect to the "control shares," except to the extent approved by a vote of two-thirds of all the votes entitled to be cast on the matter. Generally, "control shares" are shares that, when aggregated with shares already owned by an acquiring person, would entitle the acquiring person to exercise 10% or more, 33 1/3% or more, or a majority of the total voting power of shares entitled to vote in the election of directors. The Control Share Act provides that a "control share acquisition" does not include the acquisition of shares in a merger, consolidation or share exchange. Therefore, a Fund shareholder that acquires shares of a successor fund as a result of the merger of a Fund will be able to exercise voting rights as to those shares even if the number of such shares acquired by the shareholder in the merger exceeds one or more of the thresholds of the Control Share Act. The above description of the Control Share Act is only a high-level summary and does not purport to be complete. Investors should refer to the actual provisions of the Control Share Act for more information, including definitions of key terms, various exclusions and exemptions from the statute's scope, and the procedures by which stockholders may approve the reinstatement of voting rights to holders of "control shares." About the Funds Pioneer Diversified High Income Trust is an NYSE American listed closed-end fund that seeks a high level of current income. It also seeks capital appreciation as a secondary objective to the extent consistent with its primary goal. Pioneer Floating Rate Trust is an NYSE listed closed-end fund that seeks a high level of current income by investing primarily in floating-rate loans. It also seeks capital preservation as a secondary objective to the extent consistent with its primary goal. Pioneer High Income Trust is an NYSE listed closed-end fund that seeks a high level of current income by investing in a portfolio of below-investment grade bonds and convertible securities. It also seeks capital appreciation as a secondary objective. Pioneer Municipal High Income Advantage Trust is an NYSE listed closed-end fund that seeks high current income exempt from regular federal income tax. It also seeks capital appreciation as a secondary objective. Pioneer Municipal High Income Trust is an NYSE listed closed-end fund that seeks high current income exempt from regular federal income tax. It also seeks capital appreciation as a secondary objective. Keep in mind, distribution rates are not guaranteed. A fund's distribution rate may be affected by numerous factors, including changes in actual or projected investment income, the level of undistributed net investment income, if any, and other factors. Shareholders should not draw any conclusions about a fund's investment performance based on a fund's current distributions. Closed-end funds, unlike open-end funds, are not continuously offered. Once issued, common shares of closed-end funds are bought and sold in the open market through a stock exchange and frequently trade at prices lower than their net asset value. Net Asset Value (NAV) is total assets less total liabilities divided by the number of common shares outstanding. For performance data on Amundi US' closed-end funds, please call 800-225-6292 or visit our closed-end pricing page. About Amundi US Amundi US is the US business of Amundi, Europe's largest asset manager by assets under management and ranked among the ten largest globally[1]. Boston is one of Amundi's six main global investment hubs[2] and offers a broad range of fixed-income, equity, and multi-asset investment solutions in close partnership with wealth management firms, distribution platforms, and institutional investors across the Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. With our financial and extra-financial research capabilities and long-standing commitment to responsible investment, Amundi is a key player in the asset management landscape. Amundi clients benefit from the expertise and advice of 4,500 employees in nearly 40 countries. A subsidiary of the Credit Agricole group and listed on the Paris stock exchange, Amundi currently manages approximately $2.1 trillion of assets[3]. Amundi, a Trusted Partner, working every day in the interest of our clients and society www.amundi.com/us Follow us on linkedin.com/company/amundi-us/ and twitter.com/amundi_us. 1. Source (News - Alert) : IPE "Top 500 Asset Managers" published in June 2020, based on assets under management as of 12/31/2019 2. Boston, Dublin, London, Milan, Paris, and Tokyo 3. Amundi data as of 12/31/2020 Amundi Distributor US, Inc., Member SIPC

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An apartment building in New Town, N.D., is a total loss after a weekend fire, officials said.

Emily Sitting Bear is director of the MHA Nations Emergency Operations Center. She says all tenants from the 36-unit apartment building are accounted for, but there was one report of a person being treated for smoke inhalation in Sundays fire.

Multiple fire departments were dispatched to Red Hawk Estates about 6:20 a.m. Fire departments from Parshall, Stanley, Plaza and Mandaree provided mutual aid.

Sitting Bear said the fire apparently started on the third floor of Building 2. Building 1 at Red Hawks Estates was not damaged, KXNET reported.

An evacuation site has been set up at the Northern Lights Wellness Center. The cause of the fire is under investigation.

New Town, in Mountrail County, is on the Fort Berthold Reservation.

Topics North Dakota
Her warning follows a similar message she delivered over the weekend in which she said suburban Cook County might again see an indoor dining ban or the gathering limit curtailed from the current cap at 50% capacity or 50 people, whichever is fewer. On Wednesday, she said future restrictions would more likely look like mini-steps such as gradually dialing back capacity until possibly reaching the previous Tier 1 stage, which limited indoor dining to 25 people total or 25% capacity, among other requirements.
China's embassy in Australia has denied human rights abuses in Xinjiang in a bizarre propaganda presentation to local media.

With global pressure rising over Beijing's appalling treatment of Uighur Muslims, China attempted to paint a rosy picture through videos featuring the persecuted minority group and speeches beamed into Canberra from Xinjiang.

Australia has condemned restrictions on the freedom of religion, mass surveillance, extra-judicial detentions, forced labour and sterilisation, but stopped short of sanctions.

Canberra has also refrained from calling events in Xinjiang genocide as the United States and some other western nations have described them.

China's ambassador to Australia Cheng Jingye used a rare media appearance at his residence to refute the claims.

China's ambassador to Australia Cheng Jingye (pictured) used a press conference on Wednesday to deny human rights abuses in Xinjiang

'We reject those allegations which we think is fake news. Irrelevant stories that are made up by certain anti-China forces,' he told reporters in Canberra on Wednesday.

'Over time, there has been some distorted coverage about Xingjiang in certain western media. Those reports are basically based on disinformation or misinformation.'

His speech was followed by the video presentation titled 'Xinjiang is a Wonderful Land', which was also shown in London last month as Chinese missions step up a propaganda offensive to counter its damaging human rights record.

'This is a land of harmony and stability, where people from various ethnic backgrounds live and work in peace and contentment,' the video said.

'Over the long course of history people from various ethnic backgrounds in Xinjiang, joined by those from across the country, have worked together to develop this vast, magnificent part of the motherland.

'Ever since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Chinese government has placed high on its agenda the inheritance, protection and development of the excellent traditional ethnic cultures in Xinjiang.'

The press conference included a propaganda video presentation painting a rosy picture of ethnic harmony in Xinjiang, China

The videos were followed by addresses from officials and other people in Xinjiang.

The speeches repeated claims of economic prosperity and religious harmony after a period of terrorist attacks.

Through a translator, Xinjiang Vice-Governor Erkin Tuniyaz said people with ulterior motives in foreign countries were turning a blind eye to people living good lives.

He said rumours had been spread about concentration camps, forced labour, religious conversions and sterilisation.

'These allegations cannot be more preposterous and they are downright lies.'

The East Turkistan Australian Association condemned the communist regime for 'genocide policies' that locked up millions of Uighur people in prison-style concentration camps.

Detainees listening to speeches in a camp in Lop County, Xinjiang, China

'Regardless how China describes the situation, it is no longer a simple human rights concern that (Uighurs) are subjected under the pervasive ethnic genocide and other crimes against humanity,' the group said.

Ahead of the news conference, Prime Minister Scott Morrison signalled Australia would continue to speak out on human rights and other contentious issues.

'We want a positive relationship, but we will have a positive relationship that is consistent with Australia acting in accordance with its values and its national character,' he told reporters in Canberra.

'That would never be something that we would yield for the sake of a relationship.'

The ambassador refused to answer a broader question about the China-Australia relationship but noted the embassy had repeatedly expressed dismay about criticism of human rights.
Spain's Ministry of Health plans to amend the controversial law that made the wearing of face masks mandatory at all times and in all public places - that included beaches and swimming pools - even if a safe distance from other people could be maintained.

At this Wednesdays (7 April) Interterritorial Council meeting of the Ministry of Health and the regions, the department - headed by Carolina Darias - will present a new draft of the law that allows not wearing a face mask at "moments of rest" (the expression "sunbathing" is not used, but it is implied) and as long as the a safe distance of 1.5 metres can be kept from people who do not live with you.

The draft, which will in all probability now have the approval of the regions, nevertheless maintains the obligation to wear nose and mouth protection if people are on the move. In other words  the Ministry of Health explains - the mask will continue to be mandatory during walks along the beach.

Sports practice will continue to be exempt and people who carry out activities that are considered "incompatible" with the use of face masks, such as lifeguards, are excluded from wearing the mask. Also, obviously, the mask can be briefly removed when eating or drinking.
Pete Davidson says he accidentally helped Alec Baldwin lose 100 pounds

Saturday Night Live star Pete Davidson says he accidentally helped Alec Baldwin lose 100 pounds. Baldwin, 63, told Howard Stern in 2019 that Davidson, 27 encouraged him to do 100 push-ups a day, every day, to stay fit, and the SNL star confirmed the story on The Tonight Show Tuesday. I was on set and Alec was hosting and it was a sketch where I had to be shirtless, Davidson told Jimmy Fallon. So he came up to me and he was like, What do you do? And I didnt want to be rude and say, I just still have a metabolism. Im not in my mid-50s. So to make him feel better, I said, Oh man, I do 100 push ups and 100 sit ups every day. Davidson, who stars in the upcoming The Suicide Squad movie, said the lie persisted as Baldwin repeatedly appeared on the show as former President Donald Trump. Every time Id run into him in the hall, hed be like, 100 a day! Davidson laughed. And he started to do it and he lost like 100 pounds. And he says its all because of me.

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India on Wednesday reported a net increase of 55,250 in active cases, the most in a day so far, to take its count to 843,473. That is over 82 per cent of the September 18 peak of 1,017,754. Indias share of global active cases now stands at 3.69 per cent (one in 29). The country is 4th among the most affected countries by active cases. On Wednesday, it added 115,736 cases, the most in a day so far, to take its total caseload to 12,801,785. And, with 630 new fatalities, its Covid-19 reached 166,177, or 1.30 per cent of total confirmed infections.

With 3,337,601 more people getting Covid-19 vaccine shots on Tuesday, Indias total count of those inoculated reached 87,077,474. The count of recovered cases across India, meanwhile, reached 11,792,135  or 92.11 per cent of total caseload  with 59,856 new cured cases being reported on Wednesday.
You are here: China

Deputies to the fourth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC), China's national legislature, submitted a total of 8,993 proposals during the annual session earlier this March, according to data made public on Tuesday.

The proposals centered on current priorities in economic and social development and bottleneck problems the country faces in the endeavor. So said a meeting on the proposal handling, criticisms, and opinions put forward by national lawmakers.

Addressing the forum, Wang Chen, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and vice chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, urged all-out efforts to respond to every proposal piece.

After being categorized, the proposals were handed over to 194 state organs for further replies, according to the meeting.

Wang stressed that hot-button issues affecting people's immediate interests should be well addressed in handling the proposals.
By Charlotte Greenfield

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) -Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday met Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and the country's army chief for talks on the troubled peace process in Afghanistan, where both countries have long histories of involvement.

It was the first time a Russian foreign minister had visited Pakistan in nine years and comes at a sensitive time for neighbouring Afghanistan with peace talks making little headway and a deadline looming for the United States to withdraw its forces.

Khan highlighted the importance of a negotiated political settlement to the war in Afghanistan during the meeting, according to a statement from his office.

"Pakistan appreciated Russia's efforts in promoting the Afghan peace process through the hosting of the recent meeting...in Moscow," the statement said, referring to a recent summit on the peace process that Pakistan attended.

They also discussed economic relations, the COVID-19 pandemic and progress on a major gas pipeline project.

Lavrov also met Pakistan's army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, at army headquarters in the city of Rawalpindi, according to a statement from the military.

"During the meeting, matters of mutual interest including enhanced defence and security cooperation, regional security, particularly Afghan Peace Process were discussed," the statement said.

In the 1980s, Pakistan and the United States were the main supporters of the Islamist fighters who battled occupying Soviet forces.

Now, Russia is concerned about Afghan instability spilling over into central Asia as the United States seeks to extricate itself from a war in Afghanistan against the Islamist Taliban.

Russia hosted an international conference on Afghanistan in Moscow last month at which the participants, including the United States, China and Pakistan, issued a statement calling on the warring Afghan sides to reach a peace deal and curb violence.

Story continues

"A common concern is the situation in Afghanistan," Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement on Lavrov's visit to Pakistan.

"We look forward to an early finding of a constructive solution in order to end the civil war in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan through agreements on the formation of an inclusive government with the participation of the Taliban movement."

The United States signed an agreement with the Taliban last year allowing it to withdraw its forces in exchange for a Taliban guarantee to prevent international terrorism.

But fighting between the U.S.-backed Afghan government and the Taliban still rages.

The United States is pushing for an interim Afghan government between the two sides as a May 1 deadline approaches for it to withdraw its forces under the pact.

President Joe Biden has said that date will be hard to meet despite Taliban threats of more violence if it is not.

(Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield; Additional reporting by Asif Shahzad and Sheree SardarEditing by Robert Birsel and Toby Chopra)
Pennsylvania reported 4,643 new coronavirus cases in Wednesdays Pennsylvania Department of Health daily report, bringing the states 7-day average to 4,200 cases a day, a 39% increase from two weeks ago.

The health department also reported 48 new deaths Wednesday, bringing the pandemics death toll in the state to 25,285 lives lost. The majority of those who have died were over 65.

Much of the current spike in cases has been attributed to the B.1.1.7 coronavirus variant, first detected in the United Kingdom, and more easily spread.

Pennsylvania reached a cheerier milestone on Wednesday when it moved into the 11th ranking nationally for the percent of residents whove received one vaccine dose. Currently, Pennsylvanias vaccinated 35.4% of its eligible population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

(Cant see this map? Click here.)

Heres are coronavirus updates for Wednesday, April 7, 2021.

New York, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania and New Jersey together reported 44% of the nations new COVID-19 infections, or nearly 197,500 new cases, in the latest available seven-day period, according to state health agency data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

In Pennsylvania, new virus cases are up 73% compared to the beginning of March when the state was averaging 2,429 cases a day.

Hospitalizations continue to rise to 2,425 COVID-19 patients across the state, up from 1,587 a month ago. But the death rate is declining with an average of 27 deaths a day over the last week, down from 47 a month ago. The majority of people who are hospitalized and who have died are over 65.

The increase in case counts and hospitalizations remains of concern, and we are watching the numbers very closely, Pennsylvania Department of Health COVID-19 Response Director Dr. Wendy Braund said in a virtual news briefing Wednesday.

State health officials are encouraged that it appears the 7-day case average is plateauing, she said.

Practically speaking what that means is that we are once again reaching a plateau, Braund said. It is a higher plateau than we would like to see, but that is certainly good news, and an indication that our mitigation efforts are working. It is really key to to get folks vaccinated just as soon as we can. That is really our best defense.

Locally, the Lehigh Valley reported 277 new cases and no new deaths on Wednesday. It breaks down to 126 cases in Lehigh County and 151 cases in Northampton County for a total of 66,635 cases.

New virus variants are clearly one of the drivers in the case increase, said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, chair of the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California at San Francisco. Failure to suppress the rise in cases will lead to more people getting sick and dying, she said, and drive increases in other parts of the country.

The share of Pennsylvania cases caused by the more infectious B.1.1.7 variant is rapidly growing, but hard to quantify due to limited genomic surveillance testing.

On March 22, there were just 168 identified and now there are 655, according to the most recent CDC data. Current vaccines are very effective against the UK variant, and widespread vaccination should help halt virus spread. The danger is that the more people the virus infects the more opportunities it has to mutate into new variants that might better evade vaccines.

The rise of coronavirus variants in the commonwealth and across the nation are reminders we must remain vigilant, Braund said.

Public health experts across the country are still learning about the variants, Braund said. While there is still much to learn, what we know is that the existing mitigation efforts, hand washing, masking and social distancing all work to prevent the spread of COVID and variants.

With 35.4% of eligible Pennsylvanians having received their first COVID vaccine dose, Pennsylvania now ranks 11th in the nation for the percentage of the population with their first shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

(Cant see this map? Click here.)

The state also ranks fifth among all 50 states for total doses administered.

More than 85,000 people a day got shots over the last week and about 4.43 million people have received one shot or are fully vaccinated, according to state and Philadelphia health department data. This breaks down to about 2 million people with their first shot and 2.41 million fully vaccinated.

Pennsylvanias Acting Health Secretary Alison Beam visited Allentown Wednesday to help win over those who are hesitant to join the ranks of the inoculated.

We have not all shied away from explaining to folks that it really is the race of the variants versus the vaccine, Beam said during a visit to St. Lukes Hospital-Sacred Heart Campus. The vaccine is our offense, and so the more that we can get the vaccine into folks arms and get us protected is going to be our best offense allowing us to have our safe communities  and really returning to any sense of normalcy in our societies.

Beam was joined by Muslim leaders from the Lehigh Valley and Philadelphia in addressing vaccine hesitancy among minority groups across the state. Its a fight local NAACP leaders have also taken on, as well as the Hispanic Center Lehigh Valley in hosting vaccine clinics like the one offering 1,000 doses this week.

Eligibility on Monday opened up to Phase 1B in Pennsylvanias distribution program, and will expand to Phase 1C on April 12 before general eligibility on April 19.

Supply continues to plague the rollout, with Pennsylvania and Philadelphias allocation of the one-dose Johnson & Johnson from the federal government dropping from around 192,700 doses to 22,800 doses next week, according to CDC data.

The state and Philly are projected to receive 653,100 doses next week, including 337,950 first/single doses and 315,150 booster shots.

About 40% of U.S. adults have now received at least one COVID-19 shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 23% of American adults have been fully vaccinated  including more than half of Americans 65 and older.

(Cant see this chart? Click here.)

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to lehighvalleylive.com.

Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com.
Sand Mountain Family Practice in Albertville is asking you to get your coronavirus shot there! Right now, they have no waitlist and say they're ready to schedule patients.

On Tuesday, the clinic got more than 1,100 Pfizer vaccines. They've already worked through all their regular patients, and they're looking for more.

Last week, they gave out more than 900 vaccines over the course of just three days. We spoke with Dr. Wayne Peters, who explained that after months and months of calling everyone from lawmakers to the health department to get vaccines, they're happy to help the community get closer to herd immunity.

"We're going to do whatever we can to help the community get vaccinated," said Dr. Peters.

They're giving the vaccines to patients with or without health insurance. They've given the vaccine to people from all over Alabama so far.

To make an appointment, call the office at 256-878-8180. Click HERE to visit their website.
Ticket to Paradise, a romantic comedy featuring Julia Roberts & George Clooney, is set to hit theaters in the fall of 2022.

The release date for the movie has been set by Universal Pictures as September 30, 2022, according to Variety.

The motion picture, directed by Ol Parker, reunites the A-listers, who have past worked together in movies including 2001's Oceans Eleven, 2004's Oceans Twelve and 2016's Money Monster.

The latest: Ticket to Paradise, a romantic comedy featuring Julia Roberts, 53, and George Clooney, 59, is set to hit theaters in the fall of 2022

Roberts was featured in Clooney's directorial debut with Confessions of a Dangerous Mind in 2002, also featuring Sam Rockwell and Drew Barrymore.

In Ticket to Paradise, Clooney, 59, and Roberts, 53, play a former couple who are looking to help guide their daughter from making the mistakes they did in their relationship.

Production on the movie - which Parker penned with Daniel Pipski - is set to commence later on this year in Queensland, Australia.

The Australian federal government is offering tax incentives to the studio to film there as part of the Queenslands Production Attraction Strategy.

The motion picture reunites the A-listers, who have past worked together in movies including 2001's Oceans Eleven, 2004's Oceans Twelve and 2016's Money Monster

The A-listers posed at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016

Clooney's most recent project was his directing and starring turn in 2020's The Midnight Sky with Felicity Jones and David Oyelowo.

Roberts was most recently seen on the big screen in the 2018 drama Ben Is Back, as well as the Amazon Prime show Homecoming.

Universal had previously reserved a date for a film release; It is tentatively slated to hit theaters in 2022 after Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (September 7) and before Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (October 7), Deadline reported.
Rafael Navarro Gonzalez, was a leading Mexican researcher at the Institute of Nuclear Sciences (ICN) of the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He helped develop the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) kit, a portable laboratory that analyzes the chemistry of rocks, soil, and air in space. Unfortunately, he lost his life after he caught COVID-19 in January of this year. For this reason, NASA will name a mountain on Mars in his honor.

Rafael Navarro, was a leader in the study of astrobiology, in addition to identifying the role of volcanic lightning in the origin of life on Earth.

According to the UNAM Gazette , Paul Mahaffy, who is leading the NASA group and the main promoter of the initiative to name the mountain, it is located northwest of Gale crater, near Mount Sharp. The Curiosity robot that arrived on the red planet in 2012 is working there.

We determined that it would be a good way to honor our collaborator and friend Rafael Navarro Gonzalez. There were three options of objects, we talked about it with Fabiola (her epsosa), her daughter and her brother, and they decided that that could be it. We know that the official names for objects in space are given by the International Astronomical Union, but we believe that with this initiative the name to form will be faster , says the scientist.

It may interest you: The girl who looked at the stars in Culiacan and is now the first Mexican analog astronaut

The region on the red planet is rich in clays and mineral sulfates, which can help better understand changes in climate and current conditions, the site will be essential for Curiosity missions, explains Ashwin Vasavada, scientist from the laboratory of NASA Jet Propulsion.

"Rafael was a good friend and dedicated scientist, and has been a privilege and honor for Mars exploration team working with him for several years , " added the specialist Goddard Space Flight Center of NASA , Mahaffy.

Image: UNAM Gazette

His career at UNAM and the Sciences

Rafael graduated from the Faculty of Sciences of the UNAM, then he did a postgraduate degree at the University of Meryland, United States, but his love of the house of studies made him return to Mexico to give back a little knowledge.

According to AnimalMX , Rafel Navarro and other scientists were winners after proposing the Sample Analysis of Mars to NASA . They worked on the project since 2004. He studied the Pico de Orizaba, which could function as a reference of what Mars would be if the atmosphere were to terraform, that is, make it a place where humans can breathe .

Read more: The 10 most important missions of NASA

Copyright 2021 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
Former Central Regional Minister, Kwamena Duncan, has rebuked the two teenagers involved in a gruesome murder of a 11-year-old boy in the Central Region.



The two teenagers Felix Nyarko, 16, and Nicholas Kini, 17, reportedly murdered a 11-year-old boy at Lamptey Mills in Kasoa on Saturday.



The deceased, Ishmael Mensah, was a Class Four pupil of the Maranatha School and it's believed the teenagers committed such hideous crime for ritual money purposes.



The murder has provoked discussions on the human quest for quick riches and living a luxurious life.



Reacting to the issue on Peace FM's morning show 'Kokrokoo', Kwamena Duncan was alarmed that young boys could engage in murder but, however, wasn't surprised about the incident.



He stated that Kasoa is a crime zone and, on daily basis, there are reports of criminal activities at the area.



To him, security at Kasoa must be tightened to ensure the safety of the residents.



On the murder act, Kwamena stated; "You must be that heartless. You must have the heart of a monster".





Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The American military is warning that China is probably planning to take control of Taiwan more quickly than many people had thought.

The future of the island democracy has been the largest problem between the United States and China for many years. Experts consider it the most likely cause for a military conflict between the two sides.

China has been building its military for years. It has become more aggressive with Taiwan and in arguments over ownership of the South China Sea.

China considers Taiwan a breakaway territory. A military move against Taiwan would test American support for the island. The U.S. has always promised to defend Taiwan, but has left it unclear just how that would be done.

For the Biden administration, Chinese military aggression toward Taiwan would force a choice. It could break its promise and let the Chinese take Taiwan or risk a full war with China.

The Biden administration believes China is the number one problem for the United States. It also believes the U.S. must do more and do it quickly  militarily, diplomatically and in other ways  to prevent China from replacing the United States as the most powerful nation in Asia. Taiwan is at the top of the list of possible problems.

The risks are actually going up, said Admiral Philip Davidson. He is the top U.S. military commander in the Asia-Pacific area. He made his comments to a group of U.S. Senators last month about a Chinese military move on Taiwan.

The threat is manifest during this decade  in fact, in the next six years, Davidson said. A decade is a period of ten years.

Days later, Davidsons expected replacement, Admiral John Aquilino, told senators at his confirmation hearing: My opinion is, this problem is much closer to us than most think.



Biden administration officials have said they plan to deepen ties with Taiwan. China has warned against interference.

On Wednesday, Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said the military threat against his country is increasing. He pointed to the fact that the Chinese military has been doing combat-type exercises close to the island.

If we need to defend ourselves to the very last day, then we will defend ourselves to the very last day, Wu told reporters.

Also Wednesday, the U.S. Navy said the destroyer USS John S. McCain passed through the Taiwan Strait on that day.

A U.S. Navy statement said the destroyers passing showed the U.S. supports a free and open Indo-Pacific.

The United States military will continue to fly, sail, and operate anywhere international laws allow, the statement also said.



Admiral Charles Richard is responsible for U.S. nuclear forces as the head of U.S. Strategic Command. He recently wrote that China may soon become a strategic peer of the United States. He said Chinas number of nuclear weapons is expected to increase 100 percent or more in the next 10 years. The U.S. defense department agrees.

U.S. officials have noted Peoples Liberation Army actions that appear to want to trouble Taiwan. Every day, Chinese airplanes fly into Taiwans air space, forcing its small military to answer the aggression.

For years, the U.S. and China have dealt with the problem of Taiwan as a balance. China leaves Taiwan alone and the island does not claim formal independence from China.

Larry Diamond of Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution said last week that he doubts Chinese leaders are ready to destroy that balance.

I dont think its coming soon, he said.

The Biden administration says it wants to work with China where possible, but has voiced some anger about Chinese actions toward Taiwan.

Im Susan Shand.

The Associated Press reported this story. Susan Shand adapted it for Learning English. Mario Ritter, Jr. was the editor.

________________________________________________

Words in This Story

manifest adj. able to be seen, shown or visible

strategic adj. related to a general plan that is created to reach a goal in war or politics usually over a long period of time

peer n. someone who belongs to the same age, social or other group as someone else

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PEOPLE taking part in household visits during the Level 5 lockdown are taking fewer precautions than they were earlier in the year, new research shows.

The Department of Taoiseachs social activity measure (SAM) shows that one in ten people are hosting visitors or visiting another household for social reasons on any given day.

Most of these visits are taking place indoors with poor ventilation and no masks, the Departments assistant secretary general Liz Canavan told a briefing on Wednesday.

She said that while the majority of those undertaking such visits reported maintaining social distancing in early February, less than a quarter did in late March.

Read More

She said that these risks have resulted in a doubling of the proportion of the population who were having close contact encounters during social visits from 3.1pc to 6.7pc. Each of these visits typically involves two to three people from another household, Ms Canavan said.

The SAM, which tracks the publics behaviour during the Covid-19 pandemic, also found that workplace visits increased in March compared to February with more non-essential workers attending their workplace.

More than a quarter of non-essential workers visited their workplace in a given week during the month of March. Without providing specific figures, Ms Canavan said that a minority of these reported they could work from home but preferred not to, while a smaller number felt they are under pressure to go to work.

She said that traffic volumes are up 11pc week on week and 15pc in the month of March compared to February.

She said as a result of this, average close contacts reported by HSE last week were up 3pc on previous week and up 8pc up on the previous month.

Meanwhile, 22,644 people have attended the 12 walk-in test centres set up by the HSE across 12 locations since March 25 with nearly half of these being people aged 25 to 44.

Ms Canavan said that the overall positivity rate from these centres was 2.7pc but was higher in Finglas where the positivity rate is 5pc.

Additional test centres will open later this week and will target where there is the greatest risk of disease, Ms Canavan said.
DJI Air 2S' new renders show that the new drone model could be better than the current Mavic Air 2. Speculations stated that DJI will integrate a more advanced camera feature into its upcoming product.

According to The Verge's latest report, DJI Air 2S was first leaked after it was listed in an FCC filing previously in March. Because of this, rumors stated that the new drone will arrive sooner than expected.

TechnikNews is the first one to confirm the newly rendered images. If you want to know more details, here are the things that the leaked photos revealed.

DJI Air 2S' possible features

The most important feature that the new DJI Air 2S could have is the alleged 20 MP camera sensor. However, it is still lower compared to the Mavic Air 2's 48 MP camera 1/2-inch sensor.

However, analysts and other experts said that since DJI Air 2S has a larger camera, it is expected to offer more improved features and better benefits, such as HD videos in low light conditions.

Aside from this, the new drone model could also have V2 Goggles and motion controller compatibilities. If this is true, the feature would allow drone pilots to operate the upcoming DJI Air 2S in the first-person perspective together with regular flights using the product's special application.

Also Read: Drone Racing is Now a Huge Thing; Current Champion is an 18-Year-Old South Korean

However, there could be some downsides since the upcoming drone could not have acrobatic flight capabilities. Although this is the case, the V2 Goggles compatibility is expected to offer its pilots more immersive flying experience than the current Mavic Air 2.

Is it better than Mavic Air 2?

Right now, it is still hard to conclude that the new DJI Air 2S is better than the current Mavic Air 2 since this model also offers great features that will surely improve the drone pilot's experience. Mavic Air 2 offers a better image sensor, great photo modes, as well as better drone and controller compatibility compared to other DJI models.

Aside from these, this product is integrated with a 48-megapixel cam and 4K 60fps video resolution. On the other hand, its Quad Bayer color filter array makes its 48 MP cam have better performance.

For more news updates about DJI Air 2S and the company's upcoming drones, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

Related Article: Hyundai's Genesis Recently Broke a World Record for Most Drones in the Sky to Show its Company Logo

This article is owned by TechTimes.

Written by: Giuliano de Leon.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
New Delhi: Several news reports on Tuesday said that Hospitality firm OYO has applied for bankruptcy under IBC 2016.

However, the company's CEO Ritesh Agarwal denied claims via a series of tweets and said that OYO has not filed for bankruptcy. THe NCLT order pertains to the Ahmedabad entity and not exactly for Oravel Stays Pvt Ltd.

"There is a PDF and text message circulating that claims OYO has filed for bankruptcy. This is absolutely untrue and inaccurate. A claimant is seeking INR 16Lakhs (USD 22k) from OYO's subsidiary leading to a petition at NCLT," said company's CEO Ritesh Agarwal.

There is a PDF and text message circulating that claims OYO has filed for bankruptcy. This is absolutely untrue and inaccurate. A claimant is seeking INR 16Lakhs (USD 22k) from OYO's subsidiary leading to a petition at NCLT. 1/3  Ritesh Agarwal (@riteshagar) April 7, 2021

"OYO has paid that under protest and amount already banked by the claimant. OYO has also appealed with the NCLAT about the matter. OYO is recovering from the pandemic steadily and our largest markets are operating profitably," he added.

OYO has paid that under protest and amount already banked by the claimant. OYO has also appealed with the NCLAT about the matter. OYO is recovering from the pandemic steadily and our largest markets are operating profitably. 2/3  Ritesh Agarwal (@riteshagar) April 7, 2021

Agarwal has also pasted a document on twitter, stating that the company has challenged NCLT order against its subsidiary. Read the full text below.

"OYO has challenged NCLT Order against its subsidiary for an amount of 16 Lakhs

OYO has a subsidiary called OHHPL

The NCLT admitted an order against its subsidiary for an amount of 16 Lakhs OYO has challenged the order in NCLAT

This has earlier happened in Flipkart and set aside said sources familiar to the matter

OYO has challenged NCLT Order against its subsidiary for an amount of 16 Lakhs. The

Subs idiary name is OHHPL. This is not the first time that a petition has been accepted by NCLT for a new age company. In Feb 2020 Flipkart also received such a petition and it was set aside.

Statement on behalf of OYO spokesperson, "We are surprised to hear that the Hon'ble NCLT has admitted a petition against OHHPL a subsidiary of OYO for INR 16 Lakhs in a contractual dispute, which dispute is not even with this subsidiary. We have filed an appeal. The matter is sub-judice and we would refrain from commenting further on the merits of the matter at this stage. We have strong faith and belief in our judicial system."

The company also said, the INR 16 L in dispute has already been paid to the claimant under protest by the entity (other than OHHPL) with whom the dispute was raised.

Flipkart had a similar matter in February 2020 where a court for a small operational creditor had allowed NCLT petition but it was promptly set aside by NCLAT."

Live TV

#mute
[April 07, 2021] HashiCorp Releases Identity-based Security as a Service on the HashiCorp Cloud Platform

SAN FRANCISCO, April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- HashiCorp , the leader in multi-cloud infrastructure automation software, today announced HashiCorp Vault is now generally available on the HashiCorp Cloud Platform (HCP). Designed to remove complexity and help reduce operational burden and overhead, HashiCorp Vaults identity-based security platform is now available as a fully managed service operated and supported by HashiCorp experts.

HCP Vault enables organizations to get up and running quickly, providing immediate access to Vaults best-in-class secrets management and data protection capabilities. With HCP providing the resilience and operational excellence needed, organizations no longer have the burden of managing Vault themselves. Individuals and organizations benefit from day zero readiness with a modern cloud security solution that offers the ability to quickly and easily secure applications, access, and data. The largest, most secure organizations in the world rely on the expertise of HashiCorp, said Armon Dadgar, co-founder and chief technology officer, HashiCorp. We know that cloud security is critical, but we also understand companies struggle to onboard and implement security solutions quickly, which is why we introduced HCP Vault, to make that journey easier and faster for individuals and organizations. Weve supported thousands of commercial Vault clusters, and HCP Vault brings that expertise directly to users. HCP Vault  Customer Adoption

Vault Enterprise is widely adopted by the largest companies in the world. Nearly 25% of the Fortune 500 and 70% of the 20 largest U.S. banks rely on Vault to secure their most sensitive data. During the HCP Vault beta, more than 1,300 organizations participated, underscoring the interest in a managed service offering for secrets management and encryption. Lufthansa Systems and paradime.io were two of the participants in HCP Vault beta program. Lufthansa Systems is a leading airline IT provider. Based on long-term project experience, a deep understanding of complex business processes, and strong technological know-how, the company provides consulting and IT services for the global aviation industry. "More than 350 customers worldwide rely on the know-how of our IT specialists. Accordingly, Lufthansa Systems' cloud strategy is based on reliability, service, and ease of use. HCP Vault offers simplicity at the touch of a button, said Steffen Wagner, senior enterprise architect, Lufthansa Systems. Its proven and reliable service offers hosting options for EU-based companies and relieves clients of the hassle of building their cloud infrastructure. We rely on HCP Vault and Terraform Cloud for Business and look forward to scaling up with them." paradime.io is a SaaS platform that delivers collaborative DataOps for its customers who trust paradime.io to securely store credentials for their data development environments. paradime.io uses HashiCorp Vault to securely store and safeguard access to secrets, and became interested in HCP Vault to change how they automated secrets management. "With HashiCorp Vault we are able to safely store our customers' credentials. Our team was interested in HCP Vault for the added benefits  it reduces the operational burden on our team, so we can focus on our platform and not running security infrastructure, said Yasin Zaehinger, founding backend engineer, paradime.io. Integrating with HCP Vault is simple and straightforward. Robust authentication and secret injection with Kubernetes pods, detailed audit logs on usage patterns, along with managed clusters give us an enterprise-ready solution, without having to maintain clusters, manage upgrades, or worry about downtime. The power and flexibility of Vault, along with the strength of the brand and community awareness, allows us to integrate Vault as a trusted component of our platform and partner with HashiCorp and their in-house knowlede and expertise, without needing to manage everything ourselves."



HCP Vault  Partner Ecosystem

Snowflake, MongoDB, Refactr, and Appagaeis are each HCP Vault launch day partners, with integrations available today. Each solution was verified and approved by HashiCorp. The Snowflake Secrets Engines is an official plugin that lets organizations manage and control access for Snowflake database users programmatically in Vault.

The MongoDB Atlas Secrets Engine is an official plugin, which enables organizations to manage and control access for MongoDB Atlas database users programmatically in HCP Vault.

Refactrs DevSecOps platform has been integrated with HCP Vault, so that its secure automation pipelines can retrieve secrets at run time.

Appaegis provides a SaaS service to allow agentless access to SSH servers. Its integration uses the SSH secrets engine located in a customers HCP Vault instance for dynamic provisioning in their service. We are delighted to partner with HashiCorp as they announce the general availability of HCP Vault. MongoDB Atlas integrates with HCP Vault to provide a seamless cloud experience for deploying secure applications, said Andrew Davison, VP cloud products, MongoDB. The largest, most security-conscious organizations in the world rely on the expertise of HashiCorp and MongoDB to uphold data privacy.

HCP Vault helps to remove the barrier to entry, allowing individuals and teams to get up and running quickly, for organizations large and small and across every vertical, said Michael Fraser, co-founder and CEO, Refactr. Refactr's DevSecOps Solution Delivery Automation Platform supporting HCP Vault marks a new milestone in the Refactr-HashiCorp partnership and we look forward to continuing to enhance our joint offerings to deliver solutions that solve problems for our mutual customers. Customers are demanding that cloud security is set on day zero, says Yonghui Cheng, co-founder and CTO, Appaegis, With HCP Vault, Cloud Architects and Cloud Developers benefit from day zero readiness, offering modern cloud security to quickly secure applications, access, and data from the first moment. Appaegis Zero-Trust Isolation Access Cloud has been validated with HCP Vault to consolidate identity, access and credential management thus allowing customers to gain visibility, control and ease of management and delivering zero-day protection using zero trust on day zero. About HCP Vault

HCP Vault is a HashiCorp-managed service for secrets management and data encryption. HCP Vault includes both the open source and enterprise versions of Vault, the best-in-class security automation platform. HCP Vault secures, stores, and tightly controls access to tokens, passwords, certificates, and encryption keys for protecting secrets and other sensitive data. HCP Vault enables organizations to leverage all of the security and power of Vault without the overhead, complexity, and maintenance of managing it themselves. HCP Vault clusters fit into any workload and scale with adoption and offer flexible packaging to fit developers, teams, and organizations of different sizes, while also providing push-button deployment, fully managed upgrades, backups, and monitoring, so organizations and developers can focus on adoption and integration. The HashiCorp Cloud Platform is available with initial support on Amazon Web Services (AWS). HCP Vault Availability

HCP Vault is now generally available with hourly and annual pricing. To get started with HCP Vault visit www.hashicorp.com/cloud-platform . Supporting Materials and Getting Started

To learn more about HCP Vault, join us on Wednesday, April 7 at 9 a.m. PDT for the HashiCorp Cloud Platform Vault product announcement live stream with Armon Dadgar. Register here: https://hashi.co/2O67xAo . Blog: Announcing HCP Vault General Availability

HashiCorp Learn: Get Started with HCP Vault

Video: Introduction to the HashiCorp Cloud Platform About HashiCorp

HashiCorp is the leader in multi-cloud infrastructure automation software. The HashiCorp software suite enables organizations to adopt consistent workflows to provision, secure, connect, and run any infrastructure for any application. HashiCorps open source tools Vagrant, Packer, Terraform, Vault, Consul, Nomad, Boundary, and Waypoint are downloaded tens of millions of times each year and are broadly adopted by the Global 2000. Enterprise and managed service versions of these products enhance the open source tools with features that promote collaboration, operations, governance, and multi-datacenter functionality. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, though 85 percent of HashiCorp employees work remotely, strategically distributed around the globe. HashiCorp is backed by Bessemer Venture Partners, Franklin Templeton, Geodesic Capital, GGV Capital, IVP, Mayfield, Redpoint Ventures, T. Rowe Price funds and accounts, and True Ventures. For more information, visit hashicorp.com or follow HashiCorp on Twitter @HashiCorp . All product and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. Media & Analyst Contact

Kate Lehman

media@hashicorp.com



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NEW HAVEN  The campaign finance figures for the 2021 mayor race are rolling in.

Mayor Justin Elickers campaign raised more than $120,000 from 600 separate donors in the first quarter of 2021, which when coupled with matching funds received through the citys clean elections public financing program would give him a total of more than $160,000, he said Tuesday.

Meanwhile, potential Democratic primary challenger Karen DuBois-Walton raised nearly $70,000 from more than 400 donors in the first 23 days since announcing that she had formed an exploratory committee for a possible run against her fellow Democrat.

Both sides immediately sought to show, in dueling statements, that their fundraising indicates overwhelming interest from supporters.

The first-quarter filing period ended March 31. Campaign finance reports are due to the State Elections Enforcement Commission by Saturday.

Our team is still putting the finishing touches on our first campaign finance report, but I just received the preliminary numbers from them, and I wanted to share them with you right away, Elicker said in an email to supporters.

Elicker, who defeated incumbent former Mayor Toni Harp in both a Democratic primary and the general election in 2019, announced his bid for reelection Jan. 21.

DuBois-Walton, president and CEO of the New Haven Housing Authority - Elm City Communities, announced the formation of an exploratory committee for a possible run for mayor March 8.

Her campaign said Tuesday in a statement that she had raised $69,652, saying that the figures break a ten-year record  even if they fell well short of what the Elicker campaign raised. The amount represented a fundraising milestone not achieved since 2011, the statement said.

These figures, in just three weeks, are nearly double what the 2019 mayoral candidates raised in the first month of their campaigns, it said.

DuBois-Walton, who launched her exploratory committee for a 2021 run for the New Haven Mayoral seat on International Womens Day, has been strategically working behind the scenes meeting with small groups of constituents to listen to community concerns and engage residents on a personal level, the statement said.

The speed with which the DuBois-Walton exploratory committee has reached this fundraising milestone is evidence that New Haven is primed for a debate on new leadership, it said.

Were so honored and proud to receive this kind of widespread support while still exploring a run, DuBois-Walton said. This level of excitement and engagement shows just how ready New Haven is for new leadership.

As I continue to explore a run for mayor, well continue to work to ensure that folks all across this city get a chance to express what theyre looking for from their citys government and commit to identify new ways to ensure our citys leadership works for and with the community it serves, she said in the statement.

The contributions, which exploratory committee Treasurer Donald McAulay said ratify the desire for the conversation about new leadership, came from all 30 city wards, with 17 percent of them being less than $50, 36 percent coming from New Haven proper and 83 percent coming from Connecticut.

DuBois-Waltons largest donation was $375 and the average donation was $171.98, the campaign said.

Elicker said in an interview Tuesday that 70 percent of his donations came from New Haven residents.

Its clear that so many New Haven residents donating to our campaign is a strong indicator that people are excited in the direction that the city is headed and its response to the COVID 19 epidemic and everything that has happened in the last year, Elicker said.

He said in the email, I want to say thank you. You stepped up when we needed you most and helped put this campaign in a very strong position out of the gate.

... This is going to be a long campaign and weve got a lot of work to do in the coming weeks and months, but you stepped up and built a strong foundation, Elicker said.

mark.zaretsky@hearstmediact.com
A Yerevan judge presiding over the two-year trial of Kocharian and three other former officials made the decision on Tuesday ten days after the charges were declared unconstitutional by Armenias Constitutional Court.

The high court argued that they cannot be prosecuted for the alleged overthrow of the constitutional order because there was no such article in the countrys former Criminal Code which was in force during the events of March 2008.

I can say that I am very upset with the processes that have taken place, Badasian told reporters when asked to comment on the development.

Badasian declined to comment on the future of the long-running criminal case on the worst street violence in Armenias history. He said it is up to prosecutors to decide whether to appeal against the decision made by Anna Danibekian, a judge of the Yerevan court of first instance.

The minister implied that the decision may have been made possible by the current Armenian authorities failure to radically reform the judiciary and vet all judges.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian demanded a mandatory vetting of all Armenian judges in May 2019 just days after another judge, who initially presided over Kocharians trial, freed the ex-president from custody and questioned the legality of the coup charges. Pashinians government subsequently agreed to refrain from such a purge of the judiciary at the urging of European legal experts.

The prime minister has repeatedly stated that law-enforcement authorities have identified those responsible for the March 2008 deaths of eight opposition protesters and two police servicemen in vicious street clashes between security forces and demonstrators. His critics dispute that claim.

Kocharian and the other defendants deny responsibility for the bloodshed and reject the accusations as politically motivated.
EDINBURGH, Scotland, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Stampede, the Scottish hospitality software startup, today announced the launch of its Prep Starts Now campaign, with support from Visit Scotland and more than ten hospitality / tech organisations including Flipdish, Yoello, Trail and TP-Link. The campaign gives hospitality businesses access to many of the digital tools and services they need to reopen successfully during each post-lockdown stage, with partners offering free use of their services or significant discounts.

The aim of the campaign is to help businesses in the hospitality and travel sectors reopen with confidence and future-proof. It offers the advice, guidance, support, tools and tech these businesses need to grow and recover without leaning on large technology platforms like Deliveroo and Uber Eats, which take profits away from the hospitality sector. For example, the services available via Prep Starts Now will help businesses create online menus, launch click & collect services, add takeaway, loyalty programmes and create engaging digital marketing content. The campaign also provides support on difficult reopening issues like hospitality recruitment and health and safety.

In 2020, Stampede released footfall data based on 18 million hospitality customer interactions, demonstrating how slowly customers returned to hospitality venues post-lockdown  link. This was also a key driving force behind the campaign, ensuring businesses could prepare earlier, open more successfully and welcome more people back to their business.

"We saw when British hospitality businesses reopened in the summer of 2020, that they can't be turned on and off like a tap. It took a long time for footfall and income to return to anywhere near normal levels," said Patrick Clover, Stampede CEO and founder. "The Prep Starts Now campaign enables hospitality businesses to prepare better and recover faster. Meanwhile, it's also our aim to help hospitality businesses stand on their own two feet, without platforms like Uber and Google, which hurt the industry as much as they help it. It's important that venues keep more of their profits and stay in control of their customer relationships, so that they can grow on their own terms. Many hospitality and travel businesses started the digitisation process last year out of necessity. They had to reopen in a certain way and be a certain kind of business, but this time they've had more time to prepare and now they can reopen as the business they want to be moving forward."

Notes for editors

See below for a list of Prep Starts Now partners, as well as supporting quotes from these businesses. For more information on these business and the various partner offers available, see the Prep Starts Now homepage https://stampede.ai/prep-start-now/

Stampede

80 DAYS

Big Flavour

Flipdish

For-Sight

Hotel Benchmark

Pour

Private House Stays

StoreKit

Trail

TP-Link UK

Travel Tech for Scotland

Yoello

Visit Scotland

Xpressjobs

Allan Nelson For-Sight CEO & Co-founder  "Prep Starts Now is a great initiative to help the industry make the most of the opportunity as we reopen, both immediate and long term. Now is the time to prepare and to start engaging with your guests in a meaningful and personalised way. With an inflated staycation market this year, there exists a real opportunity for hospitality businesses to not only welcome these guests now, but to build loyalty and create new opportunity for the future.

"We believe that data is going to be central to helping the industry recover. With innovative technologies and a focus on data as a key business asset enabling strategic decisions, the industry can look ahead to a strong and sustainable recovery."

Cassie Bouverie, Private House Stays Founder and CEO  "After months of uncertainty, property owners are ready to welcome back guests, and we are delighted to part of the #PrepStartsNow campaign. Suppose you are tired of the complicated balancing act of managing multiple bookings platforms and seeing a considerable slice of your earnings disappear into the pockets of large corporations. In that case, Private House Stays is taking on the draconian OTA's. We decided to build our own bespoke booking software where the owner is in control and able to generate bookings direct at 0% commission. With all my knowledge, tech in the 90's, B&B in the Millennium, I am aiming to educate owners how to save thousands of pounds.

Ian Martin, Pour head of product  "We joined #PrepStartsNow because it's a great hub of resources and industry expertise to support the travel and hospitality industries reopening. At pour, our ordering technology helps businesses reassure customers and keep staff safe in the short-term, while improving efficiencies and business resiliency in the long term."

Stephen Brown, Big Flavour Director  "After a difficult last 12 months, we know that the industry, now more than ever, needs help to ensure it's in the best possible position to be successful. That's why we were delighted to be a part of the Prep Starts Now campaign, to use all of our experience to help businesses get ready for the future by working together with them and this fantastic collection of companies.

Paul Wilson, Xpressjobs managing director  "Xpressjobs are delighted to be involved in this new and exciting business collaboration working under the trading banner of 'Prep Starts Now partners' .

"As a group at Xpress we believe we have a superb range of cost-effective products and services that can help meet the needs and requirements of many businesses as they plan to reopen.

About Stampede

Stampede was founded by software developer and tech entrepreneur, Patrick Clover, to enable physical venues to engage with their customers more easily and effectively, and understand them better. From the independent coffee shop to global brands with thousands of sites - Stampede provides a level of customer insight previously only available to large corporations. It offers business owners better information on their customers through improved engagement and insights into consumer habits.

The company has grown rapidly and has served more than four million users from over 800 locations across the UK, Europe, US, Asia and South America.

SOURCE Stampede
Prostitutes in the city of Belo Horizonte in southeast Brazil have gone on strike for a week, demanding to be included in the group of front-line workers receiving priority coronavirus vaccines.

Thousands of sex workers in the city have been forced by pandemic-related closure of hotels -- where they rented rooms to sell their services -- to solicit for clients on the street, they say.

"We are in the front line, moving the economy and we are at risk," Cida Vieira, president of the Association of Prostitutes of Minas Gerais state, told AFP. "We need to get vaccinated."

Vieira and other women held a protest Monday in a street lined with shuttered hotels where they used to ply their trade, waving placards declaring: "Sex workers are professionals" and "Sex work and health."

"We are part of the priority group because we deal with various types of people and our lives are at risk," said Lucimara Costa, one of the protesting prostitutes.

The government has prioritized health workers, teachers, the elderly, indigenous people and people with underlying health conditions for the first vaccination round.

It hopes to vaccinate these priority groups, some 77 million people, in the first half of 2021, but experts say this may drag into September due to the shortage of doses.

"We are a priority group, we are health educators, peer educators. We form part of that group, since we give information about STIs for men, distribute condoms..." said Vieira.

Like the rest of Brazil, Minas Gerais state has been battling a second pandemic wave, but the number of deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, at 121, is among the lowest in the country.

The Covid-19 pandemic has claimed more than 332,000 lives in Brazil, a toll second only to the United States.

mel/js/mlr/caw
|

Update (April 7, 2021):

The fight for campus access for faith-based student groups scored another legal victory this week.

A district court judge ruled on Monday that Wayne State University violated the First Amendment with a 2017 decision that temporarily denied InterVarsity Christian Fellowship its status as a student group over the chapters requirement that its leaders be Christian.

Wayne States nondiscrimination policy, according the 83-page opinion by Robert Cleland, violated plaintiffs rights to internal management, free speech, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, and free exercise as a matter of law.

The judge ruled that the First Amendment protects religious organizations rights to select their own ministers, and that the InterVarsity chapters student leaders qualified as ministers. While InterVarsity is open to all students, it asks leaders to sign a statement of faith.

Cleland also agreed with InterVarsitys argument that the school selectively applied its nondiscrimination policy, since other organizations also had specific requirements for their leaders.

The decision comes three years after Wayne State allowed InterVarsity to regain its recognition as a campus group and only resulted in a $1 in symbolic damages. In a statement to Detroit News, the university challenged the decision to pursue litigation when InterVarsity had already been granted everything it requested in a timely manner.

The ruling, though, stands to benefit other student groups or chapters at other schools by underscoring the importance of fair treatment and religious freedom. Lori Windham, who represented InterVarsity as senior counsel at Becket, said, The law is crystal clear: universities cant kick religious student groups off campus just because they choose leaders who share their faith.

When they get kicked off campus or pursue legal challenges, it may be evangelicals who make the headlines because we have the resources, InterVarsitys external relations director Greg Jao told CT last year, but the resulting First Amendment protections also help minority faith groups who lose out because of the same policies. We should be standing there with the Sikh groups, the Hindu groups those who are most vulnerable.

The US Department of Education enacted a final rule late last year prohibiting public colleges and universities from discriminating against religious student organizations over their beliefs, practices, policies, speech, membership standards, or leadership standards and clarified their right to official recognition, facility usage, and funding alongside other groups.

-------

Original post (March 9, 2018): Just two days after InterVarsity Christian Fellowship filed a lawsuit against Wayne State University, the Detroit school decided to let the chapter regain its official status on campus once againone of the quickest initial victories in a string of legal battles over Christian groups at public colleges.

Last year, InterVarsity lost its recognition as a student group at Wayne State, the third-largest school in Michigan, over requirements that its leaders affirm the organizations Christian beliefs. The school viewed the belief requirement as a violation of its nondiscrimination policy.

InterVarsity sued on Tuesday, claiming religious discrimination; other student groups allowed on campus similarly ask leaders to share certain core values. Wayne State ultimately re-certified the student ministry on Thursday.

Were so glad that Wayne State is letting us back on campus, said Cristina Garza, former president and current member of Wayne States InterVarsity chapter, which dates back 75 years and is one of the oldest in the country. We hope the school will make this change permanent, so no other students have to go through what weve been through over the last six months.

InterVarsity is all too familiar with the fight for campus access, having lost then regained its place on 19 Cal State campuses in 2014 and 2015 due to the schools all comers policy, which requires school-sanctioned groups to open membership eligibility to all students and leadership positions to all members. Such a policy also led to InterVarsity getting forced off Vanderbilt Universitys campus a few years before.

Across more than 1,000 chapters at 687 college campuses, InterVarsity opens membership to all students, and about a quarter of participants are not-yet-Christian, the ministry reports. However, InterVarsity continues to require its student leaders to be Christians and to affirm its core beliefs.

The Wayne State saga comes weeks after similar issues at other major universities. Last month, Harvard put a Christian group on a year-long probation for asking a student in a same-sex relationship to leave the organization.

We reject any notion that we discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation in our fellowship, the leaders of Harvard College Faith and Action stated. Broadly speaking, the student in this case was removed because of an irreconcilable theological disagreement pertaining to our character standards.

Becket, a religious liberty advocacy group which represented InterVarsity in the Wayne State suit, also helped a Christian group regain its status at the University of Iowa earlier this year.

Business Leaders in Christ lost its place on campus over a sexual morality requirement in its faith statement, which kept a gay student from taking on a leadership role in the organization. Back in January, a judge ordered that the group be reinstated, though litigation is pending.

Baptist Press reported that the Baptist State Convention of Michigan had shifted its funding toward church plants in college towns over on-campus student groups, a strategic decision that may become a necessary move if campus access issues continue.

Our religious liberty and our opportunity to share as openly as we have in the past at colleges and universities is under attack, said Tim Patterson, executive director of Michigan Baptists. Baptists have to rethink how we do ministry on campus because the campus has changed.

Evangelicals themselves are largely split on nondiscrimination regulations at public universities, with 51 percent in favor of allowing belief requirements for student leaders and 44 percent opposed, LifeWay Research found in 2015.

Americans overall are open to exemptions for groups with religious convictions on sexual morality. More than two-thirds (68%) of Americans say public universities shouldnt only fund religious groups if they allow gay or lesbian leaders, according to the survey.

Recent nondiscrimination policies at college campuses have increasingly brought faith groups under scrutiny, but as CT has reported, the issue of campus access has a long history:

Even before the Christian Legal Society (CLS) narrowly lost its 2010 Supreme Court case protesting the Hastings School of Laws all comers policy, universities were struggling to find a balance between religious freedom and anti-discrimination . As far back as 1997, Grinnell College in Iowa banned InterVarsity because of its unwillingness to select a noncelibate gay leader. Later, several schools including Tufts University, Rutgers, and the University of North Carolina (UNC) also derecognized InterVarsity because requiring leaders to be Christians violated the schools anti-discrimination codes. UNC reversed its decision just weeks later; Rutgers settled out of court; and Tufts reinstated InterVarsity but later reversed it. InterVarsity recently lost campus access at SUNY Buffalo and Bowdoin College as well.

Its good that Wayne State saw the light after it felt the heat, said Lori Windham, senior counsel at Becket. This kind of official religious discrimination should never happen again.
To speak, or not to speak? Alan Tudge is once again worried about free speech on campus, fretting that left activists have forgotten what freedom of speech means.

Hes right to be concerned: as Minister for Education and Youth, its his portfolio. But he seems to have forgotten that the right not to speak is also a fundamental civil liberty. The non-speakers in question are the editors of Honi Soit, the University of Sydneys eminent student newspaper.

Federal Minister for Education Alan Tudge. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

On March 29, they published an article exposing the links between two Sydney professors and Chinese government-sponsored technology transfer programs. But a few hours later, the article was pulled off the newspapers website. Luckily, the article at the centre of this controversy can still be read online. Hurrah for the internet.

China, universities, suppression of free speech: cue the conspiracy theories. But there seems no reason to doubt the sincerity of the newspapers student editors, who deny coming under any outside pressure to retract the article. Instead, they say they were concerned about escalating Sinophobia and racism and felt a duty as student journalists to actively combat Western imperialist and xenophobic biases presented in mainstream media.
Ancient bone tools found in northern Western Australia are changing long-held scientific beliefs about Aboriginal culture.

The tools were discovered at Riwi Cave in Mimbi country in the Kimberley region.

They've been radiocarbon dated at more than 35,000 years old and are among the oldest discovered in Australia.

Ancient bone tools found in northern Western Australia are changing long-held scientific beliefs about Aboriginal culture

Bone tools of this age were previously thought to be confined to the cold southern regions of Australia and Tasmania, archaeologist Sue O'Connor told AAP.

'But these sites in the Kimberley have amazing preservation of bone,' she said.

'They've really changed our perspective.'

Four of the bone tools were found in layers dating to between 35,000 and 46,000 years ago.

They were likely used for a range of activities at the site, including as jewellery, making reed baskets and plant fibre fishing nets, and hunting.

Prof O'Connor said they may have also been used to make clothing out of animal skins to protect against the cold, challenging earlier assumptions such tools were only found in cooler southern climates.

Archaeologist Michelle Langley said the find showed bone tools had been used for at least 45,000 years by the Mimbi people.

'We previously assumed bone tools weren't widely used in northern Australia and only made it into the toolkit in the last 20,000 years,' she said.

The tools were discovered at Riwi Cave (pictured) in Mimbi country in the Kimberley region

'These tools show that wasn't the case.'

Dr Langley said it was likely the tools had always been used and archaeologists hadn't previously found them because they had broken down in the tough northern Australian climate.

Archaeologist Jane Balme said the tools showed the importance of organic materials in the early technologies of First Nations people.

'They provide a window into a greater diversity of activities undertaken by people than are revealed by stone artifacts alone,' she said.

The research is published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology on Thursday.

A team of scientists from Griffith University, The University of Western Australia and The Australian National University contributed to the study.
The 2020 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examination results will be released in two weeks.

This is according to Education CS Prof George Magoha who on Tuesday said that the marking of multiple choice papers was complete with English Composition and Kiswahili Insha papers ongoing.

We had a schedule and in the next two weeks, the results will be out, Magoha said in Kisumu.

At the same time, the Education Cabinet Secretary cautioned school heads and education officers saying a few of them were playing with the examination papers after taking them from the containers.

I want to give you a heads up that there are few of us playing around with the examination papers after taking them from the examination containers and its unfortunate, he said.

Further, Magoha observed that some people were circulating fake examination papers and urged invigilators to be extra careful.

You are aware of the circulation of fake papers by some group and these people you know them and should be ignored, the CS said.

We shall keep updating you on the progress, and we shall keep sharing any events that we find necessary, he added.
Chennai, April 7 : Australia all-rounder Glenn Maxwell says he is not overly worried about his performances at this year's India Premier League (IPL) and instead wants to focus on having a positive influence on his new franchise, Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB), in any way possible.

RCB bought Maxwell for Rs 14.25 crore at the mini-auction ahead of this season.

"I probably don't set targets. I just want to have a positive influence on the group, whether it be [through] my performance, or attitude or the way I even help with the fielding practice -- if I see improvement in the whole squad, the whole team as a collective, over the tournament," Maxwell said on the Royal Challengers Bangalore's YouTube channel.

"Obviously, we want to win the tournament, but I want to make sure that everything I do during this time has a positive influence on the group.

"So, I am not overly concerned. I think my performances will take care of themselves. I want to have a positive influence on everything I do, as far as attitude, helping out the team, leadership-wise helping out [skipper] Virat [Kohli] when he needs it, and off the field, at training, and making sure the young guys are still developing as well," he added.

Maxwell has toured India a lot. He travelled with the Indian team and has also played the IPL. Last year, he couldn't do well with the bat and was, therefore, released by Punjab Kings.

"And with my experience -- I think it's my 22nd trip to India -- you've got to be able to sort of help out the rest of the group. A guy like Kyle Jamieson - this is his first trip to India - so we're on different ends of the spectrum a little bit there. So for me to sort of pass on my previous experiences, and help him sort of fit in here trying different foods, making sure that I'm taking care of him that way as well. And it's up to the experienced guys in the squad to help," he added.

Latest updates on IPL 2021
March the Month for Prostate Cancer UK - with a radio!

Tom Read M1EYP, a keen SOTA activator from Macclesfield, has been finding alternative ways to get his walking + amateur radio fix during the Covid-19 Lockdown in England from January to March. With driving out to countryside parking spots not allowed, or, at best, socially unacceptable, Tom has been devising walking routes from his home QTH front door!

He came up with over 40 routes in the Macclesfield area, ranging from easy 5 mile strolls, to strenuous 20 mile treks! They were made available, fully illustrated and described on his website: http://tomread.co.uk/lockdown_walks.htm

These became very popular with local walking groups, and indeed with the local amateur radio community. Tom and other licensed amateurs would take their handheld transceivers out with them on these walks and communicate with each other while out, comparing notes and route information. A lot of this traffic took place on 2 metres using C4FM (simplex) mode, which has surged in popularity in East Cheshire in recent months. The GM (Group Monitor) feature on Fusion radios was useful in seeing, at a glance, which other local amateurs were out walking or monitoring from their shacks at any given time. Discussions have started as to the possibility of setting up a 70cm Fusion repeater in the area to enhance the coverage for these "Licensed Lockdown Walkers"!

In March, Tom took part in "March the Month for Prostate Cancer UK". This challenge was to walk a minimum of 11,000 steps each day in March, the 11K figure representing the number of lives lost to the disease every year in the UK. Tom managed to achieve this, and "went out big" on the final day of the month by walking 26km, overnight, from his home in Macclesfield to the school in Leek where he works as a maths teacher!

The route followed public footpaths, canal towpaths and disused railway lines, and even passed over a SOTA (Summits on the Air) summit - The Cloud G/SP-015 (on the Cheshire-Staffordshire border)! From this peak, Tom called "CQ SOTA" at 4am local time (0300z) and, remarkably, recorded eight 2m FM QSOs in his logbook! Even more remarkably, one of these was a summit-to-summit contact with Martin Shakeshaft M7BIA, who was activating Gun G/SP-013 (Staffordshire Moorlands) at the same time!

At the time of writing, Tom has raised a total of 1670 for the "March the Month for Prostate Cancer UK" appeal, but the Just Giving page will remain open until June 2021 for any further donations. The link is on Tom's Lockdown Walks webpage given above.



Tom Read M1EYP
AUSTIN, Texas, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Peak Rock Capital LLC ("Peak Rock" or "the Firm"), a leading middle-market private investment firm, today announced the final closing of Peak Rock Capital Fund III LP and its parallel funds (collectively, "Fund III" or the "Fund"). Fund III substantially exceeded its target of $1.3 billion and was over-subscribed, closing at its hard cap on $2.0 billion of limited partner commitments. Peak Rock's predecessor fund, Fund II, closed on $1.3 billion of commitments in 2017 and its inaugural fund closed on over $700 million in 2013.

Fund III will continue Peak Rock's successful strategy of focusing on making investments in middle-market companies where Peak Rock can support senior management to drive rapid growth and profit improvement through operational and strategic initiatives. Peak Rock has developed a particular expertise in corporate carve-outs and partnering with families and founders seeking first-time institutional capital. Peak Rock's flexible capital and highly experienced team allow the Firm to close transactions with exceptional speed and provide certainty of close to stakeholders. Peak Rock maintains its focus on companies with resilient demand drivers, especially those within the consumer, industrial, technology and healthcare sectors.

Anthony DiSimone, Chief Executive Officer of Peak Rock, said, "We are greatly appreciative of the overwhelming support from our existing investors and new investors to our Peak Rock family. We are honored by the quality, sophistication and diversification of the limited partners who continue to entrust us with their capital. The closing of Fund III, at its hard cap, is an endorsement of our team's ability, through hundreds of transactions and various economic cycles, to significantly grow and fundamentally improve businesses across North America and Europe. We look forward to continuing to work hard for our limited partners and driving further success for all our stakeholders."

Ralph DeBernardo, Principal and Head of Investor Relations, added, "We would like to thank all of our limited partners for the confidence they have placed in our team, as well as the speed and efficiency with which they made their commitments even in the midst of a global pandemic. Our completely virtual fundraise and strong investor demand across some of the most sophisticated institutional limited partners in the world, is a result of years of hard work and execution by the Peak Rock team."

Steve Martinez, President of Peak Rock commented, "We would like to thank our colleagues in the investment banking, financial advisory, legal and lending communities for their tremendous support over the years. We look forward to building and expanding these relationships as we grow Peak Rock's portfolio and convert the active pipeline of opportunities ahead."

Fund III's investor base is broadly diversified and is comprised of many of the world's largest and most sophisticated limited partners, including public and private pensions, sovereign wealth funds, endowments, foundations, insurance companies, asset managers and their leading consultants. The investment period for Fund III is expected to commence shortly.

John Muno and Kevin Wessel from Kirkland & Ellis LLP served as legal counsel in the formation of the Fund.

ABOUT PEAK ROCK CAPITAL

Peak Rock Capital is a leading middle-market private investment firm that makes equity and debt investments in companies in North America and Europe. Peak Rock's equity investment platform focuses on opportunities where it can support senior management to drive rapid growth and profit improvement, with expertise in corporate carve-outs and partnering with families and founders seeking first-time institutional capital. Peak Rock's credit platform invests across capital structures, with a broad mandate to provide flexible, tailored capital solutions to middle-market and growth-oriented businesses. Peak Rock's real estate platform makes equity and debt investments in small to mid-sized real estate assets in attractive, growing geographies. Peak Rock's principals have deep expertise in complex situations and crossborder transactions, with the ability to close transactions quickly where speed and certainty are priorities. For further information about Peak Rock Capital, please visit www.peakrockcapital.com.

Investor Contact:

Ralph DeBernardo, Principal & Head of Investor Relations

(512) 765-6520

Media Contact:

Daniel Yunger

Kekst CNC

(212) 521-4800

[email protected]

SOURCE Peak Rock Capital
Local, seasonal, Italian-inspired. Before you go, you already know tropes that will be in play: rustic, dried flowers on brick; hazy Hudson River farmhouse. In the flesh, though, its charming, with a flower stall overflowing in the middle of the dining room, buckets of frothy, paper-wrapped bouquets and a chalkboard pricing ranunculus, anemones and poppy pods by the stem.

Servers glide among the quiet guests; payment is tableside via Euro-style chip-and-PIN. Were struck by how smooth and pre-COVID it all feels  yes, in spite of the masks, a patio tent heated for those still dining outside even on chilly upstate days and squat potted firs that fill gaps between socially distanced tables. The vibe is smooth, though those of us in window banquettes share a view of two tipsy guests selecting thistles and teasal stalks who fall over. Another slips on her way in. I determine not to be next on my way out the door.

The short story is that Feast & Floret executes farm chic very well. Much has been written about the 19th-century blacksmiths shop and carriage house that until last fall was home to Fish & Game, the celebrated upstate restaurant by James Beard Award-winning chef Zakary Pelaccio and his chef-wife, Jori Jayne Emde. Without Pelaccio and Edme, the Feast & Floret partners  building owner Patrick Milling-Smith; his wife, Lavinia; and restaurateur Jason Denton  are taking a softer approach.

The taxidermy is out, fresh flowers are in; the open-fire spit where Pelaccio roasted fat-dripping meats is a cozy fireplace once again, and the manila paper menu, organized around house-made pastas and loosely Italian inspo, falls into short categories: antipasti and salad, grains and pasta, vegetables, meat and fish. Proteins are steak, chicken, pork and trout, with an octopus tentacle for flair. Alongside, a readable, juicy wine list checks all the boxes, from a baller three-digit Barolo to a clutch of bottles under 50 bucks. And save room at meals end for an entire page of digestivi  amari, grappi, sherries and ports.

Elsewhere, Denton has described the kitchen in democratic terms, lacking a head chef. (After this was published, he sent word that the kitchen is being overseen by Amelia Telc, who has been a pastry chef and private chef in New York City for the past decade.) I suspect simplicity benefits the line, with quick-to-prep plates like housemade sourdough with ricotta and honey and a classic white bean and Pecorino Italian mezze. But Im taken by bold pairings. Mint brightens sherry-brown butter in a salad where watermelon radishes in pencil-shaving frills cuddle pink and white cousins simply halved, their green Folie Bergere tops intact.

I happen to know from outside conversations that the heritage pork is no longer from Fish & Game supplier Climbing Tree Farm, but Hudson is awash in farm producers, and our server calls the steelhead trout and produce local. Honey for sale on the menu is from the Milling-Smiths farm, as, presumably, is the honeycomb in a flavor trifecta with pickled carrots on a cured-meat plate.

Food pops out quickly as we sip cocktails. My guests vodka-based Tainted Lady with ginger, pink peppercorn and hibiscus is as fruity and thirst-quenching as Jamaican sorrel; From Manhattan to Hudson, a twist on a stiff rye Manhattan, is softened with rose-petal syrup. Petals and florals abound.

Truffled egg toast is an upscale riff on egg-in-a-basket, with melted Fontina cheese framing a leaky egg yolk on crustless toast, shaved truffles on top, asparagus beneath. Its fabulous  something youll run home and whip up. Robert Sietsema, the dining critic for Eater, recalls Dentons 1998 Greenwich Village wine bar, where Sietsema first had it, but those new to the dish will discover the asparagus are not criss-crossed spears but inch-long bites. Five to be precise, tucked under the edge. Cmon, give us toast-bearing lengths; for $16, make it an entire raft.

Plates are pretty. In the squid-ink soprese, tender white squid glows against the black, floppy-brimmed pasta. Theres surprising sweetness and vinegar tang where we expected salty sausage 'nduja. Its gone too soon. At the end, a pavlova meringue inset with mascarpone and poached rhubarb is a delicate scene, and moist olive oil cake with poached cherries and fresh cheese is a superb win.

The folks at Feast & Floret like Italian names but most are bitter greens like spigarello, a relative of broccolini, with heat and umami from Aleppo pepper and shallot confit. While my guests steelhead trout rides a swoosh of aioli beside a shaved fennel and torn orange nest, the spigarello is a $10 a-la-carte side for a thick, wood-fired pork chop boasting a seared crust and salty strip of fat, but is disappointingly dry. I saw through two-thirds, pairing a succulent German pinot noir trocken and smear two cipollini onions roasted spreadably soft. Alongside are three tiny pickled peppers  Basque Guindillas, Im sure  arranged like a claw.

I'm gently irked Pelaccio's legacy still looms large as critics traipse back in pondering how Feast & Floret will set itself apart and connecting dots to former New York City days. The main drag of Warren Street, like so many Hudson rivertowns, is awash in transplanted downstate chefs, bartenders and restaurateurs, and at some point the local editions have to stand on their own, forebears notwithstanding. Feast & Floret does, setting its own pace with an identity sufficiently casual for day-to-night cheese and wine, pasta and affogata, cocktails and steak. Relaxed enough to house a florist: less alchemy, more farmhouse chic. Not cheap, for sure  $200 for two, with four drinks but before before tip. While Denton may have moved upstate, a peek in the side alley kitchen door reveals a crew of young women chefs running the show.

Susie Davidson Powell is a British freelance food writer in upstate New York. Follow her on Twitter, @SusieDP
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 20:59:53|Editor: huaxia

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Photo taken on April 7, 2021 shows the first batch of 50-meter rails for the Jakarta-Bandung High Speed Railway (HSR) delivered to the track-laying base of the Tegal Luar Electric Multiple Units (EMU), in the suburb of Bandung, West Java of Indonesia. The first batch of 50-meter rails of the Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway (HSR) was transported to the track-laying base on Wednesday, the railway's operator said. (Xinhua/Zulkarnain)

JAKARTA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The first batch of 50-meter rails of the Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway (HSR) was transported to the track-laying base on Wednesday, the railway's operator said.

The rails departed from Central Java province's port city Cilacap on Tuesday and passed through Indonesia's existing railway line before arriving at the Tegal Luar Electric Multiple Units (EMU) Depot on the outskirt of West Java province's capital Bandung on Wednesday afternoon.

A statement released by KCIC, a joint venture consortium between Chinese and Indonesian state-owned firms that runs the 142.3-km HSR, said the freight created conditions for the next step of rail welding and laying, as well as provided strong support for accelerating the construction of the project, KCIC added.

KCIC said the first batch of rails, made in southwest China's Panzhihua city, was shipped to Cilacap by sea from port of Fangchenggang city in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in December last year.

It said the arrival marks the rail transport channel from Panzhihua to the project site in Tegal Luar and lays a solid foundation for the early completion and opening of Jakarta-Bandung HSR.

KCIC and Indonesia's state-owned railway operator PT Kereta Api Indonesia and related construction units held delivery and receiving ceremonies at the Cilacap port and track laying base respectively.

With a speed of 350 km per hour, the high-speed railway will cut the journey between Jakarta and Bandung, the capital of West Java province, from more than three hours to around 40 minutes. Enditem
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has asked all banks and non-banks to refund interest-on-interest to all borrowers for the six month moratorium period that ended on 31 August 2020.

The central bank also clarified that asset classification of borrower accounts by all lending institutions following the judgment by Supreme Court should continue to be governed by the extant instructions as per following:

For borrowers who did not avail the moratorium, banks must follow extant income recognition and asset classification norms.

For accounts which availed moratorium, lenders must remove the period between 1st March to 31 August 2020 for asset classification.

For the period commencing 1 September 2020, lenders must follow asset classification as per extant norms.

The notification further added that all lending institutions must immediately put in place a board-approved policy to refund or adjust the interest on interest charged to the borrowers during the moratorium period, i.e. 1st March to 31 August 2020 as per the Supreme Court judgement.

Last month, the Supreme Court barred banks from charging interest on interest or penal interest on any borrower during the loan moratorium period. It says, "...there should be no interest on interest or penal interest on the instalments which were due during the loan moratorium period from 1st March to 31 August 2020 on any borrower, irrespective of the loan amount. If such interest has already been collected, it should either refunded to the borrower or adjusted towards the next instalments."

RBI says, In order to ensure that the above judgement is implemented uniformly in letter and spirit by all lending institutions, methodology for calculation of the amount to be refunded or adjusted for different facilities shall be finalised by the Indian Banks Association (IBA) in consultation with other industry participants and bodies, which shall be adopted by all lending institutions.

Borrowers who availed working capital facilities during the moratorium, whether they availed moratorium or not, should also receive refunds or adjustment. Lenders must disclose the aggregate amount of interest-on-interest refunded or adjusted by them in their financial statements for FY21, RBI says in a notification.
The National Vaccination Plan against coronavirus (COVID-19), covering the period until December 31, 2021, provides for the expansion and enhancement of the status of the vaccination "roadmap," which was developed by the Health Ministry, Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal said during a government meeting on April 7.

According to the Cabinet of Ministers press service on Wednesday, the government heard a report from Health Minister Maksym Stepanov on the National Vaccination Plan against COVID-19 by the end of 2021.

According to the prime minister, the updated document was drafted in pursuance of the presidential decree and the relevant decision of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC).

"The document will make it possible to speed up the process of vaccination against coronavirus in our country," Shmyhal said.

He also said that on April 6, a contract was announced with Pfizer/BioNTech to supply 10 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines.

"In general, a sufficient amount of safe vaccines has been contracted between the government and manufacturers to vaccinate everyone this year. We are talking about more than 50% of the entire adult population of Ukraine," the prime minister said.

He said the pandemic can only be overcome through mass vaccinations and through effective lockdown measures.
(Natural News) Without question, the federal governments law enforcement apparatuses are getting as bad as they were under previous Democratic regimes, such as when they killed the family of Randy Weaver and dozens of Branch Davidians during the Clinton regime.

In recent days, the FBI raided a business in Beverly Hills that rented out private safety deposit boxes under the pretense that owners were allowing criminals to stash their booty.

The business, U.S. Private Vaults, was hit by the feds last month in a raid that has already spawned one lawsuit after agents simply confiscated the property of everyone who had rented a storage box.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

When federal agents descended on a Beverly Hills strip mall last month, it took them five days to seize the contents of hundreds of safe deposit boxes inside a store called U.S. Private Vaults.

On Friday, the government revealed why it was so interested in the seemingly mundane business wedged between a nail salon and a spa: It was laundering money for drug dealers and letting them stash guns, fentanyl and stacks of $100 bills in security boxes that were rented anonymously, prosecutors alleged.

An indictment against the company by the U.S. attorney for Los Angeles accuses the firm of deliberately marketing itself to attract criminals by claiming that anyone can store anything outside of the purview of prying government eyes, and do so anonymously. In fact, in order to access their own storage boxes, customers did not need any identification  they just scanned an eye and their hand to unlock the door.

We dont even want to know your name, the business advertised, prosecutors said.

In addition, prosecutors said that one of the businesss owners and some of the employees were engaged in drug sales and trafficking at the business location itself, while helping some clients convert their cash into gold, and in amounts that did not attract any attention (apparently that didnt work).

But even before the government announced any charges, a court fight began over the constitutionality of the federal seizure of all content in every one of the safe deposit boxes. Last week, a customer filed suit claiming that the government overreached by confiscating the belongings in every security box without showing why it suspected each person of committing crimes, the L.A. Times reported.

FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration agents raided the establishment on March 22, confiscating all boxes and property within. It took several days for agents to go through all of the boxes and move the items to a nearby FBI warehouse, court papers indicated.

The warrant is still under seal  of course, because we cant have a government that operates with transparency  allowing prosecutors to argue that the judge who approved the warrant granted the sweeping seizures, the Times added.

The government seized the nests of safety deposit boxes because there was overwhelming evidence that USPV was a criminal business that conspired with its criminal clients to distribute drugs, launder money, and structure transactions to avoid currency reporting requirements, among other offenses, the prosecutors argued in court papers.

Agents reportedly found fentanyl, OxyContin, and huge stacks of $100 bills  but its the blanket seizure, the lack of transparency, and an act devoid of justification that is disturbing to civil libertarians, mostly because that is increasingly the way federal law enforcement agencies operate.

That is what the unnamed complainant is asserting, anyway.

Listed as John Doe, the unnamed customer argued in court documents that the search warrant should not have been as overly broad as it was, allowing for the seizure of currency, bullion, and jewelry kept in three of the private vaults because there wasnt any probable cause to suspect that person of committing any crime.

Just as the tenant of each apartment controls that space and therefore has a reasonable expectation of privacy in it, each of the hundreds of renters of safety deposit boxes  has a separate reasonable expectation of privacy in his or her separately controlled box or boxes, attorney Benjamin N. Gluck wrote in the complaint.

See more reporting like this at Tyranny.news.

Sources include:

LATimes.com

NaturalNews.com
The Government of the Republic of Lithuania adopted a resolution on 7th of April 2021 amending the Resolution of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania of 14th January 1997 No. 20 "On Dividends for State Owned Shares and Profit Contributions of State-Owned Companies" by addition of Article 3 1 , which provides, inter alia, that the LNG (Liquefied natural terminal) operator shall calculate the share of profits to be paid for dividends for 2020-2024 by eliminating unrealized impact of changes in foreign currency exchange rates and other amounts of unrealized gains (losses).

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.
Caldwell Teens Charged After Disturbance

By West Kentucky Star Staff

CALDWELL COUNTY - Two teens face drug and other charges following a reported disturbance Tuesday afternoon in Caldwell County.Just before 4:30 pm, Caldwell County sheriffs deputies were dispatched to the 1200 block of Farmersville Road after a report that a male and female were banging on windows and doors. A deputy located the two individuals and conducted further investigation.Nineteen-year-old Nathaniel Mart of Princeton was arrested and lodged in the Caldwell County Jail. He's charged with public intoxication controlled substance (excludes alcohol), possession of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia and failure to notify an address change to the Department of Transportation.A 15-year-old juvenile was charged with possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia.
vice-president and group general counsel, Bijoya Roy, has left the e-commerce giant to join French spirits group, Pernod Ricard, as general counsel for South Asia, according to the sources. She will take up the new role on 12th April, 2021.

Roy is an alumnus of Symbiosis Law School, Pune, and holds a postgraduate diploma in EC competition law from Kings College, London. Prior to Flipkart, Roy had led legal operations at organisations such as Tata Housing Development Company, Asian Paints, and Eastman Kodak Company.

In 2008, Roy joined media company Thomson Reuters and was later elevated as general counsel  global growth organization. In 2019, she joined and moved from Dubai to Bengaluru after US retailer acquired for $16 billion in 2018. A Flipkart spokesperson confirmed the development.

Roy is an experienced senior lawyer with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology, media and services industries. She is known for her skills in devising legal strategies to fuel sustainable business growth, negotiations and mergers and acquisitions (M&A). She also has expertise in leading global compliance initiatives and partnering with human resources and finance to create a robust corporate framework.

Roy is qualified as a Solicitor of England and Wales with a dual qualification from India. She also has the expertise in leading teams and supporting global markets spanning Europe, Asia, Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and Russia.

Roy has left Flipkart at a time when the Walmart, Inc-owned e-commerce firm is gearing up for a proposed initial public offering (IPO) this year or 2022. Flipkart had recently appointed Saroj Panigrahi, who was head of JP Morgans legal department in India, as its senior vice-president and general counsel. Panigrahi is responsible for all legal matters in Flipkart with a particular focus on board management, mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance and regulatory compliance.

Roy, who has led the legal operations of the Bengaluru-based firm since January 2019 was expected to transition into the role of vice president, head of legal for Flipkart Operations and report to Panigrahi, according to an internal email sent by Flipkart Group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy, to employees in December 2020. She will dedicate her focus towards overseeing all legal matters towards the operations across Flipkart, Myntra and Flipkart Wholesale, Krishnamurthy had said in the letter.


Two of the worlds largest electric-vehicle battery makers have hired top Washington insiders to hold near-daily meetings with the Biden administration in a battle that could affect the electrification plans of Ford and Volkswagen.

SK Innovation, Fords battery supplier for its upcoming electric F-150 pickup truck, faces a 10-year U.S. import ban on its Korean-made batteries and components after April 11. SK Innovation has engaged such well-connected advocates as former EPA chief Carol Browner and one-time Acting Attorney General Sally Yates to convince the administration to intervene.

LG Energy Solution, which won the order against its rival from the U.S. International Trade Commission for what the agency said was an extraordinary effort to destroy evidence in a trade secrets battle, has also brought in hired guns to influence the Biden team. Ernest Moniz, an Obama energy secretary, is advising Seoul-based LG Energy on its strategic plans, while other insiders are lobbying the administration.

The development of the battery supply chain is going to depend on what happens with this case, Moniz said in an interview.

Meetings are being held with at least a dozen agencies, including officials at Labor, Transportation and Energy. Talks, conducted over the internet because of the COVID-19 pandemic, have focused on climate change, electrification of vehicles, the Ford F-150 and jobs, said Browner, Bill Clintons Environmental Protection Agency chief who also served as a White House climate adviser when Biden was vice president.

Biden has until April 11 to intervene. Presidential vetoes, known formally as disapprovals, of ITC import bans are rare. The last one was in 2013, when the Obama administration overturned a U.S. import ban on some older models of Apple Inc.s iPhones and iPads in a blow to Samsung Electronics Co.

The issue is a complicated one for Biden. The president has made the promotion of EVs a cornerstone of his $2.25 trillion infrastructure plan to bolster the economy and combat climate change. Both South Korean battery makers are building plants in the U.S. that would employ thousands of American workers. At the same time, Biden cant be seen as wavering on intellectual property protection considering the long-standing U.S. dispute with China over the issue.

While every ITC import ban undergoes a presidential review, its not often that theres a meaningfully contested one, said LG Energys lawyer, David Callahan of Latham & Watkins LLP in Chicago, whos been coordinating meetings between agency officials and LG Energys senior executives.

LG Energy filed its claim against SK Innovation in April 2019 for allegedly stealing trade secrets by poaching scores of highly knowledgeable employees. Since then both companies have spared no expense to employ the services of Washington influencers. In 2020, SK Innovation spent $650,000 on its lobbying efforts and LG spent $531,666, according to data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Lobbyists for LG Energy, SK Innovation, Ford and Volkswagen have been meeting with more than a dozen agencies including Commerce, Justice and Defense departments; the EPA; the National Economic Council, and the National Security Council. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, whos designated to make the decision, has the task of assessing the information and deciding which arguments hold clout.

To lead its effort, SK Innovation has hired former ITC Chairman Shara Aranoff and Dan Spiegel, a former ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, who are both now with law firm Covington & Burling LLP. SK Innovation has also engaged Chartwell Strategy Group, a Washington advisory firm co-founded by former congressional aide Ozzie Palomo, to lobby stakeholders.

The subject matter is right at the heart of what theyve been working on, Spiegel said of the new administration.
With major funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the film IN SILICO is bringing the opportunities and challenges of "big data" neuroscience to virtual screens across North America on April 30th.

The independent documentary chronicles an audacious 10-year quest to simulate the entire human brain. IN SILICO will show through May 29th in select theaters, debuting at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Massachusetts.

The film follows neuroscientist Henry Markram who, frustrated with his field's status quo, sets out on a 10-year project to simulate the human brain on supercomputers.

Film director Noah Hutton documents his quest for 10 years, taking viewers behind the scenes of the Blue Brain project, and later the $1B Euro Human Brain Project, exposing a controversy-filled space where the scientific process meets ego and where the lines between objectivity and ambition blur.

The film includes interviews and perspectives from dozens of leading scientists, including Anne Churchland (UCLA), Christof Koch (Allen Institute for Brain Science, Seattle), and Sebastian Seung (Princeton University), Zach Mainen (Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, Lisbon), among others.

The film comes at a time in which a Silicon Valley ethos is creeping into academic neuroscience, luring scarce funding with the promise of a better brain future. IN SILICO challenges audiences to cut through the seductive brain imagery and flashy presentations to more critically evaluate brain research and technology.

We're proud to have supported the production of Noah Hutton's insightful 10-year chronicle IN SILICO, which examines the enormous promise and daunting challenges of big neuroscience and big personalities. By partnering with the Sloan-supported Science on Screen program, run by our wonderful partners at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, IN SILICO will reach a wider public, encouraging discussions about what a successful simulation of the human brain might mean for our technology and for our humanity." Doron Weber, Vice President and Program Director, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Following the film's release, the film's director and writer Hutton (LAPSIS, DEEP TIME, CRUDE INDEPENDENCE), along with filmmaker Werner Herzog, will participate in a virtual discussion made available through the Coolidge Corner Theatre. The virtual launch will kick off community screenings and panel discussions worldwide.

The film was made possible by an early grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, as well as financing from Sandbox Films, in addition to being part of the Sloan Foundation's Science on Screen grant program. It was Executive Produced by Greg Boustead and Jessica Harrop and produced by Kellen Quinn, Taylor Hess, and Jesse Miller.

"IN SILICO cuts to the heart of current debates over 'big science' while also revealing the very human and personal side of scientific exploration," says Greg Boustead at Sandbox Films. "In telling the story of one 10-year project, it reveals the fascinating ways in which ambition, ego, and showmanship can shape a scientific endeavor."

"All too often, science is portrayed as a monolithic, objective truth, rather than as a human endeavor subject to the same biases and controversies that can define anything we do, which is all the more reason we need a critical approach to cycles of hype and salesmanship," says Hutton. "The film is a call for continued research in neuroscience with an acknowledgement that there are ongoing debates about the best methods and the established truths."
Bengaluru, April 7 : Anti-Covid vaccine can be given to all employees above 45 years of age at their workplace in public and private sectors across Karnataka from April to develop immunity against the virus, said state health minister K. Sudhakar on Wednesday.

"Vaccine can be administered to beneficiaries above 45 years of age at all government and private workplaces across the state from April 11 to ramp up the drive and ensure more people develop immunity," Sudhakar told reporters here, The decision to vaccinate eligible people at workplaces was taken at a virtual review meeting Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa and Sudhakar had with deputy commissioners of Bidar, Chikkamagaluru, Chitradurga, Dakshina Kannada, Hassan, Kalaburagi, Mandya, Mysuru, Tumakur and Udupi districts across the southern state.

The Union Health Ministry allowed states to permit vaccination at workplaces in private and public sectors, where at least 100 employees are ready to take the jab so as to inoculate and immunise as many people at the earliest.

"As several IT firms urged us to allow vaccination in their premises, they can administer the dose to those ready for it," said Sudhakar, a medical doctor by profession.

According to the state health bulletin, 88,499 people were vaccinated across the state during the day. Among them 37,189 are senior citizens and 46,333 in the 45-59 age group.

"Cumulatively, 48,32,382 people received the dose since the vaccination drive was launched on January 16 across the southern state," said the bulletin.

Admitting that positivity rate was rising of late and touched 6.02 per cent on Monday before dipping to 5.56per cent on Tuesday, the minister said more testing would be conducted where positive cases were high or increasing.

Out of 1,25,390 tests conducted during the day across the state, 8,433 were through rapid antigen detection and 1,16,957 through RT-PCR.

With no let-up in the rising pandemic, 6,976 new cases were registered in a day on Tuesday, taking the state's Covid tally to 10,33,560, including 49,254 active cases.

As epi-centre of the infection, Bengaluru reported 4,991 fresh cases, taking its Covid tally to 4,60,016, including 35,789.

With 35 succumbing to the virus, including 25 in this tech city, the state's death toll rose to 12,731 since it broke out a year ago.

Case fatality rate was 0.50 per cent across the state on Tuesday.

"Though we have ramped up infrastructure over a year to treat Covid patients, we need to ensure more patients end up needing ICUs and ventilator, especially in Bengaluru where facilities are overwhelmed with more active cases and 5.56 per cent fatality rate," added Sudhakar, a medical doctor by profession.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
A DRUGS trade gilly was once convicted of taking part in the kidnapping and torture of a friend who was then killed by his father, a court heard.

Scott Knight (47), who was caught running a cannabis delivery service during the pandemic, had never recovered from his experience of being coerced by his father into his friends torture.

Knight had served a sentence for being an accessory, while his father had been convicted of murder, Dublin District Court was told.

The details of Knight's criminal past emerged when he pleaded guilty to sale or supply of cannabis in the capital last week. Knight, of MacUilliam Avenue, Tallaght, had the drug dealing case adjourned, for a probation report.

The prosecuting garda told Judge Mary Cashin he stopped the accused in a black Ford Fiesta at 5.05pm on March 31. He got a smell of cannabis and told Knight he would search him under the Misuse of Drugs Act.

The accused immediately took out bags of cannabis that he had concealed in his trousers. The drugs had a street value of 650 and he did not attempt to obstruct the garda in any way, shape or form, the court heard.

He was honest from the get go and it was accepted he was not selling it to profit for himself but was operating a supply delivery service, the garda said.

Knight did not have any trappings of wealth, his solicitor Robert Purcell said.

The court heard the accused had previous convictions for sale supply, or importing drugs abroad. The offences happened in the UK, Belgium and Germany.

You have a well-travelled client, the judge said.

The foreign offences happened when Knight was given a small amount of money to carry drugs across a border. He was a gilly and the one who gets caught, Mr Purcell said.

In the latest offence, he was arrested on his birthday and detained overnight before immediately entering a plea.

Mr Purcell said the accuseds criminal record resulted from something that happened to him in his early adulthood which he never really recovered from.

Knight was brought into a life of crime by his father, he said. The father was convicted of murdering Knights friend and Knight himself was also initially convicted of that crime.

However this was later quashed on appeal, he pleaded guilty to being an accessory and was jailed for 15 years.

Knight had been coerced by his father into the kidnapping and torture of his friend, who was killed by his father, Mr Purcell said.

Knight had never really recovered from his coerced involvement in this and his life since had been a sequence of drug use.

After his release from prison, his circumstances had been poor, he had a cocaine habit and was delivering small amounts of drugs during the pandemic. He did everything he could to assist the gardai when stopped.

Judge Cashin adjourned the case.
ROCKFORD, Ill., April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The pandemic has opened the door to a potentially unexplored and meaningful career path for parents, unemployed professionals and college students who may not have considered teaching. Kelly Education invites candidates who have a passion for learning to apply to be a substitute teacher or paraprofessional for K-12 students.

RECRUITMENT EVENT

WHERE: Rockford Public Schools District Office  Board Room 501 7th St., Rockford, IL 61104 WHEN: 9am  3pm on Wednesday, April 14, 2021 WHY: The community can play a critical role in helping the education system get back on track post-COVID. Whether a candidate is just entering the education field, has been a substitute teacher for many years, or is a retired professional who's never taught before, Kelly Education will provide thorough training to make sure employees are ready for the classroom on Day 1.

Candidates are welcome to walk-in anytime between 9am to 3pm to meet with a Kelly Representative or may schedule an appointment during one of the available timeslots by clicking on the following Calendly Link: https://calendly.com/macl896/rockford-public-schools-job-fair.

** This is a socially-distanced event. Face coverings or masks are required. **

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/573350d6-1912-4328-a599-445191166972

CONTACT: Visit www.kellyeducationjobs.com to apply online or contact Macey Lewis, Kelly Education, 815-770-5575 or MACL896@kellyservices.com. Media Contact: Anna Schryver, anna.schryver@kellyservices.com or 248-469-0522

Consider a meaningful career in your neighborhood schools. Kelly Education invites candidates who have a passion for learning to apply to be a substitute teacher or paraprofessional for K-12 students in the Rockford school district.

Source: Kelly Education
Commentators ponder the chances of the three leaders to unite most European parties to the right of the European Peoples Party after their meeting in Budapest on 1st April where they agreed to meet regularly and discuss topical issues.

On Hirklikk, veteran left-liberal journalist Andras Bano writes that many observers were disappointed by last Thursdays meeting because they had expected the three leaders to announce the birth of a new European Conservative party or at least a new group within the European Parliament.



He also criticises the Hungarian side for limiting the closing press conference to statements by the three participants, without allowing them to take questions.



On ATV, Tamas Lattmann, an expert on international law, believes Fidesz will be the main beneficiary of the new tripartite cooperation because the other two are members of parliamentary groups and thus have allies as well as positions within the European Parliament.



Since it left the European Peoples Party, Fidesz has practically no opportunity to stand up for its interests within the European Union. If the two right-wing groups and Fidesz were to unite into a new group, this would be the second-largest within the European Parliament, he remarks.



However, at present, such a union seems unlikely because of diverging interests, including contradictory attitudes towards Russia.



On Pesti Sracok, pro-government political analyst Daniel Deak interprets last Thursdays meeting in Budapest as a first step to organise a new right-wing alliance in Europe. When Fidesz left the Peoples Party in March, he writes, it was immediately clear that Prime Minister Orban would seek an alliance with Matteo Salvini and Mateusz Morawiecki. But for the moment they are only seeking closer cooperation rather than setting up a new party family.



This opinion does not necessarily represent the views of XpatLoop.com or the publisher.

Your opinions are welcome too - for editorial review before possible publication online.

Click here to Share Your Story





MTI Photo: Szilard Koszticsak
Feast your eyes on the endless red maple trees in Wudang district, Guiyang, capital of Southwest China's Guizhou province. The stunning scenery has recently attracted scores of visitors. [Photo/VCG]

Feast your eyes on the endless red maple trees in Wudang district, Guiyang, capital of Southwest China's Guizhou province. The stunning scenery has recently attracted scores of visitors. [Photo/VCG]



Feast your eyes on the endless red maple trees in Wudang district, Guiyang, capital of Southwest China's Guizhou province. The stunning scenery has recently attracted scores of visitors. [Photo/VCG]






Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 7)  The Department of Foreign Affairs has fired off another diplomatic protest over the continued presence of Chinese vessels at Julian Felipe Reef in the West Philippine Sea, marking the start of daily protests until they leave.

Firing another diplomatic protest, Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin, Jr. said over Twitter Wednesday morning. Every day till the last ones gone like it should be by now if it is really fishing."

Forty-four Chinese vessels, suspected to be maritime militia, are moored at Julian Felipe Reef, based on latest information from the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the National Task Force for the West Philippine Sea. China claims the ships are not militia but fishing vessels taking shelter from bad weather. The DFA in a statement on Monday said these are "blatant falsehoods."

Also known as Whitsun Reef, Julian Felipe is a shallow coral reef 175 nautical miles west of Bataraza town in Palawan, well within the Philippines' exclusive economic zone. It is part of Beijing's vast claims in the South China Sea, which includes areas Manila considers the West Philippine Sea.

On March 20, the task force reported spotting over 200 Chinese vessels in the area, a figure that slightly went down to 183 days later. Aerial and maritime patrols last week showed that 44 Chinese vessels are still at Julian Felipe Reef while over 200 others are dispersed in different areas in the West Philippine Sea.

The DFA first filed a diplomatic protest last March 21, followed by a demand for China to promptly withdraw its ships. In a strongly worded statement on Monday, the DFA reiterated its call for the Chinese vessels to leave and warned that it will fire off a diplomatic protest "for every day of delay."

Former Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario in a statement said the protest should convey purposeful direction.

One possible action to calibrate subsequent actions is to inform formally the United Nations through the Secretary General, Del Rosario said.

Del Rosario has been calling on the Duterte government to raise the countrys arbitral win at the United Nations in light of Chinas incursions in the West Philippine Sea. Locsin has repeatedly rejected his proposal, saying it would mean a relitigation.

In 2016, an arbitral tribunal recognized Manila's sovereign rights in its exclusive economic zone that Beijing contests, invalidating the East Asian giant's historic nine-dash line claim to almost the entire South China Sea. It also ruled that Chinas island-building activities on several reefs in the Kalayaan Island Group constitute violations to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea or UNCLOS and have caused devastating and long-lasting damage to the marine environment. China rejects the landmark ruling.

Aside from China's presence at Julian Felipe Reef, the military also spotted "illegal" man-made structures around the area, which is part of the Kalayaan Island Group in the disputed Spratlys. Lawmakers and maritime experts say the Philippines should band together with other countries to rally international pressure against China.
Brazil is facing a 'biological Fukushima' and is seeing new Covid variants every week, one of the country's leading health experts has warned.

A daily record of 4,195 deaths were registered on Tuesday, with the latest projections putting Brazil on track for 600,000 fatalities by July.

Miguel Nicolelis, who was until February leading the Covid response team for the northeast region of 60 million people, said Jair Bolsonaro is presiding over 'the largest human tragedy in Brazilian history.'

'Its a nuclear reactor that has set off a chain reaction and is out of control. Its a biological Fukushima,' Nicolelis said today, referencing the Japanese nuclear disaster triggered by a tsunami in 2011.

Paramedics transport a Covid patient to a hospital in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday. Brazil's health system is buckling under the strain of the latest virus wave, which has forced doctors into agonising decisions over which patients to give life-saving care and led cemeteries to hold nighttime burials to deal with the crush of coffins.

A daily record of 4,195 deaths were registered on Tuesday

Brazil has reported an average of 62,855 cases over the last seven days - the third highest figure in the world after India and the United States

He told the BBC: 'I think that Brazil is not just the epicentre of the pandemic worldwide, it is a threat to the entire effort of the international community to control the pandemic on the planet.

'If Brazil is not under control the planet is not going to be under control.

'We are brewing new variants every week and some of these are more infectious, more lethal and some of them are going to cross the borders to other countries in South America, Latin America and eventually the whole world.'

The country of 212 million people has registered an average of 2,757 Covid-19 deaths per day over the past week, the highest by far worldwide.

Miguel Nicolelis, a neuroscience professor at Duke University, who was until February leading the Covid response team for the northeast region of 60 million people

It has recorded 160 deaths per 100,000 people, behind countries such as the Czech Republic (254) and Britain (187) but still one of the 10 highest rates in the world.

Intensive care units are currently more than 90 percent full in 18 of Brazil's 27 states, according to public health institute Fiocruz. All but two of the rest are in the 'critical alert zone' of more than 80 percent occupancy, it said.

Experts say the surge is partly caused by a local variant of the virus known as P1 that can re-infect people who have had the original strain and is believed to be more contagious.

The government has meanwhile struggled to secure enough vaccines, at times forcing authorities to suspend immunization drives in some areas.

Nicolelis laid the blame squarely on Bolsonaro who is facing a political crisis which last Tuesday saw the three heads of the army, navy and the air force all resign.

The Duke University professor, who lives in Sao Paulo, believes that the country is on track for around 500,000 deaths by July 1, but warned that if the rate of transmission increases by just 10 per cent, this figure could rise to 600,000.

The professor said: 'The president of Brazil denied the severity and the gravity of the crisis since the beginning and from that point on, from February, 2020, he basically undermined any major national initiative to get the pandemic under control.

Countries reporting most cases and deaths CASES INDIA: 93,207 UNITED STATES: 64,778 BRAZIL: 62,855 TURKEY: 43,044 FRANCE: 36,560 DEATHS BRAZIL: 2,698 UNITED STATES: 824 INDIA: 530 ITALY: 410 POLAND: 382 *Latest 7-day average reported Advertisement

'From the beginning he didn't want to impose social isolation, lockdowns, didn't want to close the Brazilian airspace, was against the use of masks and a few months ago he basically blocked the minister of health for procuring the number of vaccines that Brazil would need to take care of about 210 million people.

'So his actions created complete chaos in the country, it's a complete calamity, it's the largest human tragedy in Brazilian history and his message was that this is something that is not important and that people should go about there lives as they used to do.'

Brazil's health system is buckling under the strain of the latest virus wave, which has forced doctors into agonising decisions over which patients to give life-saving care and led cemeteries to hold nighttime burials to deal with the crush of coffins.

'We're in a dreadful situation, and we're not seeing effective measures by either state or federal governments' to respond, said epidemiologist Ethel Maciel of Espirito Santo Federal University.

'At the rate we're vaccinating - 10 percent of the population (with a first dose) so far - the only way to slow the extremely fast spread of the virus is an effective lockdown for at least 20 days,' she told AFP.

'Unfortunately, politics has brought us where we are today: This enormous number of people who have lost their lives. Very sad.'

Medics check a patient suspected of suffering with Covid in Duque de Caxias, Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, on Tuesday

The health crisis has turned political for Bolsonaro, who flouted expert advice on containing the pandemic and now faces mounting pressure - including from allies in Congress and the business sector - to bring the situation under control.

Now on his fourth health minister of the pandemic, the far-right president overhauled much of his government last week, replacing his foreign, justice and defense ministers and naming new army, navy and air force commanders.

The move has raised concerns the president is digging in for political turmoil as he gears up to seek re-election next year.
A 22-year-old man was arrested and charged with stabbing his father to death at a Newark apartment, authorities said Tuesday.

Noah Jennings, of Jersey City, faces murder and weapons charges in the slaying of his father, 60-year-old Phillip Jennings, according to the Essex County Prosecutors Office.

Police on Friday found Phillip Jennings stabbed in his second floor apartment on Oration Street in Newark, the prosecutors office said. Officers went to the residence to check on Jennings, who was pronounced dead at the scene.

Prosecutors did not disclose a possible motive for the killing or detail what led to the charges against the mans son. The Essex County Prosecutors Office Homicide/Major Crimes Task Force continued to investigate, authorities said.

Records show Noah Jennings remained held at the Essex County jail.

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Noah Cohen may be reached at ncohen@njadvancemedia.com.
Kowal said those corporate trophy displays will be parceled out to various sites: to the sales teams new office in Renton, to the airplane delivery centers in Everett, Seattle and South Carolina, as well as to some of the companys overseas sales offices.
Toronto Centre hosts Mark Carney and Her Excellency Sri Mulyani Indrawati at virtual 2021 Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group



April 7, 2021, 09:00 A.M. (ET)

TORONTO, April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, Toronto Centre hosted Mark Carney and Her Excellency Sri Mulyani Indrawati in the panel Transitioning to a Green Economy: Financial Stability Implications, held during the 2021 Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group (WBG).

Moderated by Toronto Centre's CEO, Babak Abbaszadeh, the panelists explored the financial stability implications of transitioning to a green economy. The panelists examined how, with the right measures, this transition may be one of the greatest opportunities to reshape the global economy, to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, and to reduce poverty. They also discussed the need for collaboration by governments, policymakers, and the private sector to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and highlighted the need to make the TCFD recommendationson climate reporting mandatory. Through these discussions, the importance of proper scenario analysis and stress testing to assess firms' resilience to mitigate a climate crisis was underscored.

Mark Carney, UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, and Financial Adviser to UK Prime Minister for COP26, stated that, "For COP26, we need to build the framework so that every financial decision takes climate change into account. Central banks and supervisors will have an important role to play in this regard, issuing guidance to financial firms on climate-related reporting and risk management, conducting climate-related stress tests and disclosing the alignment of their own operations with net zero. Toronto Centre's work and this event is supporting regulators and supervisors as they work to support a smooth transition to net zero in the financial sector."

H.E. Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Indonesia's Minister of Finance added that, "This pandemic creates both challenges and opportunities to accelerate transformation towards greener and more sustainable economic development. Multilateral cooperation can facilitate financing and technology transformation needed to break the trade-off, especially for developing countries, between pursuing development goals and climate change actions."

In his closing remarks, Babak Abbaszadeh thanked the distinguished speakers for their inspiring comments and thought-provoking remarks. He commented, "There are grounds for optimism. Innovation and global cooperation are needed to transition to a green economy. Toronto Centre will be launching a climate stress toolkit for supervisors and regulators during COP26."

Panelists included:

Mark Carney (UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, and Financial Adviser to UK Prime Minister for COP26)

H.E. Sri Mulyani Indrawati (Minister of Finance, Indonesia)

LEARN MORE

www.torontocentre.org

For more information, please contact:

Diana Bird,

Communications and Special Projects Coordinator, Toronto Centre

647.993.3809 | dbird@torontocentre.org
Hyderabad, April 7 : The Telugu Desam Party's presence in the Telangana Assembly came to an end on Wednesday with both party MLAs urging Speaker Pocharam Srinivas Reddy to merge them with ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS).

Mecha Nageshwar Rao and Sandra Venkata Veeraiah called on the Speaker and submitted him a letter, requesting that the Telugu Desam Legislative Party (TDLP) be merged with the Telangana Rashtra Samithi Legislative Party (TRSLP).

While Venkata Veeraiah had already joined the TRS, Nageshwar Rao joined the ruling party on Wednesday.

Before meeting the Speaker, the two MLAs called on Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao and expressed their desire to join the TRSLP. The TRS chief reportedly responded positively to their request and welcomed them into the party.

Both the TDP MLAs also informed Legislative Affairs Minister Vemula Prashanth Reddy about their decision to merge TDLP with TRSLP.

The Assembly Secretary is likely to issue an official bulletin about the merger.

The TDP had won only two seats in 119-member Telangana Assembly in the 2018 elections. The party had won Ashwaraopeta and Satthupalli Assembly seats, both in Khammam district. However, both the MLAs have been staying away from party activities.

Venkata Veeraiah quit the TDP in March 2019 and joined the TRS.

The merger of the TDLP with the TRSLP will take TRS' strength in the Assembly to 104.

The TRS, which retained power in 2018, had won 88 Assembly seats. Later, a dozen MLAs of opposition Congress and two Independent MLAs joined it.
Rapid Insight Serves as a Sponsor for INAIR 2021 Virtual Conference We particularly appreciate opportunities to participate in regional events like INAIR. At these events, we get an on-the-ground perspective for how our tools can help higher ed data professionals with the challenges they see in their daily work.

Rapid Insight, a leading data analytics software provider with a wide presence in higher education, is sponsoring the Indiana Association for Institutional Research (INAIR) conference on April 6th and 7th, 2021.

Rapid Insight is a returning sponsor of the event, having sponsored the INAIR conference in 2020. Rapid Insight will host a virtual booth where attendees can learn more about the companys data prep, predictive modeling, and data sharing software. Rapid Insight has also sponsored the national Association for Institutional Research (AIR) meeting and is a frequent sponsor of other regional AIR meetings, including the annual conferences for the North Carolina and Northeast chapters of the organization.

Rapid Insight will co-present a session at the conference with Maggie Dalrymple, the Associate Director for Research and Analysis at Indiana State University. The session, titled Launching New Enrollment Management Initiatives with Rapid Insight, will detail how Dalrymple addressed an urgent need to improve enrollment management processes using Rapid Insights Quickstarts to expand enrollment analytics capacity quickly. The presentation will feature an overview of the reports and predictive models Dalrymple built to respond to her institutions needs. Jon Macmillan, Rapid Insights Product Manager, will co-host the presentation.

Were proud to once again sponsor and present at INAIRs conference, said Mike Laracy, Founder and President of Rapid Insight. We always enjoy partnering with AIR, and we particularly appreciate opportunities to participate in regional events like INAIR. At these events, we get an on-the-ground perspective for how our tools can help higher ed data professionals with the challenges they see in their daily work.

INAIRs 2021 event serves an important function. While many of the struggles caused by the COVID-19 pandemic were shared equally by institutions around the country, each region of the world and the country also experienced the effects of the crisis in unique ways. Bringing together institutional research professionals who work in Indiana allows for a collaborative conversation centered on state-specific issues in addition to a broader discussion of the national and global trends.

About Rapid Insight:

Rapid Insight is a leading provider of business intelligence and automated predictive analytics software. With a specialty in higher education and a focus on ease of use and efficiency, Rapid Insight products enable users to turn their raw data into actionable information. The companys analytic software simplifies the extraction and analysis of data, enabling institutions with student populations of all sizes to fully utilize their information for data-informed decision-making. For more information, visit http://www.rapidinsight.com.

###


Unions representing employees at two prominent podcasting companies owned by Spotify, the audiostreaming giant, announced Wednesday that they had ratified their first labor contracts.

The larger of the two unions, with 65 employees, is at The Ringer, a sports and pop culture website with a podcasting network. The second union, at the podcast production company Gimlet Media, has just under 50 employees. The two groups were among the first in the podcasting industry to unionize, and both are represented by the Writers Guild of America, East.

Lowell Peterson, the guilds executive director, said the contracts showed that the companies writers, producers and editors bring enormous value to the major platforms for whom they create content.

The contracts establish minimum base pay of $57,000 for union members at The Ringer and $73,000 at Gimlet Media, annual pay increases of at least 2 percent, and a minimum of 11 weeks of severance pay.
Amaravati, April 7 : Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy directed officials to provide drip and sprinkler irrigation facilities to small and marginal farmers.

He told officials on Tuesday to distribute them in the stipulated time while reviewing horticulture, micro-irrigation and agri-infra at his camp office.

During his review, Reddy noted that the government was drilling bore wells for small and marginal farmers, including providing micro-irrigation facilities which will result in good yields.

"All the works should be done in saturation mode and every eligible person should benefit from the schemes being implemented and there should be no scope for corruption," he observed.

The Chief Minister directed officials to prepare an action plan to benefit small and marginal farmers.

"Give priority to farmers with less than 10 acres of land in Rayalaseema and Prakasam (districts) and less than 5 acres in other places in providing drip and sprinkler facilities," he said.

According to the CM, procurement of micro irrigation facilities through reverse tendering would help in reducing the cost and benefiting farmers more.

He said the cost of drip and sprinkler systems would be concluded after taking Central and state governments' subsidies into account.

Likewise, Reddy directed officials to focus on the issues being faced by sericulture farmers who grow mulberry trees and improve their situation.

The CM also reviewed setting up of multi-purpose facility centres as part of agri-infra at a cost of Rs 14,562 crore, which will provide 14 types of facilities to farmers, which include dry storage, drying platforms, godowns, horticulture infrastructure, primary processing centres, collection centres, cold rooms and several others.

Reddy told officials to promote organic and natural farming within the limits of every rythu bharosa kendra (RBK), alongside keeping these farming practice's equipment in every custom hiring centre.
An activist family office that owns shares in Grayscale Bitcoin Trust is demanding a tender offer to boost prices that have fallen about 8% below the value of the digital assets it holds.

As of March 31, the share price represented a $3.1 billion loss to shareholders compared with the Bitcoin it holds, according to a letter that Marlton LLC sent Tuesday to the board of Grayscale Investments LLC, the trusts parent. Marlton declined to say how many trust shares it holds.

Marlton said Grayscale wasnt doing enough to increase shareholder value. Digital Currency Group Inc., which controls Grayscale Investments, authorized the purchase of as much as $250 million of trust shares last month in an effort to buoy prices. Grayscale Investments said on Monday that it intends to reapply to the Securities and Exchange Commission to convert the trust into a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund, a process it abandoned in 2017.

Also read: Singapore warns public against crypto as world warms to Bitcoin

We are frustrated that the board might allow management to squander the companys leading market share to the detriment of GBTC stockholders, whilst simultaneously rewarding yourselves handsomely with a profligate, market-leading, 2% management fee, James Elbaor, who runs the Marlton office, said in the letter. Marlton and other stockholders will not tolerate such clear destruction of stockholder value.

Grayscale Investments said in an emailed statement Tuesday that the company is 100% committed to converting GBTC into an ETF.

For years, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust was one of very few ways to get exposure to Bitcoin without buying the digital asset directly. That led to a steep premium on its shares in the secondary market where they trade after a six-month lockup period. Yet those shares are never destroyed as in a typical ETF, leading to a record supply of nearly 700 million. Even as Bitcoin skyrocketed about 772% in the past year, the trust shares have swung from a 40% premium in December to a discount today.

New entrants to the market are another factor in the Grayscale trusts woes, Elbaor said in the letter.

Aggressive competition from NYDIG, Galaxy Digital and BlockFi, among others, threatens GBTCs dominant U.S. market position, as the cryptocurrency industry awaits the SECs decision to approve cryptocurrency ETFs, the letter said. A clear capital allocation plan via a tender offer in GBTC will distinguish you and GBTC as the sole digital currency asset manager creating stockholder value.

Written by Matthew Leising.
Intelligent.com, a trusted resource for online degree rankings and higher education planning, has announced the top online programs for 2021. The comprehensive research guide is based on an assessment of 1,280 accredited colleges and universities in the nation. Each program is evaluated based on curriculum quality, graduation rate, reputation, and post-graduate employment. The methodology also uses an algorithm which collects and analyzes multiple rankings into one score to easily compare each school.

Students who pursue any one of these programs can expect to gain employment much quicker in comparison to candidates without a degree. In addition to accessibility and cost, the steady job growth in this market is one of the many reasons Intelligent.com researched and ranked the Top Most Affordable Online BCBA Program Degree Programs.

Intelligent.com analyzed 82 schools, on a scale of 0 to 100, with only 54 making it to the final list for Most Affordable Online BCBA Program Degree Programs. To access the complete ranking, please visit: https://www.intelligent.com/cheapest-online-bcba-degree-programs/

2021 Most Affordable Online BCBA Program Degree Programs featured on Intelligent.com (in alphabetical order):

Arcadia University

Arizona State University

Ball State University

Brandman University

Cairn University

California University of Pennsylvania

Capella University

Clemson University

Cleveland State University

College of Saint Elizabeth

Drexel University

Endicott College

George Mason University

Kent State University

Lehigh University

McNeese State University

Michigan State University

Monmouth University

National University

Northeastern University

Northern Arizona University

Pepperdine University

Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine

Portland State University

Purdue University Global

Saint Joseph's University

Simmons University

Southeast Missouri State University

Southern Illinois University

St. Joseph's College New York

Texas A&M University, College Station

Texas Tech University

The Chicago School of Professional Psychology

University of Arizona

University of Cincinnati

University of Colorado

University of Colorado Denver

University of Dayton

University of Kansas

University of Louisville

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Kwamena Duncan, former Central Regional Minister, says the Police at Kasoa shouldn't be blamed for the crimes happening at Kasoa in the Central Region.



According to him, Kasoa is "an everyday crime spot" adding the rate of criminal activities there is disturbing.



He stated that the Police in the area can't be blamed for the crimes because there are limited number of Police stationed to safeguard the residents.



"We can't blame the Police because, when you look at the entire Kasoa enclave and take the number of Police posts there, I'm not sure it will reach four or five. Aside that, the Police numbers are not there. In fact, the Police requirement of Kasoa, without exaggerating, must be more than a Region and that they must have a lot of Police posts," he said.



Kwamena Duncan was reacting to the gruesome murder of a young boy at Kasoa days ago.



To him, it's about time the security authorities looked at the security architecture of Kasoa and tightened security in the community.



"Whether we like it or not, if we don't develop or design a special security architecture for Kasoa and its enclave, Accra will continue to suffer because the criminals will leave there and hit Accra. So, Kasoa must get a special security architecture," he stressed on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo' programme.











Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Dr. Daniel Drucker, shown in a handout photo, a professor of medicine at the University of and senior scientist at Sinai Health, is being honoured with an international award for his role in research that's helping revolutionize treatments for type 2 diabetes, obesity and intestinal disorders. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-University of Toronto-Johnny Guatto MANDATORY CREDIT




Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto departed Jakarta on Tuesday to visit South Korea for an upcoming rollout ceremony showcasing a prototype of the country's first indigenous fighter jet.







Accompanied by some 20 officials, Prabowo is set to arrive in South Korea on Wednesday aboard a private plane to attend the KF-X fighter jet rollout event, expected to be held sometime this week, according to diplomatic and defense industry sources.







Whether Indonesia, a partner in the KF-X project, will send senior officials to the ceremony has been a focus of attention, as it could be a sign that Jakarta remains committed to the project amid speculation that it is seeking to quit the business.







During his three-day stay, the Indonesian minister is expected to meet with senior officials in South Korea, including Defense Minister Suh Wook.







Seoul's defense ministry earlier said the two countries are having talks to arrange a defense ministerial meeting on the occasion of the rollout ceremony.







Indonesia had promised to shoulder 20 percent of the new fighter's 8.8 trillion-won (US$7.9 billion) development cost, but it has stopped making payments after investing 227.2 billion won, with around 600 billion won overdue.







Eyes are on whether the defense cooperation between the two sides will get back on track with Prabowo's visit. Besides the fighter jet project, Indonesia signed a deal with South Korea in 2019 to purchase three submarines, but the business has also made little progress since then. (Yonhap)


Carnival Cruise Line is delaying by another month its return to Charleston and other U.S. ports where its ships are based.

The company said it's notifying customers of its decision to extend its domestic hiatus through June 30.

It also signaled a growing impatience with the Biden administration and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control over how and when to safely resume sailings more than a year after the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the cruise industry.

We know that this is very disappointing to our guests who continue to be eager to sail, and we remain committed to working with the administration and the CDC to find a workable solution that best serves the interest of public health," Christine Duffy, president of Carnival, said in a written statement. "We are asking that the cruise industry be treated on par with the approach being taken with other travel and tourism sectors, as well as U.S. society at large.

In its latest update April 2, the CDC offered no specific timeline about when cruises from domestic ports can start up again. Instead, it said the next step will involve trial sailings with volunteers, not paying passengers.

Three days later, Carnival suggested it could redeploy its U.S.-based ships to other locations that allow revenue-generating cruises. The company's locally based Sunshine has been anchored in the Bahamas for months.

While we have not made plans to move Carnival Cruise Line ships outside of our U.S. homeports, we may have no choice but to do so in order to resume our operations which have been on pause for over a year," Duffy said.

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Arnold Donald, CEO of the cruise operator's Miami-based parent, said during an April 7 earnings call that the company would prefer not to do that.

"But if we're unable to sail, obviously, we will consider home porting elsewhere," Donald told investors and analysts.

He also said he was "very disappointed" in the CDC's latest guidance.

"We'd like to be able to have the fleet fully going by the end of this year, early next year, and that's our aspiration," he said.

The company has pushed back its return to U.S. ports at least 11 times over the course of the pandemic. Most recently, it had hoped to start sailings again from the Port of Charleston's Union Pier Terminal on June 4 with a four-day trip to and from Half-Moon Cay in the Bahamas.

As it has previously, Carnival is offering customers whose cruises have been canceled the choice of credit that can be redeemed on a later voyage or full refunds.

Six of the parent company's nine lines are already planning to launch sailings in the Canary Islands, Italy, the U.K. and Greece, according to a new financial update Wednesday that showed a nearly $2 billion loss for the first quarter. Carnival added that advanced bookings for 2022 are running ahead compared to the pre-pandemic year of 2019 "with minimal advertising and marketing," Donald said
Residents in some areas could soon be asked to make extra council tax contributions on top of their regular bills.

One council, Wandsworth, in South West London, is currently consulting on plans to launch 'voluntary community contributions'.

The borough has long boasted of charging the cheapest council tax rates in the country.

Wandsworth, in South West London, is currently consulting on plans to launch 'voluntary community contributions'

But the area's councillors now claim that some wealthier residents would be happy to pay more and have sent residents brochures asking for feedback on the proposed scheme.

Households in the London borough face 5.7 per cent bill hikes of up to 92.

Additional contributions would be paid into an independent charitable trust and help fund community initiatives such as planting trees or refurbishing children's play areas.

Wandsworth Council leader Ravi Govindia says: 'Residents say they would be willing to pay more council tax. It could be used to pay for extra things and it will be absolutely voluntary.'

Westminster Council has a similar scheme and has raised more than 1 million since it was set up in 2018.
ALBANY  Pot may be legal now in New York, but buying, selling and consuming the drug is still prohibited on campuses, which are bound by federal laws.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo on March 31 signed a bill legalizing the use of recreational marijuana in New York for those age 21 and older, but federal law still classifies cannabis as a Schedule 1 drug.

The federal Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act requires any institution that receives federal funding to have a drug policy that addresses marijuana use.

State University of New York students caught dealing or using marijuana on campus will be subject to disciplinary action under the university system's code of conduct, according to a notice that went out to University at Albany students Monday.

"This prohibition covers all SUNY property in public as well as campus residence halls, University apartments, and offices, University-owned and leased buildings, housing, parking lots, and all SUNY events," UAlbany Dean of Students Clarence McNeill wrote. "Throughout this challenging year, UAlbany students have repeatedly demonstrated a commitment to following our campus code of conduct, and I trust this will continue."

McNeill added that UAlbanys tobacco- and smoke-free campus policy also prohibits smoking or vaping marijuana on campus.

SUNY has no position on students' legal marijuana use off-campus. During the month of April, UAlbany's Center for Behavioral Health Promotion and Applied Research will offer educational programs focused on cannabis and marijuana.

Private schools also receive federal money in the form of financial aid but are less reliant on those funding streams.

If a college or university knowingly permits possession, use, or distribution of marijuana, it is at risk of losing or having to repay Title IV funding, although it's unclear if any institutions have ever been required to do so.

In other legal states like Colorado and Massachusetts, campus marijuana policies largely reflect the federal ban on cannabis use.

Local private schools, including Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs and Loudonville's Siena College, say they have not updated their marijuana policies since New York's legalization, but the implications of the new law are currently being discussed by senior officials.

Cornell University last week emailed students emphasizing that the drug is illegal on campus under federal law.
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President Joe Biden may be open to canceling more federal student debt than he's previously indicated, according to a recent interview with White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain. With many HR professionals both in and out of college structuring their lives around student debt, the implications of any executive action are far-reaching.

Broad Impacts of Debt Cancellation

The high cost of education impacts Americans both in and out of college. In a news conference in Boston last Thursday, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., framed the conversation around student debt as one of racial, economic and generational justice. Pressley noted that much of the reliance on student loan debt within Black and Latino communities can be attributed to illegal, discriminatory practices like redlining, which have kept people of color from accumulating generational wealth and resulted in borrowers taking on much more debt than white recipients.

Warren noted that 40 percent of the people who are grappling with student loan debt were unable to finish college. Therefore, many people are trying to pay off student loan debt while working jobs that pay wages for workers with high school diplomas.

For current students, tuition fees and other expenses often prevent them from taking full advantage of what their schools have to offer. Kyra Sutton, Ph.D., a faculty member at the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations in New Brunswick, N.J., explained that students who are managing financial disparities tend to work full time while going to school so that they can graduate with as little debt as possible.

Unfortunately, that might also mean forgoing a crucial internship to maintain a job. Sutton has observed many HR students graduate without internship experience. "Most students paying their way through college can't complete unpaid internships," she said. "The challenge is, especially in HR, often employers want college students that have HR experience."

Furthermore, students who work full time often can't afford to live on campus and thus aren't able to participate in various clubs and organizations. "As a result, they miss out on building relationships," Sutton said. "Often, those relationships could help them identify a competitive job, post-graduation. Also, I have seen some of our top students, who would perform well in our master's program, leave school and pursue a job because they can't afford graduate school."

Employers have an opportunity to help workers who are trying to manage overwhelming student debt through loan repayment programs. These programs, which were trending upward from 2018 to 2019, dropped off once the COVID-19 pandemic started. But with hiring now surging, more companies are likely to begin adopting loan repayment services again.

However, these programs have long been hamstrung by Section 127 of the Internal Revenue Code, which caps employer-provided education assistance at $5,250 per employee and until recently did not include loan repayment. The Society for Human Resource Management continues to advocate for increasing that payment threshold, as well as making loan repayment a permanent part of Section 127; as of right now, repayment benefits are only extended through the end of 2025.

Presidential Actions



Klain explained that President Biden asked Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to put together a memo on Biden's legal authority to forgive up to $50,000 in student debt. However, Klain was quick to point out that Biden is simply exploring his options right now and has not made a decision either way.

Biden is also expanding the pause on student loan interest and collections to include over a million borrowers who have defaulted on loans made by private lenders.

The president also recently reversed a policy instituted by President Donald Trump's administration that had resulted in over 73,000 people receiving only partial loan forgiveness after being defrauded by for-profit colleges. Biden's action, which fully forgives these loans, will cancel more than $1 billion in student debt.

While any further actions on student loans remain unclear, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki noted that the president is taking a close look at his options, and "examining the authorities" he has to address existing loan forgiveness programs. She also said that Biden would be "happy to sign" a student loan cancellation bill passed by Congress.


Fresh fears have been raised about UK steel jobs after Sanjeev Guptas empire was thrown deeper into crisis.

Two of the tycoons businesses in Australia face being shut down as pressure mounts on his GFG Alliance.

The strain puts his operations in other countries including the UK at risk  he employs around 5,000 people in the UK including 3,000 at Liberty Steel.

Jobs fears: Sanjeev Gupta employs around 5,000 people in the UK including 3,000 at Liberty Steel

The 49-year-old owns steel plants in Rotherham, Stocksbridge, Newport and Hartlepool.

But GFG has been struggling since the collapse of Greensill Capital, which specialised in supply chain finance and was the biggest lender to GFG.

Gupta is scrambling to raise cash to keep his empire, which employs 35,000 staff, afloat. The collapse of Greensill  triggered by its exposure to GFG  saddled backer Credit Suisse with heavy losses.

The lender is now trying to wind up two of Guptas GFG businesses in Australia to recoup cash. GFG has vowed to fight Credit Suisse in the courts, saying it does not conduct any financing with the lender.

Credit Suisse has targeted several GFG firms in the UK. Last week, the Swiss investment bank filed papers to wind up a trading company, Liberty Commodities.

Lenders can apply to a court and ask it to close a company that owes them money. If successful, the assets can be sold to repay the debts.

Although Gupta has pledged not to close a single UK plant, Whitehall officials are lining up administration and other rescue plans.

GFG said: The Australian businesses are performing well and generating positive cash flow, supported by the operational improvements weve made.
Regulatory News:

ESI Group (FR0004110310 ESI) (Paris: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 March 31, 2021, 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 ** 6,059,592 8,327,965 7,961,874

* 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/20210407005602/en/

Contacts:

ESI Group
Park Heong-joon, the Busan mayoral candidate of the main opposition People Power Party, celebrates at his campaign office in Busan, Wednesday, after an exit poll showed his likely victory. Yonhap



By Bahk Eun-ji



Park Heong-joon of the conservative main opposition People Power Party (PPP), who has become mayor of Busan, was one of the so-called "Lee Myung-bak kids" as he took various key posts under the former president.



He was born in Busan's Dong District in 1960, but he spent most of his childhood in Seoul where his family moved when he was seven years old.



He studied sociology at Korea University. During his college days, Park sustained injuries to his eyes while participating in pro-democracy demonstrations.



Park briefly worked as a reporter for JoongAng Ilbo, a vernacular daily, after graduating from university, but returned to his alma mater to undertake his master's degree and doctorate in sociology. He was appointed professor of sociology at Dong-A University in Busan in 1991. Since then, his main residence  and base for political activities  has been in Busan.



Park made his political debut in 2004 when he was elected as a lawmaker of the then main opposition Grand National Party (GNP), a predecessor of the PPP, in a constituency in Busan. But his bids for a National Assembly seat in the 2008 and 2012 general elections, under the GNP ticket and as an independent candidate, respectively, failed.



Under the Lee administration between 2008 and 2013, he took several positions at Cheong Wa Dae including assistant secretary for public relations, senior secretary for political affairs and special adviser on social issues.



From 2014 to 2016, he served as secretary-general of the Office of the National Assembly.



Whenever he lost elections or took a break from political activities, Park has returned to Dong-A University as a teacher which has been denounced by his fellow professors as an indication that he pays more attention to politics than teaching.



Although he was a one-term lawmaker, public recognition of him has been high as he has made a lot of TV appearances, mostly on debate programs, where he has endeavored to establish an image of a himself as a moderate conservative.


King Saul was the first king of Israel in the Bible. When the Israelites demanded a king, God instructed the prophet Samuel to anoint Saul. However, Saul disobeyed God and proved unfit to be king.

Sauls story is one of great drama, especially his relationship with one of the most well-known figures in the Bible, David. Though Sauls story doesnt end well for him, we can learn from his triumphs and failures.

Who Was King Saul in the Bible?

Saul was not born to royal parents. He was from the tribe of Benjamin, and in his own words, Am I not a Benjamite, from the smallest tribe of Israel, and is not my clan the least of all the clans of the tribe of Benjamin? (1 Samuel 9:21).

However, there was no royal family from which a king could have been selected. Until that time, Israel had been ruled on and off by judges, during a tumultuous few hundred years that are recorded in the book of Judges.

Israel was not intended to have a king; God was to be King. However, the Israelites had devolved into debauchery. The book of Judges ends with horrifying stories of violence and immorality and the echoing refrain in those days Israel had no king (Judges 18:1, 19:1, 21:25) pointing not only to the lack of a human king but the lack of regard for the Lord as King.

Sauls father, Kish, was a man of standing (1 Samuel 9:1). Saul himself was an impressive man physically, as handsome a young man as could be found anywhere in Israel, and he was a head taller than anyone else (1 Samuel 9:2). If someone was to be king, outwardly, Saul looked like a good candidate.

What Did King Saul Do?

Sauls story begins in 1 Samuel, the book that follows the book of Judges in the Bible. 1 Samuel 8 records the people of Israel demanding that their spiritual leader, the prophet Samuel, give them a king like all the other nations (1 Samuel 8:20). Samuel at first resisted, but the Lord told him, Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their kingListen to them and give them a king (1 Samuel 8:7, 1 Samuel 8:22).

When Saul and Samuel met, Saul was off searching for his fathers donkeys that had gone missing. After a long search, he and his servant were passing through Samuels town and decided to ask the seer for advice on finding the animals (1 Samuel 9:8).

The day before, God had told Samuel He would be sending the man He intended to be king. About this time tomorrow I will send you a man from the land of Benjamin. Anoint him ruler over my people Israel; he will deliver them from the hand of the Philistines. I have looked on my people, for their cry has reached me (1 Samuel 9:16).

Though Saul initially protested (1 Samuel 9:21), Samuel anointed him as king and predicted signs that would demonstrate that Saul was chosen. These signs came to pass (1 Samuel 10:1-13).

Saul accepted the first secret anointing in 1 Samuel 10:1, but when the time came for the public selection by lot, he hid among the supplies, and God had to tell the people where to find him (1 Samuel 10:22).

At first, many rejected Sauls leadership, until he dramatically mustered Israel and delivered the city of Jabesh Gilead from the Ammonites (1 Samuel 11:1-11). He was then confirmed as king in 1 Samuel 11:15.

It looked like Saul would be a great king of military might, leading Israel. His reign was indeed marked by many military victories. However, his decline began in 1 Samuel 13.

Why Was Saul a Bad King?

In 1 Samuel 13, a large force of Philistines assembled to fight against Sauls armies. The Israelites quaked in fear. When Samuel failed to show up at the appointed time, Saul panicked and offered the sacrifice to the Lord himself, in direct disobedience of the laws of Moses.

Samuel rebuked him in 1 Samuel 13:13-14. You have done a foolish thing, Samuel said. You have not kept the command the Lord your God gave you; if you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time. But now your kingdom will not endure; the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him ruler of his people, because you have not kept the Lords command.

As king, Saul did some good things, bringing Israel together as one to fight against their enemies. However, he proved increasingly arrogant and heedless of Gods will.

God told Saul to completely destroy the Amalekites, but instead, Saul took some of their best livestock as plunder and let their king live (1 Samuel 15). He then proceeded to lie to Samuel about it.

When David distinguished himself as a warrior, Saul favored himuntil Saul grew jealous. When it was clear God was with David, Saul went mad with jealousy and wasted his time and resources trying to chase down and kill David rather than defend Israel. Then, when faced with the might of the Philistines, Saul sought out a medium in Endor to try to communicate with the now-deceased Samuelbreaking even more of Gods laws (1 Samuel 28).

In the end, Saul was a bad king not because he was weak, or incompetent, or had some other shortcoming. Rather, Saul failed because he did not trust God. From the beginning, when he hid from Gods calling to be king, to taking matters into his own hands with the sacrifice rather than trusting God, to disobeying God and keeping plunder for himself, to losing his head to jealousy, to turning to the occult, Saul, again and again, trusted his way above Gods way.

What Happened to King Saul? How Did He Die?

By the time Saul sought out the medium, it was too late. His fate was sealed. In 1 Samuel 31, the Philistines decimated the Israelite army. Sauls sons Jonathan, Abinadab, and Malki-Shua were killed, and Saul was critically wounded. Rather than be killed by the Philistines, Saul took his own life (1 Samuel 31:4).

Sauls bright future guttered out with dishonor, defeat, and suicide. His spiraling path, courtesy of his disobedience, ended in disaster for himself and his sons.

Saul was then succeeded as king by the man he hated so much, David, the shepherd boy who killed a giant with a sling and a stone through faith in God. The youngest son of a shepherd, because he was a man after Gods own heart (1 Samuel 13:14), became Israels greatest king, in direct contrast to Saul.

What Can We Learn from Saul?

Saul was set up for success. Chosen by God, anointed by Samuel, blessed with kingly looks, he should have been a great king.

However, as God tells Samuel in 1 Samuel 16:7, Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.

We can learn several things from Saul.

First, we learn that success and good leadership do not come from any inherent traits. Rather, if we want to truly lead or live our lives well, we must obey the Lord and listen to His will, not our own.

Second, we learn to proceed with humility. No matter what we achieve or what position we attain, even if it feels unshakeable or ordained by God, it can still be taken away. We must remember that all we possess is from God. Giving way to pride will only lead to destruction (Proverbs 16:18).

Another lesson we can learn is the destructive power of jealousy. Saul got so distracted chasing after David that his kingdom fell into ruin. If Saul had focused on himself and trusted God to do what He would with David, Saul might have salvaged some of his crumbling rule.

Saul is contrasted with David, a man who sought the Lords will. Although David was far from perfect, he strove to follow God. When we read about David and Saul, we see that success and failure do not depend on ourselves, but rather on the God in whom we put our trust.

Photo credit: GettyImages/anthonyjhall

Alyssa Roat studied writing, theology, and the Bible at Taylor University. She is a literary agent at C.Y.L.E., the publicity manager at Mountain Brook Ink, and a freelance editor with Sherpa Editing Services. She is the co-author of Dear Hero and has 200+ bylines in publications ranging from The Christian Communicator to Keys for Kids. Find out more about her here and on social media @alyssawrote.

This article is part of our People from the Bible Series featuring the most well-known historical names and figures from Scripture. We have compiled these articles to help you study those whom God chose to set before us as examples in His Word. May their lives and walks with God strengthen your faith and encourage your soul.

4 Things You May Not Know About Abraham in the Bible

20 Facts You May Not Know About Moses from the Bible

Who Was Mary Magdalene in the Bible?

Who Were the 12 Disciples of Jesus?

Who Was Isaiah & Why Was He Important?
Kathmandu, April 7 : Nepal on Wednesday started administering Chinese Covid-19 vaccines amid a resurgence of new cases int he Himalayan nation.

A batch of the vaccines developed by Sinopharm was delivered to Nepal late last month, reports Xinhua news agency.

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, the Chinese vaccines are being administered from 23 hospitals located at seven districts including Kathmandu.

"The vaccine is being inoculated among the people aged 18-59 years," Jhalak Sharma Gautam, chief of the National Immunization Program under the health ministry, told Xinhua.

Earlier the ministry said that people aged 40-49 years would be vaccinated.

After starting the vaccination campaign on January 27, Nepal has inoculated over 1.7 million people in the two phases.
Aside from the limited supply of vaccine much of the problem is due to the Government's woeful communications about its roll-out. Photo: Reuters.

It was probably inevitable but vaccines have quickly become one of the most divisive issues of the pandemic to date.

Perhaps surprisingly though it is not the, so called, 'anti vaxxers' who have made the roll-out of the various vaccines a political hot potato. Rather it is the sheer demand for the jab that is posing the most difficulty for the Government as it tries to ramp up its woefully slow vaccination programme.

Given the dismal year we have all endured - and with many more months of restrictions to come - it is no surprise that the vaccine, and with it the hope of freedom, is so sought after.

However, the shortage in supply has become an increasingly vexed issue and with it the last vestiges of the 'blitz spirit' that categorised the early days of the crisis are being swept away.

With the majority of the country's most vulnerable now vaccinated and protected - as much as possible - focus has swiftly turned to the roll-out of the vaccine for the rest of the population and to say people are desperate to get their hands on it is something of an understatement.

The revelations about the Beacon Hospital's decision to provide excess doses to the staff of a private school attended by children of its chairman caused understandable public fury.

The Taoiseach Micheal Martin went so far as to describe the Beacon's actions as 'repugnant' but a far thornier problem is looming on the horizon for the Government.

In the last few days all three of the main teachers' unions - the ASTI, INTO and TUI - expressed dismay at the Government's decision to change the vaccine roll-out to an age-based schedule.

Ostensibly, in terms of vaccinating the entire population as quickly as possible, this seems like a good decision and it is a system already in use in the UK - which, it should be noted has access to far more vaccine supplies than we do - where it appears to have been successful.

However the change means many teachers who would have been due to get the vaccine relatively soon will now be pushed well down the waiting list.

Given teachers must spend hours in small classrooms with large numbers of un-vaccinated children one can understand why they are so anxious.

School reopening will not be affected by the dispute, the unions have guaranteed that much, but with ballots on industrial action promised it could pose major problems for the State exams.

It's not just teachers either, many other front-line workers like those in the emergency services also have a very good claims to be vaccinated early and they will surely join the fray before long.

Aside from the limited supply of vaccine much of the problem is due to the Government's woeful communications about its roll-out which has left people confused and increasingly angry.

Considering the government is managing to get vaccines into people's arms as quickly as supplies arrive the veil of mystery around the vaccine figures is nothing short of bizarre.

Secrecy has always been a watchword for the Irish health service but in this case perhaps even the bureaucrats of the HSE might agree that honesty is actually the best policy.
Inam Sakinah and her classmates will forever be known as the students who started medical school during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic.

All of them had prepared for this step for years, taking hours of hard science classes in college, studying for the medical school admissions test and often volunteering, working or even getting master's or other advanced degrees before starting on the long path to earning a medical degree.

But their decisions to become doctors seemed to carry even more weight when set against the backdrop of the events of 2020.

"People were needlessly dying while our leaders were failing," said Sakinah, a first-year student at Harvard Medical School. "We also saw the crushing inequities the virus laid bare. That was the context in which we were beginning our journey into medicine." Covid has killed more than 550,000 Americans and disproportionately affected people of color.

And there were other concerns, too. Issues of racial justice came to a head in the wake of George Floyd's death in May in Minneapolis, while matters of science and public health were subject to debate on the presidential campaign trail.

To many, getting involved in politics quickly became as much a professional responsibility as studying human anatomy or shadowing residents on clinical rounds. Sakinah, for instance, is part of a group of medical students who channeled these concerns into forming a nonpartisan student organization, Future Doctors in Politics.

The organization, which launched in February, aims to educate medical students on the political process and show them how they can get involved in shaping policy, and perhaps even run for public office one day. At the core of these efforts is the idea that doctors will push for policies centered on patients, not insurers or hospitals. Bottom line: It's a way to voice their frustration with health care in America.

While there is currently only one chapter, at Harvard University, the group is working to establish chapters at schools such as the University of Michigan and the University of Hawaii.

The changing political face of medicine

Over the years, medical students have turned to a variety of organizations as an outlet for their political and professional concerns.

The American Medical Student Association has been politically active since it separated from the American Medical Association in 1967 and took on its current name a few years later. Since its early days, the organization has focused on health equity for people of color and, more recently, the LGBTQ community and for universal health care. Other student groups advocate for single issues, such as Students for a National Health Program, which lobbies for a government-run single-payer system, and Medical Students for Choice, which promotes reproductive rights.

Medical students also engage in nonpolitical work that can be seen as advocacy, such as volunteering at free clinics where patients might be uninsured or have substance use disorders, said Jonathan Kusner, a fifth-year medical student at Harvard.

Kusner helped lead a new nonpartisan AMSA effort in 2020, "MedOutTheVote," which asked medical students and providers to register to vote and then volunteer to assist others in registering. The initiative involved students at more than 80 medical schools and helped facilitate more than 13,000 registrations.

The MedOutTheVote initiative illustrates the change medical school professors and experts said they've noticed among students regarding their engagement with current events and awareness of how as doctors they might shape policy by wielding their medical expertise.

Dr. Neel Shah, an assistant professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at Harvard, said he thinks medical students have always been interested in politics. But today's pitched political environment makes them more inclined to speak out. "There is a greater degree of willingness to be critical of existing policies and norms, coming from students at a larger volume," said Shah.

Dr. Christopher Moriates, assistant dean for health care value at Dell Medical School of the University of Texas-Austin, said he's noticed a similar phenomenon.

"I really think that medical students have realized increasingly if they want to create healthier patients, their responsibility reaches beyond the patient in front of them," said Moriates. "As students are recognizing the systemic nature and the social determinants of health, they realize you have to treat the system around you as well and learn how to advocate for changes."

"I think it goes back before 2020, but 2020 put it in stark relief," he added.

While Future Doctors in Politics isn't officially aligned with a political party, it promotes values and a mission that are typically associated with Democrats or progressives, such as health care as a human right and racial inequity as a pressing health issue.

And it flows from the formation of the medical student organization White Coats for Black Lives, which took shape in 2015 after the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. The group's goal is to dismantle racism within the medical system and help students prepare to be racial justice advocates.

The growth of these organizations may also reflect medicine's increasing leftward tilt. Recent studies and surveys indicate more doctors identify as Democrats than Republicans, possibly in part because medical schools are admitting more women and people of color. In addition, fewer physicians now own their own practices. As small-business owners, they may have tended to lean Republican.

A widely cited 2014 study found that the percentage of doctors contributing to Republican political candidates decreased from 1991 to 2012, though certain higher-earning specialties were more likely to give to Republicans than to Democrats. A 2019 study focusing on ideology rather than party affiliation found that almost half of first-year medical students identified as liberal, while 33% identified as moderate and 19% as conservative.

Medicine is polarized, too

As the rest of society deals with the growing divisions between those on the ideological left and right, so does medicine  just look at the difference in attitude about Covid vaccines between Democrats and Republicans. Medical students are not immune from these pressures. And some conservative students and professors said they often don't feel comfortable expressing their views.

"Students are afraid. Campuses are more liberal  meaning they don't necessarily believe in less government," said Rebecca Kiessling, director of programs and chapter development at the Benjamin Rush Institute, which teaches medical students about free-market health care options and opposes government regulation. The institute has chapters at 55 out of the 192 medical and osteopathic medical schools in the U.S.

"It is often difficult at certain schools to even get the student body or administration to agree to have a Benjamin Rush chapter, because they don't believe in what we do," said Kiessling.

Others whose politics differ from the current progressive tilt echoed this experience. Dr. Brian Miller, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University who is a conservative health policy expert, said the key is not losing perspective.

"Politics is increasingly polarized and medicine is no exception," Miller wrote in an email. "The challenge for us is to remain focused on our primary goal of growing future clinicians and treating patients while providing a supportive environment for people of all perspectives and walks of life."

To Dr. Lawrence Deyton, senior associate dean for clinical public health and professor of medicine at George Washington University, it's all part of the changing attitudes of what medical students feel their job responsibilities should encompass. He thinks the trend toward activism will continue.

"It's not enough to be great at the bedside or at the clinic," said Deyton. "When it comes to public health issues, the Covid crisis, racial issues, there is a role of the clinician to speak up. Our society wants to hear from us. Some people call this a political role."
Thiruvananthapuram, April 7 : A Muslim League worker died in violence that broke out after the conclusion of polling at Kuthuparamba in Kerala's Kannur district.

As soon as the voting ended in Kerala on Tuesday night, violence broke out at Kannur -- the strongest bastion of the CPI-M -- between the Left workers and members of the Indian Union Muslim League that led to the death of an IUML worker, while his brother is being treated at a hospital in Kozhikode.

The incident occurred at Kuthuparampu in Kannur district. There were reports of friction existing before the polling day and on Tuesday it increased after the voting time got over.

According to the reports, a group of people reached the house of Manzoor and his brother Moshin. Crude bomb was thrown which injured the brothers. One of the attackers was caught and was handed over to the police.

The brothers were taken to a nearby hospital and from there to Kozhikode Medical College where Manzoor died soon after midnight.

"The CPI-M has to give an answer on why this crime was undertaken. Moshin has injuries and is under treatment," said a close associate of the brothers.

On account of the killing, the Congress-led UDF has called for a day-long shutdown at Kuthuparampu.

Meanwhile, the police have registered a case against 14 people. One of the attackers who was caught by the people is a CPI-M member, according to the IUML workers.

While the top leaders of the IUMLreached the hospital, where the body of Manzoor was kept, the CPI-M top brass is yet to react.

The Kuthuparampu Assembly constituency witnessed a spirited poll battle between the CPI-M led Left candidate -- K.P.Mohanan of the Loktantrik Janata Dal and the IUML candidate P. Abdulla, while the BJP has fielded C. Sadanandan.

A huge police force has now been deployed in the area.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Prioritizing personal freedom and his people's private choices, Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered on Tuesday to ban the state government and private entities from imposing COVID-19 vaccine passports in accessing services.

The Texas governor used his executive power to establish choices for his people despite the public health campaigns and vaccine passports pushed by the United States government and some business groups.

According to ABC News, the order of Abbott denies agencies and political subdivisions in the state, private, and public organizations that receive public funding in Texas to require individuals to have proof that they have taken vaccines against coronavirus. The mandate of Abbott also stated that it will override any contradicting local executive orders. He also called Texas lawmakers to put consideration on the order while they are taking up COVID-19 requirements in their current session.

Moreover, in a statement when he announced the order, Gov. Abbott shared that they will be continuing the vaccination for more people of Texas as one of their priorities is to protect public health. He also added that they will do it without stepping into the personal freedoms of Texans. Abbott also emphasized that the United States Constitution does not empower the federal government in mandating proof of vaccination, Forbes reported.

In addition, the Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, issued an executive order on Friday similar to the one established in Texas. The order of DeSantis bans businesses from requiring their customers to show any proof that they have been inoculated against coronavirus in availing services. Also, the order stated that any government agency in Florida is barred from issuing documentation that provides proof of vaccinations.

ALSO READ: Working-Age Latinos Face COVID-19 Death 11 Times Higher Based on USC Study

But the White House has rolled out a national 'vaccine passport' and sent its development to the private sectors, which will create a system for individuals to prove that they have been vaccinated. While the system is being developed, the Biden administration is also developing guidelines for those passports, which considers privacy, accuracy, and equity.

Meanwhile, some countries are also setting up their national databases, which allow their people to pick up their jobs and go back to normal activities after inoculation. However, the White House mentioned that they will not utilize that kind of system in the country as they eye on the vaccine passports instead, NBC reported.

Current Health Status

Furthermore, health officials in the state of Texas reported 4,167 new confirmed coronavirus cases on Tuesday. The 1,580 additional unreported cases put the total cases of the state to more than 2.8 million.

Based on the recent data available in the state, out of the 69,241 active cases in Texas, 2,882 required hospitalization on Monday. The number was 110 more hospitalizations compared to Sunday.

The data from John Hopkins University shows that the 73 recent COVID-19 deaths pushed the death toll of the state to 48,748. Over the past two weeks, there were 172 new cases per 100,000 individuals, which ranks 36th in the country in terms of new cases per capita. The rolling average number of daily new cases decreased by 721.3 in the past two weeks, a decrease of 19.6% based on the data of the said university.

RELATED ARTICLE: California Governor Gavin Newsom Announces His Plans to "Fully Reopen" the State by June 15

WATCH: Gov. Greg Abbott bans government-mandated 'vaccine passports' in Texas FROM- KENS 5: Your San Antonio News Source
YEREVAN, APRIL 7, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan has addressed a congratulatory message on the Motherhood and Beauty Day, the PMs Office told Armenpress.

Dear mothers, daughters and sisters,

Dear women,

I sincerely congratulate you on the Motherhood and Beauty Day.

We have been celebrating this day in a difficult period for two years in a row: firstly the pandemic, then the war against Artsakh kept all of us in alarm and pain. At this difficult time you are capable to encourage your families, relatives and each other with your strength and energy, and stay firm yourselves, by bearing all the burden of the current problems and difficulties be it at home, battlefield, hospital, educational facility or in a working environment where you are conducting an activity.

Dear mothers, I bow my head before you for the upbringing and education you give to your children, to the deserved citizens of our country.

I specifically bow before the mothers, sisters and daughters of our heroes fallen at the Artsakh Wars.

I understand that nothing can comfort you, but I am sure that it is the strong, flourishing, self-confident and developing Homeland that should heal your wounds.

I send words of consolation to the mothers, spouses, daughters and sisters of all our captured compatriots. We have done and do everything possible for returning our brothers back home. I remember with regret that there is still a woman among our captured compatriots, and let my pain become a strength for her and all our captured compatriots to jointly overcome this trial.

Dear women, I am sure that we will be able to restore our country jointly, working for developing Armenia and Artsakh, the message reads.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
Chief Executive Officer of the National Communications Authority (NCA) Joseph Anokye has sent an emissary to smoke peace pipe with Assin Central MP Kennedy Agyapong after the latter declared war on him over a treatment meted out to him by Joe Anokyes secretary. Readers will recall how Kennedy Agyapong threatened a showdown with Joe Anokye who used to come to his New Jersey home with Augustine Blay when NPP was in opposition. Joe Anokye has since sent a team to make peace following the MPs outburst.



Kennedy Agyapong had indicated that if how Joe Anokyes Secretary treated him and how she treats party members who call in for one form of help or another, then Joe Anokye must be careful about the type of instructions he gives his girls because the party will suffer for it.



The Assin MP who is also a former Communications Committee Chair of Parliament Kennedy said he was following up on an NCA letter written on the instructions of Acting NLA boss Ernest Mote to terminate a 1million Ghana Cedi contract with the NLA.



I saw a letter NCA had written and I called and his [Joe Anokyes] secretary picked and said he was not available and I said please this is Kennedy Agyapong can you give me his contact. She said I am sorry I cant give his number to you. I said eei, people are chopping power in Ghana paa oo. Kennedy Agyapong said. I have been Chairman of the Communication Committee ooBefore that, I know that guy [Anokye], he and Blay who followed Bawumia around. They were coming to my house in New Jersey. So I know that guy! Yes, Anokye! A lady refused to give me Anokyes number. And I have marked them all down! he thundered.



Now I am talking to Anokye. He has to be careful with the people he works with and the instructions he gives. If anyone undermines the people we will not make the person comfortable. I dont fear him! I dont fear him. He is my yonko) but I dont fear him! If he sits there and doesnt do his work well and he allows his secretary and other employees to disrespect any party member, Anokye, you wont find it easy because I swear to God, we will not agree. We will not agree.



But Joe Anokye has sent a message of peace through wife of Kennedy Agyapong, Stella Wilson Agyapong, asking for a meeting with with the Assin Central MP since the development.







Source: mynewsghana.net









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TURIN, APR 7 - Turin health police on Wednesday seized more than 6,000 illegal Chinese medical products including some billed as anti-COVID treatments. The products did not have the necessary authorization from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and Italian drug agency AIFA, police said. The probe began in mid-January when several dozen packets of Chinese medicine were discovered inside a food shop in the Piedmont capital. Police said they had come from warehouses in Prato and near Florence owned by a 50-year-old Chinese man who has been cited in the case. Florence police assisted in the operation, judicial sources said. Most of the products were in sachets and destined for the ethnic product market, police said. (ANSA).
Lily McVetty, in front of a Maine lake.

When her senior year came around, she decided to pursue these areas in greater depth, and launched a yearlong honors project focused on climate change and community adaptation, using her hometown as a case study.

Preparing for Change

Many of the communities that dot Maine's coast, including Rockland, are drafting plans in preparation for the effects of climate changefocusing on infrastructure resilience and adaptation, as well as public health, emergency management, and energy. They're taking these actions as the state embarks on its own ambitious long-term climate change agenda.

As she familiarized herself with these local and state initiatives, McVetty noticed that many of the reports seemed to tack on vague language about "equity" and "equality" as an afterthought.

"Many reports treat equity and equality like a checkbox," she said, adding that she wasn't too terribly surprised by this. "As a Chinese American and an environmental studies major, I have noticed and experienced how exclusive some environmental-related spaces can be."

Her honors project is an effort to address this, a blueprint of sorts for Rockland and surrounding towns to take a more conscientious and community-minded approach to climate change adaptation. Her opening question in her thesis is, "How can Rockland collaborate with neighboring West Penobscot Bay communities to help prepare its people and maritime industries for climate change effects in a way that is as equitable as possible?"

"Adaptation plans," she adds, "can fall short if their authors, including passionate and well-intended ones, design planning practices that fail to accurately reflect the needs and schedules of low-wealth, vulnerable, and marginalized community members."

One group that could be disenfranchised by climate change includes those who have traditionally fished for a living, or otherwise made their living from the sea. In her thesis, McVetty devised a compilaton of community-driven suggestions for equitable adaptation. One recommmendation emphasizes the importance of "revalorizing" maritime people, histories, and fisheries.

The motives behind revalorization, she explained, are to honor rural workers, including fishermen and lobstermen. "Urban-centric views have a habit of perceiving rural people and industries as inferior to those of larger cities," she said, and can diminish or exclude their viewpoints.

She points to a recent protest by the fishing community against an offshore wind project proposed for the Gulf of Maine. "I think it's great that they're organizing around this desire to not rush the process," she said. "They recognize the need for renewable resources, but believe it is about doing it the right waythat we have to know what the technical, social, and environmental impacts will be, and that those should be driven by the local knowledge of fishermen."

McVetty's research, as she noticed early on in her research process, coincides with other organizations beginning to address the issues of climate change and parity. She has found a recent report by the Mitchell Center for Sustainable Solutions at University of Maine, Orono, to offer a particularly useful framework for her own work. The report evaluates the potential equity outcomes of Maines official climate action plan.

"This project has been a wonderful opportunity to not only further learn about the community I come from, but also to coevolve with the things that are happening in the world," McVetty said.

Her advisor, Lecturer in Environmental Studies and Program Manager Eileen Johnson, said she believes McVetty may be one of the first to apply the Mitchell Center's equity framework to climate change adaptation and mitigation planning. "And that is really exciting," she added.

McVetty is using her findings to formulate a series of recommendations, many of which she compiled after conducting interviews with townspeople and reading publications from several midcoast organizations and businesses. These include the Island Institute, which supports Maines coastal and island communities; Maine Coast Fishermens Association, which is trying to protect Maines coastal culture, working waterfronts, community infrastructure, and environmental resources; The Herring Gut Learning Center, a marine science and aquaculture education center; The Hurricane Island Center for Science and Leadership, which offers educational programs for youth; and The Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries, a nonprofit that serves fishermen.

One of her most urgent recommendations is for towns to strengthen their social infrastructureas well as their physical infrastructure. While coastal towns should be focused on fortifying things like roads and buildings to deal with rising seas and fiercer storms, McVetty said she also kept hearing community members speak about the need to strengthen their town's social fabric.

This concern is backed up by scholarscited by McVetty in her thesiswho argue that the communities best set up to weather climate-driven shocks, uncertainty, and change are ones with relatively high employment and median household incomes, well-educated residents, and diverse support systems like churches and civic organizations.

McVetty argues that, to bolster social infrastructure, coastal communities might do well to expand recovery loans for maritime people and small businesses, invest more in school opportunities, and collaborate with nearby towns to co-hire a regional grant writer and coordinator who can help secure funding for climate adaptation and community-building projects.

After working for several months on her Rockland-based research, McVetty said she knows with more certainty that, whatever occupation she ends up pursuing, she wants to work with a small community.

"I enjoy working with communities in ways that are involved, and where I know that I can make an impact, she said. Having the opportunity to work with people in meaningful ways is really important to me, and this project has helped me realize that."

*The honors project at Bowdoin offers seniors the opportunity to engage in original scholarship under the supervision of a faculty member in their major, and results in a written thesis or artistic production. It is often a yearlong process, or longer, with seniors continuing to work up through the end of spring semester.
PARIS, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ENTEROME SA, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel drugs based on its unique ability to de-code molecular interactions in the gut microbiome impacting human health, today announces that Pierre Belichard, CEO, will present an overview of the Company and take part in 1-on-1 meetings with institutional investors at the following conferences:

European Biotech Investor Days: April 7-8

Jefferies Microbiome-based therapeutics Summit: April 22

Jefferies Virtual Healthcare Conference: June 1-3

Enterome's CBO, Anne Dagallier, will participate and take part in 1-on-1 meetings with potential business partners at the following conferences:

Digestive Disease Week (DDW): May 21-23

BIO International Convention: June 14-18

Contacts

Enterome

Marine Perrier

Head of External Communications and Investor Relations

investorrelations@enterome.com

Media Relations

Sylvie Berrebi / Mark Swallow / David Dible

Citigate Dewe Rogerson

Tel. +44 207 638 9571

enterome@citigatedewerogerson.com

About Enterome

Enterome is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel drugs based on its unique ability to de-code molecular interactions in the gut microbiome impacting human health. Enterome's success is based on its unique ability to identify small proteins and peptides ("effectors") from gut bacteria that can deliver a therapeutic benefit in humans.

Enterome is leveraging this unique ability to develop two highly promising pipelines of clinical and pre-clinical candidates with a focus on cancer, inflammatory and metabolic diseases:

OncoMimics : highly effective, off-the-shelf immunotherapies against cancers (EO2401, EO2463). EO2401 is in Phase 1/2 clinical trials in patients with glioblastoma and adrenal tumors. EO2463, is about to enter clinical development for indolent non-Hodgkin B-cell lymphomas.

: highly effective, off-the-shelf immunotherapies against cancers (EO2401, EO2463). EO2401 is in Phase 1/2 clinical trials in patients with glioblastoma and adrenal tumors. EO2463, is about to enter clinical development for indolent non-Hodgkin B-cell lymphomas. EndoMimics: a new generation of biologics targeting inflammatory diseases (EM101) and metabolic diseases such as Type 2 diabetes.

These pipelines have been created using Enterome's highly efficient proprietary drug discovery platform that uses machine learning and lab assays to interrogate and decode the world's largest database of gut bacterial proteins, a unique source of novel precision drugs.

In addition, Enterome's clinical candidate Sibofimloc (also referred to as TAK-018) is advancing through Phase 2 clinical trials in Crohn's disease. Sibofimloc has been partnered with Takeda globally, with Enterome retaining a significant profit share in the US.

Enterome is headquartered in Paris (France) and is backed by leading venture capital investors.

For more information, please visit the company's website at: www.enterome.com
An Iranian ship long anchored off Yemen and used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has reportedly been damaged by an explosion in the Red Sea.

The hard-line Tasnim news agency, which is affiliated with the IRGC, reported late on April 6 that the vessel, a cargo-category ship identified as Iran Saviz or MV Saviz, was targeted on April 6 by a mine that was attached to it.

It said the ship has been stationed in the Red Sea for the past few years to support Iranian commandos sent on commercial vessel [anti-piracy] escort missions."

A spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry on April 7 confirmed what it called an "attack" on the Saviz.

"The explosion occurred on Tuesday morning near the Djibouti coast and caused minor damage with no casualties. The vessel was a civilian ship stationed there to secure the region against pirates," Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said.

He added that the incident is "under investigation."

Earlier, Saudi broadcaster Al Arabiya quoted unidentified sources as saying the vessel was attacked off the coast of Eritrea and was affiliated with the IRGC.

Iranian officials did not immediately comment on the reports, which followed a reported series of attacks on Israeli- and Iranian-owned cargo ships since late February in which the two archenemies accused each other of responsibility.

But Iranian state television later tacitly acknowledged the incident, citing foreign media.

The New York Times cited IRGC-linked social-media accounts alleging that Israel had carried out the attack. The newspaper noted that Israel had not confirmed that information.

But it quoted an unidentified U.S. official as saying that Israel had informed the United States of its role after the early morning attack on April 6.

The incident comes amid years of naval skirmishes between Iranian, Israeli, and Western forces. But it also coincided with the start in Vienna hours later of tense international talks involving the United States, Iran, and other countries intended to revive the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal that Washington withdrew from nearly three years ago.

U.S. President Joe Biden took office in January with a commitment to revive that deal if Tehran returned to full compliance.

Iran has responded to the reimposition of crippling U.S. economic sanctions by gradually reducing its commitments under the accord.

Israel has been a strident critic of the JCPOA, which aimed to ease economic sanctions on Iran in return for curbs on Tehrans disputed nuclear program.

"We must not go back to the dangerous nuclear deal with Iran, because a nuclear Iran is an existential threat to the state of Israel and a great threat to the security of the entire world, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told party colleagues on April 6 after being picked to form a government following inconclusive elections.

The Saviz was placed back under U.S. sanctions by Donald Trump's administration following the JCPOA withdrawal in 2018.

The U.S. militarys Central Command said it was aware of media reporting of an incident involving the Saviz in the Red Sea," adding, We can confirm that no U.S. forces were involved in the incident."

Representatives from Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia met with Iranian officials in Vienna on April 6 in an effort to revive the deal.

Iranian and U.S. officials called the meetings "constructive."

With reporting by The New York Times, Tasnim, AP, and Reuters
By Jason Cairnduff

BELFAST (Reuters) -Crowds of youths in a pro-British area of Belfast set a hijacked bus on fire and attacked police with stones in the latest of a series of nightly outbreaks of violence that began last week.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was "deeply concerned" by the violence, which has injured dozens of police officers in recent days as protesters burned cars and hurled petrol bombs at police.

The violence comes amid growing frustration among many in the pro-British unionist community at new trade barriers between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom that resulted from Britain's exit from the European Union.

The pro-British Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) have also pointed to a decision by police not to prosecute Irish nationalists Sinn Fein for a large funeral last year that broke COVID-19 regulations.

Sinn Fein in turn have blamed the DUP for stoking tensions with their staunch opposition to the new trading arrangements and their call in recent days for the region's police chief to step down.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland has said some of the violence was influenced by "criminal elements" who helped to orchestrate the attacks.

The violence on Wednesday took place near the Shankill Road in west Belfast near a so-called "peace wall" that divides the community from the Irish nationalist stronghold of the Falls Road, where groups of youths also gathered.

The walls and fences were built between the two communities to prevent clashes during three decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland that largely ended with a 1998 peace deal.

"I am deeply concerned by the scenes of violence in Northern Ireland," Johnson wrote in a Twitter post. "The way to resolve differences is through dialogue, not violence or criminality."

The leaders of Northern Ireland's largest political parties Sinn Fein and the DUP both condemned the violence, pointing in particular to the bus hijacking and an attack on a photojournalist from the Belfast Telegraph newspaper.

"These actions do not represent unionism or loyalism. They are an embarrassment to Northern Ireland," DUP leader Arlene Foster wrote in a Twitter post that went on to describe rivals Sinn Fein as "the real law breakers."

(Reporting by Jason Cairnduff; additional reporting by Amanda Ferguson; writing by Conor Humphries; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
A treatment that combines an artificial intelligence therapist with psychedelic drugs to treat depression and addiction has been approved for clinical trials.

Life science firm atai and digital therapeutics specialist Psyber are working on a brain computer interface (BCI) based around an electroencephalogram (EEG).

The system will allow for the automated monitoring and assessment of patients who have been prescribed psychedelic drugs to treat mental health conditions.

The device will record electrical activity in the brain for real-time interpretation of emotional, behavioural, and mental states, providing the patient with live feedback.

Dr Srinivas Rao, Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at atai told MailOnline the goal was to democratise therapy and provide direct, and instant treatment to people in rural locations that may not have access to a licensed psychiatrist.

The clinical trials will see whether AI therapy can support and rebuild someone with depression who has been given psychedelic drugs to reset their brain.

No details of pricing or when it will be available on the market have been released, although clinical trials are due to begin this year.

Life science firm atai and digital therapeutics specialist Psyber are working on a brain computer interface (BCI) based around an electroencephalogram (EEG)

WHAT IS A BRAIN COMPUTER INTERFACE? A number of companies are working on systems that link the human brain to a computer. This includes Elon Musk's Neuralink which would act as an implant. But at a basic level it could be a series of external devices including cameras and brain wave monitors. They can be used for mapping the brain, assisting in treatment or even repairing cognitive functions. A BCI can provide real-time interpretation of emotional, behavioural, and mental states from someone wearing the device. This can come through monitoring brain waves, changes in pupil size, facial features, heart rate and more. Advertisement

Traditionally, the main goal of BCI has been to replace or restore useful functions to people disabled by neuromuscular disorders.

However, recent studies have shown that the technology may have useful applications for mental health disorders as it allows for a direct decoding of emotional experience from neural activity.

Rao said they have a number of psychedelic compounds in development that will be tested, but this new trial is to examine the combination of compound and AI.

'We are fully embracing the concept of medication assisted therapy but then the question is how do you do that at scale,' he told MailOnline in an interview.

'I grew up in a small town in Kentucky and there were no psychologists, no psychiatrists when I grew up, so the idea is to democratise this with democracy.'

In the case of Psyber, EEG-based BCI development will be enabled through a tailored software platform that includes machine learning elements.

Psyber, which is now majority-owned by atai, said its aim is to empower patients prescribed medication to achieve better mental health outcomes by offering personalised and novel digitally enhanced, behaviour-changing experiences.

The objective is better outcomes, a better experience and better personalised behaviour change training than existing medication or behavioural therapy.

David Keene, Digital Therapeutics Lead at atai told MailOnline the biggest problem with needing human therapists after a psychedelic treatment is that it scales one to one with the number of people being treated.

'A challenge there is that as you are ramping a program in something as common as major depressive disorder, is the telemedicine approach breaks down at scale.'

'There are some other advantages to digital therapy that you can't get with a pure telemedicine approach or from a phone call with a human,' he told MailOnline.

This includes spaced repetition, which ideally should be delivered in short stints on a daily basis, rather than in a single hourly session once a week.

'It works best for the psychologist, it works best for the travel time, it works best for the office, but it doesn't work best for your brain,' Keene said.

'Your brain digests very small pieces of information and substance use disorder patients have very small attention span to sit down and have a longer conversation, but if you can condense that to less than five minutes a day you'll keep attention.'

The system will allow for the automated monitoring and assessment of patients who have been prescribed psychedelic drugs to treat mental health conditions

USING PSYCHEDELIC DRUGS TO TREAT MENTAL HEALTH In recent years, scientists have increasingly looked to psychedelic drugs as promising therapies for treatment-resistant mental illness. Ongoing clinical trials suggest that drugs once beloved by hippies and club kids might have medical benefits. Under clinical settings, with a controlled dose, the hallucinogenic nature of the drugs help to 'alter' the minds of those taking them. This can work to effectively reset the brain of someone with depression or substance abuse disorder. Combined with therapy to 'reset' the brain, it could help someone resistant to other treatment. Advertisement

He said that would then allow them to digest the information and hold on to help.

When someone is given a combination of a psychedelic drug and AI therapy it is split into several phases, starting with pre-dose, before they are ready to change.

Then you have a dosing period, the time in the clinic when given the drug, a phase straight after where you have the largest willingness and ability for change.

Then you move into a maintenance period after therapy has helped fill in the gaps created by the drugs, where the goal is to make the changes last as long as possible.

'What can we do that will keep that tail a little bit longer, such as maintaining sobriety or help you prop up a mood longer to feel the effects longer,' said Keene.

Initially the entire process will be administered in a clinical setting, with the drug being administered by doctors, then researchers monitoring the BCI.

Over time, it is hoped a simple device will be able to be sent home to patients who can then use it to engage with the digital therapist for months after taking the psychedelic drug, to help the effects of treatment last as long as possible.

'The goal isn't telemedicine, I don't want to send a signal off to an expert to do something with, I want to create a machine learning process that can make decisions on its own local to a patient and give them immediate feedback.

'Then you can get a tight feedback loop on the order of milliseconds, but if an expert was involved you'd have a feedback loop of days,' Keene told MailOnline.

There are a number of digital therapy like cognitive behaviour therapy apps available commercially, but Rao said this would be a much more interactive approach.

'They are throwing things out there, it is response based but not closed loop, this will be a much more sophisticated process of feedback,' he said.

The device will record electrical activity in the brain for real-time interpretation of emotional, behavioural, and mental states, providing the patient with live feedback

DEPRESSION AFFECTS ONE-IN-TEN PEOPLE AT SOME POINT 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 ten people are likely to experience it at some point in their life. 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. It is important to see a doctor if you think you or someone you know has depression, as it can be managed with lifestyle changes, therapy or medication. Source: NHS Choices Advertisement

The bulk of the data from their BCI is EEG, but also pulse, eye tracking, heart rate and other elements currently being explored by the atai.

'The idea isn't to take one signal and create a metric, but to look at many different elements including facial expressions to inform of the next steps,' Keene said, adding it would help the patient and improve safety of the treatment.

Psychedelic treatments by their nature are designed to be intermittent, rather than a continuous drug a patient takes on a daily or weekly basis.

A single dose causes a long-term remission of symptoms, whether mood symptoms or stopping a patient taking a substance they were abusing.

'In our situation we need to provide therapy and find an early warning that something is beginning to go sideways for the patient,' Rao told MailOnline.

'In so doing we can either change the sort of therapy they receive, or it may be time to come in, see a doctor and potentially get re-dosed.'

He said people are viewing psychedelics as a panacea, but it won't be, as not everybody will respond to the treatment the same way, so doses will vary.

Much like modern cars have a monitor telling a driver when to change the oil in their vehicle, the digital therapist can let doctors know when a re-dosing is required.

The actual drugs will always have to be delivered under clinical conditions as they deliver a similar 'trip' to one experienced in illegal psychedelics.

However, as atai pointed out, the difference is the dosage, which will be controlled and tailored to the patient and their direct needs, then paired with therapy.

'The big difference between a recreational use of these drugs and a therapeutic use of the drugs is the therapy afterwards and before, the mindset of the person going into it, what they want to explore and how they explore after it, Keene explained.

The BCI allows for that therapy to continue, even in small towns and rural areas that may not have a therapist available on a daily or even weekly basis.

'The difference is how we tighten the feedback loop to be smaller and have higher fidelity by looking inside your brain than just what is happening on the outside,' Keene told MailOnline.

The BCI and psychedelics from atai will be developed together, so they will eventually be offered as a single product to the patient.

Regulatory approval has been granted to start trials on the combination treatment and they should begin before the end of this year.
A man in his early 20s reportedly chopped off his grandmother's head, placed the severed head in a plastic bag, and took it to Kisumu ...

A man in his early 20s reportedly chopped off his grandmother's head, placed the severed head in a plastic bag, and took it to Kisumu Central Police Station in Kenya.

The man shocked police officers when he arrived at the station with the bag and asked the officers to open the bag on April 5.

When they did, they found the freshly chopped head.

In a viral video shared on Twitter, the police are seen in a police van, escorting the suspect back to the scene of the crime in Nyalenda Estate to investigate the murder.

According to TV47 Kenya, the body of the grandmother was immediately evacuated from the scene.

The man's motive has not been revealed but he has been taken into custody.
Bryce Ruthven's outspoken 'best mate' Jason Roses confirmed the pair are 'no longer friends' following his guest appearance on MAFS on Tuesday night.

During hometown visits, Jason and two of Bryce's other pals sensationally threw him under the bus when they claimed he was 'no doubt' lying to his wife Melissa Rawson about having a secret girlfriend while filming for the show.

After the episode aired, the former Big Brother star shared a photo of his appearance on the program to Instagram and confirmed the pair were no longer friends.

Friendship over: Bryce Ruthven's (pictured) outspoken 'best mate' who revealed he had a secret girlfriend on Married At First Sight has confirmed they are 'no longer friends'

'And we are no longer friends... FYI,' he wrote, as reported by New Idea.

Jason and Bryce first met while hosting the breakfast show on Hit 104.7 Canberra.

During Tuesday's episode, Bryce brought his wife Melissa to Canberra to meet three of his pals where she questioned them point-blank about rumours the radio host had a 'secret girlfriend'.

Melissa asked the trio directly about the supposed 'secret girlfriend' who he met on Tinder, a question which made the sheepish gang quiver in their seats.

'And we are no longer friends... FYI': Jason Roses (pictured) shared a photo of his appearance on the show to Instagram and confirmed the pair were no longer friends

'I don't have heaps to comment. If I knew more I'd totally jump in and say something but... yeah,' Mikayla awkwardly chimed in.

When a producer asked Jason if the rumours were true, he said: 'No... I don't know. I don't know what he's doing, all I know is that he was seeing a girl on the outside, and I'm sure it ended when he went on the show. I'm going to believe what he's saying.'

However, once Melissa and Bryce left the room - and it appeared the group didn't know they were being filmed - they had something very different to say.

Yes ANOTHER MAFS bombshell: During Tuesday's episode, Bryce brought his wife Melissa to Canberra to meet three of his pals where she questioned them point-blank about the rumours the radio host had a 'secret girlfriend'

'Do you think he's lied to her?' Jason asked, to which Elly replied: 'Yep.'

'Yeah. No doubt,' Jason added.

'Because the gift thing is true,' Elly said, referring to the rumours he asked a friend to buy a gift for a mystery woman while he was with Melissa.

Married At First Sight continues Wednesday at 7:30pm on Channel Nine
- FinancialNewsMedia.com News Commentary

PALM BEACH, Fla., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Gold is one of the most well established and mature markets around when it comes to investable assets. It has been an important commodity in the past, and it has its major uses in electronics and jewelry, but as a market, it is often seen as a great safe haven for a number of reasons. Because gold has been seen as a valuable asset for thousands of years, it has always been desired and in demand, but it is in more recent history that the market has grown to be what it is today, and what it is today is a rather mature and stable market. The fact that gold works as a safe haven asset, one that often moves in anti-correlation to the traditional markets, means that the commodity is a great hedge against financial troubles, but it is also an asset that has shown steady and solid growth in value for a long time. Gold is not an asset that is prone to big price swings, or high volatility, but it is known to almost constantly be growing as its uses and market desire keep growing. Also, the fact that Gold is an asset that is scarce, but with an uncertain supply, means the markets are often worth watching and forecasting gold prices for the next 10 years can often lead to positive gains over this long period of time. Active stocks in the mining markets this week include Barrick Gold Corporation (NYSE: GOLD) (TSX: ABX), Clarity Gold Corp. (OTCPK: CLGCF) (CSE: CLAR), Newmont Corporation (NYSE: NEM) (TSX: NGT), Osisko Mining Inc. (OTCPK: OBNNF) (TSX: OSK), Agnico Eagle Mines Limited (NYSE: AEM) (TSX: AEM).

A report from industry insider, PRIME XBT made several predictions for Gold's future. They said that: "The gold price prediction today, and the gold price forecast 2021 looks like it could be a really positive one, and it also comes off the back of a really good year in 2020 for the precious metal which had many geo-political factors impact its price and its growth in an upward trend. Currently, the gold price is increasing because there is a clear need for a safe haven investment. We have seen Federal rate cuts, and the stock markets tanking. This has seen investors look to move their money into more secure investments, and gold is one of the best such investments. It continued: "Now is probably one of the best times to buy gold. It has been on a bullish run for almost a year but instead of turning around it is expected to accelerate because of the fall out of the Covid-19 pandemic. Having already grown by a few hundred dollars in the first quarter of 2021, it is expected that gold's price will grow even quicker for the next few quarters."

Clarity Gold Corp. (CSE: CLAR) (OTC: CLGCF) BREAKING NEWS: CLARITY GOLD MOBILIZES SECOND RIG FOR ONGOING DRILL PROGRAM IN QUEBEC - Clarity Gold Corp. ("Clarity" or the "Company") is pleased to report that it has begun mobilizing a second drill rig to the Destiny Project in the Abitibi. The rig will commence operations at the GAP Zone, a coarsely drilled zone along strike and east of the DAC Zone. The drill will be tasked with completing several holes designed to infill historic drilling and test the GAP Zone at depth. Salient results from previous drilling in the GAP Zone include 16.1 g/t Au over 6 m from 85.5 m including 90.3 g/t Au over 1 m.

"We are very excited to bring a second drill rig into our ongoing program," said James Rogers, CEO of Clarity. "As exploration progresses, the addition of the second drill rig will increase efficiency allowing the company to more rapidly complete the planned program."

About the Destiny Project

Option to acquire 100% ownership.

Located in the historic, mineral rich Abitibi Greenstone Belt.

Gold mineralization occurs in high-grade quartz veins within shear zones starting at 15 m below surface.

Drilling results include:

167 g/t Au over 1 m (from 221.7 m )

6.15 g/t Au over 23.6 m (from 117.2 m )

19.49 g/t Au over 2.7 m (from 166.0 m )

The Historical Estimate at the DAC Zone is open along strike with only coarse drilling denoting high grade intercepts outside of the 2011 Historical Estimate area showing expansion potential along strike from the DAC Zone over approximately 2.5 km to the Darla Zone.

Excellent infrastructure - ~75 km NNE of Val d'Or with road access. Considerable work done historically including over 50,000 m of diamond drilling.

The Destiny Project is located in the prolific Abitibi Greenstone Belt where more than 190 million ounces of gold have been produced historically along major structural breaks within the assemblage of Archean-age volcanic, sedimentary and intrusive rocks. The Destiny Project lies along the approximately 400 km long Chicobi Deformation Zone, a major structural break which is largely underexplored in the Abitibi Greenstone Belt.

The 5,013 ha project includes the DAC Zone, one of several gold zones along an approximately 6 km long segment of the Despinassy Shear Zone within the Chicobi Deformation Zone. Approximately 2.5 km east along strike of the DAC Zone is the Darla Zone. In between the Darla and DAC is the coarsely drilled GAP zone where 2012 drilling intercepted anomalous gold in all 12 holes which were spaced 100 m apart.

The current exploration potential is based on decades of past work on the Destiny Project. Exploration of the Destiny Project dates back to the 1930s. The first concerted diamond drilling campaign commenced in 1998.Read this entire release for the Clarity Gold at:https://claritygoldcorp.com/news/

Other recent developments in the mining markets include:

Osisko Mining Inc. (OTCPK: OBNNF) (TSX: OSK) recently provided new analytical results from the ongoing drill program at its 100% owned Windfall gold project located in the Abitibi greenstone belt, Urban Township, Eeyou Istchee James Bay, Quebec.

The Windfall gold deposit is located between Val-d'Or and Chibougamau in the Abitibi region of Quebec, Canada. The mineral resource defined by Osisko, as disclosed in the news release dated February 17, 2021 and supported by the technical report entitled "Mineral Resource Estimate Update for the Windfall Project, Eeyou Istchee James Bay, Quebec, Canada" dated March 8, 2021 (with an effective date of November 30, 2020), and assuming a cut-off grade of 3.50 g/t Au, comprises 521,000 tonnes at 11.3 g/t Au (189,000 ounces) in the measured mineral resource category, 5,502,000 tonnes at 9.4 g/t Au (1,668,000 ounces) in the indicated mineral resource category and 16,401,000 tonnes at 8.0 g/t Au (4,244,000 ounces) in the inferred mineral resource category. The key assumptions, parameters and methods used to estimate the mineral resource estimate disclosed in the February 17, 2021 news release are further described in the full technical report prepared by BBA Inc. in accordance with NI 43-101 and is available on SEDAR (www.sedar.com) under the Corporation's issuer profile.

Barrick Gold Corporation (NYSE: GOLD) (TSX: ABX) notes the statement released by Papua New Guinea prime minister James Marape announcing an imminent agreement to reopen Porgera mine. Barrick and the Government of Papua New Guinea have continued to hold constructive discussions on a framework agreement for the recommissioning of Porgera, which has been on care and maintenance since April 2020.

The agreement under discussion is in line with the principles announced in October, providing for a joint venture between Barrick Niugini Limited (BNL) and the government of PNG to operate Porgera going forward on the basis of increased PNG ownership and a fair sharing of economic benefits. BNL would continue as the operator of the mine. We remain hopeful that we will reach agreement with the PNG Government on a long-term partnership that will see the reopening of Porgera in the near future. A further statement will be issued once a final agreement is achieved.

Newmont Corporation (NYSE: NEM) (TSX: NGT) recently announced that it has executed an industry-leading $3.0 billion sustainability-linked revolving credit facility. The credit facility includes a pricing feature based upon third-party sustainability performance measures and includes overall improved pricing from the previous facility. This new credit facility expires in March 2026, amending and extending the credit facility executed in 2019.

"Our sustainability-linked credit facility further demonstrates Newmont's unwavering commitment to industry-leading environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices," said Newmont President and CEO Tom Palmer. "Our sustainability framework is at the core of what we do, and we believe that strong ESG performance is a key indicator of a well-managed business. By aligning our financial performance and our ESG performance, we are holding ourselves accountable to delivering on our purpose to create value and improve lives through responsible and sustainable mining."

Agnico Eagle Mines Limited (NYSE: AEM) (TSX: AEM) recently announced that it will host its 2021 Annual and Special Meeting of Shareholders (the "AGM") virtually on Friday, April 30, 2021. In addition, the Company today announced the appointment of Leona Aglukkaq to the Company's board of directors, the release of its first quarter 2021 results on Thursday, April 29, 2021, after normal trading hours, and the filing of a technical report for Canadian Malartic.

The Honourable Leona Aglukkaq, P.C., has been appointed to the Board of Directors effective as of March 11, 2021. Ms. Aglukkaq is a highly-experienced politician and government administrator from the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut. She was first elected as a Member of Parliament in 2008 and, in 2009, became the first Inuk in Canadian history to be appointed to the Federal Cabinet (as Minister of Health). In addition to her Federal government experience, Ms. Aglukkaq has broad public government exposure, including international diplomatic experience as Chair of the Arctic Council (2012-2015). Most recently, Ms. Aglukkaq served on the board of directors of TMAC Resources Inc., until its acquisition by Agnico Eagle on February 2, 2021.

DISCLAIMER: FN Media Group LLC (FNM), which owns and operates Financialnewsmedia.com and MarketNewsUpdates.com, is a third party publisher and news dissemination service provider, which disseminates electronic information through multiple online media channels. FNM is NOT affiliated in any manner with any company mentioned herein. FNM and its affiliated companies are a news dissemination solutions provider and are NOT a registered broker/dealer/analyst/adviser, holds no investment licenses and may NOT sell, offer to sell or offer to buy any security. FNM's market updates, news alerts and corporate profiles are NOT a solicitation or recommendation to buy, sell or hold securities. The material in this release is intended to be strictly informational and is NEVER to be construed or interpreted as research material. All readers are strongly urged to perform research and due diligence on their own and consult a licensed financial professional before considering any level of investing in stocks. All material included herein is republished content and details which were previously disseminated by the companies mentioned in this release. FNM is not liable for any investment decisions by its readers or subscribers. Investors are cautioned that they may lose all or a portion of their investment when investing in stocks. For current services performed FNM has been compensated forty six hundred dollars for news coverage of the current press releases issued by Clarity Gold Corp. by a non affiliated third party. FNM HOLDS NO SHARES OF ANY COMPANY NAMED IN THIS RELEASE.

This release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended and such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. "Forward-looking statements" describe future expectations, plans, results, or strategies and are generally preceded by words such as "may", "future", "plan" or "planned", "will" or "should", "expected," "anticipates", "draft", "eventually" or "projected". You are cautioned that such statements are subject to a multitude of risks and uncertainties that could cause future circumstances, events, or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, including the risks that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, and other risks identified in a company's annual report on Form 10-K or 10-KSB and other filings made by such company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You should consider these factors in evaluating the forward-looking statements included herein, and not place undue reliance on such statements. The forward-looking statements in this release are made as of the date hereof and FNM undertakes no obligation to update such statements.

Media Contact email:

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Mumbai, April 7 : Bollywood veteran Jeetendra turned 79 on Wednesday and his daughter, producer Ekta Kapoor, wished him a very happy birthday in her new Instagram post.

Calling him the "wind beneath" her wings, Ekta wrote about how she has learnt so much from her dad. She also spoke about his support when she decided to become a producer.

"Happie bday papa! U r d wind beneath My wings!!! U helped me grow n supported me when I chose to b a producer ! Love is acceptance u taught me that ! Love u," wrote Ekta.

According to reports, the family will have an intimate celebration this year due to the lockdown in Mumbai and the second wave of Covid-19.

Jeetendra has enjoyed a vast fan following since the 1960s and has acted in over 200 films in his career.

He is known for his performances in many films, the prominent ones being "Farz", "Himmatwala", "Tohfa" and "Sanjog".

He is a lso known as the Jumping Jack of Bollywood due to his signature dance steps.
An ancient site of carved boulders and rock formations in a Georgia forest that has long been sacred to Native Americans has been vandalized with paint and deep scratches, the United States Forest Service said.

The boulders are part of the Track Rock Gap site in the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forests, a protected area of more than 800,000 acres where more than 100 figure carvings known as petroglyphs were made on soapstone boulders by Native Americans in precolonial times, the service said.

Five boulders had scratches and two had paint on them, said Steven Bekkerus, a spokesman for the Forest Service.

Its one of the most significant rock art sites in the Southeastern United States and the only such site located on public land in Georgia, the service said on Facebook on Monday.
Australians are being warned to expect more disruption to the vaccine rollout as global shortages close down options to fill a crucial gap in domestic production and imports from Europe.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison stood by plans to give all adult Australians their first dose by October but said circumstances change and there could be no guarantee of a smooth rollout.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has warned Australians to expect further delays in the vaccine rollout. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Mr Morrison issued the warning after writing to European Union leaders seeking urgent approval for 3.1 million doses to be sent to Australia under a deal agreed to last September but stymied by export bans.

But with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen expected to turn down the request, Australia will have few avenues for other imports to ease the countrys reliance on production from CSL in Melbourne.
The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is fighting with the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation, a separate entity that helps provide financial support.
Teachers are calling for medical-grade masks to be provided to all staff ahead of schools reopening on April 12.

Members of the Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) said there are concerns about returning to the classroom given the situation in the country at present and the emergence of new strains of Covid-19.

Delegate Anthony Dowling, of the Dun Laoghaire branch, told the annual TUI conference it is unacceptable for teachers to have to bring their own masks to work every day.

Many are working in overcrowded classes with poor ventilation and inadequate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for members. We have no access to masks. We must bring our own masks to work every day, whether they are the right quality or not we dont know.

In light of the new strands of Covid and the situation in the country at present, congress calls on the executive to demand that teachers will be provided with the highest level of protection on the full reopening of schools and centres of education.

"We call on the executive to demand that teachers are provided with full medical grade masks and that only rooms that are adequately and properly ventilated will be used in the full reopening of schools and centres of education.

Delegate Aisling Bolger said the fact teachers arent being provided with masks is an absolute disgrace.

She alluded to how some countries in Europe - such as Austria - now require medical-grade masks in public.

Medical-grade FFP2 face masks are mandatory in Austria for people aged over 14 in shops and businesses, pharmacies, hospitals and on public transport.

These masks are more tight-fitting than cloth masks and create a seal around the face and filters the inflow and outflow of air.

The TUI passed the emergency motion on Wednesday afternoon.
 Just a week's worth of good reads from The Appeal | Main | Noticing federal prison flow from "Federal Justice Statistics, 2017-2018" 

The title of this post is the title of this notable new paper authored by Maybell Romero now available via SSRN. Here is its abstract:

Focus on the deleterious effects of the privatization of different functions in both the criminal adjudicative system and criminal legal system on the whole has increased on both the scholarship and policymaking fronts. Much of this attention lately has been directed to privatized police forces, privatized prisons, and even privatized prosecutors. As important as the examination of privatization and outsourcing in these arenas is, the role of the privatized public defender  especially those in rural America, with about 90% of the countrys landmass and more than 20% of its population  gets lost in the shuffle. T

his Article centers these public defenders, especially in the rural context, and the specific ethical conundrums that arise when local governments such as counties and cities decide to privatize their public defense services through the use of competitive bidding. It opens with a comparison of two comparable criminal cases with very different results of the accused to spotlight what happens when public defense is privatized. The Article then discusses the specific perverse incentives that rural public defenders face and burden under when their services are procured by way of competitive bid  not with the intention of arguing that such services should never be bid out, but rather that any jurisdiction using such a system should be fully cognizant of the risks they incur when choosing to do so. The Article then introduces, for the first time, the concept of noble cause corruption, previously used to explain and to some extent excuse police malfeasance, in a new context to explain the consequences of some of the choices rural public defenders make while burdening under contract systems, presumably for the good of their clients.
MEXICO CITY, April 6, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --

New Notes Offering

The United Mexican States (" Mexico ") announced today that it priced a global offering (the " New Notes Offering ") of U.S.$3,260,000,000 aggregate principal amount of its 4.280% Global Notes due 2041 (the " New Notes ").

The aggregate principal amount of New Notes includes approximately U.S.$760,000,000 of New Notes intended to fund the purchase of preferred tenders in the concurrent tender offer described below, and the amount of New Notes issued may be adjusted based on final acceptances in the tender offer. The closing of the New Notes Offering is expected to occur on Wednesday, April 14, 2021.

BBVA Securities Inc., BofA Securities, Inc., Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC 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 New Notes Offering may be obtained by contacting: BBVA Securities Inc., by calling +1-800-422-8692 (U.S. toll free), BofA Securities, Inc., by calling +1-800-294-1322 (U.S. toll free), Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, by calling +1-800-820-1653 or J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, by calling +1-866-846-2874.

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 its outstanding notes of the series set forth in the table below (collectively, the " Old Notes " and each, a " series " of Old Notes) on the terms and subject to the conditions contained in the Offer to Purchase, dated April 6, 2021 (the " Offer to Purchase "), expired as scheduled for Non-Preferred Tenders at 12:00 noon, New York City time, today and for Preferred Tenders, at 2:00 p.m., New York City 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 prices to be paid for each series of the Old 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 U.S. Treasury Rate for such series, which is a yield to maturity (or par call date) based on the bid-side price of the Reference U.S. Treasury Security identified for such series in the table below and (ii) the fixed spread for such series set forth in the table below.

Old Notes

Old Notes Outstanding Principal Amount as of April 5, 2021

ISIN

CUSIP Reference U.S. Treasury Security U.S. Treasury Rate Fixed Spread (basis points) Purchase Price(1) 4.000% Global Notes due 2023 U.S.$2,913,174,000 US91086QBC15 91086QBC1 2.875% due 9/30/23 0.239% +25 U.S.$1,086.46 3.600% Global Notes due 2025 U.S.$1,824,808,000 US91087BAA89 91087BAA8 0.75% due 3/31/26 0.872% +20 U.S.$1,094.08 3.900% Global Notes due 2025 U.S.$942,864,000 US91087BAJ98 91087BAJ9 0.75% due 3/31/26 0.872% +35 U.S.$1,103.39 4.125% Global Notes due 2026 U.S.$2,097,689,000 US91086QBG29 91086QBG2 0.75% due 3/31/26 0.872% +66 U.S.$1,119.14 4.150% Global Notes due 2027 U.S.$2,501,740,000 US91087BAC46 91087BAC4 0.75% due 3/31/26 0.872% +115 U.S.$1,119.09 4.500% Global Notes due 2029 U.S.$3,455,664,000 US91087BAF76 91087BAF7 1.125% due 2/15/31 1.658% +116 U.S.$1,120.19 4.750% Global Notes due 2032 U.S.$2,500,000,000 US91087BAK61 91087BAK6 1.125% due 2/15/31 1.658% +169 U.S.$1,126.20 6.750% Global Notes due 2034 U.S.$1,806,712,000 US91086QAS75 91086QAS7 1.125% due 2/15/31 1.658% +215 U.S.$1,307.70 6.050% Global Notes due 2040 U.S.$3,069,439,000 US91086QAV05 91086QAV0 1.875% due 2/15/41 2.235% +208 U.S.$1,221.46 (1) Per $1,000 principal amount of Old Notes validly tendered and accepted for purchase (the "Purchase Price"). Holders will also receive Accrued Interest on Old Notes validly tendered and accepted for purchase.

Tomorrow, April 7, 2021, Mexico expects (i) to instruct BofA Securities, 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 Tenders and Non-Preferred Tenders and (ii) to announce the Old Notes Maximum Purchase Amount, 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:

BBVA Securities Inc. 1345 Avenue of the Americas, 44th Floor New York, NY 10105 Call toll-free: +1-800-422-8692 BofA Securities, Inc. One Bryant Park

New York, NY 10036 Call toll-free: +1 888 292 0070 Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC 11 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10010-3629 Call toll-free: +1-800-820-1653 J.P. Morgan Securities LLC 383 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10179 Call toll-free: +1-866-846-2874

The Billing and Delivering Bank for this Tender Offer is: BofA Securities, 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 (as amended, 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.

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 (as amended, " EUWA "); or (ii) a customer within the meaning of the provisions of the UK Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (as amended, the " FSMA ") and any rules or regulations made under the FSMA to implement the Insurance Distribution Directive, 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 amended) as it forms part of domestic law by virtue of the EUWA (as amended, 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.

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 with 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 UK 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 (d) 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 (866) 829-1035 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 York, April 7 : Unicef Executive Director Henrietta Fore has called for simplifying intellectual property rights governing Covid-19 vaccines in order to make them universally available, but expressed reservations about completely suspending the patents during the pandemic as demanded by India and South Africa.

"This challenge requires not forced IP waivers but proactive partnership and cooperation," she said in a statement on Tuesday.

"Simplify Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) through voluntary and proactive licensing by IPR holders," to meet vaccine demands amid threats coronavirus variants, the Unicef head added.

Fore proposed a voluntary arrangement to expand vaccine manufacture and distribution and cited the cooperation between AstraZeneca and the Serum Institute of India to manufacture the vaccine developed by Oxford University.

Covid-19 "variants are emerging all over the world, and with each, the risk of a massive global setback", she said.

"At the current rate, there is simply not enough vaccine supply to meet demand. And the supply available is concentrated in the hands of too few. Some countries have contracted enough doses to vaccinate their populations several times, while other countries have yet to receive even their first dose.

"This threatens us all. The virus and its mutations will win." But she said that simplifying the IPR rules "alone won't increase production. Unlike drug manufacture, vaccine production involves a complex manufacturing process with multiple components and steps".

"IPR holders would need to provide technology partnerships to accompany IP licenses, proactively share know-how and sub-contract to manufacturers without undue geographic or volume restrictions," Fore said.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres's spokesperson Stephane Dujarric backed Fore, saying: "The points that the executive director of Unicef makes are the ones that reflect our position. There needs to be ways to simplify the process.

"Obviously, the WTO is the body where the issue of patents will be discussed, but I think, in the meantime, there needs to be stronger partnerships between the owners of the patents, the manufacturers and all of the people involved in this supply chain to make the distribution faster and to, obviously, increase the volume." Asked about Washington's reaction to the requests by India and South Africa, US State Department spokesperson Ned Price did not give a direct answer but said that President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken are "deeply focused, on the issue of expanding global vaccine manufacturing and delivery, which, of course, will be critical to ending this pandemic".

Price mentioned the agreement by leaders of the Quad -- India, the US, Japan and Australia -- at their summit last month for providing vaccines to countries in the region.

"We announced with our Quad partners that we're working to achieve expanded manufacturing of safe and effective vaccines at facilities in India," he said.

New Delhi and Pretoria made patent waiver proposal to the WTO's Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) Council that deals with patent matters in October.

It has not taken a decision and in the meanwhile, the Serum Institute of India has been producing millions of doses of the vaccine through its arrangement with AstraZeneca and Oxford University.

The vaccines are being supplied to over 70 countries through the Indian government and COVAX, the World Health Organisation facility for providing vaccines to developing countries.

(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in and followed on Twitter at @arulouis)
HENDERSON, Nev., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- USA's leading promotional product company, Promo Direct, has enabled the Spanish language for their website. Now all website visitors who are comfortable browsing the website in Spanish can do so with the click of a button.

The addition of Spanish marks the first use of a new language since the website was launched more than 25 years ago. This move marks a pivot towards the growing Spanish-speaking user base in the United States.

Promo Direct

Dave Sarro, CEO of Promo Direct, said, "With our forward-looking approach, we aim to recognize the importance of providing information to Spanish-speaking consumers in the U.S. We want to bridge the language gap by providing information and explanations of each one of our product's in Spanish. By offering a diverse browsing experience, we want to help our Spanish-speaking visitors and businesses to understand that they can trust our products and our organization."



He further added, "We have also added a dedicated phone number on our website for all of our Spanish-speaking visitors. Our team is committed to meet the needs of our Spanish-speaking customers and provide top-notch customer service support. Our employees will be available to help callers gain information on our products, place orders, assist with personalization, billing, and delivery."

To change the language setting, visitors simply need to click on the 'Navegar en Espanol' button in the top left corner of the website. The Spanish language will then be the default language for the shopping and browsing experience.

About Promo Direct:

Promo Direct was founded by Dave Sarro in 1991, with a primary goal of assisting businesses to improve brand awareness and boost sales with the help of promotional products. The company Aims to provide its customer base with a premium shopping experience, accompanied by smart Marketing solutions. Over the years, Promo Direct has won multiple awards. The most popular one being the Gold Award for the '#1 Rated Promotional Products Store' by TopTenReviews.

Contact:

Susan Smith

800-748-6150

[email protected]

SOURCE Promo Direct
Albany, N.Y.  Gov. Andrew Cuomo said today that people who came to meet with him in his office during the pandemic would be tested for Covid-19, including his family members.

But Cuomo also said he wasnt intimately involved in the details of that testing.

The governor was responding to a question about allegations his family members were prioritized for Covid testing early in the pandemic, when supplies were scarce. The matter is one of the items the state Assembly is exploring in its impeachment investigation into Cuomo.

Cuomo said he wouldnt comment in detail while that probe is ongoing, but addressed the issue briefly during a press conference in Albany.

I was not involved in the testing program to that intimate level, Cuomo said when asked if he was aware of priority testing for his family members or if he was involved in arranging it. People who I would meet with and I would be an exposure with, I was aware they were being tested.

So if you came to see me in my office, you would be tested. And that applied with my family also.

The Times Union in Albany, The New York Times and The Washington Post all reported on the testing issue last month. The papers said Cuomo and sate Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker arranged for members of Cuomos family and other influential people with close ties to his administration to get priority coronavirus testing.

The Assemblys impeachment probe is also investigating multiple allegations of sexual harassment against Cuomo and his administrations response to the Covid-19 pandemic in the states nursing homes.

Contact Kevin Tampone anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 315-282-8598
US President Joe Biden will sharpen arguments for his $2 trillion-plus new spending proposal in a speech today, challenging those who oppose his plan and the taxes that would be raised to pay for it.

Plans to ensure firms pay more tax on overseas earnings could have huge implications for Ireland, which has come under scrutiny as a location where some US companies have been able to shift profits and minimise their tax bill.

Biden faces stiff opposition from Republicans, companies and even some in his own Democratic Party to key elements of the proposal he laid out a week ago, which must be approved by Congress to become a reality.

The president will attempt to put those opponents on the defensive in a speech where he will "challenge critics to explain why it's acceptable that 91 of the biggest corporations paid zero in federal taxes in 2019, or lay out which parts of this package they don't think is worthy," according to a White House official previewing Biden's remarks, who declined to be named.

Read More

Biden will deliver the speech at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, across the street from the White House.

He is planning a host of investments over eight years in spending on roads and bridges, retrofitting homes, expanding broadband internet access, caring for the elderly, building up domestic manufacturers and building high-speed rail.

The largest share of funding for the proposal would come from a sharp increase in the corporate tax rate to 28pc, from the 21pc levy set by then-President Donald Trump's 2017 tax bill.

"There is not a shred of evidence to show that the cuts in 2017 increased growth or productivity," said Biden's Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. "The fact of the matter is the corporate structure today is broken."

Biden's plan also raises taxes on companies' overseas earnings and introduces a new minimum tax on the profits they report to investors, which could have huge implications for Ireland, whose low corporate tax rate is used to attract US multinationals.

On Wednesday, the Treasury Department released details of the tax elements of the proposal, including plans to increase auditing and enforcement, that it said would raise about $2.5 trillion over 15 years.

"The biggest companies in the world, including Amazon - they used various loopholes so they'd pay not a single solitary penny in federal income tax," Biden said when he introduced the plan. "I don't want to punish them, but that's just wrong."

Amazon.com Inc Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said on Tuesday that he supports hiking the US corporate tax rate as part of an infrastructure overhaul. But the carefully worded statement stopped short of endorsing the full spectrum of Biden's tax and spending aims.

The business lobby and Republicans have been withering in their criticisms of the proposal. The US Chamber of Commerce, the largest US business group, last month called Biden's proposed hike in corporate taxes "dangerously misguided" and warned it would "slow the economic recovery and make the US less competitive globally."

Raimondo said it is unacceptable for businesses simply to write off the plan.

"What we cannot do and what I am imploring the business community not to do is to say, 'We don't like 28. We're walking away. We're not discussing,'" she said.

"That's unacceptable. Come to the table and problem solve with us to come up with a reasonable, responsible plan."
The UKs exit from the EU has had a significant impact on many industries, including the Security Industry. The implications of Brexit are starting to become clearer to manufacturers, security dealers and customers, however, there are still practical and implementation questions that need to be answered. Here are some ways the Security Industry has been impacted:

Uncertainty. The biggest impact over the last several years is not knowing what the new rules of engagement are. Once companies know the rules and regulations, they can plan and make decisions to minimize costs, reduce risk and ensure customer success. Not knowing the changes to duties and taxes, required documentation or delays in supply, make it difficult to plan for success.

Increased Costs. It seems very unlikely that we can avoid increased costs when dealing with the UK market, including compliance costs, increased documentation and potential delays at the ports.

Compliance and Certification. Traditionally, CE has been the compliance standard for Europe, including the UK. The impact of Brexit on the UK market may require the UKCA (UK Conformity Assessed) marking to designate compliance. Further, there are still many questions regarding General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR); especially as it relates to data stored in the UK and cloud services being hosted in the UK versus the EU countries.
As the IRS delays the latest tax filing date to May 17, it continues to end out the 1,400 dollar stimulus check to families with a direct deposit on file and finally, Supplemental Security Income ( SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) are due to receive the benefits.

This is the week for those who receive SSI or SSDI Social Security benefits to start looking for their third stimulus check. The federal body projected the "majority of these payments would be sent electronically and received on April 7."

Social Security recipients with a non-US address who don't usually file taxes and receive their benefits via direct deposit or Direct Express will receive their stimulus electronically "on or about April 21," according to the Social Security Administration (SSA).

The new eligibility criteria that apply to the third wave of stimulus payments could assist you in obtaining a bigger check this time around. If you stopped or started receiving SSI or SSDI in 2019 or 2020, your situation could become complicated now that it's tax season.

When can Social Security recipients expect the stimulus check?

Even though there has been a delay getting the third payments to around 30 million people who receive benefits from Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, the Railroad Retirement Board and Veterans Affairs, because the Social Security Administration did not send the IRS the necessary paperwork.

But the IRS should have received the information it needed to send the payments last Thursday and announced that many Social Security beneficiaries and many others who don't normally file taxes will start getting their payments by April 7.

Residents can check the status of their payment using the Get My Payment tool on the IRS website.

What if the IRS sends the incorrect amount?

The IRS has said that the third stimulus payments will be based on 2020 income. So if you receive a payment before the agency processes last year's return but you qualify for more money based on your 2020 income, the agency will top off your stimulus payment at some point this year.

Taxpayers won't have to do anything to get all of the money they are eligible for, except file their 2020 returns. If you qualify for less money in 2020, you will not owe any money back.

Prepaid debit cards

"The IRS does not plan to issue prepaid debit cards to beneficiaries for this third round of EIPs," according to the SSA.

Recipients who received a previous stimulus payment as a prepaid debit card, and not on their Direct Express card account, may receive their third stimulus payment as a paper check.

Direct Express payments

Only current Direct Express cardholders can receive their third stimulus payment on their cards. Those who currently don't have a Direct Express card account cannot open one now in order to receive the stimulus funds.

Stimulus payments sent to an account that is closed or no longer active "will be returned and the IRS will reissue the payment," Direct Express said on March 23.

The SSA says residents can receive stimulus funds on their Direct Express card if the following apply:

You did not file a 2020 or 2019 tax return

You did not use the IRS' "Non-Filer" tool at the IRS website to provide information to receive a previous stimulus payment

You receive your monthly Social Security benefit or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payment via a Direct Express card.

Stimulus check arrival dates for SSI, SSDI beneficiaries and veterans

Federal beneficiaries who file a 2019 or 2020 tax return or used the Non-Filers tool in 2020 may have already received a stimulus payment or could get one in a future batch of checks being sent out by the government.

For almost everyone else, your payment could arrive on April 7 through direct deposit or on your Direct Express card. However, veterans who don't file taxes ordinarily will have to wait until mid-April, according to the IRS. People who have already filed a 2020 tax return this year to claim missing stimulus money may find that the IRS will likely use this information instead of your 2019 details if it has processed your latest return. Some people may need to file a 2020 tax return, even if they don't usually file, so the IRS has all the information needed to send payments to cover your eligible dependents.
CASS CITY  For several months Cass City village leaders have been working on a plan to become a certified-level Redevelopment Ready Community.

Village Manager Debbie Powell and the villages community development fellow, Joshua Prusik, developed a plan that also included the councils strategic goal of economic development.

The project has been completed in phases. Phase three, which is the final phase, was just completed.

The finalized draft of the economic development plan was submitted to the council at the March 10 committee of the whole meeting," Powell said. "The finalized draft of the economic development plan was prepared and is in the (council packet)."

To satisfy the best practices from (Michigan Economic Development Commission) it needs to be adopted, she told the council.

And the council did, with plans to post the document on the villages website at www.casscity.org.

The RRC certification allows the village to apply and qualify for state grants," Powell said. "The village is eligible for these grants, as we are in the process of pursuing certification, even though we have not obtained it yet."

The village received $30,000 in grant money to assist us with completing the update of our zoning ordinance, which is part of the RCC certification program, she said.

There are two levels of RRC certification. The village is going for the top level, which would qualify Cass City for marketing and other assistance from the MEDC.

The key priorities in the marketing plan include supporting entrepreneurs and business owners, promoting the village, promoting the importance of shopping local, and partnering with real estate agents to show available spaces for lease or purchase.

In addition, the plan focuses on four strategic areas  business retention and development, re-envisioning and restoring the downtown core, diversifying housing opportunities, and improving and expanding mobility.

This plan is the result of months of work and discussion, which has secured support from the citizens of Cass City, this council, the DDA-EDC, the planning commission, the chamber of commerce board of directors and the leadership of the Tuscola EDC, said Powell.

The plan covers a variety of information specific to the community, such as population, individual and household economic characteristics and housing, as well as a capital improvement plan taking into account the villages strengths, challenges and opportunities.

The plan also includes an ambitious timeline over the next few years on accomplishing various projects.

This June, for example, work will be done to recommend downtown design standards and to adopt an outdoor dining ordinance.

Developing standards for artisan production and E-commerce, and setting standards for historic preservation are among the projects officials hope to begin work on in September.

Identifying underdeveloped and under underutilized properties will be the focus in October.

Other goals of the plan, which extends to January 2024, include developing a business recruitment and development program, developing business welcome kits, and ensuring community access to modern and reliable internet service.
Piers Morgan said he has received messages on behalf of the royal family thanking him for standing up to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

Morgan has emerged as one of the couples biggest critics and left his job at Good Morning Britain last month after saying he did not believe what Meghan told Oprah Winfrey in her bombshell interview.

She made incendiary accusations against Buckingham Palace.

Morgan has since said ITV bosses told him to apologise or quit.

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Morgan appeared on US TV show Extra to discuss the continued fallout from his criticism of Meghan and told host Billy Bush he has the backing of some members of the royal family.

Ive had some messages communicated to me on behalf of several members of the royal family, the 56-year-old said.

Asked by Bush if the backing came from upper level people, Morgan replied: Im not going to go into who it was. But what I would say is, gratitude that somebody was standing up.

Former tabloid editor Morgan said he did not believe Meghan after she told Winfrey she was ignored after raising her mental health problems with figures at the palace.

The duchess also said there had been racist comments about son Archies skin tone before he was born.

Piers Morgan has continued to criticise the Duke and Duchess of Sussex (Yui Mok/PA)

Speaking on Extra, Morgan said his only regret from the controversy was briefly walking off the set of Good Morning Britain following a clash with weatherman Alex Beresford.

Morgan stressed he returned to the programme that morning. And he dismissed claims his stance on Meghan and Harry is racist.

Im not a racist, he said. Nothing Ive ever said about Meghan Markle is either racist or racially motivated. Ive been very critical of Prince Harry and last time I checked he was white and so I find this narrative deeply offensive.

Bush, who is the cousin of former US president George W Bush, asked what Morgan would say to Meghan if given the chance.

He said he would ask for an interview similar to the one she and Harry gave to Winfrey.

Morgan said: I would say to Meghan Markle, Look, sit down with me, with your husband for an equally long interview and let me ask you more difficult questions about all your claims.

But let me ask you a wider question, which is this; if you hate the royal family that much, why do you keep your royal titles? Why do you keep calling yourselves the duke and duchess of Sussex? Why would you do that if its just not to make millions and millions of dollars? And playing the victim as you do is frankly nauseating.

In a separate interview on US TV on Monday, Morgan told prominent conservative news personality Tucker Carlson that Meghan was a delusional duchess who is on the make.
Frances relationship with the veil has been fractious for a while now. The latest drive to ban the hijab for anyone under the age of 18  part of the separatism bill  stems from a movement, growing in Europe since 9/11, which targets women wearing headscarves and veils: the burqa and the niqab.

In February 2004, the National Assembly (the lower house of the parliament in France) began debating a bill to ban religious symbols from schools, including Muslim headscarves, Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses. Prior to this, in September 2003, many of Germanys regions had already banned teachers from wearing headscarves.

In 2011, France became the first country to ban all women from wearing any sort of veil, or the niqab outside their homes in any public place. The niqab ban was the first in Europe and it really questioned Frances attitude to the integration of Muslims in the country. The right-wing parties, including the Republicans led by Nicolas Sarkozy and National Rally led by Marine Le Pen, started a nationwide debate on the place of Muslims in France and hailed Frances Christian heritage.

In 2014, this ban was upheld by the European Courts, which stated that the goal of the ban was to preserve the ideas of national integrity. In 2016, several of the coastal municipal towns imposed the burkini ban for Muslim women.

It is important to understand that such policies are not a recent phenomenon. Discrimination against Muslims, especially women, has been steadily enforced in the name of law, order and national integrity for some time, and the most recent proposed ban is just another step to take away autonomy and agency from Muslim women.

Much of this is also rooted in the imperialistic legacy of France where, for part of the 20th century, it occupied many Muslim-majority lands in Africa and the Middle East. During this period, there was also a drive to separate Islamic symbols and practices from the oppressed areas by banning the veil and Arabic language from the public sphere. The colonial mindset has continued in France, and has been at the root of the blatant Islamophobia in the state.

Read more:

On 30 March, the French senate voted for the separatism bill. The bill aims to impose republican principles, and aims to give the state the tools to fight Islamic radicalism. A large part of the bill is to fight against the inferiorisation of women, and to crack down on any practices that take away the dignity of women. President Emmanuel Macron had previously voiced his belief that the hijab was not in accordance with French ideals.

The ban on the niqab and the hijab is being justified as a means to empower women. However, it is grounded in anti-Islam rhetoric, which is deeply embedded in French society and governance. By assuming that all Muslim women in headscarves are being oppressed, a disregard and ignorance of Islamic religious principles and values is revealed. It is rooted in supremacy ideals where minority ethnic women are always oppressed and need to be saved.

The French government could be viewed as having a white saviour complex  its seen to be helping minority ethnic women, but in telling them how they should act and behave, it is serving its own interests and preserving French ideals rooted in a colonial mindset. Women cannot be empowered by taking away their autonomy, free will and right to choose.

The bill has not come into force yet because it is yet to be voted in by the National Assembly. But if this bill is passed, the age of consent for sex will be lower than the age of consent for wearing the hijab. Women as young as 15 years old have sexual autonomy and agency in France, but they will not have the right to choose a symbol of their religious faith.

The bill stands against Frances national motto: liberte, egalite, fraternite. It is not equal or equitable, because it targets only a certain community, one that is already marginalised and stigmatised. And we cannot assume that sexual liberation is the only way a woman can be free.

Women can only be truly liberated when they have the right to consent and choose for themselves in everything they do, and everything they wear without society (or the government) assigning rules on what is acceptable and what is not.
Many Florida Democrats are criticizing a report by the CBS News program "60 Minutes" that attempted to depict the state's vaccination partnership with the Publix grocery store chain as abhorrent. The program on April 4 navigated the COVID-19 vaccine dissemmination in Florida. It has experienced a similar novel coronavirus death rate to California and other states notwithstanding having much looser limitations.

Democrats on DeSantis in '60 Minutes'

According to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Monday, the news magazine show discredited itself by pushing a "political narrative" regarding his overseeing of the coronavirus vaccine distribution that ran counter to the reality. The governor stated DeSantis stated on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" that amid a segment with correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, what he uttered was "deceptively edited" to depict Florida's senior citizen inoculation plan with Publix supermarkets to be merely paying back a corporate political donor.

However, CBS is abiding by a "60 Minutes" segment on DeSantis, in which the program alleged the Florida governor enlisted Publix to help with COVID-19 vaccinations due to a campaign contribution. A CBS reporter asked him at a press conference regarding the alleged "pay-for-play" scheme. But the segment aired on Sunday edited out a key section of his response to the allegation, reported Yahoo Finance.

Thus, the show is facing backlash for the narrative it aired on the Republican governor, including from Publix and two prominent Democrats in Florida. As part of a bigger story regarding Florida's vaccine dissemmination, the renowned program underscored a recent $100,000 donation that the supermarket chain made to the Florida governor's re-election bid, reported Lebanon Express.

Florida Faces 'Imminent' Pollution Catastrophe, Reservoir Wall May Collapse

As of midnight Monday morning, Florida recorded over 6.2 million Floridians had been inoculated. The report arrived shortly after the CBS News program aired the narrative on Sunday claiming the state's vaccine dissemmination was controlled by money and wealth and was "chaotic." The "60 Minutes" narrative started with a powerful statement regarding Florida's vaccine dissemmination system.

The Florida governor called the allegation a false narrative, proffering a lengthy explanation of what tanspired. It involved state officials reaching out to pharmacies besides Walgreens and CVS because those two companies took on the role of distributing vaccines to long-term care facilities, reported The Epoch Times.

The Lakeland grocer also criticized "60 Minutes," touting the reports offensive and false. TV Host Tucker Carlson also played correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi's clip. This was succeeded by the full video of DeSantis' exchange at a press conference that the CBS program took from. According to DeSantis, his deal with Publix had nothing to do with a six-figure political donation and many Florida Democrats came out to defend him and confirmed his agreement's account.

According to a CBS spokesperson, "As we always do for clarity, '60 Minutes' used the portion of the Governor's over 2-minute response that directly addressed the question from the correspondent." In the comments not aired by CBS, the Florida governor explained CVS and Walgreens were the initial pharmacies enlisted by Florida to dissemminate COVID-19 vaccines. Upon the airing of the report, the Democratic county mayor and the Democratic director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management of Palm Beach County both publicly made their responses. They stated partnering with Publix was not suggested by anyone from the Florida governor's office.

Gov. Desantis Vows To Take Executive Action Against Vaccine Passports

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The city of Worcester will be providing free Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines at the YMCA on Saturday as part of its equity mobile vaccine program.

The one-dose vaccines will be provided from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday at 766 Main St. for eligible residents who qualify as part of the citys vaccine equity initiative and are phase eligible regarding the state requirements.

The citys equity initiative focuses on 20 prioritized communities that have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19.

Those eligible as part of the initiative include Black, Indigenous, Latinx populations and any person of color. Individuals who do not speak English or prefer to speak in another language are also eligible to receive the vaccine on Saturday.

Other populations who are eligible include individuals who do not have access to public transportation or have barriers getting to vaccination sites, individuals not comfortable with traditional healthcare settings, individuals with disabilities, individuals experiencing homelessness and individuals with mental illness or substance use disorder.

The state guidelines for vaccine eligibility must also be met which include anyone 55 or older and individuals with one medical condition. Individuals who live or work in low income or affordable senior housing are also eligible as well as school educators and staff.

Essential workers are also eligible under state guidelines.

Last week, during the citys weekly COVID briefing, city officials said Worcester has administered a total of 2,130 doses as part of the states vaccine equity initiative.

Related Content:
New Delhi/Mumbai, April 7 : As Maharashtra's Covid-19 cases rose again to about 50,000 a day for the second time in three days, with the total tally crossing 31 lakh, Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi has demanded vaccination for those above 18 years of age. She has written a letter to Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan in this regard.

In her letter she said that the government should make vaccine accessible to all above 18 years. "I urge you to review this stance of the ministry and make the vaccine universally available to those below the age of 45 at least to the age of 18 , so that they can be vaccinated and resume working safely," Chaturvedi wrote in the letter.

The letter comes in the wake of the state government saying it was facing a shortage of vaccines even though the state became the first in India to surpass the 80 lakh vaccination mark.

Infections in the state shot up from 47,288 on Monday to 55,469 taking the state tally to 31,13,354. The state fatalities also shot up from 155 a day earlier to 297, as the toll rose to 56,330.

The recovery rate plummeted again from 83.36 per cent on Monday to 82.98 per cent, while the death rate worsened from 1.83 per cent a day earlier to 1.81 per cent, and the number of active cases jumped up to 472,283.

For the second time in three days, the country's commercial capital recorded a five-digit case tally. After notching 11,206 (April 4), the infections in Mumbai increased from 9,879 a day earlier to 10,040, taking the city's tally to 472,600. There were 32 more deaths, increasing the total fatalities to 11,832.

The Mumbai circle -- comprising Mumbai, Thane, Palghar and Raigad districts -- notched its second highest figure of new infections since 19,942 recorded on Sunday, at 18,594, taking the total to 991,046, and deaths to 20,737.
CALGARY, Alberta, April 05, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- FluroTech LTD. (TSXV: TEST) (OTCQB: FLURF) is pleased to announce that it has granted incentive stock options the Board of Directors to purchase 225,000 common shares of FluroTech at a price of $0.45 per share for a term of two years in accordance with FluroTechs stock option plan. The options will vest monthly over a 24-month period and have a life of 4 years. The issuance of the options is subject to final approval by the TSXV.

About FluroTech (TSXV: TEST) (OTCQB: FLURF)

The goal of FluroTechs research and technology is to develop detection methods which are sensitive, specific and easy-to-use. By combining FluroTechs proprietary spectroscopy-based technology with laboratory robotics automation and cloud computing, FluroTech, through the application of its technology and investment in FluroTest, has created a unique solution addressing the current and future pandemics. Using technology that was first developed at the University of Calgary, the FluroTest SARS-CoV-2 test is designed to identify patients with active virus infection; this is not necessarily the case for most of the currently approved tests that are meant to identify patients with SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid. FluroTechs laboratory is led by Dr. Elmar Prenner, the original developer of the technology. Dr. Prenner serves as senior science advisor of FluroTech and brings over 28 years of expertise in fluorescence spectroscopy. To learn more, visit FluroTech.com

For all investor inquiries:

FluroTech Ltd.

Danny Dalla-Longa, CEO

info@flurotest.com

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information generally refers to information about an issuers business, capital, technology or operations that is prospective in nature, and includes future-oriented financial information about the issuers perspective financial performance or financial position. The forward-looking information in this news release includes disclosure about the ability of the Companys testing devices to accurately and quickly detect COVID-19 and to process large numbers of samples in short time frames. The Company made certain material assumptions, including but not limited to prevailing market conditions and general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

Actual results may vary from the forward-looking information in this news release due to certain material risk factors described in the Corporations Annual Information Form under the heading Risk Factors, the failure to develop and commercialize its testing devices in a timely manner or at all. The Company cautions that the foregoing list of material risk factors and assumptions is not exhaustive.

The Company assumes no obligation to update or revise the forward-looking information in this news release unless it is required to do so under Canadian securities legislation.

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 this release.

Source: FluroTech Ltd.
New Delhi:

The Indian Army conducted surgical strike along LoC in the early morning hours of . Its been one year of that glorious operation which dismantled terror launch pads along the LoC. The brave soldiers pioneered clinical surgical strike where there were no casualties on Indian side whereas almost 40 terrorists were gunned down. It was out and out a successful operation.



Now, one year down the line, let us recall the reasons which forced the Indian Army to take this brave move:



# Uri attack: On , four terrorists executed one of the worst terrorist attacks on the Indian Army. On that horrific day, the terrorists killed 19 soldiers in Jammu and Kashmirs Uri in the rear office of Indian Army infantry installation. The attackers were believed to have come from Pakistan. Since the attack, Indian authorities had escalated the matter against Pakistan in international fraternity. The Indian Army took to surgical strikes to avenge the deaths of soldiers in Uri attack.



# Repeated terror strikes in India: Though there had been repeated terror attacks across India, Pakistan had never felt the need to act against terrorists operating from their soil. India has shared details about the terrorists originating from Pakistani soil but the neighboring country never acted against them. Rather, they supported the terror camps operating in their territory. The major terrorist attacks in India included 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, Mumbai serial bomb blast, attack on Akshardham Temple in Ahmedabad, Delhi serial bomb blast, Bombay train blasts, attack on Indian Parliament, Pathankot Air Base attack, Uri attack.

Read more: Surgical Strikes Anniversary: How Indian army avenged Uri attack



# Increased infiltration from Pakistan: The infiltration had increased significantly since the time India had taken the matter internationally. Indian diplomats had been successful in isolating Pakistan on various platforms. Irked by the continuous isolation of Pakistan, the country had increased infiltration from their soil and also upped the export of terrorists to India. Seeing this problem, Indian Army decided to counter the terror the camps operating from Pakistani soil. Indian Army inflicted great damage to the future prospects of infiltration across LoC.



# Pakistans support to terrorism: There had been reports where it was claimed that Pakistani Army personnel were literally sitting in terror launch pads near the LoC. As per reports, at least 17 terror camps were operating in PoK with intent to push terror into India. Pakistan-run terror camps in PoK meant Pakistan-sponsored terror on Indian territory. When India sensed inaction from Pakistan, India decided to tackle the problem by own and launched surgical strikes along LoC to kill terrorists and dismantle terror camps.



# Islamabads indifference towards terrorist activities: India had been continuously and relentlessly urging Islamabad to take action against the terrorist organizations as they were a threat to security in India. India had proactively shared all the intelligence reports against the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks in India. But, Islamabads approach had been to shield them from any action.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
A foreign correspondent at The Times was run over and killed by a drunk motorcyclist travelling up to three times the speed limit, a court heard today.

Melissa van der Klugt, 34 - who covered south Asia and Africa - was tragically killed in the 'horrific' crash in London on August 30, 2019, the hearing was told.

It was later revealed that motorcyclist Christopher Perry, 40, who also died, was drunk and travelling between 74 and 90mph over Battersea Bridge, a 30mph zone.

Ms van der Klugt's parents, who are both solicitors, will argue for an unlawful killing verdict at her inquest.

Their wishes were expressed to the Coroner via their lawyer during a pre-inquest review hearing at Westminster Coroner's Court.

Toxicology reports showed Perry had 108mg of ethanol in his blood. The legal driving limit is 80mg, the hearing was told.

Melissa van der Klugt, 34 (pictured) - who covered south Asia and Africa - was tragically killed in the fatal collision in London on August 30, 2019, the hearing was told

Ms van der Klugt died at the scene in Battersea, south London. The driver died at St George's Hospital in Tooting the following day.

The driver would likely have faced criminal proceedings for causing death by dangerous driving if he had survived, the court heard.

Amy Clarke, counsel for the family, said: 'It will be no surprise that Melissa's family feel very strongly that they want to make representations about unlawful killing.'

Assistant Coroner Bernard Richmond QC asked Ms Clark: 'You are at this stage intending, if the evidence supports the possibility, to seek to persuade me to find a verdict of unlawful killing?

'At the moment the potentials are accident, misadventure, a narrative, and unlawful killing, those are the possibilities aren't they?'

'Yes,' replied Ms Clarke.

A passing Ocado van probably had dashcam footage of the accident but the video was not saved for 'various technical reasons,' the court heard.

'I'm going to look at the effect the condition of the person driving was in before, anything that happened in the journey and what happened immediately after,' concluded Mr Richmond.

Ms van der Klugt - also known as Missy - had worked for The Times, The Sunday Times and the BBC before the tragic accident.

Described in her obituary as tall and elegant, she wrote literary, travel, features and foreign pieces for the newspapers. She was also heard on the radio and in podcasts.

Her exciting and prosperous career led her on adventures across the world including to the Rohingya camps of Delhi, the cheesemakers of Kenya and the Himalayan foothills.

Ms van der Klugt's (pictured) parents, who are both solicitors, will argue for an unlawful killing verdict at her inquest

Her first BBC dispatch saw her record herself speaking under a duvet in Delhi because the recording studio was closed overnight, her obituary in The Times said.

PC Jeremy Archer, who investigated the collision scene, told the hearing that the range of speed was calculated at between 74 and 90mph in a 30mph zone.

When asked by the Coroner, DC Helen Craine said a speed of 70mph would have 'undoubtedly' got the matter to the police for death by dangerous driving.

Mr Richmond said: 'It's clear on any reading that the speed at which the driver was going was such that even if there had been more notice, he probably would not have had a chance of stopping.

'Realistically the question is even at the minimum speed, was that an acceptable speed to be driving?'

A separate inquest will be held for the driver, who also died in the crash.

Ms van der Klugt's family are expected to question whether the ethanol reading of the driver was affected by the blood transfusion he received at the scene and whether it could have diluted the reading.

Ms Clarke said: 'Mr Perry was provided with a blood transfusion on scene.

'We also know from the collision report that Mr Perry's ethanol level in his blood we will be submitting was relevant in the assessment of how the collision occurred.

'It was 108mg and the legal driving limit is 80mg.'

It was later revealed that motorcyclist Christopher Perry, 40, who also died, was drunk and travelling between 74 and 90mph over Battersea Bridge (pictured), a 30mph zone

Addressing Melissa's parents, Diana and Kees and her brother Edmund - who appeared with Ms Clarke via video link - the Assistant Coroner said: 'Who knows what may come out, one thing that is clear is that nobody is on trial.

'We never name the driver in terms of the conclusion we reach, that's not the purpose.

'Although you're here the one person that is not here is Melissa, my job is to be her advocate and to answer the questions that she would want asked.

'I hope that I have done as much as I can to help you.

'Of course the family is the most important thing. One of the things I think is really important is the way the court marks that the way somebody dies does not mark their lives.'
NEWTON, Ill. (WTHI) - With more and more people getting the vaccine, restrictions are easing across the nation.

One long-term care facility in Illinois is letting families visit residents now. News 10 talked with officials at the Newton Care Center in Newton, Illinois. A place once hard-hit by the virus.

Back in December, they were seeing their second COVID-19 spike.

Now their administrator says there aren't any COVID-19 cases and 98 percent of their residents are fully vaccinated. Administrator Paula Schoonover says she was a little hesitant to start opening the doors again.

But since the Illinois Health Department sent out new CDC guidelines she felt more comfortable to give the go-ahead.

Visitors still have to be pre-screened when coming to visit loved ones, and let into the facility. Newton Care Center says they hope this is a step in the right direction.

"Keep a six-foot distance whenever possible but little by little we're able to relax these restrictions and hopefully get back to normal soon," Schoonover said.

The staff and residents say they can't wait till they don't have to have any restrictions and everyone can come in freely.
DETROIT -- Did you have any doubt that Akil Baddoo would be in the starting lineup in Wednesdays series finale against the Minnesota Twins?

The Tigers rookie phenom will start in left field and bat seventh when the Tigers (3-2) and Twins (3-2) play at 1:10 p.m. at Comerica Park.

In case youve missed it, Baddoo homered in the first pitch of his first Major League at-bat on Sunday, hit a grand slam on Monday and then drove in the winning run in the 10th inning on Tuesday.

On Wednesday hell have to face tough Twins starter Kenta Maeda. The Tigers have lefty Matthew Boyd on the hill.

Miguel Cabrera will start at first base for the second consecutive game, with Nomar Mazara serving as designated hitter.

Victor Reyes will start in center field.

Off the bench, the Tigers will have outfielder JaCoby Jones; infielders Harold Castro and Niko Goodrum; and backup catcher Grayson Greiner.
Nicky Shen has a quarter-life crisis, sending her on a journey to an isolated monastery in China in the series premiere of Kung Fu on the CW tonight, Wednesday, April 7 at 8 p.m. ET/PT. You can also stream the show on FuboTV (7-day free trial).

College can be hard. Its a time when youre young and figuring out what you want to do in life. But college might not be for everyone. So when Nicky has her quarter-life crisis, its not surprising she drops out. But taking off to China was a pretty big deal.

Upon her return to San Francisco, she learns her hometown is overrun with crime and corruption and her own parents, Jin and Mei-Li, are at the mercy of a powerful Triad. Itll be up to her, her tech-savvy sister Althea, Altheas fiance Dennis, Nickys pre-med brother Ryan, Assistant District Attorney and ex-boyfriend Evan, and new love interest Henry to save her community.

Shell be using her martial arts skills and Shaolin values to bring the criminals to justice. But thats not all. Shell also be searching for the ruthless assassin who killed her Shaolin mentor, Pei-Ling, and is now targeting her.

What channel is the CW on?

You can find which channel the CW is on by using one of the channel finders here: Verizon Fios, AT&T U-verse, Comcast Xfinity, Spectrum/Charter, Optimum/Altice, DIRECTV and Dish.

How do I watch Kung Fu without cable?

You can stream it on FuboTV (7-day free trial and then $64.99/month) or AT&T Now (From $69.99/month). The CW is only available in certain regional markets, so make sure to check that CW is available in your region on both streaming sites.
Newly-elected Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh presented to the 14th National Assembly a list of nominees for 14 positions, including two deputy prime ministers and 11 ministers, for his new cabinet on April 7.

NA deputies cast their votes

Under the proposal, Secretary of the Party Central Committee Le Minh Khai and Secretary of the Party Committee of Hai Phong city Le Van Thanh are nominated for the deputy PM posts.

Phan Van Giang, member of the Politburo of the 13th Party Central Committee, Chief of General Staff of the Vietnam Peoples Army and Deputy Defence Minister is proposed to become Defence Minister.

Bui Thanh Son, member of the Party Central Committee and Deputy Foreign Minister is introduced to the position of Foreign Minister.

Pham Thi Thanh Tra, member of the Party Central Committee, Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, and deputy head of the Party Central Committees Commission for Organisation is nominated for the post of Minister of Home Affairs.

Le Minh Hoan, member of the Party Central Committee and Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development is proposed to the position of Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Nguyen Thanh Nghi, member of the Party Central Committee and Deputy Minister of Construction is introduced to become Minister of Construction; while

Nguyen Van Hung, member of the Party Central Committee and Deputy Minister of Culture, Sport and Tourism, is suggested for the post of Minister of Culture, Sport and Tourism.

Hau A Lenh, member of the Party Central Committee, Vice President and General Secretary of the Vietnam Fatherland Front Central Committee is nominated for the position of Minister-Chairman of the Government Committee for Ethnic Affairs.

Tran Van Son, member of the Party Central Committee and Standing Vice Chairman of the Government Office is proposed to the position of Minister-Chairman of the Government Office.

Ho Duc Phoc, member of the Party Central Committee and State Auditor General is introduced to take the position of Finance Minister; and Nguyen Kim Son, member of the Party Central Committee and Director of the National University-Hanoi is proposed to become Minister of Education and Training.

Nguyen Hong Dien, member of the Party Central Committee and deputy head of the Party Central Committees Commission for Information and Education is suggested for the post of Minister of Industry and Trade.

Doan Hong Phong, member of the Party Central Committee and Secretary of the Party Committee of Nam Dinh province is nominated for the position of Government Inspector General.

The same day, legislators discussed the nominations in groups and the discussion outcomes will be announced on April 8 morning. Then the deputies will cast their secret votes on the approval of the nominations./. VNA
Body found offshore from Phuket restaurant

PHUKET: Police are hoping to identify the body of a man found stuck on a sandbar some 100 metres offshore from a restaurant in Rassada yesterday (Apr 6).

deathpolice

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Wednesday 7 April 2021, 12:17PM

Kusoldharm rescue workers bring the body back to shore at Saphan Hin yesterday (Apr 6). Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Capt Wiphawan Wattanangenthanong, Deputy Chief of Investigation at the Phuket City Police, was informed of the body at 10:30am She was given coordinates of where to find the body, about 100m in front of Kon Tai 2 restaurant in Rassada. Kusoldharm rescue workers were called to provide assistance. A team of five rescue workers arrived with a dingy and recovered the body, bringing it back to shore at Saphan Hin. Doctors at Vachira Phuket Hospital estimated that the man, believed to be Thai, was about 30-50 years old. However, it was difficult to determine more details due to the condition of the body, Capt Wiphawan reported. Further medical examinations are underway in the hope of confirming the mans identity, she added.
Latvian Defense Minister Artis Pabriks has called his Ukrainian counterpart Andrii Taran to discuss the security situation on Ukraine's borders, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry has reported.

"The defense ministers exchanged views on topical issues of mutual interest. It was noted that Latvia continues its political and diplomatic support for Ukraine's European and Euro-Atlantic aspirations," the report reads.

Taran informed Pabriks about the current security situation in the area of the Joint Forces Operation, in the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, in Crimea and around the state border of Ukraine. Taran paid special attention to the systemic aggravation of the situation in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions by the Russian Federation and the unwillingness of the aggressor state to confirm its commitment to the ceasefire.

"We appreciate the fact that the voice of the Republic of Latvia, as a NATO member, is sounds strongly in our support. Latvia's position on reforming the Armed Forces of Ukraine in accordance with Alliance standards is important and always substantive. We are counting on this in the future, because for Ukraine the issue on the agenda now is the prospect of obtaining a NATO Membership Action Plan," Taran said.

He thanked the Latvian side for practical assistance to the Ukrainian Armed Forces and added that lightly armored medical vehicles handed over by Latvia on February 24 this year are successfully used in the area of the Joint Forces Operation and provide assistance not only to military personnel but also to civilians, often remaining the only source of such assistance in the region.

Pabriks, in turn, reaffirmed Latvia's intention to continue to support Ukraine in restoring its territorial integrity and sovereignty.

"Latvia and other Baltic countries consider Ukraine to be NATO's most valuable partner, which stands for the protection of common values. We will do everything in our power to support Ukraine's movement towards NATO and the EU," Pabriks said.

Taran confirmed the invitation to Pabriks to take part in celebrations on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Ukraine's Independence. Taran was also invited to Latvia to continue the dialogue on the development of bilateral relations in the defense sphere.

On April 2, Taran discussed the situation on Ukraine's borders with UK Secretary of State for Defense Ben Wallace.

op
AUSTIN, Texas, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Inspired by a commitment to community banks and the role they play supporting small businesses, BAT Investments, Inc. has reached an agreement to acquire Capital Bank of Texas (CBOT), headquartered in Carrizo Springs, Texas.

Capital Bank of Texas

BAT Investments was founded by entrepreneurs and long-time bankers Bobby Priestley and Tanya Miller, who plan to expand the bank's reach by opening a new branch in Austin. Priestley and Miller are backed by a board of directors composed of civic leaders, business owners and financial services professionals. They include George "Hal" Davis, Jr., Mark Mangum, Kevin Hunter, Delores Crum, Mohammed Ali and Fred C. Allen, Jr.

"Community banks are the heartbeat of small businesses," co-founder Tanya Miller said. As President and Chief Risk Officer, Miller will be instrumental in forging the bank's future and relationships with its customers. "Community bankers personally get to know their customers and tailor products and services that align with the needs of the community," she said. "The ability to make local, individualized, and timely decisions for our customers is what sets community banks apart from large financial institutions."

With branches in Carrizo Springs and Crystal City and a loan production office in Austin, Capital Bank of Texas will be an optimal foundation to launch the company's future plans. The bank currently has assets of approximately $84 million.

Co-founder Bobby Priestley will serve as the bank's Chairman and CEO. "Banking should be all about relationships," he said. "By serving the Austin community in our careers, we've developed strong relationships that we will be able to carry forward. Additionally, the growing and robust Austin market creates endless opportunities for new client relationships."

As the bank expands its Austin footprint, it will remain dedicated to the communities where Capital Bank of Texas was founded. "CBOT has provided quality financial services and faithfully supported the communities of Carrizo Springs and Crystal City over the years," Miller said. "We look forward to continuing their legacy."

The acquisition, which is subject to regulatory approval, is expected to be completed this summer.

About BAT Investments, Inc.: Composed of principals Bobby Priestley and Tanya Miller, BAT Investments represents nearly four decades of banking and financial services experience. Founded with a mission to foster community banking and the small businesses it supports, BAT is dedicated to revitalizing the concept of local banks supporting local businesses.

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After working with two writers, Hermanus and Sidey eventually wrote the script together, moving away from the novels more personal love story.

For a year, the Offstage series has followed theater through a shutdown. Now were looking at its rebound. Join Times theater reporter Michael Paulson, as he explores signs of hope in a changed city with Lin-Manuel Miranda, a performance from Shakespeare in the Park and more.

I was more interested in the hurt and indoctrination than the protagonists catharsis, Hermanus said. I didnt want to make another gay-centric relationship drama set in the army. I wanted it to be a serious portrait of this generation.

Hermanus obliquely and subtly evokes Nicholass shifting emotions, as the soldier gradually forms a silent attachment to a fellow conscript, Dylan Stassen (Ryan de Villiers). The price of expressing such feelings is made clear in that early scene when the two lovers, bloodied and trembling, are taunted and humiliated. Later, we learn they have been sent to the fearsome Ward 22, where they are the subject of brutal experimental treatments intended to cure homosexuals, drug addicts and others deemed to be deviant.

It was very important to both Oliver and me that Nicholas wasnt certain of his sexuality, Brummer said in a video interview from Cape Town. His focus is survival, finding out how to fit in, and in finding Dylan something in him ignites, and his understanding of the world shifts.

The deep social repression of sexuality and of otherness is evoked midway through the film in a brightly colored, sun-dappled flashback to a childhood experience of humiliation, which Hermanus drew from his own memories. It is shot in a single take, one of several unpredictable cinematic decisions that inflect the movie. We set a lot of rules beforehand about our choices, but sometimes you just surrender to what is there, said Jamie D. Ramsay, the director of photography, who had worked with Hermanus on two previous films. Oliver is brave and will commit and say, OK thats the shot.
Three key developments were announced last week by the UAE in line with its role as a principal member of the U.S.s new Middle East strategy to counter Chinas dramatically increasing influence over the region: plans for a major economic expansion; plans to attract more oil trade into new contracts; and plans to counter Iranian threats to oil supplies through the Strait of Hormuz.

The first of these developments - announced by UAE Vice President and Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, vice president and prime minister of the UAE and ruler of Dubai  is Operation 300 Billion. This is an initiative that intends to raise the contribution of the UAEs industrial sector to AED300 billion (US$81 billion) from the current AED133 billion within the next 10 years. The objective will be achieved in large part through the creation of 13,500 industrial companies over that period, covering the manufacturing, construction, electricity, gas, mining and quarrying sectors in the first instance. At the centre of these plans, which in turn fall within the UAEs Circular Economy Policy 2021-2031, will be an adjunct build-out of the UAEs energy sector. This includes an overall target crude oil production increase for the UAEs flagship oil and gas company  the Abu Dhabi Oil Company (ADNOC)  from around 4 million barrels per day (bpd) to at least 5 million bpd by 2030 at the latest. Related: Record High COVID Cases Could Stall Indias Oil Imports

Much of this increase  and similar increases that will come from the other Arab states that align decisively with the U.S. through its sponsored relationship normalisation deals  will be geared towards India as the prime end-user in the East that is being cultivated by the U.S. to become a more active regional rival to neighbouring China. The 15 June 2020 clash between military units of the two great Asia powers in the disputed territory of the Galwan Valley in the Himalayas reflected a much greater change in the core relationship between the two countries than the relatively small number of casualties might have implied. It marked a new push back strategy from India against Chinas policy of seeking to increase its economic and military alliances from Asia through the Middle East and into Southern Europe, in line with its multi-layered multi-generational One Belt, One Road (OBOR) project.

Until China dramatically upped the tempo of this OBOR-related policy  at around the same time as the U.S. signalled its lack of interest in continuing its own large-scale activities in the Middle East through its withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran and its withdrawal from much of Syria  India had stuck to a policy of trying to contain China. A series of reports recently on the expected growth in Indias demand for oil, gas, and other energy products will allow it to occupy this position as a viable alternative end-user for China and to advance a more aggressive version of its own rival policy to Chinas OBOR strategy  Indias Neighbourhood First initiative.

Since the UAE signed its own relationship normalisation deal with Israel, its flagship oil producer, ADNOC, now plays a key role in the management of Indias vital strategic petroleum reserves (SPR) and a slew of new oil deals are expected between the UAE and India. Following on from this, ADNOCs chief executive officer, Sultan al-Jaber, stated at the end of March that the new investments to be made by the UAE, along with new conventional and unconventional oil discoveries, will help boost the production of Murban. This dovetails into the second key development announced last week, which was the finalisation of plans to attract more oil trade into new contracts. Specifically, last week saw the launch by ADNOC of a dedicated Murban futures contract on a new Abu Dhabi-based exchange  the ICE Futures Abu Dhabi platform (IFAD) - in partnership with the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE). Related: Goldman Sachs Sees Large Oil Demand Rebound This Summer

The light, sweet Murban crude oil grade is one of the four crudes produced by ADNOC, although it accounted for around half of the UAEs total near-4 million bpd crude oil production before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to ICE and ADNOC, Murban futures is the second physically delivered futures contracts traded on a regional exchange after Dubai Mercantile Exchanges Oman crude futures, and Murban is also a deliverable grade in the Platts benchmark Dubai and Oman crude assessments. ICE and ADNOC partnered with BP, GS Caltex, Inpex, ENEOS, PetroChina, PTT, Shell, Total and Vitol to launch the IFAD, and ICE has also announced agreements with Chevron, Trafigura, and Occidental to explore using the contract to price crude exports from the U.S. to Asia.

The new Murban contract on the new IFAD exchange also then ties into the final part of the trio of announcements last week, with this being that the UAEs Fujairah emirate is to dramatically expand over the next 10 years. Already the worlds third biggest bunkering centre, Fujairah is set to continue to benefit from its highly advantageous strategic position outside the perennially troublesome Strait of Hormuz and outside the rest of the Persian Gulf as well. Instead, Fujairah offers an unencumbered direct port on the eastern side of the Gulf of Oman, which means that any oil kept there will be able to avoid any blockade that Iran might again impose on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz. This option will become increasingly attractive to Iran as it finalises its Guriyeh-Jask oil pipeline that will allow its oil to flow without going through the Strait even as it blockades 30 per cent of the rest of the worlds oil supply. Fujairahs geographical position also allows any oil kept there to avoid any future problems that may arise with Oman if the Sultanate succumbs to Chinas current wooing of it to become part of its OBOR-related sphere of influence.

Even as it stands, Fujairah is the key hub from which the UAEs Murban oil is exported, making its way there through the 360 kilometre Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline from the Habshan onshore field in Abu Dhabi and capable of transporting 1.8 million bpd. ADNOC is also currently developing underground oil storage caverns in Fujairah that can hold 42 million barrels, including Murban, with the project expected to be completed in 2022. According to recent statements from the Fujairah port development authorities, it may add a tenth berth shortly as part of plans to boost overall storage capacity across the site to 17 million cubic metres in the next three to four years.

By Simon Watkins for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Ireland is home to Citi's European operations which were hit by the impact of Covid last year. Photo: Peter Foley/Bloomberg

Pretax profits at Citibanks Irish-based European unit last year more than halved to $475.69m (401.34m) due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Limerick native Cecilia Ronan was appointed as the head of Citibank Europe in February 2020, and new accounts show that pre-tax profits declined by 64pc in 2020. Total income decreased by 10.4pc to $2.2bn in the 12 months to the end of December last.

The business employs 10,238 people including around 2,500 in Ireland.

The directors stated that the companys businesses, operations and financial condition have been impacted by economic dislocations and trends caused by the pandemic.

The directors said that despite these impacts, the business reported a post-tax profit of $443m for 2020 and has maintained strong capital and liquidity positions with consistently strong business operations.

The business is headquartered in Dublin and has branches across 21 European countries.

The directors state that the consideration to pay dividends in relation to 2020 earnings will be kept under review in 2021 in light of uncertainties created by Covid-19 and regulators recommendations and will be finalised later in the year.

No dividend was paid in 2020 on 2019 earnings.

The companys total assets increased by $12.6bn to $74bn at year end.

The directors state that the growth was led by the markets and securities services businesses due to the successful Brexit-led transitions and portfolio build up in derivatives flow trading as well as increased financing seen across financial institutions and corporate customers.

The bank paid corporation tax of $32.59m for the year.

Numbers employed by the group last year increased from 9,446 to 10,238 and staff costs increased by 7.6pc from $744.28m to $801.5m.

Salary costs totalled $640m while social security costs came to $119.9m and pension and post retirement benefits amounted to $16.27m.

The staff costs included restructuring costs of $9.6m along with shared based payments of $15.5m.

Directors pay declined by 38.5 per cent from $5.4m to $3.3m as no payment was made under long term incentive schemes for 2020 and this followed a payout under that heading of $1.6m in 2019.

The accounts further show that 10 members of key management personnel shared remuneration of $11.76m made up of salaries of $11.2m and post employment benefits of $567,000.

The directors stated that the business has a well balanced business model that places it in a strong position to face current uncertainties facing the business and to benefit from opportunities for future growth.

They said that once the market condition improves and recovery takes hold, the volumes in payments and commercial card business are expected to bounce back.

The directors said that the company has seen a significant increase in transactional volumes and associated revenues in the Securities Services business and this is expected to continue through client acquisition and geographic expansion.

Total assets stood at $74.7bn at year-end.Net interest income was $390.61m, net fee and commission income was $969.6m and trading income $255.6m.
Faithless  All Blessed

THE GOOD: British electronic outfit Faithless returns with its seventh (first in 10 years).

THE BAD: Was anyone clamoring for a Faithless comeback record? Yes or no, here it is.

THE NITTY GRITTY: Faithless is down to its core duo, Sister Bliss and Rollo. Long-time vocalist Maxi Jazz doesnt show up this time, and neither does Rollos sister, Dido. Musically, All Blessed bounces between ethereal quickies such as Friendship and Walk in My Shoes and more beat-heavy, straightforward dance tracks. Some of the more banging moments include the majestic title cut and the fun, loopy Synthesizer.

Guest vocalists add emotion when the pair wants to settle in between the two extremes. When they crave both a lilting melody and driving rhythm, folks such as Nathan Ball (I Need Someone) and indie guy Damien Jurado (Take Your Time) fit the bill. All Blessed ends up a varied and enjoyable set, but its not all that memorable. So adjust your expectations and accept that its not 1998 anymore.

BUY IT?: Your call.

The Avalanches  We Will Always Love You

THE GOOD: Australian electronic duo the Avalanches (Robbie Chater and Tony Di Blasi) releases its third.

THE BAD: Nope.

THE NITTY GRITTY: Avalanches didnt make us wait 16 years this time; Love You follows 2016s Wildflower. Here, the duo continues the transition from building sample-heavy sound collages (its 2000 debut Since I Left You had more than 900 outside pieces) to using samples WITH live instrumentation and guest vocalists.

The live part of the equation started on Wildflowers. Here, its even more important. However, Love You is just as equally thrilling and mysterious as the guys past work. Youll hear snippets of everyone from Alan Parsons to the Carpenters to Pat Metheny paired with an eclectic set of players. Vocalists include Rivers Cuomo, MGMT, Tricky, Wayne Coyne, Karen O and so many others; some are not so easily noticed.

The record should be an exhausting 71 minutes. However, the entire affair is just the opposite  an enticing and dreamy voyage you wont mind retaking.

BUY IT?: Sure.

Dizzee Rascal  E3 AF

THE GOOD: British rapper and grime pioneer Dizzee Rascal releases his seventh.

THE BAD: Rascals best work MIGHT BE behind him, but E3 AF is the most energized this man has sounded in years.

THE NITTY GRITTY: Rascal is a survivor of that brief moment in history (circa 2003) when it seemed England would take over as the center of the hip-hop universe. That didnt happen, but a lot of fantastic albums did. Now in his late 30s, the guy is reclaiming his original style by merging pop, hip-hop, electronic and grime on his own terms. E3 AF references the E3 East London postal code where Rascal grew up, an appropriate title for this back-to-basics approach.

Yes, the record boasts a slew of guest vocalists. However, people such as P. Money, Chip and Smoke Boys never steal the spotlight away from their host. This is Rascals show  a tight, no-nonsense and noisy 10 tracks packed with attitude and vitality. Its a true thinking-mans party record.

BUY IT?: Yeah.

Contact the writer: mevans@shamrocknepa.com
Its a tale as old as time: a man and woman meet and fall in love. The two get engaged, and then worlds collide as the man meets the womans parents. Except in this story, the parents are naked all the time.

In the wacky and edgy comedy Disrobed, Katy actors Karen Lasater and Dave McClain play Sierra and George, two loving  and nudist  parents meeting their soon-to-be son-in-law Eric for the first time. Sierra and Georges daughter, Skye, however, has failed to mention to Eric that her parents are naturalists.

More by Claire Goodman: SUNDAY CONVERSATION: Single moms find housing and solace at Abigails Place

The fact that the actors are fully nude throughout the performance isnt the most unique part of Disrobed. The entire play is performed via Zoom  a fitting premise for a COVID-19 world.

Its Meet the Parents with a twist, said a representative for Hollywood Fringe, the plays hosting website. Skye is eager to introduce her buttoned-up fiance Eric to her free-wheeling family at their monthly Zoom happy hour. But shes neglected to tell him that she and her kin are all nudists, and that shes already assured them that hes one of us. When the clothes come off, will the humor, heart and humanity of this lockdown parable on love and family remain?

The production has been wildly successful thus far, turning a profit and garnering rave reviews.

For Lasater and McClain, however, baring it all had never been something they expected to do. Neither actor had ever done any nude performances before Disrobed.

Lasater and McClain both perform with acting groups in Katy and Rosenberg. They also perform in Texian Time Machine, the Fort Bend County History Museums living history program where they dress in period costumes and teach children about the 1820s.

Lasater and McClain have been friends and actors in Katy for several years. They have starred together in several productions including commercials, short films and other plays, and they only live about five miles apart.

When McClain found out about the production, he was immediately interested in the role of George, and he thought Lasater would be perfect as Sierra. Still, McClain said, asking his friend if she wanted to star in a fully nude production with him wasnt easy.

Even though we had a good working relationship and friendship at that point, I didnt know how she would react to this suggestion, McClain said. I was envisioning all kinds of scenarios where she hung up on me or called me a creep or pervert. So I was hesitant.

He only got up the nerve to call me and ask me the night before the audition, Lasater added, laughing.

The two both got the parts. Lasater credited the producer, Troy Peterson, for making the experience as comfortable and respectful as possible.

He really worked to make sure we were able to ease into it, she said. I was totally comfortable with all of it because of the way he handled things.

McClain added that the actors have a clause in their contract stating that if at any point one of the six actors no longer wishes to perform, the entire show will end.

Anyone can say, enough and that kills the showings, McClain said. (Peterson) didnt want anybody to feel uncomfortable or that once (the show) had gotten out in the world, wed lose all control of our images.

All six cast members are still in the performance and are pleased with the experience, McClain added.

McClain noted that both he and Lasater are happily married to other people, and their spouses fully support the performance.

Related: Fertitta-owned apartments in Galveston rendered uninhabitable after cold storm

I dont know how many wives would be comfortable with their husband sitting naked next to a naked woman for hours on end, rehearsing and performing, McClain said, laughing. But my wife has been great about it, and Karens husbands been great about it.

Disrobed may be a comedy with a naked twist, McClain concluded, but at the heart of it all, the play is a story about families coming together.

Its kind of a universal thing. You see it in anything from the Meet the Parents movies to Westside Story- people from different backgrounds getting together because their kids want to get married, he said. They have to try to overcome their differences or preconceived notions, and thats a big part of this world.

For more information about Disrobed, visit www.disrobed2021.com.

claire.goodman@chron.com
Jimmy Fallon is making amends with a pair of Houston TikTok creatives.

After receiving backlash last week when singer and social media star Addison Rae performed a number of popular TikTok dances, Fallon invited the creators of those dances on "The Tonight Show" to perform them, according to Benjamin VanHoose with People.

RISING HOUSTON ARTISTS: Here are five Houston artists you should be listening to

"We recognize that the creators of those dances deserve to have their own spotlight," Fallon said during Monday's episode.

Among the TikTok creators recognized were Houstonians Mya Nicole Johnson and Chris Cotter, who created the popular viral dance to Cardi B's "Up."

A few days after Rae appeared on "The Tonight Show" performing the Houston natives' dance, Johnson took to Twitter to acknowledge she was one of the original creators.

"I created #upwmyaxchris one of the people that created this challenge. Please repost to bring awareness as our young black creators are often overlooked or not acknowledged for their talents. It would be greatly appreciated."

Cotter also shared a tweet stating they were the original creators.

Fallon invited a total of nine TikTok dance creators to perform their dances on his program.

Rae told TMZ it wasn't her intention to leave out the names of TikTok creators from her segment on "The Tonight Show" appearance.

"I think they were all credited in the original YouTube posting, but it's kinda hard to credit during the show," Rae said. "But they all know that I love them so much and, I mean, I support all of them so much. And hopefully one day we can all meet up and dance together."
Multiple explosions and a fire in an underground concrete electrical vault rocked downtown Omaha, Neb., and forced the evacuation of a nearby hotel, but no injuries were reported.

The incident happened around 8 p.m. on April 5 when a power transformer that sits under the sidewalk next to the Doubletree Hotel caught fire, authorities said. Explosions from the transformer continued after firefighters arrived, producing a large amount of smoke and flames coming from the sidewalk grates over the vault, Acting Omaha Fire Battalion Chief Mickey McLaughlin said.

McLaughlin told the Omaha World-Herald that the hotel was not damaged because its basement is walled off from the vault. Firefighters had the blaze under control within minutes, and hotel guests were allowed back into their rooms a short time later.

Andrew Lovato-Needham, 18, of Phoenix, said he and his parents were in their eighth-floor room when the first explosion occurred, causing the building to shutter and the lights to flicker.

We heard an explosion that rocked the building a little bit and we freaked out, he said. We looked out the window and saw smoke coming from the sewer vents right below us, and we decided we needed to get out as fast as possible.

Work crews from Omaha Public Power Utility were on site to make repairs once the fire was out, a spokeswoman for the utility said.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Nebraska
Punjab government has imposed an 8-hour long night curfew from 09:00 pm to 05:00 am till April 30 across the state in view of the recent surge in COVID-19 cases.

Before this, night curfew was imposed across 12 districts of the state. Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has ordered a complete ban on political gatherings and those who flout the rules, including politicians will be booked under the Disaster Management Act and Epidemics Act.





Punjab Government imposes night curfew from 9pm-5am across the entire State till April 30, also bans political gatherings in the State pic.twitter.com/8lKIXxF3MP a ANI (@ANI) April 7, 2021

Besides this, gathering of not more than 50 people can attend events like funerals, cremation ceremonies and/or weddings organised at indoor venues. In case of outdoor venues, the gatherings have been capped at 100 people. Schools and educational institutions will also remain closed.

It is also mandatory for all government officers to wear face masks while in office. There, however, is some good news for shop owners in malls. The Chief Minister has allowed 10 people per shop at any time.

During the weekly review of COVID-19 situation, Singh said 85 per cent of cases in Punjab can be attributed to the UK mutant of the virus, adding the government had no other option but to take stringent measures.

Punjab, which is one of the states to report an upward COVID-19 trend in India, has reported over 2.57 lakh total cases. Out of these, more than 2.23 lakh people have recovered, with 2,350 discharges in the last 24 hours. Total 7,216 people have succumbed to the disease so far, with 61 deaths in the last 24 hours. The state has 25,913 active cases, with 494 infections reported on Tuesday.

Punjab has so far administered total 14.16 lakh COVID-19 vaccine shots so far. Out of these, over 12.84 lakh people received the first shot whereas more than 1.31 lakh people got the second shot of the life-saving jab.

Also read: World Health Day: PM Modi requests people to focus on combating COVID-19 by taking precautions

Also read: India records highest-ever single-day spike of 1.15 lakh coronavirus cases

Also read: 50 high-level teams rushed to Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Punjab amid Covid spike
COLUMBUS, Ohio, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Distressed asset auctioneer Richard Kruse of Gryphon USA said plans by the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau to delay foreclosures another nine months and create more regulations only builds pressure on consumers and the nation's housing market.

The CFPB this week announced proposed rules meant to encourage lenders and loan servicers to continue working with consumers to avoid foreclosure, pushing potential filings out to January 2022.

"I understand the intent," said Kruse. "But the CFPB is effectively demanding an immediate and unrealistic overhaul of lending, investment, servicing and mortgage insurance industries, not understanding that the end result will be worse with these rules than allowing the legal system work."

Nearly 13 months ago, Congress and the Trump administration agreed to a one-year ban on mortgages insured by U.S. agencies with a March 31, 2021 sunset. Certain evictions also were postponed as the Coronavirus-19 pandemic spread and millions of Americans lost their jobs. In February, the Biden administration through various agencies extended the foreclosure and eviction ban through June 30.

The CFPB, in its April 5 news release, warned that the expected surge of borrowers exiting forbearance in the fall will put mortgage servicers under strain. (https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-proposes-mortgage-servicing-changes-to-prevent-wave-of-covid-19-foreclosures/)

While the independent commission tries to frighten Americans about this wave of potential foreclosures, Kruse said the proposed delay would only allow for nonperforming mortgages to be further along in default status, negatively impacting the homeowner once the ban is lifted.

"Consumers have been afforded a year to identify next steps and the administration is now suggesting to add another 6 months to the timeline. What CFPP doesn't seem to grasp is that their proposal will not stop foreclosures," Kruse said. "Call it what you want; kicking the can down the road again, sticking another finger in the dyke or stacking additional pressure behind a cork that must eventually pop."

Kruse added, "The fact remains that throwing these new rules at the problem will not solve homeowners' financial distress; it will only delay it. The proposed changes are unrealistic to implement and will ultimately fail, but the administration gets their hollow victory of being able to say 'well, we tried' while at the same time distressed borrowers get to say 'thanks a lot for that'."

SOURCE Gryphon USA

Related Links

www.gryphonusa.com


Two convicted terrorists accused of assaulting a prison officer may be 'forced' to attend court after they refused to leave their cells to answer the charges today.

Parson's Green Tube bomber Ahmed Hassan, 21, and Hashem Abedi, the 23-year-old brother and accomplice of the Manchester Arena suicide bomber, did not appear in court.

The pair are accused, alongside Muhammed Saeed, 23, of assault occasioning actual bodily harm on prison officer Paul Edwards at HMP Belmarsh on May 11 last year.

Saeed, who last year pleaded guilty to five counts of possessing terrorist material, appeared via video link at Westminster Magistrates' Court.

Hassan, Abedi and Saeed are all charged with actual bodily harm, with Abedi charged separately also with assault of an emergency worker.

(left to right) Hashem Abedi and Ahmed Hassan, who have been charged over an attack on a prison officer

Muhammed Saeed, 23, is also accused of assault occasioning actual bodily harm on prison officer Paul Edwards

Asked by District Judge Tan Ikram whether Abedi and Hassan were 'refusing to attend' the hearing via video link from HMP Frankland, County Durham, an unnamed prison officer replied: 'They're refusing to come down to this location, they are in their cells on the wings.'

He added: 'They've not made any formal representation, they just insisted they're not going to attend in any shape or form, sir.'

In 2017, Hassan's homemade bomb that he hid inside a Lidl bag partially exploded on a London Underground train in Parsons Green, west London, injuring 51 people. He was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum jail term of 34 years.

Abedi was jailed for 55 years for his part in the plot to set off a bomb at the 2017 concert of Ariana Grande in Manchester, which led to the death of 22 people including seven children, as well as injuring 237 people.

Abedi, 23, and Hassan, 21, accused alongside suspect, Muhammed Saeed, 23, of assault occasioning actual bodily harm on Paul Edwards at HMP Belmarsh (pictured) May 11 2020

Saeed, appearing from maximum security Whitemoor jail in Cambridgeshire today, told the Deputy Chief Magistrate that he indicated a plea of not guilty to the prison assault charge.

Nicholas Alexander, prosecuting, said: 'This defendant along with the other two absent defendants were at HMP Belmarsh on 11 May, 2020.

'They had a period of time out of the cells and on their return back to the cells they took the opportunity of entering into an office where the Prison Officer [Paul] Edwards was seated at a desk.'

The prosecutor said the officer suffered a serious of injuries as a result of being kicked including ongoing hearing problems.

Mel Kelemework, defending, said: 'I have received instructions that Mr Saeed says he did not assault the officer.'

Hashem Abedi, 23, and Ahmed Hassan, 21, charged with assault on prison officer, refused to leave cells at HMP Frankland, County Durham, to appear in court

The court also heard that Abedi and Hassan were told by postal requisition to appear at court on 8 April, not today.

Mr Alexander said: 'They are unrepresented. It's quite clear the defendants have indicated they do not wish to attend. They are unwilling to leave their cells.'

District Judge Tan Ikram said: 'I will list this matter again at 12pm, midday, tomorrow.

'I will give them the benefit of the doubt that technically they were not due to attend today and that they were due to attend tomorrow.

'If there is ambiguity in their minds, they must appear at 12pm tomorrow.

'If they do not, it is highly likely that I will direct the use of force.'Saeed, who denies ABH, will next appear at Woolwich Crown Court on May 5.
The immediate past Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, has formally handed over to the new acting Inspector General, Usman Alkali.

The event, which took place at the police headquarters ,on Wednesday, witnessed the presence of top police officers across the country.

President Muhammadu Buhari had on Tuesday named Mr Alkali as the new acting IGP.

Mr Alkali replaces Mr Adamu who has proceeded on retirement after attaining 35 years in service.

The announcement of the new police chief was made by the minister of police while briefing journalists at the State House in Abuja on Tuesday.

The appointment came a few days after the police headquarters in Owerri, Imo State, was attacked by gunmen.

Coincidentally, the outgoing IGP visited Imo State for an on-the-spot assessment of the damage at the police headquarters when his replacement was announced.

According to a statement by the police spokesperson, Frank Mba, the acting IGP, in his remark, pledged to harness all human and material resources of the Force towards improving security, safety, law and order in the country.

Read the full statement:

PRESS RELEASE

IGP USMAN ALKALI BABA ASSUMES DUTY AS THE NEW INSPECTOR GENERAL OF POLICE

 AS FORMER IGP MOHAMMED ADAMU RETIRES FROM SERVICE

The Inspector General of Police, Ag. IGP Usman Alkali Baba, NPM, psc (+), fdc, today, 7th April, 2021 assumed duty as the Inspector General of Police of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. He was appointed by the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, His Excellency Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR on 6th April, 2021. He takes over from IGP Mohammed Abubakar Adamu, NPM, mni who retired after 35years of meritorious service to the nation. The handing/taking over of leadership between the former and new Police Chiefs was held in a brief but colourful ceremony at the Force Headquarters, Abuja. The event was climaxed with the symbolic handover of the Nigeria Police flag.

2. The new IGP, who is the 21st indigenous Inspector General of Police, thanked the President for the opportunity given him to serve the nation and humanity. He pledged to harness all human and material resources of the Force towards improving security, safety, law and order in the country.

3. Ag. IGP Usman Alkali Baba, NPM, psc (+), fdc, a fellow of the National Defence College, hails from Geidam in Yobe State. He was commissioned into the Nigeria Police Force on 15th March, 1988 as a Cadet Assistant Superintendent of Police at the prestigious Nigeria Police Academy (Annex), Kaduna. He holds a Masters degree in Public Administration (MPA) and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science.

4. The astute crime-fighter and versatile manager of men and resources, has held several strategic positions in the past cutting across all the departments of the Force. These include: Ag. Deputy Inspector-General of Police in-charge of the Department of Finance and Administration, the Force Secretary, Assistant Inspector-General of Police in-charge of Zone-5 Benin, Zone-4 Makurdi and Zone-7 Abuja. He was also a former Commissioner of Police, Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and Delta Commands amongst others. Until his appointment as the Ag. IGP, he was the Deputy Inspector General of Police in-charge of the Force Criminal Investigations Department.

5. The new Ag. IGP Usman Alkali Baba, NPM, psc (+), fdc holds a policing vision of enhancing police primacy in the protection of lives and property. He believes in the provision of motivational and credible leadership driven by professionalism and strategic planning, all directed at stabilizing internal security and modernizing police operations within the framework of citizens consent, trust, and the rule of law.

CP FRANK MBA

FORCE PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICER

FORCE HEADQUARTERS

ABUJA

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The United Kingdom has four constituent countries, England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. The UK came together over several centuries. Historically, the kingdom and its politics have been dominated by England, as it has always been the most powerful. Even today, England dominates the UK politically, linguistically, and culturally, as it is the largest, and by far, the most populous constituent country in the union. Nevertheless, the UKs other constituent countries still maintain vibrant cultures and traditions.

Contents:

How Was The United Kingdom Formed?

The first countries to come together were England and Wales. In 1536, Wales was formally merged with England, through an Act of Union. Less than a century later, in 1603, the Union of the Crowns took place, which united the royal houses of England and Scotland. It was followed by the Union of the Parliaments in 1707, when the parliament of Scotland dissolved itself and the parliament of England, based in London, became the parliament for all of Great Britain. In 1801, the parliament of Ireland, which had been under English rule almost continuously since the 12th century, formally joined Great Britain through an Act of Union. Thus, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland came into being. Ireland, except the northern part, which became Northern Ireland, would eventually break away from the UK and become independent in 1921. Hence, the UK is now known formally as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

England

9 regions of England map

The story of England begins with the arrival in Great Britain of the Anglo-Saxons, beginning in the 5th century CE. The Anglo-Saxons were Germanic tribes from northern continental Europe. In the 10th century, the Anglo-Saxons united under one ruler, King Ethelstan, who is regarded as the first King of England. He ruled from 924 to 939 CE. Several different dynasties have ruled England over more than a millennium. A pivotal moment in English history took place when the English navy defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588, marking the beginning of Englands naval supremacy. Shortly thereafter, England began establishing outposts and settlements all over the globe. Englands history as a country unto itself ended in 1603, when Queen Elizabeth I chose to anoint King James VI of Scotland as her successor in what was known as the Union of the Crowns. From then onward, England was part of the country known as Great Britain.

Royal family of England map. Editorial credit: Lorna Roberts / Shutterstock.com

Today, England is the dominant political, economic, and cultural force in the UK. This dominance is reflected in the fact that when people around the world talk about the UK, they often refer to it simply as England. Of the estimated 67 million people that live in the UK, about 56 million live in England. Most of the UKs economy is also based in England. In fact, as of 2018, Englands economy was worth approximately 1.8 trillion British Pounds, whereas the next leading economy, Scotland, was worth just an estimated 161 billion Pounds. Arguably, Englands most dominant force in the UK is the English language, which has managed to all but replace other languages indigenous to the UK, such as Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, and Irish Gaelic.

Wales

Map of Wales.

Unlike England and Scotland, Wales was never a single nation-state. Rather, it was divided among several kingdoms. Over two centuries following the conquest of England by the Normans, the English gradually seized more and more Welsh territory. The last independent Welsh kingdom was conquered by Englands King Edward I in 1283. From then on, Wales was a colony of England. In 1536, the Act of Union uniting Wales with England was passed. Industrialization came rapidly to Wales in the 18th century. In fact, Wales was once one of the most important industrial areas in the world.

Famous Conwy Castle in Wales

In the mid-20th century, Welsh nationalism led to measures that recognized the nationhood of the Welsh people, such as giving the Welsh language legal status and adopting an official flag. Efforts to revive the Welsh language have been ongoing for the last few decades. At the end of the 1980s, Welsh was made a compulsory subject in schools. In 1999, Wales was given home rule, including a parliament of their own, which allowed the Welsh people some control over their domestic affairs. Today, there is a movement for Welsh independence, though it is not as strong as similar movements in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Scotland

Map of Scotland

The forerunner of the Kingdom of Scotland was the Kingdom of Alba, ruled by Macbeth in the mid-11th century. This is the same Macbeth immortalized by Shakespeares play of the same name. In the late 13th and early 14th centuries, England attempted to conquer Scotland, but the Scots rebelled successfully to retain their independence. In 1603, King James VI of Scotland was made King James I of England, merging the two royal regimes. This was known as the Union of the Crowns. In 1707, the Scottish parliament dissolved itself, and a parliament unifying the representatives of Scotland and England was proclaimed in London, thus completing the Union of the Parliaments. Industrialization came rapidly to Scotland in the 19th century. The country became a mecca for ship-building, steel works, and iron foundries.

The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards in Edinburgh castle in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.

In 1967, oil drilling began in the North Sea, giving Scotland a vital resource for future prosperity. In 1999, Scotland was given a wide degree of autonomy, when its parliament convened for the first time since the Union of the Parliaments. During the same decade, Scottish culture and history gained worldwide prominence through movies like Braveheart and Trainspotting. Scotlands artists, musicians, and authors were also in high demand. In 2014, Scottish voters narrowly rejected independence from the UK in a referendum. Nevertheless, the Scottish independence movement is now stronger than ever, and many people believe that another referendum would lead to a vote in favor of independence.

Northern Ireland

Map of Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland was cut off from the rest of Ireland in 1921, when the British government agreed to create the Irish Free State in response to the demands of the Irish independence movement. But as part of this arrangement, six counties in the northern Ulster region of the island, in which most of the population was Protestant, were split off from the rest of Ireland and remained part of the UK. These counties would form what would be called Northern Ireland. For the next few decades, Northern Ireland would remain relatively quiet. But in 1966, violence broke out between Irish Catholics, who wanted to unite Northern Ireland with the predominantly Catholic Republic of Ireland, and Protestant Unionists, who wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK. Thus began the period known as The Troubles. Violence would continue for decades. Then, in 1994, paramilitary groups on both sides began a ceasefire. Four years later, the Good Friday Agreement was signed, giving the country an autonomous local government and power-sharing arrangements between the Irish Catholics and Protestant Unionists. Since then, a relative peace has taken hold in the country. Nevertheless, tension still remains.

The Custom House and Lagan River in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

A new paradigm has emerged in the conflict recently, as the UK voted to leave the European Union in 2016. Most voters in Northern Ireland, however, voted to remain part of the EU, since doing so meant the continued free movement of goods and services between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Much to the relief of many in Northern Ireland, a compromise was reached under which the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland would remain customs-free once the UK formally left the EU in 2021, but new customs checks would be introduced for the movement of goods between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. As of late, some Unionists have expressed their displeasure at the aforementioned new customs arrangements, as they feel more estranged from the rest of the kingdom.
The legendary French wine company Champagne Bollinger announced Wednesday that it had purchased one of Oregons pioneering wineries, Ponzi Vineyards. It will be Bollingers first winery located in the United States.

Ponzi Vineyards was founded in the northern Willamette Valley by Dick and Nancy Ponzi in 1970. Their original 20-acre farm southwest of Portland grew over the decades into 175 acres of vines the Ponzi family owns or manages. Anna Maria Ponzi, president and director of sales and marketing, and winemaker Luisa Ponzi have carried on their parents wine legacy for the past 25 years.

The purchase by Bollinger, which was founded in France in 1829, includes the Ponzi Vineyards brand and the winery and tasting room facilities located in Sherwood. Bollinger is currently conducting a search for a chief executive officer (CEO) to oversee their new acquisition.

Bollingers deal includes purchasing the Avellana Vineyard surrounding the Ponzi winery facility, along with two of the familys oldest vineyards, Abetina and Madrona. The three vineyards total 35 acres, all of which are located in the newly established Laurelwood District American Viticultural Area.

The Ponzi family will retain their original estate vineyard and their Aurora, Issimo and Paloma vineyards. The four vineyards combined total approximately 100 acres. The Ponzi family agreed to a long-term contract with Bollinger to sell grapes from these vineyards to the Ponzi Vineyards brand.

Under the leadership of the yet-to-be-named CEO, Anna Maria Ponzi will continue to direct sales and marketing during the transition period. Luisa Ponzi, who will remain as the director of viticulture and winemaking, doesnt expect much to change her day-to-day operations.

Based on how the Bollinger family works with their other holdings, Id say their approach is oversee, but dont interfere, Ponzi said.

Etienne Bizot is the chairman and CEO of Societe Jacques Bollinger, the Bollinger familys holding company. For Bizot, the purchase is the result of years of careful study of the American market.

The United States is such an important market for luxury Champagne, Burgundy, Sancerre, Cognac, and other regions in which our family owns wineries. If there was anywhere outside of France where we felt it was critical to invest, it is in the U.S. We have quietly considered opportunities for a number of years, but it is finally with the Ponzi family that we feel we have found the ideal fit, Bizot said in a press release.

According to Luisa Ponzi, the Bollinger family will focus on continuing the Ponzi wine legacy. Their focus will be on maintaining what we are doing by making pinot noir and chardonnay, not sparkling wines, Ponzi said.

-- Michael Alberty writes about wine for The Oregonian/OregonLive. He can be reached at malberty0@gmail.com. To read more of his coverage, go to oregonlive.com/wine.
Air New Zealand has released its latest tongue-in-cheek advertisement - this time with Australians their target after a travel bubble between the two countries was announced.

The national airline is known for its cheeky commercials and epic air-safety videos, which have included the cast of the Lord of the Rings and the All Blacks.

The latest full-page ad taken out in Australian newspapers on Wedneday shows a full black page with plain white text and a message for Aussies.

'Are you tired of Australians? After a year of closed borders we wouldn't blame you. Luckily for us all, the trans-Tasman bubble is about to open. So come on over. We've missed you lot.'

Air New Zealand has released its latest tongue-in-cheek advertisement - this time with Australians their target after a travel bubble between the two countries was announced

Australia and New Zealand have agreed a quarantine-free 'travel bubble' that will take effect from April 19

Australia and New Zealand have agreed to a quarantine-free 'travel bubble' that will take effect from April 19, New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said.

The neighbouring nations, which have closed borders to the rest of the world in efforts to eradicate Covid-19, will allow people to travel from one country to the other without mandatory coronavirus testing or forced quarantine.

Air New Zealand took the chance to appeal to Aussies looking for travel with the added incentive of avoiding fellow countrymen.

That will be unlikely however, with a huge number of Australians predicted to visit New Zealand seeing it's the only opportunity for many to have left the country in more than a year.

Although most states have allowed quarantine-free visits from New Zealanders for months, New Zealand has continued with enforced isolation for arrivals from Australia, citing concern about small COVID-19 outbreaks.

Flights to and from some Australian states could still be suspended if there were local outbreaks, Ms Ardern warned on Tuesday, with New Zealand often locking down entire cities for days in response to small numbers of cases.

The bubble will operate under a 'flyer beware' system, with no new support from the New Zealand government for people stuck in Australia by cancellations at short notice, Ms Ardern said.

The bubble will operate under a 'flyer beware' system, with no new support from the New Zealand government for people stuck in Australia by cancellations at short notice

The move to allow cross-border travel without mandatory COVID-19 testing is one of the first such agreements since the pandemic

'Those undertaking travel on either side of the ditch will do so under the guidance of flyer beware,' she said during the announcement.

'People will need to plan for the possibility of travel being disrupted if there is an outbreak.'

She added that travellers must wear masks on flights and undertake New Zealand contact tracing, while the travel bubble did not apply to people transiting via Australia from other countries.

The move to allow cross-border travel without mandatory COVID-19 testing is one of the first such agreements since the pandemic prompted countries to block foreign arrivals to stop the virus spreading.

'The Trans-Tasman travel bubble represents a start of a new chapter in our COVID response and recovery, one that people have worked so hard at,' Ms Ardern told reporters in the New Zealand capital Wellington.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison called the agreement 'the first of many more steps to come... as we get back to a more normal position, not only over the course of this year but beyond'.

'I very much appreciate the arrangement the New Zealand government has come to today, we welcome them back as indeed Kiwis will be welcoming Aussies,' he said.

'That means more planes in the air, more jobs on the ground and in the air as well for our airlines.'
SHENZHEN, China, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Nam Tai Property Inc. ("Nam Tai" or the "Company") (NYSE Symbol: NTP) today announced the filing of an application to appeal the March 3, 2021 judgment issued by the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court in the High Court of Justice in the British Virgin Islands (the "Court"). The judgment held that the private placement previously announced by the Company on October 5, 2020 was void and should be set aside.

The Company appeals on the basis that the judgment discloses a number of significant errors and, in particular, a demonstrable failure to take account of important evidence.

The judgment follows legal proceedings instituted by IsZo Capital LP ("IsZo") against the Company and other parties. Leading up to the private placement, Nam Tai's lending banks had notified the Company that the Company's operations and management control were subject to substantial uncertainties triggered by actions that had been recently taken by IsZo. The purpose of the private placement was to raise capital to meet funding requirements due to the accelerated repayment demands made by its banks. As a result of the series of actions taken by IsZo, the Company continues to face significant liquidity issues impacting its operations and construction projects under development.

The Company's appeal is on a number of grounds, including that the Judge erroneously rejected the existence of the liquidity crisis facing Nam Tai at the time of the share allocation. As a consequence, the Judge erroneously rejected the evidence from Nam Tai's directors that the purpose of the share allocation was to address the liquidity crisis and instead erroneously held that the purpose of the share allocation was to entrench the board. Further, the Company appeals on the additional bases that the Judge failed to consider the relevant timeline in the evaluation of the liquidity crisis, overlooked compelling contemporaneous evidence and erroneously assessed the director's evidence.

"We were extremely disappointed with and surprised by the Court's previous ruling and are appealing on a number of grounds. Nam Tai now faces significant liquidity challenges as a result of the cancelled transaction meant to address the withdrawal of our bank financing," said Dr. Lai Ling Tam, Director and Executive Chairman. "Nam Tai is committed to driving growth and creating long-term value for shareholders. The board of directors and management of Nam Tai continue to execute their fiduciary duties to act in the best interests of the Company and all shareholders as the Company moves forward in its mission to become a leading technology park developer and operator committed to long-term and sustainable growth."

Forward-looking Statement and Factors that Could Cause our Share Price to Decline

Certain statements included in this press release, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements generally can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "may", "might", "can", "could", "will", "would", "anticipate", "believe", "continue", "estimate", "expect", "forecast", "intend", "plan", "seek", or "timetable". These forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, may include projections of our future financial performance based on our growth strategies and anticipated trends in our business and the industry in which we operate. These statements are only predictions based on our current expectations about future events. There are several factors, many beyond our control, which could cause results to differ materially from our expectation. These risk factors are described in our Annual Report on Form 20-F and in our Current Reports filed on Form 6-K from time to time and are incorporated herein by reference. Any of these factors could, by itself, or together with one or more other factors, adversely affect our business, results of operations or financial condition. There may also be other factors currently unknown to us, or have not been described by us, that could cause our results to differ from our expectations. Although we believe the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance, or achievements. You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. These forward-looking statements apply only as of the date of this announcement; as such, they should not be unduly relied upon as circumstances change. Except as required by law, we are not obligated, and we undertake no obligation, to release publicly any revisions to these forward-looking statements that might reflect events or circumstance occurring after the date of this press release or those that might reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

ABOUT NAM TAI PROPERTY INC.

We are a real estate developer and operator, mainly conducting business in Mainland China. Our main land resources are located in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area ("Greater Bay Area") and Wuxi, China, of which the three plots in Shenzhen will be developed into Nam Tai Inno Park, Nam Tai Technology Center and Nam Tai Inno Valley. We plan to build these technology parks into landmark parks in the region and provide high-quality industrial offices, industrial service spaces and supporting dormitories to the tenants. Based on the experience of developing and operating technology parks and an industrial relationship network accumulated over the past 40 years, we have also exported the operation model of technology parks to other industrial properties. Through an asset-light model, we have leased industrial properties for repositioning and business invitation. We will also expand the commercial and residential property business in China as an auxiliary development strategy of the Company. As the growth prospects of China maintain, we shall seize development opportunities in the Greater Bay Area and other first- and second-tier cities in China, and continue to strengthen and expand the business of industrial real estate, and commercial and residential properties. Nam Tai Property Inc. is a corporation registered in the British Virgin Islands and listed on the New York Stock Exchange (Symbol: "NTP").

Please refer to our corporate website (https://www.namtai.com/) or the SEC website (www.sec.gov) for our press releases and financial statements.

SOURCE Nam Tai Property Inc.
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The vice president of the Luxembourg Red Cross was a guest on RTL Radio on Wednesday morning.

Red Cross Vice President Rita Krombach explained that the demand for the charity's services has significantly increased over the course of the pandemic, stating that Covid-19 and its consequences caused "a lot of problems", especially for low-income households or single parents. Krombach has been doing pro bono work for the Luxembourg Red Cross for over 35 years.

In particular, the eight Red Cross "Butteker" (grocery stores for people affected by poverty where food and everyday products are sold for one third of market prices) have noticed a stark increase in demand. The Red Cross' "social helpline", which can be reached by calling 2755, has also been much busier than usual. Krombach explained that the health crisis had made the country's already existing problems, chief among which is the housing crisis, even worse.

On a more positive note, she also stressed that Luxembourg's residents continue to show great solidarity and donate on a regular basis. Krombach does acknowledge that there is a preference for domestic causes at the moment, to the detriment of development aid. In the eyes of the Red Cross Vice President, this is completely normal and understandable.

In April, the Red Cross is once again organising its "Donation Month". Due to the pandemic, no volunteers will knock at people's doors, but the charity will send out flyers and residents can donate online. It is also possible to select a specific cause to support when making a donation.

In addition to its other work, the Red Cross is also responsible for blood donations in Luxembourg. In 2020, the charity issued a call for new donors as there were fears that people would donate less blood due to the pandemic. 2,000 people answered the call and 1,500 of them were approved. All in all, the Red Cross gained 400 blood donors within a single year.

A total of 13,700 people are registered blood donors in Luxembourg.
Sacramento, CA  A California prosecutor has filed 33 criminal charges accusing troubled Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) of inadvertently injuring six firefighters and endangering public health in a 2019 fire blamed on its equipment.

The utility has denied that it committed any crimes even though it has accepted that its transmission line sparked the October Kincade Fire, north of San Francisco, that took 15 days to contain. The blaze destroyed 374 buildings and caused nearly 100,000 people to flee as it scorched 120 square miles.

The lawsuit claims the utility failed to maintain its facilities in the five felony and 28 misdemeanor counts leveled by the Sonoma County district attorney. Those charges include recklessly causing a fire that seriously injured six firefighters, one who suffered second-and third-degree burns to his legs and torso. The company is also accused of destroying inhabited structures and emitting air contaminants with reckless disregard for the risk of great bodily injury' from toxic smoke and ash, thereby endangering public health.

Although not having seen the report or states evidence, in a statement issued by PG&E, it accepts the findings in the spirit of working to do whats right for the victims. However, we do not believe there was any crime here, relayed to the company. We remain committed to making it right for all those impacted and working to further reduce wildfire risk on our system.

These charges are the latest in a series of similar problems for the utility, serving more than 16 million people across Northern California. These latest allegations have the U.S. District Judge for the region, considering orders forcing PG&E to do more Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) during dry and windy conditions even more frequently than it has in recent years.
Top 10 Brands for Luxury Men's Fashion

Men with a high sense of style and an ability to spend top dollar to satisfy their fashion needs are not lacking options for luxury brands. But a few labels do distinguish themselves from the rest. With deep brand histories, use of the finest material, and style that is always en vogue, the following 10 brands are a cut above and their wares belong in the wardrobe of any fashion-forward gentleman.

Tom Ford

James Bond (played by Daniel Craig) in No Time to Die, an EON Productions and Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios film. Credit: Nicola Dove  2020 DANJAQ & MGM

Since starting his eponymous fashion label in 2006after serving as creative director for Yves Saint Laurent and Gucci, famously taking the latter from near bankruptcy to a multi-billion-dollar brandAmerican designer Tom Ford has become one of the hottest names in fashion. Tom Ford collections for men range from ready-to-wear evening wear, outerwear, and shoes to bags, accessories, watches, and fragrances. The brands style applies modern touches to classic looks, with a decidedly monochromatic palette that doesnt shy away from pops of color and fun patterns.

Shown above: Tom Ford Black Wool Atticus Shawl Collar Cocktail Jacket with Quilted Satin Lapel and Cuffs, Atticus Evening Trouser, White Poplin Collared Shirt, Black Satin Self Bowtie, Black Satin Cummerbund and Off-White Silk Pocket Square

Louis Vuitton

Louis Vuitton look from Fall-Winter 2021 collection

Louis Vuitton, part of the LVMH group, is one of the oldest, best known, and most valuable brands in luxury fashion. The company was founded in 1854 in Paris and its workshop soon became famed for its travel trunks. Since then, Louis Vuitton has evolved its offerings across the spectrum of fashion and style, incorporating its famed Damier (checkboard) pattern into many of its designs. The brands menswear looks are rooted in its heritage but with a bold, adventuristic style that is uniquely Louis Vuitton.

Ermenegildo Zegna

Zegna made-to-measure suit

Founded as a textile manufacturer in Northern Italy in 1910, Ermenegildo Zegna has grown to become one of the most revered names in high-end mens fashion. Leather, wool, and other fabrics remain at the center of the Zegna brand, which has expanded to include a wide range of ready-to-wear, made-to-measure, and bespoke menswear.

Ralph Lauren

Ralph Lauren Purple Label Torrence Plonge Leather Jacket ($3,295)

American designer Ralph Lauren got his start making neckties in the late 1960s and soon launched full collections for men and women, with inspirations ranging from Old Hollywood to the American West to African safaris. Ralph Laurens Polo brand is perhaps the most iconic label in mens fashion and, today, Ralph Lauren Purple Label represents the pinnacle of high-end menswear.

Burberry

Burberry Check Stretch Cotton Poplin Shirt ($470)

The Burberry brand is an entrenched part of British fashion, having launched in the 1850s with designs meant to protect against British weather. During WWI, Burberry created its now-famous trench coat for British military officers. Today, the brand and its trademarked check pattern are beloved by British royalty, athletes, and celebrities, in addition to being a pillar of British high fashion.

Isaia

Isaia Domenico Sport Jacket ($3,575)

Founded in Naples, Italy, in 1920 as a fabrics and drapery shop, Isaia moved to a small nearby village, where half the residents were professional tailors. The brand is now synonymous with luxury menswear, best known for its impeccably tailored suits and bold but fun advertising campaigns.

Brunello Cucinelli

Brunello Cucinelli Soft calfskin jacket with raglan sleeves ($6,495)

Brunello Cucinelli was born to a peasant family in a small Italian village between Florence and Rome. In 1978, he started a boutique cashmere company, which he later moved into a rundown castle in the nearby hamlet of Solomeo. To this day, this is where his brands workshop produces some of the worlds finest menswear. Brunello Cucinelli is best known for its soft but elegant suits, jackets, and sweaters.

Kiton

Kiton Flax/Linen Jacket ($7,340)

Kiton is among the most prestigious names in high-end mens fashion, best known for its bespoke suits meticulously made by hand at its workshop in Naples, Italy, where the brand was founded in 1956. Its pieces are created from cashmere, silk, linen, and seasonal fabrics, and tailored with fluid lines and elegant silhouettes that drape delicately over the shoulders.

Dunhill

Dunhill Wool High-Twist Hopsack Travel Blazer ($1,795)

Dunhill is an iconic London menswear brand that rose to popularity around the turn of the 20th century for its driving accessories and tobacco pipes. The brand began producing menswear in the late 1970s and today offers a full range of ready-to-wear, made-to-measure, and bespoke clothing.

Salvatore Ferragamo

Salvatore Ferragamo 100% Cotton Single-Breasted Overcoat ($2,800)

Though best known for its shoes and womenswear, Salvatore Ferragamo began producing menswear in the late 1970s and its mens clothing has continued to gain popularity since. Ferragamos menswear designs range from contemporary cuts of classically styled suits to playful printed outerwear.
I learned what it feels like to have health insurance the day my mother was rushed to the hospital. I remember our fear and worry. I remember my father moving swiftly, decisively. And I remember that there was no question or hesitation to take my mother to the hospital. My father, a construction worker with a sixth-grade education, had health insurance through his union, Laborers' Local 185 in Northern California. It meant we didn't have to make a choice between my mother's health and our family's financial stability. Growing up, my family didn't have much, but we did have access to health care -- and importantly, the peace of mind that comes with it.

Decades on, the memories of my mother's health scare are still vivid in my mind. I'm reminded of how different her outcomes would have been if she had not been insured. Back then, before health care reform, I remember a country where a person could be denied coverage for having a pre-existing condition such as cancer, asthma or diabetes. I remember a country where if you were lucky enough to be able to purchase individual health insurance, you faced lifetime limits on the total dollar amount your insurance would cover, leaving families facing bankruptcy once they reached the cap. And I remember a country where millions of seniors struggled with impossible choices to pay for their prescription drugs. For millions of American families who experienced a health scare like mine, they had to think twice before visiting a doctor. There was no dignity without the security that health insurance provides.

Today, thanks to the Obama-Biden Administration and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), a new generation of Americans is coming of age in a different country than the one many of us remember growing up in. Now, we live in a country where Americans with a preexisting condition -- up to 133 million, including 17 million children -- are protected from being denied coverage, where annual or lifetime limits on insurance coverage are outlawed, where nearly 12 million people with Medicare have saved over $26 billion on prescription drugs due to the ACA, and where 39 states -- including DC -- have adopted the ACA's Medicaid expansion.

Thanks to the ACA, more than 18 million Americans have gained the freedom from worry that comes with having comprehensive health coverage.

Last month, this country took another transformative step forward when President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act into law -- the largest expansion of health coverage since the ACA. Like President Biden, I too believe that health care is a right and not a privilege. Because of the American Rescue Plan (ARP), we are moving closer to making that belief a reality.

Beginning April 1, Americans can take advantage of significant additional savings to access quality, affordable health coverage through HealthCare.gov thanks to changes made by the ARP. An average of three out of five eligible uninsured Americans can access $0 plans and an average of four out of five current HealthCare.gov consumers will be able to find a plan for $10 or less per month, after advance payments of tax credits. Under the ARP, we estimate that the availability of zero-premium plans has increased by 19 percentage points in this population and low-premium plans by 16 percentage points. What's more, the ARP reduced the expected individual contribution of household income toward benchmark plan premiums to zero percent for applicable taxpayers with income between 100 and 150% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL).

The ARP is a bold start: It takes major strides toward our goal to expand access to affordable care and guarantee health security for every American -- but there is still work to be done. A healthy community is the backbone of America, and we continue to work towards that healthy, strong infrastructure. That's why this administration is working to expand access to healthy workplaces, opportunities to receive care at home, and connecting neighborhoods as part of the American Jobs Plan.

I remember a lot from my youth -- working construction with my father under the sweltering sun, spending happy days visiting national parks with my family, and learning to make do with what we had. I also remember the security and relief that comes with health coverage -- knowing that my mom was going to get the care she needed. That's what the US Department of Health & Human Services is working toward -- so all Americans can have quality, affordable health care, and the same dignity and peace of mind that my family enjoyed.
"Now artists will have more freedom," says Italy's culture minister.

Italy has abolished film censorship, as part of a new decree establishing the Film Classification Commission, the culture minister has announced.

"The system of controls and interventions that still allowed the state to intervene on the freedom of artists has been overcome definitively," said culture minister Dario Franceschini.

The move will bring an end to the state's power to censor scenes or bans movies outright, with the newly formed commission comprising 49 experts whose task will be to assess the "correct classification of cinematographic works."

Films are classified under various age brackets in Italy, beginning with movies suitable for children under the age of six. The other categories include over-14s (or aged 12+ if accompanied by parent) and over 18s (or 16+ accompanied by adult).

The panel's members include expert representatives from the film industry, from producers to directors, as well as those involved in education and the protection of children and animals.

In the past, films by Italian directors such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bernardo Bertolucci and Luchino Visconti were the subject of censorship in their home country under legislation dating back to 1913.

Movies that have been banned outright in Italy include Alfred Hitchcock's Nodo alla gola (Rope), outlawed from 1949 until 1956; Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris was banned from 1972 until 1987; A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick's ultra-violent 1971 movie, was not shown in Italy until it was screened on pay-to-view television in 1999, and it was not until 2007 that is was shown on free-to-air television.

A permanent virtual exhibition titled Cinecensura comprises archive material pertaining to 300 feature films as well as 100 advertisements and short films banned in Italy.

Created by the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia Foundation and the National Film Library, the online exhibition is divided into four themed sections, relating to the reason for censorship: sex, politics, violence, religion.

The statement from the Italian culture ministry can be read here. Cinemas in Italy have been closed for more than a year due to covid-19 restrictions.
Health authorities will investigate after an 82-year-old woman died in a Queensland aged-care facility after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine.

Police confirmed they were called to the Yurana Blue Care aged-care facility in Springwood, south of Brisbane, about 1.30pm where a woman had died.

A police spokesman said the death was non-suspicious.

The woman, who received the Pfizer vaccine on Wednesday, also had underlying health conditions.
[April 07, 2021] Kingston Digital Partners With NXP Semiconductors on i.MX 8M Plus Processors

Kingston Digital, Inc., the flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., a world leader in memory products and technology solutions, today announced it is partnering with NXP Semiconductors on their new i.MX 8M Plus applications processors. NXP is a leading applications processor developer for creating infrastructure solutions involving smart technology, and Kingston is proud that its eMMC embedded memory solution is part of the reference board for its latest application processor. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005391/en/ Kingston eMMC (Photo: Business Wire) Smart device makers requesting NXP's engineering verification kits featuring the i.MX 8M Plus chipset will see Kingston's eMMC onboard. This creates a terrific opportunity to expand the relationship with NXP and also further showcase Kingston embedded memory solutions to other IoT manufacturers. Kingston's discrete memory and storage solutions were also embedded on NXP's previous-generation i.MX 6 and i.MX 7 series processor boards. "We are honored to extend our partnership with NXP, one of the top semiconductor companies in the world, on their latest i.MX 8M Plus evaluation kit," said Sarah Shen, General Manager, US Embedded Business, Kingston. "Kingston products power machines and devices everywhere from data centers to corporate and client PCs, as well as many embedded products. We have been in the memory business for over 33 years and working with NXP is a great way to enhance our embedded solutions business." "Our latest i.MX 8M Plus processor focuses on machine learning, vision, multimedia as well as industrial IoT devices," said Jeff Steinheider, Director Global Industrial Applications Processor (News - Alert) Product Marketing, NXP Semiconductors. "As with prior NXP applications processors, it is great to work with Kingston and include their embedded memory solutions with our evaluation kits that are sent to developers and manufacturers. Our relationship runs deep on both engineering and marketing levels." Kingston started its embdded memory business in 2010 to address the then-growing trend toward smartphones, tablets and early-IoT solutions. As the world has increasingly adopted an automated lifestyle via smart devices, Kingston's presence and stature in the embedded memory industry has grown tremendously. As a result, Kingston's memory solutions can be found in industrial applications including automobile fleet tracking and devices enabling 5G telecommunications as well as many home consumer products including Bluetooth speakers, robotic vacuums and wearables.



For more information visit kingston.com. Kingston can be found on:

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Kingston Is With You About Kingston Digital, Inc. From big data, to laptops and PCs, to IoT-based devices like smart and wearable technology, to design-in and contract manufacturing, Kingston helps deliver the solutions used to live, work and play. The world's largest PC makers and cloud-hosting companies depend on Kingston for their manufacturing needs, and our passion fuels the technology the world uses every day. We strive beyond our products to see the bigger picture, to meet the needs of our customers and offer solutions that make a difference. To learn more about how Kingston Is With You, visit Kingston.com. Editor's Note: For additional information, evaluation units or executive interviews, please contact David Leong, Kingston Technology Company, Inc., 17600 Newhope Street, Fountain Valley, CA (News - Alert) USA 92708, 714-438-1817 (Voice). Press images can be found in Kingston's press room here. Kingston and the Kingston logo are registered trademarks of Kingston Technology Corporation. IronKey (News - Alert) is a registered trademark of Kingston Digital, Inc. All rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005391/en/

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Sofia Richie recently sparked romance rumors with record label boss Elliot Grainge, following a string of ultra cozy dates.

But the 22-year-old daughter of Lionel Richie was spotted without her 27-year-old love interest as she ran errands in Beverly Hills on Tuesday afternoon.

Richie, known for indulging in rigorous workout routines, put her taut tummy on display in a black crop top and a pair of distressed high-waisted jeans.

Errand run: Sofia Richie was spotted running errands in Beverly Hills on Tuesday afternoon

Layering up her look, Sofia threw on an oversized black cardigan with large buttons.

She slipped her feet into a pair of loafers with gold hardware and carried her essential belongings in a trendy Fendi bag.

Richie wore her lengthy golden hair in tightly wound braids and appeared to be rocking a fresh face.

Never afraid to accessorize, Sofia fastened a myriad of chains around her neck and shielded her eyes with a pair of designer shades.

Fitness fiend: Richie, known for indulging in rigorous workout routines, put her taut tummy on display in a black crop top and a pair of distressed high-waisted jeans

Adhering to COVID-19 protocols, the model kept the majority of her face concealed behind a mask that coordinated with her outfit.

Sofia was joined on her outing by her best friend Tess Kemper, whom she snapped a selfie with and shared to Instagram.

'Wife,' captioned the former flame of Justin Bieber as they posed in front of a mirror.

Best pal: Sofia was joined on her outing by her best friend Tess Kemper, whom she snapped a selfie with and shared to Instagram

Winding down: Returning to Instagram for a second time, she uploaded a snapshot of a giant bowl of popcorn and a bottle of coconut water, writing: 'Tuesday nights'

After scouring the stores in Beverly Hills, Richie and her pal headed home to relax.

Returning to Instagram for a second time, she uploaded a snapshot of a giant bowl of popcorn and a bottle of coconut water, writing: 'Tuesday nights.'

Sofia's retail therapy comes less than 24-hours after she was spotted looking smitten with her rumored beau Elliot Grainge, who happens to be the son of Universal Music Group CEO Lucian Grainge.

Loved-up: Sofia's retail therapy comes less than 24-hours after she was spotted looking smitten with her rumored beau Elliot Grainge, who happens to be the son of Universal Music Group CEO Lucian Grainge

The loved-up pair were seen grabbing dinner to-go Matsuhisa, with Grainge acting as chauffeur.

The couple have been spotted on a slew of dates since being linked last month, with a source confirming to MailOnline that the pair are dating.

Their first public date took place on March 24, and just two days later, Sofia shared a snap with the music mogul on Instagram.

Moving on: Sofia has been enjoying dating again after getting out of a heavily publicized relationship with Keeping Up With The Kardashians vet Scott Disick, 37, last summer

Sofia has been enjoying dating again after getting out of a heavily publicized relationship with Keeping Up With The Kardashians vet Scott Disick, 37, last summer.

Since then, she has stepped out with a string men on her arm including Cha Cha Matcha founder Matthew Morton and Israeli shipping heir Gil Ofer.

After months of break ups and reconciliations, Sofia and Scott officially called it quits in August 2020 after three years together.

New gal: He has now moved on to date Amelia Hamlin, the 19-year-old daughter of actor Harry Hamlin and reality star Lisa Rinna; Amelia and Scott pictured in February

Scott later claimed that the split happened after his much younger girlfriend had given him an ultimatum about their future.

The father-of-three said Sofia had asked him to choose between her and his relationship with ex Kourtney Kardashian and the kids.

He has now moved on to date Amelia Hamlin, the 19-year-old daughter of actor Harry Hamlin and reality star Lisa Rinna.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 03:36:54|Editor: huaxia

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Libya's Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah (R, Front) meets with his Greek counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis (L, Front) in Tripoli, Libya, on April 6, 2021. Libya's Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah on Tuesday met with his Greek counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis here to discuss restoring the bilateral relations. (Photo by Hamza Turkia/Xinhua)

TRIPOLI, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Libya's Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah on Tuesday met with his Greek counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis in the Libyan capital Tripoli to discuss restoring the bilateral relations.

"We hope to restore the distinguished relations between the two countries back to their previous state based on common interests, as we have friendly relations with Greece and there is a historic, political, cultural, economic and also humanitarian dimension to the relationship between the two countries," Dbeibah told a joint press conference following the meeting.

The two officials discussed reopening the Greek embassy in Tripoli, resuming flights between the two countries, and exchanging medical experiences.

They also discussed enhancing economic and military cooperation, as well as activating all mutual agreements in the areas of energy and maritime trade.

Referring to the Libyan-Turkish memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the establishment of maritime boundaries, Dbeibah stressed "the importance of any agreement that contributes to developing appropriate solutions and preserves the rights of Libya, Greece and Turkey."

"We are also ready to form joint committees between Libya and Greece to resume negotiations on demarcating the maritime borders to define the exclusive economic zone for both countries between Crete and Libya, and we seek to build relations based on good neighborliness and mutual respect," the Libyan prime minister said.

The newly-created Libyan Government of National Unity "works to build fruitful relations with everyone, especially the regional countries, the Mediterranean countries, with which we share common interests according to mutual respect, in a way that guarantees the interests and sovereignty of our country," he added.

Mitsotakis said the main purpose of his visit to Libya is to highlight the resumption of the work of the Greek embassy in Tripoli "as a milestone and a dynamic resumption of the Greek-Libyan cooperation and to convey a message of support for the efforts aimed at building Libyan peace and progress."

Mitsotakis stressed his country's support for Libya through the European Union or the United Nations to hold fair elections and restore security and stability.

The Greek leader also said that his priority is the full restoration of the cooperation between the two countries in the field of energy, which could be expanded to include renewable energy sources and electrical interconnection projects.

Mitsotakis called for "canceling the documents that were presented as agreements between countries, but possess no legal force, as explicitly stipulated by the European Council."

In November 2019, Libya and Turkey signed a deal on the demarcation of maritime boundaries in the Mediterranean Sea, but Greece said it could infringe upon the sovereignty rights of Greek islands in the Mediterranean.

In December 2019, Libya's ambassador to Greece was summoned to the foreign ministry, where he was informed of the decision for his expulsion following the signing of the Libya-Turkey deal.

However, the expulsion did not constitute the severing of their diplomatic relations, according to Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias. Enditem
Courtesy Call by Senator Antonio Gutierrez Limones

The Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Spanish Senate, Senator Antonio Gutierrez Limones, paid a courtesy call on the Chief Minister Fabian Picardo today.

The Deputy Chief Minister Dr Joseph Garcia and the Attorney General Michael Llamas were also present in the meeting.

The discussion centred on matters of common interest in particular on the matters that are the usual well known views of Gibraltar and the Campo which plague so many people's views of the area.

The Chief Minister said: "I am very pleased to have received Antonio and to have had a chance to have a discussion about the issues that are relevant to the reality of impetus that the day to day lives of Gibraltarians and people in the region around us.
Moderna vaccine starts to be rolled out in Wales

This article is old - Published: Wednesday, Apr 7th, 2021

The third Covid-19 vaccine is being rolled-out across Wales from today with patients in Carmarthenshire becoming the first in the UK to receive it.

The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) authorised the Moderna vaccine as safe and effective in January 2021 following stringent clinical trials.

Supplies arrived in Wales yesterday with 5,000 doses being sent to vaccination centres in the Hywel Dda University Health Board area.

The first doses will be administered at the West Wales General Hospital in Carmarthen today.





The Moderna vaccine is a two dose vaccine given at an interval of between four and 12 weeks.

Health Minister Vaughan Gething said: This is another key milestone in our fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. A third vaccine for use in Wales significantly adds to our defences in the face of coronavirus and will help to protect our most vulnerable.

Every vaccine given to someone in Wales is a small victory against the virus and we would encourage everyone to go for their vaccine when invited.

If people cannot attend their appointment we ask them to let the health board know via the contact details provided in their invitation as this vaccination slot can be offered to someone else rather than be wasted.

Once you have been vaccinated, you should continue to follow guidance, staying two metres apart, washing your hands and wearing a face covering to protect those around you.

I want to thank all those who have been working tirelessly to deliver the vaccine across Wales and help us meet our second milestone of offering a vaccine to all phase one priority groups. I also want to thank the 1.5 million people in Wales that have already come forward for their vaccine and done their bit in this national effort.

Ros Jervis, Director of Public Health for Hywel Dda University Health Board, said: Were delighted to be able to use the Moderna vaccine for deployment across west Wales.

We will be using this new vaccine, alongside Oxford Astra-Zeneca, to continue the vaccine roll out to our communities in Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire.

We are incredibly lucky to have a third vaccine in Wales, with a long shelf life and the ability to be easily transported, to help deliver the vaccination programme to small clinics across our rural communities.
Three women who absconded from their quarantine hotel in Dublin today were found by gardai almost 200km away in east Galway.

Gardai this evening confirmed the three women, whose ages and nationalities have not been confirmed, had been staying at the Crowne Plaza quarantine hotel in Santry, north Dublin for a number of days but left the facility earlier today.

It is not clear if they arrived at Dublin Airport or where they had travelled from.

However, gardai said the women were pulled over at a motorway patrol near Loughrea and persuaded them to return to the Dublin hotel.

Its not clear if they were pulled over randomly or if the registration of the car they were travelling in had been recorded as part of the quarantine process.

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Gardai say the matter is now in the hands of the Department of Health.

"An Garda Siochana are liaising with the State Liaison Officer at a designated quarantine facility in accordance with current protocols following a report of three people leaving a facility in the Dublin area earlier today, a statement this evening said.

"A graduated policing response was adopted by Gardai and all three have since been returned to the facility.

As the Department of Health are the lead agency in relation to the management of mandatory quarantining, An Garda Siochana will not be commenting further at this time.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health said it does not comment on individual cases. Asked what the department is doing to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future, she reiterated it is a criminal offence and that gardai can be summoned.

Anyone caught breaking the new mandatory 14-day hotel quarantine law for travellers arriving in the State face a 2,000 fine and up to a month in jail.

The latest incident follows the high-profile case of two young women from Dublin who initially refused to attend a quarantine hotel after arriving back from the UAE on a trip to undergo breast augmentation surgery.

Mother-of-two Kirstie McGrath (30), with an address at St Anthonys Road, Dublin 8 and Niamh Mulreany (25), a mother-of -one from Scarlett Row, Essex Street West, Dublin 2 were arrested on Friday afternoon at Dublin Airports Terminal 2 after coming back from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Defence forces personnel called gardai who brought them to Ballymun Garda Station and charged them with breaking the Health Act. They denied the charges and appeared before Judge Miriam Walsh at Tallaght District Court on Saturday. She noted the two friends had gone away for breast enhancement surgery and questioned if that was essential travel.

Colloquially referred to as a boob job, she later described their medical procedures as the reasons for their trip emerged. The court heard gardai spent almost two hours trying to explain the regulations to the women who claimed they did not know about the law change.

They pleaded for bail with their solicitor Michael French citing humanitarian grounds. He said they had children to care for and were not aware of the regulations. They had also provided three negative covid tests in the last week and could quarantine at home, he argued.

He also said they will contest the charges and contended that it was a relatively minor offence with serious ramifications.

A challenge to the constitutionality of the law will be taken, he said. He submitted that people with Covid 19 were allowed to quarantine at home and were not subject to the same restrictions as the hotel quarantine measures travellers faced.

He submitted that they did not have the funds for the quarantine fees and that refusal of bail was disproportionate for an offence which carries a one-month jail term.

Judge Walsh granted bail with conditions but a High Court judge later denied their application that would allow them to quarantine at home and its understood they are currently at a quarantine hotel.
Wilkes-Barre, PA (18701)

Today

Isolated thunderstorms during the evening. Mainly clear skies after midnight. Low 62F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Isolated thunderstorms during the evening. Mainly clear skies after midnight. Low 62F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%.
In a little over a year, the worlds scientists, businesses, governments, philanthropists, and multilateral institutions rallied and did the unthinkable: they created vaccines to fight a virus that had brought the world to a standstill, UNICEF executive director Henrietta Fore said in a statement on Wednesday.

They tested, transported, and began to administer those vaccines safely and in record time, Fore said, adding this is nothing short of astound ding.

But the fight is not yet over, she said.

Variants are emerging all over the world, and with each, the risk of a massive global setback.

At the current rate, there is simply not enough vaccine supply to meet demand while the supply available is concentrated in the hands of too few.

Some countries have contracted enough doses to vaccinate their populations several times, whereas other countries have yet to receive even their first dose.

This threatens us all, Fore warned.

The virus and its mutations will win.

In order to get ahead of the virus, and to shift gears, everyone must build on a strategy of vaccinating frontline workers but drive toward a strategy that truly enables equitable access for all.

We urge governments, businesses, and partners to take three urgent actions, she underlined.

First, simplify Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) through voluntary and proactive licensing by IPR holders.

But this alone wont increase production.

Unlike drug manufacture, vaccine production involves a complex manufacturing process with multiple components and steps.

IPR holders would need to provide technology partnerships to accompany IP licenses, proactively share know-how and sub-contract to manufacturers without undue geographic or volume restrictions.

This challenge requires not forced IP waivers but proactive partnership and cooperation.

Recent manufacturing partnerships such as Pfizer-BioNtech, AZ-SII, J&J- Merck, and J&J-Aspen are encouraging examples.

UNICEF urges others to follow suit, to increase the scale and geographic diversity of manufacturing capacity.

While markets alone cannot guarantee innovation benefits all, voluntary licensing, pooled funds, and multilateral mechanisms such as COVAX are an effective and realistic way for product developers and manufacturers to collaborate, innovate, and encourage equitable access, the executive director noted.

Second, we need to end vaccine nationalism, according to Fore.

Governments should remove direct and indirect export and import control measures that block, restrict or slow down exports of COVID-19 vaccines, ingredients, and supplies.

Viruses respect no borders.

Defeating COVID-19 in each of our home countries also means defeating it around the world by ensuring a steady flow of vaccines and supplies to all.

Finally, governments that have contracted to receive more future doses than required to vaccinate their entire adult populations this year should immediately loan, release or donate most or all excess contracted doses for 2021 to COVAX, so they can be allocated equitably among other countries, the UNICEF executive advised.

In addition, countries with a sufficient, current supply of manufactured doses should consider donating at least five percent of their available manufactured doses right away, and commit to making further contributions on a continued, rolling basis throughout the year, scaling up their contributions in line with rising supply, she said.

Confirming these dose-sharing commitments now will enhance predictability, accelerate equitable access, and help stabilize the global vaccine market.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it clear that no one is safe until everyone is safe.

But equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines is within everyones grasp.

We have proven that the world can rally to do the unthinkable, and we need to do it again, Fore emphasized.

The sooner we do, the sooner our lives, and the lives of our children, will go back to normal.
Harrisburg police are looking for the person who shot a 47-year-old man to death Tuesday evening while he was watching television in bed with his girlfriend, authorities said.

Friends and neighbors were shocked and saddened to learn Laroyce Reed was killed around 8:45 p.m. on the 1400 block of Vernon Street. Reed lived in a home that had been converted into apartments.

Abbey and Steven Carter live several doors down from Reed and told PennLive they dont know one person who disliked him or would want to hurt him. He was happy, go-lucky and enjoyed preparing meat on his outdoor grill, they said. Thats where he often could be found: standing at his grill, listening to music and dancing. He had lived in that apartment for several years.

Even if he had a bad day he wouldnt be out here drinking, throwing bottles, none of that, Abbey Carter said.

Reeds girlfriend  who has a medical condition that keeps her home the majority of the time  was with him when he died and at first didnt realize why he collapsed, the Carters said.

The Carters said they didnt hear any commotion and were surprised when they came outside Tuesday night to flashing police lights.

This was a shock to all of us, Steven Carter said.

He and Reed were friends whod enjoy a beer or cigarette together on Reeds porch. They were planning a trip to visit Reeds family in Georgia, where hes originally from.

He was cool, he didnt bother nobody. He just hung out and cooked on his porch, Steven Carter said. He was just a dude who liked to have a good time.

Police did not release additional details about how the shooting occurred, or any possible motive or suspect information.

No charges have been announced as of Wednesday morning in Reeds death. This shooting was the fifth homicide in Harrisburg so far this year, and comes less than a week after 16-year-old Chaynce King-Henderson was shot and killed on Berryhill Street.

Anyone with information on the Vernon Street shooting is asked to call Harrisburg police at 717-558-6900 or call Detective Richard Iachini at 717-255-3118. Tips can also be submitted through CrimeWatch.

Laroyce Reed enjoyed drinking beer and grilling meat on the first floor of his Vernon Street apartment, pictured here in the blue building on the right.

READ: Its hard to fathom hes gone: Family of 19-year-old who died at Dauphin County Prison rallies for change

Harrisburg man charged with killing truck driver over stupid argument
New Delhi, April 7: The ambience at the group art exhibition "Lok Mein Ram" mounted at the newly inaugurated New Delhi-based Sanskar Bharati Kala Sankul is divine and aesthetic. The reason is that the 25 artworks and one installation - all exquisite and engaging -- at Sankuls maiden exhibition are all devoted to Lord Ram and Ramayana, one of Indias holiest scriptures.

On till April 13 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. the exhibits give viewers a glimpse of varied facets of God and his life. All the artworks are acrylic on canvas barring one.

The first display to catch immediate attention is the "Ram Setu", with the words Ram forming a trail to follow across the wooden benches covered with glass. It has been done by the Director-General of National Gallery of Modern Art, Adwaita Gadanayak. The placement of padukas (wooden footwear) gives it an authentic touch! The work stresses emphatically that even though he was an incarnation of Lord Vishnu, Ram in human form had to make an effort to reach Lanka.

Gamut of emotions Continuing with the human dimension of the God, there were other works that brought alive a gamut of emotions. Kishan Soni's "Balroop Ram" shows him as a child exuding innocence, and adorned with jewellery, as the eldest prince should be, while playing with the wooden toys, like an elephant and horse, as the parrots watch him in awe.

The exact opposite of this work is Bhargav Kumar Kulkarni's "Sita Viyog". The distraught Ram looks every bit a husband, desperately in search of his abducted wife. He appears to be appealing to the Heavens above to intervene and help. Behind him, there is Lakshman, resting his hand against a tree, in sheer dejection.

Valorous Ram The courage and strength of Ram are nicely portrayed in two works, namely, Vijay Chandrakanth Jadav's "Divya Aashtra" and "Shiv Dhanush" by Abhishek Acharya. The latter shows the Prince resplendent in regal finery, without much of an effort, lifting the legendary bow of Lord Shiva. The setting in the background, all in red and golden hue, gives one the feeling of actually watching Sita's swayamvar! The other work portrays Ram, a devoted student, with his hands folded in front of his Acharya, praying for divine weapons. What strikes the viewer is how the artist has used the divine arrow with a golden aura around it to light up the whole canvas! Bringing into focus how Ram was a true egalitarian, are artworks "Ram With Sabri Mata" and "Ram With Ramnami Tribal Man" by Balaji Ubale, and "Sabri Tapasya" and "Ahilya Udhaar" by Kudlaya M. Heeremath. The first one shows Ram about to eat the fruit first tasted by Sabri to ensure that it is sweet, while the other shows him hugging a tribal devotee with all his love! The third shows Sabri welcoming Ram in her humble abode with complete love and devotion. In the last, the beautiful Ahilya is redeemed by God's touch. In both paintings, Ram's humbleness comes across as he greets Sabri and Ahilya with folded hands.

True devotee Hanuman Regarded as the complete devotee of Ram, Hanuman too is the subject of some paintings. In "Lanka Dahan" by Lalchandra Suryavanshi he is shown in his mammoth size, burning the Ravana's capital to ashes. The artist brings out the power and strength of the devotee in all its glory in yellow and gold.

Stunning works! Two works are absolutely stunning in their colour and depiction. Ganesh Kalskar "Mareech Vadh" showing the golden deer (Mareech) being hunted by Ram. The deer in shining yellow stands out in the dense foliage of the jungle. Vijay Chandrakanth Jadav's "Ravan Jatayu Yudh" gives one the feel and impact of aerial warfare. In the glare of sunlight, the legendary bird attacks Ravan who is abducting Sita.

Return of Ram Dinakar Janmali artwork "Ayodhya Agaman" in pen and ink, in black and white stands out among all the acrylic on canvas works. Abroad the pushpak viman, Ram, Sita and Lakshman with Hanuman guiding the viman is beautifully etched and looks exquisite. The artist's other work "Ayodhya Return" in a modern style, is a fine mix of colours - blue, white, brown, yellow and grey - showing the people of Ayodhya rejoicing on the arrival of their beloved King.

Organised by Lalit Kala Akademi and Naimisharanya Foundation, the displayed works were all created at a workshop organised last year at Ayodhya by these two organisations. Held from March 1 to 5, 2020, at Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Avadh University, the workshop saw participation by artists specialising in realistic art, who truly brought alive the life of the God.

(This content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com) --indianarrative/
Jennifer Aniston penned a hilarious and heartfelt tribute to her longtime friend Paul Rudd over Instagram on his 52nd birthday, which poked fun at his youthful looks.

'Happy birthday #PaulRudd!! You don't age, which is weird - but we celebrate you anyway,' the Golden Globe winner, 52, wrote along a still from their 2012 comedy, Wanderlust.

She also shared photos of their joint GQ cover story that were also published in 2012 to promote the film, which showed them in a playful pillow fight and under the covers.

Cheeky: Jennifer Aniston penned a hilarious and heartfelt tribute to her longtime friend Paul Rudd over Instagram on his 52nd birthday, which poked fun at his youthful looks

'I love you!!!!' she gushed, before sharing a GIF of them hugging.

The duo have previously shared the screen in The Object of My Affection (1998) and seventeen episodes of her hit series Friends, in which he played Mike Hannigan, Phoebe Buffay's love interest

Like The Morning Show star, Mark Ruffalo also commented on his pal's age-defying appearance.

'I love you!!!!' she gushed, before sharing a GIF of them awkwardly hugging

'Happy birthday, Paul Rudd! Did I find the secret behind your eternal youth?' The Avengers star, 53, captioned a snap of Rudd wearing his Ant-Man suit of armor and the powerful Infinity Gauntlet.

The Iron Man 3 actor's fans commented in agreement, with one writing: 'This man turned 52 and still hasn't aged at all.'

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Banks tweeted a sweet message to Rudd, which described him as her 'forever favorite on-screen boyfriend/brother.'

'Happy birthday, Paul Rudd! Did I find the secret behind your eternal youth?' The Avengers star, 53, captioned a snap of Rudd wearing his Ant-Man suit of armor and the powerful Infinity Gauntlet

'Happy birthday to the nicest guy in the Biz!' Reese Witherspoon captioned a throwback of them. 'Circa 1996...And you still look exactly like this?! What is your secret?'

The pair starred as love interests in the 2008 comedy Role Models, seven years after playing siblings in Wet Hot American Summer.

Rudd's fans will next see him in the upcoming supernatural comedy-drama Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which is set to be released on June 11, 2021.

His highly-anticipated film comes out exactly 37 years after the release of the original Ghostbusters.

Funny: Elizabeth Banks tweeted a sweet message to Rudd, which described him as her 'forever favorite on-screen boyfriend/brother'

Sweet: Alicia Silverstone also took to social media to wish her Clueless co-star a happy birthday
The French state will become the largest shareholder in Air France-KLM under a rescue deal for the stricken airline.

The government will increase its stake in the carrier from 14.3 per cent to as much as 29.9 per cent.

It will also contribute up to 3.4billion as part of a refinancing plan  855million of which will come from buying new shares.

The French The government will increase its stake in Air France-KLM from 14.3 per cent to as much as 29.9 per cent

French finance minister Bruno Le Maire said the deal was a sign of significant commitment to the airline and its workers.

The bailout is the closest a European airline has come to being nationalised during the pandemic, which brought global travel to a standstill last year, with new Covid variants and waves of infections causing further trouble.

The EU has backed the funding, which will only benefit the airlines French arm.

The carrier was formed by the merger of Air France and Dutch group KLM in 2004.

The Netherlands, which also owns 14 per cent, will not take part in the share sale, meaning the size of its stake will fall.

A major sticking point between France and the EU in agreeing the new funding was around Air France-KLM giving up some of its lucrative take-off and landing slots at Paris-Orly airport. Up to 18 of these will be distributed to other airlines.

The EU has also said France must work out an exit strategy within a year of the aid being granted, unless it was worth less than 25 per cent of the group by then.

Air France-KLM boss Benjamin Smith said: This gives us stability despite all the uncertainty that we have in our industry today.
Vietnam hopes to have no shortage of Covid vaccines from 2022

An employee of Nanogen Pharmaceutical Biotechnology JSC holds up two vials of Nanocovax, a Covid-19 vaccine produced by Nanogen, in HCMC, December 2020. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran.

Vietnam aims to secure enough Covid-19 vaccines for its population starting next year through both local production and imports.

The Ministry of Health makes this proposal in the draft of a decision to be promulgated by Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh on developing Covid-19 vaccines.

It calls for speeding up research, trial and production of vaccines in Vietnam and tying up with foreign vaccine producers for either technology transfer or import.

The ministry will be responsible for amending policies to reduce the vaccine trial period and confer approval.

Once trials prove successful, plans for vaccine production and funding plans will be made.

Currently four indigenous Covid vaccines are being developed by Nanogen Pharmaceutical Biotechnology JSC, the Institute of Vaccines and Medical Biologicals (IVAC), Vaccine and Biological Production Company No. 1 (Vabiotech), and the Center for Research and Production of Vaccines and Biologicals.

Pre-clinical trials by Nanogen, IVAC and Vabiotech have showed the vaccines are safe for use on animals and are immunogenic.

Nanocovax, the vaccine produced by Nanogen, is in the second phase of human trials, while IVACs Covivac is in its first phase.

Vabiotechs vaccine is expected to have its first and second phases of human trials approved in July.

The ministry's proposal warns that a lack of resources and difficulty to gain access to required technologies or ingredients necessary are possible obstacles to moving from research to production.

Vietnam has already been using the vaccine made by British-Swedish firm AstraZeneca, with around 54,000 people getting their first shot so far, mostly frontline workers in the fight against the pandemic.
INTO leader Mary Magner and Education Minister Norma Foley at the teachers conference in Naas. Photo: Gerry Mooney

Teacher unions will today take a step closer to industrial action that could close schools before the summer break in the escalating row over Covid vaccine priority.

They are seeking a guarantee that they will be inoculated well before the new academic year in September if industrial action is to be avoided.

All three union conferences will debate a joint motion seeking ballots of members that could ultimately lead to a stoppage by more than 60,000 teachers next term.

The unions are on a collision course with the Government after Education Minister Norma Foley ruled out a rethink on the decision to drop the priority status that teachers had on the Covid vaccine list.

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She told the Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO) conference that she understood the disappointment among teachers, but said the Government was guided by medical and scientific advice.

This is not a value judgment on any given profession. This is simply the science, she said.

She said that national and international evidence now confirms that age is the strongest predictor of whether a person who contracts Covid-19 will be admitted to hospital or ICU or die as a result of their infection.

She cited Professor Karina Butler of the National Immunisation advisory Committee (NIAC) who had confirmed that in a comparison between a 30- to 34-year-old and a 60- to 64-year-old, the latter was 70 times more likely to die as a result of Covid-19 than the younger person.

This is the latest medical and scientific evidence available.

Last week, the Government accepted the advice of public health and vaccination experts to switch to an age-based vaccine roll-out and drop the priority status for groups such as teachers and gardai.

Anticipating a firm Government line from Ms Foley, the INTO, the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) and the Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) had already prepared a joint motion to put to their conferences today. Ms Foley will also address the TUI conference.

The motion commits the unions to work together to demand vaccine prioritisation for teachers, and if they dont succeed, to explore any and all options, up to and including industrial action.

If supported in ballots of members, as unions expect it will, it could allow for industrial action in the coming term.

The matter is proving divisive with the group representing Irish small business urging the Government not to give in to demands by teaching unions.

ISME said workers on PUP would look with anger on a sector who have suffered no loss of income refusing to work because they were not prioritised for vaccination.

The business group said it would open a free-for-all, where the Government is forced to deal with the loudest, most threatening groups, rather than those presenting the greatest clinical need.

But the Government has come in for opposition criticism, with Labour education spokesperson Aodhan O Riordain tweeting it needed to rethink on vaccinations for teachers.

Schools run on goodwill. The minister has broken that goodwill by breaking her promise, he said.

Sinn Fein education spokesperson Donnchadh O Laoghaire said priority should be restored to frontline workers, who are at higher risk than those working from home or in safer environments.

After Ms Foleys address to the INTO conference, union general secretary John Boyle said the decision showed a blatant disregard for our members safety. He said teachers must be reinstated to a priority group for early vaccinations.

It is simply not good enough. When our members returned to schools in February and March with infection levels still extremely high, your government promised in writing that they would be in the first one third to be vaccinated.

Last week, your government broke that promise. Its simply not good enough minister.

He repeated his call for teachers to be considered in the new group nine on the revised vaccine list, which gives priority to those who work in crowded settings.

Surely spending nearly six hours a day in a small room with children from 25 or more families is a crowded setting, he said.

ASTI president Ann Piggott described the Governments decision to remove teachers prioritisation on the vaccine schedule as a brutal and sudden kick in the teeth and called on the Government to reverse its poor decision.
Phuket man shot by drunk off-duty police officer left paralysed

PHUKET: The 25-year-old noodle vendor shot by a drunken off-duty police officer on Bangla Rd will never walk again, and only last week underwent surgery to increase his chances of being able to sit up, doctors have told the young mans wife.

policealcoholdeathcrimeviolence

By The Phuket News

Wednesday 7 April 2021, 09:15AM

Mr Aroons wife, Ms Kulthida, and their 4-month-old son at Vachira Phuket Hospital the day after her husband was shot (Feb 24). Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

The noodle vendor, Aroon Thongplab, was shot in the stomach by Cpl Pornthep Channarong of the Phuket Provincial Police just before 6am on Feb 23 attack while he was walking along the street after collecting a noodle bowl from a customer.

In less than 24 hours Pornthep was quickly stripped of his rank and discharged from the Royal Thai Police, and now faces charges of attempted murder, carring a firearm in a public area without necessary reason, and firing a weapon in a public area.

Aroon has been receiving treatment at Vachira Phuket Hospital, where he finally woke from a coma, but remained paralysed as the bullet fired from close range had hit his spine.

Doctors have now told Mr Aroons wife, Kulthida Chananan, 26, that he husband will not walk again.

Doctors have confirmed to me that he will not be able walk again because the nerve in his spine was torn apart, Ms Kulthida told The Phuket News yesterday (Apr 6).

He cannot feel or move the lower part from his waist. Doctors just gave him spine surgery last week, so that he can sit. However, the doctors cannot assure that the surgery will work. We have to wait to see if his recovery goes well along with physiotherapy, she said.

At this stage, he is still in the Intensive Care Unit at Vachira Phuket Hospital. He has not been able to speak because he still has a tube [intubated into his throat] to assist his breathing. His lungs have improved without any internal bleeding. He is conscious and able to move his hands a little bit, but we have to read his month to understand what he wants to say, Ms Kulthida explained.

Bringing formal charges against Pornthep have been slow, Ms Kulthida confirmed.

I have already asked Patong Police, and they told me that at this stage the report to file [with the public prosecutor] is about 90% complete. I am also waiting for a notice from the court, she said.

Today [April 6] officers from Region 8 Police came to the hospital to question Aroon, but he has not been able to speak, she added.

I asked them about the bail conditions, and they told me that the suspect is still in jail, she said.

The Phuket Provincial Court approved Pornthep to be released on bail on B600,000 surety, despite a request from the Royal Thai Police to deny Pornthep bail privileges.

However, it has yet to be explained whether Pornthep was actually released on bail and later taken back into custody following a formal request by Ms Kulthida, or never released at all.

Ms Kulthida pointed out that without the intense media coverage that ensued in the aftermath of her husband being shot by a drunken police officer, interest in her case by officials had faded.

On the first day, Region 8 Police gave me flowers and B20,000 cash, and Phuket Provincial Police gave me B10,000. After that some officials contacted me, but I have not received any news from them for a while. I do not know if they are working on my case or not, she said.

Im a normal person. I do not know which official to ask for help. My husbands case gained attention for a while, but after that no one contacted me, she added.

Ms Kulthida has been struggling to cope with the burden of dealing with officials while coping with the traumatic situation and already suffering financially.

Ever since my husband was shot about a month and two weeks ago, my mum and I have not been able to return to selling noodles because I am busy filing documents with officials and visiting Aroon at the hospital, Ms Kulthida said.

Its all down to me who is responsible for filing documents with officials, so I have to let my relatives take care of my children, she explained.

Mr Aroon and Ms Kulthida have two children: a 4-year-old daughter and a 4-month-old son.

Asked what assistance high-profile rights lawyer Kerdphol Kaewkerd from Bangkok was continuing to provide, Ms Kulthida said, He often calls me. He said he is also waiting for a notice from the court. So mostly, he just asks about Aroons condition.

During talks with Mr Kerdphol on Mar 2, Patong Police Chief Col Sujin Nilabodi promised to help Mr Aroons family.

However, called by The Phuket News yesterday (Apr 6), Col Sujin was only willing to say, Police have already concluded the investigation and will file the report to the public prosecutor next week.

Col Sujin then terminated the conversation, saying that he was busy.
(@fidahassanain)

Both sides have discussed matters of mutual interests including defence and security cooperation, regional security, particularly the Afghan Peace Process.

RAWALPINDI: (UrduPoint/UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News-April 7th, 2021) Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called on Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa, at GHQ, said Inter Services Public Relations said

Russian FM Sergey Lavrov and Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Qamar Javed Bajwa discussed matters of mutual interests. They discussed defence and security cooperation, regional security, particularly the Afghan Peace Process were discussed.

The visiting dignitary acknowledged Pakistans achievements in the war against terrorism and contributions for regional peace and stability especially Pakistans sincere efforts in the Afghan Peace Process.

He expressed that Pak-Russia relations are on a positive trajectory and will continue to develop in multiple domains.

COAS said that Pakistan values its relations with Russia and reciprocates the desire for enhanced bilateral military cooperation.

Pakistan welcomes all initiatives which can bring peace and stability in Afghanistan as the whole region will benefit from it, COAS emphasized. We have no hostile designs towards any country and will keep on working towards a cooperative regional framework based on sovereign equality and mutual progress, the army chief added.
Championing UAE economic diversification and industrialisation, Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA), the worlds biggest `premium aluminium producer, shared lessons for business and its close connection with Canada at a webinar hosted by the Canada-UAE Business Council (CUBC), yesterday (April 6).

EGAs success story in becoming the largest made-in-the UAE export after oil and gas is a testament to the UAEs forward-looking and business-minded environment, and highlights the vast UAE opportunities for business in the sector and beyond, the speakers said at the webinar which was conducted via videoconference.

The guest speakers were: Abdulla Kalban, Managing Director, Emirates Global Aluminium, and business leaders Musabbeh Al Kaabi, CEO, UAE Investments, Mubadala Investment Company, and Joe Lombard, Global Managing Director, Metals, Hatch.

The session also welcomed HE Fahad Saeed Al Raqbani, Canadian Ambassador to the UAE, and HE Jean-Philippe Linteau, Consul General of Canada in Dubai and the Northern Emirates.

Al Kaabi began the session by outlining the UAEs vision for economic diversification and its ambitious agenda to become a leading global hub for innovation, sustainability, industrialization, and the creative and knowledge economies.

As a key architect in growing EGA to one of the UAEs most important companies, Kalban highlighted the heritage and the growth of EGA from the 1970s to its leading role in todays aluminium sector, as well as the UAE advantages that supported this growth, and opportunities for businesses in the UAE, including Operation 300bn. He also recognised EGAs close relationship with Canada, having worked closely with several organisations, including Hatch, over the years.

Joe Lombard and Kalban engaged in a discussion about EGAs growth and the importance of developing home-grown technologies, as well as fostering a culture of innovation and responsiveness to client needs. They discussed EGAs evolution to a fully integrated aluminium producer and where opportunities for companies to participate in the aluminium value chain exist. The leaders also delved into EGAs leadership in sustainability and offered lessons for companies looking to incorporate sustainability measures into their operations.

Having explored EGAs tremendous growth, Al Kaabi examined with Kalban the key elements of EGAs and the UAEs agendas and approaches that were important to its success and which offer key advantages to businesses operating in the UAE.

He further explored EGAs continuing innovation, its strong focus on logistics as a gateway to the region, and the development of home-grown talent to support the UAEs focus on building one of the worlds greatest knowledge economies.

HE Fahad Saeed Al Raqbani, UAE Ambassador to Canada, said: EGA is an industrial champion and global success story whose impact is felt everyday around the world through the products and buildings we use and rely on. EGAs close collaboration with Canadian organizations over the years has yielded powerful results and shows enormous potential for the two countries to work closely together as the UAE implements Operation 300bn, Energy Strategy 2050, and the development of a world-leading creative and knowledge economy.

HE Jean-Philippe Linteau, Consul General of Canada in Dubai and the Northern Emirates, UAE, said: Canada and the UAE are both among the 5 largest aluminum producers in the world. I salute EGAs achievements and its commitment to innovation to drive future growth. Our two nations will continue to work together to build sustainable economies and strengthen our trade relationship.

Abdulla Kalban, Managing Director, Emirates Global Aluminium. Said: EGA has played a major role in the industrialisation and economic diversification of the UAE for the past 40 years. Our growth has been possible due to a focus on innovation, talent development, and strong global partnerships, including those with Canada. With the UAEs recent announcement of its further industrialization plan for the next 10 years, Operation 300bn, I hope that all companies  whether within the sector and beyond  will see EGA as an example of what is possible for business in the UAE.

Musabbeh Al Kaabi, CUBC Co-Chair and CEO, UAE Investments, Mubadala Investment Company, said: As a member of EGAs Board of Directors and Chair of its Finance and Commercial Committee, I have seen first-hand the remarkable development of EGA and its importance in supporting the UAEs economic diversification and industrialization. EGA is a testament to the UAEs ambitious agenda and a lesson about the innovative businesses and models that can be developed in the UAEs forward looking and business-minded environment. I encourage Canadian businesses to capitalize on the UAEs geographic and business strengths in their global expansion plans.

Joe Lombard, CUBC Board Member and Global Managing Director, Metals, Hatch, said: It takes a special company and country to build an aluminium company in the middle of the desert and grow it to become the worlds largest premium aluminium producer. It has been a privilege and pleasure to work with EGA and the UAE to turn this vision into reality. EGAs approach is a testament to the leadership in EGA and the UAE and a lesson for companies in the sector and well beyond. --TradeArabia News Service
(Newser)  Amnesty International is weighing in on Alexei Navalny's prison conditions, and it isn't pulling punches. "We have to do more," said Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard on Wednesday. "[They] have already attempted to kill him, they are now detaining him, and imposing prison conditions, that amount to torture. ... Russia, the Russian authorities, may be placing him into a situation of a slow death and seeking to hide what is happening to him." Navalny has since last Wednesday been on a hunger strike he started over what he said was a lack of access to a doctor after experiencing worsening pain in his back and legs. Amnesty International echoed that, saying he wasn't able to be seen by a trustworthy doctor, reports Reuters.

story continues below

As for Navalny's personal doctor, she was arrested by police Tuesday while demonstrating over his medical care outside the the IK-2 penal colony in the Vladimir region where he's being held. Anastasia Vasilyeva said it's possible Navalnywho reportedly has a cough and feverhas COVID, and noted that the 44-year-old requires care at a "specialized hospital," per Al Jazeera. The state prison service contends he has been tested for COVID. The AP reports she was among nine people detained; a CNN crew was among them. Vasilyeva and the reporters have been released, but other union members are said to still be in custody. "I see only one option," Vasilyeva said. "If nothing happens, then we will come here tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. ... We can't back down. It's a matter of a person's life and death." (Read more Alexei Navalny stories.)
The team overseeing COVID-19 vaccinations for Manitoba First Nations told one reserve to stop giving shots to non-Indigenous people with no ties to the community, as band councils struggle to get appointments filled.

The team overseeing COVID-19 vaccinations for Manitoba First Nations told one reserve to stop giving shots to non-Indigenous people with no ties to the community, as band councils struggle to get appointments filled.

"We were reaching for 80 per cent of the population to get vaccinated, and we're going to be nowhere near that number," Long Plain Chief Dennis Meeches told the Free Press Tuesday.

Manitoba has prioritized First Nations people for vaccination, given that they have higher rates of death from COVID-19.

But numerous Indigenous communities are having problems drumming up interest in shots.

Long Plain, which counts a total of 4,659 band members, has struggled to administer the 1,200 doses of Moderna meant for any adult band member. Just 566 shots had been administered as of Tuesday.

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES We were reaching for 80 per cent of the population to get vaccinated, and we're going to be nowhere near that number, Long Plain Chief Dennis Meeches told the Free Press Tuesday.

Not all of those were Indigenous people.

The community offered shots to band members living on or off reserve, but still had trouble filling appointments after allowing people to drive in from Winnipeg or Brandon.

Band officials decided to offer shots to non-Indigenous people who frequently interact with Long Plain members, such as police officers, teachers and contractors.

Those doses were part of a two-day vaccine clinic last week at Keeshkeemaquah Village, just outside of Portage la Prairie, located 20 kilometres from Long Plain.

That caused a rumour mill in the town, with people hearing members of the public could show up and get immunized  well before their eligibility period.

"I thought this was possibly unethical; I'm taking vaccinations away from a First Nations person who should get it," said a local man who asked to have his name withheld.

"I told them I'm not First Nations and I'm not part of the community, and they said, Oh yeah, that's fine."

I told them I'm not First Nations and I'm not part of the community, and they said, Oh yeah, that's fine.  Local man

Long Plain health director Melanie Pritchard said the band is committed to making sure the doses are used before they expire April 17  but it never meant to give it to strangers.

"The intent was never to open it up to the public in an effort to use up vaccine. Unfortunately, the venue was more public than our on-reserve clinics, and through word of mouth... we had a large turnout," she wrote to the Free Press. "Those who were in the lineup at the time were allowed to receive their vaccination."

The First Nations Pandemic Co-ordination Response Team, which is overseeing vaccinations on Manitoba reserves, said this only occurred on March 31.

"The nurses didnt want to turn people away so (they) administered some doses. By the end of that day this practice was suspended," wrote co-lead Melanie MacKinnon.

Long Plain has two more immunization days, scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday at a site on the reserve, but many vaccine slots hadn't been filled.

"There's a lot of mistrust, and Long Plain is not alone in that," Meeches said. "A lot of people have concerns about the vaccine because, for whatever reason  conspiracy theories; all the stuff that has made its way into the psyche of people."

If our people are not receptive... and we still have a lot of doses available, why not offer that to others that are right now being considered. Eventually, everybody will be."  Long Plain Chief Dennis Meeches

Long Plain is already sending 110 doses to the nearby Dakota Tipi reserve, and will likely send shots to another nearby community, as well as first responders in Portage la Prairie.

Meeches argued he doesn't see a problem with the general public getting shots intended for Long Plain.

"I can live with that decision; I'm happy with it," he said.

"If our people are not receptive... and we still have a lot of doses available, why not offer that to others that are right now being considered. Eventually, everybody will be."

But the First Nations pandemic team insists it was a mistake.

"This will not be a practice moving forward, but every effort will be made in follow-up to second doses," said MacKinnon, whose team "will continue to work with communities, federal and provincial partners, to ensure adherence to provincial eligibility protocols."

Some reserves have bought door prizes in an effort to try incentivizing locals to book appointments, and Meeches believes officials might need to launch a public awareness campaign about the importance of getting a shot.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
Mask mandate

Regarding Here's what doctors expect in Houston as the fourth COVID wave slams the East Coast, (April 5): When Texas Gov. Greg Abbott eliminated the COVID-19 mask mandate for the state recently, he was severely criticized by both Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo. Now that the decline in COVID cases has proven Abbotts decision correct, I assume we will see Turner and Hildalgo do the right thing by publicly apologizing and agreeing that the Governor was right.

Bob Fowler, Point Blank

Hearing the truth

Regarding On singing Dixie in my junior high school chorus, (A15, April 4): Thank you for publishing this essay. As a person of pallor I have thought of this very thing with shame often over the years. We sang these same songs in elementary school through high school in HISD. I remember one called Louisiana Hayride which we sang in fourth grade in dialect. Something made me uncomfortable about that at the time. My great grandmother made me more aware when she sang Darling Nelly Gray and explained the context, and we cried. Until I read this essay I had believed the singing of these racist songs was exclusively a Southern shame. That it happened to the author in New York brings home the reality of just how widespread systemic racism in our country is. Nowhere are we free of it. Please keep publishing these personal stories. May we have ears to hear and voices and feet and hands to bring change, not bury this truth.

Nancy Smith, Houston

Infrastructure tune up

Regarding Bidens ambitious plan spends on necessities, (B1, April 4): Thank you for an unbiased, non-partisan look at the sad state of affairs of the U.S. infrastructure.

I still remember how shocked my mother was when she first visited the United States and noticed all the overhead power lines in the city. She had seen such power lines being buried in the ground many years ago in her hometown of Vienna, Austria. That visit took place in the early 80s.

I have felt for years, decades really, that the US economy operated similar to a New York City Yellow Cab  still functioning, but being driven into the ground with barely enough maintenance to keep the car running: shocks, new tires, comfort, new safety features? Fuhgeddaboudit. Eventually a major tune-up cannot be avoided, yet Republicans will probably oppose it as a monolithic block. Rather than follow your initial objective  whats not to like about where the money is spent?  they will wallow in their if its a Democrat plan we oppose it obstructionist dogma. Hopefully the bill with pass with only minor modifications.

What a commonsense, feel-good article.

Michael Waldau, Houston
The government on Tuesday hinted it could limit exports of AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccines manufactured in Korea to endure more domestic supply.

Jeong Yoo-jin, who oversees vaccine imports for the government, said, "We are looking at all options to ensure the appropriate supply of vaccines at an early date." Late last month, she said the government was not considering restricting exports.

SK Bioscience manufactures the AstraZeneca vaccine at its factory in Andong, North Gyeongsang Province for export to developing countries through the WHO's COVAX Facility.

Earlier, the Indian government limited exports of the AstraZeneca vaccine produced there saying they are needed at home.

Shipments of AstraZeneca vaccines to Korea had been delayed. The vaccine must be injected twice in intervals of up to three months, and the government hoped to delay the second dose from eight weeks to 10 to give more people their first dose.

But the growing supply problems around the world have raised concerns here that many people might miss out on their second dose within the 12-week timeframe and render the first shot useless.

Kim Woo-joo at Korea University said, "India is facing a crisis with 100,000 new coronavirus cases being reported a day, so it hasn't received too much criticism, but if Korea limits exports, we could face a huge backlash from the international community."
Governor Gboyega Oyetola of Osun State has said the centralised policing system is not working in Nigeria.

Mr Oyetola said to meet the current security challenges in the land, the federal government needs to decentralise the policing system.

He made this point known on Wednesday while speaking at the 2nd Annual Colloquium of the Sultan Maccido Institute for Peace, Leadership and Development Studies, University of Abuja.

Mr Oyetola identified the sources of insecurity as poverty which creates a gulf between the rich and the poor; inequitable allocation of resources which pits one region against the other; and injustice which makes offended parties resort to self-help and consequently take up arms against the state.

The governor also identified illiteracy which makes innocent citizens willing tools at the hands of unscrupulous elites and elements; youth unemployment which makes able-bodied; and educated youths susceptible to crime, among others.

He stressed that the inability of the central police to tackle insecurity effectively led to the creation of Amotekun, a local security network in the South-west region.

The nations conventional security agencies are overstretched and sorely underfunded. The Police once confirmed the sorry state of its manpower when it said the Force needed 155,000 additional hands to effectively police the nation. The nations security agencies as presently constituted are too centralised and too far from the grassroots to adequately provide the required security for the nation.

Worse still, they are unfamiliar with the terrains where crimes take place. It is our belief that our people understand the topography of their communities more and can govern them better.

The nations expansive forests have unfortunately become the hideouts of bandits, kidnappers, and other criminals. With the establishment of Amotekun, the forests of the South West are now better policed. The issues that make Amotekun inevitable in the South West are the same in other regions of the nation. Other regions may wish to emulate the South West to put structures in place to rid their regions of crime.

Our recent experience where the attempt to confront armed banditry headlong in the North resulted in their incursion into the South West and other regions that were erroneously perceived to be immune from the insecurity challenge is proof that each region has to be adequately policed for the region to know peace.

He also called for collective and concerted efforts to deliver the security that we desire as a nation as a people.

Our recent experience in which insecurity has challenged education, peace, economy and other spheres of life has laid credence to Abraham Maslows emplacement of security as one of the foremost in the hierarchy of needs.

This realisation underscores the need for our leaders and professionals, including traditional rulers, political leaders, academics, religious leaders and corporate leaders to constantly collaborate to brainstorm on ensuring peace in the nation. Security breeds peace, economic and other developments, political stability and good governance. The converse of this is that insecurity is a destroyer of these desirable indices.

As a people, we must realise that it is only in a safe and secure environment that optimal local commercial activities can take place; foreign investors can be attracted; goods and services can be provided; infrastructure can be built and maintained; public service can be delivered, and social and political activities can take place peacefully. Therefore, the quest for a sustainable peaceful society must be prioritised as the collective responsibility of all citizens.

Delivering security is not a task for the government alone. Corporate bodies and Non-Governmental Organisations need to partner with the government to achieve success. Business thrives in an atmosphere of peace. Business concerns must join the government to restore peace to the regions of the country.

He noted that there is a need to involve traditional rulers in tackling the nations security challenges.

For proper security of lives and property of our people and the prompt containment of growing challenges, we must inevitably now engage our traditional institutions. Governors particularly cannot afford not to look in the direction of the traditional institution.

This is because every conflict is local and as such, traditional institutions cannot be left out of the scheme. Traditional rulers know their people and also have better strategies for engaging them. Therefore, we must ride on this to be able to protect our nation from implosion.

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Two died in the crash in Co Louth (Niall Carson/PA)

Police in the Republic of Ireland are appealing for witnesses after two men were killed in a three-vehicle collision on Tuesday morning.

One of the men was 35-year-old Adam Wilson from the village of Gortin in Co Tyrone. Another, 54-year-old Michael McMahon from Greenacres in Dundalk, was also killed in the crash.

The incident happened on the Ardee Link Road in the town of Dunleer at around 8am on Tuesday.

Two other men remain in hospital, one of whom it is believed remains in a critical condition.

The Garda have appealed for anyone who witnessed the crash or who has dash-cam footage to contact them.
A Western Australia dad who shared his passion for guns and ammunition with his two young children have been slammed by police as a 'disaster just waiting to happen'.

Daniel John Prunster, 25, pleaded guilty to a string of charges when he faced Geraldton Magistrate's Court on Tuesday, including failing to adequately store firearms, pointing a firearm at another person and possessing cannabis.

As part of the case, two controversial pictures were shown to the court.

One shows Prunster's baby son lying in his cot wrapped in a belt of ammunition, which the proud dad shared on Facebook in February, the West Australian reported.

'My nugget trying to be a Russian,' the post was reportedly captioned.

A court heard Daniel John Prunster, 25, uploaded this photo (pictured) of his baby son wrapped in a belt of ammunition onto Facebook

The court also heard about a horrifying image police found on Prunster's mobile phone dated April 2020 of him pointing a shotgun at his daughter, who was holding a rifle.

She was just 15-months-old at the time.

His lawyer Amy Bowlay told the court Prunster was showing the toddler the correct way to hold a firearm and had removed the bolts and ammunition before giving it to his daughter.

Police prosecutor Sergeant Troy Gildersleeve described Prunster's behavior as irresponsible.

'The rule is to treat all firearms as dangerous and he has (not done this),' he told the court.

'The gun cabinet key was in the vehicle and ammunition was scattered around. It was a recipe for disaster just waiting to happen. His negligence could have resulted in a fatal accident.'

Daniel John Prunster (pictured) pleaded guilty to a string of charges involving firearms

Police made the disturbing discoveries after 68 rounds of ammunition and 14g of cannabis were found in his partner's car.

Officers searched Prunster's Geraldton home where they discovered 10 rounds of .223 ammunition, a single shotgun round, and .223 rounds near a gun safe in a wardrobe, which did not have a separate compartment for ammunition required by law.

A closer inspection uncovered a belt containing 25 rounds of shotgun ammunition, a .22 and .223 magazine containing live ammunition and 40g of cannabis hidden under furniture.

Prunster remains out on bail and will be sentenced on April 19.

He also faces having his firearms license revoked by the court.

Father-of-two Daniel John Prunster, 25, (pictured) recently vowed to family and friends on Facebook that he would change his ways

Ms Bowlay told the court her client was the sole provider for his young family and used his firearms for hunting and 'cultural reasons', as well as for controlling vermin.

She said Prunster acknowledged the ammunition and firearms weren't stored safely but argued it wasn't an ongoing habit.

Prunster recently acknowledged to friends and family online that he needed to change his ways.

'I needed a wake up call, I'm ready for a change in my life. The last couple of days have really been a challenge but I'm powering through. Thanks for the support from everyone much love, times are changing,' he posted on Facebook in March.
UNION therapeutics A/S (UNION) announced today that the results of a phase 1 study of inhaled and intranasal niclosamide (UNI911) have been published by The Lancet Regional Health  Europe (LINK). With no serious adverse effects reported, the study showed a strong safety profile of inhaled and intranasal niclosamide which was the primary endpoint for the trial.

The promising safety and pharmacokinetic results for inhaled and intranasal niclosamide have opened the doors for further investigation, and will now be tested as a potential treatment (UNI91104) and prophylaxis (UNI91103) for COVID-19. Niclosamide was shown by Institut Pasteur to have a 40-fold better potency than remdesivir against SARS-CoV-2.

Local administration of niclosamide prompts new options for the treatment of COVID-19

Professor Vibeke Backer, pulmonologist at the Center for Physical Activity Research, at Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, served as principal investigator for the phase 1 study. Professor Backer has taken the lead on the Lancet Regional Health Europe paper.

UNI91103 and UNI91104 are exceptional because the products are administered locally by inhalation and intranasal administration. Hence, the poor bioavailability of niclosamide is addressed, enabling a high drug concentration in the area from which the COVID-19 infection otherwise starts to spread. In this way, inhaled drugs have been crucial in the management of other respiratory conditions such as asthma. Niclosamide is a relevant and important product that holds great potential for COVID-19, and it is rewarding to see this important data published in a peer-reviewed journal. Professor Vibeke Backer, Pulmonologist at Center for Physical Activity Research, Rigshospitalet

The phase 1 trial described in the publication was randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blinded, multi-ascending dose, and was conducted in 44 healthy volunteers, of which 34 were assigned to UNI911 and 10 to placebo across five cohorts.

The trial was conducted with DanTrials at Bispebjerg Hospital, Copenhagen, backed by experts from Rigshospitalet and supported financially by the Innovation Fund Denmark.

Local administration of niclosamide to the nasal cavity and the lungs was well tolerated

The phase 1 trial met all its endpoints and demonstrated that the concentrated niclosamide solution of UNION therapeutics is well tolerated when administered via the intranasal and inhaled route. The study results demonstrated a dose-proportional pharmacokinetic and showed no signs of systemic accumulation of the drug in the blood.

With these promising results for safety and tolerance, the COVID-19 products of UNION therapeutics are gaining substantial interest from platform trials across the world. Professor Morten Sommer, Chief Scientific Officer, UNION therapeutics

A promising prophylactic option for vulnerable patients

UNION therapeutics recently announced that UNI91103 will be tested in kidney patients, a particularly high-risk patient population. Led by Cambridge University and funded by among others UK Kidney Research, the PROTECT-V study is set to determine if UNI91103 could work as a preventive treatment for kidney patients who may not benefit sufficiently from vaccinations alone.

Finding effective agents for treatment and prophylaxis is crucial for our ability to manage COVID-19 infection. We identified niclosamide as a promising option, and we look forward to testing it in this very critical patient population, said Dr Rona Smith in connection to the announcement of the PROTECT-V trial. Dr Smith, who is leading the study, is senior research associate at the University of Cambridge and honorary consultant nephrologist at Addenbrookes Hospital.

The PROTECT-V trial recently received Urgent Public Health Prioritization from the UK government ensuring rapid roll out across the UK.

The Lancet Regional Health - Europe is a regional edition of the Lancet that focuses on research conducted in the European Region.
(Newser)  As then-President Trump's term wound down, Matt Gaetz, one of Trump's staunchest allies, privately asked for a blanket pre-emptive pardon, two sources tell the New York Times. The Florida congressman also allegedly asked the White House for the same thing for some of his allies in Congress, though it's not clear who. The pardons would have shielded them from any crimes they may have committed. At the time, Gaetz was already under investigation over whether he violated sex trafficking laws and paid an underage girl for sex, but it's not clear whether either Gaetz or the White House was aware of the Justice Department probe. As for Gaetz's pardon request, it was rejected due to a lack of desire to set such a precedent, the sources say. Since the probe was launched, Politico notes, Gaetz has become "persona non grata" in pro-Trump circles.

story continues below

It's not clear whether Gaetz discussed his pardon request directly with Trump, but aides did tell the then-president, who pardoned dozens in the last months of his term. Gaetz's spokesperson says the whole story revolves around Gaetz's public call, made on Fox News after Trump lost the election, for Trump to pardon "everyone," and says the congressman never privately asked for a specific pardon for himself related to the Justice Department inquiry. Women for America First, a pro-Trump organization, is apparently undaunted by the allegations against Gaetz, which he has denied: It invited the congressman to speak at its Friday summit, the Week reports. Meanwhile Bob Kent, one of the people Gaetz claims tried to extort him over the DoJ probe, tells Fox News there was no shakedown, he just thought Gaetz could benefit from some "good publicity" if his family gave Kent the $25 million he asked for to help find missing FBI agent Robert Levinson. (Read more Matt Gaetz stories.)
About 50 protesters gathered in front of U.S. Sen. John Cornyns Houston office Tuesday demanding he take action for Dreamers.

We wanted to gather here to demand that John Cornyn support the DREAM Act that is in the Senate, said Norma Gonzalez, Texas lead organizer for United We Dream, the largest national organization of the so-called dreamers, young people who came to the United States illegally when they were children.

Cornyn has expressed intention to support some form of solution to provide permanent legal status for dreamers. But the dreamers and allies protesting in Houston said they have growing concerns that his words are not translating into action, and we have seen this before, said Juan Manuel Guzman, a young activist with United We Dream who said he would qualify for the DREAM Act currently in the U.S. Senate.

Most of the dreamers grew up in America and many have benefited from an Obama administration program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals that protects them from deportation and provides permission to work. They have to reapply every two years to stay in the program.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Houston agency prepares for arrival of migrant children

Last year, he campaigned saying that he would support the act, but now we are not seeing any of that support, Gonzalez said.

Some of the activists have been rallying in front of Cornyns office since he ran for re-election for a fourth term in the 2020 elections.

I am part of a group that has been coming here every Tuesday for 217 weeks asking him to support the dreamers, said Nail Aquino, an independent activist. Cornyn used to say the right things about immigrants as people who contribute to our country. But as his party becomes more white supremacist, he is not as supportive anymore.

On a call with media last month, Cornyn said he wants to support measures for the dreamers.

I would like to vote for a version of the Dream Act or provide a legal solution, and permanent legal solution, to DACA recipients. It depends however, on where the lines are drawn and who is included, the senator said. I think we could do something that would provide a fair outcome for a large number of young people whove done nothing wrong, but without creating some additional problems.

Cornyns office insists that he has supported the cause of dreamers to obtain a permanent solution for a long time and continues to this day. He hasnt publicly expressed an opinion specifically about the current bill so far.

There are about 124,000 DACA recipients in my state of Texas, and I will proudly cast a vote soon to ensure that they stay here and contribute to our schools, our churches, and our communities, Cornym said before casting his vote on the failed Secure and Succeed Act of 2018. We are a nation of immigrants.

That bill was criticized because it included controversial provisions, such restricting the ability to bring parents and other family members into the country.

The Dream Act of 2021, introduced by Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, and Lindsey Graham R-South Carolina, has bipartisan support.

A solution to provide a stable legal status for dreamers has also strong support from Americans, according to several polls. One conducted in 2020 by Pew Research Center indicated that three quarters of Americans favor granting a permanent legal status to them.

Poll after poll has shown tremendous bipartisan support for Dreamers and for reforms that will put them on the path to permanent status, and ultimately citizenship, in the only country they call home, said Jennifer Minear, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

However, dreamers are concerned that the bill currently in the Senate could face the same fate as many predecessors. A count from the nonprofit American Immigration Profit indicates that at least 11 dream act versions have been introduced in Congress over the last two decades.

Identical versions of the current bill in the Senate were introduced in the previous two congressional sessions.

The U.S. House of Representatives approved a similar proposal on March 3, the American Dream and Promise Act of 2021, with a bipartisan vote of 228 Democrats to 197 Republicans. The lower chamber version includes other potential beneficiaries who have been living in the country for many years with provisional legal conditions, such as those with Temporary Protected Status. TPS is a humanitarian status assigned to certain immigrants from designated countries impacted by extraordinary events such as natural disasters or political unrest.

It hurts deeply that my home, the place I have grown up in and that I have grown to love is the one leading the charge against me and my right to live and work, said Susie Lujano, a 28-year-old DACA recipient who was brought to Houston when she was 2. It is Texas the state leading a court case that could erase my chances to have a life Cornyn should support us.

Lujano was referring to a court challenge attempting to invalidate DACA led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and including several Republican-led states. A looming decision is pending from U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen for the Southern District of Texas.

We urge Cornyn to support us and lead other senators to act now, said Lujano, who works for a legal firm in Houston.

After midday Tuesday, some of the activists at Cornyns office shifted the protest to the office of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to make the same demands.

The caravan was accompanied by a truck carrying on oversized inflatable of a spider with the head as Cruz.

olivia.tallet@chron.com

Twitter.com/oliviaptallet
New research suggests Irelands increasing populations of Sika deer may be linked to local outbreaks of TB infection in cattle.

Although TB infection rates have decreased in general in recent decades, county-level data shows a correlation between higher Sika numbers and higher local TB infections  with County Wicklow a particular hotspot.

The research, conducted by researchers from Trinity College Dublin and the National Parks and Wildlife Service and supported by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, has major implications for controlling TB. It has just been published in the journal, Frontiers in Veterinary Science.

First author of the journal article, Dr David Kelly, from Trinitys School of Natural Sciences, said Irish farmers have been aware of the effects of bovine TB for well over 70 years.

"Its incidence has steadily diminished in Ireland, from 3% in 1960 to 0.3% some 50 years later. In the mid-1980s it became clear European badgers were a TB wildlife host. Since then, badger populations have been controlled around farms with TB outbreaks whenever those outbreaks cannot be linked to cattle.

"In recent years, however, it has become clear that controlling TB in badger populations cannot rely on culling alone. Along with this change in thinking, there has been a steady shift away from culling and towards badger vaccination. Unfortunately, while the management of one TB wildlife host has made great advances, another wildlife TB host has appeared on the radar: deer.

The number of deer in Ireland has been rising steadily during the 21st century, and studies in Europe and the USA have shown that deer, at higher densities, can sustain TB in their herds. Indeed, recent research has identified Sika deer in County Wicklow as one such maintenance host of TB.

The researchers behind the current study used county-level population densities (taken between 2000 and 2018) to track the three known maintenance hosts of TB in Ireland: cattle, badgers, and Sika deer.

They then considered how variations in local densities compared with the variation in bovine TB infection across the country (and also at county-level).

Dr Kelly the research shows that while there have been general reductions in TB infection, there is a correlation between increasing Sika deer density and higher local TB infection.

"This pattern has emerged in recent years and has major implications for TB control within Ireland.

Now, when attempting to manage TB in wildlife, Sika deer will need to be considered as well as badgers. Our analyses suggest Sika deer are currently of greatest concern in County Wicklow but if numbers continue to rise in other counties they may also pose problems elsewhere.
Just Divine: A Florentine Wedding and a Renaissance Ceramic

A few years ago, I flew to Florence, Italy, for a friends wedding. Not only was I fortunate in seeing my dear friend marry in one of the citys oldest churches, but I experienced a whole host of hearty Italian wedding traditions, hospitality, and more.

Youll have to wait for an article on Italian wedding traditions. In this article, I want to share my surprise and delight at the sacred art in the church.

The plain facade of the Church of Santi Apostoli defies whats inside. Built in the 11th century, the church still maintains characteristics of the High Middle Ages (10001250), even though it was remodeled during the Renaissance.

The 11th-century Church of Santi Apostoli is one of the oldest churches in Florence, Italy. (SailkoCC SA-BY 3.0)

Many believe that Michelangelo saved the church from being demolished when he suggested to the banker Bindo Altoviti that it be preserved rather than rebuilt.

Entering the church, I was first struck by the semicircular arches, typical of the Romanesque architecture of medieval Europe. Next, I noticed the golden altarpiece, but there wasnt much time to take in more.

The semicircular arches inside the Church of Santi Apostoli in Florence are characteristic of the Romanesque style of architecture that flourished throughout medieval Europe. (Mgelormino/CC SA-BY 4.0)

I sat near the front of the church, on the end of a pew. While waiting for the brides arrival, I noticed a glint of white behind a column to my left. Curious, I stretched my neck to peer around the column and saw a splendid polychrome, terracotta tabernacle, where communion vessels are traditionally stored.

I was captivated. A number of divine figures were depicted in white-glazed terracotta on a largely blue background, but I was too far away to understand the scene. The ceramic work looked similar to that of the Italian Renaissance sculptor Luca della Robbia, but Id only ever seen his art in books.

Della Robbia pioneered a tin glaze that gave terracotta a colorful shine. It was that shine that caught my attention, before Id even seen the sculptural relief.

Eucharistic tabernacle, circa 1512, by Andrea della Robbia. (Sailko/CC BY-SA 4.0)

Arts Divine Purpose

Sacred art and music is made to deepen our connection to God. Even though Im not Roman Catholic, on that day, I felt like I truly experienced the purpose of art in the setting of a sacred service. Throughout the wedding, I kept getting drawn to the tabernacle, even more so when the Italian mezzo-soprano sang the most sublime rendition of Ave Maria that Id ever heard.



As the wedding guests left the church, I lingered at the tabernacle. In the sculpture, against a blue starry sky, two angels (on the far left and right) draw open a pair of curtains, introducing us to the Trinity. Angels and cherubs are in abundance. At the top, God holds his right hand in a gesture of blessing. Directly below God, a dove represents the Holy Spirit. Farther down, on the tabernacle door, Christ can be seen ascending from his tomb. Below Christ, at the center-bottom of the tabernacle, two angels venerate a goblet of wine and a piece of bread: the elements of the Eucharist.

Everything in the ceramic has a sacred purpose, and worshipers, especially in the past, would have known that. Even the glorious, colorful garland over the arch is not just decorative; it is abundant with meaning. Lemons represent salvation, cucumbers and grapes represent the resurrection, and quinces and pine cones symbolize virtue and immortality, according to the Victoria and Albert Museum website.

I chatted briefly with the priest as he was locking up the church. The tabernacle wasnt created by Luca della Robbia but by his nephew and one-time apprentice Andrea della Robbia. I thought to myself, More della Robbias to discover. How heavenly!

To find out more about the Church of Santi Apostoli, visit SantiApostoli.com
Natural gas transportation from EU countries to Ukraine in the first quarter of 2021 amounted to 476 million cubic meters, which was 83% less than in the same period of 2020, the press service of the Gas Transmission System Operator of Ukraine (GTSOU) has reported.

According to the report, Ukraine imported 0.2 million cubic meters of gas from Poland, 65 million cubic meters from Slovakia, and 410.4 million cubic meters from Hungary. Virtual reverse flows made up 86% of gas volumes.

At the same time, net exports of natural gas from Ukraine to European countries in January-March 2021 amounted to 18.3 million cubic meters, which was almost four times more than in the first quarter of 2020 (4.8 million cubic meters).

Re-exports of natural gas in January-March this year amounted to 618.9 million cubic meters (almost 240 times more than in the same period of 2020). In particular, 141.3 million cubic meters of gas were re-exported to Poland, 107 million cubic meters to Slovakia, 340.6 million cubic meters to Hungary, and 30 million cubic meters to Moldova.

"Currently, Ukrainian underground gas storage facilities store record volumes of blue fuel, and Ukrainian suppliers use their own reserves of hydrocarbons from underground storage facilities and buy gas from the 'customs warehouse' regime from European traders. Therefore, during the reporting period, gas exports from Ukraine exceeded imports. In particular, Moldova re-exported more than half of its own gas volumes to Ukrainian underground storage facilities," said Yevhen Todorov, Commercial Director of GTSO.

In his opinion, the dynamics of the first quarter of this year shows that the Ukrainian gas infrastructure is already firmly integrated into European energy markets and is part of the energy security of European countries.

According to GTSOU, natural gas transit through Ukraine in the first quarter of 2021 amounted to 10.4 billion cubic meters.

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The Acting Secretary of U.S. Navy Thomas Harker visited Sikorsky in Stratford on Wednesday to see the production of CH-53K King Stallion helicopters, which the aircraft company is manufacturing for Navy use. The tour followed a visit by Harker to General Dynamics Electric Boat in Groton and the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and Naval Submarine Base in New London on Tuesday.

Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas W. Harker traveled to New England to visit public and private organizations, said Lt. Ashley Nekoui, spokeswoman for the Acting Navy Secretary. During his visit to Sikorsky he viewed current operational efforts and met with personnel to discuss industrial base economic wellness and workforce health. During his trip, he also visited institutions in the region with long-standing contributions to the development of the maritime services, and the education and maturation of future naval leaders.

Connecticut is a key manufacturer of helicopters and submarines for the U.S. Navy and other military branches.

Specifically, Sikorsky is the producer of the U.S. militarys largest helicopters. Owned by defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corporation, Sikorsky builds multiple models of helicopters used by the U.S. Navy for purposes like search and rescue, medical evacuations, anti-submarine warfare and mine-sweeping.

U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3, the top House Democrat in charge of federal spending, and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, joined Harker, Sikorsky President Paul Lemmo and Stephanie Hill, executive vice president of Rotary and Mission Systems for Lockheed Martin, for the visit, DeLauro said.

The group received a private tour of the factory floor to check out the manufacturing of the CH-53K King Stallion, a new helicopter model designed for heavy lifting, and the presidential helicopters. They also discussed the future aircraft Sikorsky will make, DeLauro said.

Blumenthal said after the visit he will be pushing for the Biden administration to increase military helicopter purchases.

Helicopters are absolutely key to our national defense. They save lives on the battlefield. They force multiply the power of our troops in combat. They move troops and equipment to places where other vehicles simply cannot go, Blumenthal said. Im going to be fighting for more Black Hawks, more CH-53Ks, the heavy lift, more of all of the aerial vehicles that it will be producing over these next years.

In October 2020, the Navy signed a new contract with Sikorsky ordering six more helicopters  CH-53K King Stallions, huge helicopters designed for heavy lifting  for a total of 24 Sikorsky is manufacturing to support the U.S. Marine Corps.

The Pentagon plans on spending $25 billion to buy CH-53Ks. The Israeli Air Force is reportedly demanding an engine fix for the King Stallions it bought, claiming improvements are needed to fly the aircraft in desert brown-out conditions.

Sikorsky has also supplied the U.S. Navy with more than 300 MH-60R Seahawk helicopters, made to fight against submarines and surface weapons. Other countries that have bought the aircraft from Sikorsky, or have pending orders, are Australia, Denmark, Saudi Arabia, India, Greece and Korea, a spokeswoman for Lockheed Martin said.

Sikorsky also has a contract with the U.S. government to build a total of 23 presidential helicopters. Employees in Stratford and Owego, N.Y. are working on producing thse aircraft, a spokeswoman for Lockheed Martin said.

Meanwhile, to the East, Electric Boat is currently producing two submarines a year for the U.S. military, with each vessel worth about $2.5 billion worth of business for the company.

The Biden administration has not yet proposed their first budget, including defense spending. The administration is still waiting for some top officials to be confirmed by the Senate and Biden has not yet nominated a new Secretary of the Navy. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have pressed Biden to nominate a Navy Secretary as soon as possible.

But the visits Tuesday and Wednesday show how Connecticut defense manufacturers are keeping the eyes of the Biden team trained on more investments in their products.

Blumenthal said the major challenge is ensuring these manufacturers have the work force to keep up with the orders. Employees at many defense contractors, including Sikorsky, are older and close to or at retirement age.

The contractors are juggling how to pass on this institutional knowledge while simultaneously hiring large numbers of skilled workers to carry out increased workload. Several training pipelines have been set up across the state, including at technical high schools and community colleges, to help these companies find and train the workers needed.

This plant is going to lose 1000 or more trained, skilled employees over the coming years, Blumenthal said. The challenge for Sikorsky is skill training.

State Republican Leader Kevin Kelly of Stratford said Connecticut should approve new incentives for defense contractors in the state, which earn billions of dollars in federal contracts each year, and employ a large share of Connecticut's nearly 156,000 manufacturing employees."

emilie.munson@hearstdc.com; Twitter: @emiliemunson
Chairs and tables outside a traditional Bavarian restaurant are locked at the city centre in Munich, Germany (Matthias Schrader/AP)

A spokeswoman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel is supporting calls for a short, uniform lockdown as the country grapples with a rise in coronavirus cases.

German state governors, who are responsible for imposing and lifting restrictions, have taken differing approaches.

Some back limited reopening steps and others advocate a stricter shutdown.

Armin Laschet, a governor who also leads Mrs Merkels party, is calling for a 2-3 week bridge lockdown to control infections while vaccinations are ramped up.

Expand Close Only very few people walk on the Friedrichstrasse near the former Checkpoint Charlie, an allied border crossing during the Cold War, in Berlin, Germany (Markus Schreiber/AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Only very few people walk on the Friedrichstrasse near the former Checkpoint Charlie, an allied border crossing during the Cold War, in Berlin, Germany (Markus Schreiber/AP)

Merkel spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer says, every call for a short, uniform lockdown is right.

She says numbers of new cases are not particularly good, and a rise in the number of occupied intensive care beds speaks a very clear language.

Mr Laschet also called for the next meeting between Mrs Merkel and governors to coordinate restrictions to be moved up from next Monday but has hit resistance from his colleagues.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The coronavirus (COVID-19) variant first identified in the United Kingdom late last year is now the most common form of the virus in the United States, according to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The variant, known as B.1.1.7, is now the most common lineage circulating in the United States, said CDC Director Dr. Rachelle Walensky said during a White House briefing Wednesday. Testing remains an important strategy to rapidly identify and isolate infectious individuals, including those with variants of concern.

The U.K. variant is believed to be deadlier than the original strain of the virus that prompted the pandemic over one year ago and has been found to be more contagious, prompting concerns that the variant  among other mutated forms of the virus  could lead to higher levels of hospitalizations and deaths.

Hospitalizations on Staten island have dipped since earlier this year and CDC data shows COVID-19 hospitalizations have dipped nationwide, as well. Still, cases have plateaued across the country in recent days after falling precipitously in February.

The virus still has hold on us  infecting people and putting them in harms way  and we need to remain vigilant, said Walensky, who last week lamented a feeling of impending doom at the current state of the virus in the U.S.

While mutations in variants of concern initially prompted worry among scientists that already-authorized vaccines would have reduced effectiveness against the disease, studies have indicated that vaccines made by Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson still offer strong protection against the U.K. variant.

Other mutated forms of the virus, including one that was initially detected in South Africa, elicited a weaker, but still robust, response to current vaccines.

As a result, Walensky said vaccinations will continue to be a key piece of fighting back against the emergence of more contagious versions of the virus.

We must continue to vaccinate as many Americans as we can each day because when we invest in vaccination and other public health prevention measures, we are seeing case counts decrease and deaths decrease, said Walensky. We need to continue to accelerate our vaccination efforts and to take the individual responsibility to get vaccinated when we can.
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 Yimou Lee

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan has spotted Chinese drones circling the Taipei-controlled Pratas Islands in the South China Sea and may shoot them down if they stray too close, a government minister said on Wednesday, a move that could dramatically increase tensions with Beijing.

Speaking at parliament, Lee Chung-wei, who heads the Ocean Affairs Council under whose purview the Coast Guard falls, said that they had recently spotted Chinese drones circling the Pratas, though they have not flown over the islands.

"They have never entered our restricted waters and airspace, they've just flown around them at a certain distance," Lee said.

While China recognises no Taiwanese claims of sovereignty, its aircraft and ships generally stay outside Taiwan's restricted zone, which extends 6 km from its coast.

Asked how the Coast Guard would react if a Chinese drone entered that restricted zone, Lee said they had rules of engagement.

"After it enters it will be handled under the rules. If we need to open fire, we open fire."

The Pratas lie at the top end of the disputed waterway, and have become a relatively new source of intrigue between Chinese-claimed Taiwan and Beijing.

In recent months Taiwan has complained of repeated Chinese air force activity near the islands, which Taiwan's Coast Guard only lightly defends though there are periodic deployments of marines. There is no permanent civilian population, only occasional visiting scientists.

In October, Hong Kong air traffic controllers warned off a Taiwanese civilian flight flying to the Pratas on a routine weekly supply run, forcing it to turn back.

The Pratas, the closest Taiwan-controlled territory to Hong Kong, have also taken on extra significance since anti-government protests began in the Chinese-run city.

Taiwan has intercepted at least one boat close to the Pratas carrying people fleeing from Hong Kong trying to make their way to Taiwan.

Taiwan's other main South China Sea island is Itu Aba, also known as Taiping Island, which is part of the Spratly archipelago.

Story continues

Lee said they have not spotted Chinese drones there.

Apart from China and Taiwan, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam also have competing claims for islands and features in the South China Sea.

(Reporting by Yimou Lee; Additional reporting and writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
3 eggs found, 18 lieutenants lost at base Easter egg hunt Duffel Blog. A couple of days late but still amusing.

The Joy and Privilege of Growing Up in an Indie Bookstore Literary Hub

The Strange Convulsion in Scottish Politics Craig Murray

COPS CROWDFUNDED THEIR K-9S HOSPITAL BILLS  THEN QUIETLY ADMITTED THEY HAD SHOT HIM The Intercept

Japans Cherry Blossoms Hit Earliest Peak Bloom in 1,200 Years Treehugger

Talks collapse on Ethiopias Nile dam Deutsche Welle

Indigenous Peoples Are the Best Protectors of Forests, New UN Report Shows Treehugger

Facing Kaena Point: On Turning Eighty New Yorker. Paul Theroux.

Modern Crime-Solving Methods vs. the Mystery of World War II Deaths NYT

Julian Assange

Everything The West Claims It Values Is Invalidated By Its Treatment Of Assange Caitlin Johnstone

All Eyes on Digital Payments Project Syndicate

#COVID-19

Biden Administration/p>

Black Injustice Tipping Point

Big Brother IS Watching You Watch

Our Famously Free Press

This is exactly my experience. Ive been a critic of corporate media outlets for 15 years but always assumed one could get basic facts (even if flawed) by reading them. I now no longer think this. Their journalistic and business model makes me distrust everything I read there. https://t.co/HEqhVNfDW2  Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 6, 2021

On the Miserable Necessity of Doing Censorship Stories in Pairs TK News. TK News. Matt Taibbi.

Meet the Censored: The U.S. Right to Know Foundation TK News. Matt Taibbi.

Class Warfare

Democrats en deshabille

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTYS CONSULTANT FACTORY The Intercept

Brazil

Iran

China?

India

Myanmar

Five killed in Myanmar as troops open fire on protesters Reuters

Antidote du Jour (via):

See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here.
DOVER, Del. (AP)  The official committee representing child sex abuse victims in the Boy Scouts of America bankruptcy is asking a judge for permission to file its own reorganization plan, saying the plan proposed by the BSA falls woefully short of fairly compensating abuse victims while shielding local Boy Scouts councils and sponsoring organizations from liability.

The official tort claimants committee filed a motion late last week objecting to the BSAs request for the court to extend the period in which the Boy Scouts have exclusive rights to file and solicit votes on a reorganization plan.

The BSAs plan proposes a $300 million contribution by local councils to a fund for victims, about $115 million in cash and noninsurance assets from the BSA, and the assignment of BSA and local council insurance policies. In return, the 253 local councils and thousands of sponsoring organizations would be released from further liability.

The committee noted in its court filing that it had made a settlement offer to the Boy Scouts estimating the value of the roughly 84,000 sexual abuse claims filed in the bankruptcy at about $103 billion, adding that those estimates were extremely conservative.

The committee noted that its estimate counts each claim as a single act of abuse, even though a substantial number of victims were abused repeatedly and in different ways over several years. The committee also noted that its average claim value of $811,215 is less than the average of $1.2 million per claim that the University of Southern California agreed to pay last month in an $852 million settlement with more than 700 women who accused the colleges longtime campus gynecologist of sexual abuse.

The committees objection to the BSAs exclusivity motion coincided with the final day of a three-day mediation session in which attorneys for the Boy Scouts sought to gain support for their plan from creditors, insurers and other parties.

The mediation session followed Judge Laurie Selber Silversteins rejection of the BSAs request for an April 15 hearing to approve the disclosure statement outlining its reorganization plan. Silverstein, who instead will hold a status conference next Monday, expressed frustration about the lack of progress in the case and said BSA attorneys had not provided some very necessary information and documents for a disclosure hearing.

Attorneys for the victims committee also have expressed frustration about the lack of details in BSAs plan, which has been roundly criticized by attorneys representing abuse victims.

Committee attorneys said they should be permitted to file a plan that allows the debtors to reorganize without the fire-sale intra-family settlement with the local councils and chartered organizations.

Committee attorneys indicated that the biggest difference between their plan and the BSA plan is that theirs will not include nonconsensual third-party releases from liability for the local councils and sponsoring organizations. Instead, their plan would allow for releases to be negotiated by the committee or the settlement trust, but not for the relatively paltry sum offered by the local councils. They also said that if the Boy Scouts and local councils want to rely on insurance carriers to provide the bulk of compensation for abuse victims, the local councils and sponsoring organizations do not need releases from liability.

Committee attorneys also maintain that their plan will allow the BSA to reorganize as an ongoing, financially feasible entity.

BSA attorneys have argued, however, that allowing creditors to file a competing plan would make it difficult, if not impossible, to negotiate and implement a global resolution of abuse claims and would unleash boundless litigation.

The Boy Scouts of America, based in Irving, Texas, sought bankruptcy protection last February in an effort to halt hundreds of lawsuits and create a compensation fund for men who were molested as youngsters decades ago by scoutmasters or other leaders.

Attorneys for abuse victims made clear from the onset that they would go after campsites and other properties and assets owned by local councils to contribute to a settlement fund. The local councils, which run day-to-day operations for local troops, are not debtors in the bankruptcy and are considered by the Boy Scouts to be legally separate entities, even though they share insurance policies and are considered related parties in the bankruptcy case.

The bankruptcy case has been bogged down by disputes over the provision of information by local Boy Scouts councils about their financial assets, claims by the BSA that hundreds of millions of dollars worth of its own assets are restricted and unavailable to abuse victims, and concerns by BSA insurers that attorneys for abuse victims have submitted tens of thousands of claims without ensuring their validity.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Australian comedian Chris Lilley has launched a podcast that pokes fun of woke culture almost a year after Netflix dropped a handful of his television programs amid criticism of his portrayal of non-white characters.

The audio series re-acquaints audiences with Jamie King, the melodramatic private schoolgirl character who first became a household name in Lilleys 2005 mockumentary We Can Be Heroes: Finding the Australian of the Year.

Chris Lilley has revived his character Jamie.

We Can Be Heroes was one of four shows to be removed from Netflixs catalogue last year, along with Summer Heights High, Angry Boys and Jonah from Tonga. Lilley was accused of using blackface to portray an African-American rapper named S.mouse and brownface to play Tongan schoolboy Jonah Takalua. The four shows originally aired on the ABC between 2005 and 2014.

Netflix declined to comment on its decision. However, the call was made at a time when other TV giants were grappling with how to deal with inaccurate representations of race and slavery, along with blackface (when a performer wears make-up to imitate the appearance of a person of colour). In June, the BBC pulled the British comedy Little Britain from its digital library (the show features David Walliams performing in blackface). HBO Max also removed Gone With the Wind from its catalogue amid claims the 1939 American Civil War movie ignored the horrors of slavery and perpetuated some of the most painful stereotypes of people of colour.
MANZINI  The import car dealership industry is being choked out of business by an organised syndicate which is stealing a precious metal that costs 15 times the price of gold in cars.

The precious metal that the thieves are after is tucked into almost all vehicles and is known as a catalytic converter. The converter has a honeycomb-like interior  coated with precious metals like palladium, rhodium and platinum  that scrub the worst toxic pollutants from the cars exhaust. One of the dealers to feel the pinch of the rising scourge was the Director of Umar Motors, Muhammad Aamir. The businessman claimed that yesterday, when resuming business after the long weekend, he discovered that thieves had vandalised his yet to be sold cars, which resulted in a loss he supposed was about E50 000. Aamir said when he came into his yard; he assumed all was well until a customer came into his dealership seeking to procure a vehicle. He said after the exchange of pleasantries and the enquiry by his client, he collected keys to switch on the ignition of the vehicle.

Curiosity

Just when he did that, Aamir claimed that the sound coming from the engine was too loud. Out of curiosity, the businessman said, he switched on the ignition of the other cars and the same thing happened. As this happened, Aamir claimed that he lost out on the sale as the client left. According to the entrepreneur, after the client had left, he inspected what could be the cause of this strange noise and discovered that thieves had stolen catalytic converters. In total, the businessman said 11 vehicles were vandalised by the thieves, which when he calculated tallied to about E50 000. Subsequent to this, Aamir said he inspected the dealerships yard whereupon he discovered that the thugs had cut off the fence to gain entry. The businessman said leading to being a victim of this act; he had gathered that other car dealerships had also suffered the same fate as thieves made away with catalytic converters. Just the other week, another businessman found that about E100 000 worth of the converters had been stolen from his dealership.

Challenges

He said at first, as car dealerships, they always thought that the vehicles had mechanical faults and would fix them. The cost of replacing the catalytic converter, according to Aamir, ranged between E4 000 and E7 000.

If the car had a funny sound, wed take it to the mechanic and have it fixed. The mechanics would charge us large sums and we did not know this was the reason our cars were having challenges, Aamir said. He said it came to their attention that a syndicate was behind the theft of the catalytic converters early in the year when one of the dealership owners was contacted late at night and informed that there was activity in his compound. Aamir claimed that upon arrival at the compound, the businessman discovered that there were people dismantling the catalytic converters while the security guard was making sure that they steal undisturbed.
A pedestrian has miraculously survived after being hit by a car driven by a teenager while crossing a busy intersection in Sydney.

A 32-year-old man was walking across the Cleveland and Abercrombie street intersection in Darlington on Tuesday at about 4.20pm when a white Mitsubishi Lancer slammed into him.

The man appeared to spot the vehicle moments before impact and attempted to jump away, but he wasn't fast enough and was instead thrown onto the hood of the car.

A pedestrian has been treated for a suspected head injury after he collided with a Mitsubishi Lancer in Darlington, Sydney (pictured)

The victim was treated by paramedics for a suspected head injury before he was taken to Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in a serious but stable condition.

NSW Police confirmed to Daily Mail Australia that the 19-year-old driver of the Mitsubishi Lancer was uninjured and there have been no charges at this stage.

An investigation is ongoing and police have urged anyone who has video footage or information to come forward.
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achieving a fairer and healthier Nigeria has more to do with the overall quality of leadership and governance than what happens in the hospitals, despite the huge importance of the latter. Nigeria has some of the best health policies and technical briefs but their implementation have been largely profligate and disheartening.

Today, April 7, is World Health Day. The global theme announced by the World Health Organisation (WHO) is Building a Fairer and Healthier World, which is very apt at this time given the huge negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the health of the people and the global health system. The pandemic has widened the inequality and inequity in accessing health care and medical commodities in different parts of the world. The push for equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines has become intense in recent times, given that over 70 per cent of persons who have been vaccinated are residents in 10 countries.

It is imperative for me to explain the key words in this article. Fair simply means treating people equally and without favouritism or discrimination. Its synonyms include words like just, reasonable, equitable, objective, dispassionate, impartial, rational and unbiased. In my (Igbo) language, it is simply explained by the concept of egbe bere, ugo bere (let the hawk perch, and let the eagle perch too). The English man would say that what is good for the goose is also good for the gander.

According to the WHO, health is a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Some fundamental principles which form the preamble to the WHO constitution are very critical. Let me highlight five of them: One  the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being, without regards to race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition; two  the health of all peoples is fundamental to the attainment of peace and security, and it is dependent on the fullest co-operation of individuals and States; three  the achievement of any State in the promotion and protection of health is of value to all; four  unequal development in different countries in the promotion of health and control of diseases, especially communicable diseases, is a common danger; five  the healthy development of the child is of basic importance; six  governments have a responsibility for the health of their peoples, which can be fulfilled only by the provision of adequate health and social measures. We should note that the fourth principle emphasises the importance of fairness, equity and non-discrimination in the promotion of the health of a people.

What is the situation of health in Nigeria? Today is the seventh day that the resident doctors in Nigeria embarked on a total and indefinite nationwide strike action. This is about the third time within the past one year, and the reasons for the strike are essentially similar. In this situation, the only people who can afford quality health care are the rich or insured people, who can afford the cost of care in private health facilities. The majority of Nigerians are living in extreme poverty, 33 per cent are unemployed, and as such quality health care has become a luxury for them. They have been left behind, and this is not fairness.

More so, the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF)s recent data shows that an estimated two million Nigerian children suffer from severe acute malnutrition, the highest in any country of the world, while six million (37 per cent) are stunted (too short for age)  a sign of chronic malnutrition. According to the National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS 2018), 132 children per 1000 live births die before they reach the age of five years from highly preventable and treatable health conditions like malaria, malnutrition, diarrhea, and measles. With 512 out of 100,000 women dying from child birth or pregnancy-related events (NDHS 2018), Nigeria is in the list of five countries with the highest maternal deaths in the world. The other four are India, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, and Pakistan.

Specifically, let the government of Nigeria at every level ensure that 15 per cent or more of their annual budget is dedicated to programmes and research aimed at making preventive, curative and palliative health care available and accessible to all. Health budget funds should be released and cash-backed in a timely manner, and utilised efficiently.

As a matter of fact, Nigeria is about 2 per cent of the global population but has a disproportionate share of the global burden of disease. Nigeria accounts for 25 per cent of the malaria burden worldwide, and among the 30 high TB burden countries and high multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) burden countries, Nigeria is ranked sixth (World Health Organisation, Global Tuberculosis Report, 2020). Despite the progress made in the past two decades in HIV control, the national HIV prevalence is 1.4 per cent, twice the global average of 0.7 per cent. The birth rate remains high, while only 17 out of every 100 women of child bearing age use any form of modern contraceptive. Nigerias health budget is about 5 per cent of the total national budget, and this is far below the 15 per cent minimum agreed by the African heads of government in 2001, known as the Abuja Declaration. To make matters worse, there is a mass emigration of skilled health care workers out of Nigeria due to poor working conditions. The country continues ailing, even as over 70 per cent of drugs consumed are imported, thereby putting the country at a high risk of medical insecurity. I can go on and on.

These data reminds of my experience in Denmark in 2017, where I was one of the 1,000 young people from 129 countries of the world, who met to develop innovative solutions towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. It was the maiden UNLEASH SDG Innovation Lab. Among the solutions developed by the groups in the health sector, more than a half focused on Nigerias health problems. I didnt know whether to be happy or sad about this. It looked like Nigeria was responsible for the unhealthy world we live in. Among the top three winning solutions, two were also focused on Nigeria. This explains the relevance of Nigeria in the global health space. It will not be inappropriate to describe Nigeria as a severely and chronically unhealthy country.

How then can we build a fairer and healthier Nigeria? Most of the solutions are actually outside the health sector. This leads me to what we call the Social Determinants of Health (SDH) in public health. WHO describes these as the non-medical factors that influence health outcomes. They are the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set of forces and systems shaping the conditions of daily life. These social forces and systems include economic policies and systems, development agendas, social norms, social policies and political systems. Some examples, as listed by WHO, are income and social protection, education, unemployment and job insecurity, food security, working life conditions, early childhood development, access to affordable health services of decent quality, social inclusion and non-discrimination, as well as housing, basic amenities and the environment. This list is not exhaustive. Numerous studies suggest that SDH accounts for between 30-55 per cent of health outcomes.

My prescriptions for a fairer and healthier Nigeria are simple but can only be implemented by a government with a strong political will for leaving a lasting legacy. The governments at the federal, state and local levels must be deliberate and sincere in their approaches. I will recommend the One Health Approach to designing and implementing programmes, policies, legislation and research in which multiple sectors communicate and work together to achieve better public health outcomes. Man and animals interact closely in the same environment and this interaction is responsible for the aetiology of many ill-health conditions. Environmental health and animal health must be guaranteed, even as the social determinants of human health are optimised in a fair and just manner.

I look forward to a time when public health issues would be on the front burner during political campaigns and have a significant influence on the choices of the electorates. To achieve a fair and healthy nation, Nigeria must fix its politics and governance system and ensure that no one is left behind. Every effort counts. All hands must be on deck!

Specifically, let the government of Nigeria at every level ensure that 15 per cent or more of their annual budget is dedicated to programmes and research aimed at making preventive, curative and palliative health care available and accessible to all. Health budget funds should be released and cash-backed in a timely manner, and utilised efficiently. Leveraging on the Basic Health Care Provision Funds, governors should ensure that one or more primary health care facilities in every ward across Nigeria are made fully functional in accordance with the requirements of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA)s Ward Health Systems (2018 Review). The president should give assent to the National Health Insurance Commission Bill when it is finally passed by the National Assembly as it provides for a mandatory health insurance coverage for every resident of Nigeria. The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and the State Health Insurance Agencies should work towards achieving health insurance cover for every Nigerian by 2025.

In continuation of my health-sector specific prescriptions, I want to recommend the strengthening of the six building blocks of the health system. The ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic can be leveraged upon for the strengthening of health systems. The health workforce should be adequate in number, well trained and well-motivated to work in a conducive environment. The local production of vaccines, drugs and health commodities should be increased to meet at least 80 per cent of the national needs by 2030. The health management information system should be strengthened, using technology to improve the quality of health data. The leadership and governance structures should be strengthened, especially at the community level; and policy decisions should be evidence-based. An enabling environment should be provided to encourage more private sector participation in health care delivery at all levels, while relevant government agencies should monitor health service providers effectively to ensure the delivery of the highest possible quality of care.

In the other sectors, the security of lives and property is the primary essence of government and must be guaranteed for all citizens. Basic education should be of the 21st century standard and accessible to all children, especially the girl child. The government should invest in the youths to harness the demographic dividends. The unemployment rate should be reduced to less than 10 per cent by 2023, while information and communications technology is a low hanging fruit that government needs to make widely accessible. Safe drinking water should be made available to all and an end to open defecation should be achieved. Waste must be properly managed and the environment protected sustainably. The government should continue to support subsistence and commercial farmers to enable the country achieve food security. Very importantly, stability in political governance should be ensured through good governance and participatory democracy.

In conclusion, achieving a fairer and healthier Nigeria has more to do with the overall quality of leadership and governance than what happens in the hospitals, despite the huge importance of the latter. Nigeria has some of the best health policies and technical briefs but their implementation have been largely profligate and disheartening. The poor outcomes were caused majorly by poor political decisions, corruption and incompetence, especially at the sub-national levels. I look forward to a time when public health issues would be on the front burner during political campaigns and have a significant influence on the choices of the electorates. To achieve a fair and healthy nation, Nigeria must fix its politics and governance system and ensure that no one is left behind. Every effort counts. All hands must be on deck!

Laz Eze, a public health physician and sustainable development consultant, is the Founder of TalkHealth9ja and Convener of the Make Our Hospital Work Campaign. He tweets @donlaz4u. E-mail via drlaz@talkhealth9ja.com
DENVER, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Spinnaker Support, the world's highest-rated provider of Oracle, SAP, and Salesforce support services, today announced performance highlights for its full fiscal year ending December 31, 2020. The continued strong growth of Spinnaker Support's revenue, clients, staffing, and customer satisfaction present solid confirmation of its market appeal and recognition of its award-winning combination of third-party support and managed services.

2020 Highlights

Record Growth, Healthy Financials: Net new sales deals increased by 39.1% and revenue by 22.3% compared to FY 2019. The company retained a strong balance sheet and extended its streak of profitability to 48 quarters.



Net new sales deals increased by 39.1% and revenue by 22.3% compared to FY 2019. The company retained a strong balance sheet and extended its streak of profitability to 48 quarters. Satisfied, Loyal Customers: Annual customer satisfaction ticked up to 98.7%, and Net Promoter Score (NPS) reached 79. For 2020, the company earned a 4.9/5.0-star overall rating on Gartner Peer Insights, based on independent, verified customer reviews.



Annual customer satisfaction ticked up to 98.7%, and Net Promoter Score (NPS) reached 79. For 2020, the company earned a 4.9/5.0-star overall rating on Gartner Peer Insights, based on independent, verified customer reviews. Expanded Staffing: Employee count grew by 36% in 2020, with support resources added in all eight global support centers. Key leadership roles were filled in all areas. Employees rate working for the company with 4.9/5.0 stars on Glassdoor and demonstrated their loyalty with retention rates exceeding 92%.



Employee count grew by 36% in 2020, with support resources added in all eight global support centers. Key leadership roles were filled in all areas. Employees rate working for the company with 4.9/5.0 stars on Glassdoor and demonstrated their loyalty with retention rates exceeding 92%. New & Improved Services: Launched new managed service offerings for Salesforce CRM and SAP Business Intelligence. Innovative tools and technologies to improve enterprise security and decrease issue resolution time included Artificial Intelligence (AI) and proactive monitoring.

"2020 was another exceptional year for Spinnaker Support," said Matt Stava, CEO at Spinnaker Support. "We excelled in revenues, new customer acquisitions, existing customer retention, and the continuous building of our employee base and hiring key executive leaders. I am extremely proud of our accomplishments, which occurred despite unprecedented global pandemic and economic turbulence. Because we prioritize customers and take a flexible approach to contracting, we lost zero customers to the global downturn while earning a Stevie Award in recognition of our impressive COVID response customer service."

Record Revenues from More Global Customers

In 2020, Spinnaker Support's customer count rose to just over 1,300. New customers included highly recognized and respected global brands spanning many industries, with 34% of new customers from enterprises headquartered outside of the United States. Additionally, existing customers consolidated their service requirements with Spinnaker Support, where 30.7% contracted for two or more of the company's support services.

Eleven organizations switched to Spinnaker Support from rival third-party support vendors, citing a stronger security program, more flexible commercial contracts, and lack of legal risk. "It was easy to switch to Spinnaker Support. We gained contract flexibility, improved service quality with our own assigned support team, and now enjoy a friendly and collaborative relationship," said an Oracle Database Customer in the Environmental Services industry.

New and Enhanced Services to Meet Customer Demand

Spinnaker Support added and enhanced significant services to meet the evolving needs of its clients.

The SAP practice launched SAP Business Intelligence managed services packages and enhanced its Basis services offering, two critically underserved areas in the market.

The company announced the availability of Salesforce application management and consulting services, immediately onboarding the first customers. Reviews on the Salesforce AppExchange are high and sales pipeline continues to expand.

The JD Edwards practice enhanced its existing managed services with a new 24/7 monitoring solution designed to proactively address emerging technical issues. "With our limited resources, it is reassuring to have Spinnaker Support's 24/7 CNC managed services and monitoring working with us," said Roxanne Sikraji , Director of Technology, Jacobus Energy. "Through automated alerts, their global JD Edwards team often fixes a CNC issue before we're even aware of it."

For the excellence of its existing and new services, Spinnaker Support's operations teams received a record five Stevie Awards in 2020, including Customer Service Department of the Year, Front-Line Customer Service Team of the Year, and Woman of the Year in Customer Service.

Building Towards the Future

Spinnaker Support onboarded a record number of new employees in all regions and nearly doubled the global tax and regulatory compliance team size.

To embrace growing market demand, Spinnaker Support appointed key executives with decades of industry experience. These included:

Chad Stewart , a veteran Salesforce consultant and team leader previously with Slalom Consulting, as the first Vice President of Global SaaS Support Services



, a veteran Salesforce consultant and team leader previously with Slalom Consulting, as the first Vice President of Global SaaS Support Services Martin Biggs , former IBM executive as Vice President and General Manager of the EMEA region responsible for driving sales and operational management



, former IBM executive as Vice President and General Manager of the EMEA region responsible for driving sales and operational management Shaun Forshey , Vice President, Customer Success, formerly with Oracle and Microsoft and responsible for customer lifecycle management and delivering WOW customer experiences



, Vice President, Customer Success, formerly with Oracle and Microsoft and responsible for customer lifecycle management and delivering WOW customer experiences Megan Morris , Vice President, Human Resources, a senior leader charged with helping Spinnaker Support rapidly scale its HR backbone during this period of immense growth



, Vice President, Human Resources, a senior leader charged with helping Spinnaker Support rapidly scale its HR backbone during this period of immense growth Brian Stanz, Vice President, JD Edwards Global Support Services, an operational leader with 30 years of development and business management experience for Oracle and JD Edwards

Customer Satisfaction Rises Again

Overall satisfaction increased to 98.7% in the annual customer survey, with high marks for service quality, technical and functional knowledge, and the understanding of customer's business and unique environment. Customer loyalty remains unrivaled in the space, with a Net Promoter Score of 79, nearly twice the service industry average. Customer willingness-to-recommend exceeded 91%, illustrating the high regard of the growing customer base.

Customers cite the comprehensive, responsive service, which averaged <5-minute response time. "With SAP's support, we never spoke with anyone," said Craig McBroom, Business Analyst at BancTec. "Now, with Spinnaker Support, it's 3-4 times better than SAP was. We talk to real people who deliver real resolutions. It's like you found the switch to the light in a dark room."

86.3% of annual survey respondents view Spinnaker Support as Critical or Important to the work they do. Korean-based Hanssem agreed: "Spinnaker Support is a partner that is verified and trusted from various angles. We are receiving professional support services, cutting costs, and have reallocated human resources. Even in the coronavirus era, we have been able to strengthen our core capabilities and improve our cash position."

"Since founding in 2008, we have not wavered from our mission of delivering 'supportive support' with integrity," said Stava. "We reinvest a high percentage of revenues into continuous improvement of service capabilities and value, exemplified by the fact that over 70% of employees work in customer-facing service roles. With an outstanding year like 2020, we invest more in the services that drive our customers' business success. Our high customer satisfaction and loyalty scores reflect that level of dedication and outcomes."

About Spinnaker Support

Spinnaker Support is the leading global provider of third-party enterprise software support, managed services, and consulting for mid-size to Fortune 100 global enterprises. Recognized and respected brands that run Oracle, SAP, and Salesforce customers benefit from more responsive, comprehensive, and affordable services for their enterprise applications and technologies. Since 2008, our award-winning services, exacting standards, and unparalleled expertise have earned us the trust and loyalty of more than 1,300 organizations in 104 countries. To learn more about Spinnaker Support, visit our website.

Michelle Wilkinson

1-720-4575442

[email protected]

SOURCE Spinnaker Support
Welcome back to the China In Eurasia briefing, a monthly RFE/RL newsletter tracking Chinas resurgent influence from Eastern Europe to Central Asia. Im RFE/RL correspondent Reid Standish and heres what Im following this month:

Welcome To The New Era

China owned the global stage in March. The month kicked off with the annual National Peoples Congress, with Beijing charting its future course, and culminated in a series of diplomatic wins and setbacks that point to Chinas steady, but uneven, rise in the world.

Finding Perspective: Beijing is eager to project that it is a true global power. That was the message of the National Peoples Congress, as I reported here.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and other senior officials touted Chinas ascent at the political gathering, setting up declared victories at home over the coronavirus and extreme poverty as a blueprint for future engagement around the world.

Across Eurasia, Chinese diplomats have already taken to promoting these narratives and Beijings vaccine diplomacy continued to make inroads, especially in developing nations. But Chinas rise is also not without its growing pains.

The pandemic is forcing Beijing to adapt its flagship Belt and Road Initiative and the country found itself in a tough diplomatic dispute after tit-for-tat sanctions with the European Union and other Western nations over Chinas rights abuses in Xinjiang.

Why It Matters: China is still learning how to be a world leader, but it is becoming increasingly confident in its moves.

This means that Beijings rivalry with the West, particularly the United States, is set to intensify, as highlighted by the fiery exchange between high-ranking U.S. and Chinese officials in Alaska.

As I discussed in an article in late March, Eurasia wont be the focal point of superpower tensions, but it will be far from immune.

Read More

RFE/RLs Hungarian Service reported that Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe visited Budapest on March 25 as the first stop on a tour of southeastern Europe that took place shortly after the EU imposed sanctions on Chinese officials.

Few details about Fenghes visits have been made public, as my colleagues at RFE/RLs Balkan Service reported, looking at the lack of transparency during stops in Serbia and North Macedonia.

Simultaneous Western pressure on Beijing and Moscow is pushing the two countries closer together, as evidenced by a March 23 press conference where Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi jointly bashed the United States.

Expert Corner: Just How Close Are Beijing And Moscow?

Readers asked: "Relations between China and Russia are about to enter a new phase, but where exactly is this relationship going?"

Beijing and Moscow increasingly need each other, but Russia needs China more than the other way around -- so in the future, China can use its growing leverage to get concessions from Russia on commercial deals or some policy issues that dont cross the Kremlins red lines. -- Alexander Gabuev, senior fellow at the Moscow Carnegie Center

There are real fissures between Russia and China, but the persistence of the factors driving their partnership mean they will challenge the United States and Europe for the foreseeable future. Their alignment increases the risks that both countries pose. Together, they are a more potent force that can oppose both the United States and Europe. -- Andrea Kendall-Taylor, senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and former senior U.S. intelligence analyst

A full alliance between China and Russia is not coming, but both Beijing and Moscow feel united in their confrontation with the United States. Despite potential areas of limited confrontation in Central Asia or growing competition in the arms trade, the reasons to work closer and minimize tensions so far outweigh concerns for future disagreements. -- Anton Barbashin, editorial director at Riddle Russia

Do you have a question about Chinas growing footprint in Eurasia? Send it to me at StandishR@rferl.org or reply directly to this e-mail and Ill get it answered by leading experts and policymakers.

Three More Stories From Eurasia

1. Whats In A Deal?

Beijing inked a long-rumored 25-year strategic pact with Iran on March 27 that could greatly expand its influence in the Middle East and set China up to reap a diplomatic boost if the nuclear deal with Tehran and Washington can be revived.

Digging Deeper: China has its sights on the future. Part of the motivation of the agreement is to reassure Iran as the Biden administration looks to rekindle nuclear talks with Tehran.

The 25-year pact itself outlines broad economic, military, and political cooperation, but there is plenty of reason to be skeptical about it, as I explored here in my article.

There have been reports of the deal being worth $400 billion, but no figure has been confirmed. A draft seen by RFE/RL doesnt mention any amount. Future investment likely wont be possible unless Tehran returns to the nuclear deal and sanctions placed on Iran by the Trump administration are lifted.

The View From Home: China also has a spotty track record of not following through on its deals with Iran. Moreover, the Iranian public remains highly suspicious of the agreement.

My colleague Golnaz Esfandiari looked at Tehrans efforts to reassure the public after it signed the pact with Beijing.

2. Buyers Remorse

Dritan Abazovic, Montenegros deputy prime minister, made headlines on March 26 when he said that the EU should help the small Balkan country repay a $1.18 billion loan to the Export-Import Bank of China for the construction of a highway.

The Tightrope: Abazovic has since tried to walk back his remarks, my colleagues at RFE/RLs Balkan Service told me, after the comments attracted international attention to the massive debt Montenegro owes to China.

The first tranche of repayment for the 2014 loan is reportedly due this year and the road is still under construction.

3. Broken But Not Dead

Government pressure in Kazakhstan has nearly silenced the guerrilla activism that turned the country into an unlikely window on Chinas human rights abuses, Aigerim Toleukhanova from RFE/RLs Kazakh Service and I reported in an article in early April.

Demonstrations against the internment of Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and other Muslim minorities in neighboring Xinjiang are ongoing, with a small but persistent picket outside the Chinese Consulate in Almaty.

The protests, however, are a far cry from the activism in the country over the issue in 2018 and 2019, which has been effectively quelled by a Kazakh government eager to preserve ties with Beijing.

The Human Toll: Perhaps the individual toll of the camps is best exemplified by Qalida Akytkhan, a 67-year-old grandmother whose three sons are interned in camps in Xinjiang.

At night, I take a photo of my three sons and hold it to my chest, she said during an interview. I can't sleep without it. I put it next to my head on my pillow. Sometimes I can't fall asleep until 5 a.m.

Across The Supercontinent

Shifting Course: Ukraine plans to nationalize Motor Sich, an aerospace manufacturer that is majority-owned by Chinese companies, due to its strategic importance to national defense. My colleague Ievgen Solonyna from RFE/RLs Ukrainian Service has a good breakdown of the saga (in Ukrainian.)

Cooled Off: Despite warm public rhetoric of close ties, Beijing is keeping its distance from the embattled regime of Belaruss Alyaksandr Lukashenka, as I focus on here in my article.

On The List: Ilhan Kyuchyuk, an ethnic Turkish Bulgarian deputy at the European Parliament, was among those targeted by Beijing in response to sanctions brought by Brussels over Xinjiang. Kyuchyuk told RFE/RLs Bulgarian Service that he believes he was included because he helped an imprisoned ethnic Uyghur economist receive the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

Diplomatic Booster: Budapest approved emergency use of China's CanSino Biologics coronavirus vaccine on March 22, RFE/RLs Hungarian Service reported.

It is the first EU country to do so. Hungary was already an outlier, granting use to Russias Sputnik V and Chinas Sinopharm, despite neither being approved by Brussels.

One Thing To Watch This Month

The United Nations has begun negotiations with China for a visit without restrictions to Xinjiang to see how Uyghur and other Muslim minorities are being treated in the region, according to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Negotiations will likely be slow. In the meantime, expect more efforts from Beijing to try and change the global narrative around the internment camps.

If you enjoyed this briefing and don't want to miss the next edition, subscribe here. It will be sent to your in-box the first Wednesday of each month.
Kenya, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Philippines have been added to Englands red list  meaning 11 nights of mandatory hotel quarantine for anyone arriving after 4am on Friday 9 April.

The government said the four countries had been added to protect the country against new variants of Covid-19 at a critical time for the vaccine programme.

A statement said: With over 30 million vaccinations delivered in the UK so far, the additional restrictions will help to reduce the risk of new variants  such as those first identified in South Africa and Brazil  entering England.

So far, surveillance has found that few cases of the South Africa variant have been identified as being imported from Europe, with most coming from other parts of the world.

From 4am on Friday 9 April, international visitors who have departed from or transited through Philippines, Pakistan, Kenya and Bangladesh in the previous 10 days will be refused entry into England.

Read more:

Only British and Irish citizens, or those with residence rights in the UK (including long-term visa holders), will be allowed to enter and they must stay in a government-approved quarantine facility for 10 days. They will also be required to arrive into a designated port.

No direct flight bans from these countries will be put in place, but passengers are advised to check their travel plans before departing for England.

A Virgin Atlantic spokesperson said: Our flights between London Heathrow and Manchester to Islamabad and Lahore will be departing as scheduled until Friday 9 April.

The cost of hotel quarantine for one traveller is 1,750, covering 11 nights with three meals per day.

The move affects countries with a total population of 541 million. Many British people have family connections in Bangladesh and Pakistan, and there is now likely to be a rush to return before next Fridays deadline.

The addition of Kenya, the biggest tourist location in east Africa and heavily dependent on overseas visitors, has been deplored by the co-owner of safari camps in the Maasai Mara.

Paul Goldstein said: Kenya has had a fraction  fewer than 2,500  of the Covid-related deaths than the UK. It has locked down most of the country for 60 days. It is a distant relative to somewhere like France yet finds itself on the new arbitrary red list of countries.

This is nanny-state bullying not based on any sort of science, with no thought as to how damaging this hawkish folly will be.

Trying to distract from earlier appalling mismanagement of the virus with these sort of discriminatory policies, just succeeds in thrusting millions into penury.

All arrivals to Scotland from abroad  apart from Ireland  are required to go into hotel quarantine.

Paul Charles, chief executive of the travel consultancy The PC Agency, and an advocate for Covid-19 testing rather than quarantine, said: The red list is going to flex enormously in the coming months, with weekly updates likely to see countries added at short notice.

But its interesting to see the government giving one weeks notice of the changes. This signals their plan for the summer  consumers will get one weeks notice of a country being moved from green to amber or red under the new traffic lights system.

The chief executive of the Advantage Travel Partnership, Julia Lo Bue-Said, said: The latest additions to the red list demonstrate how changeable the situation can be, and demonstrate the importance of workable, mitigation solutions to avoid uncertainty in the future.

Leisure travel abroad from the UK is currently illegal.

The prime minister is expected to outline a framework for resuming international travel at a news conference on Easter Monday.
A man holds a Black Lives Matter sign as a police car burns during a protest in Atlanta, Ga., on May 29, 2020. (Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)

Model, Black Lives Matter Supporter: All Hell Will Break Loose If Chauvin Not Sentenced, Buildings Will Be On Fire

A model and Black Lives Matter supporter warned in a now-deleted social media post that cities will be on fire if former Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin is not convicted and sentenced.

The post was uploaded to Maya Echols TikTok account before it was taken down but was re-uploaded on other social media platforms by other users.

In the video, it appears to show Echols saying, If George Floyds murderer is not sentenced, just know that all hell is gonna break loose. Dont be surprised when buildings are on fire. Just saying.

Chauvin is on trial on charges related to Floyds death last May. After video footage that showed Chauvin restraining Floyd went viral on social media, mass protests and violent riots ensued in a number of U.S. cities. Minneapolis was among the hardest-hit cities, with hundreds of millions of dollars in damages being done by rioters.

NEW  Maya Echols, a prominent Black Lives Matter activist, threatened that cities will be on fire if Derek Chauvin is not convicted for the death of George Floyd.pic.twitter.com/r4xk3kuVW2  Disclose.tv  (@disclosetv) April 6, 2021

Echols has posted videos of herself wearing Black Lives Matter apparel and has voiced support for the group in the past. According to reports, Echols is signed to IMG Worldwide as a model, and she has over 400,000 followers on TikTok.

During the summer demonstrations and riots last year, several prominent Black Lives Matter activists appeared to endorse violence, arson, and looting.

Ashley Gantt, a Black Lives Matter leader in Rochester, New York, told a crowd last year: If there was looting, if there was things on fire, that is not what is important. What is important is why these things happen.

I am just tired of you guys not putting the correct narrative out there, she said. I dont care if the whole city burned down. We need justice.

Later, Gantt said that she doesnt really want people to set the city on fire but instead wants sustainable change, sometimes we have to do whatever it takes to get it.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Minneapolis Police Lt. Johnny Mercil told a court during Chauvins trial officers are taught to restrain combative suspects with a knee on their back or shoulders if necessary but are told to stay away from the neck when possible.

And continuing to kneel on Floyds neck once he was handcuffed behind his back and lying on his stomach was in no way, shape or form part of department policy or training, and it is certainly not part of our ethics or our values, Police Chief Medaria Arradondo said on Day Six of Chauvins murder trial.

Chauvins lawyer, however, questioned Arradondo about separate video footage that appeared to show Chauvin with his knee on Floyds shoulder, not his neck. Arradondo said that he agreed his knee was on his neck, but prosecutors said that the clip was only a few seconds of the incident.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
"Since that time, we have been working with Cal Fire and independent experts to determine the cause of and responsibility for the Kincade fire," Ravitch said in a statement. "I believe this criminal complaint reflects our findings."

PG&E officials Tuesday staunchly defended the company against the criminal allegations.

"In the spirit of working to do what's right for the victims, we will accept Cal Fire's finding that a PG&E transmission line caused the fire, even though we have not had access to the agency's report or the evidence it gathered," the company stated. "However, we do not believe there was any crime here. We remain committed to making it right for all those impacted and working to further reduce wildfire risk on our system."

Ravitch charged PG&E with five felony crimes and 28 misdemeanors that deal with the company's role in starting the fire, which injured six firefighters while destroying property and forests.

The case, filed in Sonoma County Superior Court, includes environmental crimes against PG&E for the pollution generated by the blaze. Two of the felony charges were brought on behalf of two children who suffered from "wildfire smoke and related particulate matter and ash" generated by the fire, according to the complaint.
Nairobi, April 7 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 7th Apr, 2021 ) :Djibouti's President Ismail Omar Guelleh is expected to extend his two-decade rule of the tiny Horn of Africa nation as the country heads to the polls Friday.

Guelleh, 73, is facing political newcomer Zakaria Ismail Farah, his only rival after traditional opposition parties decided to boycott the election.

A businessman specialised in the importation of cleaning products, Farah, 56, is seen by observers as unlikely to pose a significant challenge to the strongman who has been in power for 22 years.

Djibouti is a largely desert country strategically situated on one of the world's busiest trade routes and at the crossroads between Africa and the Arabian peninsula, a short distance from war-torn Yemen.

Under Guelleh, the country has exploited this geographical advantage, investing heavily in ports and logistics infrastructure.

At the same time the country has seen an erosion of press freedom and a crackdown on dissent.

"Little by little, there has been a hardening of the regime since 1999," said Sonia Le Gouriellec, a political scientist who authored a book on Djibouti.

"The more it has opened to the world, the more it has closed internally." Guelleh's predicted fifth term will be his last, under a 2010 constitutional reform which scrapped term limits while also introducing an age limit of 75 which would lock him out of future elections.

Djibouti's election campaign came as the country saw Covid-19 infection rates soar by 38 percent in the past week, with some 200 cases a day in the country of almost one million people.

The rate of positive tests is 23 percent.

Nevertheless thousands turned out for rallies for the ruling Union for the Presidential Majority (UMP), many without wearing masks.

Farah -- who had to renounce his dual French citizenship to join the race -- held a few small rallies before cancelling the rest in the 10 days leading up to the polls.

He complained that he was not offered security services for his rallies.

The challenger, who has styled himself as the "flag bearer of poor Djiboutians", appeared with his wrists bound and mouth taped last month at one of his rallies to protest "unequal treatment".

In 2020 Guelleh faced an unusual wave of opposition protests, which were brutally suppressed, after the arrest of an air force pilot who had denounced clan-based discrimination and corruption.

And police broke up several spontaneous small protests against Guelleh's fifth term in the run-up to the election.
The Ukrainian side does not know the names of Iranian officials who were charged in the case of the downing of a passenger plane of Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) in January 2020, Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine Yevhen Enin said.

"The Ukrainian side does not know a single specific name of these ten persons who seem to be charged. The Iranian side has not given us any details until that time. Therefore, we cannot know whether these are really those persons who are involved in this crash or not," Enin said on the air of the Ukraine 24 television channel on Wednesday.

The deputy minister recalled the repeated "information leaks" in the Iranian mass media, which were not subsequently confirmed. "We have repeatedly called on the Iranian side for greater transparency, both in the direction of technical investigation and criminal prosecution of persons involved in the downing of Boeing," he said.

Enin said the technical investigation into the crash of the Ukrainian plane was conducted mainly in order to justify the actions of the Iranian side. None of the factual comments from the Ukrainian side were taken into account in this technical report, he said.

"The Iranian side, in fact, did not provide any specific answer to our pretrial investigation agencies and the General Prosecutor's Office regarding the circumstances of the criminal proceedings investigation. Our negotiation process, despite certain positive promises, also did not have any progress in the direction of deepening, due to the fact that these promises remain solely in words. The matter, to our great regret, is not moving forward," Enin said.
Unlike the European Union, the UK government does not have a direct right to approve or reject vaccine exports. However government officials have known about the Australian shipments and never publicly disclosed them. While the UK has sent vaccines to its overseas territories such as Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands, Australia is thought to be the only country to receive AstraZeneca vaccines made in British factories. The UK has domestic production capacity, but has been heavily reliant on vaccine imports from Europe and India. One senior Whitehall official stressed the shipments to Australia were never at the expense of the UKs rollout, which has been one of the worlds fastest. Three in five adults in the UK have already been given at least one dose since the program began in December. The official declined to be named because they were not authorised to talk about the issue publicly.

Downing Street did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday. Loading On February 28  the same day the first 300,000 UK-made doses arrived in Australia  Britain recorded 8800 new infections, well down on the January peak of 60,000. By late February more than 30 per cent of the UK population had been given at least one vaccine dose  one of the highest rates in the world. Johnsons government has repeatedly said the coronavirus pandemic requires a co-ordinated global vaccination effort and has also warned against the pitfalls of so-called vaccine nationalism. The European Commission gave itself sweeping powers in January to block vaccine exports if AstraZeneca failed to meet its contracts with the bloc.

London and Brussels have been at loggerheads over vaccine supply after European leaders accused AstraZeneca of prioritising post-Brexit Britain ahead of Europes 450 million citizens. In early March, European Council President Charles Michel claimed the UK had imposed an outright ban on the export of vaccines or vaccine components produced on their territory. That claim was wrong because doses manufactured in the UK had already been exported to Australia a fortnight earlier. The UK government swiftly denied Michels claim of an outright ban and stressed it had not blocked any exports. However it has repeatedly refused to say whether any vaccines had been sent abroad and if so, where. AstraZeneca is producing the vaccine at no-profit for the duration of the pandemic. Credit:AP Australian Health Department secretary Dr Brendan Murphy told Sky News last month that Britain had helped us a lot but did not say how.

The revelation that Australia had received AstraZeneca doses made in Britain could explain why Italy and the European Commission blocked the shipment of 250,000 doses in early March. It is likely that European officials knew then that the doses that had arrived in Australia in late February originated in the UK. Loading A commission spokesperson on Wednesday said Italy blocked the export because AstraZeneca is not meeting its obligations in the EU. So far, the company has delivered much less than what was foreseen, the spokesperson said. The pandemic continues to be very acute in the EU. Australia had originally agreed with AstraZeneca to import 500,000 doses but Europe suggested a figure of 250,000 might be more appropriate and have a better chance of getting around export curbs.

But even that application was rejected. The request was the only one knocked back out of 491 applications. The European Commission might come under fresh pressure to approve the export of AstraZeneca vaccines to Canberra given it is now known that no doses have been sent to Australia from European factories. Asked whether the commission would review its position, the spokesperson said: It is important to note that since the implementation of the export authorisation system, Australia has received more than one million doses of vaccines from the EU. Those one million doses are Pfizer jabs. Pfizer is largely meeting its contract with the EU so its exports are not being blocked. AstraZeneca, which is producing the COVID-19 vaccine at cost for the duration of the pandemic, is facing global pressure to boost supply. It had planned to provide 180 million doses to the EU in the second quarter but will only deliver 40 million.

The British-Swedish company also told the Morrison government in January that it could only provide 1.2 million offshore doses in February and March instead of the expected 3.8 million. Only 717,000 doses  the ones from the UK  have arrived so far, leaving 3.1 million doses in the balance. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has blamed that shortfall for Australias failure to meet a target of vaccinating 4 million people by the end of March. He vowed on Wednesday to write to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and AstraZeneca to seek the release of the doses. Loading The commissions spokesperson said any future export requests will be assessed on a case by case basis. More than 50 million AstraZeneca doses will be made by CSL in Melbourne. The company forecast in February that it would release 2 million doses by the end of March and then release 1 million doses a week after that. But so far, the company has released 1.3 million doses.
Kate Hudson put her fit figure on display as she took to Instagram on Tuesday to show off a new bikini.

The 41-year-old actress shared a pair of photos wearing a cotton candy sky two-piece from the Sara Foster Collection with Summersalt swimwear.

'My girl @sarafoster giving us some spring time cotton candy in a swim suit collection! Love it Love you,' Kate wrote in the caption for her roughly 13 million followers.

New bikini: Kate Hudson put her fit figure on display as she took to Instagram on Tuesday to show off a new bikini

Kate had her hair up and showed off her natural beauty without makeup as she beamed while modeling the $65 string bikini top along with a twirling white skirt.

She also posted a mirror selfie in the bikini top and the $60 'Cheeky High Leg Bottom' that also featured a low scoop front.

Sara, 41, is the daughter of Canadian musician David Foster, 71, who recently welcomed baby boy Rennie David Foster in February with wife Katherine McPhee, 37.

Kate has been in a long-term relationship with Danny Fujikawa, 34, who she first met at age 23 through her best friends Sara and her sister Erin Foster, who are his stepsisters.

Best friend: The 41-year-old actress shared a pair of photos wearing a cotton candy sky two-piece from the Sara Foster Collection with Summersalt swimwear

Loving it: Kate loved the cotton candy sky bikini and also expressed her love for Sara

Danny and Kate have two-year-old daughter Rani Rose Hudson Fujikawa together.

Kate also has nine-year-old son Bingham with ex-fiance Matt Bellamy, 42, and 17-year-old son Ryder with ex-husband Chris Robinson, 54.

The Almost Famous star launched her own activewear company called Fabletics in 2013 and regularly models the brand on social media while exercising.

Going strong: Kate has been in a long-term relationship with Danny Fujikawa, shown together in May 2017 in Los Angeles, who she first met at age 23 through her best friends Sara and her sister Erin Foster, who are his stepsisters

Kate is the daughter of iconic actress Goldie Hawn, 75, and her second husband Bill Hudson whom she split from in 1982.

Goldie has been with Kurt Russell, 70, since 1983 and he has become the man Kate regards as her father figure to the point she calls him 'Pa.'

Kate was nominated for Best Actress - Motion Picture Comedy or Musical at the 78th Golden Globe Awards held in February for her work in the musical drama Music.
Jesse Perkins fears for his granddaughter each time she plays in the backyard. Patches barren of grass mean more than just dusty clothes; she could ingest some of the toxic soil on which Perkins' house was built.

"When we see bare spots in the yard, we cover it," Perkins said, explaining how he lays boards to limit contact with arsenic- and lead-tainted dirt. "Why can't my grandbaby play in the yard on a property I sacrificed and worked my butt off to obtain? This is life and death for us."

Perkins owns one of the 54 houses that remain on the former Agriculture Street landfill in New Orleans' Gordon Plaza subdivision. In 1994, the site was labeled one of the United States' most contaminated Superfund properties by the federal government, which identified more than 50 hazardous chemicals in the soil. For more than 30 years, homeowners have pressed City Hall to pay for their relocation from an area infamous for having the second-highest rate of cancer in Louisiana.

They've sued and protested against five city administrations, the latest of which recently sent a survey to homeowners about the possibility of a buyout as city officials consider redeveloping the site.

"You've spoken to many mayors and other elected officials, but the Cantrell administration has heard your requests and is working to address this issue," said the letter to homeowners.

+3 Gordon Plaza residents renew pressure on Mayor LaToya Cantrell to relocate them from toxic site In the summer of 2019, Gordon Plaza residents who live atop the toxic waste of the former Agriculture Street landfill met with New Orleans May

The nine-question survey was due back March 31 with promises of a community meeting to review the results. Mayor LaToya Cantrell's administration said it is considering repurposing the hazardous site as an off-road bikeway, a renewable energy park, a stormwater detention pond or a park, among other options.

Residents viewed the survey as a step toward finally giving homeowners the compensation they've demanded for decades. But the three relocation options laid out by City Hall gave several of them pause:

A single payment for the house's fair market value

A single payment plus moving expenses

Relocation to a home of "comparable value" inside the city limits.

There was also a space for homeowners to fill out their own preferred option.

Perkins, a member of the nonprofit Residents of Gordon Plaza Inc.'s four-person board, as well as board members Marilyn Amar and Lydwina Hurst, questioned the use of fair market value to determine payments. Situated on a former dump, the worth of their property has been reduced to nothing, they said.

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

"There's no such thing as fair market value for us. You can't even count fair market value while living on a landfill," Amar said.

The group has been calling for a "fully funded relocation": compensation on what the properties would be worth on nontoxic land, plus moving expenses.

When asked about being relocated to a home of "comparable value," Amar said she distrusts city officials, given that it was the Housing Authority that advertised the subdivision to Black middle-class residents in the 1970s and '80s. At the time, it was billed as an American dream.

+3 Environmental justice gains notice in Louisiana race to succeed Cedric Richmond Activists see candidates Troy Carter, Karen Carter Peterson as more vocal than former representative

"I wouldn't trust that with a 10-foot-pole," she said of the comparable value offer. "Because you put [me] on toxic soil already, so how do I know you're going to give me something of comparable value?"

In a letter to the Cantrell administration, homeowners still living in the Desire area called for relocation of all remaining Gordon Plaza residents before any development occurs. They said they are concerned chemicals could be released from the ground during the redevelopment.

"I do not want to be involved in that at all," Hurst said. "I am a senior. My immune system is already compromised from illness from living back here, so I dont need any additional factors impacting that."

And any future development should not attract people, Amar and Perkins said: no parks, schools, gymnasiums or stadiums. "I would not want anyone to be exposed to what we've been exposed to," Perkins said.

Cantrell's office did not respond Tuesday to requests for comment.

Residents said no date has been set for a community meeting on the survey results. The nonprofit's board plans to inquire later this week, and Amar said she's optimistic that City Hall will follow through with relocating residents. She pointed to the economic opportunity that redevelopment represents.

"The faster they do what they need to do with Gordon Plaza, the faster they can put more money in their pockets," she said.
The two teenagers who allegedly killed a 10-year-old boy at Coca Cola, near Lamptey, a suburb of Kasoa in the Central Region, had initially planned to kidnap him to demand a ransom of GH5,000, according to the prosecutor.



Putting the two teenagers before the Ofaakor District Magistrate Court Tuesday in their first appearance in court, the Prosecutor, Chief Inspector Ernest Agbo, said the accused - Felix Nyarko, aka Yaw Anane, 16, a mason labourer, who is the first accused, and Nicholas Kini Kwame, 18, a student and second accused, had planned to take the money and add Ishmael Mensah Abdallah, the deceased, to it to present to a spiritualist for rituals..



Plan



"The accused initially planned to kidnap deceased Ishmael and demand ransom of GH5,000 from his mother, which they would add to send him for the rituals.



On the arrival of Ishmael (at the uncompleted facility), they realised that kidnapping him would be a difficult task and so they decided to kill him, Chief Inspector Agbo said.



The accused persons were last Saturday arrested following the murder of Ishmael, a Class Four pupil, for ritual purposes.



At the court sitting, presided over by Mrs Rosemond Vera Ocloo, the two were remanded in police custody to reappear on April 20, 2021.



This is to allow the police more time to conduct their investigations into the matter.



Facts



Presenting the facts of the case, Chief Inspector Agbo said the two teenagers, who lived at Lamptey, had been friends since 2008.



He said for some time now Felix had been watching Ghana Television channels which entertained Mallams and other spiritualists to promote their prowess in making people instant millionaires.



Felix, according to the prosecutor, made his intention known to Nicholas, who advised that there was a certain spiritualist in the Volta Region who could do it for them.



"The second accused, who does not own a phone, provided the phone number of the said spiritualist to the first accused, who has access to his mother's phone.



"After contacting the said spiritualist, he agreed to help if only they could provide a human being and GH5,000 for the rituals," he said.



Chief Inspector Agbo explained that on Saturday, April 3, 2021, the accused persons settled on Ishmael, 10 years, 11 months, the son of the complainant, Mr Frank Mensah Abdallah, adding that the second accused then went to hide in an uncompleted building near the first accused person's house where they planned to carry out their operation.



"The accused persons armed themselves with a club, a piece of cement block and shovel as their weapons, and the first accused, who is close to Ishmael, lured him to the uncompleted building with convincing words that his friend was selling a video game..



Killing



Nicholas, the prosecutor further said, then picked the club and hit Ishmael hard on the back of the neck, while Felix "used the cement block to hit his head, killing him instantly".



In the course of the act, he said, Felix's younger sister, eight, sensed that something was going on and so she walked towards the direction of the uncompleted building but was driven away by her elder brother.



He said after murdering Ishmael, the accused persons dug a shallow grave, buried the deceased and left the scene, so that they would return in the night to convey the body to the Volta Region for the rituals.



"But luck eluded them when Felix's sister went to inform her father, Mr Nyarko, who is Felix's stepfather, that something had gone amiss in the uncompleted building.



"Mr Nyarko went to the scene and saw that the place had been disturbed, and when he decided to remove the surface sand, he found the body of the deceased covered with sand," he said, adding that Mr Nyarko quickly confronted the first accused, who confessed and mentioned the second accused as his accomplice.



Chief Inspector Agbo said the accused persons were subsequently arrested and handed over to the police.



He said efforts were ongoing to arrest the spiritualist.



He told the court that Felix's parents could not determine his exact age and so they would need some time to do that.



Trial court



Responding, the presiding judge said the court had wanted to hear the case at the Juvenile Section, but when it realised that Nicholas was 18 years, it decided to hear the case in an open court.



She said once the entire process was over, Felix could be taken through the Juvenile Justice System.



She indicated that the actual case would not be tried at the District Court but rather the High Court, due to the gravity of the offence.

Source: Graphic.com.gh









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No need to introduce total lockdown throughout Ukraine now - PM Shmyhal

Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal has said that there is no need to introduce a total lockdown throughout the country at the moment.

"In some regions, after the introduction of the 'red' level of epidemiological danger and the responsible work of local authorities, there is a stabilization of the situation with the spread of coronavirus," Shmyhal said at a government meeting on Wednesday.

The prime minister stressed that if such dynamics continue in the future, then such regions may return to the "orange" zone.

"This once again demonstrates that adaptive quarantine is working and there is no need to introduce a total lockdown throughout the country at the moment," he added.
THE NEW WORLD ORDER, BELLAS, JBL, TITUS & MORE: COMPLETE 2020 WWE HALL OF FAME CEREMONY COVERAGE

Welcome to PWInsider.com's ongoing coverage of the 2020 and 2021 WWE Hall of Fame Classes ceremony from The Thunderdome in Tampa, Florida!

We are opening with the Class of 2020 inside the Thunderdome. Digital fans.

Jerry Lawler is the official host for the evening. The ceremony is being held on the entrance stage with a podium. He welcomed everyone to a "very special occasion." He said he is happy to present the men and women who didn't get to bask in the glory last Spring. Lawler said we roll with the punches in WWE.

The first inductee is former WWE Champion JBL.

After a long, very well done video package, Jerry Lawler quips that JBL would take on and beat King Kong and Godzilla. JBL said if you are waiting for a wrestling God from Texas to cry, you will be let down. He said that he told his grandfather in Sweetwater, Texas that he would be a pro wrestler and those dreams came true. He went and trained under Brad Rheighans and they went to the Sportatorium and with no experience, he knocked on the door and asked James Beard for a job. Lou Perez wasn't there and he was put in the ring sight-unseen for 20 minutes with Rod Price. That night, he fell in love with pro wrestling.

He told a story about a night he got so much heat in Germany, he knew he wasn't going to make it back to the locker room and Fit Finlay saved him from someone who saw him coming and the guy was so scared he dropped a knife and ran. He said that he fell in love with getting that white hot heat and told the story of giving Eddie Guerrero's mother a heart attack on mother's day. He said without Eddie Guerrero he would not be standing here today and wished he was.

He then praised Ron Simmons for their run with APA, which was them "toned down" for TV. He said that John Cena ended his historic run and if you are going to end a run, you should do it with someone who is a credit to the business like John. He said WWE allowed him to go all over the world and work with charities. When he's asked what he would do over again, he said every bit of it. He'd love one more time to stand in the ring and hear VIVA LA RAZA and watch Eddie Guerrero come out or feel the lights go out and DONG DONG and The Undertaker comes out. He'd like to be in some podunk town no one has ever heard of and getting into a car with Ron Simmons, The Godfather and Teddy Long with a bun ch of beer and go off enjoying the right.

He said that he wanted to say to everyone who thinks he might have ever wronged them or said something offensive in the locker room, cry me a river snowflake because he's a Wrestling God in the WWE Hall of Fame.

They went to the red carpet where Rhea Ripley and Peyton Royce are. Peyton said she's happy to see the 2020 Class finally getting honored. Rhea said they are the ones who paved the way. Rhea said that she grew up watching the Bellas and she finally had the chance to meet them. She felt they welcomed her right away and told a story of meeting them as a fan and now getting to meet them as a Superstar.

Randy Orton was interviewed. He said that he loves being here and points out his father is a Hall of Famer. He said he has a relationship with everyone in the Hall of Fame and is happy to see them honored.

New Day was asked about the NWO going in. Kofi said he's excited for them but he's also excited for the Bellas, who he came up with. He said he's never met a pair of harder working people. To see people getting their due is awesome. They brought so much change with the Women's Revolution, the Evolution PPV, the first women's Royal Rumble and Money in the Bank PPV. To see them get their due is awesome. Xavier teased that perhaps New Day will go in next year.

The second inductee is the late Davey Boy Smith, The British Bulldog

They had a tremendous video for Smith, focusing on his WWE exploits and the Hart family.

Accepting for Smith was his wife Diana Hart and their children Harry Smith and Georgia Smith. They had a bulldog with them which they said was the grand-daughter of Mathilda, the Bulldogs' famous mascot.

Harry said they wanted to thank WWE for the induction and opportunity and thanked the fans for their years of support. Without them, nothing would have been possible. He said Davey was so versatile as an athlete. He could pull off unreal moves and be powerful and dramatic. He had a huge physique but what was truly huge was his heart and personality.

Harry said that his father had a great sense of humor and had him laughing, bending over all the time. He said that he believes Davey's best match in WWE was Summerslam 1992 against Bret Hart and that's a match no one is ever going to forgot. He said his favorite memory of Smith was that match and it's a match he can watch over and over again and never be tired of.

He also praised Davey's match against Owen Hart for the European title as something both were really proud of. He said The Bulldogs vs. The Hart Foundation evolved tag team wrestling. He mentioned Davey's great matches with Dynamite Kid in Japan as having inspired his own wrestling style today. He is proud to carry on Davey's legacy and knows that he is with him in spirit in the ring alongside Dynamite Kid. He feels that same spirit is with them tonight.

Davey was a great father, athlete and performer and will never be forgotten by his friends, family and the WWE Universe. He wanted to thank WWE and the fans from the bottom of his heart and thanked all the stars who shared the ring with Davey. He knows there was a delay but he wanted to welcome his father to the Hall of Fame officially.

Nikki Cross was interviewed. She said tonight was exciting and amazing. They talked about The British Bulldog. She said Harry's speech was wonderful and she had to fix her makeup. She loved getting to meet Diana and Georgia for the first time and everything was so emotional. She praised the Hart vs. Bulldog Summerslam 1992 match. He had an amazing career in WCW and WWE.

Braun Strowman was asked what the Hall of Fame means to him. He said it's one thing to travel the world and do what they can do for the company but the Hall cements your legacy. It's the cherry on top. He praised the lineup.

Drew McIntyre was asked what Davey Boy Smith going in means to him. He said it's about time. He said growing up, everyone said no one from Scotland ever got signed to WWE but The Bulldogs were the representation for him. Seeing the flag fly made him believe he could get there too. He wants to inspire others and see that if he did it, so can they. That's what Bulldog did for him.

Next up is Jushin Liger

They aired a nice video piece on him, but neglected to even mention his historic feud with Brian Pillman, which is what put him on the map here in the United States.

Liger introduced himself as from New Japan and accepted the honor. He thanked WWE for the honor and said he was excited and had goosebumps. It was the first time he has been nervous to speak. He was honored to receive his plaque and ring. He is glad he became a professional wrestler and thanked all his fans in WWE. That was literally the entire speech, which if I am going to be honest, felt like a letdown if you cared about Liger.

Celebrity Inductee: Wiilliam Shatner

Shatner appeared from his home. He said he was born in Montreal and a lot of great wrestlers came from Montreal. He said he never wrestled but it eas a great honor to throw Jerry Lawler out of the ring. He said he is a big WWE fan and accepts the honor as someone who has the delight of following some of his greatest heroes. That was it!

Miz and Morrison was interviewed backstage. Miz said it was amazing to see Shatner go into the Hall. He put over Shatner's renditions of WWE themes. Morrison said that it makes sense Lawler and Shatner are friends as they have found the fountain of youth and look amazing.

Mustafa Ali said that he's come in peace tonight and he's excited to see the NWO induction tonight. Retribution didn't have the level of success of the NWO but that's OK because he's living and learning. To see them get the honor today is huge.

WWE Champion Bobby Lashley and MVP were asked about JBL being inducted. MVP said he had influence on their careers. He deserved his recognition tonight. Hurt Business approved.

Coverage continues on Page 2!

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 Flash

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday said China's development has been an opportunity for the European Union (EU) and urged the EU to make correct judgment independently and truly achieve strategic autonomy.

Xi made the remarks in a phone conversation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Noting that China-EU relations are facing new opportunities as well as various challenges, Xi said that the key is to keep to the general direction and keynote of China-EU relations from a strategic perspective, respect each other and remove distractions.

Xi said China stands ready to work with the EU to ensure the success of a series of important political agendas for the next stage through consultation, deepen and expand practical cooperation across the board, strengthen communication on climate change and other global governance issues, and jointly practice multilateralism.








New Delhi, April 7 : Indian Youth Congress (IYC) activists on Wednesday staged a protest here over the reports of alleged corruption in the Rafale defence deal.

During the protest, that was led by IYC national president Srinivas BV, IYC activists carried placards of Rafale fighter jets and raised slogans against the government.

The protest by the IYC activists came in the wake of the revelations made by a French news portal alleging that one million euros was paid to a middleman.

Speaking to the media, Srinivas said, "In the country's largest defence deal worth more than Rs 60,000 crore, the presence of commissions, middlemen and money transactions have once again opened the layers of the Rafale deal." He said that these allegations have been levelled by a French news portal.

The IYC leader said that former Congress President Rahul Gandhi's statement on the Rafale defence deal has finally proved to be true.

Srinivas also said that in every defence procurement deal in our country, it is mandatory to have an 'integrity clause'. "The presence of middlemen, bribery or exchange of commissions are prohibited," he said.

The IYC leader also demanded that there should be a fair investigation into the allegations of bribery in the Rafale deal.

IYC national media in-charge Rahul Rao said that there is no provision of middlemen or commission in defence procurement processes.

"The BJP government should clarify whether any action will be taken after the revelation of the role of middleman in the Rafale deal," Rao said.
Pete Davidson and Phoebe Dynevor are reportedly dating. Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images; Karwai Tang/Getty Images

Pete Davidson and Phoebe Dynevor are reportedly dating, multiple outlets have confirmed.

They're "going strong" and "trying to make long distance work," a source told Us Weekly on Monday.

The source added that they're both prioritizing their careers and "not looking to rush things."

Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

"Saturday Night Live" comedian Pete Davidson and "Bridgerton" star Phoebe Dynevor are reportedly in a long-distance relationship, Us Weekly and Page Six confirmed on Monday.

"Pete and Phoebe are still going strong despite not being able to physically spend time together," a source told Us Weekly.

Davidson, 27, is based in Staten Island, where he recently purchased a $1.2 million condo, while Dynevor, 25, resides in North London.

According to Us Weekly's source, the comedian and the actor are "seeing where their relationship goes" and "trying to make long distance work," communicating mostly through FaceTime and text messages.

"They're happy with each other," the source said, adding that Davidson's sharp sense of humor piqued Dynevor's interest. "He makes her laugh. Pete is a good guy and definitely a charmer. He's easy-going and fun to be around."

Because the "Waterloo Road" actor and the "King of Staten Island" star are "focused on work," neither of them are "looking to rush things," Us Weekly's source shared.

Dynevor begins production on season two of "Bridgerton," Shondaland and Netflix's record-breaking Regency drama, this spring, so she'll be in the UK for "practically the rest of the year," a source told Page Six. And Davidson, a repertory player on season 46 of "SNL," has to be in New York City to rehearse and film the comedy-sketch series.

As a result of their loaded schedules and physical separation, their relationship is "not too serious," Page Six's source said.

Story continues

Representatives for Davidson and Dynevor did not respond to Insider's request for comment.

There's been ongoing speculation that Dynevor and Davidson are together

It's unclear when or how Dynevor and Davidson met, but fans have patched together clues on when their paths may have crossed.

In February, the "Snatch" actor visited New York City to film scenes for Darren Star's show "Younger," on which she plays an Irish bartender named Claire.

She posted a series of photos from Brooklyn on social media, writing, "Grateful I got to be here for a hot sec," adding a red heart emoji.

Though she may have been in close proximity to Davidson, she wasn't seen with him.

Also in February, Dynevor's "Bridgerton" costar Rege-Jean Page hosted an episode of "SNL."

In a sketch spoofing the period drama's sex scenes, Davidson played an intimacy coordinator. Featured player Chloe Fineman pretended to be Daphne Bridgerton, Dynevor's role.

Dynevor reposted the sketch on her Instagram story and wrote that they "killed it."

The next month, Davidson appeared to take a trip across the pond to Altrincham, Greater Manchester, as seen in a photo taken with fans. A week later, Dynevor was spotted in Altrincham with a friend.

A source told Us Weekly that the stand-up comedian is hoping to visit Dynevor on her 26th birthday, which is on April 17.

Davidson has previously been romantically linked to Cazzie David, Ariana Grande, Kate Beckinsale, Margaret Qualley and Kaia Gerber. And Dynevor was rumored to be in a relationship with Page earlier this year, following the debut season of "Bridgerton." However, she denied any off-screen romance between her and her costar.

"I'd love to say there was really something between us," she told You Magazine, adding, "But no, it has always been strictly professional."

Dynevor continued: "There was so much pressure on us to get it right that it was all about the work. We have a really professional working relationship."

Read the original article on Insider
's ( ) Phil Race and John Swaite join Proactive London's Katie Pilbeam to discuss about their latest trading update.

Race says the firm 'showed resilience through the year, creating a firm foundation for an increase in performance in the next twelve months'. With the company expecting to meet current market forecasts for revenue and EBITDA for the financial year to end March 2021.

The company also announced today that it signed a new enlarged banking facility agreement with NatWest and , to support its growth ambitions, Swaite talks through some of their ambitions for the funds.
Newman faces removal over handling of child sexual abuse case

Less than a year after he was sworn into office as district attorney for Henderson, Polk and Transylvania counties, Greg Newman received word of a child sexual assault case that sounded horrific.



The alleged abuser, James Franklin Sapp, lived next door to the victim on top of Jeter Mountain. The child was 12 years old when she and her mother, Carol Lynn Owenby Siebert, met with a Henderson County sheriffs deputy at the Waffle House on Upward Road to report a statutory rape that had occurred over several years at the Sapp residence, a search warrant application said.

Four days later, on June 16, 2014, the girl told detective Tonya Reeves during a lengthier interview that Sapp had started molesting her at age 5 and had raped her repeatedly over the next seven years. The girl told Reeves that there was about 40 occurrences when something happened.

"One of the ways I was hurt by James Sapp was that he took my virginity, which is a very precious thing to me, at the age of seven, the girl said in a victim impact statement she wrote in 2015. The sexual abuse started when I was only five.

The girl, Valerie Marie Owenby, has now chosen to let the world know her identity, in coverage in the Asheville Citizen-Times, and throughout court filings and in state Bar records. Her case was at the center of a Bar grievance that Valerie and her family brought against Newman and it stands now as a core pillar in an inquiry a judge will hear next week on whether Newman should be removed from office. Although an effort to remove a district attorney is rare in North Carolina, state law and a state Supreme Court case establish guidelines for how the process works.

In a ruling on March 17, Superior Court Judge Robert C. Ervin wrote that there was adequate evidence for a hearing on charges that Newman's opponents raised in a February court filing seeking to oust him. One involves the Sapp case and Newmans role in accepting a plea bargain that set the defendant free on a single misdemeanor charge. Another involves a separate case in which a defendant charged with domestic violence has accused Newman of vindictive prosecution. The case, which the defendant won at the state Court of Appeals level, is pending before the state Supreme Court. And a third involves a reprimand Newman received in 2019 when the Grievance Committee of the State Bar heard a conflict-of-interest complaint.

Telegenic and out front



A conservative Republican and former mayor of Hendersonville, Newman has won election and re-election since Gov. Pat McCrory appointed him as district attorney in July 2013. A go-to choice as host of local Republican conventions, Newman could always be counted on to deliver zingers mocking then-President Obama and other national Democratic figures. Telegenic and happy to explain his courtroom victories on camera, Newman has been more out-front as a prosecutor than his predecessor, Jeff Hunt, who preferred to let assistant prosecutors try even the highest profile of cases. When the big cases come up in Judicial District 29B, Newman casts himself in the leading role.

The Sapp case has puzzled courthouse observers since Newman settled it with such dramatic leniency six years ago. But its what Newman failed to tell the Owenby family that may have landed him in the greatest jeopardy as next weeks hearing on his removal looms.

The owner of a tree service, Sapp and his wife lived next door to Valerie and her father, Oppie Gene Owenby. When Valerie would stay overnight at the Sapps home, James Sapp would wait until his wife was asleep before sneaking into Valeries room and molesting her, Valerie told the detective. The 12-year-old told the detective that abuse involving touching, vaginal sex or forced oral sex had occurred some 40 times from the time she was 5 until she got her period, when she said Sapp quit the abuse. He warned her, she told detectives, that he would kill her and her family if she told anyone.

My emotional damage was horrific, Valerie said in the victim impact statement. He made me feel like I was no longer clean and I felt as if I could never be true to myself. He forced me to lie to my family because he threatened me if I ever told that he would kill my grandparents and my father. That caused me to be fearful for not only my own life but also the lives of the people around me.

In a statement filed with the motion to remove Newman, Owenby wrote that he learned of the abuse when the principal of the Christian school Valerie attended called to tell him his daughter had made an inappropriate  worldly comment to a classmate. He said yes when the principal suggested the school place Valerie in a purity class.

Now we know what a scarlet letter looks like, Owenby wrote. Coming from a church setting, I did not understand. Then, I learned what Mr. James Franklin Sapp had done to my daughter. I was raising my children to be God-believing, morally right, productive citizens, and taxpayers. Now, because of what Mr. Sapp has done, I will never know who my daughter could have grown up to become.  Mr. Sapp was my next-door neighbor, and I thought he was a friend. He knew about my faith in God, and he knew the way I was raising my children. Then I learned that Mr. Sapp had been sexually molesting my daughter since she was a small child!

Sheriffs deputies arrested Sapp on Sept. 3, 2014, and charged him with one felony count of rape of a child. Eight months later, on May 18, 2015, a Henderson County grand jury charged him with five felonies  one count of rape of a child by an adult, one count of sex offense with a child by an adult and three counts of indecent liberties with a child.

Its all a buncha bullcrap, Sapp, 66, said Tuesday. My lawyer (Chris Stepp) told me not to do something (to contest the charges) until after the 12th. I do want to put my word out there. I cant do it today because Im working. I dont want to do it until my lawyer says I can because I want to sue the pants off them.

Sapp said Newman recommended the plea bargain despite what Sapp asserted was his preference to go to trial. I wanted to get it out there because they didnt have no proof, he said.

Sapp said he hopes to sue Valerie and her father. A lot of that s--- is false, he said. She had a baby while we was going to trial  two of em.  She wished not to pursue it no more. Thats what she said, so I dont really know what to say or what to do until my lawyer says what to do.

Five felonies reduced to one misdemeanor



Given the severity of the charges against Sapp, there was never any doubt that the Owenby family was strongly interested in following every court appearance the defendant would make, according to court filings and the state Bar investigation.

Sometime before Oct. 13, 2015, Newmans office informed Valerie and her parents that Sapps trial would be scheduled for Nov. 2, 2015. Then, 2 weeks before that day, on Oct. 13, 2015, Newman allowed Sapp to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor count of assault on a female, identifying the victim as Valerie Owenby, which allowed the defendant to avoid prison time and avoid registering as a sex offender.

In its investigation of the grievance filed by the Owenbys, the state Bar attorneys said that neither Newman nor anyone in the D.A.s office notified the family in advance of the plea agreement, a violation of state law requiring prosecutors to notify a victim of the date, time and place of all trial court proceedings  that the victim has elected to receive notice.

During Sapps court appearance, District Court Judge Athena Brooks asked the prosecutors office whether the victim and her family had been notified of the plea and offered a chance to be heard. Newman told the judge that the victim had been advised of the plea and had responded that they did not wish to be heard. The state Bar opened an investigation into the Owenby familys grievance on April 3, 2017. In a complaint filed with the Disciplinary Hearing Commission July 2019, the Bars attorneys said that Newman had lied to Judge Brooks about notifying the Owenby family and later had lied to Bar investigators about other facts surrounding his handling of the Sapp case in October 2015. In his response to the Bar, Newman had said: I had my victim/witness staff person prepare a bill of information and contact the mother of the victim.  I handled the plea in District Court instead of Superior Court, where a trial jury was under way.  I explained this situation to (Oppie Owenby) on the day the plea occurred.  Our file shows that the mother never returned the call.

None of the statements was true, the Bar said. The Bars counsel said that the Owenby family was not notified of Sapps Oct. 13 District Court appearance, there was no jury trial in Superior Court on that date, Newman had not spoken with Carol Owenby on that day, and prosecutors office file contained no notes showing that Newmans office called Carol Owenby about the Oct. 13 court date, nor a reference to Carol Owenby failing to return a phone call.

After a two-day hearing last November, the Disciplinary Hearing Commission found that Newman had committed misconduct in office by failing to notify the family of Sapps court appearance and plea bargain and had lied to Judge Brooks and the Bar about it. The commission suspended his law license for three years but stayed the suspension provided Newman pay the costs of the Bar proceeding, attend required education courses and not violate Rules of Professional Conduct, including the North Carolina Crime Victims Act.

Judge appoints independent counsel



Newman declined to be interviewed last week to respond to the allegations raised in the Bar complaint and the motion to remove him from office. He referred questions to his attorney, David Freeman of Winston-Salem.

Counsel presents their evidence and we present our evidence. Its like a trial, Freedman said of the process Judge Ervin approved after a brief hearing last Thursday. I cant really discuss evidence from the hearing until were at the hearing. That would not be proper. Asked specifically about the disciplinary order, Freedman said, The findings of fact will come into the hearing from the state Bar and then we have the opportunity to present evidence and argue our case.

Judge Ervin appointed James P. Coomey III as independent counsel to present evidence at next weeks hearing and in a subsequent order added Isaac N. Northrup Jr. of Asheville as a second attorney to assist him.

In a three-page affidavit she filed with Clerk of Superior Court J. Tyler Ray on Feb. 11, Peggy McDowell listed several reasons why Newman should be removed from office, including the state Bar case decided this year and the previous Bar order that disciplined Newman for dismissing a felony drug charge while serving as D.A. against a client he had represented in private practice nine years earlier. McDowell filed the affidavit on behalf of her daughter, Joanne McDowell, who is in a long-running dispute over her attempts to persuade Newman to investigate what Joanne McDowell describes as abuse of her son by his father. Joanne McDowell was in a bitter fight with her husband, an anesthesiologist in Atlanta, over custody of the boy. When she fled with the boy to Toronto, Newman charged her with child abduction. (Joanne McDowell won a ruling from a judge in Toronto in 2015 that granted her full custody of her son.) In the affidavit, Peggy McDowell cites the Leonard Schalow case and her daughters case as examples of vindictive prosecution.

In an order issued March 17, Judge Ervin found that Peggy McDowells affidavit:

 Failed to substantiate her assertions that Newman had vindictively prosecuted her daughter.

 Failed to provide any evidence that Newman suffers from mental or physical incapacity that would affect his ability to carry out his duties, nor had he shown habitual intemperance, which is among the causes for removal under state law.

 Made an invalid point regarding the fact that Newman had conducted 80 percent of his Superior Court cases in front of Judge Peter Knight, the districts senior resident Superior Court judge. Mr. Newman is not responsible for the assignment of Superior Court judges to sessions of court in District 29B, Ervin said.

 Ervin found probable cause to hear evidence involving:

 The facts surrounding the state Bars order of discipline against Newman on Jan. 4 and its earlier reprimand for conflict of interest on May 4, 2019, and whether those charges constitute willful misconduct in office.

 Whether Newman had committed willful misconduct or conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice which brings the office into disrepute.

 The possible vindictive prosecution of Leonard Schalow, a case that is pending before the state Supreme Court. Ervin found that the allegations concerning the Schalow case could, if true, constitute willful misconduct in office or conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice which brings the office into disrepute and that there is probable cause for believing that the charges in Schalow may be true.

Joanne McDowell and her mother, whose affidavit led to next weeks hearing, filed the three-page complaint without the help of attorneys.

Were OK with it, Joanne McDowell said of the judges order that dismissed her own vindictive prosecution complaint against Newman.

Responding to the Owenby familys grievance over the Sapp case, the state Bars Disciplinary Hearing Commission conducted an extensive hearing that afforded Newman the opportunity to conduct discovery, to confront and cross-examine witnesses and to present evidence, Cooney noted. Testifying were Carol Owenby Siebert, Valerie Owenby, detective Tonya Reeves, Lisa Buckner, Oppie Owenby, Judge Brooks and Newman. The D.A. was represented by F. Lane Williamson, a former chair of the Disciplinary Hearing Commission and a former Superior Court judge.

The law tilts in Newmans favor when it comes to the judges ruling. Neither the complainant seeking his removal nor the independent counsel has the right to appeal a finding by the judge that removal is not warranted. If Judge Ervin, a Democrat who is the grandson of former U.S. Sen. Sam Ervin, finds that the D.A. should be removed, Newman has the right to appeal to the N.C. Court of Appeals.

Asked whether he planned to argue that his client deserves to remain in office, Freedman said yes.

Absolutely, he said. Id say that Mr. Newman has served his duties well as the elected D.A. of Henderson, Transylvania and Polk counties and he should be able to remain the D.A. for these three counties. We are arguing theres not sufficient evidence out there thats cause to remove him.
SAN FRANCISCO, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Pendulum Therapeutics  a biotech company improving health through products targeting the microbiome  today announced a $54 million investment led by Meritech Capital with participation from existing investors including Sequoia Capital, True Ventures and Khosla Ventures. This Series C round nearly doubled the entirety of Pendulum's previous raises and brings the total venture capital raised to $111 million.

Colleen Cutcliffe, PhD, cofounder and CEO, Pendulum Therapeutics

As lead investor, Meritech General Partner Craig Sherman will take a seat on the Pendulum Board of Directors alongside Roelof Botha , a partner at Sequoia, and Adam D'Augelli , a partner at True Ventures.

"We think Pendulum is a next generation pharma company doing next generation gene sequencing," said Sherman. "Pendulum could be another 10x Genomics, Datadog, Snowflake or Roblox, which are Meritech investments that went public in the last two years. Pendulum feels like it could be that, because they are creating something that's truly differentiated and could truly change a person's life."

"Craig, Roelof and I are excited about Pendulum because they are using the microbiome in an entirely new way, to create a never-before-seen product," said D'Augelli. "There's a huge white space here. With many supplements, there's no way to tell if they're even working, while medicines are synthetic and can have side effects. At Pendulum, ingredients are sourced from the microbiome that naturally lives within our bodies, and their formulas are rigorously tested for safety and effectiveness. This new hybrid product Pendulum has created is safe, requires less capital than a drug to bring to market, and could be incredibly beneficial for millions of people."

Pendulum introduced its first product, a medical probiotic called Pendulum Glucose Control, in January 2020. It is the only probiotic clinically shown to lower blood sugar spikes and A1C levels in people with type 2 diabetes, even on top of metformin. Results of Pendulum's gold standard clinical trial were published in BMJ Open Diabetes, a prestigious peer-reviewed journal.

Pendulum Glucose Control is welcome news for more than 120 million people living with diabetes and prediabetes . The company reported a surge in demand in Q4 2020 and Q1 2021, and high customer satisfaction across several measures*:

74% of subscribing customers with type 2 diabetes are still using the product after five months

86% of customers surveyed report lowered A1C

86% of customers surveyed report improved gut health

79% of customers surveyed report lowered glucose levels/spikes

"We are grateful for our customers, as well as our investors who continue to acknowledge our ground-breaking research into the microbiome," said Colleen Cutcliffe, PhD, cofounder and CEO of Pendulum Therapeutics. "While our direct-to-consumer path is more nimble than our pharma peers, we will never cut corners. Pendulum is a team of accomplished scientists, and our products will always go through rigorous testing to establish efficacy. We believe consumers can  and should  demand hard-core scientific results from any company that is making claims about health benefits."

Cutcliffe said the new venture capital funding will be used to increase the manufacturing and sales of Pendulum Glucose Control; ramp-up manufacturing of pipeline products to address the management of other chronic diseases; and conduct additional research  including clinical trials  to further prove the company's primary hypothesis: The microbiome is the most exciting and promising frontier in health and nutrition science.

For more information and testimonials from customers, please visit www.pendulumlife.com .

*Customers surveyed by Pendulum from April - July 2020. N=38 customers with type 2 diabetes who had taken Pendulum Glucose Control for three months or more. Survey respondents received a $40 Amazon gift card for completing the survey.

About Pendulum Therapeutics

Pendulum Therapeutics believes therapies developed using evidence-based microbiome science and DNA sequencing can help heal the body from within. Armed with 13 patents and 42 pending, the company introduced its flagship product Pendulum Glucose Control , a medical probiotic, in 2020 and demonstrated its efficacy in lowering blood sugar spikes and reducing A1C in a published clinical trial . Founded in 2013 by a diverse team of scientists with deep microbiology, biochemistry, computational, and clinical expertise, Pendulum has raised $111 million to date from Meritech Capital, Sequoia Capital, True Ventures, Khosla Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures and Mayo Clinic among others. Pendulum Therapeutics is headquartered in San Francisco.

Click here for digital assets including Pendulum logos, video and photography.

Media Contact:

Nora Murray

[email protected]

419-250-0016

SOURCE Pendulum Therapeutics
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 22:12:24|Editor: huaxia

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Sudan's Irrigation and Water Resources Minister Yasir Abbas speaks at a press conference in Khartoum, Sudan, April 7, 2021. Sudan's Irrigation and Water Resources Minister Yasir Abbas on Wednesday said failure of the latest round of talks regarding the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) makes all options open before Sudan, including resorting to the UN Security Council. (Xinhua/Mohamed Khidir)

KHARTOUM, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Sudan's Irrigation and Water Resources Minister Yasir Abbas on Wednesday said failure of the latest round of talks regarding the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) makes all options open before Sudan, including resorting to the UN Security Council.

"All options are open before Sudan, including resorting to the UN Security Council," said Abbas at a press conference in Khartoum.

"Filling of the dam without a deal directly threatens Sudan and exposes the lives of 20 million citizens living below the dam to danger," he noted.

He went on saying that "this is not a matter of propaganda or media intimidation, but a description of the facts, as the storage capacity of Sudan's Al-Rusaires Dam is 7 billion cubic meters and it is only 15 kms from the GERD whose storage capacity is 74 billion cubic meters."

He reiterated Sudan's firm position which calls for changing the negotiating approach to reach a binding legal agreement.

Abbas further denied that Ethiopia proposed for Sudan to a bilateral agreement in any way.

The Democratic Republic of Congo, the current chair of the African Union, has hosted the latest round of talks over the GERD with the participation of Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia.

Sudan proposed a mediation quartet of the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and the African Union regarding the GERD issue.

Ethiopia, however, has announced its rejection to this formula.

In February, Ethiopia said it would carry on with the second-phase 13.5-billion-cubic-meter filling of the GERD in June. The volume of the first-phase filling last year was 4.9 billion cubic meters.

Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia have been in talks for years over the technical and legal issues related to the filling and operation of the GERD.

Ethiopia, which started building the GERD in 2011, expects to produce more than 6,000 megawatts of electricity from the dam project, while Egypt and Sudan, downstream Nile Basin countries that rely on the river for its freshwater, are concerned that the dam might affect their share of the water resources. Enditem
New Delhi, April 7 : WhatsApp on Wednesday announced two new features to make it easier for people to know whats available and for entrepreneurs to quickly sell their products on WhatsApp for Business.

The company said that it is now providing businesses the ability to create and manage their catalog from WhatsApp web/desktop rather than just mobile phones.

"Since many businesses manage their inventory from a computer, this new option will make it quick and easy to add new items or services so their customers know what's available,' WhatsApp said in a statement.

This will be helpful for businesses with big inventories like a restaurant or clothing store so they can manage their catalog from a bigger screen.

Currently, people can browse more than 8 million business catalogs on WhatsApp, including 1 million in India, to find something they might like to buy.

The company introduced carts on WhatsApp during the holiday shopping season last year so people could browse a catalog, select multiple products and send the order as one message to the business.

Now, it is giving them the option to "hide" specific items from their catalog and easily show them again when they're back in stock or available to customers.

"This feature is beginning to roll out to businesses around the world starting today," the company said.

According to a recent survey, 76 per cent of adults in India said "I am more likely to do business with/purchase from a company that I can contact via messaging than one that I cannot."
SSH aims to further improve the transparency of its business

and increase the profile of SSH among investors

Helsinki - April 7, 2021 - SSH.COM has signed an agreement with the technology sector-focused Swedish investment bank Redeye) to initiate research coverage of SSH.COM. The initial report is expected in June 2021.

SSH.COM CFO Niklas Nordstrom comments: "SSH.COM is committed to improving the diversity, amount, quality, and international reach of information available to investors. The cooperation with Redeye supports this aim and brings a new perspective to SSH.COM investors. The coverage by Redeye will give investors more wide-ranging information about the fundamentals and future prospects of our business."

Nordstrom continues: "This is a good time to increase the amount of information available to our investors: we have renewed our strategy and organization and we are also undergoing a business model transition. Redeye's key strengths are its international outlook and familiarity with technology companies and their business models - we believe these assets to be valuable to SSH.COM investors and potential investors."

Redeye reports will be available without charge on SSH.COM and Redeye websites. SSH.COM will announce the availability of the research after the initial report has been published.





About SSH Communications Security

SSH.COM helps organizations access, secure, and control their digital core - their critical data, applications, and services. We have over 3,000 customers worldwide, including 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies, many of the world's largest financial institutions, and major organizations in all verticals. We are committed to helping our customers thrive in the cloud era with solutions that offer secure access with zero inertia, zero friction, and zero credentials risk. SSH.COM sells online; through offices in North America, Europe, and Asia; and a global network of certified partners. The company's shares.
Maybe historians will look back on this as the year of Old Power.

Think about it. Older people, who were some of the first in line for the vaccine shots, are now being celebrated as the leaders of the post-COVID social scene ... Good news: I just got vaccinated! tweeted Steve Martin. Bad news: I got it because Im 75.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden, 78, is going like a house on fire. A few weeks ago Congress passed his $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill. Now hes introducing the world to his $2 trillion infrastructure plan. Second big whopper of an initiative from a guy lots of Americans expected to be sort of ... mild, like a mellow aging uncle who might own a very nippy German shepherd.

Everything Biden is big! This infrastructure plan is so large its going to require a lot of pondering on the part of serious citizens. Your first question is probably going to be ...

What exactly is a trillion?

OK, I know it doesnt come up in your normal check-balancing. A trillion is a thousand billions, and the next thing after that would be a quadrillion, which is 1,000 trillions. A quadrillion is ... a lot. If you traveled back in time a quadrillion seconds youd be able to watch the Antarctic ice sheet form. Were talking about 31.7 million years.

The Biden infrastructure plan does not go into quadrillions  some progressives dont think it even goes into enough trillions. (This is not nearly enough, tweeted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.) But still, its a hell of an ambitious enterprise, one that would, as Jim Tankersley reported in The New York Times, overhaul the economy and remake American capitalism.

OK, question two  what exactly is infrastructure? First, we tend to think about roads. Everybody loves roads. Well, maybe not the one theyre planning to run right through your backyard. But the ones you need to get to work, to school, to drive to visit your friends and family. Dwight Eisenhower will always be remembered as the president who gave us the national highway system, and we still look back on him as a good guy. (True, he was also supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe during World War II. Take your pick.)

Will Joe Biden be remembered as the supreme commander of the American Overhaul? Besides fixing up 20,000 miles of roads, he wants to do everything from electrifying the yellow school bus fleets to getting rid of lead pipes that taint water to making a $400 billion commitment to helping the elderly and disabled.

A Trojan horse for massive tax hikes and other job-killing left-wing policies, steamed Mitch McConnell, 79. What Mitch hates most is the fact that Biden is actually paying for much of what he wants to spend through higher taxes on corporations.

The Republican Party used to believe in balanced budgets, but its been a while. These days a new Republican president, be he George W. Bush or Donald Trump, starts off with a sweeping tax cut that leaves the government sloshing in the red. Ronald Reagan theorized that if he cut taxes, Congress would automatically cut spending to match the new bottom line. He called it starving the beast, although not a single beast even suffered a serious burp.

Starve didnt work, no, said Eric Toder of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. And by the time Clinton became president, he was really hemmed in.

So, expect resistance from the Republicans on those tax hikes. But theres a whole lot of other stuff that theyre going to find very attractive. Its hard to imagine politicians throwing their bodies in front of a plan thats going to fix their downtown bridge and get broadband service out to the folks in remote areas.

One of the many wonderful things about Bidens proposal is the way it differs from Donald Trumps. Remember the first Trump Infrastructure Week? He couldnt quite figure out what to put in the package, so he started out with a call to privatize the air traffic control system.

Didnt work out, although Trump still really loved talking about infrastructure. And having Weeks! Like American Dream Week, which he celebrated with a call for a 50% cut in legal immigration.

In the end, that Infrastructure Week was a bust for highways and trains and such. But Trump figured he was a huge success, since he counted all his spending on the Mexico wall (one of the largest infrastructure projects in the history of our country).

Then, in 2019, Trump scheduled an infrastructure meeting with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. They were invited to discuss a $2 trillion plan! Shades of ... now. But when the president arrived at the meeting, he refused to shake anyones hand and said he wasnt going to talk about stuff like road repair until the Democrats stopped investigating his relationships with Russia.

First he said he wanted to do infrastructure. The minute he walked in he backed off, Schumer recalled.

Before the Democrats were totally shooed out of the meeting, Trumps staff had set up a lectern with a big new sign saying No Collusion, No Obstruction. Small minds might refer to it as one of his better construction projects.

GAIL COLLINS is a columnist for The New York Times.
AS Covid-19 deaths show little sign of abating, good news has come to Trinidad and Tobago of a vaccine gift from the United States.

According to Shante Moore, Charge dAffaires at the US Embassy in Trinidad and Tobago, this gift comes with no hidden conditions and imposing conditions as other countries are doing.
(Photo : Screenshot From Amazon News YouTube) Jeff Bezos Supportive of Higher Tax Rates for Amazon: Here's Why

Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos recently said that he is actually welcome to the rise in corporate taxes in order to cover the "bold investments" that go into infrastructure in the US. The government singled out the tech giant for actually failing to pay federal income tax while proposing taxing businesses and the rich to cover their large $2.25 trillion infrastructure plan.

Amazon CEO Addresses Tax Rate Increase

According to Telegram, Amazon has been criticized countless times for alleged efforts to tax cutting. Politicians are now debating about how to pay for the government's ambitious overhaul, which would include investments in EV, revamping water systems, and also improving public transport.

Mr. Bezos noted his support in making bold investments on the American infrastructure. Both the Republicans and Democrats have reportedly supported infrastructure some time in the past, considering it as the "right time" to work together to make this happen. Mr. Bezos also noted that he recognizes the fact that this investment will still require concessions coming from all sides.

Amazon's 'Various Loopholes'

Mr. Bezos also noted that the company looks forward to Congress and the Administration coming together to find the right balanced solution that would maintain or even enhance the competitiveness of the United States. The government has accused Amazon of actually being included as one of the many Fortune 500 companies using "various loopholes" by not paying federal income tax.

This contrasts with the middle class families that would be paying 20% tax rates and have no way of slashing their tax bills. Amazon has also been criticized in the past for the total amount of tax that it pays in the UK. This is thanks to the complicated but still legal accounting structures. It had seen a 51% increase in sales in Britain last year due to the massive switch in online buying due to people being banned from visiting physical shops.

Read Also: Amazon Drivers Forced to Use Biometric Monitoring or Else Lose Their Jobs: Cameras to Monitor Fatigue and Unsafe Driving

Amazon Massive Profits

Amazon had only paid around $20 million in corporate tax despite raking almost $27 billion in revenue in less than one thousandth of its total turnover. Chancellor Rishi Sunak is now also hoping to agree to a brand-new international "Amazon tax" along with other nations which would impose taxes on online companies' profits. This would make it a priority for the important June G7 meeting over at Cornwall.

Mr. Sunak also said some time last month that one of his priorities in the G7 this 2021, which has already been started, is to attempt and get international agreement on a brand new way to tax these particular companies. He noted that he spends a lot of time talking to his finance minister colleagues coming from all around the world regarding the particular issue. The official statement by Jeff Bezos was uploaded to Twitter on the official Amazon account.

Related Article: Tesla Tries to Raise Taxes on Gas-Powered Vehicles by Lobbying with the UK Government

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Urian Buenconsejo

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
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A pattern emerges whenever a culture tries to fix itself with only the resources of its own unmoored virtues. A problem is identified, but misdiagnosed. Then, a solution is offered that accomplishes the exact opposite of the goal.

Examples of this include trampling on the rights of women in the name of inclusion, firing ethnic minorities for racism, and the new brand form of anti-Semitism prevalent on college campuses that are supposed to be (even because they are) woke.

These many examples reveal why worldview matters. Every worldview answers the questions Whats wrong with the world? and How can it be fixed? Some worldviews get the answers to these questions very, very wrong.

Hatred of the Jews, for example, is perhaps the oldest hatred in the world. Typically, anti-Semitism is perceived as coming from far-right, white supremacists or radical Muslim extremists. However, according to a new student group called the New Zionist Congress, anti-Semitism is increasingly found on college campuses, notably among far-left activists.

Apparently, the progressive orthodoxies built around Critical Theory offer little space for Jewish people. In the name of standing up for the oppressed, maybe the most oppressed group in world history is being excluded.

Blake Flayton, a self-proclaimed progressive, gay, Jewish college student, first explained the problem in a 2019 op-ed in The New York Times. At many American universities, he wrote, it is now normal for student organizations to freely call Israel an imperialist power and an outpost of white colonialism with little pushback or discussion  never mind that more than half of Israels population consists of Israeli Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, and that the country boasts a 20-percent Arab minority.

The problem, of course, is that Critical Theory is not big enough as a worldview to deal with a real world that constantly crosses racial, socio-economic and national lines. Critical Theory relies on those lines to determine human worth, dignity, and moral standing. No room is allowed for actual progress. Once an oppressor, always an oppressor. And, if an oppressed group rises above their oppression, whether perceived or real, they risk falling on the wrong side of the measuring stick.

Jewish history is long and winding. Even after the Germans attempted to exterminate them, and much of the world closed their borders to Jewish refugees, the Jewish people somehow managed to reclaim their homeland in Israel. Now that Israel has secured relative safety and freedom, all of a sudden, theyre evil?

This self-defeating and dehumanizing logic is a central flaw of this way of seeing the world. Any worldview that grounds human value in a perceived proximity to power or ethnicity robs individuals of their humanity. Gods Image is what makes us human and therefore valuable, regardless of whether we have any power or belong to any group.

The Bible not only provides a much better standard for determining human worth, but it also offers us a clue as to why anti-Semitism has persisted for so long. God formed the nation of Israel and chose the Jewish people through which to send the Messiah in order to bless all the peoples of the Earth. A world animated by His Enemy will hate them.

Years ago in a sermon, John Piper said that a church that fails to evangelize the Jewish people  to accept, value, learn from, and minister to them  cannot long hold on to the gospel. He was drawing heavily from the writings of Paul, which explore the mystery of Gods love for the Jewish people. The worlds new or, more accurately, renewed hate for Jewish people is another opportunity for the Church to be profoundly counter-cultural. Psalm 122 instructs us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. That peace remains a long way off. We should keep praying.

Originally published at Break Point
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The technological and market changes in the OTR tire industry presently and over the next five years are presenting several challenges to manufacturers and suppliers alike. Some of these challenges originate in one or more end-use market as a result of underlying market growth; or in the nature of OTR equipment or the manner in which OTR tires are used; or in technological changes in the tire or related industries; in the supply chain; or in the political and regulatory environments. Off-the-road tires or, OTR tires, are being built for the purpose of taking a massive amount of weight & roll through the conditions which would stop most of the cars dead. The global market for off-the-road (OTR) tires is estimated to be touch over 3.5 million tonnes in the year 2017, corresponding to the value of around $24.7 billion, and is estimated to show an overall five-year (CAGR) of around 4.2 % to 2022 in terms of volume, & 5.4% per year In terms of value.

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The stability, long life, high load-carrying capacity & puncture-proof nature of the OTR tires make them the perfect solution to support these businesses where the cutting costs is very critical. In 2017, imports of the OTR tires, including the ag implement tires, treaded construction tires of all sizes, solid tires & off-highway truck tires below 16-inch rim diameters increased over 2016, often dramatically. Only imports of the ag drive tires & off-highway truck tires with the 16-inch rim diameters & greater showed declines in comparison to 2016. OTR industry is very closely associated with GDP, because a huge part is dependent upon the construction. Hurricanes Irma & Harvey had devastating effects in Texas, Florida & the southeast region. It is expected that therell be a big flurry of activity and then it will become more of a progression. Those areas are going to have to rebuild for a large amount of time.

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The global OTR tire market has been segmented based on industry, tire type, rim type, aftermarket industry type, and sales channel. In terms of industry, the OTR tire market has been classified into construction & mining, agriculture, and industrial. Agriculture segment held the major market share In Asia Pacific and North America region.

The ecosystem of the OTR tires market consists of the manufacturers & Tier 1 suppliers like Continental , Bridgestone , Michelin , Goodyear , Pirelli , Sumitomo , Yokohama, Hankook , Nokian , & CEAT .

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Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 22:49:48|Editor: huaxia

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JAKARTA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- At least 138 people died and 61 others are still missing in flash floods and landslides triggered by tropical cyclone Seroja in Indonesia's East Nusa Tenggara province, the National Disaster Management Agency said on Wednesday.

The agency's head Doni Monardo disclosed that the deaths were reported in East Flores district (67), Alor district (25), Malaka district (4), Lembata district (32), Kupang district (5), Sabu Raijua district (2), and one each in Ende district, Kupang city, and Ngada district.

"The evacuation process is the most difficult measure in Lembata and Alor. We are struggling to mobilize heavy equipment units such as excavators and trucks to move very large boulders," Monardo said.

The Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency said such extreme weather as heavy rains, strong winds, and high sea waves of up to 6 meters occurred after the tropical cyclone Seroja was swirled in the Savu Sea, south of East Nusa Tenggara province with a peak on April 5.

Currently, Seroja moves away from Indonesia's territory, but the impact would still be felt in a number of provinces in the southern part of the country for the next a few days.

"Residents in the provinces of Bali, West Nusa Tenggara, East Java, Yogyakarta, and Central Java must watch out," the agency's head Dwikorita Karnawati said.

Seroja is the 10th tropical cyclone hitting Indonesia since 2008 but had the worst impact as it made landfall. Enditem
New Delhi:

A tragic incident occurred in Mumbai where a stampede took place on a bridge between Parel and Elphinstone station. Latest reports have claimed that 27 people died whereas more than 30 have been injured.

Medical teams have been rushed to the spot and rescue operations are underway. PM Modi and railway minister Piyush Goyal offered their condolences to the affected people.

The injured people have been brought to KEM hospital where they are undergoing treatment.Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis and railway minister have ordered high-level enquiry into the incident.

Further, the government has also decided to provide 5 lakh each to the families of the deceased. India has witnessed many cases of stampedes where several people lost their lives.

Lets have a look at some of the major stampedes in India:

15 October 2016: Stampede at Varanasis Rajghat bridge  25 dead, 60 injured.

10 February 2013: Stampede in Allahabads Kumbh left 36 dead, 39 injured.

13 October 2013: Stampede in Ratnagarh temple, Datiya, Madhya Pradesh left 89 people dead.

14 January 2011: Stampede in Keralas Sabarimala temple leaves 106 devotees dead.

4 March 2010: Stampede in Mangarh Dham, Pratapgarh, UP leaves 63 dead.

30 September 2008: Stampede in Chamunda Devi temple, Jodhpur leaves 120 people dead.

3 August 2006: Stampede in Naina Devi temple, Himachal Pradesh, leaves 160 devotees dead.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
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White House press secretary Jen Psaki fired back at a reporter who questioned why Kamala Harris went to a Chicago bakery when she still hasn't addressed the mounting crisis at the border.

'She got a snack,' Psaki quipped. 'I think she's allowed to do that.'

New York Post reporter Steven Nelson acknowledged during Wednesday's press briefing: 'As we discussed here today, Vice President Harris is put in charge of addressing the root causes of the border crisis.'

'She hasn't visited the border or Central America or spoken with leaders of El Salvador or Honduras,' he noted. 'She was traveling this week, took time to visit a bakery in Chicago. I'm wondering, is she still working on this and can you address the perception that she's sort of quietly backing off while Secretary Mayorkas is pursuing some Trump-era policies?'

He is referencing Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas appearing to take a hard-line lead on the border crisis despite Harris' role.

Psaki replied: 'The vice president was visiting Chicago, actually, to talk about COVID and the importance of communities getting the vaccine when it's available and accessible to them.'

'So, while she was there, like many Americans, she got a snack.'

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki pushed back Wednesday when a reporter questioned why Vice President Kamala Harris visited a bakery but not the southern border despite being put in charge of the crisis

'The vice president was visiting Chicago, actually, to talk about COVID and the importance of communities getting the vaccine,' Psaki said. 'So, while she was there, like many Americans, she got a snack. I think she's allowed to do that'

Since being appointed Border Czar last month, Harris has jetted all over the U.S. without visiting the 'humanitarian crisis' site

She tried to clarify, as many have done since Harris was appointed border czar last month, that the vice president's target is to address the 'root problem' in Central American countries leading to people fleeing to the U.S.  and not focus on the border crisis in general.

This has led to speculation that the administration is trying to back off Harris' role as the immigration crisis expands with a record number of migrants arriving at the border every day and images emerging of massively overcrowded detention facilities.

'I don't have an update on when she'll travel,' Psaki said of the vice president. 'I'm sure it will happen soon.'

Harris has yet to visit the US-Mexico border or even hold a press conference about her new duties in the two weeks since being tasked with addressing the migrant crisis.

The Vice President spent Easter weekend at her Brentwood home in Southern California where she baked a 'beautiful' roast pork with rice and peas, but did not find time in her schedule to visit the nearby border.

In the past two weeks she has also visited Connecticut for a talk with the Boys and Girls Club of New Haven, traveled to Oakland to meet with Governor Gavin Newsom to show support amid his potential recall election, and made a trip to a bakery in Chicago.

Harris has also been busy moving into her new residence at the Naval Observatory just days after she complained about living out of suitcases while it was being renovated.

While visiting the Brown Sugar Bakery, Harris was promoting the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and encouraging people to get vaccinated against coronavirus.

While there, Harris picked up a slice of German chocolate cake and was pictured accepting it from staff.

Despite the joy surrounding her visit from those at the bakery, the Chicago restaurant owners are still waiting for their share of the $28 billion relief for hospitality businesses.

On March 24, Harris was tasked by President Biden with leading the efforts to tackle the 'humanitarian crisis' amid a surge of migrants trying to enter the US since Joe Biden 's administration came into office.

On Tuesday Harris traveled from Los Angeles to Chicago where she found time to meet bakers at the Brown Sugar Bakery in where she was presented with cakes

A makeshift camp of migrants sits at the border port of entry leading to the United States in Mexico

New government statistics released last week revealed that 171,000 migrants were caught by U.S. authorities at the border in March - the highest monthly total in two decades.

The total arrivals includes a record 19,000 unaccompanied migrant children and 53,000 family members traveling together, the preliminary figures showed.

It comes as Biden's Homeland Security head Alejandroa Mayorkas is looking to crack down on illegal immigration by taking more legal action against border jumpers and targeting U.S. cities that act as a safe haven.

'I see cases now where we apprehend and remove individuals that I think need to be prosecuted criminally,' Mayorkas said during a virtual town hall with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) employees last week where he also revealed President Biden is considering restarting construction on Donald Trump's border wall.

'Quite frankly, I'm going to have to understand why some of these individuals are not subject to a Title 8 USC 1326 case and I intend to work with the DOJ in that regard,' he added.

Entering the U.S. illegally is a misdemeanor under Title 8 Section 1325. Furthermore, reentering the country after being ousted is a felony under Title 8 Section 1326.

Mayorkas told ICE employees that DHS will also take on so-called sanctuary cities that refuse to work with the agency to turn over illegal immigrants hiding out there.

He also vowed during the meeting, according to notes of the conversation reviewed by the Washington Times, that he is opposed to some more progressive immigration and border protection policies, like the push from the far left to totally abolish ICE.

'I'm 100% opposed to the abolition of ICE,' he said. 'It is the opposite of what I think needs to occur. I think we need to strengthen our policies and practices and communicate more effectively what we do and why we do it.'

The March arrest totals at the US-Mexico border represent the highest monthly level since April 2000 when border patrol agents caught more than 180,000 migrants.

But Harris has stayed publicly silent on the issue and has not held a press conference or major interview about her new duties she was assigned them two weeks ago.

Since being appointed in charge of the border, she also visited West Haven Child Development Center in Connecticut on to promote the administration's $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan

She made time to visit children at the West Haven Child Development Center in Connecticut two days after being appointed the new Border Czar

A migrant boy, who was abandoned in southern Texas after crossing over from Mexico, was recorded on video in tears and asking a U.S. Border Patrol agent for help last Thursday. The child had spent the night in the desert after he was abandoned by the group of migrants he had crossed the border with and feared he would be 'abducted.' U.S. Customs and Border Protection has not released the child's age or nationality

Kamala's schedule since becoming 'Border Czar' March 25 - Washington DC: Virtual Passover March 26 - New Haven, Connecticut: meeting with Boys and Girls Club and education leaders March 27-28 - Washington DC: no public commitments March 29 - Washington DC: Covid briefing and delivering pandemic remarks March 30 - Washington DC: Signed the PPP extension into law and spoke with Guatemalan President April 1 - Washington DC/Los Angeles, California: Met with stakeholders before traveling to her Brentwood home April 2-4 - Los Angeles: At home with no public commitments April 5 - Oakland, California: Met Gavin Newsom, toured water treatment plant and met business leaders April 6 - Chicago, Illinois: Toured a Covid vaccination site before returning to Washington DC Advertisement

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich invited the Vice President on a tour of the border this month in a letter on Friday.

He wrote: 'Recently, you stated, 'You have to see and smell and feel the circumstances of people to really understand them.' With that in mind, I formally invite you to join me for a tour of the southwest border in Arizona later this month.

'It will provide firsthand insight into what Arizonans, law enforcement officials and migrants are experiencing. I will make myself available any day of your choosing.'

Shortly after her appointment, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey also branded Harris 'the worst possible choice' to lead the border team, saying Biden had 'completely trivialized the issue by putting someone in charge who flat out just doesn't care'.

Ted Cruz added 'she is not going to be able to solve this crisis', branding it Biden's 'biggest political mess'.

Biden initially said his vice president would be in charge of returning migrants to their home countries in her new role.

He said: 'The vice president has agreed... to lead our diplomatic effort and work with those nations to accept the returnees, and enhance migration enforcement at their borders.'

The White House later claimed Harris was not directly involved with the border crisis but was instead addressing its 'root causes'.

Her schedule shows that since she was tasked with helping the crisis, she has largely remained in Washington DC.

On March 25, her only public duty was the White House's virtual Passover celebration with her husband Doug Emhoff, while the following day she visited New Haven, Connecticut, to meet with the Boys and Girls Club.

She spent the weekend in Washington DC with no public commitments, before receiving a Covid briefing and joining Biden for a speech on their pandemic response on the Monday.

On Tuesday March 30, Harris received the President's daily brief in the morning before signing the PPP extension into law in the Oval Office.

She spent Easter weekend at her Brentwood home before meeting with Gavin Newsom on Monday in a show of support to the beleaguered California governor

Harris speaks about investing in small businesses using community banking at Red Door Catering in Oakland

Homeland Security chief wants to prosecute MORE illegal immigrants DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is looking to crack down on illegal immigration by taking more legal action against border jumpers. 'I see cases now where we apprehend and remove individuals that I think need to be prosecuted criminally,' he said in a virtual town hall. 'Quite frankly, I'm going to have to understand why some of these individuals are not subject to a Title 8 USC 1326 case and I intend to work with the DOJ in that regard,' he added. Entering the U.S. illegally is a misdemeanor under Title 8 Section 1325. Furthermore, reentering the country after being ousted is a felony under Title 8 Section 1326. Mayorkas told ICE employees that DHS will also take on so-called sanctuary cities that refuse to work with the agency to turn over illegal immigrants hiding out there. He also vowed during the meeting, according to notes of the conversation reviewed by the Washington Times, that he is opposed to some more progressive immigration and border protection policies, like the push from the far left to totally abolish ICE. Advertisement

She also carried out the only known work related to the border since being appointed Border Czar as she held a phone call with President Alejandro Giammattei of Guatemala.

So far, 64,000 migrants out of the 350,000 who have been caught by US authorities at the border were Guatemalan.

A statement said: 'They discussed the significant risks to those leaving their homes and making the dangerous journey to the United States, especially during a global pandemic.'

The following day, she led a discussion with faith leaders where she encouraged their communities to take up the vaccine.

She returned home to California on Thursday, April 1, her third visit during the administration.

Harris spent the weekend at home where she baked a 'beautiful' roast pork with rice and peas, according to the LA Times.

She had no public events over the weekend until she traveled to her hometown of Oakland on Monday where she met with California Gov. Gavin Newsom and gave her support as he faces a potential recall election.

The Vice President toured a water treatment plant to highlight the benefits of the American Jobs Plan and held a 'listening session' with business owners.

She said during her visit to the East Bay Municipal Utility District's Upper San Leandro treatment plant, in an area affected by drought: 'For years there were wars fought over oil. In a short time there will be wars fought over water.

'We must address inequities in access to clean water, at local state federal levels, understanding opportunities to build back up infrastructure around water.'

Republican National Committee spokesman Keith Schipper said: 'It's been nearly two weeks since Vice President Kamala Harris was named manager of the Biden Border Crisis, and while she has made time to return home to the Bay Area, Harris has refused to visit the border  which is only 500 miles from her location today  to survey the crisis firsthand.

'Californians don't find this border crisis funny and demand the so-called manager get to work fixing the problem this administration created.'

On Tuesday, Harris traveled to Chicago where she toured a Covid vaccine site before returning to Washington DC.

The March arrest totals at the US-Mexico border represent the highest monthly level since April 2000

Upon her return to DC, Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff moved in to their official residence, just days after it emerged she was unhappy about living out of suitcases while it was being renovated.

The Naval Observatory - the VP's official residence - has been out of action for more than two months while it undergoes much-needed updates.

The pair had been living at Blair House, across the road from the White House, since January - an arrangement that was reportedly beginning to wear on Harris.

'She is getting frustrated,' an administration official told CNN, noting that every day her desire to move into her designated house grows more intense.

But it seems that she has now had the green light to move into the official property.

Just days before she was tasked with addressing the migrant crisis, Harris laughed when she was asked if she would visit the border.

She was in Jacksonville to address food insecurity and vaccinations when asked if she had plans to visit the border.

Harris replied laughing: 'Not today. But I have before and I'm sure I will again.'
ARCHIVED - Canary islands bear the brunt of migratory flow as Spain records a 15 per cent increase in arrivals



The number of people crossing illegally from Africa to the Canaries doubled in the first quarter of 2020

Spains Ministry of the Interior published figures on Monday relating to the number of unauthorized migrants known to have reached the country during the first quarter of the year, revealing that the total of 6,496 shows a 15.6 per cent increase over the figure for the equivalent period in 2020.

This increase is due above all to the sharp rise in the number of people crossing from northern Africa to the Canary Islands, where between 1st January and 31st March 3,436 people were intercepted either just before or shortly after they landed on the coasts of the islands. This figure is more than double the number recorded in the first quarter of last year, and reflects the current preference of the Atlantic route into Spain and the EU over the shorter but more heavily policed western Mediterranean crossing.

It also appears to demonstrate that the fall in migrant numbers on the Canaries route which had been observed since last September may be nothing more than a blip rather than a sign that the flow of Africans crossing to the islands is abating, and the relatively low figures for February (155 arrivals in the first half of the month and 109 in the second fortnight) were more than compensated for by the 856 people who reached the Canaries during the second half of March.

Meanwhile, the number of migrants intercepted as they made their way to mainland Spain and the Balearics shows an 8.4 per cent year-on-year decrease to 2,852, while in the north African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla the figures are 109 and 265 respectively, as opposed to 265 and 1,000 in the first three months of 2020.
New Delhi: Amid an unprecedented surge in the COVID-19 infections in the national capital, the government imposed a seven-hour night curfew from 10 pm to 5 am on Tuesday (April 6) with immediate effect.

Apply for e-pass here

The order came on the same day when Delhi reported 3,548 new COVID-19 cases, pushing the total tally to 6,79,962, as per the Delhi governments health bulletin. The DMRC also announced that entry in Metro during the night curfew, from 10 pm to 5 am, will be allowed only to those passengers who fall in the essential category.

ALSO READ: What is an e-pass, how can it help you during night lockdown in Delhi

How to get an e-pass in Delhi?

Visit the Delhi governments official e-pass website at https://epass.jantasamvad.org/epass/init/

Individuals will be required to enter numerous details

After completion of the form the individuals will receive a QR enabled exemption on the registered mobile number or email-ID

E-pass must be downloaded and shown to the authorities at checkpoints during night curfew

ALSO READ: These people to be affected in Delhi amid night curfew

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For the third quarter in a row, the Pennsylvania State Police are reporting a new record in the point-of-sale background checks required before most gun sales, meaning that record interest in firearms sparked by the civil unrest after the George Floyd killing and a contentious election last year has just kept soaring into 2021.

In the first quarter of 2021, the Pennsylvania Instant Check System completed 427,450 background checks. Thats up 40.2 percent from January through March 2020. State Police said previous records for PICS activity were 420,581 background checks, set from October through December of 2020; and 406,151 checks from July through September last year.

Background checks dont equate exactly to sales; some would-be buyers are barred from buying.

But more importantly, state rules in Pennsylvania exempt private sales of long guns (including rifles, shotguns and semi-automatic military style rifles) from the requirement. Some national studies suggest more than 20 percent of all legal firearms sales occur outside the background check system.

Still, they are considered a good barometer of the market, and that means, for now, things are running hot.

The main cause for that may be the results of last years election, several dealers reached by PennLive said Tuesday.

No doubt its our new president. Hes the best gun salesman out there, said John Lehman, explaining that with President Joe Biden - who supports several popular gun control measures - in the White House and the Democratic Party holding thin majorities in both houses of the Congress, many people see gun rights under attack.

Theyve already made it public, Lehman said, referring to two bills passed in early March in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Joel Koehler, operator of Eagle Arms in Breinigsville, Lehigh County, agreed that gun politics is a driving force.

Of course people are concerned. They want their Second Amendment rights not trampled, Koehler said. Ive been in the business 45 years. Ive seen this happen under every Democratic Administration from Clinton. Obama. Theyre our best salesmen.

With the Democratic Party holding the White House and thin majorities in both the houses of Congress, the chance of tighter gun restrictions being imposed at the federal level is perceived by many gun owners rights groups to be greater than its been in a more than a decade.

In separate votes that fell largely along party lines, the bills passed by the U.S. House last month would require background checks for all gun buyers, and extend the time the F.B.I. has to vet those who get flagged by the national instant check system.

The background check measure would extend the required point-of-sale checks to people buying firearms at gun shows, and to people seeking to buy guns online from private sellers. Those categories of sales were never included in the federal check system, which must come back clean before the buyers can take possession of the weapon.

The second bill would extend the three days given the F.B.I. has to complete a federal check by an additional week, to 10 days.

Despite being popular with voters, the measures face uncertain futures in the Senate, where Republicans have more enough votes to block them unless Democrats decide to roll back the chambers filibuster rule, which permits opponents of any measure to keep debate open unless at least 60 senators vote to end discussion and move to a final vote.

Lehman said his customers arent waiting to find out. Some of that may speak to the broader cultural wars at play in American society, he thinks.

I have no doubt its politically driven. People are afraid of their rights being taken away, so theyre going to exercise em while they got em. Its a major conversation with everybody at the gun shows, said Lehman, 72, whose J&S Arms dealership is based in Jersey Shore, Lycoming County.

Everywhere you look somebodys restricting something.... Its just everything from anti-police to anti-gun to anti-anything.
DORENA, Ore.  Lane County Sheriffs deputies responded to a shooting near Dorena Tuesday night.

It started as a medical emergency call, but additional reports came in of an active dispute with shots fired at the location on the 39000 block of Row River Road.

Oregon State Police and Cottage Grove Police also responded to the scene.

No one was shot, but two people were taken to a hospital with injuries that were not life threatening. One of the victims was reportedly experiencing an unrelated medical issue prior to the dispute. Police said the people involved in the shooting knew each other.

Suspect Warren Colbert, 54, was taken to the Lane County Jail on two counts of first-degree assault, three counts of unlawful use of a weapon, multiple counts of fourth-degree assault and of menacing, and three counts of reckless endangering.

There is no ongoing threat to the community.
Theres been a dramatic increase in unemployment claims filed in the past week in Michigan, so state officials are putting up fraud protections in hopes of blocking out criminals.

The Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency has flagged about 100,000 claims likely filed by criminals, the agency said in a news release Wednesday, April 7.

Payments to those accounts have been halted until the identity of each claimant can be verified.

We continue to be vigilant in protecting the integrity of the system and the benefits for those who rightfully deserve them, said acting UIA Director Liza Estlund Olson in the release.

Most of the fraud is coming via the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which is paid for via temporary federal aid and not Michigan unemployment dollars. Criminals have been posing as self-employed workers or independent contractors to get the money, the release said.

RELATED: Feds send Michigan money to find unemployment fraud

More than 500,000 claims were halted last spring for potential fraud. While many were fraudulent, at least 100,000 were legitimate claims, so many were wrongfully denied payments for weeks if not longer.

The UIA estimated in the fall that it paid hundreds of millions of dollars to fraudulent claims in 2020. Most of that came from federal coffers and not state funds, however.

As of March 13, Michigan had more than 940,000 people still claiming unemployment benefits.

What if youre a victim of unemployment identity theft?

Some criminals impersonate others using previously stolen information to get unemployment money. No personal data from claimants has been stolen from the UIA, the agency said.

The UIA sends snail mail to people whose claims are suspicious, called a Request for Information letter. If you received this letter but arent claiming unemployment, you may be a victim of unemployment identity theft.

Anytime someone files for benefits, a monetary determination letter is sent via the mail. If you get one of these letters and didnt apply for unemployment, thats another red flag.

To report unemployment identity theft, visit Michigan.gov/UIA and click on Report Fraud or Identity Theft. Here are some other state tips to protect yourself against identity theft.

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(CNN)  If you were a Facebook user in 2019, it's possible that your information is among the millions of records posted on a website used by hackers.

Cyber intelligence firm Hudson Rock over the weekend revealed that personal information from 533 million Facebook accounts was leaked, including names, phone numbers, Facebook IDs, locations, account creation dates, birthdays, relationship statuses, bios and, in some cases, email addresses. The breach includes data from more than 32 million accounts in the United States, 11 million in the United Kingdom and 6 million in India.

Facebook said the data is from a previously reported breach that occurred in 2019.

"We found and fixed this issue in August 2019," Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone told CNN Saturday.

However, for many users, information they had on their Facebook profile in 2019, such as phone numbers and birthdays, likely hasn't changed in the past two years. And that means the data could still be useful to hackers or other bad actors.

"Although this was due to an old breach [and] this is old information, now it's out there in the public domain," said Jeff Dennis, partner and head of the privacy and data security practice at law firm Newmeyer Dillion. "Anyone who has basic search skills can now go find that database and exploit it, which was not the case when the data was originally taken."

Here's what users should know about how the leaked data could be used, and how to protect themselves.

How could bad actors use the data?

The news of the leak is definitely not good. But it's also not necessarily a reason to panic.

The truth is that data breaches have, unfortunately, become fairly common for a wide range of online services. So, unless you hardly ever use the internet or mobile apps, it's likely that much of your personal information is already out there where bad actors could find it.

The types of information exposed in the recent Facebook leak are also not the most useful to hackers, unlike data such as credit card information or social security numbers.

"The silver lining here is that this data is not that valuable to attackers to conduct any sort of damning attack against an entity or a person," said Vikram Thakur, technical director at Symantec, a security software firm that's now part of Broadcom. "The information is not that granular that it can somehow impact one's identity or one's personal life."

Still, there are a number of ways that bad actors could exploit the leaked information.

First thing's first: There are websites, including haveibeenpwned.com, where users can see if their email or phone number was potentially involved in the breach. The method, however, is not foolproof  and Facebook has not said whether it will alert those whose information was hacked  so users should be on the lookout for potential misuse of their data whether or not they show up on such a site.

Because the breach includes names and phone numbers, it could lead to an uptick in robocalls or text messages (which are already a huge problem). Scammers are the most obvious potential users of leaked phone number data, but technically anyone could search the database and find this info  so people may also want to be aware of the potential for other strangers to get their digits.

"It's actually very easy to search through this data ... in a few seconds, you can easily find anybody's information that you are looking for," Thakur said, though in a cache of 533 million records, if someone has a common name, finding their information could become more difficult.

The data could also be used for carrying out social engineering attacks, such as phishing. Typically, a social engineering attack involves a bad actor imitating a legitimate person or organization, including a bank, company or coworker, in order to steal data such as login credentials, credit card numbers, social security numbers and other sensitive information.

Although the Facebook breach won't necessarily lead to an increase in the volume of phishing attempts, the fact that so many different types of information on each single user is available as a result of this hack it could make them appear more credible, and thus more successful.

"It would be very hard, as a user, to see through some sort of phishing campaign when they're using information that you thought was very private to you, such as information that would be found on Facebook in your bio section," Dennis said. "Particularly, when you combine it with location information, you can see how bad guys would start to use this information in a very sinister but effective way."

How to protect yourself

The breach is a reminder that no information users share with online services can ever be absolutely guaranteed to be secure and private.

"As good as our defenses are, the bad guys are continuing to evolve faster than we can protect ourselves and faster than companies can protect the information, so you just need to be aware," Dennis said. "I wouldn't put anything on Facebook that you wouldn't want put in a public database somewhere down the line."

Affected users, and anyone whose information could have been exposed, should keep their eyes peeled for potential scams or phishing attempts.

A good rule of thumb, according to Thakur: "Only give out your information when you are the one initiating the conversation. If somebody asks you for your social security, your password, your credit card number, even your name, there is no need for you to put it in anywhere ... unless you're the one initiating the conversation or the transaction."

In other words, if you get a phone call or email from someone purporting to be from your bank, or your doctor's office, or a company you recently shopped at asking for sensitive information, do not hand it over. Hang up. Then find a trusted phone number for that place  from the back of your credit card, the doctor's website, or the official email receipt you received from the company  and give them a call to determine if the request was legitimate.

More generally, the situation is also a good reminder to take steps to preserve your data "hygiene," as experts sometimes call it, such as using different passwords for each website, changing passwords frequently and using two-factor authentication.

This story was first published on CNN.com So you're one of 533 million in the Facebook leak. What now?
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 23:59:57|Editor: huaxia

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FREETOWN, April 7 (Xinhua) -- A total of 32,711 people in Sierra Leone have received their first shots of COVID-19 vaccines, the country's health ministry said Wednesday.

People who have received the first doses can access their second ones at vaccination sites across the country, the ministry added.

Sierra Leone kicked off its mass vaccination campaign on March 15 after receiving 200,000 vaccines from China and 96,000 AstraZeneca vaccines through the COVAX facility.

As of Wednesday, the West African country has registered 3,989 confirmed COVID-19 cases with 79 deaths. Enditem
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Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 7)  President Rodrigo Duterte will not be holding his regular "Talk to the People" address this week, his spokesperson Harry Roque said on Wednesday.

The President did not speak to the public on Monday after Roque told a press briefing earlier that day that the scheduled address had been moved to Wednesday.

In his latest statement to reporters, however, Roque said the President's address may not happen until next week. He added the rescheduling was made "in light of the rising number of active COVID-19 cases."

As of Wednesday, the Philippines had 158,701 active cases, or those currently battling the coronavirus disease. The country has been seeing an exponential rise in infections, prompting the government to again place epicenter Metro Manila and four nearby provinces under the strictest enhanced community quarantine.

"The physical safety of the President remains our utmost concern," Roque said. "In addition, the preparation for the Talk to the People Address entails a number of staff complement and we also take due consideration of their well-being."

Duterte was last seen by the public on March 29, during a meeting with government officials on the country's pandemic response. The meeting was attended by Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, who confirmed on April 6 that he tested positive for COVID-19.

In a separate statement, Senator Christopher "Bong" Go said Duterte's engagement this week was postponed after several members of the Presidential Security Group caught the coronavirus.

Brig. Gen. Jesus Durante III, head of the PSG, told state-run PTV there were 45 active COVID-19 cases among his men. He was quick to clarify that the infected PSG personnel mostly manned Malacanang gates and were not among the Presidents close-in security detail.

Several PSG members have been vaccinated. Health experts have explained that vaccinees can still contract the coronavirus, but they are protected from severe disease or hospitalization.

Where is Duterte?

Both Go and Durante stressed that the President is in Malacanang, free from any flu-like symptoms.

Nandito po siya sa Malacanang, nagtatrabaho (Hes here in Malacanang, working), Durante said.

Go belied rumors that the President is too sick to stick to his schedule of facing the nation. On Wednesday night, as #NasaanAngPangulo trended online, he shared photos of Duterte seated on a table cluttered with various documents and newspapers that appear to have been published on the same day.

"Sa mga may masasamang hangarin, wag muna kayo mag celebrate!! Nandito lang si Tatay Digong. Tambak ang trabaho," he said on his Facebook post.

[Translation: To those wishing ill of the President, don't celebrate yet. He is here, inundated with work.]

Their statements disputed some netizens' speculations that the President may be with his daughter, Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte, who has confirmed that she traveled to Singapore for personal health management."

The mayor disclosed she is on a five-day leave from April 6 to 10, and that she has a travel authority from the Department of the Interior and Local Government.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Singapore is among the top trending topics on Twitter. Replying to CNN Philippines' post on the President's rescheduled public appearance, one netizen asked, "Kasama ba siya ni Sara (Is he with Sara)?"

Another tweeted, "Nasa SG siguro 'yan (He might be in SG)!"
China is now vaccinating citizens over 60 years old and in good health as the country is speeding up its mass inoculations against COVID-19.

State Council officials said that based on the first and second-stage clinical trials for elderly people in China and the mass inoculation data of elderly populations overseas, the incidence of adverse reactions among the elderly is relatively low, which is similar to the incidence of working-age adults. Besides, research and development on COVID-19 vaccines for the elderly is speeding up, which will provide more data for this.

Different from the US and UK, which prioritized elderly people who are more vulnerable to respiratory disease, China initially prioritized its vaccinations for working-age adults.

Experts say there is no indication that either choice is incorrect, since different countries have different situations.

Zhang Wenhong, a Shanghai-based infectious disease specialist, said that in the US and UK, the coronavirus is raging across the country, which makes it impossible for elderly people to avoid it. Furthermore, the virus is lethal for older adults because the immune system weakens with age.

To reduce the rising death toll, many Western countries plagued by the coronavirus have to inoculate the elderly first, while the situation in China is very different as the country has largely contained the coronavirus. China's first and most important task is to stop the spread of the virus, which requires the government to inoculate those who move frequently across the country and have contact with a lot of people.

"You can see that most people who died of COVID-19 in the US and Europe are mainly people over 60 years old, so if the countries vaccinate that group of people, the death toll will be greatly reduced," Zhang said. "Yet, in China, our duty is to prevent imported cases and the rebound of domestic cases. To prevent this, the biggest challenge is from those who are very socially active, and very easily accessible to the virus, like doctors and customs personnel. Most of these people are young."

"Elderly people are more vulnerable to heart disease, cerebrovascular disease and so on," he said. "There is insufficient clinical trial data on the elderly at this stage, so it's better to wait until more data is available."

China has rapidly scaled up its vaccination program, aiming to have 40 percent of its population inoculated by June and 70 to 80 percent of its population vaccinated by the end of the year. So far, more than 133 million people have been vaccinated, accounting for 9.2 percent of China's total population, which is still far behind Israel, the US and the UK.

"The speed of vaccination has to be further improved. Otherwise, when other countries build up herd immunity and resume cross-border travel, our country will be in a disadvantaged position," Zhang said.

He explained that Israel has already achieved herd immunity, and the UK and US are vaccinating at a very fast pace. Once they build up an immunity wall at the end of the year, they will reopen their borders and resume their economies. At that time, if China hasn't built up its own wall, it may affect border opening, which may impact China's economy as well as other countries' as China is the world's second-largest economy.
UPDATE: Luis Thillet has been found and is safe, police said.



STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.  The NYPD is asking for the publics help to locate a senior who was reported missing after he drove away from his home in New Brighton.

Luis Thillet was seen leaving his residence on Hendricks Avenue at about 1 p.m. on Tuesday, according to a statement by the NYPDs Deputy Commissioner of Public Information.

He was driving a light blue 2003 Chrysler Town and Country minivan.

The Chrysler was detected at about 11 p.m. traveling southbound on the George Washington Bridge, according to the police statement.

The citys Notify NYC alert system issued a Silver Alert at 12:18 a.m. Wednesday for Thillet and the car with New York license plate number HLK7058.

Thillet suffers from dementia and might need medical attention, according to Notify NYC.

Authorities also spell Thillets first name as Louis.

Police described the missing man as Hispanic, standing about 59 tall and weighing about 145 pounds. He has brown eyes, is bald and was seen wearing a brown flannel shirt and black pants.

Anyone with information is encouraged to contact the NYPDs Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-8477 (TIPS) or for Spanish, 1-888-577-4782 (PISTA). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website or by texting their tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then entering TIP577. All calls are strictly confidential.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 21:54:24|Editor: huaxia

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A protester holds a sign that reads "Black Lives Matter" near the White House during a demonstration over the death of George Floyd in Washington D.C., the United States, June 8, 2020. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

BEIJING, April 7 (Xinhua) -- China urges the United States to face up to its own serious human rights problems and take concrete measures to improve its own human rights situation, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said Wednesday.

This came after U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price's remarks over China's Xinjiang Tuesday.

In response, spokesperson Zhao Lijian said the so-called "genocide" in Xinjiang is the most preposterous lie of the century. By smearing others, the United States is trying to distract attention away from its own blatant human rights violations.

Noting that history has recorded all the crimes committed by the U.S. side in violating human rights, Zhao listed five kinds of crimes at the press briefing.

The first is colonialism. U.S. history has recorded the horrific systemic ethnic cleansing and slaughter of Native Americans, which constitute genocide and crimes against humanity. Over nearly 100 years after the United States was founded, Native Americans were expelled and killed during the Westward Expansion. Their population dwindled from 5 million at the end of the 15th century to 250,000 at the beginning of the 20th century.

The second is racism. In the United States, racism is a systemic and persistent problem covering every aspect of society. As pointed out by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, African Americans face systemic racism in terms of their health, employment, education, the legal system and beyond. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, hate crimes against Asians soared by 150 percent from March last year in the United States. When the UN Human Rights Council was reviewing the report on the United States this year, over 110 countries criticized the United States on its human rights issues, urging the country to take concrete measures to solve systemic problems such as discrimination against minority groups.

The third is exporting unrest. Since 2001, the United States has launched wars and military operations under the pretext of "countering terrorism" in about 80 countries around the world, which have claimed more than 800,000 lives, including about 330,000 civilians, and tens of millions of people have been displaced in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and many other countries. The United States and the West supported and instigated the "Arab Spring," which plunged countries across West Asia and North Africa into turmoil from which they have yet to recover.

Photo taken on Jan. 12, 2019 shows the White House and a stop sign in Washington D.C., the United States. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

The fourth is interference. Hiding behind the banner of human rights over sovereignty, the United States has ignored the principles of respecting national sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs in the UN Charter, and imposed unilateral sanctions on relevant developing countries, triggering serious humanitarian crisis.

The fifth is double standards. The United States has turned a blind eye to the fact that Xinjiang enjoys prosperity and development and that the 25 million residents of all ethnic groups in the region live in harmony and solidarity, and arbitrarily slapped the label of "genocide" on China based on nothing but the accounts of a few fake academics and false witnesses. However, after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, extreme acts such as smashing and looting mosques occurred in some Muslim neighborhoods in U.S. cities. In 2017, the previous U.S. administration put in place the anti-Muslim ban, making the U.S. the only country in the world to have issued a ban targeting Muslim community specifically. According to one poll in the United States, more than 80 percent of respondents believe that Muslims face discrimination in the country.

"We urge the United States to put aside its arrogance and prejudice, face up to its own serious human rights problems and take concrete measures to improve its own human rights situation," Zhao said. 
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The gunmen who kidnapped two Chinese expatriates at a gold mining site in Osun State, on Monday, have demanded a ransom of N10 million for their release.

PREMIUM TIMES reported that Zhao Juan (33) and One Wen (50) were whisked away at a mining site located in Okepa/Itikan village in Ifewara, Atakumosa-West local government area of the state.

Two local guards securing the site were also shot during a gun duel with the kidnappers.

Speaking on the development during a radio programme on Wednesday, Yemisi Opalola, the state police spokesperson, said the kidnappers have demanded 10 million for the Chinese expatriates release.

She also confirmed the same to PREMIUM TIMES in a telephone interview.

It is true that they (kidnappers) have reached out, demanding N10 million.

Ms Opalola said the police are working alongside other security operatives to ensure that the victims return safely from the den of their abductors.

We are working together with other security operatives to ensure the two Chinese miners are rescued.

We will also ensure that the kidnappers are captured having deployed a police tactical team, including an anti-kidnapping squad, that will help in the rescue mission.

We urge members of the public to help with credible information on the activities of criminal elements in the state.

The latest incident is coming barely two months after three Chinese were abducted and their police guard killed in the state.

Last November, another policeman was killed during the abduction of a Chinese in nearby Ekiti State.
Paris on Wednesday opened archives relating to its role in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, the Official Journal of the French Republic (JORF) said

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 07th April, 2021) Paris on Wednesday opened archives relating to its role in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, the Official Journal of the French Republic (JORF) said.

JORF is the state gazette publishing major legal documents from the country's ministries, the Parliament, and the Constitutional Council.

"This order provides for free communication ... of the heritage code, archives of President of the Republic Francois Mitterrand and Prime Minister Edouard Balladur relating to Rwanda between 1990 and 1994, as well as copies of the documents cited in the report of the research commission on the French archives concerning Rwanda and the Tutsi [ethic group subjected to killings] genocide (1990-1994), preserved at the national archives," the gazette read.

On March 26, French President Emmanuel Macron received a nearly 1,000-page-long report on the matter from the research team, headed by French historian Vincent Duclert, two years after the latter was tasked to determine the role of France in Rwanda from 1990-1994.

Paris provided military assistance to the then-cabinet in Rwanda against the Tutsi rebels as part of its Francophonie policy and was then accused of indirectly investing in violent massacres targeting the Tutsi population in 1994 due to errors of judgment.

According to the report, Paris was unaware of the fact that its support to the then-government contributed to the genocide. Despite this, France's role in the genocide should be recognized, according to researchers.

Macron welcomed the results of the research and pledged to continue "efforts in the fight against the impunity of those responsible for crimes of genocide," the French presidency said in a press release.

In the meantime, a commemorative ceremony took place in Paris earlier on Wednesday marking the 27th anniversary of the beginning of the mass killings in Rwanda. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo attended the event.

The genocide in the East African country began on April 7, 1994, a day after a plane carrying Juvenal Habyarimana, then-leader of Rwanda and an ethnic Hutu was shot down over Kigali airport, killing Habyarimana and the president of neighboring Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira. The plane crash was followed by 100 days of massacres.

As the presidential plane had a French staff, the Rwandan government denounced France for involvement in the accident and subsequent mass slaughters. France has denied such accusations.

The relations between France and Rwanda slightly improved after Macron set up a commission to determine the role of France in the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
The one millionth dose of Covid-19 vaccine is due to be administered in Ireland today.

The Government had previously aimed to get 1.25 million doses given to people by the end of March - however there were supply issues.

Meanwhile, nine further Covid-19 related deaths have been recorded by the Department of Health and 443 new cases of the disease were reported.

The five-day moving average number of cases now stands at 463, which is almost 15% lower than last week.

Jack Lambert, a University College Dublin (UCD) professor of infectious diseases, thinks the Government faces infrastructure challenges to try and meet it's vaccine target of 4 million doses by the end of June.

"It's a huge challenge to rollout five million vaccines, two doses, to a population like this, with a country that really has a poor infrastructure.

"We don't have a good infrastructure, in our communities we don't have lists, databases, this and that, there is a lot of impediment to a rapid vaccine rollout in Ireland," said Professor Lambert.

It comes as the head of the HSE has said the vaccines "are now protecting the most vulnerable" in nursing homes.

HSE chief executive Paul Reid said in the latest round of mass testing of residents, fewer than a dozen tested positive out of over 16,000.

Meanwhile, human rights activists have said the government should scrap plans it has to issue Covid-19 vaccine certs.

Previously, Tanaiste Leo Varadkar said it could be the way to let hospitality businesses and live arts events return sooner.

Liam Herrick, Executive Director of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, said there is a case for using proof of immunity to ensure people can cross international borders.

However he says demanding proof in the domestic economy will only lead to discrimination -- and erode trust in the vaccine programme.

"There's a wholly separate question about having access to goods and services within a country linked to possession of a digital cert.

"No European country has successfully introduced a system of this type so far and in our view, and in the view of privacy activists across Europe,

"We feel that such a measure will lead to discrimination, violations of digital privacy and will go against the principles of having a voluntary vaccine program.
Japan is deeply concerned about Chinas repeated incursion into the East Sea and Japanese-administered Senkaku islands in the East China Sea,

Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi told his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi during a telephone call on April 5.

Motegi also voiced his concern over Chinas new law that empowers coast guard vessels to fire on foreign flagged ships within maritime jurisdiction determined by China.



Earlier, at the annual meeting under the Maritime and Aerial Communication Mechanism between the two defence authorities in late March, a representative from Japan Defence Ministry raised his grave concern over the Chinese law as well as China increasing activities that escalate tensions in the waters.

A Vietnamese soldier guarding on Sinh Ton Dong Island. Photo: VNA



Many countries in the world have showed serious concerns over Chinas recent deployment of over 200 ships around Sinh Ton Island cluster in Vietnams Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelago and requested the country to immediately bring these vessels out of the area and end all provocations.



The Vietnamese Foreign Ministrys Spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang said that the operation of the Chinese ships within the territorial waters of Sinh Ton Dong Island in Truong Sa archipelago has violated Vietnams sovereignty and the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)s regulations on the operation of foreign vessels in the territorial waters of coastal nations, run counter to the spirit and content of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC), and complicated the situation which is unfavourable for the process of negotiations between ASEAN and China on a Code of Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (COC).

VNA

Canada opposes Chinese tension-escalating actions in East Sea Canada opposes recent actions taken by China in the East Sea, Canadian Ambassador to the Philippines Peter MacArthur said in a tweet, noting that such actions escalate tensions and undermine regional stability and the rules-based international order.
Lucknow, April 7 : Bahujan Samaj Party President Mayawati on Wednesday expressed concern over the violation of Covid safety protocols in election rallies.

In a tweet, she has urged the government and the people to ensure implementation of safety protocols during campaigning and in election rallies.

"The Central and the state governments as well as the public should take the increase in coronavirus cases in the country very seriously. But inaction towards violation of Covid protocol, especially in election rallies and road shows, is a matter of grave concern. It needs appropriate attention," she said.

The number of new coronavirus cases in India has hit a record daily high since the outbreak of the pandemic with over 1.15 lakh new infections being reported in a span of 24 hours, pushing the nationwide Covid-19 infection tally to 1,28,01,785.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
(Getty Images)

In remarks urging Congress into action, Joe Biden has pressed Republicans to support a sweeping infrastructure package, what he has called a once in a generation investment in Americans, as White House officials begin designing the contours of the $2 trillion proposal.

During an address to the nation aimed at lawmakers on Wednesday, the president said there is no time to lose on his American Jobs Plan.

But heres what we wont be open to, he said in remarks directed at GOP officials. We will not be open to doing nothing.

Inaction is simply not an option, he said.

Republicans have dismissed the plan as overly broad in their arguments over the semantics of traditional infrastructure, while administration officials and Democrats have pushed for nationwide improvements to roads and bridges, water systems, broadband internet access and supply-chain production, among other areas, while arguing for US manufacturing and innovation to keep up with competitors like China and the pace of the climate crisis and growing socioeconomic disparities.

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Mr Biden said its not rational for Republicans to narrowly define infrastructure plans in the face of urgent and evolving crises.

The idea of infrastructure has always evolved to meet the aspirations of the American people and their needs, and it is evolving again today, Mr Biden said. How many of you know when you send your child to school the fountain theyre drinking out of is not fed by lead pipe? How many of you know the school your child is in still has asbestos in the walls? Is that not infrastructure?

Story continues

Mr Bidens American Jobs Plan would raise $2.5 trillion over 15 years through a proposed tax plan that would ensure a foundation for the administrations sweeping infrastructure proposals while also closing loopholes and reforming other elements of the tax code that has allowed large companies to skirt or eliminate their liabilities.

The plan would raise the corporate tax rate to 28 per cent from its current 21 per cent  partially rolling back elements of Donald Trumps massive tax cuts in 2017, when the rate was 35 per cent.

Tax reform is not a zero-sum game, with corporations on one side and government on the other, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told reporters on Wednesday. There are policies that are mutually beneficial  Win-win is a very overused phrase, but we have a real one in front of us now.

She said Trump-era tax cuts created a race to the bottom on corporate taxes that have only encouraged US companies to move profits into offshore tax havens.

Mr Biden said his plan means companies are not going to be able to hide their income outside of the US.

Its just not fair, the president said in his remarks. Its not fair to the rest of the American taxpayers. Were going to try to put an end to this ... Im not trying to punish anybody, but dammit, maybe because I come from a middle-class neighborhood, Im sick and tired of ordinary people being fleeced.

Ms Yellen also criticised the former presidents tax cuts  embraced by GOP members of Congress  for their lack of investments in transportation and research and development.

The Treasury secretary said that the White House proposal will help America compete on our ability to produce talented workers, cutting-edge research and state-of-the art research  not on whether we have lower tax rates than Bermuda or Switzerland.

Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimond told reporters at the White House on Wednesday that there is not a shred of evidence that cuts in 2017 increased growth and productivity in the US.

She told Republican lawmakers and large companies with their ears to come to us and come up with a reasonable, responsible plan, not a wholesale rejection.

We have put forth a bold proposal and a reasonable way to pay for it, she said. If you dont like this, whats your idea?

Congressional Republicans  on the heels of their rejection of Mr Bidens widely popular $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan to combat the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic  have embroiled Democrats and media into a semantics debate, despite a majority of Americans supporting broad federal investments in infrastructure.

More follows...
Sex workers in a Brazilian city have gone on strike for a week, demanding to be included in the group of front-line workers receiving priority coronavirus vaccines.

Pandemic-related hotel closures in the southeastern city of Belo Horizonte have forced thousands of prostitutes to solicit for clients on the street, they say.

'We are in the front line, moving the economy and we are at risk,' Cida Vieira, president of the Association of Prostitutes of Mins Gerais state, told AFP news agency.

'We need to get vaccinated.'

Sex workers in a Brazilian city have gone on strike for a week, demanding to be included in the group of front-line workers receiving priority coronavirus vaccine. Pictured: Women hold signs saying: 'Health ministry please include us sex workers as a priority vaccine group' and 'Sex workers are a priority group'

Pandemic-related hotel closures in the southeastern city of Belo Horizonte have forced thousands of prostitutes to solicit for clients on the street, they say. Pictured: Sex workers protesting in Belo Horizonte on Monday

Vieira and other women held a protest on Monday in a street lined with shuttered hotels where they used to work, waving placards bearing messages like 'Sex workers are health professionals too' and 'Sex workers are a priority group.'

'We are part of the priority group because we deal with various types of people and our lives are at risk, said Lucimara Costa, one of the sex workers protesting.

'We are a priority group, we are health educators, peer educators. We form part of that group, since we give information about STIs for men, distribute condoms...' said Vieira.

The Brazilian government has prioritised health workers, teachers, the elderly, indigenous people and people with underlying health conditions for the first round of vaccinations. Pictured: A sex worker holds a sign saying: 'Sex workers are health professionals too' during a protest

The Brazilian government has prioritised health workers, teachers, the elderly, indigenous people and people with underlying health conditions for the first round of vaccinations.

It hopes to vaccinate these priority groups, some 77million people, in the first half of 2021, but experts say the process may drag into September due to a shortage of doses.

Like the rest of Brazil, Minas Gerais state has been battling a second pandemic wave, but the number of deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, at 121, is among the lowest in the country.

The Covid-19 pandemic has claimed more than 332,000 lives in Brazil, a toll second only to the United States.

On Tuesday, Brazil recorded 86,979 new cases. For the first time, more than 4,000 deaths were recorded in a single day with 4,195 reported.
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In order to avoid a rupture of U.S.-Saudi relations, President Biden refrained from including Mohammed bin Salman on the list of sanctioned Saudis after last months publication of the Director of National Intelligence report finding the crown prince had authorized the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018. What message does this policy send to their counterparts and prisoners of conscience in Saudi Arabia and neighboring autocracies? If autocrats cannot be held accountable for their repression of peaceful dissent, ask human rights advocates, whats the use of such dissent?

The administration argued it would use other economic, political and security means to curtail the crown princes ability to contact the White House directly whenever he wished. Biden has made it clear that his administration will deal with MBS only as the Saudi defense minister, despite the fact MBS remains the kingdoms de facto ruler.

This position sends the wrong message to peaceful protesters and pro-democracy advocates in Saudi Arabia. They are now questioning the meaning of Bidens America is Back phrase if human rights dont take center stage in his policy toward the kingdom. Resetting U.S.-Saudi relations will ring hollow, they say, if MBS believes he got a pass on Khashoggi. According to a former ambassador to the region, Bidens response to the intelligence report has made MBS a de facto pariah.

MBS has treated the people as subjects rather than citizens, expecting them to declare allegiance, but without the ability to hold him accountable. Like other autocrats, he has invoked the Islamic/tribal principle of baya, allegiance, but ignored the other part of this formula of governance, which is shura, or consultation. Unlike previous Saudi rulers, most who assumed the throne with the approval of senior members of the royal family according to acceptable succession traditions and rituals, MBS pushed himself to the apex of Saudi rule through economic largesse, and terror tactics against dissidents and perceived opponents and detractors within the upper echelons of the family.

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In addition, MBS has used sophisticated technologies and brutal operatives to track, capture and kill dissidents, domestically and internationally.

MBS has also perpetuated the impression in Saudi Arabia that his vicious attacks on dissidents have been tolerated by some powerful foreign leaders, including former President Trump. Some of these leaders, in fact, have been reluctant to criticize his actions publicly because of perceived economic, security, geopolitical or counterterrorism considerations. The more bedazzled MBS became by the Trump administrations support, the more power he sought within Saudi Arabia and the more brutal his methods became. His sycophantic media have even claimed that Bidens decision not to punish him amounted to an exoneration of his involvement in the murder.

Although Saudi public opinion polls and anecdotal reports have suggested MBS currently enjoys significant popularity among Saudi youth, he will have to deal with the rising poverty and unemployment among these same youth.

As millions of young Saudis are unemployed or underemployed, many of the pro-reform activists are beginning to highlight the need for jobs, new employment initiatives and entrepreneurial start-ups. Many Saudi college graduates, activists say, still live at home and rely on their parents for support because they are unemployed or underemployed. They cant get married or buy a house. What will the future of Saudi Arabia be if these conditions continue or deteriorate further?

Human rights and pro-reform activists in Saudi Arabia cannot hold public demonstrations freely, safely and without government repression. Regime security services frequently meet demonstrators with tear gas, beatings, deadly violence and arrests. Many are tried under anti-terrorism and anti-state laws. Pro-reform activists believe the intelligence report implicating MBS has neither deterred his behavior nor encouraged them to continue their human rights struggle.

If the Biden administration wants to put meat on the intelligence reports bones, it should devise a simple, two-pronged approach . MBS should be told peaceful protesters should be allowed to raise their public demands for human rights and democratic reform freely and without regime harassment. He should also earmark a national fund for private, youth-driven entrepreneurial start-ups.

Two lessons have emerged from the 2011 Arab Spring: first, demands by Arab youth for justice, dignity and democracy are enduring despite entrenched autocratic regimes; and, second, relying on dictators and autocrats is problematic for U.S. foreign policy in the long run. The Biden administration would do well to send a discreet message to some senior princes in the ruling family that it is not necessarily inevitable or desirable, from Washingtons perspective, that MBS will succeed his father to the throne. Continued Al Saud rule is not beholden to any one specific prince.

Emile Nakhleh is research professor and director of the Global and National Security Policy Institute at UNM and a former senior intelligence service officer at the CIA. A longer version was published on ResponsibleStatecraft.org
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 13:31:53|Editor: huaxia

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An injured man receives medical treatment at a local hospital in Jalalabad city, capital of Nangarhar province, Afghanistan, April 7, 2021. At least two civilians were killed as well as 15 other civilians and three police officers wounded in a roadside bomb explosion in Jalalabad city, capital of Afghanistan's eastern Nangarhar province on Wednesday, a local source said. The blast occurred when an improvised bomb planted on road traffic divider was detonated via a time device in Police District 2, roughly at 6:00 a.m. local time, the source told Xinhua anonymously. (Photo by Saifurahman Safi/Xinhua)

JALALABAD, Afghanistan, April 7 (Xinhua) -- At least two civilians were killed as well as 15 other civilians and three police officers wounded in a roadside bomb explosion in Jalalabad city, capital of Afghanistan's eastern Nangarhar province on Wednesday, a local source said.

The blast occurred when an improvised bomb planted on road traffic divider was detonated via a time device in Police District 2, roughly at 6:00 a.m. local time, the source told Xinhua anonymously.

The wounded were transported to a regional hospital in Jalalabad. A police pick-up truck driving along the road was the most likely target of the bomb, the source said.

Mansoor Shahghali from the regional hospital told Xinhua that the death toll might rise as four of the wounded people were in critical condition.

No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack. Afghan military officials have often blamed the Taliban militants for similar attacks.

The province has been the scene of heavy clashes between security forces and Taliban militants in recent years. Enditem
The Arkansas General Assembly passed a bill protecting minors from gender transition surgery as well as hormones and puberty-blockers. Governor Asa Hutchinson, a solid conservative, vetoed the bill. On Tuesday, the Arkansas General Assembly overrode the veto, making it the first state in the Union to ban the procedures for children. Tuesday night, Hutchinson appeared on Tucker Carlson's show to defend his original veto. What interested me most was Hutchinson's erroneous belief that there's any science behind the existing "treatments" for transgenderism.

Tucker and Hutchinson both staked out their territory: Hutchinson insisted that it's conservative to stay out of family decisions. Tucker pointed out that conservatives' laissez-faire attitude always yields when it comes to children's well-being. Hutchinson countered that transgender treatment decisions are made with the family's consent, which is what's required for other laws protecting children (tattoos, piercings, youthful marriages, etc.). Tucker countered that chemical sterilization is more extreme than a tattoo.

Things got interesting when actual science came up. Tucker wanted Hutchinson to recite chapter and verse supporting his contention that these procedures are medically necessary for kids because they will make these children less likely to engage in self-harm, including suicide. Hutchinson, rather than referring to a specific study, cited a range of materials he'd read:

CARLSON: You said you're familiar with the studies. No one disputes that children who are asking for puberty blocking drugs ... may be depressed that seems very likely. I think the studies show it. Cite one specific study that shows puberty blocking drugs improves the condition. Does it make children less depressed? Does it make them less likely to harm themselves [or] to commit suicide? Just name one study that shows that, please. HUTCHINSON: Well, I would refer you to the American Academy of Pediatrics. I would refer you to ... the physicians that came out in opposition to this bill because they understood the risk to these young people and if you prohibit the medical care that this bill prohibits then you're going to endanger these young people even further.

That mention of the American Academy of Pediatrics is the one that should rivet everyone's attention. Less than two years ago, I did something no one else seems to have done, which is to look at the literature in the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the foremost medical pediatric association in America, and one that's totally on board with woke transgenderism.

I learned something interesting: there's no science behind the entire treatment philosophy for so-called "transgender" children. Instead, everything accepts the premise that there's a difference between sex and gender that requires hormonal and surgical intervention to "treat."

I started with the September 2018 policy statement, which is still the Academy's policy statement today. (At the time of its publication, the AAP announced that it was its policy statement.) The lead author, Jason Richard Rafferty, M.D., MPH, Ed.M., FAAP, makes his living encouraging young people to live their transgender dream.

The policy statement says nothing about whether so-called transgenderism is (1) a biological issue requiring surgery and drugs intended to harmonize body with mind or (2) a form of body dysmorphia, a mental illness the treatments for which would include psychiatric intervention and drugs intended to harmonize mind with body. It simply presents the former as a given, jumbling homosexuality and bisexuality, which are both sexual preferences, with transgenderism, which, like anorexia, is a form of body dysmorphia.

As you keep reading, you'll discover that at no point does the article ever address why or how gender identity overrides biological sex. It's just woke language in scientific clothes. Indeed, rather than referring to actual studies proving that transgenderism is a provable phenomenon, the policy statement offers this:

For more information, The Gender Book, found at www.thegenderbook.com, is a resource with illustrations that are used to highlight these core terms and concepts.

The Gender Book turns out to be a "fun education resource," written by three transgender people, none of whom is a scientist or physician.

Read on, and you'll discover that the AAP dedicates itself to reinforcing gender dysmorphia rather than showing any interest in its physical origin or in treatment alternatives  the exact opposite of how anorexia is treated. (You can read more about the AAP's circular reasoning here.)

I've long said the logical way to treat people who claim to be at odds with their bodies is to give them hormones compatible with their biological sex rather than giving them hormones that cause sterility, cancer, and heart disease, followed by mutilating surgery. That's what the body wants. It turns out that bodies subjected to these treatments try desperately to offset the prescribed hormones with the body's own hormones.

Poor Governor Hutchinson. He thought he was acting on the science when he vetoed that bill, but the reality is that he was given a bottle of snake oil.

Image: Drag kid (cropped) by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
Florida state lawmakers remain set on trying to gut a beloved higher education scholarship despite making some initial concessions and facing significant backlash from students and parents.

More than 110,000 college students received the merit-based Bright Futures scholarship in 2020, but that number might have been significantly reduced after Republican state Sen. Dennis Baxley introduced Senate Bill 86. His proposal initially said only students going into fields he believes would yield high-paying jobs could receive the award, which pays between 75 and 100 percent of in-state tuition at public and private universities.

If passed in its initial form, SB 86 would have left out students who wanted to study history, arts or English, with no money for a scholarship that has been part of Floridas higher education system since the 1990s. Students felt like they were about to be forced to choose between scholarship money and their academic interests.

It was devastating, high school student Alexandro Valdez, 16, said of the proposal. A politician was saying my dreams werent worth funding.

The merit-based scholarship uses money from the state lottery and is awarded to high-achieving students based on a combination of high school credits, standardized test scores, volunteer hours and GPA thresholds. Since 1997, that state has doled out $6.8 billion in tuition to more than 2.8 million students. But the first proposed cuts didn't stop at the restrictions on majors  SB 86 also would have reduced aid given to students who had already taken college or Advanced Placement courses in high school, and would have reduced the amount awarded to those who had certain other scholarships.

Valdez was not alone in his ire. Students, parents, arts groups and others said SB 86 would ruin a program that makes in some cases, out of reach educational opportunities available to the states best students. Students currently in the program said they were blindsided, as did high schoolers who had been planning their entire secondary education around the scholarship.

If our education is being messed with, our thoughts and input should be in consideration, Valdez said.

He and a group of teenagers from Orlando and Tallahassee jumped into action. They created a website, Save Bright Futures that provided information on what was happening and how they could help. Annotating the bill to make it accessible to a broader audience, they laid out the ramifications and encouraged fellow Floridians to sign petitions, call representatives, and go to the Senate hearings and testify.

Kaylee Duong, 18, who helped organize the Save Bright Futures campaign, said the proposed changes put her in a tough spot. A senior, Duong is currently trying to decide where to go to college. Both her older brothers were recipients of the scholarship and as she went through middle and high school, her family made sure she was getting all the requirements in place so she could receive it too. SB 86 made Duong more seriously consider out-of-state colleges, where she thought her financial aid might be more stable.

Its safe to say if this wasnt happening, it would be a much easier choice and I would probably attend in-state, she said. Not lost on Duong is part of the point of Bright Futures is to prevent brain drain and keep the states smartest students home.

One of Duongs fellow organizers, Lorenzo Urayan, who wants to go to art school, grew concerned he wouldnt be able to afford college unless he studied something state legislators deemed more practical under the proposed changes.

I think both STEM and the humanities are important, Urayan, 17, said. Its not fair for politicians to decide what you should study.

In his letter to fellow state senators in March announcing the withdrawal of some of the most controversial changes, Baxley acknowledged the significant backlash, writing We have awakened a giant.

High school students Heesu Seo, Thomas Truong, Alexandro Valdez and Shaheer Ali (Courtesy Shaheer Ali)

More challenges ahead

While Baxleys partial withdrawal was win for students who wanted to study the humanities, advocates and other lawmakers say the fight is ongoing.

Its still not a good bill, said Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat who was a recipient of the Bright Futures scholarship when she was in college.

Some lawmakers in the House are now proposing a cut to the textbook stipend in the scholarship, which would save $37 million.

"Students who need that textbook stipend deserve that access," Eskamani said.

On Wednesday, SB 86 will get another reading in the state senate, this time regarding the source of its funding. Lawmakers now want to fund the scholarship through the state's budget instead of the lottery, which means the amount of money that goes towards the program would change from year to year. Many advocates see this as a way to almost completely defund the scholarship, and middle class families worry they will be left without the best option to try to get their child a quality and affordable education without being totally saddled in student debt.

"Were just being truthful with them, that it depends on our financial status as to how much we can pay, Baxley said at a hearing last week. But many remain skeptical because there is not currently a dearth of funding from the lottery. Activist say Republicans like Baxley want to use the lottery money for policies that more closely align with their agenda.

If the funding changes, students say they will be left in limbo, unsure how much money they will be receiving year-to-year and if they can return to college.

An imperfect good

The program itself isnt perfect either.

Black students make up more than 21 percent of Floridas K-12 student population, but only 6 percent of Bright Futures recipients are Black. And while white students comprise 36 percent of total students, they have amounted to more than half of the scholarships recipients every year since the programs inception.

Scholars have found that state-provided merit aid can often give money to already-advantaged students, and is not focused on improving access for underprivileged students, said Justin Ortagus, director of the Institute of Higher Education at the University of Floridas College of Education.

Ortagus, who was a recipient of the scholarship himself, said that doesnt mean merit aid programs arent successful at their intended purpose.

We have to be honest about what we are prioritizing, and merit aid is not the mechanism to close equity gaps, he said. A program like Bright Futures makes a lot of sense for the state because its goals are to keep the states best and brightest at home so they can contribute to the local economy and increase the prestige of local institutions, Ortagus said.

While the program doesnt explicitly aim to help low-income students, it does end up helping many, including Ortagus, who grew up low-income and went to the school where he now teaches with 100 percent of his tuition covered.

SB 86, he suspects, would only exacerbate inequality that is already endemic to many merit aid programs.

The students who helped fight to save the scholarship from the first iteration of proposed cuts said they know its not perfect, and that the experience successfully lobbying the state Legislature to save Bright Futures has emboldened them to continue advocating for more equitable higher education in Florida

Bright futures has always disproportionately had less Black and brown recipients because of the SAT requirement, said Thomas Truong, an 16-year-old organizer with Save Bright Futures. What this would have done is restrict it even more for minorities.

We want education to be accessible to everyone, he said. Now, as more changes are proposed, he and his peers know they can use their voices to continue advocating for the program.
Pennsylvania, with 5.8 million vaccinations given, has moved up to 11th in the U.S. for its percentage of residents who have received at least a first dose.

Meanwhile, the state said Wednesday 2,384 people are hospitalized with COVID-19. Thats nearly 1,000 more than mid-March, when hospitalizations fell as low as 1,433.

Of those, 446 are in intensive care, about 200 more than in mid-March.

The state on Wednesday also reported 4,643 new COVID-19 infections, up slightly from the 4,557 reported last Wednesday. It reported 48 new deaths, raising the total to 25,285.

Pennsylvania has given at least a first dose of vaccine to 35.4% of its eligible population, the state said in its daily update.

About 2.1 million people are considered fully vaccinated, meaning they received the two doses needed for full protection, or received the vaccine which requires only one dose.

Pennsylvania this week will receive 442,310 doses to be given as first doses, and 268,010 does to be given as second doses.

The state for the past week is averaging about 86,000 shots per day.
The vaccine against coronavirus (COVID-19) may appear on the commercial market of Ukraine later than expected, Head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Public Health, Medical Assistance and Medical Insurance Mykhailo Radutsky said.

"The minister [Minister of Health Maksym Stepanov] said that not earlier than summer, but I think that later. So far, manufacturers [of vaccines] have officially announced that they trade only with states. Having experience in the private medical business, I do not understand how the vaccine can appear on the private medical market," he told Interfax-Ukraine.

According to Radutsky, "there are a million people who want to import a vaccine for their money and start vaccinating in private clinics, but these attempts end in nothing, because all manufacturers ask for a letter from the government, and the government of Ukraine, like any other government, will not give such a letter."

At the same time, he said: "The number of vaccines that Ukraine has contracted is enough to meet the needs of the population."
"We are thrilled that Sales Partnership has decided to recognize those not only who succeed in sales at their organization, but who do so in a particularly ethical manner," said President of the Stevie Awards, Maggie Gallagher.

Winners of the 2021 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service were announced in February, but winners of one special category, sponsored by longtime Stevie Awards sponsor Sales Partnerships, were just announced.

The Sales Partnerships Ethics in Sales Award recognizes organizations for best practices and achievements in demonstrating the highest ethical standards in the sales industry. Entrants could submit specific examples, case studies, practices, etc, illustrating why the nominated organization should be considered an excellent example of best practices in sales. This award was based on accomplishments beginning on January 1, 2020.

The team at Sales Partnerships reviewed the nominations in this category and chose three winners based on their ethical sales practices. The three Stevie Award winners are:



GOLD STEVIE WINNER: Groove, San Francisco, CA

SILVER STEVIE WINNER: Wesley Financial, Franklin, TN

BRONZE STEVIE WINNER: One Vision Productions, Tucker, GA

Sales Partnerships, Inc., which provides turnkey, outsourced selling solutions, is a sponsor of the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service program for the fifth consecutive year.

President of the Stevie Awards, Maggie Gallagher, is looking forward to having the longtime Stevie Awards sponsor present this award virtually on April 14. We are thrilled that Sales Partnership has decided to recognize those not only who succeed in sales at their organization, but who do so in a particularly ethical manner. The judges were very impressed by the sales leaders in a wide variety of industries. The best performing sales forces are also uncompromising on selling ethically. We congratulate all of the 2021 Stevie winners.

About the Stevie Awards

Stevie Awards are conferred in eight programs: the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards, the German Stevie Awards, The American Business Awards, The International Business Awards, the Middle East Stevie Awards, the Stevie Awards for Great Employers, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business and the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Stevie Awards competitions receive more than 12,000 entries each year from organizations in more than 70 nations. Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Learn more about the Stevie Awards at http://www.StevieAwards.com.

Sponsors and supporters of the 15th annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service include Sales Partnerships, Inc. and ValueSelling Associates, Inc.


Solomon Islands vendors warn high market fees forcing fishermen to the reef

April 07,2021 | Source: RNZ

High market fees imposed on tuna vendors in the Solomon Islands are forcing more fishermen to revisit their coastal fishing grounds.



Vendors warn this has also led to unsustainable tuna fishing in the Western Province of the country.



The province's Gizo Fish Market is normally restocked with fish daily as people from communities take turn to sell their fish.



This usually makes it easy to control the price of fish at the market.



But tuna vendors want the authorities to explain why they have to pay $US2.51 to sell their catch at the Gizo market while those selling reef fish are charged US62cents.



Tuna vendors said they were concerned because they spend more money and risk their lives to travel out in the open waters to fish.



This has raised a feud among the tuna fish sellers in recent times.



Namu Avo is from the Babanga community, outside Gizo Island. She is a frequent vendor at the Gizo market and one of those who has questioned the fee differences.



Avo said she felt disappointed with how the authorities were charging the fees for fish vendors at the market.



She said the difference of $US1.88 was expensive for tuna vendors, who had put more effort, time and money to fish tuna.



She said sometimes vendors returned with "few tuna, maybe less than 20", and they really needed to sell them out to repay the expenses incurred on the fishing trip.



But they still charged the vendors the same amount of fee and this was unfair, Avo said.



Avo and other tuna vendors at the Gizo market agreed the authorities needed to consider the challenges and expenses they endured to bring fresh tuna to the market.



Avo said many of them had to wake as early as 2am to prepare before heading out to various fish-aggregating devices (FADs) to fish.



According to Pacnews, Wesley Misu a fisherman and vendor from the Titiana Community outside Gizo, said the trip to reach the FADs could take up to five hours.



Travelling out into the open seas in search of various FAD devices is very difficult and dangerous, and expensive, Misu said.



The weather, he said, could be unpredictable and fishers had to take extra precaution.



Fishermen sometimes had to cancel their fishing trips when there was no fuel or when the weather was severe, Misu said.



Avo also said that fishing was a challenge for tuna fishers as they were not certain their catch would be 'completely sold'.



She said reef fish sellers only took advantage of the reefs and didn't spend much money to fish for tuna as they had exploited the nearby reefs.



Avo said the Gizo Fish Market was supposed to make selling fair to all, so that communities near Gizo could sell their fish each day.



Each market day allowed vendors from two communities, including Titiana, Nusa Baruku, Babanga, and Saeragi, she said.



Avo said as a community, vendors had to take turns to sell their catch at the market.



But she said many vendors at the Gizo market were not unsupportive of this arrangement.



Avo said she had found out that fish vendors at the Noro market were charged $US62cents regardless of being a reef fish or a tuna vendor.



However she said competition was not high at Noro Market as it was at Gizo.



It was lessened because the National Fisheries Development unloaded most of its catch to the SolTuna cannery there, Avo said.



She said at Babanga there were a lot of boats and that nearly all families on the island went out to fish, as it was their only means of survival.



She said the competition at the Gizo market could get high when other fishers or vendors arrived with high fish quantity.



And when they started dropping their prices, others had no option but to do the same, she said.



Avo said there was no understanding between the tuna vendors at the market.



She warned such situations would force fish prices to drop to as low as $US1.25 and this did not cover the expenses incurred to travel out to fish in the open seas.

 Radio New Zealand 2021

Theme(s): Others.
WALKER, MI -- Witnesses told police they heard a panicked 16-year-old say I shot him not long before police found a 43-year-old Walker man dead in a back yard.

Marshall Rylee Mansfield was arraigned Monday, April 5 on charges of open murder and felony firearm in the death of Damone Hammock three days earlier. He is charged as an adult.

A judge ordered Mansfield held at the Kent County Jail, but in a separate area than the general population.

Related: Police identify victim of fatal shooting in Walker, arrest teen suspect

A probable cause affidavit filed at Walker District Court offered new details about the moments immediately before and after the shooting at 906 Cedar Run Court, a four-unit building.

Walker police responded to the area about 4:50 p.m. April 2 on a report of a large fight and shots fired. Officers arrived to find Hammock dead in the the back yard.

Police interviewed witnesses who gave incriminating statements about Mansfield.

Several witnesses told police they saw Mansfield running after Hammock toward the back yard. After they heard a gunshot, they saw Marshall walking from behind the house, crying and in a panic state, according to the affidavit.

Witnesses said they also heard Marshall making statements I shot him, I got to get out of here, and what did I do, an officer wrote in the affidavit.

Another person also told police he saw Mansfield placing a gun in his waistband near the small of his back while emerging from the back yard.

Later, apparently after Mansfields mother arrived at the scene and she was allowed to speak with him, officers overheard him make more incriminating statements.

According to the affidavit, the officers twice heard him tell his mother that I did it.

Police have not discussed an exact motive for the shooting, other than it was preceded by a fight.

Mansfield is expected back in court April 13 for a probable cause hearing, followed by a preliminary exam scheduled a week later.

More from MLive

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The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said Wednesday it has found a possible link between the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine and rare cases of blood system blockages, known as blood clots.

The EMA announcement is the latest setback for a low-cost vaccine that was once called a vaccine for the world. The AstraZeneca vaccine has been approved for emergency use in over 100 countries including Britain and the European Union. The vaccine is also a large part of the United Nations COVAX program to provide COVID-19 vaccines to poorer countries.

The agency advised that blood system blockages should be listed as side effects of the vaccine. It said women under the age of 60 represent most of the cases of blood clots reported so far. The problems, the agency said, happened within two weeks of vaccination. The EMA said it was not possible to identify specific risk factors.

EMA chief Emer Cooke spoke to reporters Wednesday. She said the risk of death from COVID is much greater than the risk of death from these side effects.

The EMA and the World Health Organization have said repeatedly that the AstraZeneca vaccine is safe and effective.

Setbacks from the start

Early in the pandemic, the AstraZeneca vaccine, developed with Britains University of Oxford, was considered a leading candidate against the coronavirus. It costs much less than other vaccines. It also does not require extreme cold storage, making it easier to use in countries with limited resources.

Last September, the company temporarily suspended the trials of the vaccine after a volunteer in Britain developed inflammation in her spine. It was later found to be unrelated to the vaccine but led to a long delay in the United States.

In March, about 13 European countries suspended their use of AstraZeneca vaccine after reports of possible blood clots linked to the shot. Most restarted with some age restrictions after the EMA said countries should continue to use the vaccine.

A week later, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a U.S. health agency, released an unusual statement saying that AstraZeneca might have included outdated information from that trial, which may have provided an incomplete view of the efficacy data.

On Wednesday, the Reuters news agency reported that EU health ministers planned to meet after the EMAs announcement.

Even officials in Asia said they were waiting to hear the EMAs decision. South Korea had temporarily suspended the use of AstraZenecas vaccine in people 60 and younger. The countrys health officials said Wednesday that they would also pause a plan to vaccinate teachers that was to begin on Thursday, while awaiting the results of the EMAs review.

Dr. Peter English was a former head of the British Medical Associations Public Health Medicine Committee. He said questions over the vaccine could have serious consequences around the world.

English told the Associated Press, We cant afford not to use this vaccine if we are going to end the pandemic.

I'm Caty Weaver.

Hai Do wrote this story for Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor.

_______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

setback - n. a problem that makes progress more difficult

specific - adj. precise or exact

factor - n. one of the thing that causes something to happen

inflammation - n. a condition in which a part of your body becomes, red, swollen and painful
Amnesty International says some measures to tackle the coronavirus pandemic have aggravated existing patterns of abuses and inequalities in Europe and Central Asia, where a number of governments used the crisis as a smokescreen for power grabs, clampdowns on freedoms, and a pretext to ignore human rights obligations.



Government responses to COVID-19 exposed the human cost of social exclusion, inequality, and state overreach, the London-based watchdog said in its annual report released on April 7.



According to the report -- titled The State of the World's Human Rights -- close to half of all countries in the region have imposed states of emergency related to COVID-19, with governments restricting rights such as freedom of movement, expression, and peaceful assembly.

In Russia and in much of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, violations of the right to a fair trial remained widespread.

The enforcement of lockdowns and other public health measures disproportionately hit marginalized individuals and groups who were targeted with violence, identity checks, quarantines, and fines.



Roma and people on the move, including refugees and asylum seekers, were placed under discriminatory forced quarantines in Bulgaria, Cyprus, France, Greece, Hungary, Russia, Serbia, and Slovakia.



Law enforcement officials unlawfully used force along with other violations in Belgium, France, Georgia, Greece, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Poland, Romania, and Spain.



In Azerbaijan, arrests on politically motivated charges intensified under the pretext of containing the pandemic.



In countries where freedoms were already severely circumscribed, last year saw further restrictions.



Russian authorities moved beyond organizations, stigmatizing individuals also as foreign agents and clamped down further on single-person pickets.



Meanwhile, authorities in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan adopted or proposed new restrictive laws on assembly.

Belarusian police responded to mass protests triggered by allegations of election fraud with massive and unprecedented violence, torture, and other ill-treatment.



Independent voices were brutally suppressed as arbitrary arrests, politically motivated prosecutions, and other reprisals escalated against opposition candidates and their supporters, political and civil society activists, and independent media, the report said.

Subscribe To RFE/RL's Watchdog Report Watchdog is our curated digest of human rights, media freedom, and democracy developments from RFE/RL's vast broadcast region. In your in-box every Thursday. Subscribe here.

Across the region, governments in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, France, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan misused existing and new legislation to curtail freedom of expression.



Governments also took insufficient measures to protect journalists and whistle-blowers, including health workers, and sometimes targeted those who criticized government responses to the pandemic. This was the case in Albania, Armenia, Belarus, Bosnia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.



In Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, medical workers did not dare speak out against already egregious freedom-of-expression restrictions.

Erosion Of Judicial Independence

Amnesty International said that governments in Poland, Hungary, Turkey, and elsewhere continued to take steps in 2020 that eroded the independence of the judiciary. This included disciplining judges or interfering with their appointments for demonstrating independence, criticizing the authorities, or passing judgments that went against the wishes of the government.



In Russia and in much of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, violations of the right to a fair trial remained widespread and the authorities cited the pandemic to deny detainees' meetings with lawyers and prohibit public observation of trials.



In Belarus, all semblance of adherence to the right to a fair trial and accountability was eroded.



Not only were killings and torture of peaceful protesters not investigated, but authorities made every effort to halt or obstruct attempts by victims of violations to file complaints against perpetrators, the report said.

Human Rights In Conflict Zones

According to Amnesty International, conflicts in countries that made up the former Soviet Union continued to hold back human development and regional cooperation.



In Georgia, Russia, and the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia continued to restrict freedom of movement with the rest of the county, including through the further installation of physical barriers.



The de facto authorities in Moldovas breakaway Transdniester region introduced restrictions on travel from government-controlled territory, which affected medical provisions to the local population.



And in eastern Ukraine, both Ukrainian government forces and Russia-backed separatists also imposed restrictions on travel across the contact line, with scores of people suffering lack of access to health care, pensions, and workplaces.



Last falls armed conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan resulted in more than 5,000 deaths and saw all sides using cluster munitions banned under international humanitarian law, as well as heavy explosive weapons with wide-area effects in densely populated civilian areas.



Both Azerbaijani and Armenian forces also committed war crimes including extrajudicial execution, torture of captives, and desecration of corpses of opposing forces.

Shrinking Of Human Rights Defenders' Space

Amnesty Internationals report said some governments in Europe and Central Asia further limited the space for human rights defenders and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) through restrictive laws and policies, and stigmatizing rhetoric.



This thinned the ranks of civil society through financial attrition, as funding streams from individuals, foundations, businesses, and governments dried up as a consequence of COVID-19-related economic hardship.



The Kazakh and Russian governments continued moves to silence NGOs through smear campaigns.



Authorities in Kazakhstan threatened over a dozen human rights NGOs with suspension based on alleged reporting violations around foreign income.



Peaceful protesters, human rights defenders, and civic and political activists in Russia faced arrests and prosecution.



In Kyrgyzstan, proposed amendments to NGO legislation created onerous financial reporting requirements, while restrictive new NGO legislation was mooted in Bulgaria, Greece, Poland, and Serbia.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI  A collaboration between two of the large health systems in West Michigan is set to offer the regions second open-heart surgery program.

Approved by state regulators, the collaborative effort between Metro Health  University of Michigan Health and Mercy Health is designed to expand cardiovascular care in West Michigan. Grand Rapids-based Spectrum Health currently operates the only open-heart surgery program in the region.

The plan calls for the new collaborative program to open at Metro Healths hospital in Wyoming. In the future, they would plan to open a dedicated facility, according to a press release from Mercy Health and Metro Health.

The network primarily centers around Metro Health  University of Michigan Health, Mercy Health Saint Marys and Mercy Health Muskegon collaborating on local care while receiving support from Michigan Medicines Frankel Cardiovascular Center, based in Ann Arbor.

Dr. Matthew Biersack, interim president and chief medical officer of Mercy Health Saint Marys, said the network expands on previous cardiovascular collaboration in a way that provides more offerings that each individual location could not provide on its own.

The network of health systems offers us the opportunity in a collaborative way to build a world-class cardiovascular program here in West Michigan, because thats really what the residents of West Michigan deserve, Biersack said. They deserve that, that access to high quality services, and they deserve that choice when it comes to additional expertise within cardiovascular care.

The network was approved March 25 by state legislators and will continually roll out into the year, said Dr. Ronald Grifka, chief medical officer of Metro Health  University of Michigan Health.

He said that the Grand Rapids area was specifically chosen because it is the largest market in Michigan with only one open-heart program. The partnership also allows for the expansion of services such as clinical trials and new treatments in the systems Ann Arbor hubs.

With the great research experience that the University of Michigan has complied with the clinical trials, to be able to bring that to the patient in West Michigan -- which would have been very difficult for many of them to make over to Ann Arbor for frequent tests, visits -- to bring that here directly and keep them local is really just a tremendous opportunity for all the West Michigan.

This network, Grifka said, was modeled after the Cancer Network of West Michigan, which was announced in January 2020 to unite Mercy Healths and Metro Healths oncology. He also said that throughout the pandemic, working collegially with other health systems has proven beneficial, so continuing those efforts to combat another major sector in cardiology felt natural.

Its really from that (Cancer Network) experience that were able to transfer that to this cardiovascular collaborative, Grifka said. I think were having really tremendous discussions and collaboration between all three institutions and it really is exciting to see what we can do working together, as opposed to all three of us kind of butting heads and trying to one-up each other.

The new Cardiovascular Network of West Michigan will provide services such as coronary artery bypass surgery, cardiac valve repair or replacement, and repair for birth defects of the heart.

Spectrum Health runs its open-heart surgery program out of the Meijer Heart Center, which opened in 2004.

In a statement to MLive, Spectrum Health highlighted its commitment to cardiovascular care between its regional tenure and establishment of its Meijer Heart Center.

Spectrum Health said in the prepared statement that heart surgery patients have been and will continue to be a priority for Spectrum Health.

Any new heart services in our region should be focused on quality tied to volumes as many studies have established that a high volume of procedures is essential to achieving high quality outcomes and controlling costs, according to the statement. Spectrum Healths cardiovascular team performs more CABG (Coronary Artery Bypass Graft) surgeries than any other facility in Michigan, which contributes substantially to our ability to keep quality high and costs affordable.

Keith Dickey, Michigan Medicines chief strategy officer, said that the entry of the Cardiovascular Network of West Michigan into the open-heart program space will encourage competition that will actually drive prices down and push all systems to refine their approaches.

Spectrum has a very strong program in Grand Rapids, and we have a lot of respect for it and they provide great care, Dickey said. But I think we all know that competition raises everybodys game. So I think we will, as a result of this, see greater capabilities, greater service, greater outcomes, and greater patient experience, as we compete head-to-head for cardiovascular patients in that market.

Grifka agreed, adding that the collective volume of patients between the networks members will only increase the quality of care and allow for more diversity in treatment options.

Things are heading in a great direction, Grifka said. We hope this may be the start of a new mentality in healthcare really about whats best for the patient, not necessarily for one institution.

Mercy Health and Metro Health are working to finalize the agreement setting up the new network for cardiovascular care. The health systems expect the agreement to be finalized within the next several months.

Officials from Metro Health and Mercy Health said in the press release that no staff reductions will take place as a result of this collaborative agreement.

Read more:

Whitmer on CNN: Michigan could shed COVID-19 restrictions, fully reopen this summer

Long Covid continues to stump doctors and exhaust those fighting months-long battles

I shot him, 16-year-old heard saying after Walker man killed in backyard
A DRUGS trade gilly was once convicted of taking part in the kidnapping and torture of a friend who was then killed by his father, a court heard.

Scott Knight (47), who was caught running a cannabis delivery service during the pandemic, had never recovered from his experience of being coerced by his father into his friends torture.

Knight had served a sentence for being an accessory, while his father had been convicted of murder, Dublin District Court was told.

The details of Knight's criminal past emerged when he pleaded guilty to sale or supply of cannabis in the capital last week. Knight, of MacUilliam Avenue, Tallaght, had the drug dealing case adjourned, for a probation report.

The prosecuting garda told Judge Mary Cashin he stopped the accused in a black Ford Fiesta at 5.05pm on March 31. He got a smell of cannabis and told Knight he would search him under the Misuse of Drugs Act.

The accused immediately took out bags of cannabis that he had concealed in his trousers. The drugs had a street value of 650 and he did not attempt to obstruct the garda in any way, shape or form, the court heard.

He was honest from the get go and it was accepted he was not selling it to profit for himself but was operating a supply delivery service, the garda said.

Knight did not have any trappings of wealth, his solicitor Robert Purcell said.

The court heard the accused had previous convictions for sale supply, or importing drugs abroad. The offences happened in the UK, Belgium and Germany.

You have a well-travelled client, the judge said.

The foreign offences happened when Knight was given a small amount of money to carry drugs across a border. He was a gilly and the one who gets caught, Mr Purcell said.

In the latest offence, he was arrested on his birthday and detained overnight before immediately entering a plea.

Mr Purcell said the accuseds criminal record resulted from something that happened to him in his early adulthood which he never really recovered from.

Knight was brought into a life of crime by his father, he said. The father was convicted of murdering Knights friend and Knight himself was also initially convicted of that crime.

However this was later quashed on appeal, he pleaded guilty to being an accessory and was jailed for 15 years.

Knight had been coerced by his father into the kidnapping and torture of his friend, who was killed by his father, Mr Purcell said.

Knight had never really recovered from his coerced involvement in this and his life since had been a sequence of drug use.

After his release from prison, his circumstances had been poor, he had a cocaine habit and was delivering small amounts of drugs during the pandemic. He did everything he could to assist the gardai when stopped.

Judge Cashin adjourned the case.




New Delhi, April 7 : The Haryana government has unleashed a barrage of allegations against Delhi Jal Board (DJB) in an affidavit in Supreme Court. The affidavit was filed in response to a petition filed by the Delhi Jal Board against the Haryana government seeking to stop discharge of untreated pollutants, high ammonia, into the Yamuna river. The DJB also sought sufficient water supply for the capital, amid the ongoing summer season when water demand peaks, from the Haryana government.

"The state of Haryana is taking all possible and permissible steps to curb the pollution in the river water. However, the situation is the other way round as Delhi causes 79% of pollution in the water of river Yamuna", said the Haryana government in the affidavit.

The sampling of water of river Yamuna was conducted by the Central Pollution Control Board during January 7-13, 2021, in which it found that ammonical nitrogen rises sharply from the Delhi contact point at Palla at Wazirabad. This indicates unauthorised discharges between Palla and Wazirabad and rising-up of ammonical nitrogen from sediments deposition at Wazirabad pond.

The affidavit said the rising sediment deposition at Wazirabad pond which supplies water to south, west, north and central Delhi is also responsible for the rising of ammonia nitrogen. "The DJB, instead of improving its capacity to treat the increased permissible limits of ammonical nitrogen in the river water, raises a hue and cry if the river water at Yamuna contains the ammonical nitrogen level just above 0.8 PPM stating that their plant at Wazirabad cannot treat the water if the ammonical nitrogen is more than 0.8 PPM," added the affidavit.

On the aspect of depleting water levels at the Wazirabad barrage, the affidavit said Haryana is constantly supplying the raw water to Delhi through the Carrier Lined Channel (CLC) and Delhi Sub-branch canal and Haryana has no control in management and utilisation of the water in Delhi.

The Haryana government said it is not responsible for any depletion in the pond level at Wazirabad as claimed by the DJB. "It is further submitted that natural inflows and river generation accrued up to Wazirabad is to be utilised at Wazirabad pond for Wazirabad and Chandrawal WTPs (water treatment plants), but this natural regeneration has been disturbed by DJB by installing shallow tubewells and rannywells on the river bed between Pall and Wazirabad. It causes depletion in the pond level due to less availability of water in the river", said the affidavit.

Haryana said it is facing a water shortage and rejected the plea for extra/additional water saying, as sufficient quantity was supplied to Delhi. "Water shortage is due to their (Delhi's) own mismanagement and not because of any action or inaction on the part of the state of Haryana", said the affidavit.

The affidavit also cited the Economic Survey of Delhi, which categorically observed Delhi is wasting water to the extent of 40 per cent. "Depletion of water level at Wazirabad barrage is because of the diversion of the water by Delhi Jal Board for which they themselves are responsible. This situation of depletion of water was created by DJB with their ulterior motives", said the affidavit.

The overall availability of water in the river Yamuna, this year, and Tajewala/Hathnikund barrage as well as the Bhakra dam has been reduced to alarming levels by 20-40 percent. Also, the inflow of Yamuna has reduced to 1,300 cusecs this year.

The DJB had expressed concern over high ammonia levels in the Yamuna and added that it is facing a shortage of raw water supply from neighbouring Haryana. The DJB moved the Supreme Court to avert a "severe water crisis" in the city. The top court has scheduled the matter for further hearing on April 14.
New strains of the novel coronavirus are spreading quickly across the United States, and the number of new cases is also on the rise, so it would be too early to say that the countrys anti-coronavirus effort is at the finish line already, U.S. President Joe Biden said.

"There is a lot of good news, but there is also some bad news. New variants of the virus are spreading and theyre moving quickly. Cases are going back up. Hospitalizations are no longer declining. While deaths are still down  way down from January  theyre going up in some places," he said.

"Let me be deadly earnest with you: We arent at the finish line," Biden added.

At the same time, the U.S. president hailed is countrys "incredible progress" in vaccinating its population. "Yesterday, we crossed 150 million shots in 75 days  the first 75 days my administration, on our way to hitting our goal of 200 million shots by the 100th day in office," TASS cited him as saying.

According to Biden, vaccination will be available for all grown-up residents of the country by April 19, not May 1 as was initially planned. "That means, by no later than April 19th, in every part of this country, every adult over the age of 18  18 or older  will be eligible to be vaccinated," the U.S. leader stressed.
by Francis Khoo Thwe

The dossier was compiled by the CHRP, the group representing the civilian government deposed by the military junta. It catalogues 180,000 cases of atrocities: extrajudicial killings, murder of prisoners, torture, illegal detention, disproportionate use of force. The CHRP is at the heart of the civil disobedience movement. It is working for a new federal constitution and for unity among all armed ethnic groups. Since the coup d'etat, 581 have been killed and 2750 arrested.

Yangon (AsiaNews) - A dossier with 180,000 proven cases of atrocities committed by the military junta will be presented to UN experts in a public complaint and to study steps that block human rights violations, that border on war crimes.

The dossier, compiled by various witnesses throughout the country, will be submitted by the Committee for Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, (Committee of Representatives of the Republic of the Union, CRPH), a group that is made up of parliamentarians duly elected and dismissed by the military junta. The group claims to be the representative of the civilian government that the February 1 coup overthrew.

The dossier includes, among other things, more than 540 extrajudicial killings, 10 killings of prisoners while in custody, torture, illegal detention, disproportionate use of force against peaceful demonstrators.

The presentation of the dossier to the UN serves to criticize the military junta, but also to boost esteem and relations of international organizations with the CHRP.

The government in exile was formed immediately and capillary contacts with the population. People welcome and support the CRPH and recognize it as the real current government of Myanmar. At the beginning of February, occasionally there were some groups, sporadic and mercenary, demonstrating to support the military, but after a few weeks, the demonstrations in favour of the army disappeared and the CRPH has an almost absolute support throughout Country.

It is the source of the civil disobedience movement that is affecting the economic power of the military.

The CHRP is also working on two fronts: a provisional draft of a new Constitution to replace the 2008 one, which left too many powers to the military (25% of the seats in parliament and some key ministries); the formation of a federal army that gathers all (or at least the majority) of the ethnic armies into a single group to counter the violence of the junta.

The draft of the new Constitution takes a decisive step towards a federal structure of the country, allowing the various ethnic groups and regions a certain autonomy in managing the power and resources, until now in the hands of the generals.

The junta accused the 17 CHRP members of sedition and subversion of public order, a charge that includes at least two years in prison.

The Association for the Assistance of Political Prisoners released yesterdays updated toll of dead and prisoners. Yesterday 6 April there were 11 more deaths: one was killed yesterday; another 10 were killed in recent days, but documented only yesterday. In this way, the number of people murdered by the security forces rises to 581. The prisoners are 2750; added to these are 463 who have fled, under threat of arrest.
Joan Carty knows the 22 condominium units her Housing Development Fund is building in Stamford will not reverse Connecticuts long-term trend lines for home ownership.

But if you add similar-sized developments in each town statewide, a home comes into reach for 3,700 more Connecticut families  many of whom are finding affordable options dwindling fast in the spring of 2021, as a hot real estate market stokes prices.

Connecticut entered this year ranked 32nd nationally for home ownership, with 67.1 percent of all units of housing owned by their occupants as estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau.

While that was slightly above the national rate of 65.8 percent, Connecticut home ownership has yet to recover to its levels on the eve of the Great Recession, even as neighboring Rhode Island has seen a surge. The Ocean State is nearly on par today with Connecticut for home ownership, after languishing in the cellar nationally only 15 years ago.

Connecticut home ownership had peaked at 72.3 percent in the early months of 2010, only to drop below the 70 percent threshold within 18 months, as mortgage underwriting standards stiffened after the financial panic and younger couples delayed purchasing homes in favor of urban apartment life.

Builders latched onto the trend, focusing their development dollars on large rental complexes in city centers in Stamford, Norwalk and New Haven, along with smaller cities and towns. At the same time, some municipalities continue to balk at allowing larger developments of a dozen or more houses priced at or below median prices, limiting the number of starter homes within the reach of those with lower incomes.

Most of the developers in Connecticut have migrated to doing apartments  theyre not building condos, said Joan Carty, CEO of Stamford nonprofit Housing Development Fund, which assists first-time home buyers. With zoning requirements, land is your biggest cost. If you dont have a zoning code that allows for small lots, then you are passing the cost of an acre of land onto the future buyer.

This week, the Housing Development Fund will hold a commemorative groundbreaking for its 22-unit condo development in Stamfords South End, which will sell to people making half the area median income.

The Housing Development Fund was selected last December to receive a $4 million grant from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, after she decided to accelerate $4 billion in donations from her charitable fund during the COVID-19 pandemic. Scott handpicked nonprofits nationally to apply for the funding, ultimately awarding less than 400 grants.

Starting in January, the Housing Development Fund expanded its SmartMove CT down payment assistance program to cover amounts owed at the close of a purchase transaction, such as mortgage loan fees, legal bills and title insurance.

It is one of a handful of Connecticut entities offering help for renters looking to buy, along with the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority and city programs like one in New Haven that offers assistance for down payments and closing costs.

We found that 25 percent of our otherwise eligible candidates were stopped because they did not have closing costs covered, Carty said. To the degree that people are ready and can find a house within their reach, they are getting a great mortgage rate. But you need the other pieces to fall into place too.

If buying a home is top of mind for many in the spring market of 2021, keeping a home is an even bigger worry for some.

The Biden administrations American Rescue Plan includes $10 billion to funnel mortgage assistance to those meeting qualifications for funding. Gov. Ned Lamont announced plans last month to distribute $10 million in mortgage assistance in Connecticut through the Connecticut Department of Housings UniteCT pandemic relief umbrella, with the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority also offering an emergency mortgage assistance program.

Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-842-2545; @casoulman
Premier Medical USA Corporation signs strategic partnership agreement with Apollo BioTech GmbH Germany. Frankfurt/Germany, April 2nd, 2021  Premier  a global leader in WHO Prequalified diagnostic tests  today announced an agreement with Apollo BioTech GmbH  a digital mass testing provider for COVID-19 - for the integration and distribution of the Premier product line for selected markets. Under this new agreement, Apollo BioTech becomes the exclusive partner of Premier 
The Romanian government has approved a memorandum awarding a mandate to the Ministry of European Investment and Projects to negotiate Romania's National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) with the European Commission, Prime Minister Florin Citu announced on Wednesday.

"We had a very good discussion about PNRR; a memorandum mandating the Ministry of European Investment and Projects to negotiate the current form of PNRR was approved today, and of course the steps for moving forward were discussed. I asked the ministers to get directly involved in the negotiations, to help the minister of European investment and projects to make sure that the important projects for Romania will be included in the final form PNRR," Citu said on Wednesday at the end of a government sitting, agerpres.ro confirms.
JUNO BEACH, Fla., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- NextEra Energy, Inc. (NYSE: NEE) today announced that it plans to report first-quarter 2021 financial results before the opening of the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday, April 21, 2021, in a news release to be posted on the company's website at www.NextEraEnergy.com/FinancialResults. The company will issue an advisory news release over PR Newswire the morning of April 21, with a link to the financial results news release on the company's website. As previously communicated, the company will make available its financial results only on its website.

Jim Robo, chairman and chief executive officer of NextEra Energy, Rebecca Kujawa, executive vice president, finance and chief financial officer of NextEra Energy, and other members of the company's senior management team will discuss the company's first-quarter 2021 financial results during an investor presentation to be webcast live, beginning at 9 a.m. ET on April 21. Results for NextEra Energy Partners, LP (NYSE: NEP) also will be discussed during the same investor presentation.

The listen-only webcast will be available on NextEra Energy's website by accessing the following link: www.NextEraEnergy.com/FinancialResults. The financial results news release and the slides accompanying the presentation may be downloaded at www.NextEraEnergy.com/FinancialResults, beginning at 7:30 a.m. ET on the day of the webcast. A replay will be available for 90 days by accessing the same link as listed above.

NextEra Energy, Inc.

NextEra Energy, Inc. (NYSE: NEE) is a leading clean energy company headquartered in Juno Beach, Florida. NextEra Energy owns Florida Power & Light Company, which is the largest rate-regulated electric utility in the United States as measured by retail electricity produced and sold, and serves more than 5.6 million customer accounts, supporting more than 11 million residents across Florida with clean, reliable and affordable electricity. NextEra Energy also owns a competitive clean energy business, NextEra Energy Resources, LLC, which, together with its affiliated entities, is the world's largest generator of renewable energy from the wind and sun and a world leader in battery storage. Through its subsidiaries, NextEra Energy generates clean, emissions-free electricity from seven commercial nuclear power units in Florida, New Hampshire and Wisconsin. A Fortune 200 company and included in the S&P 100 index, NextEra Energy has been recognized often by third parties for its efforts in sustainability, corporate responsibility, ethics and compliance, and diversity. NextEra Energy is ranked No. 1 in the electric and gas utilities industry on Fortune's 2021 list of "World's Most Admired Companies" and received the S&P Global Platts 2020 Energy Transition Award for leadership in environmental, social and governance. For more information about NextEra Energy companies, visit these websites: www.NextEraEnergy.com, www.FPL.com, www.GulfPower.com, www.NextEraEnergyResources.com.

SOURCE NextEra Energy, Inc.

Related Links

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(Natural News) Portland, Oregon is experiencing one of its largest waves of departures from its police force in recent memory. In a series of exit interviews, many of the resigning officers mention that they are overworked, that the community no longer supports them, that the city is acting against them and that their fight to stomp out crime is pointless.

Since July 1, 2020, 115 officers have left the Portland Police Bureau (PPB). Seventy-four officers have retired while 41 have resigned. At least two more officers are expected to resign by the end of April 2021. (Related: Minneapolis experiencing crime wave as police officers keep leaving the department.)

Around a quarter of these retiring or resigning officers filled out the voluntary exit interview forms. Local news outlet The Oregonian, which was able to obtain these exit interviews through a public records request, described these exit interview statements as brutally frank. Almost all of the interviews were dissatisfied with the Bureaus leadership and its ability to respond to the problems of rank-and-file officers.

The community shows zero support. The city council are raging idiots, in addition to being stupid. Additionally, the mayor and council ignore actual facts on crime and policing in favor of radical leftist and anarchists fantasy. Whats worse is ppb command (lt. and above) is arrogantly incompetent and cowardly, wrote one retiring detective. The only difference between the Titanic and PPB? Deck chairs and a band.

Budget cuts, unit cuts that put the community at risk made working for Portlanders feel like a waste of effort, wrote one retiring patrol officer.

Many other officers who left said their workload has been getting heavier. One person wrote about how everybody is overworked, overwhelmed and burned out.

Some of the officers who have left said they dont feel supported by city officials.

What the city council has done to beat down the officers willingness to do police work is unfathomable, said one training officer who retired in January. I have never seen morale so low. Officers leaving mid-career and sometimes sooner to go to other agencies. Officers retiring when they would have stayed longer if the situation were different.

This training officer said many of his colleagues were actively de-policing due to their fear that they may be falsely accused of using excessive force. He also said he knew it was time to leave the Bureau because he no longer loved his job and looked forward to going to work.

It is no longer a fun place to work  There is no end in sight and the negatives far exceed anything positive  hate what Portland has become.

Many officers have left to work for other police departments

The Bureau is currently authorized to have 1,210 positions  916 sworn and 294 non-sworn jobs. The PPB currently only has 1,074 filled positions as of mid-March. It has 93 vacancies for sworn officer positions and 43 for civilian positions.

Many of the officers who have resigned have left to work for other police agencies. Most have gone on to work for other departments in Oregon, including the Clackamas County Sheriffs Office, the Hillsboro Police Department and the Oregon State Police. Many more followed former assistant chief Ryan Lee, who resigned to become the police chief in Biose, Idaho.

According to the PPB, at least a dozen other resigned officers are applying for other police agencies and are currently going through background checks.

The demand for former Portland police officers is so high that the Spokane County Sheriffs Office (SCSO) has begun advertising in Portland. The SCSO has paid for at least two large billboards in the city promoting the fact that it is looking to employ 40 mid-career officers and is providing a hiring bonus of $15,000.

Portland was the epicenter of some of the U.S.s most destructive riots and demonstrations in 2020. This wave of civil unrest also coincided with the citys largest jump in homicides in 26 years. Portland experienced 55 killings in 2020, with the victims ranging from eight months old to 71 years old.

Local outlet KOIN reports that the homicide rate continues to be high, and many of the detectives still in the PPB are having a hard time keeping up with the amount of work needed to solve them.

PPB Assistant Chief Mike Frome acknowledged the Bureaus problems regarding morale and workload, but he mentioned that a lot of the problems plaguing the city cannot be solved by the police.

A lot of those things in those exit interviews, nobody in the chiefs office have any power over, says Frome, who oversees the PPBs Personnel Division. We dont have any power over the mayor or the governor or any members of the City Council. We can only focus on what we can do here.

Frome has pledged to continue working hard to support the officers still in the PPB, and cultivate interested applicants who are willing to create long-term careers with the Bureau once it can restart hiring.

Learn more about the current problems of police officers in Portland and in other parts of the country by reading the latest articles at PoliceViolence.news.

Sources include:

TheGatewayPundit.com

OregonLive.com

FoxNews.com
Hong Kong activist Andy Li appeared in court on Wednesday charged with "conspiracy to collude with foreign powers" under a draconian national security law imposed by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as well as charges linked to the 2019 protest movement.

In his first public appearance since being handed back to the Hong Kong authorities on March 22 following a seven-month jail term for "illegally crossing a border," Li seemed in good spirits, clad in a white shirt and black-rimmed glasses, documents in hand.

Li entered no plea, nor bail application, and was remanded in custody pending trial, with the next court appearance set for May 18.

He was represented by barrister Lawrence Law, whose appointment sparked widespread media speculation that he was foisted on Li by the authorities, in a manner similar to methods used by police in mainland China.

But Trevor Chan, of the firm Au Yeung, Chan & Ho, denied the firm had been "assigned" the case, saying only that Li had asked for such details not to be made public.

"Absolutely not," Chan said, when asked if he was a government-appointed lawyer.

Lis sister Beatrice Li has said her brother's defense team wasn't hired by the family.

Li was held incommunicado for many days after his return to Hong Kong, and taken to the maximum-security Siu Lam Psychiatric Centre. His family received a message from him earlier this week.

Tight security at court

Security was extremely tight outside the courtroom, with ranks of police motorcycles and other vehicles escorting the prison van bringing Li to court.

The first charge against Li alleges that, between July 1, 2020 and Feb. 15 2021, Li conspired with pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai, his former assistant and U.S. national Mark Simon, and others, to "request foreign sanctions" and to "engage in other hostile activities."

Li was held in custody in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen for most of the period covered by the charges.

Another charge relates to Li's flight -- along with 11 other activists -- by speedboat on Aug. 23, 2020, while a third accuses him of being in possession of "explosives," namely, used tear-gas canisters and other spent police ammunition.

Protesters sometimes gathered spent ammunition to keep as evidence of police violence against them during the 2019 movement, which began as a mass public response to plans to allow the extradition of alleged criminal suspects from Hong Kong to mainland China.

'We have done no wrong'

Jimmy Lai was also in court on separate charges on Wednesday, pleading guilty alongside former pro-democracy lawmaker Lee Cheuk-yan and former Democratic Party chairman Yeung Sum to "taking part in an illegal assembly" on Aug. 31, 2019, at the height of the protest movement.

Lee and Yeung were released on bail, while Lai -- who also faces charges under the national security law -- was remanded in custody pending trial.

Today we plead guilty to the charges, but we have done no wrong," Lee Cheuk-yan told reporters outside the court. "This was an act of civil disobedience."

"We were affirming ... that we have the right to come out to march, he said.

Yeung said the Public Order Ordinance (POO), which is frequently used to bring criminal charges against peaceful, political protesters, shouldn't have applied on Aug. 31, 2019, as the police had issued a notice of no objection to the planned rally.

He cited Article 17 of the Hong Kong Bill of Rights and Article 27 of the city's Basic Law, which state that the residents of Hong Kong enjoy the right to freedom of speech, press and association, and of demonstration.

Yeung said the imposition of the national security law and recent changes to Hong Kong's political system by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had abolished democracy in the city.



Reported by Lau Siu Fung and Fong Tak Ho for RFA's Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Viktoria Sundqvist / Hearst Connecticut Media

A West Haven man found with a loaded gun and cocaine in his home and car despite being a convicted felon was sentenced to 30 months in prison Tuesday.

Brian Melendez, 32, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Michael P. Shea in Hartford, the U.S. attorneys office for the District of Connecticut said in a statement Tuesday afternoon.
Moroccos General Directorate of Territorial Surveillance (DGST) handed France essential information about a French woman of Moroccan origin, who was plotting a terrorist attack in a church.

The data enabled France to prevent the attack, a statement from the spokesperson of the DGST said Tuesday.

The data enabled French services to make several arrests last weekend. During the security operation police also seized materials used to manufacture explosives.

French news outlet Le Point announced the arrest of five radicalized women on Sunday.

The news outlet added that the investigation said that the five suspects were planning to commit an imminent violent action in Montpellier.

Police said that none of the suspects were known to the security services.

According to the DGST, Morocco passed the information on at the right time. The statement added that the suspects were in the final stages of planning a suicide terrorist project inside a church.

The main suspect was going to attack churchgoers with a knife.

Moroccan services also provided France with information about the level of extremism the woman who was plotting the terrorist project had reached.

Information shared indicated that the woman was inspired by graphic video content that ISIS fighters continue to share on social networks.

The spokesperson said that the arrest is part of its counterterrorism cooperation and Moroccos involvement in efforts and mechanisms to combat terrorist organizations and to achieve international security and stability.

The security operation is also part of the DGSTs commitment to continue to strengthen bilateral cooperation between Moroccan and French intelligence services to combat terrorist threats and extremism.

Moroccos counterterrorism intelligence is considered one of the powerful services across the world. Morocco introduced the Central Bureau of Judicial Investigation (BCIJ) in 2015. The BCIJ cooperates with all intelligence services across the country to fight extremism and terrorist threats.

BCIJ said that the countrys services have dismantled 2,009 terror cells since 2002.

Morocco also arrested 3,535 people for their alleged involvement in terror activities and aborted around 500 bloody terror plots in recent years, BCIJ chief Haboub Cherkaoui argued.
A general view of the steelworks and coal loading facility in Port Kembla on February 01, 2021, in Wollongong, Australia. (Brook Mitchell/Getty Images)

Steelmaker Warns Jobs at Risk Without Higher Tariffs

Steelmaker Molycop has warned it could lay off 300 jobsover half of its Australian workforceif the Anti-Dumping Commission does not agree to raise tariffs on Chinese competitors.

President of Molycops Australian branch, Michael Parker, told The Australian that the company would consider ending local steel production and instead manufacture their products with cheap Chinese imported steel if their call for raised tariffs is rejected.

The American-owned company is the last domestic producer of steel grinding balls, a component used in the processing stage of gold, copper, and lithium mining.

While Parker stressed the company did not want to make that decision, it would be impossible to compete with cheap, state-subsidised Chinese-imported steel balls without the tariffs.

We can join the party like everyone else, he said. It would be the loss of another sovereign capacity.

Molycop previously submitted an application to the Anti-Dumping Commission in 2016 on the same issue.

The commission found their Chinese competitors had been subsidised and therefore imposed various tariffs, ranging from 1 percent to 34 percent, on the imported grinding balls.

The tariffs are set to expire in September, so Molycop now wants the tariffs raised and extended for an additional five years.

Parker says the loss of their companys steel ball manufacturing in Australia would reduce Australia-based customers resilience. However, he also admitted that few of those customers cared about a locally-based supply chain.

Theyre all about reducing costs, Parker said.

The companys push for more tariffs comes amid high tensions in the diplomatic relationship between the two countries, which began after Australia led the call for an independent inquiry into the origins of the CCP virus.

In retaliation, Beijing imposed punitive economic sanctions on Australian products, including 80 percent tariffs on barley. Australia recently brought the dispute to the World Trade Organisation, to which Canada and Russia joined with shared concerns.

Economic sanctions from Beijing also hit iron ore. However, that didnt stop the country from importing the mineral. Prices for Australian iron ore rose to a 10-year high of US$178 per tonne, which made up for the slight reduction in Chinese demand.

The Department of Energy and Resources forecasted iron ore exports to reach a new high during the current financial year.
Chairman Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) gives opening remarks at the confirmation hearing for Secretary of Defense nominee retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin before the Senate Armed Services Committee at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on Jan. 19, 2021. (Greg Nash-Pool/Getty Images)

Top GOP Senators Urge Biden Not to Return to Iran Nuclear Deal

Four top Senate Republicans called on President Joe Biden on April 6 not to reenter the Iran nuclear deal and to continue sanctions against the Islamic Republic, on the day of indirect talks between the United States and Iran in Vienna.

Sens. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), and Todd Young (R-Ind.), leaders of several Senate committees or subcommittees, sent an open letter (pdf) to Biden expressing their concerns about the United States returning to the Iran nuclear dealformally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

The United States must not relinquish its leverage over the Iranian regime just to return to the JCPOA, a severely flawed agreement that undermines our national security interests due to its arbitrary sunsets and limited scope, the senators said in the letter, referring to the sanctions as an enormous amount of leverage.

Unfortunately, recent comments from Administration officials suggest that is exactly what the U.S. intends to offer Tehran.

U.S. Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley told the BBC last month: The maximum pressure campaign has failed.  It hasnt brought us any closer to this better deal that President [Donald] Trump spoke about. Its been bad for the U.S., for Iran, and for the region.

Trump imposed maximum pressure on Iran after he officially withdrew the United States from the 2015 Iran deal in May 2018, calling it a horrible one-sided deal and defective at its core.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also said last month that rejoining the Iran deal would make America and the Middle East less secure.

We urge your Administration to reset its approach immediately. Members of Congress rejected the JCPOA on a bipartisan basis in 2015, the four senators continued in their letter. Returning to the JCPOA is not a recipe for a sustainable Iran policy, and will not protect U.S. national security interests.

The White House didnt respond to a request from The Epoch Times for comment by press time.

Sanctions relief is what the United States would need to take in order for us to return to compliance with the JCPOA, State Department spokesman Ned Price said on April 5. The other part is nuclear steps that Iran would need to take.

That is what we aspire over the longer term to achievethat mutual return to compliance with the JCPOA. Its precisely what President Bidenthen-candidate Bidenlaid out on the campaign trail, Price said.

On the other hand, Iran has insisted that Washington lift the sanctions first because it violated the deal first with its withdrawal.

In this handout provided by the EU delegation in Vienna, representatives of the European Union, Iran, and others attend the Iran nuclear talks at the Grand Hotel, in Vienna, on April 6, 2021. (EU Delegation in Vienna via Getty Images)

After the talks in Vienna on April 6, Irans lead negotiator, Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, said the negotiations are on the right track, according to The Washington Post.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said a diplomatic path is the right path forward, and there are benefits to all sides.

The talks are expected to resume on April 9.
(JTA)  Spirit Airlines kicked a Jewish family off a flight when their 2-year-old child was seen not wearing her mask, spurring major criticism on social media.

The budget airline said it was following federally mandated rules, which requires passengers 2 and older to wear masks at all times, except when eating, drinking or taking medicine.

Videos show the family, whose father wears a kippah, all wearing masks except for the child, who appeared to be eating.

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The entire plane was deboarded, which Spirit told Business Insider was standard protocol, then reboarded, including the Jewish family in question. The only person who did not rejoin the flight was an attendant  he was the the person to flag the childs mask wearing, according to someone filming a video in the aftermath of the incident.

The Orthodox site Yeshiva World News reported last month that Spirit banned an Orthodox Florida couple from future flights three weeks after they flew the airline from New York in January. The couple claimed they wore masks the entire flight and had no altercations on board.

Frontier Airlines landed in similarly hot water in March for kicking a Hasidic family off a flight over mask compliance. The family claimed that they were all wearing masks except for an 18-month-old baby, and the Anti-Defamation League called for an investigation of the incident.
Dear Annie: We occasionally will have friends over for dinner, and there have been times when they simply wont leave. Im not talking about an hour or two; many times its three or four hours after dinner!

We love our friends and are happy that they feel very comfortable with us to stay that long. My wife and I are both retired, so its not like we have to be up early the next morning, but we do have other things wed like to get done before turning in. I try to drop subtle hints but to no avail.

Whats a polite way to wrap up a delightful evening that shouldnt be more than a few hours? -- To Leave or Not To Leave

Dear To Leave or Not To Leave: It sounds like your subtle hints are not working, so its time to start from the beginning. Next time you invite your friends over, instead of just putting the start time, add an end time. That way, everything is clear before the dinner even begins. Another tip could be to have a goody bag with a cookie in it. You could drop a subtle hint like, Here, dont forget your cookie on your way out. Honesty coupled with kindness is always appreciated.

Dear Annie: I lost my wife to alcoholism. On Oct. 4, 2020, she died of liver failure. She drank wine morning, noon and night.

For five straight years, until her death, she used to drink a gallon of whiskey every other day. She was in depression but wouldnt admit it; she was never outwardly drunk, but an alcoholic doesnt drink to get drunk. She eventually became a recluse. I had her in the hospital three times in six years. This was all due to dehydration from not drinking anything else but whiskey at the time, and the doctor told her she needed to leave the alcohol alone.

The past two years have been really rough. I begged. I pleaded. I cried. I screamed. Nothing seemed to happen and nothing seemed to work. She passed away in an ICU hospital three weeks after I admitted her because she had extreme phlebitis in her legs from not getting up and doing any exercises. After the third week, overnight, she went into ICU where her liver shut down completely, and then it took out her kidneys.

Annie Lane writes the Dear Annie advice column.

After being with this woman for 20 years, I lost her to the bottle. You cant make somebody stop what they dont want to stop. I was a drug addict for almost 15 years. When I finally hit rock bottom, I said enough was enough. I havent touched any drugs in over 22 years.

Alcoholism is like a drug addiction. You dont quit unless you want to quit. I just thought you should know that to give information to your readers. For those coping with an alcoholic spouse, heres my advice: Keep everything positive and keep their spouse moving and try to keep everything on a happy basis, and either theyre going to come around or theyre not. -- Come to the Conclusion on Your Own

Dear Conclusion: I am very sorry for the loss of your wife. It sounds like you were a loving and forgiving husband. As your letter pointed out, alcoholics must decide for themselves whether or not to get help. If they dont want to, they will not. There is no amount of forcing you can do. I would encourage you to seek grief support groups and other groups for family members of alcoholics. Thank you for sharing your story. It will help others know they are not alone in watching a loved one fighting this disease.

Ask Me Anything: A Year of Advice From Dear Annie is out now! Annie Lanes debut book -- featuring favorite columns on love, friendship, family and etiquette -- is available as a paperback and e-book. Visit http://www.creatorspublishing.com for more information. Send your questions for Annie Lane to dearannie@creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2021 CREATORS.COM

Read more advice:

Ask Amy: Separated soulmates are eager to connect

Dear Annie: Looking to hop off the hamster wheel

Dear Abby: Children cut off stepmother with dads power of attorney
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-06 23:05:02|Editor: huaxia

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Libya's Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah (R front) meets with his visiting Italian counterpart Mario Draghi in Tripoli, Libya, April 6, 2021. The two leaders delved into a variety of issues to promote bilateral cooperation, such as the renewal of a 2008 friendship pact and opening the Italian air space to the Libyan airplanes. (Photo by Hamza Turkia/Xinhua)

TRIPOLI, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Libya's Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah on Tuesday met with his visiting Italian counterpart Mario Draghi in the capital Tripoli and discussed mutual cooperation, according to a statement issued by the government's information office.

Praising Italy's support for the North African country's stability, Dbeibah said Libya is willing to build a strategic partnership with Italy.

The two leaders, the statement said, delved into a variety of issues to promote bilateral cooperation, such as the renewal of a 2008 friendship pact and opening the Italian air space to the Libyan airplanes.

The Libyan prime minister also pointed out that Libya and Italy face the common challenge of illegal immigration, which requires contribution from the international community.

Draghi highlighted the importance of the cooperation between the two countries in areas of infrastructure, energy, and health care, praising Libya's efforts regarding illegal immigration. Enditem
Durham, NC - According to the results of a phase 1 clinical trial just published in STEM CELLS Translational Medicine, a new stem cell therapy shows promise of making diabetes-related amputations a thing of the past. The trial involved injecting diabetes patients suffering from non-healing diabetic foot ulcers (DFU) with a cell preparation containing adult stem cells harvested from their own fat. The results showed that the treatment induced regeneration of the blood vessels surrounding the DFUs, accelerated healing - all with no serious side effects.

"Non-healing diabetic foot ulcers usually have no effective form of treatment," said Anthony Atala, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of STEM CELLS Translational Medicine and Director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. "This work should be reviewed as it demonstrates the possibility of a novel cell injection therapy that can alleviate pain and infection, accelerate wound healing, and possibly avoid amputation."

Worldwide, every 30 seconds a leg is amputated, with 85 percent caused by complications from DFU, according to estimates by the American Diabetes Association. "Peripheral vascular disease (PVD) is an aggravating condition for DFU and either alone or in combination with diabetes often culminates in recurrent, non-healing ulcers and amputations. As surgery is not always feasible for these patients, an urgent need exists for alternative therapies capable of improving blood supply to the affected foot," said Michael Carstens, M.D., of Wake Forest University's Institute of Regenerative Medicine. He and Diego Correa, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Miami, were leaders of the study that also included researchers at the Universidad Nacional de Nicaragua-Leon.

Cell-based therapies have gained attention as viable options to help restore damaged vessels while inducing the formation of new ones. Of particular interest is adipose tissue-derived stromal vascular fraction (SVF), which constitutes a collection of various cell types including adult stem cells harvested from fat tissue. The heterogeneous SVF contains endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) and high concentrations of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), among other cell types. EPCs are rare cells that circulate in the blood and are present in the fat, and that give rise to the cells that make up the inner lining of blood vessels, while MSCs seat in the perivascular space surrounding blood vessels and can differentiate into a variety of cells types, depending on the conditions of the culture they are grown in. Given their intrinsic relationship with blood vessels, they cooperatively can form stable blood vessels.

"Logistical advantages complement this key multi-phenotypic display, as SVF cells can be obtained from a same-day processing of readily accessed and harvested adipose tissue, without the need of a GMP processing facility to manufacture an MSC-based product," Dr. Carstens said.

The current study builds off two previous one that the Carstens-Correa team conducted in Nicaragua to assess the value of SVF cells as an alternative and cost-effective treatment for PVD caused by arteriosclerosis and/or diabetes.

"It's difficult to treat vascular disease and chronic ulcers due to PVD and/or diabetes in resource-poor countries such as Nicaragua," Dr. Carstens said. "Patients frequently have to travel long distances under poor road conditions to obtain medical care. Revascularization procedures are not economically possible for most of the population, and advanced stem cell procedures that require cell processing facilities represent significant logistical and economic challenges. Under such conditions, non-healing ischemic wounds present patients and physicians with unpalatable choices: chronic pain and risk of infection or amputation."

Given these factors, the Ministry of Health of Nicaragua authorized their pilot study in 2014. The results from the initial 18-month follow-up period demonstrated safety of the intervention and complete wound healing by nine months. By the final six-year follow-up, five of the initial 10 subjects still demonstrated persistence of clinical benefits. (Five had passed away due to cardiac and non-study-related causes.) In the current study, the team wanted to determine the safety and efficacy of local injections of SVF cells to treat non-healing DFUs greater than 3 cm in diameter, once again working with patients in Nicaragua.

Sixty-three people ranging in age from 35 to 70 years with Type 2 diabetes and chronic DFU - all of whom were amputation candidates - were treated with SVF cells injected into the ulcer bed, around the periphery and along the course of pedal arteries (dorsalis pedis and tibialis posterior).

"SVF cells were locally administered along the vascular trajectories distally feeding the foot in an effort to concentrate the cell product around the diseased arteries, instead of the intra-muscular route used in our previous PVD study," Dr. Correa explained. "The dose of stem cells was also reduced to the lowest level tested in the earlier study in which the SVF dose ranged from 30x106 to 158x106 SVF cells. Based upon the observed clinical responses, even for the lowest dose, and taking into consideration the smaller injecting area, this time we used a fixed cell dose of 30x106 SVF cells."

Patients were seen at six- and 12-month intervals to evaluate ulcer closure. Doppler ultrasounds also were performed in a subset of patients to determine vascular structural parameters. In this group 32 of 33 pedal arteries showed increases in flow consistent with enhanced run-off due to distal neovascularization in the foot; 33/33 arteries demonstrated significant changes in arterial wall elasticity. At six months, 51 patients had 100 percent DFU closure and eight had greater than 75 percent. Three had early amputations and one patient died.

At 12 months, 50 patients had 100 percent DFU healing, while four had greater than 85 percent healing. "The healing process was observed to take place in two different directions: from the periphery, as expected, but also by upward proliferation from the ulcer bed," Dr. Carstens said. "In several cases, newly developed tissue was capable of covering previously exposed tendons. Furthermore, even among ulcers greater than 10 cm2 virtually all patients achieved 85 percent closure or better by six months. No correlation between ulcer size and closure was observed."

This led the researchers to conclude, "By using SVF injection, surgeons can prevent limb loss, an outcome with devastating socio-economic consequences for both the patient and society. The SVF protocol presented is easy to execute, can be carried out quickly and safely as an ambulatory procedure and can be done under the demanding conditions that are often experienced in the developing world."

###

The full article, "Treatment of chronic diabetic foot ulcers with adipose-derived stromal vascular fraction (SVF) cell injections: safety and evidence of efficacy at one year," can be accessed at https:/ / stemcellsjournals. onlinelibrary. wiley. com/ doi/ abs/ 10. 1002/ sctm. 20-0497 .

About STEM CELLS Translational Medicine: STEM CELLS Translational Medicine (SCTM), co-published by AlphaMed Press and Wiley, is a monthly peer-reviewed publication dedicated to significantly advancing the clinical utilization of stem cell molecular and cellular biology. By bridging stem cell research and clinical trials, SCTM will help move applications of these critical investigations closer to accepted best practices. SCTM is the official journal partner of Regenerative Medicine Foundation.

About AlphaMed Press: Established in 1983, AlphaMed Press with offices in Durham, NC, San Francisco, CA, and Belfast, Northern Ireland, publishes two other internationally renowned peer-reviewed journals: STEM CELLS, celebrating its 39th year, is the world's first journal devoted to this fast paced field of research. The Oncologist, also a monthly peer-reviewed publication, entering its 26th year, is devoted to community and hospital-based oncologists and physicians entrusted with cancer patient care. All three journals are premier periodicals with globally recognized editorial boards dedicated to advancing knowledge and education in their focused disciplines.

About Wiley: Wiley, a global company, helps people and organizations develop the skills and knowledge they need to succeed. Our online scientific, technical, medical and scholarly journals, combined with our digital learning, assessment and certification solutions, help universities, learned societies, businesses, governments and individuals increase the academic and professional impact of their work. For more than 200 years, we have delivered consistent performance to our stakeholders. The company's website can be accessed at http://www. wiley. com .

About Regenerative Medicine Foundation (RMF): The non-profit Regenerative Medicine Foundation fosters strategic collaborations to accelerate the development of regenerative medicine to improve health and deliver cures. RMF pursues its mission by producing its flagship World Stem Cell Summit, honouring leaders through the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Action Awards, and promoting educational initiatives.
Lithuania will propose that NATO Allies provide a Membership Action Plan (MAP) to Ukraine, thus allowing the country to become a member of the Alliance, according to Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis.

He said this at a press conference following a meeting with Spanish Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya, who is on a visit to Vilnius, Lithuanian news site Delfi reported.

"We should soon write a letter to our colleagues so that they reconsider the possibility of providing a MAP to Ukraine. [...] I am convinced that NATO could have repeated its proposal on providing a Membership Action Plan to Ukraine, and we have just started to agree on this issue with our colleagues from the Baltic States," Landsbergis said.

According to him, this would be "a strong signal to Russia that Ukraine is choosing a transatlantic direction, and it has received a response among NATO countries."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly stressed the importance of granting Ukraine the NATO MAP.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said at a press conference in Brussels on February 9, following talks with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, that NATO Allies recognized Ukraine as a potential candidate for NATO membership and provided practical assistance in implementing reforms to meet NATO standards.

op
Loadspeakers are to be installed at dog poo blackspots in Dublin to issue warnings to pet owners after a dramatic rise in complaints last year.

Complaints about dog littering are up by nearly 27 per cent in the Dublin City area in the last year.

According to research carried out by Behaviour & Attitudes for Dogs Trust, 96 per cent of dog owners claimed they do pick up after their dog.

But while almost every single dog owner claims they pick up after their dog, yet, somehow, the problem persists to the extent that seven out of every 10 people have walked in poo in the street.

The mysterious discrepancy was revealed in research carried out as Dublin City Council launched a new Dog Fouling Campaign.

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There has been a 27 per cent increase in the number of complaints received in the last year with a majority of people surveyed describing how they fell foul of the problem on the street.

And slightly more than half of those in the survey (51 per cent) have come across dog poo in their local park.

The council revealed during the launch of phase two of its Dog Poo, Its Everybodys Business campaign that residents have also been contacting their local representatives to complain about the ongoing issue of dog fouling in their area.

A suite of outdoor and digital adverts, a video and a radio ad have been created for this campaign, which will be rolled out in Dublin city from this week for a two week period.

Audio devices will also be installed in a number of locations in the city to encourage dog owners to clean up after their dogs.

And if you are a dog owner, be aware that you can be fined 150 under the Litter Pollution Act if you dont clean up after your dog.

City councillors have now set up a working group to actively look at the issue of dog fouling across the city and to look at solutions to irradiate this unhealthy and anti-social behaviour.

The aim of this new campaign is to highlight the ongoing issue of dog fouling in our public parks and open spaces and to encourage dog owners and dog walkers to act responsibly and to pick up after their dog, as dog poo affects the whole community, the council stated.

The Lord Mayor of Dublin, Cllr Hazel Chu, added: The issue of dog fouling has now become a major issue in our public parks and open spaces in the city.

"There are some people in our community who are more at risk of coming into contact with dog waste and putting their health in danger, such as wheelchair users, visually impaired people, babies and toddlers.

Whether you own a dog or not, dog poo in our public spaces affects the whole community.

"I am appealing to all dog owners in the city to act responsibly and pick up after their dog as dog waste affects everyone.

Its estimated that a single gram of dog waste can contain 23 million faecal coliform bacteria, which are known to cause cramps, diarrhoea, intestinal illness, and serious kidney disorders in humans.

Dog poo can also contain nasty bacteria such as E-coli and parasites like round worm, the larvae of which can cause loss of vision.

The City Council is urging dog owners to always pick up after their dog using a Poo Bag or a scooping device before disposing of it in the nearest litter bin or taking it home and placing it in their general household wheelie bin.

Dublin City Councils Litter Prevention Officer, Bernie Lillis urged dog owners and walkers to dispose of dog waste appropriately not to leave the doggie bag on railings or in bushes or on the streets or footpaths.

Instead you should Bag it and Bin it, she said. Dog fouling is everybodys business, its not a dog problem, its a human problem and we must all be mindful of other people who use our public spaces and to make sure they are clean and safe for them to use and so that we can all stay healthy.
The family of Tyrell Wilson, a 33-year-old Black man shot by a Danville police officer last month, has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city.

It comes a day after a bystanders cellphone video surfaced, showing Wilson and Danville police Officer Andrew Hall standing feet apart in the intersection of Sycamore Valley Road and Camino Ramon, shortly before noon on March 11.

In the wobbly recording, Hall appears to step toward Wilson as Wilson backs away. For a moment, the cellphone camera dips behind the door frame. When it gets both men back in sight, Hall fires once and Wilson collapses on his back.

Doctors pronounced Wilson dead six days after the shooting, on March 17.

Instead of protecting life, defendant Hall murdered Mr. Wilson, with malice aforethought, the lawsuit by civil rights attorney John Burris states.

Hall had driven to the area that morning to respond to several calls at 11:48 a.m. reporting a person throwing rocks from the Sycamore Valley Road freeway overpass onto Interstate 680. When he arrived, Hall found Wilson standing in the street.

While police have released no evidence so far linking Wilson to the alleged rock throwing, the department published still photographs on its Facebook page of the unhoused man identified as Wilson clutching a knife in his right hand and gripping a shopping bag in his left.

Police said that Hall yelled commands for Wilson to drop the weapon, and that Wilson began advancing toward him.

The complaint alleges a series of missteps by the officer  such as not attempting to create space between himself and Wilson, and not taking cover after Wilson allegedly drew a folding knife. It contends that Hall never made any effort to use reasonable de-escalation tactics, instead shooting Mr. Wilson in the face.

Hall remains on administrative leave.

His attorney, Michael Rains, said the officer has requested a new assignment with the Contra Costa County Sheriffs Office, which has a contract to provide police services in Danville. Hall is awaiting a charging decision from District Attorney Diana Becton for a separate killing in 2018 when he fired 10 rounds through the windshield and passenger side window of fleeing motorist Laudemer Arboleda.

In addition to demanding unspecified damages, Burris seeks Halls termination, which would be up to the sheriffs office  not the court.

A spokesman for the sheriffs office declined to comment Tuesday, as did Danville City Attorney Rob Ewing, who said he had not seen the lawsuit.

Rains read the complaint Tuesday afternoon, and balked at Burris accusation of premeditated murder with malice.

It sounds like Burris has now anointed himself the district attorney of Contra Costa County, Rains said, noting that Burris is a civil attorney  not a prosecutor. He criticized the complaint for what he saw as flashy, dramatic language that distorted the facts.

Burris displayed large still frames from the video that showed the position of the two men before and after Hall fired his gun while addressing reporters at the Sycamore Park and Ride parking lot near the site of the shooting.

Burris emphasized that he seldom labels a shooting as murder, even if he disagrees with the officers actions.

I dont make that argument very often, but I do make it here, the attorney said. This is a situation which was clearly avoidable.

Wilsons mother, Diane Wilson, stood behind Burris in the parking lot, along with other family members, advocates and a pastor from the nearby city of Antioch. Through tears, she characterized her son as a kindhearted person with no history of aggression.

I do not want to see the video, Diane Wilson said. I want my last thought and pictures of my son to be the beautiful man he is  or was.

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan
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DGAP-News: CPI PROPERTY GROUP / Key word(s): Legal Matter

CPI Property Group - New York Defamation Lawsuit Dismissed



07.04.2021 / 08:28

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.





CPI Property Group

(societe anonyme)

40, rue de la Vallee

L-2661 Luxembourg

R.C.S. Luxembourg: B 102 254



Press Release - Corporate News



Luxembourg, 7 April 2021

CPI Property Group - New York Defamation Lawsuit Dismissed



CPI PROPERTY GROUP ("CPIPG") is pleased to update our stakeholders regarding a defamation claim filed in June 2020 by Kingstown Capital Management L.P. and Investhold LTD (together the "Kingstown Plaintiffs") against CPIPG and Radovan Vitek in New York State court (the "New York State Court Lawsuit").

In the New York State Court Lawsuit, the Kingstown Plaintiffs alleged defamation based on press releases and other statements made by CPIPG in relation to a claim filed in April 2019 by the Kingstown Plaintiffs in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (the "SDNY Court Lawsuit").

On 6 April 2021, the New York State Court Lawsuit was dismissed in its entirety.

"We are delighted with this decision by the New York State court," said Martin Matula, General Counsel of CPIPG. "CPIPG will always defend our reputation against baseless attacks."

As previously communicated to our stakeholders, the SDNY Court Lawsuit was dismissed in September 2020 and the Kingstown plaintiffs appealed that decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, with briefing scheduled to be completed during H1 2021. CPIPG is confident that the appeal lacks merit and that the SDNY Court's decision is on sound footing.



For further information please contact:

Investor Relations



David Greenbaum

Chief Financial Officer

d.greenbaum@cpipg.com

Joe Weaver

Director of Capital Markets

j.weaver@cpipg.com



For more on CPI Property Group, visit our website: www.cpipg.com

Follow us on Twitter (CPIPG_SA) and LinkedIn


The steadily accelerating vaccine rollout has fuelled hopes for a global economic rebound. In North America, a faint glimmer of normalcy is emerging on the horizon as the economic recovery starts to see an uptick on both sides of the border. One of the biggest beneficiaries of this increased economic activity could be the airline sector.

After navigating through the worst operating environment in history in 2020, wrought on by the pandemic, the airline industry now appears poised for a takeoff. The easing of travel restrictions and abatement of fears of contagion will pave the way for substantially more leisure and business travel over the summer and beyond. According to an International Air Transport Association (IATA) projection, airline revenue is expected to see a significant rebound in 2021. While things can change depending on virus mutation and governments management of vaccine distribution, for now, though, the world airline association forecasts passenger numbers to grow to 2.8 billion in 2021, a billion more travellers than in 2020, although still 1.7 billion travellers short of 2019.

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Great Bear added a sixth rig to accelerate the 2021 drill program at the Ontario site and will continue to infill as well as expand on the three main gold zones

Great Bear Resources stock currently trades around $15.60 a share in Canada and around $12.45 in New York

Research Capital Corporation reiterated Ltd (CVE:GBR) (OTCMKTS:GTBDF) as a Speculative Buy with a $36 a share price target after the gold explorer added a sixth drill rig at its Dixie project in Ontario.

Great Bear Resources said the sixth rig is being added to accelerate the 2021 drill program at the site and will continue to infill as well as expand on the three main gold zones, including the Hinge, Dixie Limb and LP Fault zones.

The company added that its primary focus remains infill and expansion drilling of the LP Fault zone at 25-75 meter centers.

However, it said there remain large undrilled gaps of 100-400 meters (m) between existing drill holes in several areas of the LP Fault, and within the other Dixie Project gold zones where step-out and step-down drilling have already successfully expanded the zones -- all of which remain open to extension.

This comes as no surprise as the company indicated that it will be increasing the number of drill rigs to carry out its aggressive exploration program, wrote Research Capital, formerly called Mackie Research. We are pleased to see Great Bear continuing to focus on expanding its drill program, especially in areas that we have not considered in our 9.6 million ounce mineralized inventory estimate.

The analyst firm added: For the LP Fault zone, we have only assumed open-pittable material in our estimate  any material identified at depth with economic potential represents upside  At the Limb zone, we have assumed a depth of 500 m, assuming an all underground mineable deposit.

Great Bear Resources stock currently trades around $15.60 a share in Canada and around $12.45 a share in New York.

Contact the author: patrick@proactiveinvestors.com

Follow him on Twitter @PatrickMGraham
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The first tribe in human history emerged as Eve joined Adam and both begot Cain and Abel. Close-knit as this quintessential first family was, it soon succumbed to conflict. Conflict arose not because of diversity, but due to a combination of factors, among them, avarice, rivalry, rancor, and plain misunderstanding. Nothing has changed. Where racial or ethnic identity offers the passport to power, fame, and riches, the tendency will be for members of the privileged race (or of the ruling tribe) to erect barriers to inter-group contact or upward mobility. Conversely, the under-privileged groups will tend to find themselves in the mutually contradictory position of rejecting the high costs of, and the low benefits from, their identity, while using the same loss-incurring (minority) status as a rallying point for action. It is a combination of the privileged groups advocacy of the apartheid-leaning status quo and the underclasss constant milking of their victim status that keeps the identity borders simultaneously rowdy, closed, and impregnable.

Religious and sectarian barriers ought, in theory, to be permeable. The three monotheistic religions (Islam, Christianity, and Judaism) unanimously advocate the tenets of love, honesty, justice, fairness, and compassion. What the Old and the New Testaments enjoin as the Ten Commandments are to be found repeated in different Surahs and Ayahs of the Holy Quran.

Nonetheless, the increasing secularisation of faith constitutes a serious threat not only to the purity of religious doctrines but also to inter-faith harmony. Secularisation, as used here, means the tendency to view religion as another bargaining chip in earthly contests, rather than a preparation for life after death. When faith becomes secularised, religious orders will compete for the purses, rather than the souls, of men, just as business firms compete for market share and politicians compete for votes.

Where faiths are secularised, the religious elite and their followers will place high value on the construction of expensive structures (cathedrals, synagogues, and mosques), while doing little to stem societys spiritual, moral, and physical decay. When viewed as a business pursuit or as politics by another name, religion will unfailingly pit one believer against another. This is when diversity (of the religious kind) ignites and stokes conflict.

An identity is said to be fastened on the citizens neck when the group to which s/he belongs lays total claim on his entire personality, including his thought, his response to stimuli, and his allegiance. Religious and ethnic identities lend themselves to this kind of manipulation. An ethnic nationality, in particular, characteristically sees itself as the custodian of every members conscience. To think and act independently of the tribe is to be perceived as a traitor. Among the Yoruba, the slur reserved for an independent-minded tribesman is omo ale, meaning, an illegitimate child of a luckless Yoruba father. The demand for blind obedience and conformity serves as a major disincentive to foresight, prevision, and seminal thinking within the archetypical ethnic group.

The tribe reinforces its totalitarian grip on members by fabricating and overblowing a few ostensibly identical traits. Besides harping on the obvious, such as language, culture, and possibly, spatial proximity, the ethnic group encodes and engrains assumptions about the physical and the subterranean worlds in its membersassumptions that are embellished and then transmitted across generations as unquestionable facts.

Group indoctrination takes other forms. For instance, it was until recently the practice in a few communities to brand new-borns faces. The idea was to ensure the infants permanent identification and solidarity with the tribe. The Hutu moderates in Rwanda might have been spared the ordeal of tribal marks, but those of them who might contemplate treating the Tutsis as human beings were still prevented from doing so by group ideology.

A history of inter-group hostility, ignorance of what goes on behind the alien border, an off-hand but disagreeable remark by a member of the stranger community, insecurity of life and propertythese and other factors may reinforce an individuals prejudices and confirm his worst, but, possibly, unfounded, fears of outsiders. In fact, when diversity is discussed within the context of state creation and sustenance, the analyst cannot miss the phobias and insecurities that are now so characteristic of inter-personal and inter-group relations as to be deemed mutually inter-changeable.

The very nature of ethnic separatism renders it liable to opportunistic applications. The temptation to milk ethnicity for political gain becomes irresistible where other mobilization strategies prove ineffective. Where vanquishing adversaries is the overriding goal, a group is apt to fabricate a harmony of interest where none exists. That is how individuals with demonstrably contradictory aspirations are artfully presented as a group with a common destiny, a group whose members purportedly have the same fears, hopes, and ambitions.

The Yoruba is an example of an ethnic group which has lately projected a united front as a first step towards downplaying an otherwise legendary history of intra-clan hostility. Olatunji Ojo (in an undated York University paper) traces the basically heterogeneous character of the Yoruba society to the 19th century. As he notes, the society was divided along ethnic, class, age and even gender lines. Slave recruitment, he adds, was not just a simple question of a Yoruba enslaving another Yoruba. Although people in the Yoruba region spoke mutually intelligible dialects, shared several cultural traits, and had a nostalgic attachment to Ile-Ife, the true picture . was that of a region of multiple ethnicities. Hence slaves were recruited from among the Oyo, Ife, Owu, Ekiti, Ijesa, Ondo, Ikale There is nothing to show that much has changed in this regard. The internecine wars between rival Yoruba communities (e.g., between Offa and Erin Ile) are a testimony to the staying power of diversity in a period of rapid change.

All the same, the politically active members of an ethnic group are prone to ignore the groups internal differences, and instead fabricate the shared attributes. To project a sense of oneness, the ethnic advocates will likely ignore internal sectarian disputes, and instead make much of what are basically parodies of religious tolerance. The Yoruba-speaking communities of Kwara State were united by language until the hijab controversy exposed a hitherto supressed interfaith animus and distrust.

Ignoring the consequences of mass migrations and the probability of mixed ancestral origins, but without a shred of DNA evidence to establish the purity of consanguine ties, the typical tribe points with pride to its members common heritage. If challenged to validate its claim of the common history of a people without a writing tradition, the tribe responds with unverifiable assertions, unsubstantiated assumptions, received wisdoms, anecdotes, and where all else fails, curses on skeptics, traitors, and nosy truth seekers. Conveniently playing down the likelihood of diversity in linguistic origins, and the communication barriers sometimes erected by the retention of disparate regional dialects, the tribe cites the common language spoken by members as another evidence of its uniqueness. Yet, try as it may, the tribe cannot erase the diversity in diversity.

In brief, if the post-colonial state is artificial, any state created out of is itself artificial. The newly carved out state will wrestle with precisely the same contradictions that it wishes to consign to, and leave behind in, the multi-ethnic state. It is not the diversity of the post-colonial state which endangers its survival. By the same token, it is not the feigned homogeneity of the pre-colonial society that will guarantee the viability of states that are subsequently created to gratify irredentist urges. Eventually, what will make the difference between state viability and state collapse is not diversity per se but how the diversity is managed. What matters is how the state discharges its responsibility for enhancing and sustaining the identity value of citizenship.

At the very least, the identity value of citizenship suggests a framework for tracking the importance that various segments of the population attach to a broad range of identities, be it supra-ethnic, ethnic, religious, cultural, linguistic, class, or ideological.

The identity value of citizenship concept serves other practical purposes. First, by separating appearance from reality, the concept helps pin down the real, instead of assumed or invented, causes of conflict. Second, by tracing the linkages between an individuals identity leanings and his probable responses to diversity situations, the concept enables us to contain low-intensity conflicts and settle them up-stream before they escalate into full-blown civil or military confrontations down-stream. Examples of minor conflicts that festered before taking on an opportunistic (i.e., ethnic, or religious) snowball, effect are those between an Igbo tenant and a Yoruba landlord (over rent payment!), and between a Yoruba man and his non-Yoruba neighbor over each others sanitary habits!

Third, the concept places state agencies (especially, judicial and law enforcement, and other service delivery agencies) under constant pressure to enhance their capacities, and, to move proactively to secure life and property, while also promoting the citizens sense of belonging. When the state leaves a space ungoverned or a deep sense of personal injury unassuaged, it creates a vacuum that fissiparous and lawless elements swiftly fill. The risk of citizen disaffection increases where the state fails to address charges smacking of injustice against, and marginalization of, a demographic group. Defeating the post-colonial states destabilizing forces requires strict observance of the principles of equity and equal opportunities. It further entails adopting a whole-of-government approach to the enhancement of the identity value of citizenship.

M.J. Balogun was Special Adviser to the President of the 74th Session of the UN General Assembly.
People queue up to vote for the Seoul mayoral by-election on April 7 at a temporary polling table prepared at a car dealership in Seoul's Gwangjin District. Yonhap



Voters went to polls to cast ballots for new mayors in Seoul and Busan, the country's two biggest cities, early Wednesday in by-elections deemed a critical bellwether for next year's presidential contest.



Voting began at 6 a.m. at 3,459 polling stations across the country and will last till 8 p.m. Besides the two mayoral seats, 19 other regional public posts are up for grabs, including the county governor for Uiryeong in South Gyeongsang Province and a ward office head in the southeastern city of Ulsan.



In Seoul, a total of 8.4 million voters are eligible to vote in the mayoral election while the Busan mayoral poll has slightly more than 2.9 million qualified voters.



The turnout rate for early voting for the by-elections, conducted from last Friday and Saturday, reached 20.54 percent, a record high for any by-election.



The mayoral elections, especially in Seoul which is home to nearly 10 million of the country's total 52 million population, are seen as definite harbingers of public opinion ahead of the presidential election set for March 2022.



The by-elections take place as President Moon Jae-in and his ruling party have been grappling with public outrage and falling public support ratings over spiking housing prices.



A land speculation scandal involving public officials at LH, the state housing developer, which erupted about a month ahead, further pummeled public sentiment against the ruling bloc.





One of the voters casts a ballot for the Seoul mayoral by-election at a temporary polling center prepared at Itaewon Elementary School in Seoul's Yongsan District, April 7. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul
The United States fully supports Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic aspirations, but the decision on Ukraine's accession to NATO will be made by the Alliance.

Its been an aspiration of Ukraines for some time. Weve long been discussing that aspiration with Ukraine. We are strong supporters of them. We are engaged with them in working to push back on the destabilizing actions. But thats a decision for NATO to make, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said at a briefing on April 6.

Psaki also noted that the US continued to discuss the increase in tensions in the ceasefire violations with Ukraine.

As reported, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly emphasized the importance of granting Ukraine a NATO Membership Action Plan.

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Extinction Rebellion activists have smashed the windows of Barclays Bank's headquarters in London with hammers in protest at capitalism fuelling a 'climate catastrophe'.

Seven women attached stickers reading 'in case of climate emergency break glass', before damaging the windows in Canary Wharf at around 7am today.

The protesters, who wore patches on their clothes bearing the words 'better broken windows than broken promises', then sat down and waited to be arrested.

The group said the action was part of its 'Money Rebellion' against the capitalist system which used 'nonviolent direct action, causing damage to property to prevent and draw attention to greater damage'.

Members accused the bank of 'continued investments in activities that are directly contributing to the climate and ecological emergency'.

Police officers detain an Extinction Rebellion activist outside Barclays Bank's London headquarters in Canary Wharf following a demonstration at around 7am today

A handout photo issued by Extinction Rebellion of their protest at Barclays in Canary Wharf, where they used hammers and chisels to break windows

Extinction Rebellion wants to trigger a wider revolt against the political, economic and social structures of the modern world to avert the worst scenarios of devastation outlined by scientists studying climate change.

The group's move came after activists last week splashed black dye on the facade of the Bank of England in the historical financial centre, the City of London.

Sophie Cowen, a 30-year-old campaigner from London, said: 'You may dislike our action today but I ask you to compare a crack in a window to funding wildfires and flooded homes.'

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: 'Police were called at approximately 7.13am on Wednesday April 7 to reports of a demonstration outside a commercial premises in Churchill Place, Canary Wharf.

'Officers attended and found a number of windows had been damaged.

'Seven women were arrested on suspicion of criminal damage and taken into custody at an east London police station.'

The protest in Canary Wharf, London, pictured. Stickers reading 'in case of climate emergency break glass' were attached to the windows before they were damaged

Activists from Extinction Rebellion, a global environmental movement, protest at Barclays offices in Canary Wharf. Police confirmed seven women were arrested

The broken window, pictured above. The group's move came after activists last week splashed black dye on the facade of the Bank of England in the City of London

A Barclays spokesman added: 'Extinction Rebellion are entitled to their view on capitalism and climate change, but we would ask that in expressing that view they stop short of behaviour which involves criminal damage to our facilities and puts people's safety at risk.

'We have made a commitment to align our entire financing portfolio to the goals of the Paris Agreement, with specific targets and transparent reporting, on the way to achieving our ambition to be a net zero bank by 2050, and help accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy.'

In 2019, eight people were arrested after XR activists tried to spray fake blood at the Treasury building in Westminster.

That year the group also caused widespread disruption by blockading areas of the capital for days.

Police officers detain Extinction Rebellion activists. A spokesman for the force said: 'Police were called at approximately 7.13am on Wednesday April 7 to reports of a demonstration'

The protestors, who wore patches on their clothes bearing the words 'better broken windows than broken promises', sat down and waited to be arrested
The Queen of Dancehall and Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta (LHHATL) star Spice delivered a surprise performance for Jamaican-American rapper Safaree right in his backyard recently thanks to a secret mission planned by his wife, Erica Mena.

Safaree said the experience felt like Reggae Sumfest came to his yard when he apparently walked into his Georgia home to find Spice and four bubbly dancers performing her song Cool It in front of a massive portrait of himself by his swimming pool.

He shared the moment with his Instagram followers yesterday, posting a mini clip of the occasion and tagged the location, Reggae Sumfest with the caption,

Its official Im not leaving my house this summer My wife just surprised me and brought Jamaica to my backyard. I cannot believe I just walked in my yard and had @spiceofficial performing at my crib Yoooooo this was insaneee omg!!! Yooo thank you wooo much! WOWW I am speechless!! reggae Sumfest in my yard!!! The best part was the big picture of me in the back .

Theres no telling what the event was for but it was evidently in complete dedication to Menas Jamaican bred husband.

The television personality/model went all out to adorn their pool area with colors and patterns of the Jamaican flag, which covered all the patio chairs and tabletops complete with centerpieces of natively grown flowers and plants.

Even Safarees giant photo in the backdrop was a shirtless image of the rapper on a canvas of the flag.

Spice in her usual work-mode sassiness gave what appeared to be a pretty lively performance despite a raving hoard of fans cheering on, but she did get a lone bap bap from Safaree and also a pull up from Erica.

The followers were just as delighted to see the exclusive taste of Reggae Sumfest of Spice in Safarees backyard but several couldnt help but to comment on their confusion of seeing the couples rekindle-ship after their very public split not too long ago.

Earlier in February, Safaree, who is widely known as the ex-boyfriend of female rapper, Nicki Minajs and like Spice, a cast member on the Love & Hip Hop franchise, took out his frustrations on Twitter to reveal that he was about to end his marriage to Erica.

After claiming that getting married to the 33-year-old mother of his child, was one of my biggest mistakes, it didnt take long for Erica to respond, claiming that the man she once called the love of her life was the most selfish, vain and inconsiderate person she had ever come across. Both tweets have since been deleted.

One fan wrote, NOW APOLOGIZE TO HER!!! You embarrassed and shamed her and never publicly said sorry, in regards to his messy break-up tweet.

Others agreed, correct..and a marriage or whatever the relationship is between two persons not the world, and rightttttt I 100% agree with you on this one. Im glad they worked through this issue and stayed together .

Its not the first time Safaree and Erica have made a spectacle about troubles in their relationship or insinuated a break-up, nonetheless its great to see them back in a good place. This was thoughtful, your wife is crazy but she loves you, make it work! said one fan with hopes of a bright future for these two.

Mena sure is crazy about her hubby as simply booking Spice for a performance is alleged to run you around US$18,000 plus the added costs for her dancers, hotel accommodation and airline tickets for the crew (first class and economy) and a per diem of US$125 for the entertainer and US$85 for each member of her crew  (although smaller events may be less).

We know it wasnt Safaree birthday (July 4) or their anniversary (October 7), but it must have been worth it.

Meanwhile, the Queen is gearing up to release her debut album, TEN. She just dropped a new video for Money Walk.
A skinny boy in white trousers, a dark jacket and a black ski mask, he emerges from the crowd to throw the first petrol bomb of the night at a police Land Rover in Carrickfergus. It misses and explodes beside a parked car.

He looks about 13. Somewhere, not far from where the riot is unfolding, his school uniform hangs waiting for a return to class after the Easter holidays next Monday.

He's likely to have started secondary school just 19 months ago; still finding his feet with the older lads, trying to fit in. Despite his youth, or maybe because of it, he's centre-stage on Monday night.

A crowd of around 30 young people - mostly aged from 12 to 19 - took on the PSNI to the best of their ability as older men stood on the sidelines giving instructions and advice, keeping the kids "right" in their battle with police.

It started around 9.30pm and ended just before 1am. The PSNI helicopter was overhead for the early part of the night. Police attempted to move in around 10pm but then backed off.

If the history of Northern Ireland riots is ever written, this one won't merit a mention.

The children we saw in advertisements in 1998, as the governments sold us the peace accord, had a very different outlook.

That famous Northern Ireland Office commercial, where Van sings Days Like This, follows two boys spending the afternoon rolling down sand dunes and playing on the beach in perfect peace, hands holding pebbles, not petrol bombs. That future projected for our youth is a million miles from what we've witnessed in loyalist areas in recent days.

The peace dividend for them wasn't meant to be a criminal record.

Ask that skinny boy and his mates about the ins and outs of the Northern Ireland Protocol, and they wouldn't have a clue.

Our current trading arrangements aren't part of their everyday conversation.

A sense of betrayal by the British Government over the Irish Sea Border, and fury at Sinn Fein and the PSNI over the Bobby Storey funeral, is widespread in working-class loyalist areas.

It has been intensified by some unionist politicians.

The disturbances are not spontaneous. Those organising "protests" on social media know full well what way they will likely work out.

The hand of certain paramilitary factions, meant to have left the stage a long time ago, is clear in some cases.

But many of the rioters themselves are just bored kids, looking for excitement in areas where they complain of having nothing else to do.

Staying out late, playing with the 'big boys' will have been the highlight of a dreary lockdown year.

It paled into insignificance compared to the white hot hunger strike disturbances in republican areas in 1981.

But the point is that we are 40 years on. That skinny boy experienced nothing of the Troubles. He was born a full decade after the Good Friday Agreement.

In 2009 and 2010 it was young republicans rioting in Ardoyne which hit the headlines. Youngsters, who should have long been in bed, hurled bricks, bottles and petrol bombs at the PSNI. Photos from Troubles archives show kids, much younger than today's teenage loyalists, out rioting on our streets.

There are countless 1980s images of primary school children armed with missiles, digging up roads for masonry to throw, standing at barricades with stockings over their faces, or proudly posing at burnt-out cars.

With longer evenings, the lifting of Covid restrictions, and the band season starting, the trouble on our streets will likely continue. It follows in a long tradition of inflicting misery on many, and harming the life chances of the youngsters taking part.
State

H&FW PD assures to release salary of MOs by April

Correspondent KOHIMA, APR 7 (NPN) | Publish Date: 4/7/2021 12:59:27 PM IST

Health & family welfare (H&FW) principal director Dr Kevichusa Medikhru has assured to release the pending salary of medical officers (MOs) appointed last year by the department within this month.

During an informal interaction with media persons here on Wednesday, Dr. Medikhru admitted to some lapses that led to the delay in releasing the salary of the 94 recruits for the past four months.

Health & Family Welfare principal director however said the issue was now under process and their salary would be released within April once the issue was sorted out.

Meanwhile, it has been learnt that the new recruits are undergoing immense hardships following non-release of their salary for the past four months.

With the second wave of COVID-19 now being witnessed in many States across the country, which also has the potential of overwhelming health care systems, some of these medical practitioners were even apprehensive of discharging their duties without being getting paid.
Channel Nine has refused to apologise for airing controversial scenes between Bryce Ruthven and Melissa Rawson on Married At First Sight, despite critics claiming their relationship depicts domestic abuse.

More than 12,000 viewers have signed a Change.org petition calling for Nine to apologise for airing 'triggering' scenes involving the couple, and accusing the network of failing in its 'duty of care' towards Melissa.

The petition argues Melissa has been subjected to 'gaslighting, emotional manipulation, isolation, and countless other textbook signs of a controlling and / or abusive relationship' at the hands of her TV 'husband'.

Nine breaks its silence: Channel Nine has refused to apologise for depicting controversial scenes between Bryce Ruthven and Melissa Rawson (both pictured) on Married At First Sight, despite critics claiming their relationship depicts domestic abuse

On Wednesday, Married At First Sight's executive producer John Walsh issued a statement denying that Melissa and Bryce's relationship was 'characterised by domestic violence' and reaffirming that producers always uphold a high level of care for participants.

'The petition in question does not reflect the nature of Bryce and Melissa's relationship and at no time did [production company] Endemol Shine Australia or Nine consider Bryce and Melissa's relationship to be characterised by domestic violence or the like,' Mr Walsh told B&T.

'If that had been the case we would have intervened immediately. Our first priority in making MAFS is to make sure all the participants feel they are operating in a safe environment,' he continued.

Petition: More than 12,000 viewers have signed a Change.org petition calling for Nine to apologise for airing 'triggering' scenes involving the couple, and accusing the network of failing in its 'duty of care' towards Melissa

Allegations: The petition argues Melissa has been subjected to 'gaslighting, emotional manipulation, isolation, and countless other textbook signs of a controlling and / or abusive relationship' at the hands of her TV 'husband'. Pictured together at Sydney Airport last week

Mr Walsh went on to highlight that participants are actively encouraged to report situations where they feel unsafe during filming.

He also listed the 'rigorous processes' that are used during filming to protect participants from toxic situations, including giving them access to a dedicated psychologist.

Participants are also provided with access to a psychologist after the show finishes production.

Denial: On Wednesday, Married At First Sight's executive producer John Walsh issued a statement denying that Melissa and Bryce's relationship was 'characterised by domestic violence' and reaffirming that producers always uphold a high level of care for participants

Channel Nine's statement in full 'The petition in question does not reflect the nature of Bryce and Melissa's relationship and at no time did Endemol Shine Australia or Nine consider Bryce and Melissa's relationship to be characterised by domestic violence or the like. If that had been the case we would have intervened immediately. 'Our first priority in making MAFS is to make sure all the participants feel they are operating in a safe environment. At a briefing of participants prior to commencement of filming, the importance of alerting production if they felt unsafe or uncomfortable with their partners at any time was reinforced. We understand meeting and marrying someone at first sight and living with them for eight weeks can be a potentially daunting experience and we would not persist with a scenario where someone does not feel safe. 'We have very rigorous processes in place to protect all participants in the experiment. All participants have access to the show psychologist during filming, broadcast and once the program has ended. Nine also provides an additional service for participants should they like or need further individual and confidential psychological support. 'This service gives participants access to psychologists who have been specifically engaged to support those involved in the program in relation to their experiences. This confidential service is available to all participants for as long as they need.' Advertisement

Bryce has been widely criticised since the show's very first episode for appearing to gaslight and manipulate his bride.

Viewers claim her insecurities and trauma from previous relationships are being exploited to promote discussion and create high audience engagement - at the cost of her mental health.

However, Melissa is still dating Bryce and has not accused the show of malpractice.

The kiss: During last Tuesday's episode, Bryce planted an unwanted kiss on fellow participant Beck Zemek's cheek in an apparent attempt at humour, following weeks of tension

During last Tuesday's episode, Bryce planted an unwanted kiss on fellow participant Beck Zemek's cheek in an apparent attempt at humour, following weeks of tension.

The incident left Beck in floods of tears as thousands of viewers expressed their outrage that the segment was allowed to air.

Beck subsequently told The Kyle and Jackie O Show the kiss affected her mentally, doubling down on her claim that it was harassment.

Tears: The incident left Beck in floods of tears as thousands of viewers expressed their outrage that the segment was allowed to air

'It was one of those moments where I had to bring the contract up to even see what my rights are. I didn't sign up for this,' she said.

'It was just so mentally draining for me at the time. I look at it the same way as I did before. It's harassment. I think you learn to keep your hands to yourself when you're five years old.

'It was really hard for me to even watch last night Everyone's seen a good edit of it; it was worse than that.'

Meanwhile, Australia's television watchdog has been hit with four times as many complaints about Married At First Sight compared to 12 months ago.

Complaints: Meanwhile, Australia's television watchdog has been hit with four times as many complaints about Married At First Sight compared to 12 months ago

The Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has already received 41 official complaints about this season of MAFS, compared to just 10 in 2020.

These complaints have been referred to Channel Nine, which has 60 days to respond before ACMA considers launching an official investigation into the practices.

Several former contestants have accused the show of failing in their duty of care toward female participants in recent years.

Claims: Several former contestants have accused the show of failing in their duty of care toward female participants in recent years. Natasha Spencer (pictured) who appeared on MAFS in 2020, has revealed she suffered a total nervous breakdown during filming after hearing allegations of sexual assault on set

Natasha Spencer, who appeared on MAFS in 2020, has revealed she suffered a total nervous breakdown during filming after hearing allegations of sexual assault on set.

She maintains production failed to appropriately deal with the allegations.

Fellow participant Poppy Jenkins, who was married to FIFO worker Luke Eglin on the experiment in 2020, has also claimed she was mistreated but told she wasn't allowed to voice her perspective of her experience on the show.

She also alleged there were incidents that happened during filming that were 'too controversial' to be shown on television.

'Why is Luke crying when I left? What really happened that he was crying over! You don't know because I wasn't allowed to say! It's too controversial!' she said.

'He's scared s**tless I will tell the truth. I was afraid to speak up! But f**k this s**t, I'm going to tell everything! It's not what you see, it's what you don't see! Go and ask Luke why I was so uncomfortable? Why the f**k did I really leave?'

'He's petrified I'm going to talk. He knows he's f**ked up. Those tears from him are for his reputation and job!'

Daily Mail Australia cannot publish the nature of her allegations for legal reasons.

1800RESPECT

Lifeline 13 11 14
H.I.G. Capital, LLC ("H.I.G."), a leading global alternative investment firm with over 36 billion of equity capital under management, announced today that its affiliates have provided debt financing of 130 million to a leading Italy based residential property and development company. Funds will predominantly be used to complete various residential developments. Terms were not disclosed.

H.I.G. Europe Realty has previously completed 16 real estate credit transactions and continues to focus on its target market of value-added opportunities.

Riccardo Dallolio, Managing Director and Head of H.I.G. Europe Realty in London, commented: "This transaction further demonstrates our ability to invest across the capital structure in different asset classes and jurisdictions. H.I.G. Europe Realty is committed to providing financing solutions to strong real estate sponsors across European jurisdictions."

Tareck Safi, Managing Director and Head of Real Estate Debt at H.I.G. Europe Realty, added: "We are delighted to work alongside the management team to help them pursue the company's growth ambitions via a flexible financing solution."

About H.I.G. Capital

H.I.G. is a leading global private equity and alternative assets investment firm with over 36 billion of equity capital under management.* Based in Miami, and with offices in New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Atlanta in the U.S., as well as international affiliate offices in London, Hamburg, Madrid, Milan, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Bogota, H.I.G. specializes in providing both debt and equity capital to small and mid-sized companies, utilizing a flexible and operationally focused/value-added approach:

H.I.G.'s equity funds invest in management buyouts, recapitalizations and corporate carve-outs of both profitable as well as underperforming manufacturing and service businesses. H.I.G.'s debt funds invest in senior, unitranche and junior debt financing to companies across the size spectrum, both on a primary (direct origination) basis, as well as in the secondary markets. H.I.G. is also a leading CLO manager, through its WhiteHorse family of vehicles, and manages a publicly traded BDC, WhiteHorse Finance. H.I.G.'s real estate funds invest in and lend to value-added properties, which can benefit from improved asset management practices.

Since its founding in 1993, H.I.G. has invested in and managed more than 300 companies worldwide. The firm's current portfolio includes more than 100 companies with combined sales in excess of 27 billion. For more information, please refer to the H.I.G. website at www.higcapital.com.

Based on total capital commitments managed by H.I.G. Capital and affiliates.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005509/en/

Contacts:

Riccardo Dallolio

Managing Director

rdallolio@higrealty.com



Tareck Safi

Managing Director

tsafi@higrealty.com



H.I.G. Capital

P +44 (0) 207 318 5700

F +44 (0) 207 318 5749

www.higcapital.com
A Virginia school district is taking action after a student shared an offensive George Floyd meme on social media that was shared by others.

An unidentified Cave Spring High School student posted the image after the school beat their rivals at Hidden Valley High School in a football game Friday, according to Roanoke County Public Schools. The doctored photo placed the Cave Spring logo over former Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin as he kneeled on George Floyd, over whom Hidden Valleys logo was placed.

Cave Spring High School in Roanoke, Va. (Google Maps)

School officials were made aware of the photo Saturday and are holding a student accountable for his actions, Chuck Lionberger, director of community relations for the district, said. Lionberger said the district could not disclose specific discipline, citing student privacy laws.

We also discovered this student had posted a couple of other images that were not related to George Floyd, but were just as deplorable, Lionberger said in a statement. Additionally, we learned a few students shared these images and we are also holding those students accountable as well.

The abhorrent, disturbing image shared is not representative of the values at Cave Spring or the district, Roanoke County Public Schools Superintendent Ken Nicely said in a statement.

We believe strongly in creating a culture of kindness and respect. We do not condone this behavior in any way and condemn this act, Nicely said. Actions such as this are not representative of who we are and what we believe.

George Floyd died in May after officers in Minneapolis attempted to arrest him over a report of a possibly counterfeit $20 bill. Former Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin is currently on trial for of second- and third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

Prosecutors said Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck for 9 minutes, 29 seconds, which they have argued led to his death. Chauvins attorney argued he died of an overdose, underlying health conditions and adrenaline.

The Hennepin County Medical Examiner's Office classified Floyd's death as a homicide that occurred while he was being restrained by police and listed the cause of death as a "cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression."

Floyds death sparked a new wave of racial reckoning across the country, as video of the police encounter outraged millions of people across the world. Advocates and activists have reignited conversations on racial inequity in a range of areas.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The NYPD is seeking the publics assistance locating a missing Port Richmond teen.

Niah Sykes, 15, a resident of the 2200 block of Richmond Terrace, was last seen at her home at around 9 p.m. on Saturday, according to a written statement from the NYPDs Deputy Commissioner of Public Information.

Police describe Sykes as a black female with brown eyes and black hair. She was last seen wearing a black hooded sweater with a Cookie Monster logo, black jeans and gray boots.

Anyone with information in regard to this missing person is asked to call the NYPDs Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the CrimeStoppers website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM or on Twitter @NYPDTips. All calls are strictly confidential.
YEREVAN, APRIL 7, ARMENPRESS. The United States government, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), is providing an additional $1,000,000 to support the efforts of the Government of Armenia to respond to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, bringing USAIDs total funding to date to combat COVID-19 to more than $11 million, the USAID told Armenpress.

This includes emergency funding to address immediate health needs and efforts to address the secondary and tertiary impacts of the pandemic on democratic development and economic growth. USAID is awarding the funds to UNICEF to provide targeted technical assistance to support and ensure effective implementation of COVID-19 vaccination efforts in Armenia, in accordance with the National Deployment Vaccination Plan.

Lynne M. Tracy, U.S. Ambassador to Armenia, stated: Throughout the pandemic, the United States has partnered with Armenia in its fight against COVID-19. Through this new assistance, we will continue working together to overcome COVID-19 and prepare for future public health threats.

The United States has worked closely with Armenia throughout the duration of the pandemic to protect public health and strengthen the response to COVID-19. This cooperation includes: providing funding to strengthen laboratory capacity and management of severe cases; securing essential equipment; supporting vulnerable households and children; bolstering the Government of Armenias crisis communications; enhancing emergency preparedness and response; and promoting resilience and economic stability through grants to small businesses, civil society, and media.

The United States continues to demonstrate its global leadership in public health and humanitarian assistance in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, building on the more than $140 billion in U.S. Government support for global health programs and increasing the capacity of local healthcare systems since 2001.
There are all sorts of ways to evaluate a states tax system, but a tidbit from one recent analysis caught my eye.

Louisianas average personal tax burden, according to a new study by the personal finance website WalletHub, ranks 19th in the nation, based on a formula that looks not at tax rates but at the proportion of personal income paid to state and local government.

Nothing earth-shattering there. What got my attention was that by this measure, the tax burden here is higher than in the state where I grew up  a place often stereotyped as Taxachusetts. Despite the snarky nickname, Massachusetts finished 21st with an average tax burden of 8.77% of personal income, a tad lower than Louisianas 8.82%.

So what gives?

Louisianas relatively high ranking doesnt come from the property tax burden, which the study put among the nations lowest, ranked 45th out of 50. Nor is it due to income taxes, a regular rhetorical target of politicians; proportionally, residents in 37 states pay more.

The culprit is the combined state and local sales tax. Louisianans on average pay 5.38% of their income on sales and excise taxes, the fourth highest in the nation behind Hawaii, Nevada and Washington, the study found.

That Louisianas sales taxes are high is a well-settled reality, so much so that the fact rarely enters the conversation when policymakers talk of reforming the system. Theres a lot of such talk now, with the Legislature preparing to take a stab during the upcoming session at a fundamentally change our tax structure, according to a letter signed by leaders in both chambers.

On the table are proposals to lower income tax rates and eliminate loopholes, and to abolish some business taxes. Sales taxes are on the agenda too, but only because some lawmakers want to centralize collections rather than continue to leave that task to localities.

These are all things favored by the business community, but not necessarily burning issues among ordinary residents.

High sales taxes are another matter. A new poll by the Public Policy Research Lab at LSU's Manship School of Mass Communications Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs found that a majority of adults polled, 54%, think sales taxes are too high. More Republicans than Democrats think so, 61% versus 53%, even though proposals to lower other taxes are driven by Republican lawmakers. Republican respondents are also the most likely to think income taxes are too high, 51% compared to 34% of Democrats, suggesting that Republicans are more likely to say taxes are too high in general.

Still, its noteworthy that high sales taxes arent viewed as a problem that legislative leaders are motivated to fix, despite the general understanding in economic circles that sales taxes hit lower-income residents the hardest because they tend to spend much if not all of what they earn, and income tax cuts benefit wealthier residents.

Indeed, sales taxes tend to be the go-to solution to periodic financial crises in the state, particularly with the Republican lawmakers who control the Legislature. Theyre the ones who pushed in recent years to rely on temporary sales hikes to pull the state out of the fiscal crisis that Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards inherited, while Edwards at first wanted a more balanced approach.

Edwards did note that the surviving plank of a previous tax reform effort, the Stelly Plan, at least eliminated state sales taxes on food, utilities and prescriptions, which made the subsequent sales tax increase somewhat less punishing to the poor.

It was Republican lawmakers, though, who led the fight to reverse the Stelly income tax increases that were designed to offset those cuts in the first place. That happened during the post-Katrina revenue bump (with support at the time from then-legislator Edwards), and its what put lawmakers in the position of turning to sales taxes once the bottom fell out. An extra 0.45 cents per dollar is still being tacked on to purchases through 2025, when yet another battle over how to fully fund state government will loom.

The lawmakers gathering next week in Baton Rouge know this, and if they minded much, it would be part of the conversation about revamping taxes.

That its not is a sure sign that business interests, not popular demand, are steering the tax reform train.
ROME - After observers from foreign countries were prevented from attending the latest hearing in the trial against Patrick Zaki, the Italian embassy to Egypt has immediately started working with interlocutors from like-minded countries, highlighting the need to continue to send concrete signals on the importance of trial monitoring. The international community needs to continue to use trial monitoring to preserve the rights of defendants and people under investigation, according to the embassy. Thanks to this, the embassies of France and Canada have accepted to attend a hearing while the US filed a letter to the court to stress the country's interest in the case.


Burma Deaths of Protesters and Bystanders Push Myanmar Toll to at Least 596

The military regimes forces are seen during an attack on anti-regime protesters in Kale, Sagaing Region on Wednesday morning.

Myanmar saw at least 14 more violent deaths on Wednesday as the regimes forces cracked down on anti-regime protesters from dawn to dusk in Sagaing Region in the countrys northwest and Bago Region in the central part of the country. The death toll now totals at least 596 since the Feb. 1 coup.

At least 11 protesters died when regime forces opened fire on roadblocks set up by anti-regime protesters in Sagaing Regions Kale (Kalay) Township about 5 a.m. Wednesday. Protesters were manning the roadblock.

Kale residents resisted the violent assault with homemade firearms, but they were outgunned. More than a dozen were wounded while some 18 people, including the bystanders, were arrested.

A resident who asked not to be named told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday evening that the death toll had reached 11, with the total number of fatalities expected to rise. The wounded are scattered, and several bodies are still missing. A few of those injured are being treated at the military hospital in Kale.

Of the 11 dead, eight were killed when police and soldiers fired explosives in an attack on the Tahan roadblocks. A university student, Ko Arkar Thu Aung, 22, was among those killed in the early morning.

The other three residents killed were not part of the protest, the local source said, but their bodies were taken away by the junta forces. The three are U Van Hta Thang, a rescue worker Ko Shar Mar and U Ngu Shan Paung, who was shot dead while he was feeding his pigs.

Protesters roadblocks at Tahan, a defense line set up in the west of Kale Township, were destroyed. The junta forces have now occupied the area, including the public hospital and clinics.

We are treating the injured in a secret, safe place while the junta forces have occupied the hospital and several clinics in town, said another resident, who also spoke in condition of anonymity. The volunteer healthcare staff is treating the wounded protesters in hiding.

Defying the crackdowns, Kale residents in other parts of the town are continuing to take to the streets in protest against the regime.

The resistance is not only in Kale. Protesters in other parts of Sagaings Tamu and Taze were also demonstrating against the regime.

A protester, Ko Kyaw Myo Aung, was killed and five were wounded as Myanmar regimes troops quelled anti-regime protests in Taze, Sagaing Region, for the first time on Wednesday afternoon. Until the latest crackdown, tens of thousands had joined daily rallies.

Two civilians were killed by the military regimes forces when they opened fire randomly in residential areas of Bago during a crackdown on anti-coup protesters Wednesday morning.

A 20-year-old anti-coup protester and a 48-year-old man died after both were shot in the head. Several people were wounded and some young protesters arrested, according to a Bago resident.

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ANN ARBOR, MI -- Hospitalizations for COVID-19 are rising significantly in Michigan, and St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor is among the hospitals nearing capacity.

As of Monday, April 5, St. Joes was at 99% capacity, according to the state. Hospital officials said there were 81 COVID-19 positive patients on Wednesday morning, April 7.

Related: Michigan coronavirus data for Wednesday, April 7: Hospitalizations up by 1,000 plus in past week

The median age of COVID positive patients there is about 54 years old, David Vandenberg, chief medical officer at St. Joes in Ann Arbor and Livingston, said. Previously, the median age has been about 66 years old.

Most of the patients come from the Ann Arbor-area, he said.

Related: Whitmer on CNN: Michigan could shed COVID-19 restrictions, fully reopen this summer

Vandenberg attributes the rising hospitalizations to fewer vaccinated young people and virus variants present in the state that are more transmittable. All Michigan adults became eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine on Monday.

While we have made progress in vaccination efforts across the state, demand is still greater than supply, Vandenberg said in a statement. Not everyone has had access to the vaccine yet, predominantly younger people, which helps explain the virus move to a younger demographic. Secondly, we have multiple variants presently in Michigan, which transmit more easily from person to person, which helps explain the increased number of cases.

Related: Michigan ranks highest in COVID-19 hospitalizations amid surge as model predicts further worsening

Neighboring Michigan Medicine Health System had 76 COVID-19 positive patients admitted to the hospital as of Tuesday afternoon, according to its dashboard.

Vandenberg urged people to consider vaccination because it protects from infection, and makes it less likely for a vaccinated person who gets COVID-19 to require hospitalization. The vaccines appear to be effective against multiple strains of the virus, he said.

In Washtenaw County, 222 new COVID-19 cases and 14 hospitalizations were reported in 24 hours as of Wednesday morning.

St. Joes in Ann Arbor is one of 16 hospitals with more than 90% capacity, according to the state. Four were at 100% capacity -- Beaumont Wayne, McLaren Port Huron, McLaren Oakland and Ascension St. Joseph Hospital in Tawas City -- and five were at 99% capacity, including St. Joes and Bronson Methodist in Kalamazoo, Henry Ford Macomb and Hurley in Flint.

Throughout the state, 11.9% of in-patient hospital beds are being used to treat COVID-19 patients -- an increase of 203% since Feb. 28.

MORE ON MLIVE:

Long Covid continues to stump doctors and exhaust those fighting months-long battles

Petition demands Michigan pause in-person classes until COVID-19 spread is reduced

Proposed law gives Ann Arbor renters 240 days before landlords can show occupied apartments
South Africa finalized a deal to receive 20 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine produced by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE from mid-April, allowing the country to prepare for a broad roll-out of inoculations after a series of setbacks.

The agreement had been delayed by contractual conditions demanded by Pfizer that arent in line with South Africas normal procurement policies, Anban Pillay, a deputy director general in the Department of Health, said by text message Tuesday. Those have now been resolved.

The deal comes as a boost to a country where inoculations have been limited to just over 250,000 health workers taking part in a study by Johnson & Johnson.

Thats meant South Africa lags a number of its emerging-market peers as well as some other African countries.

J&J has agreed to supply more than 30 million doses of its vaccine candidate, which was approved for general use in South Africa last week.

That and the Pfizer-BioNTech version will be used to kick-start the roll out after a decision not to use AstraZeneca Plcs shot, which was found to offer little protection against mild forms of Covid-19 in a local trial.

Pfizer insisted that South Africas health and finance ministers personally sign the vaccine-supply pact, which includes indemnity clauses to protect the company against any future legal claims, according to correspondence between the ministers seen by Bloomberg and confirmed by the National Treasury.

Our discussions with the government in South Africa to provide access to the vaccine are still ongoing, Pfizer said in an emailed response to questions. These discussions are confidential and we are therefore unable to divulge any details at the moment.

Pfizer will deliver vaccines every quarter, Pillay told the Business Day newspaper, which reported the signing of the deal earlier.
A Myanmar anti-junta protester shows a three-finger salute of defiance on his red-painted hand in memory of protesters who lost their lives during previous demonstrations in Yangon, April 6, 2021.

Myanmar citizens are struggling with shortages of food and other necessities after 65 days of rule under the military junta, whose troops shake down cargo trucks at roadblocks and steal goods and cash from vehicles, stores, and homes, residents said Tuesday.

The coup on Feb. 1 that overthrew the countrys elected government followed a year of deepening economic distress from a shutdown of economic activity to control the spread of the coronavirus. Myanmar is Southeast Asias poorest country, with nominal per capita GDP of about U.S. $1,300.

Measures to fight the pandemic, which flared up this past winter, hit households and businesses, including those in the agricultural sector, which accounts for one-fifth of GDP and over half of employment. The coup and mass civil disobedience against the junta have further dampened economic activity.

Military restrictions on transportation and security barriers set up on major roadways nationwide have choked the countrys flow of food and other goods into cities and suburban areas. Soldiers stationed along major roadways often confiscate cargo and cash from drivers and motorcyclists in the Sagaing and Mandalay regions  two of Myanmar largest population centers  merchants told RFA.

Security forces are stopping all traffic that passes through most towns in the two regions and inspecting vehicles, they said.

[Our] car was stopped last evening in Kyaukpadaung, Mandalay, and 500,000 kyats [U.S. $350] was taken from a handbag on the cars dashboard, said a person who witnessed the theft, but wanted to remain anonymous. We told them we were civil servants, and they said they didnt care and just took the money.

Similar incidents were reported in Sagaing region in the countrys northwest, where police and troops seized food from shops in markets and shopping malls without paying, traders said. They also stole goods from vehicles they inspected, resulting in fewer cargo trucks moving though the region.

Its not easy to transport goods now because (troops) are everywhere, and we dont know if we can proceed or not, said a trader in Monywa, Sagaings largest city. The cars can go on only when they say so. Even then, they sometimes will take stuff.

The trader said he recently saw security forces take a box of snacks from a vehicle during a security check.

Life is quite difficult, he added.

Only about two of every 100 truck drivers are now moving cargo through the region, the trader said.

Not only do security forces check every part of the trucks, they also ask questions if they find a lot of cash, inquiring where the money came from and who will receive it, and then sometimes take the money for themselves, he said.

A Myanmar woman reads slogans painted by anti-junta protesters on a message board in Kamayut township, Yangon region, April 6, 2021, Credit: RFA





Prices increase twofold, threefold

The economic pinch is also being felt in Yangon, the most populous city in Myanmar, whose citizens rely on deliveries of goods from outside the urban center for their household and business needs.

Disruptions in the flow of consumer goods means that neighborhood markets have little meat or vegetables to sell, while prices for the products have doubled, said one Yangon homemaker.

In Yangon, only the big supermarkets like City Mart and Metro are operating as usual, and the smaller shops and stores are all closed, she said.

Only about half the regular amount of meat and veggies is available, and you have to buy them whether you like it or not as we dont have the opportunity to choose what we want, she said. Prices have increased twofold, threefold, or more.

The number of cargo trucks entering the commercial centers largest wholesale markets have dropped by two-thirds, while prices of daily necessities have increased, said a rice seller in Yangon.

At the Bayinnaung Market in northwestern Yangon, the largest agricultural commodities trading market in Myanmar, rice deliveries have fallen by about two-thirds, though shops are open as usual, a rice merchant said.

The market for foodstuffs will remain stable for now, but if the flow of basic foods and commodities stops and storage supplies are exhausted, prices will skyrocket, traders said.

The struggle to stay fed and supplied plays out amid live-and-death battles in the streets, as heavily armed security forces suppress demonstrators and ordinary citizens alike, often firing indiscriminately into crowds or dwellings.

At least three civilians had been wounded by gunfire within 24 hours up to midday on Tuesday and an unknown number of people had been arrested since early morning, including four medical doctors in Mandalay.

Soldiers and police detained the doctors as they prepared for a protest on 73rd Street in memory of their fallen colleagues. One man was hit in the arm when police fired live rounds during the crackdown, and officers arrested two pediatricians and two other doctors, and confiscated motorcycles and cell phones from the protesters, witnesses said.

They arrived in a truck while we were preparing to stage a dawn protest, said one physician at the scene who declined to be named. They fired stun grenades five times near the university campus. Afterwards, two pediatricians and two other doctors got arrested, and three motorcycles were taken away.

Though local health department workers and other anti-junta protesters have held early morning demonstrations, this was the first time that police took action against them, those at the scene said.

Myanmar anti-junta protesters take part in a demonstration against the military regime in Myanmar's second-largest city, Mandalay, April 6, 2021. Credit: AFP/Anonymous source





Woman hit by gunfire

In the Kachin state town of Mogaung, a woman was hit in the arm by gunfire on Monday evening while counting her days earnings in her shop, witnesses said. She was shot by troops and police stationed on the bridge across the Nangyin River near her neighborhood.

Security forces also shot another man on a motorbike when he tried to turn around at the bridge, witnesses said.

There were five or six shots, and one of the first shots hit the woman, said a local resident. The last shot hit the guy on the motorbike, slightly wounding him.

A family member of the woman who was shot said a military officer apologized for the shooting Tuesday morning and offered to take her to a military hospital in Kachins capital Myitkyina.

Local residents said they wanted the troops to leave the bridge.

Security forces continued heir searches for protest leaders in other parts of Myanmar, sometimes resorting to their arresting their relatives.

When police in Thayarwaddy, a city in the central Bago region, couldnt find Jar Lay, an anti-coup protest leader, they arrested his family of six, including a four-year-old daughter, a toddler niece, and a 13-year-old brother-in-law.

The six were released on Tuesday, but Jar Lay told RFA from his hiding place that police beat his teenage brother-in-law on the side of his head during an interrogation.

An informer told police we had explosives and weapons hidden in the house which was not true, and troops came to search for them at about 3 a.m., he said. My entire family, including my kids and my in-laws, was taken to a military camp.

The teenager, who was hit in the temples and on his ears, was questioned about why he shared posts and photos on social media from his cell phone, Jar Lay said.

He was later taken to a police station and was forced to sign a confession, he said.

Before their release, the relatives had to sign a pledge that they would help police capture Jar Lay, and that if he could not be found, they would be rearrested, Jar Lay said.

Security forces are even rounding up domestic celebrities who may not have played a part in the protests.

Soldiers and police arrested famous comedian Zarganar in Yangons Tamwe township Tuesday morning, according to Facebook posts by his colleagues Ngapyaw Gyaw and Kaung Gyaw.

Zaganar is not on the list of those subject to police warrants, so it is not yet known what he has been charged with or where he is being detained, they said.

Myanmar anti-junta protesters throw red paint on a street during a demonstration in Yangon, April 6, 2021. Credit: Associated Press





Red paint on Yangon streets

Throughout the country, protests against the junta continued in various forms in Mandalay, the Yangon suburbs, and in other cities and towns.

Anti-junta protesters added color to their rallies Tuesday by smearing red paint on streets and pavements in the commercial hub Yangon to signal their opposition to the military regimes bloody crackdowns on demonstrations that have left about 570 people dead and injured scores of others, Agence France-Presse reported.

Myanmar youth meanwhile are calling for boycott of the annual Thingyan Water Festival holiday next week in defiance of the military regime and to honor those killed by security forces, the online news journal The Irrawaddy reported. Last years holiday celebrations, which include splashing water on people in public places, were called off by the government due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Military authorities, who already have closed the offices of deposed leader Aung San Su Kyis National League for Democracy (NLD), are continuing to pursue and arrest party officials and parliamentarians, according to residents in various areas.

Security forces arrested Aye Khine, a member of parliament and a local NLD executive committee member, in Mandalay region on Tuesday, said one of his colleagues.

He was returning home from hiding for a while and was arrested while he was making a phone call in the city. His phone was also taken away, said the NLD member who spoke to RFA on condition of anonymity.

Ye Kyaw Thwin, an NLD lawmaker representing Mawlamyine township in Ayeyarwady region, was arrested by authorities Tuesday afternoon while fleeing a village following a complaint from a military informant, one of his colleagues said.

Reported by RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane and Kyaw Min Htun. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
MEXICO CITY, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The United Mexican States (" Mexico ") previously announced an offer to purchase for cash (the " Tender Offer ") its outstanding notes of the 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 April 6, 2021 (the " Offer to Purchase "). Mexico has instructed BofA Securities, 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 Old Notes Maximum Purchase Amount is U.S.$700,590,000 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 table below. Appropriate adjustments will be made so that purchases are made in the minimum denominations set forth in the Offer to Purchase.

Accepted Principal Amounts of Old 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 4.000% Global Notes due 2023

U.S.$84,590,000

U.S.$84,588,000

U.S.$58,618,000

U.S.$58,616,000 3.600% Global Notes due 2025

U.S.$60,526,000

U.S.$60,331,000

U.S.$57,867,000

- 3.900% Global Notes due 2025

U.S.$31,169,000

U.S.$31,169,000

U.S.$10,924,000

- 4.125% Global Notes due 2026

U.S.$3,021,000

U.S.$3,021,000

U.S.$51,000,000

- 4.150% Global Notes due 2027

U.S.$12,582,000

U.S.$12,582,000

-

- 4.500% Global Notes due 2029

U.S.$55,626,000

U.S.$55,626,000

U.S.$11,588,000

- 4.750% Global Notes due 2032

U.S.$67,003,000

U.S.$67,003,000

U.S.$63,400,000

- 6.750% Global Notes due 2034

U.S.$101,068,000

U.S.$101,068,000

U.S.$157,902,000

- 6.050% Global Notes due 2040

U.S.$226,851,000

U.S.$226,586,000

U.S.$7,450,000

-

The settlement of the Tender Offer is scheduled to occur on Friday, April 9, 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:

BBVA Securities Inc. 1345 Avenue of the

Americas, 44th Floor New York, NY 10105 Call toll-free: +1-800-422-8692 BofA Securities, Inc. One Bryant Park

New York, NY 10036 Call toll-free: +1 888 292 0070 Credit Suisse Securities

(USA) LLC 11 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10010-3629 Call toll-free: +1-800-820-1653 J.P. Morgan Securities LLC 383 Madison Avenue New York, NY

10179 Call toll-free: +1-866-846-2874

The Billing and Delivering Bank for this Tender Offer is: BofA Securities, 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 United Kingdom ("UK") Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (as amended). 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 UK 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 (d) 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 (866) 829-1035

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
SLAVE LAKE, AB, April 7, 2021 /CNW/ - Expander Energy Inc. and Vanderwell Contractors (1971) Ltd, are pleased to announce that their Slave Lake Biomass / Gas to Liquids proposed project ("Project") received its environmental permit from Alberta Environment and Parks ("AEP") to establish Canada's first Biomass Gas to Liquids plant ("Plant") adjacent to Vanderwell's sawmill site in the Mitsue Industrial Park.

The Plant will produce over 6.5 million liters per year of low-carbon intensity, clean-burning synthetic diesel fuel (trade named SynDiesel) made from sawmill and forestry residuals. The Plant will concurrently produce marketable volumes of hydrogen from the process. The AEP permit is the last significant permit required to enable the construction and operation of the Project.

The Plant will use Expander's patented process and wood waste from Vanderwell's operations as feedstock to create a low-carbon diesel fuel that will meet Canada's new Clean Fuel Standard to 2030 and beyond. This is a significant step in meeting both the Provincial and Federal Government mandates that require diesel fuel to meet progressively more stringent Carbon Intensity limits.

To date nearly all low carbon intensity diesel fuel has been supplied from Asia and the USA due to lack of domestic supply. The Slave Lake Biomass to Diesel facility will be one of the first facilities in Canada to supply this need domestically.

The Project is well under way with construction expected to begin in late 2021. The first phase is a commercial demonstration plant producing 6.5 million litres per year of SynDiesel followed by a commercial expansion to over 20 million litres per year. The proposed 30-million-dollar Plant will create local construction jobs as well as permanent operating and maintenance jobs.

"Vanderwell is very excited about being involved in this innovative and very important project and to have it here in our backyard in Slave Lake," stated President Ken Vanderwell. "There is no doubt renewable low-carbon intensity fuels are going to be a large component in the future of the energy industry and building the first such plant in Canada here in Slave Lake will be a major accomplishment."

Expander CEO, Steve Price added, "We couldn't be happier to have Vanderwell as a partner. As a cornerstone family-owned business in Slave Lake they bring credibility and capability that are essential to making this project a success."

After a successful commercial demonstration, Expander and Vanderwell are planning to utilize additional wood waste in the area and to examine alternative feedstocks. These could include other forestry residuals, landfill material and municipal wastewater solids, and others. Expander anticipates that the Slave Lake area has a biomass availability that could support a facility producing 200 million liters of SynDiesel per year.

In addition, hydrogen is becoming increasingly important as a promising fuel to reduce the use of fossil fuels in select sectors and is key to moving Alberta and Canada toward the stated goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Our hydrogen will serve as an early building block in creating a cleaner provincial and federal energy economy.

"This is about converting waste material into a high-quality renewable low-carbon intensity fuel and a valuable hydrogen product that can help both the environment and create a new industry in Alberta and Canada," Ken Vanderwell added.

About Expander Energy

Expander Energy is a technology company founded and owned by Albertans that developed and patented its own technologies to answer the challenges of creating low carbon, high-performing fuels for Alberta, Canada, and the world markets. We believe that low carbon intensity and profitability are not mutually exclusive.

Our mission is to revolutionize the fuels of today to provide a bridge to the fuels of tomorrow.

Expander Energy Inc. is a privately held energy company located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.



About Vanderwell Contractors (1971) Ltd.

Vanderwell Contractors (1971) Ltd. is a wood manufacturing company that provides Alberta softwood dimensional lumber products and related residuals to the wholesale marketplace in North America.

Vanderwell was founded by, and is owned by Albertans, being located in Slave Lake, Alberta Canada.

SOURCE Expander Energy Inc.

For further information: Steve Price, CEO, Expander Energy Inc., [email protected], www.expanderenergy.com; Ken Vanderwell - President, Vanderwell Contractors (1971) Ltd., [email protected], www.vanderwell.com

Related Links

www.expanderenergy.com/


Im a natural contrarian, but even a contrarian has to admit that some elements of conventional wisdom are difficult to challenge. We are in the midst of a housing urgency. I wont call it a crisis because that word is dying of overuse. But its an urgency  a condition in desperate need of relief.According to one reliable survey, a quarter of all renters in America, most of them working poor, are paying more than half their monthly income on rent. Its very hard to live decently that way. Even among those generally described as middle class, a majority are paying more than 30 percent. To use the technical term, they are rent-burdened. Freddie Mac, the quasi-private housing finance agency, says we have a supply shortage of 2.5 million units. We simply need to build more places to live.This is a national problem. Heres one local snapshot: In Salt Lake City, rents have increased by 78 percent in the past two decades. Two-thirds of that increase has come in the last five years. Salt Lake City is a reasonably prosperous corner of America, but those numbers are making life quite difficult even for those with stable jobs and incomes.In the past couple of years, we have seen the rapid expansion of one particular effort to do something about this: to revise zoning laws that require single-family homes in three-quarters of the countrys residential neighborhoods. Minneapolis started this ball rolling two years ago by voting to make single-family zoning illegal . It didnt mean you couldnt build a single-family house on your property  just that local governments couldnt require you to build that way.Since then, the drive to abolish single-family zoning has succeeded at the state level in Oregon . It is being written into the long-range plan currently being drafted in Charlotte, N.C., where 84 percent of the residential land is currently zoned single-family. It is popping up widely in northern California: Sacramentos city council passed a bill early this year that will allow dwellings of four units on every residential lot in the city. Berkeley, Calif., which is now zoned 83 percent single-family, has voted to ban that type of zoning by 2022.In Minneapolis, to start with the trailblazer, not much is happening. The Minneapolis reported in early January that one year after its final adoption by the city council, the controversial plan hasnt led to many visible changes in the landscape. The citys manager of code development, speaking of the move to upzone for multi-unit construction in single-family neighborhoods, admitted that those have been fairly slow to ramp up.It may be fair to object that a year is too short a time to pass judgment on the Minneapolis experiment. Perhaps it is. But more systematic research has come to similar conclusions. The urban scholar Yonah Freemark, studying residential neighborhoods in Chicago after nearly a decade of upzoning, concluded a couple of years ago that it had had no effect on the creation of newly permitted development. Michael Storper, an urban planning professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, told an interviewer that what upzoning did not do in Chicago, and is not likely to do anywhere, is create incentives for housing construction in the areas where middle-class and lower-income people most need it at the prices for which they need it.Upzoning isnt a bad idea. It just isnt much of a panacea. Why doesnt it produce the results it was designed to produce? There are a couple of reasons. The most frequently touted feature of these new zoning rules is that they allow for the construction of accessory dwelling units (ADUs), or to use the common description, granny flats. It isnt difficult for a newspaper feature writer to pile up examples of homeowners who added onto their property to house a family member, but the truth is not many people are going to do this. A high-quality ADU in a moderately affluent city can cost $400,000. We will never have enough granny flats to make a significant dent in our housing shortage. We dont even have enough grannies. This is a feel-good change destined to have relatively little effect.The current wave of zoning reform isnt just about granny flats. Its also about allowing the construction of fourplexes and other small apartment buildings in what had been exclusively single-family neighborhoods. Some of this will no doubt happen. But the problem here is that developers wont be flocking to build cheap housing on these properties. They will lean toward housing for the affluent, on which they can charge higher rents. This wouldnt solve the fundamental existing problem.A more substantive solution that has been around for more than a decade is the requirement that developers set aside a given share of their newly built units for low- or moderate-income tenants. This sounds like the right thing to do, and in some places it probably has been. But the percentage of affordable units is a delicate calculation. If the percentage reaches a certain number, and in some areas that can mean just 25 percent of the units, the developer will decide not to build anything at all. The project doesnt cost out. As a way of dealing with this problem, many cities have offered developers an alternative: Pay a certain amount into an affordable-housing fund in lieu of putting up buildings. The developers nearly always choose this option, and the result is that we have quite a few cities with well-stocked funds but precious little new modestly priced housing.we can always look at New York City. It is an article of faith in state and local journalism never to use New York as an example of anything, but in this case it may be instructive.When he took office as mayor in 2014, Bill de Blasio made a dramatic promise to built 200,000 new affordable units over the next 10 years. Later, he raised it to 300,000. This was to cost a total of $82 billion. No other city could afford to spend that much money.In the years since then, New York has indeed seen the construction of many new apartments  50,000 of them by July of 2020, plus a larger number of units declared remodeled. The de Blasio administration claimed victory. But in 2019, 41 percent of New Yorks renters were still classified as rent-burdened.And when it came to new units, there was a noticeable phenomenon of income creep. Far more of the units were going to middle-income rather than truly low-income residents. A family of four could qualify as low-income with an annual income of $68,000. If Im reading the numbers right, the same family could make $187,000 and still qualify for a partial subsidy. We did have a major emphasis on affordable housing, and a great deal of spending on it, says Samuel Stein of the Community Service Society. And yet the problems have persisted.There is one powerful argument that has emerged in the wake of the disappointing performance of affordable housing set-asides. The argument is that we should forget about these percentages, remove as many regulatory restrictions as possible and encourage developers to build almost any kind of housing they want  luxury units included. The idea is that the sheer increase in supply, even on the expensive side, will trickle down and free up a significant number of units at the lower end. The analogy is to selling cars: If you can sell enough Cadillacs, Mercedes and Porsches, then Chevrolets and Hyundais turn up at the dealers showroom in decent shape and at decent prices, giving buyers with modest incomes a substantial break. This might be true, but at the moment there is no solid evidence for it.I think it leads us to what Scott Wiener and other California legislators have been trying to do for the last several years, without success so far. That is to encourage density , even tall apartment buildings, within as much as a half-mile of transit stations. This legislation has been through several versions, and all of them would permit multi-unit buildings in some single-family neighborhoods, but the truth is that in most cities (not all) there is plenty of commercially zoned land that could absorb most of the density  vacant parcels, parking lots, abandoned strip malls, warehouses  land that is not offering what tax lawyers call highest and best use.Taking full advantage of this property would require taxing it at rates high enough to incentivize the owners either to build residential units on it or sell it to someone who would. Could we get that kind of taxation accomplished? Im not sure. But I do know that concentrating on underused commercial land would be a pathway to a significant increase in supply  not the dribs and drabs that we would get from granny flats and duplex apartment buildings on leafy residential streets.This isnt a genuine panacea any more than the other schemes floating around at the moment. But when we get stuck on panaceas, often we dont get much of anywhere at all.
India and China are likely to hold the next round of corps commander level talks on Friday that is expected to focus on disengagement of troops in remaining friction points in eastern Ladakh, people familiar with the development said.

They said India will insist on early disengagement of troops in Gogra and Hot Springs besides pressing for resolution of pending issues in Depsang plains.

The people said the two sides had an exchange of views on holding the 11th round of military talks on Friday.

The border standoff between the Indian and Chinese militaries erupted on May 5 last following a violent clash in the Pangong lake areas and both sides gradually enhanced their deployment by rushing in tens of thousands of soldiers as well as heavy weaponry.

As a result of a series of military and diplomatic talks, the two sides completed withdrawal of troops and weapons from the North and South banks of Pangong lake in February in line with an agreement on disengagement.

In the subsequent military talks on February 20,India insisted on resolution of outstanding issues including in Depsang, Hot Springs and Gogra.

India has been insisting that peace and tranquility along the border is essential for overall ties between the two countries.

Last week, India hoped that China will work with it to ensure disengagement of troops in remaining areas of eastern at the earliest.

It said de-escalation of tension alone will lead to restoration of peace and tranquility in border areas and provide conditions for progress of bilateral ties.

In late March, Army chief Gen MM Naravane said that the threat to India has only "abated" following the disengagement in Pangong lake areas but it has not gone away altogether.

(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.)
ORANGEBURG  Former Gov. Nikki Haley will visit the South Carolina State University campus April 12, when she will appear with embattled university President James Clark.

Haley will be at the school "to see progress on several initiatives," according to a news release issued by the school.

During Haleys time as governor, Clark, a former corporate executive, was appointed to a new Board of Trustees that was tasked with restoring the school's stability. He was named the universitys 12th president in 2016.

The arrangement has not been smooth.

The S.C. State Faculty Senate passed a resolution in March stating it has no confidence in Clark, with low enrollment and the return to classroom learning being key issues, The Orangeburg Times and Democrat newspaper reported.

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The March 2 vote went 18-2 in favor of the resolution, the newspaper said.

During the appearance, Haley and Clark "will discuss progress made over the last six years and tour many of the improvements made to the campus," the school's announcement said.

"They also will discuss more advancements and activities underway, as well future needs," the statement said.

Haley was born in Bamberg and graduated from Orangeburg Preparatory School. She most recently served as President Donald Trump's U.N. ambassador and is widely believed to be exploring her own 2024 White House bid.
Inaugural poet Amanda Gorman is Vogue's May cover star, and inside the issue, the 23-year-old shares what she learned from her inauguration appearance, how she is picky about choosing campaigns since she signed with IMG, and what she thinks of the Obamas, Hillary Clinton, and Oprah.

Since appearing on stage to read her original poem, The Hill We Climb, at President Joe Biden's inauguration on January 20, Amanda has been everywhere, from star-studded panels to magazine covers to the Super Bowl.

But, she told Vogue, she doesn't take every single opportunity that comes her way, no matter how much it pays  and she has turned down millions of dollars worth of deals that weren't right for her.

Ta-da! Inaugural poet Amanda Gorman is Vogue's May cover star

Iconic: Inside the issue, the 23-year-old shares what she learned from her inauguration appearance

At the end of January, Amanda signed with elite modeling agency IMG, which has helped bring even more opportunities her way. She already had an impressive line-up of representatives, having previously signed with WME as a public speaker and with Penguin Random House as a publisher.

IMG has represented some of the world's biggest stars  both fashion-focused and beyond  over the past few decades, helping them to land deals with multiple big-name brands, from Dior to Ralph Lauren to Louis Vuitton.

Its models have also graced the covers of countless fashion magazines, including Vogue, ELLE, and Harper's Bazaar  but Amanda said that for her, any brand partnerships mean something more.

'When Im part of a campaign, the entity isnt my body. Its my voice,' Amanda told Vogue.

Still, fashion brands have been seeking her out after her high-profile inauguration performance, where she stunned in a yellow Prada coat.

In fact, Amanda revealed that so many companies were sending her flowers that she had an allergic reaction that sent her to urgent care.

Famous: Since appearing on stage to read her original poem, The Hill We Climb, and President Joe Biden's inauguration on January 20, Amanda has been everywhere

Careful: The star said she is picky about choosing campaigns since she signed with IMG

'When Im part of a campaign, the entity isnt my body. Its my voice,' Amanda explained

But just because companies are dangling huge sums of cash doesn't mean that the star is taking them all up on their offers, and she estimates that she has refused $17 million worth of deals.

Of one she turned down, she said: 'I didnt really look at the details, because if you see something and it says a million dollars, youre going to rationalize why that makes sense.

'I have to be conscious of taking commissions that speak to me,' she said.

In an interview with Haitian-American writer Doreen St. Felix, Amanda also looked back at the whirlwind that was Inauguration Day.

The first National Youth Poet Laureate said that when she got back to her hotel later that day, she jotted an entry down in her journal.

'Ive learned that its okay to be afraid,' she wrote. And whats more, its okay to seek greatness. That does not make me a black hole seeking attention. It makes me a supernova.'

Memories: The first National Youth Poet Laureate said that when she got back to her hotel after the inauguration, she jotted an entry down in her journal

'Ive learned that its okay to be afraid,' she wrote. And whats more, its okay to seek greatness. That does not make me a black hole seeking attention. It makes me a supernova,' she wrote

Star power: Oprah has become a mentor, but Amanda admits: 'Every time I text Oprah, I have a miniheart attack'

Politics: She described former President Barack Obama as 'dadlike,' former first lady Michelle as a 'cool auntie,' and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as 'such a grandma'

Amanda has earned increasing success over the years, with commissions and fellowships, and her 2015 book The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough became a bestseller after the inauguration.

This has allowed the Harvard graduate to rent a nice Los Angeles apartment  which gives her some mixed feelings.

'Im trying not to judge myself,' she said. 'When youre someone whos lived a life where certain resources were scarce, you always feel like abundance is forbidden fruit.'

On a lighter note, Amanda also dished on some of the very high-profile people she has come to have relationships worth.

She described former President Barack Obama as 'dadlike,' former first lady Michelle as a 'cool auntie,' and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as, affectionately, 'such a grandma.'

Oprah, too, has become a mentor, but Amanda admits: 'Every time I text Oprah, I have a miniheart attack.'

Just recently, on March 26, Apple TV+ debuted a new interview with Oprah and Amanda.

Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour has been plagued by accusations of racism in the past year, including in the handling of hiring Alexi McCammond as editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue

While Amanda's work tackles issues including race, oppression, and feminism, Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour has been plagued by accusations of racism in the past year.

Most recently, critics slammed her for hiring Alexi McCammond as editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue.

Shortly after the magazine announced the appointment, anti-Asian racist tweets from McCammond's Twitter account, written in 2011, resurfaced.

Publishing company Conde Nast stood by her, leaving staffers irate that she was allowed to keep her job and saying that it sent the wrong message during a time of increased attacks on American Asians.

They also complained that she was inexperienced, having never worked as an editor or manager before, and that there were other black women within Conde Nast who would have been better suited to the job.

They wrote an open letter demanding that she be replaced and also complained directly to CEO Robert Lynch.

Called out: Last year, Vogue was called out for not hiring a black photographer to shoot Simone Biles, pointing out that she didn't receive good lighting

It also emerged that in an email to staff that Anna Wintour and CEO Roger Lynch knew about the decade-old racist tweets but hired her anyway.

McCammond ultimately resigned.

Back in August of 2020, Beyonce's mom Tina Knowles has called out Vogue magazine for not hiring enough black photographers for cover shoots.

'When will American Vogue step up and hire more Black Photographers for cover shoots? We're waiting.......' she wrote.

Meanwhile, the magazine's cover star that month was Olympian Simone Biles, who was shot by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz  a decision that was been slammed on social media.

Most of the criticism has come from people who take issue with Leibovitz's lighting technique, accusing the photographer of not knowing how to light dark skin tones.

Many other Twitter users chimed in to call on Vogue to hire more Black photographers  both on principle and to eliminate problems like this one.

In June, Wintour did not take part in a company-wide call about how to promote black staffers too.

At the time, she released a statement saying: 'I want to say plainly that I know Vogue has not found enough ways to elevate and give space to Black editors, writers, photographers, designers and other creators. We have made mistakes too, publishing images or stories that have been hurtful or intolerant.

'I take full responsibility for those mistakes. It cant be easy to be a Black employee at Vogue, and there are too few of you.

'I know that it is not enough to say we will do better, but we will  and please know that I value your voices and responses as we move forward. I am listening and would like to hear your feedback and your advice if you would like to share either.'
Eight months after mild COVID-19, one in ten people still has at least one moderate to severe symptom that is perceived as having a negative impact on their work, social or home life. The most common long-term symptoms are a loss of smell and taste and fatigue. This is according to a study published in the journal JAMA, conducted by researchers at Danderyd Hospital and Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.

Since spring 2020, researchers at Danderyd Hospital and Karolinska Institutet have conducted the so-called COMMUNITY study, with the main purpose of examining immunity after COVID-19. In the first phase of the study in spring 2020, blood samples were collected from 2,149 employees at Danderyd Hospital, of whom about 19 percent had antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. Blood samples have since then been collected every four months, and study participants have responded to questionnaires regarding long-term symptoms and their impact on the quality of life.

In the third follow-up in January 2021, the research team examined self-reported presence of long-term symptoms and their impact on work, social and home life for participants who had had mild COVID-19 at least eight months earlier. This group consisted of 323 healthcare workers (83 percent women, median age 43 years) and was compared with 1,072 healthcare workers (86 percent women, median age 47 years) who did not have COVID-19 throughout the study period.

The results show that 26 percent of those who had COVID-19 previously, compared to 9 percent in the control group, had at least one moderate to severe symptom that lasted more than two months and that 11 percent, compared to 2 percent in the control group, had a minimum of one symptom with negative impact on work, social or home life that lasted at least eight months. The most common long-term symptoms were loss of smell and taste, fatigue, and respiratory problems.

"We investigated the presence of long-term symptoms after mild COVID-19 in a relatively young and healthy group of working individuals, and we found that the predominant long-term symptoms are loss of smell and taste. Fatigue and respiratory problems are also more common among participants who have had COVID-19 but do not occur to the same extent," says Charlotte Thalin, specialist physician, Ph.D. and lead researcher for the COMMUNITY study at Danderyd Hospital and Karolinska Institutet. "However, we do not see an increased prevalence of cognitive symptoms such as brain fatigue, memory and concentration problems or physical disorders such as muscle and joint pain, heart palpitations or long-term fever."

"Despite the fact that the study participants had a mild COVID-19 infection, a relatively large proportion report long-term symptoms with an impact on quality of life. In light of this, we believe that young and healthy individuals, as well as other groups in society, should have great respect for the virus that seems to be able to significantly impair quality of life, even for a long time after the infection," says Sebastian Havervall, deputy chief physician at Danderyd Hospital and PhD student in the project at Karolinska Institutet.

The COMMUNITY study will now continue, with the next follow-up taking place in May when a large proportion of study participants are expected to be vaccinated. In addition to monitoring immunity and the occurrence of re-infection, several projects regarding post- COVID are planned.

"We will, among other things, be studying COVID-19-associated loss of smell and taste more closely, and investigate whether the immune system, including autoimmunity, plays a role in post-COVID," says Charlotte Thalin.

###

The article has been peer-reviewed and published as a Research Letter in the journal JAMA.

Facts about the COMMUNITY study:

The study is conducted in close collaboration between Danderyd Hospital (principal of the study), Karolinska Institutet, KTH, SciLifeLab, Uppsala University, and the Public Health Agency of Sweden.

The research group includes the following investigators: from Danderyd Hospital and Karolinska Institutet, specialist physician, medical doctor, and principal researcher Charlotte Thalin and deputy chief physician Sebastian Havervall (PhD student in the project); from Karolinska Institutet and the Public Health Agency of Sweden, associate professor Jonas Klingstrom; from KTH, professors Sophia Hober and Peter Nilsson; and from Uppsala University, associate professor and associate senior lecturer Sara Mangsbo and Professor Mia Phillipson.

The study is funded by the Jonas & Christina af Jochnick Foundation, Leif Lundblad with family, Region Stockholm, the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, SciLifeLab, the Erling-Persson Family Foundation, and Atlas Copco.

Publication: "Symptoms and Functional Impairment Assessed 8 Months After Mild COVID-19 Among Health Care Workers", Sebastian Havervall, Axel Rosell, Mia Phillipson, Sara M. Mangsbo, Peter Nilsson, Sophia Hober, Charlotte Thalin. JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association, online 7 April 2021, doi: 10.1001/jama.2021.5612.
The San Francisco school board pledged to reopen schools in the fall to all students for full time in-person learning in a unanimous vote late Tuesday.

The resolution on reopening, authored by San Francisco Unified School District board member Jenny Lam, pledges a full return to in-person learning at the start of the 2021-22 school year if public health guidelines allow, citing falling rates of coronavirus infection and the increase in vaccinations. Remote learning will still be an option for students who choose not to return for medical, social or academic reasons.

The vote serves as a step toward bringing students back to classrooms for in-person instruction five days a week. The resolution is largely symbolic, given that the district has been allowed to reopen schools since the fall, but union negotiations, facilities issues and other county health requirements caused delays. Teachers union president Susan Solomon thanked Lam for introducing the resolution, saying, The best thing we can do is work together to bring students back safely.

It comes as the district prepares to welcome preschool through fifth-graders, special education students and vulnerable older groups starting Monday. Despite calls to bring middle and high school students back as well, officials have said it is unlikely that most older students will return before the school year ends June 2.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday that he expects all California schools to reopen for in-person instruction after June 15, when California is expected to eliminate its tiered reopening system.

State Superintendent Tony Thurmond shared the governors optimism, but cautioned that there are still many unknowns about the COVID-19 variants that public health officials are monitoring and have observed spreading among some youth.

SFUSDs spring reopening is already encountering roadblocks: Schools are short-staffed less than a week before they are set to reopen. Some staffers requested accommodations to work remotely because of increased risk for severe illness from COVID-19, requiring the district to hire substitute teachers. While nearly 300 staff members were granted accommodations, the district is short 150 substitute staff members.

I do not like teaching to a screen, said SFUSD teacher Chris Clauss at Tuesdays meeting, but for a full return in the fall to be possible, she said, We need to get the current return process right.

Amid school closures, student mental health is suffering. The rate of childrens hospitalization for mental health-related reasons has skyrocketed, and emergency room visits for suicide attempts in adolescents have increased at alarming rates.

Even with Tuesdays vote to reopen, its still unclear what the fall will look like for many schools.

In the midst of the uncertainty, San Francisco schools Superintendent Vince Matthews agreed to stay in his position for another year after announcing his retirement about a month ago.

Editors note: This story has been updated to reflect the correct pronouns for Chris Clauss.

Emma Talley is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: emma.talley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @emmat332
SPRINGFIELD  A tradition spanning eight decades will continue on April 15, when American International College convenes its 81st annual Model Congress will convene with a virtual emergency session.

The traditional weekend conference will be replaced by a free-to-attend Zoom Emergency Session at 6 p.m.

The AIC Model Congress is the longest running continuous congress of its type in the nation, one of the longest uninterrupted academic traditions in Massachusetts, and one of the colleges oldest campus staples. Every year since its inception in 1940, Model Congress has brought high schools from throughout New England to campus to write, debate, and pass legislation in a simulated congress.

The program is completely student run from program development to organization and facilitation of the legislative sessions. It marked its 80th anniversary last year, when it was held in January, two months before the coronavirus pandemic closed the campus.

The AIC Model Congress is one of the Commonwealths long-standing academic traditions during its rich history. With support from faculty and staff, AIC student leaders have kept the program thriving and secured its place as an educational opportunity for high school students throughout the northeast for eight decades. In 2021, the tradition will continue albeit differently.

This year, AICs Model Congress will convene with an emergency session only. Due to the pandemic, the committee sessions typically held throughout the weekend-long event are suspended.

Any high school student can register to attend. Zoom information will be provided to all participants as the date nears.

As this is an emergency-style debate session, participants will not know the topic of the legislation until minutes before the session begins to simulate a true emergency session in Congress.

In respect to the goal of continuing Model Congress in a stimulating and enjoyable manner, no awards will be presented this year. High school students interested in participating are invited to visit aicmodelcongress.org to learn more and/or register, or email model.congress@aic.edu for additional information. Registration deadline is April 15 at 12 p.m.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 17:07:00|Editor: huaxia

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CANBERRA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called on the European Union (EU) to release outstanding AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine doses.

Morrison said on Wednesday that delays to Australia's vaccine rollout were a matter of "straightforward maths" with AstraZeneca blocked from exporting more than 3 million doses.

"It's straightforward maths - 3.1 million out of 3.8 million doses did not come to Australia," he told reporters in Canberra.

"That obviously had a very significant impact on the early rollout of the vaccination program, until we got into a position when the domestically produced AstraZeneca vaccine would be in place."

Earlier the European Commission (EC) said that only 250,000 doses of the vaccines had been formally blocked.

In response, the government said in a statement that the EC was "arguing semantics".

"If you're not approving, it's the same as effectively you're blocking," Treasurer Josh Frydenberg told Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) television.

"The Europeans have made absolutely clear in both their public and private statements that no further doses of AstraZeneca will be flowing until they've met their own orders domestically, so this is the problem we have."

Morrison has previously announced that 1 million of the vaccines will be redirected to Papua New Guinea (PNG) if they are allowed to leave Europe.

On Wednesday he said he would write to the EC asking that they be exported.

Morrison was joined by Brendan Murphy, the Secretary of the Department of Health, who said that the domestic production of AstraZeneca vaccines by CSL was continuing to escalate but had not reached the goal of manufacturing 1 million doses per week.

So far about 920,334 vaccines had been administered in Australia, short of the government's initial target of 4 million by the end of March.

"Now that we do have the CSL doses, which are starting to increase progressively," Murphy said.

"However, they are absolutely clear that in coming weeks, they are committed to regularly achieve over a million doses a week." Enditem
(Newser)  The US Securities and Exchange Commission has frozen the assets of a Hollywood actor appearing in an upcoming movie with Olivia Munn over charges that he ran a $690 million Ponzi scheme. Zachary Horwitzwho uses the name Zach Avery in film creditsran a company, 1inMM Capital, that claimed to purchase foreign distribution rights to films, which would then be licensed to platforms including Netflix and HBO, per the Washington Post. But the emails and licensing and distribution agreements he showed investors as coming from Netflix and HBO were forged, according to the SEC. "In reality, neither Horwitz nor 1inMM Capital ever engaged in email correspondence with Netflix or HBO, nor did Horwitz or 1inMM Capital ever have any business relationship with Netflix or HBO at all," FBI agent John Verrastro writes in court documents, per the Los Angeles Times.

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The 34-year-oldwho appeared uncredited in 2014's Fury and had slightly bigger roles in a few indie filmswas arrested Tuesday at the Los Angeles mansion he purchased for $5.7 million in 2018, the Times reports. Charged with wire fraud, he's accused of misappropriating millions in investments to pay for his home, cars, jet travel, trips to Las Vegas, and luxury watches, per the Post. He'd promised investors returns of up to 40% within a year, raising $690 million between 2014 and 2019, says the SEC. As payments came due, he pulled money from new investments or concocted fake emails to explain the delays, per the FBI. The agency adds that Horwitz owes $227 million in principal alone. Assistant US Attorney Alexander Schwab suggested on Tuesday that Horwitz "squirreled away" some of that money as he urged a judge to hold the accused until trial. He was released on a $1 million secured bond. (Read more Ponzi scheme stories.)
I feel compelled to respond to Ian ODohertys column of last Saturday week, A united Ireland is a fever dream that will simply end in carnage.

The most obvious takeaway was that ODoherty is in no great rush for reunification  an opinion to which he is duly entitled.

He is not, however, entitled to measure the Irishness of his fellow citizens.

While depicting a dated snapshot of the differences between the north and the south, ODoherty informed us that he quite likes Northern Ireland and its people, but adds: I will never consider them as Irish as I am.

As a Derry man, I feel duty-bound to remind ODoherty that I am in fact every bit as Irish as he is. My Irishness is entrenched in my heart, and rubber-stamped by the Good Friday Agreement of 1998  which many would have considered a fever dream just years before its achievement.

ODoherty accuses northern nationalists of a failure to listen and stubborn, blind reluctance to understand the other side. Yet he claims the people he has met in Northern Ireland are not in any great hurry to be considered Irish.

I daresay it is ODoherty who has not been listening closely to all sides; to the 700,000 of us who now have Irish passports, to the majority of us who do not vote for unionist parties; or indeed to the growing, sensible and mature discussion many of us are having around a new and united Ireland  a discussion to which his column contributes nothing constructive.

There is evidently a clash between those who cling to a narrow, exclusionary concept of Irishness, and those of us whose vision is more ambitious and inclusive. We think of the Irish nation and dont just see the State, but also Northern Ireland with its nationalists, unionists and those who are neither. We think of our vibrant emigrant community who represent us so well around the world, whether they are away for six months or 60 years. We think of the new Irish who have chosen to make their lives here and bring with them their culture and experience.

I cannot phrase it better than campaigner Emma DeSouza, who recently warned about the existence of a hierarchy of Irishness. We are all as Irish as each other  and surely within our famously generous nation there is ample space.

It is only with such expansiveness and creativity that we can hope to achieve the new and united Ireland which is being more seriously considered of late. Anyone engaging in the general discourse  from the Claire Byrne special on RTE to Jim OCallaghans detailed proposals  will know that proponents want to see a more pluralist approach to identity. Indeed, it is essential.

A new state would likely adopt the existing arrangements in Northern Ireland  where people would have the right to be Irish, British or both.

Comments in ODohertys piece echoed those from First Minister Arlene Foster, who fears she would no longer be British in a united Ireland.

No one could ever take away the Britishness of Arlene Foster. British citizens would still be British citizens in a united Ireland, just as Irish citizens are currently Irish citizens in Northern Ireland.

But this goes to show how outdated fears can remain embedded in the minds of those who refuse to engage in the present discussions, which are much more broad and welcoming than they care to realise. They are fighting the last war, rather than building the new peace.

The new Ireland now being discussed pragmatically is not a triumphalist republican takeover which seeks to undo history  switching one disgruntled minority for another and thus realising ODohertys vision of carnage.

Rather, it is an opportunity to construct a new state in which all traditions on this island would be equally invested  a home for everyone which would mean Brits In, not Brits Out. This is the only united Ireland it is possible to achieve, and it is the only one worth having.

Some may claim I am being misty-eyed  I could accuse them of tunnel vision. The issues on the table are vast and difficult, but we have managed difficult things before. No one is calling for a Border poll tomorrow or next year, but people are increasingly eager to discuss how we can make this island work better for everyone in the long run. That conversation will not be shut down by those who find it uncomfortable, nor will our democratic progress be deterred by the irresponsible evocation of violence.

Ultimately, ODoherty warns that we should not pursue a united Ireland because it would go against the wishes of unionists. Must the wishes of nationalists and many others across this island then remain on the shelf? Here rings the echo of another hierarchy of interests  one which is long past its sell-by date.

The debate around a new Ireland is really just beginning, but when it comes to how Irish I am, the case is closed.

Ben Kelly works for The Independent (UK) and is Vice Chair of VICA (Votes for Irish Citizens Abroad).




As Belgium's latest wave of coronavirus infections once more fills intensive care beds in hard-pressed hospitals, the average age of victims is dropping as the pandemic moves through the middle-aged.

"We're not seeing grandparents any more, it's more parents now. People in their 40s, 50s and 60s," nurse Nicolas Ottermans told AFP in the intensive care unit of Brussels' Ixelles Hospital.

There are signs that the third wave of COVID-19 to have swept through Belgium may be levelling off, but the number of serious cases that need hospitalisation is still increasing and wards are filling up.

Health authorities have ordered hospitals to set aside 60 percent of ICU beds for coronavirus cases, which in Ixelles translates to 15 of 23 places, forcing health workers to cancel some other procedures.

On Tuesday, the country of 11.5 million had 3,053 Covid victims in hospital and 865 of those in intensive care, a figure that has doubled in the past month.

"At this pace we'll hit the threshold of 1,000 intensive care cases within a week," government virologist Steven Van Gucht told reporters.

Belgium has 2,000 ICU places and the first waves of the illness saw peaks of 1,285 in use last April and 1,464 in November, according to the Sciensano health agency.

But this time round many of the oldest and most vulnerable have received vaccinations and the cases are now hitting middle-aged adults, who are less likely to die but can still fall dangerously ill.

According to Ottermans, while younger adults are more likely to survive they often need longer treatment and now, a year into the pandemic, the hospital teams are stretched.

"We're tired. This third wave has been really hard," he said.

"In January and February we still had hope that we'd just see ripples but now, we're really into a third wave. It's not growing exponentially, but it's a burden, it's slow and it's dragging on," he said.

There's perhaps a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Average new daily infections in Belgium dropped by 10 percent over the last week to around 4,300 -- suggesting hospitalisation rates will fall in two weeks.

"But we'll still be in the red for four to six weeks," the nurse warned.

Meanwhile, outside the hospitals younger Belgians are beginning to chafe at lockdown measures. Last week police deployed horse riders and water cannon to disperse an April Fool's day mass gathering in a Brussels park.

Ottermans has a simple message for the students and teen party-goers.

"Watch out! During the first wave it was your grandparents who were sick. Now it's your parents who are getting intubated, put on ventilators. It would be really stupid for the young to infect their parents."
"Jessica and Travis will play critical roles in driving our purpose: A BETTER WORLD FOR PETS," said Ikdeep Singh, regional president, Mars Pet Nutrition North America. "They each bring unique and extensive experiences to our team I'm confident will help us meet the needs of even more pet parents by leveraging the power of digital, data and analytics."

In her new role at Mars Petcare, Hauff will lead agile teams of cross-functional Associates dedicated to accelerating the company's dComm presence and online business, while also ensuring the pet parent shopping experience is seamless across all channels.

Hauff is a proven digital strategy leader with 15 years of experience building and transforming high-performing digital and ecommerce channels in both the U.S. and Europe. She most recently worked at L'Oreal, beginning her career in Madrid before moving to New York, where she spent the past nine years in progressive roles, including Senior Vice President, Ecommerce Acceleration and Data Activation for L'Oreal USA.

"I'm very excited to be joining Mars Petcare, a company that is focused on delivering its purpose and also passionate about the power of people and data to drive business results," said Hauff. "Digital continues to transform the way that we connect with consumers  and it's no different for pet parents  I'm looking forward to partnering with Associates across our business to help accelerate our digital commerce aspirations."

Reaves will be responsible for short and long-term strategy development, inorganic growth, and helping boost Mars Petcare's analytics and insights capabilities to put pet parents at the heart of all decision making.

Reaves brings more than 13 years of experience growing global businesses. He most recently served as Vice President, Strategy & Development, at Tractor Supply Company  the largest rural lifestyle retailer in the U.S. with more than 1,900 stores and $10 billion in revenue. While at Tractor Supply, he led mergers and acquisitions and long range strategy development. Reaves was also responsible for developing and driving high priority initiatives. Before joining Tractor Supply, Travis spent more than six years in strategy consulting with McKinsey & Company, where he served consumer companies on strategy, revenue growth management, and other growth and commercial topics.

"I was drawn to Mars Petcare and the category for a number of reasons  from the company's purpose-driven, long-term approach to build for the next generation, to the exciting category growth and the important role it plays in pet and pet parent lives," said Reaves. "I'm honored to be a part of the team, and look forward to the opportunity to help transform the way we partner with pet parents."

The Mars Pet Nutrition North American portfolio, including iconic brands like PEDIGREE, SHEBA and IAMS  serves more than 90 million pet owning households and is driven by our purpose: A BETTER WORLD FOR PETS through its talented Associates, brands and operations.

About Mars, Incorporated

For more than a century, Mars, Incorporated has been driven by the belief that the world we want tomorrow starts with how we do business today. This idea is at the center of who we have always been as a global, family-owned business. Today, Mars is transforming, innovating and evolving in ways that affirm our commitment to making a positive impact on the world around us.



Across our diverse and expanding portfolio of confectionery, food, and petcare products and services, we employ 125,000 dedicated Associates who are all moving in the same direction: forward. With $40 billion in annual sales, we produce some of the world's best-loved brands including DOVE, EXTRA, M&M's, MILKY WAY, SNICKERS, TWIX, ORBIT, PEDIGREE, ROYAL CANIN, SKITTLES, UNCLE BEN'S, WHISKAS, COCOAVIA, and 5; and take care of half of the world's pets through our nutrition, health and services businesses, including ANICURA, BANFIELD PET HOSPITALS, BLUEPEARL, LINNAEUS, and VCA.



We know we can only be truly successful if our partners and the communities in which we operate prosper as well. The Mars Five Principles  Quality, Responsibility, Mutuality, Efficiency and Freedom  inspire our Associates to take action every day to help create a world tomorrow in which the planet, its people and pets can thrive.



For more information about Mars, please visit www.mars.com. Join us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube.

About Mars Petcare

Part of Mars, Incorporated, a family-owned business with more than a century of history making diverse products and offering services for people and the pets people love, the 85,000 Associates across 50+ countries in Mars Petcare are dedicated to one purpose: A BETTER WORLD FOR PETS. With 85 years of experience, our portfolio of almost 50 brands serves the health and nutrition needs of the world's pets  including brands PEDIGREE, WHISKAS, ROYAL CANIN, NUTRO, GREENIES, SHEBA,CESAR,IAMS and EUKANUBA as well as the WALTHAM Petcare Science Institute which has advanced research in the nutrition and health of pets for over 50 years. Mars Petcare is also a leading veterinary health provider through an international network of over 2,000 pet hospitals and diagnostic services including BANFIELD, BLUEPEARL, VCA, Linnaeus,AniCura and Antech. We're also active in innovation and technology for pets, with WISDOM PANEL genetic health screening and DNA testing for dogs, the WHISTLE GPS dog tracker, and LEAP VENTURE STUDIO accelerator and COMPANION FUND programs that drive innovation and disruption in the pet care industry. As a family business and guided by our principles, we are privileged with the flexibility to fight for what we believe in  and we choose to fight for: A BETTER WORLD FOR PETS.

SOURCE Mars Petcare

Related Links

http://www.mars.com


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London, April 7 : A trial of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine on children in the UK has been paused even as the country's medicines regulator probes a possible link of the vaccine with rare blood clots in adults, the media reported.

The trial, which started in February, is evaluating whether the vaccine generates a strong immune response in those aged between 6 and 17.

While the trial has been paused, Professor Andrew Pollard from the University of Oxford ruled out safety concerns with the trial itself, the BBC reported on Wednesday.

What the scientists are waiting for is more information, said the report.

"Whilst there are no safety concerns in the paediatric clinical trial, we await additional information from the MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) on its review of rare cases of thrombosis/thrombocytopaenia that have been reported in adults, before giving any further vaccinations in the trial," Pollard was quoted as saying by the BBC.

The suspension of the trial of the vaccine comes after a European Medicines Agency (EMA) official, speaking in a personal capacity, said there could be a link between the coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and very rare cases of blood clots in adults, although it remains unclear what the connection is and the possible causes are likewise still unknown.

Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that Britain should continue rolling out the AstraZeneca vaccine despite concerns about occasional reported cases of blood clots.

He said that the current advice of the country's medicines regulator, is to "keep going out there, get your jab, get your second jab" and "we need to keep that going".

The vaccines are already "starting to have a beneficial effect on the trajectory of the disease", said Johnson, noting the falling number of cases and deaths in the country.
As the lunchtime rush in busy downtowns across the country disappeared, Seamonds said the share of overall revenue from Rotis suburban locations increased by about 50% compared with 2019 levels. Sales through mobile orders and third-party delivery services have increased as well and now make up about 50%, a rise from 20% pre-pandemic.
Younger folks are also, as we know, the ones that are more likely to be out and about and maybe being a little bit less observant of the guidance, Rubin said. So they are driving this pandemic right now. However it doesnt mean that other groupings, other than our older seniors, are not also seeing rises because younger people will transmit to their older family or friends.
English Danish

The Polish Energy Regulatory Office has awarded a Contract for Difference to the Baltica 3 and Baltica 2 offshore wind farms with a total capacity of up to 2.5 GW. Baltica 3 and 2 will contribute significantly to Polands green energy transition, accelerate the development of the local supply chain and spur economic activity for many years to come.



The Baltica Offshore Wind Farm  the largest offshore wind project in the Polish part of the Baltic Sea comprising the two phases Baltica 3 and Baltica 2  today came a big step closer to realization when the President of the Polish Energy Regulatory Office (ERO) awarded the project a Contract for Difference (CfD) at a maximum of PLN 319.60/MWh in accordance with the Decree of the Minister of Climate and Environment of Poland and the Offshore Wind Act. This effectively confirms that the Baltica Offshore Wind Farm has been selected for the first phase of Polands ambitious offshore wind buildout program.

With a total capacity of up to 2.5 GW, Baltica 3 and 2 will generate enough green electricity to power 4 million Polish households.

In February 2021, rsted and PGE signed an agreement to form a 50/50 joint venture for the development, construction and operation of Baltica 3 and 2, developed through special purpose vehicles. Subject to the closing of the joint venture transaction and rsteds and PGEs final investments decisions, the Baltica 3-phase of the project (up to 1 GW) would start generating power around 2026, while the Baltica 2-phase (up to 1.5 GW) could become operational before 2030. The CfD award is subject to final approval from the European Commission.

Rasmus Errboe, Senior Vice President and Head of Region Continental Europe at rsted, says: The contract award for Baltica 3 and 2 is a big milestone for Polish offshore wind and for rsteds and PGEs joint ambitions in Poland. Subject to closing of the joint venture agreement, we look very much forward to delivering these important infrastructure projects and to help Poland harness the large green energy resources in the Baltic Sea. The offshore wind industry will be a cornerstone in Polands transition to green power and has the potential to create thousands of Polish jobs.

Wojciech Dabrowski, CEO of PGE Capital Group, says: The decision of the President of the Energy Regulatory Office brings the Offshore Programme and the Baltica offshore wind farm closer to realization. Offshore wind in Poland now has a solid foundation to be developed and it is currently the PGE Capital Group's priority. In our application for the CfD we also presented how we intend to carry out our investments in offshore wind farms as the leader of this new industry in Poland. We are committed to strengthen the local supply chain.

Polands roadmap for offshore wind

Polands energy policy until 2040 singles out offshore wind as a key technology to make Poland a low-emission economy, and Polands Offshore Wind Act specifies Polands ambitions for offshore wind: From zero offshore wind capacity today, Poland commits to install 5.9 GW by 2030, up to 11 GW by 2040, and analyses suggest a potential of up to 28 GW in Polish waters by 2050. This will make Poland the biggest market for offshore wind in the Baltic region and contribute significantly to the European Commissions target of 300 GW offshore wind capacity in European waters by 2050 to meet the EUs climate neutrality goal.

The Polish Wind Energy Association estimates that the realization of the offshore wind capacity targets in the Polish Offshore Wind Act will unlock EUR 29 billion investments.

Several Polish companies are already active in the offshore wind industry as suppliers of cables, foundations, cranes and vessels for installation and service of offshore wind turbines. And Polish ports in the Baltic Sea region have the potential to become hubs for installation, service and maintenance of offshore wind farms.

The information provided in this announcement does not change rsteds previous financial guidance for the financial year 2021 or the announced expected investment level for 2021.

For further information please contact:



rsted Group Media Relations

Tom Christiansen

+45 99 55 60 17

tomlc@orsted.dk



rsted Investor Relations

Allan Bdskov Andersen

+45 99 55 79 96

alban@orsted.dk

About rsted

The rsted vision is a world that runs entirely on green energy. rsted develops, constructs, and operates offshore and onshore wind farms, solar farms, energy storage facilities, and bioenergy plants, and provides energy products to its customers. rsted ranks as the worlds most sustainable energy company in Corporate Knights' 2021 index of the Global 100 most sustainable corporations in the world and is recognised on the CDP Climate Change A List as a global leader on climate action. Headquartered in Denmark, rsted employs 6,179 people. rsted's shares are listed on Nasdaq Copenhagen (Orsted). In 2020, the group's revenue was DKK 52.6 billion (EUR 7.1 billion). Visit orsted.com or follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter.

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A health worker collects a nasal swab sample from a woman to test for the Covid-19 coronavirus at a government hospital in Hyderabad on April 6, 2021. (NOAH SEELAM / AFP)

Hyderabad: Telangana added 1914 fresh cases to its coronavirus tally, the highest single day spike this year, pushing the aggregate to over 3.16 lakh, while the toll rose to 1,734 with five more fatalities.

Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) accounted for the most number of cases with 393, followed by Medchal Malkajgiri 205 and Nizamabad 179, a government bulletin said on Wednesday providing details as of 8 pm on April 6.

The total number of cases stood at 3,16,649 while with 285 patients being cured, the total recoveries were at 3,03,298.

The state has 11,617 active cases and 74,274 samples were tested on Tuesday.

Cumulatively, over 1.05 crore samples have been tested.

The samples tested per million population was over 2.84 lakh, the bulletin said.

The case fatality rate in the state was 0.54 per cent, while it was 1.3 per cent at the national level.

The recovery rate in Telangana was 95.78 per cent, while it was 92.1 per cent in the country.

According to a separate release, over 13.37 lakh people in the state have received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine while over 2.70 lakh got their second shot also as of April 6.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 11:50:58|Editor: huaxia

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by Xinhua writer Zhang Dailei

LONDON, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The enormous success of China can only be achieved by a party that "retains its close links with the people in its roots, in the working people of China," said Communist Party of Britain (CPB) General Secretary Robert Griffiths.

In a recent interview with Xinhua, the British communist leader hailed the great achievements of his Chinese comrades during the past "momentous" century, noting that the key to the Communist Party of China (CPC)'s success lies precisely in its close ties with the Chinese people.

"If I were to go right to the kernel of that experience of China and its people, I would say it's been the closeness of the Chinese Communist Party to the people," he said, adding that this feature of the party stands out throughout its history.

Griffiths visited China many times in the last decades. In his eyes, the CPC is a party that "emerged from the people, was created by the people, and it's always sought to stay close to the people."

"It's a party of the people that has been very flexible in its tactics and strategies, but also firm in its principles. It is a communist party that aims to build socialism," he said.

As the ruling party of China, the CPC's close links with the people have gained trust and support from the grassroots, which enables the whole country to take necessary, drastic measures to successfully overcome huge challenges like the COVID-19 epidemic and poverty, Griffiths observed.

"The trust of the people, the involvement of the people, undoubtedly were the keys to China's successful effort," he said.

The British communist leader also said the vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind is an important message from the CPC, which the world shouldn't ignore, especially when the world is facing a number of crises and "existential problems."

"I think the COVID pandemic has underlined the value of international cooperation of sharing our knowledge, our resources and our solidarity," he pointed out, adding that the great challenges of climate change and weapons of mass destruction also need international and global efforts to solve.

Elected as the CPB general secretary in January 1998, Griffiths witnessed the ever closer relations between his party and the CPC over the last 20 years, with numerous delegation visits and exchanges.

"We have found that very valuable. It's helped us to understand the processes that work in Chinese society and the policies of the Chinese party and government. It also has enabled us to explain it to our friends and allies here in Britain," he said.

He hoped the party-to-party visits between the CPC and the CPB can be resumed as soon as the pandemic ends.

"We want to see those close relations extend deep and further, if that's possible, because we still have a lot to learn about China," he concluded. Enditem
FREDERICK, Md. (AP)  A Navy medic who shot and wounded two U.S. sailors before he was killed by police on a nearby Army base was assigned to a Naval medical research center in Maryland for nearly two years, according to his service record.

Fantahun Girma Woldesenbet, 38, and the two men he shot were all assigned to Fort Detrick in Frederick, authorities said after Tuesdays shootings.

Woldesenbets service record says he enlisted in September 2012 and most recently reported to the Naval Medical Research Center in Frederick in August 2019. In between, he served at military facilities in San Antonio, Texas; Camp Lejeune in North Carolina; Corpus Christi, Texas; Bremerton, Washington; and Portsmouth, Virginia.

Woldesenbet was awarded a Good Conduct Medal, a National Defense Service Medal and a Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, his record shows. It lists his rank as Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class.

One of the wounded sailors was released from a Baltimore hospital on Tuesday afternoon, while the other was in critical condition, military officials said on the Navys Twitter account.

The Navy says it is sending a Special Psychiatric Rapid Intervention Team to Fort Detrick to offer mental health services to people on the base.

Police walk near the scene of a shooting at a business park in Frederick, Md., Tuesday, April 6, 2021.AP Photo/Julio Cortez

Authorities havent disclosed a possible motive for the shooting, which took place at a warehouse rented by the Naval Medical Research Center, Biological Defense Research Directorate to store research supplies and equipment. The facility is located in the Riverside Tech Park, an office park several miles from the base.

Were still trying to sort through stacks of paper ... to figure out exactly what the motive would be, Frederick Police Lt. Andrew Alcorn said Tuesday.

Lt. Col. Gregory Jackson, the Army bases chaplain, said in a Facebook post that the shootings leave a lasting mark on the Fort Detrick community with a lot of questions, and the biggest will be why?

Why did this person choose to do what he did? he asked. I wish we had answers to these questions, but, we dont always know the reason.

Woldesenbet shot the sailors with a rifle. He then drove to the base, where gate guards who had been given advance notice told him to pull over for a search, said Brig. Gen. Michael Talley. But Woldesenbet immediately sped off, making it about a half-mile into the installation before he was stopped at a parking lot by the bases police force. When he pulled out a weapon, the police shot and killed him, Talley said.

During a news conference on Tuesday, Talley declined to identify the facility where the initial shooting occurred more specifically or describe the work that is done there.

This photograph provided by WJLA shows police responding to the scene of a shooting in in Frederick, Maryland, on Tuesday, April 6, 2021. (WJLA via AP)

Fort Detrick is home to the militarys flagship biological defense laboratory and several federal civilian biodefense labs. About 10,000 military personnel and civilians work on the base, which encompasses about 1,300 acres in the city of Frederick.

Woldesenbet lived at an apartment building in Frederick, a few miles from the site of the shooting. Police cordoned off the apartment on Tuesday afternoon and a neighbor reported seeing officials escorting his wife and children from the building.

More:

Harrisburg man shot to death while watching TV in his bedroom

Baby shot in the head as people exchange gunfire during Chicago road-rage incident: police
The FedEx Packaging Lab in Collierville tests between 4,000 and 5,000 pieces annually to see how they hold up to the wear and tear of shipping.

MEMPHIS  Thousands of packages endure drops, vibrations, altitude changes and more each year at the FedEx Packaging Lab in Collierville, Tennessee.

Lab engineers and technicians test and design packages for a range of products, seeing if the packaging can hold up to FedEx transportation by air and ground.

Our top priority is to make sure your product arrives safely, said Tyler Kenney, package design and development manager at FedEx Services.

Twenty-one employees are based at the lab, with help from 19 engineers who work remotely. These employees typically work with customers shipping fragile or high-value products like electronics, medical devices and perishable goods, Kenney said.

One of those customers, Fort Collins, Colorado-based Otter Products, wanted to test a box designed to hold wine bottles while keeping them cool. Working with FedEx wasnt uncharted territory for Otter, which ships solely through the Memphis-based logistics giant.

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The FedEx Packaging Lab in Collierville has a bevy of testing equipment to fulfill its mission, including compression and vibration tables.

Weve always had a partnership with FedEx, said Rachel Lee, senior product innovation manager at Otter. Since Otter was started as a company, weve used FedEx as our shipper.

Otters Liviri brand develops shipping containers that allow perishable goods like groceries to be delivered sustainably. Liviri debuted in 2019 with its Liviri Fresh box focused on meal kits and other perishables.

Liviri introduced the Vino box to ship wine last year after testing from FedEx, but Lee said 2021 is the products first big year where were seeing interest and traction in sales. Direct-to-consumer wine shipping has been growing at a much faster pace amid the COVID-19 pandemic, she added.

The Liviri Vino box is equipped with vacuum insulated panels that allow wine to stay cool even in the hottest months.

Lee said Liviri saw the wine industry as a really good fit for a better, more sustainable container because of the challenges in shipping wine. Wine needs to stay between 35 and 75 degrees to prevent spoilage, she said, meaning the industry doesnt ship many bottles in the summer and winter.

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If you order wine in the summer, it likely wont ship until October if youre ordering from wine country, because its not a safe way to ship wine, she said.

The Liviri Vino box is equipped with vacuum insulated panels that allow wine to stay cool even in the hottest months, Lee said. The panels and reusable ice packs provide five to seven days of thermal protection, according to Liviri.

Lee said since Liviri wants its Vino boxes to last two years, its important for them to hold up to any bumps and bruises it could encounter while moving through FedExs shipping network. Prior to its 2020 launch, the box went through various tests at the packaging lab, including being dropped on all its different sides, to make sure it could keep the contents inside protected.

Vibration tests are among the tests performed at the FedEx Packaging Lab in Collierville.

FedExs package testing services are for the companys business account holders. Many of these tests are complimentary, with a fee being charged for more advanced testing, according to FedEx. The packaging lab tests between 4,000 and 5,000 pieces annually.

The lab has a bevy of testing equipment to fulfill its mission, including drop testers, compression and vibration tables, environmental chambers, accelerometers, 3D scanners, an altitude chamber and thermal imaging equipment, Kenney said.

We also use a conveyor and slide system to help evaluate how efficiently the package can move through our sorting operations, he said.

FedExs packaging team provided design input and extensive quality testing for the Liviri Vino box, Kenney said. During one test in which the Vino box was dropped on its head, some wine bottles were poking through at the top of the inserts that hold them, Lee said.

The Liviri Vino box's panels and reusable ice packs provide five to seven days of thermal protection.

Wine is tricky because there are so many different shapes of wine bottles, Lee said.

As a result of the testing, Liviri made design changes to the Vinos inserts so its wine bottles are held down no matter how the box is dropped.

Companies can purchase Vino boxes for their shipments or lease them, Lee said. The boxes are often used by fulfillment houses in California wine country, which purchase boxes for wineries to use on a per-use basis, she added.

Wineries ship the box with a return label, and consumers generally schedule a FedEx pickup for the box or drop it off at a FedEx location, Lee said. The box can also hold a bag, allowing the consumer to take the wine out of the box and hand it back to the delivery person, she said.

It was really important for us to work with FedEx and their packaging lab to make sure the contents were protected inside, Lee said. It was a good back-and-forth partnership.

Max Garland covers FedEx, logistics and health care for The Commercial Appeal. Reach him at max.garland@commercialappeal.com or 901-529-2651 and on Twitter @MaxGarlandTypes.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: FedEx, Otter Products tackle wine shipping: A look at Liviri Vino box
Andrew Harnik/AP/Shutterstock First lady Dr. Jill Biden speaks Wednesday at a virtual event with military families from around the world as part of the White House initiative to support military and veteran families.

First Lady Dr. Jill Biden is expanding her Obama-era work with military families  a cause close to her heart.

On Wednesday, she met virtually with U.S. military family members who tuned in from around the world as she revealed the next phase of her "Joining Forces" initiative

The first lady noted her own military ties: Her father was a Navy Signalman in World War II and went to college on the GI Bill, and her stepson Beau served with the Delaware Army National Guard.

"When Beau served for a year in Iraq, I saw how his children navigated his deployment," she said, according to reporters in attendance.

"I often wondered how people so small could be so strong," she continued. "Without a doubt, being a part of this military community has shaped who I am." (As she spoke, she also wore a necklace with Beau's name; he died in 2015 of brain cancer.)

Biden gave her speech from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in front of three giant screens with a grid of more than 100 military family members. She spoke with Ryzun Hazen, a senior at Ramstein High School in Germany. He discussed life as a military kid, before introducing the first lady.

RELATED: Inside Dr. Jill Biden's Return to the Classroom While Being First Lady

Andrew Harnik/AP/Shutterstock

From left to right: Former Vice President Joe Biden and Former Second Lady Dr. Jill Biden take photos with their son Beau Biden and his wife Hallie Biden on February 29, 2012

She thanked him for sharing his experience, adding, "It's that resilience a heart that makes military kids like you so special." She described Hazen as "open and funny and sincere" as she recalled meeting him earlier this year with President Joe Biden.

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Dr. Biden also recounted christening the USS Gabrielle Giffords in June 2015, as she compared the military to a ship. "And yet, so much of its power is unseen beneath the waves: the engines, the anchor, the rudders that give it direction and purpose," she said.

"The families of our service members and veterans; the caregivers who lift up our wounded, ill, and injured; and the survivors who grieve those we've lost  you may not wear a uniform," she continued. "But you serve and you sacrifice for us all. Military families are as critical to our national defense as a rudder is to a ship. And we must always act upon that truth."

RELATED VIDEO: Jill Biden Gets Right to Work While Still Teaching: The New First Lady Talks White House Plans

She went on to reveal the next phase of "Joining Forces," the initiative she started 10 years ago with then-First Lady Michelle Obama.

After reviving the initiative in January when she returned to the White House, Dr. Biden is continuing to focus the program's efforts on employment, education and health for military and veteran families, caregivers and survivors.

"We have an all-volunteer force  and it continues only because generations of Americans see the honor, dignity, and patriotism of this calling," Dr. Biden said. "How can we hope to keep our military strong if we don't give our families, survivors and caregivers what they need to thrive? If we don't act on our sacred obligation?"

She noted that the military spouse unemployment rate before the COVID-19 pandemic was around 22 percent, according to the Department of Defense. "Spouses  all of you  deserve opportunities to do the work you love, whether that means keeping your job when you move from base to base or owning your own business," she said.

She went on to advocate for quality childcare for working military spouses, adding that there are more than 2 million kids whose parents are service members, National Guard, reservists or veterans.

"Our schools want to support all students, but they don't always know how to do so," the first lady said. "We're going to work with educators and our government partners to make sure you, our military-connected kids, have what you need to succeed."

Andrew Harnik/AP/Shutterstock

Andrew Harnik/AP/Shutterstock

"Just 1 percent of our country has shouldered the burden of 20 years of war," she continued, underlining the need for health and wellness. "No one has more strength, grit and resilience than our military families, but you can't do this alone. We have to help you carry this weight  by improving access to mental health resources, ensuring everyone can put food on the table and supporting caregiving families and our survivors."

After her speech, the first lady toured the Military OneSource call center in Arlington, Virginia, a 24/7 active duty military resource hub which offers support for service members, spouses, family members and survivors.

She was briefed by health and wellness consultants after sitting in on a call.

The first lady has partnered with the Departments of Defense, Labor and Education on expanding "Joining Forces."

"And this is just the beginning," she said Wednesday. "Our effort will take all of our government working together, and we expect every agency to step up and be a part of it."
[April 07, 2021] Complete cellular connectivity coming to "Highway of Tears"

VICTORIA, BC, April 7, 2021 /CNW/ - Thanks to federal and provincial investments, Highway 16 from Prince Rupert to Prince George will soon have cellular coverage along the entire route, fulfilling a critical recommendation to make the highway safer. "We must continue to do everything in our power to prevent violence against Indigenous women and girls to ensure they are safe to travel anywhere in our province, but especially between communities along Highway 16," said Barb Ward-Burkitt, executive director, Prince George Native Friendship Centre. "I commend the Province, the federal government and Rogers for expanding cell service along the isolated and essential corridor between Smithers and Prince Rupertit serves as an important step in reconciliation and in honouring murdered and missing sisters, daughters, mothers, aunties and their families." Solving the problem of cellular gaps between communities along Highway 16 was among the Highway of Tears Symposium Report's 33 recommendations aimed at enhancing safety for Indigenous women and girls. This recommendation from the symposium was echoed in the report from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. This investment is key to ensuring women, especially Indigenous women, who are not safe can call for help and receive the services they need to ensure their safety and security. "People travelling this economic corridor and vital connection between communities will no longer be out of cell service range if they need to call for emergency services," said Lisa Beare, British Columbia's Minister of Citizens' Services. "This project means there will be cellular coverage along the entire length of Highway 16 from Prince George to Prince Rupert, giving people peace of mind knowing they can reach out for help if they need it. It is a critical milestone in helping prevent future tragedies along this route, bringing comfort to people who use the highway and are now safer because of this connectivity." The Connecting British Columbia program and the Government of Canada's Universal Broadband Fund will provide Rogers with $4.5 million toward the $11.6-million cost of installing cellular infrastructure to provide cellular coverage in the remaining areas of weak signal strength between Prince Rupert and Smithers. "This project will provide continuous cellular coverage along the whole of the highway corridor, which will improve overall safety for this area," said Murray Rankin, British Columbia's Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation. "It honours the memory of both survivors and the friends and family members of the Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people who have gone missing, been murdered or experienced other forms of violence along Highway 16." "Access to reliable cell and Internet connections provides job opportunities and is vital for the health and safety of Canadians, said the Honourable Maryam Monsef, Canada's Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Rural Economic Development. "We heard from too many loved ones the anguish, loss and trauma caused by the murders and disappearances along the Highway of Tears. Gender-based violence is preventable. Through a partnership with the Government of B.C., the Government of Canada will improve safety along Highway 16 and enable those in danger to call for help. There is more work to be done to connect more communities to high-speed Internet an reliable cell service. The Government of Canada, through the Universal Broadband Fund, will work with all willing partners to do just that."



"Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people have the right to feel safe wherever they are. For years, the Highway of Tears has become an iconic example of the tragedy of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. Families and survivors have highlighted the connection between MMIWG and gaps in cellular service along Canadian highways, especially in rural and remote areas," said the Honourable Carolyn Bennett, Canada's Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations. "This investment is an important and concrete step toward ensuring all travellers, especially women and girls, along Highway 16 from Prince George to Prince Rupert can reliably call for help if and when they need it." As part of this project, Rogers plans to install 12 cellular towers along the highway, providing 252 km of new highway cellular coverage, which will close several gaps along this corridor.

"As someone who uses this highway regularly and has been stranded once myself, I know how important this project is for the people who travel Highway 16," said Jennifer Rice, Parliamentary Secretary for Emergency Preparedness and Member of the Legislative Assembly for North Coast. "This project will not only open up access to communities along this corridor but also make it much easier for emergency responders to react quickly when people need assistance." This project will also provide coverage to three rest areas along Highway 16, located at Boulder Creek, Basalt Creek and Sanderson Point. It is scheduled to be completed in fall 2022. Rogers is proud to be investing in British Columbia to build critically needed 5G networks to bridge the digital divide, including across rural, remote and Indigenous communities," said Dean Prevost, president, Connected Home and Rogers for Business. "With these investments announced today, in collaboration with the B.C. government and the Government of Canada, Rogers is providing improved safety and reliable connectivity for those who depend on Highway 16, while creating new jobs and supporting the economy of northern B.C." As part of StrongerBC: B.C.'s Economic Recovery Plan, grants from the Connecting British Columbia program are helping to drive record investment in rural and Indigenous community broadband and highway cellular access. The Province expanded the Connecting British Columbia program in September 2020 with a $90-million grant to encourage investment in broadband and cellular infrastructure that benefits people in rural and Indigenous communities throughout B.C. The Connecting British Columbia program continues to welcome applications from Internet and cellular service providers for grants from its Economic Recovery Intake. Funds from the program will benefit people in hundreds of rural and Indigenous communities throughout B.C. this year. Quick facts The Connecting British Columbia Program Economic Recovery Intake is on track to triple its target for new highway cellular coverage.

To date, an additional 429 km of new highway cellular coverage is being added, well surpassing the 140-km target.

The Government of Canada's $1.75-billion Universal Broadband Fund is part of a suite of federal investments to connect 98% of Canadians by 2026 and 100% by 2030, including $50 million for cellular projects that will benefit Indigenous peoples.

Universal Broadband Fund is part of a suite of federal investments to connect 98% of Canadians by 2026 and 100% by 2030, including for cellular projects that will benefit Indigenous peoples. The Government of Canada has so far invested $90 million in British Columbia , with the potential to impact over 25,000 households, through several broadband funding programs. Associated links StrongerBC Economic Recovery Plan

Connecting British Columbia Program

Connectivity in B.C.

Government of Canada's Universal Broadband Fund

Universal Broadband Fund Canada's Connectivity Strategy aims to provide all Canadians with access to Internet speeds of at least 50 megabits per second (Mbps) download / 10 Mbps upload.

Connectivity Strategy aims to provide all Canadians with access to Internet speeds of at least 50 megabits per second (Mbps) download / 10 Mbps upload. Highway of Tears Symposium Report

National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, including information on developing a national action plan Stay connected Connect with the Province of B.C. at: news.gov.bc.ca/connect Follow Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada on Twitter: @ISED_CA SOURCE Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

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The Daily Beast

Naperville Police Department In 1972, 15-year-old Julia Ann Hanson was found dead in an Illinois cornfield. The teen had been raped and stabbed at least 36 times.Her family has been haunted by the unsolved crime ever since, but finally, after a nearly 50-year wait, authorities say they are bringing her killer to justice.On Friday, 76-year-old Barry Lee Whelpley was arrested in connection with the July 1972 slaying, Naperville Police Chief Robert Marshall and Will County States Attorney James
A midcentury masterpiece sits alone on a private mountaintop in Dublin, NH. And when we say alone, we mean it.

Built in 1960, the secluded house on Lake Road has had a single owner for the past 38 years, and the man who built it, Ray Winfield Smith, never lived in it.

It was the brainchild of a really interesting owner, who was an Egyptologist affiliated with Dartmouth College, says the listing agent, Michelle Carter, referring to Smith.

The home was built to house Smith's collection of Egyptian artifacts, but after it was completed, Smith went back into military service, and it's not clear whether he ever moved into the house.

He eventually donated the property to Dartmouth (the Ivy League school is about 80 miles north), which sold it to the current owners.

Listed for $3.65 million, the home, known as Oak Hill, is almost 9,500 square feet, and sits on almost 95 acres in the southern part of the Granite State.

Carter told us about the first time she saw the home in person.

It feels just like you're getting in on a really good secret, she says. I've lived in the area for 30 years, and I've driven past that gate a million times and wondered what was out there. I was really blown away the first time I was up there.

One reason she'd never seen it before? There are about 40 acres of land between the home and its gate.

I just don't know how you can find a more private place, Carter says. You could probably find something with more land, but the privacy that this property allowsby its elevation, by the fact it abuts the state forest... And the neighbors are not close. If you really value your privacy, this is an incredible property.

Views of home in Dublin, NH Flylisted

Views Flylisted

While 95 acres affords plenty of privacy, there's even more seclusion. The house abuts on 5,000 acres of state forest preserve.

The huge house has a total of 20 rooms, including five bedrooms and seven bathrooms.

All of the best materials were used while building. The exterior is pecky cypress, which is a really hard material that weathers extremely well, Carter says. The floors are all stone, and all of the paneling is mahogany.

Bedroom Flylisted

Bedroom Flylisted

Master bathroom Flylisted

Master bathroom Flylisted

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The current owners built an addition to the house in the 1980s, which included a master bedroom with a bathroom clad in marble that the owners imported from Italy.

Its very elaborate. No expense or detail was spared, the agent says. All of the fixtures in the bathroom are gold-plated.

Interior Flylisted

Interior Flylisted

Then there are the views of Mount Monadnock, Dublin Lake, and the Grand Monadnock reserve.

The views are just spectacular from every room, Carter explains. There are 360-degree views. And I don't even know how many square feet of decks there are, because there are decks everywhere.

Kitchen Flylisted

Living space Flylisted

Kitchen Flylisted

Kitchen Flylisted

Inside, the house is a well cared-for, and some original elements of the home show no signs of being 60 years old.

The property has been maintained extremely well, she says, adding that all of the systems in the house get quarterly maintenance. The kitchen is very midcentury, and it's kind of timeless, actually. It's a large kitchen and has a large stone fireplace in the kitchen, with a grill.

Pool Flylisted

The home's lower level features an entertaining area with living space, a kitchen, a guest room, and a gym. There's also an indoor pool with an outdoor feel.

You can throw the sliders open on either end and retract the ceiling and be outside. Or you can keep them closed and use the pool year-round, Carter explains.

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Watch: Custom-Built Castle in Lake Peekskill, NY, Has Charm to Spare

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Even though the home's size is immense, she says it doesnt feel that way.

A lot of homes nowadays that are new builds that have that kind of square footage are really large and echo-y, with lot of wasted space that you're heating. That's just not the case with this property at all. It feels really good, and its very livable when you're inside the property, she explains.

Living space Flylisted

Bathroom Flylisted

Living space Flylisted

Exterior Flylisted

The house is also just a few minutes from the amenities of town, which would be good for either a part- or full-time resident, Carter says.

The perfect buyer is really somebody who appreciates privacyand somebody who really enjoys midcentury architecture," she adds.

Exterior Flylisted

The post For Privacy Seekers, a Secluded and Secretive Midcentury Masterpiece in New Hampshire Beckons appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com.
Tel Aviv, April 7 : Newly-elected Israeli lawmakers were sworn in amid uncertainties over the possibility of forming a new government two weeks after the country's fourth election in two years also ended in a stalemate.

The swearing in ceremony on Tuesday marked the inauguration of Israel's 24th Knesset or Parliament, reports Xinhua news agency.

The event began with an address by President Reuven Rivlin to the newly-elected 120 members of the Knesset.

He urged the lawmakers to show leadership and end the prolonged political deadlock.

"The Israeli people expect each one of you to show leadership," he said in televised remarks.

Earlier in the day, Rivlin said no party leader gained enough support to form a majority government, but asked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to form a government.

Rivlin entrusted the longest-serving Prime Minister with the task as the latter held the most support, 52 seats, but still runs short of 61 seats needed to form a majority coalition in the Knesset.

The decision means that Netanyahu now has 28 days to put together a coalition government, with a possibility of a two-week extension before Rivlin tasks another candidate or asks the Knesset to choose one.

Netanyahu, who has been in power since 2009, is facing a criminal trial over corruption charges in three separate cases.

His trial in the Jerusalem District Court resumed on Monday with the prosecution's opening arguments.

No party gained enough votes to form a majority government in the March 23 elections.

It was Israel's fourth election in two years amid a lingering political deadlock.

The last election resulted in a broad, unstable coalition of political enemies that would have seen them taking turns in the Prime Minister's office.

It collapsed after only a few months amid a fight about the budget.
A Navy sailor shot and wounded two other sailors at a facility in the Maryland city of Frederick on Tuesday morning before driving to the US military's nearby Fort Detrick, where police shot and killed him, authorities said.

The US Navy tweeted that the shooter was a Navy hospital corpsman, and Fort Detrick officials told CNN that he was posted at that installation.

They identified him as Fantahun Girma Woldesenbet, whose rank was E-4.

'We are still investigating motive, investigating the exact circumstances,' Army Brig. Gen. Michael J. Talley told reporters at an afternoon news conference.

The gunman was stopped at the post's gates, but before the vehicle could be searched the shooter took off. He was stopped about 1/2 mile onto the installation, where he got out of the car, brandished a weapon and was shot by police, Talley told reporters.

Frederick Police Chief Jason Lando said the first shooting took place at 'a military institution' in the Riverside Tech Park. In a news release, the police department said the building is a warehouse rented by Naval Medical Research Center, Biological Defense Research Directorate to store research supplies and equipment.

The chief said the gunman used a rifle but did not provide any additional information on the weapon.

One victim is in critical condition but is stable at a hospital. The second victim is in serious condition but likely will be released Wednesday. Both were taken from the scene by helicopter, police said.

Police were called around 8:20 a.m.

Police had been called to the first scene, about a 4-mile drive east of Fort Detrick, around 8:20 a.m., Lando said earlier. 'We know some people fled from the business,' Lando said.

After the shooting, a victim entered a nearby business, Nicolock Paving Stones, and asked for help, a person there said.

'Our team was able to assist them and called the authorities,' a statement released by Jeremy Mutschler, director of marketing and advertising at Nicolock, reads. The statement emphasizes that the shooting did not happen at Nicolock.

Agencies helping Frederick police include the FBI; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Maryland State Police; and the Frederick County Sheriff's Office.

The FBI is handling the first shooting scene, officials said.

Frederick is about a 50-mile drive northwest of Washington, DC. Woldesenbet did not live on Fort Detrick, officials said.

Fort Detrick is an Army biomedical and research facility. There are elements of other military branches on the post. According to the website Military Installations, there are about 1,300 active-duty military and 8,500 civilians and contractors at Fort Detrick or the Forest Glen campus in Silver Spring, Maryland.
With just five states reporting nearly half of all new U.S. coronavirus infections, some experts are calling on the Biden administration to send extra vaccine doses to the affected areas.

State health agency data pulled together by Johns Hopkins University shows that in the most recent seven-day period, there were more than 452,000 new COVID-19 cases reported in the U.S. Nearly 197,500 of those cases, or 44 percent, were reported in New York, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Those five states account for 22 percent of the country's population.

Michigan has the highest rate of new infections over the last two weeks; on Sunday, the state's seven-day average of new daily infections hit 6,719. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) says she believes this is being driven by the more contagious variants and people, tired of being at home, going more places. "What we have to do is really put our foot down on the pedal on vaccines," she said. Whitmer, who received her first vaccine dose on Tuesday, told The Associated Press she asked the White House last week if additional doses could be sent to states where coronavirus is on the rise, and she was told all options are on the table.

Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, chair of the University of California at San Francisco's department of epidemiology and biostatistics, told AP it's clear that "more vaccine needs to be where the virus is." It won't hurt people in other areas if places experiencing a surge get more vaccines, she added, and in fact it would help everyone because it will keep the virus from spreading. More than 40 percent of American adults have received at least one COVID-19 shot, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, with roughly 23 percent fully vaccinated.

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A judge has told a court that a Dublin couple were essential and vital cogs in the machine which operated a brothel in Ennis over two years ago.

At Ennis District Court, Judge Patrick Durcan imposed a suspended three month prison term on Eamon Ryan (54) and on Fokyee Anderson (48) both of Glenmaroon Rd, Palmerstown, Dublin 20 who both pleaded guilty to permitting an Ennis property be used as a brothel on December 18th, 2018.

The couple was charged after a Gardai raid on 31 The Crescent, Ennis found two Chinese women, one aged 62 and another aged 50 working as prostitutes on December 18th 2018 and Mr Ryan and Ms Anderson also present at the property.

Solicitor for the two accused, John Casey admitted that the case was seedy and at Ennis District Court today, Judge Patrick Durcan stated that the two accused were essential and vital cogs in the machine of operating the brothel.

Judge Durcan stated: The overall nature of this industry is hugely abusive of women and the two played a role in that business. They were under no illusions about the activity they were entering into.

Judge Durcan stated that the two accused had free B&B down the country and Ms Anderson received 5 for each booking and Mr Ryan got his expenses.

During the raid, Gardai also found a 46 year old Co Clare man hiding in a wardrobe in the bedroom used by the 50 year prostitute.

Read More





Sgt Aiden Lonergan confirmed that the two women working as prostitutes were aged in their sixties and fifties.

In response, Judge Durcan asked: Sixties? In reply, Sgt Lonergan said: Yes judge.

The purpose of the raid was to protect adults engaged in prostitution and the house was rented only for a few days to allow the brothel operate.

Sgt Lonergan stated that Mr Ryan admitted to driving the women around the country while Ms Anderson took the bookings and took 5 for each booking.

Sgt Lonergan stated that there is no evidence of trappings of wealth or that the two accused had coerced or trafficked the women concerned.

The sergeant stated that when the two women who worked as prostitutes were interviewed by Gardai, they stated that that they were not being pressurised.

Sgt Lonergan stated that the two are no longer in the country.

Solicitor for the accused, John Casey stated that Mr Ryan only got petrol money and got no other benefit for his involvement whatsoever and Ms Anderson 5 per booking.

Mr Casey stated: They treated this as a holiday in the country. This wasnt a professional operation. They were making no money out of it

Mr Casey stated that Mr Ryan is a full time carer for his cousin and Ms Anderson is a grand-mother and had a grand-child in Hong Kong.

Mr Casey stated: It is seedy Judge but I would ask you to take into account their good record and their co-operation with the Gardai.

He stated that the two have no previous convictions and co-operated fully and maybe gave too much information.
An independent photographer who said she was assaulted by Portland police during protests last summer received a $50,000 settlement, which her lawyers say is the largest to stem from the citys recent racial justice protests.

Now Teri Jacobs is calling on Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler to denounce the police force and their actions toward press and protesters.

Jacobs, who won the settlement in February, released an open letter to Wheeler on Monday, calling for him to condemn the officer she said assaulted her and the officers who have been violent to other protesters over the past few months.

In her four-page letter, Jacobs cited several of Wheelers tweets from last summer, in which he appeared to denounce violence and the silencing of any voice.

On November 3, 2020, you tweeted, There will be no tolerance for any violence, intimidation or criminal destruction. We want everyone to be safe while using their voice to advocate for their perspective, Jacobs wrote. I do not feel safe in this city because your police officers continue to assault, kill and harm the people of this city, with no repercussions. You have stated many times that you will not tolerate any violence, intimidation or criminal destruction, yet I was the victim of just that, and I have yet to hear you denounce the perpetrators of this crime.

When contacted for comment, a spokesperson for Wheelers office said they had not previously been aware of the letter.

Jacobs also included in her letter nearly 30 other tweets from protesters who had been hit or injured by police during protests.

For so long weve been hearing the same messages from the mayor, denouncing protesters, Jacobs told The Oregonian/OregonLive. Police are consistently assaulting and hurting humans, and that doesnt seem to bother the mayor. It seems like property is the only thing hes concerned about.

The Oregon Justice Resource Center, which represented Jacobs, said she was photographing an Aug. 18 protest at the Multnomah Building on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard when police gave an order to disperse.

That demonstration, the 83rd consecutive night of Black Lives Matter protests in Portland, was declared a riot. A group marched from Colonel Summers Park in Southeast Portland to county government offices, where some eventually lit fires in dumpsters and broke windows.

The Oregon Justice Resource Centers news release said Jacobs was trying to leave the area when a police officer, identified as Officer 37 from the number on the back of his helmet, ran after Jacobs, hit her on the back of her head, neck and back with a stick, then knocked her to the ground and hit her in the face.

Jacobs she was wearing a press pass, which police did not acknowledge, and that her camera was broken.

Jacobs lawyers said said the incident was caught on camera and that when the officer saw he was being filmed, he stopped hitting Jacobs and moved away.

The lawyers said other officers who were in the area did not try to stop the officer from hitting Jacobs.

Teri Jacobs did not pose any threat to police, nor had she committed a crime, and she was not being lawfully arrested or detained, the Oregon Justice Resource Center said in a news release.

In her letter, Jacobs told Wheeler he should resign if he doesnt condemn police officers treatment of protesters and press.

If you do not publicly denounce the actions of the Portland police officers involved in this crime, then you are publicly admitting that you are a liar, Jacobs said.

Juan Chavez, director of the Oregon Justice Resource Centers Civil Rights Project, said the citys settlement with Jacobs was just the first step.

Now the city must do the work that it cannot fix with settlement checks, he wrote. It must immediately end its unconstitutional policing of protests in this city and commit to meeting the demands of Black Lives Matter.

Jayati Ramakrishnan; 503-221-4320; jramakrishnan@oregonian.com; @JRamakrishnanOR
Welcomed: Dr Alan Stout says the regulator is right to be cautious

The Moderna vaccine was approved for use in the UK in January (Moderna/PA)

Updated guidance advising that under-30s should be offered an alternative to the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine is unlikely to disrupt Northern Ireland's vaccination programme, with the Moderna vaccine predicted to be available here within a matter of weeks.

A review of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine by drugs regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), has found that by the end of March, 79 people in the UK had suffered rare blood clots after vaccination - 19 of whom had died. The organisation has said this is not proof the jab caused the clots.

However, the MHRA review has prompted the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), the UK Government's vaccine advisory body, to recommend that people aged 18 to 29 be offered an alternative vaccine where available.

A statement from JCVI also said it is "preferable" for younger health and social care workers, unpaid carers and household contacts of immunosuppressed individuals who have not yet received a first dose of vaccine to receive an alternative to the AstraZeneca jab "on a precautionary basis", although it said people may make an "informed choice to receive the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine to receive earlier protection".

It continued: "To date, there are no reports of the extremely rare thrombosis or thrombocytopenia events following receipt of the second dose of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine.

"All those who have received a first dose of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine should continue to be offered a second dose of AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, irrespective of age. The second dose will be important for longer lasting protection against Covid-19."

In Northern Ireland, the AstraZeneca vaccine has primarily been administered by GPs, while the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been offered at the trust vaccination centres, although they are using the AstraZeneca for the younger cohorts now eligible for vaccination.

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman from the Department of Health said stocks of the Moderna vaccine will be delivered to Northern Ireland next month.

Dr Alan Stout, chair of the British Medical Association's GP committee in Northern Ireland, has welcomed the latest development: "I think it is very reassuring. There isn't a proven link between the vaccine and blood clots and I think the regulators are being cautious, quite rightly, and ensuring that the programme is as safe as possible."



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Dr Stout also warned the risk of developing a blood clot remains high for people who develop a Covid-19 infection: "This is really about balancing the risks and making an informed decision. We do know that people can have a very minor Covid infection and develop a blood clot.

"Hopefully this won't slow down the rollout of the vaccine, to date the programme has been concentrating on the older cohorts and it should be some weeks yet before we get to the under-30s. The Moderna vaccine should be delivered next month and hopefully even before then, so that will help."

Dr Stout said it is essential that public confidence in the vaccination programme remains high and it is imperative that younger people are not put off getting a vaccine.

"We want to reduce transmission of the virus and that will reduce everyone's risk, but it also slows the spread of the virus and replications of the virus, which is what causes variants, which is really, really important at this stage," he explained.

Meanwhile, Northern Ireland has recorded 88 new cases of Covid-19 and no further deaths related to the virus, with 89 Covid-19 inpatients on Wednesday.
For six months leading up to Angelita Hinojosas 100th birthday, she rounded up her age: She always told people she was 100, not 99.

But when the big day came in June 2020, her only son wasnt able to celebrate with her inside the Sarah Roberts French Home, a nursing home in the historic Woodlawn Lake neighborhood wheres shes lived for nearly 13 years.

Nursing homes and assisted-living facilities had locked their doors and stopped residents from meeting with loved ones to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The elderly residents were among the first victims of the pandemic, which eventually killed almost 8,900 people in long-term care facilities in Texas, including 514 in San Antonio. They account for about 20 percent of all Texas COVID-19 deaths.

Vaccinations have finally brought relief.

Hinojosa and her 82-year-old son, Edward, have been vaccinated, and now theyre able to visit whenever they want in the same room. Theres no limit to how often they hug or hold hands. In May, they can celebrate Mothers Day  and then Hinojosas 101st birthday in June.

Whenever shes asked, she already tells people shes 101.

I never had problems with my son, thats why Im still living, Hinojosa. Because problems eat you up.

For the first time since the coronavirus tore across the country, life is slowly returning to normal in long-term care facilities. Late last month, the state of Texas significantly loosened restrictions, making it much easier to visit residents in nursing homes where communities have kept the pandemic spread in control.

For some families, its brought the end of window visits and ushered in an era where multiple generations of the same family  parents, children and grandchildren  can once again spend time together in the same room. There is hope and joy, after a year of profound loss and overwhelming isolation.

I feel great because I can see her and touch her, Edward Hinojosa said. She looks forward to it, and sometimes I ask her, Do you want to talk to any of your nieces and nephews? And she says, As long as youre here, thats all I want.

For much of the last year, Hinojosa greeted his mother through the window of the nursing home three times per week. Even if theyre in the same room, she often has a hard time hearing, and the mother and son struggled to communicate. Edward had to call one of the facilitys staff members, who would relay his messages to his mother behind the glass.

It was a hardship on everybody, Hinojosa said. But its best for everyone all the way around.

Over the course of the pandemic, the 60-bed facility reported 14 cases of COVID-19 and two virus-related deaths among residents, according to state data. Those are among some of the lowest counts at nursing facilities in San Antonio: Across the city, nursing homes reported nearly 3,500 cases among residents and more than 1,700 cases in employees.

At some facilities, dozens of residents were infected.

Because of the pandemics disproportionate toll on older adults and people with disabilities living in close proximity, residents and employees of long-term care facilities were given first priority for COVID-19 vaccines, along with health care workers.

The shots quickly showed results: Across the country, COVID-19 cases in nursing homes plummeted 96 percent and deaths dropped by 91 percent from the end of December to early March, according to a recent study by the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living.

Because of the improving conditions, the federal government has urged states to allow residents to visit with their loved ones, regardless of whether theyd been vaccinated or not.

It's been very emotional, said Alexa Schoeman with the Texas Office of the Long-Term Care Ombudsman, which works to protect some of the most vulnerable Texans. It's so important to residents health and well-being and families are just so grateful for the opportunity to finally be able to see loved ones.

Texas followed federal guidance and eased restrictions in late March. All nursing homes in the state are required to allow residents to meet with visitors outdoors, and indoor visits must be allowed in most circumstances. Even residents who have tested positive with COVID-19 are allowed to see their loved ones.

All visits must be scheduled  a means for some facilities to continue limitations, Schoeman said.

Certainly the goal is to get back to pre-pandemic, where residents have the right to visit with whomever they wish whenever they wish, just like the rest of us, Schoeman said. We should be able to have friends and family over as we like.

Isolation and loneliness can have devastating effects on older adults. Recent research has found that social isolation increases risk of premature death, the likelihood of dementia, stroke, heart disease, depression, anxiety and suicide, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Social isolation has devastating effects on a lot of residents, Schoeman said. We hear stories of a lot of residents who passed away during the pandemic, whether or not from COVID-19 without the family with them.

Before the pandemic struck and Sarah Roberts French Home shut off residents from outside visitors, Helen Rodriguez, 71, used to spend hours each week there tending to her 91-year-old mother, Mary Moreno. The two are best friends, and Rodriguez would brush her mothers hair, do her make-up, check her teeth and paint her nails.

The first two times she had to greet her mother through a window, Rodriguez sobbed. She knew that the facilitys precautions were only meant to protect her mother, but she still couldnt help but feel sad and anxious that she couldnt see her mother in person. Her mother has dementia, and talking by phone and waving through glass wasnt the same.

Now for the first time in more than a year, Rodriguez can visit her mother not only in person  but also with her own daughter.

Lori Rodriguez-Padilla, 46, used to help run bingo for her grandmother and other nursing home residents. She often met her grandmother for lunch, and sometimes colored with her.

But she hasnt been able to visit with her at all since the pandemic began  until last week, when for the first time she was finally able to see both her mother and grandmother in the same room.

The first thing I did, Rodriguez-Padilla said, was just hold her and hug her.

marina.riker@express-news.net
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Toledo Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur on Wednesday joined a group of U.S. Congress members in an NAACP lawsuit that seeks damages from former President Donald Trump, attorney Rudy Giuliani and the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers over their role in a Jan. 6 riot on Capitol Hill that temporarily kept Congress from recording electoral votes that awarded the presidency to Democrat Joe Biden.

The lawsuit accuses the defendants of violating the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act, which was passed to crack down on violence and intimidation against freed slaves. The lawsuit says Kaptur and the other plaintiffs suffered emotional harm during the attack on the U.S. Capitol, were hindered and impeded from discharging their official duties and were deprived of the right to be free from intimidation and threats while they were doing their jobs.

It seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages to punish the defendants for engaging in a concerted and continuing course of unlawful conduct and to deter the defendants and others from engaging in similar unlawful conduct in the future.

The events of January 6 were no accident, said a statement Kaptur issued through the NAACP. There must be consequences for those who contributed to the coordinated attempt to overturn a free and fair election and harm our democracy. This lawsuit is an important step in repairing the damage that has been done, and I am pleased to join so many of my colleagues in this fight.

A section of the lawsuit describes how Kaptur was watching the vote tally from a gallery when she saw law enforcement officers escort House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Vice President Mike Pence off the House of Representatives floor, as loud and unruly shouting and banging erupted. Kaptur remained in the gallery, becoming increasingly worried about the safety of members and staff as she heard noises that sounded like logs being pounded against the doors.

She grew increasingly eager to exit the Gallery, as she feared that hostile intruders might enter the House Chamber and put her safety at risk, the lawsuit continues. It said her worries were heightened when a Capitol Police officer told them to don gas masks because tear gas had been discharged in the complex. She was eventually able to leave the gallery and go to a sub-basement, where she finally arrived at a very crowded room where other members and their staffs sheltered.

After leaving threats to her physical safety, Rep. Kaptur grew concerned for her health, as she was directed to shelter in a room in which members could not remain socially distant and many refused to wear masks, as the CDC prescribed as the means to minimize the risk of contracting COVID-19, the lawsuit says.

Kaptur was not among the three Democratic members of Congress who tested positive for the coronavirus after they were confined in close quarters with maskless colleagues. Two of the three - Washingtons Pramila Jayapal and New Jerseys Bonnie Watson Coleman - were also listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

Other Democratic plaintiffs who joined the lawsuit on Wednesday were House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler of New York, Californias Karen Bass, Maxine Waters and Barbara Lee, Tennessees Steve Cohen, Georgias Hank Johnson Jr. and Texas Veronica Escobar. Mississippis Bennie Thompson was the original plaintiff in the lawsuit when it was first filed in February.

A statement the NAACP issued when the lawsuit was first filed said that Trump needs to be held accountable for deliberately inciting and colluding with white supremacists to stage a coup, in his continuing efforts to disenfranchise African-American voters.

The insurrection was the culmination of a carefully orchestrated, months-long plan to destroy democracy, to block the results of a fair and democratic election, and to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of African-American voters who cast valid ballots, said the statement from NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson. Since our founding, the NAACP has gone to the courthouse to put an end to actions that discriminate against African-American voters. We are now bringing this case to continue our work to protect our democracy and make sure nothing like what happened on January 6th ever happens again.

After the initial lawsuit was filed in February, Trump adviser Jason Miller released a statement that said Trump didnt plan, produce or organize the Jan. 6 rally on the Ellipse whose participants eventually stormed the Capitol.

President Trump did not incite or conspire to incite any violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, Miller continued, noting that the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate acquitted him of inciting an insurrection after the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives impeached him over his role in the riot.

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Romania and Italy have consistently supported the importance of a strong, inclusive European Union that is closer to its citizens, Romania's Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu said on Wednesday.

The statement was made at a joint news conference with Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio during Aurescu's official visit to Rome, agerpres.ro confirms.

"Romania and Italy have consistently supported the importance of a strong, inclusive union that is closer to its citizens, that ensures the security and prosperity of its citizens. We will continue to uphold these principles, including as part of the debates that will take place at the Conference on the future of Europe," said the head of the Romanian diplomacy is quotes as saying in a press statement released by the Romanian Foreign Ministry (MAE).

Aurescu reiterated Romania's objectives related to its accession to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Schengen area and thanked Italy for constant support to Romania in these files, which, in fact, Minister Di Maio reconfirmed during discussions.

The two ministers' consultations also reaffirmed that Romania and Italy support strengthening NATO's role and the deterrence and defence posture, including on the eastern flank.

The discussion also examined other issues of shared interest, such as developments in the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean Neighbourhood, EU-Turkey and EU-Russia relations, the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum.

Di Maio once again thanked Romania, during the consultations, for the solidarity shown by Romania last year in the first stage of the COVID-19 pandemic when sending a Romanian medical team to help Italian doctors in the fight against the novel coronavirus.

The Italian minister accepted an invitation from Aurescu to pay a visit to Romania in preparation for this year's joint government meeting.

"Despite the difficulties caused by the pandemic, our bilateral trade in 2020 neared over 13.8 billion euros in value, which is close to its all-time high of 2019, when we recorded 15.65 billion euros of trade. Italy remains thus, as Minister Di Maio said, Romania's second most important trading partner," said Aurescu.

He also mentioned the very important role of the Romanian community in Italy.

"It is the largest foreign community in Italy, the largest Romanian community outside the country, with an official count in excess of 1.1 million people. This community is an important link between our countries, to which we want to continue to attach special attention and that we want to develop continually. In recent years, the Romanian community has become increasingly better integrated with the Italian society," said Aurescu.

Aurescu pointed out that Romania and Italy are both supporting a strong transatlantic relationship.

"Therefore, we also discussed our close co-operation within NATO and thanked Italy for its support on the eastern flank, for NATO's deterrence and defence effort, for the deployment of the reinforced air policing in Romania, in the airspace of Romania, as well as for the affiliation of an Italian military unit to the Multinational Brigade in Craiova and for the participation in the other NATO bodies located in Romania," said Aurescu.
The Board of Trustees of HACC, Central Pennsylvanias Community College, on Tuesday adopted a $130-million 2021-22 budget that projects a 3% decrease in enrollment and a tuition increase.

Because of the continued effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the college is projecting a $586,201 revenue shortfall, according to a press release.

Like many colleges and universities around the nation, HACC faces additional enrollment challenges as a result of the unprecedented global pandemic, HACC President and CEO John J. Ski Sygielski said. It is the Colleges responsibility to be disciplined to make these hard decisions to ensure that HACC is a life-sustaining organization for many years to come.

A 2% hike in tuition will be assessed for out-of-state, non-sponsored, sponsored, dual-enrolled and College in the High School students, the release said. It will result in HACC students paying an additional $1.50 to $5.25 per credit, depending on their student type. On average, a full-time non-sponsored student will see a tuition increase of $54. This increase in tuition will generate a revenue of $1,122,586 for the college, the release said.

Sygielski: A tuition increase is the last option to consider when creating a viable budget. We continue to seek ways to ensure our students complete their education with us, we will continue to offer cost-saving measures, including scholarships and tuition giveaways.

The 2021-22 budget includes several cost-saving measures totaling approximately $1 million, including eliminating meeting and travel expenses, bad debt expenses, utilities and several additional smaller expense categories, according to the release, which noted that the school will remain fiscally responsible and seek alternative cost-saving measures throughout the fiscal year.

Included in the budget is a 2% salary increase for all full- and part-time regular employees. Adjunct faculty will receive the same increase in their hourly rate., the release said.

HACC spends approximately three of every four dollars on total compensation and benefits when compared to total expenses, the release said.

Faculty members as recently as mid-February rallied in favor of forming a union, saying their main goal is a greater say in decisions that impact the education and experiences of students.

Sygielski: We value our employees and the work they have done to adapt and transition to working from home over the past year as a result of the coronavirus. We are delighted that the board supported our request for another salary increase for our employees, the second this year.

For more information about HACC, including previous budgets, click on this link.

The release noted that the HACC Foundation, a nonprofit organization established to raise funds for the school, so far in 2020-21 has awarded more than $854,000 in scholarships and tuition giveaways to HACC students. The money raised funds student scholarships, innovative academic programs, state-of-the art training equipment and modernized facilities.

To continue these efforts, the release said, the foundation is offering continuing and future students the opportunity to earn $2,000 for their fall tuition to cover tuition and fees.
New Delhi:

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday reached on a two-day visit to Jammu and Kashmir where she would review the security situation along the Line of Control (LoC) in the Valley and Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh region.

She was received by Northern Army Commander and the Chinar Corps Commander at the Old Airfield. Sitharaman also visited one of the forward posts on the LoC in Kashmir.

Earlier, Sitharaman, accompanied by Army chief General Bipin Rawat, arrived this morning on her maiden visit to the state and straightaway went to Kupwara sector in north Kashmir for an on-ground assessment of the situation along the LoC., sources said.

The sources said senior army officials would brief the defence minister about the overall situation in the Valley, including counter-insurgency and counter-infiltration operations, upon her return from Kupwara.

Also Read: No troop contribution in Afghanistan: Nirmala Sitharaman to US counterpart

Sitharaman is scheduled to meet Governor N N Vohra and Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti later in the day, they said.

Also Read: Nirmala Sitharaman, US Defence Secretary James Mattis discuss cross-border terrorism

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"Our posture's gonna be that we're posted outside of DC, awaiting the president's orders. We hope he will give us the orders. We want him to declare an insurrection, and to call us up as the militia."

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, in November, looking ahead to Jan. 6
The Lao PM earlier sent a message of congratulations to Chinh on April 5.

During the call, PM Phankham Viphavanh said he believes PM Chinh will excellently fulfill his important missions assigned to him by the Vietnamese Party, State and people.

PM Chinh said he wishes to work closely with the Lao PM to continuously strengthen and develop the great friendship, special solidarity and comprehensive cooperation between Vietnam and Laos.

The two PMs rejoiced at the continued cooperation between the two countries amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and agreed to collaborate more closely to respond to common challenges and mobilise international resources for each countrys socio-economic development as well as for bilateral cooperation.

They agreed to work to improve the efficiency of the coordination between the two governments so as to well implement high-level agreements and outcomes of the 43rd meeting of the Vietnam-Laos Inter-governmental Committee, as well as to enhance cooperation across the fields, from defence-security, trade-investment, transport, to education-training, people-to-people exchange and local partnerships.

The two government leaders also vowed to closely coordinate and support each other at multilateral forums, especially ASEAN and the Greater Mekong Sub-region frameworks. Besides, the two sides will also work together to organize activities to mark the 60th anniversary of Vietnam-Laos diplomatic relations and 45th anniversary of the two countries friendship and amity treaty in 2022.

The two PMs took the occasion to invite each other to visit their respective countries. PM Chinh extended his warm greetings to Lao leaders and people on the occasion of their traditional Bunpimay festival.
The first international passenger flight in two months has landed in Victoria, marking the third official restart of the state's troubled hotel quarantine program.

Sri Lankan Airlines flight UL604 from Colombo touched down about 4.22am on Thursday, with passengers taken by bus to the Intercontinental on Collins Street in the CBD, where they will remain for a fortnight.

It's expected a total of 106 passengers will arrive in the state on Thursday, with more flights expected from Doha, Dubai and Singapore.

Those arriving this week will be housed at the Holiday Inn near Melbourne Airport and the Intercontinental

Those arriving this week will be housed at the Holiday Inn near Melbourne Airport and the Intercontinental.

The Novotel Ibis Melbourne Central, Pan Pacific, Holiday Inn on Flinders and Element Melbourne Richmond are also ready for use after ventilation works.

The Holiday Inn on Flinders Street will function as a 'health hotel', taking travellers who test positive to COVID-19, while the Element Melbourne Richmond will take guests with medical conditions and complex needs.

The state hasn't accepted returned travellers since February 13, when workers contracted the UK strain of COVID-19 from guests at the Melbourne Aiport Holiday Inn.

The outbreak, which grew to 24 cases, triggered a statewide five-day lockdown.

Victoria's deadly second wave of COVID-19 last year also leaked from hotel quarantine and led to a judicial review and overhaul of the program.

The first international passenger flight in two months has landed in Victoria, marking the third official restart of the state's troubled hotel quarantine program

COVID-19 Quarantine Victoria Commissioner Emma Cassar said Victorians can be confident in the third iteration of the scheme.

"We have done everything we can to make this as safe as we can and we will continue to ensure the program keeps ahead of this virus," she said on Wednesday.

Under the latest changes, returned travellers will be tested four times, unable to leave their rooms for fresh air without a medical reason, have their mealtimes staggered and large family groups will be spaced out to reduce the risk of aerosol transmission.

Hotel quarantine staff have now all received at least one Pfizer dose, while the majority have also undergone N95 mask fit testing.

Arrivals are capped at 800 in the first week, although that is expected to increase in the second week to 1,000.

Another six hotels are expected to join the program as it ramps up, including the Four Points by Sheraton.

Victoria recorded no new local virus cases for the 40th day in a row on Wednesday, following 11,746 tests.
Singapore, Singapore--(Newsfile Corp. - April 7, 2021) - The Korea Economic Daily - one of the largest financial media outlets in Korea, operating over 10 multi-media properties covering digital and print media, TV, and publishing, has partnered with Korea's leading mobile messenger provider, Kakao and Ground X, to bring the KLAY cryptocurrency to both mainstream Korean and global users.

So far, 32 well-known enterprises such as Binance, Huobi, Maker, or LG Electronics have joined the Klaytn Governance Council (GC), The Korea Economic Daily being the first media enterprise to join the (GC).





To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/7829/79659_5602d78b945f69fe_001full.jpg

The Klaytn's Governance Council's role is to operate Klaytn's consensus node thus, The Korean Economic Daily will serve as a key decision-maker in Klaytn's business and technical agenda.

Crypto Rewards for Users

To familiarize the Korean public with the crypto world and the Klaytn blockchain, The Korea Economic Daily in partnership with Hankyung.com, one of its subsidiaries, has organized a series of events meant to both promote the Klaytn ecosystem and reward the readers with the Klaytn's native token - KLAY.

Users will receive KLAY rewards in return for subscribing to Hankyung's news service, or to its variety of other platforms - from financial investment platforms to content consumption platforms.

Overwhelming Public Reception to KLAY

Since the initial announcement, user reception has been overwhelming, with thousands of hankyung.com readers experiencing cryptocurrency for the first time. By introducing cryptocurrency to potentially millions of first-time users, Klaytn and the Korea Economic Daily is at the forefront of pushing the mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency in Korea.

The organizers were also thrilled

The 'Korea Economic Daily' President Kim Jung-ho, declared "We are very happy to co-operate with Klaytn and other industry leaders across all verticals; from IT and Finance to Gaming, leveraging our technological know-how and experience in large-scale service operation. As long as we continue to play a significant role in the global market, we will continue to contribute and help establish Klaytn as the standard blockchain platform for global users."

Also, Jason Han, the CEO of 'Ground X', stated "The significance of a media conglomerate like the Hankyung Media Group joining the Klaytn Governance Council is not lost on the industry; Hankyung joins a vast group of leading global companies already actively pursuing multiple initiatives to grow the Klaytn eco-system."

About Klaytn

A future-proof layer one solution, together with its native digital asset KLAY, Klaytn seeks to address the current issues of speed, scalability, and cost.

Contact:

John Cho

Director of Global Expansion

john.cho@groundx.xyz

https://www.klaytn.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/79659
[April 07, 2021] IDnow welcomes Bundesnetzagentur decision and predicts turning point for digital identity verification

MUNICH, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The decision of Bundesnetzagentur to allow AI (artificial intelligence) based identification methods for new use cases in Germany is a confirmation of IDnow's platform strategy and at the same time a turning point in international competition for German technology companies. With the publication "Video identification with automated procedure" for automated optical identity verification by Bundesnetzagentur in cooperation with the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), AI-based solutions for the verification of customers are now approved for certain use cases in Germany in addition to the proven methods. The published order is based on the German Trust Services Act, which implements the eIDAS Regulation in Germany. The catalogue of criteria published by Bundesnetzagentur and BSI prescribes high technology standards for automated identity verification. IDnow is one of the few European providers that has already been officially confirmed with other methods by Bundesnetzagentur within the scope of an accredited conformity assessment and is now also already working on the confirmation for AutoIdent. IDnow has been using automated identification technology for many years. With its product IDnow AutoIdent, IDnow is one of the leading providers for automated identification in Germany. As early as 2012, IDnow filed a patent application for fully automated identification procedures, which has been granted by the European Patent Office. "We are pleased that the regulatory authorities have now finally opened up to technological development in Germany and we see our efforts and years of research into the development of our own AI technology confirmed," says Armin Bauer, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of IDnow. In addition to this patent, IDnow holds other patents and patent applications at the European level. IDnow's technology uses so-called Deep Learning to perform an identification at the same security level as a personal identification for example in a branch. For this purpose, the self-developed artificial intelligence, automatically recognises the security features of the ID documents in a video stream and performs a biometric face comparison of a video selfie with the ID document. This is complemented by new security mechanisms such as a "liveness detection" that prevents attacks through recorded videos and photos.



IDnow sees the regulator's decision as an important step towards a digital society in Germany and as a fundamental turning point for German companies in international market comparison. The established and very successful services such as the electronic ID card, BankIdent or the VideoIdent procedure can now be supplemented with AI-based AutoIdent methods for new use cases. IDnow expects a significant change for German consumers: The new decree will make innovative technologies such as digital identities accessible to the broad population in the future  regardless of the individual citizen's affinity for technology. This is because the new regulation enables platform companies such as IDnow to offer the appropriate digital methods for identity verification in each case. "The decision of Bundesnetzagentur is an important milestone for platform companies like IDnow. In the future, IDnow, as one of the leading European platform providers, will be able to offer additional, automated identification methods to numerous other industries in Europe. This is an essential step towards a digital future in Germany and for Europe and shows that the time for secure digital identities has come," says Andreas Bodczek, CEO of IDnow. "Consumer security is always at the forefront of the development of our procedures. For many years, we have therefore been actively working with various organisations in politics and regulation to jointly shape this secure, European future," he adds.

IDnow is one of the leading providers of digital identities with a broad portfolio of products and solutions and identifies several million citizens per year with its platform. The portfolio includes identification methods from offline to online, from automated methods to procedures carried out by identity specialists, available flexibly online, offline in branches and even by a courier at the user's doorstep. IDnow has expanded its role in recent years far beyond simply offering individual ident methods and has become the overarching platform for digital identities with several million transactions per year. Just last month, IDnow announced the acquisition of identity Trust Management AG, one of the leading international providers for on- and offline verification. This is the second acquisition in the last six months for IDnow and represents an important milestone on the way to becoming the leading identity platform in Europe. The acquisition of identity Trust Management AG enables IDnow to expand into new industries and offer its services to a broader customer base in Germany and beyond. About IDnow IDnow is a leading identity verification platform in Europe with a vision to make the connected world a safer place. The IDnow platform provides a broad portfolio of identity verification solutions, ranging from automated to human-assisted, from purely online to point-of-sale  each of them optimized for user conversion rates and security. The company has offices in Germany, United Kingdom and France and is backed by renowned institutional investors, including Corsair Capital and Seventure Partners. Its portfolio of over 500 international clients, spans a wide range of industries, and includes leading international players such as, Western Union, UBS, Commerzbank and Sixt, as well as digital champions like N26, Solarisbank, wefox and Tier mobility. Press Contact IDnow:

Christina Schwinning

press@idnow.io

+49 89 41324 6054 View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/idnow-welcomes-bundesnetzagentur-decision-and-predicts-turning-point-for-digital-identity-verification-301264007.html SOURCE IDnow GmbH

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Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 7) Former President Joseph Estrada remains in intensive care after contracting COVID-19, but his condition is improving, his son former Senator Jinggoy Estrada said Wednesday.

He is still confined at the intensive care unit and his condition is stable, the younger Estrada told CNN Philippines Balitaan. His health is improving, the doctor just updated me right now.

The former chief executive was rushed to the hospital on March 28 and tested positive for coronavirus. He was sedated and moved to the ICU on April 4, and was put on a ventilator earlier this week due to worsening pneumonia.

In a separate Facebook post also on Wednesday, the former senator cited information from doctors that his father's inflammatory markers are on a downward trend.

Hopefully this signals that his immune system is responding well, he said, adding that his fathers vital organs are also functioning well.

Estrada likewise expressed hope that his 83-year-old father can be discharged from the hospital before the former president's birthday on April 19.

The former senator also revealed he is on self-quarantine after his wife and other family members tested positive for COVID-19 this week.
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The Niger State Government has appointed Ahmad Garba-Gunna as the new emir of Kagara in Rafi Local Government Area of the state.

The appointment followed the death earlier this year of the former emir, Salihu Tanko, at the IBB Specialist Hospital in Minna, the state capital, after a protracted illness.

Announcing the selection, the chief press secretary to the state governor, Mary Noel-Berje, said Mr Garba-Gunna scored the highest number of votes in the election by the electoral college of the emirate.

Until his appointment, the new emir was the acting Chairperson of Niger State Board of Internal Revenue and held the traditional title of Dan Majen Kagara, Ms Noel-Berje said in a statement.

She said the governor, Abubakar Bello, described the appointment as well-deserved, stressing that his nomination indicates the kingmakers believe he has the royal pedigree to steer the emirate to greatness.

According to Ms Noel-Berje, Governor Bello said as a reputable professional and public servant, the new emir has the capacity to build on the legacies of his predecessors by upholding the sanctity of the traditional institution.

Your appointment, after serving the emirate as Dan Majen Kagara, to the exalted seat also represents the confidence and belief of the entire people of the emirate that you will bring your wisdom and expertise in preserving the rich cultural heritage and traditions of the people.

He reminded the new Emir that he was ascending the throne at a critical period of insecurity in his domain and urged him to use his wealth of experience by collaborating with relevant stakeholders to bring enduring peace to the area, Ms Noel-Berje quoted the governor as saying.

Kagara, the headquarters of Rafi LGA, is the location of a public secondary school where bandits abducted 38 students and staff on February 17.

The abducted persons were released 10 days later, but the bandits returned the same day, killing four persons and kidnapping many others in different attacks on Kagara and surrounding villages.
Little Rock, Ark.  Arkansas lawmakers on Tuesday made the state the first to ban gender confirming treatments and surgery for transgender youth, enacting the prohibition over the governors objections.

The Republican-controlled House and Senate voted to override GOP Gov. Asa Hutchinsons veto of the measure, which prohibits doctors from providing gender confirming hormone treatment, puberty blockers or surgery to anyone under 18 years old, or from referring them to other providers for the treatment.

Opponents of the measure have vowed to sue to block the ban before it takes effect this summer.

Hutchinson vetoed the bill Monday following pleas from pediatricians, social workers and the parents of transgender youth who said the measure would harm a community already at risk for depression and suicide. The ban was opposed by several medical and child welfare groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics.

This legislation perpetuates the very things we know are harmful to trans youth, Dr. Robert Garofalo, division head of adolescent and young adult medicine at Lurie Childrens Hospital in Chicago, told reporters on a press conference call held by the Human Rights Campaign. Theyre not just anti-trans. Theyre anti-science. Theyre anti-public health.

The bills sponsor dismissed opposition from medical groups and compared the restriction to other limits the state places on minors, such as prohibiting them from drinking.

They need to get to be 18 before they make those decisions, Republican Rep. Robin Lundstrum said.

The Family Council, a conservative group that backed the measure, praised lawmakers for enacting historic legislation.

Hutchinson said the measure went too far in interfering with parents and physicians, and noted that it will cut off care for transgender youth already receiving treatment. He said he would have signed the bill if it had focused only on gender confirming surgery, which currently isnt performed on minors in the state.

I do hope my veto will cause my Republican colleagues across the country to resist the temptation to put the state in the middle of every decision made by parents and health care professionals, Hutchinson said in a statement after the vote.

The law will take effect in late July at the earliest. The American Civil Liberties Union said it planned to challenge the measure before then.

This is a sad day for Arkansas, but this fight is not over  and were in it for the long haul, Holly Dickson, ACLU of Arkansas executive director, said in a statement.

The override, which needed only a simple majority, passed easily in both chambers, with House voting 72-25 in favor and the Senate 25-8.

The ban was enacted during a year in which bills targeting transgender people have advanced easily in Arkansas and other states. Hutchinson recently signed legislation banning transgender women and girls from competing on teams consistent with their gender identity, a prohibition that also has been enacted in Tennessee and Mississippi this year.

Hutchinson also recently signed legislation that allows doctors to refuse to treat someone because of moral or religious objections.

And the Legislature isnt showing signs of letting up. Another bill advanced by a House committee earlier Tuesday would prevent schools from requiring teachers to refer to students by their preferred pronouns or titles.

The Human Rights Campaign, the nations largest LGBTQ rights group, said more than 100 bills have been filed in statehouses around the country targeting the transgender community. Similar treatment bans have been proposed in at least 20 states.

The foundation established by the family of Bentonville-based Walmarts founder on Tuesday raised concerns about the recent measures in Arkansas targeting LGBTQ people.

This trend is harmful and sends the wrong message to those willing to invest in or visit our state, Tom Walton with the Walton Family Foundation said in a statement released before the override vote.

One lawmaker opposed to the measure compared it to the anti-integration bills Arkansas Legislature passed in 1958 in opposition to the previous years desegregation of Little Rock Central High School.

What I see, this bill, is the most powerful again bullying the most vulnerable people in our state, Democratic Sen. Clarke Tucker said before the vote.
An Australian shopper has divided the internet after suggesting a block of knives would be a great housewarming present.

But the suggestion shocked her fellow shoppers who agreed a knife or set of knives should never be given as a gift - as some suggest they metaphorically 'sever the bonds of friendship'.

The debate exploded over Facebook after the woman posted a photo of the $30 Crofton knife set which appeared in the Aldi's special buys range last month.

'So impressed with how nice this is. Great gift idea,' she said.

But she soon found out it was not a good idea at all, according to an age-old superstition still held by many.

An Australian shopper has divided the internet after suggesting a block of knives would be a great housewarming present

'Bite me if you like but you don't give knives as gifts, they cut the friendship bond,' one woman said quoting an old wives tale.

The original poster said she thought it would be a great housewarming gift present for someone leaving home for the first idea. But was thankful for the responses warning her against it.

'My dad wouldn't even give men his good butcher knife, I had to give him a dollar for it,' one woman said.

Others had heard variations of the old wives tale.

'An old aunt of mine once said if you gift any knives you also add a coin for good luck,' another woman added.

Poll Would you give a knife as a gift? Yes No Only with a coin Would you give a knife as a gift? Yes 44 votes

No 21 votes

Only with a coin 7 votes Now share your opinion





'Twice people have given our family lovely knives and both times the friendship got cut off,' another woman said.

According to Japanese folklore the only way to get around the issue and keep the friendship is to attach a coin to the knives when they are given.

Then the recipient must give the coin back as a symbolic form of payment.

An old English wives tale says to give someone a knife is to give them all of the power in your relationship.

Some knife companies already tape a coin to the box of their knives to get around the age-old superstition.

Some say the superstition dates back to the Vikings - who considered it embarrassing to be given a knife because it meant the gift giver didn't think the receiver could afford a good knife on their own.

What are some superstitions about knives? 1- They should never be given as a gift otherwise they will sever the bonds of friendship ( A coin can be given, then returned to the gift-giver to get around this) 2- Pocket knives must be closed before they are handed to another, or it will cause an argument 3- If the knife is given as a wedding gift it will sever the bonds of the marriage 4- A knife placed under the bed or a woman giving birth will ease labor pains 5- Putting a knife with a black handle under your pillow will stop nightmares 6- Stirring something with a knife will bring bad luck to the home 7- If a fisherman drops a knife and the blade points to the water he will have good luck on his next day at sea 8- Sharpening a knife's blade after the sun goes down is bad luck 9- If you leave a knife blade facing the ceiling murderers are born until it is corrected 10- If you cut yourself with your knife you should coat it with your blood to avoid it happening again Advertisement

The $30 knife block was part of German retailer Aldi's Special Buy range last month, the shopper was so impressed by the product she posted photos on Facebook and suggested it as a budget-friendly present.

In Finland special knives are given as gifts, and it is considered a huge honour to receive them.

Despite the superstition many people did agree the set was lovely.

'I bought these too and I was quite impressed, they are nice and sharp,' one Aldi shopper said.

While another suggested storing the knives in the holder upside down to help them remain sharp.

'I love the in built sharpener. The knives are nice and sharp and hopefully they will stay that way,' one woman said.
OR YEHUDA, Israel, April 6, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Synchrony Medical, a medical device company developing a personalized chest physiotherapy system designed to provide efficient airway clearance, has recently initiated a clinical trial at The National Cystic Fibrosis Center of Israel, at Sheba Medical Center.

The trial aims to test the functionality of the system and compare its airway clearance effectiveness to standard of care solutions currently used in Cystic Fibrosis and Bronchiectasis patients.

Dr. Moshe Ashkenazi (Left), Mr. Gil Sokol, Prof. Ori Efrati, and Ms. Anat Shani

"Effective airway clearance on a daily basis at home is the key to keeping chronic lung patients stable and breaking the vicious cycle of clinical deteriorations," said Dr. Moshe Ashkenazi, Pediatric Pulmonologist, Deputy Director, Safra Children's Hospital, Sheba Medical Center and Synchrony Medical's Co-founder.

Synchrony Medical has developed a novel airway clearance system based on a unique chest physiotherapy method developed at the National Cystic Fibrosis Center of Israel, Sheba Medical Center. The system includes real time sensing for an adaptive treatment to achieve effective airway clearance.

"Our system will enable patients to receive state-of-the-art chest physiotherapy independently, in the comfort of their own home," explained Anat Shani, CEO of Synchrony Medical. "By making this effective therapy accessible, Synchrony Medical will bring to patient's years of experience from Sheba's respiratory experts and may help minimize pulmonary exacerbations and costly hospitalization associated with chronic lung diseases. This trial brings us one step closer to our goal: improving the lives of millions of chronic lung disease patients who deserve better airway clearance solutions."

Synchrony Medical is a portfolio company of MEDX Xelerator, a medical device incubator formed as an initiative of MEDX Ventures Group together with Boston Scientific, Intellectual Ventures and Sheba Medical Center.

About Synchrony Medical

Synchrony Medical, a portfolio company of MEDX Xelerator, is a clinical stage medical device company innovating airway clearance for patients living with chronic lung diseases. Synchrony's system will enable patients to receive high quality chest physiotherapy independently at the comfort of their home. The system synchronizes a unique chest compression sequence and the delivery of positive airway pressure with the patient's breathing cycle, according to a personalized treatment algorithm. It is based on a unique airway clearance method developed at the National CF Center of Israel, at the Sheba Medical Center.

About MEDX Xelerator

MEDX Xelerator is a leading MedTech incubator formed as an initiative of MEDX Ventures Group together with Boston Scientific, Intellectual Ventures' Invention Science Fund and Sheba Medical Center. Operating under the auspices of the Israel Innovation Authority, MEDX leverages the healthcare expertise and industry experience of its team with the industry leading insights of its partners to nurture its portfolio companies into successful medical ventures for the benefit of patients and health care professionals. For more information, visit: https://www.medxelerator.com/.

About Sheba Medical Center

The largest and most comprehensive medical center in the Middle East, Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer is generating global impact through its medical care, research and healthcare transformation. Sheba's City of Health boasts an acute-care hospital, rehabilitation hospital, research and innovation hubs, medical simulation center and center for disaster response on one comprehensive campus in the center of Israel. A university teaching hospital affiliated with the Sackler School of Medicine at Tel-Aviv University, Sheba is shaping the future of healthcare, educating the next generation of care providers. Sheba serves as a true hospital without borders, welcoming patients and healthcare professionals from all over the world and consistently providing the highest-level medical care to all in need. Sheba has been ranked a top-ten hospital in the world by Newsweek three years in a row (2019, 2020, 2021). For more information, visit: eng.sheba.co.il.

Marketing Contact:

Inbal Landsberg, PhD

Chief Business Officer

[email protected]

SOURCE MEDX Xelerator

Related Links

http://www.medxelerator.com/




Sophia is a robot with many abilities. She speaks, jokes, sings and even makes art. Now, the next step in the robots career could be that of a musician.

Sophia is working with human musicians on several musical works as part of a project called Sophia Pop, said David Hanson.

Hanson is the head of Hanson Robotics and Sophias creator.

Were so excited about Sophias career as an artist, he said.

Hanson has been developing robots for the past 25 years. He believes realistic-looking robots can connect with people and assist in industries such as healthcare and education.

Sophia is the most famous robot creation from Hanson Robotics. She can copy human facial expressions, hold conversations and recognize people. In 2017, she was given Saudi Arabian citizenship, becoming the worlds first robot citizen.

Hanson said he imagined Sophia as a creative artwork herself, that could generate art.

In March, a digital artwork Sophia created jointly with Italian artist Andrea Bonaceto sold for $688,888 in the form of a non-fungible token, or NFT.

An NFT is something that only exists in the digital world. It is based on a technology called blockchain, which is also used with digital currency systems known as cryptocurrency.

Blockchain is an online list containing information that can be used and shared within a large network open to the public. The technology permits pieces of information to be checked and stored safely.

An NFT can be attached to a piece of digital artwork or other things existing in digital form. The NFT can be used to provide proof that the pieces are authentic. This is what permits digital artwork to be bought and sold. While anyone can view the work, the buyer has official ownership rights over the objects.

The digital work that sold for $688,888 is titled Sophia Instantiation. It is a 12-second video file which shows Bonacetos portrait changing into Sophias digital painting. Along with the digital file is the physical artwork painted by Sophia.

The buyer, a digital artwork collector and artist known as 888, later sent Sophia a photo of his painted arm. The robot then added that image to her knowledge and painted more on top of her original piece.

On the social media service Twitter, Sophia described the work as the first NFT shared work between an AI, a mechanical collective being and an artist-collector.

Sophias artwork selling as an NFT is part of a growing trend. In March, a digital artwork by artist Beeple sold for nearly $70 million, becoming the costliest digital artwork ever sold.

Im Jonathan Evans.

Zen Soo and Alice Fung reported on this story for the Associated Press. Jonathan Evans adapted this story for Learning English. Hai Do was the editor.

_______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

authentic  adj. real or true

generate  v. to cause to come into being

mechanical  adj. of or relating to machinery

trend  n. something that is currently popular or fashionable
Rome: A top official at the European Medicines Agency says theres a causal link between AstraZenecas coronavirus vaccine and rare blood clots, but that its unclear what the connection is and that the benefits of taking the shot still outweigh the risks of getting COVID-19.

Marco Cavaleri, head of health threats and vaccine strategy at the Amsterdam-based agency, told Romes Il Messaggero newspaper on Tuesday, Rome time, that the European Unions medicines regulator was preparing to make a more definitive statement on the topic this week.

A nurse holds a vial of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, manufactured by the Serum Institute of India and provided through the global COVAX initiative, in Machakos, Kenya. Credit:AP

Based on the evidence so far, Cavaleri said theres a clear association between the AstraZeneca vaccine and the dozens of rare blood clots that have been reported worldwide amid the tens of millions of AstraZeneca shots that have been given out.

It is becoming more and more difficult to affirm that there isnt a cause-and-effect relationship between AstraZeneca vaccines and the very rare cases of blood clots associated with a low level of platelets, Cavaleri was quoted as saying.
[April 07, 2021] Insurity Continues Partnership with RCG Global Services to Accelerate Software Implementation to Major Insurers

Insurity, a leading provider of cloud-based software for insurance carriers, brokers, syndicates, and MGAs is expanding its partnership with RCG Global Services to accelerate software implementations to major Property & Casualty insurance providers. As an SI partner, RCG will lead customers through requirement analysis, software configurations, legacy data conversions, implement interfaces and program management to ensure successful implementations. Insurers face complex multi-faceted challenges when undergoing large-scale core application digital transformational programs for policy, billing, claims and analytical software. Through Insurity's SI partnership program, insurers gain access to professional services firms with large scale professional teams experienced in program delivery. RCG Global Services focuses on enabling digital transformation to achieve measurable business outcomes for customer engagement, workforce enablement, and operations optimization. "We began our partnership with Insurity over 11 years ago and are very proud to be an Insurity SI Partner. We are excited to continue partnering with insurers to manage complex implementations across products and lines of business," said Charles Sybert, Insurance Practce lead at RCG.



"For more than four decades, RCG has enabled dozens of Global 1000 companies to realize their digital ambitions. Insurity is looking forward to growing our partnership with RCG," said Roy Wood, Chief Customer Officer at Insurity. "With RCG's expertise in system integrations, insurers will be able to increase efficiencies during implementations and deliver greater impact across all functions." About Insurity

Insurity is a leading provider of cloud-based software and analytics for insurance carriers, brokers, and MGAs. Insurity is trusted by 15 of the top 25 property and casualty carriers in the US and has over 250 cloud-based deployments. Through its best-in-class digital platform and with unrivaled industry experience and thought leadership, Insurity is uniquely positioned to deliver exceptional value, empowering customers to focus on their core businesses, optimize their operations, and provide superior policyholder experiences. For more information, visit www.insurity.com. About RCG Global Services RCG Global Services is a global provider of digital solutions across mobile, web, cloud, and legacy platforms, with a focus on actionable data and analytics. RCG serves clients across a range of markets, with special emphasis on financial services, insurance, healthcare, and consumer industries. In today's digitally driven world, transformation is essential if your company wants to disrupt the status quo and be respected as a leader in your field. RCG is the partner you can trust to help you realize your objectives and turn ideas into action. RCG is based in Iselin, New Jersey with offices throughout the United States, and offshore delivery centers in the Philippines and India. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005625/en/

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First Minister Arlene Foster has condemned "malign" and "criminal" elements behind the recent rioting and violence in Northern Ireland.

Her comments come after reports paramilitary organisations orchestrated some of the violence which has occurred over the last week.

In some cases it was reported children as young as 12 were involved in the disturbances in which over 40 police officers have been injured, with one officer sustaining serious injuries to their leg.

So far 10 arrests have been made in relation to the unrest.

In the last week there have been violent scenes in Derry, Carrickfergus, Newtownabbey, Ballymena and Belfast.

Speaking of the violence in Carrickfergus and Newtownabbey, both strongholds of South East Antrim UDA, Mrs Foster said: "I do absolutely accept that this is the case in a particular area of Northern Ireland, but South East Antrim UDA does not have rite in other parts of Northern Ireland, so there are concerns right across Northern Ireland.

Mrs Foster also reiterated her stance on calling for the resignation of the PSNI's Chief Constable, Simon Byrne, over his handling of the Bobby Storey funeral last summer.

Read More

Doubling down on her view that he should resign, she said the Chief Constable "needs to take responsibility for the actions that were taken by his senior command team" in regards to the republican funeral which was attended by senior Sinn Fein members.

She also said that she believes "confidence has gone in his leadership and I think confidence has gone in the senior management team".

It has emerged that the UK's policing body, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, is to launch a review of the PSNI's handling of the funeral.

Mrs Foster has insisted that she still backs the police, saying "the police have my full support".

She added: "There is no difficulty in supporting police, we support the rule of law, it's actually because we support the rule of law that we are so perplexed by the decision of the PPS not to prosecute those who very clearly broke the law at the Bobby Storey funeral."

She also said that she is prepared to engage with disillusioned loyalists, saying she will "always speak with people to try and bring them along and change them in a constitutional way and I will continue to engage with loyalist communities, there is a huge need to engage with loyalist and unionist communities and I will not be stepping away from that as the leader of unionism."

Mrs Foster is currently not engaging with the Chief Constable over the recent violence, and has received criticism in that decision from Ulster Unionist politician Doug Beattie who said he believes the First Minister is "wrong in this particular instance".

Sinn Fein's John O'Dowd also said it would be "helpful" for the First Minister to meet with the chief Constable.

Meanwhile, the Northern Ireland Assembly has been recalled to sit tomorrow to address issues surrounding the recent violence.
New Strategic Decision-Making Automation Technology Complements the Company's Tactical and Operational AI-Driven Supply Chain and Logistics Planning Solutions

SAN FRANCISCO, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Locus, a global B2B SaaS company that automates human decisions in the supply chain, today announced the release of a new product: Locus NodeIQ. Locus NodeIQ is a smart supply chain decision-making platform that enables companies to perform end-to-end network and inventory optimization.

Locus, which focuses on fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), consumer packaged goods (CPG), retail, home services, third-party logistics (3PL), e-commerce and industrial enterprises, provides a portfolio of products that drive efficiency with AI and machine learning. Locus offers intuitive products that are simple to use and designed to solve specific problems enterprises encounter when managing complex supply chains. Locus automates decision-making to optimize every facet of logistics, such as route, capacity and network design.

NodeIQ takes it to the next level, automating strategic supply chain decisions that impact four key areas: flow, location, inventory, and strategic sourcing. With NodeIQ, users can optimize the movement of goods, from raw materials to delivery of finished products, identify optimal facility locations to address supply and demand gaps, optimize stock levels and improve strategic sourcing. NodeIQ factors in real-time constraints like service levels, lead times, costs and capacity to minimize costs and maximize efficiency.

"A black swan event like the pandemic demonstrates the importance of agility in the supply chain," said Krishna Khandelwal, Chief Business Officer Locus. "But supply chains are enormously complex, and depending on the scope of the operation, the number of factors to weigh in while making the right strategic decision is truly beyond human capacity. NodeIQ's AI-powered strategic decision-making capabilities let enterprises make the right strategic choices so they can stay agile and optimize results at every level."

Locus products are gaining users worldwide because the platform is simple to use. Supply chain optimization is a data-intensive function, but Locus uses AI and other advanced technologies to cleanse data, flag anomalies and deliver clear insights. Following the same product principle of ease and simplicity, Locus NodeIQ uses a digital twin approach to make it easy for clients to test various scenarios and drill down to specific segments of the supply chain to assess potential impact. As a result, Locus customers operate more efficiently and are able to respond quickly when business conditions change.

"When COVID-19 hit, demand supply planners, procurement managers, supply chain analysts, ecommerce and warehousing specialists and other supply chain leaders at organizations around the world came together to assess how the pandemic was affecting the supply chain and make decisions on how to move forward," Khandelwal observed. "Lack of digital visibility hampered this effort for too many enterprises. Locus NodeIQ and our complete portfolio of solutions can provide that visibility."

To learn more about Locus, please visit https://locus.sh/.

About Locus

Locus is a deep-tech platform that automates human decisions in the supply chain to provide efficiency, transparency, and consistency in logistics operations. The platform uses deep machine learning and proprietary algorithms to offer smart logistics solutions like route optimization, real-time tracking, insights, and analytics, beat optimization, efficient warehouse management, vehicle allocation, and utilization. Locus also helps companies optimize their end-to-end supply chain network with its strategic consulting offering. The company powers deliveries across Southeast Asia, the Indian Subcontinent, Europe, and North America. For more information, please visit https://locus.sh/

Media Contact:

Locus Media Contact

Julie Solomon

610.764.1534

jsolomon@nextpr.com

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1197609/Locus_Logo.jpg
Tallinn:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday hailed a deep consensus between France and Germany on the future of the EU in her first reaction to French President Emmanuel Macron's ambitious EU reform speech.

"There is a wide agreement between France and Germany when it comes to the proposals although we must work on the details", Merkel told reporters before an EU leaders dinner to discuss a raft of reforms proposed by Macron in a landmark speech on Tuesday.

In the speech in Paris, the 39-year old Macron called on his counterparts to recommit themselves to a stalled European project left damaged by Brexit, the rise of populism and the migrant crisis.

Merkel, the EU's most powerful leader, said the speech, as well as a similar address by European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker, gave "a new impulse" to reforming Europe, including the eurozone.

Read more: Afghanistan: 3 killed, 16 wounded in Cinema Pamir attack

Macron's proposals for a post-Brexit shake-up of the EU include a finance minister, budget, and parliament for the 19-member eurozone, as well as an EU-wide "rapid reaction force" to work with national armies.

"For Germany, growth, jobs, and competition play a major role", said Merkel, who was elected to a fourth term on Sunday.

"In any case, I see the president's speech as a solid basis for France and Germany to continue working closely together", Merkel said.

Merkel's encouragement will be welcomed by Macron who is keen for Germany's quick endorsement of his reform agenda, but Sunday's election in Germany left the chancellor seeking new allies to rebuild a ruling majority.

Merkel must now try to form a government likely to include the Free Democratic Party, whose leader Christian Lindner considers Macron's call for a eurozone budget to be a "red line".

Merkel said that given Macron's desire to work closely with Germany, his speech will "certainly influence discussions on forming a new government."

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Elevator Agency is partnering with the global Intermarketing Agency (IMA) and will rebrand, becoming the South African chapter of IMA, effective April 2021.

Managing partners Catherine Mavrocoleas and Katherine Freemantle

There you have it folks, Elevator Agency has officially become IMA. Weve changed our name, changed our look, changed our address, but whats not changing is making the work that works. Thats in our DNA. pic.twitter.com/SNTsWdVHSR  IMA  (@ima_SAfrica) April 7, 2021

They will join the IMA global network of creators headquartered in Leeds (UK) with offices in London, Manchester, New York, Amsterdam, Munich and Sydney. IMA forms part of their broader Smollan Group family through the joint venture in Europe, Advantage Smollan.Since being acquired by the Smollan Group in 2017, Elevator has transformed from an experiential agency into a truly through-the-line offering. The agency will remain owned by Smollan, running as a stand-alone marketing solution.The relationship is structured as a partnership, not an acquisition (due to the Advantage Smollan relationship), which means they are keeping the same local leadership team and IMA Global have given them full control to run the South African branch of IMA their way.I am excited that we can expand IMAs global network through Elevator, says Smollan Group CEO Dave Smollan. This will enable us to extend our global coverage of IMA, utilise its extensive skills and capabilities, and leverage the local expertise and talent of Elevator.We have admired the Elevator business in South Africa for a number of years and have been in conversation with them for a while about how we can support the rebranding of Elevator into IMA is a part of our collective growth ambitions, says Steve Sowden, Chief Operations Officer at IMA Global. This transformation feels like a natural next step in the evolution of both our businesses and will support the opening of our new and untapped markets to support our clients wherever and whenever they need us to be.Elevators Managing Partner Katherine Freemantle says that the partnership is an amazing opportunity for her team and for the agency. It opens the agencys exposure to new and exciting global clients, and mentorship opportunities from the IMA network.She adds that the agencies synergy in positioning, values and vision is uncanny. We, much like IMA Global, focus on the Work That Works and believe in building creative solutions around a brands objectives and its consumers and not around a specific channel. As businesses, we have been compatible from day one and the rebrand affords an amazing opportunity for expansion for both brands. We also saw that the transition would allow us to really sharpen our key focus areas in terms of skills, insights and capabilities, and truly tap into IMAs ethos of thinking longer, not just bigger to ensure that we execute sustainable ideas that dont just last  they live.Being part of a global network means we can leverage IMAs vast global knowledge, experience and skills in retail, content, digital & experiential and we will utilise those global learnings and innovations for our existing and new clients, says Elevators Managing Partner, Catherine Mavrocoleas.She says that while IMA brings global knowledge and innovations to the table, Elevator has the local creative capabilities, coupled with an agile and effective way of working and Smollan has the retail execution skills. Together we feel we can provide the South African market with a truly end-to-end service that no other agency can.
On the evening of March 31, in the Southern California city of Orange, located near Disneyland, the twentieth in a string of mass shootings in the United States took place, leaving four dead, including a nine-year-old boy.

Carrying a backpack with pepper spray, handcuffs and ammunition, and holding a semiautomatic handgun, the 44-year-old shooter, Aminadab Gaxiola Gonzalez, entered a small office complex located on a main boulevard in the usually peaceful suburb, and locked the buildings gates behind him. The shooter evidently targeted the owner of the business, Unified Homes, a real estate and manufactured homes business, as well as his family members.

Police outside the office building where the shooting occurred in Orange, California on March 31, 2021. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Responding to reports of shots fired, police officers had to use bolt cutters to enter the building courtyard, where they found the boy, already deceased, next to a woman with severe gunshot wounds. As police entered the building, they found the bodies of a man and two other women.

The officers exchanged gunfire with the gunman, who was wounded. As of this writing, it is unclear whether the injury was caused by police officers or was self-inflicted. The woman who survived and the gunman were transported to a local hospital, where they remain in critical but stable condition.

Luis Tovar Jr. confirmed that his father, Luis Tovar Sr., 50, was the owner of Unified Homes and that he was killed by Gonzalez. Tovar Jr.s sister, Genevieve Raygoza, 28, and half-brother Matthew Farias, 9, were also killed by Gonzalez. His mother, Blanca Esmeralda Tamayo, is the sole survivor of the shooting. The fourth victim was identified as Leticia Solis Guzman, 58, an employee of Unified Homes.

No motive has been announced other than the statement that Gonzalez had a business and personal relationship with the victims. Authorities report that Gonzalezs estranged wife, Aleyda Mendoza, was an employee at Unified Homes two years ago. Mendoza stated that she cant understand what went through his (Gonzalezs) head to make such a terrifying decision, adding that she and Gonzalez had been estranged for two years. She left Unified Homes to start her own mobile home sales business and was not aware of any prior conflicts or confrontations between Gonzalez and Unified Homes.

A spokeswoman for the neighboring city of Anaheim, where the shooter resided, reported that Gonzalez had been charged in 2015 with several counts, including cruelty to a child, although it is unclear if the child was his. He pled guilty to misdemeanor battery and served one day in jail, while all other charges were dismissed. The conviction was expunged in 2017.

According to the Orange Police Department, Gonzalez was living in an Anaheim motel and driving a rental car. The department released a still photograph from a surveillance camera showing Gonzalez entering the complex dressed in black and gray, with a black hat, sunglasses and a black bandana. The photo shows him carrying a backpack and holding a handgun in his right hand.

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer called the incident a horrible, horrible tragedy, adding that Mr. Gonzalez made a decision to use deadly force to deal with issues he was dealing with in his life. So he will suffer and face the consequences. Spitzer noted that his office will have the option of seeking the death penalty and has laid the basis for seeking capital punishment by alleging special circumstances. But he added that the decision whether to seek execution has not yet been made.

The Orange shooting followed by only nine days the mass shooting at a King Scoopers supermarket in Boulder, Colorado perpetrated with an assault rifle by 21-year-old Ahmad Al Aliwi Al-Issa. That event left 10 dead. No motive has been revealed in that case.

Five days before the Boulder shooting, a series of shootings occurred at three separate spas in the Atlanta, Georgia area. Robert Aaron Long, 21, shot nine people with a nine-millimeter pistol, killing eight, including six Asian women. According to local authorities, Long targeted the spas and massage parlors to remove the temptation he claimed to be battling because of a sex addiction.

According to CNN, there have been a staggering 20 mass shootings since the Atlanta spa attacks on March 16. Authorities define a mass shooting as a shooting incident that results in four or more casualties (dead or wounded), excluding the shooter(s). At least seven mass shootings occurred in the week between the Atlanta and Boulder shootings, and that number more than doubled in the week following the Boulder shooting.

In the aftermath of the Atlanta, Boulder and Orange incidents, Democratic and Republican politicians offered hollow condolences, while seeking to exploit whatever political capital might be available for their immediate purposes.

Democrats, including President Joe Biden, have called for further restrictions on guns and increased background checks, an essentially meaningless reform when the nation is already flooded with firearms and most mass shooters lack significant criminal histories or diagnosed mental illnesses.

Republicans have dismissed the Democrats calls for gun control measures, throwing red meat to the deeply disoriented and, in part, fascistic elements that increasingly constitute their base by denouncing even the most minimal measures to control the proliferation of firearms as an infringement on the Second Amendment to the US Constitution.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 111 people are killed daily in the United States due to gun-related violence. In 2019, 39,707 people were killed with guns. Brazil was the only country in the world that exceeded that annual total. Furthermore, according to Everytown Research, most incidents involve groups of people who know each other, including family members, acquaintances and colleagues, or distraught individuals who open fire on coworkers.

Regardless of the precise circumstances surrounding these incidents, the fact that such mass shootings have become regular occurrences in the United States is a reflection of the decay of daily life under American capitalism. This rot has been further exacerbated over the course of the last year by the COVID-19 pandemic, as evidenced by the apparent blitz of mass shootings that have occurred as quickly as significant portions of the US reopened.

The American working class is subjected to the continuous degradation of conditions due to the ruthlessness of the ruling class. Trillions of dollars have been diverted to the coffers of the American elite and to fund imperialist aggression around the world, while the American public has received a mere pittance in financial assistance and is told there is no money to fund basic social programs.
Shares of rallied 9 per cent to Rs 1,199 on the BSE in intraday trade on Wednesday. This is also the stock's highest level since listing on the bourses on July 23 last year. It surpassed its previous high of Rs 1,145.65, hit on February 19.

Thus far in the month of April, the specialty chemicals company's stock has soared 16 per cent in the four trading days, after the company announced full commissioning of its Greenfield manufacturing facility at Dahej, Gujarat.

The Greenfield facility will have a total installed capacity 132,500 MTPA, enhancing the total capacity of Rossari by 2.1x to 252,500 MTPA. A strong upcoming pipeline of new product launches and new business lines within the four core chemistries should enable the Company to sustainably ramp-up utilization levels at the Dahej unit over the next 3-4 years, said in a press release.

Meanwhile, the companys board, on March 23, gave a go-ahead to issue equity shares aggregating to Rs 300 crore on a preferential basis, subject to necessary approvals. The company said its board of directors approved the issuance of up to 3.01 million equity shares on a preferential basis and determined a floor price of Rs 996 per equity share or such a higher price, aggregating to Rs 300 crore.

The proposed issue will bring onboard high-quality and marquee shareholders of scale and repute. The funds from this issue, if approved, will further strengthen the companys balance sheet profile and will also augment the financial flexibility to address medium-to-long-term growth prospects. The proposed investors include SBI Mutual Fund (through various schemes), Malabar Select Fund, Malabar India Fund, India Acorn Fund, Ramesh Siyani and Arpit Khandelwal, the company said in a separate exchange filing.

Rossari proposes to utilise the net proceeds to evaluate and invest in inorganic growth opportunities, within its core chemistries, with a view to diversify its product portfolio, expand the geographical reach and augment end-user industry applications. This will further enable the company to build a strong upcoming pipeline of new products, with impetus on sustainability and environment-friendliness, it said.
Lala Kent and her fiance Randall Emmett were seen leaving Craig's in West Hollywood together on Tuesday.

The Vanderpump Rules star was pictured flashing a peace sign while her significant other stood in the background and smiled before the two put their facial coverings on.

The pair's outing comes just weeks after the Bravo personality gave birth to the couple's first daughter, Ocean.

Couple's night out: Lala Kent and her fiance Randall Emmett were seen spending time together in West Hollywood on Tuesday evening, just weeks after she gave birth to the pair's daughter Ocean

Kent was dressed in a loose-fitting black zip-up hoodie, which she paired with a matching t-shirt and cap.

The 30-year-old reality television personality added white Champion sweat shorts and multicolored Nike high-top sneakers.

The social media figure's lengthy blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail and fell onto her backside during her night out with her 50-year-old partner.

Emmett also kept it dressed down, as he wore a long-sleeve black t-shirt and a set of baggy grey joggers as well as a pair of white running shoes.

Taking it easy: The Vanderpump Rules cast member wore a black zip-up hoodie and a matching t-shirt during her shared night out. She contrasted her dark tops with a pair of white Champion sweat shorts

Taking precautions: The pair put on matching facial coverings before taking a shared post-dinner stroll along the city's sidewalks

The couple appeared to be enjoying their date night and break in routine from caring for their newborn daughter, whom they welcomed last month.

Kent made the news about her child's arrival public in an Instagram post where she also gave her 1.6 million followers a look at Ocean's face.

In the post's caption, she also gave her fans a bit of context about her daughter's birth and expressed her enthusiasm about being a new parent.

The reality television personality wrote that her child's arrival 'sent me into a world I can only explain as heavenly. No one could have prepared me for this kind of love.'

She added, 'Ocean, you are the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. I am so honored to be your mama- my heart could just burst.'

Getting the word out: Kent made the news about her daughter's birth public through an Instagram post

Happy mom: In the post, the reality television personality referred to her daughter as 'the greatest thing that has ever happened to me'

Kent also serves as a stepmother to Emmett's older daughters London and Rylee, aged 10 and seven, respectively, whom he shares with his former wife, Ambyr Childers.

An insider recently spoke to Us Weekly and remarked that Kent was attempting to alter her lifestyle in response to taking on the task of being a mother.

'She feels a new spiritual connection to her daughter and herself... She feels changed as a woman and isnt attaching to any drama,' they said.

The insider added that the new parents felt a 'whole new level of happiness and contentment' after they welcomed their first child.

The source also commented that Kent, who was very close to her late father, 'feels her Dad through Ocean.'

Ready for the task: An insider recently spoke to Us Weekly and expressed that Kent and her fiance felt a 'whole new level of happiness and contentment' after the arrival of their baby daughter

On Wednesday morning, the reality television personality shared a set of photos to her Instagram Story that had been taken while she was hanging out with her Vanderpump Rules castmate Stassi Schroeder the previous day.

The first shot showed her castmate's daughter Hartford, aged three months, being held above Ocean, who looked directly at at the other baby.

Her second photo gave a further look at the gathering of parents, as Schroeder and her husband, Beau, gazed at Katie Maloney-Schwartz while she gently held Kent's first child.

Kent added a text graphic to the wider shot that read, 'Yesterday was special.'

New friends: On Wednesday, Kent shared a duo of photos that had been taken during a recent hang-out with her former Vanderpump Rules castmate Stassi Schroeder

Relaxing: One of Kent's shots showed her fellow cast member Katie Maloney-Schwartz holding Ocean as Schroeder and her husband Beau looked on adoringly

She also shared two videos to her Story after posting the group shots, the first of which showed her giving her fans a closer look at a sleeping Ocean.

The reality television personality jokingly told her daughter to 'stop it with these cute little feet,' before moving the camera towards her child's face and commenting that the newborn was 'milk drunk.'

Kent's second video showed her relaxing in bed with her daughter, where she noted that she was in 'complete mama bliss.'

She went on to promote her soon-to-be-published essay collection Give Them Lala, which goes on sale early next month.

Down for the count: The reality television personality also shared a video of her sleeping daughter, and Kent proclaimed that her child was 'milk drunk'
A resident of an asylum centre outside Belgrade receives a jab of coronavirus vaccine.  UNHCR/Igor Pavicevic

On World Health Day, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is calling for concerted international action and solidarity to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 vaccinations, including for refugees and other forcibly displaced and stateless people.

UNHCR is encouraged by the fact that 153 States have adopted vaccination strategies that include refugees. Yet, in many parts of the world, actual immunization remains a challenge, largely due to the unequal availability of vaccines and the capacity of health systems.

The blatant imbalances observed in vaccine-sharing among States are counter-productive and shortsighted. A my country first approach just cannot work in a pandemic that knows no borders, said the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.

To date, some 20 countries are known to have begun inoculating refugees on an equal footing to citizens. Recent examples include Serbia and Nepal, which came on the heels of other States, such as Rwanda and Jordan.

We commend these countries for their exemplary dedication and leadership. By including refugees in their vaccine distribution, they mitigate the risks associated with exclusion and discrimination, Grandi said. Such risks range from consequences for the overall public health situation to limited access to services or curtailed freedom of movement.

UNHCR remains committed to the allocation principles of the COVAX initiative  the global effort to ensure that COVID-19 vaccines reach those in greatest need.

Some 85 per cent of the worlds refugees are hosted in low- and middle-income countries, which face financial challenges and fragile health systems. These nations, which continue to generously host the bulk of refugees, need more support to address the urgent health needs both of their nationals and refugees, including with COVID-19 vaccines.

UNHCR has been working closely with governments, national health authorities and other partners to help respond to the devastating impacts of COVID-19. UNHCR has integrated most of its COVID-19 response plans into its 2021 Global Appeal, but urgently requires an additional US$455 million to meet supplementary needs. The agency has received contributions and pledges totaling just 13 percent of its COVID-19 appeal.

For more information on this topic, please contact:
Results demonstrate continuity of mineralization at depth and provide further confidence of geological model used for mineral reserve and resource estimation

TSX: GPR | NYSE American: GPL

VANCOUVER, BC, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Great Panther Mining Limited (TSX: GPR) (NYSE American: GPL) ("Great Panther" or the "Company") announces drill results from the resource replacement and expansion drilling program at the Company's wholly owned Tucano Gold Mine ("Tucano") in Brazil. Tucano is mining a 7-kilometre-long trend of gold deposits hosted within a large tenement package controlled by Great Panther covering approximately 90 km (2,000 km2) of the Vila Nova Greenstone Belt.

The first phase drill program focused on the TAP C pit, situated between the Taperaba pits ("TAP AB") and the Urucum pits that are the current focus of production at Tucano. TAP C is a series of three pits over a 1,500 m trend of which the C1 pit is the largest with a depth of 50 m and a strike length of approximately 700 m. The pit was mined by the previous operator down to the base of the oxide zone. The Tucano plant now has the capability to process both oxide and sulphide ore.

Exploration Highlights:

Drilling indicates continuity of mineralization of the TAP C1 deposit to approximately 50 m  70 m below the current pit floor.





 below the current pit floor. Results include intercepts of 17.7 g/t Au over 1.75 m from 130 m in 21TACDD001 and 6.3 g/t Au over 3.9 m in 21TACDD002 (note widths are drillhole intercept widths).





from in 21TACDD001 and 6.3 g/t Au over in 21TACDD002 (note widths are drillhole intercept widths). Initial results of re-modelling of the TAP C1 deposit define the structural framework that has affected the mineralization. The updated model explains mineralization discontinuities while providing better controls on areas of pinch and swell of the mineralized zones.

"The interpretation of the controls on the mineralization at TAP C1 is a key step forward," commented Rob Henderson, Great Panther's President and CEO. "The new geological model will now be used to plan ongoing drilling at TAP C1 and be extended to the adjoining areas in TAP C. With this additional work, we are confident that we will be able to include TAP C in the next open pit mineral resource statement for Tucano."

The first phase drilling program at TAP C1 followed Roscoe Postle Associate Inc.'s ("RPA") 2019 recommendation to evaluate the down-dip projections of the banded iron formation and carbonate units in the TAP C sector for their potential for hosting gold mineralization. Results from the drill program demonstrate mineralization continuity along strike and downdip.

In the current diamond drilling program, seven holes were drilled for a total of 1,212 m along a strike length of 670 m of the TAP C1 deposit, aimed at intersecting mineralization at approximately 50 to 70 m below the current pit. Results demonstrate the continuity of mineralization with depth below the pit and justify shallower infill drilling to target definition of an Inferred and Indicated mineral resource.

In parallel with the first phase drilling program, the existing geologic model is being modified taking into account structural controls that affect the gold mineralization. This new model will guide and be tested by the second phase drilling program currently underway and will be extended to the other deposits in TAP C.

The Mineral Resource and Reserve Update for the Tucano Gold Mine completed in 2018 by AMC Mining Consultants (Canada) Ltd. estimated for TAP C a Measured Resource of 1.05 Mt @ 1.10 g/t Au containing 37,000 oz of gold, an Indicated Resource of 2.29 Mt @ 1.18 g/t Au containing 87,000 oz of gold and an Inferred Resource of 1.1 Mt @ 1.3 g/t Au containing 47,000 oz of gold, calculated at a gold price of $1,500/oz. This historical resource estimate was excluded from the 2019 Mineral Reserves and Mineral Resources ("MRMR") statement prepared by RPA due to lack of confidence in the existing model and was not included in the current 2020 MRMR announced in the Company's December 15, 2020, news release for similar reasoning. RPA suggested further drilling was required below the TAP C oxide pits, thus this reinterpretation of the structural controls along with the additional drilling is an important advance in the extension of the open pit resources at Tucano. While further work and confirmation drilling are required to define a current Mineral Resource, it is believed that this new model and ongoing drilling will allow inclusion of TAP C in the next MRMR statement for Tucano. Mineral Resources that are not Mineral Reserves have no demonstrated economic viability.

Table 1: Significant gold assay results for 2021 TAP C drilling campaign Drill hole Interval

(m) From (m) To (m) Est. true width

(m) Grade (g/t

Au) 21TACDD001 4.65 84.65 89.30 2.53 0.98 21TACDD001 6.85 98.95 105.80 3.73 0.99 21TACDD001 1.75 130.00 131.75 0.95 17.67 21TACDD002 4.00 80.00 84.00 2.29 0.75 21TACDD002 6.90 129.60 136.50 4.30 1.20 including 3.95 130.65 134.60 2.27 1.74 21TACDD002 3.85 148.15 152.00 2.21 6.34 including 1.00 150.00 151.00 0.57 19.21 21TACDD003 11.95 104.25 116.20 7.36 1.39 including 3.00 110.00 113.00 1.86 3.54 21TACDD004 5.55 199.45 205.00 3.42 0.92 21TACDD005 No significant intersection 21TACDD006 6.00 18.00 24.00 3.69 0.73 21TACDD006 5.00 101.00 106.00 3.08 1.18 including 1.00 104.00 105.00 0.62 4.29 21TACDD006 4.00 168.00 172.00 2.46 0.64 21TACDD007 8.00 75.00 83.00 4.70 0.96

Notes: DD = diamond drilling;

Grades over 0.4g/t cut-off, max 2m internal dilution

True widths are estimates based on current geologic knowledge but may vary after resource modelling. Drill hole inclinations vary between 57 and 60 and mineralization is sub-vertical. Intersections are necessarily oblique to the mineralized zones as a result of access constraints due to topography and pit development.

Assay data are from the Tucano Laboratory unless otherwise indicated and intercept widths are drill intercepts. Drill holes are generally inclined at 60 degrees and mineralization is variable but close to sub-vertical.

Drilling is ongoing with a focus on increasing the drill density in the southern area between holes 21TACDD005 and 21TACDD006. This zone was inaccessible due to unusually heavy rains combined with inappropriate heavy machinery to prepare the platforms. New machinery is now on site and drilling continues. A second Reverse Circulation ("RC") drill is due on site in the second half of May and will carry out shallow, infill resource drilling. In parallel, modelling will be done of the northern pits at TAP C and those to the south as well as the area between TAP C1 and TAP AB to define additional drill targets.

The full table of drill results can be found at https://www.greatpanther.com/_resources/pdf/20210407-GPR-TAP-C-Drill-Results.pdf.

Technical Disclosure and Qualified Persons

On behalf of Great Panther, Nicholas Winer, Fellow AusIMM and Vice President of Exploration supervised the preparation of data for inclusion in this news release and approved this news release. Mr. Winer is a non-independent Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101").

The Qualified Person reviewed the Tucano QA/QC program. The QA/QC program for drill core includes the regular insertion of blanks, standards, and duplicates into sample batches, diligent monitoring of assay results, and necessary remedial actions. Resource drilling samples are first assayed at the Tucano onsite laboratory. All intervals with anomalous gold are submitted and re-analyzed by the Certified SGS Geosol laboratory in Belo Horizonte by 50 g fire-assay. All SGS Geosol assays, after diligent monitoring of QA/QC and necessary remedial actions, supersede the Tucano assay results in the database for MRMR grade estimation. QA/QC monitoring of the SGS laboratory also includes inter-laboratory checks on five percent of samples with the Certified, ALS laboratory in Belo Horizonte. In addition to the data verification methodology described above, personal inspections of the Tucano property have also been completed.

ABOUT GREAT PANTHER

Great Panther is a growing gold and silver producer focused on the Americas. The Company owns a diversified portfolio of assets in Brazil, Mexico and Peru that includes three operating gold and silver mines, four exploration projects, and an advanced development project. Great Panther is actively exploring large land packages in highly prospective districts and is pursuing acquisition opportunities to complement its existing portfolio. Great Panther trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange trading under the symbol GPR, and on the NYSE American under the symbol GPL.

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT ON FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION

This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and forward-looking information within the meaning of Canadian securities laws (together, "forward-looking statements"). Such forward-looking statements may include, but are not limited to, statements regarding: (i) continuity of mineralization of the TAP C1 deposit to approximately 50 m - 70 m below the current pit floor; (ii) initial results of the re-modelling of the TAP C1 deposit which define the structural framework that has affected the mineralization and explain mineralization discontinuities; (iii) plans to complete infill drilling of TAP C1 to target definition of an Inferred and Indicated Mineral Resource; (iv) belief that the interpretation of results of the phase 1 and phase 2 drilling programs at TAP C1 are indicative and may be extended over all of the TAP C deposits; (v) confidence in and belief that the Company will be able to include TAP C in the next MRMR statement for Tucano providing additional confidence in the geometry of the ore body is determined; and (vi) the Company's plans to pursue acquisition opportunities to complement its existing portfolio.

These forward-looking statements and information reflect the Company's current views with respect to future events and are necessarily based upon a number of assumptions that, while considered reasonable by the Company, are inherently subject to significant operational, business, economic and regulatory uncertainties and contingencies. These assumptions include: continued operations and exploration work, including plans to complete infill drilling at Tucano, in 2021 occur without significant interruption due to COVID-19 or any other reason; the accuracy of the Company's geological modeling at Tucano and the assumptions upon which they are based, including initial results of the re-modelling of the TAP C1 deposit which define the structural framework that has affected the mineralization and explain mineralization discontinuities; the results of the phase 1 and phase 2 drilling programs at TAP C1 are indicative and may be extended over all of the TAP C deposits; planned infill drilling will provide confidence sufficient to define Mineral Resource estimates for the TAP C deposits; geometry of the orebody; ore grades and recoveries; prices for gold, silver, and base metals remaining as estimated; currency exchange rates remaining as estimated; prices for energy inputs, labour, materials, supplies and services (including transportation); all necessary permits, licenses and regulatory approvals for the Company's operations and exploration work are received in a timely manner on favourable terms, Tucano will be able to continue to use cyanide in its operations; the Company will not be required to further impair Tucano as the current open pit mineral reserves are depleted through mining; the ability to procure equipment and operating supplies without interruption and that there are no material unanticipated variations in the cost of energy or supplies; operations not being disrupted by issues such as pit-wall failures or instability, mechanical failures, labour disturbances and workforce shortages, illegal occupations or mining, seismic events, and adverse weather conditions; and the Company's ability to comply with environmental, health and safety laws. The foregoing list of assumptions is not exhaustive.

These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements to be materially different. Such factors include, among others, risks and uncertainties relating to: the impact of COVID-19 on the Company's ability to operate and conduct exploration work, including drilling plans, as anticipated, and the risk of an unplanned partial or full shutdown of the Company's mines and processing plants, whether voluntary or imposed, which would adversely impact the Company's revenues, financial condition and ability to meet its production and cost guidance and fund its capital programs and repay its indebtedness; the inherent risk that estimates of Mineral Reserves and Resources may not be accurate and accordingly that mine production will not be as estimated or predicted; planned exploration activities, including plans for further infill drilling at TAP C1, may not result in the discovery of new Mineral Resources/definition of Mineral Resources and readers are cautioned that Mineral Resources that are not Mineral Reserves have no defined economic viability; there is no certainty that the Company will be able to define a mineral resource for the TAP C deposits and the Company is not treating the AMC historical estimate as a current mineral resource estimate; open pit mining operations at Tucano have a limited established mine life and the Company may not be able to extend the mine life for Tucano open pit operations beyond 2023 as anticipated; gold, silver and base metal prices may decline or may be less than forecasted; fluctuations in currency exchange rates (including the U.S. dollar to Brazilian real exchange rate) may increase costs of operations; operational and physical risks inherent in mining operations (including pit wall collapses, tailings storage facility failures, environmental accidents and hazards, industrial accidents, equipment breakdown, unusual or unexpected geological or structural formations, cave-ins, flooding and severe weather) may result in unforeseen costs, shut downs, delays in production and drilling and exposure to liability; potential political and social risks involving Great Panther's operations in a foreign jurisdiction; the potential for unexpected costs and expenses or overruns; shortages in the ability to procure equipment and operating supplies without interruption; employee and contractor relations; relationships with, and claims by, local communities; the Company's ability to obtain all necessary permits, licenses and regulatory approvals in a timely manner on favourable terms; changes in laws, regulations and government practices in the jurisdictions in which the Company operates; legal restrictions related to mining; diminishing quantities or grades of mineral reserves as properties are mined operating or technical difficulties in mineral exploration, changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined; the Company's inability to meet its production forecasts or to generate the anticipated cash flows from operations could result in the Company's inability to meet its scheduled debt payments when due or to meet financial covenants to which the Company is subject or to fund its exploration programs as planned; ability to maintain and renew agreements with local communities to support continued operations; there is no assurance that the Company will be able to identify or complete acquisition opportunities of, if completed, that such acquisitions will be accretive to the Company; and other risks and uncertainties, including those described in respect of Great Panther, in its most recent annual information form and material change reports filed with the Canadian Securities Administrators available at www.sedar.com and reports on Form 40-F and Form 6-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available at www.sec.gov.

There is no assurance that these forward-looking statements will prove accurate or that actual results will not vary materially from these forward-looking statements. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated, described, or intended. Accordingly, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward looking statements. Forward-looking statements and information are designed to help readers understand management's current views of our near- and longer-term prospects and may not be appropriate for other purposes. The Company does not intend, nor does it assume any obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements or information, whether as a result of new information, changes in assumptions, future events or otherwise, except to the extent required by applicable law.

CAUTIONARY NOTE TO UNITED STATES INVESTORS CONCERNING ESTIMATES OF MEASURED, INDICATED AND INFERRED RESOURCES

The Company prepares its disclosure in accordance with the requirements of securities laws in effect in Canada, which differ from the requirements of U.S. securities laws. Terms relating to mineral resources in this news release are defined in accordance with NI 43-101 under the guidelines set out in the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy, and Petroleum Definition Standards for Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves 2014 ("CIM Definition Standards").

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") has adopted amendments effective February 25, 2019 (the "SEC Modernization Rules") to its disclosure rules to modernize the mineral property disclosure requirements for issuers whose securities are registered with the SEC under the United States Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The SEC Modernization Rules have replaced SEC Industry Guide 7, which have been rescinded.

As a result of the adoption of the SEC Modernization Rules, the SEC now recognizes estimates of "Measured mineral resources", "Indicated Mineral Resources" and "Inferred Mineral Resources", which are defined in substantially similar terms to the corresponding CIM Definition Standards. In addition, the SEC has amended its definitions of "Proven Mineral Reserves" and "Probable Mineral Reserves" to be substantially similar to the corresponding CIM Definition Standards.

United States investors are cautioned that while the foregoing terms are "substantially similar" to corresponding definitions under the CIM Definition Standards, there are differences in the definitions under the SEC Modernization Rules and the CIM Definition Standards. Accordingly, there is no assurance any Mineral Resources that the Company may report as "Measured Mineral Resources", "Indicated Mineral Resources" and "Inferred Mineral Resources" under NI 43-101 would be the same had the Company prepared the resource estimates under the standards adopted under the SEC Modernization Rules.

United States investors are also cautioned that while the SEC will now recognize "Measured Mineral Resources", "Indicated Mineral Resources" and "Inferred Mineral Resources", investors should not assume that any part or all of the mineral deposits in these categories would ever be converted into a higher category of Mineral Resources or into Mineral Reserves. Mineralization described by these terms has a great amount of uncertainty as to their existence, and great uncertainty as to their economic and legal feasibility. Accordingly, investors are cautioned not to assume that any "Measured Mineral Resources", "Indicated Mineral Resources", or "Inferred Mineral Resources" that the Company reports are or will be economically or legally mineable.

Further, "Inferred Mineral Resources" have a great amount of uncertainty as to their existence and as to whether they can be mined legally or economically. Therefore, United States investors are also cautioned not to assume that all or any part of the Inferred resources exist. In accordance with Canadian securities laws, estimates of "Inferred Mineral Resources" cannot form the basis of feasibility or other economic studies, except in limited circumstances where permitted under NI 43-101.

In addition, disclosure of "contained ounces" is permitted disclosure under Canadian regulations; however, the SEC has historically only permitted issuers to report mineralization as in place tonnage and grade without reference to unit measures.

SOURCE Great Panther Mining Limited

Related Links

www.greatpanther.com


Stampede campaign backed by Visit Scotland offers free services and tools for businesses

EDINBURGH, Scotland, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Stampede, the Scottish hospitality software startup, today announced the launch of its Prep Starts Now campaign, with support from Visit Scotland and more than ten hospitality / tech organisations including Flipdish, Yoello, Trail and TP-Link. The campaign gives hospitality businesses access to many of the digital tools and services they need to reopen successfully during each post-lockdown stage, with partners offering free use of their services or significant discounts.

The aim of the campaign is to help businesses in the hospitality and travel sectors reopen with confidence and future-proof. It offers the advice, guidance, support, tools and tech these businesses need to grow and recover without leaning on large technology platforms like Deliveroo and Uber Eats, which take profits away from the hospitality sector. For example, the services available via Prep Starts Now will help businesses create online menus, launch click & collect services, add takeaway, loyalty programmes and create engaging digital marketing content. The campaign also provides support on difficult reopening issues like hospitality recruitment and health and safety.

In 2020, Stampede released footfall data based on 18 million hospitality customer interactions, demonstrating how slowly customers returned to hospitality venues post-lockdown - link. This was also a key driving force behind the campaign, ensuring businesses could prepare earlier, open more successfully and welcome more people back to their business.

"We saw when British hospitality businesses reopened in the summer of 2020, that they can't be turned on and off like a tap. It took a long time for footfall and income to return to anywhere near normal levels," said Patrick Clover, Stampede CEO and founder. "The Prep Starts Now campaign enables hospitality businesses to prepare better and recover faster. Meanwhile, it's also our aim to help hospitality businesses stand on their own two feet, without platforms like Uber and Google, which hurt the industry as much as they help it. It's important that venues keep more of their profits and stay in control of their customer relationships, so that they can grow on their own terms. Many hospitality and travel businesses started the digitisation process last year out of necessity. They had to reopen in a certain way and be a certain kind of business, but this time they've had more time to prepare and now they can reopen as the business they want to be moving forward."

Notes for editors

See below for a list of Prep Starts Now partners, as well as supporting quotes from these businesses. For more information on these business and the various partner offers available, see the Prep Starts Now homepage https://stampede.ai/prep-start-now/

Stampede

80 DAYS

Big Flavour

Flipdish

For-Sight

Hotel Benchmark

Pour

Private House Stays

StoreKit

Trail

TP-Link UK

Travel Tech for Scotland

Yoello

Visit Scotland

Xpressjobs

Allan Nelson For-Sight CEO & Co-founder - "Prep Starts Now is a great initiative to help the industry make the most of the opportunity as we reopen, both immediate and long term. Now is the time to prepare and to start engaging with your guests in a meaningful and personalised way. With an inflated staycation market this year, there exists a real opportunity for hospitality businesses to not only welcome these guests now, but to build loyalty and create new opportunity for the future.

"We believe that data is going to be central to helping the industry recover. With innovative technologies and a focus on data as a key business asset enabling strategic decisions, the industry can look ahead to a strong and sustainable recovery."

Cassie Bouverie, Private House Stays Founder and CEO - "After months of uncertainty, property owners are ready to welcome back guests, and we are delighted to part of the PrepStartsNow campaign. Suppose you are tired of the complicated balancing act of managing multiple bookings platforms and seeing a considerable slice of your earnings disappear into the pockets of large corporations. In that case, Private House Stays is taking on the draconian OTA's. We decided to build our own bespoke booking software where the owner is in control and able to generate bookings direct at 0% commission. With all my knowledge, tech in the 90's, B&B in the Millennium, I am aiming to educate owners how to save thousands of pounds.

Ian Martin, Pour head of product - "We joined PrepStartsNow because it's a great hub of resources and industry expertise to support the travel and hospitality industries reopening. At pour, our ordering technology helps businesses reassure customers and keep staff safe in the short-term, while improving efficiencies and business resiliency in the long term."

Stephen Brown, Big Flavour Director - "After a difficult last 12 months, we know that the industry, now more than ever, needs help to ensure it's in the best possible position to be successful. That's why we were delighted to be a part of the Prep Starts Now campaign, to use all of our experience to help businesses get ready for the future by working together with them and this fantastic collection of companies.

Paul Wilson, Xpressjobs managing director - "Xpressjobs are delighted to be involved in this new and exciting business collaboration working under the trading banner of 'Prep Starts Now partners' .

"As a group at Xpress we believe we have a superb range of cost-effective products and services that can help meet the needs and requirements of many businesses as they plan to reopen.

About Stampede

Stampede was founded by software developer and tech entrepreneur, Patrick Clover, to enable physical venues to engage with their customers more easily and effectively, and understand them better. From the independent coffee shop to global brands with thousands of sites - Stampede provides a level of customer insight previously only available to large corporations. It offers business owners better information on their customers through improved engagement and insights into consumer habits.

The company has grown rapidly and has served more than four million users from over 800 locations across the UK, Europe, US, Asia and South America.
The Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo said that Derek Chauvin went too far when he arrested George Floyd. Officer Chauvin did not follow department policy when conducting the arrest.

Last Monday, Chief Arradondo testified in court that Floyd's death was due to what happened during the arrest. The victim died allegedly due to the unwarranted actions of Chauvin while arresting the victim.

Derek Chauvin used the knee on Floyd

Police Chief Arradondo told the prosecutor on the fifth day of the Chauvin trial at Hannepin County that the arresting officer used his knee when keeping control of Floyd. He confirmed that using his knee was against department policy.

This is what happened during the court trial, as reported by the Epoch Times. He added that the officer while arresting the doomed Floyd, did not apply department rules on de-escalation.

Medaria Arradondo was quoted as saying these statements in court.

"That action is not de-escalation, and when we talk about the framework of our sanctity of life, and when we talk about the principles and values that we have, that action goes contrary to what we're taught."

Derek Chauvin is on trial for the killing of Floyd, charged with several crimes, including second-degree murder for the fatal arrest on May 25, 2020. It all began at a convenience store in Minneapolis after the store clerk reported a fake bill that Floyd used to pay for his purchase. The police answered and checked Floyd's car; inside was his alleged drug dealer cohort near him.

Black Americans Want Police Presence in Their Neighborhoods, Recent Poll Reveals

According to police officers at the scene, Floyd did not want to be arrested when Chauvin handled him. A knee was placed on the shoulders and neck while trying to restrain him. At the same time, two other officers held his lower body in place. The New York Times reported on the fatal arrest by the Minneapolis police.

Soon after Chauvin placed his knee on the man's neck, Floyd got choked. The medical examiner said it was a homicide caused by a heart attack brought by the law enforcer's subdual, restraint, and pressing on the neck.

In court on Monday, the officers should have stopped restraining the victim and give him aid. Instead of doing that, the police held on and made it worse.

Questioned by Chauvin's defense attorney, Arradondo stated that he had not arrested anyone for several years under oath. He explained that all officers were trained to use force when arresting a suspect, which depended on how the suspect reacts. Most of the time, force should not be the first option to use.

Attorney Eric Nelson, Chauvin's counsel, showed the video to Arradondo with dual footage captured during the controversial arrest. Nelson showed clips from the police body camera and an onlooker when it happened.

Nelson was quoted saying to the officer on the stand the following statements and Arradondo, answer yes.

"Would you agree that from the perspective of Ms. Frazier's camera, it appears officer Chauvin's knee is on the neck of Mr. Floyd?"

"Would you agree from the perspective of officer King's body camera, it appears that officer Derek Chauvin's knee was more on Mr. Floyd's shoulder blade?"

More testified on Monday and gave their opinions, but another trial will set on Tuesday as a continuation for more witnesses.

Democrats Allow Changes to Police Reform Bill After Looting and Rioting Protesters Stopped the Chaos

Democrat's Pandora's Box: Will They Agree with George Floyd Sympathizers to Defund Police?

@ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The Biden Administration has completed its security review of Russia following a series of efforts counter to U.S. interests  with potential new sanctions being prepared for close associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Biden ordered the review on his first day in office, and the White House has said it would focus on four problematic areas  among them Russian election interference and the Solarwinds hack of U.S. government agencies and companies whose extent is still being understood.

With the review's completion, Bloomberg News reported, the administration could impose additional sanctions or even expel Russian intelligence officers it has identified.

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting via video conference in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, April 7, 2021. The Biden administration has reportedly completed its security review, and new sanctions are a possibility

The U.S. slapped sanctions on Russia and kicked closed Russian security compounds in the final days of the Obama administration in response to Russian election interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Possible moves could involve sanctions and the expulsion of Russian intelligence officers in the U.S. under diplomatic cover, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations. Senior officials were expected to meet Wednesday to discuss what steps to take.

The sanctions could include efforts to single out people close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and agencies 'linked to election interference,' according to the report, although that has proven difficult in the past.

According to a White House spokesperson, 'We are not going to comment on internal policy conversations or meetings. From his first phone call with President Putin, President Biden has been clear that the United States will respond to a number of destabilizing Russian actions, in a manner and timing of our choosing.'

The Director of National Intelligence, in a report released last month, assessed that Putin authorized 'influence operations' to denigrate Joe Biden when he was running for president. Biden ordered the review when he took office

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday the White House was 'disturbed' by reports on opposition leader Alexei Navalny's condition in prison

One area the review is exploring are reports that Russia provided 'bounties' for killings of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Moscow denied the charge

The review included hacking of solarwinds that officials said compromised a range of federal agency computer systems

Many top Russian officials and oligarchs have already made money moves to avoid the impact of U.S. sanctions, and the U.S. already slapped sanctions as well as indictments on Russian individuals and entities linked to election hacking.

Putin last month gave his backing to a constitutional amendment allowing him to remain in office until 2036.

The administration's review focused on hacking, election interference, reports Russia offered 'bounties' for the killing of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Navalny is on a hunger strike. He was detained upon returning to Russia in January after fleeing the country to Germany after he was poisoned with the chemical agent Novichok. Amnesty International said Russian authorities may be slowly killing Navalny in prison under conditions that amount to torture.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday the White House was 'disturbed' by reports on Navalny's condition in prison, after proceedings the U.S. says were unfair.

'We urge Russian authorities to take all necessary actions to ensure his safety and health. So long as he is imprisoned, the Russian government is responsible for his health and well-being,' Psaki said.

'We stand with like-minded allies and partners in calling for his immediate release as well as an end to the persecution of his supporters,' she said, calling his imprisonment 'politically motivated.

The Director of National Intelligence, in a report released last month, assessed that Putin authorized 'influence operations' to denigrate Joe Biden when he was running for president.

The U.S. and Russia had yet another diplomatic spat after Biden said he considered Putin a 'killer' when asked by ABC's George Stephanopoulos. Nevertheless, Putin plans to attend Biden's virtual climate summit this month.
The New Jersey Department of Agriculture is urging residents in 8 counties to destroy spotted lanternfly egg masses if spotted this spring, and released a video on how to kill the pesky, crop-killing insects.

As the temperatures begin to warm, and more people are outside on their own properties, we are asking them to look for and destroy Spotted Lanternfly egg masses, NJDA Secretary Douglas H. Fisher said in a statement. The more of these egg masses that can be eliminated now, means there will be less of this nuisance pest later in the spring and during the summer.

The first step is identifying the egg masses.

If you see black, sooty mold on a tree, that is one sign the spotted lanternfly has been there, according to the NJDA. The insects prefer mating in the fall on Tree of Heaven, a deciduous tree native to Asia that is common in New Jersey. They then die and leave their egg masses there during the winter, said NJDA Director of Plant Industry Joseph Zoltowski.

Spotted lanternflies, left, create these mud-like egg masses, right, that can be destroyed now.

Once spotted, the NJDA recommends using a rock or credit card to squash the egg mass while you scrape it off the tree and into a bag to throw away. This prevents the sacs from hatching.

You want to kind of crush them as youre scraping them off, said Zoltowski in the instructional video. You just want to squish them as youre dragging  You can hear a crunch, thats how you know youre killing them.

The spotted lanternfly does not bite and is not a threat to humans or animals. However, they feed on different types of vegetation and can hurt local agriculture, which is especially a concern as growing season nears.

This past winter season, the NJDA and U.S. Department of Agriculture crews treated more than 20,000 acres and have destroyed thousands of egg masses on nearly 600 properties, officials said.

The New Jersey counties currently under quarantine for the spotted lanternfly are Warren, Hunterdon, Mercer, Burlington, Camden, Gloucester, Salem and Somerset.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Avalon Zoppo may be reached at azoppo2@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AvalonZoppo.
Sinopharm is one of the vaccines being used to inoculate the population.

The Ministry of Health is seeking to provide more information on the WHO approved vaccine which is produced by the Beijing Institute of Biological Products
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 18:24:24|Editor: huaxia

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A woman poses for a photo amid cole flowers in Longquan Village of Xiushui Township in Anzhou of Mianyang, southwest China's Sichuan Province, March 14, 2021. (Xinhua/Jiang Hongjing)

Building on its experience and success in the poverty fight, China is ready to take on a new challenge.

BEIJING, April 7 (Xinhua) -- From launching massive reforms to adopting targeted alleviation measures, China has explored a unique course to end extreme poverty and now that a complete victory has been secured, the country is rolling up its sleeves for a new mission to propel rural vitalization.

The world's largest developing country has achieved the complete eradication of extreme poverty, raising more than 770 million people out of poverty since its reform and opening up in the late 1970s.

According to the World Bank standard, this figure accounted for more than 70 percent of the global total over the same period, said a white paper released Tuesday by the State Council Information Office.

A report titled "Chinese Poverty Alleviation Studies: A Political Economy Perspective" released by New China Research, the think tank of Xinhua News Agency, has summarized foreign experts' views on the lessons the world can learn from China's success into the "Five Ds": Determined Leadership, Detailed Blueprint, Development Oriented, Data-based Governance and Decentralized Delivery.

Building on its experience and success in the poverty fight, China is ready to take on a new challenge.

"Removing the label of extreme poverty is not the end, but the beginning of a new life and a new journey," the white paper stressed, vowing to continue to consolidate the results of poverty elimination, dovetail new measures with rural vitalization, and pool more resources to energize the countryside.

In an important move to enable a smooth transition into rural vitalization, China in February unveiled a new government body -- the National Administration for Rural Vitalization -- to shift its policy focus to further boosting rural areas.

Aerial photo taken on June 18, 2019 shows a road on Banshan Mountain in Wuxiang County of north China's Shanxi Province. (Xinhua/Zhan Yan)

China will roll out more than 30 policies to ensure the resources leveraged for intensive poverty elimination are redirected toward an extensive drive for rural vitalization, Wang Zhengpu, head of the administration, told a press conference on Tuesday.

China is reviewing, adjusting, optimizing and improving existing support policies for poverty alleviation, said Wang, pledging to keep policies consistent and stable as part of efforts to prevent people from falling back into poverty.

Official data show that the final 98.99 million impoverished rural residents living under the current poverty line were all lifted out of poverty over the past eight years. All of the 832 impoverished counties and 128,000 impoverished villages were also removed from the poverty list.

China's counties have been given a five-year grace period from the day they emerged from poverty, during which they will continue to enjoy the main support policies for poverty alleviation.

To prevent any relapses, China has put in place a long-term mechanism for dynamic monitoring of any trends indicating a return to poverty and regular checks on key groups, according to Wang.

Follow-up support will be strengthened for the relocated population, with targeted efforts to develop industries, create jobs and improve infrastructure and public services.

While ensuring those who emerged from poverty see no setbacks, the government work report this year has pledged to advance rural vitalization on all fronts and improve the new urbanization strategy during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025).

By 2035, China will have achieved basic socialist modernization. With decisive progress in rural vitalization by that time, agriculture and rural areas will be modernized and fundamentally restructured, according to the white paper.

The country will become a great modern socialist country in every dimension by 2050, realizing the Second Centenary Goal and fully vitalizing the countryside.

"At that time, China will have strong agriculture, a beautiful and vitalized countryside, and prosperous farmers, enjoying across-the-board progress in society and the economy, and thriving endeavors in every sector," the white paper said. 
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NEW DELHI  India reported a record daily surge in new coronavirus cases for the second time in four days on Wednesday, while New Delhi, Mumbai and dozens of other cities announced they are imposing curfews to try to slow the soaring infections.

The rise of 115,736 coronavirus cases reported in the past 24 hours tops the 103,844 infections reported Sunday. Fatalities rose by 630, the highest daily amount since November, driving the confirmed death toll in the country above 166,000.

The federal government has so far refused to impose a nationwide lockdown to contain the latest surge but has asked states to decide on imposing local restrictions.

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The pandemic isnt over and there is no scope for complacency, Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Twitter. He urged people to get vaccinated.

India has reported 12.8 million virus cases since the pandemic began, the highest after the United States and Brazil.

While 85 million Indians have received at least one coronavirus vaccine shot, only 11 million of them have received both. India has nearly 1.4 billion people.

Due to a surge in infections, India has now delayed exports of large quantities of vaccines.

Experts say the surge, which is worse than last years peak in mid-September, is due in part to growing disregard for social distancing and mask-wearing in public spaces.

As health officials warn about gatherings in public places, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party leaders continue to hold mammoth rallies in several states where local elections are underway.

His government has also allowed a monthlong Hindu festival that draws tens of thousands of devotees daily to go ahead on the banks of the Ganges River in northern Uttarakhand state.

In other developments in the Asia-Pacific region:

 North Korea has continued to claim a perfect record in keeping out the coronavirus in its latest report to the World Health Organization. At the beginning of the pandemic, North Korea described its efforts to keep out the virus as a matter of national existence. It shut its borders, banned tourists and jetted out diplomats. The country still severely limits cross-border traffic and has quarantined tens of thousands of people who have shown symptoms. But it still says it has found no case of COVID-19, a widely doubted claim. In an email to The Associated Press on Wednesday, Edwin Salvador, WHOs representative to North Korea, said the North has reported it tested 23,121 people for the coronavirus from the beginning of the pandemic to April 1 and that all results were negative. Salvador said the North said 732 people were tested between March 26 and April 1. WHO officials say the North is no longer providing the U.N. agency with the number of people it quarantines with suspected symptoms.

 South Korea is temporarily suspending administrating AstraZenecas coronavirus vaccine to medical workers and people in long-term care settings 60 years old or younger as health authorities in Europe investigate a possible link between the shots and rare blood clots in adults. The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said Wednesday it will also pause a vaccine rollout to school nurses and teachers that was to begin Thursday, while awaiting the outcome of the European Medicine Agencys review. South Korea has so far administered the first doses of coronavirus vaccines to about 1 million people after beginning its mass immunization program in late February. The countrys vaccinations have so far relied mainly on AstraZeneca shots produced by local firm SK Bioscience. The suspension comes as South Korea on Wednesday reported 668 new virus cases, its highest daily jump in nearly three months.

 Facing criticism for a vaccine rollout thats behind schedule, Australias Prime Minister Scott Morrison notes his country has faced difficulty in getting promised vaccine doses from Europe. He said over 3 million of Australias contracted AstraZeneca vaccine doses havent yet arrived  but that shouldnt be taken as him criticizing the European Union. Thats just a simple fact. Thats not a dispute. Its not a conflict. Its not an argument. Its not a clash. Its just a simple fact. And Im simply explaining to the Australian public that supply issues is whats constraining and has constrained, particularly over these recent months, the overall rollout of the vaccine, Morrison told reporters in Canberra. He said he will write again to the European Union and AstraZeneca requesting they send the full order of vaccine doses. Morrison said some of the doses will be sent to help its neighbor Papua New Guinea deal with its virus outbreak. In March, Europe stopped about 250,000 vaccines going to Australia due to concerns about European supply shortages.

 Japans Osaka prefecture issued a special warning Wednesday that a rapid surge in coronavirus cases is placing medical systems at the verge of collapse and requested the cancellation of the Olympic torch relay along all public roads in the prefecture. Gov. Hirofumi Yoshimura declared a medial emergency in the western Japanese prefecture, where daily cases have reached new highs, and asked hospitals to urgently prepare additional beds. Yoshimura said all torch relay segments on public roads should be canceled. The Tokyo Olympics are to start in just over three months with Japans vaccination drive still in its initial stages. Experts say more contagious new variants of the virus are becoming more common and are urging health officials to respond quickly to prevent an explosive increase with only a fraction of the people inoculated.

 Nepal resumed giving out vaccinations against COVID-19 on Wednesday with vaccines donated by China. The Himalayan nation had begun its vaccination campaign in January with AstraZeneca vaccines manufactured by the Serum Institute in India, but had to suspend it after India cut the supply. China donated 800,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine that was flown in last month. India had first gifted 1 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine and Nepal purchased 2 more million from the company. However, only 1 million was supplied and delivery of the other half has been delayed by the company.
Burma At Least Five Protesters Killed as Junta Launches Heavy Crackdown in Kale

One of the youth protesters who was shot dead by junta forces in Kale Township, Sagaing Region on April 7. / Supplied

At least five protesters were killed and more than 20 injured when Myanmar junta forces opened fire on a roadblock set up by anti-regime protesters as part of their defense line in Kale Township, Sagaing Region at around 5 a.m. on Wednesday.

Protesters are manning the roadblock day and night in Tahan ward. It was set up to deter police and soldiers from entering Kale.

Before the dawn crackdown, more than a dozen military trucks arrived in Kale on Tuesday, residents said. They said the Tahan roadblock was fired on with live ammunition, including rifle grenades and other explosives fired from launchers.

A protester at the Tahan roadblock, who asked not to be named, told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday morning that five protesters died on the spot after being hit with heavy weapons when they raided our protest camp at 5 a.m.

A rescue worker said three bodies were sent to the morgue at the public hospital, while two were sent to a military hospital on the regime forces orders. We were told that the bodies would be returned to the families after they can be contacted, he said.

Another resident who saw one of the bodies said, One protester died after being struck in the neck, and his face was badly wounded too. It looked like he was hit by shrapnel. More than 20 people have been injured. Many were hit, but we have not been able to verify all the deaths yet.

Residents expected more fatalities and said several clinics in the town had been raided by junta forces.

An earlier crackdown by regime forces in Tahan ward on March 28 killed five protesters. Since then, residents have tried to defend themselves using traditional homemade percussion-lock firearms.

Since last week, residents of villages and towns in several townships in Sagaing Region including Kale, Yinmabin, Pinlebu and Tamu have defended themselves against the regime forces brutal crackdowns. They have blocked junta forces from entering Kale, where residents have used the homemade firearms against junta forces.

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By Ragini Saxena

Indians are jetting off to the Maldives in ever greater numbers to escape the coronavirus pandemic.

Visitors from the South Asian nation to the sandy paradise known for its clear water and white beaches jumped 50% to just over 44,000 in the first two months of the year versus 2020, figures from the island nations ministry of tourism show. Arrivals from China, Japan and South Korea were down around 98 per cent. Tourists from India also made up 23.3 per cent of the total in the two months, the most from any single country.

India reached a grim milestone on April 5 when the government reported over 100,000 new cases on a single day for the first time. The second wave has shuttered businesses once again and sent some cities back into lockdown, triggering a desire to holiday in far-flung destinations.

Read: India becomes fastest Covid-19 vaccinating country in the world

The Maldives remains the top pick for Indians, said Pradeep Sharma, owner of Kolkata-based Agwani Travels. It used to be a high-end destination but now the Maldives is offering good deals on hotels and people have limited options. Southeast Asia has not opened up.

Local airlines are sensing opportunity, too. Vistara, a joint venture between Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines Ltd., started non-stop Mumbai to Male flights under a travel bubble agreement between India and Maldives last month, becoming the only airline to offer premium economy class on the route.

Dubai Too Hot

Maldives is one of the most popular holiday destinations among travelers, not just in India, but from around the world, Vistaras Chief Executive Officer Leslie Thng said.

The ease of entry is also a big sell. Maldives has exempted all tourists from mandatory quarantine if passengers test negative for Covid 96 hours before their departure. That is in contrast to other countries such as the UK where overseas trips are effectively banned and any incoming traveler must take multiple Covid tests and undergo quarantine.

Read: New Covid strain in Maharashtra affects people sooner?

Nishant Pitti, a co-founder of Easy Trip Planners Ltd., said the Maldives and Dubai were the two hot spots right now for Indians wanting to travel overseas.

One thing thats panned out very well for the Maldives is that Dubai has imposed restrictions where you have to get the Covid test done before you arrive, Pitti said.

Because of this, Dubai numbers dramatically decreased in March and this is why weve seen a very good increase in Maldives vacation numbers from April onward. Dubai isnt a great place to travel in the hot time anyway, and pretty much these are the only two direct flight locations available, he said.
NASA's Ingenuity mini-helicopter has survived its first night alone on the frigid surface of Mars, the US space agency said, hailing it as "a major milestone" for the tiny craft as it prepares for its first flight.

The ultra-light aircraft was dropped on the surface on Saturday after detaching from the belly of the Perseverance rover, which touched down on the Red Planet on February 18.

Detached from the Perseverance, Ingenuity had to rely on its own solar-powered battery to run a vital heater to protect its unshielded electrical components from freezing and cracking during the bitter Martian night, where temperatures can plunge as low as minus 130 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 90 degrees Celsius).

Making it through the frigid Martian night was "a major milestone for the small rotorcraft," NASA said in a statement Monday.

"This is the first time that Ingenuity has been on its own on the surface of Mars," said MiMi Aung, Ingenuity project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

"But we now have confirmation that we have the right insulation, the right heaters, and enough energy in its battery to survive the cold night, which is a big win for the team. We're excited to continue to prepare Ingenuity for its first flight test."

Over the coming days, Ingenuity will undergo tests of its rotor blades and motors.

If all goes well, Ingenuity is expected to make its first flight attempt no earlier than the evening of April 11, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said.

It will be the first aircraft to attempt powered, controlled flight on another planet.

Tribute to Wright brothers

Ingenuity is carrying a small piece of cloth that covered one of the wings of the Wright brothers' first aircraft which achieved the first powered flight on Earth at Kitty Hawk in 1903, to pay tribute to the milestone.

Its attempt will also coincide with the 60th anniversary of the first human space flight, by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on April 12, 1961, and 40th anniversary of the April 12, 1981 launch of the first space shuttle, Columbia.

Ingenuity will be attempting to fly in an atmosphere that is one percent the density of Earth's, which makes achieving lift harder -- but will be assisted by gravity that is one-third of our planet's.

The first flight will involve climbing at a rate of about three feet (one meter) per second to a height of 10 feet (three meters), hovering there for 30 seconds, then descending back to the surface.

Ingenuity will be taking high-resolution photography as it flies from its "airfield" in the Jezero Crater.

A series of flights are planned over its mission lasting 30 Martian sols (31 Earth days).

"Our 30-sol test schedule is frontloaded with exciting milestones," said Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity deputy operations lead.

"Whatever the future holds, we will acquire all the flight data we can within that timeframe."

The four-pound (1.8-kilogram) rotorcraft cost NASA around $85 million to develop and is considered a proof of concept that could revolutionize space exploration.

Future aircraft could cover ground much quicker than rovers, and explore more rugged terrain.
Former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt warned the public not to boycott the AstraZeneca vaccine today as he warned that limiting its use could cost more lives than it saves.

The ex-Cabinet minister backed the MHRA today saying the regulator had 'got these judgement calls spectacularly right so far' during the pandemic.

A review by the drugs watchdog found that by the end of March 79 out of 20million Britons vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine had suffered deadly blood clots in the brain or arteries, a rate of about one in 250,000. Nineteen of the cases died and three were under the age of 30.

It promoted the Government's vaccine advisory group to recommend healthy people aged 19 to 29 be offered either the Pfizer or Moderna jabs instead when the programme moves to younger groups in the coming months.

Mr Hunt, who now chairs the Commons Health Committee, was asked on Sky News whether the review would lead to a confidence problem with the vaccine, which is the most widely used in the UK.

'This is a fascinating issue for the very simple reason that the EMA (European Medicines Agency)  is also recommending that the Oxford AZ vaccine remains safe for all age groups,' he said.

'That was another thing that was interesting. Individual EU countries have restricted its use, I think that there is a real danger that being over-cautious as is happening in France and Germany will cost more lives than it saves.

'Because what we can see in this country is that we have a death rate from Covid nine times lower than for example in France because we have this vaccine rolled out quickly.

At least 10 countries in Europe, joined by Germany last week, have put some kind of restriction on the use of AstraZeneca's jab, mostly opting to give it only to over-60s because the CSVT cases seem to be happening in younger adults

'A lot of that is thanks to Oxford AstraZeneca so I think most people can see we are really benefiting from a rapid rollout from the vaccine.

'But they also understand that as scientific advice comes in, in a pandemic where you need to you tweak the advice.'

The EU's medical regulators have said that AstraZeneca's vaccine should come with a clear warning that blood clots are a 'very rare side effect.'

But the European Medicines Agency (EMA) refused to back banning the jab for younger age groups despite noting that most of the cases have occurred in women under 60.

The EMA refused to back EU heavyweights like Germany which have banned the jab for under-60s, arguing that the risk posed by Covid is far greater than that of potential vaccine side effects.

EU health ministers were invited to an extraordinary virtual meeting this afternoon to be held immediately after the EMA's ruling.

Sweden was among the first to give its backing to the EU regulator, agreeing that the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine 'outweigh the risks.'

The World Health Organisation likewise sought to downplay fears, describing the blood clot link as 'plausible but not confirmed.'

However, the EMA's announcement sparked debate among medics, some of whom were concerned that it risked discouraging people from taking the vaccine.

The EU's medical regulators have said that Astra Zeneca's vaccine should come with a clear warning that blood clots are a 'very rare side effect'. Pictured: European Medicines Agency executive director Emer Cooke at a press briefing this afternoon

After the MHRA announcement, Mr Hunt told Sky News: 'They are saying today that for the vast majority of people the benefits outweigh the risks, so I think a lot of people will have a lot of confidence in what they are saying this afternoon and take the view in this exceptional situation, to follow their advice.

'You have got to look at the risk of getting Covid and dying from Covid. For the vast majority of people it will be massively safer to take the Oxford AZ vaccine than not to take it.

I am one of the people who has had my first dose of the Oxford AZ vaccine and for me and for many people its massively safer.

'And that they are saying today is that it is also completely safe for young people to take this vaccine as well because of the risks to them of coronavirus. However you can reduce that very very low risk by using alternative vaccines and that is what they are seeking to do.'
SYRACUSE, N.Y.  A Blossvale man was sentenced to 4 years and 9 months in federal prison Tuesday, after pleading guilty to illegally possessing two firearms and more than 100 rounds of ammunition as a convicted felon.

In 2001, Joseph W. Cromp was convicted of felony attempted assault, making it illegal for him possess guns.

After a 12-hour standoff with police on Oct. 2, 2019, a search warrant was executed at the 47-year-olds home, where officers seized a .22 caliber revolver, an AK-47 style semiautomatic rifle, and 113 rounds of ammunition.

Prior to the standoff, Cromp had allegedly forcibly entered a home on Deeley Road in Blossvale on midnight, where police say he got into a fight with his 22-year-old son.

According to police, Cromp forced his son to go with him to his own home, also on Deeley Road, shortly after. Police were called to the home, and the son was able to leave without incident. However, Cromp refused to leave the house until around 12:30 p.m., 12 hours after police arrived to the scene.

He was taken into custody and charged with burglary, criminal possession of a weapon, menacing, endangering the welfare of a child and criminal mischief.

As part of his plea, Cromp will also be under three years of supervision upon his release from prison.
India is seeing a second wave of coronavirus in the last few weeks. The country reported 1,15,736 new COVID-19 cases in the preceding 24 hours as on Wednesday morning.

Besides tracking, testing and isolating patients and close contacts, the government has also stepped up vaccination to handle the surge in new cases. From April 1, vaccination has been opened for everyone above the age of 45 years in the country. Registration for COVID-19 vaccination can be done through the Co-WIN portal or 'Aarogya Setu' app.

Also read: COVID-19 vaccine for above 45-years-old: How to register on Aarogya Setu, Co-WIN site

Google India has tied up with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to provide information about the nearest COVID-19 vaccination centres. In a tweet on Tuesday, Google India said it is currently showing more than 8,600 vaccination centres across over 1,500 cities in the country.

With the vaccine being rolled out to all those above 45 years of age, we are now surfacing 8,600+ Vaccination centres across 1,500+ cities.#GetTheFacts and know more  https://t.co/fJBRdZwDvy. pic.twitter.com/JPgwq3KspR - Google India (@GoogleIndia) April 6, 2021

Here is how users can check the vaccination centre nearest to them using Google:

1. Users can search for the nearest vaccination centre through Google search, maps and assistant

2. Users will have to type "covid vaccine near me" on Google search and maps. Under the 'where to get it tab, they can select a particular hospital from the list of hospitals displayed

3. Google will also provide other information like if appointment is required at the hospital and if vaccination is limited to certain patients

Also read: COVID-19: Vaccine inequity can cost India $786 billion, says Oxfam
San Francisco, April 7 : California Governor Gavin Newsom said the state is ready to fully reopen its economy by June 15 if vaccine and hospitalisation numbers remain stable.

Newsom made the announcement during a news conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, Xinhua news agency reported.

"This is a big day in terms of the pandemic... We will be moving beyond the blueprint and getting rid of coloured tiers, moving past the dimmer switch.

"Getting rid of the blueprint as you know it today. That's on June 15 if we continue our good work," Newsom was quoted as saying at the news conference.

California is set to surpass more than 20 million vaccine doses administered, including 4 million in the state's hardest-hit communities, according to the state government.

With hospitalisations continuing to steadily decline, Newsom said the next step in the Covid-19 pandemic recovery is moving beyond the state's Blueprint for a Safer Economy.

In a statement issued by his office later in the day, the Governor said: "We can now begin planning for our lives post-pandemic.

"We will need to remain vigilant, and continue the practices that got us here - wearing masks and getting vaccinated - but the light at the end of this tunnel has never been brighter." California, one of the hardest-hit US states by the pandemic, has so far reported 3,583,830 coronavirus cases and 58,541 deaths.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
DETROIT  Two people are injured and on person is dead after a shooting in Detroit.

Detroit police say the shooting occurred in the 15000 block of Ward Avenue at approximately 1:19 a.m. on Wednesday. A 64-year-old suspect allegedly entered the home and began shooting, striking three males.

A 24-year-old was pronounced dead at a local hospital, police said. A 22-year-old victim is in critical condition and a 43-year-old victim was treated for a non-life-threatening injury.

The suspect fled the scene in a pick-up truck but was later arrested and the weapon was recovered, according to police. Police are still looking for the driver of the vehicle that brought the suspect to the location.

Anyone with information regarding the incident is urged to call the Detroit Police Departments Homicide Unit at 313-596-2260 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-Speak Up.
SAN DIEGO, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- MarketSpark, the industry leading provider of managed wireless services for POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) replacement today announced it has completed a $7 million Series B round of financing to accelerate growth and rapidly scale its sales, marketing and platform development efforts. The investment was led by IDT Corporation with participation from existing and new investors Goldie Group, and Klein Enterprises. The company also announced the addition of Shmuel Jonas, CEO of IDT Corporation, and Daniel Klein, CEO of Klein Enterprises to join MarketSpark's Board of Directors.

This Series B financing builds on an incredible year of growth in which MarketSpark established itself as the leading provider for wireless 4G and 5G-enabled LTE solutions for the enterprise. In partnership with the major carriers, MarketSpark already services 35 Fortune 500 companies as they upgrade telecom equipment to deliver new wireless connectivity across their nationwide footprint.

"POTS lines are being decommissioned at an accelerated pace by the big carriers and MaketSpark is purpose built to meet the needs of our nation's largest enterprises," said Jeff Gower, CEO of MarketSpark. "This investment allows us to accelerate the digital transformation of the customer experience and scale the operational side of the business to ensure seamless installations and service delivery for our large customers. We are excited to have great investors whose deep industry expertise perfectly complements our own."

IDT Corporation, a global provider of communications and payment services, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, invests in early-stage telecom start-ups that have the opportunity to completely revolutionize the space.

"MarketSpark's managed services platform is a unique and powerful solution to the POTS replacement problem and they are perfectly positioned to deliver for thousands of companies managing millions of 4G and 5G-enabled LTE lines," said Shmuel Jonas, CEO of IDT Corporation. "We couldn't be more excited to make this investment and help accelerate MarketSpark's growth."

MarketSpark's managed service solution replaces the aging infrastructure and legacy copper lines associated with life safety systems. Key features include:

Cloud PaaS (Platform as a Service)

Hardware as a service offering (HaaS)

Proactive system alerts and notifications

Remote diagnostics and resolutions

4G optimized and 5G ready routing equipment

UL and FCC approved hardware

Fail safe redundancy

In addition, the transition from POTS lines to the MarketSpark solution simplifies the connectivity issues for large enterprises who often have to manage multiple carriers across multiple states and jurisdictions. With MarketSpark, the enterprise deals with one vendor responsible for the end-to-end solutions from planning to installation to on-going operation and maintenance.

MarketSpark's business model reduces the costs, simplifies the management and has an immediate return on investment for our enterprise customers. Better yet, since it's a cloud enabled platform, as more services and capabilities come online everyone benefits automatically," said Jake Jacoby--MarketSpark's CTO and Co-founder. "We not only update our customer's businesses; we future proof them."

About IDT Corporation:

IDT Corporation (NYSE: IDT) is a global provider of fintech, cloud communications and traditional communications services. We make it easier for families to connect, support and share across international borders. We also enable businesses to transact and communicate with their customers with enhanced intelligence and insight.

Our BOSS Revolution branded money transfer and international calling services make sending money and speaking with friends and family around the world convenient and reliable. National Retail Solutions ' (NRS) point-of-sale retail network enables independent retailers to operate and process transactions more effectively while providing advertisers and consumer marketers with unprecedented reach into underserved consumer markets. net2phone 's unified communications as a service solution provides businesses with intelligently integrated cloud communications and collaboration solutions across channels and devices. Our IDT Carrier Services and. IDT Express wholesale offerings enable communications companies to provision and manage international voice and SMS services.

About MarketSpark

MarketSpark is the leading provider of POTS replacement solutions for the enterprise. Our cloud enabled platform helps companies escape from the world of yesterday and prepare for the world of tomorrow by replacing static, costly copper telephone lines (POTS) with a managed wireless solution that is 5G ready. MarketSpark is the only MSP in the telecom space purpose built to handle POTS replacement on a global scale. Whether retrofitting or building new, we give our customers a platform for growth. Oh, and the ROI is immediate.

For more: www.marketspark.com

Contact: Robert Kulewicz, [email protected]

SOURCE MarketSpark

Related Links

https://www.marketspark.com/


Alabama Shakes drummer Steve Johnson is out on bond from Limestone County Jail.

Johnson was granted bond by Limestone County Judge Gray West, who set it at $26,500, according to Nick Lough, one of Johnsons attorneys.

This is a big day for Steve Johnson, Nick Lough, one of his attorneys, said. Hes been waiting to go to court for 15 days. He got in front of a judge and the judge gave him the opportunity to go be with his family and be with his children. Theres obviously more to come.

Johnson, 35, was arrested March 24 after being indicted last October on charges of willful torture, willful abuse and cruelly beating or otherwise willfully maltreating a child under the age of 18. Nick Lough and Johnsons other attorney, Marcus Helstowski, said shortly after his arrest that he maintains his innocence and believes the charges stem from an issue that was already litigated.

His attorneys said the arrest came two days after Johnson had his parental visitation rights restored in court. Johnson pleaded guilty in March 2020 to violating a domestic violence protection order in Limestone County. He received a suspended sentence of a year in jail, with 24 months on probation.

He faces a series of hearings May 17 related to the child abuse charges and his probation revocation. Johnsons attorneys have also filed for a more definite statement as to the nature of his charges, arguing that it is unclear what incident they stem from.

We look forward to his next court date. Theres still a lot of moving parts to this, but were very excited about how today went, Helstowski said.
LAKEWOOD, Ohio -- A spate of criminal activity and violent incidents involving guns and shootings in Lakewood led city leaders to hold a recent virtual town hall meeting to update residents on policing efforts and policies in the community.

The community safety meeting was a great forum to educate the citizens of Lakewood on how the police department deters, detects and responds to crime in our community, Lakewood Police Chief Kevin Kaucheck said.

The meeting allowed us to give perspective to our residents in regard to the recent violent crimes that had received a lot of attention. We do not believe that the incidents represent a wave of criminal activity but that they are simply a group of isolated incidents that occurred in a short span of time.

As far as the recent crimes, Kaucheck said one of the three Madison Park shooting suspects was arrested within minutes of the incident with a warrant out for a second person.

In both the MetroPCS shooting and Riverwood Cafe knife incidents, each involved a different suspect who was arrested within minutes of the crime. There were also attempted carjackings involving the same person who was arrested by Cleveland Police less than 24 hours from the time of the incident.

Initially the residents were concerned about safety in the city, but by the end of the meeting I believe that we were able to put many minds at ease, Kaucheck said. This was done by explaining the police departments response to these crimes, as well as letting them know that suspects had been arrested in almost all of these crimes.

One takeaway from the virtual town hall meeting was the police department could do a better job of keeping citizens updated and informed when it comes to higher-profile crimes in the city.

Weve already instituted plans to post information on incidents such as these on the citys website, Kaucheck said.

Also participating in the town hall was Lakewood Mayor Meghan George, who said residents asked for immediate steps to improve community safety in the form of installing lighting and high-tech police cameras, as well as adding officers in parks.

What was difficult to answer during the presentation -- and remains crucial and very important in regards to long-term steps by the city that require community involvement -- was how do we address the bigger societal issue, which is increased access to guns leading to gun violence, George said.

Those are things that are going to take longer but were working on developing programs or some community options where we can address those.

One positive for the mayor was the fact roughly 200 residents participated in the virtual town hall meeting.

We love to hear the community is engaged, George said. Were looking at future conversations that address safety from an equity lens.

Read more news from the Sun Post Herald here.
Governor Chris Sununu, NH Tyrant New Hampshire does not need a dictator. We want a public servant!

The Libertarian Party of New Hampshire demands Governor Chris Sununu relinquish all emergency powers executed by fiat in recent months and immediately rescind all Covid-related mandates and policies unconstitutionally enacted and/or extended. We offer the following letter for his consideration:

Dear Governor Chris Sununu,

We request you immediately revoke your recent extension of the state-wide NH mask mandate as well as all other covid-related executive orders implemented without legislative approval/vote.

These mandates were put in place via Executive Order and should never have been implemented in the first place. This is not how New Hampshire policy should be enacted.

Your actions show you clearly have given up on those who voted you into office; you have demonstrated a complete disregard for personal and civil liberties in our state.

Your intent to rule through Executive Order is outrageous and antithetical to freedom and our New Hampshire State Constitution.

The NH state legislature has had over a year to add the people's voice to the state of emergency, and it has not.

You, a lone man, have extended the state of emergency each time that it would have expiredand without legislative support!

You, a lone man, have enacted a mandate obligating facial coveringsagain without legislative action.

We, the people, are well-aware how dangerous it is to give one person too much power, and how difficult it is for people with power to relinquish it.

If it is the will of the people, then request that the people's legislative body pass a law, and do not rule by edict.

Failing that - if free men and women (and businesses owned/operated by free men and women) desire to wear masks, social distance, and/or follow any guidelines you wish to prescribe, this is perfectly acceptable.

But it is NOT your role, like some Caesar of New Hampshire, to "decree from on-high" that certain mandates on civil compliance and obedience occur.

We DEMAND you immediately rescind the extension of these mask mandates and other emergency powers which were unconstitutionally affected via Executive Order.

This is the Live Free or Die state. Your actions through this crisis have demonstrated you have completely given up on the voters who put you into office  most of them desiring for less government and fewer regulations.

Instead, you have turned your back on these principles!

Governor Chris Sununu, you have sadly shown your voters and the people of New Hampshire you are just another Big-State charlatan; your actions demonstrate you do not truly believe in freedom or believe its citizens deserve it.

Your actions are despicable.

The way you have seized control under the guise of emergency powers and thwarted the standard legislative process is contemptable.

Retract your extension of this mask mandate and other non-constitutional emergency powers. Immediately.

Failing to do so, we the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire will fight your gross expansion of gubernatorial powers. We will call for a vote of no confidence in your leadership as Governor and recommend all free-minded voting members of the New Hampshire State Senate & State Legislature remove you from your office.

We renounce dictator-like power of any sitting Senator or Governor of our state. We are a free state. We are a free people!

Enough is enough.

The people of New Hampshire thirst for real leadership and a governor who understands they represent the will of the people.

We do not need a Dictator! We want a public servant.

We implore you to relinquish your stranglehold over our state, abolish these unnecessary covid-related mandates and emergency powers, and instead defer to self-directed freedom and personal choice.

It is in the crucible of terrible circumstances like these that we must hold true to our most sacred freedoms, not cast them away.

We implore you not to do as so many unscrupulous men in politics have done: to bend to the whims of power and control. Truth lies in freedom.

Retract your unconstitutional mask mandate extension for NH and all additional emergency powers immediately.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

In Liberty,

The Libertarian Party of New Hampshire

The Libertarian Party of New Hampshire is New Hampshires third largest political party. For more general info, please visit http://www.LPNH.org or email info@lpnh.org.

Contact:

Sean Dempsey

LPNH Communications Committee

(603) 978-8841

Seandempsey@lpnh.org
YEREVAN.  Armenias Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ara Aivazian, on Wednesday had a videoconference with Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

As Armenian News-NEWS.am was informed by the Information and Public Relations Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia, among other issues, matters related to the forthcoming 77th session of ESCAP were discussed.

The interlocutors expressed satisfaction with the close cooperation established between Armenia and ESCAP, reaffirming their mutual readiness to ensure the continuity of respective programs and initiatives.

FM Aivazian stressed that Armenia, being a landlocked country, has always advocated the strengthening of regional cooperation and interconnection based on the full implementation of the principle of inclusion.

Ara Aivazian and Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana exchanged views also on the international efforts to defeat COVID-19 and steps towards sustainable recovery from this pandemic.

The Armenian FM drew his interlocutor's attention to the fact that Azerbaijan and Turkey, ignoring the UN Secretary-Generals call for a global ceasefire during the pandemic, had unleashed a large-scale military aggression against Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), as a result of which the Artsakh Armenians now face urgent humanitarian and socioeconomic issues.

International organizations immediate engagement on the ground and the need to take active steps were highlighted.
Blame game begins as Suez blockage dents trade routes

The combination of two high-power tugboats and a tide that swelled to its highest point in months with the full moon helped to finally free the Ever Given vessel from the banks of the Suez Canal last week.

The Dutch-led salvaging unit said nature and logistics aligned, ensuring that the week-long operation did not stretch out for more weeks as initially feared. For five days and nights the team of Dutch, Egyptian, and Japanese workers dredged huge amounts of sand and attempted to pull the vessel free using nearly a dozen standard tugboats.

But the real work could only begin once the two powerful seagoing tugs arrived, said Peter Berdowski, chief executive of Dutch dredging firm Boskalis. We always thought that what happened until that point would help a bit, but wouldnt be enough.

The Ever Given is an international corporate combination: a Panama-flagged ship owned by a Japanese company, crewed by Indian nationals, and operated by Taiwan-based Evergreen Group. And until last month, it had been virtually accident-free according to people familiar with Evergreen Group. So it came as a shock to those in the industry when the worlds most important trading channel became blocked.

I have never seen a container vessel this large grounded so hard in a canal that way, Lindsay Malen-Habib, president of the American Salvage Association, told Bloomberg. This is a first that I can remember.

After finally hauling its 220,000-tonne bulk down the Suez a week after blocking the essential waterway, the Ever Given container ship will now become the focal point of a battle over who will pay for its rescue.

Insurance company Allianz estimated that each day of the blockade was costing between $6-10 billion in losses in trade owing to ships stuck on either side, and up to $15 million a day for the canal itself.

We managed to refloat the ship in record time. If such a crisis had occurred anywhere else in the world, it would have taken three months to be solved, said Osama Rabie, the head of the Suez Canal Authority (SCA).

But questions over who will face the consequences financially are likely to puzzle insurers and investigators, potentially for years. Investigators boarded the ship, now at anchor in the nearby Great Bitter Lake, last Tuesday to find answers on what caused the grounding and who is ultimately responsible.

The Ever Givens technical operator, Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement blamed strong winds. Initial investigations rule out any mechanical or engine failure as a cause of the grounding, it said. Experts pointed to the sail effect, when containers piled high on top of a large vessel are more susceptible to strong winds.

Others have disagreed, with reports including that the Ever Given lost power. The SCA said initially the ship lost the ability to be steered in high winds and a dust storm, although Rabie later added that technical or human errors may be at fault.

The law firm Clyde & Company estimated that the Ever Given may be worth up to $110 million, while the value of the cargo could stretch to another $500 million. This case may well involve the largest salved fund of any container ship casualty to date, it said.

Catch-22 situation

Meanwhile, the fallout from the incident has disturbed commodity markets and threatened to damage an already distressed global supply chain.

The Ever Given choked off the shortest shipping route from Asia to Europe, and the trade volume that passes through usually includes large volumes of crude oil and natural gas. Not only do tankers travel north from Persian Gulf countries to Europe, many vessels carrying Russian energy resources travel south through the canal bound for destinations in Asia.

The Sumed pipeline, with one terminus at the Suez Canal, handles 9 per cent of the oil transported globally and 8 per cent of the liquefied natural gas, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

While some ships sat and waited for a resolution, others decided to take the risk of travelling additional thousands of miles around South Africa, delaying cargo arrivals by over a week at least and causing chaos for industries that work on a just-in-time supply chain basis. One Shanghai-based executive at an international chemicals logistics firm, which had dozens of containers stuck on the Ever Given, said Its damned if you do, and damned if you dont.

Shipping volumes were bouncing back globally since the beginning of 2021. Combined with a widespread shortage of containers and long waits to unload cargo on the US west coast, shipping rates have soared in recent months.

While shipping companies are now figuring out how to account for the possible impact of the Suez blockage in their rates, the incident is likely to stretch logistics providers even thinner and destabilise the shipping market for some time to come.

Global supply chains are already under pressure from a range of factors, from a shortage of semiconductors to the deep freeze and large-scale power outage in Texas. Toyota Motors halted a plant in the Czech Republic for 14 days starting last week, and Ford announced that production losses in the United States and Europe could dent its full-year pre-tax income by up to $2.5 billion.

Snowball effect

Elsewhere, other Asian and European businesses were having to weigh up contingency plans. Businesses expected freight costs to climb and shortages of shipping containers to worsen, after already enduring months of higher costs and delays due to already stretched supply lines during the pandemic.

The Wall Street Journal reported that owners of firms in Chinas eastern Zhejiang province said several clients were considering sending goods by rail to Spain and Germany instead of dealing with potential delays, while others were forced to consider airfreight. But rail or airfreight are not deemed viable alternatives in many cases because of the volume of the cargo or the higher costs involved.

To put things in perspective, if you were to put the entire 20,000 containers on the Ever Given on a plane, youd need 2,500 Boeing 747 air freighters, said Tim Huxley, chairman of Hong Kong-based Mandarin Shipping Ltd.

The cost to ship a 40-foot container box from China to Germany was around $2,000 before the pandemic hit  and it has more than tripled to over $7,400 in recent months, while the price for sending containers via rail is around $8,000 now.

In fact, according to some estimations, the average rate for sending a 40-foot container from China to Europe in general had already surged 10-fold since the start of the year. The price has gone up further in the past few days, said Daniel Harlid, a vice president at Moodys, just over a week ago. We expect freight rates to rise, and we expect containers to be extremely short in the next 6-8 weeks.

Even companies that do not use the Suez are bracing for an impact. Russian steelmaker PAO Severstal gets coal and iron ore from local sources and does not send its finished product through the canal. But obviously, freight costs went up everywhere, and we need to calculate how that will affect us, said Alexey Kulichenko, the companys CFO.

However, the incident is not likely to affect the delivery of a large number of semiconductor chips, which are mostly transported by air. Preserving a consistent humidity level is important for semiconductors, which is why more than 98 per cent of chips are transported using air couriers globally, explained Ju Seo-Hyun, director of sales in South Korea for component distributor Fusion Worldwide.

Asias overall crude oil imports also have not been heavily affected so far, as a large majority of North Sea, US, and African crude bound for East Asia and Southeast Asia is delivered via the Cape of Good Hope.

According to commodity research house S&P Global Platts, Asian buyers had already been shunning Mediterranean light sweet crude, which tends to travel via the Suez, for around a year as it has become more expensive than its European equivalent, helping to limit the impact from the Suez blockage.

The Suez Canal was famously shut down for eight years from 1967. Egyptian and Israeli forces faced off across the waterway that year during the Six-Day War and again in 1973 during the Yom Kippur conflict. It was not until 1975 that the canal was cleared of sunken ships and reopened for business.
Jack Hanna, a wildlife conservationist, TV host and former executive director of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium has been diagnosed with dementia, according to a statement by his daughters.

Doctors have diagnosed our dad, Jack Hanna, with dementia, now believed to be Alzheimers disease.

His condition has progressed much faster in the last few months than any of us could have anticipated. Sadly, Dad is no longer able to participate in public life as he used to, where people all over the world watched, learned and laughed alongside him, Kathaleen, Suzanne and Julie Hanna said in a statement.

A passion for wildlife conservation and education has been at the core of who our dad is and everything he has accomplished with the help of so many.

He has spent his life connecting people and wildlife because he has always believed that having people see and experience animals is key to engaging them in more impactful conservation efforts. Hes always said, You have to touch the heart to teach the mind.

Even though Dad is no longer able to travel and work in the same way, we know that his infectious enthusiasm has touched many hearts and will continue to be his legacy.

Hanna, 74, hosted the television shows Jack Hannas Animal Adventures from 1993 to 2008, Jack Hannas Into the Wild since 2007 and Jack Hannas Wild Countdown from 2011 to 2020.

Jungle Jack, who always wore khaki, served as executive director of Columbus Zoo and Aquarium.

The daughters said, The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium has been a major part of our lives since we moved to Central Ohio as young girls in 1978.

From day one, Dad advocated for improved wildlife habitats and focused on connecting the community with animals. After he left his active management role as Executive Director in 1992, he continued to be a spokesperson for the zoo until his retirement last year.

The family said that Jack Hanna was able to engage with millions of households through his media appearances and weekly television programs.

This allowed him to bring an unparalleled level of awareness to the importance of global conservation given the unrelenting pressures on the natural environment. To say that we are abundantly proud to be his daughters is an understatement.

Hannas wife, Suzi, the daughters said, is recovering from major surgery as a result of life-long challenges from her childhood leukemia.

The family asked for privacy to keep everyone safe in light of COVID-19 restrictions.

While Dads health has deteriorated quickly, we can assure you that his great sense of humor continues to shine through. And yes  he still wears his khakis at home.
(@ChaudhryMAli88)

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Panamanian Foreign Minister Erika Mouynes spoke on Tuesday and agreed to counter what they termed as "malign influence" in Central America and around the world, Department of State spokesperson Ned Price said in a readout on Tuesday

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 06th April, 2021) US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Panamanian Foreign Minister Erika Mouynes spoke on Tuesday and agreed to counter what they termed as "malign influence" in Central America and around the world, Department of State spokesperson Ned price said in a readout on Tuesday.

"They also spoke of the importance of countering malign influence in the region and globally," Price said. "Finally, they discussed the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for continued cooperation to protect our populations and economies.

"

Blinken emphasized that the United States shared interests in working with Panama to enhance regional stability, prosperity and security as well as play a leadership role among its neighbors on human rights, climate issues and migration, the readout said.

Blinken stated his appreciation for the strong bonds between the governments and peoples of the United States and Panama and reiterated the US commitment to the bilateral relationship, the readout added.
A vial with the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine is displayed at the University hospital in Magdeburg, eastern Germany, on Jan. 22, 2021. (Ronny Hartmann/AFP via Getty Images)

UK Begins Rollout of Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine in Wales

The UK rollout of Modernas COVID-19 vaccine has begun in Wales, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Wednesday.

The Moderna vaccine rollout begins today, starting with Carmarthen in Wales, he wrote on Twitter.

We have ordered 17 million doses that will be going into arms across the UK in the coming weeks, he said, adding, Please get your jab as soon as you are contacted.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said he was delighted over the rollout.

Delighted that we will begin the UK rollout of the @moderna_tx vaccine in west Wales today. The UK government has secured doses on behalf of the entire nation. 3 in 5 adults have now had the vaccine and its saving lives. When you get the call, get the jab.   Matt Hancock (@MattHancock) April 7, 2021

The UK government has secured doses on behalf of the entire nation, he wrote on Twitter.

Public health is a devolved policy area in the UK, which means that the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are primarily in charge of the local fight against the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, also known as the novel coronavirus.

Supplies of the vaccine arrived in Wales on Tuesday, and 5,000 doses were sent to vaccination centres in the Hywel Dda University Health Board area, the Welsh government said.

On Wednesday morning, Elle Taylor, 24, an unpaid carer for her 82-year-old grandmother, became the first person in the UK to receive the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at West Wales General Hospital, Sky News reported.

The UK medicines regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), authorised the Moderna vaccine on Jan. 8. It became the third vaccine to be approved after the Pfizer/BioNTech and the Oxford/AstraZeneca jabs.

Moderna uses the same mRNA technology as Pfizers shots but can be stored at normal fridge temperatures unlike its rival U.S. vaccine, which must be kept and shipped at ultra-low temperatures.

The shot is expected to be used in the rest of the United Kingdom by the middle of April.

According to the UK government, the Moderna vaccine is 94 percent effective in preventing COVID-19.

After the Moderna vaccine was rolled out in the United States, there have been some reports of adverse effects.

A 39-year-old healthy single mother from Utah died four days after taking a second dose of the Moderna vaccine on Feb. 1, though officials said there were no links between the vaccine and deaths in Utah.

Reuters contributed to this report.
As I said in my campaign, I want to work and reach out as president of the village to other elected officials as well as state representatives and see about building relationships so that we can get some help on various projects, she said. Theres a lot of housekeeping to do and getting things organized with landowners and developers.
Bhopal, April 7 : Former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister and senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh, on Wednesday, accused the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) of spreading hatred among different religious communities. He said India can become a 'vishwa guru' (world leader) only with love and harmony and not hatred.

The senior Congress leader in a series of tweets on Wednesday said, "Why is the BJP and Sangh Parivar miffed with me because I follow true Sanatani Hindu traditions. Stop selling religion, stop spreading hatred through religion and creating discord among people of different religions. Stop asking for votes on the basis of religion. Spread unity instead of creating rift." He also said that Sanatan Dharma is so inclusive that it considers the whole world as its family.

Referring to Mahatma Gandhi, the former MP Chief Minister said, "Why did Nathuram Godse shoot Gandhi? Because Gandhi was a true devout Hindu and respected all religions. Following the principles of truth, love, harmony and non-violence, he launched several satyagraha movements against hatred and violence. The last words he said after he was shot at were 'Hey Ram'.

"Gandhiji never held any meeting without a prayer. His chanting of Ram's name had elements of both God and Allah. The basic premise of Sanatan Dharma is 'Sarva Dharma Samabhava' which unites people instead of creating disharmony," Digvijaya Singh said.

He also said: "Swami Vivekananda ji has spoken about the same thing. The paths religions follow may be different but all lead to the same destination, just like all the rivers originate from different places but eventually merge into the sea. This is the basic ethics of all religions. All religions teach us love, harmony, truth, non-violence and brotherhood. Humanity is the only religion. After doing any religious act in Hindu religion, we say 'Om Shanti'. No family, society and nation can progress without peace."

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Sara Hill, attorney general for the Cherokee Nation, discusses the jurisdictional ramifications of the U.S. Supreme Courts McGirt v. Oklahoma decision during an April 6 virtual press conference.
The African Development Bank, AfDB, Tuesday announced Tuesday a credit line of 145 million for Egypt to help enhance operational safety and to increase network capacity on national rail lines, The New Arab reports.

The planned upgrades are expected to benefit low-income Egyptians, about 40 percent of the population, who rely on trains as an affordable mode of transport, the bank added in a statement.

The credit facility comes several days after authorities rounded up eight people over the deadly collision in the southern government of Sohag, last month.

A speeding passenger train, The New Arab reports, collided with another that had suddenly stopped. The incident left dozens of injured and at 18 people killed. Transport Minister Kamel al-Wazir blamed human error as the main cause of the accident.

President Abdelfattah al-Sisi promised sanctions for those responsible for the March deadly crash.

Egypt has witnessed several train accidents in recent history. The deadliest occurred in 2002 when 373 people died in a fire that ripped through a crowded train south of Cairo.
The Board of Directors of Abu Dhabi-based Agthia Group, a company operating in food and beverages, has approved the acquisition of majority stakes in Ismailia Investments, an Egyptian producer of frozen processed chicken and beef products, Zawya reports. The board did reveal the value of the investment accounting for 75.02 per cent.

This acquisition is a continuation of our strategy to position Agthia as the leading FMCG player in the MENA region. Egypt is a key growth market for Agthia, and Atyab operates in a sector that is fast-growing and attractive, Khalifa Sultan Al Suwaidi, the chairman of Agthia Group, said.

Ismailia Investments manages a portfolio of four brands namely Atyab, Meatland, Shiketita and Furat.

It employs more than 2,500 and 11 distribution centers spread across Egypt. The company posted a net revenue of AED 424 million ($116 million) with EBITDA of AED 79 million, Zawya notes.

Agathia recently added to its portfolio of companies, Jordan-based frozen protein products brand Nabil Foods. It also acquired last year two companies, a local dates and confectionary firm, Al Foah, and Al Faysal Bakery and Sweets Company in Kuwait.

The holding is controlled 51 percent by Abu Dhabis investment holding company, Senaat.
Ayodhya: Uttar Pradesh deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya in an announcement said that he will construct a road in Ayodhya in memory of Kothari brothers, who were killed in police firing in Ayodhya on October 30, 1990.

At many times the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders, amid the ongoing West Bengal assembly elections, exhorted the voters of the state to remember the sacrifice of Kothari brothers, who had lost their lives while agitating for the holy site in Ayodhya.

The political leaders of BJP also approached the family of Kothari brothers, following which Purnima Kothari, the sister of kar sevaks Ram and Sharad Kothari, attended one of the events in the state.

While addressing the public at the event and remembering her brother's sacrifices, Purnima Kothari burst into tears on the stage. She also congratulated PM Narendra Modi for construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya.

Earlier, connecting the Ram Janmabhoomi temple movement with West Bengal ahead of the assembly polls, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had also urged the citizens to remember the sacrifices of the Kothari brothers.

Kothari brothers sacrificed their lives for the Ram temple movement of Ayodhya. A 'smarak' (memorial) of their sacrifice is still in Ayodhya. Their dream of having Ram Temple is being fulfilled by PM Narendra Modi," said UP CM.

Live TV
Donald Trump Jr has mocked Hunter Biden on social media after the current presidents son opened up about his battle with substance abuse in a new memoir.

On his Instagram stories, Don Jr posted a picture of a crack pipe, parmesan cheese and a lighter to troll Mr Biden. Thats because in his book Beautiful Things, Joe Bidens son admitted that he once smoked parmesan cheese since it resembled crack.

Don Jr posted: Parents dont let your kids do... Um... Parmesan. Making fun of Mr Bidens addiction problem, in another Instagram story using the same photo, he said, Watch out for Big Parma. This was accompanied by three laughing emojis.

Hunter Biden is a Yale-trained lawyer and lobbyist who has been repeatedly in the news for the wrong reasons  be it Republican accusations of controversy around his business dealings or tabloid coverage of personal scandals and his struggles with drug use.

In an interview on CBS News, Mr Biden admitted that he sometimes used to smoke anything that even remotely resembled crack cocaine. He said: I probably smoked more parmesan cheese than anyone.

Read more:

He also chronicles his familys intervention in 2019 in his memoir, after it got to the point where he didnt care what he was smoking. It didnt matter: I smoked it, he said. If it was crack, great. If it wasnt, Id take a hit [anyway].

The 51-year-old was often attacked by the Trump campaign during the lead up to the 2020 presidential elections, mostly focussed on his role on the board of a Ukrainian business at a time when his father Joe Biden was the Obama administrations point man for Ukraine relations.

Screengrab of Donald Trump Jrs story on Instagram, trolling Hunter Biden for smoking Parmesan cheese. (Donald Trump Jr Instagram)

In his memoir, Hunter Biden speaks about how he lost his mother and younger sister in a car crash when he was very young, a crash which he and his older brother Beau survived. In 2015, he lost Beau to cancer. He was later in the news for having a relationship with his brothers widow, Hallie, in 2017, something he has since said was a miscalculation borne of grief. In 2019, he married his now-wife Melissa just a week after they met.

Mr Biden writes in the book that he had his first drink at the age of eight. He also admits that he tried various strategies to wean himself off drugs.

In one passage, quoted by US media, he says one method he tried was psychedelic toad venom, that he claimed kept him sober for a year. I know it sounds loopy. Yet whatever else it did or didnt do, the experience unlocked feelings and hurts Id buried deep for too long. It served as a salve.
Health and Medical Education Minister, Dr K Sudhakar has requested the Centre to provide more Covid-19 vaccines for the state.

The Minister on Tuesday, while speaking to media persons after participating in the Union Health Minister's VC with the Health Ministers of 11 states/Union territories, said he had appealed to the Centre to provide more doses of vaccines to in order to control the pandemic.

The Minister explained the measures taken in the state including speeding up testing to control the second wave in the state. The Minister also requested the centre to allocate more vaccines to the state and explained the need to increase the availability of Oxygen for the patients.

Speaking on the COVID guidelines, the Minister insisted that there should be uniform guidelines across the country regarding cinema halls, interstate travelling, meetings and other public gatherings. This will help in clearer instructions and easy to follow. Therefore, all affected states should have uniform guidelines to make people aware of the seriousness of the situation, he said.

We are conducting 1.15 lakh to 1.25 lakh tests per day. 2,19,87,431 tests were accomplished as of 5th April. Out of which 1,77,66,796 are RTPCR tests he said. The state's mortality rate stands at 1.24 pc. It is at 0.47 pc since March 1. Bengaluru records 1.03 pc mortality rate and 0.42 pc since March 1, he explained.

"We have implemented COVID guidelines like compulsory wearing of masks, maintaining physical distance etc. a penalty of Rs.250 is imposed for not following the guidelines. We have also identified sensitive containment zones. We are declaring the places with more than 5 cases as sensitive zones", said the Minister.

On Tuesday, the Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare, Dr Harsh Vardhan chaired a high-level review meeting with Health Ministers, Additional Chief Secretaries and Principal Secretaries (Health) of States/UTs of Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab and Rajasthan. These states have been reporting a very high rise in daily cases and daily mortality because of COVID-19 in the last two weeks.

(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.)
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According to MRFR analysis, Aortic Valve Market is expected to register a CAGR of 11.1% during the forecast period of 2019 to 2025 and held a value of USD 6,454.91 Million in 2018.

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An aortic valve is surgically implanted in the heart to replace a valve that has damaged due to heart valve diseases such as stenosis, regurgitation, and atresia. The replacement of damaged valves with prosthetic heart valves reduces the morbidity and mortality associated with aortic valve disorders.

The growth of the global aortic valve market is boosted by various factors such as the rising geriatric population, surge in prevalence of cardiac disorders, in conjunction with the introduction of innovative products in the market. According to the Heart Valve Voice, approximately 1.5 million people over the age of 65 years are currently affected by heart valve disease in the UK, and the number is expected to increase up to 19 million by 2050. Moreover, increasing product approvals are likely to provide favorable conditions for the growth of the market. For instance, in June 2017, the US FDA granted market clearance for aortic and mitral valve-in-valve procedures using the Edwards Lifesciences Sapien 3 transcatheter heart valve (THV).

However, product recalls due to safety reasons and changing regulatory landscapes are likely to hamper the growth of the market during the forecast period.

Several market players currently dominate the global aortic valve market. The key players are engaged in product launches and strategic collaborations to strengthen their market positions.

Regional Analysis

The market has been divided, by region, into the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East & Africa. The Americas held the maximum share in the base year 2018, owing to the presence of established key players in countries such as the US and Canada. The aortic valve market in the Americas has further been branched into North America and Latin America, with the North American market is further divided into the US and Canada. The European aortic valve market has been categorized as Western Europe and Eastern Europe. The Western European market has been classified as Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Spain, and the rest of Western Europe. The aortic valve market in Asia-Pacific has been segmented into Japan, China, India, South Korea, Australia, and the rest of Asia-Pacific. The aortic valve market in this region is anticipated to be the fastest growing during the assessment period due to the booming geriatric population, rising prevalence of cardiovascular diseases, and favorable government initiatives for disease treatment. The aortic valve market in the Middle East & Africa has been divided into the Middle East and Africa.

Aortic Valve Market Segmentation

The Global Aortic Valve Market has been segmented based on Type of Valve, Suture, Surgery, and End User.

The market, based on valve type, has been divided into mechanical and biological. The mechanical valve segment is likely to be the largest due to the high adoption of mechanical valves in replacement procedures. The biological valves segment is predicted to be the fastest-growing due to the increasing awareness about the advantages of biological valves in replacement procedures. Magna Ease (Edwards Lifesciences Corporation), Hancock II (Medtronic), Trifecta (Abbott) are some of the well-known biological valves brands currently present in the market.

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The Global Aortic Valve Market has been segmented, based on the surgery type, into minimally invasive surgery and open surgery. The minimally invasive surgery segment is further divided into transfemoral, transaortic implantation, transapical, and trans-subclavian. It is expected to hold majority share of the market owing to shorter hospital stay, less pain, and faster recovery as compared to open-heart surgery.

The end users of the market are hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers. The hospital segment is likely to hold the maximum share during the forecast period.
Collins will design the new wheel and carbon brake for the B-52H using the company's proprietary DURACARB carbon heat sink material. With its increased wear life, DURACARB will allow the Stratofortress to conduct more landings per overhaul, helping to reduce maintenance time and cost while increasing aircraft availability. DURACARB's ability to handle higher thermal energy loads during braking will also increase the safety margin when stopping heavily-loaded B-52s.

"Since the first Stratofortress variant took flight in the 1950s, Collins Aerospace has been onboard," said Ajay Mahajan, vice president, Landing Systems for Collins Aerospace. "Our world-class engineers will develop a solution that offers seamless technology insertion to help sustain the B-52 as it continues flying for another three decades."

Collins is a leading provider of wheels and brakes for military platforms as the supplier for the U.S. Air Force's F-15, F-16, C-5, C-130 and Global Hawk fleets. Collins has also completed wheel and brake upgrades for several air forces around the globe. In total, the company provides wheels and brakes for more than half of all active C-130s worldwide. Recently, Collins' military wheels and brakes division was part of a combined Air Force and Defense Logistics Agency government-industry team that received the 2020 Secretary of Defense Performance Based Logistics Award, Subsystem Level.

Collins currently supplies numerous systems for the B-52, including generators, communication and navigation systems, environmental control systems, engine systems and sensors. Collins is actively working with the Air Force and the plane's manufacturer to explore how it can support further B-52 modernization efforts, including communications and avionics upgrades.

About Collins Aerospace

Collins Aerospace, a unit of Raytheon Technologies Corp. (NYSE: RTX), is a leader in technologically advanced and intelligent solutions for the global aerospace and defense industry. Collins Aerospace has the extensive capabilities, comprehensive portfolio and broad expertise to solve customers' toughest challenges and to meet the demands of a rapidly evolving global market. For more information, visit CollinsAerospace.com.

About Raytheon Technologies

Raytheon Technologies Corporation is an aerospace and defense company that provides advanced systems and services for commercial, military and government customers worldwide. With four industry-leading businesses  Collins Aerospace, Pratt & Whitney, Raytheon Intelligence & Space and Raytheon Missiles & Defense  the company delivers solutions that push the boundaries in avionics, cybersecurity, directed energy, electric propulsion, hypersonics, and quantum physics. The company, formed in 2020 through the combination of Raytheon Company and the United Technologies Corporation aerospace businesses, is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts.

SOURCE Raytheon Technologies

Related Links

https://www.collinsaerospace.com/


The government is sticking with its plan on an age-based vaccination system, a meeting between the four bodies who represent gardai of all ranks and Deputy Chief Medical Officer Ronan Glynn heard today.

This is leading to continuing disquiet and anger among many officers who recently saw their calls for prioritisation for the vaccine disregarded.

There is no sign of any change in relation to gardai getting priority after todays meeting, a source told Independent.ie.

Last week, it was announced that, on the advice of the National Immunisation Advisory Committee (Niac), the initial vaccination programme will be overhauled to an age-based system after those aged 70 and older and those with underlying conditions have been vaccinated.

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This means that gardai will be waiting longer to get vaccinated.

This morning Nphet met with representatives of the Association of Garda Chief Superintendents, the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (AGSI) and the Garda Representative Association (GRA).

In a joint statement they said: "The General Secretaries of the Association of Garda Chief Superintendents, the Association of Garda Superintendents, The Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors, and the Garda Representative Association met with the Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr. Ronan Glynn this morning.

What is clear to all Garda Associations after this meeting is that it is solely a Government decision to move to an Age-Based Vaccination System, and as the representatives of the majority of workers in the Garda Organisation, we will continue to advocate to Government to vaccinate all members of An Garda Siochana as a matter of urgency."

Tanaiste Leo Varadkar has asked people against the governments new vaccine plan to come up with evidence to prove that gardai and teachers were at risk of getting seriously ill from Covid-19 after plans to change the vaccination roll-out programme came under fire by TDs and Senators.

In recent weeks, gardai have been allowed to accept surplus Covid-19 vaccinations from the HSE which sources say has led to many hundreds of officers receiving their first jab or expecting to get it within the coming days.

It is understood that hospitals in Galway, Mayo and Limerick have been able to offer gardai surplus vaccines and numerous gardai in the Cork West division have also received a jab.

Garda representative bodies have continually expressed deep frustration that members of the force did not know when they would be vaccinated, despite many working on the frontline during the pandemic.
SALEM, Ore.  The Oregon Senate passed a bill on Wednesday that would require high school students take a semester of civics education prior to graduation.

Senate Bill 513 was carried by Republican lawmakers, but it passed the chamber with widespread bipartisan support in a 25-3 vote.

The Oregon Department of Education already has standards in place for civics and government studies, but the bill ensures that students receive dedicated class time over a semester-long course. Students will need to complete at least a one-half credit in civics to receive a high school diploma, though that requirement does not apply until 2026.

This is an important and timely piece of legislation, said Senate Republican Leader Fred Girod. The past year has shown how government decision-making can deeply impact lives and livelihoods  for better or for worse. As kids return to school, it's important they understand the ins and outs of how decisions get made and how they can be involved. This is a good, bipartisan bill that I urge our colleagues in the House to pass.

Republicans said that the bill has broad support from educators, Oregon business leaders, government officials, and other citizens.

Oregon teachers support this bill because we know that civics instruction prepares students for their imminent participation as voters, as working adults, and as citizens in their communities, said Kevin Lepley, President of the Oregon Council for the Social Studies. There is inequity in civics education where some students receive dedicated focus on the subject while others receive limited instruction scattered across multiple social science classes. This inequity has real implications for our students and our society and it must be addressed.

The bill now goes onto the Oregon House of Representatives for consideration. The House version of the bill is introduced by Democratic Rep. Paul Evans.

We are either serious about civics education and pass this legislation or we are going to continue to kick the can down the road and we are going to continue to see a public that does not know how to vote for their own self-interest because they dont understand how government works," said Rep. Evans. "Now is the time to pass this bill and I look forward to working with my fellow representatives to advance SB 513.
Cypher VI, William & Marys student-run hackathon, is all online for 2021

All online: The annual student-run hackathon will be all online this year. Photo - of - Hide Caption

Cypher VI, the 2021 version of William & Marys student-run hackathon is set for April 9-11  and its entirely online.

Victor Tran 23 says he expects to have around 220 people participate in the event. In recent years, William & Mary hackathons have seen scads of young coders gathered together in Swem Library. Tran, the lead organizer of Cypher VI, says the online version encourages a wider range of participants.

Now that its all virtual, a lot of people from outside of Virginia can sign up, he said. We have people who have registered from as far away as India.

Cypher VI will focus on environmental sustainability, in collaboration with Earth Hacks, a foundation dedicated to use the creative energy generated at hackathons to address environmental problems, but hackathon participants and teams may work on any kind of project.

The Cypher VI team, made up of members of William & Marys chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery, have arranged an array of workshops for the event.

We have several different workshops from William & Mary, he said. The geoLab, the Developer Student Club, the Entrepreneurship Center. Theres even workshops led by alumni.

The hackathon activities will be conducted through a platform called Discord, with opening and closing ceremonies and presentations presented over YouTube. Tran explained that Discord facilitates communication and collaboration.

Hackers will have channels that they can join and talk about things: networking, looking for groups, he said. Also, sponsors will have their own channels where they can talk about their opportunities and how they can help hackers with their projects.

The organizers have landed quite an array of sponsors for Cypher VI, led by Northrop Grumman, allowing them to offer $3,500 worth of hackware prizes such as Echo Dots and mechanical keyboards.

Tran said he participated in two online hackathons this winter and he believes the team has everything in place for a successful virtual event. He said that no matter how successful the online Cypher VI turns out, he doesnt expect virtual hackathons to replace traditional in-person, all-night events.

Then theres the food. William & Mary hackathons have always been punctuated by the arrival of massive amounts of take-out. We wish we could send everybody some kind of food credit, Tran said.

In-person hackathons here are so special, he said. You get to meet with friends, sit down anywhere you like in the library. Theres free food and swag from the sponsors. Its a more memorable experience.

But were glad to be able to host a virtual hackathon, he added, and be able to provide challenges and prizes for hackers.
Europe's drug regulator will investigate whether Russia's Sputnik V vaccine violated ethical testing standards because subjects were pressured to take part.

The European Medicines Agency, which is conducting a review into whether Sputnik V can be used in Europe, will begin its probe into the ethical concerns next week.

If Russia is found to have breached 'good clinical practice' guidelines during the trial, then the jab will not be approved for use.

Europe's drug regulator is set to probe claims that state employees an military servicemen were pressured to take part in trials of its Sputnik V vaccine (file image)

It comes after concerns that state employees and military servicemen were used for trials of a vaccine made by a state-backed laboratory that was funded using state cash, creating a conflict of interest.

In December last year, the Reuters news agency also published texts that it said were sent from the manager of a state office in Moscow pressuring his staff to sign up for the trials.

'Colleagues!!!... What is this sabotage???,' Sergei Martyanov is alleged to have told staff when they refused to sign up for the trials - including some who signed up for flu shots which disqualified them from the study.

'Who are you trying to trick??? The coronavirus vaccine is the absolute priority!!!' he allegedly wrote, before demanding that staff recruit their friends and family as well.

'At least two people per employee!' another text read.

Moscow at the time denied that anybody had been forced to take part in the trial, saying participation was voluntary and happened only after a medical exam.

News that the EMA will be investigating the ethics surrounding Sputnik V trials was first reported by the Financial Times.

Those involved in the probe, which has not been formally announced, said they had concerns that it was not ethically run.

The European Medicines Agency is currently reviewing Sputnik V for use in Europe, but if it is found to have breached ethical standards it will not be approved

Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia's state-backed investment fund which helped develop the jab, denied the use of coercion.

He said: 'There was no pressure [on participants] and Sputnik V complied with all clinical practices'. He added the EMA inspection was scheduled to begin next week.

The Sputnik V jab has been touted as a way for Europe to give a much-needed boost to its stuttering vaccine roll-out, which is among the slowest in the world.

But Thierry Breton, who is spearheading the bloc's roll-out, declared last month that Europe has 'absolutely no need of Sputnik V'.

Instead, the bloc is hoping to increase the speed of its roll-out from this month by relying on increased deliveries of already-approved jabs such as Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna.

Some EU members states such as Hungary and Slovakia have bypassed the EU and bought up supplies of Sputnik to use in their roll-outs and approved them under emergency medical powers within their own countries.

Hungary, which has also bought jabs from China, has one of Europe's fastest vaccine roll-outs.
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Russia is sending a 'doomsday nuke' torpedo capable of triggering tsunamis off America's east coast to the Arctic for tests.

Washington has warned it is watching 'very closely' after satellite images revealed the expansion of military bases, including an underground facility which could be used to house the Poseidon 2M39 torpedo.

The underwater drone has a range of more than 6,000 miles and its warhead is designed to be detonated off coastal cities to flood them with radioactive waves.

It is believed the weapon, which looks like a small submarine, will be deployed to one of Russia's Arctic bases by the summer of next year if testing is successful.

Russia last year unveiled footage of its Poseidon 2M39 torpedo, a drone which carried a nuclear warhead capable of causing toxic tsunamis off the coast of enemy cities

Recent satellite images have revealed military infrastructure being built up across the Arctic, including underground facilities believed to be capable of storing the new torpedo Pictured: The Nagurskoye Air Base

In February, Vladimir Putin asked to be briefed on a 'key stage' of Poseidon's tests, with further trials due this year.

The nuclear weapon was first revealed by the Russian president in 2018, when he unveiled the Tsirkon hypersonic cruise missiles which are also undergoing tests in the Arctic, according to state media.

At the time, Putin boasted about the development of the technology as a video played images of multiple nuclear bombs dropping on the United States.

It comes as new satellite images emerged on Monday appearing to show a beefed up military presence across the polar region, from revamped runways to additional air defences and surveillance assets.

The military infrastructure is mainly being built up on the Kola Peninsula near the city of Murmansk, close to Russia's border with Norway.

Satellite images provided to CNN by space technology firm Maxar also reveal military jets and bombers as well as new radar systems near Alaska.

'We're monitoring it very closely,' John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman told The Times.

'The Arctic is key terrain that's vital to our own homeland defence.'

Satellite images appearing to show Russia beefing up its military presence in the Arctic have emerged. Pictured: One of many 'trefoil bases' with a three-pronged building on an airfield in Nagurskoy, Alexandra Land in Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia

From revamping runways to deploying additional surveillance and air defence assets, the satellite images reveal a continuous effort to expand Moscow's capabilities in the polar region. Pictured: The runway lies to the west of the base

It comes just days after three of the Russian Navy's nuclear ballistic missile submarines smashing through the Arctic ice within feet of each other in a clear show of strength.

Navy chief Admiral Nikolai Yevmenov reported to Russian President Vladimir Putin the exercise featured three nuclear submarines simultaneously breaking through Arctic ice and warplanes flying over the North Pole.

The drills were conducted around Alexandra Land, an island that is part of the Franz Josef Land archipelago where the military has recently built a base.

A Russian nuclear submarine breaks through the Arctic ice during military drills. Russia, the US, Canada, Denmark and Norway have all been trying to assert jurisdiction over parts of the Arctic

Vladimir Putin hailed the military's performance during recent Arctic drills, part of Moscow's efforts to expand its presence in the polar region

Moscow has prioritised beefing up its military presence in the Arctic region, which is believed to hold up to a quarter of the Earth's undiscovered oil and gas.

Mr Putin has in the past cited estimates that put the value of Arctic mineral riches at 22trillion.

Russia, the US, Canada, Denmark and Norway have all been trying to assert jurisdiction over parts of the Arctic, as shrinking polar ice opens new opportunities for tapping resources and opening new shipping lanes.

The new satellite images reveal Russia has been making improvements to their old Cold War bases as well as building new facilities on the Kola Peninsular near the city of Murmansk.

Russia has been improving aircraft runways and their bases across the Arctic - such as at the Nagurskoye Air Base (pictured)

Russian troops on exercise on Kotelny Island in the Arctic

'There's clearly a military challenge from the Russians in the Arctic,' a senior US State Department official told CNN.

'That has implications for the United States and its allies, not least because it creates the capacity to project power up to the North Atlantic.'

The images also reveal the strengthening of airfields at several bases across Russia's arctic coast over the past few years.

US officials fear that while these efforts are within Russian territory, Moscow could use the bases to establish control over other areas of the Arctic. This is increasingly possible as the ice melts in the region due to climate change, experts warn.

'The melt is moving faster than scientists predicted or thought possible several years ago,' the senior State Department official said. 'It's going to be a dramatic transformation in the decades ahead in terms of physical access.'

Russia launches a missile from their Severny Klever base on Kotelny island during an exercise

Mr Putin said the exercise with nuclear ballistic missile submarines smashing through ice was unprecedented for the military

'Russia is refurbishing Soviet-era airfields and radar installations, constructing new ports and search-and-rescue centres, and building up its fleet of nuclear- and conventionally-powered icebreakers,' Lt. Col. Thomas Campbell, a Pentagon spokesman, said.

'It is also expanding its network of air and coastal defense missile systems, thus strengthening its anti-access and area-denial capabilities over key portions of the Arctic,' he added.

Indeed, the three nuclear ballistic missile submarines smashing through ice last week shows Russia is building up its fleet of icebreakers.

As part of that exercise, a pair of MiG-31 fighter jets flew over the North Pole, Admiral Yevmenov said. A Defence Ministry video featured them being refuelled by a tanker plane.

Yevmenov said the sophisticated manoeuvre was carried out by submarines 'for the first time in the history of the Russian Navy.'

Moscow has prioritised beefing up its military presence in the Arctic region, which is believed to hold up to a quarter of the Earth's undiscovered oil and gas

A MiG-31 fighter of the Russian air force is refueled by an Il-78 tanker plane during Russian military maneuvers in the Arctic during military drills at an unspecified location

Mr Putin said the exercise was unprecedented for the military and praised its skills. He added that the manoeuvres have also proven the reliability of Russian weapons in polar conditions.

'I order to continue Arctic expeditions and research in the Far North to help ensure Russia's security,' the president told the navy chief.

The Russian military has expanded the number and the scope of its war games amid bitter tensions in ties with the West, which have sunk to post-Cold War lows after Russia's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region.

Putin said: 'The Arctic expedition... has no analogs in the Soviet and the modern history of Russia.'

It comes after a British spy plane monitored Russian war games in the Arctic where Moscow says it has completed initial tests on a new hypersonic missile, local media says.

An RC-135W Rivet Joint reconnaissance jet flown by the RAF is said to have circled the skies near where the Kremlin's Admiral Gorshkov frigate sailed off Russia's northern coast this week.

Russian base launches a Onyx missile from its base on Alexandra Island in the Arctic

The Gorskhov has carried out at least four test launches of the new 6,100mph Zircon missile, which is expected to go into service next year and which defence chiefs boasted had 'hit the bullseye' in testing.

Vladimir Putin sees the Mach 8 Zircon - or Tsirkon - as his missile of choice to target US cities in the event of a nuclear conflict, it is claimed.

Russia have also been launching Onyx missiles - a supersonic anti-ship cruise missile - from various bases on Alexandra Island and the Bastion complex on Kotelny island off the north coast of Siberia.

The military exercise involved an attack on supposed enemy ships in the pristine Arctic. Russian defence ministry TV channel Zvezda said that the plan had been successfully implemented.
Tata Power Solar Systems, India's largest integrated solar company and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tata Power, today announced a significant expansion of its state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Bengaluru, taking the total production capacity of cells and modules to 1,100 MW. The expansion is based on the significant increase in demand that the company has seen for its solar modules, as well as the expected increase in demand due to supportive policy steps announced recently by the Government of India for creating 'Atmanirbhar Bharat' (Self-Reliant India).

Tata Power Solar, is one of the few companies globally to have a long operating history of 31 years.

This is a strong proof point for the company's ability to honour the 25 years warranty that solar modules come with. Tata Power Solar has seen an increase in demand for its products which reaffirms the faith customers put in the quality of its products. The expansion comes amid the positive intent of the Government of India towards making this country a manufacturing hub and lessen its dependency on other countries as far as import of solar cells and modules are concerned.

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Between COVID, the resulting global economic devastation, widespread civil unrest and even the recent Suez Canal blockage, no one predicted or planned for what the world is experiencing, states Healy.

Aidan Healy, founder and Chairman of Healy Consultants, is a global business start-up and expansion expert who advises entrepreneurs, business executives, companies and governments around the world. He is now urging his clients to review their start-up and expansion plans for this year.

Between COVID, the resulting global economic devastation, widespread civil unrest and even the recent Suez Canal blockade, no one predicted or planned for what the world is experiencing, states Healy. The environment is more unpredictable than anything weve seen in our collective lifetimes. But that does not mean we can just put business expansion on pause.

With recent positive developments on the world stage, including a new American president, record stock market highs and COVID vaccination rollouts, Healy sees rays of sunlight emerging, and the makings of a revived world economy. As a result, he urges executives around the globe to give serious consideration to the crucial decision to either expand their businesses, including outside the United States or sit tight and wait.

Healy Consultants specializes in helping American and other companies expand abroad, where their extensive experience is crucial in navigating, including with language and cultural differences, international tax, compliance and regulatory issues, not to mention packaging issues and local competition.

Regardless of their decision, Healy believes business leaders must, says Healy, balance common sense and prudence while staying true to their entrepreneurial spirit. Leaders must do their homework and plan next steps to ensure their competition doesnt eat their lunch while they shelter in their basement waiting their turn for the COVID vaccine, he states.

Q&A with Aidan Healy

Q: How can you expand your business overseas if youre barely allowed to leave the house?

A: Engage local experts who can be your eyes and ears on the ground. Thats really crucial, especially at this time when international travel is constricted.

Q: In the future, will we effectively be running businesses from our kitchen tables?

A: Even with the vaccine rollout and the most optimistic scenarios, COVID-19 will be with us through 2021, so we must continue to adapt to remote working. Are you prepared to do this? Going one step further, are your remote operations capable of taking on an expansion? If not, proceed with realism and caution. Certain companies have experienced increased productivity with a remote workforce, but thats far from guaranteed. Theres no point taking unnecessary risks this year if youre just not set up yet to work remotely.

Q: Does paying rent and other office expenses even make sense in the COVID and post-COVID era?

A: Business leaders need to give serious consideration as to whether their bricks-and-mortar offices are still necessary. If not, there are savings on the table. Think about todays amazing communications technology and consider what commercial office space you really need going forward. You cant afford to be sentimental and should probably face the reality that daily lunches with your team around the conference room table like in the old days may be history. Your business needs to be lean to compete. Large and costs for unnecessary office space makes no sense.

Q: What is Decentralized Finance and how do you take advantage of it in the COVID era?

A: Many business owners now use capital markets to raise money to expand and gain a foothold in new geographical areas. But with the destruction wrought by COVID, some markets are jittery, which introduces complications for businesses that want to expand. Other companies are successfully turning to blockchain technology and crowdfunding for these needs. Such newer, more decentralized financing options have their own strengths and weaknesses compared to traditional channels and they are worth exploring in 2021.

About Aidan Healy

Based in France, Aidan Healy counsels entrepreneurs and executives from around the world on their 2021 expansion plans. Born and raised in Ireland, Healy established Healy Consultants Group PLC in Singapore in 2003. He began as a consultant at Ernst & Young, Bahrain, then became an Assistant Vice President at Credit Suisse Group. Healy graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Accounting and Finance from Dublin City University.

About Healy Consultants Group PLC:

Global business set-up experts since 2003, Healy Consultants Group PLC offers a wide variety of consulting services to companies around the globe, including Company Registration, Accounting & Tax planning, Advisory Services, Banking Solutions, Company Migration, Crypto-solutions, and Legal Solutions. Learn more at http://www.healyconsultants.com


New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday (April 7) held yet another Pariksha Pe Charcha session in which he gave valuable advice to the students preparing for exams, their parents as well as the teachers.

Guiding the students on how to do well in exams, the prime minister suggested them to not run away from the subjects they find difficult. He asked them to take care of those first.

Do not run away from any subject even if you find it difficult, said PM during the online interaction with the students.

PM Modi cited his own example of taking up more complex work in the morning when he feels fresh and leaving easier parts to late night.

He told students to not fear exams but see them as a test to improve themselves and as a small destination in their long lives.

He also said that social and family environment at times creates pressure around students that is not desirable.

If external pressure is not created, then students will not feel the pressure of exams and their confidence will also grow, he said.

He asked teachers to guide students and told parents to never create fear in the minds of their children, saying this may instill negativity in them.

Parents should instead reinforce positive motivation, he said. Parents unwittingly at times make children "instruments" of fulfilling their dreams and goals, he said, advising them against this.

PM Modi also asked parents to not discriminate between a boy and a girl child.

"We believe that girls and boys are equal, but we end up treating both differently at home. This can bring a difference in the attitude of both. This can create a conflict in children's minds", he said.

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Loading I couldnt do that. I never have. Now there are teenagers making a fortune from social media. Why didnt anyone tell me about social media? The only problem is that whenever I sit down at the computer I press the wrong button. Ive been pushing the wrong bloody button my entire life! Guy Warren was born on April 16, 1921, in Goulburn, which he remembers as cold as buggery in winter, hot as hell in summer. He had an itinerant life as a child. His father was a piano man at the movies who shifted the family from place to place every couple of years as his contracts expired. Eventually, with the introduction of the talkies and the onset of the Depression, the work dried up. It seemed like every street corner had an out-of-work muso busking to earn a pittance. Warren had no other option but to leave school in 1935, aged 14. He got a job as an assistant proofreader on The Bulletin, and watched enviously as the artists arrived on Thursday, bringing their contributions to art editor John Frith. He recalls: The door would shut, thered be roars of laughter inside, and when an artist emerged hed have a bit of paper in his hand. At the front desk hed swap the paper for a cheque, go down to George Street, and straight to the corner pub. I thought: Thats not a bad way to earn a living! Guy Warren, Dry land with blue figure, 2020 Credit:King Street Gallery on William

Warren had always enjoyed drawing so he began bombarding the art editor with his own creations. Eventually Frith became fed up, grabbed the teenager by the arm and marched him down to a building two streets away where he introduced him to an old bloke named J.S. Watkins, who was given the instruction: Teach this kid how to draw! Guy Warren, Self-portrait aged 18, 1939 Credit:National Art School Watkins was a well-respected painter: a trustee of the National Art Gallery of NSW who had spent time in Paris, and ran a private art school. Watkins had an aversion to the time-honoured practice of drawing from the plaster cast, getting students to start working immediately from the life model. Warren attended the school for one night a week, then for two nights, then added Saturday afternoon to his schedule. By the time the war arrived he had a sound grasp of drawing. Warrens other seminal experience of those years was a journey by canoe down the Shoalhaven, with his brother, Arthur, in the first days of 1939. It would end in Nowra as a huge bushfire advanced on the town. That trip helped consolidate Warrens passion for the wilderness. He has revisited the story in numerous works of art. Up until the time he volunteered for the AIF Warren says he never visualised himself as a professional artist. I thought I might be a commercial artist or a journalist, possibly a musician. Id never even been to the state gallery.

Guy Warren, Coffee Line, American airforce unit, Nadzab, New Guinea 1944 Credit:National Art School It was during the war years that Warren discovered his vocation. Most people in the army are bored out of their minds, he remembers. You spent your time sitting round, or doing jobs like packing up or cleaning latrines. Being a compulsive draftsman, freshly equipped with a good set of skills, Warren spent his war years filling sketchbooks with drawings. Unlike many of his colleagues he loved the outdoor life, at first when he undertook jungle warfare training in the rainforests of Canungra on the Qld-NSW border, and later in Bougainville. In New Guinea he drew the landscape, soldiers at work and play, Japanese prisoners of war, and the local people with their amazing headdresses and body decorations. He also met Joyce Carney, an English girl working as an officers assistant. They would be married in 1950 and have two children, Paul and Joanna.

Joy as she was known, would become an important figure in the world of ceramics, and a patient, long-suffering spouse to a man who could never see success in life as having anything to do with money or job security. Guy and Joy Warren out on the town, c 1947-48 Credit:National Art School After our conversation Guy managed to find the right button and send me an email emphasising how important Joy, who died in 2011, had been to him. At the end of the war Warren took advantage of the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme to enroll at East Sydney Tech (aka The National Art School). Among his fellow students two became friends and mentors: Tony Tuckson and Klaus Friedeberger. Tuckson, who was English, and Friedeberger, a German refugee from the Nazis who had travelled to Australia on the Dunera, already had a wealth of experience. They had visited great art museums and seen works that Warren knew only from books. They had an impressive work ethic and an interest in Modernism. What had I seen? asked Warren, The Queen of Sheba at the Art Gallery of NSW! Warren points out that we tend to forget how culturally isolated Australia was in the late 1940s. At the school there was no discussion about ideas, no information about what was happening in New York or Berlin. Any talk at all on these matters came from the students.

Shortly after graduation Warren married Joy and the couple left for England, where masterpieces were to be experienced at first-hand. Arriving in Naples they left the ship and hitch-hiked across Italy, being astounded by the wealth of art to be found in the churches of the smallest towns. Guy Warren, River trip with Joy (Malaysia) 1985 (detail) Credit:National Art School Settling in London, Guy got a job delivering mail for the post office, and worked for a time for the framer Robert Savage, alongside a young Australian named Fred Williams. He learnt many years later that another employee had been Yves Klein, who would become a legendary figure of the European avant-garde, but Warren has no recollection of him. Loading Hardly daring to imagine himself pursuing a career in art, Warren was impressed by Williams dedication. Unlike me, Fred already saw himself as a professional painter. He also gave me some good advice, telling me not to stay away from Australia for too long. As it happened he went back and I stayed on for a further eight years. When I returned to Australia in 1959 Fred was already well known [as a painter].

With a new family to support Warren was not able to indulge any fanciful thoughts about being an artist. He secured a good job as art editor of a womens magazine, confining his painting to evenings and weekends. One day he decided hed had enough and resigned. This would become a lifelong pattern: taking a full-time job to earn a living for four or five years, then quitting in order to paint for two or three years. Warren still wonders why Joy never made the slightest objection. It was during the final 18 months of the Warrens life in London, while Guy was painting full-time, that he watched a documentary about New Guinea on the BBC. The shots of tribesmen echoed the images he was trying to recollect in a series of paintings based on his experiences of that country. He wrote a letter to the BBC asking if he could purchase some still photos from the film and eventually got a call from an executive named David Attenborough, who invited him around for a drink. Many years later, with Attenborough transmuted into the worlds most beloved broadcaster and naturalist, Warren is forever having to tell the story of his meeting with the great man. They would become friends, exchange letters and notes, and catch up years later when Attenborough visited Australia. Watching Andrew Denton interviewing Attenborough on TV one night, Warren was pleased to spy one of his old paintings hanging on his friends wall. Guy Warren, Study of tribal person from notes made from photographs lent to me by David Attenborough, 1954-56 Credit:National Art School

Upon returning to Australia, Warren once again took the sensible option of securing work with an advertising agency while painting on evenings and at weekends. He stuck with it for five years until he began to imagine himself at the bottom of a deep, dark trench. He resigned and was rescued from poverty by Lloyd Rees, who asked him to help teach drawing to architecture students at the University of Sydney. In 1965 he made a memorable trip to Queensland to visit the artist Ian Fairweather, who was living as a hermit on Bribie Island. Warren had heard that Fairweather was a misanthrope but they bonded so well over a bottle of wine that he was horrified to suddenly realise he had left Joy and the kids sitting on a beach for five hours. Guy Warren, Mungo Brush, 1966 Credit:National Art School In 1967 Warren won the Flotta Lauro Art Scholarship, which enabled him to take the family back to London for six months. By this stage he had become interested in art education, and secured a grant from the British Council that allowed him to visit art schools across Britain. He supplemented this with a brief trip to the United States, where he visited several more schools. Warren arrived back in Australia as an authority on art education, and upon learning that the NSW government intended to open a new art school, offered his services. He found himself on a committee, watching all of his ideas and suggestions being systematically ignored.

Although he would become Head of Painting at the new Sydney College of the Arts in 1976 and stay until 1985, he still feels a lingering sense of frustration at not being able to achieve what he had intended. From the 1960s to the 1980s Warren experimented with different ideas and techniques. He draped models in canvas and painted over them, he drew spontaneously while bumping around in the passenger seat of a car. Ive never wanted to be one of those people who paint the same boring picture for the rest of their lives, he says. You can be conscious of the bank balance, or your freedom and your soul. Ive always asserted the right to do whatever I bloody well want to do.  You can be conscious of the bank balance, or your freedom and your soul. Ive asserted the right to do whatever I bloody well want to do. His most adventurous gambit would come in 1994 when he hired a small plane to make a drawing in the sky called The Fall of Icarus. In 1985 he enjoyed a brief taste of fame when he won the Archibald Prize with a portrait of his friend, the sculptor Bert Flugelman. Guy Warren, The Fall of Icarus, 1994 Credit:National Art School

Warren had played on the tanslation of Flugelmans name, which means Wingman, adding the outline of a winged form that he had used repeatedly in his paintings. This figure may be a secret self-portrait, with Warren portraying himself, with typical self-deprecating humour, as Icarus, who flew too close to the sun and came plummeting back to earth. Guy Warren with his 1985 Archibald Prize-winning painting of his friend, the sculptor Bert Flugelman. Credit:Fairfax Media No matter how abstract his paintings have occasionally become Warren has always valued that connection with the earth. As a painter, he says, I probably know less now than Ive ever known in my life, but I want to keep my feet in the real world. Or if not my feet then at least a finger tip. Today that world is largely the world of his memories, filled with figures from his days in New Guinea or the Shoalhaven. He wants these figures to be integral parts of the landscape, not superimpositions. Hes still dreaming and experimenting, with never a thought of retirement.
The logo for AstraZeneca is seen outside its North America headquarters in Wilmington, Del., on March 22, 2021. (Rachel Wisniewski/Reuters)

Oxford Halts AstraZeneca Vaccine Study on Kids Amid Blood Clot Link Probe

A UK trial testing the COVID-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford on children and teenagers has been paused pending additional data from a probe by the UKs medicines regulator on possible links with rare blood clotting issues in adults.

University of Oxfords Prof. Andrew Pollard said that there were no safety concerns in the trial of 300 volunteers aged 6-17 years, but that it will wait for further data to be released from the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA)the UK drugs watchdogbefore giving any further vaccinations.

The trial began in February to assess whether the shot produces a strong immune response in those in the age group.

The pause came shortly after Marco Cavaleri, a senior official for the European Medicines Agency (EMA) suggested that there is a link between AstraZenecas COVID-19 vaccine and very rare blood clots in the brain, known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST). The possible causes are still unknown, the chair of the vaccine evaluation team at the EMA told Italian daily Il Messaggero.

It is increasingly difficult to state that there is no cause-and-effect relationship between vaccination with AstraZeneca and very rare cases of unusual blood clots, he said. Cavaleri didnt provide evidence to back up his comments.

Whilst there are no safety concerns in the paediatric clinical trial, we await additional information from the MHRA on its review of rare cases of thrombosis/thrombocytopaenia that have been reported in adults, before giving any further vaccinations in the trial, Pollard said, BBC News reported.

Medical staff prepares an AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine during preparations at the vaccine center in Ebersberg near Munich, Germany, on March 22, 2021. (Matthias Schrader/AP Photo)

AstraZeneca has repeatedly denied a link between its vaccine and a higher risk of clots, citing previous studies.

The World Health Organization, who has backed the vaccine, said it is working with other regulators in closely examining the latest data. The U.N. agency said it isnt likely to change its assessment that the vaccines benefits outweigh potential risks.

Currently, countries including Germany, France, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands have limited use of the vaccine to the older population, while some have banned it outright.

The United Kingdom has seen 30 apparent cases and seven deaths of the rare blood clots from more than 18 million doses of AstraZenecas vaccine.

Dr. Peter Arlett, the European Union medical regulators head of safety monitoring, said that the figure was more than we would expect to see, but that the normal background rate of the rare blood clots is uncertain.

The EMA is expected to release its findings on Wednesday or Thursday. It told BBC News its safety committee had not yet reached a conclusion and the review is currently ongoing.

The Epoch Times has reached out to AstraZeneca for comment.

Reuters contributed to this report.
New York/New Delhi, April 7 : Controversial Bollywood actress Mamata Kulkarni's husband Vicky Goswami extradited by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), leaves a trail of several drug traffickers from the Indian sub-continent which are presently wanted by Washington. While Goswami is jailed in New York, three Indians, reportedly operating from British Columbia in Canada, figure on the list of the DEA's most wanted fugitives.

Top DEA sleuths are reportedly hunting for Bakshish Singh, a key money launderer linked with the dreaded Sinaloa drug cartel of Mexico. As per DEA reports, Bakshish was earlier working for international hawala ring leader Gurkaran Singh, a Canadian national of Indian origin. Gurkaran was arrested by the DEA a few years ago in Los Angeles on charges of providing millions of dollars to the Sinaloa drug cartel. Sources in Indian agencies revealed that Bakshish Singh and his two aides, Balwant Rai Bhola and Sanjeev Bhola, could be hiding in Canada or Punjab.

The DEA's wanted list also names Balwant and Sanjeev Bhola as members of the international hawala ring allegedly working at the behest of Mexican drug cartels. Along with Bakshish, both Sanjeev and Balwant are charged for "conspiracy to launder money". According to a DEA report, Bakshish Singh's last known address was located in Surrey, a city in British Columbia. Several Indian-origin drug traffickers have been earlier operating from Surrey, which is apart of the metro Vancouver area and touches the US border. Sources said that Bakshish might have escaped to India and could be living under fake identity.

Bakshish, born in the 1970s, was not the only one from India to facilitate funds for the Sinaloa cartel. In 2018, two Indians, Manu Gupta and Mohammed Sadik were arrested by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) from Indore for supplying drugs to one Jorge Solis, member of the Sinaloa cartel. The DRI had recovered 10 kg of drugs from the possession of Solis and Gupta which was priced over Rs 100 crore in the international market. Gupta was later found to be working for the Sinaloa drug cartel for the past several years.

Sinaloa is a sovereign state within Mexico facing the Gulf of California. The strategic location of Sinaloa and poltical patronisation, gives the drug cartel a safe haven to operate their international drug racket from this state.

The DEA has earlier unearthed another big time drug cartel involving Vicky Goswami, a former aide of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim. The DEA had also tipped Indian agencies about a pharmaceutical company allegedly operating from India, where drugs like mandrax and ephedrine were being manufactured. The pharma company having linkages with alleged drug traffickers was later sealed by the police.

The investigation report filed by DEA in the US District Court, Southern District of New York on July 25, 2019, had revealed the name of D-company aide Goswami and Ali Punjani, former husband of another Bollywood star Kim Sharma.

Goswami was extradited by the DEA from Kenya to face trial in New York.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
A novel way to pinpoint and illuminate bone damage promises to make X-rays more efficient at diagnosing bone and other injuries, Flinders University researchers say.

The new technique, looking at potential biomedical applications of an ancient inorganic salt-based aggregation induced emission (AIE) radio-luminescence material, could open new frontiers in medicine including X-ray dosimetry, bioimaging and advanced applications such as optogenetics, says Professor Youhong Tang, from Flinders University's College of Science and Engineering.

The review article, published by Professor Tang, postdoctoral student Dr Javad Tavokoli, colleagues in Hong Kong and Australian technology company Micro-X and, examined the potential of the AIEgen luminogens (AIEgens) in deep tissue imaging. The study used X-ray testing provided by Adelaide-based Micro-X.

"We were able to use Micro-X advanced X-ray machines at the Tonsley Innovation District to show the benefits of this AIEgen system which can be excited by X-ray (as the radioluminescence emitter) and UV light (as the photoluminescence emitter) compared to current AIEgens which mostly only act as the photoluminescence emitter," he says.

"The study highlighted the disadvantages of autofluorescence, poor signal-to-noise radio, and poor tissue penetration depth of traditional photoluminescence emitters which could be elegantly solved by these radioluminescence luminogens," says Professor of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Dr Tang.

"Not only do they pinpoint bone and soft tissue damage for better diagnosis and treatment but we suggest further studies could see these AIE-based materials with multifunctionalities used for improved drug delivery, biosensors, bioimaging, and tissue engineering."

Lead author on the journal article in Aggregate, Dr Tavokoli, how based at the Centre for Health Technologies at University of Technology Sydney, says the next generation of fluorescent gels could also capitalise on additional light-emitting properties making them attractive for different applications.

The latest work not only explores a series of inorganic AIE systems but also "fundamentally helps to understand both the unconventional organic and inorganic clusteroluminescence phenomena, Professor Tang concludes.

###

The paper, Revisiting an ancient inorganic aggregation?induced emission system: An enlightenment to clusteroluminescence (2021) by Zheng Zhao, Zaiyu Wang, Javad Tavakoli, Guogang Shan, Jianyu Zhang, Chen Peng, Yu Xiong, Xuepeng Zhang, Tsz Shing Cheung, Youhong Tang, Bolong Huang and Zhaoxun Yu published in Aggregate DOI: 10.1002/agt2.36
Much of the discussion about proposed changes to voting laws backed by many Republicans and generally opposed by Democrats begs the question and simply asserts that having more people vote is, ceteris paribus, a good thing.

Why should we believe that?

Why shouldnt we believe the opposite? That the republic would be better served by having fewer  but better  voters?

Many Americans, being devout egalitarians, recoil from the very notion of better voters as a matter of rhetoric, even as they accept qualifications as a matter of fact.

Categorically disenfranchising felons has always been, in my view, the intelligent default position, with re-enfranchisement on a case-by-case basis. It is likely that under such a practice some people who ought to be considered rehabilitated would be unjustly excluded. But all eligibility requirements risk excluding somebody who might make a good voter, or a better voter than someone who is eligible. There are plenty of very smart and responsible 16-year-olds who would make better voters than their dim and irresponsible older siblings or their parents. That doesnt mean we should have 16-year-old voters  Id be more inclined to raise the voting age to 30  it means only that categorical decision-making by its nature does not account for certain individual differences.

Similarly, asking for government-issued photo ID at the polls seem to me obviously the right thing to do, even if it would result in some otherwise eligible voters not voting. Im not convinced that having more voters is a good thing in any case, but, even if I were, that would not be the only good, but only one good competing with other goods, one of which is seeing to it that the eligibility rules on the books are enforced so that elections may be honestly and credibly regulated.

We could verify eligibility at the polls rigorously and easily, if we wanted to, just as we have the ability to verify who is eligible to enter the country or to drive a car. Of course that would put some burdens on voters. So, what? We expect people, including poor and struggling people, to pay their taxes  why shouldnt we also expect them to keep their drivers licenses up-to-date? If voting really is the sacred duty that were always being told it is, shouldnt we treat it at least as seriously as filing a 1040EZ?

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There would be more voters if we made it easier to vote, and there would be more doctors if we didnt require a license to practice medicine. The fact that we believe unqualified doctors to be a public menace but act as though unqualified voters were just stars in the splendid constellation of democracy indicates how little real esteem we actually have for the vote, in spite of our public pieties.

There are tradeoffs in voting, as there are in all things. Democrats prefer to minimize attention paid to voting fraud and eligibility enforcement, but even a little bit of fraud or improper voting is something that should be discouraged and, if possible, prevented. It is  spare me your sob stories  something that should be prosecuted in most cases. It is a fact that many of the things that would be useful in discouraging and preventing voting fraud would also tend to make voting somewhat more difficult for at least some part of the population. Republicans generally think that tradeoff is worth it, and Democrats generally dont. Is there motivated reasoning at work there? Of course. But the mere presence of political self-interest does not tell us whether a policy is a good one or a bad one.

One argument for encouraging bigger turnout is that if more eligible voters go to the polls then the outcome will more closely reflect what the average American voter wants. That sounds like a wonderful thing . . . if you havent met the average American voter.

Voters  individually and in majorities  are as apt to be wrong about things as right about them, often vote from low motives such as bigotry and spite, and very often are contentedly ignorant. That is one of the reasons why the original constitutional architecture of this country gave voters a narrowly limited say in most things and took some things  freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc.  off the voters table entirely. It is easy to think of critical moments in American history when giving the majority its way would have produced horrifying results. If wed had a fair and open national plebiscite about slavery on December 6, 1865, slavery would have won in a landslide. If we held a plebiscite on abolishing the death penalty today, the death penalty would be sustained.

If the question is the quality of policy outcomes, then both major camps have reasons to dread genuine majority rule. Conservatives ought to at the very least be mindful of the fact that if policy truly represented the preferences of the average American, then we would have fewer economic liberties and diminished Second Amendment rights; progressives should consider that if policy actually represented the preferences of the average American, then abortion rights would be limited and tax hikes would not fly, while wed be spending more money on the Border Patrol and less on welfare as work requirements reduced the rolls. Popular opinion does not break down along neat ideological lines.

The real case  generally unstated  for encouraging more people to vote is a metaphysical one: that wider turnout in elections makes the government somehow more legitimate in a vague moral sense. But legitimacy is not popularity and popularity is not consent. The entire notion of representative government assumes that the actual business of governing requires fewer decision-makers rather than more.

Representatives are people who act in other peoples interests, which is distinct from carrying out a groups stated demands as certified by majority vote. Legitimacy involves, among other interests, the governments responsibility to people who are not voters, such as children, mentally incapacitated people, incarcerated felons, and non-citizen permanent residents. Their interests matter, too, but we do not extend the vote to them. So we require a more sophisticated conception of legitimacy than one-man, one-vote, majority rule. To vote is only to register ones individual, personal preference, but democratic citizenship imposes broader duties and obligations. When we fail to meet that broader responsibility, the result is dysfunction: It is no accident that we are heaping debt upon our children, who cannot vote, in order to pay for benefits dear to the most active and reliable voters. Thats what you get from having lots of voting but relatively little responsible citizenship.

Voting is, among other things, an analgesic. It soothes people with the illusion that they have more control over their lives and their public affairs than they actually do. Beyond naked political self-interest, it probably is the sedative effect of voting that makes expanding participation attractive to a certain kind of politician. The sedative effect is why the Philadelphia city council has not been drowned in the Schuylkill River and why the powers that be in California have not been exiled to North Waziristan. When people vote, they feel like theyve had their say, and they are, for some inexplicable reason, satisfied with that.

We dont accept that in other areas of life: If Amazon fails to deliver your package, you expect Amazon to actually do something about it  either get you what you ordered or give you a refund. You wouldnt be satisfied simply yelling at a customer-service representative and thus having had your say  you expect your deliverables to be delivered. It is good to have your say, but that is not sufficient. That holds true almost everywhere, but not in politics.

Thus the unspoken slogan of every incumbents campaign: Youve had your say, now shut the hell up.

Progressives and populists like to blame lobbyists, special interests, the Swamp, insiders, the Establishment, vested interests, shadowy corporate titans, and sundry boogeymen for our current straits, but the fact is that voters got us into this mess. Maybe the answer isnt more voters.

More from National Review
Jennifer Dorsey is chief copy editor and Business section coordinator. She worked in Washington, D.C., and Chicago before moving to the Tetons.
COLUMBIA  Making good on its updated strategy of targeting the technology industry, Richland County extended another economic development deal to a tech company  its third in five months.

Richland County Council voted April 6 to provide tax credits to Irmo-based IMCS, short for Integrated Micro-Chromatography Systems Inc. The company is expanding its operations in Richland County, investing $4.1 million in equipment and a third building, and with it, adding 31 jobs over the next five years.

In exchange, the company will receive credits to buy down its tax bill  equivalent to 35 percent of the investments it makes  over the next 10 years.

Over the past several years, IMCS has experienced considerable success as a part of the Richland County business community, said CEO Andrew Lee. The tax incentives provided by the county will allow us to continue investing in people, capital equipment and facilities to expand our company and increase economic development in the county.

IMCS got its start engineering and producing enzymes, which speed up chemical reactions in the body, like those that break down food during digestion, and using them to make corporate drug testing faster and more accurate. But the company has been expanding into other areas.

The firm recently won a federal contract putting enzymes to work aiding in scientific advances to treat diseases from Alzheimer's to Parkinson's, as well as some cancers.

The company also is finding success adding its own innovations to a common lab tool called a pipette tip, used to measure and move liquidized samples between containers. IMCS made it faster by adding a chemical separator inside the tips themselves, reducing a step along with the chance for contamination and error.

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County Council is always eager to support growing businesses in Richland County, and it is especially exciting to watch a company like IMCS get its start here and achieve so much, said Paul Livingston, chair of Richland County Council.

The tax credits were approved by a vote of 9-1, with councilman Bill Malinowski casting the lone objection.

ICMS currently has 40 full-time employees, with 600 clients across the United States and 15 other countries.

The city of Columbia and surrounding counties first announced their shift in economic development focus to target high-paying, fast-growing technology and software companies, as well as biomedical firms, in July 2020. Business leaders say this plays to the area's existing industry and academic strengths while tech's lesser square footage requirements also provide a workaround to the competitive disadvantage of a high property tax burden.

In addition to IMCS, Richland County Council approved a tax deal for Sensor Electronic Technology Inc.  SETI for short  a Columbia ultraviolet LED maker that has expanded into the central air and ventilation business amid the coronavirus pandemic and is selling its technology as an air-sterilization system.

The company, a subsidiary of South Korea-based Seoul Semiconductor and Seoul Viosys, agreed in December 2020 to invest $55 million and add 40 jobs to its facility on Atlas Road.

Then in February, insurance provider BlueCross BlueShield, which has an insurance technology arm, received an extension of existing tax credits as it agreed to hire 700 new workers and invest $60 million in equipment.
Macrotech Developers Ltd, earlier known as Lodha Developers will launch its Rs 2,500 crore initial public offering (IPO) today. The share sale will end on April 9. On April 6, the realty firm raised Rs 740 crore from 14 anchor investors including global long only, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds multi-strategy and domestic mutual funds. The company allocated 1.52 crore shares at Rs 486 per share to anchor investors.

Promoters of the firm hold 100% stake in the firm. They plan to sell 10% stake by issuing 51,440,328 equity shares of Rs 10 face value during the IPO.

Lot size of the IPO is 30 shares for which one will have to spend Rs 14,580. A maximum of 13 lots comprising 390 shares can be bought for Rs 1,89,540.

Allotment of shares is likely to be done on April 16, 2021 and the stock is expected to make its market debut on April 22.

Price band of the issue is Rs 483 to Rs 486 per equity share.

The real estate firm plans to raise money for the following purposes; a. To reduce aggregate outstanding borrowings of the company on consolidated basis. b. To acquire land or land development rights. c. To meet general corporate purposes.

Macrotech Developers IPO: Shares trading at 4-5% premium in grey market

The firm filed draft papers with market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) in February. This is Lodha's Group's third attempt to go public. The firm made attempts to launch an IPO in 2009 and 2018 but dropped plans citing challenging times for the realty sector.

Founded in 1995, Lodha Group is one of India's largest real estate players by sales bookings, that develops real estate across the residential and commercial sectors in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (the "MMR"), Pune and London.

Macrotech Developers, Seven Islands Shipping, Dodla Dairy among six upcoming IPOs in April

Here's a look at the stance of brokerages on the issue.

Angel Broking has a neutral stance on the issue.

"Company has a strong brand in affordable and mid income housing projects, but is not able to deliver the growth in sales and free cash flow in the last couple of years. The company has reported sales degrowth of 68% in 9MFY21 and reported a negative profit after tax of Rs 265 crore. Given weak revenue growth in the past and leveraged balance sheet, we assign a NEUTRAL rating to the IPO," the brokerage said.

Stocks in news: Tata Steel, Adani Group, Axis Bank, Bharti Airtel and more

Choice Broking has given a subscribe for long term rating to the issue. "At higher price band of Rs 486, the company is demanding an TTM EV/Sales multiple of 6.3x, which is at discount to the peer average of 8.5x. Thus, the issue seems to be attractively priced. Moreover, the real estate sector is witnessing significant consolidation especially after the NBFC crisis. Dominant players like Macrotech are likely to benefit in the medium to long term. However, the resurgence of the Covid-19 infection and discontinuation of stamp duty waiver on property registration would dent the sentiment in the near term. Thus considering the above observations, we assign a "Subscribe for Long Term" rating for the issue."

Edited by Aseem Thapliyal
Photo credit: Avis

Rental car companies at popular spring break and summer travel destinations are facing shortages of cars, while travelers face high fees.

Rental giants have not recovered from the pandemic-caused disruptions, and have sold off large portions of their fleets over the past 12 months.

The shortages are likely to persist well into the summer as rental car companies are still cautious about increasing staff and cars.

If you found yourself in a sunny destination in the States in the past month and tried to rent a car, odds are you were faced with sprawling lots devoid of cars or eye-watering rental prices. The spring break season, coupled with a number of state re-openings and bottled-up consumer spending, has produced a significant shortage of rental cars in a number of big cities and vacation places around the U.S., with rental prices approaching several hundred dollars per day for very basic wheels.

A quick survey of car rental companies has revealed that daily fees for modest vehicles in high-demand areas are exceeding $300 a day, while a number of especially affected regionslike the Gulf Coast, southern California, Florida, and the Carolinashad seen fees north of $500 in March. Florida had been especially affected last month, with few cars available at most airports for the influx of spring breakers.

"We weren't able to get a rental car at all," one family traveling from Washington, D.C., to Orlando, Florida, told Autoweek. "We planned to get a car and stay for like 10 days, to visit Jacksonville, but the options on the sites just weren't there. We should have reserved the cars weeks in advance, or done something else. We just ended up taking Uber a couple of times when we had to."

Hawaii has faced a particular kind of problem: Thousands of rental cars had been shipped off the islands in 2020 to be sold and had not been replenished since. Hawaiian rental outlets don't have the easy option of shifting cars around from nearby locations to meet shifting demand. Even sunnier inland destinations like Arizona have seen shortages this spring.

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"We planned to go down to Miami but ended up just driving to Pensacola through Huntsville," another traveler from Nashville told Autoweek. "It just wasn't worth it to fly down there and have to pay that much. We called around and there were almost no cars available there, so we just drove down in a day. And it's just safer that way too, I have to say."

Photo credit: Anne Cusack - Getty Images

Another issue facing some airport rental desks is that a lot of staff laid off last summer has not been hired back, even as demand has risen dramatically. For travelers this means long lines at the airport stands and slower turnaround times at the counters. In effect, the rental companies are still watching the market but are skittish to increase car and employee numbers too quickly, fearing another depressed period this year or next.

The immediate culprit for this state of affairs is the size of the rental fleets themselves. All had attempted to shed up to a third of their fleets last summer and canceled future orders when the pandemic had brought the travel industry to a grinding halt. And now with the rollout of vaccines in the U.S. being only a couple months old, the rental car giants haven't been able to re-stock their fleets quickly enough, still lacking cash to do so from last year, and still being wary of continued pandemic-related disruption.



The deeper reasons for the current low availability, however, actually dates back to before the pandemic arrived . A number of rental car companies ran into complex issues during what was a booming economy, including increased competition among each other, competition from ride-hailing services, and a glut in the used car market. Lyft and Uber had taken a chunk out of the traditional rental business model in the second half of the 2010s, prompting some like Enterprise to launch car-sharing schemes in return, while services like Turo took a further slice out of the rental giants' pie.

Photo credit: Smith Collection/Gado - Getty Images

A number of companies tried to pare down their fleets in 2018 and 2019 and were finally brought to the brink in the spring of 2020 when travel came to a halt. Hertz entered bankruptcy protection in May of 2020, shedding hundreds of thousands of cars in order to stay afloat, while other rental companies tried to do the same, canceling up to 80% of their orders from automakers through the end of 2020. The effort produced oversupply on the used car market in the summer and fall of 2020one exacerbated by private sellers also shedding own cars to generate cashbut both new and used car buying have showed signs of rebounding by early this year.



Those canceled orders, however, mean that rental car companies won't be able to replenish their fleets all that quickly, especially as automakers had shifted their priorities in the second half of 2020.

"While not all rental-fleet orders were for cars, the loss of orders from major rental-car companies from Hertz to Avis had an impact on the first half of last year as well," Stephanie Brinley, principal automotive analyst at IHS Markit, pointed out. "Those canceled orders coincided with production shutdowns, and as production resumed, automakers in some cases shifted planned production from rental-car fleet vehicles to vehicles configured for retail."



This means U.S. travelers are likely to see several more months of rental car shortages at high-demand destinations, as the summer travel season starts heating up in the second half of May.

What are the current options for travelers facing mid-three-figure daily rental costs?

At the moment it appears to be alternative car-rental services like Turo, which lets private owners rent out their cars to travelers. But even Turo is facing a sharp rise in demand at popular destinations as more discover the service.

If there is one pandemic-friendly option to avoid the high costs of rental cars at popular destinations, it's renting locally and then driving to your vacation. That's because car rental prices have not generally ballooned in the interior of the country. If there is no avoiding air travel, try to find rental a lot at least a half hour away from the airport and take a ride-hailing service there to pick up your car. And if you're planning to travel after the school year ends, now is not a bad time to start making travel plans as the shortage could persist well into 2021.

Have you had a rent a car in the past month? Let us know in the comments below.
Investcorp, a leading global provider and manager of alternative investment products, has announced it has agreed the sale of Kee Safety Group Ltd to its management team, supported by Intermediate Capital Group.

Established in the UK in 1934 and headquartered in Cradley Heath, Kee Safety is the leading global provider of Fall Protection and Safe Access solutions and products associated with working at height. The companys products have a longstanding reputation for their quality, reliability and safety and include fall prevention equipment, roof edge protection, barrier and guardrail systems and safe access solutions. Today, the company has a global presence and sells its products across more than 60 countries worldwide to a broad range of customers, from multi-national corporations to distributors and installers. The company employs 780 people and has established operations in 10 countries, including the US and China.

Investcorp acquired Kee Safety in November 2017 and has worked closely with the management team to drive both organic and inorganic international growth, whilst expanding Kee Safetys market-leading product offering. Under Investcorps ownership, Kee Safety accelerated its growth trajectory, surpassing 100 million ($138 million) in sales and growing EBITDA at a double-digit rate. Moreover, the Company has completed fifteen acquisitions, expanding its geographic footprint in Europe, North America, Asia and the Middle East. Kee Safetys regulatory-required offering has demonstrated its defensive profile during the pandemic, with record orders achieved despite the uncertain economic environment, and eight acquisitions completed since January 2020.

Yusef Al Yusef, managing partner of Investcorps private wealth platform, said: Since our acquisition of Kee Safety, we have seen it deliver an impressive performance through meticulous execution and successful bolt-on acquisitions. This transaction reflects our ability to quickly execute an ambitious organic and inorganic growth strategy and we hope that the company continues to build on this progress.

Chris Milburn, Chairman of Kee Safety, added: Investcorp has been a true partner to us over the last three and a half years. As a management team, it has been extremely important to share our growth journey with the right partner, capable of supporting us in a period of strong development in North America, the Middle East and Asia. We have valued Investcorps constructive approach and benefited from its global mindset throughout our journey together.-- Tradearabia News Service
New Delhi: Actress-producer Anushka Sharma decided to hit back at social media haters with a powerful message. She put up her Instagram story which actually was a tweet by Steven Bartlett and the actress shared it.

Anushka Sharma's Instagram story read: Social media is full of people that can spot toxic behaviour in everyone but themselves. The world doesn't need more critics, it needs more self-awareness.

The stunning new mommy has lost oodles of weight and is looking super fit. She was clicked stepping out from her vanity van in Mumbai recently. The actress was spotted wearing a mask as she hit back to work post maternity break.

Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma were blessed with a baby girl on January 11, 2021. The duo revealed the name of their baby girl as Vamika, which means a form of Goddess Durga. The couple had requested the paparazzi to not click the baby pictures and even sent out personalised gift hampers.

Virat and Anushka got married at the picturesque Tuscany, Italy on December 11, 2017. Their wedding remained one of the most talked-about events that year.


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - President Joe Biden made a personal appeal to all Americans to take the anti-corona vaccine and stick to COVID protocols so that progress the country worked so hard to achieve in the fight against the pandemic is not reversed.



'We've vaccinated more people than any other nation on Earth. The vaccines have proven to be safe and effective. That should give us real hope, but we can't let it make us complacent,' Biden said while delivering remarks after crossing 150 million vaccine shots in the first 75 days of his administration.



'I'm still looking forward to the prospect if we keep the pace we're on and we listen to one another and take the precautions I talked about, that you'll be able to win independence from COVID on Fourth of July, the Independence Day,' Biden said after visiting a vaccination clinic in Alexandria, Virginia.



'Even moving at the record speed we're moving at, we're not even halfway through vaccinating over 300 million Americans,' he added.



The President announced that by April 19, all adult Americans will be eligible to get the vaccine.



He told reporters that the number of people who are reluctant to take the vaccine continues to diminish across the country.



Biden claimed that the United States is the first country to administer 150 million shots and the first country to fully vaccinate more than 62 million people.



'The good news is we're on track to beat our goal of 200 million shots in the first 100 days. More than 75 percent of the people over the age of 65 have gotten shots, up from 8 percent when we took office. That's a dramatic turnaround and critical because seniors account for 80 percent of all COVID deaths'.



Biden said that while the country is making incredible progress, there is also some bad news. 'New variants of the virus are spreading and they're moving quickly. Cases are going back up. Hospitalizations are no longer declining. While deaths are still way down from January, they're going up in some places.'



62004 new coronavirus cases were reported in the United States on Tuesday, taking the national total to 30847167.



907 new deaths were reported in the country on the same day, which is higher than the weekly average of 788. With this, the total COVID death toll in the U.S. increased to 556528.



California and Texas, the two worst-affected states, together accounted for 173 deaths, while most cases - 6106 - were reported in New York.



According to latest CDC estimates, nearly 80 percent of teachers, school staff and childcare workers in the U.S. received at least one shot of corona vaccine by the end of March. 'Our push to ensure that teachers, school staff, and childcare workers were vaccinated during March has paid off and paved the way for safer in-person learning,' said CDC Director Rochelle Walensky.



Meanwhile, Tuesday marked the most deadly day for Brazil due to COVID. More than 4,000 fatalities were reported in 24 hours in the Latin American country, where a more contagious variant of coronavirus fuels a surge in cases.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 21:58:10|Editor: huaxia

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NAIROBI, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Realization of an inclusive and speedy post-pandemic recovery in Africa hinges on robust action on inequalities that are responsible for poor health outcomes in the continent, a senior World Health Organization (WHO) official said on the World Health Day that falls on Wednesday.

Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for Africa, said the pandemic has worsened health inequalities in the continent with the poor grappling with limited access to life-saving drugs and contraceptives.

"We need to act on the social and economic determinants of health, by working across sectors to improve living and working conditions, access to education for the most marginalized groups," Moeti said in a statement issued in Nairobi.

She said the theme of this year's World Health Day "Building a fairer, healthier world" reinforces the urgency to tackle financing and policy hurdles that have derailed access to quality healthcare services in Africa.

According to Moeti, discrimination based on gender, income, age, educational level, ethnicity and disability has fuelled health inequalities in Africa.

"Recent data from 17 African countries show for example that a person with secondary school education is three times as likely to have access to contraception as someone who has not attended school," said Moeti.

She said that high net-worth African women are five times more likely to deliver in health facilities and have their babies vaccinated against tuberculosis compared to those in the low-income category.

Moeti said that robust engagement with communities, effective data collection, reforms and innovative financing is key to address health inequalities in Africa.

"Investment is also needed to accelerate progress towards Universal Health Coverage, to protect individuals from financial hardship in accessing needed care and improve service coverage," said Moeti.

She said that WHO has partnered with African countries to strengthen their capacity to collect data, and integrate COVID-19 response in national programs to reduce health inequalities.

"In the past year, we have disseminated technical guidance on gender, equity and COVID-19 and trained over 30 country teams in gender and health equity integrated programming," said Moeti.

The teams are using skills gained to support equitable health response, including to deal with gender-based violence in the context of COVID-19, she added.

The WHO official said that political goodwill combined with strategic partnerships is key to build resilient health systems in Africa amid pandemic-related shocks. Enditem
Cutfield Freeman, a specialist resources corporate advisory business, will assist with the partner search, financial advisory and capital raising functions.

The appointment will bring global reach and solutions to COBs strategic financial needs.

( ) ( ) (FRA:COH) has taken another step in the development of the Broken Hill Cobalt Project (BHCP) in Far West New South Wales by appointing Cutfield Freeman & Co Limited to act as strategic financial advisor.

The role of strategic financial advisor will include partner search, financial advisory and capital raising.

Cutfield Freeman will assist in COBs Global Project Partner Search by searching for and engaging with project partners and will also help identify potentially viable funding options and execution plans.

Capital raising will be another function with Cutfield Freeman to identity and source providers of senior and junior debt, and alternative financing sources.

Global reach

Cutfield Freeman, a global specialist resources corporate advisory business, brings global reach and solutions to COBs strategic financial needs.

Cobalt Blues chief executive officer Joe Kaderavek said: COB selected Cutfield Freeman given their extensive experience and reach as a global financial advisor to junior mining companies.

Development work for the BHCP continues in parallel with COBs Cobalt in Waste Streams Project.

Cutfield Freeman was founded in 2000 to provide independent financial advice to companies in the mining industry and to date, has advised on more than 150 mandated transactions in 50 countries.

It advises on joint ventures, project and corporate finance, M&A, corporate restructuring and debt restructuring in the mining sector covering a wide range of geographies and commodities.

Important cobalt asset

Tony Butler, managing director of Cutfield Freeman in London, stated: Broken Hill is a strategically important cobalt asset, which is set to be among a new wave of environmentally and socially responsible cobalt producers.

"We are excited about working with management to deliver the right financing solution for the project.

Cutfield Freeman is headquartered in London and has offices in Toronto and Hong Kong.

It has experience across the critical minerals sector with clients including Bikita Minerals, Molycorp, Neometals, Peak Resources and Wolf Minerals.

COB shares closed more than 5% higher to 38 cents and the companys market cap sits at approximately $94.4 million.
Police said the victim was part of a group of people that gathered to create a music video when a dispute occurred and multiple shots were fired. Two guns were recovered, according to police, who said Wednesday the investigation is ongoing.
According to a proposed climate plan, South Africa plans to cut emissions by about a third by 2030.

Open Public Consultation

The government has opened a public consultation on its revised climate strategy, which will extend until the end of May, to send a draft document to the UN in time for the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow, UK, in November.

Lowering Emissions

South Africa's annual greenhouse gas emissions will be limited to 398-440 million tons of CO2 equivalent by 2030, according to the draft proposal. Compared to the 2015 commitment, which set a target of 614 MtCO2 for annual emissions, this lowers emissions by 28%.

To accomplish the target, it will focus on "a very aggressive power sector investment program," as well as the introduction of a green transportation agenda, energy efficiency initiatives, and a carbon tax.

Natural Energy Sources

Gwede Mantashe, the minister of natural resources and electricity, said at an environment and growth summit held by the UK last week, "We are not setting up reasons not to do anything because there is a Covid-19 pandemic."

"It is not going to be a stroke of a pen [that] turns off coal power plants and then transitions to renewables," Mantasha said, describing the energy conversion as "a journey."

Related Article: NDC Synthesis Reports Showed How Far Countries Are From Meeting Paris Agreement's Climate Goals



Discussing the Proposal

The draft proposal was "far better" than its 2015 promises, according to Deborah Ramalope, a researcher at Climate Analytics and a former member of the South African delegation to UN climate talks.

She told Climate Home News that it is "currently not consistent with the Paris Agreement temperature target" of reducing warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

According to Climate Action Tracker benchmarks, Wanjira Mathai, regional director for Africa at the World Resources Institute, cheered the planned goal, which would align the country's efforts with limiting temperature to 2 degrees Celsius.

She praised the inclusion of measures to deal with worsening climate changes, such as early warning systems, climate-resilient growth planning, better governance, and research funding.

Estimated Budget

South Africa reports that by 2030, it will need $8 billion a year from the international community to support its decarbonization and adaptation activities, which is more than three times what it has earned in recent years. 89 percent of the climate funding it obtained in 2018-19 came in the form of loans.

Tight Goals

According to the government paper, South Africa's tighter goal was made possible by lower-than-expected greenhouse gas production over the last ten years and a fall in emission rate.

This can be explained, according to Saliem Fakir, executive director of the Africa Environment Foundation in South Africa, by the rise of the service sector and the decline of carbon-intensive heavy industries.

He said that a dramatic increase in electricity tariffs had raised the cost pressure on businesses and prompted them to boost their energy efficiency.

According to Fakir, the enhanced climate change is "not the product of real optimism," but rather a side effect of an economic transition toward utilities.

"This has little to do with a constructive solution to lowering pollution. Coal appears to be the main cause of pollution, he said.

Utility Services

South Africa's state-owned utility, Eskom, provided 86 percent of the country's electricity in 2020, rendering it the most coal-dependent G20 economy.

The revised climate plan recognizes the energy market as a decarbonization goal for the next decade, thus maintaining sustainable prosperity for people that depend on coal for their livelihoods.

Campaigners and observers claim that the nation could decarbonize more quickly, but an artificial limit on renewable energy deployment is holding it back. The government's 2019 energy supply plan provides another 1,500MW of coal power capacity to be installed this decade. Solar installations are limited to 1,000MW a year, and wind installations are limited to 1,600MW.

Climate Justice

Alex Lenferna, secretary of the Climate Justice Alliance, a network of civil society organizations in South Africa, told Climate Home News, "It is our Achilles heel of climate ambition." "It's still difficult for South Africa to secure green financing while we're looking to expand our coal industry."

According to Hartmut Winkler of the University of Johannesburg, there is "no need for a renewable limit," serving as an unnecessary obstacle to decarbonization.

"There would be absolutely no shortage of interest from developers if there was a solid indication that this country was trying to push renewables," he added.

According to Fakir, the government has attempted to keep the coal industry on board by reaching an agreement that also provides a large amount of coal in the power mix.

Although the government has approved a long-term vision to reach carbon neutrality by 2050, the proposal will also enable the country to burn coal before an exit date is settled.

Energy Issue

"There is a lot of politics and corporate interests in the coal industry. Winkler continues, "The term' coal mafia' is often used to describe opaque buying contracts."

Meanwhile, earlier this month, a fifth procurement round for 1,600 MW of onshore wind and 1,000 MW of solar energy was announced - two years later than anticipated.

South Africa is suffering intermittent power losses, which Eskom predicts could continue for the next five years due to delayed solar expansion and aging coal power plants being gradually taken offline for maintenance.

Also Read: Big Oil Burning: How Flaring in the Permian Basin Affects the Climate Challenge

For more environmental news, don't forget to follow Nature World News!
By Damali Mukhaye

The Rakai Woman MP Juliet Kinyamatama has announced her bid to join the speakership race of the forthcoming 11th parliament.

She joins the four candidates including the incumbent speaker Rebecca Kadaga and her deputy Jacob Oulanya, FDCs Ibrahim Ssemujju, and DPs Richard Sebamala who already announced their bid for the same seat.

Launching her campaign this morning at Parliament, Kinyamatama says that she is going to represent the youths who are the majority in the country and will ensure that all government agencies employ 50% of the youths in the country.

She also says that she will give a tax holiday to all private companies that will employ more youths annually to fight the unemployment challenge in the country.

Kinyamatama becomes the only woman to contest against Kadaga who has been the only female in the race. According to her, she is not scared of anyone and is ready to compete against her boss.
The Charleston areas newest brewery should have to change its name, according to a trademark infringement lawsuit filed in federal court by a competitor.

Low Tide Brewing Co. on April 8 will ask a U.S. District Court judge to issue an injunction against Tideland Brewing, which in March opened a brewery and tasting room in Holy City Brewings former North Charleston location.

The suit claims Tideland owner Hunter Eisele is trying to capitalize on Low Tides success by confusing craft beer fans.

The whole point of this is our clients have gone through the process to protect their intellectual property, said Angelica M. Colwell of Nexsen Pruet, who is representing the seven-year-old Low Tide Brewing Co. There arent any other breweries in this area that include the word tide in them.

Industry overlap is crucial in a trademark case. For example, Low Tide Liquidation in 2020 opened in Mount Pleasant, but consumers presumably wouldn't mistake home goods for beer.

Eiseles attorney declined to comment on the lawsuit.

According to the suit filed March 18, Low Tide owner Michael Fielding came up with the name for his future Johns Island brewery while reflecting on his life choices and deciding on a career path during a kayak tour. In 2015, he registered the first in a series of related trademarks.

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Under the trademarked Low Tide name, Fielding produced beers such as Tide Chaser IPA, Weizen Tide and Reeseding Tide (flavored with peanut butter in a nod to Reeses, another trademarked brand).

Around the time Fielding started establishing Low Tide, he got to know Eisele, who in 2017 opened Twisted Cypress Brewing Co. The lawsuit claims Eisele told Fielding that before he joined the Twisted Cypress project he had considered opening a brewery called Low Tide, but discovered that Fielding had already registered the domain name.

Twisted Cypress in early 2019 shut down its West Ashley taproom, announcing plans to permit and buildout TCBC 2.0 in another undisclosed location.

Its social media accounts remained quiet until fall 2020, when the brewery announced in a post illustrated by a palmetto tree logo that it would reemerge as Tideland Brewing.

Prior to sharing the news with the public, the lawsuit alleges that Eisele twice visited Low Tide Brewing Co. to find out how its owners would feel about him using the Tideland name.

The Low Tide co-owner who discussed Tideland with Mr. Eisele suggested to him that he choose an alternative name, the lawsuit states.

In addition to asking for Eiseles outfit to be barred from using the Tideland name, Low Tide would like the judge to order Tideland to turn over to Low Tide all profits derived as a result of unfair competition.

The injunction telephone hearing is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. April 8 in front of Judge David Norton.
Ukrainian servicemen work on their tank close to the front line with Russian-backed separatists near Lysychansk, Lugansk region, on April 7, 2021. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Russias Military Starts Massive Combat Readiness Inspection as Ukraine Tensions Soar

Russias military is beginning a combat readiness inspection as tensions between the Kremlin and Ukraine have escalated in recent weeks.

In accordance with the plan for the training of the armed forces, control checks have begun in the military administration bodies, formations, and military units, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said in a meeting at the Defense Ministry on April 6. The troops went to the training grounds for tactical, tactical-special, and bilateral exercises.

The official said that 4,048 military exercises will be held in Russia this month at more than 100 training grounds, with most training occurring in the Far East region in Siberia.

On April 2, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that any NATO troop deployment to Ukraine would lead to more tensions between Kyiv and Moscow.

NATO voiced concern last week over what it said was a big Russian military build-up near eastern Ukraine after Russia warned that a serious escalation in the conflict in Ukraines Donbas region could destroy Ukraine.

Our rhetoric [over Donbas] is absolutely constructive, Peskov told reporters, according to TASS. We do not indulge in wishful thinking. Regrettably, the realities along the engagement line are rather frightening. Provocations by the Ukrainian armed forces do take place. They are not casual. There have been many of them.

During the silence regime since July 27, 2020, 28 warriors have been killed by the shelling in Donbas, 24 of them this year. Since March 26 alone, weve lost 8 of our soldiers. Every day of the war costs us the lives of brave, patriotic men who must build the future of Ukraine    (@ZelenskyyUa) April 6, 2021

In late March, Ukrainian officials said that four Ukrainian military members were killed near Shumy, saying that forces loyal to the Donetsk Peoples Republic were responsible. Donetsk denied responsibility and later said the soldiers were killed by a landmine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who also spoke with President Joe Biden via telephone for the first time last week, wrote on Twitter on April 1 that muscle-flexing in the form of military exercises on the border with Ukraine is an attempt to put pressure in the negotiations on ceasefire and peace as our value.

We are always ready for provocations, he said, adding that Ukraines army is not only strength and power, but also wisdom and balance.

Ukrainian servicemen patrol along a position at the front line with Russia-backed separatists not far from Avdiivka, Donetsk region, on April 5, 2021. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

On April 2, the Donetsk Peoples Republic, which is backed by the Kremlin, announced military conscription of citizens born between the ages of 1994 and 2003, according to official documents posted online.

In the meantime, video footage uploaded on social media shows a significant influx in Russian military vehicles near Ukraine. Ukrainian tanks were also seen in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Russias foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, told reporters on April 2 that he believes Ukraines army doesnt truly want a hot conflict in the region. I very much hope that they will not be incited by politicians, who in turn will be incited by the West, led by the United States, he said.
German experts and scholars have appreciated Vietnams achievements in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and in economic recovery and development, and pinned high hopes on Vietnams new government.

Party and State leaders at the 14th National Assembly's 11th session. (Photo: VNA)

Prof. Thomas Engelbert of the University of Hamburg spoke highly of new Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh's experience in many aspects.

Especially in his position as Secretary of the Party Committee of northern Quang Ninh Province, he said, Chinh had carried out various initiatives to boost the local economy and attract foreign investment, helping the province to thrive.

Prof. Thomas Engelbert of the University of Hamburg. (Photo: VNA)



According to economist Daniel Muller from the German Asia-Pacific Business Association (OAV), Vietnams new Prime Minister, State President and National Assembly Chairman all have realistic viewpoints and actively act toward specific goals and results.



With the new government, Vietnam is still consistent with the political policy set out at the 13th National Party Congress, Muller said.



Regarding economic affairs, he predicted the industrialisation process will continue to be accelerated in combination with increasing labour productivity, while the burdens of administrative costs will continue to be reduced and digital transformation will be sped up.



The new government will focus resources on developing the digitalisation and new other fields such as artificial intelligence, he forecast, adding that the digitalisation can support the post-pandemic economic recovery.



The OAV expert also showed his expectations about the governments efforts to streamline the administrative apparatus and make it more efficient.



According to Muller, in the Indo-Pacific Strategy framework, both Germany and the EU hope to expand relations with ASEAN countries and other Asian nations. In that context, Vietnam has a good opportunity to present itself as an attractive partner and a bridge connecting the ASEAN region with the world.

Wolfgang Bork, an expert on administrative law and a member of the Germany-Vietnam association. (Photo: VNA)

Meanwhile, Wolfgang Bork, an expert on administrative law and a member of the Germany-Vietnam association, said that both the old and newly-elected governments take the great responsibility for pandemic prevention and control.



As the pandemic has been put under control, the Vietnamese economy will continue thriving and peoples incomes will keep increasing, he predicted, suggesting the country attract more foreign investment, remove unnecessary administrative procedures and ensure legal safety for foreign investors.

VNA

Government worked well during the past term The National Assembly deputies praised the role in administration and management of the President and the Government in the past term.
Scottish independence has not been pursued as urgently as it should have been in recent years, Alex Salmond claimed (Andrew Milligan/PA)

Former Scottish first minister Alex Salmond has accused his successor Nicola Sturgeon of having failed to pursue the case for independence urgently enough.

Mr Salmond, as leader of the new pro-independence Alba Party, is bidding to make a dramatic return to Holyrood almost seven years after stepping down as SNP leader and first minister.

In a thinly veiled attack on Ms Sturgeon, he appeared to side with her critics who claim she has been too cautious in her pursuit of independence.

Expand Close Nicola Sturgeon succeeded Alex Salmond as First Minister and SNP leader back in 2014. (Russell Cheyne/PA) PA / Facebook

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Whatsapp Nicola Sturgeon succeeded Alex Salmond as First Minister and SNP leader back in 2014. (Russell Cheyne/PA)

Speaking on BBC Radio Scotlands Good Morning Scotland programme on Wednesday, Mr Salmond said: I think in terms of urgency, in terms of getting on with that job, I am not certain why the case has not been pursued as urgently as it should have been over the last five years, but it should be pursued now.

He said there is a growing realisation in Scotland that that should be done, adding: People will get very frustrated if we return pro-independence majorities and nothing happens.

The Alba Party is fielding candidates in all eight regions on Holyroods list ballot, and Mr Salmond believes his party can help see a supermajority of MSPs in favour of independence elected on May 6.

He said: Now I think a supermajority gives a much better chance of it happening in the next Parliament than it happening in the last Parliament.

Ms Sturgeon has already made clear that if she is re-elected to power next month, her immediate focus will be on continuing to tackle the coronavirus crisis.

But Mr Salmond said: I think the first job of that new Parliament, with its supermajority, should be to pass a resolution in week one, instructing the Scottish government to open negotiations with the UK Government on Scottish independence, that is the sort of urgency we want to inject into the independence debate.

If it is a debate that is presented as a Tory Prime Minister against a Scottish Parliament, representing the Scottish people, the new declaration of independence, then Scotland will have a fundamental advantage in these negotiations.

Thats the importance of getting a supermajority and the opportunity presented by this election.

He also claimed there are a range of options open if Prime Minister Boris Johnson continues to block a second vote on independence.

Expand Close Boris Johnson has so far refused to grant permission for a second Scottish independence vote to be held. (Stefan Rousseau/PA) PA / Facebook

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Whatsapp Boris Johnson has so far refused to grant permission for a second Scottish independence vote to be held. (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

Mr Salmond said in those circumstances, the idea of a plebiscite is open  indicating there could be a vote organised in Scotland.

He said other options include the prospect of either domestic or international legal action against the UK Government, and calling for international pressure, diplomatic pressure to be put on Mr Johnson.

Mr Salmond also said: I do believe that popular and peaceful demonstrations have a role to play in politics.

But we must cast this debate as a Tory Prime Minister against a Scottish Parliament and a Scottish nation, the whole community of the realm from Scotland.
Apr. 7Members of Brunswick Police Chief Milton Frech Jr.'s law enforcement family past and present lined up for a final salute Tuesday afternoon, offering a farewell to a longtime officer in the Frederick County law enforcement community.

On one side stood the officers of Frech's own Brunswick Police Department, while officers from departments in Maryland and Virginia on the other side saluted as friends and family carried Frech's casket to a waiting hearse.

Frech, 56, died unexpectedly on March 30 at his home in Emmitsburg.

Major Troy Barrick of the Frederick County Sheriff's Office, where Frech worked for more than a decade, said Frech welcomed him with open arms upon his own arrival at the sheriff's office 26 years ago.

"I don't know how you couldn't be friends with Milt," Barrick said.

Frederick Alderman Kelly Russell said she met Frech when they both worked at the Frederick Police Department in the late 1980s and early '90s. As the department's assistant supervisor of special operations, Russell said she often worked with Frech on narcotics operations.

On Tuesday, she remembered Frech's great smile and consistently friendly attitude.

"He always greeted you with a handshake and a smile," Russell said.

In recent years, she most often ran into Frech at graduation ceremonies for new officers, she said.

Frech was a father figure to the younger officers on the Brunswick force, Capt. Kevin Grunwell, of the Brunswick Police Department, said during a eulogy Tuesday.

When Frech took over in Brunswick, the department's equipment and pay weren't great, Grunwell said.

He developed the department into a place where young officers and others wanted to come to, he said.

It says something about who Frech was that four very different mayors chose to keep him as the town's police chief, he said.

Frech started his career as a police officer with the Baltimore City Police Department in 1987 and served two years there. He then spent five years with the Frederick Police Department before joining the Frederick County Sheriff's Office in 1993. He retired from the sheriff's office in 2007 before going to Brunswick as assistant chief.

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He was appointed chief in 2009 when, to his surprise, the city council voted him in unanimously during a council meeting. He interviewed for the permanent position while serving as acting chief at the time and succeeded former Chief John Smith.

Milton Frech III said his father exemplified the term "community policing."

He and his sisters couldn't go to the store with their dad without him getting stopped and talking with someone, sometimes someone he had locked up, he said.

Frech's long service in the region's law enforcement community was reflected in the departments who sent representatives to Tuesday's service. Among those were the Maryland State Police, Baltimore County Police Department, the Washington, Frederick, and Carroll county sheriff's offices in Maryland and the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office in Virginia, and the Frederick, Thurmont, Gaithersburg, Hagerstown, Fairfax (Va.), and Leesburg (Va.) police departments.

Even after he left and took the Brunswick job, Frech would stop by the Frederick County Sheriff's Office's headquarters to see old friends, Barrick said.

Sheriff's deputies took over patrolling Brunswick Tuesday so all of the city's officers could attend the funeral.

"Just because he left, that bond between our agencies still remained intact and even got stronger," Barrick said.

Follow Ryan Marshall on Twitter: @RMarshallFNP
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It happened suddenly.

Last month, my social media and messages bristled with comments and kvetching from angry, impatient or desperate people longing for their COVID-19 vaccine. This month, they blossomed with images of smiling, satisfied, grateful people showing off their shot selfies and Department of Health vaccination cards.

New Mexico ranks among the top states with the highest percentage of its population vaccinated against COVID-19, well ahead in the race to herd immunity. Now, finally, it feels like it. In my corner of the world, our personal winters are finally melting. Spring has sprung.

As of Tuesday, nearly 31% of the population in New Mexico is fully vaccinated; slightly more than 48% have had their first dose.

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................................................................

With all New Mexicans 16 years and older now eligible for a COVID-19 vaccination and without need to wait to receive an event code, our numbers are likely to shoot up even more.

By contrast, 19% of people across the nation are fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

We dont have a lot of resources, you know, here in New Mexico, Dr. Laura Parajon, deputy secretary for the state Department of Health, said in an interview this week with NBC Nightly News. But we have a lot of heart.

New Mexico also has a lot of minds absorbing the science behind the virus and the vaccine.

That hasnt always been easy. Although a plethora of reliable information is available  the CDC, state DOH, Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center and the Journal, for starters  the science and the data are sometimes confusing and conflicting.

So let me make it easy: If we ever want a semblance of normalcy again, if we ever want to eat, drink and be merry with others, attend a crowded concert or game, hug a loved one, open up the economy, squash new virus variants, stop dying in higher numbers, the vaccine is our best hope.

We are our best hope.

Experts say at least 70% of us must be vaccinated in order to reach herd immunity and diminish the threat of coronavirus and its variants.

Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health explained in a recent interview with the New York Times what is likely to happen if we fall short of this goal: If we get stuck at 60 or 65% vaccinated, we are going to continue to see significant outbreaks and real challenges in our country, and its going to be much, much harder to get back to what we think is normal unless we can get that number higher.

Which is to say that while New Mexico is doing well in terms of vaccination, we still have a long way to go.

To get there will take continued availability of vaccines, continued leadership and continued commitment of National Guard, DOH and health care workers, students and volunteers to keep jabbing arms. It will also take increased efforts to reach communities with high proportions of minorities, poverty, isolation and educational deficits.

My colleague Colleen Heild (another reliable resource) reported Saturday that the CDC ranked New Mexico 37th-lowest among 48 states in vaccine coverage for residents living in counties with such high vulnerabilities.

Perhaps an even harder subset of folks to reach are those who continue to believe that COVID-19 is no worse than the flu or a hoax to ruin the economy. These are the folks who argue that wearing a mask is a violation of their freedoms, who think Dr. Anthony Fauci is a liar, who believe the vaccine kills, isnt safe or is really the governments sneaky way of injecting us with tracking microchips.

In this sci-fi world, the virus and vaccine has been politicized, an attack by the left against the right.

A woman named DiAnn opined on Facebook: NO MORE MASKS, NO MORE LOCKDOWNS. There is NO proven science these work.

Where does this wackadoodle stuff come from? I rarely get an answer when I ask.

One woman declared on Facebook she would not get a vaccine because it is killing an enormous number of people. She said that information is on the CDC web site. Its not.

When I asked her about it, she threw out a few expletives and blocked me.

And so it has gone.

We have moved so far from the days when Americans lined up for polio vaccines with little hesitation. We believed in the science, believed in our leaders. And we believed in the public good  and agreed, by and large, what that public good was.

A healthy dose of skepticism is a good thing, but not if it leads to leaning on conspiracy theories. Such alternative realities often develop in the maw of chaos, and these past few years have been among the most chaotic in many of our lifetimes.

I dont know how we change the minds of vaccine naysayers other than to keep suggesting credible resources for information and to keep being good examples of how to work together to keep COVID-19 on the run. If that means posting shot selfies and smiles on social media, so be it.

This is a race. The virus is mutating, still able to overtake us again. New Mexico is in the lead at the moment, but the race isnt over yet.

UpFront is a front-page news and opinion column. Reach Joline at 730-2793, jkrueger@abqjournal.com, Facebook or @jolinegkg on Twitter.
Shlenker Schools bear hugs bring comfort to children in crisis

Noa Lador and Julian Stevens get their bear ready for donation.

Houston firefighters from Station 68 got a great big bear hug from second-graders at The Shlenker School on Tuesday, March 30. It was the 24th year Shlenker students provided bears to first-responders to comfort children in crisis while they are being transported.



Students gave the bears directly to firefighters, who came to the day school on a ladder truck to pick up the gifts. While there, firefighters showed the students the jaws of life, fire hoses and firefighter gear. They also demonstrated fire safety details, such as stop, drop and roll.



One of the things I love most about this project is that I feel that the kids can connect with this child that they will never meet because theyve all been scared at one time in their life, Alisa Davis, a second-grade teacher at Shlenker, told the JHV, So its easy for them to imagine what another childs going through. And so, I think that helps build empathy for this child.



Fellow second-grade teacher Elizabeth Hooper agreed.



I think its really important to them because having to ride in an ambulance is something that most 7- and 8-year-olds would find somewhat intimidating, Hooper told the JHV.



So, knowing that when the children get their bears, it calms them down and they find it really soothing. I think that makes a really big impact, and they really think theyre doing something that would benefit another child.



When the stuffed bears are assembled, children place a heart inside and say their own special prayer for the child that will receive it. Then, they hug the bear.



They also wrote about their feelings, about giving away the bears and about their wish for these kids, too, said Davis. And, my kids wrote letters to G-d.



While this year wasnt as grand as years in the past, due to COVID-19, the students still were able to donate 30 personalized stuffed animals. Before coronavirus, they would take a field trip to a mall to craft the animals, but this year they had a company come to them.



Besides the bears, students raised funds through a readathon, reading more than 100 books and collecting $4,454 in sponsorship money. The money was donated to Medilife, a charity that provides defibrillators and other needed equipment to fire stations.



Reflecting on the project that the second grade has done for so many years, Hooper added, I think its just nice, that in a year when everything looks different, its lovely when you have something stay the same.




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Tucker Carlson ripped into Arkansas Gov Asa Hutchinson over his decision to veto a bill that would ban gender confirming treatments and surgery for transgender youth, accusing him of supporting the 'chemical castration' of children.

Carlson and Hutchinson engaged in a heated debate on Fox News on Tuesday night after Arkansas' Republican legislature voted to override the governor's veto and move forward with enacting the bill.

The interview was rocky out of the gate as Hutchinson, a Republican, immediately took issue with Carlson's description of the bill.

'The legislature in Arkansas a recently passed a bill that would ban doctors from prescribing so-called "puberty blockers", heavy duty hormones, to children who believe they are transgender,' Carlson said.

'The law also bans surgeons from physical castration of children. But the governor vetoed that bill on Monday. Legislators just voted to override that veto, which brings us to where we are right now.'

Addressing Hutchinson he said: 'I think of you as a conservative. Here you've come out publicly as pro-choice on the question of chemical castration of children. What changed?'

Hutchinson replied: 'Well, first of all, your teaser as you led into this program did not accurately represent the bill. If this had been a bill that simply prohibited chemical castration, I would have signed the bill.

'But Tucker as you know, this bill was over-broad, it was extreme, it went far beyond what you just said. And I made it clear that if this was about prohibiting procedures, sex reassignment surgery, absolutely, I would have signed that bill.

'But this is the first law in the nation that invokes the state between medical decisions, parents who consent to that and the decision of the patient. And so, this goes way too far.'

Tucker Carlson ripped into Arkansas Gov Asa Hutchinson over his decision to veto a bill that would ban gender confirming treatments and surgery for transgender youth on Tuesday

Carlson interrupted: 'If I could just correct you for a second,' the host said. 'This is chemical castration, of course, if you stop puberty and suppress the sex hormones, you are chemically castrating. So our description is correct.

'We are talking about minors, children here. There are all kinds of things in Arkansas, kids in every state are not allowed to do. Get married, drink a beer, get a tattoo. Why do you think it's important for conservatives to make certain that children can block their puberty, be chemical castrated, why is that a conservative value?'

'First of all, you have parents involved in very difficult decisions. You have physicians that are involved in these decisions. And I go back to William Buckley. I go back to Ronald Reagan. The principles of our party, which believes in a limited role of government.

'Are we, as a party abandoning a limited role of government and saying we are going to invoke the government decision-making over and above physicians, over and above healthcare, over and above parents and say you can't do that?'

Carlson then asked: 'How deeply have you studied this topic? With respect, it doesn't sound like you have studied it very deeply.'

He noted that 'this is an emerging field' with limited research - to which Hutchinson said he has studied the research available and had spoken with experts and faith leaders on the issue before making his veto decision.

'I'm a person of faith, but at the same time, I'm a person of limited role of government,' he said. 'I signed pro-life bills. I sign many bills that would be looked at as very conservative. But this is one that crosses the line. There is no need for it.'

The image above shows LGBTQ activists rallying outside the Arkansas State Capitol in Little Rock on March 19 against proposed legislation

Carlson continued to press Hutchinson on what research he'd reviewed before repeatedly questioning whether the governor's decision had been influenced by corporations.

After the second ask Hutchinson stated: 'Tucker, I answered that. I answered that question and I said, no, I have not. You have another question?'

Tucker replied: 'Governor, with respect, I am skeptical that not a single corporation in the state of Arkansas has weighed in with you one way or the other on this bill. I am skeptical.'

Hutchinson sought to shift the conversation back to his argument that he was aligned with the conservative value of limited role of government.

'We don't have to invoke ourselves in every societal position out there. Let's limit the role of government. Let parents and doctors make decisions,' he said.

Tucker pushed back: 'Then why don't we allow 18-year-olds to drink beer in Arkansas? Why don't we allow them to get tattoos? Why don't we allow 15-year-olds to get married?

'You have vetoed a bill that would have protected children from a life altering permanent procedure that has effects we can only guess at. But the early indication is they are very serious and very negative in some cases.'

Hutchinson responded: 'These are difficult decisions. You want to listen to the medical professionals, to professional counselors, to parents? Or do you want to leave all of these decisions to the legislators that come from all different kinds of backgrounds?

'Yes, they are elected to represent you, but they do not necessarily make the right judgments for parents and for doctors in the most sensitive issues.'

Carlson pushed back yet again before ending the interview without having reached common ground with the governor.

Hutchinson is pictured at a news conference announcing his veto on Monday

Arkansas lawmakers on Tuesday made the state the first to ban gender confirming treatments for transgender youth - a day after Hutchinson vetoed it.

The bill prohibits doctors from providing gender confirming hormone treatment, puberty blockers or surgery to anyone under 18 years old, or from referring them to other providers for the treatment.

Opponents of the measure have vowed to sue to block the ban before it takes effect this summer.

With his veto, Hutchinson yielded to pleas from pediatricians, social workers and the parents of transgender youth who said the measure would harm a community already at risk for depression and suicide.

The ban was opposed by several medical and child welfare groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics.

'This legislation perpetuates the very things we know are harmful to trans youth,' Dr Robert Garofalo, division head of adolescent and young adult medicine at Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago, told reporters on a press conference call held by the Human Rights Campaign.

'They're not just anti-trans. They're anti-science. They're anti-public health.'

The bill's sponsor dismissed opposition from medical groups and compared the restriction to other limits the state places on minors, such as prohibiting them from drinking.

'They need to get to be 18 before they make those decisions,' Republican Rep Robin Lundstrum said.

The Family Council, a conservative group that backed the measure, praised lawmakers for enacting 'historic legislation'.

The law will take effect in late July at the earliest. The American Civil Liberties Union said it planned to challenge the measure before then.

'This is a sad day for Arkansas, but this fight is not over - and we're in it for the long haul,' Holly Dickson, ACLU of Arkansas' executive director, said in a statement.

The override, which needed only a simple majority, passed easily in both chambers, with House voting 72-25 in favor and the Senate 25-8.

Opponents of the bill have vowed to sue to block the ban before it takes effect this summer

The ban was enacted during a year in which bills targeting transgender people have advanced easily in Arkansas and other states. Hutchinson recently signed legislation banning transgender women and girls from competing on teams consistent with their gender identity, a prohibition that also has been enacted in Tennessee and Mississippi this year.

Hutchinson also recently signed legislation that allows doctors to refuse to treat someone because of moral or religious objections.

And the Legislature isn't showing signs of letting up. Another bill advanced by a House committee earlier Tuesday would prevent schools from requiring teachers to refer to students by their preferred pronouns or titles.

The Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest LGBTQ rights group, said more than 100 bills have been filed in statehouses around the country targeting the transgender community. Similar treatment bans have been proposed in at least 20 states.

The foundation established by the family of Bentonville-based Walmart's founder on Tuesday raised concerns about the recent measures in Arkansas targeting LGBTQ people.

'This trend is harmful and sends the wrong message to those willing to invest in or visit our state,' Tom Walton with the Walton Family Foundation said in a statement released before the override vote.

One lawmaker opposed to the measure compared it to the anti-integration bills Arkansas' Legislature passed in 1958 in opposition to the previous year's desegregation of Little Rock Central High School.

'What I see, this bill, is the most powerful again bullying the most vulnerable people in our state,' Democratic Sen Clarke Tucker said before the vote.
The Cross-Canada Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee is holding its first public meeting this Sunday, April 11, at 1 p.m. Eastern Time to advance a program to close all schools and save lives. Register here to participate.

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed enormous physical, emotional and psychological strain on all education workers. This includes school caretakers, who are expected to open, clean and close elementary and high schools in the course of a normal work day, thereby placing them at high risk for contracting the virus and bringing it home to their loved ones.

Michael, a caretaker from Toronto, attended a recent meeting of the Cross-Canada Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee (CERSC), where he made a powerful appeal for a united struggle by teachers, caretakers, and other education staff to secure safe working conditions. The World Socialist Web Site spoke to Michael about his experiences at work during the pandemic and his views on the political establishments criminal disregard for the health and safety of working people.

Due to a predictable surge in COVID-19 infections, Toronto Public Health was forced to reverse course and order Jarvis Collegiate (pictured above) and all the city's other schools closed starting today, April 7. (Wikipedia)

I work for a Toronto school board where the high schools are only open half days, so they are safer than the elementary schools, he said. The high school buildings are mostly empty by the time I get there. I worked at a working class neighbourhoods elementary school yesterday where there were 20 classes and half were closed due to COVID cases. Yet, somehow the school is still open. It is very dangerous for the cleaning staff, and really for anyone in there.

Michael discussed the impact of the pandemic on working conditions for him and his colleagues. Before COVID, my working conditions were a bit better. I did not have as much anxiety about the environment, he explained. Now, working in unsafe workplaces the anxiety is the biggest difference, and morale has gotten lower. I go to a bunch of different schools every day. I definitely look forward to working in high schoolsit is easier, more relaxed, less anxiety.

Elementary schools have more students and staff. They are packed, when everyone is in class, staff and students. Those day shifts are the worst, the risks are a lot higher. There could be 500 out of 800 students in class in one school building because some classes are sent home to isolate or are sick, I dont know which.

Michael condemned the claims made by politicians to have hired more caretakers to clean schools. Yes, they claim to have hired 200 more people and they are still hiring this month in my school board. But many older workers are taking early retirement and they also find it difficult to maintain supplies, he commented. The school boards claims of more staff are mostly PR, because there are not more staff despite the new hires. They did give us a new kind of disinfectant for floors and multi-surface cleaning. We disinfect bathrooms and desks, floors. Sanitizers and masks are supplied, but we dont have those PPE for the body like the nurses wear in dirty areas. We just have gloves, masks, some of us wear goggles when we are mixing chemicals.

We asked Michael whether he knew of colleagues getting infected and what he thought of the governments vaccine rollout. Friends of friends got it and got quite sick, he responded. I have not gotten vaccinated and I dont know why they have not expanded vaccines to all ages. I dont know when young people like me will be vaccinated. I worry about getting it with the new variants before they get me vaccinated

The government strategy to keep schools open so parents can go to work and maintain business profits is not working for us. The resurgence in COVID-19 cases merits a lockdown, but the federal and provincial governments are staying status quo. They should have closed all non-essential workplaces and the big drivers of the infection rateAmazon fulfillment centers and big plants. It is a losing battle because they wont do the big lockdowns that are needed. The big giants, the Amazons, the President Choice warehouses, are profiting big time.

There is a lack of financial support for people to say at home to get the cases down. Some right wingers say its draconian. So what? It works. The (Ontario Doug) Ford government is unwilling to go that far. They much prefer to protect business profits even though closing it down is the best thing to do.

Michael criticized the profits before lives policy embraced by all levels of government across the country, irrespective of their political stripe. The economy comes first, he said. The federal and provincial governments are owned by their donorsthe rich Liberals, the rich Conservatives and the banks! The Liberals and Conservatives serve Bay Streets interests. They are Number 1, yep.

The school teachers union has been silent. We caretakers are members of CUPE Local 1280 and since I started working here I have not heard a thing from the union. No union reps to be seen. All the caretakers who worked at my board for many years say there have been no emails from the union, no monthly meetings, complete silence. We have not even gotten the meagre pay raise negotiated in the last contract. Its pretty bad, no joint action between school workers, nothing. I am generally a union supporter, but I am sure I am not the only one who has become disillusioned. The problem is the leadership has been neutered by the government. The leadership is really letting down the rank-and-file. Nobody is in a good situation. I would say they are not doing enough.

Michael explained that he learned about the CERSC from an article on the WSWS and contacted us because he wanted to do something to improve working conditions. Commenting on his experience at the first CERSC meeting he attended, Michael added, I think the discussion was good. It was about the union leadership and how they were basically corporatist and useless. Yes evidently it is clear that the union leadership is not looking out for our interests and we are going to have to fight for ourselves and take matters into our own hands. All school staff should come together, the secretaries, teachers, caretakers, the child care workers. The more we come together the stronger we will be. Its not working now because that is not what we are doing.

Michael stressed that the unions have no intention of organizing such a struggle, remarking, They are basically working with the government to suppress the workers.

I read an article about how the teachers union was against striking last September. I dont know why the caretakers are not striking. The caretakers have power. If we dont show up, the school is not opened. They would all be closed. The union leadership should be saying we have had enough of this bullshit and we are all not showing up until our demands are met, whatever the demands of the rank-and-file are! That is what they should be doing! Challenging the power and making those in positions of power afraid.

The union leadership, useless people like (Unifor President) Jerry Dias, have colluded with the people that they are supposed to make afraid and fight. They have become our enemy I guess, in a way. Regardless of the industry, they completely ignore the rank and file. They dont fear us and they have clearly switched sides, and the businesses dont fear us and the governments dont either.

Concluding with a message to his fellow caretakers and education workers across Canada, Michael explained, I think if only the workers knew they had the power! A lot of workers dont think we do. Theyve internalized the anti-worker propaganda. It takes a lot of courage to challenge power. It can be scary, but workers do have the power by withholding their labour, not showing up to work whether you are a teacher, caretaker, or grocery store worker. The rank-and-file has to take back power, cause a ruckus. My message is just that it is up to us to ignore and defy rotten union leadership and really take control ourselves and put fear into the bosses and union leaders. Take back control of our workplaces for ourselves and look out for each other. It wont be easy but we have no choice, no other option, we must do it. The pandemic is getting much worse.
Care and Feeding is Slates parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here or post it in the Slate Parenting Facebook group.

Dear Care and Feeding,

I grew up in Ireland, where we werent allowed to speak our language or participate in our culture in any way by English law. I went to America for college and married an American man, and am now pregnant. I suggested to my husband that I speak Irish and he speak English to the baby, so they grow up bilingual. He said the baby wont be speaking a language he doesnt speak.

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Im heartbroken, since he knows how hard it was for me and my family to be so disconnected from our culture, and how hard we foughtand Irish people still fightfor our language not to die. When I tried to explain this, he rolled his eyes and said his family is descended from French and Italian as well as English, so by my logic we should teach the baby four languages. 1) He only speaks English. 2) We could learn as much French and Italian as we can before the baby comes if its important, which I told him. 3) His families immigrated here more than 100 years ago, and Ive never heard him talk about those cultures before now.

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Ive tried to discuss this calmly over the past few days, which has only resulted in worse and worse fights, until he finally yelled that Im white and I should stop acting like Im special, or the babys going to think white people are oppressed. Ive never compared our occupation with what people of color go through in America, or any country. Since moving here my husband and I have participated in protests and political meetings for racial equality, and never once has he mentioned that my desire for connection to my culture is offensive or even related to the fight of oppressed people in America. I dont understand why he is offended at the idea of our child having the freedom to know this part of their culture, which is so important to me since I know the pain of it being illegal. Is this inappropriate in America? Is it giving up solidarity with people of color if I teach my child my language, when many people face racist violence for not speaking English?

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Erin Go Wha?

Dear Erin Go Wha,

No, of course teaching your child to understand and appreciate their Irish heritagethrough language and other meansin no way conflicts with your wish to be in solidarity with people of color in the U.S. Your husbands comment about teaching the baby French and Italian, and the out-of-left-field accusation that it is somehow  racist(?) of you to want your child to speak your countrys language, is a clear example of derailment. The bottom line, I suspect, is that he doesnt want his child to know something he doesnt, and he might also fear being left out in some way if you and your child share a language he doesnt understand. Both these things strike me as regrettably small and petty of him, perhaps springing from some insecurity (about himself, or his potential to be a good parent, or both), and Im sorry youre dealing with his attitude as fallout.

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I think its wonderful that you want to share a language and other cultural knowledge and traditions with your child. They also have a right to their heritage. While it would be ideal to have your husbands understanding and cooperation, you do not actually need his permission to teach your child about their roots or the culture the two of you will share.

It really sounds like there has been a communication breakdown, given both his accusations and the fact that he yelled them at you. I think hes the one at fault, and I find his behavior to be a bit of a red flag. Both of you might benefit from some marital counseling if you find you cannot communicate about or work through this on your own. I hope that your husband starts being more reasonable and more generousto both you and your future childand that you can get on the same page before your baby arrives.

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Dear Care and Feeding,

My boyfriend and I have been together for over two years. We have a somewhat nontraditional relationshipwe dont live together and dont plan to any time soon, and dont want to marry, but we are committed partners. He has a 7-year-old daughter and 50-50 custody, and I am struggling with my role in her life.

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The stance of my boyfriend and society in general seems to be that if youre dating someone with a child, you must love that child as your own, or not date someone with a child. The thing is, I dont love her as my own. I do love her, but like I would a friends child. I dont miss her when shes at her mothers, but am glad to see her when shes with my boyfriend. I make an effort to spend one-on-one time with her; I read with her every day, do arts and crafts with her, take her hiking, and play dolls with her. I bathe her, feed her, and do her hair. We have a solid relationship, but Im not her mom, and dont want to be.

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My boyfriend has been asking his ex for more time with his daughter, and then he wants me to help more and watch her so he can focus on his hobbies. I think he shouldnt ask for more time if he himself isnt going to spend it with her. When we met, he made it clear he wasnt interested in marriage or cohabitation, and that was appealing to me. Had he said he wanted me to be a second mom to his kid, I wouldnt have pursued things with him. Im not a parent, and dont know if Im missing something because of that. If I dont love his child like my own, should I break things off? Is it unfair that I dont want to take on more time with her so my boyfriend can do his hobbies?

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Not Looking to Be Mommy No. 2

Dear Not Mommy No. 2,

To me, it sounds like your boyfriend might not want to have to arrange his schedule around his childs needs, so he expects you to pick up the slack during his appointed time with her. And then he implies the problem may be that you dont love his kid enough? I say this not to be harsh, but because I dont think anyone should be framing this issue as a failure of love on your partas you seem to be, at least a little, with questions like: If I dont love her like my own, should I break things off? (I guess Im also not entirely sure what love a child as your own means, since an unfortunate number of parents dont truly love or appreciate the kids theyve got.) Nor do I think you have to be a second mom or third parent to your boyfriends child, or love her as if she were your kid. It would not be ideal if you disliked her, nor acceptable if you mistreated her, but it is 100 percent fine and appropriate to love her as you would a friends child. Its also great that you like spending some time with herI bet she also enjoys reading and doing crafts and going on outings with you.

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Shes not your kid, though, and you arent the one who shares custody of her. Its not your responsibility to dig deep for some level of emotion you do not have, or be responsible for most of her care during your boyfriends weekends with her. If he wants to ask for more time together, I agree with you that he should be using it, not just going off and pursuing his hobbies while always expecting you to babysit. It sounds like youre already doing and helping a lot!

I might be tempted to break things off if you talk about all this with him and he doesnt change; him trying to get out of actually caring for his child would be a deal-breaker for me. But I dont think this amounts to a terrible lack of love or feeling on your part. You said it yourself: Had he said he wanted me to be a second mom to his kid, I wouldnt have pursued things with him. Thats a fine thing to know and recognize about yourself. If you dont want to be in a situation where he expects you to parent his kid (while he does other things!), you do not have to be.

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 If you missed Tuesdays Care and Feeding column, read it here.

 Discuss this column in the Slate Parenting Facebook group!

Dear Care and Feeding,

My 10-year-old son Matt has autism. He has recently had a lot of change in his life, including leaving an elite K12 private prep school he had attended since kindergarten that had become very unkind and frankly cruel after a recent change in several administrators and a particularly incompetent and ableist teacher this year. Prior to that, the school had generally been a good environment for him, but things changed rapidly this year under the new regime. Several wonderful speech and OT therapists have quit the school recently, which is very telling about the shift in mindset.

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We made the agonizing decision to remove him from the school (which his older sibling still attendswe did not want to have tremendous disruptions in both our kids lives at the same time). We home-schooled him for a few months so Matt could regroup from his hurt and trauma. After careful consideration of our options, we decided to put him in our zoned public school, which has been great so far and very supportive. He seems to like it there, although is still upset at times about leaving his old school. Matt is in the general education classroom with accommodations as we wait for the IEP evaluation process to be completed. We expect he will remain in the general ed classroom, possibly with some support services as he does well academically with a little extra help. However, he has recently begun to deny his ASD diagnosis claiming, I do not have autism. Prior to this, he had been accepting the diagnosis reasonably well, although he did not tend to talk about it much unless we brought it up. We generally use a low-key approach in explaining his diagnosis (everyone has strengths and challenges, that type of thing).

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He had only recently begun to show interest in developing peer friendships, previously preferring to play alone at recess most days, etc. The new friendship interests had been challenging even before the school change. I think between his new awareness that peer relationships are more difficult for him and the painful process of changing schools, he just does not want to feel different right now. My question is: How do we best handle his new resistance to his diagnosis, while still supporting his emotional needs through this transition? We do not want to be in his face, forcing the issue constantly, but nor do we want him to feel bad about himselfhe is much more than his diagnosis. We love and treasure our sons sweet spirit and admire his tremendous courage and perseverance. Should we just give him some time and space with periodic gentle reminders? Maybe address it a little more after he has settled into his new school and over the summer? He does have an amazing speech therapist outside of school to help him navigate the process of finding his way in a new school and has been in counseling throughout all this. Any wisdom you can offer would be much appreciated.

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Worried in Florida

Dear Worried,

As the parent of an autistic child, this really made my heart hurt for yours. I think its not uncommon for autistic kidsor any other kidto experience times when they may wish to deny certain things about themselves, especially if those things have made them a target for exclusion and/or cruelty. I also think youre on the right track in terms of not pressuring your son to talk about this right now if hed rather not. You mention the trauma he went through: It makes so much sense that he would need to process and heal from that before he can do anything else.

I reached out to Julia Bascom, executive director of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, who confirmed that this is a fairly common experience, especially for kids whove been bullied or worse because theyre autistic. If you are different, and people use that difference to justify hurting youor even if you are hurt and also learn about your difference at the same timeit can make sense to try and disavow your difference as a way to protect yourself, she said. Bascom affirmed that what your child needs most right now is to feel loved, safe, celebrated, and accepted unconditionally at home and by as many other people as possible as he processes what happened to him at his old school.

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Bascom recommended that you continue discussing and normalizing the fact that everyone is good at some things and requires help with others, and that any supports your son needs at school are OKyou dont necessarily have to associate those supports and accommodations with his autism, she pointed out; its more important that he receive and accept them without feeling embarrassed or stigmatized. She also suggested that you continue to periodically sprinkle in conversations about autism, and that those conversations be explicitly and only positive and include both real-life and fictional autistic people he might be able to look up to. Dont make autism the focusfocus on the person, and lightly note that theyre autistic. He can make the connection. Give him lots of positive role models, and the space to process that, she said. Hes going to have plenty of time to come to terms with having a disability and the tougher aspects of autism as he grows up. Right now, just make sure he feels loved.

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Dear Care and Feeding,

Since high school, my young adult daughter has a cycle of behavior that I, her feminist mother, find perplexing. Essentially, she falls in love and takes the position she must prioritize her partners happiness over her own by making decisions (like where to live) that make my daughter miserable. When it eventually becomes obvious her partner is comfortable with her being miserable forever while they get everything they want, she breaks up. Then she turns right around and finds a different, immature, self-centered partner. Of course, none of these partners offers her any long-term commitmentwhich may actually be a blessing. I try to be respectful in reminding her that compromise in an equal and loving relationship doesnt require one partner consistently agreeing to be frustrated and miserable. Is there any other way I can help her break this vicious cycle?

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Negotiating Happiness

Dear Negotiating,

Im sure this is frustrating and sometimes heartbreaking to watch, because you love your daughter and want her to be happy and loved and valued. But you obviously cannot make her life/relationship choices for her or choose her partners. Its possible that she may not need you to keep reminding her about what true compromise is or what makes a loving relationshipits not that those points arent real and valid, but youve already told her, and I could see repeated talks about this coming across as more lecturing than supportive. No doubt she knows that your reminders are coming from love. Still, repeated this is what an equal, loving relationship should be talks could be received as criticismyou continuing to point out an area of her life where she is perhaps failing, or even disappointing you.

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You dont have to table the advice forever; I understand you want her to know that she deserves better. I think if I were you, right now Id just want to do everything I could to voice what I appreciate about my daughter, affirm how much I love and value her, build her up in every possible way I can. I dont want to presume based on the little youve shared here, but in case some lack of self-esteem or self-worthand not just bad luck in loveis a factor for her, I think your unconditional love and support will prove more important and valuable in the long run than a continued stream of the most well-meaning relationship advice.

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 Nicole

More Advice From Slate

My boyfriend recently proposed, and I happily said yes. Weve only been engaged for a few weeks, and suddenly things are on the rocks. His parents are constantly criticizing me for my lack of religion, my clothes, etc. Ive learned to deal with that. But recently they came to meet my parents and told them that they had done a poor job raising me. My parents are wonderful people and Im completely horrified that my prospective in-laws treated them so badly. My fiance says that I should try harder with his parentsI think he needs to tell them that they need to act with respect toward me and my family. Were at a stalemate, and Im seriously thinking of breaking off the engagement. Am I wrong to expect that if my in-laws cant be respectful toward my family, then my fiance needs to draw some boundaries between me and his parents?
Ankara, April 7 : A massive trial, concerning the failed 2016 coup in Turkey, nears conclusion on Wednesday when an Ankara court is expected to deliver its verdict for 497 defendants.

The trial started in October 2017 and has seen 243 hearings, reports dpa news agency.

Among the accused are former senior soldiers from the presidential guard regiment, according to state news agency Anadolu.

The prosecution is demanding life imprisonment for 90 defendants and a lengthy prison sentences for several others.

Prosecutor separately asked to acquit 264 suspects and continue the trial against 11 fugitives, Anadolu reported.

The suspects are accused of occupying the the state broadcaster TRT headquarters in Ankara on the night of the coup, July 15, 2016.

Other accusations include attempting to overthrow the Constitution and membership in a terrorist organisation.

A total of 104 are already behind bars while 11 are on trial in absentia.

Ankara blames the US-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen for orchestrating the failed coup, and has designated his movement as a terrorist group.

The cleric denies charges.

Turkey arrested tens of thousands and dismissed more than 100,000 from public service since the failed coup, 21,000 of them from the armed forces alone.

Out of a total of 289 trials into the coup attempt, 14 are still ongoing, according to Anadolu.
[April 07, 2021] TMRW launches TMRW Creators Camp to help millennials with a passion for content creation make tomorrow theirs

BANGKOK, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- TMRW by UOB, the first mobile-only bank for ASEAN's digital generation, has launched TMRW Creators Camp, to equip millennials with skills and knowledge to further their dream career of being a content creator. TMRW, in collaboration with RAiNMaker, Thailand's leading content creator community, and a day magazine, Thailand's cutting-edge content publisher, will organise a series of training workshops on digital content creation from May to June 2021. The TMRW Creators Camp is open to anyone who is currently pursuing a career as a professional content creator. Applicants must have their own YouTube or Facebook channel with at least 1,000 followers. Mr Natee Srirussamee, Head of Retail Digital, UOB Thailand, said, "As a mobile-only bank designed specifically for ASEAN's digital generation, our goal from day one has always been to support our customer's aspirations. From smart financial solutions to initiatives such as the TMRW Creators Camp, we want to give our customers a leg-up as they pursue their ambitions. "With Thai consumers close to three hours on average on social media channels such as YouTube, Instagram and TikTok[1] and as more companies and businesses redirect their advertising spend on digital channels[2], a career as a digital content creator can be a dynamic and sustainable one. We hope that through the TMRW Creators Camp, participants will be able to develop or enhance their digital skills and learn how to engage their audiences better to succeed in their chosen career path." TMRW Creators Camp is open for application from 1 April to 20 April 2021. Applicants should send a short video introducing themselves and why they wish to join the TMRW Creators Camp through TMRW website. Up to 100 successful applicants will be invited to attend four virtual workshops that cover the main elements of digital content creation including storytelling, creativity in content, creating video content and conducting a live steaming. They must attend all workshops and complete all assignments on the given topics. The workshops are hosted by prominent content creators in Thailand namely Aou Spin9, Ayashi Channel, Boom Tharis, Cee Chatpawee, Codie, Eddy, Ken Nakarin, and Softpomz. At the end of the four workshops, ten finalists who have had that highest grade in their assignments based on the creativity, engagement and production quality, will be invited to join a masterclass. During this masterclass, they will have the opportunity to learn from legendary content creators such as Nong Wongtanong, co-founder of a day magazine and The Standard, Rawit Hanutsaha, a successful entrepreneur behind the famous blog "Mission to the Moon", and Suthichai Yoon, one of the most established and influential journalists in the country. The winner will be awarded cash and content production equipment such as a digital camera, laptop and wireless microphones worth about 1 million baht to support their own professional content creation careers. For more information about the TMRW Creators Camp and application criteria, please visit www.tmrwbyuob.com/tmrwcreatorscamp and TMRW Thailand Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/tmrwthailand.







[1] Source: 'Digital 2020: Thailand', We Are Social and Hootsuite, 2020 [2] Digital advertising spend in Thailand has grown by double digits over the last five year. In 2020, Facebook received the highest proportion of advertising spend (32 per cent), followed by YouTube (21 per cent). Source: Digital Advertising Association (Thailand), 2020

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The man who died in a Queensland hospital from complications due to COVID-19 on Tuesday was former Papua New Guinean governor Malcolm Kela Smith.

Malcolm Kela Smith died from complications of COVID-19. Credit:Twitter

Queensland Health confirmed the 77-year-old man, a dual PNG-Britain national, died on Tuesday afternoon in Redcliffe Hospital, where he had been cared for since he was airlifted from Papua New Guinea on March 28.

Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said Mr Smith wasnt infectious during his time in the hospitals ICU.

Im very grateful, as we all are, to the staff there who managed him to the best of their ability to give him that chance, she said on Wednesday.
For years, Democrats in the State Legislature had worked to expand voting in Kentucky, both by putting forward large, transformative bills that never had a chance of passing, and pared down efforts like simply seeking to keep polls open until 8 p.m. (Kentucky currently closes polls at 6 p.m. on Election Day, the earliest shuttering time in the country along with Indianas.) The party was consistently rebuffed by the State Senate, which has been controlled by Republicans since 1999.

No one can argue: This expands voting options in Kentucky, Mr. McGarvey said. Every Kentuckian has more choices of when and how to vote than they did before this law. So thats something we have been fighting for for years, and Im not going to slow it up.

Republicans have been quick to praise the bill. Mr. Paul said in a statement that he was proud of the effort, and that it would ensure our elections are accurate and accessible. The Honest Elections Project, a conservative group that has joined legal efforts seeking to roll back voting access, said the bill had found a balance on the need for both access and security.

Joshua Douglas, a professor of election law at the University of Kentucky who was part of a small team of county election officials and other experts who consulted with Mr. Adams on the initial effort, said that its not the bill I would have written by any means.

He added: But it has a lot of stuff I like and not a ton I hate.
Two people have been shot and killed in Maryland overnight after authorities say an off-duty Pentagon police officer opened fire on them, thinking they were trying to break into a car.

The Takoma Park Police Department stated in a press release that the deadly officer-involved shooting took place just after 5am on Wednesday at Takoma Overlook Condominiums on New Hampshire Avenue in Takoma Park.

According to police, officers responded to the condominium parking lot after receiving multiple reports of shots fired.

A Pentagon Force Protection Agency officer opened fire in the parking lot of this condominium building in Takoma Park, Maryland, Wednesday morning, killing two people

They were met at the scene by an off-duty Pentagon Force Protection Agency officer, who told them that he had witnessed 'what he thought was a car being broken into.'

The Pentagon cop confronted the suspected car burglars, who were said to have failed to follow his commands.

The pair of suspects then reportedly jumped into a car and tried to flee, at which time the Pentagon officer pulled out his service weapon and opened fire.

A short time later, the suspects arrived at Prince George's Hospital, where both died from gunshot wounds.

The Takoma Park police said it was actively investigating the fatal shooting in consultation with the Montgomery County State Attorney's Office.

As of late Wednesday afternoon, no arrests have been announced in connection with this case.

Police have not identified the Pentagon officer and have not released the names of the two deceased suspects, pending the notification of next of kin.

A spokesperson for the police department told The Washington Post that 'there is evidence to support the officers statement' that the suspects were trying to break into a car.

Two suspects in a car burglary were pronounced dead from gunshot wounds at Prince George's Hospital

The incident marks the second time in as many weeks that a Pentagon police officer has discharged his weapon while off duty.

On March 24, a member of the Pentagon Force Protection Agency shot and wounded a 16-year-old boy who police said tried to rob him at gunpoint in Southeast Washington, DC.

The Pentagon cop told DC police that he made a failed attempt to wrestle a BB gun out of the teen's hands, and then pulled out his own service weapon and fired a single shot.

The 16-year-old survived and was later charged as a juvenile with assault with intent to commit an armed robbery.
Killers Tom and Molly Martens are set to walk free from prison after they were granted bail by a US court in a bond set at 170,000 ($200,000).

But the 71-year-old father and his 37-year-old daughter will now face a full retrial for the second degree murder of Irish widower Jason Corbett (39).

It is a move his Limerick family warmly welcomed last night after a controversial plea bargain deal apparently collapsed.

Both had been held until now without bond in a North Carolina jail but their defence lawyers brought a bail application before a Davidson County judge after they won a landmark NC Supreme Court judgement last month which quashed their conviction for the brutal murder of Irish father of two in August 2015.

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Mr Martens, a former FBI agent, and his daughter, a former nanny, are set to be released from custody after serving almost four years behind bars on a 20-25 year prison sentence for second degree murder.

They were set to be released within hours once the bail bond was confirmed.

One of the conditions of their being granted bail and released on bond is that they have no contact, direct or indirect, with the family of Mr Corbett and his two children, Jack (16) and Sarah (14).

A second condition is that both must surrender their passports and undertake not to apply for new passports.

Mr Corbett's sister, Tracey Corbett-Lynch, said it was a huge relief for the family that a retrial will be staged.

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We welcome todays decision by Garry Frank, the District Attorney for Davidson County, to seek a retrial of Tom and Molly Martens for the murder of Jason Corbett, a loving, kind, father of two who was beaten to death in his own home," she said.

"We look forward to a date being set for a retrial at the earliest opportunity.

"Jason's death was caused by unimaginable, horrific and heinous violence. The depravity of others on that night changed so many lives forever.

"We strive to live in a society with morals, values and kindness. We cannot allow for executions in our homes. We have to stand together against those who think they are above the law, those who can cruelly inflict injury in the most heinous, barbaric way, enough to cause death ten times over."

She said the Martens have shown no remorse just utter contempt for their victim, his children and his grieving family."

"For almost six years now, Jasons orphaned children have had to listen to the Martens spewing self-serving lies on social media about their father," she said.

"When the children were aged 10 and eight, they were brought on the afternoon of the funeral service for their father to interviews with a social worker. They were coached and intimidated by Molly Martens into making false statements about their father in those interviews.

"Once they were safely home in Ireland and out of the evil clutches of Molly Martens, the children recanted those statements."

"The children are prepared to give evidence in a retrial and spent two days being interviewed by detectives in North Carolina last week."

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She said they were grateful to the people of North Carolina who have been a tremendous support to the family since Jasons killing in 2015.

They had shared the familys public concerns about the prospect of the Martens being offered a plea deal to manslaughter instead of facing a retrial, she said.

"A lifetime won't erase the images of the torture Jason endured. A lifetime will not erase the physical and emotional scars left on Jason's children, Jack and Sarah. We face a lifetime of loss, but our only solace comes in knowing that justice will be served, and a jury will get to hear the truth of Jason's heart and the lies of his heartless killers."

Defence solicitor Jones Byrd, part of Tom Martens 2017 trial team, welcomed the bail ruling by the Davidson County court and said it was hoped the former FBI agent would be released from custody late on Wednesday evening.

The bond hearing attracted enormous media attention with a large contingent of US and Irish TV crews, journalists and photographers present.

A number of people also attended to show their support for the Corbett family including former work colleagues of Jason Corbett.

Had the father and daughter secured a plea bargain deal to voluntary manslaughter, they would have faced serving just two more years in prison.

Their high profile murder trial was staged over July and August 2017 in Davidson County Superior Court - located right beside the jail in Lexington, North Carolina where they were yesterday in custody.

Both would have served four years behind bars next August.

Any retrial is not expected before late 2022 with a major backlog of murder trials in North Carolina because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Martens family has already said that, when released, both would return to their homes in Knoxville, Tennessee "without fanfare."
Former ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan was falsely accused and arrested in the sensational espionage case in 1994. Supreme Court has on Monday agreed to hear next week Union of India's IA filed in the case of former ISRO Scientist Nambi Narayanan.

Former ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan was falsely accused and arrested in the sensational espionage case in 1994. Nambi continued his legal battle until the Supreme Court in 2018 ordered him a compensation of Rs 50 lakhs well as directed a judicial committee to probe the alleged conspiracy, which falsely implicated him in the case.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has sought an urgent hearing in the 1994 espionage case against ISRO scientist Dr S Nambi Narayanan who was charged with leaking confidential information pertaining to Indias space development. The ISRO spy case falsely accused Nambi of espionage, and of selling vital state secrets of the ISRO including test data from the rocket and satellite launches to Pakistan.

In an exclusive interview with NewsX, Nambi Narayanan where the former ISRO scientist talked in great length about his time in jail and how Indias scientist was tortured. Earlier back in 1995, the CBI cleared him and since then he has been fighting a legal battle against the then top police official Siby Mathews and other officials including S Vijayan and KK Joshua. The cops are believed to have maligned him and implicated Nambi in the conspiracy. It is a bitter experience. But of course, it is not as bad as the interrogation, There the torture was so heavy, detailed Narayana.

Also Read: China holds naval drills near Taiwan; Time Taiwan amps up prep against potential Chinese invasion

The IB and the police investigating me didnt know the difference between rocket and satellite. They target institutions- not institution wise, but via a person, added the scientist. I was repeatedly assaulted and theres no question, was told I didn;t deserve water. I refused to sit because they called me a traitor, told Nambi Narayana.
Twenty one employees of Ministry of Employment and Labor's National Labor Consultation Center in Ulsan's Jung District were tested positive to COVID-19 in a cluster infection on April 6. Yonhap



South Korea reported the most new coronavirus cases since mid-February Wednesday as sporadic cluster infections continued to pile up across the country, raising concerns that the country may again grapple with another wave of the pandemic.



The country reported 668 more COVID-19 cases, including 653 local infections, raising the total caseload to 106,898, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said. It marked a sharp rise from 478 the previous day and the largest since 621 daily infections on Feb. 18.



The daily caseload had been hovering above 500 since Wednesday last week, before falling to 473 on Monday due to fewer COVID-19 tests over the weekend.



The country added four more deaths from COVID-19, increasing the total to 1,756. The fatality rate came to 1.64 percent.



South Korea has been reporting more than 300 daily new patients since early February with no signs of letup due to nationwide cluster infections.



Major recent cases included a bar in the southern port city of Busan, which had reported 290 infections as of Tuesday.



Authorities have warned that the country may see the daily caseload of over 600 amid increased spring travel and loosened vigilance against the virus, signaling that enhanced virus curbs may be adopted to stem the further spread of COVID-19.



More transmissible variant cases are also straining the country's virus fight. As of Monday, a total of 330 variant cases from Britain, South Africa and Brazil had been found since October.



South Korea also urged its people to follow sanitary guidelines as they show up to cast ballots for mayoral by-elections in Seoul and the southern city of Busan on Wednesday, in which millions are expected to participate.



Local authorities plan to release new social distancing guidelines, which will be implemented starting next week.











Rental buses are parked at Tancheon public parking lot in Seoul's Songpa District on April 6. Korea's Ministry of Land and Transportation said they will roll out a subsidy fund for those in the rental bus operating business, which was hit by COVID-19's financial impact. Yonhap
Two police officers injured after Rome lockdown protest turned violent.

A demonstration by restaurant and bar owners against Italy's covid-19 lockdown restrictions saw protesters clash with police outside parliament in Rome on the afternoon of 6 April.

The protest, which also included members of the far-right group Casapound, resulted in the injury of two police officers and saw seven protesters being detained, reports Italian news agency ANSA.

Amid chants of "Work!" and "Freedom!" the demonstration in Piazza Montecitorio saw protesters demand the government to reopen businesses shut under Italy's coronavirus restrictions.

Police believe that several extremist groups "infiltrated" the demonstration with the aim of stoking an already tense situation, according to ANSA, with the clashes described as "unacceptable" by Italy's interior minister Luciana Lamorgese.

Over the last year the governments of Giuseppe Conte and Mario Draghi have allocated millions of euro in financial aid to the hard-hit restaurant sector, which is severely affected by the country's strict anti-covid rules.

Clashes in Rome on 6 April. Photo Today

Bars and restaurants remain closed at night and - under the current red and orange zone restrictions - are open only for takeaway during the day.

Protests against the anti-covid measures were also held in Milan and Naples, with street vendors blocking the north-south A1 motorway between Naples and Caserta.

Among the demonstrators in Rome was Hermes Ferrari, a 51-year-old owner of a pizzeria in the northern city of Modena, who attracted media attention due to being dressed in a similar way to the "QAnon shaman" Jake Angeli who stormed the US Capitol in January.

Boasting that he has defied the government's rules by opening to diners since 15 January, Ferrari told online newspaper ModenaToday: "We are exasperated... I hope that now someone notices us and listens to us. I had to pay loan sharks to pay employees."

Ferrari's views were echoed by many of yesterday's protesters, some of them in tears, who shouted: "We just want to work, we don't ask for anything else."

Cover photo: Bologna - La Repubblica
EV

SUV

Well, its not that easy because taxpayer cash isnt usually spent on vehicles that have the title major gas guzzler attached to it. Things might change in the near to mid future, though, as GM pushes out the new zero-emissions version . But some of us dont have the patience to wait for what could be years before seeing a Hummerdressed up with the Police Interceptor livery.Luckily, among the impatient ones theres Behance user Aksyonov Nikita andmere days from the early-April official introduction of the 2024 GMC Hummer EVhe's already come up with the virtual Police Interceptor version.Its really no surprise to see the Saint Petersburg, Russia-based virtual artist go down this route since he did the exact same thing with the 2022 GMC Hummer EV truck upon its release (as well as many other popular models, such as the A90 Toyota GR Supra or the C8 Chevrolet Corvette).This time around, though, seeing the Police Interceptor modifications adopted by the SUV version seems like a more logical match compared to the truck version. Upgrades include neat heavy-duty wheels, a beefier suspension setup, or the legendary black and white graphics package and red/blue lighting set.Its probably because the 2024 SUV is a bit more compact than its bed-equipped sibling, so its sleeker dimensions would make it a better fit for urban environments as well. On the other hand, it does come with a maximum of 830 horsepower instead of 1,000 hp promised by GM on the trucks Edition 1.Still, there are very slim chances to see either of these two start such official duties, as theres also the small matter of pricing. And it is anything but small, with the duo kicking off at $105,595 (SUV) and $112,595 (truck) for the already fully booked Edition 1s.
People lining up for the Covid-19 vaccine in the Spanish city of Gijon. J.L.Cereijido / EFE

Spains regions managed to administer nearly 1.3 million Covid-19 vaccines between March 30 and Tuesday, according to the Health Ministry. That figure is similar to that of the seven previous days, when 1.25 million shots were injected, which suggests that the campaign was not slowed down by the Easter break. But this pace will not be enough to hit the central governments targets: the current speed is equivalent to 600,000 people a week, while 1.4 million will be necessary if 70% of the adult population is to be vaccinated by September.

The data supplied on Tuesday by the Health Ministry indicate that, to be precise, 1,284,390 doses have been administered in the last seven days, compared to 1,249,531 shots the week before. During the vaccination campaign so far, 9,021,001 doses have been injected, while 2,902,291 people have received the two shots necessary for the full protection offered by the vaccine. A further 6,118,710 people now have at least one dose, which is important given that a single shot has been shown to offer a high level of protection from Covid-19.

The number of people who have already been vaccinated shows that the regional governments are moving forward without keeping hardly any of the vaccines in reserve. After its use was briefly suspended due to fears over blood-clot cases, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is once again being used in Spain. Whats more, now that it has been shown that the second dose can be delayed with no effect on the protection offered by the vaccine, Spains regions are opting to vaccinate as many people as possible with the first dose.

The latest report from the ministry shows that more than 93% of the vaccines it has sent to the regions until Monday have been used, although the percentage falls to 75.7% if the 2.2 million shots sent on Tuesday are taken into account  of course, there has not yet been time to administer these doses, nor even defrost them. Whats more, as the campaign has progressed, differences in the rate of administration from region to region have evened out, and practically all of Spains territories are administering all of the vaccines that they are receiving.

According to the latest data, more than 93% of the vaccines sent to the regions have been administered

The speed of the campaign is still slow, however, as Fernando Simon, the director of the Health Ministrys Coordination Center for Health Alerts (CCAES), admitted on Monday. We could absorb a lot more vaccines if we were to receive them, the governments chief epidemiologist said. He cited the countrys flu shot campaign, during which as many as 14 million people were vaccinated in seven weeks without making a major effort. In fact, that rate of two million doses a week has still not been reached with the Covid-19 vaccines.

The aim now is to roll out the immunization process to groups of younger people, who are easier to assemble at mass-vaccination sites and have fewer risks. Whats more, the Janssen vaccine  which has been approved by the European authorities for use but is not yet being administered in Spain  requires just one shot and does not need to be stored at extremely low temperatures. The use of this medication will help to speed up the process.

On March 31, the Health Ministry began to supply information on the campaign broken down by age group. The latest report shows that the majority of people who have already received the two doses are the over-80s (1.3 million people of the 2.2 million who have full protection), followed by 750,000 people aged between 25 and 49, from the essential workers group (teachers, police officers, healthcare workers, etc.).

A health worker administering the first shot of the Pfizer vaccine in Madrid. Eduardo Parra / Europa Press

With this data, the question still remains as to whether 33 million people can be vaccinated before September, as Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez promised on Tuesday at a press conference. The milestones for the campaign, however, rely on a constant supply of doses. In the nearly three-and-a-half months since the process began on December 28, there have been two major interruptions to the supply chain. The first came in January, when Pfizer closed a plant in order to increase its capacity. And the second, and which had a much greater effect, was due to the problems that AstraZeneca is having to produce the vaccines at the agreed rate.

Speaking on Tuesday, Sanchez blamed the British-Swedish company for the delays to the process in the European Union.

Given the problems with the supply, the EU has readjusted its purchasing calculations. It should be pointed out that Spain is not acquiring the vaccines itself but rather via a European mechanism, by which it is due approximately 10% of all the supply acquired by the European Commission. Even after these cuts in supply are taken into account, Sanchezs objective appears feasible.

A total of 2,902,291 people have received the two shots necessary for the full protection offered by the vaccine

On Tuesday, speaking with more clarity than the countrys health ministers had done previously, Sanchez set the clear objective of vaccinating 70% of Spains adult population before the end of the summer  or to put it another way, 33 million people.

And the calculations suggest this can be done. For the second quarter of the year, which has just begun, more than 300 million two-dose vaccines are expected to arrive in the EU, which would be enough to immunize 150 million people  of whom around 15 million will be in Spain. Whats more, Janssen should be delivering 55 million doses to the EU, which will mean 5.5 million fully vaccinated Spaniards given that this medication requires just one shot to offer full protection.

This means that Spain could have immunized around 30 million people by the end of June should all of the targets be met  and that would leave another two months to meet the objective that Sanchez set on Tuesday. Although the European Commission does not have a detailed estimate of how many doses it will receive going forward, if nothing changes from the second quarter to the third, Spain could vaccinate a further 13 million people, when just three million would be sufficient to hit the prime ministers target by the end of August. In the meantime, other manufacturers  such as Curevac and Sputnik  could enter the market, which would ramp up the speed even further. The other factor, of course, is that the regional healthcare systems have the capacity to administer all the doses. Until now, they have been more than up to the task.

English version by Simon Hunter.
[April 06, 2021] PowerSchool Files Registration Statement with SEC for an Initial Public Offering

PowerSchool, the leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education, today announced that it has filed a registration statement on Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission relating to a proposed initial public offering of shares of its Class A common stock. The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. PowerSchool has applied to list its common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "PWSC." Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Barclays, Credit Suisse and UBS Investment Bank are acting as lead bookrunning managers for the offering. BofA Securities, Jefferies, Macquarie Capital and RBC Capital Markets are also acting as joint bookrunning managers. Baird, Piper Sandler, Raymond James and William Blair are acting as co-managers. The offering will be made only by means of a prospectus. Copies of the preliminary prospectus relating to this offering, when available, may be obtained from: Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Prospectus Department, 200 West Street, New York, NY 10282, telephone: 1-866-471-2526, facsimile: 212-902-9316 or by emailing Prospectus-ny@ny.eail.gs.com; or Barclays Capital Inc., c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717, telephone: 888-603-5847 or by emailing Barclaysprospectus@broadridge.com.



A registration statement relating to these securities has been filed with the SEC (News - Alert) but has not yet become effective. These securities may not be sold, nor may offers to buy be accepted, prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy these securities, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction. Any offers, solicitations or offers to buy, or any sales of securities will be made in accordance with the registration requirements of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended ("Securities Act"). This announcement is being issued in accordance with Rule 134 under the Securities Act. About PowerSchool:

PowerSchool is the leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education in North America. Its mission is to power the education ecosystem with unified technology that helps educators and students realize their full potential, in their way. PowerSchool, widely recognized as the most comprehensive suite of mission-critical K-12 education solutions, connects students, teachers, administrators, and parents, with the shared goal of improving student learning outcomes. From the front office to the classroom to the home, it helps schools and districts efficiently manage instruction, learning, grading, attendance, assessment, analytics, state reporting, special education, student registration, talent, finance, and human resources. PowerSchool supports over 45 million students and 12,000+ districts, schools, and other education institutions in over 90 countries. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210406006182/en/

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Amazon has become the first company to endorse Joe Biden's corporate tax hike to pay for its $2 trillion infrastructure plan - despite the online giant being one of the savviest tax strategists in the world.

Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of the company, and the world's richest man, said in a statement on Tuesday that Biden's plan 'will require concessions from all sides'.

He spoke on the day Forbes, for the fourth year running, crowned him the world's richest.

Despite his company's own highly-controversial tax schemes, Bezos said Amazon was 'supportive of a rise in the corporate tax rate,' and called the plan 'a bold investment in American infrastructure'.

Bezos added that it was 'the right time to work together to make this happen'.

Amazon paid no federal income tax in 2017 or 2018, and paid just $162 million for 2019.

For 2020, the company paid $1.835 billion - an effective federal rate of 9.4 per cent, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

That compares to a pretax income worldwide of more than $20 billion in 2020, and is far short of the current corporate tax rate of 21 per cent.

The companys stock price rose about 76 per cent in 2020, with a valuation now of about $1.6 trillion.

Jeff Bezos on Tuesday came out in support of Joe Biden's $2 trillion infrastructure plan

Biden announced on March 31 the details of his infrastructure plan, which would see huge investment in roads, airports, public transport, internet connectivity and key facilities.

He intends to raise the corporate tax rate from 21 per cent to 28 per cent to fund it.

Speaking at a union hall in Pittsburgh, the president called it a vision to create 'the strongest, most resilient, innovative economy in the world' - and said it would create millions of 'good-paying jobs' along the way.

Bezos, who announced in February that he was stepping down as the CEO of the online retail empire he founded in 1994, has long been dogged by criticism of his own company's aggressive tax measures.

Bezos, pictured with girlfriend Lauren Sanchez, is stepping down as CEO later this year

Biden, seen on Tuesday, unveiled on March 31 his plan to improve America's infrastructure

Amazon always point out that they are using legal measures.

In December 2019 campaign group Fair Tax Mark singled out Amazon as the worst of the 'Silicon Six' - Facebook, Google, Netflix, Apple and Microsoft - for shifting revenue and profits through tax havens or low-tax countries, and for also delaying the payment of taxes they do incur.

In a statement issued at the time, Amazon said: 'Governments write the tax laws and Amazon is doing the very thing they encourage companies to do  paying all taxes due while also investing many billions in creating jobs and infrastructure. Coupled with low margins, this investment will naturally result in a lower cash tax rate.'

In 2020, Amazon paid an effective federal income-tax rate of 9.4 per cent, despite a year of massive pandemic-driven profits, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

The company's 2020 full-year profits, reported in February, soared year-on-year to $21.3 billion - the highest level in company history.

Bezos's own wealth, according to an Oxfam report issued in January, climbed so much during the pandemic that between March and September 2020 he could have given all 876,000 Amazon employees a $105,000 bonus and still have been as wealthy as he was before COVID-19 hit.

Nearly 6,000 Amazon warehouse workers in Alabama are currently awaiting the preliminary results of a unionization vote, which could be released at any moment by the National Labor Relations Board. The voting closed on Friday at the end of a hard-fought battle, which could have massive implications for the company's future work practices.

Campaigners calling for the first Amazon union, in Bessemer, Alabama, are seen in February

Workers at the Alabama facility are hoping to become Amazon's first unionized workforce

In 2019, Amazon only paid $162 million in federal taxes to the US government after reporting more than $13 billion in profits, according to the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

That was essentially a tax rate of about 1.2 per cent, after the company was allowed to defer $914 million in federal income taxes.

If Amazon had paid the full 21 per cent, its $162 million tax payment would have ballooned to $2.8 billion.

Thanks to those same deferments, the news was even better for Amazon in 2018, when it actually had a $0 federal tax bill, according to the SEC filing.

Critics said Bezos's backing of the tax hike was self-serving, as it would improve infrastructure that his company needs.

The activist group Tax March pointed out that Amazon relied on 'roads, bridges and infrastructure' paid for by taxpayers' money.

Dan Price, CEO of Gravity Payments, said that his company worked with 20,000 small businesses that were paying a higher rate of tax than Amazon.

One complained that Bezos's support was 'a cheap way for Amazon to get the country to expand his biz.'

Another pointed out the problem was tax loopholes, while another said that CEOs often hid their money in secret bank accounts.

Biden's plan was endorsed by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Monday.

The Business Roundtable, an organization that represents CEOs of major US firms, issued a statement strongly opposing the tax increase as a way to pay for the infrastructure plan, saying it would create 'new barriers to job creation and economic growth.'

In 2017, then-President Donald Trump signed a new bill law that slashed the corporate tax rate from 35 per cent to 21 per cent.

This tax cut, in addition to legal deductions and exemptions, have resulted in several large companies paying $0 in taxes.

A total of 55 companies paid no federal taxes last year despite making billions in revenue, according to a report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP).

The companies represent industries such as telecommunications, utilities and computers.

A further analysis found that 26 of those companies, including FedEx and Nike, have paid no federal income tax for at least three years after the Trump tax cuts.

A new report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that 55 large U.S. companies paid no federal income tax last year and 26 companies avoided taxes for three years

In his Prime! Bezos tops world's wealthiest chart for FOURTH year as Forbes lists a record 2,775 global billionaires worth $13.1 TRILLION

Forbes' annual world's billionaires list includes a record-breaking 2,755 billionaires, with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos topping it for the fourth consecutive year, as the wealthiest saw huge gains in investments even as the global economy sagged during the coronavirus.

The number of billionaires on the list of the world's richest people grew by 660 people in 2020, Forbes said - a record increase.

And 86 percent of the people on the list are more wealthy than they were last year, Forbes said.

The ranks of the ultra-wealthy are expanding after a year in which the coronavirus pandemic upended world economies and threatened the livelihoods of people across the globe.

At No. 1, Amazon's Bezos clocked in at a staggering $177B, cementing his spot as the wealthiest billionaire on the list.

Tesla founder Elon Musk zoomed into the No. 2 spot with $151 billion. Tesla stock is up more than 560 percent over the past year, helping put a motor under Musk's worth.

For comparison, the median net worth in the U.S. is $121,411, according to Federal Reserve data. Median means half the country is worth more and half is worth less.

Even the 'top one percent' that is oftentimes touted as the country's elite had an average household net worth of just over $11 million in 2020 - a far cry from the billionaire's list.

This year's billionaires are worth a combined $13.1 trillion, up from $8 trillion last year, Forbes said.

And the richest cities are tilting toward China: Five of the top 10 richest cities in the world are within China, if counting Hong Kong, which comes in at No. 3.

Beijing takes the top crown for city with the most billionaires at 100, while New York comes in at No. 2 - just shy of the top with 99.

Tech billionaires, meanwhile, increasingly dominate the list, Forbes says: They're worth a combined $2.5 trillion on the list, up about 80 percent from the $1.4 trillion they logged in at last year.

And 365 of the billionaires had fortunes made in technology, Forbes said - up from 241 last year.

Jeff Bezos had a staggering $177B, cementing his spot as the wealthiest billionaire on the list. Pictured in Mumbai, India, on Jan. 16, 2020, with girlfriend Lauren Sanchez

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk jumped into second spot on the list with $155B, up from 31st last year. He's pictured with his baby X  A-12, which he had with musician Grimes

The tech industry is the second-biggest contributor to the list, coming just under finance and investments, which has 371.

'The very, very rich got very, very richer,' said Forbes' Chief Content Officer Randall Lane, in an interview with Reuters Video News.

Of the 660 who were added to the list this year, 493 were brand new to the list. (Some had fallen off and re-gained their status.)

The increase of 493 brand new billionaires means one was minted roughly every 17 hours, according to Forbes calculations.

The U.S. has the most people on the list, with 724. China has 698 when including Macao and Hong Kong.

Bernard Arnault, chief executive of luxury goods firm LVMH, and Microsoft founder Bill Gates were the next two wealthiest billionaires

Investor and business tycoon Warren Buffett fell out of the top five for the first time in over two decades, as tech executives dominate the Forbes rankings and as Mark Zuckerberg knocked him out for the fifth seat

Stock prices from March 5 were used to calculate net worth, Forbes said.

Bernard Arnault, chief executive of luxury goods firm LVMH; Microsoft founder Bill Gates; and Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg round out the top five of the world's richest billionaires.

Investor and business tycoon Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, fell out of the top five for the first time in over two decades, as tech executives dominated the Forbes rankings.

Top 10 wealthiest people on the Forbes billionaire list 1. Jeff Bezos (U.S.) - $177Billion; Amazon founder and CEO 2. Elon Musk (U.S.) - $151Billion; Tesla's chief executive 3. Bernard Arnault (France) - $150Billion; chief executive of luxury goods firm LVMH 4. Bill Gates (U.S.) - $124Billion; Microsoft founder 5. Mark Zuckerberg (U.S.) - $97Billion; Facebook chief executive 6. Warren Buffett (U.S.) - $96Billion; Investor and business tycoon 7. Larry Ellison (U.S.) - $93Billion; Chairman, chief technology officer and cofounder of software giant Oracle 8. Larry Page (U.S.) - $91.5Billion; Co-founder of Google, controlling shareholder 9. Sergey Brin (U.S.) - $89Billion; Co-founder of Google, controlling shareholder 10. Mukesh Ambani (India)- $84.5Billion; Chairman, managing director of Reliance Industries, India's most valuable company by market value Advertisement

Other notables included Michael Bloomberg, with $59 billion, at 20; and Nike founder Phil Knight, with $49.9 billion, at 25. Oprah and her $2.7billion secured the 1174 spot.

MacKenzie Scott, the Amazon CEO's ex-wife, was 22 on the list with $53billion.

There were only six women in the top 50 billionaires.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey came in at 173 with $12.5billion.

Former President Donald Trump notably dropped almost 300 spots as he had an estimated worth of $2.4billion, putting him at spot 1,299.

Last year, Trump came in at 1,001 on the list.

Of the top 50 billionaires, 24 of them are from the United States. Only 10 are from China.

But while he has fallen lower on the list, the former president is still richer than he was when the pandemic started last year.

The rate at which his wealth grew was slower than that of others on the list.

This year's list has 493 newcomers, includes Whitney Wolfe Herd, chief executive of dating app Bumble, which went public this year. She came in at 2,263 with $1.3billion.

Kim Kardashian is 2674th on the list of Forbes Billionaires. Since October, her net worth has increased from $780million to $1billion, according to the magazine.

Ex-husband Kanye West is also on the list - he is ahead of Kim, in 1750th place with a net worth of $1.8billion.

Kylie Jenner is no longer on the list, after selling a 51 percent stake of her company in 2020.

Last April, Kanye West was named a billionaire by Forbes - largely the most trustworthy media authority on who gets the name - after pleading with them for months to look at his financials.

He said they'd snubbed him repeatedly for years, leaving him off of the annual April list, because of his race.

He showed them financial records from his enormously successful sneaker and clothes line, Yeezy, which backed up his status.

It's unclear how their respective fortunes will be divided in their divorce, but it is more than likely the pair signed a pre-nuptial agreement when they got married in 2014.

This year's list has 493 newcomers, including Kim Kardashian - who came in at 2674th on the list. Kanye West is also on the list - and the ex-husband is ahead of Kim, in 1750th place with a net worth of $1.8billion

Kim is the third person in her family to earn billionaire status.

Kylie Jenner, her 23-year-old sister, was the first in 2018 when, aged 21, she was named the youngest self-made billionaire in history.

New to the list is Miriam Adelson, widow of Sheldon Adelson who died earlier this year. The Trump supporter and CEO of Sands Entertainment appears to have left his wife his entire fortune. She clocks in at $38.2 billion - good for No. 36.

Meanwhile, U.S. stocks are up more than 10 per cent so far this year, so billionaires are likely - at least so far - to be racking up gains in the coming year, too - perhaps cementing even more into the rich list.
A bill that would make Alabama the 37th state to allow medical use of products made from marijuana cleared one hurdle today today at the Alabama State House.

The House Judiciary Committee approved the bill Sen. Tim Melson, a Republican from Florence.

The approval came on a voice vote after the committee waded through about 15 amendments, adopting some. There were some no votes, but there is no recorded vote on a voice vote.

Committee approval moves the bill a step closer to becoming law, although more votes are ahead. The bill next goes to the House Health committee. If approved there, it could come to a vote on the House floor for the first time.

I think its got a good chance to get through Health, Melson said. And then when we go to the floor, well just see what happens.

Melsons bill would set up a commission that would oversee regulations of medical cannabis products from cultivation of the plants all the way through production and sales at dispensaries.

Melson is a physician and medical researcher who says the weight of evidence and experiences in other states favors giving people in Alabama a chance to try medical marijuana for chronic pain, sleep disorders, seizures, muscle spasms, nausea and weight loss from cancer and other ailments and other symptoms and conditions not relieved by conventional medicines.

Doctors could recommend medical cannabis products to patients, who would receive a medical cannabis card and be placed in a state registry.

Melsons bill would not allow the use of raw plant materials or products that can be smoked, and it would not allow food products containing marijuana, like cookies or brownies.

The Senate approved Melsons bill in February. It has passed the Senate three times but has never had a vote on the House floor.

The Judiciary Committee was scheduled to consider the bill last week, but the chairman, Rep. Jim Hill, R-Moody, postponed it for a week because he said lawmakers wanted to discuss changes to the bill with Melson.

Edited at 8:37 a.m. April 8 to insert a missing word.
The New Jersey Department of Corrections has received its first allotment of body cameras for officers to wear at the states only womens prison, which has been under intense scrutiny in recent years after allegations of sexual abuse and most recently, an ongoing criminal investigation into a violent attack against a group of inmates.

The department announced Tuesday that the pilot program is being funded by a $250,000 grant award from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and will initially launch at Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women.

The initiative comes after the DOJ in April 2020 found that rampant sexual abuse at Edna Mahan was an open secret that persisted for years. The facility was thrust back in the spotlight earlier this year after authorities say a number of correctional officers allegedly violently assaulted at least two inmates and attempted to cover it up.

The state Attorney Generals office has charged eight correctional officers so far in the ongoing criminal probe into the January incident. At least six inmates have told investigators they were assaulted during the attack.

For years, lawmakers and advocates have called for more oversight of the prison, while some have even called for it to be shutdown.

Department of Corrections (DOC) Commissioner Marcus Hicks, who is facing calls for his resignation over the issues at Edna Mahan, said in a statement that the body camera program will offer greater oversight, accountability, and security of our facilities.

(It) complements our existing camera surveillance program by serving as a deterrent of inappropriate behavior increasing the safety of the incarcerated population and staff, while supporting reductions in allegations of misconduct, use of force, and the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), the law designed to prevent, detect and respond to incidences of sexual abuse and harassment in confinement Hicks said.

A DOC spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on when or how many Edna Mahan correctional officers will be outfitted with a body camera through the program.

The pilot program will also include Northern State Prison officers at a later date, according to the DOC. The department said it intends to roll the body camera program out across other DOC facilities, if there is funding available.

In November, state Assemblywoman Yvonne Lopez, D-Middlesex, introduced a bill that would require all officers in state prisons wear body cameras.

This bill is designed to provide an unparalleled level of transparency, Lopez, D-Middlesex, said when she introduced the bill. A lot of time abuse takes place in blind spots, where footage is not collected.

The bill (A5039) was referred to the Assemblys Law and Public Safety Committee and has not been acted upon since.

NJ Advance Media staff writer Blake Nelson contributed to this report.

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MISSISSAUGA, Ontario, April 06, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SEB Administrative Services Inc. (SEB Admin), a subsidiary of Smart Employee Benefits Inc. (SEB, TSXV:SEB), is pleased to announce it has signed a White Label TPA joint venture (JV) agreement with Gesticonnect, a leading Third-Party Administrator (TPA) operating in Quebec focused on emerging market companies. The JV brings a strong partnership to SEB and expands our White Label TPA offering in the Quebec market. Pursuant to the JV, SEB will deploy and support our FlexPlus suite of benefit processing solutions and services to Gesticonnect clients.



The FlexPlus Value Proposition

SEBs FlexPlus suite of products and services are leading edge and proven in the enterprise market. The same leading-edge functionality, available to some of Canadas most sophisticated clients, will now be made available to emerging market clients. Many of our FlexPlus modules provide unique functionality not typically available in other administration solutions. This new level of digitization will provide Gesticonnect clients with new digital tools and features, including quotes, billings, manage broker commission, client management, analytics, security and voluntary insurance products. This will allow Gesticonnect to enhance their services and solutions to their clients. Brokers will enjoy new revenue models. Plan Sponsors and Plan Members will have an enhanced user experience, better analytics and more flexible benefit plan designs.

The FlexPlus TPA environment is fully supported and managed from a multi-lingual ecosystem in Montreal which also services a national client base across Canada. The Quebec market represents a significant share of SEBs global business and this transaction allows SEB to both increase our commitment in Quebec and grow our local service delivery infrastructure in Quebec to service emerging clients in Quebec and across Canada.

States Tim Beaulieu, CFO of Smart Employee Benefits Inc., SEB has a large presence in Quebec with multiple enterprise clients, both government and corporate. We currently provide benefit processing and IT solutions and services to more than 30 enterprise clients, representing over 120,000 employees and over $250M of premium. This JV with Gesticonnect expands SEBs footprint in Quebecs emerging market and allows us to increase our investment in our Quebec infrastructure. Our Quebec infrastructure is a critical component of our ecosystem supporting our national and global client base.

States Denis Plante, Associate President of Gesticonnect, The emerging market comprises 99.7% of all businesses in Quebec, a largely underserved market for leading benefits administration solutions. The JV with SEB brings highly cost-effective leading-edge technology and business solutions, currently available primarily in the enterprise market, to Brokers, MGAs and TPAs in Quebec.

The FlexPlus ecosystem will provide emerging businesses in Quebec access to fully bilingual digital solutions, allowing them to cost effectively provide more user-friendly access and more flexible benefit plan designs for their employees. FlexPlus will also provide analytics to make more optimal business decisions, enhancing their overall competitiveness. We have worked with SEB for the past year to assess the suitability of the FlexPlus platform for the Quebec emerging market. SEBs existing client base in Quebec includes a number of Quebecs largest and best-known entities, corporate and government. We are confident the FlexPlus solutions being made available to our emerging market clients are proven with leading edge bilingual functionality. These solutions are also deployed across Canada with a number of Canadas largest employers. We are pleased that a huge portion of SEBs operating infrastructure is bilingual, based in Quebec and serves both Quebec and SEBs national client base. Our JV with SEB will contribute to the growth of SEB local infrastructure in Quebec.

A Quebec-based Ecosystem to Modernize the SME Market

The evolution of benefits administration in the emerging market is long overdue. This JV brings together two innovative teams with benefits, technology and delivery expertise to ensure a strong requirements and strategy fit for the Quebec emerging market. Extending access to robust high value-added group benefits solutions with support from a Quebec based, dedicated multi-lingual team, will help harmonize the delivery of benefits to Quebec employees in the emerging market.

About Gesticonnect

Gesticonnect is a provider of innovative technology solutions that enable employers to enhance their benefits offering while simplifying the experience for employees and directors by integrating leading-edge proven technologies. Gesticonnect offers all of its solutions and services through its independent network of group insurance and annuity advisers. The JV with SEB puts Gesticonnect at the forefront of leading technology solutions for benefits processing in the Quebec marketplace.

About SEB Administrative Services Inc.

SEB Administrative Services Inc. (SEB Admin), a subsidiary of Smart Employee Benefits Inc. (SEB, TSXV:SEB), is a third-party administrator (TPA) providing leading edge cloud-based, fully bilingual, benefit processing solutions using SEB Admins proprietary technologies and custom solutions and services of Partners. SEB Admins FlexPlus platform provides single sign-on connectivity for all group benefit stakeholders. FlexPlus has over 20 modules supporting multiple revenue models, capturing over 90% of all benefit processing activities for all benefit types. Each module can operate standalone or as an integrated solution. SEB Admin manages benefit plan environments for more than 50 of Canadas name brand companies and government entities. SEB Admin has over 350,000 plan members under administration and more than 180,000 additional plan members under contract and in transition; in total representing more than $1.3B of premium. FlexPlus cloud-enabled solutions support all plan designs  traditional, flex, cafeteria, hour bank, dollar bank, marketplace  via co-sourced, fully outsourced or SaaS models. Our solutions turn cost centers to profit centers for many of our clients and partners.

For further information about SEB Administrative Services Inc., please visit: www.seb-admin.com.

About Smart Employee Benefits Inc. (SEB):

SEB is a proven provider of leading-edge IT and benefits processing software, solutions and services for the Life and Group benefits marketplace and government. We design, customize, build and manage mission critical, end-to-end technology, people and infrastructure solutions using SEBs proprietary technologies and expertise and partner technologies. We manage mission critical business process for over 150 blue chip and government accounts, nationally and globally. Over 90% of our revenue and contracts are multi-year contracts related to government, insurance, healthcare, benefits and e-commerce. Our solutions are supported nationally and globally by over 600 multi-certified technical professionals in a multi-lingual infrastructure, from 11 offices across Canada and globally.

Our solutions include both software and services driven ecosystems including multiple SaaS solutions, cloud solutions & services, managed services offering smart sourcing (near shore/offshore), managed security services, custom software development and support, professional services, deep systems integration expertise and multiple specialty practice areas including AI, CRM, BI, Portals, EDI, e-commerce, digital transformation, analytics, project management to mention a few. We have more than 20 partnerships with leading global and regional technology and consulting organizations.

For further information about Smart Employee Benefits Inc., please visit: www.seb-inc.com.

Forward-looking statements

This news release is intended for information purposes only. Statements made in this news release may contain "forward-looking" information about the company's future business prospects. These statements while expressed in good faith and believed to have a reasonable basis are subject to risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth or implied by such forward looking statements. Investors should consult a professional advisor before making any investment decision.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange Inc. nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange Inc.) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Media contacts

Mohamad El Chayah, President & CEO

SEB Administrative Services Inc.

Tel: 416.418.0619

mohamad.elchayah@seb-admin.com

www.seb-admin.com

Investor contact

John McKimm, President/CEO/CIO

Smart Employee Benefits Inc.

Tel: 416.460.2817

john.mckimm@seb-inc.com

www.seb-inc.com
Over-50s insurance and cruise giant Saga has hailed 'significant pent-up demand' from vaccinated customers to travel again as it posted a heavy slump in profits for 2020.

The company plans to rehire 500 of the workers it axed last year as it looks ahead to the resurgence of a burgeoning holiday season this summer, according to Sky News. Saga, which was originally poised to restart its cruises in May, axed 1,400 jobs in the year to 31 January.

The group confirmed it was ready to restart its tour operations and cruise business later this year when it is given the green light by Government.

Ready for action: Over-50s insurance and cruise giant Saga has hailed 'significant pent-up demand' from vaccinated customers to travel again

Shares in Saga have jumped sharply today and are currently up 9 per cent or 31.3p to 379.9p. A year ago the shares were trading around 230p after the Covid crash in stock markets.

The holiday and travel sector has been hammered by the pandemic and Saga revealed today that its pre-tax profits plummeted by 84.4 per cent to 17.1million for the year to 31 January.

The company said it also saw a reduction in the value of its travel assets due to the impact of Covid-19, which would have dragged it to a loss for the year.

Revenues slumped over 57 per cent to 337.6million, primarily due to the suspension of travel operations from March last year.

The group also reported lower retail broking revenues as the pandemic weighed on travel insurance. But Saga boss Group Euan Sutherland said the company expects 'high levels' of customer retention in its cruise business when restrictions are lifted.

Jabbed and ready: The boss of Saga said many of the company's customers had received their vaccines and looking forward to a holiday

He added: 'Looking ahead, while we are mindful of economic headwinds and the potential ongoing impacts of Covid-19, it is clear that there is significant pent-up demand among our customer base, the vast majority of whom have now been vaccinated and are ready to enjoy post-lockdown freedom.

'Saga is a proud British business, with a strong brand, loyal customers and great people, and we are excited about the opportunities ahead.

'We look forward to relaunching our brand later in 2021, which will only enhance our ability to unlock the potential in Saga, returning the business to sustainable growth and creating significant long-term value for all our investors and stakeholders.'

William Ryder, an analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: 'We wouldn't say Saga is a coiled spring just waiting to bounce back - but there are some more upbeat signs across parts of the business.

'The insurance divisions are doing reasonably well, and reduced driving this year has done wonders for travel claims and underwriting margins.

'What's more, customer retention in the travel division seems to be strong, which bodes well for a recovery later this year if the vaccine rollout continues to be as effective as hoped.'
Rudy Acosta Jr., 70, was scheduled for arraignment Wednesday, but now will attend a change of plea hearing next week, according to the court records in his case. Acosta was charged last week in a criminal information with one count of willfully deceiving the FBI about the criminal activity of others when he was interviewed as part of a sprawling federal corruption investigation.




Defense Minister Suh Wook met with the European Union's military committee chief Wednesday and discussed the regional security situation and ways to enhance bilateral cooperation, Suh's office said.







Gen. Claudio Graziano, chairman of the EU Military Committee, visited South Korea at the invitation of the country's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The committee consists of the military chiefs of the 27 EU member countries.







During the meeting with Suh, Graziano voiced support for Seoul's peace efforts with North Korea and agreed to share the EU's Indo-Pacific strategies as soon as they are drawn up and discuss specific ways to cooperate, according to the ministry.







Suh stressed the significance of multilateral cooperation amid fast-changing international security circumstances and asked for the EU's active participation in the upcoming Seoul Security Dialogue and U.N. Peacekeeping Ministerial Conference, both hosted by the Seoul government.







"The two sides agreed to work closely to respond to changing security circumstances in an effective manner by sharing experiences in maritime security, anti-terrorism and cybersecurity realms," the ministry said in a release.







Earlier in the day, Graziano met with JCS Chairman Gen. Won In-choul and discussed the security situation of the Korean Peninsula.







Won asked for the EU's continued support for Seoul's efforts to denuclearize the peninsula and to establish a permanent peace, and Graziano suggested "promoting the strategic partnership through consistent military cooperation," the JCS said. (Yonhap)


In a statement, the U.S. government agency said the United Nations childrens agency, UNICEF, will receive the funding to provide targeted technical assistance to support and ensure effective implementation of COVID-19 vaccination efforts in Armenia.

The statement said the allocation brought to $11 million the total amount of coronavirus-related aid provided by USAID to the country since the outbreak of the pandemic.

This includes emergency funding to address immediate health needs and efforts to address the secondary and tertiary impacts of the pandemic on democratic development and economic growth, it said.

Although Armenia has been hit hard by the pandemic and is currently grappling with a third wave of coronavirus infections, its government plans to vaccinate only a limited proportion of the population.

The country of about 3 million received on March 28 the first major batch of a COVID-19 vaccine from the COVAX Facility, the World Health Organizations global vaccine-sharing scheme. The 24,000 doses of the vaccine developed by the AstraZeneca pharmaceutical giant and Oxford University will be made available to medical workers, care home personnel, persons aged 65 and older as well as younger people suffering from chronic diseases.

Healthcare workers were due to start administering the vaccine on Monday. The inoculations were postponed by several days due what the authorities called logistical problems.

Deputy Health Minister Lena Nanushian said on Wednesday that Armenia is continuing to negotiate with Russia on the acquisition of a smaller amount of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine.

Nanushian also told RFE/RLs Armenian Service that COVAX has offered the Armenian government to supply other coronavirus vaccines developed by the U.S. companies Novavax and Johnson & Johnson.

[The offer] has been discussed with a team of [health] specialists and the country has replied to COVAX that it is ready to acquire these vaccines as well, she said.

The official did not specify how many doses of the Novavax and Johnson & Johnson vaccines could be delivered to Armenia.

The daily number of coronavirus cases in the country and deaths caused by them has increased sharply since the end of February.

The Armenian Ministry of Health said earlier on Wednesday that 1,025 new cases have been registered in the past day. It also reported the deaths of 24 more people infected with COVID-19.

According to the ministry, there were only 6 vacant beds at the intensive care units of Armenian hospitals treating COVID-19 patients. Nearly 280 of those patients were in a critical condition.
The worlds billionaires added more than $5 trillion to their wealth over the last year, with the richest 2,755 people on earth amassing more than $13 trillion.

That list, compiled annually by Forbes, grew roughly 30 per cent from a list published just one year ago, an increase of 660 people to a list of 2,755 billionaires. Eighty-six per cent are much wealthier today than they were one year ago, at the onset of a global health crisis and its economic fallout that has left millions of people jobless in the months that followed.

A new billionaire emerged every 17 hours on average over the past year, Forbes found.

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Nearly 500 people made their first appearance on the list this year, and only 61 people who appeared on last years list did not make the cut in 2021  the smallest dip in a decade.

Amazon founder and outgoing CEO Jeff Bezos, whose estimated wealth tops $177bn, is once again at the top of the list, followed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whose net worth is $151bn.

Read more:

The publication relies on stock prices and exchange rates from 5 March to calculate net worth.

Forbes began publishing its annual ranking of the wealthiest people in the world in 1987.

That year, the worlds billionaires combined wealth reached more than $295bn. Over the following decades, their net worth exploded by more than 44 times that figure.

The worlds richest man in 1987 was Yoshiaki Tsutsumi of the Seibu Railway Group, whose net worth totalled $20bn.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates entered the number one spot in 1995 with a net worth of $12.9bn. By the end of the decade, that figure reached more than $90bn. When he stepped down in 2000, his net worth fell to $60bn, still more than five times his net worth just five years earlier.

He remains within the top five wealthiest, at No 4, with a net worth of $124bn  nearly times as much as he was worth when he made his debut on the list.

Mr Bezos has remained the worlds wealthiest man on the list since 2018.

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America is home to 724 billionaires. Eight of the top 10 wealthiest people in the world  Mr Bezos, Mr Musk, Mr Gates, Mr Buffett, Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, and Googles Larry Page and Sergey Brin, amassing a combined wealth of $728.5bn  are all in the US.

Soaring wealth among the richest people in the US followed a year of mass unemployment and lost income that has impacted nearly half of all American households.

More than 40 million Americans were unemployed within the early months of the pandemic, and roughly 4 in 10 Americans reported financial impacts from the loss of a job or income during the public health crisis, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center poll.

Read more: Trump plummets 300 spots on Forbes billionaires list as former presidents fortunes continue to tank

Last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that nearly 2.4 million Americans  roughly a quarter of all jobless Americans  have been without work for 52 weeks or longer.

That figure is likely to grow  the latest snapshot does not capture certain workers, or people who quit their jobs for health or other reasons, or the surge of unemployment claims from late March and April 2020.

The pandemic instead accelerated the growth trends among the wealthiest households.

A 2021 report from the Institute for Policy Studies found that Wall Street bonuses increased more than 1,200 per cent within the same time as Forbes has published its annual billionaires list.

That has massively outpaced increases to the federal minimum wage, which has stayed at $7.25 for more than a decade. Meanwhile, the buying power of a minimum wage income has eroded, worth 30 per cent less than it did 50 years ago, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

Growing wealth inequality in the face of the pandemic has revived debate over raising taxes on the nations wealthy, which also enjoys widespread popular support.

Reuters/Ipsos found in a recent poll that nearly two-thirds of respondents believe Americas rich should pay more, and another 2020 poll from Hill-HarrisX found that 67 per cent of voters support a wealth tax on Americas billionaires.

A Morning Consult poll focused on President Joe Bidens infrastructure proposal found that 54 per cent of voters support raising taxes on Americans earning more than $400,000 to pay for infrastructure improvements.

Senator Bernie Sanders has unveiled three proposals  the Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act, For the 99.5% Act and the Corporate Tax Dodging Prevention Act, which takes aim at the dozens of Fortune 500 companies that paid no federal income tax in 2018, including Amazon.

Unbelievably, the United States today has more income and wealth inequality than almost any major country on Earth, he said in a statement announcing the latter two measures.

From a moral, economic and political perspective our nation will not thrive when so few have so much and so many have so little.

The Biden Administration has proposed raising the corporate tax rate to 28 per cent from 21 per cent, rolling back some of the tax cuts under Donald Trump. Mr Bezos announced on Tuesday that he supports Mr Bidens plan.
(Newser)  An already bad COVID situation is worsening in Brazil, which on Tuesday reported it blew past the 4,000-death mark for the first time, reporting 4,195 deaths in the past 24 hours. "If Brazil keeps the current pace, the country will probably reach 5,000 daily deaths in April," a researcher at Brazilian health institute Fiocruz tells Bloomberg. (The US one-day peak was 4,476, and our population is about one-third bigger) The BBC reports President Jair Bolsonaro did not speak of the death toll in comments to reporters on Tuesday and remained staunchly against imposing any quarantine measures, which he says would cause economic hurt worse than that of the virus and claims has been tied to obesity and depression. Epidemiologist Ethel Maciel is far from alone in disagreeing.

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She says that "at the rate we're vaccinating"an estimated 8% to 9% of Brazilians have gotten at least one shot"the only way to slow the extremely fast spread of the virus is an effective lockdown for at least 20 days." Absent that or something like it, scientists believe the country will soon outpace the worst of what was experienced in the US in January, when the running 7-day average for daily deaths hit a high of 3,285. To date, COVID has killed roughly 337,000 Brazilians compared to 555,000 Americans, but experts tell Reuters that Brazil could slide into the No. 1 slot this summer. A Reuters analysis has found that 1 in 4 daily COVID deaths around the globe are happening in Brazil. Hence this bold statement from Duke University professor Miguel Nicolelis: "It's a biological Fukushima." (Read more COVID-19 stories.)
All limits would be lifted once the state enters the final phase of Pritzkers reopening plan, which requires 50% of residents 16 and older to have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine. The state first must also see stable or declining cases, hospitalizations and other measures of virus transmission for 28 days during the bridge phase.
Instead of dismantling encampments where unhoused people have formed their own communities, we ought to dismantle the economic system that fosters homelessness and the state power that preserves inequality.

by Sonali Kolhatkar

The 1974 classic Hollywood film Chinatown features a scene set on a picturesque lake in Los Angeles where J.J. Jake Gittes, played by Jack Nicholson, spies on two characters, Hollis Mulwray and Katherine Cross, snapping photos of them as he leans back in a boat. The iconic location where this and many other Hollywood movie scenes were filmed was near the site of a violent confrontation by hundreds of Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers against protesters on March 24. Riot gear-clad law enforcement faced off against protesters and bystanders, including residents of the surrounding neighborhood, legal observers and journalists, and violently beat some of them and arrested nearly 200 people. The police officers were following the orders of City Councilman Mitch OFarrell to dismantle a large encampment of unhoused people living by the lake.

The clash between police and protesters in Echo Park is a microcosm of our nations current economic system and the role that law enforcement plays to preserve it. A decades-long housing crisis in Los Angeles has steadily pushed growing numbers of people into the streets. According to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, there were 41,290 experiencing homelessness within city limits in 2020a 16.1 percent increase from the year before. Over the past year, with the pandemic-related mass layoffs, resulting overdue rents and other bills, and a tenuous barely there safety net, that number has likely risen even more this year.

Krithika Santhanam is an attorney and mass protest defense coordinator at the National Lawyers Guild of Los Angeles, which sent legal observers to the Echo Park protest to document any resulting police brutality. She explained to me in an interview that the police response on March 24 was no different than the same sort of violent, militant response we continue to see over and over when it comes to large-scale, predominantly progressive protests demanding social justice. Indeed, as this past year has demonstrated, regardless of location and issue, American law enforcement has applied violent police power against expressions of progressive dissent while openly tolerating or even abetting the preservation of a white supremacist capitalist order. The Echo Park sweep, taking place just as the high-profile trial of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the killing of George Floyd began, is disappointingly typical of law enforcements role in policing the poor.

Like many other police departments that were found to have engaged in serious misconduct during last years Black Lives Matter protests, the LAPD, according to a report authored by former law enforcement and commissioned by the city council, was found to have performed poorly. The reports authors lamented, It is unfortunate that the same issues have arisen again and again, with the Department being unable or unwilling to rectify the problem. According to Santhanam, the same impunity that has led to the department paying out millions of tax dollars to settle misconduct lawsuits was on full display at the raid on Echo Park. The police have been emboldened in some ways to execute this form of policing, she said. Ultimately the role of the police is, according to Santhanam, managing inequality under capitalism.

Among the hundred or so people living at Echo Park Lake before the encampment was destroyed was CC Luce, an organizer with Lotus Collective and Street Watch LA who told me that she has now lost her home and the sense of community and family that the camps residents had built up. For Luce, the question of housing goes way beyond a structure or affordability. A house is not a home; a house is just an object, she said. But to elected officials and state and local authorities, individuals and shelters are simply pieces of a puzzle that can be moved around to fit one inside the other in order to claim success at solving the crisis of homelessness.

Luce has no idea where her friends and neighbors have now been moved. She told me that as far as she knows, they were moved into transitional housing through Project Roomkey (PRK), part of a statewide program that the LA Homeless Services Authority describes as a coordinated effort to secure hotel and motel rooms in L.A. County as temporary shelters for people experiencing homelessness who are at high-risk for hospitalization if they contract Coronavirus (COVID-19).

As of last fall, the $100 million program ended up housing only a small fraction of the citys unhoused population. Seen as an innovative solution to the problem of homelessness in a city where the cost of living displaces people from their homes faster than authorities can provide them shelter, the project is simply a band-aid, and a deeply flawed one at that. One journalist who interviewed people placed in temporary housing through the program pointed out that punitive policies and practices are causing residents to leave PRK or act in ways that get them kicked out, and that strict curfews and other harsh policies are tools used by PRKs service providers to discipline their residents.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a set of guidelines for cities to tackle homeless encampments during the pandemic and warned that Clearing encampments can cause people to disperse throughout the community and break connections with service providers. This increases the potential for infectious disease spread. Councilman OFarrells justification for destroying the encampment was to conduct repairs to the park, as if that could not be done while people were living in the area. OFarrell told the Hollywood Reporter, my non-negotiable was that we would have housing solutions for everyone before we closed the parks for repairs. We were able to do just that. And yet, a handful of those who remained in their tents at Echo Park Lake were ultimately arrested before the repairs commenced. Perhaps OFarrell sees jail and housing as interchangeable locations for the unhoused.

The councilman claimed that razing the encampment had nothing to do with Hollywood production companies use of the area for film shoots. He said, Filming at the lake is nothing that even entered my mind. And yet he added, Im very aware that filming was really popular there, to film movies, commercials, you name it. Itll be, I think, available again, but the primary focus is to get people back to enjoy the park. By people, he clearly meant those other than the inhabitants of the encampment.

Santhanam pointed out that the sweep was an indication of how we continue to prioritize and privilege the viewpoints, opinions, and preferences of those who have access to housing and who have the financial means to thrive under this system. In other words, the wealthier residents of Echo Parks surrounding and gentrifying neighborhoods have made clear that they will no longer tolerate the sight of unhoused people at the edge of the lake. A petition signed by 4,000 people warned, WE  THE CITIZENS OF ECHO PARK  WILL NO LONGER TOLERATE OUR LAKE BEING DESTROYED! One person living at the encampment countered that sentiment, telling the Los Angeles Times, Until you find and address the actual problems and actual solutions, Im sorry, but were going to be here.

And therein lies the problem that the Echo Park Lake encampment and its dismantling has symbolized so heartbreakingly well: our society would rather spend money to violently clamp down on protesters who are protecting an unhoused community than fund long-term solutions to the housing crisis. It would rather displace those who created their own community in the vacuum of affordable housing options and pour resources into temporary and sterile solutions for transitional housing than foster conditions where people can actually afford to live in the places where they create their own communities. Right now all of us who lived at Echo Park Lake, we might have roofs over our heads, but were unsheltered because we cant see each other, said Luce.

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.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 23:44:51|Editor: huaxia

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NAIROBI, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Kenya and the United Kingdom on Wednesday resolved to set up a joint emergency committee to address COVID-19 travel restrictions after London added Nairobi to its COVID-19 travel red list.

Raychelle Omamo, Kenya's cabinet secretary for foreign affairs, held talks with British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab where they also agreed to bolster trade and regional security.

"They discussed the strength of our relationship on trade, regional security, and health and agreed to establish a Joint Committee to work together on addressing COVID-19 travel restrictions," the ministry of foreign affairs said in a brief statement.

It said the two officials underlined the need to work on strengthening trade and deepening regional security.

Britain sparked a diplomatic row on April 2 when it included Kenya in the COVID-19 travel ban red list effective Friday.

London said the decision was taken by UK Ministers on March 31 following a review of the latest scientific evidence pertaining to the risk of community transmission of COVID-19 variants.

According to British Department of Transport, nearly a third of about 550 people who travel from Kenya to the UK each week have been testing positive to the COVID-19 variant originating from South Africa.

But Kenya criticized the move, saying the decision was "discriminatory" and lacked "logic and scientific knowledge of the disease or the spread of the pandemic".

Kenya also said all visitors originating from or transiting through UK airports will be required to undergo a 14-day mandatory quarantine at a government facility at their own cost.

Nairobi said that exemption from the new travel restrictions include cargo flights between the two countries and Kenyan nationals resident in the UK or transiting through the European nation's airports. Enditem
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has admitted his country is facing its 'worst-ever situation' as its crumbling economy is battered by the coronavirus pandemic.

Kim made the comments during an address to thousands of grassroots members of his ruling party during a major political conference in Pyongyang on Tuesday.

Experts say Kim is facing perhaps his toughest moment as he approaches a decade in power as North Korea's coronavirus lockdown has unleashed further shock on an economy devastated by decades of mismanagement and crippling US-led sanctions over his nuclear weapons program.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has admitted his country is facing its 'worst-ever situation' as its crumbling economy is battered by the coronavirus pandemic

The North's official Korean Central News Agency said Kim made the comments during an opening speech at a meeting of the Workers Partys cell secretaries.

He said: 'Improving the peoples living standards ... even in the worst-ever situation in which we have to overcome unprecedentedly numerous challenges depends on the role played by the cells, the grassroots organizations of the party'.

He urged members to follow decisions made at a party congress in January, when he vowed to bolster his nuclear deterrent in face of U.S. pressure and announced a new five-year national development plan.

Kim made the comments during an address to thousands of grassroots members of his ruling party during a major political conference in Pyongyang on Tuesday

Experts say Kim is facing perhaps his toughest moment as he approaches a decade in power as North Korea's coronavirus lockdown has unleashed further shock on an economy

The North's official Korean Central News Agency said Kim made the comments during an opening speech at a meeting of the Workers Partys cell secretaries on April 6

The congress came months after Kim showed unusual candor by acknowledging that his plans to improve the economy weren't succeeding during another political conference

The congress came months after Kim showed unusual candor by acknowledging that his plans to improve the economy weren't succeeding during another political conference.

During Tuesday's speech, Kim also criticized the party's grassroots units for unspecified 'shortcomings' that should be immediately corrected to ensure the 'healthy and sustainable' development of the party.

Party cells, which consist of five to 30 members, are the smallest units of party authority that oversee the works and lives at factories and other places. The network is an important tool for Workers' party to perpetuate its power.

The previous conference of cell secretaries was held in 2017.

The economic setbacks have left Kim with nothing to show for his ambitious diplomacy with former President Donald Trump, which collapsed over disagreements in lifting sanctions for the North's denuclearization efforts.

The North has so far rejected the Biden administration's overture for talks, saying that Washington must discard its 'hostile' policies first.

Kim has instead dialed up pressure by resuming tests of ballistic missiles last month after a yearlong pause.

The North has so far rejected the Biden administration's overture for talks, saying that Washington must discard its 'hostile' policies first (pictured, a news bulletin featuring file photos of Kim and Biden in Seoul, South Korea)
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Mormino announced the National Alliance Program with Reliable Background Screening from Franchise Division Headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona. INFINITI HR is proud to lead by design, inspire innovation, and generate change through world-class strategic partnerships for our PEO clients. As the PEO ranked Best of 2021, INFINITI HR is committed to protect, enhance, and promote franchising with best-in-class suppliers, said Mormino. For franchisors, it is mission-critical to protect brands by having a thorough franchisee evaluation and review process to select the right franchisee candidates. Reliable Background Screening will design custom franchisee background screening programs to best serve the needs of any specific franchise. For franchisees, it is mission-critical for employers of their own right to protect units by avoiding the consequences associated with hiring an employee who could pose a threat to your valued customers. Reliable Background Screening is the trusted source for risk mitigation in all franchise background screening with unparalleled quality control and live-agent verified reports. INFINITI HR congratulates Reliable Background Screening President and CEO Rudy Troisi for inspiring such innovation to serve the diversity and dynamism of our cohort, Mormino said.

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Adelaide/Brisbane, Australia, Apr 7, 2021 - (ACN Newswire) - Agilex Biolabs, Australia's largest and most technologically advanced specialist bioanalytical laboratory for clinical trials, today announced the purchase of leading biolab TetraQ, based out of the University of Queensland.Agilex Biolabs CEO Jason Valentine said the Board and senior management at Agilex Biolabs were extremely pleased with the purchase of such a high-calibre bioanalytics company."TetraQ complements the Agilex Biolabs work in Australia and APAC with its expert staff and years of experience in regulated bioanalytical services," he said."The TetraQ purchase is part of our regional expansion plans.""Agilex Biolabs is already the largest and most technologically advanced biolabs in Australia, and the TetraQ addition to the business will further expand support for biotech clients running trials in Australia.""We are also looking forward to introducing our clients to the well-established TetraQ toxicology capabilities for their discovery and pre-clinical work in Australia, which can also attract the 43.5% tax rebate.""The clinical trials bioanalytics sector is one of the fastest-growing services globally with Australia and APAC a preferred location for conducting trials - especially since the COVID-19 pandemic."TetraQ Director Dr Peter Tapley said he was very pleased that TetraQ was now an Agilex Biolabs company."They are the leader in the sector with 24 years of experience, and offer our clients a significantly expanded range of services and technologies," he said."Agilex Biolabs is known globally for its comprehensive services, specialist scientists, and the very latest technology. So this is the ideal next step for TetraQ and its staff and clients.""I am pleased to be working alongside Agilex Biolabs' CEO Jason Valentine as we expand our offering and leverage the synergies that make our two companies leaders in the sector."Agilex Biolabs specialises in bioanalysis of small molecules and biologics for PK, immunogenicity, biomarkers and immunological pharmacodynamics assessments utilising LC-MS/MS, immunoassay (Mesoscale, Gyrolab, Luminex) and flow cytometry (BD FACSymphony A3, 20 colour cell analyser).Agilex also offers pharmacodynamics services that include immunobiology services using the latest state-of-the-art technology to support immunology, cell biology and mode of action assays, including:- Immunophenotyping- Receptor occupancy- Cytokine release assays (whole blood or PBMC stimulation assays) and cytokine/biomarker profiling- PBMC assays and cellular mechanism of action assays (eg: ADCC)Agilex Biolabs has more than 100 staff which includes 75 dedicated laboratory staff and supports clinical research for biotech clients from US, Europe and APAC.The company has recently launched the GALEXI client portal, and has taken delivery of two more Sciex API 6500+ LC-MS/MS systems. Key certifications include OECD GLP Recognition with NATA (Australian Government OECD GLP Compliance monitoring authority) and ISO 17025 Accreditation for global recognition.About Agilex Biolabs https://www.agilexbiolabs.com/Agilex Biolabs, Australia's leading bioanalytical laboratory, has more than 20 years' experience in performing regulated bioanalysis, including quality method development, method validation and sample analysis services. We have successfully supported hundreds of preclinical and clinical trials around the world where customers choose Australia for the streamlined regulatory process and access to the world's most attractive R&D rebate of more than 40% on clinical trial work conducted in Australia.We offer services for both small molecules and biologics for PK, immunogenicity (PD) and biomarker bioanalysis utilising the two platforms of LC-MS/MS and Immunoassay.About TetraQ www.tetraq.com.auTetraQ is a Brisbane-based provider of bioanalytical and rodent toxicology and pharmacokinetics services for new drug and vaccine products. Our facility has NATA recognition for compliance with the OECD Principles of Good Laboratory Practice (GLP).Our bioanalytical facility is located at the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital, and our in-life studies are run in a custom unit at the St Lucia campus of The University of Queensland. These two arms of TetraQ offer co-ordinated support for clients bringing pharmaceutical products to market.TetraQ's bioanalytical facility determines small molecule and protein concentrations in matrices including plasma, serum, urine and tissue homogenates. We can develop and validate methods to support pharmacokinetic (PK) sample analysis for both pre-clinical and clinical studies.We also offer pharmacodynamic (PD) analysis of biomarkers based on commercial ELISA kits or Meso Scale Discovery multiplex technology.Agilex Biolabs Media Contact:Kate NewtonMedia@AgilexBiolabs.comSource: Agilex BiolabsTetraQCopyright 2021 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved.
The Twins will place outfielder/first baseman Brent Rooker on the 10-day injured list with a cervical strain in his neck and select the contract of left-hander Brandon Waddell from their alternate training site today, the club announced. Hard-throwing young righty Edwar Colina was transferred from the 10-day IL to the 60-day IL to open a spot on the 40-man roster for Waddell. Colina is dealing with inflammation in his right elbow.

Rooker, 26, was the No. 35 overall pick back in the 2017 draft and has had some rough luck early in his big league career. He burst onto the scene with a .316/.381/.579 slash through seven games last summer before sustaining a fractured forearm when he was hit by a pitch. That injury ended his season, and Rooker will now head back to the injured list after just appearing in just three games in 2021.

Rooker is a bat-first prospect who isnt likely viewed as the teams long-term answer in left field, but his power bat is still expected to get a legitimate audition when hes healthy. He can shift between first, left field and DH, and given that his most recent minor league work in 2019 produced a .282/.399/.530 batting line in 67 games between Double-A and Triple-A, its not hard to see why the organization is bullish on him. The Twins did not give an immediate indication as to how long the new injury is expected to sideline Rooker.

As for the 26-year-old Waddell, an eventual big league audition with the Twins appeared likely after the former Pirates farmhand turned heads in Spring Training. Waddell yielded five runs in 9 1/3 innings, but he also struck out 15 of the 36 hitters he faced (41.7 percent) and showed what the Twins felt was a demonstrably improved arsenal. Minnesota claimed him off waivers from Pittsburgh at the end of the 2020 season and managed to sneak Waddell through waivers in late February, but his absence from the 40-man roster proved brief.

Waddell has a pair of minor league options remaining, so the Twins will be able to send him down to their alternate site in St. Paul without exposing him to waivers for a second time. For now, hell join Taylor Rogers and Caleb Thielbar as a third lefty in manager Rocco Baldellis bullpen.
Tailify, the award-winning full service influencer marketing company has secured Series A funding from Guinness Asset Management, supported by existing investors.

LONDON, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Tailify builds influencer growth programmes for some of the world's most ambitious brands. Mainly, Tailify helps brands select influencers, craft effective strategies and measure the result of that activity. With the help of their AI and behavioural science team, Tailify aims to do better influencer selection and messaging than any human being or agency in the world.

Tailify was one of the early pioneers in influencer marketing when launched in Stockholm 2014. Since moving to London in 2016, they have designed and managed over 400 influencer growth programmes for brands like Uber, LG, IKEA and agencies like Group M and PHD.

Tailify's approach to influencer marketing is different. Most brands and agencies use the same data; followers, likes, audience demographic to guide their influencer selection and creative direction. They invest in influencers as they invest in traditional mediums, such as banners, TV and magazines. But influencer marketing at the core is about human relationships, and how this relationship affects people's behaviour. This is why Tailify studies the power of influence through the lens of psychology and behavioural science.

"Over the past few years we've been building out a world class team across marketing, psychology research, behavioural science, and data science to pioneer the science of influence." - Didrik Svendsen, CEO & Co-Founder

Tailify's focus on the science behind influence has allowed them to build programmes that deliver better results for their clients. In some cases, it only takes them a week to improve influencer marketing ROI by 3X. As part of this optimisation process, they use their unique AI influencer selection tool. This allows their partners to think like behavioural scientists in the influencer selection process and in crafting messages that drive results.

The Series A investment follows three years of fast growth, and will help accelerate product development, expand the team and respond to demand for international expansion. As part of the investment, Guinness Fund Manager Ashley Abrahams will join the board of directors alongside the existing team.

Didrik Svendsen, CEO of Tailify, said: "Influence has always been what drives the world's decisions. With social platforms, the importance of influence has become significantly greater. Whoever can map and wield influence in the modern world will be able to unlock incredible value. That is exactly what Tailify is doing, and this investment will allow us to pioneer this industry even further."

Ashley Abrahams, Fund Manager at Guinness Asset Management, said: "Guinness is extremely pleased to be supporting Tailify during this exciting time of growth, expansion, and product development. Tailify has a unique positioning in this fast growing industry. We very much look forward to working with the fantastic team as they embark on the next stage of their growth."

Notes to Editors

About Tailify

Tailify is a full-service influencer marketing agency. The company launched in Stockholm 2014. Since arriving in the UK in 2016, they have designed and managed over 400 influencer growth programmes for brands like Uber, LG, IKEA and agencies like Group M and PHD.

About Guinness Asset Management

Guinness Asset Management is a London-based specialist fund management company, established in 2003. Guinness manages over 3 billion for institutional and retail investors, investing in public and private companies. Guinness is a leading EIS Investor who since 2010 has raised and invested over 200 million into more than 100 companies across the Guinness EIS and Guinness AIM EIS portfolios. Please see www.guinnessfunds.com for more details.

Esme Rice, 07982 199516, [email protected]

SOURCE Tailify

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Unusual diseases are medical mysteries that fascinate us, and one such disease is multiple system atrophy, or MSA. This rare neurological disorder causes failures in the proper functioning of the body's autonomic system (processes that are not under our conscious control, such as blood pressure, breathing, and involuntary movement). The resulting symptoms can look like two other types of neurodegenerative disease: Parkinson's disease and cerebellar ataxia. In fact, MSA can be separated into a parkinsonism subtype or a cerebellar subtype based on whether the resultant movement-related symptoms bear greater similarity to one or the other. However, MSA also has other symptoms, with sleep disorders being common, but under-researched. As a result, we understand very little about the factors that influence the presence of sleep disorders in patients with MSA. Being unable to sleep well makes life harder for these patients, who already suffer from the other symptoms of the condition; as such, emphasizing sleep disturbances is important for addressing patient needs.

With this in mind, researchers led by Dr. Hui-Fang Shang of Sichuan University in China set out to investigate three specific sleep disorders (Parkinson's disease related sleep problems [PD-SP], excessive daytime sleepiness [EDS], and rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder [RBD]) in patients with MSA. Dr. Shang explains, "Our goal was to determine the frequency of these three sleep disturbances in MSA, including in both subtypes. We also wanted to know whether sleep disorders affected how severe MSA was." Their findings have been published in Chinese Medical Journal.

After screening for MSA and excluding other neurological disorders, the researchers examined 165 patients using questionnaires to determine the presence of sleep-related symptoms and MSA severity. Dr. Shang and colleagues found that PD-SP occurred in 18.8% of patients, EDS in 27.3%, and RBD in 49.7%, whereas all three coexisted in 7.3% of patients. They also showed that PD-SP and EDS, but not RBD, were more common in the parkinsonism subtype than in the cerebellar subtype. Their analysis adjusted for patient age, duration of MSA, and usage of drug treatment for MSA, meaning these three factors did not help explain the differences in sleep disorders across the two MSA subtypes. They also found that male sex was associated with EDS and RBD in patients with MSA.

And most importantly, greater the number of these sleep-related symptoms a patient had, more severe their MSA was.

When the researchers combined their findings with results from previous brain imaging studies that looked at MSA and sleep disorders, they concluded that sleep disorders are associated with MSA-induced damage to certain regions of the brain. The location and distribution of degenerating neurons are different between the two subtypes, with a wider range of brain areas affected in the parkinsonism form. This could explain why patients with the parkinsonism subtype have more sleep disorders. Additionally, the connection between MSA severity and increased number of sleep-related symptoms could reflect the amount of neuronal damage. Because sleep disorders are associated with loss of dopaminergic and non-dopaminergic neurons (that is, neurons producing the neurotransmitter chemical dopamine), the results shed some light on the underlying biological causes of MSA.

"For me, this research emphasizes the need to focus more on sleep disorders when treating patients with MSA," says Dr. Shang , explaining the scientific and clinical contributions of their work, "We are the first to perform such a systematic analysis of sleep-related symptoms in MSA, and any future research can build on what we did here to better understand this serious condition. Currently, MSA has no cure, so a greater emphasis on sleep disorders will help do two things: address the lower quality of life in these patients due to disturbed sleep, and provide scientific data for developing effective treatments."

The findings provide hope for a more holistic approach to improving patients' quality of life.

###

Reference

Title of original paper: Sleep-related symptoms in multiple system atrophy: determinants and impact on disease severity

Journal: Chinese Medical Journal

DOI: 10.1097/CM9.0000000000001211
[April 07, 2021] Najoh Tita-Reid Joins CafeMedia Board of Directors

NEW YORK, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- CafeMedia, the premiere network of independent digital publishers, today announced that Najoh Tita-Reid has joined its Board of Directors. In this role, Tita-Reid will advise CafeMedia on its strategy for growth, brand development and new strategic opportunities, helping drive the company's mission to build a creator-first future for the open web. Tita-Reid is the Global Chief Marketing Officer for Logitech, where her responsibilities include worldwide marketing, brand equity, creative, branded and DTC ecommerce sites, and marketing transformation. Tita-Reid was inspired to join the technology industry in order to directly contribute to the meaningful advances the industry can make in improving lives. Prior to joining Logitech in 2020, Tita-Reid was Global Chief Marketing Officer and Member of the Executive Board at Hero AG, where she built the company's first truly global innovation pipeline, removing silos to foster cooperation across 11 global and regional food brands, while leading significant growth across key markets. Earlier, Tita-Reid held diverse general management, marketing and product development roles with some of the world's largest pharmaceutical, health care and consumer product companies, including Bayer, Merck and Procter & Gamble. As SVP at the GlobalHue Advertising Agency in New York, Tta-Reid delivered the largest communication effort for African Americans in US government history, working on a cross-cultural national team for the 2010 Census. Throughout her career, Tita-Reid has developed groundbreaking initiatives, including the award-winning My Black is Beautiful platform and community.



"Najoh Tita-Reid is a visionary global leader, known for fostering innovation and growth across multibillion-dollar consumer brands," said Michael Sanchez, CEO of CafeMedia. "Najoh embodies our company values: she is entrepreneurial, creative and focused on excellence. She shares our foundational belief that providing creators with the tools they need to build successful businesses will lead to a richer, more vibrant and diverse internet -- and global community." "I am thrilled to be joining the Board of a company that plays such a direct role sustaining thousands of small businesses, especially in a moment when those businesses are facing critical challenges," said Tita-Reid. "CafeMedia gives creators everywhere the technology and tools they need to grow and fulfill their potential. I look forward to helping them continue their mission in this next phase of the internet."

About CafeMedia CafeMedia is the exclusive network for the world's best independent publishers, providing the technology and services to help them grow their businesses and maximize success. Serving over 3,000 premium publishers through its AdThrive and CafeMedia brands, the company manages all digital advertising sales and technology, empowering creators to make a living doing what they love  producing great content. The company blends the best of both worlds: exceptional customer service and industry-leading monetization. The publishers represented by the company reach 167 million monthly unique visitors. Ranking as the 11th largest digital entity and as #1 in Food, Family, Home and Lifestyle, CafeMedia provides precision advertising and data solutions that connect brands to these deeply engaged audiences. For more information, please visit www.cafemedia.com or follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter . View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/najoh-tita-reid-joins-cafemedia-board-of-directors-301264338.html SOURCE CafeMedia

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U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) asked former President Donald Trump for a blanket preemptive pardon, according to a new report.

Two people familiar with the discussions told The New York Times that the Republican congressman privately sought pardons for any crimes he may have committed and for his congressional allies during the final weeks of Trumps presidency. White House officials viewed the request as a nonstarter, and the pardon was never granted, the sources said.

Gaetz, a 38-year-old conservative and a close ally of Trump, is being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department for an alleged sexual relationship with a 17-year-old, possibly violating federal sex trafficking and prostitution laws while paying her to travel with him. The age of consent in Florida is 18.

Its unclear if he knew of the DOJ investigation, which began under Attorney General William Bar while Trump was in office, when he allegedly asked for the pardon.

Gaetz denied ever having a relationship with underage girls. CNN reports a spokesperson also denied he asked Trump for a pardon.

Entry-level political operatives have conflated a pardon call from Representative Gaetz -- where he called for President Trump to pardon everyone from himself, to his administration, to Joe Exotic -- with these false and increasingly bizarre, partisan allegations against him, a spokesperson told the Times. Those comments have been on the record for some time, and President Trump even retweeted the congressman, who tweeted them out himself.

Gaetz, whos expected to speak at a pro-Trump Women for America First gala in Florida on Friday, has claimed a former DOJ official is attempting to extort him for $25 million and accused the FBI of threatening his friend.

I can say that, actually, you and I went to dinner about two years ago. Your wife was there, and I brought a friend of mine, youll remember her, Gaetz told Tucker Carlson on Fox News last week. And she was actually threatened by the FBI [and] told that if she wouldnt cop to the fact that somehow I was involved in some pay-for-play scheme, that she could face trouble.

Carlson denied remembering the woman and later called the segment one of the weirdest interviews Ive ever conducted.

Gaetz has not been charged with any crimes and the investigation is ongoing.
SILVER SPRING, Md. - The U.S. trade deficit grew to a record $71.1 billion in February as a decline in exports more than offset a slight dip in imports, with severe weather taking much of the blame from analysts, who were expecting a slightly lower gap.

The CMA CGM Argentina arrives at PortMiami, the largest container ship to call at a Florida port, Tuesday, April 6, 2021, in Miami. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

SILVER SPRING, Md. - The U.S. trade deficit grew to a record $71.1 billion in February as a decline in exports more than offset a slight dip in imports, with severe weather taking much of the blame from analysts, who were expecting a slightly lower gap.

The February gap between what America buys from abroad compared to what it sells abroad jumped 4.8% above the revised January deficit of $67.8 billion, the Commerce Department said Wednesday.

The coronavirus pandemic has stifled global trade for more than a year, but those barriers appear to be falling as millions of people get vaccinated and countries start easing operating restrictions for businesses. Total trade after two months of 2021 is just 1.8% behind where it was at this point last year, before the global economy was blindsided by the pandemic.

The U.S. vaccine rollout, which so far as gotten at least one shot into the arms of more than 100 million Americans, is far ahead of other major global economies in Europe and Asia. Should that trend continue, economists believe it will accelerate a return to business as usual and an even wider trade gap as the U.S. economy moves into high gear.

The trade deficit is poised to widen as the U.S. recovery surges in the spring and summer, said Oren Klachkin of Oxford Economics in a note to clients. Better health conditions, reopenings, and fiscal stimulus will boost domestic demand and keep a strong pull on imports.

Crew members stand on the bow as the CMA CGM Argentina arrives at PortMiami, the largest container ship to call at a Florida port, Tuesday, April 6, 2021, in Miami. The U.S. trade deficit grew to $71.1 billion in February, as a decline in exports more than offset a slight dip in imports. The February gap between what America buys from abroad compared to what it sells abroad jumped 4.8% the revised January deficit of $67.8 billion.vThe increase reflected a 2.6% decline in exports of goods and services to $187.3 billion on a seasonally adjusted basis. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

The higher trade deficit in February reflected a 2.6% decline in exports of goods and services to $187.3 billion on a seasonally adjusted basis. That wiped out a 0.7% decline in imports, which ticked down from January's record high of $260.1 billion.

The February goods deficit of $88 billion, up from $85.2 billion in January, was also the highest on record. The $5 billion decrease in exports of goods was stoked by a $2.5 billion dropoff in the capital goods category.

The February services surplus of $16.9 billion was the lowest since January of 2012, tripped up by a decline in exports of travel services. The U.S. generally runs a big deficit in goods and a surplus in services such as travel and transport.

The year-to-date trade deficit after two months of 2021 is $138.9 billion, more than 68% higher than the $82.4 billion for January and February of 2020.

The goods deficit with China grew 11.4% from January to $30.3 billion in February, while the goods deficit with Mexico shrank 42.9% from $11.9 billion to $6.8 billion.

President Joe Biden and his team have been relatively quiet regarding his predecessor's hardline trade policies. Biden seems to be more focused on domestic policies so far and hasnt called off former President Donald Trumps trade war with China or suggested he would scale back tariffs on imported steel and aluminum.
Mumbai/New Delhi , April 7 : Seen close to the Shiv Sena leadership and regarded as the 'encounter king of Mumbai' for eliminating over 300 criminals, former Senior Police Inspector Pradeep Sharma was quizzed by the National Investigation Agency(NIA) over his series of meetings with Sachin Vaze, the head of Crime Branch's Criminal Intelligence Unit, arrested on charges of planting an explosive laden SUV near Antilia, house of top industrialist Mukesh Ambani.

Former encounter specialist Sharma's interrogation adds a new twist to the much talked about extortion racket in India's commercial capital which has hitherto seen the resignation of Anil Deshmukh, the high-profile Home Minister of Maharashtra. Sources said that Sharma's questioning can shed light on the role of several cops and political leaders associated with Vaze.

Highly placed sources revealed to IANS that Pradeep Sharma, who fought the Maharashtra Assembly polls on a Shiv Sena ticket in 2019, had been in regular touch with his former protege Vaze, as per the call data records of the mobile phones used by the accused police officer.

To probe deep into the mystery of planting an SUV near Ambani's house, and Vaze's links with higher officials, the NIA summoned Sharma at its office in Mumbai on Wednesday. "This nexus of police and politicians involved in the extortion racket has to be exposed. We hope the NIA will gather evidence and unmask the leaders in the government, patronising the extortion racket," Ram Kadam, spokesperson of the BJP, told IANS.

Sources said that Vaze's erstwhile boss in the Crime Branch, Pradeep Sharma, now a Shiv Sena leader, had met his former subordinate Vaze at Mumbai police headquarters in the first week of March. Besides meeting Vaze, Sharma has also seen Vinayak Shinde, an accused along with Vaze in the murder of Mansukh Hiran, whose SUV was used in planting explosives.

Vinayak Shinde, a tainted constable, had earlier worked with Sharma and was reportedly introduced to Vaze through the encounter king. Sources said that another important meeting between Sachin Vaze and Pradeep Sharma was held outside the crime branch office, probably somewhere in western suburbs of Mumbai.

After a series of such meetings, Vaze was subsequently not seen in his office for days, and was finally arrested by the NIA on night of March 13.

Three-times BJP MLA Ram Kadam said that Sharma's interrogation is crucial. "At this moment, I can only say that how come officers close to Shiv Sena like Vaze and Sharma are being grilled by NIA? Why are officers close to the top leadership of Shiv Sena under the lens?" asked Kadam.

IANS made several attempts to contact Pradeep Sharma but he did not respond. A former police officer close to Sharma said that once his interrogation gets completed, Sharma would likely speak to the media to give his side of the story.

It is perceived that Pradeep Sharma and Sachin Vaze were close since their early days in the police department. Later the encounter duo came close to the Shiv Sena leadership. It was initially Vaze who joined the Shiv Sena in 2007 and was appointed party spokesperson.

In late 2019, when the Shiv Sena came to power in Maharashtra, Sachin Vaze, who was placed under suspension for years, got reinstated in service by the state government in 2020. Close on the heels of Vaze, his former boss Sharma too resigned from police service and joined the Shiv Sena in 2019. He was given a ticket by the party to contest from the Nallasopara seat of state assembly but lost the polls.

However Sharma's relations with Vaze and Shiv Sena grew even stronger. No wonder, Sharma was spotted in all important functions of Shiv Sena leaders held in Mumbai.

Both Pradeep Sharma and his former sub-inspector in the Crime branch, Sachin Vaze had gunned down dozens of sharpshooters of the Dawood Ibrahim gang.

While Vaze claimed to have killed 63 gangsters in police encounters, Pradeep Sharma reportedly eliminated over 300 criminals in his 35-year-old police career. Sharma, who has a large following in the police, is also known as "Encounter King" by his team members for killing the highest numbers of wanted gangsters.

Scripts of several Bollywood films, including Ab Tak Chappan, Satya, Company and many more were inspired by Pradeep Sharma's action against the dreaded Mumbai underworld dons.
(Natural News) R. James Woolsey, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1993 to 1995, revealed that he was an alien skeptic until a friends aircraft mysteriously stopped at around 40,000 feet above ground.

Woolsey spoke with The Black Vaults John Greenwald Jr. on April 2 to promote his new book, Operation Dragon: Inside the Kremlins Secret War on America. The book was co-authored by former Romanian spy Ion Mihai Pacepa.

The ex-CIA chief bared that he had heard of many sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs). But back then, the idea that these UFOs were alien spacecraft was quite far-out to him.

But there was one case in which a friend of mine was able to have his aircraft stop at 40,000 feet or so and not continue operating as a normal aircraft, he shared, noting that the friend was someone he respected. What was going on? I dont know.

Woolsey acknowledged that UFOs might simply be man-made aircraft capable of extraordinary feats. But he also raised the possibility that UFOs may be a complex set of what is going on in the world of cyber and so forth.

He added: I am not as skeptical as I was a few years ago, to put it mildly. Something is going on that is surprising to a series of intelligent, experienced pilots and well just have to see what it is.

When asked to define his mindset, Woolsey said that he had become open to new things and willing to examine them. He also hoped that humans would be friendly to aliens if they exist. (Related: UPDATED: Why first contact with extraterrestrial beings may WIPE OUT humanity (VIDEO).)

Government discloses what it knows about UFOs

Greenwald, an author and the founder of The Black Vault, a website dedicated to exposing government secrets, mentioned in the interview that other former intel chiefs were also open to the possibility of alien life.

Last December, former CIA Director John Brennan opined that it was arrogant to believe that humans were alone in the universe. Brennan, who ran the CIA from 2013 to 2017, said during an episode of the podcast Conversations with Tyler that some of the phenomena were going to be seeing continues to be unexplained. He added that these phenomena might, in fact, represent extraterrestrial activity.

Brennan also described last years trio of declassified UFO videos as eyebrow-raising. The Department of Defense made the videos public in April last year to confirm that the footage, which had previously been leaked, were real. The videos featured unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP)  the Pentagons official term for UFOs  which have yet to be explained to this day. (Related: Pentagon UFO videos just tip of the iceberg, says former U.S. government agent.)

Later in December, former President Donald Trump approved the COVID-19 relief and government funding bill. This bill included an order demanding the Pentagon and other intel agencies to make a report on what they know about UAPs. The report should be released on June 1, six months after the bill was signed into law. It would be declassified but would also contain a classified supplement.

John Ratcliffe, former Director of Intelligence under Trump, also shared what he knew about UAPs in an interview with Fox News last month. He disclosed that some UAPs engaged in actions that were difficult to explain, including breaking the sonic barrier without a sonic boom.

Ratcliffe noted that analysts typically look for a mundane explanation, such as a weather disturbance or an advanced piece of technology. But some sightings simply eluded of any of these explanations, Ratcliffe said.

In January this year, Greenwald published a trove of federal records about UAPs on The Black Vault. He was able to obtain the files after hounding the CIA with Freedom of Information Act requests over the years. Last year, the agency gave Greenwald access to more than 2,700 pages of UFO-related documents.

The CIA claimed that the documents comprised its full collection of UFO files, but Greenwald said that there was no way to confirm that. Ratcliffe also disclosed in the interview that there were a lot more sightings than have been made public. But the ex-intel chief added that the upcoming UFO report might detail some of these unexplained phenomena.

Visit UFOs.news for more about evidence of alien life.

Sources include:

DailyMail.co.uk 1

DailyMail.co.uk 2

TheGuardian.com

Military.com

NYPost.com

Space.com
Equity & Access

Two SC Campuses to Add Community Tech Hubs

Two institutions in South Carolina will run technology hubs for underserved communities. The University of South Carolina system and Benedict College are part of a $6 million project to develop a network of eight learning labs with technology and learning services. These will be set in numerous locations, including at U of SC's Palmetto College campus and Benedict's campus, all located with 15 miles of a "broadband desert," as one participant put it. Funding will come from the state's Governor's Emergency Education Relief (GEER) allocation.

Each campus will provide computer lab space and design educational programming to serve the communities in which they reside. Organizers said the project has selected Apple products, including Macs and iPads, to facilitate ease of use. The curriculum will include coding and app development and creativity and content creation, using Apple lessons. The sites will be available for use by faculty, staff, students and community members at no cost.

Benedict College already serves as a "Community Center for Coding and Creativity" in Tennessee State University's HBCU C2 program, which was designed to bring hands-on coding experiences to historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and their communities.

"We are pleased to partner with the University of South Carolina to expand educational technology access to communities around the state," said Roslyn Clark Artis, president of Benedict College, in a statement. "Benedict College remains fully committed to narrowing the digital divide for underserved communities in our state. This is a tremendous step in the right direction."

"As the state's flagship institution, the University of South Carolina is committed to enhancing statewide economic and workforce development initiatives," added U of SC President Bob Caslen, in a statement. "By providing access to Apple's coding curriculum and emphasizing creative learning, this partnership is a game changer for our state. The educational programs and training at these learning centers will give South Carolinians relevant skills that are in high demand in today's economy."
The husband of a woman accused of murdering her elderly mother was shocked and confused after learning she put drugs in her food, a NSW court has heard.

Barbara Eckersley, 68, is on trial in the NSW Supreme Court for allegedly murdering her mother Mary White at an aged care centre in August 2018.

Eckersley denies murdering her mother, who had severe dementia and other health conditions.

Barbara Eckersley (second left), 68, is on trial in the NSW Supreme Court for allegedly murdering her mother Mary White at an aged care centre in August 2018

Eckersley denies murdering her mother (pictured), who had severe dementia and other health conditions

Ms White, 92, moved to the aged care home in Bundanoon from a granny flat in her daughter's backyard after suffering a severe stroke in 2016.

She was paralysed on the right side of her body and at the time of her death was incontinent, non-verbal and needed full-time care.

Eckersley was frustrated at the care provided to her mother and planned to move Ms White to a nursing home in Coffs Harbour the week she died.

She died on August 5, 2018 when Eckersley and her husband Richard were visiting.

Mr Eckersley said it was the shock of his life when days later his wife told him she had put a drug known as 'green dream' into her mother's food on the day she died.

'I just couldn't believe it,' he told the court in Goulburn on Wednesday.

Mr Eckersley told the court he wanted to wait until Ms White's toxicology report but his wife was adamant about going to police.

After telling police she had put drugs in her mother's meal, Eckersley was told she would be charged with murder.

Her lawyer Kieran Ginges said the defence would dispute the drugs were the significant cause of Ms White's death.

She had a range of health problems including a heart condition and thrombosis.

'She could have died at any time,' Mr Ginges told the court.

Ms White, 92, moved to the aged care home (pictured) in Bundanoon from a granny flat in her daughter's backyard after suffering a severe stroke in 2016

He said Eckersley was severely depressed at the time of the incident and did not have the capacity to understand the events.

Eckersley had the drugs left over from her time working as a wildlife carer in Canberra about two decades earlier, the court was told.

It was used to euthanise native animals.

She added a small amount to her mother's food thinking she would go to sleep, not that it would kill her, Mr Ginges said.

Crown prosecutor Paul Kerr said murder was usually associated with violence, mayhem, anger, revenge and jealousy.

He said these words did not describe Eckersely, describing her as a loving, caring and compassionate daughter who did what she had out of love.

Mr Kerr told the jury they might feel sympathy for Eckersley throughout the trial.

'It would be strange if you did not,' he said.
Karen people who crossed into Thailand to seek refuge after air strikes in Myanmar's Karen state, are seen in boats on the Salween river, March 29, 2021.

Thailand disagrees with post-coup violence in Myanmar and has told the Burmese junta so, Prime Minister and former coup leader Prayuth Chan-o-cha said , in his strongest public statement to date on the killing of close to 600 pro-democracy protesters in the neighboring country.

The former army general and ex-Thai junta leader made the remarks days after Thailands friend China  as well as Russia  threw their support behind a special summit of Southeast Asian nations leaders to discuss the crisis in Myanmar.

Chinas reaction to the coup had been muted, just as when Prayuth, as the Royal Thai Army chief of staff, seized power in a military coup that toppled an elected government in 2014.

It is not that we dont care about humanitarian problems  a life is a life  but the government proposes solutions to the problems via the foreign ministry, Prayuth told reporters, in what appeared to be a defense of his governments relatively muted response on the volatile situation in Myanmar since the military there overthrew a democratically elected government on Feb. 1.

We cannot do anything we want, because we have common borders [with Myanmar] and we rely on each other for many things. But we certainly do not agree with violence and we have said so to them, and have kept telling them to reduce [violence].

The Thai PM further said we have to fix the troubles systemically in Myanmar. He also noted that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was planning to soon hold a special meeting in Jakarta of leaders from across the regional bloc.

Notably, the announcement by ASEAN members Malaysia and Brunei that a leaders summit would be held on Myanmar, came three days after China said it supported such a meeting. However, the bloc still has not yet announced a date for the special summit.

The fastidiously non-interfering bloc has for more than two months not been able to reach a consensus on how to deal with the junta in member-state Myanmar.

Displaced Burmese

Last week, after the single deadliest day in post-coup Myanmar when the military and security forces killed 114 civilians during anti-junta protests on March 27, the Thai foreign ministry for the first time in two months expressed grave concern about the situation in the country next-door.

By contrast, on the day of the Burmese coup, Thai Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan had said Its their own business, its their internal affair.

And on March 22, a Thai Army spokesman denied a local media report that a Thai border security agency had supplied 700 sacks of rice to the Myanmar Army base of operations in Karen state, which sits along the Thai-Myanmar frontier. The spokesman said any transaction that took place was part of usual border trade.

The apparent change in the rhetoric from senior Thai officials coincided with an influx into Thailand of people fleeing from the violence in Myanmar.

Thousands of ethnic Karen fled their homes in Karen state after the militarys March 27 air strikes on villages controlled by Karen National Union (KNU) rebels, who hold large swathes of territory in the borderlands with Thailand.

On Wednesday, Prayuth said relevant agencies were helping the displaced people by bringing them critical food and medical supplies.

In the past also, in many cases of people affected by the fighting [in Myanmar] the military has saved people by letting many inside for medical treatment, Prayuth said.

According to Pornsuk Kerdsawang, from Thai NGO Friends Without Borders Foundation, the Myanmar military on Monday allowed a cargo ship from Thailand to deliver aid across the border.

On April 8, the Thai military will take five vehicles to help carry goods from the Red Cross and deliver them to those displaced people. As for us, we assessed this as a breakthrough in assistance, Pornsuk told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.

Pornsuk said that helicopters and drones were heard on Tuesday flying around on the Myanmar side of the border in Karen state. She said she worried that the unrest along the frontier could threaten the rice season for local farmers.

[I]f the situation is still like this, they will be in trouble. Because they cannot grow rice, they will not have rice to eat, so we insist on our statement that we would like the government to provide assistance that takes into account long-term solutions, Pornsuk said.

Because even if the Myanmar villagers [on the Myanmar side of the border] were given the aid that people sent, its not a success  just a solution to the immediate problems.

On April 2, Prayuth instructed all relevant relief agencies to give medical and other assistance to the 1,200 or so people who had crossed into Thailand, a Thai government spokesman, told reporters.

Earlier last week, human rights and refugee advocacy groups had criticized the Thai PM for allegedly ordering the military to push the refugees back across the border into their strife-torn country.

Meanwhile, Myanmar troops again fired at anti-coup protesters on Wednesday, killing at least 15 people and wounding several in the countrys northwest, news agencies reported.

The death toll in the post-coup violence has reached at least 598, according to Thai NGO Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

In addition, Myanmar citizens are struggling with shortages of food and other necessities after 65 days of rule under the military junta, whose troops steal goods and cash from vehicles, stores, and homes, residents told the Myanmar Service of Radio Free Asia (RFA), with which BenarNews is affiliated.

British Foreign Minister Dominic Raab (left) and Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi talk during a bilateral meeting in Jakarta, April 7, 2021. [Photo courtesy Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia]

Indonesian, British FMs meet

The continuing violence in Myanmar prompted Indonesia and the United Kingdom on Wednesday to reiterate calls for a halt to the brutality.

[I]ndonesia and the U.K. are appalled that hundreds of peaceful protesters have been killed in Myanmar, said a statement issued by Britain, after a meeting of the two countries foreign ministers in Jakarta.

Both countries agreed on the importance of ASEAN as the pre-eminent regional institution and a key part of the Rules-Based International System to find acceptable solutions based on the will and the interests of the people in Myanmar.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said she and her British counterpart, Dominic Raab, had discussed how the U.K. and the international community could support ASEANs effort to help Myanmar resolve the turmoil there.

Reported by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.
The Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul) has announced its transformation into a holding group structure and reinforcing its capabilities in technology innovation by launching a dedicated applied technology solutions company, Wamid.

This transformation marks a new chapter in the group's history and signals its readiness for the IPO in 2021.

Announcing the launch of Saudi Tadawul Group today (April 7), the Saudi bourse said it will become the parent company with a portfolio of four subsidiaries: Saudi Exchange, a dedicated bourse business (previously known as the Saudi Stock Exchange Company - Tadawul), the Securities Clearing Center Company (Muqassa), the Securities Depository Center Company (Edaa) and Wamid  a new innovative applied technology services business, focused on providing innovation and nascent technologies within the Saudi economy through pragmatic innovation.

The transformation of Tadawul into a holding group structure is another important step forwards in the ongoing development of the Saudi capital market, its infrastructure and members offerings, it stated.

The launch of Wamid will add depth and diversity to the Saudi Tadawul Group and its subsidiaries' offerings in addition to strengthening market infrastructure through innovative solutions and capture expansion opportunities through targeted investments in an array of sectors and industries.

It will increase the Saudi capital market's attractiveness among global investors and reinforce its position as the issuers' exchange of choice, said the statement.

The group will benefit from the integration and synergies between its subsidiaries, ensuring efficient intra-group operations across the organization. The operational independence of each subsidiary will create an agile environment supporting rapid responses to evolving global and local market trends, it stated.

It will also facilitate the introduction of best-in-class services to all market participants, diversification of investment opportunities, and the continued development of the Saudi capital market, its infrastructure, and member's offerings, the statement added.

Sarah Al Suhaimi, the current head of Tadawul's Board of Directors, would be spearheading the group structure as its Chairperson along with Engineer Khalid Al Hussan as the Chief Executive Officer.

Mohammed Al Rumaih, who has more than 17 years of experience in the financial sector, has been named CEO of the Saudi Exchange.

Previously, Al Rumaih had held various administrative and leadership positions in Tadawul, and oversaw the development of several financial instruments, major listings and marketing initiatives.

Furthermore, Mohammed Al Nory has been appointed as CEO of Wamid. He brings 16 years of experience in commercial and investment banking, with a wealth of knowledge in corporate finance, business development and Capital Markets' products.

At a press conference held virtually today, Al Suhaimi said: "The transformation into the new structure under Saudi Tadawul Group, will support the continued growth of the Saudi capital market and reinforce its position as a global market leader and advanced capital market."

"This is a significant achievement in our journey to transform Saudi Arabia's economy. Comprehensive capital market reforms are not only prudent, but essential to ensuring higher economic growth, and achieving the nation-wide goal of the successful delivery of Saudi's Vision 2030 and aligned with the strategy of the Public Investment Fund (PIF)," noted Al Suhaimi.

Al Hussan said: "The new structure will enable us to deliver high-quality services across all our business lines, increase our competitiveness, and align our capital market with the rapid growth of Emerging Markets."

"I'm confident that the Saudi Tadawul Group and its subsidiary companies will shape what comes next in terms of capital market development in Saudi Arabia, serving as the bridge connecting global investors and regional economies. The transformation provides a strong platform for the Saudi Tadawul Group's IPO," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
The global biometrics trends review

The global biometrics market has been recently developing rapidly, and this trend will continue shortly. If in 2018 its volume was estimated at $23.4 billion, according to the forecast of the analytical company BCC Research, the market size may increase to $71.6 billion with an average annual growth rate of 23.2 % by 2024. Fingerprint scanning, facial recognition, iris, vein, and voice technologies are expected to be implemented at the fastest pace. The analysis is based on the revenue indicators of key players depending on segments, including hardware, software, and integration. Biometric electronic documents Another analytical Agency, Acuity Research, estimates that the number of biometric electronic IDs will increase by about 3.5 billion electronic documents in the world. Moreover, more than half of the UN member States issue biometric passports. Government and private contracts of Canada, the United States, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Lithuania, Hungary, Bangladesh, Senegal, and other countries are examples of implementation of programs for the transition to biometric electronic documents. Government organisations in various countries believe that biometrics is one of the most effective ways to identify refugees and those who cross the border. Now there are a lot of projects which are based on biometric technology. Biometric identification system Perhaps one of the most ambitious is the Aadhaar project being implemented in India Perhaps one of the most ambitious is the Aadhaar project being implemented in India. It is a biometric identification system that contains the data of more than a billion people. The database contains about 10 billion fingerprint templates, two billion iris templates, and a billion photos. There is another ambitious project at the Nairobi Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, where RecFaces company has implemented a passenger facial identification ready-made solution, that helps the security guards to receive notifications about airport visitors in just a few seconds and increase the efficiency of security services at least by 30%. The introduction of biometric identification of passengers aimed at increasing the level of airport security, as well as quickly obtaining information about the detection of wanted persons, stored in the long-term archive. Automated control gates As another example, face match is used at border checks to compare the portrait on a digitised biometric passport with the holder's face. In 2017, Thales company was responsible for supplying the new automated control gates for the system of Automated Fast Track Crossing at External Borders at Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. This solution has been devised to facilitate evolution from fingerprint recognition to facial recognition This solution has been devised to facilitate evolution from fingerprint recognition to facial recognition during. Governmental systems, SmartCity, airports projects using identification technologies day by day become our reality and influence the growth of the biometrics market globally. Countries are studying the experience of each other and adopting it. Paperless payment technologies The global market of biometrics will shift all industries, starting from the transportation facilities especially airports, where a transition from traditional VMS and ACS to paperless biometric self-Boarding systems will be carried out. Sports facilities will see the development of paperless payment technologies at cash desks, and the banking sector  the payment systems with remote customer identification. HoReCa will transfer from staff time tracking systems to biometric payment systems, biometric checkin systems and the use of biometric identifiers. To sum up there are two most significant drivers of this growth are surveillance in the public sector and numerous other applications in diverse market segments.
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It could have been worse.

Thats the consensus by medics and rescue workers who responded to a shark bite victim late Friday afternoon about 1.5 miles off the southwestern tip of Key Biscaynes Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park.

As the sun was beginning to set to open Easter weekend, a 36-year-old man reportedly received a one-inch puncture wound to his lower leg while in the waters around Stiltsville, a historic landmark of what was once home to 27 wood stilt houses (now just six remain) built on concrete pilings in the shallow waters of Biscayne Bay.

A speedy fire-rescue boat from the City of Miami Fire Rescue Marine Operations Center at the Bayside Marina brought the victim into the No Name Harbor shore, where Key Biscayne Fire Department personnel escorted him to Mercy Hospital, six miles away, where he was initially listed in stable condition before being treated and released.

There was no word if the man was a Key Biscayne resident.

It was not a traumatic injury, said Marcos Osorio, Fire Marshal and Deputy Chief for the Village of Key Biscayne Fire Rescue Department. The puncture was really not significant, but hes lucky considering there could have been multiple (lacerations), because when sharks bite, with their serrated teeth, they also are known to rip.

The critical concern in this case would be if the mans wound had gotten infected, Osorio said.

Had it been more serious, or if there was excessive bleeding, he likely would have been transported to the Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital.

Shark bites are rare in Miami-Dade County. Heading into this year, only 16 have been reported since records were first kept in 1882, according to the International Shark Attack File based at the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida.

Volusia County (in particular, the New Smyrna Beach area) leads the state with 312 all-time recorded shark bites, followed by Brevard (150) and Palm Beach (79).

But as the waters get warmer, and as windy conditions churn up the surf like it did Friday - thus decreasing the sharks visibility - its not uncommon.

In fact, two shark bites took place recently within a five-day span in Indian River County. A teenage girl was bitten just 15 feet offshore of Johns Island Club in Indian River Shores. Then, five days later, just three miles north, a 45-year-old man reportedly was bitten on his feet in the waters at Disneys Vero Beach Resort.

Last year, Florida accounted for 16 of the 33 shark bites reported in the U.S., with the COVID pandemic partly responsible for helping keep that total down from 41 incidents in 2019.

Newsweek reported that the Shark Attack File investigated 129 incidences of water-related bites (but not all confirmed if by sharks) in Florida in 2020.

Sometimes youll see overhead photos of a large group of sharks, and while it may look impressive, sometimes those are just Nurse sharks, and usually theyre just bottom dwellers, and not the Blacktips (or even Spinner sharks) that are known to bite, Osorio said.

Osorio was preparing to travel to Key West for an Easter getaway when he was alerted to Fridays incident. Since then, he has spoken to the media from CNN to Telemundo.

There are reasons why were always on (call), he said. Were like an insurance policy.

Osorio said when the yellow boat linked to the victim was brought in to shore, other people were onboard as well, meaning they were crucial in getting the message to responders, such as the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

In addition to boating or swimming with friends, other safety measures Osorio recommends include knowing your location and understanding the situation.

First, make sure your marine radio is working and try Coast Guard Channel 16 (distress) or try 911, he said. Its important to know your latitude and longitude. A lot of these boats have a lot of nice electronic devices, but if you dont know how to use them, it does you no good. And describe your vessel in detail; this one happened to be yellow, so that helps make it easier to locate.

If youre swimming on a beach, there is a good way to avoid danger, Osorio said.

Try not to swim when you see a lot of fish jumping around, he said. Theyre called baitfish for a reason, and what do sharks like? And avoid windy conditions that stir up the ocean and make the water murky.

In this case, several lessons were learned. But the hard way.

This was pretty rare, Osorio said. But were visitors in their ocean and weve got to respect their territory. At the end of the day, theyre (like) animals and theyre going to make mistakes. And when they assume its a fish, theyre going to bite.
A south Alabama police officer was arrested on computer tampering and ethics violation charges Tuesday night.

Officer Andrew Lee of the Prichard Police Department was arrested and booked into jail around 8 p.m. Tuesday, according to the Mobile County Sheriffs Office jail log.

Lee was indicted on five ethics violations and two counts of computer tampering, according to the log.

Lee was formerly an officer with the Chickasaw Police Department, according to WALA. Lee left the department in 2019 after resigning in good standing.

He was later hired by the Prichard Police Department.

The Alabama State Bureau of Investigation made the arrest.
Sergeant Stiger said that even being handcuffed and in a prone position can make it harder to breathe.

When you add body weight to that, it just increases the possibility of death, he said.

The testimony from Sergeant Stiger came on the eighth day of the trial of Mr. Chauvin, who has been charged with murdering Mr. Floyd. The sergeant has said that the officers who arrested Mr. Floyd were initially justified in using force to try to put him in the back of a police car and put him in the prone position, but should have slowed down or stopped their force once Mr. Floyd was on the ground.

Sergeant Stiger said on Wednesday that while Mr. Chauvin knelt on Mr. Floyd, he had appeared to use a pain compliance technique on one of Mr. Floyds hands. Sergeant Stiger said Mr. Chauvin could be seen, in body camera video, either pushing Mr. Floyds knuckles together or pulling his wrist against his handcuffs to hurt him. The sergeant said he could hear the handcuffs ratcheting tighter in one of the videos.

Those techniques may be appropriate to get a person to comply with police commands, Sergeant Stiger said, but he indicated that there was no opportunity for Mr. Floyd to comply.

At that point, its just pain, Sergeant Stiger said.

But in the cross-examination of Sergeant Stiger, the lawyer for Mr. Chauvin, Eric J. Nelson, played a short video of Mr. Floyd handcuffed on the ground and asked the sergeant if it sounded like Mr. Floyd was saying, I ate too many drugs. Sergeant Stiger said he could not make out what Mr. Floyd had said, at which point Mr. Nelson asked him if things can be missed in a chaotic scene. The sergeant agreed that they could.
This editorial appears in the April 9, 2021 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

EDITORIAL

To Survive the Green New Deal, Defeat It!

[Print version of this editorial]

March 31Despite the frantic efforts of the Federal Reserves QE4ever program and similar financial easing from other runny emitters of currency in the trans-Atlantic world, the inevitable financial blowout following decades of collapse of the physical productivity of the trans-Atlantic worlda collapse made all the more astonishing and sickening when contrasted not to the past, but to what could have been the presentis driving the present would-be rulers of Olympus to promote, nakedly, policies of direct population reduction through suicidal economic policy and warfare.

But these policies can no longer be forced through.

The unipolar post-U.S.S.R. world order, in which the Anglo-American special relationship exerted enormous and unchallenged poweron the military, financial, and policy frontsis over. The just-released U.S. State Departments 2020 human rights report falls all over itself making claims about genocide in China, claims which are unsupported by facts on the ground and for which numerous professions of agreement can no longer reliably be elicited from other nations by the threat of falling out of the U.S.s good graces.

The enormous hypocrisy, the vast disparity between, on the one hand, claims of support for human rights with, on the other hand, the reality of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, and Yemen, is such that this chasm can not be ignored. As Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying said today, The U.S. has no right whatsoever to criticize China on human rights issue. Let the curtain fall on this U.S.-staged play. Its time for U.S. politicians to wake up from their Truman Show.

The nature of the recent discussion between Macron, Merkel, and Putin, in which the necessity of adhering to the Minsk Agreements was reasserted and the potential for use of the Sputnik V vaccine was raised, is just one example of how the unipolar world is crumbling. The proposal by the President of Finland to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Helsinki Accords by bringing the U.S., China, and Russia to discuss climate and Arctic issues, while off the mark in the proposed topics, is correct in identifying the necessary participants. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made a similar reference to the formation of the OSCE coming out of the Helsinki Accords when he proposed, during the Valdai Conference in Moscow, a platform comprising all the stakeholders in the Southwest Asia-Persian Gulf-North Africa region to reach final settlements regarding Syria, Libya, Iran and the Arab Gulf states, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Russias independence of action and its brilliant strategic interventions, along with Chinas meteoric economic rise through policies that once characterized the United States and which China is now exporting in an increasingly worldwide way, are changing the world. Terms from London, dictated for American and European stenographers, no longer hold sway.

While some trans-Atlantic stink tanks continue to disgrace themselves by peddling fantasies about the Belt and Road Initiative as a neocolonialist debt-trap, many others are realizing that they cannot pooh-pooh the enormous Chinese initiative out of existence. While some look for opportunities to smear Chinas record on Covid, the reality of that nations vaccine exports cannot be denied. Where the U.S. offers weapons contracts and threats, Chinese firms offer infrastructure and financing. Where the U.K. brings chaos in Southwest Asia, Russia offers a path towards regional stability.

The greatest flank the British have is the mass-suicide proposal known as the Great Reset, the most destructive anti-development population-reduction policy short of actual military conflict menacing the world today. For the United States and Europe not to sink into a historical condition far worse than mere irrelevance, the Great Reset policy, and the fraudulent Malthusian outlook that serves to advance it, must be defeated and replaced.

But with what?

The magnificent Schiller Institute Conference of March 20-21 demonstrated the quality of thoughtful, polemical, and agapic deliberation required, as well as the power of the international dynamic created in significant part through the efforts of the LaRouche movement, to shape that better future. Prepare for that Institutes next conference, to be held on May 8, by taking actions over the coming days and weeks to crush the Green New Deal and bring to life the physical economic potential of the creative human species.
Sam Sanders recorded many episodes of Its Been a Minute, his NPR podcast and radio show, in his hometown San Antonio last year. He thinks it benefited from the change in scenery.

Before the pandemic, Sanders had been living in downtown Los Angeles. After shelter-in-place orders prompted National Public Radio to have everyone work from home, he did the show in the studio apartment he shared with his dog Zora. That swiftly got old.

So he decided to hit the road, criss-crossing the country and recording segments all over the place. He spent about six months renting a house near the Alamo Quarry Market and making that his home base. And the show changed.

Thered be so many times over the last few months where the internet or I or my team would be obsessed with this story, and I would go see my mother and my brother and  I couldnt explain the story to them because they dont live their lives on Twitter, said Sanders, 36. And that was a clue. It doesnt matter.

Its important to understand that your focus does shift when youre in a different place. And I think Texas was especially grounding, and it helped me get a lot less distracted by some of the noise and chatter that we think in our coastal elite bubbles is always important. So I think in general, being in Texas led to a lot less dumb (expletive), in my opinion.

Recent episodes of Its Been a Minute have included segments about family separation at the border, gun violence and Selena, as well as a chat with late-night hosts Desus and Mero.

The show, a smart and entertaining blend of news and pop culture featuring diverse voices, launched in 2017. It was part of a slate of new programming developed to replace the long-running series Car Talk, which had been airing in reruns since 2012.

Sanders had been covering politics, including the 2016 election, and decided he had had enough. So he jumped at the chance to build something of his own.

On ExpressNews.com: Get to know five San Antonio-based filmmakers

He worked with producer Brent Baughman to develop the show. Baughman encouraged Sanders to make it personal. To that end, most episodes are introduced by Sanders Aunt Betty, a listener favorite who also has appeared as a guest on occasion and has even shared her pound cake recipe on the air.

Another popular element of the show features listeners sharing the best part of their week, something that Sanders had been doing on his personal Facebook page on Fridays.

I think that so much of our news right now is subliminally telling us that we shouldnt have fun. That we shouldnt be happy, he said. But you know what, someone had a baby this week. Somebody graduated this week. Someone got a puppy this week. And its great. And thats allowed.

I think that segment on the show reminds us that were not meant to live in a constant state of panic.

The initial goal for Its Been a Minute was to make a fun, newsy hourlong radio show  in San Antonio, it airs at 11 a.m. Saturdays and 5 p.m. Sundays on KSTX, one of about 400 stations across the country that carries it. But it evolved into a podcast, as well, with new episodes debuting on Tuesdays and Fridays. It reaches about 1.7 million listeners each week, Sanders said.

Part of NPRs mission right now is to grow and diversify its audience, Sanders said, and the new listeners  no matter how strong radio is, new listeners are going to come to NPR through their earbuds, not their car speakers, and weve really doubled down in the last year or two on making both - making a really good radio show and making a really good podcast.

Sanders discovered NPR after graduating from Clemens High School in Schertz. He had planned to go into politics, and had been accepted by Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and Stanford University in California. But he decided to delay college for a year after both of his parents fell ill  his father developed end-stage renal failure and his mother had a massive stroke that left her paralyzed.

He stayed in Texas to take care of them, and for the first time, instead of them driving him around, he was behind the wheel, and also in charge of the radio.

I remember one Sunday, driving my mother home from church in Lockhart, I ended up putting the dial on Weekend All Things Considered when Guy Raz was still the host of the show, he said. After that, I was an NPR kid.

It took him a while to make the leap from fan to employee. After receiving a bachelors degree in political science and music from the University of the Incarnate Word, he went to Harvard University to study public policy. During a 2008 internship in New Orleans, he spent a lot of time in the car listening to stations all over the dial. One day, he was stopped at a red light, listening to a Black talk show.

One of them makes a joke, the rest of the panel laughs, and I said, Oh, my God, theyre having so much fun, I will do that, he said. Thats when I decided to do radio. NPR seems like the most credible of all the places making radio, lets do that.

He got an internship at WBUR in Boston and joined NPR in 2009. After 12 years with the network, he said he tries to use his prominence on the air and on social media to amplify voices often left out of the national discourse and to shine a spotlight on the lack of diversity in the media, including at NPR.

He is one of just a handful of Black voices on the air at the network, he said, adding that has to change to make the broadcasts more reflective of the entire country.

Im slowly becoming this aging millennial whos no longer the hot new thing  Im just a thing, he said, laughing. But Im in this position where I can say, loudly and publicly, This is wrong, fix it. This is bad, fix it.

He doesnt expect to work from an office again any time soon. So he plans to continue roving around with Zora. He put most of his things in storage last year and is considering dividing his time evenly in the year ahead between California and Texas.

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Being here reminded him of something he hadnt even realized he had been missing in the isolation of the pandemic.

One place youre always going to have friendly interactions with strangers is San Antonio  you just are, he said. And I love that.

One particular encounter at Trader Joes sticks in his mind. He was standing in line with some flowers and a bottle of wine. An older guy ahead of him glanced at him a few times and seemed to be talking about him with the cashier.

He looks back again, Sanders said, and I said, Hi! And he goes, Im paying for your flowers and your wine. Any man wanting to take care of his girlfriend and have a good date night, I gotta support that.

And I got really quiet. One, its just for me. Two, I dont do girlfriends. And in this moment, I had this decision to make. Do I school this man? Or do I take the gift in the spirit it was given? I took the gift in the spirit it was given.

You dont get that in L.A., you dont get that in New York. Everyones nice here, and it was wonderful.

Sanders thinks theres a lesson in that moment, especially in a year when everyone has endured so much.

Weve been through a lot, he said. And in whatever way it comes, if theres a free bottle of wine and some flowers for you, take it.

dlmartin@express-news.net | Twitter: @DeborahMartinEN
Disgraced former congresswoman Katie Hill has lost a lawsuit against DailyMail.com over revealing details of her three-way affair with a campaign staffer.

In a judgement handed down on Wednesday, Los Angeles judge Yolanda Orozco threw out Hill's case, finding that the stories about her were of 'compelling public interest' and protected by the First Amendment.

In her ruling, the judge said arguments by Hill's lawyers were 'unpersuasive', and that DailyMail.com's stories about the former congresswoman were in the 'public interest' because they detailed her alleged affair with a campaign staffer, pictured her using drugs that were illegal at the time, and exposed her iron cross crotch tattoo which 'resembled a white supremacy symbol that had become an issue during her congressional campaign.'

A Los Angeles judge on Wednesday ruled against former Rep. Katie Hill (pictured arriving at the Capitol in 2019) in her lawsuit against DailyMail.com

Hill, 33, resigned from Congress in 2019 after shocking nude photos emerged of the politician cavorting with Morgan Desjardins, who was then a 22-year-old junior staffer, (pictured all together) and an ethics probe was launched into her alleged affair with another aide

Texts and photographs obtained and published by DailyMail.com in October 2019 showed Hill had been in a throuple with her then-husband Kenny Heslep and 22-year-old staffer Morgan Desjardins.

Desjardins began a three-way relationship with the married couple shortly after she started working for Hill in 2017. The affair broke down in the summer of 2019 when Hill told both her husband and her lover that she wanted to focus on her work.

The congresswoman, 33, was pictured naked brushing Desjardin's hair during a trip the three took to Alaska  allegedly funded using campaign finances.

The photos also included a picture of Hill naked holding a bong emblazoned with a skull and crossbones, and with a tattoo of an Iron Cross resembling a Nazi symbol on her bikini line.

The revelations prompted investigations by the House Ethics Committee and the Federal Election Commission, and Hill resigned from congress days later and issued a public apology.

Hill sued her ex-husband Kenneth Heslep in December, accusing him of launching a 'scorched earth attack' on her after she broke up with him by distributing nude photos to DailyMail.com and RedState, a conservative media site

The pair (pictured at their wedding) quietly settled their divorce in October 2020, a year after Hill was forced to resign after it was revealed she had a 'throuple' with a campaign staffer

In December last year DailyMail.com published allegations by Hill's ex-husband that she had sex with three of her staffers, had been involved in another throuple before Desjardins, used campaign donations for a 'sex-cation', and drank and smoked marijuana excessively while serving as a member of Congress.

Heslep also claimed that a restraining order Hill had taken out against him was an attempt to gag him from speaking to the media.

Later that month Hill sued the publisher of DailyMail.com, news site Red State, a journalist for the site and Hill's ex-husband, claiming that naked photographs of her included in the stories as evidence of her affair with her staffer were 'revenge porn' and part of 'a revenge vendetta'.

On Wednesday Judge Orozco ruled that Hill's claims were an 'unlawful Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation', citing a law designed to encourage free speech about 'matters of public concern' including politicians, without the chilling effects of fearing costly lawsuits.

Heslep said Desjardins had told Hill she was bisexual when they'd first met, and described how his wife broached the subject of a three-way date about a month later

'Intimate images published by Defendant spoke to Plaintiff's character and qualifications for her position, as they allegedly depicted Plaintiff with a campaign staffer whom she was alleged to have had a sexual affair with and appeared to show Plaintiff using a then-illegal drug and displaying a tattoo that was controversial because it resembled a white supremacy symbol that had become an issue during her congressional campaign,' the ruling said.

'Accordingly, the images were a matter of 'public issue or public interest.'

In the court documents, Judge Orozco cited rulings where 'the public should be permitted to determine the importance or relevance of the reported facts for itself.'

'The photos show a sitting Congresswoman engaging in conduct some might consider highly inappropriate and perhaps unlawful, with one exhibiting Plaintiff's tattoo which looks similar to the symbols formerly used by white supremacists,' the ruling said.

'The facts of which these photos speak are about Plaintiff's character, judgment and qualifications for her congressional position. Of course, these are matters of public concern.'
Its not hard to see why Microsoft is investing in WebAssembly. Its a technology that scratches many different itches. It delivers apps to users, adds rich user interfaces to web applications, and even provides a way to manage and update edge devices. By building on widely distributed web technologies and supporting familiar programming languages, its a way to run compiled binaries anywhere that you can run a JavaScript engine.

Microsoft has had plenty of experience with common language runtimes like WebAssemblys. After all, .NETs own CLR has been around for more than two decades now and has become the foundation for its open source reinvention, while supporting many different languages from a managed C++ implementation to the stalwart C# and Visual Basic and the functional F#. So, it wasnt hard to provide tools for .NETs Roslyn compiler to target the WebAssembly byte code rather than the .NET CLRs.

Blazor WebAssembly tools in Visual Studio

The initial Blazor experiment built on the ASP.NET Core tooling to deliver WebAssembly code using familiar development tools and techniques. Now Blazor and WebAssembly are supported targets for C# development in Visual Studio. If you have a recent version of Visual Studio 2019 installed, start by creating a new project, and then choose to build a Blazor WebAssembly app. This will set up the scaffolding for a Blazor application, with an optional ASP.NET Core host, using either .NET Core 3.1 or .NET 5.0. Id recommend .NET Core 5.0 for new development, but if you want long-term support you may prefer to choose the .NET Core 3.1 option.

Blazor WebAssembly apps can be delivered as Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) or used as front ends for ASP.NET Core applications. This last option is attractive, especially if youve used technologies like Silverlight in the past, as it gives you a set of rich user interfaces for a web application. Unlike Silverlight or Flash, Blazor doesnt require risky browser plug-ins; everything is managed by the browser and its JavaScript engine (including security and application isolation).

The Visual Studio scaffolding is enough to get you started, providing a WebAssembly host for your code. You can then add controls as needed, using either the standard WinUI controls or working with third-party tools. Popular control vendors such as Infragistics have Blazor implementations of familiar controls with versions for both WebAssembly and server-side Blazor. Third-party controls like these let you build much more complex UIs, similar to those youd use in a standard desktop application.

Once youve built a WebAssembly application you need to get it to your users. The Visual Studio tool gives you some options, but you need to either provide a complete web app for the ASP.NET Core option or use something like the Windows Store to deliver a WebAssembly PWA.

Using WebAssembly in Azure Static Web Apps

One option is to use the Azure Static Web Apps tool to deliver new code to a host URL each time you push a new build through GitHub. Code in a PWA or in a webpage may well be dynamic, but its not dynamically generated by a server. By building a Blazor app as a single page application, you can use standard switch and routing techniques to handle its different URLs, with a fallback route to ensure that any other URLs automatically resolve to the index view.

Azure Static Web Apps use GitHub to host your code, so Microsoft provides a GitHub repository with the files you need to build your first Blazor app. Start by using the provided template to set up your own repository, adding the main branch to your own account. You can then clone it to a local machine for editing in your choice of development tools. Once youve set that up, in Azure follow the usual route to create a Static Web App and connect it to your new GitHub repository. You can then deploy the sample code to Azure and test your apps website. You can find the site URL in the Azure Portal.

With local code on your development system, you can open it in your choice of development tool, using either built-in Git tools or a Git client to push updates to your GitHub repository. Its best to work in a local development branch, using pull requests to update the main branch. Once youre happy with your code, accept the pull request and Azure Static Web Apps will use a GitHub Action to push a new build of both your site and your Blazor WebAssembly code to Azure. If you reload the site or a hosted PWA, youll automatically see any changes.

This approach makes a lot of sense as a way of transparently updating WebAssembly apps. Users will automatically be presented with a new version the next time they open the apps URL, with no need to seek updates. At the same time, you dont need to build an update infrastructure. A Blazor PWA delivered as an Azure Static Web App will look like a desktop app to a user, one that will always be up to date.

Taking advantage of WebView2 for WebAssembly

One interesting aspect of the recent Project Reunion 0.5 release is its production-ready support for the first WinUI 3 components, including the Chromium-based WebView2 control. This includes the same JavaScript engine as Microsofts Edge browser, and that brings along its WebAssembly support. You can use it to host Blazor and other WebAssembly frameworks, running web-delivered controls while using JavaScript interop tools to link your WebAssembly UI to local code via WinUI.

This approach makes it easier to update application logic out of band from standard updates. By refreshing the Blazor code, you can deliver updates without having to distribute a whole new release to users. This approach can work well when youre having to respond to a rapidly changing regulatory environment, for example updating a realty app for new local taxes as soon as theyve been approved, or calculating tariffs and other import duties while customs rules are still in flux.

Rapid changes arent the only reason to embed WebAssembly in an application. You can use it with WebView2 to A/B test new UI features, delivering different static content with Blazor components to different groups of users, experimentally verifying new application features before moving to standard WinUI components in a final release.

Going further

As weve seen with experiments like krustlets, Microsofts WebAssembly ambitions go much further than apps that can run hosted in any browser. It was an early adopter of the standalone WASI, the WebAssembly System Interface. This takes the WebAssembly runtime and decouples it from its browser host, providing a lightweight JVM host for compiled code. If WebAssembly in the browser gave you a near-native environment for what might have previously been JavaScript, WASI applies the same decoupling to Node.js, letting you run near-native binaries on a standalone JVM.

That has definite advantages for managing updates to small-form-factor IoT devices, where a WASI-enabled JavaScript runtime and simple firmware can keep a devices software in sync with a cloud-hosted or locally hosted repository. Devices can download updated applications as they are available, and because WASI is a standard specification, software can be developed and tested using basic simulators with digital twins.

WebAssemblys flexibility is key to much of its utility. Initially well see it used as a Flash or Silverlight replacement, providing a way to host rich controls on ASP.NET Core web apps. Experience gained here will allow us to host those new experiences in desktop apps using WebView2 before we use them as PWAs delivered via Static Web Apps. Theres a lot to like about Microsofts measured and tool-driven approach to WebAssembly, and its rapid maturity means its time to start building your own Blazor-driven experiments.
Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanth has called a meeting at 7:30 pm on April 8 to discuss the COVID-19 situation in the state.

In this meeting there will also be a discussion on preparations for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's video conferencing on the COVID-19 situation.

The Chief Minister has decided that daily meetings will be held in the evening at 7.30 pm to keep a track of the efforts being taken to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

The meeting could not be held in the morning because of the Chief Minister's is currently campaigning for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in West Bengal.

It has been decided that the meeting will be held after CM Adityanath returns to Lucknow.

Health Minister Jai Pratap Singh, Medical Education Minister Suresh Khanna and a team of 11 officials have also been called to attend this meeting.

The instructions of the High Court will also be discussed during the meeting that will be held on April 8.

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Robust portfolio and focused on mining-friendly Quebec

District scale battery metals prospect, backed by Parbec gold asset

Funded for the foreseeable

What Renforth Resources does:

( ) ( ) (FRA:9RR) is a Quebec-focused small-cap explorer, which owns 100% of the flagship Parbec gold project - one of the last un-mined gold deposits on Canadas prolific Cadillac Break fault.

The asset boasts a 2020 assessed open pit gold resource of 104,000 ounces of higher confidence indicated gold at a grade of 1.78 grams per ton (g/t) and 177,000 ounces of inferred, also at 1.78 g/t. The Toronto-based company is currently updating the resource estimate, to include over 15,000 metres (m) of new drill data, which it aims to release in June or July this year.

Parbec sits next to the Canadian Malartic Mine (CMM), which is Canadas largest gold mine, currently an open pit operation but, which is pivoting to underground, and will need ounces to process while making the shift, according to the firm.

Renforth also holds 100% of the brownfield 215 square kilometre (sq km) Surimeau District polymetallic project, where a potential district-scale volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) nickel-rich discovery of over around 20 km, has been confirmed.

The property boasts good access and numerous areas of interest, both VMS targets such as the 5 km Victoria West prospect, which Renforth is currently focused on, as well as gold prospects and other metals. Agnico Eagle's flagship LaRonde mine, exploiting a gold-rich VMS deposit, lies just 20 km to the north.

The company also, in the portfolio, has the Malartic West property, which spans 53 sq km adjacent to the western border of the CMM and the site of a surface copper/silver discovery traced over 200 metres.

It also owns the Nixon-Bartleman property in Ontario on the Destor-Porcupine Fault, with gold on surface over 500m of strike, which remains open, and the Denain-Pershing project - a large, mineralized land position east of Val dOr Quebec, which is currently optioned to O3 Mining.

How is it doing:

On March 25, 2021, Renforth announced that it had kicked off a 3,500m, 16 hole, drill program on the Victoria Nickel target at the Surimeau property.

Drilling is planned for around 3 km of the 5 km strike of the Victoria target area and is a follow-up program to its confirmation surface and sub-surface sampling programs which it said has demonstrated the presence of mineralization including sulphide nickel, zinc, copper, and silver.

Just days later, Renforth updated on progress, saying visual results in four holes had revealed the presence of nickel, copper, and zinc sulphide mineralization. The zinc-nickel occurrences at Surimeau bear a geological similarity to the Outokumpu, Finland deposits, the company has said.

And also in March this year, the company had encouraging news from Parbec, telling investors that it has discovered a new gold zone, which lies outside the current resource.

Assays from one hole included an intercept of 1.5m at 5.34 grams per ton (g/t) gold from a depth of 83.4m and 15.8 g/t of the precious metal in an intercept of 0.5m from 159m depth. Also found was 6.43 g/t gold in a three-metres length starting at 174.7m depth.

And on April 7 this year, the company reported assays from five holes from last Fall's drilling at Parbec, which it said were expected to bolster the new resource estimate.

Each hole contained gold values of interest, the company said, while a stand-out was 4.02 g/t of gold over a width of 4m from a depth of 141m to 145m in one hole.

A total of 37 drill holes from both phase one and phase two are still outstanding, Renforth added.

Inflection points:

More drill results from the Surimeau District project

An updated resource estimate for Parbec this summer

M&A activity

What the boss says:

Following news of the start of drilling at Surimeau, Renforth CEO Nicole Brewster spoke to Proactive about the project and the outlook for so-called green metals: "I really don't think we've solved the nickel deficit issue, and that's again, before you really bring electric vehicle (EV)/ the battery usage/ greening of the economy into the picture, so I think we're into a fairly robust nickel market for some time here."

Contact the author at giles@proactiveinvestors.com
A man and a woman linked to a double shooting on Canal Street early Sunday morning have been arrested in Mississippi, according to the New Orleans Police Department.

A Crimestoppers tip helped NOPD officers and members of the U.S. Marshals capture the pair of suspects, Dontez Baker and Shayla Bradley, authorities said Wednesday.

+2 With suspects identified, warrants issued in Canal Street shooting that left 2 wounded: NOPD New Orleans police have obtained arrest warrants for a man and woman linked to a shooting on Canal Street early Sunday morning that left two m

Baker, 21, faces two counts of attempted second-degree murder. Bradley, also 21, is accused of being a principal to attempted second-degree murder.

Police said Baker, Bradley and another woman were in the 700 block of Canal about 1:40 a.m. Sunday when one of them got into an argument with an unnamed, 18-year-old man. Investigators havent said what caused the argument. But Baker allegedly brandished a pistol and shot the 18-year-old as well as a 19-year-old man.

Both wounded men were taken to a hospital. Their conditions werent available Wednesday.

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Baker and Bradley ran from the scene and fled to Mississippi, police said. Officers initially didnt know their names. But they were identified after the NOPD publicly released surveillance photos of them in the wake of the double shooting.

A Crimestoppers tipster informed investigators where Baker and Bradley had gone. Officers arrested Bradley in Gulfport, Mississippi, and Baker was caught in Wiggins, Mississippi. Police said Baker had two handguns on him when he was captured.

Both suspects were awaiting their transfer to New Orleans jail as of Wednesday morning.

Check back later for more details.
Tommy Fury has defended himself after critics accused him of flouting coronavirus travel rules by failing to wear a mask while on a train.

The Love Island star, 21, shared a video of himself travelling in First Class from London to Manchester after visiting the Capital for work.

In the clip, Tommy appeared to be travelling in an empty carriage, but the operator - Avanti West Coast - stated travellers must wear face coverings unless exempt.

'Home time': Tommy Fury has defended himself after critics accused him of flouting coronavirus travel rules by failing to wear a mask while on a train

The reality personality, who is in a relationship with Molly-Mae Hague, shared the post of himself relaxing onboard alongside the caption: 'Full carriage to myself.'

A spokesman for the boxer, who was hosting coverage for BT Sport over the weekend, said Tommy only removed his mask to have a drink of water.

They told The Sun: 'This story was taken while Tommy had his mask off to drink water and I am sure you saw his other story which showed a completely empty carriage (he was the only person in it).

'Tommy has posted many pictures over the last few months of him wearing a mask.It was taken out of context. I can appreciate the confusion.'

Empty carriage? The Love Island star, 21, shared a video of himself travelling in First Class from London to Manchester after visiting the Capital for work

MailOnline has contacted Tommy's representative for comment.

An Avanti West Coast spokesperson said: 'In line with government guidance, you must wear a face covering (unless you are exempt) when you're at a station and whilst onboard a train.

'Some people may not be able to wear a face covering such as young children, people with specific medical reasons, those with breathing difficulties or whose disabilities make it difficult for them to wear a face covering.'

Government guidelines also says that it is a legal requirement to cover your face with a mask while travelling on public transport.

Natural: Molly-Mae, 21, looked radiant on Monday when she shared a new selfie with her Instagram followers, quipping from her Manchester home: 'Talk about a lazy long weekend'

As Tommy travelled home, his girlfriend Molly-Mae, also 21, shared a new selfie with her Instagram followers, quipping from her Manchester home: 'Talk about a lazy long weekend.'

Posing up a storm in the bathroom mirror, she looked radiant wearing nothing but a dab of nude lipstick, puffs of blusher and mascara - prompting praise from boyfriend Tommy.

Evidently impressed with her appearance, Tommy quickly responded to the post with the single word: 'Perfect.'

Perfect: Boyfriend Tommy Fury was quick to praise the realty star on her latest post

After straightening her hair for fans, Molly hilariously slipped back into the bed she shares with Tommy, who she met while appearing on Love Island in 2019.

'Anyone else had the laziest weekend of their life?' she queried, before adding: 'Whoops back in bed.'

Molly-Mae has been on a mission to return to her natural looks in recent weeks after she got her lip fillers dissolved late last year.

The star, who has also had her hair extensions removed, recently begged her young fans to 'just wait' before undergoing cosmetic tweaks.

The TV personality told how she wants to 'reverse all the mistakes I made' and go back to a more 'natural' look after having the composite bonds on her teeth removed by Ruh Dental, in Manchester.

Molly-Mae warned how she underwent procedures she 'didn't necessarily need to get done' and should have waited for her face to mature before having work done.

The media star has also recently had her composite bonding removed from her teeth.
US aims to remove all UXOs from famous Vietnam battlefield by 2025

The U.S. has set a target of removing all unexploded ordnance (UXO) left in Quang Tri Province from the Vietnam War by the end of 2025, an American official stated.

"Vietnam has been a tremendous partner for the U.S. when it comes to addressing legacies of war, not just, obviously, the unexploded ordnance issue, but also the issues of those who've been missing in action as well as dioxin and Agent Orange," Jerry Guilbert, chief of Programs for Weapons Removal and Abatement under the U.S. Department of State, told a press conference Tuesday.

Guilbert said one of the greatest accomplishments in Vietnam-U.S. cooperation in dealing with war legacies is the fact that there have been no deaths from unexploded ordnance in Quang Tri Province for the past few years.

He also praised the efforts of provincial authorities in pioneering many new and innovative technologies and techniques for addressing UXOs.

"We're actually on track to making Quang Tri free from the impact of UXOs by the end of 2025," Guilbert stressed, adding the central province was the most heavily contaminated by UXO in all of Vietnam.

Between 2014 and 2019, the province had attracted $100 million in foreign non-governmental aid, receiving an average 38 new projects a year. It has cooperated with 67 foreign NGOs and international organizations from countries like Ireland, South Korea, the U.K. and U.S.

Quang Tri was the stage of the Tet Offensive in 1968 and Easter Offensive in 1972.

A total 391,000 hectares of provincial land, accounting for 83.3 percent of its total area, remains infested with mines and other explosives from the war, according to official statistics.

According to Quang Tri's Legacy of War Coordination Center, 8,540 people in the province have fallen victims to UXOs since 1975, with 3,431 fatalities. Many were collecting scrap when detonating an explosive.
Chennai: Air Customs officials seized 1.72 kgs of gold on Wednesday (April 7) worth Rs 79.78 lakhs from two domestic passengers who arrived in the Chennai city.

In both cases, the passengers had collected the gold which was hidden in their flights, which had flown in from International destinations.

Officials said that 22 gold cut bits weighing 1.28 kg valued at Rs 59.18 lakhs were recovered and seized from Mohammed Anas, who had flown in from Thiruvananthapuram.

He had hidden the gold in a sock, kept in his pant pocket. On questioning, he revealed on having collected the gold which was concealed under the seat of his aircraft.

This same aircraft had operated from Sharjah to Thiruvananthapuram on its International leg. The passenger was arrested.

Ravuathar Naina Mohamed, who arrived from Lucknow was intercepted and frisked, which led to the seizure of 446 grams of gold worth Rs 20.6 lakhs.

It was learnt that the same aircraft had traveled from Dubai to Lucknow and that he had taken the gold which was concealed under the seat.
The deal with CVC would be among the largest leveraged buyouts in history

Hello Tosh - when flat screen TVs were new

Toshiba, one of the great names of Japanese business and technology, is mulling an offer to go private from London-based venture capital fund CVC Capital.

Japanese business newspaper Nikkei reported last night that CVC had tabled an offer worth Y2trn (13bn), that was said to be receiving careful consideration from the companys board.

Toshiba is almost 150 years old and renowned globally as a manufacturer of electrical products ranging from computers and televisions to microwaves and radar equipment as well as inventing flash memory.

Recent history though has seen the brands tarnished by heavy losses and a series of corporate scandals including the admission in 2015 that it had been falsifying its accounts for years and hiding a huge corrupt expenses network.

A shift into nuclear power also backfired disastrously when the Fukushima disaster in 2011 sparked a backlash.

Westinghouse Nuclear, which it acquired in 2006, went into administration in 2017 and Toshiba had to sell its prized memory chip business to ensure its survival.

Nobuaki Kurumatani, ironically who joined from CVC, has spearheaded the companys recovery since taking over in 2018.

The deal with CVC would be among the largest leveraged buyouts in history but would require the Japanese government's permission due to the companys involvement in nuclear power.

Though its main office is in London CVC is registered in Luxembourg. The private equity fund has more than 300 investors and has invested over 115bn through deals.
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Dr. Dre is denying abuse claims from his estranged wife Nicole Young and alleges that she is using them as a strategy to get out of the prenup he insists is still in place.

The 56-year-old hip-hop mogul filed new legal documents in his already nasty divorce with the 51-year-old mother-of-two as he claims that her abuse allegations are false according to a Wednesday report from TMZ.

The Still D.R.E. hitmaker - full name Andre Romelle Young - also accused Nicole of bringing up abuse claims in an attempt to squeeze money out of him as there is $1billion on the line.

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Heating up: Dr. Dre is denying abuse claims from his estranged wife Nicole Young and alleges that she is using them as a strategy to get out of the prenup he insists is still in place according to legal documents obtained by TMZ

As Dre was hospitalized for a brain aneurysm in January, he also believes that the claims are making the split stressful for him.

The Beats By Dre founder also alleges that Nicole did not raise the allegations until after the divorce filing was made and had realized that the prenup would prevent her from staking a claim to half of his wealth.

The documents also say that Dre claims Nicole's allegations are not only false but also 'appalling.'

He also denies her allegations that he had abused her even before they got married including the night before their actual wedding.

Getting ugly: The 56-year-old hip-hop mogul - full name Andre Romelle Young - also accused Nicole, 51, of bringing up abuse claims in an attempt to squeeze money out of him as there is $1billion on the line, as they are seen in October 2018

Nicole also had claimed that he 'forced' her to sign the prenup which the rapper also denies.

This has already been one of the most contentious celebrity divorces in recent memory as last month Dre requested for a judge to award him 'single status.'

The music mogul 's attorney Laura Wasser had filed court documents 'requesting a bifurcation of Dre's divorce,' which would declare himself and Young 'single,' as reported by TMZ on Wednesday.

'Dre says his divorce from his estranged wife, Nicole Young, has gotten to the point of no return,' the court documents read.

Single? This has already been one of the most contentious celebrity divorces in recent memory as last month Dre requested for a judge to award him 'single status'; Dre pictured in 2018

Dr. Dre noted that his estranged wife's recent 'false allegations of domestic violence' have left their relationship beyond repair.

He also alleged in the court docs that he has 'been trying to settle the divorce with Nicole since she filed in June 2020,' but claimed she is purposely 'dragging her feet.'

Wednesday's filing comes just days after a judge denied a restraining order filed by Young against her estranged husband, after a song released by the rapper prompted her to fear for her safety.

Bifurcation: The music mogul 's attorney Laura Wasser filed court documents 'requesting a bifurcation of Dre's divorce,' which would declare himself and Young 'single,' as reported by TMZ on Wednesday; Nicole and Dre pictured in 2018

Nicole requested the emergency domestic violence restraining order against her ex, 56, after he released a song last month in which he referred to her as a 'greedy b*tch' and a 'perjurer', according to TMZ.

Young claims that while none of this is new, she is now concerned for her safety after the release of the song, and alleges 'he has upped the ante and is now outright threatening me to keep my mouth shut or else.'

Dre discusses having a health crisis in the newly released song, which is a collaboration with KXNG Crooked and DJ Silk.

Denied: A judge has denied a restraining order filed by Nicole Young against her estranged husband Dr. Dre, after a song released by the rapper prompted her to fear for her safety

'I see you trying to f*** me while I'm in surgery, in ICU death bed on some money s***,' he raps. 'Greedy b****, take a pic, girl you know how money get,' it is also sung.

Despite Young believing the new song and her previous allegations of spousal support warranted the order, the judge ultimately denied her request due to 'insufficient evidence.'

Responding to her allegations, Dre insisted the only time he had seen Young since the divorce filing was when she visited him in the hospital following his brain aneurysm in January 2021.

Legal matters: Young, 51, requested the emergency domestic violence restraining order against her ex, 56, after he released a song last month in which he referred to her as a 'greedy b*tch' and a 'perjurer', according to TMZ

Aside from that, Dre insists he has had no contact with her, and has denied all her allegations of abuse.

Since she came forward with her claims, he 'realized he had no idea who the woman he was married to was and he wanted nothing to do with her.'

Ever since Nicole filed for divorce in June last year, their split has become more and more contentious.

In October, Dre accused his wife of criminal conduct in 'embezzling' more than $350,000 from one of their bank accounts.

Happier times: The exes pictured in Sacramento, California in 2014

In January DailyMail.com revealed that Nicole filed court documents accusing Dre of violent and emotional abuse during their 24-year marriage.

The music tycoon held a gun to her head, punched her in the face and slammed her against a wall, lifting her off her feet by her neck, she declared.

Shortly after her scathing declaration to the court, Nicole's legal team huddled with Dr Dre's lawyers and the end result was that Dre - reportedly still in his hospital bed after suffering a brain aneurysm - signed an agreement to pay Nicole a lump sum of $2million in temporary support till April.

Dre had been paying Nicole $293,000 a month in support, but she is asking the court to force him to pay her almost $2million a month, plus another $5million for attorney fees.

Nicole - who claimed in legal documents that Dre has more than $260 million on hand in cash and Apple stocks - contends that she has a right to continue the lavish lifestyle she had as Mrs. Andre Young - which she said cost around $2.3million per month.

Michel'le, who dated Dre in the 1990s, has repeatedly accused him of physical abuse which he denied in 2016 while threatening suit over a Lifetime movie about the subject. TV host Dee Barnes has also written that he beat her up at a party in 1991.
The release of superseding indictments within the last two weeks points to coordinated planning between far-right militias and the Trump White House in the January 6 assault on the US Capitol.

In a new indictment released last Thursday, US prosecutors allege that previously charged Oath Keepers militia members and a leader of the group, Stewart Rhodes, exchanged 19 phone calls over a nearly five-hour period during the January 6 attack. The phone calls indicate that Rhodes, who was on Capitol grounds during the siege, but did not enter, was directing Oath Keepers to breach the Capitol in coordination with still unnamed persons.

Stewart Rhodes, founder of the extreme-right Oath Keepers, speaks during a rally outside the White House in Washington on June 25, 2017. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Among those listed to have communicated with Rhodes on the phone during the attack include previously indicted Oath Keepers and Roger Stone bodyguards Joshua James of Alabama and Roberto Minuta of Texas. The Florida state lead of the Oath Keepers, Kelly Meggs, who previously boasted of an  alliance  he organized between Oath Keepers, Florida 3%ers, and Proud Boys and an unnamed Person 10 who also communicated with each other and Rhodes during the attack. The indictment claims that the phone calls took place between Rhodes, Meggs, Minuta, James and Person 10 beginning at 11:21 a.m. on January 6, and continued for several hours afterward. Of the 19 phone calls listed in the indictment, Rhodes was involved in nine phone calls, while Person 10 was listed in 10 calls, including at least one five-minute call between Rhodes and Person 10, at 2:31 p.m. Nine of the calls took place between 12:58 p.m. and 2:32 p.m.

The government says that Rhodes called Meggs for about 15 seconds at 2:15 p.m., after which Meggs called Rhodes at 2:32 p.m., during which they spoke for about a minute and a half. About three minutes later, Meggs led the stack of Oath Keepers up the Capitol steps and forcibly entered the Capitol building at around 2:40 p.m. After remaining inside the Capitol for roughly an hour, more than a dozen Oath Keepers left and gathered outside with Rhodes shortly after 4 p.m.

At 4:17 p.m., former President Trump released a recorded statement on Twitter reiterating his fraudulent claims of a stolen election and telling his special followers that he loved them but that you have to go home now.

Minuta and James, who were previously identified as bodyguards for Trump political crony Stone, were photographed with him on January 5 and the morning of January 6. Stone maintains extremely close connections to the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers militia groups, frequently employing the latter to serve as personal bodyguards.

Stone also has a close relationship with the chairman of the Proud Boys, Henry Enrique Tarrio, and has used the group to promote his businesses. Stone even endorsed previously indicted Proud Boy Nicholas Ochs in his last run for Congress. Demonstrating the support the group received from the state, Trump infamously directed the Proud Boys to stand back and stand by during a presidential debate last September.

In addition to Meggs, James and Minuta, the new indictment names nine more previously indicted members of the Oath Keeper militia group: Thomas Caldwell, Donovan Crowl, Jessica Watkins, Sandra Parker, Bennie Parker, Graydon Young, Laura Steele, Connie Meggs, and Kenneth Harrleson. All are charged with obstruction of Congress, destruction of government property, entering and remaining in a restricted building, tampering with documents or proceedings and conspiracy and face a possible 20-year sentence.

According to the Washington Post, in previous interviews with the publication , Rhodes has referred to Person 10 as Whip, and said he was a former soldier in the US army and a Blackwater contractor. In a recent March interview with the far-right online website Gateway Pundit, Rhodes referred to Whip as Mike.

In describing Whip/Mikes role on January 6, Rhodes said in the interview with the Gateway Pundit that the team leader on the ground that day was an experienced combat vet. Rhodes added that Whip was an explosive expert in the Army. He worked with Triple Canopy and Blackwater as a contractor all over the world, and hes an ex-cop.

Despite the extensive evidence showing that Rhodes coordinated the attack on the Capitol, he has yet to be charged. This, however, hasnt prevented the Republican Party from embracing the former Army paratrooper and leader of the fascist militia.

In a March 26 speech at an anti-immigrant rally in Laredo, Texas, hosted by Patriots at Large and Women Fighting for America, Rhodes defended the actions of himself and the far-right militias who stormed the Capitol. After Texas Republican Party Chair Allen West opened the event with a speech, he handed the stage to Rhodes, who acknowledged t hat he might go to jail for made-up crimes. Rhodes then defended himself and the other fascist militias, stating that there are some Oath Keepers right now, along with Proud Boys and other patriots who were in DC, who are sitting in jail. ... Denied bail because the powers that be dont like their political views.

Threatening future attacks, Rhodes added, If we actually intended to take over the Capitol, wed have taken it. Wed have brought guns. Rhodes claimed that the presence of himself and dozens of Oath Keepers in body armor was merely to protect Trump supporters from antifa.

Previous court documents have also established that Oath Keepers Caldwell, Watkins and Rhodes were in contact with a Quick Reaction Force stationed outside DC that was carrying weapons.

More than three months after far-right militias, ordered by Donald Trump and abetted by sympathetic law enforcement agencies, spearheaded the attack on the US Congress in order to prevent the certification of the election of Joe Biden, dozens of people who facilitated the attack have yet to be charged. While federal prosecutor Michael Sherwin said in a 60 Minutes interview in March that over 400 criminal cases have been filed related to January 6, noticeably absent are Rhodes, along with any organizers and promoters of the Stop the Steal rallies, including InfoWars founder Alex Jones and Republican operative Ali Alexander.

The growing body of evidence pointing to a massive conspiracy for overthrowing the election results and establishing Trump as a presidential dictator places in sharp relief the fact that the Democratic-controlled Congress has refused to hold hearings on the attempted coup since early March.

In the last significant hearing that was held March 5 jointly by the Rules and Judiciary Committee, then-DC National Guard Commander William Walker stated that he was blocked from deploying his troops to defend the Capitol from the far-right mob for three hours and 19 minutes from officials who were slotted into the Pentagon by Trump after his election defeat last November.

Walker testified that the delay caused by acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller and Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy was of an extraordinary character, leaving him stunned, and was in stark contrast to the response Walker received from the Pentagon during the June protests against unending police violence.

This reporter reached out to House Speaker Nancy Pelosis office multiple times to inquire when the next hearings will be held with Pentagon officials to explain the delay, but received no response. In a call to the House Committee on Homeland Security, the WSWS was told that the committee has not scheduled any upcoming hearings related to domestic terrorism or the January 6th attack on the Capitol.

The Democratic Partys failure to date to pursue a serious public investigation, as they acknowledge the first-ever attempt to overthrow a federal election in the United States, is entirely consistent with the cowardly and duplicitous policy announced by Biden in his inaugural address on January 20 in which he insisted on the need for a strong Republican party and that everything had to be done to achieve unity and bipartisanship with the same party that was overwhelmingly complicit in the coup attempt.

In an open letter published Tuesday, April 5, Democrats and nonTrump-aligned Republicans reiterated their previous calls for a 9/11 style bipartisan commission. Among the signatories were former Homeland Security and Defense secretaries from the Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama administrations as well as House and Senate lawmakers and other high-ranking officials..

They wrote that given the gravity of January 6th as a national security matterthe violent disruption to the transition of power and the continuing threat of future attacksa national commission examining the lead up to the January 6th assault, and the attendant security lapses, is not only appropriate, but a critical component of the national response.

Far from being a contradiction from the cover-up being conducted by the Democratic party, the call for the commission has the same purpose. The 9-11 commission was the means devised by the ruling class and its two political parties to cover up substantial evidence pointing to high-level government involvement or tacit support in the terror attacks in New York and Washington D.C. that killed nearly 3,000 people.

In the case of the January 6 coup attempt, the attempted cover-up is even more blatant given that one party in the proposed commission continues to overwhelmingly support the plotter-in-chief Donald Trump, echoing his fraudulent claims of a stolen election while continuing to maintain close connections with the fascist militias that were organized as government shock troops in the attempted overthrow of the election.
The Athens-Clarke County Mayor and Commission debated accepting a training grant for the ACC Police Department and discussed plans for outdoor dining plazas and sustainable development in the city in an agenda setting session Tuesday evening.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 12:46:47|Editor: huaxia

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Wang Qun, Chinese envoy to the United Nations and other international organizations in Vienna, receives interview after a meeting of the Joint Commission of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in Vienna, Austria, April 6, 2021. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) Joint Commission meeting, resumed here on Tuesday, was hailed by attending envoys as "constructive" and is expected to bring more hope for the revival of the Iran nuclear deal. Senior diplomats of Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and Iran met at a Viennese hotel on Tuesday behind closed doors, which were chaired by Enrique Mora, deputy secretary-general and political director of the European External Action Service. (Photo by Georges Schneider/Xinhua)

VIENNA, April 6 (Xinhua) -- The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) Joint Commission meeting, resumed here on Tuesday, was hailed by attending envoys as "constructive" and is expected to bring more hope for the revival of the Iran nuclear deal.

With the lifting of sanctions on Iran and nuclear implementation measures at the top of the agenda, the meeting has drawn worldwide attention as delegates from the United States joined the talks to save the nuclear deal, which was struck in 2015 but paralyzed by the U.S. withdrawal in 2018.

INDIRECT U.S.-IRAN TALKS

Senior diplomats of Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and Iran met at a Viennese hotel on Tuesday behind closed doors, which were chaired by Enrique Mora, deputy secretary-general and political director of the European External Action Service.

Local media reported that the U.S. delegation, led by U.S. Special Envoy to Iran Robert Malley, was based in a nearby hotel.

The U.S. and Iranian negotiators were not supposed to meet face-to-face, but a shuttle diplomacy approach was adopted with the intensified help of the coordinators.

Prior to Tuesday's meeting, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Abbas Araqchi said he would "not hold any direct or indirect talks" with U.S. representatives but would only negotiate with the Joint Commission of the JCPOA.

Mora said on Twitter following the meeting that it was a "constructive Joint Commission meeting."

"There's unity and ambition for a joint diplomatic process with two expert groups on nuclear implementation and sanctions lifting. As Coordinator I will intensify separate contacts here in Vienna with all relevant parties, including the U.S.," he said.

Russia's delegate Mikhail Ulyanov tweeted that the meeting was "successful."

"The restoration of JCPOA will not happen immediately. It will take some time. How long? Nobody knows," he wrote. "The most important thing after today's meeting of the Joint Commission is that practical work towards achieving this goal has started."

Walter Posch, an Austrian expert on Iran, told Austria Press Agency that the fact that talks were held in Vienna to revive the crippling nuclear agreement, albeit indirectly, was already a success.

Wang Qun, Chinese envoy to the United Nations and other international organizations in Vienna, said after the meeting that China supports the Joint Commission's efforts to set up two expert-level groups, one on sanctions-lifting and nuclear implementation, while the other on "proximity talks" with the United States.

China hopes the two groups can make progress as soon as possible, he said.

China continues to unswervingly uphold the JCPOA, Wang said, urging all parties to increase their sense of urgency, seize the current opportunities, and push the JCPOA back on track through fair and reasonable negotiations.

SANCTIONS REMOVAL CRUCIAL

According to the Iranian foreign ministry, the Vienna talks included "technical negotiations in the form of expert meetings" in order to figure out how U.S. sanctions can be lifted and how Iran can come back into full compliance with the deal.

The official Islamic Republic News Agency reported that Araqchi told the commission meeting Tuesday that lifting U.S. sanctions is the first and most necessary step to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.

The JCPOA was reached in 2015 between Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council -- the United States, Britain, Russia, France, China, plus Germany) and the European Union. Tehran agreed to roll back parts of its nuclear weapons program in exchange for decreased economic sanctions.

Washington under former President Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018 and tightened sanctions on Iran.

The United States and Iran are in a standoff over reviving the nuclear deal. U.S. President Joe Biden's administration said that if Iran returns to full compliance with the JCPOA, the United States would do the same. But Iran insisted its compliance would only take place once U.S. sanctions were removed.

Washington said on Monday that its goal of the talks was to set the stage for a mutual return to compliance with the 2015 accord but did not anticipate an immediate breakthrough.

U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said the talks are a "healthy step forward" but "we don't anticipate an early or immediate breakthrough, as these discussions, we fully expect, will be difficult."

Wang, the Chinese envoy, said Tuesday that Washington should lift all unlawful sanctions against Tehran, and the Iranian side should resume full compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal on that basis.

Wang said the status of the Iranian issue is undoubtedly attributable to the U.S. pullout of the JCPOA, and its maximum pressure policy towards Iran. Therefore, the early return of the United States to the accord is the key to cracking the current situation.

"This is a question involving the fundamental principle of rights and wrongs. As a victim, Iran's legitimate requirement should, in the first place, be affirmed and catered for," Wang said.

"The U.S. should, if it is serious, lift all its unlawful sanctions against Iran, in the meantime, abolish all its long-arm jurisdiction measures against entities and individual in third countries including China," he said. Enditem
(Newser)  Washington state Sen. Rebecca Saldana has voted in support of penalties for distracted driving. She's also vice chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, which makes it especially surprising that she opted to break a distracted-driving law during a virtual hearing of that committee on Tuesday. The Democrat representing parts of Seattle and Renton was driving as she spoke on green energy, using earphones and occasionally glancing at her phone screen. Though a Zoom background obliterated her vehicle, Saldana admitted she was behind the wheel. State law forbids "watching video on a personal electronic device," as well as earphones that block outside noises, per the Seattle Times. State Patrol Sgt. Darren Wright tells KIRO that "you've got to be able to hear the things around [you]," including emergency vehicles.

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Saldana later admitted she was "not in compliance with the law" and apologized. "I made the wrong choice in not disabling the automatic video function on my phone while driving," she said, per KING 5, noting she was "a working mom" who was "trying to make my work schedule fit with my duties as a parent." "I have supported legislation about penalties for distracted driving, and like all drivers in Washington state, I must be subject and accountable to that law and all traffic laws," she added. "Accordingly, if I receive a citation for this driving infraction, I will pay the fine." Wright, however, said a fine wouldn't be forthcoming, as an officer "has to actually physically see the violation occur," per KIRO. Still, he stressed that making Zoom calls while driving is "not a safe idea." (A California doctor made a virtual court appearance while apparently performing surgery.)
Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, forced to shelter in a safe room when supporters of Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol in January, joined a lawsuit Wednesday accusing the former president of inciting the riot.

The lawsuit said Trump, his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and two white supremacist organizations, Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, violated the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act by preventing Congress from carrying out its constitutional duties on Jan. 6 and certifying the electoral votes making Joe Biden the next president.

We have to stand up for our democracy and our rights, Watson Coleman, D-12th Dist., told NJ Advance Media. What they tried to do on that day was to weaken our democracy and disrupt our work. There needs to be accountability for the insurrection and for the fomenting of the insurrection by the president, which put all of us in danger.

Watson Coleman was one of 10 lawmakers who joined the suit, originally filed in February by the NAACP and Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chair of the House Homeland Security Committee.

Others who joined the suit included House Judiciary Chair Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and former Congressional Black Caucus Chair Karen Bass, D-Calif.

Trump senior adviser Jason Miller told CNN in February that the former president did not incite or conspire to incite any violence at the Capitol.

The protesters came to the Capitol following a rally in which Trump addressed the crowd, falsely claimed the election was stolen, and told them to fight like hell and if you dont fight like hell, youre not going to have a country anymore.

Watson Coleman said that the fraud allegations were directed at minority communities, and those were the votes Trump and his allies sought to throw out.

Weve been there before, said Watson Coleman, the first Black woman elected to Congress from New Jersey. When you look at the states and the counties and the election returns that were being challenged with disinformation, they came out of predominantly minority communities.

I know what happens if we dont stand up for our rights and if we dont use the legal system for our protection, she said.

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Watson Coleman and other lawmakers were rushed off the floor after the pro-Trump rioters breached the Capitol, broke into offices, vandalized the building and attacked Capitol Police. Five people died, including a Capitol Police officer from New Jersey.

She found shelter in a safe room, but several Republicans there refused to put on masks and she later tested positive for the coronavirus.

In the lawsuit, Watson Coleman detailed her experience on that day. According to the lawsuit, she was ushered into a small room by Capitol Police where she heard shouts and menacing noises from the insurgents in the next hallway. While trapped in the room, Representative Watson Coleman hoped that, if the rioters broke down the first door, the second thicker door would be strong enough to keep them out of the room.

After the Capitol was cleared of the rioters, Congress resumed certifying the ballots. A majority of House Republicans, including Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-2nd Dist., voted to overturn the state-certified electoral votes.

The House impeached Trump for an unprecedented second time on the charge of inciting the riot. The Senate acquitted him.

Giuliani kept insisting that the election was fraudulent, an assertion rejected by dozens of judges, including the U.S. Supreme Court, and by state election officials of both parties. The Proud Boys was the group that Trump told to stand back and stand by during the first presidential debate when he was asked to condemn white supremacist groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center has classified both the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers as hate groups.

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Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him at @JDSalant.

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After a lengthy pilot, T-Mobile Home Internet is now an official product, CEO Mike Sievert announced during the carrier's Next event on Wednesday. With today's launch, 30 million Americans across all 48 contiguous states and Hawaii can sign up for the service. T-Mobile says the package will offer average speeds greater than 100 Mbps for most new customers. At the very least, everyone who's eligible for the service will see download speeds of at least 50 Mbps. The service, which is built on T-Mobile 4G LTE and 5G networks, will set you back $60 per month with automatic payments. That price includes no additional taxes, annual contracts or an equipment rental fee. T-Mobile also promises unlimited data and no throttling.

Of those 30 million people who can sign up for the service today, T-Mobile says 10 million are located in rural communities. "We're going to make sure small-town American isn't left behind anymore," Sievert said during the presentation. You can check if T-Mobile Home Internet is available in your location by visiting the carrier's website. One thing to note is that the company says initial availability will be limited by its inventory of WiFi gateways  and there's a global shortage of those at the moment.

As part of today's event, the carrier also announced a project called T-Mobile Hometown. Over the next two years, it plans to build new retail locations in rural communities across the United States. T-Mobile estimates its new stores will create 5,000 jobs. In places where it isn't feasible to build new retail locations, the company plans to hire 2,500 "Hometown Experts." These employees will have many of the same responsibilities as its regular retail workers, but they won't operate out of a traditional store. "Think of [them] as a one-person store," T-Mobile says of the new position.
Store owners from Bangladeshs Narayanganj district protest against the governments week-long coronavirus lockdown, in Dhaka, April 6, 2021.

Protests against a week-long COVID-19 lockdown imposed in Bangladesh spread to 20 locations across the country on Tuesday, a day after police said one person was killed and others were injured when law enforcement officials fired at demonstrators in the south-central district of Faridpur.

Law enforcement officials were injured as well in Mondays violence in Faridpur, district police chief Md. Alimuzzaman told reporters.

Eight members of RAB and police were also injured in the incident, Alimuzzaman said, referring to the elite anti-crime police unit Rapid Action Battalion.

Police and members of Ansar, a paramilitary auxiliary force, fired 588 shots and 32 tear gas shells during the clashes in Faridpur that began around 6 p.m. on Monday and lasted five hours, police told journalists.

Public health expert Dr. Ruhul Furkan Siddique said that the protests could increase the risk of COVID-19 infections.

The situation is very delicate and dire. This is slowly getting worse, Siddique, a professor of the Department of Public Health and Informatics at Jahangirnagar University, told BenarNews.

Those who are protesting should understand that the government is trying to protect all as per the advice of experts. If people do not understand this, they will have to take the responsibility for infections and deaths.

A madrassa student was killed and several other people were injured when police opened fire during Mondays anti-lockdown protest in Saltha, a sub-district of Faridpur, reports said, citing law enforcement officials.

The student was identified as Jubayar Hossain, according to reports in the Bangladeshi media.

Officers opened fire in self-defense after a police station was attacked, a police spokesman told Agence France-Presse.

AFP quoted staff at a local hospital as saying that three people with gunshot wounds were in critical condition.

The protests flared up after the Bangladesh government imposed a nationwide lockdown for seven days beginning Monday, its strictest coronavirus response to date, amid a steady rise in new infections.

On Tuesday, Bangladesh reported 7,213 new COVID-19 infections and 66 virus-related deaths, government health data showed.

COVID-19 infections in Bangladesh, first detected in March 2020, peaked last June and July. Since then, new infections gradually decreased to between 300 and 400 daily in the last week of February.

New COVID-19 infections began rising again in the first week of March, mainly because people stopped following health and safety protocols, Zahid Maleque, the health minister, told journalists last week.

Meanwhile, the government has allowed public transport services to resume in Dhaka and a few other areas, starting Wednesday.

The government allowed this change after considering the effects of a full lockdown on transport staff and office workers who rely on the buses to get to their jobs, said Obaidul Quader, Road Transport and Bridges minister.

Buses and minibuses will be able to run from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. in all city corporation areas of the country, including Dhaka and Chittagong, Quader said.

However, half of the seats on public transport must remain empty, and fares will be 70 percent higher than normal, he said.

People will die without eating

Restaurant and shop owners groups said they understood the need to stem the rising number of COVID-19 cases but expressed concern about what it could mean to their groups members.

The protesters would return home if the government assured them that the shops would be reopened by a certain date. But now there is uncertainty as to when they will be able to reopen, Md. Helal Uddin, president of the Bangladesh Shop Owners Association, told BenarNews.

It is undoubtedly a necessity to impose the lockdown, but people will die without eating. If we want to save people from COVID-19 in this way, we must find some alternative solutions, Syed Mohammad Andalib, organizing secretary of the Bangladesh Restaurant Owners Association, told BenarNews.

Some 30 percent to 35 percent of the restaurant owners have gone bankrupt  and the new lockdown has emerged as a great danger for us, Andalib said.

His concerns drew support from Nahian bin Khaled, a Dhaka-based analyst from Washingtons International Food Policy and Research Institute.

They fear that if the lockdown is prolonged, they will be deprived of income from Ramadan and Eid-ul-Fitr markets, Khaled told BenarNews, referring to the Islamic holy month of fasting, which is expected to begin on April 12 in Bangladesh.

Eid-ul-Fitr marks the end of the fasting period.

Many traders make a lions share of their profits during this time and if there is no income from the shop, the employees are not paid, Khaled said.
The San Antonio Police Officers Association accused a group of police reform activists of theft and vandalism of signs on Tuesday in its latest push to stop a ballot initiative that, if passed, would strip the union of collective bargaining.

But union leaders later acknowledged that they had no evidence that the people they were accusing of vandalizing campaign signs were members of Fix SAPD, the group behind the Proposition B ballot

There are a lot of organizations that are supporting the defund the police movement, said Rory McShane, a political consultant working for the police union. It could be members of any one of those groups.

The union also accused someone in Fix SAPD of assault.

Leaders from Fix SAPD  which is registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(4), a nonprofit created for social welfare purposes  pushed back. They said that no one from the organization has encouraged its employees or supporters to confront people with opposite views in an aggressive way or to steal or vandalize campaign signs.

These attacks are baseless and ridiculous and, in my mind, a waste of time, said Ananda Tomas, deputy director of Fix SAPD. We have never once encouraged our supporters or members to do that. We respect everybodys First Amendment rights.

Fix SAPD leaders did acknowledge they had fired a paid canvasser who was accused of confronting a police union supporter in December in an aggressive manner  an incident that was apparently captured by the homeowners video security system.

Union leaders released two separate videos on Tuesday of people stealing Vote No on Prop B campaign signs. It did not release footage of the alleged assault.

As soon as we heard about that issue, we looked over the video, we got all the evidence, and we let that person go, Tomas said. They are not representative of Fix SAPD and its values. We have never ever trained anyone to act that way.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio police chief, union leader try to discredit police reform effort

Tomas said she did not recognize anyone shown in the other videos or photos collected by the police union.

She said several Fix SAPD campaign signs have been vandalized or stolen, too.

A spokeswoman for San Antonio Police Department confirmed Tuesday that officers were investigating one case of theft of a Vote No on Prop B campaign sign late Monday or early Tuesday.

The department was not able to confirm whether officers were investigating any other alleged crimes involving Proposition B campaign signs.

Its not uncommon for campaign signs to be vandalized or stolen during any election, even for U.S. president.

The reports of vandalism, theft and assault come weeks ahead of the May 1 election that will decide the fate of Proposition B. Early voting begins April 19.

Fix SAPD, which helped collect the minimum 20,000 signatures to get the proposition on the ballot, argues that too many officers accused of misconduct are able to win their jobs back through arbitration, an appeal process outlined in the citys contract with the union.

On ExpressNews.com: In San Antonio municipal races, police reform is a touchy topic

By various estimates, about two-thirds of firings are reversed by independent arbitrators.

But opponents of the measure argue that removing the police unions ability to negotiate with the city on pay and benefits will make it harder for the department to recruit officers  meaning fewer police on the street and slower response times.

This is not Minneapolis, this is not Austin, this is not even Dallas, said Alonzio Hardin, president of the Black Police Officers Coalition. This is San Antonio. The citizens of San Antonio trust and support the police.

Tomas said Fix SAPD does not support the idea of defunding the police.

She said officers would still be able to negotiate pay and benefits if Proposition B passes, at which point San Antonio could change to a meet-and-confer system.

Under meet and confer, negotiations would essentially function in the same way. The major difference is that under collective bargaining, city management is required to bargain with the union. Under meet and confer, its optional.

This contract has stood as a barrier to accountability for decades, Tomas said. This is a necessity to get the kind of contract we deserve, where the community has a voice in the contract.

eeaton@express-news.net
MYRTLE CREEK, Ore.  A Douglas County detective dove into the South Umpqua River to retrieve a bag full of methamphetamine during an attempted drug bust on Tuesday, according to the Douglas Interagency Narcotics Team (DINT).

DINT detectives were following 60-year-old Robert Paul Muniain of Oakdale, California as part of an ongoing drug investigation, the team reported. Working with deputies from the Sheriff's Office, detectives tried to pull Muniain over on I-5 northbound near Myrtle Creek.

"Muniain slowed, but refused to stop initially, exiting the freeway in Myrtle Creek," DINT said in a statement. "Muniain continued, traveling into the city of Myrtle Creek and as he was crossing the bridge over the South Umpqua River he threw a bag out of the vehicle window into the river below."

After Muniain tossed the bag, DINT said that he complied with officers and pulled over. Meanwhile, one of the DINT detectives scrambled down the river bank after the bag  spotting it floating downstream. The detective dove into the water and swam out to the bag, grabbing it while it was still floating at the surface. He was able to take the bag up to the opposite side of the river.

According to DINT, the bag contained roughly 472 grams of methamphetamine, more than a pound.

"That is a very large amount of methamphetamine which is not a personal use amount," the law enforcement team said. "For context, the typical addict would use only approximately one gram per day, on average."

The detective emerged from his ordeal wet and cold, but otherwise unharmed. Muniain was taken into custody and booked into the Douglas County Jail on charges for Unlawful Possession and Unlawful Delivery of Methamphetamine. DINT said that the investigation is ongoing and more charges are pending.
The second witness to take the stand in the trial of Derek Chauvin on Wednesday was a special agent with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Other employees of the agency are also expected to testify. So, what is it?

The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is a state police agency with a range of responsibilities, from investigating murders to testing specimens at a laboratory. Since 2014, it has also investigated all police killings by the Minneapolis Police Department and other critical incidents, such as when someone dies in custody.

The agency took over the investigation into George Floyds death on the night he died and led the inquiry that resulted in the arrest of Mr. Chauvin and the three other officers who were involved in the arrest of Mr. Floyd.

The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is based in St. Paul and has more than 300 employees, including agents, scientists and other staff, according to its website. It was created by state lawmakers in 1927.
One of Editor & Publishers 10 That Do It Right 2021
Dad Survives CCP Virus, Tearfully Hugs Daughters for First Time After 72 Days in Hospital

A loving dad who fought to overcome the CCP virus had an emotional reunion with his two young daughters. Hugging for the first time in 72 days, the family of four was reunited on March 24.

It was very stressful being away from all my girls, said Alfredo Hercules, 39, referring to his wife, Jamila, and daughters, Isabel, 9, and Safiah, 7.

When you are away from home for so long, he told Good Morning America, you start to miss the little things you took for granted.

Hercules, his daughters Isabel and Safiah, and wife Jamila reunite after 72 days (Courtesy of Catholic Healths Mercy Hospital)

Otherwise healthy, Hercules fell ill with flu-like symptoms on Jan. 3 and was admitted eight days later to Catholic Healths Mercy Hospital in Rockville Center, New York. He was diagnosed with the CCP virus without certainty how he contracted it.

Alfredo was in bad shape when he came to us, said Dr. Perry Stein, one of the fathers primary care physicians, in a Mercy Hospital press release.

When you have [the CCP virus] and it affects your breathing, it can be torture, but Alfredo pushed himself every single day.

Hercules spent 72 days being transferred through several departments as his sickness progressed. But his determination to recover paid off.

Hercules with his daughters, Isabel and Safiah, and wife, Jamila (Courtesy of Catholic Healths Mercy Hospital)

On March 24, he was discharged with supplied oxygen for his continued recovery, and reunited with his daughters for the first time in two-and-a-half months.

The hospital are calling the emotional moment Hug Day, and staff lined the corridors to congratulate him. Mercy Hospital shared a video on Facebook in which Hercules praises his team for being like a second family.

While the staff at Mercy will miss Alfredo, they were all very excited to celebrate his discharge today, the hospital posted.

Nurses and doctors from critical care, inpatient rehab, acute care, respiratory, emergency, and more were there to celebrate Alfredo.

(Courtesy of Catholic Healths Mercy Hospital)

Stein praised his patient, claiming, He showed incredible perseverance and resilience, and I give him full credit for pushing himself to this point.

Upon departing, the dad said he was looking forward to eating a home-cooked meal, enjoying the pleasant spring weather, and celebrating his daughters upcoming birthdays.

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 at TheEpochTimes.com/newsletter
The overall situation in Mali is improving. At the same time, the country faces multiple challenges, such as terrorism, Covid-19 and a humanitarian crisis. The international community should continue to focus on Mali and provide necessary support, said Dai Bing, China's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, the Xinhua news agency reported.

United Nations, April 7 (IANS) A Chinese envoy said on Tuesday that the momentum of the political process in Mali must be maintained.

The good momentum of the political process must be maintained. The Malian government has formulated the transitional action plan, and implementation is the main task for the next stage, he told the Security Council.

As the Malian government works to coordinate and advance preparation for the elections, positive efforts will also be needed to promote development, improve people's livelihood in a way that can bring more benefits to its people, he said.

The agreement monitoring committee has met for the first time in northern Mali, which is of great significance. The signatories to the peace agreement must consolidate the existing results, continue to develop mutual trust, achieve more results on issues such as the deployment of armed forces and the Northern Development Zone, properly handle the issue of re-opening negotiations on the relevant provisions of the agreement, and firmly advance the implementation of the agreement, he said.

Comprehensive policies must be implemented to improve the security situation in Mali, said Dai. "Terrorist activities are rampant in central and northern Mali with frequent attacks that have led to the continued deterioration of the security situation on the ground. A comprehensive military, political, economic, judicial, and social response must be adopted in accordance with the recommendations in the UN secretary-general's report."

Actions to combat terrorist organisations must be accompanied by efforts to eliminate the root causes of terrorism and extremism. There must be support to the Malian government so that it can continue to actively participate in anti-terrorism operations of the G5 Sahel (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger), he said.

The UN peacekeeping mission in Mali, known by its French acronym as MINUSMA, must focus on its core mandate and earnestly follow the principle of a Malian-led and Malian-owned process and strengthen its coordination and cooperation with regional organisations, said Dai.

MINUSMA must develop its roadmap based on the actual situation on the ground, and make sure that its implementation is coordinated and consistent. Foreign counter-terrorism operations in Mali need to respect Mali's sovereignty, abide by international humanitarian law, and protect the safety of Malian people, he said.

It is imperative to organise an effective response to challenges such as Covid-19, he said.

The pandemic has started to rebound in Mali, which has caused concerns. The international community should provide Mali with support to fight the disease, including ensuring timely and fair access to Covid-19 vaccines for those in need, he said.

As Mali's economy declined, about 800,000 people went back to poverty last year, with 3 million people in urgent need of emergency food assistance. A large number of people were displaced. The international community must increase assistance to ease the difficulties of the Malian people, he said.

Dai also called for efforts to ensure the safety of UN peacekeepers in Mali.

This year MINUSMA has suffered multiple attacks, during which 10 peacekeepers were killed. The safety of peacekeepers is an extremely urgent issue and is the responsibility of all parties, he said.

Attacks against UN peacekeepers must be investigated and perpetrators must be brought to justice. It is necessary to analyze the causes of the incidents and identify the weakest links so that practical effective measures could be adopted to ensure the safety of all peacekeepers, he said.

--IANS

int/rs
Who/what: Christopher Comine faced a lot of challenges in his 47 years, but when he died of a heart attack last month, he left behind a reputation for having the biggest heart, said his sister, Kimi Comine Santos.

A resident of West Scranton and an alumnus of West Scranton High School, Comine was just 13 when his 43-year-old mother also suffered a fatal heart attack, and Santos said he struggled with her death for the rest of his life. Several years later, when he was in his 20s, Comine faced a new challenge when he learned he had muscular dystrophy, a disease his uncle also suffered from. Although he could not keep working for UPS, Chris helped his sister and uncle whenever they needed him.

Chris always tried to help others and be there for friends and family even though he had limited capabilities, Santos said.

Why: Comines death on March 5 devastated his family, which also includes a son, Marky Hubshman, a student and athlete at West Scranton Intermediate School; a brother, Kevin Comine of Franklin, Tennessee; and another sister, Karin Comine Snyder of Old Forge. In addition to facing the shock of losing their father and brother, his family also must deal with the financial hardship that accompanied his sudden passing. They are accepting donations to cover his funeral expenses, which Santos said also will ease their stress. Any leftover money will go into a college fund for Marky.

Chris always wanted to be with our mother again, so we had him buried as close as possible to our parents, Santos said. Any donations will be greatly appreciated in helping to offset this cost.

How: The public can donate through the GoFundMe page, Help with funeral expenses for Christopher Comine, or mail donations to Santos at 1217 Rundle St., Scranton, PA 18504.

In her own words: Thank you for all the love and support you have given Chris and our family. It means more than you know.  Kimi Comine Santos, sister
Music producer Cordell Skatta Burrell has described as unprincipled and dishonourable, Dancehall artists who turn around and sue music producers after, agreeing in principle to record songs without the requisite written contracts in place, even though their unwritten arrangements were fair and equitable.

Skatta was speaking on The Fix Podcast recently, in the wake of Dancehall artiste Khagos recent threats to file lawsuits against several music producers for copyright breaches.

Is nice dat everybaddy a sway back to di business aspect of it now, but if you are an artiste and you know in dat time, you and di producer had that agreement, mentally, for you to come back round now, yuh know seh yuh kinda really being deceitful still. Skatta said.

A lot of them are being deceitful coming back now a seh: yuh know seh mi neva sign no paper fi dah song deh. But you were in agreement with it before it was released. You endorsed; yuh go pon stage and sing di song; yuh nev bad-mouth di producer. Not one time, yuh neva call him out. But now, dem a learn di business; now nuff a dem a learn di business seh yuh may have a case, an dem a try back-track and a seh: yow, mi a guh dig a food offa such man, wuss mi nuh too like him, he added.

Skatta said over the decades, most music recording arrangements between producers and artistes, have been predicated on gentlemans agreements between the parties, particularly due to the producers like himself having heavy workloads, and not due to them trying to siphon off money from artistes records.

I have established that work ethic (written contracts) in my time. I have done quite a few and I have not done quite a few. There was a time when my studio was like a factory, just a pump out, a push out, so mi nuh have time fi sign no paper an artiste nuh waan sign no paper, dem jus a voice an a hit yu up: when mi song a mix? When mi song a release? Skatta explained.

There is a cultural trend in Jamaica; artistes do not like to put pen to paper in this country. No care how simple; it could be a one sheet a paper, most a dem dont like fi sign dem. Ninety percent of the songs recorded in Reggae and Dancehall, they are released without an artiste putting pen to paper. Ninety percent  probably more and this has been going on from di early nineties come straight dung to present Is not everybody love put pen to paper and is kind of a tradition, he said.

The Billboard-charting producer re-emphasized that most artists are not concerned with contracts, as their main focus is to get their songs to be released, so they can, among other things reap the benefits via voicing dub plates, accrue bookings for shows.

Artiste nuh care. Dem jus waan get dem song a road fi promote and shoot dem video and suh forth. Suh a so Dancehall grow, an a suh Dancehall build, the Calabar High School old boy said.

Skatta said he has had to defend a lawsuit filed against him in the past, but declined to give details.

Das why mi tell everybaddy she when dat ting come across, teck it seriously. You may be within your rights and you give it up because you neva address it. It is not a nice feeling; I am telling you, he stated.
JACKSON, Tenn. - The Tennessee National Guards 194th Engineer Brigade will perform a change of command and change of responsibility ceremony at the National Guard Armory in Jackson on Sunday, April 11, at 1 p.m.

Col. Warner Nubbin Ross, the current 194th commander and director of schools for Hardeman County, will relinquish command to Col. Michael Scates who resides in Greenfield.

Ross served as the commander of the 194th Engineer Brigade since 2017. During his command, he deployed with the 194th to the Middle East from which they returned earlier this year. He also led his brigade in supporting Tennesseans throughout the tornado response last March, COVID-19 testing and immunizations, and civil disturbance operations.

Scates currently serves as the executive officer for the 194th and has more than 31 years of military experience. In a ceremony prior to the change of command, Scates will promote to colonel.

Also during the ceremony, Command Sgt. Maj. Michael OConner, who resides in Jackson, will transfer responsibility as the Brigades Sergeant Major to Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Plemons from Etowah.

The 194th is one of nine engineer brigades in the Army National Guard and consists of over 2,000 Soldiers. Subordinate units are located throughout Tennessee.

******MEDIA COORDINATION INSTRUCTIONS******

Media interested in attending must RSVP by calling the 194th Engineer Brigade at (731) 421-8670 or email Chief Warrant Officer 2 Dennis Owens at dennis.w.owens3.mil@mail.mil. Media will be met at the Armorys main entrance where they will undergo COVID-19 screening prior to entering the Armory. All CDC guidelines will be adhered to.
WASHINGTON  Large companies like Apple and Bristol Myers Squibb have long employed complicated maneuvers to reduce or eliminate their tax bills by shifting income on paper between countries. The strategy has enriched accountants and shareholders, while driving down corporate tax receipts for the federal government.

President Biden sees ending that practice as central to his $2 trillion infrastructure package, pushing changes to the tax code that his administration says will ensure American companies are contributing tax dollars to help invest in the countrys roads, bridges, water pipes and in other parts of his economic agenda.

On Wednesday, the Treasury Department released the details of Mr. Bidens tax plan, which aims to raise as much as $2.5 trillion over 15 years to help finance the infrastructure proposal. That includes bumping the corporate tax rate to 28 percent from 21 percent, imposing a strict new minimum tax on global profits and cracking down on companies that try to move profits offshore.

The plan also aims to stop big companies that are profitable but have no federal income tax liability from paying no taxes to the Treasury Department by imposing a 15 percent tax on the profits they report to investors. Such a change would affect about 45 corporations, according to the Biden administrations estimates, because it would be limited to companies earning $2 billion or more per year.
SPRINGFIELD  The Illinois Supreme Court issued an order this week creating stronger safeguards for tenants seeking rent relief under the governors eviction moratorium.

The courts revised order makes clear that landlords challenging a tenants eviction moratorium protections have to state the legal and factual basis for such a challenge, said Chief Judge Eugene G. Doherty, of the 17th Judicial Circuit, which spans Boone and Winnebago counties.

Doherty is vice chair of the Illinois Supreme Courts Court Operations During COVID-19 Task Force, which was created in June 2020 and makes recommendations to the Illinois Supreme Court.

It was feared by some that (the Supreme Courts previous order) would effectively allow all the cases that the moratorium is keeping out of court to get back into court because if the landlord were to just file a challenge, vaguely worded, to the declaration, the case is now in court, Doherty said. And that seems to undercut the purpose of the moratorium.

The Illinois Supreme Court issued an order in December 2020 relating to the eviction moratorium that outlines the process for landlords to challenge a tenants declaration under the order. It amended the order in February and again on Tuesday.

Gov. JB Pritzker reissued his eviction moratorium executive order last week, extending rent relief to tenants who are unable to pay due to economic hardship caused by the pandemic through May 1.

The governors reissued order, released on Friday, contains new language that the judicial branch has the authority to adopt appropriate procedural measures governing the orders application in judicial proceedings.

Pritzkers moratorium on residential evictions, first issued in late March 2020, applies to renters who submit a declaration saying they are unable to pay rent as a result of the pandemic and would be rendered homeless if they were evicted. His executive order in November, which created the declaration form, established that renters could be evicted if they were a threat to the safety of other tenants or a risk to property.

The Illinois Supreme Courts latest order states that landlords must identify with specificity the legal or factual basisfor any such challenge.

It also states directly that the burden to sustain such a challenge remains at all times with the plaintiff/landlord.

The revisions, number one, made clear that if youre challenging (the tenants declaration), you have to say what youre challenging legally and factually, Doherty said. The judge has to review that and see if, on its face, theres a basis here for a hearing. And if theres a hearing, its made clear that the burden is on the landlord.

And we were hearing stories of landlords saying, Im challenging the accuracy of the declaration, and the tenants feeling as though it was kind of dumped in their laps to prove that it was accurate, rather than the landlord proving that it was inaccurate.

Michelle J. Gilbert, legal director of the Lawyers Committee for Better Housing, said her organization was one of more than 12 fair housing groups in the state that drafted a letter to the courts COVID-19 task force last month.

The letter asked members of the task force to recommend additional language for the Illinois Supreme Courts order that would provide standards and clarify the process for challenging a tenants declaration.

Gilbert is also director of the Chicago COVID-19 Eviction Prevention Project, which is a program created by the Lawyers Committee for Better Housing through a Chicago Department of Housing grant.

Gilbert said the previous Supreme Court order resulted in legal cases where landlords filed challenges to tenants declarations, with no supporting facts as to why the declaration was inaccurate.

In some cases, Gilbert said, the landlord requested substantial documentation of the tenants financial situation, pushing the burden immediately to the tenant.

I do very much appreciate that the Supreme Court COVID committee listened to our concerns and addressed the major points that we raised, she said. I believe (the Supreme Courts amended order) will result in less challenges, but more important, that it will result in only fact-based challenges.
Welcome to Cryptovoxels, a virtual world built on the Ethereum blockchain. Image: supplied

The first time we are introduced to the Metaverse  a virtual reality world  in Neal Stephensons 1992 cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, samurai/hacker/pizza delivery driver Hiro Protagonist hooks into his computer and sees a boulevard that stretches off into an infinite blackness.

The boulevard does not really exist, the narrator explains. It is a computer-rendered view of an imaginary place.

Stephensons pre-Matrix vision of a fully-fledged digital world where hackers and wealthy elites gather to share secrets and catch a glimpse of online celebrities inspired a generation of coders, artists, and thinkers to imagine a version of the Metaverse during the dawn of the internet age.

Among the inspired was Ben Nolan, founder of Cryptovoxels  a virtual world built on the Ethereum blockchain.

When you open Cryptovoxels in your browser, you are greeted with a boulevard stretching off into an infinite purple haze.

Once the assets load, you find yourself standing in an art gallery filled with image and sound from the latest cryptocurrency gold rush: non-fungible tokens (NFTs), a cryptographically-signed asset taking the art world by storm.

Inside Cryptovoxels, artists clamber for your attention, inviting you inside their personal galleries lined with limited edition artworks all minted and traded on the blockchain.

Collectors of NFT art can show off their collections in virtual galleries. Image: supplied.

Even the virtual space inside Cryptovoxel is an NFT, with parcels of digital real estate being be traded on secondary markets like OpenSea.

A new gold rush

Recent interest in NFTs and cryptocurrencies has seen a surge in traffic through Cryptovoxels which is helping push the price of its NFT land into the tens of thousands of dollars in some cases.

When Information Age spoke with Nolan in March he had just come off fixing a minor enviable crisis caused by Cryptovoxels sudden popularity.

We just had too much load, he said. It was growing too fast.

From his home office in New Zealands capital city Wellington, Nolan apologised to his wife, brewed some coffee, and got to scaling up his vision to meet the excess demand.

It took 15 pots of coffee and really loud music all day, but we got everything migrated and now it's all running well  touch wood.

Cryptovoxels has a small team  five in total with only three working full-time  meaning Nolan is often left with much of the technical work in keeping the virtual world alive and helping implement new features.

As much as he enjoys the hands-on approach, the young entrepreneur is also aware of concerns among his community of users  many of whom have staked actual money on buying parcels of land and artworks to furnish it  about what happens if Nolan is no longer around to keep the digital lights on.

He said the hurdles for his blockchain business arent technical, even though Nolan is still iterating new features.

It's just about building the team now and making the team able to run by itself without me, Nolan said.

For a long time I had my hands on everything and now the team is getting a lot more independent which means I can concentrate on the new stuff.





Cryptovoxels founder Ben Nolan was inspired by the cyperpunk fiction of Neal Stephenson. Image: supplied.

The new stuff are Cryptovoxels next steps away from being just a browser experience into mobile and, crucially, virtual reality.

Within minutes of walking around Cryptovoxels, you can see how well-suited it would be for virtual reality; a strange new world of memes, bright colours, and bizarre architecture designed and created by artists still waiting to find mainstream attention.

Built to last

Despite being at the foundation of a new digital art movement, though one not without its critics, Nolan holds onto his modest antipodean attitude when it comes to Cryptovoxels.

Hes not running the virtual world like a Silicon Valley startup that burns through cash to reach maximum exposure while endlessly chasing venture capital funds.

Nolans financial conservatism mitigates some of the valid concerns critics of the current NFT gold rush have pointed out  namely that many of these valuable crypto tokens could disappear once the startups serving them fall apart.

Short version:



The NFT token you bought either points to a URL on the internet, or an IPFS hash. In most circumstances it references an IPFS gateway on the internet run by the startup you bought the NFT from.



Oh, and that URL is not the media. That URL is a JSON metadata file  Jonty Wareing (@jonty) March 17, 2021

My default position was this is all going to blow over and I'll need to find a job and pay hosting fees for the next 20 years, Nolan told Information Age.

We've always kept a really big buffer to do that and I think we could pay for a lot longer than 20 years now.

It's always been about keeping the costs low and just being really conservative with what we do with our sales and use that to basically pay for hosting forever.

So if everyone left and there was no one interested in cryptovoxels anymore, I expect the city to be still viewable fast loading.

The company primarily makes money through the sale of new parcels of land but it also gets royalties when land is re-sold by users on the secondhand market.

For Nolan, blockchain has never been a get-rich-quick scheme. He wants to build something that lasts while also helping usher in the next era of online communications and communities.

I really like old websites that are still up from, you know, 2002, he said.

It's really important to me that Cryptovoxels continues to exist as well.

But first hes got to keep the world running as the flood of new users arrive.
Michigan

Michigan

Michigan

Wayne County

Macomb County Circuit Court

James Biernat Jr

Macomb

Kathryn Viviano

Jonathan Jones

May 2017

Ivy Yurkus

Allison Folmar

Southfield

Detroit

Patrick Nyenhuis

Michigan's

Timothy Kenny

Wayne County Circuit Court

Oakland County

Shalina Kumar

Oakland County Circuit Court's

Oakland County

Oakland County's

Health Department

Macomb County

Michigan Supreme Court

Chief Justice Bridget McCormack

Michigan

John Nevin

Michigan Supreme Court

Southfield

(TNS)  Plexiglas partitions, arraignments of defendants from their homes and judges moderating virtual hearings have become the norm for courts acrosssince COVID-19 was discovered in the state just over a year ago.Courthouses  once full of defendants, their families, jurors and attorneys  are now empty halls of justice, with most hearings moved online to prevent the spread of the virus that has killed more than 16,000 Michiganians.The use of technology to conduct proceedings remotely has allowed courts to continue functioning, and some hearings will remain remote even after the pandemic is over, including misdemeanor trials, civil matters, family court proceedings and motion hearings. In some courts, such as Wayne County Circuit, preliminary hearings have continued in person, with just the defendant, attorney, judge and support staff present.But even with those innovations, courts acrosshave been forced to postpone most trials in felony cases because the need to seat juries in person would put too many people in a courtroom and go against court restrictions during the pandemic. The result: backlogs of thousands of cases, some dating back a year or more, incourts.Inalone, more than 3,000 cases await the circuit court's 58 judges. In, just five jury trials were conducted last year, compared with 155 in 2019, said Chief Judge.: "There is no comparison to what happened to us."A murder case that was scheduled to go to trial last month beforeCircuit Judgewas postponed for the 10th time., 27, is accused of causing thedeath of his girlfriend's 4-year-old daughter,, by punching her in the stomach.Such delays are especially troubling to defendants and their lawyers."Courts can't be on hiatus in the midst of a pandemic," said, a-based defense attorney. "It is a (constitutional) mandate that the system works effectively."defense attorneyalso noted remote proceedings can be "very useful" but not for someone who faces trial on serious charges."They can't be in front of a jury or trier of fact until the world opens back up again, which we don't know when that will be," he said. "So Zoom is good for a lot of things but bad for somebody who's maintaining their innocence. They're stuck in jail or even out on bond on a tether just waiting, waiting, waiting for their case to be in front of a jury."recent resurgence in virus cases (the state's infection rate of 452.5 cases per 100,000 people is the nation's highest) means courts will have to wait still longer to restart most jury trials and begin catching up, judges say."We have not been able to resume jury trials because of the rise in COVID-19 cases," said Chief Judgeof. "We've had to hit the pause button. ... We have to wait and see what kind of consequences this spring break has had."In, Chief Judgesaid the20 judges won't start hearing trials again until May at the earliest: "It depends entirely upon the state of COVID-19 in."She estimated the court's backlog at 80 to 90 cases "for which jury trials are expected, though some of these could settle before trial begins.""Most of these trials will be associated with criminal cases," Kumar said. "A few are associated with civil and delinquency cases."Under rules set by the State Courts Administrative Office, a county's courts can't resume jury trials unless the seven-day average of new COVID cases is at or below 70 per 1 million population and the positivity rate is 10% or less, Kumar said.As of Sunday,seven-day average of new cases was 761; the county's population is about 1.2 million.Kumar said court officials will consult with state and local officials about when to began having jury trials again."We want to be sure that theand SCAO are supportive of resuming jury trials to ensure, to the greatest extent possible, that the health and safety of jurors and all trial participants is protected," she said.Even when jury trials start up again, they won't look the same, at least for a while. Participants can expect to wear masks, face other restrictions and see plexiglass barriers around judges' benches, attorney tables and jury boxes.In, for instance, when circuit court trials resume, the number of people permitted in the jury room  which holds prospective jurors  will be reduced from 300 to less than 60, Biernat said.And when a trial is in session, "no one will sit in the jury room," he said.says many of the changes forced by the pandemic will be the norm going forward in the state's courts, especially the use of platforms such as Zoom and YouTube to ease scheduling, but in-person hearings will still be an option for defendants and other participants who have a barrier to technology.In an instance of "serendipity," judges and courthouses acrosswere licensed to use Zoom and YouTube for hearings in 2019, she said."We felt grateful that we had already gotten the Zoom licenses a year earlier," McCormack said. "We were unlike a lot of other state courts who had to scramble to find Zoom licenses. We were able to focus instead on training, tech support and tech tools. ... We really lucked out on that."To date, local courts have logged about 2.4 million hours of proceedings and court appearances on Zoom, said, the spokesman for theand state courts.Whatever the shape of court proceedings to come, "my concern is what will justice look like" in the future, said Follmar, thedefense attorney."Justice delayed can sometimes be justice denied," she said.
WASHINGTON, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Electronic Transactions Association (ETA) today announced that it has added Seemin Qadiri to its team as Vice President of Product Development & Marketing and Joe Feese as Senior Director of External Communications.

In her new role, Qadiri will lead the product vision and strategy for all ETA products. In parallel, she will oversee the Communications team as it transforms its strategic branding, marketing, and outreach efforts.

A strategic marketing executive with a track record of launching breakthrough digital products, establishing brands, and creating new revenue streams, Qadiri will focus on leveraging ETA's leadership to deliver more engaging and valuable opportunities for members to network, educate, and elevate their profiles. Working across multiple industries, Qadiri brings an agile and data-driven marketing approach that has helped organizations stay ahead of the curve while driving results with speed, efficiency, and innovation.

In his new role as Senior Director of External Communications, Feese will direct and manage external affairs operations including strategic advocacy communications, media relations, digital media, thought leadership, and brand management across the organization. Working closely with ETA's Government Relations team, he will help set the strategy and vision for all external communications, with a focus on policy and regulatory issues.

A journalist, writer, and former public relations VP, Feese has more than 20 years' experience managing broad-based corporate and nonprofit communications campaigns in both Seattle and Washington, D.C. His expertise spans the spectrum of integrated communications, including brand storytelling, public relations, crisis management, executive communications, content development, creative design, and meetings and event promotion.

"I am thrilled to welcome Seemin and Joe to the ETA team," said ETA CEO Jodie Kelley. "In this critical time of growth for ETA and the digital transactions industry, Seemin and Joe will provide clear strategic direction on elevating our marketing functions, engaging external stakeholders, and helping to further enhance the industry's promotion of financial inclusion for all Americans."

About ETA

The Electronic Transactions Association (ETA) is the global trade association representing more than 500 payments and technology companies. ETA members make commerce possible by processing approximately $22.5 trillion annually in purchases worldwide and deploying payments innovation to merchants and consumers.

Contact:

Joe Feese

[email protected]

202-677-7401

SOURCE ETA

Related Links

http://www.electran.org


A man and woman who had not been heard from for at least two days were found dead inside a North Side home Tuesday.

The two, who were between 40 and 50 years old, were discovered about 4 p.m. in the 2000 block of Chittim Trail Drive, San Antonio police said.
(Natural News) Does this narrative sound familiar? Sounds like the mass media narrative, which was a complete hoax, perpetrated on the world at the beginning of the Covid-19 spread, talking about some Chinese food market where everyone was eating bats as if they were chicken wings. Why reveal the lie before it even reaches the public eye? Illuminati freaks and kooks like Bill Gates love talking trash to pretend they have ESP superpowers, predicting their own staged events before they even happen. Yes, Bill Gates is on the record predicting his own plandemic as part of his own plan to depopulate the Earth. Its pathetic and its real.

Lets take a closer look at how one of the worlds richest men plans to use vaccines to lower the worlds population by a few billion people. Now you cant even say or write the word plandemic without Big Tech social media eliminating you and your organization from the entire social media platform forever.

Bill Gates literally says that we need the demand for vaccines in a video interview about the next pandemic thats coming to America

Bill Gates claimed the following in the year 2015: Somebody who wants to cause damage could engineer a virus then, If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, its likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war. He meant Covid-19, of course. Plus, after that, he predicted two more global mass destructive events and claimed there will be more pandemics the world cant handle.

Heres the clip of Bill Hells Gates speaking his plandemic into existence before the release of the Covid plague.

To help make sure everyone is vulnerable to Bill Gates Disease (Covid-19, 20, 21, etc.), he wants the whole world eating 100 percent synthetic beef, especially the rich countries, while he mass-vaccinates all the poor countries teenage girls into sterilization, miscarriages and drug-induced abortions. This is supposedly how were to fight global warming and over-population issues of our Earth, which it seems only Bill Gates understands and can solve all by his Microsoft lonesome. Only Bill Gates can prevent forest fires! Smokey the Bear cant help us anymore. Plus, Bill says well all get used to the taste difference with his genetically mutated beef, while it causes cancer and malnutrition.

Sure Bill, now tell us more about your plandemic that you so accurately predicted, that supposedly comes from humans eating bats, and from test-monkeys escaping laboratories with genetically mutated viruses. Yes, that is what all of Americas mass media told everyone the first few weeks of the plandemic, and the whole country bought into ithook, line & sinker.

Bill Gates is an evil man who lies to make more billions and reduce the worlds population by billions of humans

Back in 2007, it was published in the LA Times there were horror stories about the infamous Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It was discovered and documented that Bills company was a front and actually WORSENED POVERTY and polluted the environment with chemicals by investing in pharmaceutical companies that dont even actually ever sell into the developing worlds that Gates always brags about helping. Its all a huge lie, just like his philanthropy driven tax write-offs. Gates wants maximum profits first, no matter the cost.

For Bill Gates, the ends always justify the means, and he could not care less about people, their communities, their lives or their livelihood.

YouTube has scrubbed the following video mention, but we all saw it before they did. Bill Gates, at a TED convention, threw out a very bizarre declaration, before a live audience, that vaccinations, when used strategically, could help reduce the world population by as much as 15 percent. Thats where you have to correlate his campaign he named Global Polio Eradication Initiative which he funded to the tune of $1.3 billion, targeting Pakistan, India and the Philippines, with oral polio vaccines that literally cause polio outbreaks in poor countries so he can kill off the masses.

Most industrial nations know this and have BANNED Gates oral polio vaccines.

Tune your internet dial to Vaccines.news for updates on Bill Gates trying to kill off you and your family using vaccines. The Covid-19 vaccine series has already KILLED over 500 people. Are you next? Avoid Bill Gates Disease (Covid) by avoiding dirty vaccines and GMOs. Never forget that Bill Gates literally believed that the world would believe that Covid was first spread because people in China were eating bats, and that this pathetic narrative would cover up the true origins of the catastrophe that Gates and Fauci helped fund and engineer.

Sources for this article include:

NaturalNews.com

Udayavani.com

Ladbible.com

Vaccines.news

NaturalNews.com
The National Assembly (NA) adopted a resolution on the election of members to the 14th NAs Standing Committee during its ongoing 11th sitting on the afternoon of April 6.

National Assembly Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue presents flowers to Vice State President Vo Thi Anh Xuan and members of the NA Standing Committee. (Photo: VNA)

The resolution received 441 votes in favour out of 442 deputies present at the sitting, or 91.88 percent of the total NA deputies.

The new members are Bui Van Cuong, Nguyen Thi Thanh, Nguyen Dac Vinh, Vu Hai Ha, and Le Quang Huy.

Bui Van Cuong, born in 1965, was an alternate member of the Party Central Committee in the 11th tenure. He is a member of the Party Central Committee in the 12th and 13th tenures, and a deputy in the NA's 13th and 14th tenures. He has served as Secretary of the Dak Lak Provincial Party Committee since July 2019.

Nguyen Dac Vinh, born in 1972, was an alternate member of the Party Central Committee in the 11th tenure. He is a member of the Party Central Committee in the 12th and 13th tenures, and a deputy in the NA's 13th and 14th tenures. He has served as Deputy Chief of the Party Central Committees Office since December 2019.

Vu Hai Ha, born in 1969, is a member of the Party Central Committee in the 13th tenure, and a deputy in the NA's 13th and 14th tenures. He has served as Vice Chairman of the 14th NAs Committee for External Relations since May 2016.

Le Quang Huy, born in 1966, is a member of the Party Central Committee in the 13th tenure, and a deputy in the NA's 12th, 13th and 14th tenures. He has served as Vice Chairman of the NA Committee for Science, Technology and Environment since November 2017.

Nguyen Thi Thanh, born in 1967, was an alternate member of the Party Central Committee in the 11th tenure. She is a member of the Party Central Committee in the 12th and 13th tenures, and a deputy in the NA's 13th and 14th tenures. She has served as Vice Chairwoman of the Party Central Committees Organisation Commission, and Vice Chairwoman of the Board for Deputy Affairs under the NAs Standing Committee since April 2020.

A nomination list of chairpersons of NA committees and NA Secretary General and the Director General of the State Audit of Vietnam is scheduled to be submitted to the NA and discussed by legislators in groups in the afternoon./. VNA
Rapper DMX continues to fight for his life in a medical facility. But COVID-19 has been restricting everyone from giving him the support he needs.

A few days after DMX first entered a hospital in White Plains, it has been revealed that some of his kids already jetted to New York to visit him.

According to TMZ, the visit could be a final goodbye as the rapper continues to be on life support. The pandemic also restricted them to see their father altogether; thus, it complicated their time of visitation.

The COVID regulations being implemented across the country only allow one person to see a patient at a time. As of the writing, it remains unknown whether all children made it into the ICU, but the family plans to make everyone see DMX.

For what it's worth, the rapper has 15 children - although it is still unclear how many of them already arrived.

His fiancee, Desiree Lindstrom, and mother Arnet Simmons received permission to see him in the ICU.

Unfortunately, the 50-year-old rapper is still dependent on life support. Although there is little brain activity following his first admission, his chances of recovery are still questionable.

Family, Colleagues Host Prayer Vigil for DMX

As DMX's condition worsens, everyone close to him planned a prayer vigil for him.

The Ruff Ryders to the Rescue Foundation reportedly hosted the vigil on Monday at 5:00 p.m. Fox News 5 reporter Lisa Evers shared a clip of the scene, and the video shows a crowd who continuously played DMX's music outside the White Plains Hospital to pay him tribute.

The rapper's family also confirmed the prayer vigil in their April 4th statement.

"On Friday night, April 2nd, 2021, our brother, son, father, and colleague DMX, birth name of Earl Simmons, was admitted to White Plains (NY) Hospital, facing serious health issues. We ask that you please keep Earl/DMX and us in your thoughts, wishes, and prayers as well as respect our privacy as we face these challenges," the full statement said.

DMX suffered from a heart attack while staying at his home on Friday. This caused him to face oxygen deprivation which also compromised his brain function.

At that time, Attorney Murray Richman revealed that DMX's status is already worrying.

Meanwhile, the rapper's manager continues to ask everyone to pray for his fast recovery.

See Now: Famous Actors Who Turned Down Iconic Movie Roles
A 4-year-old South Jersey girl who was hospitalized with brain injuries in February is showing signs of improvement, a family member said.

The childs mother, Elinette S. Muniz, 21, of Millville, who is charged with assaulting the girl, remains jailed.

While it seems the girl will have some level of permanent brain damage, she continues to make progress, according to her great-aunt, Anita Simms-Doughty.

She isnt been able to talk yet, but recognizes family members.

Shes awake and alert. She knows that everybody is around, Simms-Doughty said.

Muniz and her boyfriend brought the child to Inspira Medical Center Mullica Hill on Feb. 24, where doctors found multiple injuries, including bleeding on the brain and damage to her chest, authorities have said.

The girl had bruises all over her body and cuts to her mouth and nose. She was transported to Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Delaware, where she was placed on a ventilator.

Muniz initially told doctors the girl fell from a bunk bed, then said the injuries were the result of slipping in the shower and multiple falls caused by seizures.

A search of the couples apartment turned up bloodied childrens clothing and blood spatter on the walls of the girls bedroom. Muniz admitted disciplining the child by striking her in the mouth and nose hard enough to draw blood, but insisted no one else had disciplined her, Cumberland County Assistant Prosecutor Angelica Carrasco described in a March hearing.

While Muniz lives five miles from a hospital, she took the girl to a hospital farther away in Gloucester County to prevent her family from being contacted, Carrasco said.

The couple stopped for gas and visited a liquor store on their way to the hospital with the unconscious girl, authorities previously noted.

The boyfriend, who is not the childs father, has not been charged. The childs biological father is making care decisions.

The childs family didnt know at first if she would survive, but steady improvements followed. She was taken off a ventilator and moved out of the intensive care unit, but remains hospitalized.

After a couple of days, she was able to open her eyes. My mom and her grandfather, they looked at her on FaceTime and she smiled and stuck her tongue out, Simms-Doughty said. Her personality is still there. And thats a very good sign.

Simms-Doughty is planning Celebration of Life events for the child this weekend, with at least one gathering in Vineland. She already held one of these and described it as a joyous occasion, rather than a somber one.

Members of the public are invited to bring gifts for the child  maybe a dress or a toy  to help her during the recovery. Simms-Doughty encouraged interested attendees to visit a dedicated Facebook page to get specific times and locations.

Bring gifts, candles, anything that is going to show her that she is loved and she is being thought about. We believe that shes going to have to start the learning process over, so a lot of learning toys would be great, too.

Simms-Doughty does not want people to make cash donations, she stressed.

Muniz was ordered detained pending trial last month and remains in Cumberland County Jail on aggravated assault and endangering the welfare of a child accusations. Even though she has no prior record, Superior Court Judge Robert Malestein found that the facts of the case are about as horrendous as the court can imagine.

Muniz is due to appear in court for a pre-indictment hearing this week.

Her daughters biological father is doing his best to manage.

Hes hurt still by this whole thing, according to Simms-Doughty. I know hes mad. Hes just dealing with it. His mom is helping him a lot, too.

For now, the family is taking it all day by day with the childs recovery.

Its just kind of a touch-and-go type thing right now, she said. We really dont know if shes able to speak. Were just monitoring her right now.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com.
Oneonta, N.Y.  A man armed with a knife was fatally shot by an Oneonta police officer Tuesday afternoon during a domestic incident in Oneonta, according to the New York State Police.

Officers responded to the domestic incident at about 12:57 p.m., on River Street, troopers said.

The circumstances of the incident were not immediately released by police

The man was airlifted to the Albany Medical Center where he was pronounced dead, troopers said.

The investigation is ongoing, troopers said. The man and the officer involved were not immediately identified by police.

A State police spokesperson said most questions will be directed to the New York State Attorney Generals Office.

The AGs office has the authority to investigate police shootings if a suspect is killed by police and there is a significant question whether he or she was armed at the time of the shooting.

Other cases where the AG has taken control include the fatal shooting by police of Jamesville teen Judson Albahm in March, and the 2019 fatal shooting by police of Syracuses DeWayne Watkins.

Judson was shot after police said he pointed an airgun, which shoots steel BBs, made by Glock to look like a real handgun at officers.

Watkins pointed a starter pistol at officers, according to Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick.

Check back for updates on this developing story.

Staff writer James McClendon covers breaking news, crime and public safety. Have a tip, a story idea, a question or a comment? Reach him at 914-204-2815 or jmcclendon@syracuse.com.
Trish Skoglund She is a team player whose deep business knowledge will help Crowley reach its goals for growth through sustainable mergers and acquisitions that best position our company for the future, and align with our partners and our customers.

Crowley Maritime Corp. has appointed Trish Skoglund as corporate director of mergers and acquisitions, guiding strategic investments that create sustainable growth and accelerate the companys competitive advantages.

In her newly created role, Skoglund will contribute to all aspects of strategic acquisitions, and she will collaborate with Crowleys business units to identify growth opportunities that best maximize the companys diverse capabilities and offerings. Skoglund will lead a team that builds and manages relationships with prospective acquisition partners to sustain a merger and acquisition pipeline for Crowley. Skoglund, who is based in Jacksonville, Fla., will report to Deepak Arora, vice president, Corporate Strategy.

Trish Skoglund is a proven leader with demonstrated abilities to provide strategic planning and analysis throughout the project cycle. She is a team player whose deep business knowledge will help Crowley reach its goals for growth through sustainable mergers and acquisitions that best position our company for the future, and align with our partners and our customers, Arora said.

Previously, Skoglund led sales and supplies services for Crowley Fuels, the companys Alaska-based business unit. As a member of Fuels leadership team, Skoglund was responsible for business development for the transportation, distribution, and sales for Fuels full offerings serving residential, government and commercial customers in more than 280 communities.

Before joining Crowley, Skoglund worked for 12 years in the energy industry in Alaska and Texas, including on assignment at BP Wind. In addition, she developed and implemented strategic plans and analysis to improve business performance for other BP units.

She previously worked at an international hardwood lumber trader in the Mexico and Argentina markets. Skoglund earned a bachelors degree in business administration and marketing from Portland State University, and an MBA in global business from the University of Portland.

About Crowley

Jacksonville, Fla.-based Crowley Holdings Inc. is the parent company of the 129-year-old Crowley Maritime Corporation, a privately-held, family- and employee-owned company that provides worldwide logistics, government, marine and energy solutions. Crowley operates with four business units: Crowley Logistics, a supply chain management division that includes logistics and ocean liner cargo transportation services; Crowley Shipping, which encompasses ownership, operations and management of conventional and dual fuel vessels, including tankers, container ships, multipurpose tugboats and barges; sustainable energy solutions for the emerging offshore wind and liquefied natural gas (LNG) sectors; engineering; project management; naval architecture and vessel construction management; Crowley Fuels, a fuel transportation, distribution and sales division in Alaska; and Crowley Solutions, which focuses on global government services and program management including, ship management, expeditionary logistics, technology solutions, energy solutions and freight transportation and logistics services. Additional information about Crowley, its subsidiaries and business units may be found at http://www.crowley.com.
The canned wine industry piqued my interest back in 2018 when I first heard about the product's growing popularity.

Cans are for soda, not vino! What could possibly go right? Having heard of numerous brands since then, I figured that theyre all the same and theyre all up to no good  until I discovered Bev, and met CEO Alix Peabody.

After experiencing life-altering reproductive health issues at the age of 24, Alix started throwing ticketed pool parties to pay off her medical bills. Her gatherings became known for their inclusivity, positivity and female-centric energy. As a result, Bev was born: The female-first beverage brand on a mission to do it differently, do it better and #BreakTheGlass.

Tellingly, a recent study commissioned by Groupon aiming to understand the obstacles faced by women entrepreneurs found that over half of female business owners polled claimed men had an easier time starting their companies while women were held to a much higher standard than their male counterparts.

The upside, for Alix, is another survey conducted on behalf of the Idaho Wine Commission, which found that 68% of those polled admitted they can never remember the names of wines they like, so now is the perfect time to cultivate prospective fans of cans.

With sleek, unapologetic packaging and a female-forward voice, Bev has amassed a cult-like following. The company is unique because its a movement rooted in the concepts of empowering underserved communities and redefining the traditional adult beverage industry from the inside out.

Alix recently sat down with me to reveal details regarding her company, the mission and her values.

Related: 5 Strategies for Business Success -- No Luck Required

On being an entrepreneur

On the company's mission

"I was living in San Francisco at age 24 when I began experiencing some pretty life-altering reproductive health issues. Over the course of the next 18 months, I underwent 6 surgeries and was ultimately faced with the decision to freeze my eggs (which, unsettlingly, wasnt covered by insurance). I quickly found myself drowning in medical bills and looking for creative ways to cover these costs. I started throwing ticketed pool parties in Sonoma with the goal of raising enough money to pay off the cost of freezing my eggs. The parties brought together an eclectic group of San Francisco millennials, and quickly became known for their inclusivity and female-centric focus. I soon became infatuated with the idea of recreating this social space on a larger scale and thats when the light bulb moment struck: It occurred to me that alcohol is the lowest common denominator at every party, but there was truly very little out there that spoke to and about women in an authentic way. With the mission and vision of the product in mind, I cashed out my 401k, bought 300 gallons of rose and decided to call her Bev!"

"At Bev our values are our culture and our culture really is our brand. Internally we have seven pillars of culture: Vulnerability, passion, kindness, accountability, candor, integrity and inclusion. We use these to guide us internally, but they are also deeply related to our mission to 'Do it Different, Do it Better, Break the Glass'. We truly believe that who we are on the inside is who we are on the outside, so these values really are the guiding force not only of who we are as a company, but also who we are to consumers."

Related: How Are Cannabis-infused Beverages Doing In the Market?

On the products

"All varietals of Bev are zero grams of sugar and we were actually the first-ever TTB approved zero sugar canned wine. Additionally, unlike many other canned wines on the market, Bev is made specifically for consumption from a can, with high-quality, CA grapes. Grapes are the only ingredient, aside from slight carbonation which we call 'a lil fizzy'. My favorite comment from consumers is 'its actually delicious'. Which is so true!"

On everything else

"We really believe that breaking the glass is a team effort. 'Made By Chicks' is on the can and represents who we are, but we also love our good dudes! We believe that real change will come when women, men (and everyone!) work together as equals."

Related: Cameron Diaz and Katherine Power: Co-founders of Avaline Wine

Copyright 2021 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
A recent Facebook hack reveals the sensitive details of its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, in which a cybersecurity expert discovers that he has signed up and uses the encrypted messaging app, Signal. It is known that Signal Messenger is one of the rivals of Facebook's instant messaging app, WhatsApp after facing a boycott.

Mark Zuckerberg Uses Signal Messenger

In a revelation by a cybersecurity expert known as Dave Walker on Twitter (@Daviey), the Facebook hack that exposed more than 533 million users' sensitive information online, the CEO is among the affected individuals. This led Walker to dig more into the information and this is where the cybersecurity personnel discovered Zuckerberg's ties to outside of Facebook.

In another turn of events, Mark Zuckerberg also respects his own privacy, by using a chat app that has end-to-end encryption and isn't owned by @facebook



This is the number associated with his account from the recent facebook leak. https://t.co/AXbXrF4ZxE  Dave Walker (@Daviey) April 4, 2021

In Walker's tweet, he regarded Zuckerberg as someone who "also respects his own privacy" by using the Signal Messenger application, which was a known alternative that could protect one's information via online encryption. Facebook is also notoriously known to ask for further data from users to use for its ad tracking venture in the platform.

The number that was discovered on Signal Messenger was taken from the Facebook hack's leaked list online, and Walker has claimed that this is linked to the Facebook account used by Mark Zuckerberg indeed. Walker also mentioned that the irony in this is that the Facebook hack has also included its CEO, who was not spared from the attack.

Read Also: GameStop Cashes In with $1B Share Sale Program for the Public-Will it Finally Happen?

Signal Messenger Confirms Mark Zuckerberg's Account

Signal Messenger is known for also taking part in the trends and online discussions regarding its products and services, and a clear example of it is when a wrong "Signal" rose in stocks. This happened after the Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, told people to use the instant messaging application instead and boycott WhatsApp. In a recent tweet by the company (@signalapp), Signal said that "Mark leads by example" with his phone number appearing on the Signal Messenger app and having an account. This was mentioned due to the May 15 deadline of WhatsApp for accepting its terms and services to share data and information to Facebook.

With the May 15th WhatsApp Terms of Service acceptance deadline fast approaching, Mark leads by example:https://t.co/Mt5YksaAxL  Signal (@signalapp) April 6, 2021

Is Mark Zuckerberg Also Boycotting WhatsApp?

The CEO is not boycotting his company, and some Twitter users speculate that he may only be using this for personal purposes or may have only created an account. The existing account of Zuckerberg may not bear any importance or gravity, despite being a prominent rival and competitor of WhatsApp that is under heavy criticism.

Related Article: How to Check if My Facebook Data Have Been Hacked [2021]: 533 Million Accounts Compromised

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Isaiah Alonzo

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Edwards signs on to bill improving public records access

State Sen. Chuck Edwards is a sponsor of bill that would strengthen North Carolina's public records law.

North Carolina taxpayers will have access to the reasons why government employees are hired, fired, promoted, demoted or suspended if a bill proposed in the state Legislature and cosponsored by state Sen. Chuck Edwards becomes law.

Senate Bill 355, the Government Transparency Act of 2021, was filed in the N.C. General Assembly in March. If passed, the bill would require state and local government agencies to keep and make public personnel records that are now hidden from the view of taxpayers.

Edwards said he cosponsored the bill because it is in keeping with his general philosophy that employees who serve the public and are in the public eye should be subject to the scrutiny of taxpayers.

I believe it is vitally important that our citizens can see certain personnel records of state employees, another cosponsor, Sen. Lisa Stone Barnes, R-Nash, told the Rocky Mount Telegram. After all, their taxes help pay the salary of these employees. There are very real problems that exist in school and law enforcement hiring, where bad apples get passed from job to job with little to no explanation to the public. This bill would give North Carolinians a glimpse into the actions of a state employee, which will help citizens have more confidence in their government.

Primary sponsors of the bill are Republican Sens. Bill Rabon, the chambers Rules Committee chairman, Norm Sanderson and Joyce Krawiec.

The bill has a lot of support within our caucus  and the primary sponsors are passionate about the issue, so I expect we will hear it in the Senate, Barnes said. I cant speak to the House. Transparency and open government are bipartisan issues, and I believe this bill is a good first step.

Rep. Tim Moffitt, a Republican who represents Henderson County, and the Houses deputy Republican Conference chairman, was not ready to commit to the bill.

As a general practice, I dont comment publicly on Senate bills until they hit the house, he said. Moffitt added that government should be as transparent as possible. If the bill clears the Senate, the earliest it might be considered in the House would be near the end of May, he said.

The bill, known in full as an An Act to Strengthen Confidence in Government by Increasing Accessibility To Public Personnel Hiring, Firing and Performance Records, requires that state and local government agencies in North Carolina, including law enforcement and schools, keep and make public records concerning the performance of employees.

Among other things, the bill makes public the date and general description of the reasons for each promotion, demotion, dismissal, transfer, suspension, separation or other change in position classification in government agencies.

If an employee is dismissed, the bill also makes public a copy of a written notice of the final decision of the head of the agency setting forth the specific acts or omissions that were the basis of the dismissal.

A tweet from a lobbyist for the State Employees Association charged that the bill opens up state employee personnel files to gossip and innuendo.

To open up everybodys personnel files so the person in the next cubicle can read it any time they want to is not a narrowly tailored response, the tweet said.

Edwards declined to comment on the tweet, saying he had not seen it. He said he has only heard from members of the news media who are interested in the bill.

A statement from the N.C. Press Association calls Senate Bill 355 one of the most important transparency bills in recent history and its introduction in the state legislature a cause for celebration. The statement also notes that access to similar personnel information is guaranteed by law in states surrounding North Carolina and in 35 other states in the nation.

Unfortunately, for as long as anyone can remember, North Carolinians have been forced to suffer under the weight of one of the worst public records laws in the country, the NCPA said. For more than 50 years, transparency of North Carolina government has been badly hindered by the lack of public access to arguably the most important government records, those surrounding the hiring, promotion, suspension, demotion, termination or discipline of state and local government employees, according to the press associations statement.

Thanks to Senate Bill 355, we now have the chance to crack the door ever so slightly to allow the public to learn the reasons for terminating, promoting, suspending, demoting or disciplining a government employee. From our perspective, it is a sea change long overdue, and the North Carolina Press Association strongly supports the bill.

* * * * *

Disclosure: As chair of the NCPAs Legislative Committee, Hendersonville Lightning editor Bill Moss is part of a team that is advocating for passage of the Government Transparency Act.
California Plans to Lift Most Pandemic Restrictions June 15

The mask mandate in the nations most populated state will stay in effect, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday, and he cautioned that California will reopen more widely in mid-June only if vaccine supply is sufficient and hospitalization rates stay stable and low

Still, the Democratic governor, who has overseen some of the most restrictive pandemic rules in the country, said it was time to forge ahead, with 20 million vaccines administered in California to date. The announcement signals an end date to more than a year of isolation after California resisted reopening too quickly even while other states pushed ahead.

We can confidently say by June 15 that we can start to open up as business as usual, subject to ongoing mask-wearing and ongoing vigilance, Newsom said. So this is a big day.

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The announcement comes as states across the country have lifted health restrictions as more people get vaccinated. California had some of the nations strictest pandemic rules, becoming the first to institute a statewide stay-at-home order last spring and adopting a complex, color-coded tier system in August that dictated which businesses could open and at what capacity depending on how widespread the virus was in a county.

Newsom said he expects 30 million doses to be administered by the end of April, putting them on track to inoculate many of the estimated 32 million people eligible for the vaccine.

The pandemic has taken its toll in California, with more than 58,000 people dead, businesses closed and students who have been out of classrooms for much of the year. Newsom, who has pushed for in-person instruction to resume, said he expects no barriers to getting students back into classrooms safely by June 15, including college students.

Under the plan, businesses can open with common-sense risk reduction measures, including mandated masking and encouraging vaccinations. The state will continue contact tracing and testing.

Most capacity limits will be lifted, although large-scale indoor events, such as conventions, will be allowed only with testing or vaccination verification requirements, said Dr. Mark Ghaly, the secretary of health and human services.

Vaccine eligibility will expand to people in California 16 and older starting April 15, although some counties have already started vaccinating young adults.

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The two-month advance notice should give people enough time to schedule their first dose, wait the recommended three to four weeks for a second shot and get through the two-week period for the vaccines to fully kick in, he said.
New Delhi, April 7 : Supporting demands for expanding the Covid vaccination coverage, Congress leader and former Union Minister P. Chidambaram on wednesday also said that the need now is that there should be walk-in vaccinations without any pre-registration.

"IMA has called for universal vaccination. Several CMs have demanded universal vaccination. Yet the central government says there is no need for universal vaccination.

"The need of the hour is walk-in vaccination to all age groups without any pre-registration," he said in a series of tweets.

However, he noted that "because of its unscientific and stubborn stance, the government has allowed the number of infections to gallop every day".

"A grave catastrophe awaits the country," he said.

Continuing his attack, he tweeted: "There is no government of any democratic country in the world that has been so callous as the Modi government.

"From demonetisation to the botched vaccination programme, Indians are paying a huge price for the WRONG policies of the BJP government." India recorded 1,15,736 new Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours, the biggest-ever single-day surge since the onset of the pandemic early last year, taking the overall tally to 12,801,785 on Wednesday, according to the Health Ministry.

Active cases crossed the 800,000 mark in the last 24 hours and now stands at 843,473, comprising 6.59 per cent of the total infections. Reports suggest that India is now the fourth most affected country in the world in terms of active cases.

Meanwhile, the death toll increased to 1,66,177 on Wednesday with 630 new fatalities.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
A team of five Australian Federal Police officers has been assembled to investigate rape allegations raised by Brittany Higgins.

But deputy commissioner Neil Gaughan will not say whether the alleged perpetrator has been interviewed.

'Natural justice has to be held here in relation to this particular issue,' he told ABC radio on Wednesday.

A team of five Australian Federal Police officers has been assembled to investigate rape allegations raised by Brittany Higgins

'Of course, this person that has allegedly undertaken any crime is not obliged to be actually subjected to an interview, they have the right to remain silent.

'It's up to them, it's a matter for them, that's the way our democracy is and the way our laws have been crafted.'

Ms Higgins alleges she was raped by a male colleague inside a ministerial office in Parliament House after a night out in 2019.

The former Liberal staffer initially decided not to pursue a police complaint, fearing her job could be affected.

But Ms Higgins re-engaged with the AFP about the alleged rape in February.

Four investigators assigned to her case are being overseen by an AFP detective-inspector.

'We will follow the evidence to where it takes us,' Mr Gaughan said.

'We've got to get this right, clearly, and we will be methodical.

Four investigators assigned to Higgins' case are being overseen by an AFP detective-inspector

'We will work through the evidence, we will work with the DPP and when we are ready and when they are ready, we will make some further public announcements about it.'

Mr Gaughan would not say how long the investigation might take.

'How long is a piece of string,' he said.

'I don't want to put a timeline on it - I think that's really dangerous - I don't want to put pressure on investigators.

'My job is to provide them with time and space to do their job and that is my intention.'

Mr Gaughan said he would not provide 'blow-by-blow' details on progress of the case but any major milestones would be accompanied by public media releases.

'We'll just have to see where that takes us in the coming weeks.'
TEL AVIV, Israel, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Foretellix, a leading provider of a Verification & Validation (V&V) platform for Automated Driving Systems, has appointed Carl-Peter Forster to its advisory board. Mr. Forster brings extensive global automotive industry experience to Foretellix.

Mr. Forster has over three decades of experience in senior operational and executive roles in the automotive industry. He served as board member at BMW, responsible for global manufacturing, Chairman and Managing Director of Opel AG, President of General Motors Europe and Group CEO at Tata Motors. Since 2013, Mr. Forster has been a board member at Geely Automobile, Volvo Cars, Gordon Murray Design and Hella.

Mr. Forster said: "I am very excited to join Foretellix. The automotive industry is undergoing a digital transformation and it needs to adopt new methodologies and tools, like those put out by Foretellix. Without using Foretellix's Verification & Validation solution, the automotive industry will not be able to achieve a safe and commercial deployment of level 2.5 systems and above."

CEO and co-founder of Foretellix, Ziv Binyamini, said: "I am delighted to welcome Carl-Peter Forster, who brings extensive global experience, to our team. I'm confident that Carl-Peter's contribution to Foretellix will be invaluable in supporting our ambition to be at the forefront the automotive industry, and partner with leading stakeholders to meet the challenge of safer and more efficient automated driving systems deployment."

A German national born in London, 66-year-old Forster holds degrees in Economics from Bonn University, and in Aviation and Space Technology from the Technical University of Munich. He speaks fluent English and German.

About Foretellix

Foretellix provides a revolutionary development lifecycle verification platform for enabling mass deployment of automated driving systems. Foretellix is using proven approaches from the semiconductor chip industry for verification of complex digital systems utilizing hyper-automation, big data analytics, and AI. The platform orchestrates and manages the massive scale of testing required to ensure safety, reduce development costs, and shorten the time to market of Automated Driving Systems deployment.

Visit www.foretellix.com

 Copyright 2021 Foretellix

Media Contacts :

Europe, Mike Stainton, +44 (0)773-989-1040, [email protected]

North America, Scott Fosgard, +1 734-272-7440, [email protected]

Israel, Moshe Mendelson, +972 508-993-284, [email protected]

SOURCE Foretellix

Related Links

http://www.foretellix.com


The Met Police Gold Commander from the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's wedding day has recalled fears a car bomb was outside the Goring Hotel where Kate was staying on the morning of her big day.

In 2011, the duchess, 39, spent her last night as a single woman at the London hotel, near Buckingham Palace in Belgravia, in a 5,000-a-night Royal Apartment on the top floor along with her mother Carole Middleton and sister Pippa.

But in the morning of April 29, just 20 minutes before the bride-to-be was scheduled to leave for her ceremony to Prince William at Westminster Abbey, police discovered an unknown vehicle close to where she was staying.

Appearing on ITV's new documentary, The Day Will and Kate Got Married, to mark their tenth anniversary, Met Police Gold Commander Bob Broadhurst recalled how a car had entered the secure zone set up by officers.

'This is a potential bomb, in a car, it's so close to the entrance and exit from the Goring that we probably might not be able to get Kate and her party out on time', he explained.

Thankfully, it turned out the car wasn't an explosive, and instead belonged to a tourist, who was no doubt shocked to find 'his vehicle with no windows and doors, alongside a parking fine,' joked Broadhurst.

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The Met Police Gold Commander (pictured) from the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's wedding day has recalled fears a car bomb was outside the Goring Hotel where Kate was staying on the morning of her big day

In 2011, the duchess, 39, spent her last night as a single woman at the London hotel, near Buckingham Palace in Belgravia, in a 5,000-a-night Royal Apartment on the top floor along with her mother Carole Middleton and sister Pippa (pictured together)

Speaking on the programme, the police commander recalled: 'We had a secure zone around the Goring Hotel.

'I don't know how it happened, and I don't really want to know how it happened to this day, but somebody in a car got through the secure zone, drove up close to the Goring, just around the corner, got out the car and legged it and joined the crowd.

'Now, we have a real problem. This is a potential bomb, in a car, it's so close to the entrance and exit from the Goring that we probably might not be able to get Kate and her party out on time.

'It was 15, 20 minutes before her due departure time. All the while, the clock is now ticking, and at that very moment, the door opened and in came my boss with a party of dignitaries from the International Olympic Committee, showing them how the Met works.

But in the morning of April 29, just 20 minutes before the bride-to-be was scheduled to leave for her ceremony to Prince William at Westminster Abbey, police discovered an unknown vehicle close to where she was staying (pictured)

'You could cut the silence with a knife as we're trying to solve this issue, and then a little voice from the corner, one of the tactical advisers, let's put it that way, says "Here governor, I hear Paddy Power are putting 10,000 to one that she doesn't make the church on time, do you want me to put some money on?" and that kind of broke the ice.

'At which time, our explosive officers had turned up. It wasn't a bomb, and we were able to not only downgrade the threat but also say stick with plan A, let's go for it,' he explained.

'I think that poor individual, who was at the end of the day just a tourist, came back to find a car with no doors or windows, and a parking ticket,' joked the officer.

Prince William and Kate leave Westminster Abbey following their Royal Wedding on April 29, 2011 in London

Elsewhere on the documentary, the baker behind Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding cake has recalled having to remove an entrance door at Buckingham Palace to get the creation safely inside.

Appearing on The Day Will and Kate Got Married, Fiona Cairns reveals how the Queen remarked on the 'dismantling' of her house ahead of the couple's big day.

The programme airs tonight at 9pm, and sees the baker recall the struggles she had with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's eight-tiered, 3ft-tall fruit cake design.

'I can remember [the Queen] saying, "I hear that you've been dismantling my house", and I said to her "Well, we had to take a door down from the room below for the trolley to go through with the cake," said Fiona.

The baker (pictured) behind Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding cake has recalled having to remove an entrance door at Buckingham Palace to get the creation safely inside

Fondly known as the Queen of Cakes, Fiona was responsible for baking the most famous cake in recent history  for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's wedding in 2011 at Westminster Abbey.

The spectacular eight-tiered, 3ft-tall creation weighed nearly 16st and took Fiona and her team six weeks to make.

Recalling the moment the cake was brought in from her bakery to Buckingham Palace, Fiona said: 'I was told that Her Majesty would be coming through the door at the top of the picture gallery to chat at midday.

Appearing on ITV's new documentary, The Day Will and Kate Got Married, Fiona Cairns reveals how the Queen remarked on the 'dismantling' of her house ahead of the couple's big day. Pictured, the couple's cake

'So no pressure, of course, never having built this cake,' admitted the designer, who has also baked creations for bands Pink Floyd and Simply Red in the past.

Fiona continued: 'When the Queen came to see us, the cake wasn't completely finished.

'I can remember her saying, "I hear that you've been dismantling my house", and I said to her "Well, we had to take a door down from the room below for the trolley to go through with the cake." But it was all put back so in the end it was fine.'

The Day Will and Kate Got Married is on tonight at 9pm on ITV.
Cruising down Interstate 580, I swung my rented Dodge Charger off the exit ramp to Berkeley and downtown Oakland, Green Days 1994 album Dookie blaring from the stereo. One track in particular seemed poignant for the pilgrimage I was undertaking:

Pay attention to the cracked streets and the broken homes

Some call it slums, some call it nice

I want to take you through a wasteland I like to call my home

Welcome to Paradise

Among the scores of British tourists making their inaugural trip across the pond that pre-pandemic year, I doubt many were motivated by the specific rationale for my journey. Id been planning this California quest since my mid-teens, uniquely driven by dedication to my favorite pop-punk band, Green Day, and daydreaming of one day visiting the venue where it all began.

Northern California born and raised, all three members of Green Day (or Sweet Children, as they were known when the band formed in 1987) cut their teeth in the East Bay punk scene before the group's ascent to global superstardom. They thrived in the ethnically diverse East Bay and its pioneering place in punk rock history.

Murray Bowles

As a teenager growing up just outside London in the mid-2000s, I plastered my bedroom with the obligatory posters, avidly collecting everything Green Day had ever committed to CD. I even camped overnight in queues to secure elusive tickets. Attending punk shows was a rite of passage, and as we jostled shoulder to shoulder in packed crowds (how far away that now seems), my friends and I felt a real sense of belonging. Id even been summoned onstage during one memorable gig, the lucky audience member plucked from the crowd to sing. As I stood with my arm around frontman Billie Joe Armstrong, I felt like the luckiest fan alive.

Fast-forward a decade and adult responsibilities and work commitments had somehow not entirely overshadowed my teenage tenacity. That December, after a work conference in Nevada concluded a day early (Im an editor at an aviation publication, a world away from punks reckless rule-breaking), this self-proclaimed Basket Case seized the opportunity for an impromptu road trip. Outside the stale glitz and glam of Las Vegas, a more authentic America awaited: California, here I come.

---

Im not entirely sure what inspired me to slide the Kia key back across the rental car desk and conspiratorially inquire whether they could substitute it for a vehicle more worthy of this decadelong dream. Optimistic energy pulsated through the casinos foyer as I tried my luck, doubtless helped by my charming British accent.

An hour later, I was edging out onto the infamous Las Vegas Strip at the helm of a white, V8 Dodge Charger.

Id never driven abroad  and certainly never in something as big as this. But now was not the time to question the rationality of my choices. With luggage safely stowed in the boot (sorry, trunk), the engine roared to life; after a little confusion over the lack of a gear lever (I drive stick back home), I set off in style on my eight-hour drive.

This would only be an overnight excursion; less than ideal to see the list of locations Id compiled, let alone experience much more of Californias culture. But a whistle-stop tour from the road would allow me to see far more than the inside of an airport.

---

Some 550 miles later I pulled up in the parking lot of Oakland International Airports Motel 6, feeling more than a little conspicuous in my ridiculous choice of ride, yet enjoying every moment of this self-indulgent mission. Room 1507 was mine for the night. After a quick trip down the road to the local 7-Eleven, I returned for a bath, only to find someone had the rooms bath plug. But in true punk spirit, I did my best with a repurposed plastic bag.

After a restless night in which adolescent excitement competed with the scream of a nearby siren, the final leg of the journey was underway. Being British, I generally require tea first thing in the morning; but since its almost impossible to brew a decent cup by jamming teabags into a hotel room percolator  a technique Id already experimented with extensively  I swung by a petrol (no, make that gas station) for caffeine in the form of coffee.

From my overnight stop, I drove north. I crossed the San Leandro Bay, keeping parallel to the waterfront as I passed through Jingletown, mentioned on many Green Day records and home to Jingletown Recording, the recording studio the band owned until 2017. I continued on I-880 north, driving through West Oakland passing the warehouse on the corner of 8th and Pine where the band members reportedly squatted during their early years. (It was a stark juxtaposition to the stadium-selling superstars Id witnessed, but then again, my punk pilgrimage in a fancy car was hardly in keeping with anti-authoritarian origins either.)

North Oakland soon gave way to Berkeley, with the signature sweat-soaked energy of the 924 Gilman, now known as the Alternative Music Foundation, tantalizingly close. On the corner of 8th and Gilman Street, this nonprofit all-ages venue is arguably as legendary as the rock superstars it spawned.

Murray Bowles

Its ironic, then, that Green Day themselves were unceremoniously barred after their third studio album, "Dookie," when they signed to a major label. Pulling up alongside this storied institution in a Dodge Charger seemed a similar intrusion upon "punk purity," but heck, I was happy.

Sadly, I had no time to stay and catch a show. Just as Green Day defied their ban to return in 2001, I, too, would have to schedule a repeat visit.

There is, after all, plenty more on my Green Day checklist. The band recorded their first studio LP at Fell Street in San Francisco and Santa Clara is home to the abandoned mental institution of "Basket Case" music video fame. (For those versed in their back catalogue, which now spans nearly three decades, Colorado Boulevard in Los Angeles is where "Jesus of Suburbia" was filmed.)

If Id had the time to head north, I would have driven out along the San Pablo Bay to Pinole Valley High School, where band members Mike and Billie Joe met. I could have continued past Rodeo, their 10,000-person hometown at the mouth of the Sacramento Delta, and taken a trip to Martinezs Christie Road, immortalized in song as their favorite spot to smoke weed. Which is, after all, where Green Day got their name.

In all honesty, it had been an exhausting, if exhilarating, experience. Id planned the trip in my head for decades yet never realized it would play out with such intensity. Here was truly an experience my Lonely Planet guidebook couldnt impart, an honest glimpse of California in all its grime and glory. As I look back in pride at my impulsive pilgrimage, Id only change one thing: Next time Ill bring my own bath plug.

"Welcome to Paradise," indeed.
EBS Ink-Jet Systems USA, Inc. (EBS), a leading manufacturer of innovative contact-free industrial ink-jet printers and printing systems, announces the launch of their newly designed website - https://www.ebs-inkjet-usa.com

With its straightforward navigation and user-friendly features, the new website makes accessing industrial hand-held and continuous in-line ink-jet printer information easy. Visitors can request pricing, get product brochures, get print samples to test and inspect character size, dry time, color, and ink cartridge life expectancy before purchasing an ink-jet printer.

This new website provides visitors with easy ways to learn about EBS's ink-jet printers. The site gives easy access to product data, application videos, answers to frequently asked questions, service and training information, reasons to buy EBS printers, and about EBS. The site contains integrated social media buttons to foster communication with customers and provide in-use videos.

EBS offers industrial customers efficient, accurate, and clean ways to mark, label, and code products. EBS's innovative contact-free industrial ink-jet printers include wireless, portable, hand-held printers and continuous in-line (large character and small character) printers that print on virtually any package or product and replace outdated and manual marking methods.

EBS Ink-Jet USA was established in 2008. Serving North and Central America's ink-jet coding needs, EBS is centrally located in suburban Chicago in Libertyville, Illinois. Their large warehouse is stocked with ink-jet printers, accessories, spare parts, and consumables, as well as a full-service repair center, technical support, and customer training. EBS is a member of the Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute (PMMI) and is ISO 9000 certified.

For more information, please contact: EBS Ink-Jet Systems USA, Inc. 1840 Industrial Drive, Suite 200 Libertyville, IL 60048 Office: (847) 996-0739 Email: sales@ebs-inkjet.com

Website: http://www.ebs-inkjet-usa.com
[April 06, 2021] INVESTOR ALERT: Law Offices of Howard G. Smith Announces the Filing of a Securities Class Action on Behalf of SOS Limited (SOS) Investors

Law Offices of Howard G. Smith announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of investors who purchased SOS (News - Alert) Limited ("SOS" or the "Company") (NYSE: SOS) American Depositary Shares ("ADSs" or "shares") between July 22, 2020 and February 25, 2021, inclusive (the "Class Period"). SOS investors have until June 1, 2021 to file a lead plaintiff motion. Investors suffering losses on their SOS investments are encouraged to contact the Law Offices of Howard G. Smith to discuss their legal rights in this class action at 888-638-4847 or by email to howardsmith@howardsmithlaw.com. On February 26, 2021, Hindenburg Research ("Hindenburg") and Culper Research published reports regarding SOS, alleging that the Company was a "pump and dump" scheme that used fake addresses and doctored photos of crypto miners to create an illusion of success. The reports pointed out that SOS lists a hotel room as the company's headquarters and questioned whether SOS purchased mining rigs from HY International Group New York Inc. ("HY"), which appeared to be a shell company. They also claimed that FXK Technology Corporation ("FXK"), which SOS announced it would purhase, was actually "an undisclosed related party shell." Moreover, the reports noted that the photographed SOS "miners" weren't the A10 Pros the company claimed to own but were actually Avalon's A1066 miners. Hindenburg went even further and found the original images from SOS's site belonged to a rival RHY.



On this news, the Company's share price fell $1.27, or 21%, to close at $4.77 per share on February 26, 2021. After the end of the Class Period, between February 27 and March 3, 2021, Hindenburg subsequently provided additional information on SOS that further supported its earlier allegations, including pictures, highlighting, inter alia, how SOS had allegedly taken steps to hide the misconduct noted in the February 26, 2021 corrective disclosures.

The complaint filed in this class action alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and/or misleading statements, as well as failed to disclose material adverse facts about the Company's business, operations, and prospects. Specifically, Defendants failed to disclose to investors that: (1) SOS had misrepresented the true nature, location, and/or existence of at least one of the principal executive offices listed in its SEC (News - Alert) filings; (2) HY and FXK were either undisclosed related parties and/or entities fabricated by the Company; (3) the Company had misrepresented the type and/or existence of the mining rigs that it claimed to have purchased; and (4) as a result, Defendants' positive statements about the Company's business, operations, and prospects were materially misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis at all relevant times. If you purchased SOS ADSs, have information or would like to learn more about these claims, or have any questions concerning this announcement or your rights or interests with respect to these matters, please contact Howard G. Smith, Esquire, of Law Offices of Howard G. Smith, 3070 Bristol Pike, Suite 112, Bensalem, Pennsylvania 19020, by telephone at (215) 638-4847, toll-free at (888) 638-4847, or by email to howardsmith@howardsmithlaw.com, or visit our website at www.howardsmithlaw.com. This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and ethical rules. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210406006183/en/

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A new study analyzing bean production and food security across 11 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, found COVID-19 pandemic-related restrictions to significantly impact bean production.

Border controls and high transport costs have led to drops in production of the key food security crop, threatening to reverse gains made in achieving Sustainable Development Goals 1 and 2, towards no poverty and zero hunger, respectively.

Even before the pandemic, 55% of the world's hungry people and 70% of the world's poorest people lived in Africa, the researchers said. In addition, food systems across Africa were already affected by the adverse impacts of climate change, disease and pests, such as the worst desert locust outbreak in 70 years impacting food security in Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and other countries in eastern Africa.

Other impacts of COVID-19 restrictions, both direct and indirect, can be found in the study: "Regional impact of COVID-19 on the production and food security of common bean smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa: Implication for SDG's," published in the Global Food Security edition of peer-reviewed platform Science Direct.

Direct impacts include farms and food businesses closing down; while indirect impacts are linked to lockdown, border closures, social distancing, and restricted transportation and trade.

The food system is already highly inefficient. What we've seen is that measures taken to control the virus led to wider food security restrictions and disruptions, exacerbating those already-existing insecurities. Pay cuts, job losses, and high food prices due to reduced food imports and closure of informal markets all disrupted food supplies, with poorer communities especially affected." Eileen Nchanji, Study Author and Gender Researcher, The Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture

From border closures to national lockdowns, delayed cargo further exacerbated food shortages, the researchers said. For instance, 15% of imported food in Kenya before the pandemic was sourced from countries that imposed export restrictions, affecting the availability and flow of crops and food.

Restrictions also led to limited access to seed, farm inputs, hired labor, and agricultural finance for smallholder farmers, especially those in Uganda, where planting was beginning.

The data, collected between March and April 2020, shows that most households in Eastern Africa ate only twice during the pandemic. Uganda was most affected, with all surveyed farmers eating only once per day during the pandemic.

The research also found a 34% decrease in access to labor attributed to the fear of getting the disease, the high cost of public transportation, and social distancing measures. Farmers also noted difficulties in accessing finance, farm inputs, seed and extension information.

The research highlights that 36%, 20%, and 3% of farmers in Burundi, Uganda, and Kenya respectively lost income during the pandemic, with knock-on impacts on food security.

The low number in Kenya is due to the fact that crops were already planted, and farmers were relying on maize and other crops stored from the previous harvest for food and to generate income, while in Uganda and Burundi, planting was ongoing, and so more money was spent on inputs, seed and food, as prices and costs of transport increased.

In West Africa, challenges included insecurity, political instability, social conflicts, and climate change, the report said, citing Food and Agriculture projections that 17 million people in the region will face severe food insecurity following measures to contain the virus.

Although governments across the continent have responded by offering economic stimulus packages, much needs to be done to enable the sub-sector to recover from ruins caused by the pandemic, authors said.

Cosmas Lutomia, at the Kenya Agriculture and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO), said: "The pandemic has necessitated a much needed discussion around the complexity of our food systems. We can only achieve sustainable and resilient food systems through strengthening public-private partnerships. We implore governments across the region to strengthen the food systems' resilience to present and future shocks."

The authors called for an immediate transformation of food systems in all the sub-regions. Governments should invest directly in input supply systems and short food supply chains through digital access, mobile-based payments, credit and food delivery, they added.
The Reporter's Notebook

Things look pretty bad right now for the people of Burma.

In my visit to Burma, I found the people of a peaceful nature, but governed by military men who at the time stayed in the background.

Since that time, there was a peaceful transfer of power to an elected government. That didnt last long. Power grabs people and doesnt let go.

We have seen the evidence of this here in our own country.

While there, I observed uniformed men carrying rifles on most street corners. They werent threatening, but their presence was unsettling.

While everything on the surface seemed okay, I was told by a person in our legation that the country was ruled by a 15-member council, and most people wouldnt know these rulers if they met them on the street.

I was in country on a 72-hour visa, the maximum time allowed. It was something relatively new, since visas to enter the country were rare indeed.

I had met with Congressman Lloyd Meeds, then congressman from Washingtons 2nd District, who having learned of my trip to Burma, asked me to look up a friend of his who was a professor in Rangoons university.

When settled in the Strand Hotel, I made the call to the university. I was questioned quite a lot about how I knew the person and why I wanted to meet with him. I answered truthfully and was surprised when two very serious individuals knocked on my hotel room door and wanted to talk with me.

I answered their questions and, apparently satisfied, they left. They were not the joking type, and a little too serious for comfort.

Meeds told me that he had made friends with the professor while he was in D.C. getting an advanced degree.

I learned later that the country had been in the process of removing anyone who was tainted by or under western influence. Later it was explained to me that the reason I couldnt meet the professor was because he was probably no longer around.

While there, there was no limit on my moving around. I had hoped to go up to Mandalay, but three days would not give me time.

I wanted to do some shopping, so I hired a pedal cab and started looking around. Stores were few and far between, but I found a lacquer tray, bade from a piece of plywood, with an interesting stencil.

Late in the day I asked about a place for dinner and again hired a pedal cab to take me to it. I was the lone person there. I was taken to a room and waited a considerable time before a waiter came in to discuss what was available. The waiter was the only one I saw during the visit. The food was good even though the circumstances were strange.

The next day I was advised that they planned to show a movie in the dining room, and I was invited. It was a Clint Eastwood western, and they got the reels mixed up. Well, no matter, I had seen the film a number of times. But the staff was thrilled. It seemed strange that Western influence was frowned on, but the Eastwood movie was okay. Just another of the mixed messages during my visit.

I was pleased when President Obama visited the country. My hope is that this sad chapter in the nations history will play out and the kind and friendly people will again be in control of their destiny.

The missing Sani-cans

The three blue Sani-cans that have decorated the yard of the infamous Bureau of Reclamation new fire station are missing.

Such planning. When the work was down, someone continued to pay rental on the three relief stations. Now they report the project might start up again, but the Sani-cans are gone; it makes you wonder where workers will relieve themselves.

Maybe the sagebrush behind the structure is taller than I thought.

It would be interesting to know how much money was wasted on having the Sani-cans there when nothing was going on.
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President Mnangagwa takes part in an urgent regional meeting in Maputo today to deliberate on measures to address terrorism in Mozambique.

The SADC Extraordinary Double Troika Summit was called for by Botswana President Mokgweetsi Masisi, who is chair of the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation.

The other two members of the Troika are Zimbabwe, which was the previous chair of the organ and South Africa, which is the next chair. Another group of three countries are participating.

Mozambique, the host country and current chair of SADC, Malawi which will be the next SADC chair, and Tanzania, which was the last SADC chair. While the three countries are a troika of chairs of SADC, they are also the host and affected countries plus two of its neighbours. The security troika includes another two neighbours.

Although terrorist activities by the insurgents who claim affiliation to the Islamic State (IS) began in 2017, what has captured international attention is the March 24 attack on Palma, a coastal town of more than 100 000 people in Cabo Delgado Province that is near a US$60 billion gas project being developed by French energy giant Total.

In a statement on Tuesday, the SADC secretariat said the region was deeply concerned about the continued terrorist attacks in Cabo Delgado, especially for the lives and welfare of the residents who continue to suffer from the atrocious, brutal and indiscriminate assaults.

According to President Masisi, who was recently in Zimbabwe to brief President Mnangagwa on the latest developments, the attacks were an affront to the peace and security of Mozambique, the region and international community as a whole.

The African Union has since called for urgent and coordinated regional and international action. The insurgent activities have so far claimed close to 3 000 lives and displaced about 700 000 Mozambicans over the past three years.

There have been a series of regional meetings meant to find a lasting solution to the conflict. On May 19 last year, an Extraordinary SADC Organ Troika Summit of Heads of State and Government on Mozambique was held at State House in Harare.

At the meeting, the bloc reiterated that the terrorist activities were in breach of the SADC Declaration on Terrorism and the AU Convention on the Prevention and Combating of Terrorism.

It was followed by another Extraordinary Organ Troika Summit in Botswana on November 27, where SADC directed the finalisation of a comprehensive regional response and support for Mozambique to be urgently considered.

In December, members of the Organ met again in Maputo and were apprised of the fighting in Cabo Delgado.

Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi also briefed regional leaders about the support that had been offered by Britain, the United States, Portugal and Ireland.

There are fears that if the conflict is allowed to fester, it will likely spill into other countries in the region.

SADC countries are bound by the Mutual Defence Pact of 2003, which identifies a threat against one-member state as a threat against the region.

Article Six of the Mutual Defence Pact states that an armed attack against a State Party shall be considered a threat to regional peace and security and such an attack shall be met with immediate collective action. Herald
The on Wednesday claimed



that the law and central investigation agencies were being misused to corner political rivals.

An editorial in the Sena mouthpiece 'Saamana' said the Bombay High Court had pulled up senior police officer Param Bir Singh over his allegations of corruption against former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh, but took cognisance of charges in a separate petition filed by one Jayshri Patil.

"Nobody is above law. But, it is now clear that the law and central investigation agencies are being misused to corner political rivals," the Marathi publication claimed.

"It is a cause of concern that constitutional authorities are getting involved in weakening the Maharashtra government in such a manner," it said.

The shares power with the NCP and Congress in Maharashtra.

The HC on Monday directed the to conduct a preliminary inquiry within 15 days into the allegations of corruption levelled by former Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh against NCP leader Deshmukh, following which he resigned as the state's home minister.

The HC was hearing pleas filed by Singh himself, lawyer Ghanshyam Upadhyay and local teacher Mohan Bhide and city-based lawyer Jayshri Patil.

The HC ordered for the inquiry on Patil's plea.

The editorial said the opposition in Maharashtra makes statements like which state minister is next in line to resign.

"They would not say this if they weren't confident that the central probe agencies were working for them. This is a conspiracy to defame the state," the Sena alleged.

It said earlier also, the opposition parties had levelled allegations against members of the ruling party and several ministers and chief ministers had to quit.

But, the atmosphere was not full of hatred and poison, the Sena said.

It said while the Bombay HC passed an order to conduct a probe into allegations against Anil Deshmukh,Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa recently got a relief from the Supreme Court as it stayed the criminal proceedings against him in a 10-year-old corruption case.

"Why different decisions for Anil Deshmukh and the Karnataka chief minister?" the Marathi daily sought to know.

Referring to a French media report on Rafale fighter jet deal which claimed that Euro 1.1 million was paid to a "middleman" by the aircraft manufacturer, the editorial asked who should now resign on moral grounds?



"Is morality only for the and NCP?" it questioned.

The has already denied the allegation in the French media report as baseless.

The editorial said "the Supreme Court had earlier passed an order that there was no corruption in the Rafale case" and the had targeted Congress leader Rahul Gandhi over his charges about corruption in the fighter jet deal.

Notably, the Supreme Court had dismissed the pleas challenging the deal between India and France for procurement of 36 Rafale jets, saying there was no occasion to "really doubt the decision making process" warranting setting aside of the contract.

(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.)
Immediate past Central Regional Minister, Kwamena Duncan, has diagnosed the motivation behind the murderous act by two teenagers at Kasoa in the Central Region.



Two teenagers named Felix Nyarko, 16, and Nicholas Kini, 17, allegedly murdered their friend Ishmael Mensah, a 11-year-old boy at Lamptey Mills in Kasoa on Saturday.



The deceased was a Class Four pupil of the Maranatha School and according to sources, he was murdered in an uncompleted building in the locality.



There are beliefs the teenagers committed the crime for ritual money purposes.



They have both been remanded into Police custody after appearing before the Ofankor District Court in the Region.



The teenagers' murder act has provoked discussions on the human quest for quick riches.



Some people are of a firm belief that the proliferation of TV stations showcasing money doublers is the main cause of the quick money syndrome in people, particularly the youth.



Discussing the issue during Peace FM's flagship programme 'Kokrokoo', Kwamena Duncan stated that the murder crime at Kasoa isn't a novelty as the place is an ''everday crime spot''.



He revealed that the residents are on daily basis faced with extreme danger.



He opined that the teenagers may have been influenced by the Kasoa crime-related evironment.



"They see this everyday. They live this everyday. Around them, there is violence. As for taking of lives, it's a common place," he said.



The Minister was alarmed that, upon all the crimes going on at Kasoa, little to nothing has been done to make the area a safer place to reside.



"We must take adequate steps in order that Kasoa doesn't continue to pose a security challenge for us as a country," he charged the security agencies.







Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
A new BBC drama set in Northern Ireland is to explore the emotive issues around abortion through the real stories of three local women.

Three Families, from the producers of Three Girls  the multi award-winning account of the Rochdale grooming scandal  is set in 2013-2019, before the recent change to abortion legislation in Northern Ireland.

The drama will centre on the stories of three women and their families as they each fight to have their voices heard. Names and details have been changed to ensure the anonymity of the real-life contributors.

The cast includes Little Boy Blue actress Sinead Keenan, Lola Petticrew from Bloodlands, Amy James-Kelly (Gentleman Jack) and Genevieve OReilly (The Dry).

Written by Gwyneth Hughes (Vanity Fair) and directed by Alex Kalymnios (The White Princess, Being Human), Three Families is made by Studio Lambert, who also produced The Nest for BBC One.

Susan Hogg, executive producer, said: Growing up in Northern Ireland I was always aware of the heated debate surrounding the issue of abortion and this is a story Ive wanted to tell for many years.

Three Families goes behind the headlines to tell the true stories of women and girls and their loved ones who have been deeply affected by the law and some of those who worked to change it.

Writer Gwyneth Hughes added: I knew the law was different, but I had no idea what that really meant until I went to Northern Ireland and met some of the families involved. Ive been deeply touched by their experiences and feel honoured to be asked to share their stories. I think the contributors will all be moved, as I am, by the extraordinary truthfulness and emotional depth that these wonderful actors bring to their stories.

The two-part drama was filmed in Northern Ireland last year and also stars Colin Morgan (Merlin, Humans) and Kerri Quinn (Coronation Street).

Piers Wenger, Director of BBC Drama, said: Following months of detailed research, Gwyneth and the Studio Lambert team will help audiences get an insight into how abortion law has affected many different women and their families.

Their stories are powerful, personal and memorable.
Two men have been charged with murdering a woman whose charred and half-naked body was found dumped in a bush nine months ago.

Najma Carroll, 33, was found in bushland near Sandy Point Quarry off Heathcote Road in Menai in Sydney's south at 5.15pm on July 29, 2020.

A burnt-out Mercedes was also discovered nearby.

The former Sydney Girls High School student was found by a local taking their dog for a walk, with police later describing her injuries as 'horrific'.

Najma Carroll (pictured) was found in bushland near Sandy Point Quarry in Menai on July 29

Police are pictured combing the site near a popular dirt bike track on July 30 following the discovery of Ms Carroll's body

Early examinations indicated attempts had been made to set her body on fire.

Detectives arrested two men at Silverwater jail on Tuesday night and and Wednesday morning and charged them with murder.

They will face Sutherland Local Court on Wednesday via audio-visual link.

In August, a man, known only as Chris, remembered Ms Carroll as a smart bookworm who rarely spoke about her family and a 'quiet girl' unless talking about her dog or history.

Chris told the Daily Telegraph he and Ms Carroll did a rehab program at Rozelle in 2015, which was supported by her mother.

Ms Carroll's (pictured) body was found with head injuries and indications she had been set on fire

Ms Carroll (pictured) was a student at selective school Sydney Girls High and she achieved top HSC marks in modern history and advanced English

'Her Mum visited her she had loving parents, I know that, but every addict has put their parents through hell,' he said.

'We got clean off the drugs at the same time but, sadly, she fell back into it.'

A former boyfriend said Ms Carroll was a regular ice user, who lived with him for about a year and purchased the drug when she received Centrelink payments.

He said she used it to 'forget her problems' and noted she was not in contact with her mother when they lived together.

'Every time she got paid, she wanted to get ice  she was addicted to it all the time. If you woke up at three in the morning and looked, she (would be) up. Who's awake at three in the morning?,' he said.

Text messages sent to a friend in the weeks leading up to her death show a young woman plagued by anxiety and troubles.

Ms Carroll was a student at selective school Sydney Girls High and she achieved top HSC marks in modern history and advanced English.

NSW Police Rescue officers speak with Detective Luke Stibbard near bushland at Sandy Point Quarry in Menai on July 30

But in recent years, Ms Carroll was 'living a rough life' amid struggles with her mental health.

Sydney High School Old Girls Union said in a Facebook post it was 'very saddened to hear of the tragic and violent death' of Ms Carroll, who was in class of 2004.

'We want to extend our sincere condolences to Najmas family and friends for the loss of a daughter, sibling and friend taken too early,' the post read.

'We hope that the person responsible for this terrible crime can be found and brought to justice.

'One of her classmates remembers Najmas intelligence, dry sense of humour and kind nature. May she rest in peace.'
Stan Heller is absolutely right (Opinion: Were fighting anti-Semitism the wrong way). The Zionist movement, which up till 1945 was a minority in every Jewish community bar Palestine, has never been interested in fighting traditional anti-Semitism, i.e. Jew hate. That was what made it different. Its solution was to accept the anti-Semitic canard that Jews did not belong in non-Jewish society.

That is why the support of anti-Semites for the Zionist movement  from Edouard Drumont, the leader of the anti-Dreyfussards to Donald Trump  has been a persistent feature in the past 120 years. There is nothing exceptional in this. Marcus Garvey, the leader of a Black separatist movement (often termed Black Zionism) also ended up working with the KKK.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 18:14:28|Editor: huaxia

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ULAN BATOR, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Southern Mongolian province of Dundgovi has launched a campaign to plant trees to combat desertification and reduce land degradation, the provincial department of environment and tourism said Wednesday.

The province have recently launched a campaign to plant at least 80,000 trees across the province by 2022 to reduce the intensity of desertification and land degradation, Munkhsukh Munkhzul, specialist of environmental training and public education at the department, told Xinhua.

The department urges every household to plant at least eight trees and every organization at least 80 trees within the framework of the campaign.

At least 76.8 percent of the Mongolian total territory has been struck by desertification, according to the country's ministry of environment and tourism.

The frequency of climate-related natural disasters such as yellow dust storms have been on the rise in the country due to desertification resulting from climate change, it said.

Dundgovi, located in the Gobi desert region of southern Mongolia, is one of the provinces most affected by desertification.

Around 60 percent of the province's total territory has been affected by desertification, according to the provincial governor's office. Enditem
- Join executives from Lightsource BP, Vattenfall, BEIS, the European Commission, Ocean Winds as new event assesses impact of European Green Deal and COP 26

LONDON, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- 2021 will be pivotal for Europe's energy sector. As the UK prepares to host COP 26 in Glasgow, the EU is mobilising its EUR1 trillion European Green Deal. And the industry itself is striving to meet ambitious emissions reduction targets and decarbonise the energy system.

https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1482968/Wood_Mackenzie_Logo... [https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1482968/Wood_Mackenzie_Logo...]

As European and national energy regulators, utilities, solar and wind developers and institutional and private investors lay the foundations of an unprecedented effort to decarbonise the continent's energy matrix, Wood Mackenzie will gather European energy industry leaders at its inaugural European Power & Renewables Conference [https://www.greentechmedia.com/events/live/power-renewables-...] on April 27-28.

The digital conference brings together CEOs, policy-makers, entrepreneurs, investors, thought leaders and regulators to weigh up the implications of the European Green Deal and how the region can ensure decarbonisation while balancing the demands of managing the Covid-19 pandemic and reviving the regional economy.

As well as exclusive presentations from Wood Mackenzie experts, and a top-tier speaker line-up, including representatives from Lightsource BP, BEIS, Ocean Winds, the European Commission, Vattenfall and BayWa r.e., the European Power & Renewables Conference offers the opportunity to connect with leading renewable developers and utilities. Delegates will also connect with transmission operators, national and European energy regulatory bodies, investment entities, and technology providers.

Each day will include a breakout session enabling delegates to connect directly with other attendees, Wood Mackenzie analysts, and exhibitors.

Key themes on the agenda include:

-- How the European Green Deal Will Reshape the Energy Mix, How Will It Be Financed and What It Means for the Power Sector Across Europe; -- Defining Renewable Development Across Europe Over the Next Decade: How the EU's Revised 2030 Decarbonisation Targets Will Affect Large-Scale Solar, Onshore Wind and Offshore Wind; -- Building Grid Flexibility: Incentivising Long-Duration Energy Storage and Capacity Markets, and Other Flexibility Mechanisms; -- Assessing the UK's ICE Phaseout by 2030: How the EV Revolution Will Impact the Power Sector; -- Redefining European Energy Market Designs in High Penetration Scenarios for Solar and Onshore and Offshore Wind to Mitigate Price Cannibalisation; -- The Role of Green Hydrogen in Europe's 2030 50-55% Emission Reduction by 2030: Forecasted Plant Development, Investment and Use Cases; -- Next-Generation Technologies for Solar and Wind Technology: What Is the Next Phase in LCOE Reduction; -- Towards a Single Energy Market: Furthering Renewable Integration Across Europe Through Enhanced Transnational Interconnection Infrastructure.

The European Power & Renewables Conference will hear from leading experts from across the industry including:

-- Catrin Jung, Head of Offshore Wind, Vattenfall; -- Dan Monzani, Director for Energy Security, Networks and Markets, the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS); -- Grzegorz Gorski, Chief Operating Officer, Ocean Winds; -- David Diaz, Chief Financial Officer, X-Elio; -- Chris Buckland, Technical Director, Lightsource BP -- Hans Bergman, Head of Unit for ETS Policy Development, European Commission; -- Christiane Kuti, Senior Director, Global Infrastructure & Project Finance, Fitch Ratings -- Hugh Brennan, Managing Director, Hive Energy; -- Dr Annegret Groebel, Director of International Relations, BNetzA; -- Graham Cooley, Chief Executive Officer, ITM Power; -- Ricardo Rocha, Technical Director, Offshore Wind, BayWa r.e.; -- Massimo Resta, Partner, Zouk Capital

To reserve your place at Wood Mackenzie's inaugural European Power & Renewables Conference, or for further information, please click on this link [https://www.greentechmedia.com/events/live/power-renewables-...].

For further speaking and programme enquiries, please contact Wood Mackenzie's Events team:

Juan Monge

+44 792 986 5456juan.monge@woodmac.com[file://10.86.178.62/Users/mongju/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/INetCache/Content.Outlook/QG85UM2G/juan.monge@woodmac.com]

Jillian Kirkpatrick

+1 617 500 6251 jillian.kirkpatrick@woodmac.com[file://10.86.178.62/Users/mongju/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/INetCache/Content.Outlook/QG85UM2G/jillian.kirkpatrick@woodmac.com]

Media enquiries:Anthea Pitt

+44 330 124 9436anthea.pitt@woodmac.com[mailto:anthea.pitt@woodmac.com]

About Wood Mackenzie:

Wood Mackenzie, a Verisk Analytics business, is a trusted source of commercial intelligence for the world's natural resources sector. We empower clients to make better strategic decisions, providing objective analysis and advice on assets, companies and markets. For more information, visit: www.woodmac.com [http://www.woodmac.com/] or follow us on Twitter @WoodMackenzie [https://twitter.com/WoodMackenzie]

WOOD MACKENZIE is a trademark of Wood Mackenzie Limited and is the subject of trademark registrations and/or applications in the European Community, the USA and other countries around the world.

About Verisk

Verisk provides predictive analytics and decision support solutions to customers in the insurance, energy and specialized markets, and financial services industries. More than 70 percent of the FORTUNE 100 relies on the company's advanced technologies to manage risks, make better decisions and improve operating efficiency. The company's analytic solutions address insurance underwriting and claims, fraud, regulatory compliance, natural resources, catastrophes, economic forecasting, geopolitical risks, as well as environmental, social and governance (ESG) matters. Celebrating its 50(th) anniversary, the company continues to make the world better, safer and stronger, and fosters an inclusive and diverse culture [https://www.verisk.com/siteassets/media/downloads/statement-...] where all team members feel they belong. With more than 100 offices in nearly 35 countries, Verisk consistently earns certification by Great Place to Work [https://www.greatplacetowork.com/certified-company/1288593]. For more: Verisk.com [http://www.verisk.com/], LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/company/verisk-analytics/mycompany/], Twitter [https://twitter.com/Verisk], Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/VeriskAnalytics/] and YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJQSl1TiJjgGAIjOJMJwP9w].

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Boko Haram attacks on the rise in Cameroon; dozens killed, thousands displaced since December

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A prominent human rights watchdog group is calling for action as Boko Haram attacks have escalated in northern Cameroon this year, leading to the death of at least 80 civilians and the displacement of thousands since December.

Human Rights Watch, an international human rights advocacy group, released a report Monday detailing the rise in violence and killing at the hands of Boko Haram terrorists in Cameroon, especially in the Far North region.

The violence has resulted in a major humanitarian crisis, as 322,000 people have been forced from their homes since 2014 and 12,500 have been forced from their homes since December 2020.

The advocacy group calls for the government to take concrete measures to protect communities subject to the increasing violence.

Boko Haram is waging a war on the people of Cameroon at a shocking human cost, HRW Senior Africa Researcher Ilaria Allegrozzi said in a statement. As Cameroons Far North region increasingly becomes the epicenter of Boko Harams violence, Cameroon should urgently adopt and carry out a new, rights-respecting strategy to protect civilians at risk in the Far North.

The Boko Haram insurgency began in Nigeria in 2009, spreading across the Lake Chad Basin to Cameroon and other countries.

Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a U.S. Department of Defense think tank funded by Congress, released a report in November showing a steep spike in terrorism violence in Cameroon and other nearby countries like Chad, Niger and Nigeria.

According to the November report, the quantity of Boko Haram attacks on civilians in Cameroon in the previous 12 months was higher than Boko Haram attacks on civilians in Nigeria, Niger and Chad combined.

Cameroon experienced the sharpest spike in violence from 2019 to 2020 and ranks just below Nigeria in the number of violent events.

Despite the recent surge in violence, Cameroons territorial administration minister claimed in February that Boko Haram is living in its last days and the situation of the Far North region is under control.

HRW urges the Cameroonian Parliament to hold a hearing to examine the governments approach to thwarting the rise in terror attacks in the Far North and provide recommendations on improving civilian protection.

With Boko Haram attacks on the rise in Cameroon, more needs to be done to effectively protect civilians, including by boosting the military presence and patrols across the Far North region and ensuring that the soldiers respect peoples rights, Allegrozzi said. Cameroons regional and international partners, including those supporting the multinational force, should bolster these efforts and ensure that their assistance does not contribute to human rights violations.

The report detailed allegations of assault committed by security forces against civilians accused of being part of Boko Haram.

The military has deployed thousands of soldiers to the region, but humanitarian workers say the military presence is too sparse to protect civilians from the terrorists. The army is overstretched and it is also confronting a civil war in English-speaking regions of the country.

The army also deals with the threat of cross-border raids by rebels in the Central African Republic.

Soldiers sometimes force or threaten unequipped civilians in the Far North region to perform night duty to guard against Boko Haram, HRW reported.

Rights groups, including HRW, have documented human rights violations and international humanitarian crimes committed by Cameroonian security forces in the Far North. These crimes include extrajudicial executions, arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, incommunicado detention, systemic torture and the forced return of refugees, according to HRW.

Untrained community self-defense groups are often the first line of defense for vulnerable communities since the military is preoccupied with other concerns. This makes communities a soft target for Boko Haram, Africa Center reported.

One of the deadliest attacks occurred in Mozogo on Jan. 8 when Boko Haram terrorists killed at least 14 civilians, including eight children, and wounded three others.

In this January attack, a small girl was used by Boko Haram terrorists as a suicide bomber to blow herself up in a crowded park in northern Cameroon.

HRW spoke to a 43-year-old woman who lost her 17-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter in the suicide tack.

Boko Haram [fighters] fired shots and screamed Allahu Akbar [God is Great], she shared. We ran toward the forest. Minutes later, we heard a loud explosion. I found myself on the ground. When I stood up, I looked for my children. My girl was dead, while the boy was badly injured. They were both covered in blood with wounds all over their bodies. Residents helped me carry the boy to our home, where he died.

Not long after the Jan. 8 attack in Mozogo, additional military vehicles patrolled the town for a few days, but residents said the reinforcements eventually left. This led to many residents fleeing to nearby villages as they live in constant worry of their security.

We live in fear, a 50-year-old man said. We are tired of this situation; we have been economically and psychologically drained.

Cameroon ranks No. 42 on Open Doors USAs World Watch List of 50 countries where Christians experience the worst persecution.

Boko Haram extremism creates a hostile environment for Christians, even though believers make up most of the country.

Because the government is often focused elsewhere, its given an opening for Boko Haram to expand and continue attacks that target Christians, Open Doors stated in a fact sheet on Cameroon.

Cameroon is also included in U.N. Watchs 2020 list of top-10 human rights abusers worldwide for torturing journalist Samuel Abuwe to death and massacring school children in English-speaking schools as part of the Anglophone Crisis.
A lot of people in Decatur are mourning the COVID-19 death of a popular sous chef. He died this month after coming down with the virus.

Deran Hill worked at Josie's as a sous and pastry chef for almost three years. We talked with his co-workers and friends about their memories of a man they say is gone too soon.

Deran Hill passed away from COVID-19 at 41. Deran Hill passed away from COVID-19 at 41.

"We worked together and just over working, we got to know each other and became very good friends," said Caitlin Fite, friend of Deran Hill.

Fite has been friends with Deran Hill for almost a decade. She says they talked almost everyday.

"We had actually, right before he went in the hospital, talked about him coming over and cooking for me and my husband," said Fite.

Unfortunately, Hill never got to leave the hospital after his boss, John Wheat, brought him to the ER, one of the few times Wheat says he hasn't seen Hill smile.

"I could see the concern in his face and he was not smiling that morning," said John Wheat, owner of Josie's.

Hill turned 41 while in the Decatur-Morgan Hospital.

"He had just turned 41 and I told him 'happy birthday' and that would've been our last conversation," said Fite.

Hill, who had underlying health conditions, died a few days after his birthday.

"As far as Deran as a person, I don't think you'll find a kinder, sweeter, more gentle man. He literally always had a smile on his face," said Wheat.

A smile that will be missed by many.

"He really enjoyed visiting with the guests and they all loved him. He would come out of the kitchen with a big smile on his face and the guests just adored him," said Wheat.

That smile won't be gone forever, though. Wheat says they're getting a portrait done of him.

"We decided it would be fitting to put Deran on the wall in the restaurant," said Wheat.

A public viewing is being held Wednesday, and graveside services will be on Thursday for Deran Hill.

More than 10,000 people have died from COVID-19 in Alabama, and around 21% of those deaths are in people younger than 65.
New Delhi: The students taking CBSE class 10 class 12 board exam should notice that they need not worry after seeing a 'C' on the link of marks for the practical exams. They should know that it does not mean they have not got good marks, rather it has a different meaning.

According to a recent circular addressed to the heads of all CBSE affiliated institutions, the CBSE has clearly stated that if any CBSE board exam candidate fails to appear for the CBSE board 2021 practical exams for being tested COVID positive or any of his close family members tested COVID positive, the concerned schools will have to re-conduct the practical exams for such students.

Such schools, however, need to consult with the CBSE regional office latest by June 11. Notably, the 'C' may be posted on the link of the marks for such candidates, while uploading the marks..

The students of the CBSE class 10 class 12 need not worry as you know as to why the 'C' in the marks is linked.

The CBSE board practical exams started on March 1, 2021 and will continue till June 11, 2020. However, the CBSE written exams for class 10 class 12 board exams are scheduled to commence from May 4, 2021.

In view of the rising COVID-19 cases in the country, the Central Board of Secondary Education has issued certain circulars for the convenience of the CBSE board exam candidates. The above-mentioned initiative to re-conduct the practical exams is one such example.

Earlier also, the CBSE issued a circular regarding the change of practical and written exam centres for class 10 class 12 board exam candidates. It directed that if any board exam candidate changed the exam centre while uploading the marks of the batch of the candidate, 'T' may be posted on the link of the marks of such candidates.

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A Warrior woman has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for the 2017 DUI traffic deaths of her 3-year-old son and a 79-year-old man.

Heather Heaton, 43, pleaded guilty Wednesday to two counts of reckless murder. Blount County District Attorney Pamela Casey said Heaton was sentence to 30 years on each count.

I am saddened to see two lives that were taken too soon as a result of the misuse of prescription drugs,' Casey said. Those who are suffering from addiction need to reach out for help before another innocent life is taken away too soon.

Grady Leon Goodwin was killed in the crash as well as Heatons son, Brayden Mahaffey.

The wreck- a head-on collision - happened just after 6 p.m. on the 24000 block of Alabama 79 in the Dallas community in May 2017. Multiple first responders went to the scene including the Blount County Sheriffs Office, Locust Fork and Dallas-Selfville Fire, Blount EMS, LifeSaver helicopter and Alabama State Troopers.

Goodwin was pronounced dead on the scene. Two others were transported by separate helicopters and Brayden died a short time later at Childrens of Alabama.

Alabama State Troopers said Goodwin was driving a 2001 Chevrolet pickup truck that collided head-on with a 2004 Jeep Grand Cherokee driven by Heaton. Heaton was also hospitalized following the crash.

Heaton was indicted by a grand jury in July 2018 following an investigation by ALEA. She has been held without bond since her arrest in January 2020.

Evidence showed that Heaton had Alprazolam, fentanyl, methadone, and morphine in her system at the time of the wreck.
Commentary: Chinese democracy delivers real results to the people

Xinhua) 09:05, April 07, 2021

Deputies to the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) leave the Great Hall of the People after the closing meeting of the fourth session of the 13th NPC in Beijing, capital of China, March 11, 2021. (Xinhua/Cao Can)

BEIJING, April 6 (Xinhua) -- The 8,993 proposals which were submitted to China's annual legislative session this year were transferred to relevant departments for research and handling today, a vivid example of Chinese democracy transforming people's voices into concrete plans and actions.

The National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee has set 22 priority topics, which can be categorized into six aspects including ensuring the livelihoods of the people, planning the work of the NPC Standing Committee, accelerating the development of a modern industrial system, comprehensively advancing rural vitalization, implementing the regional development strategies and promoting green development, according to the data made public Tuesday.

The move is a critical step for Chinese authorities to fulfill their duties in service of the people, coordinate the aspirations and demands of the whole of society and make decisions that serve the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority. The proposals received included suggestions, critiques and comments, through which the authorities can learn about the pressing needs of the people and nation, and push forward policies accordingly.

A quality democracy cannot be realized without delivering. Many critics regard China's annual national "two sessions" as a key window into Chinese democracy. That is true, but the operation of Chinese democracy does not stop at the "window." Handling the proposals demonstrates that Chinese authorities see taking concrete actions to solve the problems of the people as a top priority.

By late January, all 9,180 suggestions submitted by NPC deputies to last year's annual NPC session had been handled, with feedback provided. Various departments of the State Council adopted approximately 3,700 pieces of advice from NPC deputies and political advisors and subsequently introduced some 1,500 related policy measures.

By listening to suggestions and recommendations and accepting criticism and scrutiny through various forms of consultation, decision makers are able to reach the broadest possible consensus in all their decisions and work. Over the past decades, Chinese democracy has helped the country improve dramatically, not only economically but also ecologically, socially and culturally.

There is no perfect democracy, only democracy that fits best. Many Chinese know the story of Yan Zi, who lived over 2,500 years ago. He visited the State of Chu and told the king how sweet oranges from the south, when transplanted north, became bitter. China takes pride and has full confidence in its own model of democracy, but also respects the development paths of other countries and has no interest in engaging in ideological confrontation or exporting its social system abroad.

If there is a message that China wants to send through its democratic undertakings, it is the country's firm determination to protect the lives, health, rights and interests of the people. It is time to better understand the essence of Chinese democracy and its significance to the progress of human society.

(Web editor: Guo Wenrui, Bianji)
He's worth a reported $6.6 billion and is going through a high profile divorce from Kim Kardashian.

And now Kanye West is telling his story on his own terms in a new documentary said to have been 21 years in the making.

On Tuesday, Billboard.com reported that Netflix has spent upwards of $30 million to acquire the feature being put together by Ye collaborators Clarence 'Coodie' Simmons and Chike Ozah.

A documentary detailing the life of Kanye West from the late 1990s onwards has been acquired by Netflix for upwards of $30 million, Billboard,com reported on Tuesday

According to Billboard, Simmons has been filming Kanye since the late 1990s.

The never-before-seen footage includes the early years of the rapper's career in Chicago, the death of his mother Donda West, his foray into the fashion industry and his 2020 presidential run.

It's not known if it will also include details of his highly-publicized mental health breakdown in 2016 that led him to be hospitalized in Los Angeles.

Simmons and Ozah worked with Kanye on his Through The Wire video released in 2003 and on the third version of Jesus Walks.

The feature is being put together by Ye collaborators Clarence 'Coodie' Simmons and Chike Ozah, pictured in 2015. The duo worked with Kanye on his Through The Wire video in 2003 and Simmons has been filming the recording artist since the late 1990s, according to Billboard

The documentary will reportedly include footage of the early years of the rapper's career in Chicago and deal with the death of his mother Donda West in 2007

It will also detail his 2020 presidential run (pictured with Donald Trump in the Oval Office in October 2018) but it's not known if it will also address his highly publicized mental health breakdown in 2016 that left him hospitalized in LA

A source told Billboard that the Life Of Pablo artist has given the duo his blessing for the project which the pair will produce in conjunction with TIME Studios.

The as-yet untitled documentary is slated to stream on Netflix later this year.

Meanwhile, West's former bodyguard Steve Stanulis is also said to be shopping around a documentary about the rapper and is reportedly 'still in discussions with multiple platforms.'

A source told Billboard that the Life Of Pablo artist has given his blessing for the project which is being produced in conjunction with TIME Studios and is set to air later this year

Last month, Bloomberg calculated 43-year-old Kanye's wealth at $6.6 billion, based primarily on his hugely successful Yeezy brand and lucrative deals with Adidas and Gap (pictured March 2020 onstage at Paris Fashion Week with daughter North West)

The recording artist also has $122 million in cash and stock, according to Bloomberg's March reporting, and his music catalogue is valued at $110 million (pictured September 2016)

Last month, Bloomberg calculated 43-year-old Kanye's wealth as about $6.6 billion, based primarily on his hugely successful Yeezy brand that's reputed to be worth between $3.2 billion and $4.7 billion.

His sneaker and clothing lines have benefited from lucrative partnership deals with Adidas AG and Gap Inc., with his Gap apparel collection set to debut this summer.

The recording artist also has $122 million in cash and stock, according to Bloomberg's March reporting, and his music catalogue is valued at $110 million.

He also has $17 billion in other assets including a substantial interest in estranged wife Kim's Skims shapewear line.

The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star filed for divorce from Kanye in February after seven years of marriage.

She is said to have worked on a settlement of shared assets before formally filing and, according to UsWeekly, the ex couple are reported to be in agreement over sharing custody of their four children, North, seven, Saint, five, Chicago, three, and Psalm, who turns two next month.

Kanye also has $17 billion in other assets including a substantial interest in estranged wife Kim's Skims shapewear line. The reality star filed for divorce in January after seven years of marriage (pictured in May 2016)

Kim, 40, also officially joined the billionaires club on Tuesday when Forbes included her on its World's Billionaire List.

The outlet credited her increased wealth to the success of her KKW Beauty and Skims brands.

She also has lucrative endorsement deals and other investments and made $200million in a deal to sell 20 percent of KKW Beauty to Coty last year.

Forbes previously declared Kim's younger half-sister Kylie Jenner to be a billionaire when she offloaded 51 percent of her beauty company Kylie Cosmetics to Coty.
The Covid-19 vaccine roll out was thrown into further confusion today after it emerged teachers and special needs assistants (SNAs) from a number of special schools in the Wicklow, Dun Laoghaire and Dublin South East were vaccinated yesterday.

Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said today it should not have happened.

The move has caused bewilderment because the teachers and SNAs are no prioritised as a group for vaccination and will be expected to wait until it reaches their individual age cohort.

The staff were vaccinated at the Aviva Stadium, in Dublin, despite a decision by the National Immunisation Advisory Committee (NIAC) to remove them from a special priority ranking.

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Teachers unions are warning they will take action up to and including industrial action as a result of the overhaul of the list.

In response trade union Forsa has called on the Government to clarify revelations that special needs assistants (SNAs) working in special schools in Wicklow, Dun Laoghaire and south-east Dublin received Covid-19 vaccinations.

The union said the development was welcome, and said it wanted to see a nationwide rollout, from the health ministers constituency, to special school-based SNAs nationwide.

Last week, the union asked the Government to review its decision to remove SNAs from the Covid-19 vaccine priority list and to include them under category nine of its revised vaccine schedule, which includes people aged 16-64 who work in crowded settings.

In a letter to Taoiseach Micheal Martin, the unions head of education, Andy Pike, said that SNAs work in crowded settings where social distancing is not possible.

There are few other groups outside health and social care who work on a consistent basis providing intimate care without the ability to maintain social distancing.

"In special schools, healthcare staff like nurses, occupational therapists and physiotherapists have all been vaccinated, whilst the SNAs who work alongside them have not, he said.

The Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO) general secretary John Boyle said reports that the HSE has forged ahead and is now vaccinating teachers in special schools had been their demand all along.

We need that to continue and to be guaranteed to all workers in all our special schools, he said.

The teachers who were vaccinated were first contacted about vaccination appointments last Wednesday, a day after the Government announced a change to the vaccination priority listing, according to RTE News.

It is said that on Wednesday a number of special schools in the HSE's CHO6 area, which covers Wicklow, Dun Laoghaire and Dublin South East, were contacted and asked top rovide lists of staff for vaccination by the following afternoon.

On Friday staff at the schools, including teachers and SNAs, received appointments to attend for vaccination at the Aviva stadium yesterday.

A school principal said the HSE informed him all special schools in the CH06 area were being contacted with the vaccine offer and around 50 teachers ad SNAs were innoculated yesterday.

Asked about the incident today Mr Donnelly said :" I did hear it and I contacted the HSE straight away to get a very quick update, obviously Ill get a more detailed one.

"But what Ive been told so far is that the CHO had special need assistants on their reserve list.

"Now thats not something thats meant to happen.

"Thats not something thats happening nationally, and its not in line with the protocols. My understanding is that the CHO was trying to do the right thing, trying to make sure that there was a reserve list in place, however this reserve list is not the right way to do it."

Asked if this is the right way to do a reserve list he said :"They shouldnt - thats exactly what Im saying... that this is not the way to do a reserve list."

Asked if the schools were in his constituency he replied: "I have no idea, Ive literally just heard about it reported on RTE, and Ive asked the HSE for a detailed report but obviously I wanted to share something quickly, so thats what Ive found out so far."

The HSE said "to avoid any wastage of the vaccine the reserve list was used at the Aviva Vaccination Centre yesterday".

It said "some people were called who were identified as those within Cohort 4 and a number of people working in special schools in the area were also called."

Meanwhile new figures released by the Department of Health on projected supplies of vaccine coming here in April, May and June said there will be 3.9 million doses.

This is higher than the projected 3.6 million. June should see the largest amount of vaccines with 1.75 million doses due.
Myanmar's embassy in London was tonight seized by loyalists of the country's new military regime, according to the ambassador who has been locked out.

Ambassador Kyaw Zwar Minn has been a vocal opponent of February's armed coup and the imprisonment of overthrown civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Diplomatic sources told Reuters his deputy Chit Win led the takeover and has assumed charge of Myanmar's UK outpost on behalf of the ruling junta.

Speaking outside the Mayfair building tonight, Kyaw Zwar Minn, said he felt 'betrayed' by his colleagues, who refused him entry when he pressed the intercom.

Kyaw Zwar Minn pushes the intercom at the Myanmar embassy but is denied entry

Myanmar's embassy in London was tonight seized by loyalists of the country's new military regime, according to the ambassador (pictured) who has been locked out

Ambassador Kyaw Zwar Minn has been a vocal opponent of February's armed coup and the imprisonment of overthrown civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi

He added to the Daily Telegraph: 'When I left the embassy, they stormed inside the embassy and took it. They are from the Myanmar military.

'They are refusing to let me inside. They said they received instruction from the capital, so they are not going to let me in. This a coup.'

Police officers were scrambled to the Charles Street site but have not entered the building, which diplomatic protocol means is technically on foreign soil.

Protesters also gathered on the street outside to rally against the military's takeover of the embassy.

Kyaw Zwar Minn said he was in contact with the British Foreign Office, and Whitehall sources confirmed the Government was speaking with the Myanmar regime.

Police officers were scrambled to the Charles Street site but have not entered the building, which diplomatic protocol means is technically on foreign soil

Protesters also gathered on the street outside to rally against the military's takeover of the embassy

Myanmar's Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Kyaw Zwar Minn, stands by a car with a poster of Aung San Suu Kyi, as he is locked outside the Myanmar Embassy

Myanmar's state broadcaster reportedly said the ambassador, who has served as Naypyitaw's man in London since 2014, had been summoned back to Naypyitaw after making an unauthorised statement.

Kyaw Zwar Minn has been a thorn in the military's side since the February coup and has called for the release of Suu Kyi and ousted President Win Myint, drawing praise for his 'courage' from Dominic Raab.

Britain has sanctioned members of Myanmar's military and some of its business interests in wake of the coup, and has demanded the restoration of democracy.

An FCDO spokesperson said: 'We are seeking further information following an incident at Myanmars embassy in London.'

Scotland Yard said in a statement: 'We are aware of a protest outside the Myanmar embassy in Mayfair, London. Public order officers are in attendance. There have (been) no arrests.'
What role does the Suez Canal play when it comes to Vietnamese trade?

Tran Thanh Hai, deputy director of the Ministry of Industry and Trades Agency of Foreign Trade

The Suez is the worlds vital navigation channel. For Vietnam, this is a delivery channel with Europe and a part of the east coast of America.

In 2020, Vietnams exports to Europe reached a turnover of $43.7 billion, and imports from this market were $18.5 billion. In the first two months of 2021, the export figure was $7.5 billion, and imports $3.1 billion, corresponding to the growth rate of 18 and 12 per cent, respectively. Europe is currently Vietnams fourth-largest trading partner after China, the United States, and South Korea.

In addition to a small volume of goods transported by air and rail, imports and exports between Vietnam and Europe are still transported by sea, passing through the Suez Canal.

Which markets and commodities are most affected and need to be taken into consideration?

Goods exported to Europe will be affected the most. The EUs main exports to Vietnam are high-tech products including electrical machinery and equipment, aircraft, vehicles, and pharmaceutical products. Vietnams main exports to the EU are telephone sets, electronic products, footwear, textiles and clothing, coffee, rice, seafood, and furniture.

The Suez Canal incident exposed the weakness of the global supply chain. It also exposed a shortage of containers, thus the unexpected issue was also one of the factors that increased concerns of importers and exporters, especially in context of a lack of empty containers.

In the current context, impacts on natural disasters and epidemics greatly affect the global supply chain.

Businesses need to proactively plan to adapt and withstand external impacts on the supply chain, and build a contingency plan in case of instability.

Although the route has reopened, trade will still have to catch up. How does the Ministry of Industry and Trade support local importers and exporters, and what are the lessons for them?

The ministry directed the Vietnam Trade Office in Egypt to closely monitor the progress to inform import and export businesses. We also coordinated with the Ministry of Transport to understand the schedules of key ports and take necessary measures in case the incident at the Suez Canal persisted.

Along with the scarcity of containers and rising shipping rates, the incident at the Suez Canal shows the essential role of logistics in economic development and trade in particular, and global supply chains can be affected and broken anytime and anywhere. Thus businesses need to have strategies to improve their resilience, diversify, and make backup plans for emergencies to reduce damage to a low level.

For the Asia-Europe transport route, businesses should consider and take advantage of the intermodal rail transport plan. With the transit time from Vietnam to Germany only about 29-30 days and the cost is only marginally higher than the shipping rate at this time, this could be seen as a suitable choice in the current context.

Furthermore, insurance should be mentioned. Some importers and exporters still underestimate the role of insurance, seeing insurance as a cost, not as a tool to prevent risks. Recent changes have forced them to change this way of thinking.

How do you evaluate Vietnams import and export situation in the first quarter?

In the first quarter, export value increased 22 per cent while import increased 26 per cent, trade surplus was over $2 billion. The world is still under the impacts of the pandemic, combined with shortages of containers, rising shipping rates, and most recently the incident on the Suez Canal.

The growth in exports is contributed by businesses efforts and relevant authorities through taking advantage of trade agreements.

Currently, the electronics and wood furniture industries are benefiting thanks to the high demand in the European and North American regions. However, the difficulties in textiles and clothing, as well as footwear, are still great due to the impact of the supply chain breakdown, not only in the supply but also in the operation chain. Regarding import activities, the main product is mainly raw materials for export orders.
Amroha : , April 7 (IANS) The Amroha police has seized 'rasgulla' packets weighing around 100 kg from a village panchayat candidate who was distributing them to the voters.

Sohanveer, the candidate, and his relative Chandra Sen have been booked for violating the model code of conduct and the police later arrested Sohanveer.

Amroha goes to polls in the second phase on April 19.

Amroha superintendent of police (SP) Suniti said, "Police have seized around 100 kg of rasgullas in Hasanpur area and arrested Sohanveer of Porara village. His relative, Chandra Sen, however, escaped. Sohanveer is a contender for the village head seat. We have registered a case against them under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code." She further said, "Police and the district administration are on high alert to ensure free and fair polling. A crackdown on people, especially candidates, indulging in the distribution of liquor, chicken and sweets among voters to lure them is going on."
Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III urged the U.S. Department of Education to cancel federal student loan debt for some students who attended ITT Technical Institute. The now defunct for-profit school defrauded thousands of individuals by encouraging them to enroll and borrow loans based on false and misleading information about the value of an ITT degree.The borrower defense application that a bipartisan coalition of 24 states and the District of Columbia filed today includes students who attended ITT Tech between at least 2007 and 2011.Federal law permits the Department of Education to forgive federal student loans when borrowers were deceived in obtaining them.The attorneys general are demanding full relief to ITT students, including refunding payments already made on those loans.In Tennessee, we had hundreds of students simply trying to improve their lives through an education at ITT Tech and instead were harmed, said General Slatery. This Office will continue to work on their behalf enforcing out states consumer protection laws.Based on a 2012 congressional report, ITT enrolled roughly 282,000 students across the country between 2007-2010. During this enrollment period, ITT misrepresented the value of its education, telling potential students they would get high-paying jobs after graduation with a constant rate of earning growth- sometimes more than $100,000 in average annual earnings than workers with the same credentials.To read the letter, click here The letter was led by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, who were joined by the District of Columbia and the states of Connecticut, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.
If you click on the cabin in the deck plan a window pops up with the description

We took a cruise a few years ago from Pittsburg to Cleveland it was a nice lazy cruise

the food was good

entertainment is more low key but fun

We were on deck 2 cabin206 then 204 ..outside but nice location

The ones on the upper decks the rooms open onto the public deck so I am glad we opted for the D cat

We were not in the cabin much anyway

here are our photos if interested

Edited: 07 April 2021, 12:48
Exhibit 99.1

Green Thumb Industries Expands Independent Governance with Appointment of Swati Mylavarapu to Board of Directors

CHICAGO and VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 7, 2021  Green Thumb Industries Inc. (Green Thumb) (CSE: GTII) (OTCQX: GTBIF), a leading national cannabis consumer packaged goods company and owner of Rise Dispensaries, today announced that Swati Mylavarapu has joined its Board of Directors and will serve on the Compensation Committee.

Mylavarapu brings nearly a decade of experience investing, advising and building mission-driven technology companies. Since 2017, Mylavarapu has served as Founder and Managing Partner of Incite.org, a hybrid incubator and investment fund that combines venture capital, philanthropy, and civic advocacy to accelerate bold ideas and solve some of the worlds most pressing challenges. She was an investment partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers from 2015 to 2017. Prior to that, Mylavarapu built the early international efforts for the financial services and digital payments company Square. She also served as National Investment Chair for Pete Buttigiegs 2019-2020 Presidential bid.

Swatis impressive background, stellar credentials and combined experience in technology, innovation, social impact and philanthropy bring a unique and invaluable perspective to our board, said Green Thumb Founder and Chief Executive Officer Ben Kovler. We could not be more excited to add her voice and skillsets to the team.

I am honored to join the Board of Directors of Green Thumb, whose mission, values and executive team I deeply respect, said Mylavarapu. I look forward to making a positive impact for a company that aligns with my principles and prioritizes being good corporate citizens by giving back to communities, creating opportunity and jobs, and advocating for social change.

Mylavarapu is a trustee for the Rhodes Trust, an educational charity that supports exceptional students from around the world to study at the University of Oxford. She is also a board member for Vote.org, which uses technology to simplify political engagement, increase voter turnout, and strengthen American democracy. She previously served on the boards of B Lab and Paid Leave for the U.S.

She has a Master of Philosophy in Economic and Social History from the University of Oxford and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard. She is a Rhodes Scholar, a Truman Scholar and a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

Mylavarapu joins the following non-executive Green Thumb board directors:
A Melbourne property developer is suing a local councillor for defamation over a string of comments made by other people on a community Facebook page, in the latest in a series of cases about the liability of online administrators for posts by third parties.

Sam Zuchowski, director of Cavendish Properties, claims his reputation and standing have been severely injured because of comments on the Carrum and Patterson Lakes Forum Facebook page, administered by newly elected Kingston councillor Cameron Howe.

Kingston councillor Cameron Howe.

Cavendish Properties, headed by Mr Zuchowski and his lawyer son Adam Zuchowski, is behind the Patterson Lakes Marina District development in Melbournes south-east.

Planning applications the company had lodged with Kingston Council to develop the precinct had been the subject of posts on the community page in 2019, before Mr Howe was elected.
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Doctors have been told not to prescribe painkillers to chronic pain patients but rather antidepressants, exercise, and acupuncture.

Patients who have unexplained and ongoing pain should not use painkillers like paracetamol and ibuprofen per new guidelines published today.

National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) said in a victory for a Daily Mail campaign there is "little or no evidence" that painkillers "make any difference to people's quality of life, pain, or psychological distress."

Nice, which advises the NHS on treatments, said drugs - including benzodiazepines, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or opioids - could cause harm and addiction.

The Guardian said chronic secondary pain is pain caused by an underlying health condition. On the other hand, chronic primary pain is pain that has no specific cause and has lasted for at least three months. Chronic pain affects more than 20 million people in the United Kingdom.

Chronic Pain 101: What Should People Do To Cure Pain?

Nice suggests that doctors work with patients to develop a treatment and support plan about how to handle their pain based on how much it is impacting their day-to-day life, what things they believe they should do, and transparency "about the prognosis' confusion."

According to Evening Standard, the health department said people who are experiencing physical pain could also take antidepressants.

"Acupuncture is also recommended as an option, provided it is delivered within certain clearly defined parameters," Nice said.

Dr. Paul Chrisp, director of the Centre for Guidelines at Nice, said: "This guideline is very clear in highlighting that, based on the evidence, for most people, it's unlikely that any drug treatments for chronic primary pain, other than antidepressants, provide an adequate balance between any benefits they might provide and the risks associated with them."

"But people shouldn't be worried that we're asking them to simply stop taking their medicines without providing them with alternative, safer, and more effective options."

ALSO READ: CDC Adds Three New Common Side Effects of COVID-19 Vaccine; Are These Harmful?





Dr. Chrisp said people who are taking drugs for chronic primary pain that aren't recommended in the guideline should first ask their doctor to revisit their prescribing as part of mutual decision making.

This may include deciding to a plan to continue taking their medications if they provide benefit at a low dosage with minimal side effects or offering help to minimize and avoid taking the drug if necessary.

Nice said it's important to explore and properly resolve any withdrawal concerns while making joint decisions on whether or not to quit.

Chronic Pain 101: Here's What Royal College of GPs Said

The Royal College of GPs backed the change away from painkillers but warned that patients' access to the latest therapies was inconsistent.

Prof Martin Marshall, the college's chair, said the pain could cause untold suffering for patients and their families. He said chronic primary pain could be challenging to handle in general practice. Prof Marshall added the college has long called for recommendations to remedy this.

"We understand the move away from a pharmacological option to treating chronic primary pain to a focus on physical and psychological therapies that we know can benefit people in pain."

"However, access to these therapies can be patchy at a community level across the country, so this needs to be addressed urgently if these new guidelines are to make a genuine difference to the lives of our patients with primary chronic pain."

Lucy Ryan, a patient advocate who supported Nice in creating the new recommendations, praised it for recognizing the risks that a tablet regimen for chronic primary pain can entail, saying that patients aren't always consulted about them.

Ryan underscored that the more services available to help people manage their pain effectively, the better.

RELATED ARTICLE: How Binge Drinking Affects Your Brain Activity





Check out more news and information on Medicine and Health on Science Times.
There is enough supply of Pfizer and Moderna jabs to inoculate all u

All adults will be vaccinated by the target date of July 31 as the rollout continues full steam ahead, ministers pledged yesterday.

And officials are confident there are sufficient supplies of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for the ten million under-30s who have now been advised not to have the Oxford/AstraZeneca one.

However, some experts suggested that the change of course of the programme could still slow down the rollout and may lead to some people having to travel further to get their vaccine.

It is also too early to say whether vaccine hesitancy might increase as a result of the decision to offer the under-30s an alternative jab over fears of very rare blood clots.

And it is not clear whether some of those who have had their first dose of the AstraZeneca jab will be deterred from having their second dose  though officials have made clear that they should still have it.

On a visit to Cornwall yesterday, Boris Johnson vowed there would be no delay to the lockdown-easing plans and that he believed the vaccine rollout would continue on schedule.

On a visit to Cornwall yesterday, Boris Johnson vowed there would be no delay to the lockdown-easing plans and that he believed the vaccine rollout would continue on schedule.

Officials are confident there are sufficient supplies of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for the ten million under-30s who have now been advised not to have the Oxford/AstraZeneca one. Pictured: Practice Nurse Gemma Reid gives pensioners a Covid-19 vaccine at Lichfield Cathedral, Staffs

So far 31.7million people in the UK  more than six in ten adults  have received at least one dose of the vaccine. This means around 21million over-18s are still waiting for their first dose

He said: I dont see any reason at this stage at all to think we need to deviate from the road map and were also very secure about our supply.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said: Were on track to offer a first jab to all adults by the end of July. When you get the call, get the jab.

Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi said the Government was confident in meeting our programme targets.

So far 31.7million people in the UK  more than six in ten adults  have received at least one dose of the vaccine. This means around 21million over-18s are still waiting for their first dose.

With 16 weeks to go until July 31, the UK must deliver first doses at a rate of 185,000 a day  or 1.3million a week  over the next four months.

Current Cabinet Office projections suggest ministers are expecting supplies of 2.7million vaccines a week until the end of July.

However, a significant proportion of these will be used for second doses, which must be given to people within 12 weeks of their first.

Britain today saw its Covid cases dip by a third week-on-week after recording 2,763, compared to the 4,052 from last week

But deaths rose slightly after 45 were recorded, which was two more than the same time the week before

First-dose vaccinations have been faltering in recent days and yesterdays data showed just 85,000 first doses were delivered, compared to 187,000 second doses. However, the NHS is confident it will have enough doses of the Pfizer and Moderna jabs to give first doses to 18 to 29-year-olds.

The UKs vaccination programme has been bolstered by hundreds of thousands of Moderna jabs, which began being rolled out yesterday.

Officials also hope that two more jabs  Janssen and Novavax  could be approved within weeks. Professor Adam Finn, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, suggested the Moderna vaccine could be reserved for younger people.

Deputy chief medical officer, Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, said of the new advice for under-30s: Because of our supply situation in relation to alternative vaccines, the effect on the timing of our overall programme should be zero or negligible.

He added: It is full speed ahead with the UK vaccination programme so we can get life back to normal.

However, Caroline Casey, from data data analytics company Airfinity company Airfinity, said: In terms of hitting the deadline in July, of the vaccines we would expect to be delivered in July, AstraZeneca would make up about 36 per cent of those.

So should AstraZeneca have suspended use in certain age groups that could push the deadline... back to potentially the middle of August according to some of our calculations.

A Government spokesman said: More than 37 million jabs overall have already been administered, and we are on track to offer jabs to all over-50s by April 15 and all adults by the end of July.

Magnificent eight  vaccines that could give us a shot at freedom To help hit the July target, ministers have ordered 457 million doses of eight promising vaccines. Three of them  Oxford-AstraZeneca; Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna  have been rolled out after being approved by the medical regulator. The rest are awaiting approval or in clinical trials. APPROVED: Oxford-AstraZeneca 100 million doses ordered, enough for 50 million people.

20 million delivered so far. But under-30s will no longer be offered it.

Supplies to reduce in April due because of a delay in delivery of doses from India. Pfizer-BioNTech 40 million doses ordered, enough for 20 million people.

17 million doses delivered so far.

Pfizer is on track to meet its delivery schedule, thought to be around eight million doses in the next two months.

However jabs are now being prioritised for second doses. The EU has also threatened to impose export controls on jabs produced at Pfizers plant in Belgium, potentially disrupting supply. Moderna 17 million doses ordered, enough for 8.5 million people. It is the third jab to be approved in the UK, and the rollout began yesterday.

So far 5,000 doses have been delivered in Wales, and it will be rolled out in England from April 19.

About 100,000 Moderna jabs will be offered every week this month, increasing to 150,000 a week in May. AWAITING APPROVAL: Janssen 30 million doses ordered.

This is likely to be the next in line for approval in the UK. It is the only single-dose vaccine that is available, and has already been approved in Europe and by the World Health Organisation.

Clinical trials show the one-shot jab is highly effective. Doses of vaccine, developed by a Belgian subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson called Janssen, should be delivered to the UK in the second half of the year. Novovax 60 million ordered, enough for 30 million people.

Ministers are hopeful this jab will also gain approval by the summer. The US firm Novovax is manufacturing its vaccine in Stockton-on-Tees.

A clinical trial in the UK found it to be 89 per cent effective at preventing patients falling ill with Covid, which officials said was phenomenal. Valneva 100 million ordered, enough for 50 million people.

French company Valneva is manufacturing its vaccine in Livingston, Scotland. Clinical trials are ongoing and it will not be approved before the end of the year but could be used as a booster jab. GlaxoSmithKline-Sanofi 60 million doses ordered, enough for 30 million people.

This vaccine is still in development and several months off approval. The EU had pinned its hopes on the vaccine, being produced by French company Sanofi, signing a deal for 300 million doses. CureVac 50 million doses ordered.

The Government has a deal with biopharmaceutical company CureVac to develop vaccines against future variants if they are required. It has placed an initial order for 50 million doses to be delivered later this year. Advertisement

Covid itself more likely to cause a blood clot... and youve got a bigger chance of being killed in road accident

ByXantha Leatham Health And Science Reporter For The Daily Mail

The incredibly low risk of death from a blood clot after receiving the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab was highlighted by experts yesterday.

The chances of developing a clot and dying after getting the vaccine are around one in a million, the latest figures suggest.

Senior scientists have backed the jab, insisting its benefits outweigh the potential risks for the vast majority of people.

Official statistics show it is far more likely that a person will be killed in a road collision  or even in an accident at work  than die from the very rare side effect.

The incredibly low risk of death from a blood clot after receiving the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab was highlighted by experts yesterday

Experts have also noted that people are much more likely to develop a blood clot after becoming infected with Covid-19.

More than 20million in the UK have received a first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The experts all agree: Side effect risks are minimal Dr June Raine, Head of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the UK's medicines regulator: The benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risk for the vast majority. Our review has reinforced the view that the risk of this rare suspected side-effect remains extremely small. Professor Sir Kent Woods, former head of the MHRA: if there is a connection, it's a very, very rare one. Professor Wei Shen Lim, Covid-19 chairman for the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation: The vaccines have saved thousands of lives. The benefit for the majority is clear - if you are offered a vaccine, you should take it. Professor Calum Semple, a member of SAGE: it's a no brainer. Is the vaccine safe? I would say yes. Emer Cooke, Director of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the European regulator: these are very rare side-effects. The risk of mortality from Covid is much greater than the risk of mortality from these side-effects. Johnathan Van-Tam, Deputy Chief Medical Officer: If you sail a line across the Atlantic then it's not reasonable that you aren't going to have to make at least one course correction. Matt Hancock, Health Secretary: The MHRA and EMA have confirmed that the Oxford/Astrazeneca vaccine is safe. When you get the call, get the jab. Paul Scully, Small Business Minister: You're more likely to have side-effects from taking aspirin then you are with this. Advertisement

Of these 79 developed a blood clot, according to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), placing the odds at one in 250,000.

Out of the 79 cases, 19 died  giving a mortality rate of around one in a million. Only three deaths occurred in people under 30.

MHRA chief executive Dr June Raine told a briefing yesterday there was a reasonably plausible link between the AstraZeneca jab and blood clots.

But describing the clots as extremely rare, she said: Based on the current evidence, the benefits of AstraZeneca against Covid-19 and its associated risks  hospitalisation and death  continue to outweigh the risks for the vast majority of people.

Our review has reinforced that the risk of this rare suspected side effect remains extremely small.

More work is needed to establish beyond all doubt that the vaccine has caused these side effects.

Professor Wei Shen, chairman of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, said a recommendation to prefer other vaccines to AstraZeneca for the under-30s was out of the utmost caution rather than because of any serious safety concerns.

Meanwhile, Professor Sir Munir Pirmohamed, chairman of the Commission on Human Medicines, pointed out that catching Covid is more likely to lead to blood clots.

Some 23 per cent of those who end up in an intensive care unit with the virus will develop some form of blood clot, with 8 per cent suffering clots on the lungs and 11 per cent deep vein thrombosis.

He said there appeared to be a slightly higher risk of clots in younger age groups after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine, but the reason was not clear and further work was required.

Englands deputy chief medical officer Professor Jonathan Van-Tam presented graphics illustrating how the vaccines benefits compare with risks.

The first, representing a scenario where the number of Covid cases in the population is low, showed that for every age group except those in the 20 to 29-year-old category the potential benefits of the AstraZeneca jab outweigh potential harms.

In the 20 to 29 category, the potential serious harms from the vaccine outweigh the number of ICU admissions prevented.

As a result, the threat from the jab is higher than that from the virus, which explains why those under 30 will now be offered an alternative vaccine.

Other graphics showed that as the exposure risk increased  up to roughly the same level as at the peak of the second wave  the benefits of the jab outweigh the risk in all age groups.

Professor Van-Tam said it would be absurd to withhold the vaccine for those over 29 as the benefits clearly outweigh potential adverse effects.

Other scientists have pointed out the chances of a woman developing a blood clot through taking the contraceptive pill can be as high as one in 100.

With under-30s set to be given alternative to Oxford vaccine over clotting fears - despite tiny risk - the clarion call from Boris, experts and even Europe is... Keep Calm and Carry On Jabbing!

ByShaun Woollerand Xantha Leatham Health And Science Reporter For The Daily Mail

Watchdogs, scientists and politicians all urged Britain to keep faith with the AstraZeneca vaccine last night.

Despite under-30s now being offered an alternative jab, they insisted the Oxford versions benefits far outweighed any potential risks from very rare blood clots.

Boris Johnson led the concerted effort to reassure the public, saying the vaccine was safe, effective and had saved thousands of lives.

Inoculation remains the way to get our lives back, according to Jonathan Van-Tam, deputy chief medical officer.

And the head of the MHRA, the UKs drugs regulator, said any danger was extremely small. The statements came after the MHRA found a reasonably plausible link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and rare blood clots.

It said evidence of a connection was getting firmer with 79 reported cases following use of the jab, with 19 deaths.

Watchdogs, scientists and politicians including Boris Johnson all urged Britain to keep faith with the AstraZeneca vaccine last night as they insisted the Oxford versions benefits far outweighed any potential risks from very rare blood clots

Jonathan Van-Tam, England's deputy medical officer, led a press conference this afternoon, where it was announced the AZ vaccine is being restricted in under 30s

June Raine, who heads the MHRA, said however the chances of this rare suspected side-effect were extremely low and the benefits of the jab outweighed the risks for the vast majority.

The agency did not impose restrictions itself, but the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation said that out of utmost caution, it now recommended that the under-30s should be offered an alternative. The guidance applies to younger people only because their risk from Covid is very low.

The committee insisted other adults should continue to come forward as normal for first or second doses.

Professor Van-Tam called the move a course correction and said there should be zero or negligible impact on the timeline for inoculating the population.

The move raised fears of a public loss of confidence in a vaccine that has been the cornerstone of Britains highly successful rollout.

Professor Wei Shen Lim, coronavirus chairman for the vaccines committee, said: The Covid-19 vaccines have already saved thousands of lives and the benefit for the majority of the population is clear  if you are offered a vaccine, you should take it.

Leaked delivery schedules reveal the Government is expecting AstraZeneca's vaccine to make up 75 per cent of its Covid jab supplies over the next two months. The document, published on the Scottish Government's website in January and quickly taken down, showed Britain was anticipating about 29.4m doses of AstraZeneca's jab between April and the first week of June

Jeremy Hunt, a Tory former health secretary, said: You have got to look at the risk of getting Covid and dying from Covid. For the vast majority of people it will be massively safer to take the Oxford AZ vaccine than not to take it.

I am one of the people who has had my first dose of the Oxford AZ vaccine and for me and for many people its massively safer.

The Prime Minister said: As the regulators have said, this vaccine is safe, effective and has already saved thousands of lives  and the vast majority of people should continue to take it when offered. We will follow todays updated advice, which should allow people of all ages to continue to have full confidence in vaccines, helping us save lives and cautiously return towards normality.

The Oxford jab was also firmly backed yesterday by the EUs medical regulator. Emer Cooke, executive director of the European Medicines Agency, said clots were very rare and the risk of death from Covid was much greater.

The NHS is now likely to offer those under-30 the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine as an alternative to Oxford/AZ, with both already approved for use and available in the UK.

Ministers and health officials insisted that the change of course would not impact on the Governments target to vaccinate all 53million adults by July 31, with the Prime Minister insisting that the UK remained on track for ending lockdown on June 21.

Elle Taylor, 24, today became the first person to receive the Moderna jab in the UK. She said it would help her care for her grandmother 'properly and safely'

Well get on with rolling out the vaccine programme, he declared. I dont think that anything I have seen leads me to suppose that we will have to change the roadmap or deviate from the roadmap in any way.

Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi said: We will follow the advice and are confident in meeting our programme targets. We keep going on the most successful vaccination programme in history.

Professor Van-Tam told a briefing: The NHS has a message that we will get the right vaccine to you in the right time, according to the new JCVI advice. There might be a small delay sometimes, there might be a slightly greater distance that some people are asked to travel. But the NHS is all over this.

Vaccines continue to be the way out for the UK, they continue to be the way we can get our lives back to normal and our economy opened up again in the shortest time possible.

The new guidelines followed a review by the MHRA and the Commission on Human Medicines.

They examined a potential link between the Oxford/AZ jab and what is known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST), where potentially fatal clots form in the veins that drain the brain.

This has been combined with what is known as thrombocytopenia, where a patient also has abnormally low levels of platelets  cell fragments in the blood that form clots and stop or prevent bleeding.

There have been around four cases and one death for every one million vaccines given.

Dr Raine said that although a link between the jab and the clots was unproven, it was reasonably plausible. She said, however, that the clots were extremely rare.

She added: Based on the current evidence, the benefits of the Covid-19 vaccine AstraZeneca against Covid-19 and its associated risks  hospitalisation and death  continues to outweigh the risks for the vast majority of people.

Our review has reinforced that the risk of this rare suspected side effect remains extremely small.

The evidence is firming up and our review has concluded that while its a strong possibility, more work is needed to establish beyond all doubt that the vaccine has caused these side effects.

The MHRA received 79 UK reports of blood clotting alongside low levels of platelets following the use of the jab up to and including March 31. Of these, 44 were of CVST with thrombocytopenia and 35 were of thrombosis in other major veins with thrombocytopenia. All occurred after a first dose of the AZ vaccine. The cases were in 51 women and 28 men, aged from 18 to 79 years. Nineteen of the 79 died, of whom 13 were women.

However, officials note that more women have been vaccinated than men and there is no apparent difference in risk between them. Eleven of those who died were under the age of 50 and three under 30.

The MHRA concluded the risk level is very favourable for older people but more finely balanced for younger groups.

Professor Munir Pirmohamed, chairman of the Commission on Human Medicines, said any risks from the jab had to be set against the fact that around 30 per cent of people with Covid suffer low blood platelet counts, while Covid also causes clotting.

Professor Van-Tam used a nautical analogy to describe the course correction.

He said: This is a massive beast that we are driving along at enormous pace with enormous success, this vaccine programme.

If you sail a massive liner across the Atlantic then its not really reasonable that you arent going to have to make at least one course correction during that voyage.

The idea of withholding a vaccine where a potential harm, for example in the 40-49 group, is 0.5 harms per 100,000 people versus 51.5 intensive care admissions averted, and thats not taking into account hospitalisations, long Covid and spreading to others, then the notion that you would clip the vaccine at that point is pretty absurd really. So it is very much an independent decision but I think it has been taken in an extremely rational way.

The World Health Organisation said a causal link between the vaccine and blood clots is plausible but not confirmed based on current information.

Sabine Straus, safety committee chairman at the European Medicines Agency, said: This vaccine has proven to be highly effective, it prevents severe disease and hospitalisation and it is saving lives.

Vaccination is extremely important in helping us in the fight against Covid-19 and we need to use the vaccines we have to protect us from the devastating effects.

Professor Anthony Harnden, deputy chairman of the JCVI, said the risk/benefit ratio changed with age. He said: We on JCVI have decided that that risk-benefit ratio doesnt really stack up when it comes to the very well under-30s.

We felt, having weighed up all the data, that the benefits outweighed the risks in anybody over the age of 30. But under the age of 30 it was not clear the benefits did outweigh the risks and they were more similar, and therefore we decided  as a precautionary approach we would advise an alternative vaccine for that particular age group.

We just thought there was enough doubt in our minds that the benefits did not completely outweigh the risks of the vaccine in the very young, well age group.

Professor Adam Finn, from the University of Bristol and a member of the JCVI, said it was vital to keep vaccines going as society opened up.

Professor Calum Semple, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, which advises ministers, said he was not worried one little bit about the Oxford/AZ headlines.

Ill take it myself, he told LBC radio. Im 53, my risk of death from Covid is about one in 13,000  for me its a no-brainer.

More than 20million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have now been given in the UK, saving an estimated 6,000 lives.

Latest Department of Health data shows that 31.5million people in the UK have had their first jab, and 5.4million of these have now also received their second dose.
Wellwishers have raised more than 8,000 to help care for a mum-of-four left paralysed from the eyes down after Covid-19 worked its way into her brain stem.

Ayesha Hussain, 55, was 'fine and fit' before being struck down with coronavirus in December, according to her daughter, Amina Bux, 30.

But within days of contracting the virus, Ayesha, from Cambridge, was admitted to Addenbrooke's Hospital.

The mother-of-four was hooked up to a ventilator to help her breathe for 100 days.

And in February, a biopsy revealed that the virus had spread into Ayesha's brain stem, killing off many of her peripheral nerves and leaving her paralysed from the eyes down.

Doctors doubt she will ever move, talk or breathe on her own again after her battle with Covid-19.

But concerned donors have now crowdfunded more than 8,000 in a bid to support the family.

It comes as Amina said doctors have had the difficult conversation with her, asking her to consider the possibility of ending her mum's life.

Amina said: 'That was absolutely horrific to hear. It was really horrible.

Wellwishers have raised 8,000 for Ayesha Hussain, 55, who has been left paralysed after Covid-19 made its way into her brain stem

Ayesha (pictured right) was 'fine and fit' before being struck down with coronavirus in December, according to her daughter, Amina Bux, 30 (pictured left)

Doctors doubt she will ever move, talk or breathe on her own again after her battle with Covid

'I am my mum's voice now, and I know that she is not ready to go yet. If my mum was ready to go, she would let go.

'At the moment she is conscious and we know she can hear us and understand us, because if we tell her to move her eyes up or down or to the left or right, she does.

'I said to the doctors that they are absolutely not to turn off that ventilator.

'They don't know yet whether she could get stronger and make some sort of recovery.

Amina said doctors have had the difficult conversation with her, asking her to consider the possibility of ending her mum's life

'Until they give me a definitive answer on that, I will keep hoping and praying that something will fall into place.'

But Amina admitted: 'I have joined a lot of Covid support groups, but I have not come across anyone else who has suffered as badly as my mum.'

Now, Amina is hoping to bring Ayesha home to care for her mum herself - and has set up a GoFundMe page to help her raise funds for her mum's hospital bills and ongoing recovery.

She said: 'It doesn't matter to me if she's going to be disabled, or never going to walk again. I just want to give her the best life for the time she has left.

'I want her to be able to come home and spend time with her family, with her granchildren.

'My sister had a baby two days before mum went into hospital, so she has a grandchild she hasn't even met yet. We just want to do the best for our mum..'

Ayesha and Amina both fell ill with the virus on Christmas Day, and Amina said it felt like 'being hit by a truck'.

She said: 'We both had it really badly. But while I started to get better, my mum didn't.

'I called the paramedics out on December 29 to check on her, and they wanted to take her into hospital as they were concerned.

'Then, two days later, they put her on a ventilator. It was so scary. I prayed and prayed that she would come back, but she just hasn't since.'

Amina is hoping to bring Ayesha home to care for her mum herself - and has set up a GoFundMe page to help her raise funds for her mum's hospital bills and ongoing recovery

The page has now soared to more than 8,000 worth of donations to help Ayesha's medical care. Pictured: As a young woman

Amina added that at the end of January, her mum's heart stopped for two minutes.

She said: 'I can't even describe how I felt when I got that call. It felt like my own heart stopped.

'One minute everything was fine and she was breathing okay with the ventilator, and the next everything just shut down.

'After that, they did the biopsy and found that the Covid had made its way into her brain stem.'

But Amina added: 'Now, I feel like her heart has stopped once before but she's fought through it, so I know she's not ready to go yet. She's a fighter.

'We will keep fighting for her.'

It came after the family suffered a double blow after Ayesha's home was broken into and raided by four thieves.

But while she was in hospital criminals broke into her home on January 23rd and stole her car and jewellery.

To donate to Ayesha's GoFundMe page, click here.
In the age of sophisticated mass media marketing, why do brands still bother with on ground activations? Answer. To bring a smile on the consumers face. Recently, Indias no.1 Choco Pie Brand Lotte, has chosen to build brand recognition and recall by through a unique marketing initiative.

The campaign started with the Print ads in Delhi Times and HTCity .These print ads also had QR game codes which helped in building brand engagement and generating game playsUnique QR codes helped Lotte India to measure response from these print ads. With over 2000 engagements through the print campaign, the precursor ads were just the the right head start for the campaign.

Soon after the ads, campaign came alive when 250 Piemen were found roaming the streets, localities and other prime locations in Delhi. It turns out Lotte has conducted one of the largest on ground engagement drives to delight consumers. These Pie Men further interacted with consumers, getting selfies clicked and posted on social media platforms (FB, Instagram) with the hashtags - #PawriWithLotteChocoPie and #MeAndLotteChocoPieMan. Consumers also made use of the QR game codes to scan and play an exciting Lotte Choco Pie game.

Additionally, 30 lookwalkers roamed around prime market locations in these 3 days and sampled Lotte Choco Pie and distributed leaflets  which highlighted brand benefits.

The engagement via hashtags and interactive game generated 25000+ impressions in terms of direct engagement. The unique execution of the campaign engraved the LotteChocoPiemen on the hearts of consumers.

Speaking about the campaign, Venkatesh Parthasarathy(Marketing Head, Lotte India)said-

We were looking to assert our category leadership position in our No. 1 market, Delhi. We also wanted to imprint Lotte = Chocopie onto our consumers. The activity helped us do that exactly in a very meaningful and engaging way using online & offline means. We hope to scale this activity to other metros shortly

By leveraging a mascot to create brand recognition and driving the point home through a print and on ground initiative at scale, Lotte witnessed a very successful multi-media campaign that did stand out.

The campaign was executed by Brandpix Marketing Services Pvt Ltd
The Cabinet is expected to add EU countries to its Covid-19 high risk list next Tuesday, which would mean arrivals from those countries would have to undergo mandatory hotel quarantine.

While 26 additional countries were added to the list yesterday, no European states were included.

Transport Minister Eamon Ryan said he expects Cabinet to sign off on additional EU countries next week.

I would expect the decision on this would be approved by Cabinet on Tuesday and it would take a number of days after that to implement whatever measures, but thats the timeline I was expecting, he said.

Additional countries will be added and for some people, that will present a real burden but its a burden were going to have to bear because we want to err on the side of caution.

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Last week, Health Minister Stephen Donnelly proposed to add the US, France, Germany and Italy to the list. However, this move was opposed by Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney.

Mr Coveney argued that further consultation and discussion would be needed with the EU before those countries could be added.

Following controversy and a possible legal challenge, the Government will now re-examine the mandatory hotel quarantine system.

Ministers will look at shortening hotel stays for arrivals who produce several negative tests, how it should apply to those who have been vaccinated and if there is a way to beef up mandatory quarantine at home.

According to Higher Education Minister Simon Harris, it is perfectly legitimate to look at shortening hotel stays in some circumstances.

I think it is perfectly legitimate that we would ask is it possible to shorten the length of mandatory quarantine if there's several negative tests, if its possible to beef up or increase mandatory home quarantine.

Thirdly, if you're travelling to Ireland and youve been fully vaccinated from Covid and a certain period of time has elapsed, presumably you pose less of a risk, he said.

Mr Harris said that Government departments will tease through those issues and Cabinet will sign off on a decision next Tuesday.

There has been much uproar surrounding the hotel quarantine system, including its slow implementation and the State is now facing an impending legal challenge.

Mr Harris said anybody in Ireland has the right to take a legal challenge and the Government was guided closely in its legal advice by the Attorney General.

Sinn Fein TD Eoin O Broin said the Government should move at haste to add countries to the high risk list.

We cannot afford, for example, a new, more virulent strain of the virus coming into the country at such a crucial time.

What were seeing is politics being played between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael and who are the biggest losers in this? The public.

The Government cannot get its act together on legislation it drafted and passed only a matter of weeks ago, he added.

Taoiseach Micheal Martin has said he is in favour of adding more EU countries and the US to the States hotel quarantine list.

The Taoiseach finally confirmed he is absolutely open to increasing the number of countries on the quarantine list a week into a row between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael over imposing the rules on more EU countries

Mr Martin said he does not anticipate any legal difficulties with adding additional countries where are there concerns about new variants.

He said officials are currently ensuring that public health advice on adding more countries can be done within the hotel quarantine legislation enacted by the Dail.

He said the Government will review the legislation on a regular basis and will consider how the system evolves as countries in Europe and elsewhere in the world roll out their vaccination programmes.

Asked about opposition to adding EU countries from Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney, the Taoiseach said the Cabinet unanimously agreed with mandatory hotel quarantining.

Mr Martin said the Government are not at the stage where they have to consider a cap on places in quarantine hotels.
We need more allies and partners like the ISA Foundation who not only stand with us  but invest in us. The funding from the foundation will help provide the on-the-ground support and programming needed to serve Black women globally. - Vanessa Garrison, GirlTrek co-founder and COO

As part of its fifth round of funding, the ISA Foundation has awarded a $100,000 grant to GirlTrek to further the nonprofits national efforts supporting the physical and emotional wellbeing of Black women and girls. This is the foundations first six-figure grant supporting the pursuit of racial equality, one of its four focus areas.

Operated by global wellbeing company Isagenix International, the ISA Foundation also focuses on healthy nutrition and support for underserved children, wellness education for all, and aid for those affected by natural disasters. The nonprofit awarded its latest round of grants totaling $620,000 to 22 U.S.-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations.

GirlTrek Grant

Based in Washington, D.C., GirlTreks mission is to pioneer a health movement for Black women and girls grounded in civil rights history and principles through walking campaigns, community leadership, and health advocacy. The nonprofit has mobilized over 1 million women to walk.

The $100,000 ISA Foundation grant will support two GirlTrek programs:



Developing a lifesaving habit of Black women walking every day: As part of its ongoing program, GirlTrek will organize a network of Saturday morning walks across America powered by 10,000 trained neighborhood captains to help Black women jump-start and sustain a habit of walking. This effort will include visiting city, state, and national parks as well as historically Black colleges and universities so participants can connect with, educate, and inspire each other.

Expanding the GirlTrek Care Crusaders Support Lifeline: In response to the global pandemic, GirlTrek launched the GirlTrek Care Crusaders Support Lifeline, a pilot group of 100 doctors, therapists, and other health experts trained to accept calls from Black women dealing with isolation, loneliness, domestic abuse, and suicide. GirlTrek plans to scale this lifeline by creating a network of 1,000 trained Black volunteer health workers who can become a safety net for Black women around the country and beyond.

As a company that believes everyone deserves to experience a healthy, joyful, and abundant life, we love how GirlTrek is helping to improve Black women and girls physical and emotional wellbeing, said Justin Powell, Isagenix chief legal officer and ISA Foundation board member. Were thrilled to partner with such an inspiring nonprofit and help it expand its reach so it can make an even larger impact on the communities it serves.

Last year, GirlTrek hit a tremendous milestone of having 1 million Black women enlisted in the GirlTrek movement, said Vanessa Garrison, co-founder and chief operating officer of GirlTrek. We need more allies and partners like the ISA Foundation who not only stand with us  but invest in us. The funding from the foundation will help provide the on-the-ground support and programming needed to serve Black women globally.

Additional Foundation Grants and New Award

In addition to GirlTrek, the 22 grant recipients include:



SERV International: Based in Canton, Georgia, SERV uses food as a catalyst to completely transform lives. Its vision is to physically and spiritually feed people and develop stronger communities in some of the most remote regions in the world. SERV will use a $150,000 grant to continue to provide sustainably grown and highly nutritious food relief in the sub-Saharan region of Africa.

Embody: Based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Embody provides access to physical and mental wellness education for all regardless of race, gender identity, sexual orientation, creed, physical ability, or ability to pay. Using the healing tools of yoga and mindfulness, and through providing meaningful volunteer and service opportunities, it helps people regain agency over their own wellbeing. Embody will use a $50,000 grant to continue expanding its programs on a national scale.

One for Health Foundation: Based in Walpole, Massachusetts, One for Healths mission is to help children in underserved communities overcome critical nutrition insecurity and adopt a healthy lifestyle. It provides innovative nutrition distribution and wellness programs that equip children with the knowledge and skills to develop and retain healthy habits. One for Health will use a $35,000 grant to convert pilot projects into long-term free programs at select Boys & Girls Clubs across the country.

SERV has ties to the recipient of a new foundation award. At its New Year Kick Off event in January, Isagenix announced Rebecca Akira as its first ISA Foundation Ambassador of Hope Award honoree. Orphaned at a young age in Turkana County, Kenya, Akiru was eventually rescued by SERV and raised at the nonprofits House of Hope orphanage. The Ambassador of Hope Award includes a scholarship that will cover Akirus school expenses and allow her to complete a four-year college degree.

Since its inception in 2018 and after five rounds of grants, the ISA Foundation has awarded grants totaling over $4 million to 79 nonprofit partners in the United States and Canada. The grants, along with product donations from Isagenix, have provided over 11 million meals, funded over 34,000 educational events, and served over 300,000 children, adults, and families around the world. To view a list of previous grant recipients, visit the foundations impact page.

The ISA Foundation is accepting its next round of grant applications from U.S.-based nonprofits that were invited to apply from March 15 to April 15. Isagenix will announce the new recipients in July.

To learn more about the ISA Foundation, visit ISAFoundation.net, like the foundation on Facebook, and follow it on Twitter and Instagram.

To learn more about Isagenix, visit the Newsroom, like the company on Facebook, and follow it on Twitter and Instagram.

About the ISA Foundation

Established in 2018, the ISA Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is to create sustainable impact globally through volunteer efforts and charitable contributions focused on healthy nutrition and support for underserved children, wellness education for all, aid for those affected by natural disasters, and the pursuit of racial equality. Isagenix International covers all administrative costs of the foundation so 100% of donations can benefit those in need. For more information, visit ISAFoundation.net.

About Isagenix International

Established in 2002, Isagenix International believes that everyone deserves to experience a healthy, joyful, and abundant life. The global wellbeing company artfully crafts more than 175 effective products and offers a supportive community for its more than 550,000 customers worldwide. Isagenix shares its products through a network of independent distributors in 26 markets: the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, South Korea, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland. The private family-owned company has its world headquarters in Gilbert, Arizona. For more information, visit Isagenix.com.


PASCAGOULA, Miss. -- The City of Pascagoula will have not only a new mayor, but a largely new city council following Tuesday nights primaries.

Jay Willis was already set to be the new mayor after he was the only candidate to qualify to replace current Mayor Steve Demetropoulos, who opted to not seek a second term.

But with three current council members also deciding to forego reelection, and another defeated Tuesday night, Ward 2 councilman Felix Fornett and Ward 4s Matt Parker will be the only incumbents out of seven returning when the new term begins July 1.

Councilwoman at-large Jennifer Colmer was the only other incumbent to seek reelection, but was defeated handily by challenger Patrick Gatchell in the Republican primary. With no general election opponent, Gatchell will take the seat.

Gatchell garnered 1,508 votes, or 70 percent of the 2,144 votes cast in the city, representing a turnout of just under 17 percent, to Colmers 636 votes.

In Ward 1, Democrat Michael Hyde was unopposed, as was Fornett, also a Democrat, in Ward 2.

In Ward 3, Johnny Walker won the seat with a 291-158 victory over fellow Republican Ernie Denmark. In Ward 4, incumbent Parker won the Republican primary, and reelection, with a 344-255 win over Burt Hill.

In Ward 5, Chris Blythe will be the new councilman after outpacing fellow Republican Chris Langston 511-287.
A mass vaccination hub will be set up at Homebush in Sydney's inner west that can immunise up to 30,000 people a week - if NSW can secure sufficient supplies from the federal government.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced on Wednesday plans to vaccinate 60,000 people a week through 100 pre-existing sites as well as at the new hub.

Half of those 60,000 vaccines will be administered at a building to be leased in Homebush.

That number could go up if there is more demand, the premier said.

But she emphasised the plan depended on the Commonwealth supplying the vaccine.

A mass vaccination hub will be set up at Homebush in Sydney's inner west that can immunise up to 30,000 people a week - if NSW can secure sufficient supplies from the federal government

'At the end of the day they're responsible for making sure we have those doses to be able to give out,' Ms Berejiklian said.

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said the federal government had to overcome some 'big challenges' to get the rollout on track.

The NSW government will sign a lease on a commercial facility in Homebush which will open in the next few months.

NSW was originally given responsibility for vaccinating 300,000 residents with the federal government to take care of the rest, primarily through GPs.

But the state has stepped up to take over some of the federal government's work in light of the bumpy rollout.

The 60,000 vaccines a week will start once NSW meets the 300,000 target.

The state has vaccinated 134,323 people so far, and is expected to pass the 150,000 mark by week's end.

Ms Berejiklian said it would be difficult for NSW to take over aged care vaccinations in the state as the federal government had already paid out contracts for the work, but said she was relieved she had pushed to control of vaccinating quarantine workers.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian (pictured) announced on Wednesday plans to vaccinate 60,000 people a week through 100 pre-existing sites as well as at the new hub

Australia has administered about 855,000 doses despite the government promising four million jabs by the end of March.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison remains adamant supply issues from Europe are behind the shortfall.

The premier and Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant reminded NSW businesses and residents of the importance of QR check-in codes.

'We don't want to see QR codes hidden at the back of a venue,' Ms Berejiklian said.

Mr Hazzard said he did not regret cancelling the Bluesfest music festival over Easter despite the fact that transmission in northern NSW has been eliminated.

He said the festival would hopefully return later this year.

NSW recorded six new COVID-19 cases in hotel quarantine in the 24 hours to 8pm on Tuesday. There were zero community cases.
PHILIPSBURG (DCOMM):--- On Thursday, April 1st, and Saturday, April 3rd, several students from the American University of the Caribbean (AUC) volunteered their time and energy to provide information to the public about the COVID-19 vaccine and assist with the registration process.

On Thursday, the COVID-19 vaccination information and registration stands were located at Premiere Supermarket across from Colosseum Crossfit in Cay Hill, Greens Market in Cole Bay, and Carrefour Bush road. On Saturday there were two stands at Sunny Foods and again at Carrefour Bush Road.

Information about the COVID-19 vaccines was provided, along with practical information about the rollout campaign on Sint Maarten. The students also registered persons on the spot, which has led to a significant rise in vaccination registrations over the weekend.

AUC medical student Napolon Pellumbi said that: It is tremendously important to collaborate during this pandemic, and I wanted to do my part in boosting peoples confidence regarding vaccination. The friendliness expressed by the people of Sint Maarten and their willingness to participate in vaccine registration made my experience extremely enjoyable. Furthermore, I was highly impressed by the efforts of the community to follow CDC guidelines by continuously wearing masks and remaining 6 feet apart. For these reasons, I felt very comfortable at all times, and I owe it all to the appreciation shown by the people of Sint Maarten. I look forward to volunteering and continuously working with the people of Sint Maarten, to put forth better health and a better future.

Curacao and Aruba are currently experiencing a new Coronavirus crisis due to the more contagious UK variant. This variant of the COVID-19 virus has also been detected on Sint Maarten, and we can see active case numbers slowly rising. Considering the explosive transmission of the virus on Curacao from just a handful of cases to thousands within three weeks, the populace cannot be naive and must do everything to prevent a similar third wave hitting Sint Maarten.

The first thing is vaccination! The Pfizer vaccine has shown to be effective against the UK variant, but more people need to be vaccinated to really have an impact on national transmission. Vaccination is now open to all persons 18 years and older, who reside on Sint Maarten. Registration and the vaccine is free of charge and everyone is urged to register if you have not yet done so.

The second is testing. Persons who are experiencing symptoms or have been in contact with a known positive case are advised to call 914 or their general practitioner and to get tested for free at the Collective Prevention Services (CPS) testing location in Pointe Blanche, which is open from 8:30 to 10 AM on weekdays. Free testing is also available on the weekends, but persons will have to make an appointment by calling 914.

The third is wearing your mask, social distancing, and handwashing. Please continue to adhere to and comply with the rules, as they are the cornerstone of the Government public health prevention campaign.

Currently, almost 12.000 persons have registered for the vaccine, which is roughly 25% of the number that is needed to create sufficient protection and prevent the spread of the virus (herd immunity) among the people of Sint Maarten.

Therefore, members of the community are reminded to register for the COVID-19 vaccine.

Registration can be done via the online registration form which is available in English, Spanish, and Creole, and can be found via this link: https://forms.sintmaartengov.org/form.aspx?v=OGtn05kNmb

Both Cole Bay and Dutch Quarter Community Helpdesks are currently equipped to provide information and can assist with registration on the spot. They are open from 8:30 AM to 12:30 PM on Monday to Friday. You must bring a form of identification when you visit the helpdesk.

Lastly, the paper-based COVID Vaccine Registration Form can be picked up at several locations, including CPS at the Vineyard Office Park Building, the Division of Labor Affairs at the Simpson Bay Public Service Center in Simpson Bay, doctors offices, the Government Administration Building, and select pharmacies.

Organizations who wish to inform their staff about the Covid-19 vaccine and vaccination program via an information session can send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

If you have a friend, parent, neighbor, or relative that may need assistance with registration, transportation, or emotional support, please do your part. If you need help with the registration process, your appointment, or wish for more information about the vaccination campaign, you can also call CPS at 914 or email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Sint Maarten protected together.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 07:03:22|Editor: huaxia

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International Monetary Fund (IMF) Chief Economist Gita Gopinath speaks at a virtual press briefing during the World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings in Washington D.C., the United States, April 6, 2021. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

-- The IMF expected the global economy to grow by 6 percent in 2021, but warned recoveries are diverging dangerously across and within countries.

-- The United States would be the only large advanced economy projected to surpass the level of GDP it was forecast to have in 2022. It is expected to grow by 6.4 percent this year.

-- China is projected to grow by 8.4 percent in 2021, 0.3 percentage point above the January forecast.

WASHINGTON, April 6 (Xinhua) -- The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday projected that the global economy will grow by 6 percent in 2021, 0.5 percentage point above the January forecast, according to the latest World Economic Outlook (WEO).

"Thanks to the ingenuity of the scientific community, hundreds of millions of people are being vaccinated, and this is expected to power recoveries in many countries later this year," IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath told a virtual press briefing during the World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings.

She noted that economies also continue to adapt to new ways of working despite reduced mobility, and large economies, particularly the United States, have rolled out additional fiscal support, both of which have helped improve the outlook.

Nonetheless, the future presents "daunting" challenges, said the IMF chief economist. "The pandemic is yet to be defeated and virus cases are accelerating in many countries," she said.

Noting that there's uncertainty surrounding the forecast, Petya Koeva Brooks, deputy director of the IMF's Research Department, told Xinhua in a remote interview Tuesday that the chief source of that uncertainty is the path of the pandemic and the vaccination process.

In the baseline, the IMF assumes that there's wide availability of vaccines in the second half of this year in advanced economies, as well as some emerging markets, but for the rest of the world, the wide availability would occur only in 2022 or even beyond, Brooks said.

In a downside scenario, with delayed vaccination and a more difficult path of the pandemic, global economy is expected to grow by 4.5 percent, 1.5 percentage points lower than in the baseline projection, according to Brooks.

At the virtual press conference, Gopinath told reporters that recoveries are diverging dangerously across and within countries, as economies with slower vaccine rollout, more limited policy support, and more reliant on tourism do less well.

She urged policymakers to take a "tailored" approach in providing support, with policies well-calibrated to the stage of the pandemic, the strength of the economic recovery, and the structural characteristics of individual countries.

"Governments will need to build back the fiscal positions after this crisis. And the hope is that they will build forward better to have more inclusive, sustainable, green economies," said the IMF chief economist.

The WEO report also noted that uneven recoveries are occurring within countries as young and lower-skilled workers "remain more heavily affected," and women have also suffered more, especially in emerging market and developing economies.

Photo taken on March 30, 2021 shows an exterior view of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) headquarters in Washington, D.C., the United States. (Photo by Ting Shen/Xinhua)

"In the next stage, what would be most important is to kind of withdraw those (job retention) schemes gradually, and then to help people reallocate, acquire new skills, which would make them competitive in the new sector," Brooks told Xinhua.

The latest WEO showed that the United States would be the only large advanced economy projected to surpass the level of gross domestic product (GDP) it was forecast to have in 2022 in the absence of this pandemic. The U.S. economy is expected to grow by 6.4 percent this year, after a 3.5-percent contraction in 2020.

Other advanced economies, including those in the euro area, will also rebound this year but at a slower pace, the report noted.

Among emerging markets and developing economies, China is projected to grow by 8.4 percent this year, 0.3 percentage point above the January forecast, according to the report.

The upward revision, Gopinath said, reflects improved external environment, with stronger global growth and U.S. COVID-19 relief package, which have increased the demand for China's products.

Noting that China has seen a very strong recovery, the IMF chief economist said the recovery is "somewhat unbalanced," as it's still heavily reliant on public support and public investment, and private consumption has not recovered as fast as hoped.

"So, to make this a durable recovery, our hope is that fiscal measures and other support measures would work in the direction of supporting the recovery coming from the private sector, as opposed to the public sector," she said.

Noting that withdrawing policy support prematurely would expose the economy to additional risks, Brooks advised Chinese policymakers enhance the safety net, which would enable China to be on the rebalancing path, and benefit the economy in the medium to long run.

While China's economy had already returned to pre-pandemic GDP in 2020, many other emerging markets and developing economies are not expected to do so until 2023, the WEO report showed.

The newly released report projected the global economy to expand 4.4 percent in 2022, 0.2 percentage point above its January forecast. In 2020, global economy saw an estimated historic contraction of 3.3 percent, according to the IMF. 
Help India!



The rubber farmers said that they have been affected by the drastic reduction in import tariffs on rubber products and the dip in MSP post-India Free Trade Area (AIFTA). The rubber production continues to remain curtailed after a lockdown in the state.

Shalini S, TwoCircles.net

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Kerala: Scores of farmers in the Indian state of Kerala have been protesting and demanding that the Central government should withdraw from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) agreement.

The farmers TwoCircles.net talked to said that they have been affected by the drastic reduction in import tariffs on rubber products and the dip in MSP post-India Free Trade Area (AIFTA).

The rubber production continues to remain curtailed after a lockdown in the state, they said.

The ASEAN  India free trade agreement (AIFTA) that came into force on January 1, 2010, granted trade liberalization for multinational companies and left the farmers at a great disadvantage.

As cheaper rubber products started to flood the country from countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, the states rubber price took a dip. The price of rubber was over 245 INR per kg before the free trade agreement and at present, it is 131 INR per kg.

The Left Democratic Front (LDF) government in Kerala had shown its resentment against the agreement in 2009 and demonstrated its disapproval by forming a 910 km human chain from Thiruvananthapuram to Kasaragod. Several farmers organizations had staged protests against the agreement across the nation.

In late February this year, Kerala Karshaka Sangham  Kerala chapter of the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) marched in protest against the ASEAN agreement towards the regional office of Rubber Board in Thiruvananthapuram.

According to the farmers, the rubber production in the state has decreased from 7.71 lakh tons in 2010-2011 to an awful lesser production rate of 5.4 lakh tons in 2018-2019.

Furthermore, the farmers lament facing financial crunches in lockdown, as the tapping season ended in February last year, the stocks didnt move as retailers and rubber products manufacturing companies were not able to procure during the economic meltdown.

Studies also show Indias negative balance of trade in rubber and rubber products.

ASEAN-India FTA and Indias balance of trade in rubber and rubber products: A preliminary assessment (2016), a study conducted by Rubber Research Institute of Kottayam highlights Indias trade deficit as the country showed an increasing import of raw materials while alarmingly nullifying Indias historically inherited advantages in the external trade in finished products.

Again in November 2019, the PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry pointed out the trade deficit of the country in its report.

A farmer from Kollam in Kerala grieves that, Treating of rubber as industrial product affects the state subsidiaries we receive. The costs of fertilizers are also doubled post-AIFTA, rubber trees demand a high rate of supplementation. How do we afford the money? These kinds of policies only support private companies like MRF tyres.

K.N. Balagopal, the state secretary of Kerala Karshaka Sangham (KKS) told NewsClick, The rubber farmers in Kerala are struggling and recent years have seen a drastic decline in rubber prices. But, when rubber prices dropped, prices of the products from rubber including the tire did not decrease. Then where does the money go? Only farmers have to suffer.

He also alleged that three contentious laws passed by the BJP led union government in 2020 is the result of the ASEAN agreement signed by the then Congress-led government of India.

However, in the Budget 2021, the Kerala government has hiked the minimum selling price of rubber to 170 INR per kg from 150 INR per kg to incentivize the small scale, rubber growers.
Ivory Coasts President Alassane Ouattara on Wednesday declared that his predecessor Laurent Gbagbo was welcome to return home after being finally acquitted of crimes against humanity during a civil war that pitted them against each other a decade ago.

Ouattara said Gbagbo and his former right-hand man Charles Ble Goude were free to return to Ivory Coast when they want.

He made the remarks a week after the International Criminal Court (ICC) confirmed that both were in the clear over the devastating post-electoral violence that rocked the West African nation in 2010-11.

Arrangements will be made so that Laurent Gbagbo can enjoy, in accordance with the laws in place, the advantages and allowances available to former presidents, Ouattara told a cabinet ministers meeting in Abidjan.

The state will pay for Gbagbos return to Ivory Coast along with his family, Ouattara added.

More than 3,000 people were killed in months of fighting after the 2010 election, when Gbagbo disputed the results of the vote won by Ouattara and refused to stand down.

Gbagbo was eventually forced out of power and became the first head of state to stand trial at the ICC in The Hague.

But despite spending years behind bars in the Dutch city, as well as time in Brussels as he awaited the outcome of an appeal against his acquittal in 2019, the deeply divisive ex-president has retained strong support at home.

His supporters have hailed the ICCs decision to uphold his acquittal along with that of former youth militia leader Ble Goude, saying their return would heal the wounds of a conflict that split the country along north-south lines.

 Reconciliation and peace 

Ouattara made no mention Wednesday of the 20-year jail sentence that Gbagbo officially still faces in Ivory Coast, after he was convicted in absentia in 2019 for the looting of the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) during the 2010-11 conflict.

But Amadou Coulibaly, Ivory Coasts new communications minister and government spokesman, suggested that the sentence could be revoked.

Ill stick to what the president has said, which seems quite clear to me: we are not going to offer Gbagbo the chance to return, just to put him behind bars, Coulibaly told a press conference after the cabinet meeting.

Ble Goude had said last Thursday that he hoped for a gesture from the leaders in Ivory Coast  an amnesty or a pardon  so that president Laurent Gbagbo and I can return home.

Gbagbo has been positioning himself for a potential comeback since the end of last year when Ouattaras government held out an olive branch, issuing him with two passports, one ordinary and one diplomatic.

But there had been a question mark over his return as he awaited the ICC ruling, as well as the green light from authorities.

Kouadio Konan Bertin, the government minister in charge of national reconciliation, said Gbagbos return would facilitate the work of moving on from the conflict.

Ouattara is disposed to move towards reconciliation and peace, he said.

Ble Goudes lawyer Simplice Seri Zokou also welcomed the presidents announcement, saying it would give a new energy to the national reconciliation.

Gbagbo has cast himself as a conciliatory figure, having warned of the risk of catastrophe as tensions grew ahead of the October 2020 presidential election.

Scores died in unrest after Ouattara announced his bid for a third term  a plan that critics said scorned constitutional limits on presidential tenure.

But calm has since returned to Ivorian politics, with Gbagbos FPI taking part in legislative elections last month, breaking a decade-long boycott.
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Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has decorated the acting Inspector General of Police (IGP), Usman Alkali, with his new rank.

The traditional event, which held at the Vice Presidents Conference Hall has in attendance, the outgoing IGP, Mohammed Adamu; the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha; the Minister of Police Affairs, Maigari Dingyadi; Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu and his colleague in the office of the Vice President, Laolu Akande.

Osinbajo decorates Alkali as Nigerias new police chief

Also present was the Permanent Secretary, State House, Tijjani Umar; and the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Police Affairs.

President Muhammadu Buhari had on Wednesday named Mr Alkali as the new Acting Inspector General of Police.

Mr Alkali replaces Mr Adamu who is retiring from the police and as the inspector-general.

The announcement of the new police chief was made by the minister of police while briefing journalists at the State House in Abuja on Tuesday.

The appointment comes a few days after the police headquarters in Owerri, Imo State, was attacked by gunmen.

Coincidentally, the outgoing IGP visited Imo State for an on the spot assessment of the damages from Mondays incident when his sack was announced.

Details later..
Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Andriy Yermak said that the Center for Countering Disinformation is committed to cooperating not only with authorities and international partners, but also with representatives of the media and civil society for effective work in the field of protecting national security, the website of the head of state reported.

"Without support and interaction with the journalistic community, without interaction with civil society, it is very difficult to effectively combat disinformation, since they quickly find hidden information and promptly respond to information challenges," Yermak said during an online meeting with media experts and representatives civil society at the presentation of the Center for Countering Disinformation.

The Head of the President's Office said that "The Center for Countering Disinformation will unite all state institutions whose work is related to the fight against disinformation."

On Tuesday, Yermak, at a meeting with the ambassadors of the G7, Finland, Israel, as well as the heads of the EU and NATO Delegations to Ukraine, presented the work of the Center for Countering Disinformation and discussed the possibilities of cooperation in the area of information security.

During the presentation of the center for countering disinformation, Yermak introduced head of the center Polina Lysenko, who spoke about the tasks of the body under her control, its structure and demonstrated how the disinformation monitoring system would work.
[April 07, 2021] ZSuite Technologies Previews Solution at ICBA ThinkTECH Virtual Demo Day

ZSuite Technologies performed a demonstration of its digital escrow products during the 2021 Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) third annual ICBA ThinkTECH Accelerator Demo Day. ZSuite was selected from hundreds of applicants from around the globe competing for a place in the award-winning and globally recognized ICBA ThinkTECH Accelerator, powered by The Venture Center and with support from the State of Arkansas. The virtual event highlights ICBA's ongoing effort to foster fintech-community bank collaborations that produce tangible, relevant solutions to help community banks achieve their business objectives and deliver an exceptional customer experience for which they are known. "Over the past 12 weeks, we have been able to share with more than 100 bankers how they can offer the tools that top-tier commercial clients dream about," said Nathan Baumeister, CEO of ZSuite. "Aligning well with ZSuite's mission to provide innovative technology to help financial institutions grow deposits and expand business relationships, the ICBA ThinkTECH Accelerator has provided an exceptional opportunity to collaborate with industry experts and thought leaders, and we look forward to seeing how these relationships grow in the future." "We selected the most promising fintech solutions in critically important areas and paired them with the best and brightest industry stakeholders to refine timely, relevant solutions that solve for community bank pain points," ICBA Senior Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer Charles Potts said. "We're thrilled with the evolution of these offerings, which will allow our members to continue to be innovative and responsive to the shifting needs of their customers while continuing to move our industry forward." "This year's cohort companies rose to the challenge of attending an all-virtual accelerator, meeting with over 100 individual banks over the course of 12 weeks," Wayne Miller, executive director of The Venture Center said. "We are proud of the work they have done in this new format and are greatly impressed with their overall performance. With input from community bankers, and with a wealth of new connections, we are sure this cohort will continue to find success." To learn more about the ICBA ThinkTECH Accelerator program visit icba.org/thinktech/accelerator.



About ZSuite Technologies

ZSuite Technologies is a financial technology company that aims to power community financial institutions with digital escrow products for specific commercial verticals that can be offered to their clients. ZSuite's products, ZRent, ZDeposit and ZEscrow, streamline collection of recurring payments and automate the management and compliance around multi-use escrow subaccounting processes. To learn more about ZSuite Technologies and how it can help your financial institution, please visit: https://www.zsuitetech.com.

About ICBA

The Independent Community Bankers of America creates and promotes an environment where community banks flourish. ICBA is dedicated exclusively to representing the interests of the community banking industry and its membership through effective advocacy, best-in-class education, and high-quality products and services. With nearly 50,000 locations nationwide, community banks constitute 99 percent of all banks, employ more than 700,000 Americans and are the only physical banking presence in one in three U.S. counties. Holding more than $5 trillion in assets, over $4.4 trillion in deposits, and more than $3.4 trillion in loans to consumers, small businesses and the agricultural community, community banks channel local deposits into the Main Streets and neighborhoods they serve, spurring job creation, fostering innovation and fueling their customers' dreams in communities throughout America. For more information, visit ICBA's website at www.icba.org. About The Venture Center

The Venture Center's immersive accelerator programs are designed to accelerate the growth of early-to-late stage companies and help validate their solutions for real-world problems. Our methodology provides a unique opportunity to connect with community bank executives, receive seed investment, and learn from a comprehensive curriculum aiding in strategically addressing go-to-market, business, and finance challenges. Learn more at www.venturecenter.co. Follow The Venture Center on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter (@VentureCenter), and Instagram. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005634/en/

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In her final month on CNN before leaving her job (apparently her own decision), anchor Brooke Baldwin gave an hour-long interview to a Ms. Magazine podcast that criticizes the cable news network that has employed her in prominent roles since 2008. As my source who tipped me to the story commented, "it's a pretty interesting perspective from someone on the inside of the network and shows that things must be bad if she's willing to speak out while still employed there."



Ms. Magazine tweet promoting Brooke Baldwin's interview.

In fact, things are bad at CNN  and getting worse. After a bump in the ratings between last November's election and early this year, things have returned to normal with CNN way back in second or third place, far behind the traditional cable news leader Fox News. Meanwhile, as the scandals involving Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) continue to roil, his brother Chris's role as the governor's #1 cheerleader on CNN has hardly enhanced the network's flagging reputation for credibility.

Baldwin's interview with Michele Goodwin, part of her series of Ms. Magazine podcasts called On the Issues, was titled "Who's Telling Our Stories? CNN's Brooke Baldwin on Women and Media." It was posted on Monday, the day before the publication of Baldwin's first book, Huddle: How Women Unlock Their Collective Power, published by Harper Business.

The introduction to the Ms. Magazine podcast describes Baldwin's book Huddle as

... examin[ing] the phenomenon of 'huddling,' or what happens when women lean on one another  in the arts, activism, politics, Hollywood and everyday friendships  to lift up each other and to provide empowerment, support, inspiration and the creativity and courage to enact change and solve problems.

That sounds positive enough in a woke way, but Baldwin's comments about CNN strike a different tone.

Well, let me lift the curtain a little bit, and again, this is only my experience here at CNN, but you know, in my...so, I've been anchoring for 10-plus years, the majority of that time two hours in the afternoon, and in that time, you know, the most influential anchors on our network, the highest-paid, are men. My bosses, my executives are men. The person who oversees CNN Dayside is a man, and my executive producer for 10 years is a man. So, I have been surrounded by a lot of men.

The solution, of course, is more diversity.

By having women in power, I would argue behind the scenes, not just in front but behind the scenes, that is how you have stories that reflect who they are. And not only white women. We talk about being intersectional. There is no way we will have progress if a bunch of white women are winning. It's brown women, Black women, Asian women, it's across the board. We have to see them reflected in our stories. It's getting better, but we still have a bit of a ways to go, I think. ... I want more women in the room.

Interestingly, it is Fox News  a favorite target of CNN news and opinion shows  that features far more women in prominent hosting, reporting, and contributing roles than CNN ever has. Meanwhile, the CEO of Fox News is Suzanne Scott  the first woman to run a cable news channel. Prominent on-air personalities on Fox include Laura Ingraham, Shannon Bream, Harris Faulkner, and Martha MacCallum (who co-anchors the channel's special programming with Bret Baier), and contributors or frequent guests Kayleigh McEnany, Candace Owens, Mollie Hemingway, and many others.

Baldwin's interview is a classic example of Wokeness 101, as when she commented:

Gosh, why am I leaving my family [CNN] and my home? It's a great question. I actually think the biggest part of the answer is because of this book and because of these trailblazing women, who I have had the privilege of interviewing, kind of like when you finish this journey of holding space with women like Gloria Steinem, and Stacey Abrams, and Megan Rapinoe, and Indigenous women fighting, you know, for the planet, or the women cofounders of Black Lives Matter ...

In terms of what's next for Brooke Baldwin, in addition to promoting her book, she has plans to launch a streaming documentary series.

I am working with a production company to create what I will hope will be part of my next dream, which is an unscripted doc series that, you know, people can binge and be inspired by on fill in the blank, I'm not there yet, streaming network, where I can tell these stories of these huddles. You know what was so hard as a journalist, as a TV journalist specifically, was crisscrossing the country and having these amazing conversations, and it's all on the beautiful pages of my book, but I would love it to come alive on camera, and so that is my dream, essentially, to create Huddle the book into "Huddle" the docuseries.

Best of luck, Brooke. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Hat tip to a bright young media watcher who wishes to remain anonymous.

Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran journalist who writes about politics, media, popular culture, and health care for American Thinker and other publications. He also appears in the media, including recently as a contributor to OANN, BBC World News, The Glazov Gang, and Fox News. Peter's website is http://peter.media. His YouTube channel is here. For updates on his work, follow Peter on Twitter at @pchowka.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
YEREVAN, APRIL 7, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan arrived in the Russian Federation on a working visit and met with RF President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin, ARMENPRESS was informed from the Office of the Prime Minister.

The conversation between the two leaders is presented below,

Vladimmir Putin - I am grateful to you for accepting the invitation, because, of course, we have things to talk about in terms of building bilateral relations and, needless to say, we need to discuss the most pressing problem which is normalising the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh and related matters.

I am not going to list all the things that go into bilateral relations, or talk about the degree of depth of our relations, which are of a truly strategic nature. I will not list the international platforms on which we cooperate, either. Still, I believe it is important to mention that 40 percent of all capital investment in the Armenian economy comes from Russia.

Our trade turnover is quite impressive. However, for various reasons, but, primarily, of course, because of the coronavirus pandemic, we have seen a slight decline over the past year. I am confident that in the very near future we will not only rebuild our trade to its previous volume, but even expand it.

I see that the Intergovernmental Commission, which you and I have established, is working energetically on both sides. You have taken bold action to support its activities, and Deputy Prime Minister [Alexei] Overchuk regularly goes to Yerevan. Quite recently you received him, and he reported to you on how we see the dynamics of interaction in the region with the post-war situation in mind. You and I have discussed this issue many times.

Of course, the possibility of restoring trade and economic ties as well as transport routes in the region, so that Armenia can enjoy more opportunities for growth is the most important matter. I believe this is crucial.

I hope that today, during our conversation here and then at a working lunch, we will have the chance to discuss with you all these matters, as well as others stemming from the current situation and involving prospects for future development.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan: Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich! I am very glad to see you. First of all, let me thank you for the invitation to visit Moscow.

We will keep in close touch indeed, but meetings like this are important in terms of synchronizing the clocks, as they say. We are going to discuss a fairly hectic agenda, inclusive of strategic issues.

First of all, I would like to note that the presence of Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh is becoming an important factor of stability and security in the region, and in this vein, I hope to discuss with you today your views on the architecture of security systems in our region - in and around Nagorno-Karabakh, in Armenia and in the region, as a whole.

I hope today we can discuss issues related to the activities of the Russian-Armenian grouping of forces. We have a joint regional air defense system, and there are some nuances that I hope we will be able to clarify today.

I would like to reaffirm my appreciation of your personal contribution to regional stabilization, especially in the wake of the war following the signing of the joint statement with you and the President of Azerbaijan. But let me note that there is a very sensitive issue yet to be solved in this context  the issue of prisoners of war, hostages and other detainees.

As we have repeatedly discussed, according to the November 9 statement, all hostages, prisoners of war, and other detainees should be returned to their homeland, but, unfortunately, we still have detainees in Azerbaijan. I am happy that we have no discrepancies concerning this issue.

It is also crucial to discuss our vision of the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, because unfortunately the problem has not been resolved yet, and we need to talk about our vision of the future. And as you said, we should definitely discuss issues of economic cooperation.



I hope that today we will refer to some issues concerning strategic investments, and in that vein, I would like to discuss with you the possibility of building a new nuclear power plant in the Republic of Armenia.

We have been working closely to counter the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, we will get the first batch of Russian vaccine as early as tomorrow. It should be noted that the first batch is a symbolic one, but we look forward to procuring a large amount of Russian vaccine, because it has proven its effectiveness in practice.



We actually have to explore a broad range of issues. I hope and I am confident that we will have very effective talks today.

Vladimir Putin: Of course, we will talk about all of these issues in the most detailed way. We will take up all those issues that you feel are necessary to discuss, including the vaccine, of course. By the way, have you already completed the registration procedure in Armenia?

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan: Yes, the first batch will arrive in Armenia tomorrow. True, only 15,000 doses, but we need more than a million. I understand that currently there is a great demand for the vaccine in Russia, too.

Vladimir Putin: Our domestic production is on the rise. We are talking about a fairly large amount of output. Therefore, I think we will successfully tackle this problem.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan: Thank you.

Vladimir Putin: Not to the detriment of Russian citizens, Russian consumers. The volume of production is comparable to the need in our country, because not everyone wants to be vaccinated right away. As the vaccination campaign progresses, more and more people want to get this vaccine, which makes that supply meets the domestic demand in general. There is even a slight preponderance of supply. At the same time, the level of output is growing, so we can discuss this issue.
A burned body was discovered at the site of a reported brush fire in West New York early Wednesday morning, officials said.

West New York police officers reported a brush fire after 1 a.m. behind the West New York Swim Club, in the area of 60th Street, JFK Boulevard East and Anthony M Defino Way, Hudson County Prosecutor Esther Suarez said.

After members of the North Hudson Regional Fire and Rescue Department extinguished the fire, the burned remains of a person were discovered, who was pronounced dead at the scene, she said.

The persons identity and the cause of death are pending a report from the Regional Medical Examiners Office, she said.

The Hudson County Prosecutors Office Homicide Unit and Arson Task Force are investigating with assistance from the West New York Police Department. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Office of the Hudson County Prosecutor at 201-915-1345 or to leave an anonymous tip at: http://www.hudsoncountyprosecutorsofficenj.org/homicide-tip/. All information will be kept confidential.
The overnight riches of young politicians in Ghana coupled with the wealth they flaunt after gaining office, are to blame, among other factors, for the worsening moral decadence in Ghana, epitomised by the recent murder of a 10-year-old boy by his two teenage friends at Kasoa, Central Region, for alleged get-rich-quick ritual purposes, the Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), Mr Sulemana Braimah, has posited.



In his view, the failure by the media, specifically, and society, in general, to question the source of wealth of young politicians, has contributed to the menace, which, in his view, is now coming to a head.



The teenage suspects, Felix Nyarko, 15, and Nicholas Kini, 17, allegedly conspired to kill the Class Four pupil of the Maranatha School, Ishmael Mensah, at about 10 a.m. on Holy Saturday.



They hid the body in an uncompleted building and were to transport it to a Juju man under the cover of darkness, for the money ritual.



They are to appear before the Ofaakor district today, Monday, 6 April 2021.



Commenting on the medias role in all of this, Mr Braimah said told Class FM on Monday that: I think that we have to look at it as a collective national failure, explaining: A failure in our morals, as a country; a failure in our collective attitudes as a country.



He admitted: Yes, the media certainly have a role to play in terms of educating people about morals and values and so on; that we should do, regardless of whether these things are happening or not  thats the fundamental thing that the media have a responsibility to do.



Beyond that, however, Mr Braimah complained: I think the other thing that the media have to do which we havent been doing over the years, is this whole issue about unexplained wealth: people suddenly, either they claim they are pastors, they claim they are businesspeople or whatever, and within a space of one year or two, are flaunting multiple cars, multiple mansions and so on and so forth and no one cares to interrogate: How did they make this money?, How much taxes have they been paying to the state and so on and so forth?



Now, the other side is our politicians. We know the big mansions, the structures coming up at the Cantonments, East Legon, Airport residential area and so on and so forth.



A lot of these belong to politicians, some of whom are young people; if we should look at young to be, maybe, somebody under the age of 40, and again, we dont ask: How did they come by the money? he observed.



Demonstrating his concerns further, Mr Braimah said: During elections, parliamentary primaries, presidential primaries, the election itself, look at the amount of money that people pump in in order to become candidates of political parties and in order to become Members of Parliament.



Where do they get these monies from and how are they intending to recover these monies that they are spending? he wondered, adding: I think, as a country, we have had leadership failure in this area, and I think, over the years, whether it is NDC leaders [or] NPP leaders, they have all been culpable of this particular practice that has then led us into the moral decadence that is leading to these kinds of horrific incidents that we are witnessing.



In his view, it appears everyone wants to make money quick and regardless of how the money will be made: if it is about stealing, if it is about killing, if it is about corruption; people are eager just to make money and it appears that the only way you can be somebody in this country, is to have money and, so, people are eager.



To him, people go into politics these days, really, not for any values, not for the commitment to develop our country, it is about making money and having power.



And, so, I think as media, we have a major and massive responsibility to tackle this issue. And, of course people will tell you that its not as though we, those of us in the media, are also saints. We also are part of the problem.

Source: classfmonline.com









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The head of the European Commission, Ursul von der Leyen, was not given a chair during talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, The Washington Post reported.

The footage shows that the head of the EC did not get a seat in the meeting room, since there were only two chairs, one of which was taken by the President of the European Council Charles Michel.

As a result, von der Leyen had to sit on the sofa opposite Turkish FM Mevlut Cavusoglu, who is of a lower rank according to diplomatic protocol.

Besides, according to accepted norms, this place during such meetings is usually occupied by translators and other participants in the meeting.

Member of the European Parliament, MP Sophie in 't Veld believes that what happened was not an accident.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday warned the citizens that the country was going through unprecedented times exactly as what was seen over the last year as the COVID-19 cases were on the surge. Around the world, countries are facing a very serious third wave of this pandemic, and right now so is Canada, the Candian leader said. Furthermore, he added, This isnt the news any of us wanted, but hospitalizations are surging, ICU beds are filling up. Variants are spreading, and even people who had convinced themselves they didnt need to be concerned are getting sick.

Delivering press remarks, which included discussion about Canadas existing Recovery Sickness Benefit. Trudeau voiced concerns about the rising coronavirus cases in Canadas most populous Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia which are now in the dangerous third wave. In the second quarter rollout of the vaccines, Trudeau stated, vials arriving each week are certainly more but the uptick in available shots was not enough to keep the virus at bay, he said. Furthermore, he explained that this has prompted new shutdowns and measures in place, the Canadian Prime Minister said at a news conference in Ottawa. Even if the sun is shining and the weather is getting warmer, COVID-19 isnt done with us yet, he said. Trudeau also said that he planned to speak with Ontario Premier Doug Ford as health officials warned about more drastic measures to control variant-driven surges.

The Safe Restart Agreement is helping keep people safe, and supporting families and small businesses through the #Covid19 pandemic. Today, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the final instalment of funding through the Agreement: https://t.co/clIHLvZBjB pic.twitter.com/inoXRuIVS8  CanadianPM (@CanadianPM) April 7, 2021

ICU admissions 'trending upwards'

Meanwhile, Toronto's medical officer of health Dr. Eileen de Villa, told the presser that it wasnt the direction where Canada would have wanted to see its numbers go in, local news outlet CP24 reported. De Villa was referring to the 1,268 new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus registered in Ontario on Tuesday. In a tweet, Ontario Hospital Association (OHA) said that the province had plunged into the third wave as the cases were steeply rising and the patients in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) were trending upwards. Strong adherence to public health measures is urgently needed to prevent overwhelming hospitals, the association wrote. Meanwhile, in a separate warning, Premier Doug Ford asked Canadians to be very cautious and not let the guards down as the third wave was declared.

(Image Credit: AP)
S.C. legislators are rushing this week to get bills passed by either the House or the Senate before an arbitrary deadline makes it more difficult to pass any measures that havent cleared one chamber this year.

Theres quite a variety of high-profile legislation facing the April 12 deadline, including bills that would: increase penalties for people who commit so-called hate crimes; liberalize our alcohol laws; bar employers from requiring their employees to get a COVID-19 vaccination; encourage people to divert their income tax payments to unaccountable private schools; allow people to use marijuana for medicinal purposes; and carry guns openly, without any training or registration for  well, for no good reason and a lot of bad reasons.

Yet despite the wide variety of bills that could potentially clear the deadline, and despite promises from House and Senate leaders that they would focus on fixing long-simmering problems with policing that were brought to the forefront through the nations revulsion at the brutal death of George Floyd last Memorial Day weekend, neither body has passed any significant criminal-justice reform legislation.

(The hate-crimes bill that the House passed Wednesday is a product of House Speaker Jay Lucas much-touted Equitable Justice System and Law Enforcement Reform Committee, but its the only product of that promising review that has gotten any traction. The bill addresses ordinary criminals who target others based on race and other immutable characteristics, not inappropriate police behavior.)

We respect the difficult job our police officers have to do, and we remain convinced that the overwhelming majority of them do heroic work. But were equally convinced that a minority of police officers are not fit to wear a badge, and their actions endanger the public and their colleagues.

At least as troubling, a culture of tolerance for bad cops still exists in many police departments, which allows police to avoid not only criminal charges but even any discipline when they recklessly endanger human life. This is in some ways even more dangerous, because it allows those bad cops to keep victimizing innocent people, and the presence of these bullies in uniform who cant handle the adrenaline rush and consider disrespect a capital offense undermines public support for all the dedicated officers who have never overreacted to a situation or needlessly endangered anyone.

Although black people are disproportionately victimized, and the debate tends to focus on black victims, police abuse occurs across all races, and police who cross the line tend to get away with it regardless of the race of the victim or perpetrator. Its something we all should agree needs to be addressed.

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Broadly, lawmakers need to pass laws that make it clear that just as we wont tolerate lawlessness by ordinary citizens, we wont tolerate it by police either.

Specifically, lawmakers need to refocus police training to teach officers how to deescalate potentially violent encounters and to recognize mental-health crises; outlaw shooting a fleeing suspect in most all cases; require officers to intervene when their colleagues act inappropriately; require outside investigations of police-involved shootings; stop letting officers get their stories straight before being questioned; fund the 2015 body camera mandate; and update the meager law concerning those cameras  for instance, imposing penalties on officers who turn them off except under limited circumstances, and requiring that the video be made public except in extraordinary cases. Lawmakers also need to abolish our constitutionally suspect civil-asset forfeiture law, or at least change it to remove the profit motive from policing.

Its disappointing that no bills addressing those changes have made it out of committee in the House or the Senate to date. But that doesnt have to mean we cant see any progress this year. The April 12 deadline doesnt automatically mean death for bills still languishing in committee: It simply means that the receiving body has to vote by two-thirds to consider a bill that arrives later  which is well within reach of most bills that become law.

Mr. Lucas was right last year when he identified reforms to police procedures and practices as one of the most important issues the Legislature faces this year. Senate Republican Leader Shane Massey and other GOP senators were right last year when they unveiled a package of reforms to police training and tactics and called on their colleagues to help save lives and restore trust between law enforcement and the public in the wake of Mr. Floyd's death.

But simply creating committees and introducing bills won't save a single life; those steps also won't do anything to restore public confidence in our police. Were still waiting for action.
Toronto, April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- This week, Restaurants Canada and Uber Eats distributed $1 Million in grants to 400 independently-owned restaurants across Canada. This program is part of a partnership announced in February to support restaurants that have had to keep their dine-in service closed or restricted with capacity limits. It is part of the Eat Local Relief Effort, a Canadian Uber Eats initiative to provide support to restaurants when they need it most.

As we continue past the one-year mark of the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, its never been more important to support the restaurant industry and help keep kitchens open, said Lola Kassim, General Manager of Uber Eats Canada. Were proud to partner with Restaurants Canada on this program and offer support to 400 restaurants across the country. This is one piece of our ongoing efforts to do our part and support the thousands of restaurants in Canada that make up the heart and soul of local neighbourhoods.

After receiving over 1500 applications from coast to coast in the first week alone, 400 restaurants were selected based on financial need, having fewer than 5 locations, a maximum of 50 employees per location and annual gross revenues in 2020 of less than $3 million per location. Preference was given to the restaurants who demonstrated a commitment to their local community.

The response to the grant has been staggering, but it just goes to show the need for continued support for restaurants across the country, said Todd Barclay, President and CEO, Restaurants Canada. The transition to dine-in continues to be longer than anyone expected, and thanks to industry allies like Uber Eats, this grant will go a long way to allow these restaurants to continue safely serving their local communities.

Feedback from restaurants has been overwhelming, with many expressing that delivery options have been a lifeline during the pandemic. Others noted that this support not only helped operations, but morale as well.

We were thrilled to have been awarded the grant which was great financially, but the real benefit was how it lifted the spirits of all the staff and gave them the sense that we are all in this together and truly not alone. - Lorenzo Lepore, GM, Vancouver Alpen Club, Vancouver, BC

Were glad to be selected as one of the recipients of the Eat Local Relief Grants. As one of the Top Eats in Uber Eats in the last few months, UberEats has been a role model to showcase its support and commitment to the local community, especially for the restaurants impacted by the pandemic. - Chef Jimmy, Aroma Bistro 741, Winnipeg, MB

Thank you Restaurants Canada and Uber Eats for their generous support and commitment to local restaurants. UberEats has been our preferred delivery partner ever since coming to Ottawa in 2016. They provided us with an immediate and consistent sales outlet during those first few weeks of lockdown. We are very thankful for our loyal UberEats customers and the opportunity to serve them as we navigate this difficult time together." Johny Bonney, GM, The King Eddy, Ottawa, ON

Our experience with the Restaurants Canada and Uber Eats program to give back to their partners was very appreciated. In this time of need, this was something unexpected and generous on the part of Uber Eats." - George Michakis, Owner, La Belle Province (Bellepros), Montreal, QC

Programs offering extra support to businesses such as mine during this very uncertain time have been the boost that has given me the stability to carry through. In addition to the financial cushion that a grant offers, having this type of outreach also lifts spirits in a way that lasts well after the money is spent." - Erin Schwanz, Owner, Fortune Doughnut, Halifax, NS

Uber Eats announced the grant program as part of their five-month, $7-million restaurant support package to help independently owned restaurants. The package is driving renewed demand to local restaurants, helping those who are struggling through the second and now third wave of COVID-19 by continuing to waive and discount a number of fees, including: extending 0% pickup and 7.5% online ordering until June 30, 2021, and helping restaurants with cash flow by waiving daily payout fees until June 30, 2021.

About Restaurants Canada

Restaurants Canada is a national, not-for-profit association advancing the potential of Canadas diverse and dynamic foodservice industry through member programs, research, advocacy, resources and events. Before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Canadas foodservice sector was a $95 billion industry, directly employing 1.2 million people, providing Canadas number one source of first jobs and serving 22 million customers across the country every day. The industry has since lost hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions in sales due to the impacts of COVID-19.

About Uber Eats

Uber Eats is an on-demand food delivery app and website that helps bring millions of people around the world the food they want, at the tap of a button. We partner with over 400,000 restaurants in more than 6,000 cities across 45 countries and six continents who make meals for every taste and occasion. From specialty local favorites to everyday national brand names, Uber Eats offers millions of dishes while maintaining an average delivery time under 30 minutes.
Caroline is someone who is trying to figure out her place, especially in New York City, Feely said. She just moved there. She doesnt really know what she wants to do with her life. Shes in the process of exploring. She moved here in a relationship and she puts that relationship first. Shes someone who puts other people before herself. This show is her journey of learning what it means to love yourself.
Four Seasons has long been a leader in creating unforgettable meetings and events, helping planners create customised, one-of-a-kind experiences that make lasting impressions on attendees. While the meetings and events landscape has changed as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic, Four Seasons remains more committed than ever to creating innovative and engaging meetings and events.

"We have adapted to a world where we are connecting virtually more than ever before. Until we can gather safely again, we are creating ways to combine advanced technologies with a human approach that is distinctly Four Seasons," says Ben Trodd, Senior Vice President, Sales and Hotel Marketing. "Time apart from colleagues, clients, friends and family has only reinforced the importance of meetings and events and the need to connect in meaningful ways. Hybrid Meetings offers the service excellence, innovation and creativity that Four Seasons is known for, while elevating the safety and care required to bring people together in the current environment."

Trodd continues, "While the format of these meetings and events may look slightly different, our ability to foster deep connections and create exceptional experiences for our clients and guests remains. Each event is brought to life through industry-leading technology, a focus on health and safety through Lead With Care, and by our incredible people who are dedicated to making each meeting and event spectacular."

A Trusted Partner, Every Step of the Way

Whether hosting an annual conference, delivering a keynote address to a large audience of clients and customers, celebrating a landmark anniversary, or simply working from a new setting, Four Seasons teams are ready to support throughout the planning journey, providing expertise on hosting a Hybrid Meeting and customising programming to address and overcome the needs and challenges of connecting in the age of COVID-19.

Four Seasons industry-leading technology solution partners form an integral part of the Hybrid Meetings planning process, providing personalised consultations and expert guidance, ensuring seamless meetings and events, no matter the format.

To immerse and engage attendees in the meeting or event, Four Seasons talented conference services and catering teams can craft unique experiences that will delight attendees, whether in-person or remote, from bespoke local activities to curated culinary surprises that are served on-cue across multiple global venues. Four Seasons offers elevated dining options created by award-winning chefs and mixologists, while maintaining the highest safety standards throughout preparation, presentation and packaging.

Planners and attendees can also take comfort that their wellbeing is the highest priority through Four Seasons enhanced global health and safety program, Lead With Care, which is implemented at every Four Seasons hotel, resort and residence worldwide, and is adhered to by all third-party vendors. Commonplace measures such as screening, increased sanitation, physical distancing, and mandatory use of masks or face-coverings are in effect, while Four Seasons will also manage attendee flow, room set-ups and food and beverage experiences, suggesting outdoor venues wherever possible, to ensure heightened health and safety at every stage of the event.

Whether as a departure requirement, for added safety at in-person gatherings, or simply for peace of mind, all Four Seasons properties globally can facilitate access to COVID-19 testing for guests through a third-party provider. Property teams will work with planners to understand their specific needs and provide guidance and recommendations on end-to-end testing options and costs.

Trodd continues, "Guided by leading healthcare experts, we ground all planning and decision-making in expertise and the latest knowledge and best-practices, while training our on-property teams not only about how to adhere to the strictest of protocols, but also why they matter."

Coming Together from Near and Far: About Hybrid Meetings

No matter the purpose or destination, Four Seasons can customise an array of Hybrid Meeting solutions to suit every unique need.

Organisations looking to deliver an important message can benefit from the multi-broadcast meeting solution, which provides a compelling and professional backdrop, stage and technology to engage audiences and bring the message to life. Perfect for keynotes and leadership addresses, this unique format takes speakers out from behind a desk to present in front of their global online audience. For example, Four Seasons Hotel Silicon Valley at East Palo Alto offers the first and only hotel-based Virtual Events Studio in the San Francisco Bay Area, equipped with an LED stage, allowing for studio-quality lighting, broadcast-quality cameras and audio, bespoke backdrops, a green room for presenters, and more.

For those able to meet in smaller gatherings, the innovative Hub & Spoke solution is thoughtfully designed to promote new ideas and spark global discussion, connecting several regional groups across multiple Four Seasons properties to create a single hybrid event, enabled by cutting-edge technology. One central Four Seasons contact will coordinate across multiple properties, providing a cohesive and consistent experience for attendees from anywhere in the world. With more than 100 Four Seasons hotels and resorts around the globe, each and every guest will enjoy Four Seasons signature service and quality excellence.

Guests can turn a luxury Four Seasons room or suite into a personal office, or enjoy spacious meeting rooms with small groups, creating a quiet space for video conferencing with Wi-Fi, AV support, and room service available at the touch of a button through the Four Seasons App and Chat.

Celebrations no longer need to be put on hold through the Gala to Go offering, helping to create a fundraiser, gala, or other celebratory event, bringing together a small group of in-person attendees with a wider audience of friends, family, colleagues and loved ones joining remotely. Custom packages and onsite programming help create special moments of surprise and delight. For example, Four Seasons properties from Las Vegas to Langkawi are offering micro-wedding packages, providing options for intimate onsite celebrations, with added details such as custom cocktail kits, mini cupcakes, a wedding day agenda, spa products, and more delivered to those tuning in from afar.

Whether virtually or in-person, Four Seasons teams are ready to welcome back guests through Hybrid Meetings, bringing people together to strengthen connections and create memorable meeting and event experiences. With Global Meetings Industry Day (#GMID21) on April 8, 2021, Four Seasons celebrates the continued importance and resilience of the meetings and events industry.

For additional images, please see here.

About Lead With Care

Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts continues to welcome guests with Lead With Care, the company's enhanced global health and safety program. Grounded in health care expertise and enabled by access to leading technologies and tools, Lead With Care establishes procedures that educate and empower employees to take care of guests and each other. For more information about Four Seasons Lead With Care program as well as specific details of property protocols and facility updates, click here. Four Seasons adheres to the local regulations and guidelines in each market in which it operates.

Four Seasons Mobile App and Chat also provides a convenient and contactless way for individuals, planners and groups to customise their time with Four Seasons, whether staying for leisure, or planning or attending a meeting or event. With service available in 100+ languages, guests have the ability to make and manage reservations, request luggage pickup, airport transfers, room service, housekeeping requests, and more.

About Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts

Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts opened its first hotel in 1961, and since that time has been dedicated to perfecting the travel experience through continual innovation and the highest standards of hospitality. Currently operating 119 hotels and resorts, and 44 residential properties in major city centres and resort destinations in 47 countries, and with more than 50 projects under planning or development, Four Seasons consistently ranks among the world's best hotels and most prestigious brands in reader polls, traveller reviews and industry awards. For more information and reservations, visit fourseasons.com. For the latest news, visit press.fourseasons.com and follow @FourSeasonsPR on Twitter.

Media Contact

Matthew Levison

[email protected]

646-274-3631

SOURCE Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts

Related Links

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OToole Promises Pandemic Inquiry if Elected, Criticizes Feds Vaccine Procurement Plan With China

Conservative Leader Erin OToole criticized Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus decision to partner with China on making COVID-19 vaccines while promising a public inquiry into the Liberal governments pandemic response if the Tories were to win power.

During a press conference on April 6, OToole said Trudeau had dropped the ball completely when he turned to China to manufacture COVID-19 vaccines.

A January report by iPolitics showed that days after the federal government announced a deal with a Chinese vaccine company in 2020, Beijing had deliberately blocked the candidate vaccine shipments to Canada, which led to months of delay in clinical trials.

It was the worst in a series of poor decisions, OToole said. We are still scrambling to catch up.

As of April 6, Canada has administered 6.9 million vaccine doses, with roughly 1.8 percent of the population fully vaccinated. OToole said this has placed Canada at number 44 in a global ranking of vaccinations per capita, behind Azerbaijan, Costa Rica, and Serbia.

The opposition leader called for a public inquiry to examine all aspects of the Liberal governments response to the COVID-19 crisis.

When the pandemic is over, we need answers, we need to know what worked and what didnt. We need complete transparency and accountability, OToole said.

Canada Health Minister Patty Hajdu responded to the Conservative leaders remarks during a Parliament Hill press conference on Tuesday, saying that the Liberal government is very open to a thorough examination of its responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

I cant predict the nature of the inquiry, but I can tell you that we would want all Canadians to participate, Hajdu said. I will say that were open to an inquiry that is as deep as necessary, including a public inquiry thats focused on how our country can be better prepared for global health threats in the future.

OToole also called on the government to appoint a special monitor from the Office of the Auditor-General to track the pandemic response in real-time to ensure lessons are learned for handling future emergencies.

Last month, Canada marked a national day of observance for those lost to the pandemic. But to truly honour their memory, we must pledge to learn from the mistakes made, and improve our resilience and readiness as a country, he said.
WASHINGTON, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars (TWC) and Elon University announce a five-year School of Record partnership that will go into effect with the fall 2021 semester.

The School of Record partnership enables students from colleges and universities that are not affiliated with TWC to receive an Elon University transcript for up to 15 academic credit hours when they complete TWC's Academic Internship Program (AIP). Currently, only students enrolled in one of the 400 institutions affiliated with TWC could receive academic credit. This agreement means that more students will have the opportunity to access a high-impact living, learning and working experience through the AIP, and receive Elon academic credit hours, which they can transfer to their home institution.

"Elon has thoroughly vetted and approved our curriculum. We are thrilled to offer a greater population of college students access to AIP through this agreement, and to have those students' achievements recognized by Elon University with an academic transcript," said TWC Chief Academic Officer Dr. Kelly Eaton.

TWC and Elon University have been partners since 1988, with 539 TWC alumni from Elon University to date. Elon President Emeritus Leo M. Lambert, serves on the TWC board of trustees.

"We are grateful for the opportunity to expand Elon's long and mutually beneficial partnership with The Washington Center," said Elon University President Connie Ledoux Book. "As the School of Record, we want to encourage students from all colleges and universities to take advantage of TWC's unique learning experiences in our nation's capital."

Students will be eligible to gain academic credit through this agreement starting in the Fall 2021 semester. To learn how institutions can partner with TWC, visit explore.twc.edu/sor-Elon or email [email protected] .



About Elon University

Elon University is a top-100 national university with a reputation as the premier student-centered environment for experiential learning. With an emphasis on strong personal relationships between students and their faculty and staff mentors, Elon is the leader in the annual U.S. News & World Report feature on academic programs that are "focused on student success."

About TWC

The Washington Center is the largest and most established student internship program in Washington, D.C. Since our founding, we've helped more than 60,000 young people translate their college majors into career paths.

Media Contact:

Carmenchu Mendiola

[email protected]

SOURCE The Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars

Related Links

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Michigan students are required to take standardized tests this spring, the federal government has ruled.

The U.S. Department of Education has denied the states request to waive the requirement for the annual tests amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Michigan Department of Education officials said.

With its decision to deny Michigans request to waive M-STEP testing in the midst of the pandemic, USED (U.S. Department of Education) continues to demonstrate its disconnect from conditions in public schools in Michigan and across the country, State Superintendent Michael Rice said.

The standardized tests include include M-STEP for students in third through eighth grades; PSAT 8/9 for students in eighth grade; MME, including SAT, for students in 11th grade; MI-ACCESS for students receiving special education services in third thorough eighth grades 11th grade, and WIDA for students in English learner programs in grades K-12.

The state superintendent requested the waiver in a letter to acting U.S. Education Secretary Phil Rosenfelt Monday, Jan. 25, citing inconsistent instructional methods between Michigan schools as one of several reasons to grant waivers from assessment and accountability requirements.

In his waiver request, Rice said the tests cannot be administered fairly and safely while thousands of students are still at home learning remotely  many lacking consistent Internet access.

Last March, former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos allowed Michigan to waive standardized testing for 2019-20.

The issue of state testing has been debated by state education leaders, school administrators and the Michigan Education Association. While the state teachers union and state superintendent argue the tests are not a good option for gauging student performance this year, others, like the Detroit Public Schools superintendent, argue that collecting data will help officials know how the pandemic has affected student learning.

The tests should not be used to hold teachers and students accountable for their performance this year, but rather to collect data on how much learning loss students have suffered during the pandemic, DPS Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said.

Acting U.S. Assistant Education Secretary Ian Rosenblum agrees, saying in a letter to education leaders that standardized tests are crucial for collecting data on learning loss during the pandemic.

We must be prepared to address the educational inequities that have been exacerbated by the pandemic, including using student learning data to enable states, school districts, and schools to target resources and supports to the students with the greatest needs, Rosenblum said.

While many Michigan districts have been open to in-person learning, some students are still learning remotely. Schools that have opened also face frequent closures and quarantines due to exposure to COVID-19.

A recent surge in COVID-19 cases this spring already has sent schools that were offering in-person classes back to remote learning.

Last summer, Michigan leaders enacted locally-chosen benchmark assessments to provide parents and teachers the knowledge of where students are and to offer support as a result. Rice argues these benchmark assessments offer a far better look into where students are performing and can be used to target resources and extra support as needed.

Is it any wonder that educators are leaving the profession when, in a pandemic, USED insists that Michigan use time, which should be dedicated to childrens social emotional and academic growth, to test a portion of its students to generate data that will inform precisely nothing about our childrens needs that we wont already know more substantially and quickly with benchmark assessments this year? Rice asked.

State Board of Education President Casandra Ulbrich also offered sharp criticism of the federal governments decision.

This is beyond disappointing. Its shameful, Ulbrich said. USED had an opportunity to do the right thing for the right reasons, and instead chose to appease special interests rather than support students. Michigan citizens, educators and parents will get virtually no useful and actionable information from this years state tests. It would be shameful now if the state legislature used these results to impose negative consequences on children or schools.

The federal government did grant a waiver request from the state for federal accountability requirements. In a letter to Rice, the federal government waived the requirement the state measure progress toward long-term goals and interim progress, rate schools based on performance and identify low-performing schools for targeted support and improvement based on data from the current school year.

The federal government also waived the requirement that at least 95% of students participate in state assessments.

MDE will not require students learning in a remote or virtual setting to come into a school building solely for the purpose of being tested, Rice said.

Also on MLive:

Sports, spring break & sleepovers: COVID chaos as outbreaks increase in Michigan schools

Billions in stimulus money headed to Michigan schools, but slowly. Heres why

Ann Arbor Public Schools moves back return to classroom for some grades
A system upgrade by the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) that has transferred business registration entirely online, has left businesses in the country stranded for months, unable to register and function properly.

The impact is huge for the countrys struggling small businesses, and Nigerias ease of doing business record.

The commission announced last December the upgrade of its online registration portal for businesses.

It said the upgrade would include features that allow the automation of key services and processes in line with the federal governments effort to improve Nigerias ease of doing business.

But the exercise has instead slowed down registration for several months, leaving prospective registrants frustrated and causing a huge backlog of unattended cases.

Many business owners and lawyers who act as registration agents told PREMIUM TIMES applications they filed since 2020 were still pending at the commission.

Usually, the process of registering a business name may take one to two weeks, depending on the CAC workload and other factors, according to the commission. A registrant can do it themselves or engage an agent, usually a lawyer.

But since 2020, that process has lasted as long as six months in some cases.

A footwear entrepreneur, Johnpaul Okonkwo, based in Ekiti State, said his application for business name registration sent to the commission more than four months ago were still pending approval.

I have been trying to log into the website to check if my registration has been done but the response I am getting from them is that the registration is under process, he said.

This has affected me in getting a name for my business. My initial plan was to get my registration done and also get a business account with it.

Up till now, I cant process the account without a business name.

Its a delay because I cant do much with my business.

An Aba-based fashion entrepreneur, Okezie Peters, shared a similar experience.

Registering a business is very important when you want to do a serious business.

But the way in which business registration in this country is done is unbearable and frustrating.

It has been almost three months that I have been trying to register my business but everything proves abortive.

I think the commission doesnt want us to do business again in this country, he said.

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Ease of Doing Business

Nigeria ranked 169th out of 190 countries in the World Banks Ease of doing business in 2016, compared to 170th in 2015 and 147th in 2014.

In 2020, Nigeria moved 15 places up the ladder according to the World Banks EDB report to 131st from 146th position in 2019.

The Buhari administration has made efforts to improve the ease of doing business ranking in the country, and one area of attention has been the registration of businesses.

In 2016, President Muhammadu Buhari established the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC), in line with the federal governments economic recovery and growth plan (ERGP 2017-2020).

The plan targeted improving Nigerias ranking and pushing the country to be amongst the top 70 countries in the World Bank doing business index by 2023.

The PEBEC set an objective to make it possible to set up a business in 24 to 48 hours.

To achieve this, the following measures were enlisted: allowing online registration of businesses, online name searches, improving the reliability and user interface experience of the online portal, reducing the forms from seven to one and integrating the payment for stamp duties with the registration process.

Lawyers who spoke to PREMIUM TIMES said the system upgrade by the CAC has become so frustrating, and it discourages business owners from applying for registration.

Arome Okwori, a Jos-based lawyer, said, Its been quite frustrating to be candid as it is now, most incorporation processes have stopped.

You know because you dont do anything physical they said it should be online.

How do you do a post-incorporation process online?

If you want to register a process and you go to the website, the website does not recognise you want to do post-incorporation, Mr Okwori told PREMIUM TIMES.

Mr Okwori said not too long ago, he was to register a company and in the end, the company certificate came out without a registration number, which was strange and it was so embarrassing.

The client wanted the document so urgently he couldnt get the document, he said. We have to start the process all over again.

Mr Okwori noted that the delay in the business registration process has a huge implication for both entrepreneurs and lawyers.

The implication is huge: loss of confidence by clients, loss of business for entrepreneurs and even the lawyers who are mainly into corporate companies. We sympathise with them because when theres no work, no pay. This is the reality of the situation.

Unlike before, if you have an issue theres somebody you can call and approach but now you cant access them. Who do you call?

If you have a process online you have to just keep waiting until you get the response and it is very frustrating, he said.

He urged the commission to do the right thing.

I dont know what is happening. Things are just not working the way they are supposed to work, he said.

Another lawyer, Joseph Felix, said the ease of doing business was a mere political statement.

Nothing like the ease of doing business; its just a political statement. How can you do an incorporation? They tell you the ease of doing business is one-stop but it takes like six months to get registration.

And the client wont understand that it will take you that long. Theres nothing like that, he said.

The experience has been very difficult. The waiting time is very outrageous because you dont even get answers to your requests.

Like in Jos here when you go to their zonal office they will just tell you to wait for a text message or email which may never come, he added.

He noted that the consent for incorporation of trustees has become very frustrating.

I had an experience in which I applied for consent to file corporate trustees but it took almost six months before I got a response that they have upgraded their systems and I needed to go back again and make another application.

He said the delay made it difficult for clients to trust lawyers. More importantly, the process has badly affected small businesses in the country.

This is affecting the small scale businesses in the country because you can not access any facility without being registered and most of these SMEs funds need registration.

And by the time the client wants to access these facilities and they tell them to bring their certificates may be within one or two months and they come to us to register them and its taken six months definitely, they will not get those facilities.

So it is affecting the small scale businesses, he said.

More lawyers speak

An Abuja-based lawyer, Damilola Olafusi, said Doing business with CAC has been terrible, they are making business so difficult for me, they are making my clients even lose confidence in me, my ability to deliver.

It has been terrible since last year. There are works that I started since last year and Im yet to get approval for them. And then when those work dont get approved, a client that will ordinarily refer you cant bring a referral because youve not even delivered their job to them.

Also, certainty in delivery time is difficult to give when a client brings a job.

You cant tell them the actual time that you will deliver because, a job that takes a week, two weeks now takes months to get delivered. Its been terrible and then the fact that we dont even have access to the commission any more, makes it even more difficult because you send complaints via emails and they dont still respond, she said.

She said previously when an application is queried, the CAC sends the reason for the query for the applicant to know how to resolve it. That hardly happens now.

The portal upgrade they do or whatever they said they did has caused a lot of problems and issues for them because things were going on fine before now, the lawyer said.

You will go into CAC and get your job done. Within five to 10 minutes you are out of there.

At most an hour you will resolve whatever you want and you are out and lawyers didnt have issues with that.

But now, there is a particular work I have been doing, they queried the work almost 15 times and I keep resolving it but they dont even attach the reason for the query.

So how would the person identify what exactly they are trying to talk about? she queried.

According to her, prompt and timely registration is essential if the government wants entrepreneurship to have a surge effect on the economy because every business ought to be legally registered for that to happen.

Money inflow that is supposed to come is not coming in, she said.

With the system they are running now the economy will be affected because now, lets not look at it from the registration aspect, companies are existing that are doing businesses with either foreign companies or bigger companies that pick contracts. There are requirements for picking contracts: filing annual returns, doing a lot of post-incorporation work.

If those things are not complied with, you cant get the contract, you cant proceed with some filings, she said.

She added that the inability of CAC to offer timely business registration has many implications for the country economy and wont attract foreign investors if things continue the way it is now.

The foreign investors that want to come and incorporate companies in Nigeria when they see all of this, it discourages them because they look at it like if to register or incorporate business takes a lot of such time, what will it now be like when running the business?

Ordinarily, security is a major issue for foreign bodies, delegates or investors to come into the country and invest.

Timeline for service delivery is another problem and then other agencies, all of the tax issues, the money you have to pay for a foreigner to just come and invest then, now CAC is bringing a lot of issues also.

So all of that is discouraging enough.

People that also partner with foreign bodies when they have to do some filings and then those filings are not done, it also makes the foreign companies look at it that these people are not competent enough, she said.

She advised the CAC to bring back the old way of registration if the new way is not working.

Johnson Omede, an Abuja-based lawyer, said his experience with the commission was not different from what others narrated. He said while CACs aim was lofty, the system upgrade had achieved the opposite.

The only challenge that we are having is that the changes are having a slow pace and the sooner they can address that the better for everybody, he said.

Truly for the time we have had these issues, it has affected the ease of doing business, he said.

He urged the commission to fast-track the process of developing the website and releasing it for business.

Its highly welcome by every one of us. We will only encourage the registrar-general to fast-track the process so that all these delays we have will not be there, he said.

CAC speaks

Reached by PREMIUM TIMES, Duke Ukaga, the Director, Public Affairs, Corporate Affairs Commission, CAC, said, Well, you know, we have a new system on the ground and with every new system there will be challenges and those challenges have been worked upon every single blessed day.

And very soon it shall all be over and everything will be smooth sailing, he said.

And then also, dont forget that this is COVID pandemic period. The workforce of the federal government has been reduced by up to 50 per cent.

Even though CAC has tried to meet up that gap by some online services, thats also a factor.

In other words, as I said earlier at cservice@cac.gov.ng, just send in any complaint you have. You will get a response, he added.
That Nemam Ghafouri was born in a cave might be one of the least remarkable things about her. It was the 1960s, and her mother went into labor in the mountains of what is now the Kurdistan region of Iraq as she was fleeing with her other children from Iraqi government forces.

Like tens of thousands of other victims of Saddam Husseins campaign against the Kurds, the family sought refuge in Iran before moving to Sweden as refugees. Dr. Ghafouri went on to study medicine in Sweden and in Hungary and become a cardiothoracic surgeon. She participated in aid missions in India and Ethiopia. Then she returned to Iraq, to help Syrian refugees flooding across the border to the Kurdistan region.

She died on April 1 in a hospital in Stockholm. She was 52. Her sister Nazdar Ghafouri said the cause was complications of Covid-19.
The 110m sale of Irish payment technology firm Sentenial means a payday for shareholders including former Finance Minister and European Commissioner Charlie McCreevy, who is a director of the company, the late Feargal Quinns family, and veteran executive Gary McGann.

The Kildare-based company is being bought by Australias EML Payments for up to 110m, including cash upfront and up to 40m under an earn out agreement. The same buyer took over Navan-based Prepaid Financial Services last year, making multi-millionaires of its founders Noel and Valerie Moran.

Sentenials majority shareholders are the family of Sean Fitzgerald, 56, who founded the company in 2003 after spotting the potential opportunity in the EUs then-nascent single European payments area more than a decade before was created as he attempted to navigate an unwieldy system of cross border payments in his chemical engineering job.
ONEONTA, N.Y.  New York State Police have identified the 23-year-old shot and killed by an Oneonta police officer as Tyler R. Green.

Police say Green was involved in a domestic dispute Tuesday afternoon, and was wielding a knife on River Street before he was shot by Sgt. Ralph Pajerski.

James Corrigan // WKTV James Corrigan // WKTV

Kevin Marcewiz, who witnessed the incident, told NEWSChannel 2 Green came outside with a toddler around 1 p.m., after allegedly stabbing the woman he lived with in the leg.

When police arrived to the scene, he allegedly dropped the child, and threatened officers with the knife. That's when Pajerski fired two shots, striking Green in the midsection.

Green was airlifted to Albany Medical Center for treatment, but later died from his injuries.

An investigation will be conducted by the New York State Attorney General's Office.

"This isn't easy on anybody. This is a sad situation, it's a tough one for the entire city to have to face. As i said, at this time, we don't really know what happened," said Oneonta Mayor Gary Herzig. "So, there is body cam footage. I am very confident the attorney general will do an investigation that provides us with a real outcome as to what took place, and we will wait for that."

Herzig says Pajerski and a second responding officer have not yet returned to work.
Pregnant WAG Zoe Marshall and her family enjoyed some quality time together before they welcome their second child - a daughter.

On Tuesday, the 36-year-old shared sweet photos of her NRL star husband Benji and their son Benjamin Fox, four, during their time at the Sydney Royal Easter Show.

The images shared by the brunette beauty on Instagram show the father and son enjoying the food and attractions at the annual event.

Day out: Pregnant WAG Zoe Marshall [pictured] has shared sweet photos of her husband Benji and their son Benjamin Fox enjoying the Sydney Royal Easter Show on Tuesday

In the first photo, Benji, 36, and Benjamin looked very excited to chow down on their own chips on a stick, while another showed them walking through the showgrounds.

The following image showed the South Sydney Rabbitohs player carrying his boy in his arms as they walked through a fun house.

Zoe's final image in the collection was of Benji and Benjamin posing for a wacky photo as they poked their heads through a wall adorned by soft serve cones.

Yum yum: In the first photo, Benji, 36, and Benjamin looked very excited to chow down on their chips on a stick

Strolling around: Another photo of the father and son showed them walking through the showgrounds

'I was definitely the third wheel today,' the podcast host joked in her caption.

'We had the most incredible time at @sydneyroyal_eastershow my tip get there at 8:30am, pre pay parking at P1 and enjoy,' she shared to her legion of Instagram fans.

'The chips on a stick are the best thing on earth. Thanks for having us @sydneyroyal_eastershow,' Zoe added.

Fun times! An image showed the South Sydney Rabbitohs player carrying his boy in his arms as they walked through a fun house

Cute: Zoe's final image in the collection was of Benji and Benjamin posing for a wacky photo as they poked their heads through a wall adorned by soft serve cones

Zoe and Benji, who are proud parents to their son Benjamin Fox, two, shared their exciting baby news in an Instagram post in December.

She shared a sonogram photo alongside a recording from her podcast in which she described being 'so sick' during the first few weeks of her pregnancy, and revealed their second child is due in June 2021.

The couple are expecting a daughter, Seven News reported earlier this month.

The happy news comes after Zoe revealed in April she'd suffered a devastating miscarriage in late 2019.

Baby on the way: Zoe and Benji shared their exciting baby news in an Instagram post of the sonogram in December

She explained that Benji had asked her not to announce her pregnancy too early because the emotional impact of losing a baby in 2019 had 'rattled him'.

'We had a loss around this time last year. I think the impact of that on me really rattled him. He's private in general but didn't want me to share.'

Zoe married NRL star Benji at a private estate in Byron Bay in 2013.
The acting Inspector General of Police, Usman Alkali, has said the police under his leadership would improve the security situation in the country.

He also said he would prioritise and put community policing in practice.

The IGP stated this on Wednesday after his decoration by the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, at the State House, Abuja.

President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday named Mr Alkali as the new acting Inspector General of Police.

He replaced Mohammed Adamu whose tenure expired in February but was extended for three months.

Mr Adamu did not ,however, stay for the three months.

Mr Alkali said the theoretical aspect of community policing was started by his predecessor but assured that it would be properly practised under his leadership.

Many Nigerians have persistently called for community policing in the country in addition to the Nigeria Police Force.

This, they believe, would help in tackling the problems of insecurity that have bedevilled many parts of the country.

As part of measures adopted to consolidate efforts aimed at containing the security situation in the country, the federal government recently approved the sum of N13.3 billion for the take-off of the Community Policing initiative across the country.

Some governors, especially in the south-west region of the country, have set up a regional security network code named Amotekun to help beef up security in the region.

The police also recently recruited special constables, also known as community policing officers, to be deployed to various communities in the country.

Improving policing

While stating that the strategies employed by his predecessor did not tackle many security challenges, the new acting IGP said he would rejig the police for effective results.

You will see improvement on where my predecessor has left. I came in at a very challenging time. I know it. I recognise it and I will work on how to improve from where my predecessor has left.

I have been a member of the management team. We have tried to do our best, but it is not enough. There is room for improvement.

Definitely, we are going to rejig our operational strategies, he said.

On the funding of the police, the IGP said the force has the blessings of the president and hopes to get more of what the police have requested through the Police Trust Fund.

He urged Nigerians to support the police to help it succeed.

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Nigerians should expect improvement on the security situation. And Nigerians should also collaborate and cooperate with us. With all the inadequacies we have, we still require everybody to be part of policing in this country.

And that is why the emphasis on community policing will continue and the emphasis of collaborating with all other sister agencies will continue and we hope to have a better situation very soon.

We will continue to practicalise it. My predecessor has left at the theoretical stage, we have started practicalising it but we have not gone far and therefore, all the methods of practicalising it has been put in place and we are going to continue with it in collaboration with other stakeholders.
RAMAT GAN, Israel, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Friendly Technologies - a market leader in IoT Device Management with an installed customer base of 250+ carriers/operators globally - has partnered with Microsoft and is the first to offer a full Plug & Play solution for Microsoft's Azure IoT. The solution provided by Friendly includes integration with both MS Azure IoT Hub and Azure IoT Plug & Play, enabling automated connectivity for Azure IoT of standard IoT devices, supporting LwM2M & TR-369/USP.

Friendly worked with Microsoft's Azure IoT product team and has completed the integration of the Microsoft IoT Hub over one year ago. The integration offers full Azure IoT Hub Device Twin support, includes support for device concurrency, desired and reported property updates, direct methods, and device messages. Following the initial completed Friendly integration, Microsoft launched a new Azure IoT Central, offering device plug & play support, which Friendly Technologies is proud to have recently added to its list of forward-thinking integrations.

Customers can now easily connect devices to the MS Azure platform that they were previously unable to or those which are not supported automatically on the Azure IoT cloud, thereby enabling a seamless and automated process. The journey of connecting their IoT devices via bootstrap and/or registration to telemetry and commands, all done securely from their Cloud applications to Edge devices located anywhere in the world, is made possible by this key development.

Azure IoT Central is Microsoft's IoT Application Enablement solution, where solution developers can build complete end-to-end IoT solutions utilizing the Azure IoT framework. Friendly's One-IoT LwM2M connector was essential, allowing for IoT devices to be connected via NB-IoT, CAT-M1, and with the amalgamation of these networks on new 5G rollouts.

Friendly's One-IoT device management platform is classed as a carrier-grade IoT device management solution, connecting any IoT device - regardless of their protocols - to upstream Cloud applications.

Friendly's support for the Azure IoT Plug & Play includes: Create/Update devices, Create/Update templates, and Get device credentials in Azure IoT Central. The integration also includes Provisioning devices in Azure DPS (Device Provisioning Service), as well as the bidirectional communications via Azure IoT Hub Device Twins (Update property/telemetry, receive commands).

Sean van der Walt, Friendly Technologies' IoT Product Director, stated "Friendly's One-IoT platform includes a host of Cloud connectors, such as Kafka, AMQPS, PubSub, MQTTS, and other stream protocols, which allows our solution to be Cloud Ready. Our One-IoT solution is cloud and device-agnostic, and we're especially proud of the fact that we were the first in the world to connect LwM2M IoT devices to Microsoft's Azure IoT more than 18 months ago, and we are the first in the world to release our Azure IoT Plug & Play connector."

Ilan Migdal, Friendly Technologies' CEO, added that "IoT Enterprises, utilities, carriers/operators, and service providers now have the ability to seamlessly connect their IoT assets to Cloud platforms, to scale their service operations, to streamline the costs for mass deployment, and to optimize operations for their service personnel, thereby creating business efficiencies and improving business returns across the value chain."

About Friendly Technologies

Friendly Technologies is a leading provider of operator-class platforms for IoT, Smart Home, and TR-069 Device Management.

Friendly has been providing TR-069 device management solutions to operators and service providers since 2007. When IoT and Smart Home first appeared, Friendly leveraged its expertise and expanded its offering to the IoT and Smart Home markets. Today, Friendly offers a unified IoT platform for managing LWM2M, MQTT, OMA-DM, and TR-069 devices, and a complete solution for the smart home.

Friendly platforms enable their customers to generate new revenue streams in smart home and IoT markets, such as utilities, transportation, smart cities, and more.

The traditional ACS TR-069 for operators and CSPs improve the customer experience, reduces costs, provisions new devices, monitors QoE, and remotely configures and updates firmware while providing data information to service providers.

Friendly Technologies, whose IoT and device management solutions are installed in more than two hundred IoT businesses and service providers worldwide, has been recognized by Frost & Sullivan as a global leader in unified device management and smart homes.

Website  friendly-tech.com

LinkedIn  linkedin.com/company/friendly-technologies

SOURCE Friendly Technologies Ltd.
REGULATED RELEASE



FILING OF 2020 UNIVERSAL REGISTRATION DOCUMENT

Paris  April 7, 2021

Klepierre filed its Universal Registration Document relating to fiscal year 2020 with the Autorite des marches financiers (the AMF) on March 31, 2021.

It can be read or downloaded on the websites of:

- Klepierre: www.klepierre.com, in the section Finance / Publications / Annual and semi-annual reports;

- The AMF: www.amf-france.org.

It is also available to the public free of charge upon request:

- By mail:

Klepierre

Investor Relations

26 boulevard des Capucines

75009 Paris

FRANCE

- By e-mail: investorrelations@klepierre.com

The universal registration document integrates, among others, the following items:

- The annual financial report for 2020 and the statutory auditors report;

- The management report including notably the non-financial performance statement;

- Information regarding internal control and risk management;

- The Supervisory Board on corporate governance;

- The information relative to the fees paid to statutory auditors; and

- The description of the share buyback program.





ABOUT KLEPIERRE

Klepierre is the European leader in shopping malls, combining property development and asset management skills. The companys portfolio is valued at 21.9 billion at December 31, 2020 and comprises large shopping centers in more than 10 countries in Continental Europe which together host hundreds of millions of visitors per year. Klepierre holds a controlling stake in Steen & Strm (56.1%), Scandinavias number one shopping center owner and manager. Klepierre is a French REIT (SIIC) listed on Euronext Paris and is included in the CAC Next 20, EPRA Euro Zone and GPR 250 indexes. It is also included in ethical indexes, such as Euronext CAC 40 ESG Index, DJSI World and Europe, FTSE4Good, STOXX Global ESG Leaders, Euronext Vigeo France 20 and World 120, and figures in CDPs A-list. These distinctions underscore the Groups commitment to a proactive sustainable development policy and its global leadership in the fight against climate change.

For more information, please visit the newsroom on our website: www.klepierre.com

Investor relations contacts Hubert dAillieres, Group Head of IR and financial communication

+33 (0)1 40 67 51 37  hubert.daillieres@klepierre.com

Paul Logerot, IR Manager

+33 (1) 40 67 53 02  paul.logerot@klepierre.com

Julia Croissant, IR Officer

+33 (0)1 40 67 51 68  julia.croissant@klepierre.com

Attachment
Sinn Fein has confirmed it will support the independent unionist Ian Marshall in the forthcoming Irish Seanad by-elections.

Ian Marshall  a former president of the Ulster Farmers Union  was previously elected to the Irish Senate in 2018, before losing his seat in the 2020 election. He has been nominated as the preferred candidate for a seat on the Agricultural panel.

The Armagh man was the first unionist elected to the republic's upper chamber in 2018 after he was nominated by then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.

Read More

The upcoming by-election for the two vacant seats in the Seanad is due to be held on April 21, with the candidates decided by TDs and Senators in the Irish Dail during a secret ballot.

Sinn Fein said it was important that unionist voices were included in the Senate. Another former Senator, businessman Billy Lawless, will also get Sinn Fein's backing.

In a statement Sinn Fein said: It is important that the north has voices in the Oireachtas and that unionist perspectives are included in that; which is why we will be supporting Ian Marshall.

The vacancies arose following the resignations of Sinn Fein's Elisha McCallion and Fine Gael's Michael D'Arcy last year.
Ghislaine Maxwell, the alleged 'madam' for Jeffrey Epstein, has been told off for failing to flush her toilet and leaving her cell filthy by guards at the prison where she is being held, court documents have revealed.

Staff at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, noted that the British socialite 'frequently did not flush her toilet after using it, which caused the cell to smell', prosecutors said in a letter filed in federal court.

The document also revealed that Maxwell has been given the coronavirus vaccination while in custody and that she is 'physically healthy' after she complained last month that she has been held in 'detrimental' conditions.

Maxwell, 59, had claimed in a filing made by her lawyer that she was forced to drink dirty tap water and that a guard 'physically abused' her during a pat-down search while awaiting trial.

Ghislaine Maxwell, the alleged 'madam' for Jeffrey Epstein, has been told off by guards at the prison where she is being held for failing to flush her toilet and leaving her cell filthy

Staff at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, noted that the British socialite 'frequently did not flush her toilet after using it'

Maxwel, seen in a courtroom sketch, had claimed in a filing made by her lawyer that she was forced to drink dirty tap water and that a guard 'physically abused' her during a search

Ghislaine Maxell is pictured with Jeffrey Epstein, second left, at a party at the Mar-a-Lago club in 1995

The new letter was signed by three Assistant US Attorneys - including Maurene Comey, the daughter of former FBI director James Comey.

'MDC staff directed the defendant to clean her cell because it had become very dirty,' the letter reads.

It continues: 'Among other things, MDC staff noted that the defendant frequently did not flush her toilet after using it, which caused the cell to smell.

'In addition, the defendant had not cleaned her cell in some time, causing the cell to become increasingly dirty. MDC staff directed the defendant to clean her cell in response to the smell and the dirtiness, not as retaliation for complaining about a particular search'.

The rest of the letter sets out to debunk all the claims made by Maxwell's lawyers, who claimed last week that her treatment would be appropriate for Hannibal Lecter, the fictional serial killer in The Silence of the Lambs.

Defense attorney Bobbi Sternheim had written in a letter to U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan that, because of conditions at the prison, Maxwell 'is withering to a shell of her former selflosing weight, losing hair, and losing her ability to concentrate.'

Sternheim alleged Maxwell is losing weight because she is not being fed properly and that she is being woken up every 15 minutes by a flashlight.

The letter says that MDC staff have 'not observed the defendant experience any noticeable hair loss' despite what her lawyers have said.

Maxwell's weight has fluctuated between 133lbs and 137lbs which means that even her lowest weight gives her a BMI of 20.8 which is considered 'normal' for a person who is 5' 7' tall.

'Most recently, when the defendant was weighed last week, her weight was 137.5 pounds,' the letter reads.

Prosecutors shot back in the letter that searches are required and that Maxwell sleeps with an eye mask

A picture depicts a typical ADMAX SHU cell and show the bunk bed, shower, seating area, and combination toilet and sink fixture at Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn

The letter admits that the tap water may run brown for a few seconds when engineers from the city of New York have been doing maintenance nearby.

'The tap water available in the MDC is provided by New York City. As a result, on occasions when the City has conducted maintenance near the MDC, the water has been temporarily shut off,' the letter reads.

On those days, inmates including Maxwell are given bottled water.

'After the water is turned back on, the water is sometimes cloudy or brown and needs to run for several seconds before becoming clear,' the letter reads.

The letter states that 'MDC staff, including the legal staff, drink the same tap water from the same water system as the defendant while in the institution'.

Prosecutors refuted claims that Maxwell's meals arrive cold, noting: 'meals arrive in containers that are both microwavable and oven safe. Currently, the defendants meals are heated in a thermal oven.'

Comey denied that Maxwell had been strip searched and said that checks every 15 minutes with the flashlight involved shining the light on the ceiling so they could see Maxwell in her bed and 'sufficiently to confirm that the defendant is breathing.'

Besides, Maxwell wears an eye mask and 'regularly sleeps through these nighttime wellness checks', the letter states.

Billionaire Epstein died in 2019 after he hanged himself in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.

In 2008, Epstein was convicted in Florida of procuring a child for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute after reaching a plea deal with prosecutors.

He was accused of raping dozens of young teen girls between 2002 and 2005. The girls were allegedly groomed by his associate Maxwell  who was charged in 2020 with crimes of enticement of minors and sex trafficking of underage girls.

She denies the allegations.

Epstein was arrested again in July 2019 on federal charges for sex trafficking in Florida and New York just a month before he died.

Maxwell has complained that body searches of her are invasive and in February alleged that one amounted to physical abuse.

The prosecutors said that the pat-down in question was recorded on camera and after reviewing the footage the MDC concluded the search had been 'conducted appropriately and the defendant's complaint about that incident was unfounded'.

Prosecutors said Maxwell receives five hours of video teleconference calls with her counsel every weekday 'for a total of 25 hours of attorney VTC calls per week' and 'continues to receive more time to review discovery than any other inmate.'



The letter adds that Maxwell 'has received a COVID-19 vaccine and is now fully vaccinated - in short, MDC medical staff assess that the defendant is physically healthy'.

Maxwell has been in prison since she was arrested in July last year and charged with allegedly enticing underage girls for Epstein to abuse. She is also charged with perjury in a separate civil case.

Last month she was hit with two new charges: sex trafficking conspiracy and sex trafficking of a minor. She has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
"The security situation around the world is increasingly complex," said Trine Bramsen, Danish Minister of Defense. "Being able to defend yourself and your allies is crucial. For peace. For stability. For freedom and democracy. With the new F-35 fighter jets we will increase our ability to protect Denmark. Our region. And wherever necessary as we have done before - side by side with the U.S. and other allies. The F-35s will be at the absolute center for the Danish Defense in the coming decades."

"The F-35s will be at the absolute center for the Danish Defense in the coming decades'" - Trine Bramsen

Like the F-16 before it, the F-35 is spearheading NATO's air power and ensuring strategic integration of allied combat airpower. The vital interoperability of the 5th Generation F-35 binds 13 allies and partners with the United States in air dominance and enabling critical joint capabilities. The F-35 will serve as a force multiplier for Denmark, allowing the Royal Danish Air Force to train and fight alongside NATO allies and create a strong deterrent.

"The F-35 will ensure Denmark's sovereignty and air dominance, enhance its multidomain and network-based coalition operations, and play a pivotal role in keeping the Arctic a secure and stable region," said Greg Ulmer, executive vice president, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics. "This game-changing capability would not be possible without the unwavering support of the Danish government and the innovative contributions of Danish industry."

Senior government and military leaders from Denmark and the United States attended the ceremony. A replay of the event is available here.

Danish industry serves as a critical partner with the F-35 Lightning II program through high technology work, ensuring competitiveness and defense industry viability in Denmark. Two Danish companies, Terma A/S and Multicut A/S, are currently making parts such as pylons, advanced composites, software solutions, radar components and horizontal tail edges for every F-35 delivered.

Denmark's F-35 program of record calls for 27 F-35A aircraft, each of which will be built at Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth. The first aircraft will be delivered to Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, later this month where Danish pilots and maintainers will begin training.

With stealth technology, supersonic speed, advanced sensors, weapons capacity and increased range, the F-35 is the most advanced, survivable and connected aircraft in the world. More than a fighter jet, the F-35's ability to collect, analyze and share data, is a powerful force multiplier that enhances all airborne, surface and ground-based assets in the battlespace enabling men and women in uniform to execute their mission and return home safely. To date, Lockheed Martin has delivered more than 625 F-35s, trained more than 1,300 pilots and 10,380 maintainers, and the F-35 fleet has flown nearly 370,000 cumulative flight hours.

For additional information, visit our website: https://www.f35.com/f35/global-enterprise/denmark.html

About Lockheed Martin

Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin Corporation is a global security and aerospace company that employs approximately 114,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services.

Please follow @LMNews on Twitter for the latest announcements and news across the corporation.

SOURCE Lockheed Martin Aeronautics
has introduced a new app review process for both developers and advertisers to help them resolve issues upfront and lessen the likelihood of future policy violations.

said the new process will help enhance the mobile app inventory quality for developers who choose to monetize with either AdMob or Ad Manager platforms.

"App review is a new process that evaluates a mobile app's inventory quality before allowing unrestricted ad serving. In going through the process, publishers will get a unified view of all their apps' approval status with actionable feedback," the company said in a blog post on Tuesday.

App reviews will be rolled out gradually this year with two features: app readiness and app claiming.

With app readiness, publishers will need to link new they want to monetise with AdMob or Ad Manager to at least one supported app store.

Linking an app will kick off a review process which checks things like the app source, the publisher's ownership of the app, and compliance with AdMob or Ad Manager policies.

With app claiming, publishers can declare a comprehensive list of their apps' inventory with the ability to manage and track all apps' review status directly in their AdMob or Ad Manager account.

"With this feature, publishers will receive suggestions of that are being monetised using their publisher ad code, but haven't been added to their AdMob or Ad Manager account," informed.

Publishers can act on suggestions starting in mid-2021, and eventually will be required to add all apps to their account to allow unrestricted ad serving.

Google said that it recommends publishers complete the app review process by linking to supported app stores and claiming their mobile apps to prevent potential interruptions in monetisation.

The company last month announced to lower its planned commission rate for app developers, following complaints from software makers over steep fees.

Google said it will levy a 15 per cent rate on in-app purchases to all developers for annual sales up to $1 million and take a 30 per cent commission from revenues over the $1 million mark.

The new policy will take effect in July.

--IANS

na/

(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.)
has surpassed the to become the fastest COVID-19 vaccinating country in the world with an average daily rate of 30,93,861 vaccine doses,the Union Health Ministry said on Wednesday.

The cumulative number of COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in the country has crossed 8.70 crore.

Cumulatively, 8,70,77,474 vaccine doses have been administered through 13,32,130 sessions, as per the provisional report till 7 am.

These include 89,63,724 health care workers (HCWs) who have taken the 1st dose and 53,94,913 HCWs who have taken the 2nd dose, 97,36,629 frontline workers (FLWs) who have received the 1st dose, 43,12,826 FLWs who have taken the 2nd dose.

Besides,3,53,75,953and 10,00,787 beneficiaries more than 60 years old have been administered the 1st and 2nd dose respectively while 2,18,60,709 and 4,31,933 beneficiaries aged 45 to 60 were given the 1st and 2nd dose respectively.

More than 33 lakh vaccination doses were administered in the last 24 hours.

As on Day-81 of the vaccination drive (6th April), 33,37,601 vaccine doses were given. Out of which, 30,08,087 beneficiaries were vaccinated across 41,396 sessions for 1st dose and 3,29,514 beneficiaries received 2nd dose of vaccine.

India's daily new cases continue to rise and1,15,736 new cases were registered in a span of 24 hours.

Eight states including Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala have shown a rise in the COVID daily new cases accounting for 80.70 per cent of the new cases reported in a day.

Maharashtra has reported the highest daily new cases at 55,469.It is followed by Chhattisgarh with 9,921 while Karnataka reported 6,150 new cases.

The daily positivity graph is on a steady incline and currently stands at 8.40 per cent, the ministry said.

India's total active caseload has increased to 8,43,473 and now comprises 6.59 per centof the country's total cases.

A net increase of 55,250 cases recorded in the total active caseload in a span of 24 hours.

Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Kerala and Uttar Pradesh cumulatively account for 74.5 per cent of India's total active cases.Maharashtra alone accounts for 56.17 per cent of the total active caseload of the country, the ministry said.

The Centre is actively engaging with all states and UT governments, especially those showing an upsurge in daily new cases and with a high caseload of active cases.

Union Health MinisterHarsh Vardhan had on Tuesday chaired a high-level meeting through video conference to review the situation of COVID-19 and progress of vaccination in 11 states and UTs that are showing very large numbers of daily cases and high mortality due to coronavirus.

The Cabinet Secretary chaired a high-level review meeting on Friday last with chief secretaries, DG Police and health secretaries of all States/UTs, with focus on 11 states and UTs that have been reporting very high rise in daily cases and daily mortality because of COVID-19 in the last two weeks.

Regular review meetings are taken by Union Health Secretary with secretaries of all States and UTs.

The Centre has rushed 50 high level teams to Maharashtra, Punjab and Chhattisgarh to assist the states in COVID control and management measures. These teams will be stationed in the states for 3-5 days.

India's cumulative recoveries have surged to 1,17,92,135 with59,856 recoveries beingregistered in a span of 24 hours.

A total of 630 deaths were reported in a span of 24 hours.

Eight states account for 84.44 per cent of the new deaths. Maharashtra saw the maximum casualties (297). Punjab follows with 61 daily deaths.

Eleven states and UTs have not reported any COVID-19 deaths in a span of 24 hours.

These are Odisha, Ladakh (UT), D&D & D&N, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Sikkim, Manipur, Lakshadweep, Mizoram, Andaman and nicobar Islands and Arunachal Pradesh.

(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.)
Alarmed by recent mass shootings in Orange, Boulder in Colorado, and Atlanta area, California lawmakers advanced a new tax proposal on the sale of guns and ammunition in the state on Tuesday to increase the funds for violence prevention programs.

Based on the legislation proposed by Assemblyman Marc Levine (D-San Rafael), a $25 excise tax on retailers would be imposed for each sale of new guns, and a certain percentage of tax yet to be determined for the ammunition, NRA-ILA reported.

According to Los Angeles Times, Levine told the Parliamentary Public Safety Commission that gun-related violence would not end on its own during a hearing on Tuesday.

He also emphasized that lawmakers must take responsible action to end gun violence in the state and the rest of the country.

Levine pointed out that the numbers are not just statistics as they are human lives. He added that there were more than 100 mass shootings recorded across the U.S. in the span of three months this year.

The panel voted 5 to 2 together with party lines in approving the legislation. But it still needs approval from the full Assembly.

The gun tax was backed by lawmakers who cited a string of mass shootings that includes one on Wednesday at an office park in Orange. The gunman killed four individuals, including a nine-year-old boy.

Also, on March 22, another gunman opened fire at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, which resulted in the death of 10 individuals, including a police officer, The Washington Post reported.

On March 16, or days before the Boulder shooting incident, a gunman also killed eight people at three Atlanta-area spas. Among the victims were six women of Asian descent.

READ NEXT: President Biden Guarantees to Push Tax Hike to Fund the Infrastructure Plan

Tax Burden

The National Rifle Association (NRA), a gun rights advocacy group, is against the legislation. The group told the lawmakers that the gun tax was an unconstitutional attempt to limit American citizens' ability to buy firearms for their protection.

The western regional director of the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action, Daniel Reid, said the legislation would only affect those law-abiding citizens, and the gun tax would make it even more difficult for them to buy firearms for protection.

Reid added that those who will be affected are those individuals living in high-crime communities, underserved, who cannot protect themselves and their families.

Even Tom Lackey, a Republican Assemblyman of Palmdale and the committee's vice chairman, contradicted the proposal. He pointed out that the new gun tax would be too much as the state already gets around $6 million yearly from fees related to firearms.

But the executive director of the advocacy group Gun Owners of California, Sam Paredes, stressed that the new tax is aimed at discouraging people from buying firearms. Lawmakers, who backed the tax proposal, noted that the people in the state are buying guns at an alarming record pace.

READ MORE: 4 Killed, Including a Child, in Mass Shooting at Southern California

WATCH: Shooting In Orange, California, Kills At Least 4, Including A Child - From TODAY
Djibouti's President Ismail Omar Guelleh is expected to extend his two-decade rule of the tiny Horn of Africa nation as the country heads to the polls Friday.

Guelleh, 73, is facing political newcomer Zakaria Ismail Farah, his only rival after traditional opposition parties decided to boycott the election.

A businessman specialised in the importation of cleaning products, Farah, 56, is seen by observers as unlikely to pose a significant challenge to the strongman who has been in power for 22 years.

Guelleh, flanked by his wife and government officials, wrapped up his campaign on Wednesday with a colourful final rally in a stadium packed with cheering supporters and traditional dancers.

"As I see you today in large numbers, I am sure that you will also come in large numbers to the polling stations," Guelleh said before crowds wearing tee-shirts emblazoned with his popular initials, IOG.

Djibouti is a largely desert country strategically situated on one of the world's busiest trade routes and at the crossroads between Africa and the Arabian peninsula, a short distance from war-torn Yemen.

Under Guelleh, the country has exploited this geographical advantage, investing heavily in ports and logistics infrastructure.

"He gave hope to the youth, and built ports for this country. Thanks to him we are no longer unemployed", said 23-year-old Halima Saad, one of the estimated 25,000 who attended Wednesday's rally.

- 'Unequal treatment' -

But the country has also has seen an erosion of press freedom and a crackdown on dissent as it has courted foreign interest.

"Little by little, there has been a hardening of the regime since 1999," said Sonia Le Gouriellec, a political scientist who authored a book on Djibouti.

"The more it has opened to the world, the more it has closed internally."

Guelleh's predicted fifth term will be his last, under a 2010 constitutional reform that scrapped term limits while introducing an age limit of 75, which would lock him out of future elections.

Story continues

Djibouti's election campaign came as the country saw Covid-19 infection rates soar by 38 percent in the past week, with some 200 cases a day in the country of almost one million people, and the rate of positive tests at 23 percent.

Nevertheless thousands turned out for rallies for the ruling Union for the Presidential Majority (UMP), and few wore masks in the packed stands at Guelleh's final campaign address in the capital.

Farah -- who had to renounce his dual French citizenship to join the race -- held a few small rallies before cancelling the rest in the 10 days leading up to the polls.

He complained that he was not offered security services for his rallies.

The challenger, who has styled himself as the "flag bearer of poor Djiboutians", appeared with his wrists bound and mouth taped last month at one of his rallies to protest "unequal treatment".

In 2020 Guelleh faced an unusual wave of opposition protests, which were brutally suppressed, after the arrest of an air force pilot who had denounced clan-based discrimination and corruption.

Police broke up several spontaneous small protests against Guelleh's fifth term in the run-up to the election.

- Dependence on China -

Djibouti, which gained independence from France in 1977, has remained stable in an often troubled region, drawing foreign military powers such as France, the United States and China to establish bases there.

The country, seeking to become a trade and logistics hub, in 2018 launched the first phase of what will be Africa's biggest free-trade zone, financed by China.

The Asian powerhouse -- which sees Djibouti as a critical part of its "Belt and Road" global infrastructure initiative -- also funded the building of a railway to Ethiopia.

"Previously there were many alliances... What happened during the last mandate is that they fell into a... total dependence on China," Le Gouriellec said.

On the international stage Djibouti suffered a setback in its diplomatic ambitions in 2020 when it lost out to Kenya for a non-permanent seat at the UN Security Council.

The country's economy shrank by one percent in 2020, but is expected to grow seven percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Djibouti's GDP per capita is about $3,500, higher than much of sub-Saharan Africa, but some 20 percent of the population lives in extreme poverty and 26 percent are unemployed, according to the World Bank.

md/np/jj
A new study has shed light on the toll the pandemic is taking on Irelands frontline staff.

One young doctor said she was having suicidal thoughts as a result of the crisis; while a care worker who felt pressurised to go without PPE into the room of a patient who had tested positive, developed symptoms of post-traumatic stress consistent with a near-death experience and had to give up work.

Both women were among about 100 healthcare workers who got confidential trauma therapy sessions in a bid to help them cope with the fallout of being on the front line.

The drive was organised by Trauma Response Network Ireland (TRNi) as part of a study to better understand the trauma and suffering being experienced by many frontline workers during the pandemic.

A second phase of the study will begin in the coming weeks and is free of charge to all frontline workers  including medical staff, gardai, fire-service personnel and retail staff.

After receiving the therapy, the doctor said she was now coming through the other side and able to process the situation, saying she did not think she had been honest with herself about how bad she had been.

I was jumpy, not sleeping, on edge, having suicidal thoughts, she said.

Meanwhile, the incident involving the care worker happened in a nursing home in the early stages of the pandemic, when she was instructed to go into the room despite not wearing any PPE.

She did so for fear of losing her job, she said, and while she subsequently tested negative for Covid, the emotional impact of her experience led to her suffering an emotional breakdown.

She had chronic anxiety, was unable to sleep and endured nightmares and flashbacks.

She was prescribed medication for anxiety by her GP but did not feel this was helpful. She did not feel she had any other supportive treatment options open to her within the health service.

Following four therapy sessions, she reported that she was symptom-free.

Johnny Moran, national co-ordinator of TRNi, said last year when Covid struck that they assembled a group of therapists trained in mass response trauma  the response to incidents like 9/11 in New York or the Paris or Manchester bombings.

If you can catch single-event trauma early, you can take the symptoms out. And the earlier you get to it, the better, he said.

The findings around the Covid crisis have shown that much of the trauma is burnout-related.

Theres a mentality in the caring profession that its a vocation and theres a loyalty, that were all in it together. But frontline people have been going at this for a full year now and when they go home they face the same challenges as everybody else, said Mr Moran.

Without funding or input from the HSE, the therapists and researchers are working on a voluntary basis under the leadership of Dr Derek Farrell of the University of Worcester and Professor Paul Miller of Ulster University.

Researchers expressed concern that few male essential workers who might be experiencing trauma have so far taken part, with the vast majority of those contacting them being women  81.64pc of those taking part in the first study and a staggering 90pc so far of those who have contacted TRNi to take part in the second phase are female.

A psychologist on the front line who took part in the study admitted she had not realised she had encoded the trauma at a cellular level.

She spoke of an unknown incident which has not been publicised, saying: Today, I still can recall the incident, but the level of disturbance is so low that it does not trigger me or impact the rest of my life.

However, another doctor said that while her anxiety levels had decreased for the first time in months following the therapy, it unfortunately did not last and she felt she was back to square one after a month.

Since then she has been attending psychotherapy and had reduced her workload by half.

If you are affected by any of the issues in this article, then help is available.

Samaritans are on freephone: 116 123.

Pieta House is on freephone: 1800 247 247. Or you can text HELP to 51444.

A full list of mental health support services is available on the HSE website
by Ati Nurbaiti

President Jokowi calls on ASEAN to intervene to ensure the safety of the people of Myanmar whose generals are more interested in Thailands military coup than Indonesias model of democratic transition. In Indonesia there is little empathy for protesters in Myanmar.

Jakarta (AsiaNews)  Indonesia needs to continue efforts to open communication channels with Myanmars military, which carried out a coup against the civilian government of democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

To stop the crackdown against the anti-coup protest movement, Indonesias President Joko Widodo has called for an emergency meeting of the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN). Such a move, which Malaysia supports, has met with opposition by some ASEAN nations, which usually insist on non-interference in the domestic affairs of the groups members.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi stated that Indonesias utmost concern was the safety of the Myanmar people. She called on the countrys military to refrain from violence and open up to dialogue, and requested humanitarian access for the estimated thousands of detainees.

To reach a peaceful solution to the crisis, she called on China, Japan and Russia, which have close political and trading ties with Myanmar.

Myanmars Armed Forces (Tatmadaw) are becoming increasingly violent as they are losing control of the population in both the towns and villages, said Debbie Stothard, an activist with ALTSEAN Burma, speaking to AsiaNews. The military was shocked to find that the civil disobedience movement also includes high ranking officials.

For Stothard, ASEAN must do more than make ineffective pleas against violence. A solution is urgently needed before the end of this year when the ASEAN leadership changes from Brunei to Cambodia, who will say [the Myanmar issue] is an internal affair, since Cambodia is close to China.

Despite criticism against its own democratic system, Indonesias transition from military to civilian rule and democracy can serve as a lesson for Myanmars military rulers, Lieutenant General (ret) Agus Widjojo, head of the National Resilience Institute (Lemhanas), told AsiaNews.

With the end of President Suhartos authoritarian rule in 1998, Indonesias military gave up its powerful dual function role in defence and non-defence matters. Thus, it could serve as an example for trust-building in civil-military relations, which is still absent in Myanmar.

Yet, as Widjojo acknowledges, Indonesia is no longer a model for Myanmars military who look more favourably to Thailands experience under coup master and former general Prayuth Chan-ocha.

Indonesias intensive lobbying is missing the people-to-people element, this according to Sri Lestari Wahyuningroem, head of the Centre for Citizenship and Human Rights Studies at the Jakarta-based National Veteran University (UPNVJ).

There should be more solidarity based on a shared civic sense of humanity, she told AsiaNews. But there is lack of emotional communal connectivity, she explained, compared for example to the massive demonstrations in Indonesia and Malaysia, Southeast Asias Muslim majority countries, against the persecution of Myanmars Rohingya Muslim minority.
Tullamore native Emily OReilly, European Ombudsman, author and former journalist and broadcaster, has been announced as part of the line-up for a new event series aimed at instigating a high-profile public debate on leadership in Ireland.

Ms OReilly will join author and broadcaster Emma Dabiri and Editor of The Currency and Deputy Chair of the RTE Board Ian Kehoe to share her views on leadership in the media during a free online event on Thursday, 15th April at 1pm.

The event, Leadership in the Media: A Two-Way Street? is the first of four events taking place as part of The Better Leadership Forum, a new initiative from LIFT Ireland aimed at instigating a high-profile public debate on leadership. The four events will take place across 2021, and each will focus on leadership in a particular sector of Irish society, including the media, politics, business and the public sector.

Aprils event will explore leadership in the media, addressing topics such as: the role of the media in calling out good and bad leadership; the importance of press freedom and an independent and well-functioning media sector; and the role of the media in promoting positivity during difficult times.

The Line-Up

The panel discussion will be moderated by Professor Kevin Rafter, Head of the School of Communications at DCU, while speakers include:

Emily OReilly, European Ombudsman, author and former journalist and broadcaster.

Ian Kehoe, Editor of The Currency and Deputy Chair of the RTE Board.

Emma Dabiri, author, broadcaster and social historian.

Sinead OCarroll, Editor of TheJournal.ie.

Joanne Hession, founder and CEO of LIFT Ireland.

Professor Niamh Brennan, the Michael MacCormac Professor of Management at University College Dublin and Founder / Academic Director of the UCD Centre for Corporate Governance, will serve as rapporteur for all four events in The Better Leadership Forum; and a final report on lessons from the events will be published later this year.

Background to the Better Leadership Forum

LIFT Ireland is an initiative founded by entrepreneurship and leadership expert Joanne Hession and designer, broadcaster and entrepreneur Sonya Lennon to raise the level of leadership in Offaly and nationwide. Current LIFT partners include ESB, Munster Rugby, Bank of Ireland, NUI Galway CPL, GOAL, Merchants Quay Ireland, SOLAS, Dublin Airport, and over 100 secondary schools across Ireland.

Launching the Better Leadership Forum, Joanne Hession, CEO and founder of LIFT Ireland, said: Since LIFT was established in 2018, we have focused on building partnerships with organisations in Offaly and across Irish society, working at a grassroots level to promote better leadership in businesses, schools, charities and community groups. Now, we are building on our work to date with the launch of The Better Leadership Forum, an ambitious series of events that aims to spark public debate around the issue of leadership.

We are delighted to have Ms. OReilly joining the Forum and hearing her perspective on some of the most pertinent questions around leadership in Ireland today. What does it mean  particularly in challenging times  to be a good leader? How do we cultivate ethical leadership across all facets of society? Do the media have a responsibility to call out poor leadership; and can they actually do that in practice? These are the sorts of questions well be exploring during The Better Leadership Forum.

Sonya Lennon, co-founder of LIFT, said: Challenging times often bring out both the best and worst of leadership. At every level  from community initiatives to international governments  we have seen examples of good leadership over the past year alongside incidences of poor judgement and decision-making. We have a great opportunity now to reflect on what good leadership really means and explore a cultivation of ethical leadership across Irish society, for everyone's benefit.
Murillo and Skeets's poetry speaks boldly and poignantly about the human condition in ways that transcend particular places or individual experiences.(Lori Anne Ferrell, director of the awards)

For their powerful explorations of identity, desire, and violence in the modern world, John Murillos "Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry" (Four Way) has been selected as the recipient of the 2021 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Jake Skeetss "Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers" (Milkweed) has been selected as the 2021 Kate Tufts Discovery Award recipient.

Chosen annually, the Kingsley awardwhich is one of the largest annual awards in contemporary poetryprovides $100,000 for a book by a mid-career poet; the Discovery award honors a book by a poet of promise with $10,000.

The selection of this years winners was announced during a traditional call-the-winner event hosted every spring by Claremont Graduate University (CGU).

*****

Due to quarantine restrictions, the event, which is typically held in person at the home of CGU President Len Jessup, was shifted to an online format. Attendees watched online as the two winners were called and notified about their selection.

Finalist Judging Chair Timothy Donnelly, who won the Kingsley in 2012 for "The Cloud Corporation," gave the good news to this years winners.

Donnelly praised Murillos "Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry'"(a collection that examines the brutal legacy of racial injustice) for making traditional poetic forms like blank verse feel as relevant for us today as Frost did for his timeand we applaud that nothing about the book feels rushed. It is a deeply considered, impeccably selective, resonant, radiant book.

Donnelly singled out Murillos poem On Confessionalism and the tragic sonnet sequence Delores, Maybe for their perfect execution. On Prosody he called a tour-de-force that takes Robert Frosts observation that The best place to get the abstract sound of sense is from voices behind a door to places he probably didnt foresee.

Murillo is an assistant professor of English at Wesleyan University and a past recipient of a Pushcart Prize and the J. Howard and Barbara MJ Wood Prize from the Poetry Foundation as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, among others.

In addition to Donnelly, this years judging committee included poets Meghan ORourke, Luis Rodriguez, Prageeta Sharma, and Patricia Smith (winner of the Kingsley in 2018 for "Incendiary Art").

For the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the judges chose Skeetss collection because, as Donnelly told him, we are in awe of this book of yours. Knocked flat. We are humbled by the care and the candor with which it bears witness to what it means to come of age in the Indian Capital of the World. The hardships, the hazards, the resilience, and the refusal not to find beauty wherever it can still be found.

A recipient of a 92Y Discovery Prize, a Mellon Projecting All Voices Fellowship, an American Book Award, and a Whiting Award, Skeets described his prize-winning poetry collection as a project of reclamation for me, and for this picture, and the history that went behind it.

The picture he referred to is a cover photo of his late uncle, Benson, taken by Richard Avedon in 1979 as part of a series of portraits about the American West.

The circumstances behind the photoand the exchanges Avedon had with Benson about itwere lost to the family when, a year after the photo was taken, Benson was stabbed to death. "Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers" is Skeetss poignant response to that loss.

*****

This years awards are notable for their attention to small independent pressesall of this years finalists (including the winners) are published by the indiesand for an unexpectedly regional angle that ties the winners with Claremont and the Southwest.

Skeets is from the Navajo Nation and teaches at Dine College in Tsaile, Arizona. At the same time, Murillo, a Brooklyn resident, grew up not far from the Claremont Graduate University in Ontario, attended high school there and in Alta Loma, and has family in Pomona.

Its striking and, I think, significant that both of this years winners are connected with our region in some way, said Lori Anne Ferrell, dean of CGUs School of the Arts & Humanities and director of the awards. They might be regional in terms of their backgrounds, but, still, their poetry speaks boldly and poignantly about the human condition in ways that transcend particular places or individual experiences.

########

About the Kingsley & Kate Tufts Poetry Awards

One of the worlds most prestigious poetry awards, the Kingsley Tufts Award was started at CGU in 1992 by Kate Tufts to honor her late husband, Kingsley, who held various executive positions in L.A.-area shipyards and wrote and published poetry. It was followed a year later by the establishing of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Past Kingsley Tufts Award recipients include Patricia Smith, Vievee Francis, Angie Estes, Afaa Michael Weaver, D.A. Powell, B.H. Fairchild, Thomas Lux, Henri Cole, and Linda Gregerson; past recipients of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award include Yona Harvey, Charles Harper Webb, and Lucia Perillo.

About Claremont Graduate University

Founded in 1925, Claremont Graduate University is one of a select few American universities devoted solely to graduate-level education. The university is a founding member of The Claremont Colleges, which include Pomona College, Pitzer College, Claremont McKenna College, Scripps College, Harvey Mudd College, and Keck Graduate Institute. CGU comprises seven schools offering 76 degree and certificate programs. The universitys unique transdisciplinary perspective encourages students to explore complex issues across academic disciplines. CGU is home to the Peter F. Drucker & Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management and the annual Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Awards.
Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan has said that one of the major reasons for the spike in coronavirus cases was people not following COVID-appropriate behaviour.

Vardhan explained that although the situation is under control, lax behaviour in following the protocols is the main culprit behind the surge in cases. The Union minister noted that the sudden rise in cases is largely or maybe event-driven comprising local body elections, grand weddings, and farmers' protest.

"This has come to our notice that the sudden increase in cases is largely or maybe event-driven, including grand weddings, local body election, farmer's protest, etc.," Vardhan said on Tuesday.

He also appealed to people to take up mass awareness campaigns to revive the importance of such measures in the populace.

Also Read: Seven more COVID-19 vaccines in clinical trial stage in India: Dr Harsh Vardhan

Vardhan, who held a review meeting with health ministers of 11 states and UTs (Union Territories) where the coronavirus cases are on the rise, noted that these states together contributed 54% of the total caseload and 65% of the total fatalities in the country, with a lopsidedly high count of deaths in Maharashtra and Punjab.

"In last two months, the country witnessed a sudden surge of COVID-19 cases. When our active cases were low... Our recovery rate is 92.38 per cent. Despite the increasing cases, the fatality rate is at 1.30 per cent of the country," he said.

Vardhan further said that a high-test positivity rate was being witnessed in Maharashtra (25%) and Chhattisgarh (14%). He noted that since February, these states have seen a significant rise in coronavirus cases, the majority of which have been reported in the younger population of 15-44 years, the Union Health Ministry said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Vardhan lauded the increase in tests undertaken in the last four weeks but warned against the high RAT (rapid antibody test) proportion in Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, and Maharashtra.

Also Read: Not every person in the world will be vaccinated, says Harsh Vardhan

"No shortage of Covid-19 vaccines"

The Union minister further clarified that there was no shortage of vaccine stock in the country and that the Centre has assured the states that they will get the vaccines as per their requirement. "The Centre will not allow any state to face vaccine scarcity," he said.

Vardhan's statement came after Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope told reporters that the state might run out of coronavirus vaccine in three days.

"No state is facing vaccine scarcity and neither will we allow them to face it. All states are being supplied with Covid-19 vaccine as per their requirements," Vardhan said.

"This was communicated to all states at the beginning of the meeting on Tuesday. I had assured them that there would be no shortage of vaccines and the supply will continue as per requirement," the Union health minister added.

According to the Maharashtra government, the state presently has a stock of only 14 lakh vaccine doses that will last only for three days. Likewise, Andhra Pradesh, which currently holds only 2.7 lakh vaccines, expects it to be exhausted by Thursday.
The COVID-19 vaccine will be given to individuals who are 16-years old and up to begin on Tuesday. Its goal is to immunize more people and expand who can avail of the jabs.

Sources say that the State University of New York is planning to offer the vaccines to college students who will be sent home soon. More vaccine jabs are pushed to made sure immunization will be increased from its present number based on the Biden administration's initiative.

COVID-19 vaccine age limit has been expanded in New York

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, has authorized those from 30 and over, can get vaccinated from the virus. He made another announcement that allowed individuals from 16 to 29 to be included in the vaccination program to start April 6, as reported by ABCNews.

What can be given to teens from 16 to and 17-year-olds is the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, it is the only one that is prescribed for their age group. But, only the permission of parents is needed for those aged 16 to 17 before getting vaccinated at state-run sites.

Some exceptions will apply that do not need parental consent if teens are married or parents themselves. As a warning, getting these vaccines are not 100% proof, because it might entail risk for those under 16-years old.

Expand eligibility to get COVID-19 vaccines, according to New York state health officials, will significantly minimize COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations, particularly among millennials and Generation Xers in this age limit. Protecting not just the elderly and also younger age rages is important as well, to protect everyone from the CCP virus.

Ex-Clinton Adviser Calls the Proposed COVID-19 Vaccine Passports an End to Freedom

As of early January, those hospitalized for COVID-19 went from 8,600 to 4,400 patients in the state of New York. It is an indication the uptick in the CCP virus is getting less with more vaccine jabs given to more people.

But in mid-March, more new COVID-19 cases have increased and hospital treatment has leveled out as well according to data registered. There more COVID-19 patients in the younger age range who are hospitalized for treatment said the state Department of Health data given to the Associated Press.

The report cited that 1,146 patients with COVID-19, who identified last Sunday are up from ages of 20 to 54. An increase from 986 cases which is a 16% increase detected in early March by sources.

In New York hospitals, about half of COVID-19 patients are now under the age of 65, a significant increase from January and February, when that age group accounted for one-third of patients. New Yorkers aged 20 to 44 account for 13% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in the state, up from 7% in early January.

Most SUNY Empire State College students will be given the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is only one dose needed to be protected. This would allow them to finish all vaccinations, by the final semester in early May.

Other colleges that include Rutgers University and Cornell University will require all students to be vaccinated when coming back in the fall. But the SUNY has not said if vaccination is a prerequisite to entering the university.

Already there are 350,000 students getting emails to schedule getting the COVID-19 vaccine that falls into the prescribed age limit for vaccination, according to SUNY.



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@ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
DETROIT - You now have not one, but two chances to immerse yourself in the art of Vincent van Gogh as a second immersive exhibition has just been announced for Michigan.

A company from Montreal, in partnership with Michigans 313Presents, announced this morning it will bring Beyond van Gogh: An Immersive Experience to TCF Center, formerly Cobo Center, in Downtown Detroit this June. Tickets, which can be purchased here, are now on sale.

This announcement comes just says after Immersive van Gogh (see that announcement here) announced it will come to Detroit this summer, with the venue not yet revealed. The dates were just announced for Oct. 21 through Feb. 6 with pre-sale tickets, which can be found here, starting at $40.

Immersive van Gogh is produced by Lighthouse Immersive and was created by Italian installation artist Massimiliano Siccardi. It boasts more than 500,000 cubic feet of projections, 60,000 frames of video and 90,000,000 pixels.

Now, back to this mornings announcement of Beyond van Gogh. This exhibition features a similar a floor-to-ceiling hour-long walkthrough. It was created by French-Canadian Creative Director Mathieu St-Arnaud and his team at Montreals Normal Studio.

This exhibition will showcase more than 300 van Gogh masterpieces, including The Starry Night, Sunflowers, and Cafe Terrace at Night. Audio will play throughout the exhibition with van Goghs own words set to a symphonic score.

Tickets, which can be purchased here, are $32.99 for adults, $23.99 for ages 5-15, $28.99 for students, military and seniors, and $27.99 for groups of 8 or more. They are now on sale with a 10% discount for a limited time through April 11. Just use the discount code Beyond at checkout.

While we wait on the venue and dates for Immersive van Gogh, we do know that Beyond van Gogh will be at TCF Center from June 25 through August 15.

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Customers at Starbucks might soon be able to 'borrow' a cup for $1 instead of sipping their drinks in a single-use container.

The 'Borrow A Cup' trial is only taking place at five stores in the Seattle area through May 31, but it could be rolled out elsewhere if successful.

The company says the reusable cups are the latest strategy in Starbucks' stated goal of reducing waste by 50 percent by 2030.

In the test program, customers will have the option to order their beverage (hot or cold) in a reusable cup. If they do, they'll put down what the company is calling a $1 refundable deposit.

Starbucks is launching a new reusable cup pilot program in Seattle (file photo)

A customer can then give the cup back to Starbucks, which will use a third-party company that will collect used cups each day and 'professionally clean and sanitize them using commercial dishwashing equipment.'

The cups will then go back into circulation within 48 hours, Starbucks said.

If the customer decides to return their cup to Starbucks, they will receive a $1 credit to their Starbucks Rewards account, in addition to 10 Bonus Stars that can be applied to items like free beverages.

Each reusable cup, which is made from lightweight polypropylene plastic, would replace 30 disposable cups.

According to Starbucks, the cups are the same material used for cold cups currently, as well as lids for both cold and hot cups. It is recyclable in most cities and does not contain BPA.

The program is optional and customers will have the opportunity to order traditional beverages.

'We understand the interdependency of human and planetary Health, and we believe it is our responsibility to reduce single use cup waste,' said Michael Kobori, Starbucks Chief Sustainability Officer.

Starbucks is partnering with GO Box to professional sanitize and clean the cups, an important element of the program particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

GO Box will collect cups daily from Starbucks, clean and sanitize them with commercial dishwashing equipment, and have them back ready to use by stores within 48 hours.

They are also partnering with Ridwell, which offers to pick up the reusable cups from the front doors of people's homes.

Starbucks will be evaluating customer feedback as they look at 'scalable options to reduce single use cup waste,' the company said to DailyMail.com.

Starbucks is leading a larger effort to try to make their business and the world more sustainable.

The reusable cups are available for a $1 refundable deposit at select stores and will be professionally sanitized and cleaned upon their return after use (stock)

They have been allowing people to bring their own cup for a discount since the 1980s, although that program is currently suspended.

Starbucks Korea also just announced their plan to eliminate single-use cups from South Korean stores by 2025.

It will be the first major market to test the complete elimination of single-use cups from Starbucks stores.

MarketWatch reports that the reusable cup program is set to begin in that nation in July.

Reusable cups have also previously been launched in the United Kingdom, with those cups made from six single-use paper cups.

Starbucks has also transitioned many of their iced drinks towards cups with a sip spout, allowing for the potential elimination of plastic straws, though they are still available at locations.

Data from the Clean Water Fund estimates 120 billion disposable coffee cups are used in the United States each year.

Starbucks is no stranger to generating controversy with their cups around the holiday season, but the idea of piloting reusable cups is drawing a decidedly mixed reaction on social media.

One Twitter user didn't think it goes far enough: 'I love this idea, things need to change! But @Starbucks also needs to tell their employees to stop asking customers if they want a straw to go with their cold-cup lids!'

Dr. Vickie Carey, meanwhile, tweeted: 'I'm not a Starbucks fan, but seems to me, if they want to reduce waste; just have people bring their own cups and charge by the oz. to accommodate varying sizes.'

Others are not seeing the logic in rolling out this experiment during a global pandemic.

'Free Covid at select Seattle locations,' one user tweeted.
A woman who makes 3,000 a week by sharing racy photographs posing with dead animals on OnlyFans has claimed she posts the photos to raise money for conservation charities.

Michaela Fialova from Litomerice, Czech Republic, first went hunting a deer with her family at just 13-years-old, and became fascinated by trophy hunting after moving to South Africa in 2013.

Earlier this year, she began sharing 'sexy' snaps online, posing with dead crocodiles, giraffes and zebras in skimpy outfits and lacy underwear, and said she was 'overwhelmed' by how much she could earn through OnlyFans.

Her controversial images of trophy hunts and other kills have been widely discredited by the public, who have even called for Michaela to be banned from Africa entirely.

However, Michaela has defended her actions, and claimed she is only posting the snaps on the site in order to raise money for conservation efforts, saying: 'I plan to continue uploading as much content as possible so that I'm able to fund the veterinary care for animals in need because this is why I started off my journey in the first place - to help and protect the animals.'

Michaela Fialova (pictured) from Litomerice, Czech Republic, has raised almost 3,000 within a week of posting on OnlyFans

She makes 3,000 a week from OnlyFans photos of her with guns and dead animals and claims she only posts the racy snaps to raise money for conservation charities

Michaela (pictured) who is in interested in conserving animals, also enjoys hunting as an opportunity to taste new meats

Michela (pictured) said her friend Sandra, recommended that she tried raising money for her conservation team using Only Fans

Michaela said: 'I began hunting when I was thirteen-years-old when I went out with my family for the first time and hunted down a deer, which gave me a thrill like no other and since then, I've not been able to live without hunting.

'As time went on, I began getting interested in the conservation of animals by hunting and I studied this at university as it was my dream career as I got older.

'At age twenty-four, I moved to South Africa to start my career as a conservationist where a typical day involved studying the animal that we wanted to manage and then stalking out the herds to detect the weak and old members, which we then hunt down.

'You don't want overpopulation - especially in the wild - as it can lead to a struggle for water and food if there's too many of the same species, which is why I do what I do.'

Michaela (pictured) who has been hunting since killing a deer at age 13, has killed zebras, giraffes, crocodiles and impalas

Michela (pictured) can spend up to three days stalking animals to decide the weakest in the herd to kill

For Michaela, the thrill she gets from hunting is like no other and she enjoys being able to taste new meats as well as conserving animals that are in need due to disease or over-population.

She has had extensive rifle training to ensure that she can shoot the animal in one hit without causing them too much pain and claims that she is using her skills for helping animals, rather than just for fun.

A typical day hunting involves studying the species of animal that needs population management and stalking them for three days, until they can detect the weaker members of the herd to kill.

She continued: 'Once we detect the members of the herd to cull, we then detect members that have strong genetics and therefore need to be taken care of for sustainable population growth.

Michaela (pictured) made just under 3,000 from posting 'sexy' pictures in her underwear on OnlyFans in a week

'As well as weeding out disease and overpopulation, I also protect animals such as rhinos from poachers.

'We do this by shooting down the rhino with a dart which puts them to sleep and then we proceed to dehorn them.'

Over the course of a week, around 50 per cent of the population can be hunted which will sustain the overall population for the future.

She added: 'I know some people might see this as cruel, but it enables the rhinos to populate successfully without being badly hurt by poachers in the future.'

Michaela (pictured) who has had extensive rifle training, has been widely discredited by the public for her trophy kills

Michaela said this form of conservation can be expensive for the reservations, explaining: 'This process is costly and can cost anywhere between three-thousand to seven-thousand pounds per rhino, which used to be fine when the private reservation I work for used to have an income from commercial hunting - but due to covid, this has declined.'

Michaela was trying to find a way to make some extra money to help fund her conservation team when her friend, Sandra, 32, suggested OnlyFans.

She said: 'As my hunting pictures have become popular over time, I used to make money from sponsorships which I donated to the private reservation, but this has also stopped and I was at loss thinking of ways to make some extra cash.

'My friend, Sandra, suggested to me a few months ago about OnlyFans because I had already adopted the nickname 'sexy hunter' because I post risque pictures on my social media, so I thought why not post the same photos on there.'

Michaela (pictured) said she protects rhinos from poachers by dehorning them, after shooting them with a dart to put them to sleep

The subscription based social media platform intrigued Michaela because she had modelled for male magazines previously.

She set up her OnlyFans in March 2021 and in the course of a week, made just under 3,000 from posting 'sexy' pictures in her underwear that she had already posted on social media.

She explained: 'I had no idea that I could make so much money from one platform which was mind blowing to me, but I was over-the-moon that I was finally able to donate money to my reservation which desperately needed some new tactical vests for some rangers.

'Now, I plan to continue uploading as much content as possible so that I'm able to fund the veterinary care for animals in need as this is why I started off my journey in the first place - to help and protect the animals.'

Michaela (pictured) said her method of conserving rhinos can cost between 3,000 - 7,000 per animal

Michaela (pictured) revealed the money she previously earned from sponsorships for hunting pictures has stopped

As well as the vests, she claimed she plans to spend the money on veterinary care for safari animals in need.

Michaela has been criticized online for her snaps, with one comment she received saying; 'I hate you, how can you sit there so happy when that animal has lost its life' and 'You're a murderer'.

However, she explained the words don't bother her because she feels hunting is important to the preservation of wildlife population.

'I haven't had any 'creepy' requests so far and most of my subscribers are very respectful, but I have had some comments from outsiders who don't seem to approve of my new business venture.

Michaela (pictured) said she plans to upload as much as possible, to fund veterinary care for animals in need

'I've had comments such as, 'You're seriously going to sell yourself on OnlyFans' directed towards me from people who want to make fun of what I'm doing, but I don't care as I used to pose for men's magazines and this is no different to that.

'In terms of hunting, I have had some hurtful comments such as, 'You're a murderer' and 'You're so selfish, I hate you' directed towards me which hurt at first, but over time I've realised that these people know nothing about what I do and if they did their research, they would realise that not hunting would harm wildlife so much more.'

Michaela continued: 'I try my best to give the public true information so that I can prevent emotional reactions such as this, but people do get carried away sometimes, even to the point where people were calling on me to be banned from Africa for good.

'I know my pictures of trophy hunts such as zebras, lions, giraffes and other animals can be upsetting, but I do this for practice and to give these old animals a new lease of life such as for food for humans.

'I believe the biggest animal I've hunted to date was a one-thousand-pound antelope which I hunted for meat and fed to an entire starving village, which is one of my biggest accomplishments.

Michaela (pictured) said the hardest thing about hunting is seeing the animals in pain, however they hunt only those that need to be killed

'Despite this, one of the hardest things about hunting is killing the animals and seeing them in pain. I've trained often for many years to ensure that I can complete long range shooting in one shot so that the animal doesn't have to suffer much, but it's very hard to see when you make an error or wound the animal.

'I know that we kill animals that need to be killed and save the ones that need to be saved and it's all part of the job that I just have to overcome.

'My message to anyone who doesn't like my hunting or OnlyFans, is that you can hate me if you wish, but I'm doing all I can to protect our wildlife so that we can have a healthy population of species for years to come.

'It's my life and it's part of my journey to educate people on why hunting can be used for good.'
Acclaimed comedian Dave Chappelle stayed on the radar during 2020 with several specials and appearances throughout the year. His 8:46 video ruled YouTube in terms of viewership stats, and his guest spot on Saturday Night Live drew in millions last November.

Behind the scenes, hes been working quietly to build a legacy in his hometown of Yellow Springs, Ohio where he has plans to launch a comedy club. And Chappelle recently revealed his interest in one film genre that hed be open to tackling if the opportunity presented itself.

Dave Chappelle at 2018 Toronto International Film Festival | Michael Tran/FilmMagic/Getty Images

Dave Chappelle is known for comedic films

Those who know Dave Chappelles backstory may already be aware that hes been in the business since 1987, and his climb includes an array of TV and film roles. Before Chappelles Show skyrocketed him to international fame, he was in more than one dozen movies.

In the past, fans might have recalled seeing him in Robin Hood: Men in Tights, The Nutty Professor, Half Baked, and Youve Got Mail. More recently, Chappelle had a part in Chi-Raq and starred alongside his friend Bradley Cooper in A Star Is Born.

Most of his movie roles have been in comedies with a few dramas sprinkled in, and hes been limiting the amount of scripted features on his plate. Perhaps that may change.

Being on the set of A STAR IS BORN almost felt like a jam session. There was these palpable vibes. Everyone really liked each other. It was a very unique experience in my career  @DaveChappelle #TIFF18 pic.twitter.com/hrlmBzY6SH  TIFF (@TIFF_NET) September 9, 2018

RELATED: Why Dave Chappelle Turned Down Role In Forrest Gump and Later Regretted It

Chappelle wants to try his hand at Nollywood

Outside the glamour, influence, and heavyweight vibes of Hollywood lie several major motion picture industries in other countries. Bollywood has its own stars and series of multiple successes, and the same goes for Nollywood, Nigerias bustling movie industry. The latter caught Dave Chappelles attention.

During a chat with Naomi Campbell on her vlog, No Filter With Naomi, he spoke about his lack of interest in being a movie star. Chappelle said he loves stand-up and the element of freedom that comes with it. Hed rather stick to that format. However, he does have an idea for a Nollywood film.

He told Campbell hes been binge watching Nollywood action movies and has developed an appreciation for their ingenuity. Im kind of fascinated by that. If I could, I would do one of those movies, said Chappelle.

If I can find a director  and Im not going to make a big budget Nollywood movie. Im gonna do it like them. Make The Matrix for $48, he continued. He talked about how funny and engaging the movies are and hed want to make something in the same vein.

If I partnered up with one of these directors and said, What could you make me for $100,000? Id probably be amazed at what theyd be able to do, Chappelle said.

He reiterated how much he would love to work with a resourceful, imaginative Nollywood director.

Join @DaveChappelle and I for a very special 1 Year Anniversary episode of #nofilterwithnaomi, #tomorrow, Tuesday, April 6th at 3PM EST. See you then! #NoFilter #Tuesday pic.twitter.com/BgWuhU83N9  Naomi Campbell (@NaomiCampbell) April 5, 2021

Chappelle is also game to open a comedy club in Africa

The comedian also touched on Steve Wonders desire to move to Ghana and how it inspired him to want to make a similar move. Chappelle said Campbell connected him to a renowned architect to build an additional home on the African continent. They have something in motion.

He said wants to at least rent a space over there and I hope to open a comedy club there cause I heard theres none. Fans should stay on the lookout for any potential film or venue-related projects from Chappelle that sprout up in Africa.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

On the sidelines of the official visit of His Majesty the Kings Representative for Humanitarian Work and Youth Affairs, HH Shaikh Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa, to Belgrade, the first meeting of political consultations between the Kingdom of Bahrain and the Republic of Serbia was held today.

The session was chaired by the Undersecretary for International Affairs, Dr. Shaikh Abdullah bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, and the Assistant Minister for Bilateral Cooperation, Ambassador Vladimir Maric, with the participation of the Assistant Minister for Multilateral Cooperation, Ambassador Aleksandar Tasic, and the Assistant Minister for Security Policy, Ambassador Diana Ivancic.

During the meeting, the Undersecretary of International Affairs welcomed the successful visit of the Serbian President to the Kingdom of Bahrain, which took place last month and resulted in positive outcomes towards growing bilateral partnership between the two friendly countries.

He referred to in this regard the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding on political consultation between the two countries' foreign ministries, as a pivotal step that reflects the constant efforts of the two friendly countries in the framework of strengthening bilateral relations in various fields of cooperation.

He affirmed that the foreign policy of the Kingdom of Bahrain, led by His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, is based on the principles of positive cooperation and maximizing mutual benefits with all friendly countries, indicating that the Kingdom is a promising market for investments in the areas of the smart economy, vital sectors, renewable energy, tourism and other productive activities.

He also called for intensifying joint cooperation to confront the repercussions of COVID-19, reviewing in this regard the distinguished efforts and effective measures of Team Bahrain, led by His Royal Highness the Crown Prince and Prime Minister, Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa.

For his part, the Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs for Multilateral Affairs expressed his country's aspiration to develop relations of cooperation and joint coordination with the Kingdom of Bahrain in all fields, wishing the Kingdom continued progress and prosperity.

The meeting witnessed discussion of developing areas of bilateral cooperation in the interest of the two friendly countries and peoples as well as discussing the current situation and developments on the regional and international arenas of common interest.
Humanity can achieve a bright future by insisting on inclusive institutions, aiming a public-private capital multiplier at sustainable development, and empowering local communities.

Powering Prosperity: A Citizens Guide to Shaping the 21st Century, the critically acclaimed book by Dr. Indranil Ghosh, has been awarded a prestigious Axiom Business Book Award, earning a silver medal in the International Business and Globalization category.

The Axiom Business Book Awards are the largest and most respected critical guidepost for business books, and are intended to bring increased recognition to exemplary business books and their creators. Previous medalists include Nobel laureate Robert Shiller, former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Pulitzer Prize winner Doris Kearns Goodwin, philanthropist and investor Raymond Dalio to name just a few.

Since the Global Financial Crisis, we have been approaching a crossroads in modern human history. The top 1 percent of people own more than half of the worlds wealth, while hundreds of millions suffer in extreme poverty. Governments quarrel over the politics of environmental policy, even as climate change poses an existential threat to life on the planet. And communities hollowed out by the forces of globalization still struggle to stand on their feet.

In May 2020, at the height of the Covid crisis, Dr Ghosh published Powering Prosperity as a blueprint for humanity to overcome these challenges. The central message of the book could not have been more timely - that humanity can achieve a bright future by insisting on inclusive institutions, aiming a public-private capital multiplier at sustainable development, and empowering local communities.

In Powering Prosperity, Dr. Ghosh brings together his decades of experience as a sustainable investor, entrepreneur, policy advisor, and scientist, to provide a new framework for understanding the worlds challenges and the choices societies must make to address them.

About Indranil Ghosh

Dr. Ghosh is CEO of Tiger Hill Capital and Senior Advisor at Cube Infrastructure Managers. He was previously Head of Strategy at Mubadala, Abu Dhabis Sovereign Investment and Development Fund, and held senior roles at Bridgewater Associates and McKinsey & Co. He holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from MIT and an MA in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University.

Dr Indranil Ghosh

indranil.ghosh@tigerhillcapital.com
CEO of Swedish telecom giant Ericsson Borje Ekholm answers journalists' questions after presenting the company's fourth quarter and 2019 full year result at the Ericsson headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden, on Jan. 24, 2020. (Fredrik Sandberg/TT News Agency/AFP via Getty Images)

Ericssons Backing of Huawei Shows How Companies Become Hostages to the CCP

News Analysis

Telecommunications giant Ericsson didnt enjoy the benefits of a ban of its rival Huawei in Sweden; instead, its been asking the Swedish government to reconsider the ban. An analysis suggests the profits gained from the Chinese market left the company susceptible to coercion by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

As the United States and the UK led the campaign to exclude CCP military-related companies from deals with 5G networks globally, the top beneficiary of that decision, Ericsson, reported net profits (pdf) soared to SEK 17.6 billion ($2.1 billion) in 2020 versus SEK 1.8 billion ($215 million) in 2019.

However, Ericsson Chief Executive Borje Ekholm lobbied Swedish authorities to ease the ban on Huawei. The text was obtained by a Swedish newspaper, The Local, in January 2021.

Ekholm told The Local in the interview that 8 percent of Ericssons revenue was from the Chinese market but only 1 percent from Swedens.

The corporations 2020 report included a statement of risk from Huaweis ban in Sweden and listed 11 potential adverse impacts, including reduced or lost market share.

He called the decision a complication for Ericsson.

Last year, Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies Corp. was hit with frequent setbacks, even in small European countries. Sweden barred Huawei and ZTE from its 5G network on Oct. 20, 2020, for security concerns.

Two days later, the regimes ambassador Gui Congyou explicitly threatened in the interview that Swedish companies operating in China would be negatively affected even though he refused to use the word retaliation.

Elisabeth Braw, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, described the approach the CCP used in Ericssons case as a corporate hostage-taking in an analysis on Foreign Policy.

Through economic coercion, CCP authorities advance their political agenda globally.

Western governments face losing major companies or losing their independence from business interest, Braw said.

The CCP understands even minor curbs provokes large multinationals and business associations to lobby their governments for foreign-policy change, Luke Patey, the senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, wrote on Foreign Policy.

HSBCs Dilemma

London-based global banking giant HSBC, which profits grow primarily from Asia and Hong Kong, was caught by the Party taking a political stance in Hong Kong in the summer of 2020.

Pro-democracy protesters sit outside HSBC in the Kowloon district of Hong Kong on Aug. 11, 2019. (Anthony Wallace/AFP via Getty Images)

HSBC hoped to remain neutral and silent on politics during the first few days when the regime imposed the national security law in Hong Kong on May 28. The law was viewed as a tool to crush political dissent to Beijings one-party rule. Slashed by the Partys mouthpiece, the banks Asia-Pacific head Peter Wongs pro-Beijing petition signing finally came on June 3.

The state-run Beijing Daily issued the warning titled Swindling Clients, HSBC Would Eventually Lose All the Clients on the Chinese social media platform on June 1. The next day, CCPs official newspaper, Peoples Daily, forwarded the commentary.

It threatened HSBC by saying there was no chance to gain profits from Chinese people on land controlled by the Party while standing on the side of Western countries.

The article also blamed HSBC for conducting an internal investigation into Huawei, which the U.S. Department of Justice used as evidence to bring charges against the companys CFO Meng Wanzhou.

HSBCs endorsement did not appease the mouthpieces. HSBCs silence on the issue in the past week is worth noting. In this sense, Wongs support comes late, the English-language mouthpiece of the CCP, Global times, said on June 4.

The situation for HSBC was more serious. Over 90 percent of profits in the retail banking and wealth management unit were generated in Hong Kong in the first six months of 2019.

In February 2020, it announced that it was expanding its Asian presence and cutting of its operations in Europe and the United States. In 2020, almost 100 branches were shuttered.

Later in 2020, HSBC froze the account belonging to Ted Hui, a key figure in Hong Kongs democracy movement, and that of his wife and parents, shortly after Hong Kong police accused him of misappropriating funds and money laundering. The former member of the legislative council and his family arrived in the UK in December 2020 after fleeing Hong Kong.

His account was partially unfrozen for a short time, and then it was frozen. HSBC came under fire outside of China for complying with the regime.

The pressure HSBC suffered exemplifies the unavoidable circumstance any corporation will face that wants a piece of the mainland Chinese market, Fan Yu, an expert in finance and economics, wrote on June 10, 2020.

The implication being that global companies will become increasingly embroiled in a rift between the Chinese regime and the West.

Censoring Academic Publications

The CCP has taken the same approach to the academic worldParty control through the same economic approach.

Wu Jo-hsuan, a Taiwanese doctor, found herself facing a dilemmaeither adding the word China after Taiwan in her academic paper or being rejected for publication in the medical journal Eye and Vision.

In September. 2020, the editorial team at Eye and Vision, a publication by Springer Nature a company based in the UK, explained to Wu the nationality requirement is the editorial policy, according to a report by Radio Free Asia (RFA) on Sep. 1, 2020.

In a written response to RFA, Springer Nature Group explained that the Eye and Vision operate under a separate set of editorial guidelines from its other publications. Eye and Vision works in partnership with Wenzhou Medical University in China.

According to the Affiliated Wenzhou Medical Universitys official website, Eye and Vision is actually sponsored by the state-funded Wenzhou Medical University.

Early in 2017, Springer Nature, whose publications include Nature and Scientific American, was criticized for bowing to the CCP. The SpringerLink website deleted articles from its mainland site with topics the Party considers sensitive, including Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, and human rights, although it claimed to be the only way to go through the regimes sophisticated online censorship mechanism.

Springer Nature explained in a statement to the Associated Press at the time that if it had not selectively blocked access to the politically sensitive articles, access to its SpringerLink website inside China could have been cut by Chinas Great Firewall.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
[April 07, 2021] India Gets FREE National Autism Helpline - 9100 181 181

- Launched by Pinnacle Blooms Network to establish a one-stop communication centre for autism-related enquiries in the country HYDERABAD, India, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Autism is spreading at an epidemic rate with more than 3 crore autistic children/people out there currently, as per WHO. Autism Spectrum Disorder is a life-long Neurological and Psychological disorder that has been around for 104 years. Modern science has still been unable to establish a root cause or reason for Autism, leaving this disorder with no known medicine or cure. Autism symptoms can be identfied as early as 12-14 months age in most autistic children. People suffering with Autism usually face issues such as Sensorial malfunction, Cognital developmental delays, Speech delays, resulting them withdraw from society. Depending on others even for their day to day life, not being self-sufficient, is leading to untimely deaths within 17-32 years; as per the research of University of Wisconsin. Parents, Family members of autistic children can now be rest assured and dial India's National Autism Helpline 9100 181 181 to get FREE professional guidance, assistance on Autism. They can receive free professional advices from expert Doctors or Therapists regarding their children's physical growth, behavioral and developmental changes, health-wellness issues and find useful solutions to manage them. This would help lives of autistic kids better with further inclusion in schools and society at large. India's FREE National Autism Helpline 9100 181 181 can also be reached out by Teachers, Schools, curious minds to ask questions, get information about anything/everything related to Autism Spectrum Disorder. Through qualitative, integrated therapies such as Speech Therapy, Occupational Therapy, ABA/ Behavioral Therapy, Special Education, Hydro Therapy, Yoga Therapy, Dance Therapy, Music Therapy; one can impart the skills of holding up sensorial break-downs, Life skills to be able to stand upon their own feet and carry-on to have their own life and even stand a chance to have famly further. Any information related to this can be availed by calling India's National Autism Helpline 9100 181 181.



9100 181 181 - India's FREE National Autism Helpline is designed, operated by Pinnacle Blooms Network - one of the leading Autism Therapy Centres Network, whose core purpose is to empower crores of kids/ people with neurological, psychological disorders to be self-sufficient, to be part of mainstream society, to stand a chance at life, career, family, and bring smiles into their families. "With an experience of conducting 7,00,000+ exclusive one on one autism therapy services across our network of centres PAN India over past half-decade time, we have launched this Free National Autism Helpline - 9100 181 181. Hoping to see crores of people make use of these authentic, professional services in making their kids lives get better, making their families better, making our society autistic-friendly, voiding the untimely deaths of crores of autistic kids/people," said Dr. Sreeja Reddy. Saripalli, Founder, Chief Strategist, Pinnacle Blooms Network.

About Pinnacle Blooms Pinnacle Blooms Network is special Edu-HealthCare unit of Prestigious StartUp India award owned Bharath HealthCare P LIMITED. Visit https://bhclpl.org for more information. About Bharath HealthCare P LIMITED Bharath HealthCare P LIMITED is Health, Wellness division of prestigious Kotii Group of Technological Ventures R&D P LIMITED. Find out more at https://kgvpl.com Youtube Play List: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIaQDEzfECk&list=PL0lwT9W0zVpgcVGtxrUeDtD58JtrH00PK https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8aJoDiuaIY&list=PL0lwT9W0zVpiLhGbr6newoQBl5-Rlcs8G https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpLkt0MVbPA&list=PL0lwT9W0zVpjuOdR_87e4mDEdC3zOnmlD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpLkt0MVbPA&list=PL0lwT9W0zVpjuOdR_87e4mDEdC3zOnmlD Contact : Prudhvi Matsa

Director

Bharath HealthCare P LIMITED

care@pinnacleblooms.org

Helpline number - 91-00-181-181

Mobile - +91-7989589760 Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1482631/Autism_Therapy_Helpline.jpg

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Django Unchained (April 24)

Quentin Tarantino picked up an Academy Award for best original screenplay (his second, after Pulp Fiction) and directed Christoph Waltz to a trophy for best supporting actor (his second, after Inglourious Basterds) for this ultraviolent, wickedly entertaining pastiche of spaghetti western, Southern melodrama and broad, Blazing Saddles-style comedy. Jamie Foxx stars as the title character, a riff on the protagonists of countless Italian westerns of the 1960s, here reimagined as a freed slave looking to rescue his wife from a Mississippi plantation. Waltz is the bounty hunter who assists him on his quest, and Leonardo DiCaprio is the plantation owner who proves to be a tricky target.

Stream it here

The Sapphires (April 26)

Four young Aborigine women become an unlikely but effective R&B quartet in this musical drama from the director Wayne Blair, inspired by a true story. Chris ODowd (Bridesmaids) co-stars as an Irish music promoter who hears the group singing country songs at a talent competition and becomes convinced that they could make good money touring bases in Vietnam, belting Motown tunes. It sounds like a simple rags-to-riches jukebox musical, but The Sapphires has much to say beyond its lyrics, following thoughtful and often heart-rending threads on race, identity, colonialism and war. And beyond that, the songs are divine.

Stream it here

Blackfish (April 30)

This harrowing documentary from the director Gabriela Cowperthwaite details the practices of the SeaWorld theme parks that keep killer whales in captivity, focusing in particular on the story of Tilikum, an orca who was involved in the deaths of three people while kept at SeaWorld Orlando. In often grisly detail, Cowperthwaite and her team examine attack footage and interview employees and witnesses, investigating the deaths with the precision of a true crime film, albeit one where the question is not who did it, but why.
Mexicos Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard on April 7 announced that the countrys health regulator Cofepris has authorised the emergency use of Indias COVID-19 vaccine COVAXIN. While taking to Twitter, Ebrard said that with a timely decision to authorise COVAXIN, the options for vaccinations against coronavirus in Mexico are expanding. In a following tweet, the Mexican minister also informed that the country has now approved six vaccines, including AstraZeneca, Cansino, Covaxine, Pfizer, Sinovac and Sputnik V, against the deadly virus.

As per the Johns Hopkins University tally as of April 7, 2,256,509 have been infected with novel coronavirus with 2,256,509 casualties in Mexico. According to the Associated Press, so far, the country has received 14.7 million doses of several brands of vaccines and administered almost 9 million shots. Experts say that the number of people vaccinated is a small amount, considering the countrys population of 126 million.

Indias Vaccine Maitri

Meanwhile, besides administering these vaccines to the citizens of India, the Centre has also exported them to other countries under the Vaccine Maitri programme. Vaccine Maitri programme that was started around a month ago, aims to help poor countries amid the global pandemic. In this brief period, the country has got delivered around 45.6 million doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine manufactured by the Serum Institute of India (SII) and Bharat Biotech's indigenous vaccine, of which 38.47 million doses were commercial supplies and 7.12 million doses were granted to around 45 countries.

Neighbouring Bangladesh, which received 9 million doses of COVID-vaccines- 7 million doses as commercial supplies and 2 million doses as grant assistance, and an additional 5 million and 2 million doses of commercial supplies on January 25 and February 22, is the major recipient. Morocco emerged as the second major recipient with commercial supplies of 2 million, 4 million and 1 million doses of the vaccine on January 22, February, 11 and February 24, respectively. Ghana, Nigeria, Guyana, Guatemala, Tajikistan are some of the recent beneficiaries of this programme. Some other countries that have received India's gift of vaccines in the past include Brazil, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Bhutan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.

(Image: AP/PTI)
Ivey is also known for signing the nation's strictest abortion ban into law. Brynn Anderson/AP

Alabama Governor Kay Ivey says the state's mask mandate will end on Friday.

She said people should still wear masks to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.

She called the new phase "Safer Apart," and said it would include "slimmed down" restrictions.

See more stories on Insider's business page.

Alabama Governor Kay Ivey has confirmed that the state's mask mandate would end on Friday.

She announced the end of the mask mandate during a press conference about the state's handling of COVID-19 alongside State Health Officer Scott Harris on Wednesday.

Ivey, a Republican, said that while there will be no government mandate for masks, she will still wear one around other people and encourage others to do the same to help prevent the spread of the virus.

She called the new phase "Safer Apart," adding that it will include "greatly slimmed down" restrictions.

Read more: Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte's COVID-19 diagnosis underscores scary reality of lacking immunity as most - but not all - governors are now vaccinated

Read the original article on Business Insider
File photo

In response to articles on cancer and death with dignity, I could write another book. As a physician, I started becoming involved in resolving many of the issues discussed by starting an organization in 1978, called ECaP; short for Exceptional Cancer Patients. My first book was Love, Medicine & Miracles; I have been writing and teaching and running support groups for 50 years.

Death with dignity is a natural process, and when people are empowered they do not have trouble dying. My dad died laughing, due to stories my mother was telling, including the fact he lost a coin toss and had to take her out on their first date. He chose the day of his death and so we had a big party in his hospital room for all those who could come. He had said to my mother, I need to get out of here. I explained to her it was his body he was talking about and not his bed. No one in our family has had trouble dying. When ready, they went to sleep and died peacefully in their sleep.
Keanu Reeves was spotted arriving at Berlin's Potsdam Babelsberg studios on Wednesday to work on latest film John Wick 4.

The 56-year-old actor wrapped up warm and looked jovial as he locked his car and headed into work.

Reeves donned a black coat over skinny black pants, with a dual-tone beanie and a comfortable scarf.

Ready for work: Keanu Reeves was spotted arriving at Berlin 's Potsdam Babelsberg studios on Wednesday to work on latest film John Wick 4

The bearded star looked cheerful as he left the parking lot.

The upcoming feature's cast and crew are currently prepping to begin principal photography on the future entry in the action-thriller series in June.

Development on the fourth entry in the action thriller franchise officially began shortly after the release of its third film, John Wick: Chapter 3  Parabellum, in May of 2019.

In April of last year, series director Chad Stahelski spoke to Collider and noted that the project's creative team had set their bar much higher for the upcoming film from its inception.

Arrival: The 56-year-old actor wrapped up warm and looked jovial as he locked his car and headed into work

On set: Reeves donned a black coat over skinny black pants, with a dual-tone beanie and a comfortable scarf

'We submitted an idea or thematic [plan] and it was really big. So, we're talking about doing a little bit more than a [John Wick 4], or something like that, and trying to develop that,' he said.

The 52-year-old filmmaker also expressed that the development team had a relatively fleshed-out story in mind for the forthcoming feature and that they were glad to have a roadmap of sorts.

Stahelski said, 'I'm in a happy place where we are in development...we're in a place where we know what we want do and where we want to do it.'

The director then remarked that the planned film would not lose its action-focused core, as he and creative partner David Leitch regularly looked back on their past roles for creative inspiration.

Onward and upward: During an interview with Collider, Chad Stahelski noted that the creative team behind the series was attempting to raise the bar for its fourth entry

Prepping for success: The series' director also noted that the team had fleshed out a concept for the upcoming film, and expressed, 'we know what we want do and where we want to do it'; Reeves is seen performing in 2019's John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum

'I think Dave and I were both good at what we did as stuntmen and as choreographers. So, we don't want to lose that,' he stated.

Production for the fourth entry in the franchise will primarily take place in Berlin and Paris, with New York City and Japan serving as additional filming locations.

The crew behind the film originally intended to shoot back-to-back for another John Wick feature, although this idea was later shot down, leaving the possibility of a fifth movie in limbo.

The fourth entry in the action franchise was originally scheduled to make its debut sometime this year, although the onset of the global pandemic forced the release date to be pushed back to May 27th, 2022.

The time change was partially done to avoid a potential conflict with Reeves' upcoming science fiction-action movie, the currently untitled fourth film in the Matrix series.

To those who wait: The fourth entry in the action-thriller franchise was supposed to make its debut this year, although it was eventually pushed back to May 27th, 2022; Reeves is spotted in the series' first film. which premiered in 2014

Several spinoffs in the John Wick franchise are also currently in the development stage.

A female-centric film entitled Ballerina, which will serve to expand the universe of the original movies, has been worked on ever since 2017, and in May of last year, it was announced that Chloe Grace Moretz was being eyed for the lead role.

A television series entitled The Continental has also been in the development process for three years and will focus on the in-universe hotel of the same name.

The forthcoming show was given its official order in 2018 and it is set to premiere on Starz in the near future.

Reeves is set to reprise his iconic role as the series' titular character for The Continental.
The Telecommunication and Posts Regulatory Authority (ARPT) of the Republic of Guinea and the company Global Voice Group (GVG), a provider of ICT and RegTech solutions, have announced a partnership relating to the deployment of what is described as a leading-edge mobile and digital ecosystem regulation platform in Guinea.

The project encompasses such aspects of regulation as the regulatory management of mobile and digital identities, interconnectivity, data services and mobile money. GVG will be responsible for the deployment of the platform, as well as for the related technical operations, over a five-year period, at the end of which the company will transfer the platform's ownership to the ARPT.

Using big data analytics, GVG monitors, collects and analyses the data originating from crucial economic sectors, and transforms them into actionable information. Its main offices are in Spain and South Africa.

The general purpose of this GVG platform is ambitious: to promote and sustain trust and inclusiveness in the mobile and digital ecosystem for the benefit of all Guineans. To achieve this, the platform implements data-driven regulatory technologies that will guarantee regulatory compliance in this ecosystem, as well as the alignment of the ecosystem with the state's digital development and inclusion guidelines.

The installation of the digital platform will begin on 1 June of this year. The partners suggest that this is the most ambitious project to date for the digitisation of the countrys regulatory tools.
An early innovator in healthcare communications with corporate experience in areas such as sustainability and DE&I, Cathy will drive the firm's evolution while building on its legacy as a sophisticated and trusted counselor with deep multi-sector expertise. Founder Ken Makovsky is concurrently stepping into the role of Chairman and CEO, and will focus on the firm's business development efforts and advise on key client relations.

"I'm excited to be returning to an independent, growth-minded firm at a time when having the freedom and ability to adapt to meet client needs is more crucial than ever," said Cathy Fink, President at Makovsky. "Makovsky has a stellar legacy of providing knowledgeable, senior-level counsel to clients navigating complex and constantly shifting communications ecosystems. I look forward to expanding our offerings as we continue to provide that same high level of customized service in the years ahead, especially as the lines between advertising, PR and marketing continue to blur."

"Cathy is a dynamic leader with global cross-functional expertise, and her experiences as an entrepreneur as well as in the big agency world make her an ideal partner for all practice areas here at Makovsky. We are delighted to have her on board as we explore the grey areas in today's communications world, and we are invigorated by the prospect of what lies ahead for the firm and our clients," said Makovsky Founder, Chairman and CEO Ken Makovsky. "She moves easily from patient advocacy in healthcare to multi-sector corporate reputation situations and is a trusted counselor to C-Suite executives across the healthcare, marketing and communications industries."

An accomplished marketing and communications executive, Cathy is a firm believer that communications rooted in pragmatism, simplicity and cultural sensitivity can catalyze sustainable change in systems across business sectors. Her pioneering vision for what is now known as the "consumerization of health" was the driving force behind the creation of The Eden Communications Group, the patient education company she co-founded in 1991 and later sold to Omnicom. Her extensive healthcare experience and service-centric approach to management is a natural fit for Makovsky, which prioritizes an industry-first approach, deep specialization, and engaged senior counsel.

Most recently, Cathy was an Executive Vice President with the global public relations firm Porter Novelli Inc., where she oversaw the agency's portfolio of work for Johnson & Johnson and Boehringer Ingelheim. Her experience working at the intersection of healthcare and technology includes the recent launch of one of the world's largest direct-to-consumer virtual clinical trials in a partnership with Apple and J&J. She has previously worked as a consultant, with clients that included private foundations, non-profit organizations, pharmaceutical companies, healthcare marketing agencies, allied healthcare providers, and emerging provider organizations.

About Makovsky

Makovsky is one of the world's leading and oldest independent integrated communications firms. Makovsky has been recognized as "Agency of the Year" and Founder Ken Makovsky "PR Professional of the Year" and "Blogger of the Year" multiple times by industry organizations. Originally founded in 1980, the firm has long been an independent-minded mainstay of New York's public relations world, reliably informing consumers, investors, policymakers and other stakeholders for over four decades. It is recognized for its deep specialization in health, financial and professional services, technology, and energy.

Clients have ranged from seed-level startups and publicly-traded multinational corporations to nonprofits and Fortune 500 blue-chip names. Ken Makovsky also founded IPREX, a global partnership of independent public relations firms in 30 countries and 40 cities in the U.S.

For media inquiries, please contact:

Leah Cox

Makovsky

(212) 508-9667

[email protected]

SOURCE Makovsky & Company
Provincial budget

Finance Minister Scott Fielding reads the 2020 budget in the legislature. (Ruth Bonneville / Winnipeg Free Press files)

Afternoon announcement: Finance Minister Scott Fielding will deliver the provincial budget in the legislative chamber this afternoon. The Free Press will have full coverage. Fielding announced another significant piece of the Tory governments financial plan Tuesday. Carol Sanders reports. Read More

Deficit forecast: The province will release its third-quarter financial results for the 2020-21 fiscal year today, including an increase in the deficit forecast from $2.05 billion to $2.08 billion. Read More

Mayors money wants: Mayor Brian Bowman announced his wish list for the budget on Tuesday. Joyanne Pursaga reports. Read More

What's happening today

The Brandon courthouse (The Brandon Sun files)

Court case continues: The Crown is scheduled to continue calling witnesses at the faint hope clause hearing for Michael Bridges, who is seeking early parole for the murder of Erin Chorney in Brandon in 2002. Prosecutor Mark Lafreniere cross-examined Bridges on Tuesday and asked him about incidents where he said the inmate acted inappropriately in prison. Read More

Weather

Your forecast: Mainly sunny with a high of 16 C, wind chill as low as -5 this morning and peak winds from the northeast at 20 km/h.

In case you missed it

(iStock / Getty Images)

Grade retention rapped: Despite concerns raised about a "no fail" practice in public schools during the province's education review, superintendents say making students repeat grades is rarely in their best interest. Maggie Macintosh reports. Read More

Community shut out of Commons: A new grassroots group says Filipino-Canadians need a voice in the House of Commons. MP Rey Pagtakhan represented the Liberals in a Winnipeg-area riding from 1997 to 2004, but no Filipino-Canadian has followed in his footsteps. Dylan Robertson reports. Read More

On this date

On April 7, 1945: The Winnipeg Free Press reported that Allied forces were nearing Bremen and Hannover in Germany; British and U.S. troops advanced a mile-an-hour breakthrough that took them past Nazi forces. Meanwhile, Canadian troops advanced from Holland into Germany to within 47 miles of the North Sea port of Emden, and other troops in Holland threatened an escape route for 50,000 German troops. Vessels of the British Pacific fleet were damaged by Japanese aircraft in an attack near the Sakishima islands.

Today's front page

Get the full story: Read today's e-edition of the Winnipeg Free Press Read More
Nokia has announced the conclusion of a multi-year patent cross-license agreement with Lenovo, that includes multiple technologies in the cellular and multimedia space. The agreement will require Lenovo to pay a net balancing amount to Nokia for these patents, and it resolves all pending patent litigation between the two companies.

Nokia often licenses out their patents to other companies based on the fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. The company has around 20,000 patent families, and has more than 129 billion invested in R&D over the past two decades alone.

The terms of this particular agreement between Lenovo and Nokia are confidential however.

Commenting on the agreement, Jenni Lukander, President of Nokia Technologies, said:

We are delighted to have reached an agreement with Lenovo. The agreement reflects Nokias decades-long investments in R&D and contributions to cellular and multimedia standards. We appreciate, and very much respect, the constructive spirit Lenovo brought to our negotiations and look forward to working together to bring further innovation to their users around the world.

John Mulgrew, Chief Intellectual Property Officer of Lenovo, said:
MACKINAW CITY, MI - The expense of running a kitchen, the lack of employees and the struggle to run a business through the Covid-19 pandemic was just too much for the owners of respected brewery Biere de Mac Brew Works.

On Sunday, they served their last meals. The kitchen is closed.

It was not an easy decision, but at the end of the day, we have to look at what makes the most sense for the business, said head brewer/operations manager Danny Ranville, who opened the brewery with his dad George Ranville in 2017.

We are all bummed to abandon such a killer menu....but running a kitchen consumed a lot of our time and energy, and the return on our effort is better on the brewery side of the business.

Known for its variety of beer styles, Biere de Macs French and Belgian-inspired collaboration with Mackinac State Historic Parks, called Fleur de Mac, was MLives pick for Beer of the Year in 2020. Beer is still their main passion, and they want to keep growing their brands.

But the menu had an intense following for its eclectic upscale comfort food.

Specials might include Jamaican style jerk chicken, rice and beans simmered in coconut milk, sweet festival dumplings and creamy slaw, as well as ahi tuna ceviche salad with rice noodles. Those paired with staples such as burgers made with a special proprietary blend of beef, and mac and cheese with bacon lardons and corkscrew pasta. They even had an Avocado BLT on Naan bread on the menu.

Everything was elevated.

We are really, really sad to see our kitchen close for the summer, said president George Ranville. But, everything we put out was scratch, and it took an army of prep guys in the summer.

Right now they are down to one prep person. Thats right, one, George Ranville said.

In Northern Michigan, $627 a week in unemployment is more enticing than getting a job, said Danny Ranville, who said they hope to keep most of their employees, but some had to put in their notice.

He said Biere de Mac spent thousands of dollars over the last six months in jobs listings and posts to generate employees.

That part of the story is kind of sad, Danny Ranvile said. I couldnt get anyone to show up for an interview.

They will have about 10 employees this year, which is down from 32-37 in the peak summer months before Covid, Danny Ranville added.

The Biere de Mac Mushroom Lovers burger is a complete umami bomb, and that is a good thing.

Chef Edgar Jacobs wrote the original recipes, the owners said. He left about a year ago to work on his 200-acre farm. Chef Jermaine Harrison, who worked with Jacobs for most of 2019, left recently when we all realized we could not run our menu on so little help, George Ranville said.

Jacobs would do well in foodie towns such as Ann Arbor or Grand Rapids, but they dont want to leave up North, George Ranville said.

Jermaine might head down to Grand Rapids at some point... I cant say enough good things about Jermaine...he makes a Jerk Chicken special that Im really going to miss.

What will the brewery do now?

Food trucks

Molly Krell, Biere de Macs beer sales rep and and marketing person, is reaching out to food trucks and scheduling them for the coming months. A schedule will be appear online and on their Facebook page.

Since you are not allowed to have food trucks in Mackinaw City, the food trucks are pretty interested in being this close, said George Ranville, whose brewery is just south of downtown off I-75 and outside the city limits in Wawatam Township.

So, were pretty excited about the summer, George Ranville added.

As of now they have three trucks lined up, serving Asian and Mexican food, as well as burgers. The Digs Food Truck will operate Wednesday-Saturday starting May 19. More info at digsfoodtruck.com.

In addition, Biere de Mac will still offer a few items: an in-house charcuterie board, fresh Masseys whitefish spread plate, and our hot pretzels with our homemade spicy beer mustard, plus some chips, George Ranville said. Masseys whitefish spread is great if you have not had it.

And they are leaving the door open to re-open the kitchen down the road.

Biere de Mac Brew Works in Mackinaw City, Michigan, has offered an elevated comfort food menu since opening in 2017, as well as award-winning beer. In April of 2021, it closed the kitchen due to the lack of employees and other Covid-19-related issues. They will focus on making great beer and feature food trucks.John Gonzalez

We are telling guests that our kitchen is gone for now, but it may not be gone forever, Danny Ranville said. We are just being agile with the times and making changes that are in the best interest in the company in these weird economic times.

The hardest thing about COVID is that it makes it impossible to plan not knowing what is going to happen next.

One thing they know for sure, their beer will make it to Mackinac Island. Their blueberry wheat beer is a top seller at the Carriage House Restaurant at The Iroquois Hotel.

This summer they will have beer on tap at five or six new places on the Island, in addition to The Carriage House, George Ranville said.

Flights at Biere de Mac come in the form of the Mighty Mac.

READ: MLives Beer of the Year is a tribute to Mackinac history

MLive's Beer of the Year is Biere de Mac's Fleur de Mac, a collaboration between the brewery and Mackinac Historic State Parks.

IF YOU GO

Biere de Mac Brew Works

14277 Mackinaw Highway, Mackinaw City, MI 49701

231-427-7007

Hours: Noon-10 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday; closed Mondays and Tuesdays. (This week 4:30-8:30 p.m.)

More info: bieredemac.com or Facebook

Biere de Mac Brew Works head brewer/operations manager Danny Ranville (left) with his dad, George Ranville. They opened the brewery in Mackinaw City, Michigan, in 2017.John Gonzalez

The Dirty Chips appetizer at Biere de Mac Brew Works in Mackinaw City, Michigan. These are house-made chips with grilled Amish-raised chicken, bacon, bleu cheese, chives, green onions and house-made creme fraiche.Courtesy of Danny Ranville
ROME, APR 7 - Lazio regional council President Mauro Buschini quit on Wednesday after being accused of irregularities in a hirings case. "I have always worked with full respect for the law, the institutions and in the utmost transparency," Buschini said in a resignation statement. "Over the last few days the Council and my person have been the victims of political attacks and speculation". Buschini denied claims of rigging competitions for hiring staff saying that procedures had been "proper and fully transparent, enabling us to boost human resources with experienced and well-trained staff". Buschini, a member of the centre-left Democratic Party which controls the regional government, is the first head to roll in what has been called the 'Concorsopoli' (CompetitionGate) Affair, which has seen a bumper crop of new staff hired. (ANSA).
Expands ROYBI  Availability to School Districts

Initial Relationship Could Lead to Future Collaboration Development

TOCCOA, GA / ACCESSWIRE / April 7, 2021 / Galaxy Next Generation, Inc. (OTCQB:GAXY) ("Galaxy" or the "Company), a provider of interactive learning technology solutions, today announced it has entered into a distribution agreement with ROYBI, an artificial intelligent ("AI") education company, based in San Jose, California.

Galaxy will be expanding the availability of the ROYBI artificial intelligent tutor to its existing and future school district clients in the K-12 education market. This market consists of approximately 130,000 public schools and numerous private, charter, and religious schools, as well. Galaxy will also be adding the offering into their Canadian and Australian distributorships for availability into their respective markets.

Started in 2019, ROYBI is a wonderful tutor, providing a sophisticated 1-on-1 private tutoring experience using artificial intelligence. Named by TIME Magazine as of the best inventions in the education category, ROYBI Robot introduces kids to technology, math, science, and language arts, and sparks creativity and communication skills.

The ROYBI platform features over 500 free lessons, age-appropriate content, 40 free stories and songs, 73 categories and is in English and Mandarin with plans to add more languages & programs. ROYBI is safe and trusted, using Amazon Web Services, it collects information anonymously to provide a better user experience, and is transparent throughout the process. ROYBI Robot has won numerous accolades and industry recognition for its innovation and carefully designed content.

Gary LeCroy, Galaxy's Chief Executive Officer, commented, "We believe ROYBI will be well-received by our existing and prospective school district clients. This distribution agreement is just the first step in a potentially much deeper relationship, as we are in discussions about joint development on future products. We are extremely excited to work closely with the ROYBI team in providing AI solutions to the K-12 education market."

With this partnership, the companies are poised to become the leaders in providing the best-in-class technology available to children and schools across the globe. Our mission is to set children apart for future success by providing a personalized learning experience through AI and quality education. For additional information on ROYBI, please visit: https://roybirobot.com.

About Galaxy Next Generation, Inc.

Galaxy Next Generation (OTCQB:GAXY) is a provider of interactive learning technology solutions that allows the presenter and participant to engage in a fully collaborative instructional environment. Galaxy's products include Galaxy's own private-label interactive touch screen panel as well as numerous other national and international branded peripheral and communication devices. Galaxy's distribution channel consists of 22+ resellers across the U.S. who primarily sell the Company's products within the commercial and educational market. Galaxy does not control where resellers focus their resell efforts, although generally, the K-12 education market is the largest customer base for Galaxy products - comprising nearly 90% of Galaxy's sales.

For additional information, please visit our website at: www.galaxynext.us

Safe Harbor Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These forward-looking statements are based on the current plans and expectations of management and are subject to a number of uncertainties and risks that could significantly affect the company's current plans and expectations, as well as future results of operations and financial condition. A more extensive listing of risks and factors that may affect the company's business prospects and cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements can be found in the reports and other documents filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. 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.

Investors Contact:

IR@GalaxyNext.us

P:888-859-1274

SOURCE: Galaxy Next Generation, Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/639199/Galaxy-Next-Generation-and-Artificial-Intelligent-Education-Provider-ROYBI-Enter-Into-Distribution-Agreement
Photo taken on Jan. 14, 2020 shows the visiting vessel of China Coast Guard (CCG) 5204 at Pier 15 in Manila, the Philippines, Jan. 14, 2020. Photo:Xinhua

After the enforcement of China's Coast Guard Law, some foreign institutions and individuals made a fuss about provisions on the use of force. They argued that with the help of this law, the Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) will now use force recklessly, threatening the personal safety of fishermen from other countries and affecting regional stability. However, the truth is unlikely to be covered by lies. And facts always speak louder than words. Based on the actual cases, CCG can be regarded as a model of civilized law enforcement in the South China Sea.

At the end of November 2016, tropical storm Tokage raged in the South China Sea. A Philippine fishing boat sank in Xihu Lake on Huangyan Island. Two fishermen fell into the water, one of whom collapsed and needed immediate rescue. The CCG braved the huge storm, and overcame difficulties to arrive at the island. As soon as the two fishermen were transferred to the CCG vessel, the CCG arranged doctors onboard to treat them. They were provided with meals and spontaneously offered personal clothes and daily necessities. On December 2, China handed over these two fishermen to the Philippines at the agreed place. The Philippines was deeply grateful to China for its good deeds.

On April 2, 2020, a Vietnamese fishing boat intruded the waters under the jurisdiction of China. After being warned by the CCG many times, it made frequent dangerous actions, instead of leaving. Finally, it struck at a CCG vessel and sank. The CCG quickly released a boat to rescue rather than doing nothing. Without any casualties, all the eight Vietnamese were rescued and returned home safely.

On June 10, 2020, a similar case took place again. A Vietnamese fishing boat fled at a high speed in waters under Chinese jurisdiction in an attempt to evade the boarding inspection of CCG. During the process, the Vietnamese fishing boat swerved suddenly and collided with the CCG vessel, causing itself to roll and sea water to pour in. Three fishermen fell into the water. CCG immediately rescued the fishermen, and at the same time helped them repair their boats.

There are many other similar cases. As the largest law-enforcement force in the South China Sea, CCG has fully demonstrated its professional and civilized quality in the process of law enforcement. It has fully protected the legitimate rights and interests of the objects of law enforcement. Unfortunately, some people turn a blind eye to these facts. They make up all kinds of lies: such as "violent law enforcement", "no respect for human life" and "forced confession." Indeed, in recent years we have witnessed severe clashes between the maritime law-enforcement forces of some countries and the fishermen of other countries.

According to incomplete statistics by some scholars, during the first nine months of last year, one person died and four others were missing in the fishing conflict between Indonesia and Vietnam. On August 16 last year, a Vietnamese fishing boat collided with a Malaysian vessel of maritime law enforcement off the coast of Malaysia. The Vietnamese ship threw iron and gasoline incendiary bombs. In response, the Malaysian government shot and killed one fisherman, detaining another 12.

As China has repeatedly stressed, with the Coast Guard Law, China's maritime law-enforcement activities will be more scientific and standardized. When and what enforcement measures should be adopted are clearly written down. It is believed that the actions of the CCG can stand the test of and respond accordingly to questions from the outside world. Only time and facts will tell the true story.

The author is a current affairs commentator. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- An aide to Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson is charged with rape and sexual battery in a secret indictment that was unsealed last week, according to court records.

Alexander Lackey, 35, was secretly indicted March 22 on charges that accuse him of sexually assaulting a woman multiple times between October 2018 and January of this year. The abuse started when she was 17 years old, and took place at Lackeys home on Broxton Avenue in Cleveland, according to court records.

Lackey is charged with five counts of rape, three counts of sexual battery and one count of domestic violence. He is set for an April 13 arraignment in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court.

Lackey is the citys government and international affairs manager. City records show he was hired in December 2014 as a special assistant to the mayor.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael OMalleys spokesman Tyler Sinclair said prosecutors indicted Lackey in secret because they feared he may have fled the country because they believed his work for the city involved international travel.

Common Pleas Court Judge Brian Corrigan unsealed the indictment in a March 30 order and issued a warrant for Lackeys arrest. Court records show he is not in police custody, and no attorney information is listed.

In response to requests for comment from Jackson and Lackey, a city spokeswoman said in a statement that officials learned of the indictment March 29, the day before it was unsealed. Lackey has been placed on paid leave pending the outcome of a pre-disciplinary hearing that is scheduled for April 12.

The city referred further questions to Lackeys attorney, but did not provide an attorneys name.

Cleveland.com has requested copies of the incident report.

The investigation began Jan. 6 after police investigated a domestic violence report involving Lackey and the woman, who was then 19 years old, Sinclair said. The woman sought treatment at a hospital, Sinclair said.

The woman told a Cleveland police detective that she and Lackey got into an argument and she stood in the doorway because Lackey did not want to talk, according to a Cleveland Municipal Court filing. Lackey slammed the door into the womans body, stepped on her bare feet while he wore shoes, grabbed her by the arms and dragged her around his house. He then sprayed her in the face with air freshener and water, the complaint said.

The woman told police that Lackey told her she was lucky he didnt have any guns in the house because he could have killed her, the complaint said.

Cleveland city prosecutors charged Lackey in Cleveland Municipal Court with domestic violence, aggravated menacing and unlawful restraint one week after the encounter. He pleaded not guilty.

Cleveland polices child abuse and sex crimes unit detectives subsequently opened an investigation that uncovered the sexual abuse, Sinclair said.

Lackeys attorney, Craig Smotzer, in March filed a request with Municipal Court Judge Michelle Earley asking her to let Lackey go on a family vacation to Florida from March 20 through March 28 while he was free on bond.

In court filings, City Prosecutor Aqueelah Jordan objected to Lackeys request on the basis that he could pose a flight risk because the city provided evidence in discovery that showed that Lackey could face additional charges in the future. The motion did not disclose what those charges were.

Earley granted Lackeys request over Jordans objection. Prosecutors dropped the case in municipal court one day after the grand jury returned its secret indictment charging Lackey with rape and sexual battery.

Smotzer on Wednesday declined to comment on the misdemeanor case and told cleveland.com that as of Wednesday afternoon, Lackey had not yet decided if he was going to hire Smotzer to defend him in the felony case.

Cuyahoga County prosecutors on Friday filed a motion asking a judge to issue a domestic violence temporary protection order that would prevent Lackey from having any contact with the woman as a condition of his bond.

Lackey is one of 17 people employed as a special assistant to the mayor, according to city payroll records. His annual salary is $67,110.78, records say.

Lackey in his work with the city helped coordinate the citys programs with its Sister Cities, connecting Cleveland to cities in other countries to exchange art and culture, and helping coordinate trips to the city from international delegations. Valerie McCall, chief of governmental and international affairs to whom Lackey reported, wrote in a 2017 memo included in Lackeys personnel file that he would be taking over a former employees role coordinating legislation and communications between the administration and Cleveland City Council.
New efforts seeking to refocus and preserve the MAGA underway, with former hardline Trump immigration aide Stephen Miller rolling out a new group to put pressure on the Joe Biden agenda and prominent ex-White House aides signing up for a new advocacy group by Mike Pence.

Miller, who helped design and sell Trump's 'zero tolerance' policy at the border, is organizing to use the courts and public pressure to try to put a check on Biden in what he terms 'resisting the radical lefts agenda '

He told the Wall Street Journal that anything 'that we believe to be illegal is fair game.'

Former Vice President Mike Pence has formed a new group to tout the Trump-Pence agenda. He is considered a candidate for president in 2024. Trump raged at him in leading up to the electoral count, and blasted him in a Jan. 6th tweet

His effort comes a day after he blasted out a picture of himself and Trump taken inside Trump's office at Mar-a-Largo, which Trump has used to send out a flurry of fiery statements attacking Biden as well as the media and 'woke' corporations as he plots his own political future.

Pence, who unfailingly praised Trump during their four years together in the White House, is launching a new advocacy organization called Advancing American Freedom  and its advisory board includes several figures who advised Donald Trump in the White House.

Among those getting behind the effort, which coincides with Pence's return to the political stage with an event this month in battleground South Carolina, are former counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway and former chief economic advisor Larry Kudlow.

Those backing the effort aren't necessarily signing up for a potential Pence run for the White House in 2024  and former President Donald Trump, who isn't ruling out his own run for reelection  has given the group his public blessing.

Trump himself touted the effort, the Washington Examiner reported in a story that spelled out Pence's plans  although Trump's brief statement notably did not specifically single out Pence for praise.

Trump's statement said: 'It was the most successful first term in American history. Nice to see Mike highlighting some of our many achievements!'

An advisor to the group told DailyMail.com Trump and Pence 'are in the top tier presidentially, having secured the highest number of votes of any GOP ticket in US history' and brushed off chatter about who would be on the ticket in 2024.

'Talk should not be about 2024 so much as 2022, where each of them will have a unique and compelling role in delivering Republican majorities in the House, Senate and governorships,' said the advisor. 'The focus should be on the current Administration, not the next one. Just 11 weeks in, Biden and Harris have worsened the border crisis, killed energy jobs, promised to raise taxes, and stoked dissent.'

The effort by Pence to cheer the accomplishments of his and Trump's tenure comes as Trump continues to consolidate his own influence in the Republican Party despite the Capitol riot that led to his second impeachment and a trial that featured video of rioters calling to 'hang Mike Pence.'

It comes as leading Republicans sought to unify the party and several top Republicans have visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who called out Trump for 'provoking' the riot, issued a scathing statement this week echoing Trump's attacks on 'woke' corporations and the media.

Also signing on is former White House budget director Russ Vought who tweeted the day after the Jan. 6th Capitol riot that he was 'greatly saddened by the violence and loss of life at the Capitol Building yesterday. We believe in the rule of law and should abide by it.'

Former Trump aide Stephen Miller is forming a new legal group to stymie Joe Biden's agenda

Former counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway is advising Pence's group

'It was the most successful first term in American history. Nice to see Mike highlighting some of our many achievements!' said Trump in a statement

He told the Wall Street Journal that anything 'that we believe to be illegal is fair game' as his group targets the Biden agenda

Strains between Trump and Pence came to the forefront during the Capitol riot

His last tweet came the day before Trump left office, where he said serving as Trump's director of the Office and Management and Budget had been the 'honor of a lifetime.'

Another backer is former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who said on Fox News he was 'furious' after the riot, where MAGA supporters occupied the congressional office he once held, terming the perpetrators 'barbarians.'

'I was furious. I am furious,' Gingrich told the network.

Conway has been advising Pence since he left office at the end of August 2020, having advised Trump since managing his 2016 campaign.

Others serving on the group's board include former Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint, a former conservative House member, Club for Growth President David McIntosh, and former Sen. Rick Santorum, who like Pence also served in the House.

'Advancing American Freedom plans to build on the success of the last four years by promoting traditional conservative values and promoting the successful policies of the Trump administration,' Pence said.

Trump raged at Trump in the days leading up to when Congress met to count the electoral vote, as Pence resisted Trump's effort to overturn votes certified by states.

Trump tweeted while the Capitol riot was underway: 'Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!
At a cost of $38 billion a year, an estimated 5.3 million people are living with a permanent disability related to traumatic brain injury in the United States today, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The physical, mental and financial toll of a TBI can be enormous, but new research from the University of Georgia provides promise.

In a new study, researchers at UGA's Regenerative Biosciences Center have demonstrated the long-term benefits of a hydrogel, which they call "brain glue," for the treatment of traumatic brain injury. The new study provides evidence that not only does the gel protect against loss of brain tissue after a severe injury, but it also might aid in functional neural repair.

Brain damage following significant TBI commonly results in extensive tissue loss and long-term disability. There currently are no clinical treatments to prevent the resulting cognitive impairments or tissue loss.

Reported on March 5 in Sciences Advances, the new finding is the first to provide visual and functional evidence of the repair of brain neural circuits involved in reach-to-grasp movement in brain glue-implanted animals following severe TBI.

Our work provides a holistic view of what's going on in the recovery of the damaged region while the animal is accomplishing a specific reach-and-grasp task." Lohitash Karumbaiah, Lead Investigator, Associate Professor, University of Georgia's College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Created by Karumbaiah in 2017, brain glue was designed to mimic the structure and function of the meshwork of sugars that support brain cells. The gel contains key structures that bind to basic fibroblast growth factor and brain-derived neurotrophic factor, two protective protein factors that can enhance the survival and regrowth of brain cells after severe TBI.

In a prior short-term study, Karumbaiah and his team showed that brain glue significantly protected brain tissue from severe TBI damage. In this new research, to harness the neuroprotective capacity of the original, they further engineered the delivery surface of protective factors to help accelerate the regeneration and functional activity of brain cells. After 10 weeks, the results were apparent.

"Animal subjects that were implanted with the brain glue actually showed repair of severely damaged tissue of the brain," said Karumbaiah. "The animals also elicited a quicker recovery time compared to subjects without these materials."

To measure the glue's effectiveness, the team used a tissue-clearing method to make brain tissue optically transparent, which allowed them to visually capture the immediate response of cells in the reach-to-grasp circuit using a 3D imaging technique.

"Because of the tissue-clearing method, we were able to obtain a deeper view of the complex circuitry and recovery supported by brain glue," said Karumbaiah. "Using these methods along with conventional electrophysiological recordings, we were able to validate that brain glue supported the regeneration of functional neurons in the lesion cavity."

Karumbaiah pointed out that the RTG circuit is evolutionarily similar in rats and humans. "The modulation of this circuit in the rat could help speed up clinical translation of brain glue for humans," he said.

With support from UGA's Innovation Gateway, Karumbaiah has filed for a patent on the brain glue. He is also partnering with Parastoo Azadi, technical director of analytical services at the UGA Complex Carbohydrate Research Center, and GlycoMIP, a $23 million, National Science Foundation-funded Materials Innovation Platform, created to advance the field of glycomaterials through research and education.

"Doing the behavioral studies, the animal work and the molecular work sometimes takes a village," said Karumbaiah. "This research involved a whole cross-section of RBC undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty members from both UGA and Duke University."

The collaborative research effort provided five UGA RBC fellow undergraduates with an experiential learning opportunity and to publish their first paper. This is the first publication for Rameen Forghani, an aspiring M.D.-Ph.D. undergraduate working in the Karumbaiah lab.

Forghani said the undergraduate team "learned how to collaborate on this project" and about the impact of moving lab research to patients who need treatment.

"My fellow undergraduates and I were empowered to take ownership of a piece of the project and see it through from the planning stages of data analysis to writing and being published," said Forghani. "As an aspiring, early-career physician-scientist, working on a project that has translational impact and directly addresses a very relevant clinical problem is very exciting to me."

Charles Latchoumane, research scientist in the Karumbaiah lab and first author on the study, divides his time between UGA and Lausanne, Switzerland, where he works at NeurRestore, a research center aimed at restoring lost neurological function for people suffering from Parkinson's disease or from neurological disorders following a head injury or stroke.

"This study has been four to five years in the making," said Latchoumane. "Our collaborative research is so painstakingly documented that, after you read about it, you have to believe there is new hope for severe victims of brain injury."
Union Home Minister Amit Shah



had lunch at the home of a 'rickshawala' here in Howrah district on Wednesday after winding up a road show at Domjur assembly constituency.

Sitting on the floor of the modest house, Shah had a simple fare of rice, dal, vegetables and salad made by the womenfolk of the house.

The Union Home Minister was accompanied by BJP candidate for Domjur Rajib Banerjee and other leaders.

During the lunch, the host sat in front of the guests taking care of them.

Earlier, Shah held a road show through the narrow roads of Domjur town with a large crowd in attendance.

Standing atop a lorry decorated with flowers, cutouts of Narendra Modi and BJP flags, Amit Shah, with BJP president J P Nadda, and party's candidate from Domjur Rajib Banerjee, waved at people who had queued up on both sides of the road.

With bands playing 'Sare jahan se accha', Shah threw flower petals at the crowd, which surged as the show proceeded from Jagdishpur Haat to Kona crossing.

(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.)
Islamabad, April 7 : Pakistan on Wednesday passed the grim milestone of 15,000 Covid-19-related deaths as the country struggles to contain the spread of the virus amid a third wave of the pandemic.

The death toll now stands at 15,026, with 102 fatalities reported during the last 24 hours, according to the Health Ministry.

The total number of cases reached 700,188 with the addition of 4,004 new infections, reports dpa news agency.

Authorities have put virus hotspots under lockdown, arrested dozens of people for not wearing face masks, and sealed restaurants and shops for violating restrictions.

On Tuesday, authorities decided to keep most schools closed for another three weeks.

The decision was taken after the positivity rate of those tested for the coronavirus reached 10 per cent.

Earlier in February, Pakistan started vaccination using the Sinopharm vaccine, a gift from China.

A survey at the start of the year had revealed around half of the citizens were sceptical of the vaccines and would not go for a jab.

But thousands rushed to get inoculated after a private firm rolled out Russia's Sputnik V on April 2.

The first shipment of 50,000 doses have already been booked and private medical facilities are waiting for next shipment.

On Monday, pandemic response authorities said a total of 936,383 doses of vaccine have been administered in the country so far.
New Delhi: Veteran actor Jeetendra celebrates his birthday on April 7. On this special occasion, several celebs thronged social media to wish him. Daughter Ekta Kapoor wished father on social media with an adorable family video post.

Several celeb friends such as veteran actress Neetu Kapoor, her daughter Riddhima Kapoor Sahni, Sussanne Khan, Hina Khan and Anita Hassanandani amongst others extended wishes to the great star Jeetendra.

Producer Anand Pandit recalling the old days said, "When I met Jeetu ji, nobody knew me in Mumbai. I literally arrived in the city of dreams with nothing but dreams. I was fortunate that at that time, Jeetu ji came into my life, took me under his wing, motivated and inspired me and gave me the confidence to reach where I have today. He is a self-made man who knows how hard it is to make it big in this industry but his own example proves that it is possible to succeed with dedication and hard work."

Even though Jeetendra has retired from the silver screen, he continues to be a benign presence in Pandit's life. He said, "Jeetu ji has been a rock, a mentor and guide to me. To date, when I need advice or some insight, I turn to him and he always gives me a very incisive point of view. He turns 79 this year but he is forever young and still as simple and full of life as when he first started his career all those decades ago."

Anand Pandit's much-awaited production, Abhishek Bachchan starrer 'The Big Bull' will release on April 8, 2021, on Disney+Hotstar.
San Francisco, April 7 : Google's abrupt firing of prominent Artificial Intelligence (AI) ethics researcher Timnit Gebru late last year and reports of the company sacking more employees later has now led an Alphabet shareholder to push for adoption of policies for better whistleblower protections.

Trillium Asset Management has filed a shareholder resolution asking the board of directors for review of current policies by a third party, The Verge reported on Tuesday.

"Reporting suggests that many Google employees who have resigned or been fired ... publicly report retaliation after voicing human rights implications of company practices, including systemic workplace racism and sexism," the resolution reads.

"These red flags suggest the potential for culture, ethics, and/or human rights problems internally." Trillium has 63,078 Alphabet shares, according to the report.

Gebru had said late last year that she was fired over an email where she expressed her doubts about Google's commitment to inclusion and diversity.

The departure of Gebru irked many Google employees.

Earlier this year, two Google engineers, including one of Indian-origin, quit Google over the abrupt firing of Gebru who was the technical co-lead of Google's Ethical Artificial Intelligence Team.

While engineering director David Baker said that Gebru's dismissal "extinguished" his will to work in the company, software engineer Vinesh Kannan announced that he was quitting because Gebru and April Christina Curley, a diversity recruiter, were "wronged".

Google has fired another artificial intelligence (AI) ethics leader Margaret Mitchell who was the co-lead of its Ethical AI team, following an investigation into her use of corporate email.

According to a report in Axios in February, Google fired Mitchell after she used an automated script to look through her emails in order to find evidence of discrimination against her co-worker Timnit Gebru who was fired earlier.
Between the Galaxy S21 series and the foldables it plans to release later this year, Samsung is pretty much set with premium smartphones for 2021. For anyone who doesnt want to drop flagship levels of cash, though, Samsung just pulled back the curtain on a bevy of new affordable models for the US, including the companys cheapest 5G smartphone yet.

Samsung

At the top of the range is the $499 Galaxy A52 5G, which Samsung talked about at length during its Galaxy Awesome launch event back in March. In case the salient details escape you, the A52 packs a 6.5-inch Super AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate, a 4,500mAh battery, a quartet of rear cameras headlined by a 64-megapixel sensor, and one of Qualcomms relatively fresh Snapdragon 750G chipsets. As we mentioned last time, the A52 5G is in some ways a more impressive device than the LTE-only Galaxy A72 Samsung announced at the same time, which explains why Samsung didnt bother bringing that pricier model to the US this year.

With all that said, there is one thing weve learned since the Galaxy A52 5G was first announced: like Samsungs more premium models, this phone will get three years of Android updates.

Samsung

The next step down from there is the Galaxy A42 5G, which pairs the same 750G chipset as its sibling with a more restrained set of specs  think 4GB of RAM instead of 6GB, a 13-megapixel front camera instead of the A52s 32-megapixel one, and one fewer camera around back. (The A42 has a 48-megapixel main rear shooter with an f/1.8 aperture, flanked by an 8-megapixel ultra-wide and a 2-megapixel sensor for capturing depth data.) Even so, the A42 has a couple things going for it that the A52 doesnt: its the only model Samsung announced today that supports mmWave 5G, and it has a slightly larger 5,000mAh battery.

Curiously, the A42 5G also has a very slightly larger display than the A52 5G does  at 6.6 inches diagonal, this notched screen is the biggest of all the displays Samsung used for its US selection of A-series phones. Of course, biggest hardly means best here, since this screen only refreshes at 60Hz and tops out at HD+ resolution.

Samsung

And then theres the A32 5G, which  at $280  is the companys first crack at making a truly inexpensive 5G device. Samsung managed to drive costs down by using one of MediaTeks Dimensity 720 chipsets with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage, along with a 6.5-inch HD+ LCD screen instead of a more visually appealing AMOLED panel. (At least its refresh rate peaks at 90Hz.) Apart from that, the A32 uses the same battery and the same front and rear camera setups as the A42 does, just with one change: the A32 also packs a 5-megapixel macro camera.

Rounding out Samsungs lineup are the A12 and A02s, which share the same 6.5-inch Infinity-V display. Thats about where the similarities end, though. The $180 A12 runs with a MediaTek P35 chipset, 3GB of RAM, and 32GB of storage, along with an 8-megapixel front camera and a rear quad camera system headlined by a 16-megapixel main sensor. Meanwhile, the $110 A02s is considerably bigger than last years model thanks to its whopper of a screen, but youd do well to keep your expectations for the 13-megapixel main and 2-megapixel macros in check. Similar caution is probably warranted for the A02ss performance too since it uses a three-year-old Snapdragon 450 chipset, but you could do much worse for price.

Samsung

As usual, Samsung went a little crazy with the sheer volume of these smartphone announcements, but what else did you expect? Samsung has never been coy about how important the A-series has been to its bottom line, and as usual, its expecting the cheapest of its new phones the be its bestsellers when they go on sale. And speaking of which, if one of these new models managed to strike your fancy, you wont have long to wait before claiming your own: the A42 5G will make its US debut first on April 8th, followed by the A52 5G, A32 5G and A12 on the 9th, and the A02s on April 29th.
Mike Zouhri PainWorth co-founder in hospital after accident

PainWorthone of 15 winners at the 2021 American Bar Association TechShowannounced today the acquisition of California-based legal-tech company ProSe Claims.

PainWorth has already been turning heads by revolutionizing the claims process for claimants, insurance companies, and lawyers.

The free-to-use PainWorth app makes it possible for injury claimants to easily find outon their ownwhat their claim might be worth. Users who choose to self-represent can even use the app to generate the paperwork they need to start their settlement process.

PainWorths secret ingredient is its algorithm that automatically scans thousands of past cases to find relevant case law and citations. It then performs all the necessary statistical calculations and arithmetic in secondsa process that typically takes human economists, claims adjusters, and lawyers dozens of hours.

Indeed, in a recent industry interview, one insurance insider declared that PainWorth was the future of claims settlement.

Mike Zouhriwho co-founded PainWorth after being struck by a drunk driver in 2019is thrilled to finally announce the acquisition:

While weve been working to address access-to-justice problems in Canada, ProSe Claims has been tackling very similar problems in the United States. Weve been chatting with them for quite some time, and they really believejust as we dothat the legal system is broken and incredibly slow at delivering justice.

In addition to acquiring the assets of ProSe Claims, key members of the ProSe Claims team will also be joining PainWorth.

For example, ProSe Claims Co-Founder and CEO, Justin MacFayden, will be bringing his American legal experience to the PainWorth team.

It was just a natural fit, said MacFayden. The PainWorth team has built an elegant, easy-to-use app to help resolve a very real access-to-justice problem. Their app is free-to-use for claimants, greatly reduces time and labour costs for lawyers and insurance companies alike, andbetter yetit greatly speeds up the settlement process. Working together, we can now start to adapt the PainWorth app to the USA and to American legislation, andin so doinghelp more people than ever before. Its no secret that Americans pay the highest medical costs in the world, so an app like PainWorth is urgently needed in the United States to help those involved in car accidents, medical malpractice suits, or even assault and battery cases.

Hot on the heels of its acquisition of ProSe Claims, PainWorth will next appear at the 2021 edition of InsureTech North on April 22-23. There, they will be offering demonstrations of their soon-to-be-unveiled Pro Portal app for insurance companies and claims adjusters.

Following this, the next steps on PainWorths roadmap will be an official entry into the US market and pursuing investors for a seed round to fund future expansion and product offerings.

We believe that there are still some major issues to tackle in the global justice system, said Zouhri. And so were aimingwith technologyto solve those problems now and into the future. Our goal is simple: we want to democratize and modernize a slow, biased, and antiquated justice system. We want everybody to be able to get justice, regardless of their age, sex, race, or economic situation.

For more information about Painworth visit: https://painworth.com/


A 22-year-old Youth League worker was rigorously injured after clashes broke out between workers of the CPI(M) and the Indian Unon Muslim League (IUML) in Koothuparamba constituency on Tuesday, 6 April, post state Assembly elections.

The deceased identified as Mansur, a native of Chokli, had suffered critical injuries to his leg and was admitted to a private hospital in Kozhikode, where he was declared dead by the doctors, police said. An alleged CPI(M) activist was taken into custody by the police soon after the incident, sources said.

Police said the activist succumbed to his injuries in the early hours of Wednesday, 7 April, Kerala saw over 74 percent voter turnout and though the polling itself was peaceful, at least three incidences of violence were reported at night.

According to local witnesses, the shocking incident happened when a clash broke out in Paral area in Koothuparamba constituency over allegations of bogus voting by around 8 pm on Tuesday.

A group of people waylaid Manusur and his brother Muhsin, a UDF poll agent, near their home and hurled bombs at them before attacking the youth with sharp weapons, they said.

Post-poll clashes broke out elsewhere too in the state. According to reports, two Congress workers were hacked during clashes in Eruvai and Puthuppally. Violence was also reported in Kayamkulam and Haripad after polling ended at 7 pm on 6 April.

Bangladesh Blast: 20 injured at the residence of a municipal Mayor.

Uddhav's minister Bachchu Kadu slaps contractor over poor food quality

Shiv Sena: BJP'S Conspiracy to Defame Government
China has a big role to play: ICRC official

09:02, April 07, 2021 By Gong Ming ( People's Daily

In response to the spiking humanitarian needs, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) issued its highest ever annual appeal, with an increase of 5.5% over the 2020 budget. In his interview with People's Daily, Jacques Pellet, Personal Envoy of the President for China and Head of the ICRC Regional Delegation for East Asia, explains the humanitarian threats facing the world and the cooperation plans between ICRC and China to address the current global crisis.

Jacques Pellet (Photo provided to People's Daily)

Speaking of the humanitarian threats at present, Pellet said that over the past decade, the ICRC budget has almost doubled, which reflects the growing humanitarian needs. "There are over 100 ongoing armed conflicts across the world while the COVID-19 pandemic poses another layer of threat to the vulnerable populations in fragile contexts. In 2021, 239 million people will need humanitarian assistance and protection," Pellet said, adding that this is already the highest figure in decades.

Pellet stressed that amid the alarming humanitarian crises and increasing needs, a key challenge for humanitarian actors in 2021 and beyond is to maintain and acquire the funds necessary. "For that, we would expect more support from countries like China, both politically and financially."

Pellet said China has one of the largest diplomatic networks. Its voice and actions can have a great impact on humanitarian affairs. "We are in contact with China for collaboration on various fronts, on Africa for instance. This increased engagement reflects China's key role in the world and its increasing influence on global affairs and governance."

Over 40% of the ICRC's budget will be spent on activities across the African continent this year. Pellet pointed out that ICRC has been engaging with Chinese authorities and representations abroad to obtain China's support in assistance programs in fragile contexts in Africa as well as in countries along the Belt and Road Initiative. ICRC is looking for more engagement through multilateral platforms such as the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation.

"The ICRC is keen to engage with companies operating in conflict and fragile environment in their efforts to do no harm and to practice their corporate social responsibility. We have concrete connections with some Chinese companies overseas," Pellet said as an example. In 2019, a Chinese company that was commissioned through a bidding process by the ICRC and the Ministry of Water Resources in Borno State, Nigeria, completed a water project with a daily capacity of 9 million liters in Borno's capital Maiduguri. "That greatly improved access to water for 150,000 people, including residents and internally displaced people."

In his opinion, the nature of today's humanitarian crises is increasingly complex. Humanitarian relief, development programs and peacekeeping are all needed at the same time, in the so-called Humanitarian-Development Nexus. He believes China, as the world's second largest economy, has a big role to play in this regard. "China has earlier funded ICRC programs in Syria and Nigeria, which contributed to improving the livelihood of those affected by war and helped stabilize the local situation. These elements can contribute to its development." Pellet stressed ICRC is expecting that such support and collaboration could continue on a regular ongoing basis.

"China's global response to fighting the pandemic by providing assistance worldwide shows the important role China can play in dealing with global challenges and shaping its relationship with the outside world," said Pellet, stressing that many of the places that receive China's assistance are also contexts where the ICRC carries out its humanitarian activities and ICRC has seen a positive development in China's multilateral engagement and in its understanding of the importance of the role of organizations such as ICRC. Pellet hopes in that respect, the recently released white paper, China's International Development Cooperation in the New Era, will open new windows of opportunity for further cooperation.

Pellet also mentioned China's successful control of the virus and the fight against extreme poverty. He believes China's experience can bring interesting aspects for other countries in need of humanitarian assistance.

He said the idea of humanity transcends cultures, nationalities, races and religions. Vulnerable communities and people affected by armed conflict and violence should be assisted based on their needs and this assistance. Humanitarian programs should be carried out without discrimination or bias. He understands the concept of "a community with a shared future for mankind" as China's desire to actively contribute to the well-being of the world population through cooperation. "We are now facing a vicious circle. Conflicts and violence remain one of the main causes of poverty throughout the world, but similarly, increasing poverty further fuels violence and conflict. More than ever, the ICRC needs China's support to address the needs of people affected by armed conflict and increase their resilience," Pellet said.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
Engie, a French multinational utility company, has handed over its second energy efficiency project - Medical City of King Saud University - to Saudi national energy services company (Tarshid).

The MCKSU Project was awarded by Tarshid to Engie in December 2019 and was officially handed over in December last year.

After concluding a detailed audit of the facilities, Engie has successfully completed the implementation of 11 energy savings measures to reduce energy usage and guarantee energy efficiency for the Medical City of King Saud University (MCKSU) in Riyadh by over 31%, equivalent to 43 GWh per year, for 10 years.

Engie leveraged its global experience in energy efficiency to provide innovative and cost-effective energy solutions to the projects 8 hospital buildings which occupy an area of over 322,000 sq m.

Efficiency measures include the retrofitting of ventilation and air conditioning systems, lighting, and the implementation of smart solutions, all of which contribute to 30,000 tonnes of emissions being avoided annually. Engie will continue operating and maintaining the implemented energy savings solutions for 10 years, consistently monitoring and controlling the hospital facilities consumption through a state-of-art energy control room located in Engies facilities in Riyadh.

Tarshids CEO Waled Alghreri stated that this project comes as one of many projects that the company supervises their execution through a model of collaboration with the private sector (Public-Private Partnership). Tarshid also develops, manages, and finances energy efficiency projects by working with energy efficiency services companies and various beneficiaries, providing support and facilitation to them throughout the project duration.

Additionally, the company strives to continually develop the energy efficiency sector and create the appropriate and supportive environment to enable those companies to function and execute retrofitting projects at a level comparable to its global counterparts. It is noteworthy that Tarshid came as a result of a collaborative effort between the Ministry of Energy and the Public Investment Fund.

Tarshid aims to be a pioneer in its field and to help build a more sustainable future, as part of its goals to achieve the kingdoms vision 2030 in developing the energy efficiency industry, and to be one of the promising sectors for the kingdoms economy.

Engie CEO, Turki Al Shehri comments: With sustainability on the top of the kingdoms agenda, Engies experience in providing effective energy efficiency solutions to reduce costs and avoid emissions is now more important than ever. Engie brings a global level of expertise to the local economy, working to ensure Saudi Arabia fulfils its energy transition commitments. The private sector has a huge role to play in the kingdoms transition to a sustainable economy and can help provide the manpower and funding necessary to help achieve goals of the Vision 2030.

Thanks to the partnership models adopted by Tarshid, global clean energy solution providers like Engie can play an integral role in the kingdoms long-term development.

The project falls in line with kingdom-wide goals to achieve significant energy savings and build a more sustainable future. Engie is a global leader in delivering sustainable energy management solutions that are design technology-enabled, data-driven and provide sustainable assets and energy optimisation to create long-term value.

Since 2018, Engie has been dedicated to providing energy efficiency services to government, commercial and industrial sectors across Saudi Arabia. In partnership with Tarshid, Engie aims to transform infrastructure of the kingdom into high-performing assets by maximising efficiency, minimising costs and reducing environmental impact, while supporting knowledge transfer to local partners. -- Tradearabia News Service
Harrisburg University of Science and Technologys Student Center was named Best Interior Architecture Project of 2020 by the Mid Atlantic Real Estate Journal.

The MARE Journal, which covers the real estate industry in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington D.C., recognized the Student Center in its recently published Best of 2020 issue.

Located on the arcade level of the Whitaker Center for Science and the Arts, the 7,950-square-foot Student Center was designed by Harrisburgs Murray Associates Architects, P.C., a press release said.

This award recognizes the innovative design of Murray Associates in creating a Student Center that is a unique, state-of-the-art space where our students work, have fun, and collaborate together, said Dr. Eric Darr, Harrisburg University president.

The Student Union Center features dedicated collaborative learning and small group areas, private study and conference rooms, student club meeting space, an aquaponics lab outfitted with a video monitoring system for guests, fitness and gaming areas, and a self-service kitchen.

It also includes a custom-designed amphitheater outfitted with a seamless video wall display that can be used as a student/faculty work area, a lecture and presentation space, distance learning lab, community event space, and for other student team-building events, a release said.

We understood the need for a dedicated space for the HU Students and are proud of this recognition, said Murray Associates Architects P. C.s President, Benedict H. Dubbs, AIA RA, LEED AP. This project fits into our design focus fostering community, innovation, and creative learning environments for our educational clients.

To view the story, visit this link.
The US labour regulators on April 5 found that two outspoken Amazon workers, who publicly criticised the company and called on to do more to protect workers and the environment, were illegally fired last year. According to The Associated Press, Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa worked at Amazon offices in Seattle and they pushed the firm to do more to reduce its impact on climate change and to better protect warehouse workers from coronavirus. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) found that Amazon violated the rights of the two workers and also confirmed that it found merit in the case, adding that if Amazon doesnt settle the case a complaint will be filed, after which a trial could start. Cunningham shared with AP an email from the NLRB that found that Amazon violated the rights.

Amazon disagrees with NLRBs findings

However, the US e-commerce company disagreed with the preliminary findings and said that it fired the employees for repeatedly violating internal policies, and not because they talked publicly about working conditions or sustainability. Amazon said that the firm supports every employees right to criticise their employers working conditions. However, they added, that does not come with blanket immunity against our internal policies, all of which are lawful.

Now, because of NLRBs ruling, Amazon could be forced to offer the two employees, Cunningham and Costa, their jobs back, pay them back pay and reimburse them for expenses related to losing their jobs. It worth noting that Cunningham and Costa were user-experience designers at Amazon. They were the two most prominent voices among a group of workers who wanted the company to take more steps to combat climate change and to stop doing business with oil and gas companies.

The two employees had even held protests and they spoke to the media about their concerns. About a year ago, they had also planned a call between Amazon warehouse and office workers to talk about unsafe conditions in the e-commerce giants warehouses. But before that could happen, Amazon fired the two women.

Cunningham and Costas case comes amid a time when Amazons treatment of workers has been in the spotlight. As per reports, currently, the votes by Amazon employees in Alabama are being counted to see if a warehouse there will become the first union shop at the e-commerce colossus. Amazon employees in Alabama want the company to pay workers more, give them more break time and be treated with respect.

(Image: AP/Unsplash)


UTICA, N.Y. -- The Illinois-based transportation outfit that the Utica City School District has contracted with for the next five years says they're looking for a place in Utica for the buses that will be used to transport students, and they plan on aggressively seeking to hire former Birnie Bus employees. Birnie's contract with the school district will not be renewed at the end of the school year.

Durham School Services says they plan to pay former Birnie Bus employees more than they were making with Birnie, and, allow them to keep their seniority. They're holding a meet and greet Thursday, April 8, at the Delta by Marriott, in downtown Utica. They are asking people to make appointments for the meet and greet, as well as for interviews, also at the hotel, the following week of April 12. Anyone interested can schedule a time slot for both, at Utica.Durham@gmail.com

The events are open to anyone interested; not just former Birnie Bus employees.
What just happened? Will.i.am, best known as the frontman for the Black Eyed Peas, has made several pushes into the world of technologynot all of them successful. But the rapper hasn't been put off by a few past failures. His latest project is a tech-packed face mask that features everything from noise-canceling headphones to Bluetooth connectivity. It's also a lot more expensive than most masks: $299.

Created through a partnership with Honeywell, the Xupermask (pronounced "Supermask") features dual three-speed fans and HEPA filters. That's the same setup found on LG's equally Cyberpunk 2077-looking PuriCare Wearable Air Purifier mask.

As Will.i.am was involved in the Xupermask's creation, it has built-in active noise-canceling headphones for enjoying your tunes while looking like a Fallout character. There's also a microphone, Bluetooth 5.0, and a magnetic earbud docking system.

Taking a leaf from Razer's Project Hazel, the Xupermask boasts LED day glow lights, though they're not of the RGB variety, as is the case with the PC accessory maker's product. You also get a 7-hour battery life.

The futuristic look of the Xupermask comes from Jose Fernandez, the Hollywood costume designer who worked on Black Panther, The Avengers, and X-Men 2. He also made the SpaceX suits for Elon Musk.

"XUPERMASK is constructed out of innovative materials, including silicone face seal and secured by an elastic strap for comfort and high performance. Easily adjustable to a variety of face shapes, the powerful accessory has the durability to be worn up to 365 days a year anywhere in the world," states the press kit.

All that tech doesn't come cheap. The Xupermask will cost $299 and be available in white/grey/orange and black/black/orange colors when it launches on April 8. Each one ships with a Xuperkit consisting of a carrying case, 3-month supply of HEPA filters, multi-size ear tips, USB-C charging cable, and a fabric mask.

With the vaccine rollout continuing and more states dropping their masks mandates, is now the best time to launch an expensive mask? In the words of Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan:

"even with vaccinations, we are hearing you still have to be masked up because there is still the risk factor that even if you're vaccinated, you still need to be incredibly careful. Secondly, there are also many countries that are unlikely that are going to get the whole [scale] of vaccinations in the next year or even two, so traveling everyone should be very careful."

Could you create something better? The US government is paying up to $500,000 for new designs that address some of the problems people have with current masks.
LA PAZ (Reuters) - Bolivia's leftist ruling party received an electoral setback on Sunday when exit polls showed it had lost the possibility of governing the most populated cities in the country.

In the midst of a second wave of coronavirus, the center-right won the mayoralties of La Paz, Santa Cruz, Cochabamba and El Alto, which account for about 70 percent of the Bolivian population. In all the country has 11.3 million inhabitants.

The ruling party's rivals won eight of the 10 main Bolivian cities and appeared set to take control of least four of the nine provincial governorships, according to survey data released by local television channels Unitel, Red Uno and Bolivision.

The left returned to power in Bolivia at the end of last year, when current president, Luis Arce, won the national election with a comfortable 55.1 percent. He was backed by former president Evo Morales.

But increasingly Bolivian voters are looking towards a new generation of politicians.

In the city of El Alto, long a bastion of socialism, Eva Copa, a former socialist party star who was pushed out of the party for being too moderate, was elected mayor, according to the exit polls.

"We have shown that we are a new alternative," she told reporters.

Election authorities have a week to announce the official results of Sunday's vote, which was marred by long delays at many polling stations where lines formed as people waited to cast their ballots.

(Reporting by Danny Ramos; writing by Hugh Bronstein; editing by Richard Pullin)
Tributes to former Conservative frontbencher Peter Ainsworth flooded in last night after his death at the age of 64.

Mr Ainsworth, a former investment banker, served as shadow culture and environment secretary during his parliamentary career.

He joined the Conservative Party as a schoolboy and became president of the Oxford University Monday Club, a Right-wing group allied to the Tories.

The former conservative frontbencher Peter Ainsworth has died at the age of 64

He was elected to Parliament in 1992 as the MP for East Surrey and used his maiden speech to the Commons to voice concerns about the threat posed by the M25 to the countryside.

The married father of three stepped down from Parliament at the 2010 election.

He became chairman of the Big Lottery Fund from 2011 to 2019 and was appointed chairman of the Churches Conservation Trust in 2016.

He also became chairman of the Heritage Alliance in 2018.

Pictured: Former Conservative MP Peter Ainsworth, with wife Claire

Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden said: It is with deep sadness that I learned today of Peters death. He was unfailingly kind, charming and a committed public servant.

Tory peer Zac Goldsmith said: He was a committed environmentalist, going back years, and was an inspiration to me personally.

He added that he was above all kind, funny and lovely.

Government minister Zac Goldsmith: 'Im so sad to hear about Peter Ainsworth. He was a committed environmentalist, going back years, and was an inspiration for me personally.

'But above all, he was the kind, funny and lovely man to know. All my thoughts with his family.'

Oliver Heald, MP for North East Hertfordshire, said: 'Sad to learn of the passing of my old friend Peter Ainsworth.

'He was a good MP, great public servant and a strength in the Opposition Years. Last met up with him to see the play This House, where we both recognised and enjoyed the Whips Dilemma.'

Former minister for universities and science Sam Gyimah added: 'Very sad to hear of the passing of Peter Ainsworth, my predecessor as MP for East Surrey.

'Peter was charming, witty, thoughtful and principled. A committed environmentalist, passionate about the Arts and was in politics for the right reasons. Thinking of his adorable family.'

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the National Lottery described Mr Ainsworth as a 'tireless public servant' and added: 'Peter was a passionate advocate for the environment and for communities all across the UK. Our thoughts are with his family and friends.'
The generous legacy of a wealthy and charitable banker who died over 100 years ago is still being felt today.

Wellington Darley, who died in October 1920, left an estate worth 234,954  worth an estimated 15m in todays money.

Mr Darley of Violet Hill, in Bray, Co Wicklow, was a former governor of the Bank of Ireland, and an internal trust set up to help widows of bank officials facing financial hardship is still in operation today.

However, the Charities Regulator has applied to dissolve the trust as its objectives are no longer practical. It aims to give all the remaining money to the Society of the St Vincent De Paul.

A spokesman for the Society of St Vincent De Paul said they knew nothing about the donation at this stage.

But they welcomed it as a blessing at a difficult time for the charity.

All our shops are closed and our income has been severely depleted by the pandemic, they said.

It speaks to the calibre of the man that his generosity is still benefiting people over a century after his death.

A Bank of Ireland spokesman was unable to confirm the amount of money remaining in the trust. However, Mr Darley owned a shareholding in the bank which is thought to be significant.

Back in 1920, Mr Darley was one of Irelands richest men.

He owned property throughout Ireland and England and was the director of several companies.

Tragically in the years before his death, he lost both of his sons in World War I.

Arthur Tudor Darley, his eldest son, joined the British Navy as a cadet in 1891 and first went to sea on the battleships HMS Royal Sovereign and HMS Rodney.

After promotion to lieutenant in 1898, he specialised in torpedo warfare.

He was promoted to the rank of commander at the end of 1909.

Commander Darley died in the sinking of the armoured cruiser HMS Good Hope during the Battle of Coronel off the Chilean coast on November 1, 1914.

Just four years later his brother, and the last surviving son of Wellington, Lieutenant Colonel John Evelyn Carmichael Darley (38), was killed in action in France on Easter Sunday 1918.

A decorated war hero, he was educated at Eton and obtained a commission in the 5th Lancers in November 1899, a regiment he served throughout the South African war. He received both the Queens and the Kings medal.

In December 1901, he was promoted to captain in a Hussar regiment for continuous good service. In January 1902, he was severely wounded.

He was promoted to the rank of major in 1913 and went to France on August 15, 1914, where he took part in the retreat from Mons and in the first and second battle of Ypres.

In April 1916, he became lieutenant colonel of his regiment; less than two years later, he died in battle on March 18, 1918, his birthday.

Wellington Darley died just two years later.

He left large sums of his fortune to charities and divided the rest between his wife, two daughters and grandson.

He was remembered as a man of great sympathies with a statesmanlike outlook who did a great deal for the advancement of his community.
All New South Wales public sector employees who are primary carers will soon be able to access 14 weeks of paid parental leave in the first year of their baby's life.

Previously, public sector employees were entitled to up to 14 weeks paid parental leave only if they were the mother, or up to one week paid leave if they were the 'other' parent.

'This is a huge win for the parents of NSW and for gender equity,' Public Service Association NSW General Secretary Stewart Little said on Wednesday.

All New South Wales public sector employees who are primary carers will soon be able to access 14 weeks of paid parental leave in the first year of their baby's life (stock image)

'This gives families more choice about how they'll care for their new child.

'It also means women will be able to more readily return to work once they're ready, knowing that the other parent also has access to paid parental leave.'

Public Sector Industrial Relations advised the union last week that from July it would expand the NSW public sector parental leave entitlement to include two further categories.

One covers the birth or primary parent at the time of birth, adoption or surrogacy, and the 'other parent' who has primary responsibly for the care of the child not at the time of the birth, adoption of surrogacy.

The 'other parent' will also be able to access two weeks paid leave at the time of birth and an additional 12 weeks paid leave, which can be taken at 24 weeks half pay, in the first 12 months of the baby's life.

'There is no silver bullet to addressing gender inequality in our workplaces. But universal parental leave paves the way for significant cultural shift,' Mr Little said.'
Burma Death Toll From Myanmar Regimes Crackdown Reaches at Least 587

The military regimes forces are seen during an attack on anti-regime protesters in Kale, Sagaing Region on Wednesday morning.

Myanmars protest-related death toll since the Feb. 1 coup has reached at least 587 after the military regimes forces launched armed attacks in several townships around the country on Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning.

As of Tuesday evening, about 581 people had been killed by the juntas forces, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) said.

At around 5 a.m. on Wednesday, the juntas forces attacked anti-regime protesters with live rounds and heavy explosives during an operation to remove a roadblock erected by protesters as part of their defense line in Kale Township, Sagaing Region.

At least five anti-regime protesters were killed and more than 20 injured.

On Tuesday night, a man was killed by regime forces in Nyaung Shwe Township, Shan State when they opened fire on residents who appeared in the streets to protest a violent regime raid on a restaurant. Several people were also reportedly injured in the shooting.

According to the Shan State-based Kanbawza Tai news agency, on Tuesday the regimes forces returned to family members the dead body of a young man who was arrested on Sunday while he was helping to put out a fire at a ward administration office in the Shan State capital, Taunggyi.

Photo records show the man suffered serious head injuries. An autopsy was due to be conducted on his body.

Meanwhile, despite the fact that there were no protests being held there, military regime forces opened fire in several wards in Myingyan Township, Mandalay Region between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. on Wednesday, according to a resident.

A man was reportedly sustained an arm injury during the shooting.

The Myanmar military regime has intensified its deadly crackdowns against anti-regime protesters, using live rounds as well as grenades fired from launchers. During their raids, regime forces frequently fire indiscriminately at bystanders, pedestrians and residents.

Despite the intensity of the crackdown, tens of thousands of people across the country continue to take to the streets daily to protest against the military regime.

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At Least Five Protesters Killed as Junta Launches Heavy Crackdown in Kale

Myanmar Regimes Thugs Target Doctors and Clinics Aiding the Wounded

Myanmar Youths Call for Boycott of Traditional Water Festival to Defy Junta, Honor Those Slain
London bus workers have experienced a toll of illness and death from COVID-19 up to three times greater than the national average. More than 60 bus workers are dead, with dozens more hospitalised or left struggling with long-COVID.

Last April, confronted with a first wave of infections and deaths, anger erupted against the collusion of Unite the union with the bus companies, Transport for London (TfL) and its chairman, Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan.

They are doing nothing to protect us! drivers told the World Socialist Web Site on April 10. Fury was directed against Unites joint letters with TfL and the bus operators instructing drivers that personal protective equipment (PPE) was not recommended. Throughout those early months, Unite echoed the false claims of Khan and the Tories that COVID-19 posed a low risk to transport workers and passengers and that handwashing would provide adequate protection.

A wave of resignations from Unite at London garages is proof that many drivers now see it as a pro-company union. Under these conditions, a small group of former Unite reps and activists are calling on workers to join the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT), which they claim represents a genuinely militant and left-wing alternative. But switching from one union to another will do nothing to resolve the fundamental problems facing bus and transport workers, which are the same problems that confront workers in every sector and industry worldwide.

Save for its more militant rhetoric, there is nothing to distinguish the RMT from Unite. Its record over the last decade includes ending strikes against the closure of ticket offices on the London Underground and wearing down UK-wide opposition by rail drivers and conductors to the introduction of Driver Only Operated (DOO) trains. Despite repeated strikes against DOO since 2016, RMT officials forced through sell-out deals at ScotRail, Greater Anglia, Southern and West Midlands Railway that watered-down the safety-critical role of conductors. Like Unite, the RMT shelved strike votes in 2020, lining up with a de facto no-strike agreement by the Trades Union Congress based on appeals for national unity during the pandemic.

London bus drivers already have first-hand experience with a so-called left-wing trade union. For more than a decade, Unite was portrayed as Britains biggest such union. Len McCluskey, its current general secretary, was dubbed Red Len by the press, declaring in 2010 that his aim was the achievement of a socialist economic, social and political system, by means of both parliamentary and extra-parliamentary approaches.

A member of the Labour Party since 1970 and a supporter of the Militant Tendency during the 1980s, McCluskey was Jeremy Corbyns main ally during his tenure as Labour leader, helping him to politically neuter and crush left-wing and socialist sentiment in the working class, most infamously through his role in blocking the de-selection of Blairite MPs at Labours 2018 national conference. This supposedly left union has done everything possible to suppress strike action among its 1.4 million members across key sectors including transport and manufacturing, in the face of staggering social inequality.

Whether under left-wing or right-wing leadership, todays trade unions function as corporatist partners of the employers and the state, ruthlessly enforcing pro-market reform against the working class. This is a universal process, reflected in the evolution of union organisations on a world scale.

The globalisation of capitalist production in the 1980s cut the ground beneath the national-reformist programmes of the labour parties and trade unions in every country, shattering their ability to extract concessions from the employers. With capitalists able to relocate offshore and exploit the cheapest sources of labour, along with tax breaks and investment incentives, unions responded by repudiating any defence of even the most minimal reforms, offering up their own members at internationally competitive rates of pay and slashing conditions in a never-ending race to the bottom. In this process, union officials have assumed the role of joint stockholders and business partners.

The unions have a vested interest in suppressing industrial action and blocking any threat to the stability of financial markets.

Unite today resembles the very corporations it colludes with. It has been an active participant in the growth of speculative finance that has enriched a parasitic financial oligarchy. Unite has 340.6 million in general funds, operates 1.1 billion in pension funds, and has access to 50 million in shares. Its annual accounts for 2018 (the most recent available) show 272 valid strike ballots where a yes vote resulted that year, but just 73 resulted in strikes.

Unite senior officials enjoy salaries and lifestyles that place them firmly in the top 5-10 percent of income earners. McCluskeys gross salary is 96,095, but this excludes expense claims. Unites accounts show the extent of the pork barrelling2.9 million for committee and council expenses, 8.3 million in sundry expenses, 3.1 million for expenses for conferences, 458,000 for expenses of executive committee (head office) and 10.5 million in payments to regions and branches.

The RMTs decades-long evolution toward corporatism is fundamentally the same. Founded in 1990 as a merger of the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR) and the National Union of Seamen (NUS), the RMT covered sections of the working class with militant traditions of struggle. But it came into existence under conditions of the terminal decline of the trade union movement in Britain and all over the world.

Bob Crow, a Stalinist from the Communist Party of Great Britain, was the unions assistant general secretary from 1992 and its general secretary from 2002 until his death in 2014. He was held up as a latter-day Arthur Scargill (National Union of Mineworkers president, 1982-2002), someone prepared to launch militant action in defence of his members. But those drawing the comparison, including Crow himself, never bothered to explain how the British miners strike o f 1984-85 was betrayed.

Bob Crow (left) with Boris Johnson (credit: globalgranary.life)

Scargill had opposed any political struggle against the Trades Union Congress and Labour bureaucracys deliberate isolation of the miners. Despite unofficial strikes among rail workers, dockworkers and lorry drivers, the TUC and Labour Party blocked the development of a general strike to bring down the Thatcher government. By the time the RMT was founded, Scargill had repudiated any perspective based on militant industrial struggle, advocating a nationalist alliance with the employers to Save Our Pits.

Crow was a continuation of everything that was negative and backward looking in the British workers movement. He combined tub-thumping demagogy and calls for limited strike action with attempts to find a productive working relationship with the government and employers. He opposed privatisation, wanting a return to the post-war nationalised industries, but his appeals were directed to a Labour Party that was evolving into a Thatcherite free-market enterprise under Tony Blair, mirroring the evolution of social-democratic parties throughout the world. In 1997, Crow briefly joined Scargills Socialist Labour Party (SLP) that proclaimed its defence of real Labour values, opposing the Blairites ditching of Clause 4 ( public ownership of industry) from the partys constitution and calling for a British exit from the European Union. The SLP soon descended into factional in-fighting and political obscurity.

Crows politics was underpinned by economic nationalism. He was a lifelong advocate of the Stalinist British road to socialism, a reformist programme coupled to calls for peaceful co-existence between capitalism and socialism and the defence of Britains national independence. This found reflection in the RMTs early advocacy of the  Say No to the EU  campaign, with Crow claiming that Britains withdrawal from Europe would open new vistas for workers rights based on the return of national sovereignty. Such a nationalist programme, with its denunciations of social dumping, whereby cheap foreign labour displaces local workers, was a criminal betrayal of socialism that led inevitably to collaboration with the most right-wing forces. Speaking at the UK Independence Partys conference at Eastbourne in 2011, Farage paid tribute to Crows support for the anti-EU cause, He is 100 percent a British patriot in every regard and every way.

Crow pioneered the left-wing nationalist arguments later taken up by the RMT and large swathes of Britains pseudo-left in the 2016 Brexit referendum. The Left Exit camp, led by the Socialist Party and Socialist Workers Party, claimed Britains leaving the EU would strengthen the fight for socialism under a Corbyn-led Labour government. Such arguments served to block a genuine left-wing alternative to the EU cartel of bankers, that could only be based on the unification of the working class in the fight for the United Socialist States of Europe. Instead, the working class was subordinated to a pro-Brexit faction of the ruling class led by the Tory right. Class lines were obliterated, summed up in George Galloways invocation, on a platform shared with Farage, Left, right, left, right, forward march to victory.

While claiming to be progressive and anti-racist, the RMT routinely promotes nationalist divisions in the working class. It denounces a foreign takeover of Britains railways, declaring under the Tories, any state can run our railways other than the British state.

In 2016, RMT officials, joined by members of the Socialist Party, hung German flags over Newcastle railway station, seeking to channel workers anger over cuts by Deutsche Bahn into anti-German sentiment. This criminal pitting of British workers against their class brothers and sisters on the continent also aims to deflect from the RMTs collaboration with the rail companies, including UK-based transnationals savage attacks on transport workers across the UK, Europe and internationally.

The RMT's nationalist campaign against foreign ownership serves to split and divide the working class (source: RMT)

Those former Unite activists praising Crow reflect the myth-making of his legacy by the pseudo-left Socialist Party, Labour lefts such as Corbyn and John McDonnell, and the Stalinist Morning Star .

Tributes to Crow from right-wing politicians and business leaders following his death in 2014 get closer to the truth, with Boris Johnson telling the BBC that Crow was not a 'left-wing ogre If anything, he was more moderate than some of the other characters in the RMT,' adding that he was the man you would go to if the deal was to be done.

Mike Brown, then managing director of London Underground, recalled in the Evening Standard, Bob Crow agreed with TfL Commissioner Peter Hendy and me on much more than the media headlines might have suggested, reminiscing that, strikes would be called off at the last moment with claims of major new concessions having been wrung out of us, which was never true.

In Britain and throughout the world, workers are coming into struggle against savage austerity, saddled with organisations hostile to their most basic class interests. The trade unions, rooted in the nation-state, advance the programme of corporatism, working in partnership with company boardrooms and government ministers to enhance the competitive position of their own industry. Hence the RMTs participation in the Tory governments Rail Industry Recovery Group whose remit is to slash pay, conditions and pensions.

Unites version is a radical blueprint to transform UK manufacturing based on its call to Build localBuy UK and bring back the thousands of manufacturing jobs that moved overseas. This programme of economic nationalismwhether espoused by Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn; Donald Trump or Joe Biden; Unite or the RMTleads inevitably to trade and military war. The RMTs campaign on the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) attests to this, linking the fight for better pay to the RFAs role in protecting the UKs strategic and security interests in operating supplies for the Royal Navy.

If these issues are not more widely understood in the working class, this is down to the role of pseudo-left groups who specialise in providing socialist credentials to pro-capitalist organisations. The SPs campaign to elect Steve Hedley as RMT general secretary is a case in point. A former SP member, Hedley has served as Senior Assistant General Secretary of the RMT since 2012. In February, the SPs newspaper reprinted Hedleys election statement, in which he proclaimed, The bosses will fear me as general secretary as they know I cannot be bought or intimidated!, pledging, I will work closely with the national executive council, officers and reps to defend jobs, safety, terms and conditions, and pay.

Hedleys entire election campaign is a cover for the RMTs participation in the Johnson governments Rail Industry Recovery Group. There is no public record of Hedley opposing the RMTs participation, let alone mobilising rail workers against this committees backroom plans to gut workers jobs, pay, safety and pensions.

The pseudo-lefts support for Hedleyand its willingness to promote the RMT as a militant unionrests on its leading role in the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC). Founded in 2010 as an electoral alliance of pseudo-left and Stalinist groups with the trade union bureaucracy, TUSC is viewed as a critical mechanism for protecting the trade union apparatus under conditions of escalating class struggle.

After Corbyn became Labour leader in 2015, TUSC was effectively mothballed as efforts by its alliance members focused on electing a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour government. Their promotion of Corbynism as 21st century socialism was aimed at suppressing the class struggle, trapping radicalised workers and youth behind the doomed project of achieving socialism through the Labour Party. In the midst of the pandemic, TUSC has been relaunched, aiming to divert new sections of workers and youth seeking a way to fight the pro-Tory agenda of Corbyns anointed successor, Sir Keir Starmer.

There are no short-cuts or easy answers to the problems facing the working class. The road forward depends on drawing the lessons of the past, and this means turning to socialism. The socialist movementled today by the International Committee of the Fourth International and its affiliated Socialist Equality Partiesembodies the entire history of the working class and the fight for socialism since Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto.

The fight against austerity, combatting the turn to police repression, attacks on migrants and the drive to war, requires the building of new organisations of class struggle. A network of rank-and-file action committees, independent of the unions, must be built up, linking workers across industries and national borders, and advancing policies to meet the urgent social needs of the working class during the pandemic for secure and well-paid jobs, affordable housing, access to healthcare, the protection of immigrants and refugees and opposition to militarism and war.

We urge all those who want to participate in this struggle to attend this Saturdays meeting called by the Socialist Equality Party.
In the view of transport strike in Karnataka on 7 April, several universities including Bangalore University, Bengaluru Central University have postponed the examinations scheduled on Wednesday. Workers of Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC), Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC), North Western Karnataka Road Transport Corporation (NWKRTC) and North Eastern Karnataka Road Transport Corporation (NEKRTC), under the banner of Karnataka State Road Transport Employees League announced a strike from 7 April. The protest is against the governments failure to implement a salary under the 6th Pay Commission for the Road Transport Corporation workers.

"Without giving room for the government to take strict measures, drop the strike and cooperate with the administration," chief minister B S Yediyurappa said.

All you need to know about Karnataka transport strike from Wednesday

1) "Transport employees have given a call to go on strike from Wednesday, the chief minister held a discussion in this regard, we are requesting employees not to go on strike keeping COVID-19 situation in mind. They had nine demands, eight of them have been fulfilled and implemented," chief secretary P Ravi Kumar said, reported news agency PTI.

2) "Their demand for implementation of the sixth pay commission report, and thereby give them the salary on par with the government employees, cannot be accepted," he added.

3) On Tuesday, the chief minister held a meeting with the chief secretary and top Transport department officials on tackling the strike.

4) The government has also made alternate arrangements by roping in private transport operators and seeking for deployment of more trains, aimed at addressing inconvenience caused to the general public, due to the strike.

5) "Private buses, maxi cabs will be left free, they will be allowed to operate in assigned routes. The transport commissioner is working on alternate arrangements across the state," he added. The government also requested the railways for special trains to places like Kalaburagi, Belagavi, Hubballi, Mysuru among others, according to PTI.

6) Karnataka government allowed the state road transport corporation to hire private buses and school buses for transportation, news agency ANI reported.

7) The protesters league led by farmer leader Kodihalli Chandrashekar said that they will not budge to threats and will continue with the strike.

"...People of the state are watching, our indefinite strike will continue...our protest will be non-violent, employees will not come to duty," Chandrashekar told PTI. He also appealed to private transporters to join hands in the stir.

8) "There will be no more negotiations or talks...still if they go for strike, all the measures that can be taken in the framework of law will be taken. This is the strict decision taken by the CM and it will be implemented...no work no pay will anyway be there," P Ravi Kumar said.

9) "There are COVID restrictions in place and a notification has already been issued under the Disaster Management Act stating that people cannot gather in groups, Kumar said, if it is violated, action will be taken under the act, also IPC, police act among others," Kumar further added.

10) Transport commissioner will take steps to see to it that autos and cabs don't charge exorbitantly, taking advantage of the transport strike, the state chief secretary noted. A notification fixing cab and bus fares has already been issued and no once can charge over it. "If we get to know about it, strict action will be taken," he mentioned.

"The transport commissioner will take steps to ensure that autos and cabs don't charge exorbitantly, taking advantage of transport strike," Kumar further added.

(With inputs from agencies)

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Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope on Wednesday said the state has requested the Centre for the supply of for medical use from nearby states.

"12 metric tonnes of is produced and over 7 tonnes of is consumed daily. We've urged that we should be supplied medical oxygen from the nearby states. If a need arises, we'll close down the industries that use oxygen but won't let the supply of medical oxygen be affected," Tope said.

"We are working on various technologies for obtaining oxygen for medical purpose. I came across a technology on Tuesday which can absorb oxygen from open air. That will also decrease the need for liquified and pressurised oxygen," the Minister added.

Tope further said that the state government is also looking to speed up the setting up of oxygen plants proposed in Mumbai, Palghar and other areas.

He also lauded the state government for keeping the vaccine wastage rate to just three per cent against the rate of six per cent.

Slamming the Opposition, the Minister said that nobody should do politics over a public health crisis adding that they shouldn't provoke people for protests against restrictions.

"If there is some need for relaxations, our government will consider in due course of time. The Chief Minister has appealed this and Devendra Fadnavis also supported it," he said.

Speaking about the issues regarding Tribitron's ventilators being out of function, he said that the company's ventilators are not functional due to technical issues and they have requested to train our technicians to look for the technical issues in those Ventilators.

On Wednesday, Maharashtra reported 55,469 new COVID-19 cases and 297 deaths.

The active number of cases in the state stands at 4,72,283. The death toll in the state has gone up to 56,330.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Joseph S. Nye, Jr.





CAMBRIDGE  During Joe Biden's long career in the U.S. Senate, he established a record of supporting human rights as a goal of American foreign policy. Now, as president, Biden's commitment in this area is being put to the test.







Foreign policy involves trade-offs among many issues, including security, economic interests, and other values. But when it comes to human rights, trade-offs often give rise to charges of hypocrisy or cynicism.







Consider the 2018 killing of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul. Former President Donald Trump was criticized for ignoring clear evidence of a brutal crime in order to maintain good relations with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, better known as MBS.







Liberals criticized Trump's mild reaction to Khashoggi's murder as remorselessly transactional and heedless of the facts. Even the conservative Wall Street Journal editorialized that "we are aware of no President, not even such ruthless pragmatists as Richard Nixon or Lyndon Johnson, who would have written a public statement like this without so much as a grace note about America's abiding values and principles."







Trump viewed access to oil, sales of military equipment, and regional stability as paramount, but ignored that upholding values and principles that are attractive to others is also an important national interest. Defending human rights tells the world who Americans are, and enhances America's soft power, or the ability to get what one wants through attraction rather than coercion or payment.







Combining these different types of interests in foreign policy requires compromise, which gives rise to criticism over how the compromises are struck. During the 2020 campaign, Biden criticized Trump for turning a blind eye to MBS's role in Khashoggi's murder.







Upon becoming president, he authorized the director of National Intelligence to release a declassified report that assigned blame to MBS, banned 76 Saudi individuals from the United States, and curtailed the use of American weapons in the Saudi war in Yemen.







But liberal critics argued that Biden should have gone further and announced that the U.S. would not deal with MBS, thereby pressuring King Salman to install another crown prince. Many experts on the Kingdom argue that this sort of regime change was beyond America's capability. Unlike Trump, Biden invoked American values, but raised questions about whether he struck the right balance.







Similar issues have arisen over Biden's policy toward China. Biden criticized Chinese President Xi Jinping for not having "a democratic bone in his body," and when Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met with their Chinese counterparts in Anchorage, they criticized China's human rights violations in Xinjiang and the repression of democracy and its defenders in Hong Kong. With regard to Russia, Biden agreed with a statement that President Vladimir Putin was "a killer."







Yet when it came time to invite leaders to a U.S. climate summit, Xi and Putin were on the list (though the Saudi invitation went to King Salman, not his son). Was this hypocrisy, or did it reflect a realistic assessment that climate change is a major threat that cannot be managed without the cooperation of these countries' governments?







For example, China is now the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and Saudi Arabia sits on the largest pool of hydrocarbons. There can be no solution to our climate problem if they are not on board. We will have to learn the importance of exercising power with others as well as over others if we wish to deal with ecological interdependence. That means working with China on climate and pandemic issues even as we criticize its record on human rights.







How then can we decide whether our leaders make "the best moral choices" under the circumstances? As I argue in my book "Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump," we can start by making sure we judge them in terms of "three-dimensional ethics" that considers intentions, means, and consequences, and by drawing from three foreign-policy schools of thought: Realism, liberalism, and cosmopolitanism, in that order.







Human rights should not be framed as pitting values against U.S. national interests, because values are part of America's national interest. We should start with realism, but not stop there. Within the realm of the possible, we should assert our values in the manner in which they are most likely to make a difference. At the same time, if we do not start with realism, we will soon rediscover that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.







The goals that U.S. presidents have sought over the years do not reflect a pursuit of justice at the international level similar to what they aspired to at home. In the 1941 Atlantic Charter (one of the founding documents of the liberal international order), U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared their devotion to freedom from want and fear.







But Roosevelt did not try to transfer his domestic New Deal to the international level. Even the renowned liberal philosopher John Rawls believed that the conditions for his theory of justice applied only to domestic society.







At the same time, Rawls argued that liberal societies have duties beyond their borders, including mutual aid and respect for institutions that ensure basic human rights while allowing people in a diverse world to determine their own affairs as much as possible. Thus, we should ask whether a leader's goals include a vision that expresses widely attractive values at home and abroad, but prudently balances those values and assesses risks so that there is a reasonable prospect of their success.







This means that we judge a leader based not only on his or her character and intentions, but also on contextual intelligence when it comes to promoting values. So far, Biden is passing that test.









Joseph S. Nye, Jr. is a former dean at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and the author of "Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump." His article was distributed by Project Syndicate (




New Delhi: With the number of COVID-19 cases rising rapidly across the country, the Centre on Wednesday (April 7) hit out at Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh governments over their alleged failure to control the spread of infection in their states.

Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan said that the allegations of vaccine shortage were utterly baseless and that it was an attempt by the state governments to divert attention from their own failures.

Deplorable attempts by some state governments to distract attention from their failures and spread panic among the people, Dr Harsh Vardhan was quoted as saying by ANI.

I have seen statements made by public representatives in Maharashtra about shortage of vaccines. This is nothing but an attempt to divert attention from Maharashtra governments repeated failures to control the spread of pandemic, he added.

Inability of Maharashtra govt to act responsibly is beyond comprehension. To spread panic among the people is to compound the folly further. Vaccine supplies are being monitored on a real-time basis, and State governments are being apprised regularly about it, Dr Harsh Vardhan said.

Allegations of vaccine shortage utterly baseless. Throughout last year as Union Health Minister I have been witness to misgovernance and casual approach of Maharashtra government in battling virus. Their lackadaisical attitude singularly bogged down countrys efforts to fight virus, he added.

He further said that performance of Maharashtra government in terms of vaccinating healthcare and frontline workers was not great, adding that it was shocking to see how state government is putting Maharashtrians in danger by letting people escape institutional quarantine mandate for the sake of their personal Vasuli.

Chhattisgarh only government in the world to have incited vaccine hesitancy

Highlighting the disproportionately higher mortality rate in Chhattisgarh, the minister blamed the state government for refusing to use Covaxin.

Chhattisgarh has seen disproportionately higher number of deaths in the last 2-3 weeks. Their testing remains heavily dependent on rapid antigen tests which is not a wise strategy, Dr Harsh Vardhan said

Chhattisgarh government refused to use Covaxin despite it being given emergency use authorization by DCGI. Not only this, by its actions, leaders of the state govt have dubious distinction of being perhaps only government in the world to have incited vaccine hesitancy, he added.

The union minister also pointed out other states that need to bring their healthcare systems up to the mark.

Quality of testing needs to improve in Karnataka, Rajasthan and Gujarat. In Punjab, high case fatality rate needs to be improved by early identification of those needing hospitalization, he said.

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With 450 registered voters in the village and only 104 votes counted as of late Tuesday night, the race remained in doubt. Between the two candidates, approximately $85,000 was raised. Lake County Clerk Robin OConnor said write-in votes are tabulated in the office by an election judge. Results will not likely be known until early next week.
'Give helpers the jabs before they come to HK'

Agencies say banning all flights from the Philippines would hugely affect families who need helpers. File Photo: RTHK

The government has been urged to consider requiring domestic helpers from the Philippines to be vaccinated against Covid-19 before they come to Hong Kong, amid suggestions of a ban on all arrivals from the country.



Concerns have spiked over recent imported cases from the Philippines, which is seeing a surge in Covid-19 infections and the discovery of a new mutant variant.



That prompted University of Hong Kong microbiologist Ho Pak-leung to call for a ban on all flights from countries such as the Philippines and India to keep the Covid-19 variant out.



Professor David Hui from the Chinese University, who advises the government on the pandemic, said the administration needs to strike a balance between infection control and the needs of local families.



"If you stop them from coming, you minimise the risk to the community. However, many Hong Kong families actually rely on foreign domestic helpers. So, if we stop the visitors coming from the Philippines, then a lot of Hong Kong families will be affected," he told RTHK's Frances Sit.



Hui said authorities could consider making vaccinations compulsory for helpers before they arrive here.



But Ho raised concern about a limited supply of the vaccines in the Philippines.



Teresa Liu, from the Association of Hong Kong Manpower Agencies, said her group would discuss with Philippine authorities whether helpers could get priority for inoculation.



She believes Hong Kong employers would be willing to pay for the jabs if the 21-day hotel quarantine for helpers would be shortened.
IRVING, Texas, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- NorthStar Anesthesia, an industry leader in providing modernized anesthesia care for over two decades, has expanded to serve new states and regional systems across the country.

Over the last few months, NorthStar transitioned to serve five new hospitals, surgical centers and healthcare systems. These systems are Saint Francis Healthcare, which is part of the Trinity Health System, the Great Falls Clinic and Lubbock Heart and Surgical Hospital, which are owned by Surgery Partners, Alliance Specialty Surgical Center, and the East Coast Surgery Center.

"At NorthStar we are thrilled to be serving these new communities in Delaware, Florida, Montana, and Texas," said NorthStar CEO, Adam Spiegel. "We look forward to working with the many incumbent providers from these sites that have joined NorthStar as well as recruiting additional high-quality anesthesiologists and CRNAs to join these teams."

In addition to geographic expansion, this growth within existing partnerships highlights NorthStar's strong track record of providing high-quality anesthesia care.

Saint Francis Healthcare in Wilmington, Delaware, a member of Trinity Health, offers critical healthcare services including emergency care, cardiology and cancer care. During the transition, NorthStar retained 100% of incumbent physicians and a majority of CRNAs. NorthStar provides anesthesia services to three other Trinity hospitals.

"At Saint Francis, we provide our patients with service above and beyond what is expected. It was clear from the start that NorthStar Anesthesia would put our patients first and be a great partner," said Brandon Harvath, President and Chief Operating Officer at Saint Francis Healthcare. "NorthStar Anesthesia provided the necessary guidance, support and structure, as we transitioned anesthesia providers. Their team's engagement and constant communication made the transition both seamless and successful."

At the Great Falls Clinic in Montana, NorthStar retained 100% of providers with a seamless transition that took place on January 20, 2021. The Great Falls Clinic is the fourth oldest medical clinic west of the Mississippi and cares for 250,000 residents living in the seventeen north central Montana counties.

"Retaining our existing providers was a top priority for our anesthesia transition," said Wayne Gillis, Chief Executive Officer of the Great Falls Clinic. "NorthStar fully supported that initiative and was able to secure 100% of our existing providers. Not only did NorthStar ensure a smooth transition, but with their help we were able to add open heart procedures to our existing cardiovascular service line within three weeks of NorthStar assuming anesthesia services."

NorthStar Anesthesia was also able to retain 100% of the incumbent physicians at Lubbock Heart and Surgical Hospital in Lubbock, Texas. Lubbock Heart and Surgical Hospital is a physician-owned hospital serving the South Plains region.

"NorthStar Anesthesia came in and developed a strong plan to support our anesthesia service needs and desired growth. Not only were they able to support us earlier than anticipated, they developed a strong recruiting strategy and secured strong, long term providers that have supported our hospital's growth plan," said Ashlye Kaerwer, Chief Nursing Officer at Lubbock Heart Hospital & Surgical Center. "We strongly value NorthStar's partnership, their communication, and ongoing willingness to support the needs of our hospital and surgery center."

To learn more about NorthStar Anesthesia, visit www.northstaranesthesia.com.

About NorthStar Anesthesia

NorthStar Anesthesia is a company of caregivers, founded by an anesthesiologist and a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA). With more than 2,000 anesthesiologists and CRNAs under its banner, NorthStar partners with more than 170 hospitals and medical centers to deliver a more productive and efficient model of anesthesia care. Its "care team" approach focuses on the provision of high-quality care while measurably improving operating room performance. For more information, visit www.northstaranesthesia.com.

Contact:

Simone Jackenthal

Trident DMG

202-923-5296

[email protected]

SOURCE NorthStar Anesthesia

Related Links

http://www.northstaranesthesia.com


With an $400bn industry target, India eyes to beat China at its own game and emerge as a chip hub. A recent report by IC Insights suggests that South Korean and Taiwanese companies far exceed China in terms of semiconductor capital investment.

South Korea and Taiwans companies far exceed China in terms of semiconductor capital investment. Samsung has been the top spender in the world since 2010, as per the IC Insights. Intel is barely catching up to TSMC, which is in second place. Samsung and TSMC are projected to account for 43% of global capital spending this year.

According to a report by IC Insights, US company Intels market share is insufficient to compete with South Korea and Taiwan. To have any fair chance of success, governments will have to invest at least $30 billion a year for at least five years, says the study, the report said, referring to the minimum investment required by the US, China, and the EU to grow chipmakers with production technology and capability comparable to Samsung and TSMC.

Over the last two decades, Samsung and TSMC have dominated the global chipmaking industry. One of the detrimental consequences of an oligopoly is the recent automotive chip crunch. US Tech giant Intel has announced plans to invest $20 billion in two new chip manufacturing facilities in Arizona by 2024. Although Intels large investment is driven by competition between the United States and China, the companys strategy must also be to close the gap with the top two firms.

Read More: China holds naval drills near Taiwan; Time Taiwan amps up prep against potential Chinese invasion

Referring to Chinas chip industry, the report said, For China, even if the money were available, trade issues blocking some of the most important pieces of process equipment from being sold into the country would certainly be a hindrance.

India has also set its eyes on the Semiconductor industry. The government will provide cash rewards of more than $1 billion to any company that establishes chip fabrication units. Private companies will be expected to purchase Made In India chips in order for these new fabrication plants to have guaranteed buyers.With an $400bn industry target, India eyes to beat China at its own game and emerge as a chip hub.
The Centre today hit back at the government and accused it of creating panic and spreading lies after it raised serious concerns about Covid-19 vaccine shortage in the state.

The Centre's reaction came hours after health minister Rajesh Tope said that the state had barely 2-3 days of vaccine stock left and urged the to hasten supplies. A day earlier, other non-Bharatiya Janata Party ruled states including Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Odisha had expressed similar concerns of vaccine shortage.

The development comes as India surpassed the US to become the fastest vaccinating country in the world with an average daily rate of 3.09 million vaccine doses. In all 87 million doses have been administered to date, including 3.3 million on Tuesday, Union health ministry said in a statement.





ALSO READ: Mumbai Police issues new Covid-19 lockdown guidelines: Details here

Briefing reporters today, Tope said, "We were vaccinating 300,000 persons daily when the Centre asked us to double the target. We took up the challenge and are now vaccinating around 450,000 people daily in  He added, We will easily scale up to 500,000 and then 600,000. But now we are forced to close some of the centres in the state as the doses are not available. People are being turned away by the staff at these centres."

The minister said Maharashtra is the number one state in vaccinating people and urged the Centre to supply doses quickly and open up for everyone above 18 years as that would help the state to contain the spread of the pandemic. According to Tope, the state has 1.4 million Covid-19 vaccine doses available, which will suffice for only three days.



ALSO READ: Covid-19 vaccination centres to be launched at workplaces from April 11

He also said Maharashtra was adopting all the instructions laid down by the Centre and following the 3T principle of tracking, testing and treatment.

Tope's remarks led to a sharp rebuke from the Centre with Union health minister accusing Maharashtra of politicising the issue.

"Vaccine supplies are being monitored on a real-time basis, and state governments are being apprised regularly about it. Allegations of vaccine shortage are utterly baseless," said in a statement. His colleague, Information & Broadcasting minister Prakash Javadekar also said Maharashtra should stop politicising the vaccine issue and added that nearly 2.3 million doses were available, including 740,000, which are in the pipeline.





ALSO READ: Wearing of mask mandatory even while driving alone: Delhi High Court

said the performance of the Maharashtra government in vaccinating healthcare and frontline workers was also not great. "It is shocking to see how the state government is putting Maharashtrians in danger by letting people escape institutional quarantine mandates for the sake of their personal vasuli. Overall, as the state has lurched from one crisis to another, it seems the state leadership is happily sleeping at the wheels," he said.

The Union health minister said Maharashtra has vaccinated only 86 per cent of the health workers with the first dose. The equivalent numbers for Delhi and Punjab are 72 per cent and 64 per cent, respectively. On the other hand, 10 Indian states and Union Territories have a more than 90 per cent record, he added.

Maharashtra has administered the second dose to just 41 per cent of healthcare workers; the equivalent numbers for Delhi and Punjab are 41 per cent and 27 per cent, respectively, he said. And 12 Indian states/UTs have done more than 60 per cent.

Meanwhile, has been halted in the town of Panvel near Mumbai. The local municipal corporation said vaccination will not be carried out till fresh stock is made available.
Black hole pairs found in distant merging galaxies

Astronomers have found two close pairs of quasars in the distant Universe. Follow-up observations with Gemini North spectroscopically resolved one of the distant quasar pairs, after their discovery with the Hubble Space Telescope and Gaia spacecraft. These quasars are closer together than any pair of quasars found so far away, providing strong evidence for the existence of supermassive black hole pairs as well as crucial insight into galaxy mergers in the early Universe.

The quasars in each of the two pairs are separated by just over 10,000 light-years, suggesting that they belong to two merging galaxies [1]. Double quasars are scientifically interesting but rare objects -- particularly in the most distant reaches of the Universe -- and these are the most distant quasars found that are so close together. We see these quasar pairs as they existed roughly 10 billion years ago [2].

"We estimate that in the distant Universe, for every one thousand quasars, there is one double quasar. So finding these double quasars is like finding a needle in a haystack," commented Yue Shen, an astronomer at the University of Illinois and lead author of the paper announcing this discovery.

Quasars are the intensely bright cores of distant galaxies, powered by the feeding frenzies of supermassive black holes [3]. These energetic objects profoundly affect galaxy formation and evolution, making observations of quasar pairs in the early Universe a unique way for astronomers to investigate the evolution of merging galaxies. Quasar pairs also provide a natural laboratory in which to study the processes leading to the formation of binary supermassive black holes.

"This truly is the first sample of dual quasars at the peak epoch of galaxy formation that we can use to probe ideas about how supermassive black holes come together to eventually form a binary," elaborated team member Nadia Zakamska of Johns Hopkins University.

Finding the two quasar pairs was a daunting challenge, requiring a new method that combined data from several space and ground-based telescopes, including the international Gemini Observatory, a Program of NSF's NOIRLab. Quasar pairs at such large distances can only be resolved by sharp-eyed telescopes such as Hubble or Gemini, but observing time on these telescopes is too valuable to use it to sweep through large areas of the night sky in search of rare astronomical objects.

To focus their search, the researchers first identified 15 quasars for further investigation using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a three-dimensional map of objects in the night sky. From this list of 15 quasars, they then used observations from the Gaia spacecraft to identify four potential quasar pairs [4]. Finally, these candidates were imaged with the Hubble Space Telescope, which visually resolved two quasar pairs, giving this novel method a success rate of 50%.

The team then used the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on Gemini North (located on Maunakea in Hawai'i) to verify the discovery and further investigate one of the quasar pairs [5]. The combination of the sensitivity of GMOS and superb observing conditions allowed the team to resolve individual spectra from both quasars in the pair [6]. These spectra provided the team with independent measurements of the distance to the quasars and their composition, as well as confirming that the two quasars are indeed a pair rather than a chance alignment of a single quasar with a foreground star.

"The Gemini observations were critically important to our success because they provided spatially resolved spectra to yield redshifts and spectroscopic confirmations simultaneously for both quasars in a double," explained Yu-Ching Chen, a graduate student at the University of Illinois who is on the discovery team. "This method unambiguously rejected interlopers due to chance superpositions such as from unassociated star-quasar systems."

While the team members are confident in their discovery, there is a small possibility that they have actually observed double images of single quasars. These astronomical doppelgangers can be formed by gravitational lensing, which occurs when an intervening massive galaxy distorts and splits the light from a distant object, often resulting in multiple images of that object. The researchers are convinced that this is highly unlikely, however, as they could not detect any foreground galaxies in their observations.

With their method successfully demonstrated, the researchers now plan to search for more quasar pairs, building up a census of double quasars in the early Universe.

"This proof of concept really demonstrates that our targeted search for dual quasars is very efficient," concluded Hsiang-Chih Hwang, a graduate student at John Hopkins University and the principal investigator of the Hubble observations. "It opens a new direction where we can accumulate a lot more interesting systems to follow up, which astronomers weren't able to do with previous techniques or datasets."

"This exciting investigation illustrates yet again the discovery potential of combining archived survey data with new, focused observations from state-of-the-art facilities," said Martin Still, Gemini Program Officer at NSF. "The international Gemini Observatory proved to be the ideal instrument to confirm the identity of these black holes and characterize their environment."

###

Notes

[1] By comparison, our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is around 100,000 light-years across.

[2] Distance and time are entwined in astronomy. The farther away astronomical objects are, the longer it takes for their light to reach us on Earth. In the Solar System, for example, it takes sunlight just over 8 minutes to reach Earth, meaning we see the Sun as it was 8 minutes ago. On a far grander scale, we can observe distant galaxies as they were billions of years ago -- offering astronomers a window onto the early Universe. One pair of quasars has a redshift of 2.17, and the pair that Gemini spectroscopically resolved has a redshift of 2.95.

[3] As these black holes consume infalling matter from their surroundings, they produce an intense torrent of radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum. The amount of energy released is enormous, enough to outshine entire galaxies, and makes quasars bright beacons in the night sky.

[4] The European Space Agency's Gaia spacecraft measures the positions and distances of astronomical objects with painstaking precision. Gaia measures how the positions of stars subtly shift as Earth orbits the Sun, an effect known as parallax. Distant quasars are much too far from Earth to have measurable parallaxes, but the researchers realized that quasar pairs could mimic the motion of nearby stars. While these quasar pairs appear to be single points in the Gaia data, random fluctuations in the brightness of each quasar could make the pair resemble a nearby star "jiggling" from side to side. Identifying quasars with this apparent jiggling motion provided the team with a list of quasar pair candidates for further investigation with Hubble.

[5] The Gemini observations were awarded through Director's Discretionary Time (DDT), a small portion of observing time that is reserved for testing new methods or responding to unexpected astronomical events. DDT can also be used for high-risk, high-reward observations -- such as the ones in this discovery.

[6] The emission spectrum of an astronomical object is a measure of how intensely the object emits light at different wavelengths. This can provide astronomers with insights into the properties of an object, such as its chemical composition, mass, temperature, and distance.

More information

This research was presented in the paper "A hidden population of high-redshift double quasars unveiled by astrometry" in the journal Nature Astronomy.

The team is composed of Yue Shen (Department of Astronomy and National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Yu-Ching Chen (Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Hsiang-Chih Hwang (Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University), Xin Liu (Department of Astronomy and National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Nadia Zakamska (Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University), Masamune Oguri (Research Center for the Early Universe, Department of Physics, and Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, University of Tokyo), Jennifer I-Hsiu Li (Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Joseph Lazio (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology), and Peter Breiding (Department of Physics and Astronomy, West Virginia University).

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 (in cooperation with DOE's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory). 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.

Links

Research paper

Photos of Gemini North

Space Telescope Science Institute press release

University of Illinois press release

Contacts

Xin Liu

University of Illinois

Email: xinliuxl@illinois.edu

Yue Shen

University of Illinois

Email: shenyue@illinois.edu

Hsiang-Chih Hwang

Johns Hopkins University

Email: hchwang@jhu.edu

Nadia Zakamska

Johns Hopkins University

Email: zakamska@jhu.edu

Amanda Kocz

Press and Internal Communications Officer

NSF's NOIRLab

Cell: +1 626 524 5884

Email: amanda.kocz@noirlab.edu

This story has been published on: 2021-04-07. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
The Duchess of Cornwall during a visit to the Lordship Lane Primary Care Centre Vaccination Centre to meet staff, volunteers and patients receiving the Covid-19 vaccine (Geoff Pugh/The Daily Telegraph/PA)

The Duchess of Cornwall helped prepare Pfizer vaccines during a visit to an inoculation centre and had a brief encounter with a needle.

Camilla gently shook a phial of vaccine mixed with saline solution a number of times after Dr Russell Hearn invited her to join in the process during a visit to the Tottenham Vaccine Centre in north London.

She was told each bottle could inoculate six people and replied Oh theres going to be six! Goodness, it looks tiny. I always thought you got a whole one.

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When the duchess asked if a precious bottle of vaccine had been dropped she was told only one in 50,000 and replied That is pretty good.

Camilla, who was given her AstraZeneca jab earlier this year, said: This is a much more volatile vaccine.

They have to be kept at a very low temperature.

During her time in the London borough of Haringey the duchess also met members of the areas Muslim community during a separate visit to learn about their work supporting others during the pandemic and to donate Buckingham Palace corgi keyrings and royal stickers.

She travelled to the London Islamic Cultural Society at Wightman Road Mosque ahead of the start of Ramadan next week when Muslims fast from dawn till sunset for four weeks.

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At one point during her tour of the vaccine centre based at the Lordship Lane Primary Care Centre she spotted a medical student volunteer holding a needle.

The duchess, who is known not to like needles, said oh and took a step back but Dr Hearn said: Dont worry, its not going nowhere near you.

She spoke at length with Dr Hearn about how he and his team had done so well in administering the vaccine  they are due to give their 50,000th injection this weekend.

The duchess had been invited to the centre by the Mayor of Haringey, Adam Jogee, who has been supporting medical practitioners encouraging the take-up of the vaccine.

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He told her: Its been amazing to see the hard work, the tenacity, the tears, the sweat that is going in to get everyone vaccinated.

Its a real pleasure that you are here to find out more about how we are getting our people safe.

During her visit to the London Islamic Cultural Society the duchess helped pack Iftar boxes  the name of the evening meal eaten when Muslims end their daily fast  destined for child refugees observing Ramadan.

Wearing a headscarf with her face mask she dropped in corgi keyrings and packets of guardsmen sticker collections from the Royal Collection Trust gift shop before tying the bags up with a red ribbon.

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Bibi Khan, the centres president, gave the royal a Koran inscribed to the Duchess of Cornwall and Prince of Wales, and when she was told the gift was printed in English, Camilla said Oh good.

She then added: I am deeply, deeply touched by this as I am sure my husband will be too. I would very much like to bring him here in the not-too-distant future.

You are a shining example and I wish there were more places like this in the country bringing the community and all faiths together.

I hope I shall be back again.

Ms Khan described how the centre began life in her late father Abdool Allis house for Guyanese Muslims in 1983, and now has more than 30 cultures and languages.

It holds prayers and community events and served as a pop-up Covid-19 vaccination clinic during lockdown.

Ms Khan said: We have been working with food banks and helping the community delivering food parcels. These are the people who do it, some are businessmen, but they really allow us to be able to utilise their services at no cost.
International certificates and international programs are a "strong passport" for students to enroll in universities in Vietnam.

In recent years, the HCMC University of Technology has reserved annual quotas for exceptional students having international certificates or following international training programs (these students dont have to attend entrance exams).

The students who can apply are those taking the ACT for US students, have SAT score from 550 or equivalent, and GPA of 2.5/4 at high school; or an ACT of 8/12 and GPA from 2.5, or IB from 20, or AS/A from CA or BTEC Level 3 Extended Diploma from C-A. .

The school also accepts students following a Canadian high school program (those who have high school exam score from 70 percent, or IB from 20, or AS/A from C-A, or BTEC Level 3 Extended Diploma from C-A); and following the Australian program (ATAR from 85, or OP from 6.0, or IB from 20, or AS/A from C-A, or BTEC Level 3 Extended Diploma from C-A).

The students following high school programs of other countries can apply if they can meet some requirements.

The Medical Faculty of the HCMC National University enrolls students who have international certificates (SAT, ACT, IB, A-level) and received the title of good student in all high school years. They can major in high-quality training programs in medicine, pharmacology and odonto stomatology.

When prioritizing enrollment for excellent high-school students, one of three subordinate criteria for consideration is an international certificate in English.

The HCMC Economics University, Ton Duc Thang University, HCMC University of Technology and Education and HCMC University of Medicine and Pharmacy apply similar policies.

Nguyen Hoai Thang, head of the training division of the HCMC University of Technology, said that schools prioritize enrolling students with international certificates because they want to take the initiative in international integration. The longer term allows the student to study in the schooling environment in developed countries.

This is diversification in enrollment. Schools are seeking other enrolment methods rather than relying on high school finals, he said.

However, Thang admitted that the number of students enrolling in the school under this method remains low.

According to Pham Thai Son from the HCMC Food Industry University, the students following international programs and with international certificates have good understanding about careers, job opportunities and training programs.

As they are familiar with tertiary education programs when they are at high school, they can read documents, communicate, and have better integration opportunities.

Nguyen Tuan Kiet from the Medical Faculty of the HCMC National University said these students have good English skills and can quickly adapt.

Le Huyen

Universities' English language requirements may hinder rural students, experts warn As more and more top Vietnamese universities consider prospective students' English language ability for admission, concerns have been raised about inequality for students in rural areas.
If youve seen a tall man walking around town wearing a contraption surrounded by a shower curtain, youre not alone.

Reddit user u/MichaelG4 shared a video he secretly took of the man while dining at Sea Island. In the video, you can see the man, who has not been identified, filling up his cup at the drink station. Seems normal enough, right? Well, the man also has a halo of sorts floating around his head that allows him to be enclosed by a clear shower curtain.

Oh, and hes wearing a highlighter-yellow vest, on which hes spelled out 6 Feet 4 Life in what appears to be tape.

According to comments on the post, this seems to be a regular getup for the man.

MORE WEIRD NEWS: Need your RodeoHouston fix? Calf-scrambling to be livestreamed this year

He shops at my [T]arget from time to time, said one user, who added that they had seen him in his COVID-friendly outfit as early as last summer. Others commented that they had seen the mystery man at Ingram Park Mall and H-E-B as well.

Some people had feelings about the display.

I would expect something like this in Austin, not San Antonio, one comment read.

But alas, thats where things get interesting. Another user note that the contraption probably isnt actually for protection, especially considering the man isnt wearing a mask in the video. Instead, some believe the display is nothing more than a gimmick poking fun at individuals taking precautions to avoid COVID-19.

I've talked to this guy a couple times, said a commenter by the name of Wayne. It's a joke he's making about maskers. He's very right-minded and loves getting attention.

Well, hes definitely going to get some attention after this.

When you try too hard to own the libs and end up owning yourself, another comment read.

Sir, you played yourself.

Have you seen this man? Are you amused? Let us know!
WNPR / Contributed photo

CORNWALL  The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection plan to hold a controlled burn of about three acres of brush in Mohawk State Forest, near the summit of Mohawk Mountain on April 7, weather and conditions permitting, according to a statement.

Controlled burns are an important forest management practice, DEEP officials said in the statement. This particular burn builds on an initial burn conducted in 2015 to reduce dead organic matter at the site. ... (It) will further reduce dead organic matter ... And help to maintain the vista at the popular mountaintop summit, which is accessible by public vehicle. This burn also provides a valuable training opportunity for DEEP staff.
Poonawalla has mentioned that the existing production capacity to manufacture Covishield in India is under pressure due to increased demand in India.

New Delhi, April 7 (IANS) Adar Poonawalla's Serum Institute of India (SII) has been served a legal notice by AstraZeneca over delays in supplying the Covid vaccine.

Poonawalla has also mentioned as per reports that the Indian government's pause on major Covishield shipments to other countries and the 'first claim' deal with India were difficult to explain abroad, where the vaccine was sold at a higher cost per dose.

In March, AstraZeneca had announced supply to 142 countries underway as part of the unprecedented effort to bring broad and equitable access to the vaccine.

AstraZeneca with its partner Serum Institute of India will be the biggest initial supplier to COVAX, the pharma company had announced.

The first of many millions of doses of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine have begun arriving in low and middle-income countries across the world through the multilateral COVAX initiative, Astrazeneca said.

First COVAX shipments were dispatched to Ghana and Cote D'Ivoire, also countries including the Philippines, Indonesia, Fiji, Mongolia and Moldova. This supply represents the first COVID-19 vaccine for many of these countries.

AstraZeneca had said further shipments will arrive in the coming weeks with the aim of supplying a total of 142 countries with hundreds of millions of doses of the vaccine in the coming months.

The majority of these doses, manufactured by AstraZeneca and its licence partner Serum Institute of India, will go to low and middle-income countries.

--IANS

san/ash
Tokyo, April 7 : Japans Osaka on Wednesday declared a state of medical emergency as hospitals in the western prefecture were overwhelmed by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Osaka reported 878 new infections on Wednesday, the largest daily spike since the outset of the outbreak, reports dpa news agency.

The surge is attributed to more contagious variants of the coronavirus, Osaka Governor Hirofumi Yoshimura told a news conference.

The Governor also said he has decided not to hold the leg of the Olympic torch relay scheduled next week in the whole prefecture.

Osaka officials were in talks with the Olympic organising committee concerning alternate solutions, he added.

The central government issued a semi-state of emergency over the pandemic in the prefectures of Osaka, Miyagi and Hyogo on Monday amid fears of a new wave.

Hyogo confirmed a record 328 new cases on Wednesday, while Tokyo reported 555 new infections, the largest daily number in two months.

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike told reporters she would ask the central government to extend the semi-state of emergency to the Japanese capital.

Tokyo "has been in a serious crisis", said the Governor.

She also asked the capital city's 13.9 million residents to "refrain from travelling to another prefecture" to help reduce the spread of the coronavirus.

Japan issued a coronavirus state of emergency in a total of 11 prefectures in January.

It was lifted in Tochigi in February and six other prefectures last month.

The government ended the measure in Tokyo and its neighbouring prefectures in late March.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP)  Indiana legislators gave final approval to a bill that wont require businesses to make accommodations for pregnant workers, despite an appeal from Gov. Eric Holcomb for a law requiring more protections.

The proposal allows a pregnant employee to request accommodations and requires the employer to respond in a reasonable time frame, but it does not mandate managers to grant any of the requests.

Such steps, such as longer breaks or transfers to less physical work, are cast by supporters as ways of improving Indianas infant mortality rate, which federal statistics show was the countrys 14th worst in 2018 with 525 infant deaths.

But Republicans who dominate the Legislature have sided with major business groups rather than the GOP governor on the issue. Lawmakers also rejected a separate Holcomb-backed bill last year that would have ensured similar accommodations.

If we truly set forth to provide support and accommodations to pregnant workers to help ensure that they can get the help they need at work to stay healthy and safe through a pregnancy, then this is not the bill, said Democratic Sen. Shelli Yoder, of Bloomington. What this ends up doing is it gives legislators an opportunity to pat ourselves on the back to say we did something, we passed this, when really its more of a slap in the face of pregnant workers.

The latest measure passed the House in February by a 95-2 votes as even lawmakers wanting tougher regulations supported it as a way of getting some protections for women into state law. Senators voted 31-19 on the bill Tuesday, sending the measure Holcomb.

Federal laws already require larger companies to provide pregnancy accommodations, but top Holcomb administration health officials have advocated for the state accommodations requirement as a way of helping pregnant women who dont face clear rules in the workplace.

The governor said after the House advanced the weaker bill in February that his goal was not going to come to fruition, thats been a message received from lawmakers.

Holcomb said he would issue an executive order ensuring such accommodations for state employees to demonstrate to business owners how such accommodations can work. He has yet to issue such an order.

Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray said many lawmakers were hesitant to put more regulations on businesses, especially in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Some major business groups, including the Indiana Chamber of Commerce and the Indiana Manufacturers Association, additionally raised worries about possibly exposing more businesses to lawsuits by requiring them to provide accommodations.

I feel that many women will come forward because of this bill. And the good companies will accommodate them. And the bad eggs  they wont, said bill author Republican Sen. Ron Alting, of Lafayette. When youve been around this chamber a while, youll learn once in a while you better take what you can get. For many of us this bill is not far enough ... but its a step in the right direction.

___

Associated Press writer Tom Davies contributed to this report.

__

Casey Smith is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
A Ukrainian playboy who once posed for photos with Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and George Clooney has been accused of organising the naked photo shoot which caused outrage in Dubai.

Vitaliy Grechin, a Kiev-born investor who grew up and worked in the US, has been identified by media in his home country as the man behind the shoot which saw 12 Ukrainian models and a Russian man arrested and scheduled for deportation.

Grechin is believed to be the man seen in an image taken in the same hotel room where a now-notorious balcony photo was taken just moments later.

In it, the man sits at a grand piano while surrounded by 19 naked women - two of whom are models who were identified as taking part in the photo shoot which drew the attention of Dubai police.

Vitaliy Grechin, a Ukrainian investor and playboy, has been accused of organising the now-notorious naked photoshoot in Dubai which caused outrage in the Arab state

Grechin is believed to be the man in this image, taken in the same hotel room where the photo shoot later took place, surrounded by naked models

Some of the same models were then pictured on the balcony of the same hotel room, in an image that prompted Dubai police to arrested 12 people

Sources in Kiev told local news site Strana, one of Ukraine's biggest news sites, that the man in that image is Grechin.

'According to our information, [he] was the organiser of the trip itself and the scandalous photo session,' the site reported.

A trawl of Grechin's social media reveals that he is no stranger to being surrounded by groups of scantily-clad women while showing off his playboy lifestyle.

Facebook images show him posing with groups of women in bikinis on boats and in nightclubs, while another shows him on a private jet alongside women dressed as flight attendants - two of whom are later pictured in the cockpit wearing lingerie.

Russian source BAZA reported that Grechin had not been detained with the rest of the group in Dubai and got out of Ukraine.

Grechin has not commented on the claims of his involvement in the scandal.

Instagram images from some of the models known to be in the Dubai shot reveal that they also attended a similar event held at a ski resort in Ukraine for Grechin's birthday back in February.

Marianna Fedchuk and Anastasia Kashuba, both 21, were present at the birthday bash, as was Yana Graboschuk, 27.

Yana posted a photo of herself kissing Grechin along with a caption wishing him a happy birthday.

He also posted an image of the bash online, writing: 'Wanted to thank all of you for your much awaited birthday wishes.'

Grechin was born in Kyiv but moved aged ten with his parents to America around the time of the fall of the USSR.

He is reported to have degrees in finance and personnel psychology.

There are claims he served in the US army, and that at some point he was posted to the American embassy in Ukraine.

It is unclear if a Russian man detained in connection with the Dubai nudity - IT company head Alexey Kontsov, 33 - is linked to Grechin.

Russian diplomats are known to be giving him consular assistance.

The Ukrainian foreign ministry confirmed that 11 of the women on the Dubai shoot were their citizens.

Grechin was born in Kiev but moved to the US aged 10. He was pictured with then-president Obama in 2011, the same year it is thought he made a donation of $31,000 to Democrats

Grechin was also pictured alongside celebrity A-listers including George Clooney

They were held for 'violation of the norms of public morality', as was Kontsov.

Pictures also show Grechin with then President Obama, and records show at least one political donation of $33,100 by a man of his name to his campaign in 2011, when the photograph was taken.

Other pictures show him with former US first lady and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and Hollywood stars George Clooney and Sylvester Stallone.

'Publicly Grechin in every possible way demonstrates the attributes of 'expensive life'',' reported Strana.

'It is also rumoured that he organises parties for Ukrainian MPs.

'These parties are traditionally attended by girls from Grechin's 'escort suite'.'

The report stated: 'Grechin's main distinguishing feature is his manner of surrounding himself with a large number of women of model appearance.

'Grechin does not hide this, and even, on the contrary, demonstrates in every possible way in social networks.'

Those arrested over the photoshoot, which took place just days before the start of Ramadan, were facing up to six months in prison under the UAE's strict public decency laws.

But it has since been confirmed that they will be deported from the Arab state.

After an unusually speedy investigation, Dubai's Attorney General Essam Issa al-Humaidan announced that those behind the photo shoot would be deported to their home countries, without elaborating further.

Dubai police have declined to officially identify those detained. More than a dozen women appeared in the widely shared video - with some named by Russian media.

Some of the same models known to have been posing on the Dubai balcony were also pictured celebrating Grechin's birthday in Ukraine in February

Grechin posted an image of the gathering on his social media, thanking attendees for their birthday wishes

One woman outed by local media, Marianna Fedchuk, 21, admitted to being in a clothed picture including many women who subsequently stripped for the naked shot - but denied being one of the women on the balcony.

She said she flew back to Kyiv before the photo was taken, she said, as she urged her followers to follow her x-rated social media pages 'more closely, so you can at least distinguish naked me from the other naked girls'.

Meanwhile, trained lawyer Yana Graboshchuk, 27, was revealed to be among the group detained for the revealing shoot - as her family said they knew where she had flown but had no idea what her purpose was.

She was outed by her distinctive tattoo which matches her social media pictures.

Ukrainian and Russian authorities confirmed the arrest of their citizens Tuesday, but the nationalities of the others detained were not immediately known.

The swift deportation is rare for the legal system in Dubai. Such cases typically go to trial or are otherwise adjudicated before deportation.

'The public prosecutor ordered the deportation of the accused for their behaviour contrary to public morals,' al-Humaidan said, adding that the group of women had been charged with violating the country's public decency law.

Dubai is a top destination for the world's Instagram influencers and models, who fill their social media feeds with slick bikini-clad selfies from the coastal Emirate's luxury hotels and artificial islands.

But the city's brand as a glitzy foreign tourist destination has at times provoked controversy and collided with the sheikhdom's strict rules governing public behaviour and expression.

The nude photo shoot scandal came just days before Ramadan - the holiest month of the Muslim calendar - and as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky landed in nearby Doha, Qatar, for an official state visit.

Over the years, Dubai increasingly has promoted itself as a popular destination for Russians on holiday.

Signs in Cyrillic are a common sight at the city's major malls.
Actor Zach Avery has been arrested for allegedly masterminding a $690 million Hollywood Ponzi scheme in which he lied about licensing deals with Netflix and HBO to secure funding for his film distribution company.

The 34-year-old, whose real name is Zachary J. Horwitz, was taken into custody and charged on Tuesday with wire fraud over the Ponzi scheme related to his company 1inMM Capital LLC.

He is accused of raising more than $690 million over five years after falsely claiming to investors that he had movie licensing deals with huge companies, including HBO and Netflix, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission complaint.

Horwitz and 1inMM had promised investors returns in excess of 35 percent.

Federal authorities say $227 million that was put in by victims is still yet to be repaid.

The SEC says Horwitz used the investments to fund his own lavish lifestyle, including the purchase of his $5.7 million home, $100,000 spent on trips to Las Vegas and the payment of a $1.8 million American Express bill.

Actor Zach Avery, whose real name is Zachary J. Horwitz, was taken into custody and charged on Tuesday with wire fraud over the Ponzi scheme related to his company 1inMM Capital LLC

The actor, who has starred in The Devil Below, You're Not Alone and Last Moment of Clarity, started his film distribution company back in 2013 to acquire and distribute English language feature films to the Latin American market.

Horwitz had told investors they were buying film rights that would be resold to Netflix and HBO but 1inMM actually had no business relationship with either company, the SEC complaint says.

He had allegedly falsely told the investors that he had successful track record of selling film rights and that they were supplying funds to acquire the rights to specific films.

According to authorities, Horwitz provided promotional materials to investors that claimed 1inMM Capital offered 'safe' investments because 'we receive confirmation from each of our outputs indicating their desire to acquire the rights to any title we purchase PRIOR to us releasing funds for the film'.

Among the promotional materials was an annual report for 1inMM Capital that detailed strategic partnerships with HBO, Netflix and Sony.

That annual report also included a 'library snapshot' of films his company had also distributed via licensing.

The complaint says Horwitz had showed investors fabricated agreements and emails regarding the purported deals with HBO and Netflix.

The SEC says Avery used the investments to fund his own lavish lifestyle, including the purchase of his multi-million dollar Los Angeles home (above), $100,000 on trips to Las Vegas and a $1.8 million American Express bill

He had allegedly falsely told the investors that he had successful track record of selling film rights and that they were supplying funds to acquire the rights to specific films. Pictured above is an example of the promissory note Horwitz allegedly gave to investors to secure funding

According to authorities, Horwitz provided promotional materials to investors that claimed 1inMM Capital offered 'safe' investments. Among the promotional materials was an annual report for 1inMM Capital that detailed strategic partnerships with HBO, Netflix and Sony (above)

That annual report also included a 'library snapshot' of films his company had also distributed via licensing. Among the films that Horwitz lied about owning the rights to include the 1989 Jean-Claude Van Damme action film Kickboxer, as well as The Lords of Salem, a 2012 horror movie

HOW THE ALLEGED FILM PONZI SCHEME WORKED Horwitz allegedly falsely claimed to private investors that his company 1inMM Capital purchased regional distribution rights to films, typically in the post-production stage of development. His company would then license to online platforms such as HBO and Netflix for distribution in particular regions outside the US, including Latin America. He promised that 1inMM Capital could provide investors lucrative rates of return on the promissory notes, often in excess of 35 percent. Horwitz provided promotional material, including annual reports, as well as fabricated agreements and emails regarding the purported deals with HBO and Netflix. Horwitz managed to secure a series of 6 month or 12 month promissory notes from investment firms on the basis on distributing the films. According to authorities, Horwitz generally paid out the returns until late 2019. He allegedly did this on early investments by using funds from newer investments. Investors complained after 1inMM start defaulting on returns in late 2019. In five years, he managed to raise $690 million from investors that authorities say he mostly used to find his lavish lifestyle. Federal authorities say $227 million that was put in by victims is still yet to be repaid Advertisement

Those agreements and emails contained forged, or fictional signatures, of Netflix or HBO employees.

Among the films that Horwitz lied about owning the rights to include the 1989 Jean-Claude Van Damme action film Kickboxer, as well as The Lords of Salem, a 2012 horror movie.

Horwitz managed to secure a series of 6 month or 12 month promissory notes from investment firms on the basis on distributing the films.

Horwitz and 1inMM had promised investors returns in excess of 35 percent.

According to authorities, Horwitz generally paid out the returns until late 2019. He allegedly did this on early investments by using funds from newer investments.

Investors complained after 1inMM start defaulting on returns in late 2019.

Authorities say Horwitz blamed Netflix and HBO for the mounting defaults by forwarding fake correspondence between him and Netflix and HBO.

According to the affidavit, private investment firms had transferred approximately $227 million to 1inMM Capital since late 2018.

Horwitz, through 1inMM Capital, has allegedly defaulted on all these underlying returns.

The FBI said that Horwitz's company has failed to make more than 160 payments he had mapped out to investors, with the Chicago firm JJMT Capital, LLC owed $160 million in its principal loan and another $59 million in promised profits.

Other main investors included: Movie Fund, Fortune Film Fund One, Fortune Film Fund Two, SAC Advisory Group, Vausse Films and Pure Health Enterprises.

Horwitz's home was raided by FBI agents as he was arrested.

In an initial court appearance in Los Angeles, Horwitz told the presiding judge that he understood the charges against him.

The judge agreed on a $1 million secured bond for Horwitz's release until future court proceedings.

He could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

He is accused of raising more than $690 million over five years after falsely claiming to investors that he had movie licensing deals with huge companies, including HBO and Netflix. He appeared in the 2020 movie Last Moment of Clarity
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Ultrasonic probe covers are the sterile covers which provide imaging solutions. They are applied on the transducer that is used for scanning and diagnosis. They are used to provide distortion-free images for use in applications such as urology, radiology, cardiology, gynaecology, neurosurgery, etc. They are largely used by radiologist on transducers to carry out ultrasound procedures and image organs including stomach, intestinal walls, pancreas, gall bladder etc. Ultrasonic probe covers are made of high quality natural rubber. They are generally lubricated with water based lubricant and act as hygienic protection for patient during ultrasonic examination. Furthermore, they are reliable and convenient to use. Increasing awareness regarding health has led to considerable increase in full body checkups per year.

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Furthermore, endocavity examinations across the world have also significantly rose. Ultrasonic probe covers largely serve as a viral barrier for transrectal and transvaginal ultrasound procedures. Thus, rising endocavity examinations are directly driving ultrasonic probe covers market. Furthermore, mandatory government regulations regarding single-use disposable probe covers is another major factor facilitating the growth of the market. For e.g. Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) proposes use of new probe cover for a probe for each patient.

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The association also recommends every new cover to be highly disinfected.Ultrasonic probe covers market can be segmented on the basis of type, sterility, product type, material, application, and region. On the basis of type, the ultrasonic probe covers market can be segmented into linear, curvilinear and phased array. On the basis of sterility, the ultrasonic probe covers market can be segmented into sterile and non-sterile. On the basis of product type, the ultrasonic probe covers market can be segmented into latex-free. On the basis of material, the ultrasonic probe covers market can be segmented into rubber, polyethylene, polyurethane, and others. On the basis of application, the ultrasonic probe covers market can be segmented into urology, radiology, cardiology, gynaecology, neurosurgery,and others.

On the basis of region, the ultrasonic probe covers market can be segmented into North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and South America. Amongst all, North America is expected to be the most lucrative ultrasonic probe cover market owing to high personal hygiene awareness, favorable government initiatives, and increasing investment for healthcare equipment in the region.

The major players operating in ultrasound probe covers market are CIVCO Medical Solutions Co., Inc., Cone Instruments Inc., Vermed (Nissha Medical Technologies), Fairmont Medical Ltd, GE Healthcare Ltd., Parker Laboratories Inc., Protek Medical Products Ltd, PDC Healthcare Inc., Ecolab Ltd, and MedXL Ltd among others.

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Dr. Selja Vaalto (on the right) and Doctoral Candidate Aino Tervo demonstrate the TMS. The new technology under development will bring additional relief to patients suffering from chronic pain, depression and more.

An Aalto-led team is developing new transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) technology to treat pain, depression and other neurological conditions. The aim is faster and more effective treatment.

Imagine experiencing chronic pain or depression so severe that no medication will bring relief.

Such conditions may not be common, but they do exist. For patients fortunate enough to receive professional help, treatment often involves a combination of different therapies. One of these is transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).

The thought of having an electric current pulsed into your brain is an unnerving one, yet the procedure is completely painless. A specially-designed electromagnetic coil is placed on the head to induce a magnetic field pulse in the brain that in turn produces an electric field and a specific neural response. All the patient feels is a light tapping sensation, as if someone's finger is repeatedly touching their scalp.

A TMS session lasts between 15 and 30 minutes, during which time the patient receives between 1,000 and 3,000 stimulations. Depending on the condition being treated, the frequency is adjusted to either speed up or slow down the firing of neurons.

"Your brain is an information-processing system that generates electric currents," says Professor Risto Ilmoniemi, who heads Aalto University's Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering. "Every thought you have, and every action you perform, generates a magnetic field in and around your brain. It's roughly one billionth of the earth's field."

"If we can measure the magnetic field of the brain from the outside, then the inverse principle of physics means we can influence the brain from the outside too. This is how we can quite precisely determineby using TMSwhich areas of the brain are involved in various functions," says Ilmoniemi.

Credit: Aalto University

Location, orientation and intensity

Transcranial magnetic stimulation has been around since the mid-1980s, when Dr. Anthony Barker and his team created the world's first TMS device in the UK city of Sheffield. Since then, the technique has been taken into use around the world as a treatment for chronic pain, depression, and several other neurological conditions.

With the technology available today, TMS targeting is a time-consuming procedure to perform. The patient first needs to have an MRI scan to map their brain and identify the approximate target areas for stimulation. Then the TMS operator needs to take a trial-and-error approach to moving the single-coil TMS device around the patient's head to find the optimal location, orientation and intensity for treatment. This procedure needs to be repeated every time the coil is moved to a new target area.

These are some of the TMS challenges that Aalto University aims to address through the ConnectToBrain project. Backed by a EUR 10 million grant from the European Research Council, the project team is developing a new kind of TMS device and the algorithms needed to run it.

Whereas traditional TMS devices have only a single magnetic coil, the ConnectToBrain team has developed one with multiple coils, allowing more than one part of the brain to be stimulated at a given time. The new TMS device also includes an electroencephalogram (EEG) function so that the brain's electrical responses can be measured in real time.

Much of the hardware and software is developed by Aalto University, while the University of Chieti-Pescara in Italy develops signal processing and artificial intelligence technology, and the University of Tubingen in Germany works on clinical applications. Validation experiments take place in the Helsinki University Hospital's BioMag laboratory.

Credit: Aalto University

Relief for Alzheimer's and stroke patients

Two of the conditions the ConnectToBrain project is focused on treating are Alzheimer's and stroke. By setting algorithms to read the signals from patients' brains in real time, the new stimulator can quickly adjust the location, orientation, intensity and timing of the electrical pulses to better treat these conditions.

"Traditionally, transcranial stimulation includes many manual procedures and decision-making by the operator," says Aalto University's Aino Tervo, a Doctoral Candidate helping to develop the new technology. "But our new hardware can quickly shift the electrical stimulus from one part of the brain to another without any manual work from the operator. We're also developing algorithms that leave the decisions up to the computer."

"Combining an EEG together with a multi-locus magnetic stimulator will help with both selecting and stimulating the targets," says Tervo. "We can adjust the parameters automatically based on the EEG, and with the multi-locus device we can stimulate two different locations at the same time, or with intervals of just one millisecond. This is simply not possible if we only have one coil."

"This work opens a whole new clinical and research area, as we can stimulate more areas of the brain at the same time, while also operating faster," she says.

Credit: Aalto University

Discovering more about the brain

Tervo works closely with Clinical Neurophysiologist Dr. Selja Vaalto, who specializes in treating patients suffering from chronic pain. The patients come to the Helsinki University Hospital's Department of Clinical Neurophysiology when other treatmentssuch as medicationhave failed to bring sufficient relief. While TMS does not yield results for all patients, Vaalto says there is A-level clinical evidence that it works in around 50 percent of cases.

"We have patients with complex regional pain syndromea neuropathic pain that is very difficult to treat and can be drug resistant," she says. "These patients initially come for two weeks of daily TMS treatment, and if it's shown to be effective we move to maintenance treatments of once a week and then once a month."

"On treatment days, we stimulate those areas of the brain that we know are associated with certain conditions," she says. "This affects the synapses between the neurons and increases activity in the stimulated areas. In a sense, we're encouraging the neurons to communicate more. This yields to changes in neurotransmitter levels and in levels of endogenous opioids."

Vaalto foresees that the new TMS technology under development will help doctors to work even deeper in the brain, and bring additional relief to patients suffering from chronic pain, depression and more.

Credit: Aalto University

"In stroke patients, for example, lesions damage nerve tracts between two areas of the brain," she says. "With this new multi-locus TMS, we can get the tract working more strongly if we can stimulate both areas at once. This hasn't been possible until now."

"Similarly, with depression, it's not just about what happens in cortical areas of the brain; there are also nerve tracts originating in frontal areas that are directed towards deeper basal areas of the brain," she says. "Those areas are very important in emotional reactions, and with this new technique we will be much better able to treat them."

"The work we are doing is really opening up a whole new chapter in transcranial magnetic stimulation," says Vaalto. "We'll not only be able to treat more patientsas we can work fasterwe'll also discover new and more effective ways of bringing relief to the people who need this therapy."

Explore further New treatment location challenges thoughts on addiction
By Julien Ponthus, Abhinav Ramnarayan and Paul Sandle

(Reuters) - Deliveroo shares rose on Wednesday, the first day retail investors could trade stock bought during the food delivery group's initial public offering (IPO), while some of its riders cycled through London to demand fair pay.

At 1411 GMT on the first day of unrestricted trading, Deliveroo's shares were up 2.1% at 286 pence, but still about 25% lower than the IPO price, following a hefty first day tumble when it made its stock market debut in London last week.

Deliveroo was given an initial valuation of 7.6 billion pounds ($10.46 billion) through a 390 pence price tag per share.

"Though Deliveroo has risen...on the first day of trading available to retail investors, it's too soon to tell whether this is a vote of confidence in the stock," said Connor Campbell, an analyst at Spreadex.

"The real test for the company is going to be the coming months."

About 100 cyclists and moped riders rode from Shoreditch in East London to Deliveroo's headquarters in the City on Wednesday, asking for fair pay and basic workers' rights during a demonstration organised by the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain (IWGB).

"Sometimes I'm able to earn a living wage that I'm comfortable with for one shift. And then the next shift I can go out and work for hours, and literally earn nothing," Kerry Hargadon, 25, who has been a Deliveroo rider for six years, told Reuters.

"5 POUNDS AN HOUR"

Musician Jason Bond, 32, who started riding for Deliveroo when work dried up at the start of the pandemic, said that while some shifts brought in decent pay, others left him with less than the minimum wage.

"You can be earning 5 pounds an hour," he said.

Story continues

A Deliveroo spokesperson said that in a survey carried out on Tuesday, 88% of riders said they were happy with the company.

"This small self appointed union (IWGB) does not represent the vast majority of riders who tell us they value the total flexibility they enjoy while working with Deliveroo alongside the ability to earn over 13 an hour," the spokesperson said in a statement.

The poor stock market debut in London, which saw around two billion pounds wiped off Deliveroo's valuation, came after heavyweight investors such as Aberdeen Standard Life and Aviva sat the deal out, citing concerns about gig-economy working conditions and the outsized voting rights that will be handed to founder Will Shu.

Antonio De Negri, founder and CEO of London financial boutique Cirdan Capital said the company needed to recoup this lost value.

"One solution could be, for example, to offer part of the shares with more voting rights to those institutional investors interested in the business model of the British platform," he said.

"SMILING THROUGH THE PAIN"

Still, for some investors, the gig-economy model remains shaky at best, with workers considered independent contractors with few legal rights and benefits.

In March, Uber Technologies announced following a court defeat that it would offer guaranteed entitlements to its more than 70,000 UK drivers, including holiday pay, a pension plan and limited minimum wage.

Deliveroo said in its IPO prospectus that it is involved in legal proceedings in a number of countries as it faces challenges around the status of its drivers.

Small retail investors who bought shares via a "community" share offer, allowing Deliveroo's customers to participate in the listing, were hurt by the first day losses as London Stock Exchange rules prevented them from trading until today.

"I am smiling through the pain and going to hold. I will ride it to 0 if I have to," said Sam Elliot, a London-based primatologist who invested 250 pounds.

(Reporting by Julien Ponthus, Abhinav Ramnarayan, Paul Sandle, Elizabeth Howcraft and Danilo Masoni; Chart by Ritvik Carvalho; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
Police are verifying the authenticity of the statement, purportedly issued by the outlaws.The banned outfit also admitted that four of its cadres were killed in the encounter in which 22 security personnel had lost their lives.Constable Rakeshwar Singh Manhas of the 210th CoBRA battalion, an elite unit of CRPF, had gone missing after the gunfight along the border of Sukma and Bijapur districts last Saturday.The CPI-Maoist statement also claimed that 24 security personnel were killed in the encounter."As many as 2,000 police personnel had reached near Jiragudem village to execute a major attack (on Saturday). To thwart them, Peoples' Liberation Guerilla Army retaliated during which 24 security personnel were killed and 31 others injured. We have caught a policeman (CoBRA commando) at the spot while others escaped," said a statement purportedly written by Maoists and being circulated on social media on Tuesday.It said the government should first announce names of interlocutors and the jawan will be released later. He will remain safe in our captivity till then, it said.The two-page statement was issued in the name of Vikalp, spokesperson of the Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee of Maoists, which had been instrumental in executing several deadly attacks in south Bastar, including the Jhiram valley attack in Bastar district on May 25, 2013, in which top Congress leaders of Chhattisgarh unit were killed.Maoists admitted that four cadres were killed in the Bijapur gunfight and the body of the slain woman cadre could not be retrieved from the spot.The body of a woman Naxal was recovered by security forces from the encounter spot.The ultras also claimed to have seized 14 weapons, 2,000 cartridges and other materials from the encounter site.The photographs issued with the purported statement shows the looted arms and ammunition.However, sources in police had said at least 12 Naxals were killed in the gunfight that lasted for over 4 hours.According to the police, 10 weapons, including seven AK-47 rifles, two SLR rifles and one Light Machine Gun, of the security personnel went missing after the attack.Meanwhile, a senior police officer said the authenticity of the statement is being verified."The authenticity of the statement issued by Maoists claiming that they have held hostage the jawan is being verified. Further action will be taken accordingly," Inspector General of Police (Bastar range) Sundarraj P said.Police have been continuously carrying out searches to trace Manhas, and local villagers, social organisations, local public representatives and journalists are also being contacted to locate his whereabouts, the IG said.Tribal Activist Soni Sori has appealed to Naxals to release the jawan if he is in their captivity."If they delay releasing the jawan, then I will head towards the encounter site on Wednesday and will try to talk to them (Maoists) to free him," Sori said.Manhas was part of a squad that had gone for an anti-Naxal operation on Friday night in the jungles on the Bijapur and Sukma border.On Saturday, the gunfight broke out between security forces and ultras between Tekalguda and Jonaguda villages in which 22 troopers were killed and 31 others injured.Out of the 22, the Central Reserve Police Force lost eight personnel, including seven CoBRA commandos and one jawan from its Bastariya battalion, eight from the DRG and six from the Special Task Force.Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday visited Jagdalpur and Bijapur to review the situation in the aftermath of the deadly attack.
Paris, TX (75460)

Today

Cloudy skies early, then off and on rain showers overnight. Low 66F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Cloudy skies early, then off and on rain showers overnight. Low 66F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%.
A former couples battle for ownership of a small dog has landed in court, with a magistrate deciding that the ex-girlfriend should keep Kobe the $4000 Pomeranian because her one-time partner had given it to her as a gift.

The Melbourne Magistrates Court heard the dispute between Maurice Chow and his former partner, Siwen Chang, who both claimed to be the rightful owner of the dog after their relationship ended in 2019.

Kobe the Pomeranian.

The court heard that the pair had begun dating in June 2017 and moved into a Southbank apartment together. A little over a year later, Mr Chow paid a breeder in NSW more than $4000 for a Pomeranian puppy, which Ms Chang named Kobe.

When they broke up in November 2019, Ms Chang took Kobe with her, despite Mr Chow asking her not to. He sent a text message demanding Kobe be returned before following up with letters from his solicitors. A month later, Mr Chow filed his statement of claim in court seeking possession of Kobe.
Meantime, Mettawa Mayor Casey Urlacher, brother to former Chicago Bear Brien Urlacher, will have to wait until later this week for write-in votes to be counted to see how he fared against challenger Jess Ray, Steve Sadin writes for the Lake County News-Sun. Urlacher did not initially file for reelection in December because he was under indictment for sports-related gambling charges, Sadin reminds. He was pardoned by former President Donald Trump on Jan. 20 and became a write-in candidate.
Suspended Mumbai Police cop Sachin Vaze has accused Maharashtra ministers Anil Deshmukh and Anil Parab of extortion.

In a handwritten letter to the National Investigation Agency (NIA), Sachin Vaze has alleged that NCP supremo Sharad Pawar was against his reinstatement into Mumbai Police last year and wanted it to be repealed.

Following this, the then state Home Minister Anil Deshmukh allegedly told Sachin Vaze that if he pays Deshmukh Rs 2 crore, he will persuade Pawar to let Sachin Vaze back into the force.

"The home minister told me that he will convince Pawar saheb and for that purpose, he asked me to pay Rs 2,00,00,000. I had expressed my inability to pay such an amount. On this, the home minister asked me to pay it in a later course," Sachin Vaze wrote in the letter. The tainted cop also claimed that Anil Deshmukh had called him to the Sahyadri Guest House in October 2020 and asked him to collect money from 1,650 restaurants and bars in Mumbai.

Also Read: Ambani bomb scare & the untold secrets of tainted Mumbai cop Sachin Vaze

"I refused saying it was not within the scope of my capability," Sachin Vaze stated.

According to him, Anil Deshmukh put forward the same demand again in January 2021 when the two met at Deshmukh's official residence. Sachin Vaze has alleged that the minister's PA Kundan was also present at the meeting as the then home minister asked him to collect Rs 3-3.5 lakh from each of the 1,650 restaurants and bars in Mumbai.

Sachin Vaze further claimed in the letter that Maharashtra Transport Minister and Shiv Sena leader Anil Parab had asked him to extort money for him. The suspended cop has claimed that Anil Parab met him in July-August 2020 and asked him to extort Rs 50 crore from the Saifee Burhani Upliftment Trust (SBUT), which was facing a probe.

"In July-August 2020, I was called by Minister Anil Parab at his official bungalow... At the meeting, Parab asked me to look into the complaint under preliminary inquiry and bring the trustees of the SBUT to him for negotiations about the inquiry. He also insisted to initiate primary talks to get Rs 50 crore from SBUT in order to close the said enquiry. I had expressed my inability to do any such thing as I do not know anybody from SBUT and also I did not have any control over the inquiry," Sachin Vaze told NIA.

He further alleged that Anil Parab also called him once again in January this year and asked him to delve into an investigation against some contractors listed in the BMC and collect Rs 2 crore each from them.

Also Read: Mansukh Hiren murder case: CCTV shows Sachin Vaze, murder accused Vinayak Shinde in Audi

"He told me to collect at least Rs 2 crore from 50 such contractors. An inquiry was on in this matter based on an anonymous complaint. The Crime Intelligence Unit inquiry against the contractors had not yielded any result," Sachin Vaze wrote.

He also claimed that he had apprised then Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh about the extortion demands by Anil Deshmukh and Anil Parab, but the latter reportedly told him not to act on the demands.

"...I met the Police Commissioner (Param Bir Singh) and told him that I expressed my apprehension about this...I told him that I would be embroiled in a false controversy in the near future. The CP encouraged me and categorically instructed me not to involve myself in any such illegal collection of money from anyone and for anyone," Sachin Vaze alleged.

The suspended Mumbai Police assistant inspector's letter substantiates some of the claims made by Mumbai Police officer Param Bir Singh, who, in his March 20 letter to CM Uddhav Thackeray, alleged that Anil Deshmukh had asked police officers, comprising Sachin Vaze, to collect Rs 100 crore each month from restaurants and bars.

Meanwhile, a Mumbai court on Wednesday extended the NIA custody of the suspended Mumbai cop till April 9 in the Antilia bomb scare case. The NIA arrested Sachin Vaze on March 13.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.  An Annadale man, whose disturbing social media posts allegedly calling for the extermination of Democrats and their families after the 2020 presidential election led to his arrest on multiple federal charges, appears poised to plead guilty.

Papers filed Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court say Brian Maiorana seeks to change his previously entered plea of not guilty in the case. A hearing has been scheduled for April 26.

Maiorana, 54, was arrested at home on Nov. 10 after allegedly making a series of violent threats in the wake of citywide protests and the presidential election won by Democrat Joe Biden.

Investigators also found illegal guns and ammunition in the residence, said officials.

The posts were made on an unnamed social media platform from around September to the weekend after the Nov. 3 election, authorities allege. Biden, the former vice president, defeated then-President Donald Trump.

Some posts included direct references to the election, said authorities.

In one post in October, authorities allege Maiorana wrote, Its come to the point where pipe bombs need to be thrown into these mobs of potentially non-violent violent protesters.

After the election, Maiorana said, Carnage needs to come in the form of extermination of anyone that claims to be Democrat  as well as their family members, court filings allege.

Just days later, he said, As the Jew Senator from Jew York said nothing is off the table, apparently threatening Sen. Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat.

He added: The Turner Diaries must come to life. We blow up the FBI building for real. All the alphabet agencies assassination will become the new normal now.

The Turner Diaries is a 1978 novel by William Luther Pierce. It depicts a violent revolution in the U.S. which leads to the federal government being overthrown, a nuclear war and a race war that results in the systematic extermination of non-whites, said court filings.

The novel, federal prosecutors said, has been influential among white nationalists and neo-Nazi groups. It has been cited as the inspiration for acts of violence, such as the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.

Authorities allege Maiorana posted that the election was fraudulently stolen from us.

He also allegedly said, All right thinking people need to hit the streets while these scumbags are celebrating and start blowing them away.

The time has now past for patriots to stop being on the defensive defensive action is a position of weakness, authorities allege Maiorana posted around Nov. 8. We must take offensive action starting now. All of you know what that is.

During the search of the defendants home, authorities said they seized a semiautomatic Glock pistol, two magazines of .45-caliber ammunition, parts for a .22-caliber firearm and additional ammunition.

Maiorana had previously obtained a pistol permit from the upstate Orange County Sheriffs Office in late 1992, but surrendered it in 1999, court papers said.

Due to a 2007 felony conviction in Pennsylvania for statutory sexual assault, he is barred from possessing or obtaining firearms or ammunition, said court documents. Maiorana is registered as a level-one sex offender in New York, those records said.

Maiorana was charged with transmission of threats to injure; felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition, and felon in possession of ammunition.

Court papers dont say to which charge or charges the defendant intends to plead guilty.

Defense lawyer James Darrow declined comment on the case, as did a spokesman for the Brooklyn federal prosecutors office.
Ghislaine Maxwell. Laura Cavanaugh/Getty Images

Ghislaine Maxwell's lawyers recently complained about "horrific conditions" at her Brooklyn jail.

Prosecutors on Tuesday refuted the claim that Maxwell "is withering to a shell of her former self."

They added that Maxwell doesn't clean her cell or flush her toilet.

Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Prosecutors responded to Ghislaine Maxwell's complaints of mistreatment in jail with a long letter on Tuesday, countering her claims and accusing her of not keeping her cell clean.

The British socialite is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, on charges connected to her former associate, the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein died by suicide in his jail cell in Manhattan while awaiting his own trial in August 2019.

In an attempt to get Maxwell released on bail as she awaits trial, which is scheduled to start in July, her lawyers recently complained about "horrific conditions" in the jail.

They said Maxwell was "being kept awake all night to make sure she does not commit suicide" and is "stuck in de facto" solitary confinement due to COVID-19 safety measures.

Barricades at an entrance to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Maxwell's lawyers also complained about their client not getting enough food and said the food she does receive is not being heated properly, "rendering the food inedible."

"The overall conditions of detention have had a detrimental impact on Ms. Maxwell's health and overall well-being; and she is withering to a shell of her former self - losing weight, losing hair, and losing her ability to concentrate," the attorney Bobbi C. Sternheim wrote in a letter to the court on February 16.

On Tuesday, prosecutors responded to the complaints in a letter of their own, addressing each complaint, according to court documents viewed by Insider.

They said Maxwell is allowed out of her cell every day from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. and has the option to go outside for exercise. They added that even with COVID-19 precautions, Maxwell has been able to meet with her lawyers in person, though they've decided to do only video meetings.

Story continues

As to Maxwell's assertion that she's not getting sleep, prosecutors said guards are required to check on her every 15 minutes during the night, but she wears a sleeping mask and note that she "regularly sleeps through these nighttime wellness checks."

Prosecutors said that Maxwell has been assessed as "physically healthy" and has maintained a normal weight throughout her stay at the detention center.

They said her weight has fluctuated between the 130s and 140s. She recorded her lowest weight, 133 pounds, in July 2020, which is considered a normal BMI. Her weight last week was 137.5 pounds, they added. (According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Maxwell would have to weigh less than 118 pounds to be considered clinically underweight.)

Jail staff have also "not observed the defendant experience any noticeable hair loss."

Furthermore, the prosecutors suggested that Maxwell has herself to blame for some of the conditions she's living in.

In a footnote, they detailed how staff had asked her to clean her cell at one point when it became "very dirty."

"Among other things, MDC staff noted that the defendant frequently did not flush her toilet after using it, which caused the cell to smell," the letter reads.

Prosecutors have been continuing to build their case against Maxwell, who has been accused of grooming girls for Epstein between 1994 and 2004. She's also been accused of abusing one of the girls.

Last month, prosecutors filed additional charges against Maxwell based on the allegations of a fourth accuser who was a minor at the time of the alleged abuse.

Maxwell has remained in jail over fears she would be a flight risk in part due to her British and French citizenship, which she has offered to give up.

Read the original article on Insider
NANDIGRAM, India  The challenger arrived with police vehicles, a band of drummers and the backing of the countrys powerful prime minister. The crowd joined him in full-throated chants of glory to the Hindu god Ram: Jai Shree Ram! He brought a warning: If Hindus did not unite around him, even their most basic religious practices would be in danger in the face of Muslim appeasement.

In another part of town, the incumbent took the stage in a wheelchair, the result of what she said was a politically motivated assault. Though her injuries kept her from stalking the stage in her white sari and sandals as usual, she still regaled the audience with taunts for the opposition. And she had a warning of her own: Her defeat would be a victory for an ideology that has no place for minorities like Muslims.

The monthlong election unfolding in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal is deeply personal. Mamata Banerjee, the states chief minister for the past decade, is facing off against her former protege of 20 years, Suvendu Adhikari. He and dozens of other local leaders have defected from her party and are now allied with Narendra Modi, Indias prime minister.

But the heated vote could indicate something broader: whether anybody can stop Mr. Modis movement to reshape Indias secular republic into a Hindu-first nation.
Mumbai, April 7 : The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has relaxed the period of external commercial borrowing (ECB) proceeds in terms deposits.

Post the decision, unutilised ECB proceeds drawn down on or before March 1, 2020 can be parked in term deposits with AD Category-I banks in India, prospectively up to March 1, 2022.

Under the extant ECB framework, ECB borrowers are allowed to place ECB proceeds in term deposits with AD Category-I banks in India for a maximum period of 12 months.

"In view of the difficulty faced by borrowers in utilising already drawn down ECBs due to Covid-19 pandemic induced lockdown and restrictions, it has been decided to relax the above stipulation as a one-time measure, with a view to provide relief," the RBI said in its Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies.

In another decisions, the central bank has decided to increase the limit of outstanding balance in Prepaid Payment Instruments (PPI) with full KYC compliance from the current level of Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2 lakh.

The decision is aimed at incentivising the migration of PPIs to full KYC.

To promote optimal utilisation of payment instruments (like cards, wallets), and given the constraint of scarce acceptance infrastructure (like PoS devices, ATMs, QR codes, bill-payment touch points), the RBI has been stressing on the benefits of interoperability amongst the issuing and acquiring entities alike, banks or non-banks.

The guidelines issued in October 2018 enabled interoperability, albeit on a voluntary basis, insofar as the PPIs were full KYC (they met all Know Your Customer requirements). Despite a passage of two years, migration towards full KYC PPIs, and therefore interoperability, is not significant, it said.
A County Derry joinery company has been celebrating after their inclusion in a report highlighting the UK's fastest-growing small and medium businesses.

Specialist Joinery Group have been named as one of London Stock Exchange Group's 1,000 Companies to Inspire Britain in 2020.

Businesses featured in the report demonstrated strong revenue growth over the last three years and outperform their peers in the sector.

Specialist Joinery Group Managing Director Ciaran O'Hagan said people were at the heart of the company's ethos.

We are incredibly proud to have been recognised as one of the top 1,000 companies to inspire Britain by London Stock Exchange Group, he said.

Specialist Joinery Group is a multi-award-winning family business dedicated to delivering bespoke joinery for commercial interiors projects. People are at the core of its operation, not technology.

Values such as fairness, transparency, and honesty are engrained in the organisation, from the shop floor to the boardroom.

Today, we export that market-leading expertise around the world with specialisms in metal, glass and installations and are committed to excellence and to innovation at every stage of every project.

James Nelson, Connor Diamond and Aaron McGahon (Apprentices) with Dave Owens (Master Craftsman).

The Maghera company have also been shortlisted as a finalist in the 2021 Northern Ireland Apprenticeship Awards.

The Specialist Academy, founded in 2015, is a standalone facility comprising of the shop floor, computer-aided design suite, canteen, offices and meeting spaces.

A spokesperson said apprentices brought youth and vitality to the company.

We believe that apprentices are the lifeblood of the company.

The Academy has had a fantastic impact by promoting a culture of learning and collaboration, allowing us to train each individual up to meet our needs.

Apprentices bring some youth and vitality to Specialist, bringing fresh insights and new ideas.
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.
The following is from a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial:

It is understandable: the desire to embrace an elderly loved one, to shed a mask and smile brightly at the counter clerk, to reunite with a group of friends over a bottle of wine and a gab session. But this is not the time.

We are COVID weary, to be sure. But we must be wary of our natural instincts for face-to-face communion with others.

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made a tearful public statement last month that she is plagued with a recurring feeling of impending doom. Dr. Rochelle Walensky said she fears a fourth wave of the coronavirus may be at our doorsteps.

This is not an irrational fear. Germany hovers on another lockdown. Paris hospitals are on the verge of being overwhelmed with COVID patients. New cases are climbing across the U.S. Science and medicine are trying to gauge the effectiveness of vaccines against new virus variants that are being found near and far.

This is the time to dig deep for the will and the self-discipline to combat COVID fatigue.

President Joe Biden cautioned America recently that This is deadly serious. He asked leaders across the land to double down on mask mandates. This is common sense.

Now is the time to channel the spirit of the Greatest Generation. Those who battled in World War II  abroad, in actual combat, and those who contributed to the war effort on the home front  rose to the expectations and requirements of the occasion. And they kept rising until the battle was won. This is the American spirit.

A bit of fear is a good thing in a deadly pandemic, and we remain in pandemic gloom despite the pinhole lights of vaccination and the more distant torch of herd immunity.

The president said it and citizens must listen: Nows not the time to celebrate. It is time to do what we do best as a country: our duty, our jobs, take care of one another.  Fight to the finish. Dont let up now.

This is the time for hope, but not complacency. We may be weary but we are not worn down or worn out. We must find the resolve to continue to do the right thing: Wear a mask and social distance.
NEW YORK, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Meredith Corporation's (NYSE: MDP) Travel + Leisure announces that the second season of its Let's Go Together podcast launches today, with new episodes debuting every Wednesday. Over the course of the upcoming season, award-winning travel expert and host Kellee Edwards will continue the series where it left off by sharing more conversations with a diverse group of travelers about the journeys that changed their lives. This season will also explore the cultures of some of Travel + Leisure's favorite destinations through the personal stories of inspiring people who know them well.

Travel + Leisure Let's Go Together

In the premiere episode, available today, the openly gay former mayor of Houston, Annise Parker, talks about how she led the capital of space exploration to become one of the nation's most diverse cities. Upcoming episodes include guests and topics such as the story of Jin Prugsawan, a female park ranger striving in a traditionally male-dominated profession; an interview with Billy Mitchell, aka Mr. Apollo, the tour guide and historian of the famed Apollo Theater in Harlem, who shares his decades-long experience watching it become a cultural center for Black performers and transforming Harlem into the energetic and diverse neighborhood it is today; and actress and comedian Margaret Cho talking about her hometown of L.A., traveling as an Asian American, and more.

Kellee Edwards said, "I love that our first season of Let's Go Together stayed true to the name of the show by bringing together a diverse community of travelers to share their storiesones never told, but that reveal increasingly familiar experiences. People felt seen and it has been beautiful to know you're not alone by normalizing these stories in a way that a travel podcast has not before. I'm looking forward to season 2 and expanding the discussion through additional lenses."

Season 2 of Let's Go Together will feature more than 25 episodes. In addition to host Kellee Edwards, several Travel + Leisure editors will join the series as special guest hosts for select episodes, including Travel + Leisure Editor in Chief Jacqui Gifford and Travel + Leisure Digital Content Director Deanne Kaczerski, among others.

Let's Go Together is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and on your favorite listening platforms. To learn more about the series, find out more about last season's episodes, listen to the trailer, and stay up-to-date on upcoming guests and topics, visit: https://www.travelandleisure.com/lets-go-together-podcast.

ABOUT TRAVEL + LEISURE

Travel + Leisure is the preeminent voice for the sophisticated traveler, serving up expert intelligence and the most immersive travel lifestyle content anywhere. Travel + Leisure captures the joy of discovering the cultural pleasures the world has to offerfrom art and design to shopping and style to food and drinkand provides compelling reasons to get up and go. Reaching an audience of more than 30 million, the Travel + Leisure media portfolio includes the U.S. flagship magazine, travelandleisure.com, newsletters, the Let's Go Together podcast, the World's Best Awards franchise, an extensive social media presence, and international editions in China, India, Mexico, and Southeast Asia. Launched in 1971, the U.S. edition of Travel + Leisure is the only monthly consumer travel magazine in the U.S. Travel + Leisure is part of Meredith Corp.'s (NYSE: MDP) Luxury Group of best-in-class brands and is owned by Travel + Leisure Co. (NYSE: TNL).

SOURCE Meredith Corporation

Related Links

https://www.meredith.com


New Delhi, April 7 : Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday advocated vaccination for all and said every Indian deserves the chance to a safe life, after the resurgence of Covid cases in the country.

"It's ridiculous to debate needs & wants. Every Indian deserves the chance to a safe life. #CovidVaccine." he said.

Rahul Gandhi's comment came in the wake of health secretary saying on Tuesday that vaccines are given to those who need it the most.

Another Congress leader Manish Tewari too attacked this theory and said, "This is the most obtuse gibberish. Only a Bureaucrat can say it with a masked straight face. Does Virus have an age distinguishing vector coded into it's genome sequence? Do young not deserve protection when you are exporting the vaccine to everybody and their grandmother?" As per reports Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan had said that, "The aim of vaccination is not to administer to those who want it but to those who need it." India on Wednesday recorded 1,15,736 new Covid-19 cases, the biggest-ever single-day surge since the onset of the pandemic early last year, taking the overall tally to 12,801,785.

Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab have shown a steep rise in the daily new cases.

The Central Government has rushed 50 high-level multi-disciplinary public health teams to 50 districts across Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Punjab in view of the recent very large numbers of daily new Covid-19 cases and daily mortalities being consistently reported by these States.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Valens' distribution network now includes five Canadian provinces with additional expansion expected in the short-term

KELOWNA, BC, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - The Valens Company Inc. (TSX: VLNS) (OTCQX: VLNCF) (the "Company," "The Valens Company" or "Valens"), a leading manufacturer of cannabis products, today announced that it has entered into an agreement with the Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries Corporation to supply and distribute a wide range of cannabis products to LGCA-licensed private retailers in the Province of Manitoba. With this agreement, Valens expands its distribution network to five provinces in the country.

"Expanding our domestic distribution capabilities is one of our top strategic initiatives to drive growth this year and beyond," said Tyler Robson, Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder and Chair of The Valens Company. "Our entry into the Manitoba market takes us a step further toward capturing larger market share and bringing the Valens advantage to consumers in a new province, enabling greater access to our high-quality products across Canada."

Valens has already shipped several products to the province, including A1 Cannabis' Summit 10 THC beverages, Verse Cannabis' Tropic Lemon and Sunset Peach vape carts and 1:20 CBD oil, with additional product formats across various categories expected to be shipped in the coming weeks.

In addition to Manitoba, the Company's distribution network also includes Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Saskatchewan. Expansion into other Canadian provinces and territories, such as Quebec, is expected in the short-term as discussions continue with provincial and territorial boards and private retailers.

About The Valens Company

The Valens Company is a leading manufacturer of cannabis products with a mission to bring the benefits of cannabis to the world. The Company provides proprietary cannabis processing services across five core technologies, in addition to best-in-class product development, formulation and manufacturing of cannabis consumer packaged goods. The Valens Company's high-quality products are exclusively formulated for the medical, therapeutic, health and wellness, and recreational consumer segments, and are offered across numerous product formats, including oils, vapes, concentrates, edibles and topicals, as well as pre-rolls, with a focus on next-generation product development and innovation. Its breakthrough patented emulsification technology, SoRSE by Valens, converts cannabis oil into water-soluble emulsions for seamless integration into a variety of product formats, allowing for near-perfect dosing, stability, and taste. In partnership with brand houses, consumer packaged goods companies and licensed cannabis producers around the globe, the Company continues to grow its diverse product portfolio in alignment with evolving cannabis consumer preferences in key markets. Through its wholly owned subsidiary Valens Labs Ltd., the Company is setting the standard in cannabis testing and research and development with Canada's only ISO17025 accredited analytical services lab, named The Centre of Excellence in Plant-Based Science by partner and scientific world leader Thermo Fisher Scientific. Discover more on The Valens Company and its subsidiaries at http://www.thevalenscompany.com .

Notice regarding Forward Looking Statements

All information included in this press release, including any information as to the future financial or operating performance and other statements of The Valens Company that express management's expectations or estimates of future performance, other than statements of historical fact, constitute forward-looking information or forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws and are based on expectations, estimates and projections as of the date hereof. Forward-looking statements are included for the purpose of providing information about management's current expectations and plans relating to the future. Wherever possible, words such as "plans", "expects", "scheduled", "trends", "indications", "potential", "estimates", "predicts", "anticipate", "to establish", "believe", "intend", "ability to", or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might", "will", or are "likely" to be taken, occur or be achieved, or the negative of these words or other variations thereof, have been used to identify such forward-looking information. Specific forward-looking statements include, without limitation, all disclosure regarding future results of operations, economic conditions and anticipated courses of action.

The risks and uncertainties that may affect forward-looking statements include, among others, regulatory risk, United States border crossing and travel bans, reliance on licenses, expansion of facilities, competition, dependence on supply of cannabis and reliance on other key inputs, dependence on senior management and key personnel, general business risk and liability, regulation of the cannabis industry, change in laws, regulations and guidelines, compliance with laws, reliance on a single facility, limited operating history, vulnerability to rising energy costs, unfavourable publicity or consumer perception, product liability, risks related to intellectual property, product recalls, difficulties with forecasts, management of growth and litigation, many of which are beyond the control of The Valens Company. For a more comprehensive discussion of the risks faced by The Valens Company, and which may cause the actual financial results, performance or achievements of The Valens Company to be materially different from estimated future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by forward-looking information or forward-looking statements, please refer to The Valens Company's latest Annual Information Form filed with Canadian securities regulatory authorities at www.sedar.com or on The Valens Company's website at www.thevalenscompany.com. The risks described in such Annual Information Form are hereby incorporated by reference herein. Although the forward-looking statements contained herein reflect management's current beliefs and reasonable assumptions based upon information available to management as of the date hereof, The Valens Company cannot be certain that actual results will be consistent with such forward-looking information. The Valens Company cautions you not to place undue reliance upon any such forward-looking statements. The Valens Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law. Nothing herein should be construed as either an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy or sell securities of The Valens Company.

SOURCE The Valens Company Inc.

Related Links

https://thevalenscompany.com/


The regional director of the World Health Organization's (WHO) Bureau for Europe, Dr. Hans Kluge, was decorated on Wednesday with the National Order "For Merit" in the rank of Commander by President Klaus Iohannis.

"I am confident that, through personal example, you will support a strong, excellence-oriented regional organization capable of providing reliable and timely expertise for all Member States in the region. Romania has supported your candidacy for this high strategic position, taking into consideration your vast experience in the field and the fact that the mandate priorities outlined in the New Work Program correspond to a vision we want for the future WHO and for the health of European citizens. I am convinced that through the assumed leadership model you will contribute to strengthening the role of Europe and of the entire Organization in global health," said the head of state, at the decoration ceremony that took place at the Cotroceni Presidential Palace, agerpres.ro confirms.

He stressed that systems and societies need to be well prepared to meet emerging challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, showing that adequate leadership is needed.

You have shown both national solidarity, leaving no one behind and international solidarity, the WHO representative said, according to the official translation.

Hans Kluge added that he often sets the example of our country in the meetings he has.

The fact that Romania supported my candidacy was a highly important thing. It was the first country that supported my candidacy, and this is a memory that will remain. You can consider me a great friend of your country. Friendship is a very important platform for further work in health systems, he said.

President Klaus Iohannis awarded the National Order "For Merit" in the rank of Commander to the WHO Regional Director for Europe, as sign of "high appreciation for his important contribution at European level in managing the COVID-19 pandemic, for the close collaboration relationship with Romania, actively participating in the efforts to improve the Romanian health system".
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un spoke to a group of grassroots operatives of the country's ruling Worker's Party, in the opening event of a massive gathering of local party officials from across the country. North Korean state media reported the event, saying that the leader had told the local operatives that it was up to them "to overcome unprecedently numerous challenges" despite what he called "the worst ever situation".

Kim attended the opening of the "6th Conference of Cell Secretaries of the Workers' Party of Korea" on Tuesday, the Korean Central News Agency reported early Wednesday. It's common for North Korean media to report news the day after it has happened.

Party cells are the smallest units of party authority, overseeing the work and lives of individual groups of people within a factory, office, or other workplace. This grassroots network is one of the ways that the ruling party perpetuates its power over the country. The previous conference of cell secretaries was held in December 2017.

North Korea is facing even more challenges than usual, after more than a year of international lockdown against COVID-19 and no end in sight. Pyongyang is also in an awkward position in its relations with South Korea, and facing further uncertainty in relations with Washington, as the new U.S. President Joe Biden's administration completes a review of its North Korea policy.

Image Credits: Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
MediaTek and Samsung have launched what they says is the worlds first 8K QLED TV  the Samsung 8K QLED Y21  powered by MediaTeks MT7921AU.

The MT7921AU supports Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 from a single, highly integrated platform. With 1.2 Gbps speeds, it enables smoother streaming and gaming. Wi-Fi 6E is designed to make use of uncongested bandwidth in the 6GHz spectrum and offers numerous advantages over previous Wi-Fi generations, such as significantly faster multi-gigabit data throughput, lower latencies and the latest security and connection reliability features.

Consumers depend on fast, reliable connectivity, whether they are using their TV for streaming, gaming or following along with workouts," said Jerry Yu, MediaTek corporate senior vice president and GM of the Intelligent Devices Business Group, commenting on teh launch.



"Our collaboration with Samsung has been instrumental in bringing consumers the latest smart TV technology to support these uses and beyond. With our advanced connectivity technologies  including WiFi-6 support  integrated into Samsungs 8K TVs, were driving the premium smart TV segment forward globally.
Jailed Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny is losing about 1 kilogram a day, his lawyer said, as he continues his hunger strike amid growing concerns about his overall health after he reported a severe cough and high temperature.



Vadim Kobzev, a member of Navalny's legal team, said in a post to Twitter on April 7 that his temperature remained elevated but down slightly from the previous day.



"Aleksei walks by himself. Feels pain when walking. A very disturbing factor is that the disease is clearly progressing in terms of loss of sensitivity in the legs, palms, and hands," he wrote in a separate tweet.



Earlier, Olga Mikhailova, another member of Navalny's legal team, said he had had an initial test for exposure to coronavirus and that had come back negative. She said they were waiting results of a second.

The White House said that it was "disturbed" by reports that Navalny's condition is deteriorating and urged Russian authorities to ensure his health and safety.



Navalny is only months removed from a near-fatal nerve-agent poisoning in Siberia last summer. He was imprisoned after returning to Russia in January following his recuperation in Germany. He is now being held in what is known as one of Russia's toughest penitentiaries, about 100 kilometers east of Moscow.



Navalny announced his hunger strike last week to protest what he has called deliberate attempts to deprive him of sleep and the failure of authorities to provide proper medical treatment for his back and leg pains. Since entering prison last month he has lost a total of 13 kilograms, his lawyers have said.



Navalny "continues his hunger strike. HIs weight is steadily dropping by 1 kg per day. All that the administration of the colony is currently doing is trying to dissuade him from the hunger strike," Kobzev tweeted, adding that the Kremlin foe remained in the medical unit of the colony.



His temperature "is constantly being measured," the lawyer said, adding: "Yesterday it was 38.4 [degrees Celsius], the day before yesterday it was 39, and today it is about 37.2."

Meanwhile, the White House reiterated that it considers Navalny's imprisonment "politically motivated and a gross injustice," and urged Russian authorities to "take all necessary actions to ensure his safety."



"So long as he is in prison, the Russian government is responsible for his health and well being," press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters.



A day earlier, on April 6, Anastasia Vasilyeva, his personal doctor, was rebuffed by prison officials in her efforts to see Navalny, and she was later detained outside the prison, along with at least nine other supporters.

Vasilyeva is also the outspoken head of the Alliance of Doctors union, and has been vocally critical of the Kremlin's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.



Two of those detained along with Vasilyeva -- Artyom Boriskin, and his press secretary Valeria Merkulova -- remain in custody, charged with violating the law regulating gatherings near penitentiaries, according to a Navalny ally, Sergei Ukhov.

Boriskin and Merkulova will remain in custody until a court decides on their pretrial restrictions, Ukhov said.



Two days earlier, Navalny's allies said in a post published to his Instagram account that he had a "severe cough" and fever of 38.1 degrees Celsius, after a third prisoner in his crowded quarters had been sent to the hospital with suspected tuberculosis.



Navalny's health condition is potentially precarious because of his exposure to a military grade nerve-agent last August. He has accused President Vladimir Putin of ordering security agents to assassinate him, something the Kremlin denies.



Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said Navalny would receive the necessary medical care but no preferential treatment.

A lawyer who has gained widespread popularity for his investigations into official corruption and his slashing wit, Navalny was arrested at a Moscow airport in January on charges of violating his parole, sparking large-scale protests.



A Moscow court found him guilty of violating the terms of his parole from an older embezzlement case that is widely considered to be politically motivated, and his suspended sentenced was converted to jail time.

With reporting by TASS. Reuters, AFP, and Idel.Realities
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 09:35:20|Editor: huaxia

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LAGOS, April 7 (Xinhua) -- At least eight people were killed and four others injured in separate gunmen attacks in Nigeria's northwestern state of Kaduna, an official said on Tuesday.

Security agencies have reported the incidents in the local areas of Kajuru and Kachia, said Samuel Aruwan, commissioner for the state's internal security and home affairs, in a statement.

Five people were killed when armed bandits opened fire on a bus as well as a truck carrying firewood after blocking the Kaduna-Kachia road around Kadanye village in Kajuru, an attack that also left three others injured, said Aruwan.

In another incident, gunmen barricaded the Doka axis of the same road and shot at a truck, killing the driver, he said.

In Kachia, gunmen invaded a herders settlement in Inlowo village, and killed one person before carting away 180 cows, according to the security chief.

At Akilbu village in Kachia, Aruwan said, gunmen shot at a vehicle, injuring two people with one of them later dead in hospital.

Aruwan did not give further details such as the dates of the fresh attacks.

A series of gunmen attacks have hit the northern part of Nigeria in recent months. Enditem
Delhi government has imposed night curfew from 10 pm to 5 am till April 30 in the wake of deteriorating COVID-19 situation in the national capital. Delhi recorded 5,100 new Covid-19 cases, which is by far the highest single day spike in Covid-19 cases this year. Total 17 deaths were reported in Delhi, taking the overall death count to 11,113.

"People who want to get Covid-19 vaccination will be exempted but will have to get an e-pass. Shopkeepers selling essential goods like groceries, fruits, vegetables, milk, and medicine will be allowed to move after getting an e-pass. Print and electronic media will also be allowed to move only through e-pass," the Delhi government's order says.

Also read: Delhi govt issues night curfew guidelines; see what's exempt

The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has said commuters falling under the essential categories will be allowed to travel in Metros during the night curfew. In a tweet, DMRC said on Tuesday: "All metro users are requested who do not fall in the essential category may complete the journey and reach their destination by 10 pm as you are not allowed to travel after 10 pm to 5 am in the night in metro as per govt order till April 30."

All those who have been exempted from night curfew restrictions will have to produce a curfew pass, also known as e-pass. If you are travelling or commuting through Delhi between 10pm-5am due to work requirements, you must apply for a curfew pass:

Also read: Delhi imposes night curfew from 10pm to 5am as Covid-19 cases rise

Here's what you need to do:

Log on to Delhi government's official website for e-pass: epass.jantasamvad.org/epass/relief/english/

On the form, add details like contact number, name, district, office address, type of services, date of birth, ID proof and other documents like visiting card or business licence.

Submit the form and your e-pass will be generated.

Do not apply for a curfew pass if your work does not involve night travel or for your personal purposes. Violation invites prosecution under applicable laws.

e-pass is being issued for those who are engaged in providing essential services, but do not have a government ID

You are required to carry an e-Pass only if your work requires travel in the night (from 10PM - 5AM)

If your work-related travel is limited to day-time, you DO NOT have to apply for this e-Pass

The number of new coronavirus cases in India hit a record daily high since the outbreak of the pandemic with over 1.15 lakh new infections being reported in a span of 24 hours, pushing the nationwide COVID-19 tally to 1.2 crore, the health ministry data suggests.

Also read: PM Modi holds high-level meeting to review COVID-19 situation, vaccination drive
EXTON, Pa., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Ricoh USA, Inc. today unveiled the Ricoh Scholars Program for Clemson University graduate students continuing their science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) education at the university after attending a Historically Black College or University (HBCU). The program will award $80,000 over the course of four years to outstanding, diverse students primed to become the next generation of innovators. The first Ricoh Scholar is Ananya Gupta, who received her bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Claflin University and is currently a first-year Ph.D. student in Human-Centered Computing at Clemson.

"Ananya's work on making the ways we interact online more accessible and more secure is exciting, and it's exactly the kind of thing we want to support with the Ricoh Scholars program," said Dr. Bart Knijnenburg, Assistant Professor in Human-Centered Computing, Clemson University. "Ananya has become part of the Humans and Technology Lab (HatLab.org), a diverse lab of young scholars from all over the world who are internationally recognized for their work in privacy and adaptive decision support systems. Her participation in the lab paired with her work in data privacy and her project streamlining and improving translation of social media posts into different languages has prepared Ananya to make a real difference. With Ricoh's help, Ananya can take these early steps with more confidence and financial security."

STEM graduate students attending Clemson after an HBCU can apply for the annual fellowship after completing their bachelor's degree.

"The University's outstanding and cutting-edge research in the Department of Human-Centered Computing drew me to Clemson," said Gupta. "During my first year pursuing my doctorate, I have found my passion in work that will provide better technology-based services that are more secure, trustworthy and accessible, especially to poor and middle-class people worldwide. Being recognized as a Ricoh Scholar will allow me to focus on my study and research without additional financial stress. I am beyond grateful for Dr. Knijnenburg's guidance, Ricoh's commitment to students from diverse backgrounds and this life-changing fellowship, all of which are helping me achieve my academic and future career goals."

The Ricoh Scholars program is an extension of Ricoh's foundational commitments, The Ricoh Way, as embodied by The Spirit of Three Loves: "love your neighbor, love your country, love your work." Ricoh's founder, Kiyoshi Ichimura, first articulated these founding principles in 1946, and they have guided Ricoh's path ever since. The Ricoh Scholars program helps uplift our neighbors, strengthening our country and developing stronger minds that will shape the future of work. This ties directly into Ricoh's own efforts to foster a more diverse and inclusive world, elevating the best and the brightest to positions where their innovative drive can make the most impact. As the challenges and demands of the changing workplace coalesce in the coming months and years, Ricoh is dedicated to help businesses adapt and thrive, by putting access to the best people, processes and technologies at users' fingertips.

"At Ricoh, we applaud innovation," said Donna Venable, Executive Vice President of Human Resources and Deputy General Manager, Shared Services, Ricoh North America and Deputy General Manager, Human Resources Division, Ricoh Company, Ltd. "At its root, innovation comes from fresh perspectives. This fellowship is one way we are supporting people with diverse backgrounds, and different points of view, who have the passion for and commitment to continual learning that is a hallmark of innovators. I can't wait to see what the recipients do next."

A Clemson partner for more than eight years, Ricoh provides an array of digital services including Intelligent Lockers, managed print services along with print and mail services for the University.

For information on Ricoh please click here, or follow the company's social media channels on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

| About Ricoh |

Ricoh is empowering digital workplaces using innovative technologies and services enabling individuals to work smarter. For more than 80 years, Ricoh has been driving innovation and is a leading provider of document management solutions, IT services, communications services, commercial and industrial printing, digital cameras, and industrial systems.

Headquartered in Tokyo, Ricoh Group operates in approximately 200 countries and regions. In the financial year ended March 2020, Ricoh Group had worldwide sales of 2,008 billion yen (approx. 18.5 billion USD).

For further information, please visit www.ricoh.com

 2021 Ricoh USA, Inc. All rights reserved. All referenced product names are the trademarks of their respective companies.

SOURCE Ricoh USA, Inc.

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OnlyFans has denied it has been hacked after explicit photos of hundreds of performers, including Bella Thorne, were reportedly been leaked online by hackers.

'OnlyFans has not been hacked. Any reports of a security breach are false. There is a group of people purchasing, compiling and then illegally hosting content,' a spokesperson said.

'We have sent them a cease and desist letter and filed a WIPO Complaint against the registrant. The registrant has not responded to the Complaint and we are pursuing further legal action.'

According to BackChannel, a security company that studies the behavior of cybercriminals, a link to a Google Drive folder was 'shared on a low-tier hacker forum by a threat actor known for collecting and exchanging sexually explicit material' last month.

BackChannel says the folder contains videos and pictures stolen from hundreds of OnlyFans creators.

'In our effort to notify all users and spread awareness of the activity, BackChannel is notifying impacted users, the cloud services provider, and other concerned parties threatened by this security incident,' BackChannel wrote in a disclosure online.

Hundreds of OnlyFans creators, including Bella Thorne (left and right), have reportedly been hacked by cybercriminals who posted explicit images online

BackChannel says the folder contains videos and pictures stolen from hundreds of OnlyFans performers (disclosure pictured)

OnlyFans said 'content protection is a top priority and OnlyFans has a dedicated anti-piracy team that provides legal DMCA support to issue takedowns on behalf of the creators'.

'It is a violation of our Terms of Service to copy, duplicate or record user content, and DMCA law protects creator content being published without proper permissions. This procedure is inclusive of all required notices to move any infringement up to litigation if target websites refuse to comply,' the company said in the statement.

'OnlyFans also notifies the offending domain registrars and hosting services as well as reporting to all major search engines. With a duty to help battle against illegal piracy, OnlyFans is firmly in the fight to protect user content. Takedown success rates have been over 75% across offending image hosting sites, torrent providers, and cyber lockers,' the statement continued.

Earlier on Wednesday, BackChannel founder Aaron DeVera told BleepingComputer that the Google Drive folder originally contained folders for 279 OnlyFans creators, with one of the folders having over 10GB of videos and photos.

DeVera said it appears that all of the content was uploaded into the folder in October 2020.

'OnlyFans has somewhat weak content controls around their content, and there are plenty of bots and scrapers a legitimate subscriber can use. What makes this unique is that so many users were bundled in one folder,' DeVera told BleepingComputer.

His team also believes that it was compiled by more than one person.

'This implies that multiple contributors likely added to the cache, or that the uploader sourced the content from multiple leaks. We do not assess that the poster on RaidForums is the original uploader of the Google Drive content,' DeVera added.

The folder also appears to have been shared from the City College of San Francisco account. BackChannel representatives are currently trying to contact them to remove the entire folder.

Thorne (left and right) along with Cardi B, Blac Chyna and Tyga are among the celebrities who use the platform

A DailyMail.com request for comment to Thorne's reps was not immediately returned.

OnlyFans is a content subscription service based in London. Creators on the site can earn money from users who subscribe to their content.

Thorne along with Cardi B, Blac Chyna and Tyga are among the celebrities who use the platform.

BackChannel created an online tool that allows OnlyFans creators to check to see if their accounts were impacted.

If a creator's content is found in the leak, BackChannel recommends users to visit https://labac.dev/content, which can be used to get the content removed.

The incident comes months after Thorne sparked outrage with sex workers when she joined OnlyFans and then raked in $1million on her first day.

The former Disney star created an OnlyFans profile in August 2020.

But she angered several people who slammed her for charging $200 for a 'naked' photo where she was not actually nude.

Thorne apologized at the time but sex workers blamed her for the subscription platform instating new payment caps and holds.

Content creators said Only Fans subsequently imposed payment caps of $50 on pay-per-view posts from a previous cap of $200, and a $100 cap on tips.
To hear more audio stories from publishers like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.

PINEDALE, Wyo.  Kenna Tanner and her team can list the cases from memory: There was the woman who got tired and did not feel like finishing her hike; the campers, in shorts during a blizzard; the base jumper, misjudging his leap from a treacherous granite cliff face; the ill-equipped snowmobiler, buried up to his neck in an avalanche.

All of them were pulled by Ms. Tanner and the Tip Top Search and Rescue crew from the rugged Wind River mountain range in the last year, in this sprawling, remote pocket of western Wyoming. And all of them, their rescuers said, were wildly unprepared for the brutal backcountry in which they were traveling.

It is super frustrating, said Ms. Tanner, Tip Tops director. We just wish that people respected the risk.
Efforts to raise awareness about implicit racial bias or structural racism in health care are forcing some doctors to speak out -- carefully.

In March, an editor at JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, was fired because he said in a podcast it was unfortunate the word racism taints a valuable discussion on disparate outcomes in health care.

Physicians make a huge investment in time, money, and energy to become medical doctors and are reluctant to make waves with government regulators or powerful special interests. Implicit bias training is now a requirement for credentialing with at least one insurance company and may soon be mandated for medical licensing. Physicians undergo this training at their own time and expense.

Additionally, there is little to no evidence that health care disparities are the result of racism. Blacks suffered disproportionately from COVID-19, but science shows this has more to do with factors like population density than subconscious bigotry. If research doesn't back up their claims, politicians should apologize for suggesting that health care providers are racists and remove any orders to address implicit bias. Looking at public policy problems through the lens of race is in itself a form of racism. Do woke warriors realize that?

Below are the thoughts of one practicing physician who wishes to remain anonymous.

Eat Your Heart Out, George Orwell

My state has a race problem and so does the nation. Elected leaders, however, are only exacerbating this problem and using the pandemic as their pretext.

In the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, a marked mortality difference existed between racial groups. Instead of recognizing the reasons behind this difference are complex and multivariate, the governor of the state where I practice, Michigan, took the easy route and attributed all differences in COVID-19 mortality to racism.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer acted on this false assumption in July 2020, when under the guise of combating racism, she mandated all health care workers undergo implicit bias training. To be implemented in the near future, this training is to be administered by the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA). Anyone refusing this training will lose their license and the ability to practice medicine.

Suffering such punishment would effectively destroy a health care workers career. Worse, the training could reduce the number of health care workers during a pandemic when they are most needed.

Setting a dangerous precedent, Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) jumped on the racism bandwagon in November 2020, requiring implicit bias training for all of its contracted physicians.

Refusing this political indoctrination could lead to professional ruin. Doctors might lose their hospital privileges and their base of patients. BCBS dominates 66 percent of the market.

Most people agree there is a need to combat overt bias. However, the claim is that implicit bias is bias so subtle that the person harboring it is not even aware that they have it. Thus, implicit bias training is not the Orwellian 1984 policing of the content of thought but is the policing of subconscious thought.

Unlike the dystopic Big Brother, neither Big Government nor Big Insurance has the ability to detect thoughts, much as less detect thoughts that you did not consciously think. Thus, it is patently absurd to claim that they can train you to un-think thoughts that you did not consciously think?

Ignores the Root of the Problem

By attributing disparities in early COVID-19 mortality to subconscious thought processes, government and special interests ignore the root cause of the problem and block any chance of finding a solution.

Early in the pandemic, no treatments existed for COVID-19. At that time, African Americans made up 40 percent of the deaths while only making up 13.6 percent of the population. Such a massive difference in outcomes could not be explained by subtle, unconscious, implicit bias. With no known treatments, it could not be explained by explicit bias as there was no treatment for a biased individual to withhold. If based solely on asymmetric racial treatment, the only way such a massive difference in mortality could exist would be from outright murder.

This extrapolated accusation is why many health care workers take great umbrage with the simple-minded racism explanation of those such as Whitmer. Further, physicians are angered as these baseless claims exacerbate distrust by our communities of color causing them to avoid vaccination further imperiling their health.

I dont deny that bias exists. We should all look into our own hearts to be sure we are living up to the ideals espoused by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. to judge by the content of ones character instead of the color of ones skin. Claims of implicit bias and forced bias training do the exact opposite. It is indifferent to character and places all judgment on skin color.

That seems pretty biased to me.

Perhaps a better way to combat the problem of bias is to place less emphasis on skin color and the new, racially-obsessed religious belief of woke Marxist theory and instead return to the timeless, racially-blind, classical religious teaching Do onto others as you would have them do onto you, (Luke 6:31).

AnneMarie Schieber (amschieber@heartland.org) is the managing editor of Health Care News.

Image: Yuya Tamai

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
Long after the burial, after I had spent years quietly researching and writing my memoir about my grandfather, I heard about the petition in 2015 signed by 17 prominent Lithuanians to remove the plaque. The petition to the library and the city of Vilnius pointed out that while Jonas Noreika bravely led two rebellions against the Soviets, he was also a genocidal architect during the Nazi occupation who wrote orders to create a ghetto, send Jews to other ghettos, round up Jews and half-Jews and distribute their property weeks before their murders. Noreika was responsible for the deaths of at least 8,000 Jews in three cities and several towns and villages, and this should disqualify him from being a national hero.
Pune, India, April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Essential Oil Market size was valued at USD 3,497.5 million in 2020 and is projected to register a CAGR of 8.9% during the forecast period. The consumption pattern in essential oils varies from region to region. For instance, the demand in North America is mainly driven by the rising use of essential oils in the food & beverages and pharmaceutical industries. The scenario is different in Europe, as the region is witnessing rising demand for these oils in the cosmetic industry.

The term essential oil has been derived from Quinta essential, a term coined by Paracelsus von Hohenheim of Switzerland for denoting the effective component of a drug. Essential oils are natural extracts from stems, roots, flowers, seeds, and other parts of a plant. In old days, these were mainly used for therapeutic and medicinal purposes. Today, essential oils are also considered as potential ingredients in food & beverages and cosmetic industries. Essential oils are soluble in fixed oils, alcohol, and ether, but are insoluble in water.

Get Sample Copy of This Report @ https://www.quincemarketinsights.com/request-sample-68975

These volatile oils are normally colorless and liquid in room temperature. They have a characteristic odor and have a density less than unity. They have a refractive index and a very high optical activity. They are extracted through various distillation methods, such as distillation, cold compression, solvent extraction, maceration, and others. These volatile oils are widely used in perfumery, cosmetic industry, and also in aromatherapy. Essential oils possess insecticidal, antifungal, and antibacterial properties.

Rising demand for essential oils for fragrance and flavors, and as preservatives in cosmetics, food & beverages, and pharmaceutical industries are driving the growth of this market. Some other factors such as increasing demand for aromatherapy, growing awareness about natural products, and rising demand for healthy food can also drive market growth. Further, essential oils can help reduce the risk of chronic diseases such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and others, which is also expected to exert a positive impact on market growth.

Some Noted Developments Considered in the Report:

In July 2020, BASF Nutrition & Health and Isobionics launched their first joint product, Isobionics Santalol, which is a substitute for sandalwood oil. This product is helping the company in meeting customer demand in the region.

In June 2018, Firmenich collaborated with Nelixia to increase their production of natural ingredients and essential oils in Central America.

In April 2018, MANE SA opened a new manufacturing site in Colombia. This will help the company in strengthening its position to better serve customers in the Andean region and in capturing growth opportunities in the fragrances market.

In November 2017, Symrise launched a new series of citrus essence oil replacers, including certified organics. These fully sustainable products are designed to imitate the taste profile of citrus essence oils.

In June 2017, Symrise AG expanded its position in the dynamic Brazilian market by the acquisition of Citratus. Over the last decades, Citratus has developed well-established business relations with the fast growing, local customers in the fragrance industry. Thus, this acquisition will help Symrise AG in enhancing its business.

Global Essential Oils Market, By Product Type

Based on the product type, the market has been divided into clove oil, patchouli oil, Java citronella oil, nutmeg oil, vetiver oil, cubeb oil, Cananga oil, cajeput oil, kaffir lime leaf oil, benzoin, lemongrass oil, cinnamon oil, Massoia bark oil, and others. The Cananga product type segment dominated the global essential oils market in 2020, and is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 8.5% during the forecast period. Cananga oil is obtained from the Cananga tree, which is a large evergreen tropical tree originated in the rainforest of various Asian and South Pacific Islands, such as Indonesia and Philippines.

The Cananga essential oil can be extracted by the steam distillation process from the fresh flowers, leaves, roots, buds, or seeds of the Cananga tree. The Cananga oil is widely used in aromatherapy due to its pleasing fragrance. This oil has emerged as an essential perfumery element, due to which it has strong demand in floral and oriental compositions. The high growth of the segment can be attributed to the properties of the oil that make it suitable for perfumery and medicinal applications. The growing application of Cananga oil primarily for oily skin/hair, insect bites, high blood pressure, anxiety, and stress, along with the increasing application of essential oil in many areas, is driving this market.

Buy Now Full Report @ https://www.quincemarketinsights.com/insight/buy-now/essential-oils-market/single_user_license

Global Essential Oils Market, By Method of Extraction

Based on the method of extraction, the market has been segmented into distillation, carbon dioxide extraction, cold press extraction, solvent extraction, and other extraction methods. The distillation segment is currently dominating the global essential oils market, as distillation is the single most effective method that can remove 99.9% contaminants.

This is the only process that boils the water and thereby removes virus, bacteria, and other impurities. The major benefit of this technology is that the molecules of volatile oils flee from the plant material and evaporate into the steam, thus purifying the oil. This is the best method of extraction that provides continuous temperature control of the steam implement to the plant materials, thereby reducing dilapidation of the valuable essential oil.

Global Essential Oils Market, By Application

Based on applications, the market has been divided into medical, food & beverages, spa & relaxation, cleaning & home, and agribusiness. Among these segments, the medical application segment of the essential oil market captured the largest market share in 2020, followed by the food & beverages application. The medical application segment is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 9.3% during the forecast period till 2028.

Essential oils are well known for their health benefits, as they contain natural ingredients that impart the essence of the source from which they have been extracted. Active compounds of essential oils possess numerous medicinal properties that are useful in the pharmaceutical and nutraceutical industries, which is further anticipated to boost the growth of the medical application segment.

Global Essential Oils Market, By Sales Channel

Based on sales channels, the market has been divided into direct sales and third-party sales. The direct sales segment is dominating the market, which accounted for about two third of the global essential oil market in 2020. In the direct sales process, the product is directly supplied from manufacturers to the end users.

Direct sourcing is particularly attractive for strategic essential oils, which account for an important share in essential oil sales, as these oils are not always readily available through traders. Direct sales channels include social media through multi-level marketing. As direct sale is cost effective, companies are readily adopting the direct sales channel, and this is contributing to market growth.

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Global Essential Oils Market, By Region

Based on regions, the global essential oils market has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa, and South America. Among these regions, the Asia Pacific region captured the largest market share of 32.5% in 2020 and is projected to grow with the highest CAGR during the forecast period. The growth of this region is mainly attributed to a large population base, along with diverse untapped markets that are likely to attract companies to increase and establish their operation and distribution facilities in the region. So, the high growth of this regional market is mainly due to the wide scope of application of essential oils and a large customer base.

Some Major Findings of the Essential Oils Market Report Include:

A major global market trend & forecasts analysis along with a country-specific market analysis for up to 25 countries.

An in-depth global essential oils market analysis by the aforementioned segments, along with an analysis of trend-based insights and factors in all major countries across the globe.

An in-depth analysis of raw materials, regulatory scenario, guidelines, technological benchmarking, pricing analysis, and impact factor analysis.

Profiles of major market players operating in the global essential oils market, which include BASF, Solvay, Symrise AG, GIVAUDAN, Young Living Essential Oils, LC, Berje Inc., Huabao International Holdings Limited., Hasegawa Co., Ltd., Ventos, S.A., DoTERRA International, Firmenich SA, Cargill, DSM, MANE SA, and Sensient Technologies, among others.

Competitive benchmarking, product offering details, growth strategies adopted by the leading market players along with their major investments in the last five years

Key impact factor analysis across regions that includes analysis, along with the drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges that are prevailing in the global market.

Impact of COVID-19 on the global essential oils market.

Browse key industry insights spread across 229 pages with 123 market data tables and 41 figures & charts from the report, Essential Oils Market By Type Products (Cananga oil, Cubeb oil, Nutmeg oil, Benzoin, Cajeput oil, Java citronella oil, Patchouli oil, Cinnamon, Clove oil, Lemongrass oil, Vetiver oil, Kaffir lime leaf oil, Massoia bark oil, Others), Sales Channel (Direct, Third Party), Application (Spa & Relaxation, Cleaning & Home, Food & Beverages, Medical, Others), Extraction Method (Distillation, Cold Press Extraction, Carbon Dioxide Extraction, Solvent Extraction, Others), Geography (Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, South America, Middle East & Africa)  Industry Trends and Forecast to 2028 in depth analysis along with the table of contents (ToC).

Link: https://www.quincemarketinsights.com/industry-analysis/essential-oils-market

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Australia's Prime Minister on Wednesday said he had not criticized the European Union for not receiving the country's contracted AstraZeneca vaccine doses. Scott Morrison said over 3 million of the doses didn't arrive in Australia, which has affected the country's vaccine rollout.

Speaking at a news conference in Canberra on Wednesday Morrison said his statements were "not a dispute", and said he was "explaining to the Australian public that supply issue is what's constraining and has constrained particularly over these recent months, the overall rollout of the vaccine,

He said he will write again to the European Union and AstraZeneca requesting they send the full order of vaccine doses. Morrison said some of the doses will be sent to help its neighbor Papua New Guinea deal with a rise in coronavirus infections.

Image Credits: AP

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
After committing a traffic violation, an Alabama man traveling with his SUV is now accused of smuggling 20 Guatemalan men found inside his vehicle.

Authorities, who intercepted the Alabama man, said Pedro Roda-Lucas, 21, was driving a 2008 GMC Yukon when he was pulled over in Center City for a traffic violation, according to KIRO7.

The Mills County Sheriff's Office said Roda-Lucas of Tuscaloosa could not provide a driver's license when he was asked for documentation, and he also gave authorities a fictitious name.

In a Facebook post published on April 1, the Mills County Sheriff's Office said deputies found 21 men inside Roda-Lucas' vehicle. Later on, the individuals were determined to be from Guatemala and were in the United States illegally.

Mills County Sheriff Clint Hammonds said that the Guatemalan men had paid to be brought to the U.S., and "all were on their way to Georgia."

Hammonds said all people inside the vehicle except for the driver did not have any mobile phones or money as they had been taken away from them.

Hammonds noted that they were able to secure and interviewed the 21 Guatemalan men with the aid of the Texas Department of Public Safety troopers and Texas Parks And Wildlife game wardens.

Roda-Lucas eventually admitted that he was smuggling the Guatemalans and was to be paid $450 per person upon arrival in Georgia, KWTX reported. Hammonds said the Alabama man was arrested, but the Guatemalans inside the SUV were released.

The Sheriff's Office online booking records showed that Roda-Lucas was charged with smuggling of persons, a third-degree felony. The suspect was also charged with failure to identify, providing a fictitious name, and driving with a suspended license.

READ NEXT: Working-Age Latinos Face COVID-19 Death 11 Times Higher Based on USC Study

Biden's Immigration Orders

Hammonds said the Mills County Sheriff's Office had contacted the U.S. Border Patrol and was advised that due to President Joe Biden's new orders on immigration, they should not take the Guatemalans into custody.

Hammonds noted that they were also told to let the Guatemalans go if they do not have any offenses against them.

Meanwhile, the Sheriff's Office said Fellowship Baptist Church's members in Center City helped move the remaining 20 men to the church. Church officials gave the Guatemalans water and food upon arrival at the church.

Last February, Brodrick Keith Rhodes, a 32-year-old Houston man, has been charged with conspiracy to transport illegal immigrants.

Authorities stopped the suspect when he approached the Free Border Patrol checkpoint in San Diego, Texas, in January as he drove a semi-truck and refrigerated trailer.

Authorities discovered 119 illegal immigrants in the trailer's cargo area after a K-9 alerted a possible presence of contraband and subsequent inspection of the vehicle.

Rhodes is facing up to 10 years in prison and a maximum $250,000 fine if convicted with the charges filed against him.

READ MORE: Biden Admin May Have To Restart Border Wall Construction To Fill Holes
The United States looks likely to overtake the UK in vaccinating a higher percentage of its population in the coming months, as president Joe Biden was poised last night to announce that all American adults should be offered a jab by April 19.

The US vaccine roll-out continues to accelerate, with some four million doses given in 24 hours over the weekend, and 150 million shots understood to have been administered in Mr Bidens first 75 days in office. By contrast, the UK scheme is anticipated to slow down.

Official estimates of UK supplies have been sharply downgraded and the Cabinet Office has indicated that an average of 2.7 million doses a week will be given in England until the end of July, down from a previous estimate of 3.2 million.

In America, an average of three million shots are given each day.

Around 150 million doses being administered during Mr Bidens presidency would mean that 166.53 million shots have been given to Americas 331 million-strong population  equivalent to 50.31 per 100 people.

Just over 32pc of Americans have had a first dose and 18.66pc have had a second, making one in five American adults fully protected against the virus. In the UK, nearly 47pc of people have had a first dose and 8pc have received their second.

The UK population is 67.89 million and 37,119,083 doses have been administered. This means that a higher proportion of jabs has been administered in the UK than in the US, with 54.52 total doses per 100 people compared to 50.31. But the gap is expected to narrow.

Supplies of UK vaccines in April have been constrained by the need to test a batch of 1.7 million doses and delays in a shipment of around five million jabs from India.

The British cabinet office scenario, provided to experts on the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, suggests the squeeze on supplies may continue for months.

In America, if the Biden administration reaches its target of 200 million doses in 100 days by April 30, that would mean 216.53 million doses in total, or 65.41 doses per 100 people.

If Britain were to keep vaccinating at its current rate of around 560,000 shots a day, it would reach 51,230,308 total doses  or 75.47 per 100 people by April 30, but that is not expected to happen.

UK prime minister Boris Johnsons official spokesman refused to be drawn on details around supplies and deliveries of vaccine doses but said we remain on track to meet the targets set for the programme. No 10 has insisted that all adults will be offered a vaccine by the end of July.

Mr Biden is expected to announce plans to bring forward the deadline for states to make all American adults eligible for a vaccine by almost two weeks.

The deadline had been May 1, but such is the success of the roll-out, Mr Biden wants to press on with a new target of April 19. ( Telegraph Media Group Limited 2021)

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021]
The National Consumer Dispute Redressal Commission (NCDRC) has dismissed a complaint against Vishakhapatnam-based Care Hospitals Institute of Medical Sciences, and its doctors including a cardiologist Dr GSR Murthy and general physician Dr Swaroopa Rani and held that there was no deficiency on part of the hospital and doctors.The complainant had accused all of them of not admitting the patient in intensive care unit (ICU) till the arrival of the cardiologist, that oxygen was not given and there was a delay in the treatment of the patient. The complainant, Devarakonda Surya Sesha Mani, wife of the patient, Raja Ram Mohan, had alleged that proper injections were not administered to the patient leading to his death.

After considering the submissions of both the parties, NCDRC declined to accept the submission of the petitioner that Raja Ram Mohan was not admitted to ICU or that oxygen was not given till the arrival of the cardiologist as the records revealed that the cardiology resident doctor was present on duty and was regularly briefing the relatives of the patient's status.

It should be borne in mind that we are dealing with a case of alleged medical negligence and thus need to analyse whether the treating doctors or hospital failed in their reasonable duty of care. The medical record of the Care Hospital is a vital document to prove the medical negligence, if any. It is apparent from the record that the Annexure C5 - the medical report, issued on 4 November 2013 is a normal report. We note after nine months of that report the patient got admitted in serious condition in Care Hospital, the Commission noted in its order.

The apex commission observed There was past medical history of diabetes and the ECGs were confirmatory of acute MI (STEMI). Therefore, we cannot rule out the possibility that the patient developed cardiac problems during the nine months. We note that the doctors made all efforts to resuscitate the patient from the cardiac arrest but could not revive the patient. In our view, they performed their duty with reasonable standard of care. We do not find any deficiency either from the hospital or the treating doctors.

The case relates to a patient, who was taken to the hospital for vomiting in 2014. The complainant had alleged that the general physician examined the patient in the casualty and kept him there for three hours. The hospital authorities collected Rs5,000 at the time of admission. In the casualty, the patient again vomited and for the first time complained of breathlessness. The complainant claimed that the patient and she requested for oxygen mask but the doctors did not pay any heed.

The complainant further alleged that she and the other attendants were directed by the physician to stay away from the casualty ward and, therefore, they were observing the patient through a glass window from outside. The counsel for the petitioner contended that the doctor gave one injection to the patient upon which he immediately developed convulsions, cramps and he became unconscious.

The complainant alleged that at 10.20pm, one assisting doctor came outside the casualty and informed that due to 70% of blockage of arteries of the heart, the patient became unconscious. It was further submitted that the doctor demanded medicines worth Rs40,000 and the complainant paid the same on the spot.

The complainant repeatedly requested the hospital staff to call the cardiologist but without any success. Eventually, the patient was shifted to ICU, however, the patient expired on 19 June 2014. On inquiry, the hospital did not give a proper explanation for the cause of death of the patient, the complainant alleged.

As per the petition, precious time was wasted in casualty for non-administration of initial injection, non-supply of the oxygen mask, and they delayed shifting the patient to the ICU. It was further alleged that, despite requests for the entire medical record, the Hospital supplied only three documents. The complainant also requested to provide CCTV camera recording for 19 June 2014 but it was not provided. The petition claimed that the doctors and the hospital treated the patient casually. The aggrieved complainant filed a petition alleging medical negligence and deficiency in service during treatment of the patient and demanded Rs10 crore as compensation.

The counsel for the Hospital and the doctors denied all the allegations of medical negligence and submitted that the consumer complaint be dismissed as it was frivolous and further stated that the patient and his wife at the time of admission suppressed that the deceased was suffering from diabetes for the past 20 years. The patient was an alcoholic and tobacco chewer. It was further submitted that the patient was brought to the hospital with complaints of severe back pain and vomiting and proper medications were administered for nausea and vomiting. The doctors also called the cardiologist.

The counsel for the doctors and the Hospital further contended that as the patient's relatives were creating unruly behaviour, they were asked to leave the casualty. The counsel submitted that, since the patient developed severe breathlessness followed by respiratory arrest, Code Blue was announced and immediately, CPR was started with ambuventilation. The cardiologist came to the hospital and took control of the situation and the patient regained rhythm and the second ECG was taken which showed the patient had suffered a massive heart attack. The patient was immediately intubated with ETT No 8 and connected to a mechanical ventilator. The cardiac monitor showed ventricular fibrillation, therefore, 360 joules shock was given. The cardiac massage was also started; the patient was given bolous dose of injection adrenaline every three minutes. However recurrent ventricular fibrillation continued and showed cardiac asystole. Tenecteplase 40 mg IV bolus was given which was worth Rs40,000. Thus, under the supervision of the doctor, the entire critical care team treated the patient but the patient could not be revived and passed away, the counsel contended.

The cause of death was cardiogenic shock and acute extensive anterolateral STEMI and there was no negligence on part of the hospital or the doctor.

The counsel further added that on 30 July 2014, the complainant issued a legal notice with false allegations and demanded a compensation of Rs96 lakh. However, she later filed a consumer complaint before NCDRC with an inflated claim to the tune of Rs10 crore.

NCDRC referred to another judgement by the SC and stated, "The court held that a professional might be held liable for negligence either if they do not possess the requisite skills that they claimed to have, or they dont exercise the skill which they have. While referring to the judgements, the court said that the human body is like a highly complex machine and a doctor could not assure full recovery of a patient. The only assurance that such a professional can give or can be understood to have given by implication is that he possessed the requisite skill in that branch of the profession which they are practising and while undertaking the performance of the task entrusted to them, they would be exercising their skill with reasonable competence.

The apex commission observed that the SC had in another case Achutrao Harbhau Khodwa Vs State of Maharashtra, (1996) held that The skill of medical practitioner differs from doctor to doctor. The nature of the profession is such that there may be more than one course of treatment which may be advisable for treating a patient. Courts would indeed be slow in attributing negligence on the part of a doctor if he has performed his duties to the best of his ability and with due care and caution. Medical opinion may differ about the course of action to be taken by a doctor treating a patient, but as long as a doctor acts in a manner which is acceptable to the medical profession, and the court finds that he has attended on the patient with due care skill and diligence and if the patient still does not survive or suffers a permanent ailment, it would be difficult to hold the doctor to be guilty of negligence.
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Lone doctor dedicated to treating people on remote island for 13 years

People's Daily Online) 09:50, April 07, 2021

Wang Hui, 36, the only doctor at a health center on a remote island in east China's Shandong province, has been safeguarding the health of the local people for 13 years.

After graduating from Shandong College of Traditional Chinese Medicine in 2008, Wang started working as a doctor on Xiaoqin Island in Changdao county, Yantai city in the province, about 200 kilometers away from her hometown in Laiyang in the province.

Wang Hui stands in front of the health center on Xiaoqin Island in Changdao county, Yantai city, east China's Shandong province. (Photo/Qilu Evening News)

The island is home to about 500 permanent residents, most of whom are middle-aged and elderly people. As it is isolated from the outside world, it takes the locals about four hours to reach the nearest land by ship, the only transportation method available to them.

When Wang came to the island for the first time, she was troubled by the lack of transportation, poor medical conditions, and insufficient freshwater resources. However, she overcame all these difficulties and has been the only doctor on the island for the past years.

"In the past, Xiaoqin township on the island had four doctors, but they left and returned to the county seat or their hometowns for work transfer or personal reasons, except for Wang Hui," said Wang Renjun, deputy Party head of the township.

Living on the second floor of the health center on the island, she usually starts treating patients at 8 a.m. every day, and sometimes has to provide medical treatment to 30 patients in one day.

Wang has cared for her patients to the best of her ability and sees them as family. Song Liying, an old woman who suffered a sudden cerebral hemorrhage which left her in a vegetative state, was one of them.

It's very difficult for Song's husband to take care of her alone. After learning about her situation, Wang started to look after Song at her home in early 2014. Over the past seven years, Wang always arrived at Song's home at about 6:30 every morning to make liquid food for the elderly woman.

What impressed Wang most was a fisherman who survived an accident. "His bleeding arm bone was exposed, Wang recalled, saying that she had to immediately stop the bleeding even though she was shocked to see such serious wounds.

Due to poor medical conditions on the island, the patient was transferred to a hospital in another location. "Fortunately, the patient recovered fairly well and could continue to work," she added.

Now, the medical conditions on Xiaoqin Island have been improved, and helicopters are used for medical evacuation missions for critically ill patients on the island.

"I do whatever it takes to relieve patients' pain," Wang said, hoping that new doctors will come to the island and perform surgeries there.

Wang has also long treated the island as her second hometown. Due to her job and the lack of transportation, she seldom leaves the island and usually returns to her home in Laiyang twice a year for about a week each time.

A dedicated and responsible doctor, Wang has won the trust of the local residents.

"Other doctors were not willing to come to the island because of the poor conditions here. For all these years, Wang Hui, a young doctor, has chosen to stay here and has treated the health center as her home. Island residents have a soft spot for her," said 38-year-old Cai Changsheng, a local diver.

"If she leaves the island one day, we will miss her very much," Cai added.

"Life might be humdrum on the small island, but I can realize the value of life as a doctor," Wang said, adding that "I was not a high-flyer and never thought that I would make it big. But the job on the island really fulfills me, and I will do my best to help villagers on the island."

In December 2019, Wang Hui was honored with the title "Most outstanding college graduate for grassroots services" in recognition of her dedication to her job as a responsible doctor on the island.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
The Cost of Compliance

The Issue is Privacy, But Secrecy Shields Donation

(TNS)  In an attempt to "put consumers in the driver's seat" of their data privacy, Florida legislators are giving bipartisan support to legislation that imposes new disclosure requirements on companies that collect information on their customers and sell it to data brokers.Modeled after a California law that last year became the strongest data privacy law in the country, SB 1734 creates the Florida Privacy Protection Act and requires businesses to tell consumers what information they've collected and how they're going to use it. The bill requires any company that collects and sells consumer information to establish a button on its website to allow consumers to opt out of allowing the company to sell the information it has collected about them."The landscape of the Internet has changed considerably in a relatively short period of time, and the internet of today is a one-way street, where the most intimate details of the consumer's life are monetized, and sold to the highest bidder," said Sen. Jennifer Bradley, a Fleming Island Republican who is sponsoring the Senate bill. "The financial success of these companies who market our private lives are built on the consumer's lack of knowledge and lack of consent to this process."Bradley said the goal of the measure is to "shift the balance of power over data collection back to consumers" by requiring companies to give notice of their practices and seek consent from consumers. Since California adopted a similar law in 2020, companies across the state have placed "do not sell my information buttons" on their web pages, and the state has set up model templates.In November, California voters went further in strengthening the privacy laws by passing Proposition 24. It added new requirements for businesses to protect personal information, including by "reasonably" minimizing data collection, limiting data retention, and protecting data security. A similar privacy law was passed in Illinois. And in Europe, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) protects personal data and restricts the use of it by business entities and internet companies.Bradley's more modest proposal, however, is fiercely opposed by Florida businesses, many of whom make money off selling people's data."The cost would be significant to comply with this law," said Alfred Saikali, chair of the Privacy and Data Security Practice at the Shook, Hardy & Bacon law firm in Miami. "You're going to have to purchase technology, you're going to have to perform data inventories, you're going to have to hire lawyers, like myself."In an attempt to reach a middle ground Tuesday during the Senate Rules Committee meeting, Bradley introduced a strike-all amendment to her bill that creates a loophole for companies that contract with a "service provider" to handle their data. She also limited the businesses required to comply to those that sell personal information of more than 100,000 customers to third parties, or businesses that derive 50 percent or more of their global annual revenues from selling or sharing personal information about consumers.And in a major concession to the Florida Chamber of Commerce and Associated Industries of Florida, Bradley agreed to remove the enforcement teeth by eliminating a provision that allowed consumers to sue businesses if they could show their private data was sold in violation of the proposal. The Florida Attorney General's office would be responsible for enforcing the law, which would take effect July 1, 2022.Despite the deep concessions, industry lobbyists remained opposed to the measure and an advocacy group that supports the legislation but won't identify its donors, warned that the change could undermine the intent of the bill."The amendment to the bill changes the definition of 'sale' in a way that allows Big Tech to share or loan private data to anyone they want  without consumers knowing or having anything to say about it," said Ron Sachs, spokesman for Propel Florida, the advocacy organization. "It enables those giant companies to escape legal accountability and any responsibility to get any consumer's permission."Brewster Bevis, lobbyist for Associated Industries of Florida, said that while the amendments were helpful the bill "is still going to cost Florida businesses a gigantic amount."Florida TaxWatch, a non-profit research organization funded by business, produced a study that estimated it would cost Florida businesses $36.5 billion to develop the technology and meet the requirements."These compliance costs would disproportionately affect smaller businesses with fewer resources to comply, which is why Florida TaxWatch recommends state policymakers first conduct a formal economic impact analysis to study the possible effects of the law change and delay implementation beyond January 1, 2022, until more can be known," said Dominic Calabro, TaxWatch president, in a statement.Sen. Jeff Brandes, a St. Petersburg Republican, argued that Florida should not attempt to regulate data on its own."The thought that you could have 50 different privacy laws in 50 different states around the country and any business could potentially possibly comply with that is unfathomable," he said.But senators from both sides of the political aisle commend Bradley for tackling the issue. Sen. Dennis Baxley, an Ocala Republican, said there is wide public support for privacy restrictions. According to the Senate staff analysis, the Pew Research Institute found that 84 percent of Americans say they feel they have very little or no control over the data that is collected about them by both the government and private companies, but few people read privacy policies."We have an enormous, enormous amount of personal data risks out there that ordinary people are very concerned about what's happening," Baxley said.Senate Democratic Leader Gary Farmer of Lighthouse Point said "the time has come to level the playing field when it comes to our rights of privacy.""You know our Founding Fathers anticipated this type of stuff when they put privacy in the Constitution," Farmer said. "But now we've got to go farther and ensure that we have a say in what happens to our personal information."In a classic irony, Politico has reported that a nonprofit named Propel Florida, which lists its address as a UPS box in Hillsborough County, has contributed $300,000 to legislators to get the data privacy law passed. Propel Florida does not disclose its donors and has hired a Tallahassee-based lobbying team. Even the lobbyists told thethey don't know who is funding the effort.Before the Rules Committee approved her bill, Bradley assured her colleagues: "This is not the California law" and promised that the compliance costs "are going to be much lower."But, she added, there is also a cost to consumers because of their lack of privacy. "Their information is put into predictive analysis that's going to affect their credit worthiness, their employability," she said. "They're the only ones bearing the cost of this, and they can't delete it." Bradley did not respond to requests for comment about Propel Florida's position on her amendment.A companion House bill, HB 969, retains the private right of action for any consumer who alleges a violation to file a lawsuit. It is being sponsored by Rep. Fiona McFarland, R- Sarasota, but opponents warn it will encourage lawsuits. California's law includes the private right of action and, according to the Senate staff analysis of the bill, there have been no lawsuits filed in the first year the law was in effect.
Patna, April 8 : Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) MLA Raj Kumar Singh who contested against the Janata Dal-United (JD-U) claiming that he will send Nitish Kumar to jail during 2020 Assembly elections, had joined the JD-U.

Singh is the only MLA who won 2020 election on LJP ticket. After joining the JD-U at CM residence (1 Anne Marg) in Patna, he changed the stand and said that Nitish Kumar is a visionary leader and role model for him.

"I was in NDA before the election and now I am a part of a party which is one of the strongest alliance partners of the NDA," Singh said.

Singh had moved an application before speaker Vijay Sinha on April 5 following which the speaker allowed him to join any other party which he wish to on April 6.

There was a buzz that he may join JD-U during the second cabinet expansion in February this year. However, he didn't joined as negotiations over his portfolio were not finalised. Sources said that he was promised a ministerial berth in the third expansion by the JD-U top leadership.

After joining the JD-U, Singh said: "I hardly have close political relationship with Chirag Paswan. He fought 2020 election to defeat the JD-U. I won the election on my own strength. Nitish Kumar is a visionary leader and I want to strengthen his hand in order to develop Bihar."

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
(Natural News) What is the FBIs main purpose now? Because outside of some great investigative work that gets little national attention, the bureau increasingly seems to be used as a federal weapon aimed primarily at Republicans, generally protecting Democrats while leaking any detail of ongoing investigations that could damage the GOP.

(Article by Ashe Schow republished from DailyWire.com)

The latest example relates to an FBI investigation into a political ally of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), during which allegations were made against Gaetz accusing him of having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl, whom he allegedly paid to travel with him. The New York Times reported on the investigation, quoting three, anonymous people briefed on the investigation. Gaetz has denied the allegations. Maybe theres something there and maybe there isnt, but no matter the outcome, the way the investigation was reported appeared, at least in part, politically motivated.

RedStates Bonchie addressed the problematic aspects of the Times recent Gaetz piece:

Really, it should bother everyone, no matter their feelings on Gaetz, that the FBI can just leak something like this, to attack someone in such a blatantly political way. When you are facing an anonymous allegation, you cant respond to it in any effective manner. Just last night, the reporter behind the Times story appeared on Rachel Maddows show and countered Gaetzs claim about the man he named, yet she did so offering no proof whatsoever. These games are rigged, and you arent supposed to be able to defend yourself.

This is the same tactic media outlets took during the FBIs investigation into whether former President Donald Trumps 2016 campaign colluded with Russia to steal the election. That investigation ultimately found no evidence of such collusion, but that didnt stop media outlets from publishing thousands of articles over a two-year period featuring quotes from sources familiar with the matter.

Again, Gaetz may or may not be guilty; thats not the issue. The issue here is the FBIs role in media leaks. The bureau, Bonchie notes, hasnt treated its investigation into President Joe Bidens son Hunter in the same manner, with virtually no leaks or strategically placed anonymous sources speaking to the media.

We learned in December 2020 that the FBI had been investigating Hunter Biden since 2018, but allegedly paused the investigation because of a bureau policy against overt action that might impact the election.

Read more at: DailyWire.com and FBICorruption.news.
New Delhi: As several states impose a night curfew, the Centre has directed them to limit social and public gatherings to curb the COVID-19 spread. In a high-level review meeting chaired by Harsh Vardhan with 11 states and UTs that are witnessing a surge in COVID-19 cases, the Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare on Tuesday (April 6, 2021) highlighted the current trajectory of new infections and deaths, country's Public Health Response in terms of testing and laboratories.

According to a press statement by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), it was also observed that since March 1 2021, the country has seen a spurt rise in COVID-19 new cases and deaths.

The meeting was held with the Health Ministers, Additional Chief Secretaries and Principal Secretaries (Health) of states and UTs of Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab and Rajasthan.

"Through more granular presentation, state-wise details of active cases, recovered cases, testing, deaths, Case Fatality Rate, Cases per million and death per million in each state was also discussed," the MoHFW stated.

Harsh Vardhan also stressed the cases with mutant virus and discussed a detailed summary of the number of SARS-CoV-2 with mutations in certain states of India.

The MoHFW said that with respect to the new mutant strain, it was observed:

1. So far, no linkage has been seen with the surge in COVID-19 cases due to foreign travellers.

2. Currently, the SARS-CoV-2 variants detected in the community have been prevalent for the last 6-8 months.

3. Various states that are witnessing surges in cases have revealed different mutation profile, post-sequencing.

In order to curb the resurgence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the states were advised on the strengthening of public and private healthcare resources. They were specifically asked to:

1. Strengthen Covid Appropriate Behaviour: masking, physical distancing and hand hygiene.

2. Limiting social/public gatherings.

3. Implement Test, Track, Treat efficiently.

4. Quarantining and testing the individuals suspected to be positive including close contacts of positive persons (at least 25 to 30 contacts per positive person).

5. Implement containment zone guidelines effectively.

6. Enhance vaccination pace  as per the protocol

The Union Health Minister also assured everyone that the Centre will continually replenish the vaccine stock and urged the states to vaccinate the prioritized groups in mission made.

"No State Government can complain that because of vaccine shortage, we have not been able to vaccinate," Vardhan said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is also scheduled to review the COVID-19 situation with all the Chief Ministers on Thursday (April 9).

This is to be noted that the states mention above together contribute to 54% of the total cases and 65% of the total deaths in India.

"The disproportionate higher deaths in Maharashtra and Punjab have further increased during the last 14 days, contributing to 64% of the total deaths in the country," the Centre highlighted.

It also informed that since February 2021, these states have witnessed a steep increase in cases, majority of which was reported in the younger population (among 15-44 years of age). On the other hand, majority of the deaths have been reported among the elderly population (> 60 years).

Maharashtra (25%) and Chhattisgarh (14%) have reported highest positivity rate. It was also observed that during the past 4 weeks testing has increased but RAT proportion is very high in Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh & Chhattisgarh  Caution urged in Maharashtra w.r.t. RAT %. Another worrisome aspect pointed out was that the testing capacity of the private sector is underutilized in many states and visiting teams gave feedback, which indicates the laxity in following CAB, CZ activities and increased social gatherings. From all this, it is visible that our 3 tools- following Covid appropriate behaviour, containing the infection and vaccination were not implemented efficiently which gave rise to the present situation of the country.
Kerrys first visual artist in residence Lisa Fingleton. Anyone interested in working with Lisa is asked to contact Kerry County Council arts office.

The county's first visual artist in residence hopes to work with people across the county to explore issues such as climate change and biodiversity in terms of creativity when she takes up her new post this month.

Lisa Fingleton has been appointed as Kerry County Council's first Visual Artist in Residence, a role funded by Creative Ireland with support from Kerry's Arts Office.

Lisa is no stranger to working with the arts office, having been Filmmaker in Residence from 2006 to 2008. She also worked with the art offices on the film 'The Swimming Flagstone' in Lixnaw in 2019 - a project to engage the people of Lixnaw in discussions about food, biodiversity and climate change, drawing on the historical legacy of the past. She has also showcased her work at the Kerry Visual Artists Showcase, facilitating drawing workshops at festivals and being awarded various arts bursaries over the years.

As part of her residency, Lisa would like to work with the people of Kerry to explore the cross sections between creativity and issues, helping them to connect with the world around them.

"In the past, artists painted often very idealised landscapes. What this global pandemic has shown us is our vulnerability, but also our capacity to adapt to unprecedented change, and now we are being called to re-explore our relationship with nature and how we represent her," said Lisa.

Lisa will commence her residency in mid-April, and any individuals, artists, groups and schools interested in mentoring and being part of these projects should contact the Arts Office on arts@kerrycoco.ie or at (066) 718 3541 for further information.
Clive Davis was forced to postpone his second Grammy party after being diagnosed with Bell's Palsy in February, but it should be worth the wait with Oprah Winfrey set to honor Tina Turner at the bash.

The 67-year-old media mogul pre-taped her interview with Davis on Monday for the virtual soiree, which will take place in May, according to the New York Post.

It is unclear if Turner herself, 81, who was featured in the HBO documentary Tina last month, will put in a virtual appearance at the party at this time.

Postponed: Clive Davis was forced to postpone his second Grammy party after being diagnosed with Bell's Palsy in February, but it should be worth the wait with Oprah Winfrey set to honor Tina Turner at the bash

Interview: The 67-year-old media mogul pre-taped her interview with Davis on Monday for the virtual soiree, which will take place in May, according to the New York Post

Tina: It is unclear if Turner herself, 81, who was featured in the HBO documentary Tina last month, will put in a virtual appearance at the party at this time

'He interviewed her for 90 minutes it will, of course, be edited,' a source said of the interview.

'Its linked to one of his favorite Tina Turner performances, and there was quite a bit of discussion around Tina,' the insider added.

'Clive was very excited that he got Oprah. Its a big deal. He was like, "Can you believe this?"' the source added.

Interview: 'He interviewed her for 90 minutes it will, of course, be edited,' a source said of the interview

Favorite: 'Its linked to one of his favorite Tina Turner performances, and there was quite a bit of discussion around Tina,' the insider added

Very excited: 'Clive was very excited that he got Oprah. Its a big deal. He was like, "Can you believe this?"' the source added

Davis announced in January that he was hosting two virtual Grammy parties this year, instead of one in-person event, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The first event took place at the end of January, featuring a curated selection of some of Davis' favorite musical performances, including Janis Joplin at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, Whitney Houstons 10-minute medley at the 1994 American Music Awards and Jay-Z and Alicia Keys performing Empire State of Mind from Times Square in 2016.

John Legend, Jamie Foxx, and Jennifer Hudson each performed during the bash, while Davis also interviewed Bruce Springsteen, Diddy, Alicia Keys, Barry Gibb, Chance the Rapper, David Foster, Gladys Knight, and Carole King.

Two parties: Davis announced in January that he was hosting two virtual Grammy parties this year, instead of one in-person event, due to the COVID-19 pandemic

The second party was originally slated for March 13, just a day before the Grammys ceremony at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

While a specific date hasn't been given for the rescheduled virtual party, sources said it would happen sometime in May.

'He is in good spirits and looks forward to doing the second half of his pre-Grammy gala in May,' a source close to Davis said.

Good spirits: 'He is in good spirits and looks forward to doing the second half of his pre-Grammy gala in May,' a source close to Davis said

'The names connected with part two are going to be bigger, if not better,' the source added.

Davis has famously hosted his annual Grammy bash at the Beverly Hilton Hotel ever the awards ceremony each year.

There is no indication if Oprah will be involved in other aspects of the party, with the first virtual bash clocking in at over five hours.

Bigger names: 'The names connected with part two are going to be bigger, if not better,' the source added

Bash master: Davis has famously hosted his annual Grammy bash at the Beverly Hilton Hotel ever the awards ceremony each year
Girls posing for photo at a school in Baiyun Township in Rongshui Miao Autonomous County, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. [Xinhua file photo/Huang Xiaobang]

BEIJING, April 6 (Xinhua)  China's ethnic minority areas have made notable progress in fighting poverty, said a white paper issued on Tuesday.

From 2016 to 2020, the number of the poor dropped by 15.6 million in the country's five autonomous regions  Inner Mongolia, Guangxi, Tibet, Ningxia and Xinjiang  and three provinces with a large multi-ethnic population  Guizhou, Yunnan and Qinghai, said the white paper issued by the State Council Information Office, titled "Poverty Alleviation: China's Experience and Contribution."

The paper stated that extreme poverty was eliminated in all 28 of the minority ethnic groups with a small population.

Some ethnic groups, still at the later stage of primitive society when the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, leapfrogged to socialism and then again made great strides towards moderate prosperity in all respects, said the paper.

(Source: Xinhua)
A Missouri man was sentenced on Tuesday to 12 years in federal prison after he twice tried to purchase a chemical weapon on the dark web and pay for it with Bitcoin as part of a plot to poison a woman who had ended a relationship with him, prosecutors said.

The man, Jason William Siesser, 46, of Columbia, Mo., pleaded guilty last year to one count of attempting to acquire a chemical weapon and one count of aggravated identity theft, according to federal court records. He appeared remotely during the sentencing hearing in U.S. District Court in Jefferson City, Mo.

Prosecutors said that when he placed the orders for dimethylmercury, Mr. Siesser used the name of a youth who had been placed in his custody through the group home company that he had been working for.

Exposure to a few drops of dimethylmercury, a highly toxic organomercury compound, can be fatal, according to the American Council on Science and Health. A permit is required to purchase the clear, sweet-smelling liquid, which has few uses outside of scientific research and is classified as a chemical weapon when used in a way that it was not intended. Its lethal effects have received widespread attention for their role in the death of a professor at Dartmouth College after a 1996 lab accident.
Burma Shan State Villagers Flee Fighting Between Rival Ethnic Armed Groups

Feature photo caption: A house damaged by the fighting between RCSS and TNLA.

Over 1,000 locals in Namtu, northern Shan State have been displaced by fighting between the Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS) and the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA).

The two Shan State-based ethnic armed groups have been fighting each other since March 29 over territorial disputes in Namtu.

There was also shelling besides exchanges of gunfire. All the villagers have fled in panic. My family is now staying at the house of a relative. Over 20 houses in our village were burned down by the artillery fire. We are in serious trouble, said a resident of Panlong village.

More than 1,000 residents from Panlong have fled to Mansan, Pan Thabyay, Yay O and Nar Koh Leng villages and are taking shelter in monasteries and the houses of their relatives, said Nan Kham Aye, an elected Lower House lawmaker of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy party.

Nan Kham Aye won the seat representing Namtu in last years November election, but was ousted along with the democratically-elected government led by the National League for Democracy when the military seized power in their Feb.1 coup.

I heard three of the houses hit by artillery were the homes of ethnic Shan villagers and the rest were the homes of Palaung (also known as Taang) people, said Nan Kham Aye.

Local people, civil society organizations and political parties are providing relief supplies to the displaced villagers from Panlong, she said.

An artillery shell landed in the compound of a power station in Mansan Village earlier this week. It did not directly hit the power station, but damaged the house of an employee who lives in the compound. The power station supplies electricity to Mandalay, Lashio and Namtu, said Nan Kham Aye.

Tensions remain high in Namtu. Around 100 villagers from Manli village in Chaungsa village tract have also fled following the increased military activity.

RCSS information office Major Kham San said: The fighting has been going on for a week in Mansan, near Mongmu village tract and Panlong village. And there have also been clashes in Hsipaw.

The RCSS major said the attacks were launched by the TNLA together with the Shan State Army-North, the armed wing of the Shan State Progress Party (SSPP). The Irrawaddy was unable to obtain a comment from the TNLA.

The TNLA information department on Monday said 15 houses in Panlong village were burned down by the RCSSs artillery fire.

The RCSS denied using artillery in the fighting. Major Kham San said the RCSS is only defending itself against the TNLAs attacks.

The two sides have been fighting each other since 2016 over territorial disputes in northern Shan State. The TNLA is based in northern Shan State and has not signed a truce with the government. The RCSS is based in southern Shan State, but is also active in southeastern and northern areas of Shan State.

The RCSS signed the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement with the then government of President U Thein Sein in October 2015. It then expanded its forces and reached Namhsan in the Palaung Self-Administered Zone one month later, resulting in clashes with the TNLA.

The SSPP, which is based in northern Shan State, has accused the RCSS of trespassing on its territory and has joined the TNLA in military operations against the RCSS in Namtu.

Leaders of the TNLA and RCSS have held talks to resolve the territorial disputes, but no agreement could be reached as the TNLA demanded the RCSS withdraw all of its troops while the RCSS insisted on sharing the territories with the TNLA.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaking on "Pariksha par Charcha" on Wednesday said that "Exams are not the last chance to prove yourself", but it is an opportunity to take your first steps towards your dreams.

"Parents, relatives and teachers make a big deal of small exams. Exams are not the last chance to prove yourself, but it is an opportunity to take your first steps towards your dreams," he said.

"We become conscious more than necessary and start over-thinking. I think this is not the end. Life is very long, this is just a small halt. We should not create pressure."

"Liking and disliking things are part of human nature. But we have to learn to distribute our abilities equally. Distribute your time to each subject equally" he said to the students.

"You knew of exams. They did not come suddenly. It means you are not scared of exams but of something else. But such atmosphere has been created around you that exams are everything. Sometimes schools, parents, relatives create an atmosphere that you have to undergo a big event, a huge crisis," he said.

Prime Minister Naredra Modi also responded to questions about how the food habits of children can be changed and how parents can help children to eat healthy food rather than junk food, and how to sharpen their memories.

The PM interacted with students, parents and teachers regarding the upcoming Board exams virtually and shared tips on how to deal with academic stress. The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has announced to conduct Class 10 and 12 Board Exams 2021 from May 4.

'Pariksha Pe Charcha' is an event where the Prime Minister responds to questions related to examination stress and related areas posed by students in his uniquely engaging style in a live programme.
Andrew Giuliani, a former Trump White House staffer and the son of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, told the Washington Examiner he plans to run for governor of New York in 2022.

Why it matters: Despite a flood of sexual misconduct allegations and a federal investigation into his handling of COVID-19 in nursing homes, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is still expected to run for reelection next year. A Cuomo-Giuliani matchup would set up a clash between two of the most prominent political families in New York.

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What they're saying: "Outside of anybody named Trump, I think I have the best chance to win and take the state back," Giuliani told the Washington Examiner.

"I think I'm the right candidate, and this is the right time to help change New York State, and we've got a playbook that works," he added.

"It just shows how terribly Cuomo has run the state into the ground and the truth is the assembly in State Senate is to blame as well."

Between the lines: Giuliani's bid for the governor's mansion has been encouraged by conservative donors and political figures, and would have the backing of former President Trump, a source tells the Examiner.

He hopes to "challenge Cuomos handling of crime, taxes, education, and the mutiny of New Yorkers from the state," the Examiner notes.

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Fort Crockett Apartments will always hold a special place in the hearts of many of its residents, particularly as all they have now is memories.

The 1960s complex suffered irreparable damage following February's historic four-day winter freeze, per Houston Chronicle's Nick Powell. The severe storm caused days-long blackouts, destroyed water lines and claimed the lives of nearly 200 Texans.

Its been so sad seeing so many people, especially elderly people here, to see them have to pack up and leave when we all thought this would be our last destination, last place to live, said 72-year-old Betty Loth, as reported by Powell. These have been awesome apartments. We all just loved to live here.

PICKING UP THE PIECES: Communities of color have a long road to recovery after Texas winter storm

Loth had longtime dreams of living near the water and enjoying picturesque views. For her, the Seawall Boulevard complex was a dream come true, and she's not the only person sad to see it go.

I miss the Gulf view from my front door, said 17-year resident Lucille Busenhart, 99, as reported by Powell. I loved my big rooms and I never wanted to move.

Houston billionaire Tilman Fertitta purchased the property in 2005. Instead of investing in "costly infrastructure upgrades," he has decided to terminate the leases of residents. Not that they had much of a choice.

After a thorough examination of our property damages, we have learned that the freeze has caused a major system-wide failure of the entire water piping system, said Jeff Cantwell, executive vice president of development for Landrys Inc, as reported by Powell. Worse yet, the water piping is over 50 years old, meaning there is no simple or quick fix given the size and scale of the failure. Our staff has worked tirelessly, meeting with multiple contractors and plumbers, to understand every solution possible, and all have concluded that there is no feasible solution to repair the problem and reopen the buildings.

END OF AN ERA: Texas director Richard Linklater fights to save failing River Oaks Theatre

Landry's gave notice to residents on Feb. 25 that they would need to make future housing arrangements, as reported by Powell. In addition to 38 days of rent-free housing and $1,000 in additional moving assistance, he also offered those in need a free guest room at a Fertitta-owned Holiday Inn, with the option to stay a bit longer at a discounted rate.

At this time, no plans have been made for the property.
Downing Street has insisted all adults will be offered a coronavirus vaccine by the end of July as planned despite official estimates of supplies being sharply downgraded.

The Cabinet Office has indicated that an average of 2.7 million doses a week will be given in England until the end of July, down from a previous estimate of 3.2 million.

The Prime Ministers official spokesman refused to be drawn on details around supplies and deliveries of vaccine doses but said we remain on track to meet the targets set for the programme.

(PA Graphics)

Supplies of vaccines in April have been constrained by the need to test a batch of 1.7 million doses and delays in a shipment of around five million from India.

But the Cabinet Office scenario, provided to experts on the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (Spi-M) suggests the squeeze on supplies may continue for months.

Papers produced by Spi-M on February 17 were based on an average of 3.2 million doses a week until the end of July and 3.9 million thereafter.

Spi-M said the central scenario provided by the Cabinet Office for its March 31 paper was considerably slower, with 2.7 million weekly doses until the end of July and two million from then on.

A slower scenario suggested that just 2.5 million weekly doses might be available.

The Spi-M summary notes that the two scenarios produced by the Cabinet Office may not reflect the situation most likely to occur.

(PA Graphics)

The Prime Ministers official spokesman said: The Health Secretary set out a couple of weeks ago now the fact that there will be a slight reduction in April but the key thing to remember is that doesnt mean that we are not on track to hit our pledges.

We remain on track to vaccinate all those in phase one by April 15, we remain on track to vaccinate or provide the first dose to all adults by the end of July.

The rollout will be boosted by the introduction of Moderna jabs later in April alongside the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines already being used.

Im not going to get into the specifics of how many we will get this month, the spokesman said, but we will have three vaccines that we are able to distribute and that will ensure that we can continue to make sure we are giving people their first doses as well as giving more and more people their second doses.

Some 26.7 million people in England have had a first dose, the equivalent of 60% of the adult population, leaving around 17.5 million adults needing their initial jab to meet the end-of-July target.
Gogunuru : , April 7 (IANS) The police in Andhra Pradesh's Chittoor district have cracked a temple attack case at Gonuguru village within 24 hours of the incident on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, a complaint was filed at the Kuppam Urban police station that some unknown miscreants have destroyed the idols at the Subramanya Swamy temple located on top of a hill.

Chittoor police immediately formed three special teams to investigate the case and followed the leads provided by the temple management, priest and a few locals.

"It was unearthed that Jyothi, a mentally unstable lady who frequently visited the temple, desecrated the idols on March 31 under the influence of toddy," said a police officer.

Senthil Kumar, the Superintendent of Police (SP) in Chittoor, said the temple is located at a very isolated spot and is rarely visited by the devotees unless it is a special occasion.

He noted that even the temple priest visits it only once a week.

"The temple management, priest and locals voiced their suspicion on a lady who goes by the name Jyothi. She is mentally unstable and frequently visited the temple at odd hours, according to the locals," said Kumar.

During questioning, Jyothi revealed to the police that she desecrated the idols a week ago after consuming toddy at a local store.

Jyothi told the police that she placed the idols in a ditch 20 metres away from the temple and went back to the village the same day and told people that she had killed Murugan. But the people did not take her seriously owing to her mental condition.

"Murugan is how Subramanya Swamy is referred to locally. The matter was reported after the priest visited the temple on Tuesday," said the IPS officer.

The southern state has already witnessed umpteen alleged temple attacks in the past few months, sparking wild theories and opportunist political mudslinging.

Irrespective of the government of the day or the political party in power, temple offences occurred in Andhra Pradesh almost every year in the past five years, as per the statistics shared earlier by Director General of Police (DGP) Gautam Sawang.

Under the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) government, 163 temple offences were reported in 2015, 139 in 2017, 123 in 2018 and 177 in 2019, when the government transitioned to the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP).

In 2020, a year which saw an uproar following the chariot burning at the Sri Lakshmi Narasimha Swamy temple in Antarvedi, there were 143 alleged temple offences.

Until January 14 this year, as many as 58,871 religious places have been mapped, while 43,824 CCTV cameras have been installed in 13,089 religious places. As many as 1,635 temple offenders have been rounded up from September 2020 onwards. A total of 15,394 village defence squads have been formed and the numbers are expected to go up.

Meanwhile, TDP supremo Chandrababu Naidu on Tuesday deplored the temple attack and called it an extremely sad development.

"Desecration of idols and temple attacks are occurring because of the state government's laxity. Not just one or two, hundreds of incidents are taking place and it is surprising that the government is ignoring the matter," he claimed.
For more complicated conflicts, arbitration or courts are deemed the next routes to a possible solution. Photo: Shutterstock

Almost a decade ago, the Law on the Protection of Consumers Rights took effect. The dissemination of the law and other relevant documents in the last 10 years has contributed to raising awareness of the whole society on this issue, and it stipulates consumers rights and modes of settling disputes between consumers and goods or service traders.

According to the law, the consumer has the right to claim damages when a goods or service fails to meet standards or technical regulations or to reach the quality, quantity, utilities, prices, or other matters as notified, posted up, advertised, or committed by the goods or service trader.

They also have a right to lodge a complaint or denunciation, or initiate or request a social organisation to initiate a lawsuit to protect his/her rights under this law and other relevant laws.

It adds that a dispute between a consumer and a goods or service trader shall be settled through negotiation, mediation, arbitration, or court.

According to published information from the Vietnam Competition and Consumer Authority (VCCA), the Ministry of Industry and Trade, about the activities of receiving, consulting and resolving consumer requests and complaints at the VCCA in 2020, about 90 per cent of consumer requests and complaints have been successfully resolved by negotiation between consumers and businesses. This is an effective method of dispute resolution, which saves time and costs for both consumers and businesses.

However, for complicated cases in which both parties cannot agree on a resolution, arbitration and court are the appropriate choices. Practically, arbitration is not popular due to limitations and shortcomings in procedures, time, as well as consumers perception of this agency; therefore, court is a more popular choice.

Burden of proof in civil cases on consumer right protection is regulated as follows. First, a consumer is obliged to provide evidence and prove in a civil case to protect his/her legitimate rights and interests under the law on civil procedures, except proving faults of a goods or service trader.

Next, a goods or service trader is obliged to prove that it does not commit faults causing damage. And lastly, a court shall decide on the party at fault in a civil case on consumer right protection.

Based on the above regulations, there are notable procedures for consumers and businesses in a consumer protection lawsuit.

First, when suing enterprises, consumers are obliged to provide sufficient evidence and proof to protect their legitimate rights and interests. Secondly, the enterprise is obliged to prove that it does not commit faults causing the damage.

If the court decides the enterprise commits fault, the enterprise is obliged to compensate the consumer according to the courts judgment. In contrast, if it decides the enterprise does not commit fault, the parties fulfil the obligations under the judgement.

In practice, there is popular concern in the business community about the negative effect on the companys reputation, brand, and bottom line due to the long lawsuit process while they are not guilty under court judgement. In this case, the business is obliged to prove the damage (if any) caused to its reputation, brand, and bottom line and then the court will make a decision.

It can be seen that court is the last choice when consumers and businesses have gone through a process of negotiation or mediation but cannot agree on a settlement. However, in reality, this method has many limitations and can adversely affect consumers and businesses.

Therefore, when a dispute arises, both parties can refer to some experiences for effective resolution. They can carefully study the Law on the Protection of Consumers Rights and its guiding documents, especially the contents of the rights of a consumer, obligations of a consumer, responsibilities of goods and services traders towards consumers, prohibited acts, modes of settling disputes between consumers and goods or service traders, and burden of proof in civil cases on consumer right protection.

They can also conduct negotiations as well as consult with state management agencies or social organisations on the protection of consumers rights to ensure the negotiation process has a legal basis and is highly effective. Consumers and businesses may contact the VCCA, local departments of Industry and Trade, and consumer protection associations at all levels for legal consultation.

Lastly, if a consumer sues a business, the parties refer to Article 42 of the Law on the Protection of Consumers Rights on burden of proof in civil cases on consumer right protection.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 7) The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday said it would be irresponsible to allow the distribution of Ivermectin to the public, reiterating there is insufficient scientific evidence for the anti-parasitic drugs use as a possible COVID-19 treatment.

Speaking to CNN Philippines, FDA Director General Eric Domingo said that testimonials and anecdotes from those who have taken the drug are not counted as strong basis for the recommendation of its use.

Testimonials or anecdotal findings are not considered very strong scientific evidence, Domingo said in an interview with The Source. You only prove the use of a drug when you have a well-designed clinical trial.

It would be irresponsible to give it to people right now without knowing exactly how to use it and what the effect will be, added Domingo, who also appealed to concerned parties to wait for the results of clinical trials in other countries.

Anakalusugan party-list Rep. Mike Defensor earlier said he would distribute Ivermectin for free to some sick and elderly residents in Quezon City despite the drug not being registered for human use in the Philippines.

Only veterinary products of Ivermectin have been approved by the FDA to date.

RELATED: Advocates asked to wait for FDA nod before promoting Ivermectin vs COVID-19

Domingo stressed that like other medicines, using Ivermectin may result in possible side effects including neurological or gastrointestinal problems.

He reiterated that marketing the product for commercial use is illegal.

Baka yan ay veterinary product na pinalitan yung packaging, or smuggled," Domingo warned. "Kasi wala naman sa ating commercially available. 'Yung distribution, halimbawa gagawa ka ng marami, bawal yun kasi unregistered drug yun.

[Translation: They could be veterinary product whose packaging was changed, or smuggled. Because we dont have commercially available products. The distribution, for example, if you will produce in large quantity, thats illegal because it is an unregistered drug.]

Ivermectin use should be limited to clinical trials

Aside from the FDA, the World Health Organization has also advised against the use of Ivermectin for COVID-19 prevention and treatment due to insufficient studies.

In an online briefing, Dr. Socorro Escalante said the use of the drug should be limited to clinical trial settings.

The effects of Ivermectin on end points such as mortality, prevention of mechanical ventilation, hospital admission, duration of hospital admission, and viral clearance are all uncertain, Escalante said.

The Department of Health, meanwhile, warned that the dispensing of Ivermectin will violate the Republic Act No. 9711 or the FDA Act of 2009.

Specific to that law, sinabi mismo na yung mga hindi rehistradong gamot hindi natin pwedeng ipagamit sa ating kababayan, DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said in a separate forum.

[Translation: Specific to that law, it says that unregistered medicine cannot be used by our countrymen.]

Merck, the company behind the drug, said over the weekend that pre-clinical trials indicate "no scientific basis for its potential therapeutic effect against COVID-19, adding there is a concerning lack of safety data in the majority of studies.
It was a terrifying incident for a group of Oklahoma school children. A Cleveland Public Schools school bus windows were allegedly shot out as the bus was driving in Oklahoma City.

Video Transcript

JEAN PARKER: Not sure I want my kids going to Oklahoma City on a bus right now.

JACKLYN CHAPPELL: A community in disbelief after the Cleveland school district says this happened to one of their buses in Oklahoma City. Inside, 11 students and two sponsors headed back to Cleveland after a trip to the city.

GARY KNIGHT: It appears that a small, white Honda pulled up alongside the bus and shot either a BB gun or a pellet gun through five or six of the windows on the school bus, breaking them.

JACKLYN CHAPPELL: The bus allegedly shot at while driving northbound on I-35 just past Britain Road. The bus driver immediately pulling over at the Haefner Exit.

GARY KNIGHT: He heard some glass breaking on the bus. He checked to make sure everyone was OK and that was certainly the case, thankfully nobody was hurt.

JACKLYN CHAPPELL: But Oklahoma City Police saying they don't think a gun did the damage.

GARY KNIGHT: There was no indication that the bullet went through the bus or did further damage. It broke the window and that was pretty much it. They were not really able to find any projectiles inside the bus and there's no sign that anything went completely through the metal on the bus. So it's believed it was either a pellet gun or a BB gun.

JACKLYN CHAPPELL: Back in Cleveland, a town just trying to understand why.

JEAN PARKER: I just hope they catch whoever did it. I mean, it's terrible that they would do that to children.

JACKLYN CHAPPELL: Like Jean Parker, who has lived across from the school for 16 years now. She says things like this don't happen in Cleveland. Shocked to hear that kids had to witness it.

JEAN PARKER: Just wish them well. I can't believe that someone would do that. It's amazing that no one was hurt.

JACKLYN CHAPPELL: Cleveland schools sending News 4 a statement, saying in part, "We are very thankful that no one was injured in such a senseless act. Our teacher and bus driver did a great job comforting students, calling parents, and handling a situation that they should never be faced with." In Cleveland, Jacklyn Chappell, Oklahoma's News 4.
On Tuesday, the CDC awarded Alabama more than $44 million to expand coronavirus vaccine programs. It's part of $3 billion set aside to improve vaccine distribution, access and equity.

A significant portion must go to county health departments and community-based organizations, and 75%, which comes to roughly $33 million, has to go to specific programs and initiatives designed to expand vaccine access and acceptance among minorities.

It's a big victory for groups that have been working to expand vaccine accessibility in these communities for months.

"This isn't about 'I'm afraid, I'm hesitant, I don't want to take a vaccine.' Our community's ready to take a vaccine, and we are ready to do our part," Tiffany Whitlow, the co-founder of Acclinate Genetics, said.

Aside from co-founding the Huntsville-based group, Acclinate Genetics, Whitlow also helped launch the #nowincluded initiative, which gives the Black community access to information about the health care industry. She said hearing that so much of the state's funding from the CDC will be used to give minority communities access to the vaccine was a sigh of relief.

"Obviously, all of this work takes resources, so to know that there are intentional resources being allocated to support organizations like ours, UAB and so many other partners at a state level, it honestly just provides just an extra sense of hope," she said.

As of March, only about 14% of African Americans in Alabama had received their first dose of the vaccine, yet, they make up almost 27% of the overall population in the state.

Statistics like these are why members of Whitlow's organization weren't the only ones happy to hear about the state's initiative. State NAACP president Benard Simelton said educating African American communities about the vaccine itself and where to get the vaccine has been a top priority, especially since many still have questions on how they can receive one.

"The biggest thing that I hear is 'where do I go? How do I sign up for the vaccine?'" Simelton said.

Simelton said giving the vulnerable communities access and education when it comes to the vaccine can be life-saving.

"We want everyone to be able to live a long, healthy life and not have a life cut short because of not having the vaccine," he said.

When compared to the rest of the country, Alabama is actually 9th when it comes to vaccinating the most vulnerable populations, and having more funding dedicated to this is expected to help.
Victoria's much-maligned hotel quarantine program has resumed, with international flights to touch down in the state for the first time in almost two months.

Some 106 returned travellers will arrive at Melbourne airport from 4.30am on Thursday aboard flights from Colombo, Doha, Dubai and Singapore.

They will be taken to the Holiday Inn at Melbourne Airport and the Intercontinental on Collins Street, where they will stay for a fortnight.

The state hasn't accepted returned travellers since February 13, when workers contracted the UK strain of COVID-19 from guests at the Holiday Inn.

The outbreak, which grew to 24 cases, triggered a statewide five-day lockdown.

COVID-19 Quarantine Victoria Commissioner Emma Cassar said Victorians should be confident in the third iteration of the scheme (pictured, travellers from Melbourne)

The program was overhauled in December after a judicial inquiry, with further reviews conducted by Deputy Chief Health Officer Allen Cheng and SaferCare Victoria following the second leak.

COVID-19 Quarantine Victoria Commissioner Emma Cassar said Victorians should be confident in the third iteration of the scheme.

"We have done everything we can to make this as safe as we can and we will continue to ensure the program keeps ahead of this virus," she said on Wednesday.

Under the changes, returned travellers will be tested four times, unable to leave their rooms for fresh air without a medical reason, have their meal times staggered and large family groups spaced out to mitigate aerosol transmission.

Arrivals are capped at 800 in the first week, though it is expected to increase in the second to 1,000 (pictured, arrivals from Melbourne)

Hotel quarantine staff have now all received at least one Pfizer dose, while the majority have also undergone N95 mask fit testing.

Arrivals are capped at 800 in the first week, though it is expected to increase in the second to 1,000.

The Novotel Ibis Melbourne Central, Pan Pacific, Holiday Inn on Flinders and Element Melbourne Richmond are also ready for use after ventilation works.

Another six hotels are expected to join the program, including the Four Points by Sheraton.

Victoria recorded no new local virus cases for the 40th day in a row on Wednesday, following 11,746 tests.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 07:18:30|Editor: huaxia

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VIENNA, April 6 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese envoy on Tuesday urged the United States to lift all illegal sanctions against Iran and its "long-arm jurisdiction" against third-party entities and individuals, including those from China, as the Iran nuclear deal talks resumed in Vienna.

Senior diplomats from China, France, Germany, Russia, Britain and Iran met behind closed doors in the Grand Hotel Wien. On top of the agenda are lifting sanctions on Iran and nuclear implementation measures.

The meeting of the Joint Commission of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known as the Iran nuclear deal, has drawn public attention as representatives from the United States are in Vienna to save the deal.

The U.S. should lift all illegal sanctions against Tehran, and the Iranian side should resume full compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal on that basis, said Wang Qun, Chinese envoy to the United Nations and other international organizations in Vienna, after the meeting.

Wang said that the U.S. withdrawal from the deal and its maximum pressure against Iran is the root cause of the current situation. Therefore, the early return of the U.S. to the accord is the key to cracking the problem.

"The justified request of the injured party, rather than the offending party, should be confirmed and satisfied first. This is a basic right-or-wrong question. The U.S. should lift all sanctions against Tehran and on this basis, Iran can resume full compliance to the nuclear deal," Wang said in a statement.

He stressed that China firmly opposes any illegal unilateral sanctions imposed by the U.S. and will safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.

Wang added that China supports the Joint Commission's efforts in setting up two expert-level groups, one on sanctions-lifting and nuclear issues, and the other on "close contact" with the U.S. He said China hopes the two groups can make progress as soon as possible.

China continues to unswervingly uphold the JCPOA, and hopes that all parties can enhance their sense of urgency, seize the current opportunities, and push the JCPOA back on track through fair and reasonable negotiations, Wang noted.

He pledged that China will work with all parties to continue advancing the political settlement of the Iran nuclear issue, and strive to restore the full implementation of the 2015 accord as early as possible.

The JCPOA talks were chaired by Enrique Mora, deputy Secretary-General and Political Director of the European External Action Service (EEAS), on behalf of High Representative of the European Union (EU) for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell. Media reports said the U.S. delegation led by Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley was based in a nearby hotel.

Mora said on Twitter following the meeting that they had a "constructive Joint Commission meeting."

"There's unity and ambition for a joint diplomatic process with two expert groups on nuclear implementation and sanctions lifting. As Coordinator I will intensify separate contacts here in Vienna with all relevant parties, including the U.S.," he added.

According to the official Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Abbas Araqchi told the commission meeting that lifting U.S. sanctions is the first and most necessary step to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.

The U.S. and Iranian negotiators were not supposed to meet face-to-face but a shuttle diplomacy approach was adopted with the intensified help of the coordinators.

Prior to Tuesday's meeting, Araqchi said he would "not hold any direct or indirect talks" with U.S. representatives but would only negotiate with the Joint Commission of JCPOA.

If the P4+1 countries, including China, Britain, France and Russia, plus Germany, succeed in convincing Washington to lift all the sanctions "by any means they know," Iran will comply, said Araqchi, who is also Iran's deputy foreign minister.

Washington said on Monday that its goal of the talks was to set the stage for a mutual return to compliance with the 2015 accord but did not anticipate an immediate breakthrough.

Walter Posch, an Austrian expert on Iran, told Austria Press Agency that the fact that talks were held in Vienna to revive the crippling nuclear agreement, albeit indirectly, was already a success.

The JCPOA was reached in 2015 between Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council -- the United States, Britain, Russia, France, China, plus Germany) and the EU. Tehran agreed to roll back parts of its nuclear weapons program in exchange for decreased economic sanctions.

Washington under former President Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018 and tightened sanctions on Iran.

The United States and Iran are in a standoff over reviving the nuclear deal. The Joe Biden administration said that if Iran returns to full compliance with the JCPOA, the United States would do the same. But Iran insisted its compliance would only take place once U.S. sanctions were removed. Enditem
Tailify, the award-winning full service influencer marketing company has secured Series A funding from Guinness Asset Management, supported by existing investors.

LONDON, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Tailify builds influencer growth programmes for some of the world's most ambitious brands. Mainly, Tailify helps brands select influencers, craft effective strategies and measure the result of that activity. With the help of their AI and behavioural science team, Tailify aims to do better influencer selection and messaging than any human being or agency in the world.

Tailify was one of the early pioneers in influencer marketing when launched in Stockholm 2014. Since moving to London in 2016, they have designed and managed over 400 influencer growth programmes for brands like Uber, LG, IKEA and agencies like Group M and PHD.

Tailify's approach to influencer marketing is different. Most brands and agencies use the same data; followers, likes, audience demographic to guide their influencer selection and creative direction. They invest in influencers as they invest in traditional mediums, such as banners, TV and magazines. But influencer marketing at the core is about human relationships, and how this relationship affects people's behaviour. This is why Tailify studies the power of influence through the lens of psychology and behavioural science.

"Over the past few years we've been building out a world class team across marketing, psychology research, behavioural science, and data science to pioneer the science of influence." - Didrik Svendsen, CEO & Co-Founder

Tailify's focus on the science behind influence has allowed them to build programmes that deliver better results for their clients. In some cases, it only takes them a week to improve influencer marketing ROI by 3X. As part of this optimisation process, they use their unique AI influencer selection tool. This allows their partners to think like behavioural scientists in the influencer selection process and in crafting messages that drive results.

The Series A investment follows three years of fast growth, and will help accelerate product development, expand the team and respond to demand for international expansion. As part of the investment, Guinness Fund Manager Ashley Abrahams will join the board of directors alongside the existing team.

Didrik Svendsen, CEO of Tailify, said: "Influence has always been what drives the world's decisions. With social platforms, the importance of influence has become significantly greater. Whoever can map and wield influence in the modern world will be able to unlock incredible value. That is exactly what Tailify is doing, and this investment will allow us to pioneer this industry even further."

Ashley Abrahams, Fund Manager at Guinness Asset Management, said: "Guinness is extremely pleased to be supporting Tailify during this exciting time of growth, expansion, and product development. Tailify has a unique positioning in this fast growing industry. We very much look forward to working with the fantastic team as they embark on the next stage of their growth."

Notes to Editors

About Tailify

Tailify is a full-service influencer marketing agency. The company launched in Stockholm 2014. Since arriving in the UK in 2016, they have designed and managed over 400 influencer growth programmes for brands like Uber, LG, IKEA and agencies like Group M and PHD.

About Guinness Asset Management

Guinness Asset Management is a London-based specialist fund management company, established in 2003. Guinness manages over 3 billion for institutional and retail investors, investing in public and private companies. Guinness is a leading EIS Investor who since 2010 has raised and invested over 200 million into more than 100 companies across the Guinness EIS and Guinness AIM EIS portfolios. Please see www.guinnessfunds.com for more details.

Esme Rice, 07982 199516, esme.rice@tailify.com
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 15:14:40|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The China Development Bank, one of the country's policy banks, has pledged to beef up its financial support for scientific and technological innovation during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025).

A total of 300 billion yuan (about 45.88 billion U.S. dollars) under a special loan program for innovation and research will be arranged for the next five years, the bank said, adding that loans worth 50 billion yuan will be offered this year.

The special loan program will be mainly used for supporting fundamental research and original innovation to facilitate the implementation of strategic projects on science and technology, the bank noted. Enditem
What lengths will the U.S. go through to ensure China doesn't abuse its military power globally?

Three and a half years ago, U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Soldier Center released a 3-minute long video depicting "The Soldier of the Future," a look into the ideal U.S. uniformed soldier supported by advanced technology and guided by intelligence.

In the 1:42 mark in the video, which can be viewed below, it presents what it calls the "Human Dimension" that makes up a soldier, outlining five things: Distributed/Adaptive Training and Immersive Simulation, Neural Engineering, Optimized Human Performance, Nutritional Intervention, and Physiological Status Monitoring.

But what exactly is "neural engineering" and does it fall into the ethical limits of the Constitution in relation to the development of "super soldiers"?

Neural engineering or neuroengineering is defined by Britannica as the biomedicine discipline that uses engineering technologies and mathematical and computational methods combined with techniques in neuroscience and biology to "[enhance the] understanding of the functions of the human nervous system and the improvement of human performance, especially after injury or disease."

So how is this field of study being implemented in the military and does it break ethical limits? Is the U.S. a step closer to creating "super soldiers" to counter its enemies such as China's?

If the U.S. Army CCDC Soldier Center video on "The Soldier of the Future" is any indication, the answer might probably be yes.

CBN News reported that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA is already working on an "advanced implant" that will enable putting the human brain "online" and using eye and ear implants among other circuitry to create, essentially, an "optimal fighting machine."

What some may believe are the "super soldiers" of the future could be enhanced humans or cyborgs, which are part human and part machine.

Back in December 2020, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, in which he warned against China as a rising power. He declared that the People's Republic of China is the "greatest threat" to the U.S. and is the "greatest threat to democracy and freedom worldwide" since the second World War.

He argued that based on intelligence, "Beijing intends to dominate the U.S. and the rest of the planet economically, militarily and technologically" through its "rob, replicate and replace" strategy.

This strategy involves stealing U.S. intellectual property, replicating technology, and then giving American businesses a run for their money.

As China poses as the primary national security threat to the U.S., it's interesting to know that the American military is gearing up to face one of its biggest enemy by possibly developing "super soldiers" of its own.

In December 2020, NBC News reported that according to U.S. intelligence, China has already conducted "human testing" on some of its People's Liberation Army members in the hopes of creating "super soldiers" with "biologically enhanced capabilities."

A paper written by scholars Elsa Kania, a Chinese defense technology expert at the Center for a New American Security and former Navy officer and China matters consultant Wilson VornDick read, "Chinese military scientists and strategists have consistently emphasized that biotechnology could become a 'new strategic commanding heights of the future Revolution in Military Affairs."

It is important to ponder now how the U.S. will stay within ethical limits to address the growing concern over China's military power. George Lucas, U.S. Naval Academy Professor Emeritus, told CBN that soldiers should be given the freedom to refuse "exotic technologies" such as computer parts being placed into human bodies.

Nevertheless, if the U.S. remains committed to staying within ethical limits, one thing is for sure as per CBN - "it's likely our adversaries, like China, will not."
[April 07, 2021] Nation's first quantum startup accelerator, Duality, launches at the University of Chicago's Polsky Center and the Chicago Quantum Exchange

CHICAGO, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The University of Chicago's Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the Chicago Quantum Exchange today announced the launch of Duality, the first accelerator program in the nation that is exclusively dedicated to startup companies focused on quantum science and technologya rapidly emerging area that is poised to drive transformative advances across multiple industries. Duality's purpose is to help quantum startups bridge the gap between the laboratory and the marketplace that is a critical barrier to success for emerging technologies. Led by the Polsky Center and the Chicago Quantum Exchange, Duality is also reinforced by founding partners, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Argonne National Laboratory and P33. The launch of the quantum accelerator comes at a time when countries around the world are racing to unlock the potential of quantum technology. The Chicago area has emerged as a leading global quantum center, notably last year when the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation announced that three of the eight federally funded quantum information science research centers and institutes would be based in the region. Quantum science and technology has the potential to transform industries in the same way that the internet has reshaped the world in recent decades, and leaders hope that the Chicago area is positioned to benefit as the center of the quantum world in the same way that Silicon Valley transformed as it became the center of the tech revolution.



With a minimum $20 million investment over the next 10 years from a broad ecosystem of corporate and academic partners, Duality will help up to 10 quantum startups per year grow their businesses in the Chicago area. The program will be based within the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, a global leader in management education. Chicago Booth is widely known for its thought leadership  with nine Nobel laureates  and its impact on the global business community. The name Duality refers to a core principle of quantum mechanics, in which a single entity may act as both a particle and a wave. The name also evokes the accelerator's unique role of bringing together the dual expertise from both leading quantum scientists and business partners to grow and scale quantum startups. Duality will provide entrepreneurs with support from leading quantum researchers, as well as business and entrepreneurial expertise from Chicago Booth, Chicago Quantum Exchange's corporate partners, the Polsky Center's broad network, and the networks, facilities, and programming from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Argonne National Laboratory, and P33. Students and researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will have the opportunity to collaborate with and learn from experts in this expanding quantum technology development ecosystem.

Duality is taking applications through its website for the first cohort. Companies are invited to apply and will be considered on a rolling basis until May 14, 2021. Actively promoting diversity, equity and inclusion, the program is seeking a range of diverse applicants, in terms of race, gender and ethnicity. "The Chicago area has a vital role in generating new science and technology, and Duality will provide critical support to bring quantum science from breakthroughs in the laboratory to practical applications that can foster new businesses, create jobs and improve aspects of the quality of life," said Robert J. Zimmer, president of the University of Chicago. "This program leverages the unique strengths of the University of Chicago and our partners to convene industry, researchers and venture capitalists to realize the potential of quantum science while simultaneously providing mutual benefit to the research and academic mission of the University of Chicago." The state of Illinois has made a strong commitment to support quantum research overall, and Duality will further enhance the region's ecosystem for technology development and commercialization. "We are building the future of technology right here in Chicago," said Chicago Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot. "This program taps the extraordinary talent in the city across fields from science and innovation to entrepreneurship, manufacturing and development, and is a testament to the strengths of this incredible city and its residents." The 12-month accelerator program will focus on supporting and advancing companies that are building quantum technologies, products and applications, and related enabling technologies. Starting virtually in July and continuing in person when COVID-19 restrictions lift, each cohort of companies will have the opportunity to access state-of-the-art facilities, office and lab space, and each startup will receive $50,000 in unrestricted funds. "The region is uniquely positioned to lead in quantum engineering and other areas of deep tech, meaning the types of early-stage technologies that rely on fundamental scientific breakthroughs to move innovations into use in the world," said Juan de Pablo, vice president for national laboratories, science strategy, innovation and global initiatives at the University of Chicago. "The combined efforts of the partners in the Duality accelerator, along with our expanding global reach, will further elevate the scientific footprint of Illinois and the larger region." View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nations-first-quantum-startup-accelerator-duality-launches-at-the-university-of-chicagos-polsky-center-and-the-chicago-quantum-exchange-301264367.html SOURCE University of Chicago

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India reported a total of 1,15,736 fresh coronavirus cases on April 6. It is the highest ever single-day spike in India since the first case of the deadly virus was reported on January 30, 2020. Additionally, daily cases breached the 1-lakh mark for the third time in three days. India on Sunday registered 1.03 lakh cases and on Tuesday 1.07 lakh cases, respectively in a span of 24 hours. Overall, India has registered a total of 1,28,01,785 cases of coronavirus until April 7.

Active cases have increased to 8,43,473, which comprise 6.58 per cent of the total infections. Recovery rate has declined to 92.11 per cent with 1,17,92,135 people getting cured of the COVID-19 infection. COVID-19 related fatalities have also increased to 1,66,177 or 1.29 per cent of the total cases.

States like Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Punjab, Chandigarh, Gujarat, and Rajasthan continue to witness a surge in coronavirus infection. For instance, Maharashtra's a ctive case count stands at 4,73,693, Chhattisgarh 52,445 cases, Delhi 17,332 cases, Gujarat 17,348 cases and Rajasthan 16,140 cases.

According to data by the union health ministry, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, and Rajasthan contributed 54 per cent of the total cases and 65 per cent of the total deaths in the country.

However, India's COVID-19 cases per million is still among the lowest. India has 9,192 cases per million while countries like the US has 91,757, France 71,718, and the UK 64,216, the union health ministry claimed.

It added, more than 43 lakh COVID-19 vaccine doses were administered in a span of 24 hours on April 5, the highest single-day coverage till now, taking the total doses given in the country so far to 8,31,10,926.

But the Centre has cautioned that the next four weeks are "very, very critical" and sought people's participation to control the second wave of the pandemic. Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said it seems that people have given 'Tilanjali' (abandon) to measures like wearing masks to combat the disease.

Dr Vardhan highlighted that one of the major reasons for the surge in cases was complacency among people towards following COVID appropriate behaviour. The minister urged people to wear masks and take the second wave seriously.

Meanwhile, to contain the spread of the virus, the Delhi government has imposed a night curfew between 10 pm and 5 am till April 30. Additionally. Odisha, Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Punjab have also imposed night curfews to check the surge in Covid-19 cases.

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Gift to UW Supports 4-H and Teton County Extension

A $1.8 million gift from Ann Ramsay in honor of her late mother, Elizabeth McCabe, will support 4-H and University of Wyoming Extension employees located in Teton County. McCabe, a former co-owner of The Jackson Hole Guide, died in 2012 at age 101. (Brad Boner Photo)

The University of Wyoming has received a $1.8 million gift from Ann Ramsay in honor of her late mother, Elizabeth McCabe, that will support 4-H and UW Extension employees located in Teton County. The Teton County 4-H Building in Jackson will be named in McCabes honor.

My mother was totally devoted to the 4-H mission, and all the children and families who participated in it, Ramsay says.

Support for UW Extension employees located in Teton County is critical for the mission of the program. Such salaries are state-based and are not adjusted for those working in Teton County, where the cost of living is significantly higher than the rest of the state.

For decades, McCabe was a big supporter of UW Extension programs in Teton County. She co-owned The Jackson Hole Guide newspaper, which later became The Jackson Hole News & Guide. She dedicated her life to serving others.

Elizabeth was a community businesswoman who encouraged youth to give their best, UW Extension Community Development Educator Mary Martin says. She spent days attending 4-H activities to capture photographically those who competed. Her pictures captured moments that would have been lost to our youth.

McCabe felt a deep affinity for the Jackson Hole area -- a sentiment that developed during her news career that spanned more than five decades. McCabe was an avid photographer, and her weekly full-page photo This is Jackson Hole garnered her Wyoming Press Association awards. She photographed people, wildlife and the scenic Teton Valley.

For decades, McCabe contributed an annual segment devoted to local 4-H participation. At the age of 100, McCabe photographed her last Teton County Fair.

She became a treasured friend to the community, and her pictures are now carefully included in hundreds of 4-H record books, Martin says. I have a vivid remembrance of Elizabeth, cameras around her neck, asking our 4-H members to explain what they learned with their projects. Her smiling presence, gentle encouragement and genuineness were a gift.

Ramsay inherited her love of community from McCabe, who is remembered for her ability to bring people together. McCabe died in 2012 at age 101.

In December 2020, Ramsay gifted a property located in Teton County to UW for the support of 4-H and UW Extension activities. The property was sold last month with the proceeds going toward establishing the endowment in McCabes honor.

She loved taking pictures and congratulating the winners and participants, Ramsay says. I miss her every single day. She was the most wonderful mother and friend.
After new deliveries of the Navy's littoral combat ships were halted in January over a serious design flaw, testing will begin this month to fix the problem, the Navy's top admiral said.

Tests to fix problems with the Freedom-class littoral combat ships' combining gear will take place ashore, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday told reporters on Monday. The design flaw, first reported by Defense News, is a complex problem that affects four engines' ability to power a water jet that drives the ship up to 40 knots, he said.

"That is the key engineering challenge for us right now, is the combining gear," Gilday said during a virtual Defense Writers Group event. "It seems to be the element that fails the most. It's not the only one, but it's a key one right now that limits our ability to generate forces in a predictable manner for combatant commanders."

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The Navy has tasked the vendor with fixing the problem, Gilday said. The service won't accept any new littoral combat ships until that's done.

"This month, we're going to be doing some shore-based testing, and then we'll be installing, hopefully, a redesigned combining gear in the engineering plant of the new ships that are being built up in Wisconsin," he said. "... We need LCS to be reliable and sustainable at sea."

Lockheed Martin designed the ship, which is built by Fincantieri Marinette Marine in Wisconsin. The combining gear was designed by the German firm RENK AG, according to Defense News. The Navy, Lockheed and RENK AG have worked together on a fix, the outlet reported, but it could take months to install on each ship.

The Navy has 35 littoral combat ships delivered or on contract.

"I remain focused on making the absolute very best that we can out of that program," Gilday said. "We've got some dedicated sailors who love those ships; they love going to sea on them. I want to fulfill their dream and get them out to sea as much as we can so that they can see the world and provide for the national defense."

Mechanical problems on the LCS, which first entered service in 2008, have long been an issue, prompting congressional hearings and threats from lawmakers to end funding for the program. Gilday announced in January plans to divest of the service's first four experimental LCSs and other ships that aren't fit for a fight against sophisticated adversaries.

Still, Gilday said he's committed to providing the country with a reliable and lethal ship. Despite the problems, he still contends its missile, anti-submarine or counter-mine capabilities could prove useful in combat.

But he also sees the LCS serving in other important roles, he said, such as working alongside allies or conducting freedom-of-navigation operations around the globe.

"There's a lot that we can do, and we shouldn't be limited by our imagination," Gilday said.

-- Gina Harkins can be reached at gina.harkins@military.com. Follow her on Twitter @ginaaharkins.

Related: Navy's 1st 4 Littoral Combat Ships Head to Retirement as Shipbuilding Budget Drops
President Joe Biden has announced that he's bumping up his deadline by two weeks for states to make all adults in the US eligible for coronavirus vaccines. But even as he expressed optimism about the pace of vaccinations, he warned Americans that the nation is not yet out of the woods when it comes to the pandemic.

"Let me be deadly earnest with you: We aren't at the finish line. We still have a lot of work to do. We're still in a life and death race against this virus," Biden said in remarks at the White House.

The president warned that "new variants of the virus are spreading and they're moving quickly. Cases are going back up, hospitalizations are no longer declining. He added that "the pandemic remains dangerous," and encouraged Americans to continue to wash their hands, socially distance and wear masks.

Biden added that while his administration is on schedule to meet his new goal of distributing 200 million doses of the vaccine during his first 100 days, it will still take time for enough Americans to get vaccinated to slow the spread of the virus. But he expressed hope that his Tuesday announcement, that every adult will be eligible by April 19 to sign up and get in a virtual line to be vaccinated, will help expand access and distribution of the vaccine. Some states already had begun moving up their deadlines from the original May 1 goal.

"No more confusing rules. No more confusing restrictions," Biden said. Biden made the announcement after visiting a COVID-19 vaccination site at Immanuel Chapel at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria. During his visit, he thanked everyone for administering the shots and for showing up to receive them.

"That's the way to beat this," Biden said. "Get the vaccination when you can." The president also said no one should fear mutations of the coronavirus that are showing up in the US after being discovered in other countries. He acknowledged that the new strains are more virulent and more dangerous, but said "the vaccines work on all of them."

Biden also announced that 150 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been shot into arms since his inauguration on January 20. That puts the president well on track to meet his new goal of 200 million shots administered by his 100th day in office on April 30.

Biden's original goal had been 100 million shots by the end of his first 100 days, but that number was reached in March.

Still, he acknowledged Tuesday that his administration fell short of its goal to deliver at least one shot to every teacher, school staff member and childcare worker during the month of March, to try to accelerate school reopenings.

Biden announced the target early last month and directed federal resources toward achieving it, but said Tuesday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that about 80 per cent of teachers, school staff and childcare workers had received a shot.

Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, also spent the day Tuesday focused on promoting the COVID-19 vaccine, each touring a vaccination center, Harris in Chicago and Emhoff in Yakima, Washington. Harris praised the workers and those receiving their vaccine at a site set up at a local union hall, and spoke of spring as "a moment where we feel a sense of renewal".

"We can see a light at the end of the tunnel," she said. Some states are making plans to ease their health restrictions, even as the country is facing a potential new surge in virus cases. On Tuesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, warned that the country is in a "critical time" because "we could just as easily swing up into a surge."

"That would be a setback for public health, but that would be a psychological setback, too," he said during an interview with the National Press Club. He noted that Americans are experiencing "COVID-19 fatigue" after more than a year of lockdowns and restrictions to public life aimed at slowing the spread of the virus.

Biden and many of his advisers have warned against reopening the economy too quickly and easing mask mandates, at the risk of driving a fresh surge in virus cases. "We just don't want to have to go back to really shutting things down. That would be terrible," Fauci said.

But Biden's announcement of the April 19 deadline was aimed at injecting optimism into a public that's grown weary of the restrictions, and it comes as a flood of vaccine is being sent to states this week.

Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus coordinator, told governors Tuesday during a weekly conference call that more than 28 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines will be delivered to states this week, White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced at her daily briefing.

That allocation brings the total amount of vaccine distributed over the past three weeks to more than 90 million doses, Psaki said. At least a dozen states opened eligibility to anyone 16 and older on Monday alone, while New Jersey and Oregon announced this week that all residents 16 and older will become eligible on April 19.

The president had announced just last week that 90 per cent of adults would be eligible for one of three approved COVID-19 vaccines by April 19, in addition to having a vaccination site within 5 miles of their home.

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When an organization for the defense of Syrian refugees gets wind of Sam's gig, they tell him that he's an exploited victim. Although he defiantly declares that it was his choice, he starts to have his doubts about his decision. These doubts and his unhappiness increase when in short order he is sold to a Swiss collector (no laws against owning a human artwork in Switzerland) and soon thereafter offered for auction. In an over-the-top scene (that will make some think of Ruben Ostlund's "The Square,") Ben Hania satirizes both the art world and racist prejudices about Arab males and terrorism.
Syracuse, N.Y.  Jared Van Ramshorst used to think every day about killing himself.

The 31-year-old college professor, who earned a doctorate in geography from Syracuse University last year, considered suicide a convenient option for dealing with his chronic depression and anxiety.

If things got too bad, I had an escape plan I knew would work, he says.

The plan was to kill himself while his partner was at work. Hed call 911 before doing it so first responders would find him instead of his partner.

Van Ramshorst took preliminary steps to carry out his suicide plan two years ago as the stress of graduate school intensified. He added his partners name to the ownership title of his car so she could keep it without having to go to probate court if he killed himself. He also made sure she could access their bank accounts.

As he prepared for suicide, Van Ramshorst realized he needed help. He went to SUs counseling service which referred him to an outpatient treatment program at Upstate Medical University for teens and young adults, ages 16 to 40, at high risk of suicide.

Van Ramshorst is convinced hed be dead were it not for the Upstate program which he completed last summer. He recently started a new job teaching at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.

I feel like I got my life back, he says.

Van Ramshorst is one of more than 300 patients whove completed the program Upstate launched in 2017. It uses a therapy invented in Syracuse by Upstate psychiatrist Dr. Robert Gregory that helps patients control self-destructive behavior, understand their emotions and change the way they see themselves.

The therapy is gaining international attention because of its success. Many people end up in the program after making multiple suicide attempts. These are people really on the edge, Gregory says.

The Upstate program and its patients stories of recovery provide hope in a seemingly out-of-control public health crisis. Suicide deaths in Onondaga County soared in 2019. The county health department reported 68 suicide deaths in 2019, up from 59 in 2018, an increase of more than 15%. The countys suicide rate per 100,000 people for the three-year period of 2017-2019 is 12.1, up from 10.5 for 2016-2018.

Thats significantly higher than the state rate of 8.3, but lower than the national rate of 13.9.

The U.S. suicide rate rose 32% between 1999 and 2019. Its the tenth leading cause of death for people of all ages and the second leading cause of death for people 10 to 34.

The coronavirus pandemic is making the problem worse, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A CDC survey conducted in June found one of every four 18- to 24-year-olds had seriously considered suicide in the past 30 days. The survey also found the prevalence of depression, anxiety and drug and alcohol use has soared during the pandemic.

Onondaga County emergency dispatchers have seen a 15% increase so far this year in calls from people who are suicidal or experiencing other mental health problems.

Upstate plans to allow teens as young as 13 to participate in Gregorys program beginning late this summer or early fall.

What makes Upstates outpatient program unusual is its focus on what Gregory calls healing from the inside out.

There are many suicide prevention programs nationwide that provide hotline crisis intervention and referrals. But Gregory says people in danger of killing themselves need a lot more than quick trips to hospital emergency rooms to stay alive.

Its hard for both providers and patients to believe that transformational healing and recovery is actually possible, and we are far too quick to give up on that, he says.

Without Upstates program, people at high risk of suicide seeking intensive specialized outpatient treatment might have to go out of town for care, said Kenneth J. Marfilius, a Syracuse University professor and suicide prevention expert.

One of the problems we have in our nation is access to high quality mental health care, Marfilius said. Upstate with this program is really spearheading the effort and can be a model for the nation.

Contact Community Services, an East Syracuse agency that operates a suicide hotline, refers some callers to the Upstate program. Its a crucial service for people who are chronically suicidal, said Cheryl Giarrusso, Contacts director of crisis intervention.

That group really needs supercharged support, Giarusso said. The Upstate program is perfect for them.

Patients meet once a week in the Upstate program with a therapist to learn how to understand their emotions and accept themselves. Its hard work, according to Gregory, who compares it to getting physical therapy after a stroke.

The Upstate program uses Dynamic Deconstructive Psychotherapy  DDP for short, a treatment Gregory invented 15 years ago. DDP was included on the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administrations database of evidence-based mental health programs after being vetted by independent reviewers. That means the federal agency considers DDP a sound and scientifically-based treatment.

Its used by therapists in the United Kingdom, Iran, Australia, Israel and other parts of the U.S. Its effectiveness has been documented in clinical trials at Upstate.

Many people at risk of suicide misinterpret social interactions with others, misread other peoples motives, fail to evaluate experiences objectively or recognize what emotions they are feeling, according to Gregory.

During therapy, patients are required to give detailed accounts of daily social interactions and identify emotions they felt during those encounters. The goal of doing this is to help them see experiences in a new light and develop different ways of relating to others.

Destinee Taylor-Jenkins of Camillus attempted suicide in 2017 after being hospitalized nine times for mental health problems. N. Scott Trimble | syracuse.comN. Scott Trimble | syracuse.com

Destinee Taylor-Jenkins of Camillus didnt know why she felt so hopeless and depressed. She started thinking about suicide at age 14.

The depression was just coming out of nowhere and I couldnt relieve it, she says. Living felt like a chore.

Taylor-Jenkins, now 24, attempted suicide in 2017 and was rushed by ambulance to Upstate University Hospital.

She was hospitalized nine times for mental health issues in Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo and Saratoga Springs, and treated by numerous therapists. A lot of the therapies were like a Band-Aid that didnt do much for me, she says.

Nothing seemed to work until 2019 when she started the Upstate program.

Taylor-Jenkins learned a lot from analyzing her daily experiences in therapy. She works at a fast-food restaurant and often talked in therapy about how encounters with mean and insulting customers made her feel bad. Taylor-Jenkins often assumed customers acted this way because there was something wrong with her.

Her therapist asked her why she felt that way and pressed her to dig deeper into her feelings. She didnt tell me to feel a certain way, but she would help me navigate my way through my feelings, she says.

Through that process Taylor-Jenkins learned she had a tendency to unfairly blame herself when things went wrong. I discovered things arent always my fault, she says.

Before starting the Upstate program, Taylor-Jenkins couldnt hold a job, live on her own, save money or maintain relationships.

Now she has her own apartment, a supervisory job at a fast-food restaurant, recently bought a new car and got engaged.

From where I was to where I am now, its amazing, Taylor-Jenkins says.

When she was suicidal and depressed Taylor-Jenkins lived with her mother, Kim Darling. Darling was reluctant to leave her daughter home alone for fear she would kill or hurt herself.

Darling urged her daughter to try the Upstate program after seeing a news report about it.

I call it miracle therapy, Darling says. I wasnt sure wed ever find something like this to change Destinees life.

Tyler Overton, of Syracuse, has attempted suicide six times and struggled with depression since she was 9.

Tyler Overton, 24, of Syracuse, has battled depression since she was 9. She has attempted suicide six times.

Shes been in and out of emergency rooms and hospital psychiatric units. She started going to a therapist when she was 18, but the therapy did not stop her suicidal urges.

On top of having this heavy burden of depression on my chest, my mind was always racing because I was trying to think of an easier way to kill myself, Overton says.

She entered the Upstate program in 2018. Overton struggled at first because the program required her to talk about emotions she had kept bottled up inside. But she stuck with it. By the time she finished in April of 2019, Overton said her depression level was as low as a normal person on the street.

Over 12 months in the program, the average patients suicidal thinking decreases 79%, depression level falls 58% and anxiety drops 57%. Those numbers are based on monthly patient assessments conducted by therapists.

Overton used to think shed be dead by 18 or 21. Now shes optimistic about the future. She works full time in the medical records department at Hematology Oncology Associates of CNY. Her dream is to eventually open her own bakery.

I am doing all the stuff I didnt plan on doing, she says.

Overton said shes had some bouts of anxiety and depression during the coronavirus pandemic.

Recovery is a process that never ends, she says.

To cope with anxiety during the pandemic Overton said shes been doing breathing exercises and reaching out to friends.

A few patients have attempted suicide while in the program or after leaving it and had to be hospitalized. But none have completed suicide. Gregory acknowledged that may be due in part to luck. The program  can only open the door to recovery and not force people through it, he said.

Van Ramshorst started having suicidal thoughts in high school. They became more frequent as he got older.

He said suicidal thoughts are like billboards on the side of a highway. They come and go, he says. You glance at it and then it just passes by.

Van Ramshorst compares the Upstate program to chemotherapy.

Cancer is a life-threatening disease and so is suicide, he says. You just cant continue your normal life and expect it to be OK. It takes a commitment to therapy and having it hurt a little bit to shake things up and get better.

Van Ramshorst says he learned in therapy to stop being a perfectionist.

When he was writing his 300-page doctoral dissertation, he would get paralyzed trying to perfect the wording of a single sentence.

He loves teaching, but would feel awful if a lecture didnt go well. I would internalize things and think it was a deficiency with myself, he says. Now he accepts the fact that he, like everyone else, has bad days. No one can produce perfect lectures 10 out of 10 times, he says.

Van Ramshorst says many people downplay the seriousness of mental health issues and are reluctant to get help.

It was difficult for me to make that decision, but ultimately it was a decision that saved my life, he says.

James T. Mulder covers health and higher education. Have a news tip? Contact him at (315) 470-2245 or jmulder@syracuse.com

Are you thinking about suicide? Heres how to get help

Dial 911 if you are in immediate danger.

1-800-273-8255 National Suicide Prevention Hotline. This toll-free, confidential suicide prevention hotline is available to anyone in suicidal crisis or emotional distress. By dialing 1-800-273-TALK, the call is routed to the nearest crisis center in a national network of more than 150 crisis centers, including Contact Community Services in Syracuse.

(315)-251-0600 Contact Community Services Hotline, provides 24 hour telephone counseling.

1-800-273-8255 Press 1, Veterans and Military Crisis Line

Crisis Text Line, a texting service for emotional crisis support. To speak with a trained listener, text HELLO to 741741. It is free, available 24/7 and confidential.

(315) 448-6555. Comprehensive Psychiatric Evaluation Program (CPEP), 205 Prospect Ave., Syracuse. This licensed psychiatric emergency room at St. Josephs Hospital Health Center provides evaluation and treatment for individuals of all ages who are experiencing an acute mental health crisis.

(315)-726-8650 or (315)-569-4129 St. Josephs Mobile Crisis Outreach, provides off-site initial evaluation and assessment of individuals in an emotional crisis.

(315) 464-3117 Upstate High Risk Psychiatry Program, outpatient treatment for people at high risk of suicide. Anyone interested in the program can call. Referrals are not needed.
It wasnt quite the champagne-cork-popping salute that celebrated the repeal of Prohibition back in 1933.

But the chance to belly up to a bar after the states long coronavirus-inspired ban has had some Pennsylvanians making beelines to their favorite watering holes, thirsty to down a drink and make a political statement.
The SoftBank-backed startup, which offers ride-hailing, food delivery and payment services, is set to merge with a SPAC owned by Altimeter Capital in a deal that will see it valued at around US$35bn

Grab, a South-East Asian startup backed by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, is set to list in the US through a US$35bn merger deal with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).

The company, which offers a range of services including ride-hailing, food delivery and payment solutions, is reported to be on the cusp of finalising a merger deal with a SPAC owned by technology investment firm Altimeter Capital, through which it is predicted to raise around US$3.7bn.

This would be added to the US$5bn that Grab already has in its cash reserves, while the unprofitable firm also reported 70% revenue growth in 2020 as its ride-hailing business broke even.

However, the companys predicted US$35bn market cap will also leave it well short of similar firms such as ( ), which currently holds a market cap of around US$108bn.

Grabs listing is a key test for the South-East Asian tech sector, which is aiming to offer international investors access to the heavily populated and growing consumer markets such as Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia.

It will also continue a recent flurry of tech companies listing on both the New York and London markets, with varying degrees of success.

One of the more high-profile flops has been food delivery app Holdings PLC ( ), which has seen its share price tumble from its 390p IPO price to around 286.3p in lunchtime trading on Wednesday.
The controversial AstraZeneca vaccine, of which Australia has 53 million doses, has come under fire from the UK's own vaccine board, raising questions about its rollout Down Under.

British experts called for under 30s to be offered alternatives while experts continue to investigate its link to rare blood clots.

In Australia, the AstraZeneca Covid jab has been declared safe by The Therapeutic Goods Administration and is an integral part of the nation's slow-moving vaccine rollout - meaning there is no sure-fire way to demand another vaccine.

Health chiefs are continuing to back the vaccine and offer it nationally while the link to blood clots is monitored - with just 79 cases in the UK out of 20 million who received the jab.

Most Australians will be offered the AstraZeneca vaccine with the government securing 53.8 million doses, including 50 million to be manufactured onshore.

The UK government's vaccine advisory group has ruled that people aged between 19 and 29 should be offered an alternative to AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine while experts continue to investigate its link to rare blood clots

A review by the UK's drugs watchdog the MHRA found that by the end of March, a rate of just one in 250,000 Britons who received the AstraZeneca vaccine had suffered deadly blood clots in the brain or arteries.

Of the 79 cases, 19 died and three were under the age of 30.

Slides presented at a press conference announcing the change in guidance on Wednesday showed that younger people are more prone to blood clots after vaccination than older groups.

The MHRA said healthy people aged 19 to 29 should be offered either the Pfizer or Moderna jabs instead when the programme moves to younger groups in the coming months.

Anyone who has already had their first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, regardless of their age, is being advised to go for their second appointment as planned.

AUSTRALIA'S VACCINE ROLLOUT Pfizer/BioNTech 10 million doses will be available from early 2021 These doses will be manufactured offshore Australia will have the option to purchase additional doses where supply is available University of Oxford/AstraZeneca Australia has secured 53.8 million doses of this vaccine 3.8 million doses will be delivered to Australia in early 2021 50 million doses will be manufactured in Australia in monthly batches. CSL will manufacture these doses on behalf of AstraZeneca Novavax 51 million doses will be made available in Australia during 2021 Advertisement

AstraZeneca's jab is only being paused for under-30s in Britain because coronavirus levels are getting low, said the nation's Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van-Tam.

If Covid was still more prevalent, as it is in the rest of Europe, he suggested that the vaccine would still be recommended for all ages, including young people.

The MHRA insisted there was still no concrete proof that the British-made vaccine is causing the clots, but admitted the link was getting firmer.

The review prompted the UK Government's vaccine advisory group, the JCVI, to recommend that people aged 18 to 29 be given an alternative jab.

It comes after a Melbourne man's rare blood clotting disorder was 'likely linked' to the AstraZeneca vaccine.

A nurse administers the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine to a patient at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne on March 17

SHOULD PREGNANT WOMEN RECEIVE THE COVID-19 VACCINE? Pregnant women were not enrolled in any coronavirus vaccine trials, leading many to wonder if they should be vaccinated at all. When vaccines for coronavirus first started to be rolled out, the World Health Organization warned that they should should not be used on pregnant women due to lack of evidence about the safety and efficacy. Later, the organization walked back its advice and said vaccines can be administered in expectant mothers safely. Additionally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American College of Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine say vaccines should be offered to pregnant women. This is because expectant mothers are are at a greater risk of severe illness or death if they become infected with COVID-19 compared to non-pregnant women of the same age. Experts say pregnant women should talk to their healthcare providers first and be informed of any potential risks of getting the vaccine. Advertisement

The TGA and the ATAGI met on Saturday morning and Acting Chief Medical Officer Michael Kidd said no changes to the AstraZeneca rollout were recommended.

He said it was likely, given similarities with rare overseas cases, that the man's clotting disorder was related to him receiving the jab.

However, Professor Kidd again emphasised that the risk of serious disease and death from Covid-19 among the mostly unvaccinated Australian population was 'far greater'.

The expert advice is the result of investigations into the illness of the man in his 40s who was admitted to Melbourne's Box Hill hospital after receiving the AstraZeneca jab on March 22.

'While at this time, we don't have evidence of causality, the clinical features of this case are consistent with what we have seen in international reports of similar cases,' Prof Kidd said.

'And it is likely that the case reported yesterday is related to the vaccine. This would be consistent with international experience.'

Four million Australians were due to have jabs by the end of March, a target missed by more than 3.3 million.

The government had aimed for all Australians who want a vaccine to get one by the end of October, a goal critics say is out of reach.

Health Minister Greg Hunt expects more than one million Australians to be vaccinated 'very soon' and anticipates the two million mark will be exceeded not long after that as more general practices join the rollout.

On Wednesday, an elderly woman with pre-existing medical conditions died hours after receiving her Covid-19 vaccine in a Queensland aged care home.

Most Australians will be offered the AstraZeneca vaccine with the government securing 53.8million doses, including 50million to be manufactured onshore

It is understood the 82-year-old received a dose of the Pfizer vaccine at the Springwood Yurana Aged Care Facility on Wednesday, before she died in the afternoon.

Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said 'at this stage there are no signs of any causal link'.

'Any event that happens following vaccination is fully investigated,' Professor Kelly said.

'Sadly more than 1000 people pass in aged care every week. It is inevitable, as the head of the TGA has noted, that this will include people who have been recently vaccinated.

'It can be expected that older and more frail people in an aged care setting may pass away due to progression of underlying disease or natural causes, this does not mean the vaccine has contributed to this.'

The woman had a lung condition.
IPP has a long and established history in the package equipment field and their ability to promote the CS Analytical testing program will enable them to better serve their client based on multiple fronts

CS Analytical Laboratory, the worlds only cGMP, FDA-registered and inspected contract laboratory exclusively designed and dedicated to container testing for the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device industries, officially announced today a partnership agreement with Industrial Production Processes (IPP) Ltd. The agreement, which became official on March 17, 2021, will grant rights for IPP group to represent and promote the CS Analytical service offering to their key clients in the UK and Ireland. With locations in Birmingham, UK and Cork, Ireland, IPP is well established in both territories, and routinely meets with the key stakeholders who are in need of routine USP and EP container qualification testing and USP 1207 integrity testing. As a leading technical distributor of packaging equipment to the pharmaceutical and medical device sectors in these geographic areas, IPP has the local knowledge and experience to enhance the CS Analytical presence and assist their clients with a unique service offering.

Commented IPP Managing Director Jack Daly, Partnering with CS Analytical was an easy and natural decision as we are already well established in the relevant packaging instrument field and its cGMP laboratory testing offering allows the IPP team to better serve our client base with a broader, required and unique service offering.

IPP has a long and established history in the package equipment field and their ability to promote the CS Analytical testing program will enable them to better serve their client based on multiple fronts, commented Brian Mulhall, CEO of CS Analytical.

Routine container qualification testing has become much more stringent and intense due to recent changes to the standard USP methods. Clients globally are looking for service providers that understand the complexity of these unique requirements and have the laboratory experience to execute the qualification testing required. CS Analytical is wholly focused on this niche market and can assist clients in defining the required qualification methods and help to ensure that they are done in a cGMP, FDA regulated laboratory. In addition, with the growth of the USP 1207 container integrity testing requirements, IPP clients who are purchasing instruments commonly need an experienced service provider to assist with method development and validation. The partnership between IPP and CS Analytical will add an additional layer of comfort and support, thus helping clients meet the CCIT requirements in a more timely and cost-effective manner.

About CS Analytical Laboratory

The worlds only cGMP, FDA-registered contract laboratory exclusively designed and dedicated to container testing for the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device industries, the CS Analytical Team includes world-leading experts and thought-leaders on FDA and EU regulatory expectations and USP and EP primary package testing requirements inclusive of container closure integrity (CCI) testing (CCIT). Test services include CCI method development, validation, and analysis, USP/EP/JP physical and physicochemical testing, and Comprehensive and Complementary services for all common or unique primary packaging components and systems inclusive of glass, plastic, elastomeric, and more. CS Analytical is the single source to ensure a regulated industry product-package system meets strict, complex, and ever-changing regulatory requirements.

About Industrial Production Processes (IPP) Ltd

With over 40 years experience, IPP (IPT Ltd trading as IPP in Ireland and formerly APP in the UK) is a technical distributor of manufacturing equipment to the electronics, pharmaceutical and medical device sectors across Ireland and the UK. With a strong presence representing package equipment and instrumentation, our team of service and sales engineers is committed to meeting the technical requirements of our clients in a timely and effective manner.


NO

By Helena Frith Powell

After a year of working from home, there are plenty of people who are keen to swap their desk in accounts for one overlooking their geraniums for ever. And some generous bosses might even let them.

In my view, that would be a disaster. Working from home should not become some kind of post-Covid human right.

I don't think it's good for either bosses or their employees; especially female ones.

Helena Frith Powell (pictured) says working from home forever would be a 'disaster' and does not believe that it should become a 'post-Covid human right'

Aviva, one of Britain's biggest companies, this week warned that women might miss out on promotion because, as the primary carer, they are more likely than men to opt for working-from-home.

The FTSE 100 firm fears managers will promote staff on the basis of visibility as opposed to quality of work.

This seems obvious to me. WFHF, or Working From Home For ever, is surely asking for trouble. Most people require discipline to work.

How many people are genuinely conscientious with only the cat to look over their shoulder? If you're at home to watch the toddler, why not save on a few hours of expensive nursery fees? Fancy a slightly longer lunch than normal? Your boss will never find out.

But that's not all. Much as the techies insist otherwise, we all know a Zoom meeting isn't as productive as an in-the-flesh brainstorm. Especially in the creative industries, where ideas are often bounced around informally. We've had a whole year to find out, after all.

Work means doing things you may not actually like

Much as entitled millennials might like to pretend otherwise, work does involve doing some things you don't necessarily want to do, like showing up in person.

It's vastly in their interests, too, since it's far harder to mentor younger workers remotely than it is to have a sisterly chat over a canteen coffee.

In the 1990s, I worked as a head-hunter for the media industry. The office was in London's Regent Street. I didn't enjoy the commute from Sussex to Charing Cross, nor the expense of it (once I'd paid for childcare too, I only just about broke even).

But I got up in the dark on freezing winter mornings and headed to the station because that's what my boss wanted. If you want to get ahead in your career  or frankly, right now, just keep your job  then maybe you should consider what your boss wants, too.

As uncomfortable as those early mornings, tights and skirt suits look after months of lie-ins and leggings, that's nothing in comparison to worrying about not having a job at all.

YES

By Anna Whitehouse

Let's start with the bottom line. Strapping someone to an office chair nine to five under strip-lighting isn't good for business.

It's time to stop caring about where people are sitting, whether in the kitchen or the boardroom, and look at what they are doing.

The UK has the lowest productivity rate in Europe; cramming your workforce into a stuffy office block isn't, well, working.

Anna Whitehouse (pictured) says office working is clearly not effective as the UK has the lowest productivity rate in Europe

Sure, not all jobs can be done remotely, but where possible, release the office shackles. In the dark context of a pandemic it worked, so what's the fear?

Look to our European counterparts: Finland is already leading the charge with the Working Hours Act that came into effect in January 2020. It gives employees the right to work where and when they want for half of their working hours.

The Finnish economy hasn't crumbled as a result, and they are now the third most gender-equal country in the world.

And that's it: we're in 2021. The nine to five was born in the Industrial Revolution. A time when men brought home the bacon and women cooked it. Working from home allows both men and women to share domestic responsibilities and the paid work far more equitably.

The Office for National Statistics found a 58 per cent increase in childcare undertaken by men in lockdown. Why? Because they were there. They were at home instead of being rammed under the armpit of a stranger on the train.

It's time to stop caring where people are sitting

This isn't a man-bashing exercise by the way. Men want to parent, too. It's not just parents either. Everyone should have the right to choose where they work.

The right to have dinner with their family over sitting in a traffic jam.

The right to spend time saved on that commute in the gym or on a life-enhancing hobby. (The environmental benefits of reduced CO2 emissions aren't to be ignored, either).

And to be clear: this isn't about forcing everyone back. The naysayers have been talking about missing water cooler chats and how they can't stare at their pot plant any longer. Good for them. This is about choice.

The tech is in place: far from slacking, employees used Slack to their advantage. Far from losing out, businesses Zoomed in.

Any company believing the 'new normal' should include clock-watching, competitive presenteeism excessive cc:ing and commuting like lemmings is stuck in the last century.

A time when men didn't see their children and women were chained to the kitchen sink. No thanks.
Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine's benefits outweigh risks and link to blood clots remain unproven, according to the European Medicines Agency. Photo: Getty Images

AstraZeneca's (AZN.L) share price continued to remain under pressure even as the European Medicines Agency (EMA) reiterated on Wednesday the benefits of the company's COVID-19 vaccine far outweigh the risks. This comes following reports of possible links of the vaccine to blood clots.

Meanwhile, the UK has said adults under 30 should be offered an alternative vaccine instead of the AstraZeneca jab if there is one available in their area and they are not at high risk of COVID.

AstraZeneca's stock was down 1% on Wednesday afternoon.

"COVID-19 is associated with a risk of hospitalisation and death. The reported combination of blood clots and low blood platelets is very rare, and the overall benefits of the vaccine in preventing COVID-19 outweigh the risks of side effects," the EMA said.

It added that very rare cases of unusual blood clots should be listed as a side effect, but that the vaccine is effective and should continue to be used.

"EMA is reminding healthcare professionals and people receiving the vaccine to remain aware of the possibility of very rare cases of blood clots combined with low levels of blood platelets occurring within two weeks of vaccination," it said in a statement.

"So far, most of the cases reported have occurred in women under 60 years of age within two weeks of vaccination. Based on the currently available evidence, specific risk factors have not been confirmed," it added.

It also said that one plausible explanation for the combination of blood clots and low blood platelets is an immune response, leading to a condition similar to one seen sometimes in patients treated with heparin (heparin induced thrombocytopenia).

WATCH: EMA says AstraZeneca COVID vaccine's benefits outweigh risks

EMAs safety committee has requested new studies and amendments to ongoing ones to provide more information and "will take any further actions necessary."

Story continues

READ MORE: Under-30s in UK will not be given AstraZeneca COVID vaccine due to very rare risk of blood clots

Ahead of the EMA's briefing, Spains Castile and Leon region suspended the use of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine for the second time.

We cant run the risk of continuing to use the product knowing that there are questions about who it should be used for and risking adverse reactions, Veronica Casado, regional health minister told local press.

Meanwhile in the UK, more than 31 million people have already had a first vaccine dose and more than 5 million people have received their second jab. These are either AstraZeneca or Pfizer (PFE).

The UK has also purchased 17 million doses of the Moderna (MRNA) jab, enough for 8.5 million people. Rollout of the vaccine has begun in Wales on Wednesday and is expected in England in the next few days.

June Munro, CEO for the UK's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, has also said the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine continue to outweigh the risks for the vast majority of people.

She said up to 31 March there had been 79 cases of this condition, with 19 deaths. Three of the 19 people who died were under the age of 30.

Earlier it had been reported that a trial of the vaccine on children in the UK has been halted until there is more clarity from regulators about the jab's possible link with rare blood clots in adults.

Earlier Speaking to The Telegraph, senior government adviser Dr Maggie Wearmouth said the rollout for younger people in the UK should be paused until regulators issue clear guidance on its safety. She said slowing down the rollout may be crucial to maintain public trust and confidence.

Professor Andrew Pollard from the University of Oxford told the BBC that although "there are no safety concerns in the paediatric clinical trial, we await additional information from the MHRA on its review of rare cases of thrombosis/thrombocytopaenia that have been reported in adults, before giving any further vaccinations in the trial."

AstraZeneca's stock continues to remain under pressure. Chart: Yahoo Finance

As Astrazeneca's woes continue, the Netherlands became the latest country to pause rollout of its jab over the weekend amid concerns about possible blood clotting complications.

Last week, some cities in Germany temporarily halted the vaccine for people under the age of 60, while Canada has suspended its use for those under 55.

And the companys ties with the EU have also been strained: the European Commission has blamed pharmaceutical companies  primarily AstraZeneca  for not delivering the promised doses to the EU.

WATCH: Oxford pauses UK trial for COVID-19 vaccine on children

Last week, some cities in Germany temporarily halted the vaccine for people under the age of 60, while Canada has suspended its use for those under 55.

And the companys ties with the EU have also been strained: the European Commission has blamed pharmaceutical companies  primarily AstraZeneca  for not delivering the promised doses to the EU.
The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the proposal of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) for ramping up domestic manufacturing of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels under the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme.

The proposed scheme is envisaged to create additional 10,000 megawatt capacity of integrated solar PV manufacturing plants in the country.

Under the PLI scheme, the Cabinet in November 2020 had approved Rs 4,500 crore for manufacturing of high efficiency solar PV modules. The nodal ministry thereafter proposed a programme on high efficiency solar PV modules for the same.

Solar capacity addition presently depends largely upon imported solar PV cells and modules as domestic manufacturing industry has limited operational capacities of solar PV cells and modules. The programme on high efficiency solar PV modules will reduce import dependence in a strategic sector like electricity. It will also support the Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative, said a government statement.

The scheme is likely to give a boost to domestic manufacturers. Solar manufacturing is still nascent in India and the Centre has been trying to reduce import dependence.

Adani Green, Azure Power, Kolkata based Vikram Solar, and Mumbai-based Waaree Solar are some of the leading solar panel manufacturers in India.

Goldman Sachs-promoted renewable project developer ReNew Power recently announced its entry into the solar manufacturing space.

The will make India self-sufficient and self-reliant. While it puts the spotlight on domestic manufacturers, it will also make the country a key global supplier. By diverting demand to India, domestic manufacturers will get the much-needed confidence to invest in expanding capacity. It will make the sector more operational and accessible to foreign players, said Hitesh Doshi, chairman and managing director, Waaree Group.

Under the scheme, manufacturers will be selected through a transparent competitive bidding process and PLI will be disbursed for five years after the commissioning of the manufacturing plants on sales of high efficiency solar PV modules.

Manufacturers will be rewarded for higher efficiencies of solar PV modules and also for sourcing their material from the domestic market. Thus, the PLI amount will increase with increased module efficiency and increased local value addition, said the statement by the Cabinet.

Doshi, however, said, Although a concentrated can incentivise manufacturers, the solar sector requires additional investment to create an ecosystem that encompasses the complete demand-supply value chain.



India has set an ambitious target of 175 gigawatt (Gw) of renewable energy capacity by 2022. This includes 100 Gw from solar and 60 Gw from wind energy. The current solar power capacity of 32 Gw has, however, come on the back of imported content.

Close to 75 per cent of Indias solar power capacity is built on Chinese solar cells and modules. Indias solar cell (component of a solar panel) manufacturing capacity stands at 3 Gw and of module (finished product) is 5 Gw, while the countrys solar power generation capacity stands at 32 Gw. India awarded its first solar manufacturing tender earlier this year. Under this, Adani Green and Azure Power will construct solar cells and module manufacturing of 2 Gw and 1 Gw, respectively. The MNRE in a recent notification said for any procurement by the central government agencies and nodal departments, preference would be given to local products for which there is sufficient local capacity.

As part of the countrys recent efforts to ban imports from China, the MNRE has also proposed 20 per cent basic Customs duty on imports of solar cells and modules.
The Massachusetts child welfare agency is seeing only about half of their cases in person, according to the most recent data released by the agency in December and January.

The state Department of Children and Families visited 46% of its cases in-person in January and 54% in December, the Boston Globe reported on Monday.

Since August, the departments policy has been to alternate virtual and in-person visits for the 42,000 children that it cares for or oversees, the newspaper reported.

Social workers became eligible to get a coronavirus vaccine at the end of January, and with warmer weather coming, Maria Mossaides, the director of the Office of the Child Advocate, told the newspaper there is, no excuse not to find a place to meet.

Most elementary and middle schools in the state have been mandated to return to full time, in-person learning this month. Many day cares have been operating in-person since the summer.

An investigation into the death of a 14-year-old autistic boy in October identified the fact that DCF had not prioritized his family for in-person visits as one of the many failures that led to his death. The Office of the Child Advocate, which investigated the death, also found that DCF had not issued guidance on how to conduct an effective virtual visit during the pandemic, though the agencys commissioner said last week that it would follow the recommendations from the advocates report.

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Bengaluru: In the wake of rising cases in Bengaluru, the city police on Wednesday banned the use of swimming pools, gyms, party halls, and other similar activities in residential complexes, news agency ANI reported.

"Prohibit operation of amenities like Swimming Pool, Gymnasium, Party Halls in apartment/residential complexes in Bengaluru City" the order reads. Also, Section 144 of the CrPC will be imposed in the city from today.

On Tuesday, the Bengaluru police Commissioner Kamal Pant issued a prohibitory order on rallies, demonstrations, public gatherings, functions and group prayers.

The order dated April 4, stated that the Chief Secretary as the chairman of the state executive committee of Karnataka State Disaster Management Authority imposed restrictions for public safety and health such as wearing facemasks, physical distancing and hand hygiene.

Besides a ban on rallies and demonstrations in the city, the police said pubs, bars, clubs and restaurants should not have visitors more than 50 per cent seating capacity.

Anyone found violating the orders will be booked under the Disaster Management Act and Karnataka Epidemic Diseases Act.

Meanwhile, the city has reported 4,266 fresh cases and 26 deaths on Tuesday.
A large number of white people already believe that they suffer higher levels of discrimination than Black people and other minorities do.

Craig and Richeson write:

Organizational messages that are favorable to racial diversity have also been found to enhance the sense among whites of personal and group discrimination against them compared with race-neutral messages.

In addition, many Republican and conservative-leaning whites are convinced that as minorities become more powerful, the left coalition will become increasingly antagonistic to them. Craig and Richeson write:

This research suggests, in other words, that whites are likely to perceive more antiwhite discrimination under circumstances in which they perceive that their groups position in society is under threat.

Nour Sami Kteily, a professor of management and organizations at Northwesterns Kellogg School of Management, emailed to say that he and Richeson have been conducting a study that asks whites how much they agree (7) or disagree (1) with statements like:

If Black Americans got to the top of the social hierarchy, they would want to stay on top and keep other groups down.

and:

If Black Americans got to the top of the social hierarchy, they would put all of their effort toward creating a more egalitarian social system for all groups.

On average, whites fell at the midpoint, but, Kteily wrote, there was:

large variation associated with being Republican vs. Democrat, with Republicans being more likely to believe that Black Americans would use power to dominate. The difference is highly statistically significant.

In a December 2019 article, Demographic change, political backlash, and challenges in the study of geography, Ryan Enos, a political scientist at Harvard, wrote:

The relationship between diversity and reactionary politics should be considered one of the most important sociopolitical issues facing the world today  it is a near certainty that almost every developed country and many developing countries will be more diverse a generation from now than they are today.

Thus, Enos continued:

if increasing diversity affects political outcomes, the relationship can point in two consequentially different directions: toward increased diversity liberalizing politics or toward increased diversity causing a reactionary backlash.

The 2020 election of Biden combined with Democratic control of the House and Senate have contained, at least momentarily, the reactionary backlash, but a liberalized politics has not yet been secured. What are the prospects for Democrats seeking to maintain, if not strengthen, their fragile hold on power?

Looking toward the next two sets of elections, Brian Schaffner, a political scientist at Tufts, argued in an email that Biden will have to tread carefully if he wants to maintain winning margins for his party in 2022 and for himself in 2024:

I think much of the survey data we have seen over the past several years indicates that many whites have quite favorable attitudes toward the social welfare programs that the Democratic Party supports while they are often turned off by the partys rhetoric and platform on the issue of race and racism.

If the Biden administration, Schaffner wrote,

can continue to deliver on popular policy programs like the American Rescue Plan and make the midterm elections a referendum on those policies rather than on discussions of racism then he may be able to hold together the coalition that helped him win in 2020.

Robert Griffin, research director of the nonpartisan Democracy Fund Voter Study Group, wrote by email that he expects the national environment to be worse for Democrats in 2022 than it was in 2020.

The shift, he continued,

will almost certainly include a loss of support among white voters who  if history is any guide  will represent a larger share of the electorate in 2022 because of midterm turnout dynamics.

Griffin wrote that its not obvious to me that this shift will be dependent on Bidens ability or failure to overcome white racial resentment, because these midterm dynamics are pretty baked in and it would be shocking to see them defied.

On the plus side for Democrats, Griffin noted:

The growing educational divide among white Americans does present an interesting opportunity for the Democratic Party. One of the things most people dont appreciate is that white overrepresentation among voters is driven almost entirely by white college voters. This overrepresentation of white college voters is even greater in midterm elections. The growing educational divide among white voters  with Biden viewed much more favorably by white college voters  potentially blunts some of those midterm dynamics I described.

I asked Griffin what the prospects are for Biden to build a stronger and more durable Democratic coalition. He is doubtful:

If you had to pick one group that would do the most to solidify the Democratic coalition electorally, it would be white non-college voters. They make up more than 40 percent of voters and are exceptionally well represented in the Electoral College, the House and the Senate.

Biden, Griffin continued,

improved slightly on Hillary Clintons margin among these voters, but it wasnt anything massive. Given the long-term trends away from the Democratic Party among these voters, even holding onto his 2020 margins would likely represent an achievement.

Based on his actions to date, Biden clearly disagrees and remains intent on strengthening both the white and minority side of the Democratic multiracial coalition through legislative action.

In one of the ironies of politics, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia  who personifies in the extreme the Democratic Party dilemma on race, ethnicity and immigration  has become a critical stumbling block to Bidens ambition to enact a transformative agenda.

West Virginia is 92 percent white, the third-highest percentage in the nation, exceeded only by Maine and Vermont. In a generation, it has undergone a virtually complete Republican realignment.
Powered by Bausano's innovative Multidrive transmission system, MD Nextmover sets new high standards for efficiency, reliability, durability and sustainability

Bausano, an international leader in the design and production of customized extrusion lines for the transformation of plastic materials, today announced it will livestream for U.S. and Canadian operators a production demonstration of its MD Nextmover 125/25 twin-screw extrusion line. The demonstration will be held online on Wed., April 28, 2021, at 12:00 p.m. ET/11:00 a.m. CT/9:00 a.m. PT.

In the demonstration, Clemente Bausano, vice president of Bausano, will discuss the company's history, recent growth and product roadmap. This will be followed by an introduction of the two Multidrive-powered MD Plus and MD Nextmover lines by a technical team, who will operate the MD Nextmover 125/25 extruder to production levels of 800-1,000kg/h. Technicians will also explain different solutions and configurations for various production ranges and showcase the extruder's Smart Energy System, an innovative contactless cylinder heating system that delivers energy savings of up to 35%. The demonstration will conclude with a Q&A session.

"Our online demonstration is an opportunity for U.S. and Canadian operators to see our newest offerings and hear how we're responding to the needs of customers in North America," said Clemente Bausano. "The position of the U.S. as the eighth largest plastic processing sector in the manufacturing world is why we have strengthened our presence in North America. As we lay the foundation in a dynamic U.S. sector, we are well positioned to accelerate our growth in the market."

Bausano's MD Nextmover extrusion lines are best suited for several types of extrusion, pipes, granules, wood plastic composites, profiles and materials used in the medical industry. Made with world-renowned "Made in Italy" quality, advanced engineering and technological innovation, Bausano's extruders are distinguished by the capacity of the company's in-house team of engineers to customize every single component, including aesthetics, based on the specific needs of the customer.

In January 2021, Bausano announced its next-generation lines of twin-screw extruders in the U.S. and Canada. Bausano also recently launched a new training program for specialized technicians at its Houston and Oswego [Ill.] dealerships, so U.S. and Canadian operators receive qualified technical support. This fall, its twin-screw extrusion line will be installed in the showrooms of the company's reselling partners so that operators can see Bausano products in person.

To register to attend the online demonstration, go to https://www.bausano.com/digital-lab/usa-virtual-open-day/.

About Bausano

Founded in 1946, Bausano is an international leader in the design and production of customized extrusion lines for the transformation of plastic materials. Quality, flexibility and attentiveness to the individual needs of every customer: these are the company's distinctive features in developing tailor-made solutions for the extrusion of pipes, granules, profiles and wood plastic composites (WPC) for a wide variety of applications as well as material used in the medical sector. Bausano is a strategic partner to its customers by virtue of its complete control over the value chain, a highly qualified pre-sales consultancy service as well as after-sales support with specialized operators who are able to work on-site within 24 hours from a request. The company's headquarters are located near Turin, Italy, and it has production units in Brazil and India. Its U.S. offices are based in Oswego, Ill. and Houston. For more information, visit https://www.bausano.com/en/ and follow on Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005073/en/

Contacts:

Bausano Corporate Communications

Lbdi Communication

Silvia Vara: svara@lbdi.it

Ginevra Fossati: gfossati@lbdi.it

Skype: LBDI_pr

Bausano Product Communications

Gabriel Marketing Group

Michael Tebo

1-703-967-3553

michaelt@gabrielmarketing.com
PARADISE, Calif. - A Paradise resident was arrested for two offenses on Monday evening in Paradise, Paradise Police Department said.

Sarah Quinton, 34, was found by a citizen in her vehicle passed out in the Paradise Plaza parking lot.

When officers arrived, Quinton appeared to be heavily intoxicated and struggled to stay conscious when officers contacted and identified her.

The vehicle she was in had fresh damage that appeared to be in a minor accident prior to arriving at the parking lot. The engine was running but the damage from the accident prevented the vehicle from operating fully, police said.

Officers found Quintons two children in the car who are ages three and seven. Police said the children were inappropriately secured in the vehicles safety seats.

Quinton was over three times the legal Blood Alcohol Concentration to drive a vehicle in California.

The officers investigation determined Quinton had driven her vehicle while heavily intoxicated and being in an accident while her children were inappropriately secured in the vehicle safety seats.

Paradise Police said Quinton was arrested for Felony Child Endangerment and Driving Under the Influence of Alcohol. She was transported and booked into Butte County Jail.

Her children were placed into protective custody and released into the care of Childrens Services, police said.
Photo: The Canadian Press FILE - Vice President Mike Pence speaks during a memorial service for the late Air Force Brig. Gen. Chuck Yeager in Charleston, W. Va., on Jan. 15, 2021. Pence has a book deal. His autobiography, currently untitled, is scheduled to come out in 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, File)

Former Vice-President Mike Pence has a book deal. His autobiography, currently untitled, is scheduled to come out in 2023.

I am grateful to have the opportunity to tell the story of my life in public service to the American people, from serving in Congress, to the Indiana Governors office and as Vice-President of the United States, Pence said in a statement. I look forward to working with the outstanding team at Simon & Schuster to invite readers on a journey from a small town in Indiana to Washington, DC.

Simon & Schuster announced Wednesday that it also signed Pence to a second book but did not immediately provide details. Pence is the first major Trump administration official to have an announced deal since the president left office in January, although former White House advisor Kellyanne Conway and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are among those reportedly working on books.

A Pence memoir will likely be subject to similar tensions the former Vice-President has faced since he refused then-President Donald Trump's demands that he help overturn the election results. Among Democrats and others who opposed Trump, Pence is widely seen as Trump's loyal and complicit ally. Meanwhile, Trump supporters, and Trump himself, denounced him for not intervening Jan. 6 in Congress' formal certification of Democrat Joe Biden's presidential victory.

The certification  that Pence had no power to change  was delayed for hours after hundreds of Trump supporters, some chanting Hang Mike Pence," stormed the U.S. Capitol.

Simon & Schuster Vice-President and Publisher Dana Canedy said that Pence's book would be revelatory, without specifically saying whether he would address the events of Jan. 6.

Vice-President Pences life and work, his journey as a Christian, the challenges and triumphs he has faced, and the lessons he has learned, tells an American story of extraordinary public service during a time of unrivaled public interest in our government and politics, Canedy said. His revelatory autobiography will be the definitive book on one of the most consequential presidencies in American history.
OK, so I saw this TikTok that Target is the new sex trafficking hub, or very commonly known for sex trafficking, and I saw this girl posted her story so I wanted to say about mine, Makenzie Jade says in her video. She then tells a story about being followed by a man while in the produce section of her local Target, then being circled by two additional men with nothing in their shopping carts. She called her mother and boyfriend, who contacted Target employees to ensure her safety and walk her to her car, where she says she saw one of the men she had seen in the store waiting for her.

The harrowing story, told in two parts, is hashtagged #sextraffickingawareness and #target, and has a combined 1.2 million views. In an Instagram direct message, Makenzie says she posted the video to raise awareness to the situation. It is something you only see in movies, she tells Rolling Stone. I saw another girl post what happened to her, not thinking it would ever happen to me at my local Target.

The it Makenzie is referring to is sex trafficking. Over the past week on TikTok, there have been dozens of videos, some with millions of views, in which young women from all over the country describe being followed by strange men or women in Target in what they describe as an attempted trafficking operation, though the videos dont really clarify what that term means.

In one video, Allie Mellman, a 27-year-old woman from St. Paul, Minnesota, describes being approached by a woman in Target five years ago who asked her if she needed financial help and then gave her a mans business card; when she looked up the name on the card, she couldnt find a website or social media profile for the man. At the time I thought it was really weird, says Mellman, whose video got more than 587,000 views. But it wasnt until she saw other videos on TikTok of women describing similar experiences that she thought it may have been linked to trafficking. I was like, oh my God, that sounds exactly like what happened to me.

In a two-part video series with more than 7 million views, Kassidy Brown, 22, from Omaha, Nebraska, describes being followed by a young woman and what appeared to be her mother at a local Target before getting security involved. All of the young women in these videos describe feeling uncomfortable or unsafe by their encounters, but only labeling them as a trafficking attempt after seeing other women share their own stories in TikTok videos.

I saw a lot of videos of other women being followed around on the street, at other stores, Wal-Mart, Home Goods, things like that, says Brown. I was like, this is insane, and a lot of women were saying this happened to me at this store, or at this specific location. It seems like its happening way more often than we think it does.

Despite the stickiness of such narratives on social media, however, anti-trafficking experts are highly skeptical of these reports. I have never heard a case of anyone being abducted from Target in my 20 years in this field, says Jean Bruggeman, executive director of Freedom Network USA, a national network of anti-trafficking advocates. (Representatives for Target did not immediately return a request for comment.)

Indeed, when asked about the TikTok rumors, many experts say they adhere to a familiar pattern of sex trafficking rumors and urban legends intended to spread hysteria while simultaneously misrepresenting the realities of what trafficking actually looks like. Despite the omnipresence of narratives about young women being abducted by mysterious strangers in public places, the majority of trafficking victims are marginalized people  undocumented migrants, for instance, or homeless LGBTQ teenagers who dont have access to shelters  who more often than not know and trust their traffickers.

Any time we teach people false information, we have to remember everyone hears these narratives over and over about what trafficking looks like, says Kate DAdamo, a partner at Reframe Health Justice who has studied the history of sex trafficking narratives. Not only does it mean that people who are vulnerable to being trafficked are made more vulnerable because theyre [made invisible], were also focusing on the wrong place.

Dubious rumors purporting to raise awareness about the realities of sex trafficking are nothing new. A lot of these urban legends, its old wine in new bottles, says folklorist Benjamin Radford, noting theres a long-established genre of stranger danger stories focused on abductors of women and children at malls stemming all the way back to the 1950s. Recent high-profile sex trafficking cases in the news, such as the story of Jeffrey Epstein, as well as the frenzy surrounding the trafficking-centric QAnon conspiracy theory, have led to the resurgence of such rumors.

Most notably, an urban legend focusing on the online furniture retailer Wayfair as a trafficking hub went viral on TikTok last year; photos of zip ties marking womens cars as kidnapping targets in parking lots at Walmart and Target also went viral on Facebook and Instagram. One of the functions of folklore is people tell stories about what theyre concerned about, says Radford. And what theyre concerned about these days, rightly or wrongly, is this problem of sex trafficking.

He classifies this most recent entry as an example of a memorate, or a first-person story that lends credence to the narrative and gives it more immediacy. The sheer number of them tends to lend credibility, he says of the TikTok Target trafficking videos. If theres one viral video, you can dismiss that. But when you have dozens of people saying similar stories, that will get people talking.

Human trafficking tends to give rise to such stories because, due to its underground nature, theres not a large body of reliable data on the phenomenon. The problem with human trafficking is the amount of information we have about actual trafficking cases is extremely limited, says Caren Benjamin, chief communications officer of the Polaris Project. There is no good way to collect data. There is extremely limited victim reporting, and a huge percentage of people in trafficking situations never identify as being in trafficking situations.

For this reason, human trafficking and sex trafficking in particular tend to be widely misrepresented in mainstream media. Though most coverage focuses on young white women as victims of a shadowy ring of abductors, a la Taken, anti-trafficking experts say that most trafficking survivors  up to 90 percent, Benjamin estimates, though no hard numbers are available  are disenfranchised and vulnerable people who already have relationships with their traffickers.

People who are in a position that theyre unable to leave where theyre being abused and exploited, such as homelessness, substance abuse, or lack of immigration status, are most likely to be subject to trafficking, says Bruggeman. Advocating for a stronger social safety net, expansion of affordable housing, affordable medical care  those are the tangible things we can all do to really make a difference to stop this crime from happening, she says.

Unfortunately, due to societal misperceptions surrounding trafficking, calls for such sweeping infrastructural changes are often ignored in favor of focusing on more sensationalized stories of attempted abductions in stores or parking lots. This ultimately has the effect of diverting attention and resources away from people who are most in need, says Bruggeman: It makes it harder for trafficking survivors to see themselves in this narrative and feel that law enforcement and service providers will recognize their experience as an experience of abuse and exploitation.

Brown, the TikToker whose videos detailing her own experience garnered millions of views, says while she is unsure her experience was 100 percent sex trafficking, the encounter she described in her videos felt very uncomfortable and unsafe, and Ive been taught from a young age to remove myself from situations that felt that way.

She says she received hundreds of comments from women who shared similar stories about being approached in a Target or another department store. I dont think every woman in the comments has been making up these stories. Unfortunately its the world we live in that women have to be on guard 24/7, she says. We have to be aware and super vigilant all the time.

Indeed, while stories like Browns might not serve to underscore the existence of shadowy, mid-end department store trafficking rings, they do serve to highlight a crucial and very real phenomenon: in a world where nearly one in three women has experienced some form of physical violence (albeit usually at the hands of a partner or loved one and not a stranger), women have every right to feel wary or uncomfortable when approached by people, particularly men, in public spaces. The danger, cautions Radford, arises when people exaggerate about things like this when there are real, legitimate dangers out there.
Portlands mayor and city commissioners said late Tuesday they reached a deal on a set of proposals aimed to stem a dramatic rise of shootings and gun deaths over the last year and will vote unanimously to approve them on Wednesday.

Given the late timing of the maneuver, members of the public will not be able to speak in favor or against the package during Wednesdays council meeting but can submit written testimony beforehand. If it indeed garners all five council members votes, it would take effect immediately.

The compromise would reestablish a proactive team of uniformed police officers tasked with preventing shootings by reassigning current sworn employees to that role, documents detailing the plans show.

The team would operate with greater civilian oversight than its disbanded predecessor, and the Police Bureau would not receive an additional $2 million in one-time funding originally sought by Mayor Ted Wheeler.

Under the deal, the council would also provide millions of new dollars to community organizations for anti-violence work and authorize the hire of two dozen new unarmed park rangers, as a trio of commissioners proposed last week, according to the proposals.

And while Portlands newly minted community safety director  former Portland Fire Chief Mike Myers  would receive funding to hire crime analysts to study and review shootings, he would not oversee the citys gun violence response, as Commissioners Mingus Mapps, Carmen Rubio and Dan Ryan originally proposed.

We agree that the immediate spike in gun violence is a public health threat that requires a public health response that invests in community-based organizations working to change the conditions and environments that foster violence, the mayor and all four commissioners, including Jo Ann Hardesty, said in a joint statement issued through Rubios office Tuesday evening.

And, we agree the police are part of the solution with strong, independent community oversight. By realigning their resources, police can prioritize the work needed to break the cycles of gun violence.

The $5.9 million deal represents the councils first substantive action on policing since two new members, Rubio and Mapps, joined the council in January.

Politically, the body stretches from Hardesty, a Portland police critic for decades and the first Black woman elected to the Portland City Council, to Wheeler, who serves as police commissioner and has repeatedly stood by the bureaus leadership even as the agency has come under fire for mistreating protesters and struggled to quell a surge in shootings.

The City Council, including Wheeler, voted 3-1 amid an eruption of racial justice protests last summer to cut funding for the Police Bureaus Gun Violence Reduction Team, which was criticized for suspecting and stopping too many Black males. The council seat that belonged to late Commissioner Nick Fish had not yet been filled at the time.

Portlands elected leaders added the new gun violence prevention measure to Wednesdays City Council agenda using a procedure that allows them to include last-minute items with the support of at least four of the five members of the council. All five supported the addition Tuesday, records show.

Weve been listening to the community through their words, actions and protests, said Will Howell, a spokesman for Rubio. This is an urgent issue and demands an urgent response.

There have been at least 284 shootings this year that have left 91 people injured, Lt. Greg Pashley, a Portland police spokesperson, said Tuesday. Firearms have caused 18 of the citys 25 homicides since Jan. 1.

Statistically, the city is on track to experience 100 homicides if the pace does not slow in the remainder of the year.

Portland recorded 55 in 2020, the highest number in 26 years. Forty-one were fatal shootings, more than half of them people of color, figures provided by the police bureau show.

Under the compromise plan, the City Council would direct the Portland Police Bureau to reassign six assault detectives and one sergeant to work on gun-related investigations approved by the Multnomah County District Attorneys Office.

The mayor, acting as police commissioner, separately directed the bureau to use 12 officers and two supervisors currently assigned elsewhere to form a new uniformed team tasked with combatting the citys wave of gun violence, documents show.

That so-called focused intervention team will work with community stakeholders to develop specific strategies that will be routinely reviewed. Deputy Police Chief Chris Davis said in a memo Tuesday that the new team could be up and running within 30 to 45 days.

Implementing this plan within existing resources, which are already strained, will require trade-offs, Davis wrote to Wheelers office.

We anticipate reductions in our capacity to meet demand in other areas, including traffic safety, call response time in patrol, and investigative functions such as domestic violence and human trafficking.

Last month, Portland police launched a so-called enhancement community safety team that dispatches an on-call team of officers and detectives to shooting investigations.

The council proposal would also immediately allocate $4.1 million to community-based groups that already work with the citys Office of Violence Prevention to aid shooting victims and their families and attempt to stop retaliations, documents show.

Another $1.4 million would pay for around-the-clock foot patrols by two dozen new park rangers. Though unarmed, these rangers have the authority to enforce rules in and near public spaces that have been the sites of some of the shootings or other violent altercations in the last year.

Finally, about $442,000 would fund three crime analysts as well pay for a study by an outside firm to look at gun violence reduction efforts in Portland. All money in the proposal would come from a city reserve contingency account created last fall that now has a $6.3 million balance.

Our community is demanding long-term prevention and short-term action, Wheeler said in a statement. Our agreement today will help save lives.

Members of the public can submit written testimony on the City Council proposal to CCTestimony@portlandoregon.gov

-- 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.
(ANSA) - ROME, APR 7 - Around 5.6 million pupils in Italy, 66% of the nation's 8.5 million school students, were able to return to class on Wednesday after the Easter holidays.

Before Easter around eight in 10 pupils were having lessons via distance learning because of COVID-19 restrictions.

But this proportion has dropped to a third, around 2.9 million pupils, after the government decided that students should physically return to class even in high-contagion-risk red zones, up to the first year of middle school. (ANSA).


New Delhi, April 7 : Bollywood actress Sara Ali Khan has been roped as the brand ambassador of personal care brand Mamaearth. She will be endorsing their hair care range.

"Since I was a kid, my mother has been using onion oil, rice water, Amla juice, etc on my hair. These kitchen recipes have always done wonders for my hair. When Mamaearth approached me to endorse their hair care range and I got to know that their products are inspired by traditional recipes using natural ingredients, I knew I had to partner with this brand." She adds: "While they create great toxin-free products, what I love the most about the brand is their philosophy of goodness inside and their purpose of serving a greater good. I am excited to embark upon this journey and urge fellow millennials to choose the goodness of Mamaearth." Ghazal Alagh, Co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer, Mamaearth, said: "We are a brand founded by millennials for millennials. As a purpose-driven brand, we intend to serve a greater goal along with creating great quality products that are safe and effective. Sara is a voice that the youth resonate with and we strongly feel that she would be able to advocate the brand's ideology and further our cause." (Puja Gupta can be contacted at puja.g@ians.in)
Researchers discovered that sunlight is now more effective when it comes to neutralizing the novel coronavirus, which is the one causing the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic. They claimed that sunlight is now eight times faster than before.

According to Explica's latest report, the latest sunlight study was conducted by different universities. These include Oregon State University, University of Manchester, ETH Zurich, and UC Santa Barbara.

However, the researchers explained that persistence and exposure risk still vary significantly between outdoor and indoor locations.

"The theory had predicted that inactivation should occur an order of magnitude slower," said Paulo Luzzatto-Fegiz, a UC Santa Barbara Professor of mechanical engineering.

"In experiments, viruses in simulated saliva and exposed to UV-B lamps went inactive more than eight times faster than the theory would have predicted," added the lead author of the study.

Why sunlight can now neutralize COVID-19 faster

Wonderful Engineering reported that the new study was published by the Journal of Infectious Diseases. It explained that previous researches include UV-B rays to be effective at inactivating the deadly virus.

Also Read: COVID-19: Are Germ-Killing Seats Effective? Trains in Canada Upgraded to Protect Riders From Coronavirus

They also didn't find any effect of UV-A rays when it comes to neutralizing the novel coronavirus. However, the new study proved that the UV-A rays are more effective compared to UV-B types.

The researchers added that they could help medical experts and scientists to have a new approach that could effectively stop the spread of COVID-19. Luzzatto-Fezig also added that these rays could be speeding up the inactivation process.

What previous studies show

Recent studies said that sunlight can inactivate the novel coronavirus for between ten to 20 minutes. However, UV light could now do this in less than ten or 20 minutes, thanks to the newly found effects of sunlight's UV-A rays.

The latest study's conducted experiments revealed that the simulated saliva viruses were neutralized eight times faster using UV-B lamps. On the other hand, if the UV-A rays would be proven effective, this could help prevent the virus's further spread since most indoor lights and LED bulbs produce stronger UV-A radiation compared to the sun itself.

For more news updates about COVID-19 and other related innovations, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

Related Article: Cheap COVID-19 Vaccine Only Comes From Chicken Eggs, Allegedly Creates More Potent Antibodies?

This article is owned by TechTimes

Written by: Giuliano de Leon

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
MILAN  Aspesi wants to bring its chic understatement to China, digitally.

The company has teamed with Farfetchs digital and tech company Curiosity China to make its debut on WeChat and Weibo, while an official store is expected to bow on Tmall in September.

More from WWD

This is a real debut in China, where we have no retail presence, explained Aspesi chief executive officer Simona Clemenza. But, since some online wholesale partners had very positive results selling our collections, we wanted to directly approach the market, focusing on digital.

As the CEO highlighted, through WeChat and Weibo, Aspesi aims to boost its brand awareness, paving the way for the launch of the online store on Tmall. We are debuting digitally, but when the market is ready, we aim to open some physical points of sale, said Clemenza, who expects China to account for 20 percent of the brands business in five years.

While Italy is still the companys biggest market, Northern Europe, Germany and Switzerland are performing very well in terms of online sales, which in 2020 increased 30 percent compared to the previous year. In order to capitalize on that, Aspesi, whose digital business accounts for 10 percent of total revenues, decided to revamp its online shop, bringing its management in-house. It has been an incredible effort for the company, but we think that its so important for us to directly operate our online business, which has great potential for growth, said Clemenza, who added that the e-commerce site will feature innovative tools, including the chance to pay with Bitcoins, and will be central in the development of an omnichannel strategy to include the brands 15 physical shops.

In March 2020, Aspesi kicked off an ambitious retail expansion plan, which included the opening of a 2,153-square-foot flagship in Tokyos luxury Aoyama district, the inauguration of a concession at the Rinascente department store in Milan, where the label also operates a flagship in the heart of the Golden Triangle luxury shopping district, as well as the debut of a boutique on the island of Capri and of space inside Madrids department store El Corte Ingles.

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The plan continued with the relocation last month of the Madrid flagship, which was moved to luxury shopping avenue Calle Lagasca. We are registering very positive results there, although the moment is very complicated, said Clemenza. The fact that we moved to the citys most prestigious shopping area and we are surrounded by the most important luxury brands seems to be a winning choice for the brand.

At the same time, Aspesi is expanding its retail footprint in Italy with the opening of a flagship in Verona, and in France with a franchised shop in Saint-Tropez.

The wholesale channel continues to contribute to the lions share of Aspesis total business, accounting for 60 percent of its turnover. This is going to be such a key year for our wholesale business, since beginning in June we will present our clients the first collections designed by creative director Lawrence Steele, said Clemenza.

In November, Steele, who worked as a design consultant for Aspesi for 13 years, from 2004 to 2017, was named creative director, a new role for the brand. The designer joined Aspesi from Marni, where he worked as associate creative director supporting Francesco Risso.

We are so excited to have Lawrence on board. From what Ive started to see, I believe he is interpreting Aspesis understated, effortless elegance at best, said Clemenza. I think that it was finally time for the brand to give voice to a creative director who can set a direction and communicate it at many levels.

According to Clemenza, Steele who is American, will also help boost the international visibility of the label. Aspesi, for example, has recently signed with a high-end distributor to expand its wholesale business in North America.

Aspesi, which is controlled by investment fund Armonia Sgr, closed 2019 with revenues of 46 million euros, up 10 percent over the two-year period 2017 to 2019. Figures for the 2020 fiscal year are not available yet, according to Clemenza.

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International

Leaders of Russia and China tighten their grips, grow closer

MOSCOW, APR 7 (AP) | Publish Date: 4/7/2021 1:18:28 PM IST

Theyre not leaders for life  not technically, at least. But in political reality, the powerful tenures of Chinas Xi Jinping and, as of this week, Russias Vladimir Putin are looking as if they will extend much deeper into the 21st century  even as the two superpowers whose destinies they steer gather more clout with each passing year.

Whats more, as they consolidate political control at home, sometimes with harsh measures, theyre working together more substantively than ever in a growing challenge to the West and the worlds other superpower, the United States, which elects its leader every four years.

This week, Putin signed a law allowing him to potentially hold onto power until 2036. The 68-year-old Russian president, who has been in power for more than two decades  longer than any other Kremlin leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin  pushed through a constitutional vote last year allowing him to run again in 2024 when his current six-year term ends. He has overseen a systematic crackdown on dissent.

In China, Xi, who came to power in 2012, has imposed even tighter controls on the already repressive political scene, emerging as one of his nations most powerful leaders in the seven decades of Communist Party rule that began with Mao Zedongs often-brutal regime.

Under Xi, the government has rounded up, imprisoned or silenced intellectuals, legal activists and other voices, cracked down on Hong Kongs opposition and used security forces to suppress calls for minority rights in Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia.

Xi has sidelined rivals, locked up critics and tightened the partys control over information. An ongoing crackdown against corruption has won popular support while also keeping potential competitors in line.

His steady consolidation of power led to the removal of term limits on the Chinese presidency in 2018, demolishing a convention the party had established to prevent a repeat of the abuse produced by Maos one-person rule.

Xi further telegraphed his intention to remain in power by breaking from tradition and not indicating a preferred successor.

One who appeared eager to take on the role, Sun Zhengcai, was brought down in 2017 and sentenced to life in prison on corruption charges.

And in Russia, Putins most outspoken critic, Alexei Navalny, was arrested in January upon his return from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin  an accusation Russian authorities have denied. In February, Navalny was sentenced to 2 years in prison.

In defying the West, Putin and Xi both have tapped nationalist feelings. Russias 2014 annexation of Ukraines Crimea propelled Putins approval ratings to nearly 90 per cent before they slackened amid economic woes and unpopular pensions reform.

But the impact of Putins and Xis enduring retention of power hardly ends at their respective nations borders. It ripples outward into the geopolitical balance of power in countless ways.

As Moscows relations with the West sank to post-Cold War lows amid accusations of election meddling and hacking attacks, Putin has increasingly sought to strengthen ties with China.

And while China so far has avoided a showdown with the West like Russias, it is coming under growing pressure from Washington and its allies over Beijings human rights record in Xinjiang, Hong Kong and the South China Sea.

U.S. President Joe Biden has taken an increasingly tough line with both leaders, recently describing Putin as a killer and having his top national security aides excoriate China for a litany of issues.

Such approaches suggest that Moscow and Beijing will have incentives to build an even stronger alliance.

Like their nations, the two leaders themselves have fostered a closer relationship, too.

Putin and Xi have developed strong personal ties to bolster a strategic partnership between the two former Communist rivals as they vie with the West for influence.

And even though Moscow and Beijing in the past rejected the possibility of forging a military alliance, Putin said last fall that such a prospect cant be ruled out entirely.

While both Putin and Xi each appear to be firmly entrenched, numerous challenges persist. The pandemic, for one, posed a major challenge for both rulers, and they took a similarly cautious approach when it struck.

Putin responded last spring by introducing a sweeping six-week lockdown that severely hurt the already weak Russian economy. His approval rating plummeted to a historic low of 59%. Later, the government eased restrictions and steered clear from new lockdowns, helping reduce economic damage and shore up Putins ratings.

Xi remained out of the public eye in the first uncertain weeks, possibly fearing that any misstep could have given rivals a chance to topple him. In the end, China controlled the pandemic better than many other places, enhancing Xis position as leader.

Xi must also figure out how to satisfy ambitious young politicians who may see their careers being stymied by his lengthy tenure. And he has to demonstrate that his extended rule will not lead to the excesses of the Mao years, especially the disastrous and deeply traumatic 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.

Xi has to manage an essential paradox. He venerates Mao and is building the same cult of personality and centrality of the party, said Daniel Blumenthal, director of Asian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
Membership in Forbes magazines annual ranking of the worlds billionaires has swelled by nearly a third, but theres no need to check to see if you made it.

No one new from San Antonio cracked the list. So, once again, the number of billionaires who call San Antonio home remains firmly stuck at three.

Heading the list of San Antonio residents in the no-longer-so-exclusive club is Christopher Kit Goldsbury, 78, the Silver Ventures owner who hit the jackpot when he sold salsa maker Pace Foods to Campbell Soup for about $1.1 billion in 1994.

Forbes calculated Goldsburys net worth at $1.7 billion, unchanged from last year. Nevertheless, his ranking tumbled 566 spots from 1,267 last year to tied for 1,833 this year.

Thats likely due in part to an unprecedented explosion in the number of newly minted billionaires.

Forbes reported 660 new people joined the billionaires party, pushing membership up to 2,755. Apparently, the pandemic didnt rain on everybodys parade.

San Antonios two other billionaires  Dr. James Leininger, 76, and B.J. Red McCombs, 93  came in tied at 2,035 with a net worth of $1.5 billion.

More for you Business 17 Houston business owners make Forbes 2021 World...

For Leininger, the founder of wound-care company Kinetic Concepts Inc., his net worth was flat in comparison with 2020 when he was ranked as the 1,415 richest person on the list. Kinetic Concepts Inc. was rebranded as Acelity Inc., which was acquired by 3M Co. in 2019.

Auto magnate McCombs net worth rose $100 million from last year when he was 1,513 on the list. Still, his net worth is off from $1.6 billion just a few years ago. McCombs built a network of 55 car dealerships thats now down to 12, Forbes reported.

H-E-B Chairman and CEO Charles Butt, 83, is not on the list because the magazine doesnt separate his fortune from the rest of his family. Forbes earlier this year calculated the familys net worth at $17.8 billion.

Gayle Benson, 74, the widow of Tom Benson  who amassed some of his wealth in San Antonio car dealerships and banking before moving to New Orleans in the 1980s  landed at 891 on Forbes list with a $3.5 billion fortune. Tom Benson died at age 90 in 2018.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos retained the title of the worlds richest man, registering a staggering net worth of $177 billion. Thats a nearly 57 percent increase from 2020 when his wealth was calculated at $113 billion.

Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk rocketed to second on the list from 31 a year ago. His net worth has climbed to $151 billion  or more than 500 percent from $24.6 billion last year.

Some notable Texans on the the list include Landrys and Houston Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta, whose $4.6 billion net worth placed him 622 on the list.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban wasnt far behind Fertitta, ranking 655 with a net worth of $4.4 billion.

pdanner@express-news.net
Chinese lawmakers submit 8,993 proposals to legislative session

Xinhua) 13:36, April 07, 2021

Deputies to the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) leave the Great Hall of the People after the closing meeting of the fourth session of the 13th NPC in Beijing, capital of China, March 11, 2021. (Xinhua/Li He)

BEIJING, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Deputies to the fourth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC), China's national legislature, submitted a total of 8,993 proposals during the annual session earlier this March, according to data made public on Tuesday.

The proposals centered on current priorities in economic and social development and bottleneck problems the country faces in the endeavor. So said a meeting on the proposal handling, criticisms, and opinions put forward by national lawmakers.

Addressing the forum, Wang Chen, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and vice chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, urged all-out efforts to respond to every proposal piece.

After being categorized, the proposals were handed over to 194 state organs for further replies, according to the meeting.

Wang stressed that hot-button issues affecting people's immediate interests should be well addressed in handling the proposals.

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Bianji)
Catalina Names HR Leaders in US and Japan

Shopper intelligence specialist Catalina has appointed Joy Linsday and Kanako Takano to oversee its Human Resources (HR) in the US and Japan, respectively.



Catalina, which has operations in the US, Costa Rica, Europe and Japan, uses its real-time shopper database to help CPG brands, retailers and agencies optimize every stage of media planning, execution and measurement. Linsday joins as Senior Vice President of People & Culture, overseeing HR worldwide, with a primary focus on the US; and she has also been appointed as a member of the company's Executive Leadership Team. She was previously SVP of Human Resources at healthcare tech company Zelis Payments, before which, she was Senior HR executive for manufacturing company Liberty Diversified International, and she led HR in the hospitality, healthcare and financial services industries with Carlson Companies, UnitedHealth Group and Ameriprise Financial, respectively. She is now tasked with creating people and culture strategies.



Takano has joined Catalina Japan as Chief Administrative Officer, with responsibility for HR, Operations, and Vendor Management, having most recently served as Director of Japan APAC Service & Operations & Lodging for Expedia Holdings, with previous roles at companies such as Persol Holdings, Adecco, MetLife, Yahoo!, AOL and American Express. She now reports directly to Brett Wayn, President & CEO of Catalina Japan.



Commenting on the appointments, Global President & CEO Wayne Powers said: 'Our talent needs have become more sophisticated in recent years as we've doubled down on delivering real-time shopper intelligence insights and omni-channel capabilities that drive sales and build loyalty for the world's leading brands and retailers through a mix of highly targeted in-store, TV and digital media networks. Joy and Kanako have the experience to ensure we're attracting the strongest, smartest, most innovative people to Catalina, and keeping them here.'



Web site: www.catalina.com .




An Iranian cargo ship believed to be a base for the Revolutionary Guard has been attacked.

Iran's Foreign Ministry confirmed the Tuesday attack on the MV Saviz, which has been anchored in the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen for years.

The assault, which is suspected to have been carried out by Israel, came as Iran and world powers sat down in Vienna for the first talks about the US potentially rejoining a landmark nuclear deal with Tehran and others.

'Fortunately, no casualties were reported ... and technical investigations are underway,' Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said in a statement.

'Our country will take all necessary measures through international authorities.'

Iran's semiofficial Tasnim news agency, believed to be close to the Guard, reported the attack late on Tuesday, saying explosives planted on the hull of the Saviz had exploded.

It did not blame anyone for the attack and said Iranian officials likely would offer more information in the coming days.

In an earlier state TV statement, an anchor cited a New York Times story, which quoted an anonymous US official telling the newspaper that Israel informed America it carried out an attack on Tuesday morning on the vessel.

An Iranian cargo ship believed to be a base for the Revolutionary Guard has been attacked. Iran's Foreign Ministry confirmed the Tuesday attack on the MV Saviz, which has been anchored in the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen for years. Pictured: The Saviz in an October 2020 satellite photo [File photo]

The ship's long presence in the area is believed to be connected to Iran's alleged backing of Houthi rebel forces in Yemen's years long war

In a separate statement, the US military's Central Command only said it was 'aware of media reporting of an incident involving the Saviz in the Red Sea.'

'We can confirm that no U.S. forces were involved in the incident,' the command said. 'We have no additional information to provide.'

Israeli officials declined to comment on the incident when contacted by The Associated Press, as did the Saviz's owner.

However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brought up Iran in a Tuesday speech to his Likud party after being asked to form a government following Israel's recent election.

'We must not go back to the dangerous nuclear deal with Iran, because a nuclear Iran is an existential threat to the state of Israel and a great threat to the security of the entire world,' Netanyahu said.

Israel was not part of the historic nuclear deal signed in 2015 between Iran, the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council - the US, the UK, Russia, China, France - plus Germany and the European Union.

The ship's long presence in the area has been repeatedly criticised by Saudi Arabia, which leads a coalition that is presiding over a bloody intervention into Yemen's years long civil war.

The West and United Nations experts say Iran has provided arms and support to the country's Houthi rebels who are fighting the Saudi-backed government forces.

Iran denies arming the Houthis, though components found in the rebels' weaponry link back to Tehran.

Iran has previously described the Saviz's role as aiding in 'anti-piracy' efforts in the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb strait, a crucial choke point in international shipping.

In his statement, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Khatibzadeh referred to the ship as a commercial vessel.

The Saviz is owned by the state-linked Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines and came to the Red Sea in late 2016, according to ship-tracking data.

In the years since, it has drifted off the Dahlak archipelago, a chain of islands off the coast of the nearby African nation of Eritrea in the Red Sea.

It likely received supply replenishments and switched crew via passing Iranian vessels using the waterway.

Briefing materials from the Saudi military earlier obtained by the AP showed men on the vessel dressed in camouflage, military-style fatigues, as well as small boats capable of ferrying cargo to the Yemeni coast.

That briefing material also included pictures showing a variety of antennas on the vessel that the Saudi government described as unusual for. commercial cargo ship, suggesting it conducted electronic surveillance.

Other images showed that the ship had mounts for .50-caliber machine guns.

The assault on the ship came as Iran and world powers sat down in Vienna for the first talks about the US potentially rejoining a landmark nuclear deal with Tehran and others. Pictured: Iran's Governor to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Kazem Gharib Abadi, leaves after the Iran nuclear talks on Tuesday in Vienna, Austria

The Washington Institute for Near-East Policy has called the Saviz an 'Iranian mothership' in the region, similarly describing it as an intelligence-gathering base and an armoury for the Guard.

Police papers from the institute don't explain how it came to that conclusion, though its analysts routinely have access to Gulf and Israeli military sources.

The Saviz had been under international sanctions until the 2015 nuclear deal, which saw Tehran receive economic relief in exchange for limiting its enrichment of uranium.

The Trump administration later renewed American sanctions on the ship as part of its decision to unilaterally withdraw from the accord.

In June 2019, Saudi Arabia flew a critically ill Iranian off the Saviz after Tehran made a request through the United Nations for assistance.

Amid the wider tensions between the US and Iran, a series of mysterious blasts have targeted ships in the region, including some the US Navy blamed on Iran.

Among the ships damaged recently was an Israeli-owned car carrier in an attack Netanyahu blamed on Iran.

Another was an Iranian cargo ship in the Mediterranean Sea.

Iran also blamed Israel for a recent series of attacks, including a mysterious explosion in July that destroyed an advanced centrifuge assembly plant at its Natanz nuclear facility.

Another is the November killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a top Iranian scientist who founded the Islamic Republic's military nuclear programme two decades ago.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 04:01:21|Editor: huaxia

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People wearing face masks are seen on a street in Havana, Cuba, April 6, 2021. Cuba reported on Tuesday 1,030 new COVID-19 infections in the last day, which confirms a rise in the number of cases on the island, bringing the accumulated total to 81,640, along with four more deaths for a total of 440, the Ministry of Public Health said. (Photo by Joaquin Hernandez/Xinhua)

HAVANA, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Cuba reported on Tuesday 1,030 new COVID-19 infections in the last day, which confirms a rise in the number of cases on the island, bringing the accumulated total to 81,640, along with four more deaths for a total of 440, the Ministry of Public Health said.

Of the new cases, 1,021 were from community transmission, with 437 of them in Havana, which continues to be the epicenter of the pandemic, reported Francisco Duran, national director of hygiene and epidemiology of the ministry.

On Tuesday, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel announced harsher measures to deal with the high incidence rate of COVID-19 in the country, warning via Twitter that a "low awareness of risk is the greatest danger."

"Alarming start of April, with daily average of more than 1,000 cases, mostly in Havana. In the coming hours there will be more drastic measures regarding closure measures, similar to the first outbreak," the president wrote.

Diaz-Canel also noted that "it will take months for Cuba to be completely immunized," calling for greater citizen responsibility "for the sake of our families and the homeland."

The country is currently in intervention trials and Phase III trials of two vaccine candidates against COVID-19, Soberana-02 and Abdala, while three other vaccine projects are in various stages of research. Enditem
Psaki dodges question about Equality Act's implications for Catholics: 'Difference of opinion'

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White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki declined to directly answer a question asking for President Joe Bidens thoughts about the Equality Acts implications for Catholic businesses and individuals who seek to operate in accordance with their deeply held religious beliefs.

EWTN White House Correspondent Owen Jensen asked Psaki about the Equality Act's implications for religious Americans, specifically Catholics, during a White House Press Briefing Tuesday.

What does the president, who we know is Catholic, say to Catholic doctors, Catholic institutions who are fearful that if the Equality Act passes, it has the potential to trample on their conscience rights? What does the president say to those people who are concerned about that? he asked.

Psaki responded by saying that the president has a difference of opinion.

[B]ut he has been a supporter of the Equality Act, and he also is a practicing Catholic and attends church nearly every week, she responded.

Tuesday was not the first time Jensen brought up the Catholic and religious communities concerns about the Equality Act, which would codify discrimination protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity into federal law without clear protections for religious organizations.

At the March 2 press briefing, Jensen told Psaki that pro-life groups were very concerned about the phrase pregnancy discrimination in the Equality Act  that it would force doctors to perform abortions even if it violates their concerns.

There are also concerns the bill would force doctors to perform gender transition surgeries and sterilizations, again, even if it violates their conscience. What does the president, President Biden, say about those concerns? Jensen asked at the time.

Psaki refused to answer Jensens question directly, instead pointing out that the President has been a long supporter of Roe v. Wade and has a consistent belief that [the ruling that made abortion a national right] should be law.

And he will fight to continue to protect that as being law, she said.

Jensen pressed Psaki for Bidens thoughts about conscience concerns, to which she replied, Im just going to state what the presidents policies are.

The Equality Act is a wide-reaching piece of legislation billed as a necessary measure to codify nondiscrimination protections for the LGBT community into federal law. Biden promised to sign the legislation into law during the first 100 days of his administration, which will come to a close on Apr. 30.

Conservatives and religious organizations have raised concerns about several provisions in the Equality Act in addition to those mentioned by Jensen at the White House press conferences.

Specifically, critics of the Equality Act fear that the bill would expand the definition of a public accommodation to include nonprofit entities such as shelters and food banks as well as religious schools.

Should this happen, opponents contend, Christian colleges could be forced to place men who identify as women in womens dormitories.

Additionally, religious employers could be forced to include in their health plans things they might object to, like cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers for children and sex reassignment surgery, warned Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Gregory Baylor.

Unlike most measures similar to the Equality Act passed at the state and local level, the federal legislation does not include religious exemptions.

The Equality Act has already passed the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives on a largely party-line vote. The bill has stalled in the Senate, where most legislation requires 60 votes to pass. Democrats have a narrow 50-50 majority in the upper chamber, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote in favor of the Democrats.

Senate Republicans are expected to unanimously oppose the Equality Act and one Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Opposition to the legislation by all Republicans and Manchin would leave the legislation short of the votes needed for passage.

Biden has repeatedly touted his support for the Equality Act as a presidential candidate. As president, he has highlighted his Catholic faith extensively on the campaign trail.

His support for abortion and embrace of other positions that contradict the Catholic Church's teachings have led to one church official requesting that he refrain from referring to himself as a devout Catholic and some denying him communion.

Despite his divergence from Catholic Church teachings on several important issues, two-thirds of American Catholics think Biden should still be able to receive communion, according to a survey from the Pew Research Center.
Published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, researchers in the Climate Intervention Biology Working Group -- including Jessica Hellmann from the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment -- explored the effect of solar climate interventions on ecology.

Composed of climate scientists and ecologists from leading research universities internationally, the team found that more research is needed to understand the ecological impacts of solar radiation modification (SRM) technologies that reflect small amounts of sunlight back into space. The team focused on a specific proposed SRM strategy -- referred to as stratospheric aerosol intervention (SAI)) -- to create a sulfate aerosol cloud in the stratosphere to reduce a portion of incoming sunlight and radiation. In theory, this cloud could be controlled in size and location.

SAI is like placing tiny reflective particles in the atmosphere to bounce a portion of the solar radiation back to space, so that some of the radiation does not reach -- and warm -- Earth.

The team emphasizes that greenhouse gas emissions reduction and conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem functions must be the priority.

"We are just starting to consider the risks and benefits of geoengineering, and it's critical that we include ecosystems in cost-benefit studies", said Hellmann, director at the U of M Institute on the Environment. "We should only pursue geoengineering if its benefits strongly outweigh its downsides. Because our efforts to stem climate change are modest and slow, the case for considering geoengineering is growing, and this paper represents the ecologists chiming in to the geoengineering conversation."

The complexity of cascading relationships between ecosystems and climate under SAI -- in combination with the timing, amount, length and termination of SAI scenarios -- means that SAI is not a simple thermostat that turns down the heat a couple of degrees. Other potential effects of SAI include shifts in rainfall and increases in surface UV rays. While SAI might cool an overheated Earth, it would not be able to counter all of the effects of rising atmospheric CO2, such as halting ocean acidification.

"When we approach complex questions like these, there is a broad scale, theoretical understanding of the inherent patterns of biodiversity across the surface of Earth, but this understanding is often informed by finer-scale experiments that test the biological and physical mechanisms underlying those patterns," said Phoebe Zarnetske, study co-lead and an associate professor in Michigan State University's Department of Integrative Biology and the Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior program.

"I hope the paper can convince ecologists that research about nature's responses to solar geoengineering is not just important, but also interesting -- touching on core ecological questions about topics as varied as photosynthesis and animal migration," said U of M alum Shan Kothari, who contributed to the study during his time at the College of Biological Sciences before going to the University of Montreal.

Kothari said that an example of how other scientists can consider the study's findings is to contemplate the unique conditions resulting from solar geoengineering scenarios that may aid or impede the ability for ecosystems to store carbon. He added that such research could help the international community consider solar geoengineering with a stronger awareness of the potential risks and benefits involved.

###

The study's co-lead is Jessica Gurevitch, an ecologist at Stony Brook University in New York. This research was funded by the National Science Foundation.
State Rep. Park Cannon, D-Atlanta, is placed into the back of a Georgia State Capitol patrol car after being arrested by Georgia State Troopers at the Georgia State Capitol Building in Atlanta, Thursday, March 25, 2021. (Alyssa Pointer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

Georgia lawmaker Park Cannon will not be prosecuted after her disturbing arrest for knocking on the governors door in a voting rights protest.

The Black state representative was arrested and dragged off the state capitol grounds while protesting the signing of a sweeping Republican-backed overhaul of state elections.

A district attorney in Atlanta has now announced that she will not pursue charges against Ms Cannon for the incident that saw her handcuffed and taken away by police.

After reviewing all of the evidence, I have decided to close this matter, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said in a statement.

It will not be presented to a grand jury for consideration of indictment, and it is now closed.

Read more:

Ms Cannon, a Democrat from Atlanta, was arrested on 25 March after knocking on the door to Governor Brian Kemps office as he was speaking on live television about the voting bill he had just signed into law.

While some of Representative Cannons colleagues and the police officers involved may have found her behaviour annoying, such sentiment does not justify a presentment to a grand jury of the allegations in the arrest warrants or any other felony charges.

Police charged her with obstruction of law enforcement and disruption of the General Assembly and she was released from jail later in the day.

Democrats and voting rights groups have condemned the passage of the bill as they say the law will disproportionately disenfranchise voters of colour.

The new law includes identification requirements for absentee ballots, limits the use of drop boxes and criminalises giving voters in line water or food.

Story continues

It has been harshly criticized by Joe Biden and resulted in a string of lawsuits from civil rights groups.

Major businesses in the state have also added their voices to the widespread criticism of the law, introduced by Republicans after Mr Bidens win in November and the loss of two US Senate seats in January.

The legislation is one of a wave of GOP-backed election bills introduced in states around the country after former President Donald Trump stoked false fraud claims regarding the 2020 election.

Following the election in November, Mr Trump refused to accept his loss by about 12,000 votes in Georgia, long a Republican stronghold.
Dozens of industrial zone projects in 13 cities and provinces covering have been approved in the first quarter, promising thousands of hectares of new space for investors over the coming years.

The new industrial zones will be able to accommodate the rising investment demand across the country.

The northern province of Bac Ninh has the most new industrial zone (IZ) projects this year, with a total of five new projects. Of these, Gia Binh II and Que Vo III's subdivision 2 have received in-priciple approval in March. Que Vo III IZ will have an area of 208.54 hectares with a total investment of VND2.78 trillion ($120.87 million). Gia Binh II IZ will have an area of 250ha and is developed by Hanaka Group with the total investment of VND3.96 trillion ($172.17 million).

In fact, Bac Ninh has been home to numerous giants like Samsung, Canon, Nokia, and Pepsico for a long time while Amazon and Home Depot are just now setting eyes on the location and tech giant Google has already chosen the province to invest and produce its Google Pixel phones. Additionally, local corporations like Vinamilk, Vinasoy, and Kinh Do have also set up bases here.

Besides Bac Ninh, some new IZs in Quang Tri are also quite large. Trieu Phu IZ is the biggest one to be approved in March with a total area of nearly 529ha (in Trieu Phong District) and the total investment of VND4.534 trillion ($197.13 million).

Meanwhile, Quang Tri IZ (Hai Lang District) will have an area of 481.2ha and the total investment of VND2.074 trillion ($90.17 million). It is developed by a joint venture of three investors, including Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park (VSIP), Amata City Bien Hoa JSC, and Sumitomo Corporation.

Another new IZ in Quang Tri Province  Tay Bac Ho Xa IZ (Vinh Linh District)  will stretch across an area of 214.77ha with a total investment of VND925 billion ($40.2 million).

Vinh Phuc also has several large-scale new IZs with a total investment value of more than VND1.5 trillion ($65.2 million) for nearly 500ha of space, including Song Lo, Tam Duong I, and Thai Hoa-Lien Son-Lien Hoa.

In addition to these three provinces, Hai Duong, Vinh Long, Quang Nam, Thua Thien-Hue, Nam Dinh, and Nghe An all have large-scale IZs that were approved by the prime minister in March.

As of the end of February 2021, there were 370 IZs across the country, covering an area of 115,200ha, according to the Ministry of Planning and Investment. 328 of these are operating outside economic zones (EZs), 24 are in coastal EZs, and eight are in border EZs. They create around 3.65 million direct jobs in total.

VIR
Homeowners of America Insurance Company (HOAIC), a property and casualty insurance provider, is pleased to announce that Don Capik has joined the company as a Territory Sales Manager in Georgia.

Capik brings over 22 years of insurance industry experience to HOAIC after spending his most recent time with AAA Insurance. In addition to his insurance background, Capik has a solid working knowledge of Georgia as he helped AAA launch their products in the state, beginning in 2015. He is charged with helping to expand the HOAICs strategic growth in the region.

HOAIC Vice President, Director of Sales and Marketing, Michael Cox, said We are very excited to be adding such an experienced and knowledgeable insurance professional to the team at Homeowners of America. Don will be instrumental in continuing to build our partner agent base and increasing our production in the great state of Georgia.

Georgia was the fifth state where the Texas-based company began actively writing policies in January of 2018.

Capik will be based in the Atlanta area, managing the development of new and existing independent agency relationships throughout the state.

About Homeowners of America Insurance Company

Homeowners of America Insurance Company (HOAIC) is based in Irving, Texas. The company provides property and casualty insurance in Texas, Arizona, Illinois, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia and insures over 230,000 homes. HOAIC has been assigned a Financial Stability Rating of A, Exceptional by Demotech, Inc. For more information, visit https://hoaic.com.
Since the first day of the trial of Derek Chauvin, it has been one of the central arguments in his defense: that the bystanders who witnessed George Floyds arrest last May in Minneapolis also influenced Mr. Chauvins actions.

On Wednesday, Eric J. Nelson, a lawyer for Mr. Chauvin, returned again to the crowd of people who had gathered outside Cup Foods and watched Mr. Chauvin kneel on Mr. Floyd, their voices raised and their cellphones recording. Mr. Nelson repeated insults that had been heard on videos from that day and suggested that the bystanders made up an aggressive and unpredictable group.

Asked if the crowd was growing more excited, a use-of-force expert for the prosecution, Sgt. Jody Stiger of the Los Angeles Police Department, answered, They became more concerned.

Police policies generally advise how officers should react when they are being heckled by bystanders or filmed with smartphones, an increasingly common occurrence, said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a nonprofit in Washington.
People reviewing their retirement plans as the new financial year gets under way are being warned to watch out for online pension scammers (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

People reviewing their retirement plans as the new financial year gets under way are being warned to watch out for online pension scammers.

Pensions Minister Guy Opperman, who issued the warning, said some tech companies must do more to crack down on scam adverts.

The 2021/22 financial year started on April 6.

Mr Opperman said: Scammers who steal peoples hard-earned savings are the lowest of the low and the Government is working closely with its partners on the best ways to combat, and raise awareness of, pension fraud.

I have been very clear that some tech companies are failing pension savers; they must do more to crack down on scam adverts and should use their existing powers to verify advertisers and stop taking money from fraudsters who are online scammers using their site to promote fake adverts.

Expand Close Pensions Minister Guy Opperman said tech companies should do more to crack down on scam adverts (David Mirzoeff/PA) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Pensions Minister Guy Opperman said tech companies should do more to crack down on scam adverts (David Mirzoeff/PA)

My message to savers is simple: If you are considering making changes to your finances and retirement planning this new tax year  stay on your guard, and speak to a legitimate independent financial adviser or consult Pension Wise, which is free and independent.

The Work and Pensions Committee recently said an online free-for-all has allowed scammers to advertise while tech giants line their pockets.

It said tech firms such as Google are accepting payment to advertise scams and then further payments from regulators to publish warnings

In response to the committees report, Google said it takes dishonest business practices and misleading ads very seriously and consider them to be a violation of its policies.

Google said previously that, last year, it updated its financial services policies and removed 3.1 billion bad ads from its platforms, of which 123 million were ads related to financial services.

The Government said that in a recent meeting with Google, Mr Opperman had urged the tech giant to use existing powers to verify advertisers and stop online scammers using its site to promote fake adverts.

New powers in the Pension Schemes Act will contain measures to empower pension schemes to take action where they suspect scam activity, and to require members to take guidance if they wish to make certain transfers.

The measures will enable trustees to prevent a transfer in certain circumstances  such as when the transfer is raising red flags, triggered by who is involved in the transfer.

These protections are part of wider measures to protect consumers from pension scams, including the ramping up of communications with those over-50 about their choices ahead of retirement.

Here are the Governments tips to avoid pension scams:

 Be wary of offers found online. Some adverts hosted by tech giants can be fake or link to dodgy offers.

 Scammers often approach unannounced  by phone, email, social media, text, letter or even on your doorstep. In 2019, the Government banned cold calling in relation to pensions so all unexpected calls, emails and text messages should be treated with extreme caution.

 If someone appears out of the blue, and offers a free pension review, be wary. Offers or mentions of one-off investments, time-limited offers, up-front cash incentives, legal loopholes or even government initiatives can be pension scam warning signs.

 If you receive an offer of high returns, perhaps of 7%, 8% or higher, but only if you transfer immediately, this should set alarm bells ringing.
New Delhi: The Nitish Kumar-led government has announced a gift for the guest teachers in Bihar which would get them more money for every class they take.

As per a media report, the Bihar government has increased the pay of guest teachers and part-time teachers of all universities and colleges in the state for every session they take. The report claimed that the guest teachers' pay has now been increased from Rs 1,000 per class to Rs 1,500 per class.

The decision was reportedly taken in a cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Tuesday (April 6, 2021), where 7 others proposals were also approved.

This is to be noted that these guest teachers are selected for a period of 11 months, by the committee constituted under the Vice-Chancellor.

Nitish Kumar also held a high-level review meeting on the COVID-19 situation, he directed officials to conduct coronavirus tests of all the frontline and health care workers and also of their relatives who come in contact with them.

The Bihar Chief Minister said that the maximum amount of testing should be done and only a limited number of people should get involved in public events. He also asked officials to keep the arrangement of the quarantine centres ready at the block level.


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HONG KONG (dpa-AFX) - Japan will on Thursday see March results for its monthly eco watchers survey, highlighting a busy day for Asia-Pacific economic activity. In February, the survey for current conditions had a score of 41.3 and the outlook was at 51.3.



Japan also will see February figures for its current account and March numbers for its consumer confidence index. The current account is tipped to see a surplus of 1.966 trillion yen following the 646.8 billion yen surplus in January. In February, the consumer confidence index saw a score of 33.8.



Hong Kong will see March results for its private sector PMI from Markit Economics; in February, the index score was 50.0.



Taiwan will release March numbers for consumer and wholesale prices; in February, consumer prices were down 0.08 percent on month and up 1.37 percent on year, while wholesale prices dipped an annual 0.35 percent.



Indonesia will provide February figures for retail sales; in January, sales were down 16.4 percent on year.



Thailand will see March results for its consumer confidence index; in February, the index score was 49.4.



The Philippines will release February figures for imports, exports, trade balance and industrial production. In January, imports were down 14.9 percent on year, while exports fell an annual 5.2 percent, the trade deficit was $2.421 billion and industrial production tumbled 21.1 percent on year.



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Mumbai, April 7 : Actor Sonu Sood on Wednesday took the vaccine for Covid-19 prevention at a hospital in Amritsar, Punjab.

The actor also launched "Sanjeevani: A Shot of Life", an initiative to encourage people to get vaccinated and raise awareness.

Speaking about the same, Sonu Sood said: "I wanted to start this drive because I feel it is very important to bring that awareness among people who are still thinking whether they should get vaccinated or not. Family members should push their elder ones, people who are eligible to get vaccinated. It will only help them survive the times we are facing in the near future."

"We are doing this in many districts and a lot of villages in Punjab and different states. The awareness is not much and they still have double thoughts whether they should get vaccinated or not. That's why I wanted to get vaccinated in front of everyone and send the message across that don't think twice. We will get a lot of camps done. This is a movement that we are trying to start to increase awareness," he added.

The initiative is a CSR drive that intends to reach Indian citizens with relevant information about the Covid-19 prevention vaccine.

--IANS abh/vnc

Sent from my iPhone

-- Syndicated from IANS
This artist's conception shows the brilliant light of two quasars residing in the cores of two galaxies that are in the chaotic process of merging. The gravitational tug-of-war between the two galaxies stretches them, forming long tidal tails and igniting a firestorm of starbirth. Quasars are brilliant beacons of intense light from the centers of distant galaxies. They are powered by supermassive black holes voraciously feeding on infalling matter. This feeding frenzy unleashes a torrent of radiation that can outshine the collective light of billions of stars in the host galaxy. In a few tens of millions of years, the black holes and their galaxies will merge, and so will the quasar pair, forming an even more massive black hole. A similar sequence of events will happen a few billion years from now when our Milky Way galaxy merges with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy. CREDIT NASA, ESA, and J. Olmsted (STScI)

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is "seeing double." Peering back 10 billion years into the universe's past, Hubble astronomers found a pair of quasars that are so close to each other they look like a single object in ground-based telescopic photos, but not in Hubble's crisp view.

The researchers believe the quasars are very close to each other because they reside in the cores of two merging galaxies. The team went on to win the "daily double" by finding yet another quasar pair in another colliding galaxy duo.

A quasar is a brilliant beacon of intense light from the center of a distant galaxy that can outshine the entire galaxy. It is powered by a supermassive black hole voraciously feeding on inflating matter, unleashing a torrent of radiation.

"We estimate that in the distant universe, for every 1,000 quasars, there is one double quasar. So finding these double quasars is like finding a needle in a haystack," said lead researcher Yue Shen of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The discovery of these four quasars offers a new way to probe collisions among galaxies and the merging of supermassive black holes in the early universe, researchers say.

Quasars are scattered all across the sky and were most abundant 10 billion years ago. There were a lot of galaxy mergers back then feeding the black holes. Therefore, astronomers theorize there should have been many dual quasars during that time.

"This truly is the first sample of dual quasars at the peak epoch of galaxy formation with which we can use to probe ideas about how supermassive black holes come together to eventually form a binary," said research team member Nadia Zakamska of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

The team's results appeared in the April 1 online issue of the journal Nature Astronomy.

Shen and Zakamska are members of a team that is using Hubble, the European Space Agency's Gaia space observatory, and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, as well as several ground-based telescopes, to compile a robust census of quasar pairs in the early universe.

The observations are important because a quasar's role in galactic encounters plays a critical part in galaxy formation, the researchers say. As two close galaxies begin to distort each other gravitationally, their interaction funnels material into their respective black holes, igniting their quasars.

Over time, radiation from these high-intensity "light bulbs" launch powerful galactic winds, which sweep out most of the gas from the merging galaxies. Deprived of gas, star formation ceases, and the galaxies evolve into elliptical galaxies.

"Quasars make a profound impact on galaxy formation in the universe," Zakamska said. "Finding dual quasars at this early epoch is important because we can now test our long-standing ideas of how black holes and their host galaxies evolve together."

Astronomers have discovered more than 100 double quasars in merging galaxies so far. However, none of them is as old as the two double quasars in this study.

The Hubble images show that quasars within each pair are only about 10,000 light-years apart. By comparison, our Sun is 26,000 light-years from the supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy.

The pairs of host galaxies will eventually merge, and then the quasars also will coalesce, resulting in an even more massive, single solitary black hole.

Finding them wasn't easy. Hubble is the only telescope with vision sharp enough to peer back to the early universe and distinguish two close quasars that are so far away from Earth. However, Hubble's sharp resolution alone isn't good enough to find these dual light beacons.

Astronomers first needed to figure out where to point Hubble to study them. The challenge is that the sky is blanketed with a tapestry of ancient quasars that flared to life 10 billion years ago, only a tiny fraction of which are dual. It took an imaginative and innovative technique that required the help of the European Space Agency's Gaia satellite and the ground-based Sloan Digital Sky Survey to compile a group of potential candidates for Hubble to observe.

Located at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, the Sloan telescope produces three-dimensional maps of objects throughout the sky. The team pored through the Sloan survey to identify the quasars to study more closely.

The researchers then enlisted the Gaia observatory to help pinpoint potential double-quasar candidates. Gaia measures the positions, distances, and motions of nearby celestial objects very precisely. But the team devised a new, innovative application for Gaia that could be used for exploring the distant universe. They used the observatory's database to search for quasars that mimic the apparent motion of nearby stars. The quasars appear as single objects in the Gaia data. However, Gaia can pick up a subtle, unexpected "jiggle" in the apparent position of some of the quasars it observes.

The quasars aren't moving through space in any measurable way, but instead their jiggle could be evidence of random fluctuations of light as each member of the quasar pair varies in brightness. Quasars flicker in brightness on timescales of days to months, depending on their black hole's feeding schedule.

This alternating brightness between the quasar pair is similar to seeing a railroad crossing signal from a distance. As the lights on both sides of the stationary signal alternately flash, the sign gives the illusion of "jiggling."

When the first four targets were observed with Hubble, its crisp vision revealed that two of the targets are two close pairs of quasars. The researchers said it was a "light bulb moment" that verified their plan of using Sloan, Gaia, and Hubble to hunt for the ancient, elusive double powerhouses.

Team member Xin Liu of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign called the Hubble confirmation a "happy surprise." She has long hunted for double quasars closer to Earth using different techniques with ground-based telescopes. "The new technique can not only discover dual quasars much further away, but it is much more efficient than the methods we've used before," she said.

Their Nature Astronomy article is a "proof of concept that really demonstrates that our targeted search for dual quasars is very efficient," said team member Hsiang-Chih Hwang, a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University and the principal investigator of the Hubble program. "It opens a new direction where we can accumulate a lot more interesting systems to follow up, which astronomers weren't able to do with previous techniques or datasets."

The team also obtained follow-up observations with the National Science Foundation NOIRLab's Gemini telescopes. "Gemini's spatially-resolved spectroscopy can unambiguously reject interlopers due to chance superpositions from unassociated star-quasar systems, where the foreground star is coincidentally aligned with the background quasar," said team member Yu-Ching Chen, a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Although the team is convinced of their result, they say there is a slight chance that the Hubble snapshots captured double images of the same quasar, an illusion caused by gravitational lensing. This phenomenon occurs when the gravity of a massive foreground galaxy splits and amplifies the light from the background quasar into two mirror images. However, the researchers think this scenario is highly unlikely because Hubble did not detect any foreground galaxies near the two quasar pairs.

Galactic mergers were more plentiful billions of years ago, but a few are still happening today. One example is NGC 6240, a nearby system of merging galaxies that has two and possibly even three supermassive black holes. An even closer galactic merger will occur in a few billion years when our Milky Way galaxy collides with neighboring Andromeda galaxy. The galactic tussle would likely feed the supermassive black holes in the core of each galaxy, igniting them as quasars.

Future telescopes may offer more insight into these merging systems. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, an infrared observatory scheduled to launch later this year, will probe the quasars' host galaxies. Webb will show the signatures of galactic mergers, such as the distribution of starlight and the long streamers of gas pulled from the interacting galaxies.

###

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C.

Artist's Illustration: NASA, ESA, and J. Olmsted (STScI)

Science: NASA, ESA, Y. Shen and X. Liu (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), and H.-C. Hwang and N. Zakamska (Johns Hopkins University)

Please follow SpaceRef on Twitter and Like us on Facebook.


After the Indian governments recent statement about giving the Covid-19 vaccine to those who need it, and not want it, filmmaker and Scam 1992 director Hansal Mehta has reacted to the news via a Twitter post. Sharing a picture of his 25-year-old son Pallava, who suffers from Down Syndrome, Hansal Mehta tweeted, My son Pallava is 25 years old. He has Downs Syndrome. He has suffered from a near fatal respiratory failure a few years ago. Does he want the vaccine or does he need it? My son Pallava is 25 years old. He has Downs Syndrome. He has suffered from a near fatal respiratory failure a few years ago. Does he want the vaccine or does he need it? pic.twitter.com/zG5wuIa2t1  Hansal Mehta (@mehtahansal) April 7, 2021




Syracuse, N.Y. -- Eleven Onondaga County school districts will be able to offer all-day Pre-K, starting next school year.

The state budget passed last night includes $90 million to fully fund all-day Pre-K in districts that have not been offering the program, which combines child care with kindergarten preparedness, that families do not have to pay for.

The state pays for a certain number of slots; it will not be free full-day Pre-K for all. The qualification for receiving the slots are unclear. There are 210 districts in the state that will receive money for Pre-K slots.

The Onondaga County districts are Skaneateles, Westhill, West Genesee, Baldwinsville, Fabius-Pompey, Jamesville-DeWitt, Fayetteville-Manlius, Marcellus, Tully, Liverpool and North Syracuse.

None of them were offering all-day Pre-K this past year.

At least two Onondaga County districts are planning to pass up the money. Westhill will not be taking the money or adding the Pre-K program, said Steve Smith, the districts assistant superintendent for business. His district is slated to receive money for 44 Pre-K slots.

Jamesville-DeWitt also will be turning down the money, said Superintendent Peter Smith. The district is slated to receive $388,800, funding for 72 slots.

Smith said he didnt hear about the Pre-K money until the budget was announced and the district isnt prepared to start a Pre-K program from scratch before the next school year starts.

Starting a Pre-K program is a significant undertaking, Smith said.

Below is the number of slots created and the funding amount for each district in Onondaga County:

Baldwinsville, 118, $674,960

Fabius-Pompey, 20, $128,320

Fayetteville-Manlius, 84, $453,600

Jamesville-Dewitt, 72, $388,800

Liverpool, 143, $908,050

Marcellus, 25, $147,400

North Syracuse,179, $1,119,287

Skaneateles, 22, $118,800

Tully, 20, $122,240

West Genesee, 107, $598,344

Westhill, 44, $243,584

See the entire state list here:
The funeral of a mum who lost her husband and two sons in horrific murder-double in Kanturk is to be held on Friday.

Ms O'Sullivan (61), who passed away after a long battle against illness, lost her husband and two sons to an horrific murder-double suicide just six months ago.

Her funeral service will be held on Friday at 1.30pm in the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Kanturk, Co Cork.

Residents who had already been left marked by the Kanturk tragedy that befell their small communities will be very upset following the death of Anne O'Sullivan, a local councillor for the area has said.

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She was already battling a long-term health condition when her husband, Tadg (59) and youngest son, Diarmuid (23), fatally confronted her eldest son, Mark (25) in a dispute over a 2m Cork farm inheritance.

It is understood from local sources that she died in the early hours of this morning after being cared for in a hospice over recent times.

Cllr James Kennedy who said he had heard the news only a few moments ago described it as just tragic.

What happened there in Kanturk, you know, it would leave a mark on anyone, Cllr Kennedy said. We can only pray for her and the family.

Its a human tragedy on so many levels. Its still so difficult to comprehend.

"I don't think it's something you could comprehend, it's just beyond reason.

As humans were all frail and it's a very narrow line that we travel sometimes between reason and unreason. (But something like this) really rips through a community, particularly close communities like that.

You have to try and be resilient and deal with the matter as best you can.

"Buts it an awful blow for any community to suffer.

"Here in Mallow people were absolutely shocked, and still are, so this (Ms OSullivan passing away) is very, very sad.

Cllr Kennedy said that while he didnt know the family involved personally, the tragedy had affected everyone in the area.

I am a councillor for the Mallow electoral area and Kanturk would be just outside my domain, he said, but its not very far, it's only down the road actually from Mallow.

We look upon ourselves as kindred towns, theres a connectivity between Mallow and Kanturk.

People in Mallow still stop me and talk about it, he added.

I was having a chat with some of my friends there only a week ago and it came up in the conversation.

"People just cannot comprehend, you know, the tragedy that has unfolded

I think this lady passing will be at the forefront of people's minds now. I know people will be very, very upset.

"Its very sad. Well be praying for the family and praying for the lady.

It might have been a small mercy actually because the weight of that on any human being, and a wonderful human being like her, you know, its bound to have maybe shortened her life.

She was so brave to carry on and try her best but something like that would impact on any human being, no matter how strong or resilient you are.

On October 26, Tadg and Diarmuid are believed to have confronted Mark in the bedroom of the family home at Assolas outside Kanturk in north Cork and shot him multiple times.

Anne, who was also in the farmhouse, ran to a neighbour's house to raise the alarm.

Mrs O'Sullivan had only returned to the Assolas farmhouse some 36 hours before the tragedy having travelled to a medical appointment in Dublin with her eldest son.

The mother of two - who worked for years as a nurse at Mt Alvernia Hospital outside Mallow - attended both the Requiem Mass of Tadg and Diarmuid and later the Requiem Mass of her son, Mark.

Mark, a trainee solicitor, was hailed as "the greatest son a mother could have."

His Requiem Mass heard that "the bond between them (Anne and Mark) was unbreakable."

"Mark had such a big heart and so much love to give...I can't imagine how much effort and love he put into being Anne's son," his best friend Sharmilla said.

No funeral arrangements have been confirmed.
It has just recently been learned that a third wind farm, known as Lissinagroagh Wind Farm, is planned for the Manorhamilton area. It is to be built and operated by Coillte Renewable Energy and will provide for up to 20 wind turbines.

Relatively nearby, the Manorhamilton area has the Carrickeeny Wind Farm in Glencar, owned by the Swedish conglomerate and ready to assemble furniture producer, IKEA, and the Gaelectric Wind Farm in Faughery Mullies, owned by Chinese financiers.

In its submission for the Lissinagroagh Wind Farm, Coillte Renewable Energy state onshore wind energy for Ireland makes sense for many reasons. It is a clean fuel source that does not pollute the air like power plants that rely on the combustion of fossil fuels, such as coal or natural gas.

Unlike conventional power plants, wind turbines do not produce atmospheric emissions that cause acid rain or greenhouse gases. Wind energy is a free domestic natural resource, produced in abundance in Ireland.

Coillte Renewable Energy also claim there are good annual average wind speeds in the (Lissinagroagh Wind Farm) Study Area.

The site is located where there are existing turbines. It is considered that the landscape can accommodate additional wind turbine development.

The above is just a tiny amount of the Coillte Renewable Energy information about the proposed Lissinagroagh Wind Farm that its Project team has provided in its recent newsletter that many Manorhamilton area residents have received.

Regarding the newsletter Coillte Renewable Energy say we would encourage and welcome your input and comments in this Newsletter.

If you would like to be added to our mailing list to receive project updates by post or email, please let us know. Please get in touch by email or by phone  phone 1890-800-501, E-mail lissinagroagh@coillte, website www.lissinagroaghwindfarm.ie.

In response to the above invitation from Coillte Renewable Energy local resident and a member of the Lissinagroagh Wind Farm Information Group, Claire OHara states on the Groups Facebook page Coillte want your input, feedback, and comments.

Well give it to them. I am encouraging everyone in our communities who stand to be affected by this proposed development to contact this number or email your concerns whatever they may be.

Whether its the adverse visual impact on our area, noise pollution from wind turbines, the detrimental effect on our wild life, whatever your concern, now is the time to make your point, Claire believes.

Meantime another Lissinagroagh Wind Farm Information Group member, Joseph Sheerin says  the community in Manorhamilton, Kiltyclogher and Rossinver need to write to Coillte and the (Windfarm) developers and request a public meeting in each community.

The debate about the proposed Lissinagroagh Wind Farm is likely to intensify in the coming weeks and months judging from the concerns expressed by many other members of the Lissinagroagh Wind Farm Information Group on the Groups Facebook page.
A seemingly unfiltered and un-airbrushed photo of Khloe Kardashian surfaced online over the weekend.

The Kardashian PR team are now trying to scrub it from the internet, citing copyright infringement as the photo was posted without approval.

On Wednesday, Sydney radio host Ash London said it's 'really sad' Khloe is trying to delete the unedited photo of herself because she actually looks beautiful in it.

Reaction: Radio host Ash London said it's 'really sad' that Khloe Kardashian is trying to scrub an unfiltered photo of herself from the internet because she actually looks beautiful in it

Ash wrote on Instagram: 'Is anyone else just really sad over Khloe Kardashian's waging war against an unedited photo of herself in a bikini... a photo in which she looks beautiful?

'How are young people expected to love their bodies when this is the message we are sending?'

She continued: 'To be fair... I wouldn't like it if someone posted a photo of me in a bikini I didn't approve... but my sense on this is that the issue she has is that she deems the photo unflattering.'

Viral: A seemingly un-airbrushed photo of Khloe Kardashian surfaced online over the weekend. The Kardashian PR team are now trying to scrub it from the internet, citing copyright infringement as the photo was posted without approval. (This is not the image in question)

The radio personality went on to say that this could have been a 'wonderful opportunity' for Khloe to send a positive message to other women.

She continued: 'Moral of the story? Unless you've seen someone's body in an ill-fitting bikini under those horrendous downlights in the change room... you're not allowed to compare your body to theirs.'

The image in question - which can be viewed here - shows Khloe, 36, standing by a pool wearing a skimpy leopard-print string bikini.

The Good American founder appears unfiltered, un-airbrushed and not as flawless as she looks in campaign shots for her brand.

Soon after it leaked on various forums online, the Kardashian PR team reported the posts as copyright infringement, due to the photo being posted without permission.

Having her say: 'Is anyone else just really sad over Khloe Kardashian's waging war against an unedited photo of herself in a bikini... a photo in which she looks beautiful?' Ash wrote in a lengthy Instagram post

The image seems to have been taken at Kris Jenner's desert compound in La Quinta, California, where the Kardashian and Jenner clan just spent the Easter weekend.

In the alleged unedited picture, Khloe's waistline appears less defined, her curves less dramatic and her skin not as impossibly smooth as it looks in her carefully staged glossy fashion shoots.

Tracy Romulus, Kim Kardashian's BFF and chief marketing officer for KKW brands, said in a statement to Page Six: 'The color edited photo was taken of Khloe during a private family gathering and posted to social media without permission by mistake by an assistant.

'Khloe looks beautiful but it is within the right of the copyright owner to not want an image not intended to be published taken down.'
The Erk (Freedom) Party says it will nominate a candidate to run in Uzbekistans October 24 presidential election, The Diplomat reports. Erk was technically Uzbekistans first registered political party  having been founded in 1990, it filed its registration papers with the Justice Ministry just two days after Uzbekistan declared independence in 1991. But the ensuing years saw the partys leaders harassed, arrested, and fled into exile; the party was not reregistered and lingers in legal limbo, still.

The last time an Uzbek president faced a serious challenger, one seen as legitimate rather than a Potemkin candidate, was in 1991. In that election, Islam Karimov  who had become president of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic the previous year  faced off against Muhammad Solih, a poet and the founder of Erk. The contest, viewed as heavily rigged in Karimovs favor, was the only time Karimov took less than 90 percent of the vote in the final count.

Karimov went on to rule Uzbekistan until his death in 2016; Solih fled Uzbekistan in 1993, under increasing pressure from the government. In 1999, a series of bombings rocked Tashkent. In the aftermath, the Uzbek government alleged that bombings were an assassination attempt on Karimov carried out by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). It also alleged the plot was concocted with Solih. He was tried on extremism charges in absentia and sentenced to 15 years in prison, effectively banning him from ever returning to the country. His brother, Muhammad Bekjanov, was kidnapped in Ukraine and returned to Uzbekistan, where he was sentenced to 15 years. He eventually spent nearly 18 years in prison before being released in 2017.

After the turn of the century, Erk operated quietly. In 2003, the party held a meeting in Tashkent, hailed by RFE/RL at the time as the first time the party has met openly in 10 years.

The matter of reregistration is the hurdle that has kept Erk out of Uzbekistans elections since 1991. Despite hopes that President Shavkat Miriyoyevs reform push would extend to the political realm, that hurdle remains firmly in place for Erk. It was not reregistered ahead of the 2019 parliamentary polls. In January 2020, the partys leader in Tashkent Otanazar Oripov (also spelled Atanazar Arifov in English) led a delegation to meet with Uzbek Minister of Justice Ruslanbek Davletov. Erk sought to resume its activities openly, and finally reregister. Per RFE/RLs report after the meeting, one member of Oripovs delegation, Agzam Turgunov, said Davletov told them, This party is part of the past, forget about it.

Nevertheless, Erk has made clear its hopes to participate in the 2021 presidential election, a challenge for Mirziyoyev to live up to the promises made of allowing space for opposition.

In a statement reported by RFE/RL, the party noted that two of its members  Salovat Umrzoqov and Jahongir Otajonov  have expressed their intentions to run for president. The party, the statement said, has decided to nominate its candidate for the upcoming presidential election.
Opinion Article

7 April 2021

Technology is evolving at a record pace, and these emerging digital technologies are now reshaping traditional business practices. As digital technologies and related data become increasingly prevalent, it is natural that ethical concerns regarding the usage of these technologies arise, especially in situations where the ordinary citizen's private information is involved.

The hospitality industry, in particular, engages in data capturing and data storing on a mass scale. Moreover, digital payment gateways have become a necessity to serve the modern guests, making the processing of sensitive information widespread. Added to that are the increasing expectations of guests for organisations to accommodate their changing preferences. These factors raise several questions and pose a few challenges in maintaining guest relations while upholding the Corporate Digital Responsibility (CDR) in the hospitality arena.

Compliance vs Personalisation

Personal data collection is vitally important in the hospitality industry to enable companies to develop relationships with their customers (Jones and Comfort, 2021). Accenture found that 74% of consumers believed that "living profiles" with more detailed personal preferences would be useful if they were used to curate personalised experiences, products and offers. Gaining a better understanding of customer needs and preferences - or guest intimacy - can enable the delivery of personalised services that will help increase customer satisfaction, lower service costs and improve guest loyalty (Peterson, 2020).

The challenge is that in order to provide a personalised experience, hospitality organisations will have to collect and store a significant amount of personal guest information, a factor that is heavily regulated. In this regard, the most stringent guidelines come from the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in effect since 2018. It imposes strict regulations on any organisation that handles the personal data of EU citizens or residents. As such, the GDPR will apply to hospitality organisations within the EU and those outside the EU if an EU citizen requests their services.

In balancing the conflicting needs of compliance and personalisation, the best approach for hospitality organisations is to be clear and transparent about their data collection. Guests must be informed of the 'when' and 'how' of personal data collection and processing. Given that most guests prefer a personalised experience, they are more likely to consent when they know that their data will only be used to provide them with a better experience.

Ensuring the security and confidentiality of the information gathered to create guest profiles is vital in regulatory compliance. Over the past few years, enterprise cloud technology has taken centre stage with an estimated adoption rate of 72% for private clouds. In choosing a cloud provider, organisations should include ethical considerations as criteria for their software selection and perform corresponding due diligence (Corporate digital responsibility, 2021). In dealing with private cloud solutions, hospitality organisations must ensure that it solely controls the information that it distributes over the cloud and maintains authorisations and access permissions effectively. Service providers like Microsoft Azure contain built-in features that guarantee enhanced security spanning network security, data encryptions and auditing processes. This can allow hospitality organisations to uphold their CDR while leveraging guest data to provide personalised experiences.

Growth of Digital Payments

Hospitality organisations must adopt and facilitate the latest guest trends in order to retain their competitive edge. This means that they must accommodate the surge of advancement in digital payments. A report from Experian in 2019 revealed that 1-in-10 millennials use their digital wallet for every purchase, and McKinsey forecasts mobile commerce to reach 70% by 2022.

However, the rise of digital payment also means an increased risk of cyber-attacks. Most of the high-profile company data breaches that occurred in the past few years have targeted POS systems. A POS or payment card attack is not an attack on the hospitality organisation directly but a third-party crime that attacks the vendor. Nonetheless, the hospitality organisation will also be victimised since the consequences of compromising the security of guest information will be severe.

Good CDR practices involve securing the information collected in every way possible, requiring hospitality organisations to secure quality standards when trying to accommodate changing guest preferences. Organisations must pay attention to security certifications such as PA-DSS when choosing vendors. The certification ensures the development of secure payment applications that do not store prohibited data. Incorporating compliant applications will be an excellent reflection of the hospitality organisation's commitment to providing the guests with an enhanced experience in line with its CDR.

The Extent of Personalisation

The next question regarding CDR and guest relations is, how much personalisation is too much personalisation? In other words, how do you identify the line between customisation and invasion of privacy? Yes, guests prefer a tailored experience, but are they more likely to be thrilled or horrified when you serve them the same drink they ordered at the bar five years ago? Also, is collecting personal data by using social media in accordance with CDR ethics?

First and foremost, hospitality organisations should acknowledge that receiving a personalised experience is a choice the guest has, not a mandate to be imposed on them by hospitality organisations. The approach to CDR and the personalisation strategies all hinge on this choice. Personalisation must be based on information the guest voluntarily provides. To this end, tailoring your guests daily fruits basket based on what they've consumed is a far better approach than going through their Instagram posts to determine their preferences.

The continuous evolution of digital technologies means that the challenges in tackling CDR while maintaining guest relations in hospitality will continue to evolve as well. Nevertheless, given the emerging regulations and privacy concerns of the modern era, hospitality organisations must frame their CDR in consideration of the new technologies, threats, and norms. Establishing a robust system that upholds the organisation's CDR will not only safeguard the reputation of hospitality organisations but also contribute towards creating a healthy digital corporate culture across the industry.
Since its sensational announcement about shutting down the smartphone business, LG seems to be headed in a different direction when it comes to its products. Recently, the South Korean company has released the lineup of the 2021 smart speakers which feature a lot of support for AirPlay 2, as well as Dolby Atmos and DTS:X.

There are five new soundbars that will hit the market soon. The said products will guarantee the users with much smoother sound quality, and a developed multiple channel immersion.

LG 2021 Soundbar Lineup Now Completed

According to a report by Jed John Ikoba of Gizmochina on Wednesday, Apr.7, the upcoming soundbars will provide long-lasting connectivity to other devices. They will also come with eco-friendly packaging and design.

It is also noteworthy to jot down its highly-developed immersion for multi-channels when incorporated with LG's AI Sound Pro technology. You can now also feel the vibe of DTS:X and Dolby Atmos through the emergence of 3D-Audio Technology.

Moreover, the soundbars are reportedly arriving with their boasted sleek appearance which could be an ambient addition for a room. Particularly when they are arranged together with the smart TV, the soundbars could yield an impressive sound output.

Other than that, they would also feature support for voice assistants like Amazon's Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple's Siri, which now welcomes the new voices beside the default female voice. The voice support will also serve more purposes in the smart speakers through instructing clear and convenient commands.

Furthermore, the LG soundbars will also support Bluetooth 5.0, eARC input, and USB. It was also revealed that the models will be Hi-Res audio certified for lossless playback.

Read Also: Samsung Unbox and Discover 2021 Features Micro-LED, Neo QLED TVs & MORE

LG Soundbars Will Also Feature AirPlay2

Apple Insider reported that the three soundbar models, SP11RA, SP9YA, and SP8YA will accentuate an AirPlay 2 support used for streaming. Through this feature, you can now stream from your Apple devices like Mac, iPhone, or iPad.

AirPlay 2 could also control all devices that are connected to the soundbars, and it could also combine with the other smart home speakers for a highly-synced home sound.

On top of that, they also support digital voice assistants, as well as an AI room calibration, which optimizes the audio by estimating the room's dimensions.

LG Soundbars Launch Date and Where

The five smart devices will come to North America and Europe for their global launch in late April. It is also expected that more soundbars will arrive this year.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, the people are forced to stay in the comfort of their homes. This has led to an increased demand for gadgets and devices last year.

While the economies are on the verge of dropping, people should still maintain safety while enjoying what's inside their homes. The introduction of another set of soundbars would help the people to relax for a moment. They could also be useful during virtual meetings since in-person conferences are not allowed now.

Related Article: Microsoft Collaborates with LG to Create 3D Sensing Component for Azure







This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Joen Coronel

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The Chhattisgarh government on Wednesday imposed a total lockdown in the capital Raipur from April 9 in the wake of a steep hike in coronavirus cases.

The lockdown will remain in effect till April 19. Earlier in the day, Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel held a meeting with senior health officials to ensure sufficient availability of hospital beds for coronavirus patients in the state.

Also Read: India records highest-ever single-day spike of 1.15 lakh coronavirus cases

Voicing concern over the rate at which COVID-19 cases and deaths are rising in Chhattisgarh, CM Baghel urged people not to go out of their houses unnecessarily and adhere to safety protocols.

Till Tuesday, the state had registered 3,86,269 coronavirus cases, comprising 4,416 deaths.

Also Read: 50 high-level teams rushed to Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Punjab amid Covid spike

According to official numbers, the total count of active cases in Chhattisgarh stands at 52,445, while 3,29,408 COVID-19 patients have recovered so far.

The state, on Tuesday, logged 9,921 fresh cases, the highest one-day surge since the outbreak of COVID-19 in March last year.
Society, family members help senior citizens gradually adapt to digital economy

People's Daily Online) 13:18, April 07, 2021

More and more senior citizens in China have gradually overcome the digital gap, once considered an obstacle for them in adapting to and embracing the digital economy.

Nowadays, 68-year-old Zhou Yufang, who owns a fruit store in Beijings Chaoyang district, handles cash much less often than she used to, after she started to accept payments on mobile devices. On top of that, online shopping is no longer a difficult thing for her.

A staff member helps a senior citizen check the appointment information on a machine at Beijing Tiantan Hospital under the Capital Medical University in Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 9, 2020. (Xinhua/Chen Zhonghao)

By the end of 2020, about 11.2 percent of Chinas 989 million net users were aged above 60 years old, according to the 47th statistical report on the development of the Internet in China.

To make sure senior citizens are not left behind in the digital society, local governments have intensified efforts to assist them and improved relevant services, such as organizing training courses on the use of smartphones.

To ensure smart devices do not become a barrier in the daily lives of elderly people, universities for the elderly in some cities have opened courses on the use of smartphones targeting senior citizens.

A survey conducted in Shanghai found that people aged between 60 and 70 were very eager to learn how to use smartphones, and would master basic skills such as scanning health QR codes, making mobile payments, ordering car-hailing services and making medical appointments in just a few days, said Ma Chi, a researcher with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

Reports have confirmed that neighborhood committees, nursing homes and villages have held training sessions on the use of smartphones for elderly people, not only in Shanghai, but also in other places including Sichuan, Zhejiang and Anhui provinces.

A report on peoples satisfaction with the services provided to help them better adapt to the digital economy in 2020 indicated that the digital economy played a significant role in boosting the sense of happiness among people aged 65 years old and above.

In particular, being able to use short video platforms and social media makes senior citizens most excited about the digital economy. For them, a smartphone means not only a shorter distance between the vegetable market and their home, but also a tool to keep in contact with friends and relatives all over the world.

In November 2020, the State Council launched an initiative to help seniors bridge the digital divide, introducing a set of measures to help the elderly better adjust to technological innovations.

The countrys central government demanded that smartphones with large screens and fonts, louder audio outputs and greater battery capacities be developed for elderly consumers. It also encouraged companies to roll out "senior modes" for their input methods, focusing on problems such as illiteracy, presbyopia and slow typing speed among elderly users.

However, experts also warn that senior people could easily be taken in by cell phone scammers, and thus suffer economic losses, and suggested that supervisory departments firmly crack down on illegal acts, internet companies develop rumor identification systems and family members of these elderly people make efforts to help them, as measures to jointly protect the rights of senior citizens.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Oil prices were moving lower in European trade on Wednesday as talks to revive a nuclear deal with Iran opened the possibility of an easing of sanctions on its oil exports. The downside was capped by prospects for stronger global growth amid steady progress with coronavirus vaccinations and additional government stimulus. Brent crude futures for June settlement eased 0.2 percent to $62.60 per barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures for May delivery were down 0.4 percent at $59.11. Iran said talks in Vienna on Tuesday aimed at restoring its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers had been 'constructive' and they will continue to discuss ways to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that former U.S. President Donald Trump unilaterally abandoned in May 2018. 'The talks in Vienna were constructive . our next meeting will be on Friday,' Abbas Araghchi, who is leading the Iranian delegation in Vienna, told Press TV. Economic optimism prevails after data showed U.S. job openings rose to a two-year high in February and hiring picked up. Final PMI numbers from Europe were in focus this morning, with the Eurozone's services PMI increasing from 45.7 to 49.6 in March. That was up from a preliminary reading of 48.8. The IHS Markit/CIPS composite Purchasing Managers' Index for U.K. - measuring Britain's huge services sector and its manufacturers - rose to 56.4 in March from 49.6 in February. U.S. crude oil stockpiles fell in the most recent week, while fuel inventories rose, media reports said, citing the API data. Official data is due to be released later in the day. 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.
Diia next week to begin registration of citizens to receive UAH 8,000 of aid  PM

The Diia portal next week will start registering citizens to receive an aid in the amount of UAH 8,000, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said.

"It will be possible to register for the aid of UAH 8,000 already next week," the prime minister said, opening a government meeting on Wednesday.

As reported, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law "On providing assistance to insured persons for the period of implementation of restrictive anti-epidemic measures introduced to prevent the spread of acute respiratory disease COVID-19 caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus." The law provides for a one-time material payment in the amount of UAH 8,000 to support small businesses and people involved in it in the face of increased quarantine.
Joshua Trujillo/Starbucks

Oatmilk is the latest plant-based milk to hit Starbucks  but you might not be able to find it at your nearest location.

The Seattle-based coffee chain introduced the Oatly brand to its national drink menu in March, and just a month later some locations are unable to make the new drinks due to a temporary shortage.

Oatmilk has continued to grow in popularity over the past year with sales spiking 138% in 2020, according to Nielsen.

"Due to high demand, some customers may experience a temporary shortage of oat milk at their store," a representative for Starbucks told CNN Business on Tuesday. It was not specified whether the shortage was widespread or when customers can expect oatmilk to be back in stores. The company suggested fans opt for other dairy-free alternatives like soy milk, almond milk or coconut milk.

RELATED: Starbucks Launches Oatmilk on Menus Nationwide  See the New Spring Menu

Starbucks Oatly oatmilk at Starbucks

RELATED: A Ketchup Shortage Is Affecting Restaurants Across the Country

Oatly has also been struggling with supply, with the company experiencing pandemic-related construction delays at one of its factories in Utah, according to Bloomberg. The facility was meant to open last year, but just recently started production.

Starbucks also told CNN that they don't attribute the shortage to the popularity of their new oatmilk-based beverages on the spring menu, which was unveiled in March.

The two new drinks are the Honey Oatmilk Latte and the Iced Brown Sugar Oatmilk Shaken Espresso. While the latter drink includes a blend of Starbucks Blonde espresso, brown sugar, cinnamon and oatmilk, the former features the same coffee base "intentionally combined with a hint of honey and a toasted honey topping," available in iced or hot format.
Yes, no matter what

Yes, but it depends on variety

No, for medical reasons, uncertainty

No, principle

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I let the couple in and asked how it made them feel, said Alessio. The woman said, I didnt know what she was talking about, but I just wanted to get in and go. She felt intimidated.

I learned we need to do more, Alessio said of the visit. Somebody called and asked me why we need to do this; that 40-minute experience gave me a lot of reasons to do it. Clearly, there is intimidation, confusion, manipulation, blocking, and frightening people. Theres a lot of direct and passive-aggressiveness in terms of blocking people from health services, which is just not right.

Demonstrators who describe themselves as non-threatening to clinic visitors must learn to see their encounters from the visitors point of view, according to Councilmember Beth Painter, who has previously served on Napa Planned Parenthoods board of advocates.

Weve learned a lot this year about perspectives and discrimination, she said. Someone may not feel theyre shaming an individual, when in fact they really are. You have to look at life through the lens of another individual; to shame someone whos just trying to access a health care facility is just wrong.
SsangYong Motor's Tivoli vehicles are lined up for sale in Pyeongtaek, Gyeoggi Province, in this file photo on Feb. 3. Yonhap



By Lee Min-hyung



SsangYong Motor is likely to enter court receivership as early as today, as the Korea Development Bank (KDB), the main creditor of the cash-strapped firm, is set to approve court-led restructuring after the firm failed to secure any new investments.



The move came after the ailing company de facto failed to sign an investment contract with U.S. car retailer HAAH Automotive, its latest negotiating partner, leaving the KDB with no other choice but to reach an agreement with the court over the legal procedure.



"We are fine-tuning the details with some other creditors before submitting our opinion to the court," a spokesman at the state-run lender said.



Upon receiving an opinion from the KDB, Seoul Bankruptcy Court will start the restructuring process for SsangYong before the end of the week.



Under the court-led restructuring, the company will be able to avoid filing bankruptcy only if it finds a new potential buyer. Given that HAAH was supposed to pay 280 billion won ($251 million) for SsangYong, any new investor will be able to take over the automaker outright if they can invest between 200 billion won and 300 billion won.






MINNEAPOLIS - Losing some hearing or eyesight is often a part of getting older, but a new study says losing function in both senses may put you at greater risk of dementia and cognitive decline years later. The research is published in the April 7, 2021, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study did not find such a link between losing just one of those senses.

"Depending on the degree of hearing or vision loss, losing function in your senses can be distressing and have an impact on your daily life," said study author JinHyeong Jhoo, M.D., Ph.D., of Kangwon National University School of Medicine in Chuncheon, Republic of Korea. "But our study results suggest losing both may be of particular concern."

The study looked at 6,520 people between the ages of 58 and 101. Visual and hearing impairment was determined by questionnaire asking about using glasses or hearing aids. People rated their hearing as "normal," "reduced, but able to communicate without a hearing aid," "difficult communicating with a hearing aid" or "no hearing at all." People rated their sight as "normal," "reduced, but able to view newspaper or TV without wearing glasses," "unable to view newspaper or TV with glasses" or "no sight at all."

At the beginning of the study, 932 people had normal seeing and hearing, 2,957 had either visual or hearing impairment, and 2,631 said they had both impairments.

Dementia was more than twice as common in the group with both impairments at the beginning of the study. In that group, 201 people out of 2,631, or 8%, had dementia at the start of the study, compared to 2.4% with one sensory impairment and 2.3% with no sensory impairment.

Researchers evaluated people's thinking and memory skills every two years for six years using a test that includes word recall and recognition. Then they analyzed the relationship between having a hearing or vision impairment and dementia and having both impairments and dementia.

During the six-year follow-up period, 245 people developed dementia. Of the 1,964 people with both impairments, 146 developed dementia, compared to 69 of the 2,396 people with one impairment and 14 of the 737 people with no impairments. In addition, 16 out of 142 people who could not determine whether they had a sensory impairment developed dementia.

After adjusting for factors like sex, education and income, researchers found that the group with both hearing and seeing impairment were twice as likely to develop dementia than the group with normal sensory function. People with just one impairment were no more likely to develop dementia than those with normal sensory function.

In addition, the decline on thinking test scores was steeper among people with both hearing and vision impairment.

Jhoo says that further research is needed to explain why people with two impairments have a greater risk for dementia than those with one.

"Older people with only a visual or hearing impairment can usually still maintain social contact, so they may not feel be as isolated or depressed as people who have both impairments," Jhoo said. "However, when someone has both impairments, that may increase the risk of isolation and depression, which previous research has found may affect dementia risk and thinking skills later on."

A limitation of the study is that participants completed a questionnaire about their hearing and vision. Not having objective measures of people's hearing and vison could have affected the study results.

###

The study was supported by Research of Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Learn more about dementia at BrainandLife.org, home of the American Academy of Neurology's free patient and caregiver magazine focused on the intersection of neurologic disease and brain health. Follow Brain & Life on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

When posting to social media channels about this research, we encourage you to use the hashtags #Neurology and #AANscience.

The American Academy of Neurology is the world's largest association of neurologists and neuroscience professionals, with over 36,000 members. The AAN is dedicated to promoting the highest quality patient-centered neurologic care. A neurologist is a doctor with specialized training in diagnosing, treating and managing disorders of the brain and nervous system such as Alzheimer's disease, stroke, migraine, multiple sclerosis, concussion, Parkinson's disease and epilepsy.

For more information about the American Academy of Neurology, visit AAN.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube.
Anaheim Police Chief Jorge Cisneros updates media about the Orange County Human Trafficking Taskforce at the Anaheim Police Station in Anaheim, Calif., on April 6, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

Orange County Tackles Its Human Trafficking Hotbed

Visitors flock to Southern California for its beaches and sunshine, but theres a darker side to Orange Countys tourism industry that law officials are working to combat: human trafficking.

Orange County has become a destination location for human trafficking victims, officials from the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force said during an April 6 press conference in Anaheim.

Orange County District Attorney (OCDA) Todd Spitzer said human trafficking occurs in Orange County with such great magnitude because of the large tourism industry.

Were an international center that people want to come to and vacation, and have conventions and recreate, Spitzer told reporters. And that same attraction also brings the people here who want to exploit and take advantage of sex workers and labor workers and people that are exploited because of the work that they provide.

Milestone Year

This year marks the task forces 10th year partnering with the Anaheim Police Department, the OCDAs office, and the nonprofit Waymakers.

Its recently released 2021 Human Trafficking Victim Report highlights the impact of the task forces efforts to combat human trafficking.

Vulnerable populations are being abused, and its happening right here in Orange County, said Michelle Heater, program director for Waymakers. This violent crime is occurring in broad daylight.

Ongoing Battle

Although the pandemic has brought plenty of things to a standstill during the past year, it hasnt stopped human trafficking.

Definitely the numbers dwindled, as far as visitors, but human trafficking continues to occur in our communities regardless of the pandemic, Anaheim Police Chief Jorge Cisneros said.

The task force assisted 357 victims of sex and labor trafficking in 2020, according to the 2021 Human Trafficking Victim Report, slightly down from the previous years 415 victims.

The decrease was likely due to law enforcements limited ability to be proactive with human trafficking investigations and victim identification during the pandemic, the report said.

Of last years victims, 330 were women, 27 were men, and 101 were minors.

Pandemic Slows Prosecution

The DAs office has prosecuted 773 human trafficking cases in the past decade.

The number of referrals for services made from prosecution was high in 2020, but due to the pandemic, the criminal justice system was slowed, the report said. Cases and investigations were unable to move forward at the same rate they did prior to the pandemic.

There were about 295 referrals made to victim assistance services in 2019 and 2020, the report said.

Support for Victims

Waymakers and The Salvation Army are the primary organizations providing social services support for trafficking victims.

The two top service needs provided to victims of human trafficking have been case management and emotional support, Heater said.

Waymakers provides human trafficking victims with such assistance as crisis intervention, emergency assistance, relocation, counseling referrals, and more.

Last year, therapy services increased for victims, which could be a result of increased mental health support needs due to the isolation and stress of the pandemic on victims, the report said.
A convicted Isis supporter who knew the Westminster attacker has admitted disseminating terrorist propaganda after his release from jail.

Ibrahim Anderson shared Isis videos, including some showing beheadings and calling for terror attacks, on Facebook and the encrypted Telegram messaging app.

He also broke notification requirements for convicted terrorists, and downloaded Isis propaganda magazines containing guides on launching terror attacks.

On Wednesday, Anderson admitted committing a total of 15 terror offences after being freed from prison.

The case comes amid mounting concerns over the impact of jail sentences on terror offenders, radicalisation inside prisons and the effectiveness of deradicalisation programmes.

Read more:

Anderson was sentenced to three years imprisonment in 2016 for promoting Isis outside Topshop in Londons Oxford Street.

It later emerged that he went to the same Luton gym as the Westminster attacker, Khalid Masood, and an Isis fighter who was killed in a drone strike.

Anderson, now 44, was one of numerous terror convicts linked to Anjem Choudarys banned al-Muhajiroun network.

Following his release from prison, he was subjected to terrorist notification requirements, which are intended to enable police to monitor convicts and manage any risk they pose.

But he was able to commit a string of terror offences through summer and autumn last year.

Appearing at Londons Old Bailey on Wednesday, Anderson pleaded guilty to 10 counts of disseminating terrorist publications on Facebook and Telegram in July.

They included official Isis propaganda films showing execution and beheadings, calling for terror attacks and glorifying suicide bombings.

The defendant, who entered his pleas via a video-link from HMP Wandsworth, admitted a further four charges of possessing terrorist publications. They related to issues of Isis official Rumiyah magazine, including editions containing instructions on knife and vehicle attacks.

Anderson was linked to Anjem Choudarys al-Muhajiroun network

Anderson also pleaded guilty to breaching terrorist notification requirements by not giving police details of current email accounts.

Patrick Harte, for the defence, told the Old Bailey that Anderson admitted dissemination on a reckless basis in the sense he did not intend his act to encourage terrorism.

Mr Harte told the court his client said he must have inadvertently downloaded the other documents when he downloaded the films. He said Anderson did not open them or forward them to anyone else.

Judge Philip Katz QC ordered a pre-sentence report and remanded Anderson in custody until a further hearing on 30 April.

Concerns had been publicly raised about Andersons online activity before the period covered by the case.

In 2019, The Sunreported that he had shared hateful images on his Facebook page including one showing an AK-47 assault rifle laid in front of a prayer mat.

The caption said: Remember the Mujahideen [warriors] in your prayers because they are fighting on your behalf.

Anderson lived in Luton, where he attended a gym that was frequented by other extremists.

Inquests into the March 2017 Westminster attack, which left five victims dead, heard he knew terrorist Khalid Masood through the gym, as well as a man called Abu Rahin Aziz who was later killed while fighting for Isis in Syria.

Anderson went to the same gym as Westminster attacker Khalid Masood

Anderson, a former mechanic with five children, has previous convictions for assault and possession of an imitation firearm.

Born as Andrew Anderson, he converted to Islam while serving a jail sentence for robbery in the 1990s.

Before his 2016 prison sentence, he was known for preaching from stalls linked to the al-Muhajiroun extremist network.

In August 2014, he was spotted on Oxford Street handing out a leaflet on the Isis caliphate and challenged by two Muslim women who reported him to police.

Photos of the leaflets circulated on social media showed them declaring the dawn of a new era and calling on Muslims to pledge allegiance and migrate to the new so-called Islamic State.

The case resulted in his prosecution for inviting support for Isis, which was the same offence used against al-Muhajiroun leaders Anjem Choudary and Mizanur Rahman.

Despite being hailed as the UKs most dangerous extremist group and banned as a terrorist organisation since 2006, no one has ever been successfully prosecuted for membership of al-Muhajiroun itself.
Briggs Equipment has completed the acquisition of Laois Hire Services Limited, as well as the purchase of the Dublin-based business Balloo Hire Limited, whose operation in Northern Ireland is already part of the Briggs Group.

The parent company of equipment firm Balloo Hire Centres has announced two acquisitions in the Republic.

Briggs Equipment paid an undisclosed sum for Laois Hire Services and Balloo Hire in Dublin.

It bought Balloo Hire in Northern Ireland two years ago.

The deals will enable Briggs to offer the hire of welfare units, pumps, generators and traffic management devices.

Laois Hire has been involved in major infrastructure projects including the development of Irelands motorway network and the construction of the Terminal 2 building at Dublin Airport.

Briggs said it hoped to replicate the success of its local business in the Republic.

Group managing director Peter Jones, added: "We are delighted to have completed the acquisition of Laois Hire and Balloo Hire Limited.

"Both businesses have a strong track record of delivering value within the Irish plant hire market, and were confident that with the backing and support of the Briggs Equipment Group, the businesses will go from strength to strength.

"Over recent years, we have worked hard to build our presence within Irelands materials handling sector and weve had good success in this area.

"These acquisitions enable us to further diversify our offering and provide a comprehensive and cohesive proposition that now includes plant hire across the entire island of Ireland.

He continued: "Despite the challenges that the coronavirus pandemic has presented over the past year, we are committed to pushing forward with our business development and acquisition strategy.

"This acquisition demonstrates the robustness of our business and our ongoing commitment to strengthening our market position."

Laois Hire and Balloo Hire will continue trading under those names.
The China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was touted as a game-changer for Pakistan's deteriorating economy. However, the future of CPEC has been cast in doubt following a US Agency report, which signals disagreements over funding between China and Pakistan.

Tensions have emerged between the two nations- China and Pakistan over the future of China Pakistan Economic Corridor, as per a US Agency report. The report asserts that there are disagreements over funding and direction over many mega projects under the CPEC banner between China and Pakistan.

The CPEC was touted as a game-changer for the deteriorating Pakistans economy in 2015. However, it has continued to sink under huge debt trap in recent years. Moreover, the pace of CPEC projects have fallen to a standstill even as China remains to be one of the few countries still investing in Pakistan.

According to a report published in Modern Diplomacy, written by Geopolitical analyst Fabien Baussart, the recent meeting between the dignitaries of China and Pakistan has lead to a significant down-falling of the expectations of CPEC projects, especially after the Covid-19 breakout. Bausssart writes that while the country has for long portrayed the $6.8 billion main line-1 project to be the main artery of the Pakistan railways and tried to convince China for the financing of the project; The Chinese have avoided any commitment for funding. The report further states that the hype created by Islamabad over CPEC, as a panacea for all problems, is finally losing steam.

Also Read: China holds naval drills near Taiwan; Time Taiwan amps up prep against potential Chinese invasion

The Joint Cooperation Committee (JCC) monitors the CPEC and is chaired jointly by the Vice-Chairman of Chinas National Development and Reform Commission and Pakistans Minister for planning, development, and cpecial initiatives. The first meeting of JCC was conducted in the year 2013 following several others and the last one was in November 2019. The 10th JCC meet was supposed to be conducted in early 2020 but was reportedly cancelled due to increasing tensions between Islamabad and Beijing over the progress being made under the committees banner and the directions of the project.

CPEC would link Pakistans southern Gwadar port, which is about 626 kilometres west of Karachi, in Balochistan on the Arabian Sea to Chinas western Xinjiang region. It further includes plans to create road, rail, and oil pipeline links to upgrade connectivity between China and the Middle East.

Also Read: India reports highest spike of Covid-19 cases: Vaccination for all a need of the hour?
Adrian Dunbar has revealed he cheated death when his car got blown up on holiday to Jerusalem with his wife and children.

The Line of Duty star - who plays Ted Hastings in the hit BBC show - said he had just left the vehicle with his wife Anna Nygh and their children and headed into the city to explore when their car was targeted.

Although he did not give an exact date, the incident happened during Israel's intifada uprising, which took place between 1987 and 1991.

Shocking: Line of Duty star Adrian Dunbar has revealed he had a narrow escape when his car got blown up on holiday with his wife and children in Jerusalem

The 62-year-old actor - who has daughter Madeleine, now 35, and stepson Ted, 39, with Anna - said he did not wish to alarm his family, but knew immediately it was their vehicle that had been the target.

Speaking on Elizabeth Day's How To Fail podcast, the actor explained that growing up in Northern Island during the Troubles gave him a 'wariness' of such incidents.

He recalled: 'I was in Jerusalem with the family. We parked at the Nablus Gate and we went into the old city and we were talking. I heard a bomb go off and I looked up into the sky and I just knew it was our car.'

Shocking: The Line of Duty star said he left the vehicle with his wife Anna Nygh (pictured in 2017) and their children and headed into the city to explore when their car was targeted

Adrian added: 'I said to Anna who was with the kids "wait here I'm just going to go and look at something" and she said "why? What was that?" and I said "don't worry about it".

'I knew just from where the direction was and the fact that we were driving a budget American car and the intifada was still on that they had identified that the car was an American car.

'When I went down, the car was a mangled heap. Thankfully, we didn't have anything serious in it at the time like our passports or anything - that was to happen later.

'But I just dealt with it like "oh, God somebody's blown up our car".'

Adrian - the eldest of seven children - was born in a working-class area of Enniskillen, but his family moved to Portadown a decade later because 'there was no work', they later moved back after the Troubles exploded.

The experiences stayed with him after he moved to London two decades ago, explaining: 'When I first arrived, I did notice things that other people would not be aware of.

'If someone came in and threw their bag down in the corner and went to the toilet, things like that you would think "oh right, he just threw down his bag, I will have to wait until he comes back".

Family man: Adrian (pictured with wife Anna in 1993) said that his experiences growing up in the Troubles made him aware of dangers around the world

'I would be aware and would be waiting for him to come back out of the toilet and sit back down beside his bag rather than just walk back out the door.

'Sometimes you would be wary of silly things like seeing a car parked on its own, looking abandoned outside a public building.

'You'd just think "what is that car doing there? Its 2 o'clock in the morning its on a double yellow line".

'You wouldn't be thinking about it but fleetingly these things would register with you.'

Adrian move to London to pursue a career in acting, and is currently sending fans wild with his latest role in Line Of Duty.

The head of AC-12 is known for his sensational one-liners, and he provided another belter as he hit back at DCC Andrea Wise (Elizabeth Rider) during Sunday's episode.

When told his search for H shouldn't be about 'old battles', the Superintendent defiantly told his boss: 'The name's Hastings, ma'am. I'm the epitome of an old battle.'

Delighted fans of the show were quick to applaud Ted's fabulous comeback, with one declaring it the 'line of the season' while another told him to 'take a bow'.

The current season of the BBC police drama is following the AC-12 team in their investigation of DCI Joanne Davidson (Kelly Macdonald) as she leads the team looking into the murder of journalist Gail Vella (Andi Osho)
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 6)  12 deaths in one day.

This was the horror Dr. Katrin De la Paz had to face in a government hospital last week as COVID-19 cases surge.

Since last year, she had been on duty in two COVID referral hospitals. It's a lot worse now, she said, seeing how the virus has become more contagious and patients deteriorate faster.

At one point, De la Paz had to choose who among five critical patients would use the only available mechanical ventilator. There were three ventilators left, but two were broken.

She decided to use the ventilator on an 89-year-old female patient who had the lowest oxygen saturation level. Hours later, three of the other patients died.

De la Paz agonizes over having to make the hard decision on who gets to live and who could possibly die.

"Bakit namin kailangan mamili kung sino ang pagbibigyan? Bakit dumating sa punto na 'di namin ma-treat nang maayos or maisalba 'yung buhay ng bawat isa sa pasyente namin? Bakit kailangan namin mamili? It's very frustrating," De la Paz said.

"Nakikiusap ako sa kanila, konting pasensya. Pero at the back of my mind, ang hirap humingi ng pasensya sa isang naghihingalong pasyente. Paano kung magulang mo 'yun? Paano kung kamag-anak mo 'yun?" she added.

[Translation: Why do we have to choose? Why did it reach this point that we can no longer give the proper treatment or save our patients? Why do we have to choose? It's very frustrating. I appeal to them (families) to be patient with us. But at the back of my mind, it's so hard to ask for patience when a patient is dying. What if that was your parent or relative?]

Having to face too many deaths everyday is very traumatizing for De la Paz. Repeatedly, she said she's very tired, too. As a doctor for six years now, she is used to long hours on duty. A few hours of sleep is enough for her.

But there's another aspect that's just too hard to bear. "'Yung physical exhaustion kaya itulog, but mental and emotional exhaustion? Mahirap bumawi lalo na kung mamatayan kami kada araw. Kung 'yung mga pasyente alam namin kaya pa eh, kaya pa ilaban. Eh pero namamatay. Kasi kulang kami ng gamit, kulang kami ng tao. Sayang 'yung buhay. 'Yun 'yung nakakapagod," she said.

[Translation: The physical exhaustion, you can sleep it off. But the mental and physical exhaustion? It's so hard to recover from that especially if you lose patients every day. When you know the patient can still survive, can still fight. But they die. Because of lack of equipment, lack of medical personnel. A life is lost. That's what's exhausting.]

Frontline workers seek psycho-social help

Dr. Bernard Argamosa of the National Center for Mental Health said De la Paz's story highlights how healthcare workers' mental well-being should also be prioritized.

With many hospitals now in full capacity, healthcare workers are having mixed feelings of exhaustion, frustration, and hopelessness.

Argamosa, who serves as the program director of the NCMH Crisis Center, said since last year, more than 300 workers from government hospitals and frontline agencies like the Health and Social Welfare departments have availed of psycho-social counseling and other interventions.

"Minsan may health workers daw na natulala, nagrereklamo na 'di makatulog, pero marami sa kanila nagkakaroon ng irritability... We are bound by our duty to serve and save lives. Kung nakikita namin na 'di namin sila natutulungan dahil overwhelmed ang system, magkakaroon ng disappointment, self-doubt and blame  which eventually, if left unchecked, can lead to various degrees of mental instability," Argamosa said.

[Translation: Some health workers are distracted or absent-minded, they complain that they cannot sleep, or they show irritability... We are bound by our duty to serve and save lives. If we see we can't help them because the system is overwhelmed, we show disappointment, self-doubt and blame  which eventually, if left unchecked, can lead to various degrees of mental instability.]

De la Paz said she has cried and gotten emotional a few times while on duty. But as much as she can, she tries to avoid showing her emotions so as not to affect her patients and co-workers.

She believes counseling sessions, or simply talking to someone outside the workplace can be a big help.

The public can do their share too in easing the burden of healthcare workers to avoid the spread of the coronavirus and hospitalizations.

"'Yung feeling na parang kami na lang 'yung lumalaban, kami na lang ang naiwan. Kasi nga trabaho namin 'to. This is our sworn obligation, our oath. Ang bigat... This is all our obligation. We should follow health protocols. Tayo-tayo lang din ang magtutulungan."

[Translation: You get the feeling that you're the only one fighting, you're the only one left. Because this is our job. This is our sworn obligation, our oath. It can be a burden... This is all our obligation. We should follow health protocols. We should help each other.]

According to the Health Department, last year, some 3.6 million Filipinos suffered from mental disorders related to the pandemic.

The NCMH has a 24/7 crisis hotline. This year, they've been receiving more than a thousand calls per month from just an average of 400 calls pre-pandemic. Majority of the calls are about anxiety and depression-related concerns.

If you are in need of mental health support, please call the 24/7 NCMH Crisis Hotline at (0917) 899-8727, (0966)-351-4518, (0908)-639-2672 or 1553 (Luzon-wide landline toll-free).
[April 07, 2021] eBlu Solutions (Louisville, KY) Announces $11.4M Series A Round

eBlu Solutions (Louisville, KY) announced today that it has raised an $11.4M Series A round led by OCA Ventures (Chicago), with co-investors Mutual Capital Partners (Cleveland) and FCA Venture Partners' Health Innovations II (Nashville). Under the leadership of CEO Mark Murphy, eBlu Solutions is a digital health prior authorization software company - whose digital platform streamlines the prior authorization of expensive infusion-based specialty medications. For patients suffering from complex, chronic conditions, the path to receiving specialty medication can be fragmented and expensive for all parties. eBlu Solutions aims to make benefits verification, prior authorization, and manufacturer co-pay assistance programs more efficient for practices that deliver physician administered infusion-based specialty medications to patients. Instead of navigating a complicated net of drug-specific online portals and insurance approvals, eBlu Solutions' scalable and secure software platform makes the process of getting patients on life changing treatments more streamlined for medical providers. "We're enthusiastic to grow and continue developing our talent pool of 70+ team members. eBlu was founded with a mission to simplify the fragmented process behind benefits verification and prior authorization for infusion-based specialty medications. For patients suffering from complex, chronic conditions it is common for physicians to recommend specialty medications. Unfortunately, these medications can be costly, leading to an often-burdensome fragmented process of phone calls and faxes between physicians and insurance providers. eBlu Solutions' secure and scalable platform helps the medical practice navigate the approval process so their patints can start treatment as soon as possible. This capital will allow us to expand our team and pursue our mission," said Mark Murphy, CEO of eBlu.



"We're delighted to have the support of this experienced group of Venture investors. eBlu Solutions aims to use the proceeds of the Series A to continue to grow its team and fuel the development of talent in our sales, product management, business intelligence, and software development areas," said co-founder and CTO Nathan Fornwalt. "Our platform brings together a great combination of technology and human expertise to streamline a fairly fragmented process which helps patients whose access to quality healthcare depends on the communication between payers and providers. We're excited to keep scaling so we can have an ongoing positive impact on improving the lives of patients," added co-founder and COO Kim Farley.

"When we're investing in a company, we do extensive due diligence," said Andy Patton (News - Alert) , Executive in Residence at FCA. "eBlu has a really clear vision and a unique mission that's scalable beyond rheumatology, neurology, gastroenterology, and allergy & asthma - the specialties they're currently supporting. We're excited to help eBlu continue to grow. Electronic prior authorization software has received substantial interest from investors over the last few years. eBlu occupies a unique position in the industry." About eBlu Solutions eBlu Solutions provides a secure software platform for electronic prior authorization and benefits verification in the infusion-based specialty medication space. eBlu Solutions aims to streamline the fragmented nature of the approval process for specialty medication treatments, and currently supports a variety of specialties including rheumatology, neurology, gastroenterology, and allergy & asthma. eBlu's initial partnerships have been with pharmaceutical companies, HUBs, and IMCs to make treatment less burdensome for patients, practices, and providers across the country. eBlu was a participant in the 2016 cohort of XLerateHealth, a leading healthcare accelerator headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky. Since that time, the company has continued to refine its technology platform and grow its revenue. Despite the COVID pandemic, eBlu Solutions saw its revenue double in 2020 and expects 2021 year over year revenue to more than triple. eBlu's management team has a long history of working in healthcare. Founder and COO Kim Farley and CEO Mark Murphy have a combined 45+ year track record in the healthcare industry. Similarly, Founder and CTO Nathan Fornwalt has a strong background in technology innovation and product development. More information can be found at: www.eblusolutions.com View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005197/en/

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Joe Biden will take action to curb gun violence as soon as Thursday, according to a report.

The president is expected to unveil a package of executive actions at the White House, Politico reports, citing four people familiar with the plan.

Long-awaited by activists keen for action from the Biden administration, the move will fulfil a campaign pledge to make regulations of firearms a priority.

Recent mass shootings in Georgia, Colorado, and California have further frustrated campaigners.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Tuesday that she expects to hear more from the president tomorrow regarding the issue, but would not be drawn on further details.

Read more:

It is believed that Mr Biden will order that the buyers of ghost guns  homemade or makeshift weapons  be subjected to background checks.

Other specifics are unclear, but there could be actions related to concealed assault-style weapons; a ban on firearm purchases by those convicted of domestic violence; and federal guidelines on the storage of firearms at home.

More than 100 Democrat lawmakers in the House of Representatives wrote to the president last week asking for action on concealed assault weapons following the deaths of 10 people in a Colorado grocery store.

Mr Biden may also announce his nominee to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives  potentially one of the tougher confirmation hearings in the 50:50 split Senate.

The administration has said that legislative fixes to gun violence are a greater priority than executive action, highlighting support for bills to expand background checks, stop guns being handed over before such checks are completed, and a ban on assault weapons.

Senior officials told Politico that the administration understands the urgency and is looking forward to rolling out these initial actions.

Advocacy groups are hoping for a comprehensive plan to tackle gun violence rather than standalone bills and executive orders.

During the pandemic, 2020s summer of racial unrest, and Mr Bidens electoral victory, gun sales soared.
New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern and (R) Australian Prime Minster, Scott Morrison speak to media at a press conference held at Admiralty House in Sydney, Australia on Feb. 28, 2020. (James D. Morgan/Getty Images)

Australia and New Zealands World-Leading Pandemic Response Brings Start of Two-Way Travel Bubble

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has attributed the establishment of a quarantine-free two-way travel bubble between Australia and New Zealand to each countrys success in managing the CCP virus pandemic.

This latest major step in the resumption of international travel has only been possible due to the internationally recognised, world-leading responses to the COVID-19 pandemic by Australia and New Zealand, Morrison said in a statement on April 6.

Morrison told reporters that both countries had not suffered the same types of virus impacts seen in other parts of the world.

The fact that we now can combine again will mean jobs; it will mean people reunited, he said. It will mean many opportunities as those normal relations are restored between Australia and New Zealand.

The two-way Safe Travel Zone between the two countries follows Australia opening a one-way bubble six months ago, with more than 34,000 arrivals into Australia from New Zealand during that period, Morrison said.

The quarantine-free travel will begin on April 19, but New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern warned travellers to be prepared for disruptions caused by outbreaks of COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

Those undertaking travel on either side of the ditch will do so under the guidance of flyer beware, she said. People will need to plan for the possibility of travel being disrupted if there is an outbreak.

Officials in both countries will now work closely together to manage outbreaks. Ardern explained that there will be a continue, pause, suspend framework when it comes to regional outbreaks.

Rather than suspend all international flights, should a localised outbreak occur, flights to that Australian state may be paused or suspended depending on the risk, she said.

Morrison said, Should temporary restrictions need to be applied due to a COVID-19 outbreak, both countries will provide as much notice as possible to Government agencies, passengers, airlines and airport operators affected by any such measures.
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / April 7, 2021 / Skeena Resources Limited (TSX:SKE)(OTCQX:SKREF) ("Skeena" or the "Company") is pleased to announce an updated Mineral Resource Estimate ("MRE"), for the Eskay Creek gold-silver project ("Eskay Creek"), located in the Golden Triangle of British Columbia, which has been reviewed and validated by SRK Consulting (Canada) Inc ("SRK"). The 2021 MRE was derived from 7,583 historical surface and underground diamond drill holes totalling 651,332 metres, with an additional 751 surface diamond drill holes completed by Skeena between 2018-2021 totalling 104,740 metres. The effective date of this MRE is April 7, 2021 and an updated technical report will be filed on the Company's website and SEDAR within 45 calendar days of this disclosure. Reference images are presented at the end of this release as well as on the Company's website.

2021 Eskay Creek Resources

Table 1: Eskay Creek pit constrained resources reported at a 0.7 g/t AuEq cut-off grade and underground resources reported at 2.4 and 2.8 g/t AuEq cut-off grades for long-hole and drift and fill mining, respectively (UG = Underground).

Category Tonnes (000) AuEq (g/t) Au (g/t) Ag (g/t) AuEq Ounces (000) Au Ounces (000) Ag Ounces (000) Measured Pit 17,312 5.8 4.2 118.4 3,213 2,322 65,908 Measured UG 345 6.1 5.2 67.3 68 58 747 Total Measured 17,657 5.8 4.2 117.4 3,281 2,380 66,655 Indicated Pit 20,342 2.9 2.2 52.5 1,903 1,439 34,362 Indicated UG 506 5.3 4.9 35.8 87 79 583 Total Indicated 20,848 3.0 2.3 52.1 1,990 1,518 34,945 M+I Pit 37,654 4.2 3.1 82.8 5,116 3,761 100,270 M+I UG 851 5.7 5.0 48.6 155 137 1,330 Total M+I 38,505 4.3 3.1 82.1 5,271 3,898 101,600 Inferred Pit 5,239 1.4 1.0 25.0 231 174 4,203 Inferred UG 429 4.9 4.1 57.0 67 57 787 Total Inferred 5,668 1.6 1.3 27.4 298 231 4,990

Pit Constrained Resource Growth Discussion

The Company's Phase 1 and Phase 2 infill drilling programs were immensely successful in not only recategorizing pit constrained resources but also adding additional resources in the 22 Zone, 21A Zone, 21B Zone and the recently discovered 21C-HW Zone. Furthermore, the NEX (Northern Extension) Zone has now been incorporated into the pit constrained resource base. This new Northern Pit Expansion integrates the largely Measured and Indicated NEX Zone and provides the potential for additional reserves.

In 2019, the Company's MRE utilized conservative 'zero-grade' 1.0 metre buffers surrounding historical stopes and development partially imposed due to spatial uncertainty. Consequently, mineralization occurring inside these buffers was not reported. During 2021, numerous Phase 2 drill holes predictably intersected the modelled historical workings which provided spatial confidence resulting in the reduction of the buffers from 1.0 metres to 0.2 metres. Overall, this translated into the reporting of an additional 731k tonnes averaging 25.4 g/t AuEq (597koz AuEq).

Table 2: Measured, Indicated and Inferred pit constrained resources reported at a 0.7 g/t AuEq cut-off grade.

Category Tonnes (000) AuEq (g/t) Au (g/t) Ag (g/t) AuEq Ounces (000) Au Ounces (000) Ag Ounces (000) Measured 17,312 5.8 4.2 118.4 3,213 2,322 65,908 Indicated 20,342 2.9 2.2 52.5 1,903 1,439 34,362 M+I 37,654 4.2 3.1 82.8 5,116 3,761 100,270 Inferred 5,239 1.4 1.0 25.0 231 174 4,203

Underground Constrained Resources Discussion

Determination of underground resources with reasonable prospects for economic extraction was completed with stope optimization software that considered both long-hole and drift and fill mining methods based on the geometries of zones. Underground resources in the NEX Zone and 22 Zone were only informed by historical drilling data, however, the Company's drilling programs have facilitated growth in the Water Tower Zone (WTZ) and Lower Mudstone (LM).

Table 3: Measured, Indicated and Inferred underground constrained resources reported at a 2.4 g/t AuEq cut-off grade for long-hole mining and 2.8 g/t AuEq cut-off grade for drift and fill mining.

Category Tonnes (000) AuEq (g/t) Au (g/t) Ag (g/t) AuEq Ounces (000) Au Ounces (000) Ag Ounces (000) Measured UG 345 6.1 5.2 67.3 68 58 747 Indicated UG 506 5.3 4.9 35.8 87 79 583 M+I UG 851 5.7 5.0 48.6 155 137 1,330 Inferred UG 429 4.9 4.1 57.0 67 57 787

Walter Coles, Skeena's President & CEO commented, "I would like to congratulate Skeena's Vice President Exploration & Resource Development, Paul Geddes and Chief Resource Geologist, Kathi Dilworth and their teams. They have delivered a terrific new resource estimate for Eskay Creek. The Measured and Indicated resources have increased by an astounding 186%, on a tonnage weighted basis, since our last resource report. I am eager to see how much more Paul and Adrian Newton, the Company's Director of Exploration, can continue to grow the size of Eskay Creek as we target a Tier 1 annual production and reserve profile."

Measured and Indicated Resources

The conversion of pit constrained resources to the Measured and Indicated categories is an important de-risking milestone for Eskay Creek. The abundance of resources now categorized as Measured are especially significant due to the very high confidence level of this category. The Company anticipates a substantial percentage will ultimately convert to Proven Reserves once Feasibility level studies are completed. On a tonnage weighted basis, 40%, 48% and 12% of the current pit constrained resources are respectively categorized as Measured, Indicated and Inferred.

Additional 2021 NEX Studies

Based on tonnage, 12% of the new pit constrained resources are categorized as Inferred resources. The Company is finalizing a small surface-based drilling program to convert these small pods of scattered mineralization to the Measured and Indicated categories. In the area of the Northern Pit Expansion, a program of geotechnical drilling and metallurgical sample collection will occur in Q2 2021 to enable the upgrade of resources to reserves.

Resource Breakdown by Lithology

Unmined mineralization at Eskay Creek is hosted largely in the Rhyolite facies, which has lower concentrations of the epithermal suite of elements (Hg-As-Sb) relative to the Contact Mudstones. Preferential historical development and mining of the extremely high-grade mineralization hosted in the Contact Mudstone has resulted in extensive depletion of resources in this rock type. The 2021 pit constrained MRE indicates that on a tonnage weighted basis, 68% of the resources are hosted within the Rhyolite facies with only 18% hosted in the remaining unmined Contact Mudstone. The outstanding 14% occurs predominantly within the hanging wall andesite-sedimentary lithology package which lies stratigraphically above the Contact Mudstone, with a minor amount in the footwall Dacite.

Accelerated 2021 Exploration Program Initiated

With the infill drilling programs completed and the pit constrained resources having been largely converted to the Measured and Indicated categories, the Company has initiated a property scale exploration program. This accelerated program is designed to define additional near surface, bulk tonnage mineralization with the goal of expanding the current resource base and to supplement the existing mine plan. The program will involve a data compilation and interpretation period followed by judicious target ranking that will culminate in drill testing of near mine and regional targets in H2 2021. Dr. Harold Gibson, one of the world's foremost experts in VMS systems, has been engaged by the Company to assist the program which will be spearheaded by the Company's Director of Exploration, Adrian Newton, P.Geo.

Eskay Creek Deposit Mineral Resource Estimate Notes

The mineral resources disclosed in this press release were estimated using the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum ("CIM") standards on mineral resources and reserves definitions, and guidelines prepared by the CIM standing committee on reserve definitions and adopted by the CIM council.

Mineral resources are not mineral reserves and do not have demonstrated economic viability. There is no certainty that all or any part of the mineral resources estimated will be converted into mineral reserves.

As defined by NI 43-101, the Independent and Qualified Person for the Eskay Creek MRE is Ms. S. Ulansky P.Geo., of SRK Consulting (Canada) Inc. who has reviewed and validated the Eskay Creek MRE. The effective date of the MRE is April 7, 2021.

Resources are reported in-situ and undiluted for the pit constrained and underground scenarios; both are considered to have reasonable prospects for economic extraction.

In accordance with NI 43-101 recommendations, the number of metric tonnes was rounded to the nearest thousand. Any discrepancies in the totals are due to rounding effects.

Metal prices used for the AuEq calculation are US$1,700 per ounce of gold, and US$23.00 per ounce of silver. AuEq = Au (g/t) + [Ag (g/t)/74].

Metallurgical recoveries reflective of test work that averages 90% Au and 80% Ag were utilized in the determination of cut-off grades for the open pit and underground resources.

The calculated pit constrained cut-off grade was determined to be 0.66 g/t AuEq, whereas the long-hole stoping and drift and fill underground mining method cut-off grades were calculated to be 2.4 g/t AuEq and 2.8 g/t AuEq, respectively. A pit constrained cut-off of 0.7 g/t AuEQ was selected for the MRE. Cut-off grades must be re-evaluated considering prevailing market conditions (including gold prices, exchange rates and costs).

Two models were constructed in a two-stage process: a stage one pit constrained model using a 9 x 9 x 4 metre block size using 2 metre capped composites. An underground model using a 3 x 3 x 2 metre block size using 1 metre capped composites was estimated in stage two.

Block tonnage was estimated from volumes using bulk density values projected from defining rock type groups. Specific gravity values coded into the block model range from 2.66 g/cm 3 to 3.0 g/cm 3 .

to 3.0 g/cm . The geological model was updated in 2021 to include hanging wall and footwall sediments, which were previously merged within the stratigraphic packages. In addition, extrusive units were delineated below the prolific rhyolite lithology package.

Eighty-four (84), mineralization domains were created in Leapfrog Geo TM (Seequent) using two distinct methods: (1) an Indicator RBF Interpolant utilizing a nominal cut-off grade of 0.5 g/t AuEq and probability of 50% was used for the Contact Mudstone unit, and (2) the Interval Selection tool using a 0.5 g/t AuEq cut-off was the method of choice for the mineralization domains in the remaining lithology types. The mineralization domains were separated into major fault block and historical mining zones, and each domain was modified or reassessed individually to consider presiding mineralization features.

(Seequent) using two distinct methods: (1) an Indicator RBF Interpolant utilizing a nominal cut-off grade of 0.5 g/t AuEq and probability of 50% was used for the Contact Mudstone unit, and (2) the Interval Selection tool using a 0.5 g/t AuEq cut-off was the method of choice for the mineralization domains in the remaining lithology types. The mineralization domains were separated into major fault block and historical mining zones, and each domain was modified or reassessed individually to consider presiding mineralization features. All eighty-four (84), mineralization domains were estimated and those blocks that were captured within the optimized pit shell at a 0.7 g/t AuEq cut-off were reported as pit constrained resources. Nineteen of those mineralization domains, which fell below the level of the optimized pit, were reported within underground stope optimized shapes.

Five low grade shells were constructed and estimated along with the 84 mineralization domains slated for the pit constrained resources only.

A 3.0 metre hard boundary around all underground stopes was constructed so that high grade composites from within mined out areas had limited influence. The 3.0 metre restricting boundary was utilized in both the pit constrained and underground estimation models.

Grade capping was performed on each lithology-separated domain using 2 metre composites in the open pit model and 1.0 metre composites in the underground model, with both composite files honouring mineralized domain boundaries. Composites were distributed equally in length.

Within the 84 mineralization domains gold capping values ranged from 7 to 650 g/t and silver capping values ranged from 40 to 25,000 g/t in the 2.0 metre composite file. Grade capping was performed separately in the 5 low grade zones and did not exceed 9 g/t gold and 200 g/t silver. Gold capping values ranged from 4 to 400 g/t and silver capping values ranged from 10 to 30,000 in the 1.0 metre composite file.

Gold and silver variograms were used to determine the spatial relationship of composites over distance. Two metre composites established the primary orientation, nugget, sills and ranges per rock type-divided domain for the open pit model. For the underground estimate, variograms for the 1.0 metre composites used the same orientations as the 2.0 metre composites, however the nugget, sills and ranges were accordingly updated.

Ordinary Kriging was used for the estimation of gold and silver in all domains. Resources were estimated using Maptek Vulcan TM (version 2021.0.1) using sub-blocking capabilities of 3 x 3 x 2 metre cell sizes for the pit constrained model, and 1 x 1 x 1 metre cell sizes for the underground model.

(version 2021.0.1) using sub-blocking capabilities of 3 x 3 x 2 metre cell sizes for the pit constrained model, and 1 x 1 x 1 metre cell sizes for the underground model. Search orientations were modified with Dynamic Anisotropy using a surface which mimicked the local lithological units. Dynamic Anisotropy was used for the 21A, 21B, 21C and the Lower Mudstone Zone. The remaining zones used an orientation defined by the variogram.

The mineral resources were estimated using three passes with increasing search radii based on variogram ranges. Pass 1 approximated 2/3 of the range of the variogram; Pass 2 equalled the range of the variogram and Pass 3 equalled 2.5 X the variogram range in the pit constrained and underground model.

In both models, Pass 1 used a minimum of 8 composites and a maximum of 10 composites. Pass 2 used a minimum of 5 composites and a maximum of 15 composites and Pass 3 used a minimum of 3 composites and a maximum of 15 composites. A maximum of 2 composites per hole were specified.

Hard boundary interpolations were honoured between lithologies within the domains.

A low grade envelope model was estimated using 2 metre capped composites within five domains. The variogram orientation for these low-grade domains were inherited from the nearest mineralization domain. One estimation pass using a restricted search of 25 m x 25 m x 15 m was allocated using a minimum of 3 composites and a maximum of 10 composites per estimated block. A maximum of 2 composites per hole were specified. Only coherent waste zone blocks estimated using a minimum of three drill holes were included into the Inferred category.

Measured, Indicated and Inferred resources were classified according to the following scheme for the pit constrained model: The Measured category is defined as blocks interpolated only within Pass 1, using a minimum of 4 drill holes, a kriging variance of less than 0.3 and an average distance of less than 15 metres to the gold composites. The Indicated category is defined by blocks interpolated within Pass 1 and Pass 2 only, and using a minimum of 4 drill holes. The Inferred category is defined by blocks interpolated within Pass 1, 2 and 3 using a minimum of 2 holes and a kriging variance of less than 0.8.

For the underground model, the resources were classified according to the following scheme: The Measured category is defined as blocks interpolated within Pass 1 only using a minimum of 4 holes and an average distance of less than 15 meters to the gold composites. The Indicated category is defined by block interpolated during Pass 1 and 2 using a minimum of three drill holes. The Inferred category is defined by block interpolated within Pass 1, 2 and 3 using a minimum of 2 holes.

In consultation with SRK's geotechnical team who reviewed the documentation on fill-type used previously at the Eskay Creek Mine, an exclusion buffer of 1.0 metre surrounding the underground workings for the underground model was specified, whereas a buffer of 0.2 metres surrounds the underground workings in the proposed pit constrained model. Estimated mineralization that occurs within these buffers is not included in this MRE.

Estimates use metric units (metres, tonnes and g/t). Metal contents are presented in troy ounces (metric tonne x grade / 31.10348).

Neither the Company, nor SRK, is aware of any known environmental, permitting, legal, title-related, taxation, socio-political, marketing or other relevant issue that could materially affect this mineral resource estimate.

The abundance and significance of As, Hg and Sb is currently under evaluation.

The quantity and grade of reported Inferred mineral resources in this estimation are uncertain in nature and there has been insufficient exploration to re-define the Inferred mineral resources as Indicated mineral resources. It is uncertain if further exploration will result in upgrading them to the Indicated mineral resources category.

Table 4: Pit constrained scenario assumptions for determining cut-off grades with reasonable prospects of economic extraction.

Input Parameters Value Unit Pit Wall Angles 45 Degrees Reference Mining Cost $3.00 US Dollars Per Tonne Mined Mining Recovery 95% Percent Mining Dilution 5% Percent Processing Cost $15.50 US Dollars Per Tonne Processed General and Administration $6.00 US Dollars Per Tonne Processed Process Recovery Au 90% Percent Process Recovery Ag 80% Percent Sell Price Au $1,700.00 x (0.95) US Dollars Per Ounce (95% Payable) Sell Price Ag $23.00 x (0.95) US Dollars Per Ounce (95% Payable) Transportation/Refining Costs $25.00 US Dollars Per Ounce AuEq Strip Ratio 9.89:1 Unitless

Table 5: Underground scenario assumptions for determining cut-off grades with reasonable prospects of economic extraction.

Input Parameters Value Unit Reference Mining Cost $80.00 US Dollars Per Tonne Mined Processing Cost $25.00 US Dollars Per Tonne Milled General and Administration $12.00 US Dollars Per Tonne Milled All In Costs $117.00 US Dollars Per Tonne Milled Process Recovery Au 90% Percent Process Recovery Ag 80% Percent Sell Price Au $1,700.00 x (0.95) US Dollars Per Ounce (95% Payable) Sell Price Ag $23.00 x (0.95) US Dollars Per Ounce (95% Payable) Transportation/Refining Costs $25.00 US Dollars Per Ounce AuEq

Eskay Creek Mineralization

The Eskay Creek deposit represents a shallow water, bimodal volcanic sequence hosted in a fault bounded basin with an epithermal VMS signature. Rhyolite facies volcanics are overlain by mafic volcanics with a clastic mudstone occurring at the contact between the two volcanic episodes. This mudstone represents the period of quiescence between the two volcanic events and is spatially and temporally related to the main mineralizing event at Eskay Creek. The epithermal suite of elements (Hg-Sb-As) and bonanza precious metal grades dominantly occur at this interface but are not homogenously distributed throughout the mudstone. Rather, they are spatially associated with vents fed from underlying synvolcanic feeders.

Due to the higher precious metal tenor of the mudstone-hosted mineralization, the vast majority of historical production at Eskay Creek occurred within this rock type whilst the Rhyolite-hosted feeder style mineralization was less developed due to its lower Au-Ag tenor. Rhyolite-hosted mineralization is not enriched in Hg-Sb-As and was often blended with mudstone-hosted zones to reduce smelter penalties for the on-site milled concentrates and Direct Shipped Ore (DSO).

About Skeena

Skeena Resources Limited is a Canadian mining exploration company focused on revitalizing the past-producing Eskay Creek gold-silver mine located in Tahltan Territory in the Golden Triangle of northwest British Columbia, Canada. The Company released a robust Preliminary Economic Assessment in late 2019 and is currently focused on infill and exploration drilling to advance Eskay Creek to full Feasibility by the end of 2021. Additionally, Skeena continues exploration programs at the past-producing Snip gold mine.

On behalf of the Board of Directors of Skeena Resources Limited,

Walter Coles Jr.

President & CEO

Contact Information

Investor Inquiries: info@skeenaresources.com

Office Phone: +1 604 684 8725

Company Website: www.skeenaresources.com

Qualified Persons

The Independent and Qualified Person for the Eskay Creek MRE is Ms. Sheila Ulansky P.Geo., of SRK Consulting (Canada) Inc. (Vancouver), who has reviewed, validated and approved the Eskay Creek MRE as well as the technical disclosure in this release. In accordance with National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects, Mr. Paul Geddes, P.Geo. Vice President Exploration and Resource Development, is the Qualified Person for the Company and has validated and approved the technical and scientific content of this news release. The Company strictly adheres to CIM Best Practices Guidelines in conducting, documenting, and reporting its activities on its various exploration projects.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements made and information contained herein may constitute "forward looking information" and "forward looking statements" within the meaning of applicable Canadian and United States securities legislation. These statements and information are based on facts currently available to the Company and there is no assurance that actual results will meet management's expectations. Forward-looking statements and information may be identified by such terms as "anticipates", "believes", "targets", "estimates", "plans", "expects", "may", "will", "could" or "would". Forward-looking statements and information contained herein are based on certain factors and assumptions regarding, among other things, the estimation of mineral resources and reserves, the realization of resource and reserve estimates, metal prices, taxation, the estimation, timing and amount of future exploration and development, capital and operating costs, the availability of financing, the receipt of regulatory approvals, environmental risks, title disputes and other matters. While the Company considers its assumptions to be reasonable as of the date hereof, forward-looking statements and information are not guarantees of future performance and readers should not place undue importance on such statements as actual events and results may differ materially from those described herein. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements or information except as may be required by applicable securities laws.

Neither the Toronto Stock Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
With all precincts reporting, Tannhauser was leading Benigno with 53.9% of the vote, according to the Cook County Clerks Office. Due to mail-in and provisional ballots that have not yet been counted, election night vote totals are not final and vote totals are expected to change by the official canvass on April 27.
[April 07, 2021] Reinsurance Group of America Announces First Quarter Earnings Release Date, Webcast

Reinsurance Group of America, Incorporated (NYSE:RGA) plans to release first quarter earnings on Thursday, May 6, at approximately 4:15 p.m. Eastern Time. The release will be issued via newswire and will also be available through RGA's website, www.rgare.com. RGA will host a conference call to discuss the first quarter results beginning at 11 a.m. Eastern Time on Friday, May 7. Interested parties may access the call by dialing 1-800-458-4121 (323-794-2093 international). The access code is 4329984. Participants are asked to call the assigned number approximately 10 minutes before the conference call begins. A live audio webcast of that conference call will be available on the Investors page of RG's website, www.rgare.com. A replay of the conference call will be available at the same address for 90 days following the conference call.



Reinsurance Group of America, Incorporated (RGA), a Fortune 500 company, is among the leading global providers of life reinsurance and financial solutions, with approximately $3.5 trillion of life reinsurance in force and assets of $84.7 billion as of December 31, 2020. Founded in 1973, RGA today is recognized for its deep technical expertise in risk and capital management, innovative solutions, and commitment to serving its clients. With headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri, and operations around the world, RGA delivers expert solutions in individual life reinsurance, individual living benefits reinsurance, group reinsurance, health reinsurance, facultative underwriting, product development, and financial solutions. To learn more about RGA and its businesses, visit the company's website at www.rgare.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005120/en/

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I was very curious about focused work, Portnoy said in a news release. Where does it come from, how does it apply to me, how does it apply to everyone else? This could be something that could help a lot of people tap into a skill set to achieve what they want to achieve.
SAN FRANCISCO, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The global commercial tabletop kitchen products market size is expected to reach USD 17.74 billion by 2028, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. It is expected to expand at a CAGR of 7.5% from 2021 to 2028. The evolution of self-service kiosks and the popularity of buffet systems in restaurants have resulted in the growing adoption of commercial tabletop kitchen products. Besides, events such as holiday parties, business meetings, weddings, or any other social gathering require feeding a large number of people, wherein a buffet system is considered to be the ideal service option. This scenario is expected to result in the growing adoption of different buffet service utensils and serving ware, such as plates and drinkware.

Key suggestions from the report:

Asia Pacific held the largest share of over 33.0% in 2020 and is foreseen to remain at the forefront over the forecast period

By material, the metal ware segment held the largest share of over 43.0% in 2020. This is attributed to the increased adoption of metal ware in the commercial sector

The porcelain material segment is projected to expand at the highest CAGR of 8.3% from 2021 to 2028 owing to its favorable properties, such as strength, elasticity, permeability, cost-effectiveness, and translucency

Read 80 page research report with ToC on "Commercial Tabletop Kitchen Products Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Material (Glassware, Porcelain, Metal Ware), By Product (Cutlery, Flatware, Buffet Ware, Tabletop Products), By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2021 - 2028" at:https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/commercial-tabletop-kitchen-products-market

The growing trend of food-away-from home, dining out, and takeout has been presenting lucrative growth opportunities for restaurants and eating joints, which has resulted in a surge in the number of eateries. This has driven the need for various tabletop kitchen products for the preparation, service, and delivery of various kinds of foods. The growth of the restaurant industry is mainly attributed to the customer desire for convenience, socializing, and high-quality food and services. This has influenced restaurant owners to invest in modern and quality tabletop kitchen products, including dinnerware and buffet ware.

The rapidly increasing urbanization across developing economies is a prominent factor leading to a positive scenario for the market. In line with this, growing investments by countries in constructing office buildings, hotels, retail stores, malls, hospitals, and other commercial infrastructure will result in the subsequent demand for various kinds of tabletop kitchen products. According to Invest India, the construction market in India is expected to emerge as the third-largest globally by 2025. Similarly, in China, the number of private hospitals doubled to a total of 16,900 hospitals in 2017 from 2011. Such infrastructure development efforts are paving the way for various commercial tabletop kitchen products across countries.

Businesses are gradually shifting from brick-and-mortar sales to e-commerce portals due to increasing digitization, penetration of smartphones, and internet access. To expand product visibility, especially in the emerging markets, manufacturers are showcasing their products on various online platforms, such as company-owned portals and third-party retailers. Appropriate pricing, dealer margins, a strong distribution network, and brand awareness are some of the critical factors determining the success of industry players. Omnichannel is a new strategy implemented by manufacturers in the market.

Asia Pacific held the largest revenue share in 2020 and is expected to expand at the fastest CAGR over the forecast period. In Asia Pacific, China is likely to be at the forefront in terms of revenue share and is expected to expand at a notable CAGR from 2021 to 2028. Factors such as the increasing popularity of commercial tabletop kitchen products and the expanding hospitality sector in the country are driving the market in China. The presence of a large number of manufacturers of tabletop kitchen products in China is another factor boosting the market growth.

Grand View Research has segmented the global commercial tabletop kitchen products market on the basis of material & product, and region:

Commercial Tabletop Kitchen Products Material & Product Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2016 - 2028)

Glassware



Cutlery





Flatware





Buffet Ware





Tabletop Products



Porcelain



Cutlery





Flatware





Buffet Ware





Tabletop Products



Metal Ware



Cutlery





Flatware





Buffet Ware





Tabletop Products

Commercial Tabletop Kitchen Products Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2016 - 2028)

North America



U.S.





Canada





Mexico



Northern Europe



Denmark





Sweden



Southern Europe



Italy





Spain



Western Europe



Germany





U.K.





Netherlands





Austria



Eastern Europe



Russia





Poland



Asia Pacific



China





Malaysia





India





Japan





Vietnam





Australia





New Zealand





South America





Brazil





Chile



Middle East & Africa



Saudi Arabia





Turkey





Egypt





South Africa

List of Key Players of Commercial Tabletop Kitchen Products Market

The Oneida Group

Villeroy & Boch AG

Arc International

Sambonet Paderno Industrie S.p.A.

Mepra S.p.A.

Sola Cutlery

Solex GERMANY GmbH

GmbH Lenox Corporation

Pinti Inox S.p.A.

The Vollrath Co., L.L.C.

Degrenne

Studio William Welch Ltd.

Amefa B.V.

BHS Tabletop AG

Churchill China (UK) Ltd.

(UK) Ltd. Libbey Inc.

Matfer Bourgeat International

WNK

Lifetime Brands, Inc.

Steelite International

Find more research reports onHomecare & Decor Industry, by Grand View Research:

Luxury Hotel Market - The global luxury hotel market size was valued at USD 83.10 billion in 2017 and is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of 4.3% over the forecast period. Emerging tourism and corporate industries across various regions, rising disposable income, increasing standard of living of people, and rise in preference for leisure travel are expected to drive the market.

in 2017 and is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of 4.3% over the forecast period. Emerging tourism and corporate industries across various regions, rising disposable income, increasing standard of living of people, and rise in preference for leisure travel are expected to drive the market. Tabletop Kitchen Products Market - Market growth is driven by the rising adoption of serving ware for everyday domestic use. In addition, significant developments in the foodservice and hospitality industry have been majorly driving demand for tabletop kitchen products to provide better customer service and dining experience.

Construction Toys Market - The global construction toys market size was valued at USD 10.40 billion in 2018. Increasing recognition of the benefits associated with construction toys in the cognitive development of kids is expected to drive the market.

Gain access to Grand View Compass, our BI enabled intuitive market research database of 10,000+ reports

About Grand View Research

Grand View Research, U.S.-based market research and consulting company, provides syndicated as well as customized research reports and consulting services. Registered in California and headquartered in San Francisco, the company comprises over 425 analysts and consultants, adding more than 1200 market research reports to its vast database each year. These reports offer in-depth analysis on 46 industries across 25 major countries worldwide. With the help of an interactive market intelligence platform, Grand View Research helps Fortune 500 companies and renowned academic institutes understand the global and regional business environment and gauge the opportunities that lie ahead.

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New Delhi:

The Islamic State group on Thursday released what appeared to be a rare recording of its cloistered leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The video showcased Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi sending out a telling message to the terror group supporters, vowing to continue the group's fight across Syria and Iraq as its self-proclaimed caliphate has been reduced to a mere shadow of its self.

The video has left many flabbergasted as it was the first public message of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi since last 11 months. ISIS media released a 46-minute audio message that plays a speech by Baghdadi, according to the militant group.

It remains unclear when the message was recorded. But its release comes at a troubled time for the Islamic State, whose territorial claims have eroded significantly since Baghdadi was heard from last. The Islamist militants, who once laid claim to a wide expanse of land straddling the border between Iraq and Syria, lost the major Iraqi city of Mosul  where Baghdadi declared the group's caliphate in 2014  earlier this summer to the Iraqi military.

And U.S.-backed rebels are now racing against the Syrian regime to retake the oil-rich province of Deir ez-Zor in Suria. Rebel forces have also pushed progressively deeper into Raqqa, ISIS' so-called capital.

Peppered with references to current geopolitical flash points, including North Korea and Iraqi Kurdistan, the unverified 46-minute speech seemed partly intended to silence reports that Baghdadi has been killed on the battlefield.

It has been almost a year since his last message to followers, recorded as Islamic State militants girded themselves for a U.S.-backed assault on Mosul, their largest stronghold.

Now fully under control of the Iraqi government, the city's mosque - from which Baghdadi made his only public appearance as the militant group's leader - lies in ruins, a shattered reminder of the dominance the Islamic State once held over a swath of land that once spanned almost a third of Syria and Iraq.

Three years on, the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, is defending a shrinking stretch of territory. In Iraq, the group is down to two last strongholds after losing a grueling, nine-month battle for control of the city of Mosul. In Syria, the Islamic State has all but lost its grip on its onetime de facto capital of Raqqa and is now facing down parallel U.S. and Syrian-backed offensives in the oil-rich eastern province of Deir Ezzor.

In Thursday's recording, the voice purporting to be Baghdadi's cast those defeats in a more charitable light. "This predicament is a generous gift from God," he said.

He also consoled foot soldiers and supporters over their recent defeats, saying the top priority for Muslims is to "satisfy" God. "Victory against their enemies and the enemy of God comes n

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Representative Alcee Hastings, a former federal judge who, despite being impeached and removed from the bench, was elected to Congress, where he championed civil rights and rose to become dean of the Florida delegation, died on Tuesday. He was 84.

Lale Morrison, his chief of staff, confirmed the death. She provided no other details.

Mr. Hastings, a Democrat, had announced in early 2019 that he had pancreatic cancer. He continued to make public appearances for a time but was unable to travel to Washington in January to take the oath of office.

His death reduces his partys already slim majority in the House of Representatives, which is now 218 to 211, until a special election can be held to fill his seat. His district, which includes Black communities around Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach as well as a huge, less populated area around Lake Okeechobee, is reliably Democratic.

A strong liberal voice, Mr. Hastings was a pioneering civil rights lawyer in the 1960s and 70s in Fort Lauderdale, which at the time was deeply inhospitable to Black people. Throughout his career he crusaded against racial injustice and spoke up for gay people, immigrants, women and the elderly, as well as advocating for better access to health care and higher wages. He was also a champion of Israel.
The election of President Joe Biden has been the cause of much hand-wringing in the United States oil and gas sector. The current U.S. president has made clean energy and climate change a central part of his platform, at what many fear will be the expense of shale, one of the nations key economic sectors. Unfortunately, our economic bedrock of oil and gas is under attack by an administration that is bent on eliminating millions of jobs, Republican Congressman Brian Babin told the public back in February at a press event along with six other Texan lawmakers, as he stood in front of the refineries and petrochemical plants of the Houston Ship Channel.

This rather alarmist missive came on the heels of the then very new presidents decision to pull the plug on the massive Keystone XL pipeline project on his very first day in office. Babins sentiments have been echoed by plenty of oilfield insiders and pro-oil pundits who have not been shy about decrying the new administrations less than cozy relationship with the shale sector.

That sentiment is understandable, with Bidens Energy Secretary pick Jennifer Granholm issuing an ultimatum to the oil industry to adapt or die. Granholm emphasized that the world is moving away from oil and toward clean energy. Im not going to sugarcoat how hard transitions are, Granholm said at IHS Markits annual CERAWeek conference last month, acknowledging that the clean energy transition will be anything but easy for the United States shale patch. The bottom line is this particular growth of clean energy and reduction of carbon provides a huge opportunity and Im extending a hand of partnership, she said.

Related Video: How To Love Pipelines and Fear Climate Change

Despite this rhetoric, it seems that the Biden administration is now throwing the oil industry a bone. The presidents much-touted infrastructure initiative is going to call for asphalt - lots and lots of asphalt - in an unexpected boon for the domestic oil sector. Last week Biden presented his $2.25 trillion infrastructure proposal that will provide a number of economic opportunities for oil, including $115 billion allocated to roads and bridges, and an additional $16 billion to get out of work oilfield laborers back into paid positions plugging abandoned wells across the United States.

The biggest opportunity, however, lies in the sky-high asphalt demand embedded in the infrastructure spending bill. The biggest winners may not be in the domestic market though. Since asphalt is derived from the heaviest and most-dense material in a barrel of crude this development could stand to benefit Canadas struggling oil sands the most, which will be ecstatic for any new market for their heavy crude bitumen.

Related: OPEC+ Was Wise To Ease Output Cuts Despite Demand Concerns



In fact, while the Biden administration is charging full steam ahead on the clean energy transition, with massive investments into electric vehicles and renewables, its clear that they have been listening to the oil sector and have been making a concerted effort not to leave oilfield workers behind. Since taking office two months ago, Bidens been more boon than bane for a fossil-fuel industry that was wary of the ascendance of a politician bent on accelerating the energy transition, Bloomberg reported last week, citing Goldman Sachs assertion that Biden has been bullish for oil overall.

The jobs cant come fast enough. Home to the worlds third-biggest oil workforce, the U.S. saw an 11% cut to headcount in 2020 that reduced the ranks of employed to just under 1 million, Bloomberg reports. Another 10,000 or so job cuts are expected this year. While the Biden administration has been straightforward that there will be oilfield industry casualties from the green energy transition, so far it does seem that theyre doing what they can to soften the blow. It appears that even the infrastructure investments into renewable energy will benefit oilfield workers in the end - and ultimately large oil states like Texas will play a major role in the future of wind, solar, and energy storage in the U.S.

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Australia's longest-running TV drama Neighbours has been plunged into scandal after an indigenous guest actress claimed a racist culture was running 'rife' on set.

Shareena Clanton says her six-week stint on Ramsay Street in a guest role was marred by 'multiple racist traumas' which have required ongoing counselling.

During filming in January and February this year, the use of racial slurs became so common at least one actor was asked to leave the set and take cultural sensitivity training, Ms Clanton claims.

Australia's longest-running TV drama Neighbours has been plunged into scandal after indigenous guest actor Shareena Clanton claimed a racist culture was running 'rife' on set

The 30-year-old wrote on Instagram: 'It's been lonely, triggering and traumatising to work in such a culturally unsafe space,' adding she would never work for the Network Ten show again.

Within the social media post, the Perth-born actor listed multiple allegations of racist and inappropriate behaviour by senior Neighbours staff and fellow cast members.

Ms Clanton says she fired her agent when he described a senior staff member's alleged use of the term 'slave driver' - in reference to him working hard - as 'office banter'.

She also claims the set was 'rife' with covert levels of racism, citing a white actress openly calling another actress of colour a 'lil' monkey' as an alleged example.

She claims she tried to explain why the slur was so offensive but to no avail and reported the person to HR.

Ms Clanton also says HR were also forced to set up segregated spaces to keep feuding stars apart after the repeated use of the 'n' word in front of her, twice on set and in the green room.

But that when she confronted the actor directly she was told to 'go somewhere else'.

Ms Clanton says her six-week stint on Ramsay Street in a guest role was marred by 'multiple racist traumas' which have required ongoing counselling (pictured, Clanton with Colette Mann who is not believed to be involved in the allegations)

Speaking about challenging the alleged use of racist slurs, she told Guardian Australia: 'A staff member turned to me and told me that I needed to take it somewhere else, because I was making other people uncomfortable'.

Ms Clanton claims the alleged perpetrator was only reprimanded and ordered to attend cultural sensitivity training after they had used the 'n' word twice.

In another instance, an actress is accused of openly laughing when the same racist term was used - a claim Ms Clanton said the woman denied when questioned by human resources.

'She said that I 'misconstrued' what she was 'laughing at' and that she was laughing at 'something else'. That is a blatant lie,' Ms Clanton wrote.

'The retaliation for calling out this misconduct and racism often left me ostracized and further marginalised.'

Other claims included Ms Clanton paying out of her own pocket to have a Wurundjeri Elder on set for 'cultural safety reasons', and a department head laughing when a cast member used a highly sexualised term.

Clanton told Guardian Australia the atmosphere on set was 'toxic' and that there was an 'unhealthy level of silent complicity' among management as well as her fellow actors.

She said: 'There was a lot of commentary that was highly inflammatory, sexist, misogynistic, crass and crude  the kind of comments that if I were to make in any other workspace would absolutely [result in] instant dismissal,

'But somehow people just continued to get a gentle word spoken to them, or have a polite side word between [the alleged culprit] and the person who was offended by what was being said.'

A Fremantle Media spokesperson said the Network Ten soap, now into its 35th year, 'strives to be a platform for diversity and inclusion on-screen and off-screen'.

'Our quest is always to continue to grow and develop in this area and we acknowledge that this is an evolving process,' a statement said.

'Shareena's involvement in the creative process and on set was invaluable and hugely educational and will benefit the series moving forward.

'There have been significant and lengthy discussions with Shareena during her time on Neighbours and we will continue to work with all cast and crew to ensure Neighbours continues to be a fully inclusive environment.'

During filming in January and February this year, Ms Clanton claims the use of racial slurs became so common at least one actor was asked to leave the set and take cultural sensitivity training

Several actors, including her co-star Zoe Terakes, as well as Sharon Johal, and Belinda Bromilow, have publicly stated their support for Ms Clanton.

Ms Clanton's fellow First Nations actor Meyne Wyatt also tweeted his supported and he said he too had experienced racism on the set.

However, the Wentworth star has also faced a barrage of criticism for speaking out online.

In a second post on Instagram on Wednesday, Ms Clanton showed screenshots of the reaction to her public allegations from Twitter.

Users had termed Ms Clanton a 'whiner, for sure', while others said she could 'kiss goodbye' to 'what token career she had'.

Commenting on the responses, she said: 'I have no qualms critiquing such power structures. What do I have to gain here by speaking truth to one of the most powerful and multi-million dollar global production houses like Freemantle Media? I'm the one being blacklisted.

'There are many horror stories from other First Nations people and under-represented communities about what they experience on set and in the story rooms. Believe them.'

She added: 'I stand by my truth and what I said I bore witness to and directly endured.'

The Wentworth star said she feared going public with allegations of racism would damage her career prospects.
Pigs are seen in a hog pen in a village in Linquan county in Anhui Province, China, on Aug. 31, 2018. (Chinatopix Via AP)

Fresh African Swine Fever Outbreak Hits Chinas Xinjiang

Chinas agriculture ministry on April 5 reported an outbreak of African swine fever in the Xinjiang region, marking the third occasion the region spotted cases since February.

The outbreak occurred on a farm with 599 pigs under Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a state-owned economic and paramilitary entity under U.S. sanctions over human rights abuses in the region.

Thirty-three pigs were infected and six died, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said in a statement. Local authorities have culled the remaining live pigs in the affected zone and halted transports of hog or related products in and out of the area.

African swine fever has plagued China since it emerged in the country in August 2018. The deadly disease forced China to cull millions of hogs and wiped out about 40 percent of the countrys pig stock, leading to widespread pork shortages and sending prices to skyrocket.

The virus has made multiple appearances in Chinas mainland this year, including in southern Guangdong Province, southwestern provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan Province, and the central province of Hubei.

The recent rounds of swine fever outbreaks in China have slashed the hog population in northern China by at least 20 percent, various industry estimates found.

New Hope Liuhe, Chinas fourth-largest producer, also found two new virus strains in January that had infected more than 1,000 hogs on their farms. As the virus could remain contagious for months and even years in some products, the discovery raised concerns of the new strains spreading to other parts of the world through contaminated meat.

GM Biotech, a privately-owned biotechnology firm based in Hunan that develops testing kits for the disease, said the new strains are very difficult to detect at the initial stage of infection and have a longer incubation period after infection, Reuters reported at the time.

Taiwan, which has so far remained intact from the disease, recently reported a dead pig infected with the African swine fever on the coast, prompting a round of herd testing around the area. The pig was washed ashore over the weekend and had the same virus strain matching the one circulating in China.

In late March, Chinese media also reported dozens of pig carcasses were found near Inner Mongolia. The cause of the deaths remains unknown.

In February, Hong Kong culled 3,000 herds in a farm after eight pigs tested positive for the African swine fever virus. Most of the infected pigs came from mainland China, according to Hong Kong officials.
More details of the November 2020 killing of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh have emerged. Mossad, the Israeli external-intelligence agency, planned the operation. Some twenty operatives, including Israelis and Iranians, observed Fakhrizadeh for eight months. At the same time Israel smuggled a RWS (Remote Weapon System) machine-gun into the country. This RWS was modified to operate from a pickup truck or van.

Israel is a major developer and manufacturer for RWS equipment and use them on military vehicles as well as part of their border defense systems on active borders like the one covering Gaza. Israel produces three types of RWS; a 75 kg (169 pound) one for 5.56mm and 7.62mm machine-guns, a 160 kg (350 pound) one for 12.7mm and 14.5mm machine-guns, and a 1.5 ton one for 40mm and 20mm autocannon. The border defense ones are mounted in concrete turrets along with high-res day/night vid cams and usually are armed with a 12.7mm machine-gun with an effective range of over 1,000 meters. These RWS are in a platform that is normally inside the turret and only raised into firing position when a potential target is sighted, or for training and testing. These are operated by remote operators in a control center who evaluate the sighting and open fire with warning or lethal shots depending on the nature of the intruders; armed or unarmed and how many and whether they are on foot or in a vehicle.

It is unclear what caliber machine-gun was used against Fakhrizadeh, who was shot dead after the security vehicle ahead of his car was fired on. He was curious as to what was happening, exited his own vehicle was fired on and shot twice, fatally. Apparently, the Iranians did not suspect a concealed vehicle mounted RWS and that vehicle was rigged with explosives that were set off remotely after the attack. There was little left for the Iranians to collect and reassemble. The Israelis may have used a foreign RWS or an Israeli one sanitized to hide its origins. None of the Mossad personnel involved were captured and all got away.

RWS mounted sniper rifles have been developed and used, but this attack involved a machine-gun controlled by a skilled operator. One report described the RWS as mounted and concealed on a pickup truck. Another source reported that this was strictly an Israeli operation, with no American involvement.

Fakhrizadeh was a senior Iranian nuclear scientist and veteran IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) general. During decades of IRGC service the 63-year-old Fakhrizadeh also managed to get several advanced scientific degrees, including a doctorate in physics. With that technical training Fakhrizadeh became a key member of the team developing nuclear weapons for Iran. His prominence in the nuclear weapons program was mentioned several times in the half-ton of secret nuclear program documents Israel stole from Iran in 2018. Those documents confirmed the key role Fakhrizadeh played in the nuclear program, something he was sanctioned for by the United States as far back as 2008. He is the fifth key member of the Iranian nuclear weapons effort to be killed since 2010. The loss of Fakhrizadeh is expected to slow Iranian nuclear weapons development and it will take years to find a suitable replacement.

Fakhrizadeh was killed using a less complex but difficult to perfect weapon. The idea of a remote-control machine-gun has been around since the 1940s but years of tinkering, and better technology, eventually resulted in a Norwegian firm (Kongsberg) developing a remote-control gun system that worked effectively, dependably, and affordably. This has made the RWS practical for widespread combat use. While some troops miss the greater feeling of situational awareness (especially being able to hear and smell the surroundings) you got as an old-school turret gunner, most soldiers and marines have adapted and accepted the new system. What it lacks in the smelling and hearing department, it makes up for in terms of night vision and zoom. Most importantly, it's a lot safer. In pre-RWS days turret gunners made up a disproportionate number of combat casualties.

The United States was the first to adopt the Kongsberg Protec RWS for use by troops in Iraq. By the end of 2006, there were about a thousand Protec CROWS (Common Remotely Operated Weapon Stations), in U.S. service. By 2012 there were over 8,000 and U.S. ultimately purchased over 16,000 of them. Many of the enemy fighters had seen Western or Japanese films featuring killer robots and often thought that's what they were facing. The fear factor was real and it helped. The accuracy of the fire, and uncanny speed with which the CROWS gun moved to point at a target, was due to something few officers expected: so many troops who quickly become expert RWS operators. The guys operating these systems grew up playing video games. They developed skills in operating computer systems (video games) very similar to the CROWS controls. This was important because viewing the world around the vehicle via a vidcam is not as enlightening (although a lot safer) than having your head and chest exposed to the elements and any firepower the enemy sends your way. But experienced video gamers are skilled at whipping that screen view around and picking up any signs of danger. It was soon found that the zoom and night vision capabilities made the RWS operator superior to having someone manually handling the weapon and detection of the enemy.

The Israeli military tended to assign female soldiers to be RWS operators for the border defense RWS turrets. It is unclear if video game experience was a prerequisite but the women proved better at determining if a target required lethal fire or just warning shots to force them back across their side of the border or to halt long enough for Israeli troop to show up and capture the interlopers.
The European Union and its member states are supporting PNG's ongoing efforts in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic.

They've decided to release an additional K4 million to support the International Committee of the Red Cross in PNG to implement a six months intervention.

The intervention will focus on increasing the treatment capacity of the public health care system, support the testing capacity in detention centers and provide general support to the vaccination campaign in PNG.

According to a statement from the EU, since February, the EU has already channelled through the World Health Organisation, K12 million, and in late March, at the request of PNG Authorities, the EU Civil Protection Mechanism (an EU solidarity tool for emergency situations) has been activated.

After the timely support deployed by France recently, Germany offered a 7-person Emergency Medical Team consisting of 2 doctors, 2 nurses, and 3 light medical staff who are expected to arrive in PNG around mid-April this year with the length of deployment planned for at least 28 days.

The German team will integrate with St Johns Ambulance.





NBC / ONE PNG





Next :PNG Man who received COVID-19 Vaccine Dispels Fear
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 07:33:28|Editor: huaxia

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WASHINGTON, April 6 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Joe Biden announced Tuesday that all American adults will be eligible for COVID-19 vaccine by April 19.

Biden announced the new timetable after his visit to a vaccination site in Alexandria, Virginia, moving up his original deadline of May 1 by nearly two weeks.

Biden said that 150 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been administered within his first 75 days in office, in line with a stated goal of 200 million shots by his 100th day in office.

He urged Americans to continue to practice pandemic safety measures, saying the country is not "at the finish line yet" and may experience more "disease and misery" before July 4.

A few weeks ago, Biden called on states, tribes and territories to make all U.S. adults eligible for vaccination no later than May 1.

Biden has stressed that while the country is now vaccinating a record number of Americans, the battle against COVID-19 is "far from won" as cases are once again on the rise.

The country has seen a rise in new cases in 27 states, including cases from new and emerging COVID-19 variants. Currently, the seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases is about 61,000 cases a day, a 10 percent increase over the previous period, according to the latest data of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Biden has called on every governor, mayor and local leader to maintain -- and in some cases reinstate -- mask mandates.

Some states' governors have lifted requirements for masks and allowed businesses to reopen to full capacity against warnings from public health experts.

Highly contagious variants are rapidly spreading in the United States, threatening to outpace the vaccination efforts.

Last week, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said B.1.1.7, the variant first identified in Britain, is starting to become the predominant strain in many regions of the United States, accounting for 26 percent of COVID-19 cases circulating across the nation.

The country has recorded more than 17,000 infection cases of coronavirus variants as of Tuesday, according to the latest data of the CDC.

Among these cases, 16,275 cases were caused by B.1.1.7. There were 386 cases of a new strain initially discovered in South Africa, called B.1.351, and 356 cases of the P.1 strain first discovered in Brazil.

In addition, the B.1.427 and B.1.429 variants, two coronavirus strains first detected in California, are also being closely monitored by the CDC.

About 168 million COVID-19 vaccine shots have been administered as of Tuesday, while more than 219 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been distributed across the country, CDC data show. Enditem
"Beyond Arthouse cinemas and film festivals, it is often a challenge to locate and watch Canadian film and television projects here in the US. This difficulty was the catalyst for CANADA NOW to build something new and we couldn't be more thrilled to support it and share!" -Khawar Nasim, Acting Consul General, Consulate General of Canada in New York

As evidenced most recently by the outpouring of love for Schitt's Creek, there is clearly an enthusiastic audience for Canadian content in the US. We are delighted to collaborate with Telefilm Canada and the Consulate General of Canada in New York to raise the profile of Canadian films and series even further. - Justine Barda, Founder and CEO, Telescope

CANADA NOW 's monthly boutique curation will spotlight six different programming sections in addition to the searchable database of productions accessible within the U.S. The site is now live and every month will feature a section on New Arrivals, Classic Films and a spotlight called Indigenous Voices. For the month of April, in addition to those sections, the site will feature a section on Canadian Oscar-nominated films called Oscar Loves Canada, a spotlight on International Jazz Day as well as a section called National Film Board Gems composed of five films selected by the National Film Board of Canada. These additional curated sections will change every month to keep things fresh and offer new content.

"After tremendous successes in Europe and other countries around the world Telefilm Canada has partnered with Telescope to develop and build a fully searchable database accessible on one platform. It offers a way to find fresh and inspiring new content as well as thousands of precious Canadian gems from first features to award winning films and series."

- Christa Dickenson, Executive Director, Telefilm Canada

"The NFB is thrilled to be partnering on CANADA NOW to bring powerful and timely Canadian storytelling to an ever-wider US audience. With thousands of productions online, Canada's public producer and distributor, the NFB, is a world-renowned source of acclaimed animation, documentary, fiction, interactive works and more."

- Claude Joli-Coeur, Government Film Commissioner and NFB Chairperson

For monthly updates on new content please sign up for the CANADA NOW newsletter here .

To check out CANADA NOW's microsite on Telescope and its vast database of the incredible content that can be viewed in the US, click here !

Telefilm Canada

Telefilm is dedicated to the cultural, commercial and industrial success of Canada's audiovisual industry. Through funding and promotion programs, Telefilm supports dynamic companies and creative talent at home and around the world. Telefilm also makes recommendations regarding the certification of audiovisual treaty coproductions to the Minister of Canadian Heritage and administers the programs of the Canada Media Fund. Launched in 2012, the Talent Fund raises private donations to principally support emerging talent. Visit telefilm.ca and follow us on Twitter at @telefilm_canada and on Facebook at @telefilmcanada

Consulate General of Canada in New York

The Consulate General of Canada in New York represents the Government of Canada in New York, Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Bermuda. The Consulate General's efforts and engagements cover a range of political, commercial, cultural, security and economic interests to Canada in our region. From providing business clients with practical advice and on-the-ground intelligence, to engaging with local, state and federal government representatives, to servicing Canadians and visa holders, the Consulate General of Canada in New York is highly engaged with stakeholders across multiple sectors and industries. Follow us on Twitter: @CanadaNY Facebook: @CanadaNY and on Instagram: @canada.newyork

About the NFB

The NFB is Canada's public producer and distributor of award-winning documentaries, auteur animation, interactive stories and participatory experiences, working with talented creators across the country. The NFB is taking action to combat systemic racism and become a more open and diverse organization, while working to strengthen Indigenous-led production and gender equity in film and digital media. NFB productions have won more than 7,000 awards, including 12 Oscars. To access this unique content, visit NFB.ca.

Telescope

Telescope Film promotes international film to American audiences. Our site is powered by a database of 450,000 titles with one-click access to over 150 streaming services. We also offer curation, in the form of Telescope Recommends and a weekly Spotlight, to help users discover new content from around the world. Visit us at https://telescopefilm.com/ .

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Someone just called me today and said We drove past your business last week, and it was cold outside. That cake must be good because people were standing in line! Hart said in February. That type of support  where people dont pass you up just because they gotta stand in line  I dont know how you repay that.
Leaders in the Texas House on Wednesday unveiled a suite of health care initiatives aimed at boosting access for new moms, children, Texans in rural areas and those who depend on costly prescription drugs.

The bills, many of which have bipartisan backing, are among what was suggested to be the first wave of measures the lower chamber hopes to pass this session amid the coronavirus pandemic. Texas has long had some of the worst health outcomes in the country, as well as the highest uninsured rate.

Its very important that we put health care and health front and center, and the House is doing that, said Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, adding its rare for members to get behind such a broad spectrum of legislation all at once. Thats a big deal, Coleman said.

Some of the measures, especially one extending health care coverage for mothers in the months after childbirth, have been passed before by the Republican-controlled House only to die in the more conservative state Senate.

But the package was perhaps most notable for excluding any effort to draw down billions in federal funding through Medicaid expansion, a step most other states have taken and that has been long prioritized by health care advocates, Democrats and some moderate Republicans.

TEXAS TAKE: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox

Some House members believe they have found a way to appease conservative concerns about expanding Medicaid through legislation that is budget neutral and contingent on federal support. But that measure, HB 3871, still has yet to be heard in committee, one of the early hurdles of the legislative process.

Its an elephant in the room that will be addressed, said House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, though he declined to say whether the bill itself, which is co-authored by several Republicans, would be heard.

Phelan appeared to walk back remarks from early in the session, when he said there could be a path forward on a Republican-supported approach to drawing down the expansion dollars. He noted that expansion itself would help only a small fraction of Texans, by some estimates between 700,000 and 1 million.

Were talking about millions of Texans with these bills, Phelan said about the measures highlighted Wednesday. On Medicaid expansion, he added, We can talk about that legislation when it gets to the House floor.

In addition to extending coverage for new moms, the legislation unveiled Wednesday would expand access to telehealth services, reduce red tape for children on Medicaid and re-create a task force on health care disparities that had been disbanded before the pandemic. It would also create discount buying clubs for common high-cost medications including insulin and epinephrine.

We're thrilled to see that leaders of the Texas House are committed to passing critical health care legislation this session, said Stephanie Rubin, CEO of Texans Care for Children, though she added the group was disappointed that Medicaid expansion was excluded.

The package also includes a handful of partisan bills, including one from Rep. James Frank, R-Wichita Falls, that would allow low-cost, quasi-insurance plans to reenter the market, without requirements that they cover most benefits or pre-existing conditions.

Everyone up here wants to see more Texans with health insurance coverage that meets their individual needs, Frank said, stressing that the plans would create more market competition.

Health care advocates and lobbyists for insurers spoke out against that bill Tuesday, warning it would likely siphon off healthy people without providing quality, comprehensive care.

jeremy.blackman@chron.com
As of midnight, Tuesday April 6, the HPSC has been notified of 423 confirmed cases of COVID-19. There is now a total of 239,325* confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ireland. Of the cases listed today, 18 have been attributed to Limerick.

The '5-Day Moving Average of New Cases' for Limerick stands at 9, while the 'New Cases during last 14 days' stands at 179.

Of the cases notified today:

219 are men / 201 are women

73% are under 45 years of age

The median age is 30 years old

199 in Dublin, 41 in Kildare, 23 in Meath, 20 in Galway, 18 in Westmeath and the remaining 122 spread across 19 other counties.

As of 8am today, 232 COVID-19 patients are hospitalised, of which 56 are in ICU. 13 additional hospitalisations in the past 24 hours.

The Health Protection Surveillance Centre has today been notified of 5 additional deaths related to COVID-19. 4 of these deaths occurred in April, and 1 in February. There has been a total of 4,732 COVID-19 related deaths in Ireland.

As of April 4th 2021, 936,087 doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in Ireland:

663,411 people have received their first dose

272,676 people have received their second dose



The COVID-19 Dashboard provides up-to-date information on the key indicators of COVID-19 in the community including daily data on Irelands COVID-19 Vaccination Programme.
San Francisco:

Social networking platform Twitter is set to roll out the biggest ever change to its platform  its 140 character limit will be now expanded to 280 characters. San Francisco-based Twitter said the new limit, aims to address a major cause of frustration for many users.

Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey fired off what may be one of the first expanded tweets.This is a small change, but a big move for us, he wrote.

140 was an arbitrary choice... Proud of how thoughtful the team has been in solving a real problem people have when trying to tweet. A small group of users will see the new limits before Twitter decides on rolling out the changes more broadly, the company said.

Trying to cram your thoughts into a tweetweve all been there, and its a pain, product manager Aliza Rosen and software engineer Ikuhiro Ihara said in a blog post.

Were doing something new: were going to try out a longer limit, 280 characters, in languages impacted by cramming.

Twitter planned to leave the old limit in place for tweets in languages such as Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. It was done because internal data showed written characters in those languages packed plenty into the alloted space.

Our research shows us that the character limit is a major cause of frustration for people tweeting in English, but it is not for those tweeting in Japanese, Rosen and Ihara said.

Also, in all markets, when people dont have to cram their thoughts into 140 characters and actually have some to spare, we see more people tweeting.

Twitter, which became a public company in 2013, has never reported a profit even though it has built a loyal base of celebrities, journalists and political figures. A notable and prolific tweeter is none other than US President Donald Trump.

In its most recent quarter, Twitter reported its base of monthly active users was unchanged at 328 million compared to the first three months of the year.

Its growth has failed to keep pace with the social network leader Facebook, which has some two billion users, and Facebook-owned Instagram, with 800 million.

Were hoping fewer tweets run into the character limit, which should make it easier for everyone to tweet, Rosen and Ihara said in the blog post.

We understand since many of you have been Tweeting for years, there may be an emotional attachment to 140 characters... But we tried this, saw the power of what it will do, and fell in love with this new, still brief, constraint.

Twitter has been seeking to draw in users by offering more video including live streaming of sporting events, aiming to broaden its appeal.The messaging platform reported a net loss of $116 million in the second quarter, slightly wider than its $107 million loss a year ago.

It remained an open question whether the new tweet limit would ignite the growth an engagement Twitter needs to compete in the fast-moving social media segment.

The more they expand, the more they start looking like Facebook, Enderle Group analyst Rob Enderle said of Twitter.

And if they start looking like Facebook, then Facebook will take them out and has the warchest for it.

The move by Twitter could also be rendered moot by lifestyle changes brought about by trends in voice-commanded digital assistants, said Gartner analyst Brian Blau.

What are tweets in those worlds? Blau said. We see Twitter sort of struggling to get this business right while everyone else is moving in a another direction.
A new scheme is set to help the cafe culture expand in Dundalk with funding to help coffee shops and restaurants develop their outdoor dining facilities.

The new initiative delivered in partnership between Failte Ireland and Louth County Council will help tourism and hospitality businesses in the county to develop and increase their outdoor seating capacity.

Under the new scheme local cafes and restaurants can apply for a grant of up to 4,000 to buy items including outdoor tables, chairs, umbrellas, electric heaters, screens, wind breaks, plant stands and wooden platforms.

The initiative will also support Louth County Council to upgrade and enhance streets and public spaces and implement weather-proofing solutions to allow year-round outdoor dining.

This will facilitate medium to large scale, weather-proofed dining areas for a collective of businesses in a single zone or street.

Each Local authority can apply for up to 200,000 for a maximum of two locations.

The move comes as National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) member Philip Nolan recently said its clear were looking at an outdoor summer in 2021.

Senator John McGahon, welcoming the scheme, said: Developing outdoor dining and socialising spaces will help to improve the vibrancy of our towns across Louth and bring them more in line with the European model.

The new Outdoor Dining Scheme has two aims.

It will enable individual tourism and hospitality businesses to increase their dining and seating capacity in the short-term and will also create a long-term strategy for our local authority to develop appropriate, permanent, weatherproofed outdoor dining infrastructure in Louth.

This will support jobs and businesses and transform appropriate outdoor spaces across Louth as welcoming, vibrant places that will help support economic recovery.

The Government and Failte Ireland announced the new 17million scheme for developing outdoor dining capacity nationwide last week.

The Outdoor Dining Enhancement Scheme comprises two parts and will be delivered in partnership between Failte Ireland and local authorities across the country.

Part One of the scheme will provide funding for individual tourism and hospitality businesses to develop and increase their own outdoor seating capacity.

Funding allocated under Part Two will enable local authorities to develop permanent outdoor public dining spaces in towns and urban centres, similar to those that exist in various European cities.

Louth senator Erin McGreehan said: I would encourage tourism and hospitality businesses across Louth to apply for the grant.

It is another grant to assist these businesses who have had to close for most of the last year.

The part two of this announcement is very exciting, encouraging a European style of outdoor collective dining.

This funding will uplift a street-scape to have a permanent structure in our towns.

I look forward to seeing the results of this funding and enjoying the many beautiful restaurants and cafes we have.

The Scheme opens for initial applications on April 12th 2021.
(Newser)  In her first few months in office, freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has attacked fellow Republicans, been mocked for supporting wild conspiracy theories like "Jewish space lasers" starting wildfires, and been kicked off two House committee. A lot of donors apparently liked what they saw. Sources tell Politico that the Georgia lawmaker raked in a stunning $3.2 million in donations during the first quarter, with around 100,000 donors giving an average of $32 each. Even for a high-profile first-term lawmaker, that's an enormous haul this far away from the next election, Politico notes. Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's haul was $728,000 in the equivalent quarter two years ago.

story continues below

Greene did not self-fund in the first quarter, sources say. Business Insider notes that Greene's first-quarter haul was larger than what she took in during her entire campaign last yearaccording to federal records, she raised slightly over $3 million, $950,000 of which was self-funded. Greene confirmed the fundraising haul in a Twitter thread Wednesday, describing herself as "the most attacked freshman member of Congress in history." She thanked the "God fearing, America loving, wonderful hardworking people" who donated, and added: "In the words of my favorite President Trump, 'the best is yet to come.'" (Read more Marjorie Taylor Greene stories.)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-06 22:54:24|Editor: huaxia

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NEW DELHI, April 6 (Xinhua) -- India's External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov held talks in New Delhi on Tuesday and discussed bilateral and global issues, said a statement issued by the Indian ministry of external affairs.

The focus of their discussions was preparations for Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to India for the annual summit later this year.

"We talked about longstanding partnership in nuclear, space and defence sectors. We assessed positively our economic cooperation, noting the new opportunities in Russian Far East," said Jaishankar while briefing media persons after the talks.

"Our rapidly expanding energy cooperation that now includes long term commitments was also on the agenda. On my part, I briefed Minister Lavrov on recent developments in India that open up new opportunities for Russian businesses in various sectors. The Self-Reliant India economic vision can facilitate a more contemporary economic relationship in the post-COVID era," he added.

The Indian minister also said that both sides noted the appetite for greater investments in each other.

According to him, there was an exchange of views on West Asia and the Gulf and Iran. He said peace and stability in such a sensitive and vital region is in global interest.

Lavrov arrived in Delhi on Monday for a two-day official visit. Enditem
Pastors daughter shot dead, several others injured on Easter Sunday

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Radio personality Rickey Smiley and Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin are among the leading voices condemning the fatal shooting of the beloved daughter of a local pastor and wounding of several others, including four children, Sunday night.

Areyelle Yarbough, the 32-year-old daughter of the Rev. Michael Yarbrough of Shady Grove Missionary Baptist Church, was shot in the head at Patton Park at about 7 p.m., AL.com reported. Five other victims, ages 21, 17, 16, 15, and 4, were also wounded. The 16-year-old boy was shot in the right hip while another female was shot in the chest.

Yarbrough, who was employed as the countys manager of principal accounting and sang remotely for her fathers church earlier on Sunday morning, was pronounced dead at the scene at 7:33 p.m.

Calls made to Shady Grove Missionary Baptist Church for comment Tuesday were not immediately answered, but Smiley, a Birmingham native who knows the Yarbrough family well, has offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of Yarbroughs killer.

Im really angry today, Smiley said at a press conference.

Its time for the community to stand up. Everybody was out there at the park on Facebook Live. You know who did it. Turn it in to the police department,' Smiley said. I want these murderers, and all murderers found. Stop this no-snitch policy. What does it prove? How is that cool?

Woodfin said the entire community should be angry about the killing of the pastors daughter who was just trying to enjoy the park.

All of us should be angry. If youre not, I dont know. All of us should be sad, and if youre not, I dont know, he said. I dont understand why a 32-year-old innocent black woman has to die when shes just minding her own business, enjoying Easter Sunday in the park. A park is supposed to be [a] safe place.

An eyewitness told authorities that some 1,000 people were in the park, with many grilling and eating with their families just before the shooting.

Yarbrough and another woman were sitting on top of a blue Dodge Charger when someone opened fire, striking the women and the vehicle.

Birmingham police Sgt. Rod Mauldin told AL.com that the shooting erupted from a fight between a group of males and the victims were innocent bystanders.

We know people saw things,' Mauldin said. We need people to come forward with any information you have concerning this incident. No matter how big or small you think it is ... We need descriptions. We need names.

Jefferson County Commission Pro Tem Lashunda Scales called Yarbrough one of the countys brightest employees.

I am devastated to know the life of one of the countys brightest employees was taken,' Scales said. My condolences to her family and friends. We must stop the violence.

Alabama A&M University, where Yarbrough studied, noted in a tweet Monday that: AAMU is saddened to learn through media reports of the death of alumna Areyelle Yarbrough '14. RIP Areyelle.
Olivia Esparza grew desperate as she watched her daughter, Diana, get colder and colder in the February freeze.

Diana, 20, has a condition called Rett syndrome and is non-verbal and non-mobile, and needs electricity to power the machines that keep her healthy: one that helps her breathe at night and another suctions saliva out of her mouth so she doesnt choke. When Esparzas house lost power, she worried about whether Diana would be able to breathe; if the milk she feeds her would spoil without refrigeration.

And she seethed.

She had filled out paperwork to register with CenterPoint as a critical care customer, and she believed she would get a warning about coming outages. She never heard anything.

Power outages from storms or other catastrophes are not just inconveniences for many medically fragile Texans. They are life threatening.

When power abruptly shut off across the state in February, it imperiled thousands of Texans who need electricity to survive. State officials have so far attributed 110 deaths to the storm  though a Houston Chronicle analysis has pegged that number at nearly 200  and at least 20 are believed to have suffered from serious medical conditions and needed power to help keep them alive or healthy.

Despite a stream of natural disasters hitting the state over the past decade, the February freeze revealed continued problems Texas disabled community faces in times of emergencies And the measures that are in place, such as the State of Texas Emergency Assistance Registry statewide registry  meant to help emergency planners prepare for disasters  or special designations with power companies like the one Esparza signed up with, provided little help during the blackout, according to a survey of nearly 600 disabled residents that asked about their experience during the freeze.

It underperformed, and Im being polite, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said, of STEAR. It needs to be revamped.

The STEAR program

STEAR is a database of names, contacts and medical information on disabled or homebound residents that the state makes available to counties and cities, which must designate a custodian who can access the data. Officials can then use the data to inform first responders, notify residents or offer services to those on the list.

About 160 cities and counties use the registry in some form or another. Approximately 85,000 people have registered, according to the emergency management department; a 2019 report prepared for the state by the Texas Workforce Investment Council said about 3.3 million Texans, have disabilities. Advocates for the disabled pin the number even higher, and say as many as a quarter of all Texans live with some form of disability.

Many power companies also have lists for critical care customers or those with chronic conditions. The designation provides some protections for customers to prevent interruption or disconnection of service. To qualify, customers must have their doctors fill out an application to send to one of the companies that distribute power from generation plants to individual homes.

More Information ABOUT OUR REPORTING: This story is based on interviews with dozens of disabled Texans and their relatives, city, county, and state officials, attorneys and advocates for the state's medically fragile residents, representatives from several of the state's power companies, as well as numerous records requests and a review of past news coverage, government reports, and other documents. See More Collapse

Only 6 percent of those who responded to a survey given by the advocacy group Disability Rights Texas were registered with STEAR or as critical care customers with power companies  and more than half did not know such programs existed.

STEAR was created by the Texas Department of Emergency Management to assist those with access and functional needs and individuals with disabilities during an emergency event and provide emergency planners with information about the needs of individuals in their community.

It replaced an earlier program  known as the Transportation Assistance Registry  created after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita decimated the Gulf Coast in 2005. 

I dont know who cares about us

Communication and coordination for the medically fragile are crucial during disasters because such residents are far more likely to suffer: they need electricity to power oxygen concentrators or ventilators; they need water for dialysis treatments; and are frequently less likely to have their own transportation to get supplies or get to dialysis or other medical appointments.

Nearly 45 percent of the people who responded to the Disability Rights Texas survey said they felt they were in physical danger during the freeze because medicines spoiled without refrigeration or critical medical equipment stopped working.

Some who had registered with the state program or were on a utility critical care list were surprised when they didnt get warnings.

They knew I have a child in this house that needs power, said Esparza. Im not saying that they need to bring me a generator. What Im saying is that when the rolling blackout was going to happen  why cant we get children that really need help, and elderly, before we start turning power off.

In an emailed statement, officials from CenterPoint acknowledged critical care designation provides certain protections from suspension or disconnection of service, but said service could be interrupted unexpectedly in major weather events or other situations beyond the companys control.

Designation as a critical care residential customer does not guarantee the uninterrupted supply of electricity, so customers who rely on electricity for life-sustaining equipment should always have a back-up plan in place, officials said.

It made me realize were just superfluous and expendable, said Lydia Nunez-Landry, a Seabrook resident with muscular dystrophy who uses a power wheelchair and said she stopped signing up for state and utility registries because they didnt help. And I dont know who cares about us.

State response

State officials said there is no promise of help during emergencies. The state emergency management department administers the STEAR program but it doesnt provide services to anyone. That is left to local governments.

Officials stressed the program does not guarantee assistance during emergencies, and that disabled residents should have emergency plans in place.

Participation in the STEAR Program by counties and cities is strictly voluntary, emergency management spokesman Seth Christensen said

The Chronicle polled more than a dozen Texas cities and counties about how they used the state registry in February.

Some disseminated the contact and health information on disabled people to first responders. Others did not.

Houston did not because officials believed outages would be brief. Once the extent and duration of the blackouts became apparent, the Mayors Office of People with Disabilities and OEM staff coordinated with 3-1-1 representatives and Houston Metro to transport people with disabilities to warming centers so those individuals could recharge durable medical equipment, said Nikea Bradley, the citys emergency management coordinator.

Waller County did not use the registry during the storm, while Chambers County imported the state data into its emergency notification system. Galveston did use the registry to identify disabled or homebound people, said Zach Davidson, a Galveston County spokesman. We were in constant contact with this group and made deliveries of needed resources.

Power companies registries

Power companies and the Public Utility Commission also made it clear that being listed as a critical care customer doesnt mean there will be uninterrupted service in times of emergency.

If electricity is a necessity, you must make other arrangements for on-site back-up capabilities or other alternatives in the event of loss of electric service, a PUC disclaimer reads on the critical care application customers must send to doctors.

State rules for Texas transmission delivery utilities require companies to provide advance notice if reasonably possible, to critical and chronic care customers if they may lose power during emergencies or other necessary interruptions.

Houston attorney Patrick Luff, who represents relatives of several people who died in the storm, argues that transmission delivery utilities and power generation companies had a duty to ensure that the companies were reviewing the critical care lists, warning their customers that the power could go out, and using rolling blackouts in a way that protected medically vulnerable customers.

A spokesman from the Public Utilities Commission of Texas referred questions about chronic and critical care customers to individual transmission delivery utilities.

False promise

Advocates for the disabled community say both STEAR and utility company programs promote a false promise.

When you have these big events, thats when people really need help, said June Kailes, a consultant who specializes in disability policy. And thats when it doesnt work.  So you dont dangle this registry in front of people, its a false sense of security.

Turners disabilities czar, Gabriel Cazares, said, In theory, registries seem like a good idea. But the STEAR Registry is a data dump that the state collects  and makes available to cities without any funding, without any support, without any guidance.

Now, Cazares said, many in the disability community are deeply suspicious of registries.

The state of Texas provides inadequate support for people who are electrically dependent. Its terrible, said Laura Stough, a professor of psychology at Texas A&M University who studies the impact of disasters on people with disabilities and advised the Texas Department of Emergency Management.

Efforts to fix the problem

The states STEAR database came under scrutiny after Hurricane Harvey, as first responders struggled to rescue thousands of Houstonians trapped in flooding homes.

In 2019, investigators from the Sunset Commission urged lawmakers to direct the Department of Public Safety, which previously oversaw the database, to better coordinate the registry and give guidance to local jurisdictions on how to help medically vulnerable residents. Its unclear what action the department took in response to that recommendation.

Currently, fewer than a third of the states 254 counties have STEAR custodians, officials able to access the data to plan or disseminate to first responders. Only about 80 of the states 1,200 cities have such custodians.

Weve got this centralized list but the use of it is totally decentralized, said Amanda Fredriksen, with the AARP. After every hurricane, theres a review of these issues, people wring their hands and wish they had done things differently.

In 2018, two of the state emergency management department advisory committees recommended TDEM hire a disability integration specialist. They repeated the recommendation in 2019 and again in 2020.

The department has yet to make any such hire.

At the same time, state lawmakers passed a law in 2019 creating an 11-person committee  made up of first responders, city officials, and six people with disabilities or representing people with disabilities  to study ways to help elderly or disabled Texans during disasters and ways to shelter them during severe storms.

Though the task force was charged with producing a report on the issue by Dec. 1, 2020, Gov. Greg Abbott didnt name his appointments to the group until just two months before that date. And the task force didnt hold its first meeting until March 15, 2021  three months after it was supposed to have turned in its final product.

In the wake of the deep freeze, lawmakers are again attempting to address the issue. After a constituent was unable to get to his dialysis appointments  and ultimately died  state Rep. John Bucy filed legislation to make a registry similar to existing one but require first responders and others to perform wellness checks of people on the list within 24 hours of a declared state of emergency.

Having this just be an optional tool isnt getting it done, he said. If (Texans) choose to put their names on this list, they are doing it because they expect to be taken care of and have help.

No help coming

Three days into the freeze, Olivia Esparza was desperate. I had to do something. It wasnt getting any better.

She tried to book a hotel room, but when she arrived, she found the power was off there, too. Without power, she couldnt use Dianas suction machine, to make sure she didnt choke. And she couldnt keep her warm.

Pushed to the edge, she made a decision.

She loaded Diana into her van and drove east, away from Texas and away from the frigid cold.

Chronicle reporters Zach Despart and Dylan McGuinness contributed to this story.
Brown University on Tuesday joined a growing number of colleges that will require students to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 before returning for in-person classes next fall.

Starting in the Fall 2021 semester, Brown will require COVID-19 vaccines for all undergraduate, graduate and medical students who will be on campus or engage in any level of in-person instruction, Christina Paxson, president of the Ivy League school, wrote in a letter to the campus community posted online.

Medical and religious exemptions will be allowed.

The university is still weighing whether to require employees to be vaccinated. That decision is expected in the summer.

The Providence school anticipates a return to a more traditional pre-pandemic academic experience for the 2021-22 school year, including standard occupancy for student residences, and expanded dining and recreation options on campus, she said.

This year has been difficult for so many members of our community as the months of this pandemic have stretched on, and I know we all look forward to a greater return to normal, Paxson wrote. Although aspects of our lives will continue to be influenced by public health considerations for quite some time, I am looking toward next year with a sense of optimism.

Roger Williams University in Rhode Island last week announced that it would require all students to be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus next fall. Northeastern University in Boston made a similar announcement Tuesday.

Rhode Island on Tuesday made an additional 7,300 COVID-19 vaccine appointments available at the states vaccine signup website.

The appointments are for state-run mass vaccination sites at the Dunkin Donuts Center in Providence and in Cranston, and for new regional sites in Westerly, Johnston and East Providence.

I am glad to be starting off the new week by expanding vaccine eligibility to Rhode Islanders 50 years and older, Gov. Daniel McKee said in a statement. Were moving quickly to build out our capacity and make vaccines accessible to all Rhode Island adults when our supply increases.

The states vaccine preregistration system is also launching this week. Rhode Islanders can preregister at the Vaccine Interest Notification List.

When an appointment opens up for someone who has pre-registered and who is eligible, a notification will be sent to that person via email, text message or phone call with a one-time use link. Appointments will be for a set date and a specific location, though there will be some flexibility for the exact time.

Notifications will start Wednesday.

More than 262,000 people in the state, or about 25% of the total population, have already been fully vaccinated, according to state Department of Health numbers released Tuesday. More than 378,000 people in the state have received at least one dose.

The Rhode Island Department of Health on Tuesday reported another 370 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus and three more virus-related fatalities.

There have now been almost 140,000 confirmed cases and 2,632 deaths from the disease in the state. The department said it reduced the total number of deaths by two because those victims were found to be residents of other states.

The states new cases per 100,000 population by week, and new hospitalizations by week, both updated every Tuesday, have both gone up in the past seven days. The new cases went up slightly from 269 to 270, but the hospitalizations jumped from 122 to 163.
[ Spoiler (click to open) ] his character wouldnt be in S2 anyway

 Viewer discretion this clip; includes still photos from arrest More behind the cutWhoopi still has questions about the whole sequence during arrest. Joy feels the blue wall is faltering. Sunny feels this case is different because it prompted protests and solidarity across the world. Meghan didnt realize there were other first responders like EMTs as part of the event who also tried to intervene and will be traumatized forever. Sara feels this is a showcase of what law enforcement cant do during arrests.Sarah is keeping cooking, getting off devices as much. Joy feels habits are circumstantial, Sara will go back to microwave meals soon haha. Joy says shes going to go back to lunch with her friends and gossip. Sunny is keeping clothes upper half, loungewear lower half, for as long as possible. Meghan is same as Sunny.Hot sexy guy is leaving the show. Whoopi saysbut shed buy Sunny a vibrator  which Sara cackled. Sunny doesnt know what stage of grief she is in. Sunny and Sara both now burn for Idris. Sara explains Bridgerton to Joy. Meghan is a silly prude and talks Yellowstone. Whoopi says if anyone wants to know where they can buy vibrators, the panel laughs, Meghan acts immature.Tammy Duckworth, Senator and war veteran, is promoting her book. She talks about the rise in AAPI attacks, Cabinet representation, said names she put forward were called, but for Deputy position, says WH responded within hours of her later remarks and she was pleased, talks about the Capitol attacks especially ex-military, her baby and being a working Senator-mother, Me-again wants better maternity leave now that SHE has a baby, more talk about George Floyd, Me-again CalledtheWhitehouse about Russia-Navalny /rolleyes/, some discussion about Russia being our enemy.Sara switches to the book, TD talks about her accident and losing her legs, and nearly her arm. TD explains why she felt compelled to fight for America, her conversation with her daughter, the book is a love letter to her country. Talks about growing up very poor in Hawaii. Some nice early family photos. Talks about what she thinks the average person feels about the American Dream, which isnt being an uber wealthy person. Tells a funny anecdote. More on GA voter restriction laws, that are being attempted in other states.+++++++++++++++Matt Gaetz (R-FL) is under suspicion for having sex with a minor, transporting her and other minors across state lines, showing nude photos of his conquests to colleagues on House floor, paying for sex through cashapp, and so on. Matt went on Tucker Carlson to deny the allegations and claim Carlson was a witness to his innocence, and Carlson was idontknowher.gif. Joy notes that even his bff are distancing themselves. Thinks T45 emboldened people like Gaetz. But even Fox is turning on him. Sara thinks its disturbing on so many levels. Creepy has been there a long time. Arrogance due to his family political legacy. Meghan starts off ok, Matt was the only one who voted against a law on revenge p0rn then goes off the rails comparing him to Swalwell*. Sunny thinks Matt is behaving and reacting right out of the GQP playbook. Rattles off the laundry list of despicable GQP behavior and actions, totally on brand for them now.MLB is moving All Star game to Denver as a result of the voting restriction legislation. Gov Kemp and the GQP is having a meltdown because of course. Sunny talks about being good corporate citizens. Sara thinks it will hurt most the people in the lowest income brackets who work these jobs when events pull out. References Stacey Abrams concerns that it hits poc 2x. Whoopi says these new laws were created off a lie, there was no voter fraud. Not only does it restrict voting access, it allows local Board of Elections partisan power to overrule a close local election. Joy says GQP has nothing to offer citizens, so GQP is panicking. Meghan is so beyond ridiculous. Biden misquoted a few elements, but voting organizations and all of media has outlined every single step backwards to voter access. She claims Biden called for a boycott [narrator He Did Not]. She nearly has an aneurism. Then says we should boycott Beijing Olympics. Whoopi cuts her off. Whoopi goes back again to the partisan Board Chairs who can override elections, and hasnt thought about Beijing Olympics. Lol.Whoopi got her second shot. VM talks about how safe it is, that 90% of doctors have already been vaxx, high confidence that it will be ok, that it works. Talks about not taking pain relievers before the vaxx, but ibuprofen or acetaminophen afterwards is fine, to address any possible side effects. Me-again makes it a self-own, that her GQP friends wont get vaxx. She called the WH herself! /rolleyes/ VM talks about the outreach plans. Joy asks about longevity, VM says its a misconception that the vaxx only last 6 months. He says the vaxx lasts at least 6 mos, then we may see it evolve to an annual shot like the flu each season.Sunny moves on to the testing for minor age children. VM merges the vaxx and mental health impacts and the importance of getting kids back in school. Sara mentions the high rise in cases amongst young adults with new variants. VM is cautiously optimistic because vaxx rates are well ahead of schedule. The vaxx works against new variants, so still practice 3-W, but the more people are vaxx, the sooner the new cases can subside.Source links are below each video or section
Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC ("KSF") and KSF partner, former Attorney General of Louisiana, Charles C. Foti, Jr., remind investors that they have until June 1, 2021 to file lead plaintiff applications in a securities class action lawsuit against Canoo Inc. (NasdaqGS: GOEV, GOEVW) f/k/a Hennessy Capital Acquisition Corp. IV, if they purchased the Companys securities between August 18, 2020 and March 29, 2021, inclusive (the "Class Period"). This action is pending in the United States District Court for the Central District of California.

What You May Do

If you purchased securities of Canoo and would like to discuss your legal rights and how this case might affect you and your right to recover for your economic loss, you may, without obligation or cost to you, contact KSF Managing Partner Lewis Kahn toll-free at 1-877-515-1850 or via email (lewis.kahn@ksfcounsel.com), or visit https://www.ksfcounsel.com/cases/nasdaqgs-goev/ to learn more. If you wish to serve as a lead plaintiff in this class action, you must petition the Court by June 1, 2021.

About the Lawsuit

Canoo and certain of its executives are charged with failing to disclose material information during the Class Period, violating federal securities laws.

On or about December 21, 2020, Canoo Holdings became a public entity via merger with Hennessy Capital, with the surviving entity named "Canoo." On March 29, 2021, post-market, the Company disclosed significant changes to its business model, previously touted by the Company to investors, deemphasizing its engineering services business and no longer focusing on its subscription-based business.

On this news, shares of Canoo plummeted $2.50, or $21.2%, from a March 29, 2021 close of $11.80 per share to close at $9.30 per share on March 30, 2021, on heavy volume.

The case is Blake v. Canoo Inc., et al., No. 2:21-cv-02873.

About Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC

KSF, whose partners include former Louisiana Attorney General Charles C. Foti, Jr., is one of the nations premier boutique securities litigation law firms. KSF serves a variety of clients  including public institutional investors, hedge funds, money managers and retail investors  in seeking to recover investment losses due to corporate fraud and malfeasance by publicly traded companies. KSF has offices in New York, California and Louisiana.

Story continues

To learn more about KSF, you may visit www.ksfcounsel.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210406006176/en/

Contacts

Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC

Lewis Kahn, Managing Partner

lewis.kahn@ksfcounsel.com

1-877-515-1850
Gandhinagar, April 7 : Gujarat on Wednesday reported its highest daily spike of Covid cases so far, at 3,575, taking its tally to 3,28,453, while the death toll rose to 4,620 with 22 more succumbing.

In April so far, the state has added 20,755 cases at a daily average of 2,965, while in March, it had seen 37,809 cases at an average of 1,220 daily.

A total of 2,217 patients were discharged, taking the total to 3,05,149, while there are 18,684 active cases.

Ahmedabad saw 823 new cases, closely followed by Surat with 819, while there were 490 in Rajkot and 457 in Vadodara.

Jamnagar saw 175, Patan 111, Bhavnagar 90, Gandhinagar 79, Mehsana 66, Junagadh 43, Kutch 38, Mahisagar 37, Panchmahals 33, Kheda 32, Morbi 31, Dahod 29, Banaskantha 26, Bharuch 22 and Amreli 20.

Ten deaths were reported from Surat, six in Ahmedabad, and one each in Vadodara, Bhavnagar, Mehsana, Mahisagar, Panchmahals, and Banaskantha.

Till now, a total of 80,61,290 persons have been vaccinated out of which 71,86,613 have received their first dose, and 8,74,677 both doses.

Moreover, around 1.7 lakh senior citizens over 60 and comorbid patient between 45 and 60 were also vaccinated, with 1,48,111 getting their first shot, and 20,656 the second.
Rapper will.i.am wants to make face masks a high-end, high-tech statement.

The Black Eyed Peas member announced this week he is teaming up with Honeywell to launch XUPERMASK, a $299 mask with a ton of bells and whistles.

In addition to dual three-speed fans and HEPA filters, a type of mechanical air filter, it features Bluetooth connectivity, LED day glow lights, noise canceling audio and microphone capabilities, seven hours of battery life and a magnetic earbud docking system. It also comes with adjustable straps.

The XUPERMASK was designed by will.i.am, Honeywell and Jose Fernandez, the designer behind Elon Musk's SpaceX suits.

Over the years, will.i.am has added a handful of tech titles to his resume. He's invested in Tesla and Beats Electronics, and became a director of innovation for Intel. And his company, i.am+, which is focused on "wearable products," has acquired a handful of tech products, such as smart home company Wink and machine learning startup Sensiya.

His new role as a mask designer comes as some states have started lifting mandatory mask mandates amid the rise of Covid-19 vaccinations in the US. Still, experts say Americans won't be setting masks aside anytime soon.

"SARS happened in Japan and Southeast Asia, and they got over it, and they still wear masks," will.i.am told the New York Times.

The XUPERMASKS comes with a carry case, three months of HEPA filters, different-sized ear tips and a charging cable.

The XUPERMASK has not yet been FDA cleared or approved but has been authorized by the FDA for emergency use by the general public and by healthcare professionals.

The mask will drop on April 8 on its website, Xupermask.com.
A leading historian has said the Irish Land Commission records are unnecessarily being kept locked away by the State, preventing vital research.

Professor Terence Dooley of Maynooth University says the full, complex story of Irelands revolutionary period can only be told when the Land Commission records are made accessible to researchers.

The records, now housed in Portlaoise, remain closed to the research public on, Mr Dooley says, the pretext that they are working records and do not come under Freedom of Information legislation.

For 70 years, questions have been asked in the Dail as to why they have remained closed, and the answer is the same in 2021 as it was back then, he said.

For decades, I have been arguing that the history of Ireland, from the Land Commissions establishment in 1881  and, indeed, well before, because of the records the Commission inherited  is being unnecessarily kept locked away. So, therefore, is the history of how the Irish revolution eventually played out after 1923. I believe this is now unacceptable.

Mr Dooley said that the information stored in the records illuminated this period.

The personal family information is no more sensitive than [what] is contained in the IRA pension claims, which required people to bare their souls for a few, but important, pounds per month.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture, which has responsibility for the records, said there are no immediate plans to make the eight million or so records generally available to the public.

The records are stored at a Department of Agriculture facility in Portlaoise, are available in paper format only and are fragile, some dating back as far as the late 1800s, the spokesperson said. In order to maintain them, it is essential that they are handled and stored appropriately.

Wider access and digitisation will be a matter for consideration when the completion of the work of the former Commission is at a more advanced stage.
Light fixtures lined Walnut Street in Worcester Tuesday morning as production crews prepped the building that once housed Commerce High School for a George Clooney-directed film.

Clooney is expected to be in Worcester next week as production on The Tender Bar in the city is scheduled to start Monday.

The movie takes place in Long Island but has been shooting across Massachusetts. The film depicts a young boy, who is searching for role models after his father left shortly after he was born. He develops bonds with his uncle, played by Ben Affleck, and other patrons at the bar. The drama was adapted from the 2005 memoir by Pulitzer-winning author J.R. Moehringer.

Work on The Tender Bar is expected to be done mostly inside the former Commerce High School on Walnut Street. In addition to equipment sitting outside the building, brackets hung outside windows from the top floor.

For the production of the film, Clooney has already been spotted snapping selfies with fans in Wakefield, Beverly, Ashby and Watertown.

Worcester has been described as a hot bed for movie production by those who work in the film industry.

From 2006 to 2017, production companies shot 26 films in the city, according to the Massachusetts Film Office. More than a dozen projects were completed or are underway in the last three years in Worcester with big names like Liam Neeson and Ryan Reynolds visiting the city.

The production of Tender Bar will add Clooney to the list.

Related Content:
Hong Kong: Voting system briefings conducted

Chief Executive Carrie Lam and principal government officials today met representatives from different sectors to explain the improvements to Hong Kongs electoral system and render their support.

Mrs Lam attended the meetings with the engineering and the real estate sectors, during which she addressed the questions raised by the participants.

The meetings were part of the six briefing sessions hosted by Secretary for Development Michael Wong and Secretary for Transport & Housing Frank Chan.

Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung met some of the Legislative Council Members and Hong Kong members of national organisations at three briefing sessions.

Mr Cheung said the core of the current improvements to the electoral system is to enlarge the Election Committee (EC) membership to 1,500 and to adjust and improve the EC composition by empowering it with new functions.

The Chief Secretary encouraged participants to brief people in different sectors of the community on the improvements to deepen their understanding of the new electoral system as well as its necessity and urgency.

At the six briefings, Secretary for Transport & Housing Frank Chan said by improving the electoral system and ensuring the comprehensive implementation of patriots administering Hong Kong, the constitutional order established by the Constitution and the Basic Law, and the fundamental political ethics of Hong Kong people administering Hong Kong can be effectively safeguarded.

Mr Chan added that various deep-seated problems can also be effectively resolved, thereby ending political strife and social rifts. Hong Kong would then be able to focus on peoples livelihood, economy and development.

Secretary for Development Michael Wong reiterated the importance, necessity and urgency of improving the electoral system.

The Hong Kong SAR will be able to focus on enhancing economic development and improving peoples livelihood, including addressing the housing and land supply matters, and ensuring the citys long-term prosperity and stability, Mr Wong added.

In his meetings with labour sector and employer representatives, Secretary for Labour & Welfare Dr Law Chi-kwong elaborated on the importance of patriots administering Hong Kong to ensure the long-term and stable development of one country, two systems and the urgency of the related legislative amendments.

They also exchanged views on the ECs formation and LegCo under the new legislative amendments.

Secretary for Education Kevin Yeung hosted four briefing sessions with the University Grants Committee (UGC) chairman, UGC-funded university presidents as well as representatives from the education sector.

Mr Yeung said amending the local electoral legislation could enhance the balanced and orderly political participation of the community. It would be conducive to Hong Kongs prosperity and stability as well as the sustainable development of all sectors, including the education sector.

Secretary for Commerce & Economic Development Edward Yau hosted three sessions with representatives of small and medium enterprises and the tourism and hotel sectors.

Mr Yau reiterated the necessity and urgency of improving the electoral system, highlighting its importance to creating a stable business environment and ensuring Hong Kongs prosperity and stability. He called on them to fully support the relevant amendments.

Secretary for Food & Health Prof Sophia Chan hosted four briefing sessions with stakeholders of the catering, agriculture and fisheries, Chinese medicine and health services sectors.

She said social stability and good governance are essential to the Hong Kong SAR Government in focusing on economic and livelihood issues and its work for peoples betterment, thereby making Hong Kong a better place to live and work in.

Prof Chan appealed to the public for their unanimous support in taking forward and accomplishing the legislative work.

Secretary for the Environment KS Wong met representatives of community organisations from Sham Shui Po, Tsuen Wan, Kowloon City and Sai Kung districts at four briefing sessions.

Mr Wong noted that the amendments to the Basic Law annexes will bring Hong Kong back on the right track, adding that the Government will step up efforts to improve peoples livelihood and enhance environmental quality.

Secretary for Security John Lee held three briefing sessions with representatives of the Central & Western, Islands and Tuen Mun fight crime, fire safety and area committees.

Citing chaos and illegal acts in past council meetings as examples, Mr Lee pointed out the importance and necessity of full implementation of the principle of patriots administering Hong Kong, as well as safeguarding the constitutional order as enshrined under the Constitution and the Basic Law.

The participants from the district organisations welcomed and supported improving Hong Kongs electoral system. They expressed the hope that the Hong Kong SAR Government can focus on dealing with economic and livelihood matters in the future.

At the two briefing sessions for representatives of Kwun Tong and Sha Tin's fight crime, fire safety and area committees, Secretary for Home Affairs Caspar Tsui called on the attendees' support for the amendments.

He reiterated that the Home Affairs Bureau will fully co-operate in the work of improving the electoral system and spare no effort in explaining the amendments.

This story has been published on: 2021-04-07. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
LEWISBURG  A New Jersey man who had been accused of raping a female in a Bucknell University fraternity house more than a decade ago has pleaded guilty to reduced charges.

Joseph John McClain III, 36, of Milburn, New Jersey, on Tuesday entered pleas in Union County court to charges of simple assault and indecent exposure.

Charges of rape, sexual assault and aggravated indecent sexual assault are to be dismissed at sentencing.

However, District Attorney D. Peter Johnson has reserved the right to reinstate those counts if Judge Michael T. Hudock rejects the plea agreement.

The victim did not want McClain to have a felony conviction, said Johnson while explaining the plea agreement. McClain is an attorney.

She wanted him to admit what he did and serve some jail time, Johnson said.

The plea agreement recommends McClain be under court supervision for four years.

It would include a jail term of 10 days to two years, minus a day, with parole after the 10 days followed by two years probation.

The charges stem from an incident that occurred about midnight on Oct. 26, 2008, in the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity house. McClain, who was visiting his brother, admitted he was intoxicated.

The arrest affidavit alleges this is what occurred:

McClain met the victim at a fraternity party and about midnight he took her to his brothers room, locked the door and gave her alcoholic beverages.

She accused him of making finger penetration while using his legs to pin her. She told police she resisted and he let her go only after she faked an orgasm.

The lead investigator, Jeffrey Ettinger of the Bucknell Department of Public Safety, later went to that room and found McClain sleeping. Ettinger obtained a search warrant to collect fingernail scrapings.

The victim, a Bucknell student at the time, was so impacted by the alleged sexual assault she chose not to go forward with charges at the time, Johnson had explained in 2019 when the charges were filed.

She changed her mind and, due to a 12-year statute of limitations in such cases, the prosecution could proceed, he said.

Bucknell pulled its recognition of Tau Kappa Epsilon in 2019 due to a number of violations of the universitys Code of Conduct unrelated to the 2008 incident.

The national organization revoked the chapters charter thus ending TKEs presence at Bucknell.
Ministers have suspended aid grants to Oxfam again over allegations of sexual exploitation against the charity, this time in Africa.

The Foreign Office banned new funding after reports 'called into question' the charity's ability to keep those it worked with safe.

It came after revelations that Oxfam knew that its mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo was at 'particularly high risk' of sexual exploitation two years before it launched an investigation.

Two aid workers in the DRC were suspended by the charity last week as part of an inquiry into sexual misconduct, bullying and mismanagement.

Oxfam was authorised just weeks ago to bid for UK aid funds again, having been barred after a sexual exploitation scandal in Haiti was exposed in 2018.

Ministers have suspended aid grants to Oxfam again over allegations of sexual exploitation against the charity, this time in Africa. Pictured: Stock image

The revelations sparked calls for reform and more transparency in the British aid sector.

But the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said yesterday that it would now suspend all future funding.

A spokesman said: 'All organisations bidding for UK aid must meet the high standards of safeguarding required to keep the people they work with safe.

'Given the most recent reports which call into question Oxfam's ability to meet those standards, we will not consider any new funding to Oxfam until the issues have been resolved.'

It came after 20 whistleblowers signed a letter to Oxfam urging it to address 'a culture of bullying and impunity for senior managers abusing their power' in its DRC offices.

The charity's investigation, which is being conducted by external consultants, began in November.

The signatories demanded to know why it was taking so long, why some of those accused of misconduct remained in post and why there had been no conclusion since issues were first raised in 2015.

Documents confirm that Oxfam was aware of mounting problems among its team in the DRC for a number of years, according to The Times.

The Foreign Office banned new funding after reports 'called into question' the charity's ability to keep those it worked with safe. Pictured: Stock image

It asked inspectors from the Humanitarian Quality Assurance Initiative, which monitors aid organisations, to assess its work in the country.

Its report said: 'DRC was classified [in 2018] as a particularly high-risk country in regard to safeguarding and ... Oxfam's global safeguarding team had been working with the Oxfam DRC team to address these issues since May 2019.'

Oxfam's global safeguarding manager visited the DRC office and two field bases to conduct training for all staff, it revealed.

The report said Oxfam had 'taken appropriate steps to establish a robust safeguarding system to prevent and respond to sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment in the DRC Oxfam offices and programmes'.

However, the charity still called in investigators to begin an inquiry into other concerns about its DRC mission.

Last week Oxfam suspended two aid workers following new accusations of sexual exploitation and bullying in the DRC.

A ten-page letter sent by staff to the charity's bosses in February accused 11 people of sexual exploitation, bullying, death threats and corruption.

An Oxfam spokesman said: 'The steps we are taking in the DRC reflect our commitment to tackle abuses of power.

'We are aware of the FCDO statement and are seeking further information.

'The Charity Commission and FCDO have been notified appropriately and we will continue to keep them informed as the investigation concludes its work.'
Top executives have been fired and bonuses slashed at Credit Suisse as the bank reels from twin crises at two rogue clients.

The European lending giant slumped to a 690million loss in the first quarter of the year following scandals at Archegos and Greensill Capital.

Credit Suisse provided prime broking and financial services to hedge fund Archegos, which blew up last month after bets it made on stocks unravelled.

Credit Suisse's chief risk and compliance officer Lara Warner (pictured) and the investment bank head Brian Chin have both been axed

The Swiss bank was also left heavily exposed to lender Greensill, which was founded by controversial Australian businessman Lex Greensill and advised by David Cameron but collapsed in early March.

Credit Suisse said it would lose 3.4billion from Archegos but has not yet put a figure on Greensill  meaning there could be further pain to come.

As a result the banks senior executives have had their bonuses for the year withdrawn, while outgoing chairman Urs Rohner waived his 1.1million fee.

Chief risk and compliance officer Lara Warner and the investment bank head Brian Chin have both been axed.

Both were key allies of chief executive Thomas Gottstein, who took over from Tidjane Thiam in February last year but could find himself in the firing line when outgoing Lloyds boss Antonio Horta-Osorio takes over as Credit Suisse chairman next month with a major clean-up job on his hands.

Gottstein said: The significant loss relating to the failure of a US-based hedge fund is unacceptable. He added: In combination with the recent issues around the supply chain finance funds, I recognise that these cases have caused significant concern amongst all our stakeholders.

Serious lessons will be learned. Credit Suisse remains a formidable institution with a rich history.

The departures of Warner and Chin are a serious embarrassment for the bank and Gottstein as the board continues to investigate what went wrong.

Many have pointed the finger at Warner who was responsible for analysing the risk of both Archegos and Greensill and who was personally involved in signing off on a loan to Lex Greensill in October.

The collapse of Greensill has proved highly embarrassing for Cameron who became an adviser to the company in 2018 and received share options that could have been worth millions of pounds  but are now worth nothing.

Greensill was also the main financial backer of Liberty Steel owner GFG Alliance, the sprawling business empire of Sanjeev Gupta.

There are now concerns about the future of Liberty Steel, which has 3,000 staff at plants across the UK.

Warners demise will have sent ripples through compliance departments at banks across the globe.

Warner was highly thought of at Credit Suisse, having worked her way up from a role as analyst when she joined from Lehman Brothers in 2002.

The dual Australian and US national was a close confidante of former boss Thiam and under him she moved from New York to Zurich for the top compliance job in 2015.

She was promoted again by Gottstein last summer when the risk and compliance departments were combined.

Likewise, Chin also benefited from Gottsteins reshuffle and was promoted from his jobs as head of global markets to lead the investment bank.

Question marks have now been raised over Gottstein himself and his ability to judge character after he promoted them both.

There are suggestions that Horta-Osorio may look elsewhere for a trusted lieutenant to clean up the bank.

One bank analyst said: I wouldnt be surprised. Antonio has a reputation and will want to make an impact straight away. This is a big blow-up that has cost the bank billions.

The analyst added that Horta-Osorio has a mammoth job if he is to turn around a bank that has been in disarray for some years.

Thiam was ousted in the wake of a saga involving corporate espionage that sent shock waves through Switzerlands famously discreet banking community.

He resigned after losing a boardroom battle that erupted when the bank admitted to having hired private detectives to spy on former staff.
New Delhi, April 8 : With the exponential surge in Covid-19 cases over the last few weeks in the national capital already a cause of concern, the current wave of coronavirus spreading among people aged between 20 to 45 years shows the need to vaccinate all age groups, Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain said on Wednesday.

"As per the new trend, the virus is fast spreading among the people aged between 20 to 45 years. They may not get affected much but can pose a threat to the elderly at home. Therefore, the vaccination should now be made available to all ages," he said at a press conference.

About the massive surge in the capital, he said that the way new infections are spreading, they might break the previous record.

Delhi on Wednesday reported 5,506 new Covid-19 infections, the highest after November 27 last year when 5,482 cases were reported. On November 11 last year, Delhi had reported 8,593 cases, the highest single-day spike till date for the city.

Meanwhile, the country on Wednesday registered 1,15,736 new infections in the last 24 hours, the biggest single-day surge since the onset of the pandemic early last year.

According to the minister, with steep increase in new Covid-19 cases, the Delhi government has increased around 2,000 beds in both government and private hospitals, and an additional 2,000-2,500 beds will be increased by the next week.

About the effectiveness of the night curfew, Jain said: "We cannot impose night curfew in certain parts, it has to be applied to all of Delhi. However it has been done for the time being. We will analyse the impact. It is not a harsh decision, it will start from 10 p.m. and people generally finish their work by then." The minister also made it clear that taxis are allowed and if someone is coming from outside and has valid tickets, they can travel.

"For restaurants and hotels, the timing is anyway 11 p.m. I believe that the condition of the virus is not mellow, so we have to be aware and careful. People talk in extremes, either they are in favour of a complete lockdown or none at all. There has to be a middle ground as well."

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
[April 06, 2021] ALE SIP Devices partners with GLC to offer SIP connection

SHANGHAI and MANILA, Philippines, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise SIP Devices (ALE SIP Devices), an audio technology expert in the global market of desk phones and operating under the Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise brand, is partnering with Gur Lavi Communications (GLC), one of the fastest growing telecommunications distributors in the Philippines. This cooperation will bring ALE SIP Devices' superior open SIP DeskPhones, headsets, and excellent localised services from Gur Lavi Communications, to the Philippine market. Audio quality and stable connection are important for business calls. ALE SIP Devices' DeskPhones feature 360-degree tuning and super-wide bandwidth to deliver superior audio quality. End-users can enjoy hands-free conference calls with performance echo and noise cancellation. Jitter and packet loss is largely reduced due to the enhanced voice service. As well, the headsets provide super noise-cancelling communication, and the integrated hearing protection technology reduces hearing fatigue. "As Partners, GLC, a trusted distributor specialising in business communications, and ALE SIP Devices will address the enterprise need for efficient and effective telephony communications, while providing users-centric services in the Philippines," said Zhengang LI, General Manager of ALE SIPDevices.



"ALE SIP Devices delivers one of the most sought-after business communications solutions in today's enterprise market. As the exclusive partner for SIP devices, we are very excited to deliver these solutions, and address our customer demand with an expanded number of resellers throughout the country," said Erwin Co, President and CEO, GLC. About ALE SIP Devices

ALE SIP Devices, an audio technology expert in the global market of desk phones, is operating under Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise brand. It focuses on innovative technologies to develop a wide-range of SIP-based products that can be integrated into a variety of solutions with easy provisioning tools in a cost effective, secure and flexible manner. It can provide global business partners and end-users products simpler business connections anywhere with top-notch audio, reliable hardware and software which have gone through miscellaneous tests before launching to the market. From innovative development to green manufacturing, it strictly manages every component and each production procedure to ensure products can address worldwide standards. Website: www.aledevice.com ALE SIP Press Contacts

Priscilla Teng

SIP Devices

+86-18818200337

priscilla.teng@al-enterprise.com About Gur Lavi Communications Gur Lavi Corp. is a telco distributor specialising in business communications solutions including world class IP telephony devices, On Premises and Cloud Solutions, Voice and Video Solutions, IP PBX and Gateways and Session Border Control Solutions. GLC started with very humble beginnings. Now into its eighth year, and managing more than 200+ accounts, it has cemented its place as one of the fastest growing Telecommunications Distributors in the Philippines. The goal that drives the team of young, agile employees is to provide innovative, reliable communications solutions to the enterprise market by offering high quality, cost-effective, reputable brands to customers, supported by highly trained technical expert engineers. Website: www.gurlavi.com.ph GLC Press Contacts

Angela Gutierrez

agutierrez@gurlavi.com.ph

SOURCE ALE China; GLC

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RICHMOND HILL, ON, April 6, 2021 /CNW/ - Staples Canada will provide up to three hours of paid leave for its employees to receive the COVID-19 vaccine when it becomes available in their local jurisdiction. To help its employees make an informed decision for their health, Staples Canada will also provide educational resources and information sessions with a medical professional about the vaccine.

Staples Canada ULC (CNW Group/Staples Canada ULC)

"As one of Canada's largest national retailers, we recognize the important role we play in the lives of our employees, customers and the communities we serve," said Wanda Walkden, Chief Human Resources and Talent Officer, Staples Canada. "We want to make sure that our employees have access to the information they need to make an informed decision, as vaccination efforts across Canada continue to increase. Supporting employee health and safety is a responsibility we take seriously and providing our employees with paid time off to receive the vaccine, if they wish to, is a part of that commitment."

Staples Canada's approach is to ensure their employees have all of the resources they need to make an informed decision for both themselves and their families. In addition to a virtual information session with its corporate healthcare and telemedicine partners, Staples Canada employees and their eligible dependents have access to one-on-one virtual healthcare, an Employee Assistance Program, and other resources to help them make informed, healthy decisions. Throughout the pandemic, Staples Canada has also provided its employees with paid sick time.

ShopSafe in-store health and safety program

To maintain a safe working environment for its employees and shopping environment for its customers, Staples Canada store locations continue to observe its ShopSafe Program. In-store health and safety protocols include physical distancing guidelines, all-day disinfection and fogging, face mask requirements, sanitization stations and a ShopSafe app that gives customers the option to join a virtual queue in-store during peak times.

Story continues

About Staples Canada

Staples Canada is The Working and Learning Company. With a focus on community, inspiration and services, the company is committed to being a dynamic, inspiring partner to customers who visit and its over 300 locations and staples.ca. The company has five co-working facilities in Toronto, Kelowna, Oakville and Ottawa under the banner Staples Studio. As The Working and Learning Company, Staples Canada is committed to small businesses and consumers through thousands of new products from the best brands, an expanded service offering at Solutionshop, and informative content through its blog and Spotlight Speaker Series. A privately-owned company, Staples Canada is dedicated to helping customers work, learn and grow. Visit staples.ca for more information or get social with @StaplesCanada on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.

SOURCE Staples Canada ULC

Cision

View original content to download multimedia: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/April2021/06/c8465.html
Shares of Reliance Industries (RIL) and Bharti Airtel will be in focus. Bharti Airtel announced an agreement with Reliance Jio lnfocomm to transfer the 'Right to Use' of Airtel's 800 MHz spectrum in Andhra Pradesh (3.75 MHz), Delhi (1.25 MHz) and Mumbai (2.50 MHz) to Jio. Through this agreement, Airtel will receive a consideration of Rs 1037.6 crore from Jio for the proposed transfer. In addition, Jio will assume future liabilities of Rs 459 crore relating to the spectrum.

Tata Steel said that the company has achieved highest ever quarterly crude steel production of 4.75 mn tons with a 3% QoQ growth in Q4FY21. Full year FY21 production was lower by 7%YoY primarily due to the disruption caused by COVID-19 pandemic in H1FY21.

Tata Steel Long Products (TSLP) said that the company has achieved the highest ever quarterly crude steel production of 186 thousand tons with a growth of 7% QoQ and 19% YoY on the back of debottlenecking at steel melting shop and arcing.

INOX Leisure said that the company's board of directors approved to raise funds upto Rs. 300 crore through issue of securities either by way of a public issue or by way of rights issue or by way of a private placement (including but not limited through a qualified institutional placement).

Shares of Barbeque-Nation Hospitality will debut on the bourses today, 7 April 2021. The firm has raised Rs 453 crore from the recently concluded initial public offering (IPO) in price band of Rs 498-500.

Wonderla Holidays said that Wonderla Bangalore has announced the closure of water rides effective from 7th April till further notice, following the government directive. All land rides will be functional as normal.

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JACKSON, MI  A Jackson-based business incubator and accelerator has received more than half a million dollars in federal government grant funding to support innovative responses to the coronavirus pandemic.

Lean Rocket Lab received $569,300 from the U.S. Department of Commerces Economic Development Administration as part of a grant challenge for entrepreneurial groups addressing the economic, health and safety risks during the pandemic.

Lean Rocket Labs grant will support its Manu-Tech Virtual Incubator Covid Response Unit, said Ken Seneff, chief operating officer and co-founder. Its a new section within the incubator that helps tech and manufacturing companies with ideas that address the pandemic. The incubator is partnering with Lawrence Technological Universitys Centrepolis Accelerator.

The grant wont specifically write checks for entrepreneurs. Instead, it allows the incubator to invest in human resources to expand its mentorship, pitch competitions and services to the small companies.

Weve already been helping a number of startups and entrepreneurs that are developing COVID response products and technologies. With this grant, were having just an additional focus on that, Seneff said. This is going to allow us to bring in a staff members specifically run this program and expand and focus on this one vertical, if you will, in addition to everything else we already do.

Some products can be used beyond the pandemic. For example, Archimedes, a business in the incubator, is working on a light system that would wash hands by killing the germs with a UVC light, Seneff said. Another is working on an artificial intelligence that could inspect paint or glass finishes in manufacturing plants.

When COVID ends, its going to help manufacturers be more resilient, he said. Because next time that worker either gets sick or cant come to work because of the virus, the robot is going to keep doing the same work.

Lean Rocket Lab is one of 44 organizations to get the grant, out of 238 applicants, according to the Department of Commerce. The department granted $29 million through the program.

This kind of funding can help invigorate the local economy, Seneff said.

Were looking at attracting companies and startups here to Michigan, he said. They create new high-tech jobs which are typically pretty high paying jobs, and then generating more investment. The ultimate goal (is) that these companies come here, they grow their company here, they manufacture their products here and they grow to become great companies that pay taxes and are part of our economy here in Michigan.

This is how it all starts. You gotta start somewhere and programs like this is what helps help shape an economy.

MORE JACKSON NEWS:

Shots fired at Jackson park were from 16 year old, police say

They keep trying, but lawmakers have been unable to limit Michigan health departments authority

Watch the Hanover-Horton boys basketball team celebrate D3 state quarterfinal win
Lev Gottlieb Wins Two GG Spring Festival Events in One Day!

April 07, 2021 Matthew Pitt

Most poker players would be content with winning a single GG Spring Festival event. Lev "LevMeAlone" Gottlieb is not one of those players. Gottlieb not only won the $10,300 Super MILLION$ event for $586,074, he took down the $10,300 Super Tuesday for $320,729 on the same day!

The 312-strong Super MILLION$ crowd were whittled to the final table of nine on April 3, with those nine players returning to the action at GGPoker on April 6. Gottlieb held the chip lead as the final table shuffled up and dealt, but he still had a lot of work ahead of him to take the tournament down.

Aliaksei Boika fell in ninth-place at the hands of "ILUCKuHARD" before Andrea Datobusted in eighth-place and collected the final five-figure prize of the tournament.

Follow the GG Spring Festival LIVE Don't miss a beat! Follow ongoing live coverage of the biggest GG Spring Festival events right here on PokerNews. Click Here

Argentina's Damian Salas 10 big blind three-bet all-in with pocket nines did not go to plan because Pedro Garagnani looked him up with the superior pocket tens. Game over for Salas.

The final table became a little less shark-infested when the dangerous Christian Rudolph ran his ace-six into the dominating ace-queen held by Juan Pardo Dominguez. Rudolph's Spanish executioner could not put those chips to good use because he was the next player out of the door.

Each of the remaining four players locked up a quarter of a million dollars and were only three bust outs away from more than $580,000.

Jordan "PiePie" Cristos bowed out with pocket sevens against Gottlieb's nines, and heads-up was set almost immediately after when ILUCKuHARD ran a triple barrel bluff against Garagnani only to discover his opponent had turned a straight.

The chip stacks were quite even going into heads-up, but Gottlieb won the key hands and soared into the lead. The final hand took place at the 175,000/350,000/45,000a level, and saw Garagnani open-shove for 3,267,450 with queen-jack. Gottlieb woke up with aces, and made the easiest call of his career. Garagnani improved to trips by the river, but Gottlieb's aces turned into a full house. Victory number one was secured.

GG Spring Festival Event H-05: $10,300 Super MILLION$ Final Table Results

Place Player Country Prize 1 Lev "LevMeAlone" Gottlieb Mexico $586,074 2 Pedro Garagnani Brazil $451,926 3 ILUCkuHARD Austria $348,482 4 Jordan "PiePie" Cristos United States $268,717 5 Juan Pardo Dominguez Spain $207,209 6 Christian Rudolph Germany $159,780 7 Damian Salas Argentina $123,207 8 Andrea Dato Italy $95,006 9 Aliaksei Boika Belarus $73,259

Relive the Super MILLION$ Final Day's Action

Gottlieb Takes Down Second $10K Event of the Evening

The $10,300 Super Tuesday attracted a field of 141 entrants and it only took 9.5 hours to see all but one fall by the wayside. Gottlieb was the last person standing once again.

As you can imagine, the final table of this tournament was just as stacked with talent as the Super MILLION$ he won earlier. Fabrizio Gonzalez crashed out in ninth place, and "QuantumKey" of Croatia and the in-form Joakim Andersson followed suit.

Shawn Daniels's exit in sixth-place secured him a $76,057 payout, with David Peters netting $101,423 when he slipped up in fifth.

Christian Rudolph, who earlier finished sixth in the Super MILLION$ for $159,780, scooped an additional $135,250 here when his tournament ended abruptly in fourth.

High stakes guru Timothy Adams bowed out in third for $180,359 to leave Joao Vieira and Gottlieb heads-up. Gottlieb clinched the title and the $320,729 top prize, leaving Vieira to walk away with $240,513.

GG Spring Festival H-15: $10,300 Super Tuesday Final Table Results

Place Player Country Prize 1 Lev "LevMeAlone" Gottlieb Mexico $320,729 2 Joao Vieira Portugal $240,513 3 Timothy Adams Canada $180,359 4 Christian Rudolph Germany $135,250 5 David Peters United States $101,423 6 Shawn Daniels Mexico $76,057 7 Joakim Andersson Sweden $57,035 8 QuantumKey Croatia $42,770 9 Fabrizio Gonzalez Uruguay $32,073
Army Recognition Group is appointed with its Online Defense and Security magazines Army Recognition, Navy Recognition, and Air Recognition as Official Online Show Daily News and Official Web TV for IDEF 2021 International Defense Industry Fair and Exhibition that will be held from 25 to 28 May 2021 in Tuyap Fair Exhibition Center, Istanbul, Turkey.



Army Recognition Official Online Show Daily News and Official Web TV for IDEF 2021, International Defense Industry Fair & Exhibition that will be held in Istanbul, Turkey from 25 to 28 May 2021. (Picture source Army Recognition/IDEF)

IDEF 2021, the 15th International Defense Industry Fair, will take place from the 25th till the 28th of May at TUYAP Fair and Congress Center in Istanbul, the biggest city of Turkey, hosted by the Ministry of National Defense and under the management and responsibility of the Turkish Armed Forces Foundation.

The organizer expects the participation of more than 1,000 companies from Turkey and some 50 countries, as well as more than 500 delegation members from 70 countries. Some 70,000 visitors from at least 90 countries are also expected, despite the current pandemic. So, IDEX is definitely a major international Defense Exhibition not to be missed!

For the first time, Army Recognition is the Official Online Show Daily News and the Official Web TV for IDEF Turkish defense industry fair & exhibition. Therefore, follow all the activities of IDEF 2021 in our daily videos that will include demonstrations, interviews, presentations of new defense products and more, recorded on site and published via the Official Web TV of IDEF supplied by the Army Recognition editorial team.

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The leaders of Pennsylvanias state university system may see the consolidation of some schools as the best road forward but faculty members clearly are not convinced.

A poll released on Wednesday by the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties found nearly 70% of faculty members who teach at one of the universities slated for consolidation do not support the move. Less than 8% of faculty respondents supported it.

A total of 991 faculty members of the 1,469 who teach at one of the universities proposed for consolidation participated in the survey, which was conducted between March 24 and 26. The poll found faculty believed only 2% of students are excited about the university consolidations while six in 10 believe students are less enthused.

The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education has proposed merging some institutions as a remedy for the systems financial challenges. The State System is moving toward integrating Bloomsburg, Lock Haven and Mansfield universities into one school and Clarion, California and Edinboro into another as part of a systemwide redesign.

System Chancellor Dan Greenstein has stated that his meetings with students found them to be excited about the opportunities of the university mergers. But the survey indicates significant opposition among the faculty.

Dr. Jamie Martin, president of the faculty union, said the survey shows there is a disconnect between the narratives that exist and are being pushed in many venues by the State System regarding the views of faculty.

It would behoove the State System, including the chancellor and the Board of Governors, to listen to the concerns expressed by our faculty and to take them to heart, Martin said in a statement. The support, involvement and investment of faculty in a consolidation is integral. Unfortunately, there is little faculty buy-in to the current plan.

All six of the campuses affected by the consolidations are planned to remain open but they would operate under a single administration, faculty, array of academic programming, and budget. The systems board of governors is scheduled to meet in late April to decide whether to move forward with preliminary consolidation plans.

A state law enacted last summer granting the system the authority to make such changes requires a 60-day public comment period to gather input. The earliest a final decision to implement the consolidations could be made is in July. If approved, the first class of students could enter the combined universities in the fall of 2022.

To date, Republican leaders of the GOP-controlled General Assembly have voiced support for the consolidation idea and believe the chancellors leadership is taking the financially beleaguered state universities in the right direction.

In responding to the faculty survey, system spokesman David Pidgeon defended the systems redesign efforts as necessary to keeping the state universities affordable and accessible for all Pennsylvania students

Public higher education of the future  in which students have more opportunities than they do today and where we give ourselves a chance to recapture our affordability edge  can be realized if we are bold enough to make hard decisions while we still have some time and resources to do so, Pidgeon said.

In response to an open-ended question on the facultys survey, professors raised concerns about the consolidations resulting in fewer in-person classes for students as well as fewer program offerings on a students campus of choice.

Others commented on concerns that the consolidation planning process that began in earnest in October is being rushed and will end up not saving money for the system or make the cost of attendance more affordable for students.

The system is pursuing the changes as most of its universities are facing declining enrollments and becoming less financial stable. Greenstein told lawmakers the consolidation plan is not designed to save money but rather to strengthen the universities and the academic opportunities they offer to students.

The consolidated universities in the western part of the state intend to expand their online academic offerings to try to build up enrollments while the ones in the central part of the state will pursue offering non-degree offerings to help people retrain to meet the states workforce needs.

Greenstein told senators at a hearing last month that the financial realities facing the 14 universities were so severe that if the consolidation plan doesnt happen, he would come back next year to recommend the systems dissolution.

He told senators that would be disastrous for students and the commonwealth. He said in a subsequent statement that dissolution was not the preferred course of action.

At the same time, an even greater disaster would be to do nothing, Greenstein said. That would drain our universities collective resources, leaving each of them impaired. Our system redesignchallenging as it iswill alter that path, allowing us to preserve affordable, high-quality education for all Pennsylvanians at each of our institutions.

Faculty members, however, took the chancellors words as a threat. They viewed his message as harmful to efforts to recruit and retain students at a time when that has already been a challenge, due to a decline in high school graduates and the rising cost to attend the state universities.

West Chester University faculty member Clifford Johnston said, His job was to improve the system, not tear it down.

The chancellor told House members in February that the system could lower the cost of attending them by as much as 25% in five years either by making dramatic changes to the systems structure or the state providing $250 million more a year to help fund it.

The faculty survey found only 3% of faculty are excited about the consolidation while 83% indicated they are not. Those responding to the survey also indicated their belief that the overriding problem for the system is a lack of funding from the state. The systems $477.5 million state appropriation this year is at about the same level as it was two decades ago.

Faculty and several Democratic lawmaker have criticized Greenstein for not being a stronger advocate for more state funding for the system. In his testimony to lawmakers, Greenstein said the systems request of a 2% increase in state funding for next year is in recognition of the difficult fiscal challenges facing the state.

Other findings of the faculty survey include only 7% believe the consolidation process has been transparent while 78% disagree with that view. Only 11% of faculty believe the final academic program array will reflect how it is envisioned by the work groups who are developing the consolidation plan.

Pidgeon took issue with the facultys perception about there being a lack of transparency surrounding the consolidation process.

He maintains system officials have pursued the university integrations in the full light of transparency, availing ourselves multiple times to students, faculty, staff, the state Legislature, the communities, the board of fovernors, and online at PASSHE.edu, where anyone can see for themselves the work thats being done. That will not change. Before integrations can be finalized there will be a two-month long public comment period, including public hearings, when anyone who wants to share their perspective can.

Faculty members are serving along with students, administrators, staff and community members on the 200 working groups charged with crafting various aspects of the universities consolidation plan.

The State System that serves 93,700 students also includes Cheyney, East Stroudsburg, Indiana, Kutztown, Millersville, Shippensburg, Slippery Rock, and West Chester universities.

* This post hs been updated to include statements from State System of Higher Education spokesman David Pidgeon.

Jan Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@pennlive.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JanMurphy.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 17:35:03|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, April 7 (Xinhua) -- China's historic success in poverty reduction, as shown in a newly released white paper, is worth learning for other countries still troubled by poverty, foreign experts have said.

China's poverty reduction is a remarkable contribution to the global poverty relief endeavor, said Muratbek Imanaliyev, former secretary-general of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and former foreign minister of Kyrgyzstan, in an interview with Xinhua.

Commenting on the white paper titled "Poverty Alleviation: China's Experience and Contribution," Imanaliyev said that the people-centered philosophy of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the successful implementation of China's reforms are key to such achievements.

The document, issued Tuesday by China's State Council Information Office, records the course of the Chinese people's great fight in eliminating extreme poverty, introduces China's approach, and shares its experience and actions in poverty alleviation.

Kingphet Mongkhonvilay, a senior official from the Lao People's Revolutionary Party, said that China has accomplished its poverty alleviation target while fighting against the COVID-19 pandemic, illustrating that the CPC wholeheartedly serves the people.

He expressed hope that other countries will benefit from China's experience and all partners worldwide could jointly pursue common development and complete eradication of absolute poverty.

Wilson Lee Flores, a columnist for the English-language daily The Philippine Star, said that a strong leadership, the solidarity among the people, and the determination to reform are among the key aspects the Philippines can learn from China's anti-poverty efforts.

Noting that the CPC and the Chinese government have succeeded in eliminating poverty, former Egyptian diplomat and Chairman of Egypt-China Friendship Association Ahmed Waly said that the country has made precise efforts over poverty alleviation. Enditem
China sees rapid development of prefabricated construction

09:11, April 07, 2021 By Yuan Taoxiong ( People's Daily

A worker is manufacturing prefabricated house parts in north China's Hebei Province, Jan. 15, 2021. (People's Daily Online/Zhu Dayong)

At a workshop of a new construction material company under the Shaanxi Construction Engineering Group Corporation (SCEGC) in Qinhan New City, part of the Xixian New Area, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, prefabricated units such as walls, floor slabs, beams and staircases were rolling off four automatic production lines.

These prefabricated units, going through standardized production and strict quality check, feature much better quality than those produced with concrete placement, and have a millimeter-level precision.

These "spare parts" were later transported to a construction site of a residential complex five kilometers away, where constructors were building houses just like building blocks. Prefabricated parts accounted for 63 percent of the total construction.

The wide application of prefabrication saved 70 percent of energy and 50 percent of water consumption, and improved efficiency by three times, said Liu Xinlong, chairman of board of the new construction material company under the SCEGC. Prefabricated parts also significantly reduced dust and noise during construction, and basically no construction garbage was created, he added.

What's behind the speed and precision of prefabricated construction is continuous innovation made by enterprises. "Secondary design is usually what we do after receiving construction drawings, so that we can make what can be prefabricated in the factory," Liu introduced, adding that this is a key link that demonstrates the competitiveness of an enterprise.

With a tailwind in the prefabricated construction industry, the Xixian New Area is working for a transformation in traditional construction. Statistics indicated that the total area of prefabricated structures has hit 2.78 million square meters there.

While prefabricated constructions are soaring above the ground, changes are also taking place in underground structures. Municipal engineering projects such as subways and tubes now make up half the revenue of the SCEGC's new construction material company. Prefabricated tubes have largely improved construction efficiency in a municipal power pipeline project in Qinhan New City. It only took 12 days to complete the construction of a 1-kilometer section of the project.

Xu Jianping, assistant to the president of the Sany Group, a leading Chinese enterprise of high-end equipment manufacturing, told People's Daily that the core of prefabrication is smart construction. In three years, the group will develop over eight construction robots and five will be massively produced, to further improve mechanization and automation of the construction industry, Xu said.

The development of prefabrication is only a part of Xixian New Area's efforts to build a modern industrial pattern. At present, the area is in full swing to develop advanced manufacturing, airport economy, electronic information, sci-tech R&D, cultural and tourism and headquarter economy. Each of the above six industries has a value of over 100 billion yuan ($15.27 billion). Last year, the GDP of the area increased 7.2 percent year on year, ranking the first among all cities and districts in Shaanxi Province.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
Scientists have produced stunning images showing exactly what happens to the cells of a person who is injected with the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine.

Images reveal how the jab forces the injected person's own cells to make replicas of the real coronavirus spike, a glycoprotein, which sticks out from its surface.

The spikes on the surface of the host's own cells are then recognised as a foreign invader by the immune system and attacked with antibodies.

The immune system remembers the shape of the spike and how to defeat it so that if a person does get infected in the future then they can rapidly fight off the virus.

Analysis of the spike protein replicas made by the human cells after injection with the Oxford jab reveals the vaccine-induced spikes are almost identical to those of the virus

What is in the Oxford vaccine? The most important component of the jab is the modified adenovirus, but this active ingredient is accompanied by other compounds in the injection. For example, the vaccine also contains inactive ingredients such as polysorbate 80, an emulsifier, and a very small amount of alcohol (0.002mg per dose). The vaccine also contains traces of magnesium (3 to 20 parts per million). The manufacturing process involves creating a virus which contains the genetic code for the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. But this is done in small numbers and researchers need a way to make millions of copies. In order to do this, a conveyor belt of host cells which replicate the adenovirus is needed. Traditionally, this is done with chicken eggs. The modified virus is injected into the eggs, the egg cells amplify the number of copies and these are then weakened or neutralised and extracted for the vaccine. This method is employed for some Covid-19 vaccines in development and also for flu jabs. However, some institutions have replaced chicken cells with human cell lines, including the Oxford-Astrazeneca team working on ChAdOx1 nCoV-19. These cells are called HEK-293 and they come from the kidney of a legally aborted foetus in 1973. HEK-293 cells are not themselves the cells of the aborted foetus, but identical clones. These cells are not injected in the vaccine, but are used to manufacture the modified virus before being extracted. Advertisement

The AstraZeneca jab is under criticism at the moment for purported side-effects which may cause blood clots in a very small percentage of people.

But the vaccine is highly effective at protecting against Covid-19 and has been given to millions of Britons, with the 100 million doses ordered by the Government making up a quarter of the UK's stockpile.

Researchers from the University of Oxford worked with Professor Max Crispin of the University of Southampton, an expert in virology and glycoproteins, to see how good their vaccine was at imitating the coronavirus spike.

Human cells in a laboratory were exposed to the vaccine and after two days the researchers looked at the shape and structure of the imitation spikes.

The method of analysis is called cryo-electron microscopy (cryoEM) and thousands of images were taken and combined as part of the study.

Study co-author Professor Peijun Zhang, of the University of Oxford led the imaging work.

'CryoEM is an immensely powerful technique which enabled us to visualise the dense array of spikes that had been manufactured and presented on the surface of the cells,' she said.

Analysis of the glycoproteins themselves revealed the vaccine-induced spikes are almost identical to those of the virus.

'In this study we set out to see how closely the vaccine induced spikes resembled those of the infectious virus.

'We were really pleased to see a large amount of native-like spikes,' Professor Crispin said.

'This study will hopefully provide further understanding for the public, helping them see how the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine works.

'Many people may not realise how their cells become little factories manufacturing viral spikes that then trigger the immune response needed to fight off the disease.

'This may also provide reassurance that the vaccine is doing its job and generating the material that we need to present to our immune systems.'

The study has been published in the journal ACS Central Science.

Scientists have produced stunning images showing exactly what happens to the cells of a person who is injected with the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine. Pictured, a graphic based on the new imaged showing how the vaccine (left) turns the cells of a person who has been injected into 'little factories manufacturing viral spikes that then trigger the immune response needed to fight off the disease' (right)

Professor Max Crispin previously found that the coronavirus (pictured) is not as heavily protected or disguised as some viruses, such as HIV. He said the spike proteins are disguised by the virus, which allows to to be a 'wolf in sheep's clothing'

How does the Oxford-Astrazeneca vaccine work? The Oxford-Astrazeneca vaccine is made with a common cold virus from a chimp, known as an adenovirus. It is genetically modified to be harmless to humans. Researchers also tweaked the adenovirus to contain a copy of the genetic code from the SARS-CoV-2 which is responsible for making the Covid spike protein. Spike proteins protrude from the surface of the coronavirus and latch onto receptors on human cells, hijacking the ACE2 pathway and infiltrating cells. The spikes are also integral in how the body's immune system recognises the pathogen and attacks it. In the case of the vaccine, the chimp adenovirus  as well as other ingredients to stabilise the solution  is injected into a person's arm. Once inside the body, the harmless adenovirus infects the person's own cells which then read the embedded virus genetic code and manufacturers spikes which sick out from their own surface. This is the key step as the spikes imitate the coronavirus, without posing any risk of infection or disease. As a result, the human immune system flags it as an intruder and begins attacking it, releasing white blood cells and trying to manufacture antibodies to neutralise the foreign object. Once it does this, the immune system remembers how best to latch onto the spike protein and defeat the virus for future reference. Then, if a person does contract the real virus, their body rapidly reacts and fights off the infection. This is immunity. This way of fighting off viruses has been in use for more than a decade, and has been used to make vaccines to other infections, such as flu and MERS. However, the method is slower to adapt than the other form of vaccine, which are based on mRNA, which are being made by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna. Subsequently, an Oxford vaccine that can target new variants will not be ready until later this year. The vaccine is called ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 and is given as two-doses. The second dose is given 4-12 weeks after the first dose. Advertisement

The key to a successful vaccine is ensuring the imitation spike protein it produces is as close to that of the real virus as possible.

There are several ways to do this, including the mRNA method of both Pfizer/BioNtech and Moderna and an inactivated whole virus.

But the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab uses a different technique based on a common cold virus found in chimps.

The team inactivated the ape virus and inserted a piece of the coronavirus' genetic code into it which is responsible for the production of the critical spike protein.

The coronavirus spike protein is how the virus infects people. The nefarious protein attaches to the common ACE2 receptor on human cells and hijacks it, using it as a gateway to infect human cells.

But while the spike protein is how SARS-CoV-2 infects people, it is also how it is most easily recognised.

Once a person receives the Oxford jab, known as the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine, their cells then get infected by the harmless modified chimp virus.

Then, the person's own cells read the coronavirus' genetic code and produce a replica of the spike protein on their surface.

How accurately these mimic spikes resemble those of the virus determine the robustness of a person's immunity.

The concern for vaccine developers and academics is that new variants of coronavirus, such as those first spotted in Brazil and South Africa, have specific mutations which change the shape of the spike.

This, they believe, could lower immunity provided by vaccines as the new spike seen on variants is significantly different to that of the vaccine.

Therefore, the person who has been inoculated has antibodies which do not work on the new strain, rendering them unprotected and vulnerable to infection.

Studies and trials have found that the Oxford jab does work against the emerging strains, but not as well as it does against the original version of the disease and the Kent strain.

The jab is under scrutiny for a concerning link to blood clots in younger people MPS today said Britain's drug regulator the MHRA must urgently finish its review into the link between the Covid vaccine and a rare brain blood clot called CVST.

Last night Oxford University halted trials of its coronavirus vaccine in children until the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) concluded on its safety in younger people, with formal advice expected in as early as today.

Health watchdogs continue to probe the link between the jab and CVST, which can lead to a stroke, with the European medical regulators set to announce the conclusions of their investigation at 3pm.

Germany has already temporarily banned the vaccine for under-60s and France making the same controversial move for under-55s.
Annastacia Palaszczuk has written a letter to Scott Morrison calling for National Cabinet to host a gender equality summit, as she takes a dig at his action on the sexual misconduct scandal in Canberra.

The Queensland Premier said she wants a National Women's Summit to address 'ongoing economic and social inequality facing Australian women'.

Ms Palaszczuk posted her letter on Twitter where federal Labor leader Anthony Albanese re-tweeted it with the caption 'leadership' in yet another dig at Mr Morrison.

Even though it's routine for politicians to address each other on first-name terms, some on social media believed Ms Palaszczuk added extra sass to her letter by calling him 'Scott' and crossing out 'Prime Minister'.

She also demanded 'action to address the gender pay gap, the gender superannuation gap, affordable childcare and sexual harassment'.

Annastacia Palaszczuk (pictured) has written a letter to Scott Morrison calling for National Cabinet to host a gender equality summit every year

Ms Palaszczuk - who addressed the prime minister as 'Scott' - posted her letter on Twitter

'Right now I believe our nation is at a point in time when real and enduring action must be taken to address the economic equality endured by Australian women for far too long,' the state Labor leader wrote.

A Labor source told Daily Mail Australia the letter was a 'swipe' at Mr Morrison because it implied the government was not doing enough to address equality and safety after former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins alleged she was raped in parliament.

The source said the letter also implies that state governments will need to be involved in finding and implementing national policies to benefit women.

The Coalition has taken a hammering in the polls after Ms Higgins came forward with her rape allegation and backbench MP Andrew Lamming was accused of trolling women on Facebook.

In response, Mr Morrison brought together senior colleagues on Tuesday at the first meeting of the new cabinet women's task force to address gender equality.

Ms Palaszczuk's letter comes after her deputy Steven Miles launched a series of attacks on the federal government in a brawl that has been ongoing for months.

He has accused Mr Morrison of using the vaccine rollout to distract from his handling of women's safety issues and also slammed Defence Minister Peter Dutton for criticising Premier Palaszczuk over Brisbane's three-day lockdown last week.

Mr Morrison brought together senior colleagues on Tuesday at the first meeting of the new cabinet women's task force to address gender equality

'Go eat some chocolate and read a book Peter Dutton,' Mr Miles tweeted.

'We might not have needed the lockdown if you'd delivered the four million doses you promised by March 31.

'Maybe the new defence minister could help get our aged care workforce vaccinated?'

Last year Mr Miles ripped up a tax invoice from the New South Wales government and called Scott Morrison a 'school bully' for telling the state to pay for its quarantine hotel costs.

The deputy premier filmed himself destroying the $30million bill charging for the 7,112 travellers with Queensland addresses who were held in New South Wales quarantine from March 29 to September 30 last year.

Queensland has said it won't pay up until Mr Morrison allows a proposed national quarantine hub near Toowoomba in the state's south-east.
PHILIPSBURG: --- Detectives from the Juvenile department of the Police Force of St. Maarten along with the Prosecutor's Office arrested two persons on Wednesday morning, Police searched the homes in the Belvedere/ Dutch Quarter area.

One of those suspects is a non-teaching staff of the Helmich Snijders (Hillside Christian School) and her neighbor after complaints were filed against them for sexually abusing two students that were taking afternoon classes at the home of the non-teaching staff. The non-teaching staff of the school has been identified as Joy Walters the secretary, while the second suspect has been identified as Bernard Eugene Stroud, an employee of UTS. SMN News learned that the school employee is also the mother of his child.

On March 26th, 2021, the school dispatched a letter to all parents and guardians informing them of the unfortunate incident that involves one or more of their students.

SMN News has been reliably informed that at least two students came forward last week which sparked an investigation, and a complaint was filed with KPSM.

On Wednesday morning the Police and Prosecution arrested the two suspects that were accused while their homes were searched.

Two arrests, house searches related to sexual abuse of minors. (JOINT PRESS RELEASE KPSM AND OM).

Complaints about sexual abuse against minors involving an elementary school employee and her neighbor led to their arrests early today, Wednesday, April 7, 2021, by the Juvenile Department of the Police KPSM on the order of the Prosecutors Office OM SXM.

The houses of the two suspects were searched as part of the ongoing Pandora investigation that is also looking into child pornography. A firearm and a quantity of marijuana were found and confiscated from one of the houses. Data carriers were confiscated from both houses.

The investigation is ongoing and the suspects - J.D.W. and B.E.H.S. remain in police custody.

One of the suspects is a (suspended) school employee who targeted her victims at school. The (alleged) abuse later took place when the victims attended after-school tutoring at the suspects home.

The abuse of the minors took place at the homes of the suspects over prolonged periods of time starting from around 2010. The time span of the abuse differs based on each victims contact with the arrestees. In the case of one victim, the abuse occurred on the premise of an elementary school. The abuse of another victim took place in 2019 and during the 2020 lockdown when the child was at tutoring classes at the home of one of the arrestees.

Aside from complaints of sexual abuse, one complainant stated that photographs of the victim(s) were taken by the school employee and shared with the second arrestee, who is her neighbor.

All of the victims in this case are/were below the age of 13 at the time they were abused by the suspects.

Cases involving the sexual abuse of minors are considered as heinous by OM SXM and KPSM as they target the most vulnerable in the community  children.

OM SXM and KPSM are cognizant that cases like this are very emotional ones and urges parents and guardians not to let emotions guide actions. The police and OM SXM are working diligently on tackling such cases for the safety of the community and in particular our children.

OM SXM and KPSM encourage everyone in the community to be mindful of the welfare of all children and to report any and all instances of sexual abuse whether against minors or adults. To report (sexual) abuse, call KPSM on + 1 721 554-2222, extension 501.
ABU DHABI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News / WAM - 07th Apr, 2021) Masdar has announced the signing of agreements to develop a utility-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) project in the Republic of Azerbaijan. The 230-megawatt (MWac) project is the countrys first foreign investment-based independent solar project structured as a public-private partnership.

Mohamed Jameel Al Ramahi, Chief Executive Officer of Masdar, signed the Investment Agreement for the project with Parviz Shahbazov, Minister of Energy of Azerbaijan, and he signed a Power Purchase Agreement and Transmission Connection Agreement with Baba Rzayev, President of Azerenerji OJSC, the national electrical power company and off-taker for the project.

The signings took place during a ceremony yesterday at the Ministry of Energy Office in Baku, with Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE Special Envoy for Climate Change, Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, and Chairman of Masdar, and Suhail Al Mazrouei, Minister of Energy and Infrastructure for the UAE, attending virtually. Abdalla Alshamsi, Charge dAffairs at the UAE Embassy in Baku, also attended.

Parviz Shahbazov appreciated this project based on foreign investment in terms of addressing the global challenges, sustainable and diversified development of the country's economy, as well as the objectives of the reforms in the energy sector.

He said, "The transformation of Azerbaijan into a country of "green growth" through the extensive use of renewable energy sources over the next 10 years has been defined by Ilham Aliyev, the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan as one of the national priorities that will ensure socio-economic development. By signing these contracts for a solar power plant worth about US$200 million, we are one step closer to our goals for renewable energy and carbon emissions. The solar power plant to be built in Baku and Absheron district will produce about 500 million kWh of electricity annually, save 110 million cubic meters of natural gas, reduce carbon emissions by 200,000 tons, create new jobs and attract other investors to new projects."

Dr. Al Jaber said, "For the UAE, it is important that our actions on climate always amplify the efforts of others around the world. This partnership with Azerbaijan is a great opportunity to leverage our collective wills on this key issue to work towards meeting global climate goals, reducing environmental impacts and creating new knowledge, skills and jobs.

"

Al Mazrouei said, "Todays landmark agreements will enhance co-operation between the Republic of Azerbaijan and the United Arab Emirates in the renewable energy sector. Azerbaijan and the UAE, both signatories to the Paris Agreement, are united in our commitment to combating climate change. We look forward to working with Azerbaijan on other clean energy opportunities in future."

President of Azerenerji OJSC underlined the importance of wind and solar energy pilot projects in the course of diversifying the energy production of Azerbaijan, which has become an exporter of electricity along with ensuring its energy security, through renewable energy sources.

"According to the signed agreements, the connection of the 230 MW power plant to be built by the company to the network and the purchase of electricity generated at the plant will be performed by Azerenerji OJSC," he said. "The power plant will be integrated into the energy system by connecting to the "Janub" substation. Together we will achieve timely and high-level implementation of these agreements."

Chief Executive Officer of Masdar said, "This project marks a significant stage in Azerbaijans clean energy transition. Masdar has taken an active role in addressing climate change since 2006 and today we are a catalyst for renewable energy in more than 30 countries around the world. We are honored to be working with the Government of the Republic of Azerbaijan on this landmark project, which will help Azerbaijan diversify its energy sources, drive sustainable development and reduce emissions."

The project entails developing, financing, constructing, and operating the 230 MWac PV plant, to be located nine kilometers northwest of the Alat settlement in the Republic of Azerbaijan. Masdar signed the implementation agreement for the project in January last year. The plant is expected to start commercial operation in early 2023.

Azerbaijan is targeting to increase its installed power capacity to 30 percent from renewable sources by 2030, as the country looks to diversify its economy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Azerbaijan has an estimated solar energy potential of 23,040 MW, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). The project will help to generate half a billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, enough to meet the needs of more than 110,000 homes, and will reduce emissions by 200,000 tons a year.
A bipartisan group of Oregon lawmakers is backing a proposal to tackle unaffordable prescription drug prices that would go further than any other state in the nation.

Several legislatures around the country are considering or have looked into similar proposals to create drug-pricing boards this year, based on a milder version Maryland passed in 2019.

The possibility that the Oregon Legislature could vote on such a plan has attracted national political spending for and against it, most visibly in the form of digital and print ads paid for by the pharmaceutical industry.

Drug pricing control hasnt happened at the federal level so states are saying, Lets do something here, what we can, said Sen. Deb Patterson, a first-year Democrat from Salem and one of four sponsors of the bill. Health care continues to be one of the most expensive parts of peoples budgets.

Senate Bill 844 would create a state Prescription Drug Affordability Board with the power to set upper limits on how much Oregon buyers would be allowed to pay for particularly high-priced drugs. Payment limits would apply throughout the health care system, from wholesalers and pharmacies to physicians, hospitals and nursing homes, according to another bill sponsor, Rep. Rachel Prusak, a Democrat from West Linn. For patients, the proposal could reduce what they pay for high-priced drugs.

If insurers, pharmacy benefit managers or individuals want to opt out of the payment limit for a drug, the proposal would allow them to do so. Bill language instructs the board to set up a simple process to allow opt-outs.

The board would have five members appointed by the governor. Board membership would be limited to Oregon residents with expertise in health care economics or clinical medicine and people with ties to the pharmaceutical industry would be barred from serving. The bill would create a stakeholder council to advise the board, and pharmaceutical industry representatives would be included on the council in addition to representatives of other health care sectors, labor unions, employers and diverse communities.

Lawmakers are scheduled to vote Wednesday afternoon on whether to move the bill out of committee and send it the full Senate for a vote. Democrats hold a supermajority in both chambers of the Oregon Legislature and in recent years Republicans have also enthusiastically helped to pass laws that force drug makers to give advance notice and explain large increases in the prices of medicines. Its unclear how a proposal to cap price of some high-cost drugs would fare, however.

Both Prusak and Patterson have backgrounds in health care: Prusak is a nurse practitioner and Patterson spent 20 years working for various organizations on health policy, education and advocacy.

Rep. Kim Wallan, a Republican from Medford, is also a chief sponsor on the bill but did not respond to a request for comment. Sen. James Manning Jr., a Eugene Democrat, also signed on as a regular sponsor of the bill. Altogether, its a shorter list of sponsors than many bills this session.

Maryland was the first  and so far only  state to pass a comparable version of the pricing board law, although it only covered public employers and the board must get permission from legislative leaders on any payment limit, according to the health news organization Stat. The boards price control authority takes effect in 2022.

In Maryland, the push to control drug prices got a boost from a billionaire Texas couple, John and Laura Arnold, through their funding of health reform advocacy, Stat reported. The Arnolds are also lending financial support to the Oregon proposal, according to registered lobbyist and former state House speaker Dave Hunt. Hunt represents a coalition of public employee unions, health insurance and health care companies, AARP Oregon and OSPIRG.

Oregon lawmakers proposal for the price control board comes three years after legislators passed a landmark drug price transparency law. Prusak said Senate Bill 844 is the logical next step. If the plan passes, somebody can actually control the cost if the increase isnt warranted, Prusak said. If (drug makers) can present their case that its warranted, I cant imagine theres a problem.

Drug price data collected thus far by the state illustrates some of the limits of how much that approach has affected costs.

In 2018, the Legislature passed with strong bipartisan support a law that requires drug companies to report to the state any net annual price increase of 10% for prescription drugs that cost more than $100 a month. There is also a reporting requirement for new drugs that cost more than $670 a month. And under a second drug price reporting law the Legislature passed in 2019, companies must notify the state 60 days in advance if they expect annual price increases of at least 10% or $10,000 for brand name drugs and at least 25% or $300 for generic pharmaceuticals.

Proponents of the 2018 law described it as a first step to understand what drives increases in prescription drug prices. State regulators summed up the first two years of drug pricing data in annual reports which contain some interesting findings. The pharmaceutical industry has sued in federal court to overturn the laws, but in the meantime they remain in effect.

In 2020, drug manufacturers submitted 70% fewer price increase reports to the state than in 2019, according to the Department of Consumer and Business Services. The reasons for this trend are unclear  One explanation suggested by the data is that manufacturers are spreading price increases more widely across their portfolio of drugs to avoid triggering transparency requirements.

Pharmaceutical makers increased prices in 2020 on drugs that had been profitable in 2019, the state found. There was an average 2019 profit margin of 19% for drugs with 2020 price increases high enough to trigger reporting requirements, according to the state. Six of those drugs had profit margins of more than 80%, meaning they make 80 cents of pure profit for every dollar of revenue from the drug, state regulators wrote.

Stories of sudden steep increases in drug prices abound, from when former pharmaceutical CEO Martin Shkreli increased the cost of medicine to treat parasitic infections from $13.50 to $750 a pill, to continued cost increases for the decades old EpiPen and insulin which was discovered a century ago, NPR reported. News also continues to come out about pharmaceutical companies role in the nations opioid addiction crisis, for example that Purdue Pharma downplayed the addiction risk of OxyContin.

Still, the central role of vaccines in combating the COVID-19 pandemic and the speed at which drug researchers developed the shots has helped to rehabilitate the industrys image with Americans. A February survey by the Harris Poll found 62% percent of respondents had a favorable view of prescription drug companies, up from 32% in January 2020.

Industry trade group PhRMA highlighted the successful development of vaccines in record-breaking time in a statement emailed to The Oregonian/OregonLive. In the midst of this progress, Oregon legislators are promoting a harmful policy that would threaten the very research and investment needed to get us out of this and future pandemics, the groups Director of Public Affairs Jasmine Gossett wrote. She did not directly answer a question about how the Oregon price control proposal would undermine the industrys ability to conduct research and develop vaccines, particularly given the option for purchasers to opt out of any potential price limits if they felt the need to pay more to support the research.

In ads against the Oregon drug board proposal, PhRMA said that any price limits could lead to some medicines no longer being available to patients in the state. When The Oregonian/OregonLive asked Gossett to explain the claim, she did not cite reasons but instead pointed to a PhRMA ranking of the number of cancer drugs available in nearly two dozen countries that shows the U.S. has speedy access to by far the most of any country, with Germany a distant second.

Prusak said drug companies are implying they would stop selling certain medicines in Oregon if the state started to set payment limits. Those arguments  are so offensive and ridiculous, she said. They continue to sell to countries like Canada and around the world at the same or much less cost. And yet theyre threatening if Oregon and other states were to lower to those costs they wouldnt sell here. It doesnt pass the logic test.

Prusak described PhRMAs statement that payment caps could undercut vaccine development fear mongering during the pandemic, during a time that people have lived through a scarcity in vaccines. She pointed to a February 2020 poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation that found 45% of Americans surveyed said they were very or somewhat worried about being able to afford prescription drug costs.

PhRMA targeted Prusak specifically with a Google ad that says, Tell Rep. Prusak: Vote No  Stop Threatening Access.

Rep. Rob Nosse, a Democrat from Southeast Portland, said the pharmaceuticals industry targeted him and other lawmakers in a similar way when they were pushing for the 2018 price disclosure law. The Register-Guard reported at the time that the industry paid for a firm in Virginia to call Oregonians around the state to ask them whether theyre interested in sending a letter to 13 targeted lawmakers, a mix of swing-seat Democrats and moderate Republicans, during the ongoing session.

The pharmaceutical industry is powerful, Nosse said in an interview, although in his experience the approach doesnt work. Its kind of desperate.

With that said, Nosse said he personally supports Senate Bill 844 but is unsure it will pass this year. Its an aggressive bill.

-- Hillary Borrud

hborrud@oregonian.com
By Guy Faulconbridge, Kate Holton and Alistair Smout

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain should give an alternative to Oxford/AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine to under 30s where possible due to a "vanishingly" rare side effect of blood clots in the brain, Britain's vaccine advisory committee said on Wednesday.

Officials said the benefits of the shot continued to outweigh its risks for the vast majority, after safety concerns spurred over a dozen countries in recent weeks to suspend use of the vaccine following reports linking it to a brain blood clotting disorder. Britain has kept using the shot throughout.

Wei Shen Lim, chair of Britain's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), said that based on the available data and evidence, it was preferable for adults aged under 30 with no underlying conditions to be offered an alternative to the AstraZeneca vaccine where available.

He said that for younger people, where the risks of hospitalisation were much lower, the risk/benefit calculation of the Oxford/AstraZeneca shot meant others vaccines were preferable.

"We are advising a preference for one vaccine over another vaccine for a particular age group, really out of the utmost caution, rather than because we have any serious safety concerns," Lim said at a briefing.

He said people should continue to have a second dose of the AstraZeneca shot if they had received a first dose.

June Raine, chief executive of the UK's MHRA medicine regulator, said that over 20 million AstraZeneca vaccine doses had been given by March 31, with 79 case reports of the side effect and 19 deaths, all after first doses of the shot.

"This is a vanishingly rare, but sadly quite serious, adverse event..., and you can't pick these kind of things up until you have literally deployed tens of millions of doses of vaccine," Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van-Tam said.

He added that the move would have only a negligible impact on the pace of Britain's vaccine rollout.

Story continues

The rollout of Moderna's shot began on Wednesday, while Britain is also deploying Pfizer's vaccine, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the move on AstraZeneca would not impact England's roadmap out of lockdown.

"As the regulators have said, this vaccine is safe, effective and has already saved thousands of lives - and the vast majority of people should continue to take it when offered," he said.

GETTING FIRMER

The change to advice on Britain's vaccine rollout came after its MHRA medicine regulator said the reports of rare brain blood clotting were a suspected side-effect from the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca.

MHRA chief Raine said the benefits of the shot outweighed the risks for the vast majority, echoing an update from Europe's medicine regulator also made on Wednesday.

Europe and Britain's medicine regulators have been investigating small numbers of reports of brain blood clots, known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST), that have occurred in combination with unusually low blood platelet levels after people have been given the shot.

Munir Pirmohamed, chair of the Commission on Human Medicines, said the link between cerebral blood clots, lower platelets and the AstraZeneca vaccine was "getting firmer".

"Early evidence suggests that this constellation of symptoms is caused by an immune response against platelets which allows the platelets to then lead to clotting in different parts of the body," he told a news conference.

"But what we don't have clearly is the link between the vaccine and how the immune response becomes activated against the platelets, and that's where the scientific work needs to go on to identify what that link is."

(Reporting by Alistair Smout, Kate Holton, William James and Paul Sandle; editing by James Davey, Guy Faulconbridge and Mark Heinrich)
Located on top of a small mound, on a sliver of land stretching into the serene Yamdrok Lake is Rituo Temple, the home of just one solitary monk who spends his days chanting sutras and meditating.

Rituo, which means the stone on the mountain in Tibetan, is often referred to as Tibets loneliest temple. It has a history that goes back more than 700 years, but its considered one of the countrys hidden gems, as few tourists venture out to visit it. Thats because its located in the middle of nowhere, on a thin patch of land stretching into Yamdrok, one of the three holy lakes of Tibet. But the few people who did visit it, tell stories about the peace and quiet that most of us only dream of, and about the surreal experience of taking in the amazing natural scenery from atop the solitary rock mound.

The name of the temple, the stone on the mountain, was inspired by a centuries-old rock enshrined here, a relic that is said to have the power to cure all diseases.

Standing at the top of Rituo Temple, you can reportedly see Tibetan antelopes running freely and bar-headed geese swimming in the water, and as night falls, the sky full of stars is reflected on the lake, like a fairyland.

But perhaps the most amazing thing about Rituo Temple is the fact that it has just one inhabitant. His name is Ahwang Pincuo and he spends most of his days bringing water from down at the lake all the way to the temple, chanting sutras and meditating.

Ahwang is only the latest in a long line of solitary monks who have watched over Rituo Temple over the centuries, and when he dies, his place will be taken by someone else. You may be wondering what keeps a man from going crazy in a remote place like this, and in this case, its the power of his faith.

There is no denying the natural beauty of this Tibetan wonder, but because of its remoteness, it doesnt get as many visitors as other, most accessible attractions.

Rituo Temple is just one of the many hidden gems weve come across in recent years. Another one that comes to mind is this fairytale castle thats actually a 4-star hotel in China.
A County Derry historian has co-written a book documenting those people forced into exile for taking part in the United Irishmen rebellion of 1798.

Stephen McCracken, from Magilligan, is co-author of 'United Irishmen  Emigres of Erin', along with Colum O Ruairc from County Wicklow.

The new book, compiled during the Covid-19 pandemic, reveals that 11% of over 600 emigrants the pair documented were from County Derry.

Derry entries include John Fitzhenry from Dungiven, who fled to France following the rebellion and became a sub-lieutenant in the Irish Legion.

'enchanted'

In the book, Miles Byrne, leader of the 1789 rebellion in Wexford, describes Fitzhenry as an 'honest Presbyterian from the North of Ireland', who was 'enchanted' with his musket.

So enchanted was he with this musket that he determined to lay out two or three guineas in getting it newly stocked and polished, in the best style, he said.

I told him to try it again before going to any expense, so we went next day to the ruins of an old windmill, a league from the town, and we placed a sheet of paper on the wall.

After firing three rounds, without once hitting the target, he flung the musket on the ground, swearing at it. He was very good humoured.

John Caldwell, from Limavady, who went on to be elected as Republican Governor for North Carolina in 1871, is also covered in the book.

Caldwell's father Robert had played a role in the 1798 rebellion and was forced to emigrate with his family in its aftermath.

'United Irishmen  Emigres of Erin' can be purchased for online at www.lulu.com or Stephen can be contacted on stmccracken@hotmail.com.
John Gray reveals he 'sat down' from leading Relentless Church to get his life in order

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Pastor John Gray revealed that he stepped away from leading Relentless Church in Greenville, South Carolina, to work on his marriage and family.

A few months ago I sat down from leading at Relentless. My life wasnt in order, Gray wrote on Instagram Friday. Church isnt first. My wife is.

Along with the lengthy post, the minister shared a professional photo of his wife, Aventer, posing in a gown. He then proceeded to honor her as he has done in times past after rumors of affairs circulated in the media claiming the pastor was unfaithful to his wife of eight years.

This is my wife. She is from God. She is a life giver. She is a kingdom builder. Her name is Aventer. I met her at church. She was worshipping God through dance. Over time, she allowed me in her life and let me dance with her. She took my ring and said yes and we began our forever journey, Gray said.

He then explained that what his wife did not know at the time of their young love, was that he never knew consistent discipline, planning, leadership, manhood, or personal holiness in action from a mans standpoint. Gray added that he was living a shadow life but God was unwilling to let him stay in that place of brokenness and allow him to assume that he was whole when he was not.

I failed to uphold the holy standard of God in my marriage. And Im sorry. Although you are the only woman Ive ever slept with, emotional unfaithfulness is just as wrong, Gray continued. Sin is sin.

People want to minimize one sin over another, when it all can get you sent to hell, he maintained.

Gray credited marriage in helping him face his flesh.

Flesh versus spirit. It is every mans battle. Loving God isnt enough. Preaching Jesus isnt enough. Face yourself. Get delivered. Or hurt the ones who actually love you the most, he said.

The post comes after last week's announcement from Hillsong Church that it fired megachurch Pastor Carl Lentz for a moral failure and his refusal to submit to leadership while employed with the global ministry.

Gray said that, in his situation, he's seeking counsel and will continue to do so.

I started intense counseling (personal and for my marriage) in the summer. Scariest thing ever. Most necessary thing ever. I had no one to blame. My life is my responsibility, Gray declared.

The father of two said he brought much shame to his family and seeing his wifes name in the media because of his unfaithfulness broke his soul.

So since I was the cause of public embarrassment, let me be JUST AS LOUD ABOUT PUBLIC HONOR, Gray added. Aventer you are a miracle to me. I am sorry for the pain I have caused you. You [sic] name should have NEVER come up in any conversation, in any negative way with anyone ever. I must do the work to earn your trust.

The preacher ended his post by vowing that he will work to become the husband and man God intended.

Gray also promised to be a better leader for his congregation moving forward.

He became pastor of Relentless Church in 2018 after years of preaching at Joel Osteens Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas. Since then, he has come under much criticism for gifting his wife with a $200,000 Lamborghini for their eight-year anniversary just months after he confessed to listening to voices that lured him away and almost caused the couple to divorce.

Last month, the pastor announced to his congregation that he was going on a sabbatical while preaching a message titled, You Are Here. Gray confessed that he needed immediate intervention from the Holy Ghost.

"I'm going to step away into a time of sabbatical, he said during the Sunday service, revealing that he was stepping away so that his heart, soul and mind can be restored.

Gray shared that he would continue doing the necessary work in five different areas of his life.

Primary among them is my wife, my family, my kids, my physical health, this church, and the leadership and the stewardship of this church, the Ohio native explained.

It's important to take a step back to realize that I have been battling, and being a wounded warrior only has so much celebration to it. Sometimes you need to sit still for a moment and allow the Lord to restore your soul; I'm no different, he added.

Gray noted that he is in a process that's being overseen by elders who have years of senior pastoral leadership and oversight that will get him to a place of wholeness and restoration.

I've been needing it for so very long. I'm grateful to God, he said, explaining to the congregation that he will continue to be their pastor and is doing the work now in order to run this next 40 years strong. I need to just step back and rest. I don't need judgment, I need prayers.

The Christian Post reached out to Relentless Church for clarification on Grays sabbatical but did not receive a response by press time.

According to the church broadcasts, Gray did not preach for a month but delivered a sermon, this weekend, so its unclear whether or not he is still on leave.
(TNS)  This is the first in a series of stories by Wicked Local Metro exploring how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted vocational technical schools in the region.Inside one of Minuteman Regional High School's robotics labs, a small group of students gathers around a massive machine. Next to them, Robotics and Automation instructor Tina Collins looks on. The walls around the group are plastered with the blueprints of spaceships. Silently, 3D printers toil away on one side of the room, slowly constructing tiny robotics parts.Inside the machine at the center of the gathering, green lasers seamlessly etch the Minuteman logo onto wooden cribbage boards. Carpentry students made the board, and were now collaborating with Collins and her robotics students to finish them with the laser machine. Collins and the students laugh as they peer eagerly into the machine, watching tiny lines form on their boards.With half the student body finally returning to in-person learning on March 1, the Minuteman community is slowly but surely recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. The feeling of relief in the air is palpable, Collins said."In the beginning it was kind of eerie because there was only 25 percent of our population in. It didn't feel like a real school, it felt like a ghost town," she said. "Now there's much more life."Before the end of the year, Minuteman SuperintendentDirector Ed Bouquillon expects the vocational school to increase capacity to 75 percent, he said. While a return to normalcy may be in sight, vocational schools like Minuteman and others have had a long and particularly challenging road through the pandemic.Like most institutions, the region's vocational schools scrambled to adapt when the dangers of COVID became apparent last spring. How does one replicate the hands-on nature of career and technical education (CTE) through an online format?David DiBarri, superintendent of Northeast Metro Tech in Wakefield, pulled all of the school's 15 shop heads together to discuss how to best replicate the technical education portion of the vocational program for remote students. They organized lists of supplies that would be necessary for at-home shop lessons, set aside funding for them, and have since sent out multiple shipments to students stuck at home, DiBarri said.In another major undertaking, they came up with a plan to feed students who no longer ate meals every weekday at school, DiBarri said. More than 50 percent of the Northeast Metro Tech student body are part of low-income households, he added.For weeks, Northeast Metro Tech organized deliveries of breakfast and lunch to students to ensure no one went hungry, DiBarri said. The school also partnered with Route 1 Grillhouse in Saugus to provide daily hot meals to students in need last spring.At Minuteman, school closures came at a particularly devastating time for the freshmen class. After an onboarding period at the new Minuteman building at the beginning of last year, the students were just starting their foray into CTE shop classes. One week later, remote classes became the norm.One of those students, now a sophomore, is Jonathan Bradbury of Acton. Bradbury studies Multimedia Engineering. The shop is taught out of a high-tech, three-level facility that doubles both as a screening room with a massive projection screen and a customizable theater for live performances. Bradbury and his peers only had a week or two in the new facility before the shutdown."In the old school, we were in a little cramped computer room ... this year, with our weeks that we get to be in, we really use the time well. We have a lot of projects in the bank and even more to make," he said.Learning hands-on skills through a virtual classroom was difficult for the students, but teachers also struggled to adapt. Minuteman Advanced Manufacturing Instructor Corey Dolan said he had difficulty with the concept at first. Last spring, the necessary but less "exciting" parts of CTE were emphasized online, while both teachers and students anticipated the return to their shops."I can't speak for every shop teacher, but for us it seemed impossible at first. We thought, 'You can't teach a kid to weld, or to be a plumber virtually.' But now we've all figured it out," Dolan said. "Since the kids aren't here that much, when you get them it's more of a treat for them. They're a lot more productive, more locked in. All the seemingly boring stuff is done virtually, so when they're here it's just fun."While fun, the return to school was also a nerve-wracking prospect for Shawsheen Valley Regional Technical High School's Superintendent-Director Brad Jackson. Shawsheen, located in Billerica, has operated an almost entirely hybrid model this year, where every other week students come to school to participate in their shop classes. Of the approximately 1,300 students at Shawsheen Tech, just 50 chose to go full remote this year, Jackson said.Now, he is looking ahead to a completely full return for students and staff on May 3."From Shawsheen's perspective, things changed when the Commissioner put hard dates in place when it came to elementary and middle schools," Jackson said. "I felt when it came to putting our fate in the hands of the commissioner, or take control of our own destiny, we ultimately had to take control of our own destiny."At Minuteman, a full return this school year is not in the cards simply due to space constraints. Two grades a week are coming to school now, where they participate in fully in-person shop classes and academic courses that still incorporate some students joining via webcam. A jump to 75% capacity will likely come after April break, Bouquillon said.Despite official guidelines relaxing social distancing to 3 feet instead of 6 in schools, Bouquillon said he still can't safely welcome all Minuteman students back at once. The building was designed for 628 students, and 634 currently are enrolled in the school, he added.Plans are in the works to expand the school's capacity for next year, and Bouquillon said he expects to have all students be in-person by September.However, the nature of CTE classes does help limit the spread of COVID. Bouquillon said that, while there have been positive cases reported among Minuteman community, it's been clear that COVID has not been transmitted through the school and that those positive cases came from outside exposure."Since we're in a shop, we're kind of in our own little bubble. The most interaction we get is at lunch or on the bus, but we stay here in a nice healthy cluster. If a kid gets sick, they just shut down one shop," Bradbury said.The specific challenges faced by those at vocational schools will not disappear overnight, and many questions still remain on how to reopen completely. For Bouquillon and others in vocational learning, the pandemic swiped out the very heart of their schools. Recovering from that blow will a crucial step moving forward."The way that we learn, the way that we know our kids learn best, we've had to set aside. Remote learning can never replace hands on, experiential learning in a shop," he said. "The purpose of our school has been put on the shelf."
The alleged extortion scheme to shake down congressman Matt Gaetz' father of $25 million and fund a black op to free rogue CIA operative Robert Levinson from detention in Iran may have been run out of the Israeli consulate in New York, according to leaked texts obtained by The American Conservative.





Leaked texts from an Israeli consular official show more details in Gaetz-Levinson funding scheme https://t.co/2wypHVvDS9  Arthur Bloom  (@j_arthur_bloom) April 2, 2021



From The American Conservative, "Leaked Texts From Israeli Consulate Employee Show More Details In Gaetz-Levinson Funding Scheme":

Three screenshots of texts between Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, and Jake Novak, media director of the Israeli consulate in New York City were shared with TAC. The messages were authenticated by one of the parties to them.



In the first screenshot, Novak messaged Adams last Saturday to tell him about the investigation into Gaetz. The New York Times story on the Gaetz investigation was not published until Tuesday.

In the second, Novak appears to represent himself as deeply involved in the efforts to free Bob Levinson from Iran, telling Adams this is screwing up my efforts to free Bob Levinson.

"Gaetz's dad was secretly finding [sic] us," he continues. "So I'm very much wanting this to be untrue. I've got a commando team leader friend of mine nervously waiting for the wire transfers to clear."



In the third screenshot, Novak casts doubt on Gaetz's claims that he is being extorted. "The real documents do not extort," he writes, "And we only asked for $25 million as an estimate at first. We came way down."





Novak locked his Twitter account after the story came out.







Over the weekend, Gaetz retweeted the TAC story as shared by Raheem Kassam:





Wait... the Israeli embassy in New York just admitted attempting to extort a sitting U.S. Congressman????



Wtf is going on!!!!! https://t.co/pjoz2rpmdo  Raheem Kassam (@RaheemKassam) April 2, 2021



Gaetz may have been ensnared in a honey pot operation by Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg, an Epstein-esque figure on the outskirts of MAGA Inc. who is currently in jail awaiting charges for sex trafficking a minor between the age of 14 and 17, as well as fraud, identity theft and more.







Gaetz last week shared evidence and text messages with the Washington Examiner showing the alleged $25 million extortion demands his family received from former DOJ official David McGee and former Air Force intelligence officer Bob Kent.



One text Gaetz shared showed Kent saying he has "a plan that can make [Matt Gaetz's] future legal and political problems go away" which involved Gaetz's father funding a black op to rescue former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who went missing in Iran in 2007 while on a rogue mission for the CIA.



"McGee is the attorney for the Levinson family," The Washington Examiner reported. "Kent in December 2018 had planned a secret mission to try to rescue Levinson, but he was reportedly thwarted by the federal government."



"Despite the family members of Levinson saying in March 2020 that they presumed him to be dead based on information given by U.S. officials, the alleged message from Kent said he had located Levinson in Iran and has two 'proof of life videos,'" The Washington Examiner reported. "Kent also requested the Gaetz familys help returning Levinson in exchange for giving Matt Gaetz credit for the operation and promising a presidential pardon for unnamed legal issues."







The Examiner continued:

The next day, on March 17, Don Gaetz purportedly met with Kent, and Kent handed him a three-page document outlining "Project Homecoming." That document detailed a plan to save Levinson at the cost of a $25 million loan.



The Project Homecoming document states that Gaetz is "under investigation by the FBI for various public corruption and public integrity issues" and alleges that the FBI is aware of photos depicting Gaetz in a "sexual orgy with underage prostitutes."



"In exchange for the funds being arranged, and upon the release of Mr. Levinson, the team that delivers Mr. Levinson to the President of The United States shall strongly advocate that President Biden issue a Presidential Pardon, or instruct the Department of Justice to terminate any and all investigations involving Congressman Gaetz," the document reads.





Gaetz's father contacted the FBI about the alleged extortion attempt and was going to wear a wire to blow the whole operation wide open while making his first $4.5 million payment but someone tipped the New York Times off before the sting could go through.







Gaetz "suspects that a leak to the New York Times story about the investigation into whether he had a relationship with a 17-year-old was timed to thwart the FBI investigation into the extortion," the Examiner reported.

"This former Department of Justice official tomorrow was supposed to be contacted by my father so that specific instructions could be given regarding the wiring of $4.5 million as a down payment on this bribe," Gaetz said. "I don't think it's a coincidence that tonight, somehow, the New York Times is leaking this information, smearing me, and ruining the investigation that would likely result in one of the former colleagues of the current DOJ being brought to justice for trying to extort me and my family."



The 17-year-old in question "doesn't exist," Gaetz said, adding that he has "not had a relationship with a 17-year-old. That is totally false."

Though Gaetz's story in the Examiner got a fair bit of coverage, the leaked texts from TAC showing the Israeli consulate may have been running the operation have been completely ignored.



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Travel is coming back and Filipinos can earn extra income through hosting, according to Airbnbs Whats My Place Worth tool, a new resource rolled out by Airbnb for prospective Hosts to calculate their potential monthly income. The interactive tool computes the estimated income through inputs for geography, type of listing and space and factors in prior Airbnb booking data in the area.

As the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact local communities and businesses in the Philippines, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) recently reported that some 4 million Filipinos remain unemployed in January 2021. or many, sharing their homes on Airbnb has provided a COVID social safety net, helping them to stay economically afloat in these unprecedented times. In Baguio City, for example, the Php11,491* in estimated monthly income through hosting on Airbnb represents important supplemental revenue for prospective Hosts.

For those considering hosting, now is the time. A recent Meaningful Travel Trends survey commissioned by Airbnb indicated that Filipinos are ready to reconnect with their families as soon as travel restrictions ease, and there is pent-up demand for travel as people yearn to get out of the house after months of pandemic-caused isolation.

In fact, latest YouGov data indicates that travel with immediate and extended family will be the #1 reason for domestic travel amongst Filipinos this year. Filipinos are also seeking safe and affordable travel options, with quick getaways and nature retreats likely to gain traction.

The Whats My Place Worth tool is one of many resources Airbnb has for prospective Hosts, all of which can be explored at Airbnb.com/host. Please review all local laws and general health and safety guidelines prior to listing your space on Airbnb.

*The earning estimate for Baguio City hosts stated here is for an entire home listing with a guest capacity of 6. It is based on booking data from the past 12 months for that area, and calculated by multiplying a nightly price by the total nights of occupancy.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - An Iranian ship believed to be a base for the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and anchored for years in the Red Sea off Yemen has been attacked, Tehran acknowledged Wednesday.

This Oct. 1, 2020, satellite photo from Planet Labs Inc. shows the Iranian cargo ship MV Saviz in the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen. The Iranian cargo ship, believed to be a base for the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard that has been anchored for years in the Red Sea off Yemen, has been attacked, Iranian state television acknowledged Wednesday, Wednesday, April 7, 2021. (Planet Labs Inc. via AP)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - An Iranian ship believed to be a base for the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and anchored for years in the Red Sea off Yemen has been attacked, Tehran acknowledged Wednesday.

Iran's Foreign Ministry confirmed the attack on the MV Saviz, suspected to have been carried out by Israel  though Tehran did not immediately blame its regional archenemy. The assault came as Iran and world powers sat down in Vienna for the first talks about the U.S. potentially rejoining the tattered deal aimed at curbing Irans nuclear program, showing events outside the negotiations could derail those efforts.

The ship's long presence in the region, repeatedly criticized by Saudi Arabia, has come as the West and U.N. experts say Iran has provided arms and support to Yemen's Houthi rebels in that country's yearslong war. Iran denies arming the Houthis, though components found in the rebels' weaponry link back to Tehran.

Iran previously described the Saviz as aiding in anti-piracy efforts in the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb strait, a crucial chokepoint in international shipping. A statement attributed to Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh described the ship as a commercial vessel.

Fortunately, no casualties were reported ... and technical investigations are underway," Khatibzadeh said. "Our country will take all necessary measures through international authorities.

In an earlier state TV statement, an anchor cited a New York Times story, which quoted an anonymous U.S. official telling the newspaper that Israel informed America it carried out an attack Tuesday morning on the vessel. Israeli officials declined to comment about the assault when reached by The Associated Press, as did Saviz's owner.

Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz, while refusing to say if his country launched the attack, described Iran and its regional allies as a major threat.

Israel must continue to defend itself, Gantz told journalists. Any place we find an operational challenge and necessity, we will continue to act.

Irans semiofficial Tasnim news agency, believed to be close to the Guard, reported that a limpet mine planted on Savizs hull caused the blast. A limpet mine is a type of naval mine that is attached to the side of a ship, usually by a diver. It later explodes, and can significantly damage a vessel. Iran did not blame anyone for the attack and said Iranian officials likely would offer more information in the coming days.

In a statement, the U.S. militarys Central Command only said it was aware of media reports of an incident involving the Saviz and that U.S. forces were not involved.

At the United Nations, spokesman Stephane Dujarric expressed concern over the Saviz incident and urged concerned parties, including countries in the region, to exercise maximum restraint and refrain from taking any escalatory actions and, in particular, to respect their obligations under international law.

Also Wednesday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called the Vienna talks a success while speaking to his Cabinet.

Today, one united statement is being heard that all sides of the nuclear deal have concluded that there is no better solution than the deal, he said.

A European diplomat with knowledge of the talks, speaking on condition of anonymity to frankly discuss the closed-door meeting in Vienna, acknowledged outside events could affect the negotiations.

We hope that every action, whether it comes from (nuclear deal) parties or external parties, wont undermine the dynamic," he said.

Talks between working groups discussing proposals on American sanctions and Iranian violations of the deal started Tuesday night and continued Wednesday, even after Iran acknowledged the attack. Participants said the Saviz attack had no immediate effect on the meetings.

The Saviz, owned by the state-linked Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, came to the Red Sea in late 2016, according to ship-tracking data. In the years since, it has drifted off the Dahlak archipelago, a chain of islands off the coast of the African nation of Eritrea. It likely received supply replenishments and switched crew via passing Iranian vessels using the waterway.

Briefing materials from the Saudi military earlier obtained by the AP showed men on the vessel dressed in military-style fatigues, as well as small boats capable of ferrying cargo to the Yemeni coast. Those materials also included pictures showing a variety of antennas on the vessel that the Saudi government described as unusual for a commercial cargo ship, suggesting it conducted electronic surveillance. Other images showed the ship had mounts for .50-calibremachine-guns.

The Washington Institute for Near-East Policy has called the Saviz an Iranian mothership in the region, similarly describing it as an intelligence-gathering base and an armoury for the Guard. Policy papers from the institute don't explain how they came to that conclusion, though its analysts routinely have access to Gulf and Israeli military sources.

The Saviz had been under international sanctions until Iran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, which saw Tehran receive relief from sanctions in exchange for limiting its enrichment of uranium. The Trump administration later renewed American sanctions on the Saviz as part of its decision to unilaterally withdraw from the accord.

In June 2019, Saudi Arabia flew a critically ill Iranian off the Saviz after Tehran made a request through the United Nations for assistance.

Amid the wider tensions between the U.S. and Iran, a series of mysterious blasts have targeted ships in the region, including some the U.S. Navy blamed on Iran. Among the ships damaged recently was an Israeli-owned car carrier in an attack Netanyahu blamed on Iran. Another was an Iranian cargo ship in the Mediterranean Sea.

Iran also has blamed Israel for a recent series of attacks, including a mysterious explosion in July that destroyed an advanced centrifuge assembly plant at its Natanz nuclear facility. Another is the November killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a top Iranian scientist who founded the Islamic Republics military nuclear program two decades ago.

Associated Press journalists Nasser Karimi and Mehdi Fattahi in Tehran, Iran; Ilan Ben Zion in Jerusalem; Sylvie Corbet in Paris, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and David Rising in Berlin contributed to this report.

Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki insisted Tuesday that the U.S. government would not be putting in place a federal vaccine passport system.

'The government is not now, nor will we be supporting a system that requires Americans to carry a credential. There will be no federal vaccinations database and no federal mandate requiring everyone to obtain a single vaccination credential,' Psaki said at the press briefing.

She acknowledged that private companies and non-profits were looking into ways Americans could prove they were vaccinated against COVID-19 as the country works toward reopening.

'Our interest is very simple from the federal government, which is Americans privacy and rights should be protected so that these systems are not used against people unfairly,' Psaki said.

She was asked about vaccine passports after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott became the second Republican governor to sign an executive order that prohibited the state government from requiring Texans show proof of inoculation.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki insisted Tuesday that the U.S. government would not be putting in place a federal vaccine passport system after Republicans lined up against the concept

Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed an Executive Order Tuesday that prohibits government from requiring people show proof of vaccination against coronavirus to 'go about their daily lives'

Abbott's announcement came after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis also took executive action banning COVID-19 'vaccine passports'

'Texans shouldn't be required to show proof of vaccination & reveal private health information just to go about their daily lives,' the Texas Republican governor tweeted along with a video message.

'I issued an Executive Order that prohibits government-mandated vaccine passports in Texas,' he added: 'Don't tread on our personal freedoms.'

'These vaccines are always voluntary and never forced,' Abbott said in his video message on Twitter Tuesday morning, adding encouragement for Texans to get the jab.

'We will continue to vaccinate more Texans and protect public health,' he continued, 'and we will do so without treading on Texans' personal freedoms.'

Texas is the most populous red state  and Abbott says 13 million vaccine doses have been administered of its 29 million citizens.

On Sunday, the Texas Rangers' home opening game saw a packed stadium of fans as further proof of a return to normalcy in the Lone Star State.

'Don't tread on our personal freedoms,' Abbott demanded in a tweet with the video announcement

The Texas executive order against coronavirus vaccine passports comes after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, also a Republican, took the same action last week.

Mississippi's GOP Governor Tate Reeves has also said he doesn't support vaccine passports and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has called them Biden's 'mark of the beast.'

Governor DeSantis signed an emergency order Friday banning so-called 'vaccine passports', claiming they would create 'two classes of citizens'.

The order prevents any state-run organization and private business from demanding that their staff or customers show a vaccine passport to work there or gain services.

In a press conference last Monday DeSantis said: 'It's completely unacceptable for either the government or the private sector to impose upon you the requirement that you show proof of vaccine to just simply be able to participate in normal society.'

'Requiring so-called COVID-19 vaccine passports for taking part in everyday life  such as attending a sporting event, patronizing a restaurant, or going to a movie theater  would create two classes,' he added.

The Texas Rangers' home opening game on Monday was packed with fans as the state continues to open at a more rapid pace than other states

Fans not wearing masks cheered on the team, three weeks after Abbott dropped the state's mandate on face coverings

While DeSantis and Abbott are the only governors who have issued official orders banning the passport idea, other Republicans have harshly condemned the proposal.

Mississippi's Republican Governor Tate Reeves said Sunday that he opposes the potential of vaccine passports in his state, claiming they are an unnecessary measure.

'I don't support vaccine passports,' he told CNN's 'State of the Union' host Jake Tapper. 'I don't think it's necessary and I don't think it's a good thing to do in America.'

He added: 'At some point we have to let Americans make the decision that they think is best for them and their family.'

Reeves didn't give much reasoning, but did tout the vaccination rate among seniors in his state.

Mississippi is one of the state's Biden claimed is using 'neanderthal thinking' by ending mask mandates earlier this year.South Dakota Governor Kristi Nomen called vaccine passport ideas as 'un-American.'

Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene called it 'Biden's mark of the beast,' and demanded GOP Governor Brian Kemp ban it in the Peach State. Others have called it 'dystopian' and reminiscent of 'Nazi Germany.'

The Biden administration said there are at least 17 different passport initiatives being developed by public and private entities.

The World Health Organization is also working to develop a 'smart vaccination certificate.'

The White House, however, said last week it would not impose any restrictions at the federal level related to vaccine passports, like keeping a nationwide database of those inoculated.

Psaki doubled down on that statement Tuesday.
SOMERVILLE, Mass., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- LineVision, Inc., a leading provider of non-contact overhead power line sensor solutions to monitor, optimize, and protect critical energy delivery infrastructure today announced the closing of its Series B financing round, raising $12.5 million to accelerate the company's growth. The round is led by UP Partners , a Los Angeles-based electrification and mobility fund. Other new investors include National Grid Partners, the venture investment and innovation arm of one of the world's largest investor-owned energy companies; and ZOMA Capital , a Colorado-based family office specializing in grid modernization technologies. These new investors join existing LineVision backers including Clean Energy Ventures , which is again investing in LineVision through this Series B financing round.

LineVision's V3 Power Line Monitoring System V3 system monitoring a 230kV in northern Virginia

"We are thrilled to welcome this elite group of investors and partners on LineVision's next phase of growth," said Hudson Gilmer, LineVision's Chief Executive Officer. "With this investment, we will continue to build the team and platform which are helping our utility clients around the world increase the capacity, flexibility, and resilience of their grids."

"LineVision is harnessing advanced sensors and analytics to solve one of the most critical obstacles to the energy transition," said Adam Grosser, Chairperson of UP Partners. "There is simply no way we will achieve the urgent goals of electrification and decarbonization without widespread deployment of technologies like LineVision to unlock more capacity and flexibility from the existing grid."

"National Grid has long been dedicated to deploying technologies that enable us to optimize the performance and reliability of our network," said Rudy Wynter , President of National Grid, New York. "Technologies like LineVision's V3 systems help us better understand the condition of our assets while enabling us to meet the goals of our Net Zero by 2050 plan. We see investment in grid-enhancing technologies like LineVision as strategically important to our efforts to modernize the grid and integrate more renewables."

National Grid is currently utilizing LineVision's V3 platform to assess conductor asset health, obtain greater situational awareness, and increase transmission line capacity with Dynamic Line Ratings. The utility first deployed LineVision's solutions in 2018 on transmission lines in Massachusetts, and in 2020 installed LineVision's asset health monitors on lines in New York.

LineVision's unique V3 sensors collect real-time data on critical parameters of overhead power lines including line temperature, sag, horizontal motion, and anomalies. Studies have shown congestion on transmission lines costs US consumers more than $8 billion annually. A recent study by The Brattle Group showed that Dynamic Line Ratings enabled by LineVision will help double integration of renewables on the existing grid.

In just over two years since its founding, LineVision has secured deals with National Grid, Dominion Energy, Xcel Energy, Tennessee Valley Authority, and several other North American utilities yet to be announced. The company also works with multiple European utilities through the Farcross Project , which aims to improve cross-border interconnections by utilizing Dynamic Line Ratings.

About LineVision

LineVision provides industry leading, non-invasive solutions that monitor the condition and behavior of high-voltage transmission lines, and can significantly improve line throughput, helping ensure optimal, safe, and reliable operation. For more information, visit www.linevisioninc.com , or follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn.

About UP.Partners

UP.Partners is an early stage venture firm investing in the future of multi-dimensional mobility. The UP.Community of entrepreneurs, executives, technical experts, co-investors, and policymakers support the portfolio of companies that are forging a better, more connected future for the world. UP.Partners is headquartered in Santa Monica, California, with offices in Silicon Valley and Boston. For more information on how we're helping humanity go UP, visit us at www.up.partners .

About National Grid Partners

National Grid Partners (NGP) is the venture investment and innovation arm of National Grid plc., one of the largest investor-owned energy companies in the world. NGP invests for strategic and financial impact and leads company-wide disruptive innovation efforts. The organization provides a multi-functional approach to building startups, including innovation (new business creation), incubation, corporate venture capital, business development and culture acceleration. NGP is headquartered in Silicon Valley and has offices in Boston, London, and New York. Visit ngpartners.com or follow us on Twitter (@ngpartners_).

About Zoma Capital

ZOMA Capital was founded by Ben and Lucy Ana Walton to catalyze and scale bold and innovative solutions to social and environmental issues facing their home regions of Colorado and Chile. With a global investment portfolio spanning multiple asset classes, ZOMA Capital invests in a broad range of market-based sustainable solutions advancing energy, water, workforce and community economic development to help support resilient, thriving communities.

Media Contact:

Colin Mahoney

Mahoney Communications Group

212-220-6045

[email protected]

SOURCE LineVision, Inc.
Businessman and ex-lawmaker to stand trial in fraud attempt case

 Press service of Moscow's Presnensky District Court

10:54 07/04/2021

MOSCOW, April 7 (RAPSI)  A court in Moscow will consider a fraud attempt case against entrepreneur Zurab Pliyev and ex-deputy of the lower house of Russias parliament Denis Volchek, the press service of the Investigative Committees Main Investigations Directorate reports.

The defendants are in detention until June 22, 2020. Earlier, they signed a plea deal with investigators.

Investigators believe Pliyev and Volchek tried to make a Moscow entrepreneur pay them 300,000 euros and wrist watch worth over 7 million rubles (over $90,000) promising him to put an end to his criminal prosecution.
KYODO NEWS - Apr 8, 2021 - 01:08 | All, World

South Korea's main opposition party is certain to have won in Wednesday's mayoral elections in the nation's two biggest cities, Seoul and Busan, by solid margins, according to a state-run broadcaster, likely dealing a blow to the ruling camp less than a year from the next presidential election.

According to KBS, with slightly over 60 percent ballots counted, People Power Party candidate Oh Se Hoon is certain to be the new Seoul mayor with over 55 percent of the vote compared with 41 percent for his rival Park Young Sun from the ruling Democratic Party.

"Dear Seoul citizens, as you have offered me this priceless chance, I'll put in my utmost efforts so that Seoul, the heart of Korea, could beat again, and that our country could stand up right again," said Oh as he expressed appreciation for his win.

"I cannot feel any more responsible (to work as new mayor) since there are many Seoul citizens who are bearing great pain and inconvenience due to the economic crisis amid the coronavirus pandemic," he added.

Park earlier admitted her defeat, saying that she feels thankful for those who voted for her and humbly accepts the outcome.

Recent opinion polls had shown the ruling party's candidates trailing their rivals from the opposition party in both cities, reflecting falling public support for President Moon Jae In over soaring housing prices and related scandals.

The mayoral contests were among the 21 by-elections held Wednesday to elect public officials in three cities and six provinces. Voting ended at 8 p.m.

Park, before running for Seoul mayor, headed the SMEs and Startups Ministry in the Moon administration and was a four-term lawmaker. Her rival Oh served as Seoul mayor in 2006-2011.

In the southern port city of Busan, People Power Party candidate Park Heong Joon won a landslide victory over Kim Young Choon, former head of the Oceans and Fisheries Ministry, who ran from the Democratic Party.

"This election is a reflection of people's firm stance over how this administration is doing," said Park, while showing appreciation for those who helped him win the mayoral race.

The Seoul and Busan mayoral contests were being closely watched as they serve as a barometer of public sentiment ahead of the presidential election next March. In South Korea, a president only serves a single five-year term.

Reflecting the importance of the by-elections, early voting held Friday and Saturday saw turnout of 20.54 percent, one of the highest rates in South Korean election history, according to the National Election Commission.
[April 07, 2021] Camrost Felcorp Inc. Completes Drilling for Mississauga's Biggest Geothermal System

At 66 Storeys, EX3 will be Province's Tallest Geothermal Powered Condominium MISSISSAUGA, ON, April 7, 2021 /CNW/ - Camrost Felcorp Inc., the developer of the award-winning Exchange District mixed-use new community in downtown Mississauga today announced that the drilling of 186 geothermal boreholes, which will provide an alternative energy source to two of the four towers in the development, have now been completed making way for the commencement of shoring and excavation. The project will bring off-grid energy to the rental tenants in the development's purpose-built rental tower, as well as guests of the planned boutique hotel structure, and, the 650 suites in the 66-storey EX3 condominium tower. In partnership with Diverso Energy, a Geothermal Energy Service Provider, the buildings will benefit from this low carbon heating and cooling solution which, unlike conventional systems, will not require heating boilers or rooftop cooling towers. Additionally, geothermal eliminates the need for natural gas for heating, ensuring Exchange District is a true development of the future. The inclusion of EX3 in this power system makes it the tallest residential development in the province to feature this innovative geothermal-based approach to sustainable energy service. "The Exchange District is an award-winning community, celebrated for its careful urban planning, distinctive architecture, and smart design, not to mention its unparalleled, transit-oriented location in the heart of the Mississauga's City Centre," notes Joseph Feldman, Vice President of Development at Camrost Felcorp. "But in today's real estate environment, we understand that those attributes are simply not enough for our market. Purchasers, renters, retailers and those who care about creating great communities, all agree that tody's communities must also be environmentally sensitive, sustainable and conscientious."



According to Diverso Energy's co-founder and partner, Jon Mesquita, the company has partnered "with several real estate developers across the GTA in the last few years, helping them meet ever increasing new energy and carbon targets and purchaser demands for energy efficiency," adding that EX3, at 66-storeys, "will be the tallest condominium tower in the province to benefit from a geothermal heating and cooling system." Further demonstrating Camrost Felcorp's commitment at the Exchange District to sustainability and the pursuit of innovative environmentally-friendly technologies, the developer today has also announced a partnership with Mitsubishi Electric to utilize the company's state-of-art Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) system.

Mitsubishi's proprietary City Multi water source VRF system revolutionizes the typical approach to HVAC systems in multi-residential towers, providing a premium HVAC solution typically seen in Class-A commercial settings, with features such as simultaneous heating and cooling as well as heat-recovery capabilities. While the heat recovery system has a greater initial cost, it allows for better zoned thermal control of a building and overall greater efficiencies, ultimately saving residents operating costs in a sustainable manner. About Exchange District Exchange District is a new urban master-planned community destination coming to downtown Mississauga. Comprising three condominium towers, a rental residence and hotel, the project has been recognized as critical urban element in the creation of the new Mississauga City Center. A multi-use community, Exchange District will boast more than 2-million square feet of coveted retail, shopping, dining, office and commercial spaces, a boutique hotel, new lush public parks and thoughtfully designed open spaces. Camrost Felcorp Camrost Felcorp has established its place as one of the foremost names in the development industry since 1976 by consistently leading the way in creating landmark condominiums, and is behind many of the Greater Toronto Area's most distinctive and memorable residential communities and commercial properties. Unique in design, each is built on a similar foundation of superior craftsmanship, a pre-eminent address, and a timeless style that is ahead of the industry. Diverso Energy With over 30 years combined experience, Diverso Energy is an industry leader in the design, construction, and operation of geothermal heating and cooling systems. Helping developers of multi-family and commercial office buildings achieve sustainability and energy reduction targets by offering a unique geothermal utility model converting the upfront costs to long term operational expense. Mitsubishi Electric Sales Canada Inc. Mitsubishi Electric Sales Canada Inc. was established in 1979 as a subsidiary of the Mitsubishi Electric Corporation of Japan. Since then, Mitsubishi Electric Sales Canada Inc. has been at the forefront of heating, cooling and ventilation technology, sales, installation, and service. With 100 years of experience in providing reliable, high-quality products to both corporate clients and general consumers all over the world, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation is a recognized world leader in the manufacturing, marketing and sales of electrical and electronic equipment used in information processing and communications, consumer electronics, industrial technology, energy, transportation and construction. SOURCE Camrost Felcorp

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British Gas has pressed ahead with plans to dismiss all engineers who refuse to sign an inferior contract including a pay cut of up to 15 percent. It has only agreed to put back the deadline from April 1 to April 14.

Over 7,000 full-time engineers and members of the GMB union have been in dispute with British Gas since early January and have taken 42 days of strike action against the fire and rehire contracts. This has been the largest industrial action in the sector for four decades.

The new contract is based on adding an extra 5.5-8 hours of unpaid work and travel time to the working week. As in every industry and across the public sector, workers face demands to slave away without any family or social life, and on less pay, for the sole purpose of boosting productivity and profits and enforcing austerity cuts.

British Gas is prepared to terminate overnight the employment of a section of its 20,000-strong workforce, whose length of service ranges from a minimum of 10 years through to 40 years, for refusing to forfeit their terms and conditions. Those who do not sign under duress will not receive any redundancy, only 12 weeks pay based on the minimum notice required.

The resort to dictatorial methods by the company has not been enough by itself to intimidate workers. British Gas relies on the collusion of the GMB against its own members. The unions response to the issuing of the dismissal notices on March 25 was to advise strikers in an email, weeks beforehand, that they had no other option than to sign.

The union is solely responsible for the division this has created among the striking engineers whose action had been solid up to this point. The company now boasts that 95 percent have signed the new contract. Whether this is true cannot be verified. Despite the treachery of the GMB, hundreds of engineers, and according to one source up to 1,000 workers, have refused to sign.

The GMB is now taking steps to wind down the opposition entirely. It has postponed the date for a further national one-day walk out until April 14, the very day engineers will be dismissed for refusing to sign or transferred over to the new terms against their will. The one-day action is the equivalent of reading the last rites over any genuine fight.

British Gas engineers cannot allow the struggle they have waged to be betrayed in this way. It is necessary to draw the lessons of the dispute so far and break the stranglehold of the GMB.

Workers have been incensed by the profit drive of the multi-million-pound company, whose operations would be impossible without their expertise and labour.

During the pandemic, many engineers remained on the job conducting repairs and maintenance on boilers and heating systems in households up and down the country, entering homes at the risk of COVID-19. Others participated in the distribution of food parcels on behalf of the Trussell Trust to the vulnerable and needy by repurposing their vehicles to perform deliveries. During this period, while they were praised officially as heroes, the company was drawing up plans, announced last summer, to tear up their terms and conditions.

The sentiments of British Gas engineers have been made clear in comments under the Twitter hashtag, #StoptheBritishGasFire

One worker said, Im being fired pure and simple. For not accepting inferior terms and conditions from a company making millions. The man responsible will pocket millions in bonuses.

In reference to British Gas CEO another stated, Chris OShea, [CEO of British Gas parent company Centrica] you are the lowest form of life. How much are you paid to ruin decent peoples lives? Youll no doubt walk away with millions while you ruin the company my family has served for 100 years.

In contrast the GMB has presented British Gas engineers not as fighters for the interests of the entire working class, but as supplicants who had to throw themselves at the mercy of the CEO, the company boardroom and even the Conservative government. Their efforts have centred on a letter writing campaign to OShea and shareholders. An appeal by GMB General Secretary Justin Bowden to high profile investors stated, We believe that we have a joint interest in persuading Centricas senior management from changing its current course, before more damage is done to the company (and, consequently, the value of your investment)

This is the real constituency of the GMB, which it vows at every opportunity to protect from the independent demands of the working class.

The company can rely on the fact that the union would rather see hundreds of its members dismissed and thousands having to accept the inferior terms than organise a broader mobilisation against the fire and rehire scheme. It has also been able to count on the other British Gas trade unions, such as Unison, Unite and Prospect, which accepted the companys modernisation programmehiking up productivity and axing 5,000 jobs.

The GMB has not even shrunk from presenting Prime Minister Boris Johnson as an opponent of fire and rehire contracts. His hypocritical criticism of the policy as unacceptable is positively referenced in the GMB video, The story so far, in the section, Support flooding in. Labour MPs have likewise been allowed to line up and pay lip service to solidarity with the strike at British Gas.

GMB video praising Boris Johnson's hypocritical statement that fire and rehire policies are "unacceptable" (source: GMB Facebook)

The allies of British Gas workers are not to be found in this political alignment of hostile class forces. The trade unions and Labour Party have functioned as the essential prop of the Johnson government, which has been given free rein for its herd immunity agenda in which no loss of life from the pandemic is considered too high in the interests of prioritising profits.

In addition to the sacrifice of key workers on the frontline and enforcing a return to work in which workers lives are not lawfully protected, the Labour Party and trade unions subordination of the working class to the corporate and financial oligarchy is facilitating a wave of restructuring to preserve and boost the enrichment of a parasitic super-rich elite.

The end of what Johnson has proclaimed the last lockdown will guarantee a new wave of death and is geared toward an intensification of the exploitation of the working class. Since last March, one in 10 workers have been forced to reapply for their jobs on worse terms and conditions.

British Gas workers must turn for support to other sections of workers entering strugglebus workers on strike at Go North West against fire and rehire contracts and RATP over zero-hour contracts and inferior terms for new starters; NHS workers against the derisory one percent pay offer; and teachers against the unsafe reopening of schools.

The mobilisation and unification of the working class can only be taken forward based on the establishment of a network of rank-and-file committeesindependent of the trade unionswhich will oppose the sacrifice of workers lives and livelihoods in the interest of the profit motive, and fight for the reorganisation of the economy based on a socialist programme.

This perspective will be discussed in a Socialist Equality Party online public meeting this Saturday calling for the formation of a network of rank-and-file action committees. We urge British Gas workers to register today.
Getting the balance right between fun and discipline in family life is never easy.

Many of us end up feeling like the parent who always says No, too busy with work and household chores to play games and fancy dress.

But what if you dedicated a day to saying Yes to everything your children demanded?

That's the premise of Yes Day. It started as a book by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld, which Hollywood actress Jennifer Garner  ex-wife of Ben Affleck  tried with her three children, Violet, Seraphina and Samuel.

The family enjoyed it so much it has now become one of their traditions, with Jennifer turning it into a new Netflix film of the same title. The idea is simple: let your children set the rules and make all the decisions for 24 hours.

A recipe for bankruptcy and domestic disaster, surely? Three brave mothers put it to the test...

MAYBE THEY WILL REMEMBER ME AS 'FUN MUM', NOT A GRUMP

Three brave mothers have put Yes Days to the test, letting their kids set the rules for 24 hours. Clover Stroud (pictured) is mother to Evangeline, eight, Dash, six, and Lester, four

Clover Stroud is mother to Evangeline, eight, Dash, six, and Lester, four. She says:

You mean we can do absolutely anything we want, Mum? You mean you promise you will say Yes to absolutely everything?'

My daughter Evangeline looks at me with eyes so sparkling, it's as if I have just told her that Covid has been eradicated, or, at the very least, she has won the lottery. She runs around the kitchen shouting with excitement, her younger brothers copying her. 'We can do absolutely anything we want and Mum will have to say Yes!'

After months of lockdown and disappointment, in the spirit of Jennifer Garner's new film, Yes Day, I have decided to reward my children with a day in which I say Yes to all of their demands.

The fact we can't yet visit the Tower of London or take a trip to Hamleys should make this promise a little easier than it might have been in normal life.

Sweets for breakfast? No problem. Turn their bedrooms into elaborate dens? Of course. Free rein of my make-up bag and do me up as you like? Why not!

Clover's Yes Day involved her children (pictured) asking for KitKats and Haribos for breakfast, a chaotic baking experience and building a den in their bedrooms

Spend the afternoon cooking whatever mad concoctions they can come up with without me trying to organise and control them? Whatever makes you happy, kids! In short, I say Yes to everything and brace myself for the consequences.

We kick off the day at breakfast and the children screech with delight as I pile their plates with KitKats and Haribos. They initially devour the sweets hungrily, until they all develop a raging thirst and start mewing at me for glasses of water.

They are soon bouncing off the walls on a massive sugar rush and, although it's not yet 9am, I am starting to question my decision to say Yes to their wildest demands.

WHAT THE PARENTING EXPERT SAYS. AND IT'S A YES! Anita Cleare is a parenting expert and coach, co-founder of the Positive Parenting Project and author of The Work/Parent Switch: How To Parent Smarter Not Harder. She says: A Yes Day is a bit like a team-building day at work, where you go off on an outward-bound course and solve problems together. Its purpose is to reduce hierarchy and destabilise the dynamic, so you see people in a slightly different light. It's a bonding exercise and when done well  as a very occasional treat, not every day  it can really improve your relationship with your children. It works best when parents are involved in activities we wouldn't normally do  like gaming with teens, or doing something messy with little ones  and when we find an unexpected enjoyment in it and really have fun. Our children understand us differently as a result, and vice versa. In general, it's good for children to explore the edges of what they're allowed to do  but the fact is a lot of them are quite likely to want to eat junk food all day or spend 24 hours on screens. You might want to think about how you apply the principles of Yes Day to make the most of it without completely erasing boundaries. Perhaps by saying it's a Yes Day for activities but not for food. Having said that, when you take away the forbidden aspect of sweets for breakfast, you might find children discover for themselves how unsatisfied all that sugar leaves them, which is not a bad lesson. When children ask whether they can do something, it's good to stop and think: can I say Yes to this? Is it going to take us as a family to a new and interesting and refreshing place? This past year we've got so used to saying No, it's what lots of children have come to expect. No, it'll make too much mess. No, we can't spare the time. No, I don't have the energy. It's our job to set boundaries and sometimes be unpopular, but it's good to have a reset of that mentality too. A Yes Day as a one-off can do that. But my advice is to challenge ourselves every day to say Yes more often. anitacleare.co.uk Advertisement

But a promise is a promise, as they often tell me, so we plough on.

Next up is the den, which sees them stripping sheets from their beds, dragging old sleeping bags from the backs of cupboards and draping picnic blankets across the back of chairs to create a tunnel in their bedroom.

In the process, books are pulled from shelves, the toy box is upended and a lamp is broken.

In normal circumstances I would have been bellowing at them to tidy up  but this time I take a deep breath, try to channel some inner zen and look the other way.

The blankets won't take long to tidy up, I tell myself, imagining this experience will seal me in their memories, years from now, as a 'fun mum', rather than a big grump running around clearing up after them.

By lunchtime they are so sick of sugar they actually ask for cheese sandwiches, which I find a teeny bit gratifying.

But there's little time to feel smug because moments later they have raided my make-up bag and are covering me in lipstick and mascara.

'We want you to look like a circus clown,' Lester tells me seriously, as Dash sprays me with a can of dry shampoo, narrowly missing my eyes, and Evangeline rubs lipstick into my face.

By 3pm I am exhausted, and realise that a large part of the energy of parenting goes into maintaining control and tidying up. Control is the thing I have lost completely.

Finally, they pull me into the kitchen to 'make cakes'.

From years of hard-won experience, I know that baking with children is never the cute and cosy maternal experience it's made out to be, but instead involves mess and raised voices, resulting in inedible, flat cakes no fairy would want to claim as their own.

Leaving the kids to their own devices has left the kitchen in complete chaos.

A dozen eggs are quickly smashed around me, flour is scattered like confetti everywhere and so much milk is spilt, I don't have time to cry over it.

The entire day, in fact, is so crazy that by the end of it all the children are flagging.

'I'm tired,' says Lester.

'I'm hungry for some pasta,' says Dash, eyeing the slippery mess of eggs and flour all over the kitchen floor.

'Can't we just sit on the sofa and watch a film?' asks Evangeline. 'Please, Mum, that's all we really want to do with you.'

I breathe a sigh of relief and throw the mop back in the cupboard.

The cleaning can wait, as this is the best suggestion anyone has had all day.

My Wild And Sleepless Nights by Clover Stroud is out now (8.99, Black Swan).

EGG MCMUFFINS FROM UBER EATS FOR BREAKFAST

Jackie Clune is mother to Saoirse, 17, and 15-year-old triplets Thady, Frank and Orla. She says:

'It's very simple whatever I normally say No to, I have to say Yes.' I've been trying to explain the concept to my four housebound teenagers but they just can't seem to grasp it and keep asking for the downright ridiculous or plain silly.

'Mum, can you sign the house over just to me?' asks one of the boys. 'Mum, can we bunk off school?' 'Mum, can you give me 1 million?'

Teens are motivated by two things  money and food. With 1 million out of the question, I agree to their demand that for the entire day they can order from Uber Eats.

We are strictly a one-takeaway-a-week family, but today we start with Double Egg McMuffins, hash browns, coffee and pancakes.

I have to get Saoirse to order on the app  I'm 'such a boomer', apparently. Twenty minutes later I deliver the steaming, fatty parcels to each bedroom door.

I even let Frank keep his curtains closed all day (every other morning I make him open them: 'You need vitamin D!'), but today he gets to fester in the dark like a rare species of lockdown bat.

At lunchtime I receive orders for sushi, noodles and gyoza. Whatever happened to beans on toast? I didn't even know what a 'gyoza' dumpling was at their age.

Jackie Clune - mother to Saoirse, 17, and 15-year-old triplets Thady, Frank and Orla (all pictured) - was forced to let her children have their computers on overnight during Yes Day

Still, no washing-up, so I busy myself around the house preparing for the next Yes challenge. My daughters always complain I never want to watch their favourite shows on the family TV, preferring, as I do, 'depressing medical documentaries or the news'.

If, by some miracle, they catch me in a lighthearted mood (perhaps when I've cracked open a new HRT patch) and I do consent to their choice, I spend the whole film on my phone, lifting my head every now and again to ask what's happening.

They tell me to sit down before putting on cult classic comedy Clueless. They love anything about American high schools featuring worryingly thin girls with glossy hair and an improbable ability with barbed one-liners.

I hate all films in this genre. Puerile, sexist, crass hymns to the WASP American dream. But it's Yes Day, so we sit down together and they confiscate my phone. I instantly feel panic rising in my throat. I can't sit here for two hours watching this rubbish!

My brain will rot, I'll miss important emails and I won't know what's happening with the vaccine rollout. But they are merciless and I sit for the whole film.

I would like to report that it was a revelation but, sadly, I was bored rigid and could not wait for the ending, with its obligatory 'life lesson' morality.

Milkshakes are deemed necessary afterwards, and within 20 minutes, four vats of artery-busting ice cream and mashed up chocolate arrive via yet another Uber driver. Where do they put it all?! There are more calories in one shake than the entire cast of Clueless would have had in a month.

Usually we're strictly a one takeaway a week family. Now it's rice on the floor. Sauce on the dog. Tin foil everywhere

Next up, my boys, avid gamers, challenge me to stop nagging them about their screen addiction and learn how to play online. I veto any violent or misogynistic games, so they pick what looks like an inoffensive raft-building game called, well, Raft.

It involves navigating a small boat while trying to harpoon passing flotsam in order to build a bigger and better raft than your rivals (in this case, a trio of charming boys online who try to help me learn the rules).

Sadly, hand-eye coordination has never been my strength  I can't even thread a needle, let alone lasso a floating oil drum. The graphics are so realistic I feel instantly seasick, and within five minutes I've been eaten by a large shark. They didn't warn me about the sharks.

Dinner is Indian takeaway, which I allow them to eat whenever and wherever they want. Chaos. Rice all over the floor. Sauce all over the dog. Tin-foil trays left crusty and rancid all over the house.

The final Yes of the day is allowing the kids to keep their computers on overnight. I fall asleep to the sounds of them happily clicking away on their keyboards, no doubt telling their friends how sick they feel. And how rubbish I am at Raft.

STRANGERS LOOK ON IN DISGUST AS MY BOY GRABS SWEETS

Rachel Rounds is mother to eight-year-old Tanoa. She says:

As I open my bleary, bloodshot eyes at 5.45am, I realise it's my son Tanoa who has woken me up by shouting: 'Mummy, can I play Roblox on your phone?'

For him, it is like Christmas Day, as he is rarely allowed to play on my phone and certainly not at this time in the morning. He has tried it before but been told, in no uncertain terms, to go back to sleep. But this morning, I have no choice, as today is Yes Day, which is his idea of heaven and my idea of hell.

If I think this is the worst it can get, I am sadly mistaken. Breakfast consists of Frazzles crisps, three Drumstick lollies and a glass of Cola.

I can just about cope with this  one day without Marmite on toast won't hurt him. But then he asks: 'Mummy, as you have to say Yes to everything, may I swear?'

Meanwhile, Rachel Rounds' son Tanoa (both pictured) 'pushed the boundaries' and asked to be allowed to swear for the day, much to Rachel's disapproval

He is never allowed to swear, although he knows exactly what a swear word is, largely because despite trying very hard not to, I swear frequently and loudly. And he's the one who tells me off for it.

Through gritted teeth I say Yes, and then, like the naughty schoolboy he is, he shouts 's**t' very loudly and repeats it again. And again. And again, falling into fits of laughter. He is loving every second of this  but I am horrified and want to cry. I feel powerless and angry.

Is this what it's like for trendy 'woke' parents who believe it's OK to say Yes to their 'precious moppets' all the time?

Tanoa knows the meaning of the word No and hears it all the time. It's called discipline and, although I am softer than his alpha-male, Fijian father, he is not allowed to get away with bad behaviour or pushing boundaries.

But, goodness, he has pushed those boundaries today. At the supermarket, it gets worse. Much to the disgust of another mother standing with her two children next to us in the sweets aisle, Tanoa picks up ten packets. I feel my cheeks redden with shame as this stranger looks at me in disgust.

Ecstatic and unable to believe his luck, Tanoa smiles with glee at the two children staring with open-mouthed envy. I push him away to the vegetable aisle in the forlorn hope that this will make the appalled family think I am not such a terrible mother.

Things get worse at the till when the shop assistant loudly counts out the sweets before I hurriedly pack them into a bag. I lie to her that it's his birthday and the sweets are for party bags.

Back at home, Tanoa proceeds to stuff as many sweets as possible into his mouth, clearly thinking I am going to change my mind and demand them back, which I am sorely tempted to do.

His next request to play with his Lego in the living room may sound perfectly reasonable, but I suffer from 'tidiness OCD' and cannot bear mess of any kind. My house is pristine: every surface is polished, there are no crumbs anywhere and Tanoa usually plays with toys in his bedroom.

He brings down two huge boxes of jumbled Lego and pours them out on to the coffee table and across the floor, along with a Playmobil castle and the sweet tin, overflowing with an assortment of additive-filled jellybeans and fizzy Cola bottles.

I am itching to tidy it away and can't bear to look. He is sitting in the middle of the floor, bricks everywhere and a pink marshmallow sticking out of his mouth.

'Oh, by the way, Mummy, as I am busy building a Transformers defender base, can you do my homework for me?' This is the final straw, I can't possibly do his homework: it's unethical, immoral, spoilt behaviour.

'No, I cannot, will not and should not,' I shout at him. And with that, I slam shut the living room door and rush to the kitchen, which I decide needs urgent cleaning. As do his teeth.
[April 07, 2021] Delivery Robots Market worth $957 million by 2026 - Exclusive Report by MarketsandMarkets

CHICAGO, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the new market research report "Delivery Robots Market with COVID-19 Impact by Load Carrying Capacity (Up to 10 kg, More than 50 kg), Components, Number of Wheels, End-User Industry (Food & Beverages, Retail, Postal), and Geography - Global Forecast to 2026", published by MarketsandMarkets, the market is expected to grow from USD 212 million in 2021 to USD 957 million by 2026; it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 35.1% during 20212026. Reduction in delivery costs in last-mile deliveries, and Increase in venture funding are the key factors driving the growth of the delivery robots market. Further, Worldwide growth of e-commerce market are factors propelling the growth of the delivery robots market. Ask for PDF Brochure: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=263997316 "4-wheeled delivery robot segment is estimated to register the largest market share during the forecast period" The delivery robots market for 4-wheeled delivery robots accounted for the largest market share in terms of value in 2020. Companies offer four-wheeled robots for delivering groceries, food orders, flowers, packages, and boxes among other things. Reducing the distance between the front and rear set of wheels will result in better zero-radius turning in any desired direction with 4-wheeled robots. Hence, 4-wheeled delivery robots accounted for the largest market share. "The market for the retail industry to hold the largest share of the delivery robots market in 2021." The retail industry held the largest share of the delivery robots market in 2021. The increasing use of the internet provides an impetus to online shopping. The ever-increasing trend of online shopping is expected to escalate the demand for delivery robots for the e-commerce application in the retail industry in the next few years. Once the rules and regulations for operating delivery robots are defined worldwide, these robots would also be adopted for cargo deliveries, which is also an iportant factor that is likely to fuel the growth of the market.



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North America expected to hold the largest market share during the forecast period North America has been home to many delivery robot manufacturing companies such as Robby Technologies (US) and BoxBot (US). Sophisticated and adequate street infrastructure, such as proper design and sufficient width of sidewalks and footpaths, helps companies in testing and operating delivery robots in this region. Starship Technologies (US), JD.com (China), Panasonic System Solutions Asia Pacific (Singapore), Savioke (US), Nuro (US), Amazon Robotics (US), Robby Technologies (US), Boston Dynamics (US), Robomart (US), and Eliport (Spain) are the key players in the market. Related Reports:

Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) Market with COVID-19 Impact Analysis, by Type (Tow Vehicles, Unit Load Carriers, Forklift Trucks, Assembly Line Vehicles, Pallet Trucks), Navigation Technology, Industry, and Geography - Global Forecast to 2025 Top Robotics Market with COVID-19 Impact Analysis by Top Industrial Robotics (Articulated, SCARA, Cartesian, Parallel, Collaborative), Top Service Robotics (Logistics, Domestic, Medical, Defense, Rescue, and Security) - Global Forecast to 2025 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, "Knowledge Store" 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:

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GREENWICH  Hannon Stern, a freshman at Greenwich High School, took first place in the high school division of the 36th annual poster contest run by the Connecticut Council of Language Teachers.

GHS world language students have a long and successful history of placing at the state contest. Congratulations to Hannon for her outstanding work of art, said Elizabeth Fancher, a world language teacher at GHS.

Each year, students are invited to submit original artwork for the contest that addresses a theme. This years theme is languages celebrate our differences. This year, tere were 157 entries from over 40 high schools.

It was truly a pleasure to see so many beautiful works of art. Choosing the winners of this years contest was a difficult task for the judging committee, said Melissa Tubbs, organizational director of the CT COLT.

The Connecticut Council of Language Teachers promotes, advocates for and fosters the teaching and learning of world languages and cultures.

Eastern Middle student earns honors for COVID project

After two weeks of virtual judging, the CT Science and Engineering Fair awarded two first place prizes to an eighth-grader at Eastern Middle School.

EMS student Zara Haque was the only middle school student in the Greenwich Public Schools to participate in the fair. Zara won first place in life sciences and first place in the CT Science Teacher Association. She now has the opportunity to compete in the Broadcom Masters National Fair.

Zaras project was called Can Trust Kill? COVID-19 and Social Capital.

Zara shared her impressive research, all of which was completed outside of school hours, and Im so proud of the recognition she received for this important work, EMS science teacher Jessica Iannacone said.

Her abstract says: COVID-19 is the most critical issue facing humanity right now. It is vital to conduct research on the factors that contribute to COVID-19 cases and deaths so that we can better understand which populations and communities are most vulnerable to this virus. My project investigates whether social capital is correlated with COVID-19 cases and deaths. Social capital measures the amount of trust and web of connections among members of a community or region.

She used county-level data from the U.S. Senate and The New York Times to statistically test the relationship between COVID cases/deaths and social capital. After controlling for income, diabetes, minorities, density and age, Zara said she found that social capital had a positive and statistically significant correlation with COVID cases and deaths.

The component of social capital that is most strongly correlated with COVID cases and deaths is family unity, she said. Overall, my findings indicate that a potential downside of high social trust is that it may lead to greater transmission of COVID-19. These results will be of interest to policymakers and healthcare providers in the fight against COVID-19.

Greenwich student inducted into Phi Kappa Phi

Kate Ruberti of Greenwich was recently initiated into the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, the nations oldest and most selective all-discipline collegiate honor society. Ruberti was initiated at Elon University.

Ruberti is among 30,000 students, faculty, professional staff and alumni to be initiated into Phi Kappa Phi each year. Membership is by invitation and requires nomination and approval by a chapter. Only the top 10 percent of seniors and 7.5 percent of juniors are eligible for membership.

Phi Kappa Phi was founded in 1897 and now has chapters on more than 325 campuses. Its mission is To recognize and promote academic excellence in all fields of higher education and to engage the community of scholars in service to others.

Lehigh University honors local students

Local students at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., were named to the Deans List in Fall 2020. This status is granted to students who earned a scholastic average of 3.6 or better.

The honored local students are Alissa Landberg of Cos Cob; Chelsea Clark of Cos Cob; Robert Lanni of Greenwich; Ella Morrissey of Greenwich; Caroline Robinson of Greenwich; Rebecca Grady of Greenwich; Trista Ford of Greenwich; Sabrina Trabish of Greenwich; Leila Schneider of Greenwich;Mitchell Katz of Greenwich; Hetty Mcmillan of Old Greenwich; Timothy Hanna of Old Greenwich; Frederick Tucker of Old Greenwich; and Anne Frey of Riverside.
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San Antonio police seized an industrial generator and water tank from a North Side exotic dance club after the business continued operating without their certificate of occupancy.

The XTC Cabaret, located at 2023 Sable Lane, was using a mobile generator and a 2500 gallon water tank to run the club in response to the City of San Antonio shutting off its power and water. The establishment continued to operate even after the city pulled its certificate of occupancy in November for continuously violating COVID-19 regulations.
Photo: pixabay

After getting a report that an 18-year-old woman might be in trouble, Vancouver police headed to a downtown apartment building Friday night (April 2).

Upon arrival, they found a party with around 20 people.

Initially, police were called because a member of the public reported an 18-year-old woman had been drugged and taken inside one of the apartments. When they got there they found the party in full swing, according to a police press release. Officers were concerned about the report of the young woman and entered the apartment.

"One of the guests yelled profanities and allegedly attempted to punch the officers. He was arrested for assault peace officer and taken to jail," state the Vancouver Police Department in the release.

Police did find the young woman; she was unharmed.

The party host has been fined $2,300 in accordance with current laws in place during the pandemic. "Numerous" party-goers were also ticketed.
WEST SPRINGFIELD  In an effort to further prepare students for careers after high school, the state has recognized 18 schools offering Innovative Pathway programs in everything from business and finance to manufacturing and health sciences.

These early career programs provide students tremendous opportunities for future success in and out of the classroom by building partnerships with local employers to equip students with experience and knowledge in a growing field, Gov. Charlie Baker said in a statement.

In October 2019, Baker and Lt. Gov. Karen Polito announced the availability of $1.8 million in grants over three years from American Student Assistance, a national nonprofit based in Massachusetts. The grants helped high schools across the state develop programs that prepare students for college and careers.

We are very excited about this opportunity for our students and the continued expansion of our offerings, said Patrick Danby, principal of West Springfield High School.

West Springfield High School is one of the schools recognized by the state for its three new programs in business and finance, health care and social assistance, and information technology. The programs will serve 280 students.

With the expansion of our Innovation Pathways program well focus on bolstering our new career pathways, Danby said. The pathways are designed to create strong partnerships with employers in order to expose students to career options and help them develop knowledge and skills related to their chosen field of study before they graduate high school.

Other selected schools will incorporate the following programs:

Ware High School is launching a program in manufacturing that will serve 130 students.

Turners Falls High School in Montague is launching an additional program in manufacturing that will serve 20 students.

Atlantis Charter School in Fall River is launching a program in information technology that will serve 50 students.

Bartlett High School in Webster is adding programs in health care and social assistance and manufacturing that will serve 120 students.

Carver Middle-High School offers a program in manufacturing that will serve 75 students.

Chelmsford High School is launching two programs in business and finance and information technology that will serve 40 students.

Dearborn STEM Academy in Roxbury is launching a program in health care and social assistance that will serve 120 students.

Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School is launching a program in health care and social assistance that will serve 40 students.

Excel High School in South Boston is launching a program in information technology that will serve 150 students.

Swampscott High School is launching a program in manufacturing.

Uxbridge High School is launching a program in business and finance that will serve 100 students.

Worcester Public Schools is launching a program in environmental and life sciences at its six comprehensive high schools that will serve 45 students.

Schools that apply for an Innovation Pathway designation are required to follow five design principles including equitable access for all students; guided academic pathways relating to one of five broad industry sectors; enhanced student supports; relevant connections to careers; and partnerships between high schools, employers, and workforce development boards.

It is a testament to the success and importance of these programs that despite the challenges of the last year, high schools moved forward with creating more early career opportunities for students, said state Education Secretary James Peyser. These programs give students relevant and valuable experience that helps them think about their future career paths, something that may have been sidetracked during the health crisis.

More than 600 students are expected to enroll in the programs. With these new designations, there are now 49 high schools in Massachusetts with Innovation Pathway programs, with a total of 121 pathways. More than 4,000 students are projected to be enrolled in an Innovation Pathway program by the fall of 2021.

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World Health Day is observed every year on April 7 since 1950. This day is aimed at creating awareness of a specific health theme and also to highlight a priority area of concern for the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Other aim of this day is to acknowledge the efforts of healthcare workers and the success of the WHO. The focus of this year's World Health Day is to ensure equitable access to healthcare facilities around the globe.

World Health Day 2021 significance

The World Health Day is observed every year to spread awareness about a specific health problem. WHO usually launches advocacy campaigns on this occasion.

History of World Health Day

The World Health Organisation (WHO) organised the first World Health Assembly which called for a "World Health Day" in 1948. The first World Health Day was observed on April 7, 1950 and since then, it is celebrated every year on the same day.

World Health Day 2021 theme

The theme of this year's World Health Day is "building a fairer, healthier world". This is a priority area of concern for the WHO as the COVID-19 crisis put the spotlight back on the inequity in healthcare system and how some people are able to stay healthier simply because of where they are born and their economic conditions.

WHO added that most of the diseases faced by these groups are preventable. The WHO stated, "As COVID-19 has highlighted, some people are able to live healthier lives and have better access to health services than others-entirely due to the conditions in which they are born, grow, live, work and age." The organisation has proposed a four-step strategy of working together, collecting reliable data, tackling inequities and acting beyond borders to achieve this goal.

Also read: World Sleep Day 2021: Theme, quotes, how poor sleep can affect you

Also read: One in three COVID-19 survivors at higher risk of brain, mental health disorders: Oxford study
In his talk about Critical Race Theory (CRT), Dr. Voddie Baucham maintained that the Gospel remains to be the "answer and solution" to racism.

In a recent interview with Faithwire, Dr. Voddie Baucham expressed his concern with how the CRT worldview has crept into churches, thereby influencing Christianity's concept of social justice.

"This is a religious movement," Baucham said of CRT. "It has all the trappings of a religion. It has its own cosmology, it has its own saints, it has its own liturgy, its own law. It has all of those elements. And a lot of those things are very subtle, which makes them rather attractive to religious people."

Baucham warned that while the CRT philosophy may sound "appealing" to Christians who are bent on social justice, its tenets are not grounded in the Scripture. He also warned against the temptation of taking some of its elements while disregarding others.

"We don't need critical race theory to teach us on race, on partiality, on the sin of partiality," he said.

Acknowledging the fact that there are issues to which the Bible does not directly speak to, the 52-year-old preacher still believes that the directives found in it are sufficient.

"There's a whole lot of things that the Bible is not, but, when it comes to the relationships between people, when it comes to sins based on partiality, the Bible is absolutely a textbook on that," he added.

Also an apologist, Baucham explained how CRT elevates humanism over what the Bible say about the universal nature of man. He also pointed out how over exposure to it could override a Christian's critical thinking. The storytelling methodology is truly effective in highlighting social issues that need addressing. But since most of these stories are coming from an emotional standpoint, a Christian would be torn between executing a "just judgment" and being a sympathetic ally of the "marginalized."

"In critical race theory, if you want to know the truth when it comes to race and racism, you have to elevate black voices, you have to listen to the voice of the marginalized - and this is what people are talking about in church today, right?" explained Baucham.

"[W]ith critical race theory, we do this because that's the way you know truth. Not through knowing God, not through knowing God's Word, but through listening to the voices and the experiences of the people who we determine to be marginalized."

CRT as a Construct of Oppression

Further in the interview, Dr. Baucham was asked if CRT could lead people to wrongly believe Christianity. Since the philosophy mainly zeroes in "white privilege," it pits Americans (by virtue of citizenship) against each other. Baucham fears that CRT's "divisive rhetoric" would not really help, but only compound the problem on racism.

"A few years from now, people are going to be fed up with critical race theory, and there's going to be a backlash," he said. "I worry about the fact that there's going to be a rise in actual white supremacy because of the rise of critical race theory. I worry about the fact that there's going to be a rise in actual racism because of the way we're dealing with this now."

On the subject of ethnicity, the pastor of Grace Family Baptist Church directs believers to go back to what the Bible has clearly stated, with Ephesians 2 and Galatians 3 as examples.

"When the Bible talks about no longer being a Jew or Greek and also being a male or female or slave or free, the Bible is talking about divisions that are real and divisions that, in many instances, God established," explained Baucham.

"So the Jew-Gentile divide that Paul talks about in the latter half of Ephesians 2, that is a real divide that God established. ... The black-white divide is not a real divide, it's not one that God established. So if God speaks to something that will obliterate a real divide that He established, we better well believe He will also take care of a false divide that men established."

Learn more from Faithwire's full interview with Dr. Buacham here.
During the coronavirus pandemic, public discourse generally accepted the premise that disparate outcomes among racial groups were not due to any biological differences between those demographics. Discussions instead focused on the socioeconomic and political factors that fuel health inequality.

The same cannot be said for disparate COVID-19 outcomes between men and women. Overall, men are more likely to die should they contract COVID-19. Analysis of that fact has largely clung to assumed sex-related variables around genetics and hormones and how that could potentially affect the immune system.

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The result, however, is the overlooking of one of the most adversely affected demographics: Black women, who, based on a new research paper from Harvard are more likely to die from COVID-19 than any other demographic except Black men.

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Researchers Tamara Rushovich, a Ph.D. student in the Population Health Sciences Program at Harvard University, and Sarah Richardson, the director of Harvards GenderSci Lab, spoke with Slate about how their findings could save lives. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Lets get started with an overview of the study.

Rushovich: We started back in the summer. There were reports showing the mortality and case rates among men and women, and we were beginning to see reports by race and some other variables, but generally in individual identity categories: the mortality rates among men, the mortality rates among women, and lots of things coming out about how men were dying at higher rates than women broadly.

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We wanted to understand that a little bit more deeply, knowing that there are so many social factors for historical reasons related to racism, discrimination, history of economic deprivation, etc. that shape someones risk of exposure, access to testing, access to hospital resources, etc. If you look just at sex alone, you get one picture, but if you look across more axes, what does that look like and what does that mean for the sex disparity in COVID rates?

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To get data to even look at mortality rates by more than one variable was initially hard to do because it was not available at the federal level. You could only see COVID rates either by sex or by race or by age, but not in a format where you could look at it across multiple variables. And we really wanted age because we know that COVID is different across age groups and older ages are at higher risks. We were able to get data from Michigan and Georgia, which were the only states publicly reporting data in that format. And thats the basis of our study.

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Our main findings centered around that, within racial groups, the sex disparity varies. The ratio between the rates among white men compared to white women is smaller than the ratio of the deaths among Black men compared to Black women. And the ratio within Asian men and women is comparable to the white men and women. When looking across, we saw that the disparity between Black women and white women is much larger than the disparity between white men and white women.

When you only look across one axis, you miss some of that variation and where are there actually quite high rates among particular groups that is not seen if you only look at race groups or at sex groups or age groups.

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Richardson: That is an incredible finding that the disparity among women of different racial groups is larger than the disparity between white men and white women. The suggestion is that the disparity we really need to be looking at is that race by sex intersection, going back to the framework of intersectionality and structural gendered racism, as a key driver of outcomes in this pandemic. And the point that the disparity between Black women and Black men is larger than the disparity between white men and white women also tells us something about how those disparities are working within each group racially defined.

How much larger is the disparity between Black women and white women?

Richardson: Its over three times the disparity between white men and white women.

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Rushovich: The headlines have been Men Fare Worse Than Women. But who disappears in that picture? Black women who are dying of COVID at extremely high rates. That specific vulnerability is lost. Its the Kimberle Crenshaw intersectionality story.

Its very true that Black women end up missing in the narrative when we look at the data one way or the other. What does this data say about the way racism functions in America?

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Rushovich: Its showing that racism intersects with discrimination along gender and sex lines to become amplified, or work together, to both affect Black women and amplify sex disparities between Black men and Black women in a way that is reduced between white men and white women.

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[Some of our hypotheses for why this might be the case] are things like occupation, where you see both racial and gender discrimination in terms of whos performing what types of occupations and which of those are essential workers. There is an overrepresentation of Black women in home health aide and nursing positions, which are high exposure routes for COVID. Theres also the effects that structural and gendered racism has on comorbidities in terms of shaping the many different avenues that influence health.

Richardson: Its well known that this exact pattern is what you would find if, for example, you looked in Georgia at heart disease rates by race and by sex. You would find Black men at the top and Black women after that. And a disparity among white men and white women that is less of a disparity and the rates overall are lower in those two groups. What that tells us is, like my colleague Evelynn Hammonds always says, COVID-19 did not create race disparities. It makes them visible.

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And what we have observed in the discourse around sex differences is a focus, a rush to biological causal variables. But our research has shown that there are extreme variations in the degree of the sex disparity similarly across states.

All of this shows that biology would be a very poor candidate to explain these kinds of variations, just like we consider biology a very poor candidate to explain the extreme racial disparities that have been seen. Instead, they pattern along these well known social trajectories.

Why is it important to see that this disparity is due to structured gendered racism?

Rushovich: Where you see the cause coming from is where you then look to make the changes to fix it. If you see the cause, like Sarah was saying, in biological or genetic areas, then youre going to lean towards medical and other kinds of treatment. But if you see it more coming from social and gendered structural racism as a cause, then you really have to look at institutional policy and social factors as needing to change to address the disparity.

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Richardson: A ton of research and resources have gone into investigating these hormonal and genetic variables in the sex disparity. But Black feminist health scholars have been calling since the beginning of the pandemic for attention to structural gendered factors, such as the greater exposure of women of color in essential worker positions, special attention to protection from evictionswhich overwhelmingly affect women of color and Black women.

Our findings support a much more cautious approach to making claims of sex disparities without considering interacting factors, because then you obscure those extreme vulnerabilities. If you only look at the claims about sex disparities, you would think the group to target is just men. And as our figures very clearly show, there are differential vulnerabilities within the group of men and within the group of women.

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The study uses data from the two states. Does this limit the findings of the study or does it give credence to the qualitative information thats already out there about how Black women are being disproportionately affected by COVID?

Rushovich: Michigan and Georgia are quite different and quite large states. Each state has done their own thing in terms of lockdowns, mask mandates, and policies. Those will likely influence the gender or the sex disparity because of the way it influences whos exposed and who gets tested. I dont think you can generalize, but the trends are something that should be looked at in other states. And I would expect we would probably see them in other states, but the degree can vary, because the response has been so different.

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Richardson: Yeah, it is a limitation. Wed like to do 50 states. And as soon as we can, we will be doing more states. One of the other limitations is that most states dont report data for Hispanics in a similar format, and thats also a very high vulnerability group. Other analyses would include a greater number of race/ethnicity classifications and add sophistication to what were able to see. It wouldnt change the degree of the disparity between Black people and white people that we see here, but it would add nuance in terms of other forms of vulnerability.

So it is a limitation, but as we have seen, each state in essence had its own pandemic. And so in a way, crunching all the data together is inappropriate and you do need to look state by state. Its remarkable that we see such similar patterns between these two states, and it suggests that this is a real-deal patterning of structural gender racial disparities.

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Weve talked a lot about the social factors that likely cause such outcomes, but what could clinicians and policymakers do going forward to address these disparities?

Rushovich: When were thinking about COVID relief bills going forward, looking at occupations that have people who are particularly affected by COVIDsuch as home healthcare workers and especially considering documentation statusand making sure those people are included in COVID relief legislation. Addressing evictions because you cant shelter in place or stay at home when youre evicted. And addressing the long legacy of structural gendered racism in the healthcare system in terms of bias and access to treatment and vaccines.

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Richardson: In the clinical setting, a problem with the sex disparities claims is that when somebody comes in, they get seen as a man and thus vulnerable in some way, or as a woman and thus vulnerable in a different way. A fear at the clinical level of reinforcing this highly binary disaggregated way of thinking about vulnerabilities is that you get sex stereotyping in these environments that would lead to different trajectories for treatment, as some biological scientists have actually argued. And so weve been working hard to texture those kinds of assertions and stereotypes by highlighting the social dimensions of particular vulnerabilities.

A third area of recommendation is data reporting. This data actually is collected. It is just simply not reported in such a way that we can see for a single individual their age, their race, and their gender or sex, so that we can look at these patterns. Its not made available in any accessible format. So if we could draw out more responsible, accountable reporting in a way that could allow us to see these patterns, that would be very high impact.

Rushovich: Then another point on the reporting which weve written a little about is the wide variety in the way that gender or sex is reported and whether its in a binary category, whether theres an unknown, or a transgender, or a non-binary category. That also goes into the way that data are collected and reported.

Richardson: We really need better reporting of what is meant by sex and gender. Up to 5 percent of the population may identify as non binary or gender non-conforming or transgender. And currently this is absolutely not represented in the data reporting practices, and we have more stuff forthcoming on that.
Mira Sorvino looked unrecognisable with a blonde wig and facial prosthetics as she was pictured on set filming American Crime Story: Impeachment for the first time on Tuesday.

The actress, 53, transformed into Monica Lewinsky's mother Marcia Lewis as she headed to film the Ryan Murphy drama in Los Angeles.

Mira is set to star alongside Beanie Feldstein as Monica Lewinsky in the anthology series, which is inspired by the infamous Bill Clinton scandal which saw the then US-President accused of having a sexual relationship with a White House intern.

Surprise! Mira Sorvino looked unrecognisable with a blonde wig and facial prosthetics as she was pictured on set filming American Crime Story: Impeachment for the first time on Tuesday

Coddling: The 27-year-old Booksmart actress had a black leather purse in hand, while Sorvino, leaning into her motherly instincts, had one arm gently wrapped around her as they walked

Although Mira's involvement in the project has yet to be announced, her ensemble suggests that she may be playing the role of Monica's mother Marcia Lewis.

Lewis famously appeared before the grand jury investigating allegations that her daughter had an affair with US President Bill Clinton.

Mira was spotted on set in character and was dressed in a knee-length fur coat layered over a tweed blazer with gold buttons and matching pencil skirt, reminiscent of one particular outfit Marcia wore during a press conference at the time.

Shock: The political sex scandal took place in 1998, when a news report emerged claiming that then-President Bill Clinton had had an affair with Monica Lewinsky

Pictured: Footage of a meeting between US President Bill Clinton and 24 year-old Monica Lewinsky who is at the centre of the allegations of sexual misconduct by the President

Transformed: The actress (left) transformed into Monica Lewinsky's mother Marcia Lewis (right), as she headed to film the Ryan Murphy drama in Los Angeles

Scandal: The series is inspired by the Bill Clinton scandal which saw the then US-President accused of having a sexual relationship with a White House intern Monica Lewinsky (pictured)

Action: Mira was spotted on set in character and looked completely unrecognisable (pictured right in February last year)

Hitting all the right notes: The outfit was reminiscent of one Marcia wore during a press conference at the time

Timeline of Bill Clinton/ Monica Lewinsky sex scandal November 1995 - President Bill Clinton, 49, engages in an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, 22 March 1997 - The affair ends, according to Lewinsky. She said they had engaged in sexual encounters on nine occasions September 1997 - White House employee Linda Tripp begins recording her conversations with Lewinsky after she confided in Tripp about the affair January 7, 1998 - Lewinsky signs an affidavit stating that she never had a sexual relationship with Bill Clinton. This was at the request of attorneys representing Paula Jones, who had accused Clinton of sexual harassment in 1994 January 17, 1998 - News of the scandal first breaks on the Drudge Report January 21, 1998 - The Drudge Report publishes allegations that Lewinsky had kept a 'garment with Clinton's dried semen'. The story is picked up by major news outlets January 26, 1998 - President Clinton denies the affair while standing with his wife Hillary at a White House press conference. He says the famous line: 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman' January 27, 1998 - Hillary Clinton appears on the TODAY Show where she defends her husband and calls the claims 'a vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced his run for president' February 6, 1998 - President Clinton says in a press conference that he will not resign from office August 3, 1998 - A blood sample is taken from President Clinton for DNA testing against stains from Lewinsky's blue dress August 6, 1998 - Lewinsky begins to testify before the grand jury August 17, 1998 - Clinton testifies to the grand jury where he admits to 'inappropriate intimate contact'. He speaks to the nation in a televised address, finally admitting that he had a relationship with Lewinsky October 2, 1998 - Transcripts of Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripps taped phone conversations are released December 11, 1998 - The House Judiciary committee votes to impeach, approving two articles of impeachment, including lying to a grand jury and obstruction of justice December 12, 1998 - Clinton says he won't resign and denies lying under oath December 19, 1998 - The House of Representatives votes to impeach President Clinton. Clinton vows to remain in office until 'the last hour of the last day of my term' January 7, 1999 - The Senate begins its trial of President Clinton February 12, 1999 - The Senate acquits President Clinton on both charges of perjury and obstruction of justice Advertisement

She had a strand of pearls fastened around her neck, a generous amount of red lipstick on her pout, and a pair of black cat-eye sunglasses, with one of her well-manicured hands wrapped around the strap of a black purse.

To complete the 90s era costume, the Hollywood alum slipped on some black sheer pantyhose and a pair of black high heels.

Beanie, who is portraying Monica Lewinsky, wore her brunette strands in a feathery 'do and kept her figure concealed beneath a large, black peacoat.

The 27-year-old Booksmart actress had a black leather purse in hand, while Sorvino, leaning into her motherly instincts, had one arm gently wrapped around her as they walked.

Similar to Mira's get-up, Beanie had on some sheer tights and trekked down the sidewalk in a pair of black chunky heels.

In between takes, Mira was seen holding onto a face shield as on-set makeup artists and hairstylists touched up her exterior.

Despite the heat and intensity of filming, the actress appeared to be in a chipper mood, often smiling at crew members in her vicinity.

Mira and Beanie join a star-studded cast, including Clive Owen as President Clinton, Edie Falco as First Lady Hillary Clinton, Betty Gilpin as Ann Coulter, Billy Eichner as Matt Drudge, Sarah Paulson as Linda Tripp, and Annaleigh Ashford as Clinton accuser Paula Jones.

The political sex scandal took place in 1998, when a news report emerged claiming that then-President Bill Clinton had had an affair with Monica while she was a White House intern.

At the time the trysting began in November 1995, Clinton was 49 years old and Lewinsky was 22.

Clinton would initially deny having sexual relations with Lewinsky, claiming in a January 1998 deposition that the two were never alone together in the White House.

Unknown to Clinton, however, Lewinsky had already revealed the details of the affair to her friend Linda Tripp, saying there were nine sexual encounters through March of 1997; several included oral sex and at least one involved Clinton penetrating her with a cigar.

The Clinton-Lewinsky affair became public a day after Clinton's sworn testimony, when Tripp gave Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr tapes of Lewinsky admitting to her relationship with the president.

He was impeached in 1998 on charges of lying under oath and obstruction of justice. The Senate acquitted him along party lines, with no Democrats casting 'guilty' votes.

At the time, Americans' views on the impeachment proceedings were seen as a political Rorschach test.

Republicans castigated Clinton for carrying on an affair with Lewinsky and lying about it both publicly and under oath.

Democrats saw the episode as an attack on their party's young, fresh face, waged over personal weaknesses instead of policy.

But the Senate acquitted President Clinton on both charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

Despite their direct connection to the 1998 scandal, Hillary and Bill only play minor roles in the third installment of the anthology series, which is currently without a set release date.

In conversation with DuJour in February, series star Sarah Paulson spoke candidly about the forthcoming project and how the 'story' is 'really about these three women: Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp.'

'There is one predominant thing that we forget: that these are human beings and multidimensional people.

'This series gives you an opportunity to understand some of the behavior. I have more in common with Linda than I care to admit.

Getting in character: Beanie, who is portraying Monica Lewinsky, wore her brunette strands in a feathery 'do and kept her figure concealed beneath a large, black peacoat

Staple pieces: Similar to Mira's get-up, Beanie had on some sheer tights and trekked down the sidewalk in a pair of black chunky heels

Friendly gal: Despite the heat and intensity of filming, the actress appeared to be in a chipper mood, often smiling at crew members in her vicinity

'My impatience, my desire for everything to be just so. I can tap into that with Linda. I felt a connection with her,' said Paulson of her portrayal of the infamous whistleblower and friend of Lewinsky.

Sorvino is not stranger to Ryan Murphy productions, being that she recently starred in the acclaimed producer's seven part Netflix limited series Hollywood, which premiered last year.

'American Crime Story: Impeachment' is the third instalment of the American Crime Story series.

The first was a critically acclaimed 2016 adaptation of the trial of OJ Simpson, called 'The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story', while the second series in 2018 was called 'The Assassination of Gianni Versace.'

The second series focused on the July 1997 assassination of legendary fashion designer Gianni Versace by sociopathic spree killer Andrew Cunanan.

Star-studded: Mira and Beanie join a star-studded cast, including Clive Owen as President Clinton, Edie Falco as First Lady Hillary Clinton and Betty Gilpin as Ann Coulter

Acquitted: The Senate acquitted President Clinton on both charges of perjury and obstruction of justice

Hollywood: Sorvino is not stranger to Ryan Murphy productions, being that she recently starred in the acclaimed producer's seven part Netflix limited series Hollywood last year
Is acquisition innovation going mainstream?

It was probably four years ago that I was moderating a panel on acquisition with an official from the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental organization known at the time as DIUx.

Experimental is gone from the name, but DIU continues on.

I asked this official if the concept of innovative acquisition spreads, which is one of DIUs goals, would he be out of a job one day.

It drew a laugh, but he also said that he hoped so.

A lot has changed since then and you see plenty of signs across the market that the use of innovative acquisitions have spread across the government as agencies push for new technologies and solutions, plus quicker ways of buying.

Over the last week, weve seen two clear signs of how far this trend has gone. Michael Brown, director of DIU and a former Symantec CEO, has been nominated undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment.

President Biden has also nominated Robin Carnahan as the next administrator of the General Services Administration. Shes a veteran of GSAs 18F organization, where she ran the state and local practice. Most recently, she was a fellow at the Georgetown University Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation.

So we have two people steeped in the belief that that the government needs to be more innovative with how it buys and how it delivers services.

When you think about the challenge ahead for many agencies of modernizing and transforming their operations, it will be good to have two veteran innovators at the top of such large and influential organizations.

Industry should be applauding their nominations.

A couple highlights from their careers:

Carnahan is the former Missouri secretary of state and since joining 18F in 2016 has been a proponent of more collaboration and coordination between levels of government. More recently, shes spoken about how the pandemic has exposed weaknesses in how social services such as health and unemployment benefits are delivered.

The country lacks the infrastructure to respond to crises. Not having that digital infrastructure undermines peoples trust in government to work at the time they need it, Carnahan said.

Brown has led DIU since 2018 and is a former CEO of Symantec and Quantum. Hell bring some Silicon Valley sensibilities to a higher level at DOD.

Last year, he spoke about the need to incentivize companies to focus on long-term investments and research and not short-term gains. There is too much of a focus quarterly results, he said.

I hope that perspective extends to government as well so that agencies stop asking companies about profit margins and trying to determine what an appropriate profit is.

I think one of the most important things these two nominees can bring their organizations is cover. There are a lot of people doing innovative things across the government but there are far too many that are too risk adverse. Too afraid of failure.

Failure is not a horrible thing, if you embrace it and learn from it.

Carnahan and Brown can provide that cover that encourages those under them to try new ways to buy and deliver services. Not everything will work, but at least some will and well all benefit from that.
By Ritah Kemigisa

Rwanda today marks 27 years after the genocide that took place between April 7th and July 15th1994 during the Rwandan Civil War, over one million people mostly Tusti and some moderate Hutu were killed in 100 days by armed militia

As the world joins Rwanda in solidarity to commemorate the day, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guteress has called upon all nations to draw lessons from the Genocide and ensure a replica of the same never happens.

Guteress meanwhile says there is need to honor those murdered and recognize those who survived for their resilience.

The National Unity and Reconciliation Commission in Rwanda has since rallied the public to ensure unity prevails and abstain from divisionism.

According to the commissions executive secretary Fidele Ndayisaba, it is everyones duty to ensure that the genocide does not happen again and try as much as possible to shun anything that seeks to jeopardize their unity.
HORRY COUNTY  Three proposed developments  each coming with their own slew of opposition  have almost reached the finish line.

On April 6, Horry County Council voted to move all three developments to their third and final reading on April 20. This comes as residents and activists opposed each proposed development.

Each of these developments have to go through three readings by council, with each reading receiving a majority vote to move forward.

The second reading is when county residents have the ability to comment and disagree or agree on the project, which typically means that councils second reading unofficially approves the project.

Normally there are two opportunities for residents to speak up during council meetings: public hearing and public input.

A public hearing happened on April 6, and each resident who spoke up had five minutes to address a specific issues, in this case on a specific development. Public hearing only happens during one of three readings.

Public input is something that happens at the beginning of council meetings and is an open floor for residents to speak up on any concerns they might have, county spokesperson Thomas Bell said.

Due to COVID-19, public input is currently suspended.

Usually each issue or "ordinance" has one reading which will allow for public hearing, and is typically done on the second reading.

This all but means that the trio of developments will likely be approved, unless something unexpected transpires or a council member choses to defer the issue, Bell said.

The proposed developments include Lennar Carolina's request to rezone close to 300 acres where U.S. 501 and S.C. 31 intersect in the Myrtle Beach area, and two requests from G3 Engineering of about 55 acres on Old 90 and about 100 acres on S.C. 905 both in Conway.

U.S. 501 and 31, Myrtle Beach area

Roughly 140 homes could be built in a flood zone if Lennar Carolinas request to rezone is approved.

Lennar is requesting to rezone 300 acres where U.S. 501 and S.C. 31 intersect in the Myrtle Beach area from commercial forest agriculture and commercial to multi-residential 3, which allows for mixed residential development in urban areas of the county.

Developers are proposing 214 single-family homes and 63 townhomes on the property.

The plan calls for 80 units, which will be within the 500-year flood zone, and 60 units will be within the 100-year flood zone

A common misunderstanding of 100- and 500-year flood zones is that they only happen once in those specific time periods, that is not always the case.

A 100-year flood zone means that there is 1 percent chance of a flood happening every year. And a 500-year flood zone means there is a 0.2 percent chance a flood will happen every year.

During a 30-year mortgage, homes in a 100-year flood zone have a 26 percent chance of being flooded at least once, according to the United States Geological Service.

"We're building in a flood zone, that is what gives me pause," said Johnny Gardner, the council chairman.

The change in zoning would actually decrease the number of properties that are able to be developed on the lot, said David Schwerd, director of planning and zoning commission.

With that current project, they could easily put 500 townhouses out there and meet all of our current access regulations. So, you're actually significantly reducing the amount of density that's going on, on this project, Schwerd said.

Horry Countys current flood regulations allow buildings to be built within a flood zone. For this project specifically, some homes will have to be built 12 inches above the base flood level, and some 24 inches above the highest adjacent grade.

They will still be located in a FEMA flood zone, no matter what we do, said David Gilreath, assistant county administrator for infrastructure and regulation.

It passed 7-4, with councilmembers Tyler Servant, Al Allen, Danny Hardee, Mark Causey, Johnny Vaught, Orton Bellamy and Cam Crawford in favor. Councilmember Dennis DiSabato abstained.

Old 90, Conway

As Amelia Wood stood before council on April 6 with concerns about S.C. 90s increased traffic and accidents, S.C. 90 stood at a halt.

At 6:12 p.m., S.C. 90 was closed at Bellamy Road in Conway due to a vehicle versus 18-wheeler accident, according to Horry County Fire and Rescue. One person was transported to the hospital with injuries.

Close to 45 acres was recently rezoned for 69 lots and G3 Engineering would like to rezone the remaining portion of the property to create 144 additional lots. This would total 215 lots.

Horry County tied with Charleston County as the worst county in South Carolina for fatal collisions in 2019, according to the South Carolina Department of Public Safety. There were 72 fatal collisions

On S.C. Primary Highway, which is what S.C. 90 is, 22 of the 72 collisions occurred.

One other concern Wood had was with the wording of council documents.

Wood asked council, Do y'all really believe that it will be good for the public welfare to add more homes in a place where we dont have enough infrastructure now?

Please think about that before you vote.

It passed 8-4, with council members Servant, DiSabato, Bill Howard, Harold Worley, Causey, Vaught, Bellamy and Crawford in favor.

S.C. 905, Conway

G3 Engineering is requesting to rezone close to 100 acres, taking the land from commercial forest agriculture to multi-residential, for a total of 199 lots for single family homes. Grissett Lake Landing was recently developed next to the property with 99 lots.

Two lots on the proposed development are located in a flood zone.

According to the rezoning request, flooding from Hurricane Florence went beyond the 100- and 500-year flood zone on a portion of this property.

Councilmember Orton Bellamy, who represents this area of the county, has been working with developers to address concerns raised by residents and activists.

Councilmember Gary Loftus asked how much of the proposed development has a chance to flood.

G3 developer Felix Pitts explained that during Hurricane Florence the Waccamaw River rose. He added there are existing ditches along the river but they did not mitigate all of the water, with about 5 percent of site being impacted by water.

None of that gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling, Loftus said.

With 5 percent of the property affected, Pitts countered that G3 Engineering has no problem committing to raising all their properties to 17-foot floor elevation.

It passed 10-2, with council members Servant, Loftus, DiSabato, Howard, Worley, Gardner, Causey, Vaught, Bellamy and Crawford in favor.
By Ruth Anderah

A Police officer Constable Emaru Samuel attached to Canine headquarters has been sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty to the offense of unlawful possession of protected species.

He was sentenced jointly with one Levy Eliu, a peasant farmer of Opalangor village, Alere parish in Amuria District by Buganda road court chief Magistrate Miriam Okello Ago after they were arrested with two pieces of raw elephant ivory.

Buganda Road court chief magistrate Miriam Okello Ayo has explained that the said punishment is to serve as a deterrent to the other would-be offenders against killing protected species for financial gain since such acts are rampant.

She further stated that the said sentence is to help the convicts reform.

Prosecution says on March 16th, at Apoloros village in Kapelebyong District, the two had in their possession two whole pieces of raw elephant Ivory weighing 43.2kgs without valid wildlife use right.
Japanese conglomerate has received a buyout offer from a British private equity fund in a deal that could be worth about $20 billion (14.5 billion euros).

The scandal-hit firm's shares were temporarily halted on Tokyo's stock exchange after it confirmed the bid by CVC Capital Partners.

If successful, it will allow to focus on and other core businesses, reports suggested.

Toshiba's US-listed shares rocketed almost 20 per cent after the bid was revealed.

The conglomerate has been at the centre of a number of scandals in recent years, including false accounting and huge losses linked to its US nuclear unit.

It was forced to sell its profit-making chip sector to make up for huge losses. Toshiba's chief executive and president Nobuaki Kurumatani confirmed the offer from CVC Capital Partners - his former employer - on Wednesday, adding that "we'll discuss it in a board meeting."

CVC's main office is in London although Luxembourg is its official headquarters.





is one of Japan's oldest and largest firms whose business empire stretches from home electronics to nuclear power stations.

Its accounting scandal in 2015, in which it admitted overstating its profits for six years, shocked corporate

The firm was on the brink of bankruptcy and to avoid being delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange, had to sell its crown-jewel memory-chip business.

Toshiba's shares were still demoted to the Tokyo Stock Exchange's second tier in 2017 and only returned in January.

The company's recovery took place under Nobuaki Kurumatani - the first outsider to lead the company in 50 years. He joined from CVC Capital Partners in 2018 and has worked to regain investor confidence.

The deal with CVC would rank among the top 20 largest leveraged buyouts in history but due to Toshiba's involvement in nuclear power stations, it would require the Japanese government's permission.

Toshiba was once synonymous with the global ascent of corporate Japan, but has since been forced to diversify into other areas.
Andrew Giuliani says hes planning to run for governor of New York in 2022, challenging incumbent Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Giuliani, a former top aide to President Donald Trump and son of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, told the Washington Examiner that the thinks he has a very real chance to win the gubernatorial race as Cuomo faces multiple scandals, including allegations of sexual harassment and scrutiny of his handling of data on nursing home deaths from Covid-19.

Outside of anybody named Trump, I think I have the best chance to win and take the state back, and I think theres an opportunity in 2022 with a wounded Democratic candidate, whether its going to be Gov. [Andrew] Cuomo, whether its going to be a radical [Attorney General] Letitia James, whether its going to be a no-name lieutenant governor, I think theres a very, very real chance to win, Andrew Giuliani told the conservative publication Wednesday. I believe I can win the race.

According to Politico, representatives for the New York State Republican Committee did not immediately respond to requests to comment.

U.S. Rep. Tom Reed, a Republican from Corning, N.Y., previously said he planned to run for New York governor but instead announced his retirement last month after being accused of sexual misconduct. Other potential GOP candidates could reportedly include Rep. Lee Zeldin of Suffolk County or Rep. Elise Stefanik, who represents New Yorks 21st District in the North Country.

According to the Examiner, Giulianis bid has been encouraged by conservative donors and would have support from Trump. Giuliani served in the White House as a special assistant to Trump and as a director of the Office of Public Liaison. He has never held an elected office, but his father Rudy served as mayor from 1994 to 2001 and was known as Americas mayor after the Sept. 11 attacks before representing Trump as an attorney.

Andrew Giuliani told the New York Post that hell meet soon with state GOP Chairman Nick Langworthy in Albany and county Republican leaders from across the state. He told the Examiner he plans to then launch his campaign later this month.
Mumbai, April 7 : Arrested Mumbai Police crime branch officer Sachin Vaze has opened up a Pandora's Box for the Maha Vikas Aghadi government in Maharashtra, accusing former Home Minister Anil Deshmukh, Transport Minister Anil Parab and others of pressuring him to extort money from the contractors of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and illegal tobacco factories and bars in the city.

In a handwritten letter dated April 3, a copy of which has been viewed by IANS, Vaze has claimed that NCP chief Sharad Pawar was against his reinstatement into Mumbai Police in 2020 and wanted it to be revoked. However, senior officials of the NIA remained tightlipped on the authenticity of Vaze's letter.

In the letter, Vaze said that Deshmukh had told him that if he paid Rs 2 crore to him, "he would convince Pawar to allow him back into the force".

"I had expressed my inability to pay such an amount. On this, the home minister asked me to pay it in a later course," Vaze wrote.

Vaze further claimed that Deshmukh had called him to the Sahyadri Guest House in October 2020 and asked him to collect Rs 3-3.5 lakh each from 1,650 bars and restaurants in Mumbai.

"I refused by saying that it was not within the scope of my capability," Vaze claimed in his letter, adding that as far he knew, there were only 200 bars in Mumbai and not 1,650, as anticipated by Deshmukh.

Vaze also alleged that soon after he came out of the meeting with Deshmukh, his PA Kundan had advised him that he must comply with the instructions of the minister if he wished to keep his job and post intact.

Vaze also said that Deshmukh made the same demand again in January 2021, when the two met at the former minister's official bungalow.

Vaze in his letter also claimed that Maharashtra Transport Minister and Shiv Sena leader Anil Parab had asked him to extort money for him.

"In July-August 2020, I was called by Minister Anil Parab at his official bungalow... At the meeting, Parab asked me to look into the complaint under preliminary inquiry and bring the trustees of the SBUT to him for negotiations about the inquiry. He also insisted to initiate primary talks to get Rs 50 crore from SBUT in order to close the said enquiry. I had expressed my inability to do any such thing as I do not know anybody from SBUT and also I did not have any control over the inquiry," Vaze told NIA in his letter.

Vaze further claimed that Parab called him again in January 2021 and asked him to look into an inquiry against some contractors listed in the BMC and collect Rs 2 crore each from them.

"He told me to collect at least Rs 2 crore each from 50 such contractors. An inquiry was on in this matter based on an anonymous complaint. The Crime Intelligence Unit inquiry against the contractors had not yielded any result," Vaze claimed in his letter.

Vaze, who was arrested on March 13 in connection with the explosive-laden SUV found outside Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani's residence on February 25, said that he had informed the then Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh about the extortion demands made by Deshmukh and Parab.

"...I met the Police Commissioner (Param Bir Singh) and expressed my apprehension about this... I told him that I would be embroiled in a false controversy in the near future. The Commissioner encouraged me and categorically instructed me not to involve myself in any such illegal collection of money from anyone and for anyone," Vaze wrote.

Vaze is currently being investigated by the NIA in connection with the mysterious death of Mumbai-based businessman Mansukh Hiren, whose body was found from a Thane creek on March 5.

A Mumbai Court on Wednesday extended the remand of Vaze till April 9.

After the cases related to the explosive-laden SUV and the death of Hiren exploded in Maharashtra, Singh was shunted out from the top cop's post and made the Commandant General of Home Guards.

After being shunted out as Mumbai Police Commissioner, Singh dropped a 'letter bomb' on March 20, accusing Deshmukh of asking Vaze and other Mumbai police personnel to extort Rs 100 crore 'monthly' from bars, hotels and restaurants in the city.

Earlier in the day, Singh had appeared before the NIA in connection with the case.

The Bombay High Court on Monday ordered a CBI preliminary enquiry against Deshmukh. The court also asked the CBI to complete the probe within 15 days, following which the CBI registered a PE on Tuesday night. Two teams of the agency have already arrived here from Delhi.

(Anand Singh can be contacted at anand.s@ians.in)
It's not just Apple's ad tracking coming under scrutiny from privacy proponents. Forbes reports that the advocacy non-profit Noyb has filed a complaint with France's Data Protection Authority accusing Google of violating the EU's "Cookie Law" with the Android Advertising Identifier (AAID). Google creates the unique phone ID automatically and prevents you from deleting it, violating European rules requiring "informed and unambiguous" permission, according to Noyb.

You can reset the AAID, but that doesn't eliminate past data or stop advertisers from tracking your activity using the new ID.

While the complaint was filed in France, Noyb said that nearly all Android phones in the EU were likely affected. The group, chaired by privacy campaigner Max Schrems, is betting that France can force Google to take action quickly. Noyb's complaint is based on the EU's e-Privacy directive and thus doesn't require other authorities to cooperate. A successful move could lead to a "substantial" sanction against Google, according to the non-profit.

We've asked Google for comment.

There's no guarantee this will lead to action. However, Schrems has a reputation for producing tangible results. He's part of why the EU-US Privacy Shield fell apart  there were concerns data sharing agreements wouldn't protect EU residents' data. There's a real possibility Noyb could succeed, and that could force Google to either offer more control over your device's AAID or scrap the technology altogether. That would leave advertisers scrambling to find new tracking methods, but it would also be good news if you're privacy-conscious.
Rebel Wilson shoots Hollywood film in Wrexham

This article is old - Published: Wednesday, Apr 7th, 2021

Pitch Perfect, Bridesmaids and JoJo Rabbit star Rebel Wilson is filming in Wrexham today.

The star is filming as part of The Almond and The Seahorse that started shooting in Liverpool earlier this week.

Due to the production St Giles carpark has been closed off to the public to facilitate the storage of crew vehicles for the next few days.

A council spokesperson told us: Some of the vehicles on St Giles car park are part of an independent film production, and will be parked at the site for three days from Wednesday, April 7 until Friday, April 9.

There will still be around 20 spaces available for other vehicles to use, and a full list of other town centre car parks can be found on our website.

Please remember that the town centre remains closed for non-essential shopping until next week (Monday, April 12th).

The filming is taking place in the Tuttle Street flats with Wilson spotted on the penthouse balcony earlier today, amid a large security operation in the surrounding streets to keep onlookers away.

Rebel Wilson and Janet McTeer are starring in what Ffilm Cymru, investors in the film, say is a poignant story of two couples exploring the impact of a traumatic brain injury on their lives.

They noted that The film is due to start principal photography in north Wales and Liverpool in March 2021 with that appearing to reach Wrexham from today.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Celyn Jones (@celyn_jones)

Earlier this week Wilson was pictured in Liverpool as part of the production.

More details on the project were announced in October via a press release from an agency involved:
Youve heard all about how the teacher unions are keeping kids locked out of school, despite CDC guidelines that say its safe to open the classrooms and doctors saying how much students need to be back in school: you know, all the scientific evidence that unions  and teachers  were insisting we abide by back when they agreed with it.

And depending on what sort of media sources you frequent when youre not reading the newspaper, you might be inundated about how awful those unions are.

We agree that there's no good reason to keep locking kids out of the classroom  and there hasn't been for months. Thats one reason we think its important to remind readers that we dont have teachers unions in South Carolina.

We do have an upstart group that clearly wants to be a union, a group whose leaders make a lot of loud union-like noises about how dangerous it is to open the schools. But such sentiments always have been in the minority in South Carolina.

Overwhelmingly, S.C. teachers are just like the rest of us  except tasked with a much more difficult job than many of us: They are committed first and foremost to whats best for our kids, and they understand that while we all risk our health when we venture outside the safety of our homes during the COVID-19 pandemic, classrooms are much safer than most places we go.

This idea was driven home last week, when the S.C. Senate passed legislation requiring all schools to return to five-day-a-week classes by April 12.

The legislation wont make nearly as much difference as a similar measure would have earlier, since Greenville County is currently South Carolina's only large school district that doesnt plan to have all students back by April 12 and is one of only four districts that hadnt already planned to allow all students back into the classroom within a week of that date.

But whats important for the sake of this conversation is less the effect than the reaction: The states largest teacher organization applauded the legislation. Thats right, applauded it.

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Granted, the thing that Palmetto State Teachers Association likes most about S.704 is that it prohibits schools from requiring teachers to provide simultaneous in-person and online teaching next school year unless "dual-modality instruction" is necessary due to unavoidable circumstances and unless teachers get extra pay for the extra work  which is a sensible way to handle the matter.

The association probably also likes the part of the bill that allows retired teachers to return to the classroom without losing retirement pay  which makes sense as long as it is a truly short-term exception to the smart law that was designed to ensure that state employees cant game the system and undermine the stability of our State Retirement System.

But the teachers could have applauded those provisions and held their noses to accept the five-day-classroom provision as a necessary part of the compromise. They didnt.

Instead, the associations Patrick Kelly told The Post and Couriers Seanna Adcox: The five-day return, at this point, is appropriate. It feels like the appropriate move in the best interest of our students.

Hes right about that.

Its disappointing that the Legislature needs to intervene to get all of our school districts to allow students back into the classroom full time, when the Charleston County School District and so many others have demonstrated, for months now, that its safe. And we still hope the law wont be necessary because the holdout districts will allow all the students back in class before the House is able to sign off on the bill.

But its good to be reminded that most of our teachers really are concerned about the science, and their students, and arent refusing to provide those students with the education we all need them to have.
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Malibu, CA, April 6, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - In this segment of The Ellis Martin Report, Ellis speaks with Jonathan Wiesblatt, CEO of Rockridge Resources ( CVE:ROCK )( OTCMKTS:RRRLF ) as the company expands its drill program at the Knife Lake Copper Project in Saskatchewan to 2100 metres.Rockridge Resources is a publicly traded mineral exploration company focused on the acquisition, exploration, and development of mineral resource properties in Canada and other mining-friendly jurisdictions. The Company's Raney Gold Project is a high-grade gold exploration project located in the same greenstone belt that hosts the world-class Timmins and Kirkland Lake lode gold mining camps. The Company's Knife Lake Project is in Saskatchewan, which is ranked as the #3 mining jurisdiction in the world by the Fraser Institute. The project hosts the Knife Lake deposit, which is a VMS, near-surface copper-cobalt-gold-silver-zinc deposit open along strike and at depth. Rockridge's goal is to maximize shareholder value through new mineral discoveries, committed long-term partnerships, and the advancement of exploration projects in geopolitically favourable jurisdictions.To view the interview, please visit:About Rockridge Resources Ltd

Rockridge Resources (CVE:ROCK) is a publicly traded mineral exploration company focused on the acquisition, exploration, and development of mineral resource properties in Canada and other mining-friendly jurisdictions. The Company's Raney Gold Project is a high-grade gold exploration project located in the same greenstone belt that hosts the world-class Timmins and Kirkland Lake lode gold mining camps. The Company's Knife Lake Project is in Saskatchewan, which is ranked as the #3 mining jurisdiction in the world by the Fraser Institute. The project hosts the Knife Lake deposit, which is a VMS, near-surface copper-cobalt-gold-silver-zinc deposit open along strike and at depth. Rockridge's goal is to maximize shareholder value through new mineral discoveries, committed long-term partnerships, and the advancement of exploration projects in geopolitically favourable jurisdictions.
Gail Anne Cotton ran the UK side of a drugs racket from her home. (Reach)

A grandmother who cooked class A drugs from her kitchen has been jailed for three years.

Part-time cleaner Gail Anne Cotton made thousands by running the UK operation of an international drugs racket from her home in Oldham, Greater Manchester.

The 55-year-old cooked up batches of the zombie drug known as spice that she managed to smuggle into UK jails using sheets of paper that appeared to be letters to prisoners.

Watch: Dog Sniffs Out Drugs Stuffed in Breakfast Burritos, Proves that Food Isn't a Distraction

However, police uncovered her operation when they searched her house last November following a tip-off.

Police found 5,000 in cash, four mobile phones, five SIM cards, digital scales, "designer cannabis" worth 140, 940g of spice with a street value between 4,080 and 9,400, and 355g of MDMA with a value of between 10,400 and 14,200.

Spice can cause extreme reactions in some users. (Getty/file photo)

Officers also discovered two Vanish tubs under the sink containing a white, rock-like substance that tests showed was a stash of cocaine worth 6,000.

One of Cottons phones contained numerous messages about selling spice and showed she played a leading role in conspiring to produce the substance.

Messages between her and a contact in Australia, named in Minshull Street Crown Court as "Joe MacAussie", indicated she was operating the UK side of a drugs operation.

Cottons defence lawyer stressed that there were others involved, telling the court: There may be others above her  that is a real possibility and there is nothing on her record that aggravates her position.

The court heard how Cotton imported ingredients from China and supplied spice around Britains jails.

Gail Anne Cotton was jailed for three years at Minshull Street Crown Court. (Reach)

Judge Tina Landale told the court that spice can cause bullying, intimidation and serious crime and pressure on the families to bring it in.

She added: For the staff in prison it causes lawlessness, bad behaviour and aggression.

"The value of the drugs  cocaine, ecstasy, cannabis and spice  is high and the profit to be made was very considerable.

Story continues

Cotton, of Melling Road, Oldham, was sentenced to three years after being convicted of conspiring to produce spice with intent to supply, possession of cocaine with intent to supply, possession of ecstasy and MDMA with intent to supply and possession of cannabis with intent to supply.

Watch: Shocking video shows prisoner on Spice
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They were once the most unlikely of close pals  a future king of England and the dogged ITV newsman.

But the two-decades long friendship between Prince William and Tom Bradby is now over, according to senior royal sources.

The Duke of Cambridge has been left annoyed that the high-profile presenter  host of ITV's News at Ten  has sided with his brother Prince Harry and sister-in-law Meghan in the increasingly bitter transatlantic war of the Windsors.

While phone calls and communication between the Duke of Sussex in California and Bradby in London have become commonplace, William, in contrast, is said to no longer trust the high profile journalist who was once a close confidante.

A royal insider revealed: 'The friendship between William and Tom is very much over. The Duke feels let down by Bradby and the way he's acted over the past few months.

The Duke of Cambridge was once so close with Tom Bradby that he was chosen to conduct the November 2010 engagement exclusive interview with him and Kate Middleton

'William is a sensitive soul and believes it's in times of crisis when you find out who your true friends are. It would be fair to say Bradby hasn't been one of them.'

Among senior royal aides, there is growing anger at the way Bradby and ITV News seem to have become a mouthpiece for Harry and Meghan's gripes about the Royal Family.

Bradby, 54, was host of an ITV documentary filmed in South Africa in 2019 when Meghan, in a swipe at her new family, moaned: 'Not many people have asked if I'm okay. It's a very real thing to go through behind the scenesit has really been a struggle.'

Harry also used Bradby's documentary to publicly confirm a feud with his brother, admitting that he and William were 'on different paths at the moment'.

More recently, Bradby is believed to have been central to ITV being granted the rights to broadcast Oprah Winfrey's incendiary interview with the pair, where they lobbed a number of grenade-like allegations at the monarchy, including claims a senior royal had made racist comments about their future child's skin colour.

Bradby hosted an ITV documentary in South Africa in 2019 which Harry used to publicly confirm a feud with his brother

The royal source said: 'Some staff at the Palaces are even angrier about Bradby and the tone of his reporting at ITV News, which they consider to be pro-Harry and Meghan.

'It's well-known Bradby personally communicates with Harry on a regular basis and that is pretty obvious to royal aides who know how things work.

'But it's been very difficult to accept given the long history between Bradby and William.'

William was once so close with Bradby that he was chosen to conduct the November 2010 engagement exclusive interview with him and Kate. Bradby went on to attend the nuptials at Westminster Abbey as a guest.

A spokesman for William at the time said: 'The couple asked to record this interview specifically with Mr Bradby, whom they have both known for some time.'

Bradby's ITV documentary in South Africa in 2019 also saw Meghan Markle tell him: 'Not many people have asked if I'm okay'

But Bradby was equally close with Harry, attending his Windsor wedding to Meghan, alongside other media figures including Oprah and James Corden.

The friendship with both brothers was solidified during Bradby's time as ITV's royal correspondent.

He travelled with Harry to Lesotho in Africa to make a 2004 documentary.

Bradby's closeness to the brothers then exploded into the public domain as part of the News of the World phone hacking scandal, when details of a call between him and a royal staff member was published in the Sunday newspaper.

Like Harry, Bradby has been publicly open about his mental health issues, revealing he had to take lengthy time off from hosting News at Ten in 2018 after suffering the 'mental health equivalent of a heart attack'.

The Mail on Sunday revealed earlier this month that Bradby has 'significant sway' over how Meghan is portrayed more widely on ITV.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex speak to Oprah Winfrey in their bombshell tell-all interview which first aired on March 7

They reported he may have been involved in pointing the Duchess 'in the right direction' over how to complain about Piers Morgan's criticism of her on Good Morning Britain, which resulted in him quitting the show.

A source told the newspaper: 'Tom Bradby has a certain cache at ITV as their news man. He is also the man with the golden goose in the bosses' eyes as he has a hotline to Prince Harry.'

But don't expect to see Bradby securing another interview with William again.

Our royal source added: 'The Duke will, of course, remain cordial and professional in his relations with senior media figures, but that special relationship he once had with Bradby is no more. William no longer sees him as a friend.'

Kensington Palace declined to comment. A spokeswoman for ITV News said: 'Unfortunately at this moment we won't be in a position to comment.'
ITS a case of home sweet home for a Limerick woman who has taken the much sought-after title of Home of the Year.

Jen Sheahan, who was born in Corbally, was named the winner in the grand final of season seven of the popular RTE show with her clever renovation of a late 1800s artisan cottage in Rathmines, Dublin.

Jen attended Villiers Secondary School here in Limerick and has definitely kept her Limerick heritage according to her father, Frank Sheahan, a physiotherapist. Her mother Dr Mary Gray is a popular GP and both are based at the Corbally Medical Centre on the Corbally Road.

Jen moved to Parteen when she was eight years old but, like her father, is Limerick to the core, said Frank.

Jen is filled with joy after winning the title. "Its just fabulous," she told the Leader. "to even get into the top seven, let alone win, is incredible!

Jens house was clearly a massive hit with the three judges, Amanda Bone, Hugh Wallace and Limerick native Suzie McAdam (pictured below).

"A unique home and a well-deserved winner," Amanda said in the final episode which was broadcast on Tuesday night.

Jen is one of the contestants with no history in interior design and said she fell into this renovation project due to necessity. I was working (in Dublin) with a certain amount of money, and only one salary, and all that means is that buying somewhere that needs to be done up and restoring it is a good option, she explained.

She says that shes so glad that she decided to go down this renovation path. "Its brilliant to be able to put your own stamp on something.

Jen shared her advice on the best way to approach a renovation project for all the budding Limerick DIY hopefuls. Figure out the use of it before the look of it. Its really tempting at the start to be like I want it to look this, and have your pictures and your pinterest boards.

This Limerick womans journey shows that anyone can take on a renovation project and even win Home of the Year and Jen has some tips for anyone who has Home of the Year fever.

Your house is your house. If people are divided in opinion about your house thats a good thing. You want something that youve designed that works for you, not something that works for absolutely everyone.

Two other Limerick families of course had secured a spot in this years final of Home of the Year, Saara McLoughlin with her home in Annacotty, and young couple Kate and Cian ODriscoll who hail from Raheen and Ennis Road respectively.

The O'Driscoll's Dublin house made it to the final three homes of the seven properties featured in the final.

Limerick lady, and judge, Suzie McAdam concluded the show by saying of Jens winning house: This home represents everything that this competition is about and it is the right end to this story."
Connecticut state Sen. Will Haskell (D-Westport) and Connecticut state Rep. Stephanie Thomas (D-Westport) recently cheered the Connecticut Government Administration and Elections Committee's approval of legislation increasing access to absentee voting and overhauling voting access and registration statewide. Sen. Haskell and Rep. Thomas, respectively Senate and House Vice Chairs of the Committee, joined in voting to send the legislation to the Senate for further consideration.

"We've known for years - well before the COVID-19 pandemic - that we need to modernize our voting systems," Haskell said. "The pandemic only further highlighted the barriers that make our democracy inconvenient for some. Expanding opportunities for absentee ballots will help more people cast their votes without undue interruption to their work and family life, and helping young voters learn about the voting process will strengthen our democracy for the long-term. This legislation will increase Connecticut's voter turnout and make the process of casting a ballot easier and safer. After all, the right to vote is too easily rendered meaningless without the opportunity to vote."
And then, on Easter Sunday, the rain came. And came. And came. In biblical volumes it came. Before, at least, we were dry and outside. Now we were damp and confined to two tents. That night when we were tucked in my dad made his nightly trek to the homestead, an umbrella in one hand, bottle of wine in the other. My younger brothers Josh and Jordan were asleep in the big tent and next door, in the A-frame, David and I lay by lantern light talking about music. I think I was espousing the staying power of Fairground Attraction when Dave interrupted  Do you hear something? No, I replied. Hear what? It sounded like someone screaming.

I sat up. Are you sure? I think its just the rain. We paused. Listened hard over the downpour. Someone was screaming. David tore up the zip of the tent and bolted out. I grabbed the light and followed, ready to dash into the big tent next door. But the second I got outside I stopped dead in my tracks. There was no tent to run into. No walls, no door. Only a mass of misshapen canvas on the ground and tent poles sticking out at odd angles. My brother Joshs voice again came, crying for help. We fumbled with the heavy material until at last we found a zipper, managed to get it open and Josh came crawling out.

Wheres Jordan?! David yelled. He didnt know. The soaked tent canvas was too heavy for us to lift. We didnt even know which bump was Jordan and which were suitcases or Eskys. If one of us crawled in would we get trapped? David made a split second decision. He turned and sprinted to the homestead. Barefoot through the gauntlet of a million bindis. Josh and I stood huddled in the rain calling the name of our youngest brother as loudly as our voices could manage. But nothing stirred in the fallen tent. Within moments the two men arrived and began heaving up the walls of the tent with the strength of an army, my dad ripping his way inside and appearing seconds later with my little brother in his arms. Hed slept through the whole thing. That night we all slept in the homestead. The next day the sun was out again but the river had broken its banks and we were flooded in. The pilot flew us one by one off the property to safety, the excitement of being in a helicopter for the first time slightly dimmed by the exhaustion of wanting the whole holiday to be over. But as I looked out the window down on the sweeping national park and the wonder of Carnarvon Gorge below I thought, This is where weve been camping? My dad was right. It was absolutely beautiful.

To My Country by Ben Lawson is published by Allen and Unwin. Catch Ben Lawson in Firefly Lane, now streaming on Netflix. Kirsty Everett pictured skydiving in Cairns at 16 years old. Kirsty Everett, author of Honey Blood The smell of sunscreen, the gritty feel of granules of sand between my toes and the relentless symphonies of cicadas; all the evocative signs of summer. Its 1997. Im 16 years old and Im in Cairns with Dad. We slurp on Frosty Fruit ice-blocks, and sporadic flutters of adrenaline have forced a grin on my face. Its so hot that sweat soaks my armpits, my lower back, my upper lip and my eyebrows. I crunch on the last chunk of ice and lick the wooden stick.

We walk into Pauls Parachuting and a man with brown hair grown into a mullet smiles at us. Mullet-man pushes his sunglasses off his face, sitting them on his head. Hes sunburned around the shape of his sunglasses on his face. My names Mark. Ill be taking Kirsty up today. Mullet-Mark winks at me. Not only was this a place for parachuting it was also a museum dedicated to haircuts from the 1980s. Do you wanna come with us? Mark asked Dad. No, said Dad, This is a sort of present just for Kirsty. ***

Our two bodies are an inelegant mess as we fall from the small plane 10,000 feet from the ground in the tandem skydive. Mullet-Mark and I are an eight-limbed creature tumbling through the clouds. We spin around and around and around. The wind roars, blasting mercilessly against my eardrums, deafening me in the seconds of unfolding free-fall. My heart pounds and soars triumphantly. I have no control over my strong, short legs; Im at the mercy of the wind propelling us, pressuring us to wheel and twirl. Were a tangled muddle of arms and legsand then, were not. They call this part free-fall, but strangely, I dont feel the sensation of plummeting to the ground and the land does not appear to be coming closer. Im now pointing, tummy first, in the direction of the ground and Marks abdomen is squished against my clammy back. The skin on my face is like a blown bubble of gum: chubby jowls stretched up towards my ears.

They call this part free-fall, but strangely, I dont feel the sensation of plummeting to the ground and the land does not appear to be coming closer. Suddenly, were thrust upwards by a force so strong it manages to pull my Bonds underpants right up inside my butt. The parachute is open. Nobody warned me that it would feel like being given the worlds strongest wedgie. Now, the eight-limbed critter thats me and Mullet-Mark begin to float. We glide towards the ground. Sunlight warmly caresses my face. My heart gallops with excitement. For a moment I remember why were here  I almost died eight years ago and this is my present from Dad for being alive. What I see as I descend looks like a childs miniature model of green paddocks and tiny red farmhouse. Theres even a toy-sized coastline with white sand and an aqua-coloured ocean. Pop! Pop! Pop! My ears overflow with bursting pressure.

The grass and trees make the ground look like a quilt stitched together with various shades of green. Loading I shift my attention from the ground to the sky around me. My body is a marionette, and gravity and air are the masters of my strings. I try to catch clouds. Mark laughs at me. I dont care. I grab again and again at the white fairy-floss. Who wouldnt want to touch the clouds? The sky is a kaleidoscope of colours. The sun, a yellow orb of light, is surrounded by shafts of white that splay themselves out in all directions. Mother Nature has drawn shades of orange, pink, purple and yellow on the fluffy clouds. Carefully, shes merged one colour into the next so you cant tell where the pink shades end and the purple shades begin. My eyes devour the visual candy smeared across the sky. What do you reckon? asks Mark.

Amazing, I utter, but the word isnt good enough; words so often arent. As we get closer to the ground, I can feel the power of the strings of gravity that are pulling us towards Earth. Were being dragged towards dark green grass on a huge empty paddock. I can see Dad waiting for me, his hand shielding his eyes from the glaring sun. I lift my legs straight up in front of me for the landing. Marks feet touch the ground for both of us. He unclips me and Dad hugs me. Ecstasy surges through my veins. My heart gallops with excitement. For a moment I remember why were here  I almost died eight years ago and this is my present from Dad for being alive. For a moment melancholy threatens to steal the joy from my soul, then, I realise; I really need to retrieve my underpants from inside my bum. Honey Blood by Kirsty Everett is published by HarperCollinsPublishers. Turia Pitt with husband Michael and their son Hakavai. Credit:Turia Pitt / Instagram

Turia Pitt, author of Happy and Good Selfie It was my second ever Mothers Day. Id just come home from a surf to find Michael and Hakavai in the driveway, in the car, with the engine revving. Michael was wearing his aviator sunglasses that made him look like a 70s pornstar. Cmon darl, jump in, were going camping! When? I asked, somewhat apprehensively.

Right now darl, lets get going! Did I want to go camping right at that point? No. Not terribly. I wanted a shower and a hot cup of tea. Maybe a little nap. But I didnt want to dampen Michaels enthusiasm, so I replied: Wow! OK! Youre being spontaneous, this will be great! Um, should we pack? Nah darl, Ive packed up some of the gear in the garage, he said. Right.

We engaged in a somewhat heated discussion about what he had and hadnt packed (pot and pan set, yes, Hakavais bed roll, no). We stopped off quickly at the shops to get some essentials (biscuits for Dad, yoghurt for Son, wine for Mum) and continued our hour-long journey south along the highway. Hakavai was asleep in the back, sunlight stippled across his pudgy cheeks and I began to feel nostalgic for the days he was a little baby, despite still being a baby. Soon, we arrived at our camping destination. Since it was a Sunday, most people were going home which was excellent because it meant we had the campsite all to ourselves. I like people, but I find small talk awkward. Wandering down to the shoreline, we frolicked in rock pools, marvelled at the shells the size of Hakavais fingernails, and the way the foam latticed up the gritty sand. We ferried our stuff down to the campsite. Then walked back up to get more stuff. Then ferried the stuff down to the campsite. Then walked back up then did more ferrying until all our stuff was out of the car.

As Michael set up our campsite, Hakavai and I got out of the way and went down to the beach. There, we instantly smelt the salt in the air. Wandering down to the shoreline, we frolicked in rock pools, marvelled at the shells the size of Hakavais fingernails, and the way the foam latticed up the gritty sand. Loading All of a sudden, I felt immensely grateful to be there on Yuin country  on the NSW South Coast  in the dusky afternoon, and for the Elders and caretakers of this land, past present and emerging. Our campsite was excellent (I mean, Michael had done an OK job). We blanched some warrigal greens in the pot, then reserved the boiling water to make couscous, and served it with grilled campfire fish. Delicious. As the sun sleepily went to bed, the stars and moon came out in full force and Hakavai and I ran around the campsite to look at them.

Covered in salt and sand and couscous, Hakavai was fully exhausted and ready to sleep. We lay in the tent with him as he pottered around for a bit, and then had his bottle and was knocked out. Michael and I were right behind, out like a light within about two minutes. And we stayed like that, all snug in our sleeping bags until about 5am, when Hakavai sat up in bed and started woofing. Like a dog. We ate breakfast, swam, and then ferried the three loads of gear back to the car for the drive home, not 24 hours after wed arrived. Thats what I love about camping on Yuin country. The way time slows down. But thats what I love about camping on Yuin country.
Srinagar, April 7 : A youth from PoK, who had inadvertently crossed the Line of Control and entered into the Indian territory, has been repatriated at a crossing point at Tithwal on the LoC, officials said on Wednesday.

The Indian Army said that on the night of April 5, a youth from PoK inadvertently crossed the LoC into Karnah in north Kashmir's Kupwara district.

"The youth, who has been identified as Mausam, the son of Manzoor Ahmad from the Lipa area of Kashmir under the illegal occupation of Pakistan, was sheltered by the Indian troops deployed along the LoC for the night with due care. Pakistani authorities were informed about the whereabouts of the youth," the army said.

The army further said that based on the interaction between the authorities of both sides on Hotline, the Indian authorities repatriated the youth to their Pakistani counterparts at the Tithwal crossing point as a humanitarian gesture.

"The youth was presented clothes and sweets before his return. On the occasion of repatriation, the representatives of the civil administration of Karnah were present. The exchange took place at 11.50 a.m. on Wednesday," the army said.

The officials added that such inadvertent crossings have taken place earlier also due to the close proximity of the villages along the LoC on either side. However, the Indian side has always been prompt in returning the individuals keeping the humanitarian issue in mind, the army said.

The Tithwal Crossing Bridge located on Kishanganga river has been acting as a point of peace between the two sides. The site is visited by lots of people from either side of the border and it is emerging as a tourist site, especially after the recently agreed ceasefire between India and Pakistan.
MILAN, April 7 (Reuters) - Italy's government, the country's main unions and employer associations said on Wednesday they had signed a protocol to organise the administration of vaccines in workplaces, as Rome steps up its vaccination plan.

Companies are eager to resume full activity in Italy, one of the European countries worst-hit by COVID-19, after businesses have been heavily impacted by the restrictions that Rome has imposed for over a year to stem the contagion of coronavirus.

Under the agreement, companies or groups of companies can submit their plans for voluntary employee vaccinations to local health authorities and make premises and internal medical staff available to do so.

Alternatively, companies will also be allowed to sign agreements with private medical service suppliers to have their employees vaccinated.

While health authorities will still provide the vaccines - once doses are available - needles, syringes and specific training for staff, employers will bear the costs of setting up and managing the vaccinations.

Italy has said it aims to vaccinate at least 80% of its population by the end of September, following criticism about the slow rollout of its campaign.

As of Wednesday afternoon, 11.6 million shots had been administered in the country, with 3.6 million of its 60-million-strong population having received the recommended two doses.

Medical staff who will vaccinate in the companies will not be held liable for any adverse health events after the jabs.

"As soon as the vaccine availability will make it possible, this will give a strong boost to the national vaccination campaign," Italy's largest employers lobby Confindustria said in a statement.

Confindustria last month launched a survey among companies to find out which ones were willing to take part in the country's vaccination effort. Almost 7,500, including TIM , Enel and Pirelli have signed up to the initiative.

Rome is also in direct talks with some large corporations, including Stellantis, to use their premises as hubs for its nationwide vaccination campaign.

(Reporting by Giulio Piovaccari; editing by David Evans)
An Australian luggage brand has launched the world's lightest double-wheeled suitcase, hours after the trans-Tasman travel bubble with New Zealand was cleared for takeoff.

The $245 'Carry On Light' from July weighs 1.8kg, half the weight of the average empty carry-on bag.

The lightness of the case - less than two 1-litre bottles of water - allows travellers to pack more and avoid hefty fees for over-weight baggage at the airport.

Complete with soft-grip handles and double wheels that spin silently on the ground, it can be personalised with names or initials in nine colours on the brand's website.

The $245 'Carry On Light' from July (pictured) weighs 1.8kg, half the weight of the average empty carry-on bag

The revolutionary case is sure to pique the interest of holiday-starved Australians eager to leave the country after more than a year of international border closures.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Tuesday announced the trans-Tasman travel bubble with Australia will reopen from April 19, as both countries continue to enjoy low coronavirus cases.

The launch of the bubble, which will allow travellers to fly between the two countries without quarantining, has prompted airlines to add hundreds of flights with return services on offer for as little as $500.

The lightness of the case - less than two 1-litre bottles of water - allows travellers to pack more and avoid hefty fees for over-weight baggage at the airport

Qantas and Jetstar - which announced a combined weekly service of 122 flights - will operate the same routes as they did before the pandemic hit, along with two new services - Auckland to Cairns and the Gold Coast.

Australians heading to New Zealand will be kept separate from other international arrivals who are still required to go into mandatory hotel quarantine for 14 days.

Those keen to take advantage of New Zealand's winter ski season will have plenty of gear and clothing to pack, making July's lightweight suitcase a truly timely release.

The $245 case (left) can be personalised with names or initials in nine colours on the brand's website

Brand co-founder Athan Didaskalou said consumer research showed more than 60 percent of Australians named luggage weight allowances as the biggest hassle of flying.

'We spent 2020 in deep design and product development,' Mr Didaskalou said.

'We made an ultra light suitcase that felt and looked like a suitcase we'd want to use. The result is a world-first that keeps the smooth wheels and proper handles but removes all the weight.'

He said he is proud to share Australian design innovation with the world.
The former head of emergency management for the Manitoba government has slammed the province's COVID-19 vaccine rollout as incomprehensible and suggested its time for the military to be called in.

The former head of emergency management for the Manitoba government has slammed the province's COVID-19 vaccine rollout as "incomprehensible" and suggested its time for the military to be called in.

Chuck Sanderson, who served as executive director of the Manitoba Emergency Measures Organization for 11 years and retired in 2013, said recent setbacks at the mass vaccination clinic at the RBC Convention Centre in downtown Winnipeg have exposed lapses in provincial planning.

"In a flood, when you got to the point where you couldnt handle it with your own local resources, you get to tap into the federal resources  and my feeling is, its time," Sanderson told the Free Press on Tuesday.

JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Chuck Sanderson, former executive director of Manitoba Emergency Measures Organization, is not impressed with and is critical of the provinces COVID-19 vaccination program.

"A whole rethink has to happen and thats why I think that they should be asking for the assistance of the military. The military is fantastic at logistical issues such as this and they could help this province get back on track in a very short period of time."

After significant delays at the mass clinic following the introduction of an "accelerated vaccine delivery model" two weeks ago, Sanderson said it appears the campaign is vulnerable to staffing shortages because it relies on casual employees. He questioned why more mass vaccination clinics have not yet been opened in Winnipeg, adding it is not feasible to have a single clinic.

"Emergency management systems are simple, theyre robust, theyre not subject to failure with one anomaly. Theyre built with all kinds of redundancies in them, so even if there was a glitch, you wouldnt know it as the receiver because theyve already got it built into the system," Sanderson said.

In a flood, when you got to the point where you couldnt handle it with your own local resources, you get to tap into the federal resources  and my feeling is, its time  Chuck Sanderson, former executive director of the Manitoba Emergency Measures Organization

"Whatever theyve built here is simply to save money and not lives, and that really is the issue. Somebody is trying to save some money at the expense of Manitobans."

As of Tuesday, the province had received 372,030 doses of COVID-19 vaccine and administered 216,718, about 58 per cent of its inventory.

The balance includes 54,600 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine that will be distributed to pharmacists and physicians and 26,500 that were sent to First Nations for use on reserves. Since January, a total of 51,800 doses have been directed to First Nations priorities.

The remaining doses, more than 68,000, are the responsibility of the Manitoba government to deliver.

CP Members of the Canadian Armed Forces help with an outbreak in Montreal last April. (Graham Hughes / The Canadian Press files)

"... I think that they should be asking for the assistance of the military. The military is fantastic at logistical issues such as this and they could help this province get back on track in a very short period of time.  Chuck Sanderson

On Tuesday, the provinces chief public health officer said Manitoba will be hit by a third wave of COVID-19, the severity of which will depend on how many Manitobans can get a dose of the vaccine before the wave arrives.

However, Dr. Brent Roussin said its tough for him to say whether the vaccine rollout is moving fast enough to get ahead of exponential spread, as neighbouring provinces grapple with new COVID-19 waves driven by more infectious variants.

"If our numbers stay where they are for the next four to six weeks, were likely to have a significant number of Manitobans vaccinated by that time," Roussin said. "If we are going to see a steep increase in cases, like weve seen in other jurisdictions, were going to fall behind on that approach."

DANIEL CRUMP / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Dr. Brent Roussin, Manitobas chief provincial public health officer.

The province said its inventory of 68,000 doses will be used over the next nine days, despite it stating it has capacity to deliver 20,000 doses each day through its immunization network.

Officials with Manitoba's vaccine task force have said that while the province has the capacity, they have chosen to perform closer to 6,000 doses a day at clinics so people have more choices for appointments throughout the week and better customer service.

From an emergency management perspective, Sanderson said there is no reason for the province to ration vaccine supply over a week rather than giving a high volume of doses in a few days.

"You could slow things down when you have reached a certain critical mass, perhaps," Sanderson said. "But we are in a situation where the objective is to get as many jabs into peoples arms as possible, in the shortest amount of time possible.

Roussin defends perceived speed of vaccine rollout Click to Expand The task force administers doses often within the same week it receives them, Dr. Brent Roussin insisted. (Kevin King / Pool files) Posted: 6:16 PM Apr. 6, 2021 Manitoba's top doctor defended the province's COVID-19 vaccine rollout Tuesday, as he faced questions about its slow pace. The vaccine task force had planned to be able to immunize 20,000 Manitobans per day by April 1  and the province claims it would now be able to administer 20,918 daily, if Manitoba had enough doses. Read Full Story

"The best practice is to go with what science is saying and science is saying get those doses in peoples arms ASAP because of the variants that are coming along," Sanderson.

"Vaccination sites should be going seven days a week full-tilt and none of this business of lazy Sundays," he said. "Its just incomprehensible to think of the way theyve rolled this out."

At 71, James Schellenberg said if the province offered him a COVID-19 vaccine at 3 a.m. on a weeknight, you could bet he would drive there from his home in North Kildonan to get the shot.

Instead, he has decided to drive more than an hour to Morden to get his vaccine at the mass vaccination clinic this weekend.

He said it was the earliest appointment offered to him when he booked last Thursday.

"There doesnt seem to be the urgency to get people vaccinated that I would hope there would be," the self-described mild-mannered Mennonite told the Free Press. "Its a little frustrating to read that we could do 20,000 a day, and we havent seen anywhere near that. And then also to see blame being placed other places (and) to say we dont have enough vaccine when we have thousands of doses that we havent inoculated yet.

"At my age, I feel some personal urgency to get vaccinated."

On Tuesday, Health Minister Heather Stefanson said she was satisfied with the rate of vaccination in Manitoba and is pleased with the work of the vaccine task force.

"Vaccination sites should be going seven days a week full-tilt and none of this business of lazy Sundays. Its just incomprehensible to think of the way theyve rolled this out."  Chuck Sanderson

"There have been challenges with supply as well from the federal government, so certainly we had a bit of setback for the next week on Moderna, and so those are the challenges that we face on a regular basis," Stefanson said. "Well continue to take those challenges to ensure that we can roll out this vaccine to Manitobans who need, want and deserve it."

Asked whether the federal government has offered military assistance to support the immunization campaign, Stefanson said federal support is always needed, then added the question would best be posed to Emergency Measures, which falls under the Infrastructure Department.

Stefanson said she is confident that doses on hand as of Tuesday will be administered within about a week.

NDP Leader Wab Kinew said he wants to see a greater sense of urgency from the province to get people vaccinated more quickly.

He said he believes that money is standing in the way of Manitoba being able to administer 20,000 doses a day as it has promised.

"It always is with this government. Its always a question of spending money and trying to rely on volunteers, trying to rely on part-time (staff), trying to rely on secondments. Just hire people. Lets get this thing done. Lets get it going," Kinew said.

 with files from Larry Kusch and Carol Sanders

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / April 7, 2021 / GGX Gold Corp. (TSXV:GGX)(OTCQB:GGXXF)(FRA:3SR2) (the "Company" or "GGX") is pleased to announce gold assay results for the remaining drill holes from its 2020 exploration program at the Gold Drop property in the Greenwood Mining Camp of south-central British Columbia.

Gold assay results were recently received for the remaining drill holes completed on the COD vein

(COD20-17 to 19) and for all drill holes completed on the Perky vein (PKY20-01 to 17).



Weighted average gold grades were calculated based on interval length for the following holes:

PKY20-07: 1.34 meters (0.96-2.30 m) grading 57.86 g/t gold

PKY20-08: 2.17 meters (0.70-2.87 m) grading 82.72 g/t gold

PKY20-09: 1.03 meters (10.44-11.47 m) grading 5.17 g/t gold

PKY20-13: 1.60 meters (4.59-6.19 m) grading 10.83 g/t gold

PKY20-15: 0.91 meters (8.75-9.66 m) grading 3.09 g/t gold

Photos of core from PKY20-08 showing rusty quartz vein with holes where sulphide minerals have been eroded.

Significant results were obtained for holes drilled to test the Perky vein, a parallel vein located 200 meters west of the COD vein. The following lists Perky vein drill intercepts over 1.0 grams per tonne gold.

Hole From

(m) To

(m) Interval Length

(m) Gold (g/t) Description PKY20-01 60.48 60.93 0.45 1.66 Quartz veinlet, pyrite in granodiorite PKY20-04 27.91 28.41 0.50 4.72 Quartz veinlet, pyrite in granodiorite PKY20-07 0.96 1.85 0.89 26.7 Quartz vein, visible gold PKY20-07 1.85 2.30 0.45 119.5 Quartz vein, pyrite PKY20-08 0.70 1.31 0.61 2.07 Quartz vein, rusty PKY20-08 1.31 1.73 0.42 9.63 Quartz vein, rusty PKY20-08 1.73 2.26 0.53 235 Quartz vein, visible gold PKY20-08 2.26 2.87 0.61 81.4 Quartz vein, visible gold, telluride, pyrite PKY20-09 10.44 10.97 0.53 7.47 Quartz vein, pyrite PKY20-09 10.97 11.47 0.50 2.73 Quartz vein, rusty, pyrite PKY20-12 9.20 10.06 0.86 26.9 Quartz vein PKY20-13 3.38 4.12 0.74 2.46 Quartz vein, pyrite PKY20-13 4.59 5.09 0.50 3.72 Quartz vein, pyrite PKY20-13 5.09 5.62 0.53 7.26 Quartz vein, pyrite PKY20-13 5.62 6.19 0.57 20.4 Quartz vein, pyrite PKY20-14 36.76 37.32 0.56 1.40 Qtz stringers, pyrite PKY20-15 2.66 3.26 0.60 3.54 Quartz vein PKY20-15 8.75 9.23 0.48 2.44 Quartz vein, pyrite PKY20-15 9.23 9.66 0.43 3.81 Quartz vein

The above intercept lengths are drill core lengths and may not represent true widths. True widths cannot be determined at this time due to lack of information on the geometry of the Perky vein.

Additional drilling is being planned to further explore the Perky vein and to test the Lively vein which was also a new discovery in 2020.

Holes COD20-17 to 19 were drilled south of the area of high-grade mineralization previously identified on the COD vein. Hole COD20-18 and 19 were drilled in a scissor pattern across the projected southern extension of the COD vein, approximately 250 meters south of the of the area of high-grade mineralization. No significant results were obtained from these holes.

Results for associated silver, tellurium and other elements of interest have not been received yet.

Analyses disclosed in this release were conducted by ALS Global - Geochemistry Analytical Lab in North Vancouver, BC, Canada. ALS is an independent, fully accredited commercial laboratory. All mineralized vein samples were analyzed by the metallics sieve method (ALS Code Au-SCR24) with gold determination by fire assay. For other samples, gold was determined by the fire assay method using a 50-gram sample weight and AA finish. Over-limits were re-analyzed by fire assay using a gravimetric finish. Other metals were analyzed as part of a 48-element package using a four-acid digestion and determination by ICP-MS.

David Martin, P.Geo., a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 and consultant to the Company, approved the technical information in this release.

On Behalf of the Board of Directors

Barry Brown, CEO

604-488-3900

Office@GGXgold.com

Forward-Looking Statement

This News Release may contain forward-looking statements including but not limited to comments regarding the acquisition of certain mineral claims. Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions and therefore involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements and Revolver undertakes no obligation to update such statements, except as required by law.

Forward-looking statements are based on the then-current expectations, beliefs, assumptions, estimates and forecasts about the business and the industry and markets in which the Company operates, including that: the current price of and demand for minerals being targeted by the Company will be sustained or will improve; the Company will be able to obtain required exploration licences and other permits; general business and economic conditions will not change in a material adverse manner; financing will be available if and when needed on reasonable terms; the Company will not experience any material accident; and the Company will be able to identify and acquire additional mineral interests on reasonable terms or at all. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions which are difficult to predict. Investors are cautioned that all forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including: that resource exploration and development is a speculative business; that environmental laws and regulations may become more onerous; that the Company may not be able to raise additional funds when necessary; fluctuations in currency exchange rates; fluctuating prices of commodities; operating hazards and risks; competition; potential inability to find suitable acquisition opportunities and/or complete the same; and other risks and uncertainties listed in the Company's public filings. These risks, as well as others, could cause actual results and events to vary significantly. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and information, which are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. There can be no assurance that forward-looking information, or the material factors or assumptions used to develop such forward looking information, will prove to be accurate. The Company does not undertake any obligations to release publicly any revisions for updating any voluntary forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable securities law.

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: GGX Gold Corp.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/639201/GGX-Gold-Corp-Drills-235-gt-Gold-Over-057-m-and-1195-gt-Gold-Over-045-m-on-Perky-Vein-at-Gold-Drop-Property-Historic-Mining-Camp-Greenwood-BC
We both have been blessed by God with a long, long life, Mr. Williams, who had last been in touch with Mr. Coolidge about five years ago, said in a phone interview on Wednesday.

In the last week of October 1944, Sergeant Coolidge and some 30 outnumbered soldiers in his rifle and machine-gun section faced annihilation by German troops with tanks during a major battle in the Vosges Mountains of eastern France, near the German border.

Sergeant Coolidge had fought with the 36th Infantry Division in Italy before it moved into France, and most of the troops under his command in the fall of 1944 were replacements for those who had been killed or wounded in the divisions long slog. They had little if any combat experience.

His unit was nevertheless ordered to hold off the German forces threatening to attack the right flank of the divisions Third Battalion, 141st Infantry, which was massing with two other battalions outside the tiny town of Belmont-sur-Buttant.

Through the first day of his units confrontation with the Germans and over the next three days, Sergeant Coolidges men fought for control of what was known as Hill 623 in the face of repeated attempts by the Germans to overrun them. All the while, Sergeant Coolidge sought to calm them and direct their fire.
MILWAUKEE, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- MGIC Investment Corporation (NYSE: MTG) has announced plans to release its first quarter 2021 financial results after the market closes on Wednesday May 5, 2021. A conference call/webcast has been scheduled for 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time on Thursday May 6, 2021 to discuss the Company's results for the quarter ended March 31, 2021.

Individuals interested in joining by telephone should dial 1-866-834-4126 ten minutes before the conference call begins. The call is also being webcast and can be accessed via the company's investor website http://mtg.mgic.com under Newsroom. A replay of the webcast will be available on the company's website through June 6, 2021.

The Company also today issued selected operating statistics of the primary mortgage insurance of its insurance subsidiaries for the month of March 2021. The summary is also available on the company's investor website under Newsroom, Press Releases.

The information concerning new delinquency notices and cures is compiled from reports received from loan servicers. The level of new notice and cure activity reported in a particular month can be influenced by, among other things, the date on which a servicer generates its report, the accuracy of the data provided by servicers, the number of business days in a month, transfers of servicing between loan servicers, and whether all servicers have provided the reports in a given month. Notices of delinquency are typically reported to us when loans are two payments past due (for example, for March we report as a new delinquency any delinquent loan that missed its February 1st (or earlier) payment that was not previously reported to us). We expect the number of delinquencies will continue to be influenced by various factors related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including its length and severity, the length of time that measures intended to reduce its transmission remain in place, the resulting level of unemployment, the impact of various government initiatives to mitigate the resulting economic harm and efforts to reduce its transmission.

The information concerning the percentage of loans in forbearance is based on the most recent information provided by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the GSEs), as well as loan servicers, and we believe substantially all reported forbearances are related to COVID-19. While the forbearance information provided by the GSEs refers to delinquent loans in forbearance as of the prior month-end, the information provided by loan servicers may be more current.



January February March Beginning Primary Delinquent Inventory (# of loans) 57,710 56,315 55,103 Plus: New Delinquency Notices 4,810 4,330 3,871 Less: Cures 6,094 5,446 6,088 Less: Paid Claims 108 95 109 Less: Rescissions and Denials 3 1 2 Ending Primary Delinquent Inventory (# of loans) 56,315 55,103 52,775 % of New Delinquency Notices in Forbearance 47% 46% 42% % of Primary Delinquency Inventory in Forbearance 60% 61% 61%

About MGIC

Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Corporation ("MGIC") ( www.mgic.com ), the principal subsidiary of MGIC Investment Corporation, serves lenders throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, and other locations helping families achieve homeownership sooner by making affordable low-down-payment mortgages a reality through the use of private mortgage insurance.

From time to time MGIC Investment Corporation releases important information via postings on its corporate website, and via postings on MGIC's website for information related to underwriting and pricing, and intends to continue to do so in the future. Such postings include corrections of previous disclosures, and may be made without any other disclosure. Investors and other interested parties are encouraged to enroll to receive automatic email alerts and Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds regarding new postings. Enrollment information for MGIC Investment Corporation alerts can be found at https://mtg.mgic.com/shareholder-services/email-alerts . For information about our underwriting and rates, see https://www.mgic.com/underwriting .

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release may contain forward looking statements. Forward looking statements consist of statements which relate to matters other than historical fact, including matters that inherently refer to future events and involve certain important risks and uncertainties, any of which could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed in our forward-looking statements. More information about the risks, uncertainties and assumptions affecting the company can be found in the risk factors included as Exhibit 99 to our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020, and in other filings we make with the Securities and Exchange Commission. No investor should rely on the fact that such statements are current at any time other than the time at which this press release was issued.

SOURCE MGIC Investment Corporation

Related Links

http://www.mgic.com


Real estate is the largest industry in the United States, measured by GDP, and its dominant players are becoming larger and larger, said Stefan Swanepoel, T3 Sixty chairman and CEO.

T3 Sixty, a real estate management consulting and analytics firm, has released the definitive list of the nations largest real estate companies and franchise brands in its 2021 Enterprise 20 report as part of its annual Real Estate Almanac publication. The report analyzes and ranks real estates largest enterprise companies and franchise brands by 2020 calendar year sales volume, transaction sides and agent count, and shows that the nations 20 largest real estate companies grew sales volume market share by 4.0 percent in 2020 from the previous year.

The market share growth, accounted against NARs annual existing home sales statistics, shows that the 20 largest real estate brokerage enterprises (which account for companies full stats  franchise brand and company-owned brokerage) did a total of $2.1 trillion in sales volume in 2020. This represents an accelerated concentration from the top 20 sales volume market share growth from 2018-2019 of 2.7 percent.

The top 20 real estate enterprises accounted for 54.9 percent of existing home sales volume in 2020, revealing just how much production is concentrating among the nations biggest and most powerful real estate organizations.

The Enterprise 20 analyzes companies by the sales volume and transaction sides of both their company-owned brokerages and the franchise brands they may own as an enterprise. This gives a full, clearer picture of just who the biggest of the big are, the scale of their industry dominance and the degree to which its increasing. Access the full 2021 Enterprise rankings here, which includes access to enterprise rankings by 2020 sales volume, transaction sides and agent count.

Just the five largest real estate enterprises by annual sales volume in 2020  Realogy Holdings Corp., Keller Williams Realty, RE/MAX, HomeServices of America and Compass  accounted for 42.4 percent of total existing home sales volume in 2020.

Enterprises have differing structures. Realogy and HomeServices of America, for example, manage both company-owned brokerage operations as well as franchise brands; others such as Keller Williams Realty and RE/MAX operate just as a franchisor, and others such as Compass just have company-owned brokerage operations.

Real estate is the largest industry in the United States, measured by GDP, and its dominant players are becoming larger and larger, said Stefan Swanepoel, T3 Sixty chairman and CEO.

Among the nations top 20 franchise brands by sales volume, Keller Williams Realty retains its No. 1 rank with $387.6 billion in annual sales by companies that operate under its brand, followed by RE/MAX with $294.2 billion, Coldwell Banker Real Estate with $265.4 billion, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices with $139.26 billion and Sothebys International Realty with $135.1 billion. These top five brands also saw strong year-over-year sales volume increases, ranging from 8.8 to 32.1 percent, another example of how real estate thrived in a year that throttled many other industries.

Access the full 2021 Enterprise 20 franchise brand rankings here, which includes rankings by 2020 sales volume, transaction sides and agent count.

About the 2021 Enterprise 20

The Enterprise 20, which analyzes the residential real estate industrys largest enterprises and franchise brands, is the fourth section of the Real Estate Almanac, a comprehensive annual compendium on the residential real estate brokerage industry. The Almanac includes a ranking of real estates most powerful leaders (SP 200), a list of its largest MLSs and Realtor associations (ORE 200), a list of the largest technology companies (Tech 500), a list of the nations largest holding companies, franchise brands and public companies (Enterprise 20), and a list of the nations 1,000 largest brokerages (Mega 1000). For more, visit realestatealmanac.com.

About T3 Sixty

T3 Sixty is a trusted advisor and management consultancy in the residential real estate brokerage industry. T3 Sixty also provides extensive data services and research to affect intelligent change and growth. For more, visit t360.com.


Embattled Liberal-National MP Andrew Laming is under investigation by the electoral commission over more than 30 Facebook pages operated without political authorisation disclosures.

Guardian Australia reported Mr Laming was behind the pages, which attack political opponents with pro-LNP material.

An Australian Electoral Commission spokesperson confirmed the Facebook activity would be investigated over the requirement for electoral authorisation designed to allow voters know who is communicating.

Embattled Liberal-National MP Andrew Laming is under investigation by the electoral commission over more than 30 Facebook pages operated without political authorisation disclosures

The Facebook pages include Redland Bay Bulletin, which has a similar name to local news site the Redland City Bulletin

Another is called the Redlands Institute, which describes itself as a forum for balanced discussion of major issues

The Facebook pages include Redland Bay Bulletin, which has a similar name to local news site the Redland City Bulletin.

'We welcome new families, update the issues and keep a close eye on politicians and their promises,' the Facebook page says.

Another is called the Redlands Institute, which describes itself as a forum for balanced discussion of major issues.

Dr Laming is quitting politics at the next election after being accused of harassing two female constituents and taking a photo of a woman while she was bending over.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has resisted calls to dump him from the coalition party room with the government holding a wafer-thin majority in the lower house.

Dr Laming has not denied taking the photo without the woman's consent but says there was nothing untoward.

He is also under fire after admitting to bullying, stalking and harassing various women over several years.

The 54-year-old has been given a month of paid medical leave to seek counselling and empathy training.
The first picture of a mother-of-two who was found dead at a road junction with stab wounds to her neck, chest and back has been released by police.

The body of Emma McArthur, 43, was discovered at a remote road junction near Crookham Common, near Thornford Park Hospital, in Thatcham, Berkshire, around 11.45pm last Thursday.

Her 'on-off boyfriend' Christopher Minards, 35, an ex-Army medic, was charged with her murder.

In a tribute released by her family, Miss McArthur was described as 'spiritual, spontaneous and a free spirit'.

This image, released by Thames Valley Police, is the first picture of mother-of-two Emma McArthur, 43, who was found dead at a road junction with stab wounds to her neck, chest

A statement released by Thames Valley Police on behalf of Emma's family read: 'Darling Emma, Spiritual, spontaneous and a free spirit - with a love of mother nature especially animals and the outdoors. You had a thirst for learning, new skills and could turn your hand to most things.

'Practical - you have never shied away from life's challenges, caring, thoughtful and always saw the best in everyone.

'A mother who always put her children before herself and whose love touched all those who were blessed with being able to call her a friend.

'Definitely unique and a one off. How empty our lives will be without you.

McArthur's 'on-off boyfriend' Christopher Minards, 35, an ex-Army medic, was charged with her murder. Pictured: Police block the road at the junction where Emma McArthur's body was found

'Spread your wings and follow your dreams. Loving mother, daughter and friend.'

Minards, from Thatcham, appeared at Reading Magistrates' Court on Monday accused of her murder. He's also charged with being in possession of a knife in a public place.

Wearing a grey jumper, and appearing before magistrates Joanne Corrigan and Yuki Beardmore-Gray, he was remanded in custody.

The court heard Minards was in an 'on-off' relationship with Ms McArthur.

Minards, from Thatcham, appeared at Reading Magistrates' Court (pictured) on Monday accused of her murder

Prosecution counsel Shane Hauschild said: 'The victim Emma McArthur was aged 43 years and a mother-of-two children.

'The defendant and the victim were known to one another, they had met on Facebook in June 2019.

'Paramedics arrived and administered life support but despite their best efforts the victim was pronounced deceased at 12.47am. The defendant was later arrested on suspicion of murder.'

On joining the army a decade ago, Minards was deployed with 4th Rifles and the Welsh Regiment in Iraq.
Most materials go from being solids to liquids when they are heated. One rare counter-example is helium-3, which can solidify upon heating. This counterintuitive and exotic effect, known as the Pomeranchuk effect, may now have found its electronic analogue in a material known as magic-angle graphene, says a team of researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science led by Prof. Shahal Ilani, in collaboration with Prof. Pablo Jarillo-Herrero's group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

This result, published today in Nature, comes thanks to the first ever measurement of electronic entropy in an atomically-thin two dimensional material. "Entropy describes the level of disorder in a material and determines which of its phases is stable at different temperatures," explains Ilani. "Our team set up to measure the electronic entropy in magic angle graphene to resolve some of its outstanding mysteries, but discovered another surprise".

Giant magnetic entropy

Entropy is a basic physical quantities that is not easy to grasp or measure directly. At low temperatures, most of the degrees of freedom in a conducting material freeze out, and only the electrons contribute to the entropy. In bulk materials, there is an abundance of electrons, and thus it is possible to measure their heat capacity and from that deduce the entropy. In an atomically-thin two-dimensional material, due to the small number of electrons, such a measurement becomes extremely challenging. So far, no experiments succeeded in measuring the entropy in such systems.

To measure the entropy, the Weizmann team used a unique scanning microscope comprising of a carbon nanotube single-electron transistor positioned at the edge of a scanning probe cantilever. This instrument can spatially image the electrostatic potential produced by electrons in a material, with an unprecedented sensitivity. Based on Maxwell's relations that connect the different thermodynamic properties of a material, one can use these electrostatic measurements to directly probe the entropy of the electrons.

"When we performed the measurements at high magnetic fields, the entropy looked absolutely normal, following the expected behaviour of a conventional (Fermi) liquid of electrons, which is the most standard state in which electrons exist at low temperatures. Surprisingly, however, at zero magnetic field, the electrons exhibited giant excess entropy, whose presence was very mysterious." says Ilani. This giant entropy emerged when the number of electrons in the system was about one per each site of the artificial "superlattice" formed in magic angle graphene.

Artificial "superlattice" in twisted layers of graphene

Graphene is a one atom thick crystal of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice. When two graphene sheets are placed on top of each other with a small and special, or "magic", misalignment angle, a periodic moire pattern appears that acts as an artificial "superlattice" for the electrons in the material. Moire patterns are a popular effect in fabrics and emerge wherever one mesh overlays another at a slight angle.

In magic angle graphene, the electrons come in four flavours: spin "up" or spin "down", and two "valleys". Each moire site can thus hold up to four electrons, one of each flavour.

Researchers already knew that this system behaves as a simple insulator when all moire sites are completely full (four electrons per site). In 2018, however, Prof. Jarillo-Herrero and colleagues discovered to their surprise that it can be insulating at other integer fillings (two or three electrons per moire site), which could only be explained if a correlated state of electrons is formed. However, near a filling of one electron per moire site, the vast majority of transport measurements indicated that the system is quite simple, behaving as an ordinary metal. This is exactly where the entropy measurements by the Weizmann-MIT team found the most surprising results.

"In contrast to the behaviour seen in transport near a filling of one electron per moire site, which is quite featureless, our measurements indicated that thermodynamically, the most dramatic phase transition occurs at this filling", says Dr. Asaf Rozen, a lead author in this work. "We realized that near this filling, upon heating the material, a rather conventional Fermi liquid transforms into a correlated metal with a giant magnetic entropy. This giant entropy (of about 1 Boltzmann constant per lattice site) could only be explained if each moire site has a degree of freedom that is completely free to fluctuate".

An electronic analogue of the Pomeranchuk effect

"This unusual excess entropy reminded us of an exotic effect that was discovered about 70 years ago in helium-3", says Weizmann theorist Prof. Erez Berg. "Most materials, when heated up, transform from a solid to a liquid. This is because a liquid always has more entropy than the solid, as the atoms move more erratically in the liquid than in the solid." In helium-3, however, in a small part of the phase diagram, the material behaves completely oppositely, and the higher temperature phase is the solid. This behaviour, predicted by Soviet theoretical physicist Isaak Pomeranchuk in the 1950s, can only be explained by the existence of another "hidden" source of entropy in the system. In the case of helium-3, this entropy comes from the freely rotating nuclear spins. "Each atom has a spin in its nucleus (an 'arrow' that can point in any direction)," explains Berg. "In liquid helium-3, due to the Pauli exclusion principle, exactly half of the spins must point up and half must point down, so spins cannot freely rotate. In the solid phase, however, the atoms are localized and never come close to each other, so their nuclear spins can freely rotate."

"The giant excess entropy that we observed in the correlated state with one electron per moire site is analogous to the entropy in solid helium-3, but instead of atoms and nuclear spins, in the case of magic angle graphene we have electrons and electronic spins (or valley magnetic moments)", he says.

The magnetic phase diagram

To establish the relation with the Pomeranchuk effect further, the team performed detailed measurements of the phase diagram. This was done by measuring the "compressibility" of the electrons in the system- that is, how hard it is to squeeze additional electrons into a given lattice site (such a measurement was demonstrated in twisted bilayer graphene in the team's previous work). This measurement revealed two distinct phases separated by a sharp drop in the compressibility: a low-entropy, electronic liquid-like phase, and a high-entropy solid-like phase with free magnetic moments. By following the drop in the compressibility, the researchers mapped the boundary between the two phases as a function of temperature and magnetic field, demonstrating that the phase boundary behaves precisely as expected from the Pomerachuk effect.

"This new result challenges our understanding of magic angle graphene," says Berg. "We imagined that the phases in this material were simple - either conducting or insulating, and expected that at such low temperatures, all the electronic fluctuations are frozen out. This turns out not to be the case, as the giant magnetic entropy shows".

"The new findings will provide fresh insights into the physics of strongly correlated electron systems and perhaps even help explain how such fluctuating spins affect superconductivity," he adds.

The researchers acknowledge that they do not yet know how to explain the Pomeranchuk effect in magic angle graphene. Is it exactly as in helium-3 in that the electrons in the solid-like phase remain at a great distance from each other, allowing their magnetic moments to stay completely free? "We are not sure," admits Ilani, "since the phase we have observed has a 'spit personality' - some of its properties are associated with itinerant electrons while others can only be explained by thinking of the electrons as being localized on a lattice".

###

Prof. Shahal Ilani's research is supported by the Sagol Weizmann-MIT Bridge Program; the Andre Deloro Prize for Scientific Research; the Rosa and Emilio Segre Research Award; and the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust.

Prof. Erez Berg's research is supported by Irving and Cherna Moskowitz.

Prof. Yuval Oreg's research is supported by the Lady Davis Professorial Chair of Experimental Physics. Prof. Oreg is the Head of the Maurice and Gabriella Goldschleger Center for Nanophysics.

Prof. Ady Stern's research is supported by the Veronika A. Rabl Physics Discretionary Fund and the Zuckerman STEM Leadership Program.
Nobel Laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka, on Wednesday, paid a condolence visit to widow of late Afenifere spokesman, Yinka Odumakin, at their re...

Nobel Laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka, on Wednesday, paid a condolence visit to widow of late Afenifere spokesman, Yinka Odumakin, at their residence in Omole area of Lagos.

Soyinka described late Odumakin as a persistent and brave fighter.

The late Odumakin, 56, died on Friday after battling with respiratory problems occasioned by COVID-19 complications.

In the condolence register, Soyinka said, Farewell to a doughy fighter.

Similarly, a former Speaker, House of Representatives, Mr Dimeji Bankole, said late Odumakin struggled for human rights and lived till end.

According to a veteran Nigerian broadcaster, Mr Bisi olatilo, Odumakin left the way strong people leave.

NAN reports that Soyinka and others were all received by his widow, Dr Joe Okei-Odumakin, also rights campaigner and president, Women Arise.

(NAN)
The United States is prepared to consider some form of diplomacy with North Korea if it facilitates regional denuclearization, the White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters on Wednesday

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 07th April, 2021) The United States is prepared to consider some form of diplomacy with North Korea if it facilitates regional denuclearization, the White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters on Wednesday.

"Broadly speaking, we have a clear objective as it relates to North Korea, which is denuclearizing the North Korean Peninsula, the Korean Peninsula, I should say. We are, of course, continuing to enforce sanctions, we are consulting with allies and partners. We are prepared to consider some form of diplomacy if it is going to lead us down the path toward the denuclearization," Psaki said during a daily briefing.
Cairo, April 7 : The Suez Canal Authority (SCA) said that traffic in the vital waterway remained unaffected despite a sudden break in a ship's engine.

"The SCA has swiftly tackled a sudden break in an engine of one of the passing ships, oil tanker M/T Rumford, through the canal," Xinhua news agency quoted the SCA as saying in a statement on Tuesday.

Carrying 62,000 tonnes of oil, the ship was passing the canal in the south convoy when the trouble occurred, it added, explaining that SCA's tug boats have helped solve the problem.

"The ship resumed its passage after the engine was fixed by its staff," the statement said, adding traffic of containers in the canal's both branches wasn't impacted by the sudden incident.

Traffic resumed on March 29 after the 224,000-tonne Panama-flagged ship, Ever Given, was grounded on March 23 after it had veered off its course in a single-lane stretch of the canal during a sandstorm.

The incident caused a six-day suspension of navigation in the canal, stranding at least 422 ships.

Linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, the Suez Canal is a major lifeline for global seaborne trade since it allows ships to travel between Europe and South Asia without navigating around Africa, thereby reducing the sea voyage distance between Europe and India by about 7,000 km.

Some 12 per cent of the world trade volume passes through the Suez Canal.

At least 18,840 ships passed through the canal last year.

The Suez Canal provides one of Egypt's main sources of income, alongside tourism and remittances from expatriates.

Revenue from the waterway reached $5.6 billion last year.
Married At First Sight viewers were left 'heartbroken' and 'sad' for Melissa Rawson as the truth about Bryce Ruthven's secret girlfriend was finally revealed.

Former bride Samantha Harvey returned to the experiment to attend the girls' night when she revealed that claims of Bryce's relationship outside of the show were true.

'I don't know if you know about a girl back in Canberra that he's been talking to and messaging,' Sam announced, in front of all of the brides. 'He has been messaging her quite frequently and trying to get time off to go to the rugby with her.'

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Broken: Married At First Sight viewers were left 'heartbroken' and 'sad' for Melissa Rawson as she broke down in tears on Wednesday after Samantha Harvey returned to reveal the truth about Bryce Ruthven's secret girlfriend

'He said that he has to do this show for his exposure for his career in radio.'

Sam even revealed the name of the mystery woman, which was the blow that reduced Melissa to tears.

The news sent shock waves among the other brides, as well as with viewers who flocked to Twitter to share their heartbreak for Melissa.

Revelation: Sam announced, in front of all of the brides, 'He has been messaging her quite frequently and trying to get time off to go to the rugby with her.' Sam even revealed the name of the mystery woman, which was the blow that reduced Melissa to tears

Emotional: The news sent shock waves among the other brides, as well as with viewers who flocked to Twitter to share their heartbreak for Melissa

'My heart has just broke for Melissa,' one wrote, as another said: 'The producers must be so happy that Melissa is broken now.'

'This is honestly very sad, Bryce you dog,' a third commented.

'Can people stop ambushing Melissa at every turn,' someone else added.

Red flag: Meanwhile another tweeted, 'Not sure how Bryce thinks this will boost his image and career. The bloke will never getting laid again after this'

A viewer said: 'As irritating as Melissa's misplaced loyalty to a gaslighting d***head was to see, it's really sad seeing her so upset and betrayed. She needed to hear it though. Heartbreak hurts, even if the idiot causing it doesn't deserve one's heart.

'Not sure how Bryce thinks this will boost his image and career. The bloke will never getting laid again after this,' another tweeted.

At the ladies' night gathering, Samantha continued with the revelation of Bryce's girlfriend, saying: 'Basically, she's waiting for him to come off the show. This was a week and a half ago. I heard it from one of Bryce's very good mates, Jason.'

Breakdown: Melissa was clearly shook by the news, seeing as she only recently caught up with former Big Brother s in Canberra

Melissa was clearly shook by the news, seeing as she only recently caught up with former Big Brother star Jason Roses in Canberra - who had completely denied the claims that he had a girlfriend.

'I even know the girl's name,' Sam continued - with the big reveal leaving Melissa to break down in tears.

Sam later explained to a tearful Melissa that the girl in question was still waiting for Bryce on the outside, leaving his bride utterly lost for words.

Hurt by the truth: 'I am the biggest fool,' Melissa said to the camera. 'I'm very upset that it's come to this, because I've...'

'I am the biggest fool,' Melissa said to the camera. 'I'm very upset that it's come to this, because I've...'

She then breathed heavily as she tried to battle her tears, saying: 'I won't do it anymore.'

Married At First Sight continues Sunday at 7pm on Nine
Agencies | Washington

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

The Ambassador of the Kingdom of Bahrain to the United States of America, Shaikh Abdullah bin Rashid Al Khalifa, paid a visit to Bell Helicopter, the leading American company in the field of military equipment and supplies, where he went through the company's production line for AH-1Z aircraft, as it is working on the production of the first Lot 16 AH-1Z aircraft for the Royal Bahraini Air Force. The Ambassador was accompanied by the Military Attache in Washington, Brigadier-General, Marine Engineer Jassim Abdullah Al-Jowder, and Brigadier-General, Pilot Faisal Abdullah Al-Kaabi of the Royal Bahraini Air Force.

The Ambassador noted that achieving this milestone was thanks to the wise directives of His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, who was able to expand wider horizons for the relationship of the Kingdom of Bahrain with the United States of America and make it continuous and steady in all vital areas.

He added that hosting the US Fifth Fleet Command by Bahrain since 1971 is a testament to the strength of the friendly relations between the two countries, and is also an affirmation of the International Maritime Security Construct (IMSC), noting the level of joint training and the defence cooperation agreement between the two friendly countries, especially in the field of combating piracy, extremism and terrorism, as well as the promotion of security and peace in the region, which is reflected by this successful cooperation through building the AH-1Z fleet.

The Ambassador said that Bahrain is proud of the fruitful history of cooperation with Bell Helicopters, praising their constant keenness to participate in the Bahrain International Defence Exhibition and Conference.

The company is working on the production of the first Lot 16 AH-1Z aircraft for the Royal Bahraini Air Force, which comes within the framework of the aircraft purchase agreement that was signed during the visit of His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister, to Washington in November 2017, as part of the ongoing modernisation and development program of the Bahrain Defence Force.

"We are honoured to host a delegation from the Kingdom of Bahrain to share with us the achievement of the production of the AH-1Z, as today's celebration marks a new achievement in developing air capabilities in the Kingdom of Bahrain," said Mike Deslatt, Vice President and Projects Director for Bell Helicopters, pointing out that Bahrain will be the first country in the world to acquire this type of aircraft.

During the visit of Shaikh Abdullah bin Rashid Al Khalifa to Dallas, US, he met the Chairman and CEO of De Gaulle & McNaughton Oil Consultants, John Wallace, and the Executive Chairman of Hunt Consolidated, Ray Hunt, where he reviewed his latest explorations and developments of the Bahrain Bay field.

He also met officials from the US Chamber of Commerce, where he expressed Bahrains pride in the historic strategic partnership with the United States of America in many fields, including the economic and commercial fields, foremost of which is the Free Trade Agreement and the establishment of the American Trade Zone in Bahrain. The two sides discussed trade cooperation opportunities for US companies in various economic sectors during the meeting.

The Ambassador also met a member of the Texas House of Representatives, Congressman Marc Veasey, where they discussed a number of issues, including the advancement of the role of women in Bahrain, the Iranian role and the threat it poses to the security and stability of Bahrain and the region. They also discussed the historical developments resulting from the Abraham Accords.

In conclusion, the Ambassador extended an invitation to Congressman Veasey to visit the Kingdom of Bahrain and the Fifth Fleet of the United States of America and to meet with his counterparts in the legislative branch.
Mike Menyhart, Chief Strategy Officer, and Kathleen LaVoy, General Counsel, Ready to Lead SEA Electric Growth with Seniority and Expertise Following Companys US $42 million Equity Financing

SEA Electric, Chief Strategic Officer, Michael (Mike) Menyhart

Michael (Mike) Menyhart joins global automotive technology company SEA Electric as Chief Strategy Officer, bringing a solid foundation and base of capital markets relationships to lead SEA Electric toward its natural evolution to a publicly-traded company.

Michael (Mike) Menyhart joins global automotive technology company SEA Electric as Chief Strategy Officer, bringing a solid foundation and base of capital markets relationships to lead SEA Electric toward its natural evolution to a publicly-traded company.

SEA Electric, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary, Kathleen (Katie) LaVoy

Global automotive technology company SEA Electric expands its leadership team with the addition of Kathleen (Katie) LaVoy as General Counsel, Corporate Secretary, providing more than 13 years of proven worldwide litigation expertise and compliance solutions.

Global automotive technology company SEA Electric expands its leadership team with the addition of Kathleen (Katie) LaVoy as General Counsel, Corporate Secretary, providing more than 13 years of proven worldwide litigation expertise and compliance solutions.

SEA Electric US-based global headquarters team

Tony Fairweather, SEA Electric president and founder (center left) and the SEA Electric US-based global headquarters team, in Los Angeles, with current SEA-Drive-equipped vehicles (from left): SEA Sprinter Cutaway EV, SEA Hino M5 EV, SEA Hino M5 EV - Chassis, SEA Ford Transit EV - Cutaway, and SEA Ford Transit EV - Shuttle.

Tony Fairweather, SEA Electric president and founder (center left) and the SEA Electric US-based global headquarters team, in Los Angeles, with current SEA-Drive-equipped vehicles (from left): SEA Sprinter Cutaway EV, SEA Hino M5 EV, SEA Hino M5 EV - Chassis, SEA Ford Transit EV - Cutaway, and SEA Ford Transit EV - Shuttle.

SEA Electrics proprietary SEA-Drive

SEA Electrics proprietary SEA-Drive electrification technology adapts to a large range of OEM truck and commercial vehicle platforms, and its unique mid-mounted, mid-voltage battery helps provide improved safety and vehicle dynamics. Pictured: SEA-Drive 120 with 138 kilowatt hours (kWh).

SEA Electrics proprietary SEA-Drive electrification technology adapts to a large range of OEM truck and commercial vehicle platforms, and its unique mid-mounted, mid-voltage battery helps provide improved safety and vehicle dynamics. Pictured: SEA-Drive 120 with 138 kilowatt hours (kWh).

LOS ANGELES, April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Continuing to balance a recent string of successful business strategies, global automotive technology company SEA Electric is expanding the leadership team in its US-based global headquarters with the recent management additions of Michael (Mike) Menyhart, Chief Strategy Officer and Kathleen (Katie) LaVoy, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. Both executives secure a strong Midwest presence, bridging SEA Electrics national expanse which already includes the West Coast, an innovation center in Iowa and plans to build a presence in the greater New York area. (View link for photos and full background: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/h4ecyu10tzsdt5q/AABcOwyRMJhD78ofbSPq0LdRa?dl=0).



Story continues

According to Tony Fairweather, SEA Electric president and founder, the companys biggest learnings over the past year may well have been their silver lining. The virtual and remote world in which weve all become accustomed has opened opportunities for talents and human capital not tied to a single location  and our growth is a living example. The management team we have created, and now led by Mike and Katie, provide access to the best talent to match our world class technology and IP.

Menyhart joins SEA Electric with a strong background in banking, corporate development, finance, and general management with former senior positions at Accenture, SunTrust Bank, and Genpact. His experience brings a solid foundation and base of capital markets relationships that can lead SEA Electric through its natural evolution toward one as a publicly traded company. In addition, his previous work in the digital transformation and advanced technology space will help keep SEA Electric as the leader in commercial electric vehicle power systems.

Its exciting to become involved in an industry and company that will not only deliver tremendous global environmental impact but also deliver compelling outcomes for our clients through unmatched total cost of ownership and reliability, said Menyhart. We are in a position to lead the movement for global environmental sustainability. The delivery and logistics industry is at an inflection point and SEA Electric is driving the industry transformation from harmful greenhouse gases to zero emissions. We will make a huge difference in the world while significantly improving the driver experience and building a better alternative to the internal combustion engine.

The addition of Katie LaVoy as General Counsel and Corporate Secretary brings proven expertise of strategic thinking and commercial knowledge to find legal and compliance solutions. Good governance starts before you go public, said LaVoy. My number one goal is to apply my past experience and leadership from public companies to build the worldwide compliance necessary for SEA Electric to be regarded as a top tier company  one that positions its technology and sustainability on the forefront and recognizes the people that created it.

LaVoys various leadership roles have stemmed from 13 years of experience at the publicly traded Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Corporation  a large global corporation within the maritime industry that enables marine transportation. She holds a JD (Doctor of Law) degree from the Northwestern University School of Law and an Executive MBA from the Kellogg School of Management. Her litigation portfolio includes delivering high-value legal solutions to challenging issues.

The Future for SEA Electric

While SEA Electrics roots will always remain in Australia, along with various manufacturing and technology capabilities, the companys US growth brings an advantage that can later be replicated in Europe, as well. The sheer size of the opportunities before us, which began in Australia and the Pacific region, are exponentially growing within the US and European markets, said Fairweather.

We have an extremely compelling story to tell, from the solid foundation of the technology and people behind us in our original home in Australia to those who are joining our journey worldwide. We are anxious for the future and the positive direction it holds.

On the heels of its recent US $42 million equity financing announcement, SEA Electric also closed its latest purchase of 1,000 electric vehicle batteries from long-time technology partner Soundon New Energy Technology (Chinas leading environmental protection industry enterprise). This important transaction supports SEA Electrics proprietary SEA-Drive 70, 100 and 120 major power-system models. While most of the initial units are slated for the United States, the balance will go to SEA Electric inventories in Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia, as well as the companys first entry into the European market.

About SEA Electric

Global automotive technology company SEA Electric was founded in Australia in 2012, creating its proprietary electric power-system technology (known as SEA-Drive) for the world's urban delivery and distribution fleets.

Widely recognized as a market leader in the electrification of commercial vehicles on a global basis, SEA Electric commands a global presence, deploying product in seven countries including USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Indonesia and South Africa with collectively more than one million miles of independently OEM-tested and in-service international operation.

The companys global sales, after-sales and engineering are represented in all subsidiaries, whilst North America has the largest upfitting capacity for SEA Electric at more than 30,000 units per annum.

Contact: Deb Pollack/Strategic Communications

(t) 805.320.9248 (e) deb@debpollack.com

Photos accompanying this announcement are available at



https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/de0ded47-671e-449b-8257-28deb2a2c1e1

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/52c95c3a-dc23-44f6-b8ce-d2c52f03d5a6

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/ed1a3b41-c3c6-453b-8beb-bd4eb2836f4f

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/ea029774-ec01-4bad-a4ef-1fb94e7750e6




The block of Mission Street just south of Cesar Chavez has been, like so many blocks of San Francisco, a much quieter place for the past year. Roccapulco, the Latin club with its neon sign, has sat empty since the beginning of the pandemic. Virgils, a neighborhood watering hole, closed its doors in March 2020 and recently announced it would never open again. Even the coffee shop down the street is up for lease.

And El Rio, the 42-year-old neighborhood institution that began as a gay Brazilian leather bar, had gone dark, too. That is until last Thursday, when its backyard patio opened for the first time in more than a year  with a line of people out the door. Another line appeared Friday, and then Saturday, and, briefly, Sunday, too.

Patrick Prado and Sophia Zamudio-Hass were part of that line on Friday evening. There was a chill in the air, but they didnt seem to mind. They were just happy to have the place back.

Great music, best vibe, weve been missing it, Zamudio-Hass said.

Prado started scrolling through Instagram. He held his doble quince here  his 30th birthday party. He held up a photo of himself in a green gown full of layers. He wore a tiara, too.

Really special memories, Zamudio-Hass said.

El Rio is just one business, of course. But its also been your dive (as the bars slogan goes) for the citys queer community for decades. And after a year of losing thousands of businesses, and at least a few queer bars, to have something like El Rio back matters.

This was home. This was home base, said Rob Avruch as he sat on the back patio Friday just as the golden hour set in and the tiny lights strung up above flicked on. You twirled, you shimmied, you made out. This really was the place that made me feel connected to the heart of the San Francisco that I love.

Trey  Avruch turned to his friend, he just asked me if I have any good memories of this place. His friend found a video on his phone. Avruch was dancing on a packed El Rio patio in a black, one-piece swimsuit, a big sun hat on his head and a paloma in his hand. I hope this place can be a place to reconnect with people we havent seen in a long time.

That happened again and again on the patio Friday.

Hiyee!

Oh my God, hi, sweetie!

Ive really missed you! Are you still ...  And on and on.

Inside the bar, throughout the weekend, Jasmine Johnson squeezed limes and mixed margaritas and ran them out to the tables in the back. Shes worked at El Rio for something like six years.

More Information El Rio: Open 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. Thursday - Friday, and 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday - Sunday. 3158 Mission St., S.F. www.elriosf.com See More Collapse

El Rio is my home, she said. I have had every emotion you could possibly have in El Rio.

That word  home  kept coming up again and again.

For me it feels like a safe space and a family, said Cynthia Martinez, another longtime bartender. It was just a really tough year overall.

The place just unifies people, said Antonio Herrera. He got his start at El Rio by helping grill chicken in the backyard and slowly made his way up to the bar. Its a magical place that just unifies us. Its a community.

Usually, El Rio is the sort of place where youre squeezing through folks, as Lynne Angel, the bars general manager, put it. On Friday, the music was softer, parties were led, one-by-one, to the 20 or so tables in the back and and people wore their masks between sips  but the bar still played disco-tinged hits, the palomas tasted the same and people were happy to be there.

Its just great to have the vibe back, the community back together, Angel said. Ive been here in this space a lot over the past year, and it being empty was like bummer city. It really felt like a shell of itself.

Its not like El Rio to be quiet. This is a place where punk bands play in the back room on Friday nights, drag queens fill the patio on Saturdays and people who have had one too many drinks spill their guts during heartbreak karaoke on Sundays. El Rio is where people have met the loves of their lives and later married them. This is a place for community, where politicos would gather to watch results roll in on Election Day, where the calendar was packed with fundraisers, sometimes more than one a day. And on Fridays, a woman named Jackie usually shucks oysters and hands them out for free.

Not all of that is going to come back all at once, but Angel is already working on some programming within city pandemic guidelines, including the return of the daytime soul music party, Hard French, on May 15.

In my mind it was just like the community was the reason why we were going to try to make sure that we survived, Angel said. This is an institution in this neighborhood and has been for so long, the thought of not reopening is just  its too sad.

Back in October 2019, a few months before the coronavirus was all anybody could talk about, the Mission Economic Development Agency bought the bars building, securing its future for years to come. It was a huge relief for Angel and everybody who works there. But then the pandemic came, and nothing seemed certain anymore, not even El Rios future. As if to underscore that truth, Virgils Sea Room, a sort-of sister bar next door, announced in February it wouldnt be reopening.

They were just the best neighbors, Angel says.

Now some of Virgils patio furniture decorates El Rio.

The point is, no one knows the full shape of the world that will emerge once everything is said and done, but a place like El Rio reopening  or the Tadich Grill, which reopened this week, or the Masonic, which anticipates holding its first concert in June  offers some comfort that the world wont be completely unrecognizable.

On Friday evening, Emelyn Parker had come from Oakland to have a drink at El Rio. She described the place as flamboyant in the most delicious way possible. ... This was the place that just made me feel like I was in a community.

A song came on, something dark and electro and she nodded along. Parker said she misses the punk shows and metal shows in the back room. She remembered seeing her friends band play there once  a fun, rowdy punk show  and all the people knocking into each other, like waves on a dance floor.

My band hasnt played here yet, she said.

But with El Rio open, theres still a world where it might.

Ryan Kost is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rkost@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @RyanKost
A Scranton man faces felony assault charges for shooting several handgun rounds into a city apartment.

Trevon Owens, 27, 832 Saginaw St., was charged Wednesday with aggravated assault, simple assault, recklessly endangering another person and possession of firearms prohibited.

In a criminal complaint filed by Detectives Michael Schultz and Joseph Lafferty, witnesses told police they saw and heard Owens, known to neighbors in the Hilltop Manor housing complex as Tray, fire five or six shots into an apartment at 128 Thunderbird Drive, where Anthony Dejesus lives with his mother, Elsa Dejesus. The shooting happened at about 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, police said.

Owens ran toward his building, witnesses told police. A few minutes later, Anthony Dejesus pursued him, holding two knives and threatening harm toward the man who just shot into his apartment, police said.

One witness who said she knew Owens told investigators there must be some kind of bad blood between the two. Dejesus had been banging on Owens door the prior night as if he wanted to fight, she said, according to police.

The shooting led to police surrounding Owens building shortly after 7:30 p.m. Tuesday.

We have a search warrant and demand entry, a voice boomed over a loudspeaker. Come to the front door with your hands in the air and obey the officers commands.

The police then breached the back door of the building. The man they were looking for was not there.

Officers learned their suspect was instead hiding out at 617 Mineral Ave. They took Owens into custody without incident, police said.

Owens is in Lackawanna County Prison in lieu of $300,000 bail. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. Tuesday.

Detective Sgt. James Pappas said in an email the investigation is ongoing and police may charge more people.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki speaks during the daily press briefing at the White House on Mar. 30, 2021. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

White House Confirms Biden Administration Not Discussing Beijing Olympics Boycott

The White House reiterated that the Biden administration isnt discussing a joint boycott of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, noting that the United States is still planning to attend the event.

The confirmation comes April 7, after the State Department initially said yesterday that it was discussing with allies whether to consider a potential joint boycott, before the department later backtracked.

The Biden administration continued with the finding by the Trump administration that China was committing genocide with its repression of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities. During the daily briefing, a reporter asked White House press secretary Jen Psaki why this finding hasnt warranted a response or action from the United States, and also inquired what the country might need to see from China before it fully participates in the Olympics.

Just to be very clear and reiterateour position has not changed in our planned participation, Psaki responded.

However, we are working as we would be on any issue in coordination with our partners and allies about a range of concerns we have with Chinas behavior and their actions, including the genocide of Uyghur Muslims in China, including actions China has taken as it relates to economic and security steps. And so, that is something we would do in partnership and coordination with our partners in the region.

Just like any relationship, there are areas where we feel we can work together, areas where we have great concernswe voice thosewe dont hold back on those as the president did in his call.

The press secretary was referring to a call Biden had with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in February.

With calls for a boycott growing over Chinas human rights record, State Department spokesman Ned Price on April 6 repeated concerns over what Washington has described as genocide against Uyghur Muslims in the northwestern Xinjiang region.

Asked if the United States was consulting allies over whether to consider a potential joint boycott, Price told a media briefing: It is something that we certainly wish to discuss.

We understand that a coordinated approach will be not only in our interests, but also in the interests of our allies and partners.

Price later clarified in an email that he was referring to the United States having a coordinated approach rather than specifically discussing a joint boycott.

He subsequently wrote in a tweet that there was nothing new to announce, 2022 remains a ways off, but we will continue to consult closely with allies and partners to define our common concerns and establish our shared approach to [China].

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman later responded to the idea of a boycott.

International society will not accept [it], Zhao Lijian told a news conference in Beijing on April 7.

Human rights groups have urged the IOC to take the Olympics out of China because of its treatment of Uyghur Muslims along with other human rights concerns.

An independent U.N. panel said in 2018 that it had received credible reports that at least 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslims have been held in camps in Xinjiang.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Here's what you need to know: Wednesday, April 7th
London-based broker the Ardonagh Group has launched Ardonagh Global Partners (AGP), a unit focused on international mergers and acquisitions.

Its first acquisition in the United States, AccuRisk Solutions, follows on the heels of recent purchases in the UK and Australia.

AGPs strategy is to invest in leading platforms operating in attractive markets and product verticals outside of the UK and Europe and will sit within Ardonaghs new International platform, said the company in a statement.

Following refinancing in the summer of 2020, Ardonagh said it has committed to invest 155 million ($215 million) in M&A.

AGP will be led by Des OConnor, who ran a successful buy-and-build strategy as CEO of Bravo Group, the largest network of independent insurance brokers in the UK which became part of Ardonagh in 2020.

AGP then detailed its recent acquisitions for which financial terms were not disclosed.

AGP said it agreed today to acquire U.S. healthcare and benefits managing general underwriter, AccuRisk, in a joint venture with the Amynta Group.

Based in Chicago, AccuRisk specializes in medical stop loss, occupational accident and supplemental health products for small and mid-sized businesses, Ardonagh said, noting that the U.S. medical stop loss market has rapidly expanded from $10 billion in 2010 to $24 billion in 2020, as employers look for alternatives to the fully insured market.

AccuRisk also has expanded into the captive and ancillary service lines as these markets have significant U.S. growth opportunities. Ardonagh said the AccuRisk acquisition will allow it to enter the strategically important U.S. market.

In February 2021, AGP acquired Resilium Insurance Broking, Australias largest independently owned intermediary network. Resilium will act as the centerpiece of the companys Australian operations and allow Ardonagh to leverage opportunities for the wider portfolio within Australia.

In March 2021, AGP bought UK-based M&A specialist broker Hemsley Wynne Furlonge, an M&A insurance broker which structures bespoke insurance solutions for transactional risks. It specializes in warranty & indemnity, tax, contingent risk, and environmental indemnity products. With offices in London and Germany, the business has grown substantially since its launch in 2014.

All three acquisitions have been funded through the groups committed acquisition facility, the company said.

The Ardonagh Group was established in 2017 with the backing of majority shareholders HPS and Madison Dearborn Partners, two blue chip U.S.-based private equity groups. Ardonagh Group also owns such companies as Price Forbes, Thames Underwriting, and Towergate.

Source: The Ardonagh Group Ltd.

Topics Mergers
Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia failed to agree on a decision in the latest round of African Union-led talks. The three countries have held talks to resolve their years-long dispute over a controversial dam. The dam is being built by Ethiopia on the Blue Nile River.

Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia talks fail

The foreign minister and irrigation ministers of three nations met in Kinshasa, the capital of Congo. Three countries have held talks to negotiate on the filling and operation of the Grand Ethiopia Renaissance Dam. There has been no breakthrough in the meeting after Ethiopia rejected a Sudanese proposal that was backed by Egypt.

The Sudanese want to include international mediators in the talks. Ethiopias foreign minister, Demeke Mekonnen in a brief statement posted on Facebook said that his country appreciates the AUs efforts to resume the AU-led process to reach a positive outcome". He said that Ethiopia cannot agree to stop the utilization of the Nile.

The years-long dispute over the dam being built by Ethiopia on the Niles main tributary centres on the speed at which a planned reservoir is filled behind the dam. Another point of dispute is how the dispute. three countries would agree on a decision during future disputes. England and Sudan agree on legal binding over dam's filling but Ethiopia wants to follow guidelines.

To resolve the years-long dispute over a giant dam Ethiopia is building on the Nile Rivers main tributary, Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan began their round of talks on Saturday, April 4. In a statement, Egypts Foreign Ministry said that Cairo wants the negotiations to eventually lead to a legally binding agreement over the operation. The three-day talks were taking place in Kinshasa, which is the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the current chair of the African Union. The AU is mediating the negotiations between the three countries.

(Inputs and Image from AP)
BOCA RATON, Fla., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Paramount Sourcing , the PPE distribution company, announced today that Dr. Peter Rosenblatt is Paramount Sourcing's new Chief Medical Officer. As an Assistant Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Biology at Harvard Medical School and Director of Urogynecology at Boston Urogynecology Associates and Mount Auburn Hospital, Dr. Rosenblatt brings more than 25 years of specialized medical experience to his new position at Paramount Sourcing.

In order to address the immediate spike in demand for PPE caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Paramount Sourcing's co-founders Brett Maugeri and Sean Perelstein created a new streamlined infrastructure designed for the transfer of masks, gowns, face shields and other vital equipment from production centers to hospitals and other essential businesses.

"Paramount Sourcing is committed to the constant improvement of its infrastructure to help distribute PPE during the COVID-19 pandemic," said Maugeri. "We have vetted and established relationships with factories in Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Malaysia, China, and inside the U.S to help increase the production of PPE."

During the past year, Paramount Sourcing has successfully helped distribute hundreds of thousands of PPE masks and gowns to government entities and non-profits across the country. The addition of Dr. Peter Rosenblatt as Chief Medical Officer will provide a whole new dimension, adding to Paramount Sourcing's already robust infrastructure distribution system, particularly with respect to providing valuable insight into the medical community.

"As a surgeon who has been dealing with the challenges of PPE shortages over the past year, I am excited and proud to have joined the outstanding Paramount Sourcing team," said Dr. Rosenblatt. "I am proud to join forces with Paramount Sourcing in furtherance of our common goal to provide the highest-quality PPE products to hospitals and other businesses to help protect both patients and employees during this challenging time."

"We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Rosenblatt as the newest member of the Paramount Sourcing team," said Perelstein. "He is a trusted and respected medical professional in the Boston community and beyond, and his wealth of experience within the industry will be invaluable for the continued growth of our company."

In his first act as Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Rosenblatt has coordinated the production and donation of 100,000 Level 2 ASTM 3-Ply medical face masks, the first 10,000 of which will go to Rosie's Place , a women's shelter in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1974, Rosie's Place was the first shelter for women in the country and continues to serve as a necessary sanctuary for homeless and underserved women in Boston.

"I am thrilled to be able to work with Paramount Sourcing to donate critical protective equipment, such as face masks, to local non-profit organizations across the country. As a Boston resident, Rosie's Place is particularly close to my heart; I am proud to help protect our local community and keep its residents safe," said Dr. Rosenblatt.

The COVID-19 pandemic poses heightened risks for people experiencing homelessness as most do not have adequate access to protective equipment or life-saving medical care. With more than 18,000 individuals currently classified as homeless within Boston alone, the donation by Paramount Sourcing to Rosie's Place offers necessary protection to a portion of the city's most vulnerable citizens.

For more information about Paramount Sourcing visit https://www.paramountsourcing.com .

ABOUT PARAMOUNT SOURCING

Paramount Sourcing helps to provide valuable infrastructure to distribute PPE to those who need it most. Paramount Sourcing customers are provided with full access to the company's business relationships including contract manufacturers, and legal and logistics partners. Paramount Sourcing handles everything from documentation of the initial transaction to facilitating funding solutions, daily logistics, and negotiating requests with manufacturers. Now, through valuable partnerships with factories around the world, Paramount Sourcing is able to distribute up to one million isolation gowns daily. For more information about Paramount Sourcing visit https://www.paramountsourcing.com.

SOURCE Paramount Sourcing, LLC
[April 07, 2021] Ameresco Begins Second Phase of Department of Defense Funded Flow Battery Investigation

Ameresco, Inc., (NYSE: AMRC), a leading cleantech integrator specializing in energy efficiency and renewable energy, today announced that it has begun phase-two of a multi-stage investigation into how flow battery technology could support microgrids with the Department of Defense (DoD). Phase-one of the investigation was completed in April 2020 and primarily focused on evaluating the technical and economic feasibility of flow battery energy storage. Phase-two of the investigation shifts attention to physical validation and evaluation of flow batteries at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, CO. Phase-one of the research won a 2020 Project of the Year award from the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) and Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP). This success paved the way for Ameresco to advance to the second phase of the multi-stage research program, which is being conducted in partnership with NREL, and supported by Invinity Energy Systems (LSE:IES) and S&C Electric Company. Funding for the investigation comes from ESTCP, whose goal is to identify and demonstrate the most promising innovative and cost-effective technologies and methods that address DoD's high-priority environmental requirements. Research collected from the project's first phase demonstrated that there is an opportunity for Vanadium Flow Battery (VFB) storage technology to decrease diesel generation reliance and lower the cost of critical load support within a military microgrid. Given these results, the objective of phase-two is to validate the reliability and operational performance of VFB battery equipment through Hardware in the Loop (HIL) testing. "Microgrids offer enormous opportunity to provide resilient power-from military installations, to campuses to communities," said Dr. Martha Symko-Davies, Laboratory Program Manager for NREL's Energy Systems Integration Facility. "Flexible energy storage is a key component to incorporating more variable renewable energy into microgrid systems. We are extremely pleased to bring our advancedlaboratory capabilities and expert researchers to this ESTCP project to further advance the state of the art of the technology. We look forward to sharing results from this effort, which can inform a wide range of military and nonmilitary applications."



If the results of this work justify further investigation of flow battery technology, Ameresco hopes to continue this research with a future field deployment of a flow battery system at a DoD site. This third phase of work would significantly contribute to strengthening the depth of knowledge available on advanced energy technologies such as flow batteries. Additionally, Ameresco was recently selected for another ESTCP project which is expected to begin in 2022. The focus of this project is to demonstrate building level energy storage, with a zinc bromide flow battery that can be sited indoors.

"We are very pleased to be continuing our ESTCP funded research to advance the field of study around such important energy storage technologies," said Nicole Bulgarino, executive vice president of Federal Solutions at Ameresco. "Research like this is crucial to characterizing the performance of novel energy storage technologies like flow batteries, and to identifying under what circumstances they can support microgrid projects with our Federal customers. We're thrilled to be at the forefront of developing energy storage technologies that not only benefit the industry but the world at-large." To learn more about Ameresco's research or download a copy of the phase-one report, visit the ESTCP website. About Ameresco, Inc. Founded in 2000, Ameresco, Inc. (NYSE:AMRC) is a leading cleantech integrator and renewable energy asset developer, owner and operator. Our comprehensive portfolio includes energy efficiency, infrastructure upgrades, asset sustainability and renewable energy solutions delivered to clients throughout North America and the United Kingdom. Ameresco's sustainability services in support of clients' pursuit of Net Zero include upgrades to a facility's energy infrastructure and the development, construction, and operation of distributed energy resources. Ameresco has successfully completed energy saving, environmentally responsible projects with Federal, state and local governments, healthcare and educational institutions, housing authorities, and commercial and industrial customers. With its corporate headquarters in Framingham, MA, Ameresco has more than 1,000 employees providing local expertise in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. For more information, visit www.ameresco.com. About the Environmental Security Technology Certification Program Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP) is the DoD's environmental technology demonstration and validation program. The Program was established in 1995 to promote the transfer of innovative technologies that have successfully established proof of concept to field or production use. ESTCP demonstrations collect cost and performance data to overcome the barriers to employ an innovative technology because of concerns regarding technical or programmatic risk, the so-called "Valley of Death." The Program's goal is to identify and demonstrate the most promising innovative and cost-effective technologies and methods that address DoD's high-priority environmental requirements. Projects conduct formal demonstrations at DoD facilities and sites in operational settings to document and validate improved performance and cost savings. To ensure the demonstrated technologies have a real impact, ESTCP collaborates with end-users and regulators throughout the development and execution of each demonstration. Transition challenges are overcome with rigorous and well-documented demonstrations that provide the information needed by all stakeholders for acceptance of the technology. The announcement of a customer's entry into a project study contract is not necessarily indicative of the timing or amount of revenue from such contract, of the company's overall revenue for any particular period or of trends in the company's overall total project backlog. This project was included in our previously reported contracted backlog as of December 31, 2020. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005156/en/

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With more than 470 deaths since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody 30 years ago, and news over the Easter weekend of a fifth person dying since the start of March, Aboriginal pain and suffering are palpable. This is a national crisis deserving national attention and urgent action.

The federal government is claiming the 339 recommendations of the royal commission have been largely implemented, but recent Aboriginal deaths highlight those that were not implemented. These deaths were preventable and should not have occurred.

This is a national crisis deserving national attention and urgent action. Credit:Getty

One important recommendation that has not been implemented is that imprisonment of Aboriginal people should only be a matter of last resort. This recommendation was supported as recently as 2018 by the Australian Law Reform Commission in the Pathways to Justice inquiry aimed at reducing Aboriginal incarceration which recommended imprisonment for sentences under 12 months be abolished. This has not happened in Western Australia or the Northern Territory, where mandatory detention laws, condemned by UN treaty bodies, remain a key driver of Aboriginal incarceration and also deaths in custody.

The royal commission also made it clear that solitary confinement was very harmful and should not be used for Aboriginal people. And yet correctional authorities in several states have developed policies that segregate prisoners, isolating them from others. These policies were challenged recently in the Supreme Court of Western Australia on behalf of two Aboriginal prisoners who have been detained in separate confinement since October last year. The court heard that the Aboriginal prisoners were being kept in their cells between 21 and 23 hours a day, denied review rights, and had their health and safety placed at risk from this treatment. According to the Mandela Rules, excessive solitary confinement is prohibited and a form of psychological torture.
Scott Morrison has suffered an unfortunate slip of the tongue while talking about Health Minister Greg Hunt.

The Prime Minister was discussing the vaccine roll out during a press conference in Canberra on Wednesday when he accidentally appeared to call Mr Hunt an inappropriate swear word that rhymes with his last name.

'On the 19th of February, Minister Cu... Hunt called the EU health minister to advocate for release of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Australia,' Mr Morrison said, stumbling over his words.

It didn't take long for the gaffe to go viral, with hundreds of social media users calling out his stuff up.

'Tomorrow: '$443m grant awarded to Great Speech Therapy Foundation,' one Reddit user joked.

The prime minister was speaking about the vaccine roll out during a press conference in Canberra on Wednesday when he accidentally called Mr Hunt a very inappropriate word that rhymes with his last name

It didn't take long for the gaffe to go viral on social media. Some joked that Mr Morrison made a Freudian slip about Mr Hunt (pictured)

'Minister C**t' doesn't really narrow things down in this government,' said another.

'The most Aussie thing Scott Morrison has ever said and it was an accident.'

'I can't wait for the get on the beers remix of this,' a fourth wrote.

Others joked that Mr Morrison made a Freudian slip about the health minister.

During Wednesday's media conference, Mr Morrison said the Government contracted 3.8 million doses of the AstraZeneca jab in September.

'In late January, the EC [European Commission] introduced strict export controls which were further expanded on March 24,' he said.

Mr Morrison told reporters that in mid-late January, AstraZeneca provided updated advice that only 1.2 million of the 3.2 million offshore manufactured product could be delivered in February and March.

'That was 500,000 in February and 700,000 in March. That was because a range of issues, which included not just the vaccine shortage in Europe - AstraZeneca's awareness of the increasing restrictions on export controls, and so applications were not made for those 3.8 million doses,' he said.

During Wednesday's media conference, Mr Morrison said the government contracted 3.8 million doses of the AstraZeneca jab in September

There are 2.5 million doses of Australian-made AstraZeneca shots awaiting testing from the nation's medicine regulator. Pictured: Workers at CSL in Melbourne

Mr Morrison said Mr Hunt called the EU Health Minister to advocate for the release of the AstraZeneca vaccine on February 19 - when his unfortunate slip of the tongue occurred.

Australia has administered about 855,000 vaccine doses despite the Government promising four million jabs by the end of March.

Mr Morrison remains adamant supply issues from Europe are behind the shortfall.

Cabinet minister David Littleproud on Tuesday went further, accusing the EU of badly letting down Australia.

'The arithmetic is simple on this. We are three million short because of the EU, who cut us short,' he said.

An EU official said there was no request for export to Australia under review after it emerged seven were under scrutiny, putting some shipments on hold.

There are 2.5 million doses of Australian-made AstraZeneca shots awaiting testing from the nation's medicine regulator.

Mr Morrison said 'just throwing more money' at manufacturer CSL would not fix the issue.

Meanwhile, a mass vaccination hub will be set up at Homebush in Sydney's inner west that can immunise up to 30,000 people a week - if NSW can secure sufficient supplies from the federal government.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced on Wednesday plans to vaccinate 60,000 people a week through 100 pre-existing sites as well as at the new hub.

Half of those 60,000 vaccines will be administered at a building to be leased in Homebush.

That number could go up if there is more demand, the Premier said.

Australia has administered about 855,000 vaccine doses despite the government promising four million jabs by the end of March

NSW has vaccinated 134,323 people so far, and is expected to pass the 150,000 mark by week's end

But she emphasised the plan depended on the Commonwealth supplying the vaccine.

'At the end of the day they're responsible for making sure we have those doses to be able to give out,' Ms Berejiklian said.

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said the Federal Government had to overcome some 'big challenges' to get the rollout on track.

The NSW Government will sign a lease on a commercial facility in Homebush which will open in the next few months.

NSW was originally given responsibility for vaccinating 300,000 residents with the federal government to take care of the rest, primarily through GPs.

But the state has stepped up to take over some of the Federal Government's work in light of the bumpy rollout.

The 60,000 vaccines a week will start once NSW meets the 300,000 target.

The state has vaccinated 134,323 people so far, and is expected to pass the 150,000 mark by week's end.

Ms Berejiklian said it would be difficult for NSW to take over aged care vaccinations in the state as the Federal Government had already paid out contracts for the work, but said she was relieved she had pushed to control of vaccinating quarantine workers.
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A talented jazz musician was murdered and dismembered when he complained after a drug dealer killed his cat, a court heard.

William Algar, 53, was stabbed to death and parts of his body were found on a nature reserve.

Mr Algar, 53, who was known as by his middle name of Blaise, had objected to a 19-year-old threatening to kill his cat Felix and paid with his life, jurors heard.

After complaining to the teenager, who cannot be named, Mr Algar was stabbed through his chest at his home in Barnes, West London.

Prosecution witness Philip Ross said the teen killer confessed knifing Mr Algar.

Simon Emmons, 40, is said to have returned with the 19-year-old teenager to Mr Algar's home.

Emmons is accused of butchering Mr Algar's body leaving his head and torso attached and wrapped in a duvet but his limbs severed.

The limbs were later found on Hounslow Heath. Felix the cat has never been found.

The following morning the pair stabbed another man, 35-year-old Ebrima Cham, 11 times in a 'ferocious and frenzied' murder the following morning, the Old Bailey heard.

Simon Emmons, 40, is accused of cutting off William Algar's limbs, wrapping his head and torso in sheets and burying them in a nature reserve in December 2019 (pictured, Mr Algar)

Police forensics teams enter a tent at Mr Algar's home in Barnes, south-west London

Philippa McAtasney, defending Emmons, said to Mr Ross: 'You believed the teenager had killed Blaise with what he was saying.

'He had done that because he had been treated as inferior or had been disrespected and did not like that. That is how he came to kill the cat.

'He made it clear that if he says he is going to do something he was going to do it.

'He had to kill the cat and that is how he and Blaise came to have a confrontation.'

Mr Ross said: 'First off, I did not really want to know. It is very scary to have that on your mind and not being able to tell anyone.

'I have lied about many things in my life but I have never lied about murdering someone, that is crazy.'

Crispin Aylett, prosecuting, told the jury: 'You may recall that, when I began my address to you, I said that the 19-year-old had confessed to the murder of William Algar.

'Philip Ross was the man to whom he confessed. According to Mr. Ross, he also admitted his part in the murder of someone called 'Brim'.

'According to Mr Ross, the teenager said that he had a friend called 'Blaise'.

Jurors have been told Mr Algar (pictured) was targeted over a bitter drugs feud after he became involved in the supply of heroin and fell into debt with the alleged killers

'According to the teenager, Blaise had also been involved in the supply of drugs but at a higher level in the chain than him.

'He said that he used to go to Blaise's flat for what he referred to as a 're-up', in other words, to re-load.

'He told Mr Ross that, one day, he and Blaise had got into an argument.

'According to him, Blaise had spoken disrespectfully to him. He had told Blaise, 'I'm not your bitch' or something...If you keep talking to me this way, if this keeps carrying on, I will kill your cat'.

'Mr Ross is under the impression that the argument had continued and he believes that he said that he had killed the cat - although he is not certain about this.

'Pausing there, whether William Algar owned a cat or simply fed one, a box of cat food was found in the kitchen at Nowell Road.

'It is also the case that, on 22nd November, William Algar had used a pay-phone not far from his flat to ring the police.

Emmons and the teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, are accused of then murdering Ebrima Cham (pictured) in a 'ferocious and frenzied' stabbing the next day

Police found Ebrima Cham, known locally as Brim, had suffered from stab wounds and he was pronounced dead. Pictured: The scene in December 2019

'Mr Algar told the police that someone was trying to kill his cat.

'Mr. Ross says that the teenager told him that the two of them had begun struggling with one another.

'He said that he had pulled a knife out - 'I backed the rams [Rambo] out' - and it had been 'either me or him'.

'He said that had stabbed Blaise in the chest and Blaise had died.

'He told Mr Ross that he had dragged Blaise's body into the bathroom and then placed it in the bathtub.

'Mr Ross says that he had the impression that the teenager and Blaise had been the only people in the flat at the time of this incident.

'The teenager said that he had been unable to get rid of the body because it had been 'only me' in the flat.'

Emmons, of no fixed address, denies perverting the course of justice and murdering Mr Cham.

The 19-year-old, of no fixed address, denies two counts of murder relating to Mr Algar and Mr Cham.

Felix the cat has never been found.

The trial continues.
COLUMBUS, Ohio  A conservative activist from Southwest Ohio has issued subpoenas as part of a state elections case hes filed against a former state legislative candidate aligned with House Speaker Larry Householder.

Chris Hicks is hoping to uncover information about campaign spending for Allen Freeman, a township trustee from Clermont County who in May 2020 finished last in a hotly contested three-candidate Republican primary for an Ohio House seat there. Freeman reported spending just $14,000 on his campaign, even though public records show his campaign bought more than $100,000 worth of TV ads alone.

The Ohio Elections Commission in December authorized Hicks complaint for a full hearing, which similar to a civil lawsuit, now gives him power to subpoena records and in some instances, compel people to answer questions in writing. The case is scheduled to be heard in July in a hearing that will be similar to a court environment, including witnesses who will be testifying under oath.

I dont know what theyre going to do, but Im a tenacious guy with no hourly billing rate, and Im committed to unraveling this stuff because its wrong, Hicks said in an interview.

Freeman, who didnt return a message, was tapped by Householder to run in the 2020 Republican primary for an open seat in Ohios 66th House District. Because there also was another open seat in a nearby district, pro-Householder forces flooded the local airwaves with hundreds of thousands of dollars in anonymously funded ads supporting Freeman and Jean Schmidt, who ended up winning in her race for Ohios 65th House District.

In the elections commission hearing in December, Don Brey, an attorney for Freeman, said Freeman hadnt reported the ads because Jeff Longstreth, a former top Householder aide who was coordinating spending in the race, had never given him a bill. Longstreth, like Householder, was arrested and charged in July 2020 as part of a federal bribery probe into a state nuclear bailout bill.

Given Mr. Longstreths criminal issues, it shouldnt be a surprise he never got a call back, Brey said.

The allegations against Householder involve the use of anonymous political money that helped him and his allies get elected to the Ohio House. Householder, who was one of the most powerful politicians in the state until his arrest, has pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing, but Longstreth has pleaded guilty, as has Generation Now, a pro-Householder dark money group that Longstreth ran.

Brey conceded that pro-Freeman ads had run in the campaigns name during his Ohio House race last year, but said he couldnt be sure of the exact price, and whether they may have been meant as a gift. He said Longstreth hadnt returned Freemans messages.

Wed be committing a violation if we put down a number that was inaccurate, said Brey, a longtime Republican campaign-finance attorney in Ohio.

Brey declined to comment for this story, saying he didnt want to talk about a case in the media.

Schmidt, meanwhile, through her campaign reported paying $100,000 to Longstreths company, Constant Content, and reported owing him another $64,300, according to her campaign finance reports.

The Elections Commission is responsible for enforcing Ohios campaign-finance laws and can issue fines or, when necessary, refer cases for criminal prosecution. While it doesnt conduct investigations, once a case is accepted, it can issue subpoenas on behalf of people who filed the complaint, forcing parties to turn over information.

Last month, Hicks issued subpoenas and written requests for information, known as interrogatories, to Freeman, the Strategy Group for Media, which produced ads for Freemans campaign, and staff who helped with Freemans campaign, including Luke Householder, Householders son.

Hicks said hes heard back from one  the Strategy Group, through its attorney, former Franklin County Prosecutor Ron OBrien, sought to throw out the interrogatories, arguing that since Strategy Group wasnt a party in the case, they couldnt be forced to answer written questions, citing state law and rules that apply to lawyers during legal proceedings. The subpoena he issued for Luke Householder was returned as undeliverable, he said.

OBrien, who declined to comment for this story, sought for Ohio Elections Commission Executive Director Phil Richter to rescind the interrogatories, but said the company would respond to the subpoena for documents separately.

Richter called the complaint an interesting case. If Hicks can get evidence showing that the Freeman campaign wrongly avoided reporting campaign expenses, it could result in a fine or a referral for prosecution, he said.

It will be interesting to see if hes able to sufficiently establish all the evidence he needs in order to do that, Richter said.
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.
The extent of a warranty The extent of a warranty has been clearly delineated in the Civil Code. If, for example, a purchaser discovers a defect in a purchased item during the warranty period, he has the right to demand that the seller repair the item free of charge, reduce its price, or replace it with another item. He also has the right to return the item and receive a refund. Article 21 of the Law on the Protection of Consumers Rights (LoPCR) supplements the Civil Code by providing details on the warranty obligations of traders, not just sellers as defined in the Civil Code. Warranty shall be provided on goods, parts and accessories as agreed by parties or required by law. A trader of goods, parts and accessories subject to warranty shall: 1. Fully perform its obligations to provide warranty on its goods, parts and accessories; 2. Provide consumers with a warranty card which must specify the time of maintenance. Such time is excluded from the warranty period. When the goods trader replaces parts or accessories or change the goods, the warranty period for such parts, accessories or goods shall be counted from the time of replacing those parts or accessories or changing the goods; 3. During the time of maintenance, provide consumers with similar goods, parts, or accessories for temporary use or offer another solution accepted by consumers; 4. Change or recall similar goods, parts, or accessories and refund consumers when it, past the time of maintenance, fails to repair or correct the faults; 5. Change ore recall similar goods, parts, or accessories and refund consumers when it fails to correct the faults after three or more times of maintaining such goods; 6. Pay expenses for the repair and transportation of goods, parts, and accessories to maintenance places and from such places to consumers places of residence; and 7. Be held responsible for warranty on goods, parts, and accessories for consumers even when it authorises another organisation or person to provide such warranty. Defective products The concept of a product as the term used in the LoPCR has historically been very broad. Traders may have difficulties in determining whether the item they are offering is a product, and may also have difficulty assessing defects of the product or determining who is liable for a defect. The Law on Quality of Products and Goods (LoQPG) mentions defect of products. However, the word defect seems to mean only poor quality. The LoPCR goes beyond this. Under the LoPCR, a defective product is a product which is not safe for consumers and which can cause death, personal injury, or property damage, even if those products have been manufactured in accordance with current technical standards or specifications, and even if the manufacturer is not aware of the defects at the time the products are sold. There may be defects in the technical design of mass manufactured products. Defects may arise from the manufacture, processing, transport, or storage of singly manufactured products. Defects may also result from a failure to provide adequate instructions or warnings on potentially dangerous products. In other words, quality is not the only factor involved in determining whether a product is defective under the LoPCR. One must also consider design, whether consumers are properly instructed on use, or whether the consumer has been warned of dangers. Article 23 of the LoPCR outlines the responsibilities for compensation of damage caused by defective goods. Goods traders shall pay damages when their defective goods harm the life, health, or property of consumers even when they are not aware about or not at fault for such defects, except in one case defined in Article 24 of the same law. Goods traders provided in Clause 1 of the article include goods producers; goods importers; organisations and persons with their commercial names on goods or using trademarks or commercial indicators showing that they are goods producers or importers; and direct suppliers of goods to consumers in case those responsible for paying damages specified in the first three points of this clause are unidentifiable. Source: Law on the Protection of Consumers Rights
[April 07, 2021] Information Analysis Incorporated Announces Acquisition of Tellenger, Inc.

FAIRFAX, Va., April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Information Analysis Incorporated (OTCQB: IAIC), an information technology modernization and services company, announced today it has acquired Tellenger, Inc., a provider of cybersecurity, cloud, and data analytics services, to support companies in protecting their cyber systems and infrastructure.

The innovations from the talented team at Tellenger, Inc. will further accelerate our suite of cyber, cloud, and data analytics designed to help financial institutions, merchants and governments secure their digital assets, explained Stan Reese, President and CEO of IAI. Through a powerful combination of product and services, and data-driven advanced technology, Tellenger offers an exciting opportunity to complement our existing strategy and technology to expand into the cyber and cloud space. With Tellengers range of products and services, organizations can proactively manage cyber and cloud risks, better safeguarding critical intellectual property and preventing large-scale data breaches and ransomware attacks. In addition to IAI solutions, Tellenger, Inc. will continue to provide cyber security solutions across abroader set of industries, including healthcare, manufacturing, and government sectors.



IAI stands out as a true innovator, focusing on the real problems of real businesses, said Heather Tortorelli, CEO and co-founder of Tellenger, Inc. By becoming part of IAIs team, we have an opportunity to scale our solution and help companies in new industries to take steps to better manage their cybersecurity and cloud risk. Tellenger is expected to be accretive to IAI in revenue and earnings in its first year.

About Information Analysis Incorporated Information Analysis Incorporated (www.infoa.com), headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia, is an information technology product and services company. The Company is a web application and e-business solutions provider, as well as a software conversion specialist, modernizing legacy systems and extending their reach to the internet and more modern platforms. About Tellenger, Inc. Founded in 2007, Tellenger specializes in cybersecurity, cloud solutions, software development, and data analytics. From business process re-engineering to cloud assessments and migration to cybersecurity and more, they assist Federal organizations such as DHS, the Marine Corps, and HHS agencies, in ultimately helping and servicing the American people. Every project is approached with a standardized set of processes, appraised at CMMI Level 3, that have proven to reduce risk and ensure success. Additional information for investors This release may contain forward-looking statements regarding the Information Analysis Incorporateds business, customer prospects, or other factors that may affect future earnings or financial results. Such statements involve risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to vary materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements. These include the failure to obtain sufficient contracts, and to profitably complete those contracts. Investors should read and understand the risk factors detailed in IAIs Annual Reports on Form 10-K for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2019 and 2020, and in other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. For additional information contact: Matt Sands  CFO

(703) 293-7925

msands@infoa.com



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Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 18:23:42|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, April 7 (Xinhua) -- World Health Day 2021 is being commemorated globally on Wednesday, under the theme of building a fairer, healthier world.

In contrast to its previous themes, which typically focused on some specific types of disease or health threats like diabetes and food safety, this year the World Health Organization (WHO) chose a more general and abstract theme for the yearly event.

It's not that the WHO has run out of choices of disease types, or the world was free from specific health threats; it is just the still-ravaging pandemic has attested to the fact that unfairness and inequality, especially in addressing such global challenges as COVID-19, are actually more lethal than any specific disease.

WORSENING SITUATION

The pandemic that poses equal threats to all is another litmus test for the unfairness and inequality in human society.

As some developed countries have been rapidly rolling out their vaccination programs, making progress in clinching a full recovery, people in many other countries are suffering from the latest resurgence of COVID-19 infections.

In Argentina, Health Minister Carla Vizzotti warned that a second wave of COVID-19 infections "is already a fact" in the country. While in its neighboring Brazil, the national count of COVID-19 cases has just crossed the grime milestone of 13 million.

Hospitals are being overrun by patients; intensive care units in some worst-affected cities are more than 90 percent full. The same plight prevails in other countries like Turkey, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Worldwide COVID-19 deaths are also rising once again, hurdling towards a new threshold of 3 million, with some countries and cities like Brazil, Bangladesh, and India's Mumbai having just recorded their highest number of daily deaths.

According to a tally from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, it took more than one year for the global COVID-19 death toll to reach 2 million, but the next 1 million deaths would be added in just about three months.

FALSE DAWN

As most people thought that they have finally got to see the light at the end of the tunnel as the COVID-19 vaccines have been rolling out, inequality and unfairness in vaccine distribution are waking those in poor countries up to the cold truth that it is just a false dawn amid the gloom.

"COVID-19 has exacerbated inequalities both between and within countries," said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a press briefing on Tuesday. "It's a travesty that in some countries health workers and those at-risk groups remain completely unvaccinated."

While some developed countries have hoarded vaccines far in excess of their needs, many people in developing countries are waiting in desperation for their first doses.

In Kenya's capital Nairobi, people have to wait in long queues and jostle for jabs, with some elderly people reportedly getting up as early as 6 a.m. to get inoculated, only to return home to try their luck again the next day.

The latest data from the Duke Global Health Innovation Center Launch and Scale Speedometer, which monitors COVID-19 vaccine purchases, finds that high-income countries already own more than half of all global doses purchased, and it is estimated that there will not be enough vaccine doses to cover the world's population until 2023.

"Many high-income countries have hedged their bets by advance purchasing enough doses to vaccinate their population several times over," it said in a study.

None of the middle- and lower-middle income countries have enough to vaccinate their entire populations. At the same time, Canada has purchased enough to vaccinate its population five times over, said the study.

"We are fighting a very primitive organism, something between alive and dead, very organized, functioning as one, so I think we need to function as one on a global level," said Jelena Begovic, director of the Institute of Molecular Genetics and Genetic Engineering of University of Belgrade.

"Unfortunately, I am not seeing this, particularly in events concerning vaccination," she noted.

MORAL FAILURE

The "inequitable" vaccine distribution was a "catastrophic moral failure" and a "failed opportunity," Michael Ryan, executive director of WHO Health Emergencies Program, said in March.

Actually, many of those developed countries have once made announcements calling for equality and fairness in the global fight against the pandemic.

However, it is easier to make the pledge to ensure equal access of all countries, rich or poor, big or small, to the COVID-19 vaccines than put it into practice, especially when the vaccines are in short supply.

"Solidarity is only expressed in media declarations. In the talks behind the closed doors, there is not any," Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis told journalists, criticizing some countries' monopoly on vaccine distribution.

According to Leon Laulusa, executive vice president of Paris-based ESCP Business School, at least 75 percent of the world's population must be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity, or nearly 6 billion people, which would take at least 12 billion doses for a double injection.

To achieve the final victory in this global fight, all countries need to take real actions to ensure fairness and equality, rather than just make empty talks and hollow promises. After all, in such a closely linked world, no one would keep safe until everyone is safe.

In this sense, China has taken more than its due responsibility. According to the latest data, China has been providing vaccine aid to 80 countries and three international organizations, exporting vaccines to more than 40 countries, and cooperating with more than 10 nations in vaccine research, development and production.

As noted by some analysts, unfairness and inequality revealed in the process of vaccine distribution are just another embodiment of the social gaps and discrimination that have long been existing in some Western countries.

And by the same token, to win the global anti-pandemic fight, and build "a fairer, healthier world," those countries need to do more. Enditem
Poking fun at Telstra by stating "You dont need Australias fastest 5G until you do", Optus aggregated its 5G spectrum bands of 3500Mhz and 28Ghz (mmWave) on top of existing 5G spectrum bands to deliver "unprecedented bandwidth and speed."

Optus, together with technology partner Nokia, has claimed "a new 5G record achieving 10Gbps aggregated throughput on a live 5G site in Strathpine, Brisbane further strengthening its ambition to deliver Australias fastest 5G."

Through the use of its "unique spectrum assets" Optus says the 10Gbps throughput "was achieved by aggregating Optus 5G spectrum bands of 3500Mhz and 28Ghz (mmWave) on top of existing 4G spectrum band layers to deliver unprecedented bandwidth and speed, giving customers a glimpse of what they can expect once mmWave is available commercially."

Lambo Kanagaratnam, Optus Managing Director Networks said: Todays accomplishment is yet another 5G milestone for Optus as we push hard to deliver our customers with Australias fastest 5G network. We already know that 5G is fast but what were seeing here is innovative use of spectrum layers to deliver a single site with over 10Gbps throughput.

"This is a fantastic demonstration of how mmWave spectrum, integrated into existing 5G and 4G sites, has the capability to significantly boost overall site capacity  which will be a gamechanger for our customers.

In addition to an increase in total site throughput, this test has demonstrated a significant increase in single user peak speed. We are currently seeing commercial single user peak speeds of around 1-2Gbps on our existing 5G sites, but once the 5G mmWave layer is added we expect to see peak speeds closer to 4Gbps.

"This additional capacity and faster per user speed will be incredibly important for our Enterprise customers, paving the way for a range of low-latency and ultra-high bandwidth services not available today.

Optus says increased 5G site capacity "will also ensure that customers in densely populated areas or locations where there is a large network demand, will be able to access the network without compromising the performance of their applications.

"For example, without the added mmWave layer average peak site capacity is around 3Gbps, which would typically support around 75 individual 4K video streams simultaneously per 5G site. Adding the mmWave spectrum layer and increasing site capacity to 10Gbps has the potential to support around 250 4K video streams per 5G site - an uplift of more than 230 percent.

"The 10Gbps recorded was a consolidated speed across multiple users by harnessing the full capability of such a high capacity network."

Anna Wills, Head of Oceania at Nokia said, This is another milestone in the development of 5G services and demonstrates the confidence operators have in our 5G solutions. Todays achievement with Optus shows the potential of mmWave deployments, particularly at a time when connectivity and capacity are so crucial. Were proud of our long-standing relationship with Optus and the great strides we continue to make together in this new era of connectivity.

Optus reminds us that it currently has "more than 1200 5G sites covering over 830,000 households in Australia."
by Phil Buckley

The eagerly anticipated Temora Air Force Centenary Showcase took place over the weekend of March 6th/7th, 2021 in the skies over the Temora Aviation Museum (TAM) in Temora, New South Wales, Australia. The event, highlighting the Royal Australian Air Forces 100th year as an independent air arm, featured dozens of historic and currently serving military aircraft, with representative types spanning most of the RAAFs century of service. The RAAF, of course, held a significant presence with a variety of types from its active fleet. The Temora Aviation Museum also celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, so it was indeed a special event for all involved.

Although COVID restrictions have eased somewhat in New South Wales presently, crowd attendance was still limited to no more than 3,000 visitors per day. The skies were busy during the event, with 170 or so aircraft movements taking place, not to mention the General Aviation aircraft arrivals and departures. Nineteen TAM staff and 45 volunteers helped the show run smoothly in the public areas, with a score or more volunteer pilots and aircrew taking care of business airside. There were dozens of volunteer pilots and crew airside also assisting in the success of this event. Thirty nine different aircraft performed in multiple displays over the two days. Pride of place, of course, went to the aircraft and aircrew from the recently stood-up No.100 Squadron RAAF, the Air Force Heritage Squadron which features airworthy historic types from both the RAAF Museums collection at Point Cook and the Temora Aviation Museum. This event marked the first time the new support organization functioned in public, a marvelous partnership of both civilian and military entities. The majority of Temoras warbird Fleet participated in aerial exhibitions, while some remained on static display.

Displays

TAMs English Electric Canberra TT.18 WJ680 has been undergoing overhaul for the last few years, but is close to flying again. Museum personnel rolled her out each morning for engine starts, which gave the crowd an exciting opportunity to see and hear the 1950s-era Rolls-Royce Avon engines running up. The museum hopes the aircraft will fly again in 2021. TAMs Gloster Meteor F.8 VZ467 was on static display for this event as was their CAC-built North American CA-27 Sabre A94-983. The latter is still grounded, awaiting an ejection seat overhaul.

The showcase display thrilled the crowd with the angry growl of Pratt&Whitney piston power from the four North American Harvards in the Southern Knights precision display team. Also of note were early examples of military trainers  the deHavilland DH-82A Tiger Moth, Ryan STM, CAC CA-16 Wirraway and Vultee BT-13 Valiant. Classic RAAF trainers from the 1950s through 1990s took part in a tight, six-ship display comprised of CAC CA-25 Winjeels and PAC CT/4 Painted Parrots. Seeing two CAC Boomerangs (A46-122 and A46-63) escorting TAMs uniquely airworthy Lockheed Hudson bomber (A16-112) was a rare treat. The Boomerang is enjoying a renaissance at present, with several examples of this pugnacious Australian WWII fighter design under restoration at present. The Wollongong-based CAC Mustang A68-199 also made a surprise visit to the show, although it remained on static display for the event.

The large mix of warbirds at the show also included three Spitfires flying in formation, a first in Australian skies since the 1940s! Two examples came from TAM collection, with the other from Queensland. This rare flying display alone inspired many people to come to the air show. An exciting element for many included seeing and hearing the large formation (for Australia) of six WWII-era fighters, which included noted Australian warbird pilots like Guy Bourke in TAMs Spitfire Mk.XVI TB863, Scott Taberner in a shark mouthed Curtiss P-40N/Kittyhawk (NZ3125), Doug Hamilton in P-40N-5 42-104986, Cameron Rolfe-Smith in Spitfire Mk.XVIe TE392, and Stephen Death in TAMs Spitfire Mk.VIII A58-758. The HARS (Historical Aircraft Restoration Society) PBY-6A Catalina Bu.46679 also made an appearance, reminding everyone of the long missions which RAAF Black Cat PBYs flew across the South Pacific during WWII. An exciting Vietnam era display included assorted Cessna O-1 Bird Dogs, TAMs Cessna A-37B Dragonfly, Brett Leech in Bell 47 (VH-XTF) and the HARS ex-Royal Australian Navy Bell UH-1B Iroquois N9-3104 and the ex-RAAF DHC-4 Caribou A4-210. The late afternoons saw a loud and fast display from TAMs Cessna A-37B Dragonfly 68-10779, trailing its white display smoke, and this had many people looking skywards.

The RAAF, celebrating its centenary, attended the airshow with a number of their current fleet to showcase their capabilities, including their newest fighter, the Lockheed-Martin F-35A Lightning II. The RAAFs Air Force Roulettes aerial demonstration team, flying their newly-acquired Pilatus PC-21s gave another of their hallmark precision flying displays. The F-35 also put on a spirited display above Temora, with the Lightning II also taking part in a heritage flight with the two Temora-based Spitfires and Doug Hamiltons P-40N. As part of the static lineup, a RAAF Lockheed C-130J Hercules from No.37 Squadron and a No.76 Squadron BAE Systems Hawk 127 trainer were also on display, with a Pilatus PC-21 in special 100th anniversary tail markings nearby.

The Centenary Showcase was a remarkable event, and showed the large diversity of vintage military aircraft now on public display Down Under. The weekend show also gave a reminder to those in attendance that the freedom we enjoy today, wasnt easily won, nor preserved. The Temora Aviation Museum helps tell this story in an impactful way with its significant artifacts and aerial performances. They hold a number of smaller events over the year and more details are available on their website. The author wishes to thank TAM staff and volunteers who assisted him over the weekend to enable this media coverage.

On March, 31st 2021, the Royal Australian Air Forces official 100th birthday, a massed celebratory flypast took place over Canberra, the nations capital  it was indeed a rare and exciting opportunity to see a wide range of current and historic aircraft from the RAAFs serving and former fleet.


Stimulus checks, unemployment benefits, grocery stores, third party delivery services and COVID-19 vaccine availability all play a huge role in a dire issue affecting the restaurant industry in Houston and beyond: staffing shortages.

We knew that prior to the pandemic, recruitment of employees was the number one issue that kept restaurant owners awake at night, said Joe Monastero, chief strategy and operations officer for the Texas Restaurant Association, as reported by Dallas Observer's Lauren Drewes Daniels. In 2019, 43 percent of restaurants surveyed listed staffing as their number one problem. When we did the survey in 2020, obviously the pandemic took over the top spot, but recruitment was still number two.

END OF AN ERA: Texas director Richard Linklater fights to save failing River Oaks Theatre

The pandemic has made matters worse for Texas employees, forcing workers to leave the restaurant industry altogether. While management may have been able to make due earlier in the pandemic, employees are needed to meet the demands now that Texas businesses are reopening to 100 percent capacity.

We are so severely depressed in our workforce. You are seeing restaurants operate at limited hours, youre seeing them not opening at all, youre seeing all types of things, said Cameron James, president of the Greater Houston Restaurant Association, per KPRC2's Courtney Zubowski.

James shared that that the number of restaurant workers in the greater Houston region dropped from 300,000 to below 250,000 amid the ongoing pandemic.

Smaller staffs mean restaurant workers are faced with more work and fewer hands to pitch in.

That struggle is real with everybody in the city, in the state and likely across the country, said James Moore, President of the San Antonio Chapter of the Texas Restaurant Association, as reported by Fox 29 San Antonio's Amanda Henderson.

There's especially high demand and longer wait times in San Antonio, especially on weekends. Moore says he's been forced to close Full Belly restaurant earlier than normal to survive through the week.

BACK AND BETTER: Houston Black Restaurant Week is coming back bigger and better in 2021

In Beaumont, Madison's on Dowlen Road is just one of six restaurants owned by Frankie Randazzo. While Randazzo plans to continue enforcing the mask mandate for his employees, he fully supports Gov. Abbott's decision to open restaurants at 100 percent capacity, per James Grant and Kierra Sam for 12NewsNow. But being understaffed is putting a major strain on customer service.

When they get there, they get upset because you have to be put on a wait, Randazzo said, as reported by 12NewsNow. There's sections that are closed. They see tables that are open."

"What they don't realize is that the restaurant is doing that intentionally most of the time because they don't have enough people."
Developers proposing to demolish a 'perfectly good' house to make way for a cycle path have reportedly bought the home for 80,000 more than its market value.

The four-bedroom private home, which is less than 20 years old, could be destroyed to create a controversial cycle route which will pass through the close to a new 'affordable' housing development on an adjacent site.

The move has prompted outrage from neighbours who say plans to flatten the house will change the 'way of life' in their 50home leafy suburban cul-de-sac on the outskirts of Cardiff, South Wales.

Homeowners Paul and Janice Snelgrove have reportedly agreed to sell the home for 400,000 - a 'generous' mark up on the property's market value - to property developers Edenstone Homes.

Neighbours in the 50home cul-de-sac, Clos Nant Glaswg in Pontprenau, say they are 'disappointed' that Paul and Janice Snelgrove have agreed to the deal, but add that they do not blame them for accepting.

The Snelgroves, who own a garage business in the city and are in their late 50s, bought the four-bed detached, red brick house for around 112,000 in 2001, just five years after it had been built.

The destruction order for the house is included as part of plans for 45 new affordable housing homes next to their existing private houses on the outskirts of Cardiff.

When demolishing existing homes and buildings, developers can either obtain a compulsory purchase order, or reach an amicable agreement with the owners of the home or building in question.

The plans are due to go before Cardiff planning committee on April 21. Any destruction order will only come into play if the plans for the whole site are approved.

The 300,000-plus house in a suburban cul-de-sac on the outskirts of Cardiff, Wales, is set to be destroyed to make way for a cycle lane

The destruction order (house ringed in red) is part of plans for 45 new 'affordable' housing homes next to their existing private houses (field ringed in red)

The move has prompted outrage from neighbours who say plans to flatten the house will change the 'way of life' in their leafy cul-de-sac. Pictured: Residents Rob Lee with Vaughan and Alison Williams

Families say they are not against the new development but do not want the cycle path to run through their quiet suburban cul-de-sac.

A petition to 'Save Number 43' has now been signed by nearly 300 people to call on Cardiff Council to reject the pathway plans in the Pontprennau suburb of commuter homes.

Neighbours say they are 'disappointed' that Paul and Janice Snelgrove have agreed to the deal, but add that they do not blame them for accepting.

Vaughan Williams, who helped set up an action group to fight the housing development and cycle path which cuts through the close, said: 'I spoke to Paul shortly after the plans for the cycle path were submitted to Cardiff council.

'I asked Paul how he felt about the proposed demolition of his home and he said he had reluctantly agreed to sell and accept 400,000 for it to be demolished.

'I don't blame Paul and Janice for accepting. It is a generous offer  80,000 above its actual market value  but I am disappointed.'

Vaughan and Alison Williams are both retired and have lived at their home for over 20 years, but say they will now consider moving.

Retired fish and chip shop owner and father-of-four Mr Williams, 63, added: 'No one around here blames them for agreeing to the offer.

'The alleyway created by the cycle path will threaten our safety and security and is utterly pointless, as far as I can see.'

Paul Cawley, 61, has also lived in the area for 17 years and says planners have not considered the community in their plans to flatten the home for a cycle path.

He said: 'We have a great community spirit here everybody is aware of who is coming and going. I have numerous concerns regarding the demolition [but] I'm not opposed to the housing development.

'I don't think the road is particularly safe for cyclists due to the junction at the bottom. It is ill-conceived and ill-thought through.

'I'd like the application to be rejected, the planners haven't considered us.'

A petition to 'Save Number 43' has now been signed by nearly 300 people to call on Cardiff Council to reject the pathway plans in the Pontprennau suburb of commuter homes

Families say they are not against the new development but do not want the cycle path to run through their quiet suburban cul-de-sac

The neigbours deny being 'not in my backyard' nimbys trying to block the people living in the affordable homes.

Action group chairman Rob Lee said: 'Even if you build five-bedroom luxury houses we would oppose the plan, if it involved the demolition of one of our homes and destroying our way of life'.

Residents also raised issues of the isolated nature of the development which is 'plonked 'among fields with no amenities or connectivity.'

Mr Lee said: 'This lets people in affordable housing down.'

Another neighbour, 44-year-old design manager Jason Jeffrey, called the proposals 'ill-informed and ill-conceived', adding: 'It will negatively affect the environment here.'

He said: 'I understand the need for the affordable housing that is proposed, and that developments nowadays should be as environmentally friendly as possible, but this path for cycles won't connect the new community to any local amenities. It will only connect them to this close, so what's the point?

'And I also question the notion of demolishing a perfectly habitable house to make way for this cycle path. I thought our country has a housing shortage. This is crazy.'

Residents fear they will not get a fair hearing as Cardiff City planners 'seem to have made up their minds' on the application which is not due to be heard until April 21.

A spokesperson for Cardiff Council said: 'This application hasn't been determined yet.

'As [the Planning Authority] we obviously consider all objections and comments made on the proposal, which is then set out by the case officer in a decision report which is presented to the Planning Committee when the case is due to be heard.

They added: 'There is a specific process, and what we cannot do is predetermine that process before the planning committee reach their decision.'

Developers United Welsh say it is important for the new builds to 'integrate well' with the community.

A spokesman said: 'This development will provide much needed high-quality homes for affordable rent and first-time buyers.

'It is important for the proposed new homes to integrate well with the community and for pedestrians and cyclists to have adequate access to local facilities and amenities.

'Local residents are being consulted as part of the planning process.'

Mail Online have contacted Edenstone Homes and developers United Welsh for comment.
Terry McAuliffe, the leading candidate in this years Democratic primary for Virginia governor, faced a flurry of attacks from his rivals at a debate on Tuesday night as they aimed to diminish his broad support from Black voters. In the most extraordinary broadside, the states Black lieutenant governor, Justin Fairfax, accused Mr. McAuliffe of treating him like George Floyd or Emmett Till after Mr. Fairfax was accused of sexual assault by two women in 2019.

Mr. McAuliffe, a white former governor of the state who has the backing of many of the states top Black elected officials, issued a public call that year for Mr. Fairfax to resign.

Mr. Fairfaxs remarks on Tuesday  in which he compared himself to two Black people killed in episodes of white violence  were the most pointed attempt by one of the three Black candidates in the race to draw a racial distinction between them and Mr. McAuliffe, who is aiming to reclaim the office he held from 2014 to 2018.

The accusation came at the end of the debate, the first for the five Virginia Democrats running for governor. Responding to a question asking the candidates to envision the future of law enforcement in Virginia, Mr. Fairfax said theoretical descriptions were unnecessary because he was a living embodiment of the harm that false accusations and a rush to judgment can produce.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - April 7, 2021) - RT Minerals Corp. (TSXV: RTM) (OTC: RTMFF) (the "Company" or "RT Minerals" or "RTM") is pleased to announce that Mr. Victor Cantore has joined RT Minerals as a Special Advisor to the Board to provide advice to RT Minerals on its capital markets strategy, as well as exploration planning.

Mr. Donald (Dan) M. Clark, Chairman and President of RTM noted: "We are pleased to have Mr. Cantore join the Company in his role as a Special Advisor to the Board. His success in the mining sector, as well as his knowledge and long-term experience within the broader capital markets will be a great addition to RT Minerals."

Mr. Cantore is President, CEO, and a Director of Amex Exploration Inc., a publicly traded exploration company which is advancing a significant gold discovery at its Perron Gold Project in Quebec.

Mr. Cantore is a seasoned capital markets professional specializing in the resource and high-tech sectors. He has more than 25 years of advisory and leadership experience having begun his career in 1992 as an investment advisor and then moving into management roles at both public and private companies. During his career Mr. Cantore has organized and structured numerous equity and debt financings, mergers and acquisitions, joint venture partnerships and strategic alliances.

Mr. Cantore serves on the boards and advisory boards of various companies both private and public.

Option Grant

RT Minerals further reports that pursuant to the Company's stock option plan, the Company has granted incentive stock options to purchase up to 300,000 common shares (the "Options") to consultants of the Company. Subject to the provisions of the Company's stock option plan, the Options vest immediately and may be exercised at a price of $0.105 per share for a period of five years from the grant date. The Options are subject to the acceptance of the TSX Venture Exchange.

About RT Minerals Corp.

RT Minerals Corp. is a junior exploration company listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "RTM". The Company currently has 43,122,988 shares outstanding. RTM holds 100% interest in the Norwalk gold property located near Wawa, Ontario. The Company also holds an option to acquire 100% interest in the Link-Catharine RLDZ gold property with a total area of 544 acres, and subject to shareholder and regulatory approval, RTM will acquire control of a 100% interest in a further 24,536 acres of mining properties (subject to a 2% GSR) that adjoin the RTM Link-Catharine property, through the issuance of 21,000,000 Tier 2 (TSX.V) Surplus Escrow Shares (subject to a 36 month escrow release format) under the proposed acquisition of Catharine Gold Inc., as announced by the Company by news release dated March 24, 2021.

For more information on the Company and its properties, please visit RTM's website at www.rtmcorp.com.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

Donald (Dan) M. Clark

Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

RT Minerals Corp.

Telephone: 604-681-3170

Fax: 604-681-3552

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Service Provider (as the term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy of accuracy of this news release.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains certain 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. Readers 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 including, but not limited to, market conditions, availability of financing, actual results of the Company's exploration and other activities, risks and uncertainties associated with the announced transaction involving Catharine Gold Inc., environmental risks, future metal prices, operating risks, accidents, labor issues, delays in obtaining governmental approvals and permits, and other risks in the mining industry. All the forward-looking statements made in this news release are qualified by these cautionary statements and those in our continuous disclosure filings available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances save as required by applicable law.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/79638
Cancer therapy in recent times relies on the use of several drugs derived from biological sources including different bacteria and viruses, among others. However, these bio-based drugs get easily degraded and therefore inactivated on administration into the body. Thus, effective delivery to and release of these drugs at target tumor sites are of paramount importance from the perspective of cancer therapy.

Recently, scientists have discovered unique three-dimensional, water-containing polymers, called hydrogels, as effective drug delivery systems (DDSs). Drugs loaded into these hydrogels remain relatively stable owing to the network-like structure and organic tissue-like consistency of these DDSs. Besides, drug release from hydrogels can be controlled by designing them to swell and shrink in response to certain stimuli, or minute changes in conditions, like temperature or pH (which determines the acidity of an environment). For instance, when conditions are just the right level of acidic in the tumor microenvironment, these DDSs either shrink or swell and release the drug.

However, there has been no method for the one-pot synthesis of hydrogels that respond to more than one such stimulus and degrade to release drugs at target tumor sites. Until now.

Now, a team of scientists, led by Professor Akihiko Kikuchi from Tokyo University of Science, reports the production of unique degradable hydrogels that respond to changes under multiple conditions in "reducing" environments mimicking the microenvironment of tumors. As Prof. Kikuchi observes, "In order to prepare degradable hydrogels that can release drugs in response to changes in the tumor microenvironment, we prepared hydrogels that respond to temperature, pH, and reducing environment, and analyzed their properties."

In their study published in the Journal of Controlled Release, Prof. Kikuchi--along with his colleagues from Tokyo University of Science, Dr. Syuuhei Komatsu, Ms. Moeno Tago, and Ms. Yu Ando, and his collaborator on the study, Prof. Taka-Aki Asoh from Osaka University--details the steps of designing these novel hydrogels from the synthetic polymer poly(ethylene glycol) diglycidyl ether and the sulfur-containing organic compound cystamine. In response to low temperatures, these hydrogels swell up while they shrink at the physiological temperature. Additionally, the hydrogels respond to pH changes by virtue of possessing tertiary amino groups. It must be noted here that the pH of the tumor microenvironment fluctuates between 5.5 and 6.5 owing to glycolysis in the tumor cells. Under the reducing conditions of this environment, the hydrogels degrade because of the breakage of disulfide bonds and change into low molecular-weight water-soluble oligomers that are easily excreted from the body.

To further test their drug release properties, the scientists loaded these hydrogels with specific proteins by exploiting their temperature-dependent swelling-deswelling behavior and tested the controlled release of drugs under acidic or reducing conditions. It was found that the amount of drug loaded onto these hydrogels could be controlled by changing the mesh size of the hydrogel polymer network by changing temperature, suggesting the possibility of customizing these DDSs for specific drug delivery. Besides, the hydrogel network structure and electrostatic interactions in the network ensured that the proteins were preserved intact until delivery, unaffected by the swelling and shrinking of the hydrogels with pH changes in the surrounding environment. The scientists found that the loaded protein drugs were completely released only under reducing conditions.

Using these hydrogels and the tractability that they provide, doctors may soon be able to design "customized" hydrogels that are specific to patients, giving personalized medicine a big boost. In addition to that, this new DDS provides a way to kill cancer cells that are left behind after surgery. As Prof. Kikuchi states, "The implantation of this material in the affected area after cancer resection may eliminate residual cancer cells, making it a more powerful therapeutic tool".

As cancer tightens its vise grip around the world, treatment options need to be varied and upgraded for customized and effective therapy. This unique and simple design technique to produce multi-stimuli-responsive hydrogels for effective drug delivery to target tumor sites may just be one among several such promising techniques to mount an answer to the challenge cancer poses to humanity.

###

About The Tokyo University of Science

Tokyo University of Science (TUS) is a well-known and respected university, and the largest science-specialized private research university in Japan, with four campuses in central Tokyo and its suburbs and in Hokkaido. Established in 1881, the university has continually contributed to Japan's development in science through inculcating the love for science in researchers, technicians, and educators.

With a mission of "Creating science and technology for the harmonious development of nature, human beings, and society", TUS has undertaken a wide range of research from basic to applied science. TUS has embraced a multidisciplinary approach to research and undertaken intensive study in some of today's most vital fields. TUS is a meritocracy where the best in science is recognized and nurtured. It is the only private university in Japan that has produced a Nobel Prize winner and the only private university in Asia to produce Nobel Prize winners within the natural sciences field.

Website: https:/ / www. tus. ac. jp/ en/ mediarelations/

About Professor Akihiko Kikuchi from Tokyo University of Science

Prof. Akihiko Kikuchi is a faculty member of the Department of Materials Science and Technology, Faculty of Advanced Engineering at Tokyo University of Science, Japan. He graduated in Industrial Chemistry in 1987 from Tokyo University of Science and obtained his doctorate in Industrial Chemistry from Tokyo University of Science Graduate School in 1992. He has published various research papers in the fields of Biomedical engineering/Biomaterial science and engineering. He received Yamazaki Teiichi Prize in 2009 and the Award of Japanese Society for Biomaterials in 2018. He was elected as the Fellow of the International Union of Societies for Biomaterials Science and Engineering in 2016. He is also affiliated to Society of Polymer Science, Japan as the Vice Chair for the 70th Meeting of the Society of Polymer Science.
ROME, APR 7 - The hardest proof yet of a 'new physics' possibly superseding the Standard Model has been found by the Muon G-2 project in which Italy is represented by the National Nuclear Physics Institute (INFN), one of the protagonists of the experiment, INFN Pisa section chief Graziano Venanzoni, told ANSA Wednesday. Published in the Physical Review Letters, the result obtained by the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) of Batavia near Chicago "is the most solid evidence of the possible presence of a new physics", he said. Fermilab said the experiment had found the first traces of particles and forces not predicted by the Standard Model. (ANSA).


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A cop in Kerala has gifted a bicycle to a boy, for a heartwarming reason. The act of kind-heartedness came about after the schoolboy had a case filed against him by neighbour's for taking their new bicycle.

The touching story was shared on Facebook by Latheef Attappadi, a shopkeeper in Palakkads Sholayur. The post has gone viral with over 12,000 people sharing it in the past two days.

Also read: Chennai Cop Turns Saviour For Destitute Pregnant Woman. Finds Her Shelter In The Time Of Need

The tale describes how police officials of Sholayur station, who heard the entire sequence of events decided to do something special for the boy against whom the complaint was filed. After being touched by the desperation of the boy, they decided to buy him a new bicycle.



"His childish desire to ride a bicycle had made the child take his neighbours brand new bicycle. The issue, however, soon escalated into a complaint of theft with the neighbour going to the police accusing the boy of theft", Latheef writes in his post.

Also read: Not 'Spiderman' But Delhi Cops To The Rescue As They Save Lives Of 3 People Trapped In Fire

Facebook/Latheef Attappadi

As per a report in The News Minute, the boy belongs to an impoverished family and his youthful exuberance had led him to taking the cycle to his house. When the owners coudn't find their two-wheeler, they went to the police and filed a complaint.



As the police started searching for the bicycle, they were told that the boy had parked it in his house. On being questioned by the cops, the boy told them he just wanted to take it for a ride.

Though police settled the issue amicably, Vinod Krishna, the Station House Officer of the Sholayur police station was deeply moved by the incident, and decided to buy him a new bicycle. For that he came to my shop, the post read.

Latheef goes on to add that he learnt that the police officer too had humble beginnings and that's why he was able to empathise with the boy.



Latheef himself, was touched by the incident and urged the police officer to not pay for the bicycle. Though there may be complaints against police officers, we can always take pride that such officers with a good heart are there for our protection. I salute the CI of Sholayur police station Vinod Krishna and his colleagues, who were instrumental in making the child happy, the post adds.

Also read: Watch: Cop Saves Passenger's Life Who Tried To Board A Moving Train At Vasco Station In Goa
Massachusetts General Hospital president Peter Slavin announced he will be stepping down and that it is time to call upon a new captain for the ship.

This is one of the hardest decisions I have ever made, he wrote in an email obtained by MassLive. After months of both reflecting and looking ahead, I have concluded there will never be a right time to leave.

Slavin became president of Massachusetts General Hospital in 2003. The email stated he will remain president until his replacement is found, as requested by Jonathan Kraft, chair of the MGH Board of Trustees, and Anne Klibanski, MD, president and CEO of Mass General Brigham.

In January, Betsy Nabel, president of Brigham and Womens Hospital, also announced she is stepping down after 11 years. Nabel left March 1 to focus her energies on biotech innovation, the hospital said in a statement.

Massachusetts Hospital Association president and CEO Steve Walsh said Slavin was more than just a leader at Massachusetts General Hospital, he has been a leader on behalf of our entire healthcare community.

Through both his time on the MHA Board and the example he has set at MGH, he has pushed us to be a better, more innovative system for our patients, Walsh said in a statement. We thank Dr. Slavin for his tremendous contributions to MHA and hospitals across the state.

In an email, Slavin noted the difficulty of the pandemic and the challenges it has created this past year and going forward.

Were emerging from the depths of a pandemic, were rethinking the way we work, were re-aligning into a true integrated health care system, were planning a magnificent new building, and were about to launch a bold comprehensive fundraising campaign, Slavin said.

But he also noted it as one of his prouder moments as president.

We have seen that sense of support and purpose again and again, including this past year, when our staff drew upon the combination of grit, ingenuity and heart as they courageously marched into battle against COVID-19, he wrote. My proudest moments as president, in fact, were not necessarily in the best of times, but rather in the worst, when extraordinary people throughout our hospital were tested their hardest and shined their brightest.

Read Slavins full email below.

Dear Colleagues,

The day in January 2003 when I became president of Massachusetts General Hospital was one of the most humbling and meaningful days of my life. The opportunity to lead an institution that I loved, respected, and revered was momentous  almost surreal. MGH was, after all, where my family had received care for almost 100 years and where I discovered the joy of medicine, the privilege of caring for patients and families. It was the place that had supported me in my career and encouraged me to challenge myself. It was here I learned to rely on and lead with instinct, conscience and heart. The idea that I had been entrusted to guide this remarkable institution into the future was profound.

Today, more than 18 years later, I am feeling a similar sense of deep emotion as I tell my beloved MGH family that I have decided to step down as president. This is one of the hardest decisions I have ever made. After months of both reflecting and looking ahead, I have concluded there will never be a right time to leave. Yet this particular moment in the arc of this storied institution feels like a crossroads of sorts. Were emerging from the depths of a pandemic, were rethinking the way we work, were re-aligning into a true integrated health care system, were planning a magnificent new building, and were about to launch a bold comprehensive fundraising campaign. Now seems like a fitting point in time to call upon a new captain for the ship, someone with new energy and new ideas, who can ably steer this great hospital forward into a bright and promising future as an anchor of Mass General Brigham.

I have informed Jonathan Kraft, chair of the MGH Board of Trustees, and Anne Klibanski, MD, president and CEO of Mass General Brigham, of my intentions, and Anne will be initiating a search for a new MGH president. They have asked me if I would remain in this role until my successor is in place, and I have agreed.

I feel so privileged to have been part of this wondrous place for nearly four decades. The MGH has always been a leader in advancing medicine and health care for the region, nation and world. Yet it is also a place that has held fast to its simple founding principles. When in distress, every man becomes our neighbor was the rallying cry penned by our founders in 1810. That sentiment has endured for more than two centuries, a steady omnipresent whisper throughout this organization. All those who have walked these halls have upheld this covenant to our patients, the community and one another. Perhaps its this unequivocal sense of purpose, this calling, that has made our hospital so special  there is something in the ether.

Thinking back over nearly two decades of my tenure as president stirs so many proud moments when we celebrated the accomplishments of our staff and hospital. Among the highlights are Jack Szostak, PhD, winning the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; MGH twice being ranked the #1 hospital in the nation by US News & World Report; and earning the highest national awards for community health and equity  the 2011 AAMC Spencer Foreman Award, the 2015 AHA Foster McGaw Award, and the inaugural AHA Equity of Care Award in 2014.

I remember the thrill in 2003 when the MGH became the first hospital in the state to receive Magnet recognition. We opened the Yawkey and Simches buildings in 2004, the Lunder Building in 2011, and the Russell Museum in 2012. We established the Ragon Institute in Cambridge in 2009, the same year we launched the Home Base program and the Lurie Center for Autism. We opened ambulatory centers in Danvers and Waltham, and we welcomed Marthas Vineyard, Nantucket Cottage, Cooley Dickinson, and Wentworth-Douglass hospitals into the MGH family.

There were also some immensely painful times, including my first few months as president, when tragedies took the lives of Buildings and Grounds employee Ricardo Diaz, ironworker Christopher MacInnis, and MGH cardiologist Brian McGovern, MD. MGH staff cared for some of the most severely burned patients from the Rhode Island nightclub fire in 2003, and 10 years later this hospital was called upon when the Boston Marathon bombings shook this city and nation. We have seen that sense of support and purpose again and again, including this past year, when our staff drew upon the combination of grit, ingenuity and heart as they courageously marched into battle against COVID-19. My proudest moments as president, in fact, were not necessarily in the best of times, but rather in the worst, when extraordinary people throughout our hospital were tested their hardest and shined their brightest.

I can think of no higher honor than to have been one who has walked these halls, who has contributed but a tiny thread to the rich and vibrant fabric of this place. I have been humbled to stand shoulder to shoulder with the thousands of women and men  with all of you  who work so hard to make the MGH such a hallowed temple of healing.

With all my heart, thank you.
Jersey City public schools are expected to open on April 26 for in-person instruction, but coronavirus variants and their effects on children could change the districts plans.

Board of Education President Mussab Ali said the schools are still on course to reopen, but there is some concern over some of the variations of COVID-19 that have triggered a third wave of the virus. He said Superintendent Franklin Walker will make his final decision on April 19 at the BOE caucus.

If you asked me two weeks ago, I would say I was more confident at the school reopening than I am today, Ali said. Just given what happened with the variant and given what is happening with this third wave.

He added teachers are expected to return to the schools on April 15.

Walker and Deputy Superintendent Norma Fernandez were unavailable for comment.

Ali said the board and the district will be closely watching Newark public schools, the states largest school district, as they reopen on April 12.

As they are open for a week or two, if they are able to do it and we look at their best practices and see everything that is happening there, I think it will give us more confidence, Ali said. But if Newark opens and within a week shuts down the entire district, I dont think that bodes well in terms of what it will look like for us.

Dr. Alexander Sarenac, the director of emergency medicine at Hudson Regional Hospital, said COVID-19 overall has made very few children sick. He said he himself has not put any children on oxygen or admitted any children for COVID-19 related symptoms while working in the ER.

But two virus variances, from the United Kingdom and South Africa, area believed to increase the virus transmission rate by 40 to 70%, he said. Sarenac said the mortality rate COVID-19 has had on children overall is extremely low.

As to how the new variance might affect children is that the transmissibility, the chance you will get it, is likely higher, Sarenac said. However, it is really not been determined if any children will get seriously ill from it, (but they might develop) mild symptoms. I would expect that to increase but I guess the mortality rate is very low and is low in the adult population, but it is probably extremely low in the child population.

Sarenac added some children have developed a multi-system inflammatory disease, possibly due to COVID-19 exposure, that is still being studied. He said it is something that is seen among children with other viral infections, but he did not have any data on the subject.

Jersey City had over 848 positive COVID-19 cases in just the first week of April. In March, the city had a total of 4,091 cases, just slightly under the amount of total positive cases in April 2020. There have been 18 deaths in the county, seven of those from Jersey City.

The school districts 30,000 students have not seen the inside of their schools in over a year, and could soon be returning for at least two days of in-person learning a week. Roughly 40 percent of parents are expected to send their children back to the school buildings based on a survey that only half of the districts parents answered.

New Jersey officials said last week that variants, including the strain from the United Kingdom, were contributing to a rise in cases and hospitalizations. In March, there was an up to 48% increase in the number of hospitalizations among the 20-29 and 40-49 age groups in New Jersey, ABC News reported.




[This unedited press release is made available courtesy of Gamasutra and its partnership with notable game PR-related resource Games Press.]

April 7, 2021  This coming Monday will mark 60 years since mans first foray into space as six decades ago Yuri Gagarin, and his capsule Vostok 1, journeyed into outer space and completed 1 full orbit around Earth. Such an occasion demands a great celebration and World of Tanks is bringing exactly that to its players.



To the Stars! is a two-pronged event which will see players acquire Star Points. By acquiring this special form of in-game currency through daily missions, they themselves will get great rewards, such as a unique 2D style based on Vostok 1 and the man himself, Yuri Gagarin, as well as some other valuable goodies. Gagarin will be an in-game commander, dressed in his iconic orange flightsuit. His voicelines have been specially recorded by a professional voice actor who has mimicked both the diction and intonation of this renowned space hero. This part of the event will run until April 19th.



Alongside the personal progress, players need to join forces to complete a set of common goals: completing stages daily from today to April 12th. Just like personal progress, it will require players to earn Star Points and these will be added to a shared piggy bank between all tankers, so everyones contribution is crucial. Once the required Star Points have been acquired, more of Gagarins story unfolds. Besides more details becoming available, players will also get increased XP multipliers in battles between April 12th and 19th.



During the event, tankers can visit a special event website dedicated to the first-manned spaceflight and this significant astronautical milestone. The World of Tanks team worked closely with Galina Gagarina, daughter of Yuri, during the creation of this event to make sure her fathers story was told as accurately as possible.



Yuri Gagarin proved that humans can live and operate in space. His flight encouraged and gave hope to all those who dreamed of this! It kickstarted the deep understanding of humanitys role in preserving and developing our cosmic homeEarth, says the daughter of the legendary cosmonaut. Im happy to know that, through the millions-strong audience of World of Tanks, the memory of mankinds first foray into space will be preserved for years to come!



Max Chuvalov, Publishing Director for World of Tanks, adds: We would like to thank Galina Gagarina for all the help and advice she gave throughout the project. We are happy to share her fathers story with all our players and hopefully by doing so, more people will become inspired!



Players will be able to track both their own and the shared progress here. For more information about the To the Stars! event, visit worldoftanks.com.



###



About World of Tanks



World of Tanks is the first team-based, massively multiplayer online action game dedicated to armored warfare. Throw yourself into the epic tank battles of World War II with gamers all over the world. Your arsenal includes over 600 armored vehicles from 11 nations, carefully detailed with historical accuracy.



Official website: worldoftanks.com

About Wargaming



Wargaming is an award-winning online game developer and publisher headquartered in Nicosia, Cyprus. Operating since 1998, Wargaming has grown to become one of the leaders in the gaming industry with 5,500 employees and offices spread all over the world. Over 200 million players enjoy Wargamings titles across all major gaming platforms. Their flagship products include the massively popular free-to-play hit World of Tanks and the strategic naval action game World of Warships.



Official website: wargaming.com
New surveys show Americans' membership in communities of worship has declined sharply in recent years, with less than 50% of the country belonging to a church, synagogue or mosque.

Why it matters: The accelerating trend towards a more secular America represents a fundamental change in the national character, one that will have major ramifications for politics and even social cohesion.

By the numbers: A Gallup poll released last week found just 47% of Americans reported belonging to a house of worship, down from 50% in 2018 and 70% as recently as 1999.

The shift away from organized religion is a 21st century phenomenon. U.S. religious membership was 73% when Gallup first measured it in 1937, and stayed above 70% for the next six decades.

Context: The decline in membership is primarily driven by a sharp rise in the "nones"  Americans who express no religious preference.

The percentage of Americans who do not identify with any religion rose from 8% between 1998 and 2000 to 21% over the past three years, while the percentage of nones who do not belong to a house of worship has risen as well.

The big picture: The story of a more secular America is chiefly  though not entirely  one of generational change.

Membership in houses of worship is correlates with age, with the oldest Americans much more likely to be church members than younger adults.

But while church membership is lower among younger generations, the dropoff is particularly stark among millennials and Gen Z, who are about 30 percentage points lower than Americans born before 1946, compared to 8 points and 16 points respectively for baby boomers and Gen X.

points lower than Americans born before 1946, compared to 8 points and 16 points respectively for baby boomers and Gen X. Children who grow up without organized religion are less likely to join houses of worship when they become adults, so it stands to reason that the secularization trend will only continue in the future, barring major demographic or cultural changes.

Yes, but: Generational replacement  the idea that society-wide changes in values between the young and the old can be attributed to their different circumstances growing up  doesn't tell the entire story.

Even the oldest Americans have seen a slight rise in the percentage of nones, while 20% of Gen Xers report no religious affiliation, up from 11% in 1999.

Details: Whatever their religious practices, Americans are increasingly rejecting many of the moral precepts found in most major religions.

A 2017 Gallup poll found a significant majority of Americans believe practices like birth control, divorce, extramarital sex, gay and lesbian relations are all morally acceptable.

In a piece last year for Foreign Affairs, the political scientist Ronald F. Inglehart argued that as birthrates have dropped thanks in part to contraception and falling infant mortality, modern societies have become less observant "because they no longer need to uphold the kinds of gender and sexual norms that the major world religions have instilled for centuries."

The catch: Just because conventional religious practice is on the decline doesn't mean Americans will have no need to fill what the journalist Murtaza Hussain calls the country's "God-shaped hole."

While the earlier phases of the civil rights movement were built on the strength of the Black church, today many young people are flocking to campaigns like Black Lives Matter that aren't religious in nature, but often adopt the language of religion, spirituality and justice.

"Political debates over what America is supposed to mean have taken on the character of theological disputations," Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote in a recent Atlantic essay. "This is what religion without religion looks like."

What's next: As religion decreasingly becomes something Americans practice, it may instead become another identity, subsumed into the ongoing culture wars.

The trend may also shake up the electorate. The journalist Matt Yglesias noted that when a white person switches from being Christian to non-affiliated, they are more likely to become a Democrat, "but when a Black person makes the same switch, the correlation goes in the other direction."

That could help explain the fairly secular Donald Trump having partial success in increasing the GOP's share of the non-white vote in 2020.

The bottom line: The U.S. remains an unusually religious country, with more than seven in 10 Americans still affiliating with some organized religion, according to the Gallup poll.
Mumbai, April 7 : The Ministry of Law and Justice has reportedly abolished the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT) with immediate effect. Filmmakers and producers took to Twitter to express their disappointment.

Filmmaker Hansal Mehta tweeted on Wednesday: "Do the high courts have a lot of time to address film certification grievances? How many film producers will have the means to approach the courts? The FCAT discontinuation feels arbitrary and is definitely restrictive. Why this unfortunate timing? Why take this decision at all?" "Such a sad day for cinema. FILM CERTIFICATION APPELLATE TRIBUNAL ABOLISHED | 6 April, 2021," expressed filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj.

Producer Guneet Monga reacted: "How does something like this happen? Who decides ?" Producer and trade business analyst Girish Johar tweeted: "With #FCAT dissolved by Govt, mayb a larger body may come up, setup by Govt, which will not only address censor grievances of films, but raised issues of other content as well..#Online #OTT #Short #SocialMedia..kuchch toh aayega, makers cant afford, nor Govt can't burden courts more." Before releasing in theatres, every film in India has to be certified by the Central Board of Film Certification or CBFC, which is also often referred to as the Censor Board. However, if any filmmaker is unhappy with a change suggested by the CBFC, they could go and challenge the decision at FCAT.

With FCAT abolished, filmmakers unhappy with CBFC's decision will now have to go to court with grievances.

Films which have been benefitted by FCAT in the recent past, include "Udta Punjab" (2016), "Lipstick Under My Burkha" (2017), "Babumoshai Bandookbaaz" (2017), "Kaalakaandi" (2018) and "Rangeela Raja" (2019) among others.
The notion is horrendous to contemplate.

A nuclear torpedo drone creeps along the ocean floor, slipping under coastal missile defences and detonating with catastrophic effect close to New York.

A vast wall of water rises from the sea, tearing through the city, obliterating all in its wake and leaving the area flooded with toxic radioactivity.

When he unveiled plans for his latest military nightmare a few years ago, everyone thought Vladimir Putin was bluffing.

Capable of devastating a huge stretch of coastline with a multi-megaton warhead, the Poseidon 2M39 torpedo would set off a chain of deadly radioactive tsunamis that would smash into towns and cities leaving them uninhabitable for decades.

This 'doomsday nuke' or 'apocalypse torpedo' seemed just the sort of super weapon that the sabre-rattling Russian leader would dream up to scare the wits out of opponents and bend them to his will.

At the time, U.S. officials and defence experts dismissed it as fantasy.

But now the grim truth has emerged from the melting Arctic ice: Russia really is developing the Poseidon, sending a chill through the West.

The Poseidon 2M39 torpedo would set off a chain of deadly radioactive tsunamis that would smash into towns and cities leaving them uninhabitable for decades. Pictured: Putin

The Poseidon nuclear-powered underwater drone is seen being test-launched somewhere in Russia

At least three submarines adapted to carry the enormous torpedoes are already being tested in the Arctic where the Putin regime is building an ominous military presence.

The region was once iced over and un-navigable, but the ice is melting and it has become crucial to Russia's economic plan to open and control a northern shipping route from Europe to Asia.

The gradual disappearance of the ice barrier has also exposed the military vulnerability of Russia's once impenetrable northern border.

Putin wants the 2M39 deployed in the Arctic by the summer of 2022 and, according to Russian media reports, has asked his defence ministry to keep him closely informed of tests that started in February and will continue this year.

The existence of proposals for the 2M39 were first revealed, reportedly on purpose, by a Russian general in 2015 who was photographed chatting to Putin while carrying plans for the supposedly top-secret weapon.

Three years later, Putin announced that Russia was developing the torpedo in a bombastic speech in which animated images showed nuclear warheads dropping on the U.S.

While sceptics dismissed the Poseidon as a 'paper tiger' intended to put the wind up the West, some defence experts insisted there was simply too much evidence that this project was in deadly earnest.

They pointed to proof that Moscow was expensively modifying submarines, fitting large underwater hangar doors instead of conventional torpedo tubes, so they would be capable of launching such huge missiles.

Few now believe Poseidon is a myth, although the precise capabilities and feasibility of such a mega-torpedo remain a subject of intense debate.

In 2019, an apparently innocuous video was posted on YouTube of a Russian oceanographic research ship completing sea trials near the Arctic.

A clip emerged in 2019 showing the Poseidon - seen by military officials as a giant nuclear-capable torpedo - during a launch test

Footage shows military officials overseeing the test launch of Poseidon, which can supposedly be launched from a submarine

Sharp-eyed military experts spotted on its deck a Poseidon torpedo, prompting speculation that the weapon was designed to be launched from the seabed  onto which it could be lowered from the side of the vessel  as well as from a submarine.

That option, which avoids the potential for the sub being located and destroyed before the torpedo can be launched, would certainly be possible.

And since it has its own power plant on board  in effect, acting like an underwater drone  the torpedo's range is pretty much limitless although some have estimated it at 10,000 kilometres (6,200 miles).

What is known with certainty is that the Poseidon is the biggest torpedo ever built.

More than 6ft in diameter and 65ft long, the remotely-controlled weapon is 30 times the size of a standard heavy torpedo and estimated to weigh 100 tons.

What is known with certainty is that the Poseidon is the biggest torpedo ever built

Few now believe Poseidon is a myth, although the precise capabilities and feasibility of such a mega-torpedo remain a subject of intense debate

It is both nuclear-armed and nuclear-powered. Compared to inter-continental ballistic missiles, it is likely to be relatively slow, needing hours to reach a target.

A speed of up to 80mph from a pump that uses a jet of water for propulsion is thought to be likely.

Western experts are dubious about Russian claims that it travels at more than 120mph underwater, saying the technology needed for this speed would make the torpedo so loud as to be easily detectable.

And it is detectability  or the lack of it  that is the key to this weapon's terrifying potential. It has the advantage of complete stealth as it hugs the seabed to get past missile defences. Russian sources have described the torpedo as virtually unstoppable.

And when it reaches its target, there's the question of its city- pulverising potential. Last November, Christopher A. Ford, then U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Non-Proliferation, described the Poseidon as designed to 'inundate U.S. coastal cities with radioactive tsunamis'.

The scientific phenomenon of giant waves breaking while still far out at sea, known as the Van Dorn Effect, is well known and the idea of a giant nuclear torpedo capable of creating such waves was investigated by the U.S. as long ago as the Cold War.

Sharp-eyed military experts spotted on its deck a Poseidon torpedo, prompting speculation that the weapon was designed to be launched from the seabed  onto which it could be lowered from the side of the vessel  as well as from a submarine. Pictured: The Sarov submarine for Poseidon

Putin wants the 2M39 deployed in the Arctic by the summer of 2022 and, according to Russian media reports, has asked his defence ministry to keep him closely informed of tests that started in February and will continue this year. Pictured: Russia's Arctic Nagurskoye Air Base

However, U.S. Navy studies in the 1950s and 1960s concluded that most of a mega-wave's energy is dissipated when it breaks on the continental shelf before reaching shore, so they were considered less than ideal weapons.

That said, the Poseidon was initially described as carrying a 100-megaton warhead  bigger even than the Soviets' air-dropped Tsar Bomba, the most powerful nuclear weapon ever tested.

With that kind of payload, the explosion could produce a giant tsunami far offshore, meaning the Poseidon would not even need to get close to a target city to destroy it.

According to TASS, Russia's state-controlled news agency, however, the country's military now say it will be armed with a far smaller two-megaton warhead  at 133 times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima still devastating but, say some experts, unlikely to be strong enough to create a tsunami offshore.

The Poseidon (pictured) was initially described as carrying a 100-megaton warhead  bigger even than the Soviets' air-dropped Tsar Bomba, the most powerful nuclear weapon ever tested

While Russian claims about Poseidon shift all the time, Western defence chiefs admit that they are deeply concerned by anything that can launch a nuclear attack without even being spotted by their missile defence systems.

Vice Admiral Nils Andreas Stensones, who as head of Norwegian Intelligence is fixated by Russian moves in the Arctic, ominously told CNN that Poseidon was 'aimed at targets... and has an influence far beyond the region in which they test it currently'.

U.S. Government sources, who say they are monitoring developments there 'very closely', warn that Russian control of the Arctic would allow it to extend its power into the North Atlantic  and that would be a deeply alarming development for the UK.

It has been reported that Russia plans to equip its Northern Fleet with 30 Poseidon torpedoes. Nobody is reassured by the country's insistence that its designs in the Arctic are peaceful.

It is pinning its economic hopes on opening up the region to shipping and is already demanding that tankers passing through the area get Russian permission and use Russian pilots.

At least three submarines adapted to carry the enormous torpedoes are already being tested in the Arctic where the Putin regime is building an ominous military presence

Meanwhile, defence analysts say that submarines are the only real tool where the Kremlin has any hope of levelling the playing field with a militarily superior U.S.

Now there is no doubt that Poseidon exists, experts predict it will be used to 'scare' the West and likely be used as a bargaining chip in arms control talks.

With Russia already testing the submarines that could carry Poseidon, and given Moscow's dismal track record when it comes to military mishaps, environmental experts fear dire nuclear contamination of the sea when they come to test the torpedo, too.

In Hollywood's Clash Of The Titans, if not in actual Greek mythology, Poseidon, god of the seas, releases the monstrous sea creature the Kraken to destroy the city of Argos by creating a huge tidal wave.

President Putin may be hoping his NATO opponents remember the film as they respond to the new underwater threat.
Iran sees Washington's signals of its readiness to join nuclear negotiations, and is ready to resume compliance with obligations under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action if all U.S. sanctions are lifted, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday.

"Today, we see that the United States has waken up for negotiations, and we confirm that we are ready to resume our commitment to the nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of all sanctions," Rouhani said.

The Iranian leader stressed that Tehran wants to discuss all the unsettled issues. "Today, the U.S. declares readiness for direct or non-direct negotiations, and this is a victory of the Iranian people," Rouhani continued.

In 2015, Iran signed the JCPOA with China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union. The agreement required that Iran scale back its nuclear program and severely downgrade its uranium reserves in exchange for sanctions relief, including lifting the arms embargo five years after the deal's adoption. In 2018, the Trump administration withdrew the United States from the JCPOA and began implementing hard-line policies against Tehran.

The current Biden administration has vowed to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran and use it as the basis for further negotiations on the outstanding issues concerning Iran's ballistic missile program and its support for militant proxies across the Middle East.
In recent days, more coronavirus vaccine appointments have become available, particularly at the Atlantic County COVID-19 Vaccination mega-site, where hundreds of appointments were available at the start of the week.

The Atlantic County site is currently filling thousands of appointments on a daily basis at the Atlantic City Convention Center, according to a statement provided to NJ Advance Media.
Denton, TX (76205)

Today

Cloudy skies early, then off and on rain showers overnight. Low 66F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Cloudy skies early, then off and on rain showers overnight. Low 66F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%.
Two teenagers have been locked up for life for the savage gang murder of an 18-year-old man who was hacked to death with machetes.

The defendants were aged just 14 and 16 when they set upon Santino Dymiter in east London on the afternoon of August 26 2019.

Rahiem Anderson, aka Ramzy, now 18, and the other boy, now 16, were both wearing electronic tags at the time of the attack in Chadd Green, Plaistow.

Just weeks before, the pair were released from young offenders institutions having been convicted over a plot to kidnap, falsely imprison and blackmail a young man.

Expand Close Rahiem Anderson was found guilty of the murder of Santino Angelo Dymiter, 18 (Metropolitan Police/PA) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Rahiem Anderson was found guilty of the murder of Santino Angelo Dymiter, 18 (Metropolitan Police/PA)

It was alleged that they were directed by others to do a ride-out in rival gang territory.

The defendants had denied murder but were convicted by a jury at the Old Bailey in February.

On Tuesday, Anderson, from Romford, was locked up for at least 18 years and three months.

The younger defendant was detained for life with a minimum term of 16 years.

Judge Richard Marks QC said: So far as the victim Santino Dymiter is concerned, he was no angel as the jury heard.

But he was 18 years old and he had his whole life ahead of him. He did not deserve to die, still less in the circumstances in which he did.

Unless you are a mother you cannot know what it feels like to lose a child but to lose a child through senseless and stupid violence is beyond words Malgorzata Dymiter, mother

In a victim impact statement, mother Malgorzata Dymiter described how he had previously got in with the wrong crowd.

She said: Unless you are a mother you cannot know what it feels like to lose a child but to lose a child through senseless and stupid violence is beyond words.

Mr Dymiters girlfriend Sianie Smith said her soulmate and forever best friend had been smart and funny.

Before his death, he wanted to become a model citizen with goals to achieve and adventures to complete, she said.

In mitigation, the 16-year-olds barrister Benjamin Aina QC said: Another young boy has lost his life on the streets of our capital.

The prosecution evidence you heard during the trial suggests a gang-related background, a ride-out in a car, the use of knives in a savage fashion on a young boy who sadly has died.

He said it was a complete mystery how a pleasant, charming and affable boy was involved in this type of savagery.

Mr Aina highlighted his clients age and immaturity and that he was easily influenced.

He added: When these children, these young men, are put in an environment where there are positive influences, a little bit of discipline, they are ordinary children. They do not do anything other than what ordinary children do.

During the trial, jurors had heard the killing was linked to the Beckton Boys gang, who had a long-running dispute with the Chadd Green gang, with whom the victim was associated.

At about 3.20pm on August 26, the two teenagers arrived in Chadd Green in a stolen car, wearing black clothes and latex gloves, with their faces covered by bandanas.

Armed with machetes, they went for Mr Dymiter and an 18-year-old friend who took refuge in his nearby home.

Mr Dymiter was heard to scream help me as he suffered a succession of slashing and stabbing blows.

He collapsed on the pavement and was pronounced dead at the scene.

The getaway car, which was found abandoned, was linked to the two attackers by DNA and fingerprints, jurors heard.

The pairs movements were also traced through their electronic tags.

They were both previously convicted over a kidnap, false imprisonment and blackmail plot the year before.

Anderson made no comment to police but, while on remand at Cookham Wood Young Offenders Institution, was heard to brag about the killing to inmates.

The court heard Anderson also had previous convictions for possessing a large Rambo-style blade and folding lock knife.
A white influencer and author is being slammed for saying she is proud to be 'unrelatable'  while comparing herself to Harriet Tubman, Malala Yousafzai, and Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

Rachel Hollis, an Austin-Texas based motivational speaker and entrepreneur with 1.6 million Instagram followers, recently posted an ill-advised social media video in which she boasted about being able to afford a housekeeper to clean her toilets.

Rachel insisted that she had no desire to be 'relatable' to her followers, and went on to compare herself to other 'unrelatable' women including Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart, and Oprah Winfrey.

Yikes! Rachel Hollis, an Austin-Texas based influencer, is being slammed for saying she is proud to be 'unrelatable'

Cringe! She is also being slammed for comparing herself to the Underground Railroad's Harriet Tubman, who freed close to 70 enslaved people and spent life after the Civil War as an activist

Oh no! She also appeared to compare herself to activist Malala Yousafzai

It goes on: Her list also included Ruth Bader Ginsberg (left) and Amelia Earhart (right)

Rachel has since deleted the controversial video from TikTok and Instagram, but not before it set tongues wagging.

In the clip, she explains that she had been doing a livestream and mentioned a 'sweet woman' who comes to her home twice a week to clean.

'She's my house cleaner. She cleans the toilets,' she said.

'Someone commented and said, "You are privileged AF." And I was like, you're right. I'm super freaking privileged. But also, I worked my a** off to have the money to have someone come twice a week and clean my toilets.

'And I told her that, and then she said, "Well, you're unrelatable."'

Here, Rachel performs a dramatic laugh before saying: 'What is it about me that made you think I want to be relatable?

'No sis, literally everything I do in my life is to live a life that most people can't relate to. Most people won't work this hard. Most people won't get up at 4 a.m. Most people won't fail publicly, again and again, just to reach the top of the mountain.

'Literally every woman I have admired in history was unrelatable. If my life is relatable to most people, I'm doing it wrong,' she concluded with a smirk.

Uh-oh! In a deleted video, Rachel said she was proud to be 'unrelatable' and have a housekeeper

In trouble: Her caption mentioned ''Harriet Tubman, RBG, Marie Curie, Oprah Winfrey, Amelia Earhart, Frida Khalo, Malala Yousafzai, Wu Zetian... all Unrelatable AF'

But while Rachel appeared to be seeking applause with her rant, it didn't quite have that effect on viewers.

In particular contention was her caption on the video, which listed other 'unrelatable' women  supposedly like her.

'Harriet Tubman, RBG, Marie Curie, Oprah Winfrey, Amelia Earhart, Frida Khalo, Malala Yousafzai, Wu Zetian... all Unrelatable AF. Happy Womens History Month!' she wrote.

The backlash was swift, with commenters taking particular issue with the way Rachel compared herself to the Underground Railroad's Harriet Tubman, an abolitionist who freed approximately 70 enslaved people and spent her life after the Civil War as an activist.

'Rachel Hollis comparing herself to Harriet Tubman is WILD,' Twitter user Angie Treasure wrote.

'And also to a young girl who was shot for wanting to get an education,' wrote a commenter. 'Annoying, glorified influencer vs Malala  yep, same same. My goodness, the absolute entitlement and delusions of grandeur.'

Yet another wrote: 'I woke up and saw folks talking about Rachel Hollis. Only to find out she compared herself working hard to hire a housekeeper to the work ethic of Harriet Tubman, Oprah, and Marie Curie....'

Calling her out: The backlash was swift, with commenters taking particular issue with the way Rachel compared herself to Tubman and the others

'Shes so snarky,' wrote another. 'Harriet Tubman and Amelia Earhart and every other woman she mentioned are unrelatable because theyre GD HEROES! A hero, Rachel Hollis is not.'

'On the one hand, Rachel Hollis told a generation of women to try harder, but then again on the other, Harriet Tubman set many slaves free, so I don't know guys seems legit,' said yet another.

Writer Wendi Aarons tweeted that while facing off against the criticism, Rachel reportedly deleted comments by women of color  including one by her.

'She also deleted my comment that said STILL ... I RISE which is weird because she previously tried to pass off that quote as her own,' she wrote.

Several other people took issue with Rachel failing to understand how her own privilege has allowed her to afford a housekeeper.

'Rachel Hollis was born two feet from home plate and can't stop talking about how hard she worked to score and yelling at the people on first base about how they're holding themselves back,' wrote one.

'In addition to being a completely toxic a**hole, Rachel Hollis also married a rich man and only has the life she has because his wealth and connections enabled her to do so,' said another. 'She could have sat in her husband's massive home and done nothing and still afforded a housekeeper.'

Clueless:Several other people took issue with Rachel failing to understand how her own privilege has allowed her to afford a housekeeper

'The DISDAIN with which she says, "What is about me that makes you think I want to be relatable,"' griped another.

'How is this not - "I'm clearly better than you. I will always be better than you. There isn't even a comparison. I'm insulted by the mere idea."'

Several also pointed out that Rachel is quick to point to her early wakeup time as proof that she works harder than most  but there are many low-paying jobs that also require people to be up before dawn.

'Rachel Hollis might be able to afford a housekeeper bc she "gets up at 4am and works her a** off every day", but I can almost guarantee that housekeeper does the same thing - but for multiple houses a day and they'll never become a CEO,' wrote one.

As the outrage grew, Rachel took to Instagram on Sunday to respond  but as since deleted that post as well.

Rethinking it: As the outrage grew, Rachel took to Instagram on Sunday to respond  but as since deleted that post as well

Avoiding: She insisted she was comparing herself to the other women and blamed her team for leading her wrong

'To believe that because I mentioned them, I am comparing myself to them is ridiculous,' she said of Harriet Tubman, RBG, and the others.

'Do I aspire to be as brave? As fierce? To live life on my own terms and  hopefully  inspire other women to do the same? Hell yes!

'But I cannot now, or ever, compare myself to those women and I don't want to. I don't want to try and be the next fill-in-the-blank, I'd like to try to be the first me.

'I didnt respond to these things on Friday when I heard that people were upset. I listened to my team instead of my gut,' she said.

'I listened when they told me not to respond, to let it blow over. I listened when they said they would monitor the situation  which meant monitor comments,' she added, blaming her team for deleting critics.'

After deleting her own post, Rachel has since followed up with another, this time with a more straight-forward apology.

'I'm so deeply sorry for the things I said in my recent posts and the hurt I have caused in the past few days,' she wrote.

Better: Rachel has since followed up with another post, this time with a more straight-forward apology

'I know I've caused tremendous pain in mentioning prominent women  including several women of color  whose struggles and achievements I can't possibly understand.

'By talking about my own success, I diminished the struggles and hard work of many people who work tirelessly every day.

'I disregarded the people whose hard work doesn't afford them financial security, often due to inherently racist and biased systems. I did not allow space for people to voice their anger, hurt, and disappointment, which caused even more pain.

'I acknowledge my privilege and the advantage I have as a white woman, no matter how I grew up.

'There are many things I would like to say to reiterate just how sorry I am, but the important thing for me to do now, something I should have already done, is honestly, be quiet and listen.'
A bus accident in Mexico killed 16 people, while 14 people were injured due to the collision. According to AZ Central, the accident happened at around 3:36 a.m. Tuesday in the south of the Arizona-Mexico border, specifically near the entrance of the Noche Buena Mine.

The Latest Bus Accident in Mexico

Mexico News Daily reported that a bus carrying mine workers and a van carrying tourists had crashed head-on at kilometer 156 of the Caborca-Sonoyta highway. Images of the crash site showed that the two vehicles had obstructed the two-lane road following the tragic incident.

The Sonora Attorney General's Office said that all of the 16 passengers traveling in the van died on the scene, while the 14 people inside the bus were rushed to hospitals in Caborca.

Mining company Minera Penmont confirmed that 13 injured workers were already in stable condition, but the bus driver was in critical condition.

According to Associated Press, the tourist van, which reportedly belongs to the Transportes Ejecutivos Premiere, appeared to bear the worst of the damage. The 16 people inside the tourist van were all Mexican citizens, and three were men.

"As soon as the accident was known the emergency services were notified," said Minera Penmont in a release. Minera Penmont added that their company regrets the tragic accident. The company further noted that they are in "constant communication" with the local authorities who facilitate the investigations.

The survivors of the bus accident were hospitalized due to major fractures and bruises. Forensic staff was already tasked with inspecting the two vehicles following the crash.

The British-Mexican firm Fresnillo plc. owned and operated the Noche Buena gold mine through Minera Penmont. According to the company's website, the firm had been operating the gold mine since 2012.

READ NEXT: California Crash Leaves at Least 13 Dead Near U.S.-Mexico Border

Another Bus Accident in Mexico

On a different day, another bus accident took place in Mexico, killing seven and injuring a total of four people. The March 29 bus accident stemmed from the bus driver who lost control of the vehicle on a highway near the state of Acambay in Mexico.

The bus is owned by Omex VIP company, and the accident occurred on the Aculco-Acambay highway near the Dongu community. The bus was on its way to Toluca from Saltillo.

Authorities confirmed that some of the victims were thrown out of the bus windows and into the ditch. Reports also noted that other victims were trampled underneath the bus because they rolled over into the ditch on the bus side.

Initial reports noted that about 30 people were on board when the bus accident took place. However, it was changed to only 11 passengers and two drivers involved in the accident.

Four surviving passengers from the bus accident were transported to a hospital in Acambay to treat serious injuries.

READ MORE: Gender Reveal Stunt Results To Plane Crash, Kills Two Individuals

WATCH: How Kids Can Survive and Escape a School Bus Crash - From WFLA News Channel 8
Russian police officers detain Anastasiya Vasilyeva, a doctor and ally of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, near the IK-2 corrective penal colony, where Navalny serves his jail term. Photo: Reuters/Maxim Shemetov

Russian police detained nine people outside a prison holding Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny yesterday as a small group of his supporters came to the facility and authorities turned away a doctor who tried to see him.

Mr Navalny (44), a prominent opponent of president Vladimir Putin, announced a hunger strike last week in protest at what he said was the refusal of prison authorities to treat him properly for acute back and leg pain.

Some allies had threatened to protest at the prison in the town of Pokrov unless he saw a doctor of his choice and was given proper medicine. The prison has said his health is satisfactory and that he has had all necessary medical care.

Yesterday, Anastasiya Vasilyeva, a Navalny ally who leads a doctors trade union that authorities see as opposition activists, said she had not come to protest.

Instead, she said she had an appointment with a senior prison official and wanted to be let in to see Mr Navalny and check on his health. She was turned away.

Police later detained her along with at least six other people, including supporters and two reporters for CNN, according to Reuters correspondents.

All our peaceful actions dont work. It feels like they want to kill Alexei, Ms Vasilyeva said as she was led away.

Police said nine people had been taken into custody for flouting public order. Authorities stepped up security at the prison early yesterday, closing a parking lot to all but prison staff, setting up a makeshift checkpoint and blocking the road.

It is now under a special (security) regime, a policewoman said.

Mr Navalny said late on Monday that he had a high temperature and bad cough and that three inmates in his ward had been hospitalised with tuberculosis. He said he planned to continue his hunger strike.

The pro-Kremlin Izvestia newspaper later cited the state prison service saying that Mr Navalny had been moved to a sick bay and tested for Covid.

The Kremlin declined to comment on Mr Navalnys health, but said that he would receive medical care like any other prisoner if he was ill.

Antonina Romanova, a Navalny supporter, said she had come to show solidarity.

It happens that for some reason the people who can sort things out in the country end up in jail, she said.
YEREVAN.  The participants in the women's action of protest initiated by the opposition VETO movement of Armenia have marched from outside the main government building to the Yerevan central police station where more than ten apprehended protesters were taken.

Armenian News-NEWS.am reported earlier that the participants in this protest had marched from Charles Aznavour Square to the main government building, where a large number of police forces were concentrated.

The protesters tried to break through this police chain, but a scuffle broke out as police did not allow them to approach the entrance to the government building.

Also, these protesting women threw eggs at the government building.

Those present claimed that the police had pushed back and hit reporters, too.

Clashes broke out between the police and the protesting women, and the police started to forcibly apprehend these women.

Police informed that 15 people were apprehended at the courtyard of this government building.
Britain should not give Oxford University/AstraZeneca's vaccine to under 30s where possible, Britain's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said on Wednesday, due to a very rare side effect of blood clots in the brain. The Sun newspaper and Sky News reported they would be given Pfizer or Moderna instead.

Wei Shen Lim, COVID-19 Chair for JCVI, said that based on the available data and evidence, the committee has advised that it is preferable for adults aged under 30 with no underlying conditions to be offered an alternative to the vaccine where available.

"We are not advising a stop to any vaccination for any individual in any age group. We are advising a preference for one vaccine over another vaccine for a particular age group, really out of the utmost caution, rather than because we have any serious safety concerns," he said at a briefing.

He said people should continue to have a second dose of the shot if they had received a first dose.

It came after Britain's MHRA medicine regulator identified a possible side-effect from the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Oxford University and involving rare brain blood clotting.

Chief executive June Raine said that the benefits of the shot outweighed the risks for the vast majority.

Meanwhile, the EU's drug regulator says it has found a possible link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and a rare clotting disorder but said that the benefits of the shot still outweigh risks.

In a statement released Wednesday, the European Medicines Agency placed no new restrictions on using the vaccine in people 18 and over.

Earlier this week, a senior official from the European Medicines Agency said there was a causal link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and the rare clots that have been seen in dozens of people worldwide, among the tens of millions who have received at least one dose of the shot.

Marco Cavaleri, head of health threats and vaccine strategy at the Amsterdam-based agency, said in comments to Rome's Il Messaggero newspaper on Tuesday that it is becoming more and more difficult to affirm that there isn't a cause-and-effect relationship between AstraZeneca vaccines and the very rare cases of blood clots associated with a low level of platelets.

But Cavaleri acknowledged the agency hadn't yet figured out how exactly the vaccine might be causing these rare side effects. The agency said its evaluation has not yet reached a conclusion and the review is currently ongoing.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Loucoumane Coulibaly

ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo and one of his close allies have permission to return home following their acquittal on charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court, President Alassane Ouattara said on Wednesday.

But Gbagbo's return could be complicated by a 20-year sentence given to him in absentia in November 2019 by an Ivorian court for misappropriating funds from the regional central bank.

While Ouattara did not say whether Gbagbo had been pardoned, his return could ease political tensions in the world's top cocoa producing nation after an October presidential election marred by violence.

Gbagbo, 75, served as president from 2000 until his arrest in 2011 after his refusal to concede electoral defeat to current Ouattara. Post-election violence spiralled into a civil war that claimed the lives of 3,000 people.

On March 31 the ICC upheld a 2019 decision which ruled prosecutors had failed to present enough evidence to prove their case against Gbagbo and Charles Ble Goude, a former youth leader.

Speaking to ministers before a meeting, Ouattara said he "noted" the decision of the appeals chamber in The Hague.

"As for Mr. Laurent Gbagbo and Ble Goude, they are free to return to Ivory Coast whenever they wish," Ouattara said.

The travel expenses of Gbagbo and his family would be covered by the state, and he would receive an allowance allotted to former heads of state, Ouattara added.

"I would like to stick to the words of the head of state," government spokesman Amadou Coulibaly told reporters regarding the implications of the embezzlement conviction, adding that in Ivory Coast "there is an independent justice system."

"I don't want to go further than what the head of state said, which is quite clear," Coulibaly said.

Gbagbo's lawyer could not be reached for comment.

(Reporting by Loucoumane Coulibaly; Writing by Hereward Holland; Editing by Bate Felix)
DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran's Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday an Iranian ship, the Saviz, had been attacked in the Red Sea, a day after media reports that the vessel had been hit with limpet mines.

"The explosion occurred on Tuesday morning near the Djibouti coast and caused minor damage with no casualties. The vessel was a civilian ship stationed there to secure the region against pirates," ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said.

"The issue is under investigation".

It is the latest in a series of reported attacks on Israeli- or Iranian-owned ships since late February, for which the two sides have each accused the other of being responsible.

Israeli officials declined to comment on Tuesdays reported attack on the Iranian ship.

When asked by reporters on Wednesday for comment on the attack, Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz declined. But he added, according to the Maariv news website: "We have offensive systems operating 24/7, 365 days a year and they are ready to go into action in any arena and over any distance."

The United Nations is concerned about Tuesday's incident, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York.

"Although the circumstances around the incident remain unclear, we want to underscore the importance for the concerned parties, including countries in the region, to exercise maximum restraint and refrain from taking any escalatory actions," he said.

Iran has refused to recognise Israel since its Islamic Revolution in 1979 that toppled the U.S.-backed Shah. Israel sees Irans nuclear programme as a threat to its existence.

The shipping incidents have occurred since U.S. President Joe Biden took office in January, pledging to rejoin Iran's 2015 nuclear containment deal with six world powers - abandoned by his predecessor Donald Trump in a move welcomed by Israel - if Tehran returns to full compliance with the accord.

Tehran and Washington held what they described as "constructive" indirect talks in Vienna on Tuesday aimed at finding ways to revive the accord.

(Additional reporting by Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem, Michelle Nichols in New York; Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Jonathan Oatis)
[April 07, 2021] Crown Castle Announces First Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call Details

HOUSTON, April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Crown Castle International Corp. (NYSE: CCI) ("Crown Castle") plans to release its first quarter 2021 results on Wednesday, April 21, 2021, after the market closes. In conjunction with the release, Crown Castle has scheduled a conference call for Thursday, April 22, 2021, at 10:30 a.m. eastern time. The conference call may be accessed by dialing 800-347-6311 and asking for the Crown Castle call (access code 7566143) at least 30 minutes prior to the start time. The conference call may also be accessed live over the Internet at http://investor.crowncastle.com. Any supplemental materials for the call will be posted on the Crown Castle website at http://investor.crowncastle.com.





A telephonic replay of the conference call will be available from 1:30 p.m. eastern time on Thursday, April 22, 2021, through 1:30 p.m. eastern time on Wednesday, July 21, 2021, and may be accessed by dialing 888-203-1112 and using access code 7566143. An audio archive will also be available on the companys website at http://investor.crowncastle.com shortly after the call and will be accessible for approximately 90 days.

ABOUT CROWN CASTLE

Crown Castle owns, operates and leases more than 40,000 cell towers and approximately 80,000 route miles of fiber supporting small cells and fiber solutions across every major US market. This nationwide portfolio of communications infrastructure connects cities and communities to essential data, technology and wireless service  bringing information, ideas and innovations to the people and businesses that need them. For more information on Crown Castle, please visit www.crowncastle.com. CONTACTS

Dan Schlanger, CFO

Ben Lowe, VP & Treasurer

Crown Castle International Corp.

713-570-3050



[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Whenever Im with my grandpa in stores, Im always having to translate for him since he doesnt understand. In this example of my family being discriminated against, there is no equality and they werent being treated fairly.

Another example of inequality actually happened maybe a week ago to my cousin. He was walking home from school with my brother on the sidewalk, and some lady was walking on the same sidewalk as well and she told them  you guys ever heard of social distancing? and my cousin responded back If you really cared youd be wearing a mask. Then she responded to him by saying  you little twerp

The next day she went to complain to their school and he got in trouble for something he did after school. The police and the principal showed up at his house just because of that little situation. Nothing happened to him, but to get him in trouble and have the police show up to his house just because hes a different race or a different color is pretty unfair and even racist I would say.

When George Floyd got killed by a white police officer, people went crazy because he said he couldnt breathe. In that situation, no equality or justice was being served.
The first COVID-19-related death in over a month was reported in Hale County last week.

The individual was a woman 61 years old or older. The latest detailed report from the Plainview-Hale County Health Department reflects the death in counts for Plainview. Her death marks the 138th reported in Hale County since last March bringing Plainviews total up to 121.

Prior to this death, the last one was reflected in the report for February 23.

COVID-19 case numbers have steadily declined in recent months prompting the city to scale back on the frequency of its released reports. The city is now only releasing updates on Tuesdays and Thursdays moving forward with its more in-depth reports still set to be released on Tuesdays.

Comparison of the detailed report from March 15 shows there were just 25 new COVID-19 cases reported across the county since then.

The latest report, which reflects the latest data reported as of 5 p.m. Monday, shows 17 of those cases were reported in Plainview, three were reported in Abernathy and in Petersburg and one case each was reported in Cotton Center and in Hale Center during that March 16-April 5 time frame.

Those cases are split almost evenly among the four different age groups. There were four cases reported among those 0-20 years old and seven cases each in the 21-40, 41-60 and 61 and older age groups.

There were 968 tests conducted within that time frame.

The data also shows 19 new recoveries for Hale County. There were 11 in Plainview, four in Abernathy, two in Hale Center and one each in Petersburg and Cotton Center.

As of Monday afternoon, there were 14 active cases of COVID-19 in Hale County  11 in Plainview, two in Petersburg and one in Abernathy.

The number of those vaccinated also continues to grow. As of Tuesday afternoon, 7,512 Hale County residents had received at least one dose of an available COVID-19 vaccination and 4,436 had been fully vaccinated.

Local and state leaders and health officials continue to encourage COVID-19 vaccinations. Everyone 18 and older is now eligible to receive doses of the vaccine in Texas.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-08 03:19:39|Editor: huaxia

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RABAT, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Morocco announced on Wednesday 663 new COVID-19 cases, taking the tally in the North African country to 499,688.

The total number of recoveries from COVID-19 in Morocco increased to 486,349 after 641 more were added.

The death toll rose to 8,867 with two new fatalities during the last 24 hours, while 454 people are in intensive care units.

The COVID-19 fatality rate in Morocco stands at 1.8 percent while the recovery rate is 97.3 percent.

Meanwhile, 4,410,023 people have received so far the first vaccine shot against COVID-19 in the country, and 4,038,083 people have received the second dose.

The North African country launched a nationwide vaccination campaign on Jan. 28 after the arrival of the first shipment of China's Sinopharm vaccines.

Moroccan government announced on Wednesday a nationwide night curfew during the Muslim's fasting month of Ramadan to combat the spread of COVID-19.

The curfew will be implemented from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. local time, starting from the first day of Ramadan. Enditem
Diligent Corporation (Diligent or the Company), the modern governance company, today announced that it has completed its acquisition of Galvanize, a global leader in SaaS governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) software. Having also recently acquired Steele Compliance Solutions, Inc. (Steele), a leader in ethics and compliance software, Diligent is now the worlds largest GRC SaaS company with more than 1,500 employees and one million users. The financial terms of both transactions were not disclosed.

By integrating Galvanize and Steele into the Diligent modern governance platform, the Company is creating a comprehensive solution to meet its clients GRC needs, from IT to the boardroom. The platform will help clients:

implement and measure risk management and controls across the organization;

enrich insights with best practice and external benchmarks while strengthening regulatory compliance; and,

aggregate data into a holistic view for their leadership teams and board.

The combined company will serve more than 23,000 clients across all industries and provide concierge-level support built on market-leading customer satisfaction scores. Diligent will benefit from Galvanizes robust partner network and its comprehensive Leader recognition from both Gartner and Forrester analysts. Touting over 80 integrations with leading technology partners, Galvanize will also accelerate Diligents seamless integration into customers existing technology stacks.

Diligent is proud to be shaping the future of modern GRC by building an operating system for purpose-driven capitalism, said Brian Stafford, CEO of Diligent. Were enabling visionary leaders to keep pace with the rising tide of stakeholder capitalism and make progress on ESG commitments. Clients can look forward to a completely integrated platform that covers risk, compliance, audit and governance, and drives enhanced visibility across the entire organization. Were thrilled to have the talented Galvanize and Steele teams onboard and, together, look forward to creating a positive impact for our clients.

By joining Diligent, the clear market leader in its space with a board governance platform used by the leaders of today and tomorrow, Galvanize elevates the work of GRC professionals further into the boardroom, said Laurie Schultz, President and CEO of Galvanize. The combination will fast forward our vision of positioning GRC as a critical component of every enterprise through our category leadership.

Credit Suisse served as the exclusive financial advisor, and Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP served as the legal advisor to Diligent. Evercore served as the financial advisor, and Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP served as the legal advisor to Galvanize.

About Diligent Corporation

Diligent is the largest governance, risk and compliance (GRC) SaaS provider, serving more than one million users from over 23,000 organizations around the globe. Our modern GRC platform ensures boards, executives and other leaders have a holistic, integrated view of audit, risk, information security, ethics and compliance across the organization.

Diligent brings technology, insights and confidence to leaders so they can build more effective, equitable and successful organizations. We empower 62% of the Fortune 500, 90% of the FTSE 100 and 83% of the ASX 200 to improve their bottom line, keep pace with stakeholder expectations and create lasting, positive impact on the world.

For more information visit www.diligent.com.

About Galvanize

Galvanize is the leading provider of award-winning, cloud-based security, risk management, compliance, and audit software for some of the worlds largest organizations. The integrated HighBond platform provides visibility into risk, makes it easy to demonstrate compliance, and helps grow audit, risk, and compliance programs without incurring extra costs. More than 6,300 organizations in 130 countries rely on HighBond to meet their objectives, including many Fortune 1000 and S&P 500 companies, hundreds of banks, manufacturers, and healthcare and government organizations. Whether managing threats, assessing risk, measuring controls, monitoring compliance, or expanding assurance coverage, HighBond automates manual tasks, blends organization-wide data, and broadcasts it in easy-to-share dashboards and reports. www.wegalvanize.com

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005536/en/
Scott Morrison insists former Australia Post boss Christine Holgate decided to quit but is refusing to comment on shocking allegations she was bullied out.

Ms Holgate resigned late last year after it was revealed four Australia Post executives were gifted luxury watches for sealing a lucrative deal.

She has attacked Australia Post chairman Lucio Di Bartolomeo in a blistering submission to a Senate inquiry, accusing him of lying to parliament and humiliating her.

Scott Morrison insists former Australia Post boss Christine Holgate decided to quit but is refusing to comment on shocking allegations she was bullied out

The prime minister said he wanted to leave the issue between Ms Holgate and Australia Post.

'Ms Holgate decided to leave Australia Post. That's just a matter of record,' Mr Morrison told reporters in Canberra on Wednesday.

Ms Holgate resigned late last year after it was revealed four Australia Post executives were gifted luxury watches for sealing a lucrative deal

An independent investigation later cleared Ms Holgate of any dishonesty, fraud, corruption or intentional misuse of taxpayer funds.

But the accomplished chief executive claims she was bullied out of the company, unlawfully stood down and abandoned to a media firestorm.

'To this date, I have not received any explanation why I was forced to stand down other than the minister and prime minister insisted on it and that in itself, does not have legal standing,' Ms Holgate wrote.

Mr Morrison refused to address the perception he threw her under a bus during a stunning Question Time tirade where he called for her to go.

Labor communications spokeswoman Michelle Rowland said the allegations in the 150-page submission were staggering.

'She is clearly very aggrieved by the actions not only by the chair of the Australia Post board but also the prime minister and the minister for communications,' she told ABC radio.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg would not confirm whether the government had sought an explanation from the Australia Post chairman.

Ms Holgate says Mr Di Bartolomeo treated her 'like a criminal' and blames him for being forced out of the top job.

'He lied repeatedly to the Australian people and to their parliament about his actions,' she wrote.

Her submission also featured emails, photos of handwritten cards and a letter from her lawyers to Mr Di Bartolomeo.
SHIAWASSEE COUNTY, MI  McCarthy Building Companies is looking to hire between 30 to 40 people as things ramp up in the spring for an ongoing solar farm project.

The St. Louis, Missouri-based company hired over 250 local workers, from entry-level laborers to journeyman electricians, for the construction of the Assembly Solar Project and is once again looking to fill more spots.

Solar is going to be big in Michigan for the next 10 years, said Brian Timmer, site manager for McCarthy, during a Friday, April 2 virtual conference call. And Shiawassee county is a hot spot.

McCarthy is the subcontractor for the current $250 million, 1,800-acre Ranger Power Assembly Solar project in Hazelton and Venice Townships on which construction first began in mid 2019.

Drew Veilbig, Ranger Powers development manager, said Assembly Solar is being developed in three phases: Assembly Solar I is the current site being constructed but has been operating since December.

Assembly II and III are slated to begin operating later this year.

We are looking for talent for this project and then also folks who want to get into this industry, Timmer said. Were staying here through October of this year so its a full construction season window.

McCarthy is looking at hiring at the entry level, but the company is also searching for supervising crew leaders.

Training programs that McCarthy offers - including an electrical apprenticeship, craft training, and mentoring - can lead from an entry level worker into more of a supervisory role and a crew lead.

Everybodys always surprised that the training investment that were putting into them both on a technical and a soft skill side, Timmer said. Once weve made that investment, we want to keep these people and retain them.

With several other projects already started, McCarthy is taking some of the labor that theyve trained in the positions and relocated people to help and stay within solar.

Timmer said that a lot of people have already started looking at transferring to other projects in different cities for permanent employment.

I know solar is expanding rapidly in Michigan, even with other general contractors and nationwide, Erica Gilliland, who oversees craft recruiting on a national level for McCarthy, said in the virtual conference call. Even if for whatever reason, they arent going to the next McCarthy project, for those people whove received the training, that is top of its field in our area, there are other jobs locally.

McCarthy is currently offering a starting wage of $14 to $18 an hour to work at the Assembly Solar project, with most weeks accumulating between 50 to 60 hours a week.

We offer all kinds of benefits for everybodys life circumstances, Timmer said. Our standard package that we offer coming in includes two-weeks of paid-vacation, seven-paid holidays, medical benefits after 30 days, and a slew of other benefits.

McCarthy is also offering referral bonuses to people who can bring in other individuals for work, as well as internship opportunities in renewable energy to high school and college students.

Anyone interested in pursuing a career at McCarthy Building Companies can visit https://www.mccarthy.com/careers for more information, or by calling 855-41-BUILD.

Read more on MLive:

Man launches campaign to prevent possible new mid-Michigan solar farm construction

Michigans largest solar farm under review, could power 35,000 homes

Proposed Shiawassee solar farm would cover 1,200 acres in two townships
Experts say an outback Queensland region, where the COVID vaccine is given to any adult who wants it, runs the risk of sending the wrong message, even if they tentatively backed the measure to avoid waste.

Central West Hospital and Health Service, which takes in areas from Bedourie in the far west to Alpha in the centre of the state, including Longreach, Winton, Barcaldine and Birdsville, has been calling for anyone over the age of 18 to make an appointment to get their COVID-19 jab.

All adults in Birdsville are able to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Credit:Steve Christo

There is no phased approach in the Central West and vaccine is available for everyone 18 years and over who wants it, Central West HHS said in a recent Facebook post.

In other parts of the state, doses of the vaccine remained limited and the nationally agreed phased rollout was being followed strictly.
New Delhi/Islamabad, Apr 7 (UNI) Russia and Pakistan on Wednesday voiced concern over the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan and said they would work to help create inclusive power structures to end the conflict in the country.

Recent reports said terrorists are gaining ground in northern and eastern Afghanistan as the May 1 deadline of US pullout from Afghanistan nears.

"We are concerned by the deterioration of the situation in the area of security in Afghanistan and by the rise in terrorist activities and march of ISIL in the north and east of the country, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after talks with his Pakistan counterpart Shah Mehmood Qureshi in Islamabad.
Six men, including two from Massachusetts, were arrested and charged on Wednesday in connection with an ongoing investigation into sex abuse at a New Hampshire detection center.

New Hampshire authorities said 54-year-old Jeffrey Buskey, of Quincy, and 51-year-old Stephen Murphy, of Danvers, were each charged with five counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault stemming from abuse allegations made by former residents of the Sununu Youth Services Center, formerly known as the Youth Development Center.

Four former residents of the Youth Development Center raised the assault allegations against Buskey, alleging the abuse took place between 1996 and 1999, according to New Hampshire Deputy Attorney General Jane E. Young and New Hampshire State Police Colonel Nathan Noyes. Three former residents of the facility made assault allegations against Murphy, alleging the abuse took place between 1997 and 1999.

Buskey waived extradition from Massachusetts. Extradition is pending for Murphy.

The other men arrested include Bradley Asbury, 66, of Dunbarton, New Hampshire; Frank Davis, 79, of Contoocook, New Hampshire; Lucien Poulette, 65, of Auburn, New Hampshire; and James Woodlock, 56, of Manchester, New Hampshire, prosecutors said. The men also face numerous sexual assault charges from allegations date from 1994-2001.

New Hampshire prosecutors said the probe into the child abuse allegations is still ongoing.

The aforementioned arrests do not represent the culmination of the investigation but are merely a step forward in this comprehensive and multi-faceted investigation, they said.

Sununu Youth Services Center has been under investigation since July 2019 after two former counselors were charged with raping a teenage boy 82 times in the 1990s, the Associated Press reports. Prosecutors dropped those charges last year to expand and strengthen the probe.

Several of the men arrested Wednesday were previously named in a civil lawsuit filed last year involving alleged physical or sexual abuse of more than 200 men and women when they were children at the Manchester facility from 1963 to 2018. That suit names 150 staffers as the alleged abusers, according to the Associated Press.

Attorney for the plaintiffs in the suit allege that children were gang raped by counselors, beaten while raped, forced to compete for food in fight clubs organized by counselors and put in solitary confinement for weeks or months, the Associated Press reports.
[April 07, 2021]

Ekinops chosen by TELUS to deliver virtualized access network functions

PARIS, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- EKINOPS (Euronext Paris - FR0011466069) (EKI), a leading supplier of optical transport and enterprise connectivity solutions, today announces it has been selected by TELUS, a world-leading communications and information technology company, to deploy network function virtualization (NFV) and next-generation software-defined network (SDN) capabilities to enhance its award-winning network.

TELUS chose the OneAccess-branded ONE2501, which delivers a "one-box-fits-all" approach. The ONE2501 is based on OneOS6, the modular software solution enabling a full range of built-in software services that can be activated remotely and on-demand, equipping TELUS with a SD-WAN-ready, carrier-grade and multi-service business data router. The cmpact and power-efficient design of the ONE2501 also reduces TELUS' environmental footprint in the delivery of its enterprise services.







"Our work with TELUS illustrates Ekinops' value to service providers in giving them both freedom and control, together with a host of cost savings and operational efficiency gains," commented Kevin Antill, Ekinops' group vice president of sales for North America. "We are extremely pleased to be working alongside this major tier one operator in North America."

"Delivering the connectivity and quality network experience our customers have come to expect requires a SDN strategy that implements access and optical products that are both interoperable and open," said Walter Miron, Director, Technology Strategy, SDN and Business Solutions DevOps at TELUS. "Ekinops' collaboration and versatility allows us to enhance our networks in an innovative and scalable way that reduces our environmental footprint and scales our total cost of ownership."

For more information visit: https://www.ekinops.com/

Contact:

For further media information, or to schedule an interview with Ekinops, please contact Fraser Kay, iseepr, +44 (0) 113 350 1922 / fraser@iseepr.co.uk

View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ekinops-chosen-by-telus-to-deliver-virtualized-access-network-functions-301264178.html

SOURCE Ekinops
London, April 7 : UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson saidthat Britons should be "realistic" about international travel for holidays amid concerns over the third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic on the European continent.

The government is yet to make a decision on whether Britons can go for a foreign holiday from May 17 as previously planned, Xinhua news agency quoted Johnson as saying on Tuesday.

"That doesn't mean we've given up on May 17. I know how impatient people are to book their holidays but I think we just have to be prudent at this stage." The Prime Minister said that Britain should continue rolling out the AstraZeneca vaccine despite concerns about occasional reported cases of blood clots.

Johnson said the current advice of Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the UK's medicines regulator, is to "keep going out there, get your jab, get your second jab" and "we need to keep that going".

The vaccines are already "starting to have a beneficial effect on the trajectory of the disease", said Johnson, noting the falling number of cases and deaths in the country.

On Monday, Johnsonconfirmed that from April 12, non-essential shops will reopen and pubs and restaurants will reopen outdoors as Britain moves to step two of the roadmap out of the Covid-19 lockdown.

Meanwhile, hairdressers and barbers as well as gyms can reopen, along with zoos, theme parks, libraries and community centres.

However, experts have warned that despite progress in vaccine rollout, Britain is "still not out of the woods" amid concerns over new variants and the third wave of the pandemic across Europe.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Shinji Asada of One Capital, Isshu Rakusai of Nota, and Takuya Hosomura of Salesforce Ventures. (Left to Right) Helpfeel achieves a 98% FAQ search hit rate with its unique "Intent Prediction Search" technology. It reliably displays the most suitable FAQ page to solve a customer's problem by being able to respond to search terms that may be ambiguous, emotional, or misspelled.

Nota, Inc., the developer and provider of self-service support application Helpfeel, is pleased to announce that it has raised a Series B investment totaling 500 million JPY (~$5M USD) from a group of investors led by One Capital.

Other investors that participated in the Series B funding round include Salesforce Ventures, Hakuhodo DY Ventures, and Persol Process & Technology.



Use of Funds

The investment will be used to accelerate the development of Helpfeel and Nota's other products and to expand marketing and sales activities, strengthen recruiting, and further expand the customer base.

Market need and mission

Helpfeel is growing rapidly with monthly recurring revenue growing 670% year over year. With an average monthly churn rate of less than 0.25% and a number of leading companies as customers, it has achieved product-market fit and strong traction.

One of the reasons behind the growing need for online self-service support like Helpfeel is that customer service based on phone calls, emails, and live chat is reaching its limits for both companies and their customers.

One survey (1) showed that the average response time to customer inquiries is over 12 hours and 10 minutes. At the same time, another survey (2) showed that about 70% of respondents had to contact a support center after checking an FAQ site where they could not solve their problem.

When companies fail to improve their FAQ pages, their support operators receive a huge number of inquiries on a daily basis. These companies struggle to manage employee stress and prevent turnover, resulting in a double problem of high staff turnover and low customer satisfaction.

Helpfeel solves many of the issues faced by support teams by providing an instant FAQ search that can reliably solve most customer problems. By realizing a transformation to self-service support, customers can get answers and solve problems without interacting with an operator, and in much less time. This helps companies reduce the number of inquiries their operators need to solve directly and it alleviates demands on support resources.

Use cases and features of Helpfeel

Helpfeel can be easily installed on any app or website and be used to predict and answer what the user wants to know based on the words they input. It can be applied to not only reduce the number of inquiries, but also in a wide range of areas such as onboarding after user registration, as an internal help desk, and to search a catalog of products and services.

On the technical side, the system uses "Intent Prediction Search," which is based on a proprietary algorithm that predicts the questions users want to ask based on the words they type and it then suggests related articles. This algorithm was invented by Nota's CTO Toshiyuki Masui who invented the predictive input system for Japanese on mobile devices while working at Apple.

Many companies have already implemented Helpfeel, and Nota has created a range of case studies detailing how the introduction of Helpfeel led to a dramatic reduction in the number of direct support inquiries. The case studies are in Japanese at the time of publication but can be made available in English upon request.

About One Capital, the #1 B2B SaaS VC in Japan

One Capital is a venture capital firm with a strong track record in the B2B SaaS space, and is participating in this round as lead investor, with Shinji Asada assuming the role of board member. During his career as a venture capitalist, and including a previous stint as head of Salesforce Ventures Japan, Asada has invested in and provided hands-on support to companies such as freee, Sansan, Yapppli, Goodpatch, Visional (BizReach), Andpad, and Studist.

Comments from Investors

 One Capital

Shinji Asada, Representative Director, CEO, and General Partner

I often hear people say, "I tried to call the call center, but it didn't work," or "It took a lot of time and effort (stress) to get an answer. I have had such experiences countless times. If only there were a way for users to solve their own questions, it would be a good experience for both parties and improve the brand value of the service provider. We will do our best to contribute to Nota as much as we can.

 Salesforce Ventures Japan

Takuya Hosomura, Principal

The level of expectation that users have for "personalized online experience" and "immediate response" from companies when using their services is only increasing. Helpfeel is an innovative product that responds to questions and search methods that users may not be able to articulate well and guides them to the right answer. We are pleased to support Nota, a company that will further contribute to improving labor productivity in Japanese society and enhancing the online experience for users.

 Hakuhodo DY Future Design Fund

Nosuke Urushiyama, Partner, Hakuhodo DY Ventures

When considering the interface with consumers, the importance of how to understand the needs of individual consumers in real-time and how to design a smooth experience in the tech touch area is only increasing. Helpfeel is a product that not only contributes to the reduction of man-hours but also provides insights into what users are experiencing by visualizing their search behavior. We feel that Hakuhodo DY Group has a lot of potential in this area. We will continue to work with Nota to spread the value of Helpfeel by combining the sei-katsu-sha ideas and creativity of the Hakuhodo DY Group.

 Persol Holdings, Persol Process & Technology

Koichi Yokomichi, President and Representative Director

Our company provides outsourcing and systems for customer support and service operations. From our experience, we are keenly aware that in order to achieve customer success in today's world of diversifying user needs, it is important to encourage users to solve their own problems and spend more time on problems that truly require consultation. In this context, we strongly sympathize with Nota, which has a vision of a "self-service center", and feel that Helpfeel is a very promising product to enhance users' self-solution by FAQ. We are very pleased to be able to work together to transform the company into a "self-service center" through this investment.

Nota-style knowledge sharing: the "Nota Workplace"

Nota offers innovative web services to deliver knowledge sharing as its core business. Nota develops and provides the instantly searchable FAQ Helpfeel, the infinitely scalable team knowledge base Scrapbox, and the instant screenshot sharing app Gyazo.

The combination of these solutions in the "Nota Workplace" allows people in different places and at different times to work together in a highly creative and modern way.

About Helpfeel

Helpfeel: an instantly searchable FAQ that helps most customers solve their own problems in seconds.

Helpfeel is the savior of customers and support teams. The system focuses on reliable searchability and makes it easy to build a FAQ site where problems can be solved immediately. It not only helps customers solve problems on their own, but also reduces the burden on customer support staff and call centers.

Helpfeel achieves a 98% FAQ search hit rate with its unique "Intent Prediction Search" technology. It reliably displays the most suitable FAQ page to solve a customer's problem by being able to respond to search terms that may be ambiguous, emotional, or misspelled.

In addition, it is equipped with incremental search, which allows it to predict questions and display candidate results as keywords are being typed. This approach of searching for the most suitable question from the search keyword and then displaying the answer is about 1,000 times faster than the response time of competing FAQ systems to date.

With these innovations, Helpfeel significantly reduces the number of direct support inquiries by answering frequently asked questions that would otherwise need to be handled by phone, e-mail, or live chat. As a result, the stress and workload of customer service staff can be dramatically reduced.

Visit the website: Helpfeel (in Japanese)

Partial list of Helpfeel Customers

Yahoo Japan Corporation, The Iyo Bank, 17LIVE, AHB, Net Protections Holdings, DeNA, Whiteplus, Mirrativ, Minna no Market, HENNGE, Recruit Holdings, bellFace, Money Design, Newton, Persol TempStaff, Siroca

-----

Note: Helpfeel is only available in Japanese at this time. The English language version is coming soon. To inquire about Helpfeel in English, you can send an email to the company via contact *at* notainc.com.

-----

Nota's other products

 Scrapbox: a team knowledge base that's infinitely scalable

Scrapbox allows teams to organize a variety of information by networking wiki-like pages with instant links, rather than the traditional hierarchical (folder) structure where ideas are progressively obscured with scale. A network of information results simply by surrounding words with brackets, without the need to worry about disorderly folders ever again. It also has a variety of functions such as simultaneous editing and the ability to pase images and Youtube videos allowing teams to access all kinds of knowledge in one place.

Visit the website: Scrapbox

 Gyazo: instant screenshot and video sharing of desktops, websites, and apps

Gyazo is a tool that allows people to easily take a screenshot by simply clicking and dragging over an area on screen. Images taken can not only be shared as instant links, but are also automatically saved to an account, making it the perfect tool for sharing information that is difficult to convey via text alone. It also supports a keyword search of OCR results and metadata, so you can easily find screenshots you have taken in the past.

Visit the website: Gyazo

Company Overview

 Founded December 21, 2007

 Representative Director and CEO: Isshu Rakusai

 Kyoto Head Office: 5F Kawamoto Building, 110-16, Gosho Hachiman-cho, Kamigyo-ku, Kyoto 602-0023, Japan

 Tokyo Office: Shiodome City Center 5F, 1-5-2 Higashi-Shinbashi, Minato-ku, Tokyo 105-7108, Japan

 U.S. Office: 1250 Borregas Avenue #23, Sunnyvale, California 94089

Nota's Company website

Nota is hiring.

Sources

1. Superoffice.com's "Customer Service Benchmark Report (New Study 2021)

2. "CallCenter White Paper 2019" (in Japanese)
[April 07, 2021] Indian travellers ready to adopt 'digital health passports' to restart travel

The study, commissioned by Amadeus and delivered by Censuswide, provides encouraging news for the industry, with 47% of Indian travelers keen to book international travel within six weeks of restrictions easing, compared to the global average of 41%

93% of respondents would be comfortable using a digital health passport for future travel BENGALURU, India, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- As governments and the travel industry explore the benefits of digital health passports, the message from Indian travelers is clear: digital health passports can be a vital tool in opening up travel once again. The study found that 93% of Indian travelers would be comfortable using a digital health passport for future trips, as the appetite to travel remains high with nearly half (47%) expressing their interest in booking international travel within six weeks once the restrictions are lifted. The study further revealed that over the past three quarters, 79% of Indian travelers would be willing to store their travel health data electronically if it meant it will enable them to travel sooner, and if it enabled them to pass through the airport faster with less face-to-face interactions with others. The international study that included over 1,000 respondents from India, indicates that there is enough incentive for authorities and businesses to accelerate plans for digital health passports. In fact, 57% stated that they would be happy for a digital health passport to become the norm. Despite an overwhelming response to digital health passports, when queried further, there are concerns about security and privacy such as: 34% of respondents are worried about data security risks with their personal information being hacked,

28% of respondents are concerned about lack of transparency and control over how and where their data will be shared. Surprisingly, the highest scepticism around digital health passports was reported among Gen Z, with 12% saying that they would not be comfortable using a digital health passport under any circumstances. The travel industry needs to consider and explore the checks and balances to ease privacy concerns and build traveler confidence in digital health passports, to which the survey found that: Over half of Indian travelers (53%) would be comfortable using a digital passport if it was accepted by most countries and was regulated as per international standards,

8 out of 10 (80%) would be more likely to store health data on a secured app where a travel provider has partnered with a trusted healthcare provider. Even though receptiveness to sharing data is high, when asked about the technologies that would increase confidence in travel in the next 12 months, mobile solutions wre highlighted as a popular option, with suggestions that include:



Mobile applications that provide on-trip notifications and alerts (51%)

Contactless mobile payments (49%)

Facial recognition technology (48%)

Boarding pass on mobile (47%) Mani Ganeshan, Head of R&D, APAC, Amadeus, says, "As businesses navigate out of the global pandemic, the future of travel looks optimistic. This study offers a clear roadmap for the industry, by acknowledging the appetite for technologies that can address the concerns of travellers, whether it is better access to information or reducing physical proximity. Innovations such as digital health passports can catalyse both traveller confidence and the opening of international borders once again. With the world racing towards digital transformation unlike ever before, sophisticated travel-friendly apps will help build the much-needed confidence for travellers both worldwide and in India." Christophe Bousquet, CTO, Amadeus, comments, "This study reinforces the key role that technology will play in rebuilding travel. We've seen a shift since our last survey, as travellers now place more focus on mobile and touchless technology, crucial areas that will clearly strengthen traveller confidence. It's also very relevant to see that travelers are open to digital health passports and sharing their data as they move through the journey, once the right safeguards are in place. At Amadeus, we're committed to rebuilding a better industry, together with our customers and partners."

To gather more insights into how the travel industry can rebuild, Amadeus, a global leader in travel technology, commissioned research to learn more about travelers top concerns around digital health data, their comfort levels with sharing and storing their data, and the solutions that may help to alleviate their concerns for future travel. The research is the second in a series of traveler surveys, where Amadeus takes a regular checkpoint on traveler sentiment and concerns to help the industry rebuild travel in the most effective way. The 2020 Rethink Travel survey revealed how technology can help to increase traveler confidence and Amadeus revisited this question to see how traveler confidence has changed since September 2020. 91% of travelers globally now say that technology will increase their confidence to travel, an increase from 84% in September 2020. To learn more about the results of the 2021 survey, read the global and country reports and infographics through the links below. Research methodology The survey was conducted in late February 2021 by global insight-driven research firm?Censuswide?to explore?traveler?sentiment in light of COVID-19 towards digital health data and technology to help rebuild travel. The findings were based on 9,055 respondents residing in France, Germany, Spain, UAE, Russia, India, Singapore, UK and US who have traveled abroad in the last 18 months (with a minimum of 1,000 respondents per market). Fieldwork was carried out between 18th - 26th February 2021. Censuswide abides by and employs members of the Market Research Society which is based on the ESOMAR principles. For reference: Generation Z = 16-24 year olds; Millennials = 25-39 year olds; Generation X = 40-54 year olds; Boomers = 55-74 year olds; 75+ Silent Generation. About Amadeus and Amadeus Labs Travel powers progress. Amadeus powers travel. Amadeus' solutions connect travelers to the journeys they want through travel agents, search engines, tour operators, airlines, airports, hotels, cars and railways. We have developed our technology in partnership with the travel industry for over 30 years. We combine a deep understanding of how people travel with the ability to design and deliver the most complex, trusted, critical systems our customers need. We help connect over 1.6 billion people a year to local travel providers in over 190 countries. We are one company, with a global mindset and a local presence wherever our customers need us. Our purpose is to shape the future of travel. We are passionate in our pursuit of better technology that makes better journeys. Amadeus is an IBEX 35 company, listed on the Spanish Stock Exchange under AMS.MC. Amadeus Labs was founded in Bengaluru to extend Amadeus' Engineering and R&D activities in the Asia-Pacific region. Today, being Amadeus' 2nd largest Engineering and R&D site worldwide, Amadeus Labs Bengaluru plays a critical role in product development globally. Follow us on: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedln To find out more about Amadeus, visit www.amadeus.com

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As Gandhi had famously quoted, Be the change that you wish to see in the world. Your voice is as important as everyone elses and women on boards represent those voices and are the catalyst to lead that change.

KAYGEN, Inc. is excited to announce that our President, Rashmi Chaturvedi, Co-founder, and President of KAYGEN Inc., award-winning global business and technology partner, was elected to the Women's Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) Board of Directors. Her term began last month and extends for three years.

The WBENC board serves as the guiding leadership body for the organization and is made up of National Corporate Members, Forum Members and Leadership Council Members. The election recognizes Chaturvedis distinctive service to WBENC as a member of the WBENC Forum which serves in an advisory capacity to the WBENC Board providing input and feedback on WBENC programs and other matters.

"We at the WBENC Forum have benefited greatly from Rashmi Chaturvedis business acumen and support of other women owned businesses and we are delighted to recommend her for a WBENC board seat, said Patti Massey, Forum Chair and President of myca:group.

I am honored to serve on the WBENC Board and to represent 17,000 women owned businesses that fuel our countrys economic growth. WBENC has been instrumental in providing women owned businesses with resources to develop and grow their businesses, Chaturvedi said.

An advocate for economic equity, Chaturvedi currently serves on the Board for Womens Business Enterprise Council West (WBEC-WEST) and the Transportation Business Advisory Council at the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority (LA Metro). As an executive board member and financial and compliance officer, her work at LA Metro has played an important role in ensuring small businesses get access to contracting opportunities.

Chaturvedi has been recognized as a 2020 WBENC WBE Star representing WBEC-West. She was awarded 2020 Outstanding CEOs by WE USA magazine and named 2018 Enterprising Woman of the Year Champion for her strategic vision, ability to build successful business and her tireless dedication to excellence in every facet of her life.

KAYGEN has been listed as Top 50 Women Owned Business by the Orange County Business Journal, Inc. 5000 as Fastest growing private companies in North America and Fast 100 Asian American business by USPAACC.

About KAYGEN Inc.

KAYGEN Inc. is an award-winning global business and technology professional services provider, enabling organizations to leverage their data as a strategic asset to solve their most pressing business challenges and achieve their goals. Utilizing a variety of leading data management practices and technologies, its specialized experts enable clients to effectively leverage their enterprise data, so they can make the right decisions to maximize productivity, efficiency, and profitability  while maintaining compliance with the latest data privacy and security regulations. The name KAYGEN is inspired from the Japanese word Kaizen, meaning continuous improvement. KAYGEN embodies this approach in its overall business model and data-driven solutions. To learn more, http://www.kaygen.com.

ABOUT WBENC

WBENC is the largest third-party certifier of businesses owned, controlled, and operated by women in the United States. WBENC partners with 14 Regional Partner Organizations (RPOs) to provide its world- class standard of certification to women-owned businesses throughout the country. WBENC is also the nations leading advocate of women-owned businesses and entrepreneurs. Throughout the year, WBENC provides business development opportunities for member corporations, government agencies and more than 17,000 certified women-owned businesses at events and other forums. Learn more at http://www.wbenc.org.
Vietnamese businesses are once again struggling to get containers to export their goods amid a global imbalance in the logistics sector.

Bui Thi Ngoc Tuyen, deputy director of Bich Chi Food Company in the southern province of Dong Thap, said as empty containers have become scarcer, prices have tripled.

"We struggle to get enough containers for our goods, and even if we do, there is no ship to transport them."

Duy Tan Plastics, which gets one-fifth of its revenues from exports, is also caught in a similar struggle, with logistics costs on some main routes rising 95231 percent year-on-year.

The company has seen the number of orders decline by around 10 percent due to higher shipping costs, its deputy director Le Anh said.

Tran Thanh Hai, deputy director of the Agency of Foreign Trade under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, said sea shipment costs have risen because container costs have surged seven or eight times.

Vietnamese companies had already faced a container shortage towards the end of last year and earlier this year as global trade rebooted after months of limited activities caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, but the recent Suez Canal blockage has once again triggered shortages which could severely hurt exporters.

Although the mega ship Ever Given has been freed from the canal, some ships had been forced to reroute on a longer journey, and a two- or three-week delay of shipments is expected.

This means Vietnamese exporters will have to wait a couple of weeks or even a month to receive empty containers for the next shipment, and they will have to bear higher costs due to shortage of the metal boxes, said Ho Van Hiet, CEO of Prime Logistics Vietnam, which transports around 200 containers a month.

Container rents in December and January had surged 5-10 times from earlier due to a global shortage of containers. Although prices dropped by 10-20 percent last month, they could return to the previous peak in this and the next month due to the Suez blockage, Hiet told VnExpress International.

His company has been urging customers to make quick deliveries now, before prices climbed again.

Lam Thi Thanh Bong, CEO of Karl Gross Logistics Vietnam, said that after a period of limited trade activities last year caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, many Western countries are having an oversupply of empty containers while some Asian ones are seeing shortages.

"This imbalance in supply and demand will have major impacts on Vietnamese exporters," she said.

For now, exporters need to book their shipment between two and four weeks prior to ensure they have slots on the vessels and they should negotiate sharing higher logistics costs with their partners, she added.
Kate Garraway has taken control of her husband Derek Draper's business affairs, a year after the former lobbyist contracted Covid.

The political lobbyist, 53, remains critically-ill in intensive care after coronavirus 'wreaked havoc' throughout his body.

12 months on, Kate, 53, has been made the director of a firm founded by Derek.

'She's determined to tackle it': Kate Garraway has taken control of her husband Derek Draper's business affairs, a year after the former lobbyist contracted Covid

Documents filed to Companies House show she's been named on the books of his Astra Aspera Ltd firm.

The company's name is a take on the Latin phrase 'ad astra per aspera' which means 'to the stars through hardship'.

She has been handed more than 50% of the firm to give her the controlling interest to make decisions on her own.

Health: The political lobbyist, 53, remains critically-ill in intensive care after coronavirus 'wreaked havoc' throughout his body

And notes on the company's listing show that it is late in filing accounts for 2019 due to Derek's illness.

Books for 2018 reveal it paid more than 128,000 in tax meaning the firm was taking in a healthy income.

Derek  the firm's other director  founded the outfit in 2011.

Finances: Kate has been handed more than 50% of the firm to give her the controlling interest to make decisions on her own

A source told MailOnline: 'It's been an incredibly tough year for Kate and the family and she's been left with a lot of financial decisions and complications on top of it all.

'Making Kate the director for Derek's company for the time being, was the best decision for everyone to try to manage things while Derek is unable to. It's been a lot for Kate to handle but she's determined to tackle it.'

Last month, Kate revealed she had to rely on friends for financial support while off work during Derek's Covid battle.

The Good Morning Britain host explained how although those in TV are 'paid a good wage compared to the nurses keeping Derek alive', she had to stop earning 'quite suddenly' last March and turned to pals for support.

Kate said: 'Working in television, everybody does get paid a good wage compared with the nurses who are keeping Derek alive. But that obviously stopped quite suddenly last March.'

The star said she worried she'd sound like she was 'pleading poverty' and added that she's had to think about things she never contemplated before Derek's illness.

Heartache: The Good Morning Britain presenter's husband Derek Draper, 53, remains in ICU almost a year after he was admitted to hospital with novel coronavirus. Pictured in 2019

Kate admitted a major learning curve was the legal side of things, saying: 'I haven't really got my head round the legal situation.

'I've been in a continual survival mode. Just thinking, let's get through today.'

She explained that since Derek's been in hospital she's not been able to access his credit card accounts or their joint savings.

Kate even revealed she's not allowed to see her husband's medical notes because of data protection and them not giving each other power of attorney.

The mother-of-two said she recalled having a chat with Derek about how they should do this, however it never came about, with her saying she probably brushed it off by saying some joke like: 'Youre not being mine'

Kate also reflected on how she's been faced with a long-line of problems to fix at home as well as working out childcare for her two children on her own.

She detailed how during the past 12 months their family car has broken down and the replacement was stolen. And while self-isolating to visit Derek in hospital the familys fridge-freezer broke followed by a flood and failed heating.

Sad: Kate  who shares Darcey, 15, and William, 11, (pictured in 2019) with her husband of 15 years  admitted it is 'shocking' to see his current state, including his eight stone weight loss

Adding to the list of bad luck, just two days before Christmas Kate even had to call her agent, who also reps Emma Willis who works for Marks and Spencer, to sort some food for Kate and her children to have over the festive period.

It comes after Kate stated she has been 'absolutely overwhelmed' by the positive reaction to her documentary, and admitted the 'battle' for her husband Derek goes on as he faces a 'challenging fortnight.'

Kate returned to GMB after the emotional Kate Garraway: Finding Derek documentary aired last month and said: 'It's been absolutely overwhelming in a really wonderful way.'

She said: 'We spoke on Tuesday morning about how it was quite a difficult decision to think about filming it, but you hoped it would bring some comfort to some people or perhaps shine a light on a situation that... or for a group of people who might be suffering away in a way that hasn't been focused on.

'I've had so many comments from people. The reaction has been extraordinary. I've had so many messages from people talking not just about COVID, but about experiences in their own life, where some of the things we touched on have impacted.'
Documents show that Saskatchewan health officials who were considering a proposal for the province's first supervised drug consumption site found such spaces save lives and money without risking public safety.

The new safe consumption site Prairie Harm Reduction is seen in Saskatoon on Sept. 30, 2020. Documents show that Saskatchewan health officials who were considering a proposal for the province's first supervised drug consumption site found such spaces save lives and money without risking public safety. The government decided not to commit any cash. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Kayle Neis

Documents show that Saskatchewan health officials who were considering a proposal for the province's first supervised drug consumption site found such spaces save lives and money without risking public safety.

The information is contained in briefing notes prepared for the deputy minister of health on a request from the site's organizers for $1.4 million a year to help keep it running 24-7. The government decided not to commit any cash, including in the 2021-22 budget tabled Tuesday.

The partially redacted documents, released to The Canadian Press under freedom-of-information legislation, cover the period from November 2019 to March 2020 when Saskatoon-based Prairie Harm Reduction was setting up the site.

Fundraising in the community allowed the site to open its doors last October, but at reduced hours.

"It's pretty impossible to argue that we don't need them in Saskatchewan," said executive director Jason Mercredi.

"The scientific evidence shows that (supervised consumption sites) save lives," said one briefing note.

The sites are meant to be safe injection or ingestion sites for all drugs, but primarily deal with opioids such as fentanyl.

The document cited data that "shows more than 4,600 reported overdoses have been reversed without a single death" since 2017 at sites across Canada.

It also said the programs can reduce health-care costs by preventing overdoses and reducing infections from drug injection.

Another briefing document pointed to specific concerns raised by some residents about the Saskatoon site. They worried it could result in increased violence and drug use.

"Most current evidence suggests that the presence of a (supervised consumption site) in a community does not result in negative impacts on public safety or public order, particularly when the community is already managing the presence of injection drug use," the document reads.

Jim Reiter, health minister at the time, said the government chose to prioritize money for treatment beds, counselling and other medical support, but suggested the province should at some point revisit the need for a consumption site.

Mercredi said Prairie Harm Reduction serves about 120 people a week, plus many others who visit its drop-in centre, which offers different supports.

The biggest complaint he said he hears is that the site is only open in the daytime during business hours. It is closed on weekends.

"The scariness of our site has kind of gone away," he said.

"People, I think, thought we were going to be this big bad wolf and instead they find out we're a lot of smiles, coffee, a safe place to go."

Mercredi said the opioid crisis has only worsened since the initial funding request, which is why he had hoped the province would reconsider.

The Saskatchewan Coroners Service said 2020 was the deadliest year on record for drug overdoses.

The data shows there were 345 confirmed and suspected drug toxicity deaths, including 12 from suicide. Many of the deaths involved fentanyl or related opioids.

There were 75 deaths in the first two months of this year.

"It's palpable now," said Mercredi. "People are much more aware of the overdose crisis  350 folks dying last year  that's a lot of families. That's a lot of friend circles."

Addictions Minister Everett Hindley said the budget funds harm reduction measures, including further distribution of the life-saving antidote naxolone and new mobile buses for Saskatoon, Regina and Prince Albert. People will be able to inquire at the buses about treatment options and get their drugs tested.

There's also additional money for addictions treatment beds, Hindley said.

"We are trying to provide supports to as many people as we can across this province, whether they live in Saskatoon or Swift Current or La Ronge," Hindley said Tuesday.

"I recognize this is a challenge in Saskatoon, but that being said, this is a provincewide challenge."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 6, 2021
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 17:52:21|Editor: huaxia

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VIENTIANE, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Lao Ministry of Health Wednesday urged authorities and people countrywide to stay vigilant against COVID-19 and avoid unnecessary celebrations during Lao New Year which falls in mid-April.

Deputy Director General of the Department of Communicable Diseases Control under the Ministry of Health Sisavath Soutthaniraxay told a press conference in Lao capital Vientiane on Wednesday that people countrywide must strictly comply with COVID-19 prevention measures including wearing face masks when leaving homes, practicing frequent hand-washing with soaps or hand gels, and keeping a social distance.

The National Taskforce Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control reported that it has been monitoring 4,697 people at 36 accommodation centers across the country.

As of Wednesday, Laos has tested 138,766 suspected cases with 49 cases tested positive, and 47 patients have recovered.

Laos reported its first two confirmed COVID-19 cases on March 24 last year. Enditem
NASHVILLE, Tenn., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- FB Financial Corporation ("FB Financial" or "the Company") (NYSE:FBK) announced today that it will release its 2021 first quarter results of operations on Monday, April 26, 2021, after the close of the market. The Company will host a conference call at 8:00 a.m. Central Time on Tuesday, April 27, 2021, to discuss its first quarter results of operations. For investors or analysts who want to attend the call, the listen only dial-in number is 888-317-6003, confirmation code 2908979.

A live online broadcast of FB Financial's conference call will also begin at 8:00 a.m. Central Time, on Tuesday, April 27, 2021, at https://www.webcaster4.com/Webcast/Page/1631/40699. An online replay will be available approximately two hours after the call ends for 12 months. A telephone replay will begin approximately two hours after the call ends and will be available for seven days. To listen to the telephone playback, please dial 877-344-7579, confirmation code 10154025.

About FB Financial Corporation

FB Financial Corporation (NYSE: FBK) is a bank holding company headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. FB Financial Corporation operates through its wholly owned banking subsidiary, FirstBank, the third largest Tennessee-headquartered community bank, with 81 full-service bank branches across Tennessee, Kentucky, North Alabama and North Georgia, and mortgage offices across the Southeast. FirstBank serves five of the largest metropolitan markets in Tennessee and has approximately $11.2 billion in total assets.

SOURCE FB Financial Corporation
Catalent, a global leader in clinical supply services, today announced that a number of its clinical supply experts will be participating in upcoming Global Clinical Supplies Group (GCSG) events, discussing cell and gene therapy supply chains, direct-to-patient (DTP) services, and just-in-time delivery models.

As part of the 2021 GCSG Spring Bootcamp program, which runs from April 12-22, 2021, Paul Ingram, Ph.D., Global Director of Strategic Development and Innovation, Catalent Clinical Supply Services, will be part of the Essentials of Cell & Gene Therapy Supply Chains session and will discuss the manufacturing and supply chain requirements of autologous and allogeneic cell and gene therapies. Additionally, Nicole Gray, Catalents Director of Strategic Supply Solutions, will be one of two leaders of the Exploring Direct to Patient Clinical Trial Models workshop, which will discuss best practices to engage sponsors clinical teams, clinical sites, and couriers to ensure a successful partnership in a DTP supply chain model.

The GCSG 2021 US Forum takes place from April 26  29, and at this event, Ms. Gray will co-present a session entitled Overview of Direct to Patient Models for Clinical Trials at 1:30 p.m. on Monday April 26, where she will give an overview of DTP strategies, and considerations in implementing a robust supply chain model. She will also be one of two leaders of the Direct to Patient: a Covid-19 Solution or a Long-Term Change to Clinical Trial Conduct? workshop on Tuesday April 27 at 2:45 p.m. and Thursday April 29 at 1:30pm., where she will discuss the adoption of DTP and decentralized studies during the pandemic, and the opportunities to continue with such models once the restrictions of the pandemic are lessened.

Also on Monday April 26, at 2:45 p.m., and at the same time on Wednesday April 28, Kate Carey, Catalents Director of Strategic Supply Solutions will co-host a session entitled Just-in-Time or Too Late? The Hurdles and Benefits of Introducing Make-to-Order Clinical Supply Chains, which will discuss how just-in-time strategies can resolve issues with clinical supply chains, and what significant process and technology barriers must be overcome in order to drive effective change.

During Dr. Ingrams 25-year career, his work has focused on pharmaceutical research and development and medical devices. He has over 15 years of experience in clinical supplies, working in both Phase 1 unit manufacturing suites and trial supplies service companies, including Quintiles (later Aptuit), Fisher Clinical and, since 2011, Catalent. Dr. Ingram obtained his doctorate in pharmaceutical development from Strathclyde University in Glasgow, U.K.

In her role at Catalent, Ms. Gray is responsible for developing the companys direct-to-patient business and other new strategic service offerings. She has 18 years experience in clinical supplies project management, and prior to her current role, spent six years as the Director of Project Management for Catalents Philadelphia facility. She is an active member of GCSG and is currently the Board Secretary.

Ms. Carey has worked in the pharmaceutical industry for 17 years and has held multiple roles in clinical supplies project management, and in her current role at Catalent, she has responsibility for supporting the companys innovative demand-led supplies model (pull model). Ms. Carey has worked with cross functional teams to evaluate how the late stage pull model can transform the management of drug product to increase flexibility of supplies when sponsors are facing the complex and ever-changing environment of clinical supplies.

To find out more information about these events, visit https://www.clinical.catalent.com/news-and-events/#events

About Catalent Clinical Supply Services

Catalent is a global leader in clinical supply services, with comprehensive and flexible solutions for small molecules, biologics, and cell and gene therapies and integrated solutions to accelerate speed to clinic. Catalent offers a full range services including clinical supply management, comprehensive packaging solutions, comparator sourcing, cold chain storage and global distribution and specialized supply chain services including direct-to-patient and demand-led supply. With nine GMP clinical packaging facilities and over 50 strategically located depots on six continents combined with more than 25 years experience across thousands of studies in more than 80 countries, Catalent has the comprehensive services, global scale and expertise necessary to reliably supply clinical trials of all sizes and complexity anywhere in the world.

About Catalent

Catalent is the leading global provider of advanced delivery technologies, development, and manufacturing solutions for drugs, biologics, cell and gene therapies, and consumer health products. With over 85 years serving the industry, Catalent has proven expertise in bringing more customer products to market faster, enhancing product performance and ensuring reliable global clinical and commercial product supply. Catalent employs around 15,000 people, including approximately 2,400 scientists and technicians, at more than 45 facilities, and in fiscal year 2020 generated over $3 billion in annual revenue. Catalent is headquartered in Somerset, New Jersey. For more information, visit http://www.catalent.com

More products. Better treatments. Reliably supplied.
Launched in 2017, Trademark Collection by Wyndham is designed for travelers seeking distinctive, attainable accommodations in sought-after destinations, with each Trademark hotel maintaining its own unique attributes. The addition in Belize is the latest in the brand's fast growth trajectory around the world over the past four years, with approximately 115 hotels in the U.S., Canada, Belize, Mexico, Sint Maarten, Curacao, Australia, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Belgium.

"We are on a strong growth trajectory for Trademark Collection by Wyndham and we look forward to continuing this momentum," said Scott LePage, President Americas, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. "This growth is not only a testament to Trademark's value as a compelling brand, but also the value of the Wyndham brand recognition, which is so important in a time when travelers are looking to names and brands they trust for their future travels."

Turtle Island Beach Resort, Trademark Collection by Wyndham offers eight beach houses and five pet-friendly villas with sweeping water views, as well as an infinity pool, spa, fitness center, beach bar, and signature Turtle Island Restaurant. With its location just offshore, Ambergris Caye is largely protected from the strong currents of the Caribbean by the stunning Belize Barrier Reef, the second largest barrier reef in the world, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Easily accessible from the mainland, the hotel offers a quick five-minute, complimentary boat transfer for guests from San Pedro Town.

The resort's villas offer two bedrooms with a full kitchen, terrace and a private pool ideal for enjoying sunset, while the beach houses feature one bedroom, a fully equipped kitchen, and a terrace with a thatched roof, offering the best sunrise views. Guests can enjoy complimentary kayak and paddleboard experiences right at the resort's beach, or world-class snorkeling and diving expeditions at the nearby Hol Chan Marine Reserve and Mexico Rocks. The hotel also features a turtle sanctuary lagoon where three turtles are being nurtured back to health.

Belize has seen significant recent hotel development growth. According to the latest numbers released by the Belizian Tourism Board (BTB), the revenue generated in the accommodation sector has increased year over year for 10 years until the global pandemic. Turtle Island Beach Resort, Trademark Collection by Wyndham joins two additional Wyndham properties in Belize, Ramada by Wyndham Princess Belize City, and Costa Blu Beach Resort, Trademark Collection by Wyndham.

"The resort is an idyllic private island escape with an incredible natural setting for outdoor exploration, relaxation and personal service. We are able to provide our guests a unique all-encompassing five star experience at our private island retreat," added Daniel Reigl, General Manager, Turtle Island Beach Resort, Trademark Collection by Wyndham.

Wyndham hotels in Belize and around the world participate in Wyndham Rewards, the world's most generous rewards program with thousands of hotels, vacation club resorts and vacation rentals worldwide. Designed for the everyday traveler, members earn a guaranteed 1,000 points with every qualified stay and may redeem points for a wide range of rewards, including free nights, gift cards, merchandise and more.

About Trademark Collection by Wyndham

Each of Trademark Collection by Wyndham's upper-midscale-and-above hotels around the world - from landmark hotels in Germany and Switzerland to its flagship hotel, The Galt House Hotel in Louisville, Ky. - boast three common attributes: character, charm, and individuality. Launched in 2017, Trademark Collection is geared to three- and four-star hotel owners passionate about upholding their hotels' independent spirit and designed for everyday travellers seeking distinctive, attainable accommodations in sought-after destinations. For more information, visit www.wyndhamhotels.com/trademark.

About Wyndham Hotels & Resorts

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts (NYSE: WH) is the world's largest hotel franchising company by the number of properties, with over 8,900 hotels across nearly 95 countries on six continents. Through its network of approximately 796,000 rooms appealing to the everyday traveler, Wyndham commands a leading presence in the economy and midscale segments of the lodging industry. The Company operates a portfolio of 20 hotel brands, including Super 8, Days Inn, Ramada, Microtel, La Quinta, Baymont, Wingate, AmericInn, Hawthorn Suites, Trademark Collection and Wyndham. Wyndham Hotels & Resorts is also a leading provider of hotel management services. The Company's award-winning Wyndham Rewards loyalty program offers 86 million enrolled members the opportunity to redeem points at thousands of hotels, vacation club resorts and vacation rentals globally. For more information, visit www.wyndhamhotels.com.

Contacts:

Carolina D'Elio

Communications Director LATAMC

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts

O (+54 11) 5217  5777

[email protected]

Scott Carman

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts

+1 (973) 753-6590

[email protected]

SOURCE Wyndham Hotels & Resorts

Related Links

http://www.wyndhamhotels.com


Castle Island Brewing Co. will finally have a taproom just minutes away from its namesake in South Boston.

The brewery is set to open a taproom at 10 Old Colony Ave. at the former Cole Hersee plant, the Boston Globe reports.

We here at Castle Island Brewing Company couldnt be more excited to FINALLY announce our second location, opening this summer in South Bostonright down the street from our very namesake, the brewery wrote on Instagram in a post announcing the new taproom.

The brewery says the new location will be home to a 10-barrel innovation brewhouse, a tasting room and event space, outdoor patio and a full kitchen that will focus on South Shore-style bar pizza.

This is something we always wanted. But theres a difference between wanting something and making it happen, Castle Island Brewing founder Adam Romanow told the newspaper.

Related Content:
Investor presentation provides clear path for future growth and profitability

Independent valuations affirm the underlying value of Nam Tai 's real estate assets

SHENZHEN, China, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Nam Tai Property Inc. ("Nam Tai" or the "Company") (NYSE Symbol: NTP) today released an investor presentation highlighting the fundamental value of its assets and a clear path for future growth.

The Company also announced the completion of third-party valuations of its properties by Savills Real Estate Valuation (Guangzhou) Limited ("Savills") and Jones Lang LaSalle ("JLL"), resulting in an asset value of approximately RMB 5.7 billion ($880 million), which equates to a net asset value of approximately $18 per share, including balance sheet adjustments. The independent valuations completed in April 2021, includes Nam Tai's six major properties: Nam Tai Inno Park, Nam Tai Technology Center, Nam Tai Inno Valley, Nam Tai Longxi, offices in Zhuoyue Baozhong Times Square, and Wuxi Facilities.

The $18 per share valuation based on independent third-party valuations contrasts with the unsubstantiated $40 per share valuation claimed by activist investor IsZo Capital LP, who have not provided a valuation methodology to support its estimated price. As a result, shareholders are urged to question whether the striking valuation difference is a tactic employed by IsZo to entice shareholders to support IsZo's campaign to take control of the Company. IsZo has targeted Nam Tai based on an unrealistic and unsubstantiated projection for the value of Nam Tai's share price, which is in stark contrast with independent expert opinions.

The investor presentation is available under "Presentation - Information and Activities" of the Investor Relations section at www.namtai.com. Highlights of the presentation include:

Strong Business Strategy with Clear Path for Growth

The Company has steadily executed its strategy, achieved meaningful milestones, and has set forth a clear path for long-term growth. In 2020, Nam Tai delivered profitability against significant economic and industry headwinds. The Company successfully executed its development growth strategy during the year as evidenced by the acquisition of an attractive site in Dongguan, where housing prices have since increased by approximately 20%, successfully converting the zoning of Nam Tai Technology Park to a highly favorable strata title, and completing its first project, Nam Tai Inno Park, on time and $117 million under budget.

Valuable Real-Estate Assets with Significant Potential for Future Growth

The Company has created a strong platform to source land acquisitions, develop and monetize properties with a focus on the fast-growing Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, the world's largest Bay Area in terms of land area and population with highest real GDP growth. In addition to its completed project, Nam Tai has a highly valuable pipeline of projects that have the potential to bring increased revenues and profits for shareholders.

Kaisa Partnership Adds Strategic and Financial Value

Critical to the Company's success is its strategic partnership with Kaisa, a top 24 national developer[1] and a top 3 developer in Shenzhen[2] with more than 20 years of local real estate experience. Leveraging its significant expertise in the local market, Kaisa brings to the Company a number of significant and strategic advantages, including local real estate expertise, expedited industrial development projects, and enhanced access to bank financings, suppliers and local authorities. Kaisa's partnership and investment in the Company has greatly increased market confidence in Nam Tai, including from customers and suppliers  which are key to the continued success of the Company.

"Nam Tai is committed to driving growth and creating long-term value for shareholders. We believe our investor presentation and the independent valuation reports referenced in the presentation will provide clarity and assurance to shareholders regarding both our growth prospects and our underlying asset value. The highest priority for Nam Tai management is to resolve outstanding liquidity matters and resume normal operations," said Dr. Lai Ling Tam, Director and Executive Chairman. "We deeply value the input and opinions of our shareholders. We look forward to demonstrating the true value of the Company, as well as management's vision for unlocking significant growth."

Notes: 1 According to 2020 ranking by CRIC 2 According to 2020 ranking by China Index Academy

Forward-looking Statement and Factors that Could Cause our Share Price to Decline

Certain statements included in this press release, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements generally can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "may", "might", "can", "could", "will", "would", "anticipate", "believe", "continue", "estimate", "expect", "forecast", "intend", "plan", "seek", or "timetable". These forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, may include projections of our future financial performance based on our growth strategies and anticipated trends in our business and the industry in which we operate. These statements are only predictions based on our current expectations about future events. There are several factors, many beyond our control, which could cause results to differ materially from our expectation. These risk factors are described in our Annual Report on Form 20-F and in our Current Reports filed on Form 6-K from time to time and are incorporated herein by reference. Any of these factors could, by itself, or together with one or more other factors, adversely affect our business, results of operations or financial condition. There may also be other factors currently unknown to us, or have not been described by us, that could cause our results to differ from our expectations. Although we believe the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance, or achievements. You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. These forward-looking statements apply only as of the date of this announcement; as such, they should not be unduly relied upon as circumstances change. Except as required by law, we are not obligated, and we undertake no obligation, to release publicly any revisions to these forward-looking statements that might reflect events or circumstance occurring after the date of this press release or those that might reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

ABOUT NAM TAI PROPERTY INC.

We are a real estate developer and operator, mainly conducting business in Mainland China. Our main land resources are located in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area ("Greater Bay Area") and Wuxi, China, of which the three plots in Shenzhen will be developed into Nam Tai Inno Park, Nam Tai Technology Center and Nam Tai Inno Valley. We plan to build these technology parks into landmark parks in the region and provide high-quality industrial offices, industrial service spaces and supporting dormitories to the tenants. Based on the experience of developing and operating technology parks and an industrial relationship network accumulated over the past 40 years, we have also exported the operation model of technology parks to other industrial properties. Through an asset-light model, we have leased industrial properties for repositioning and business invitation. We will also expand the commercial and residential property business in China as an auxiliary development strategy of the Company. As the growth prospects of China maintain, we shall seize development opportunities in the Greater Bay Area and other first- and second-tier cities in China, and continue to strengthen and expand the business of industrial real estate, and commercial and residential properties. Nam Tai Property Inc. is a corporation registered in the British Virgin Islands and listed on the New York Stock Exchange (Symbol: "NTP").

Please refer to our corporate website (https://www.namtai.com/) or the SEC website (www.sec.gov) for our press releases and financial statements.

SOURCE Nam Tai Property Inc.

Related Links

http://www.namtai.com


STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The Staten Island Mall in New Springville has beefed up its security presence with a highly trained gun-sniffing canine named Bolo.

The German Shepherd is being provided through the Malls parent company Brookfield Properties, which utilizes security partner Allied Universal Security Services. He trained at Shallow Creek Kennels in Sharpsville, Pa., according to the Mall.

Bolo will patrol the Mall with a security officer to deter the possession of firearms, and quickly and safely resolve any detections.

We did not launch this because there was a problem, but because it is a good, proactive program, said Jim Easley, senior general manager of the Staten Island Mall.

We welcome millions of guests a year, and the Staten Island Mall provides for thousands of retail associate jobs. We are proud to be a hub for the community, and it is a privilege that we take seriously. The well-being of our guests, tenants and employees is paramount. We are constantly evolving our security protocols, and the new canine weapon detection program is an added safety measure to offer extra comfort to our shopping center community, he added.

While Bolo has a friendly demeanor, Easley said stopping to pet the dog is being discouraged, as hes always working while on duty at the Mall.

The extra security measure, which has been initiated at many other Brookfield Properties, is to uphold the Malls code of conduct, which strictly prohibits firearms.

BOLOS TRAINING

Bolo has received extensive training to detect firearms at Shallow Creek Kennels, which is a privately owned and operated police service dog importing and training facility. The establishment selects and personally trains the canines to work in law enforcement.

Our extensive training program is built on years of law enforcement experience to ensure the highest quality in service, security and care for the dogs, said John Brannon, owner of Shallow Creek Kennels.

Weapon detection and deterrence is a critical component to safety and prevention. Shallow Creek Kennels was formed with the fundamental goal to select and train highly reliable detection canines to protect communities worldwide. Our involvement with mall security has been a natural collaboration, and we are honored to be a trusted resource to help support customers, merchants and shopping center management.

He said the canines are trained through odors that are common to firearms along with a reward, which is usually a ball.

In a short period of time the reward is removed and the dog is alerting to the presence of firearm odor. The finished canine believes when he smells the imprinted odors, he has found his reward, said Brannon.

Easley said the canine will be another arm of Mall security.

With everything going on it the world today, we hope this extra measure helps people feel safe, he said.

And the Mall has used canines for security in the past.

This is a preventative measure, like any security initiative that we have, said Lindsay Kahn, a Mall spokeswoman. Having a canine patrol is not new to the Staten Island Mall, and this is a program we have at a hand full of properties throughout the county. And it has been effective and successful.

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TORONTO, ON, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Kontrol Technologies Corp. (CSE: KNR) (OTCQB: KNRLF) (FSE: 1K8) ("Kontrol Technologies" or "Kontrol" or "Company") is pleased to provide a corporate update.

"We continue to make progress towards our 2021 corporate goals," said Paul Ghezzi, CEO of Kontrol. "We have integrated our previously completed acquisition, New Found Air, added growth in our core business, entered new markets with BioCloud and improved our balance sheet."

Outlook



COVID-19 impacted operations in 2020 by making it difficult to access customer sites for the first six months of the year and the Company experienced a deferral of capital projects. In many cases customers have resumed or budgeted those projects for completion in 2021.

Based on the significant investments made in 2020 across our operating platform, and with current visibility the Company anticipates FY 2021 revenue of approximately $33 million to $35 million (compared to unaudited revenue of approximately $13 million for FY 2020) and FY 2021 Adjusted EBITDA in the range of $3.7 million (compared to unaudited Adjusted EBITDA of approximately $2.0 million for FY 2020).

The anticipated revenue mix is 70% from the Company's core business and 30% from BioCloud.

Adjusted EBITDA is a non-IRFS financial measure. The Company defines Adjusted EBITDA as net income or loss before interest, income taxes, amortization, and depreciation, share based compensation, and acquisition related expenses.

Please see Forward Looking Information Disclaimer.

Smart Buildings

Over the past year the global pandemic has changed the way in which commercial, multi-residential and industrial buildings are managed and maintained. More than ever, there is an emphasis on how to deploy technology to reduce operating costs, optimize energy savings and increase automation to reduce labor costs while advancing sustainability.

The ability to efficiently aggregate data in real-time and harness that data to drive measurable improvements in energy, emissions and air quality is what Kontrol offers its customers. How we deliver that is through building automation, a recurring service platform and software as a service.



BioCloud

To date the Company has invested approximately $4 million CAD in the development and commercialization of BioCloud with approximately 50% of that investment funding provided by Government sources.



The Company's progress to date includes (not in any order):

IRAP Funding from the National Research Council of Canada

of Moving from prototype to commercialization and production

Manufacturing improvements in design for scaling purposes

4 patents filed (3 USA and 1 Canada)

and 1 Canada) 14 distribution partners and 3 referral agreements spanning Canada , USA , Middle East , South Korea , Vietnam and China

, , , , and Additional distribution partners in various stages of negotiation

Funding from the Ontario Together Fund

Units deployed in the field spanning restaurant, sporting, long-term care and other applications

Various Non-Disclosure Agreements signed with potential partners and distributors

Distributors are not mandated to purchase BioCloud units but if they don't achieve their minimum annual targets, they will lose their preferred distributor pricing. Non-exclusive distribution partners have a typical minimum purchase of 250 units annually.

Balance Sheet

As of March 31, 2021, the Company's debt position has been reduced by approximately $4 million driven primarily by the conversion of the Company's convertible debt and debt repayment. As of March 31, 2021, approximately $795,000 remains in convertible debentures, which the Company anticipates will be converted in 2021.

In addition, the Company has settled certain vendor hold backs through equity issuance and cash payments.

Over the period from Q3 2020 to March 31, 2021, proceeds from options and warrants exercise of approximately $4.5 million were received.

Uplisting

The Company continues to work on its previously announced uplisting strategy (December 2020) and at the appropriate time will provide an update.

About Kontrol Technologies Corp.

Kontrol Technologies Corp., a Canadian public company, is a leader in smart buildings and cities through IoT, Cloud and SaaS technology. Kontrol Technologies provides a combination of software, hardware, and service solutions to its customers to improve energy management, air quality and continuous emission monitoring.

Additional information about Kontrol Technologies Corp. can be found on its website at www.kontrolcorp.com and by reviewing its profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com

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Neither IIROC nor any stock exchange or other securities regulatory authority accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Non-IFRS Financial Measures

The Company defines Adjusted EBITDA as net income or loss before interest, income taxes, amortization, and depreciation, share based compensation, and acquisition related expenses. The Company believes Adjusted EBITDA is a useful measure as it provides information to management about the operating and financial performance of the Company and its ability to generate operating cash flow to fund future working capital needs, as well as future growth. Adjusted EBITDA may also be used by investors and analysts for the purpose of valuing the Company. Readers are cautioned that these non-IFRS definitions are not recognized measures under IFRS, do not have standardized meanings prescribed by IFRS, and should not be construed to be alternatives to net earnings determined in accordance with IFRS or as indicators of performance, liquidity or cash flows.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. All statements contained herein that are not clearly historical in nature may constitute forward-looking information. In some cases, forward-looking information can be identified by words or phrases such as "may", "will", "expect", "likely", "should", "would", "plan", "anticipate", "intend", "potential", "proposed", "estimate", "believe" or the negative of these terms, or other similar words, expressions and grammatical variations thereof, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" happen, or by discussions of strategy.

Where the Company expresses or implies an expectation or belief as to future events or results, such expectation or belief is based on assumptions made in good faith and believed to have a reasonable basis. Such assumptions include, without limitation, that sufficient capital will be available to the Company and that technology will be as effective as anticipated.

However, forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors, which could cause actual results to differ materially from future results expressed, projected, or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such risks include, but are not limited to, that sufficient capital and financing cannot be obtained on reasonable terms, or at all, that technologies will not prove as effective as expected, that customers and potential customers will not be as accepting of the Company's product and service offering as expected, and government and regulatory factors impacting the energy conservation industry. Kontrol BioCloud is an air quality technology and not a medical device. The Company is not making any express or implied claims that its product has the ability to eliminate, cure or contain the COVID-19 (or SARS-2 Coronavirus).

Accordingly, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements and the forward-looking statements contained in this press release are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. The forward-looking statements contained herein are made as at the date hereof and are based on the beliefs, estimates, expectations, and opinions of management on such date. Kontrol does not undertake any obligation to update publicly or revise any such forward-looking statements or any forward-looking statements contained in any other documents whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise or to explain any material difference between subsequent actual events and such forward-looking information, except as required under applicable securities law. Readers are cautioned to consider these and other factors, uncertainties, and potential events carefully and not to put undue reliance on forward-looking information.

SOURCE Kontrol Technologies Corp.
A team of scientists from the University of California Santa Cruz, USA, recently identified a novel variant (B.1.x) of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) that might be circulating in at least 20 US states and six countries globally. The mutations found in this variant are also present in other known variants of concern (VOCs). Crucially, because of the presence of a large deletion mutation, the sequence of B.1.x has been rejected by automated sequence checking tools used in publicly available genomic sequence databases. The study is currently available on the bioRxiv* preprint server.

Background

Whole genome sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 is one of the conventional methods to track viral evolution. A continuous sequencing of the viral genome is particularly important to identify the mutations that have emerged under positive selection and play vital roles in improving viral fitness, such as increased transmissibility and evasion of host immunity. In other words, early detection of new viral variants through genome sequencing is essential for understanding strain-specific clinical characteristics and developing strain-specific diagnostics and therapeutic and prophylactic interventions.

In the later phase of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, several new SARS-CoV-2 variants have been identified, with some showing significantly higher transmissibility and immune-evasion ability. These variants are designated as Variants of concern (VOCs) because of their severe impact on public health responses. The presence of multiple spike mutations is the most common feature among various VOCs, including the UK variant (lineage: B.1.1.7), the south African variant (lineage: B.1.351), and the Brazilian variant (lineage: P.1).

In the current report, scientists have presented the SARS-CoV-2 genome sequencing data obtained from an ongoing study.

Study design

The scientists analyzed high-quality SARS-CoV-2 sequences obtained from 339 samples from Santa Cruz County of California. About 58% of these sequences were from the B.1.427 and B.1.429 lineages, which were initially identified in California. Moreover, two of the tested sequences were associated with the B.1.1.7 lineage (the UK variant).

Important observations

By conducting genome sequencing, the scientists identified a novel variant of SARS-CoV-2 in eight samples. Because of its association with the B.1 lineage, they temporarily named the variant B.1.x. With further analysis, they observed that the novel variant shares several mutations with the UK variant and other known VOCs. Specifically, the variant exhibited several spike mutations, including S494P, N501Y, D614G, P681H, K854N, and E1111K. Of these mutations, N501Y is known to increase binding affinity between spike receptor-binding domain (RBD) and angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2). Similarly, the D614G mutation, which was present in the globally dominant variant of SARS-CoV-2 in 2020, is known to increase viral infectivity. In addition, the B.1.x variant exhibited one nucleocapsid mutation (N:M234I), which is predicted to increase protein stability.

Regarding transmission dynamics of B.1.x, the scientists noticed a shape increase in frequency with time (<1% in January to >10% by mid-March). However, they failed to detect the variant in samples collected at the end of March. With further investigation, they observed that the increase in B.1.x frequency is primarily due to higher local transmission rather than multiple viral introduction events. Overall, these observations suggest that the number of cases with B.1.x may increase over time. By analyzing publicly available samples from different parts of the USA, they noticed that the variant is present in at least 20 states across the USA.

The phylogenetic distribution of 339 samples obtained from SARS-CoV-2 sequencing in Santa Cruz County plus 1000 samples from elsewhere. The tree is produced via the UShER web portal at hgPhyloPace ( https://genome.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin/hgPhyloPlace ). To produce it we added the 339 genomes from the Santa Cruz County samples to a global phylogeny of > 1 million SARS CoV-2 genomes and then pruned back to retain only the Santa Cruz genomes plus 1000 others selected at random. We visualized the tree using the Auspice.us platform. The 339 samples from Santa Cruz County are colored in red, with the eight samples representing B.1.x highlighted in gold, and the remaining 1000 samples are colored by Nextstrain clade. Note that clade sizes reflect both prevalence and local sampling effort and we have not attempted to correct for the effect of either.

Most interestingly, the scientists observed that the variant contains a 35bp deletion causing a frameshift and a premature stop codon in the open reading frame 8 (ORF8). These characteristics are also present in the B.1.1.7 lineage because of a nonsense mutation. Such similarities between B.1.x and B.1.1.7 variants suggest that inactivation of ORF8 may be associated with viral evolution.

While submitting the sequences to the publicly available databases, the scientists noticed that both the GISAID and GenBank initially rejected all 8 genomes of the B.1.x variant because of the large deletion mutation in ORF8. This indicates that the sequences belonging to the B.1.x lineage are mostly underreported by these databases because of the technical problems associated with automated sequence quality control tools. To overcome such submission errors, the scientists suggest the use of UShER program that rapidly places new sequences onto an existing phylogeny. This will allow the corroboration between closely related sequences with novel mutations during batch submissions or individual sequence submissions.

Study significance

The study identifies a novel SARS-CoV-2 variant that shares genomic similarities with other known VOCs, such as the B.1.1.7. Based on the study findings, the scientists urge for rapid surveillance in order to understand the exact transmission dynamics and clinical implications associated with the novel SARS-CoV-2 variant.

*Important Notice

bioRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 18:33:39|Editor: huaxia

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CANBERRA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has praised the resilience of the country's economy after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) upgraded its growth forecasts.

According to the latest IMF data, Australia's gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to grow by 4.5 percent in 2021. It marks a full percentage point increase from the 3.5 percent growth forecast by the IMF in January.

Frydenberg said the new projections marked a milestone in Australia's ongoing recovery from the pandemic.

He rejected the suggestion that Australia's delayed vaccine rollout has inhibited economic growth, saying it was important to distinguish the situation Australia finds itself in compared to the United States and Britain, "where the virus ran rampant and you can see that in the numbers."

"Australia's situation in terms of the virus is quite different to other nations, we've been able to successfully suppress the virus and we've had outbreaks and that's led to localised lockdowns and last year statewide lock downs," Frydenberg said.

The IMF projected that Australia's GDP would grow by 2.8 percent in 2022.

However, it warned that a high degree of uncertainty surrounds the projections.

"Much still depends on the race between the virus and vaccines," it said. Enditem
Mr Abdul-Rauf Alhassan, the Jirapa Municipal Director of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), has appealed to Parliament to expedite action on passing the Affirmative Action Bill into law.



He said passing the bill into law was a sure way of achieving increased women participation in decision making since it would become obligatory for the government to give equal opportunity for men and women to be able to participate effectively in decision making at all levels in the country.



Mr Alhassan was speaking during a capacity building workshop for the Equal Rights and Opportunities for Women and Girls Project (EROP) Support Team at Nadowli in the Nadowli-Kaleo District of the Upper West Region.



EROP is being implemented by GH Alliance, the African Centre for Human Rights and Sustainable Development (AfCHuRSD) and WOMEN IN NEED (WIN) with funding from the Dutch Embassy in Ghana.



The Jirapa Municipal Director of CHRAJ noted that ensuring equal opportunity for men and women in decision making would speed up development, adding that women have a lot of skills and potentials that could be tapped for nation-building and should therefore not be relegated to the bottom.



Madam Bernice Naah, the Executive Director of AfCHuRSD, said she was happy that the Speaker of Parliament, Mr Alban Bagbin, himself acknowledged that the Bill had been on the drawing board for far too long and that there was the need to do something about it.



She said per this, the Speaker recognised that women have a critical role to play in building the country, hence the need to pass the Bill into Law to give them equal opportunity to play their part.



She highlighted the need to build women capacity to better prepare them to avail themselves for leadership roles when the Bill was passed into law, hence the essence of the training being held for the EROP Support Team.







Source: BBC









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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You wouldnt get that sense from how Ms. Mason has been treated. After her voting conviction, a federal judge found she had violated the terms of her supervised release, and sentenced her to 10 extra months behind bars. That punishment, which she began serving in December 2018, earned her no credit toward her five-year state sentence.

Ms. Mason has continued to fight her case, but so far she has lost at every step. In March 2020, a three-judge panel on a state appellate court rejected her challenge to her sentence. The court reasoned that she broke the law simply by trying to vote while knowing she was on supervised release. It didnt matter whether she knew that Texas prohibits voting by people in that circumstance.

This appears to be a clear misapplication of Texas election law, which criminalizes voting only by people who actually know they are not eligible, not those who, like Ms. Mason, mistakenly believe that they are. Its as though Ms. Mason had asked a police officer what the local speed limit was, and he responded: Beats me. Why dont you start driving and see if we pull you over?

Last week, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the states highest court for criminal cases, agreed to rule on Ms. Masons appeal. Its her last chance to avoid prison for voting. Tossing her conviction would bring a small measure of justice to a woman whose punishment should have been limited to, at most, not being able to cast a ballot.

But it wouldnt give her back the last four years of fear and uncertainty she has endured for no good reason. Ms. Masons first grandchild was born a few months ago, another reminder of how much she would miss if she were to lose the appeal and end up back behind bars. This is very overwhelming, waking up every day knowing that prison is on the line, trying to maintain a smile on your face in front of your kids and you dont know the outcome, Ms. Mason told The Times in an interview. Your future is in someone elses hands because of a simple error.

Identifying errors like these is the whole point of offering provisional ballots: The crazy quilt of voting rules and regulations that Americans face from state to state can trip up even the best-informed voters, and honest mistakes are common. By prosecuting Ms. Mason, just one of more than 44,000 Texans whose provisional ballot in 2016 was found to be ineligible, the state is saying that you attempt to participate in democracy at your own risk.

That risk is almost always higher for people of color. Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, likes to brag about the 155 people his office has successfully prosecuted for election fraud in the last 16 years  an average of fewer than 10 per year. What he doesnt say out loud is what the A.C.L.U. of Texas found in an analysis of the cases he has prosecuted: almost three-quarters involved Black or Latino defendants, and nearly half involved women of color, like Ms. Mason.
WE WENT to Newport for three days last week, two Minnesotans long married, to rediscover the fact that ocean air is delicious and invigorating and can even make you happy. That surely is why the Vanderbilts built their monstrous mansion on the shore: sinking into decadence in a fake palace w
Games for Change Receives Stevens Initiative Funding for Program to Virtually Connect Young People Around the World





[This unedited press release is made available courtesy of Gamasutra and its partnership with notable game PR-related resource Games Press.]

Grantees will bring together thousands of young people from the United States and the Middle East and North Africa for an exciting opportunity to engage with global peers through virtual exchange. New York, April 7, 2021  Today, the Stevens Initiative announced its support of Game Exchange, implemented by Games for Change. Games for Change is one of 19 grantees to be named a 2021 Stevens Initiative grantee. People-to-people exchanges are critical to advancing global peace and understanding, said Matthew Lussenhop, Acting Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Through early adoption of virtual exchanges, the Stevens Initiative has elevated technology to foster collaboration between students in the United States and counterparts in the Middle East and North Africa. In addition to developing relationships with their peers abroad, virtual exchange allows young people to build empathy, develop leadership skills, and learn about new topics. While participants have different experiences depending on their virtual exchange program, all are impacted in ways both big and small, including changes in career trajectory, a new interest in different cultures, lifelong friendships, and more. Under the Stevens Initiative, Game Exchange implemented by Games for Change, is a virtual program for teens in the United States, Bahrain, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates; students from the four countries will join in creative dialogue and collaboration based on a shared interest in video games and game design. As society continues to become more connected, the ability to collaborate globally has become an essential skill, said G4C President Susanna Pollack. Through Game Exchange, we are fostering this using a universal medium understood and loved by youth worldwide-- video games With these new grantees, the Stevens Initiative has funded 83 grants. Through these programs, the Stevens Initiative will expand its reach to nearly 75,000 young people in 17 MENA countries and the Palestinian Territories, and in 47 U.S. states, Puerto Rico, one tribal community, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Washington, D.C. Other grants include: AURAKs Acknowledge  Challenge  Transform (ACT): Developing Empathetic Leadership prepares college-aged youth in the United States and Middle East with the knowledge and skills required to acknowledge and challenge various forms of biases through empathy.

AMIDEASTs Qisasna facilitates cross-cultural exchange between American and Yemeni students by providing participants with the skills needed to produce podcasts that focus on discussions of global issues, perceptions of both cultures, career opportunities for young people, and community service.

Culturinguas Global Social Entrepreneurship Journey joins high school students in San Antonio, Texas, and in Benghazi, Libya, to develop a social enterprise idea that solves a United Nations Sustainable Development Goal.

Empaticos Coding with Empathy Challenge, developed in partnership with Code.org, brings together middle school students from the United States and Egypt to collaborate on a series of empathy-building computer science and virtual exchange experiences.

Enactus Morocco and Enactus USs Entrepreneurial Exchange helps university students and young adults gain entrepreneurship fundamentals through a virtual course that culminates in ten cross-country, cross-culture teams competing in a project pitch competition.

Engineering World Healths Virtual Engineering Innovation & Cultural Exchange fosters an international collaboration between participants living in the United States, Lebanon, and Jordan with a focus on science, technology, math, and engineering (STEM).

Florida International Universitys Tabadul: Creating Language-Learning Community Through Virtual Reality brings together college-aged youth in the United States and in the Middle East and North Africa for language-learning and community building through virtual reality.

Global Ties U.S.s MENA-USA Empowering Resilient Girls Exchange (MERGE) brings together girls ages 15-19 from the United States and MENA region in a supportive virtual space to learn about their own mental health, develop emotional resilience skills, and share this knowledge with their communities.

Hashemite Universitys Research, Education, and Advocacy for Community Health (REACH) brings together college-aged youth in the United States and in the Middle East for online, face-to-face learning experiences.

The International Foundation for Training and Development and the Onslow County School Districts Youth for Sustainable Development Goals Virtual Exchange Program brings together and engages high school aged students, grades 9-12, to learn about the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), why they are important, and what these goals represent for students and their community.

The Institute of International Educations Harnessing Innovation through Virtual Exchange for Enhanced Results (HIVER) program develops intercultural communication and problem-solving skills among diverse students at participating U.S. and MENA universities.

LaGuardia Community Colleges Global Scholars Achieving Career Success (GSACS) is a collaborative multi-campus program that foregrounds UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and career readiness competencies in class-to-class virtual exchanges between students from the City University of New York and universities in the Middle East and North Africa.

PATHWAYS Institute for Negotiation Educations Game Changers in Education brings together undergraduate education students from the United States and Israel for real-time interactive joint learning and facilitated online exchange focused on developing and applying creative negotiation skills.

Seattle University School of Laws Transitional Justice Legal Exchange brings together Moroccan and American law students for a class on transitional justice and human rights co-taught by professors from one Moroccan and one American institution.

Soliyas Global Circles are short online dialogue opportunities, bringing together young people from various backgrounds and nationalities for a face-to-face exchange around compelling global issues that matter to youth today.

SUNY Upstate Medical University's Bridging Cultures to Defeat COVID-19 is a virtual health sciences education program that brings together American, Middle Eastern, and North African clinical and scientific trainees for collaborative scientific and medical education and for unique professional development and cultural exchange opportunities.

The New York Academy of Sciences Junior Academy is a virtual exchange program bringing together a passionate community of problem solvers made up of talented students, STEM experts, and organizations around the world dedicated to designing innovative solutions to global challenges.

WorldDenvers World Affairs Challenge is a virtual exchange program serving youth ages 14-17 in the state of Colorado and the MENA region through an online, mobile-accessible exchange in which bi-national student teams of six to ten participants learn and practice leadership development, cross-cultural communication, and project management. In our interconnected and diverse world, virtual exchange is a necessary tool that gives young people an appreciation for the world around them. The Stevens Initiative is proud to support these programs at a time when shared understanding and experiences among our next generation of leaders are more important than ever, said Christine Shiau, Managing Director, the Stevens Initiative at the Aspen Institute. The Stevens Initiative is an international effort to build global competence and career readiness skills for young people in the United States and the Middle East and North Africa by growing and enhancing the field of virtual exchange. Created in 2015 as a lasting tribute to Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, the Initiative is committed to helping to expand the virtual exchange field through three pillars of work: investing in promising programs, sharing knowledge and resources, and advocating for virtual exchange adoption. Since 2004, Games for Change (G4C) has empowered game creators and innovators to drive real-world change using games and immersive media. G4C partners with technology and gaming companies, nonprofits, foundations, and government agencies, to run world-class events, challenges, and youth programs. G4C supports a global community of game developers working on using games to tackle real-world challenges, from humanitarian conflicts to climate change and education. Game Exchange is supported by the Stevens Initiative, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, with funding provided by the U.S. Government, and is administered by the Aspen Institute. The Stevens Initiative is also supported by the Bezos Family Foundation and the governments of Morocco and the United Arab Emirates. More Information The U.S. Department of States Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) builds relations between the people of the United States and the people of other countries through academic, cultural, sports, professional and private exchanges, as well as public-private partnerships and mentoring programs. These exchange programs improve foreign relations and strengthen the national security of the United States, support U.S.international leadership, and provide a broad range of domestic benefits by helping break down barriers that often divide us. Visit eca.state.gov . The Aspen Institute is a global nonprofit organization committed to realizing a free, just, and equitable society. Founded in 1949, the Institute drives change through dialogue, leadership, and action to help solve the most important challenges facing the United States and the world. Headquartered in Washington, DC, the Institute has a campus in Aspen, Colorado, and an international network of partners. For more information, visit www.aspeninstitute.org . The Bezos Family Foundation supports rigorous, inspired learning environments for young people, from birth through high school, to put their education into action. Through investments in research, public awareness, systems building and programs, the foundation works to elevate the field of education and improve life outcomes for all children. The Kingdom of Morocco has held a longstanding commitment to the promotion of peace, mutual understanding and respect across all fora. In line with this commitment, the Government of the Kingdom of Morocco is a strong supporter of the Stevens Initiative and is proud to be included in its programs, which foster opportunities for cross-cultural exchanges between youth. The Embassy of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in Washington, D.C. is committed to promoting and increasing cross-cultural understanding and educational exchanges. In line with the UAE Governments values, the Embassy supports educational programming at schools and universities across the U.S. The Embassy works with U.S. institutions to provide unique opportunities for peer-to-peer exchanges and help broaden students horizons.
It won't take much for Vietnam to develop nuclear power

All it will take is VND1 million ($43) per person per year for Vietnam to get its entire power supply from nuclear plants.

Sebastien Eskenazi

Lately there has been a few articles about how Vietnam will feed its growing energy demand. And I usually feel sad for Vietnam when I read them because they support either coal and gas which pollute a lot or solar and windfarms which take a lot of space and need coal and gas to provide power when they dont work anyway.

Humans using too much space is actually the first environmental threat according to the WWF. And a good example of the need for coal and gas when you have too much solar or windfarms is Germany. In contrast France produces the majority of its electricity from nuclear power and emits a lot less CO2 per megawatt.hour than Germany.

A few years ago Vietnam considered building a nuclear power plant, but pulled the plug on it, deeming it too expensive.

However, a new generation of safer and cheaper nuclear power plants is available now. These are small modular reactors. Traditional reactors are very big, which made manufacture of their parts a complex task.

Going smaller makes it easy to manufacture and, since more reactors are needed for the same power output, it helps achieve economies of scale.

All new reactors must follow the latest design safety guidelines, which were improved based on lessons learnt from Fukushima.

It can keep operating safely for more than a week even if everything around it is destroyed.

A 300-MW plant will cost $700 million.

Lets do some math. The peak electricity power demand last summer was a record 39GW, equivalent to the capacity of 130 reactors.

A nuclear reactor has a lifespan of 50 years. So we should build them over a span of 50 years so that when the last one is built, the first one needs to be replaced. That means roughly three reactors at a cost of $2.1 billion a year.

Divide that by 90 million people and you get $23 per person per year, or roughly VND500,000.

Of course there are extra costs such as building local factories and buying energy storage systems since nuclear systems don't handle demand variations very well, and technology transfer is not free either.

So we can safely make an estimate of 1 million dong per person per year. Of course, not everyone can afford this sum, and so it should probably be obtained through more appropriate means like income tax.

The price is for plants built in western countries, and should be cheaper if the parts are built in Vietnam. As long as Vietnamese workers can deliver the quality, that is, and this is why technology transfer to train them properly is so important.

Cooling towers and high-tension electrical power lines are seen near the Golfech nuclear plant in France. Photo by Reuters.

Besides providing Vietnam with a carbon-free source of electricity, such a project would also enable it to build a nuclear industry, offer new training opportunities for its universities and jobs for its workers.

Finally this is not just about building the reactors: They also need to be operated, maintained and then decommissioned. This means even more work and business and training opportunities.

Of course, we should probably not buy all the reactors at once. We could split their construction into three phases: 40 reactors over 20 years, another 40 over the next 15 years and 50 in the last 15 years.

Considering the scale of the project, it will be necessary to set up factories and train people in Vietnam. That is why the first phase will be longer than the others and have fewer reactors built than the last.

Also, as energy demand grows in Vietnam, it may be necessary to build more reactors. Having three phases will allow us to add more reactors than planned in phases 2 and 3 if needed.

In the first phase, technology transfer could be about construction and operation of the plants. The second phase could be about waste management and facility decommissioning. In the final phase maybe more advanced topics such as design could be shared or there could be some sort of partnership.

Having several auction phases is also important to avoid being stuck with a single provider and to be able to benefit from future reactor improvements.

At the same time each phase should be large enough so that Vietnam can get a good financial deal.

In the end, 50 years from now, Vietnam could have its own nuclear engineering education and nuclear industry. Probably even research.

Some may say that Vietnam's reliance on coal is useful for its coal industry. The truth is that if by losing a low-skill, low-value industry, which is bound to decline, you can gain a high-value, high-skill industry with a future, it is probably a good trade.

So, who wants carbon-free, environment-friendly, reliable, and cheap electricity?

*Sebastien Eskenazi is a writer on environmental protection, a mechanical engineer and an AI scientist. The opinions expressed are his own.
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By Xinhua

In Ghana, coffins are not merely wooden boxes used to bury the deceased, but also pieces of artistic work with interesting design languages, a unique way for people to commemorate their departed.

In the bustling downtown Accra, capital of the West African country, a coffin workshop displays various wooden carved coffins in the shape of a bird, a hen, and even an apple eliciting the mood of an art exhibition . The coffins are designed to reflect the deceaseds profession before death. We believe that what you do in life, you have to continue in your afterlife, that is why we do it, said Lawrence Anang, a 22-year-old carpenter of the workshop. We may design coffin in the form of a book or pen for a deceased teacher, a driver would probably get a coffin in the shape of a truck, or maybe the car he drove before he passed away, while an apple could be for an apple seller or farmer, he added.

After completing high school, Lawrence opted to stay in the workshop to burnish his carpentry skills before proceeding to college . To design a coffin, we draw a pattern first, based on what you want to build, then we take measurements and cut the wood according to your desired design and shape it, said Lawrence. The work never bores me, said Lawrence, adding that from creative design to coffin painting, he is now capable of dealing with customized orders. Although it is somehow a pity that the delicately carved coffins will be buried underground very soon, Lawrence said they still want to do their best to make the coffins attractive to everyone in order to show respect to the family and the dead.

Around 70 years ago, Lawrences grandfather Seth set up the coffin workshop. He made the first coffin in the shape of an airplane for his late mother, who had a dream of flying in an airplane but never came true before she passed away. Lawrences father inherited the traditional family skill of coffin-making, and gradually established himself as one of the leading coffin-makers in Ghana.

Being the third generation of the family career, Lawrence and his brothers now aspire to make a difference by promoting Ghanaian coffin arts. The industry has evolved over the years as peoples demands for stylized coffins are on the rise, which has also attracted more carpenters to join in the lucrative business.

According to Lawrence, the workshop has now lured many foreign customers, who have gained interest in purchasing coffins for art exhibitions in museums abroad. I will make sure my children also get to know (the business), it is a very unique and nice thing to learn, said Lawrence, adding that he is confident that the traditional skill will be inherited from generation to generation.
WESTPORT, Conn., April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- HMG Strategy, the World's #1 digital platform for enabling technology executives to reimagine the enterprise and reshape the business world, is excited to be hosting the 2021 HMG Live! San Diego Technology Executive Leadership Summit on Thursday, April 8. HMG Strategys highly interactive digital events bring together the worlds most distinguished and innovative business technology leaders to discuss the most pressing leadership, strategic, cultural, technology and career challenges and opportunities that technology executives face today  and into the future.



The 2021 HMG Live! San Diego Technology Executive Leadership Summit will focus on successful approaches for technology executives to build trust with the C-suite, how to drive secure digital transformation, and effective ways to cultivate a trusting culture in a work-from-anywhere environment.

This past year has really taught leaders the importance of trust in a distributed workplace environment, said Hunter Muller, President and CEO of HMG Strategy. Weve truly relied on each other to come together in the face of uncertainty and apply those lessons as we enter the future of work.

As a centerpiece for the discussion thread on trust, HMG Strategy is also excited to have special guest speaker and bestselling author Stephen M.R. Covey share his insights on why a high-trust culture can operate with greater efficiency and at less cost along with recommendations for CIOs and technology executives to cultivate trust with the CEO, the Board and across the organization.

Prominent technology executives speaking at the 2021 HMG Live! San Diego Technology Executive Leadership Summit include:

Sandeep Bose , Unit CIO, Credit & Fraud Risk, American Express

, Unit CIO, Credit & Fraud Risk, American Express Phil Bullinger , CEO, Infinidat

, CEO, Infinidat Dr. Max Butterfield , Professor of Psychology, Point Loma Nazarene University

, Professor of Psychology, Point Loma Nazarene University Doug Cyphers , Vice President, SIM San Diego; VP IT, WD-40 Company

, Vice President, SIM San Diego; VP IT, WD-40 Company Ursuline Foley , Board Member & Strategic Advisor, Board Member, DOCOsoft, Provident Financial Services

, Board Member & Strategic Advisor, Board Member, DOCOsoft, Provident Financial Services Misti Fragen , VP, Learning, Research & Culture, Novant Health

, VP, Learning, Research & Culture, Novant Health Erica Hausheer , SVP, CIO, Teradata Corporation

, SVP, CIO, Teradata Corporation Jason JJ James , CIO, Net Health

, CIO, Net Health Pam Kubiatowski , Sr. Director of Digital Transformation, Zscaler

, Sr. Director of Digital Transformation, Zscaler Martin Leach , VP, R&D IT, Global Quality IT, Human Experience IT, Alexion Pharmaceuticals

, VP, R&D IT, Global Quality IT, Human Experience IT, Alexion Pharmaceuticals Abe Lietz , SVP & CIO, KinderCare Education

, SVP & CIO, KinderCare Education Barb Munro , Co-Founder and Membership Chair, SIM San Diego; Co-Founder, Partner, The Carrera Agency

, Co-Founder and Membership Chair, SIM San Diego; Co-Founder, Partner, The Carrera Agency Steve Phillpott , President, SIM San Diego; CIO, Illumina

, President, SIM San Diego; CIO, Illumina Dr. Paul Randolph , Director, Employee Assistance Programs, Scripps Health

, Director, Employee Assistance Programs, Scripps Health Dr. Anne W. Rimoin , Professor, Department of Epidemiology, UCLA School of Public Health

, Professor, Department of Epidemiology, UCLA School of Public Health Jim Swanson , EVP and Enterprise CIO, Johnson & Johnson

, EVP and Enterprise CIO, Johnson & Johnson Jennifer Wesson Greenman, Chief Information Officer, Cancer Treatment Centers of America Global



Valued partners for the 2021 HMG Live! San Diego Technology Executive Leadership Summit on April 8 will include Auth0, Cohesity, Darktrace, Forescout Technologies, Globant, Horizon3.ai, Illumio, Ivanti, PagerDuty, RingCentral, SafeGuard Cyber, SIM San Diego, Sonatype, and Zscaler.

To learn more about 2021 HMG Live! San Diego Technology Executive Leadership Summit and to register for the event and qualify for a Fitbit Sense, click here.

HMG Strategy will be hosting its 2021 HMG Live! Global Women in Technology Summit on April 13. This event brings together the top female technology executives from around the world to explore the topics that are most important to them. Topics to be discussed at this event will include how men in leadership roles can be more meaningful allies for women in the workplace, how women leaders can help to reimagine the business and lead the organization into a bright future, and how to foster an inclusive, high performing culture.

Prominent technology executives speaking at this event include:

Charlotte Baldwin , Chief Digital and Technology Officer, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer

, Chief Digital and Technology Officer, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer Mignona Cote , Global Specialty Head, Security, Risk, and Compliance, Amazon Web Services

, Global Specialty Head, Security, Risk, and Compliance, Amazon Web Services Ann Dozier , SVP, Chief Information Officer, Southern Glazers Wine & Spirits

, SVP, Chief Information Officer, Southern Glazers Wine & Spirits Nicole Eagan , Chief Strategy Officer and AI Officer, Darktrace

, Chief Strategy Officer and AI Officer, Darktrace Cindy Finkelman , Former CIO, FactSet Research Systems

, Former CIO, FactSet Research Systems Hala Furst , Cybersecurity and Technology Business Liaison, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

, Cybersecurity and Technology Business Liaison, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Sally Grant , Vice President, Lucd AI

, Vice President, Lucd AI Meredith Harper , VP, CISO, Eli Lilly and Company

, VP, CISO, Eli Lilly and Company Jennifer Hartsock , Vice President & CIO, Baker Hughes

, Vice President & CIO, Baker Hughes Liane Hornsey , Chief People Officer, Palo Alto Networks

, Chief People Officer, Palo Alto Networks Rashmi Kumar , Chief Information Officer, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

, Chief Information Officer, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Lo Li , SVP, Global Consumer Solutions, Equifax

, SVP, Global Consumer Solutions, Equifax Lesley Ma , CIO and Chief Continuous Improvement Officer, NSF International

, CIO and Chief Continuous Improvement Officer, NSF International Latha Maripuri , CISO, Uber

, CISO, Uber Deb Muro , CIO, RN, CHCIO, El Camino Health

, CIO, RN, CHCIO, El Camino Health Lynne Oldham , Chief People Officer, Zoom

, Chief People Officer, Zoom Wendy M. Pfeiffer , CIO, Nutanix

, CIO, Nutanix Bernadette Rotolo , Senior Vice President, Head of Global Systems, Warner Music Group

, Senior Vice President, Head of Global Systems, Warner Music Group Janet Sherlock , Chief Information Officer, Ralph Lauren Corporation

, Chief Information Officer, Ralph Lauren Corporation Kimberly Stevenson , SV & GM Foundational Data Services, NetApp

, SV & GM Foundational Data Services, NetApp Mark Stewart , Chief Operating Officer, Stellantis

, Chief Operating Officer, Stellantis Blanca Trevino , President and CEO, Softtek

, President and CEO, Softtek Melissa Vice , Chief Operating Officer, Vulnerability Disclosure Program, DoD Cyber Crimes Center

, Chief Operating Officer, Vulnerability Disclosure Program, DoD Cyber Crimes Center Sigal Zarmi, International CIO & Global Head of Technology Transformation, Morgan Stanley

Valued partners for the 2021 HMG Live! Global Women in Technology Summit on April 13 will include Auth0, CIOReview, Darktrace, Forescout Technologies, Globant, Horizon3.ai, Illumio, Ivanti, PagerDuty, Palo Alto Networks, RingCentral, SafeGuard Cyber, Softtek, Sonatype, and Zoom.

To learn more about 2021 HMG Live! Global Women in Technology Summit and to register for the event, click here.

HMG Strategy will also be hosting its 2021 HMG Live! St. Louis CIO Executive Leadership Summit on April 20. Topics to be discussed at this event will include fostering an inclusive culture that works for all employees, protecting the enterprise from cyber threats and how to approach the topic with the C-suite, and technologies that tech leaders are leaning on to drive success for their companies.

Prominent technology executives speaking at this event include:

Adrian Butler , CIO, Casey's General Stores

, CIO, Casey's General Stores Stephen M. R. Covey , Global Authority on Trust, Leadership and Culture, The FranklinCovey Global Speed of Trust Practice

, Global Authority on Trust, Leadership and Culture, The FranklinCovey Global Speed of Trust Practice Adam Fletcher , CISO, Blackstone

, CISO, Blackstone Paris Forest , Sr. Director IT, Boeing, The Boeing Company

, Sr. Director IT, Boeing, The Boeing Company Peter Hogan , CTO, Post Holdings

, CTO, Post Holdings Jennifer Hopper , CIO, Save A Lot

, CIO, Save A Lot Kristin Johnson , CHRO, Edward Jones

, CHRO, Edward Jones Dilip Krishna , Managing Director, Deloitte & Touche LLP

, Managing Director, Deloitte & Touche LLP Shavon Lindley , CEO, ion Learning

, CEO, ion Learning Matthew Modica , VP & CISO, BJC Healthcare

, VP & CISO, BJC Healthcare Karl Mudra , CIO, Delta Dental of Missouri

, CIO, Delta Dental of Missouri Lisa Nichols , CEO, Technology Partners

, CEO, Technology Partners Lamont Orange , CISO, Netskope

, CISO, Netskope Sherry Ryan , VP, CISO, Juniper Networks

, VP, CISO, Juniper Networks Bob Schukai , Executive Vice President, Technology Development, Fintech & New Infrastructure, Mastercard

, Executive Vice President, Technology Development, Fintech & New Infrastructure, Mastercard Jason Smith , CIO, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis

, CIO, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis Kristine Swan , VP of IT Business Partnering - Digital Farming, Bayer Crop Science

, VP of IT Business Partnering - Digital Farming, Bayer Crop Science Christine Miller Way , Director, Client Experience Channel, Edward Jones

, Director, Client Experience Channel, Edward Jones Jose Zeilstra, CEO, Gender Fair



Valued partners for the 2021 HMG Live! St. Louis CIO Executive Leadership Summit on April 20 will include Auth0, Darktrace, Forescout Technologies, Globant, Horizon3.ai, Illumio, Ivanti, NPower, PagerDuty, RingCentral, SafeGuard Cyber, Sonatype, Technology Partners, and Zscaler.

To learn more about 2021 HMG Live! St. Louis CIO Executive Leadership Summit and to register for the event, click here.

Additionally, HMG Strategy will be hosting its 2021 HMG Live! Bay Area CIO Executive Leadership Summit on April 22. Topics to be discussed at this event will include leading authentically and guiding the path to a brighter future, creating and executing a winning IT strategy, and recommendations from tech leaders on how to cultivate a high-performing culture.

Prominent technology executives speaking at this event include:

Selim Aissi , SVP & CISO, Ellie Mae

, SVP & CISO, Ellie Mae Ashwin Ballal, Ph.D. , SVP & CIO, Medallia

, SVP & CIO, Medallia Martin Bally , CISO, Stellantis

, CISO, Stellantis Andrew Bray , VP, Global IT, Dialog Semiconductor

, VP, Global IT, Dialog Semiconductor Stephen M. R. Covey , Global Authority on Trust, Leadership and Culture, The FranklinCovey Global Speed of Trust Practice

, Global Authority on Trust, Leadership and Culture, The FranklinCovey Global Speed of Trust Practice Tom Cullen , CIO, JUUL Labs

, CIO, JUUL Labs Beth Devin , Strategic Consultant & Advisor, HearstLab, Hearst Corporation

, Strategic Consultant & Advisor, HearstLab, Hearst Corporation Stuart Evans , Director of the Emirates, Carnegie Mellon University i-Lab

, Director of the Emirates, Carnegie Mellon University i-Lab Kostas Georgakopoulos , Global CTO & CISO, Mondelez International

, Global CTO & CISO, Mondelez International Jack Hamm , CISO, Gigamon

, CISO, Gigamon Sineesh Keshav , CTO, ProLogis

, CTO, ProLogis Michael LaVallee , Managing Partner, Jobplex

, Managing Partner, Jobplex Thomas Rodden , CIO, Varian Medical Systems

, CIO, Varian Medical Systems Trevor Schulze , SVP & CIO, RingCentral

, SVP & CIO, RingCentral Kimberly Stevenson , SV & GM Foundational Data Services, NetApp

, SV & GM Foundational Data Services, NetApp Mallik Tatipamula , CTO, Group Function Technologies & Architectures, Ericsson

, CTO, Group Function Technologies & Architectures, Ericsson Sylvie Veilleux , CIO, Dropbox

, CIO, Dropbox Jennifer Wesson Greenman , Chief Information Officer, Cancer Treatment Centers of America Global

, Chief Information Officer, Cancer Treatment Centers of America Global Laura Whitt-Winyard, Global CISO, DLL Group



Valued partners for the 2021 HMG Live! Bay Area CIO Executive Leadership Summit on April 22 will include Auth0, Darktrace, Forescout Technologies, Gigamon, Globant, Horizon3.ai, Illumio, Ivanti, Onapsis, PagerDuty, Palo Alto Networks, RingCentral, SafeGuard Cyber, Sonatype, and Zscaler.

To learn more about 2021 HMG Live! Bay Area CIO Executive Leadership Summit and to register for the event, click here.

To learn about HMG Strategys upcoming CIO & CISO Summits, click here.

UPCOMING WEBINARS & DIGITAL ROUNDTABLES

HMG Strategy has also received exceptional interest in its webinars through the strength of the 400,000+ technology executives in its community and the quality of the content it delivers. HMG Strategy has scheduled multiple 30-to-60-minute webinars over the next few months with an arsenal of innovative technology companies such as Azul, Citrix, Darktrace, HCL Technologies, Illumio, Ivanti, Moveworks, Nutanix, Okta, OutSystems, PagerDuty, RangeForce, RingCentral, SafeGuard Cyber, UiPath, Zoom, Zscaler, and Zylo.

HMG Strategy will host a digital roundtable powered by Zylo on April 14th entitled Are You Truly Optimizing Your Organizations SaaS Spend? In this interactive roundtable discussion, Zylo Co-Founder and CEO Eric Christopher, Dutt Kalluri, SVP of Global Technology at Broadridge, and top CIOs and technology executives will discuss effective strategies to optimize SaaS investments by improving adoption and utilization of the applications that are in use. Well also examine successful approaches to monitor and track SaaS applications that employees are using along with best practices to empower employees to access approved SaaS applications.

To learn more about this roundtable and to register for the event, click here.

On April 20th, HMG Strategy will host a webinar powered by Illumio entitled Ransomware and Your Remote Workforce: Extending Zero Trust to the Endpoint. In this webinar, which features Katey Wood, Director, Security and Compliance Product Marketing at Illumio, well explore how well businesses are protecting their remote workforces against Ryuk and other ransomware  and how companies will be positioned to address these threats once employees begin returning to the office.

To learn more about this webinar and to register for this event, click here.

On April 21, HMG Strategy will be hosting a digital roundtable powered by Nutanix entitled How Financially Smart is Your Hybrid Cloud Strategy? In this interactive roundtable discussion with CIOs and technology executives, Tim McCallum, Director of Customer Success Finance at Nutanix, and Dara Meath, Divisional CIO and Head of Digital at Conair, will share the business benefits that companies realize from using hybrid cloud environments, including the ability to pivot quickly to address speed-to-market requirements  along with how a hybrid cloud environment can deliver CAPEX savings.

To learn more about this roundtable and to register for the event, click here.

On April 27th, HMG Strategy will be hosting a webinar powered by Azul Systems on Rationalizing Your Organizations Java TCO. In this event, which features Simon Ritter, Deputy CTO at Azul Systems, well explore the ramifications of price hikes for Java support, techniques for organizations to dramatically lower their Java licensing and support costs along with the security requirements for transitioning to a more cost-effective approach.

To learn more about this webinar and to register for the event, click here.

To learn more about HMG Strategys distinctive executive roundtables and webinars, click here.

ABOUT HMG Strategy

HMG Strategy is the world's leading digital platform for connecting technology executives to reimagine the enterprise and reshape the business world. Our regional and virtual CIO and CISO Executive Leadership Series, authored books and Digital Resource Center deliver unique, peer-driven research from CIOs, CISOs, CTOs and technology executives on leadership, innovation, transformation and career ascent. HMG Strategy also produces the HMG Security Innovation Accelerator Panel, a new webinar series thats designed to connect enterprise CISOs and security leaders with the most innovative cybersecurity companies from across the world.

The HMG Strategy global network consists of over 400,000 senior IT executives, industry experts and world-class thought leaders.

To learn more about the 7 Pillars of Trust for HMG Strategy's unique business model, click here.

Tom Hoffman

203-221-2702

TomHoffman@hmgstrategy.com

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/47988300-143e-4c24-a422-704e73c2f79e




Ukraine can count on two tranches of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) due to a longer negotiation process, Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Kyrylo Shevchenko has said.

"The main assumption of our macroeconomic forecast remains the continuation of cooperation with the IMF. Given the longer course of negotiations, we can focus on two tranches," Shevchenko said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

Early February this year, the governor of the National Bank announced the possibility of Ukraine receiving three tranches.

He expressed the hope that the Verkhovna Rada, having returned to its usual mode of operation, will adopt all the laws necessary to continue cooperation with the IMF.

"Now, even in the case of a decrease in volumes [although I am not ready to talk about volumes], there is nothing threatening. These funds can be replaced by the placement of eurobonds. We all know that the IMF is primarily not about money, but about trust in the country. This is a powerful signal to investors," the governor of the central bank said.

At the same time, he said that his institution would not finance the state budget deficit in the absence of funding.

"There was already last year, when there was a lot of speculation on this topic. I can only quote again my favorite article of the NBU Law No. 54: "The National Bank does not finance the state budget deficit." Neither the NBU, nor I plan to deviate from this point," Shevchenko said.
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Britain's drug regulator must urgently finish its review into the link between AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine and a rare brain blood clot, MPs insisted today amid fears the inoculation roll-out could be thrown into crisis if the jab is banned for younger adults.

Health watchdogs are probing the link between the jab  the main weapon in the UK's Covid-fighting arsenal  and a rare complication called CVST, which can lead to a stroke.

European medical regulators will announce the conclusions of their investigation at 3pm, with Germany having already temporarily banned the vaccine for under-60s and France making the same controversial move for under-55s.

But the MHRA, which polices the safety of all vaccines in Britain, has yet to offer any updated guidance. Sources claim the agency could stop under-30s from getting the jab.

Former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who is the current chair of the Health Select Committee, today said there is 'urgency' over the MHRA review.

Number 10's scientific advisers have already hinted that supplies of Moderna's jab could be reserved for younger people, if the MHRA pressed ahead with a German-style ban. Professor Adam Finn, of the joint committee on vaccination and immunisation (JCVI), said the fears were being taken 'very seriously' and the UK is 'walking a tightrope here between the need for speed but also the need for clarity'.

Another JCVI member today said vaccinations for under-50s should be paused while the regulator investigates the risk of blood clotting.

Dr Maggie Wearmouth opened the possibility to 'slowing things down' until Britain's home-grown shot is branded completely safe. She said: 'The issue is about safety and public confidence. We don't want to cover anything up that we feel that the public should be knowing.'

Last night Oxford University halted trials of its coronavirus vaccine in children until the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) concluded on its safety in younger people, with formal advice expected in as early as today.

Scientists stress cases of CVST  the medical term for the complication  are extremely rare and have only been spotted in 30 recipients of AstraZeneca's vaccine in Britain out of a total 18million. This equates to around one in 600,000 people. But experts say it may be more common in young women, who are known to be most at risk of the clots.

More than 31.6million adults have now received their first dose, putting Number 10 on course to meet its target of offering a vaccine to all over-50s by April 15.

However, the Government has not factored in a potential ban on using AstraZeneca's vaccine in the next phase of the roll-out. The jab is currently the main weapon in the country's arsenal, with Pfizer's supply being rationed for top-ups.

Moderna's vaccine was deployed for the first time in Britain today but ministers have only bought 17million doses  enough for 8.5million people. Leaked supply projections suggest No10 anticipated it would get around 160,000 doses every week next month, leaving serious questions about whether the UK will be able to make a dent in the next phase of the roll-out.

It could leave the UK in a mad scramble to reach the goal of offering every eligible adult a jab by the end of July.

It comes as:

A 24-year-old carer today became the first person in Britain to get Modernas coronavirus vaccine as the roll-out was expanded in Wales  but England will have to wait another fortnight to use the jab;

The SNP could save Boris Johnson from a growing Tory revolt over domestic vaccine passports as Labour hardened its opposition to the documents;

No10 refuses to rule out needing proof of jabs to enter non-essential shops, leading to fears you'll need vaccine passport to buy clothes;

Boris promises to make it 'as easy as possible' for families to travel abroad this summer, with 5 on-the-spot Covid tests set to be allowed instead of gold-standard 100 PCR swabs;

Lockdown easing could be sped up because vaccines are working, says the scientists who correctly forecast second wave - as SAGE doomsday predictions are criticised for being 'too pessimistic';

Britain's daily Covid deaths fall by two-thirds in a week with 20 new victims - while cases plunge by 40% to 2,379;

One in three Covid survivors are diagnosed with anxiety, depression or other mental health issues within six months of recovering, major study finds;

Generation of home-schooled children lacked 'discipline and order' in lockdown says Gavin Williamson as he backs mobile phone ban in schools.

People are still being encouraged to have the AstraZeneca jab and yesterday Boris Johnson (pictured exercising today) said it was 'very very important' the public go for their inoculations

More than 31million Britons have received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine in the UK

The risk of dying from Covid-19 is significantly higher than the rate of CSVT blood clots, which haven't even been definitively linked to the vaccines (Based on fatality estimates from Cambridge University and CSVT occurrences in Germany)

Today Mr Hunt told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'I think there is urgency. I think the one thing you can't say about the MHRA is that they act slowly  they have been very, very fast and fleet of foot throughout this pandemic.

'But I think people do understand that this is a new virus, these are new vaccines, there is no medicine that is 100 per cent safe, and that's why you have to look at these very difficult balances of risk.'

Asked if the MHRA would come to a fair and balanced decision, he said: 'I think the regulator has got a lot of credit in the bank because what authorities need in a pandemic is to act fast and also to maintain trust and the MHRA which is our independent regulator was the first regulator in the world to approve a vaccine for Covid and in terms of trust they made that big call in January to space out the doses which has saved thousands of lives.

Adam Finn, a professor of paediatrics at the University of Bristol and who also sits on the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), said concerns over the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab are being taken 'very seriously' and 'very thoroughly' investigated

'So I think people will listen to their advice when it happens today or tomorrow and I think they will be sensibly British and keep calm and carry on and follow that advice.

'There may or may not be a causal link but even then it is the balance of risk and what we know is that the risk of Covid killing you is much higher for older people and it looks like the risk of this type of blood clot is also lower for older people.

Dont panic on Oxford jab: String of experts urge people to keep risks in proportion, as reassurance operation begins Experts have today rushed to defend the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, with one expert saying aspirin is probably more dangerous, as the MHRA investigates claims it is linked to a rare brain blood clot. Sage adviser Calum Semple, professor of child health at the University of Liverpool, urged people to continue accepting the AstraZeneca jab. Speaking to LBC radio this morning, he said: 'I'll take myself, I'm 53, my risk of death from Covid is about one in 13,000, for me it's a no-brainer, I need to have the vaccine.' He later added: 'This vaccine is safe. What do I mean by safe? You can look right, look left, look right again cross a road, it's safe to cross because you don't see any cars (but) you can trip, you can stumble. 'Nothing is risk-free, but is the vaccine safe? I would say yes.' Asked whether patients concerned about blood clotting should take an aspirin to thin their blood, Professor Semple said: 'Taking an aspirin is probably more dangerous [than taking the vaccine]. If you take an aspirin, some people are in danger of having a stomach ulcer. 'That's the thing. Nothing risk free.' His call to optimism was echoed by Ravi Gupta, professor of clinical microbiology at the Cambridge Institute for Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Diseases. Professor Gupta today told Sky News the vaccination programme should continue until more is known on blood clots and the AstraZeneca vaccine. He said people in their '20s, 30s, 40s and 50s' are at risk of severe Covid 'and there is an argument for vaccination to continue in those individuals because the rate of this blood clot disorder is extremely low, although slightly elevated against background levels'. And Professor Sir Kent Woods, the former chief executive of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), told LBC radio he has 'no reservations' about the AstraZeneca vaccine. He said: 'The risks of Covid are much higher. 'The reason it is so difficult to be certain whether or not there is a cause-and-effect relationship, even in younger people, between the vaccine and these thrombotic events, these clotting events, is that there are such clotting events occurring in the background anyway. 'It's not an unknown event.' He added: 'Covid itself - the infection itself  is known to be associated with a substantial increased risk of blood clots of various kinds. 'At a time when the population has got lots of Covid going around, it's very difficult to know what the actual background rate of these clotting events is without the vaccine. 'We can say I think, that if there is a connection, it's a very, very rare one and this is why I am not concerned about the fact that relatives of mine have had the AstraZeneca vaccine in their 40s.' Advertisement

'So that risk profile may change depending on age but there is tremendous public confidence in the vaccine programme.

'People can see that because we have done it faster than anywhere else in Europe, our seven day death rate is down to 30 a day compared to nine times that in France, so I think people understand that the vaccine programme is saving lives but they also understand that advice changes as we get to learn more about these vaccines and so I think they will listen very carefully to the advice and follow it.'

European Medicines Agency (EMA) bosses will address the mounting fears in a 3pm briefing today. Regulators last month insisted there was no evidence to justify banning the jab for younger people.

Addressing Britain's next steps in the roll-out, Dr Wearmouth warned ministers threatened fracturing public trust if they pressed ahead with the next stage of the roll-out without being in full command of the evidence. 'We don't want people to lose confidence and the vaccine to stay in fridges,' she told the Telegraph. 'But we don't want people to feel they have been falsely reassured either.'

Dr Wearmouth said the JCVI has drafted its recommendations for the second stage of the roll-out for those aged 18-49, but said this could now be revised before being submitted to Health Secretary Matt Hancock.

Other leading experts today leapt to defend the AstraZeneca vaccine  which is the mainstay of the UK's roll-out.

Former chief executive of the MHRA, Sir Kent Woods, said he has 'no reservations' about the jab because the risks of Covid are 'much higher'. SAGE adviser Professor Calum Semple said he is 'not worried one little bit' about the fears and that it was a 'no-brainer' that he, as a 53-year-old, should get the jab.

One Cambridge scientist downplayed calls to pause the roll-out, saying he would 'certainly come forward for that vaccine at the moment'.

Last night it was revealed Oxford University had paused its vaccine trial on children amid concerns around blood clotting.

The university said the decision to pause its trial was precautionary and that there were no health issues among any of the youngsters involved.

The university began studying the vaccine in five-to-17-year-olds in February, with the aim of eventually scaling up the trial and testing it in 200 people.

Researchers have stopped recruiting new volunteers and it is not clear how many children have already been given a dose.

Oxford is waiting for more information from the UK's regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, before restarting the study.

Britain's study of AstraZeneca's vaccine on children was also going to give 200 youngsters a placebo. An AstraZeneca spokesman told the WSJ the company was awaiting the outcomes of the regulatory reviews and declined to comment further.

Dr Adam Finn, a professor of paediatrics at the University of Bristol, sounded a note of caution and made clear 'we do need to get to the bottom of this'.

This morning he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that concerns over the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab are being taken 'very seriously' and 'very thoroughly' investigated.

He said: 'What stands out about them is that we see thrombosis, including thrombosis in the cerebral veins, all the time, but we don't normally see them in association with a low platelet count  which is a small blood cell which is involved in blood clotting  and so that makes them stand out and makes us think that this is something a little bit different and out of the norm.'

Dr Finn said this meant they wanted to understand why this was being caused and whether it is linked to the vaccine.

Told there had been 30 cases of this kind of blood clot and seven deaths amid more than 18 million people receiving the jab, Mr Finn said it 'could potentially' affect the rollout of the vaccine.

He said: 'Those figures quoted were up until March 24 and I think we'll hear shortly what's happened subsequent to that in terms of numbers of cases, but we can expect there will have been more in the interim.'

Asked if different vaccines could end up being reserved for certain groups as more vaccines come on stream, owing to fears over blood clots in younger people, he told BBC Breakfast: 'That's certainly possible.

'We are seeing another vaccine coming in [Moderna] and further vaccines are approaching licensure, and I know that the UK has made contracts for quite a wide range of different vaccines.

WHICH COUNTRIES HAVE SUSPENDED THE ASTRAZENECA VACCINE? NOT BANNED United Kingdom

Austria

Bulgaria

Cyprus

Estonia

Ireland

Italy

Luxembourg

Portugal

Romania

Spain

Slovenia BANNED FOR UNDER 55s France BANNED FOR UNDER-60s Germany BANNED FOR UNDER-65s Finland

Lithuania

Sweden BANNED FOR UNDER-70s Iceland BANNED FOR ALL AGES Denmark

Holland

Latvia

Norway Advertisement

'As time goes forward we will have much more flexibility about who can be offered what.

'On the other hand, we do need to keep the programme going if the plan to open things up and allow things to get back to normal is to proceed without another wave of the pandemic coming through.

'So it's quite a tricky balancing act here, getting the balance right, getting vaccines coming through... getting the risk-benefit right for people coming forward.'

He urged people being offered the vaccine at the moment to take it, saying the 'risk-benefit is very strongly in favour of receiving the vaccine'.

Dr Finn said people could expect more information from regulators within 24 hours.

Yesterday, he told BBC Newsnight: 'We are walking a tightrope here between the need for speed but also the need for clarity and scientific certainty about what's going on and of course the public wants to know, so very important issues that need to be addressed urgently.'

The Prime Minister, who has himself had the AstraZeneca vaccine, yesterday called on the nation to get their jab during a visit to the Anglo-Swedish plant in Macclesfield.

He said the 'best thing' people can do is 'look at what the MHRA say', adding: 'Their advice to people is to keep going out there, get your jab, get your second jab.'

Sage adviser Professor Calum Semple echoed the PM's clarion call and urged people to continue accepting the AstraZeneca jab.

Speaking to LBC radio this morning, he said: 'I'll take myself, I'm 53, my risk of death from Covid is about one in 13,000, for me it's a no-brainer, I need to have the vaccine.'

He later added: 'This vaccine is safe. What do I mean by safe? You can look right, look left, look right again cross a road, it's safe to cross because you don't see any cars (but) you can trip, you can stumble.

'Nothing is risk-free, but is the vaccine safe? I would say yes.'

And yesterday he told Channel 4 News: 'This has been done out of exceptional caution and the big story still is that for a middle-aged, slightly overweight man, such as myself, my risk of death is one in 13,000 - the risk of this rare clot, which might not even be associated with the vaccine, is probably one in a million.

'So I'm still going to say it's better to get the vaccine than not get the vaccine and we can pause and take time to carefully consider the value for children because they're not at risk of death from Covid.'

He added: 'If you've been called for the vaccine then you're in an age group that is very likely to benefit from the vaccine. So the bottom line is if you've been called for the vaccine I would urge you to take the vaccine.'

At least 10 countries in Europe, joined by Germany last night, have put some kind of restriction on the use of AstraZeneca's jab, mostly opting to give it only to over-60s because the CSVT cases seem to be happening in younger adults

Professor Sir Kent Woods, the former chief executive of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), told LBC radio he has 'no reservations' about the AstraZeneca vaccine.

He said: 'The risks of Covid are much higher.

DOES THE ASTRAZENECA VACCINE CAUSE BLOOD CLOTS? WHY ARE HEALTH CHIEFS SCARED? DOES THE ASTRAZENECA JAB CAUSE BLOOD CLOTS? Scientists insist there is no proof yet that AstraZenecas coronavirus vaccine causes blood clots in the brain, known as CVST. But officials cant rule out the link completely  with scientists suggesting it could be triggered by the jab triggering the immune system to attack its own platelets - small cells the body uses to clot wounds. SO WHY ARE HEALTH CHIEFS SCARED? Germany spotted one in 90,000 cases  and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said it was occurring at a rate of 1 in 100,000 in under-60s and that rates were slightly higher than expected But Britain spotted only one in 600,000  based on 30 cases out of 18.1million doses up until March 24. IS IT REALLY OCCURING MORE THAN AVERAGE? Scientists say evidence is shifting and that a link is becoming clear, in words of the EMA's vaccines chief yesterday. But critics say it is incredibly hard to disentangle the risk because CVST is also more common in young women  blurring the lines between which cases may have been sparked by the jabs and which would have happened anyway. WHICH COUNTRIES HAVE ALREADY RESTRICTED THE JAB TO OLDER PEOPLE? Germany last week temporarily banned the AstraZeneca vaccine for under-60s, while France took the same controversial move for under-55s. Iceland has restricted it to over-70s, while Finland, Sweden and Lithuania all say it can only be given to adults over the age of 65. Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Latvia have all suspended the jab completely, while regulators probe the link further. WILL BRITAIN FOLLOW SUIT? The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), which polices the safety of vaccines in the UK, could stop under-30s from getting the jab. Sources told Channel 4 news that regulators were likely to press ahead with a German-style age-restricted ban. But Government insiders told the Daily Telegraph that they were unlikely to impose any age-based ban. The MHRA has yet to offer any updated formal guidance but it could be forced into action if Europes equivalent body announces tougher action at a press conference this afternoon. IF THE JAB IS PROVEN TO CAUSE THE CLOTS, WILL THEY BAN IT COMPLETELY? Regulators are unlikely to ban the jab completely even if it is linked to blood clots because it still offers protection against the virus. Scientists say the benefits far outweigh the risks for older people, who are more at risk of hospitalisation of death if they catch the virus. But say the equation is 'more complicated' for younger people who are less at risk from the virus. Numerous experts lined up yesterday to downplay fears, saying the risk of dying from Covid is up to 35 times higher for young adults than from CVST, the medical term for the clots. When age-specific bans of the AstraZeneca jabs roll-out have been imposed, they have still seen it offered to older age groups. Advertisement

'The reason it is so difficult to be certain whether or not there is a cause-and-effect relationship, even in younger people, between the vaccine and these thrombotic events, these clotting events, is that there are such clotting events occurring in the background anyway.

'It's not an unknown event.'

He added: 'Covid itself - the infection itself  is known to be associated with a substantial increased risk of blood clots of various kinds.

'At a time when the population has got lots of Covid going around, it's very difficult to know what the actual background rate of these clotting events is without the vaccine.

'We can say I think, that if there is a connection, it's a very, very rare one and this is why I am not concerned about the fact that relatives of mine have had the AstraZeneca vaccine in their 40s.'

And Ravi Gupta, professor of clinical microbiology at the Cambridge Institute for Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Diseases, told Sky News the vaccination programme should continue until more is known on blood clots and the AstraZeneca vaccine.

He said people in their '20s, 30s, 40s and 50s' are at risk of severe Covid 'and there is an argument for vaccination to continue in those individuals because the rate of this blood clot disorder is extremely low, although slightly elevated against background levels'.

Professor Gupta said vaccinating children was done to 'cut down transmission in the community in the main' and therefore the decision to stop the study on them until more was known was 'good practice'.

Asked if he would take the jab, he said: 'I think that's on balance at the moment - there's still transmission of Covid, and there is a risk to all of us of being infected, particularly as the economy is being opened up and society's opening up, we are at risk of getting severe infection.

'So I would certainly be going forward for that vaccine in the current situation, because I'm in that age group.

'So yes, I think it should be continued.'

Several European countries have limited the AstraZeneca jab to older people or even suspended its use entirely following clotting in a tiny amount of cases.

One of the European drug regulator's senior officials yesterday claimed there is now a 'clear' link between the jab and CVST  a brain blockage that can lead to a stroke.

Marco Cavaleri, head of vaccines at the European Medicines Agency (EMA), said that CVST  a brain blockage that can lead to a stroke  was occurring more often than expected in younger people.

Mr Cavaleri admitted that the body was still baffled about how the jab may trigger the rare complication.

EMA officials are already probing the link between the vaccine and CVST, which is more common in young women.

Despite his comments, Mr Cavaleri's agency has repeatedly insisted AstraZeneca's jab is safe and the benefits outweigh any risks.

Last week it slapped down Germany for suspending its use in under-60s, arguing there was 'no evidence' to support age-based restrictions.

But at the same time, the watchdog paved the way for a potential U-turn, warning that the rate of the complication did appear to be slightly higher than expected in vaccinated under-60s.

Experts across the board say the evidence is now 'shifting' and that the jab is likely  in extremely rare cases  to cause the brain blockage.

Britain's medical regulator may also impose a German-style ban of AstraZeneca's vaccine, it emerged this week.

Sources told Channel 4 it could stop under-30s getting the jab  which is the main one being deployed in Britain.

But Government insiders told the Telegraph that regulators were unlikely to impose any age-based ban.

It came amid reports that thousands of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine are being wasted in France following a 'wave of panic' triggered by its suspension.

And it was also claimed that EU officials are confident they will have enough doses to immunize the majority of their citizens by the end of June.

Britain is aiming to have offered a first dose to all adults by the end of July.

The World Health Organization still maintains there is 'no link for the moment' between the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine and blood clots.

Rogerio Pinto de Sa Gaspar, director of regulation and prequalification at the WHO, told a briefing today: 'The appraisal that we have for the moment, and this is under consideration by the experts, is that the benefit-risk assessment for the vaccine is still largely positive.'

He added: 'For the time being there is no evidence that the benefit-risk assessment for the vaccine needs to be changed and we know from the data coming from countries like the UK and others that the benefits are really important in terms of reduction of the mortality of populations that are being vaccinated.'

Scientists insist the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine outweigh any risks for elderly people  who are most at risk of hospitalisation or death if they catch the virus.

Carer, 24, becomes the first person to get Moderna's Covid jab in Wales Elle Taylor, 24, today became the first person to receive the Moderna jab in the UK. She said it would help her care for her grandmother 'properly and safely' A 24-year-old carer today became the first person in Britain to get Moderna's coronavirus vaccine as the roll-out was expanded in Wales  but England will have to wait another fortnight to use the jab. Elle Taylor, from Ammanford, revealed she was 'very excited and happy' to receive the jab, adding that the nurses were lovely and it 'didn't hurt'. 'I'm an unpaid carer for my grandmother so it is very important to me that I get it, so I can care for her properly and safely,' she said. 'My grandmother has had her first dose and she is going for her second dose on Saturday.' Health Secretary Matt Hancock said he was 'delighted' the first dose of Moderna's vaccine had been administered in the UK. But confusion has erupted over the roll-out of the jab  the third to be deployed in Britain. No10's vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi yesterday revealed Moderna's shot would only be used from the third week of April. Nicola Sturgeon, however, revealed hours later that the first batch had already arrived in Scotland, with sources saying it would be dished out later this week. Britain is only expected to get 100,000 doses of Moderna's vaccine in April. Around five per cent of that supply has already been sent to one Welsh hospital trust, covering three regions. Wales has already moved on to offering over-45s jabs. Ministers have bought 17million doses in total  enough for 8.5million people  and have planned for deliveries of the jab to 'significantly increase' in May. Leaked supply projections suggest No10 anticipated it would receive around 160,000 doses every week next month. But with doubts mounting about the availability of AstraZeneca's vaccine amid fears the jab could be banned for younger adults, the lack of supply leaves serious questions about whether or not Britain can push on with the inoculation drive. No10 has repeatedly insisted it is on track to hit its goal of offering every eligible adult a jab by the end of July. And the drive must go smoothly if restrictions are to be eased drastically over the coming months. But the Government has not factored in a potential ban on using AstraZeneca's vaccine in the next phase of the roll-out. The jab is currently the main weapon in the country's arsenal, with Pfizer's supply being rationed for top-ups. Health watchdogs are set to make a final ruling on the use of the vaccine in the coming days, with Government advisers saying that blood clot fears are being taken 'very seriously' and hinting that Moderna's jab could be reserved for under-50s. Advertisement

But they warn that the picture is 'more complicated' for young people.

Experts estimate the risk of dying of Covid for 25 to 44-year-olds is 0.04 per cent  or one in 2,500.

For comparison, the rate of CVST cases seen in Germany  which originally banned the jab for over-60s over the same blood clot fears  is around one in 90,000.

It is not clear how many younger adults will suffer the blood clots naturally  but officials admit the risk is higher in women under the age of 50.

Officials are working round-the-clock to disentangle the statistical risk, analysing the background rate of CVST as well as the reported rate among people given AstraZeneca's vaccine.

'In the next few hours, we will say that there is a connection, but we still have to understand how this happens,' Mr Cavaleri told Italian newspaper Il Messaggero.

'Among the vaccinated, there are more cases of cerebral thrombosis... among young people than we would expect.'

But France is already wasting thousands of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine due to concern over the jab, even as the country battles against a third wave.

Medics have reported people turning down the inoculation in droves, despite it being a key part of the country's planned route out of the pandemic.

This is because President Emmanuel Macron has performed a series of U-turns over the highly effective vaccine, with critics suggesting the Brexit-critical leader had challenged the jabs safety and effectiveness to attack the UK.

European capitals have been told the EU has now secured enough doses for them to inoculate the majority of their citizens by the end of June, according to a briefing note seen by Bloomberg.

The forecast, however, assumes that some 70million AstraZeneca doses will be used, which could be put in doubt if regulators limit their use.

It also shows that some member states - including Austria, Croatia and the Czech Republic - are expected to lag behind.

EU Commissioner Thierry Breton, who is leading jabbing efforts, has previously claimed they will have the capacity to deliver enough doses to hit 'herd immunity' by July 14, which is Bastile Day in France.

Amid the MHRA's safety review of the jab, two senior sources told Channel 4 news that the data is still unclear on the risks of the vaccine.

But the insiders said there are growing arguments to justify offering younger people  below the age of 30 at the very least  a different vaccine.

Both sources, however, emphasised their support for the Oxford jab and their concerns that any restriction of its roll-out could damage public confidence.

Dr June Raine, the agency's chief executive, said: 'The benefits of Covid vaccine AstraZeneca in preventing Covid infection and its complications continue to outweigh any risks and the public should continue to get their vaccine when invited to do so.'

She added: 'Our thorough review into these reports is ongoing.

'We are asking healthcare professionals to report any cases they suspect to be linked with Covid vaccination via the Covid yellow card website.'

The head of the EMA, Emer Cooke, has previously stressed there is 'no evidence' to support restricting the use of the jab across the continent.

She added a link between unusual blood clots in people who have had the jab is 'not proven, but is possible', but added that the benefits far outweigh risks.

The World Health Organization has also urged countries to continue using the 'safe and effective' jab, which offers a backdoor to get the world out of the pandemic.

Scientists have shifted their position in recent weeks, to indicate other vaccines against Covid may be better for young people.

Professor Neil Ferguson  the scientist whose grim modelling that 250,000 may die without restrictions scared ministers into imposing Britain's first lockdown last March  said the jab may not be suitable for younger Britons, if a link is proven.

'In terms of the data at the moment, there is increasing evidence that there is a rare risk associated, particularly with the AstraZeneca vaccine,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme yesterday.

'But it may be associated at a lower level with other vaccines, of these unusual blood clots with low platelet counts. It appears that risk is age related, it may possibly be  but the data is weaker on this  related to sex.

A TIMELINE OF THE ASTRAZENECA BLOOD CLOT SAGA March 7: Austria suspended the use of one batch of the vaccine after a woman, 49, who had been given it died of a 'severe coagulation disorder' and a 35-year-old developed a blood clot in her lung. March 11: Authorities in Denmark, Norway and Iceland suspended all use of the vaccine following a 60-year-old woman in Denmark died of a blood clot after the reports emerged in Austria. Danish health minister Magnus Heunicke said: 'It is currently not possible to conclude whether there is a link.' March 11: European Medicines Agency's safety committee began an investigation into the cases. It confirms 30 cases of 'thromboembolic events'  clots  were reported after five million vaccines in the EEA. March 12: Thailand suspended the use of the vaccine off the back of European worries. Bulgaria also stops using it. March 12: The European Medicines Agency, Britain's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, Health Canada, the World Health Organization and AstraZeneca itself, all spoke out to defend the vaccine and say there is no proof it's linked to blood clots. March 13: The Netherlands, Italy and Ireland temporarily stopped using the vaccine as fears about the cases in Austria and Denmark snowballed. March 14: Germany and France suspended the vaccine. March 15: Spain, Portugal and Slovenia suspended use of the jab. March 15: Professor Andrew Pollard, the Oxford expert who ran the clinical trials of the jab, insisted safety data are 'reassuring' and said 'clearly those blood clots still happen' as often as they would in unvaccinated people. March 16: World Health Organization officials met to discuss the issue. European Medicines Agency is still investigating. March 17: Scientists accuse governments of banning the jab on political grouns. AstraZeneca's vaccine has been a flashpoint in the past. March 18: European Medicines Agency holds a press conference on its investigation and rules that the vaccine is 'safe and effective'. It said there wasn't enough evidence to rule out a link to blood clots, but also not enough to prove one. On balance, it would be safer for countries to keep using the vaccine to stop Covid. The investigation would continue. March 18: Germany, France and Italy resume use of the jab after the EMA's conclusion. March 19: Finland suspends the jab after finding blood clot cases in its own population. March 19: Bulgaria, Cyprus, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands and Spain all confirm they will start using the jab again. Scandinavian countries did not follow suit and kept the ban in place. March 22: A study is published that found public trust in the AstraZeneca vaccine collapsed in Europe at the time of the blood clot saga. A YouGov survey found more than half of people in Germany, France, Italy and Spain believed the jab was unsafe. March 30: Germany bans the vaccine for people under the age of 60 after officials said they had found 31 cases of CSVT after 2.7million vaccinations. April 2: UK regulators announce a total of 30 blood clots, 22 in the brain, have now been discovered in Britons vaccinated with the AZ jab. April 5: UK regulators begin reviewing their guidance amid concern the jab is considerably more likely among younger people. Advertisement

'And so the older you are, the less the risk is and also the higher the risk is of Covid so the risk-benefit equation really points very much towards being vaccinated.

'I think it becomes slightly more complicated when you get to younger age groups where the risk-benefit equation is more complicated.'

Professor Paul Hunter, an infectious disease expert at the University of East Anglia, has also warned there may be a link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and blood clots.

He told the Today programme it is 'not uncommon' to get a cluster of rare events by chance.

'But once you find that cluster in one population and it then crops up in another  such as previously in the German and now in the English  then I think the chances of that being a random association is very, very low,' he said.

'Clearly more work needs to be done, but I think the evidence is shifting more towards it being causally related at the moment.'

'[But] the chance of dying if you don't have the vaccine is many times greater than the risk of dying from CVST after the AstraZeneca vaccine, even if it does turn out, as I suspect it will, that this link is causal.'

Although there isn't any evidence that the blood clots are developing because of vaccinations, some academics have a theory that it is the immune reaction making it happen.

Research teams in Germany and Norway claim the blood clotting issue may be caused by the jab, in very rare cases, making the body attack its own platelets.

Platelets are tiny chunks of cells inside blood that the body uses to build clots to stop bleeding when someone is injured. But they can also make unwanted clots.

Experts from Oslo and Greifswald University believe the jab could cause the body to produce antibodies  normally used to fight off viruses  which mistake platelets in the blood for foreign invaders and attack them.

To compensate, the body then overproduces platelets to replace those that are being attacked, causing the blood to thicken and raising the risk of clotting.

They admitted they 'don't know why this is happening'.

But the researchers say the phenomenon is similar to one that can occur in heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT), when sufferers take a drug called heparin.

It comes as No10's vaccine minister today revealed the long-awaited Moderna Covid vaccine will be dished out in Britain within the next two weeks.

Nadhim Zahawi said the first batch of the jab  approved by regulators in January  is set to arrive in the third week of this month, with 'more volume' expected in May.

Ministers had promised Moderna's vaccine, which uses mRNA technology such as Pfizer's, would arrive by the spring. Britain has ordered 17million doses.

But confusion erupted over Moderna's supply today, after Nicola Sturgeon revealed the first batch of doses arrived yesterday. If Scotland's First Minister is telling the truth, it means the UK is currently sitting on thousands of vaccines that are proven to work.

Announcing the impending arrival of the Moderna vaccine, Mr Zahawi told BBC Breakfast: 'It will be in deployment around the third week of April in the NHS and we will get more volume in May as well.

'And of course more volume of Pfizer and Oxford/AstraZeneca and we have got other vaccines. We have got the Janssen  Johnson and Johnson  vaccine coming through as well.

'So I am confident that we will be able to meet our target of mid-April offering the vaccine to all over-50s and then end of July offering the vaccine to all adults.'

Despite Mr Zahawi saying the vaccine won't be deployed until later this month, Ms Sturgeon said Scotland had already received its first batch of the jab.

Scotland is due to receive more than one million of the 17million doses ordered by the UK.

The First Minister also said that the doses have already been factored into forward planning for the vaccination programme, and will be delivered over the coming months.

Addressing yesterday's coronavirus briefing in Edinburgh, she said: 'The arrival of this first batch doesn't mean that we are able to accelerate the vaccination programme.

'The speed of vaccination is already taking account of the expected Moderna supplies.

'Nevertheless the fact that we now have three vaccines in use is clearly very welcome and it does give us additional security of supply, which is important.'

The risks of the AstraZeneca jab are so small... yet the gains are so great, writes Professor DAVID WERRING

As a clinical neurologist, I must balance on a daily basis the risks and benefits of interventions in often complex, high-risk situations.

While these are specialised decisions about the net benefit of a particular course of action, they are the stuff of medicine in general  and of course of life, too.

And it is just such a judgment that is preoccupying the minds of both scientists and the public following the news yesterday that the European Medicines Agency's head of vaccines Marco Cavaleri now believes there is a 'clear' link between AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine and blood clots.

This follows weeks of reports of unusual blood clots detected in the brains of some of those given the Oxford vaccine  a small number, but enough to lead some countries, including Germany, France and Canada, to restrict who can be given the jab.

Regulators are looking at reports of unusual blood clots detected in the brains of some of those given the Oxford vaccine  a small number, but enough to lead some countries, including Germany, France and Canada, to restrict who can be given the jab

Little wonder that the low thrum of anxiety has now grown into more serious concern that could potentially undermine the rollout of the so far hugely successful vaccine programme

Little wonder that the low thrum of anxiety has now grown into more serious concern that could potentially undermine the rollout of the so far hugely successful vaccine programme.

This alarm is understandable, particularly against the backdrop of a year in which the world has been turned upside down.

Vaccine chiefs are treading a fine line between acknowledging concern over the latest worrying headlines and keeping us focused on the benefits of a vaccine they see as the best chance of freeing us from a virus with its own proven catastrophic consequences, among them  ironically  the chance of developing potentially fatal blood clots, symptoms affecting around one in four who contract severe Covid-19. Of course, blood clots are not always inherently bad: indeed, we would be in a great deal of trouble without them.

WHAT IS CVST? AND HOW COULD IT BE LINKED TO ASTRAZENECA'S JAB? Cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) is an extremely rare type of blood clot in the brain. It occurs when the vein that drains blood from the brain is blocked by a blood clot, resulting in potentially deadly bleeding on the brain. Symptoms can quickly deteriorate from a headache, blurred vision and faintness to complete loss of control over movement and seizures. John Hopkins University estimates it affects five in a million people in the US every year, which would suggest 330 patients in Britain suffer from the condition annually. According to the university, it can affect patients with low blood pressure, cancer, vascular diseases and those prone to blood clotting. Head injuries can also trigger the condition. Britain's regulator said CVST is so rare they aren't even sure how common it is in the general population. Although there isn't any evidence that the blood clots are developing because of vaccinations, some academics have a theory that it is the immune reaction making it happen. Research teams in Germany and Norway claim the blood clotting issue may be caused by the jab, in very rare cases, making the body attack its own platelets. Platelets are tiny chunks of cells inside blood that the body uses to build clots to stop bleeding when someone is injured. But they can also make unwanted clots. Experts from Oslo and Greifswald University believe the jab could cause the body to produce antibodies  normally used to fight off viruses  which mistake platelets in the blood for foreign invaders and attack them. To compensate, the body then overproduces platelets to replace those that are being attacked, causing the blood to thicken and raising the risk of clotting. They admitted they 'don't know why this is happening'. But the researchers say the phenomenon is similar to one that can occur in heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT), when sufferers take a drug called heparin. Advertisement

Comprised of platelets, red blood cells and a mesh-like protein called fibrin, their usual function is to prevent bleeding by helping to seal off a wound. The problems we associate with blood clots occur when one forms in a blood vessel when it shouldn't, leading to all kinds of potentially serious and sometimes fatal health conditions.

In our arteries  vessels that carry blood away from the heart into vital organs  they cause heart attacks and strokes.

In our venous system (the vessels that carry slower moving deoxygenated blood usually back to the heart), the most common problems are deep vein thrombosis from a clot in the leg, and pulmonary embolism from a clot in vessels carrying deoxygenated blood to the lungs.

In my work I sometimes see a rare type of stroke caused by a clot in veins that drain blood from the brain, a condition known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST). It is this latter kind that has been reported in a small number  around 30  of the estimated 18million Britons who had received the Oxford vaccine by March 24. The great majority of these vaccine-associated CVSTs have been in young females, and, worryingly, there has been a high rate of fatality.

We don't have the data to explain why women have been disproportionately affected yet but, in cases of CVST not connected to vaccines, about two-thirds involve females, which can probably be attributed to associations with the contraceptive pill and pregnancy.

Like many doctors, my first instinct was that, given the low number of reports, it could be nothing more than coincidence.

However, distinctive features have emerged in the reported cases which have generated concern about a link to the vaccine, not least that patients had low levels of blood platelets and unusual anti-Platelet Factor 4 antibodies, suggesting an immune reaction. These antibodies are usually found in people who have been given the blood thinner Heparin and gone on to develop something called Heparin-induced thrombocytopenia, a condition in which platelets are reduced but blood clots are more likely to form.

It raises the question of whether the vaccine triggered an immune response which included the production of these antibodies and a related, heightened chance of clotting. Yet it's also important to state here that an association is not the same thing as a direct causal link, for which researchers need a great deal of complex supporting evidence.

There is also much we don't know about these reported cases in terms of any shared characteristics among those involved. More research is needed before we can definitively say that all of the reported brain blood clots were caused by the AstraZeneca jab.

The fact remains that all vaccines have the potential to harm a small number and that harm has to be weighed against the clear overall benefit for the majority of the population.

As things stand, the risk of a blood-clotting problem is vanishingly small, about one in 600,000, though  it has to be said  we are in a rapidly evolving situation. Ongoing research and close surveillance is vital. It may be that a causal link is established between the Oxford jab and these brain blood clots, and, if so, it is important that doctors are made aware so that they can offer rapid diagnosis and specific treatments.

Indeed, I understand that the World Health Organisation, the EMA and our own Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency may clarify their policies over the AstraZeneca vaccine as early as today and we must, of course, follow their advice.

But whatever conclusion they arrive at we must not allow it to detract from our appreciation of the great success of our vaccination programme to date.
Joppa's EEI Power Plant To Close Next Year

By West Kentucky Star Staff

JOPPA - An Illinois electric utility announced Wednesday plans to shutter its coal power plant in Joppa by September 1 of next year.The closing affects 115 employees who were told last year that the plant would keep operating until 2025.The Joppa Power Plant opened in 1953. It currently operates six coal units with a combined capacity of 1,002 MW and five natural gas units with a combined capacity of 239 MW.Vistra, who owns Electric Energy Incorporated, said in a press release that it has reached a settlement, after the Sierra Club brought a complaint in 2018 before the Illinois Pollution Control Board concerning allegations of environmental exceedances occurring prior to Vistra's ownership.The company says it is renewing its call for passage of the Illinois Coal to Solar and Energy Storage Act to facilitate Vistra's $550-million repurposing of coal plant sites across central and southern Illinois.If the act passes, Vistra says it intends to build a stand-alone 45-MW battery energy storage facility at the Joppa plant, which does not have the site characteristics to support utility-scale solar. The new battery system would store enough electricity to power about 22,500 homes.Illinois State Representative Patrick Windhorst (R - Metropolis) released a statement on the closure:According to Dr. David Loomis of Strategic Economic Research, during the implementation of the Coal to Solar and Energy Storage Act, the state and local communities will benefit from a significant boost to economic activity. His analysis projects that, from 2022 to 2025, the initiative will:-support 2,957 full-time jobs across the state-create $461 million in statewide earnings for workers-generate $1.7 billion in total economic output in the stateThe economic impact study projected that constructing the battery energy storage facility at Joppa would support more than 100 local jobs and spur more than $10 million in economic output in Massac County.
(CNN)  The US Air Force's new hypersonic missile program suffered a blow Monday after it failed to launch from a B-52H Stratofortress bomber aircraft flying from Edwards Air Force Base in California.

"B-52H Stratofortress took off Monday over the Point Mugu Sea Range intending to fire the first booster test vehicle for the AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) program. Instead, the test missile was not able to complete its launch sequence and was safely retained on the aircraft which returned to Edwards AFB," the Air Force said in a statement.

The test failure is a setback to the US, which is engaged in a race with China and Russia to develop hypersonic weapons at a time of increased global tensions. The missiles are designed to travel at a such a high speed that they can fly great distances and move quickly through heavily defended airspace to attack targets such as harbors, airfields and other installations before they can be successfully shot down.

"The ARRW program has been pushing boundaries since its inception and taking calculated risks to move this important capability forward. While not launching was disappointing, the recent test provided invaluable information to learn from and continue ahead. This is why we test," said Brig. Gen. Heath Collins, the armament directorate program's executive officer. The weapon is aimed at providing US commanders around the world with "the capability to destroy high-value, time-sensitive targets," according to an Air Force statement.

The new missile is called an AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) and it is expected to be ready for deployment in the next few years. The test was specifically aimed at demonstrating the ability of the ARRW to achieve hypersonic speed.

The Pentagon is aiming to eventually develop a hypersonic missile that can travel at 20 times the speed of sound in a real world military strike, defense officials say, not far off the speed that Space Shuttles traveled when reentering the Earth's atmosphere. So far, there have been some components tested at speeds near that.

Race with Russia and China

Russia and China are both developing hypersonic weapons programs and Russia claims to have successfully tested a missile. The US is focusing on conventional hypersonic weapons that are based on ships, land and air platforms. Hypersonic weapons broadly fall into two categories: air-breathing missiles and so-called "boost-glide" missiles.

The Pentagon's FY2021 hypersonic-related research request was $3.2 billion, up from $2.6 billion a year earlier. The goal is to have hypersonic missiles ready for deployment in the next few years, with hypersonic defense capability following a few years later.

China first tested a hypersonic missile in 2014 and Russia in 2016. Russia's hypersonic glide vehicle, known as Avangard, is equipped with nuclear warheads and launched from SS-19 intercontinental ballistic missiles, according to the Congressional Research Service. Russia conducted successful tests on Avangard in 2016 and 2018, announcing in December 2019 that it had activated two SS-19s equipped with Avangard.

China's hypersonic glide vehicle, known as DF-ZF, has been tested at least nine times since 2014, according to the CRS.

"Among the novel weapon systems China is testing is an intercontinental range hypersonic glide vehiclesimilar to the Russian Avangardwhich is designed to fly at high speeds and low altitudes, complicating our ability to provide precise warning," said Gen. Terrence O'Shaughnessy, then commander of US Northern Command, in February 2020.

Gen. Glen VanHerck, the head of US Northern Command, warned in March that the missiles could "challenge our ability to provide actionable warning and attack assessment."

Last year, former acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly said hypersonic weapons "have already changed the nature of the battlespace, much as nuclear technology did in the last century." Comparing hypersonic missiles to Russia's launch of the Sputnik satellite ahead of the United States, Modly urged the military to invest heavily in research and development. Even though hypersonic weapons have never been used in combat, he warned that they can "destabilize the global security environment and pose an existential threat to our nation."

This story was first published on CNN.com "US Air Force test to launch ultra-fast hypersonic missile fails"
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told Russian President Vladimir Putin that he intended to discuss with him the construction of a new nuclear power plant in Armenia with the participation of Russia, Sputnik reports.

"Today I want to discuss with you the possibility of building a new nuclear power plant in Armenia," Pashinyan said at a meeting with Putin.

Pashinyan also said that he intended to discuss the activities of the joint Russian-Armenian group of forces and the joint regional air defense system.

"I hope that today we will also discuss some details of the activities of the Russian-Armenian joint group of forces, we also have joint regional air defense system. There are some details that, I hope, we will be able to clarify today," the prime minister said.
(Photo : Screenshot From Marques Brownlee Official YouTube Channel) Samsung Q1 2021 Sees Massive 44% Profit Jump Due to Strong Galaxy S21 Sales while Semiconductor Division Expects Drop

Samsung Electronics has seen a significant rise in its operating income for Q1 of 2021. The massive jump has been reportedly backed by robust sales of the smartphones that would offset the lowered profits coming from the company's semiconductor division.

Samsung Q1 2021 Profits

In its recent earnings, per a Wednesday report in CNBC, the company noted that it initially expected an operating income of 9.3 trillion won or $8.3 billion USD and sales of 65 trillion won or $58 billion for the current quarter. This is a massive increase of 44.19% as well as 17.48%, respectively, in comparison to the year before.

According to ZDnet, the mobile division was the main leader in this growth and a large part of it is due to the recent Samsung Galaxy S21 series launch back in January. This occurred a month earlier compared to the flagship line's more usual release date. Samsung has also noted that the S21 is even selling faster in comparison to the S20.

South Korean Analysts on the Spike in Profits

According to South Korean analysts, it is expected that the mobile division could have contributed over 4 trillion won or over $3.5 billion to the company's operating income. The company's usual consumer electronics division, responsible for selling TV and appliances, is now also expected to have benefited from the continued pent-up demand coming from the pandemic during the current quarter.

Another Samsung division, the semiconductor division, is now expected to record its so far lowest profit in years. This is despite the massive global demand for chips. The division's total profitability was reportedly hampered by the significant costs of running its own facilities. These include the application of EUV or extreme ultraviolet and even experiencing the month-long halt of an important plant over in Austin, according to the analysts.

Read Also: Samsung Galaxy S21 vs. iPhone 12 5G Download Speed: Which is Faster?

LG Quits Smartphone Business

As the total memory prices have increased, the semiconductor division is now expected to lead the pack in profits yet again this second quarter of 2021. Samsung is expected to announce the full earnings report for the current quarter coming at the end of the month.

While Samsung is leading in profits, LG, on the other hand, has announced that it will be quitting the smartphone industry due to struggles in making a profit. The company will be bidding goodbye to the smartphone industry and focusing more on other segments of its company.

LG is also popular for other appliances so the company plans to shift its resources towards the segments that actually turn in profits. The closing of its smartphone division is expected to take place on July 31, which is not a long way from now. Currently, the LG smartphone is preparing to close doors and consumers will no longer be able to buy new LG smartphones when they close.

Related Article: Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 100x Zoom Trick: Capturing HD Moon Photo Without Tripod-- How to Do It in Other Phones

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Urian Buenconsejo

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A pair of brothel raiders who threatened two sex workers with an axe before raping and robbing them have been jailed for 33 years.

Edmilson Caimanque, 23, David Fonseca, 27, together with Adilson Mendes-Namdja-Uare, 23, and an unidentified fourth man posed as customers before barging into the brothel in Hackney, north east London.

Mendes-Namdja-Uare had worked as a security guard for the brothel, so he knew the locations of the CCTV cameras and an axe which was kept hidden for emergencies.

Armed with the axe and a knife they placed plastic bags over the victims' heads and tied them up on their beds.

Fonseca, Caimanque, and the unidentified security guard raped the terrified victims on their beds before demanding more money from them.

David Fonseca, 27, (pictured) was found guilty of one charge of rape and was sentenced to a total of 15 years imprisonment

Armed with an axe (pictured inside the brothel) and a knife they placed plastic bags over the victims' heads and tied them up on their beds

Caimanque asked one victim why they did sex work, and told them: 'It's dangerous work, you could die at any time'.

The women attended a sexual health clinic the next day where a nurse called the police.

Caimanque and Fonseca pulled down the CCTV system before they left and took it with them.

But they were caught because they left their used condoms behind and their fingerprints were found on the bags placed over the women's heads.

Mendes-Namdja-Uare was owed wages for his security work and organised the raid.

The women were 'tied up with tape, (pictured, left inside the brothel) had bin bags placed over their heads and then they were horrifically raped and robbed', Oliva Ball, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said

The women offered sexual services at the basement flat via Vivastreet and had only worked at the property for three days before the raid took place. Pictured: Scene after attack

Speaking of her trauma one victim said: 'I am much more aggressive than I used to be.

'Now I have a sensation of distrust in all men. I used to go out with my friends, now I prefer to stay in my room alone.'

The other victim said: 'The day of the rape, I had a sense that if I resisted more, the man would done much more harm to me.

'I feel vulnerable on the street, even in the day, especially with men around me.

'I have the sensation someone is following me. Previously I did not understand paranoia, now I understand how unpleasant it can be.

Fonseca (pictured), Caimanque, and the unidentified security guard raped the terrified victims on their beds before demanding more money from them

'I still see the face of my attacker, I can't get rid of it.

'I could stay in bed all day long slowly deteriorating, luckily I have my son to motivate me.'

Describing the attack on 12 June 2019, prosecutor Maximilian Hardy said: 'This was a coordinated attach on both victims.

'Mr Mendes-Namdja-Uare played a leading role in the planning and execution of the robbery.

'By bringing Mr Caimanque and Mr Fonseca as back-up, Mr Mendes was using them as enforcers to carry out the robbery.

Adilson Mendes-Namdja-Uare, 23, (pictured) was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for the robbery

'Without him organising the offence, the victims would not be raped by his co-defendants.'

During the sentencing at Wood Green Crown Court Judge Kalyani Kaul said: 'These women were betrayed by those who knew they were vulnerable, and had only been in this country for a number of days, in the case of one victim.

'Sex workers are as protected by the law as anyone else.

'Nothing could justify what happened that night, nothing could justify what happened to those women.

'Looking at the three of you, you would not expect your mothers, your sisters, your girlfriends to be treated like this.

'As far as the robbery is concerned, you were the certainly the prime mover, without you there would not have been any offences that night.' Judge Kaul told Mendes-Namdja-Uare.

'You knew the women didn't work there regularly, they didn't know you, you didn't know them.

'You told one victim she had to have sex with one of your accomplices, this was happening under your direction.

Turing to Caimanque, Judge Kaul said: 'What possessed you to cruelly degrade these women is beyond me.

'It is difficult for me to understand how you could treat these women in the way you did when you would never do so to your own family.

Fonseca was told: 'There is nothing I can sentence you to which will make up for what you did that night.

'I pay tribute to both victims for the brave and dignified way they gave evidence before this court. No-one should ever have to go through this sort of treatment.

The women offered sexual services at the basement flat via the website Vivastreet and had only worked at the property for three days before the raid took place.

Caimanque, Fonseca, and Mendes-Namdja-Uare, all of no fixed address, denied but were convicted on 12 February of two counts of robbery; namely stealing a Samsung Galaxy S7 and a total of 1,250 in cash.

Caimanque also denied but was convicted of two counts of rape, and was sentenced to a total of 18 years imprisonment.

Fonseca denied but was found guilty of one charge of rape and was sentenced to a total of 15 years imprisonment.

Mendes-Namdja-Uare was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for the robbery.

All three men will serve two-thirds of their sentence before being automatically released on licence, while Caimanque and Fonseca will remain on the Sexual Offenders' Register for life.

Oliva Ball, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said: 'This was a terrifying ordeal for the victims. They were tied up with tape, had bin bags placed over their heads and then they were horrifically raped and robbed.

'The prosecution case included DNA evidence from the condoms that Caimanque and Fonseca had left behind.

'Fingerprints from these defendants were also found to match fingerprints on bags left at the scene, contradicting the defence claim that Caimanque and Fonseca had partaken in consensual sex for which they had paid.

'Despite the attackers taking the building's CCTV system, the prosecution was able to show that all three defendants were in the area at the time of the incident by piecing together CCTV from other cameras in the vicinity.'

Detective Sergeant Adam Knott from the Met's Central East Public Protection unit, said: 'These men attacked two women who were sleeping in what should have been the safety of their own home.

'The evidence gathered, during what was an extremely complex and detailed investigation, led to the identification of all three defendants.

'The conviction and subsequent sentencing of these men is testament to the bravery of the two women who were attacked and I commend them for coming forward to report these horrendous crimes.

'The resulting sentence against these dangerous offenders may well have prevented other women from being harmed.'
Civil society groups have urged the government to not enforce mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations as Prime Minister Hun Sen said state workers would have to get inoculated if they wanted to keep their jobs.

The prime minister released an audio message on his official Facebook page warning civil servants that they risked termination if they did not get vaccinated for COVID-19, adding that failure to get the vaccine would make them a potential infection risk.

I would like to stress that those who intend to evade getting vaccinated are at risk of being terminated from their work; be it the armed forces, national and sub-national civil servants, or contract workers, he said in the audio message.

The government started vaccinating people in early February with the Sinopharm, CoronaVac and Covishield vaccines, completing close to half a million shots as of Wednesday. The current vaccination push is targeting priority groups, including government officials.

Chak Sopheap, who heads the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, said the government should ensure voluntary vaccinations based on rules set by the World Health Organization with no coercion.

This is important that we adhere to the WHO principle that the vaccination is voluntary and not that the state forces vaccination, she said.

She added that there was hesitation in Cambodia about the quality and efficacy of the vaccines being used. Chak Sopheap said the government should focus on educating people about the importance of vaccinations and provide thorough information needed by the public.

Part of the hesitancy may lie with Hun Sens decision to not get the SInopharm vaccine at the last moment after Chinese officials informed the government that the vaccine should be administered to people under the age of 60.

Pech Pisey, the director of Transparency International Cambodia, said the government and the prime minister should not discriminate against people's decisions on vaccinations.

It is basic rights that there should not be coercion in vaccination. Vaccination should be voluntary. And any individual should have the right to decide for one's health. Phay Siphan, a Council of Ministers' spokesperson, said that getting vaccinate against COVID-19 was a duty to help combat the spread of the viral disease and was not based on any political calculations.

Other places in the world also use vaccines. How about that? The vaccines are not related to politics. Only those who talk ill about them are political.
Boris Johnson said we want to make things as easy as we possibly can as he discussed plans to restart travel (PA)

Boris Johnson has pledged to make new testing requirements for returning holidaymakers as affordable as possible amid concerns that many people will be priced out of foreign travel.

The Government announced plans for a new system on Monday that would require travellers arriving in the UK from low-risk countries to take pre-departure and post-arrival coronavirus tests.

Aviation leaders such as easyJet boss Johan Lundgren have suggested this would be unnecessary, but called for lateral flow tests to be accepted  rather than more expensive alternatives  if the policy is implemented.

Mr Johnson told reporters: I do think we want to make things as easy as we possibly can.

The boss of easyJet is right to focus on this issue. Were going to see what we can do to make things as flexible and as affordable as possible.

A Downing Street paper published on Monday stated that it is not known whether foreign leisure travel will be permitted from May 17, which is the earliest date it could resume for people in England under the Prime Ministers road map for easing restrictions.

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Mr Johnson said: I do want to see international travel start up again. We have to be realistic. A lot of the destinations that we want to go to at the moment are suffering a new wave of the illness, of Covid, as we know.

We cant do it immediately, but that doesnt mean that weve given up on May 17.

We will be saying as much as we can, as soon as we can, about international travel.

I know how impatient people are to book their holidays if they possibly can but I think we just have to be prudent at this stage.

Under the traffic light system, countries will be rated green, amber and red based on a range of factors, including the proportion of their population which has been vaccinated, rates of infection, emerging new variants and their access to reliable scientific data and genomic sequencing.

Mr Lundgren told BBC Breakfast mandatory tests for people returning from green countries should not be needed.

He said: I dont think that is fair, I dont think its right, and I dont think it is necessarily established from a medical and scientific point of view that is the right thing to do.

If they choose, however, to go down that route to have the tests in place, it should be the same type of testing, the lateral flow testing, which is much cheaper, more accessible, that is being used to open up the domestic sector as an example.

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Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests are swab tests that are processed in a laboratory, and cost around 120 each in the UK for private customers.

This is way over and above what the cost is of an average easyJet fare, Mr Lundgren explained.

Requiring passengers to pay for PCR tests wouldnt open up international travel for everyone, he said.

Rapid tests, or lateral flow device tests, are swab tests that give results in 30 minutes or less, without the need for processing in a laboratory.

Everyone in England will have free access to those tests twice a week from Friday.

Virgin Atlantic chief executive Shai Weiss told reporters that people should be able to return from green countries without the need for tests when it is safe to do so.

He added: We cant have a prohibitively expensive testing system that puts businesses, people and families off travelling.

Passengers travelling to and from green countries should be able to do so freely, without testing or quarantine at all, and vaccinated passengers travelling to and from amber countries should not face testing or quarantine.

Mr Weiss said destinations that should be on the green list from May 17 include the US, Israel and the Caribbean.

The US is vaccinating over three million people per day, Israel is the worlds leading vaccinated country, and the Caribbean has done an awesome job throughout this pandemic of keeping things under control, he explained at a joint press conference with Heathrow chief executive John Holland-Kaye and British Airways boss Sean Doyle.

Mr Holland-Kaye said the United Arab Emirates could be included as they also have very high levels of vaccination.

He went on: There are plenty of long-haul countries which have low Covid levels, and many of them have high vaccination levels also.

Mr Doyle cited recent research by consultancy York Aviation which suggested that a lost summer of international travel would cost the UK economy 55.7 billion in a decrease in trade and 3 billion in a cut in tourism.

Travel to and from the US is vitally important for all of us here in the UK, he said, adding: No air link to the US until September will cost the UK an additional 2.4 billion. Thats 23 million per day.

A tremendous lost opportunity if we dont act now and quickly.
PALM BEACH, Fla., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Gold is one of the most well established and mature markets around when it comes to investable assets. It has been an important commodity in the past, and it has its major uses in electronics and jewelry, but as a market, it is often seen as a great safe haven for a number of reasons. Because gold has been seen as a valuable asset for thousands of years, it has always been desired and in demand, but it is in more recent history that the market has grown to be what it is today, and what it is today is a rather mature and stable market. The fact that gold works as a safe haven asset, one that often moves in anti-correlation to the traditional markets, means that the commodity is a great hedge against financial troubles, but it is also an asset that has shown steady and solid growth in value for a long time. Gold is not an asset that is prone to big price swings, or high volatility, but it is known to almost constantly be growing as its uses and market desire keep growing. Also, the fact that Gold is an asset that is scarce, but with an uncertain supply, means the markets are often worth watching and forecasting gold prices for the next 10 years can often lead to positive gains over this long period of time. Active stocks in the mining markets this week include Barrick Gold Corporation (NYSE: GOLD) (TSX: ABX), Clarity Gold Corp. (OTCPK: CLGCF) (CSE: CLAR), Newmont Corporation (NYSE: NEM) (TSX: NGT), Osisko Mining Inc. (OTCPK: OBNNF) (TSX: OSK), Agnico Eagle Mines Limited (NYSE: AEM) (TSX: AEM).

A report from industry insider, PRIME XBT made several predictions for Gold's future. They said that: "The gold price prediction today, and the gold price forecast 2021 looks like it could be a really positive one, and it also comes off the back of a really good year in 2020 for the precious metal which had many geo-political factors impact its price and its growth in an upward trend. Currently, the gold price is increasing because there is a clear need for a safe haven investment. We have seen Federal rate cuts, and the stock markets tanking. This has seen investors look to move their money into more secure investments, and gold is one of the best such investments. It continued: "Now is probably one of the best times to buy gold. It has been on a bullish run for almost a year but instead of turning around it is expected to accelerate because of the fall out of the Covid-19 pandemic. Having already grown by a few hundred dollars in the first quarter of 2021, it is expected that gold's price will grow even quicker for the next few quarters."

Clarity Gold Corp. (CSE: CLAR) (OTC: CLGCF) BREAKING NEWS: CLARITY GOLD MOBILIZES SECOND RIG FOR ONGOING DRILL PROGRAM IN QUEBEC - Clarity Gold Corp. ("Clarity" or the "Company") is pleased to report that it has begun mobilizing a second drill rig to the Destiny Project in the Abitibi. The rig will commence operations at the GAP Zone, a coarsely drilled zone along strike and east of the DAC Zone. The drill will be tasked with completing several holes designed to infill historic drilling and test the GAP Zone at depth. Salient results from previous drilling in the GAP Zone include 16.1 g/t Au over 6 m from 85.5 m including 90.3 g/t Au over 1 m.

"We are very excited to bring a second drill rig into our ongoing program," said James Rogers, CEO of Clarity. "As exploration progresses, the addition of the second drill rig will increase efficiency allowing the company to more rapidly complete the planned program."

About the Destiny Project

Option to acquire 100% ownership.

Located in the historic, mineral rich Abitibi Greenstone Belt.

Gold mineralization occurs in high-grade quartz veins within shear zones starting at 15 m below surface.

Drilling results include:

167 g/t Au over 1 m (from 221.7 m )

6.15 g/t Au over 23.6 m (from 117.2 m )

19.49 g/t Au over 2.7 m (from 166.0 m )

The Historical Estimate at the DAC Zone is open along strike with only coarse drilling denoting high grade intercepts outside of the 2011 Historical Estimate area showing expansion potential along strike from the DAC Zone over approximately 2.5 km to the Darla Zone.

Excellent infrastructure  ~75 km NNE of Val d'Or with road access. Considerable work done historically including over 50,000 m of diamond drilling.

The Destiny Project is located in the prolific Abitibi Greenstone Belt where more than 190 million ounces of gold have been produced historically along major structural breaks within the assemblage of Archean-age volcanic, sedimentary and intrusive rocks. The Destiny Project lies along the approximately 400 km long Chicobi Deformation Zone, a major structural break which is largely underexplored in the Abitibi Greenstone Belt.

The 5,013 ha project includes the DAC Zone, one of several gold zones along an approximately 6 km long segment of the Despinassy Shear Zone within the Chicobi Deformation Zone. Approximately 2.5 km east along strike of the DAC Zone is the Darla Zone. In between the Darla and DAC is the coarsely drilled GAP zone where 2012 drilling intercepted anomalous gold in all 12 holes which were spaced 100 m apart.

The current exploration potential is based on decades of past work on the Destiny Project. Exploration of the Destiny Project dates back to the 1930s. The first concerted diamond drilling campaign commenced in 1998. Read this entire release for the Clarity Gold at: https://claritygoldcorp.com/news/

Other recent developments in the mining markets include:

Osisko Mining Inc. (OTCPK: OBNNF) (TSX: OSK) recently provided new analytical results from the ongoing drill program at its 100% owned Windfall gold project located in the Abitibi greenstone belt, Urban Township, Eeyou Istchee James Bay, Quebec.

The Windfall gold deposit is located between Val-d'Or and Chibougamau in the Abitibi region of Quebec, Canada. The mineral resource defined by Osisko, as disclosed in the news release dated February 17, 2021 and supported by the technical report entitled "Mineral Resource Estimate Update for the Windfall Project, Eeyou Istchee James Bay, Quebec, Canada" dated March 8, 2021 (with an effective date of November 30, 2020), and assuming a cut-off grade of 3.50 g/t Au, comprises 521,000 tonnes at 11.3 g/t Au (189,000 ounces) in the measured mineral resource category, 5,502,000 tonnes at 9.4 g/t Au (1,668,000 ounces) in the indicated mineral resource category and 16,401,000 tonnes at 8.0 g/t Au (4,244,000 ounces) in the inferred mineral resource category. The key assumptions, parameters and methods used to estimate the mineral resource estimate disclosed in the February 17, 2021 news release are further described in the full technical report prepared by BBA Inc. in accordance with NI 43-101 and is available on SEDAR (www.sedar.com) under the Corporation's issuer profile.

Barrick Gold Corporation (NYSE: GOLD) (TSX: ABX) notes the statement released by Papua New Guinea prime minister James Marape announcing an imminent agreement to reopen Porgera mine. Barrick and the Government of Papua New Guinea have continued to hold constructive discussions on a framework agreement for the recommissioning of Porgera, which has been on care and maintenance since April 2020.

The agreement under discussion is in line with the principles announced in October, providing for a joint venture between Barrick Niugini Limited (BNL) and the government of PNG to operate Porgera going forward on the basis of increased PNG ownership and a fair sharing of economic benefits. BNL would continue as the operator of the mine. We remain hopeful that we will reach agreement with the PNG Government on a long-term partnership that will see the reopening of Porgera in the near future. A further statement will be issued once a final agreement is achieved.

Newmont Corporation (NYSE: NEM) (TSX: NGT) recently announced that it has executed an industry-leading $3.0 billion sustainability-linked revolving credit facility. The credit facility includes a pricing feature based upon third-party sustainability performance measures and includes overall improved pricing from the previous facility. This new credit facility expires in March 2026, amending and extending the credit facility executed in 2019.

"Our sustainability-linked credit facility further demonstrates Newmont's unwavering commitment to industry-leading environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices," said Newmont President and CEO Tom Palmer. "Our sustainability framework is at the core of what we do, and we believe that strong ESG performance is a key indicator of a well-managed business. By aligning our financial performance and our ESG performance, we are holding ourselves accountable to delivering on our purpose to create value and improve lives through responsible and sustainable mining."

Agnico Eagle Mines Limited (NYSE: AEM) (TSX: AEM) recently announced that it will host its 2021 Annual and Special Meeting of Shareholders (the "AGM") virtually on Friday, April 30, 2021. In addition, the Company today announced the appointment of Leona Aglukkaq to the Company's board of directors, the release of its first quarter 2021 results on Thursday, April 29, 2021, after normal trading hours, and the filing of a technical report for Canadian Malartic.

The Honourable Leona Aglukkaq, P.C., has been appointed to the Board of Directors effective as of March 11, 2021. Ms. Aglukkaq is a highly-experienced politician and government administrator from the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut. She was first elected as a Member of Parliament in 2008 and, in 2009, became the first Inuk in Canadian history to be appointed to the Federal Cabinet (as Minister of Health). In addition to her Federal government experience, Ms. Aglukkaq has broad public government exposure, including international diplomatic experience as Chair of the Arctic Council (2012-2015). Most recently, Ms. Aglukkaq served on the board of directors of TMAC Resources Inc., until its acquisition by Agnico Eagle on February 2, 2021.

DISCLAIMER: FN Media Group LLC (FNM), which owns and operates Financialnewsmedia.com and MarketNewsUpdates.com, is a third party publisher and news dissemination service provider, which disseminates electronic information through multiple online media channels. FNM is NOT affiliated in any manner with any company mentioned herein. FNM and its affiliated companies are a news dissemination solutions provider and are NOT a registered broker/dealer/analyst/adviser, holds no investment licenses and may NOT sell, offer to sell or offer to buy any security. FNM's market updates, news alerts and corporate profiles are NOT a solicitation or recommendation to buy, sell or hold securities. The material in this release is intended to be strictly informational and is NEVER to be construed or interpreted as research material. All readers are strongly urged to perform research and due diligence on their own and consult a licensed financial professional before considering any level of investing in stocks. All material included herein is republished content and details which were previously disseminated by the companies mentioned in this release. FNM is not liable for any investment decisions by its readers or subscribers. Investors are cautioned that they may lose all or a portion of their investment when investing in stocks. For current services performed FNM has been compensated forty six hundred dollars for news coverage of the current press releases issued by Clarity Gold Corp. by a non affiliated third party. FNM HOLDS NO SHARES OF ANY COMPANY NAMED IN THIS RELEASE.

This release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended and such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. "Forward-looking statements" describe future expectations, plans, results, or strategies and are generally preceded by words such as "may", "future", "plan" or "planned", "will" or "should", "expected," "anticipates", "draft", "eventually" or "projected". You are cautioned that such statements are subject to a multitude of risks and uncertainties that could cause future circumstances, events, or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, including the risks that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, and other risks identified in a company's annual report on Form 10-K or 10-KSB and other filings made by such company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You should consider these factors in evaluating the forward-looking statements included herein, and not place undue reliance on such statements. The forward-looking statements in this release are made as of the date hereof and FNM undertakes no obligation to update such statements.

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Main opposition People Power Party's Seoul mayoral candidate Oh Se-hoon speaks to party members at the party headquarters on Yeouido, Seoul, Wednesday, as they watch the results of the exit poll which showed Oh's likely victory. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk



By Jung Da-min



Oh Se-hoon of the conservative main opposition People Power Party (PPP) has become the mayor of Seoul for the third time  first in 2006, then in 2010 and finally this year.



Born in 1961, Oh became a lawyer in 1991 after passing the national bar exam. He made his political debut in 2000 when he was elected to represent the Gangnam-B constituency in the 16th general election as a lawmaker of the main opposition Grand National Party, a predecessor of the PPP.



In 2006, Oh was elected as the youngest mayor of Seoul at the age of 45. His political presence grew even bigger when he was re-elected as mayor in 2010, beating former Prime Minister Han Myeong-sook and when he started to be mentioned as a potential presidential candidate of the country's conservative bloc.



But his political career faced a setback after he resigned from the mayoral post in 2011 over a failed campaign opposing the introduction of free lunches for all school students regardless of their parents' financial status. He proposed a referendum on the issue, but it was rejected due to low voter turnout. Oh staked his mayoralty on the result at the time, calling the free lunch program a populist policy.






Prominent Iranian producer Gholamreza Moosavi, whose latest film is Berlin standout Ballad of a White Cow, has been hospitalized in Tehran due to COVID-19, London-based Iran International TV has reported.

Moosavi, 69, who is president of Irans film producers union and also heads Film Iran, which is the countrys largest domestic distributor, is in an intensive care unit of Tehrans private Nikan Hospital due to coronavirus, Iran International said in a statement.

More from Variety

Last month French distributor Totem Films sold Ballad of a White Cow  the Berlin competition title co-directed by Behtash Sanaeeha and Maryam Moghaddam about a womans struggle for justice, recognition and independence in todays Tehran  to a slew of European territories. The pic was produced by Moosavi and French producer Etienne de Ricaud.

Moosavis other producer credits comprise social dramas Hatred, directed by Reza Dormishain, which went to several international festivals; Last Theft by Pedram Alizadeh; and I Am a Mother by Fereydoun Jeyrani.

Iran is battling the worst coronavirus outbreak in the Middle East and lags behind in terms of vaccination with only some 200,000 vaccine doses administered in the country of 84 million, according to the World Health Organization. COVAX, an international collaboration to deliver the vaccine equitably across the world, on Monday reportedly delivered its first shipment to Iran consisting of 700,000 Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine doses.

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CHELSEA, Mich., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- BBC Entrepreneurial Training & Consulting (BBCetc) has been selected as one of the 2021 awardees for the Michigan 50 Companies to Watch award, presented by Michigan Celebrates Small Business. BBCetc will be honored at an awards ceremony during the 17th annual Michigan Celebrates Small Business gala event, July 20.

BBCetc has been assisting small businesses for the past 30+ years with high-value information, expert training (including well-regarded virtual training), and experienced guidance to successfully navigate the process so they can reach their potential.

BBCetc employs a group of highly skilled, expert consultants with a combined expertise that includes all 11 SBIR funding agencies. In fact, four BBCetc consultants have previously held C-level positions with successful SBIR/STTR awardees that won more than 200 SBIR/STTR awards during their tenure.

"We are honored to be among the impressive organizations recognized this year as a Michigan Celebrates Company to Watch," said Kris Bergman, managing partner and co-owner. "We are enormously proud to be a Michigan company. Our clients are from many other parts of the country, but Michigan is where we started."

BBCetc has been designated an all-agency SBIR/STTR support organization for the state of Michigan since 2002, and Michigan companies directly assisted by BBCetc have been awarded $300+ million in SBIR/STTR funding.

"Small businesses create significant economic impact in communities all across Michigan, said Josh Hundt, Chief Business Development Officer and Executive Vice President at the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. "We are excited to acknowledge and celebrate more than 80 small businesses this year who have been selected by their peers, communities and small business support organizations and demonstrate the resiliency and impact of Michigan small businesses."

Companies nominated for the Michigan 50 Companies to Watch award must be second-stage companies, defined as having six to 99 full-time-equivalent employees and generating $750,000 to $50 million in annual revenue or working capital from investors or grants. Additionally, the companies must be privately held and headquartered in Michigan.

Each nominee is evaluated based off of intent and capacity to grow such as:

Employee or sales growth

Exceptional entrepreneurial leadership

Sustainable competitive advantage

Other notable factors that showcase the company's success

Michigan Celebrates Small Business hopes to celebrate small business success in-person at the Breslin Center in East Lansing on July 20. At this time MCSB is planning for a hybrid approach to the celebration, offering a virtual and in-person experience. If an in-person gala is permitted, MCSB will comply with CDC, state and Michigan State University guidelines.

About Michigan Celebrates Small Businesses

Michigan Celebrates Small Businesses is a non-profit (501c3) organization that is composed of statewide founding organizations that provide small businesses with resources to help their company grow. MCSB has Since 2005, their awards gala has celebrated and honored the impact small businesses have on our communities and state. MCSB makes small businesses their priority and will continue to support, connect, and celebrate small businesses in Michigan.

Michigan Celebrates Small Business is a partnership of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, Edward Lowe Foundation, Small Business Association of Michigan, U.S. Small Business Administration, Michigan Business Network and the Michigan Small Business Development Center.

Kinexus Group is the Managing Partner of 2021 Michigan Celebrates Small Business gala.

Information about Michigan Celebrates Small Business can be found at www.MichiganCelebrates.org

Contact Information :

Amy Davis

[email protected]

734.627.7971

SOURCE BBCetc

Related Links

http://www.bbcetc.com


Health authorities believe the death of a woman just hours after she received a Covid -19 vaccination was unrelated to the injection.

The 82-year-old died at the Blue Care Yurana Aged Care Facility in the southern Brisbane suburb of Springwood on Wednesday, reportedly three hours after being given the Pfizer vaccine.

As of Wednesday evening there were no signs of any link between the woman's death and the vaccination, according to Australia's Chief Medical Officer, Professor Paul Kelly.

The Blue Care Springwood Yurana Aged Care Facility where an 82-year-old woman died the same day she received a Pfizer coronavirus vaccine

She was reportedly given the Pfizer vaccine at 10am and police were called to the residence at 1.30pm

The woman is understood to have been suffering from a lung disease.

'Sadly more than 1000 people pass in aged care every week. It is inevitable that this will include people who have been recently vaccinated,' Professor Kelly said.

'It can be expected that older and more frail people in an aged care setting may pass away due to progression of underlying disease or natural causes, this does not mean the vaccine has contributed to this.'

He added that 'any event' occurring after a vaccination will be 'fully investigated' by medical experts and the Therapeutic Goods Administration.

A report is also being prepared for the coroner.

Police were called to the residence at 1.30pm and confirmed to Daily Mail Australia that the woman's death 'is not being treated as suspicious'.

Queensland Police were unable to comment further.

Daily Mail Australia also contacted the Blue Care Springwood Yurana Aged Care Facility for comment.

The elderly woman's death comes two days after a former governor from Papua New Guinea, Mal Kela Smith, died from Covid in a Queensland hospital.

The dual Papuan-British national was evacuated to Queensland on an emergency flight on March 28.

Mr Smith was first diagnosed in Papua New Guinea and was in intensive care in Redcliffe Hospital until he died 'from complications due to Covid-19' on Monday, Queensland Health said.

As Mr Smith was not diagnosed in Australia, he will not be counted in Queensland's official death toll, which stands at 6.

Australia's Chief Medical officer said all 'events' that occur after a vaccination will be thoroughly investigation

The man who died in a Queensland hospital from Covid-19 was former governor and business man from Papua New Guinea, Mal Kela Smith (pictured)

There have been no deaths from locally-acquired cases or travellers with Covid-19 in Queensland since April 18 last year.

Three people, including a returned overseas traveller in his 40s, are currently in intensive care with the virus in Australia.

Australia's vaccine rollout plan is based on two vaccines: an imported one made by Pfizer and BioNTech, and the other by AstraZeneca and University of Oxford.

The majority of Australians will receive the AstraZeneca vaccine, as it is being locally manufactured by CSL.

Fatigue, headaches and body aches are understood to be the most common side effects of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Dr David Caldicott (pictured) detailed his adverse reaction to Pfizer Covid vaccine

Overseas there have been reports of deaths in Norway and Israel after Pfizer vaccinations, but authorities have reassured the public the claims are overstated and coincidental.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison received the Pfizer vaccine, which was mainly being used in the early stages of Australia's vaccine rollout, before local production of the AstraZeneca jab began.

According to clinical trials the Pfizer vaccine prevents Covid-19 in 95 per cent of recipients.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration was adamant 'there is no specific risk of vaccination with the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine in elderly patients'.

But the TGA did identify side effects.

More than 60 per cent of people will experience fatigue from a Pfizer dose and over 50 per cent will get a headache.

Over 30 per cent will suffer muscle pain or chills from the Pfizer vaccine and more than 20 per cent will experience joint pain.

Last week an experienced emergency room doctor claims he was floored for days by side effects from his second jab of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine that 'shocked' him.

David Caldicott, who works at Canberra's Calvary Hospital, was among the first people in the country to get the vaccine under the government's phase 1a rollout.

Dr Caldicott had his first dose of Pfizer's vaccine in February, which he described as fairly normal with no adverse effects.

But three weeks later he received his second Pfizer dose and was so exhausted he cancelled his weekend plans and decided to stay home.
Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/07/2021 -- Sailing ships have improved drastically since the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution made possible the usage of new materials and designs that developed and altered shipbuilding techniques. A windlass in utilized in order to move heavy ships from one location to another. A windlass allows cost-effective and efficient customized systems to be built to suit the marine vessel's deck requirements and layout. Shipbuilding has, therefore, become a lucrative industry in several developing and developed countries.



Windlass market for marine industry can be segmented based on type, power type, end-user, application, and region. Based on type, the windlass market for marine industry can be segregated into vertical and horizontal. Vertical windlass is also called capstan windlass. It is the most widely preferred windlass, as it requires less deck space in shipbuilding. A horizontal windlass requires less fall than a vertical windlass. A horizontal windlass is placed behind the windlass deck on the ship behind to support the anchor line. In terms of power type, the windlass market for marine industry can be further classified into manual windlass, electric windlass, and hydraulic windlass. Manual windlasses are utilized for shipbuilding as they are easy to install and potentially less risky.



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Electric windlasses employ a remote control or foot buttons while steering and motoring up the anchor. Electric windlasses are widely preferred as they offer power control for dropping the anchor with an electric brake to stop them. Hydraulic windlasses utilize pressurized hydraulic oil to operate large yachts and ships. In terms of end-user, the windlass market for marine industry can be segmented into offshore support vessels, defense vessels, cruises, large & small ships, and yachts. Based on application, the windlass market for marine industry can be segregated into oil & gas industry. Windlass is utilized to carry heavy offshore support vehicles for crude oil transportation. Based on application, the market can be further segmented into maritime security. Windlasses are employed on defense vessels for patrolling and monitoring marine activities in order to maintain maritime security. Moreover, the market is further classified into tourism industry, based on application. The tourism industry employs cruises, yachts, and small boats, which require windlasses, in order to promote and develop tourism.



A major drivers of the windlass market for marine industry is its cost-effectiveness. An electric windlass is widely utilized due to its quick and easy installation. New technologies are being developed in order to reduce windlass production costs and to ensure better safety. A key restraint of the windlass market for marine industry is its high cost. A windlass needs to be affordable for small boat manufacturers. Furthermore, high maintenance cost needs to be reduced.



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In terms of geography, the windlass market for marine industry in Asia Pacific region is expanding due to the consistent rise in maritime activities in the region. This has boosted the demand for windlass due to the increase in oil exploration and tourism activities. Marine activities in Asia Pacific region are primarily witnessed in countries such as Australia, China, the Maldives, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and New Zealand which is forecasted to increase in demand for windlass. In North America, the market for windlass for marine industry is anticipated to expand due to the increase in oil & gas exploration activities in offshore areas of the region. In Europe, countries such as Germany, Norway, France and the U.K. are witnessing an increasing demand for windlass market for marine industry due to the significant growth in marine activities. The countries in Latin America are anticipated to witness an increase in demand for windlasses in the near future.



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Key players operating in the windlass market for marine industry are Maxwell, Lewmar, Ideal, Rolce Royce Plc., and Nautic Expo.



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Wizz Air Abu Dhabi, the newest national airline of the UAE, has announced its first flight to Tel Aviv on April 18, following the announcement that Israel has been added to the "Green List", meaning travellers will no longer need to quarantine upon arrival in Abu Dhabi.

Tickets are already on sale on wizzair.com and the airlines mobile app, which is also available in Arabic, with fares starting as low as AED99 ($26.9).

The flights from Abu Dhabi to Tel Aviv will be available three times per week in April, moving to daily flights in May.

Kees Van Schaick, Managing Director of Wizz Air Abu Dhabi, said: In light of the recently eased restrictions, Im delighted to announce the date of the first WIZZ flight from Abu Dhabi to Tel Aviv later this month. The connection between the two cities is a historic moment  the link between the UAE and Israel will further contribute to the tourism sector and help to diversify the local economy, while bringing new low-fare business and leisure opportunities for travellers.

Tel Aviv is Israels cultural and commercial capital city featuring golden beaches and a lively cosmopolitan atmosphere. It is a perfect destination for those who wish to discover culture, explore new places, unlock history and enjoy Israels delectable cuisine. - TradeArabia News Service
A Trenton, New Jersey-based contractor is being fined $201,000 after one of its employees suffered serious injuries when the roof beneath him collapsed.

The U.S. Department of Labors Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited Osman Alex Inestrosa  who operates using the name Lifetime Contractor Corp.  and proposed penalties totaling $201,090 after two OSHA investigations in the fall of 2020.

OSHA initiated an inspection in September 2020 in response to a complaint and found Inestrosa allowed a worker to make roof repairs without proper safety protections at a multi-family residential complex in Mahwah. The agency cited Inestrosa with four willful violations that included exposing workers to tripping and fire hazards, failing to ensure workers wore hard hats and exposing workers to eye injuries. OSHA proposed penalties of $109,224.

One month later, OSHA initiated a second inspection at an Elmwood Park apartment complex when the roof of a multi-car garage collapsed causing serious injuries to a roofing worker employed by Inestrosa. Once again, inspectors found Inestrosa failed to provide fall protection, hardhats and eye protection and permitted use of the wrong ladders. The agency cited the contractor for three willful and three serious violations and proposed $91,866 in penalties.

Falls continue to be the leading cause of serious injuries and death in the construction industry and yet, fall protection citations are among the most common we record each year, said OSHA Area Director Lisa Levy of Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, in a U.S. Department of Labor press release. On multiple occasions, this employer knowingly disregarded well-known safety protocols, and we will hold him accountable for failing to meet his legal obligation.

The company has 15 business days from receipt of its citations and penalties to comply, request an informal conference with OSHAs area director or contest the findings before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.

Source: U.S. Department of Labor

Topics New Jersey Contractors
With the broad contours of the $212 billion state budget in place, elected officials and others are sifting through some of the bright news in store for the Capital Region.

That includes a $750 million commitment to rebuild and consolidate the states venerable Wadsworth Center health and science labs along Brevator Avenue on the east end of the Harriman state office campus in Albany.

Its terrific news, said Albany Democratic Assemblywoman Patricia Fahy, who with other local legislators has sought the project for years. Of the money allocated, $150 million is for site preparation with the rest toward building the center.

Fahy stressed that the budget item doesnt mean they can rest easy. She wants to push for an expansion of what is currently envisioned as a public sector lab complex into a science park that could accommodate private sector players, startups and possibly condominiums or some housing, which could help revitalize the city.

Indeed, there was competition over where the center would go. Rensselaer County lawmakers wanted it near the Regeneron pharmaceutical complex in East Greenbush or the State University of New Yorks existing health sciences campus in Rensselaer.

Either way, the money, which has been off-again, on-again for the past several years, is an overall win for the region. Much of the existing center is along New Scotland Road in Albany. Now with money allocated, expect lawmakers and local business leaders to keep pushing to ensure the project moves ahead in a timely way.

Its incumbent that we actually start work on the project, said Mark Eagan, president of the Capital Region Chamber.

There was more good newsin the budget, which was still being finalized Wednesday.

Earlier in the year, pre-budget, the companies building massive wind towers for the states large-scale offshore wind power project chose the Port of Albany to host a new assembly plant for the towers, which should generate 300 jobs.

Fahy and others are now pushing to insert Made in America clauses regarding the guts of the wind turbines, currently made mostly in Europe. And the 2021-22 budget also includes some references, albeit vague, about domestic sourcing.

Other items have remained in place, despite early fears the pandemic or changing politics would gut them.

Funding for Regional Economic Development Councils, which play a proportionately larger role upstate, has remained in the budget, despite fears that a new state Senate Democratic majority, in which New York City area lawmakers have an expanded role, would cut such items.

And the approximately $1 billion in small business COVID-19 relief will be welcome in all corners of the state, although it remains to be seen how accessible and simple it is to use, said Saratoga County Democratic Assemblywoman Carrie Woerner.

Woerner was also happy with a $40 million line to help small arts organizations, of which there are many in the region.

Officials in Saratoga Springs and Saratoga County were relieved to see that video lottery terminal aid was restored, allowing the city to receive $2.325 million and the county, $775,198, for hosting video gambling.

This is very important for both the city of Saratoga Springs and the county, said Saratoga County Board of Supervisors Chair Todd Kusnierz. But its especially important to the (city) with the ongoing fiscal challenges they are seeing there. That was a win for us.

Kusnierz was also happy the county received $185,000 for a mentoring program that provides support for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and other challenges.

Also significant to Saratoga County was the agreement between Rivers Casino & Resort and the Saratoga Harness Horseperson's Association. The budget initially allowed the casino to defer its purse payments to the horse owners who trot at the Saratoga Casino and Hotel track. That was scrapped and the casino, which has not supported racing with any payments for more than a year, will start paying all the money owed to the association this month.

Albany city officials noted a $12 million spending line in addition to their usual Aid and Incentives for Municipalities money.

At the University of Albany, researchers at the Center of Excellence in Weather and Climate Analytics saw their annual state funding rise from $250,000 to $800,000.

This is fantastic news because it significantly increases the capacity of the COE to take on new projects and expand more fully into new industry sectors like transportation and agriculture, said spokesman Jordan Carleo-Evangelist.

Contributing: Pete DeMola, Kenneth Crowe II and Steve Hughes
Pakistan: BCDA for accelerating development work in coastal areas

by Muhammad Irfan

April 07,2021 | Source: Urdu Point

The governing body meeting of Balochistan Coastal Development Authority ( BCDA) Tuesday took several important decisions for accelerating development work in the coastal areas. The meeting was chaired by Chief Minister Jam Kamal Khan, said Mir Abdul Rauf Rind, the chief minister coordinator. Talking to APP, he said many important and positive amendments had been made in the BCDA Act 1998 and the act had been adapted as per modern times requirements. He said the meeting had given formal approval to BCDA Employees Service Rules 2021. It decided to release Rs57.73 million as grant for development schemes. It agreed to hire human resource services on contract basis in the BCDA. It agreed to abolish and redesign some of the posts. The meeting also approved a grant of Rs188 million for the salaries of BCDA employees and asked to construct a building at the coastal strip of Balochistan. Discussing the agenda for obtaining no objection certificate, it was agreed that the BCDA could start work on the proposal and submit it to the government for approval.



Under the BCDA's Public Private Partnership (PPP) Act 2018, the governing body agreed to make PPP laws to the extent that the BCDA could start working on its own PPP rules as per amended PPP Act 2018. On the agenda of formation, the governing body decided that the proposal to amend the BCDA Act could be put before the provincial cabinet. The governing body approved its service rules after fulfilling all the formal conditions. The meeting also approved the proposal of Authority Allowance Grant. Rind said the BCDA tenders had been issued for a number of projects under the act , while work was underway on a few projects including coastal master planning, construction of seven tourist resorts, construction of rest areas at nine different locations along the coastal strip, construction of eight floating jetties. Feasibility Study of Authorized Fish Landing Sites, Construction of Beach Parks at five locations, plantation of different types of vegetation on the coastal strip were included, he added. Meanwhile, during the governing body meeting, BCDA Director General Babar Khan gave a briefing to the chief minister in detail.

 1997-2021, UrduPoint Network
A grandmother has been jailed after her secret double life cooking drugs in her kitchen then smuggling them into prison soaked into pen pal letters was exposed.

Cleaning manager Gail Cotton, 55, brewed zombie drug Spice in her house before impregnating it into sheets of paper as gangland 'Mrs Big'.

The drug-drenched documents were then mocked up as pen pal notes to avoid suspicion from authorities at jails in Liverpool and Scotland.

Cotton was arrested after an actual paper trail led to her door in Oldham, Greater Manchester, and raiding police uncovered an Aladdin's cave of narcotics.

Minshull Street Crown Court was told yesterday detectives found cannabis, cocaine, MDMA and drug distribution equipment hidden around her kitchen and a utility room. Recipes for making Spice were dotted around the 148,000 property.

Between August and November last year, she imported ingredients for the drugs from China into the UK via a contact based in Australia known as Aussie Joe before setting up her kitchen as a base for her illicit production line.

Police say she sold on the spice paper to inmates at jails in Liverpool and Scotland with text messages showing her arranging deals with buyers. One asked How much for a book? for her to reply: Cant do books, they do not dry properly, papers will be clear.

Cleaning manager Gail Cotton, 55, brewed zombie drug Spice in her kitchen in Oldham

Gail Cotton's home in Oldham where police raided and found up to 80,000 of drugs

The drugs seized from her home would have made up to 80,000 if sold by inmates on the prison wings due to upscaled demand for the drug.

Cotton admitted drug smuggling and producing Spice and was jailed for three years.

Until now she had been known locally for helping her daughter complete a 10k Race for Life event, but was detained in November 2020 after police executed a search warrant at 6.45am following a tip off.

Prosecutor Miss Verity Quaite said: Officers asked the defendant if there was anything in the property that he should be aware of. She let him in and told him there was cocaine under the sink, but the defendant said that the drugs were not hers.

Police found 50.6 grams of cocaine at over 85% purity in a tub - equating to 6,000 then found another tub containing MDMA of 81% purity equating to between 10,400-14,000. Police continued to search the property and found empty snap bags, digital scales and 500 in cash. Five SIM cards were also retrieved.

Fourteen grams of designer cannabis was also found under the sink, equating to the value of 160 and in the outer building, 940 grams of spice was found, which had a value of between 4,080 - 9,400.

Police also found instructions on how to mix spice plus 105 grams of synthetic powder and acetone were also discovered. Police originally did not appreciate the significance of the acetone but there were a number of empty bags of acetone in the backyard.

Police returned later to the property at 12:30pm but by this time, this had been removed. The defendants daughter had been at the property in the interim.

Gail Cotton, the grandmother unmasked as a gangland 'Mrs Big' by detectives in Manchester

Spice, pictured here, was made into a liquid form and soaked in papers sent to prison penpals

Gran's 80,000 seized drugs haul revealed Among Gail Cotton's 80,000 stash were specific quantities of drugs that would make more when cut and sold. They included: - 59.6 grams of cocaine with valued at 6,000 - 355 grams of MDMA valued at 14,200 - 13.99 grams of cannabis with valued at 140 - 940 grams of spice valued at 9,400 Advertisement

Miss Quaite added: One of the investigators said the defendant had a leading role in the conspiracy to supply spice. She was importing the ingredients from China needed to make spice and had been in conversation with a contact in Australia via telephone.

It is possible he is a level above the defendant who said she would let others mix the drug when she was not there but said it was her business. She sold the spice paper in Liverpool and as far as Scotland and sold it into prisons.

Text messages say the ingredients were imported from China and are described as being pure white like Sherbet. On 4 Oct 2020, someone asked what was taking so long for the chemicals from China to come. The defendant did not arrange for them to be delivered to her property.

The value of spice in prison is up to four times higher than the value on the street value. Between 60-80k is a conservative value estimate for f the drugs involved on this case. She was involved in the supply to customers around the UK, in Liverpool and Scotland.

Cotton gave no comment in police interview. In mitigation defence counsel Rick Holland admitted: This must be classified as a leading role. There is no argument to the level of harm and aggravating features to supply into prisons, I take no issues with that.

She was working part-time as a cleaner. She had not abandoned that job, there were others that were involved, hence why this is a conspiracy. There may be others above her - that is a real possibility and there is nothing on her record that aggravates her position.

She is aware she will face a custodial sentence but she is not well equipped for what she will face.

Sentencing Cotton, Judge Tina Landale told her: You were producing spice as a profitable business knowing some of it would be sent into prison. Spice in prison causes very serious harm indeed.

Firstly, for the prisoners, as well as the intimidation and bullying it causes family members to bring it into prison and also for the staff inside the prison. It has repercussion for the whole community. For the staff inside prisons it causes lawlessness, problem behaviour, disorder and aggression.

I have to look at the overall position of your role and the harm you have caused. This was aggravated because of the level of profit. I take into account everything I have read and everything that I know about you. There are a significant number of family members who will suffer as a result of your actions.
Derek Chauvins defense hinges on an argument that George Floyds drug use, not Mr. Chauvins knee, caused his death. To that end, the defense asked permission to present an arrest of Mr. Floyd in May 2019  exposing jurors to Mr. Floyds history of interactions with law enforcement.

Judge Peter Cahill, who has maintained that Mr. Floyds past actions are largely irrelevant to the case, initially said no.

But a second search of Squad 320, the patrol car that George Floyd was briefly put into on the evening he died, prompted the judge to change his mind.

The 2019 arrest began with a traffic stop. While in custody, Mr. Floyd told officers that he had swallowed several tablets of Percocet, a strong narcotic. He was taken to the hospital.
The following list includes recent reports from the Midland County Sheriffs Office and the Midland Police Department. Compiled by reporter Mitchell Kukulka.

Sunday, April 4

10:22 p.m.  A 41-year-old Lee Township resident called to report two suspicious vehicles stuck on state land. It was discovered the two vehicles were previously reported as stolen, one out of Midland County and the other out of Isabella County. Deputies recovered the two vehicles. The Isabella car was turned over to Isabella County authorities.

2:19 p.m.  Deputies were dispatched to a Mount Haley Township residence in reference to a shots fired complaint. Deputies spoke with the 53-year-old man who was shooting a shotgun. He was shooting in a safe direction and had a safe backstop.

11:59 a.m.  Deputies were dispatched to speak with a 49-year-old woman in reference to an assault that occurred at the Porter Township McBride home. It was reported the staff member was assaulted by the 33-year-old resident. No injuries occurred from the assault. Staff wished not to press charges, but to have the incident documented.

10:19 a.m.  Deputies were dispatched to a Jerome Township location in reference a report of a pit-bull hanging from a rope. Deputies made contact with the 27-year-old male homeowner, who showed deputies it was a toy that his dog likes to play with.

6:52 a.m.  Deputies responded to a report of a vehicle that crashed into the ditch in front of a Lee Township residence. The driver was reportedly knocking on doors of nearby residences asking to be towed from the ditch. Deputies located the 40 year-old male driver, who was arrested for operating while intoxicated.

5:50 a.m.  A deputy responded to a single-vehicle rollover crash in Warren Township. A citation was issued to the at-fault driver for careless driving.

2:20 a.m.  A deputy responded to a Jerome Township highway for a car-deer crash.

1:48 a.m.  A 37-year-old Warren Township woman was arrested at her Warren Township residence for an outstanding warrant out of the Saginaw City Police Department. The woman was turned over to Saginaw City Police.

Saturday, April 3

7:22 p.m.  A 56-year-old Hope Township man requested deputies contact a 62-year-old male neighbor who may be shooting firearms in an unsafe direction. Deputies contacted the neighbor, who displayed a proper shooting lane with backstop away from other residences.

7:18 p.m.  Deputies were dispatched to an Ingersoll Township location in reference to a two-vehicle crash. A 49-year-old man was arrested for operating while intoxicated causing injury and property damage.

7:03 p.m.  Deputies, Midland Township Fire and MidMichigan EMS responded to an Ingersoll Township residence for a report of a possible drug overdose. A 27-year-old man reported his 28-year-old brother took a handful of sleeping medication, as he has not slept in a few days and wanted to catch up on his rest. The brother agreed to go to the hospital to receive medical treatment.

11:07 a.m.  Officers responded to a domestic assault in the 900 block of West Allen Street.

11:03 a.m.  The Michigan State Police asked deputies to attempt to locate a 35-year-old Greendale Township man at his parent's house and arrest him. Deputies located the man and attempted to arrest him, which he resisted. He was eventually arrested and turned over to MSP.

10:34 a.m.  A 49-year-old Genesee County man reported that unknown suspects attempted to break into his Warren Township property. Nothing was taken.

10:10 a.m.  Deputies responded to a vehicle crash in Homer Township.

9:15 a.m.  Officers responded to a vehicle crash in the area of Ashman and Mertz streets.

4:42 a.m.  Deputies responded to an assault that occurred inside the Midland County Jail. A male inmate assaulted another male inmate by punching him in the face and chest while in a general population cell block. Deputies took statements from all parties involved and a report was sent to the courts for review. Minor injuries were reported.
Union Home



Minister held a series of colourful road shows in three districts of south Bengal on Wednesday, promising rapid industrialisation if is voted to power and predicted a massive victory for his party.

Shah claimed the will win between 63 to 68 seats out of 91 constituencies for which elections have been held in the first three phases of the eight-phase West Bengal assembly elections.

Asserting that Mamata Banerjee's departure is assured, he said at Mallick Fatak in Howrah, "She is such a big leader, so her departure should also be with a big margin." The home minister also promised to wipe out hooliganism and political violence if his party came to power.

The first of the road shows of the day was at Singur, once the hotspot of the anti-land acquisition movement.

The symbolism of the home minister holding a road show in Singur, three days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a rally there and alleged the "obstructionist mindset" of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee deprived West Bengal of industries and jobs, was clear--the wants to corner her over the state's dwindling industrial base and lack of jobs.

Lustily cheered by crowds, Shah stood atop a decorated vehicle with BJP candidate for the Singur seat Rabindranath Bhattacharya, who recently joined the saffron party after leaving the Trinamool Congress, and smilingly waved at people standing by the roadside and on terraces and balconies.

Speaking to reporters during the show, Shah said Singur, which has been shunned by industry since the 2006 agitation, will be developed by the next BJP government in the state.

"We will develop the area by setting up industries and a Rs 500 crore intervention fund has been announced for potatoes, for which the area is known, in our Sankalp Patra (manifesto)," he said.

Shah said, after winning the elections, the BJP government will ensure that small, medium and large industries are set up in Singur, situated beside the national highway connecting Kolkata and New Delhi.

"We will pursue politics of development, dialogue and cooperation, instead of confrontation," he said.

After having a quick lunch at a 'rickshawala's' modest home at Domjur in between his roadshows, Shah told reporters that he has full faith that the BJP will cross the target of winning 200 seats out of 294 constituencies in the state.

"Bharatiya Janata Party estimates that it will surely win 63 to 68 seats in the first three phases of elections and gain a huge lead over the TMC, Left and the Congress," he said.

He said he welcomed TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee invocation of Hindu Gods and Goddesses, and recitation of Chandi Path (hymns to Goddess Durga) at public meetings, but quipped it was "too late for her".

Banerjee, often accused by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other BJP leaders of minority appeasement, has been regularly chanting hymns and asserting her Hindu identity to keep the majority community in good humour.

The road show meandered through the roads of Singur town for nearly an hour from Dulepara More to Singur police station, as colourful posters, BJP flags and green and saffron balloons dotted the route.

Chants of ''Jai Shri Ram'' and slogans demanding industrialisation and jobs pervaded the air as the procession crawled through streets.

Referring to the Singur movement of 2006-08 that forced Tata Motors to move out its proposed small car Nano's mother production unit from the area, Modi had told an election meeting that the TMC used the place for political purpose and then left the people to fend for themselves. Singur, a small town in Hooghly district, has an old connection between Banerjee and Modi.

The scene of an aggressive movement led by Banerjee against forcible land acquisition by the then Left Front government for the ''Nano'' project, Singur, along with Nandigram, had catapulted the street fighter TMC leader to power in West Bengal in 2011.

The sustained, and often violent, protests by the local farming community led by Banerjee forced the Tatas to move out of Singur.

A cryptic ''Suswagatam'' SMS from Modi, then the Gujarat chief minister, to Ratan Tata, the group chairman, is said to have clinched the deal in Gujarat's favour and led to the relocation of the project to Sanand near Ahmedabad.

Many considered it as West Bengal's loss and Gujarat's gain.

Shah also held rallies at Domjur, Howrah Madhya and Behala East constituencies, all of which will go to polls in the fourth phase on April 10, with party candidates in tow.

Addressing the crowd at Mallick Fatak in central Howrah, Shah said that a BJP government in the state will make its border security strong enough to ensure that no one can cross over into it illegally.

"Under Modiji's leadership, we have to reform the education system, strengthen infrastructure, provide work to the unemployed and promote industry," he said.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Photo: BC Gov Flickr

Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry predicted the U.K. variant of COVID-19 will become the dominant strain in B.C. in a few weeks.

She said Tuesday that the B.1.1.7 strain of the virus is now making up about a third of new infections in the province.

It is increasing, it is taking over, she said.

Weve seen in Ontario that now it's about 60 per cent of all of the new cases are with the B.1.1.7 (UK) strain, and we are probably a month or so behind Ontario in getting there.

Studies show the B117 strain is significantly more contagious, increasing the viruses reproduction number by between 40 and 70 per cent. Early science shows the U.K. variant likely increases the risk of hospitalization, but study samples sizes are small.

Dr. Henry, however, somewhat downplayed concerns associated with the variant taking over as something entirely expected.

We know that this happens, it is the way that viruses evolve over time.

It will spread faster and take over transmission, that is what we saw in the U.K. and that is what we are seeing in B.C., she added.

She noted that vaccines so far appear to be able to deal with the B117 variant.

Dr. Henry blamed the increase in recent cases on social gatherings and more social contacts, something she says they have been able to confirm through contact tracing.

While COVID-19 hospitalizations have creeped up in recent months  now at 328 people in hospital with 96 in the ICU  Health Minister Adrian Dix said the system is far from overwhelmed.

Across B.C., hospitals are at 90 per cent capacity, well below pre-pandemic levels. Intensive care units are sitting at 76 per cent.

Health officials, however, warned that the system could feel pressure as variants take hold if people do not follow social distancing rules.

The virus is adapting and is taking advantage wherever it can, and it isnt fair. But we are together in this storm and now we have vaccines on our side as well. There will be an end, of that, I am confident, and we will be in a very different position by this summer and that is a prediction that I will make right now," Dr. Henry said.

There were 207 new cases of variants of concern identified in the past day. That number includes 67 cases of the B.1.1.7 variant first detected in the U.K., and 140 cases of the P.1 variant first detected in Brazil.

In total, B.C. has detected 3,766 cases of the variants of concern. That includes 2,838 cases of B.1.1.7, 877 cases of the P.1 variant, and 51 cases of the B.1.351 strain first discovered in South Africa.

There had been rumours that the outbreak at the Vancouver Canucks was of the P.1 variant but provincial health officer Bonnie Henry said that she was not aware that this was the case.

Those rumours may have started because the P.1 variant has been infecting younger British Columbians. Dix said that the median age of the 140 P.1 infections detected in the past day was 30, and that the median age of all 877 P.1 variant cases detected in B.C. is 33.

The median age of 3,766 people who have been infected with any of the three variants of concern in B.C. is 35, Dix said. He did not provide an updated figure for the median age of all people who have contracted COVID-19, but that age was recently 37 years old.

with files from Glen Korstrom
Victorians are hoping it's third time lucky for their troubled hotel quarantine program, as authorities spruik stricter protocols to ensure COVID-19 doesn't leak into the community again.

Some 106 returned travellers will arrive in Melbourne from 4.30am on Thursday from Colombo, Doha, Dubai and Singapore.

They will be taken to the Holiday Inn at Melbourne Airport and the Intercontinental on Collins Street, where they will stay for a fortnight.

Some 106 returned travellers will arrive in Melbourne from 4.30am on Thursday from Colombo, Doha, Dubai and Singapore

The state hasn't accepted returned travellers since February 13, when workers contracted the UK strain of COVID-19 from guests at the Holiday Inn.

The outbreak, which grew to 24 cases, triggered a statewide five-day lockdown.

The state's second wave, which last year resulted in more than 18,000 infections, 800 deaths and a 112-day lockdown, also leaked from hotel quarantine.

The program was overhauled in December after a judicial inquiry, with further reviews conducted by Deputy Chief Health Officer Allen Cheng and SaferCare Victoria following the second leak.

'We've gone through these hotels room by room, floor by floor to make sure that they are safe,' Acting Emergency Services Minister Danny Pearson said on Wednesday.

'We have adopted and we have changed and we have listened to the report of experts and as a consequence, the program is robust'.

COVID-19 Quarantine Victoria Commissioner Emma Cassar said Victorians should be confident in the overhaul.

'My message is really simple, we have done everything we can to make this as safe as we can and we will continue to ensure the program keeps ahead of this virus,' she said.

As part of the changes, travellers will be tested four times - on days zero, four, 12 and 14.

They will be unable to leave rooms for fresh air without a medical reason, while meal times will be staggered and large family groups spaced out to avoid risk of aerosol transmission.

Infection prevention control has also been ramped up for staff, who have all received at least one Pfizer dose.

The state hasn't accepted returned travellers since February 13, when workers contracted the UK strain of COVID-19 from guests at the Holiday Inn

About half have received their second, though all workers should be fully vaccinated by the end of April and their family members soon after.

The majority have also undergone N95 mask fit testing and will be required to wear the more protective masks as well as full PPE while working on floors housing returned travellers.

Each worker also has a unique QR code, which records their daily test results, vaccination status and close contacts.

'The QR app has enabled really quick data upload for our public health colleagues. So, in the unlikely event (an outbreak) was to happen, we could provide that information at a great speed of around 45 minutes,' Ms Cassar said.

Arrivals are capped at 800 in the first week, though it is expected to increase in the second to 1000.

The returned travellers will be taken to the Holiday Inn at Melbourne Airport and the Intercontinental on Collins Street, where they will stay for a fortnight

The Novotel Ibis Melbourne Central, Pan Pacific, Holiday Inn on Flinders and Element Melbourne Richmond also are also ready for use after ventilation works.

Another six hotels are expected to join the program, including the Four Points by Sheraton, which media toured on Wednesday.

The hotel has been revamped to accommodate the many staff involved in the program, including nurses, doctors, defence force personnel and police.

It even has its own testing site and stockroom filled with toys, baby formula and food, nappies, cleaning products and toiletries to cater for young families, who are the largest cohort to pass through the system.

Authorised officers will be stationed on each hotel floor, where they monitor guests 24/7.

They are not allowed mobile phones or books as they are required to be 'as alert as possible' to potential incidents and accidents.

Victoria recorded no new local virus cases for the 40th day in a row on Wednesday, following 11,746 tests.
Beer producers are calling for huge tax cuts to help struggling pubs following crippling Covid-19 lockdowns.

The Brewers Association is calling for Scott Morrison to slash the draught beer tax in half, a move that could save a small pub $465 each week.

That saving could be passed on to consumers in the form of lower prices or used to pay down debt and keep the pub alive, said chief executive John Preston.

The Brewers Association is calling for Scott Morrison to slash the tax in half, a move that could save a small pub $465 each week. Pictured: Drinkers at the Sydney Opera House

If the saving were passed on entirely, a feel-strength schooner could be about 25 cents cheaper.

It comes after draught beer sales dropped by a third last year as lockdowns kept punters from pubs and clubs.

Mr Preston said a big tax cut in the May budget could 'help hospitality sector as they cope with the ongoing impact of mandatory closures due to lockdowns and other restrictions such as capacity limits.

'A 50 per cent reduction in the excise rate on draught beer would deliver a massive boost to hospitality business owners at a relatively small cost to the government,' he added.

Draught beer sales dropped by a third last year as lockdowns kept punters from pubs and clubs. Pictured: A bar in Sydney in March 2020

The group's modelling has found that halving the tax to draught sales would cost the Government $150 million out of total current beer tax revenue of $2.5 billion.

Beer tax in Australia is the fourth highest in the world after Norway, Japan and Finland.

It is estimated that, including GST, 42 per cent of the cost of carton of full-strength beer goes straight to the taxman.

'Beer anchors pubs and clubs, and these businesses need a break,' said Mr Preston.

How does Australia rank on beer tax compared to other countries? Australians pay the 4th highest beer tax in the industrialised world. The table below ranks beer taxes around the world, expressed in Australian dollars (as at February 2020), per litre of alcohol. Norway $3.62 Japan $2.92 Finland $2.46 Australia  packaged $2.26 Australia  draught $1.59 United Kingdom $1.52 Ireland $1.50 New Zealand $1.26 France $0.50 Italy $0.50 Canada $0.35 United States $0.31 Spain $0.15 Germany $0.13 Advertisement

The CEO also said any tax reduction would benefit the brewing industry which supports 100,000 jobs and the farming industry which supplies millions of dollars of produce for making beer.

He said the government should at least freeze the rate and stop the current automatic increases every six months.

The drop of 30 per cent in draught beer sales compared to the previous year represents a drop in beer sales by pubs and clubs last year of just over $1 billion  a devastating loss for the hospitality and brewing sectors.

In April and May 2020 beers sales for pubs and clubs dropped 94 per cent and 96 per cent.

Overall beer sales across both the hospitality and retail sectors (i.e. through bottle shops and pubs and clubs) were down for the year by 2.6 per cent.

Overall, 373,500 kegs had to be tipped with the costs borne by the sector.

That's around 44 million schooners in lost sales to the brewing industry and our hospitality sector.
Superannuation industry lobby groups could be shut down under new legislation aiming to reduce retirement account fees and improve returns, with Liberal senator Andrew Bragg suggesting regulations could be introduced forcing representative bodies to merge.

The federal governments Your Future Your Super changes could be used to force consolidation among industry superannuation lobby groups in a bid to cut down on the expenses of the nations industry super funds. One feature of the legislation could give the Treasurer the power to block funds from making spending and investment decisions the government does not like.

Senator Andrew Bragg has been pushing for major changes to the superannuation system. Credit:Peter Braig

The $3 trillion superannuation industry charges about $30 billion a year in fees and Senator Bragg estimates the lobbying arm of these groups employs about 100 people and spends $50 million.

[Do] we really need to cough up for four huge lobby groups, asked Senator Bragg, who formerly worked at the Financial Services Council and the Business Council of Australia. He clarified he was referring to the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees, Industry Super Australia, the FSC (whose members include super funds but also other finance-related businesses) and the Association of Superannuation Funds Australia.
CHANDIGARH: The Punjab government on Wednesday announced its decision to impose a night curfew from 9 PM - 5 AM across the entire state till April 30 amid rising COVID-19 cases.

The Captain Amarinder Singh-led Congress government also banned political gatherings across the state till further notice.

Punjab Government imposes night curfew from 9pm-5am across the entire State till April 30, also bans political gatherings in the State pic.twitter.com/8lKIXxF3MP  ANI (@ANI) April 7, 2021

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had earlier warned of stricter restrictions if the COVID-19 situation in the state, which is reeling under a massive surge of cases and deaths, does not improve over the next week.

The situation will be reviewed again on April 8, and a decision on further curbs may be taken if the COVID-19 spread continues unchecked, he had told reporters.

He also underlined the need for aggressive vaccination, particularly in areas with high cases and cities with more than 300 cases.

Amid the surge in Covid-19 cases, several states have announced restrictions, including lockdown, weekend lockdown, night curfews to curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

Ahead of Punjab, the Delhi government had on Tuesday imposed a night curfew in the national capital from 10 pm to 5 am. The order was implemented with immediate effect and will remain effective till April 30. Delhi reported 3,548 new Covid-1919 cases, 2,936 recoveries, and 15 deaths on Monday. With this, total cases in the national capital reached 6,79,962, including 14,589 active cases.

Amid growing concerns over fast-rising cases of COVID-19 infections, India on Wednesday recorded 1,15,736 new coronavirus cases, taking the total tally in the country to 1,28,01,785.

According to the Health Ministry data released at 8 AM, the death toll increased by 630 to 1,66,177. The is the biggest one-day rise in cases in the country ever since the pandemic began.

According to the Health Ministry, there are currently 8,43,473 active cases across the country, while 1,17,92,135 patients have been discharged, with 59,856 discharges reported in the last 24 hours.

As many as 25,14,39,598 samples have been tested for COVID-19 up to 6 April, of which 12,08,329 samples were tested on Tuesday, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said. Meanwhile, more than 8.70 crore vaccine doses have been administered till now, ever since India's inoculation drive began on 16 January.

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[April 07, 2021] Government of Canada invests to bring high-speed Internet to 144 more households in Lemonville and Locust Hill

Ontarians in rural communities to benefit from increased connectivity OTTAWA, ON, April 7, 2021 /CNW/ - The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted how much we rely on our connections. Now more than ever, Canadians across the country need access to reliable high-speed Internet as many of us are working, learning, and staying in touch with friends and family from home. Right now, too many Canadians living in rural and remote communities lack access to high-speed Internet. Through the Universal Broadband Fund (UBF) Rapid Response Stream, the Government of Canada is taking immediate action to get Canadians connected to the high-speed Internet they need. Today, Helena Jaczek, Member of Parliament for MarkhamStouffville, on behalf of the Honourable Maryam Monsef, Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Rural Economic Development, announced just under $125,000 in funding for Bell to bring high-speed Internet to rural residents of Lemonville and Locust Hill. This project will connect 144 underserved households to high-speed Internet: 115 households in Lemonville ($84,000)

29 households in Locust Hill ($40,800) The project being announced today was approved within five months of the November 2020 formal launch of the $1.75-billion Universal Broadband Fund. Projects funded under the UBF, as well as through other public and private investments, will help connect 98% of Canadians to high-speed Internet by 2026 and achieve the national target of 100% connectivity by 2030. Today's announcement builds on the progress the Government of Canada has already made to improve critical infrastructure in Ontario. Since 2015, the federal government has invested more than $2.85 billion in over 4,060 infrastructure projects in Ontario communities with populations of fewer than 100,000 people. These investments mean 481 km of new or upgraded roads that are making our communities safer; more than 938 projects to provide residents with cleaner, more susainable sources of drinking water; and more than 5,427 additional housing units built in rural communities, helping ensure all Ontarians have a safe place to call home.



Quotes "Congratulations to Bell and the communities of Lemonville and Locust Hill on today's important broadband announcement. This investment will bring reliable, high-speed Internet access to 144 households in these two communities, helping create jobs, improving access to health care and online learning services, and keeping people connected to their loved ones. I will continue working to make sure our communities here in Markham and Whitchurch-Stouffville have access to the critical infrastructure they need."

 Helena Jaczek, Member of Parliament for MarkhamStouffville

"Fast, reliable and high-capacity broadband networks will be key to the COVID-19 recovery and to social and economic opportunities for all stakeholders into the future. Bell has committed to further accelerating our industry-leading capital investment plan over the next two years to bring world-class broadband connections to even more communities. We're proud to partner with the Government of Canada by investing $302,400 to connect rural households in Lemonville and Locust Hill to the fastest fibre home Internet speeds available."

 Bruce Furlong, Senior Vice President, Access Engineering and Deployment, Bell Canada Quick facts Canada's Connectivity Strategy aims to provide all Canadians with access to Internet speeds of at least 50 megabits per second (Mbps) download / 10 Mbps upload.

The Universal Broadband Fund (UBF) is a $1.75-billion investment designed to help connect all Canadians to high-speed Internet. Applications to the UBF were accepted until March 15, 2021 , and are now being evaluated.

investment designed to help connect all Canadians to high-speed Internet. Applications to the UBF were accepted until , and are now being evaluated. The UBF is part of a suite of federal investments to improve high-speed Internet. The suite includes the Connect to Innovate program, which is expected to connect nearly 400,000 households by 2023, and the recently announced $2-billion broadband initiative from the Canada Infrastructure Bank. Associated links Backgrounder: Universal Broadband Fund and Telesat low Earth orbit satellite capacity agreement

Universal Broadband Fund

Connect to Innovate Program  Project status updates

Canada Infrastructure Bank announcement

High-Speed Access for All: Canada's Connectivity Strategy Stay connected Follow Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada on Twitter: @ISED_CA SOURCE Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

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Amaravati, April 7 : A day after a single judge bench of the Andhra Pradesh High Court stayed the MPTC and ZPTC polls, a larger bench srtuck off that order on Wednesday, paving the way for conducting the polls as scheduled on Thursday.

On Monday, high court judge Upmaka Durgaprasada Rao had stalled the polls for not giving four weeks' prior time and mandated new State Election Commissioner (SEC) Nilam Sawhney to file an affidavit by April 15.

With Rao's order overturned now, polling for the 7,220 Mandal Parishad Territorial Constituencies (MPTCs) and 515 Zilla Parishad Territorial Constituencies (ZPTCs) will happen as usual on Thursday.

However, the court has mandated that counting of votes should not be undertaken until further directives.

Advocate General (AG) Sriram argued the case on behalf of the state government, resulting in a favourable order for it considering that the government is eager to finish all the elections and focus on the task of Coronavirus vaccination.

On behalf of the State Election Commission (SEC), advocate C.V. Mohan Reddy argued that the 28-day or four-week prior time before issuing the MPTC and ZPTC poll notification is not necessary.

After listening to the arguments both in favour and against the polls, the court gave its green signal.

The verdict came as a blow to the opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDP), Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Janasena, all of which had petitioned against the polls.
Xinjiang busts separatist criminal group

Xinhua) 09:12, April 07, 2021

Children walk in a street after school at a scenic spot in the ancient city of Kashgar, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, May 16, 2020. (Xinhua/Zhao Ge)

URUMQI, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Authorities in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region on Tuesday revealed that they had busted a separatist criminal group in the educational sector.

The group's leader was Sattar Sawut, former director of the Xinjiang education department and former head of the region's leading group on basic-education curriculum reform. They incorporated ethnic separatism, violence, terrorism, and religious extremism content into minority-language textbooks. These books had been used for 13 years. It had grave consequences, said Wang Langtao, vice president of the Xinjiang regional higher people's court, at a press conference.

Sattar Sawut was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve after being found guilty of crimes of separatism, taking bribes and several other crimes.

Sattar Sawut, born in November 1947 in Toksun County, Xinjiang, pleaded guilty to the crimes and did not file an appeal against the verdict.

Sattar Sawut took advantage of compiling and publishing ethnic language textbooks for primary and secondary schools to split the country, starting in 2002. He instructed others to pick several people with separatist thoughts to join the textbook compilation team, the court found.

Sattar Sawut strongly demanded incorporating content that preached ethnic separatism, violence, terrorism, and religious extremism into the textbooks to split the state, the court found.

The investigation also found that 84 texts preached ethnic separatism, violence, terrorism, and religious extremism in the 2003 and 2009 editions of the textbooks.

Under the influence of the textbooks, several people (already convicted) participated in terrorist attacks in Urumqi on July 5, 2009, and April 30, 2014, respectively, or became key members of a separatist group headed by former college teacher Ilham Tohti, the court found.

Sattar Sawut also took advantage of his government posts to accept bribes worth 15.05 million yuan (about 2.3 million U.S. dollars), the court said.

(Web editor: Guo Wenrui, Bianji)
Wednesday, April 7, 2021 at 1:00PM

by Josh Bierman

Im sure Im not the only contributor/reader on this site who upon Oscar nomination morning wakes to find theyve already seen just about every above the line nominee. Or if they havent, they come to terms with having to sit through Hillbilly Elegy after managing to avoid it for months.

This season, like in so many past ones, its those below the line nominees that I spent time getting to know after the nomination announcement. I didn't expect to be so far behind on Best Documentary Feature ahead of nomination morning...

AppleTV+s Boys State had been gaining momentum as a potential nominee as had Kirsten Johnsons Netflix venture, Dick Johnson is Dead. However, the documentary branch threw us a curveball like they did in 2018 when buzzy documentaries like Wont You Be My Neighbor? and Three Identical Strangers, frontrunners all season long, were shafted. And much like 2018, were still left with a pretty strong line up. While AppleTV+ missed out, Netflix has two nominees in contention, Amazon Prime has one, and our two foreign language documentaries can be found on Hulu. Without further ado, lets meet our nominees in the order I personally met them...





My Octopus Teacher explores filmmaker and marine life enthusiast Craig Fosters relationship with an octopus he spent a year observing off the coast of Cape Town. Directors James Reed and Pippa Ehrlich interecut Fosters narration with footage Foster himself shot underwater. While the underwater shots do a great job of showing what this experience must have been like, Fosters narration goes a long way in helping you understand his aquatic reality. In the first few minutes, he describes how frigid the water was on his first few visits and his description was so vivid that I felt cold hearing about it. I wont lie, I was hoping for a bigger octopus than the one we got, but then again this wasnt my octopus teacher, it was someone elses. And like Foster it was hard not to fall in love with this octopus and the relationship that Foster creates with her. The documentary is at its most interesting (and heartrending) when dealing with the hardest part of documenting nature--the helplessness of the human observer in the animal worlds most violent moments. In most nature documentaries we accept the reality that documentarians cant insert themselves into the environment they are filming, but most dont have the relationships that Foster built with the octopus. Both Foster and the audience are left reeling as we watch our octopus fend for her life against sharks. Ultimately, My Octopus Teacher hits all of its marks. Foster clearly sets up in the beginning a relationship he always dreamed of being able to have with animals, he creates that relationship, and then we see how it serves to bring him closer to the people already in his life, like his son who he begins to include in his underwater adventures. And it all happens in a snappy 85 minutes, the perfect feature length.

The first of the two foreign language documentaries I watched was Chiles The Mole Agent. A private investigator is contacted by the daughter of a woman in a nursing home who believes her mother is being mistreated. The PI advertises in local listings for an elderly person to go undercover in the facility. Enter Sergio, a recently widowed man looking for a way to fill his days. What follows is a heartwarming portrait of a man finding a purpose later in life, but also a sobering look at aging. There are delightful moments of Sergio learning how to use technological devices like an octogenarian Maxwell Smart. We see him become the flavor of the month at the home with every woman making a move including a woman who has been there for 25 years. (Wheres that movie? That means she would have been in this facility starting in her mid 60s and she seemed completely with it, both mentally and physically, in her 80s!).

I dont know if Ive been in the house too long and watching the news too much, but I was convinced Sergio was Dr. Faucis long lost twin. Like his American counterpart, he takes his job so seriously and with a degree of empathy that is so rare. That level of thoughtfulness for other people should be necessary in every single job. Ultimately, while I loved watching Sergios journey and the friendships he makes, this didnt feel like a documentary. It didnt feel like a documentary about an elderly man going undercover to find abuse in a nursing home, it almost felt like they were documenting a social experiment. And yet, I was completely charmed by the movie and would be happy to see it win on Oscar night. It also doesnt hurt that it was less than 90 minutes. If you havent watched I Care a Lot yet, the two films would make an interesting double feature. And for what its worth, The Mole Agent has what Dick Johnson is Dead wants.

The next documentary was Netflixs Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution which explores the lives of a group of disabled kids who attended Camp Jened, a summer camp that let them be surrounded by people just like themselves. It ultimately empowered many of them to be leading forces in the disability rights movement when they grew up. All the documentaries in this category do a really wonderful job of getting us to fall in love with the figures theyre spotlighting. No documentary in this list has a better cast of characters. They are brimming with life, particularly Denise Sherer Jacobson who has a wicked sense of humor. My hang up with the film was based on what I was assuming it would be from the title. I was hoping to see more of their life at camp. I had an uncle who was a quadrapalegic and his greatest joy in life was going to summer camp every year from childhood through adulthood. He would paint and make friends and talk about it all year until the next summer came around. I wish we got to experience more of the camp life, because ultimately Camp Jened closed and we deserve the oral history leading to that moment. That being said, the latter half of the title leads to a rousing and empowering second half. This is a must watch for younger generations including my own. I was embarrassed I didnt know how recent the fight for the civil rights of handicapped folks was in our history. Ultimately, I think this will be our winner come Oscar night. I hope theres a way that all the Camp Jened alumni who made this film so special will be able to be included on Oscar night. I think a virtual ceremony will make that more likely than a regular Oscar night. I think back to Ali Stroker winning a Tony for Oklahoma! and having to wait backstage to then take the stage upon winning. While these amazing crusaders fought hard for an accessible world and succeeded, you dont have to look further than an awards show as recent as 2019 to see that we still have a ways to go.

If anything can spoil Crip Camps win I think its Garrett Bradleys Time. Bradley shows us Fox Richs two decade long battle to get her husband, Rob, out of prison following a conviction for armed robbery using both home video footage Fox herself shot over the course of years interspliced with Bradleys own camerawork beginning in 2016. Fox is endlessly watchable. Eloquent and savvy, we watch her come into her voice over the course of twenty years. It is impossible not to root for her and for what she is fighting. The ingeniousness of bouncing back and forth between the present day and the past shows not just Foxs growth, but how her children have forged a path while not having a father figure present in the way most children do. Following the protests of last June and the recent fight in New York State to vaccinate the incarcerated community, this film highlights the struggle black people have been facing for decades in and out of the prison system. Time is a movie for the moment we are living in. The last five minutes hit like a ton of bricks. It is an emotional release like none other. I well up even at the thought of it. In addition to the story itself, no documentary in this list tells its story as innovatively as Time. If a spoiler happens in this category it will be here. And it would be pretty neat to have two female POC directors winning in one night.

Rounding out the category is Collective. For the second time in history and the second year in a row, one of the nominees in this category is also a nominee in Best International Feature. The Romanian doc tells the story of a 2015 fire at a Bucharest nightclub that killed 27 and injured 180. In the months after the fire, 37 more people died due to the hospital's inability to treat burn victims as well as the discovery that hospitals had been using diluted disinfectants. As journalists continue to investigate the mismanagement of the healthcare system, it becomes clear how broken the system is and ultimately how hopeless reform will be. Like Time, Collective is a film that comments on the moment we are currently living through.For over a year now, weve all been focused on the flaws of healthcare systems the world over. Its impressive how timely it is considering it was technically released in 2019. It does a great job of exploring the healthcare crisis while also showing us how one particular survivor coped with her new reality. Im not sure this makes sense, but of all the documentaries this felt the most like a capital D documentary. It is Serious. It is the biggest downer and it felt like a spiral of things getting worse. There are images that made my stomach turn for myriad reasons. I didnt find any hope in this film, not that it was their job or intention to give the viewer that feeling. Ultimately, I wonder if that will hurt its chances. Maybe next year well have our third year in a row where we have a foreign language film in both International Feature and Documentary and itll emerge victorious in one category. But this year is not that year.

My predictions in order of most likely winner to least...

Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution Time Collective My Octopus Teacher The Mole Agent

What say you, reader? Do you also think Crip Camp will emerge victorious? Or are you still bitter that Dick Johnsons Oscar chances are dead?

OTHER CATEGORY REVIEWS

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STOCKHOLM, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The increasing demand to build and maintain high-quality infrastructure in the Nordics, together with the opportunities that lie in urbanization and climate positive city development, promise an exciting outlook for NRC Group. Supporting our mission of creating infrastructure that goes beyond the demands of today and tomorrow, we pursue a strategy of sustainable growth, promoting climate-friendly solutions and proactively work to becoming a zero-emission industry.

NRC Group has now published its first Sustainability Report that provides stakeholders information on performance and governance of material sustainability topics for 2020. The report has been prepared in accordance with the GRI Standards and reviewed by a third party, where the GRI Content Index is available in the report.

"The past year has been challenging. We demonstrated resilience through our response to the Covid-19 pandemic. I would like to thank our people whose efforts ensured our high health and safety standards were maintained and that we delivered on our environmental commitments, all under very difficult circumstances. I am confident that our learnings from 2020 and ability to adapt quickly will serve us well in the future, particularly as we address our critical sustainability challenges, including health, safety and climate impacts.", says Henning Olsen, CEO of NRC Group.

NRC Group is closely monitoring the EU's work on Sustainable Finance and the EU Taxonomy regulation. The new legislative and non-legislative actions introduced in the European Green Deal and the EU Sustainable Finance Action plan, will require companies to consider and disclose how they are working with sustainability in a new and standardized manner. In preparation for the EU Taxonomy, NRC Group will during 2021 assess the 'greenness' of revenues, investments and operational costs.

"The classification system for economic activities will contribute substantially to climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation and further environmental objectives. Sustainable finance is an important enabler for implementing the Green Deal and making the EU's economy sustainable. Going forward, we believe the NRC Group will benefit from the EU taxonomy as our core business areas are largely aligned with the EU environmental objectives.", says Dag Fladby, CFO of NRC Group.

Media contact:

Lene Engebretsen

Press contact

+47 90 12 39 39

http://www.nrcgroup.com

lene.engebretsen@nrcgroup.com

The full report can be downloaded on www.nrcgroup.com

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/nrc-group/r/the-sustainability-report-2020-from-nrc-group,c3320950

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The German state of Bavaria has negotiated a "preliminary contract" to receive 2.5 million doses of the Russian COVID-19 vaccine Sputnik V, the regional leader announced on Wednesday.

Sputnik V is still subject to approval by the European Medicines Agency.

This "preliminary contract is signed today" said the Minister-President Markus Soder, a conservative politician.

He added that "if Sputnik is approved in Europe, then the state of Bavaria will receive additional doses of vaccine", 2.5 million, in the coming months.

R-Pharm Germany, a subsidiary of Russian drug manufacturing giant R-Pharm, has a production line in the Bavarian town of Illertissen, and is in a position to manufacture the Russian vaccine, according to several German media outlets.

Soder, a possible candidate to succeed Angela Merkel, had already asked the EMA in March to speed up its approval process for Sputnik V.
Students in San Antonio and across the state  including some who have been learning at home  came to school Tuesday for state-mandated STAAR testing they couldnt complete due to glitches with the online system.

The first day of the STAAR came amid an ongoing pandemic that has many families still trying to decide whether or when to return their students to in-person learning. The STAAR must be taken in person and those who were unable to complete any of three tests affected by Tuesdays problems will need to return to campus to try again.

The problems were described as widespread, the result of connectivity issues at Educational Testing Service, or ETS, a vendor used by the Texas Education Agency to administer the STAAR.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio schools prepare for STAAR, ordered to encourage virtual learners to show up in person

All involved in public education in Texas should expect better than what they have experienced today; we are working to ensure that our students do not experience future testing issues, a TEA statement said.

The State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, is the standardized test that underlies the TEAs annual ratings of schools and school districts. Passing its fifth- and eighth-grade reading and math exams has been required for students to advance to the next grade.

But those consequences have been suspended during the pandemic  the STAAR is being given this week mainly to see where students stand academically after a year of educational upheaval. The TEA directed school districts to encourage at-home learners to participate in a bid to improve the value of the data on student progress or learning loss amid a school year like no other.

Tuesdays glitches occurred with the writing exam for grades 4 and 7 and the test for high school English I on the first of five days that students were eligible to take these tests online. ETS had problems with its database system and has been working to make the necessary corrections, the TEA said.

On ExpressNews.com: Texas students will take STAAR exams but the stakes will ease for school districts

At North East ISD, the issues became evident early in the morning when some students were unable to log on. Some who got past that step got kicked off the platform, district spokeswoman Aubrey Chancellor said.

Everyone who was testing on paper continued with no problems, Chancellor said. Once some of the students stopped trying to log on and the traffic was lessened, then some of our students were able to get on and they continued their testing without issue today.

At least 1,400 NEISD students will need to retest and will be rescheduled for April 13, she said.

Northside ISD experienced the same connectivity issues and officials are working to finalize plans for those who were unable to test, spokesman Barry Perez said. The district sent a notification of the glitches to parents, but each campus was working on sending individual notifications to those needing to retest.

Some schools were affected more than others, Perez said. The other issue is that there is a second test scheduled for Thursday... the last we heard from ETS is that they hope to let everyone know by 5 a.m. tomorrow if they have been able to resolve the connectivity issues.

Tuesdays tests would likely be rescheduled for April 13, Perez said, if there is no issue with other tests.

Its unclear how many students across the state were affected, TEA officials said. Some students were able to complete and submit their tests online without any issues.

Some experienced slow response times and were able to answer some of the questions but could not finish the exam. The software saved responses every 30 seconds, so those students will be able to finish the exam at a later date without having to start from the beginning.

We understand the frustration this has caused students, parents, teachers, and administrators. What happened today is completely unacceptable, the TEA statement said.

This year is ETSs last year handling the administration of the online exams. Cambium Assessment will take over starting next school year to ensure that users have a seamless online testing experience moving forward, the TEA said.

TEA had made the decision to change testing vendors before Tuesdays glitches.

The states decision to issue the test in person this year was immediately controversial mainly due to COVID-19 concerns.

Theres no way around the fact that this was a big decision for so many families who have been virtual this year, Chancellor said. At the same time, this was the first time that so many students were taking it (the STAAR test) online and sometimes technology fails. So I think we have to be a little understanding of that.

Some lawmakers, parents and teachers have criticized the TEAs requirement that students take the test in person this year and have called for the STAAR to be canceled. Texas State Teachers Association President Ovidia Molina called it absurd and risky.

Throughout the state, many students who have been learning virtually from home all school year to protect themselves and their families from COVID-19 trudged back to campuses today, Molina said in a prepared statement. Now, many of them will have to return to campuses to try again.

Danya.Perez@express-news.net
[April 07, 2021] ProSearch Kicks Off Spring Events with Data Privacy Panel at Legalweek(year)

LOS ANGELES, April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ProSearch, a leading provider of comprehensive discovery and compliance solutions to corporate legal departments and law firms, announces its spring event schedule.

At Legalweek(year) Virtual Series 3, Ryan Costello, head of the ProSearch Data Privacy Engagement Service, will moderate a panel of data privacy experts in a one-hour discussion on Highlighting Challenges in the Intersection of Data Privacy and Discovery to be presented virtually on April 13, 2021, at 11 a.m. EDT. Panelists include: Ifeoma Anekwe, Vice President, Legal Discovery Management, JPMorgan Chase

Stephen Goldstein, Director of Practice Support, Squire Patton Boggs

Bill Karazsia, Associate General Counsel, Privacy & Data Protection, Fortive

Robert Taylor, Associate General Counsel, J2 Global, Inc. In this session, panelists will share emerging solutions for protecting private information throughout the discovery process. ProSearch co-founder and CEO Julia Hasenzahl will join George Socha of Reveal-Brainspace on April 16, 2021, at 11 a.m. EDT, on the ACEDS eDiscovery Leaders Live interview series. The conversation will explore the ProSearch approach to eDiscovery and current topics in legal technology. Details available on LinkedIn, #eDiscoveryLeadersLive. ProSearch solutions advisors Lauren Roso and Maggie Burtoft will participate in an invitation-only virtual even Awareness into Action: Inspiring Change at The Women in Law & Leadership Virtual Summit on April 21, 2021. Centerforce conferences focus on core values around diversity and inclusion and explore the obstacles, risks and rewards on the path to a fulfilling and productive career for women and minority leaders.



ProSearch will join Shook, Hardy & Bacon in sponsoring Lunch with Lidia on April 22, 2021, at 1:00 p.m. EDT. An exclusive virtual event, hosted by The Electronic Discovery Institute, it features two-time Emmy Award winner Lidia Bastianich, who will teach invited guests to master the art of Italian cuisine, live from Becco in New York City. ProSearch will sponsor the SOLID Europe Summit on Legal Innovation and Disruption, April 29-30, 2021. Solutions advisor Damir Kahvedzic will offer a virtual TED Talk-style talk on The Red Flags of Innovation: Lessons from the Past. What can we learn from a 150-year-old UK law that stifled innovation and proved disastrously short-sighted?

ProSearch takes an unconventional approach to solution design and service delivery with its Enterprise offering, in which ProSearch teams become an extension of the clients, listening and collaborating on solutions that maximize investments and improve outcomes. The company regularly supports and participates in premier industry events to share its knowledge, expertise and passion for innovation. About ProSearch

ProSearch enables corporations and law firms to meet eDiscovery, fraud investigation, compliance and IG requirements at scale with precision and ease. The ProSearch team of consultants, data scientists, linguists, project managers, attorneys and discovery specialists collaborates with clients to execute their matter strategies and ensure on-target, on-budget, on-time delivery. Because discovery is a business process that can be measured, managed and improved, ProSearch offers an Enterprise solution tailored to align with an organizations business goals by providing operational excellence that transforms its discovery processes. To learn more visit ProSearch.com. Media Contact

Vicki LaBrosse

Edge Marketing for ProSearch

vlabrosse@edgemarketinginc.com

651-552-7753



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There was commotion outside the Harare Magistrates Courts on Tuesday when MDC Alliance activist, Makomborero Haruziveshe, was jailed for engaging in public violence. (VOA)
A nurse has been left terrified after a criminal gang mistakenly threatened to target her house thinking it belonged to a prison officer.

Jan, from Clarehall, north Dublin arrived home from work one day to find gardai at her house, who informed her that her house was being targeted by accident.

She told her story on Liveline today, saying: I had a detective sergeant from Coolock Garda Station at the door informing me that my address was out there with criminals who were targeting a prison warden but they had my address by mistake.

They said they investigated it thoroughly and it is a real threat.

Read More

He basically just said that we need to be on guard, we need to be advised on how to stay safe and that a crime prevention officer would come to the house. My number would be highlighted at Coolock Garda Station and if I rang at any time of the day or night, a car would be sent straight down.

The woman told listeners that she lives in fear every day and fears for her and her 21-year-old sons safety.

She continued: I just live with my son. Theres no man whos 30 years in the prison service living at my address.

How can you sleep with that threat? Im going to bed every night thinking this darkness is going to come to my house and either cause criminal damage or potentially violence against me and my son.

Jan added that a crime prevention officer visited her house and advised her to take new safety precautions, such as blocking up her letterbox, installing security cameras, and driving a different way to work.

However, Jan explained that gardai have not made contact with her since the crime prevention officers visit.

The nurse said: The guards said to me that it was ongoing investigation and theyd be in touch with me but I havent heard from them in two weeks.

Its just an absolute disgrace.

Ive been given no support, no backup. Ive been left in limbo to deal with this situation thats been put on me.

While she expressed her frustration with garda officers, Jan shared that Cllr Tom Brabazon, former Lord Mayor Dublin, has been of great help to her.

She revealed that he was the one who boarded up her letterbox and acquired fire extinguishers for her.

Cllr. Brabazon said: Obviously I was very concerned for this ladys welfare. Shes working 12 hours a day and she described the situation which I was really concerned about.

Jan certainly wouldnt be the first and I certainly have come across situations before, but Jan is very vulnerable.

Read More
Five states in the US have accounted for almost half of the countrys new coronavirus infections in the past week, data has shown.

According to data from the Johns Hopkins University, New York, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania and New Jersey together reported 44 per cent of the nations new Covid-19 infections.

Out of the 452,000 total US infections in the latest available seven-day period, the five states recorded 197,500 of those new cases.

Together, the states account for just 22 per cent of the US population, with Michigan in particular having seen the highest rate of new infections in the past two weeks.

In the state, the seven-day average of daily new infections reached 6,719 cases on Sunday, a number that sits at more than double what it was two weeks earlier.

Read more:

Despite the hike in cases, Democratic Gov Gretchen Whitmer is reluctant to tighten restrictions, blaming the surge on pandemic fatigue and more contagious variants.

Other elected officials and health experts have said that other more contagious variants of the virus like B117 have contributed to increases both in Michigan and other parts of the country.

According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Florida and Michigan have recorded the two highest totals of the variant, at 3192 and 1649 respectively.

Pennsylvania has so far recorded 655 cases of the variant, which was first detected in the UK, with New Jersey reaching 627 cases while New York hits 136, the CDC said.

The variant, named B117, is believed to be twice as transmissible as the dominant strain in the US, meaning its spread could lead to increased hospitalisations and put pressure on health services.

Nationwide the CDC says more than 16,200 cases of the B117 variant have been confirmed in surveillance testing in the US, with the variant having been recorded in all 50 states.

The agency stipulated that their data on the variants is based on a sampling of positive tests and do not represent the total number of cases of variants that may be circulating in the country.

On Wednesday, the director of the Centers for Disease Control, Dr Rochelle Walensky, said that the B117 variant had become the most common "lineage" of the novel virus in the United States.

"Based on our most recent estimates from CDC surveillance, the B117 is now the most common lineage circulating throughout the United States," she said.

The heavy concentration of new cases has prompted some experts and elected officials to call for President Joe Bidens administration to ship additional vaccine doses to the worst hit states.

Dr Elvin H Geng, a professor in infectious diseases at Washington University told the Associated Press that it only makes sense to send vaccines to where the cases are rising.

However, he warned that upping doses for other states could mean areas recording less cases could see less vaccine as a result.

You wouldnt want to make those folks wait because they were doing better, he said.

So far, the White House has shown no signs of shifting from its policy of dividing vaccine doses among states based on population.

In total, the US has recorded over 30.9 million cases of the novel coronavirus since the pandemic began, leading to the deaths of over 556,000 people.

The country has administered over 169 million vaccinations, equating to 32.6 per cent of the population, with around 108 million of those shots being the first dose.

Additional reporting by the Associated Press
Villagers attend a protest against the military coup, in Launglon township, Myanmar (Photo : Dawei Watch/via REUTERS)

Russia said on Tuesday the West risked triggering civil war in Myanmar by imposing sanctions on the military junta that has seized power in a coup, but France said the European Union will step up restrictions on the generals.

The Kremlin's show of support was a boost to the junta that overthrew Aun San Suu Kyi's elected civilian government on Feb. 1. But it still faces a sustained campaign of pro-democracy demonstrations and civil disobedience across the country, and condemnation and more sanctions from the West.



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In Myanmar's main city Yangon on Tuesday, protesters sprayed red paint on roads, symbolising the blood shed in a crackdown by the security forces.

"The blood has not dried," said one message in red.

About 570 people, including dozens of children, have been shot dead by troops and police in almost daily unrest since the coup, and security forces have arrested close to 3,500 people, advocacy group the Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) said.

Among those detained are Suu Kyi, Myanmar's most popular politician, and members of her National League for Democracy, which trounced military-backed candidates in a November election.

However, Russia said on Tuesday that sanctions against the authorities were futile and extremely dangerous.

"In fact, such a line contributes to pitting the sides against each other and, ultimately, pushes the people of Myanmar towards a full-scale civil conflict," the Russian Foreign Ministry said, quoted by the Interfax news agency.

Russia is a major arms supplier to Myanmar and its deputy defence minister met coup leader General Min Aung Hlaing in the capital Naypyitaw last month, drawing criticism from rights activists who accused Moscow of legitimising the junta.

The European Union was preparing to impose collective sanctions on the Myanmar military targeting its business interests, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in Paris.

"We are going to add economic sanctions at the level of the 27 (EU countries)...against the economic entities linked to the army so that they (sanctions) can be applied very quickly," Le Drian told lawmakers.

The EU last month imposed sanctions on a number of figures linked to the coup and the subsequent repression, while the United States has also taken measures against individuals and military-run businesses, which cover a wide span of Myanmar's economic life.

A protest scheduled for Wednesday has called for the burning of Chinese-made goods. Many protesters are opposed to China, a major investor in Myanmar, because it is seen as supporting the junta.

NEXT GENERATION

Anger has swept Myanmar in the past two months over the coup that brought an abrupt end to a brief era of democratic and economic reform and international integration that followed the military's oppressive 1962-2011 rule.

Suu Kyi and her party had pledged to change the constitution to reduce the military's political clout.

The junta says it acted because the November election was fraudulent - an assertion dismissed by the election commission and international observers - and says it will hold a new election.

Western countries have backed the protesters' calls for Suu Kyi and her government to be reinstated.

The ability to organise protests has been hampered by the military's restriction of broadband wireless internet and mobile data services that had been the main channel for spreading word of what was happening in the country.

Those able to access social media on Tuesday shared pictures of striking workers marching for a second day in the city of Mandalay, some wearing gas masks and giving the three-finger salute that has become a symbol of resistance to army rule.

Authorities have issued arrest warrants for dozens of celebrities, models and influencers, and on Tuesday a popular comedian was arrested in Yangon, the Mizzima news site reported.

Sithu Aung Myint, a prominent journalist, was on the wanted list. Writing on Facebook, he said he was proud to be considered a threat.

"When the coup council who have been committing crimes announces you as a lawbreaker together with the whole country, you will be more than happy because you are recognised as a hero in this revolution," he wrote.

"Your next generation will be proud of you."


After many years raising rabbits, Do Quoc Toan, a farmer in Dan Phuong district in Hanoi, has reaped fruit. His rabbit farm brings revenue of over VND1 billion a year.

Toan works at his rabbit farm all day and only uses family workers and does not have to hire workers.

Toan has a bachelors degree in accountancy from the Hanoi Trade University. Soon after graduation, he got a job at a state agency, which was a dream of many young people.

However, Toan found the working environment restrained, which did not fit him. He wanted to work in a dynamic environment. In 2000, Toan decided to give up the job and started doing petty trade to accumulate money for bigger projects.

In 2016, he returned to his home village, and spent the money he saved on agricultural production.

Raising rabbits was not done by anyone in the area, but Toan decided to raise rabbits after he received advice from friends, and read information about the demand from the Japanese market.

In 2017, he began raising 1,000 female breeding rabbits and adult rabbits on an area of 200 square meters.

Lacking knowledge, Toan had to learn from farmers in other regions. But he incurred big losses as hundreds of rabbits died because of mistakes in farming.

The cages were designed very simply, made manually. Two or three of us worked from early in the morning until late afternoon. Only since late 2018, when I bought some machines, has the workload eased, he said.

Toan had a very tough time selling rabbit meat. He was refused in the domestic market, but he could not contact Japanese importers. Most of the meat was sold to restaurants and merchants at VND65,000 per kilogram. But the prices and market demand fluctuated all the time, thus causing constant anxiety.

Fortunately, in 2019, he was able to contact a Japanese company which was collecting rabbit meat. He began expanding his herd of rabbits by twofold and enlarged his farm to 900 square meters with 3,000 rabbits.

After many failures, Toan now has achieved a high success rate of 95 percent.

Toan said he sells 800 rabbits to the Japanese partner each month that serves research and medicine production. However, the exports have halved in recent months because of Covid-19.

Nhat Thanh

Hoi An farmers earn high income from buffalo tour One of the entertainment services travelers enjoy in Hoi An is riding buffalos and learning to farm. The special tours allow local farmers to earn big money.
Scientists have made a pivotal breakthrough in understanding the way in which cells communicate with each other.

Research shows cytonemes distribute Wnt proteins in vertebrate tissue

Scientists have made a pivotal breakthrough in understanding the way in which cells communicate with each other.

A team of international researchers, including experts from the University of Exeters Living Systems Institute, has identified how signalling pathways of Wnt proteins - which orchestrate and control many cell developmental processes  operate on both molecular and cellular levels.

Various mechanisms exist for cells to communicate with each other, and many are essential for development. This information exchange between cells is often based on signalling proteins that activate specific intracellular signalling cascades to control cell behaviour at a distance.

Wnt proteins are produced by a relatively small group of cells and orchestrate cell proliferation and differentiation, but also cell movement and polarity of the neighbouring cells.

However, one of the most crucial functions of the Wnt signalling is patterning of the body axis  which essentially helps determine where the head and tail should form in in a developing tissue.

Previous research led by Professor Steffen Scholpp, from the Living Systems Institute, highlighted that thin finger-like protrusions, known as cytonemes, carry Wnts from the source cells to recipient cells.

However, the mechanism controlling Wnt cytonemes at the molecular level is currently unknown.

In the new study, his team explored the role of a key component of the PCP signalling pathway Vangl2 in zebrafish embryos.

In this project, Dr Lucy Brunt, identified that Wnt proteins activate the PCP pathway in a source cell in order to regulate cytoneme initiation and signal dissemination.

By activating this pathway via Vangl2, she induced the formation of long and branched cytonemes which reinforced distant Wnt signalling in the neighbouring cells.

Based on these data, fellow researcher Dr Kyle Wedgwood and his team developed a mathematical model to simulate this effect in a developing zebrafish egg, and predicted that the patterning of the body axis is massively altered.

And the prediction was correct explained Dr Brunt.  We found that the formation of longer cytonemes in zebrafish larvae led to a strongly reduced head, and strikingly the forebrain tissue was missing completely.

Together with cell biologists from the National University of Singapore, the scientists showed that the mechanism they described in zebrafish embryogenesis, operates also in different tissues, including human cancer cells.

Professor Scholpp said "The exciting results of this multidisciplinary, multiscale project provides a step change in understanding how the Wnt signalling pathway operates at the molecular and cellular level in a living vertebrate animal.

"The data from this project will help us to understand the mechanisms involved in controlling normal Wnt signalling, in the future," he added. "We believe that the outcome will have fundamental implications for how we could manipulate Wnt signalling during disease states."
Not much to thank

Re: Thank you, Trump, Your Turn, March 28:

My friend gives President Donald Trump credit for the fast production of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Trump did not take national action on this deadly pandemic in early 2020. In February, he told journalist Bob Woodward that the virus was deadly, though he had told the country it was like the flu.

At the time, scientists had evidence that social distancing and mask-wearing were essential  and Trump did little to encourage those practices. He later claimed it would disappear in the summertime.

Last month, infectious disease expert Dr. Deborah Birx told CNN that thousands died preventable COVID-19 deaths after those lost during the initial surge. The families of the 48,000 Texans and 500,000 other Americans who lost someone to COVID-19 would not thank Trump.

Adam Castillo

Trumps aim pure

When a person runs for any office, he or she will gain support from a diverse group. Among Donald Trumps tens of millions of supporters are many with whom you and I would not want to be seen, much less photographed. No candidate has the time or the means to control who wears a cap promoting their campaign.

Inviting supporters for a political rally is standard operating procedure. Public opinion is often influenced by honest reporting about the size and demeanor of such crowds.

However, a reporter can easily find and photograph many  in any crowd  who are under the influence of alcohol, drugs or vitriolic hatred. And any crowd can be infiltrated by foes disguised as friends.

Trump neither invited nor encouraged lunatic-fringe thinkers. He was motivated to stay in power because his reform programs were not complete. Charges of sedition  and worse  show clearly how those accusing him think, not the former presidents motives.

Bill Gisler

Main Streets champ

As the state director of the National Federation of Independent Business, I want to thank U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar of Laredo for setting aside politics and standing up time and again to defend small businesses in Texas.

Cuellar has the courage to take hard votes to defend the states job creators. Plus, hes fighting for tax cuts for small businesses, which is exactly what they need to continue recovering from the economic setback brought by the pandemic.

His effort as his partys lead for the Main Street Tax Certainty Act, which made the small business deduction permanent, solidified his leadership as someone Main Street can trust to stand up for them. Once again, hes going against the grain by taking this position, but he knows it will make communities stronger. He knows its the right thing to do.

I hope people realize how hard Cuellar is fighting for Texas, as well as its job creators and families. I wish we had more leaders like Cuellar in Congress.

Annie Spilman, Austin
Sweden's acclaimed research on uterine transplants has taken a new step forward: into the field of health economics. Now, for the first time, there is a scientifically based estimate of how much implementing the treatment costs.

The current research is based on the nine uterine transplants from living donors carried out in 2013, under the leadership of Mats Brannstrom, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, and Chief Physician at Sahlgrenska University Hospital.

The transplants were performed within the scope of the world's first systematic, scientifically based study in the field. After the first birth in Gothenburg in 2014, there were a further seven births before a woman outside Sweden had a baby after a uterine transplant.

Now that the survey of costs is complete, the results have been reported with certain reservations. First, the number of cases studied is restricted to nine; second, the treatment has taken place as part of a research project, subject to the requirements this has entailed. Nonetheless, the study represents an initial indication of costs.

The researchers arrived at a total average sum per transplant, now reported in the journal Human Reproduction, of EUR 74,564 in current monetary value. This figure comprises costs relating to the recipient and donor alike.

The total includes, first, screening examinations and treatments, such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), in the year preceding the transplant; second, the actual operations on the donor and recipient; and third, costs in the two months after the transplant, including sick leave.

Sick leave (25.7%) was the single largest item in the cost calculation. The other categories were postoperative inpatient care (17.8%), surgery (17.1%), preoperative examinations (15.7%), anesthesia (9.7%), medication (7.8%), postoperative testing (4.0%), and readmission to hospital (2.2%).

The total is described as relatively high, due partly to the extensive scientific requirements. In a future clinical setting, the researchers say, aggregate transplant costs would likely be lower.

Thomas Davidson, Associate Professor in the area of Health Economics and Health Technology Assessment at Linkoping University, and first author of the study, puts the matter in perspective.

"In terms of priorities, this study is important because it contributes key data for deciding whether to offer uterine transplants within publicly funded health care. A cost estimate is the starting point for upcoming assessment of whether the intervention is cost-effective."

Cost-effectiveness is usually measured in terms of cost per quality-adjusted life year (QALY) gained -- a yardstick that combines economic aspects with longevity and quality of life.

"In assessing cost-effectiveness, we have to relate both costs and effects, preferably measured in QALYs, to those of alternative treatments," Davidson says.

Lars Sandman -- Professor of Health Care Ethics, head of the Centre for Priority Setting in Health Care at Linkoping University, and the study's co-author -- adds his comments.

"There are still essential issues we want to keep investigating. One is how we should regard the effects of a uterine transplant. Should the QALY gain generated include only the benefit to the mother of getting pregnant, giving birth and being the child's parent? Or should the benefit of a child being born and living on for a number of years, adding QALYs, be included as well? It makes a big difference in terms of the cost-effectiveness of the intervention, which is an important factor in the priority-setting context."

Professor Mats Brannstrom, corresponding author, sums up.

"All the costs of investigation, staff, and hospital care were funded through research grants. The grand total is close to what we'd calculated, and comparable to the current cost of kidney transplantation from a living donor. In all probability, future uterine transplantation will be more cost-effective thanks to the robot-assisted surgical technique we've developed, which means shorter hospital stays and patients returning to work sooner."

###

Title: The costs of human uterus transplantation: a study based on the nine cases of the initial Swedish live donor trial, https:/ / doi. org/ 10. 1093/ humrep/ deaa301 Contacts:

Mats Brannstrom, tel. +46 36 254 455, email mats.brannstrom@obgyn.gu.se

Thomas Davidson, tel. +46 709 200 344, email thomas.davidson@liu.se

Lars Sandman, email lars.sandman@liu.se
People waiting for their first Covid vaccine say they are not put off by blood clot fears - and insist they would still be happy to have AstraZeneca shot.

A review by drugs watchdog the MHRA found that by the end of March, 79 out of 20million Britons vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine had suffered blood clots in the brain or arteries, a rate of about one in 250,000.

Nineteen of the cases died and three were under the age of 30.

UK health chiefs today said Britons under 30 should be offered an alternative to AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine while experts investigate the link.

A press conference tonight announced the change in guidance - and stated that younger people are more prone to blood clots after vaccination than older groups.

But concerns about the highly-rare clots have done nothing to deter those waiting for their first dose.

Here, Britons tell MailOnline how they would 'snap someone's hand off for the vaccine' - while others said they 'trust the scientists who say it's safe'.

David Coursey, 38, management consultant in Bristol

David Coursey, 38, said: 'I'd definitely still take it.

'If you look at the number of people who have had the vaccine, versus those who have been ill because of it, it's very marginal. Hardly anyone has been badly affected by it.

'My parents have had the AstraZeneca one and I know some of my friends parents have, and they've been fine.

'So I'd take my chances. I'm young and pretty healthy so I think the chances of it affecting me are very slim.'

David Coursey, 38, said: 'I'd definitely still take it. 'If you look at the number of people who have had the vaccine, versus those who have been ill because of it, it's very marginal. Hardly anyone has been badly affected by it'

Dominic Core, 45, chef in Bristol

Dominic Core, 45, added: 'I wouldn't be put off one little bit.

'I think there's a risk with taking any drugs. Even if the wrong person took paracetamol it could have bad side effects.

'So no, it doesn't bother me one bit.

'I have a feeling I'm going to be given the Moderna one, because of the age group I'm in.

'But I wouldn't give it a second thought about having any of the vaccines.'

Dominic Core, 45, (pictured) added: 'I wouldn't be put off one little bit. 'I think there's a risk with taking any drugs. Even if the wrong person took paracetamol it could have bad side effects'

Carmen Horton, 24, accountant in Bristol

Carmen Horton, 24, said she would still have the AstraZeneca vaccine.

She added: 'I think there has been a lot of scaremongering about it, but I don't really take that to heart.

'It's something that I'd look into myself and discuss with my doctor.

'But it looks like it's the same risk, if not lower, of getting a clot from the vaccine as just getting it normally.

'And they still put women on birth control, and that comes with a lot higher risk of a blood clot. So I'm not too bothered by it.'

Carmen Horton, 24, (pictured) said she would still have the AstraZeneca vaccine

Millie Paine, 24, student in Bristol

Millie Paine, 24, said: 'I would still take it.

'I think the chances that you will get a blood clot are way lower than your chances of getting Covid and dying from that.

'And also, as far as I'm aware, there is not an established causal link between the two things.

'It just seems like the benefits would outweigh the risks.'

Millie Paine, 24, said: 'I would still take it. I think the chances that you will get a blood clot are way lower than your chances of getting Covid and dying from that'

Zack Osborn, 28, chef in Bristol

Zack Osborn, 28, said he would also still have the AstraZeneca vaccine.

He said: 'I think it's just a game of numbers, if you look at the sheer number of people who have had the AstraZeneca vaccine, and those who have actually had bad side effects.

'I think you'll find side effects with any large-scale output like this, especially when it's been done on short notice.

'I think it's interesting that they've stopped trialling the vaccine on children for the time being while they investigate the possible links to blood clots.

'But for me personally, if I was offered it, I would just take it. It's definitely a step forward.'

Zack Osborn, 28, (pictured) said he would also still have the AstraZeneca vaccine

Janek Borkowski, 26, works in PR in Bristol

Janek Borkowski, 26, said he was not put off by the Oxford vaccine's potential links to blood clots.

He said: 'I don't really have a problem with it.

'The scientific opinion I have seen and read seems to suggest it's something like a one in 60,000 chance of getting a clot.

'And I heard one scientist say that you're less likely to get a blood clot from the vaccine than you are normally.

'So I would still have the vaccine.'

Janek Borkowski, 26, said he was not put off by the Oxford vaccine's potential links to blood clots

Freya George, 21, retail worker from Leeds.

Freya George, 21, said: 'I'd definitely take it if it was offered to me. I don't know much about it but I trust the scientists who say it's safe.

'I don't really know I think I'd research it more if I got offered the vaccine but I don't think I'd not take it.

'The positives outweigh the negatives.'

Nathan Swaine, 19, software developer from Leeds

Nathan Swaine, 19, said: 'I think it's better to have the vaccine than not.'We have a higher chance of dying from Covid and spreading it than we do from the vaccine.

'I feel it's safe and I'd definitely take it if it was offered to me.'

Rebecca Brown, 26, nail technician from Leeds

Rebecca Brown, 26, said: 'I don't think I'd hesitate to take the vaccine if it was offered to me.

'I'd be more than happy.

'Women have a bigger risk of getting a blood clot from taking the contraceptive pill than we'd have from taking the vaccine.

'I trust the testing and feel confident it's safe.'

Abi Yerrill, 20, student from Leeds

Abi Yerrill, 20, said: 'I'd definitely still take the vaccine if it was offered to me.

'We're better off with it than without even if there are risks.'It's a concern for sure and it's worth noting it and looking into.

'But the positives far outweigh the negatives.'I also really want to get out this summer.'

Erin Ritchie, 21, baker from Leeds

Erin Ritchie, 21, said: 'I just really want to be able to go out and enjoy the pub with my mates.

'I think the vaccine is safe and I'd take it the moment it's offered.'I'm not concerned that it's unsafe. There are always risks with everything but they're not big enough for it to make me decide against it.'

Erin Ritchie, 21, said: 'I just really want to be able to go out and enjoy the pub with my mates'

Will Lewis, 20, student from Leeds

Will Lewis, 20, said: 'I'd take the vaccine as soon as it's offered even if there's a link between it and clotting.

'We need to protect ourselves and others and the vaccine is the best way to do that.

'There are always risks but we take far bigger risks than this vaccine poses all the time.

'And I think we're all ready to go out and do things without worrying about infecting others or getting infected ourselves.'

Will Lewis, 20, said: 'I'd take the vaccine as soon as it's offered even if there's a link between it and clotting'

Ben Barkworth, 26, content editor from Leeds

Ben Barkworth, 26, said: 'I would have taken the vaccine if it was offered, it's still good generally for us to get vaccinated to get over the pandemic.

'If I was offered an alternative vaccine I would take that, but I don't think the AZ vaccine is so harmful that I would avoid it entirely.

'Blood clotting is concerning, but the numbers are quite minimal.

'If they're telling us we shouldn't take it I would take that information on and I would avoid it. But it's tough to say.

'If they're suggesting we get other vaccines I'll wait for that.

'I'm still confident in the vaccines, AZ or otherwise, and I think it's still better that we get it.

'It's a tough one but I think it's best for everyone to get vaccinated.

'The benefits need to outweigh the negatives, and I think they do.'

Terry Ashby, 29, artist from Leeds

Terry Ashby said: 'I'd snap someone's hand off for the vaccine. I've read the stats, the numbers seem small and the chances of falling ill are low.

'I know it's a possibility, but with any vaccine there's always a chance people react badly.

'I personally would take my chances.

'If I was giving the option of AZ or another I would choose another, but if I was just given that option I wouldn't mind.

'I think that holding a press conference about it does raise concerns, but when you actually look at the numbers as I have done there is not much to worry about.

'As far as I can tell why they are stopping the jab for the under 30s is because there is a slight chance you'll be ill. I'm not that worried.'

Phoebe Scott, 23, student from Leeds

Phoebe Scott, 23, said: 'I'm not too concerned about the clotting, as someone who has been on the pill I know the risk there is much worse and that's never really focused on. I think it'll be fine.

'If I was offered the AZ vaccine and it was the only choice I would take it.

'To be honest, even with the new advice, it wouldn't deter me. I would still take whichever vaccine is given to me first.

'I just want to see my family and friends again, and I'm ready.'

Shane Conlan, 29, bricklayer from Leeds

Father-of-two Shane Conlan said: 'I think I still feel safe because it's been approved and we know there are risks but they're not enough for me to feel uncomfortable or unsafe.

'I wasn't too worried about it but I'll have to read up more because the press conference is obviously concerning.

'But with the blood clotting, for what I understand, women have had a chance of getting that from taking the pill and that's something they do every day.

'If I can avoid taking the AZ vaccine I might do now especially if an alternative is available, but I would probably still take it if it was offered.

'As long as the risks remain as minuscule as I believe it is at the time.'
WASHINGTON, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- A group of visionary, practical, and supportive women has come together to help shape the Women's Forest Congress. Advisory Council members serve as advisors to the Steering Committee, advocate for the Congress's broader work, and ensure equal representation from diverse backgrounds, organizations, and views. The Advisory Council brings unique knowledge, skills, and wisdom to augment the Steering Committee, with the goal of building out the Women's Forest Congress.

The Advisory Council also provides another way to be intentional about the direction of the Women's Forest Congress, making room for more voices and perspectives in a different leadership capacity. While the Steering Committee retains decision-making authority, the Advisory Council provides information, recommendations, and advice for future courses of action.

The 2021 Women's Forest Congress Advisory Council

Ebonie Alexander, Executive Director, Black Family Land Trust

Based in Durham, North Carolina, the Black Family Land Trust is one of the country's leading land trusts. It's dedicated to preserving and protecting African American and other historically underserved populations' land assets, including forests, using the core principles of community-based economic development. Ebonie joined the Council because she thinks its work has value for all communities. On a personal level, she believes she will bring an important voice to the Council based on her cultural and programmatic experience. Ebonie lives on land that has been in her family for generations, and when she walks in the woods, she feels a spiritual connection with her ancestors.

Tia Beavert, Tribal Forest Manager, Yakama Nation Tribal Forestry

The Yakama Nation Reservation covers 1.4 million acres in south-central Washington State and includes 650,000 acres of forest and woodlands. Yakama Nation Tribal Forestry provides about 80 jobs for Tribal members within the Wildland Fire, Fuels, Forest Development, Mount Adams Recreation Tract-D, and Fee Land Forestry Programs. The program collaborates with other government agencies in cross-boundary forest management efforts. Tia accepted her role on the Council because she wants the opportunity to encourage other women to grow professionally and to enhance her ability to manage Yakama lands for her people. As an enrolled member of the Yakama Tribe, she brings a Tribal perspective to the Council.

MaryKate Bullen, Director of Sustainability and ESG, Forest Investment Associates

Forest Investment Associates is a timberland investment manager based in Atlanta with an unwavering focus on environmental stewardship that contributes to healthier forest ecosystems and better forestry investment performance. MaryKate leads FIA's sustainability and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) programs, working across the business to identify opportunities to preserve and create value and to build an inclusive investment platform that sees sustainability as an essential driver for the success of the forest industry. She joined the Council to help ensure that women's perspectives, concerns, and needs are considered in how we think about the future of forestry. MaryKate brings a strong global perspective on sustainability strategy and challenges facing the sector, which will complement the existing leadership of the Women's Forest Congress. She enjoys hiking and camping in national forests and state parks with her husband and two rescue beagles.

Deborah Hawkinson, President, Forest Resources Association

Based in Washington, DC, the Forest Resources Association represents the interests of nearly 300 organizations and businesses in the forest products industry. Its membership includes loggers, mills, equipment manufacturers, local forestry associations, and large corporations. Deborah believes the Council offers a unique and vibrant viewpoint for forestry, and she is excited to contribute her thoughts to this important conversation. With over 25 years of experience in the forest sector, beginning in an administrative position, she brings a broad set of knowledge and expertise and a unique ability to relate to women at different stages of their careers. Deborah is fortunate to live along the Potomac Gorge, where she loves to hike with her husband and dog Brody and help her family enjoy trees in a resilient and beautiful landscape.

Jessica Leahy, Henry W. Saunders Distinguished Professor in Forestry, University of Maine

Jessica's research covers environmental attitudes and behaviors towards forests, forestry, and other natural resource management topics using a social psychology and communication approach. Her research program, based in Orono, Maine, encompasses the role of social capital and trust in public involvement, participation, and citizen science; forest landowner decision-making processes; and the influence of media and educational campaigns on attitudes and behavior. Jessica joined the Council because she believes it has the potential to be an industry-wide game-changer that can encourage women to study forestry and bring diversity to the sector. She owns 400 acres of woodland in Maine and spends most weekends practicing silviculture with her husband and chocolate lab, Cori.

Caitlyn Pollihan, CEO and Executive Director, International Society of Arboriculture

The International Society of Arboriculture promotes the professional practice of arboriculture. ISA exists so that professionals, allied professionals, public officials, and consumers worldwide recognize the economic, environmental, and societal benefits and values of trees. The ISA has a global membership and credentialing body. One of its goals is to ensure that arboriculture and urban forestry are seen as a diverse and inclusive profession that people will want to choose as their career. Caitlyn accepted her role on the Council because she feels that increasing the participation of women in the forestry sector is critical for the future of our forests. Caitlyns's regular visits to her local park in Atlanta have highlighted the importance of using her work to guarantee access to trees and green space for everyone.

Deborah Spalding, Co-Chief Investment Officer, Commonfund

Commonfund Asset Management is a leading investment advisor to nonprofit institutions. Deborah co-leads the investment team and oversees the design, tailoring, and implementation of custom solutions for clients. She also leads the firm's ESG and sustainable investment efforts. Deborah serves as an independent board member of Resource Management Service, LLC, a Birmingham, Alabama-based timber investment management organization. She is also a lecturer in forest and ecosystem finance at Yale University. Deborah accepted her role on the Council because she believes women can provide a unique and important perspective on sustainable forest management. A passionate environmentalist, she brings her financial expertise and real-world market perspective to her work on the Council. An avid kayaker, Deborah enjoys spending time outdoors with her friends and family.

Andrea Tuttle, Forest and Climate Policy Consultant

Based in Arcata, California, Andrea was the first woman Director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. For over a decade, she attended the UN climate negotiations and consulted in South East Asia and China on sustainable forest management. She now serves on the boards of the Pacific Forest Trust, the Save the Redwoods League, and formerly on the US Endowment for Forestry and Communities. She joined the Council to help the Women's Forest Congress focus on the substantive knowledge that women can bring to the field of forestry. Andrea strongly believes women in forestry should use their voice to promote the importance of forests to the planet, ecosystems, and society by applying their science and management skills. The magic of ancient redwood forests is in close reach outside her door, where Andrea and friends are invigorated by their majesty.

Tanya Wick, Vice President, People, and Services, Tolko Industries

Tolko Industries is a privately owned Canadian forest products company with operations in western Canada, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. It manufactures and markets specialty forest products to world markets. Tolko's products include lumber, plywood, veneer, and oriented strand board. As the first woman executive in Tolko Industries' 65-year history, Tanya partners with executive leaders and the board of directors to shape and execute the organization's strategic direction. She joined the Council to help create an open and supportive environment where women get the opportunity to develop the knowledge and abilities they need to build their careers. She likes to spend weekends outdoors with her partner and dog, where she can reset in a place where there are no boundaries, and the opportunities seem endless.

The Women's Forest Congress Wants to Hear from You



The Advisory Council wants your perspective and ideas to ensure the Congress delivers on its remarkable potential. Learn more or email us, and join the conversation at Twitter (@WomensForestCng), Facebook (@womensforestcongress), and LinkedIn (@womens forest congress).

About the Women's Forest Congress

The Women's Forest Congress is a forum to develop strategies and solutions for forests through a female lens. Women throughout the forest community have come together to share personal and professional experiences, connect with other women in the community, shape the latest innovations, and consider how actions informed by the female perspective can make a profound impact on the future of forests. Forests play an intrinsic role in our lives. Forest products touch us at all stages of life and are increasingly emphasized as a central tenet of a responsible, sustainable future. Forestry is essential to us all, yet the sector has less than 20% participation by women and even less by people of color. Learn more and get in touchwe want to hear from you.

SOURCE Womens Forest Congress
(Natural News) Wyatt McGlaun, a teenager from The Woodlands in Southeast Texas, is blaming his recent diagnosis of Guillain-Barre syndrome on the fact that he received his first dose of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine several weeks before.

Guillain-Barre is a very rare autoimmune condition that causes the bodys immune system to attack the nerves, Some of the signs and symptoms of this syndrome include weakness in the legs, an inability to walk and even paralysis. There is no cure for the condition, but there are treatments that can be taken to ease and reduce its symptoms. Many who are diagnosed can also recover and regain their ability to walk after several months of therapy and treatment.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has acknowledged that on certain occasions, people have developed Guillain-Barre syndrome in the days or weeks after receiving certain vaccines. The National Institutes of Health has also reported one case of Guillain-Barre in an 82-year-old woman who was diagnosed after receiving the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine.

The CDC has refused to confirm whether pre-existing autoimmune conditions such as Guillain-Barre can worsen after people receive the coronavirus vaccine. (Related: Scottish woman develops severe and painful rashes all over her body immediately after getting AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine.)

McGlaun certain the coronavirus vaccine caused his Guillain-Barre

McGlaun, a high school senior in his last semester, has described himself as being in perfect health. He was eligible to get the vaccine early because of his part-time job, so he got his first shot in early March.

I wanted to get the vaccine, said McGlaun during an interview with Houston NBC affiliate KPRC. I felt it was the right thing to do. I wanted to travel and enjoy my last summer before college.

But several weeks after he received the first dose, McGlaun suddenly felt extremely weak and had difficulty walking. I had to pick him up, said McGlauns mother during the interview. My six-foot-three, completely healthy boy.

He was immediately admitted to CHI St. Lukes Health, where the doctors diagnosed him with Guillain-Barre syndrome after doing some tests.

I just knew, you know, said McGlaun, who is certain that the coronavirus vaccine caused his rare condition. Something didnt feel right. I wasnt getting any better.

Listen to this Special Report episode of the Health Ranger Report, a podcast by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, as he informs his listeners how to save the life of a family member who has taken a vaccine.

Doctor skeptical of link between coronavirus vaccine and Guillain-Barre

Dr. Charles Sims, an infectious disease specialist from St. Lukes and a member of the Montgomery County Health Authority, does not believe the coronavirus vaccine caused McGlauns Guillain-Barre.

Sims believes it is much more likely that a viral or bacterial infection is the culprit behind his infection. To Sims, it was merely a coincidence that symptoms started appearing several weeks after McGlaun got his first dose.

There have been cases of Guillain-Barre seen in people who have received the vaccine, but theyre not at any higher rate than people who have not received the vaccine, claimed Sims. Guillain-Barre is seen in about one to two people per million per year.

McGlauns parents said they want their sons story to be shared not to deter anybody from getting the vaccine, but to make more people aware of its potential adverse effects and to help people recognize Guillain-Barre quickly if it happens to them.

Do your research, said McGlauns father. Not that vaccines are a bad idea or a bad thing or anything, but its a personal choice.

Listen to your body is the biggest thing that Ive learned, said McGlaun of his ordeal.

McGlauns family said they plan to report the incident to the CDC, who will investigate the incident.

Learn more about how the coronavirus vaccines may be causing serious and very rare health conditions like Guillain-Barre syndrome to occur by reading the latest articles at Vaccines.news.

Sources include:

Click2Houston.com

CDC.gov

IBTimes.com
Saudi NEOM megacity project signs deal for largest fish farm in the region

April 07,2021 | Source: Arab News

NEOM, the Saudi megacity development project, has signed an agreement with Tabuk Fish Company that includes plans for a fish farm with a production capacity of 70 million eggs. This would make it the biggest hatchery in the MENA region.

The deal, signed in the presence of Minister of Environment, Water and Agriculture Abdulrahman Al-Fadley, will expand local aquaculture production and apply a new generation of technologies.

It also includes a focus on improving the productivity of local fish species in the Red Sea, which will contribute to efforts to achieve the Kingdoms goal of producing 600,000 tons of fish products by 2030, and place the country at the forefront of countries that are pioneers in sustainable aquaculture.

Ali Al-Shaikhi, CEO of the National Fishery Development Program and director general of the General Directorate of Fisheries, said that with the involvement of a major company such as NEOM, the agreement marks a fundamental turning point for investment in the aquaculture industry. It is one of the most promising and effective industries in terms of economic growth, he added, which can boost national gross domestic product and help achieve food security.

NEOM CEO Nadhmi Al-Nasr said the agreement will help to improve the productivity of local species in the Red Sea, and called for continuous research and development in the aquaculture sector to improve the quality of fish throughout their life cycles and over many generations.

He added that genetic research will be used to implement urgent measures designed to localize fish fingerling production and achieve the required production balance in the Red Sea.

Nasser Al-Sharif, chairman of Tabuk Fish Company, said the agreement aims to develop a modern fish farm that not only will provide job opportunities for the local community but also attract international technology companies to NEOM. This, he added, allows us to provide an integrated set of new business opportunities that will have a positive impact in achieving added value for the company, and for the NEOM region and beyond.

The aquaculture sector is the fastest-growing food sector in the world, currently representing more than 50 percent of the total global supply of seafood.

The Kingdom forecasts expected growth in seafood consumption of 7.4 percent annually between now and 2030. Sustainable growth of aquaculture will not only help to meet this demand but also alleviate pressure on wild fish stocks, which are under tremendous pressure as a result of overfishing in the region and globally.

Theme(s): Fisheries Development and Aquaculture.
Ryanair said it expects to report a net loss of between 800m and 850m for the financial year ending March 31.

The airline was previously guiding losses at a range of between 850m to 950m. Ryanair's full-year traffic was 27.5m, down from 149m the previous year.
Cook County Sheriff's Police are asking for the public's help in locating Szymon Tomerski, who was reported missing after leaving a nursing facility in unincorporated Maine Township on April 2. (Cook County Sheriffs Police / HANDOUT)
A San Francisco student made a stunning plea to the embattled city board of education during Tuesdays Zoom meeting.

Zoe Simotas, a senior at Lowell High School, introduces herself in a cheery voice before getting down to brass tacks.

Im honestly here to just ask the board of education to pull it together, she says during her 90-second public comment, recorded by HereSay Media.

This honestly feels like a runaway train. All of the infighting and individual actions taken outside of board of education meetings are ridiculous.

Here, Simotas is likely alluding to the lawsuit Allison Collins filed last week against her colleagues after she was ousted in March from her position as the board's vice president. Her removal came after a series of controversial tweets from 2016 were re-circulated.

I would really ask all of you to examine why youre here and think back on why you chose to run for the board of education, Simotas said. And the only answer to that question is to fight for students.

It feels like SFUSD is falling apart, she added.

The district has endured a slew of scandals over the past few months, including a notable lawsuit filed by the city attorney for the district's failure to re-open schools in a timely manner. Another lawsuit was filed amid the school renaming controversy.

During her brief but resonant comment, Simotas, a reporter for the school's student paper, expressed relief that she will be graduating in just under two months. But she said she worries for the future that holds for her younger brother  who is just about to enter sixth grade.

She also stood in support of the decision made to change Lowells merit system to a lottery system, a move that supporters say will improve diversity in the school and reduce inequities in the district.

During the meeting, the school board also made the decision to renege on its proposal to rename 44 schools in the district, a proposal that was met with severe criticism  in part due to its timing amid the COVID-19 pandemic and its failure to cite historians.
VANCOUVER, BC, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - NexGen Energy Ltd. ("NexGen" or the "Company") (TSX: NXE) (NYSE: NXE) is pleased to announce the appointment of Harpreet Dhaliwal to the position of Chief Financial Officer.

Leigh Curyer, Chief Executive Officer, commented:

"On behalf of the Board and entire NexGen team, I would like to welcome Harpreet to the organization. Harpreet's experience in the mining industry in the CFO role is well established and she joins NexGen at an exciting time in the Company's stage of development."

Harpreet Dhaliwal, CPA

Harpreet Dhaliwal is a highly regarded and accomplished financial executive with extensive experience in the resource sector. A graduate of The University of British Columbia, Ms. Dhaliwal commenced her career at Pricewaterhouse Coopers LLP before transitioning to the resource sector working with Uranium One Inc., Endeavour Mining Corporation and Fiore Management & Advisory Group.

Most recently, Ms. Dhaliwal served as the Chief Financial Officer at Leagold Mining. At Leagold, she was responsible for the design and implementation of financial reporting, treasury and IT systems, working with operations and project teams on budgeting, forecasting, and presenting to analysts and boards on financial matters for multiple producing mines. She has successfully completed numerous mergers and acquisitions supported by debt and equity financings and led integrated lean and efficient finance teams.

About NexGen Energy Ltd.

NexGen is a British Columbia corporation with a focus on developing the Rook I Project located in the south western Athabasca Basin, Saskatchewan, Canada into production. NexGen has a highly experienced team of uranium industry professionals with a successful track record in the discovery of uranium deposits and in developing projects through discovery to production. NexGen also owns a portfolio of highly prospective uranium properties in the south western Athabasca Basin, Saskatchewan, Canada.

Forward-Looking Information

The information contained herein contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable United States securities laws and regulations and "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. "Forward-looking information" includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to mineral reserve and mineral resource estimates, the 2021 Arrow Deposit, Rook I Project and estimates of uranium production, grade and long-term average uranium prices, anticipated effects of completed drill results on the Rook I Project, planned work programs, completion of further site investigations and engineering work to support basic engineering of the project and expected outcomes. Generally, but not always, forward-looking information and statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", or "believes" or the negative connotation thereof or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved" or the negative connotation thereof. Statements relating to "mineral resources" are deemed to be forward-looking information, as they involve the implied assessment that, based on certain estimates and assumptions, the mineral resources described can be profitably produced in the future.

Forward-looking information and statements are based on the then current expectations, beliefs, assumptions, estimates and forecasts about NexGen's business and the industry and markets in which it operates. Forward-looking information and statements are made based upon numerous assumptions, including among others, that the mineral reserve and resources estimates and the key assumptions and parameters on which such estimates are based are as set out in this news release and the technical report for the property , the results of planned exploration activities are as anticipated, the price and market supply of uranium, the cost of planned exploration activities, that financing will be available if and when needed and on reasonable terms, that third party contractors, equipment, supplies and governmental and other approvals required to conduct NexGen's planned exploration activities will be available on reasonable terms and in a timely manner and that general business and economic conditions will not change in a material adverse manner. Although the assumptions made by the Company in providing forward looking information or making forward looking statements are considered reasonable by management at the time, there can be no assurance that such assumptions will prove to be accurate in the future.

Forward-looking information and statements also involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties and other factors, which may cause actual results, performances and achievements of NexGen to differ materially from any projections of results, performances and achievements of NexGen expressed or implied by such forward-looking information or statements, including, among others, the existence of negative operating cash flow and dependence on third party financing, uncertainty of the availability of additional financing, the risk that pending assay results will not confirm previously announced preliminary results, conclusions of economic valuations, the risk that actual results of exploration activities will be different than anticipated, the cost of labour, equipment or materials will increase more than expected, that the future price of uranium will decline or otherwise not rise to an economic level, the appeal of alternate sources of energy to uranium-produced energy, that the Canadian dollar will strengthen against the U.S. dollar, that mineral resources and reserves are not as estimated, that actual costs or actual results of reclamation activities are greater than expected, that changes in project parameters and plans continue to be refined and may result in increased costs, of unexpected variations in mineral resources and reserves, grade or recovery rates or other risks generally associated with mining, unanticipated delays in obtaining governmental, regulatory or First Nations approvals, risks related to First Nations title and consultation, reliance upon key management and other personnel, deficiencies in the Company's title to its properties, uninsurable risks, failure to manage conflicts of interest, failure to obtain or maintain required permits and licences, risks related to changes in laws, regulations, policy and public perception, as well as those factors or other risks as more fully described in NexGen's Annual Information Form dated March 19, 2021 filed with the securities commissions of all of the provinces of Canada except Quebec and in NexGen's 40-F filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and Edgar at www.sec.gov.

Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking information or statements or implied by forward-looking information or statements, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information or statements due to the inherent uncertainty thereof.

There can be no assurance that forward-looking information and statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated, estimated or intended. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements or information. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or reissue forward-looking information as a result of new information or events except as required by applicable securities laws.

SOURCE NexGen Energy Ltd.

Related Links

http://www.nexgenenergy.ca/


The popular RTE television show Home of the Year has announced its winner, and a Laois company is celebrating.

The Finline Furniture company employs Laois craftworkers to handmake stylish quality furniture in their Emo depot.

Their bespoke furniture featured in not just the winner's home, but in three of the finalists' gorgeous houses.

"We are delighted to see that 3 out of the 7 finalists have fabulous Finline Furniture pieces in their houses

House 2 we meet Jen and our gorgeous mustard Baltimore Sofa with matching footstool, and our bespoke Klaus sofabed and many of our feather filled scatter cushions.

"House 5, we see our elegant Alexandra sofa in the stunning home of Kevin & Joe. And finally, in house 7, we are introduced to Kate & Cian with another one of our Baltimore sofas in the most incredible deep coral fabric which has a feather quilt option for their seat cushions." the company said.

Jen Sheahan and her late 1800s artisan cottage in Dublin, scooped the coveted title of Home of the Year 2021. (images below)

The seventh series of Home of the Year saw the three judges Hugh Wallace, Suzie Mc Adam and Amanda Bone visit twenty one homes across the country but chose Jen's home as the ultimate winner.

Judge Hugh Wallace said, "Today is really about celebrating seven extraordinary homes. I know I say the standard is incredible but this year my breath was taken away. You know arriving up to this cottage was a treat. You knew something special was going on! Entering the living/kitchen/ dining area was terrific because its such a small footprint of the house. They created so much space in that area around the dining table with all their memorabilia pictures little bits and pieces and I thought it was terrific. The home has been re-imagined and oozes with the personality and style of the homeowner - the design, layout and functionality of this home was a real surprise. It has great functionality for a small home but even better - big personality and that came from the homeowner."

Judge Amanda Bone said: "It was very interesting to be able to wander through peoples' homes. I was gobsmacked at how creative Irish people are. This competition - it really shows me how passionate people are about their homes and the effort that they go to. Jen's home is very cleverly thought out in terms of the layout, particularly the open plan kitchen, dining and living area and even though the ceilings are low, because of the light, it feels much more spacious. The home that won is all about what can be achieved with clever design in such a small space. Definitely a unique home and a well-deserved winner."

Judge Suzie Mc Adam said: "It was always going to be extremely hard this year to pick a winner - the standard has been exceptional. There are some homes that have taken my breath away - theyve created an incredible ambiance - perfect use of colour, incredible renovations - there are quite a few Id like the keys to! I love that Jen's home was packed full of personality - these functional areas and yet we saw colour. She even had a disco bathroom which I thought was so much fun. This home represents everything this competition is about, it's the right end to the story."

Jen Sheahan is very proud of the design of her late 1800s cottage in Dublin. She wanted one of these cottages for a long time and was delighted when one came on the market in 2019. It needed a lot of work as it was damp, had no central heating and the toilet was outside.

Jen did a complete renovation, knocked all internal walls, dug up the floor and lowered it plus added on an extra floor to make it a two-storey house. There are clever storage solutions throughout this home. Jen describes her style as modern, playful and colourful. She loves that it is fun, comfortable and loves to see peoples reactions when they see a feature such as her disco ball light in her brightly coloured downstairs toilet.

She spoke of her happiness at winning.

"I feel... I dont even know how I feel yet! Complete and utter shock - Im floating on air Im so thrilled to pieces I cant believe it! My home is little and it needs to have a lot of dual functions so it might be small, but a lot can be done in a small space thats really just made for me. Its just incredible I would never ever have thought that it would be me standing here.

She praised the other six finalists.

"It's mind blowing - the creativity is incredible the different style in every home. Really, really impressive - it was wonderful to see it I couldve stayed looking at those (photo displays of the other homes) all day."

Finline Furniture congratulated Jen.

"Congratulations to Jen with her stunning 19th century, colourful and quirky cottage which scooped the title of Home of the Year 2021. @workerscottage @rtehomeoftheyear. We at Finline were thrilled to see our popular our Baltimore Sofa, Storage Footstool & our Klaus Sofa Bed with loads of our scatter cushions in Jens home," they said.

See below images of her furniture.

The other six finalists were:David O Brien - black bespoke home in Co Cork

Kate O' Driscoll - restored and modernised period home in Dublin

Saara McLoughlin - quirky semi-detached house in Limerick

Sally Ann Mitchell - cottage in Co. Dublin

Kevin Desmond - restored period home in Dublin city

Tanya Lee Conroy - modernist architectural home in Co. Galway

Below: Kate & Cian's couch

Below: Kevin & Joe's couch.

Home of the Year is sponsored by Phonewatch. You can catch up with all the episodes of series 7 of Home of the Year on RTE Player www.rte.ie/player
MSNBC and CNN legal analyst Midwin Charles died on Tuesday at age 47, her family said in a late night post to her social media profiles.

The attorney's cause of death was not mentioned in the post from Charles' family members.

'It is with a profoundly heavy heart and the deepest sadness that we announce the untimely passing of our beloved Midwin Charles,' they said in the Tuesday post.

'She was known to many as a legal commentator on television but to us, she was a devoted daughter, sister, aunt, niece and cousin. Our lives are forever changed and we will miss her for a lifetime.'

MSNBC and CNN legal analyst Midwin Charles died on Tuesday at age 47, her family shared. The attorney's cause of death was not mentioned in the post

'She was known to many as a legal commentator on television but to us, she was a devoted daughter, sister, aunt, niece and cousin,' her family said in a post. 'Our lives are forever changed and we will miss her for a lifetime'

Charles provided commentary on shows including CNN, HLN, Bloomberg TV, MSNBC and TV One. While working for CNN, she even provided legal commentary for live trials daily on InSession (formerly CourtTV) on truTV. Pictured with Don Lemon

According to her website, Charles was the founder of law firm Midwin Charles & Associates LLC and a contributor at Essence Magazine.

Charles provided commentary on shows including CNN, HLN, Bloomberg TV, MSNBC and TV One. While working for CNN, she provided legal commentary for live trials daily on InSession (formerly CourtTV) on truTV. Charles had previously written for the Huffington Post.

Notable media personalities, politicians, and other celebrities took to Twitter to remember the brilliant and passionate lawyer.

The View's Sunny Hostin said: 'Midwin was my friend. We worked together on In Session/Court TV. She was a brilliant beautiful legal mind. I will miss her and am praying for her family and especially for her mother whom she adored and spoke of so often. Rest my dear friend.'

The View's Sunny Hostin said: 'Midwin was my friend. We worked together on In Session/Court TV. She was a brilliant beautiful legal mind. I will miss her and am praying for her family and especially for her mother whom she adored and spoke of so often. Rest my dear friend'

'I am DEVASTATED! Midwin Charles is someone I am deeply grateful to for her heart and her head,' shared New York City mayoral candidate Maya Wiley. 'And she was someone I valued at MSNBC! My heart goes out to her family and we have all lost a Sister. #RIJ'

PBS White House Correspondent Yamiche Alcindor shared a tribute and a photo of her and her 'Haitian sis' as she accepted the 2019 McSilver Honoree Award

'I am DEVASTATED! Midwin Charles is someone I am deeply grateful to for her heart and her head,' shared New York City mayoral candidate Maya Wiley. 'And she was someone I valued at MSNBC! My heart goes out to her family and we have all lost a Sister. #RIJ'

PBS White House Correspondent Yamiche Alcindor shared a tribute and a photo of her and her 'Haitian sis' as she accepted the 2019 McSilver Honoree Award.

'This is so, so hard,' Alcindor said in her post. 'My Haitian sis  was a brilliant mind and a beautiful person who worked so hard. Her voice and presence will be deeply missed.'

Bernice King added: 'Im saddened to learn of the death of Midwin Charles. My heart goes out to those mourning her here and to her family. From what people are sharing, her life was a light that brightened the way for others. Well-lived.'

Bernice King added: 'Im saddened to learn of the death of Midwin Charles. My heart goes out to those mourning her here and to her family. From what people are sharing, her life was a light that brightened the way for others. Well-lived'

Yvette Nicole-Brown shared that she was 'gutted' by the news while Meena Harris said that she was 'sending love and prayers'

Actress Patricia Arquette said that she was sad to hear about the passing of the attorney, offering her love to the family

Yvette Nicole-Brown shared that she was 'gutted' by the news while Meena Harris said that she was 'sending love and prayers.'

'This is devastating,' said CNN political analyst and TheGrio's Natasha Alford. 'Midwin, I pray you rest in power and perfect peace. Thank you for all youve contributed and the light you shined in the world. So many looked up to you, including me, and we will honor your memory.'

Laura Coates, a CNN senior legal analyst, added: 'I am so incredibly sorry to hear this. I respected her so much. What a devastating loss of a beautiful soul. I am so sorry for your familys tremendous loss.'

'This is devastating,' said CNN political analyst and TheGrio's Natasha Alford. 'Midwin, I pray you rest in power and perfect peace. Thank you for all youve contributed and the light you shined in the world. So many looked up to you, including me, and we will honor your memory'

Laura Coates, a CNN senior legal analyst, added: 'I am so incredibly sorry to hear this. I respected her so much. What a devastating loss of a beautiful soul. I am so sorry for your familys tremendous loss'

'Midwin, you were brilliant, fierce lawyer & analyst as well as a funny and warm soul,' said Exavier Pope, sharing a 2019 photo of the pair on Sirius XM's the Karen Hunter Show. 'The law & legal analyst community will miss you as your family, friends and all the lives you touched.'

'Midwin Charles you are a star that will never cease to shine. Thank you for illuminating my life, and the lives of so many, forever,' said Chris Witherspoon.

'I have no words here,' said Jumaane Williams, NYC Public Advocate. 'I'm having trouble comprehending this loss. It's stunning! As much prayers as I can muster to her family.'

'Midwin, you were brilliant, fierce lawyer & analyst as well as a funny and warm soul,' said Exavier Pope, sharing a 2019 photo of the pair on Sirius XM's the Karen Hunter Show. 'The law & legal analyst community will miss you as your family, friends and all the lives you touched'

'Midwin Charles you are a star that will never cease to shine. Thank you for illuminating my life, and the lives of so many, forever,' said Chris Witherspoon
LITTLE ROCK, Ark., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The STARR Coalition, a non-profit dedicated to advancing mental health research, today announced a National Call to Action to Support Mental Health Research in partnership with biopharmaceutical research leaders, clinical investigators, and advocacy organizations focused on treating unmet mental health needs.

National Call to Action to Support Mental Health Research

"Mental Health Disorders have long been a neglected area for medical research, unlike other well-funded research for diseases such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes, which has led to many life-saving medical advances," said Luke Kramer, Executive Director of The STARR Coalition. "Mental illness can be just as devastating and individuals living with these illnesses too often suffer in silence. More than half of those living with mental illness do not see a reduction in symptoms with current medical therapies. This is unacceptable. Today's National Call to Action to Support Mental Health Research was established to draw attention to the urgency for the development of treatment innovations for people living with mental illnesses to live fulfilling, satisfying lives."

An estimated 44 million adults in the U.S. have a mental health condition, and in the past year, only 4 in 10 people with a mental health condition received treatment.1 Currently, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) spends about $239 billion on research, but only about 7 percent of the funds go towards mental health research.2 Data from 2010 indicate the global direct and indirect economic costs of mental disorders were estimated at $2.5 trillion.3

"The STARR Coalition's Call-to-Action has four distinct components, each of which lists specific activities that people can do immediately to support each component: (1) Volunteer for Research; (2) Promote Research; (3) Fund Research; and (4) Support Policy," said Nichole Gutierrez, Site Director at Pillar Clinical Research and a member of STARR's Call to Action steering committee. "The goals of the initiative are to accelerate scientific research by increasing public awareness of the safety and benefits of mental health clinical research and to motivate the public to actively support mental health clinical research, similar to cancer, Alzheimer's Disease, and other diseases."

"There are many actionable ways for individuals and organizations to increase public awareness and support the advancement of mental health research aside from the conventional pathways of clinical trials," said Adam Simmons, Director of Clinical Program Management at Alkermes and a member of STARR's Call to Action steering committee. "Other important ways to support research include joining and donating to organizations that support research, participating in walks and runs that bring awareness to mental illnesses and research, and sharing stories and supporting your peers' participation in medical research. The first step to increasing mental health research is to start a conversation about removing the barriers and stigma associated with mental illness."

To view the list of ways to support mental health research and to get more information about the National Call to Action to Support Mental Health Research, visit the website at http://thestarr.org/supportmhresearch/.

About the STARR Coalition

Founded in 2015 as a forum for the leaders in mental health clinical research, The STARR Coalition is a non-profit, independent organization committed to supporting mental health clinical research by cultivating community engagement, promoting trust, and fostering partnerships and goodwill among stakeholders in mental health advocacy and clinical research.

1 www.nami.org/policystats

2 https://report.nih.gov/funding/categorical-spending#/

3 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5007565/

Media Contact

Erica Moore

610-613-3524

[email protected]

SOURCE The STARR Coalition
AUR (Alliance for the Unity of Romanians) is considering an alliance with UDMR (Democratic Union of Hungarians of Romania) to defend the rights and liberties of Hungarians and Romanians in Ukraine, given that Hungary's policy for the Hungarian citizens abroad is "exceptional," Senator Claudiu Tarziu said on Wednesday, agerpres.ro confirms.

"Our Hungarian friends also have a minority in Ukraine, they have secondary schools, high schools, university departments in Hungarian, they have money for cultural activities, important funds. So that I am considering, very seriously, to follow an invitation from my colleague who is the leader of the UDMR group in the Senate, to form an alliance to defend the rights and freedoms of Hungarians and Romanians in Ukraine, to form an alliance with UDMR that is. I am very serious about this matter and this is, in fact, a public invitation to dialogue for the formation of this alliance. In my opinion, Hungary's policy for the Hungarians abroad is exceptional, it is a model for other states that are interested in their minorities abroad," Tarziu, who is co-chairman of AUR, told a press conference conference.
Businesses are nervous about 2022 with the outstanding amount of Papua New Guinea Government debt owed to the sector, outstanding landowner payments and the growing law and order woes.

PNG Manufactures Council chief executive officer Chey Scovell told The National that conversations among the business community suggested that Government owed businesses more than K2 billion(US$570 million).

I dont have an updated list, but from general conversations with business and what is being raised with the various chambers, it would exceed K2 billion, he said.

We hear that contractors for the Department of Works have claims for this amount alone, so the number could be as high as K3 billion(US$855 million).

No doubt they may have paid some, technically a K1(US$0.28cents) payment would be paying at least some.

The Budget hasnt been able to be implemented properly at all.

Recurrent expenditure, monthly bills for things like water, power, security, rent, are not being paid in full or in many cases at all.

Weve suggested that the Government put up an online portal/list, for all creditors to register for the Government to show full or progressive payments.

Scovell said that what Government was doing to the business sector was as if businesses all stopped paying taxes for one to five years but kept consuming State services.

They wouldnt be able to survive, so how is it that they expect businesses to carry on? he said.

It is also a bit of a cop out that Treasury is taking a long time and in many instances taking extensive reviews of claims to see if they will pay them and by how much.

Scovell said the Government was obligated to act in good faith and to be a role model, however, inducing or threatening businesses to take significant cuts on payments owed for goods and services rendered was a poor form.

We note there are many dodgy claims, but there seems to be little evidence that hire car firms, public works contractors and catering firms (reported as problematic areas) are having the same scrutiny, he said.

BOC Gas waited years to be paid for medical gases such as oxygen supplied to PMGH (Port Moresby General Hospital), it was reviewed twice that I know of and not paid.

The other item of note is that debt carried is a growing debt.

The older it gets the more it has cost the businesses.

Also, our currency has been depreciating, many businesses based their fees on the foreign exchange rates at that time, some even had loans.

Just like our tax penalties, the longer they are overdue, the higher they should become.

This Government isnt doing to others as it does for itself.

We still have micro, small and medium enterprises that have suffered duress due to non-payment of bills going all the way back to our 40th Independence, same goes for the 2015 Pacific Games, we hear from the regional chambers that there are many outstanding claims for the past two elections.

Again, if we had a publicly available list, the Government wouldnt be able to hide behind confusion and people could whistle blow on dubious claims..

SOURCE: THE NATIONAL/PACNEWS / ONE PNG





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The trial of a businessman accused of being the "intellectual author" of the 2016 murder of high-profile Honduran environmentalist Berta Caceres has begun in the capital Tegucigalpa.

David Castillo was president of electric group Desarrollos Energeticos (DESA), the company behind a hydroelectric dam that at the time of her death Caceres was mobilising opposition against.

A coordinator for indigenous organizations in Honduras, Caceres was assassinated in March 2016 by gunmen who entered her house in the community of La Esperanza.

Her murder brought international attention to the threats and intimidation faced by environmentalists and rights activists in the Central American nation.

"There is overwhelming proof against David Castillo and he should be convicted," Caceres' daughter Berta Zuniga told AFP at an indigenous religious ceremony organised in front of the court where the trial opened Tuesday.

"Berta (Caceres) did not die, she multiplied", shouted around a hundred people, in front of an altar with candles, flowers and photos of the environmentalist.

Castillo, a former military officer who trained at the US academy West Point, was arrested in March 2018.

He was accused of masterminding her murder, in connection with which other DESA employees have already been convicted.

The hydroelectric dam was planned to sit across the Gualcarque River, on which indigenous communities depended -- and protests organised by Caceres and her organisation COPINH had paralyzed the construction site.

In 2019 Sergio Rodriguez, a top DESA official, was jailed for 30 years for orchestrating the killing with Douglas Bustillo, DESA's former chief of security, and soldier Mariano Diaz.

The court found they paid four gunmen $4,000 to carry out the murder.

"As president of DESA, David Castillo hired Douglas Bustillo, who hired the contract killers," Caceres' daughter Zuniga said. "There is evidence in their communications."

Story continues

Zuniga added that DESA's partners, particularly bankers, should also be held accountable.

The killing sparked international outrage, with the United States and the European Union both demanding Caceres' killers be brought to justice.

After Castillo's pre-trial hearing in October last year, rights group Amnesty International issued a statement reminding the Honduran authorities "to comply with due process", after a broadcast of the hearing could not be accessed remotely, "thus limiting publicity and the transparency of the judicial process."

ybl-reb/je
CERRO GORDO COUNTY, Iowa - A man is facing a plethora of charges after a motorcycle pursuit in northern Iowa reached speeds in excess of 130 miles per hour, according to the Iowa State Patrol.

Cody Bohanan Smith, 23, of Colorado, was arrested Tuesday after an incident that began when he was clocked driving 110 miles per hour on Interstate-35 at milemarker 156.

A short time later, he was clocked going more than 130 miles per hour as law enforcement attempted to pull him over.

Smith was passing vehicles on the right and left shoulders, according to court documents, before he eventually exited on Highway 18.

He continued to attempt to elude law enforcement until he lost control on a gravel shoulder due to bald tires. He crashed into the front of a trooper's vehicle.

A loaded handgun, ammunition and a pocket knife were located at the scene.

He is facing charges of felony eluding and numerous traffic violations, including reckless driving, improper use of a median, speeding failing to maintain control and defective tires.
Press Release

7 April 2021

The health crisis has upset consumers' expectations in terms of long term stays This is why Louvre Hotels Group is developing in the Apart 'hotel market with Tulip Residences.

Thanks to this new brand, the group offers its customers and investors ever more diversified offers. The Group's first two residential hotels will open their doors this summer at Joinville-le-Pont in France and Warsaw in Poland.

Advertisements

Tulip Residences, a hybrid concept, a new experience: welcoming, inspiring, relaxing

Tulip Residences is a hybrid experience built on the themes of coliving, coworking and well-being. Each residential hotel will include:

Studio or two-room apartments, designed for extended stays: spacious, furnished with upscale bedding, an equipped kitchenette, high speed internet access and a wide-screen HD TV.

Coworking areas allow guests to work in a stimulating environment designed to spur creativity.

A Tulip Cafe serving light meals and snacks featuring local and organic products, open 7 days a week from 6.30 a.m. to 11 p.m.

A well-being area including a 40 to 60m2 yoga room, a fitness room and a Vital Dome infratherapy device, ideal for stress prevention, eliminating toxins and relaxation.

These areas were designed in partnership with the Tremend Design firm and the designer, Magdalena Federowicz Boule, to provide a relaxing urban stay where clients can unplug and unwind. The hotels target a business clientele on extended stays, as well as leisure travellers such as families, groups of friends or seniors.

Louvre Hotels Group pursues its diversification strategy

By launching Tulip Residences, its 3-star residential hotel lifestyle concept, Louvre Hotels Group continues to expand its portfolio and gains a foothold in a new high-potential segment. The Group offers its clients and investors a complement to its traditional hotel brands, positioning itself as an urban haven for extended stay travellers. The brand will be marketed with a 4-star 'Collection' label.

2 upcoming openings, 30 planned over the next 5 years

In March 2021, the Group will inaugurate its first subsidiary residential hotel, with nearly 100 rooms, in Joinville-le-Pont; a sort of "laboratory" where it will test its latest innovations. It will then open its first franchised residential hotel at the heart of Warsaw in Poland in May 2021.

Louvre Hotels Group plans to open some thirty Tulip Residences over the next 5 years across Europe, mainly in city centres and near major transport hubs. As request by its shareholder Jin Jiang, eager to invest in long-stay residences, Louvre Hotels Group will adapt this concept in China Indeed, the opening pilot hotel is scheduled for the end of 2021 with the ambition of signing 25 new establishments by 2022 in the largest Chinese metropolises.

Guaranteed return on investment

Louvre Hotels Group offers personalized support to meet investor needs and requirements, targeting profitability and innovation. Tulip Residences offer many advantages: attracting a wide range of extended stay clients while generating operating margins that ensure excellent return on investment. Its all-in-one concept also enables to maximize add-on offers and generate significant additional revenue. Plus, the product is adapted to both a business and leisure clientele for stays of one night or several weeks.

An innovative intrapreneurial project at Louvre Hotels Group

To tap the full potential of this market segment, Louvre Hotels Group is banking on intrapreneurship, a method that generates out-of-box thinking by tapping new sources of development ideas, as well as Louvre Hotels Group's clout in the fields of distribution, revenue management, marketing, communication, purchasing, technical, etc. The Group entrusted this project to intrapreneur Cyril Vaussard, cofounder of the Hotels & Preference chain and previously director, then regional director for a residential hotel brand.

"Tulip Residences meets the needs of travellers who book extended hotel stays and want the comfort of a hotel as well as stimulating, functional common areas, for both business and personal use." Cyril Vaussard, General Manager Tulip Residences
Hybrid virtual public meeting scheduled to discuss 2021-22 US-41 project in Houghton

Dan Weingarten, MDOT Office of Communications, 906-250-4809 Transportation

WHAT:

The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) and the City of Houghton will hold a hybrid virtual public meeting to discuss the 2021-2022 US-41 (Townsend Drive and College Avenue) rebuilding project in Houghton. This meeting immediately precedes a regular Houghton City Council meeting. People can attend in person or participate on Microsoft Teams. There will be a short presentation at 5 p.m. followed by a question-and-answer period.

WHO:

MDOT Ishpeming Transportation Service Center (TSC) and Superior Region staff

City of Houghton officials

Community stakeholders

Interested residents and business owners

WHEN:

Wednesday, April 14

5-5:30 p.m.

WHERE:

Click here to join the meeting on Microsoft Teams

To join by phone without using Internet, call 248-509-0316

Conference ID: 307 381 289#

How to attend a live event in Teams

Houghton City Hall

616 Shelden Ave.

Houghton, MI 49931

Accommodations can be made for persons with disabilities and limited English-speaking ability. Large print materials, auxiliary aids or the services of interpreters, signers, or readers are available upon request. To make a request, contact Orlando Curry at 517-241-7462 or CurryO@Michigan.gov at least seven days before the meeting.

BACKGROUND:

Beginning this spring, MDOT will invest $9 million to rebuild 1.1 miles of US-41 from McInnes Drive to Isle Royale Street. The work will include converting the four-lane boulevard section to two lanes with designated turn lanes at major intersections, widening College Avenue to add a center left-turn lane, storm sewer improvements, and city sanitary sewer and water main replacements. One-way detours are planned during each summer for this project. Work is expected to be completed in fall 2022.

Long-term benefits include improvements to vehicle and pedestrian safety and operations.

For more information about the project, please visit the project website. Throughout work, project detour and closure information will be posted on MDOT's Mi Drive website, and will also be shared on social media.
WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden on Tuesday moved up the COVID-19 vaccine eligibility target for all American adults to April 19, but warned that with new virus variants spreading "we`re still in a life-and-death race" with the coronavirus.

Biden directed states to widen the vaccine eligibility to people 18 or older by April 19, two weeks earlier than the May 1 deadline he announced previously. No COVID-19 vaccine is authorized yet for children under 16, although testing is underway.

Most U.S. states had already said they would open vaccines to all adults by that new target date.

By April 19, every adult will be eligible to be vaccinated.  President Biden (@POTUS) April 6, 2021

"What we do now is going to determine how many people we`ll save or lose in the month of April and May, and June, before we get to July Fourth," Joe Biden said at a White House event.

More than 80% of teachers and school staff had received at least one vaccination shot, Biden said, but noted that variants of the coronavirus are spreading and generating a rise in cases.

We arent at the finish line. We still have a lot of work to do. Were still in a life-or-death race," Biden said.

Despite the progress were making as a nation, I want every American to know in no uncertain terms that the fight against COVID-19 isnt over. pic.twitter.com/gZTkXC7czX  President Biden (@POTUS) April 6, 2021

He said that by no later than April 19, every adult 18 or older will be eligible to be vaccinated.

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Biden`s announcement had confirmed for the public that "everyone is eligible around the country."

This means Americans no longer need to check with state and local websites to see whether they qualify, she said.

"No more confusing rules," said Biden.

Vaccine supplies and efficiency in getting shots into arms have increased significantly in the race to get more people inoculated as more contagious virus variants circulate.

Biden spoke after touring a vaccination site at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia.

"Governors - Democrats and Republicans - are working with (the White House COVID-19 response team) to accelerate the vaccination program," White House chief of staff Ron Klain said on Twitter.

When vaccine doses were in shorter supply, states initially limited distribution to high-risk groups, such as the elderly and front-line healthcare workers, and then gradually opened up vaccines to other age and at-risk groups.

This afternoon, I stopped by a vaccination clinic at the Virginia Theological Seminary. Its an example of the kind of partnerships were seeing around the country  people coming together across different faiths to serve those most in need. Its America at its best. pic.twitter.com/iiT8r1OVnp  President Biden (@POTUS) April 7, 2021

Upon taking office in January, Biden set a goal of delivering 100 million shots into people`s arms within his first 100 days in office, which is the end of April. That goal has since been doubled to 200 million.

COVID-19 has killed more than 555,000 people in the United States - the world`s highest coronavirus death toll. But more than 167 million vaccine doses have been administered in the country. Four in 10 Americans have had at least one vaccine dose, a rate far ahead of most countries.

The authorized vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech both require two doses, while Johnson & Johnson`s is a one-shot vaccine. The Pfizer vaccine is authorized for those aged 16 and up, while the other two can be given to adults age 18 and older.

U.S. vaccine distribution began haltingly under Biden`s predecessor, Donald Trump.
Prince Osei, a 38-year-old driver, who is accused of kidnapping his two kids has appeared before an Accra Circuit Court.



Osei is said to have picked the kids after close of school on March 23, this year, and failed to tell the police, the whereabouts of the two children.



Appearing before the court today, Osei promised to produce them on April 9.



Osei who is being held on two counts of kidnapping his kids aged 11 and seven, and two counts of engaging in domestic violence to wit - a conduct or behaviour that endangers the safety and well-being of another person.



He has pleaded not guilty.



The court was told that, it had been six years when Osei allegedly abandoned the kids and their mum.



Accused through his counsel, Mr William Brown, indicated that the kids would be in Accra on Thursday April 8, this year and assured the court that the children would be brought to court on April 9.



The prosecution, led by Chief Inspector Kofi Atimbire, opposed to the grant of bail, saying the kids had not been found and as whether they were alive the Police did not know.



The court presided over by Mrs. Christina Cann, remanded Osei into custody to reappear on April 9.



The prosecutions case is that, the complainant, Catherine Agyapong, is a trader and the victims are her biological children and they all lived at Bubuashie in Accra.



The prosecutor said Osei resided at Bubuahie and he is the father of the victims.



According to Chief Inspector Atimbire, the complainant and the accused person were married but for the past six years, the complainant did not know the whereabouts of the accused.



The prosecution said on March 23, this year, at about 7:00am, the complainant sent the victims to school at Ayigbe Town, near Bubuashie and left for work.



Chief Inspector Atimbire said the same day, at 7:00pm, the complainant returned from work and the victims could not be found.



The complainant searched for the kids within her vicinity but she did not find them and was told by a friend that Osei had taken the kids to Kumasi.



The prosecution said investigations revealed that on March 23, this year, at about 3:30 pm when the victims had closed from school and were returning home, the accused kidnapped them at Ayigbe Town, near Bubuashie and without the consent of the complainant took them to Kumasi.



On March 28, this year, at about 7:05am, the complainant and others arrested Osei and escorted him to the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit (DOVVSU) Kaneshie and reported the matter.



When he was quizzed over the whereabouts of the kids, he failed to disclose same to the Police.

Source: GNA









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IIT Kanpur is setting up a School of Medical Research and Technology (SMRT), a medical school with Centres of Excellence (CoE) and a first-of-its-kind super-specialty teaching hospital in India.

Combining medicine with engineering and encouraging cross-disciplinary learning, SMRT will provide an ecosystem that promotes the development of technology-based interventions for diagnosis, surveillance, management, mitigation, and prevention of diseases. IIT Kanpur has appointed HOSMAC, a healthcare management and planning consultancy to design the SMRT.

The proposed hospital with a medical college will have a built up area of more than 1 million square feet and will be India's first super-specialty teaching hospital with a medical college campus. IIT Kanpur already provides an ecosystem for innovation and incubation in biomedical research and healthcare and has collaborations with medical colleges and hospitals across the country. SMRT will complete the missing link of a clinical set up on campus and address the challenges posed by distance that affect the overall outcome, said sources.

"This new initiative will bring about a sea change in innovative research that addresses medical problems through a robust R&D focus to develop need-driven medical devices and technologies. The institute is envisaged to be a one-of-its-kind medical school that would offer EnMed (Engineering in Medicine) programmes wherein medical graduates will also be trained in engineering disciplines and vice versa to successfully bridge the technology gap and offer solutions to medical needs that are unique to India," said Prof Abhay Karandikar, Director IIT Kanpur.

In the first phase of the project, the institute will offer post-graduate courses such as cardiology & cardiothoracic surgery, urology & nephrology, medical and surgical gastroenterology, neurology & neurosurgery and oncology. The idea is to encourage innovation and research development in these fields and address the dearth of super-specialists in the country. It will be open for MBBS admissions in phase II of the project.

Sources said HOSMAC was initially appointed by Tata Trusts to prepare a detailed business plan for IIT Kanpur to assess the feasibility of starting a medical school within its campus. HOSMAC is now appointed for preparing the master plan and to undertake detailed architecture and engineering design of the campus.

"We have conceptualised the super-specialty hospital as a floor-wise medical specialisation stack, having its own clinical space (like OPD, IPD and diagnostics) with academic research blocks," said Dr Vivek Desai, managing director of HOSMAC.

Also read: IIT Bhubaneswar claims its campus is completely 'COVID-19 free'

Also read: JEE Main 2021 result: Telangana Boy scores perfect 100 for 2nd time
An ambitious new initiative has been launched that uses serological testing to improve the control of sheep scab within three hot spot areas in England.

The project will run for two years in three focus areas where scab currently presents a significant problem: the North West, the Midlands and the South West.

Participating farmers will be offered on-farm advice and free blood testing using the sheep scab ELISA test developed by the Moredun Research Institute.

The initiative will also cover the payment of costs of visits by a local veterinary surgeon.

Sheep scab, a highly infectious disease caused by the parasitic mite Psoroptes ovis, costs the UK sheep industry an estimated 70-200 million every year.

The disease has remained a significant problem for the health, welfare and productivity of sheep since the 1950s when it was re-introduced via imported sheep.

Populations of sheep scab mites in the UK now have proven resistance to one of the main treatment groups, injectable macrocyclic lactones (MLs).

Project organisers the Moredun Institute said it was imperative that the industry made a concerted effort to bring the disease under control.

Dr Stewart Burgess, project lead from Moredun said: Sheep scab is a real scourge for the sheep industry in the UK.

"This new initiative gives us the opportunity to get ahead of the curve in terms of scab control, setting a new benchmark for how we deal with the disease in the future.

The project will be co-ordinated by local industry groups already working with sheep farmers in each focus area.

These will include the Farmer Network in the North West, ADAS in the Midlands and the National Sheep Association (NSA) in the South West.

Dr Christine Middlemiss the UK's Chief Veterinary Officer said: "Their unique combination of on-farm advice, training and blood testing will support sheep farmers.

"This is an exciting community-led approach to sheep scab control and I am looking forward to seeing this exciting project come to fruition."
Two Ecuadorean girls who were abruptly dumped over a steel barrier at the Mexico-United States border could soon be reunited with their parents in New York City, an official with Consulate of Ecuador in Houston told DailyMail.com on Wednesday.

Surveillance video footage released by Border Patrol showed the moment on March 30 when a human smuggler dropped Yareli, three, and her five-year-old sister Yasmina over the 14-foot high border wall in New Mexico last Tuesday.

Another smuggler was waiting on the American side to catch the girls, who were then tossed to the ground. Both smugglers then fled, abandoning the children.

The surveillance camera operator immediately alerted Santa Teresa Border Patrol Station agents and directed them to the remote location.

The girls' mother, Yolanda Macas Tene, and father, Diego Vacacela Aguilar, had left their Ecuadorean home not long before, relatives said, and were awaiting their daughters in New York City.

El Paso Sector Chief Patrol Agent Gloria Chavez provides snacks to the two girls from Ecuador who were abandoned by human smugglers and dropped over a 14-foot high border wall in New Mexico last Tuesday. An official with the Consulate of Ecuador in Houston told DailyMail.com on Wednesday that the children will be reunited with their parents, who reside in New York

Footage release by U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows a human smuggler (top) climbing over the Mexico-United States border wall in New Mexico after dropping two sisters from Ecuador, aged 3 and 5, over the steel barrier last Tuesday

Their paternal grandfather, Lauro Vacacela, told Telemundo from the family's hometown of Jaboncillo that the couple were desperate to be reunited with their children.

'Their parents really wanted to be with them, and the mother was suffering immensely, so they sent for them,' he said.

The girls had lived with Vacacela, and their brightly-painted pink bedroom still had all their toys and clothes.

Vacacela did not know how the girls arrived at the border, or how much was paid to the people traffickers, known as 'coyotes'.

Asked if he was concerned, he replied: 'Yes, it can be rather risky, you could say.'

Lauro Vacacela, grandfather of the girls, spoke from the family home in Jaboncillo, Ecuador

Vacacela showed Telemundo the bright pink bedroom where the young girls lived

Baskets of clothes and toys which belonged to the girls are seen in their Ecuadorean home

Parents Yolanda and Diego, with daughters Yareli and Yasmina, lived in this wooden home

Rosa Macas, the girls' maternal aunt, was horrified on seeing them dumped in the desert

Maternal grandfather Manuel Macas begged Joe Biden to have pity on the two young girls

The girls' maternal aunt, Rosa Macas, said she was horrified when she saw what happened to the two.

'Maybe if they had been with me, they would never have left,' she said.

Manuel Macas, their maternal grandfather, begged Joe Biden to allow the family to be reunited in New York.

'Help us - let these two innocent girls be with their parents in New York, so they can be loved' he said.

Magdalena Nunez told DailyMail.com that Consulate of Ecuador officials had a chance to speak with the girls via a videoconference call on Monday.

'The girls are in excellent health,' she said in phone interview.

The number of migrants crossing into the United States has skyrocketed to the highest levels in at least 15 years, it emerged this week, and record numbers of teenagers and children arriving without parents have overwhelmed the governments ability to care for them.

U.S. agents took more than 171,000 migrants into custody last month, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures.

Last month, CBP took in more than 18,800 unaccompanied minors - a 99 per cent increase from February and a figure far above the previous one-month high of 11,861 in May 2019.

On Wednesday it emerged that, two days after the Ecuadorean girls were abandoned, a 10-year-old Nicaraguan boy had been found alone.

The child was found sobbing uncontrollably, stumbling along a desert road in Texas.

The 10-year-old boy from Nicaragua was found sobbing uncontrollably in the desert on April 1

The Border Patrol came across the lost child, abandoned by other migrants, in Texas

He asked the border agent: 'Can you help me?'

He explained that the group of migrants he had been traveling with had abandoned him while he slept.

Attempting to prevent future incidents similar the one involving the two Ecuadorean girls and the Nicaraguan boy will certainly be at the top of the to do list for Vice President Kamala Harris, who on March 24 was picked by Biden to lead the efforts in crafting a solution for its immigration crisis.

Harris has, however, still to visit the United States-Mexico border or even hold a press conference about her new duties in the two weeks since being tasked with addressing the migrant crisis.

The Vice President spent Easter weekend at her Brentwood home in Southern California, but did not find time in her schedule to visit the nearby border.

In the past two weeks she has also visited Connecticut for a talk with the Boys and Girls Club of New Haven and flew out Oakland to meet with California governor Gavin Newsom to show support amid his potential recall election.

Nunez added that the consulate is pleased with the treatment that U.S. Customs and Border Protection has provided for the sisters, who are currently being held at the El Paso Processing Center.

U.S. federal guidelines stipulate that children can't be held at the detention centers past 72 hours after they have been apprehended by the Border Patrol.

The law requires the children to be transferred to the care of the Department of Health and Human Services [HHS]. The Office of Refugee Resettlement is in charge of providing longer-term shelters for the minors.

Nunez could not provide a specific timeline for the girl to be reunited with their parents, who live in New York.

'They will do it as agile as possible. The consulate has been looking to make sure that they are placed at a safe place,' she said.

It's unknown if the parents are legally residing in the United States.

Immediately after the girls landed on the ground, two smugglers could be seen fleeing on the Mexican side of the border

CBP stats show that more than 4,000 people who were abandoned by human smugglers, or 'coyotes' as they are referred to in Spanish, have been rescued by Border Patrol agents in the southwest border region since October 1, 2020.

'The inhumane way smugglers abuse children while profiting off parents' desperation is criminal and morally reprehensible. Just this month, a young girl died by drowning, a six-month-old was thrown into the river, and two young children were dropped from a wall and left in the desert alone,' Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.

'There can be no doubt that children are exceptionally vulnerable when placed in the hands of smugglers. There is grave risk they will be exploited and harmed. I applaud our heroic Border Patrol agents who have saved lives this week and every week, while putting their own lives at risk for the greater good of the country.'

U.S. Border Patrol EL Paso Sector Chief Gloria Chavez previously had mentioned that the agency's goal was to reunite the girls with the parents.

'I'm appalled by the way these smugglers viciously dropped innocent children from a 14-foot border barrier at night. If they had not been seen, the girls could have been left in the desert for hours,' Chavez said.

'We are currently working with our law enforcement partners in Mexico and attempting to identify these ruthless human smugglers so as to hold them accountable to the fullest extent of the law.'

New government statistics released last week revealed that 171,000 migrants were caught by US authorities at the border in March - the highest monthly total in two decades and the latest sign of the mounting humanitarian challenge confronting President Joe Biden.

The total includes about 19,000 unaccompanied migrant children and 53,000 family members traveling together, the preliminary figures showed.

A bakery, a water plant and her LA home: Everywhere Kamala has flown in the 14 days since she was placed in charge of migration crisis (but not, obviously, the border)

Kamala Harris has still to visit the US-Mexico border or even hold a press conference about her new duties in the two weeks since being tasked with addressing the migrant crisis.

The Vice President spent Easter weekend at her Brentwood home in Southern California where she baked a 'beautiful' roast pork with rice and peas, but did not find time in her schedule to visit the nearby border.

In the past two weeks she has also visited Connecticut for a talk with the Boys and Girls Club of New Haven, traveled to Oakland to meet with Gavin Newsom to show support amid his potential recall election, and made a trip to a bakery in Chicago.

Harris has also been busy moving into her new residence at the Naval Observatory just days after she complained about living out of suitcases while it was being renovated.

On March 24, she was tasked with leading the efforts to tackle the 'humanitarian crisis' amid a surge of migrants trying to enter the US since Joe Biden's administration came into office.

Since being appointed Border Czar, the Vice President has jetted all over the US without visiting the 'humanitarian crisis' in the south

New government statistics released last week revealed that 171,000 migrants were caught by US authorities at the border in March - the highest monthly total in two decades.

It comes as Biden's Homeland Security head is looking to crack down on illegal immigration by taking more legal action against border jumpers and targeting US cities that act as a safe haven.

The total includes about 19,000 unaccompanied migrant children and 53,000 family members traveling together, the preliminary figures showed.

The March arrest totals at the US-Mexico border represent the highest monthly level since April 2000 when border patrol agents caught more than 180,000 migrants.

But Harris has stayed publicly silent on the issue and has not held a press conference or major interview about her new duties she was assigned them two weeks ago.

Harris visited the Brown Sugar Bakery in Chicago on Tuesday after touring a Covid vaccine site

The March arrest totals at the US-Mexico border represent the highest monthly level since April 2000

Harris speaks about investing in small businesses using community banking at Red Door Catering in Oakland

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich invited the Vice President on a tour of the border this month in a letter on Friday.

He wrote: 'Recently, you stated, "You have to see and smell and feel the circumstances of people to really understand them." With that in mind, I formally invite you to join me for a tour of the southwest border in Arizona later this month.

'It will provide firsthand insight into what Arizonans, law enforcement officials and migrants are experiencing. I will make myself available any day of your choosing.'

Shortly after her appointment, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey also branded Harris 'the worst possible choice' to lead the border team, saying Biden had 'completely trivialized the issue by putting someone in charge who flat out just doesn't care'.

Ted Cruz added 'she is not going to be able to solve this crisis', branding it Biden's 'biggest political mess'.

Biden initially said his vice president would be in charge of returning migrants to their home countries in her new role.

He said: 'The vice president has agreed... to lead our diplomatic effort and work with those nations to accept the returnees, and enhance migration enforcement at their borders.'

The White House later claimed Harris was not directly involved with the border crisis but was instead addressing its 'root causes'.

Her schedule shows that since she was tasked with helping the crisis, she has largely remained in Washington DC.

On March 25, her only public duty was the White House's virtual Passover celebration with her husband Doug Emhoff, while the following day she visited New Haven, Connecticut, to meet with the Boys and Girls Club.

She spent the weekend in Washington DC with no public commitments, before receiving a Covid briefing and joining Biden for a speech on their pandemic response on the Monday.

On Tuesday March 30, Harris received the President's daily brief in the morning before signing the PPP extension into law in the Oval Office.

She also carried out the only known work related to the border since being appointed Border Czar as she held a phone call with President Alejandro Giammattei of Guatemala.

So far, 64,000 migrants out of the 350,000 who have been caught by US authorities at the border were Guatemalan.

A statement said: 'They discussed the significant risks to those leaving their homes and making the dangerous journey to the United States, especially during a global pandemic.'

The following day, she led a discussion with faith leaders where she encouraged their communities to take up the vaccine.

She returned home to California on Thursday, April 1, her third visit during the administration.

Harris spent the weekend at home where she baked a 'beautiful' roast pork with rice and peas, according to the LA Times.

She had no public events over the weekend until she traveled to her hometown of Oakland on Monday where she met with California Gov. Gavin Newsom and gave her support as he faces a potential recall election.

The Vice President toured a water treatment plant to highlight the benefits of the American Jobs Plan and held a 'listening session' with business owners.

She said during her visit to the East Bay Municipal Utility Districts Upper San Leandro treatment plant, in an area affected by drought: 'For years there were wars fought over oil. In a short time there will be wars fought over water.

'We must address inequities in access to clean water, at local state federal levels, understanding opportunities to build back up infrastructure around water.'

Republican National Committee spokesman Keith Schipper said: 'It's been nearly two weeks since Vice President Kamala Harris was named manager of the Biden Border Crisis, and while she has made time to return home to the Bay Area, Harris has refused to visit the border  which is only 500 miles from her location today  to survey the crisis firsthand.

'Californians don't find this border crisis funny and demand the so-called manager get to work fixing the problem this administration created.'

On Tuesday, Harris traveled to Chicago where she toured a Covid vaccine site before returning to Washington D.C.

Upon her return to DC, Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff moved in to their official residence, just days after it emerged she was unhappy about living out of suitcases while it was being renovated.

The Naval Observatory - the VP's official residence - has been out of action for more than two months while it undergoes much-needed updates.

The pair had been living at Blair House, across the road from the White House, since January - an arrangement that was reportedly beginning to wear on Harris.

'She is getting frustrated,' an administration official told CNN, noting that every day her desire to move into her designated house grows more intense.

But it seems that she has now had the green light to move into the official property.

Just days before she was tasked with addressing the migrant crisis, Harris laughed when she was asked if she would visit the border.

She was in Jacksonville to address food insecurity and vaccinations when asked if she had plans to visit the border.

Harris replied laughing: 'Not today. But I have before and I'm sure I will again.'
(Alliance News) - Brown Bidco Ltd on Wednesday said HSBC Bank US, National Association agreed to become a lender in relation to its Signature Aviation PLC acquisition.

Back in February, Brown Bidco and Signature Aviation had reached agreement on a recommended cash acquisition by Bidco of the entire issued and to be issued share capital of Signature Aviation.

Brown Bidco is a newly formed company indirectly owned by Blackstone Infrastructure, Blackstone Core Equity, Global Infrastructure Partners and Cascade Investment LLC.

The offer values the aviation services company headquartered in London at USD4.73 billion, about GBP3.46 billion.

Signature shares closed 1.2% higher in London on Wednesday at 406.00 pence each.

By Evelina Grecenko; evelinagrecenko@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Los Angeles, April 7 : Hollywood actress Shailene Woodley has shared the reason she said yes to the film "The Mauritanian".

The upcoming legal drama, , based on true events, delves into the life of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, an innocent man captured by the US government. Imprisoned for years without trial at Guantanamo Bay, he finds unlikely allies in a defence attorney and her trusted associate.

On what made her accept the role, Woodley said: "To have the opportunity to be part of this story that is so real and so true for a few individuals, specifically Mohamedou, and to get it out into the consciousness of so many Americans and people around the world, I felt like it was part of my responsibility as an actor." The film features Oscar winner Jodie Foster as defence attorney Nancy Hollander, while BAFTA nominee Woodley plays Teri Duncan, the associate.

Recalling her interaction with the real-life Mohamedou, she said: "The first time I Skyped with him and his big smile came up, he said thank you for doing this movie and it just moved me so deeply because all I wanted to say to him was thank you for trusting us to breathe life into this in a cinematic way." The film also features Benedict Cumberbatch and Zachary Levi along with Tahar Rahim, who plays the titular part of Mohamedou Ould Slahi.

"The Mauritanian" is set to release in India by PVR Pictures.
Prime Minister Florin Citu said on Wednesday that a full nationwide lockdown in Romania is not being considered, mentioning that economic relaxation is being aimed at, provided that everyone gets vaccinated.

"We are not considering lockdown. I have been opposed since the very beginning: I said that there will be no nationwide lockdown in Romania, there will be no lockdown at all; we are moving, as you can see, toward economic relaxation but on condition that all of us get vaccinated. June 1 can only happen if we get vaccinated, otherwise we don't have a chance," said Citu after a government meeting, agerpres.ro confirms.

Asked to comment on top official with the Health Ministry Andreea Moldovan having spoken about a two-week lockdown, Citu said that she only gave a theoretical example and did not make a proposal.

"I had a discussion with the senior official and she gave me a theoretical example. Last year, all the lockdown discussions revolved around two weeks, because the discussion about the virus was you have to stay at home for two weeks to get rid of the virus. It was a theoretical discussion, it was not a hypothetical discussion, there was not a proposal to that end," the prime minister added.
Retired NRL star Sam Burgess has been pictured with his son Billy, two, on Instagram for the first time in months.

The last time the former South Sydney Rabbitohs player, 32, uploaded a photo with his children to his official Instagram account was back in December.

It comes amid a troubling past few months for Sam who is attempting to turn his life around, after his messy split with ex-wife Phoebe Burgess, 31.

Rare family photo: NRL star Sam Burgess, 32, shared this rare family photo with son Billy, two, to his Instagram Stories on Wednesday... as he attempts to turn around his troubled personal life after his messy split from ex-wife Phoebe Burgess

In the photo shared to Instagram Stories and captioned with love heart emojis, a casually dressed Sam is seen nestling in close to Billy on the couch.

Billy smiles at the camera and places one arm on his father's chest.

Sam also shares daughter Poppy, four, with Phoebe. They married in 2015 and split for a second time in October 2019.

Private: The last time the former South Sydney Rabbitohs player uploaded a photo with his children to his official Instagram account was back in December. Pictured: ex-wife Phoebe, 31, Billy, and the former couple's daughter Poppy, four

Last month, Sydney-based Sam was pictured at an evangelical church on the Gold Coast.

He was spotted on March 21 in the Metro Church, two days after he was cleared by a judge of intimidating his former father-in-law Mitch Hooke.

'I just met this legend Sam Burgess at Metro Church today,' a fellow worshipper posted on Instagram with a picture of the pair. 'Congrats to Sam on his first step on a new journey.'

Turning his life around: Last month, Sydney-based Sam was pictured at an evangelical church on the Gold Coast. 'I just met this legend Sam Burgess at Metro Church today,' a fellow worshipper posted on Instagram with a picture of the pair (seen above)

A source close to Sam said he was 'keeping his head down' and 'making change'.

He was also spotted last month with a bodybuilding pastor from an evangelical church, walking to a Hyundai hatchback registered to Metro Church after getting coffee at a Nobby's Beach cafe.

He has been spending time training with friend and spiritual adviser, Rob Quatro, who has introduced him to the Pentecostal faith, although at this stage Sam is just an interested observer.

Turning over a new leaf: A source close to Sam said he was 'keeping his head down' and 'making change'

He was recently cleared on appeal of intimidating his former father-in-law, Mitch Hooke.

A conviction for intimidating Mr Hooke was overturned by a New South Wales District Court judge.

He will face court again in May after allegedly being detected driving with cocaine in his system while on his way to pick up his children from Bowral on February 22.

Cleared: He was recently cleared on appeal of intimidating his former father-in-law, Mitch Hooke (pictured). A conviction for intimidating Mr Hooke was overturned by a New South Wales District Court judge

Court date: He will face court again in May after allegedly being detected driving with cocaine in his system while on his way to pick up his children from Bowral on February 22. Pictured playing for the South Sydney Rabbitohs in April 2012

Sam was allegedly unlicensed while behind the wheel of his BMW X5 which was unregistered due to his failure to pay $1,200 in parking and traffic fines.

He has not spoken publicly about his conviction being overturned or how he will deal with the upcoming charges.

Sam's personal life has been in upheaval since his separation from wife Phoebe and his forced retirement due to a chronic shoulder injury in October 2019.

That same month, Sam was accused by Mr Hooke of threatening him while visiting his two children at the Hooke family home in the Southern Highlands.

Upheaval: Sam's personal life has been in upheaval since his separation from wife Phoebe and his forced retirement due to a chronic shoulder injury in October 2019

A year later, The Australian newspaper published untested claims against Sam of wild partying and domestic abuse during his marriage. He has denied the allegations.

Sam watched Judge Mark Williams overturn his intimidation conviction at the District Court in Goulburn via audio visual link, as did Mr Hooke.

'My firm view upon reading the evidence is that the Crown case was not established beyond reasonable doubt,' Judge Williams ruled.

Sam's solicitor Bryan Wrench said outside court his client was relieved by the result.

'This is the judgment he deserves,' Mr Wrench said. 'He never wanted this fight, but he had to fight to clear his name. He is innocent and finally he has been vindicated.'
Excerpted from Epoch Times. Doesn't sound too different from what happens here in the USA. At least Europe and Canada have exercised an abundance of caution. We hand out donuts and shame.

The Strange Sinovac Vaccine Phenomenon: Countries Report Increased Cases After Using Vaccine



By Eva Zhao



April 3, 2021 Updated: April 4, 2021

The Hong Kong government recently rolled out a large-scale vaccination plan against the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as COVID-19, but its been mired by frequent reports of serious adverse reactions. In just one month, 13 people died in Hong Kong after being inoculated, 11 of whom had been injected with the Sinovac vaccine, a Chinese domestically made vaccine.

The CCP has not reported a single case of serious side effects or death after it announced the administering of 100 million doses of the Sinovac vaccine in China on March 28.

But there are four strange phenomena of the Chinese Sinovac vaccine, analyzed as follows.



No Deaths Reported in China
(Newser)  "A row over rare-earth deposits could bring down Greenland's government," read an NPR headline on Tuesday. On Wednesday, "could" shifted to "did." The AP reports the country's main opposition party managed to get the most votes in a parliamentary election, ending the decades-long ruling tenure of the center-left Forward (Siumut) party. The left-leaning Community of the People party (Inuit Ataqatigiit) took 37% of the vote. It will have 12 seats in the 31-seat Greenlandic national assembly, to Forward's 10 seats and will now endeavor to form a coalition government with a minimum of 16 seats. NPR details what was at stake. Thanks in part to the melting of Greenland's ice cap, it's becoming easier to access what are believed to be huge deposits of rare-earth minerals that other nations have been licking their lips over. It has led to an economy vs. environment division. More:

story continues below

Most imminent was a proposed international mining project by the Australia-based and Chinese-owned Greenland Minerals, which wants a license that would give them entry to the open-pit Kvanefjeld mine in the country's south. The company already secured preliminary approval, and has spent upwards of $100 million readying the mine.

The mine is thought to potentially hold the largest deposit of rare-earth metals outside China, which lays claim to more than 90% of global production, per the AP. In addition to uranium, it is known to have neodymium, a key component in wind turbines and electric vehicles.

NPR reports that fans of the proposal have zeroed in on the economic gains it would provide, which they see as accelerating the country's path to independence from Denmark. Denmark is in charge of Greenland's foreign, monetary, and defense policies, and polls show a majority of Greenland's population of 56,000 do want out.

The Community of the People party is pro-independence, but it is also pro-environment, though Reuters reports it is not "opposed outright" to mining. The chair of the party confirmed Wednesday that stance was unchanged. "We must listen to the voters who are worried. We say no to uranium mining," said Mute B. Egede.

NPR speaks to one local who describes what has happened to the formerly green slope of Kuannersuit mountain, where test drilling for the mine project has been underway: "Now that area is like all sand and just black. There's no green at all."

As for how big a win this was for the Community of the People party, the BBC notes that since 1979, Forward has been in power for all except four years. The election's outcome "could have major consequences for international interests in the Arctic," the BBC observes.

(Read more Greenland stories.)
A Vietnamese man from the Mekong Delta province of Hau Giang has been fined by local police for setting up a robbery scene to cover the sale of over US$6,500 worth of jewelry from his wife.

Tran Van Loi in Hau Giangs Chau Thanh District reported to police officers at around 1:30 pm on March 7 that he had been robbed at knifepoint by two strange men, losing one necklace and one bracelet, valued at VND150 million (US$6,530) in total, that he had been wearing.

Chau Thanh District's police officers came to the location that Loi claimed to be where the incident had taken place to examine, but they later determined that he had made a false report.

At the police station, Loi admitted that as he needed VND80 million ($3,480) for personal expenses, he faked the robbery so as to sell the aforementioned jewelry without telling his wife the truth.

Loi had hidden the jewelry away, covering his mouth with duct tape and pretending to pass out on the ground before someone noticed him about ten minutes later.

As Lois family came to the place of the incident, with many onlookers around, they completely believed he had just been robbed and attacked.

Police in Chau Thanh District on Tuesday decided to fine Loi VND750,000 ($32) for making a false report to authorities, affecting their operations and causing public disorder.

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Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 16:58:57|Editor: huaxia

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A resident wearing a mask gets inoculated with a dose of vaccine developed by Chinese pharmaceutical firm Sinovac at a vaccination site on the occasion of World Health Day in Manila, the Philippines, April 7, 2021. The Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) reported 6,414 new COVID-19 infections on Wednesday, raising the total number of confirmed cases in the Southeast Asian country to 819,164. (Xinhua/Rouelle Umali)

MANILA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) reported 6,414 new COVID-19 infections on Wednesday, raising the total number of confirmed cases in the Southeast Asian country to 819,164.

The death toll climbed to 14,059 after 242 more patients died from the viral disease, the DOH said.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire reminded the public that the decrease in the number of cases must not be interpreted as a downward trend, saying there were testing laboratories that did not operate and submit data last week due to the holiday.

Vergeire said in an online briefing that the transmission is still high, urging people not to be complacent.

"The age groups most affected by COVID-19 are those aged 20 to 49 years old. There are more younger people that are having severe infections compared to before. We are looking at this matter," Vergeire said.

The Philippines, which has about 110 million population, has tested over 9.8 million people since the outbreak in January 2020.

World Health Organization Regional Director for the Western Pacific Takeshi Kasai on Wednesday expressed concern about the surging COVID-19 cases in the Philippines, warning that the increasing trend "is moving towards the red line." Enditem
Inside the tight confines of prison, disease has fertile ground to fester.

Statewide, Michigan is reporting some of the highest new coronavirus numbers since December, and the prison system has again been hit hard, but is showing signs of improvement as statewide inmate vaccination efforts near completion.

Approaching 80% of nearly 33,000 inmates at some point during the pandemic have tested positive, according to data available on the Michigan Department of Corrections case tracking website.

Five MDOC employees and 140 prisoners have died in connection with COVID-19. Two deaths, one of an employee and another of an inmate, were reported in the last week.

While the spread appears to have slowed in recent months with stricter segregation, quarantining and the vaccination of more than 35% of the inmate population, there are recent outbreaks at individual prisons and among correctional officers at large that have caused concern, said MDOC spokesperson Chris Gautz.

We dont want to see that third wave hit us like we had that second back in November and December when we had thousands of active cases with staff and we were having real issues with vacancies, Gautz said. Whats been going up lately is our employee numbers.

Weve seen more and more employees test positive in the last few days ... Our hope is that it doesnt translate into, in a week or two, more prisoners testing positive.

The MDOC reported 136 new staff cases between Tuesday, March 30 and Monday, April 6 that appear to be spread out across the prison system, where nearly 6,000 officers work. According to MDOC data, of nearly 9,000 total employees, 3,999 or 44% as of Wednesday had at some point tested positive for COVID-19.

There has been an uptick in positive tests by staff... which parallels what we are seeing in Michigan in general, said Byron Osborn, president of the Michigan Corrections Organization, the union that represents MDOC employees. The protocols for employee screening, testing and positive tests remain the same as theyve been for the past few months.

All employees are subject to daily screening and if a facility has any positive test employees or prisoners, then everyone is subject to weekly testing. All employees that test positive are required to go off work for a minimum of 10 days to quarantine.

Active inmate cases as of Wednesday were at 424, down from 568 about a week prior, which Gautz said is much lower than earlier peaks nearing 6,000 last year. And the outbreaks are more confined within individual prison facilities.

On Dec. 1, MDOC was reporting 5,331 active inmate cases. Gautz said once a prisoner tests positive, they may remain listed as an active case for at least 30 days and longer if symptoms persist.

After testing positive, an inmate is quarantined for 10-14 days, depending on a few variables, such as when they first showed symptoms and when the positive test result was returned if its an asymptomatic instance.

If the inmate is considered to be actively shedding the virus, Gautz said, then you would move to the step-down phase that lasts roughly 15 days where were monitoring you but youre not contagious at that point.

The majority of the current active cases, 63%, are within two facilities: Bellamy Creek Correctional Facility in Ionia with 117 active cases and the Charles E. Egeler Reception and Guidance Center in Jackson with 152 cases. As of Feb. 1, Bellamy was only reporting 15 active cases and the Charles E. Egeler Reception Center 44.

At Bellamy Creek, its because of the British variant which they discovered on Feb. 8 and theyre still seeing some residual number from that, but its largely died down, Gautz said. With Egeler, that just jumped up. We were very nervous about that one because we started seeing spikes not very long after it was reported in the news that there was a child in Jackson who tested positive for the South African variant.

Prison health officials sent out positive prisoner saliva samples for further analysis, but none of the more aggressive coronavirus variants were detected.

The prison system hasnt revealed a definitive theory for the latest uptick at the Jackson Reception Center. It is, however, a prison with the most outside contact, being the first stop for inmates entering the prison system from the county jails or following sentencing. It also houses minimum-security inmates with medical issues, including COVID-19.

Gautz said inmates are staying at the reception center for longer periods of time than normal and only being transferred to outlying correctional facilities when the facility nears its 500-inmate capacity and theyve been thoroughly screened.

When we need to open up the release valve, weve done that, but were trying to hold people in place as much as we can, especially now that theres an outbreak going on, Gautz said.

Even if prisoners are only in the reception center for a brief stint, administrators should be able to determine if they are contagious prior to any transfer moving forward.

Policy directives issued by MDOC Director Heidi E. Washington on March 26 require any new inmate to be tested when they arrive at the reception center. A second test is administered no less than 72 hours before the inmate is transferred to a more permanent facility and a rapid test is given if the secondary test results arent complete prior to transfer.

The 72-hour rule requiring clear tests results is now being applied across the entire prison system. If a prisoner refuses a test or must be moved without testing, for instance, due to a medical emergency, theyre considered a warm handoff and must be isolated for at least 10 days, the new directives instruct.

In addition to stricter formal policies in the new directives, prison administrators hope the mass vaccination efforts show results. It appears they already are.

From March 30 to April 5, the MDOC administered 30,814 tests and only 165 came back positive. Thats a positive rate of 0.54% at a time when the statewide seven-day average is 15.7%, based on Michigan Department of Health and Human Services data.

Nearly 18,000 of the systems 33,000 inmates have accepted the vaccine.

About two-thirds of our population has asked for the vaccine and has been able to get it, Gautz said.

By the end of this week, the MDOC expects to complete its prisoner vaccinations.

More on MLive:

Are Michigan prisons nearing herd immunity?

Prisoners are hiding coronavirus symptoms

Correctional officers protest working conditions

Coronavirus variant found in Ionia prison

Michigan administers more than 1.5M doses of COVID-19 vaccine
Titan Company gained 1.39% to Rs 1547.10 after the company said it recorded very strong revenues in Q4 March 2021.

Titan on Wednesday said it continued to witness strong business momentum as the Covid impact on the consumer sentiments seemed to fade in the early part of the quarter. After recording the best ever revenue in Q3, which was a festive season, the company again recorded very strong revenues in Q4.

Titan said its jewellery division emerged very strongly from the crisis and witnessed strong growth in the quarter, the Watches & Wearables and the Eyewear divisions also made very good progress on recovery. However, Titan said that the second half of March 2020 was impacted by the emerging Covid situation.

The company recorded strong revenue growth of 60% for the overall Q4 due to low base of March 2020, with revenue growth of over 36% in the comparable January & February months. Q4 reported revenue growth was further aided by a large B2B gold coin order that contributed about 8% of the growth.

For the International Business Division, the performance of its Dubai Boutique has exceeded the internal expectations and all the retail metrics are quite healthy. The division is now planning to open another store in GCC. The division took over 10 kiosks of Watches from the existing business partner in GCC.

Titan's jewellery division continued to see the strong sales momentum in Q4, reflecting the strong market share gains. Sharp decline in gold prices during the quarter also gave impetus to the consumer demand for the industry. The company said that the Q4 also had a large B2B order in the quarter, contributing to about 10% of the quarter's growth. The retail and reported revenue growth for the first two months was about 32%. Reported revenue growth for the quarter was 70% due to the low base of March month in the previous year.

Despite the 70% loss in retail sales in Q1 due to lockdowns, the division has exceeded the retail sales of previous year on a full year basis. The ticket size has been normalized compared to the initial period of the year after the lockdown, though it is still much better than last year levels. Significantly, the number of buyers (invoices), has moved from near full recovery in Q3 to strong double digit growth in Q4, leading to strong revenues from these two factors. With the strong buyer's growth, the GHS enrollments has also recorded strong double-digit growth. The division added 26 Tanishq stores on a net basis in FY 2021, with the retail space addition being ~123K square feet

Caratlane delivered a growth of 60% for the quarter continuing its strong growth trajectory. Despite the challenges at the start of the year, for the full year FY 2021, the Caratlane B2C business grew at 26%.

The company's Watches & Wearables division had a recovery rate of close to 90% for the first two months of the quarter and had flat reported revenue in Q4 compared to last year. Titan launched the Edge Mechanical, the slimmest mechanical watch by Titan, with a 2.2 mm slim in-house hand-wound movement. This collection heralded Titan's entry into the rarefied world of luxury mechanical watches. In FY2021, the division added 13 World of Titan (WOT) stores, 11 Helios stores and closed 13 Fastrack stores, on a net basis, adding 1.5 K sq. ft. of retail space

Eye Wear division's revenue grew by 20% in the quarter, with the growth in the first two months being 4%. In FY 2021, the division added 15 stores on a net basis, with addition of about 1.8 K sq. feet of retail space.

The company's other businesses had a revenue recovery of around 80% in Q4, compared to the revenue of same quarter in last year. Taneira continued to recover well with 93% recovery in Jan & Feb month, however, accessories business was drag on the segment. In Fragrances, sales recovered 80%. Sales in the World of Titan stores has started growing at 7%. Ecommerce continues to grow with customers moving to online purchasing. Sales in LFS continue to lag compared to other channels.

Titan Engineering and Automation Limited (TEAL), a wholly owned subsidiary of the company, had a revenue decline of 26% in Q4 as the aerospace business continues to face challenges due to the continued headwinds in the industry. Titan noted that the automation business vertical is however showing good signs of revival with the increase in the enquiries for automation solutions in the recent past and improving order book.

Titan Company is engaged in making and selling watches, jewellery, eyewear and others. The Tata Group company posted a 10.85% decline in standalone net profit to Rs 419 crore on 17.64% rise in total income to Rs 7,324 crore in Q3 FY21 over Q3 FY20.

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Del Mar, California--(Newsfile Corp. - April 7, 2021) - Universal Wellness Holding Corp (OTC Pink: ADHC) announces today that their new E-Commerce website opens for business Wednesday, April 7, 2021 . The new site, www.UniversalWellnessHC.com has been developed in collaboration with Pharmstrong, a leading Colorado-based CBD company. Universal Wellness and Pharmstrong have been working closely together to design an E-Commerce marketing platform that complements Pharmstrong's existing business model with a specific focus on driving traffic to Pharmstrong's E-Commerce platform.

The parties have a profit share agreement providing revenue to Universal Wellness for all orders generated through the new website and fulfilled by Pharmstrong.

The site will include many features, including the following sections:

Corporate Overview

Link to OTC Markets.com for a stock quote, financials, and other relevant shareholder information.

for a stock quote, financials, and other relevant shareholder information. Link to Join the email list.

Link to information on the benefits of Organic CBD and the Wellness lifestyle.

Link to information on the benefits of Organic CBD and the Wellness lifestyle. Complete E-Commerce site offering wellness and USDA Organic CBD products for sale to the general public.

On this state-of-the-art E-Commerce site, there will be the ability to purchase high-quality USDA Organic CBD wellness products. Interested parties may visit the site at www.universalwellnesshc.com to see the introductory website pending the E-Commerce site's unveiling on Wednesday, April 7, 2021 . Please join the email list to stay apprised of special discounts and breaking news in Universal Wellness.

"We are thrilled about our partnership with Universal Wellness and the opportunity to share with their shareholders the health benefits of USDA Organic CBD. Pharmstrong has been in business for nearly three years, and as former hemp farmers, we produce and deliver some of the purest and most potent hemp products on the market. Like Universal Wellness, we are committed to our customers' well-being and vitality," commented Melissa Dugan, CEO at Pharmstrong.

Universal Wellness previously announced two Letters of Intent to acquire leading companies in the CBD sector. Interested parties can refer to our previous news releases on www.otcmarkets.com for more information on those companies as the due diligence process continues.

Based upon the latest information from www.otcmarkets.com, Universal Wellness Holdings Corp ("ADHC") currently has:

866 million shares outstanding

330 million shares in the float

Shareholders should be aware that Universal Wellness Holdings Corporation (OTC Pink: ADHC) only distributes information via the www.otcmarkets.com news release section. No other prior news sources, including previous 8k filings or other prior news releases distributed through other news outlets, should be relied upon as official news from the company.

Universal Wellness Holdings Corporation is not planning to reverse split the stock; once again, there will be no reverse split of this stock for Universal Wellness Holdings Corp (OTC Pink: ADHC).

Additionally, the company has been made aware of a potential lawsuit filed against the company. Universal Wellness Holdings Corp has not been formally served with the lawsuit, so there can be no comment on the matter. A draft copy was discovered by the company and reviewed by the company's securities litigation counsel, who has assured management that this suit is nothing more than a shakedown attempt. When and if the company is properly served, the suit will be answered, and whatever applicable cross complaints will be filed against the plaintiffs and other parties.

ABOUT Pharmstrong www.pharmstrong.com

Pharmstrong is a Colorado-based company offering USDA Organic CBD products online and at their store on Main Street in Breckenridge, Colorado. Pharmstrong is passionate about producing safe, uncomplicated, high-quality CBD products for intelligent consumers who seek active, longer lives. Their customers, like their founders, know they deserve better, natural choices for their physical and mental wellbeing. Recently they unveiled Pharmstrong UK, another E-Commerce site. Currently, Pharmstrong is working on global expansion plans, beginning in Europe and Australia.

ABOUT Universal Wellness Holdings Corp (OTC Pink: ADHC)

Universal Wellness Holdings Corp (OTC: ADHC) is a publicly-traded holding company trading under the ticker symbol ("ADHC"). Until the new ticker and name changed are approved, information on ADHC can be found on otcmarkets.com under American Diversified Holdings Corporation. The company has recently changed its name and is awaiting a new ticker symbol to be assigned.

Investor Contact: adhccorp@gmail.com 858-259-4534

Pharmstrong contact: help@pharmstrong.com 303-596-4348

www.UniversalWellnessHC.com

www.pharmstrong.com

Information contained herein includes forward-looking statements. These statements relate to future events or future financial performance, involving known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause our actual results to be materially different performance or achievements expressed. You should not place undue reliance on these statements since they involve known and unknown risks; in some cases, beyond our control may affect actual results. Any forward-looking statement reflects our current views with respect to future events and is subject to uncertainties.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/79589
Vietnams newly-elected Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh held phone talks with his Laotian and Cambodian counterparts on Tuesday.

In his conversation with PM Chinh, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen praised Vietnams positive achievements in recent years, believing that the Vietnamese government and people will reap more successes in the future under the leadership of the newly-elected prime minister.

Chinh stated he will work closely with PM Hun Sen to further develop the neighborliness, traditional friendship, and comprehensive cooperation between the two countries and two governments.

The two premiers agreed to charge their ministers of health with sharing experience in COVID-19 prevention and control.

They consented on strengthening ties in defense and security, improving the effectiveness of borderline management, preventing the spread of diseases, and ensuring the smooth flow of goods through border gates.

PM Chinh thanked Cambodia for supporting Vietnam to successfully serve as Chair of ASEAN in 2020, while affirming Vietnams support for Cambodia in the organization of the upcoming 7th Greater Mekong Sub-region Summit and 13th Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) Summit in 2021.

Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh holds phone talks with Laotian Prime Minister Phankham Viphavanh, April 6, 2021. Photo: Vietnam Government Portal

During the talks with Laotian Prime Minister Phankham Viphavanh, PM Chinh said he will exert efforts to continuously strengthen and develop the great friendship, special solidarity, and comprehensive cooperation between Vietnam and Laos.

The two heads of government agreed on boosting cooperation between the two countries amid the COVID-19 pandemic, responding to common challenges, and mobilizing resources for each sides socio-economic development and bilateral ties.

They vowed to closely coordinate and support each other at multilateral forums, especially ASEAN and the Greater Mekong Sub-region frameworks.

The two sides will also work together to mark the 60th anniversary of Vietnam-Laos diplomatic relations and the 45th anniversary of the two countries friendship and amity treaty in 2022.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
To the Editor:

Re Could I Save These Sacred Jewish Books?, by David Margolick (Op-Ed, April 3):

The quandary of Jewishness is told in this article. Years ago I was browsing in a flea market. There, in a jewelry case, I was drawn to a bejeweled small prayer book. Emotions overwhelmed me. How could such a beautiful, sacred item be so degraded? It was as if this book reached out to me.

Without disputing the asking price, I bought it. Yes, I am Jewish and a Holocaust survivor. Was I part of this prayer books legacy? Printed in 1969 by the Jerusalem Press. How many worshiped with this book? Did the last owner die? How long did it languish in this dusty case? Was it waiting for me?

Its been part of my precious possessions for 18 years. It is inanimate, but I cherish its soul and memories.

Marianne Bobick

Gainesville, Ga.

To the Editor:

I applaud the respect for aging Jewish prayer books that David Margolick demonstrates. But the reader might be left with the impression that all the prayer books of the synagogue have lost their relevance. Mr. Margolick chafes at the robotic responsive readings and counts the number of pages still to be endured.
By Xinhua

With a small hammer and a chisel in his hands, David Ngwerume, a lawyer-cum-artist, pounded on a solid chunk of Chrysoprase stone.

Brownish dust fell off and a figure of a lion took slowly shape as he repeated the procedure. The piece of sculpture Ngwerume was working on is part of the Thy next world collection,  a collection of artwork to inspire people to see the world differently and live harmoniously with nature.

Despite being a practicing attorney with a law firm in Harare, Ngwerume is also an internationally acclaimed sculptor with a fantastic eye for detail. Although he said it is no easy feat to balance his creative career and practicing law, Ngwerume strives to give equal attention to both professions.Whenever I am not in courts and I dont have work at the law firm, I spend my other time here, so I cant call it spare time but I would also call it productive time because once I am done there I am here at the workshop, he told Xinhua in an interview at his workshop.

While law and arts might seem to be different worlds apart, Ngwerume said there are countless similarities between the two professions, which enables him to excel in both at the same time. Both fields deal with humanity, and if you are a very good artist who can use imagination and creativity, it also assists you in the law aspect of it because your perceptions and your views towards the world are different. Law moves in advocacy, you need to convince a judge, art also needs advocacy, it needs you to convince viewers who will be seeing your art and for them to understand how it comes out and what you are trying to portray, he said.

Ngwerume, who has pursued art for over two decades, has mastered the art of expressing societal issues through his art. His work is inspired by his day-to-day experiences in the legal system. He uses mostly serpentine stone to carve pieces of art that convey emotions, events, and the struggles of everyday life. Ngwerume described the artwork as an effective tool to bring everlasting positive change in society. So through art and through the law, it creates a harmonious order with sustenance between the two, that is how people are living in their lives and also what can we do as humans to change the world, he said.

Some of Ngwerumes famous works include Scales of Justice sculpture erected in front of the Harare and Bulawayo High Courts. He has also carried out works for various organizations including the Judicial Services Commission of Zimbabwe, Office of the President and Cabinet of Zimbabwe, the Angolan government, and the DRC government.

Earlier this year, Ngwerume released a work of art titled Daring a Mustang under a collection dubbed Taking the Reins. The collection was inspired by the horse culture and the pieces are made of brown Chrysoprase stone, a type of stone that is found within deposits of nickel. Ngwerume said while the pandemic hindered his work, it has also enabled him to put more effort into his artwork. He has also used his artistic talent to create awareness about the COVID-19 pandemic.

Earlier this year, he hogged the limelight after unveiling his new piece titled The New Normal, a piece of sculpture that draws inspiration from the daily reality the world is facing amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The piece, which is made up of black granite, showcases an African woman, carved in an African map design, wearing a heard scuff and a surgical mask.

As an attorney, Ngwerume has also helped many artists to navigate various legal challenges facing them such as copyright issues. Zimbabwes stone sculpture is world-renowned and the art traces its history to the medieval Great Zimbabwe empire which was founded in the 11th century, and from which Zimbabwe derives its name.
Reeling from a ban on its EVs from China's military facilities, Tesla is trying to clear the air over the country's spying fears lest they spill over into a broader, nationalism-fueled boycott. According to Reuters, the US automaker took to its Chinese social media page to confirm that cameras in its cars are not activated outside of North America.

Even in the United States, car owners can freely choose whether to turn on its [the camera's] use. Tesla is equipped with a network security system with world-leading security levels to ensure user privacy protection, Tesla wrote on Weibo, Chinas take on Twitter.

Tesla Inc's Beijing unit said on Wednesday that Cameras that are built into Tesla Inc.'s cars aren't activated outside of North America, in a statement on Weibo. "Even in the United States, car owners can freely choose whether to turn on its use, Tesla said. pic.twitter.com/BUvbtSKLI5  CGTN Global Business (@CGTNGlobalBiz) April 7, 2021

Reports surfaced last month that China was prohibiting military personnel and staff from key state-owned companies from parking their Tesla cars on facilities or bringing them to work. The issue stemmed from the myriad cameras packed into the EVs that officials seemingly thought could be used to record activities at a base or monitor troop movements. Tesla's new Model 3 and Model Y cars also come equipped with a cabin camera above the rear-view mirror that can capture short video clips in the event of a crash or collision.

Though Tesla makes it clear on its website that these systems are turned off by default, it has again been forced to play down Chinese surveillance fears to stave off a national incident. Tesla chief Elon Musk previously said it would "get shut down" if it used cars for spying in China or any other country.

Foreign companies have come under fire of late in China for calling out the government's alleged use of Uighur Muslims for forced labor. The broader US-China trade war has also stirred anxieties of possible Chinese retaliation in the wake of the Trump administration's crippling sanctions on Huawei. Adding to the pressure Tesla faces, China is the company's largest market behind its native US, with sales in the country more than doubling to $6.7 billion last year.
(Natural News) 60 Minutes, a long-disgraced news magazine that airs on far-left CBS, launched a political assassination attempt against Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) Sunday night. By Monday afternoon, this shamelessly dishonest hoax and conspiracy theory had collapsed into a steaming pile of fake news.

(Article by John Nolte republished from Breitbart.com)

According to the long-disgraced 60 Minutes, DeSantis accepted a $100,000 political donation from Publix supermarkets and then awarded Publix with a vaccine contract. In other words: pay-for-play.

Heres how the hoax fell apart.

It began with the discovery that the long-disgraced 60 Minutes had deliberately and maliciously edited a clip of DeSantis while he answered a round of questions and heckling from disgraced-60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi.

Through this deliberate act of malicious editing, the long-disgraced 60 Minutes tried to make DeSantis look like a fool as he dodged her question. The truth, however, as we saw in the full video, is that he answered her question at detailed length and did so to the satisfaction of any reasonable person.

The full video hit social media almost immediately after the long-disgraced 60 Minutes hit piece aired and quickly went viral.

Then, Jared Moskowitz, Floridas former head of emergency management and a Democrat, lashed out at the long-disgraced 60 Minutes as liars spreading absolute malarkey about DeSantis.

The former head of Florida's emergency management agency (a Democrat fwiw) pushes back on 60 Minutes story tying Publix donations to DeSantis to its state vaccine distribution contract https://t.co/svEckfoIU8  Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) April 5, 2021

60Minutes I said this before and Ill say it again, he tweeted. @Publix was recommended by @FLSERT and @HealthyFla as the other pharmacies were not ready to start. Period! Full Stop!

He added, No one from the Governors [sic] office suggested Publix. Its just absolute malarkey.

Then, Dave Kerner, the Democrat mayor of Palm Beach, was so disgusted by the long-disgraced 60 Minutes segment, he released a lengthy statement blasting the long-disgraced 60 Minutes for spreading intentionally false information. It read in part:

I watched the 60 Minutes segment on Palm Beach County last night and feel compelled to issue this statement. The reporting was not just based on bad information  it was intentionally false. I know this because I offered to provide my insight into Palm Beach Countys vaccination efforts and 60 Minutes declined. They know that the Governor came to Palm Beach County and met with me and the County Administrator and we asked to expand the states partnership with Publix to Palm Beach County. We also discussed our own local plans to expand mass vaccinations centers throughout the county, which the Governor has been incredibly supportive. We asked and he delivered. They had that information, and they left it out because it kneecaps their narrative.

That was written by a Democrat.

For its part, the long-disgraced 60 Minutes has now gone dark with the story, Fox News reported:

CBS appears to be distancing itself from a 60 Minutes report that has been widely criticized as a hit piece against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, by members of both parties.  The next day, however, there was no mention of the 60 Minutes report on CBS This Morning or the CBS Evening News, according to Grabien transcripts.

Whats more, the long-disgraced 60 Minutes has not covered a single one of the coronavirus or sexual abuse scandals swirling around Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY), but thats because Cuomo is a Democrat and the long-disgraced 60 Minutes is a left-wing propaganda outlet determined to mislead the public with fake news, maliciously edited video, and disinformation.

Everything the corporate media report is a lie.

It is long past time that those interested in the truth start to IGNORE the media, and that includes hate-watching.

CNNLOL, NBC, MSNBC, Washington Post, New York Times, NPR, PBS, etc., are all lying liars who lie. Everything they report is a lie. Stop watching this crap. Ignore this crap.

Thats what DeSantis did. The long-disgraced 60 Minutes tried to sucker him into sitting down for an interview. He refused, which was the exact right decision.

Stop watching fake news.

Stop doing business with fake news.

Ignore fake news.

Read more at: Breitbart.com and NewsFakes.com
The BJP's president Dilip Ghosh on Wednesday alleged that Trinamool Congress workers attacked his car with bombs and bricks in Cooch Behar district of North Bengal, a charge denied by the ruling party.

Ghosh said that the car's window glasses including the one on his side were smashed in the attack which took place at Sitalkuchi after a public meeting of his party.

After breaking the glass, a brick also hit him, he said.

"If this is the situation, how can one expect free and fair polls in Cooch Behar, where people had voted for change in the 2019 Lok Sabha election," Ghosh said in a video message.

Cooch Behar district will go to polls in the fourth phase of assembly elections on April 10.

The BJP won seven seats in North Bengal, including Cooch Behar, in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

It was alleged that TMC workers returning from a rally of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, which was held in another nearby town, got embroiled in a clash with BJP activists attending Ghosh's meeting.

"I was waiting in my vehicle after our meeting for the people to leave when we were attacked with firearms, bombs, bricks and sticks by people holding TMC flags. It was like a Talibani attack," Ghosh said.

It was alleged that several country-made bombs were hurled at his car.

He claimed that the police did not act to prevent the attack on him and BJP supporters.

Ghosh said that if the Election Commission does not take immediate action, polling in constituencies in Cooch Behar will be a "farce".

TMC spokesman Kunal Ghosh said that the ruling party was not involved in the attack.
In trying to figure out what might have happened at Perth Childrens Hospital on Easter Saturday night, an experienced medico shared a chilling observation.

The workforce had been asked by the system to sprint for the past four or so years and clinicians are fatigued, worn out, and have got to the point where they are very tolerant of the misery of others.

Nurses feel anxious about working for fear they cannot deliver adequate care to their patients. Credit:Nic Walker

The senior clinician, it must be stressed, does not work at PCH and has no direct knowledge of events that led to the death of sunny, intelligent seven-year-old Aishwarya Aswath.

Those matters will be the subject of a 4-6 week root cause analysis by the hospital  a formality after any SAC 1 (severity assessment code 1) event, that is one that has or could have had serious or fatal consequences attributed to healthcare provision or a lack thereof.
This article appears in the April 9, 2021 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

[Print version of this article]

Jacques Cheminade

A Call to Action

Jacques Cheminade is President of Solidarite et Progres, a political party in France, associated with the ideas of Lyndon LaRouche. He spoke on the third panel, Southwest Asia: Pivot for War, or Peaceful Development with the New Silk Road, of the Schiller Institutes March 20-21 international conference, The World at a CrossroadTwo Months into the New Administration.

View full size

Schiller Institute Jacques Cheminade

We have reached one of those moments of history in which the human capacity to survive is at stake. After having heard our speakers of the preceding three panels, nobody can deny this. It is a moment of tragedy, because the main world leaders, at least in our Western world, have lost their commitment to care for others, for the advantage of others, as defined by the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, key to establishing peace among nations. We ourselves would become tragic heroes if we were to concede to the self-destructive dynamics of our societies, caring more for our own destiny than for the common good of Humanity.

What I mean by a call to action is not to tell people what to do, which would certainly be preposterous, but to give through my contribution on what has to be done, a sense of the common commitment by all of us here, not yet as a force in numbers, but as the main potential for the world to come, because we are committed to the common good, the General Welfare of ourselves and our posterity. As members or friends of the Schiller Institute, from multiple geographical and intellectual origins, we act for the coincidence of the opposites, for a constantly renewed higher purpose, in a moral, political, economic and aesthetic sense, to reach a unity from what has inspired our contributions.

We refuse to become Hamlets, selfishly obsessed by a culture of death. We have fewer excuses today to remain at an academic and existentialist level than our predecessors before World War II. Let us listen to what Dr. Leo Alexander, expert adviser to the Nuremberg Tribunal, had to say about their political sins of action and omission at that time:

Whatever the proportions these Nazi crimes assumed, it became evident to all who investigated them that they had started from small beginnings. But it is important to realize that the infinitely small hedged-in lever from which this entire trend of mind received its impetus was the attitude toward the non-rehabilitatable sick.

Lets be frank, we have fewer excuses. Already Lyndon LaRouche, during the nineteen eighties of the past century, warned us that potentially, todays criminal acts were many times worse in impact than those of Adolf Hitler. Some took that as a provocation or a metaphor, but what is happening in the world since then fully confirms that potential. We are not facing small beginnings only. While people are dying from hunger, while countries like Yemen and Syria are tortured, while most of the world is left without a decent public health sector to fight against pandemics, our leaders turn their heads away or, worse, participate in the crimes. This has been stated better than I could do by our preceding speakers.

The humiliation of the other has become a common, bestial behavior. The financial Great Leap Backward, in the clutches of a green financial dictatorship, has become the policy of the West, ineluctably leading, if enforced, due to the lack of physical economic development, to a policy which polite people call population reduction, and the less polite, mass murders. More money has been issued in a few months in the United States than in two centuries of American history. And Japan, Western Europe and Latin-America are going in the same direction, giving money to the money managers and not to productive investment. As a result, the present and the expected potential economic production in the future, are not able to even maintain the present level of world population. It is not a technical mistake but the willfully destructive policy of an oligarchy to maintain its power against the interests of the other.

Such an evil behavior leads to war. Joe Biden, the President of the United States, dared to call the President of Russia a killer. While Putin takes it with his ironical smile, the Russian Ambassador in Washington has been recalled to Russia, and Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council, declared: I can only quote Freud: Nothing in life is more expensive than illness and stupidity. At the same time, the United States announced its commitment to deploy mini-nukes, lowering the nuclear war thresholdNATO deploys its Defender 2021 military exercises next to the Russian borders, while Jens Stoltenberg, NATOs Secretary General, calls for a Global NATO extended into Asia, and the British government pursues the aggressive dream of a Global Britain. Western policies are even worse towards China, as we all know. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and the entire Biden Administration, are openly implementing joint preparations for military confrontations with China.

From the Project for a New American Century of the Cheney era, to the National Defense Strategy document of 2018, to the present Interim National Security Strategic Guidance and the letter signed by President Biden on the Legal and Policy Framework for the United States use of Military Force and Related National Security Operations, the same war mongering tone prevails, over some hypocritical references to democracy and responsibility to protect.

We, of course, say No! to all these threats. The dissolution of NATO, to put all these imperial threats to an end, has become mandatory. A circle of reflection of French inter-arms, composed of major retired generals, has issued a call to stop the mad train of NATO before its too late. But, of course, much more is needed.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche calls for:

 the immediate establishment of a modern health care system in every country of the world;

 the doubling of world agricultural production in order to eliminate hunger and poverty for a growing world population;

 the end of the casino economy through a global Glass-Steagall law to separate the banks;

 a New Bretton Woods credit system to provide productive credit for investments in the real economy;

 the creation of 1.5 billion new productive jobs to rebuild the world economy after the pandemic and to seriously begin to overcome global devolution; and

 cooperating with Russia and China to develop the New Silk Road in South West Asia and Africa, thereby addressing the root causes of the refugee crisis while establishing a lasting peace order.

I made similar proposals for my country, France. Too often I hear people saying: The conditions are not met. Its too good to be true. And even I think that human beings are not as good as you think. This is the moral decay of populations in our Western World. Faced with the permanent lying of their leaders, they have too often lost their belief in the Good.

It is to tackle this cultural pessimism that I make this call for action.

Our fourth panel will show the commitment of doctors, farmers and persons engaged on the first front for human life, to present their proofs that the Good could and should be actualized, that a better world is possible, based on a moral commitment and all the potential means of production and transportation to build platforms of human development. [See last weeks EIR for the Panel 4 presentations.] The three ongoing Mars ventures express this cultural optimism, necessary to all of us to build a world of explorers beyond the borders of the known universe, both physically, mentally and, in a real sense, spiritually.

I strongly advise those of you who have not yet read it, to read Lyndon LaRouches book, written in 2005, Earths Next Fifty Years, and those who have already read it, to re-read it, with the intention to better explore the potential of your commitment, to become more confident about your own powers.

The battle for the future is not a lesson to be learned and followed, but a call for creation within our minds, and for action on behalf of justice. Let me remind you of Platos first book of The Republic, where he leads Glaucon, Polemarchus and Thrasymachus to explore what Justice is. He shows them that justice is neither to submit to public opinion and expect to trade advantages, nor to serve ones friends and harm ones enemies, nor to seek the advantage of the strongest. Socrates stresses that, the love of honor and money is considered as a shameful thing, and rightly so, and adds that power is a necessary task, not to find ones own advantage, but the advantage of the governed, and mostly of the weakest among them.

This is what we have to mobilize ourselves for. The difficulty starts when we look at the state of affairs today: Western powers dividing the world into two categories, friends and enemies, with no sense of the common good, infecting public opinions with that sense, and dividing to conquer, as a principle to control the populations. This leads, logically, to the world of the Thrasymachus and the Alcibiades, i.e., rule by force and war of all against all.

Our call to action is therefore a call to change the very way of thinking of our fellow citizens, and to act to make it not only possible, but the most enjoyable thing to do, because to do the Good is fun. To organize each other we have therefore to be ruthless, because we do expect the best from each of us. It is with such a commitment that Gandhi won the independence of India, and Martin Luther King the end of segregation. The taste of victory is therefore not only possible, but necessary. As an objective imposed upon ourselves, going much further than Gandhi and Martin went (and we can find other cases), not to imitate them in this or that, but to fulfill their dreams. Lets have many dreams come true, and sound the drum of history, but this time, as what was said in the first panel, with the best of all possible music to reach a harmony of interests along a World Land-Bridge.
Several reports said that human traffickers are using Facebook to deceive migrants into coming to the United States.

CBN News said the human traffickers give false hopes to people that the United States has accepted them for immigration. The media outlet cited the Department of Homeland Security in stating that such social media posts viral easily and spread misinformation quickly such that there is now a surge in immigrants in the U.S. border.

"Travel to Mexico to the United States. Costs $8,000. 100 percent safe. Cross through Matamoros. You walk one hour, after in automobile until you arrive to your relative," CBN News quoted a social media post written in Spanish and addressed to those aspiring to be in the U.S. from South America.

CBN News said the Facebook page purporting misinformation have several posts in a day. Some of the posts are said to come from apparent smugglers seeking information on how to immigrate to the U.S..

Meanwhile, NBC News said that the apparent smugglers easily prey on people since they use the Biden administration's welcome to migrants. The media outlet identified the Facebook pages "Migrants from Various Countries in Mexico" and "Migrants in the Mexico-U.S.A. Border Awaiting Hearing" as some of these.

NBC cited some posts to include pictures of families with their luggage presenting a scenario that they are already in the United States and aided by its caption enticing others to experience the same. While some posts portray a migrant was helped "to go to the United States" after posting please "for ways to go cross the border." Comments on the post show "smuggling rates, destinations, and WhatsApp numbers."

"Make your dream a reality in the United States. We are here to help you. The journey is safe and reliable and the price is $4,500 leaving from Monterrey to San Antonio, Texas," NBC News cited one caption.

Sometimes, negotiations on pricing only happen after immigrants post on the groups looking for help crossing the border.

"Someone help me go the United States," a person posted on one such group, NBC noted.

"It's ready. 3,000 to arrive at the line/ 6000 to jump to your destination. Whatever state. Pay when your relatives receive you," said one of the many comments made in reply to the post.

The Department of Homeland Security has been monitoring such social media presence but it was only after the media outlet reported these to Facebook that the said pages were removed. Facebook prohibits human exploitation and smuggling in their community policy.

The Department of Homeland Security, in its Factsheet dated February 18, 2021, clarified that the Biden Administration's invitation to migrants does not in any way nor "signal any change to border enforcement" such that people can openly "migrate irregularly to the United States." The invitation is part of "the Biden Administration's commitment to reform immigration policies that do not align" with the "nation's values."

In line with it, the department released a newly established process particularly those who have been affected by the Migrant Protection Protocols and have been sent back to Mexico and who have "pending cases before the Executive Order for Immigration Review" was set in place. The said new process is the one being enforced to "safely and effectively process individuals at the southwest border" of the United States.

The DHS also released a warning last March 31 on the "grave risk of children travelling with smugglers" that would use the south border as access.
In the hours following a violent rampage in Georgia in which a lone attacker killed eight individuals and injured one other, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Wednesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place, the Onion wrote after the Atlanta-area spa shooting. This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and theres nothing anyone can do to stop them, said Iowa resident Jamie Harkin, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the worlds deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations.
Albany, N.Y.  New York nursing homes will have to spend more of their revenue on staffing and keep less in profits under a provision in the state budget approved Tuesday.

Nursing homes will have to spend at least 70% of revenue on direct resident care. Of that amount, 40% must be spent on nurses, certified nurse aides and other staff who work directly with residents.

The provision also caps profits at 5%. When total operating revenue exceeds expenses by more than 5%, the excess revenue must be turned over to the state. The state will redistribute the money to nursing homes to help them improve quality.

In addition to staffing costs, direct resident care includes maintenance, housekeeping, food service, nursing administration and a variety of medical services.

Direct resident care does not include administrative costs, capital costs, debt payments, taxes (except for sales or payroll taxes), capital depreciation, rent, leases and fiscal services.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a news release the budget provision will help ensure facilities are prioritizing patient care over profits.

But nursing home industry officials warned the spending formula will cause some facilities to default on their mortgage loans and close. They also say the measure does not address the biggest problem facing New York nursing homes -- chronic underfunding by the state Medicaid program.

The spending formula is one of several nursing home reforms state lawmakers developed after Covid-19 swept through New York nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, killing more than 15,000 residents. The pandemic shined a spotlight on short staffing, poor quality of care and other problems that bedeviled many nursing homes long before the pandemic.

The spending formula will take effect Jan. 1, 2022.

1199 SEIU, the powerful union that represents workers at 343 nursing homes in New York, lobbied hard for the change.

Even as care suffers, too many owners are extracting profit from these homes, the union said in testimony at recent budget hearings. The union estimates the new spending formula will shift about $500 million to resident care currently being spent on management costs and profit.

Stephen Hanse, a nursing home industry official, said most New York nursing home problems resulted from the states decision to cut more than $2 billion in Medicaid funding to the facilities over the past 12 years. Medicaid pays the biggest share of nursing home bills.

The average daily cost of nursing home care is $266 per resident, but the state Medicaid program pays an average of $211 per resident, according to Hanse.

The 70/40 mandate fails to address this deficit and continues the states financial disregard for our seniors, said Hanse, president of the New York State Health Facilities Association.

Most nursing homes have mortgages and the new funding mandate will make it difficult for operators to make their loan payments, according to Hanse. He also said the mandate will discourage nursing homes from making capital improvements.

James T. Mulder covers health and higher education. Have a news tip? Contact him at (315) 470-2245 or jmulder@syracuse.com
Dubai Economy and Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Authority have signed an agreement to expand the UAE KYC (Know Your Customer) Blockchain Consortium positioning it as the national corporate e-KYC platform.



It will facilitate faster, more secure and streamlined customer onboarding and allow sharing of verified e-KYC data between licensing authorities and financial institutions through advanced distributed technologies, reported Emirates news agency Wam.



The founding Consortium Members include Dubai Economy, Dubai International Financial Centre, Emirates NBD, Emirates Islamic, Commercial Bank of Dubai, HSBC, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, RAKBANK and Mashreq Bank. The first phase went live in 2020 and more entities have joined since resulting in the platform holding close to 50 per cent of corporate e-KYC records in UAE.



The Government of Dubai Legal Affairs Department is proud to be one of Dubai Economys key strategic partners on this first-of-its-kind initiative for the region where we have provided and continue to provide legal support to Dubai Economy in their consolidation efforts with DIFC and the formation of the Consortium Agreement for the UAE KYC Blockchain Consortium," said Dr. Lowai Mohamed Belhoul, Director-General of the Government of Dubai Legal Affairs Department.



"Dubai Economy is focused on strengthening our digital economy and the launch of the UAE KYC Blockchain Platform in partnership with our key banking partners is a testament to our ambitions to transform Dubai into a global investment destination, said Abdulla Hassan, CEO, Corporate Support Sector, Dubai Economy.



Following its launch in 2020, the platform has become increasingly crucial not only in simplifying the procedures for opening bank accounts for investors, but also in enabling banks to digitally receive verified KYC data. This initiative has a positive impact in attracting business and on the global ease of doing business ranking of Dubai and the UAE.



Alya Al Zarouni, Executive Vice President of Operations at DIFC Authority, said: "DIFC has been at the forefront in positioning Dubai as the leading business destination in the region since its inception 16 years ago.



We are looking forward to working with Dubai Economy to share best practices so we can collectively advance Dubais digital economy. Implementing a nationwide e-KYC solution will make it easier for new businesses to open accounts easily when they set up operations in the UAE and support our leading position in the region for managing privacy and data protection to the highest international standards."
Two women accused of stabbing an acquaintance before stuffing her in the boot of her own car for 12 hours allegedly visited six different locations - including a McDonalds and a shopping centre - before they were eventually arrested.

Kayley Ketley and Letia Henderson told police they were returning a white Holden Commodore to a car hire company in Colo Vale, in the New South Wales Southern Highlands, when they were pulled over on the Hume Motorway about 11.30am on February 3.

The address on the satellite navigation device they were following was actually leading them to Belanglo State Forest, police facts state.

The state forest, midway between Sydney and Canberra, was notoriously the site where the victims of serial killer Ivan Milat were discovered.

In the boot of the car, police found 24-year-old Nisha Phillips, and officers allege a 30cm kitchen knife was hidden under Ketley's feet.

Police claim they were alerted that something was amiss when a concerned truckie called 000 alleging the car in front of him was driving erratically and that a hand appeared to be sticking out of a broken tail light.

The teenager is 20 weeks pregnant and was refused bail when she last appeared in court in late February

This map shows the six locations the accused visited and stopped after allegedly stabbing Nisha Phillips at a home in Claymore

They allege Phillips had been stabbed at least seven times - twice in the legs and five times in the shoulder - and that Ketley, 24, and Henderson, 18, had unlawfully detained her for 12 hours and taken her to at least six separate locations while she was stuck in the boot.

Ketleys bail was formally denied in Campbelltown Local Court on Wednesday despite her lawyer promising to post her grandmothers $4,000 life savings as a surety.

The 24-year-old is facing charges of with unlawful wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, detaining to gain advantage causing bodily harm and driving a vehicle without [the] owner's consent, which carry a maximum penalty of 25 years behind bars.

Her co accused, 18-year-old Henderson, will also remain behind bars until at least their next court appearance on April 28. She is 20 weeks pregnant.

The duo are accused of stabbing and kidnapping Phillips on February 2 and 3, 2021.

Kayley Ketley (pictured) remains behind bars despite her lawyer offering a $4,000 surety

Nisha Phillips was allegedly first stabbed inside this townhouse in Claymore before she was forced into the boot of her own car

Court facts reveal the duo allegedly travelled to six different locations after allegedly stabbing Phillips in both legs at a home in Claymore.

Police allege Phillips willingly drove to see Henderson and Ketley before an argument broke out and the latter stabbed the complainant in the left thigh using a red kitchen knife.

Ketley then allegedly stabbed Phillips in the right leg and instructed her to walk to her car, where she was forced into the boot.

From there, the trio drove to a second residential address in Glenfield, where the two accused allegedly dumped the victim and left for four hours.

Ketleys lawyer Mark Rumore argued in court that during this time, the complainant had four hours to escape or flee, indicating she wasnt kidnapped as the charges state given she chose to remain at the address.

Police allege Henderson (left) helped her friend Kayley Lee Ketley (right) carry out a horrific stabbing and kidnapping

The 24-year-old alleged victim managed to get her hand out the back tail light of the car (pictured) which was seen by a passing truck driver, who called NSW Police

Police claim she spent the time applying first aid to her wounds and trying to bandage herself up.

They allege when Ketley returned to the house she said: Oh, youre still alive? What a shame. I guess were going to have to drag this on. I was hoping you would just give it up'.

Phillips was again put in the boot of the car at knifepoint at about 6.10am, police allege, and driven to Campbelltown mall car park.

CCTV footage was played to the court of the two women driving through the parking garage. Police allege Ketley opened the rear car door and, while leaning over into the boot, stabbed Phillips a further five times in the shoulder and arm.

Henderson's mother defended her innocence outside of court

She was allegedly told to keep her head down while in the boot.

From there, GPS tracking on the car reveals they drove to an address in Ambarvale, where they met with a man and woman who live at the home.

The pair allegedly assisted in retrieving Phillips from the boot after the Holden was reversed into the carport, at which point police facts state the woman brandished a hammer in a threatening manner.

The woman, who Daily Mail Australia has not identified, was later pulled over with police with the hammer in her possession. She told officers she was returning it to a tradesman and was sent on her way. She returned to the address and demanded Ketley and Henderson leave with Phillips.

Police allege the duo continued on their drive and pulled over on the side of the road near Menangle to smoke cannabis. At this time, they allege Henderson or Ketley offered Phillips a drink of water and an ice cream.

Henderson later admitted to wiping blood from the back of the car, near the licence plate, using a black and white tea towel which she dumped on the side of the road, police facts state. Detectives were able to retrieve the cloth.

After leaving the Ambarvale address, police retrieved data which suggested Ketley entered the address of the Belanglo State Forest into her satellite navigation system.

Nisha Phillips (pictured) was allegedly stuffed in the boot of her own Holden Commodore after 12 hours of terror that began at a unit in Claymore, western Sydney, about 10.30pm on Tuesday

The two accused allegedly took Phillips, then bleeding profusely, to this home in Ambarvale

The magistrate said one could only wonder what the purpose of going [there] was and questioned whether it was merely to inflict further terror on Phillips.

While driving and following the directions of the satellite navigation system, the two women took several videos - equating to about five minutes - of themselves singing and dancing to rap music on the drive.

The court heard following their arrest, Ketley claimed she was heading to Colo Vale to return the hire car they were driving. She denied they were ever on the way to the Belanglo forest, which is well south of Colo Vale.

By 11.30am - some 12 hours after the ordeal allegedly began - concerned motorists began calling 000 to report an erratic driver on the Hume Motorway. A truck driver claimed a tail light was broken on the car and that what appeared to be a hand was sticking through, signalling for help.

Henderson's lawyer later said the family would not make any comment in relation to the charges

The women also were caught on CCTV parking in Campbelltown Mall car park about 6.10am on February 3, where Phillips was allegedly stabbed a further five times

Police eventually pulled over the car and allegedly found the 30cm black kitchen knife at Ketleys feet.

They also found the alleged victim, still in the boot, with stab wounds to both legs, left shoulder and torso. Her left shoulder was dislocated.

Police claim Ketleys DNA and fingerprints were on the handle of the knife, and the alleged victims blood was on the blade of a second knife.

In Ketleys initial police interview, she denied knowing Phillips was in the boot of the car and admitted to owning a small amount of marijuana that was seized.

She claimed the woman from the earlier Ambarvale address asked her to pick up the car from Ambarvale Hotel car park and return it to a hire company in Colo Vale.

Henderson was interviewed separately and also claimed she was asked to pick up the car and return it to the Colo Vale hire company.

Latia Henderson (above), 18, revealed she was pregnant at her last court appearance

Phillips reportedly spent four hours alone at a home in Glenfield (pictured), where police claim she tried to bandage her stab wounds

But the 18 year old, who was then in the early stages of pregnancy, allegedly also made partial admissions, including acknowledging that she knew Phillips was in the boot and that she wiped blood from the car and left the tea towel on the side of the road.

Since their arrest on February 3, both women have remained in custody.

Earlier on Wednesday, Hendersons mother told Daily Mail Australia the women were not guilty.

She clutched the hand of a little girl and was supported by her own mother, Henderson's grandmother, as she made the defiant claim.

'We don't need to make any comments because they're not guilty,' she said. Henderson's grandmother then said they had nothing else to discuss on the matter.

The court heard prosecutors were awaiting electronic interview with the alleged victim and expert medical records before proceeding.

The duo are both scheduled to reappear in Campbelltown Local Court via audio visual link on April 28.
A fiancee has revealed the heartbreak of having to plan her partner's funeral instead of their dream wedding after he was killed in a horror crash at a rail crossing - and the phone call that turned her world upside down.

Madeline Bott's partner Ethan Hunter, 27, died instantly alongside his 50-year-old colleague Mark Fenton when their B-double truck collided with a freight train in Bribbaree in south-west NSW.

The tragedy on February 23 this year came as Ms Bott and Mr Hunter were putting the finishing touches on their nuptial arrangements after being together for eight years.

'Instead of planning my dream Fijian wedding with Ethan, I planned his funeral,' Ms Bott, an emergency nurse, said.

Madeline Bott's partner Ethan Hunter (the couple are pictured together) died in February after the truck he was travelling in collided with a freight train at a rail crossing in rural NSW

Ms Bott said Mr Hunter (pictured) was 'incredibly sensible and hardworking' and 'did not race the train'

The couple (pictured together) were due to be married on March 27, eight years after they first got together

'Ethan (was) the love of my life, an adored son, treasured brother and cherished uncle and friend.'

The 26-year-old said she spent March 27, the day the couple were due to be married, by her husband's grave with their dog Knox.

'Ethan and I were meant to be married in beautiful Fiji. Instead of walking down the aisle Knox and I sat with Ethan at his grave side,' Ms Bott said.

'I lost my whole life at a level crossing. Now I need to learn how to live life without someone I never pictured my life without. It shouldn't take such a horrendous event to effect change.'

Mr Hunter and Mr Fenton were carting gypsum from one side of a farm to the other when the accident happened, with confronting pictures from the scene at Eurabba Lane in Bribaree showing the wrecked truck pushed along the train line.

Mr Hunter (pictured) and Mr Fenton were carting gypsum from one side of a farm to the other when the accident unfolded

Ms Bott, who had spent the day shopping, tried to call Ethan on her way back home but didn't have any luck getting through

Ms Bott, who had spent the day shopping, tried to call Ethan on her way back home but didn't have any luck getting through.

'His phone kept going to the voicemail so I decided to call one of our friends, she told me it would be fine,' she told 7News.

But ten minutes later her friend called back and told Ms Bott that 'something bad' had unfolded.

'On my drive home I went past all the fire trucks and ambulances, I knew something terrible had happened,' she said.

'Finally, I got to Ethan's family farm. Ethan's mother was in tears and told me he had passed away.'

The rail crossing was classified as 'passive' meaning it only had a stop sign and no flashing lights or boom gates.

'Both (were) incredibly sensible and hardworking men who did not race the train and with better railway safety measures both would still be here today,' she said.

The confronting scene (pictured) after the truck Mr Hunter was travelling in alongside his colleague Mark Fenton smashed into a freight train

Ms Bott said she had been with Mr Hunter (pictured together) since she was 18, describing him as 'the love of my life'

In a heartbreaking post online, Ms Bott said 'Instead of planning my dream Fijian wedding with Ethan, I planned his funeral'

'This railway crossing had only a simple stop and look for trains sign. The railway lines view is obstructed with overgrown grass and a significant amount of trees.'

Ms Bott has launched an online petition calling for improved safety measures at all rail crossings, and has met with her local state member of parliament Steph Cooke as she ramps up her campaign.

'I am petitioning for lights to be made mandatory at all level crossings at a minimum. In rural areas we need to bridge this gap in transport and start fighting for our right to be safe at all level crossings,' Ms Bott said.

'I will never be able to bring Ethan back, but I can fight to make sure I do all I can to prevent anyone else going through the pain I feel. This is for you Ethan Hunter and Mark Fenton, I promise we are all going to fight for you.'

According to the Australian Track Rail Corporation there are more than 1000 near hits between vehicles and trains and almost 30 fatalities every year at rail crossings

In early April, Ms Bott met with her local state member of parliament Steph Cooke (pictured together) to discuss her petition calling for better safety measures at rail crossings

According to the Australian Track Rail Corporation there are more than 1000 near hits between vehicles and trains and almost 30 fatalities every year at rail crossings.

Across Australia, there are more than 23,500 railway level crossings, with only 21 per cent classed as 'active', meaning they have boom gates and or flashing lights.

'I will provide every support to Madeline to ensure her online petition can be presented to NSW Parliament and collective calls from our community for improved railway level crossings are heard,' Ms Cooke said.

In a statement provided to Daily Mail Australia, Tara McCarthy, Transport for NSW's executive director of safety, environment and regulation, said: 'Level crossing safety is an important area of focus for Transport for NSW and part of our effort to drive the road toll Towards Zero.

'Every year, the NSW Government is investing $7.3million through the NSW Level Crossing Improvement Program (LCIP) in accelerating upgrades of priority level crossings and level crossing safety education and enforcement campaigns.

'From 2011-12 to 2019-20, the program has funded 58 major upgrades to level crossings including the installation of high intensity LED lights, bells and retro-reflective boom gates with another 29 level crossings identified for upgrade in the next two years.'
The Alabama House of Representatives has narrowly rejected a bill to place new restrictions on driving with a cell phone.

Its already illegal in Alabama to send or read a text message while driving.

The bill by Rep. K.L. Brown, R-Jacksonville, would have expanded that to make it illegal for a driver to hold a phone or support it on their body, such as on their shoulder. It would have made it illegal to use a cell phone to take or watch a photo or video while driving.

The bill failed on a 48-47 vote.

Brown said that similar laws have saved lives in Georgia and Tennessee. But some lawmakers said the law could have been misused to target Black drivers. Others said new restrictions on cell phones would do nothing to stop other causes of distracted driving.

It is impossible to legislate safe driving, Rep. Jamie Kiel, R-Russellville, said. In the end, you just cant legislate personal responsibility.

The bill included exceptions for calling for emergency services or for using a phone while parked on the shoulder of a road. It would not have been a violation to use a phone on speaker mode or with a voice-activated application.

Violations would have been a primary offense, which means police could stop drivers solely for that reason.

Several lawmakers said the law could have been used as an excuse to stop Black drivers without justification, creating potential for tragic encounters.

Rep. Tashina Morris, D-Montgomery, said she has an adult son who works an overnight shift and always worries about receiving a late-night phone call saying her son made the wrong move after being pulled over by law enforcement.

When they say, driving while black, that is a 100% true factor, Morris said.

Browns bill would have required police to send monthly reports to the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency that would include the racial breakdown of drivers stopped for violations.

Still, most Black lawmakers voted against the bill. Their opposition, combined with no votes from about one-third of the Republican majority, was enough to kill the bill.

Kiel offered an amendment to cover other causes of distracted driving, including eating or drinking, sleep deprivation, riding with a pet on your lap, and lighting a cigarette. He said he was trying to make a point that it was impractical to outlaw all potential distractions.

The House tabled the amendment at Browns request.

Under Browns bill, a first violation would have resulted in a $100 fine. A second offense would have carried a $200 fine. Third and subsequent offenses would have brought a $300 fine and counted as a three-point violation in the drivers record.

Lawmakers have considered similar years for several years.

In 2019, Michelle Lunsford spoke to the committee about her daughter, Camryn Callaway, a 17-year-old student who was 17 when she lost her life in a distracted driving accident on Interstate 65.

Alabama and national politics.
Dr. Dinesh Kapur to lead partnership's all-physician advisory board. Tweet this

OneCouncil is a board composed of physician representatives from every OneOncology practice that taps into the expertise on its physician leaders to leverage the economies of scale and deep clinical, research and practice management expertise across the platform's partners.

"I'm so pleased to lead OneOncology's all-physician board," Dr. Kapur said. "OneCouncil is a driving force in OneOncology's leadership in clinical initiatives, value-based contracting and care delivery. I look forward to building on our foundation of success to enhance our physicians' abilities to deliver care as the practice of oncology continues to transform."

Dr. Natalie Dickson served as OneCouncil's first chair. As the pandemic swept across the US forcing all health delivery organizations to quickly establish COVID-19 safety protocols, Dr. Dickson led the OneCouncil Quality and Value Committee's initiatives to provide risk-readiness assessment and guidance to practices so they could follow emerging public health guidance to get patients back into cancer centers safely for treatment.

During Dr. Dickson's tenure, OneCouncil also established a Value-Based Contracting Committee to lead on alternative payment efforts with commercial payers and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). OneCouncil also includes a Physician Education Committee that curates physician education opportunities and administers OneCommunity, the online social media learning platform for partner physicians. OneCouncil also includes a Pathways Committee that is developing clinical pathways and decision-support tools for physicians.

"I was extremely honored to be OneCouncil's first leader and believe we made incredible strides on behalf of our physician partners," Dr. Dickson said. "I look forward to seeing where Dr. Kapur and our amazing physician leaders take us next."

About OneOncology

OneOncology is a national platform for independent, community oncology practices working together to improve the lives of everyone living with cancer through a physician-led, data-driven and patient-centric model. OneOncology is comprised of leading community oncology practices representing more than 550 providers practicing at more than 175 sites of care across the United States. To learn more, visit oneoncology.com or LinkedIn.

SOURCE OneOncology

Related Links

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Telephone conversation of Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belarus V.Makei with the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates of Syria

On April 6, 2021, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Belarus Vladimir Makei had a telephone conversation with Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates of the Syrian Arab Republic Faisal al-Mikdad.

During the conversation current issues of the development of Belarusian-Syrian relations in the political, trade, economic and humanitarian spheres were discussed.

The Foreign Ministers reaffirmed the inevitable mutual political support at the international arena and the common interest in promoting the bilateral cooperation.

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Ray Fisher, who played superhero Cyborg in Justice League, has once again opened up about the behaviour of director Joss Whedon on the sets of the 2017 film, during the movies reshoots. The actor has reiterated that Whedon was unprofessional and abusive after he stepped in as the director for the project in place of Zack Snyder. It has also been reported that Wonder Woman actor Gal Gadot also faced several issues with Whedon; read along to know more.

Joss Whedon reportedly threatened Gal Gadots career

In the report by The Hollywood Reporter, which featured the interview with Ray Fisher, a source of the outlet said that Gal had issues with how her character was more aggressive in Joss Whedon's Justice League than in the Wonder Woman movie. The actor wanted to make sure that her character aligned to that in the Wonder Woman movie and was similar from one movie to another. Gadot and Joss had further issues after he made changes to the script and wanted the actor to record the new lines, which she felt were not suitable for her character.

Following this, Whedon allegedly threatened to harm Gadots career if she did not agree with the changes that he wanted. A witness claimed that Joss said he was the writer and if Gal did not just say the lines in the way he wanted, he could make her look extremely stupid in the movie. As per reports, Whedon also mocked director Patty Jenkins, who has directed the two Wonder Woman movies, after which both Jenkins and Gadot went up to then- Warner chairman Kevin Tsujihara with their complaints.

In an earlier statement to the website, Gal had mentioned that she had her issues with Whedon and Warner Bros., which she handled in time. She also said in a statement to LA Times that she had her own experience with Joss and it wasnt the best, and she took care of it and went to the higher authorities to let them know. Following this, Warner Media launched an investigation in the matter, and in December 2020 they made the announcement that the investigation was over and "remedial action was taken.

Promo Image Source: Still from Wonder Woman 1984

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I became Asian when I left Asia.

Born and raised in South Korea until a few months shy of turning 11, I had never heard of anyone around me referring to themselves as Asian, until I moved to Canada. Victoria is a beautiful city tucked in at the very corner of British Columbia, on Vancouver Island, whose quaint buildings on the charming waterfront downtown and range of temperatures resemble that of London. A paradise, a town for newlyweds or the nearly-deads, Victoria was supposedly a place too nice for racism to exist.

This was less than a year after 9/11 and the following onslaught of Islamophobia and crime and prejudice against South, Central, and West Asians and North Africans (those who are or are perceived to be Muslim). Moving to Canada  the safer half of North America, my parents figured  I was met with assumptions that I was Chinese or Japanese and the inevitable question, What kind of Asian are you?, which were all novel to me.

As quickly as I absorbed English, I accepted that I was now Asian, which somehow meant simultaneously that I was more than and less than Korean.

I witnessed my first anti-Asian hate in sixth grade, not too long after I settled into my new school.

One of the few Asian girls in class had actively tried to befriend me, an alien. Call her N. She was loud, bright, and always cheerful. Though I couldnt speak or understand English the way I wanted yet, I could still see right away that many students, most of whom were white, derided her. They scrunched up their noses when N opened her lunchbox. When N brushed against them or was near them, they yelled, Ew, [her name] cooties, sometimes replacing cooties with germs, to which I had to ask one of them, What are cooties?

I cannot forget one time, walking home, I saw white boys from our class throwing eggs at N from across the street. Ns stoic eyes, and her slow gait, despite the shells falling around her. I had never seen or experienced such violence, and what this incident taught me was that I need to scrub clean my alienness so they dont think I, also, have germs, smell disgusting.

I began to keep a diary, which I made sure to record in English.

On March 16, 19 years later, I picked up my phone and saw a headline pop up. A young white man had shot and killed eight people, across three massage shops in the Atlanta area. The names of the victims are Xiaojie (Emily) Tan, 49; Daoyou Feng, 44; Hyun Jung Grant, 51; Suncha Kim, 69; Soon Chung Park, 74; Yong Ae Yue, 63; Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33; Paul Andre Michels, 54. The last two were customers, while the others were employees. The killer claimed that he had a sex addiction and wanted to eliminate the temptation.

The Asian womens bodies, repositories of his temptation.

The police spokesperson on the case said the killer was pretty much fed up, kind of at the end of his rope. Said yesterday was a really bad day for him.

My grandmother, my mothers mother, was also named Sunja, a different transliteration but nevertheless the same name as Suncha Kim. I liked to go over to her place whenever I went back to Korea, every summer and winter. When I was about 13, I was obsessed with death; I often felt overwhelmed by my fear of it. When I confessed this to my grandmother, she said, By the time I was 16, I wasnt scared of anything in the world.

She meant it, perhaps, in the context of having grown up through the Japanese colonization of Korea and the Korean War. Death had already touched her life too many times. I looked forward to turning 16.

Kukmin Ilbo reports that Suncha Kim moved to the U.S. in 1980. 1980, the most prominent memory of mass shooting in contemporary collective memory in South Korea: It was the year of the Gwangju Democracy Movement, in which thousands of civilians, including young students, as young as middle-school age, protested against the authoritarian government and its military regime. Hundreds were shot down by the martial-law army, thousands injured.

Forty years later, gun violence is unfathomable in South Korea, Gwangju, an antediluvian history for many younger generations.

In 2021, Suncha had a son, a daughter, and three grandchildren. In her spare time, she liked to line dance.

At 16, there were times when I felt immortal.

At 16, my best friend S, a Chinese Canadian girl, and I would casually exchange comments such as: If youre Asian, you automatically get 50 more points in attractiveness. We had already recognized that Asian fetishization existed, even among our peers in high school; what we didnt realize yet was its dangers and the Western history of dehumanization attached to it.

When grown men whistled at us as we roamed downtown in miniskirts, we giggled and strutted with pride.

It was only in my 20s that I read about the history of the Asian American movement. I found out that Asian American was a highly political term, coined in the 60s in a drive toward Pan-Asian solidarity against the larger culture of racial oppression. However, what do we imagine when one utters the word Asian or Asian American? An East Asian face like mine? So when we use the terms, or identify the self as such, we need to be aware of whom we are addressing, referring to, including, and excluding. In using the terms without rigor and introspection, are we not reasserting a certain supremacy?

Toward the end of seventh grade, walking home with N, I said something about being Asian. I think about how everyone expected me to be quiet, good at math, which were in fact all true for me. But it was that they already knew that before they knew me.

You know, Im Asian too, N said.

You are? I said, taken aback.

Iraq is part of Asia, she said.

Now that I live in the U.S., and my parents in Korea, all they are curious about is my safety wherever I live. Is there discrimination against Asians? They would want to know, and to that, where do we begin? I should note that the word my parents, and seemingly the general population in Korea, use for Asians here, however, is dongyangin, which might translate to Easterners or Orientals, but the Western connotations embedded in Orientals do not exactly translate here. Every time there was a shooting, my mother hints that maybe I could move back to Korea. But my life is here, I say.

Soon Chung Park had moved to the Atlanta area from New York only recently. Her husband, Gwangho Lee, says that he called her up one day at work just to tell her he missed her. It made her so happy. He laments that he didnt do it more. Now, her life is no longer here.

I read Jean Chen Hos essay Sex Work Is Care Work, which contains tender recollections about her Chinese American aesthetician and Korean hair stylist in L.A., weaved into reflections on the Atlanta shooting and sex work as care work.

I want to love them, she writes, regarding the victims. I want the families and friends who survive them to know these women were valuable. For all the care they gave, all the times they administered or yielded touch. I want to touch back.

I think about the body scrub I would get every time I went back to Korea. I, too, paid women to touch me in bathhouses, while I was naked and surrounded by other naked women, and how safe and peaceful I feel amid all our denuded bodies and desexualized glances. I miss the bathhouse women, who would converse among themselves as they scrubbed clean their clients, laughing between strokes.

Of the victims who were Korean, Hyun Jung Grant was the only one who kept her citizenship. She had two sons, and worked late hours at Gold Spa to pay for rent and their tuition. She loved to dance. She was one of those moms whos their childrens best friend. Unable to legally prove their relationship, the sons could not obtain her body after the shooting.

The Asian body as vehicle of germs, disease, illness. At least for East Asians, I know this is not a new trope that rose alongside COVID-19; it is one that has persisted throughout the histories of East Asian migration in the U.S.

But the model-minority myth is such a strong, pervasive one that many East Asians themselves didnt realize until the virus that we were still deemed threats, perilous, nasty. That the narrative can change just like that.

Asian American Community in Shock, Asian American Community Petrified, How to Support the Asian American Community. Ive wondered ever since I started living in the U.S. if I am part of this community. Is the right nationality also a prerequisite for membership? What is the difference between people and community?

Community requires building. If we claim membership to such a broad category, the Asian American community, imagine it as fellowship, friendship, family, we must ask  what work does it entail? What have we been given by others, and what can we give?

In 2007, one month shy of turning 16, I read about a mass shooting at a place called Virginia Tech. The next day, on a stairway at school, a boy stopped me to say:

Hey, he was Korean. Are you going to shoot everyone too?

His laughter, and that of the other Taiwanese international students standing with him, fell around me.

Yong Ae Yue moved to the U.S. to be with her soldier husband, whom she separated from in 1982. Even when she herself didnt have work, she would extend kindness to others, giving them food, flowers, gifts.

I became myself an Asian American  without American citizenship.

Asian and Asian American feel at once too big and too limiting to encompass all groups of people of Asian descent. Plus, without an American passport, what does it mean if I say I am part of the Asian American community?

For now, for me, it means to intentionally align the self with the lineage and the history of resistance to whiteness and allegiance to community-building with people of Asian descent in the country I live in. It means to extend kindness to those whose experiences and backgrounds are unfamiliar to us. It means to speak nearby, in the words of filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha, and which Cathy Park Hong describes as speaking in proximity (whether the other is physically present or absent), which requires that you deliberately suspend meaning, preventing it from merely closing and hence leaving a gap in the formation process.

It means to acknowledge and thus dispel the notion that East Asians have representative status in both Asian and Asian American. It means to use critical language to continue complicating and challenging these categories as well as community, terms we often automatically insert ourselves in, all the while leaving out others, without asking what these acts mean.

When nothing makes sense, how can I write?

Then I remember that I came to write precisely because little made sense  my linguistic, ethnic, cultural, racial, and gender identities, reflected and refracted in ways I didnt always expect, want, or understand, in the countries I came to call home.

Ever since I bought my first journal so I could become my own historian, writing was an act to preserve myself against forces that tried to diminish and distort me.

Last year in Korea, someone asked me, When there are so many tragedies, issues, how can we possibly remember them all? To which I said, We can remember more than we may believe. We can.

I write to render that into truth, to try.

A few years ago, a poet named J and I read together. Our books were born in the same month, same year. We talked about how excited we are for the books to take on new lives, pass through different hands beyond ours and our friends. We talked about how people are already asking, Whats next, whats next, whats next. What are you working on now?

Im working on my life, damn it, J and I joked, and laughed, two poets of color, shoulders touching. Were working on our lives.
The Marine Corps has launched a fresh inquiry into a amphibious tank disaster that killed nine men after the victims branded the first probe a whitewash.

The new investigation follows an outcry from the relatives of some of the service members killed in the disaster, who have questioned why no general was held responsible even though the initial inquiry said the tragedy could have been prevented.

On July 30, a seafaring armored tank sank off San Clemente Island - located off the Southern California coast - killing eight Marines and one sailor.

The announcement of the second investigation comes less than two weeks after the maritime branch released its findings into the accident.

It was found the accident was caused by inadequate training, shabby maintenance of the amphibious vehicles and poor judgement by commanders, the report said.

The commanding general of Marine Corps Forces Pacific said another leader 'bears some responsibility' because necessary assessments were not carried out.

The vehicle took on water on July 30, 2020 while 15 Marines and one sailor were inside near San Clemente Island in Los Angeles County. Pictured: The 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit is seen during training on July 27 2020, three days before the disaster

There are about 800 AAV's in the Marin'e inventory that can carry up to 21 people and each weighs 26 tons

The training accident 70 miles (113 kilometers) off San Diegos coast was one of the deadliest for the Marines in recent years. Leaders said it could have been prevented.

An investigation report released March 26 detailed a slew of missteps and oversights, and that the vehicle should never have left the off-ramp in the first place.

Slides from the report obtained by The Marine Corps Times reportedly show one failure after lead to the nine deaths.

'Crew deviations from required actions per the Common SOP (standard operating procedures)  the general lack of experience and effective instructional periods doomed this crew and its passengers to a preventable tragedy,' one of the slides read, according to the new outlet.

One of the failures was the vehicle itself, it said. It had 'two specific areas of watertight integrity that would have met Not-Mission Capable Deadline criteria,' according to the slides.

Such faults, if detected, would have meant the vehicle would never have been used for training in the first place.

An Undersea Rescue Command deploys the Sibitzky Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) from the deck of the Military Sealift Command-chartered merchant vessel HOS Dominator off the coast of Southern California in search for the bodies on Monday, August 3, 2020

The Assault Amphibious Vehicle (AAV) was returning to the USS Somerset, an amphibious ship, after a day of training training for the Marines on San Clemente Island, a Navy-owned facility, when it started to take on water.

'The transmission failed, bilge pumps were unable to expel water rapidly enough due to the transmission failure, and the AAV began to sink,' a Thursday press release about the investigation said.

In addition to the two potential leaks, the slides also showed that emergency lighting inside the vehicle was stuck in the disabled position.

That left the crew of the amphibious assault vehicle in the dark and using their cell phone lights to desperately try to find an unmarked escape hatch as they took on water.

However, when trying to open the hatch himself, one of the marines discovered the 'handle had spun past the open position due to a broken woodruff key.'

The boat had lost audio communication, according to the slides, leaving the Marines to resort to using flags to signal they were sinking. There were also no safety boats nearby to save them.

Although nine died, seven Marines in the vehicle, including its commander, survived.

This image is an aerial view of the coast near San Clemente Island where the incident occurred

Pictured: A map showing the location of San Clemente island, off the coast of San Diego

The victims of the amphibious tank disaster Pfc. Bryan J. Baltierra, 18, of Corona, California

Lance Cpl. Marco A. Barranco, 21, of Montebello, California

Pfc. Evan A. Bath, 19, of Oak Creek, Wisconsin

Navy Hospitalman Christopher Gnem, 22, of Stockton, California

Pfc. Jack Ryan Ostrovsky, 21, of Bend, Oregon

Lance Cpl. Guillermo S. Perez, 20, of New Braunfels, Texas

Cpl. Wesley A. Rodd, 23, of Harris, Texas

Lance Cpl. Chase D. Sweetwood, 18, of Portland, Oregon

Cpl. Cesar A. Villanueva, 21, of Riverside, California Seven marines in the vehicle, including its commander, survived. Advertisement

Marine Corps officials declined to say what prompted the unusual move to open an additional investigation, which started Friday and could lead to new disciplinary actions.

A board of officers led by Lt. Gen. Carl Mundy will review the formation of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit at Camp Pendleton, its readiness and training and its oversight by headquarters.

'The goal is to ensure the Marine Corps is doing everything possible to prevent this type of mishap from happening again,' a statement from the Marine Corps said.

The Marines use the vehicles to transport troops and their equipment from Navy ships to land.

The armored vehicles are outfitted with machine guns and grenade launchers, and look like tanks as they roll ashore for beach attacks, with Marines pouring out of them to take up positions.

Three commanders have been dismissed as a result, including Col. Christopher Bronzi, the commanding officer of the 15th MEU, and Lt. Col. Michael Regner, who commanded the 1st Battalion, 4th Marines.

The unit is made up of more than 1,000 troops, all of which reported to Bronzi as part of his task force.

Seven other military personnel faced administrative or disciplinary action.

The Marine Corps announced the probe after notifying all families of those who died. Some of the families told The Washington Post they questioned why no generals were held accountable.

'Why are these men allowed to be in control of peoples lives period anymore?' Christiana Sweetwood of Danville, Virginia, whose son was among those killed, said in an interview last week with the newspaper.

'No more. Thats the angry part of me speaking. Are these generals getting off and these lower-level guys taking the blame?'

News of the investigation released on March 26 raised the possibility that more people may be culpable for the disaster.

The body of Pfc Bryan J. Baltierra (left), 19, of Corona, California, was flown to Delaware. Found at the scene was Lance Cpl Guillermo S. Perez (right), 20, of New Braunfels Texas. His body was flown to the Dover base on August 5

Other victims include Lance Cpl Marco A. Barranco (left), 21, of Montebello, California, and Pfc Jack Ryan Ostrovsky (right), 21, of Bend, Oregon

Pfc Evan A. Bath, 19, of Oak Creek, Wisconsin, was killed during the accident last year

US Navy Hospitalman Christopher Gnem, 22, of Stockton, California, was one of the victims. Gnem was posthumously advanced to the rank of Petty Officer Third Class and awarded his enlisted Fleet Marine Force Warfare Specialist qualification

Other victims include: Lance Cpl Chase D. Sweetwood (center), 19, of Oak Creek, Wisconsin, Cpl Wesley A. Rodd (left), 23, of Harris, Texas, and Cpl Cesar A. Villanueva (right), 21, of Riverside, California

These include Major General Robert Castellvi, the former commanding general of the 1st Marine Division, who oversaw the training of the Marines in the platoon of amphibious assault vehicles involved in the July 30 incident.

Lieutenant General Steven Rudder, the commanding general of Marine Corps Forces Pacific, found Castellvi 'bears some responsibility' because the Marines involved did not receive a required assessment before they were reassigned to the 15th MEU.

This is known as a Marine Corps Combat Readiness Evaluation.

Rudder opted not to discipline Castellvi - who is now the service's inspector general - saying the marines involved had already been transferred under Bronzi.

The former commander of the 3rd Assault Amphibian Battalion was also cited in the investigation, but did not name him. It said the commander failed to ensure the marines involved in the AAV platoon received the required readiness evaluation and that the vehicles were fully operational before being assigned to the 15th MEU.

The coffins of the nine men who died arrive at the Dover Air Force Base in Delaware where they were received by family members, August 12, 2020

Rudder also wrote in his assessment that the coronavirus pandemic had a part to play in the disaster.

'In my opinion, this distracted personnel from the attention to detail required to form a MEU,' Rudder wrote.

'However, to the extent any such distractions occurred they should not have prevented the units involved from accomplishing their respective missions.'

A conversation prompted by the disaster was held last week between General David H. Berger, the commandant of the Marine Corps, and Admiral Mike Gilday, the chief of naval operations.

'What we discussed was the fact that there are gaps and seams where there shouldn't be gaps and seams in Navy and Marine Corps operations at the tactical level,' Gilday said in a call with reporters.

'So these are combined operations that we've been doing for some time now, and to have separate requirements on the Marine Corps side and the Navy side just doesn't make sense.'
Oleksiy Arestovych, spokesperson of the Ukrainian delegation to the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG) on Donbas, has said that an extraordinary emergency meeting of the TCG will be held at 15:00 on April 7 in an online format, and its main agenda will include returning to strict adherence to the ceasefire regime and the relevant agreements between the TCG parties dated July 22, 2020.

"An emergency meeting of the TCG on Donbas is scheduled for 15:00. Security is on the agenda, first of all. Returning to strict adherence to an additional set of measures for the ceasefire regime, which is being violated more and more often lately, and grossly violated, with tragic consequences. We must return to the state of security that was in the first weeks and months after the ceasefire was introduced on July 27, when the ceasefire was really abided and the were no casualties. Since only yesterday and the day before yesterday there were several killed defenders," Arestovych said in a comment to the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.
Brazils battle with the coronavirus continues to careen in the wrong direction as the country, on Tuesday, set a new record in daily fatalities, topping 4,000 recorded deaths in a 24-hour span. With a new, more contagious local variant on the loose and lackadaisical national leadership under President Jair Bolsonaro, the country is lining up to surpass the U.S. death total with just two-thirds of the population. The growing calamity of the uncontrolled outbreak was made stark Tuesday when the countrys ministry of health tallied a record 4,195 COVID-19 deaths, after setting new daily highs in fatalities each week since last February.

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The virus has already claimed 337,000 lives in Brazil, making the South American nation second only to the U.S. globally in recorded cases and deaths. As infection and death rates in the U.S. have started to fall, however, Brazil is now the epicenter of the pandemic and contributes roughly one out of every four coronavirus deaths worldwide, according to a Reuters analysis. Its a biological Fukushima, Miguel Nicolelis, a Brazilian doctor and professor at Duke University, told Reuters. Its a nuclear reactor that has set off a chain reaction and is out of control.

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Meanwhile, Brazils health care system is already maxed out as Bolsonaro has long shrugged off any efforts to contain the virus, including social distancing and mask-wearing, implying, like his ideological buddy Donald Trump, that the virus is a media invention. They called me homophobic, racist, fascist, a torturer, and now  what is it now? Now I am  someone who kills a lot of people? Genocidal. Now, Im genocidal, Bolsonaro sarcastically told supporters outside the Presidential Palace in Brasilia Tuesday evening. What am I not blamed for here in Brazil? Bolsonaro has been in office since Jan. 1, 2019, the entirety of the pandemic.*

In public, Bolsonaros government continues to downplay the human and economic impact of the latest surge, and the president had criticized vaccination as a solution, stunting the countrys vaccination program from the start.
A Birmingham woman has been charged in last weeks slaying of a man during a domestic dispute.

Jasmine Mari Drake, 29, is charged with capital murder in the April 1 shooting death of 44-year-old Louis Bryant. Jail records indicate the charge against Drake is a capital crime because there were children present during the killing.

Officers responded at 4:30 a.m. that Thursday to a report of a person shot at 1516 Vanderbilt Road. When they arrived on the scene, they found Bryant unresponsive. Birmingham Fire and Rescue Service attempted life-saving measures, said Sgt Rod Mauldin, but Bryant was pronounced dead on the scene.

Drake was booked into the Jefferson County Jail at 6:37 p.m. Monday and remains held without bond.
Imperial Valley News Center

Six Arrested After Four Swim Around Border Wall

Imperial Beach, California - Sunday, at approximately 6:20 a.m., U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested four men from Mexico who swam around the international border wall into the United States along with two additional men who picked them up north of the border to transport them further into the U.S.

U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested four men from

Mexico who swam around the international

border wall into the United States along with

two additional men who picked them up north

of the border to transport them further into the U.S.

Shortly after 6 a.m., an agent patrolling the Imperial Beach coastline near Seacoast Drive and Admiralty Way observed four men walking north along the beach. The men were wearing torn wetsuits and not carrying any equipment, such as surfboards.

When the agent approached the men, they fled. After a short chase, the agent was able to apprehend one of the four, a 17-year-old Mexican national. The agent requested additional agents for assistance. As other agents arrived, they saw the other three men get into a GMC Acadia SUV.

Agents conducted a vehicle stop on the SUV as the driver attempted to leave the area. The driver, front seat passenger, and the three men in wetsuits who were in the rear seat and cargo area were Mexican nationals illegally present in the U.S.

The five adults and one juvenile were transported to a nearby Border Patrol station for processing. The driver and front passenger were charged with alien smuggling and the vehicle was seized by the Border Patrol.

As a constant reminder to the public, if you see something out of the ordinary near the coast, dont hesitate to call authorities, said Chief Patrol Agent Aaron M. Heitke. Attempting to swim around the border wall is very dangerous, especially in the thick fog that was present that morning, yet callous smugglers continue to guide people on this dangerous course.

If you have information about maritime smuggling or suspicious activity along the California coastline, please call the Maritime Coordination Center (MCC) at 1-562-283-7820 or notify local law enforcement by dialing 9-1-1.
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Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas wants to criminally prosecute more illegal immigrants and crack down on sanctuary cities

Joe Biden's Homeland Security head is looking to crack down on illegal immigration by taking more legal action against border jumpers and targeting U.S. cities that act as a safe haven for them.

'I see cases now where we apprehend and remove individuals that I think need to be prosecuted criminally,' DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said during a virtual town hall with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) employees last week where he also revealed President Biden is considering restarting construction on Donald Trump's border wall.

'Quite frankly, I'm going to have to understand why some of these individuals are not subject to a Title 8 USC 1326 case and I intend to work with the DOJ in that regard,' he added.

Entering the U.S. illegally is a misdemeanor under Title 8 Section 1325. Furthermore, reentering the country after being ousted is a felony under Title 8 Section 1326.

Mayorkas told ICE employees that DHS will also take on so-called sanctuary cities that refuse to work with the agency to turn over illegal immigrants hiding out there.

He also vowed during the meeting, according to notes of the conversation reviewed by the Washington Times, that he is opposed to some more progressive immigration and border protection policies, like the push from the far left to totally abolish ICE.

'I'm 100% opposed to the abolition of ICE,' he said. 'It is the opposite of what I think needs to occur. I think we need to strengthen our policies and practices and communicate more effectively what we do and why we do it.'

Vice President Kamala Harris was put in charge of the White House's response to the immigration crisis. Critics have slammed her for not yet visiting the southern border or its overflowing holding facilities in the few weeks since being designated border czar.

Since Biden made the announcement, Harris has visited New Haven, Connecticut; Oakland, California and Chicago, Illinois  all to promote the American Rescue Plan and preview more relief.

She also went home to California for Easter weekend with second gentleman Doug Emhoff and moved into the Naval Observatory after getting 'frustrated' with the time it was taking to complete the renovations. She has also listed her D.C. condo on the market for $1.995million.

Another notable tidbit to come from that meeting Friday was Mayorkas revealing Biden is considering restarting construction on Trump's southern border wall in an effort to address the record numbers of illegal crossers.

He said the construction might resume in order to plug 'gaps' in the current barrier between the U.S. and Mexico.

The move comes as Biden made a big spectacle on Day One of his administration by issuing an executive order freezing Department of Defense funding for border wall construction. In February, he officially ended the emergency order at the border, but there were concerns about where the funds would go that were already appropriated for the border wall project.

The new hard-line stances come as Biden's administration is facing a growing crisis at the southern border with record numbers of migrants arriving every day and facilities quickly becoming overcrowded and understaffed.

The new hard-line stance comes as record numbers of migrants continue to arrive at the southern border

Mayorkas says he will target so-called sanctuary cities like Philadelphia (right) and Los Angeles (left) that don't cooperate with ICE and act as a safe haven for illegal immigrants

Since being appointed Border Czar, Vice President Kamala Harris has jetted all over the U.S. without visiting the overcrowded migrant camps and addressing the crisis

SANCTUARY CITIES - WHAT AND WHERE Sanctuary cities - and states - are those which in broad terms protect illegal immigrants from deportation by federal authorities. There is no legal definition and no single set of laws - so agreeing which places are sanctuary cities or states is in itself contentious. But broadly, most sanctuary cities say that their police officers do not ask for immigration status, and do not report it to the federal authorities when they detain, arrest or process suspects. Most will also decline to detain illegal immigrants on requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement unless they are accused of serious crimes. The degree of seriousness varies from place to place. In New York, even a felony is no guarantee that an immigration detainer will be obeyed. California is the biggest single sanctuary area, with local law enforcement agencies banned by state law from using money, personnel or equipment to help federal immigration authorities act against illegal. While critics might say some places are sanctuary cities, local lawmakers often deny it. In Los Angeles, where cops are banned from stopping people solely on suspicion of being illegal, the mayor has rejected the label, and frequently co-operates with immigration agencies. Cities which identify as sanctuary include: Berkeley, California, since 1971 San Francisco, CA Boulder, Colorado Hartford, Connecticut St Petersburg, Florida Chicago, Illinois Urbana, IL Evanston, IL New Orleans, Louisiana Albany, New York Kalamazoo, Michigan Jersey City, New Jersey Newark, New Jersey New York, New York Portland, Oregon Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Seattle, Washington Cities accused of being sanctuary cities because of laws which limit co-operation with ICE, but which deny it include: Los Angeles, California Atlanta, Georgia Portland, Maine Baltimore, Maryland Boston, Massachusetts Detroit, Michigan Ann Arbor, Michigan Minneapolis, Minnesota Advertisement

So-called sanctuary cities emerged as a hot topic in the midst of Trump imposing strict crack downs on deporting illegal immigrants.

A sanctuary city refers to a jurisdiction that limits their cooperation with the federal government's effort to enforce immigration law.

California itself has deemed itself a sanctuary state and other cities include places like Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Portland, Oregon.

Mayorkas also revealed during the meeting he's working on a new set of guidelines to govern ICE officers' arrests and attempts to deport illegal immigrants.

Pressed by ICE employees worried about public resistance, Mayorkas said the agency has a 'noble mission.'

Mayorkas served during Barack Obama as head of ICE and later as deputy secretary at DHS under then-Secretary Jeh Johnson.

Some feel Mayorkas is just fronting for ICE employees without the intentions to follow through with some of these plans.

'I've seen this administration say a lot of things that I feel like they're disingenuous about, and they know they can't deliver on, but they pretend and leave their audience to believe they can deliver on. That's what I see here,' a former DHS official told the Times.

During the forum, employees pleaded for a firmer stance amid the current migrant surge.

One employee lamented that DHS was treating illegal immigrants more leniently regarding COVID-19 restrictions than American citizens.

Others questioned the new administration's border policy changes, claiming Trump's policies appeared to be working to curb the immigration crisis.

One employee complained, according to the Times, of 'notoriously low morale' and blamed Washington for its lack of support.

Under Trump there was a lot of freedom to target illegal immigrants with criminal records, which allowed agents and officers to pursue deportation against anyone in the country without permission or legal status.

With Biden in office, however, ICE has been given much stricter rules.

The priorities of the new administration have seen ICE book-ins cut by 62%, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

Mayorkas defended the stricter priorities, saying: 'Every law enforcement agency to which I have been a part, or which I have worked, has priorities in light of the fact that it doesn't have unlimited resources.'

'I know there may be disagreements about where those lines are drawn, and we're going to be talking about that in the coming weeks,' he added.

The DHS lead promised 'discretion' and said the final guidelines won't be 'set in stone.'

Biden's administration is facing record numbers of migrants arriving at the southern border and federal government holding facilities are 'stretched beyond thin,' according to an independent report concluded after a visit to the sites.

House Whip Steve Sacalise is leading a delegation of 10 Republican members to the southern border to assess the conditions, which have been described as 'inhumane' and 'horrific.'

Vice President Kamala Harris, who was designated border czar by Biden last month, has faced a slew of backlash for not yet visiting the border. Seemingly, Harris has not done anything yet to improve conditions at holding facilities or address problems with immigration under this administration.

NASA and other federal agencies reportedly sent out emails to their employees asking if they are willing to volunteer at the overcrowded child migrant facilities.

Mayorkas defend Biden canceling border wall construction, telling ICE employees during last week's meeting that it leaves 'room to make decisions' on finishing 'gaps in the wall.'

'It's not a single answer to a single question. There are different projects that the chief of the Border Patrol has presented and the acting commissioner of CBP [Customs and Border Protection] presented to me,' Mayorkas said, according to notes of the ICE session reviewed by the Times.

'The president has communicated quite clearly his decision that the emergency that triggered the devotion of DOD funds to the construction of the border wall is ended,' he continued. 'But that leaves room to make decisions as the administration  as part of the administration  in particular areas of the wall that need renovation, particular projects that need to be finished.'

On February 11, Biden ended Trump's southern border emergency, which was issued through executive order in February 2019.

A migrant boy, who was abandoned in southern Texas after crossing over from Mexico, was recorded on video in tears and asking a U.S. Border Patrol agent for help last Thursday. The child had spent the night in the desert after he was abandoned by the group of migrants he had crossed the border with and feared he would be 'abducted.' U.S. Customs and Border Protection has not released the child's age or nationality

Mayorkas also said Biden is considering restarting construction on Donald Trump's southern border wall to fill 'gaps'. Many illegal immigrants are able to easily cross through areas of the border where barriers were left incomplete

Migrants from Central America continue to arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border. A group are seen on the US side of the Rio Grande after crossing on Wednesday

In the reversal, Biden slammed Trump by saying: 'Building a massive wall that spans the entire southern border is not a serious policy solution. It is a waste of money that diverts attention from genuine threats to our homeland security.'

There were immediate concerns with the legality of the reversal, with experts claiming it could be illegal for Biden to stop funding that was already appropriate in Congress-approved funding for the wall specifically.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) launched an inquiry last month related to Biden stopping funding for the border wall construction project.

The president campaigned on the promise of immediately ending the building work along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Charles Young, a public affairs officer for the GAO, confirmed they were investigating whether Biden was legally allowed to end the construction.

Congress approved nearly $1.4 billion in border wall funding in December 2020 for fiscal year 2021 as part of a $900 billion coronavirus stimulus package under Trump.

Chair of the Senate Republican Policy Committee Roy Blunt slammed Biden for the change, claiming as a 36-year veteran of the Senate, he should know procedure better.

'He was in the Congress a long time,' Blunt said. 'He knows it's the Congress' job to authorize how the money is spent and the president's job to spend it efficiently.'

It now appears that Biden could be reversing his reversal by going forward with construction of the wall  at least in some parts.

Mayorkas says these new projects at the wall could include filling in 'gaps,' adding 'gates' and reconciling areas 'where the wall has been completed but the technology has not been implemented.'

Notes of the meeting show CBP, the agency that oversees the border wall, has submitted a plan for what it wants to see implemented.

Border and immigration agencies are struggling to find places for the mass amount of migrants.

While Biden's administration vows they are turning away the majority of adults and family units, they claim they will not turn away unaccompanied children arriving at the border.

A record 19,000 unaccompanied minors arrived at the southern border in March while thousands of adults are also risking their lives to try and get into the U.S. by way of Mexico.

Esto prueba que el muro fronterizo no sirve de mucho, mejor equipo tecnologico si. Aqui 20 migrantes cruzan por un hueco en el muro, sin embargo, una camara los detecta y son detenidos mas adelante. Esto ocurrio en Arizona, segun publica la misma patrulla fronteriza. pic.twitter.com/LoOxbI73Tf  Pedro Ultreras (@pedroultreras) April 5, 2021

In March, a record number of 19,000 unaccompanied minors arrived at the southern border while thousands of adults are also risking their lives to try and get into the U.S. by way of Mexico. A group of children are pictured on the banks of the Rio Grande on Wednesday

Facilities at the border are overflowing with migrants, some reaching nearly 2,000% of its mass capacity.

A report filed Friday in a Los Angeles federal court, two inspectors appointed to monitor conditions of children in custody detailed 'severe overcrowding' that is further problematic in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

Social distancing was 'functionally impossible', the experts said, calling the overcrowding 'not sustainable.'

Trump received a lot of criticism for the border crisis under his administration where families were seen separated into different facilities when they arrived at the border.

Conditions were denounced as inhuman as children were pictured in cages.

The conditions, however, appear to be not nearly as bad as that under Biden, who has stopped border wall construction and issued more lax immigration policies since taking office.

Upon leaving Washington in January, about 460 miles of border wall were completed under Trump's presidency with funds directed after he declared a national emergency at the border so Pentagon funds could be used for construction.

Most was fixing or filling in areas where some sort of barrier already existed or replacing outdated designs or vehicle barriers that did nothing to stop people crossing on foot.

Trump was particular about his promised border wall, with some reports indicating he micromanaged several aspects of the construction, like color and design.

During his last few days as president, Trump visited his wall to celebrate 400 miles completed  where he also penned his name on a paper attached to the wall with his famous bold signature.

During Biden's campaign, he promised all migrants seeking asylum would be granted it in the U.S. This led to several caravans from Central America departing for the U.S. when Biden was named the presidential election winner.

Since taking office, the crisis at the border has surged.

CBP's projected numbers show illegal crossings reaching 26,000 in September  a record high more than double that during Trump's administration.

During Trump's presidency, more than 400 miles of border wall was constructed with funds appropriated under a national emergency memorandum that redirected Pentagon money. Biden immediately froze funds on Day One and later ended the emergency order which brought a halt to all border wall construction and left several projects unfinished with gaps

A bakery, a water plant and her LA home: Everywhere Kamala has flown in the 14 days since she was placed in charge of migration crisis (but not, obviously, the border)

Kamala Harris has still not visited the US-Mexico border or even held a press conference about her new duties since being tasked with addressing the migrant crisis.

The Vice President spent Easter weekend at her Brentwood home in Southern California where she baked a 'beautiful' roast pork with rice and peas, but did not find time in her schedule to visit the nearby border.

In the past two weeks she has also visited Connecticut for a talk with the Boys and Girls Club of America, met with Gavin Newsom to show support amid his potential recall election, and made a trip to a bakery in Chicago.

On March 24, she was tasked with leading the efforts to tackle the 'humanitarian crisis' amid a surge of migrants trying to enter the US since Joe Biden's administration came into office.

New government statistics released last week revealed that 171,000 migrants were caught by US authorities at the border in March - the highest monthly total in two decades.

Kamala Harris has still not visited the US-Mexico border or even held a press conference about her new duties since being tasked with addressing the migrant crisis.

Harris found time to meet bakers at the Brown Sugar Bakery in Chicago on Tuesday where she was presented with cakes

The total includes about 19,000 unaccompanied migrant children and 53,000 family members traveling together, the preliminary figures showed.

The March arrest totals at the US-Mexico border represent the highest monthly level since April 2000 when border patrol agents caught more than 180,000 migrants.

But Harris has stayed publicly silent on the issue and has not held a conference or major interview about her new duties she was assigned them two weeks ago.

Biden initially said she would be in charge of returning migrants to their home countries.

Kamala's schedule since becoming 'Border Czar' March 25 - Washington DC: Virtual Passover March 26 - New Haven, Connecticut: meeting with Boys and Girls Club and education leaders March 27-28: - Washington DC: no public commitments March 29 - Washington DC: Covid briefing and delivering pandemic remarks March 30 - Washington DC: Signed the PPP extension into law and spoke with Guatemalan President April 1 - Washington DC/Los Angeles, California: Met with stakeholders before traveling to her Brentwood home April 2-4 - Los Angeles: At home with no public commitments April 5 - Oakland, California: Met Gavin Newsom, toured water treatment plant and met business leaders April 6 - Chicago, Illinois: Toured a Covid vaccination site before returning to Washington DC Advertisement

He said: 'The vice president has agreed... to lead our diplomatic effort and work with those nations to accept the returnees, and enhance migration enforcement at their borders.'

The White House later claimed Harris was not directly involved with the border crisis but was instead addressing its 'root causes'.

Her schedule shows that since she was tasked with helping the crisis, she has largely remained in Washington DC.

On March 25, her only public duty was the White House's virtual Passover celebration with her husband Doug Emhoff, while the following day she visited New Haven, Connecticut, to meet with the Boys and Girls Club.

She spent the weekend in Washington DC with no public commitments, before receiving a Covid briefing and joining Biden for a speech on their pandemic response on the Monday.

On Tuesday March 30, Harris received the President's daily brief in the morning before signing the PPP extension into law in the Oval Office.

She also carried out the only known work related to the border since being appointed Border Czar as she held a phone call with President Alejandro Giammattei of Guatemala.

A statement said: 'They discussed the significant risks to those leaving their homes and making the dangerous journey to the United States, especially during a global pandemic.'

The following day, she led a discussion with faith leaders where she encouraged their communities to take up the vaccine.

She returned home to California on Thursday, April 1, her third visit during the administration.

Harris spent the weekend at home where she baked a 'beautiful' roast pork with rice and peas, according to the LA Times.

She had no public events over the weekend until she traveled to her hometown of Oakland on Monday where she met with California Gov. Gavin Newsom and gave her support as he faces a potential recall election.

The Vice President toured a water treatment plant to highlight the benefits of the American Jobs Plan and held a 'listening session' with business owners.

Republican National Committee spokesman Keith Schipper said: 'It's been nearly two weeks since Vice President Kamala Harris was named manager of the Biden Border Crisis, and while she has made time to return home to the Bay Area, Harris has refused to visit the borderwhich is only 500 miles from her location todayto survey the crisis firsthand.

Harris visited the Brown Sugar Bakery in Chicago on Tuesday after touring a Covid vaccine site

'Californians don't find this border crisis funny and demand the so-called manager get to work fixing the problem this administration created.'

On Tuesday, Harris traveled to Chicago where she toured a Covid vaccine site before returning to Washington DC.

The previous Thursday, she also spoke with Canada's deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland about developing a 'positive, forward-looking agenda in the Northern Triangle' of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.

Just days before she was tasked with addressing the migrant crisis, Harris laughed when she was asked if she would visit the border.

She was in Jacksonville to address food insecurity and vaccinations when asked if she had plans to visit the border.

Harris replied laughing: 'Not today. But I have before and I'm sure I will again.'

'Somebody could kidnap me, I'm scared': Moment sobbing migrant boy approaches Texas border patrol after being abandoned and spending night in desert

With tears in his eyes, the migrant boy can be seen in the video walking towards the Border Patrol agent before he asked him if he could provide him assistance because he had been left stranded near the Rio Grande.

'It's that I was coming with a group and they abandoned me and I do not know where they are at,' the child told the officer.

'You do not know where they are at? They left you alone?' the agent asked.

The distraught child, struggling to maintain his composure, apparently had been sent to the United States by his parents, who were not part of the migrant group who had already advanced further along the desert area.

'At the end they abandoned me. I have come here to ask you for help,' the frightened boy said.

A U.S. Border Patrol agent traveling on a dirt road east of Rio Grande City found an abandoned migrant boy crying and asking for assistance last Thursday after he had been abandoned by a group of migrants that had illegally crossed the Mexico-United States

The Border Patrol agent then questioned the child if he had been instructed 'to come ask for help,' but the migrant boy replied, 'no, I am coming because if I did not, where am I going to go? Somebody could abduct me, kidnap me. I am scared.'

The incident reportedly took place east of Rio Grande City on April 1 after the border agent had finished his shift, his friend Anjel Hernandez wrote on Facebook.

Univision reported that the child, whose age and nationality have not been made public by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, spent the entire night trekking through the Rio Grande Valley region after his unlawful entry into the country.

U.S. Border Patrol El Paso Sector chief Gloria Chavez told the network that parents should think about their children's well-being each time they are sent alone to cross the perilous Mexico-United States border.

'To all parents who are considering sending their unaccompanied children to the border, please reconsider that act because it is very dangerous to expose children,' Chavez said.

Human smuggling networks, who according to NBC News, have used public Facebook pages to hawk their services to Central American migrants have warned parents that their children would be guaranteed access across the Mexico-United States border if they travel alone.

The painful image of the child asking the Border Patrol officer was recorded just two days after U.S. Border Patrol released a surveillance video that showed human smugglers dropping two girls from Ecuador over a 14-foot high border wall in the New Mexico desert.

The sisters, aged three and five, were rescued by agents Tuesday and transferred to the Santa Teresa Border Patrol Station for medical evaluation.

Fox News obtained a photo Friday, that shows the girls interacting with Chavez, who handed them snacks at the processing center.

Official CBP figures show that apprehensions at the border have increased for 10 consecutive months, including the last nine of former President Donald Trump's administration.

President Joe Biden's administration has encountered a surge at the southern border over the last two months.

In February, CBP agents encountered 100,441 undocumented immigrants, including 9,457 unaccompanied migrant minors.

Government data shows that 171,000 migrants were caught by CBP at the United States-Mexico border in March, the highest monthly total in two decades. Border agents encountered at least 19,000 unaccompanied children.

The preliminary tallies for March are the highest since the agency reported more than 180,000 encounters with migrants in April 2000.
A teacher has told how he could not breathe after a three-minute walk after catching Covid-19.

Eugene Grace of the ASTIs Nenagh branch said he does not want any other teacher to go through what he has.

Speaking at the unions annual convention this morning, he said he had a very personal reason for speaking in favour of a motion to ballot for strike action if vaccines are not scheduled for teachers by the end of the school year.

Up until last October I was a very fit and healthy young man with no health issues, then I contracted Covid-19 in my workplace, he said.

Over the last six months Ive been in three different ambulances, including where my deputy principal had to call the ambulance, countless doctor visits and in hospital twice.

Read More

Currently Im battling pleurisy. Yesterday, I tried to go for a walk. After three minutes I couldnt breathe.

He said he has experienced long periods of ill-health since catching the virus.

Its turned my life upside down. I dare any member of the public, or the Cabinet or Nphet or NIAC to go into a school, follow a secondary teacher around for one day.

I teach 165 teenagers every single day. If you were inside in a classroom with 25 or 30 big 18-years-old, youd be calling for vaccination too. The consequences here are too great for people.

He said there are around 37,000 secondary school teachers practicing in Ireland.

If youre talking about vaccinating 250,000 a week, how long would it take to vaccinate secondary school teachers? he asked.

Another speaker, Stephen Campion, said teachers should refuse to go back to school on Monday, not only for their own protection, but for their students protection.

He said on March 27, UCC professor Gerry Killeen said he was very concerned about new variants and hospitalisation rates for young children.

I do not understand why we are going back on Monday, not only for ourselves, but for our students, he said.

And I think that we should be asking for a proper review of the international evidence, which according to the same professor flies in the face of all the evidence that schools are safe. Theyre not. Theyre only as safe as far as the community is safe.

Teacher Siobhan ODonovan said she would not go back to school in September unless she is vaccinated, while others called for the union to hold an immediate ballot.

Ms ODonovan said the likes of Stephen Donnelly are up in the Convention Centre and you would need binoculars to see who was speaking.

She said she teaches in a portacabin and knew it was not a safe room. She was scared she would contract the disease.

Speaking against the motion, Edward Byrne said he was conflicted as he felt no one was listening to the unions arguments and accused Education Minister Norma Foley of being irrational.

They should just say they want us back at all costs, he said. It would be more honest.

Socialist Party member and former TD Ruth Coppinger said under the new schedule, teachers should be vaccinated by the next school year, which made the motion quite powerless.

The unions past president, Deirdre MacDonald, said teachers were not seeking to jump the queue.

She said in conjunction with other unions, the ASTI is seeking a parallel process alongside the roll-out of the vaccine by age group.

This would be occupationally based, depending on the frontline aspect of someones work.

She said we had seen the devastation that had been caused to the most marginalised in the education system.

We have seen the value of teaching like never before, and we must sustain this, she said. She urged delegates to support the motion because teachers health is educations wealth.

Read More




She's currently enjoying a new romance with electrician James Green.

And Lisa Armstrong appeared in good spirits as she arrived for work on Alan Carr's Epic Gameshow in Mediacity in Manchester on Wednesday.

The make-up artist, 44, bundled up in a leopard print coat and casual black joggers with a purple stripe as she made her way inside.

There she goes: Lisa Armstrong appeared in good spirits as she arrived for work on Alan Carr's Epic Gameshow in Mediacity in Manchester on Wednesday

Lisa, who is the ex wife of Ant McPartlin, teamed her outfit with a pair of white trainers, while she stored her essentials in a large burgundy shoulder bag.

The media personality's face was mostly concealed by a pink face mask, while she swept her tresses into a loose style.

Lisa gave a brief wave as she walked ahead of her day on the set of the comedian's new show.

Wrapped up: The make-up artist, 44, bundled up in a leopard print coat and casual black joggers with a purple stripe as she made her way inside

It comes after Lisa shared a loved-up snap with her electrician beau James late last month.

She fixed the camera with a smile as she cosied up to James, 37, in the snap, and sported a dark rose smoky eye.

Proving she had plenty to be smiling about, the beauty simply captioned the snap with three love heart emojis.

Low-key look: Lisa, who is the ex wife of Ant McPartlin, teamed her outfit with a pair of white trainers, while she stored her essentials in a large burgundy shoulder bag

Lisa and father-of-two James went public with their relationship last August, a few months after he separated from his wife Kirsty.

In February, she shared snaps on Valentine's Day with her boyfriend, who is believed to be spending the UK's third lockdown with Lisa.

Simply captioning the post with 'HVD', Lisa cuddled up to James in the images, with him planting a kiss on her cheek as she pulled a cute face, in her first romance since her 31million divorce with the TV star was finalised.

Loved up: It comes after Lisa previously appeared to be in great spirits as she posted a loved up snap with partner James Green on Twitter

Beauty: The media personality, who is the ex-wife of Ant McPartlin, went public with her relationship with James last August

Lisa, the head of make-up for Strictly Come Dancing, finalised her divorce with Ant back in April 2020 after their split in January 2018 following 12 years of marriage.

Earlier this year, the Saturday Night Takeaway co-host was reported to have handed over 31 million to Lisa, including their 5 million home in West London, following his highly documented battle with painkillers and alcohol.

The former couple also have joint custody of their Labrador Hurley following the settlement.

While she remains on good terms with him, Lisa is understood to have felt that Ant 'got away with a lot' following their split.
Speculations of a lockdown are rife in the country as the Covid-19 infections in India touched a record high of 1,28,01,785 cases on Wednesday. Partial lockdowns and night curfews are already in place in Delhi, Pune, Mumbai and other cities which are reporting a spike in infections.

However, the chief scientist of the World Health Organisation, Dr Soumya Swaminathan, has advised against a complete lockdown in India.

As per a report by The Indian Express, Dr. Swaminathan said that citizens should try to manage the pandemic's second wave in the country without a lockdown as it can have a terrible consequence.

Read more: India sees highest-ever single-day spike of 1.15 lakh Covid-19 cases

The consequences are terrible", she said referring to a potential lockdown.

We have to manage the second wave before thinking of a third wave and till enough people are vaccinated, there definitely can be more waves in the pandemic", she was quoted saying by The Indian Express.

Since the WHO recommends a gap of 8-12 weeks between two jabs of the Covishield vaccine, more people stand a chance to get inoculated in the meantime.

Vaccination is not recommended yet for children but yes, the gap between two doses can be stretched to eight to 12 weeks", she said.

The WHO chief scientist thinks that complete lockdowns will do more damage until most people are vaccinated.

Experts in Pune have also chimed in agreement.

In conversation with The Indian Express, Prof L S Shashidhara, a professor at IISER, Pune and Ashoka University, said, "Last year, even during the lockdown, Pune had many hotspots. As soon as the lockdown was lifted, albeit partially, the numbers started going up. Then there was a 10-day lockdown which did not help. Numbers went up even further. With community transmission rampant, during the lockdown, the virus would still be spreading within smaller groups in a locality and as soon as the lockdown is lifted, it will spread even more rapidly as people tend to relax more after the stress of the lockdown".

Read more: Variants may be driving India's Covid-19 surge; can't know without tests

The occasion of World Health Day on April 7 this year naturally focused around pandemic-centric discussions. While speaking on the occasion, the regional director of WHO Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh emphasized on accelerated vaccine rollouts to counter the new wave of Covid-19 cases in Pune.

Currently, India stands second when it comes to the number of vaccine jabs administered daily - 26 lakh doses. In the first place is the US with above 30 lakh jabs per day. The US also became the first country to administer 150 million vaccine jabs and fully vaccinate 62 million people.

With Covid-19 varients surfacing, infections are increasing and so is mass panic, says Dr Dhananjay Kelkar, medical director of Deenanath Mangeshkar Hospital.

Needless to say, the government has to take some steps to restrict Covid-19 spread as the pressure is on private hospitals. The good things now are that many small hospitals are becoming Covid centres. Last year, there was a huge scare and several facilities had displayed boards stating they were not Covid-19 hospitals but this time, more than 25 small hospitals have come forward and we can expect more beds opening up in Pune for treating Covid-19 patients. Currently, there are 4,000 beds in Pune city and all hospitals have been increasing the bed strength daily", he was quoted telling The Indian Express.
ANN ARBOR, MI  University of Michigan students can access free COVID-19 vaccinations beginning next week.

There are 7,500 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine available to students at no cost through two sources, according to an email to students from university officials. The university sought supply of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine because its only one shot, whereas other vaccines require two shots, the email states.

UM will administer shots to students at Michigan Stadium and in pop-up clinics at the Dearborn and Flint campuses next week, according to the email. There are 4,000 shots available between April 17-20 at Michigan Stadium, according to the universitys COVID-19 vaccine website.

On April 14-15, there are 800 available vaccine appointments at the UM-Flint Northbank Center Building, 432 N. Saginaw St. There are also 500 additional doses available through the Genesee County Health Department, according to UMs COVID-19 vaccine website.

There are 200 available appointments at the UM-Dearborn Fairlane Center North, 19000 Hubbard Dr., on April 16.

Students who previously completed the Blue Queue questionnaire and created a MyUofMHealth account are already registered to receive an invitation to schedule a vaccination appointment, the website states.

The university has also partnered with Meijer, which will provide 2,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine at its pharmacy at 3145 Ann Arbor-Saline Road on April 15-16. Students can sign up for these vaccine appointments by texting GoBlue to 75049 or visiting the clinics website.

UM is seeking additional vaccine supply from different sources for students, faculty and staff and encourages students to seek vaccination appointments from all sources, the email states. The university worked with Kroger to administer 1,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine to students earlier this week, the email states.

Michigan Medicine has posted tools to help find vaccines in the area, and the universitys Human Resources department created a COVID-19 vaccine eligibility and availability page to help get an appointment through a clinic, pharmacy, health department or Michigan Medicine.

More information on the vaccine clinics can be found here.

READ MORE:

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Scranton became the latest Pennsylvania city to ban conversion therapy on LGBTQ youths.

City council on Tuesday adopted an ordinance prohibiting licensed mental health professionals from practicing the widely discredited and potentially harmful effort to change ones sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, on minors under the age of 18 within city limits.

Sought by Councilwoman Jessica Rothchild, councils first openly gay member, the ban will support and help protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth by showing that the city wont stand for these practices, she said.

Its personal for me, Rothchild said of the ban. Any way that we can help out the LGBTQ youth that are in the Scranton community is going to be really beneficial to us.  Its doing our small part in helping to abolish such practices and to show the LGBTQ community that they are accepted and loved as they are.

The ban is proactive, as officials are not aware of any conversion therapy currently practiced in the city. Rothchild thanked her council colleagues and Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti and her administration for backing the ban.

Council voted 4-0  with Rothchild, Kyle Donahue, Mark McAndrew and Tom Schuster all in favor, and council President Bill Gaughan absent  to adopt the ban.

First, council amended language in the ordinance, based on guidance received from the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ youth, to ensure the ban is effective and enforceable, Rothchild said.

The Trevor Project commended Scranton.

The Trevor Project applauds the city of Scranton for taking action to protect LGBTQ youth from the dangers of conversion therapy, Troy Stevenson, the organizations senior advocacy campaign manager, said in a statement. We know from our research that this so-called therapy has only ever worked to produce negative mental health outcomes and increase suicide risk.

In other matters, council voted 4-0 on each of the following:

To introduce an ordinance to make Third Avenue one-way, from Elm to Broadway streets, because big trucks use Third Avenue as a detour of the weight-restricted East Elm Street bridge. This is to help hopefully alleviate some of the issues the residents of Third Avenue have been having with truck traffic, Donahue said. This way, theyll only have to deal with the traffic going one way and not both ways.

To introduce a resolution to accept a $145 donation from the 9/11 Memorial Committee of Lackawanna County to buy a sign to dedicate the 1800 block of Rosen Court in South Scranton in memory of WWII veteran Walter Pasiak. He was the last known survivor of Pearl Harbor residing in Lackawanna County, and died in January at age 98.

To introduce an ordinance to implement the Office of Economic and Community Developments annual action plan for federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) funding for block grant, home investment and emergency homeless assistance programs.

To advance on second reading an ordinance extending the earned income tax deadline from April 15 to May 17 to match extensions granted by the U.S. Treasury Department and the state because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

To advance an ordinance reversing the one-way of the 300 block of Center Street abutting the Lackawanna County Government Center. At the countys request, council previously designated that portion of Center Street as one way from Penn to Wyoming avenues. The reversal would make the street one-way from Wyoming to Penn avenues.

To adopt a resolution authorizing submission of an annual evaluation report to HUD regarding the citys federal funding for 2020.

To adopt a resolution accepting a $5,000 donation to the Scranton Fire Department from Gregg L. Sunday and Joan M. Sunday, in honor of late city firefighter Stephen Sunday, to defray costs of firefighting equipment.

Tabled for further review legislation to establish no-parking zones on portions of Main Avenue and Oram Street to accommodate a state Department of Transportation traffic signal project.
The Supreme Court (SC) on Wednesday said the taxman cannot view all businesses as fraudulent, as it made sharp observations against the manner in which goods and services tax (GST) was implemented by tax authorities.

A bench, comprising justices DY Chandrachud and MR Shah, said: "The Parliament had intended the GST to be a citizen-friendly tax structure... the purpose of the Act is lost in the manner in which it is enforced in our country."

The observations were made during the hearing of a plea challenging powers of provisional attachment under the Himachal Pradesh GST Act, filed by Radha Krishna Industries, represented by senior advocate Puneet Bali and advocate Surjeet Bhadu. The bench noted that tax authorities cannot go on attaching assets and it cannot be a pre-emptive strike, as it termed provisional attachment draconian.

The company submitted before the bench that power of attachment under Section 83 is draconian.

According to this Section, during the pendency of tax proceedings, the department can attach any property (including bank accounts and accounts receivable), as provisional attachment. The tax officers use it as a measure to guarantee the satisfaction of a later judgement by the courts.

The bench observed that a balance has to be maintained between protecting the interests of revenue and protecting genuine businesses. "The country needs to come out of this tax culture that all businesses are fraudulent... even when Rs12 crore tax has been paid, just because some tax is still due, you cannot start attaching property," it said.

It emphasised that tax officers raise huge demands from businesses with no accountability. The bench said tax officers raise huge demands after assessment and cited that if Rs10,000 crore has been reduced to Rs1,000 crore by the appellate tribunal or the top court, it must reflect in the assessment of the tax officer.

The bench stressed that law needs to be structured and the tax authorities have to abide by the mandate of law. After the parties concluded their arguments, the bench reserved the verdict.

The Himachal Pradesh High Court in January this year dismissed the plea seeking quashing of the provisional attachment under Section 83.

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.
Strengthening the fight against Covid-19 pandemic, Indias most diversified media conglomerate, Network18 with F ederal Bank, and actor and activist Sonu Sood have come together to launch a nationwide vaccination awareness campaign - 'Sanjeevani  A Shot of Life'. Launched on the occasion of World Health Day, the campaign aims to raise awareness amongst all Indians on the importance of vaccination. Appointed as the campaign ambassador, Sonu Sood officially launched the campaign today at a glittering launch event at Attari Border, Amritsar, where he, earlier in the day also took his first vaccine shot. The campaign is supported by Dr. Harsh Vardhan - Minister for Health & Family Welfare, Science & Tech, Earth Sciences., Randeep Guleria - Director, AIIMS, Adar Poonawalla - CEO, Serum Institute of India, Devi Shetty - Chairman, Narayana Health, Amitabh Kant - CEO, Niti Ayog, Dr. Sanjay Gupta - Chief Medical Correspondent, CNN, Balbir Singh Sidhu - Punjab Health Minister, and Rakesh Asthana - DG, BSF.

The nine-month long campaign has been conceptualised around a three-fold objective, which aims to lay focus on creating awareness on immunization, tackle vaccine hesitancy, and drive an actionable solution-driven movement targeting the remotest and underprivileged sections of the society. Extending its support to governments mass vaccination drive, Network18 along with Federal Bank and Apollo Hospital will introduce a special Sanjeevani ki Gaadi vehicle that will set up COVID vaccination camps across villages in the five Federal Bank adopted districts of Amritsar, Nashik, Indore, Guntur and Dakshin Kannada. Reaching out to the most COVID hit sections, the initiative with its partners will gift a vaccine by paying for free vaccination of citizens across the adopted villages. The NGO partners, Give India and United Way will come together to create awareness on the importance of taking the vaccine across the 5 adopted districts, through on ground activities.

Puneet Singhvi, President-Digital & Corporate Strategy, Network18 Media & Investments Ltd, shared, "Sanjeevani is an extension of Network18's ongoing efforts to create awareness around the importance of Covid-19 vaccine - why vaccinating every single Indian is a priority, and how India can get back on its feet. Along with Federal Bank, we have decided to take the vaccine message to every single village in the country, literally. But we will not just be carrying out awareness activities, we will also be holding free vaccination camps at many locations in conjunction with our partners. Our aim is to build a healthier and resurgent India. We have chosen World Health Day to launch this campaign. Sonu Sood, who has already been doing exemplary work in this space will be a force-multiplier for us as Sanjeevani's brand ambassador."

Campaign Ambassador Sonu Sood commented, It gives me immense pleasure to be a part of a campaign that reaches out to people across the remotest sections of the society. It is our responsibility to ensure people are aware about the importance of vaccination and immunization. At such trying times, we all must come together and work towards improving health of the society. We are already seeing the second wave of infections and it is my humble request to every citizen to take the vaccine as soon as possible.

Shyam Srinivasan, MD and CEO, Federal Bank Ltd. said, Federal Banks signature CSR programs, over the years, have been focused on addressing real needs of the communities we operate in. We believe that in the many programs we have put our efforts, be it education or healthcare our fingerprints havent faded from the lives of those we have touched. Sanjeevani, a well-conceived program that we have co created with Network 18 is aimed at the serving one of the most crucial requirements of the times we are living in. We hope this mega outreach initiative will help actualize our dream of ensuring that the vast majority of our country will benefit from the ambitious vaccination program that the nation has embarked upon.

Commenting on the initiative, Santosh Menon, Chief Content Officer, Network18 said, "This campaign ties in perfectly with Network18's efforts in helping spread Covid-19 awareness. As Indias battle against the pandemic has evolved, so have we, seamlessly pivoting from initiatives such as War on Corona and Corona Warriors to Sanjeevani. Our initiatives have also won accolades. CNN-News18 recently won the ENBA Award for best news coverage during the pandemic. We intend the Sanjeevani campaign to be 360-degree, straddling awareness about vaccines across the country to myth-busting to actually vaccinating people across the length and breadth of India. We are thrilled to have Federal Bank and Apollo Hospitals as partners in this initiative."

Making the campaign far-reaching, the network will run 12 half-hour episodes across CNBC-TV18 and News18 Network in sixteen languages capturing the activities and conversations. Watch Sanjeevani starting April 7 on News18 Network and follow #LagayaKya for round-the-clock coverage.
Thiruvananthapuram, April 7 : In what was a totally different almost one month experience, far away from all engineering activities, 88-year-old 'Metroman' E. Sreedharan, who faced a stiff poll battle at the Palakkad Assembly constituency, on Wednesday said for the rest of his life, he will work in the constituency.

"Win or lose, I am now going to be stayput in Palakkad. Even though I had left this town a long time back, from now on, I will be here. I will open an office also as my work will be for this constituency," said Sreedharan.

Metroman was pitted against young two-time Congress legislator Shafi Parambil, who is also the president of the Youth Congress and C.P. Pramod of the CPI-M.

Incidentally in the 2016 polls, the then BJP candidate finished second and pushed out the CPI-M to the third place.

"We are confident that we have done well and I was very clear in our strategy that we will not speak anything against our opponents and instead speak on what our plan is for the constituency. Even though I had left this constituency long back, people here knew about me and that has helped me," added Sreedharan.

Meanwhile Palakkad district Congress committee president and also the Palakkad Lok Sabha member V.K. Sreekandan played down the confidence of Sreedharan and said no doubt he is a renowned engineer.

"We also heard that he is going to open an office here. It's good because Indian Railways have announced various projects in Palakkad and his services would be good for that, while the Palakkad legislator's office here would be that of Shafi Parambil," said Sreekandan.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Wells declined to speak with detectives in person, but called one the next morning, records show. He said he went to buy $20 in marijuana from Castillo, charges state. He claimed Castillo lifted his shirt up quickly and Wells couldnt tell if he had a weapon. He kinda blacked out and parked on a side street after shooting the teen, charges state.
H John Voorhees III / Hearst Connecticut Media

The News-Times announcement of March 4, Danburys Dorothy Day homeless shelter loses appeal, could be forced to shut down, leaves me, and, I suppose, many others, with very mixed emotions.

As one of the founders of the Dorothy Day House, in Danbury, I am aware of the 38-year span of time when there was no follow-up on requests to the Planning and Zoning Commission to operate the shelter. Neither City of Danbury personnel, nor the volunteer staff members of the Dorothy Day House, have any information as to why the initial permit (for one year) was never renewed. The best guess that anyone seems to have is that such requests were waived within the second year because of the fact that homeless people in the Danbury area needed to be given shelter and that the only ones who were doing this were the volunteers at the Dorothy Day House of Hospitality (a soup kitchen to which an emergency housing shelter had been legally added.
In yet another fillip to the Make in India and domestic manufacturing dream of the Indian government, Apple said on Tuesday that its flagship and environment-friendly iPhone 12 smartphone will soon be produced in India for the local customers Image Source: IANS News

San Francisco, April 7 : The storage available on mobile phones sold last year has increased as the average smartphone NAND flash capacity crossed the 100GB mark for the first time in 2020, says a report.

According to market research firm Counterpoint, the advancements in cameras, Application Processors (APs) and displays have stimulated increased storage demand for videos, images and other multimedia applications. Consequently, NAND capacity has shown significant growth in smartphones.

However, the research firm says, it differs in iOS and Android phones.

"In iOS phones, the average NAND capacity reached 140.9GB in Q4, 2020, compared to 95.7GB in Android phones during the same period. But this gap is narrowing," the research firm said in a statement.

"It is evident from the graph below that the average capacity of Android has been increasing rapidly in the past few years. The average capacity in 2020 grew 5.6 per cent and 20.5 per cent for iOS and Android phones, respectively," it added.

The data indicates that Apple did not push the boundaries of its storage size and chose to stick to 512GB NAND, its highest storage capacity which has been there since 2018.

On the other hand, the biggest Android OEM, Samsung, looked to maximize its storage capacity and launched the Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus in 2019 with 1TB NAND. All this resulted in a lower storage growth rate for iOS compared to Android in 2020, the report said.

According to Q1 2019-Q4 2020 mobile handset sell-through tracker, NAND flash in smartphones grew by 20.3 per cent on average, from 80.7GB in 2019 to 97.11GB in 2020. However, iOS saw a 5.6 per cent increase in 2020, much lower than the 20.5 per cent growth in non-iOS devices.

The difference in average capacity between iOS and non-iOS devices continues to decrease. The gap between the two groups was approximately 45.2GB in Q4 2020, down from 56.8GB in Q4, 2019.

Although NAND price continued to fall during 2019-2020, the share of sales of high-capacity models (256GB and 512GB) for iOS did not grow during the same period.
OTTAWA - The pressure on the federal Liberal government to introduce a universal basic income ratcheted up a notch Wednesday with a report from the parliamentary budget officer that suggests it could cut poverty rates in Canada by almost half in one year.

Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux waits to appear before the Commons Finance committee on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Tuesday March 10, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

OTTAWA - The pressure on the federal Liberal government to introduce a universal basic income ratcheted up a notch Wednesday with a report from the parliamentary budget officer that suggests it could cut poverty rates in Canada by almost half in one year.

The report landed just one day before the opening of a three-day virtual Liberal convention, where Liberal MPs and grassroots party members from east to west are pushing the idea in top priority policy resolutions.

However, the hefty price tag  estimated by budget officer Yves Giroux at $85 billion in 2021-22, rising to $93 billion in 2025-26  is likely to reinforce Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's view that now is not the time to embark on a costly new program.

Giroux concluded that the federal government could almost halve poverty rates if it launched a basic income program similar to one previously studied in Ontario.

Although nationally the drop in poverty rates under such a measure would be about 49 per cent, the reductions would vary across provinces.

Giroux estimated that poverty rates could fall as much as 61.9 per cent in Manitoba or as little as 13.5 per cent in Newfoundland and Labrador.

At its core, a basic or guaranteed income would provide a no-strings-attached minimum income to citizens.

Under the Ontario model, people would receive a benefit to bring their income about three-quarters of the way up to the poverty line, with payments rolled back by 50 cents for every dollar earned above that level.

That would amount to a $17,000-benefit for a single person or $24,000 for a couple,

The Ontario experiment, which federal officials monitored closely, was ended early with a change of government in Ontario.

The budget officer's report updated his projections from last summer about the cost of a basic income program and details the financial ripple effect across households and workers.

Driving his work were questions from parliamentarians about the effects of a basic income program, which has picked up political traction over the last year as the COVID-19 pandemic put the economy into a tailspin. At its worst, the pandemic cost the country about three million jobs and reduced hours and incomes for 2.5 million more.

The grassroots of both the Liberal and New Democratic parties have put forward resolutions at their respective policy conventions this weekend to make a basic income a core policy.

Toronto Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, who has championed the basic income idea within the governing party's caucus, acknowledged the government will likely balk at the stiff price tag when it's facing an unprecedented, pandemic-induced deficit approaching $400 billion.

But he said the budget officer's cost estimate doesn't factor in things like the cost of poverty or the savings that could be incurred by rolling some existing federal income supports, like the GST tax credit or the Canada Workers Benefit, into a basic income program. Provinces could also save money by reducing their social assistance programs.

"I do think we have to take this idea of reinventing our social safety net seriously," Erskine-Smith said.

"I think we have to learn the lessons of the pandemic," he added, noting that "our social safety net wasn't fit for purpose at a time when many Canadians needed it." He said many would have been left behind if the government had not hastily created the Canada Emergency Response Benefit to keep them afloat.

While he wants a universal basic income to be the long-term goal, Erskine-Smith said in the meantime he hopes the government will build towards that by increasing the Canada Child Benefit, the workers benefit and the guaranteed income supplement for seniors.

For the most part, Giroux estimated a basic income would increase disposable income for those at the bottom of the income scale by 17.5 per cent, or just over $4,500, while those higher up the earnings scale would see their incomes drop slightly.

The reason for the drop would be another caveat in the modelling, that the federal government would remove refundable and non-refundable tax credits aimed at fighting poverty.

Overall, Giroux's report said more than 6.4 million people would see their disposable income rise as a result of a basic income program, on average by 49.6 per cent, while 16.8 million more would have their net income fall by 5.4 per cent.

Giroux's report also said that the interaction between tax rates, elimination of credits and earnings as part of basic income would make some workers rethink taking on additional employment hours if it meant losing income through a combination of paying more taxes and receiving fewer benefit dollars.

He estimated that overall, employees would reduce their hours worked by 1.3 per cent nationally, which would cost federal coffers between $3 billion and $3.3 billion annually over a five-year stretch due to lost revenues.

Erskine-Smith said that relatively small impact should "allay that myth really about basic income to suggest that it's a disincentive to work."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 7, 2021.
Police in Vietnams Mekong Delta have discovered 71 suspected Kuman Thong dolls at a local apartment.

The dolls were found after police officers examined apartment No. P328 at the Hung Phu apartment building in Cai Rang District, Can Tho City on Tuesday.

Thai Thi Yen Nhi, 24, who resides at the location, was not able to provide any documents proving the origin of the dolls.

All of the products were later confiscated by police officers to facilitate their investigation.

The dolls were suspected to be Kuman Thong, a household divinity of Thai folk religion that is believed to bring luck and fortune to the owner.

They are often worshipped to obey their worshippers for personal gains, protection, wealth, and harm in some cases.

In Vietnam, a lot of secret and superstitious groups have been established on social media to trade, exchange, and worship Kuman Thong, according to officers.

These dolls are usually offered at millions to hundreds of millions of dong. (VND1 million = US$43.5)

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More than three-quarters of Massachusetts seniors have already rolled up their sleeves for a COVID-19 vaccine, but Gov. Charlie Baker on Wednesday reminded older unvaccinated residents that they remain vulnerable.

If you are over the age of 65 or 55, I think itd be great if you sign up, pre-register to get an appointment now that its your turn, Baker said in a news conference Wednesday after touring the vaccination site at Oceanside Events Center in Revere. Because you are, based on all the data associated with vulnerable populations ... you are most at-risk. Were thrilled were over 80% with that population, but that still means theres a bunch of folks who are quite elderly who havent signed up yet.

Bakers remarks come as the state has now fully vaccinated more than 1.5 million residents, and about two weeks before President Joe Bidens April 19 target to make all Americans eligible for the vaccine.

Starting Monday, April 19, all who live, work or study in Massachusetts and are 16 or older are eligible to book their vaccine appointments.

The governor noted that outreach and educational campaigns and mobile vaccine clinics may help reach some unvaccinated individuals who are homebound or in congregate care. But Baker strongly urged eligible and able seniors to sign up and get vaccinated.

Baker touted the states vaccination ramp up, but noted officials hope to vaccinate more than 5 million people.

Theres a ton of work left to do here, he said. The focus for us and the commonwealth generally should be on getting everybody vaccinated as quickly as we possibly can.

Baker called on the federal government to boost supplies, particularly of the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine in hard-to-reach communities, health centers and community centers. Currently, the state is administering at least 60,000 to 90,000 vaccines daily, but with greater supply, without adding a single additional site, we could probably do double or triple that if the feds shipped more vaccine, Baker said.

Im so grateful for Pfizer and Moderna for being there in December, but it takes six weeks, the governor said of the two-dose vaccination process. Think about how fast ... if you had (Johnson & Johnson) mixed in, you could move through populations and get fully vaccinated.

He noted that the single-dose vaccine would be a helpful tool to do heavy-duty mobility vaccinating, particularly in neighborhoods where we cant get people to wherever the vaccine is.

Manny Lopes, East Boston Neighborhood Health Center President and CEO, said the Latino community has seen a 200% month-over-month increase in vaccination after the state expanded eligibility and opened more vaccination sites.

Lopes noted the Revere site, serving locals and nearby communities like Chelsea, Everett, East Boston and Winthrop, is next to the Wonderland station on the Blue Line.

Many that live and work in Revere and the surrounding communities take the T every day, communing to essential jobs ... at grocery stores, restaurants and businesses that keep our communities moving, he said. Were bringing the vaccine to them in a location thats close and convenient.

Related Content:
SHL closes Aspiring Minds brand to create a single market leader in talent acquisition and talent management solutions

NEW DELHI, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- SHL, the global leader in people science and people answers, announced today the closure of its Aspiring Minds brand, marking the beginning of a new chapter: one company and one platform for all people answers.

Learn how Aspiring Minds became SHL.

SHL completed the acquisition of Aspiring Minds in April 2020, bringing new, enhanced AI-driven capabilities into SHL's longstanding deep and broad array of solutions. Today's announcement completes the integration of Aspiring Minds into SHL.

Aspiring Minds customers will continue to enjoy the products they have relied upon, now rebranded as SHL, and enhanced by a wider array of solutions spanning the entire employee lifecycle. The most popular solutions like Autoview (now Smart Interview On-Demand), Codemeet (now Coding Interview) and SVAR (now Language Simulations) are now part of a wider SHL catalogue.

Meanwhile, existing SHL customers will continue to benefit from the groundbreaking innovations that made Aspiring Minds such a success, and that have already been incorporated into many existing SHL solutions.

"The joining of Aspiring Minds to SHL has progressed well despite the impact of COVID. We are already operating as one business and the final step is closing the Aspiring Minds brand itself," said SHL CEO Andy Bradshaw. "And while the brand will no longer exist in the market, all the great products, innovation and people still remain with us and are a crucial element to driving SHL's success."

SHL offers talent acquisition and talent management solutions powered by its 40 years of experience in assessment science, and now adds state-of-the-art, adaptive assessment technology and artificial intelligence (AI) to allow a standardized, reliable and unbiased measure of people's skills and capabilities.

"SHL is the market leader for personality, behavior, and ability assessments - operating in 150 countries across 40 languages. Aspiring Minds brought a diverse skills portfolio including simulations, coding assessments, video interviewing, and more to this union. Together, we have the most comprehensive and industry leading portfolio of talent solutions available," said Himanshu Aggarwal, co-founder of Aspiring Minds and now SHL's Chief Growth Officer.

The Aspiring Minds website, www.aspiringminds.com, will redirect visitors to www.shl.com. For more information on SHL's solutions visit shl.com.

About SHL??

SHL's science and technology maximizes the potential of your company's greatest asset - your people.?From Talent Acquisition to Talent?Management,?we help you create the diverse, agile, and innovative workforce you need to succeed in an unpredictable environment.??

SHL's?data driven?people insights?allow?businesses?to accurately and objectively identify potential and fit.?Its?unmatched?portfolio of products,?driven by a team of over 300 people scientists,?helps?measure?skill, personality, motivation, job fit, and behavior.?SHL delivers?engaging experiences built on science, which are all delivered?through?global expert services.?

One platform for all your people answers.? www.shl.com ??

Contact

Kristina Iniguez

PR@shl.com
Weather & Science Observer

Here Ive shared how scientists develop forecasts and predictions of our planets weather: from ground and airborne observations and data from stationary and orbiting satellites. Those data that are gathered are put through algorithms on computers that help create weather forecasts and predictions. Its not a perfect science and likely never will be.

So, how are scientists gathering data...
The Minister of Internal Affairs, Lucian Bode, declared on Tuesday, in southeastern Constanta, that it is practically impossible for the judicial police officers, who represent 60% of the Romanian Police, to pass under the Ministry of Justice, a conclusion reached by both the representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and those of the Ministry of Justice, agerpres.ro confirms.

"The governing program provides for the takeover of the Judicial Police from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the Ministry of Justice. Following discussions we had institutionally with the Ministry of Justice, both we and the Ministry of Justice have concluded that this is virtually impossible, because we are talking about 28,000 Judicial Police police officers, out of the 48,000 police officers that the Romanian Police has today, 60 percent of the Romanian Police should, according to this regulation, pass under the Ministry of Justice, which would create a big problem. in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and an equally big problem for the Ministry of Justice, because it could not manage them," said Bode.

The Minister stated that it is intended to develop a guide for the Judicial Police employee.

"The Ministry of Justice proposes, among other things, the extension of the Prosecutor's Office structures where police officers of the Judicial Police to be seconded, proposes a regulation of salaries, proposes a matter related to the period of secondment and, in these conditions, I said yes, we agree to discuss, in a bill assumed and debated publicly. We received this bill for approval, it was not put in transparency and public debate, which I believe will happen in the next period, (...), when that working group starts working. There, we will talk very clearly about a guide for the career of the Judicial Police officer, because as things stand today, it is not okay," said the Minister of Internal Affairs.

According to him, through such a guide of the judicial police officer, only the police officers who qualify at the highest level from a professional point of view will be able to work at with the National Anti-corruption Directorate (DNA).

"Practically, today, a police officer seconded to DNA, for example, at the moment when the mandate expires, we receive at the Ministry of Internal Affairs a request for an extension of that mandate for another 3 years and I think we would need a guide for a Judicial Police officer, so that you know that if out of the 28,000 Judicial Police officers 1,000 want to reach DNA, out of the 1,000, can be selected the 150 that this elite structure of the Romanian prosecutor's offices needs, so that the prosecutor's office will not come and say I want you to second Popescu to DNA. And out of the 1,000 who qualify professionally at the highest level, the best can be recruited. In the end, we need a middle ground, a dialogue, a debate. I am convinced that we will reach a form so that the objective we are pursuing, that of reducing crime in Romania, is achieved," said Lucian Bode.
Last May, Baylor Scott & White Health, the largest nonprofit hospital system in Texas, laid off 1,200 employees and furloughed others as it braced for the then-novel coronavirus to spread. The cancellation of lucrative elective procedures as the hospital pivoted to treat a new and less profitable infectious disease presaged financial distress, if not ruin. The federal government rushed $454 million in relief funds to help shore up its operations.

But Baylor not only weathered the crisis, it thrived. By the end of 2020, Baylor had accumulated an $815 million surplus, $20 million more than it had in 2019, creating a 7.5% operating margin that would be the envy of most other hospitals in the flushest of eras, a KHN examination of financial statements shows.

Like Baylor, some of the nations richest hospitals and health systems recorded hundreds of millions of dollars in surpluses after accepting the lions share of the federal health care bailout grants, their records show. Those included the Mayo Clinic, Pittsburghs UPMC and NYU Langone Health. But poorer hospitals  many serving rural and minority populations  got a tinier slice of the pie and limped through the year with deficits, downgrades of their bond ratings and bleak fiscal futures.

A lot of the funding helped the wealthy hospitals at a time, especially in New York, when safety-net hospitals were hemorrhaging, said Colleen Grogan, a health policy professor at the University of Chicago. We could have tailored it to hospitals we knew were really suffering and taking on a disproportionate amount of the burden.

In Baylors case, the system, which runs Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas and 51 other hospitals, said it spent $257 million last year on pandemic-related costs, including protective clothing for employees and patients and creating isolation rooms. Baylor has $197 million in unspent federal relief funds to use this year to cover costs of battling the virus and refrigerating vaccines, it said.

Our COVID-19-related expenses and lost revenue continue to exceed the funding we have received to date, Baylor said in a statement to KHN.

Other well-heeled hospitals or large systems faced bigger problems. Both NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and CommonSpirit Health, a 140-hospital Catholic system that operates in 21 states, lost money despite federal grants in the vicinity of a billion dollars each. A few systems, including the for-profit chain HCA Healthcare, returned federal funds when they saw they had skirted their worst-case scenarios. But most spent the aid and held onto any leftover money and new grants to cover anticipated pandemic costs this year because hospital executives fear more case spikes.

Much of the lopsided distribution was caused by the way the Department of Health and Human Services based the allotment of the initial bailout funds on hospitals past revenue. That favored institutions with well-off patients who have private health plans over those that rely on lower-paying government insurance, which is what many poor people use.

HHS distribution formulas did not take into account which hospitals had enough assets to survive.

Baylor, for instance, began 2020 with $5.4 billion in cash and investments, enough to keep it running for 238 days, the financial disclosures show.

Hospitals that ended the year with profits were entitled to federal aid because of the extraordinary latitude Congress and HHS set in how hospitals could classify their pandemic costs.

Last fall, when HHS attempted to limit how much aid hospitals could keep based on their profits  so the money could be redirected to struggling hospitals  the effort was swiftly beaten back by the industry and Congress. HHS officials declined requests for an interview but noted in a statement that Congress had ordered it to revert to its broader definition of permissible use of PRF funds.

The Biden Administration continues to review programs and policies including considerations for the unallocated funding under the PRF program and the $8.5 billion recently appropriated under the recently signed American Rescue Plan Act, the statement said.

Avoiding a Drawdown of Reserves

The bailouts were initiated last spring to help health care providers ride out a once-in-a-century public health calamity. The money designated to hospitals and other health care providers from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act and subsequent legislation totaled $178 billion.

It was intended to offset all costs of treating infected patients, including purchasing ventilators, masks, gowns and other personal protective equipment. Congress further authorized hospitals to use the money to compensate for a drop in revenue when they shut down elective surgeries and non-emergency treatments to prepare for the anticipated deluge of COVID-19 patients.

The money, referred to as the Provider Relief Fund, helped many poorer hospitals avert cash crunches, layoffs and bond rating downgrades. A survey by the consulting firm Kaufman Hall found that the median hospital gain during 2020 would have been 0.3% without the federal support. With it, half of hospitals posted gains of 2.7% or more, below the 2019 median margin of 3.1%, according to the firm, which also produces analytic work for the American Hospital Association.

In February, the association urged Congress to replenish the nearly empty relief fund, saying, hospitals have never experienced such a widespread, national health crisis.

Some hospitals finances deteriorated significantly during the pandemic. From the end of March through December, the rating agency Moodys downgraded 28 hospitals, primarily because of weaknesses such as higher debt or more competition, said Lisa Goldstein, associate managing director at Moodys.

Others suffered worse fates, like Williamson Memorial Hospital, which shut down last April. The hospital, in West Virginias coal country, had been trying to climb out of bankruptcy protection, but unfortunately, the decline in volumes experienced from the current pandemic were to[o] sudden and severe for us to sustain operations, its CEO wrote on Facebook.

Conversely, many prosperous health systems emerged unscathed from the moratoriums of last spring, often due to the federal aid. It gave them an ability to not have to draw down on their reserves to make up for the loss in revenue, said Suzie Desai, a senior director at S&P Global Ratings.

Systems saw patient visits return to near normal as the year wore on. In some cases, business in the latter half of 2020 was even higher than in the same period in 2019 because of pent-up demand for treatments postponed from the spring, financial records show.

We saw volumes spring back in every area except emergency room visits, said Kevin Holloran, a senior director at Fitch Ratings. Major hospital systems also reported that cases tended to be more complex than normal, leading to higher insurance payments.

UPMC accepted $460 million in bailout funds while collecting $2.5 billion more in revenue in 2020 than in 2019. The nonprofit system ended the year with an $836 million operating surplus  providing a 3.6% margin that was triple the prior years  in part due to the growth of the health insurance plan the system owns.

Other hospitals that sold insurance, including Baylor, persevered because the cause of their financial troubles  fewer surgeries and doctors visits  meant the health plans paid fewer claims.

UPMCs strong finances went unmentioned in a recent fundraising pitch announcing the launch of its Health Care Heroes campaign. During the past year, health care workers have carried the weight of the world on their shoulders, risking their own health and safety to ensure ours as we navigated the COVID-19 pandemic, the email said. Now its our turn to recognize their hard work.  By making a donation, you will help provide training, recognition, and support for our staff initiatives.

Donald Yealy, a senior vice president of UPMC and the chief medical officer of UPMC Health Services, said the fundraising appeal was a way to allow people in the community to show their appreciation.

The intent of the request and the letter were clear. People are free to ignore or to have an opinion. I dont begrudge that at all. I respect people having a different opinion, he said.

Hospitals can hold on to unspent relief funds until the end of July to defray any further pandemic-related costs. After that, any unspent money must be returned to the U.S. Treasury. UPMC retains $80 million in unspent relief funds, which the health system said it expects to use. Were still in the process of incurring significant costs related to COVID, said Edward Karlovich, UPMC executive vice president and chief financial officer.

A Shot in the Arm Sometimes Unneeded

In April 2020, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, forecast up to $3 billion in lost revenue because of the pandemic. Instead, Mayo, which received $338 million in federal relief funds, ended the year with revenue that was $202 million higher than in 2019. Mayo recorded a $728 million surplus, which equaled a 5.2% margin.

It gave us a shot in the arm when we needed it, said Dennis Dahlen, Mayos chief financial officer. Later, when it seemed likely Mayo would run a surplus, executives debated what to do with the federal funds.

Honestly, we considered dropping the margin, Dahlen said. After weighing their options, Mayo landed in a middle-of-the-road decision by returning $156 million to the federal government.

We considered it with what everyone else was doing  and we thought about what was good for society, Dahlen said. Nonprofit doesnt really mean no profit. It means tax-exempt. We still have to create earnings so we can reinvest in ourselves.

Mayo ended the year with $14 billion in investments, $3 billion more than it had in 2019, a 29% increase.

The funds were, indeed, a lifesaver for some. Marvin OQuinn, president and chief operating officer of CommonSpirit Health, said there was never a thought of turning back the money.

Despite receiving $1.3 billion in relief funds, CommonSpirit, based in Chicago, ended last year with a $75 million deficit, which translated to a 0.2% loss.

We have been set back by a year, OQuinn said. All the things we wanted to do  to renovate, to building new facilities, to expand our service  weve had to slow up to get through the crisis.

Scattershot Relief

The first $50 billion in relief funds was sent out indiscriminately as a life support, said Ge Bai, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. HHS tried to target subsequent distributions. It sent $22 billion to 1,090 hospitals with large numbers of COVID-19 patients. It sprinkled an additional $16 billion among hospitals that serve poor populations, Native American tribes, people in rural areas and children.

But even with the targeted aid, recipients included well-endowed academic medical centers and major urban hospitals. Only $14 billion took profitability into consideration, HHS documents show. HHS restricted those payments to hospitals with 3% or lower profit margins.

Wealthy hospitals also benefited because HHS used a broad definition of lost revenue. If a hospital earned less than in the year before, or simply less revenue than it had budgeted for, it could chalk up that difference to the pandemic and apply the relief funds to it. The implications garnered little attention at the time as they were overshadowed by the concerns about how HHS was doling out the money rather than how it could be used.

In September, HHS attempted to tighten its overall limits on how much money the hospitals could keep by basing it on the difference from the previous years net income rather than overall revenue  a number that in many cases would be much lower. The goal, the department said, was to prohibit most providers from using PRF [Provider Relief Fund] payments to become more profitable than they were pre-pandemic, to conserve resources to allocate to providers who were less profitable.

The American Hospital Association complained that would punish hospitals that had behaved responsibly by cutting costs and be an administrative and accounting disaster, as many hospitals had already spent the grant money.

HHS backed down a month later, citing significant attention and opposition from many stakeholders and Members of Congress. Not fully satisfied, Congress cemented the rollback in a December law.

Some hospital executives attributed their surpluses to their aggressive cost-cutting measures.

NYU Langone Health, for instance, received $461 million in relief funds, which covered about a third of its pandemic-related losses, said Daniel Widawsky, chief financial officer. Another third of Langones losses was absorbed by the record-high financial performance in the months before the pandemic, he said, and prompt cost control addressed the rest.

Widawsky said that at the beginning of March Langone canceled travel, froze hiring, paused construction and stopped discretionary purchases. The first three days in March, we locked down spending, he said. If they wanted to buy a pencil, they had to call me. Langone ended its fiscal year in August with $208 million in net income, and recorded a $136 million surplus in the final quarter of 2020, or 5.5%. Earlier this year, two credit agencies upgraded their outlook on Langone from stable to positive.

Despite accepting $942 million in bailout funds, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital had a $457 million operating deficit, a 7% loss, at the end of September. It was a sharp turn from September 2019, when the system recorded a $166 million surplus, a 2.5% gain.

The system, which declined to comment, has not yet released its financial metrics for the final three months of 2020, but Fitch projected it would remain in the red. Still, NewYork-Presbyterian remains fiscally solid: Its most recent disclosure reported $3.8 billion in cash and short-term investments, enough to keep operating for more than a year.

---

Jordan Rau and Christine Spolar of Kaiser Health News wrote this story.

(Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.)

2021 Kaiser Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Lebanese architect Charbel Abou Jaoude has a US$ 5-billion plan to redevelop the area devastated by two explosions. It includes a 2,200-metre-long cruise terminal, a fishing port, storage area, and a 160-metre tower. France and Germany are also interested in the reconstruction.

Beirut (AsiaNews/OLJ)  The first proposals to rebuild the Port of Beirut are beginning to emerge. The facility was the scene of a double explosion on 4 August, which claimed hundreds of lives and caused huge devastation.

The prospect of billions of dollars in business has attracted local and international players, to revive a sector of vital economic importance to the Lebanese capital, while the investigation into the disaster continues but with no results so far.

One of the first projects is by Lebanese architect Charbel Abou Jaoude, under the National Rescue Congress, an association founded in October 2019 to which he belongs.

His US$ 5-billion project would redevelop part of the area. It would include a 2,200-metre-long cruise terminal, triple the dock area, install giant cranes, and build a fishing port, storage areas, and a 160-metre tower to accommodate the port administration, a museum, and a restaurant.

The goal is to increase twelvefold the port's revenues, which stood at US$ 230 million in 2018, the last year before the crisis, thus preventing Lebanon from lagging behind its main regional competitors: Israel (Ashdod and Haifa with connection to Jordan) and Syria (Tarsus)

The project by Charbel Abou Jaoude's firm is similar to another presented at a webinar centred on a study published by the World Bank in January titled Reforming and Rebuilding Lebanon's Port Sector : Lessons from Global Best Practices.

On that occasions, participants stressed the need to develop other Lebanese ports following a national and regional strategy, with the aim of improving governance and profitability.

Analysts and experts note that competition over reconstruction will be close, given the expected volume of business and the number of investors from around the world interested in the project.

The objectives of the work include extending the port area, modernising customs and improving connections to the dry port in Taanayel, in the Bekaa.

France and Germany are also interested in the reconstruction work. However, both have set as a precondition the resolution of Lebanons political crisis, which has prevented for months the formation of a new government called to launch reforms that would lead to economic growth.
A look at the major movers on the London market on Wednesday

Investors in ( ) must be getting used to a rollercoaster ride.

Its shares are up 48.23% or 0.55p to 1.68p, on further consideration of a drilling report on Tuesday which had sent them lower.

The company had said that drilling the Merlin-1 well at Project Peregrine in Alaska provided encouragement but equipment failure prevented hydrocarbon samples from being taken yet.

We appreciate that these early results may be difficult to interpret. That is because we do not yet have all the data required to allow interpretation, said managing director David Wall.

This means some uncertainty remains; however, it is already clear that Merlin-1 has delivered by far the best outcome of any of the five wells drilled by 88 Energy in Alaska over the last six years.

Even though they are off their peak the company's shares have more than tripled since the start of March.

3.31pm: HSS higher on Irish sale

( ) has built up a good gain after announcing the sale of its Irish large plant hire business for 11.2mln in cash.

It is selling Laois Hire Services Limited to Briggs Equipment Ireland, and the proceeds will be used to invest in its core tool hire business. It said Laois represented just 4% of its annual revenues, so the deal was a good one for shareholders.

HSS also said trading in 2020 was in line with its expectations, and since then it had seen encouraging momentum in the first three months of the current year with earnings for the period comfortably ahead of the same time last year.

Chief executive Steve Ashmore said: "Over the last four years, we have made substantial progress against all three of our strategic priorities: to de-lever the group, transform the tool hire business and strengthen our commercial proposition...Today's announcement is another step forward on our strategy, enabling us to increase focus on our core tool hire business."

The company's shares have climbed 10.2% or 2p to 21.6p on the news.

Also heading higher is energy infrastructure specialist Petrofac Ltd ( ).

Its shares are up 9.95p or 10.22% at 107.3p after it extended US$700mln of its banking facilities. It expects to report net debt of US$116mln as at the end of 2020, better than expectations, and continues to target eliminating net debt as market conditions and contract awards recover.

2.30pm: Payment specialist sees shares climb by a fifth

( ) is on the up after it said full year profits were likely to be ahead of previous expectations.

The company, which specialises in payment and loyalty systems for the petrol forecourt and retail sector, also had some positive contract news.

It announced a five year extension to an existing contract with "a major international oil and gas group for the provision of loyalty services Europe-wide." It is also optimistic about progress on a separate project for another existing customer.

And it is in discussions about an extension of its borrowing facility to support any increase in working capital.

Chief executive Jeremy Lewis said: "COVID-19 profoundly affected many aspects of our daily lives in 2020 and remains with us still. The retail sector felt the impact and so we are pleased to have navigated the pandemic challenges of last year as well as we did. Furthermore, it is very encouraging to see our major retail partners renewing their multi-year relationship with us now, a good indication of our standing as their managed service provider of choice."

The news has lifted its shares 21.28% or 1p to 5.7p.

11.40am: Oil and gas group loses a fifth of its value

Hurricane Energy PLC (LON:HUR) has seen its shares blown off course after a downbeat reserves report on its West of Shetland assets and a warning that shareholders could be wiped out.

The latest report shows a downgrade in reserves and a statement that "there can be no certainty of any further activity" on the assets including the key Lancaster field.

Hurricane is seeking new investment including repaying or refinancing a convertible bond and said: "The company continues to engage with an ad hoc group of its convertible noteholders over the company's forward work programme, strategy, financing and balance sheet recapitalisation

"It should be noted that there is a risk of significant dilution to existing shareholders from a possible restructuring and/or partial equitisation of the convertible bonds and of potentially limited or no value being returned to shareholders.

"If no agreement can be reached with the company's stakeholders on additional development activity at Lancaster, the field could continue to produce from the P6 well before reaching its economic limit, the timing of which would depend on oil prices, actual production levels delivered and the level of cost savings achievable. The field may then be decommissioned, with potentially limited or no value returned to shareholders."

Its shares have slumped 21.5% or 0.77p to 21.5p.

10.32am: VR group shares jump

Virtual reality technology group (LON: VRE) is doing well in the real world after a positive update.

The company's shares have climbed 17.5% or 1.75p to 11.75p as it said revenues for its ENGAGE software had jumped 138% quarter on quarter in the first three months of 2021 to 0.4 million. This compares to total revenues of 0.6 million for the whole of last year.

Some 28 new customers have signed up since January, including the US State Department.

Chief executive David Whelan said: "ENGAGE usage continues to grow as more and more organisations worldwide see the benefits of the kind of immersive experience that ENGAGE offers versus traditional video-based communications tools such as Zoom and MS Teams. We are focused on building on the ENGAGE client, user and revenue momentum we generated in 2020. Over the coming year, we will be targeting enterprise and institutional clients in our key geographies of Europe, Asia and North America and grow ENGAGE usage."

9.02am: Home safety group boosted by German deal

Shares in FireAngel Safety Technology Group PLC ( ) have been fired up by a significant new partnership which could be worth up to 21mln for the company.

The home safety product specialist is linking up with a German business - which supplies services to 12mln apartments worldwide - to set up an R&D programme for a new generation of smoke alarm.

The German company will fund the development phase of the alarm, with FireAngel receiving a fee of 1.4mln for use of its intellectual property during the development phase. Once production has started, a royalty fee per product will be payable to FireAngel with a multi-million volume fee agreed for the initial 30 months. Manufacturing is expected to begin in early 2024, with an estimated 7mln new devices being produced.

John Conoley, executive chairman of FireAngel, said: "This is the most significant development for FireAngel for several years and is expected to be transformational for the group. The directors estimate that, during the life of the partnership, the company should earn up to 21mln in royalty, management and support fees. [The partnership] will be materially cash positive and contribute financially to the company for the long term."

FireAngel shares have more than doubled on the news, up 14.7p to 29.2p.

8.25am: Network group jumps after surge in revenues

( ) has signalled a positive update and seen its shares soar in response.

The company, a specialist in smart mesh networks which allow machine to machine communication, said full year revenues were above market expectations and around 2.5 times the 2.5m seen in the previous 15 month period.

It shipped 481,000 modules to customers during the year, up from 115,000, with 5.3m of cash received compared to 4.1m.

Executive chairman John Cronin said: "I'm delighted with the progress made during the financial year ended 31 March 2021, which has delivered our highest annual revenue to date..With deployments being secured against Letters of Credit or advance payments, cash collection has significantly improved, and together with ongoing cost control, our cash position at 31 March 2021 is higher than at 31 March 2020.

"This has been an extremely challenging year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, nevertheless we have continued to pursue a number of opportunities which we expect to bear fruit in due course. We also expect revenues to materially increase during the current financial year and note market expectations of 8.8m of revenue for the financial year ended 31 March 2022."

The optimistic tone has lifted Cyanconnode 15.28% or 1.02p to 7.67p.

Also on the move is ( ), up 10.21% or 0.24p to 2.59p and more than recovering a loss of around 5% on Tuesday.

The company, a specialist in digitising chemistry, unveiled a collaboration with the University of Nottingham's School of Chemistry, providing access to its DigitalGlassware platform to support the University's sustainable chemistry initiatives.

DeepMatter chief executive Mark Warne said: "Having worked with the University of Nottingham previously in their Digital Teaching Laboratory, we are delighted to be working with [project leader Professor Jonathan Hirst] in his challenge to design, make and ultimately manufacture new molecules in a more sustainable fashion. We recognise that significant changes are required in the way science is organised and conducted for there to be progress towards a more sustainable environment and we are pleased that our technology will play a role in developing the industry's sustainability."

Professor Hirst said: " At the moment, there are all kinds of inefficiencies, which are largely neglected in the search for new chemicals with specific desired properties. This project will provide machine learning tools for chemists and chemical engineers that will help them address two questions. How do we find greener synthetic routes to chemicals? And how do we identify greener target molecules from the outset?"

Proactive news headlines

( ) said it has generated record profits and revenues from its cryptocurrency mining operations for the third month in a row as it capped off what it said was the best quarter in its history.

( ) has hailed record output from its facilities in Gabon in the first quarter of 2021 as demand for its products increased amid a global economic rebound from the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

FinnCap Group PLC ( ), the small-cap broker and finance group, said the strong market for IPOs and secondary funding continues to filter through into its results.

PLC ( ) said the total viewership of its network is set to double as a result of signing German content creator Nikita Sembowski.

( ) said its portfolio company Artios Pharma Limited, in which it owns a 12.4% stake, has agreed a global research collaboration with Swiss pharma giant Novartis to create a new generation of DNA Damage Response (DDR) cancer therapies.

( ) said it started drilling at the Kineta North gold licence in north-eastern Ivory Coast and has already observed visible gold in the first hole completed.

Construction materials specialist PLC ( ) has unveiled the 13mln acquisition of Belgian concrete assets alongside the formation of a second construction materials platform. The company also announced that it expects to publish its full year 2020 results on 13 April 2021.

( ) is seeking to drill two wells, each targeting initial production of 600 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd), and spud a third well by the end of 2021, the company said as it set out its objectives for the year.

( ) said it expects to meet current market forecasts for revenue and EBITDA for the financial year to end March 2021.

PLC ( ) surged on Wednesday after giving investors an update on its recent operations.

Lab work carried out researchers at the world famous Johns Hopkins in the US appears to underline the potential of s ( ) lead drug in COVID-19.

Curtis Banks PLC ( ) said it weathered the coronavirus storm and made good progress on a number of strategic initiatives in 2020.

( ) said it has completed the 150,000 deal to take full ownership of Licence P2170, which hosts most of the Verbier discovery and is one part of the Greater Buchan Area (GBA) development project.

Xpediator ( ) confirmed that it will announce final results for calendar year 2020 on Monday 12 April 2021. Chief executive Robert Ross and chief financial officer Mike Williamson will provide a live investor presentatio on the Investor Meet Company platform at 10.30am UK time on the day.

( ) announced the grant of share awards under its 2021 long-term incentive plan (LTIP) to reward and incentivise senior executives, after its 2012 plan expired. The awards are subject to attainment of targets over three areas, including total shareholder return, EBITDA and ESG measures.

Silence Therapeutics PLC (LON:SLN, NASDAQ:SLN) chief executive Mark Rothera will present a company overview followed by Q&A at the Needham Virtual Healthcare Conference on Wednesday, April 14 at 8:45am EDT/1:45pm BST. A live webcast of the presentation will be available via the company's website (www.silence-therapeutics.com) and an archived replay of the webcast will be available there afterwards.
NEW YORK, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The health pandemic brought about a large number of business challenges when it became apparent that Covid-19 was going to be more than a short-term global interruption. It prompted companies to reassess priorities and react to the changes going on around them. This observation is also true of the customer service industry, as experienced first-hand by Atento (NYSE: ATTO) when providing support to many of its global clients over the past few months.

An example of one such business challenge can be illustrated by the situation with Texas-headquartered Fortune 500 Company, and Atento client, GameStop (NYSE: GME), who had to deal with an unexpected situation early on in the pandemic.

"In April, we were suddenly left without a considerable number of our customer service agents, who were unable to access their place of work due to the pandemic. Our service provider at that time could not find a workaround, meaning that we needed to find an alternative solution rapidly", recounts Mark Qualls, VP US Operations, GameStop. Faced with this unexpected happening, GameStop approached Atento to see if it could help.

"In just a few weeks, we were able to get the project up and running by moving it to Guatemala, where the pandemic was not yet so prevalent", explains Wesley O'Brien, VP of Sales, Atento. Indeed, although initially starting with customer service over email, the project was quickly expanded in scope to include chat, and by the end of the year it encompassed voice capabilities, as well, offering GameStop's customers a quicker way to receive customer service.

"The nature of the pandemic, and the rate at which we began to see that digitalization and seamless customer experience were becoming a key requirement for the end-customer, made us look at more innovative and effective ways of connecting with consumers. Atento advised and guided us throughout that journey", adds Mark.

"What we are seeing is that in the wake of the pandemic, companies are looking for service providers that can guarantee flexibility, agility and security. This is a tendency we can only believe will continue over the coming months and years," concludes Wesley.

About Atento

Atento is the largest provider of customer relationship management and business process outsourcing ("CRM BPO") services in Latin America, and among the top five providers globally. Atento is also a leading provider of nearshoring CRM BPO services to companies that carry out their activities in the United States. Since 1999, the company has developed its business model in 13 countries where it employs approximately 140,000 people. Atento has over 400 clients to whom it offers a wide range of CRM BPO services through multiple channels. Atento's clients are mostly leading multinational corporations in sectors such as telecommunications, banking and financial services, health, retail and public administrations, among others. Atento's shares trade under the symbol ATTO on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). In 2019, Atento was named one of the World's 25 Best Multinational Workplaces and one of the Best Multinationals to Work for in Latin America by Great Place to Work. Also, in 2021 Everest named Atento as a star performer Gartner named the company as a leader in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant. For more information visit www.atento.com

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "may," "should," "expects," "plans," "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," "predicts," "intends," "continue" or similar terminology. These statements reflect only Atento's current expectations and are not guarantees of future performance or results. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. In particular, the COVID-19 pandemic, and governments' extraordinary measures to limit the spread of the virus, are disrupting the global economy and Atento's industry, and consequently adversely affecting the Company's business, results of operation and cash flows and, as conditions are recent, uncertain and changing rapidly, it is difficult to predict the full extent of the impact that the pandemic will have. Risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, competition in Atento's highly competitive industries; increases in the cost of voice and data services or significant interruptions in these services; Atento's ability to keep pace with its clients' needs for rapid technological change and systems availability; the continued deployment and adoption of emerging technologies; the loss, financial difficulties or bankruptcy of any key clients; the effects of global economic trends on the businesses of Atento's clients; the non-exclusive nature of Atento's client contracts and the absence of revenue commitments; security and privacy breaches of the systems Atento uses to protect personal data; the cost of pending and future litigation; the cost of defending Atento against intellectual property infringement claims; extensive regulation affecting many of Atento's businesses; Atento's ability to protect its proprietary information or technology; service interruptions to Atento's data and operation centers; Atento's ability to retain key personnel and attract a sufficient number of qualified employees; increases in labor costs and turnover rates; the political, economic and other conditions in the countries where Atento operates; changes in foreign exchange rates; Atento's ability to complete future acquisitions and integrate or achieve the objectives of its recent and future acquisitions; future impairments of our substantial goodwill, intangible assets, or other long-lived assets; and Atento's ability to recover consumer receivables on behalf of its clients. In addition, Atento is subject to risks related to its level of indebtedness. Such risks include Atento's ability to generate sufficient cash to service its indebtedness and fund its other liquidity needs; Atento's ability to comply with covenants contained in its debt instruments; the ability to obtain additional financing; the incurrence of significant additional indebtedness by Atento and its subsidiaries; and the ability of Atento's lenders to fulfill their lending commitments. Atento is also subject to other risk factors described in documents filed by the comp any with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which the statements were made. Atento undertakes no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

SOURCE Atento S.A.

Related Links

http://www.atento.com


Suabo was in the kitchen, cooking a meal for her family when she heard children screaming outside. Armed men have invaded the town! they cried.

She was puzzled. She had only heard of minor sporadic attacks in the past but never close to her home in Palma, northern Mozambique. She continued to cook.

An hour later, the children were back, this time screaming about bombs. Looking outside, she saw people running down the hills towards the beach, near her home.

Unable to find her husband, who was out working, Suabo immediately called her daughter and urged her to take her baby. They frantically joined other fleeing villagers, and in the ensuing panic and chaos, the three of them managed to jump onto a ferry boat carrying several staff and contractors from the French energy firm Total.

From the boat, I could see armed men shooting at people. We managed to escape, but many other boats stayed captive, 40-year-old Suabo said.

From the boat, I could see armed men shooting at people.

They arrived at the Amarula hotel in another part of town, where they spent the night outside without food or water. But the hotel was also attacked, forcing them to run and hide in the bush for three days before managing to escape Palma by boat.

The coastal town was attacked on 24 March by non-state armed groups, forcing over 11,000 people to flee. In the aftermath, displaced Mozambicans like Suabo have been arriving in the various towns of Pemba, Nangade, Mueda and Montepuez by foot, road and boat.

Suabo and her family disembarked in Pemba a week later, together with some 1,100 other displaced civilians, the majority of them women and children, who arrived exhausted, with barely anything, showing signs of severe trauma due to the atrocities they witnessed and worried for the relatives left behind.

Suabo, 40, fled attacks launched by non-state armed groups on 24 March in the coastal town of Palma, Mozambique. She is currently staying at a transit centre in Pemba with her daughter and granddaughter.  UNHCR/Martim Gray Pereira

These are the lucky ones, as thousands are still stranded in Palma, hiding and not knowing if they will be able to escape, said Margarida Loureiro, the head of office in Pemba for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.

Together with local authorities and partners, UNHCR has been screening and verifying details of the recent arrivals and conducting protection assessments to identify the most vulnerable people in need of urgent assistance. Those identified are referred to various services and helped to trace and reunite with family members. Nearly 80 per cent of separated people are women and children. Partner staff are also being trained on protecting internally displaced people (IDPs) from gender-based violence and sexual exploitation.

The majority of the displaced families are staying with relatives and friends but for people like Suabo who have no relatives, they are staying at a transit center set up by the government, where they receive food assistance, sleeping mats and blankets. As of 6 April, approximately 250 displaced people were still living at the transit center.

See also: UNHCR scales up response as thousands flee attacks in northern Mozambique

Suabo is currently in limbo as she wonders what will happen next. She is sad and worried after being separated from her husband and their three other children.

I wish for the conflict to stop. I dont want other people to go through what I am going through.

They took away my home, my belongings, but worst of all, they took away my biggest gift in life  my family, she said.

Like Suabo, Lucia also fled by boat and is currently staying at the transit center. An environmentalist and NGO worker, she worries about the future and she is scared to return home.

We need help from humanitarian organizations. There are so many women and children here separated from their families, she said.

Before the latest attack in Palma, escalating violence in Cabo Delgado had already displaced nearly 700,000 Mozambicans to other parts of Cabo Delgado, Niassa and Nampula provinces, the vast majority living with host families, whose scarce resources are already stretched.

The situation has severely impacted health, water and shelter facilities as well as access to food in the region. The harrowing humanitarian crisis is compounded by an already fragile situation of chronic underdevelopment, consecutive climatic disasters and recurrent disease outbreaks including, most recently, COVID-19.

While UNHCR and partners continue to scale up assistance to the thousands who have been displaced, Suabo hopes that peace will return to her hometown.

I wish for the conflict to stop. I dont want other people to go through what I am going through right now, she said.
PARIS : Several European countries are considering mixing up COVID-19 vaccines for citizens who received a first dose of AstraZeneca's shot, an unprecedented move that highlights challenges for governments struggling to tame fresh rises in infections.

Vaccination programmes have been upset after a small number of reports that recipients of the AstraZeneca inoculation have suffered extremely rare blood clots, leading some countries worldwide to suspend its use out of caution.

A senior official for the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said in an interview published on Tuesday there was a link between the vaccine and rare blood clots in the brain but the possible causes were still unknown.

The EMA later said in a statement that its review of the vaccine was ongoing. It will give an update on its investigation on Wednesday afternoon.

AstraZeneca has said previously its studies have found no higher risk of clots because of the vaccine, millions of doses of which have been administered worldwide.

While many countries have resumed using the shot, some have imposed age restrictions.

In many instances, this has left officials scratching their heads over what to do for people who received a first dose of AstraZeneca but are no longer eligible under the new rules.

While the numbers are small compared with the tens of millions being inoculated across the region, the decision is significant because it has not been tested in late-stage human trials.

Any divergence to the EMA's marketing authorisation would also be considered as "off label use", meaning it would not be approved by the regulator and leave individual countries responsible for any possible side-effects.

The EMA had no immediate comment when asked about mixing and matching vaccines and referred to the briefing later on Wednesday.

Some experts say that, because all of the vaccines target the same outer "spike" protein of the virus, they could work together to train the body to fight off the virus. There is no evidence it will be as effective.

Germany was the first European country to recommend on April 1 that people under 60 who have had a first AstraZeneca shot should receive a different product for their second dose.

Norway will decide whether to resume using AstraZeneca's vaccine or rely on alternatives by April 15.

"The outcome is either you get one vaccine, the AstraZeneca vaccine ... or you get a booster vaccine with other types of vaccines," Sara Viksmoen Watle, a senior physician at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, told Reuters.

Norwegian authorities are also waiting for the results of a British trial launched in February to explore mixing doses of Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines. The timing of the data is not known.

Britain said late last year it would allow people to be given shots of different COVID-19 vaccines on rare occasions, but it has not yet had to do so.

Finland, which resumed using the AstraZeneca vaccine from March 29, but will only give it to people aged 65 and over, said it would wait for the EMA's conclusions before making a recommendation. It will have to start giving second doses by mid-April.

In France, where the vaccine can now only be used for those aged 55 or older, the issue affects hundreds of thousands of people.

A top health advisory body in charge of defining the use of vaccines, the Haute Autorite de la Sante (HAS), is also contemplating deploying a messengerRNA (mRNA) vaccine produced by Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna as a second dose, according to two sources aware of the organisation's plans.

A formal decision has not been yet taken, however, as experts await more data, notably from Britain, one of the sources added. France has until early May, which marks 12 weeks after the first doses were administered.

The HAS had no comment.

Back in February, it said there was no data to assess interchangeability of AstraZeneca's vaccine and therefore advised that those who had already received a first dose should not get a different shot when vaccinated for the second time.

"We are left guessing and that makes me and other colleagues feel very uncomfortable," said Charlotte Senechal, a 52-year-old hospital nurse working in Strasbourg, eastern France.

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[April 07, 2021] GiGstreem Secures $50-Million Investment from Crestline to Deploy Gigabit Ubiquitous WiFi in Multifamily and Commercial Properties across the U.S.

GiGstreem, a premier in-building gigabit internet service provider, announced that it has secured a $50-million investment from Crestline Investors, Inc. (Crestline) to support the company's continued growth strategy in deploying its Ubiquitous WiFi (News - Alert) platform to multifamily properties across major cities throughout the U.S. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005213/en/ A GiGstreem dish sitting on a New York City rooftop can broadcast 10 Gigabits of capacity to buildings within a two-mile radius. (Photo: Business Wire) Launched in 2017 and headquartered in New York, GiGstreem is a premier gigabit internet service provider that currently operates in multiple U.S. East and West Coast markets providing services to commercial business, residential communities and apartment buildings. With its state-of-the-art technology, GiGstreem offers entire buildings and communities continuous property-wide WiFi coverage on their own private network, which in turn facilitates the next generation of wireless and technology-enabled services including IoT, smart devices, in-building mobility (including CBRS and Connectivity-as-a-Service) and building management systems. Amid the pandemic, a growing number of consumers have recognized the limitations of the large providers' networks, and the resulting outages and complaints have cost countless lost hours in productivity and economic losses. Property owners have quickly come to value purpose-built networks like GiGstreem that are specifically designed to accommodate multiple streaming devices without any lag or bufer. As they roll out technologies designed to improve property operations, developers have prioritized providers who have mastered large-scale connectivity, which has made GiGstreem an increasingly attractive option.



With GiGstreem's plans to continue its growth strategy across major U.S. cities, the investment from Crestline provides GiGstreem with capital that will enable the firm to deploy the necessary infrastructure in order to satisfy its backlog of demand. "The pandemic has created a major shift in how people utilize their apartments, with millions of residents now accustomed to working from home on a regular basis. As the importance of reliable web service has grown, it has exposed the capacity issues of traditional providers," said GiGstreem CEO Joel McIntyre. "We are excited to partner with Crestline and to receive this funding, which will enable us to expand our Ubiquitous WiFi platform to hundreds of thousands of units across 15 new metropolitan areas."

Added Crestline Investors Partner Will Palmer: "We are thrilled about the market opportunity that GiGstreem represents and believe the Ubiquitous WiFi platform currently being deployed is a great value proposition that consumers are increasingly demanding in a post-COVID environment. We believe that Joel McIntyre (CEO) and Andrew Kusminsky (COO) are the right guys for the job." A portfolio company of RET Ventures and LNC Partners, GiGstreem's business development is aided in part by RET's investor network, which includes many of the largest and most innovative multifamily and single family rental property owners/managers in the country. The leading real estate technology VC with a focus on multifamily, RET's strategic investors own or manage more than two million residential units across the U.S. & Canada. "The move toward seamless connectivity within the home is still in the early innings," said RET Ventures Partner John Helm. "Perhaps more significantly, smart home technology - a feature embraced by managers as much as residents - benefits tremendously from ubiquitous property-wide coverage. As property owners continue to discover the many benefits of technology integration, GiGstreem's unique WiFi deployment will facilitate the operations of modern apartment buildings across the country. With Crestline's investment supporting GiGstreem's national growth, the Company is poised to create synergies with our other portfolio companies - and with real estate technology more broadly - enhancing processes for operators and residents alike." Houlihan Lokey served as the exclusive financial advisor to GiGstreem on this transaction. About GiGstreem Launched in 2017, GiGstreem is a premier in-building gigabit internet service provider currently operating in multiple east and west coast markets providing services to commercial businesses, residential communities and multi-tenant properties. About Crestline Investors, Inc. Crestline Investors, Inc., founded in 1997 and based in Fort Worth, Texas, is an institutional alternative investment management firm. Crestline specializes in opportunistic and credit investments, including financing and restructuring solutions for mature private equity funds. In addition, the firm manages a multi-PM equity market-neutral hedge fund, and provides beta and hedging solutions for institutional clients. Headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, the company maintains affiliate offices in London, New York City, Toronto and Tokyo. For more information, please visit www.crestlineinvestors.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005213/en/

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The proposed talk came one day after Toledo was remembered at a vigil at the same location. It also came one day after Mayor Lori Lightfoot called for a new police foot-pursuit policy to be implemented by the Chicago Police Department before the start of the summer and demanded an investigation into the gun recovered at the scene where Toledo was killed.
Pope Francis reaches out to Fr Dionysius Mintoff, founder of a Centre for Peace and a shelter for migrants in Malta, on the occasion of his 90th birthday.

By Linda Bordoni

Dear father, I have just found out that the day before yesterday you turned 90! I send you my Best Wishes!



These simple words on a hand-written note, penned and signed by Pope Francis, most certainly made the day for Fr. Dionysius Mintoff, as he went about celebrating an important birthday at the Pope John XXIII Peace Laboratory he founded on the island of Malta.



In the note, written on 3 April, Pope Francis goes on to thank Fr Mintoff for his priestly and religious life as a Franciscan and for his life-long ministry in the Church. In his typical modest style, he asks the elderly Franciscan to pray for him before wishing him a blessed Easter and signing off with a simple: fraternally yours, Francesco.



The Pope John XXIII Peace Laboratory

Fr. Dionysius Mintoff established the Pope John XIII Peace Laboratory in 1971, following an appeal made by Pope John XXIII, who called for the world to reflect on peace.

As a Franciscan, and a Maltese who has personally seen the outcomes of war, I decided to open a space that advocates for peace education in Malta he explained some years ago in an interview.

And it is no secret that Fr. Mintoff had been hoping to personally welcome the Pope and show him around, during the Apostolic Visit to Malta that had been scheduled for 31 May 2020 and was postponed due to the pandemic.

The Peace Lab runs an extensive adult education programme. It has its headquarters at Hal Far, a site that was originally part of the HalFar airfield which saw intensive air combats during World War 2.

Its transformation from a site where war was waged to a Peace Centre carries strong symbolic meaning, and the fact that the Centre lives on thanks to the commitment of volunteers makes it a practical example of how a non-governmental, voluntary organization can do much in shaping consciences and promoting the common good.

Fr. Mintoffs deep belief that Malta was in need of an open and unrestricted meeting-place, where people of different backgrounds and faiths could come together to work for education, justice and human rights, continues to be at the basis of the work carried out at the Peace Lab.

Adapting to the times

The Lab has morphed with the needs of a changing world scenario, and today provides a place of welcome and integration for migrants who land on Malta during their journeys of hope towards wealthy European nations.

Since 2002, Peace Lab has been offering shelter to refugees and migrants. In the firm belief that we are all brothers and sisters, it includes a church, a mosque, and a prayer room for all religions, as well as a number of activities that flourish in an environment that is conducive to learning, inclusion and acceptance.
KONNOR PERRIN, Chariho boys lacrosse, freshman: Perrin established a school record for assists in a game with nine in the Chargers 22-0 win over Ponaganset. Perrin leads the team with 21 assists to go with 14 goals.

LILA RICH, Stonington girls track, senior: Rich won two events at the ECC Division I track meet. Rich was first in the high jump (5-0) and the pole vault (10-0) as the Bears finished third at the meet.

MADIGAN HILTZ, Westerly boys lacrosse, senior: Hiltz scored seven goals and had three assists in pair of victories for the Bulldogs. Hiltz has 17 goals and seven assists for the season.

ADDIE HAUPTMANN, Wheeler softball, junior: Hauptmann was 4 for 9 with a home run and six RBIs in two games. For the season, Hauptmann is hitting .617 with eight homers and 42 RBIs. She has 50 hits.

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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.  Nearly 80% of teachers, school, staff and child-care workers in pre-K through 12th-grade schools across the United States received at least one dose of the coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine so far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on Tuesday.

According to the CDCs latest estimates and survey data, about 8 million school staffers got at least their first shot of the vaccine by the end of March.

Our push to ensure that teachers, school staff and child-care workers were vaccinated during March has paid off and paved the way for safer in-person learning, said CDC Director Rochelle P. Walensky in a statement. CDC will build on the success of this program and work with our partners to continue expanding our vaccination efforts, as we work to ensure confidence in COVID-19 vaccines.

The announcement comes as President Joe Bidens administration makes the push to reopen schools across the country and return students to in-person learning by Bidens 100th day in office.

Last month, Biden directed all states to make pre-K through 12 teachers, school staff and child-care workers eligible for vaccination and prioritize vaccines for them within the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program during March. More than 2 million school staffers were vaccinated through this program during the month of March.

Additionally, 5 million to 6 million were vaccinated through their state programs through the end of March.

*** CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF CORONAVIRUS IN NEW YORK ***

The CDC doesnt consider vaccinations a requirement to reopen schools. Instead, it suggests schools follow safety and health measures like wearing face masks, social distancing and routine cleaning and disinfecting. According to guidance from the CDC, schools can open for fully in-person instruction if both positivity rates and case rates per 100,000 people remain low.

According to a school reopening tracker from the American Enterprise Institute, only 42% of school districts in the country are offering students full in-person instruction as of March 29. That percentage has been slowly going up since 28% on Jan. 4.

New York City has been reopening its school buildings to students in phases  starting with the citys youngest and most vulnerable students. Elementary, preschool and special education students went back to classrooms in mid-December. Middle school students went back to campus at the end of February, while high school students  the last to return  went back at the end of March.

Mayor Bill de Blasio also has an ambitious goal of returning all public school students to campus for the 2021-2022 school year, but it will all depend on the citys vaccination efforts and coronavirus numbers come September.

According to the city Department of Education (DOE), of the approximate 147,000 DOE staff systemwide, 65,000 got a COVID-19 vaccine  or about 44%.

This number includes pedagogical staff, like teachers, principals, assistant principals, social workers and guidance counselors  as well as non-pedagogical staff, like paraprofessionals, school food workers, school aides and administrative employees.

About 46,000 pedagogical staff out of 94,000, or about 49%, got at least one dose of the vaccine. About 19,000 non-pedagogical staff out of 53,000, or about 36%, got at least one dose.

The DOE said the actual number of staff members who have been vaccinated is larger than these counts, as these totals dont include staff who arent New York City residents, or who were vaccinated at sites outside of New York City, such as Long Island, Westchester, New Jersey and Connecticut.

School Zone: A new newsletter with the updates you need as our schools try to get back to normal. Enter your email address here and hit "subscribe" to receive this weekly newsletter:



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Declan Donnelly has been seen with wife Ali Astall for the first time since a 'professional' burglary gang targeted their 5 million home.

The TV presenter, 45, appeared to be putting on a brave face after the ordeal as he smiled while he and his other half, 43, took their dog Rocky for a walk in London on Wednesday.

He kept a tight hold of his pet pooch as he strolled around his neighbourhood, while Ali had her hands firmly in her pockets during the walk.

Outing: Declan Donnelly put on a brave face on Wednesday as he and wife Ali Astall were seen stepping out for the first time since 'professional' burglary gang targeted their 5 million home

Dec put on a casual display as he wore a black jacket over a logo T-shirt, which he teamed with dark jeans and black trainers.

Ali, meanwhile, looked effortlessly chic in a black longline coat that she wore over a pair of grey gym leggings with a camouflage-print.

She pulled her blonde locks back into a tight ponytail, and she shielded her eyes with a pair of chic shades.

Stroll: Dec kept a tight hold of his pet pooch as he strolled around his neighbourhood, while Ali had her hands firmly in her pockets during the walk

Keeping spirits high: Dec appeared to be putting on a brave face after the ordeal as he was seen smiling whilst he and his other half, 43, took their dog for a walk

Casual: Ali looked effortlessly chic in a black longline coat that she wore over a pair of grey gym leggings with a camouflage-print

It was revealed on Wednesday that Dec's 5 million home was targeted while the TV star was asleep upstairs with his wife and young daughter.

Police rushed to his West London home shortly after 1am on Tuesday following a 999 call.

Dec - one half of presenting duo Ant and Dec - his wife Ali, and their two-year-old daughter Isla were all asleep upstairs in the seven-bedroom home.

Shock: It was revealed on Wednesday that Dec's 5million home was targeted by a burglars

Incident: Dec - one half of presenting duo Ant and Dec - his wife Ali, and their two-year-old daughter Isla were all asleep upstairs in the seven-bedroom home

Outing: Dec's TV partner Ant McPartlin was seen with fiancee Anne-Marie Corbett walking their dogs earlier in the day

The suspects had botched an attempt to rip open the iron gates at the front of the property - which was purchased by Dec for 1.9 million in 2006.

They fled in a car shortly before officers arrived.

The Donnellys were only aware that the burglars - understood to have been a 'professional' gang - targeted their home when the police told them.

A source told The Sun: 'Dec and Ali weren't disturbed. The first they realised anything was amiss was in the morning.'

Safety first: On Wednesday, a locksmith wearing a facemask and gloves was seen fixing the iron gates outside Dec's home, reinforcing his security following the scare

Target: The suspects had botched an attempt to rip open the iron gates at the front of the property, which was purchased by Dec (pictured with Ali in 2018) for 1.9million in 2006

'The robbers couldn't force the gates open and that's what made them give up, and flee.'

Met Police officers conducted inquiries along the street today and forensic checks were carried out.

The force confirmed that the suspects left the scene prior to police arriving and there was no evidence to suggest they gained access to the house. No arrests have been made.

On Wednesday, a locksmith wearing a facemask and gloves was seen fixing the iron gates outside Dec's home, reinforcing his security following the scare.

Terrifying: The Donnellys were only aware that the burglars - understood to have been a 'professional' gang - targeted their home when the police told them
DHAKA: At least 20 people were injured in a blast at the residence of a Bangladesh municipality Mayor.

The incident took place at about 9 p.m. on Tuesday night when Haji Abdus Salam, the Mayor of Mirkadim municipality in Munshiganj district, was attending a meeting with councillors and other officials on the second floor of the building. The injured people included four councillors and the Mayor's wife. Salam, however, remained safe.

The injured are claiming that the incident took place due to the blast of a bomb thrown by miscreants while the investigating police said it could occur from gas leakage. Locals said, they heard screams coming from the mayors house and rushed to the spot to find fire.

Meanwhile, physicians of the Dhaka hospital told the media that one of the patients has been taken to Intensive Care Unit (ICU) with 60 per cent burn injuries.

Twelve of the injured were immediately taken to the Sheikh Hasina National Institute of Burn and Plastic Surgery in Dhaka, while one person is undergoing treatment at Munshiganj General Hospital.

Abu Bakar Siddique, officer-in-charge of Munshiganj Sadar Police Station, said the reason behind the blast could not be ascertained immediately.

Israeli Parliament: Newly-elected Israeli lawmakers were sworn in amid uncertainties

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says US seeks to increase scale of climate finance

North Macedonia surpass 4,000 Covid-19-related deaths: Health Ministry
7 April 2021

AfriAg Global plc

("AfriAg" or the "Company")



Posting of Supplementary Admission Document

The Company announces, further to the announcement of 19 March 2021, a supplementary admission document is being posted to shareholders today.

Pursuant to Apollon's option to acquire 90% of the stock of Doc's Place under a Right to Purchase Understanding ("Doc's Place RPU"), and Apollon's exclusive right to purchase the assets and assume certain liabilities and obligations of CBev under a Right to Purchase Understanding ("CBev RPU"), an additional risk factor is being brought to Shareholder's attention.

A copy of the Chairman's letter, including the additional risk factor, contained in the supplementary admission document, in the event that either the Doc's Place RPU or CBev RPU is triggered, are set out in full below in this announcement without material amendment or adjustment.

Availability of the Supplementary Admission Document

The Supplementary Admission Document will be made available shortly online at www.afriagglobal.com.

The Directors of the Company accept responsibility for the contents of this announcement.

-ENDS-

For additional information please contact:

AfriAg Global PLC

David Lenigas lenigas@monaco-capital.com

Apollon Formularies

Tel: +44 207 907 9314

Kevin Sheil kevin@apollon.org.uk

Stene Jacobs stene@apollon.org.uk

Peterhouse Capital Limited (Corporate Adviser)

Tel: +44 207 220 9795

Guy Miller gm@peterhousecapital.com

Blytheweigh (Financial PR/IR-London)

Tel: +44 207 138 3204

Tim Blythe tim.blythe@blytheweigh.com

Megan Ray megan.ray@blytheweigh.com





AFRIAG GLOBAL PLC

(a company incorporated and registered in the Isle of Man under the Isle of Man Companies Act 2006 with registered number 002845V)



PART I

LETTER FROM THE CHAIRMAN OF AFRIAG GLOBAL PLC



Directors: RegisteredOffice:

David Lenigas 34 North Quay

Hamish Harris Douglas, Isle of Man, IM1 4LB

Donald Strang

7 April 2021

Dear Shareholder

PROPOSED OFFER TO ACQUIRE THE ENTIRE ISSUED SHARE CAPITAL OF APOLLON FORMULARIES LTD

APPROVAL OF WAIVER OF OBLIGATIONS UNDER RULE 9 OF THE CITY CODE ON TAKEOVERS AND MERGERS

CHANGE OF NAME TO APOLLON FORMULARIES PLC

PLACING AND SUBSCRIPTION OF 50,000,000 NEW ORDINARY SHARES AT 5 PENCE PER SHARE

NOTICE OF GENERAL MEETING

Introduction

Since the posting of the Admission Document dated 17 March 2021, I am writing to bring to your attention an additional risk factors pertaining to the option to acquire Doc's Place International, Inc. and/or CBev Ventures, Inc., with regards to the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.

Doc's Place International, Inc.

As stated in the Admission Document, Apollon has an option to acquire 90% of the stock of Doc's Place under a Right to Purchase Understanding ("Doc's Place RPU"), a company incorporated and existing in the State of Georgia, USA, by 30 June 2021. Such 90% stock interest is owned by Stephen D. Barnhill, M.D., who serves as Doc's Place's sole director and Chief Executive Officer. Stephen D. Barnhill, M.D., is also Chairman and CEO Apollon Formularies, Inc., a U.S. affiliate of AFJ to which he also serves as President and director. Doc's Place has established and operates a Wellness Centre and Resort which is described as being a component of a Global Centre of Excellence for Medical Cannabis Therapy. In addition to such interest and right to purchase, there exists a financing arrangement whereby Apollon has paid and loaned money to Doc's Place for the leasing and development of property and facilities for the establishment of the Wellness Centre. AFJ leases space to and obtains services from Doc's Place in order to be the exclusive medical cannabis retail dispensary and treatment operation located on the premises and to have a destination for patients and their families to have convenient access to accommodations, care and amenities while undergoing treatment in Jamaica. Apollon is also entitled to 95% of the net profits of the business of Doc's Place. Doc's Place, which currently has eight treatment rooms, is approved by the SRC and Ministry of Science, Energy and Technology for the treatment of medical cannabis patients.

CBev Ventures, Inc.

As stated in the Admission Document, Apollon has an exclusive right to purchase the assets and assume certain liabilities and obligations of CBev, a company incorporated and registered in the State of Georgia, USA, as pertain its business under a Right to Purchase Understanding("CBev RPU") by 30 June 2021. CBev is a beverage company that develops, markets and distributes functional and craft beverages in the legal CBD and medical cannabis industries. Stephen D. Barnhill, Jr. is the sole director and Chief Executive Officer of CBev and per the CBev RPU will become a senior vice president of Apollon responsible for leading its worldwide functional beverage division and enter into an employment agreement. Apollon has also provided CBev with  64,571 of funding per such arrangement.

Additional Risk Factor pertaining to Doc's Place and/or CBeb Ventures, Inc., in the event that either the Doc's Place RPU or CBev RPU is triggered

Further investments by the Company in the medical cannabis and CBD wellness sector and the exercise of its right to purchase in respect of either Doc's Place International Inc. and/or CBev Ventures, Inc. may be precluded by the laws in force from time to time in the United Kingdom

The Directors will take all precautions to ensure that:

- the activities of the Company are in compliance with the laws that are in force in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland from to time to time ("UK Legislation") and the laws, regulations and guidelines of the jurisdictions in which they choose to operate; and

- the Company does not contravene POCA 2002.

The Directors will also ensure that the activities of any companies invested in by the Company in the future are and remain in compliance with the laws, regulations and guidelines of the jurisdictions in which they operate.

However there can be no guarantee that the Company will be able to successfully complete financial, legal, regulatory and technical due diligence in respect of any target company in which it is contemplating an investment including without limitation the right to purchase which it holds in respect of Doc's Place International Inc. and/or CBev Ventures, Inc. If the Company fails to obtain:

1. an appropriate and unqualified opinion from suitably experienced and qualified local counsel in the jurisdiction in which any investment targets operate that its activities are in compliance with the local laws, regulations and guidelines; and

2. an appropriate and unqualified opinion from suitably qualified and experienced counsel in England and Wales that the investment targets do not breach UK Legislation, including, without limit, POCA 2002,

then the Company will not be able to complete the investment into such target companies including, without limit, Doc's Place International Inc. and/or CBev Ventures, Inc. This may have material adverse effects on the business, financial condition, results and/or future operations of the Company.

No other significant change

Save as disclosed in this Supplementary Admission Document, there have been no significant changes affecting any matter contained in the Admission Document and no significant new matter has arisen, the inclusion of information in respect of which would have been required to be included in the Admission Document if it had arisen at the time of its preparation.

Recommendation

The Existing Directors, who have been so advised by Peterhouse, consider that the Proposals and Resolutions set out in the notice of General Meeting are fair and reasonable, and in the best interests of the Company and its Shareholders as a whole and accordingly, unanimously recommend Shareholders to vote in favour of the Resolutions to be proposed at the General Meeting. In providing advice to the Directors, Peterhouse has taken into account the Directors' commercial assessments.

Accordingly, the Existing Directors recommend that the Independent Shareholders vote in favour of the Resolutions to be proposed at the General Meeting, as they intend to do in respect of their own holdings of Ordinary Shares which amount, in aggregate, to 2,040,000 Ordinary Shares representing 6.43 per cent. of the Existing Ordinary Shares.

Yours faithfully

David Lenigas

Executive Chairman





DEFINITIONS

The following definitions apply throughout this document, unless the context requires otherwise:
Staten Island, NY  The NYPD, the Richmond County District Attorneys Office and Assemblyman Charles Fall (D-North Shore) will sponsor the New York City Gun Buy-Back Program on Saturday, April 24, in Mariners Harbor.

The event encourages New Yorkers to trade guns for cash.

New Yorkers will receive a $200 pre-paid card for operable handguns and assault rifles. For rifles, shotguns and airguns, New Yorkers will receive a $25 pre-paid card.

According to the NYPD, no questions will be asked.

The program will take place at the Calvary Chapel, 30 Maple Parkway, from 10 a.m to 4 p.m.

Those attending the event must follow social distancing guidelines.
Firm Announces 2023 Goal and Increase in ESG AUM

ATLANTA, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Invesco Ltd. (NYSE: IVZ), a leading global asset management firm, announced today its 2020 Investment Stewardship Annual Report, which provides a detailed view into company engagements, including case studies, Invesco's proxy voting approach and social equity and climate change focus areas. The report also outlines Invesco's new commitment to integrate Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) into all investments by 2023. Currently, the firm has ESG integrated into 75% of its investments and aims to integrate ESG into 100% of all investments by 2023.

The report highlights that Invesco managed $34.5 billion in ESG AUM last year, up from $21 billion in 2019. Globally, Invesco manages more than 40 commercially available ESG dedicated products.

"The past year has been a time of uncertainty; however, our focus on corporate governance and being good stewards has not wavered. We continue to remain committed to engaging with clients in a meaningful way to help navigate short term challenges, long term risks and new opportunities," said Cathrine de Coninck-Lopez, Global Head of ESG for Invesco. "ESG is integrated into everything we do, and it goes to the heart of the way we are working with our clients to realize the value they seek."

The report is focused on Invesco's ESG Philosophy, which can be broken down into three core aspects:

Materiality: The consideration of ESG issues on a risk- adjusted basis and in economic context. Invesco does not view ESG aspects as constraints, aside from certain restrictions driven by legal obligations in certain territories.

ESG momentum: The concept of improving ESG performance over time, is particularly interesting. Invesco finds that companies that are improving in terms of their ESG practices may enjoy favourable financial performance in the longer term.

Engagement: Invesco takes its responsibility as active owners very seriously and sees engagement as an opportunity to encourage continual improvement. Dialogue with portfolio companies is a core part of the investment process for its fundamental teams. Taking advantage of Invesco's scale, the firm often participates in board-level dialogue and is instrumental in giving shareholder views on management, corporate strategy, transparency, and capital allocation as well as wider ESG aspects.

The 2020 Stewardship Report highlights the Company's key advancements in ESG since its last published report as well as impactful initiatives underway, including:

Story continues

Proxy Voting: Invesco's Policy Statement on Global Corporate Governance and Proxy Voting (Global Proxy Policy) sets forth the framework of Invesco's broad philosophy and guiding principles that inform the proxy voting practices of the firm's investors around the world. Invesco takes its responsibility as active investors very seriously and views proxy voting as an integral part of its investment management responsibilities. Last year, Invesco voted in 10,399 meetings, on 247,465 resolutions across 74 markets. To leverage the engagement and deep dialogue of our active investors, our passive strategies will typically vote in line with the majority holder of the active equity shares held by Invesco. As a result, the impact of our vote is amplified giving our active equity managers even greater clout with their portfolio companies.

Client Engagement: Engagement with company management and proxy voting play a fundamental role in Invesco's efforts to help manage, protect, and enhance the value of Invesco's clients' investments. Therefore, Invesco may question or challenge a company about ESG issues that could have an impact on future value. Before and during investment in a company, many of the firm's investment teams will engage with company management on a number of issues, including those that are ESG-related. As a result, Invesco held over 2,000 engagement meetings with companies during 2020 calendar year, an increase of over 100% compared with the prior one-year period. The top 5 topics for Global ESG team engagements and the percentage of meetings where the topic was addressed were as follows:

Industry Engagement: Invesco is an active member and supporter of several external organizations as well as participants in various industry advocacy groups. Last year, Invesco became a signatory of Climate Action 100+, a partner of the Climate Bond initiative, a supporter of the Transition Pathway Initiative (TPI), a member of the One Planet Asset Managers (OPAM) initiative and signed the Confluence Philosophy Belonging Pledge to Advance Racial Equity.

Climate Change is a key focus area for Invesco and its clients. Invesco has committed to the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures and is part of the solution by supporting and investing in companies that are allocating capital towards the transition. In 2020, Invesco supported over 55% of shareholder proposals requesting that companies report on financial and physical risks of climate change on the company's operations and requests for greater transparency regarding the company's oversight, control mechanisms, and reduction goals of its GHG emissions, including methane emissions.

Social Equity is another key area Invesco is passionate about. As a corporate entity, Invesco has global initiatives that include a Women's Network, an LGBT Network and a Black Professionals' Network, among others. Invesco is working toward a goal of having at least 35% female representation among our senior leaders by 2022  we are currently at 33% globally. Invesco understands the need for greater diversity at the enterprise level and is continuing to increase our efforts at every level across functions at the firm.

ESGIntel is a proprietary tool built by Invesco's Global ESG research team in collaboration with our Technology, Strategy, Innovation and Planning (SIP) team providing ESG insights, metrics, data points and direction of change. ESGintel provides a way for Invesco to have a proprietary view on ESG risks and opportunities related to our investment companies.

The 2020 Stewardship Report can be found on the Company's website.

About Invesco Ltd.

Invesco Ltd. (Ticker NYSE: IVZ) is a global independent investment management firm dedicated to delivering an investment experience that helps people get more out of life. With offices in more than 20 countries, our distinctive investment teams deliver a comprehensive range of active, passive and alternative investment capabilities. Invesco managed $1.3 trillion in assets on behalf of clients worldwide as of January 31, 2021. For more information, visit www.invesco.com/corporate.

Contact: Gina Simonis gina.simonis@invesco.com 917-715-8339

Cision

View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/invesco-publishes-2020-annual-investment-stewardship-report-301263926.html

SOURCE Invesco Ltd.
Oh Se-hoon of the main opposition People Power Party, center, sighs in relief at his party's office in Yeouido, Seoul's Yeongdeungpo District, after news that he has outpaced by a large gap his opponent Park Young-sun from the ruling Democratic Party in vote-counting for the Seoul mayoral election race that began on April 7. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk





Oh Se-hoon of the main opposition People Power Party (PPP) is expected to win the Seoul mayoral seat by a solid margin in Wednesday's by-elections, seen as a major bellwether for next year's presidential election, an exit poll showed.







Oh defeated his rival from the ruling Democratic Party (DP) Park Young-sun 59 percent to 37.7 percent in the exit poll, jointly released by three broadcasters: KBS, MBC and SBS.







The Seoul mayoral by-election was called after the previous mayor, Park Won-soon affiliated with the DP, apparently took his own life in July last year in the face of sexual harassment allegations raised by a female subordinate.







The Busan mayoralty, as well as 19 other regional public posts, are also up for grabs in the by-elections.






[April 07, 2021] VTG Awarded $188M NSWC Port Hueneme TI16 Contract to Modernize Combat Systems Across the Fleet

CHANTILLY, Va., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- VTG, an industry-leading provider of force modernization and digital transformation solutions, announced that it has been awarded the Technical Insertion 16 Sustainment, Installation, Procurement and Engineering Services contract by the Naval Surface Warfare Center Port Hueneme Division, a field activity of the Naval Sea Systems Command. The indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract has a potential value of $188 million and a five-year period of performance. "VTG has a proud legacy of closely collaborating with the Navy to engineer the next generation of sea power," said John Hassoun, VTG president and CEO. "The TI16 program enables VTG to build upon that legacy, expanding our technical expertise, strengthening our partnership with NSWC Port Hueneme and NAVSEA, and  most importantly  modernizing the fleet." The TI16 program is the U.S. Navy's enterprise approach to modernizing combat systems across the surface leet  most notably the Aegis Combat System  and includes all cruisers and destroyers, aircraft carriers, and amphibious ships. TI16 also enables the Navy to introduce the latest commercial off-the-shelf technologies and open architecture designs into its combat systems.



VTG will leverage its robust, full lifecycle combat systems engineering capabilities to fulfill TI16 program requirements. The company currently provides prime contract warfare, control, and C5I engineering services to the NAVSEA Naval Sea Systems Engineering Directorate and has over 50 years of experience installing and integrating advanced C5ISR systems aboard every existing U.S. Navy surface ship and submarine class. Most recently, VTG completed the successful installation and integration of the ODIN directed energy laser weapon system aboard two Arleigh Burke class destroyers. The company will also leverage its growing digital and software engineering capabilities. Earlier this month, VTG announced that it had begun work on a prime contract to develop the future state of the Navy Operational Architecture and to optimize fleet interoperability. The company also introduced the VTG Battle Lab, an industry-integrated model-based systems engineering environment for next-generation warfare systems. About VTG

VTG delivers force modernization and digital transformation solutions that expand America's competitive advantage in the modern battlespace. Headquartered in Chantilly, Virginia, VTG provides full lifecycle engineering for naval, aerospace, network, and digital requirements. Whether at sea, in the air, on land, or in cyberspace, VTG delivers Tomorrow's Transformation Today. For more information, visit us at www.VTGdefense.com.

View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/vtg-awarded-188m-nswc-port-hueneme-ti16-contract-to-modernize-combat-systems-across-the-fleet-301263699.html SOURCE VTG

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Comment by the Press Service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belarus in connection with the statement of the US Embassy on March 25, 2021

In connection with the statement of the US Embassy on March 25, 2021, we express our sincere gratitude to the American side for finally showing their willingness to transfer bilateral rhetoric into a constructive channel and for congratulations on a significant date in the history of our country. We will only welcome the spread of this practice on public holidays as well.

We acknowledge our mistake and avail ourselves of this opportunity to apologize for the lack of congratulations on the recent 160th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution of the Confederate States of America, whose flag is still dear to many Americans. At the same time, the BLM movement throughout the country has tens of millions of members.

Unfortunately, today the American society is deeply divided, as J. Biden states: My whole soul is in this. Bringing America together, uniting our people, uniting our nation ... I know the forces that divide us are deep and they are real ... let's start afresh, all of us. Let's begin to listen to one another again, hear one another, see one another  "

We also support the aspirations of the American people for a better future  on this day and every day! Therefore, we believe that only genuine inclusive dialogue will help the American nation to unite at this difficult moment in history. As a disinterested gesture of goodwill, Belarus, having experience as a platform for negotiations within the TCG, is ready to offer its services in organizing such a process. We will provide any assistance we can, including with the engagement of our partners from integration structures.

Although more than two centuries have passed since independence, recent events in the United States show that the Americans struggle for freedom persists. Currently, hundreds of thousands of Americans of all ages are standing up for the right to determine the destiny of their country. In attempting to have their voices heard, many pay a heavy price as the administration resorts to lethal force to shoot several people to maintain its grip on power and to fix the election results.

We admire the courage and determination of American heroes, including J.Assange, E.Snowden and Ch.Manning, who sacrificed almost everything for the sake of true freedom and harmony in American society.

Belarus, together with the American people, is looking forward to the day when an ordinary American will be able to walk near the Capitol without let or hindrance.

We are grateful to the appointed US Ambassador to Belarus Mrs. J.Fisher for her invaluable advice to the entire Belarusian people when and how we need to hold elections. Of course, our Belarusian primitive and scant thinking would never fulfill itself to solve this issue. As a sign of exceptional gratitude, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is ready to accept Her Excellency's application for Belarusian citizenship out of turn in order to include her in the list of voters and give her the opportunity to vote. The same can be done without citizenship on any electronic platform, avowed by Mrs. J.Fisher.

We cannot ignore Americas helping hand in conducting the elections. Such achievements of the American electoral system as voting by mail and the electoral college, instead of a direct expression of will, can be demanded and studied by the Belarusian side.

Being deeply inspired by the US attention to the fate of Belarus, as a response, we can make a disinterested contribution to the development of agriculture in Alaska and the effective development of its lands. In this regard, we are ready to consider the possibility of joint management of this territory.

We could deploy the Belarusian construction organizations located in the region to transfer experience and help residents of the southern states in overcoming the consequences of the natural disaster.

We sincerely wish the American people unity, and to climb the stairs of the American Dream without stumbling.

We hope that the positive trend in our relations will continue and we will jointly come to the moment when we can happily meet the US Sixth Fleet at the maritime borders of Belarus.

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Recipe Roots: Vancouver > Ventura, California > San Francisco

Growing up in 1980s California, Evan Blooms idea of Jewish food wasnt limited to the Ashkenazi culinary canon of his familys roots. There was brisket on the family table, of course, kugel, matzo brei, and trips to delis in Los Angeles that seeded his love of pastrami and rye. But the idea of Jewish flavors and dishes extended beyond the common canon.

Salmon is just as Jewish to me, Evan, who co-owns Wise Sons explains. My mom was born and raised in Vancouver, Canada, where salmon is, er, king. We ate salmon like Americans eat chicken: all the time, he writes in the new cookbook Eat Something: A Wise Sons Book for Jews Who Like Food and Food Lovers Who Like Jews.

Evans mother Linda would poach salmon in the oven or wrap it in foil and poach it in the backyard on the grill  always gas, never charcoal. Were Jews, Evan laughs. Its more convenient. Its that idea that 365 days a year, you can pop out to the patio and throw something on the grill.

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The salmon in the Bloom family is finished with sliced lemons and dill  a task Evan helped with before he was old enough to cook. To Evan, that was Jewish, especially with those flavors, he adds.

The familys love of salmon comes from his mothers roots in Canada, he says. After leaving Czarist Russia to come to North America, Evans great-grandparents settled in rural Saskatchewan where Evans grandmother was raised as one of nine children. Later, she moved to Vancouver, where Evans aunt and cousins still live. Whenever we would go visit, this was a dish we found on the table, Evan adds.

Today, the dish is in regular rotation in Evans home in the Bay Area. He often makes extra so he can use the leftover fish, as his mom did when he was growing up, to make salmon burgers, salmon salad, or as the topping for a bagel. His father Stuart would also take advantage of leftovers, taking the skin of the salmon and crisping it in the toaster oven for a snack.

Creatively using leftovers is a hallmark of the Bloom family kitchens. My mom used the word  I think its Yiddish  ungepatchke[t], Evan says. Very few things she made were the same every time. It was a little of this, a little of that. Whatever was in the fridge became something else. And thats how I work at home now.

To us, that too feels Jewish.

Editors Note: Evans recipe for homemade pastrami  and the story of how he came to own a deli  is also part of our archive. Check it out here.
Kabul, April 7 : At least 59 people were killed in insurgent activities and clashes in Afghanistan in the past 24 hours, a local independent war monitoring group said on Wednesday.

"Within the past 24 hours, our team has documented 59 deaths, including eight civilians, nine Afghan National Defense and Security Forces members, and 42 Taliban militants," Xinhua news agency quoted the group, Reduction in Violence (RiV), as saying in a statement.

The group said that there were also 30 civilians, 38 Taliban militants, and seven security forces members wounded in the cited period.

The casualties were reported in 15 violent incidents that took place in seven of the country's 34 provinces, according to the RiV figures.
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Fluor Corporation (FLR) said Stork, a Fluor company, was awarded a 2-year contract for inspections, surveillance and quality assurance services by Babcock International Group, covering various vendor sites in the United Kingdom, including Babcock's Rosyth site, as well as other global locations. Over the next two years, Stork will provide independent third-party inspection, surveillance and quality assurance services to assist Babcock International Group in complying with regulatory and legal requirements. Stork's UK office in Aberdeen will lead the work. The project began in January 2021. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
Vladimir Litvinenko, the rector at the St. Petersburg State Mining University who chaired the committee that awarded Russian President Vladimir Putin his doctorate in 1997, has become one of the new members of the Forbes billionaire's list.

In its annual rating of the worlds wealthiest people, released on April 6, Forbes estimated Litvinenko's assets at $1.5 billion.

Forbes said Litvinenko's wealth jumped on the back of a rise in the share price of Moscow-based PhosAgro, a chemical holding company that produces fertilizers and phosphates.

The 65-year-old Litvinenko owns almost 21 percent of the company.

"The company's share prices increased from 2,443 rubles ($31.8) per share (April 6, 2020) to 4,163 rubles ($54,2) per share (April 6, 2021)," Forbes wrote.

Litvinenko, who has been rector at the university since 1994, also led Putin's election campaign in St. Petersburg on three different occasions.

In 2006, researchers at the Brookings Institution in Washington who studied Putin's thesis said they had found that 16 of 20 pages of the thesis's key section had been either copied in full or with minimal changes from a textbook titled Strategic Planning And Public Policy, written by University of Pittsburgh professors David I. Cleland and William R. King in 1979 and translated into Russian in 1982.

Putin's thesis was titled Strategic Planning Of The Reproduction Of The Mineral Resource Base Of A Region Under Conditions Of The Formation Of Market Relations.

In a 2006 interview with the magazine Vlast, Litvinenko said that he had "no doubts" that Putin wrote his thesis himself.

Litvinenkos daughter, Olga Litvinenko, told RFE/RL in 2018 that her father wrote the thesis for Putin after he became the university's rector with the support of Putin, who was at the St. Petersburg mayor's office at the time.

Putin has never commented publicly on the allegations.
A vial of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine is pictured in a pharmacy in Boulogne Billancourt, outside Paris, in this March 15 photo. The Korean government signaled that it could place a hold on exports of the AstraZeneca vaccine manufactured in the country amid a global vaccine shortage, but many health experts said the measure would be unrealistic. AP-Yonhap



By Jun Ji-hye



The government has hinted that it could halt exports of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine manufactured here amid mounting concerns over a global vaccine shortage.



Such a move comes amid growing "vaccine nationalism" around the world, with India and the European Union (EU), among others, having placed restrictions on exports of vaccines, triggering difficulties for many other countries in securing sufficient doses.



Jeong Yoo-jin, a senior official who oversees the procurement of COVID-19 vaccines here, said Tuesday that the government was "considering all possible means to secure ample vaccines at the right time."



The comments were in response to a reporter's question about whether the government was considering curtailing exports of the AstraZeneca vaccine, produced at SK Bioscience's facility in Andong, North Gyeongsang Province.



Jeong's latest comments show a change in the government's position, as she said March 30 that the government was "not considering" halting exports of vaccines.



"There is a need to review the possible impact that a halt of exports could have on Korea as it could have the undue effect of exerting an adverse influence in the country importing other vaccines," Jeong said at the time.



Restrictions on exports of COVID-19 vaccines have recently become a hot topic around the world after India, a major supplier of the AstraZeneca vaccine, placed a temporary hold on all exports of the vaccine to meet domestic demand as infections there have been rising.



The EU has also toughened rules on exporting vaccines, requiring companies to seek export authorization, as part of measures to check if companies are respecting their supply commitments to the EU, according to foreign news agencies.



Experts here, however, said that it would be hard for the government to actually place a hold on exports of the vaccine, given that SK Bioscience is a contract manufacturer of AstraZeneca.



They said if the administration decided to use the vaccine manufactured here for its own residents, no global pharmaceutical firms would want to sign contracts with Korean companies to manufacture their products.



In addition  from an ethical point of view  Korea is a member of the World Health Organization, and vaccines produced here have been supplied to developing countries via the COVAX Facility, the World Health Organization-led global vaccine distribution project.



"If Korea actually implements restrictions on exports of the vaccine, the country would be severely criticized in the international community," Kim Woo-joo, an infectious disease professor at Korea University, said.



Experts added that India's COVID-19 situation has been much more serious than that of Korea as the former has reported some 100,000 cases on a daily basis.



Korea added 668 virus cases, including 653 local infections, Tuesday, raising the total caseload to 106,898, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, Wednesday.



This marked a sharp rise from 478 identified the previous day, and the largest since 674 daily infections reported Jan. 7.


I never met my grandfather, Lui Lee. First name Lee. Last name Lui. He came to the United States as a teenager, having grown up as a poor farmer in Southern China. His family saved up money so their son could go to the golden mountain  America.

When he passed through the foggy Golden Gate strait of San Francisco on the SS Asia in the early 1900s  the big red bridge wouldnt be built until decades later  just the choppy, cold waters of the bay greeted him. He hit landfall at the U.S. Immigration Station at Angel Island.

There was a medical check. Also a long interrogation. He was asked where he lived in China, where the corner store was, and the location of parks and relatives. Then came the question: whats your name?

Loy.

Luy?

Loy.

Loo-eee?

Loy.

The immigration officer settled on Lui.

Grandpa Lui headed up to the barracks which sat on the hill on the right. The bunks at night were cold. He slept there for weeks, waiting to see if he could enter the U.S. Some people waited up to two years. Some, with no laws that gave them recourse, died in the guarded barracks.

This was one of Americas first detention centers. And it was created to keep Asians out.

Carved into the barracks walls 100 years ago  translated here by Pacific Link, KQEDs Asian Education Initiative  are reminders left by some of the hundreds of thousands of immigrants processed at the Ellis Island of the West:

Imprisoned in the wooden building day after day,

My freedom withheld; how can I bear to talk about it?

I look to see who is happy but they only sit quietly.

I am anxious and depressed and cannot fall asleep.

[] Nights are long and the pillow cold; who can pity my loneliness?

Swap wooden for plastic covered and youve modernized the poem. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act described these unwanted Asian immigrants. The preamble read: In the opinion of the Government of the United States the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities...

Chinese laborers were taking jobs in construction, restaurants, and laundries  and brought crime. A poster announcing the acts passage read, Hip! Hurrah! The White man is on Top. There was rampant anti-Asian sentiment and related hate incidents.

The U.S. views on the Chinese are interchangeable from the 19th and 21st century. Also mostly interchangeable, the word Chinese or Asian with Latino or Hispanic. What applied 150 years ago, applies today.

Today there are over 200 detention centers in the U.S. Today the death rate of those held in these centers is about 12 per 100,000 detainees, the highest rate in 15 years. Today the average stay is around three weeks, and as long as two years or more.

Lets go back to a poem carved on the walls from the early 1900s:

America has power, but not justice.

In prison, we were victimized as if we were guilty.

Given no opportunity to explain, it was really brutal.

I bow my head in reflection but there is nothing I can do.

My grandfather lied to immigration officers. He was not Lui Lee. He bought fake papers. His real name was Wong Lee. He was the start of what currently is some 1 million unauthorized immigrants from Asia in the U.S. today. I often say he broke the law because he wanted a better life for the grandchildren he would never meet.

My grandfather took his secret to the grave. For millions of Asian Americans, it wasnt until they visited the graves that they realized their families crimes. Tombstones often having their fake names in English and their real names in Chinese.

My father found out when he was in his 40s that he was not a Lui, but a Wong. I was a teenager and realized my name was not Richard Lui. It is Richard Wong. I was not who I thought I was.

Next month will mark the 100th anniversary of the first immigration quotas set in this country. Now, while our country grapples with a realignment of values after a long and far-reaching stay-at-home period, many people are realizing they arent who they thought they were.

Our nation must see our forgotten stories. Our history classes must embrace our imperfect past. We must tear down the structures of how we think about new people. And we must remember to take the time to compose new poems - and remember the writings on the wall.

Richard Lui is an anchor and journalist for MSNBC / NBC News. This piece is adapted from his book, Enough About Me: The Unexpected Power of Selflessness from HarperCollins/Zondervan. He is a board member of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation, a 501c3 that focuses on the history of the former immigration on Angel Island. NBC News Researcher Alex Lo contributed to this piece.
The landscape of sloping vineyards on the banks of the River Mosel in Germany is a characteristic symbol of a region, which cannot be understood without its wine: the Mosel wine region. Tourists from all over the world, especially from the neighbouring countries of Belgium, Luxembourg, and The Netherlands visit the area in search of mountains and wine. However, the lack of new generations and the increase in temperatures and short heavy summer rainfall events caused by climate change endanger the production of wine.

In this sense, the European H2020 Diverfarming Project began in 2018 the diversification of a steep-slope, very stony (up to 70%) ecological vineyard. In the majority of the vineyards, the introduction of herbaceous species for plant cover has become widespread, with herbaceous plants in the alleys between the grapevines, but beneath them, it is combated with herbicides or mechanically. With the aim of reducing soil erosion, increasing soil fertility, and mitigating the effects of greenhouse-gas emissions, a team of researchers from the Trier University (Germany) coordinated by Professor Manuel Seeger and Professor Soren Thiele-Bruhn put into practice the introduction of aromatic plants (thyme and oregano) beneath the grapevines of the 'Weingut Dr. Frey' wine-making company.

After three years of diversification the team formed by the researchers Felix Dittrich, Thomas Iserloh, Roman Huppi, Sophie Ogan, Soren Thiele-Bruhn, Manuel Seeger, and the winemaking entrepreneur Cord Treseler have published the first results of the diversification on the productivity of the grapevines and the quality of the wine. These results show the potential possibilities that these practices have since they have not generated negative effects in the wine production.

Although a certain amount of competition was observed between the aromatic cover and the grapevines for water and nutrients, these effects far from being negative, give rise to thinking that they may have a positive effect on the quality of the wine, as the researcher Manuel Seeger comments. This is related to the reduction of certain nutrients: while the availability of nitrate had no change in the crop diversification, the ammonium, phosphorus, and potassium levels did decrease in the uppermost area of the soil (the first 10 cm). However, it is known that there is a certain relationship between available potassium and wine quality. The results of this study point out that a change in the availability of the mineral acidity of the soil would seem to generate an increase in the quality of these wines. Moreover, the principle of yield compensation was observed: although the yield of the grapevine is slightly lower, this is compensated by an increase in quality.

The study highlights the extreme events at climate level that have taken place over the three years of the diversification. In 2018, storms produced one month's volume of rainfall in the zone in just one hour; whilst in 2019 and 2020 there were record high temperatures and drought. In this way, it is clear that the availability of water and the climate conditions are the most determining factor for the productivity of the vineyard. Despite that being the case, if we take the extreme conditions into account, the diversification has had no negative effects on the yield of the crop or on the quality of the wine. In standardised situations and with the long-term stabilisation of the diversification this opens the door to an increase in profits thanks to the diversification.

The conservation of the characteristic landscape of the zone, the reduction in contaminant emissions, and the increase in biodiversity both in the soil as well as in other organisms such as insects will contribute added value to this sector, which is currently open to changes that enable it to face this lack of a generational substitution and the scenarios which the effects of climate change are expected to bring. All of this is to save the future of the Mosel wine.

###

Diverfarming is a project financed by the Horizon 2020 Programme of the European Commission, within the challenge of "Food Security, Sustainable Agriculture and Forestry, Marine, Maritime and Inland Water Research and the Bioeconomy" under agreement 728003, and which counts on the participation of the Universities of Cartagena and Cordoba (Spain), Tuscia (Italy), Exeter and Portsmouth (United Kingdom), Wageningen (Netherlands), Trier (Germany), Pecs (Hungary) and ETH Zurich (Switzerland), the research centres Consiglio per la ricerca in agricoltura e l'analisi dell'economia agraria (Italy), the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (Spain) and the Natural Resources Institute LUKE (Finland), the agrarian organisation ASAJA, and the companies Casalasco and Barilla (Italy), Arento, LogisticaDFM and Industrias David (Spain), Nieuw Bromo Van Tilburg and Ekoboerdeij de Lingehof (Netherlands), Weingut Dr. Frey (Germany), Nedel-Market KFT and Gere (Hungary) and Paavolan Kotijuustola and Polven Juustola (Finland).
During a Republican forum last Wednesday, Texas congressional candidate and former Donald Trump official Sery Kim made racist remarks about Chinese immigrants. I dont want them here at all, she said. They steal our intellectual property, they give us coronavirus, they dont hold themselves accountable.

These comments are straight out of Trumps playbook. Theyre false, xenophobic and used for cheap political points. Theyre also grotesquely irresponsible at a time when targeted violence against the Asian American community is at a terrifying high, in large part due to rhetoric like this.

Kim justified that rhetoric by adding, And quite frankly, I can say that because Im Korean.

That last part. As a Korean American and lifelong Texan, hearing Kim justify her absurd statements with her Koreanness filled me with rage. When it comes to anti-Asian racism, it doesnt matter whether youre Korean or Chinese. To our attackers, we all have the same foreign faces. How could she say something so thoughtless and dangerous, so divisive? But Kim appeared to be laboring under the delusion that pandering to conservative voters would give her power that her white GOP counterparts enjoy.

It gives me no joy to say that she was proved wrong in the most vitriolic way. Her speech went viral, and she has since been met with violent, racist messages online. Nobody deserves to be subjected to such treatment, but I cannot say that Im surprised. Throwing her fellow Asian Americans under the bus did not save her from racism or endear her to white America. In addition to becoming the target of hateful trolls, Kim has been thoroughly criticized by the Korean American community and lost the endorsement of two Republican congresswomen of Korean descent.

Kim has since responded to the backlash, I am shocked that in an effort to counter Asian-American hate the liberal media is targeting me, an Asian and an immigrant, in an effort to paint me as anti-Asian and anti-immigrant just for speaking against the oppressive Chinese Communist Party.

This is rich. We know the difference between critiques of the Chinese government and racist comments about Chinese people, and Kims comments at the forum were explicitly about Chinese immigrants. She denigrated Chinese people who come to live here. Her original comments had nothing to do with the CCP, as she now claims. But even if they did, its worth examining why she is so fixated on China when our own government failed to adequately address the pandemic, leading to 555,000 deaths, and utterly abandoned us during winter storm Uri, the fallout from which many Texans are still suffering.

Kim is not alone in her fearmongering about China. It is pervasive in this country and inseparable from the violence Asian people are experiencing. It is also not new  Asian immigrants have long been used as scapegoats for Americas problems, and our dehumanization has been leveraged to manufacture consent for imperialist and racist wars fought in our countries of origin. What Kim seems to miss is that hatred toward one group of Asians results in persecution toward us all. During World War II, Chinese and Korean Americans mistaken for Japanese Americans were assaulted, despite wearing buttons that read I am Chinese and Korean American. I was reminded of this last year when I saw online advertisements for shirts that read Im [insert ethnicity here], not Chinese, as reports of anti-Asian attacks rose sharply at the beginning of the pandemic. Such misguided efforts at self-protection are reflected in Kims indignation at being called Chinese by racist trolls in the wake of her Wednesday comments.

Kims remarks will have virtually no impact on the CCP or on U.S.-China relations, but they will definitely add fuel to a fire that does real harm to Asians living in America. This rhetoric incites violence. This is not a hypothetical  we have a years worth of tragic evidence demonstrating how such comments from public officials embolden people to attack us. Kim misses the point of what it means to be Asian American, even as she wields that term in her statements. We are an extremely diverse group, as Asian people in this country are divided by nationality, generation, class and immigration status. But our fates are tied together by the fact that here, we are racialized in the same way. We are treated as perpetual foreigners, and whatever acceptance we gain from our white neighbors is conditional and can be revoked at the drop of a hat. Proximity to whiteness will not save us. The only thing that will save us is our solidarity with one another.

Nam is a Korean American graduate student and reproductive justice advocate in Houston.
Father Aho will serve 25 months in prison for providing help to a terrorist organisation. The clergyman, absent from the courtroom, has always rejected the charges. The trial was held without journalists and public. Anti-Christian repression is growing as evinced by the Assyrian monks trial and the fate of Hagia Sophia.

Istanbul (AsiaNews)  A Turkish court sentenced Assyrian monk Sefer (Aho) Bilecen to two years and a month in prison after he was convicted of providing help to a terrorist organisation.

The clergyman found himself up on terrorism charges after he gave a piece of bread to two people who had turned up at the gates of his monastery; prosecutors told the Mardin High Criminal Court that the people in question were members of the outlawed Kurdish Workers Party (PKK).

The clergyman, who was not present in the courtroom, has always protested his innocence, and rejected the charges.

Better known as Father Aho, the Assyrian monk is custodian of the old Syrian Orthodox monastery of Mor Yakup (St Jacob), which he restored. It was abandoned after the genocides of 1915.

He was arrested on 9 January 2020, but released four days later under pressure from public opinion. According to the indictment, the priest is guilty of belonging to a terrorist organisation, i.e. the PKK, which is outlawed in Turkey.

The priest was taken into custody on the basis of the secret testimony of a PKK defector who reported him to the Turkish authorities.

For his part, Father Aho has always insisted that he did not know that the people who came to ask him for food, that he did not know that they were members of the PKK, and that he helped them out of Christian charity.

In todays proceedings, the court sentenced the monk to two years and one month in prison for aid to a terrorist organisation. As in previous hearings, journalists were not allowed to attend the session.

The court decision comes amid rising violations and abuses against the Christian minority, including a series of episodes in which the countrys Christian religious and cultural heritage is being sold off or treated irreverently.

In one case, the authorities listed for sale online a centuries-old Armenian church. In another, a party with barbecue was held in the historic Armenian church of Sourp Asdvadzadzi.

More significantly, two major museums, the ancient Christian basilicas of Hagia Sophia and Chora, were turned into mosques. In both buildings, the images of Jesus and Christian frescoes and icons were covered by a white curtain.

Such controversial episodes reflect Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogans nationalism and islam policy designed to hide Turkeys ongoing economic crisis and coronavirus emergency in order to keep him in power.
Former Below Deck Mediterranean star Hannah Ferrier is still feuding with her old boss and co-star Captain Sandy Yawn, one year after leaving the show.

The 34-year-old slammed Sandy on social media on Wednesday after the super yacht captain criticised her in a recent interview.

The pair famously fell out during the last season of Below Deck Mediterranean when Sandy fired Hannah for bringing undeclared prescription drugs on board during a charter.

Drama: Former Below Deck Mediterranean star Hannah Ferrier (pictured) is still feuding with her old boss and co-star Captain Sandy Yawn, one year after leaving the show

In a recent interview, Sandy boasted about sacking Hannah before taking a jab at the stewardess.

'There is no competition with Hannah. I'm a captain and she waits tables,' she told Showbiz Cheat Sheet.

'Theres no equal there professionally. I think thats the part that I think really disturbs her, is her ego,' Sandy continued.

Firing back: The 34-year-old slammed Sandy on social media on Wednesday after the super yacht captain criticised her in a recent interview

'Its sad. I feel for her, this girls still hanging onto that sh*t I havent thought about until you asked me about it,' she continued.

Sandy also said that Hannah was only on Below Deck 'for the camera' and that she 'didn't trust her'.

She wasn't finished there, with the captain also claiming that the professional manner in which she'd fired Hannah on the show had inspired managers in the yachting industry.

'Imagine being a captain and then insulting and bringing down half of the yachting community (mostly the woman) while continuing to pretend you empower woman,' Hannah tweeted

'I met with a manager, a fleet manager that manages crew. And he said he wants to take the clip of the video, how I explained it, and show every captain on yachts that have to deal with crew,' she bragged.

Hannah hit back on Twitter, writing: 'Imagine being a captain and then insulting and bringing down half of the yachting community (mostly the woman) while continuing to pretend you empower woman.

'At least she FINALLY vocalised how she feels about people who work on the interior...' she added.

The mother-of-one also re-posted an Instagram post from fan account Blocked_By_Jax that said: 'Captain Sandy can f**k off'

Feud: The pair famously fell out during the last season of Below Deck Mediterranean when Sandy fired Hannah for bringing undeclared prescription drugs on board during a charter

The mother-of-one also re-posted an Instagram post from fan account Blocked_By_Jax that said: 'Captain Sandy can f**k off.

'Hasn't thought of Hannah at all but is making a training video about her. I cannot stand this woman.'

Since leaving Below Deck Mediterranean last year after five seasons, Hannah has settled down in Sydney and had her first child with fiance Josh Roberts.
Nepal resumes vaccinations, thanks to a gift from China

Three weeks after suspending its vaccination campaign, Nepal has started administering shots again thanks to a gift of doses from China. The Himalayan nation had been depending on vaccines manufactured in neighboring India, but last month India began cutting vaccine exports as the country experienced a surge in cases. Nepals vaccination effort ground to a halt, even as infections began to rise again. Last week, Nepals other giant neighbor, China, stepped in with a donation of 800,000 doses of the vaccine developed by Sinopharm, a state-owned company. Read more

Let's look at the global statistics Global infections: 132,534,877 Global deaths: 2,875,876 Nations with most cases: US (30,847,737), Brazil (13,100,580), India (12,801,785), France (4,902,026), Russia (4,554,481). Source: John Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center

At the root of your pandemic boredom may be a feeling of loss of control

Even in normal times, boredom is a very common emotion. The causes for it are multifold, but a lack of control over your situation is a common one. Knowing that many of us may not be able to have much control over our movements for at least the next few months, how do we try to alleviate our boredom? Researchers say its important to acknowledge theres no easy fix for our doldrums  so much of what is happening right now is beyond our control, and the vaccines are just beginning to be rolled out, so we may not be able to make big moves just yet. So just accept the situation and sit tight. Read more

Brazils daily deaths hit 4,000 for the first time

Brazils crisis has worsened further after more than 4,000 daily deaths were reported for the first time since the pandemic began last year. At least 4,195 people were reported to have lost their lives on Tuesday, taking the total death toll  the worlds second highest after the US  to nearly 337,000. Brazil also reported 86,979 new infections. Experts fear a record 100,000 Brazilians could lose their lives this month alone if nothing is done. Despite the growing crisis, Brazils president, Jair Bolsonaro, continues to resist the idea of a lockdown and downplay the epidemic. In which country arent people dying? he said last week. Read more

Aegean islands aim to become first fully vaccinated areas of Greece

Tens of Aegean Islands scattered around the Greece are aiming to become the first Covid-free areas as vaccination efforts intensify in tourist destinations hoping for an influx of summer visitors. In one of the biggest operational challenges of modern times, authorities have vowed at least 69 islands will be fully vaccinated by the end of April. Under the scheme, conceived with the help of the armed forces, delivery of thousands of vaccines to the islands will be stepped up in the coming weeks. Read more
Yes, we're aware that the website is down. We're working hard to resolve those issues. Meet us in DMs, and we will assist you.  americanair (@AmericanAir) April 5, 2021

Customers who attempted to book a flight with one of the three airlines encountered page loading errors, and the only way to get around this problem was actually to turn to the phone booking system of each company.All three airlines acknowledged the issues on Twitter, confirming they were working on addressing them but without sharing any specifics on what exactly happened.While some netizens believed they got hacked, the problem was actually encountered by Googles flight services powering the three companies' systems. Delta itself confirmed in a statement that it was working with a third party to resolve the whole thing, but the name of this company hasnt been disclosed.Delta is engaged with a third-party vendor that is currently troubleshooting a technical issue that is impacting the ability for customers to search for and book flights on Delta.com and the Fly Delta app. Delta's Customers can still check in for flights and use the platforms to search for other flight planning information. We apologize for the inconvenience, Delta told The Hill in a statement.On the other hand, Google itself confirmed it was working on fixing a known issue in its platform, but without sharing any other specifics on what exactly.The problem has already been corrected, and all systems are back up and running normally. Delta has confirmed that booking a flight on its website is working properly, and customers can also rely on the other systems too, including the Fly Delta app (whose booking system is based on the same platform).The issue was caused by the failure of technology provided to Delta and multiple airlines by Google. We apologize for any inconvenience this caused, Delta eventually confirmed.
Gov. Gavin Newsom made a bold declaration on Tuesday: By June 15, California will be able to almost fully reopen after a year and three months of pandemic restrictions.

The clock has started, and California now has a little under 10 weeks to stabilize its vaccine supply and ward off another deadly wave of the coronavirus to meet its self-appointed target. On the whole, the state is in good shape, public health experts say, and that date seems reasonable for reopening.

But 10 weeks is still plenty of time to get knocked off the path to recovery, they warned. Especially when it comes to a pandemic defined by its twists and turns, and as the U.S. faces down a fourth surge.

Its a pretty bold leap to try and predict that far out, in COVID times, said Dr. Matt Willis, Marin Countys health officer. I hope that well be able to move forward. But theres a lot that can happen between now and then.

Californias reopening plan involves ditching the complicated, color-coded tier structure thats guided the state response since August. Instead, almost all sectors of the economy will be able to fully resume normal operations, with some precautions still in place. Californias mask mandate will remain indefinitely, state officials said.

Opening the state on June 15 is largely reliant on vaccine supply: California expects it will have enough by then so that every person 16 and older who wants to be vaccinated either already is or can easily make an appointment. The second criterion is keeping hospitalizations for COVID-19 very low. The state is using that metric as its main marker of whether a fourth wave is building and potentially threatening lives.

With those goals in mind, there are several hurdles that could hobble the states plans, or even make a June 15 reopening impossible, public health experts said. In short, those hurdles are: vaccine supply, variants and human behavior.

Vaccine supply

Newsom has said he feels confident that the state will have plenty of vaccines from the three manufacturers to offer shots to everyone on demand. And supply has indeed improved dramatically since the rough start of the state rollout. On Tuesday California hit 20 million doses administered, and Newsom said hes aiming for 30 million total by the end of this month.

But county public health officials arent all quite as confident. Willis said he learned Wednesday afternoon that county vaccine allocations across the state would be lower next week than this week or the week before. This could be a one time thing, but does raise additional concerns about setting a fixed (reopening) date, he wrote in a text message. We havent seen the increase in doses promised yet.

In a statement, Dr. Grant Colfax, director of San Francisco public health, said Wednesday that having a target date for reopening is exciting news because of its implication that we will soon have enough vaccines for all eligible San Franciscans. But he added that the city still has far more capacity to administer shots than actual doses.

State and federal leaders have repeatedly made promises to improve vaccination efforts, and to a certain extent those promises have been fulfilled, but some of them have not, said Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, an infectious disease expert at Stanford. Granted, this is a difficult process. Its not often you build out vaccine manufacturing for a whole world all at one time. But you need to keep vaccination levels up to reopen.

Maldonado noted that supply is just one aspect of reaching herd immunity and stomping out spread of the virus. Over the next two months, she said, it may become clearer how many people dont want the vaccine, and how much that will impact the states reopening progress.

Variants

Coronavirus variants may be the real wild card barrier to reopening. California already has identified all of the most concerning variants circulating around the globe, but so far none seem to be causing significant damage, and notably the vaccines should provide strong protection against all of them.

The B.1.1.7 variant first detected in the United Kingdom is now dominant in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday. That variant is up to 90% more infectious, and also causes more serious disease. And it may be whats driving surges in Michigan and a few other states.

California has identified about 900 cases of the U.K. variant but its not dominating here yet. Instead, two California-bred variants  known as B.1.427 and B.1.429  are predominant, and though theyre also more infectious theyre not nearly as concerning as the U.K. variant.

Its really the variants that threaten to undo all the progress weve made, Dr. Sara Cody, Santa Clara Countys health officer, told the Board of Supervisors. Like many of her public health peers, she said shes mindful of surges in other parts of the world and how tenuous Californias recovery could be if a dangerous variant gets a foothold.

Dr. John Swartzberg, a UC Berkeley infectious disease expert, said theres no clear reason that places like Michigan should be experiencing new surges in cases and hospitalizations when theyre also vaccinating at a quick pace. He and others suspect the B.1.1.7 variant is playing a significant role.

Thats a headwind that very much worries me. Whats protecting the West, and whats protecting specifically California from the same thing happening in Michigan? Swartzberg asked. What will these variants do and will they throw off the governors plans? Unknown.

Human behavior

Pinning a date on reopening could be an interesting study in psychology, some public health experts said. Will Californians use that June 15 date as a morale booster to get them through these last couple of months of restrictions? Or will they use it as an excuse to get a little sloppy and give up some still-necessary precautions like mask-wearing?

Stephen Lam / The Chronicle

Some people may think its party time already. But its not, said Dr. Curtis Chan, deputy health officer for San Mateo County.

The Bay Area is still reporting several hundred new coronavirus cases every day, and about a dozen deaths due to COVID-19. No counties are yet in the least restrictive yellow tier of the states still-operational blueprint for reopening. In short: The coronavirus remains a deadly threat, and people need to behave appropriately even as the situation improves and the public health messages become more hopeful than dire.

We want people to start thinking about what comes next, but balancing that with where we are today, said Dr. Nicholas Moss, Alameda Countys health officer. This is not the finish line.

Erin Allday is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: eallday@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @erinallday
How China has lifted nearly 800 mln people out of poverty

Xinhua) 10:06, April 07, 2021

-- Through continuous efforts, the final 98.99 million impoverished rural residents in China had all been lifted out of poverty, and all 832 impoverished counties and 128,000 villages had been removed from the poverty list by the end of 2020.

-- The strategy of targeted poverty alleviation is China's strongest "weapon" in its final battle against poverty, and a major innovation in the theory and practice of poverty reduction.

-- China's success in poverty alleviation has proven that the problem of poverty, in essence, is how the people should be treated: the people-centered philosophy is the fundamental driving force behind this cause.

BEIJING, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the world's largest developing country has achieved a complete eradication of extreme poverty, raising more than 770 million poor people from poverty since its reform and opening up in late 1970s.

According to the World Bank standard, the figure accounted for more than 70 percent of the global total over the same period, said a white paper released Tuesday by the State Council Information Office.

The 100-year history of the CPC is a history about eradicating poverty and backwardness, and leading people's fight for a better life, Xu Lin, director of the office, said at a press conference when introducing the paper.

Photo taken on April 6, 2021 shows the Chinese and English editions of the white paper titled "Poverty Alleviation: China's Experience and Contribution" issued by the State Council Information Office at a press conference in Beijing, capital of China. (Xinhua/Jin Liangkuai)

SOLEMN COMMITMENT DELIVERED

The Chinese nation had long been plagued by poverty at a scale and a level of severity which were rarely seen anywhere else in the world.

Since its founding in July 1921, the CPC has always taken the happiness of the people and rejuvenation of the nation as its aspiration, said the white paper titled "Poverty Alleviation: China's Experience and Contribution."

The founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949 and the establishment of the socialist system have provided basic institutional guarantees for addressing the root causes of poverty. The reform and opening up, which started about four decades ago, has accelerated the country's development and poverty alleviation.

"Ensuring that poor people and poor areas will enter the moderately prosperous society together with the rest of the country is a solemn promise made by our Party," President Xi Jinping was quoted as saying.

Since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, the Party Central Committee, with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core, has fought a decisive battle against poverty that has been unprecedented in scale and intensity, and has benefited the largest number of people in human history, according to Xu.

To fulfill the commitment, the leadership has mobilized the energies of the whole Party, the whole country, and the whole of society. More than 3 million first Party secretaries and resident working team members have been selected and dispatched to carry out targeted poverty reduction since 2013.

Poverty relief assistants Liu Ying (1st L) and He Changle (2nd L), as well as village officers, help carry melons planted by villagers in Dongqin Village, Congjiang County of southwest China's Guizhou Province, Nov. 11, 2020. (Xinhua/Yang Wenbin)

Through continuous efforts, the final 98.99 million impoverished rural residents had all been lifted out of poverty, and all 832 impoverished counties and 128,000 villages had been removed from the poverty list by the end of 2020.

The historic achievements came with huge sacrifices. More than 1,800 CPC members and officials have lost their lives in the cause of poverty reduction, according to the paper.

TARGETED STRATEGY

"To help the poor, we must know who they are," the paper said.

During its poverty alleviation practices, China has developed a set of standards and procedures to accurately identify the poor, the causes of their poverty and their needs. These were summarized as targeted efforts in six areas, referring to efforts to identify the poor accurately, arrange targeted programs, utilize capital efficiently, take household-based measures, dispatch first Party secretaries based on village conditions, and achieve the set goals.

For instance, poor households are identified primarily based on their incomes, with consideration given to other factors including housing, education and health, while for villages, consideration is given to the incidence of poverty, the per capita net income of the villagers, and income from businesses run by village collectives.

The individuals and villages confirmed as poor were then registered and a national poverty alleviation information system was created.

"Through this registration system, for the first time in the history of poverty alleviation, China has identified every poor individual in every village," the paper said.

The strategy of targeted poverty alleviation is China's strongest "weapon" in its final battle against poverty, and a major innovation in the theory and practice of poverty reduction, which highlights the CPC's sound approach whereby all actions are based on actual conditions and conform to the needs of development, it said.

PEOPLE-CENTRED PHILOSOPHY

China's success in poverty alleviation has proven that the problem of poverty, in essence, is how the people should be treated: the people-centered philosophy is the fundamental driving force behind this cause.

Combo photo taken between July and October 2020 shows villagers, who used to be registered as impoverished households in over 20 cities and counties of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, smiling as they have benefited from the businesses under poverty alleviation program. (Xinhua)

"The root cause of poverty is inadequate development," the paper said, adding that development is the most effective way to eradicate poverty.

During its fight against poverty, China has taken five measures, including boosting the economy to provide more job opportunities, relocating poor people from inhospitable areas, compensating for economic losses associated with reducing ecological damage, improving education in impoverished areas, and providing subsistence allowances for those unable to shake off poverty through their own efforts alone.

Over the course, investment from the central, provincial, city and county governments have totaled nearly 1.6 trillion yuan (about 244 billion U.S. dollars), including 660.1 billion yuan from the central budget.

China's successful practice and valuable experience in eliminating extreme poverty have deepened human understanding of poverty reduction trends, enriched the theory of international poverty reduction, and boosted the confidence of other countries, especially developing ones, in eradicating extreme poverty.

Aerial photo taken on June 14, 2020 shows a relocated area by the Gaqu River in Chido Township of Dengqen County in Qamdo, southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region. Qadom City has witnessed a total of 194,600 residents, 38,400 households, 1,127 villages and 11 counties get rid of poverty thanks to the poverty alleviation efforts. (Xinhua/Tian Jinwen)

Poverty is not predestined, nor is it unconquerable, the paper said. "China's experience in poverty alleviation indicates that courage, vision, sense of responsibility, and the eagerness to take on challenges are the most essential."

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Bianji)
NEW YORK, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- OTC Markets Group Inc. (OTCQX: OTCM), operator of financial markets for 11,000 U.S. and global securities, today announced Mission Ready Solutions Inc. (TSX-V: MRS; OTCQX: MSNVF), a company which specializes in providing comprehensive government contracting solutions, has qualified to trade on the OTCQX Best Market ("OTCQX"). Mission Ready Solutions Inc. upgraded to OTCQX from the OTCQB Venture Market.

Mission Ready Solutions Inc. began trading today on OTCQX under the symbol "MSNVF." U.S. investors can find current financial disclosure and Real-Time Level 2 quotes for the company on www.otcmarkets.com.

The OTCQX Market is designed for established, investor-focused U.S. and international companies. To qualify for OTCQX, companies must meet high financial standards, follow best practice corporate governance, and demonstrate compliance with applicable securities laws. Graduating to the OTCQX Market from the OTCQB Market marks an important milestone for companies, enabling them to demonstrate their qualifications and build visibility among U.S. investors.

"Moving from the OTCQB to the OTCQX Best Market is another great achievement for the Company as we strive to increase shareholder value," said Buck L. Marshall, President and CEO of Mission Ready. "Upgrading to OTCQX will provide the Company with greater exposure and access to the US markets while improving liquidity for the investment community both in Canada and the United States. We firmly believe that our clear global strategy, strong management team, operational infrastructure, global network, consumer messaging, and financial results will continue to drive shareholder value."

About Mission Ready Solutions Inc.

Mission Ready, through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Unifire, Inc. ("Unifire"), specializes in providing comprehensive government contracting solutions through its privileged access to a host of government contracting vehicles including its Multiple Award Schedule contracts administered by the United States General Services Administration. Unifire is a designated Small Business and an industry-leading manufacturer and distributor of over 1.5 million fire, military, emergency, and law enforcement products. With extensive knowledge and experience in providing solutions to the US Federal Government, Unifire utilizes its highly-efficient, scalable technology infrastructure to provide procurement solutions for program managers, military and federal contracting offices, base supply centers, and other governmental supply agencies.

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.

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DUBLIN, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- AerCap Holdings N.V. ("AerCap") (NYSE: AER) has announced its major business transactions during the first quarter 2021:

Signed lease agreements for 60 aircraft , including 28 widebody aircraft and 32 narrowbody aircraft.

, including 28 widebody aircraft and 32 narrowbody aircraft. Purchased 1 aircraft , 1 Embraer E2.

, 1 Embraer E2. Executed sale transactions for 9 aircraft , including 2 Airbus A320 Family aircraft, 1 Airbus A330, 2 Boeing 737NGs, 1 Boeing 787-8 and 3 Boeing 767-300ERs from AerCap's owned portfolio.

, including 2 Airbus A320 Family aircraft, 1 Airbus A330, 2 Boeing 737NGs, 1 Boeing 787-8 and 3 Boeing 767-300ERs from AerCap's owned portfolio. Issued $1 billion of 5-year senior unsecured notes with a 1.75% coupon.

Entered into a definitive agreement with General Electric (NYSE:GE) under which AerCap will acquire 100% of GE Capital Aviation Services ("GECAS"), a GE business, as previously announced. Entered into a bridge credit agreement, term loan agreement and revolving credit agreement for an aggregate amount of $28.4 billion associated with the acquisition of GECAS.

About AerCap

AerCap is the global leader in aircraft leasing with one of the most attractive order books in the industry. AerCap serves approximately 200 customers in approximately 80 countries with comprehensive fleet solutions. AerCap is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (AER) and has its headquarters in Dublin with offices in Shannon, Los Angeles, Singapore, Amsterdam, Shanghai, Abu Dhabi, Seattle and Toulouse.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains certain statements, estimates and forecasts with respect to future performance and events. These statements, estimates and forecasts are "forward-looking statements". In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "may," "might," "should," "expect," "plan," "intend," "estimate," "anticipate," "believe," "predict," "potential" or "continue" or the negatives thereof or variations thereon or similar terminology. All statements other than statements of historical fact included in this press release are forward-looking statements and are based on various underlying assumptions and expectations and are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and assumptions, and may include projections of our future financial performance based on our growth strategies and anticipated trends in our business. These statements are only predictions based on our current expectations and projections about future events. There are important factors, including the impacts of, and associated responses to, the Covid-19 pandemic, that could cause our actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements to differ materially from the results, level of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. As a result, we cannot assure you that the forward-looking statements included in this press release will prove to be accurate or correct. In light of these risks, uncertainties and assumptions, the future performance or events described in the forward-looking statements in this press release might not occur. Accordingly, you should not rely upon forward-looking statements as a prediction of actual results and we do not assume any responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of any of these forward-looking statements. Except as required by applicable law, we do not undertake any obligation to, and will not, update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

For more information regarding AerCap and to be added to our email distribution list, please visit www.aercap.com and follow us on Twitter www.twitter.com/aercapnv.

SOURCE AerCap Holdings N.V.

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Samsung is bringing five Galaxy A 2021 models to the US this month, three with 5G

Samsung is bringing the first batch of Galaxy A 2021 phones to the US, including its first 5G phone under $300. There are three 5G models in total, plus a couple of affordable 4G phones. All but one of them will be available by Friday.

None of these are new, by the way, they launched in other markets previously. This is all about the availability in the States. Heres a handy table with prices and launch dates:

All five models have expandable storage. Also, Samsung is giving away free trials for YouTube Premium (2 months) and SiriusXM Streaming (6 months) with all of these models.

The Samsung Galaxy A42 5G will arrive first, you will find it on Samsung.com tomorrow. Most of the others will arrive a day later (on Friday), all except the Galaxy A02s, which is expected on April 29. It's not clear if any carriers will offer the 2021 A-series models.

It looks like the Galaxy A32 4G and A52 4G will not be joining their 5G siblings in the US. This also means no Galaxy A72 (which only has a 4G version).



Coming soon to the US: Galaxy A52 5G  Galaxy A42 5G  Galaxy A32 5G  Galaxy A12  Galaxy A02s

Weve already reviewed the Galaxy A42 5G and the Galaxy A12. We also have a review of the Galaxy A52 (4G), though note that it has a different chipset and display compared to its 5G sibling (S720G vs. S750G and 90 Hz vs. 120 Hz).

Source
Photo: GoFundMe

A Nanaimo woman was shot in the face and hand early Saturday when she intervened with a friend in distress.

Friends say Regina Hampson intervened when her roommate tried to kill himself with a 12-gauge shotgun.

There was a loaded gun involved, and she went to remove that gun from him.  And in that process, the gun had gone off, Michael Mercer told CHEK News.

Hampson was shot in the face and hand.

It was incredibly selfless and heroic that she gave no regard for her own safety, said Jo-Lynne Wikkerink, who has started an online fundraising page for Hampson. Her friend was in danger and she intervened.

Hampson, who is in hospital in Vancouver, is in a great deal of pain, her partner Jason Culley said Tuesday in a video update. Doctors plan to operate Wednesday to try to save her right eye. Hampson will also undergo a bone and nerve transplant next week in an effort to save her thumb.

Theres love and understanding here, and well get through this, Culley says in the video, as Hampson cries quietly in the background.

Culley also expressed compassion for their friend in distress.

The fundraising page says the couple always have their door open and had recently taken in someone who was trying to get his life back on track. They didn't know he had serious mental health issues.

Anyone who has had the pleasure of knowing Regina knows how incredibly kind and loving she is. She is an exceptional mother and stepmother, an incredibly supportive partner and friend, and a genuinely good person. She saved this mans life, and sacrificed her own well-being during the process. She is selfless beyond measure. This woman is a warrior, a hero, says the fundraiser.

Hampson faces a long road to recovery and will need to take time off work. Culley will also have to take time off work to support her during this time. The couple has three children.

The couple wants people to know their friend didnt mean to harm Hampson, but they hope this incident will push him to get the help he needs. Twenty-per cent of the donations will be donated to local mental health support organizations.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

The Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities (BACA) held a press conference today to announce the latest developments in the participation of the Kingdom of Bahrain in Expo 2020 Dubai.

Present at the event were Shaikha Mai bint Mohammed Al Khalifa, President of BACA and the Commissioner General of the Bahrain Pavilion at the Expo, Tala Fakhro, Chief Project Officer at the Economic Development Board (EDB), Noura Al-Sayeh, Head of Engineering Projects at BACA, and fashion designer Hala Kaiksow.

The self-built national pavilion for the Expo showcases the concept of density and its role in providing opportunities. Bearing the slogan Density Weaves Opportunities, the pavilion showcases the features of Bahrains natural and urban structural fabric.

Shaikha Mai bint Mohammed Al Khalifa commented, Today we confirm our participation in Expo 2020 Dubai in the UAE, one of the worlds most important events. Our participation in this global event is a great opportunity to affirm our cultural presence amongst the countries of the world, supported by the leadership of the Kingdom of Bahrain stewarded by His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.

Designed to reflect the concept of density in the Kingdom of Bahrain and its rich cultural and historical heritage, Her Excellency noted that the Kingdom of Bahrains national pavilion aims to open up promising opportunities for sustainable development, underscoring the important role that countrys diverse urban fabric and natural, cultural and social characteristics have played in enhancing its profile at the regional and international level.

Tala Fakhro, Chief Project Officer at the EDB said, We are looking forward to showcasing the Kingdom's unique competitive advantages and business-friendly environment at this year's EXPO 2020 event. As a leading regional and global event, we will have the opportunity to present the Kingdom's achievements, from both an economic and cultural perspective to new audiences. Bahrain, well known for its openness and diversity, has much to offer investors and we are excited to present those opportunities across different activities hosted at Expo 2020 during the 6 months period.

Expo 2020 Dubai, which carries the slogan "Connecting Minds, Creating the Future," will be held from 1 October 2021 to 31 March 2022, and is the first and largest event of its kind to be held in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia region. Expected to attract nearly 25 million visitors over the six months over its duration, 70% of whom will be international visitors, the event presents a perfect platform and environment for Bahrain to showcase itself.

Located in the Opportunity district - one of Expo Dubais three themed areas  Bahrains national pavilion explores the concept of density and its role in creating promising opportunities and future possibilities in an increasingly crowded world through an immersive experience designed by architect Christian Kerez in cooperation with WANDERS WERNER FALASI Consulting Architects in the UAE.

The pavilion is an open and slightly submerged space accessed by a ramp that forms the bridge from the exterior to the interior. The structure of this central space is conceived as a 24m high rectangular building with a central and open exhibition space of 30 meters by 30 meters held by 126 columns of only 11 cm in thickness. In addition to functioning as a support mechanism to one another and the ceiling, the columns elegantly reference the principles of communication and density in exploring three-dimensional possibilities inspired by the traditional geometric plaster ornamentations of traditional Bahraini architecture. This central space includes the main exhibition space, gift shop, and cafe, all of which have been arranged in a free-flowing manner between the columns as a physical spatial representation of the pavilions density-centered theme.

Akin to walking through a dense forest, the 126 steel columns allow visitors to freely experience the exhibition and planned pavilion program, while the aluminum-made facade signifies one of the Kingdom's main exports. The entire structure was designed to allow it to be completely dismantled and rebuilt at a permanent location back in Bahrain after the end of the Expo.

The pavilions main exhibition revolves around weaving as a metaphor for density. The space will display art installations that incorporate traditional crafts  weaving and embroidery using textiles and palm fronds  and sophisticated modern technologies  fiberglass and carbon fiber  as a way to illustrate the diversity and versatility of Bahrains traditional crafts and contemporary woven materials production, as well as the innovation and basic skills involved in the production process. Visitors will also be able to interact with technological innovations related to the manufacture of carbon fiber, fiberglass, and composite materials used in the automotive and construction industries.

Designers, craftsmen and apprentices will conduct a series of design-focused collaborative experimental technological processes in which materials are produced to create different art installations and products that highlight the production process rather than the end product. The resulting creations will be displayed in a revolving series of themed exhibitions, shows, and installations, each of which will last 6 weeks for the duration of the Expo. The themes that will be explored include the sea, crafts and technology, the urban fabric, density, crafts and fashion, and finally sustainable cities.

As part of its preparation for the Expo Dubai 2020, BACA launched a crafts training program in cooperation with the Al-Jasra Handicrafts Center, the Shaikh Ebrahim bin Mohammed Al Khalifa Center for Culture and Research, and the Capital Mall for Bahraini handmade products (operated by the Ministry of Labor and Social Development), the Awal Women Society, and the Bani Jamra Textile Factory, to train and preserve a wide range of traditional crafts, provide a creative education, and offer an opportunity to develop skills. In all, 22 participants took part in the training program which was overseen by four artists and designers.

Award-winning Arabic calligraphy and typography designer Pascal Zoghbi and graphic designer Clara Sancho Perez to create the identity of the Bahrain Pavilion. Inspired by the theme Density Weaves Opportunities, the design creates a dynamic logo that seamlessly embodies the themes multi-functionality while retaining the pavilions unique character. The identity was created with a bespoke font  29LT Zawi  that denotes flexibility, multi-direction, simplicity and strength, recalling the geometry of the dense columns that make up the pavilion.

The columns were also the inspiration behind Bahraini fashion designer Hala Kaiksow, who worked with the Bani Jamra Textile Factory to produce a unique contemporary line of garments that also incorporate traditional Bahraini craft techniques. A Bahraini artist and sculptor, Kaiksows work has garnered international fame, taking home the 2016 International Fashion Show Designer Award, and shortlisted for the 5th Art Jameel Prize exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Her work has also been exhibited at the Grand Palais as part of a group exhibition in Paris in 2018.

Run by Bahraini chefs Bassam Al-Alawi and Lulwa Sowaileh, the pavilion cafe will offer patrons Bahraini dishes that reflect the richness and variety of local cuisine and ingredients and its different landscapes, from agricultural lands to fishing grounds and southern deserts.

Using the same approach that proved to be so successful at Expo 2015 Milan and previous BACA events, the pavilion will be staffed by selected volunteers who will be responsible for introducing visitors from all around the world to Bahrain and its tangible and intangible cultural heritage. This initiative, aims to involve Bahraini youth in this important event where they serve as ambassadors to the country and give them real-world practical experience.

Ultimately, Bahrains participation in Expo 2020 Dubai, represented by BACA and in cooperation with the Economic Development Board as a business partner and representative, in cooperation with Gulf Air, NBB, MOICT, BCCI, Tamkeen, Mumtalakat, Export Bahrain, BTEA, Export Bahrain and Batelco, aims to utilize this opportunity as a catalyst for future economic growth and career.
A new pioneer centre for artificial intelligence research is expected to open in Copenhagen at the end of 2021. Headed by world-leading American AI researcher, Serge Belongie, and with a good DKK 350 million to back it

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE A new pioneer centre for artificial intelligence research is expected to open in Copenhagen at the end of 2021. Headed by world-leading American AI researcher, Serge Belongie, and with a good DKK 350 million to back it, the centre will conduct world-class artificial intelligence research focusing on societal challenges, people and design, while putting Denmark at the international forefront.

AI hand and human hand

The pioneer center will work extensively on the ethical aspects of AI and how to design technologies built on artificial intelligence in such a way that they are accepted and understood by those who need them. Photo: Getty

The University of Copenhagen observatory on stervold in the center of Copenhagen was once used to look for new stars and planets in the night sky. But hopefully by the end of this year, the building will be purposed for high-tech achievements, as home to the first Danish pioneer centre for artificial intelligence research.

The Danish National Research Foundation, the Carlsberg Foundation, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the Lundbeck Foundation and the Villum Foundation now enters contract negotiations with Danish universities about the establishment of the up to now greatest research centre for artificial intelligence in Denmark. With slightly more than DKK 350million of funding from the foundations as well as participation from Aalborg University, Aarhus University, DTU, the IT University and the University of Copenhagen, the centre will be the most ambitious investment in artificial intelligence research ever on Danish soil.

"I am both happy and proud that the University of Copenhagen may be expected to host the pioneer centre. It is a unique collaboration between foundations and universities who will unite forces to do research in one of the greatest technologies of our time, one that has the potential to solve a wide range of societal challenges," says Katrine Krogh Andersen, Dean of the University of Copenhagen's Faculty of Science.

Predicting diseases and climate change

According to the plan, the centre will be headed by the University of Copenhagen and one of the field's leading researchers, Serge Belongie, an American who is currently serving as a professor and vice dean at Cornell Tech in the United States. He will be appointed professor at the Department of Computer Science at the Faculty of SCIENCE.

"Denmark has fantastically well-organized data collection across public institutions that one would never come across in the United States. Data that makes it possible to harness the possibilities of artificial intelligence and, for example, predict the earlier stages of breast cancer, monitor endangered species or make urban planning smarter," states Professor Serge Belongie, the pioneer centre's future director.

Predicting and preventing diseases, monitoring climate change and biodiversity, as well as energy and infrastructure, are three out of a total of 10 significant societal challenges that the pioneer centre's research will be centred around.

Each of the ten focal areas will be approached by top researchers who, in collaboration with companies and public institutions, will use artificial intelligence over five to seven years to solve a wide range of societal challenges through research, innovation and spin-out companies.

A new Danish brand

In addition to the "hard" disciplines within artificial intelligence, such as virtual reality, machine learning and deep learning, the pioneer centre will also work extensively on the ethical aspects of AI and how to design technologies built on artificial intelligence in such a way that they are accepted and understood by those who need them.

"The initial hype over what AI can accomplish using large amounts of data and advanced algorithms is beginning to subside. Now, it must also be possible to explain how artificial intelligence arrives at its predictions, so that it is no longer a mystery which no one fully understands, but one which we can use to base a substantial number of important decisions," says Belongie.

Among other things, he highlights LEGO, Danish design and architecture as examples of a well-developed socio-technical landscape in Denmark and an expression of a culture where people and technology work together. It is a culture that Belongie would like to add something hyper modern to.

"If we truly succeed with our main objectives, then there will be a whole brand around artificial intelligence and Denmark, as the rest of the world has observed in relation to furniture design, architecture and so on," concludes Serge Belongie.

Facts:

The Pioneer Centreis expected to open at the end of 2021 under the direction of the University of Copenhagen

Professor Serge Belongie will serve as the center director and get his laboratory, "the Belongie Lab", which will mainly research computer vision

The centre is expected to be financed with approximately DKK 350 million from the Danish National Research Foundation, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the Carlsberg Foundation, the Villum Foundation and the Lundbeck Foundation

Researchers from Aalborg University, Aarhus University, DTU, the IT University and the University of Copenhagen will be associated with the centre

The aim of the pioneer centres is to establish excellent research units that carry out basic research aimed at solving major societal challenges

The pioneer centre aims to create societal impact in 10 areas: Biotech, life and health sciences, Climate and Biodiversity Monitoring, Equality in Health, Education, Economic Growth and Entrepreneurship, Crisis Relief, Verification and Validation of Information, Energy and Infrastructure, Security, Ethics and Legal Certainty, Public Sector and Social Affairs

The seven research groups within the pioneer centre will be working with the following sub-categories: Causality and explainability, extended reality, fine-grained analysis, learning theory and optimization, signals and decoding, speech and language, and networks and graphs

###
Robert Jenkins, the high-profile defense attorney and TV pundit who represented politicians Ray Nagin and Aaron Broussard in their corruption cases, received a six-month suspension from practicing law on Wednesday.

Jenkins consented to the discipline imposed by the Louisiana Supreme Court, which stemmed from complaints that he took thousands of dollars to represent convicted prisoners but failed to press their appeals.

The suspension is a low point for an attorney whos had a hand in some of the biggest recent criminal cases in the area. In 2014, he represented Ray Nagin at the former New Orleans mayors trial for taking bribes and kickbacks. Nagin was convicted on 20 of 21 charges and sentenced to 10 years.

Two years before that, Jenkins represented former Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard when he pleaded guilty to corruption charges, including accepting bribes.

The federal courthouse is one venue of several for Jenkins, who also handles numerous cases in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court, such as the Lamborghini driver who crashed into the Tchoupitoulas Street floodwall in 2016 and killed his young passenger. Jenkins, 63, appeared in one state court case hours before his suspension.

Former Mayor Ray Nagin's abrupt early release is last chapter in City Hall corruption saga Ray Nagins abrupt release from prison Monday amid the coronavirus pandemic brought down the final curtain on the biggest City Hall corruption

Outside the courtroom, Jenkins is a familiar face for viewers of WDSU-TV, where he has served as an on-air legal analyst.

Jenkins will have to cool his heels for a bit thanks to the suspension order, which takes effect immediately. Jenkins didnt respond to a request for comment, but court records about two bar complaints lay out a troubling backstory.

In one case, a woman gave Jenkins $7,500 in 2012 to represent her son, who was serving a 35-year sentence on manslaughter and armed robbery convictions in Washington Parish.

In another, Jenkins was paid $15,000 in 2016 to represent a man in even more desperate straits, having been convicted of aggravated rape in St. James Parish and sentenced to life.

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Both men had already exhausted their initial appeals, which meant their only hope was a long-shot post-conviction appeal. But Jenkins did little for either man, according to a joint stipulation of facts between him and the state Office of Disciplinary Counsel.

In seven years on the case of the convicted killer, Jenkins visited him in jail once, never filed a brief and never made a court appearance. Jenkins also continued to represent the prisoner even though he believed there were no viable issues for appeal, he admitted. Jenkins said he was biding his time for the passage of new legislation that might help the man.

In the rape case, Jenkins promised to have DNA samples sent to a lab for testing, make contact with the victim to see if she was willing to recant and explore the possibility of geriatric release.

However, Jenkins never filed a brief, never sent samples to the DNA lab, never made contact with the victim and didnt press the issue of old-age release. Besides state prison records of a single visit to his client, Jenkins had no way at all to substantiate his claim that he worked on the case, he admitted.

The mother of the Washington Parish defendant filed a complaint with the state Office of Disciplinary Counsel in October 2019, and the other prisoner's complaint was filed in April 2020. Jenkins has agreed to try and resolve fee disputes with both men, according to disciplinary records.

In consenting to his discipline, Jenkins spared himself disciplinary hearings and the possibility of a more severe punishment. Both sides agreed that Jenkins was cooperative and remorseful during the discipline process.

In addition to the suspension, Jenkins must serve a two-year probationary period. If he commits more misconduct, he could be required to serve an additional six months of suspension and re-apply for the practice of law.

In 32 years as a lawyer, Jenkins has received two admonishments, in 1996 and 2016. In 2017, Nagin filed an appeal on his own behalf alleging that Jenkins bungled his trial, including a closing argument that was "quite rambling and lacked clarity." Nagin's appeal was denied.
Mumbai:- Sachin Vaze removed from the Crime Branch and posted in some other department. It is being done so that an impartial investigation can be conducted in this case (Mansukh Hiren death case ) Wednesday March 10, 2021. (Photo: Sandeep Mahankal Image Source: IANS News

Mumbai, April 7 : Spelling fresh trouble for the Maha Vikas Aghadi government (MVA) in Maharashtra, arrested Mumbai Police crime branch officer Sachin Vaze has opened up a Pandora's Box by accusing former Home Minister Anil Deshmukh, Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar and Transport Minister Anil Parab of pressuring him to extort money from the contractors of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), and illegal tobacco factories and bars in the city.

Vaze's explosive letter bomb comes in the wake of the flak the Nationalist Congress Party-Congress-Shiv Sena government is facing from the opposition BJP in connection with the cases related to the explosive-laden SUV found outside the residence of Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani and the subsequent mysterious death of Mumbai-based businessman Mansukh Hiren.

In the handwritten letter to the Special NIA Court dated April 3, a copy of which has been viewed by IANS, Vaze has claimed that NCP chief Sharad Pawar was against his reinstatement into Mumbai Police in 2020 and wanted it to be revoked, 16 years after he was suspended in March 2004. However, senior officials of the NIA remained tightlipped on the authenticity of Vaze's letter.

In the letter, Vaze, the then chief of Crime Intelligence Unit (CIU), said that Deshmukh had told him that if he paid Rs 2 crore to him, "he would convince Pawar to allow him back into the force".

"I had expressed my inability to pay such an amount. On this, the home minister asked me to pay it in a later course," Vaze wrote.

Vaze further claimed that Deshmukh had called him to the Sahyadri Guest House in October 2020 and asked him to collect Rs 3-3.5 lakh each from 1,650 bars and restaurants in Mumbai.

"I refused by saying that it was not within the scope of my capability," Vaze claimed in his letter, adding that as far he knew, there were only 200 bars in Mumbai and not 1,650, as anticipated by Deshmukh.

Vaze also alleged that soon after he came out of the meeting with Deshmukh, his PA Kundan had advised him that he must comply with the instructions of the minister if he wished to keep his job and post intact.

Vaze also said that Deshmukh made the same demand again in January 2021, when the two met at the former minister's official bungalow.

Vaze in his letter also claimed that Maharashtra Transport Minister and Shiv Sena leader Anil Parab had asked him to extort money for him.

"In July-August 2020, I was called by Minister Anil Parab at his official bungalow... At the meeting, Parab asked me to look into the complaint under preliminary inquiry and bring the trustees of the SBUT to him for negotiations about the inquiry. He also insisted to initiate primary talks to get Rs 50 crore from SBUT in order to close the said enquiry. I had expressed my inability to do any such thing as I do not know anybody from SBUT and also I did not have any control over the inquiry," Vaze told the NIA in his letter.

Vaze further claimed that Parab called him again in January 2021 and asked him to look into an inquiry against some contractors listed in the BMC and collect Rs 2 crore each from them.

"He told me to collect at least Rs 2 crore each from 50 such contractors. An inquiry was on in this matter based on an anonymous complaint. The Crime Intelligence Unit inquiry against the contractors had not yielded any result," Vaze claimed in his letter.

Vaze, who was arrested on March 13 in connection with the explosive-laden SUV found outside Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani's residence on February 25, said that he had informed the then Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh about the extortion demands made by Deshmukh and Parab.

"...I met the Police Commissioner (Param Bir Singh) and expressed my apprehension about this... I told him that I would be embroiled in a false controversy in the near future. The Commissioner encouraged me and categorically instructed me not to involve myself in any such illegal collection of money from anyone and for anyone," Vaze wrote.

Vaze is currently being investigated by the NIA in connection with the mysterious death of Mumbai-based businessman Mansukh Hiren, whose body was found from a Thane creek on March 5.

A Mumbai Court on Wednesday extended the remand of Vaze till April 9.

After the cases related to the explosive-laden SUV and the death of Hiren exploded in Maharashtra, Singh was shunted out from the top cop's post and made the Commandant General of Home Guards.

After being shunted out as Mumbai Police Commissioner, Singh dropped a 'letter bomb' on March 20, accusing Deshmukh of asking Vaze and other Mumbai police personnel to extort Rs 100 crore 'monthly' from bars, hotels and restaurants in the city.

Earlier in the day, Singh had appeared before the NIA in connection with the case.

The Bombay High Court on Monday ordered a CBI preliminary enquiry against Deshmukh. The court also asked the CBI to complete the probe within 15 days, following which the CBI registered a PE on Tuesday night. Two teams of the agency have already arrived here from Delhi.

(Anand Singh can be contacted at anand.s@ians.in and Quaid Najmi can be contacted at q.najmi@ians.in)
IN the run up to Brexit day, the Bulletin featured a series of interviews with senior local and national politicians about what post Brexit life would be like in Spain.

All of them waxed lyrical about how welcome British residents and visitors would continue to be and that the authorities were doing everything possible to make life easy for Britons post Brexit.

From personal experience, swapping my green card for the new T.I.E was a stroll in the park - however at the newspaper we are continuing to be inundated with calls from people suffering all kinds of problems with no one to turn to for help and advice.

Its in the hands of the Spanish, one reader trying to solve her driving licence issue was told yesterday.

Spain appears to be playing Brexit by the Brussels book, unlike countries like Greece and Cyprus which have decided to adapt the rules and regulations for the benefit of their own economies and potential new British residents.

Both countries look set to gain, much to the cost of Spain, after implementing more flexible rules for long-term tourists.

The Greek Government has put in place a trio of tax incentives aimed exclusively at foreign tax residents who are considering moving to the country.

It is targeted at high earners, expatriates wishing to spend time in Greece, and the work from anywhere crowd. Spain needs to have a rethink regarding how it plans to treat the British.
New Delhi, April 7 : Aerospace major Boeing expects demand for more than 2,200 new jets valued at nearly $320 billion over the next 20 years in India.

In its annual Commercial Market Outlook (CMO), Boeing anticipates resilient long-term demand for commercial airplanes and services.

The CMO cited that Covid-19 pandemic has sharply reduced Indian air travel last year, however, the country's domestic passenger traffic is recovering more rapidly than in most other countries and regions, recently reaching 76 per cent of pre-pandemic levels.

Besides, India's passenger traffic has been predicted to outpace global growth, doubling from the pre-pandemic levels by 2030.

At present, India's passenger market is the world's third largest.

Furthermore, India's economy is predicted to grow at 5 per cent annually through the forecast period, the highest of any emerging market.

"Many more Indians will travel by airplane for leisure and business as incomes rise tied to industrialization and an economic growth rate in South Asia that leads all emerging markets," said David Schulte, managing director of Regional Marketing, Boeing Commercial Airplanes.

"With greater demand for domestic, regional and long-haul travel, we anticipate India's commercial fleet will grow four-fold by 2039." As per the CMO, India's air carriers have opportunities for growth in international markets.

Schulte noted that several airlines have started or plan to start non-stop routes between India and North America to serve a passenger preference for direct service flights.

Boeing India President Salil Gupte said: "India's burgeoning manufacturing and services business means the region is uniquely positioned to become a major aerospace hub." "We remain committed to partnering across India to develop the nation's aerospace ecosystem, as continued investment in the civil aviation infrastructure and talent will enable sustained growth."
Leading construction industry event Big 5 said its digital festival which made its debut last November has won top honours at the Middle East Event Awards 2021.

Held virtually in 2020 as a special edition, The Big 5 Digital Festival was the first digital event in the 40+ years history of The Big 5, the largest and most influential event for the construction industry in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia.

The Middle East Event Awards 2021 recognises companies and individuals from the events industry for their exemplary efforts, said its organisers.

The Best Digital Event award was one of the newly introduced award categories with the aim to honour the contributions and strategies developed by organisers in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

On the win, Josine Heijmans, VP (Construction) at dmg events said: "We are delighted to win the Best Digital Event at the Middle East Event Awards, it is a fantastic recognition for the teams that worked so hard to deliver a great event for our exhibitors and visitors despite the circumstances."

During the Covid-19 pandemic, The Big 5 Digital Festival offered the global construction community a convenient platform to access leading-edge education, innovation, and business opportunities.

With over 61,000 live chats and calls taking place over the 4 days, the event connected global construction players from 127 countries on a purpose-built platform powered by an AI-based matchmaking software.

"As event organisers, we had to quickly adapt and find viable solutions to continue accomplishing our mission of connecting and supporting the construction community despite travel restrictions, lockdowns, and physical distancing. This award, coupled with visitor and exhibitor feedback, is further motivation for us to continue developing innovative solutions that drive global business and trade," noted Heijmans.

The Big 5 will return from September 12 to 15 at the Dubai World Trade Centre and will be the only live in-person global construction event this year, she added.

The Big 5 2021 will run alongside nine specialised events including The Big 5 Heavy, Middle East Concrete, Windows, Doors & Facades Event, Gulf Glass, HVAC R Expo, The Big 5 Solar, Middle East Stone, Urban Design & Landscape Expo and FM Expo.

Set to support economic growth and recovery, the event will feature enhanced health and safety measures to ensure all participants can meet, network, and do business in a safe environment.
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Pakistan Navy Ship (PNS) AZMAT Wednesday visited port Bandar Abbas, Iran during overseas deployment to Persian Gulf/ Gulf of Oman

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 7th Apr, 2021 ) :Pakistan Navy Ship (PNS) AZMAT Wednesday visited port Bandar Abbas, Iran during overseas deployment to Persian Gulf/ Gulf of Oman.

Upon arrival, Islamic Republic of Iran Navy (IRIN) extended warm welcome and PN Ship was received by senior officers of IRIN and Defence Attache of Pakistan in Iran, said a Pakistan Navy news release received here.

During the port stay, Mission Commander along with Commanding Officer of PNS AZMAT called on Governor General and Representative of Supreme Leader of Hormozgan Province and Commander 1st Naval District of IRIN.

During the interactions, Mission Commander conveyed good wishes of Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Muhammad Amjad Khan Niazi for the people of Iran in general and the IRI Navy in particular. The Mission Commander also extended gratitude for the whole-hearted support provided by Iranian authorities for PN Ship Port Call during COVID-19 scenario.

Pakistan Navy Ship AZMAT also participated in Passage Exercise with IRI Navy Ships ALBORZ, FALAKHAN AND KHADANG. The visit of PN Ship and participation in exercise with IRI Navy is a manifestation of PN resolve to work with regional navies in order to enhance peace and security in the region.

Pakistan Navy believes in promoting stability in the region and has remained committed to maritime security and order at sea. The visit of PNS AZMAT is aimed to further strengthen bilateral ties and enhance naval collaboration. It is expected that the recent visit will further contribute towards strengthening close and fraternal ties of Pakistan with Islamic Republic of Iran.
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Republicans, Democrats have different opinions about Bidens religiosity: Pew

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A new survey from the Pew Research Center found that while the majority of Americans know that President Joe Biden is Catholic, perceptions about the degree of his religiosity differ based on an individuals partisan affiliation.

The Pew Research Center released the results of an extensive survey last week asking the American people for their thoughts and feelings about the religious faith of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. The survey, conducted between March 1 and March 7, included 12,055 respondents who are part of Pews American Trends Panel, which is an online survey panel that is recruited through national random sampling of residential address.

The survey asked respondents to identify the faith of the president and vice president. Fifty-eight percent of those surveyed correctly identified Bidens faith as Roman Catholic.

An additional 31% said they were not sure of his faith, while 6% identified him as Protestant, 3% said he was atheist, 1% said he belongs to an other religion not listed, and 1% thought his religion is something else. A higher number of Democrats and Democrat leaners (63%) knew that Biden is Catholic than Republicans and Republican leaners, just 55% of whom identified Bidens faith as Catholic.

The survey also asked respondents to weigh in on their thoughts about Bidens religiosity. Among all U.S. adults, a majority (64%) said the president is religious, with 37% characterizing him as somewhat religious and 27% describing him as very religious. Meanwhile, 35% of Americans think Biden is not religious, with 21% saying that he is not too religious and 14% believing that he is not at all religious.

An overwhelming majority of Democrats and those who lean Democrat (88%) believe that Biden is religious, with 45% describing him as very religious and 43% agreeing with the characterization of the president as somewhat religious. Nine percent of Democrats thought that the president is not too religious while 3% believed that he is not at all religious.

Republicans are far less likely than Democrats to describe Biden as religious. Just 7% of Republicans and adults who lean Republican thought that he was very religious, while 29% described him as somewhat religious. A plurality of Republicans surveyed (35%) concluded that Biden was not too religious, while 29% characterized him as not at all religious.

The responses to a question about how often people think Biden mentions his religious faith and prayer also illustrated a partisan divide. Overall, 61% of Americans believe that Biden mentions his religious faith and prayer about the right amount. That number rises to 79% among Democrats while dropping to 42% among Republicans.

While just 11% of Democrats thought that Biden mentions his religious faith and prayer too little, 33% of Republicans said the same, along with 21% of the respondents as a whole. A small minority of all U.S. adults (14%) thought that Biden mentions his religious faith and prayer too much. Broken down by partisan affiliation, 8% of Democrats and 5% of Republicans said the same.

With responses broken down among religious groups, white evangelical Christians, a strongly Republican voting bloc, were the least likely to say that they thought Biden is very or somewhat religious. As majorities of all other religious groups agreed with that supposition, just 35% of white evangelicals said that they agreed with the characterization.

White evangelicals were also the most likely group to say that Biden talks about his religious faith too little and the least likely to believe that he discusses his faith about the right amount. Majorities of all other religious groups believed that Biden talks about his religion about the right amount, while a narrow plurality (41%) of white evangelicals said the same. Thirty-nine percent of white evangelicals told Pew that the president talks about his religion too little, a far higher share than all other religious groups.

The results of the survey reflect concerns about Bidens position on abortion among pro-life religious voters, who overwhelmingly support the Republican Party in presidential elections. Biden, who touted his Catholic faith on the campaign trail, was denied communion by a priest in South Carolina because of his pro-abortion advocacy.

Although most respondents correctly identified Biden as a Catholic, the American public remains unsure about Harris religion. When asked to identify Harris faith, the overwhelming majority of respondents (65%) reported that they were not sure. Twelve percent correctly identified her faith as Protestant, while 8% said she belongs to no religion, 5% thought she was Catholic, 4% thought she belongs to an other religion, such as Judaism or Islam, while 3% told Pew that Harris practices Hinduism.

The partisan divide that manifested itself in the question about Bidens religiosity was also on display when respondents were asked about Harris religiosity. Overall, a majority of Americans (52%) thought that Harris was not too religious or not at all religious compared to 46% who described her as either very or somewhat religious.

The share of respondents who saw Harris as not too religious or not at all religious rose to 79% among Republicans, while dropping to 29% among Democrats. Nineteen percent of Republicans described Harris as very or somewhat religious compared to 69% of Democrats. The share of respondents that viewed Harris as very or somewhat religious ranged from 20% among white evangelicals to 78% among black Protestants, a group that overwhelmingly favors Democrats in presidential elections.
Kolkata, April 7 : The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has summoned the illegal coal smuggling case's alleged kingpin Anup Majhi aka Lala for questioning for the fourth time on Thursday, officials said.

A senior CBI official related to the probe told IANS: "We have issued summons to Majhi for questioning on April 8 at our office at Salt Lake here." Majhi has been evasive during his questioning earlier, said the official who did not want to be identified.

The CBI questioned Majhi on Tuesday for several hours. He was also called for questioning twice earlier - on March 30 and April 1.

Majhi's close aide Ganesh Bavaria was questioned on April 3, and Birbhum's former Superintendent of Police Shyam Singh on April 1. The CBI had also questioned former Asanol Commissioner, Laxmi Narayan Meena in connection with the case.

On April 5, the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which is probing the money laundering part, attached Majhi's immovable assets to the tune of Rs 165.86 crore.

The attached assets include land, factory premises, plant machinery and other assets of two companies -- Ispat Damodar Private Ltd and Sonic Thermal Private Ltd. The manufacturing plants of both these companies are situated in West Bengal's Purulia and Bankura.

Majhi, the director of a company engaged in the purchase and sale of dry fuel, is accused of alleged illegal coal trading in the Asansol-Raniganj belt of West Bengal.

The CBI had registered a case involving alleged illegal coal pilferage in November last year, naming Majhi, Eastern Coalfield Ltd General Managers Amit Kumar Dhar and Jayesh Chandra Rai, ECL chief of security Tan Das, area security inspector Kunustoria Dhananjay Rai, and SSI and security in-charge Kajora area Debashish Mukherjee.

It had also recorded the statement of Rujira Banerjee, wife of Trinamool Congress MP and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's nephew Abhishek Banerjee and his sister-in-law Menka Gambhir in the last week of February.

The agency has recently carried out searches at several locations in the state, including at the premises of Amit Agarwal, a close aide of Majhi, raising the heat in poll-bound West Bengal, where the ruling Trinamool and the BJP are engaged in a bitter battle.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - April 7, 2021) - Destiny Media Technologies Inc. (TSXV: DSY) (OTCQB: DSNY), the makers of Play MPE, a cloud-based SaaS solution for promotional music marketing, today announced that the Company will hold a conference call on April 14, 2021 at 2:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time (5:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time) to discuss financial results for its second quarter ended February 28, 2021. The Company plans to release financial results for the second quarter before market opens on April 14, 2021.

The conference call will include comments from President, Chief Executive Officer - Fred Vandenberg, Director of Business Development - Glenn Mattern, and Chief Financial Officer - Sam Ritchie.

Date: April 15, 2021

Time: 2:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time (5:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time)

Direct dial in: 1-416-764-8688

North America toll-free participant dial in: 1-888-390-0546

Conference ID: 59112630

A replay of the call will be available until April 21, 2021.

Direct replay: 1-416-764-8677

North America toll-free replay: 1-888-390-0541

Replay passcode: 112630#

A transcript will also be available on Destiny's corporate site at https://investors.dsny.com/investors/financials/

About Destiny Media Technologies Inc.

Destiny Media Technologies Inc. ("Destiny"), provides software as service (SaaS) solutions to businesses in the music industry solving critical problems in distribution and promotion. The core service, Play MPE (www.plaympe.com), provides promotional music marketing to engaged networks of decision makers in radio, film, TV, and beyond. More information can be found at www.dsny.com.

Contacts:

Fred Vandenberg

CEO Destiny Media Technologies, Inc.

604 609 7736 x236

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/79683
Defiant British holidaymakers continued to fly out to Portugal today less than four days before the country is set to be removed from the UK's travel 'green list'. Tourists leaving London Gatwick Airport today said the announcement had 'put a real dampener on the trip' but added that they would 'still try to enjoy ourselves'. Others said they 'just want to get away - nothing is going to stop us', with some changing flights to arrive home before the change is activated on Tuesday at 4am. At Gatwick today, an easyJet flight left for Faro at 8.30am, with those travelling on it expressing their disgust at having to pay for extra Covid tests and then quarantine for ten days at the end of their holiday after Portugal moves to the amber list. One couple said the extra costs for a two and eight day test and a third test to leave quarantine after five days had amounted to 1,200 - more than double the cost of their return flight to Faro. Pictured at Gatwick today (from left): Friends Amy and Jade; Essex couple Josh and Sophie with their daughter Harriet; and Kathy Kirby.
A central Pennsylvania man will keep serving a 10- to 20-year prison sentence after a state appeals court Wednesday refused to overturn his rape and other convictions in a sexual blackmail case.

Airii Coad is behind bars because a Lebanon County jury found he had coerced a woman into having sex with him by threatening to post on Facebook nude photos he had secretly taken of her.

In denying Coads appeal, a panel of the Superior Court rejected his contention that prosecutors didnt prove he had committed any crimes.

The case is a horror story from the age of social media.

Airii Coad

According to the Superior Court opinion by Judge Victor P. Stabile, the victim dated Coad briefly before trying to end their relationship. Coad asked to meet her in person, so in September 2017 they met on a rail trail in Lebanon.

During that conversation, Coad told her he had the nude photos and would post them on Facebook if she didnt agree to have sex with him two more times, the woman testified. She said Coad refused to show her the photos.

The victim said he was in a panic, agreed to Coads terms and had intercourse with him twice.

A month later, however, Coad texted her again. This time, the woman said, he claimed to have found a folder containing more nude photos of her and that he wanted to negotiate another deal. That deal was for her to have sex with Coad three times before he would delete the newly discovered photos, she said. Again, she agreed.

Coad didnt stop, however, the woman later told police. She said he demanded that she send him sexual photos and videos or he would post the nude pictures online.

Those text messages, police said, included ones that stated, So now since you want to argue, you get to do a live video strip tease for me and, Right now I have the power, so if I want you as my personal (expletive) toy then thats what happens. Understand?

At that point, the woman told her therapist what was happening and the therapist called the police. The county jury convicted Coad in February 2020 on charges of rape, sexual assault, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, indecent assault, criminal use of a communications facility and harassment.

On appeal to Stabiles court, Coad, 27, of West Reading, contended prosecutors didnt prove the sex acts he engaged in with the victim werent consensual. He claimed she was a willing participant.

Stabile called that contention meritless because the woman only agreed to engage in sex with Coad under duress after saying she wanted to end any romantic involvement with him.

Unhappy with victims decision, (Coad) decided to coerce victim into agreeing to additional sexual contact under the threat of publication of victims nude photos, telling the victim that if the photos were to be posted she would lose her job, her friends, and her family, Stabile wrote. Faced with (Coads) threat, the victim felt she had no choice other than to assent to additional sexual contact.

Stabile also rejected Coads claim that the jury placed too much weight on the testimony of the victim in deciding to convict him.

Court records show Coad, now a registered sex offender, is awaiting trial in Montgomery County on other unrelated charges involving a reported September 2019 rape at Arcadia University.
Yes, "roughing it" might not be your thing when you head out on a Texas road trip.

If you want all the sweet amenities of an upscale hotel to enliven your camping adventure, consider indulging in a "yurt" tented cocoon near the Texas Hill Country. Taking the Airbnb Texas spotlight is "Yurtopia" featuring three cozy yurt sites, including the Sasha Ger, Lena Ger and Becca Ger.

"We had the most relaxing, peaceful and fun time...and we watched the sunset, sunrise and the stars from the top deck late each night," Airbnb guest Trina wrote.

Airbnb/Yurtopia

GETTING AWAY FROM IT ALL: Here are the countries now allowing U.S. visitors

What this Texas yurt experience offers guests is a private resort setting to just unplug and "turn off the world during your stay at Yurtopia and soak in the views, sights and sounds of the Texas Hill Country woods."

Some of the amenities include 10 acres of nature trails, a private rooftop deck for the best stargazing, a hot tub and fire pit. Guests can snap up an overnight stay for $371 a night. Overseen by Airbnb superhosts Ann-Tyler and Brian, this yurt destination has a 4.97 ratinga distinction earned by great stays at a good location.

Airbnb/Yurtopia

"Beautiful hideaway in paradise! First class all the way...will be back!" Airbnb guest Jennifer wrote.

From yurts, luxury tents to domes, the love of Texas glamping is all about experiencing the rustic outdoors in some non-traditional lodging filled with creature comforts.

Airbnb/Yurtopia

"With glamping, you don't need to have outdoor experience," HoneyTrek glamping blogger Anne Howard told Chron. "It's easy access to nature, with creative structures like tipis and treehouses. These spots tread lightly on the land and integrate with nature."

One of the top draws to glamping especially amid the pandemic is that it takes some of the logistical nightmares of camping out of the equation, Howard said.

Airbnb/Yurtopia

"Glamping took all the hard work out of camping. That's why it's becoming more and more popular," Howard said. "It's also about sustainable practices and providing an experience that's truly authentic and unique. It should be a place of heart and intention."
Richard Manders of Watford, Ont., a long-time Standardbred owner, breeder, and former trainer-driver, passed away on Sunday, March 28.

Manders passed at St. Joseph's Hospice in Sarnia at age 70 after an eight-month battle against small cell lung cancer. He started in the harness racing industry as a young boy, when his father John (Jack) Manders raced horses all over Ontario, and followed in his father's footsteps along with brothers Raymond (deceased 1989) (Marlene), Robert (Susan), Keith (Mary), and now nephew Scott who has purchased the family farm and is therefore the fourth generation of Manders on the property and still breeding and racing horses.

He is also survived by his loving wife of 32 years Chris (nee Prevett), whom he met while stabled at Windsor Raceway when she was working for Greg Wright; sister Wendy (Joe) Koolen and several nieces and nephews in the Watford area and in the U.S. Predeceased by his parents, John and Mary, brother Raymond, and sister Gloria (late of N.J.).

His horses over the years included Upper Canada, Shower Gift, Confederation Line, Three Black Ties, Icy Welcome, Just Maverick and Casino Classic among others.

His funeral was held Saturday, April 3 at Watford Cemetery. Arrangements were entrusted to Dennings Funeral Home of Watford and condolences and memories may be left on their website. There is also a recording of the service which was livestreamed for anyone interested in viewing it.

Please join Standardbred Canada in offering condolences to the family and friends of Richard Manders.
[April 07, 2021] U.S. General Services Administration Awards Envistacom Multiple Contract Schedules

Envistacom, LLC, a leading technology company that delivers advanced communications, cyber and other related solutions and services to customers in the aerospace, defense, and intelligence communities, today announced the award by U.S. General Services Administration ( GSA (News - Alert) ) of both a Schedule 70 Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) contract and a One Acquisition Solution for Integrated Services (OASIS) Small Business Schedule contract. These contract schedules provide Envistacom's customers with new ways to access the company's products and services. Envistacom will deliver the following Special Item Numbers (SINs) on the Schedule 70 contract: SIN 54151S IT Professional Services

SIN 517410 COMSATCOM

IN 611420 Training Courses



About Envistacom LLC

Headquartered in Atlanta, GA, Envistacom provides communications, cyber and intelligence operations solutions to the U.S. DoD and coalition partners in the aerospace, defense, and intelligence communities. Customers rely on Envistacom for rapid-response, secure technology solutions and subject-matter expertise to support mission critical operations. With an elite team of former military leaders and domain experts located around the world, and multiple indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract vehicles worth over $62B, Envistacom is a trusted partner in protecting military, civilians and critical infrastructure around the world. Envistacom is a Disadvantaged Woman Owned Small Business (DWOSB). For more information on solutions or contract vehicles, please visit www.envistacom.com, and follow @Envistacom on Facebook (News - Alert) , Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005648/en/

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Apr. 7Despite a recent arrest, Pennsylvania State Police want to collect more information on the brutal murder of Evelyn Colon 44 years ago.

Troopers and Pennsylvania Crime Stoppers introduced a tip line to amass that information. Anyone with insight is asked to call 800-4PA-TIPS (800-472-8477) and reference media release No. 1956.

It was Dec. 20, 1976, when troopers began investigating human remains found on the banks of the Lehigh River in East Side borough, Carbon County, near White Haven in Luzerne County. The remains belonged to a woman and her near full term baby.

After being held in a morgue for years, the woman and her baby were buried at the Laurytown Road Cemetery in Lehigh Twp. in 1983 under a modest wooden cross that bore the name of Beth Doe.

They remained nameless for decades until state police at Fern Ridge announced an update in the case March 31. They positively identified Beth Doe as Colon, 15, who went missing in December 1976. Her survivors in their grief later named her baby Emily Grace Colon, according to information from the family.

Troopers also also announced the arrest of Luis Sierra, 63, of Ozone Park, New York, that day. He would have been 19 years old at the time. Trooper Gabrielle Van Wie filed the felony count of criminal homicide against him.

Sierra remains in custody awaiting extradition and a preliminary arraignment. Troopers said once they are able, more information will be released during a news conference in coordination with the Carbon County District Attorney's Office.

Background

According to arrest papers:

Colon's remains and that of her unborn daughter were packed into suitcases and likely thrown from an Interstate 80 overpass bridge.

Inside the suitcases were parts of a Sept. 26, 1976 New York Sunday News that would have circulated in northern and eastern New Jersey, to include Hudson County.

The woman was strangled, shot in the neck and dismembered in a death ruled homicide by Dr. Albert Fillinger, who performed an autopsy at Gnaden Huetten Hospital in Lehighton three days after the discovery.

Story continues

Her head, nose and ears were cut off and Fillinger determined she was killed within 24 hours of being found.

DNA extracted in 2007 after an exhumation were entered into a federal missing person database, but there were no matches for anyone reported missing. But, in 2020, a Texas laboratory compiled a DNA profile that was uploaded to public DNA databases. It proved a match to Luis Colon Jr., Evelyn Colon's nephew.

Investigators searched more within the family, learning that Evelyn was last seen in Jersey City, New Jersey, and the baby's father was Sierra, a junior at James Ferris High School at the time who went by the name "Wiso." Sierra at one point lived next to the Colons on Sixth Street in Jersey City.

But, the couple later moved into an apartment in Jersey City, and when Evelyn's mother and sister went to visit there in mid-December 1976, they found the apartment empty. The sister told police Sierra was abusive and reportedly told her mother if anything happened to her, Sierra would be involved.

A January 1977 letter written in Spanish and stamped from Stamford, Connecticut, said Evelyn had a baby boy, Luis Jr., and was doing well and if she needed anything she would call family. But, Evelyn lacked writing skills.

Evelyn was never reported missing but, according to the family, they continued to search for her through the years.

When Troopers Brian Noll and Brian Janoski interviewed Sierra on March 31 at his home, Sierra initially denied knowing Evelyn before acknowledging that he dated her, lived with her and she was having his child.

He told them he last saw her prior to leaving for work one day. They argued, and when he got home and found her gone, he assumed she was at her mother's. Sierra said when he checked the mother's house, no one answered.

He couldn't explain the letter, saying they took a day trip to look at apartments in Connecticut but returned to New Jersey. He admitted to sending a letter to her family saying they were moving there but he couldn't explain why they would have sent the letter prior to moving. When investigators said the letter announced the birth of a son, he couldn't recall writing it but acknowledged it was possible and that he would have named the child Luis Jr., like the letter indicated. Sierra had several other sons, none of which were named Luis.

Told the letter would have been sent after Evelyn's death, he couldn't provide an explanation. He also couldn't explain why he made little effort to contact Evelyn and his child.

Contact the writer: achristman

@standardspeaker.com; 570-501-3584
2019: Australian intelligence services conclude that China was responsible for a cyber-attack on Australia's parliament and three largest political parties in the run-up to a May election.

April 2020: Australian PM Scott Morrison begins canvassing his fellow world leaders for an inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. Britain and France are initially reluctant but more than 100 countries eventually back an investigation.

April 15: Morrison is one of the few leaders to voice sympathy with Donald Trump's criticisms of the World Health Organization, which the US president accuses of bias towards China.

April 21: China's embassy accuses Australian foreign minister Peter Dutton of 'ignorance and bigotry' and 'parroting what those Americans have asserted' after he called for China to be more transparent about the outbreak.

April 23: Australia's agriculture minister David Littleproud calls for G20 nations to campaign against the 'wet markets' which are common in China and linked to the earliest coronavirus cases.

April 26: Chinese ambassador Cheng Jingye hints at a boycott of Australian wine and beef and says tourists and students might avoid Australia 'while it's not so friendly to China'. Canberra dismisses the threat and warns Beijing against 'economic coercion'.

May 11: China suspends beef imports from four of Australia's largest meat processors. These account for more than a third of Australia's $1.1billion beef exports to China.

May 18: The World Health Organization backs a partial investigation into the pandemic, but China says it is a 'joke' for Australia to claim credit. The same day, China imposes an 80 per cent tariff on Australian barley. Australia says it may challenge this at the WTO.

May 21: China announces new rules for iron ore imports which could allow Australian imports - usually worth $41billion per year - to be singled out for extra bureaucratic checks.

June 5: Beijing warns tourists against travelling to Australia, alleging racism and violence against the Chinese in connection with Covid-19.

June 9: China's Ministry of Education warns students to think carefully about studying in Australia, similarly citing alleged racist incidents.

June 19: Australia says it is under cyber-attack from a foreign state which government sources say is believed to be China. The attack has been targeting industry, schools, hospitals and government officials, Morrison says.

July 9: Australia suspends extradition treaty with Hong Kong and offers to extend the visas of 10,000 Hong Kongers who are already in Australia over China's national security law which effectively bans protest.

August 18: China launches 12-month anti-dumping investigation into wines imported from Australia in a major threat to the $6billion industry.

August 26: Prime Minster Scott Morrison announces he will legislate to stop states and territories signing deals with foreign powers that go against Australia's foreign policy. Analysts said it is aimed at China.

October 13: Trade Minister Simon Birmingham says he's investigating reports that Chinese customs officials have informally told state-owned steelmakers and power plants to stop Aussie coal, leaving it in ships off-shore.

November 2: Agriculture Minister David Littleproud reveals China is holding up Aussie lobster imports by checking them for minerals.

November 3: Barley, sugar, red wine, logs, coal, lobster and copper imports from Australia unofficially banned under a directive from the government, according to reports.

November 18: China releases bizarre dossier of 14 grievances with Australia.

November 27: Australian coal exports to China have dropped 96 per cent in the first three weeks of November as 82 ships laden with 8.8million tonnes of coal are left floating off Chinese ports where they have been denied entry.

November 28: Beijing imposed a 212 per cent tariff on Australia's $1.2 billion wine exports, claiming they were being 'dumped' or sold at below-cost. The claim is denied by both Australia and Chinese importers.

November 30: Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lijian Zhao posted a doctored image showing a grinning Australian soldier holding a knife to the throat of an Afghan child. The move outraged Australians.

December 12: Australian coal is added to a Chinese blacklist.

December 24: China suspends imports of Australian timber from NSW and WA after local customs officers say they found pests in the cargo.

January 11, 2021: Australia blocks $300million construction deal that would have seen state-owned China State Construction Engineering Corporation takeover Probuild. The bid was blacked over national security concerns.

February 5, 2021: China confirms Melbourne journalist and single mother Cheng Lei has been formally arrested after being detained in August, 2020.

February 23, 2021: China accuses Australia of being in an 'axis of white supremacy' with the UK, USA, Canada and NZ in an editorial.

March 11, 2021: Australia is accused of genocide by a Communist Party newspaper editor.

March 15, 2021: Trade Minister Dan Tehan announced he wants the World Trade Organisation to help mediate discussions between the two countries over the trade dispute.

April 21, 2021: Foreign Minister Marise Payne announces Australia has scrapped Victoria's controversial Belt and Road deal with China using new veto powers.

May 6, 2021: China indefinitely suspends all strategic economic talks with Australia, blaming the Morrison Government's attitude towards the relationship. The move cuts off all diplomatic contact with Beijing under the China-Australia Strategic Economic Dialogue, freezing discussions between key officials below a ministerial level.
Ohio Judge Alison Hatheway temporarily blocked a law that would have given aborted babies a decent burial, reports say, due to the lack of clear rules for its implementation by abortion clinics and facilities.

"Without the required rules and forms in place, the plaintiffs will be forced to stop providing procedural abortions because of a real threat of sanctions and penalties independent from criminal prosecution. This substantially interferes with, if not denies, the plaintiffs' patients' rights to access abortion under the Ohio Constitution," Hatheway pointed out, as per the Associated Press.

The Associated Press said that Hatheway, who is a Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge, made the decision a day before the "fetal remains law" was set to be implemented, which Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed into law in December to ensure that human life is treated with dignity.

Hatheway, who was newly installed to her post last week, also banned the enforcement of the penalties against abortion providers that the state is provided to enforce as per the new law until 30 days after the rules have been set.

In addition, the AP revealed that the Unborn Child Dignity Act replaced an existing Ohio law that required the "humane disposal" of aborted fetuses yet did not define what "humane" meant. AP added that arguments will proceed in the lawsuit while Hatheway's temporary block is in place. This included clarifying the need for a burial permit, for the issuance of a death certificate after a burial of fetal remains, and if the existing disposal regulations on human bodies is encompassed by the new law.

AP also cited that the form required by the new law to be filed by the woman undertaking the abortion has remained unreleased. The form is to be submitted by the clinic and should indicate if the patient has been notified about the procedure of "humane disposal" and that the woman indicates what option she has chosen, that is whether it is burial or cremation.

According to the Ohio Right To Life website, the Unborn Child Dignity Act was introduced into the Ohio Senate in February 2019 by sponsor Senator Joe Uecker with the aim of promoting the "dignity of the unborn through " proper burial while strengthening Ohio's laws on informed consent" since "Deceased unborn infants deserve the same respect as other human beings."

The Ohio Right To Life website explained that the current state code "prohibits the trafficking of the products of conception" but did not specify the need to conduct a "human disposal of aborted infants." It added that the establishment of the rules for "the proper disposal of products of conception and define 'humane disposal' as earthly burial or cremation."

Pro-abortion groups, clinics, and Ohio's ACLU lawyers, as per the AP, have tagged the new law as "unconstitutional" since it is an obstruction for women to avail of legal abortion and also called it as "frivolous and medically unnecessary."

The Christian Post reported that a joint statement was released by pro-abortion groups and providers composed of the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Ohio, Preterm-Cleveland, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio, and Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio Region. The statement celebrated the blocking of the new law as a "victory for patients."

"There is a history of aggressive enforcement against abortion providers in Ohio, and this ruling ensures that abortion providers are not vulnerable to severe sanctions, fines and penalties, including potential license revocation, during this interim period as we await final rules and regulations from the Ohio Department of Health," the statement said.

The state, however, clarified that the law is not against abortion.

"The only way that it has the effect of a ban on April 6 is under the plaintiffs' erroneous factual and legal assumption that they will have to preemptively stop all abortions because of a lack of affirmative assurances (against prosecution)," clarified Ohio Department of Health Andrew McCartney.
Pakistans Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Wednesday held talks with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov here and the two leaders are expected to focus on strengthening bilateral economic and defence ties and discuss the Afghan peace process.

Pakistan Television footage showed that Lavrov, the first Russian foreign minister to visit Pakistan since 2012, arrived at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs where he was welcomed by Qureshi. Lavrov planted a sapling in the premises of the ministry and then went inside the building for a joint photo session, followed by the delegation-level talks.

Officials said that the two foreign ministers will hold in-depth discussion on various topics of bilateral interest with the aim to expand the multi-faceted ties. The issues of Afghan peace will also be prominent in the parleys. During the visit, the Russian foreign minister will also call on Prime Minister Imran Khan and have interaction with other dignitaries. He is also expected to meet Pakistan Army chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa.

Qureshi said ahead of Lavorvs arrival that there was a lot of scope for economic cooperation. He said that Russia was playing a role in the Afghan peace process. He later on tweeted that the Russian Foreign Minister's visit is in line with the commitment of Islamabad and Moscow to further strengthen their bilateral ties and deepening the growing bonds of cooperation and collaboration.

Separately, the Russian Foreign Ministry, in an official statement on Lavrovs visit to Islamabad, said that Pakistan is an important foreign policy partner of Russia and fruitful interaction is maintained at international organisations, primarily in the UN and its specialised agencies.

The cooperation between Moscow and Islamabad is based on the coincidence or similarity of positions on most of the problems of the world community, including issues of strategic stability and countering terrorism, according to the statement. The relations have come a long way from the Cold War hostility to current level cooperation and there is hope to further expand it in coming years. Earlier, the Russian Foreign Minister arrived here on Tuesday on a two-day official visit with the objective to deepen cooperation in different fields. He was received by Qureshi at the airport where the two leaders held a brief chat.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
 Close George Floyd died because he had no oxygen in his body, medical expert says

Hennepin County Medical Examiner Dr Andrew Baker is expected to testify today in the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

Dr Baker is the only person who performed an autopsy on George Floyd, following his death in May 2020 in the custody of Mr Chauvin and three other Minneapolis officers.

The former officer faces two murder charges after he knelt on Mr Floyds back for more than nine minutes during the arrest for a counterfeit $20 bill nearly 12 months ago.

Dr Bakers testimony will come a day after two major witnesses for the state testified in court on Thursday that Mr Floyd died when Mr Chauvin kneeled on his neck until he couldnt breathe.

Mr Floyd died of positional asphyxia, which is a fancy way of saying he died because he had no oxygen in his body, said Dr Bill Smock, a forensic medical specialist and police training doctor.

When the body is deprived of oxygen, in this case from pressure on his chest and back, he gradually succumbed to lower and lower levels of oxygen until it was gone and he died, he added.

Earlier in the day, Dr Martin Tobin, a lung specialist, reached a similar conclusion on the stand.

Mr Floyd died from a low level of oxygen, he said. Its like the left side is in a vice. Its totally being totally pushed in, squeezed in from each side, he added.

The jury is set to reconvene at 9:15am CT (3:15 UK) on Friday, as the prosecution continues to state its case.

Check out The Independents live updates and analysis below.
[April 07, 2021] SPYR Technologies Joins Soaring Smart Home Camera Market with IoT Subsidiary, Applied MagiX

NEW YORK, NY, April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SPYR Technologies (OTC Pink: SPYR) has officially joined the soaring multi-billion-dollar smart home camera market with its wholly owned subsidiary, Applied MagiX, Inc., and the launch of 4 different sourced products, including an Apple HomeKit Secure Video Camera. Surveillance cameras can be found in nearly a third of all smart homes in the U.S., UK, Germany, and France according to new research published in Strategy Analytics report Smart Home Survey  Surveillance Cameras. Meanwhile, the latest Home Automation Ownership & Usage Report from NPD Groups Connected Intelligence, states that half of U.S. consumers own at least one smart home device, up from 35% in January of 2020, and security cameras remain the most commonly owned device of all the smart home devices. In general, security is a key motivator in smart home device purchases, NPDs research found that security cameras have been the leading volume driver for the last 4 years. In fact, according to the firm, security cameras made up nearly one out of every four smart home device purchases at retail in 2020, the most of any device type. Because the home security camera is the marquee device favored by those outfitting their homes to become more automated and smart, its an ideal product for Applied MagiX to add to its smart home product lineup. Applied MagiX launched 4 products last week with the aim of driving revenue into the company immediately, while SPYRs California-based subsidiary continues to develop and launch its own proprietary products. The companys smart home camera is the highlight product among those first 4 Apple HomeKit offerings, which Applied MagiX sourced from its trusted technology partner, Onvis. And, it has introduced the product, the Onvis C3 HomeKit Secure Video Camera, with an extremely competitive price of $59.99. (Same product found on Amazon for $89.99) https://appliedmagix.com/shop/onvis-c3-camera Bill Ablondi, Director of Strategy Analytics Smart Home Strategies advisory service, said of the camera market, Surveillance cameras are potent assets smart home companies can use to attract new customers, as they provide consumers the feelings of safety and security in and around their homes, a potentially powerful value proposition that can be replicated in all markets. Just two years ago, in 2019, the global smart home security camera market was valued at around $3.9 billion, but according to KBV research, the market size is expected to reach $10.4 billion by 2026, rising at a CAGR of 16.5% during the forecast period. The same market is anticipated to reach $11.89 billion by 2027, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc., expanding at a CAGR of 15.7% over the forecast period. Industry experts cite a host of reasons for the explosive growth in the size of the smart home camera market, including the rapid adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) in smart homes, a rise in crime, and homeowners spending more time at home during the COVID-19 pandemic living, working and learning. These factors and others have created a rise in first-time home automation customers, who are looking for quick and easy ways to focus on security, while, at the same time, pushing enthusiasts to continue upgrading their homes with new and improved smart home devices so that their homes remain safe and secure. Jack Narcotta, Senior Industry Analyst in Strategy Analytics Smart Home Strategies advisory service, said, The two most powerful purchasing drivers for surveillance cameras are how they help consumers feel secure and how they giv consumers peace of mind to know their families and homes are safe.



According to NPDs Future of Tech report, sales of smart home devices are forecasted to continue their growth this year (2021), with sales up 9% over 2020. So, as consumers look for products that protect the home and can also be integrated with other smart home devices that theyve previously installed, smart security systems that are compatible with door locks, light switches, and sensors will increase in popularity and continue to drive the expected year over year sales increases. Applied MagiX also has 3 different smart sensors available on its online web store, including the:

Onvis SMS1 Multipurpose Smart Sensor (Environment & Motion) for $19.99 https://appliedmagix.com/shop/onvis-sms1-homekit-motion-sensor

Onvis CS1 Multipurpose Smart Sensor with Alarm for $19.99 https://appliedmagix.com/shop/onvis-cs1-smart-sensor-alarm

Onvis CT2 Door/Window Contact Sensor for $15.99 https://appliedmagix.com/shop/onvis-door-window-contact-sensor-ct2 The company will continue to add Apple HomeKit products and accessories to its lineup, as well as launch Apple Watch accessories, and Apple CarPlay products and accessories. Additionally, Applied MagiX will introduce its own signature line of proprietary and branded smart home products and accessories later this year. Read SPYR Technologies press releases at https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/spyr/press-releases About SPYR Technologies SPYR Technologies is a technology company that, through its subsidiary, Applied MagiX Inc., develops and resells Apple ecosystem compatible products with an emphasis on the growing multi-billion-dollar smart home market. SPYR continues to identify and target acquisitions that will grow its footprint in the industry and expand the products it offers consumers, including companies developing artificial intelligence and smart-technology products. About Applied MagiX, Inc. Applied MagiX is an Internet of Things (IoT) company headquartered in Manhattan Beach, California, with an office in Hong Kong. The company is a registered Apple developer that develops and resells Apple ecosystem compatible products with an emphasis on the growing multi-billion-dollar smart home market. About Stock Market Media Group Stock Market Media Group is a news & media content development IR firm offering a platform for corporate stories to unfold in the media with press releases, feature news articles, corporate videos, radio-style CEO interviews, and research reports. This article was written based on publicly available information. Stock Market Media Group may, from time to time, include our own opinions about the companies, their business, markets, and opportunities in our articles. Any opinions we may offer about any of the companies we write about are solely our own and are made in reliance upon our rights under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and are provided solely for the general opinionated discussion of our readers. Our opinions should not be considered to be complete, precise, accurate, or current investment advice, or construed or interpreted as research. Any investment decisions you may make concerning any of the securities we write about are solely your responsibility based on your own due diligence. Our publications are provided only as an informational aid, and as a starting point for doing additional independent research. We encourage you to invest carefully and read the investor information available at the website of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission at www.sec.gov , where you can also find all of SPYR Technologies filings and disclosures. We also recommend, as a general rule, that before investing in any securities, you consult with a professional financial planner or advisor, and you should conduct a complete and independent investigation before investing in any security after prudent consideration of all pertinent risks. We are not a registered broker, dealer, analyst, or advisor. We hold no investment licenses and may not sell, offer to sell, or offer to buy any security. Our publications about SPYR Technologies are not a recommendation to buy or sell a security. Should Stock Market Media Group and its management own shares in the profiled company, they may benefit from any increase in the share price of the profiled companies and hold the right to sell the shares bought or issued at any given time including shortly after the release of the companys profile. Section 17(b) of the 1933 Securities and Exchange Act requires publishers who distribute information about publicly traded securities for compensation, to disclose who paid them, the amount, and the type of payment. Under the Securities Act of 1933, Section 17(b), Stock Market Media Group discloses that its coverage was extended and was remunerated an additional fifteen-thousand dollars, paid for by a third party via bank wire, for its published content related to SPYR Technologies. In February 2015, SPYR agreed to issue to us 250,000 shares of SPYRs Restricted Common Stock. Our rights to sell any of this Restricted Common Stock are subject to prior compliance with all U.S. Securities Laws, including but not limited to Rule 144. Further, our sale of any of the Restricted Common Stock is subject to a volume restriction providing that we may only sell 5,000 shares daily for every 250,000 shares of the daily trading volume. All shares have been held for the requisite period under Rule 144 and were eligible to be sold immediately upon reaching the requisite holding period without further notice. Stock Market Media Group and its management never accept compensation in free-trading shares for its marketing services of the company being profiled, however third parties that have compensated Stock Market Media Group may hold free-trading shares of the company being profiled and could very well be selling shares of the companys stock at the same time the content is being disseminated to potential investors; this should be viewed as a definite conflict of interest and as such, the reader should take this into consideration. For more information: www.stockmarketmediagroup.com . Contact:

Stock Market Media Group info@stockmarketmediagroup.com

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Five days of fighting in Sudan's West Darfur region has left at least 87 people dead, medics said Wednesday, with thousands fleeing the latest outbreak of violence

Khartoum, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 7th Apr, 2021 ) :Five days of fighting in Sudan's West Darfur region has left at least 87 people dead, medics said Wednesday, with thousands fleeing the latest outbreak of violence.

"The committee has recorded a new toll of ... a total of 87 dead and 191 injured," the West Darfur Doctors' Committee said, after clashes involving gunfire and shelling in El Geneina, state capital of West Darfur.

The last toll issued late Tuesday by the United Nations had stood at 56.

Fighting between the Massalit and the Arab communities broke out on Saturday, with thousands fleeing the latest outbreak of violence, some escaping into neighbouring Chad, according to the United Nations.

El Geneina residents and the UN have reported days of fighting including gunfire and shelling, with a power station destroyed, an ambulance attacked and a rocket-propelled grenade hitting the key Sultan Tajeldin Hospital.

Other hospitals were also damaged in the fighting.

The Doctors' Committee said it condemned "in the strongest terms" attacks against hospitals and staff, calling them "barbaric behaviour which cannot be justified under any circumstances".

It is the latest outbreak between the communities since January, which has forced over 100,000 people to flee their homes, according to the UN.

The government on Monday declared a state of emergency and deployed troops to West Darfur.

The UN said it had suspended flights and aid operations to the city, a key hub for humanitarian assistance -- a decision the world body said would affect upwards of 700,000 people.

On Tuesday, the UN warned that the "inter-communal violence further deteriorates an already dire situation for vulnerable people." The vast Darfur region was ravaged by a civil war that erupted in 2003, leaving around 300,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced, according to the UN.

It flared when ethnic minority rebels rose up against dictator Omar al-Bashir's Arab-dominated government.

Khartoum responded by unleashing a notorious Arab-dominated militia known as the Janjaweed, recruited from among the region's nomadic tribes.

The conflict has subsided over the years, and the latest in a string of peace deals was agreed in October.

But after years of conflict, the region is awash with automatic weapons and clashes still erupt, often over land and access to water.

Residents long displaced during the worst years of the war are returning to find others have occupied their lands.

Sudan is in the midst of a rocky transition following the toppling of long-time president Omar al-Bashir in April 2019, following mass protests against his rule.
After finding unexploded bombs when he was digging the foundations of his new house last month, Ta Thanh Dat knew what he had to do.

A 227kg bomb was found and safely handled by a mobile bomb and mine clearance team from PeaceTree in Huong Hoa District, Quang Tri Province.

The man in Dong Ha City, the central province of Quang Tri, called the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Team and asked for help.

The team comes from RENEW  a co-operative programme between Quang Tri and foreign NGOs to restore the environment and address the consequences of war, especially unexploded ordnance (UXO). The main foreign partner in the programme is Norwegian Peoples Aid (NPA).

As soon as they received the call, EOD arrived at Dats house, searched and finally found 22 unexploded bombs and more than 350 small bullets.

The unexploded ordnance and bullets were moved away from the construction site and deactivated safely.

Dat said the teams professional and quick response helped him feel safe and confident that his new house would be built on schedule.

Earlier, in January this year, teams from the NPA/RENEW project searched for UXO across 865,000 sq.m in Hoang Ha Hamlet, Gio Viet Commune, Gio Linh District of the same province.

The teams found and deactivated 111 cluster bombs and other unexploded ordnance.

Le Viet Mau, a resident, said almost all of the more than 100 households' land and almost all their farmland was contaminated with UXO, which put people in danger.

We are so happy to see unexploded ordnance removed, he said.

The central province of Quang Tri was most heavily contaminated by unexploded ordnance (UXO) in Vietnam following the three decades of bombardment in the resistance war against the US.

Eighty-two per cent of Quang Tris total area is contaminated by UXO from the war with the US. Wartime bombs and landmines have killed more than 3,430 local people and injured 5,100 others.

In the last 26 years, the province has received nearly US$144 million from international organisations to remove the bombs. Thanks to this funding, UXO has been cleared on a total land area of more than 214 million sq.m. Part of the funding was spent on detecting cluster bombs on 449 million sq.m and identifying more than 446 million sq.m of land contaminated by UXO. More than 86 million sq.m of contaminated land was tackled. More than 740,700 UXO were found and deactivated.

Dozens of thousands of people in affected areas received support to improve their livelihoods and better understand UXO.

Vice-chairman of the province Peoples Committee Hoang Nam said the province and its partners have been making great efforts in bomb clearance.

2018 was the first year the province reported no accidents relating to UXO, he said.

The province has worked since 1995 with international organisations such as the US-based Peace Trees Vietnam, the Mines Advisory Group, Clear Path International, and Norwegian Peoples Aid on clearing UXO and supporting UXO victims.

Peace Trees Vietnam was the first non-governmental organisation granted permission to operate in Vietnam to implement bomb clearance.

Nam said that US non-governmental organisations helped the province clear UXO in about 187 million sq.m as well as to deactivate hundreds of UXO.

They also helped develop and train human resources to use modern technology for bomb clearance.

Nearly 900 local people living in UXO-affected areas received support to get stable jobs and incomes, he said.

The NPA/RENEW project since 2001 has also brought safer living conditions for local people.

The province is working to clear about 3,000ha of land each year to become the first Vietnamese locality safe from UXO accidents by 2025, Nam said.

Early this year, the provincial Peoples Committee approved a plan to implement an action programme for settling the consequences of UXO in 2021-25 period.

Besides land clearance, it aims to mobilise US$10-12 million annually from foreign non-governmental organisations to address UXO, complete all cluster bomb detection activities, and publicise areas identified as dangerous due to UXO.

It plans to help 60,000 people access education on UXO and have 1,300-1,500 UXO victims and their families receive healthcare and livelihood support every year.

All local schools are expected to include UXO safety education in their curricula within the next five years.

The province also plans to seek more foreign funding for dealing with UXO, prepare human resources for UXO settlement, increase training for those who manage and steer the work, and boost communications to raise awareness among agencies and the community.

According to the Ministry of Defence, between 2010 and 2020, the total clearance area is estimated to reach more than 500,000ha, including over 400,000ha conducted by the ministry and the remaining by international organisations.

Vietnam has spent approximately VND12.6 trillion (US$549 million) on bomb and mine clearance in the past decade.

The total amount includes VND9 trillion ($391 million) from development and investment projects, VND1.42 trillion ($62 million) from the national action plan against post-war legacy, and VND2.2 trillion ($96 million) from international non-refundable aid.

UXO was scattered over Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia by US bombers, at three times the volume of ordnance dropped in World War II, according to Project Renew.

VNS

Vietnam addresses post-war UXO consequences Vietnam is one of the countries suffering from heavy consequences of post-war bombs, mines and unexploded ordnances (UXO). The country has implemented measures to clear bombs, mines and explosives.
Mumbai, April 7 : Controversial suspended police officer Sachin Vaze was apparently a privileged and blue-eyed boy of then Mumbai Police chief Param Bir Singh, as per a report submitted by present Commissioner of Police Hemant Nagrale to the Maharashtra Home Department on the circumstances leading to his reinstatement.

It details Assistant Police Inspector (API) Vaze's nine-month long tenure in the elite Crime Intelligence Unit (CIU) of Mumbai Police's Crime Branch and categorically says he was reinstated by Singh in June 2020, after a decision of the Police Establishment Board, despite opposition from top police officers then.

Two Police Inspectors - Sudhakar Deshmukh and Vinay Ghorpade - were transferred to Units 01 and 10, ostensibly to make way for Vaze, who was of a lower API rank, but was posted as in charge of the CIU.

"As per the information given on telephone, the then Jt CP (Crime) had strongly opposed for posting of Sachin Vaze. But at the insistence of the then CoP (Singh), the then Jt CP (Crime) unwillingly issued the office order for posting of Vaze at CIU," says the damning report.

Earlier, after his suspension period ended on June 5, 2020, Vaze was reinstated and posted in a non-executive post in the armed police force on June 8, 2020, but barely a couple of days later, he landed the plum appointment at the CIU.

In March, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested Vaze for his alleged role in the planting of a SUV with 20 gelatin sticks and a threat note near the home of industrialist Mukesh Ambani's on February 25, followed by the mystery death of Thane businessman Mansukh Hiran on March 5.

After these cases erupted, Singh was shunted out and posted as the Commandant General, Home Guards, following which he shot off a "letter-bomb" targeting then Home Minister Anil Deshmukh, who quit after the Bombay High Court ordered a preliminary probe by the CBI into Singh's allegations.
The Costa del Sol tourist board (Turismo Costa del Sol) has revealed that airlines are offering almost 2.3 million seats on scheduled flights to Malaga airport during the months of May, June and July.

Of those, 1,862,293 seats correspond to international flights, which the tourists board says shows "the reactivation of tourism is beginning to become a reality."

All eyes are focused on the main market for the Costa del Sol, the United Kingdom. The British Government has already postponed the start of travel abroad for holidays until at least 17 May, if the coronavirus situation allows it, within its new restriction-easing programme. The date is key because this is the country where the travel companies have planned major promotion.

Of the 1.8 million seats from international destinations, 615,000 are in the British market.

The Costa del Sol tourism board says that one out of every four plane seats to Malaga airport will originate in the UK. Subject to international travel being allowed unhindered, the airport will be connected with direct flights to London, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Belfast, Liverpool, Glasgow, Nottingham, Leeds, Newcastle, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Doncaster, Bournemouth and Aberdeen.

In a more detailed breakdown, Turismo Costa del Sol says that the air corridor with London will offer 251,000 seats followed by Manchester with 58,700 seats and Birmingham, with 37,600 seats.

In order of international seats offered to Malaga, France is in second spot displacing Germany which has slipped to fourth as the Netherlands takes the third place.

Airlines

Ryanair, the airline that currently leads the table for volume of passengers at Malaga airport, will strengthem this position. Turismo Costa del Sol said, "From foreign markets, the majority of passengers, specifically one in four visitors, will come with Ryanair, which is offering more than 475,000 seats to Malaga airport."

The tourist board report indicates that easyJet will be the airline with the second-largest offer of seats to fly to the Costa del Sol, with 269,259 tickets on offer followed by the Spanish airline Vueling, with 134,816 seats, and British airline Jet2.com has scheduled 103,056 seats.
In March 1964, the New York Times reported that dozens of people heard the anguished cries of 29-year-old Kitty Genovese as she was raped and murdered outside her Queens, New York apartment but did nothing. The Times was lying. The lie worked, though, because we've also seen things happen when people should have intervened to stop something but refrained. Now, thanks to ubiquitous smartphones, we're seeing that, in 2021, there's an epidemic of passive Americans watching tragedy strike.

Many of us have seen recent videos in which something terrible happens and bystanders capture the event on an iPhone or other devices. The carjacking of an Uber driver, and his subsequent death at the hands of two teenage girls in D.C.; the vicious beating of an Asian man on a New York subway; and the ghastly assault of an elderly Asian woman in New York  all have shocked the senses of a country nearly numb from a constant stream of appalling images.

These events have several things in common: they take place in public spaces, are witnessed by other people, and are recorded on digital devices. The most important thing these events have in common is that no one stepped up to stop the aggressor. In all three events, people watched as an innocent person was savagely attacked, and no one lifted a finger to intercede, except to lift their phones and hit "record."

In 1964, believing the Times to be truthful, the public was outraged that a young woman could be raped and murdered within earshot of dozens of her neighbors and no one would come to her assistance. Now we view a video of naked violence without pausing to consider who recorded it and why. Who was present? Where is the outrage? Where were the men?

There are myriad explanations for why men are impotent in these situations. It could be that men are less virile, as is evident in falling testosterone levels. It could be fear of litigation; of being sued by the criminal. It could be the absence of actual empathy, from real human contact, as opposed to "virtual" empathy, gained from watching digital media. It could be simple fear.

Perhaps it is none of the things listed above; perhaps it is something deeper and much more damaging. Maybe we have lost sight of Truth  the idea that there is a universal right and wrong. Instead of a shared concept of good and evil, we now have billions of individual worlds of relativity. Each of us constructs a reality not based on good and evil, but rather on a spectrum ranging from pleasant to unpleasant.

When we see a fellow passenger on the subway savagely beaten, we find it unpleasant and hit record to share the unpleasantness with others. When we see two girls carjacking an Uber driver, we record the unpleasantness for our Twitter followers. When we see an elderly woman beaten to the pavement and kicked in the head, we have more unpleasantness to post on Facebook.

Men, in these situations, should not post on Facebook or Twitter. They should not be recording at all. Men should be acting. Men should know what is good and what is evil and act accordingly. But in a virtual and relative world, men do not act; they experience and share those experiences via a post to social media. It is as if the act of recording and posting the videos is to form a consensus on the unpleasantness of the event and to develop a sense of outrage. But outrage is feeling, not an action.

There is a theory in moral philosophy, emotivism, that proposes that moral claims within a statement can be reduced to the expression of feelings  that there is no moral value outside of how an individual feels. When we witness an act of evil in the emotivism framework, the nature of the evil is reduced to a feeling, and the imperative to act is obscured. This explains why we see evil acts perpetrated in the presence of passive men who do nothing to intercede.

Emotivism blends well with our culture. Woke-ism and emotivism combine to define a culture devoid of moral imperatives based on good and evil and instead require only a consensus of feelings. Thus, we can burn down businesses in dozens of cities when a (former) felon dies as a police officer holds his knee to the suspect's shoulder blades because we have formed a consensus of outrage. The murder of the Uber driver, the beatings of the Asian man on the subway, and the beating of the Asian woman on the street lack consensus; therefore, no action is required.

Men do not step up because they no longer recognize good and evil. The men are still around us, but they have been emasculated by their feelings.

Chris Boland can be reached at cboland7@outlook.com.

Image: Man watching TV by Amateur Hub from Pexels.

(Correction: An earlier draft of this article said that the police officer killed George Floyd. That is not this publication's stance and we have corrected this essay to reflect that fact.)

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
The coronavirus lockdown in March will have a fairly small impact on GDP, according to Chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Kyrylo Shevchenko.

According to Ukrinform, he said this in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

"We estimate that the lockdown in March will have a rather small impact on GDP, smaller than the one in January. The final estimate will depend on the actual quarantine parameters. Of course, some support will be provided by the statistical effect of the comparison base - from the second half of March last year there was a very strict lockdown throughout the country," Shevchenko said.

He noted that with regard to new lockdowns (the so-called quarantine of red zones), the NBU would consider them in its next macroeconomic forecast, which will be made in April.

"We are now taking several lockdown scenarios to calculate our model: depending on which scenarios the government chooses, we will use them. Of course, in our April forecast we will take into account the tightening of restrictions due to a region or city getting into in the red quarantine zone," Shevchenko said.

However, he noted, when assessing the quarantine factor, two aspects must be taken into account. First, quarantine measures have almost no impact on such sectors of the economy as industry, agriculture, but they significantly affect the services sector and transport. Second, the economy has already largely adapted to quarantine measures, even in the services sector. Accordingly, their influence, Shevchenko said, is not as destructive as in the second quarter of 2020.

"We expect world prices for goods predominating in Ukrainian exports to remain high, while energy prices, according to our estimates, will remain relatively stable. An additional factor is the possibility of a better harvest, as weather conditions were favorable in winter, and the area under winter crops was also increased," Shevchenko added.

The International Monetary Fund expects Ukraine's real GDP to reach 4% this year, up 1% from its previous forecast released last October.

op
Ammonia has recently emerged as a liquid storage and transport medium that has shown promising stability for long-distance hydrogen transport. At 108 kg H 2 /m3, liquefied ammonia (NH 3 ) can store 50% more hydrogen than liquid hydrogen. When ammonia is decomposed at high temperatures, only hydrogen and nitrogen gases are produced, with minimal carbon dioxide emissions.

Because more than 200 million tons of ammonia are currently produced annually for industrial use around the globe, the infrastructure for its mass storage and long-distance transport already exists and could simply be re-purposed for hydrogen transport. However, the need for large amounts of heat has thwarted the widespread adoption of ammonia for use in hydrogen transport and storage.

The decomposition reaction through which hydrogen is extracted from ammonia can only proceed at high temperaturewhich requires high energy input. A catalyst in the form of a solid powder can be added during the decomposition reaction to lower the reaction temperature; however, the existing ruthenium-metal-based catalysts are very expensive and have low stability, thus requiring regular replacement.

Now, researchers at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) led by Drs. Hyuntae Sohn and Changwon Yoon have developed a catalyst for hydrogen production from ammonia decomposition that exhibits 2.5-times higher ammonia decomposition performance than conventional commercial catalysts. The results of this study were published in the journal Applied Catalysis B: Environmental.

The catalyst consists of ruthenium metal particles and zeolite strongly bound by calcination under vacuum, resulting in the containment of sub-nanometer and nanometer ruthenium metal particles in each pore of the zeolite support.





A schematic diagram of the catalytic structure for ammonia decomposition developed by KIST researchers. Credit: Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST)

This novel catalyst achieves its efficiency while using only 40% of ruthenium metal compared to existing catalysts. Because nanometer-sized (or smaller) ruthenium metal particles are present and maintain their stability during the ammonia decomposition process even at high reaction temperatures, the use of the proposed catalyst can overcome the problem of low stability, which has been significantly limiting the commercialization of existing catalysts.

The developed catalyst has an advantageous structure in that the nanometer-sized ruthenium metal particles are uniformly spread over zeolite, a crystalline mineral. Thus, this catalyst has shown higher performance and stability than previously reported catalysts and is expected to facilitate the commercialization of the process for high-purity hydrogen production from ammonia. Dr. Hyuntae Sohn

The importance of large-capacity hydrogen transport based on ammonia is rapidly increasing, with fierce competition among advanced countries over the development and acquisition of related technologies. The application of the proposed catalyst for large-capacity hydrogen production via ammonia decomposition, which is currently under research and development, will ultimately help the commercialization of ammonia-derived hydrogen and the large-capacity hydrogen transportation between countries. Dr. Changwon Yoon

This research was supported by the New & Renewable Energy Core Technology Program of the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning(KETEP), granted financial resources by the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy (MOTIE).

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| 2021-04-07 18:09:30|Editor: huaxia

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Authorities in Ghana have launched investigations into the incidents of stranded dolphins and dead fishes at two separate locations along the country's shores.

ACCRA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Authorities in Ghana have launched investigations into stranded dolphins and dead fishes at two separate locations along the country's shores, an official told Xinhua Tuesday.



"Some live dolphins were trapped by waves and driven towards the sandy beach in Axim, a coastal community in the Western region on Sunday," said Michael Arthur-Dadzie, Executive Secretary of the Fisheries Commission.

He said some fishermen picked up between 60 and 80 of the live dolphins to sell to dealers in its flesh and parts before officials could reach the scene.

"This phenomenon occurs at various locations in the world from time to time. These are carnivorous mammals and while they follow smaller fishes to feed on, they could lose their navigation path and get trapped by tidal waves, which wash them ashore," Arthur-Dadzie explained.

He added that "some of the sea mammals that hit the shores in Axim died due to suffocation and trauma. These have been buried by our officials and the fishermen associations. But some live dolphins were also rescued and released into the sea."

File photo shows a fishman pulls a boat to the bank at the fishing port of Jamestown in Accra, capital of Ghana, Jan. 5, 2012. (Xinhua/Shao Haijun)

Arthur-Dadzie also confirmed that about 20 tons of dead fish were washed to the shore at Osu, a coastal community in the Ghanaian capital.

"We have commenced investigations to establish the cause of these incidents. This will help us ascertain whether the dolphin incident and that of the dead fishes were due to natural causes, or there had been some human activities contributing to the situation," he stated.

The Fisheries Commission, Food and Drugs Authority (FDA), Environmental Protection Agency, and some of the country's universities are collaborating in the investigations which include laboratory analysis of parts of the fishes and dolphins.

He was, however, confident that the incidents would not affect Ghana's global rating in the protection of sea mammals, "because our response to the developments was swift."

The FDA said it was monitoring all fish markets in Ghana to prevent the sale of any of the dead fish washed ashore to consumers.

Mike Ababa-Edu, an executive member of the Ghana National Canoe Fishermen Council, described the incident as isolated, urging the regulatory bodies to intensify their education of fishermen so they could help protect endangered species in the sea. 
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DGAP Ad-hoc-Service Tel: +49 (0)89 210298-50 Fax: +49 (0)89 210298-72 Email: newsroom@dgap.de Issuer: Issuer: ISIN: ERS Test AG LV0000100535 Contact: Agent: ERS Test AG EQS Group AG Test3 Prof.Dr. Robert DD TukTuk Prof.Dr. Robert DD TukTuk Phone: +49 (0) 89 21 02 98 - 502 Phone: 089-21029834 Fax.: +49 (0) 89 21 02 98 - 57 Fax.: 089-21029849 E-mail Contact: info4@eqs.com E-mail Agent: joachim.nenning@eqs.com

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INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL ALLOWANCE RULES (while on India payroll)



- Air Travel: Travel will be booked in accordance with the Company Travel Policy.



- Conveyance from home to airport (and vice versa) in the home country and from airport to office/hotel (and vice versa) at the destination country will be paid by company on actuals. Employee has to produce bills to claim the same.



- Accommodation: Employees will be provided accommodation at the company approved hotels in each location.



- Per-diem: While on overseas travel, the company shall pay a per diem allowance as per the following table, to cover your food and incidental expenses incurred whilst staying away from your home country:







Country

Per Diem



Russia

30



Germany

24



Hongkong

30



Switzerland

41 EUR arrival day and departure day, 61EUR for a total day







** All amounts in Euros (to be converted using exchange rates provided by Finance). 80% of the total per diem allowance will be given in the form of loading foreign exchange on a prepaid HDFC Bank Corp Multi Currency Forex Card and the remaining 20% will be paid in Euros.



- The per diem covers food and incidental expenses. No bills need to be submitted to claim this amount.



- Per-diem is applicable from date of arrival at destination country to date of arrival at home country. On the arrival and departure days, regardless of how many hours you travel professionally, 50% of daily allowance will be deductible. Also, the per diem rate will be reduced by a portion (20%, 40% and 40% for breakfast, lunch and dinner respectively) for business meals (company provided food/drink, conference, complimentary breakfast at the hotel), regardless of whether the traveler chooses to eat the meals provided.



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- International prepaid sim card may be purchased by the employee from the destination country and will be reimbursed on production of actual bills.



- The employee should complete the Travel Expense Reimbursement Form and should submit the signed form within five working days from the end of the travel date. All detailed receipts/bills should be attached with the Expense Report. After approval, reimbursement will be processed within five business days.









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He's approaching the end of his 14-day quarantine in a Toronto hotel, after jetting over to Canada to shoot his upcoming comedy film 8-Bit Christmas.

And Neil Patrick Harris showed that he's been using his solo time creatively, when he shared a video of himself 'sanitising' his hotel bathroom  and body.

Sporting just a pair of camouflage boxer briefs, the How I Met Your Mother star, 47, used a spray bottle to clean tiles and mirror, before taking aim at his underwear and inside his own month in the hilarious clip, posted on Instagram on Tuesday.

Let us spray: Neil Patrick Harris took to Instagram to share a clip of himself spraying 'sanitiser' into his mouth on Tuesday

Set to the soundtrack of Bobby Cole's classic Who Likes Jazz, the American actor was seen spraying under his arms, in his hair and across his torso as he cleaned up.

Captioning the clip, the New Mexico-born screen star wrote: 'Quarantine Day 12 of 14: Cleaning. I like doing this daily, just to maintain my sanity. #ohwait.'

Throughout his time in quarantine, David has treated his Instagram followers to daily hilarious updates on the ways he's been keeping himself entertained.

Those activities have included watching Schitt's Creek, practising yoga, using a vintage typewriter, and playing solo games.

Underwear: The How I Met Your Mother star, 47, also sprayed the solution into his boxer briefs

Getting quarantine clean: During the hilarious clip, the star also sprayed down his entire body

Quarantine: He's approaching the end of his 14-day quarantine in a Toronto hotel, after jetting over to Canada to shoot his upcoming comedy film 8-Bit Christmas

His time in quarantine has also meant spending Easter apart from his partner David Burtka and their twin children Harper and Gideon, 10.

Sharing a snap of his children celebrating the holiday in colourful style, he wrote: 'Happy Easter. Missing these two big time. But so thankful to @dbelicious for representing so well. #grateful #bestdadever #eastereggs #levitation.'

With his quarantine set to end this week, the actor will be able to join the ongoing production of his comedy 8-Bit Christmas, directed by Michael Dowse and co-starring Steve Zahn, June Diane Raphael and Cyrus Arnold.

Back in February, Neil joked that he was 'free' of his children, thanks to the reopening of schools, during a virtual interview with Ellen DeGeneres.

Thorough: The screen star used a spray bottle to clean tiles and mirror in his hotel bathroom

Day 12: Captioning the clip, the New Mexico-born screen star wrote, 'Quarantine Day 12 of 14: Cleaning. I like doing this daily, just to maintain my sanity. #ohwait'

Taste: The actor reacted in exaggerated disgust after spraying the 'sanitiser' into his mouth

The actor was promoting his critically acclaimed series It's a Sin, when he opened up about his whole family contracting the novel coronavirus.

Harris began by saying that he's, 'on the East Coast, holed up with my family and we're making the most of it.'

When asked if he's still performing magic during the pandemic, he added that he now, 'buy things at auction, little cool magic props and horde them and figure out how they work.'

When Ellen asked how his family is doing, the screen confirmed that they all had COVID-19 at the same time.

Free: Back in February, Neil joked that he was 'free' of his children, thanks to schools reopening

'Yeah I was filming The Matrix 4 in San Francisco, right at the beginning of the year, and then I came back and it was right at the end of March I started feeling not so well,' he began.

He added they were 'holed up, the lockdown started, then I lost my sense of taste and sense of smell.'

Harris confirmed that his husband, their twins and their friend Michael who was staying with them all contracted COVID-19.

'It was early on so it was a little bit tenuous and scary, there weren't any examples of anything, but no one had to be hospitalised,' he added.

DeGeneres added that she caught COVID-19, but, surprisingly, her wife Portia de Rossi never caught it somehow, nor did anyone near her.

Harris said his twins are 'miraculous' and he misses them because they're back in school, after having school at home for months.

'As of last week, they were able to be with all the protocols, the masks and the six feet apart and getting tested all the time, so, Ellen, I'm free!,' he joked.

The actor also introduced his new dog Ella, revealing that, 'Santa brought Ella on Christmas morning.'
Saudi Arabian Logistics, the cargo logistics arm of national flag carrier Saudia, has sealed a cargo ground handling agreement with Dubai carrier Emirates SkyCargo.

A key player in the regional aviation sector, SAL provides premium ground handling services for multiple airlines at Saudi Arabias local airports and logistic support with cargo chain solutions.

The company also connects all means of transportation with local airports to make a larger contribution to vision 2030 and transform the Kingdom into a global logistic hub.

SAL said this deal comes as part of the companys strategy to logistically partner with the most reputed airlines with strong presence in the international arena.

CEO Omar Hariri said: "This cooperation with the leading Emirates SkyCargo as a logistic partner will have a positive effect on the flow of cargo operations at all our main stations in the kingdom."

"We take pride in this partnership which will boost the traffic of goods into the kingdom and also cargo from our domestic airports loaded into Emirates aircrafts where we have placed all logistic capabilities and resources including equipment and manpower to serve our mutual strategic objectives," he stated.

Hariri also highlighted the long track record of cooperation between Emirates SkyCargo and ground handling division at Saudia Cargo prior to the privatization of the sector when SAL has taken over all ground handling duties at all main airports in the Kingdom.

"Saudi Arabia is considered a market with high interest to Emirates SkyCargo and we have strong business relation with SAL," remarked Nabil Sultan, Divisional Senior Vice President at Emirates.

"We look forward, through the extension of this ground handling agreement, to continue our partnership and offer a rich and value-adding logistic services to our clientele in this market. We are confident that our operations will run smoothly and seamlessly due to SALs unique handling capabilities, which will consequently, bolster trade and cargo operations between the two countries," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
Nguyen Thuy Hanh holds a banner calling for the release of a prisoner of conscience during a protest in Hanoi.

UPDATED at 7:30 A.M. EDT on 2021-04-08

Police in Vietnams capital Hanoi on Wednesday arrested a well-known activist who raised funds for the families of jailed prisoners of conscience, for what official media in the one-party state said was "disseminating anti-state documents."

Nguyen Thuy Hanh, who had earlier run afoul of Communist Party authorities for trying to run for election in 2016, was taken into custody Wednesday morning in the lobby of her apartment building, said Dang Bich Phuong, a personal friend, citing information from Hanhs family members.

I asked Hanhs older sister, who lives in Phu Yen province, but she didnt get the news directly herself. She heard about it from other relatives, she said, speaking to RFAs Vietnamese Service on April 7.

Police officers on the scene barred bystanders from taking photos or filming the arrest, Phuong added.

Also speaking to RFA, former prisoner of conscience Vu Hung confirmed the arrest, saying he had been away from Hanoi when Hanh was taken away and hadnt heard of her arrest until after 3:00 p.m., when he quickly returned to Hanoi.

When I asked to visit Hanh, a receptionist in her apartment building told me she had been arrested that morning, Hung said. She said that about 30 people had been present at the arrest, and that police first read out the arrest warrant and then sealed her apartment.

A reporters call asking police in Hanois Thuong Dinh ward about the arrest was turned away by an officer who said We dont know and then hung up, while a receptionist at the Hanoi Police Investigation Agency said reporters should come in person to the agency to ask their questions.

Born in 1963, Hanh is a well-known human rights activist in Hanoi and founder of the 50K Fund, set up to provide financial support to family members of prisoners of conscience who cant afford to travel to the prisons where their loved ones are held.

Her account at Vietcombank was blocked in 2020 after she raised about 500 million Vietnamese dong (US $21,600) to support the family of Le Dinh Kinh, the elderly leader of the Dong Tam commune, who was shot dead by security forces during a police raid on Dong Tam in Jan. 9, 2020 amid a long-running land dispute that landed many of his family members in jail.

Hanh closed her fund in early December to have time to treat an illness, but affirmed her continuing support for prisoners of conscience.

Ming Yu Hah, Amnesty Internationals deputy regional director for campaigns, called Hanh's arrest "a blatant and politically-motivated attempt to silence one of the most respected human rights advocates in the country."

Hah noted that Vietnamese prisons are "notoriously overcrowded" and called for Hanh's immediate release.

"It is a travesty that Nguyen Thuy Hanh is being targeted for her humanitarian work in support of unjustly detained prisoners. She should be celebrated and supported for this worknot punished," she said.

Crackdown on candidates

Hahn was a self-nominated candidate in 2016 for election to the countrys National Assembly, a process tightly controlled by the ruling Communist Party and restricted to Party-approved candidates, sources said.

Rights group Amnesty International called on Vietnam on April 1 to end its crackdown on independent candidates for election to the countrys rubber-stamp legislature in a vote scheduled for May 23, saying that two would-be Assembly members have already been arrested and charged under Article 117 of Vietnams Criminal Code for activities opposing the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

Le Trong Hung, a citizen journalist and member of Chan Hung TVwhich broadcasts Facebook livestreams on social and political issueswas arrested by police in Hanoi on March 27, while blogger Tran Quoc Khanh was taken into custody in Ninh Binh province on March 10, Amnesty said.

Emerlynne Gill, Deputy Regional Director for Amnesty International, noted that while Vietnam has recently put itself forward as a candidate for membership in the U.N. Human Rights Council, based in Geneva, [Vietnamese] authorities are engaging in blatant and widespread human rights violations at home.

At least 173 known prisoners of conscience were being held in Vietnamese prisons as of December 2020, Amnesty said in an annual report released on April 6, the highest recorded number since Amnesty International began publishing these figures in 1996.

Among those, 72 were held for expressing their opinions online, a marked increase on previous years, the rights group said, adding, Prison conditions remained generally harsh, but prisoners of conscience in particular were subjected to discrimination, harassment and ill-treatment.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Hahn had nominated herself for elections this year.

Reported by RFAs Vietnamese Service. Translated by Chau Vu. Written in English by Richard Finney.
Sam Houston State University officials are working with Conroe leaders to highlight the schools new medical campus.

A new medical campus is a worthy accomplishment for any city council to brag about and members of the Conroe City Council were eager to do just that while extending what help they could in making the school a success while touring the new SHSU osteopathic medical campus in Conroe.

The campus welcomed its first class of 75 students last fall and will be accepting another 112 this coming August. Opening a new campus in the midst of a pandemic was no small feat but with rigorous COVID-19 precautions, the school administration reports that there has been no on-campus spread of the virus.

Now, school officials are looking to the future and have plans to work with the city council on several initiatives.

Former Conroe Mayor Tommy Metcalf organized Tuesdays tour of the campus with current mayor Jody Czajkoski, and current council members Todd Yancey, Curt Maddux, and Mayor Pro Tem Raymond McDonald to show them what an asset he believes the campus is to Conroe.

Everybody is enthusiastic about the college of medicine being here in Conroe and leadership on both sides  the college of medicine and also on City Council  want to create this to be a wonderful partnership together, Metcalf said.

Several years ago, Metcalf said he received a phone call from Dana Hoyt, the president of SHSU at the time, who wanted to meet to talk about the university opening a college of medicine in Conroe.

I told her I thought it was a brilliant idea, he said, suggesting the former Boy Scouts camp off of Interstate 45 as the location.

Now, several years later, the only thing the state-of-the-art campus is missing is the lobby mural that will be created by a Canadian artist when it is safe for them to travel to Texas to complete it.

The four-story building includes a 160-seat theater classroom with six presentation screens, multiple large convertible classrooms to be used as necessary, a simulation hospital where students get hands-on practice with medical actors and realistic medical dummies as patients, an operation room, a cadaver lab, a fully-stocked student lounge, dozens of study rooms, and lockers for students to keep their personal belongings.

Following the tour, the city council members sat down with the schools deans to discuss future opportunities to work together. Together, the group of school officials and city officials found several areas they could work together on.

Recently the city purchased the former Conroe YMCA building, which the campus had planned on partnering with to offer students a place to work on their physical health. The city plans to turn the space into its own recreational facility with programs that will complement what the YMCA was offering and offered to work with SHSU to create access for students.

Currently, SHSU is operating a clinic here in Conroe that opened last November, but the university is having difficulty spreading the word about it and finding new patients. The pandemic has made this even more difficult. Czajkoski offered the resources of his own offices to help spread the word and alert the community to the new clinic.

As COVID-19 continues to impact the nation, SHSU offered their medical experts as resources for Conroe to utilize and consult with. The university has maintained strict masking and social distancing guidelines on campus but plans to loosen these protocols next year.

I think all its going to take is communication on both sides saying What can we do to make this combination better? Metcalf told the gathered group. So, I, as a citizen of Conroe, really feel good about it.

jamie.swinnerton@chron.com
The state Fire Marshals Office is investigating after two people were found dead Sunday afternoon in a burned home in Baldwin County, police said.

Robertsdale police officers responded to the home on Devine Road around 2:46 p.m. Sunday for a welfare check after the victims neighbor could not contact them after trying to deliver a package.

The neighbor then called police, who noticed that a fire had occurred inside the home.

Two people inside were found dead, police said.

Robertsdale police turned the investigation over to the state Fire Marshals Office.

The office could not be reached by AL.com for further comment.

Police declined to release the names of the victims because their next of kin was yet to be contacted.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AgJunction Inc. (TSX: AJX) (AgJunction or the Company) and Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. (IN:MAHM) (Mahindra) are pleased to announce a joint project whereby Mahindra will demonstrate autosteering technology on a Hasret 125 Luks CRD4 tractor, built by Erkunt Traktor Sanayii A.S in Turkey.



The demonstration will provide local growers a close look at key precision farming technologies, including auto-steering functions for precision planting and crop maintenance, auto eTurns and row headland process for managing field configurations, automated implement lift capability, and precision navigation using cellular enabled real-time kinematic GPS technology. The demonstration will be conducted over a six to eight-month period and cover all aspects of crop planting, tilling, fertilization, irrigation, and harvest leveraging the accuracy and continuity of the AgJunction precision guidance solution on the Mahindra Erkunt tractor.

The demonstration will be conducted with local farmers in the Afyonkarahisar Province of Turkey. AgJunction and Mahindra will provide training on precision farming techniques with experienced Turkish growers, using the latest available steering and tractor technologies. Local university students will be engaged to provide technical support and learn about the latest technologies in a hands-on environment.

Precision farming using AgJunction technology can enable farms of all sizes to improve productivity and increase crop yields, said Dr. M. Brett McMickell, president and CEO of AgJunction. We look forward to working with Mahindra to improve the accessibility of precision agriculture globally.

Commenting on the joint project, Ramesh Ramachandran, Sr. Vice President, FES Strategy & Head, Farming as a Service, Mahindra, stated: Precision Farming technologies are needed by farmers globally to enhance crop yield and lower cost of cultivation. Through our work with AgJunction, we look forward to bringing these technologies at an affordable cost.

About AgJunction

AgJunction Inc. is a global leader of advanced guidance and autosteering solutions for precision agriculture applications. Its technologies are critical components in over 30 of the worlds leading precision Ag manufacturers and solution providers and it holds over 200 patents and patents pending. AgJunction markets its solutions under leading brand names including Novariant, Wheelman, Whirl and Handsfreefarm. AgJunction is headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, and is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) under the symbol AJX. For more information, please go to AgJunction.com .

About Mahindra

Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. is part of The Mahindra Group, a USD 19.4 billion federation of companies that enables people to rise through innovative mobility solutions, driving rural prosperity, enhancing urban living, nurturing new businesses and fostering communities. It enjoys a leadership position in utility vehicles, information technology, financial services and vacation ownership in India and is the worlds largest tractor company by volume. It also enjoys a strong presence in renewable energy, agribusiness, logistics and real estate development. Headquartered in India, Mahindra employs over 256,000 people across 100 countries. Learn more about Mahindra on www.mahindra.com / Twitter and Facebook: @MahindraRise

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking information and forward-looking statements (collectively, "forward-looking information") within the meaning of applicable securities laws and is based on the expectations, estimates and projections of management of AgJunction as of the date of this news release, unless otherwise stated. The use of any of the words "expect", "anticipate", "continue", "estimate", "objective", "ongoing", "may", "will", "project", "should", "believe", "plans", "intends" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking information. These statements are only predictions and actual events or results may differ materially. Although the Companys management believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, it cannot guarantee future results, performance or achievement since such expectations are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive and political uncertainties and contingencies. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on such forward-looking information contained in this press release.

In respect of the forward-looking information, AgJunction has provided such information in reliance on certain assumptions that it believes are reasonable at this time, including, but not limited to, the sufficiency of budgeted capital expenditures in carrying out planned activities; that AgJunction's future results of operations will be consistent with management expectations in relation thereto; availability of key supplies, components, services, networks and developments; the impact of increasing competition; conditions in general economic, agricultural and financial markets; demand for the Company's products; and the continuity of existing business relationships.

Since forward-looking information addresses future events and conditions, such information by its very nature involves inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors and risks. These include, but are not limited to the risks associated with the industries in which AgJunction operates; competition; inability to introduce new technology and new products in a timely manner; legal claims for the infringement of intellectual property and other claims; negative conditions in general economic, agricultural and financial markets; and reduced demand for the Company's products. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive.

Additional information on other factors that could affect the Company's operations or financial results, are included in reports of AgJunction on file with applicable securities regulatory authorities, including but not limited to, AgJunction's Annual Information Form which may be accessed on its SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com. The forward-looking information contained in this press release is made as of the date hereof and AgJunction undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless so required by applicable securities laws.

Contact:

Media

press@agjunction.com

Investor Relations

Gateway Investor Relations

Cody Slach or Cody Cree

1-949-574-3860

AJX@gatewayir.com
THE latest Covid-19 announcement by government last week brought no easing of restrictions for marts, which are to remain online for the time being.

Despite the lack of change, David Quinn of Carnew Mart said that he is hopeful for a return of ring-side buyers sooner rather than later.

'To one degree, we're lucky to have the online system that we do and it's working well insofar as people are engaging with it but it's not for everyone. We'd be hopeful that we'll be able to get a certain number of people back in May with social distancing, but a lot will depend where the cases are and if there's a drop nationally.

'A lot of people would like to get back around the ring, particularly from the social aspect of the whole thing and we'd love to have customers back with us but at the moment it looks like, at least for the month of April, we're going to be as we are,' he said.

Mr Quinn said that he was confident in the safety of marts when it comes to the spread of the virus, but believes that the online offering is here to stay regardless.

'Back last summer from June we got to have people around the ring but since the end of October, bar a week or two in December, we've been completely online ever since the pandemic started. During those four months last year, we had no outbreaks or clusters and, as far as I know, it was the same nationwide at marts. One thing that we have to our advantage is that our sheds are big and open, so the 60 people in the big ring and the 30 in the second ring aren't in too enclosed of a space and it did work very well.

'In Level 3, we could have as many people as the premises could hold at two metre distance while with Level 4, you could have buyers only. We never had that but some in the west of Ireland did and we think we'd get about 30 into each ring in Level 4 so it would be a help to us.

'Post-Covid, even when there are no restrictions, I feel the online part of the business is going to continue to be very active and you're going to see the online platform continue even when the marts are fully back up and running. The system now is important as it's allowing far away buyers, who may only come to sales occasionally to tune in every week to buy cattle or sheep,' he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 22:46:01|Editor: huaxia

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MANILA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The Philippine government's rollout of the China-made vaccine against COVID-19 has raised optimism that the surging caseload stretching the country's health system may finally be tamed and the downward economy would be on the path to recovery.

Merlinda Montevirgen, a 55-year-old technical consultant of the Department of Finance, said she felt relieved after receiving the first dose of the Chinese CoronaVac vaccine on April 1.

"I think the vaccine is safe. I did not experience any side effects at all," Montevirgen, a mother of two, told Xinhua.

She said getting the vaccine meant another layer of protection for her family, including her 80-year-old mother.

"I want to help the country reach herd immunity from the virus, hopefully within this year," she said.

Since the Philippines imposed strict lockdown measures in March 2020, "we go out only when it is necessary and always remind each other to use alcohol, wash our hands, and wear face masks and face shields," she said.

The Philippines has been in varying quarantine levels since the government imposed a lockdown in mid-March last year to curb the spread of COVID-19.

Despite the extended lockdown, the country is still grappling with surging infections. The emergence of more transmissible coronavirus variants poses new challenges to contain the virus.

Since the Philippines reported the first COVID-19 case in the country in January 2020, nearly 820,000 Filipinos have been infected by the virus, and over 14,000 died as of April 7.

The arrival of the CoronaVac vaccine, produced by Chinese company Sinovac Biotech, paved the way for the Philippines to start its vaccination drive on March 1 and scale up the vaccination rollout to frontline healthcare workers.

The country is due to receive more shipment of the CoronaVac vaccine in batches later this year, as it aims to inoculate up to 70 million Filipinos this year to achieve herd immunity.

Philippine General Hospital Director Gerardo Legaspi, 59, a renowned neurosurgeon, was the first Filipino health worker to receive the CoronaVac vaccine.

"The decision to pick Sinovac is based on science, and it took Philippine experts six weeks to carefully study the vaccine," he said in a televised press conference after a dose of CoronaVac was injected into his left arm.

Legaspi urged Filipinos, especially health workers, to get the CoronaVac vaccine.

Dominic Madrid, 28, a frontline worker at a hospital in Albay province, said he jumped at the opportunity to get the CoronaVac vaccine when it was offered to the hospital staff.

"I was reluctant at first to get the CoronaVac due to media reports about its efficacy and safety. But my concerns were erased when most of the Southeast Asian countries started rolling out the vaccine," he said, hoping that the rest of his family will also get vaccinated one day.

The Philippines has the second-highest number of COVID-19 cases in Southeast Asia. According to Carlito Galvez, the chief implementer of the government's fight against COVID-19, the Philippines ranks fourth in vaccination rollout in the region.

Manila City Mayor Francisco Domagoso got his Sinovac jab on Sunday after the government allowed the vaccination of mayors and governors in Metro Manila and areas with high infection rates.

He thanked China for providing the vaccines, saying the China-made vaccine "is an approved, safe product (approved) by our regulatory agency."

Ronald Barreda, 33, is a social worker in a hospital in Albay province, southeast of Manila. He considered the vaccination as the very solution to the pandemic.

"The pandemic is a global concern. It is better to become part of the solution rather than become part of a problem," he said. Enditem
Two heavy cranes at the Red Hook Container Terminal in the Brooklyn borough of New York on Feb. 16, 2006. (Stan Honda/AFP via Getty Images)

Supreme Court Asks Biden Administration to Weigh In on Waterfront Commission Dispute

The Supreme Court directed the Biden administration to share its views on whether New Jersey should be allowed to withdraw from a powerful bistate commission that monitors corruption at the storied Port of New York and New Jersey, a signal that it may soon decide to hear the commissions appeal from a lower court.

The case is Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor v. Murphy, court file 20-772. The commission won at trial, foiling, at least temporarily, New Jerseys move to exit from the commission, but that decision was reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit.

The Waterfront Commission is a somewhat unique [interstate] compact agency, according to the Yale Journal on Regulation.

It states that the commission is a regulatory agency, exercising federal and state regulatory powers over interstate and international trade. While the missions of compact agencies are quite varied, most merely exercise the contracting states proprietary powers to construct or maintain facilities or allocate resources or responsibilities between or among states.

In an unsigned order on April 5, the Supreme Court invited Acting Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar to file a brief expressing the views of the United States.

The Department of Justice declined to comment.

In 1953, New York and New Jersey entered into the Waterfront Commission Compact, as allowed by the U.S. Constitution, and created the commission to combat widespread corruption and racketeering at the Port of New York and New Jersey. The compact was approved by Congress and became federal law, the commission stated in its petition for certiorari, or review, filed with the Supreme Court on Dec. 4, 2020.

The ports reckoning with organized crime was immortalized in director Elia Kazans 1954 film, On the Waterfront, which won eight Academy Awards.

For decades since, the Commission has successfully rooted out illegal activities at the port, but New Jersey had a change of heart and enacted a law to withdraw itself unilaterally from the compact, according to the petition. The state law, known as Chapter 324, would dissolve the commission and divert revenues that would otherwise fund the commission to the New Jersey state police, who would assume the commissions regulatory responsibilities over the New Jersey side of the port.

In 2018, then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, signed the legislation withdrawing New Jersey from the commission. Christie was succeeded in the post by Phil Murphy, a Democrat.

Critics have long derided the commission as ineffective, along with blaming it for over-regulating businesses involved in the port and for labor shortages long after organized crime had been driven out.

The commission sued to block the New Jersey governor from enforcing Chapter 324. A U.S. district court granted summary judgment to the commission, but the 3rd Circuit reversed, holding that a state could dissolve an agency created under federal law and transfer the agencys functions to itself. The lawsuit itself couldnt proceed because New Jersey enjoys state sovereign immunity, the appeals court determined.

But the commission disagrees, arguing the 3rd Circuits decision conflicts with those issued by two other appeals courts and has implications for federalism.

It stated that the decision raises issues of broad significance for interstate compacts and destabilizes dozens of similar compacts by heightening the risk of a violation of the compact or a unilateral withdrawal with no readily available recourse. And given that interstate compacts approved by Congress have the status of federal law, the decision undermines the strong federal interest in encouraging States to cooperate with each other by entering into and adhering to compacts.

In a brief filed with the Supreme Court on March 1, New Jersey urged the court not to take up the commissions appeal.

The core question presented is whetheron the specific facts of this caseNew Jersey retained its sovereign immunity in a lawsuit implicating the diversion of revenue from its treasury to an interstate compact agency, it stated.

As the unanimous Third Circuit panel explained, its fact-specific conclusion that New Jersey retained its immunity follows from this Courts precedents. That holding does not warrant certiorari.

Ruling for New Jersey will not make interstate compacts unenforceable, the state argued.

After all, myriad other options exist to hold States accountable for violating an interstate compact.
[April 07, 2021] Global Gate Capital and Berkeley Investments Acquire Converted Mill Buildings in Historic Canal District of Lawrence, Massachusetts

Global Gate Capital and Berkeley Investments have acquired a portfolio of historic mill buildings in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The properties, built in the 1800's and located on the Merrimack River in the North Canal Historic District, comprise an aggregate of 760,000 square feet. Three of the buildings, located at 270, 240 and 242 Canal Street, were converted to 372 residential units in 2007 and 2019. The partnership intends to construct an additional 63 units at 240 Canal Street, for a total of 435 residential units. The portfolio also includes a 343,000 square foot warehouse located at 250 Canal Street. The investor team plans to make targeted improvements to the assets including interior renovations and improved amenities. Berkeley Investments will act as operating partner and asset/construction manager and will be supported by Princeton Properties for property management. Debt financing for the project was provided by CIBC Inc. Rudy Sayegh, CEO of Global Gate Capital, said: "We are pleased to complete this investment which represents our 5th UStransaction in the last 24 months. We have been investing in US multifamily since 2014 and are excited to continue to grow our portfolio."



Philip Tager, Head of US Real Estate at Global Gate Capital, said: "We are delighted to be teaming up with Berkeley Investments on this project, the first of what we hope will be many transactions pursued together. Berkeley is a highly experienced and respected owner/operator in greater Boston, a market Global Gate is keen to invest more in." Young Park, President of Berkeley Investments, said: "We support the ongoing efforts of the City of Lawrence to re-imagine the Canal District and the city as a vibrant economic engine for the entire region and look forward to further investment in these historic and unique buildings."

Global Gate Capital is an investment and wealth management firm that invests in multiple asset classes including real estate, private equity, credit, and listed securities. Global Gate has been investing in real estate since its inception and has deployed significant AUM in the asset class. With offices in Geneva, London, New York, Dusseldorf, and Dubai, Global Gate has grown its assets under management to over $4.5bn since its founding in 2013. Berkeley Investments is a Boston-based, real estate investment and development company founded by Young K. Park in 1991. It is a vertically integrated firm with proven in-house property, asset, construction and development management capabilities. Since inception, Berkeley has acquired and/or developed in excess of 17 million square feet of commercial office, flex, parking and multi-family assets. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005715/en/

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Stefano Domenicali says Formula 1 risks losing sight of "the big picture" amid a dispute over extra funding for the three-race sprint qualifying trial.

Top team bosses Toto Wolff and Christian Horner are arguing behind the scenes that teams need to be compensated under the new budget cap for the additional costs of the extra races.

"We are in the process of defining the final details of these short races on Saturday," F1 CEO Domenicali told Rai's Radio Anch'io Sport. "We want to have that done by mid April.

"We will use this format for the first time in Silverstone," the Italian announced.

Some team bosses are hitting back at the Wolff-Horner argument, especially when it is putting a $300-400,000 price-tag on the extra costs.

"You can't make an invoice in advance," Haas' Gunther Steiner told Auto Motor und Sport.

"If everything goes wrong, Toto may be right with his estimate. But if you get through the sprints without damage, it's less."

Domenicali agrees: "The difference (in cost) is not as big as it is made out to be."

The F1 CEO does not think there should be special exceptions to the $145m budget cap for sprint qualifying or any other measure.

"If we ask for compensation for everything we want to try, we will never get there," Domenicali insisted. "We shouldn't lose sight of the big picture."

(GMM)
Encouraged by the prosperity gained in 2020, the biggest commercial banks in Vietnam target making a profit of VND1 billion this year.

Techcombank president Ho Hung Anh

Techcombank, owned by billionaire Ho Hung Anh, has released documents for the 2021 shareholders meeting which show an ambitious business plan to obtain pre-tax profit of VND20 trillion this year, or 25 percent higher than last year.

If succeeding, Techcombank would be the second bank in Vietnam and the first joint stock bank to hit the $1 billion profit threshold. Prior to that, profit was gained by Vietcombank, where the state holds the controlling stake.

Techcombank projects the highest profit target in its history based on a 12 percent growth rate in credit and 14.7 percent growth rate in capital mobilization.

Though the profit was high in 2020, Techcombank intends not to pay dividends to shareholders. The banks managers are going to submit to shareholders a plan to retain profit to serve business projects.

However, it plans to issue ESOP, about 6 million shares, at VND10,000 per share, inconvertible within one year. In November 2020, Techcombank also issued 4.76 million under the ESOP program.

Meanwhile, Vietcombank has set a profit target of VND30 trillion in 2021.

In January 2020, Vietcombank became the first listed company reporting profit of $1 billion for one year. It saw aprofit of VND23 trillion in 2019.

In 2020, Vietcombank reported consolidated profit of VND23 trillion, or $1 billion, though Vietnams banks and businesses experienced the toughest ever year because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Vinhomes (VHM), owned by billionaire Pham Nhat Vuong, also reported a record high profit of VND11.5 trillion in Q4 2020, twice as high as the same period of the year before, after handing over Vinhomes Ocean Park, Grand Park and Smart City projects. The total consolidated profit reached VND37 trillion in 2020, up by 25 percent over 2019, while EPS was VND8,463, up by 30 percent.

Vietcombank has a quota for 10.5 percent credit growth rate this year. VietinBank, BIDV and Agribank, the other three in the big four have been granted quotas of 6-7.5 percent. The targets are 11-12 percent for some joint stock banks, but the banks have a small credit scale. With the 10.5 percent credit growth rate and its large scale, credit to be provided by Vietcombank would be the highest in the market.

According to SSI Research, the profits of Vietcombank and BIDV may increase by 75-85 percent in Q1 after provisioning, while private banks expect a 45-55 percent increase in pre-tax profit.

In related news, Moodys has upgraded Sacombanks long-term deposit rating from Caa1 to B3 with stable prospects.

V. Ha

Bank shares in demand as banks report huge profits The capitalization value of some banks has increased by one billion dollars within a short time.
On Wednesday morning, former President Donald Trump endorsed Mo Brooks for Alabama's open U.S. Senate seat.

In a statement Trump said "few Republicans have as much courage and fight as Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks." The statement went on to say "Mo Brooks has my complete and total endorsement for the U.S. Senate representing the great State of Alabama. He will never let you down!"

Brooks released a statement that said "I am honored and humbled by President Trump's strong endorsement of me for Alabama's U.S. Senate seat. I ask all Alabamians who share our America First vision to heed and honor President Trump's request by joining our campaign."

The U.S Senate position will be left vacant by U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), who announced he will not seek re-election in 2022. Shelby is currently in his sixth term. So far, Lynda Blanchard is the only one other person who has announced their candidacy for the U.S. Senate seat. She's Trump's former ambassador to Slovenia and calls herself a defender of Trump's legacy.

Currently, Brooks is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Alabama's 5th district. That includes the following counties: Lauderdale, Limestone, Madison, Morgan and most of Jackson. Hes been re-elected to Congress four times.
Budding modelling act Diamond Victoria better known as 'Sika' has won the maiden edition of the Pose for Africa TV reality show.



After partaking in a series of tasks over 13-weeks, Sika stood out among her fellow contestants as she won herself a trip to a fashion show in Milan, a modelling contract as well as a special cash prize.



Delali Agor, another sensational modelling act was the first runner-up (Silver Model) having won herself a trip to Paris while Jacqueline Wiafe Konadu, who was the pre-final favourite picked up the third prize (Bronze Model) with a trip to Dubai for a special fashion show.



Speaking at the glamorous grand finale held at the Premier Beach Resort in Krokobite, Madam Afua Asantewaa Aduonum, Executive Director of ASKOF Productions (Organizers of the show), said it was a dream true for her to stage this reality which is the first of its kind in Ghana.



I had a dream of becoming a top model but since I couldnt fulfil that dream, I thought I could give others the opportunity to pursue modeling at the top level that was why I created this project.



Modelling is often associated with the Western world and not that popular in Africa. So I decided to also create this show in order to project our arts and culture as Ghanaians and Africans as a whole, she said.



Additionally, Madam Aduonum expressed hope that the reality show would help bridge the gap between the international and Africa modelling market thus showcasing the numerous talents we have on the continent.



The night saw legendary Highlife performer Gyedu Blay Ambulley delivering a masterclass performance to the amusement of the few audiences who were gathered at the event.



Nakeeyat Dramani, a one-time winner of TV3's Talented Kids, also delivered an inspirational poetic speech reminding women about the need to strive hard to exploit numerous opportunities to make Ghana a better place.



The maiden edition of Pose for Africa was sponsored by Adonko Next Level, KIA, TeeBay Beauty, Geodrill, BelaQua, Premier Beach Club, among other supporting sponsors.

Source: GNA









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Lashing out against the rival Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ahead of the fourth phase of the West Bengal elections, Chief Minister said she is a 'Bengal tigress', who will not bend in front of BJP's attacks.

Speaking at a public gathering in Cooch Behar, Banerjee said: "They (BJP) will bring goons from Assam. They will explode bombs and threaten people. Do not be afraid. They do not want our mothers and sisters to vote. Central forces are blocking ur mothers and sisters from voting."

She claimed that if the comes to power in the state, they will build detention camps like in Assam. "They have kept 14 lakh Bengalis in detention camps, who have no future. We are fighting for those poor people. They were not even voting, police made raids on them."

" cannot do anything to me with their money. I am a Bengal tigress, I break but I do not bend," she further remarked.

Banerjee appealed to the people to vote for the Trinamool Congress (TMC) if they did not want to see "Gujaratis capturing Bengal". She also raised slogans such as ' hatao' and 'BJP ke chai na' (We do not want BJP).

"We will not let Gujaratis capture Bengal. Bengal will stay in Bengal, we will not let goons from Gujarat take over Bengal," she said.

West Bengal has witnessed three out of the eight phased polls so far to the 294-member state Assembly. Counting of votes will be held on May 2.

The fourth phase of the elections is set to commence on April 10. A total of 373 candidates will contest for 44 constituencies in the upcoming phase, which will encompass five districts of West Bengal - Cooch Behar, Alipurduar, South 24 Parganas, Howrah and Hooghly.

(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.)
Which ETFs Will Benefit As A Stronger US Dollar Reacts To Global Market Concerns

The recent news of Hedge Fund and other institutional crisis events has opened many eyes as investors and traders realize the post-2008-09 global market credit bubble has extended well beyond what many people may realize. Recent news that China offered a deferment for Chinese corporations and state-run enterprises content with shadow banking credit/debt issues at a time when China is tightening monetary policy shows that a process, like the 2008 Lehman incident, may be setting up where institutional level credit/debt liabilities ripple through the global markets as global central banks attempt to reign in monetary policies.

This process is not likely to happen suddenly though. If this type of contraction in global monetary policy takes place, resulting in increased pressures to contain excessive credit/debt functions in the markets, then we believe the process may result in an extended 9 to 16+ months of hit-and-miss events leading up to a potentially bigger event. The Archegos Fund forced unwinding of trades hit the markets recently as a wake-up call. Prior to the Archegos event, the Greensill Capital collapse shocked the global markets because of the size and scope of this failure. Now, we see Credit Suisse issuing warnings that Q1 earnings may have taken a big hit because of exposure to the Greensill and Archegos assets  which is leading to Credit Suisse attempting to put the Gupta Trading Unit into insolvency.

As they old saying goes, shoes are dropping all around us.

Still, my research team and I believe these incidences are somewhat isolated in todays world and not of the scale of the 2008-09 credit crisis event but the US Dollar and Treasury Yields are starting to react as if FEAR is starting to increase in the global markets. Lets start by reviewing what happened to the SPY and US Dollar between 2005 and 2011 to get a better understanding of how these two global market components reacted to the events leading up to the 2008-09 credit market crisis and how the US Dollar acted afterward.

2008-09 Weekly SPY Trends

The following chart shows the SPY Weekly chart data from 2005 to 2011 and highlights the extended rollover top that set up between April 2007 and April/May 2008. After that topping pattern was completed, a bigger breakdown in price trend took place in the SPY, near June 2008, which prompted a deep selloff reaching a low in March 2009. Yet, when we compare that activity to the second US Dollar Index Daily chart, we can see the US Dollar didnt really start to advance until the bigger risks of the 2008 crisis event were becoming clearly evident.

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The US Dollar continued to decline through 2007 and extended this decline in early 2008. It bottomed sharply in March 2008 and broke-out to the upside in August 2008. At that same time, the SPY had stalled near $130  near the end of the rollover top formation. The US Dollar reacted to the risks in the markets by firming up near support and actually acting as a global currency safe-haven before the larger risk factors were clearly known.

2008-09 Weekly US Dollar Trends

Throughout the 2008-09 downward price collapse, the US Dollar rallied nearly 26%  reaching a peak just below $90. After that peak was reached, a period of extensive US Dollar volatility continued for many years, ranging from $74 to $89. At that time, the global central banks were manipulating all levers while attempting to navigate the most critical global capital market crisis since 1929. Foreign markets, emerging markets, and global currencies are scrambling for support and traders rolled capital into and out of market sectors, ETF, and stocks chasing recovery returns. Eventually, the US Dollar settled near $80, in 2012-14, then began a strong rally near August 2014 targeting levels above $102.

The importance of this historical reference is that the US Dollar begins to act as a global market safe-haven when unknown risk factors begin to rattle global markets. This happens because capital seeks to move away from risks and unhealthy investment environments before the general markets react to these same risks. For example, in the middle of the early recovery after the 2009 bottom, the US Dollar rotated wildly (Highlighted by A on these charts). Throughout this price decline and recovery phase, a number of different sectors reacted to the shifting capital and trends that resulted in real opportunities.

XME  the SPDR Metals & Mining ETF, peaked and sold off from $95 in June 2008 and bottomed near $17.50 in November 2008. Afterward, XME climbed over 345% to a price level above $77 over a 25 month span of time.



XOP  the SPDR Oil and Gas Exploration ETF, peaked and sold off from $292 in June 2008 and bottomed near $92 in March 2009. Afterward, XOP climbed over 180% to a price level above $260 over a 24 month span of time.



XHB  the SPDR Homebuilders ETF, peaked and sold off from $25 in September 2008 and bottomed near $8 in March 2009. Afterward, XHB climbed over 150% to a price level above $20 over a 24 month span of time.



Dont miss the opportunities in the broad market sectors over the next 6+ months. Staying ahead of these sector trends is going to be key to developing continued success in these markets. As some sectors fail, others will begin to trend higher. Learn how BAN Trader Pro can help you spot the best trade setups. Learning to profit from these bigger trends and sector rotation will make a big difference between success and failure. If you are not prepared for these sector rotations, then you can sign up now for my FREE webinar that teaches you how to find, enter, and profit from only those sectors that have the most strength and momentum. Staying ahead of sector trends is going to be key to success in volatile markets.

For those who believe in the power of trading on relative strength, market cycles, and momentum but dont have the time to do the research every day then my BAN Trader Pro newsletter service does all the work for you with daily market reports, research, and trade alerts. More frequent or experienced traders have been killing it trading options, ETFs, and stocks using my BAN Hotlist ranking the hottest ETFs, which is updated daily for my premium subscribers.

In Part II if this article, we will explore the current US Dollar setup and the sectors we believe will continue to drive strong trends for traders/investors.

Chris Vermeulen

www.TheTechnicalTraders.com

Chris Vermeulen has been involved in the markets since 1997 and is the founder of Technical Traders Ltd. He is an internationally recognized technical analyst, trader, and is the author of the book: 7 Steps to Win With Logic



Through years of research, trading and helping individual traders around the world. He learned that many traders have great trading ideas, but they lack one thing, they struggle to execute trades in a systematic way for consistent results. Chris helps educate traders with a three-hour video course that can change your trading results for the better.



His mission is to help his clients boost their trading performance while reducing market exposure and portfolio volatility.



He is a regular speaker on HoweStreet.com, and the FinancialSurvivorNetwork radio shows. Chris was also featured on the cover of AmalgaTrader Magazine, and contributes articles to several leading financial hubs like MarketOracle.co.uk

Disclaimer: Nothing in this report should be construed as a solicitation to buy or sell any securities mentioned. Technical Traders Ltd., its owners and the author of this report are not registered broker-dealers or financial advisors. Before investing in any securities, you should consult with your financial advisor and a registered broker-dealer. Never make an investment based solely on what you read in an online or printed report, including this report, especially if the investment involves a small, thinly-traded company that isnt well known. Technical Traders Ltd. and the author of this report has been paid by Cardiff Energy Corp. In addition, the author owns shares of Cardiff Energy Corp. and would also benefit from volume and price appreciation of its stock. The information provided here within should not be construed as a financial analysis but rather as an advertisement. The authors views and opinions regarding the companies featured in reports are his own views and are based on information that he has researched independently and has received, which the author assumes to be reliable. Technical Traders Ltd. and the author of this report do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any content of this report, nor its fitness for any particular purpose. Lastly, the author does not guarantee that any of the companies mentioned in the reports will perform as expected, and any comparisons made to other companies may not be valid or come into effect.

Chris Vermeulen Archive

 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.




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The Nigeria Correctional Service (NCoS) says it has recaptured 48 fleeing inmates of the Owerri Custodial Centre.

The recaptured inmates escaped from the facility on Monday, when gunmen invaded it, releasing about 1,844 inmates.

The NCoS Spokesman, Francis Enobore, disclosed this in a statement made available to News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday in Abuja.

Mr Enobore noted that peace had gradually returned to the Owerri custodial centre in Imo, following the recent invasion of the facility by bandits.

The 48 inmates recaptured as at 1550hrs today (Wednesday) increases the number of inmates presently in custody to 84.

This includes those that resisted the temptation to escape during the attack.

Among the escapees, 11 were recaptured by men of the 211 Nigerian Airforce Base, Owerri while others either came back on their own volition or were returned by their relations, traditional rulers and religious leaders, he said.

The Acting Controller General, NCoS, John Mrabure, however, charged all staff members in the command to go after the fleeing inmates and smoke them out of hiding at all cost.

Mr Mrabure read the riot act during the interactive session with personnel attached to the custodial centre, including those at the state headquarters.

He further asked the entire body of workers to braze up to frontally resist emerging security challenges confronting the nation and, by extension, the NCoS.

He expressed profound appreciation to other security bodies in fortifying custodial centres across the county and in Search and Recover exercise.

He equally thanked other individuals and groups for their patriotic disposition in ensuring that escapees in their custody were safely returned to the custodial centre.

NAN
April 07 : Ayushmann Khurrana has a poetic mind and often shares his thoughts on social media. The busy actor, who has been shooting back to back ever since the lockdown was relaxed last year, is currently prepping for his forthcoming film Doctor G. The actor took to social media and penned his thought about the world of fame.

Sharing a monochrome picture of himself on his Instagram handle, the actor flaunted his physique and abs and added a beautiful note on world of fame. The Dream Girl actor started off by saying that This world of fame isn't liberating. It seems like you are in a room, with less space, less time, less communication, lesser friends. And there's a huge crowd outside the room, constantly knocking the door, wanting to come inside.

All artists feel insecure about the days when they will no longer be in the limelight; when their world of fame will crumble down. The Andhadhun actor highlighted on this point and wrote, When the fame will be gone, you will be again in the room alone, with more time, extra large space, far lesser friends. The only difference would be that nobody would be knocking from outside..

Soon after the actor shared the post, his fans loved his thoughts and poured in comments, making it viral in no time. Bollywood celebs like Ekta Kapoor, Aditi Rao Hydari, Neeti Mohan and others have also dropped comments on the post.

Meanwhile, on the work front, Ayushmann has recently started work on his upcoming film Doctor G with Rakul Preet Singh. Written by Anubhuti Kashyap, Saurabh Bhat, Vishal Wagh and Sumit Saxena, the film is helmed by Anubhuti, and produced by Junglee Pictures. The actor has recently wrapped up shooting for Anubhav Sinhas much-hyped film Anek, for which he had stationed in Arunachal Pradesh for a long time.
SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria's long-serving prime minister, Boyko Borissov, announced plans on Wednesday to seek a coalition government after his party came first in Sunday's national election, but he said he was "unlikely to succeed".

Following a rise in protest parties accusing it of failing to root out corruption, Borissov's centre-right GERB will be the largest party in the parliament but far short of majority, with some 26.2% of ballots won.

In power since 2009, Borissov, 61, has modernised the country's crumbling roads and kept its finances in check.

He has also alienated voters and potential allies who see him as the decision-maker who has safeguarded the power of oligarchs in the European Union's poorest and most corrupt member state.

"We are obliged to our voters, who put us first, to propose an option. From the comments that I hear, this is unlikely to succeed," Borissov told his outgoing cabinet.

Foreign Minister Ekaterina Zaharieva told national BNT television that GERB plans to propose a government only with its own ministers and led by a prime minister, who most likely will not be Borissov, who wanted to focus on his party.

She said the party has not yet discussed names.

Coming in second in the election with 17.7% was a new anti-establishment grouping founded by TV host Slavi Trifonov, who will likely take a shot at forming a government if Borissov fails.

Borissov said on Wednesday he was ready to back Trifonov to form a government to avoid snap polls that could harm Bulgaria's ability to tap EU coronavirus recovery funds, battle a surge in new infections and restart its battered economy.

"If they need it, I am ready to have 10 deputies ready to back them. A stable governance is what matters to me. I love my country and want the business to be calm," Borissov said.

"New election is not a solution," he said.

Borissov's new offer comes after two small protests parties and the Socialists who came in third rejected his proposal for a technocrat cabinet to lead the country through the COVID-19 pandemic until the end of the year.

Story continues

International observers of the election said the massive use of state resources gave his party a significant advantage, but even that did not prevent it from losing a fifth of its seats.

Trifonov's There Is Such a People party has repeatedly said it would not get into any governing deal with GERB, the Socialists or the ethnic Turkish MRF party.

On Wednesday, Borissov said if rivals wanted new polls, the best way forward was to agree on a new constitution that could address changes in the electoral system and then call an election for a grand national assembly that should approve it.

(Reporting by Tsvetelia Tsolova; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Barbara Lewis)
By Peng Chunli

America's first African Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin recently called for addressing racial discrimination by thoroughly investigating extremism in the ranks, including racism and anarchist extremism. Analysts said, for a long time, racial discrimination is not only a common phenomenon in the US military, but also deeply rooted in American values and culture. The military shakedown is more symbolic than realistic, and America is quickly stepping down from its self-claimed pedestal for democracy and human rights.

The long-standing racial discrimination

According to a report on its racist problems issued by the US Air Force in December 2020, African Americans in the air force, ranging from senior officers to the ranks, are subject to widespread discrimination in treatment, promotion and punishment.

When General Charles Q. Brown, Jr. was appointed Chief of Staff of the Air Force in 2020, he said point-blank that his success didnt mean liberty and equality. Austin, in an interview on March 21, also said he has met numerous obstacles in his military career ever since he became operations officer of the 82nd Airborne Division in 1995, and white supremacy has become a conscious prejudice in the military.

According to a survey conducted by The Institute for Veterans & Military Families at Syracuse University, about 1/3 of active service members in the US claimed to have witnessed white supremacy or extremism in the military, such as the swastika sign, white-supremacist tattoos, KKK stickers, and Nazi salutes between soldiers.

Why has racism existed in the US military for such a long time? On the one hand, the top brass is still dominated by the whites, and white supremacy is usually associated with patriotism and American rejuvenation. On the other hand, after the Iraq War and the Afghan War, the US military has a much larger demand for new recruits and has kept silent on the racist problems in order to enlist enough soldiers, even helping the applicants to cover up their extremist tattoos. Such American-style double standards have been seriously questioned by the outside.

Resurgence of Asian discrimination

Compared with the widely noticed African Americans, Asian Americans have received little attention as mainstream media tend to keep quiet on discrimination against them. However, an outburst of Asian discrimination resurge in the US lately.

A recent report released by Stop AAPI Hate, an American organization, shows that 3,795 Asian discrimination events of various types were reported from March 19 in 2020 to February 28 in 2021. On March 21, protests were organized in tens of cities across the US against discrimination and hate crimes toward Asians, the largest-scale protest of this type in recent years, yet Americas mainstream media, such as New York Times and Washington Post that like to pride themselves on objectivity and neutrality, collectively kept silent on the topic.

Statistics show that soldiers of African descent account for about 9% in US military and those of Asian descent 4.8%, the latter being subject to equally serious racial discrimination.

On April 2, 2011, Marine Lance Corporal Harry Lew shot himself at his barracks in Afghanistan due to sustained discrimination and abuse.

On October 13, 2011, Asian-American private Danny Chen was found dead on duty after enduring intolerable racial hazing and harassment.

......

With the increasingly divided politics in the US over recent years, some politicians are even publicly rooting for white supremacy, adding fuel to racial discrimination in American society. While the US is smearing and lying about the human rights situation in other countries, it always plays down the grave human rights problems on its own soil, which exposes the hypocritical nature of the so-called American democracy.

Will the shakedown really work?

Will the latest shakedown ordered by Defense Secretary Austin work on the long-standing racism in US military? Well, there are two questions to answer. First, did the Department of Defense (DOD) take the step really to root out racial discrimination or for some ulterior motives? Second, is the DOD under Austins charge capable of rooting out the problem?

There is no doubt that addressing racial discrimination has always been the right choice to be politically correct in the US rather than a way to really solve the problem. Chief Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said on March 29 that the 60-day stand-down is not ordered to collect information from the military, but to reinforce its values. Matt Gaetz, a member of the US House of Representatives, criticized Austins investigation into military extremism just for turning the DOD from a capable organization into one controlled by left-wingers.

Besides, although the shakedown was mainly targeted at white supremacy, Austin didnt pinpoint it directly, but defined it as extremism with a broader sense, and its not hard to guess why.

It is said that the DOD is unsure about the scope of extremist problems in the military yet or has any specific data. A few weeks ago, members of the House of Representatives Committee on Armed Services said at a hearing that the DOD only demanded its commanders to spend one day talking to their troops about extremism in the ranks, but it was impossible to fully grasp the situation of racial discrimination within one day. Obviously, the senior officers at Pentagon didnt do enough to get to the bottom of the issue.

For a long time, the US has been practicing double standards in a wide range of areas, and the DOD has never clearly defined what extremism means. Its foreseeable that the recent shakedown ordered by Austin will be more symbolic than really effective, and racial discrimination in American ranks will continue to exist for a long time to come.
FLINT, MI -- Five current and former government officials charged with felony crimes related to the Flint water crisis called for preliminary hearings before their cases are heard in Genesee Circuit Court Tuesday, April 6, and a judge said she will consider their arguments before ruling on that request.

Circuit Judge Elizabeth A. Kelly heard arguments from attorneys for the five -- Richard Baird, Jarrod Agen, Nancy Peeler, Darnell Earley and Gerald Ambrose -- and Flint water prosecutors in a nearly two-hour hearing Tuesday before taking the motion to reroute the cases back to Genesee District Court under advisement.

Attorneys for Baird, 64, filed the motion to send the cases to the lower court for preliminary examinations, something lawyers from the Michigan Office of Attorney General contend they are not entitled to after they were indicted by a one-man grand jury earlier this year.

Anastase Markou, an attorney for Baird, told Kelly that district court preliminary exams are mandatory, regardless of whether individuals are charged initially with information in court or by a single grand juror.

Thats our standard course for the vast majority of felony cases, Markou said. The government has attempted to shroud these cases in secrecy. Its time that these accusations actually be brought into the light, that these defendants understand what they are accused of, and that these accusations be tested through ... cross examination at a preliminary hearing.

Baird, Agen, Peeler, Earley, Ambrose and four other state and local officials were indicted by a one-man grand jury, Genesee Circuit Judge David Newblatt, in January for alleged water crisis crimes.

Their attorneys have called the state law that allows for a single grand juror indictment archaic and said it amounts to an effort to keep information in the cases secret and provide those charged with scant information about the basis of the charges against them.

But Assistant Attorney General Chris Kessel, who argued for Flint water prosecutors, said the single grand juror was a legitimate way to charge crimes related to the water crisis and said the law doesnt differentiate between the process for felony cases to go directly to a circuit court -- just as a citizen grand jury indictment would.

The defense team in this case has taken a very simple and straightforward procedural question and tried to make it very complicated and tried to make it seem very complex when it is really anything but, Kessel said.

The current Flint water prosecutions are the second time Peeler, Earley and Ambrose have faced charges tied to the water crisis and their initial preliminary exams proved more than routine.

Each went on for multiple days, required the production of millions of documents, and ended without resolution after the state dismissed the first set of charges against them before they were bound over for trial.

The dismissals and the restart of the criminal investigation came after the election of Attorney General Dana Nessel in 2018 and the appointment of Michigan Solicitor General Fadwa Hammoud and Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy to lead the rebooted investigation.

Hammoud fired former special prosecutor Todd Flood, who had been appointed to investigate Flint water crimes by former Attorney General Bill Schuette.

Read more on MLive:

Top aide to former Gov. Snyder wants case sent back to district court for preliminary exam

Flint water crisis: Whos being charged and what were their roles

Secret grand jury helped prosecutors beat statute of limitations deadline in Flint water case
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This FMI report examines the wearable medical device market for the period 20162026. The primary objective of the report is to offer insights into current strategies and development scenario in the market that is significantly helping growth trajectory of global businesses and companies operating in this market. The wearable medical device market report begins by defining the product segment, application, and distribution channel. It is followed by an overview of the market dynamics of the global market, which includes FMIs analysis of the key trends, drivers, restraints, opportunities, regulations and government initiatives that have an impact on the global wearable medical devices market.

The primary factors fuelling demand for wearable medical devices include progressive demographic geriatric population, increasing prevalence of conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease and associated morbidity and mortality rates, escalating healthcare costs, rising consumer demand for home healthcare devices for improved health and safety etc. Moreover, adoption of wearable medical devices is also gaining traction in the home healthcare sector. However, lack of awareness among general population about wearable medical devices in certain countries, reluctance to shift from conventional devices to wearable devices, substitute and alternative products for wearable medical devices, availability of viable treatment options for certain diseases etc. are the factors hampering the growth of global wearable medical devices market.

Request a Sample of this Report @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-826

Based on product segment, the market has been segmented into wearable therapeutic medical device, (further sub-segmented into hearing aid, insulin pump and respiratory therapy devices (respiratory therapy devices is further sub segmented into sleep apnea devices and non-invasive ventilation)), wearable monitoring and diagnostic devices, (further sub-segmented into fetal and obstetric devices (fetal and obstetric devices is further sub-segmented into wearable fetal monitors and infant motion sensing monitors), continuous glucose monitoring devices and cardiac monitoring devices (cardiac monitoring devices is further sub-segmented into wearable heart rate monitors, wearable pulse oximeters, wearable blood pressure monitors) and health and fitness devices. A detailed analysis of each segment has been provided in terms of market size, Y-o-Y growth rate, absolute $ opportunity and BPS analysis.

Based on application type, the market has been segmented into patient monitoring, home healthcare and health and fitness.

The report has been segmented based on distribution channels into hospital pharmacies, clinics, online channel and hypermarkets. In countries such as U.S., Canada, U.K, Japan etc. physician recommend wearable devices to patients through clinics, hospitals pharmacies as these devices are used for monitoring purpose. Apart from this few wearable medical devices such blood glucose monitors etc. are available in hypermarkets, few manufacturers use go-to-market strategy by supplying their products through online channel distribution mode by reaching out to the customers.

The next section of the report highlights wearable medical devices market size and trends by region, and provides market forecast for 20162026. Key regions considered in this report include North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ), Japan and the Middle East & Africa (MEA). The study discusses key regional trends contributing to growth of the wearable medical devices market across the globe, as well as analyses the extent to which drivers are influencing this market in each region.

The above sections by product segment, application type and distribution channels  evaluate the present scenario and growth projections in the global wearable medical devices market for 20162026, considering 2015 as the base year, 2016 as the estimated year and provided data for the forecast period, i.e., 20172026.

To reach the global market size for wearable medical devices market we employed the bottom up approach and have also considered revenue generated by device manufacturers. In order to provide an accurate forecast, we started by sizing up the current market, which forms the basis of how the global wearable medical devices market is expected to grow in the future.

In addition, it is imperative to note that in an ever-fluctuating global economy, we not only conduct forecasts in terms of CAGR, but also analyse based on key parameters, such as year-on-year (Y-o-Y) growth rates, to understand the predictability of the wearable medical devices market and to identify opportunities in the market.

The wearable medical devices market segments, by product segment, application type, distribution channels and region, are analysed in terms of Basis Point Share (BPS) to understand the individual segments relative contributions to market growth. This detailed level of information is important for identifying various key trends in wearable medical devices market.

Get Full Report Buy Now @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/checkout/826

Another key feature of this report is the analysis of key segments in terms of absolute dollar opportunity. This is traditionally overlooked while forecasting the market. However, absolute dollar opportunity is critical for assessing the level of opportunity that a provider can look to achieve, as well as to identify potential resources from a sales and delivery perspective of the market.

To understand key growth segments in terms of growth and adoption of wearable medical devices globally, Future Market Insights developed the Market Attractiveness Index. The resulting index should help providers identify the real market opportunities.

Key Segments Covered

By Product Segment

Wearable Monitoring and Diagnostic Devices

Fetal and Obstetric Devices Wearable Fetal Monitors Infant Motion Sensing Monitors

Continuous Glucose Monitoring Devices

Cardiac Monitoring Devices Wearable Heart rate monitors Wearable Pulse Oximeters Wearable Blood Pressure Monitors

Wearable Therapeutic Medical Device

Hearing Aid

Insulin Pump

Respiratory Therapy Devices Sleep Apnea Devices Non Invasive Ventilation

Health and Fitness Devices

By Application Type

Patient Monitoring

Home Healthcare

Health and Fitness

By Distribution Channels

Hospital Pharmacies

Clinics

Online Channel

Hypermarkets

By Region

Global Market

North America

Latin America

Western Europe

Eastern Europe

APEJ

Japan

MEA

Request for Report Ask A Question @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/ask-question/rep-gb-826

Key categories of providers covered in the report are wearable medical devices manufacturers. This section is primarily designed to provide clients with an objective and detailed comparative assessment of key providers and the potential players with respect to the same. Report audiences can gain segment-specific vendor insights to identify and evaluate key competitors based on the in-depth assessment of their capabilities and success in the wearable medical devices marketplace.

Detailed profiles of the providers are also included in the scope of the report to evaluate their long-term and short-term strategies, key offerings, SWOT analysis and recent developments in the wearable medical devices market. Key market competitors covered in the report include Medtronic plc, Siemens AG, Fitbit Inc., Bayer AG, Panasonic Corporation, Animas Corporation- Johnson and Johnson, Smiths Medical - A Smiths Group Company, Koninklijke Philips N.V., Owlet Baby Care, OMRON Corporation, Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd and Rest Devices Inc.
Foreign residents participate in a mock poll at a multicultural family support center in Busan, April 16, 2018, ahead of the nationwide local elections, which were held on June 13, 2018. Korea Times file



By Lee Hyo-jin



Foreign residents in Seoul, including eligible immigrant voters of the mayoral by-election, shared various expectations from the new mayor on making the capital a more foreigner-friendly city.



As foreign nationals who have been in the country for over three years after obtaining permanent residency are given the right to vote in local elections, 38,126 foreign residents in Seoul were eligible to cast their votes in the election, according to the National Election Committee (NEC).



"The amount of the city budget allocated to programs supporting foreigners has declined in the past three years so I hope to see that decline arrested by the new mayor," said Paul Carver from the United Kingdom, 44, who works here as an accountant. He was the head of the Seoul Global Center, an organization established to support foreign residents in the capital, between 2016 and 2019.



But at the same time, he expressed disappointment that there had been no information contained in the candidates' campaign pledges on specific support policies for foreign residents, who account for about 5 percent of the total population in Seoul.






In an interview with Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND), German Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer announced a further increase in military spending and a massive rearmament programme over the coming years. She threatened Russia and China, and underscored German imperialisms aim of enforcing its economic and geostrategic interests around the world by military means, including independently of and in opposition to the United States.

First of all, its about our own interests and our own security. It was never about doing the United States a favour. We have to ensure our own security, she noted near the beginning of the interview. American foreign policy is again more dependable under the new president. However, key foreign policy areas of focus remain under Biden  such as the Indo-Pacific. It is also clear that the issue of burden sharing within NATO remains on the agenda for the United States, even if they now adopt a new style.

A German army ceremony in Berlin, 2019

In fact, the Biden administration and the US military are paving the way for a military confrontation with the nuclear powers Russia and China. They have intensified the conducting of provocative freedom of navigation exercises in waters claimed by China in the South China Sea and are planning to station offensive missiles along the coastlines of many densely populated islands, including Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines.

Biden has also intensified the war drive against Russia since taking power. In mid-March, he described Russian President Vladimir Putin as a murderer and threatened retaliatory measures. Since then, the Ukrainian regime of Volodymyr Zelensky, backed by the US, NATO and European Union, has stepped up its war with pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country.

German imperialism is responding to the threat of a nuclear war with its own major war drive. Amid the pandemic, the ruling class claims there is no money for the necessary protective measures and decent wages for health care workers. Welfare benefits are being cut, and the exploitation of the working class intensified. At the same time, billions of euros are to be funnelled into military rearmament.

It is good that the army will receive an additional 2.5 billion for the coming year, stated Kramp-Karrenbauer in the interview. This equates to a five percent increase in defence spending next year to reach 49.3 billion. Even though the defence budget is almost as much as the combined budgets for health and education, the ruling elite remains dissatisfied.

These sums are nowhere near enough to further develop our capabilities to effectively combat the threats, complained the defence minister and vowed to further increase defence spending after the September federal election. The next coalition talks would be decisive. They must confirm major rearmament projects for the future. Security is a central task for the entire government, she said.

Behind the backs of the population, the grand coalition government is working on Germanys largest rearmament programme since the military buildup of the Wehrmacht prior to World War II. They have presented a consolidated plan of what is necessary for our security, stated Kramp-Karrenbauer. It includes the major rearmament projects we have agreed to at the European level and which therefore have priority. These projectstogether with the normal defence budgetmust be guaranteed under a planning law, because they extend over 10 to 15 years. They will certainly need to spend more money.

The figures and projects dreamt of by Kramp-Karrenbauer and the Defence Ministry are gigantic. The sum to meet our calculated requirements by 2025 can be measured in tens of billions, she remarked. Fifteen armaments projects have been named, including their cost. Along with German-French projects like FCAS (Future Air Combat Systems) and MGCS (Main Ground Combat System), these include the replacement of the Tornado fighter jets, the replacement of out-of-date naval service ships, the purchasing of aircraft for defence against submarines, as well as a tactical air defence system.

The rearmament is not aimed, as the Defence Minister likes to claim, at ensuring the security and prosperity of the German population, waging the war on terror, or even the enforcement of womens rights and democracy. What is involved is the imposition of German imperialisms interests by military means.

In the interview, Kramp-Karrenbauer defended parliaments decision in late March to extend the German military intervention in Afghanistan, and prepared readers for a further escalation of combat operations in the Central Asian country. She has in close consultation with the military leadership, ordered the strengthening of protective measures. Reinforcements, additional armaments, equipment and munitions will be sent there. She would also have liked to have armed drones available.

But the ruling elites brutal occupation and plundering of Afghanistan are only the prelude to much wider wars. According to Kramp-Karrenbauer, the army has learned a great deal from 20 years in Afghanistan. She desires a political debate about this whole-of-government intervention. One is obliged to do that for those who died or were injured in Afghanistan. In addition, one must with regard to the next German intervention, possibly in the Sahel zone, be clearer from the outset on which goals are achievable and which arent.

With the characteristic hubris of the German bourgeoisie, which carried out barbaric crimes during the two world wars with the aim of seizing world power, Kramp-Karrenbauer threatened Russia and China. Russia is with its arsenal of weaponry, unlike China, a very imminent threat, both with conventional and nuclear weapons. However, China also has a very ambitious plan to make its army the largest and most modern in the world. And it has evidently the desire to shape the world order in its image so as to force weaker countries in particular to take specific action. We, meaning Europe and the West, cannot afford to be the weaker ones.

This is unmistakable. Germany and Europe are rearming to impose limits on Beijing and Moscow, up to and including a nuclear war. In this, it is not Russia and China, but the imperialist powers who are the aggressors. NATO has been systematically encircling Russia since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and is now intensifying its hostility towards Beijing. Despite close economic ties between the two countries, Germany is playing an increasingly aggressive role.

After Berlin backed the right-wing coup in Ukraine in 2014 to install a pro-Western regime and weaken Russia, it is turning its attention further to the east. Already last September, the Social Democrat-led Foreign Ministry published a doctrine for the Indo-Pacific, which stated: The Himalayas and the Straits of Melaka may seem far off. But our prosperity and geopolitical influence for the decades to come are based precisely on how we cooperate with Indo-Pacific states. As a globally active trading nation, Germany cannot be satisfied with the role of a spectator, including on military issues.

This policy is now to be implemented. The situation in the Indo-Pacific certainly interests us, stressed Kramp-Karrenbauer. Germany will send a frigate to the Indo-Pacific in the coming months. Ultimately, the respect of rules for free trade and territorial integrity, the strengthening of our democratic partners in the region, like Australia, Japan, and Singapore, is in the German and European interest. We are not only talking about the threat to the freedom of sea lanes by China, but actually doing something about it, she continued.

The deeper cause of the imperialist powers ruthless actions is the deep crisis of the capitalist system, which has been vastly intensified by the coronavirus pandemic. Like the murderous profit before lives policy, which has claimed the lives of over 75,000 people in Germany alone, the drive to war is being supported by all parties in parliament, including the nominal left.

In its election programme, the Greens plead for a massive rearmament programme for the German army, NATO and the European Union, and threatened Russia and China. And the Left Party long ago made clear that in a potential Social Democrat/Left Party/Green government, it would fully endorse the aggressive foreign policy course.

In the election campaign, only the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP) is resisting the return of German militarism and the threat of a third world war. It is fighting for an international and socialist programme in order to provide a perspective to the mounting opposition among workers and young people.

The SGP election programme states: Amid the coronavirus pandemic, all of the major powers are preparing for new wars to enforce their economic interests  millions are to die to pursue the imperialist interests of the German financial elite via military means. We demand: The immediate ending of all foreign interventions and wars! Dissolution of NATO and the German army! Billions for education and jobs instead of rearmament and war!
[April 07, 2021] Absen Builds Asia's Largest 8K Ultra HD Virtual Studio

SHENZHEN, China, April 7, 2021 /CNW/ -- LED virtual studios are an emerging technology that has come under the spotlight in recent years in both Chinese and international professional film shooting markets. Integrating the latest LED display technology with a virtual camera system and real-time rendering system, LED virtual studios bring extraordinary effects of cinematography. Thanks to the strength of its innovation, Absen has just built and launched Asia's largest indoor panoramic LED stereoscopic virtual studio, which will now go into use. The stereoscopic LED virtual studio is 6 meters high and has a diameter of 24 meters, taking up a total area of more than 700 square meters, and consisting of a ceiling screen and a curved screen. This is the first attempt by China's film and television market to construct such a structure. Through relentless innovation and a drive to constantly try new things, the Absen team finally solved technical problems with steel welding, load-bearing, ceiling fixing, and connecting the ceiling and backdrop curved screen. Absen's LED display makes use of a PWM constant current LED driver, which greatly improves image display and grayscale level, so thateven the darkest textures in a picture are visible. The dynamic and vividly vibrant image effects mean that everything in the picture comes out clearly. In addition, Absen's LED display has a high refresh rate, enabling it to quickly respond to a dynamic picture and synchronize with a high-speed camera without leaving any trace of scanning lines. This technology has allowed it to "surmount many pan-focusing challenges and become an alternative to shooting on location."



With the help of Absen's giant panoramic 270 LED display, completely real-time, "what you see is what you get" film and television production now is a reality. By directly viewing the shooting environment and modifying scene effects in real time, creators have more flexibility to actualize their artistic ideas. Now epic, grand-scale photography can be done even in a limited space, saving time, energy and the need for an actual change of scenery. The LED virtual studio can also accurately produce light sources and the reflection and refraction effects of its reflectors are almost indistinguishable from reality, making video truer to life.

LED virtual studios already play a significant role in film and television shooting, and are set to become a major trend in the photography industry in the near future. Absen virtual studio LED solutions has excellent performance: 10/12bit input and 16bit output with HDR support;

Absen LED panels are able to work with higher frame rates which can reach up to 144 frames per second, it makes it possible to shoot slow-motion visual effects with over-cranked cameras against LED screens and still retain perfect synchronization between screen and camera.

Low latency with frame delays as low as 1 frame;

The genlock can lock the processor at the camera shutter to achieve seamless synchronization of virtual scenes and character movements. At present, the LED virtual studio Absen launched has been adopted by TransQuebec.inc. XR Studio in Canada, Channel 5 in Russia, Catalyst Connect in the UK, Show Imaging Studio in the US, and many other films and television producers. These examples of its application in industry demonstrate its significant advantages. Absen has also been continuously developing other new technologies and products, with the aim of bringing more practical solutions to the market. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/absen-builds-asias-largest-8k-ultra-hd-virtual-studio-301263719.html SOURCE Absen.com

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Cyberattacks are increasing in frequency, ramping up the data privacy threats they pose to government agencies and businesses alike. Governments both domestic and foreign need to step up efforts to pass legislation that bolsters technological defenses this year, warn privacy groups.

Stiffer privacy laws are gradually being reviewed and signed into the U.S. market. But that process is mostly taking place at the state level.

Meanwhile, cyberattacks present IT experts and legislators with a war on two fronts. The software industry struggles with security issues that make cyberattacks viable. Government officials and business execs struggle with complicated legal issues involving outdated or missing privacy protections.

Bigger and more successful incursions into government, business, and personal computers are common events. Phishing campaigns and ransomware attacks are finding new victims regularly. The situation is much like a game of Whack-a-Mole.

Privacy advocates see better opportunities for privacy laws taking hold as they focus on pushing federal legislators to enact stronger consumer privacy laws in the coming years. These new laws need to pay prime attention to emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), cloud computing, and blockchain.

"I expect increasing regulation, especially when it comes to state laws that focus on sensitive personal data," says Scott Pink, special counsel in the Silicon Valley office of the international law firm O'Melveny & Myers, and member of the firm's Data Security and Privacy Group.

Pink regularly advises media and technology companies on how to comply with the current patchwork of state and industry-specific privacy regulations. He believes that 2021 could mark a new era in privacy laws aimed to safeguard a wide array of valuable digital information.

"COVID-19 health data is of immediate concern as we move into the pandemic's next phase. Governments and health care systems are collecting vast amounts of contact tracing and vaccine-related information. Implementing laws, policies, and procedures to ensure the integrity of that data will be key," Pink told TechNewsWorld.

Cyberattacks are a significant risk, especially as remote working and the increasing sophistication of phishing and social engineering attacks create more vulnerabilities than ever before, he emphasized. Cyberattacks and their impact on data privacy can severely impact the operations of government agencies, companies, schools, and beyond.

RATs in the Attack Mix

The most prevalent threats lurking in 2021 are RAT infestations. The acronym RAT stands for Remote Access Trojan, a form of malware that allows hackers to control devices remotely.

Once a RAT program is connected to a computer, a hacker can look at local files, acquire login credentials and other personal information, or use the connection to download viruses that can then, unbeknownst to the user, be spread to others.

Remote access intrusions can be problematic, especially with millions of people now working from home, noted Robert Siciliano, cyber social identity protection instructor at ProtectNow.

"Microsoft's remote desktop protocol and numerous third-party remote access technology services dramatically increase the attack surface for hackers wanting to break into corporate and government networks," he told TechNewsWorld.

Some of the cyberattacks are based on escalated tactics made available since the pandemic and are different from those prior to last year, he noted. Neither corporate America nor local, state, and federal governments never saw this coming.

The Cloud Factor Counts Too

Still, hackers are not succeeding strictly by using modern-day- high-tech tactics. Today's threats are an escalation of existing threat methods that have been around for years and that have been accelerated by even more prevalent use of cloud computing and agile development, according to Naama Ben Dov, associate at YL Ventures, an American-Israeli venture capital firm that specializes in seed stage cybersecurity investments.

The cloud migration is a big part of the data privacy troubles we are seeing today. Data remains the highest value target for attackers. As such, data theft is the most prevalent threat this year, insisted Eldad Chai, co-founder and CEO of Satori Cyber, a data access and governance firm in Tel Aviv that is one of YL Ventures' portfolio companies.

"Through access to a corporation's data, attackers can inflict reputation, legal and operational damages that are disproportional to any other attack vector," he told TechNewsWorld.

Of course, much of that data is in the cloud. The trend of moving data to the cloud has accelerated over the past years and is now at a record high with the success of platforms such as Snowflake and the boost 2020 provided to cloud migration programs, Chai noted.

"The massive migration of data to the cloud, the democratization of data within an organization, and the work-from-home environment have expanded the attack surface for data and make it extremely hard to operate an effective data protection program," said Chai.

WFH Also Problematic

The work-from-home scenario has made the hacker's job so much easier. Attackers follow where their targets go, observed Ben Dov. Right now, more than ever, that data is dangling between home workers' computers, in-office workspaces, and cloud storage banks.

Conventional wisdom has always been workers are more productive in an office environment; and when COVID hit, IT managers were mostly unprepared, Siciliano said.

Although some companies deployed tech help to those employees using their own computers and routers at home to address security with devices outside the network, it simply was not enough.

"Work at home devices connecting to company networks with misconfiguration is an IT manager's greatest fear," he said.

Too Little, Too Late

In the U.S., existing federal laws such as the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 never quite anticipated this level of work at home, for example. The federal government is unlikely to make any significant changes anytime soon with so many other life-threatening existential concerns, in Siciliano's view.

One growing threat to data privacy incursions is ransomware. But it is an effect and not the cause of privacy loss. Ransomware ultimately ends up being an effect of a remote access Trojan or technology, he noted.

"IT managers must be more proactive with hardware, software configurations, and security awareness training," said Siciliano about preventing data privacy disclosures.

Shifting Tech Threatens Effectiveness

Among the most prevalent privacy threats we faced in 2021 comes from a reliance on third-party IT services that increasingly displace, or replace, applications historically deployed on-premises, according to YL Ventures' Ben Dov.

"Like the SolarWinds incident, many supply chain attacks target IT management systems that were in use long before the rise of the cloud. Organizations still depend on these tactics, and this attack will force a rethink of the extent of IT supply-chain exposure," she told TechNewsWorld.

The same applies to software applications, she continued. Recent years have seen an explosion in the amount of third-party software. This reality makes organizations lose visibility into the risks entailed with being exposed to said third party components.

That situation will no doubt get worse before it gets better, Ben Dov warned. Increased data privacy breaches, particularly private data, is increasingly on the sprawl.

"As long as there is a lack of meaningful technological approaches to identifying and securing data, many leakages are bound to happen," she said.

Fix What's Broken

Many existing solutions focus on data governance and adherence to compliance. These goals are important but do not aim at the root of the problem. They are only good to the extent that certain regulations go, according to Ben Dov.

"We need solutions that are able to track and monitor data through an entire lifecycle, in a way which will meaningfully integrate with existing business units of organizations and enable them to execute rather than stifle R&D, sales, and marketing. Security should be a cross-enterprise interest and goal which supports business processes," she countered.

Currently, the lawmaker is mostly focused on our rights as individuals to privacy. While this is welcomed and needed, it overlooks the implementation of privacy programs, and every company has its own way of meeting the privacy requirements, offered Satori Cyber's Chai.

"Focusing the laws on the outcomes, such as if data is lost you get fined, does not deal with many of the underlying issues in actually protecting individuals' privacy," he said.

Chai is not sure it is likely to happen this year. But he hopes that governments will do a better job in defining and standardizing data protection programs in a manner that will guide the industry in implementing effective and sustainable programs.

New Privacy, Security Wrinkles

With adoption of both cloud infrastructure and cloud services (SaaS), more attacks tailored and customized to circumventing the existing guardrails of the cloud will occur. Hackers will seek ways to circumvent cloud authentication mechanisms, suggested Ben Dov.

A related concern involves the trend of companies developing their own in-house applications, becoming their own software company. That opens the door to application-specific attacks, she cautioned.

"Hackers will always choose the easiest path in, and until 2020 exploiting bugs in old operating systems to install malware or social engineering people to install malicious software on their laptops was an easy path in," added Chai. "With data and servers moving to the cloud, we will eventually see less such attacks and more attacks focused on the cloud environments."

A key element that needs to be addressed, according to Siciliano, is a lack of concern for the security role employees need to play. That is especially true regarding phishing. Employees need a better understanding of how their ineffectiveness could result in calamity.

"Security awareness training as it pertains to phishing simulation by itself is absolutely not enough and will not solve the problem. The discussion needs to shift from security awareness to security appreciation, and right now most organizations are not doing that," he complained.

Final Thoughts

The main gap Chai sees today regarding data security and privacy is that existing solutions are not suitable to a model that leverages the legal context of the data. Models for existing data protection tools are mostly black or white. Either you have or you do not have access to data, he explained.

However, the privacy and legal context of data is much more complex, he reasoned. A piece of data could be authorized for usage based on the consent given when collecting the data, the geographical location of the data, the size and nature of the data set, the way the data will be used, and a set of other considerations.

"Until the legal and privacy context are integrated into existing models for data protection, we will still be behind," he said.

That process will need increased industry-government-academic cooperation and partnerships to share data pertaining to cybersecurity threats. It will also take knowledge about the threat to counter them, added Ben Dov.

Jack M. Germain has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2003. His main areas of focus are enterprise IT, Linux and open-source technologies. He is an esteemed reviewer of Linux distros and other open-source software. In addition, Jack extensively covers business technology and privacy issues, as well as developments in e-commerce and consumer electronics. Email Jack.


LOS ANGELES  As soon as Justin Perez left the vaccination clinic, his phone buzzed with a text message.

A former co-worker had heard a hot rumor about a clinic where anyone, even young people like them, could get a COVID-19 vaccine. The clinic was in Bakersfield.

"I am in Bakersfield," texted Perez, a 35-year-old video designer from Sherman Oaks, confirming the rumor. "I got injected 20 minutes ago."

Cal State Bakersfield has been the go-to vaccination site for the young and the healthy from Los Angeles County for more than a week, ever since word spread that the facility had more doses than patients  thousands more  and no restrictions on age, eligibility or county of residency. Some vaccine seekers have been writers, engineers and Hollywood actors, who said the site was welcoming Angelenos with open arms.

Thousands of Southern California residents in recent days have headed over the Grapevine and into the Central Valley. By Monday night, "Bakersfield" was trending on Twitter, spurred by a wave of vaccine hunters who are young, healthy and have time to take a four-hour round-trip road trip. Though many will be eligible for the shot at home in a week or so, there's no guarantee that appointments will be available right away.

Bakersfield's open-door policy felt slightly surreal to some patients, especially compared to L.A. County's busy, strict vaccine clinics. Some describe whirlwind days, waking up assuming they would have to wait weeks to get vaccinated, then, after seeing a stream of gleeful social media posts, deciding on a whim to drive up the 5 Freeway and getting the shot two hours later.

"The whole way there, and the whole way back, my friend and I were kind of in a daze," said Julie Greiner, 25, a comedy writer from Glendale who got ice cream to celebrate her vaccination. "We were like, did this really happen?"

The site's excess capacity is due at least in part to a relatively high rate of vaccine hesitancy in Kern County, including among evangelical Christians and low-income residents of color, according to officials at Kaiser Permanente, which is helping to run the clinic. Additionally, Kern skews young: About 11% of those in the county are 65 or older, meaning that many residents, perhaps the majority, became eligible for vaccination only in the last few weeks.

About 24% of people living in Kern County have received at least one dose, compared with 33% of residents statewide, according to the Los Angeles Times vaccine tracker.

Bakersfield officials say it's true the site is vaccinating everyone 16 and older. But they stopped short of encouraging out-of-town visitors, cautioning that the clinic is meant to serve Kern County residents, and the appointment system is reserved for locals.

When officials were planning the site, the idea of people arriving from other counties "didn't really cross our minds," said David Womack, senior vice president of Kaiser Permanente in Kern County. But word spread quickly. By the third day, staff had noticed out-of-county visitors. Now, nurses are seeing "a few hundred" Southern California patients per day, he said.

"We have the capacity, we have the vaccine  it would be a crime to turn people away," Womack said. "We want to get shots in arms."

About two-thirds of patients do not have appointments, Womack said. The walk-in policy, a rarity for mega-sites, is designed to improve vaccine access for seniors and others who've struggled with the state's appointment software.

The site opened March 26. During its first week, about 900 people were vaccinated per day, less than 20% of the daily 5,400-shot capacity. About 2,500 people were vaccinated Monday, and the site was on track Tuesday to break that record, Womack said.

The site's popularity exploded last weekend, when actor Wil Wheaton, known for his role in "Star Trek: The Next Generation," told his 1.1 million Instagram followers that he had visited. After he got a Pfizer-BioNTech jab, he wrote in a photo caption, he "cried a little bit" with relief.

"It's so quick and easy, and you aren't jumping the line or taking a jab away from someone," Wheaton, 48, said. Once he arrived at the site, he said, the process took 40 minutes.

Womack cautioned that the clinic may start limiting walk-up appointments, or restricting them to certain hours of the day, because they significantly slow the check-in process. He added: "If the day comes when we have to do that, we just ask that people understand."

Local officials are evaluating levels of vaccine hesitancy among Black residents, Latino immigrants and white evangelicals and how to address it, said Kristin Weber, Kaiser's interim director of public affairs in Kern County. She said the county is working to make the shots available at churches, and community groups are spreading the word about the vaccine.

There are a few people who "believe some really weird stuff," said Chris Lewis, a construction worker, as he ate a pulled-pork sandwich in his truck outside PorkChop & Bubba's BBQ near Bakersfield High School. But mostly, he said, his co-workers seem open to the idea of getting vaccinated.

Lewis said he planned to get the shot sometime this year but isn't in a hurry, since he recently had COVID-19.

At the campus vaccine site Tuesday morning, cars with license plate frames from dealerships in El Monte, Hollywood, Glendale, Alhambra, Carson and Santa Monica were dotted across the parking lot.

As patients walked out, workers in orange T-shirts whooped, applauded and cheered. One yelled, "Congratulations! Tell your friends!" to a couple wearing Dodgers hats as they walked back to their car holding hands.

After he got vaccinated Tuesday, Michael Vargas, 24, stopped for a selfie with a cardboard cutout of infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci outside the clinic exit, joking: "Is this to scale?"

Vargas, a Bakersfield resident who works in pest control, said he had become eligible recently but had been dreading trying to find an appointment. When a friend who attended Cal State Bakersfield told him he could get vaccinated by walking in, he decided to stop by. He was vaccinated less than an hour later.

The process was so easy that Vargas said he planned to encourage his friends and family to come.

Max Folkman, a 33-year-old writer of video games from West Hollywood, drove up early in the morning with his roommate after seeing success stories spreading on Twitter and Reddit. A few days earlier, a friend had pulled off the 5 Freeway during a drive to Seattle and gotten vaccinated.

Folkman was pleasantly surprised by how smoothly the vaccination went, he said  and when they walked back to the parking lot, past several workers who were cheering them on, they saw a heron standing next to their car.

"It seemed like a good omen," Folkman said.

Karla Hernandez, 35, who lives in L.A.'s Koreatown, worried that Central Valley residents weren't getting vaccinated because of misinformation spreading in the community.

She stopped at Los Reyes Market in South Bakersfield after getting vaccinated, before heading back to L.A. She talked to a few employees, asking if they knew about the campus site and reassuring them that the vaccine was safe.

"It's concerning to me that not enough people from Bakersfield are going," she said.
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Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks about U.S. leadership in fighting the global coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic during an event at the State Department in Washington on April 5, 2021. (Alexander Drago/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

Religious Liberty and US Foreign Policy: No Longer the Guiding Principle?

Freedom of religion recently has been placed by the US atop a hierarchy of human rights. This will change, Secretary Blinken says.

Commentary

On March 30, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced what some saw as a fundamental change in American foreign policy. The United States, Blinken said in presenting the Department of States 45th annual report on human rights in the world, will repudiate the unbalanced views that placed religious liberty at the top of a hierarchy of human rights.

There is no hierarchy that makes some rights more important than others, Blinken said.

Media saw it as a strong criticism of the previous administration, and of Blinkens predecessor as secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, who had repeated time and again that religious liberty was at the top of a hierarchical pyramid of human rights. Pompeos approach created the conditions for promoting the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom, held twice in Washington, D.C., and a third time online due to COVID-19 (rather than in Warsaw, Poland, as planned), accompanied by regional meetings, and the admirable work of Sam Brownback as ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom.

Is religious liberty really just one among a myriad of other human rights, some of which may deserve more attention than freedom of religion or belief? I respectfully disagree.

Surely, there are several human rights that must be protected and granted to all. Its much appreciated that a world power such as the United States renews its commitment to putting human rights at the top of its priorities in foreign policy. How different human rights stand with respect to each other is a debated philosophical question, but it also has very practical implications.

Particularly at a time when the list of whats considered human rights is constantly growing, they may conflict with each other, and trying to defend all of them in the same way may lead to intractable impasses. I believe that yes, some basic human rights are more basic than others, which is why we call them fundamental, i.e., foundational. They lay the foundation upon which others are erected. Other rights depend on them. They serve as a rationale, a paramount, and the ultimate criterion of evaluation and order.

The most basic human right is, of course, the right to life. A dead person does not have rights, and we only talk of human rights in relation to the living. Homicide is the most basic violation of human rights. But the first political human right is religious freedom, since it allows us to freely address the most basic questions of human life, and indeed the core premise of the human condition itself.

This is neither a sectarian statement nor an endorsement of faith as such. Freedom of religion or belief also protects the freedom not to believe. It grants humans the right to address the ultimate questions of human life without constraints, deciding for or against the existence of God, for or against any religion, or all of them. From this, all the rest comes. This first political human right stands at the foundation of all the others.

As American citizens, presumably Blinken and Pompeo agree on the fact that this principle is enshrined (the word is particularly appropriate) in the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, whose aim is to preserve individual and corporate liberty from any possible interference by the state. These documents indicate religious liberty is the first political human right of a U.S. citizen. Immediately after, the First Amendment mentions the political rights to freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. That of the human rights in the U.S. Constitution is a crowded podium, but the gold medal is bestowed upon religious freedom.

I wonder whether a competent ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom will be appointed again, and the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom will continue. The United States has involved other countries, who have appointed their own ambassadors-at-large for religious freedom following the American model, and have co-sponsored the ministerials. It would be strange if the United States, having incited other countries to co-operate, now abandoned them.

The March 30 Blinken speech accompanied the publication of a strongly worded report on human rights, which severely criticized China, particularly for the genocide waged by the CCP against Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples in Xinjiang, which its non-Han inhabitants call East Turkestan. Blinken assured the world that the strong U.S. commitment to denouncing human rights abuses in China will continue. Even before being confirmed by the Senate as secretary of state, Blinken had publicly agreed with Pompeo on calling these CCP crimes genocide.

This is good news, but one wonders whether the rights of Uyghurs and several other persecuted minorities in China and throughout the world will now be protected without addressing the basically religious nature of the persecution vested on them. If this would be the case, misunderstandings on what the persecution is all about will be created and perpetuated, to the detriment of the very human rights Blinken vowed to defend.

Marco Respinti is the editor-in-chief of International Family News. He is an Italian professional journalist, member of the International Federation of Journalists, essayist, translator, and lecturer.

This article was originally published by Bitter Winter, a magazine on religious liberty and human rights in China.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Gujarat government has announced night curfew from 08:00 pm to 06:00 am in 20 cities from April 7, i.e., Wednesday till April 30 amid a surge in COVID-19 cases after a review meeting headed by Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani.

The cities where curfew will be imposed are: Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, Surat, Bhavanagar, Rajkot, Anand, Vadodara, Godhra, Junagadh, Amreli, Mehsana, Dahod, Patan, Bhuj, Bharuch, Jamnagar, Surendranagar, Morbi, Gandhidham and Nadiad. Before this, night curfew from 09:00 pm to 06:00 am was imposed in Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Rajkot and Surat.

The Gujarat High Court had suggested imposing a curfew or lockdown for three to four days to break the infection chain as the COVID-19 situation was getting "out of control" in the state.

Also read: COVID-19 second wave: Cases rising rapidly, next 4 weeks critical, says Health Ministry

Besides this, the government has also banned political and social gatherings till April 30. Gujaratis cannot invite more than 100 people to a marriage ceremony.

State government offices will remain shut on every Saturday and Sunday this month. Poll-bound areas like Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation and Morva Hadaf assembly were, however, exempt from these curbs.

Gujarat CM Vijay Rupani said that the Centre will also send a team of medical experts to help the state government chalk out a strategy to check the rise in cases. Talking about the need to ramp up RT-PCR tests, Rupani said, "Contact tracing will be increased to identify the infected people. Such patients will be isolated so that the chain of infection can be broken. We have decided to strictly implement restrictions in micro containment zones and the help of police will be taken."

Also read: IMA urges PM Modi to include all above 18 in COVID-19 vaccination drive

Gujarat reported 3,280 new COVID-19 cases, 2,167 recoveries and 17 deaths on Tuesday. Total number of COVID-19 cases in the state are over 3.24 lakh with over 3.04 lakh recoveries. COVID-19 death toll in Gujarat stands at 4,598 whereas the state has a total of 17,348 so far.

Meanwhile, several villages and towns in Central Gujarat like Lunawada, Santrampur, Malataj, Demol, Rupaiyapura, Sarsa, Virsad, Pansora and Changa have chosen to go for voluntary lockdown amid rise in coronavirus cases. Various trade associations have also decided to shut down their businesses.

Edited by Mehak Agarwal
Dian Yulia Novi (left) sits next to her husband, Nur Solikin, during their trial at a court in Jakarta, Aug. 23, 2017. Dian was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison for her involvement in an Islamic State-inspired plot to carry out a suicide bomb attack on the presidential palace.

Zakiah Aini, an Indonesian woman who was killed last week while allegedly trying to attack police officers, loved to talk to people on social media but rarely socialized in real life, her neighbors and friends told local media.

On March 31, the college dropout told her mother at home that she was going out. She then walked into the national police headquarters in Jakarta and pointed a gun at police, before officers shot her dead.

Zakiah was radicalized online, said Wawan Hari Purwanto, a deputy at the State Intelligence Agency (BIN).

She was active on social media. She was an introvert, but chatty on social media, Wawan told BenarNews.

Zakiah, 25, was the second woman to die in a span of four days while apparently on a suicide mission in Indonesia. On March 28, Palm Sunday, a newlywed couple set off at least one bomb in a suicide attack outside a Catholic church in South Sulawesi province, injuring 20, police said.

These latest attacks  which authorities linked to the Islamic State (IS) extremist group  show that the Indonesian government had not done enough to curb rising radicalism among women or taken threats posed by female militants seriously, experts told BenarNews.

The incidents exposed the governments lack of policies in countering such a threat, they said.

A dearth of womens perspectives in counter-terrorism policy-making is largely to blame, said Dwi Rubiyanti Kholifa, director of the Asian Muslim Action Network (AMAN).

At the BNPT, for example, there are no women at the [decision-making] level, so it is difficult to have a woman's perspectives, Dwi told BenarNews, referring to the National Counterterrorism Agency.

Officials dont have a gender perspective in their analysis, she said.

They dont seem to understand that some women carry out a terrorist attack for penance, some for recognition, some for a sense of empowerment, while some were driven by gender injustice and inequality, Dwi added.

As an example Dwi cited the case of Ika Puspitasari, a former Indonesian maid in Hong Kong who was jailed in 2017 back in her home country after being convicted of plotting an attack on minority Shia communities.

Ika felt marginalized and gained confidence and empowerment after pledging allegiance to IS, Dwi said.

Very dangerous

Once they are in prison or have served out their sentences, female convicts and ex-convicts are not kept under such close surveillance as their male counterparts, said Dete Alijah, a terrorism researcher at the Society Against Radicalism & Violent Extremism (SeRVe) Indonesia.

After they walk free, there is no monitoring. Women are very dangerous because they are easily radicalized, and they are also difficult to de-radicalize, Dete told BenarNews.

Women have become more prominent in terrorism after IS, in 2016, declared that combat was just as necessary for women as for men, said Sidney Jones, who directs the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC), a think-tank in Jakarta.

The militant group was slowly losing its grip in Syria and Iraq and needed more recruits, Jones said.

At that time, there was a sudden change in the attitude of the central ISIS  allowing women to fight the war, Jones told BenarNews, referring to the militant group by one of its other names.

The militant group changed its tune on women in combat that year when, Bahrun Naim, an Indonesian IS fighter in Syria, said that an attack was more likely to succeed if a woman carried it out.

Bahrun Naim said that women would not be suspected when carrying a backpack. We saw that Zakiah managed to enter the national police headquarters, Jones said, referring to the huge complex where the headquarters are housed.

Do the recent attacks by women show that female militants are increasing in number? Very likely, according to an IPAC study published last September.

For instance, only four women were convicted of terrorism in Indonesia between 2002 and 2014, but women made up 51 of 475 people convicted of, or detained for, terrorism since then, the study found.

Police tape seals off the area around the Surabaya Central Pentecostal Church in Surabaya after it was targeted in a deadly terrorist attack, May 13, 2018. [Yovinus Guntur/BenarNews]

IS and women in combat

The shift in the responsibilities of women, from playing supporting roles, such as harboring fugitives, to being actively engaged in terrorism emerged after the arrest of would-be suicide bomber Dian Yulia Novi in December 2016.

Dian, then 29, was about to carry out a suicide attack at the presidential palace in Jakarta when police arrested her.

A host of women-led attacks followed in the next few years.

Puji Kuswati became the first Indonesian woman to die in a suicide attack when she, her husband and four children set off bombs at three churches in Surabaya on May 13, 2018.

The next day, another woman, Tri Ernawati, along with her husband and three children detonated explosives at the Surabaya police headquarters.

The two attacks killed at least 22 people, including the suspected bombers.

Also in 2018, a 26-year-old woman and her husband tossed a pressure-cooker bomb at a police station in the Indramayu, a regency of West Java province, but it failed to explode.

In 2019, a woman named Solimah blew herself up with her 2-year-old son in the North Sumatra town of Sibolga while resisting arrest, despite an appeal from her arrested husband to surrender.

Technology as militancy-enabler

By 2021, intelligence and counterterror agencies would have been aware of a rise in female militancy. So, experts said, it appeared the authorities could not replicate with women radicals their relative success in arresting and deradicalizing male militants.

BNPT Deradicalization Director Irfan Idris denied that his agency was not responsive to womens participation in extremism.

At BNPT, we keep tabs on the patterns of terrorism, including the rise of female attackers. We have been talking about this for some time, Irfan told BenarNews.

But technology makes everything easy [for the attackers], including accessing radical content via the internet and social media. That is a challenge in itself.

Irfan also denied that female convicts were not placed in de-radicalization programs.

That is not true. Deradicalization programs are for men and women, he said.

In its report released in September 2020, IPAC had said the government needed to increase the number of female prison officers, whose roles were important as companions or guardians, amid the rise in the number of women convicted of terrorism cases in recent years.

IPAC said assistance provided by female guardians, or people entrusted with accompanying and providing guidance to female militants, was more effective than religious counseling in eroding prisoners radical views.

IPACs Jones said the development of information technology enabled women IS sympathizers in Indonesia to discover that women in other countries were already actively involved in fighting.

So those who are not satisfied being in the seat as housewives find role models in women who are more active in other countries such as Chechnya, Palestine and Iraq, Jones said.

Thanks to the internet, the women also have a channel for brainstorming and discussion, including girls-only Telegram chat groups.

For example, Zakiah, who was killed at the police headquarters last week, had posted messages supporting IS on Instagram, National police chief Gen. Listyo Sigit Prabowo said.

She wrote something about fighting [a] jihad, Listyo told reporters hours after police gunned down the woman.

Calls for women to join holy war have featured in IS propaganda media, including the Indonesian-language Al-Fatihin magazine, said Muhammad Adhe Bakti, managing director of the Center for Radicalism and Deradicalization Studies, or PAKAR.

The ISIS-affiliated magazine in one of its issues in March 2018 ran stories about brave female jihadists, complete with religious justification, Adhe told BenarNews.

The emergence of female terrorists has also resulted from the dwindling numbers of male militants, BINs Wawan said.

Police said in December 2020 that they had arrested 228 terrorism suspects in 2020.

Some of those arrested were suspected of planning to carry out attacks, while others had been on a wanted list for previous acts of terrorism, police said.

Meanwhile in February and March, police snared nearly 50 suspects from Jemaah Islamiyah, an al-Qaeda-linked militant group.

Women are increasingly important because of the absence of men who have been arrested or have died, Wawan said.
The boss of collapsed finance company Greensill boasted to staff about the firm's 'enormous liquidity' just three weeks before it collapsed and became embroiled in a political scandal.

Australian financier Lex Greensill, 44, reassured staff in an internal video on February 15 - audio of which has been obtained by the FT - of the 'incredible strength' of a key set of funds it held with Zurich-based Credit Suisse.

Just two weeks' later the Swiss bank froze these funds, precipitating Greensill's collapse around seven days later - leading to unwelcome headlines for former Prime Minister David Cameron, an adviser to the firm, who was today facing fresh questions over his closeness to Mr Greensill.

Australian financier Lex Greensill, 44, (seen walking his dog in Cheshire on April 5) reassured staff in an internal video on February 15 of the 'incredible strength' of a key set of funds it held with Zurich-based Credit Suisse

Greensill's main business consisted of 'supply chain financing', which is the providing of loans to companies to allow them to pay their suppliers promptly.

The company bundled these loans into bond-like investments which were then packaged into funds and sold to the likes of Credit Suisse.

Greensill took out insurance to avoid the risk of the suppliers who had taken out the loans being unable to repay them.

Mr Greensill spoke to staff on February 15 amid fears that insurance on funds held by Credit Suisse was about to run out.

He reassured employees that bosses were finalising a new insurance policy for the funds and those held by the Zurich-based asset manager GAM.

He said: 'We've got enormous amounts of liquidity that are available to us, for our assets in the funds,' he said. 'The markets are very much behind us.'

What is supply chain financing? Supply chain financing  also known as reverse factoring  is where a company brings in a middleman to pay a supplier on its behalf. In many cases, this is done through so-called 'early payment' schemes  where suppliers are offered the chance to be paid early, but at a discount, by the lender. The company that bought goods from the supplier then settles the debt with the lender later on. The lender makes money by taking a share of the discount taken off a supplier's payment. Supporters say the 'win-win' arrangement allows suppliers to get paid promptly, while big businesses can smooth out their flow of outgoings. Advertisement

However, his words were contradicted a fortnight later when Credit Suisse froze its $10billion (7.2bn) range of funds after the insurance on them expired, leading to Greensill's collapse.

Greensill's failure is set to produce 2.53bn ($3.5bn) of losses for Credit Suisse, according to analysts at JP Morgan.

The banking giant was also caught up in the collapse of Archegos, a hedge fund run by the billionaire Bill Hwang, leading to another bill estimated to be 3.4bn ($4bn).

As a result the bank's senior executives have had their bonuses for the year withdrawn, while outgoing chairman Urs Rohner waived his 1.1m fee.

Chief risk and compliance officer Lara Warner and investment bank head Brian Chin have both been axed.

They were key allies of chief executive Thomas Gottstein, who took over from Tidjane Thiam in February last year but could find himself in the firing line when outgoing Lloyds boss Antonio Horta-Osorio takes over as Credit Suisse chairman next month with a major clean-up job on his hands.

Gottstein said: 'The significant loss relating to the failure of a US based hedge fund is unacceptable.'

He added: 'In combination with the recent issues around the supply chain finance funds, I recognise that these cases have caused significant concern amongst all our stakeholders.'

The departures of Warner and Chin are a serious embarrassment for the bank and Gottstein as the board continues to investigate what went wrong.

Pressure was growing on Boris Johnson to introduce a lobbying law last night as David Cameron faced more questions about his closeness to a controversial financier (File image)

Many have pointed the finger at Warner who was responsible for analysing the risk of both Archegos and Greensill and who was personally involved in signing off on a loan to Lex Greensill in October.

Who is Lara Warner? High-flying Australian-American once touted as the next CEO Warner has been Chief Risk Officer at Credit Suisse since 2019, before last year being promoted to Chief Risk and Compliance Officer in a reshuffle of the board. Given her role involves identifying and managing risks to the bank's profitability, she will be seen to bear some responsibility for failing to spot issues with Archegos and Greensill before they collapsed, costing her company millions. In 2017, she was among three senior executives to receive a total pay package of 54m. The 52-year-old, who holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Pennsylvania State University, served as an equity research analysis at Lehman Brothers before moving to Credit Suisse in 2002. The move meant she missed Lehman's being declared bankrupt in 2008, which is considered one of the key moments of the Great Recession. In 2019, she was touted by Financial News as a possible successor to CEO Tidjane Thiam. The profile praised her role in imposing capital controls on Credit Suisse's trading division and becoming the first woman to join the group executive board. The Australian-American was the first woman to join the group executive board, and has helped to scrutinise the bank's conduct and culture, leading a review of a historical sexual assault case. Advertisement

Her demise will have sent ripples through compliance departments at banks across the globe.

Warner was highly thought of at Credit Suisse, having worked her way up from analyst when she joined from Lehman Brothers in 2002.

The dual Australian and US national was a close confidante of former boss Thiam and under him she moved from New York to Zurich for the top compliance job in 2015.

She was promoted again by Gottstein last summer when the risk and compliance departments were combined.

Likewise Chin also benefitted from Gottstein's reshuffle and was promoted from head of global markets to lead the investment bank.

Question marks have now been raised over Gottstein himself and his judge of character after he promoted them both.

There are suggestions that Horta-Osorio may look elsewhere for a lieutenant to clean up the bank.

One bank analyst said: 'I wouldn't be surprised, Antonio has a reputation and will want to make an impact straight away. This is a big blow up that has cost the bank billions.' The analyst added that Horta-Osorio has a mammoth job if he is to turn around a bank that has been in disarray for some years.

Thiam was ousted in the wake of a saga involving corporate espionage that sent shockwaves through Switzerland's famously discreet banking community.

He resigned after losing a boardroom battle that erupted when the bank admitted to having hired private detectives to spy on former staff.

It came as ex-PM David Cameron faced more questions about his closeness to Mr Greensill as leaked emails revealed how the Australian was able to push through a government loan scheme from which he benefited by citing the authority of then PM.

The cache of messages showed how the businessman told officials in 2012 that 'the PM' had requested that he implement his ideas 'across government'.

He was said to have sent his proposed loan plan for NHS pharmacies to senior officials, who opposed them, but he was so confident he told them: 'We are not seeking your approval.'

Lara Warner, (left) chief risk and compliance officer, is one of the senior executives to be axed from Credit Suisse after the bank reported bumper losses from two corporate collapses. Brian Chin,(right) CEO of its investment bank, is also stepping down

Brian Chin: 'Nice guy' American executive who oversaw Credit Suisse's investment bank Chin, 42, had only been CEO of Credit Suisse's investment bank since August last year before being axed over its recent losses. He joined the firm in 2003 from Deloitte, where he was a senior analyst, on the Securitisation Transaction Team. Prior to that he worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers and the US Attorney's Office after graduating from Rutgers University with a degree in Accounting. In 2017, senior Credit Suisse insiders told eFinancialNews that Chin was a 'really great guy'. Another said: 'He's very personable and charismatic and is the kind of leader people would follow over hot coals. His style is all about trust and loyalty and camaraderie and people really respond to that.' Recent filings show he had been awarded tens of millions of dollars worth of share options as part of his annual pay package. Advertisement

The latest disclosures add to the pressure on Mr Cameron who brought Mr Greensill into No 10 as an unpaid finance adviser.

After leaving office the former PM then went to work as an adviser for Mr Greensill's firm, Greensill Capital, in 2018 and later lobbied ministers on its behalf for support through the Government's corporate Covid finance scheme.

He went straight to Chancellor Rishi Sunak and a Treasury minister, both of whom are said to have rebuffed the efforts.

Greensill Captial subsequently filed for insolvency after its application was rejected. Its collapse put the future of 5,000 jobs at risk while tens of millions of pounds of share options which Mr Cameron was reported to have received became worthless.

Last night Labour demanded the Government introduce a law to tackle cronyism in the wake of the lobbying scandal.

According to the latest disclosures, civil servants were worried by Mr Greensill's proposals for a system of supply-chain finance  fast-tracking funds to a company's suppliers for a commission, giving the company extra time to generate the money it needs to pay its own bills.

There were reportedly even suggestions the scheme could leave the government open to 'legal challenge'.

One official described Mr Greensill as a 'semi-private sector agent', adding: 'Rein him in  stop him approaching departments unilaterally.'

The Sunday Times reported that a deal was reached with Mr Greensill's former employer Citigroup to run the scheme for pharmacies without a tender.

The financier was said to have shocked officials by writing that there was 'no formal contract with Citigroup', adding 'this situation is entirely normal in the private sector'.

Credit Suisse said it was set to lose an astonishing 3.4bn from the collapse of Archegos, a hedge fund run by the billionaire Bill Hwang. Pictured is its London HQ

Labour's Cabinet office spokesman Rachel Reeves called for legislation to expand the statutory register of lobbyists.

Mr Cameron did not have to declare his Greensill role on the register as the rules apply only to third-party lobbyists and not those employed directly by firms. Miss Reeves said: 'Given the cronyism consuming the Conservative Party, it's crucial that the scope of the lobbying register is expanded to include in-house lobbyists.

'The former Conservative prime minister's conduct and the immense access Greensill was given illustrates perfectly both the toothlessness of current rules, and Tory ministers' complete disregard for any self-driven integrity when lobbying.' Neither Mr Cameron nor Mr Greensill has commented over any of the claims.

The former PM has already been cleared by a watchdog looking at whether he engaged in lobbying for which he should have been registered. A Government spokesman said: 'Lex Greensill acted as a supply-chain finance adviser from 2012 to 2015 and as a crown representative for three years from 2013.

'His appointment was approved in the normal manner including registering any potential conflicts of interest.'
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MBABANE  The trial of the two royal aides, who allegedly stole jewellery worth E800 000 at Nkoyoyo Royal Palace, is not open to members of the public.

The accused persons are Nokulunga Zambane Simelane (35) of Ntondozi and Zandile Malinga (33) of Fonteyn. Yesterday, the High Court granted an order that the matter be heard in camera. The order was granted by Judge Nkosinathi Maseko. When a matter is heard in camera, it means that it is conducted in private and members of the public and the press are not allowed to attend. In camera is used in sensitive cases to protect the privacy of the parties. The application for the matter to be heard in private was moved by Principal Crown Counsel Ncamsile Masuku. The purpose of the application, according to Masuku, was that some of the exhibits were private and she also cited security reasons. Simelanes legal representative, Mpendulo Dlamini, told the court that he was hearing such an application for the first time and requested to consult with his client. Judge Maseko adjourned the proceedings to give him time to consult Simelane.

Before the adjournment, Judge Maseko explained the nature of the application to Malinga, who is conducting her own defence in the matter. The judge informed her that the Crown had applied that the proceedings be closed to members of the public and only the accused persons, lawyers and court officials should be present during the trial. The court reconvened and the application by the Crown was granted. Worth noting is that the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Phila Dlamini, was present in court. One of the accused persons, Malinga, pleaded guilty to the charge of theft while Simelane tendered a plea of not guilty. The matter was postponed to tomorrow. Simelane and Malinga were employed as royal aides based at the palace. They were both charged with theft.

According to the charge sheet, they allegedly committed the offence during the month of January 2020. The allegedly stolen items included two gold Jacobs watches valued at E400 000, a Jacobs necklace valued at E100 000, a Jacobs ring valued at E100 000, Swarovski bracelet valued at E50 000, Swarovski necklace valued at E50 000, a pair of earrings valued at E50 000 and Swarovski necklace valued at E50 000. The items are said to have been in the lawful possession of Phangisile Mngometulu. One of the witnesses to be paraded by the Crown, Mncedisi Tsabedze, in a statement made under oath, stated that he was present when the jewellery was allegedly sold in the Republic of South Africa. He disclosed how he got involved in the deal, how much each item was sold for in the neighbouring country and to whom, including the amount each of them received. The veracity of these allegations is still to be tested in court.


Controversial Bollywood actress Mamata Kulkarni's husband Vicky Goswami extradited by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), leaves a trail of several drug traffickers from the Indian sub-continent which are presently wanted by Washington.

While Goswami is jailed in New York, three Indians, reportedly operating from British Columbia in Canada, figure on the list of the DEA's most wanted fugitives.

Top DEA sleuths are reportedly hunting for Bakshish Singh, a key money launderer linked with the dreaded Sinaloa drug cartel of Mexico. As per DEA reports, Bakshish was earlier working for international hawala ring leader Gurkaran Singh, a Canadian national of Indian origin. Gurkaran was arrested by the DEA a few years ago in Los Angeles on charges of providing millions of dollars to the Sinaloa drug cartel. Sources in Indian agencies revealed that Bakshish Singh and his two aides, Balwant Rai Bhola and Sanjeev Bhola, could be hiding in Canada or Punjab.

The DEA's wanted list also names Balwant and Sanjeev Bhola as members of the international hawala ring allegedly working at the behest of Mexican drug cartels. Along with Bakshish, both Sanjeev and Balwant are charged for "conspiracy to launder money". According to a DEA report, Bakshish Singh's last known address was located in Surrey, a city in British Columbia. Several Indian-origin drug traffickers have been earlier operating from Surrey, which is apart of the metro Vancouver area and touches the US border. Sources said that Bakshish might have escaped to India and could be living under fake identity.

Bakshish, born in the 1970s, was not the only one from India to facilitate funds for the Sinaloa cartel. In 2018, two Indians, Manu Gupta and Mohammed Sadik were arrested by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) from Indore for supplying drugs to one Jorge Solis, member of the Sinaloa cartel. The DRI had recovered 10 kg of drugs from the possession of Solis and Gupta which was priced over Rs 100 crore in the international market. Gupta was later found to be working for the Sinaloa drug cartel for the past several years.

Sinaloa is a sovereign state within Mexico facing the Gulf of California. The strategic location of Sinaloa and poltical patronisation, gives the drug cartel a safe haven to operate their international drug racket from this state.

The DEA has earlier unearthed another big time drug cartel involving Vicky Goswami, a former aide of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim. The DEA had also tipped Indian agencies about a pharmaceutical company allegedly operating from India, where drugs like mandrax and ephedrine were being manufactured. The pharma company having linkages with alleged drug traffickers was later sealed by the police.

The investigation report filed by DEA in the US District Court, Southern District of New York on July 25, 2019, had revealed the name of D-company aide Goswami and Ali Punjani, former husband of another Bollywood star Kim Sharma.

Goswami was extradited by the DEA from Kenya to face trial in New York.

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.
The Navy fired the guided-missile destroyer Hopper's skipper on Tuesday after her leadership negatively affected the crew's morale.

Cmdr. Kathryn Dawley was relieved by Capt. Kenneth Athans, Destroyer Squadron 31's commodore, over a "loss of confidence in her leadership," Navy officials announced Wednesday. An official familiar with the circumstances said the decision was based on Dawley's overall performance in "this critical leadership billet."

"Morale of the crew played a large factor in the decision to remove her from command," the official said.

Read Next: Tests to Fix Big Design Flaw Plaguing Navy's Littoral Combat Ships Will Start Soon

Capt. Don Rauch, Destroyer Squadron 31's deputy commander, has assumed command temporarily until a permanent replacement is identified. Dawley, who could not be reached immediately for comment, has been reassigned to Commander Naval Surface Group Middle Pacific in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Dawley, a prior-enlisted sailor, took command of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, which is based in Pearl Harbor, in April 2020. She was Hopper's first female commanding officer. She's also the first female officer to command a Navy ship named for a woman.

The destroyer's name honors Rear Adm. Grace Hopper, who joined the Naval Reserve in 1943 after earning her doctorate at Yale University and became a pioneer in the field of computer science. Hopper is the second Navy warship to be named for a woman who served in the ranks.

When taking command of the ship, Dawley said that "Hopper has been my dream since I commissioned."

"As a role model, Rear Adm. Grace Hopper ... embodied the qualities of a naval officer that I strive to be -- strong, confident and fearless," Dawley said in a Navy news release.

Dawley enlisted in the Navy in 1997 and earned her commission in 2003 after earning a degree from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. When taking command of Hopper, she told the crew of roughly 300 to be "the best version of you every day."

"The energy and spirit that each of you bring to this warship are unlike any that I have seen in my career," she said, according to a Navy release about the change-of-command ceremony. "I am honored to work for you and to be a part of this team."

She previously served on the destroyer The Sullivans, the Perry-class frigate Hawes, and the amphibious assault ship Bataan.

Dawley is Hopper's second commanding officer to be relieved in the last three years. In 2018, the ship's commanding officer was removed from his position over allegations that he had an inappropriate relationship with a junior sailor.

-- Gina Harkins can be reached at gina.harkins@military.com. Follow her on Twitter @ginaaharkins.

Related: Navy Fires Rear Admiral in Charge of Aviation Depots
"This is a massive milestone for our team," says Jon Campbell, Director of Gaming at Herman Miller. "Since launching our first batch of gaming products in July, we have been incredibly humbled by the number of people who have chosen Herman Miller for their setups. We are thrilled to celebrate a partnership with one of the most influential and respected people in the gaming community, especially one that has been such a pioneer in this space."

"I'm extremely excited about this partnership because it shows that a big company like Herman Miller cares about what us gamers have to say," says Betar. "After streaming and sitting for long periods of time, I realized the importance of quality products and investing in them for your health. Once I switched to Herman Miller for gaming, I could immediately feel the difference!"

Timthetatman has been streaming since 2012, gaining millions of followers drawn to his inspiring skills, upbeat personality, and entertaining banter. Streaming popular games including World of Warcraft, Counter-Strike, Overwatch, and Fortnite, his skills and interest in a wide variety of games appeals to thousands of viewers every day. "Tim is one of the most entertaining content creators in the industry today," says Campbell. "I have always been inspired by Tim's decision to sit in Herman Miller chairs for almost his entire streaming career. This relationship is truly authentic, and we're excited to celebrate Tim's commitment to Herman Miller."

While Timthetatman will be a crucial part of the brand's efforts to continue to get to know the gaming community, the opportunities go well beyond introductions and endorsements. "We will be supporting Tim and his community through original content and exclusive product information, in addition to gathering feedback directly from Tim and his community for product design," says Campbell. "To truly deliver products to the gaming community that we feel proud of, we strongly believe we need players to be deeply involved. Opportunities like this allow their voices to be heard and give them a chance to influence the products they want and need."

"Gamers know what other gamers like. By including gamers like us and asking for feedback, you're going to get genuine feedback," says Betar. "The Embody chair is one of the best chairs there is. Watching Herman Miller take it and design it for gamers showed me that they really care and want to give gamers the best. I'm thrilled a company like that wanted to partner with me."

And while Tim is the first official global brand ambassador for Herman Miller's gaming division, he's far from the first streamer the team has worked with. "From the very beginning of this project, we've been partnering with teams and players to discover what they needed and wanted in a gaming chair," said Campbell. "Players have been using our chairs for years and we knew it was time to give them the attention they deserved--but we couldn't do that without actually involving them in every step of the process." That process included visiting Gaming Houses, interviewing players, conducting research with active players, and inviting players to be part of various launches.

The first product in Herman Miller's gaming portfolio, the Herman Miller X Logitech G Embody Gaming Chair, launched globally this past July. Top Esports organizations including TSM, San Francisco Shock, Philadelphia Fusion, and Complexity, plus top players and content creators, are already actively using the chair.

"We gained critical insight and knowledge for our current gaming chairs from studying how players sit and play and talking with them about their experiences and concerns," said Campbell. "I can't wait to see what new findings are waiting to be tapped into through this partnership. We promised when we announced we were moving into the gaming space that this wasn't a one-time thingwe are here to stay. And staying means inviting more voices to the table, engaging in more conversations, and at the end of the day, delivering more quality products players can trust."

About Herman Miller

Herman Miller is a globally recognized leader in design. Since its inception in 1905, the company's innovative, problem-solving designs and furnishings have inspired the best in people wherever they live, work, learn, heal, and play. In 2018, Herman Miller created Herman Miller Group, a purposefully selected, complementary family of brands that includes Colebrook Bosson Saunders, Design Within Reach, Geiger, HAY, Maars Living Walls, Maharam, naughtone, and Nemschoff. Guided by a shared purposedesign for the good of humankindHerman Miller Group shapes places that matter for customers while contributing to a more equitable and sustainable future for all. For more information visit www.hermanmiller.com/about-us.

About TIM THE TATMAN (Tim Betar)

Tim "Tim The Tatman" Betar is one of the most influential Twitch personalities with over 6.1M followers and 229M total stream views. Known for playing Call of Duty: Warzone, Valorant, Overwatch, World of Warcraft and Fortnite, Tim's variety channel reaches an average of 36K viewers per stream and often reaches over 100K concurrent viewers. His boisterous personality and positive attitude have amassed one of the largest interactive communities on the platform. His loyal following recently launched him to #1 trending on Twitter after he finally won Fall Guys, a game he famously struggled to beat. Capturing the hype around the victory, ESPN released a 30 for 30 dedicated to the story of Tim's win. Shortly following, Tim competed in a gaming tournament on Twitch called Battle of the Best, which was the platform's most successful branded tournament stream ever. Tim headlined the event and drove 9M views, 90M minutes watched and a peak of 215K concurrent viewers. Beyond Twitch, Tim is a content creator with over 2.7M subscribers and 421M total views on his YouTube channel. Without a doubt, he is a leading voice in gaming.

SOURCE Herman Miller, Inc.

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Michaeleen Doucleff is far from the first parent who has been driven to despair, locked into a grinding war of attrition with a wilful toddler. Nor is she the first to have been tipped into post-natal depression after long weeks spent at home alone for hours a day with a fussy newborn baby.

Like many parents, Doucleff spent much of the first months and years of her childs life vacillating between the worry that there was something wrong with her, (am I not doing it right?) to the worry that there was something wrong with her child. Her daughter Rosy is smart and curious and lively, and before her arrival, Doucleff had longed to be a mother. So, why was it all such a battle?

Then, by chance, her job as a health reporter for National Public Radio in the US brought her face to face with a different approach to raising children that seemed to expose by stark comparison how fraught and fractious western parenting is.

Parenting is hard. But are we making it harder than it has to be? This question launched Doucleff on a journey of discovery, with her three-year-old toddler in tow, from which she has concluded that, in fact, the problem is our parenting culture.

The first clue to this came when she was sent to do a report on a Mayan community in the Yucatan in Mexico. None of the parents she met there seemed to be struggling in the way that she was. On the contrary, the parent/child relationships she witnessed in action were overwhelmingly harmonious and co-operative. There, she regularly witnessed children of all ages perform acts of jaw-dropping maturity and helpfulness, from a pre-teen who spontaneously got up to wash the dishes without being asked, to a family of five children who worked together to have everyone fed and dressed in time for the school bus without one single whine or nag.

Her curiosity fired, she started digging into the literature on hunter-gatherer communities. The research is very rich, she tells me from her home in San Francisco, and what you find are these incredibly strong trends, that you really find common across many, many hunter-gatherers  from India, the Philippines, to Namibia and Tanzania to the Andes and the Amazon and Australia. All these groups have been separated by tens of thousands of years, but still carry a few core elements of their culture, or core values.

Doucleff set out to experience those values first hand and wrote about it in her new book, Hunt, Gather, Parent (Harper Thorsons). She brought her toddler daughter Rosy on a world tour, to live with three different ancient cultures  the Yucatan Mayans, an Inuit community in Northern Canada and the Hadzabe hunter-gatherers in Tanzania. The book is part parenting guide, part travel memoir, part sociological interrogation. It seeks to put the conventional wisdom of western parenting in question and discover why so many traditional cultures share parenting practices that result in well-behaved, community-minded, self-confident kids. (Hint: there are no time-outs or star-charts here.)

Doucleff seeks to draw on the millennia of practical experience that has informed family dynamics in the worlds oldest cultures. She learns how Mayan parents never nag, but rather channel childrens intrinsic motivation to contribute to family life. Inuit parents, she discovers, never shout at their kids. Instead, they tame toddler tantrums with patience and tenderness and teach remarkable emotional self-regulation by example. She learns that Hadzabe parents cast an invisible safety net of community care around their children who explore their environment freely, and as a result develop impressive self-reliance and confidence.

To a western parent, some of the advice in the book seems revolutionary. She counsels parents to throw out the piles of plastic toys and activities that fill living rooms across Europe and America. As for kid-centred activities such as soft-play? Save your money. Constantly seeking to entertain and stimulate children teaches them to be passive, she argues. From the toddler years, kids want to join in what parents are doing. By making adult responsibilities and jobs like cooking meals, shopping for groceries and washing dishes a group activity, kids learn to make an authentic contribution to family life and develop self-respect. And some of it makes perfect intuitive sense; rather than arguing with or scolding children, Inuit parents expect them to be unpredictable and irrational and instead de-escalate conflict by exuding Zen-like calm.

Each time she came home to San Francisco, shed attempt to put into practice what she had learned with Rosy. We would see something and then I would try to figure out how to implement it here. And in that process, it allowed me to understand it much deeper  it crystallised the key aspect of it, she explains. This led to her coming up with the acronym TEAM to synthesise the core principles the communities she lived with shared. T for together; E for encourage; A for autonomy; M for minimal interference.

The TEAM acronym reveals how none of the parenting techniques Doucleff witnesses employ the sort of heavy-handed behaviour modification that is a feature of western parenting. In the Yucatan, children are encouraged to help but are never forced or bribed. In the Arctic tundra, children are not punished or disciplined in any way, but rather gently steered towards community-minded behaviour. And in the Tanzanian bush, Hadzabe parents dont consider it their business to control their children.

Interestingly, research in the areas of child psychology and developmental neuroscience is mounting up to support these principles. The notion that punishment is ineffective and even damaging is reaching consensus among early childhood experts.

Doucleff also learned about the crucial role that other care-givers or alloparents play in the lives of children and their parents in the communities she visited. Reflecting on the loneliness and isolation she experienced in her first few months with Rosy, she notes that in the Kung community in Botswana when the baby cries, the Kung woman is almost never alone.

People say it takes a village. But its not about a village. Its about four or five people helping you, Doucleff says. These alloparents arent just like a lot of people that come in and out of the childs life. They are really core to the child and really know the child and are attached. Thats what I saw in these places A relative, a close friend, a couple of children who are close.

Back in San Francisco it took some time to unlearn the habits that Doucleff and Rosy had developed. I started to see that I was actually practicing and modelling in the opposite of the book, Doucleff says. We think we value independence and generosity and helpfulness. But then, you know, my husband and I will sit and argue about who is going to do the dishes. Well thats not valuing helpfulness. Thats valuing arguing and getting out of your responsibility.

Expand Close Washing dishes together  and not arguing about who does them  teaches children the value of working together. Picture posed / Facebook

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Whatsapp Washing dishes together  and not arguing about who does them  teaches children the value of working together. Picture posed

So now, we dont argue about it. We both do them with Rosy every night  that shift is huge. And then Rosy gets to see people working together, people wanting to help each other. I realised, how am I going to get Rosie to want to do the dishes, if my husband and I arent wanting to do them? If it becomes this punishment or this onerous task that we are arguing about, why would she ever want to do them?

Last year, the principles of TEAM were really put to the test. For seven weeks Michaeleen was locked down with Rosy alone while her husband left to care for his parents.

During the lockdown I had to basically ignore Rosy for big chunks of time in our little condo, and she had to entertain herself. We started off small  like an hour. And then wed go outside and take a break. But we worked up to like six hours a day. And she got really good at it. We are constantly entertaining children. This idea is so baked into us. Good parents play with their children, good parents give them lectures, interact with them at every moment. Thats what we think. But its not sustainable if you are with a child 12 hours a day and you are trying to get work done. Which is a lot of the world.

Theres data that shows that when the parent micromanages childrens movements and activities, the kid doesnt develop initiative to say, now I need to go do my homework or now I need to go take a shower. They cede the responsibility to the parent and they dont develop that skill of being able to manage their time. And it was remarkable, Rosy learned to self-entertain.

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Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About Raising Children, by Michaeleen Doucleff is available at dubraybooks.ie, 20.25
On Wednesday, two-time Emmy winner Justin Theroux unveiled the trailer for creator Neil Cross' seven-episode series The Mosquito Coast, which premieres April 30 on Apple TV+.

The D.C.-born 49-year-old executive produced the dystopian drama with his uncle Paul Theroux, who authored the bestselling book way back in 1981.

In the three-minute preview, Justin portrays 'brilliant inventor and radical idealist' Allie Fox who takes his family on the run with him to Mexico.

Premieres April 30 on Apple TV+! On Wednesday, two-time Emmy winner Justin Theroux unveiled the trailer for creator Neil Cross' seven-episode series The Mosquito Coast

All in the family: The D.C.-born 49-year-old executive produced the dystopian drama with his uncle Paul Theroux (R, pictured in 2015), who authored the bestselling book way back in 1981

'Everything's complicated,' Allie says in the trailer. 'But there's always a solution.'

It's unclear precisely what crime Fox committed to make the feds and local police hot on his trail - but he's clearly a bit unhinged, desperate, and irresponsible.

And while Allie's wife Margot (Melissa George) and teen son Charlie (Gabriel Bateman) seem on board with the plan, his college-bound daughter Dina (Logan Polish) begins talking with a FBI agent (Kimberly Elise).

'I think he just wants everything off his back and by proxy, his family's too,' Justin explained to Vanity Fair last Friday.

Outlaw: In the three-minute preview, Justin portrays 'brilliant inventor and radical idealist' Allie Fox who takes his family on the run with him to Mexico

Allie says in the trailer: 'Everything's complicated, but there's always a solution'

Surrounded: It's unclear precisely what crime Fox committed to make the feds and local police hot on his trail - but he's clearly a bit unhinged, desperate, and irresponsible

Divided family: And while Allie's wife Margot (Melissa George) and teen son Charlie (Gabriel Bateman) seem on board with the plan, his college-bound daughter Dina (pictured, Logan Polish) begins talking with a FBI agent (Kimberly Elise)

'We probably saw elements of this guy a lot during the pandemic, when everyone fled New York and wanted to buy a place upstate. He's the one that takes it just that much further. I think he's slightly embittered by not being recognized.

'Maybe that's just his ego. The way his life has treated him makes him go, "That's it, we're striking out. We're going to cross the border and throw a grenade over our shoulder, because America is done."'

The Mosquito Coast is said to be a quasi-prequel to Peter Weir's 1986 flop starring Helen Mirren, Harrison Ford, and River Phoenix.

Justin explained to Vanity Fair last Friday: 'I think he just wants everything off his back and by proxy, his family's too...The way his life has treated him makes him go, "That's it, we're striking out. We're going to cross the border and throw a grenade over our shoulder, because America is done"'
When Michael Bridges killed Erin Chorney in 2002, it devastated a Brandon family and left them yearning for answers, a Brandon courtroom heard on Tuesday.

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The Brandon courthouse on Princess Avenue. (Matt Goerzen/The Brandon Sun)

When Michael Bridges killed Erin Chorney in 2002, it devastated a Brandon family and left them yearning for answers, a Brandon courtroom heard on Tuesday.

Cynthia Chorney, Erin Chorneys aunt, was the first witness to testify for the Crown at Bridges faint hope clause hearing in the Court of Queens Bench.

Erin was killed in April 2002, but her body wasnt found until approximately two years later in someone elses grave.

"We were absolutely devastated," Cynthia said under questioning from Crown attorney Mark Lafreniere.

"We didnt know where she was. We looked absolutely everywhere, trying to figure out different avenues of how to find her."

"Initially it was just, OK, she didnt come home and were looking for her, but after a week, it was like This is just not Erin."

Tuesday marked the sixth day of Bridges faint hope clause hearing, where he is asking a jury to be allowed to apply for parole before he has served 25 years in prison for first-degree murder.

Erin was born in 1983, her aunt told the court, and was a "light" in the family.

She loved swimming lessons, seeing her grandparents and became someone her younger cousins looked up to.

As she got older, Erin became close with her two siblings and her goal was to become a writer and a counsellor.

The last time Cynthia saw her niece was on a drive to Saskatoon for a family function, after she pressed assault charges against Bridges, she testified. Erin was killed during a discussion with Bridges about those same charges.

"We talked about  how she wanted to not let that be part of her life and move on and have a healthy life," Cynthia said.

Bridges was seated in the prisoners box and listened with his head down for most of Cynthias testimony on Tuesday afternoon.

The family put up missing person posters all across the province and sent out search parties, Cynthia said.

She said they never stopped looking.

When the news came out that Erins body had been found, it was difficult to take, Cynthia said, and left the family "devastated."

"Every one of us in our family have a picture of Erin sitting on our living room mantles somewhere. Shes the first person we look at when we wake up in the morning and shes the last person we look at when we go to bed. And we wish she could be with us," Cynthia said through tears.

Lafreniere cross-examined Bridges on Tuesday morning, following his testimony to defence lawyer Carley Mahoney on Monday.

Bridges lied multiple times to authorities over the course of the investigation into Erins death, Lafreniere said, but Bridges responded he has changed in the close to two decades since the night of the murder.

The Crown drew attention to the fact Bridges took elaborate steps to hide this involvement in the murder, including disposing of Erins possessions, preparing her body by wrapping it in bedsheets and burying it in someone elses grave.

Bridges then lied to police, saying he didnt know what happened to Erin in the days and weeks after her death.

Lafreniere also questioned Bridges on why he took the charges to trial, which was his right, rather than pleading guilty in 2005.

"At that time, the only person I was considering was myself," Bridges said.

"I was a coward  I was selfish. All these things were at the very start of my sentence. I was only thinking of myself and I will not deny that," he said.

Lafreniere also brought up a number of incidents over the course of Bridges time in prison where he said Bridges acted inappropriately.

In one incident in 2018, Bridges was asked questions by a corrections facilitator about the murder.

In the facilitators report, it says Bridges became uncomfortable, defensive and came across like he didnt want to complete the exercise.

Bridges apologized the next day and said his behaviour was "ridiculous," the report says, but Lafreniere said he couldnt control himself in the moment.

"It was a stressful situation that you were unprepared for, just like youre likely to encounter in real life," Lafreniere said to Bridges.

"Im ashamed of what I did and its the hardest thing to talk about," Bridges replied.

"I dont like opening up about that. I wont open up to somebody who doesnt give me an introduction  Im standoffish, Ill fully admit  I know Im going to face tough challenges and its just that subject, its a hard thing to talk about."

Bridges said he has learned ways to handle tough situations and get a handle on his emotions.

Defence lawyers Ryan Amy and Carley Mahoney closed their case at the end of Bridges testimony.

The faint hope clause was repealed from the Criminal Code in December 2011, but Bridges can still apply under it as he was convicted before it was removed.

The clause, otherwise known as S.745.6 of the Canadian Criminal Code, was a statutory provision that allowed offenders sentenced to life imprisonment with a "parole eligibility period of greater than 15 years to apply for early parole once they have served 15 years."

The Crown attorneys are scheduled to continue calling witnesses to testify today.

 dmay@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @DrewMay_
My ongoing series in partnership with Entrepreneur, If I Knew Then: Leadership Lessons, is a unique platform for hosting virtual fireside chats with high-profile CEOs of major brands, from Indeed and Nextdoor, to GoDaddy and DocuSign. These insightful sessions spotlight the minds of successful leaders as they share one-of-a kind advice and lessons for both current and future entrepreneurs.

For our 16th episode, I spoke with Ben Chestnut, the CEO of Mailchimp, a company he co-founded with Dan Kurzius in 2001 as a side project to their web design agency. Together, they designed Mailchimp to be a delightful, yet powerful email marketing tool that gives small businesses access to technology that was once reserved for larger enterprises. The company has now evolved into a platform that helps small businesses with everything from buying a domain name and setting up a website, to creating an online store and setting up eCommerce marketing automation.

Headquartered in Atlanta, where Chestnut received his bachelors degree in industrial design from Georgia Tech, Mailchimp has impressively scaled in growth over the past two decades, but its mission remains the same: to empower the underdog. Chestnut leads a team of 1,200 employees across six offices, including in Atlanta, Brooklyn, Oakland, Santa Monica, Seattle and Vancouver. Mailchimp helps empower millions of businesses and entrepreneurs globally with savvy marketing, commerce tools and award-winning customer support.

Related: Free On-Demand Webinar: How to Build a Successful Business Without Outside Financing

After 20 years in business, the co-founders continue to each retain 50 percent of the company, despite offers north of a billion dollars from outside investors (a unicorn feat in itself). Mailchimp remains privately held and highly profitable, with $700 million in revenue in 2019, 60 percent industry market share and a valuation of $4.2 billion.

When asked what inspired him to become an entrepreneur, Chestnut recalls the story of his mother running a hair salon out of the kitchen and brainstorming business ideas on car trips with his father:

My mom gave me this entrepreneurial model," he says. "She didnt call herself an entrepreneur or a small business; she called it making ends meet. It was her talent. I saw entrepreneurship as just breathing, a thing you do in life. It was a service business; clients came into our kitchen. I learned about customer service this way. My father was in the military and dreamed about starting a business, but he could never make that break, because he had to support the family. I have memories of brainstorming businesses to start one day with him on car trips when I was growing up. It inspired me to finish what we started. In 2000, we all got laid off at this dot com, and I remembered all of those stories I brainstormed with my Dad. I knew that if I didnt try to be an entrepreneur, I would never be one. I might get a great cushy job, but I might regret it. I thought, let me try this.

Read on for more of Chestnuts insights from his journey of building a sustainable, evolving and enormously successful business. Here are 12 takeaways from my conversation with this incredible leader:

1. Do what works and repeat

There is no playbook to build a successful business. Starting a company is not always perfect, and you'll make plenty of mistakes. Chestnut recalls a time in the early Mailchimp years when he was searching for a playbook or mentor who could flip the switch so the light bulb would come on. Chestnut soon realized there is no playbook, so he asked himself what was working and moving the needle  even something as small as getting 100 customers. Chestnuts mentor at the time asked how he was able to get those 100 customers and advised him to use the same strategy again, which worked. Stop focusing on the negatives or the mistakes made, do what works and repeat it until customers stop buying it.

2. Find the communication style you're good at, then find the channel that will inspire you to use it

Founders are good at one way of communicating. For Chestnut, it was writing, so he fell into blogging, which was how he marketed Mailchimp. He calls it the "3 Cs": Whats the channel? What's your communication style? What's the channel that's going to give you the highest cadence?

3. Listen hard, change fast

Chestnut believes the world would be a better place if CEOs listened more. Talk and listen to customers, connect the dots and live up to your brand promise. We had an extreme customer focus from the beginning, but Id be lying if I didnt acknowledge that we started at a time when the economy was horrible and everybody needed an affordable marketing channel," he says. "SaaS was kind of new, and we had a SaaS offering right off the bat. It was a good one for a channel that was neglected for a long time. I still remember a customer from Dayton, Ohio said, Sprinkle the magic in all of the channels and make it easy.

Related: 12 Leadership Lessons from Envoy Founder and CEO Larry Gadea

4. Diversify your customer base

Imagine an inbox with 1,000 requests from customers. That is enough to overwhelm three people in a rented office space. You need to find the trends within those requests and build for those trends; if you build something, it should solve for millions of people, not just a small handful of really big customers. By diversifying your customer base, you are not relying on retaining your fewer bigger accounts.

5. Avoid regrets by taking risks

Early in Chestnuts journey, he picked up a book, Regrets of the Dying, about a home care nurse who detailed everything she learned from taking care of people on their deathbeds. Chestnut lives his life to avoid regret and says This book was my motivation to take a leap and do new things. I dont want to be on my deathbed having not taken risks.

6. Have a unique story to tell

Even if your business is doing something thats been done before, share how your take on it is unique. Entrepreneurs should remind themselves, I am an entrepreneur. I have a story to tell.

Related: 13 Leadership Lessons from Chegg President and CEO Dan Rosensweig

7. You need to know the goal. But dont stop there

Chestnut takes this concept a step further, asking himself, What are the habits I need to achieve my goals? What do I need to change to get there? He then forgets about his goals and chooses to focus on the change of habits, knowing the goals follow. You need the sun, you love the sun, but if you stare at it, it will burn your eyes out," he says. "I hire people to watch the goals now, and my job is to think of the next level because I am the role model. How do I change to achieve this goal? I need to behave this way, the culture of the company has to behave this way.

8. Look for leaders that can adapt to any scenario.

Chestnut has a strategy to help him assess whether a candidate is a good listener and can focus. Maybe its more of a pet peeve," he says. "But I have a fork test. He purposely takes prospective hires to lunch or dinner at a loud restaurant. If they are unable to drown out the noise and get distracted by the sound of a fork dropping, its a sign that they cant stick to a goal or focus on the person in front of them. He also shares another trick he has, which is to take on the persona of Gomer Pyle when he asks people to tell him about what they know. This shows him if they can explain the subject simply. It is a test to see if they truly understand the topic or subject matter and are humble enough to dumb it down for a simpleton. If they get defensive, thats a bad sign. If they are curious, that is a great sign.

9. Make sure the leaders on your team are brave enough to tell you when you are wrong

Hire people who are smarter and better than you, because youre not always going to be right. Not everyone will feel comfortable telling you when you are wrong. Its important to interact with and listen to your leaders in a way that is open and encouraging of honest feedback. This must be practiced, but over time your people will trust that they have the ability to tell you when you are wrong.

10. You dont need to read books on time management, just hire great leaders (and stellar executive assistants)

Running a tiny squad is very different from running a team of 100 or 1,000. Understanding organizational behavior is helpful, but you can't understand it by reading leadership books you get at the airport. Great leaders know what they are doing, and they save you the time you need. Have a great executive assistant, and get other executive assistants for your executive team as soon as possible. This helps everything grow. Chestnut confesses that he never reads growth hacks or time management books, because he believes with growing a business, everything changes every couple of months. Patterns never stick, because he's always having to prepare for change. We are on a rock hurtling through space on an ever-expanding universe," he says. "Something will change. Everything will change. Its all about adaptability and resilience.

11. Design your product or service for the life stage of the customer versus the industry

Avoid comparing your small business clients to other companies in their industries. Instead, look at the evolution of their competitors. To sell to people who are just starting their businesses, Chestnut and his team create a persona of the young entrepreneur. At the five-year mark, they noticed a trend where their customers were hiring another person handle the marketing. As a result, Chestnut's team gives these businesses another persona at this stage of their growth.

12. Dont listen to your ego; build for your customer

Let your customer always be your North Star. You will mess up a little bit every day. Something is always broken, but you keep on marching. Look at and care for your customers, not yourself.

I think about our customers and how they are becoming global," Chestnut says as he reflects on the future of Mailchimp. "They sell things that are small and shippable. Our customers are the future of commerce, and our global potential is to serve all entrepreneurs all over the world. The majority of our revenue comes outside of the US. Mailchimp is on the cusp of 1B in ARR. That is a good rite of passage that I want to celebrate.

Mailchimps mission to empower the underdog by building powerful marketing technology and democratizing it for small businesses has not only survived two decades and a pandemic, but it is thriving. Mailchimp is also giving back, providing free six-month memberships to qualified organizations that are helping with Covid-19 vaccine distribution.

It is no wonder Chestnut has been called a combination of Mr. Rogers and Bruce Wayne, even though he likens himself more to the great American author Kurt Vonnegut. In the words of Kurt Vonnegut, We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down. I look forward to hearing how Chestnut develops his wings.

To learn more about this incredible leaders journey and the lessons he learned along the way, watch the full webinar.

Related: 10 Leadership Lessons with Dallas Mavericks CEO Cynt Marshall

Copyright 2021 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
We have blogged several times before about the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and what is an autodialer under the rules and on April 1, 2021 the Supreme Court provided some clarity. As background, in 2015, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a TCPA Order that, in part, broadly defined what technology might constitute an autodialer. This is important because calls and texts made to a cell phone using an autodialer would fall within the scope of the requirement to receive either prior express consent or prior express written consent to call or text a consumer. Under this past Order, even a system with the potential to make autodialed calls seemed to potentially fall within the rules consent requirements. NAFCU members can find more background on this here.

Multiple groups challenged the FCCs 2015 Order in federal court, including NAFCU and in March 2018 a federal appeals court struck down much of the 2015 Order in the ACA International v. FCC case, including rejecting the broad interpretation of autodialer (more details in this NAFCU Compliance Blog post and NAFCU Compliance Monitor article). This left courts applying the TCPAs statutory definition of an autodialer to determine which technology may or may not be an autodialer for the purposes of the TCPA, often with different results across jurisdictions. Here is that definition for reference:

equipment which has the capacity

(A) to store or produce telephone numbers to be called, using a random or sequential number generator; and

(B) to dial such numbers.
United Airlines has announced a new policy regarding the hiring of pilots. The company states:

Over the next decade, United will train 5,000 pilots who will be guaranteed a job with United, after they complete the requirements of the Aviate program  and our plan is for half of them to be women and people of color.

What if that plan is inconsistent with selecting the best qualified candidates for guaranteed jobs? If the airline then gives up or modifies its plan, as it should, there is no problem.

But if the company rejects best-qualified white male candidates in adherence to its plan, it will be vulnerable to claims of race and/or sex discrimination. In addition, it will lower the quality of its pilot force  hardly a trivial matter considering the responsibilities of an airline pilot.

How would United defend selecting less qualified pilot trainees due to considerations of race and gender? In its statement, United alluded to financial barriers that [according to the company] limited access to the airline pilot career path for generations of women and people of color.

I dont believe this is a legal defense to an employment discrimination claim.

Its also somewhat incoherent. Lets assume that past generations of women and people of color had fewer opportunities to become pilots than white males. Granting racial preferences to an entirely different generation of women and people of color does nothing to help those who were deprived of opportunities way back when.

In fact, if United prefers female applicants to better qualified male applicants, it might inflict damage on the sons and/or grandsons of women deprived of equal opportunity years ago.

Does United contend that financial barriers still limit access to certain groups? It doesnt say this. But if it is so, this means, unfortunately, that members of these groups are probably less qualified, as a collection, to become airline pilot trainees.

United doesnt say that it has discriminated against women and people of color in filling pilot positions. Indeed, by citing financial barriers, United seems to be placing blame elsewhere.

But absent past discrimination by United, I dont believe the company can defend selecting less qualified women and racial minority candidates. And even if the company could show that it discriminated in the past on the basis of race and/or gender, it might be hard pressed to defend filling its next 5,000 pilot jobs, over a period of ten years, with 2,500 women or minority group members.

To my knowledge, when courts have approved of quota hiring as a remedy for proven past discrimination  which they rarely do  the quotas havent been nearly as drastic and longstanding as the one United contemplates.

Any highly qualified white male applicant to Uniteds pilot program who is rejected by the company during the next ten years should consider consulting a lawyer.
A murder suspect crashed into a truck, leading a pursuit from police officers on Tuesday evening. The chase began in San Diego to Los Angeles in California and lasted for about two hours, according to a Fox News report.

The suspect that was tailed by the authorities is allegedly involved in assaulting a law enforcement officer and a murder. The chase began in San Diego Area around 5:30 in the afternoon, according to an NBC Los Angeles report. The said pursuit is headed north of 215 Freeway towards Riverside County.

READ NEXT: California Crash Leaves at Least 13 Dead Near U.S.-Mexico Border

Murder Suspect and the Pursuit

The chase ended when the car of the suspect slammed into a truck as it turned left on the wrong side of the street. In the video by NBC LA, the suspect was driving recklessly, aiming to lose the authorities, but the suspect suddenly slammed into a truck that was making a wide right.

The crash with the truck happened in Ontario, at Holt Boulevard and San Antonio Avenue. At least six patrol units from the sheriff are chasing the black pickup truck, according to a KTLA report. The suspect was identified as Michael Caleb Reed, a 35-year-old parolee who is wanted for suspicion of carjacking and evasion. Reed was also accused of killing a 40-year-old in a home in Harrison Drive on March 28, 2021.

Before the semi-truck, the suspect also bumped into the surface of the street in Pomona at around 6:20 p. m. A pickup truck caused a sedan and another truck to collide. Because the suspect was unscathed, the pursuit of the pickup truck continued.

The pickup truck also went to the parking lot located in Paloma Drive and Holt Avenue, hitting another truck, then continue.

Authorities noted that the suspect was driving for about 90 mph on Highway 60 while driving on the wrong side of the road. Because of this, several cars were nearly hit. The murder suspects also drove on the sidewalk while the pickup truck was chased by the authorities.

In addition, the murder suspect was also tossing random objects or papers from the window several times during the pursuit. Moreover, few people were also dropped during the chase and will continue driving after that.

The End of the Pursuit

The pickup truck whom Reed was driving slammed with the truck just before seven in the evening.

Authorities confirmed that the airbags of the pickup truck were deployed while a passenger was discovered. The report noted that a woman passenger was seen hanging the arms and head out the window.

Authorities highlighted that Reed eventually went out of the pickup car and crawled towards the deputies. The woman passenger was also taken under custody but was later released. Meanwhile, the authorities did not further on the details of the alleged assault by the murder suspect on a law enforcement officer.

READ MORE: Five People Killed in Alaska Helicopter Crash, Including Czech Billionaire Petr Kellner

WATCH: Murder suspect leading pursuit crashes into big rig, and is surrounded by more than a dozen patrol cars - from NBC Los Angeles
 Flash

A U.S. Navy medic shot and critically injured two people at an industrial park in Frederick, the U.S. state of Maryland, on Tuesday before heading to a nearby military base, where he was killed by personnel there, authorities said.

Frederick Police Chief Jason Lando told a news briefing that police responded to a shooting incident around 8:20 a.m. ET at Riverside Tech Park, where a 38-year-old male suspect opened fire, striking two men and causing others to flee. It was not yet clear whether the shooting happened inside or outside the business.

The suspect then drove about 10 minutes to Fort Detrick, a military installation that houses most elements of the U.S. Army's biological defense program, where he was fatally shot by "personnel on the base," Lando said.

"We have two different scenes. All I can tell you is that we have confirmed there is only one shooter. The public is no longer at risk. Everyone is safe," Lando said.

The U.S. Navy confirmed on Twitter that the shooter was a Navy Hospital Corpsman, and that sailors were involved during the encounter with the shooter.

The two victims in the shooting suffered life-threatening injuries and were flown to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, police said.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said it was still too early to give further details. "We still don't have all the facts right now. Information is still coming in," he said.

Special agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) are responding to assist, the ATF's office in Baltimore said on Twitter.

Several schools in the Frederick County Public Schools (FCPS) system were "briefly placed on lockout status," the FCPS said in a tweet. "All students and staff are safe. The lockout has been lifted."

Frederick Community College (FCC) told students to follow a "lockdown alert" in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, saying later in an updated tweet that students can "return to normal operations. The incident has been contained. There is no threat on FCC campus."

The Frederick Police Department will hold another press briefing in the afternoon to give an update about the incident.
KERRVILLE, Texas, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- James Avery Artisan Jewelry, a family-owned jewelry retailer based in Texas, announces the opening of its newest store today in Westwood Village at 33020 FM 2978 Rd, Ste 531, Magnolia, Texas 77354.

"This Magnolia store is another opportunity for us to bring the Texas Hill Country to Houston," says James Avery CEO John McCullough. "We are a vertically integrated company and our jewelry is designed and crafted right here in Texas from materials sourced worldwide. It is always a privilege for us to share our designs and the James Avery shopping experience with current and new customers alike."

Putting customer and associate safety first, the Westwood Village store is following recommended COVID-19 health protocols and guidelines implemented in all James Avery stores. Hand sanitizing stations are set up in store for customers and associates and areas throughout the store are regularly cleaned and sanitized. Additionally, the company requests customers to honor social distancing guidelines and to wear face coverings when in store. James Avery associates undergo daily health screenings and wear facemasks.

Operating hours are Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday, 12 to 6 p.m. and are subject to change. Store Manager Jonna Guin and her team are ready to welcome customers to shop in the new store or use the Contactless, Curbside Pickup or Buy Online, Pickup in Store options at JamesAvery.com.

About James Avery Artisan Jewelry James Avery is a vertically integrated, family-owned company located in the heart of the Texas Hill Country. We offer finely crafted jewelry designs for men and women in sterling silver, 14K and 18K gold, bronze and gemstones. James Avery jewelry is designed and crafted by our own skilled artisans in Kerrville, Comfort and Hondo, TX using the finest materials sourced worldwide. We are a multi-channel retailer with over 100 James Avery stores in four states. Our jewelry is also available at JamesAvery.com, more than 200 Dillard's locations and Dillards.com. You can also find our designs at airport stores in Austin and Houston and at the AAFES locations in Fort Hood and Fort Belvoir. For more information, visit JamesAvery.com or facebook.com/JamesAvery.

SOURCE James Avery Artisan Jewelry

Related Links

http://JamesAvery.com


Lock-down, personal loss and suffering have not thwarted the spirits of Norwich girl Bertie Emes-Ellis who simply lives to give.

Lock-down, personal loss and suffering have not thwarted the spirits of Norwich girl Bertie Emes-Ellis who simply lives to give.

Norwich church to host praise weekend Kingdom Ambassadors International Church in Norwich are holding a Praise and Worship weekend later this month, and everyone is warmly invited to come along. Read more

Norwich St Johns Cathedral fraudster must pay back 1 A former treasurer of St John the Baptist Catholic Cathedral in Norwich, who is in jail for defrauding the cathedral of 235,000, has been ordered to pay back just 1 because he has no assets. Read more

Come and help at North Norfolk Christian centre The Pleasaunce Holiday Centre in Overstrand is holding a work-party morning on Saturday June 12 and would like as many people as possible to join in to help get the gardens ship-shape. Read more

St Francis church in Heartsease goes for growth St Francis Church in Heartsease is organising a practical Let it Grow event this weekend to celebrate World Environment Day. Read more

Giving young people a vision for world mission The missionary organisation OMF is putting on a training event for Christian youth workers and their friends. Read more

God can use old age to bring new life Anna Heydon encourages to make the most of the new opportunities which God offers us as we approach the more mature years of our lives. Read more

YMCA Norfolk Housing Engagement Worker YMCA Norfolk is seeking a Housing Engagement Worker, based in Norwich, to help provide a programme of positive activities for residents. Read more

Will does 13-hour run for north Norfolk homeless Will Aldred ran 62 miles along the Angles Way over the Bank Holiday weekend to raise money for the Saint Vincent to Paul Society (SVP) in Norfolk. Read more

Yarmouth area churches are phoning a friend Five churches in the Yarmouth area are taking part in a phone befriending scheme, but more are being urged to join, as demand for the service grows. Read more

TV film as Norfolk man changed one million lives A documentary about the amazing story of Norwich-based charity Care for Childrens dream to foster one million children in China will be premiered tomorrow night on Sky TV. Read more

Have your say on future role of Celebrate Norfolk The team behind ecumenical Christian charity Celebrate Norwich and Norfolk wants to hear your thoughts about its future role. Read more

After the Storm will be a chance to reflect After the Storm? is a series of events set to take place at St Stephens Church, Norwich, in September 2021 to give people the chance to reflect on the global Covid-19 pandemic which has enveloped us all. Read more

Quiet Waters has summer offer for keyworkers The Quiet Waters Christian retreat house in Bungay would like to give a big thank you to those who have been Essential Workers during the past year. Read more

Breakfast fellowship in Cromer for forces veterans An Armed Forces and Veterans Breakfast Club (AFVBC) has started meeting again in North Norfolk, ending the recent social isolation of veterans during pandemic restrictions. Read more

Two Recovery Workers needed by Matthew Project The Matthew Project is advertising two exciting full time opportunities as Recovery Workers, to support people in the community delivering 1:1 and group work. The roles will be centred in either Great Yarmouth or Kings Lynn and Thetford. Read more

Call to Prayer finds a new home in Heartsease The Call to Prayer ministry is moving this summer to a new base in Heartsease. Read more

YMCA opens cafe and soft play in Norwich A brand-new cafe and soft play area is set to open in Norwich on May 28 run by YMCA Norfolk in its new community hub on Aylsham Road near the city centre. Read more
IF you have absolutely no urgent or emergency need to be outdoors today, then remain at home.

Should you take a chance and decide to tempt fate, then it may most likely result in you being stopped and questioned by police officers and members of the Defence Force, or even find yourself charged and taken before a court.
One in ten have long-term effects 8 months following mild COVID-19

Eight months after mild COVID-19, one in ten people still has at least one moderate to severe symptom that is perceived as having a negative impact on their work, social or home life. The most common long-term symptoms are a loss of smell and taste and fatigue. This is according to a study published in the journal JAMA, conducted by researchers at Danderyd Hospital and Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.

Since spring 2020, researchers at Danderyd Hospital and Karolinska Institutet have conducted the so-called COMMUNITY study, with the main purpose of examining immunity after COVID-19. In the first phase of the study in spring 2020, blood samples were collected from 2,149 employees at Danderyd Hospital, of whom about 19 percent had antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. Blood samples have since then been collected every four months, and study participants have responded to questionnaires regarding long-term symptoms and their impact on the quality of life.

In the third follow-up in January 2021, the research team examined self-reported presence of long-term symptoms and their impact on work, social and home life for participants who had had mild COVID-19 at least eight months earlier. This group consisted of 323 healthcare workers (83 percent women, median age 43 years) and was compared with 1,072 healthcare workers (86 percent women, median age 47 years) who did not have COVID-19 throughout the study period.

The results show that 26 percent of those who had COVID-19 previously, compared to 9 percent in the control group, had at least one moderate to severe symptom that lasted more than two months and that 11 percent, compared to 2 percent in the control group, had a minimum of one symptom with negative impact on work, social or home life that lasted at least eight months. The most common long-term symptoms were loss of smell and taste, fatigue, and respiratory problems.

"We investigated the presence of long-term symptoms after mild COVID-19 in a relatively young and healthy group of working individuals, and we found that the predominant long-term symptoms are loss of smell and taste. Fatigue and respiratory problems are also more common among participants who have had COVID-19 but do not occur to the same extent," says Charlotte Thalin, specialist physician, Ph.D. and lead researcher for the COMMUNITY study at Danderyd Hospital and Karolinska Institutet. "However, we do not see an increased prevalence of cognitive symptoms such as brain fatigue, memory and concentration problems or physical disorders such as muscle and joint pain, heart palpitations or long-term fever."

"Despite the fact that the study participants had a mild COVID-19 infection, a relatively large proportion report long-term symptoms with an impact on quality of life. In light of this, we believe that young and healthy individuals, as well as other groups in society, should have great respect for the virus that seems to be able to significantly impair quality of life, even for a long time after the infection," says Sebastian Havervall, deputy chief physician at Danderyd Hospital and PhD student in the project at Karolinska Institutet.

The COMMUNITY study will now continue, with the next follow-up taking place in May when a large proportion of study participants are expected to be vaccinated. In addition to monitoring immunity and the occurrence of re-infection, several projects regarding post- COVID are planned.

"We will, among other things, be studying COVID-19-associated loss of smell and taste more closely, and investigate whether the immune system, including autoimmunity, plays a role in post-COVID," says Charlotte Thalin.

###

The article has been peer-reviewed and published as a Research Letter in the journal JAMA.

Facts about the COMMUNITY study:

The study is conducted in close collaboration between Danderyd Hospital (principal of the study), Karolinska Institutet, KTH, SciLifeLab, Uppsala University, and the Public Health Agency of Sweden.

The research group includes the following investigators: from Danderyd Hospital and Karolinska Institutet, specialist physician, medical doctor, and principal researcher Charlotte Thalin and deputy chief physician Sebastian Havervall (PhD student in the project); from Karolinska Institutet and the Public Health Agency of Sweden, associate professor Jonas Klingstrom; from KTH, professors Sophia Hober and Peter Nilsson; and from Uppsala University, associate professor and associate senior lecturer Sara Mangsbo and Professor Mia Phillipson.

The study is funded by the Jonas & Christina af Jochnick Foundation, Leif Lundblad with family, Region Stockholm, the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, SciLifeLab, the Erling-Persson Family Foundation, and Atlas Copco.

Publication: "Symptoms and Functional Impairment Assessed 8 Months After Mild COVID-19 Among Health Care Workers", Sebastian Havervall, Axel Rosell, Mia Phillipson, Sara M. Mangsbo, Peter Nilsson, Sophia Hober, Charlotte Thalin. JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association, online 7 April 2021, doi: 10.1001/jama.2021.5612.

This story has been published on: 2021-04-07. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
A spokesman for Mr. Trump declined to comment. In response to the story, Mr. Trump released a statement on Wednesday morning saying that he had not discussed the pardon with Mr. Gaetz.

Congressman Matt Gaetz has never asked me for a pardon, Mr. Trump said. It must also be remembered that he has totally denied the accusations against him.

Mr. Gaetz has denied having sex with a 17-year-old or paying for sex. A spokesman denied that he privately requested a pardon in connection with the continuing Justice Department inquiry.

Entry-level political operatives have conflated a pardon call from Representative Gaetz  where he called for President Trump to pardon everyone from himself, to his administration, to Joe Exotic  with these false and increasingly bizarre, partisan allegations against him, the spokesman said in a statement. Those comments have been on the record for some time, and President Trump even retweeted the congressman, who tweeted them out himself.

Though Mr. Gaetz had little formal power in the House, where he remains a backbencher, he offered Mr. Trump what he craved and what Republican congressional leaders would not always offer: fierce loyalty and a taste for bare-knuckle political combat.

In his memoir published last fall, Firebrand: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the MAGA Revolution, Mr. Gaetz recalled his first one-on-one phone call with the president in late 2017. Mr. Trump had seen Mr. Gaetz on Fox News attacking Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, and thought he had heard an ally.

I need warriors, you know what I mean? the president told him.

Mr. Gaetz knew precisely. Though he came from the more conservative Florida Panhandle, the young congressman shared Mr. Trumps taste for boasts, particularly about sexual exploits, and a knack for self-promotion. Neither was particularly impressed by the trappings of traditional power in Washington, and both were sons of powerful men. Mr. Gaetzs father, Don Gaetz, was the president of the Florida Senate and a wealthy businessman, and Mr. Trumps father a successful real estate developer in New York.
A year after the first COVID-19 shutdown, President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act  the $1.9 trillion coronavirus legislation that truly has little to do with coronavirus at all.

The third of its kind since 2020, the bill was proposed with the intention to provide COVID-19 relief and bailout states with federal funds. But in this case, the third time isnt the charm as once again, federal decision makers have turned to quick fixes that create long-term issues rather than long-term solutions.

Our recent history teaches us a federal bailout of the states threatens to further harm taxpayers, federalism and ultimately the states themselves. This third state bailout, with less than 10% going to COVID-19 relief and only 1% going to vaccine distribution, proves that this will be the case again.

Since the first discussion on federal bailout of the states began in 2020, hundreds of state lawmakers addressed the policy problems with a federal bailout. State leaders were concerned with the federal solution prescribed to help them, because a state bailout wrongly rewards those who have made poor financial decisions at the expense of prosperity states.

In 2020, state and local governments already received hundreds of billions in CARES Act funding. In many states, much of the funds remain unspent. My home state of California has a $25 billion surplus, and will now receive $42.63 billion more. Giving more only incentivizes more fiscally irresponsible decision making and will unjustifiably punish the financially responsible states.

Weve seen the consequences of federal bailout before. In 2009, state legislators voiced concerns over the strings attached to federal dollars during debate on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, acknowledging the costly consequence of accepting a bailout. Federal aid will unfortunately always come with strings attached and will more than likely only lead to increase in spending and higher state taxes.

Today, though, our national debt lingers at almost three times what it was in 2009. The stakes are too high to continue a cycle that promises quick fixes from the federal government. Quick fixes turn into long-term issues, and if we continue to dig the hole so deep we may never escape. We should instead rely on fact and experience, and learn from our history.

The only real way to make productive, responsible decisions for our states is for our states to practice fiscal discipline. It is one of the more difficult roads to take, but to bring true relief to our communities, we should look to policy solutions in the prosperity states that lead the way in fiscal responsibility. Prosperity doesnt come from luck, but from the difficult and necessary work to balance state budgets and keep spending in check.

Organizations like the American Legislative Exchange Council release annual publications, like Rich States, Poor States, ranking the states performances in policy variables that have proven to build financially resilient prosperity states. Many of the states at the top of this ranking, such as Utah and Wyoming, find themselves in the best position coming out the other side of the pandemic. Practicing fiscal responsibility in state policy solutions is proven to build state competitiveness in both times of prosperity and turmoil.

Nearly a year ago, over 200 state lawmakers and nearly 1,500 state leaders and activists signed a letter to raise policy concerns with a bailout  and Congress noticed.

The fight is not over, and voices are still needed to commit to fiscal responsibility in the states. Encourage your state lawmakers to choose solutions that build true prosperity in your state.

Lisa B. Nelson is the chief executive office of the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization bringing state legislators and stakeholders together to develop public policy beneficial to the free market and individual liberty.
HOUSTON, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Summit Midstream Partners, LP (NYSE: SMLP) (the "Partnership") announced today that it has amended its offer to exchange (the "Exchange Offer") its 9.50% Series A Fixed-to-Floating Rate Cumulative Redeemable Perpetual Preferred Units (Liquidation Preference $1,000) (the "Series A Preferred Units") tendered in the Exchange Offer for up to 2,400,000 newly issued common units representing limited partner interests in the Partnership (the "Common Units"). The Partnership has extended the expiration date of the Exchange Offer to 11:59 p.m., New York City time, on April 13, 2021 (the "Expiration Date"), unless further extended. The Partnership will issue Common Units in exchange for Series A Preferred Units that are accepted for exchange promptly after the Expiration Date. As of 11:59 p.m., New York City time, on April 6, 2021, based on preliminary information provided by American Stock Transfer & Trust Company, LLC, the depositary for the Exchange Offer (the "Depositary"), 23,912 Series A Preferred Units were properly tendered (and not validly withdrawn) in the Exchange Offer. The Exchange Offer is still conditioned on, among other things, that holders of at least 15,000 Series A Preferred Units properly tender (and do not validly withdraw) their Series A Preferred Units prior to the expiration date of the Exchange Offer. There are no other material changes to the Exchange Offer.

The complete terms and conditions of the Exchange Offer are set forth in the Offer to Exchange and related Letter of Transmittal, as amended and supplemented, that are filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") under cover of Schedule TO. Copies of the Offer to Exchange and Letter of Transmittal may be found on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov, the Partnership's website at www.summitmidstream.com or may be obtained from the Information Agent, D.F. King & Co., Inc., at 800-967-5071 (toll free) for unitholders, 212-269-5550 for banks and brokers or [email protected]. The Depositary can be contacted at 877-248-6417 (toll free) or 718-921-8317.

THIS PRESS RELEASE IS NEITHER AN OFFER TO PURCHASE NOR A SOLICITATION OF AN OFFER TO SELL ANY SERIES A PREFERRED UNITS, NOR IS IT AN OFFER TO SELL OR A SOLICITATION TO BUY ANY COMMON UNITS. THIS PRESS RELEASE IS NOT A SOLICITATION FOR ACCEPTANCE OF THE EXCHANGE OFFER. THE PARTNERSHIP IS MAKING THE EXCHANGE OFFER ONLY BY, AND PURSUANT TO THE TERMS OF THE OFFER TO EXCHANGE, THE LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL AND OTHER RELATED DOCUMENTS FILED WITH THE SEC, AS AMENDED AND SUPPLEMENTED. THE EXCHANGE OFFER IS NOT BEING MADE IN ANY JURISDICTION IN WHICH THE MAKING OR ACCEPTANCE THEREOF WOULD NOT BE IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE SECURITIES, BLUE SKY OR OTHER LAWS OF SUCH JURISDICTION. NONE OF THE PARTNERSHIP, OUR GENERAL PARTNER, ITS BOARD OF DIRECTORS, OFFICERS OR EMPLOYEES, THE INFORMATION AGENT OR THE DEPOSITARY FOR THE EXCHANGE OFFER MAKES ANY RECOMMENDATION IN CONNECTION WITH THE EXCHANGE. THIS PRESS RELEASE SHALL NOT CONSTITUTE AN OFFER, SOLICITATION OR SALE IN ANY JURISDICTION IN WHICH SUCH OFFER, SOLICITATION OR SALE IS UNLAWFUL.

About Summit Midstream Partners, LP

SMLP is a value-driven limited partnership focused on developing, owning and operating midstream energy infrastructure assets that are strategically located in unconventional resource basins, primarily shale formations, in the continental United States. SMLP provides natural gas, crude oil and produced water gathering services pursuant to primarily long-term and fee-based gathering and processing agreements with customers and counterparties in six unconventional resource basins: (i) the Appalachian Basin, which includes the Utica and Marcellus shale formations in Ohio and West Virginia; (ii) the Williston Basin, which includes the Bakken and Three Forks shale formations in North Dakota; (iii) the Denver-Julesburg Basin, which includes the Niobrara and Codell shale formations in Colorado and Wyoming; (iv) the Permian Basin, which includes the Bone Spring and Wolfcamp formations in New Mexico; (v) the Fort Worth Basin, which includes the Barnett Shale formation in Texas; and (vi) the Piceance Basin, which includes the Mesaverde formation as well as the Mancos and Niobrara shale formations in Colorado. SMLP has an equity investment in Double E Pipeline, LLC, which is developing natural gas transmission infrastructure that will provide transportation service from multiple receipt points in the Delaware Basin to various delivery points in and around the Waha Hub in Texas. SMLP also has an equity investment in Ohio Gathering, which operates extensive natural gas gathering and condensate stabilization infrastructure in the Utica Shale in Ohio. SMLP is headquartered in Houston, Texas.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes certain statements concerning expectations for the future that are forward-looking within the meaning of the federal securities laws, including, without limitation, information concerning completion of the Offer to Exchange, the terms and timing of the Offer to Exchange, and the impact of completion of the Offer to Exchange. The Partnership may modify the terms or timing of the Offer to Exchange with requisite notice. Forward-looking statements include, without limitation, any statement that may project, indicate or imply future results, events, performance or achievements and may contain the words "expect," "intend," "plan," "anticipate," "estimate," "believe," "will be," "will continue," "will likely result," and similar expressions, or future conditional verbs such as "may," "will," "should," "would," and "could." Forward-looking statements also contain known and unknown risks and uncertainties (many of which are difficult to predict and beyond management's control) that may cause SMLP's actual results in future periods to differ materially from anticipated or projected results. An extensive list of specific material risks and uncertainties affecting SMLP is contained in its 2020 Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 4, 2021, as amended and updated from time to time. Any forward-looking statements in this press release, are made as of the date of this press release and SMLP undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect new information or events.

SOURCE Summit Midstream Partners, LP

Related Links

http://www.summitmidstream.com


Flowing north of the border, raw sewage from Mexico has been an issue not only for the city of Tijuana, as it also continues to contaminate Southern California beaches.

Tijuana and the state of Baja California reportedly made some repairs to the outdated sewage infrastructure in Tijuana last year, and officials confirmed that the problem was already fixed. But after a few weeks, the sewage problem returned and is still damaging nearby areas, like San Diego.

Currently, the sewage serves as a passage for 30 to 40 million gallons of raw materials, which flows on a daily basis from Mexico to the Tijuana River Valley, then go out to the ocean on the north side of the border, affecting beaches in Southern California.

According to Border Report, Imperial Beach Council City Council member Paloma Aguirre said officials made repairs "here and there" and make a big claim that they have fixed the issue.

However, Aguirre noted that the city of Tijuana has not been able to keep up since approximately over two million people use the sewage system built in the 1940s.

Aguirre added that the raw sewage problem has already been translated into a public health crisis and has been going on for the last 30 years.

The coastline in the north of the border, which stretches into Imperial Beach, is now closed due to the high levels of bacteria found in the water. The pollution also made its way straight into the ocean, WIVB reported.

Warning signs have been posted around the area to caution individuals to stay out of the water. The pollution damaging the waters of the Southern California beaches came from fecal matter that flows through the raw sewage, which originated from the south of the border.

Aguirre noted that people exposed to these pollutants have gotten sick, and it is alarming. Aguirre said that even she has gotten sick and "gone to urgent care" because of the exposure to these pollutants.

Aguirre further noted that everyone in the city council has also gotten sick, adding that the pollution affects the community's overall quality of life.

READ NEXT: Mexico President Contradicts His Decision to Get COVID Vaccine Following Advice From His Doctors

Financial Help

Just a few weeks ago, the Senate and the House of Representatives approved the Border Water Quality Restoration and Protection Act and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency.

The agency will oversee the cleanup efforts that will be done along the Tijuana River Valley and take charge in organizing development initiated by federal, state, and local agencies to reduce the pollution on the border, KUSI News reported.

The agency's goal is to minimize the effects of sewage spills. Congress has given the agency $300 million to decrease the environmental threats of raw sewage. The said project's funding will come from the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement signed just last year.

READ MORE: Biden Admin May Have To Restart Border Wall Construction To Fill Holes

WATCH: Reimagining Transboundary Water - From SDSU
MINNEAPOLIS  Two Minneapolis police officers with experience in crisis intervention and use of force spoke about proper procedures Tuesday in the seventh day of testimony in Derek Chauvins murder trial, with one of them saying the now-fired officers knee on George Floyds neck was not part of department training.

Tuesdays proceedings wrapped up with a Los Angeles police sergeant and use of force expert retained by the prosecution saying that he saw on officer body camera video that Floyd stopped resisting arrest on May 25 that should have led Chauvin and the other officers to ease up on their restraint.

Initially, when Mr. Floyd was being placed in the back seat of the vehicle, the officers were justified in trying to have him comply and sit in the back seat of the vehicle, Sgt. Jody Stiger said. However, once he was placed in the prone position on the ground, he slowly ceased his resistance and the officers -- or ex-officers, I should say should have slowed down or stopped their force.

At the days start, Sgt. Ker Yang, who serves as the Minneapolis Police Departments crisis intervention training coordinator, and Lt. Johnny Mercil, who oversees the MPDs use of force training, became the seventh and eighth current or former Minneapolis police officers to testify. That included Chief Medaria Arradondo.

Yang testified that in his job he coordinates with civilian mental health professionals to train officers who encounter people in crisis situations, such as mental health issues. Although Yang was never directly asked about Chauvins actions, he discussed the best practices in dealing with people in crisis, or a situation beyond a persons coping mechanism. What it is beyond their control, they dont know what to do. That could also include people under the influence of drugs and alcohol or suffering from anxiety.

Yang said he trains officers to bring them back down.

When it is safe and feasible, we shall de-escalate, Yang said, adding that the model for crisis intervention focuses on voice, neutrality, respect and trust. It is useful, and it is practical.

He was followed by Mercil, who explained to the jury when two specific neck restraints are allowed on a subject: one that renders a suspect unconscious to counter active aggression or one that does keeps someone conscious while offering the lesser active resistance.

He testified about red zones, where injury tends to range from serious to long lasting and could include serious bodily injury or death. Areas included the head, neck and sternum, among others.

Mercil was shown a photo from the viral bystander video of Floyd under Chauvins knee and then asked whether that tactic is part of department training that Chauvin and all other officers have received.

No, sir, the lieutenant said. At the same time, he acknowledged that department policy does not explicitly forbid such an act, but he added that this position should stop once a suspect is handcuffed and under control, as Floyd was that night.

During cross-examination, defense attorney Eric Nelson offered for the first time a series of photographs from Officer Thomas Lanes body camera. Mercil agreed they show Chauvins knee and shin on Floyds shoulder area. The images offer four moments within a five-minute span.

After viewing those photos, Nelson asked Mercil, Does this appear to be a neck restraint? Mercil responded with no.

Nelson also raised questions of a general nature about whether suspects Mercil has ever arrested at times are making excuses, say they are suffering a medical emergency or declare I cant breathe to avoid going to jail. The lieutenant said hes had those experiences.

While pinned on the pavement, Floyd was asked by police during his arrest how he could talk while at the same time being unable to breathe, a question that appeared to raise the question among the officers about Floyd being deceptive.

The afternoon started with testimony from Nicole Mackenzie, the departments medical support coordinator and first aid educator of officers.

Gwen Carr, mother of Eric Garner, joins attorney Ben Crump and representatives of the Floyd family at the Hennepin County Government Center Tuesday, April 6, 2021, in Minneapolis where testimony continues in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. (Mark Vancleave/Minneapolis Star Tribune/TNS)TNS

Mackenzie helped the prosecution make two points: that cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) can be started while waiting for paramedics to arrive and that talking contradicts someones contention that they cant breathe.

Prosecutor Steve Schleicher asked Mackenzie whether officers are trained to go ahead with CPR before an ambulance arrives. She said yes. Floyd did not receive medical attention while under arrest until two paramedics arrived.

In the context of talking during an I cant breathe plea, Mackenzie said, There is a possibility somebody could be in respiratory distress and still be able to verbalize it. Just because theyre speaking doesnt mean theyre breathing adequately.

Mackenzie acknowledged under questioning from Nelson that police officers should ensure that a scene is safe before rendering aid. This is a theme the defense attorney has visited numerous times since his opening statement at the start of last week.

Nelson also asked whether agonal breathing  or involuntary gasps sometimes made by people under cardiac arrest  could be confused as regular breathing. She confirmed that as well.

Mackenzie also acknowledged that chaotic scenes contribute to a first responders ability to provide aid.

If youre trying to be heads down on a patient that you need to render aid to, its very difficult to focus on that patient while theres other things around you, she said, if you dont feel safe around you, if you dont have enough resources, its very difficult to focus on the one thing in front of you.

Nelson asked: Does it make it more likely that you may miss signs that a patient is experiencing something?

Yes, Mackenzie replied.

The distraction can harm the potential care of the patient? Nelson inquired.

Yes, Mackenzie said.

Schleicher came back and asked whether a crowd of agitated onlookers excuses a police officer from rendering aid.

Only if they were physically getting themselves involved, Mackenzie said. At the scene of the arrest, some bystanders grew increasingly loud in their pleadings with the officers and sometimes used profanity, but never physically threatened Chauvin or the other officers on Floyds body, according to any of the witnesses or video evidence presented so far.

Before the days testimony began, attorneys made their arguments Tuesday about whether a witness to Floyds arrest should be compelled to testify.

Morries L. Hall was with Floyd on that night late last spring, when Floyd was apprehended by police outside a corner store in south Minneapolis and pinned on the pavement under an officers knee until he died.

Hall has said he would invoke his Fifth Amendment constitutional right against self-incrimination and not testify as ordered in the fired police officers trial in Hennepin County District Court.

Judge Peter Cahill listened on Tuesday to points raised by Halls attorney, Adrienne Cousins, and from the defense and prosecution before putting off any ruling on the issue until at least late in the week.

In Tuesdays hearing out of the view of the jury, Hall appeared via video hookup and explained through his attorney that he would be exposed to a potential third-degree murder charge and other possible felony counts should he be forced to answer questions in Chauvins trial.

Cousins said her client has been provided no immunity, no protection for his testimony whatsoever. I cannot envision any topics Mr. Hall would be called to testify on that would be relevant to the case that would not incriminate him.

Hall is listed by both the defense and the prosecution as a possible witness as they present their respective cases.

Nelson disclosed the areas of questions he has for Hall. They include inquiries about: what Floyd and Hall were doing together that day, Hall possibly passing Floyd a counterfeit bill in the Cup Foods store, providing Floyd with drugs and other questions about illicit drug use.

Going for the ignition when police arrived ... taking something out of his backpack and throwing it, giving false names to police and his decision to leave Minnesota for Texas immediately after Floyds death, Nelson continued.

Testimony last week from Floyds girlfriend revealed her belief that Hall provided drugs to Floyd earlier in the month of his death.

Cahill agreed that all those topics would expose Hall to self-incrimination while testifying. The judge said he did see that Hall could talk about being in the SUV with Floyd and share his observations, but his attorney and prosecutor Matthew Frank disagreed.

Former New York Gov. David Paterson joins representatives of the Floyd family at the Hennepin County Government Center Tuesday, April 6, 2021, in Minneapolis where testimony continues in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Chauvin is charged with murder in the death of George Floyd during an arrest last May in Minneapolis. (Mark Vancleave/Minneapolis Star Tribune/TNS)TNS

Again, Cousins said, that too could be incriminating her client.

Frank concurred with Cousins, saying that limiting the line of questioning creates a huge problem in that Hall would be invoking his Fifth Amendment right in front of the jury when asked follow-up questions.

It wont exist in a vacuum, there will be other questioning and we will have the right to question him about his credibility and other aspects of that interaction that would lead, unfortunately and potentially, to him invoking question by question in front of the jury.

Ultimately, Cahill directed Nelson to put in writing the questions he would ask Hall and bring those back by Thursday for further discussion.

Chauvin is charged with second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the killing of Floyd. Three other fired officers who assisted in Floyds 2020 arrest  J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao  are scheduled to be tried in August on charges of aiding and abetting murder and manslaughter.



Paul Walsh of the Star Tribune wrote this story.

(Star Tribune staff writers Rochelle Olson and Chao Xiong contributed to this report.)

2021 StarTribune. Visit at startribune.com.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
AMHERST Mass. - The long-awaited first results from the Muon g-2 experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory show fundamental particles called muons behaving in a way that is not predicted by scientists' best theory, the Standard Model of particle physics. This landmark result, made with unprecedented precision and to which UMass Amherst's David Kawall's research group made key contributions, confirms a discrepancy that has been gnawing at researchers for decades.

"Today is an extraordinary day, long awaited not only by us but by the whole international physics community," said Graziano Venanzoni, co-spokesperson of the Muon g-2 experiment and physicist at the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics. "A large amount of credit goes to our young researchers who, with their talent, ideas and enthusiasm, have allowed us to achieve this incredible result."

"It's fantastically interesting to work on," says Kawall, a professor in UMass's physics department. "Everything matters. Every little detail matters, and all future theories of physics will have to be compatible with this result."

A muon is about 200 times as massive as its cousin, the electron. Muons occur naturally when cosmic rays strike Earth's atmosphere, and particle accelerators at Fermilab can produce them in large numbers. Like electrons, muons act as if they have a tiny internal magnet. In a strong magnetic field, the direction of the muon's magnet precesses, or wobbles, are much like the axis of a spinning top or gyroscope. The strength of the internal magnet determines the rate that the muon precesses in an external magnetic field and is described by a number that physicists call the g-factor. This number can be calculated with ultra-high precision.

Kawall's group, which included postdocs David Flay and Jimin George, graduate student David Kessler, and undergrad Alysea Kim, worked on measuring the strength of the magnetic field through which the muons passed, as well as preparing the magnet itself, a feat requiring almost unimaginable precision. "One of the innovations we were responsible for," says Kawall, "was developing a system involving 8,000 sheets of laser-cut iron foil to make the magnetic field as homogenous as possible. With our system, we were able to achieve results nearly three times better than the previous experiment." The team also spent years developing special calibration probes of incredible fidelity, accurate down to 15 parts per billion.

As the muons circulate in the Muon g-2 magnet, they also interact with a quantum foam of subatomic particles popping in and out of existence. Interactions with these short-lived particles affect the value of the g-factor, causing the muons' precession to speed up or slow down very slightly. The Standard Model predicts this so-called anomalous magnetic moment extremely precisely. But if the quantum foam contains additional forces or particles not accounted for by the Standard Model, that would tweak the muon g-factor further.

"This quantity we measure reflects the interactions of the muon with everything else in the universe. But when the theorists calculate the same quantity, using all of the known forces and particles in the Standard Model, we don't get the same answer," said Renee Fatemi, a physicist at the University of Kentucky and the simulations manager for the Muon g-2 experiment. "This is strong evidence that the muon is sensitive to something that is not in our best theory."

With more than 200 scientists from 35 institutions in seven countries, the Muon g-2 collaboration has now finished analyzing the motion of more than 8 billion muons from that first run.

"So far we have analyzed less than 6% of the data that the experiment will eventually collect. Although these first results are telling us that there is an intriguing difference with the Standard Model, we will learn much more in the next couple of years," says Fermilab scientist Chris Polly.

"Pinning down the subtle behavior of muons is a remarkable achievement that will guide the search for physics beyond the Standard Model for years to come," said Fermilab Deputy Director of Research Joe Lykken. "This is an exciting time for particle physics research, and Fermilab is at the forefront."

###

More images of the Muon g-2 experiment are available here.

A fact sheet is available here.

Contacts:

Tracy Marc,

media@fnal.gov

David Kawall,

kawall@physics.umass.edu

Daegan Miller,

drmiller@umass.edu
London: Former foreign minister Alexander Downer has criticised the strict border policies denying Australian citizens entry to their own country as in breach of their human rights.

And Australias longest-serving foreign minister, who also served as the countrys top diplomat in London for four years, said it was a bloody outrage that ordinary citizens had to pay around $10,000 to return to the country through a combination of excessive flight fares and the $3000 quarantine fee. He called for quarantine costs to be scrapped.

Alexander Downer. Credit:Eamon Gallagher

Mr Downer said taxpayers should be paying for quarantine because the government had imposed the requirement, with huge support of the public, in pursuit of Australias zero-tolerance approach to coronavirus.

International flights into Victoria resumed on Thursday after being halted for almost two months following quarantine outbreaks.
PHOENIX, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Advisor Group, the nation's largest network of independent wealth management firms, today announced the successful recruitment to its network of Charles Stephen, an Albuquerque, N.M.-based firm led by Partners Adam Ciepiela and Kelly Famiglietta that has four financial professionals and oversees $583 million in total client assets.

Charles Stephen joins Advisor Group through its subsidiary and network member firm SagePoint Financial and one of SagePoint's top-producing Super-OSJ groups, Santa Barbara, Calif.-based AmeriFlex Financial Services. Advisor Group also includes FSC Securities, Royal Alliance Associates, Securities America, Triad Advisors and Woodbury Financial Services.

In addition to Mr. Ciepiela and Ms. Famiglietta, the practice includes financial professionals Steve Ciepiela, who co-founded the firm in 1983, and Jonathan Stoner, who joined Charles Stephen in 2018. The practice specializes in multigenerational financial planning, retirement planning, portfolio management, business succession planning, education planning and tax planning, among other services.

Desiree Sii, President and CEO of SagePoint Financial, said, "More than ever, financial professionals look to leverage the resources, scale and expertise of well-run, well-resourced wealth management firms to support their businesses. The experts at SagePoint and Advisor Group are ready to work with the financial professionals of Charles Stephen to help them reach their business goals."

Adam Ciepiela said, "In this competitive landscape, we knew the right path forward for our firm and clients was to partner with AmeriFlex, SagePoint and Advisor Group. At each level, we have found enthusiastic experts ready to help us grow our business and serve our clients to the best of our ability."

Ms. Famiglietta continued, "Joining SagePoint and working with AmeriFlex provides our firm access to best-in-class shared resources, business services and technology while streamlining our regulatory compliance programs, enabling our financial professionals to focus on our clients' needs."

Greg Cornick, Advisor Group's President, Advice & Wealth Management, said, "On behalf of the entire Advisor Group network of firms, we welcome the exceptional professionals at Charles Stephen. The success they have had to this point is a credit to their hard work and focus on offering their clients an amazing service experience. Bringing aboard a group as strong as this is a credit to the ability of Desiree Sii and her team to tell our story to the market of prospective recruits. Moving forward, both SagePoint and Advisor Group will be, as always, in Charles Stephen's corner as they grow their business to the next level."

About SagePoint Financial

SagePoint Financial, Inc. is part of one of the nation's largest independent broker-dealer organizations and a Registered Investment Advisor, member FINRA and SIPC. SagePoint is supported by Advisor Group, one of the largest truly independent broker-dealer networks in the industry. The firm has approximately 1,400 advisors across the U.S. For more information, please visit www.sagepointfinancial.com.

About Advisor Group

Advisor Group, Inc. is the nation's largest network of independent wealth management firms, serving approximately 11,100 financial professionals and overseeing over $450 billion in client assets. The firm is mission-driven to support the strategic role that advisors can play in the lives of their clients. Cultivating a spirit of entrepreneurship and independence, Advisor Group champions the enduring value of financial professionals and is committed to being in their corner every step of the way. For more information visit https://www.advisorgroup.com.

Securities and investment advisory services are offered through the firms: FSC Securities Corporation, Royal Alliance Associates, Inc., SagePoint Financial, Inc., Triad Advisors, LLC, and Woodbury Financial Services, Inc., broker-dealers, registered investment advisers, and members of FINRA and SIPC. Securities are offered through Securities America, Inc., a broker-dealer and member of FINRA and SIPC. Advisory services are offered through Arbor Point Advisors, LLC, Ladenburg Thalmann Asset Management, Inc., Securities America Advisors, Inc., and Triad Hybrid Solutions, LLC, registered investment advisers. Advisory programs offered by FSC Securities Corporation, Royal Alliance Associates, Inc., SagePoint Financial, Inc., and Woodbury Financial Services, Inc., are sponsored by VISION2020 Wealth Management Corp., an affiliated registered investment adviser. Advisor Group, Inc. is an affiliate of these firms. 20 E. Thomas Rd., Ste. 2000, Phoenix, AZ, 85012. 866.481.0379.

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The U.S. Navy employee from New Jersey charged with participating in the U.S. Capitol attack in January has requested the judge in his case reconsider his ruling to keep him jailed pending trial.

Timothy Hale-Cusanelli hopes a decision in another Capitol case will help his bid for freedom, according to a filing from his lawyer, Jonathan Zucker.

Hale-Cusanelli, 31, of Colts Neck, was working as a security officer at Naval Weapons Station Earle, also in Colts Neck, when he was arrested in January, shortly after the Jan. 6 attack. Hes since been banned from the base in Monmouth County.

Federal authorities say he is a white supremacist Nazi sympathizer who has worn his mustache like Hitler and, in seeking to keep him jailed pending trial, a danger to the community.

Federal Judge Trevor N. McFadden in Washington, D.C., ruled last month to keep him in custody, a decision he said was a close call.

Hale-Cusanelli has been indicted on seven crimes, ranging from civil disorder to disruptive behavior at the Capitol, but his lawyer has argued many times that his client is not accused of any physical violence on Jan. 6, and wore not combat gear, but a suit and tie.

After Hale-Cusanellis detention hearing, two other Capitol suspects, mother and son Lisa Eisenhart and Eric Munchel, of Tennessee, were released to home detention after two months behind bars following a successful argument to a federal appeals panel.

Munchel was known as the zip-tie guy after a photograph of him climbing through the U.S. Senate chamber went viral.

Eric Munchel, aka "Zip-tie guy," was granted bond Monday and will be allowed to return home after being held for more than two months. (Win McNamee/Getty Images/TNS)TNS

In their successful appeal, judges drew a distinction between Capitol suspects accused of simply being present, who may have cheered on the violence or entered the Capitol after others cleared the way, and suspects who actually assaulted police officers and broke through windows, doors, and barricades, the decision says.

If the government wants to hold suspects not accused of violence, they have to demonstrate a specific reason why they remain a threat, the appeals judges said. The decision did not release the mother and son, but after the appeal decision, federal prosecutors relented in their quest to keep them jailed and the judge on their case released them.

Zucker writes in his motion that his client solidly falls into the first group, who are not accused of physical violence. He also directly compares Hale-Cusanelli to Eisenhart and Munchel, who are also not accused of physical violence, but that Zucker writes were more involved in the assault. They wore tactical gear, discussed leaving their weapons outside, and Munchel said he wanted to take a gavel from the Capitol, Zucker argues.

Given the courts stated recognition that this was a very close call on bond and the newly enunciated considerations from the Munchel decision, it is necessary for the court to reconsider its bond decision for appropriate evaluation of the Munchel factors, Zucker argues.

Federal prosecutors have until April 16 to respond to Zuckers motion. Hes previously argued that Hale-Cusanelli would agree to monitoring conditions if released back to New Jersey, where he has a support system of loved ones.

Hale-Cusanelli is also a member of the U.S. Army Reserves, which is reviewing the allegations against him for possible administrative action, the Army has said.

Federal prosecutors included these pictures of Timothy Hale-Cusanelli in court papers opposing his release from custody pending trial. The Colts Neck man has been indicted on seven crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

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Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com.
Police officers in Baringo County are holding one of their colleagues after he allegedly killed a civilian in Baringo North following a quarrel over Sh450.

Administration Police (AP) officer Victor Ruto, 32, reportedly attacked a bar owner, Reuben Cherotich, 43, at Kipsaraman trading centre after he demanded payment of a Sh450 bill.

The officer attached to Bartabwa AP camp is said to have pulled out a knife from his pocket and stabbed Cherotich in the neck.

Confirming the incident, Baringo County Police Commander Robinson Ndiwa said the bar owner succumbed to injuries while being rushed to hospital.

They picked a brief quarrel and fought before the officer pulled out a knife, stabbing him on the neck. The suspect has been arrested and he shall be arraigned in court as soon as possible to answer to murder charges, said the police boss.

The officer is said to have been in the company of other people drinking alcohol past the restricted 10 pm curfew hour.

Meanwhile, Rift Valley Regional Commander George Natembeya on Tuesday restored the 6 pm to 6 am curfew in Baringo North citing a brazen disregard for the law and spike in crime and insecurity in the region.
Superannuation laws due to take effect in less than 90 days are a $3trillion concern for the superannuation industry and consumer advocates.

Martin Fahy, chief executive of the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia, wants the introduction of the laws delayed until July 2022.

He also wants the proposed performance test watered down into a two-year 'trial run'.

Superannuation laws due to take effect in less than 90 days are a $3trillion concern for the superannuation industry and consumer advocates (stock image)

Super Consumers Australia director Xavier O'Halloran agrees the proposed bill needs work but warns delay will hurt consumers.

'For too long trustees have been left alone in the dark with our money,' Mr O'Halloran told a parliamentary inquiry on Wednesday.

'Australia's superannuation system must move to a model which does more to ensure all people have a single, high-performing superannuation fund.'

Under the new laws, underperforming funds will be cut off from new members and required by the prudential regulator to shape up or exit the market.

But the proposed performance test covers investment performance and not costly administration fees.

This approach will turn up the heat on underperforming fund managers, but does little to target inefficiently administered funds, Super Consumers Australia said.

Multiple accounts are also a target for lawmakers as savings can get lost and workers can be assigned to a default fund that might turn out to be a dud.

The new laws should create a 'best in show' model where people get the information needed to select a fund when they enter the workforce, Mr O'Halloran said.

There are 850,000 unintended multiple accounts created each year, and holding multiple accounts can reduce a typical worker's balance by $51,000.

Underperforming products can reduce a typical member's balance by more than $500,000 by the time they retire.

But Dr Fahy said the July 1 start date will place an 'enormous burden' on employers to manage the changes, including the transition to one default account for workers.

He said the bill should not be passed until the draft regulations that detail how it will work are available.

Scott Donald, director of the Centre for Law, Markets and Regulation at the University of NSW, is also concerned about the lack of detail and loose wording for 'ministerial discretion'.

He said investment managers won't be able to determine what will fall foul of the new laws.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 21:50:38|Editor: huaxia

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VIENNA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Wang Qun, Chinese envoy to the United Nations and other international organizations in Vienna, on Tuesday gave an interview to major Chinese and foreign media on the U.S. and Iran's return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) implementation.

Q1: What is the focus of the Joint Commission meeting of the JCPOA? Any concrete results? How long will it last? When would the U.S. and Iran agree to return to full JCPOA implementation?

Wang: The current Joint Commission Meeting was convened at a critical moment, and all parties agreed to vigorously implement the foreign ministers' consensus reached at their meeting last December and to help get the U.S. and Iran back to full and effective implementation of the JCPOA at an early date.

The current meeting has launched two processes -- the nuclear implementation and sanction-lifting working groups' work, and the "proximity talks" with the United States. The two working groups have already started their work straight away.

It is the hope of China that all parties will sustain such momentum in a bid to reach an early consensus on getting the U.S. and Iran back to full and effective implementation of the JCPOA, and bring the JCPOA onto the normal track as soon as possible.

Q2: Recently, all parties have had intensive interaction on the U.S. and Iran's return to the implementation of the JCPOA. Has China done its part?

Wang: The JCPOA is an important achievement of multilateralism reached through arduous efforts. China has, by proceeding from the overall interests of safeguarding multilateralism and the authority of the United Nations Security Council, always been playing an active and important role in upholding the JCPOA, and has worked hard to help bring the JCPOA back to its full and effective implementation.

First, China has, to this end, provided robust political support. As you may recall, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi put forward a four-point proposition on the political and diplomatic settlement of the Iranian nuclear issue at the foreign ministers' meeting last December, in a bid to advance political and diplomatic solution.

Second, China has participated in successive Joint Commission meetings and contributed to its work. China has worked hard to help cement the consensus of all parties to safeguard the JCPOA and facilitate the launching of the negotiating process of a formula to get the U.S. and Iran to fully and effectively implement the JCPOA.

Third, China has worked hard on major parties through bilateral channels to forge consensus. Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu, has recently had several telephone conversations with Robert Mally, the U.S. president's special envoy for Iran.

In those telephone conversations, Ma urged the U.S., as the party responsible for its unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA, to show its sincerity by taking earnest and earliest action, such as the lifting of unlawful unilateral sanctions against Iran and the abolition of its long-arm jurisdictional measures, including those on China.

In the meantime, China has also worked on Iran through various channels, urging it together with U.S. to get back to the implementation of the JCPOA at an early date.

In addition, in light of certain countries' pushes at the UN Security Council for a presidential statement on the Iranian nuclear issue, and their pushes for an anti-Iran resolution in the meeting of the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency last month, China has vehemently registered its explicit oppositions, and has thus helped to do away with the disruption of efforts to have the U.S. and Iran return to the JCPOA implementation.

In addition, China has also proposed to establish a multilateral dialogue platform among the Gulf countries, so as to address the concerns of all countries through equal consultations and forge new consensus, and through new channels on maintaining regional peace and stability.

In a nutshell, China has done its utmost to push the JCPOA back to normal track. We have done our part, and we will, of course, continue to make unremitting efforts to this end.

Q3: Iran has insisted that the United States lift all sanctions before its return to the JCPOA. How does China look at this issue?

Wang: This is a question involving the fundamental principle of rights and wrongs. As a victim, Iran's legitimate requirement should, in the first place, be affirmed and catered for.

The current status of the Iranian issue is undoubtedly attributable to the U.S. pullout of the JCPOA, and its maximum pressure policy towards Iran. And Iran has subsequently been compelled to reduce its commitments to implementing the JCPOA as a countermeasure.

We in China have a saying that "the one who ties the knot should be the one to undo it."

In order to break the current impasse, it is imperative that the U.S. return to the JCPOA at an early date by lifting all unlawful and unilateral sanctions.

It's a correct choice for the new U.S. administration to decide to return to the JCPOA. We commend such an effort.

However, the U.S. should, if it is serious, lift all its unlawful sanctions against Iran. In the meantime, it should abolish all its long-arm jurisdiction measures against entities and individuals in third countries including China.

This is exactly how it should be for the U.S. for returning to the JCPOA, and it's also a legitimate requirement. In parallel, Iran should, on this basis, get back to its full implementation of the JCPOA accordingly.

Q4: The United States has always called for negotiations to resolve regional security issues involving Iran. Some European countries have also expressed the sentiment to negotiate an upgraded version of the JCPOA. What's China's view on this?

Wang: The most urgent work is to get the U.S. and Iran back to full and effective implementation of the JCPOA at an early date. This is preciously the focus and subject matter dealt with at the Joint Commission meeting.

As for the role of the JCPOA, it is desirable to look at it from a historic perspective. The original intention of its negotiation is to address the Iranian nuclear issue rather than all regional security issues.

This is a fact of life concerning the Middle East's regional security dilemma. And it is clear and known to all JCPOA participants and the U.S.

As for the relevant concern on regional security, it's imperative that it be separated and dealt with at a different platform vis-a-vis the JCPOA.

China has proposed that, under the premise of safeguarding the JCPOA, a multilateral dialogue platform in the Gulf region should be established to discuss current security issues in the region, so as to address the concerns of various countries through equal consultations, and forge new consensus on maintaining regional peace and stability. China is open on how the initiative be put into practice.

Q5: The Iranian side openly refused to have any direct or indirect talks with the U.S. at any levels. And the U.S. State Department spokesperson also said that the U.S. did not anticipate to have direct dialogues with Iran anytime soon. How, do you think, to achieve indirect contact between the U.S. and Iran?

Wang: To launch "proximity talks" is one of the results registered at the Joint Commission meeting. This is the result of hard efforts made by China as well as all other JCPOA participants in recent months, though with the caveat that specific modalities of such talks will be further worked out.

We appreciate and will continue to support the European Union, as the Joint Commission meeting's coordinator, to play its positive role in the communication between the U.S. and Iran. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 04:38:56|Editor: huaxia

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KHARTOUM, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Sudan on Tuesday blamed the lack of progress during the new round of talks over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on "Ethiopian obstinacy."

"A round of talks over the GERD was concluded today (Tuesday) in the Congolese capital of Kinshasa without any progress because of the Ethiopian obstinacy," said Sudan's negotiating team in a statement.

"Ethiopia has persistently rejected all alternative options and compromises proposed by Sudan to give a role to the international partners, represented in the United Nations, the African Union, the European Union and the United States to facilitate the talks and mediate among the three parties (Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia)," it added.

The statement said that Ethiopia also insisted on continuing the negotiations with the same old approach.

Sudan's negotiating team further highlighted the danger of Ethiopia's unilateral measures, particularly after its first filling of the dam last July.

"This Ethiopian obstinacy obliges Sudan to consider all possible options to protect its security and citizens in accordance with the international law," the statement said.

The Democratic Republic of Congo, the current chair of the African Union, hosted the latest round of talks over the GERD with the participation of Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia.

Sudan proposed a mediation quartet of the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and the African Union regarding the GERD issue.

Ethiopia, however, has announced its rejection to this formula.

Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia have been in talks for years over the technical and legal issues related to the filling and operation of the GERD.

Ethiopia, which started building the GERD in 2011, expects to produce more than 6,000 megawatts of electricity from the dam project, while Egypt and Sudan, downstream Nile Basin countries that rely on the river for its freshwater, are concerned that the dam might affect their share of the water resources. Enditem
Vicki Clerke (pictured) defrauded her employer of $3.7 million and lost it on poker machines - forcing her boss to keep running the business and become one of Australia's oldest FIFO workers

An elderly industrial chemist has been forced to become one of Australia oldest FIFO workers after his personal assistant stole millions of dollars from his business.

Tasmanian Greg Zeuschner, 75, was trying to sell his aerosol paint company UltraColor in September 2018 when his personal assistant Vicki Clerke confessed to stealing 'hundreds of thousands' of dollars and losing it on poker machines.

Clerke, 64, was jailed for four-and-a-half years in February after it emerged she had actually defrauded his business of $3.7 million.

Mr Zeuschner has so far only recouped $235,000 from Clerke's bankruptcy proceedings because the clubs where she gambled away the money refused to return the stolen funds.

The 75-year-old planned to use the sale of his business to retire to his hobby farm near Launceston but the deal was put on hold while Clerke was on trial.

Clerke, 64, (right) was sentenced to four-and-a-half years behind bars in February for defrauding her employer

Having failed to get back most of the money he lost, Mr Zeuschner is still running UltraColor and flying to Sydney from Tasmania every week to supervise the business' production.

'It was devastating. Like a lot of small businesses we were paying our employees more than we paid ourselves,' he told the ABC.

'[Vicki] had been treated like a family friend. She had actually stayed with us, here in Tasmania, just as a guest.'

Greg Zeuschner, 75, (pictured) has so far only recouped $235,000 from Clerke's bankruptcy proceedings

He recalled how Clerke called him to admit to the fraud on the morning of his meeting with the potential buyers - fearing they would find out about the theft when they looked into the company's finances.

'I asked the question, "well, how much?"' Mr Zeuschner said.

'That's when she said "well, hundreds of thousands" and that she'd put it through the poker machines. It turned out later to be around $3.7 million.'

The two clubs named in court where Clerke lost the money were Windsor RSL north west of Sydney and St Marys Leagues Clubs in the city's west.

She hid her fraud by creating dummy invoices.

Her high levels of spending meant she was treated as a VIP at the St Marys club and had her own personal attendant and complimentary drinks menu in the pokies room.

The court heard she lived a modest lifestyle, putting all the stolen funds and her winnings back into the poker machines.

Clerke was treated as a VIP at the St Marys club and had her own personal attendant (stock image)

Despite the business owner claiming he should be repaid the stolen money by the leagues clubs, St Marys Leagues chief executive Rod Desborough said his organisation had no obligation to do so.

Under the Proceeds of Crime Act, businesses are only expected to repay money they knew to be stolen - which was not the case in Clerke's fraud.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted St Marys Leagues and Windsor RSL for further comment.
She's the queen of owning it as a fan favorite on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

And Lisa Rinna was finally ready to address her 19-year-old daughter Amelia's relationship with Scott Disick, 37, as she joked about their shared love of bucket hats on Instagram.

The 57-year-old soap star turned reality television icon was clearly in the mood to chat with her fanbase as she shared a few her daughter's stan accounts celebrating Amelia and Scott's flourishing romance, and Rinna and Disick's similar wardrobe choices.

Make em laugh: Lisa Rinna was finally ready to address her 19-year-old daughter Amelia's relationship with Scott Disick, 37, as she joked about their shared love of bucket hats on Instagram

Earlier in the week, Lisa posed alongside her husband of 24-years, Harry Hamlin, Amelia, and 22-year-old daughter Delilah.

The Days of Our Lives actress looked incredible wearing a black swimsuit with a matching bucket hat shielding her eyes from the bright sun as the family enjoyed a Spring Break holiday in Miami.

While sharing a few photos of her family on her stories, Lisa seemingly addressed Scott when writing: 'Welp we both seem to share a love of bucket hats.'

Loved up: The pair held hands and combed the beach in South Florida earlier in the week

Blessed: While sharing a few photos of her family on her stories, Lisa seemingly addressed Scott when writing: 'Welp we both seem to share a love of bucket hats.'

The Days of Our Lives actress looked incredible wearing a black swimsuit with a matching bucket hat shielding her eyes from the bright sun as the family enjoyed a Spring Break holiday in Miami

Scott kept his newly-bleached blonde buzz cut covered up in a black bucket hat as he walked alongside his model girlfriend on Monday.

Hamlin rocked a bubblegum pink bikini with a white skirt wrapped around her waist as the couple walked on the beach.

Amelia and Scott first sparked relationship rumors last year while attending Kendall Jenner's Halloween birthday party in West Hollywood, and have since enjoyed the life of leisure together.

All in the family: She previously dated Mercer Wiederhorn, and Scott's past relationship with Kourtney Kardashian is still a storyline on Keeping Up With The Kardashians as he co-parents his three children with the reality star; seen on Instagram

She previously dated Mercer Wiederhorn, and Scott's past relationship with Kourtney Kardashian is still a storyline on Keeping Up With The Kardashians as he co-parents his three children with the reality star.

The former couple have Mason, 11, Penelope, eight, and Reign, six, together and dated for nearly 10 years before calling it quits on their relationship in 2015.

Hamlin, who found fame starring on RHOBH before taking her talents to the modeling world, has called Disick her 'dream man' on Instagram.
Singapore , April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CGCX.io will allow traders in India to directly buy and sell crypto assets from a dedicated trading desk as individuals or as an institution. A fully insured OTC desk will make the buying and selling of crypto easier and reduce traders risk of loss. In March of 2020, the Supreme Court of India nullified the RBI (Reserve Bank of India) ban on cryptos, marking a monumental step for the firm, allowing it to venture into India.

Entering India is part of the companys growth strategy as it expands to global markets. India, which is home to more than a billion people, has massive potential for crypto adoption. Not only will CGCX.io provide cryptocurrency trading services, but it will also demonstrate the application of blockchain technology to various startups that seek to benefit from it. The company is also partnering with several blockchain funds to extend its services to institutions and institutional investors. A successful launch will ensure that CGCX.io services are implemented to uplift various ecosystems in the country. The Indian Market is expected to benefit from CGCXs retail and institutional services.

CGCX.io ventures into the Indian market with an additional benefit; it serves as a fully insured custody solution for institutions, which means it can hold large quantities of crypto assets in its independent storage. Cryptocurrency custody solutions are becoming increasingly important to safeguard crypto assets. Theyre slowly replacing online wallets which have proven to be susceptible to hacks, and private offline keys which could be lost or stolen. Institutional investors face more significant risk than individual investors when it comes to safeguarding access to their tokens, hence requiring a crypto custody solution.

The companys objective remains to secure tokens in wallets trading on their exchange and protect these tokens from cyber-attacks and hacks through their highly sophisticated insured hybrid cryptocurrency trading platform. Plans are also underway to facilitate real estate tokenization. Users of CGCX.io services will be able to trade fiat currency for cryptocurrency and purchase a home or property using crypto.

About CGCX.io

CGCX.io launched its services in 2017, offering the first-ever insured hybrid-crypto exchange on a multi-service platform. In an astonishingly short time, CGCX.io has successfully expanded its reach into other industries, including Investment Banking and Real Estate, with plans to get listed on US regulated exchanges in the near future.

To learn more about CGCX.io, visit www.cgcx.io

For the original news story, please visit https://www.prdistribution.com/news/crypto-exchange-cgcx-io-enters-india-to-set-up-the-first-insured-otc-desk-and-digital-asset-custody-for-cryptocurrencies.html



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A political strategy deployed effectively by Republicans in Floridas national and state elections has trickled into the Coral Gables mayoral race: connecting your opponent to socialist dictatorships.

Early this week, after mayoral candidate Patricia Keons campaign says her digital ads inadvertently ended up on a state-supported Venezuelan news site, opponent Vince Lago went on the offensive, accusing Keon of steering campaign funds to the propaganda arm of Venezuela strongman Nicolas Maduro.

A text message blast and bilingual Facebook advertisement sent out Monday and Tuesday from the Coral Gables First political committee show Keons face on a red background with big black and white letters that say Pat Keon paid money to the propaganda arm of the regime of Nicolas Maduro.

They also show a screenshot of a Keon banner ad appearing above a story on the news site Telesur, a Latin American network founded in 2005 by Hugo Chavez with the aim of being a Latin socialist answer to CNN, according to a Boston Globe article that reported on its launch.

The political committee supporting me felt it was important to share with the community where Pat Keon has been placing advertisements due to the lack of sensitivity and understanding it shows toward our many friends and neighbors who have suffered at the hands of these regimes, said Lago, whose own family fled Fidel Castros Cuba before he was born.

Keon, Lagos main competition in a race that also features Jackson Rip Holmes, said the attack is pure insanity and the effort of a desperate person.

Her campaign says it didnt pay for advertising on the news site. In fact, the campaign says it does not purchase advertising directly from any website, and instead targets voters using Google display ads.

Mayoral candidate Vince Lago circulated a screenshot of a banner ad promoting one of his opponents, Patricia Keon, on the news site Telesur, a Latin American network sponsored primarily by the Venezuelan government.

We have very limited control as to where these ads appear, given that billions of websites host Googles display ads, consultant Michael Worley wrote in an email.

The socialist line was employed by President Donald Trumps reelection campaign, and likely contributed to Miami-Dade Countys dramatic swing toward the right in the 2020 election. In Congressional races and other downballot campaigns, too, the GOP leaned into the message to reach Miamis large immigrant and refugee populations from countries like Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela, where the leftist regimes of Maduro and Chavez had serious political and economical implications on their lives.

Story continues

According to county election data, 48.1% of Coral Gables voters are Hispanic. About 43% of the Hispanic voters in Coral Gables are registered Republicans. Though the Coral Gables race is nonpartisan, Lago is a Republican and Keon is a Democrat.

With early voting beginning Saturday, the back-and-forth reflects a further departure by the candidates over the final days of the campaign from traditional City Hall issues like development and taxes in favor of identity politics.

Worley, who is in charge of Keons digital ad buys, wrote that Lagos attack is a baseless, desperate attempt to distract from a Miami Herald story last week that revealed Lago was among dozens of parents who signed a letter that denounced a Miami Catholic schools effort to address racism. Lago lost an endorsement and faced new attacks from Keons campaign after the story was published.

Stan Adkins, a consultant who is working on Keons campaign said the attack resembles Miami-style gutter politics that are straight out of the South Florida Republican playbook.

When all else fails  call your opponent a socialist, he said.

Lago punched back at Keons campaign Tuesday, saying they tried to smear him a a racist. On a Community Newspapers Facebook Live video, he said he will not stand for anyone calling him or his family racist because of the letter he signed to the school.

This is completely and utterly politically motivated, he said.
DUBAI: Ten officials have been indicted in Iran over the 2020 military shootdown of a Ukrainian passenger plane that killed 176 people, an Iran prosecutor said Tuesday. The announcement coming just as Tehran begins indirect negotiations with the West over its collapsed nuclear deal with world powers.

Tehran military prosecutor Gholamabbas Torki avoided naming those responsible when he announced the indictments Tuesday while handing over his office to Nasser Seraj. The semiofficial ISNA news agency and the Iranian judiciary's Mizan news agency both reported his remarks.

Last month, Iran's Civil Aviation Organization (CAO) published its final report on the Ukrainian passenger plane's crash, identifying a "mistake" by the air defense operator as the cause of the incident.

"The plane was identified as a hostile target by the operator of an air defense system stationed around Tehran, and two missiles were fired at it," the CAO said in the preface of its 285-page report.

The Ukrainian aircraft, a Boeing 737-800, was shot down on January 8, 2020 shortly after taking off from Tehran by Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps with two missiles, killing all 176 people on board.

European Union ready to work on concrete agenda with Turkey

Suez Canal Authority says, traffic slows in Suez Canal as oil tanker faces engine trouble

Bangladesh Blast: 20 injured at the residence of a municipal Mayor.
Moody's Analytics today announced that it has integrated the Grid database of adverse news, sanctions, and politically exposed persons (PEPs) into Bureau van Dijk's Compliance Catalyst platform.

Grid is the flagship database of Regulatory DataCorp, which Moody's acquired in 2020. Integrating Grid into the Compliance Catalyst solution-which is powered by our Orbis entity database of 400 million private and public companies-creates a single platform for customers to derive the right risk-relevant information to support their screening and due diligence programs.

Combining the entity and ownership data in Orbis with Grid's adverse news and curated risk data (currently around 13 million risk profiles and 3 billion articles) delivers more accurate name matching and reduces the number of false positives when screening individuals and entities.

"We are focused on helping our customers understand who they are doing business with, from many perspectives, and identify potential risk exposure," said Keith Berry, General Manager at Moody's Analytics. "Bringing these data resources together lets customers screen and monitor both individuals and entities more efficiently and with greater precision. This is the latest step in the integration of our KYC capabilities to offer customers smarter, and more holistic, screening tools."

Know Your Customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) regulations continue to tighten. Regulations such as the Sixth Anti-Money Laundering Directive and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations present new challenges for compliance teams. Grid's combination of data and categorization mean that Compliance Catalyst users can now filter that content by risk type, risk stage, and risk age, based on relevance and their own risk profiles.

Moody's Analytics KYC and compliance solutions combine expertise, data, and technology from across Moody's Analytics including from acquisitions Bureau van Dijk, Regulatory DataCorp (now operating under Bureau van Dijk), and Acquire Media.

About Moody's Analytics

Moody's Analytics provides financial intelligence and analytical tools to help business leaders make better, faster decisions. Our deep risk expertise, expansive information resources, and innovative application of technology help our clients confidently navigate an evolving marketplace. We are known for our industry-leading and award-winning solutions, made up of research, data, software, and professional services, assembled to deliver a seamless customer experience. We create confidence in thousands of organizations worldwide, with our commitment to excellence, open mindset approach, and focus on meeting customer needs. For more information about Moody's Analytics, visit our website or connect with us on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Moody's Analytics, Inc. is a subsidiary of Moody's Corporation (NYSE: MCO). Moody's Corporation reported revenue of $5.4 billion in 2020, employs approximately 11,400 people worldwide and maintains a presence in more than 40 countries.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005432/en/

Contacts:

TRACEY SCOTT

Moody's Analytics Communications

+44.207.772.5207

Moody's Analytics Media Relations

moodysanalytics.com

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Whos ready for more burgers?

Shake Shack, one of the worlds best-known burger brands, will open its first Oregon restaurant in Beaverton on Friday, April 16, the company announced Wednesday.

Until now, the company had kept silent about its Portland-area expansion plans. But news has trickled out. In December, the companys proposal to turn a former vitamin store across from Powells City of Books was approved by the Portlands Bureau of Development Services.

But that downtown location, with its proposed patio, bicycle parking and outdoor ping-pong table, was not to be Oregons first. As first reported by The Oregonian/OregonLive.com, construction was already underway at the Cedar Hills Crossing shopping complex in Beaverton, with sources saying the company was targeting an April opening date.

Shake Shack isnt the only burger behemoth scouting out Portland locations. Californias In-N-Out chain is working on at least two metro-area locations, one along the Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway, the other near the Bridgeport Village mall in Tualatin. But dont expect those to open anytime soon.

At this stage, we are in the development entitlement phase so its still too early to say when, or even if, we will be able to open restaurants there, In-N-Out Vice President of Real Estate and Development Carl Arena wrote in a statement to The Oregonian/OregonLive.com. Once we do begin construction on a new location, it usually takes us 5 to 6 months to build the restaurant and open for business.

Shake Shack first opened in New York City in 2004, building its reputation on classic roadside American fare including burgers, hot dogs, fries and frozen custards, only with higher quality ingredients and plenty of local touches. The chain can be found in around 30 states, as well as other countries including Mexico and Kuwait.

A few questions remain:

Will Portlanders line up for Shake Shack the same way Seattleites did when the chain first opened in the Pacific Northwest in 2018?

Update: According to a company spokesperson, Shake Shack has suspended their localized menu offerings during the pandemic. When Shake Shack enters a new market, it typically adds a new menu item specific to the region. Given that Shake Shack founder Danny Meyers Union Square Hospitality Group and Affiliates is a major investor in Portlands homegrown ice cream company Salt & Straw, could a sea salt and caramel ribbons milkshake be in the offing?According to a company spokesperson, Shake Shack has suspended their localized menu offerings during the pandemic.

And given that Shake Shack employs a modern smash technique, aka Portlands new favorite burger style , how will Shake Shacks burgers compare to Portland-area smash superstars such as Burger Stevens, Rough Draft or Mid City? (Not to mention the nearby Killer Burger and Five Guys chains?)

Well find out next week.

-- Michael Russell, mrussell@oregonian.com, @tdmrussell
New Delhi, April 7 : Adar Poonawalla's Serum Institute of India (SII) has been served a legal notice by AstraZeneca over delays in supplying the Covid vaccine.

Poonawalla has mentioned that the existing production capacity to manufacture Covishield in India is under pressure due to increased demand in India.

Poonawalla has also mentioned as per reports that the Indian government's pause on major Covishield shipments to other countries and the 'first claim' deal with India were difficult to explain abroad, where the vaccine was sold at a higher cost per dose.

In March, AstraZeneca had announced supply to 142 countries underway as part of the unprecedented effort to bring broad and equitable access to the vaccine.

AstraZeneca with its partner Serum Institute of India will be the biggest initial supplier to COVAX, the pharma company had announced.

The first of many millions of doses of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine have begun arriving in low and middle-income countries across the world through the multilateral COVAX initiative, Astrazeneca said.

First COVAX shipments were dispatched to Ghana and Cote D'Ivoire, also countries including the Philippines, Indonesia, Fiji, Mongolia and Moldova. This supply represents the first COVID-19 vaccine for many of these countries.

AstraZeneca had said further shipments will arrive in the coming weeks with the aim of supplying a total of 142 countries with hundreds of millions of doses of the vaccine in the coming months.

The majority of these doses, manufactured by AstraZeneca and its licence partner Serum Institute of India, will go to low and middle-income countries.
Japan's Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi during a joint news conference with UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab (not pictured) following the eighth Japan-UK Foreign Ministers' Strategic Dialogue at Iikura Guest House in Tokyo on Feb. 8, 2020. (Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images)

Japans Foreign Minister Expresses Serious Concerns to Chinese Counterpart

Japans foreign minister Toshimitsu Motegi clashed with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in a telephone conversation on April 5 over a range of issues, ahead of Prime Minister Yoshihide Sugas visit to Washington to strengthen JapanU.S. ties on April 16.

Motegi criticized Chinas behavior in disputed waters, the human rights situation in Xinjiang, and issues in Hong Kong in a 90-minute phone discussion with Wang.

While confirming with Wang the importance of contributing to the region and the international community, Motegi expressed serious concerns about the invasion of the Senkaku Islands (also called the Tiao-yu Islands in Taiwan and the Diaoyu Islands in mainland China) by the China Coast Guard, the South China Sea, Hong Kong, and the human rights situation in Xinjiang during the longer-than-expected conversation.

On the Chinese side, however, Wang said that Hong Kong- and Xinjiang-related issues are Chinas domestic affairs, and he hoped Japan wouldnt be led by countries that stand against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Japan should not stretch its hand too far, he said.

On April 6, a cross-party group of Japanese lawmakers called for a law enabling sanctions for human rights violations at its inaugural meeting. Akihisa Nagashima, a Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker, told the meeting that serious human rights violations are occurring around the world.

The world is focusing more and more on how Japan, whose constitution emphasizes human rights, will respond, he said.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato also expressed that Japan should constantly evaluate the need for its own sanctions law, at a news briefing in Tokyo.

Currently, Japan lacks a legal framework to impose sanctions on human rights abuses.

Its rare for Japan to criticize China publicly, especially in terms of human rights. For decades, Japan has cautiously maintained its relationship with the communist regime, its top trading partner.

However, the Japanese government has been increasingly critical of the practices of the CCP in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and in disputed waters. On Feb. 1, Chinas controversial coast guard law took effect, which empowers its maritime law enforcement to open fire on foreign vessels if needed.

Jun Tsuruta, an associate professor of international law at Meiji Gakuin University, believes that the China Coast Guard poses a challenge for Japan because China hasnt provided a clear definition of its jurisdictional waters in a geographical sense, according to an April 6 article in The Japan Times.

He suspects China is making claims under its own interpretation of maritime zones beyond what the UNCLOS states and deems the China Coast Guard as a maritime law enforcement agency and a military agency as well, after examining the text of the law in detail. UNCLOS stands for the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

On April 4, Japans Ministry of Defense said the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning had, a day earlier, sailed between Okinawa and Miyakojima islands to enter the Pacific Ocean, the first time that a Chinese ship has crossed the waters since April last year.

On March 16, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin visited Tokyo for a ministerial meeting with Motegi and Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi.

At the meeting, the officials joined forces to criticize Chinas behavior, which presents various challenges to the U.S.Japan alliance and the international community.

Japan was the first destination of the visiting U.S. officials overseas travel under the Biden administration.
In an interview on Tuesday, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said the decision marked an important step, and it adds an extra arrow in our quiver. But he declined to disclose how exactly the ruling would impact his legislative strategy going forward, including passage of a massive public-works plan Mr. Biden released last week.

Well have to get together as a caucus and discuss things  as we always do  about the best place to use it, he said.

The initial guidance from Elizabeth MacDonough, the parliamentarian, seems to have given Mr. Biden and his congressional allies at least one more chance to use the reconciliation process before the fiscal year ends Sept. 30, as well as more opportunities in the next fiscal year. Ms. MacDonough told lawmakers on Monday evening that Senate rules appear to allow a revision to the budget plan they used to pass the $1.9 trillion stimulus law that would enable them to add new elements under another round of the fast-track reconciliation process, according to Mr. Schumer.

The details of the ruling have not been made public, and Mr. Schumer and top Democratic staff members will most likely have to return to Ms. MacDonough with additional questions about how to proceed.

But for now, her decision has buoyed some activists who have pressed for Mr. Biden and Democrats to be more aggressive about using their power to force through big policy changes. They are likely to intensify pressure on the White House and leading Democrats in the coming weeks to use the newfound tool.

Most immediately, Democrats believe the ruling could provide additional flexibility for winning enactment of Mr. Bidens plans for as much as $4 trillion in new economic investments  including rebuilding electric grids, fighting climate change, reducing poverty and helping millions of women work and earn more.
Android's open-source version will now support Rust which is headed towards the development of the operating systems because Google wants to lessen the bugs from the memory safety of the systems.

While Java and Kotlin are often affiliated with Android apps, the codes in the systems are written in low-level programming such as C and C++. Now, Rust takes its part to help Google to improve its OS.

Rust Enters Android to Enhance OS Capabilities

In a Google Security blog posted by the Android team on Tuesday, Apr.6, the developer for C and C++ languages holds the responsibility for memory management. Besides, they have better "control" and "predictability" when it comes to their capacities.

However, the team also noted that mistakes like ambiguous and multithreaded codebases are the most common errors when doing the system process.

Also, memory safety is secured through Rust since it merges the compile-time checks for object/lifetime ownership. Besides, it also combines the runtime checks to validate the memory accesses and therefore does the same thing that C and C++ can execute.

Presently, Rust is enabled in a sandbox if it detects that a C or C++ process deems to be running a deceitful input. However, Google stated that running in the sandbox is costly and there is no guarantee that the chain attackers would not exploit the vulnerabilities in security systems.

"Even if we redirected the efforts of every software engineer on the Android team, rewriting tens of millions of lines of code is simply not feasible," the team added.

Read Also: Another Google AI Employee Leaves Following Two High-Profile Oustings of Researchers in His Team

Android Team Tackles Replication of Memory Bugs

The team said that the old code is not the one requiring an immediate solution for improvement. Moreover, they also tackled the problem involving identifying and reproducing memory bugs that need fixing.

ZDNet reported on Wednesday, Apr. 7, that the team also noted that only a few people could run a review to fix the complex code bases of C and C++. There are also times that even if the fixes are implemented, they could come out as "incorrect."

Why Use Rust?

Rust's ability to force variable initialization is one of its advantages and the reason why developers adopt it. Such constraints could avoid up to 5% of vulnerabilities exposed in Android security systems.

The team also stated that when tools receive an update, developers should be trained as well to test them. The arrival of Rust as Android Open Source Project support has started in the past 18 months.

Mozilla also adopted Rust earlier this 2021. The server has targeted it to construct Firefox's Servo browser engine. It will also be a big help for the replacement of 160,00 C++ lines in exchange for Rust's 85,000 lines.

The company has been looking forward to what Rust can do since it stated that it was "fulfilling" to use. Mozilla continued that it would launch the new projects using Rust over the previous interventions done in C and C++ languages.

Related Article: 11 Zero-Day Vulnerabilities Recorded - Android, iOS, and Windows Devices Are Infected



This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Joen Coronel

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
To make all content across the Science family of journals more integrated, discoverable, and visually compelling for the reader, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world's largest general scientific society and publisher of the Science family of journals, will move its full suite of online content to Atypon's online publishing platform, Literatum, in the summer of 2021.

The move comprises all of Science's content, including the archives dating back to 1880, the research and commentary in Science Translational Medicine, Science Signaling, Science Immunology, Science Robotics, and the open-access journal Science Advances, as well as News from Science, Science Careers, blog, video, podcast, and Custom Publishing content.

A top-to-bottom redesign delivers a clearer navigational structure, allowing users to browse and discover content more easily, with enhanced visibility for references and figures in research articles. Added to this is a greater ability for personalization through bookmarking and saved searches, as well as an improved responsive design to ensure a seamless user experience on any device.

The new site will make Science's popular News, Careers, podcast, and video content more discoverable and interconnected, further aiding AAAS's efforts to advance and broadly communicate science. It will also better identify related research and commentary to the reader, including as it spans the six Science family journals across distinct scientific disciplines. The broader dissemination of science to researchers outside a field is part of the strategic mission of AAAS.

Posts on the Editor's Blog -- which comments on content in the Science family journals and ideas in the scientific enterprise more broadly -- will be more prominent, as will posts from the Visuals Blog reflecting the vision behind the Science design, graphics, photography, and multimedia teams, who continue to lead the industry through award-winning design.

For authors who publish in the Science family of journals, the platform change will mean increased internal efficiency and flexibility that will help journal editors and production teams meet the needs of the research community more rapidly.

For updates on what the platform change may mean for you, please visit the following page:

http://www. sciencemag. org/ about/ new-science-website

###

About the American Association for the Advancement of Science

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world's largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science, as well as Science Translational Medicine; Science Signaling; a digital, open-access journal, Science Advances; Science Immunology; and Science Robotics. AAAS was founded in 1848 and includes more than 260 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world. The nonprofit AAAS is open to all and fulfills its mission to "advance science and serve society" through initiatives in science policy, international programs, science education, public engagement and more.

About Atypon

Atypon develops publishing technologies for getting mission-critical content into the hands of the practitioners and researchers who need it most. Atypon's online publishing and website development tools let publishers manage, deliver, and monetize all of the content they distribute--from standards and scholarly articles to video and online courses. Atypon's tools for researchers let them easily author, discover, and access the content they need. Founded in 1996, Atypon is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, with over 470 staff in 9 offices around the world, and is owned by Wiley.
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BEIRUT  Jordans King Abdullah II addressed the unprecedented public rift within the royal family for the first time Wednesday, portraying it as an attempted sedition involving his half-brother that had been nipped in the bud, but caused him anger, pain and shock.

The monarch appeared to be doubling down on the allegations against Prince Hamzah, a former crown prince, while at the same time trying to reassure Jordanians that the nation was returning to business as usual. But even if the current crisis is eventually defused, major challenges loom for the Western-allied monarchy as it confronts growing internal dissent.

Wednesdays statement, presented by a newsreader on Jordan TV, dealt with the internal crisis that erupted over the weekend when Hamzah was confined to his home and accused of being part of a plot to destabilize the kingdom.

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Hamzah has denied the allegations, saying he was simply calling out long-running corruption and mismanagement in the kingdom.

The king said Wednesday that he was hurt by the recent events.

The challenge over the past few days was not the most difficult or dangerous to the stability of our nation, but to me, it was the most painful, he said. Sedition came from within and without our one house, and nothing compares to my shock, pain, and anger as a brother and as the head of the Hashemite family, and as a leader of this proud people.

Abdullah also suggested that there was continued control over Hamzahs movements. The prince, who has not been seen or heard from in days, was with his family at his palace, under my care, the statement said.

There was no sign that authorities have released up to 18 other detainees, including members of one of the powerful tribes on which the monarchy has historically relied.

Authorities have imposed a sweeping gag order on any coverage of the royal dispute in a sign of how sensitive they are to how it is perceived. The gag order and the kings willingness to sanction his own brother also reaffirmed what Jordanians understand as their red line  an absolute ban on criticizing the monarch or the royal family.

Bessma Momani, a professor of international relations at Ontarios Waterloo University, said the crisis strengthened Hamzahs popularity, making critics of the government and new followers rally behind him.

She said the kings doubling-down on vague plot allegations could also create problems in the future. Prosecuting those detained, including members of a powerful tribe, could stir protests. If they are let go, more questions could arise about whether there was ever a plot.

Even before the palace drama, Jordan was grappling with an economic crisis exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, with one in four people out of work. Longstanding complaints about corruption and misrule have fueled scattered protests in recent months.

At the same time, the regions strategic landscape is shifting as powerful Gulf states pursue closer ties with Israel, potentially undermining Jordans role in the Middle East peace process.

The White House, in a statement issued Wednesday, said President Joe Biden had spoken with Abdullah to express strong U.S. support for Jordan and underscore the importance of the kings leadership to the United States, the region and the peace process.

Asked by reporters if he was concerned about the situation in Jordan, Biden said: No, Im not. I just called to tell him that he has a friend in America. Stay strong.

The crisis in the royal family erupted Saturday when Jordans military chief of staff visited Hamzah and warned him to stop attending meetings with critics of the government. Things quickly escalated, with Hamzah accusing the security establishment of threatening him and ordering the general to leave his home.

Authorities placed the former crown prince under a form of house arrest and detained up to 18 people, including former senior officials. On Sunday, the government said Hamzah and others were involved in a malicious plot against the kingdoms security with foreign support.

Abdullah and Hamzah are both sons of King Hussein, who ruled Jordan for nearly a half-century before his death in 1999. Abdullah had appointed Hamzah as crown prince upon his succession but stripped him of the title in 2004.

The government imposed the gag order on coverage of the dispute after an audio recording of the meeting between Hamzah and the chief of staff, Gen. Yousef Huneiti, raised questions about its allegations of a foreign conspiracy. Neither mentioned any such plot in the recording, which was recorded surreptitiously and circulated online.

Family members of those who were arrested in connection with the alleged plot, meanwhile, said theyve had no communication with authorities or the detainees.

Those arrested include Yasser al-Majali, Hamzahs chief of staff, and Samir al-Majali, both prominent members of the Majali tribe.

We dont know where he is, said Yasser al-Majalis brother, Abdullah. He said they have been unable to reach any officials and have not been informed of any charges.

If there is anything against them, take them to court for a fair trial, he said. We dont want any trouble. We care about stability and we want our people to be released.

The Majali tribe issued an angry statement immediately after the arrests, calling it a black day in which the tribes dignity had been insulted.

The tribe denied the men had plotted against Jordan and warned against involving them in any internal or family dispute. On Wednesday, video surfaced of the tribesmen holding a small rally demanding the release of their relatives and chanting: Where is Hamzah?

Jordan has a large Palestinian population, including more than 2 million refugees from past wars with Israel and their descendants. The monarchy has granted most of them full citizenship but has historically viewed them with suspicion. Its main base of support is powerful tribes from east of the Jordan River, who dominate the security forces.

For decades, the monarchy has cultivated close ties with the U.S. and other Western nations, which it has used to press for the creation of a Palestinian state including the West Bank and east Jerusalem, which Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 war.

That strategy has hit a wall in recent years as the peace process has ground to a halt. Israel and Jordan made peace in 1994 and maintain close security ties, but relations have soured amid a series of recent diplomatic spats.

At the same time, Gulf countries have been cultivating closer ties with Israel over their shared antipathy toward Iran, relations made public last year when the United Arab Emirates agreed to normalize relations with Israel in a U.S.-brokered deal. Saudi Arabia has at times appeared to be weighing a similar move.

___

Krauss reported from Jerusalem.
PUNE, India and NEW JERSEY CITY, N.J., April 6, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Fulcrum Digital, a leading business platform and digital engineering company, has announced two key appointments to its global leadership team. The company welcomed Munishk Gupta, Executive Vice President, Global Delivery, and Prasad Washikar, Senior Vice President, Higher Education, and Consumer Products and Services. Both of them will be based at the company's India office in Pune.

Earlier this year, Fulcrum Digital advanced to a Pods structure. Pods are independent strategic business units of the company's core industry verticals - Financial services, Insurance, Food services, Higher education, Consumer products and services, and e-commerce. This shift is a part of the company's Vision 2022 - of achieving an equal revenue mix between business platform and digital engineering. The leadership expansion aims to drive the next phase of growth within this Pods structure and create significant value for clients globally.

Munishk Gupta will lead the global delivery function. He will be responsible for the overall growth and profitability of the company. Prior to joining Fulcrum Digital, Munishk was based out of Paris for over 20 years and held many senior management and leadership roles. These include executive committee and board position roles at organizations such as ESCP, Stallergenes Greer, and the International Chamber of Commerce. He holds an Engineering degree in Computer Science from SDMCET, Dharwad, a Master's degree from Ecole Polytechnique France and Po Paris, and an executive MBA from ESCP Business School.

Prasad Washikar is returning to Fulcrum Digital with over 24 years of extensive experience in IT, sales, customer relationship management, delivery operations, and complex transformation programs. He has previously held key leadership positions with organizations like Fujitsu Consulting, Tata Consultancy Services, and Capgemini. At Fulcrum, Prasad will focus on taking the higher education, and consumer products and services Pod engagements to greater heights. He holds an Engineering degree from Govt. Engineering College, University of Pune, and a Master's degree in Software Engineering from BITS, Pilani.

Speaking about the new appointments, Dhana Kumarasamy, CEO, Fulcrum Digital, said, "We are excited to have Munishk and Prasad join the Fulcrum Digital family. They have extensive experience in digital transformation, technology, customer delivery, and business strategy. I am confident that their deep industry insights and leadership will further enable us to empower our clients. The leadership expansion is aligned to our growth strategy and vision of a 50/50 product-service mix by 2022."

Munishk Gupta, Executive Vice President, Fulcrum Digital, said, "With the current global focus on digital transformation, the opportunity to be a part of Fulcrum Digital could not have come at a better time. I look forward to strengthening the company's global footprint in the market as well as enhancing its global delivery."

Commenting on his re-joining the company, Prasad Washikar, Senior Vice President, Fulcrum Digital, said, "This is an exciting time for Fulcrum Digital as it gains market edge with its unique proposition of business platform capabilities combined with digital engineering and domain expertise. I look forward to working with the incredibly talented team to create value for our customers."

About Fulcrum Digital:

Fulcrum Digital is a leading business platform and digital engineering company. We partner with global companies from diverse industries, including banking and financial services, insurance, higher education, consumer products and services, food services, and e-commerce. With expertise in digital transformation, machine learning, and emerging technologies, we offer a consulting-led, integrated suite of enterprise-grade software products, services, and solutions.



Founded in 1999, Fulcrum Digital has over 1200 employees, empowering more than 100 global clients from its facilities in the US, LATAM, Europe, and India. Our baked-in agility, technology prowess, innovation culture enables us to deliver business value to clients  rapid digital acceleration, faster products to the market, reduced cost of ownership, and scale businesses beyond geographies. As an expeditious company, we continuously adapt and mature our practice, striving to become the leading digital transformation authority in the global marketplace.



For more details, visit us at www.fulcrumdigital.com





SOURCE Fulcrum Digital
A Co. Antrim pervert who detailed in diaries his sexual exploits with a teenage girl half his age was handed a three-year sentence today.

Ordering Andrew McRoberts to spend 18 months in jail and the same under supervised licence conditions, Judge Patrick Lynch QC told the 32-year-old he had known all along that what he was doing was wrong and that it had to be kept secret.

He knew the risks and ultimately, he has come to pay for those risks, said the Craigavon Crown Court judge.

At an earlier hearing McRoberts, from the Lower Ballinderry Road, Ballinderry, had entered guilty pleas to a total of eight sex offences, all committed on various dates between 4 April 2018 and 30 July 2019, including six of sexual activity with a child, sexual communication with a child and possessing an indecent image of a child.

The court heard how the offences came to light in August 2019 when the victims parents were told by family friends of their suspicions regarding McRoberts and their daughter who was just 15-years-old at the time.

Her parents examined her mobile phone while she slept and uncovered extremely sexual messages on it from someone called Andrew, who transpired to be the defendant, and also that they had been exchanging sexually explicit images of each other.

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Whatsapp PACEMAKER PRESS BELFAST Andrew McRoberts at Craigavon Court on Wednesday.

When police raided McRoberts home the following day, officers seized sex toys, BDSM restraints and three used contraceptives which when forensically tested, still had the DNA of the schoolgirl on them.

While McRoberts was arrested and taken into police custody for questioning, his teenage victim underwent an Achieving Best Evidence video interview with specially trained child abuse detectives where outlined how she met McRoberts at a vintage tractor rally and after a week of exchanging messages, he had said that he liked her, even though she was only 14 at the time.

That was the start of their sexual relationship which continued for about 16 months and according to the teenage victim, they had sex on 20-30 occasions.

Prosecuting counsel Ian Tannahill outlined how the teenager spoke throughout the interview as being in a relationship, a boyfriend and girlfriend relationship, adding that in reality, we know of course that it was a series of criminal acts by this man.

The teenage schoolgirl told police she sent pictures of her private parts to him...of her own freewill and that he would send her sexually explicit images of himself as well.

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According to the diaries and her police interview the pair first had sex on 9 July 2018 when the victim was 14-years-old, adding that McRoberts had detailed dates and times when they met and the activity that went on, even when the schoolgirl had her first sip of Buckfast.

The diaries are distasteful and course, he told the court, submitting that we make the proposition that what you see there is a diary of how a child is groomed and then more serious offending over the course of that year, by the defendant, and used by him in an ascending list of events and activities.

Defence counsel Peter Coiley conceded that throughout the offending, McRoberts knew what he was doing was wrong, that his crimes are deplorable....and despite knowing that he continued the relationship.

He said McRoberts had asked him specifically to tell the victim and her family: I am deeply sorry that this has happened. If I could wind back time I would never have become involved and can only apologise for my actions.

Jailing McRoberts today, the judge said despite defence submissions the victim was not corrupted by the defendants actions, I cannot accept that.

She is a victim and one cannot say there is no corruption - there was a series of sexual activities and some very explicit activities between them, said Judge Lynch.

He told McRoberts that while he would get credit for pleading guilty, he had little option but to plead guilty as he was convicted out of his own mouth given his written diary entries which would have been strong corroborative evidence had he decided to take the case to trial.

Those pleas, along with McRoberts clear record were mitigating factors but aggravating factors included the age disparity and the fact that there is no indication that he would have stopped had the offences not been discovered.

In addition to the jail sentence, McRoberts was ordered to sign the police sex offenders register for the rest of his life and also handed a seven year Sexual Offences Prevention Order.
Britain said on Wednesday that it would offer alternatives to the AstraZeneca vaccine for adults under 30 as European regulators described a possible link with rare blood clots, a setback for the worlds most widely used vaccine and a blow to the more than 100 countries relying on it to save lives amid a global surge in coronavirus cases.

The European regulator, the European Medicines Agency, stopped short of advising that use of the vaccine be curbed in the 27 European Union countries, saying that it was up to the national authorities to decide who should receive which vaccine.

Until the announcement, Britain had never wavered in its use of the vaccine, making it a holdout in Europe even as many countries detected unusual, sometimes fatal, blood clots in some recipients. But evidence has mounted that very small numbers of Britons had also been afflicted, forcing the country to reduce the use in younger people of a vaccine that is the backbone of its world-beating inoculation program.

The concern over the blood clots has threatened the pace of vaccinations far beyond Europe. At least 111 countries of varying income levels have administered doses of AstraZenecas shot, making it international aid groups most potent weapon in the battle to reduce deaths in vaccine-starved countries.
RAL NAT CON Unlike the 2020 virtual convention, which was a success, people are extra excited about coming to a live event, said RAL Academy Chief Operating Officer Isabelle Guarino. Now we have a 3rd keynote speaker and a major industry announcement.

Once a year, RAL NAT CON hosts its largest residential assisted living event. Investors, vendors, assisted living homeowners, operators and other industry influencers assemble to advance the industry. Leaders set new trends, discuss innovative technologies for quality senior living, and outline past advancements and future projections.

Live In-person Event Setting New Trends For Senior Living

Unlike the 2020 virtual convention, which was a success, people are extra excited about coming to a live event, said RAL Academy Chief Operating Officer Isabelle Guarino. Now we have a 3rd keynote speaker and a major industry announcement. In addition to Alzheimers and dementia expert Teepa Snow and New York Times bestselling author Gary Chapman, event planners have added Brent Kesler to the keynote speakers lineup. Kesler implemented The Money Multiplier (TMM) method of managing and growing wealth. His strategy enabled him to pay off almost $1 million in debt within 39 months. For the past seven years, the licensed chiropractor travels nationwide, lecturing thousands of entrepreneurs about his powerful TMM method of taking control of your financial life. Break the bonds of economic slavery with Brent Kesler.

High-impact Opportunity For Real Estate Entrepreneurs

The event is power-packed with lots of fun, cocktail parties, cigars under the stars, raffles & prizes, and an annual awards gala. Register now while seats are available to mix and mingle with other movers and shakers. The event is also an opportunity for assisted living entrepreneurs to network with industry leaders executing at the highest business level. Learn from renowned keynote speakers and over 30 industry experts during a 3-day high-energy experience. Visit http://www.RALNATCON.com to learn more and register before the life-changing event sellout.

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Ive come to learn that in this village volunteerism is one of the things that benefits each and every one of us, Meyer said. Ive learned a lot and I would like to deploy that almost decades worth of experience and take it to the next level in helping this community.
The killers of Limerick man Jason Corbett, Molly and Tom Martens, may apply for bail today, while they consider a plea bargain offer of manslaughter, or face a full retrial on second-degree murder charges.

According to Mr Corbetts sister, Tracey Corbett Lynch, a bail hearing for the pair has been set aside for 2pm today,(7pm Irish time) at Davidson County Courthouse.

Ms Martens, aged 37, and her father Tom, 71, were convicted in 2017 of Mr Corbetts 2015 murder, however their convictions were quashed last month and a retrial ordered after they successfully argued they did not get a fair trial.

The pair have already served four years of each of their 20-25 year sentences.

Mr Corbett, 39, was beaten to death as he slept in his North Carolina home, which he shared with his second wife Molly Martens, and his two children, Jack and Sarah, from his previous marriage to his late wife Margaret Fitzpatrick, who passed away years previously after suffering an asthma attack in 2006.

Molly Martens and Tom Martens, a former FBI officer, beat Mr Corbett to death with a metal baseball bat and a concrete paving brick, their trial heard.

However, they claimed they acted in self defence after Mr Corbett tried to choke Ms Martens.

Despite this defence, the trial heard that when police and paramedics arrived at the house they found no visible marks on the father and daughter.

The Martens have been transferred from separate high-security prisons, where they were serving their murder sentences, to Davidson County jailhouse.

Almost 8,000 signatures have been added to a petition launched by the Corbett family which seeks a Retrial for Molly and Tom Martens and which will be sent to Davidson County DA, Garry Frank.

Mr Frank, who informed the Corbett family last week that he had offered the Martens a plea bargain deal rather than seek a retrial, due to a backlog in criminal cases, due to Covid-19, could not be reached for comment.

Ms Corbett-Lynch, who won custody of her brothers children Jack, 16, and Sarah, 14, said they were devastated at the DAs decision.

Her brother John Corbett, who works for the NHS in London, has written to the DA as well as US president Joe Biden expressing his dismay at the plea bargain offer to two cold narcissistic individuals.

My many colleagues in the UK NHS health system, are also totally dismayed how two cold-blooded murderers are being gifted leniency by the North Carolina Justice system, Mr Corbett wrote.

Two cold individuals who used weapons way beyond the reasonable amount of force necessary to kill someone (I have 21 years military service). Two individuals who did not have a scratch on them...(in their obscene self-defence plea).

"Some individuals would get five years in prison for theft. We as a family, like any family in the world who have lost a family member to a brutal cowardly murder, would want normal justice. Sadly the justice system seems, in this case, to be working for the murderers, and not for the life they have coldly taken for their own narcissistic agenda.

It is a truly sad day as all eyes are on the inequality and injustice being played out at the moment in North Carolina.
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Epoxy Curing Agents Market size demand is driven by growing applications in paint and coatings industry. Superior bonding property, higher mechanical strength and corrosion resistance are the factors which are increasing product consumption.

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Increasing demand from high performance resins obtained by mixture of polymer along with product in applications such as composites, electrical and electronics, adhesive, construction, paint and coatings industry will drive the epoxy curing agents market growth.Based on application, the coatings segment is projected to lead the epoxy curing agents market during the forecast period.The epoxy curing agents market was valued at about US$ X,XXX Mn in 2017 and is projected to expand at a CAGR of X.X% during the forecast period.

Coating was the largest application segment of the epoxy curing agents market in 2016. Epoxy curing agents are used in marine, can & coil, decorative, protective, and general industrial coatings. Epoxy curing agents are used in primers to enhance the adhesion quality of coated part in marine and other applications, especially on metal surfaces where corrosion & chemical resistance is important to protect the surfaces from damage or wear.uring agents play a vital role in determining the properties of the final cured product. The properties of amine-based curing agents include chemical and thermal resistance and weatherability. The major applications of amine-based curing agents include coatings, adhesives, composites, and electrical & electronics, among others. Polyamides resin, widely used as a curing agents for epoxy resins, is formed by the condensation reaction between dimer acid and polyamine and contains reactive primary and secondary amines in its molecules. As

polyamides have high hydrocarbon moiety in their molecules, they cure epoxy resins into highly plasticized rigid thermosetting polymers.

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Rising industrial development in China is among the factor for industry growth in the region. Increasing production capacities of existing manufacturing plants and product innovation are the strategies for capturing the industry share. Growing income and increasing number of end use product manufacturers in the countries such as South Korea, Malaysia and Indonesia will further drive the regional epoxy curing agents market size.

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Some of the prominent key players are BASF, Hexicon Inc., Evonik Industries, Incorez Ltd., Momentive specialty chemicals, Huntsman Corporation and DOW Chemical Company. Other prominent players include Gabriel Performance products, Mitsubishi Chemicals, Cardolite Corporation. Brenteg specialties Inc, Aditya Birla Chemicals and DIC corporation
Burma Series of Explosions Rock at Least Seven Locations in Myanmars Largest City

The military regime's forces arrive at the Myanmar Plaza shopping mall in Yangon's Bahan Township after an explosion on Wednesday afternoon.

A series of explosions rocked at least seven locations in Yangon, including state-owned offices, a military cantonment area and a shopping mall, on Wednesday.

Three explosions occurred in the early morning in a cantonment area near the Shwedagon Pagoda, in Yangons Dagon Township, where the families of military personnel are housed.

A witness told The Irrawaddy that the blasts came from stun grenades that had been put on a vehicle on Ziwaka Street in front of the housing unit. Although the vehicle received minor damage, no heavy damage to the surrounding area was reported.

The regimes state-run Myawaddy TV reported Wednesday evening that three stun grenades exploded in that incident, one near the housing, a second one in a garbage bin and a third one on the windshield of a parked car.

Three other explosions reportedly occurred near the Yangons Hluttaw compound in Dagon Township when three grenades were thrown, the regimes TV station reported.

Another two explosions occurred at the Sanchaung Township administration office and under the Myaynigone Flyover bridge in the township.

Some vehicles near the administration office received damage.

In addition, stun grenades were reported to have exploded at the Myanmar Plaza shopping mall in Bahan Township and near the eight miles junction in Mayangone Township. Those blasts came after an explosion occurred at the Myanmar Port Authority office at Yangons Kyauktada Township on Wednesday morning.

Those responsible for the explosions remain unknown.

On Myanmars most popular social media platform, Facebook, people voiced their suspicions about who might be behind the attacks, given the locations of some of the blasts.

Located in the vicinity of former War Office, which is still occupied by the military, and other army-related buildings, the cantonment on Ziwaka Street was believed to be impregnable.

Many people have expressed suspicions that the regime arranged the blasts as a pretext to escalate the crackdown on anti-regime protesters who have been accused by military coup leaders of destabilizing the country.

The regime claims nightly via state-run TV that riotersthe militarys euphemism for anti-regime protestersare attacking government offices, local level administration offices and police stations.

On Tuesday afternoon, a bus owned by the military regime was damaged by an explosion while it was being parked at the compound of a bus terminal owned by the regime at Yangons South Oakkalap Township.

Last week, two military-owned shopping malls in Yangon-one downtown and another in the northern part of cityburned down during curfew hours when no civilians were not allowed to be out.

Following the February coup, more than two dozen government offices, local administration offices and police stations in the country had been attacked.

Amid the daily deadly crackdowns and arrests, tens of thousands of people across Myanmar have taken to the streets to show their defiance of military regime.

As of Wednesday morning, more than 590 people have been killed by the military regime during their lethal crackdowns, shootings and raids against the anti-regime protests, bystanders, pedestrians and residents.

You may also like these stories:

Myanmar Regime Detains Medics and Elected MPs

Shan State Villagers Flee Fighting Between Rival Ethnic Armed Groups

Myanmar Junta Accused of Extra-Judicial Executions and Human Rights Abuses
(Natural News) The aggressive deplatforming of journalist and congressional candidate Laura Loomer by Big Tech entities is spreading throughout the corporate apparatus.

(Article by Shane Trejo republished from BigLeaguePolitics.com)

YouTube recently removed Loomers ability to make public posts on the Google-owned video streaming service:

Dear Laura Loomer: We havent banned you or your content, weve just moved it to the private section so no one can see it. Very truly yours,

YouTube? pic.twitter.com/HtR1KkpUCz  DR JANES DC asks HOW MUCH MORE WILL YOU TAKE? (@DrJanesDC_) April 2, 2021

While Loomer is used to being jerked around by tech monopolies, other corporations are beginning to join the trend. The financial system is starting to blacklist Loomer and other dissidents while the Republican establishment lines their pockets and looks the other way.

Big League Politics reported earlier this week on how Loomer was booted from Stripe, in similar fashion to former president Donald Trump. Even though the payment processor is discriminating against patriotic conservatives, the Republican Party is still running their WinRed platform through Revv, a Stripe partner.

Revv has now made it so that you cant have candidate accounts unless you go through WinRed. WinRed uses Stripe which banned Trump and me, Loomer wrote in a Telegram post.

The Republican Party is setting themselves up to be DEPLATFORMED. How stupid can these people at the GOP be? Apparently really stupid. Do not donate to the GOP or RNC. Only candidates, she added.

While it is certainly true that Republican leaders are stupid, they are also bought off and beholden to the corporate elite. These weak-willed operatives may believe that their years of dutiful service to their special interest masters will protect them from the Orwellian onslaught.

The top contributor for House Minority Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) throughout 2019-2020 was Comcast. Comcast made the decision to prevent Loomer from sending texts because they arbitrarily determined she was dangerous in the heat of a congressional campaign last year.

Big League Politics reported on Comcasts unprecedented measure to unperson Loomer in a move that could be seen as a form of electoral interference:

Journalist and U.S. Congressional Candidate Laura Loomer is the most banned woman on the internet  so much so, in fact, that the globalist elite are inventing new ways to censor her.

Loomer, who is running to be the Republican nominee for Floridas 21st Congressional seat, has been banished from using Comcast and Xfinity to disseminate her political messages.

In an incredible turn of events, Comcast/Xfinity just banned my campaign from sending out fundraising emails and text messages, Loomer explained in the video address to her supporters.

Comcast here in Palm Beach County is one of the only internet service providers and sometimes the only one that you have available, and, as the Republican front-runner in my Congressional race, I have now been banned, she added.

Loomer noted that Comcast considers her political messages to be dangerous content as a justification for her banning. She also noted that Comcast has a long-standing relationship with Rep. Lois Frankel, the incumbent Democrat politician who Loomer wants to unseat, going back to her days as Mayor of West Palm Beach.

GOP leaders look the other way, and allow their champions and their constituents to have their rights violated, because they are getting paid off by the perpetrators.

Read more at: BigLeaguePolitics.com and Censorship.news.
Mosel vineyards are preparing for climate change by sharing their soil with aromatic

The landscape of sloping vineyards on the banks of the River Mosel in Germany is a characteristic symbol of a region, which cannot be understood without its wine: the Mosel wine region. Tourists from all over the world, especially from the neighbouring countries of Belgium, Luxembourg, and The Netherlands visit the area in search of mountains and wine. However, the lack of new generations and the increase in temperatures and short heavy summer rainfall events caused by climate change endanger the production of wine.

In this sense, the European H2020 Diverfarming Project began in 2018 the diversification of a steep-slope, very stony (up to 70%) ecological vineyard. In the majority of the vineyards, the introduction of herbaceous species for plant cover has become widespread, with herbaceous plants in the alleys between the grapevines, but beneath them, it is combated with herbicides or mechanically. With the aim of reducing soil erosion, increasing soil fertility, and mitigating the effects of greenhouse-gas emissions, a team of researchers from the Trier University (Germany) coordinated by Professor Manuel Seeger and Professor Soren Thiele-Bruhn put into practice the introduction of aromatic plants (thyme and oregano) beneath the grapevines of the 'Weingut Dr. Frey' wine-making company.

After three years of diversification the team formed by the researchers Felix Dittrich, Thomas Iserloh, Roman Huppi, Sophie Ogan, Soren Thiele-Bruhn, Manuel Seeger, and the winemaking entrepreneur Cord Treseler have published the first results of the diversification on the productivity of the grapevines and the quality of the wine. These results show the potential possibilities that these practices have since they have not generated negative effects in the wine production.

Although a certain amount of competition was observed between the aromatic cover and the grapevines for water and nutrients, these effects far from being negative, give rise to thinking that they may have a positive effect on the quality of the wine, as the researcher Manuel Seeger comments. This is related to the reduction of certain nutrients: while the availability of nitrate had no change in the crop diversification, the ammonium, phosphorus, and potassium levels did decrease in the uppermost area of the soil (the first 10 cm). However, it is known that there is a certain relationship between available potassium and wine quality. The results of this study point out that a change in the availability of the mineral acidity of the soil would seem to generate an increase in the quality of these wines. Moreover, the principle of yield compensation was observed: although the yield of the grapevine is slightly lower, this is compensated by an increase in quality.

The study highlights the extreme events at climate level that have taken place over the three years of the diversification. In 2018, storms produced one month's volume of rainfall in the zone in just one hour; whilst in 2019 and 2020 there were record high temperatures and drought. In this way, it is clear that the availability of water and the climate conditions are the most determining factor for the productivity of the vineyard. Despite that being the case, if we take the extreme conditions into account, the diversification has had no negative effects on the yield of the crop or on the quality of the wine. In standardised situations and with the long-term stabilisation of the diversification this opens the door to an increase in profits thanks to the diversification.

The conservation of the characteristic landscape of the zone, the reduction in contaminant emissions, and the increase in biodiversity both in the soil as well as in other organisms such as insects will contribute added value to this sector, which is currently open to changes that enable it to face this lack of a generational substitution and the scenarios which the effects of climate change are expected to bring. All of this is to save the future of the Mosel wine.

###

Diverfarming is a project financed by the Horizon 2020 Programme of the European Commission, within the challenge of "Food Security, Sustainable Agriculture and Forestry, Marine, Maritime and Inland Water Research and the Bioeconomy" under agreement 728003, and which counts on the participation of the Universities of Cartagena and Cordoba (Spain), Tuscia (Italy), Exeter and Portsmouth (United Kingdom), Wageningen (Netherlands), Trier (Germany), Pecs (Hungary) and ETH Zurich (Switzerland), the research centres Consiglio per la ricerca in agricoltura e l'analisi dell'economia agraria (Italy), the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (Spain) and the Natural Resources Institute LUKE (Finland), the agrarian organisation ASAJA, and the companies Casalasco and Barilla (Italy), Arento, LogisticaDFM and Industrias David (Spain), Nieuw Bromo Van Tilburg and Ekoboerdeij de Lingehof (Netherlands), Weingut Dr. Frey (Germany), Nedel-Market KFT and Gere (Hungary) and Paavolan Kotijuustola and Polven Juustola (Finland).

This story has been published on: 2021-04-07. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
The move to make the Holy Bible as Tennessee's official book was opposed by some experts.

Representative Jerry Sexton (R-Bean Station) sponsored the House Joint Resolution 150, designating the Bible as the official State book. It was passed in the House on March 29, 55-28. It is now heading to Senate for approval.

However, Ken Paulson, the Middle Tennessee State University Free Speech Center director and first amendment expert, said that the resolution is "unconstitutional", Fox 17 News reported.

"Its not fair to say this is my faith, I'm in a position of power and I'm going to promote my faith, it's not only unconstitutional, its un-American," he stated.

"What we have here is a bill that a single state senator can brag about, that encroaches on the religious faith of Tennesseans, and will cost the state money to defend," Paulson added.

In an April 2016 article, Paulson explained the reason of the legislation's unconstitutionality. He said that the First Amendment forbids passing laws that favor a certain religion, in guarantee of the nation's religious freedom. Thus, he deemed that designating the Bible as Tennessee's state book constitutes to supporting a religion over another.

This is Sexton's third attempt to pass the proposal but chose to introduce it as a resolution this time, rather than a bill. It was first introduced in 2015 but was vetoed by Former Governor Bill Lee in 2016, citing Attorney General Herbert Slatery's 2015 opinion that the bill could be a violation of the state and federal constitutions.

Lee also said that he felt the proposal "trivializes the Bible," which he believed "is a sacred text."

Sexton reintroduced the bill last year but lawmakers failed to vote for it before the end of the legislative session.

The representative spoke about the Bible's significance in his personal life.

"I would like to recognize it because it's been a book important to me my whole life," he said.

He continued by saying that the resolution acknowledges the economic impact of the Bible in the state, being home to one of the biggest Bible manufacturers.

"This bill does not make anyone buy the [B]ible, read the [B]ible, get baptized, go to Sunday school or anything, it just recognizes the [B]ible and history and economics of what its meant to us," he further stated.

Moreover, the lawmaker argued that the Bible is also important to the state itself.

"The Holy Bible has great historical and cultural significance in the State of Tennessee as a record of the history of Tennessee families that predates some modern vital statistical records. Families recorded their own vital records in family Bibles that were passed down through the generations," he pointed out.

He said that he had been working on refining the measure for already seven years, adding that he was just trying to "put the Bible where [he felt] like it belongs."

Sexton, a Baptist minister, also believed that the Bible should not be "discriminated against" due to its religious nature, contending that the country was not founded on any religion, such as those that are relative to Buddhist or Muhammad, but of Judeo-Christian values.
The most harrowing story Ive read in the New York Times in recent days was Miriam Jordans account of a car crash last month in Southern California involving a Ford Expedition that had come from Mexico, straight through a breach in the border wall. The Ford was crammed with 25 people when it hit a tractor-trailer rig on Route 115, 110 miles east of San Diego.

Few of the survivors have been able to describe what happened next, Jordan writes. The crunch of metal and glass, the bodies flung dozens of feet across the pavement. Twelve people died on the spot, a 13th at a nearby hospital.

Jordan follows the stories of the victims and survivors, and theres a heartbreaking sameness to them: people who have been driven by fear or want from their homes in Mexico and Central America, and who are willing to take grave risks and pay exorbitant sums to make it to the United States. These are not terrorists, gang members, lowlifes, benefit seekers or  except in their willingness to violate U.S. immigration laws  lawbreakers. They are seekers of the American dream, worthy of our compassion and respect.

Yet those 13 people  along with others who have recently lost their lives in dangerous crossings  might not have met their grisly fate if the Biden administrations concept of compassion wasnt also an inducement to recklessness.

And they would not have been killed if a wall had been standing in their way.

Thats a conclusion Ive come to reluctantly, and not because Ive abandoned my disgust with Donald Trump. Walls are ugly things: symbols of defensive, suspicious, often closed-minded civilizations. Walls are, invariably, permeable: Whatever else a border wall will do, it will not seal off America from unwanted visitors or undocumented workers  roughly half of whom arrive legally and overstay their visas.

Walls also cannot address the root cause of our immigration crisis, which stems from a combination of social collapse south of the border and the pull of American life north of it.

But a well-built wall should still be a central part of an overall immigration fix. Its an imperfect but functional deterrent against the most reckless forms of border crossing. Its a barrier against sudden future surges of mass migration.

Its also a political bargaining chip to be traded for a path to citizenship in a comprehensive immigration-reform bill. And its a prophylactic against the next populist revolt, which is sure to overtake our politics if the Biden administration cannot competently control an elementary function of governance.

U.S. agents apprehended 170,000 migrants along the southwest border in March, a 70 percent jump over Februarys numbers and the highest level in 15 years. Notwithstanding the administrations claims to the contrary, there is a crisis, led by a massive surge in child migration spurred by President Joe Bidens promises of a more humane policy than his predecessors.

Some of this surge is seasonal. And some can be dealt with by building more shelters for unaccompanied minors and families, or speeding up the process of finding relatives or others who can take in unaccompanied children.

But the administration would be foolish to suppose the surge will recede on its own. The years of relative economic prosperity in Mexico that, for a time, led to a net outflow of Mexican migrants from the U.S. is over, thanks to a combination of drug cartels, a pandemic and the misgovernance of its inept populist president. Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua are failing states. A Plan Colombia-style package of security assistance could help. But it will cost billions and probably take a decade for its effects to be felt.

In the meantime, the United States risks a version of the European migration crisis of 2015. Thats the one that contributed heavily to the Brexit vote, turbocharged the rise of far-right parties like Frances National Front and the Alternative for Germany, and paved the way to Trumps election.

Theres little question that our own migration crisis is a political boon for immigration restrictionists. The wonder is why a serious Democratic administration would aid and abet their cause.

Its also putting the interests of comprehensive immigration reform further out of reach. Congress has not passed a significant immigration bill in over three decades. Biden came to office with an opportunity to get a bipartisan accord, but no Republican will sign on to legislation that widens the doors to legal immigrants, much less one that offers some form of amnesty to illegal ones, without a serious plan for border security.

For Democrats, thats an opportunity to defuse the political bomb Republicans would love to plant right under them. And its a jobs-creating infrastructure program to boot.

Will a wall solve all of our immigration problems? Hardly. It will take years to build, and some practical, regulatory and legal hurdles might be hard to surmount. But for anyone who hopes for America to remain a proud nation of immigrants, it has to be a part of the solution.
NATOs pressure against Russia exacerbated and joined with extreme Ukrainian nationalistsincluding fascists such as the Azov Battalionto drive an anti-Russian cultural and political movement in the country.

by Vijay Prashad

On March 11, Ukraines Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter that his government has approved the Strategy for Deoccupation & Reintegration of Crimea. What he referred to is a new strategy driven by Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelensky to retake Crimeaincluding the Black Sea port of Sevastopol. Ukraines National Security and Defense Council passed Decree no. 117/2021 on March 24 that laid out the governments decision to contest Russias control over Crimea. On Twitter, President Zelensky used the hashtag #CrimeaIsUkraine to send a clear signal that he is prepared to escalate conflict with Russia over Crimea. The Ukrainian government set up a Crimean Platform Initiative to coordinate strategy alongside the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to pressure Russia over both Crimea and the conflict in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine.

Zelensky, an actor, was thrust into politics when he played the role of Ukraines president in a television show called Servant of the People. Fiction became reality when his television show became a political party, which ran on a decidedly vague platform to bring decency back to politics. He won the presidency in 2019 with 73 percent of the vote. There was a general sense that Zelenskys blank slate, and advocacy for Russian actors in Ukraine, would translate into a peace process for eastern Ukraine and with Russia. Instead, Zelenskyegged on by his NATO allieshas become far more aggressive against Russia than his predecessor Petro Poroshenko.

In March 2014, after Russian troops entered Crimea, the population voted to join Russia; eight days later, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution asking Russian troops to withdraw. The stalemate set up by the vote in Crimea and the UN resolution persists.

NATOs March Eastward

Current tensions should not masquerade as ancient animosities. This is the case with the relationship between Ukraine and Russia. For seven decades, both countries were part of the USSR, and for over a decade after 1991, relations between the two countries remained cordial. On February 9, 1990, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker told the last leader of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not move one inch to the east from the Oder-Neisse line that divides Germany from Poland. NATO expansion is unacceptable, Gorbachev told Baker. Baker agreed: Not an inch of NATOs present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction. In a letter to the German chancellor Helmut Kohl the next day, Baker recounted this conversation, emphasizing the extension of the zone of NATO would be unacceptable. By implication, Baker wrote, NATO in its current zone might be acceptable.

The Western powers broke their commitment immediately. In 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined NATO, while in 2004, the alliance drew in Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. A line of states that comprise Ukraine, Belarus and Moldovaall of which border Russiaremain outside NATO. In 2002, the NATO-Ukraine Action Plan opened up a framework for Ukraines possible entry into NATO. This process has raised serious questions not only about the eastward expansion of NATO, but alsomore significantlyabout the deeper cultural relationship that Ukraine has had with Russia to its east and with Europe to its west; in what direction should Ukraine orient itself (a fifth of the Ukrainian population is Russian speaking, with the largest numbers in Ukraines urban areas and in the Donbass region)?

NATO has aggressively courted Ukraine and Belarus, with NATOs various plans deeply focused on putting pressure on Russia. The most recent NATO 2030 report highlights its strategic focus around Russia, which is seen as destabilizing and provocative. In the interest of putting pressure on Russia at its border with Ukraine, the NATO-Ukraine Commission met throughout 2020 to advance the NATO-Ukraine Distinctive Partnership (set up in 1997). In June 2020, NATO recognized Ukraine as an Enhanced Opportunities Partner, the closest form to full NATO membership. Ukraines armed forces, now substantially trained with NATO, joined NATO forces for three major military exercises last year (Saber Junction, Sea Breeze and Combined Resolve).

At a meeting of NATO Foreign Ministers on March 24, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said, Russia has increased its pattern of repressive behavior at home and aggressive behavior abroad. To this end, NATOs approach to Russia will be, Stoltenberg said, deterrence and defense, with an openness to dialogue. Dialogue seems to have been downgraded between the Western alliance and Russia, with a green light to Ukraine to make provocative statements and actions.

Europes Need for Russian Gas

Beneath the tension lies Europes appetite for energy. As a result of U.S. actions over the past two decades, Europe lost three major sources of energy: Iran, Libya, and Russia. Because Ukraine has become a hotspot, Russian energy investorsmainly the state energy firm Gazprommoved to build a pipeline under the Baltic Sea to connect Russian oil fields with Germany. The two pipeline projects (Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2) began in 2011-12, before the outbreak of hostilities in eastern Ukraine and before Russia formally took Crimea (both in 2014).

Germany welcomed the pipelines, since these would resume gas delivery to Europe on a regular basis. U.S. President Joe Bidens administration has sharpened the attack on Nord Stream 2; Bidens Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that any entity involved in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline risks U.S. sanctions and should immediately abandon work on the pipeline. Polands anti-monopoly regulatorUOKiKhas fined Polish subcontractors to the tune of about $7.6 billion for participation in the project. German Chancellor Angela Merkels close ally Peter Beyer, who is Germanys coordinator for transatlantic affairscalled for a suspension of the pipeline.

Nord Stream 2s Andrei Minin said that his projects fleet have been targets of regular provocations on the part of foreign civilian as well as military vessels. This could only refer to the military exercises that NATO and its alliesincluding Ukrainehave conducted in the Baltic Sea; Minin directly pointed to Polish aircraft flying low over the project in Danish waters.

Nord Stream 2 is 95 percent complete and is projected to be ready to go by September 2021. Failure of the U.S. to properly return to the Iran deal and the continued crisis in Libya make Nord Stream 2 fundamental to Europes energy planning. But Nord Stream 2 is trapped in the attempt by NATO to isolate Russia.

Ukraines Minority Problem

No country is truly culturally homogenous. Ukraine has substantial populations with cultural roots in neighboring states. This applies mainly to the Russian-speaking population, which has close ties to Russia both culturally and politically. One in five Ukrainians speaks Russian, while about one in 10 Ukrainians identify with a range of cultural worlds that emerge from Belarus to Gagauz (a Turkish community from Budjak).

NATOs pressure against Russia exacerbated and joined with extreme Ukrainian nationalistsincluding fascists such as the Azov Battalionto drive an anti-Russian cultural and political movement in the country. Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who benefited from Western backing, put forward a language law in 2017 that hampers the teaching of the minority languages in the countrys schools. The target for the law was to de-Russianize the population, but it had an impact on the countrys smaller minorities. For that reason, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary and Romania filed complaints with the Council of Europe.

Hungarys Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Facebook in late 2020 that his government would stand up for Transcarpathian Hungarians in every international forum. Ukraine, he said, not a member of NATO, has launched an attack against a minority group originating from a NATO member country. The contradictions of Ukraine-NATOs anti-Russian agenda run afoul of other NATO members for reasons that were not calibrated carefully.

Firing across the Ukraine-Russia border has stepped up, egged on by Bidens full-throated support of Zelenskys newly found anti-Russian ambitions. A senior United Nations official at the Department of Political and Peacekeeping Affairs tells me that they want military forces to withdraw from the border. All the main platforms for negotiationthe Normandy Format and the Arria Formula meetings at the UNare in a stalemate. We need cool heads to prevail, said the UN official. Anything other than that could lead to a catastrophic war.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest book is Washington Bullets, with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma.
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Germany shares NATO and EU concerns about the build-up of Russian troops on the border with Ukraine.

"The federal government shares this concern and informed Moscow about it on April 3," government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer said at a briefing on April 7, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

She also recalled a joint statement by Berlin and Paris in which the parties expressed concern about the increase in ceasefire violations in eastern Ukraine and called for "restraint".

At the same time, German Foreign Ministry spokesman Christofer Burger said that the German side had repeatedly called on Russia to hold talks in the Normandy format at the level of foreign ministers. According to him, steps to de-escalate the situation through the use of existing formats are a top priority. "Steps to implement the Minsk [Agreements] are not the ones we could be satisfied with," he said.

The government spokeswoman also stressed that for Germany, as for all NATO member states, Ukraine is a respected long-term partner of the Alliance, which last year was granted the status of Enhanced Opportunities Partner, testifying to a particularly close partnership. Germany supports the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.

On April 1, it became known that the United States European Command had raised its alert status to the highest level after the occupiers in eastern Ukraine violated the ceasefire and killed four Ukrainian servicemen, while Russia began pulling troops to the border with Ukraine.

According to intelligence data, the Russian side pulled 28 battalion tactical groups to the state border of Ukraine.

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A renowned British livestock scientist, who started her working life as a shepherdess, has received a prestigious award from the European Federation of Animal Science.

Dr Joanne Conington is the recipient of the Distinguished Service Award in recognition of her career and service to the livestock sector.

She is known for helping to develop novel breeding programmes for the sustainable genetic improvement of sheep and goats in practice.

After gaining her undergraduate degree in Agriculture and Food Marketing, she worked as shepherdess in Scotland for two years to gain more practical experience.

Her combined interests in livestock and international development led her to Bolivia where she worked as a livestock specialist with an NGO alongside smallholder farmers in the Andean plains.

When she returned to the UK, she completed an MSc in Livestock Production Science and then worked as a sheep specialist for the Meat and Livestock Commission, providing advice to farmers.

In 1992, she took up a post as a Livestock Geneticist at the Scottish Agricultural College (SAC)  now SRUC, leading on the development of breeding programmes for sheep.

Nearly three decades later - having completed a PhD in Animal Breeding while raising three young boys and being made a Reader in Applied Livestock Genetics - she is Head of the Department of Agriculture, Horticulture and Engineering Sciences at SRUC.

If Covid-19 restrictions allow, she will receive the award at the annual meeting of the EAAP in Davos, Switzerland, in September.

I am deeply honoured. To be recognised by my peers in academia and industry is the icing on the cake. Its amazing," she said.

Isabel Casasus, EAAP President, added: Jo has made remarkable contributions in the field of genetic and genomics of sheep efficiency, with special emphasis on ewe longevity and the survival of the offspring.

"Her service to EAAP, particularly in the Sheep and Goat Scientific Commission, has been very valuable to our community.
NEW YORK, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- atai Life Sciences ("atai" or the "Company"), a global biopharmaceutical company developing psychedelic and non-psychedelic compounds for various mental health indications, has acquired a majority stake in Delaware based Psyber, a company dedicated to developing interventions to improve various mental health disorders and induce behavioural changes through brain computer interface (BCI)-enabled digital therapeutics (DTx).

EEG-based BCI devices record electrical activity in the brain for real-time interpretation of emotional, behavioural, and mental states. Traditionally, the main goal of BCI has been to replace or restore useful functions to people disabled by neuromuscular disorders. However, recent studies have shown that the technology may have useful applications for mental health disorders as it allows for a direct decoding of emotional experience from neural activity.

In the case of Psyber, EEG-based BCI development will be enabled through a tailored software platform and a large patent portfolio, combined with atai's diverse compounds.

"At atai, we firmly believe that giving power back to the patient could lead to improved health outcomes," said David Keene, Digital Therapeutics Lead of atai. "This novel technology is designed to do exactly that, combining both medicine and BCI-assisted therapy puts the patient firmly in the driving seat as it tailors to the individual's specific needs."

Psyber's aim is to empower patients prescribed medication to achieve better mental health outcomes by offering personalized and novel digitally enhanced, behaviour-changing experiences that complement their medication assisted therapy. The objective is better outcomes, a better experience and better personalized behaviour change training than existing medication or behavioral therapy solutions currently offer.

"BCI as a technology has the potential to change the world as we know it," said Prahlad Krishnan, CEO of Psyber. "In the context of mental health, this is no exception as every patient enrolled in BCI-assisted therapy will have greater autonomy, ever more empowered to change their feelings and behaviors to improve their quality of life."

About atai Life Sciences

atai is a biopharmaceutical company founded in 2018 in response to the clear and growing unmet needs of mental health patients worldwide. atai is dedicated to acquiring, incubating and efficiently developing innovative therapeutics to treat depression, anxiety, addiction, and other mental health disorders. atai's business model combines funding, technology, scientific and regulatory expertise with a focus on psychedelic therapy and other drugs with differentiated safety profiles and therapeutic potential. By pooling resources and best practices, atai aims to responsibly accelerate the development of new medicines across its business entities, seeking to effectively treat and ultimately heal mental health disorders. atai's vision is to bridge the gap between what the mental healthcare system currently provides and what patients need. atai is headquartered in Berlin, with offices in New York, San Diego and London. For more information, please visit www.atai.life.

Investor Contact:

Greg Weaver

atai  Chief Financial Officer

Email: [email protected]

Media Contact:

Anne Donohoe

KCSA Strategic Communications

Phone: +1 (212) 896-1265

Email: [email protected]

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A lawyer is suing her public defender boss for gender discrimination claiming he told her to dress 'like a nun' because her outfits were causing prisoners to masturbate, before he allegedly fired her when she complained about his comments.

Former public defense attorney Jami Pellerin filed a lawsuit against District Public Defender G. Paul Marx accusing him of firing her from the 15th Judicial District Indigent Defender's Office in Lafayette, Louisiana, after she reported his inappropriate comments to human resources.

Pellerin claims her boss repeatedly made sexual and sexist remarks to her in the three years she worked there including asking her about her sex life, telling her to dress 'less attractive' and warning her he could fire her for being 'too attractive.'

She also alleges she was underpaid compared to her male colleagues ever since she was hired by the defender's office in March 2017.

The attorney says she was fired in March 2020 in retaliation for complaining about the alleged unequal pay and harassment.

Marx has denied the allegations branding them 'sick lies' and claims Pellerin was fired for missing training to attend a wedding.

Lawyer Jami Pellerin (left) is suing District Public Defender G. Paul Marx (right) for gender discrimination claiming he told her to dress 'like a nun' because her appearance caused inmates to masturbate - before he allegedly fired her when she complained

In the 28-page lawsuit filed in Lafayette last week, Pellerin says Marx would often ask her about her sex life and whether she was going to get pregnant.

It claims the comments started straight away with Marx asking her when she was first hired if she was married and warning her the office couldn't afford maternity pay if she became pregnant.

When she returned to work after getting married in 2018, Pellerin claims Marx repeatedly asked her if she was pregnant yet.

The suit cites one particular incident in September 2019 where Marx as well as HR Director Chris St. Julien and staff attorney Janet Brown allegedly told her that her outfits were inappropriate and she should dress more 'like a nun'.

Pellerin was told her appearance was causing inmates at the parish jail to masturbate and that it was her responsibility to dress 'less attractive,' the suit alleges.

Marx allegedly told her: 'Men don't have self control. As their attorney and an employee of the public defender, you have to protect these men from their basic instinct by being less attractive.'

Pellerin claims she was also warned she would be fired if she didn't correct the situation by changing her outfit choices.

Pellerin's attorney Jill Craft told News 10 the comments she endured on a regular basis were 'intensely personal.'

'There were not only comments about her personally, about the way she dressed, her marriage, whether she was going to get pregnant or not, things that no employer has any business asking about, and from her perspective, even though she complained about it, she reported it to whoever she could think of,' she said.

When Pellerin raised concerns about Marx's comments, he allegedly told her: 'I can fire you for being too attractive, and there's nothing you can do about it.'

Pellerin (right) claims her boss repeatedly made sexual and sexist remarks to her in the three years she worked there including asking her about her sex life, telling her to dress 'less attractive' and warning her he could fire her for being 'too attractive'

She also alleges she was underpaid compared to her male colleagues before being fired in retaliation for complaining about the alleged unequal pay and harassment

The suit also alleges Pellerin was underpaid from the day compared to her male colleagues, with some paid 10 percent more despite becoming licensed attorneys at around the same time as her.

Pellerin was hired as a staff attorney in the juvenile division for $51,000 a year on March 1 2017, the suit says.

Her male predecessor had been paid $56,000, she says.

Pellerin had already passed the Louisiana bar exam and was a licensed attorney.

She says she was then transferred to a felony position, replacing a man who had only had his license for around two months but had been earing more than her at $58,000.

Pellerin claims she tried to bring up the topic of pay with Marx in a November 20178 meeting, but was met with more sexual comments in response.

Pellerin claims she reported the gender discrimination and harassment to the office's human resources and was fired in retaliation.

The Lafayette Parish Courthouse where the 15th Judicial District Indigent Defender's Office resides.

'The outcome should have never happened. If folks have complaints of discrimination, they are free in this country to be not retaliated against, and in Mrs. Pellerin's circumstance, she contends that's exactly what happened to her,' Craft said.

Pellerin also claims her dismissal was retaliation for her helping a private defense attorney in February 2020 - one month before her firing.

She claims her male colleagues were also helping the attorney and that she had also offered advice.

She says she was reprimanded by Marx for this while her male coworkers were later praised.

Marx denied the allegations as 'sick lies' telling The Advocate the real reason for Pellerin's dismissal was that she had skipped scheduled training to go to a friend's wedding and was working 'out of her lane' with prison inmates.

He said Pellerin often wore 'tight, revealing, low-neckline' clothing but insisted she was not subject to a special dress code 'other than our normal policy, which says you're representing the office and you can't do whatever you want.'

Pellerin's attorney Jill Craft told News 10 the comments she endured on a regular basis were 'intensely personal'

The public defender told the Daily Advertiser Pellerin has a 'vendetta' against his office and the suit is based on 'scandalous quotes that were fabricated in large part'.

'I want women who have these issues to have a fair hearing,' Marx said.

'I also want this to be based on the reality of the workplace and not a vendetta of someone who is angry getting back at the office.'

Marx admitted there was a meeting about Pellerin's attire but that her version of events was not accurate.

'We've got a record of what happened and what was said, but this petition was drafted in such a way as to sensationalize that,' he said.

After she was fired in March 2020, Pellerin first took her complaint to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

When the EEOC was unable to resolve the dispute, she filed the suit against Marx and his office.

Pellerin is seeking unspecified damages for 'extreme emotional distress, humiliation and embarrassment' and has asked for a trial by jury.
"A pioneer in intelligent water solutions and services, Birdz currently has three million connected devices in operation and several smart water networks deployed across Europe," said Fredrick Royan, Vice President. "It uses the radio network architecture of telcos or private networks to deliver a sophisticated and comprehensive water management service that ranges from sensor development to monitoring, transmitting, and analyzing data. It also facilitates decision making by offering deep visibility into the network and presenting actionable insights on a single-view dashboard."

Birdz collaborates with various vendors to provide connectivity, visibility, and legitimacy at the point of data operation. For instance, it partnered with Ledger, a leader in security and infrastructure solutions for blockchain-based applications, to embed a specialized microchip and its unique secure operating system directly into its water sensors. This technology will ensure the accuracy of all collected data by signing and encrypting the data before sending it to the cloud and registering it in the IOTA blockchain. By leveraging Ledger's technology, Birdz reinforces the importance of accurate water quality data, helping cities detect any irregularities from natural or malicious forces.

Currently, Birdz deploys numerous water sensors in Europe, covering countries such as the United Kingdom, Italy, Bulgaria, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland. Its future growth strategy is based on its interoperable IoT platform (IoT Drive), skillfully designed around the environmental themes of water, waste, energy, and air quality. This software platform delivers key functionalities like the fast deployment of new objects and simplified data export to third parties.

"Birdz's innovative environmental IoT platform enables clients to collect data and control any sensor for different uses such as water, waste, energy, or air quality in a connected city, regardless of the communication network," noted Riana Barnard, Best Practices Research Analyst. "Backed by its technology expertise and skilled resources, Birdz accelerates the digital transformation of water utilities and commercial clients to boost accountability, cost-efficiency, affordability, and customer experience."

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents a Company of the Year award to the organization that demonstrates excellence in growth strategy and implementation in its field. The award recognizes a high degree of innovation with products and technologies and the resulting leadership in customer value and market penetration.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analyses, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.

About Frost & Sullivan

For six decades, Frost & Sullivan has been world-renowned for its role in helping investors, corporate leaders, and governments navigate economic changes and identify disruptive technologies, Mega Trends, new business models, and companies to action, resulting in a continuous flow of growth opportunities to drive future success. Contact us: Start the discussion. Contact us: Start the discussion.

Contact:

Kristen Moore

P: 210.247.3823

E: [email protected]

About Birdz

Birdz, a pioneer in remote reading of water consumption, is now a key player in environmental IoT. With over 20 years of experience, the company, a subsidiary of Veolia, deploys its know-how in the service of the Smart City through a very broad ecosystem of solutions - from the design of sensors, to the use of data, including monitoring, transmission and analysis.

More than 3 million connected meters have been deployed by Birdz, collecting millions of data each day to improve resource management.

www.birdz.com

Press Contacts:

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Joe Biden is riding a wave of optimism following the passage of his $1.9trillion (1.4trillion) fiscal package.

There may be more to come should the White House manage to steer proposals for a further 1.44trillion of climate change and infrastructure spending through a Congress jittery about debt levels.

As the International Monetary Funds spring World Economic Outlook makes clear, the US spending and cash splurge of 3.6trillion and still counting is a gift to output in the advanced world.

Deep pockets: Joe Biden is riding a wave of optimism following the passage of his $1.9trillion fiscal package

The Fund, which was in despair about global prospects a year ago, has lifted its global growth forecast to 6 per cent this year and 4.4 per cent in 2022.

Among the Western nations, the US will be the first to restore its total output to pre-Covid levels, with growth of 6.4 per cent this year against a 3.5 per cent decline in 2020.

The US has paid a heavy price in pandemic deaths but its policy of keeping the economy open as much as possible and big spending on vaccines has paid off, with three of the big pharma companies backed  Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson  in full vaccine production.

Britains lengthier lockdowns and an economy highly dependent on trade meant it suffered a debilitating 9.9pc loss of output last year.

If the IMF is right, the UK should get a two-year bounce of 5.3 per cent this year and 5.1 per cent in 2022, bringing output back to pre-pandemic levels.

Britains scientific prowess, together with soaring output, should offer Boris Johnson an upbeat platform to launch a Tory re-election campaign.

Only a few years ago IMF meetings were dominated by bleak Brexit warnings. There is barely a mention in the Outlook.

In the Eurozone, growth of 3.8 per cent is expected in 2022, a modest 0.7 percentage point uplift since October.

In contrast the UK forecast is lifted by a whopping 1.9 percentage points to 5.1 per cent. It is hard to overlook the nastier outcomes of Covid.

Loss of output per person in the poorest countries is projected at 5.7 per cent, against 4.7 per cent in emerging markets and 2.7 per cent in the wealthier world.

The worst-affected groups in the pandemic are young and low-skilled workers, as per the UKs recent unemployment data. Women also suffered across the globe.

In Britain programmes such as Kickstart and apprenticeships targeted at younger citizens have never been more important. Across the world some 11.6trillion has been spent in fiscal support, and a repeat of the Great Depression avoided.

It is sobering to reflect that without the spending and monetary spigots being opened a 3.3 per cent tumble in global output last year could have been three times worse.

Private grief

There was not much weeping and wailing to be heard as the union flag was lowered over G4Ss London headquarters.

If history is any guide the tears will soon flow. G4S has a troubled reputation in the UK over past failings, from the Olympics to electronic tagging, but for all its faults it is an unheralded part of global Britain.

It employs 25,000 or so in the UK and is the worlds largest security company with staff of more than 500,000 worldwide, earning one-third of its revenues in Asia.

Yet almost unnoticed in lockdown, G4S has been sold to an American outfit less than half its size, Allied Universal, backed by private equity princeling Warburg Pincus.

Having taken on 3.3billion of debt to complete the transaction it can be expected that jobs will go and assets sold.

Vital services such as running UK Justice will be jettisoned. It also means that a foreign owner, beyond oversight by UK directors and investors, will be patrolling the Hinkley Point nuclear plant.

Meanwhile, the people who sold Britain short, chairman John Connolly (formerly involved in failed financial group Barlow Clowes) and chief executive Ashley Almanza will march off clutching large cheques.

Such deals bring free market capitalism into disrepute.

Swiss roles

Heads have rolled at Credit Suisse following involvement in the Archegos Capital and Greensill scandals. Chief risk officer Lara Warner and investment banking chief Brian Chin have been shown the door.

But what about the fat cats who presided over this mess?

Chief executive Thomas Gottstein, who took over in 2020, and his predecessor Tidjane Thiam cannot be left unchallenged.

At the very least there should be clawback of past bonuses.
TEMPE, Ariz., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Arizona State University's plans for its new ASU California Center in downtown Los Angeles took another step forward today with the announcement that the W. P. Carey School of Business will be launching its highly ranked Master of Science in Business Analytics (MS-BA) in California for the fall 2021 semester. The program is currently accepting applications for the first cohort, part of ASU's inaugural class of students based in California.

The ASU California Center is located in the historic Los Angeles Herald Examiner building, constructed by William Randolph Hearst and completed in 1914. Opening in August, ASU's new home in California will include classrooms, conference spaces, venues for community events, and more. In addition to the W. P. Carey School, more than 15 academic colleges and administrative units will call the ASU California Center home, including the recently christened Sidney Poitier New American Film School.

The W. P. Carey School created the MS-BA in 2013, in response to demand for an intensive data analytics master's degree from industry partners. In the years since, the program has attracted thousands of students from across the country and around the world due to its market-driven curriculum, the reputation of the W. P. Carey School's departments of information systems and supply chain management, and ASU's ranking as the most innovative university in the country six years in a row, according to U.S. News & World Report.

As a result of the program's longstanding quality, the W. P. Carey School has been ranked No. 10 in the country for business analytics graduate programs in the 2022 Best Graduate School rankings, also released by U.S. News & World Report  ahead of UCLA, USC, and Loyola Marymount University. In the latest rankings, 30 W. P. Carey programs and disciplines are ranked top 25 by U.S. News, the most for any business school in the nation.

"We are always so honored to be included among our peers as one of the best business schools in America. That's especially true with a field as important and competitive as business analytics," said Amy Ostrom, interim dean of the W. P. Carey School of Business and the PetSmart Chair in Services Leadership. "As we expand the program to offer a solution for students in Southern California that is not only closer to home but also designed to accommodate the busy schedules of working professionals, we're extremely proud of what the MS-BA has achieved so far and excited about its future in downtown L.A."

The 12-month curriculum will be delivered on a flexible weekly schedule. Students will take classes on Wednesday evenings from 6 to 10 p.m. via ASU Sync, an asynchronous, technology-enhanced, and fully interactive remote learning modality that includes live lectures via Zoom technology. Also, every quarter (in August, October, January, March, and June), classes will meet in person at the ASU California Center on two consecutive Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The combination of virtual and in-person learning will provide students the necessary freedom to complete coursework independently and builds the collaboration and communication skills needed to succeed in the global economy.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, demand for data scientists is expected to grow 15% by the end of the decade, much faster than the average for all occupations. MS-BA students in Los Angeles will also gain the support of W. P. Carey Career Management and Employer Engagement; upon graduation in 2020, MS-BA students were employed by Amazon.com, Avnet, Dell, Deloitte, and Goldman Sachs, among others. Applications for the MS-BA in L.A. are now being accepted. Visit wpcarey.asu.edu/msba-la to learn more.

About Arizona State University

Arizona State University has developed a new model for the American Research University, creating an institution that is committed to access, excellence and impact. ASU measures itself by those it includes, not by those it excludes. As the prototype for a New American University, ASU pursues research that contributes to the public good, and ASU assumes major responsibility for the economic, social and cultural vitality of the communities that surround it.

W. P. CAREY SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

The W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University is one of the top-ranked business schools in the United States. The school is internationally regarded for its research productivity and its distinguished faculty members, including a Nobel Prize winner. Students come from more than 100 countries and W. P. Carey is represented by alumni in over 160 countries. Visit wpcarey.asu.edu.

For more information/media contact:

Shay Moser

W. P. Carey School of Business

480-965-3963

[email protected]

SOURCE W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University

Related Links

https://wpcarey.asu.edu


The Morrison government kept demanding money from some of the poorest Australians after it knew its robo-debt scheme was faulty because it had not kept a record of which purported debts were generated through the bungled program.

A report from the Commonwealth Ombudsman released on Tuesday said public servants manually identified 525,648 debts raised on unlawful grounds through the robo-debt program: about 50,000 more than the government confessed in May last year.

A report from the Commonwealth Ombudsman said public servants manually identified 525,648 debts raised on false grounds through the robo-debt program. Credit:Marina Neil

While that process was happening from November 2019 until at least May 2020, the government continued to pursue people who had purported debts if they had not yet been identified as a robo-debt, causing a high risk it was chasing debts with no legal basis.

While the Ombudsmans report noted that Services Australia, the government department responsible for robo-debt, had generally acted as efficiently as possible  it was scathing of the decision to keep pursuing debts while it checked whether they were legally sound.
(Natural News) Globalists have a forked-tongue plan to exterminate humanity: Many who take the vaccine will simply die from the engineered hyperinflammatory reactions that are likely to hit hard in the Fall, while those who refuse to take the vaccine will be hunted down, rounded up and thrown in covid concentration camps for efficient extermination.

This plan will be resisted in conservatives states like Florida and Texas, but this is precisely the plan being rolled out in genocidal blue states like New York and California. Many other genocidal regions in other nations are also participating in this mass extermination experiment, such as the state of Victoria, Australia.

In New York, the criminal-minded Governor Cuomo is pushing vaccine passports to coerce the population into taking the engineered death shots which are already resulting in tens of thousands of deaths worldwide. All such deaths are called coincidences, of course, because the medial establishment lies about the cause of death to achieve their desired goals of medical tyranny. In 2020, when a person died months after tested positive for covid, that death was called a covid death. But in 2021, when a person dies five minutes after taking a covid vaccine, that death is called a coincidence.

All this doesnt mean the anti-human globalist demons will succeed, however. There is also growing resistance against vaccine passports, with many people (including political leaders like Ron Paul) claiming such as idea may be the final straw or tipping point needed for humanity to finally rise up and end the medical tyranny now being unleashed against them by terroristic governments worldwide.

Thats why other global depopulation plans are also being pursued as rapidly as possible, including:

Fake president Joe Biden trying to start World War III with Russia via Ukraine.

Anti-human demon globalist Bill Gates trying to block the sun and collapse the global food supply to unleash mass famine.

The rapid deployment of 5G electromagnetic weapon systems in cities around the world, with telecommunications capabilities serving as the cover story.

The mass poisoning of the food supply with pesticides, herbicides and heavy metals.

Economic assaults on humanity via covid lockdowns, crushing small businesses and local employment opportunities.

The globalists are no longer even pretending to be working to save humanity

The denial phase of the globalist agenda is now over, and anti-human globalists are rolling out concentration camps, vaccine passports, FBI terrorism and weaponization of the government against human civilization on all fronts. The new Biden infrastructure bill even earmarks $20 billion to tear down roads and highways that are deemed racist. The total destruction of human civilization is now under way.

This does not mean they will succeed, and their are many things people can do to defeat this intense evil and restore human liberty and dignity.

In a special podcast thats also incorporated into my daily podcast, I lay out a health strategy for helping yourself or others survive the covid death wave even if youve already taken a vaccine. While no plan works in all cases, I believe this nutritional strategy can save lives. Check it out here:

Brighteon.com/57387c35-fbb4-4446-9a95-77aa08dba041

Todays Situation Update podcast also reveals how humanity may be on the verge of rising up against globalist terrorist governments that are working on rolling out vaccine passports as a permanent control mechanism to enslave the compliant sheeple who go along with it.

The time to peacefully resist vaccine passports, vaccine mandates and criminal governments is NOW. Listen and share:

Brighteon.com/bc525fcc-7df1-434e-8127-21ce2e79c38d

In yesterdays podcast, we covered more details about the rolling out of covid concentration camps  something now approved by the New York Senate  which can be used by the Governor to round up those who resist vaccines by labeling them a danger to public health.

The unvaccinated will be labeled the new terrorists by the Big Pharma-funded journo-terrorism media and the anti-human criminal government. This is what they will keep repeating over and over again while they hunt down, round up and kill those who resist:

Brighteon.com/805fd639-2380-4889-af93-4bba9d8c0ebc

Find a new podcast each weekday at:

https://www.brighteon.com/channels/hrreport
Centre to make advance payment of Rs 1500 Cr for 30 Crores doses of vaccines 05 Jun 2021 | 12:25 AM Patna, May 4 (UNI) Former Bihar Deputy Chief Minister and BJP member of Rajya Sabha Sushil Kumar Modi on Friday said that the Centre has decided to make advance payment of Rs 1500 Crores to Hyderabad based Company Biological for production of 30 cr vaccine doses of coronavirus. see more..

No agreement on MeECLs Jaintia Distribution Circle : Sangma 04 Jun 2021 | 11:05 PM Shillong, June 4( UNI) Meghalaya Chief Minister, Conrad Sangma on Friday said that no agreement has been signed yet to hand over the Jaintia Distribution Circle to the public sector undertaking under the Government of India or to any private company. see more..

Congress attacks Nitish as Bihar is placed at the bottom of SDG index 04 Jun 2021 | 9:50 PM Patna, Jun 04 (UNI) Congress on Friday ridiculed Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for his claims of achieving development, saying he shoul explain to the public as to why Bihar is placed at the bottom in the list of states prepared by NITI Ayog on Sustainable Development Goals(SDG). see more..

SER despatched 13636 MT of liquid medical oxygen across country 04 Jun 2021 | 9:29 PM Kolkata, Jun 4 (UNI) South Eastern Railway (SER) has already moved 190 Oxygen Express

Trains with total 13636 tonnes of Liquid Medical Oxygen (LMO) to 12 different States and

Union Territories for treatment of Covid affected patients. see more..
Appointment

7 April 2021

Royal Sonesta San Juan welcomes Chagrin Olivo as the director of sales and marketing.

Prior to her new role of Director of Sales & Marketing at Royal Sonesta San Juan, Olivo was the Associate Director of Sales at the former InterContinental San Juan. With her goal-oriented and strategic mindset, and a great deal of passion, Olivo makes a perfect fit to lead the Royal Sonesta San Juan sales team.

In her new position, Olivo will plan and manage the overall sales and marketing strategies for the property. She has worked in the hospitality industry for 16 years, including 7 as, Corporate Sales Manager at the InterContinental San Juan previously.
Burnt vehicles are seen outside the Nigeria police force Imo state command headquaters after gunmen attacked and set properties ablaze in Imo State, Nigeria, on April 5, 2021. (David Dosunmu/Handout via Reuters)

Gunmen Free More Than 1,800 Inmates in Attack on Nigerian Prison

YENAGOA, NigeriaMore than 1,800 prisoners are on the run in southeast Nigeria after escaping when heavily armed gunmen attacked their prison using explosives and rocket-propelled grenades, the authorities said.

Nigerian police said it believed a banned separatist group, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), was behind the attack in the city of Owerri, but a spokesman for the group denied involvement.

The secessionist movement in the southeast is one of several serious security challenges facing President Muhammadu Buhari, including a decade-long Islamist insurgency in the northeast, a spate of school kidnappings in the northwest and piracy in the Gulf of Guinea.

Buhari said the attack, in a city near the oil-rich Niger Delta region that is the mainstay of Africas top crude exporter and biggest economy, was an act of terrorism. He ordered security forces to apprehend the fleeing prisoners.

The attackers stormed the facility at around 2:15 a.m. on Monday, according to the Nigerian Correctional Service said.

The Owerri Custodial Centre in Imo state has been attacked by unknown gunmen and forcefully released a total of 1,844 inmates in custody, its spokesman said in a statement late on Monday.

The Nigerian Correctional Services facility that was attacked by gunmen is seen in Imo State, Nigeria, on April 5, 2021. (David Dosunmu/Handout via Reuters)

The police said attackers used explosives to blast the administrative block of the prison and entered the prison yard.

Preliminary investigations have revealed that the attackers are members of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), said Frank Mba, a spokesman for the Nigeria Police Force.

IPOB wants independence for a region in southeast Nigeria it calls Biafra. One million people died in a 1967-70 civil war between the Nigerian government and secessionists there.

In recent months security in the region has deteriorated. Several police stations have been attacked since January, with large amounts of ammunition stolen and reports of the IPOBs paramilitary wing, the Eastern Security Network (ESN), clashing with the military.

But an IPOB spokesman told Reuters the group did not carry out the prison raid.

IPOB and ESN were not involved in the attack in Owerri, Imo state. It is not our mandate to attack security personnel or prison facilities, the IPOB spokesman said in a phone call.

By Tife Owolabi
Winnipeg actress Sharon Bajer has a small part in the locally lensed movie Run, which is now playing on Netflix after a few months of being denied a Canadian audience on the American service Hulu.

Winnipeg actress Sharon Bajer has a small part in the locally lensed movie Run, which is now playing on Netflix after a few months of being denied a Canadian audience on the American service Hulu.

According to the Internet Movie Database, Bajers character is named "Kathy Bates." Since the movie stars Sarah Paulson, one might assume this is a homage to Paulsons co-star from the Ryan Murphy TV series American Horror Story.

But its more specifically a shout-out to the role that won Bates an Oscar in the 1991 movie Misery, Annie Wilkes, a presumed helper who turns out to be a psycho.

Director Aneesh Chaganty, who co-wrote the script with Sev Ohanian, adds a familial twist to the hostage dynamics of that Stephen King adaptation, exploring the relationship of Diane Sherman (Paulson) and her daughter Chloe, played by real-life wheelchair user Kiera Allen, making an impressive movie debut.

Diane is apparently one of those self-sacrificing moms who lives for her child. Chloe is in need of lots of attention: not only is she paraplegic, she has a host of other challenges, including asthma and diabetes.

Fortunately, Chloe is a plucky one, determined to make a break from home by applying to a multitude of universities. But by tiny increments, Chloe comes to the realization that her mom may not be entirely on board with her daughters ambitions.

Chaganty made a name for himself with the 2018 thriller Searching, starring John Cho as a father trying to find his missing daughter via her internet search history. If Searching was a more experimental, stylish thriller, Chaganty is going for something more classical, even Hitchcock-esque, with a story exploring a darker, more selfish aspect of parenting.

Lionsgate Chloe Sherman (Kiera Allen, left) has a tense mother-daughter moment with mom Diane (Sarah Paulson).

He proves to be quite adept indeed. Large sections of the film have little to no dialogue, as Chloe comes to the realization she is a prisoner in the house she always assumed was home. The stuff of everyday life  doors and windows and the wheelchair stair lift  suddenly become barriers that will require all of Chloes smarts to get beyond.

Other films with similar stories  from Jessica Langes 1998 thriller Hush or Tallulah Bankhead in the tawdry 1965 shocker Die! Die! My Darling!  have veered into campy territory.

But this film is comparatively restrained, anchored by good, solid work from both Paulson and especially Allen, who manages to keep it real through what must have been an unnerving number of closeups.

Of course, since the film was shot in Manitoba, standing in for Washington State, eagle-eyed viewers will notice a few local actors, including Eric Athavale, Cory Wojcik, Onalee Ames and Bajer, who gets a decent laugh in the throwaway role of a pharmacist.

But its the atmosphere of the piece that truly impresses. As in the 2019 movie Fractured  another exploration of dubious parenting skills  the wintry Manitoba landscapes are beautifully bleak and remote, and oh, so horror-appropriate.

A Manitoban watching this movie will be able to relate to Chloes predicament, in which familiar surroundings are suddenly overlayed with existential menace.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing
Rolls-Royce is to supply twelve mtu Kinetic PowerPacks to King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (Kaust) in Saudi Arabia this summer.

The systems, equipped with dynamically rotating kinetic energy accumulators, will be used to provide the university's supercomputing facility and data center with clean, conditioned, uninterruptible power supplies, acting as the energy backbone.

"We are delighted that such a renowned university as King Abdullah University for Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia has chosen us as a partner placing their confidence in our solutions, our expertise and our many years of experience. The choice underlines our recently expanded expertise in the field of dynamic uninterruptible power supplies and is a major success," explains Andreas Schell, CEO of Rolls-Royce Power Systems.

"We've been in discussions with the customer since 2016. We were able to fulfil all of the customer's wishes and requirements and thus put together a complete solution, that includes a substantial local content" adds Bernard Hanssens, Managing Director of the subsidiary in Dubai.-- Tradearabia News Service
Click here to read the full article.

AMC Networks British programming-focused streamer Acorn TV has acquired exclusive SVOD and U.S. premiere rights to the new season of Midsomer Murders from distributor All3media International.

Acorn TV will premiere the first two feature-length episodes of season 22 from April 19 and will bow the remaining four episodes this fall after production concludes.

In Midsomer Murders, detective chief Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon) and detective sergeant Winter (Nick Hendrix) investigate homicides, blackmail, greed and betrayal in Englands most murderous county. The long-running series inspired by the novels of Caroline Graham began in 1997 on U.K. broadcaster ITV and has been a hit for Acorn TV, where the first 21 seasons are also available.

Midsomer Murders remains one of the most popular mystery series of all-time and is beloved by our subscribers, so Acorn TV is thrilled to exclusively offer new episodes on April 19, as soon as they are available, as well as four more mysteries later this year, said Matthew Graham, general manager of Acorn TV. Given the importance of this series to the mystery genre and British television lovers worldwide, we know fans have been anxiously awaiting the new season, so were excited to be the only place in the U.S. to watch all 22 seasons.

Acorn TVs 2021 programming includes commissioned original series like U.K. crime drama Whitstable Pearl, starring Kerry Godliman (After Life), U.K. detective drama Dalgleish starring Bertie Carvel (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell), the second season of Australia-set Miss Fisher spinoff Ms. Fishers Modern Murder Mysteries, New Zealand romantic comedy Under the Vines, as well as Northern Ireland crime thriller Bloodlands, starring James Nesbitt and co-executive produced by Jed Mercurio, and Australian detective series My Life Is Murder, starring Lucy Lawless.

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The owner of the Whyalla steel mill says it is close to sealing a refinancing deal with a new group of lenders that may quell a push by its major creditor Credit Suisse to place the business into liquidation.

Billionaire steel tycoon Sanjeev Guptas Australian steel and mining companies said in a statement on Wednesday that it was in advanced talks with new lenders and was hoping to strike a refinancing arrangement that would allow it to pay back its creditors.

Sanjeev Gupta is hoping to strike a new debt deal that would see his Australian steel business flush with cash. Credit:Nic Walker

Credit Suisses trustee Citigroup filed wind up applications against Mr Guptas Whyalla mill operator Onesteel Manufacturing and coking coal miner Tahmoor Coal in the NSW Supreme Court on Tuesday evening.

The action reveals that Credit Suisse has taken assignment of the debt owed by Mr Guptas Australian mining and steel companies to Greensill UK. Sources close to the parties in the refinancing discussions said any refinancing deal by Mr Gupta would cover the debt now held by Credit Suisse.
A new 1 million Home Bargains store in Magherafelt is set to open its doors this Saturday morning.

50 new jobs will be created at the store on Station Road in the town, while the company will also donate 2,000 to local charity Positive Futures, which helps people with a learning disability, acquired brain injury or autistic spectrum condition to live as independently as possible in their homes.

The charitys Chief Executive, Agnes Lunny, said: We are delighted to receive this generous donation from Home Bargains, which will make a real difference to peoples lives.

"Its so encouraging to see a business supporting people in the community right from the moment it opens its doors to the public.

"We look forward to building an even closer relationship with Home Bargains and its staff in Magherafelt and wish it every success.

The new Magherafelt store will join over 500 outlets across the UK, with the company currently opening around 50 stores per year.

Alan Black, the new Magherafelt store manager, said: Its a huge honour to be opening our new Magherafelt store this weekend and something that Im exceptionally proud of.

Having worked for Home Bargains for six years, working my way up from an in-store team member, this is certainly a special moment and one Ill cherish for the rest of my career.

The 14,650 sq ft store, which formally housed Forbes Furniture, will offer shoppers a range of products, including homewares, health and beauty essentials, sweets, snacks and drinks, as well as fresh and frozen food.

Alan added: Station Road will be a great location for us and were proud to be able to offer local people top-branded goods at exceptionally low prices.
Romania has very well succeeded in proving institutional capacity, community solidarity and the heroic devotion of its health workers, said WHO Regional Director for Europe Hans Kluge, as he participated on Wednesday in the event "Climate change, the human-nature relationship and public health" organized at the Cotroceni Presidential Palace on the occasion of the World Health Day, agerpres.ro confirms.

Romania is a positive example in the region, having taken comprehensive and timely measures to handle this unprecedented state of emergency. Despite the fact that this pandemic continues to raise problems, Romania has very well succeeded in proving its institutional capacity, community solidarity and the heroic dedication of its health workers. I am very happy that my native Belgium has acknowledged the merits of a Romanian doctor from Piatra Neamt, Catalin Denciu, declaring him the hero of the year 2020, said the WHO official.

At the end of 2020, doctor Catalin Denciu sustained serious burns while trying to save several patients from the fire that broke out at the ICU ward of the Piatra-Neamt County Emergency Hospital last November.

He was transferred to a hospital in Belgium for medical treatment. Another ICU doctor and two nurses were also slightly injured in the fire that also killed ten COVID-19 patients.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.  Dead fish have been washing ashore over the past few months, and New Jersey officials have offered an explanation.

Larry Hajna, a spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), said the department is investigating the deaths, but has preliminarily identified an undetermined species of bacteria as the cause.

The only fish species being impacted appears to be menhaden, an extremely abundant fish found in coastal areas harvested primarily for bait and non-food commercial purposes, Hajna said. There is nothing to suggest human health or other fish, shellfish or wildlife are at risk.

A spokeswoman for the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), which is also investigating the deaths, said they are working with their own sample analysis to confirm the New Jersey DEPs assessment.

Previously, a DEC spokeswoman said fish had tested negative for specific disease despite showing symptoms like irregular swimming patterns.

The DEP spokesman said Wednesday that more lab testing needs to be conducted to determine the exact species of bacteria, but that theyd determined it belongs to the Vibrio family, which is common in marine habitats.

Both entities have been investigating with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) to determine the cause of the deaths that were first noticed late last year.

The ASMFC is a regulatory body that coordinates fish conservation and management on the East Coast. It is compromised of three commissioners each from 15 states along the eastern seaboard.

Menhaden are both an important part of the food chain and are commercially harvested for their use in supplement products, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Larger fish and predatory birds eat the menhaden, and the fish are harvested for use as as fertilizers, animal feed and bait, as well as being a major source of omega-3 fatty acids for their use in human and animal supplements.

Multiple authorities have made efforts in recent years to stimulate and protect the Atlantic Menhaden population.

The New York legislature passed and Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill in 2019 that prohibited use of certain large, industrial fishing nets to take menhaden. That bill was sponsored by State Sen. Todd Kaminsky (D-Long Island) -- who is one of three ASMFC commissioners from New York -- in his legislative chamber.

In August, the ASMFC voted unanimously to link how many menhaden could be fished in a year to ecological reference points that take into consideration larger fish populations that feed on the smaller menhaden.

Multiple readers reached out to the Advance/SILive.com in later November and early December concerned about large numbers of dead fish washing up on Staten Islands shores.

DEC officials said in December that residents around the state had reported similar phenomenon, and that its not necessarily something to be concerned about.

Die-off events of menhaden are not unusual and there are various naturally occurring causes for these events. Fish, such as bunker, that swim in large schools are particularly vulnerable to low dissolved oxygen, certain environmental pressures, and pathogens, the DEC said in a statement.

Similar masses of dead fish washing up on Staten Islands shores have been reported in the past, including in 2017 when the DEC offered a similar explanation.

In a November report on our sister site, NJ.com, Hackensack Riverkeeper Bill Sheehan talked about the same phenomena in New Jersey.

While Sheehan said it is quite common, the report noted that the die-off events at the end of 2020 were unusual because most occur during warm weather, when things like algae bloom deplete oxygen from the water.

Sheehan said at the time that the Hackensack River was unusually warm because of a hot summer and warm fall.

Theres no one to blame for these sort of instances, he said. You can blame Mother Nature.

The DEC encourages the public to report incidents of fish die-off events by email to marinefisheries@dec.ny.gov.
[April 07, 2021] IVC Research Center and APM & Co. Latest Report, Most Active Israeli Funds of 2020

TEL AVIV, Israel, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In cooperation with the Israeli law firm APM & Co, IVC Research Center presents the 2020 Most Active Venture Capital Funds Annual Report, which analyzes the first investments activity in Israeli tech companies since 2014. Two Israeli VCs, Entree Capital, and F2 Venture Capital ranked 1st with 14 first investments. Insight Partners, American private equity and venture capital fund, ranked second with 13 first investments alongside Israeli Peregrine Ventures and 13 first investments in 2020. South Israel Bridge Fund (SIBF) ranked joint third with the American GoAhead Ventures VC fund, both with 11 first investments in 2020. Despite the urmoil caused by the global pandemic, the number of first investments in Israeli tech companies soared to a seven-year high. In 2020, IVC recorded 620 first investments, pointing to a comeback to growth compared to a decrease in 2019. In total, Israeli VCs' participation in first investments grew 65% in 2014-2020 compared to a 25% increase of the foreign VCs. The Israeli VC funds in 2020 number of first investments accounted for 45% of all first investments, almost the same as their 46% share in 2019. Furthermore, both foreign and Israeli VCs increased their first investment activity compared to 2019.



According to IVC's data, most of the first investments went to early rounds (Seed and A rounds) as expected. However, in 2020, there was a change in the rate of first investments in the early rounds compared to the last seven years. In the past year, the number of first investments in growth rounds (B and C) and the later rounds (D and Late Rounds) is in line with the overall investment trend in recent years: more investments were routed to later rounds, completing a climb of approximately 82% in 2014-2020. Most of the first investment trends align with investors' positive sentiment towards allocating more capital to later rounds. The number of first investments in later rounds has climbed by about 119% since 2014 and amounted to 10% of total initial investments in 2020, significantly higher compared to just 6% in 2014-2016. Marianna Shapira,

Research Manager

IVC Research Center

Marianna@ivc-online.com

View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ivc-research-center-and-apm--co-latest-report-most-active-israeli-funds-of-2020-301263915.html SOURCE IVC

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Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 20:02:26|Editor: huaxia

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HONG KONG, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread in Asia-Pacific countries as India registered over 100,000 new cases on Wednesday while the coronavirus tally in the Philippines is nearing 820,000.

A total of 115,736 new COVID-19 cases were registered in the past 24 hours in India, according to official data released by the federal health ministry.

The latest single-day spike, highest so far, took the total tally in the country to 12,801,785.

This is the second time within this week when more than 100,000 new COVID-19 cases were recorded in India. Earlier, 103,558 new cases were reported on Monday.

Besides, as many as 630 deaths took place due to the pandemic since Tuesday morning, taking the total death toll to 166,177, revealed the ministry's data.

The Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) reported 6,414 new COVID-19 infections, raising the total number of confirmed cases in the Southeast Asian country to 819,164.

The death toll climbed to 14,059 after 242 more patients died from the viral disease, the DOH said.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire reminded the public that the decrease in the number of cases must not be interpreted as a downward trend, saying there were testing laboratories that did not operate and submit data last week due to the holiday.

World Health Organization Regional Director for the Western Pacific Takeshi Kasai on Wednesday expressed concern about the surging COVID-19 cases in the Philippines, warning that the increasing trend "is moving towards the red line."

South Korea reported 668 more confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of midnight Tuesday compared to 24 hours ago, raising its total number of coronavirus infections to 106,898.

The daily caseload was up from 478 in the previous day, recording the highest in 48 days since Feb. 18.

Four more deaths were reported, bringing the death toll to 1,756. The total fatality rate stood at 1.64 percent.

Thailand reported 334 new COVID-19 cases amid a rise in cluster infections, the Center for the COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA) said.

Thailand's Transport Minister Saksayam Chidchob confirmed on Wednesday he has tested positive for the coronavirus and been admitted at a hospital in his home province of Buriram.

Thailand has so far confirmed a total of 29,905 cases of infection, of which 28,069 patients have fully recovered and been released from hospitals while 1,741 others are currently hospitalized and 95 fatalities have been reported.

Nepal started administering the COVID-19 vaccines donated by China amid resurging COVID-19 cases.

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, the Chinese vaccines are being administered from 23 hospitals located at seven districts including Kathmandu, most of them are in the country's capital and its adjacent areas.

Nepal reported 260 COVID-19 cases on Tuesday. The number of COVID-19 cases went down below 50 per day early in March. Enditem
Scott Distler: Finding a way out of 'the cave'
Wayne LaPierre, the embattled chief executive of the National Rifle Association, said on Wednesday that he had kept his organizations recent bankruptcy filing secret from almost all its senior officials, including its general counsel, chief financial officer and top lobbyist. He also did not inform most of the N.R.A.s board.

Mr. LaPierre made the comments after taking the stand, virtually, at a trial in federal bankruptcy court in Dallas. Though the N.R.A. is solvent, it filed for bankruptcy protection in January in an audacious bid to circumvent regulators in New York, where the N.R.A. has been chartered for a century and a half.

The states attorney general, Letitia James, had sued the association in August, trying to shut it down amid claims of mismanagement and corruption. She is also seeking tens of millions of dollars in misspent funds from Mr. LaPierre and three other current or former N.R.A. leaders.

The nonprofit organization has been enmeshed in scandal for the last two years, with revelations of lavish spending by the N.R.A. and its contractors  on Zegna suits and luxurious trips Mr. LaPierre took to places like Lake Como in Italy and the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas. Other benefits included chartered jets for him and his family and vacations on a contractors yachts, which were named Illusions and Grand Illusion.
Paul Tomasic Joins as Head of European Healthcare

Houlihan Lokey (NYSE:HLI), the global investment bank, announced today two key appointments with the expansion of its Healthcare Group into Europe. Paul Tomasic joins the firm as a Managing Director and Head of European Healthcare, with Andrew Murray-Lyon joining as a Director. Both will be based in London.

"We are extremely proud of the market-leading position that our US Healthcare team has achieved and excited to extend our sector knowledge, insights, and collaborative approach and best-in-class advice to healthcare clients across Europe," said Mark Francis, Global Head of the Healthcare Group at Houlihan Lokey. "Paul and Andrew are outstanding, highly respected advisors across the medtech, outsourcing and services, and life science sectors and share our commitment to delivering the highest quality outcomes for our clients. Partnering with our US team to deliver global insights and solutions, and with colleagues across our Financial Sponsors and Capital Markets groups and in our country offices, we believe they will be a trusted partner for clients in Europe."

Paul Tomasic joins the firm from RBC Capital Markets, where he spent seven years as Managing Director and Head of European Healthcare Investment Banking, advising both private equity and corporate clients on M&A advisory and capital raising requirements. Prior to this, he was a Managing Director at Citigroup, leading the firm's healthcare investment banking efforts in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. He began his investment banking career at UBS in 2000, covering healthcare companies in London and subsequently in New York. Mr. Tomasic holds an LLB from the London School of Economics and a BSc in Accounting and International Business from the NYU Stern School of Business.

Andrew Murray-Lyon also joins the firm from RBC Capital Markets, where he was a Director in the healthcare team, working with Mr. Tomasic for the past four years. Prior to this, he spent three years as a Vice President in Lazard's healthcare team after four years at Deutsche Bank and three years at Lehman Brothers (subsequently Nomura), also covering healthcare. He holds a BSc in Biological Sciences from the University of Edinburgh and an Executive MBA from Columbia Business School.

Also joining Houlihan Lokey's new Healthcare team are Federico Pavia Ghione, who joins the firm from Lincoln International as an Associate, and Owen Richards and Zofia Duffy, both of whom join from Grant Thornton as Financial Analysts.

"The continued growth of our European Corporate Finance business remains a priority for the firm, and adding sector coverage in areas where we see strong demand from our clients and where we believe we have a competitive advantage is a key part of the growth strategy. The wealth of expertise that Paul and Andrew bring to the firm, combined with the strength of our outstanding US Healthcare group, will be of huge benefit to our European clients," said Shaun Browne, Co-Head of European Corporate Finance at Houlihan Lokey.

Over the past six years, the firm has grown its European Corporate Finance business through a series of acquisitions and strategic hires. Houlihan Lokey now has more than 260 bankers in Europe, up from 80 in 2014.

"Given the strength of Houlihan Lokey's US Healthcare team and the unparalleled growth of the firm's European Corporate Finance business, I believe we have a tremendous opportunity to develop the leading mid-cap healthcare advisory team in Europe. The unique culture of the firm, the importance placed on teamwork, and the unerring focus on superior client outcomes are a few of the many factors that attracted me to the firm, and I look forward to contributing to the continued success of the firm," commented Mr. Tomasic.

Houlihan Lokey's Healthcare Group is among the largest of its kind in investment banking, with more than 50 financial professionals located in New York, Dallas, Chicago, San Francisco, Sydney and London. In 2020, the Healthcare Group was ranked as the No. 1 M&A advisor for U.S. healthcare transactions under $1 billion, based on data from Refinitiv.

About Houlihan Lokey

Houlihan Lokey (NYSE:HLI) is a global investment bank with expertise in mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, financial restructuring, and valuation. The firm serves corporations, institutions, and governments worldwide with offices in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific region. Independent advice and intellectual rigor are hallmarks of the firm's commitment to client success across its advisory services. Houlihan Lokey is the No. 1 M&A advisor for the past six consecutive years in the U.S., the No. 1 global restructuring advisor for the past seven consecutive years, and the No. 1 global M&A fairness opinion advisor over the past 20 years, all based on number of transactions and according to data provided by Refinitiv.

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Instigators of Hong Kong riots Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, Lee Cheuk-yan and Yeung Sum on Wednesday pleaded guilty to participating in an unauthorized assembly on Aug. 31, 2019.

The three defendants were arrested on Feb. 28, 2020.

Lai was also involved in multiple other cases including illegal assemblies and national security law violations.
New Delhi: Amid an unprecedented surge in the COVID-19 infections in the national capital, the government imposed a seven-hour night curfew from 10 pm to 5 am on Tuesday (April 6) with immediate effect.

What is an e-pass?

During the seven-hour window only essential services will be allowed. If any individual needs to travel during this time in Delhi, they will require an e-pass, which is a permission slip issued by the government from its official website.

Citizens can either carry a hard or soft copy of e-pass, which can be shown to the authorities at checkpoints during night curfew.

ALSO READ: How to get an e-pass for Delhi night curfew

Who needs an e-pass for travel during night curfew in Delhi?

As per the state governments orders, the vaccination centres in the national capital will be open 24 hours. Individuals traveling to get their vaccination jab during the curfew timings will require a documentation proof.

People travelling for essential services will be exempted from the restrictions but carrying an e-pass for travelling between 10 pm-5 am is mandatory.

Similarly, Journalists and media people will be required to carry an e-pass with them if they are working during night curfew hours.

ALSO READ: Delhi wears a deserted look as govt imposes night curfew to check COVID-19 surge - In pictures

The order came on the same day when Delhi reported 3,548 new COVID-19 cases, pushing the total tally to 6,79,962, as per the Delhi governments health bulletin.

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Protesters gathered in the Uptown area of Minneapolis on the night of June 3-4, after US Marshals said a murder suspect was shot and killed by law enforcement officers.According to The Star Tribune, the shooting was at the top of a parking lot on West Lake Street and South Fremont Avenue. Citing the Marshals Service, the paper said a number of agencies were involved in the operation, including officers from the Hennepin, Anoka and Ramsey County sheriffs offices and the Department of Homeland Security.Footage captured by Rebecca Brannon shows the police presence as protesters gathered, and fires burning at the intersection of Girard Avenue South and West Lake Street in Uptown. Credit: Rebecca Brannon via Storyful
New Delhi, April 7 : Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan on Wednesday held the Maharashtra government responsible for the current outbreak of Coronavirus across the country. He said the state government's lax attitude led to escalation of cases at a massive rate.

In a statement, the minister said, "Throughout the last year, as the Health Minister of India, I have been a witness to the misgovernance and utter casual approach of the Maharashtra government in battling the virus. The lackadaisical attitude of the state government has singularly bogged down the entire country's efforts to fight the virus." He further said that deplorable attempts made by some state governments to distract attention from their failures and spread panic among the people.

The Union Health Minister said, "In recent days, I have seen with growing dismay a number of irresponsible statements from some State government functionaries in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. As these statements have the potential to mislead the public and spread panic, it has become necessary to put the record straight." According to Harsh Vardhan, at a time when the country is witnessing a fresh wave of Covid infections, many State governments have failed to take appropriate response measures and apply the lessons that the nation has learned over the past one year of handling this pandemic.

Referring to the demand to open up vaccination to everyone above the age of 18, or to drastically lower the minimum age criteria for vaccination eligibility, he said, "The Government of India has been frequently and transparently updating all the state governments about the demand-supply dynamics and the resultant vaccination strategy that has been adopted." He further stated that in fact, the vaccination strategy has been drawn up after extensive deliberations and consultations in partnership with all State governments.He pointed out that the primary aim of vaccination is to reduce mortality among the most vulnerable people, and enable the society to beat the pandemic.

The Union Health Minister said that as the supply of vaccines remains limited, there is no option but to prioritize, an established practice around the world, and is well known to all State governments.

"Maharashtra has vaccinated just 86 per cent of health workers with the first dose. The equivalent numbers for Delhi and Punjab are 72 per cent and 64 percent. On the other hand, 10 Indian states/UTs have done more than 90 per cent," he said.

He further said: "Maharashtra has vaccinated just 41per percent of health care workers with a second dose. Equivalent numbers for Delhi and Punjab are 41 per cent and 27 per cent. There are 12 Indian states/UTs that have done more than 60 per cent." Harsh Vardhan further pointed out that among frontline workers, Maharashtra has vaccinated only 73 per cent with the first dose. Equivalent numbers for Delhi and Punjab are 71 per cent and 65 per cent. There are five Indian states/UTs that have already done more than 85 per cent.

"Vaccination of frontline workers with a second dose for Maharashtra is at A41per cent. For Delhi and Punjab, these numbers are 22 per cent and 20 per cent. There are six Indian states/UTs that have done more than 45 per cent," he said.

Vardhan further said: "These states are trying to divert attention from their poor vaccination efforts by just continuously shifting the goal-posts? Politicizing such a public health issue is a damning indictment of certain political leaders who should know better." Pointing towards comment from public representatives in Maharashtra about shortage of vaccines, the minister said, "This is nothing but an attempt to divert attention from Maharashtra government's repeated failures to control the spread of pandemic. The inability of the Maharashtra government to act responsibly is beyond comprehension. To spread panic among the people is to compound the folly further." The Minister clarified that vaccine supplies are being monitored on a real-time basis, and State governments are being apprised regularly about it. Allegations of vaccine shortage are baseless.

"We, in the central government, have regularly counselled the Maharashtra state government, made them available all resources and sent central teams for help. However, the lack of effort on the part of the state government is now clearly visible and comes to haunt us all," he said.

The Minister pointed out that today, Maharashtra not only has the highest cases and deaths in the country but also has one of the highest test positivity rates in the world! Their testing is not up to the mark and their contact tracing leaves a lot to be desired.

"The performance of Maharashtra government in terms of vaccinating health care workers and frontline workers is also not great. It is shocking to see how the state Government is putting Maharashtrians in danger by letting people escape institutional quarantine mandates for the sake of their personal Vasuli. Overall, as the state has lurched from one crisis to another, it seems as if the state leadership is happily sleeping at the wheels," he said.

Offering Union government assistance, he said that the Maharashtra Government needs to do a lot more to control the pandemic and the Central Government will help them in all possible ways.

"But focusing all their energies on playing politics and spreading lies to create panic is not going to help the people of Maharashtra," he said.
Orange County DA Says Hes Mulling Death Penalty for Suspected Shooter

The chief suspect in a mass Orange, California, shooting could face the death penalty if convicted, and Orange Countys district attorney said hes pursuing the option.

With respect to the situation in Orange, Im the only person in this county that makes the ultimate decision about whether were going to charge somebody with death, Todd Spitzer said during an April 6 virtual town hall. That is an immense responsibility, and Im required under the law, and morally, to look at the entire situation.

On March 31 about 5:30 p.m., a man locked the gates leading to an office building at 202 W. Lincoln Avenue in Orange before opening fire inside a Unified Homes office, police said.

He was later shot by police and transported to the hospital in critical but stable condition.

Four people were killed, including 28-year-old Jenevieve Raygoza, her 50-year-old father, Luis Tovar, 9-year-old Matthew Farias, and Leticia Solis.

Blanca Tamayo, the mother of Jenevieve and Matthew, survived the shooting.

Aminadab Gaxiola Gonzalez was charged April 2 with four felony counts of murder, one felony count of attempted murder, and two felony counts of attempted murder of a police officer.

Deciding the suspected shooters fate if convicted is a big responsibility, Spitzer said, adding he and his team will be looking through all the facts of the case before making a decision.

Im going to be looking at the criminal history of the shooter, Spitzer said. What was the motive with respect to his conduct? How many people did he kill? This was a multiple homicide event. Four people were killed. Three he tried to kill, one is in the hospital and she had to undergo serious surgery. She was the one that was trying to protect her child. Her child succumbed to the injuries, 9 years old, and that pulls at my heartstrings in a very different way as a dad whos had two kids.

Spitzer said he often meets with victims or their families to also hear what punishment they seek.

While there is currently a moratorium on the death penalty in California from Gov. Newsom, it only lasts as long as he is in office, and many cases can take 25 years to fully prosecute.

Mental Health

During the virtual town hall meeting, state Assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva addressed how to best work with mentally ill people in the county.

Orange County has been forced  to really confront and examine what we have been doing as far as our policies from the local level, from the county level, even within schools to address our homeless population, Quirk-Silva said. Weve seen a huge growth in the last decade in homelessness.

Spitzer, the countys top prosecutor, said police dont always need to be the first to respond to reports of someone dealing with a mental health crisis. He referenced Anaheims dual 911 dispatch program, which defers mental health calls to a special line managed by trained mental health professionals.

We know when the police come and somebody is in crisis, it often escalates the situation and results in officer-involved shootings, and many times people who just needed mental health intervention end up seriously injured or dying, he said.

Spitzer said he feels for the families who have mentally ill members, as he has a cousin who has schizophrenia.

I really understand firsthand what mental illness can do to a family and a community, and we cannot lock people up because theyre mentally ill, but we also dont have the proper places or the right kind of treatment and interventions to deal with that, he said.

The district attorneys office is developing a mental health division.
SINGAPORE, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Flash Coffee, a tech-enabled coffee chain backed by Rocket Internet announced that it has raised US$15 million in Series A funding in a round led by White Star Capital, with participation from prominent investors including Delivery Hero-backed DX Ventures, Global Founders Capital, and Conny & Co. The Series A round sets the total capital raised by Flash Coffee to US$20 million. The new funding will be used to expand the brand in 10 markets across APAC.

Flash Coffee launched in January 2020, and now operates 50 locations across Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia. Flash Coffee has enjoyed strong traction in its markets despite the pandemic; with the majority of its stores already achieving profitability and demonstrating the success of its business model.

Currently Flash Coffee is opening three new outlets per week, an already ambitious pace that will be tripled to 10 store launches per week in order to open 300 additional stores across the region by end of this year.

CEO David Brunier and COO & CFO Sebastian Hannecker co-founded the company to make premium coffee accessible to Asia's rising middle class. Brunier's experience as foodpanda CMO and Hannecker's Bain Consulting pedigree have informed Flash Coffee's disruptive grab-and-go business model, allowing for significant cost savings to be passed on to customers.

"Our dream is to have a Flash Coffee every 500 metres in all major Asian cities", says Brunier. "Strong investor support for our Series A round enables us to harness untapped potential in the region and replicate our success in seven new markets this year: Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. We will also build a regional HQ in Singapore and expand our regional tech hub in Jakarta to 50 people to support our vision of fully leveraging technology to improve customer experience, proactively drive growth and significantly increase operational efficiency."

Eric Martineau-Fortin, Founder & Managing Partner at White Star Capital, says, "We are pleased to support Flash Coffee in bringing its experience to millions of consumers across Asia. We believe that the brand's tech- enabled approach will drive its ability to provide high quality coffee and service at excellent value to address an underserved demand for affordable premium coffee in these rapidly expanding Asian markets."

Brendon Blacker, Partner at DX Ventures, says, "DX Ventures is very excited to support Flash Coffee in its Series A round and significantly increase our investment in the company. We see enormous potential for the business to attract a loyal customer following for its premium quality and highly innovative coffee menu. We look forward to supporting Flash Coffee with its rapid regional expansion plans."

The company aims to digitise today's offline-dominated coffee industry with a newly launched consumer app that boasts a streamlined pick-up feature, sophisticated loyalty programme, personalised promotions and interactive challenges. Its dedicated barista app improves the operational efficiency of its stores and enables performance-based incentives for its baristas, ensuring an unparalleled customer experience.

High resolution images downloadable here. Credited to Flash Coffee.

About Flash Coffee

Flash Coffee is a Singapore-based tech-enabled coffee chain that serves an award-winning menu of high-quality drinks at affordable prices. Customers can use the Flash Coffee app to order and pay online, choosing to pick up orders from one of the brand's iconic yellow storefronts, or order for delivery through major platforms in each market.

Flash Coffee's unique coffee menu curated by World Latte Art Champion Arnon Thitiprasert sets it apart from conventional cafes and quick service brands. All drinks are prepared with premium ingredients and 100% Arabica coffee beans. Highly addictive signature drinks include Avo Latte, Nutella Latte and Lychee Espresso Soda, to name a few.

About White Star Capital

White Star Capital is a global multi-stage technology investment platform that invests in exceptional entrepreneurs building ambitious, international businesses. Operating out of Guernsey, New York, London, Paris, Montreal, Toronto, Tokyo and Hong Kong, our presence, perspective, and people enable us to partner closely with our Founders to help them scale internationally from Series A onwards.

Media Contact: Flash Coffee, [email protected]

SOURCE White Star Capital
Gaza, April 7 : A high-ranking Egyptian security delegation arrived in the Gaza Strip to hold talks with the leaders of the Islamic Hamas movement, Palestinian sources said.

The delegation members on Tuesday crossed into the besieged Gaza Strip through the Erez crossing between the coastal enclave and Israel, Xinhua news agency quoted the sources as saying.

The sources declined to reveal more details on the purpose of the sudden visit, saying that the schedule was unclear.

Major General Ahmed Abdel Khaleq, chief of the Palestinian affairs in the Egyptian General Intelligence Service, heads the delegation, according to the sources.

Hamas has been ruling the Gaza Strip since 2007, when it seized control of the territory and ousted the security forces of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The visit of the Egyptian delegation, the first since December 2020, took place as preparations were on for the May 22 legislative elections in the Palestinian territories.

Egypt sponsored two rounds of intra-Palestinian national dialogue in Cairo in February and March on holding the polls.

Besides the legislative polls, the presidential elections will take place on July 31, while the elections of the Palestinian National Council, the highest decision-making body of the Palestine Liberation Organization, is slated for August 31.

The last Palestinian presidential elections were held in March 2005, and the legislative polls in January 2006.
SAN DIEGO, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- An influencer in the cannabis industry and within the health, wellness and fitness sector, Golden States Greens knew early on that its brand would be an inclusive one that valued patient loyalty.

With the accountability of that mindset in place, the Cannabis You Can Trust brand built its image with the goal of creating an exceptional customer experience.

San Diego's best dispensary

This is the representation you have today.

"At Golden State Greens, we have a Nordstrom's approach to the industry," said Owner/Operator Adam Knopf. "We want to be recognized as being the best, so we make sure we're offering the best products and aligning ourselves with the best brands."

That alignment comes in the form of its budtenders, products and many local partnerships, which have connected its consumers with music, friends, celebrities and an overall better quality of life, over the years.

Before the pandemic hit, the retail dispensary was heavily involved in community events, which have since taken a back seat to the global health crisis.

"We're a community-based dispensary, and with COVID, it's been hard to have community events like we're used to," Knopf said.

But Golden State Greens has plans this year to continue some of its traditions as more restrictions are lifted throughout the state and county.

"This past year, a lot of people have been pent up and cooped up, and we want to do what we can to bring everyone together," said Chief Marketing Officer Alex Leon.

Since the beginning of the global health crisis, Golden State Greens complied with all laws and operated in the safest manner possible while still providing excellent customer service.

"We're trying to expand our business to provide better, more effective service to our customers while remaining safe," Leon said. "As business owners, we're in the throes of change with this pandemic."

Currently, the Golden State Greens storefront on Hancock Street in Point Loma is gearing up to reenergize the community with beach clean-ups and an annual surfboard drive this summer.

In the past, Golden State Greens has involved itself in the community by contributing during the holiday season to the Ronald McDonald House Charities, matching whatever is raised. It also advocates for the homeless and partners with local businesses for the greater good.

Despite any hardships experienced, Golden State Greens stands as an example of a business constantly working to improve itself and maintain the integrity of its brand.

"It's super important for us to stay community-driven," Leon said. "As part of that mindset, we're always trying to evolve."

The Golden States Greens dispensary specializes in the best medical and recreational marijuana, CBD and weed delivery in San Diego's Midway District.

Golden State Greens' storefront is centrally located near the airport, along with several nearby beaches. Check out their social media for upcoming community-focused festivities on 4/20.

For more information, call (619) 268-8035 or visit their website at Golden State Greens.

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Golden State Greens

San Diego's best dispensary

SOURCE Golden State Greens

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The presence of Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh is becoming a key factor for stability and security in the region. This is what Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan said during his meeting with President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin in Moscow, adding that he hopes to consider the architecture of the security system in Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia and the region in general.

Today we will discuss certain nuances of the Russian-Armenian grouping of the joint forces. We also have a unified air defense system in the region, and I hope to specify certain nuances. Once again, I would like to mention your personal contribution to stabilization of the situation in the region, especially after the war and the signing of the trilateral statement (on Nagorno-Karabakh-ed.). However, in this context, there is a very important issue that remains unsolved, and that is the issue of prisoners of war, hostages and other persons being kept. Based on the statement signed on November 9, 2020, all prisoners of war, hostages and other persons being kept must be returned to Armenia, but unfortunately, there are still Armenians being kept in Azerbaijan. I am very glad that we dont have disagreements over this. It is very important to discuss our views on the solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh issue since the issue remains unsolved. I would also like to discuss economic cooperation, particularly strategic investments. In this context, today I would like to consideration the opportunity of building a new nuclear power plant in Armenia, Pashinyann said.
Jordans king has addressed the public feud with his half-brother, Prince Hamzah, portraying it as an attempted sedition that caused him shock, anger and pain.

Wednesdays statement, carried by Jordan TV, marked the first time King Abdullah II addressed the unprecedented rift in the royal family which erupted over the weekend.

I speak to you today as my family and tribesmen  to reassure you that the sedition has been buried, the statement said.

Expand Close King Abdullah II laughs with his half brother Prince Hamzah, right, in a picture taken in 2001 (Yousef Allan/AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp King Abdullah II laughs with his half brother Prince Hamzah, right, in a picture taken in 2001 (Yousef Allan/AP)

The challenge of the last few days was not the hardest or the most dangerous to the stability of our nation, but it was the most painful because those who are party to the sedition were from our own home and from outside it, he said.

Nothing can come close to the shock and the pain and anger I felt, as a brother, and head of the Hashemite family and as a leader to this dear people.

He said Prince Hamzah, who has not been seen or heard from in days, was with his family at his palace, under my care.

There is no sign that authorities have released up to 18 other detainees, including members of one of the powerful tribes on which the monarchy has historically relied.

Authorities have meanwhile imposed a sweeping gag order on any coverage of the royal dispute in a sign of how sensitive they are to how it is being perceived.

Jordan was already grappling with an economic crisis exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, with one in four people out of work. Long-standing complaints about corruption and misrule have fuelled scattered protests in recent months.

Expand Close Jordans Prince Hamzah with his mother Queen Noor (Hussein Malla/AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Jordans Prince Hamzah with his mother Queen Noor (Hussein Malla/AP)

The regions strategic landscape is shifting as powerful Gulf states pursue closer ties with Israel, potentially undermining Jordans role in the Middle East peace process.

The dispute with Prince Hamzah shows that the kingdom can no longer use its international standing as a mediator in regional conflicts and bulwark of security for the West without addressing growing economic and political challenges at home, said Tuqa Nusairat, an expert at the Atlantic Council.

Jordanians have been consistently expressing concerns over the direction of the country, including publicly protesting, she added.

The crisis in the royal family erupted on Saturday when Jordans military chief of staff visited Prince Hamzah and warned him to stop attending meetings with critics of the government.

Things quickly escalated, with Hamzah accusing the security establishment of threatening him and ordering the general to leave his home.

Authorities placed the former crown prince under a form of house arrest and detained 18 people, including former senior officials.

On Sunday, the government said Hamzah and others were involved in a malicious plot against the kingdoms security with foreign support.

Abdullah and Hamzah are both sons of King Hussein, who ruled Jordan for nearly half a century before his death in 1999. Abdullah had appointed Hamzah as crown prince upon his succession but stripped him of the title in 2004.
By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors on Tuesday said Ghislaine Maxwell is "fully vaccinated" against COVID-19 and in good physical health, as Jeffrey Epstein's former associate and girlfriend prepares for trial on charges she helped enable his sexual abuse of girls.

In a letter to U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan in Manhattan, prosecutors disputed claims that the 59-year-old British socialite has suffered from hair and weight loss while been subjected to restrictive conditions and invasive searches at the Brooklyn jail that has housed her since last July.

Prosecutors said staff at the Metropolitan Detention Center have not detected "noticeable hair loss," that the 5-foot-7 (170 cm) Maxwell weighed 137.5 pounds (62 kg) last week, and that her lowest recorded weight of 133 pounds (60 kg) was normal.

"In short, MDC medical staff assess that the defendant is physically healthy," the letter from U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss and other prosecutors said. It did not say when Maxwell was vaccinated.

Lawyers for Maxwell did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

One of the lawyers, Bobbi Sternheim, had written on March 31 that Maxwell's detention was having a "deleterious effect on her health and well-being," raising concern whether she would be "strong enough to withstand the stress of trial."

Prosecutors said Maxwell is subjected to regular searches like other inmates at the Brooklyn jail, and has up to 91 hours a week to review materials for trial, more than any inmate.

Maxwell has pleaded not guilty to helping Epstein recruit, groom and sexually abuse three girls from 1994 to 1997.

She is awaiting arraignment on a March 29 indictment accusing her of sex trafficking of a fourth girl on Epstein's behalf from 2001 to 2004.

A trial is scheduled for July 12. Maxwell's lawyers have been considering whether to seek a delay.

Epstein, a financier, killed himself at age 66 in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trail on sex trafficking charges.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Stephen Coates)
Family and friends of a missing US soldier who was brought up in Longford will gather in a park in El Paso Texas this weekend to release red balloons in a bid to raise awareness of their plight.

Private Richard Halliday (21), who is originally from Drumroe in Ardagh, disappeared from the barracks in Fort Bliss where he served in the US Army. The last time he spoke to his mother was on July 23, 2020.

It was only after 36 days, when his parents hadnt heard from him, that Rob, his father, called the unit and was told his son had gone AWOL and was by that time regarded as a deserter.

When Richards parents discovered that his unit wasnt even searching for him they decided to go to El Paso to get more information.

We were told our son was no longer there, that he was a deserter, Richards mother Patricia said.

By then, it was day 36. So much time had passed. So much time wasted.

At a press conference held by the US Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID) in February, officials said they still had no answers in the disappearance of the Fort Bliss Army private, despite more than 500 man hours devoted to search efforts.

We still dont know what happened and we still dont have our son, Patricia said at the time. All I know is you just cant disappear from the barracks without someone knowing. Someone knows something and all we want is for them to come forward.

Patricia and Robert adopted Richard from Poland when he was just five years old. They were stationed in Germany until Robert retired from the military. But the family continued to live abroad in Germany and in Ireland for most of Richards life.

They bought a cottage at Drumroe and were very involved in the Ardagh and Longford community where they lived for over ten years, through the church, girl guides and karate.

When Richard, the youngest of the four children, completed his Leaving Cert, he decided to visit his oldest sister, Hannah, who was by now married and living in Seoul, South Korea.

It is from there that he decided to join the US Army as a volunteer.

Being the son and grandson of military veterans, Richard was determined to join the Army and pay his way through college.

But six months before he disappeared, Richard began to talk about wanting to get out of the Army and said that he was having issues with army leadership.

The first 14 months, he did really well, Patricia said. But then something happened and he seemed different. But he didnt want to confide in us. We encouraged him to finish.

After Richards disappearance, officials followed multiple tips and leads, but none led them to Richard. There was no indication of foul play or any specific suspicious circumstances surrounding his disappearance after CID officials conducted an in-depth forensic search of his barracks room.

Richards family has created their own tip hotline and the Facebook page Find Richard Halliday in the hope of collecting information that could lead to their son. Patricia goes live on the page nearly every day with updates about Richards case or to make a plea for any new tips.

We just want to find our son, Patricia pleaded. Any bit of information might be what finally leads us to him.

As part of their campaign they will be releasing red balloons on Saturday.

Richard's favorite color is red, his mother writes. We hope to color the sky red as a Red Alert, and to not only raise awareness for our First US Army officially designated missing soldier, but also to shine the light of awareness on all missing loved ones.
Australian businesses want to send a high-level trade mission to China as soon as possible despite political tensions between the two nations as part of a plan to boost the nations exports by $110 billion by 2030.

In a blueprint devised by the Business Council and the Asia Society to strengthen Australias economic links to the region, local businesses would also tap the Asian diaspora and international student network to target nations including Indonesia, India and Vietnam as part of a plan to diversify and strengthen the economy.

China last year imposed more than $20 billion in tariffs on Australian exports, including wine, as the relationship between the nations deteriorated. Credit:AP

But in recognition of concerns about China and national security, the same plan encourages Australian businesses to work more closely with spy agencies about potential risks while carrying out special training to protect their own operations.

Australias diplomatic relationship with China has been strained for several years and is now affecting trade between the two nations.
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MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Congressional Medal of Honor Society regretfully announces that Charles H. Coolidge, Medal of Honor recipient, passed away Tuesday, April 6, 2021, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, at the age of 99.

In October 1944, Coolidge was a Technical Sergeant assigned to 2d Platoon, Company M, 3d Battalion, 141st Infantry Regiment, 36th Infantry Division, U.S. Army. His heavy machine gun unit was detailed to a dense wood east of Belmont-sur-Buttant, France, to cover the right flank of their battalion.

A large force of German Infantry was discovered near to their position and pressed an attack on Coolidge's unit. As there was no officer present, he assumed command. For three cold and rain-soaked days, Coolidge exposed himself to enemy fire as he went through the ranks, inspiring and supporting his men, many of whom had not seen combat before. His able leadership enabled his combat group to repulse repeated attacks by the enemy.

On the fourth day, a renewed enemy attack included heavy and light arms, supported by two tanks. Coolidge moved close enough to the tanks that the tank commander was able to call out for Coolidge's surrender. He responded, "Sorry, Mac, you'll have to come and get me," and then took aim with a bazooka, which failed to function. Coolidge then used hand grenades to inflict heavy casualties on the infantry troops surrounding the tanks. When it became apparent that their position was being overrun, Coolidge oversaw an orderly retreat and ensured he was the last to leave the position.

For his actions on those four days, Coolidge was awarded the Medal of Honor in a ceremony near Ulm, Germany, on June 18, 1945.

Coolidge was born in Signal Mountain, Tennessee, on August 4, 1921, and attended Chattanooga High School in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Following his Army service, Coolidge returned to Tennessee and worked for the Veterans Administration before taking up the family business, Chattanooga Printing and Engraving.

Although Multiple Sclerosis, a disease of the central nervous system, limited his movement in his later years, he remained committed to spreading the values of patriotism, integrity, and courage. He was the inspiration behind the establishment of the Charles H. Coolidge National Medal of Honor Heritage Center in Chattanooga.

He is survived by three sons and numerous other family. Burial arrangements are pending at this time.

There are 68 recipients alive today.

About the Congressional Medal of Honor Society

The Congressional Medal of Honor Society was chartered by Congress in 1958 and consists exclusively of the living recipients of our nation's highest award for bravery in combat, the Medal of Honor. The Society is a 501(c)3 organization dedicated to preserving the legacy of the Medal of Honor and its Recipients, inspiring America's youth and its Veterans, and supporting the Recipients as they connect with communities across the country. Those who wear this light blue ribbon and Medal around their neck are "recipients" of this prestigious award; they are not "winners." Although it is common to refer to the Medal as the Congressional Medal of Honor, it is simply named the Medal of Honor, although, as stated, the Congress did establish the Society as the Congressional Medal of Honor Society. Please visit us at www.cmohs.org.

Contact: John Falkenbury

704-904-0108

[email protected]

SOURCE Congressional Medal of Honor Society
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ENEVA  Big pharmaceutical companies have not come out of COVID-19 looking like model global citizens. Pfizer has been accused of bullying South American governments after demanding they put up military bases as collateral in exchange for vaccines. Meanwhile, Bill Gates persuaded Oxford University to sign an exclusive deal with AstraZeneca for its new offering, rather than allow it to be copied freely by all. The British/Swedish multinational quickly announced it would fall 50 million vaccines short on its first shipment to the European Union.

But what if there were a looming health crisis that could make COVID look almost minor in comparison? The World Health Organization (WHO) has been warning of just such a case for some time now, predicting that antimicrobial resistance will kill up to 10 million people every year by 2050  almost four times as many as the coronavirus has killed in the past 12 months.

Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats to global health, food security, and development today, they write, noting that without effective antibiotics all manner of conditions  including pneumonia, tuberculosis, gonorrhea, and salmonellosis  could become far more deadly. Drug companies are making this situation worse by encouraging the overuse of our precious stores of antibiotics, particularly in the Global South and also by refusing to invest enough resources into creating new ones.

Global overuse

The more antibiotics are used, the more resistant bacteria become to them, meaning that humanity must guard its reserves and slow down the pathogens adaptive evolution by using them only when necessary. Between 2000 and 2015, antibiotic consumption decreased by 4% in rich nations but increased by 77% in developing ones, and their overuse has become rampant across the world. The poorer enforcement of medical laws in these countries leads manufacturers to adopt unethical marketing approaches and develop creative ways to incentivize prescribing among healthcare providers, in the words of Dr. Giorgia Sulis, an infectious disease physician and epidemiologist at McGill University, Quebec.

As Sulis explained to MintPress:

India is perhaps the best example in this regard, due to its large pharmaceutical market and the predominant role of the private sector in healthcare delivery. A private sector that is highly fragmented and largely unregulated, where a substantial proportion of providers lack any sort of formal medical training, is extremely vulnerable to [these kinds] of bad business strategies.

Superbugs already kill an estimated 58,000 babies inside the country each year.

While India does have a national healthcare system, it is chronically understaffed and underequipped, leaving most of the population to rely on one of the millions of informal providers  health workers who have no official qualifications. Informal providers vastly outnumber trained professionals.

There is a very haphazardly integrated type of medicine, which is practiced all over India. We have a professionalized modern healthcare system with regulations. But it is a system that is limited in its size and scope, explained the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicines Meenakshi Gautham, an expert on antibiotic use in South Asia. Informal providers or para-health workers are the ones who continue to meet the healthcare needs of millions of people who dont have access to the formal health system.

These informal providers are a goldmine of profits for big pharma. A 2019 study by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that a host of drug companies ply them with cash incentives, gift cards, medical equipment, vacations, televisions, free samples, and discounts on bulk purchases  all of which were intended to increase antibiotic use, thereby risking overprescription. Some salesmen admitted to undercover reporters that they knew the drugs were being misused, but that they were motivated purely by profit. They also revealed that they would promote drugs to informal providers based on their profitability, not their efficacy.

These informal workers are commonly written off derisively as quacks who give out treatments mindlessly. While Dr. Gauthams work found that they often do have major holes in their medical understanding, she defended them as a vital part of a healthcare system under which seeing a qualified doctor is beyond the financial means of millions. You might assume that they are illiterate and they are quacks and they do not know what they are doing but that is not true. What we found was that about 30% may even be graduates or postgraduates, she said, adding that most had worked as doctors assistants and continued to be mentored by them.

Informal practitioners are usually respected and important members of their communities and, when in doubt, often consult qualified doctors on the best course of action. Dr. Gauthams study also found that they did not prescribe any reserve antibiotics  powerful medications considered a last resort and therefore used in hospitals as sparingly as possible.

Unfortunately, informal practitioners routinely prescribe less than full courses of antibiotics, despite the fact that this is a huge driver of resistance. This is not done out of ignorance, but rather because India is such an unequal society that poor patients simply cannot afford long courses of antibiotics. Packages are customized based on patients paying capacity. If the patient cannot afford a full course, then they will be given two or three days of antibiotics  or even less, Dr. Gautham noted. The effect of this is that bacterial infections become stronger and more resistant to treatment with antibiotics. And bacteria do not respect borders. Consequently, the extreme inequality in much of the Global South is a direct threat to human survival elsewhere.

Thus, any top down approach simply banning informal practitioners from handing out antibiotics would surely do more harm than good, given the huge shortage of qualified doctors. Furthermore, Dr. Suliss study found that qualified practitioners were actually more likely to prescribe antibiotics than the so-called quacks. This could be because licensed professionals are subject to exactly the same incentives and financial rewards that their unlicensed peers are under  a system that also prevails across the United States.

In 2019, ProPublica found more than 700 American doctors who had received more than $1 million each from drug and medical device companies. It is commonplace for U.S. doctors to receive financial and other rewards for prescribing certain drugs, a system that undermines their neutrality. Across the world, big pharma wines and dines medical professionals in expensive resorts, claiming these events are educational conferences. But the line between informative events and expense-paid vacations is not always easy to distinguish.

Making a big problem bigger

A second way in which giant pharmaceutical corporations are aiding the spread of resistance is their refusal to devote the necessary resources towards replenishing stores of new antibiotics. Investment in the area has rapidly dwindled. The big problem is that we do not have any novel antibiotics in the pipeline that we can expect to see in the near future So we really have to protect those that we do have, Dr. Gautham told MintPress.

And while the Global South overprescribes antibiotics, in the West farm animals are pumped full of them, farmers even giving them to healthy animals so they can be packed tighter in ever-increasing herd sizes. The WHO notes that in many countries, 80% of medically important antibiotic consumption goes to farm animals and has strongly recommended a wholesale reduction of the practice.

Antibiotics used in farms spill over into the surrounding environment through run-off and waste, creating resistance to drugs and endangering human health. Unfortunately, the for-profit corporate agriculture sector has little regard for the consequences. As one paper in the British Journal of General Practice noted,

In animals and fish, antibiotics are used as a substitute for good hygiene, with little understanding of how this might impact on antimicrobial resistance in humans. As a society we must urgently reconsider how we use antimicrobials to preserve this valuable resource for future generations.

The hyper-exploitation of animals is also leading to dangerous outbreaks of zoonotic (animal to human) diseases.

Ultimately, the problem of antibiotic overprescription is structural in nature, and there is little end to it in sight. As Dr. Sulis told MintPress: The industry has no interest at all in raising awareness on the importance of using antibiotics wisely and the potential implications of inappropriate use, including overprescription, although she noted that it was difficult to accurately weigh up the proportion of blame they deserved and to disentangle their role from other key drivers of the crisis.

Nothing to see here, just a looming disaster

The negative effects of this looming scenario are profound. Since the adoption of penicillin in the 1940s, the widespread use of antibiotics is estimated to have extended average life expectancy by 20 years. Dr. Gautham noted that as antibiotic overuse keeps increasing, then all those antibiotics that we have today will slowly become ineffective against even the most common infections.

Thus the conditions of the past will become the maladies of the future. Cancer treatments such as chemotherapy, cesarean sections, and other common surgeries will be in major jeopardy, as they require antibiotics to prevent any post-surgical and opportunistic infections. Healthcare costs will spike as conditions that were treatable in a few days will draw on for weeks, and some cases may not be recoverable. As Dr. Sulis warned:

The consequences ultimately affect everyone on the planet. We are already facing a dramatic increase in incidence of multi-drug- and extremely drug-resistant infections, but we are running out of effective therapeutic options. This scenario is bound to get worse over the next few years and, in the absence of countermeasures, it will have an impact on healthcare as a whole, not to mention the economic losses.

For such a profound problem, which threatens the very foundation of modern medicine, the story is receiving barely any attention in the media. Indeed, so uninterested is the press in pharmaceutical profiteering accelerating superbugs that media-literacy group Project Censored chose it as one of their top 25 most censored stories of 2019-2020. The only substantial corporate reporting on the unethical sale of antibiotics, their research showed, was a single 2016 investigation by The New York Times.

Unlike with COVID, there is still time to prevent mass suffering. And yet this systemic problem appears to be getting worse, not better, as we move closer towards it. If the past year has taught humanity anything, it is that bugs do not respect borders and increased global planning and cooperation are vital to meet the planets most pressing problems head-on. Unfortunately, it seems we are sleepwalking into another preventable catastrophe. And few are even talking about it.

Feature photo | MintPress News | AP

Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.
AACHEN, Germany, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Grunenthal, a global science-based pharmaceutical company, today announced that Sustainalytics, a Morningstar company and a globally-recognized provider of ESG research, ratings and data, has assessed it as having overall medium ESG risk. In addition, Sustainalytics acknowledged that Grunenthal has a strong management of its ESG risks. This places Grunenthal in the top five percent of the global pharmaceuticals subsector.

"The long-term success of companies can no longer be measured by financial success alone. As a science-based company, Grunenthal strives to make a net-positive impact on the society," said Gabriel Baertschi, CEO Grunenthal. "While we are proud to see our efforts recognized in this ESG rating, we know that a big part of the journey is still ahead of us. Building on our foundation as a responsible business, we will now integrate sustainability even more closely in our core strategy."

Grunenthal was evaluated by Sustainalytics based on its ESG Risk Ratings framework, which focuses on exposure and management of a company's material ESG issues. 'Exposure' reflects the degree to which a company's enterprise value is exposed to material ESG issues including ethical marketing, clinical trial transparency, whistleblowing, corruption and bribery. 'Management' measures a company's preparedness and track record in managing its exposure to material ESG issues through its policies, programmes, trainings and management systems.

The company's ESG Risk Rating is available on Sustainalytics' website. All data mentioned is as of 6 April 2021 and refer to the Grunenthal Pharma GmbH & Co. KG.

About Grunenthal's ESG efforts

Grunenthal has been focusing its Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) efforts on four pillars: educate about pain treatment and responsible use of opioids; ensure access to medicines, innovate pain management, and raise awareness for "pain as a disease":

Educate about pain treatment and responsible use of opioids

Grunenthal has so far reached around 65,000 health care professionals in its efforts to educate the healthcare sector about pain management and improve the patient outcomes from pain treatment. As a leader in pain innovation and as an opioid manufacturer, Grunenthal is highly committed to ensuring that its employees, customers, patients and also its partners have a thorough understanding of the company's stance on the responsible medical use of opioids in pain. The company has fostered a mindset shift along the full value chain by ensuring that all opioid-related materials contain Grunenthal's statement on responsible use of opioids  clearly highlighting the risks and benefits of this class of medicines. In addition, Grunenthal had established a dedicated standing governance body to provide and promote clear guidance, coherent behavior, continuous improvement, training and control mechanisms.

Ensure access to medicine

Grunenthal is committed to ensuring the availability of key medicines to address unmet medical needs in the markets we serve. In the US, for instance, 5 million patients are in need of neuropathic pain treatment associated with diabetes. With the US FDA label extension of one of our non-opioid pain medicines for the treatment of neuropathic pain associated with diabetic peripheral neuropathy of the feet, Grunenthal has ensured patients get access to this much needed treatment. At the same time, the company is focused on addressing unmet therapeutic needs in underserved markets by offering specialized non-opioid pain medicines.

Innovate pain management

Grunenthal's research and development strategy focuses on tackling in pain and collaborating with partners to address the huge unmet needs in pain. Through biennial grants of 200,000 provided by Grunenthal and the EFIC, the company supports young scientists early in their career in carrying out innovative clinical pain research. Since foundation of the EFIC-Grunenthal Grant in 2004, approximately 1.6 million was awarded to fund 65 projects. In addition, to drive patient-centric innovation in chronic pain and neurological disorders and award patient-centric and scientifically robust innovation, the company supports the Brain, Mind, and Pain Patient-Centered Innovation Grant, which awards 90,000 biennially to research proposals to encourage patient-centered innovation that leads to improvements in the life conditions of pain patients.

Raise awareness for "pain as a disease"

Chronic pain is an enormous global health problem affecting around 10% of the world's population. Grunenthal raises awareness about the impact of pain by supporting a multi-stakeholder platform, called the Societal Impact of Pain platform, which fosters the development of pain policies on national level. With Grunenthal's Pain Toolkit, the company has established a practical tool that provides patients with handy tips and skills in the form of explanations, infographics and videos, on how to self-manage pain. Moreover, Grunenthal has a long-standing passion for preserving the dignity and quality of life at the end stage of people's lives. The Grunenthal Foundation for Palliative Care promotes science and research in palliative care and the care for seriously or terminally ill people in Europe as well as in Latin America.

Besides these four focus pillars, Grunenthal is covering the entire range of the Environmental, Social and Governance spectrum with various initiatives and measures:

Environmental

Our efforts to promote sustainable development include defining concrete goals for the operations of our five production sites, across our supply chain and all of our affiliates across the globe by following leading international standards for environment, health and safety. We collect and analyze data from our production sites and use it to continuously improve efficiency, while also reducing energy consumption and minimizing waste based on strategic approach of zero waste to landfill programme.

Social

Caring for its employees and for the communities where we operate is key to Grunenthal's business conduct. Grunenthal offer its employees an exciting working environment and wide-ranging individual development opportunities. It is the company's goal to maintain high levels of engagement and to strengthen the company as a Great Place to Work. Grunenthal promotes a vibrant, high-performance culture and brings it to live through a shared set of values. These are supported by specific behaviours that guide the decision-making. Grunenthal ensures outstanding results are recognised and rewarded. For example, the company celebrates exceptional contributions each year with its Grunenthal Global Excellence Award.

Governance

Sound governance is key to safeguard the company's license to operate and continue providing medicines to patients in need. Grunenthal has a comprehensive compliance and ethics management system which provides a clear framework for our decisions and actions. Grunenthal's Code of Conduct for employees reiterates the company's strong commitment to the highest ethical standards while the Code of Conduct for Business Partners ensures business relationships based on a reciprocal commitment to responsible behavior. Grunenthal has an external Ethics Helpline for 24/7 anonymous reporting in place to ensure compliance with the Code of Conduct. Grunenthal is also committed to full disclosure of transfers of value to healthcare professionals, healthcare organizations and patient organizations.

About Grunenthal

Grunenthal is a global leader in pain management and related diseases. As a science-based, privately-owned pharmaceutical company, we have a long track record of bringing innovative treatments and state-of-the-art technologies to patients worldwide. Our purpose is to change lives for the better  and innovation is our passion. We are focussing all of our activities and efforts on working towards our vision of a world free of pain.

Grunenthal is headquartered in Aachen, Germany, and has affiliates in 29 countries across Europe, Latin America and the US. Our products are available in more than 100 countries. In 2020, Grunenthal employed around 4,500 people and achieved sales of  1.3 bn.

More information: www.grunenthal.com

Follow us on:

LinkedIn: Grunenthal Group

Instagram: grunenthal

For further information, please contact:

Florian Dieckmann, Head Global Communications, +49 241 569 2555, [email protected]

Fabia Kehren, Head External Communications & Editorial Management,

+49 241 569-3269

[email protected]

Grunenthal GmbH, 52099 Aachen, Germany

SOURCE Grunenthal Group
Internet, Everywhere--(Newsfile Corp. - April 7, 2021) - Shopify Inc. (NYSE: SHOP) (TSX: SHOP), a leading global commerce company, plans to announce financial results for its first quarter ended March 31, 2021 before markets open on Wednesday, April 28, 2021.

Shopify's management team will host a conference call to discuss first-quarter results at 8:30 a.m. ET on Wednesday, April 28, 2021. The conference call will be available via webcast on the investor relations section of Shopify's website at https://investors.shopify.com/news-and-events/.

An archived replay of the webcast will be available following the conclusion of the call.

About Shopify

Shopify is a leading global commerce company, providing trusted tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail business of any size. Shopify makes commerce better for everyone with a platform and services that are engineered for reliability, while delivering a better shopping experience for consumers everywhere. Proudly founded in Ottawa, Shopify powers over 1.7 million businesses in more than 175 countries and is trusted by brands such as Allbirds, Gymshark, Heinz, Staples Canada, and many more. For more information, visit www.shopify.com .

CONTACTS:

INVESTORS:

Katie Keita

Senior Director, Investor Relations

613-241-2828 (ext. 1024)

IR@shopify.com

MEDIA:

Rebecca Feigelsohn

Communications Lead

416-238-6705 (ext. 302)

press@shopify.com

SOURCE: Shopify

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/79226
MASON CITY, Iowa  A man accused of attacking someone over garbage is pleading guilty.

Joseph Randall Upshaw, 51 of Mason City, has entered a guilty plea to a reduced misdemeanor charge of assault causing bodily injury. He was originally charged with felony willful injury resulting in bodily injury for an incident on October 12, 2020.

Law enforcement says after Upshaw argued with someone over trash bins in the 500 block of 1st Street NE in Mason City, the victim took Upshaws garbage and threw it into his yard. Investigators say as the victim walked back to his home, Upshaw hit the victim in the head with a blunt object.

A sentencing hearing is now scheduled for May 5.
New policies seen spurring personal insurance

From:ChinaDaily | 2021-04-07 09:40

Expert says tax incentives may boost investment in endowment products

China is expected to adopt new policies to improve the personal insurance system, a former financial regulator said.

Such improvement might come about through tax incentives, to encourage individuals to invest in commercial endowment insurance products, said Zhou Yanli, a former vice-chairman of the China Insurance Regulatory Commission and a member of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

In a recent interview with China Daily, Zhou said the nation's commercial endowment insurance pilot program, which is supported by preferential taxation and fiscal subsidies, should be expanded. "That will be feasible."

The pilot program was first rolled out in Shanghai and the Suzhou Industrial Park in Jiangsu province, and in Fujian province, in May 2018.

Through the pilot, a part of the pre-tax premium income could be deducted, a measure to encourage people to buy such insurance products.

"But this trial is very limited now," said Zhou, adding new policies should increase the pre-tax deduction of the premium and enlarge the group of individual investors of commercial endowment insurance.

The former financial regulator's expectation is in line with the government's work plan this year as China is developing a stronger public health system, and the statutory retirement age will be raised in a phased manner.

"The multi-tiered social security system will be improved, with coverage of basic old-age insurance reaching 95 percent of the population," said this year's Government Work Report.

In terms of deepening reforms in the fiscal, taxation and financial systems, the report highlighted "strengthening the role of insurance in protecting against risks and providing services".

The government has pledged to increase basic pension for retirees and subsidies and living allowances for groups entitled to such benefits, and work toward unified national management of old-age insurance funds.

Commercial endowment insurance serves as the third pillar of China's pension system. The personal insurance market has seen sound and rapid development in recent years in China.

The market achieved considerable coverage nationwide. Yet, problems like insufficient supply and low level of protection still exist, analysts said.


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Chatsworth, CA, April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NewMediaWire -- Cavitation Technologies, Inc. (OTCQB: CVAT) (BERLIN: WTC) has signed a pilot test agreement with Island Breeze Farms. The agreement is meant to evaluate CVATs technology and the growth of healthier cannabis plants with increased crop yields. Island Breeze Farms is a Licensed Cannabis grower in Southern California, operating a 130,000 square foot greenhouse facility.

CVATs technology and nanotech water system substantially increases the amount of molecular oxygen in water. As cannabis plant roots absorb the molecular oxygen, Nano bubbles continue to replace lost oxygen, resulting in a stable elevated level of oxygen. This stable elevated level of oxygen produces a cleaner and more efficient method of irrigation, resulting in healthier plants with increased crop yield. Additionally, cavitation processed water will create a healthy soil environment without bacteria and fungi.

Roman Gordon, Global Technology Manager, commented, This pilot test agreement is a huge opportunity for our Company as our technology may have substantial commercial value in the cannabis industry. The global cannabis cultivation market size is estimated to surpass $123.9 billion this year and domestically, U.S. farmers have been licensed to grow 511,442 acres of cannabis  a 455 percent increase over 2018 levels. In California alone there have been over 5,800 State growers licenses issued. By utilizing our nanotech water system cannabis growers will have cleaner feed water and should expect to see healthier plants and increased yields in their crops.

About Cavitation Technologies, Inc.

Founded in 2007, the company designs and manufactures innovative flow-through devices and systems, as well as develops processing technologies for use in edible oil refining, renewable fuel production, water treatment, and alcoholic beverage enhancement. The company's patented Nano Reactor systems and various technologies have over 40 patents issued and filed both domestically and abroad. http://www.ctinanotech.com/

Follow us on Twitter for real time updates: https://twitter.com/CavitationTech

Like us on Facebook to receive live feed updates: https://www.facebook.com/ctinanotech

Forward Looking Statement

This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "may," "should," "potential," "continue," "expects," "anticipates," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates," and similar expressions such as, should expect to see healthier plants and increased yields in their crops by utilizing the nanotech water system. These forward-looking statements are based largely on the Company's expectations and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond the Company's control. Actual results could differ materially from these forward looking statements as a result of a variety of factors including, among others, the state of the economy, the competitive environment and our ability to perform as anticipated and other factors described in our most recent Form 10-K and our other filings with the SEC, including subsequent periodic reports on Forms 10-Q and 8-K. In light of these risks and uncertainties there can be no assurances that the forward looking statements contained in this press release will in fact transpire or prove to be accurate. The information in this release is provided only as of the date of this release, and we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this release on account of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by law.

Cavitation Technologies, Inc. 8187180905 info@ctinanotech.com

Source: Cavitation Technologies, Inc
Gary Cain, who was convicted with former state Sen. Carlos Uresti three years ago for defrauding investors, wont be getting out of prison any time soon.

Cain last month asked a judge to grant him a compassionate release from prison because his declining health makes him particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus.

Senior U.S. District Judge David A. Ezra denied the request Monday, noting that prosecutors provided evidence that Cain tested positive for COVID-19 in July and refused the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine when offered it in December.

Cains violation of the law suggests that early release would not reflect the seriousness of the offense, promote respect for the law, provide just punishment, afford adequate deterrence of future criminal conduct, or protect the public from further crimes, Ezra wrote in his order Monday.

Cain, 64, is serving a 68-month sentence in a low-security correctional institution in Seagoville. Hes about at the midway point of the sentence and is scheduled to be released in August 2023.

On ExpressNews.com: Uresti co-defendant Gary Cain loses his appeal

In 2018, Cain and Uresti and were convicted by a jury for their roles in FourWinds Logistics, an oil field services company that lured investors with promises that there were riches to be made in the buying and selling of sand used in fracking for oil production. Prosecutors called it a Ponzi scheme.

Cain, a FourWinds consultant, was found guilty of nine felonies, including money-laundering and wire-fraud charges.

Uresti, 57, a San Antonio Democrat whose more than 20-year political career was upended by the scandal, is serving a 12-year sentence at a facility in western Louisiana and is slated to be released in 2029. He was convicted of 11 felonies.

Both men also have to pay $6.3 million in restitution to FourWinds victims.

Cain did not create the  scheme, but he was given a generous contract to find additional investors to keep the scheme going, and actually participated in the fraud by continuing to encourage investors to keep their money in the fraud and continuing to cash checks from the company, Ezra said in his ruling. Cain received $30,000 a month from FourWinds.

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

Even though it appeared Cain knew by the end of 2014 that FourWinds was misusing investor funds, he persuaded some investors to keep their money in the company, Ezra added. Investors lost more than $8 million collectively.

Cain also hid assets and filed a fraudulent tax return, the judge said.

In his request for an early release, Cain said he was suffering from a bad heart, obesity, hypertension and rheumatoid arthritis. But he did not suffer any severe complications after contracting COVID-19, Ezra said.

Cains medical conditions are controlled thanks to the medical care he is receiving in prison, the judge said, citing prosecutors case against an early release.

Randy Pulman, a lawyer for Cain, declined to comment.

pdanner@express-news.net
The advert begins with a dad pointing a torch at a boiler and filling a hot water bottle for his child.

Then a voiceover starts: 'Boiler playing up? Dreading waking up to a freezing home and an unexpected repair bill? Not when you're covered by British Gas HomeCare.'

But the energy giant's latest TV campaign offers little comfort to the hundreds of thousands of customers being forced to wait weeks for repairs.

Money Mail has heard from dozens of furious homeowners who pay around 300 a year for the company's HomeCare plan.

Abandoned: British Gas HomeCare insurance should cover the cost of boiler and thermostat repairs and annual services. Yet customers are struggling to get an appointment

There are more than 3.5million policyholders, and the insurance should cover the cost of boiler and thermostat repairs and annual services.

You can also pay extra to cover your home electrics, drains and plumbing.

Yet many customers have been told they must wait weeks for an appointment, leaving some families without heating and hot water.

Others say they can't get through on the phone and are repeatedly let down when engineers don't turn up as promised. And some have gone nearly two years without an annual boiler service.

British Gas says it had to cancel all but essential jobs in the third national lockdown, including most boiler services.

But experts accuse it of using Covid as an excuse. They say the real reason for the delays is recent strike action.

The union GMB claims at least 170,000 homes are stuck in a queue for repairs after thousands of workers downed tools earlier this year. British Gas disputes this figure.

Despite the backlog, British Gas is offering new HomeCare customers gift cards worth up to 75 if they sign up before May 10.

Now experts say families caught out by delays could be in line for hefty payouts.

British Gas promises repairs or visits for HomeCare customers within a 'reasonable time' unless something 'beyond [its] control makes that impossible'.

But consumer law specialist Gary Rycroft says the current long delays could pave the way for compensation claims potentially worth hundreds of pounds each.

'For anyone without hot water or heating, I would say anything more than a week is not at all a reasonable time to wait for repairs,' he says. 'And for vulnerable people such as the elderly, that time-frame should be less.

'The current strike by engineers puts British Gas in potential breach of its own contract, because you could say the proper human resources management of its workforce is very much a matter that should be within its control.'

The union GMB claims at least 170,000 homes are stuck in a queue for repairs after thousands of workers downed tools earlier this year. British Gas disputes this figure

Mr Rycroft says customers could take their cases to the Financial Ombudsman Service and claim a year's refund, plus the cost of hiring other engineers, and potentially more for inconvenience.

British Gas's terms also state that it may reschedule repairs and visits if non-essential travel is banned under government guidelines.

But Mr Rycroft, a partner at Joseph A. Jones & Co, says lockdown rules shouldn't stop engineers doing their jobs, as they are key workers.

Baroness Ros Altmann's mother had to call British Gas about her boiler on Monday. Although she has a HomeCare plan, the 89-year-old was told she would have to wait four weeks for an engineer.

'My mother has been paying for this plan for years,' says the former pensions minister. 'At the very least, British Gas needs to offer refunds to customers who are unable to benefit from their cover.'

In late January, retired building manager Peter Auger, from Windsor, woke up without hot water or heating.

The 67-year-old called British Gas HomeCare, but was met with 'endless' voicemails saying the pandemic meant that staff were unable to speak to him.

Peter and his wife Anne, 63, had paid 17.50 a month since September 2020, and before that were on an even costlier British Gas plan for several years.

Eventually they were told the earliest an engineer could come out would be on February 16, leaving them without heating for more than three weeks.

The couple had to fork out 160 on the day, when an engineer told them their timer needed replacing. He put in place a temporary solution but said British Gas would need to replace it.

Despite dozens of phone calls and many promised appointments that failed to go ahead, the couple are still waiting to have their timer replaced. Anne says: 'We just felt helpless. It's impossible to get anyone on the phone.'

Landlady Lorraine Mawer, from Bedfordshire, has been paying 5.50 a month to British Gas for more than five years as part of a basic plan that includes central heating breakdown cover.

Sales drive: Despite the backlog, British Gas is offering new HomeCare customers gift cards worth up to 75 if they sign up before May 10

But when her tenants reported having no hot water or heating last Friday, her letting agent contacted British Gas and was told the earliest appointment available was on April 22, leaving the tenants without heating for 20 days.

Lorraine says: 'British Gas is taking money for a service it is not providing. In the end, my letting agent had to send some heaters round to my tenants. We then had to pay for a local plumber, who visited on Easter Sunday.'

Grumblings over boiler services not being carried out were already rife before the pandemic.

Complaints website Resolver has received 1,844 gripes about boilers in the past year, but the average number of monthly cases rose from about 70 in December to 150 in January and February.

Martyn James, of Resolver, says: 'Often these kinds of plan are not worth the paper they are written on, as there is so little clarity in the small print.

'British Gas should set out in their documents how long customers should expect to wait for a visit and state what it will do if it cannot meet this deadline.'

British Gas customers have also vented their fury after seeing their premiums hiked at renewal.

Review site Trustpilot is littered with complaints about the company. GMB says 200,000 annual service visits had been cancelled following 12 days of strike action by the end of January.

It says these numbers have since risen 'significantly' as there have now been 42 days of strike action in total.

British Gas says annual service visits are being delayed and it will clear the backlog shortly, adding that it has now resumed non-essential jobs.

It claims it is reaching vulnerable customers with boiler breakdowns on the same day, and non-vulnerable customers within two to three days.

A spokesman adds: 'We've had to rearrange some annual service visits, primarily driven by our response to the Covid-19 lockdown, to safeguard the health and safety of our staff and customers.

'During the lockdown we have focused on immediate threat to health, life or safety, including heating breakdowns and uncontrollable water leaks.'

moneymail@dailymail.co.uk
An open attitude of the Romanian Parliament against racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism is needed and urgent, Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Ludovic Orban, the national leader of the National Liberal Party (PNL), said on Wednesday.

"Oftentimes public discourse on our fellow Roma seems to be dominated by incitement to hatred, and there is often silence when those who should fight against racism and discrimination do not. It is therefore appropriate to pay attention to the alarm signals sent by associations, to the analyses of research institutes and of the specialists who study social phenomena," Ludovic Orban told a roundtable conference called "Romania, the common and indivisible homeland of all its citizens," organised by the parliamentary group of national minorities in the Chamber of Deputies and the Pro-Europe Romany Association, agerpres.ro confirms.

According to Orban, reading the reports published in recent years by the Elie Wiesel Institute, UNICEF and Romania's National Council for Combating Discrimination, or even a simple foray into social media shows a not very encouraging picture: only a third of Romany children complete formal primary education, and the numbers are even lower for girls, and over 70% of their families live in a state of poverty that prevents them from accessing education, healthcare and other services.

"The pandemic since last year has exacerbated these phenomena, making it increasingly difficult to access jobs, education, information and the health care system," Orban said.

According to him, in order for the Romanian society to be able to aspire to modernity, it must defend its dignity and values.

"As we all know, Romania has laws that condemn discrimination in all its forms, only we rarely see them (...) That is why an open attitude of the Romanian Parliament against racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism, which are related and equally reprehensible phenomena, is necessary and even urgent," added Orban.

He announced that important projects will be discussed, including the founding of cultural organisations to present and stimulate the development of Romany culture in Romania: a theatre house and a museum to celebrate heritage and living culture.
ROCHESTER, Minn. - After another overdose linked with counterfeit pills, police in Rochester are warning residents to stay away from any drugs not directly prescribed to them by a doctor.

The Rochester Police Department says counterfeit pills have been involved in at least eight overdoses resulting in four deaths across the city since the start of this year. Officials have seized over 10,000 of them in Rochester, which they say are made to look like legitimate prescription drugs, but are by and large laced with fentanyl - an extremely potent and often deadly opioid.

Lt. Frank Ohm, who oversees RPD's Criminal Interdiction Unit, believes the pandemic has played a role in these counterfeit pills becoming more widespread. He says shutdowns and restrictions have made it more difficult to smuggle certain narcotics, namely methamphetamine, leading users to find alternatives.

"Methamphetamine has become more difficult for a user to get ahold of. It's become very expensive to purchase, so drug users have turned to other kinds of drugs in order to adapt," Ohm told KIMT. "Opioids, in general, have seen a tremendous comeback as a result, because opioids, and specifically fentanyl, are much easier to transport and to get into our country."

Lt. Ohm says the pills so closely resemble legitimate prescription drugs, those who encounter them may be more willing to trust they are safe to consume.

"They look like prescription pills that you would get from your doctor, and I think that's maybe helping fuel this problem," Lt. Ohm said. "So there may be a higher trust factor with this versus any other kind of street drug that a person may run across."

The lieutenant adds while Rochester isn't alone in seeing this surge in counterfeit pills, it does present a significant problem for our community.

"I think it's fair to say that this is a very big problem in our community right now. It's not solely Rochester - this is a problem nationwide that many, many communities are battling right now. But certainly, we're one of those communities that's fighting it."

Ohm reiterates the most important advice he can give is to avoid any pills you haven't been prescribed by a professional.

"You should assume that anything not prescribed to you by your doctor is suspicious at minimum, and possibly dangerous and deadly."
PAOLI, Pa., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Keystone Power Holdings, LLC (Keystone), a renewable energy developer/owner of solar facilities, continues to develop and operate solar projects for wastewater treatment plants in Illinois. As with all of Keystone's projects, these projects deliver a triple benefit: bring down energy costs, reduce environmental impact and build resiliency into local power grids.

Two installations have been operational in Illinois for over 12 months, in the Village of Milan and the City of Colona. Keystone funded the systems through its investment fund, KPH Solar Farms Fund I, which provides financing for eligible projects from 250 kilowatts to 10 megawatts. In each case, Keystone developed, built and financed the development with no up-front costs for the municipalities. The power generated is being purchased by the municipalities at a discount to current utility rates. Projected savings are close to $1 million over the life of the two solar power purchase agreements. In Milan's case, Keystone was able to purchase land adjacent to the plant to accommodate the installation.

"Illinois continues to be a good market for us, given the business-friendly environment, Illinois' efforts to go green and support from the Illinois Shines Program," said Anthony Fotopoulos, co-founder of Keystone Power Holdings. "We are pleased to work with smaller municipalities and non-profits, giving them the opportunity to diversify their energy sources, shrink their carbon footprint while also conserving public funds."

"It was a pleasure to work with these municipalities and our process makes it easy for them. In both cases, we built solid relationships and found good spaces for installation," said William DePhillipo, co-founder of Keystone Power Holdings. "Developing solar projects for municipalities continues to be a priority of ours and we look forward to continuing to grow partnerships for similar projects in other states.

About Keystone Power Holdings

Keystone Power Holdings, LLC is a renewable energy developer and owner of solar energy facilities. We specialize in developing medium to large-scale photovoltaic solar systems across North America. We develop facilities for municipalities and non-profits, public and private universities and schools, and large corporate clients on or near their properties, either on the ground or rooftop, while passing on savings. For more information, email [email protected] or visit our website at www.keystoneph.com.

Media Contact:

Laura L. Kieley

Signal Hill Communications

[email protected]

551.482.5732

SOURCE Keystone Power Holdings

Related Links

https://www.keystoneph.com


Emergency Care Service workers move a Covid-19 patient to an ambulance in Brazil (Felipe Dana/AP)

Brazil has reported a 24-hour tally of Covid-19 deaths exceeding 4,000 for the first time, becoming the third nation to go above that daily threshold.

Many governors, mayors and judges are reopening parts of the economy despite lingering chaos in overcrowded hospitals and a collapsed health system in several parts of the country.

Brazils health ministry on Tuesday said 4,195 deaths were counted in the previous 24 hours, with the nations pandemic toll quickly approaching 340,000, the second highest in the world.

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Only the United States and Peru have had daily death tolls higher than 4,000.

Health officials said the figure was partly due to the Easter holiday, which delayed the count.

Local authorities nationwide argue that numbers of cases and people in hospital are trending downward after a week of a partial shutdown.

Wednesday's #WorldHealthDay is an opportunity to show support for ensuring that people everywhere can access #COVID19 vaccines.#OnlyTogether can we bring the pandemic to an end. https://t.co/lsfaV8no4k pic.twitter.com/OV2tXbIaA1  United Nations (@UN) April 7, 2021

Miguel Lago, executive director of Brazils Institute for Health Policy Studies, which advises public health officials, said reopening is a mistake that he fears will bring even higher death numbers, though he thinks it unlikely to be reversed.

The fact is the anti-lockdown narrative of President Jair Bolsonaro has won, Mr Lago told The Associated Press.

Mayors and governors are politically prohibited from beefing up social distancing policies because they know supporters of the president, including business leaders, will sabotage it.

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Mr Bolsonaro, who has long downplayed the risks of the coronavirus, remains fully against lockdowns as damaging to the economy.

Meanwhile India has hit another new peak with 115,736 coronavirus cases reported in the past 24 hours.

New Delhi, Mumbai and dozens of other cities are imposing curfews to try to slow the soaring infections.

The latest rise reported on Wednesday overtook Sundays record of 103,844 infections.

Deaths rose by 630 in the past 24 hours, the highest since November, raising the total death toll in the country to 166,177 since the pandemic began.

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Experts say the surge is blamed in part on growing disregard for social distancing and mask-wearing in public spaces.

The latest surge in infections is worse than last years peak of more than 97,000 a day in mid-September.

India now has a seven-day rolling average of more than 78,000 cases per day and has reported 12.8 million virus cases since the pandemic began, the highest after the United States and Brazil.

South Korea has reported its highest daily jump in new coronavirus cases in nearly three months as concerns grow about another huge wave as the country wrestles with a slow vaccine rollout.

The 668 infections reported Wednesday were the most since January 8 when officials reported 674 new cases.

Since the pandemic began, South Korea has had 106,898 confirmed cases, with 1,756 deaths related to Covid-19.

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South Korea had been struggling to keep transmissions under control following a major winter surge that erased months of hard-won gains.

There is also concern over the pace of the countrys vaccine rollout that is slower than many other developed economies, after officials insisted on a wait-and-see approach because the outbreak was not as dire as in the US and Europe.

However North Korea continues to claim a perfect record in keeping out the coronavirus in its latest report to the World Health Organisation.

In an email to The Associated Press on Wednesday, the WHO says North Korea has reported that it tested 23,121 people for the coronavirus as of April 1 and that all results were negative.

Outsiders have expressed doubt about whether North Korea has escaped the pandemic entirely, given its poor health infrastructure and a porous border it shares with China, its economic lifeline.
A Pennsylvanian pastor criticized Hillsong Church, claiming that the organization does not handle allegations of abuse committed by its staff appropriately but chooses to defend them instead.

Pastor Ed Crenshaw, whose daughter Anna was assaulted by one of the church employees, said that the church mishandled the accusations of abuse by its staff, opting to stand on their defense instead of taking appropriate action to provide justice for the victims, The Christian Post (CP) reported.

Anna went to Sydney, Australia to attend Hillsong College in 2016. She was also volunteering at Hillsong Church's Citycare ministry. But one night in 2019, a drunk Jason Mays, a married man who was a worship leader at Hillsong, assaulted her in the presence of others.

She said that a guy who was with them pulled her out to safety and told Anna not to say anything.

But she reported the incident to the church's head of pastoral care oversight, Margaret Aghajanian. However, the woman did not seem to fully believe her statement. Anna said that Mays challenged her story causing Aghajanian to probe further, even after hearing the statements of two witnesses whose testimonies validated Anna's.

Moreover, she said that according to a statement from Hillsong, Mays apologized and expressed regret for his actions when it was addressed with him the first time. But Anna does not believe that Mays is truly sorry since he would later change his story, discrediting her. She also said that he even called the police on her once.

When CP asked about the incident, Hillsong Church reportedly described the assault as just "a hug gone wrong." The spokesperson of the church said that Mays was just "attempting to hug" Anna.

But Anna refuted Hillsong's statement, saying that her description of the incident is not a hug, arguing that she knows exactly what a hug is, but that the church is actually minimizing Jason's actions and the effect on her.

Anna's father, Pastor Ed Crenshaw, said that Hillsong chose to focus on the scandals in its branch in New York, failing to handle the bigger problem of abuse.

"They've developed a habit of self-protection. And, I think, when it comes to dealing with somebody like my daughter who had an accusation against the son of Hillsong's top HR guy, and she reports it to the wife of Hillsong's chairman of the board ... that they tend to slip into self-protection mode, and I think they are still in that," the pastor told CP. "Even with their comments about HR changes and how they dropped the ball ... It gives too much blame to Carl Lentz and doesn't take responsibility for how, in their own situation, they have failed victims, even going back to the victims of Frank Houston," he continued.

Frank Houston, father of Hillsong's founder, Brian, reportedly abused a number of young boys in New Zealand and Australia during his tenure. Brian then forced his father to resign from Sydney Christian Life Centre upon learning of the abuse.

But one of those boys abused by Frank revealed that Brian accused him of tempting Frank when he was a child.

Hillsong dismissed the claim that Frank's failures is relative to Hillsong's culture, contending that Frank "was never a pastor at Hillsong Church."

Pastor Ed pointed out that Mays should never be reinstated as a Hillsong staff if Brian was serious of modifying its organizational culture, adding that he would fire a staff in his church if found to be committing such.

"I think Brian Houston is one of the best leaders in the church world today, [but] I just think there's a blind spot here... Like a lot of big organizations, [they have] a tendency to prioritize self-protection," the pastor further said.

Hillsong's spokesperson told CP that the church has developed policies and procedures to handle abuse complaints seriously. The church also denied that it is defending Mays.

"Hillsong Church vehemently denies any allegation of a culture that tolerates abuse. We take every complaint seriously and regularly demonstrate our commitment to updating our policies and procedures," the spokesperson said.

In according with the clip reviewed by CP, Brian defended Jason's reinstatement as a church employee, stating that they "felt he deserved another chance" and that he is not "a sexual predator" but just someone "who did something stupid."

Anna, however, agreed with her father, saying that keeping Mays as a staff sends a message that other church members "can get away with actions like Jason" and that "it shows people that you can get away with anything as long as you have the right connections within the higher level staff."

Anna also said that Brian's claim of not defending Mays contradicts the way Hillsong handled her case.

"I think that it's only going to perpetuate a culture of abuse and allowing abuse when people see the way that they've handled this," she further said.

In conclusion, Anna revealed that she has received tremendous amount of support from people, noting that most of them "are not willing to [turn] a blind eye to it anymore."
In this photo taken prior to the COVID-19 pandemic at Sandia National Laboratories boiling water reactor test site, Tito Bonano, right, shares his knowledge of nuclear energy research with Efrain ONeill, an electrical engineering professor at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez, who recently spent a year at Sandia. Credit: Randy Montoya

Have you ever started a new job and spent a lot of time figuring out everything from how to get paper for the printer to whether an important customer prefers quick phone calls to emails?

Imagine if that important customer was the federal government and the project you were working on was evaluating the development of a geologic repository for the permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.

Experts at Sandia National Laboratories just began their second year of a project to capture important, hard-to-explain nuclear waste management knowledge from retirement-age employees to help new employees get up to speed faster.

"At Sandia, we've had over 45 years of experience in nuclear waste management in the U.S. and internationally," said Tito Bonano, nuclear energy fuel cycle senior manager. "But the expertise and experiences of people like myself, Peter Swift, Ken Sorenson and others that have retired or are retirement age, walks away when we leave the organization. We refer to that kind of expertise and experiences as tacit knowledge, and we had to act to stop the bleeding of tacit knowledge."

Tacit knowledge includes understanding the boss's opinions as to why a competitor is doing well or the best way to work with an important customer. Such knowledge is often difficult to explain. Explicit knowledge, which includes things such as a phone number or the temperature of water, is easier to document and communicate to others.

Explicit knowledge can be captured in reports and spreadsheets, but tacit knowledge is often learned through mentorship, observation and practice.

"Most large organizations, laboratories and government agencies are very good at saving their explicit knowledge, in the form of reports and documents," said Janette Meacham, the nuclear energy fuel cycle program's licensing and knowledge management lead. "But the knowledge that comes from going into Tito's office with a difficult problem and having him say, "I remember 15 years ago we did something similar, and this is how we did it, and you need to watch out for this other thing," is not captured in a report."

Through focus group discussions, a multiday workshop, a series of four-hour deep dives and recording interviews with retiring employees, the knowledge management team led by Meacham captured this tacit knowledge and is in the process of organizing and tagging it to make it easier for early career and new employees to access.

Preserving this contextual knowledge will save time and U.S. taxpayers' money, especially when the federal government begins work on a permanent nuclear waste disposal solution, Bonano said. He added, "As a federally funded research and development center, we have a responsibility to be good custodians of the knowledge we've developed to benefit future projects."

Focus groups, recorded Q&A sessions to capture hard-to-explain knowledge

Starting in 2019, the team conducted focus groups with employees who had been with the organization less than five years, five to 10 years and more than 10 years to discover how each group best learns and wants to access information.

"One of the tenets of a successful knowledge-management project is getting the right information to the right people at the right time in the right format," Bonano said. "Future generations are going to need to solve the country's nuclear waste management problem. We want to make sure that all of the knowledge we capture ultimately supports the licensing of a nuclear waste management facility."

Then, Sandia hosted a three-day workshop with experts, retirees and federal representatives. Each speaker had some prepared remarks, but the most valuable part of the workshop was when the experts responded to questions from the audience, Meacham said. About 50 Sandia employees at all stages of their careers attended the workshop to learn directly from the experts, and the workshop was recorded for future reference.

They also hosted a series of four-hour deep dives on complex topics, such as how to effectively get expert opinions for risk assessments and understanding how various regulations on nuclear waste management overlap with each other. Each deep dive was led by an expert who started the discussion with prepared information and then answered a lot of productive questions from an audience of 15 to 20 employees. The sessions were also recorded. There were six deep dives last year, and there will be four more later this year.

Also, as other important topics come up in the ordinary course of business, the team records interviews with experts and recently retired employees to capture their tacit knowledge.

The recordings of each session or interview, searchable transcriptions, the experts' slides and links to the documents they referenced are all available to Sandia nuclear energy fuel cycle staff via an internal archive. Eventually, Meacham hopes to have the archive accessible to the Department of Energy and experts at other national laboratories.

Already the internal archive has seen significant use. In an average month, it gets about 2,000 visits from the 180 employees within Sandia's nuclear energy fuel cycle program, Meacham said.

Expanding a culture of preserving knowledge at Sandia, abroad

In addition to the recorded sessions, Meacham is working on developing a culture in the organization where capturing tacit knowledge is just as important, and just as an integral part of the job, as capturing explicit knowledge in the form of reports. To that end, she is leading the construction of a taxonomy to tag the recorded seminars and interviews and such explicit-knowledge resources as reports , as well as a more sophisticated database where employees can easily add tacit knowledge. The goal is to make all the information more accessible.

"The first part was getting those interviews, grabbing that information quickly while we could and stopping the bleeding," Meacham said. "At the same time, we have to come up with an overarching system of capturing that information as it is created. We need to make it part of the normal work processes of the nuclear energy fuel cycle staff, and staff across the labs."

In the future, Meacham and Bonano hope to extend what they've learned about knowledge management, capturing tacit knowledge and making it accessible to early career employees to other portions of Sandia and other agencies.

They already have been asked to collaborate with colleagues at the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority in the U.K., the Nuclear Waste Management Organization of Japan and other international agencies as they undertake similar knowledge management projects.

"Everyone else seemed to be talking about the problem of maintaining important knowledge, but we said, "We've got to do something about it now," so we just did it," Bonano said. "It's part of Sandia's attitude that we're here to solve problems."

Explore further How Biden can jumpstart U.S. nuclear waste strategy
Reardon said both properties would be developed by Crow Holdings of Chicago. Another lot, bordered by 96th Avenue, Massachusetts Drive and Broadway, has been divided into two parcels, one at 2.2 acres and one at 4.16 acres. Both have sales pending and are being developed by Murray Development of Illinois.
A former police officer in Bucks County is accused of sexually abusing four teenaged boys 20 years ago, authorities said.

James Carey, 52, was arraigned Wednesday morning on 122 charges, including multiple counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child under the age of 16, aggravated indecent assault of a child under the age of 16 and statutory sexual assault.

The offenses allegedly occurred between 1987 and 2009, and Wednesdays charges come after previous reports and investigations into Careys behavior did not result in criminal charges being filed, prosecutors said.

Carey was free after posting 10% of $100,000 bail. His attorney, Michael Applebaum, could not be reached for comment.

District Attorney Matt Weintraub said if there are other potential victims, they should come forward and contact his office 215-348-6344, even if the person wants to remain anonymous.

We will help you get justice. We can help you heal, he said.

Carey lives in Cape May Court House, New Jersey. He most recently worked as a school bus driver in southern New Jersey, according to the Bucks County Courier Times.

BREAKING: Retired Warminster Twp. DARE Officer James Carey (blue mask) was arraigned on 200+ sexual assault-related crimes involving four teens from 10-20 years ago. The judge described him a danger to the community & set bail at 10 percent of $100,000. @CBSPhilly pic.twitter.com/e3PsMz76SY  Joe Holden (@JoeHoldenCBS3) April 7, 2021

Carey previously worked as a Warminster Township police officer, and allegedly abused the boys when he worked as a D.A.R.E. officer two decades ago, a spokesman for the Bucks County district attorneys office said.

The Warminster Township police department declined to comment when asked about Careys case.

Three of the accusers were students at Log College Middle School at the time of the assaults, and Carey was a D.A.R.E. officer with the Centennial School District, prosecutors said.

D.A.R.E. stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education, and is a national program that began in 1983 to have certified local police officers teach students to avoid drugs and alcohol.

Prosecutors said Carey had unique access to children, and ingratiated himself into the childrens lives, specifically those who were already facing challenges in their life.

Carey invited boys to his house, in his hot tub, on kayaking and camping trips, and one time took a group to Dorney Park, records show. Carey was in charge of a Teen Activity Corp, and worked with the Boy Scouts and a program through the Warminster Township Fire Department, giving him unfettered access to children, prosecutors said.

Carey used his position of power as a police officer to groom the children, and also their caregivers, the district attorneys office said.

One victim testified the sexual abuse began when Carey found marijuana at the Warminster Township Recreation Center and claimed it belonged to then-13-year-old boy. Carey, who was in uniform, locked the bathroom door and performed an invasive body search that turned into sexual assault, according to the affidavit of probable cause.

Carey reportedly told the boy he was going to jail, but could avoid jail if he complied, records say. Carey would go on to sexually abuse the teen a handful of times, detectives said, and each time Carey was in his police uniform.

When the victims family moved out of the township, he was finally out of Careys reach...it was the best thing that ever happened for him, records say.

This victim, now 36, reported the abuse in May 2020 to Warminster police, and the case was referred to the Bucks County District Attorneys office because the police department previously employed Carey, prosecutors said.

The victim contacted police because he believed the state changed the statute of limitations for prosecuting childhood sexual assault, records say.

The case involved a lengthy investigation by Bucks County Detectives and an inquiry by a Bucks County Investigating Grand Jury, the district attorneys office said.

Court papers include interviews with the victims, and numerous friends and neighbors of the victims. Carey lived in the township at the time, and lived near some of the victims and their friends.

Carey appeared before the grand jury on April 1, and invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, prosecutors said.

Carey allegedly oversaw community service for one victim, and made the teen boy perform chores at Careys house before sexually assaulting him, records say.

The boy was abused from when he was 13 until he was 18, and the abuse only stopped when the teen moved away, detectives said. The victim, now 43, told detectives Carey waited until the last possible moment to sign the community service form, in order to continue the sexual abuse.

The accuser said when he was 17 and involved in an underage drinking incident, he told another Warminster officer about the abuse, but could not remember the officers name.

As an adult, the man called Warminster police to ask about the statute of limitations and reported Carey molested him, but was told the incidents fell outside the statute, court papers say.

A third victim reported Carey molested him when he was about 15 years old, while they were at Careys home. The victim initially tried to leave, but Carey blocked the teen from the door, records say.

While the boy was still a teen he reported the incident to Warminster police, but nothing happened, court records say. The victim and his mother reported the incident again in 2006 to Warminster police, after Carey was fired from the department, records say.

Bucks County detectives in 2001 investigated Carey for allegations of sexual abuse, after the Warminster Township Police Department became aware of concerning conduct and referred the information to the county district attorneys office.

Charges were not filed in 2001, prosecutors said.

Then-District Attorney Diane Gibbons, who is now a Bucks County judge, wrote a letter that year to the police department advising that Careys behavior and conduct was very concerning, and her office had grave concerns about the communitys safety with Carey employed as a police officer, court papers say.

Her words turned out to be prophetic, Weintraub said.

Five years later, when Carey worked at the Driftwood Campground in Cape May County, New Jersey State Police investigated Carey for reports of inappropriate conduct with minors at the campground.

No charges were filed in that case, either.

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Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com.
With Vaccines Expanding, CA Plans Summer End To COVID Restrictions

Announcing a pending return to normalcy, California health officials said today all state COVID-19 restrictions on businesses, gatherings and recreational activities will be lifted June 15, subject to vaccine availability and low hospitalization rates, although a mask mandate will remain in place.

Assuming continued availability of vaccines and no spikes in COVID-19 hospitalizations  particularly among people who have been vaccinated  the state on June 15 will do away with its Blueprint for a Safer Economy, the four-tier, color-coded system that has guided economic reopening through a series of restrictions and capacity limits.

California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said the June 15 date was chosen for being two months after COVID-19 vaccines are made available to all Californians aged 16 and over. And the decision to lift all the blueprint requirements comes in response to rising vaccination numbers and continued decreases in all key pandemic-tracking metrics, such as case numbers, positivity rates and hospitalizations.With all of that, we are at the stage where were ready to consider the next aspect of our pandemic response, Ghaly said.

The road to this moment hasnt been easy. We have come together as Californians to save thousands of lives. And now we look at what is beyond that Blueprint for a Safer Economy that has been guiding Californias slow, public-health-minded transition and opening of our economy.  We look to get to that end of the blueprint.

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Ghaly said scrapping the blueprint  which will be done statewide, regardless of where individual counties may be ranked at the time in the tier system really means that every day activities will be allowed, and businesses can open with common-sense risk-reduction measures. This means the end to our color-coded tiers, he said. You can go to movies, to the beach and see family.

Ghaly stressed, however, that a statewide mask mandate will remain in place to prevent illness and promote health. He noted that the June 15 date could possibly be adjusted if the state begins over the next two months to experience rises in hospitalization numbers or a sudden lack of vaccine supply. He urged all residents to ensure the move occurs on time by continuing to practice infection-control measures.

We want to emphasize that we continue to focus over these now 10 weeks from today, a period where we continue to push out vaccinations and continue to focus on those personal protective measures, those mitigating measures  wearing our masks in settings, especially indoors, when were in crowds, Ghaly said.

Gov. Gavin Newsom echoed that sentiment, saying residents cannot get careless in the coming weeks about taking precautions  particularly in the face of increasing COVID variants that can be more infectious and could potentially be more resistant to vaccines.

This is really a race, these vaccines, against the variants, against the mutations, Newsom said. And thats why, again,  it is incumbent upon all of us not to announce `mission accomplished, not to put down our guard, but to continue that vigilance that got us where we are today the lowest case rates, positivity rates.  We are seeing the bright light at the end of the tunnel, and on June 15, all things being equal continue that good work well have moved beyond the blueprint and well be opening up this economy and business as usual.

The governor said that when the blueprint is scrapped, he expects schools, community colleges and universities across the state to return to in-person instruction. Although he stopped short of saying they would be required to do so. There will be no barrier to having our kids back for in-person instruction, he said.

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The announcement came on a day the state crossed the 20 million threshold for the number of vaccinations administered overall. The state also reached the 4 million mark of vaccinations in lower-income communities that have been hard hit by the pandemic. Reaching that 4 million threshold will allow more than a dozen counties to move to a less restrictive tier in the economic blueprint. San Diego and Riverside counties will both be able to advance out of the red tier and into the less-restrictive orange tier.

We will only keep moving toward this June 15 date, not only by emphasizing vaccines, but also by emphasizing the ongoing work of Californians, Ghaly said. This really continues to be on our shoulders to make the responsible decision to keep our masks on, to avoid crowds and other settings where we still might encounter COVID. But as we move toward that date on June 15, we look forward to this two-month period not just to keep our focus on vaccines, but to give our partners in communities, in businesses and other sectors a chance to prepare to be ready for this post-blueprint era in California.
Mitchell boys basketball coach Todd Neuendorf named Hamlin head coach

Todd Neuendorf has resigned after four seasons as Mitchell boys basketball coach, the school announced Friday afternoon.
HARRISBURG  Liz Forrest doesnt think four of Pennsylvanias most powerful lawmakers will pick her  a semiretired technology consultant and failed state legislative candidate from Pike County  to be the potentially deciding vote in how they redraw their political districts this year.

Past chairs of the Capitols redistricting commission have included Ivy League law professors and retired judges. Beyond settling politically charged disputes, the chair is in a position to cast the tie-breaking vote on state House and Senate maps that determine which voters go where, which communities are split apart and which lawmakers have a shot at getting reelected.

I doubt seriously they really are looking for somebody like me,  Forrest said. Im just going to put my name in, and it either works or it doesnt.

The once-a-decade process to draw new political maps  normally done in secret with little public input  is officially underway in Harrisburg, and the General Assemblys Democratic and Republican caucus leaders are accepting applications from members of the public to chair the powerful Legislative Reapportionment Commission. Its only the second time in the commissions five-decade history that lawmakers have done so.

But it remains to be seen whether this years open application process would lead to selecting someone like Forrest, or a seasoned political insider once again.

While theyve stressed the importance of having a fair and transparent redistricting process, most of the commissions members told Spotlight PA and Votebeat its too soon to elaborate on what theyre looking for in a chairperson. They have less than a month to name someone or cede that responsibility to the majority-Democrat state Supreme Court.

Thats what has happened during nearly every redistricting cycle since 1971. Now, with Harrisburg at peak levels of partisanship, advocates pushing for more public involvement and transparency are hoping history doesnt repeat itself and commissioners choose an independent chair.

Despite the pressure that comes with the job  specifically, the charge of casting the crucial swing vote on maps that can ultimately determine control of the legislature  almost anyone can qualify, even those who are eyeing a run for public office, are related to politicians or work as lobbyists or for campaigns.

Past chairs have included Republican Stephen McEwen, a retired Superior Court judge from Delaware County; former U.S. District Judge Robert Cindrich; and James Freedman, a former dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

I think (lawmakers) understand that were in a new political era where Republicans and Democrats, right and left, theres a real interest in transparency and openness, said David Thornburgh, managing director of the anti-gerrymandering organization Draw the Lines. I think the leadership is much more interested in recognizing that than pushing back.

Draw the Lines and other advocacy groups focused on removing politics from the redistricting process, like Fair Districts PA and Common Cause PA, are encouraged by state Sen. David G. Argalls bill that puts guardrails on who can serve as chair.

The measure, which passed unanimously out of a Senate committee in March, prohibits a person from holding the role if they or their spouse were registered lobbyists or political candidates in the last five years or worked for a political campaign or public official in the last five years. The full Senate wont return to Harrisburg until April 17, leaving little time for it to be considered in that chamber and the House before the commissions April 30 deadline.

I saw this bill as at least one small step in the right direction trying to make it a little less cutthroat partisan, said Argall, R-29, Rush Township, whos served as a lawmaker through three previous redistricting cycles.

Argall said hes had brief conversations with the four members of the Legislative Reapportionment Commission, but that it was too soon to tell if they would agree to pick a chair with his additional criteria in mind.

Erica Clayton Wright, a spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward, R-39, Greensburg, called a reporters questions about what additional criteria are being considered a bit leaning implying we have preconceived notions about a fifth member.

The reality is a request for nomination was just issued (March 26), Wright said. We are looking forward to evaluating and reviewing the qualifications and credentials of the individual candidates based on merit.

Through a spokesperson, House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff, R-171, Bellefonte, said he was looking for someone who could be a neutral arbiter who shares our commitment to a fair, open and legal redistricting process. He said the public application process would ensure  assuming we can agree to a candidate  that the person is best qualified and not the outgrowth of political favoritism or nepotism.

Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-43, Pittsburgh, the only current commissioner who also served on the 2011 commission, said the panel should adopt Argalls criteria and that hes personally committed to applying the criteria to his search.

Costa is also looking for someone who is going to be committed to working for the right outcome, in terms of a fair outcome, an equitable outcome.

Scholars and redistricting experts have found that the party in control of redistricting often has a partisan advantage in the resulting maps.

But determining whether a map has been purposefully drawn for that reason  referred to as gerrymandering  is much more complicated. For one, Democrats tend to cluster in urban environments, while Republicans are spread out across the state, resulting in some naturally uneven districts.

Argall hopes his bill will increase trust in state government, which he said reached an all-time low in the past year thanks to misinformation surrounding the 2020 election and the governments role in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.

I feel sometimes as if Im working in a room full of gasoline fumes and people are flicking their lighters, he said.

The Republican-controlled General Assembly has in the past failed to advance efforts to create an independent redistricting commission without lawmakers, or at least rein in their power. Courts and scholars have found that when left up to their own devices, lawmakers in charge of the redistricting process will gerrymander maps, or draw them in ways that help them win as many votes as possible while minimizing the voting power of their adversaries.

Pennsylvanias 2011 congressional map  drawn largely in secret by the GOP lawmakers and approved by a Republican governor  was considered one of the most gerrymandered of the time, and in 2018, the state Supreme Court threw it out, saying Republicans gave themselves an unfair advantage.

Argall will play a powerful role in that process this year as chair of the Senate State Government Committee, which considers the map, and he said hes planning a round of public hearings.

While the congressional map-drawing will still be led by Republicans, theyll have to work with Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf  who must give his stamp of approval  if they want to avoid the map being challenged in court.

Will that lead to bipartisanship? Argall said. I hope so.

(This article is part of a yearlong reporting project focused on redistricting and gerrymandering in Pennsylvania. It is made possible by the support of Spotlight PA members and Votebeat, a project focused on election integrity and voting access.)
New Dlehi:

Security forces during an anti-militancy operation busted a major hideout of Hizbul Mujahideen militants in Jammu and Kashmirs Doda district on Wednesday.

The security forces have recovered a huge cache of arms and ammunition from the natural cave-hideout of the militant group.

Doda Senior Superintendent of Police Mohammad Shabir told the media that the militants group had made a natural cave their hideout.

It hideout was was unearthed during an anti-militant operation in the forest area of Thana Dessa area, added the SSP.

Also read: Indian Army foils Uri-like attack in Baramulla; four terrorist killed, Pak marked weapons recovered



The SSP further added that the anti-militancy operation was carried out by Jammu and Kashmir Police and the Indian Army after they received intelligence inputs.

Also read: Army chief's stern message to Pakistan: 'Infiltrators will be buried two-and-a-half feet under the ground'



He further added that the security forces recovered Ak-47 assault rifles, Chinese pistols, Chinese grenades, Rocket propelled Grendar rounds, under barrel grenade launchers, 323 rounds of AK-47 ammunition and a collection booklet of the terrorist group.

The Shabir added that the joint security forces are carrying out search and cordon operations in the region to flush out the militants.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Banda : , April 7 (IANS) After an arduous journey of more than 14 and a half hours, mafia don and BSP MLA Mukhtar Ansari was brought to Banda jail on Wednesday morning.

The convoy bringing Mukhtar reached Banda around 4.30 a.m. and the ambulance carrying the don and three vehicles with senior police officials entered the jail premises.

Vehicles belong to media houses that had been tailing the convoy were stopped at a distance from the jail.

The high voltage drama in bringing Ansari from Ropar in Punjab to Banda in Uttar Pradesh finally ended with the safe shifting of the don to Uttar Pradesh.

Immediately after he was brought to Banda jail, a team of four doctors medically examined him and he was then shifted to the barrack.

Official sources said that the panel of four doctors has been asked to remain on call by the Banda jail.

Earlier, the convoy bringing the don from Punjab was briefly stopped on Tuesday evening at Jewar for refueling and then again at Agra, for change of drivers.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, held a late-night meeting with senior officials to monitor the transfer of the accused which was done under full media glare.

The transfer of Ansari to the UP jail, meanwhile, is being touted as a major victory for the Yogi Adityanath government which has embarked on 'Mission Mukhtar' when it began a crackdown in May 2020 against Ansari and his gang.

According to the UP police, Ansari faces 52 cases in the state and elsewhere, and 15 of them are at the trial stage.

The police have, till now, arrested 96 criminals and seized, freed, or demolished property worth Rs 192 crore linked to the BSP MLA and his associates.

Ansari is also the prime accused in the 2005 murder of BJP legislator Krishnanand Rai.

Seventy-two arms licenses linked to him and his accomplices had been suspended and an extortion racket that fed crores of rupees yearly to Ansari and his associates was busted.

The transfer of Mukhtar Ansari had taken a political turn last month when the Yogi Adityanath government told the Supreme Court that the Punjab government was "shamelessly protecting" the legislator by not handing over his custody to face trial "in 10 heinous cases of murder, extortion, cheating, fraud" and "gangster acts" in the special court for MPs and MLAs in Allahabad.

UP BJP MLA Alka Rai, wife of former legislator Krishnanand Rai who was murdered in 2005, had also been sending letters to Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, accusing the Congress government in Punjab of helping Ansari, an accused in the murder of her husband in evading court appearances in UP.

A senior official who spoke to IANS on condition of anonymity, said, "For Mukhtar Ansari, Ropar jail may have been a reformatory but Banda jail will be a jail in the true sense of the term. We will make sure that he gets no extra facilities except those he is entitled to."
The latest news on COVID-19 developments in Canada (all times Eastern):

The latest news on COVID-19 developments in Canada (all times Eastern):

6:15 p.m.

B.C. is reporting another 997 COVID-19 cases and two more deaths, bringing the total fatalities to 1,491 since the pandemic started.

Of the 330 people in hospital, 105 are in intensive care.

There have been 946,096 doses of the three vaccines administered, about 87,000 of them second doses, covering about 20 per cent of eligible recipients in B.C.

There are 8,728 active cases in the province and another 14,602 people who are under active public health monitoring after being exposed to a known case.

5:30 p.m.

Alberta is reporting 1,351 new COVID-19 infections in its latest update.

There are 575 new cases involving more transmissible virus variants, which now make up nearly 43 per cent of the provinces active cases.

There are 333 people in hospital, with 79 in intensive care.

Alberta Health Services says 755,831 people have received vaccine doses so far.

4:05 p.m.

Health officials in Saskatchewan are reporting 189 new cases of COVID-19 and two new deaths.

They say one of the deaths was someone in the 30-39 age group in the north central health zone and the other was someone over 80 from the Regina zone.

The province says there are 201 people in hospital due to the virus and 159 people are receiving inpatient care.

As of today, 2,830 COVID-19 variants of concern have been identified in Saskatchewan.

3 p.m.

Manitoba is reporting 109 new cases of COVID-19 and one additional death.

The province says 22 new infections are from variants, and all but one are from the Winnipeg region.

There are 140 people in hospital because of the virus, and 32 of them are in intensive care.

1:45 p.m.

Nova Scotia is reporting two new cases of COVID-19.

Both are in the Halifax area with one related to travel outside of Atlantic Canada and the other a close contact of a previously reported case.

The province has a total of 37 active cases of novel coronavirus with one person in hospital.

As of Tuesday, the province has administered 123,166 doses of COVID-19 vaccine, with 30,069 people having received their required second dose.

1:15 p.m.

Newfoundland and Labrador is reporting one new case of COVID-19 today.

Health officials say the case involves a person in their 60s in the western health zone and is related to domestic travel outside of the Atlantic region.

The province now has four active cases of novel coronavirus.

Officials say beginning next Wednesday, high school students will move to a blended model that includes online and in-person learning.

1:05 p.m.

New Brunswick is reporting one new COVID-19-related death today.

Health officials say a person in their 30s in the Edmundston region died of underlying complications including novel coronavirus.

The case brings the number of deaths in the province to 31.

Officials are also reporting 14 new cases of COVID-19, including 11 cases in the Edmundston area, for a total of 163 known active cases of the disease.

12:35 p.m.

Quebec is expanding access to COVID-19 vaccines to Montrealers who are essential workers or who have chronic illnesses.

Essential workers such as teachers and first responders will be able to book an appointment starting Friday and will need to provide proof of employment.

Montrealers under the age of 60 with chronic illnesses will be able to receive a vaccine in hospital starting Monday.

Vaccines will be accessible to people 60 and older across the province starting Thursday, and authorities will open walk-in clinics for those 55 and older wanting to get an AstraZeneca shot.

11:10 a.m.

Quebec is reporting 1,270 new cases of COVID-19 today and 29 more hospitalizations related to the disease.

Health officials say 543 people are in hospital, including 123 people in intensive care, a rise of two.

Officials are also reporting eight more deaths attributed to the novel coronavirus, including one within the past 24 hours.

The province says it administered 43,631 doses of vaccine Tuesday, for a total of 1,636,310.

Quebec says almost 20 per cent of its population has received at least one dose of vaccine.

10:40 a.m.

The National Advisory Committee on Immunization says it is standing by its emergency recommendation to extend the delivery of second doses of COVID-19 vaccines up to four months.

The panel's "rapid" response recommendation a month ago was followed by further research on the vaccines.

NACI's experts say they still believe that extending the time to give a second dose will bring protection to Canadians more quickly.

The panel says it expects the administration of second doses won't end up taking as long as four months based on Canada's expected vaccine supply.

10:35 a.m.

Ontario reports 3,215 new cases of COVID-19 and 17 more deaths linked to the virus.

Health Minister Christine Elliott says there are 1,095 new cases in Toronto, 596 in Peel Region, and 342 in York Region.

She also says there are 225 new cases in Ottawa and 187 in Durham Region.

Ontario says a record 104,382 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine were administered in the province since Tuesday's update.

8 a.m.

A new stay-at-home order will be issued in Ontario to try and control a third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, sources tell The Canadian Press.

Premier Doug Ford is expected to make the announcement at an afternoon news conference.

Sources say the order will take effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday morning and last for four weeks.

Only stores selling essential goods will remain open during the four-week period.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 7, 2021.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.  The NYPD released new details Wednesday as they seek to identify the skeletal remains of a person discovered recently on the North Shore, in a case thats since been deemed a homicide.

Investigators responded to a 911 call in January reporting what appeared to be human remains in Mariners Marsh Park, near Richmond Terrace and Holland Avenue in Mariners Harbor.

Police on Wednesday described the victim as a male of either Asian or Hispanic descent, between the ages of 15 and 22.

Authorities say he stood between 4-feet-11-inches and 5-feet tall.

Police say its believed the deceased couldve went missing from 2004 to 2006.

The NYPD also released photos of clothing items the victim was wearing at the time of his death.

The NYPD released images of clothing worn by a male whose skeletal remains were found in a Mariners Harbor park. (NYPD)

They include a brown headband, a blue long-sleeved shirt, a white T-shirt with the words Island All Star Cheerleader on the front and brown Timberland boots.

The medical examiner last week classified the manner of death as homicide by means that included sharp force injuries of neck and torso.

The NYPD released photos of boots and a headband worn by a male whose skeletal remains were found in a park in Mariners Harbor. (NYPD)

A pocket calendar from 2005 were found with the skeletal remains, a source with knowledge of the investigation previously told the Advance/SILive.com.

Bottles of alcohol also were recovered near the remains, but investigators didnt know in January if the beverages were related to the case, the source said at the time.

A wallet containing the calendar was found, but it did not have ID, the source said.

Anyone with information in regard to this incident is asked to call the NYPDs Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the CrimeStoppers website or on Twitter @NYPDTips.

All calls are strictly confidential.



RELATED COVERAGE: Crime news on Staten Island
The way we move says a lot about the state of our brain. While normal motor behavior points to a healthy brain function, deviations can indicate impairments owing to neurological diseases. The observation and evaluation of movement patterns is therefore part of basic research and is likewise one of the most important instruments for non-invasive diagnostics in clinical applications.

Under the leadership of computer scientist Prof. Dr Bjorn Ommer and in collaboration with researchers from Switzerland, a new computer-based approach in this context has been developed at Heidelberg University. As studies inter alia with human test persons have shown, this approach enables the fully automatic recognition of motor impairments and, through their analysis, provides information about the type of the underlying diseases with the aid of artificial intelligence.

For the computer-supported movement analysis, subjects usually have to be tagged with reflective markings or virtual markers have to be applied to the video material produced in the framework of the assessment. Both procedures are comparatively complicated. Furthermore, conspicuous movement behaviour has to be known in advance so that it can be further examined.

"A real diagnostic tool should not only confirm motor disorders but be able to recognize them in the first place and classify them correctly," explains Prof. Ommer, who heads the Computer Vision group at the Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing at Heidelberg University.

Precisely that is made possible by the novel diagnostic method developed by his team, and known as "unsupervised behavior analysis and magnification using deep learning" (uBAM). The underlying algorithm is based on machine learning using artificial neural networks and it recognizes independently and fully automatically characteristic behavior and pathological deviations, as the Heidelberg scientist explains.

The algorithm determines what body part is affected and functions as a kind of magnifying glass for behavioural patterns by highlighting different types of deviation directly in the video and making them visible. As part of this, the relevant video material is compared with other healthy or likewise impaired subjects. Progress in treating motor disorders can also be documented and analysed in this way. According to Prof. Ommer, conclusions can also be drawn about the neuronal activity in the brain.

The basis for the uBAM interface is a so-called convolutional neural network, a type of neural network that is used for image recognition and image processing purposes especially. The scientists trained the network to identify similar movement behavior in the case of different subjects, even in spite of great differences in their outward appearance.

That is possible because the artificial intelligence can distinguish between posture and appearance. Besides the recognition and quantification of impairments, a detailed analysis of the symptoms is also important.

To study them in detail, we use a generative neural network. That way we can help neuroscientists and clinicians focus on subtle deviations in motor behaviour that are likely to be overlooked with the naked eye, and make them easily visible by magnifying the deviation. Then we can exactly demarcate the type of disease in the individual case." Dr Bjorn Ommer, Computer Scientist and Professor, Heidelberg University

The research team has already been able to prove the effectiveness of this new approach with the aid of different animal models and studies with human patients. They tested, inter alia, the precision with which uBAM can differentiate between healthy and impaired motor activity. In their publication on the topic, the scientists report a very high retrieval rate both in mice and human patients.

"In all, our study shows that, as compared to conventional methods, the approach based on artificial intelligence delivers more detailed results with significantly less effort," Bjorn Ommer emphasises.

With respect to the application, the scientists hope that uBAM will be used both in basic biomedical research and in clinical diagnostics and beyond. Prof. Ommer: "The interface can be applied where traditional methods prove too complicated, tedious, or not efficient enough. Potentially it could lead to a better understanding of neuronal processes in the brain and the development of new therapeutic options."
CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - At 8:30 am ET Wednesday, Statistics Canada will release Canada trade data for February. Ahead of the data, the loonie showed mixed trading against its major counterparts. While it fell against the greenback and the euro, it held steady against the yen and the aussie. The loonie was worth 1.4991 against the euro, 87.11 against the yen, 0.9612 against the aussie and 1.2616 against the greenback as of 8:25 am ET. 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.
SALEM, Ore.-- A new bill in the state senate would create staffing ratios in Oregon's long-term care facilities.

Senator James Manning co-authored the bill after recent staffing problems came to light at two Lane County long-term care facilities. The bill is currently in the Senate Committee on Human Services, Mental Health, and Recovery. If signed into law, the Oregon Department of Humans Services would create a standard ratio of caretakers to residents based on each facility's needs.

Senator Manning said in a perfect world, he would like to see a one-to-one ratio, but in reality, he's hoping most facilities would have a one-to-three ratio.

Staffing problems were first highlighted at the Junction City Retirement Home and Assisted Living Community during a power outage in October of last year. Then in February of this year, caregivers at the Rawlin in Springfield protested working conditions claiming there were not enough staff to care for residents.

Senator Manning said after the power outage in Junction City, he became committed to improving the lives of residents in long-term care facilities.

"We're going to fix this we're going to pass a statewide standard that's going to hold people accountable," Senator Manning said. "People should not have suffered in facilities because of the lack of staffing levels or the lack of the basic necessities they had agreed upon when they signed their contracts."
UDMR (Democratic Union of Hungarians of Romania) has never discussed an alliance with AUR (Alliance for Romanians' Unity), this proposal being a "frivolous" one, because one cannot have a pro-minority attitude outside the borders and an anti-minority discourse inside, the leader of the UDMR Senators, Turos Lorand, told AGERPRES on Wednesday.

AUR co-chairman Claudiu Tarziu said on Wednesday that his party is considering an alliance with UDMR to defend the rights and freedoms of Hungarians and Romanians in Ukraine, agerpres.ro confirms.

Turos Lorand also mentioned that he did not receive any such a proposal from his colleagues in the Senate before the statement appeared in the press.
The Sears building on Olympic Boulevard in Boyle Heights. (Los Angeles Times)

To the editor: I cried reading about the impending closure of the Sears store in Boyle Heights. So much of my family's history revolves around that Sears.

My family arrived in Los Angeles from Mexico in 1956. Our father was hired by Sears to unload merchandise from trucks for six weeks only. Those six weeks turned into a 30-year career, during which he was sent to help open the first Sears store in Europe.

My dad's hard work, his becoming bilingual, and his being so simpatico enabled him to provide us with a middle-class life. He was forever grateful for the opportunities Sears gave him  and yes, everything we bought was from Sears.

Carmen Escamilla, Laguna Beach

..

To the editor: Your story about the closing of Sears on Boyle Heights was touching but incomplete.

For decades Boyle Heights was the home of the second-largest Jewish immigrant population in Los Angeles. In 1928, the graduating class of Roosevelt High School was almost entirely Jewish. And where did this group shop? Sears.

As a second-generation American Jew, I grew up in Boyle Heights in the 1940s, and Sears was where we went to buy clothes for the kids, tools for my father and a washing machine for my mother. And when we were away, I always knew when we were close to home when I saw that big blue sign.

Let's hope the building stays intact.

Richard Posell, Los Angeles

..

To the editor: The majestic and again-endangered Sears structure in Boyle Heights is the architectural twin of Sears Crosstown in my hometown of Memphis; both opened in 1927. The Memphis building also endured decades of deterioration before being restored as Crosstown Concourse, a mixed-use facility that now includes a high school.

Upon arrival by car in Los Angeles in 1970, you can imagine my surprise at seeing such a familiar and distinctive tower near downtown. A wrong turn onto Alameda Street in search of the Hollywood Freeway provided the view.

I'm ashamed to say that I never entered the Boyle Heights building.

Story continues

Cay Sehnert, Eagle Rock

..

To the editor: Your article states, "Developer Izek Shomof, who purchased the property in 2013, plans to turn it into residential lofts, a trendy food hall and creative office spaces with a rooftop recreation area, but the COVID-19 pandemic has slowed progress."

Evidently, this redevelopment may not be the cash cow that the Shomof had envisioned. Why doesn't he sell or even donate this iconic property to the city?

Repurpose the landmark and turn it into a homeless shelter. Floors can be used to segregate people into safe groups with specific needs, such as single parents with kids or LGBTQ people. Offices can be transformed into on-site social services and childcare. Include a full commissary and kitchen that can provide nourishment, jobs, and job training.

Mike Hayashi, Ladera Heights

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
New data highlights research renaissance across Middle East, North Africa and Turkey with opportunity to expand local collaborative networks

LONDON, April 8, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Clarivate Plc (NYSE:CLVT), a global leader in providing trusted information and insights to accelerate the pace of innovation, today released a report which explores the seismic shift of the research landscape in 19 countries across the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey (MENAT) region over recent decades. It presents an international success story, with the region's global share of research output quadrupling from 2% to 8% over the last 40 years, and papers from 22 million individual researchers identified within the region between 2008 and 2017.

The latest Global Research Report from the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) uses data from the Web of Science to demonstrate how MENAT research is growing in volume and impact, driven by increased participation in international research networks. One example is Egypt which has achieved rising impact at scale, with 60% international collaboration and a Category Normalized Citation Impact (CNCI) above world average. The report also points to a changing regional balance over time - for example, finding that Iran has surpassed Israel and Turkey to become the largest research producer among MENAT countries, increasing its world share of the Web of Science literature from 0.2% in 2000 to 2.3% in 2019.

To put the region's research contribution into global context, ISI conducted a special analysis of MENAT research output mapped against the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Out of 819 SDG-related topics identified, MENAT countries have authored at least one paper in 253 topics (31%). For most of the MENAT countries, public health and epidemiology is the most frequent topic for publication and accounts for more than one-quarter of their SDG-related papers. However, there are also visible regional sustainability priorities: sustainable economic growth and biogas are hot topics in Turkey while soil erosion is especially strong in Iran.

The increasingly international scope of the MENAT regional research base is seen in its researcher mobility and collaborations. The report analyzes researcher mobility both within the region and globally, finding that there is a significant outward flow of talent, with North America and Europe being the most popular destinations. It draws attention to the opportunity for more local collaboration within the region, where domestic mobility is relatively low and purely domestic papers currently account for about 5% of total output. The findings highlight how collaboration within the region as well as with the rest of the world will enhance the quality of scientific research, accelerate access to new markets and allow the financial costs of research to be shared - more effectively meeting the economic and societal challenges the region faces.

Dr. Martin Szomszor, Director at the Institute for Scientific Information at Clarivate said: "The data indicate that MENAT research shows high levels of global collaboration, resulting in diverse and high-quality output with rising impact. However, regional collaboration remains relatively low and fragmented and our analysis suggests that a collaborative regional network could improve competitiveness between the region and the rest of the world by focusing on shared needs and international priorities."

Joel Haspel, SVP Strategy, Science at Clarivate said: "At Clarivate we know that the trusted insights and analytics we provide will help to accelerate the pace of innovation, and our Global Research Reports are a key part of that for the international research community. The period of exceptional growth and impact that this report examines is unsurprising given the MENAT region's history of deep commitment to knowledge and learning. Given these countries' rich human capacity and available resources, as well as the clear evidence of improvement presented in this report, one may hope to see further advances in science and technology for the region in the future."

Notes to editors:

This report from the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) is titled: "The changing research landscape of the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey". It follows on from a 2011 analysis of the Middle East published by ISI: "Global Research Report: Middle East - Exploring the Changing Landscape of Arabian, Persian and Turkish Research". If you would like to receive a copy of the 2011 report, please email ISI@clarivate.com.

The international citation data from the Web of Science used in this report was complemented by regional citation indexes from the Egyptian Knowledge Bank, the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) and the Islamic World Science Citation Center (ISC) in Iran.

About Clarivate

Clarivate is a global leader in providing solutions to accelerate the lifecycle of innovation. Our bold mission is to help customers solve some of the world's most complex problems by providing actionable information and insights that reduce the time from new ideas to life-changing inventions in the areas of science and intellectual property. We help customers discover, protect and commercialize their inventions using our trusted subscription and technology-based solutions coupled with deep domain expertise. For more information, please visit clarivate.com.

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High-profile campaigners are battling the government's timeline for allowing indoor service

A High Court judge has allowed a case to reopen indoor hospitality brought against the UK government to speed up proceedings.

Westminster now has to file evidence by April 16 to prove that pubs and restaurants should not resume indoor service before May 17, as set by the roadmap.

Judge Mrs Justice Eady said the case will be granted permission to go to judicial review in the week starting April 19.

"I accept that there is a need to expedite consideration of this matter if the challenge is not to be rendered academic by passage of time, she was reported as saying by Sky News.

This again proves, as we did with the substantial meal, that the Government cannot make decisions, unless backed up with evidence.



Both myself and @hughosmond are delighted with todays decision.



All we ever asked for was fairness and facts.



Today, is a win for Hospitality.  Sacha Lord (@Sacha_Lord) April 6, 2021

The challenge was brought by Sacha Lord, Greater Manchester's night-time economy adviser, and Hugh Osmond, founder of Pizza Express, and recently-created PLC (LON:VARE).

There is no hard evidence to keep indoor hospitality, with measures in place, closed until 17 May, Lord said earlier this week.
A Taliban spokesman says insurgents targeted an airbase in southern Afghanistan where international troops are based.

If confirmed, it would be the first attack against foreign forces that the Taliban has claimed responsibility for since the United States signed a deal with the Taliban in February 2020.

Kandahar Airfield, where international troops in NATO's Resolute Support mission are based, was targeted with multiple missiles on April 7, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah wrote in a tweet.

Missiles have hit targets, causing heavy human & material losses, he added.

Neither the U.S. military nor NATO has commented on the claim.

According to the U.S.-Taliban agreement, reached under the administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump, the militant group agreed to end attacks against international troops.

All foreign forces are also to leave Afghanistan by May 1 in exchange for security guarantees from the militant group such as severing ties with Al-Qaeda and refusing to harbor any foreign terrorists.

But Trumps successor, President Joe Biden, has warned the withdrawal deadline will be difficult to meet, raising the prospect the entire agreement with the Taliban will unravel.

Afghanistan has seen a nationwide spike in bombings, targeted killings, and violence on the battlefield as common ground evades peace negotiators in Qatar.

Later this month, Taliban and Afghan government representatives are expected to gather for a U.S.-backed international conference in Turkey meant to give new impetus to intra-Afghan peace talks.
I think that natural origins of the pandemic are completely plausible, Dr. Bloom said, but added that he agreed with Dr. Tedros that the assessment of a lab accident was not extensive enough and requires further investigation.

Apart from the lab, the report mentions several promising directions for future study, including tracing the path of animal products or animals that could have carried the virus to markets in Wuhan.

Peter Daszak, the head of EcoHealth Alliance, who has been lambasted by lab leak theorists for his previous work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, said the findings so far pointed to wild animal farms as the most likely locales for the spillover from animals to people. There are many such farms in China and Southeast Asia, and the animals on them, like raccoon dogs and civets, have contact with both bats and people. Thousands of tests of animals and animal samples from China, including at seafood and other markets, have yielded no evidence of the presence of SARS-CoV-2, according to the W.H.O. report.

The report also mentions that both mink and cats have proved easily susceptible to infection, presumably from humans, and are potential reservoirs of the virus. Cats have not been shown to pass the virus on to humans, but mink have. China has a thriving mink industry but has not reported any mink farm infections to the W.H.O.

Dr. Lucey said he referred to the lack of information about Chinas mink farms as The Silence of the Mink.

As to human studies, the report suggests that testing blood in blood bank donations made from September to December 2019 could be very useful. The first recorded outbreak occurred in the Huanan Market in Wuhan in December 2019.

Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, said that the W.H.O. mission had asked the Wuhan blood bank system to hang on to donated blood from that time period. That was agreed to, she said, and now the Chinese are seeking permission to test the blood for antibodies to the virus that could help to pin down exactly when the virus first appeared in humans. If such studies were extended, it could help with location as well.
An Iranian military vessel stationed in the Red Sea was damaged by an apparent Israeli mine attack on Tuesday in an escalation of the shadowy naval skirmishing that has characterized the two adversaries exchanges in recent years.

The damage to the vessel, which the Iranian news media identified as the Saviz, came as progress was reported on the first day of talks to revive American participation in the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and major world powers. Israel, which regards Iran as its most potent foe, strongly opposes a restoration of that agreement, which was abandoned by the Trump administration three years ago.

Several Iranian news outlets showed images of flames and smoke billowing from a stricken vessel in the Red Sea, but the full extent of the damage or any casualties was unclear.

The Saviz, technically classified as a cargo ship, was the first vessel deployed for military use that is known to have been attacked in the Israeli-Iranian skirmishes.
WATERLOO, Iowa (AP)  The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation will probe the police shooting of an alleged armed suspect in Waterloo.

Television station KCRG reports that the shooting happened early Wednesday morning, after someone called authorities around 12:45 a.m. to report a man armed with a gun near the city's waterfront along the Cedar River.

Black Hawk County deputies reportedly found the man nearby, and Waterloo police are reported to have shot the suspect.

The man was taken to Allen Hospital after the shooting.

Authorities have not released the wounded man's name or medical condition, nor have they released any details about what led to the shooting.
Six former staffers at New Hampshire's state-run youth detention center were arrested on Wednesday in connection with the sexual abuse of 11 children over the course of a decade after more than 200 alleged victims filed a lawsuit last year.

One of the former staffers arrested by New Hampshire State Police on Wednesday continued working with children for nearly 20 years after he is accused of holding a boy down while colleagues raped him.

The Sununu Youth Services Center, formerly known as the Youth Development Center, has been under investigation since July 2019.

Jeffrey Buskey, 54, of Quincy, Massachusetts, and Stephen Murphy, 51, of Danvers, Massachusetts had previously been charged with raping a teenage boy 82 times in the 1990s.

Those charges were dropped last year in order to strengthen the expanded investigation, but both men were arrested again Wednesday and charged with rape, the New Hampshire Attorney General's Office said in a press release.

Instead of the dozens of charges they previously faced, Buskey is now charged with five counts of rape involving four children between 1996 and 1999, while Murphy is charged with five counts of rape involving three children between 1997 and 1999.

Jeffrey Buskey, left, and Stephen Murphy have each been charged with five counts of rape after previously facing 82 charges

Two others also were charged with rape, while another two were charged with being accomplices to rape. The allegations span from 1994 to 2005.

The new arrestees are: Lucien Poulette, 65, of Auburn; Bradley Asbury, 66, of Dunbarton; Frank Davis, 79, of Hopkinton and James Woodlock, 56, of Mancheste.

Poulette is charged with 33 counts - including rape and sexual assault - involving seven victims between 1994 and 2005.

Asbury is charged with being an accomplice to the rape of a former resident between 1997 and 1998.

And Davis is charged with one count of rape and five counts of sexual assault involving two victims between 1996 and 1997.

Woodlock is charged with three counts of being an accomplice to rape between 1997 and 1998.

All of the New Hampshire men have been ordered held without bail, the prosecutors said in the release.

Frank Davis, left, and Lucien Poulette have now been charged with rape and sexual assault

Brad Asbury, left, and James Woodlock have been charged as accomplices to rape

The AG's office didn't comment on the possibility of further arrests but said the latest developments were 'merely a step forward' and that the investigation will continue.

'Today's arrests make clear that this administration is committed to holding these perpetrators accountable for their detestable actions,' said Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican.

'This is not over, and we will continue to investigate these horrific allegations.'

The center is named for former Gov. John H. Sununu, father of the current governor. Democrat lawmakers in the state have previously asked Sununu to shut down the youth detention center amid investigations into the abuse.

Several of those arrested were previously named in a civil lawsuit filed last year in which more than 200 men and women allege they were physically or sexually abused as children by 150 staffers at the Manchester facility from 1963 to 2018.

According to the attorney for the victims, children were gang raped by counselors, beaten while raped, forced to compete for food in 'fight clubs' set up by counselors and locked in solitary confinement for weeks or months.

'Today's indictments and arrests are the next step in giving my clients the justice they so rightly deserve. My clients are brave survivors whose strength and courage in coming forward and telling authorities what happened to them resulted in these arrests,' Rilee told DailyMail.com in an emailed statement.

'The New Hampshire State Police and the Criminal Bureau of the New Hampshire Attorney General's office have been working tirelessly for many months, and my clients have faith that this is just the beginning of what will be numerous arrests of the abusers and their enablers.'

Rilee told the Associated Press that the indictment is an 'important step in holding these men criminally responsible for the unspeakable crimes they have committed.'

'We have faith that this is just the beginning of the arrests and indictments of not only all of the perpetrators, but also all of those that allowed it to happen,' he said.

Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester, New Hampshire is pictured in 2020

David Meehan, the lead plaintiff in the civil lawsuit, alleges that Woodlock repeatedly beat him and held him down while Buskey raped him and told him he had 'simply misunderstood events' when he spoke up during a group counseling session.

Woodlock later left the Youth Development Center and became a juvenile probation and parole officer - a position he held until he went out on leave in 2017. He declined to comment on Meehan's allegations when a reporter visited his home in early 2020.

The New Hampshire men are expected to appear in court Thursday while authorities seek extradition from Massachusetts for Buskey and Murphy.

Buskey waived extradition from Massachusetts while extradition remains pending for Murphy, MassLive reported.

Messages were left for their lawyers Wednesday and it was unclear whether the others are represented by attorneys.

In 2000 and 2001, the state Division of Children, Youth and Families spent seven months investigating 25 complaints of physical abuse and neglect at the center.

One boy said he lost the tip of his finger when staff members slammed a door on it and others accused staff members of wrapping boys' heads in towels and slamming them against pool tables. It concluded teens had been abused in five of the cases.

Asbury, then head of the state employees union chapter at the youth center, called the allegations offensive in a newspaper article published during that investigation.

'We take them personally,' Asbury said. 'That stuff does not take place. It's not tolerated. We don't have time to abuse them.'

The Youth Development Center (YDC) in Manchester, New Hampshire, is facing allegations that more than 150 staff abused more than 200 children over 60 years

David Meehan is pictured in the 1990s when he claims that several staff members abused him

David Meehan, center, has waived his right to anonymity and is the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit accusing the State of New Hampshire of covering up decades of sexual, physical and emotional abuse at its youth detention center in Manchester. He is pictured with two other victims who did not want to be identified

In the lawsuit filed last January, alleged victims also say they were choked, beaten unconscious, burned with cigarettes and had bones broken between 1963 and 2018.

Some of the former children, many of whom are now adults as old as in their 70s, claim they were locked in solitary confinement for weeks or months, sometimes shackled or strapped naked to their beds while their injuries healed.

Some say they turned to a life of crime after being released, while others left the education system unable to read or write to this day.

Last month, Rilee said he now represents 230 clients and that of the 150 accused staffers, more than half are accused of sexual abuse.

According to the facility's website, the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 was established in 2003 'to address the elimination and prevention of sexual abuse in correctional and juvenile facilities.'

'PREA establishes a zerotolerance, proactive and preventive standard for the incidence of sexual abuse in confinement settings in the United States,' the website reads.

Kids placed in the Sununu Youth Services Center range in age from 13 to 17 years old ad the average length of stay prior to initial release is 8 to 12 months.
Key benchmark indices are trading firm in early trade on buying demand in index pivotals. At 9:25 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was up 168.59 points or 0.34% at 49,369.98. The Nifty 50 index was up 64.75 points or 0.44% at 14,748.25.

The S&P BSE Mid-Cap index was up 0.6%. The S&P BSE Small-Cap index was up 0.81%.

The market breadth, indicating the overall health of the market, is strong. On the BSE, 1461 shares rose and 591 shares fell. A total of 81 shares were unchanged.

RBI policy:

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is slated to announce its first bi-monthly monetary policy of the 2021-22 fiscal today, 7 April 2021 after a three-day meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) headed by RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das.

Stocks in news:

Reliance Industries (RIL) rose 1.81%. Bharti Airtel gained 1.74%. Bharti Airtel announced an agreement with Reliance Jio lnfocomm to transfer the 'Right to Use' of Airtel's 800 MHz spectrum in Andhra Pradesh (3.75 MHz), Delhi (1.25 MHz) and Mumbai (2.50 MHz) to Jio. Through this agreement, Airtel will receive a consideration of Rs 1037.6 crore from Jio for the proposed transfer. In addition, Jio will assume future liabilities of Rs 459 crore relating to the spectrum.

Tata Steel advanced 2.21%. The company has achieved highest ever quarterly crude steel production of 4.75 mn tons with a 3% QoQ growth in Q4FY21. Full year FY21 production was lower by 7%YoY primarily due to the disruption caused by COVID-19 pandemic in H1FY21.

Tata Steel Long Products (TSLP) surged 4.17%. The company has achieved the highest ever quarterly crude steel production of 186 thousand tons with a growth of 7% QoQ and 19% YoY on the back of debottlenecking at steel melting shop and arcing.

INOX Leisure fell 0.71%. The company's board of directors approved to raise funds upto Rs. 300 crore through issue of securities either by way of a public issue or by way of rights issue or by way of a private placement (including but not limited through a qualified institutional placement).

Wonderla Holidays slipped 0.75%. Wonderla Bangalore has announced the closure of water rides effective from 7th April till further notice, following the government directive. All land rides will be functional as normal.

Global Markets:

Overseas, Asian stocks are trading mixed on Wednesday after Wall Street pulled back from record highs reached in previous sessions.

U.S. stocks fell from record levels on Tuesday as the recent rally driven by signs of strong economic rebound took a pause.

On Tuesday, California Governor Gavin Newsom said that the state will reopen its economy by June 15 provided that coronavirus vaccine and hospitalization cases remain stable.

The IMF on Tuesday projected an impressive 12.5% growth rate for India in 2021, stronger than that of China, the only major economy to have a positive growth rate last year during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Indian economy is expected to grow by 6.9% in 2022.

The IMF revised up its forecast for the world economy. On Tuesday, the organization said it expects growth at 6% in 2021, up from a January prediction of 5.5%, and Chief Economist Gita Gopinath said that despite lingering uncertainties around the pandemic, a way out of this health and economic crisis is increasingly visible.

Back home, key equity indices ended with small gains after a volatile session on Tuesday. Gains were capped amid a spike in COVID-19 cases in the country. The barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, rose 42.07 points or 0.09% to 49,201.39. The Nifty 50 index added 45.70 points or 0.31% to 14,683.50.

Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) sold shares worth Rs 1,092.75 crore, while domestic institutional investors (DIIs), were net buyers to the tune of Rs 416.59 crore in the Indian equity market on 6 April, provisional data showed.

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Amnesty Internationals new secretary general Agnes Callamard is an unwavering thorn in the side of autocrats and rights abusers who is also unafraid to turn a critical eye on her home country France.

Callamard, 58, comes to the London-based rights group after almost half a decade as the UNs special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions which saw her gain a reputation as a straight-talking figure unafraid to cross swords with the powerful on the most sensitive of issues.

As the main UN investigator into the murder of dissident Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018, she complained that the legal process in Saudi Arabia had protected top officials right up to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

She described the killing of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani in a US strike in Iraq in 2020 as illegal, earning a rebuke from then US secretary of state Mike Pompeo.

And Callamard irked Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte so much over his merciless crackdown on drugs crime he launched repeated expletive-laden tirades against her.

She also accused Saudi Arabia of bully-boy tactics after a senior Saudi official at the UN in Geneva reportedly threatened twice to have Callamard taken care of.

I certainly have no intention of keeping quiet, she told AFP in an interview at Amnestys French headquarters. We will do even more to get in the way of repression.

Asked by the AFP photographer to adopt a neutral gaze, she replied: I cannot. I can be angry, upset or animated. But neutral is not possible.

On Khashoggi, Callamards report, published in June 2019, concluded there was credible evidence that top Saudi officials, including Prince Mohammed, were liable for the killing.

She insisted that she will never back down in the face of threats.

 Difficult to understand 

Amnesty was deeply embarrassed by a painful U-turn over Alexei Navalny, the jailed opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who it initially described as a prisoner of conscience and then dropped the term due to his past nationalist comments.

Callamard has wasted no time tackling the case, writing to Putin to warn him there is a real prospect that Russia is subjecting him (Navalny) to a slow death in prison.

She told AFP that Amnestys message on Navalny was now clear: Immediate release and an end to conditions of imprisonment which amount to torture. There is no ambiguity.

But Callamard also does not mince her words about her home country, which has long irritated activists with arms sales to autocratic regimes. She doubts its rights credentials under Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, a former minister of defence.

France has taken measures on the sale of arms which are again difficult to understand  we sell arms to states which are recognised as responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity, she told AFP.

French diplomacy is not what it was on many rights issues, whether we are talking about Saudi Arabia or China, she said.

Amnesty Internationals annual report published Wednesday, the first under her leadership, said richer countries are failing a rudimentary test of global solidarity by hoarding Covid vaccines.

Her values were handed down through her family by her mother, a teacher, and the memory of her grandfather a member of the French resistance shot by the Nazis in August 1944.

As a child she would pay her respects to him every year at the place he was shot on the anniversary of his death.

She is also deeply critical over legislation put forward by the French government seeking to boost public order and fight Islamist extremism accused of eroding civil liberties.

It is the whole set of values of solidarity, respect, values against racism, values for equality that are being attacked by these measures.

mep-sjw/txw

Twitter
PD1-Vaxx has been deemed safe with no dose-limiting toxicities (DLTs) and no serious adverse reactions observed at mid-dose (50g) level and will now escalate to the final highest dose (100g) cohort.

Additionally a Phase I clinical trial of PD1-Vaxx in USA has commenced recruitment for patients with non-small cell lung cancer.

( ) ( ) welcomes Cohort Review Committee (CRC) confirmation that the Phase I clinical trial of its checkpoint immunotherapy candidate, PD1-Vaxx, will proceed to the third and final highest dose cohort.

The CRC unanimously agreed PD1-Vaxx to be safe with no dose-limiting toxicities (DLTs) and no serious adverse reactions observed after CRC review of all safety and tolerability data for the second mid-dose patients dosed with PD1-Vaxx (50g) as monotherapy.

Imugene has been advised that it can proceed with opening the third PD1-Vaxx Phase 1 cohort at the 100g highest dose level.

Shares have been as much as 16% higher to A$0.15, a new high of more than 10 years.

Safety and tolerability

The ongoing Phase 1 data represents a clinical proof-of-concept signal for PD1-Vaxx monotherapy with early efficacy signals and indicate that B-cell activating immunotherapies can induce clinically active antibody responses against an important immune regulation receptor target.

Imugene managing director and CEO Leslie Chong said: Phase 1 trials are generally designed to look for safety, tolerability and early response signals to determine the optimal dose for further development.

I am encouraged that we are seeing positive signals at such an early stage of our PD1-Vaxx Phase I trial.

Clinical results to date

After six weeks (day 43) treatment with PD1-Vaxx, one patients tumour was non-measurable indicating a complete response (CR), with three patients showing stabilization of disease (SD) and a single patient progressing (PD).

The status of two patients from cohort 1 (1 x SD, 1 x CR) were unchanged at day 85.

These are encouraging results in patients who have progressed after previous treatment with checkpoint inhibitors including Keytruda, Opdivo or Tecentriq.

Further results and scans are scheduled over the coming weeks.

Mayo Clinic receives IRB approval

The company has also announced that the prestigious Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona, has received Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval to commence and join the Phase I clinical trial of PD1-Vaxx in USA.

The first-in-human, Phase 1, multi-centre, dose-escalation study of PD1-Vaxx is recruiting patients with non-small cell lung cancer.

Imugenes PD1-Vaxx is a B-cell activating immunotherapy designed to treat tumours such as lung cancer by interfering with PD-1/PD-L1 binding and interaction, and produce an anti-cancer effect similar to Keytrudaa, Opdivoa and the other immune checkpoint inhibitor monoclonal antibodies that are transforming the treatment of a range of cancers.

The primary goal of the Phase 1 trial is to determine safety and an optimal biological dose as a monotherapy (mOBD) with efficacy, tolerability and immune response also being measured.

Determination of mOBD will be made by the Cohort Review Committee (CRC) and requires successive dosing within cohorts of at least three patients each.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 21:38:07|Editor: huaxia

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GENEVA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- On the occasion of World Health Day, April 7, the United Nations (UN) Refugee Agency (UNHCR) called for "concerted international action and solidarity" to secure access to COVID-19 vaccines for refugees, and for forcibly displaced and stateless people.

In a press statement issued on Wednesday, the UNHCR regretted that unequal access to vaccines and limited capacity of health systems could compromise the immunization of refugees, even if 153 countries included them in their vaccination strategies.

"The blatant imbalances observed in vaccine-sharing among states are counter-productive and short-sighted," UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said.

"A 'my country first' approach just cannot work in a pandemic that knows no borders," he added.

According to the UNHCR, only 20 nations are known to have vaccinated refugees on an "equal footing" with their citizens. Recent examples include Serbia, Nepal, Rwanda and Jordan.

These countries, along with many other low and middle-income countries, host 85 percent of the world's refugees, the UNHCR said.

The Geneva-based organization said that while these nations continue to "generously host" to bulk of refugees, they are being plagued with "financial challenges and fragile health systems."

"We commend these countries (those that vaccinate refugees) for their exemplary dedication and leadership," Grandi said. "By including refugees in their vaccine distribution, they mitigate the risks associated with exclusion and discrimination."

Reiterating its support for the COVAX Facility -- the World Health Organization-led (WHO) initiative that aims to provide vaccine doses for low and middle income countries -- the UNHCR said that it needs an additional 455 million U.S. dollars but to date it has received only 13 percent of that sum in contributions and pledges.

The WHO said that as of Monday, more than 604 million COVID-19 vaccine doses had been administered, mostly in high-income nations.

WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Tuesday called it a "travesty" that not all countries had enough vaccine doses to protect their health workers and at-risk groups. Enditem
In the representation to the Health Ministry, NATHEALTH has suggested involving other healthcare providers with skilled medical workforce to ramp up to the vaccination drive

NATHEALTH-Healthcare Federation of India has submitted a set of recommendations to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and NITI Aayog on the urgent need to scale up the vaccination drive by including private diagnostics labs and home care providers in the inoculation process. These steps will not only accelerate vaccination numbers at the community level but will also play a pivotal role to stem rising cases of COVID-19 in India, effectively scaling up numbers and expanding coverage in a short span of time.

In the representation to the Health Ministry, NATHEALTH has suggested involving other healthcare providers with the skilled medical workforce to ramp up to the vaccination drive. Some of the key suggestions submitted along with the rationale to the Government are:

Involving certified, private diagnostic organisations - this can increase coverage and ensure that the general public has quick access to vaccination, especially those in the high-risk category.

Phlebotomists at accredited laboratory chains are well-trained to proficiently inoculate the population with utmost compliance under the supervision of MBBS doctors.

Temporary vaccine centres can be set up in schools, malls, hotels/dormitories, airports, and large corporate houses can be created to conduct the inoculation drive as per the SOPs and operational guidelines of the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India, which can facilitate vaccine storage, handling, administration and documentation.

Involving more private home healthcare industry players in order to reduce the cost of care for patients and the burden on the stretched hospitals system - Home healthcare industry has a huge potential in preventing the spread of the COVID infection in current times of surge.

Creation of satellite, temporary off-site community vaccination clinics/centres managed by home healthcare providers - These centres outside of hospitals can be set up in community centres, malls, colleges, schools, stadiums, RWAs, offices of large corporations and others.

Dr Harsh Mahajan President, NATHEALTH and Founder and Chief Radiologist, Mahajan Imaging said, The private sector has supported the government in the fight against the pandemic and these recommendations submitted by NATHEALTH is an effort to further lend active support to the Government. Some hospitals are back to their pre-COVID levels of occupancy and also focusing on non-COVID patients.
Holiday-starved Australians yearning for exotic adventure are travelling to a sandy stretch of countryside where rare cacti and succulents grow cheek-by-jowl as far as the eye can see.

It sounds like a scene from an arid Arizona desert, but Cactus Country can be found down a side road in Strathmerton, a sleepy town of 1,042 residents just under three hours' drive north of Melbourne CBD.

Australians have been flocking to the farm - which is home to the country's largest cactus collection - to capture brightly coloured Instagram photos and dine at a restaurant that serves Mexican tacos, beers and frozen margaritas.

Standard entry costs $17.50 for adults and $7.50 for kids, with two-person tour and drinks packages starting from $55.

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Holiday-starved Australians yearning for exotic adventure are travelling to a sandy stretch of countryside where rare cacti and succulents grow cheek-by-jowl as far as the eye can see

Cactus Country (pictured) can be found down a side road in Strathmerton, a sleepy town of 1,042 residents just under three hours' drive north of Melbourne

The farm is open from 10am to 6pm Wednesday through Sunday, alongside a nursey where guests can buy succulents to take home as a memento.

Travellers have left rave reviews on social media, with one Melburnian calling it her 'favourite place for a day trip out of the city'.

Most advise spending at least four hours at the 'cactus kingdom', which has eight walking trails for visitors to explore.

A second described it as 'a spectacular spot' while a third said the experience was 'truly amazing'.

Strathmerton, a sleep town of 1,042 residents just under three hours' drive north of Melbourne

Most advise spending at least four hours at the 'cactus kingdom' (pictured), which has eight walking trails for visitors to explore

Australians have been flocking to the farm to capture brightly coloured Instagram photos

Standard entry costs $17.50 for adults and $7.50 for kids, with two-person tour and drinks packages starting from $55

An on-site restaurant (pictured) serves Mexican tacos, beers and frozen margaritas

Others tagged their friends in promotional videos of the farm, with one writing: 'Get in the car, we're going!'

It's the latest domestic attraction to draw Australians to Victoria, following an enormous sunflower field that bathes the countryside in a yellow glow and a mesmerising lake that turns pink in certain weather.

Hundreds have been flocking to the lake, tucked away in Westgate Park less than 20 minutes' drive from the CBD, to capture content for their social media feeds.

The lake is strikingly similar to the better known Hutt Lagoon, a spectacular site six hours' drive north of Perth at Yalabathara that is quickly becoming a 'must-see' destination on Australia's west coast.

But at 6.3km from the bustling heart of Melbourne, Westgate Park offers a more accessible alternative.

Australians hungry for the perfect Instagram photo are travelling to an industrial part of Melbourne to pose in front of this mesmerising lake filled with bubblegum pink water

Hundreds have been flocking to the lake, tucked away in Westgate Park less than 20 minutes' drive from the CBD, to capture carefully curated content for their social media feeds

However you'll need to time your visit because the captivating hue isn't permanent.

The natural phenomenon only occurs with the right balance of salt, sunlight, high temperatures, low rainfall and algae, which produces a reddish-orange pigment called beta-Carotene that stains water pink.

Parks Victoria told the ABC Westgate lake first turned pink in December 2012, and has turned pink almost every summer since.

The colour is at its most vivid when the sun hangs directly over the water, from 10am until 2pm each day.

Westgate Park, 6.3 kilometres from Melbourne CBD

The natural phenomenon only occurs with the right balance of salt, sunlight, high temperatures, low rainfall and algae, which produces a reddish-orange pigment called beta-Carotene that stains water pink

The colour is at its most vivid when the sun hangs directly over the water, from 10am until 2pm each day

Photos of the lake have drawn stunned responses on social media, with one woman who visited last summer declaring she was 'in awe of its beauty'.

'Nature will never cease to amaze me,' said a second, while a third called it the best sight she has witnessed in Australia.

Many were incredulous that such a remarkable attraction existed in Melbourne.

One resident said she only recently discovered the lake despite living in the city for more than 20 years.

Others said they could hardly believe how vivid the colour was in real life.
Volvos performance EV subsidiary Polestar is reportedly taking steps to go greener than any electric auto manufacturer before it. As part of the companys inaugural release of its annual review and sustainability report, Polestar announced on Wednesday that it plans to produce only carbon-neutral vehicles by 2030.

Rather than planting trees as a means of offsetting carbon dioxide emissions from its production chain, a practice which Polestar CEO, Thomas Ingenlath, considers a cop-out, the company will instead cut emissions by altering the manner in which its cars are made. This will include the entirety of Polestars production process from suppliers to retailers.

Were electric, so we dont have to worry about combustion engines producing toxic emissions  but that doesnt mean our job is done, Polestars Head of Sustainability, Fredrika Klaren, noted in a Wednesday press statement. We will now work to eradicate all emissions stemming from production of our vehicles. Now is a historic and exciting time for car manufacturers, an opportunity to seize the moment, do better and dare to build the dream of climate-neutral, circular and beautiful cars.

This move comes as the global automotive industry scrambles to clean up its act and individual automakers position themselves in what is quickly shaping up to be an electrified and sustainable future. The past few years have presented environmental advocates with a number of challenges, such as Volkswagens 2015 Dieselgate scandal in which the company employed a software cheat to circumvent industry diesel emission standards, or the Trump administrations Quiotian quest to roll back Obama-era emissions rules and Californias lawsuit against the former administration over its proposed national fuel efficiency standards.

Details are still scarce as to what tangible steps Polestar intends on taking to achieve its carbon neutral dreams by the end of this decade.
Two men have been charged with murder after a former top student's charred, half-naked body was found dumped in bushland.

Najma Carroll's body was discovered near Sandy Point Quarry off Heathcote Road in Menai, in south Sydney, on July 29 last year.

Police described the 33-year-old's head injuries as 'horrific' and said she had been set on fire.

A burnt-out Mercedes Benz was also found not far from Ms Carroll's body.

Following extensive investigations, detectives arrested two men at Silverwater jail on Tuesday and this morning.

They were both charged with murder and will appear in Sutherland Local Court via video link on Wednesday.

Najma Carroll's body was discovered near Sandy Point Quarry off Heathcote Road in Menai, in south Sydney, on July 29 last year

NSW Police officers return from searching bushland near Sandy Point Quarry in Menai last July after the grisly discovery was made by two dog walkers

Ms Najma was a student at selective school Sydney Girls High and she achieved top HSC marks in modern history and advanced English.

But in recent years, Ms Carroll was 'living a rough life' amid struggles with her mental health.

NSW Police said Ms Carroll lived in Sydney's Inner West but was known to spend time in the southwest. They also said she had a history of drug offences.

Her friend Ian Clare told The Daily Telegraph he and his girlfriend let Ms Carroll stay with them in Liverpool.

In one text message, Ms Carroll told Mr Clare: 'I'm going to stop writing messages now because more words sent on a text message are not going to relieve any anxiety I have, they're not going to do anything but probably make me feel worse.'

Ms Carroll left her kelpie Chuck behind at their home and in another text said she wanted to visit the dog because 'things haven't been easy lately'.

Police said Ms Carroll lived in Sydney's Inner West but was known to spend time in the southwest. Pictured: NSW Police search bushland near Sandy Point Quarry in Menai

Ms Najma was a student at selective school Sydney Girls High and she achieved top HSC marks in modern history and advanced English

Ms Carroll's friend Ian Clare shared final text messages from the 33-year-old former top student (pictured, left and right)

Mr Clare told the publication he last saw Ms Carroll about a month before she vanished, when the 33-year-old visited his house to grab some of her belongings.

He described Ms Carroll as 'nice and compassionate' but said she was 'a very unsettled girl, very emotionally disturbed'.

'Last we spoke to her she was living around the Marrickville area on people's couches ... she was basically living the rough life, basically homeless, no steady home,' Mr Clare said.
New Delhi:

You cant teach an old dog new tricks and this idiom suits Pakistan very well when it comes to terrorism. The country known for being a "safe haven" for terrorists continued to provide assistance to them even after the September 29 surgical strike last year.

On September 29, 2016, Indian Army shocked the world including Pakistan by carrying out surgical strike and destroyed terror launch pads in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK).

The fearless and retaliatory move by Indian Army came after four Pakistani terrorists attacked an Army Base in Jammu and Kashmirs Uri sector. The cowardice attackers killed 17 soldiers and injured 19.

After the Uri attack, the clamour for surgical strikes on Pakistan rose sharply and Indian Army did what the entire nation wanted to see.

However, Pakistan not learning any lessons continued to provide its support and assistance to terrorists. Attacks and infiltration didnt stop post-surgical strike.

Attacks and infiltration post-September 29 surgical strikes:

On November 29, just two months after the surgical strike two major attacks shocked the Jammu and Kashmir again. 7 Army personnel including a Major were killed while 8 others were seriously injured.

According to an RTI report, 135 terrorists killed while 43 security personnel were martyred in terror attacks till August 2017.

By June 2017, 22 infiltration bids were attempted and 34 armed intruders were killed by the security forces.

Umar Fayaz killing: A Lieutenant rank Kashmiri Army officer Umar Fayaz Parry was assassinated by terrorists in Jammu and Kashmirs Shopian district. Fayaz was on leave and gone to Shopian to attend a marriage ceremony when terrorists abducted him and murdered brutally.

Also Read | 2016 surgical strike on Pakistan live-streamed to Delhi Army headquarters

Amarnath Yatra attack: On July 10, Terrorists killed seven Amarnath pilgrims, including six women, and injured 19 others as they struck a bus in Kashmir's Anantnag district, in the worst attack on the annual pilgrimage since the year 2001.

According to an IndiaSpend analysis of data from the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), deaths due to terror-related incidents in Jammu and Kashmir rose sharply post-surgical strikes on Pakistan.

From 246 in 2015-16 to 323 in 2016-17, deaths due to terrorism-related incidents increased by 31 per cent in Jammu and Kashmir in one year since Indian Armys surgical strikes in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir.

Earlier this week, Army Chief General Bipin Rawat hinted more strikes on Pakistan and said cross-LoC surgical strike last year was a message to the Islamabad.

"The strikes were a message we wanted to communicate. I think they understood what we meant. These things could follow, if required," General Rawat said.

His message was a clear indication that if the situation in Kashmir remains what it is now, India will again do what it does the best, retaliate strongly and aggressively.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Georgian PM Garibashvili tests positive for COVID-19, President Zurabishvili self-isolates

By Veronika Malinboym

Prime Minister of Georgia Irakli Garibashvili tested positive for COVID-19, PMs office announced earlier today. The office confirmed that the prime minister is now in self-isolation but feels fine and will continue to work remotely.I tested positive for COVID-19. I am currently in self-isolation, but I am feeling well and I continue to work remotely, PM Garibashvili posted on his Facebook page.President of Georgia, Salome Zurabshvili, has also moved into self-isolation after having been in contact with PM Garibashvili a few days ago, despite having received the first shot of AstraZeneca vaccine earlier in March. The Zurabishvilis press office reported that the president would take a PCR test as per the protocol.Earlier today, Head of Labour Inspection of Georgia Beka Peradze announced that amidst the rising fears of the third way of pandemic in Georgia, the government is introducing a new set of regulations which will prohibit renting of the property for the purpose of organizing social events. Peradze added that according to the new regulations, the property owner will be obliged to report any social event that is held on the premises of their property, as the failure to do so may result in a fine of $3,000 (approximately GEL10,000).Deputy Health Minister of Georgia Tamar Gabunia, has also stated earlier today that in case the government considers it necessary to introduce further regulations, the restriction of movement will be among the first possible options to consider. Gabunia added that the concrete plan related to the Orthodox Easter celebrations has not been drawn yet, noting the government would come up with it in April:Everything will depend on how well the society follows the rules that have already been established. It will determine whether or not we will have to reintroduce stricter measures, said Gabunia.As of today, 897 new cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in Georgia, 463 of which were recorded in Tbilisi. Over the last 24 hours, 196 patients have made a recovery, and 10 have died. The total count of confirmed cases in Georgia since February 2020 has reached 284,958.
Nearly half of new coronavirus infections nationwide are in just five states - a situation that is putting pressure on the federal government to consider changing how it distributes vaccines by sending more doses to hot spots.

New York, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania and New Jersey together reported 44 percent of the nation's new COVID-19 infections, or nearly 197,500 new cases, in the latest available seven-day period, according to state health agency data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

And Minnesota officials are now warning the state is poised to follow the alarming trends seen in nearby Michigan.

Total US infections during the same week numbered more than 452,000. To date, the US has recorded more than 30.8 million cases and 556,509 deaths.

Average daily new cases are hovering around 65,000 in the US - up from the 2021 low of 53,000 cases a day seen week before last.

Encouragingly, deaths remain below 1,000, with 915 new fatalities recorded Tuesday. But the seven-day rolling average of new fatalities rose slightly for the first time in a week, to 790.

Dr Anthony Fauci said Tuesday that he believes the rapid U.S. vaccination campaign - which is now administering an average of three million shots a day - will stem the increasing infections and prevent a fourth wave of the pandemic.

The heavy concentration of new cases in states that account for 22 percent of the US population has prompted some experts and elected officials to call for President Joe Biden's administration to ship additional vaccine doses to those places.

So far, the White House has shown no signs of shifting from its policy of dividing vaccine doses among states based on population.

Nearly half of new coronavirus infections nationwide are in just five states - New York, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania and New Jersey - according to Johns Hopkins data

New York had the highest number of new cases over the latest seven day period with 53,088

Michigan recorded 46,879 new cases in the week ended Tuesday. The seven-day average of daily new infections reached 6,719 on Sunday - more than double what it was two weeks earlier

Florida recorded 38,421 new cases in the week ended Tuesday. The state's seven-day average of daily new infections has exceeded 5,400, an increase of 20 percent in the past two weeks

Pennsylvania recorded 29,458 new infections in the week ended Tuesday

New Jersey recorded 28,592 new infections in the week ended Tuesday. The state's seven-day rolling average of daily new infections has risen over the past two weeks

Sending extra doses to places where infection numbers are climbing makes sense, said Dr Elvin H Geng, a professor in infectious diseases at Washington University.

But it's also complicated. States that are more successfully controlling the virus might see less vaccine as a result.

'You wouldn't want to make those folks wait because they were doing better,' Geng said. 'On the other hand, it only makes sense to send vaccines to where the cases are rising.'

The spike in cases has been especially pronounced in Michigan, where the seven-day average of daily new infections reached 6,719 cases Sunday - more than double what it was two weeks earlier.

And at least four hospitals in central Michigan have fewer than 10 percent of their hospital beds available amid the rise in Covid cases - and the latest wave of patients is younger and healthier, doctors told CNN.

Only New York reported higher case numbers. And California and Texas, which have vastly larger populations than Michigan, are reporting less than half its number of daily infections.

Though Michigan has seen the highest rate of new infections in the past two weeks, Democratic Gov Gretchen Whitmer has said she does not plan to tighten restrictions.

She has blamed the virus surge on pandemic fatigue, which has people moving about more, as well as more contagious variants.

'Taking steps back wasn't going to fix the issue,' Whitmer said as she got her first vaccine Tuesday at Ford Field in Detroit, home of the NFL's Lions.

'What we have to do is really put our foot down on the pedal on vaccines' and urge people to wear masks, keep their social distance and wash their hands, she added

Whitmer got the shot the day after Michigan expanded eligibility to everyone 16 and older. She asked the White House last week during a conference call with governors whether it has considered sending extra vaccine to states battling virus surges. She was told all options were on the table.

The heavy concentration of new cases in states that account for 22 percent of the US population has prompted some experts and elected officials to call for President Joe Biden's administration to ship additional vaccine doses to those places

Michigan falls in 31st place in the U.S. for getting its residents at least one dose of Covid vaccine.

Nearly 32 percent of Michiganders have had one or more doses, and the state has used more than 73 percent of its vaccine supply.

It is giving about 87,000 shots a day, according to Bloomberg tracking.

That lags behind most of the nation, with about 49,000 dose administered per 100,000 people in the state.

But with 67,000 doses of vaccine delivered to the state per 100,000, Michigan's allocations are about on part with New York's, Pennsylvania's or Florida's.

Both New York and Pennsylvania have gotten more of those shots into arms, however.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced Tuesday that it will allocate $90.2 million to Michigan in an effort to speed up the vaccination effort there.

'This investment will support state and local health departments and community-based organizations as they work on the front lines to increase vaccine access, acceptance, and uptake,' said CDC director Dr Rochelle Walensky.

About 75 percent of that funding will go to efforts to improve access to vaccines for people of color, supporting local heath departments and community health centers.

These programs could offer anything from door-to-door visits to assist with scheduling vaccination program and hiring people to inform non-English speakers about vaccination.

In New York City, vaccination appointments are still challenging to get. Mayor Bill de Blasio has publicly harangued the federal government about the need for a bigger vaccine allotment almost daily, a refrain he repeated when speaking to reporters Tuesday.

'We still need supply, supply, supply,' de Blasio said, before adding: 'But things are really getting better.'

On the state level, Gov Andrew Cuomo has not called publicly for an increase in New Yorks vaccine allotment, even as cases ticked up in recent weeks and the number of hospitalized people hit a plateau.

In New Jersey, where the seven-day rolling average of daily new infections has risen over the past two weeks, from 4,050 daily cases to 4,250, Democratic Gov Phil Murphy said he is constantly talking to the White House about demand for the coronavirus vaccine, though he stopped short of saying he was lobbying for more vaccines because of the states high infection rate.

Vaccine shipments to New Jersey were up 12 percent in the last week, Murphy said Monday, though he questioned whether that's enough.

'We constantly look at, okay, we know we're going up, but are we going up at the rate we should be, particularly given the amount of cases we have?' Murphy said.

People enjoy lunch hour in Union Square in New York on March 26

New virus variants are clearly one of the drivers in the increase, said Dr Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, chair of the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California at San Francisco.

Failure to suppress the rise in cases will lead to more people getting sick and dying, she said, and drive increases in other parts of the country.

'More vaccine needs to be where the virus is,' Bibbins-Domingo said, adding that people should get over the 'scarcity mindset' that has them thinking surging vaccine into one place will hurt people elsewhere.

In Florida, relaxed safeguards during a busy spring break season likely helped spread virus variants, said University of South Florida epidemiologist Jason Salemi.

The state's seven-day average of daily new infections has exceeded 5,400, an increase of 20 percent in the past two weeks.

While many new infections appear to be among younger people, Salemi said he's worried about Florida's seniors.

About 78 percent of residents age 65 and older have received at least one vaccine dose, but roughly one million more still have not gotten any shots.

'We seemingly have the supply,' Salemi said. 'Are these people not planning to get vaccinated?'

Leanne Montenegro, 21, covers her eyes as she doesn't like the sight of needles, while she receives the Pfizer vaccine at a FEMA vaccination center at Miami Dade College in Miami

Talk of sending extra shots to some states comes at a time when the number of daily infections in the US has fallen dramatically compared to a January spike following the holiday season. However, the seven-day average of daily infections been rising slowly since mid-March.

The five states seeing the most infections stand out. As of Tuesday, 31 US states were reporting seven-day averages of fewer than 1,000 new daily cases.

White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients said Tuesday more than 28 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines will be delivered to states this week. That allocation will bring the US total to more than 90 million doses distributed in the past three weeks.

The news came as Biden announced more than 150 million coronavirus shots have been administered since he took office, and that all adults will be eligible to receive a vaccine by April 19.

About 40 percent of US adults have now received at least one COVID-19 shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

About 23 percent of American adults have been fully vaccinated - including more than half of Americans 65 and older.

Geng said the nation should take a step back and go slow. Even just a few more weeks of Americans sticking with social distancing and other precautions could make a huge difference.

'The take-home message here is, let's not jump the gun,' Geng said. 'There's light at the end of the tunnel. We all see it there. And we will get there. Slow and steady.'
As Texans recover from the devastating February winter storm and blackouts, lawmakers are trying to decide how to prevent something like it from ever happening again.

But it seems unlikely the natural gas industry will be forced to winterize its systems to prevent its facilities from freezing

IN TEXAS: Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick lashes out at Harris County, media during presser defending voter security bill

Texas Monthly's Andrea Zelinski reports that legislators have largely let natural gas off the hook when it comes to requiring weatherization in the future, despite the fact that a third of Texas' gas-producing facilities "froze off" when temperatures plunged between Feb. 14-20. Natural gas produced more than half of Texas' electricity in 2020, Zelinski reports.

Zelinski reports that only one bill (Senate Bill 3) comes close to requiring weatherization at natural gas facilities, putting the onus on the Railroad Commission to instate rules on how the natural gas industry must prepare to operate its facilities during extreme weather events like the freeze. Seven other major bills drafted in response to the blackouts don't include weatherization requirements for natural gas infrastructure.

But Zelinksi notes that Railroad Commission Chairman Christi Craddick has deflected blame away from the industry she regulates, making it unlikely for the Commission to step in when it should. Craddick and her father, Representative Tom Craddick, earned more than $100,000 from Texass largest natural gas companies in 2019. The natural gas industry has largely opposed weatherization requirements.

BILL TO WATCH: Texas could follow Arkansas in passing anti-trans health care bill

Dozens of natural gas facilities also failed to fill out a two-page form that would have prevented blackouts at the plants and allowed facilities to provide power when the grid needed it most, the Houston Chronicle's Jay Root, Eric Dexheimer and Jeremy Blackman reported last month.

Nearly 200 deaths have been attributed to the winter storm and the resultant blackouts, the Houston Chronicle's Zach Despart, Alejandro Serrano and Stephanie Lamm found.
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BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - U.K. stocks advanced on Wednesday, with a weaker pound and gains in oil and iron ore prices on the prospects for stronger global growth helping underpin sentiment. Adding to investor optimism over economic recovery, the IHS Markit/CIPS composite Purchasing Managers' Index - measuring Britain's huge services sector and its manufacturers - rose to 56.4 in March from 49.6 in February. The benchmark FTSE 100 climbed 57 points, or 0.8 percent, to 6,880 after rallying 1.3 percent on Tuesday. AstraZeneca shares were down about 0.6 percent. The University of Oxford announced that it is halting the trial of the Covid vaccine developed by the company on children and teenagers. Croda International was marginally higher. The chemicals company announced that its fragrances and flavors subsidiary, Iberchem, has agreed to acquire Parfex S.A., a French fine fragrance business, for a total enterprise value of 45 million euros. Discount carrier Ryanair Holdings gained nearly 1 percent after trimming its annual loss estimate. Royal Dutch Shell rose half a percent. The oil & gas company said it expects to make the first profit from pumping oil since the start of the pandemic. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
The FBI seal is seen before a news conference at FBI headquarters in Washington on June 14, 2018. (Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo)

US Charges New York Cosmetics Executive With Iran Sanctions Violations

WASHINGTONU.S. prosecutors said on Tuesday they charged the president of a New York cosmetics company for his alleged involvement in a conspiracy to violate U.S. economic sanctions on Iran.

Michael Rose, president of Forsythe Cosmetics Group LLC, is accused of skirting U.S. sanctions between 2015 and 2018 by arranging for the export from the United States to Iran of more than $350,000 worth of cosmetics, prosecutors said in an indictment.

They said an Iranian-based importer with whom Rose was working then used front companies based outside Iran to send payments to New York and to arrange for the shipment of goods to Iran via the United Arab Emirates.

Danya Perry, a lawyer for Rose, declined to comment on the indictment.

Rose was arrested on Tuesday by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Commerce Departments Office of Export Enforcement. Prosecutors said he was expected to appear before a magistrate judge in Manhattan federal court.

Whatever his motivationgreed or something more sinisterwe allege Mr. Rose intentionally disguised his products ultimate destination and lied about those products prices to limit his customs liability, said William F. Sweeney Jr., an FBI assistant director.

By Mark Hosenball
JACKSONVILLE, Fla., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Richmond American Homes of Florida, a subsidiary of M.D.C. Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: MDC), is excited to announce that Walkers Ridge, a beautiful new community showcasing the builder's signature Seasons Collection, is now open for sales in Jacksonville.

More about Walkers Ridge (RichmondAmerican.com/WalkersRidge)

Boasting a modern layout and thoughtful design, the Ruby is one of several Seasons Collection floor plans available at this Richmond American community.

Five Seasons Collection floor plans from the mid $200s (RichmondAmerican.com/JaxSeasons)

Ranch and two-story homes with flexible layouts

3 to 5 bedrooms, approx. 1,560 to 2,380 sq. ft.

Hundreds of ways to personalize with finishes and fixtures

Complimentary Home Gallery design assistance

Minutes from shopping and dining at Oakleaf Town Center

Close proximity to Naval Air Station Jacksonville,I-95 and the First Coast Expressway

Buyers who build a new home from the ground up at Walkers Ridge will have the opportunity to work with professional design consultants to select colors, textures, finishes and fixtures that showcase their unique stylea complimentary service!

Walkers Ridge is located at 5203 Sawmill Point Way, Jacksonville, FL 32210. Call 904.541.2546 or visit RichmondAmerican.com for more information.

View health and safety updates at RichmondAmerican.com/COVID-19.

About M.D.C. Holdings, Inc.

Operating under the name Richmond American Homes, MDC's homebuilding subsidiaries have built more than 210,000 homes since 1977. Among the nation's largest homebuilders, MDC's subsidiary companies have operations in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Virginia and Washington. Mortgage lending, plus insurance and title services are offered by the following MDC subsidiaries, respectively: HomeAmerican Mortgage Corporation, American Home Insurance Agency, Inc. and American Home Title and Escrow Company. M.D.C. Holdings, Inc. is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "MDC." For more information, visit MDCHoldings.com.

SOURCE M.D.C. Holdings, Inc.

Related Links

www.richmondamerican.com


Developers will finally grab a humble 'island' home next door to high rise apartments after a David and Goliath battle with the elderly owner ended with his death.

Barrie Dickson, 90, died last year after living in the Federation bungalow in Kogarah, in Sydney's south, for 65 years.

He was approached by developers countless times to sell his home, but always refused in scenes similar to Darryl Kerrigan from Australian classic film The Castle.

Mr Dickson bought it when he was 24 for just $13,000 and it is expected to fetch at least $3 million when it goes to auction on April 10.

The property, at Kogarah in Sydney's south, is surrounded by a number of high rise apartments

Mr Dickson's daughter Joanne, who along with her brothers Greg and Peter are selling the house they grew up in, said they were proud of their father's battle.

'We all admired him for it,' she told Domain. 'He always spoke his mind and was a great believer in standing up for what he felt was right. He never wanted to leave.'

'I think he moved around so much when he was young, he just wanted to put down stumps in one place and, from that moment, never wanted to go anywhere else.

'Dad wouldn't hear of anyone putting a price on his home. We all know progress comes along and that eventually it will happen no matter what, but he just wanted to stay in his home as long as he could, as he achieved that.'

The federation style home (pictured middle) is tipped to fetch at least $3million when it goes to auction on April 10

Mr Dickson previously said he was not anti-development, he just liked the suburban feel his home offered and didn't want to move.

He was also convinced the volume of noise from the apartments next door contributed to the death of his wife in 2014 after 50-plus years of marriage.

'When they come into local streets and put pressure on people who've been battling all their lives to get a home, it's such a shame,' he said four years ago.

Mr Dickson accused local councils, the state governments, and the courts of favouring developers.

Mark Somboli, the principal at Belle Property St George, expects the property to go under the hammer for at least $3 million - and is likely to be bought by a developer given it sits on a coveted 500sqm of land next to other apartment towers.

He also admired the late Mr Dickson, describing him as a 'soldier' who was a man of integrity.

The home, on the Princes Highway in Kogarah, features three-bedrooms and two-bathrooms and is also walking distance to a number of nearby schools.
SACRAMENTO, Calif., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Conception Nurseries, a leading cannabis tissue-culture company with facilities in California and Oregon, announced that Dov Szapiro and Will Muecke have joined the board of directors. Both bring tremendous experience and strategic insight to the rapidly evolving market for consistent genetic strains of cannabis clones that enable growers to scale while reducing costs. Szapiro and Muecke are highly experienced senior executives, investors, advisers and board members in companies across multiple industries worldwide.



Szapiro is the co-founder and managing member at Entourage Effect Capital (EEC) a United States private investment firm dedicated to investing in the cannabis industry. Muecke is a co-founder and managing member of Artemis Growth Partners, the industry-leading ESG and impact-oriented private equity platform in global cannabis.



Szapiro is focused on transforming cannabis companies into industry leaders and uses his experience derived from founding and selling one of his startups to a $1 billion conglomerate to assist portfolio companies with strategy, operations and business development. He is well versed in using structured buyouts, acquisitions, mergers and IPOs to grow companies.



"EEC was an initial investor of Conception Nurseries and we worked with its CEO, Kevin Brooks, and the Board of Directors to lead various transactions that have led to Conception having one of the strongest balance sheets in that space," says Szapiro. "Conception's proprietary tissue-culture micropropagation technology, team and business model are exactly what licensed cannabis growers need to meet the ever-increasing demand for healthy, high-quality, predictable and affordable cannabis strains in this rapidly growing industry."



The mission of EEC (formerly Cresco Capital Partners, LLC) is to actively leverage its sector and investment experience, networks, and investment process to identify, invest and accelerate high-quality emerging growth companies. As one of the first growth equity investors in the cannabis industry, EEC has already allocated $200+ million since 2014 into 65+ companies.



Muecke formerly was managing director and global co-head of healthcare services investment banking at Goldman, Sachs & Co. before developing his first GIIRS-certified, award-winning emerging markets impact private equity fund, backed by the World Bank and other leading ESG-oriented investors, which was the predecessor to Artemis Growth Partners.



"At Artemis Growth Partners, we invest in the most defensible, dynamic, and visionary companies in cannabis, and we're excited about the tremendous market opportunities available based on the science-driven approach that Conception Nurseries uses to mass produce highly scalable, genetically certified cannabis clones that reduce costs and overhead for growers," says Muecke.



Artemis oversees $320+ million in mission-driven discretionary assets under management invested in a portfolio of 30 companies spanning the rapidly growing legal cannabis markets of the US, Colombia, the Caribbean, Israel, China, Europe, and the United Kingdom.



Kevin Brooks, CEO of Conception Nurseries, welcomed the two new board members saying: "We're very fortunate that Dov Szapiro and Will Muecke have chosen to bring their vast experience in the cannabis industry and investment community to our company. They are both key partners and true value-add investors that will help Conception achieve an unparalleled competitive edge and strategic growth while delivering greater value to our customers."



Conception Nurseries brings tissue culture technology to the cannabis industry and produces TrueClone plantlets free of pathogens and with exceptional vigor at a cost-per-plant below producers' in-house costs. In 2020 Conception won the prestigious Ready to Invest award from The Arcview Group and was named a Top Ten Cannabis Tech Solution Provider by Enterprise Technology Review.

MEDIA CONTACT:

[email protected]

This press release was issued through 24-7PressRelease.com. For further information, visit http://www.24-7pressrelease.com.

SOURCE Conception Nurseries

Related Links

https://conceptionnurseries.com


Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 20:26:39|Editor: huaxia

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NANNING, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The 18th China-ASEAN Expo will take place both online and offline in Nanning, capital of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, in September, the organizer said on Wednesday.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of dialogue relations between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). This year's expo will help expand the platform functions of the expo. It will also further serve the construction of the Belt and Road Initiative and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

The expo will have an exhibition area of 124,000 square meters and hold exchange activities in economy and trade, science and technology, and the digital economy and health, said Wang Lei, secretary-general of the China-ASEAN Expo Secretariat.

In 2020, trade between China and the ASEAN reached 684.6 billion U.S. dollars, bucking the trend to post a year-on-year increase of nearly 6.7 percent. The ASEAN remained China's largest trading partner, demonstrating the massive potential and strong resilience of China-ASEAN economic and trade cooperation, said Wei Yan, an official with the Ministry of Commerce.

Yang Zhuo, another commerce ministry official, advised to focus on development opportunities of the RCEP and expand and deepen cooperation in fields including health, new business models, and technological innovation.

Total two-way investment between China and ASEAN reached 22.31 billion U.S. dollars in 2020, according to Yang. Enditem
Connecticuts COVID vaccine allotment has surged in recent weeks, but Johnson & Johnson supply issues could hamper efforts to quickly vaccinate everyone who is eager for a shot.

In two weeks, the amount of first doses coming into Connecticut has doubled from about 150,000 the week of March 22 to 288,000 this week. But this number may be the highest for several weeks as the Johnson & Johnson vaccine supply drops off, officials said.

The state Department of Public Healths data shows the surge in new first doses has come largely from an increase in Johnson & Johnson vaccines, which jumped from several thousand in mid-March to more than 100,000 this week.

But an issue with the production of the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine led a Maryland manufacturer to discard 15 million doses, officials said.

Based on what weve been told so far, we expect it to go down somewhat next week, based primarily on Johnson & Johnson supply being lower next week than this week, said Josh Geballe, chief operating officer for Gov. Ned Lamont. This week is an exceptionally high week for J&J.

He said the decline in Johnson & Johnson vaccines was baked into our models going forward.

This could be a high-water mark for the next couple weeks, probably getting us through the month, Geballe said.

Connecticut receives three separate allocations of the vaccine: One to the state government for disbursement to providers, one to pharmacies and a third to federally qualified health centers.

A DPH memo to providers Tuesday said the state governments allocation of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was going to drop to 6,400 doses next week. DPH said the allocation for future weeks could be even lower.

Most J&J orders for the upcoming week will not be able to be filled. We will work with providers to see if there are ways that alternative products that can be used, but clinic efforts that require J&J may have to be delayed, DPH said in the memo.

Dr. James Cardon, chief clinical integration officer for Hartford HealthCare, said the networks nearly 20 clinics manage to what we are allocated.

We adjust what and where we administer on a weekly basis, he said.

State officials remain confident that despite this drop in Johnson & Johnson supply, everyone who wants a vaccine will get a first dose by the end of the month after eligibility expanded last week to people age 16 and older.

During a visit to a mobile clinic at Rose City Senior Center in Norwich, Lamont said Wednesday his administration is monitoring the situation hourly.

We tried to target all the J&J to the mobile vans. Just like you see (at the Rose City Senior Center), because these are populations where its a lot easier to have one shot and be done, Lamont said. Well do the Moderna and Pfizer in our more traditional routes. I hope its just for two weeks.

On Wednesday, the state reported a 3.84 positivity rate on new COVID-19 tests. Hospitalizations increased by a net of nine patients to 514 statewide. An additional five deaths were reported for a total of 7,935.

When reports surfaced last week that the Maryland manufacturer had to nix 15 million Johnson & Johnson doses, Connecticut officials quickly dispelled concerns that it would slow the vaccine efforts here.

Acting DPH Commissioner Deidre Gifford said last week that none of the doses delivered to Connecticut came from the facility, and state officials have remained confident in the vaccine.

While the Johnson & Johnson doses have fluctuated considerably in recent weeks, Connecticut continues to receive a steady supply of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.

As of Monday, Connecticut had administered at least one dose of the vaccine to about 45 percent of the population age 16 and older. A total of 1.3 million first doses of the vaccine have been administered and about 800,000 people are fully vaccinated. State officials said about 57,000 doses administered have been the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Providers have welcomed the recent increases in supply as demand is expected to remain high for the next couple of weeks.

Yale New Haven Health opened 35,000 appointments over the past week, and plan to open another 16,000 to 17,000 this week, according to Dr. Ohm Deshpande, the hospitals vice president of population health.

Supply hasnt equalized demand, but its getting there, Deshpande said. The appointments tend to go quickly, but the number of appointments we are opening is 10 times what we were doing a few weeks ago.

Staff writer Josh LaBella contributed to this story.
YEREVAN, APRIL 7, ARMENPRESS. Chief of General Staff of the Armenian Armed Forces Lt. General Artak Davtyan visited the military bases deployed in the eastern direction of the country and inspected the readiness level of the military personnel, the Ministry of Defense said in a news release.

The Lt. General also visited a combat position of a military base of 2nd Army Corps and inspected the operational situation, the conditions of combat shift service, ongoing engineering and reinforcement works in the frontline at the given part of the border.

Lt. General Davtyan instructed the commanders of the units to further raise the level of physical, combat readiness and morale of the personnel.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan
In This Installment of Access the Experts

UNO Writers Workshop Program Coordinator Kevin Clouther answers the question: What's the best way for a new writer to get started?

About Clouther

Clouther is a prolific and experienced writer whose stories have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Greensboro Review, Gulf Coast, J Journal, and The New Orleans Review among other journals, and he has contributed essays to The Millions, NPR, Poets & Writers, Salon, and Tin House.

He holds degrees from the University of Virginia and Iowa Writers Workshop and is the recipient of the Richard Yates Fiction Award and Gell Residency Award.
And while Google Maps also supports walking, biking, and transit directions, its navigation capabilities are getting a significant overhaul in the latest update.Google Maps can now provide navigation directions indoors using the Live View feature, essentially using your phone to scan your surroundings, figure out where you are, and then guide you to the point youre trying to find.Lets say youre in a mall and looking for a specific store. Just pull out your phone, open Google Maps and Live View, scan whats around you using the phone cameras, and then the application will display navigation directions on the display to let you know where to go in order to find the store.Google says this feature is based on global localization and Street View images to understand the orientation, so the rollout would happen gradually. The company says it wants its indoor navigation based on Live View to work in airports, transit stations, and malls, but just as expected, itd take some time to make it happen.The good news is that American users in Chicago, Long Island, Los Angeles, Newark, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle can already give it a try, as this feature is live in select malls in these regions on both iPhone and Android. Just make sure youre running the most recent Google Maps app.On the other hand, Google says it plans to release the indoors navigation update in the coming months in more locations, including in airports, malls, and transit stations in Tokyo and Zurich. More cities would follow after that, the company says, but for the time being, no other specifics have been shared in this regard.
Lies are stopped by truths

09:09, April 07, 2021 By Zhong Sheng ( People's Daily

The ending of chaos and resumption of stability in Hong Kong is a fact that all Chinese people, including Hong Kong compatriots, are glad to see. The so-called 2021 Hong Kong Policy Act Report issued by the U.S. Department of State on March 31 is complete slandering.

Aerial photo taken on June 27, 2017 shows the scenery on the both sides of the Victoria Harbor in Hong Kong, south China. (Xinhua/Lui Siu Wai)

The report, arbitrarily fabricating lies and attacking the national security law in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), claimed, in a super exaggerated manner, that Hong Kong's autonomy was "undermined," and tried to frame China with groundless accusations.

It must be pointed out that the so-called report, fantasizing about troubling Hong Kong with lies, is a total miscalculation.

The law on safeguarding national security in the HKSAR initiated a major transition in Hong Kong and has brought stability back to the city. It improved Hong Kong's electoral system and developed its democratic system, offering institutional guarantee for the long-term development of the "one country, two systems" policy and the stability of the HKSAR.

Today's Hong Kong society is no long troubled with rioters and "burn with us" tactic. It is enjoying stability, and all sectors are united to combat COVID-19, improve livelihood and revitalize economy.

Such positive transition is telling more and more Hong Kong compatriots that only a strong China can prevent Hong Kong from falling into the abyss of "color revolution", ensure the complete implementation of the "one country, two systems" policy, and bring a bright future for Hong Kong.

The so-called "impact" on freedom claimed by the U.S. is never the truth. Since Hong Kong returned to the motherland, the central government of China has always fully and faithfully implemented the principle of "one country, two systems," under which the people of Hong Kong govern Hong Kong. The central government has also acted in strict accordance with the Constitution and Hong Kong's Basic Law. The HKSAR enjoys a high degree of autonomy and its residents enjoy democratic rights and freedom in accordance with law as never before.

Since the implementation of the law on safeguarding national security in the HKSAR, Hong Hong's illegal violent protests have been put under control, and the region's economic and social orders were brought back to stability. Hong Kong residents are living and working in contentment, which has further reinforced people's confidence that the law will bring back long-term stability for Hong Kong.

The truths reflect people's aspiration and the general trend. No matter how many lies the U.S. fabricates on issues related to Hong Kong, or how it tries to manipulate these issues politically, it is just making feeble noises in front of the magnificent power of justice.

Hong Kong's achievements today came from the efforts made by generations of Hong Kong citizens and the strong backing of the Chinese mainland. Hong Kong's development achievements today are the result of the hard work of several generations of Hong Kong people with the support of its motherland. They are never alms-giving or charity of any foreign country.

The central government of China offered all-round support for Hong Kong in multiple fields. It helped Hong Kong to combat COVID-19, and supports Hong Kong to enhance its status as an international financial, transportation and trade center. The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area will be a key growth point of China's economy in the future, and will definitely further activate Hong Kong's development potential.

There's no doubt that the U.S., canceling or threatening to cancel the so-called special status of Hong Kong, will never contain Hong Kong's prosperity, or the region's integration into the motherland.

Having experienced the turbulences in recent years, all Chinese people, including Hong Kong compatriots, as well as international personnel that hold an objective attitude toward China, are gaining a deeper understanding of the "one country, two systems" policy, and becoming more immune to the lies fabricated by a few western countries, including the U.S. Most of the countries are choosing to standing by justice on multilateral platforms, such as the UN, to oppose a few western countries that interfere in China's domestic affairs and support China's position and measures on Hong Kong affairs.

Hong Kong is part of China and its affairs are entirely China's internal affairs. The U.S. side must practically obey international law and the norms governing international relations, and stop interfering in China's domestic affairs in all forms.

History will eventually prove that the great cause of the "one country, two systems" policy will finally remove interference and continue developing. Hong Kong will also maintain long-term stability and prosperity to shine as the "Pearl of the Orient."

(Zhong Sheng is a pen name often used by People's Daily to express its views on foreign policy.)

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
ATLANTA, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- OSHA's COVID-19 guidelines instruct businesses on how to operate as safely as possible during the COVID-19 pandemic. SMART Safety Group, an Atlanta safety consultant, briefly outlines some of these guidelines on its website. Businesses need to understand OSHA's guidelines so that they can protect their employees as much as possible. All companies have a legal obligation to provide their employees a safe work environment. Amidst the ongoing pandemic, COVID-19 is still a threat.

The bulk of the guidelines outline the components of a COVID-19 prevention program. A prevention program lessens the overall risk of contracting COVID-19, proving its effectiveness. Every program should have a workplace coordinator to oversee implementation and enforcement efforts. The company should conduct hazard assessments to identify unsafe or potentially unsafe work environments. In a COVID-19 context, this includes tight configurations that prevent social distancing. Other preventive measures include implementing physical distancing, using face coverings, and performing routine cleaning and disinfecting to curtail the spread. OSHA advises companies to deep clean any areas where suspected or confirmed COVID-19-infected people have been.

Employers should make special considerations for older workers and workers with disabilities or medical conditions. Workers with disabilities may be legally entitled to "reasonable accommodations" that protect them from the risk of contracting COVID-19, such as work-from-home options. To minimize quarantine's negative impact on employees, businesses can allow them to telework or work in an area isolated from others. If neither accommodation is possible, they can allow workers to use paid sick leave or consider implementing paid leave policies. The Families First Coronavirus Response Act gives eligible employers 100% reimbursement through tax credits to provide employees with paid sick leave or expanded family and medical leave for specified reasons related to COVID-19 through March 31, 2021.

Businesses are required to record cases of COVID-19 illness on Form 300 logs if they are confirmed as COVID-19, are work-related, and involve one or more relevant recording criteria. They also have to follow the requirements in 29 CFR 1904 when reporting COVID-19 fatalities and hospitalizations to OSHA.

SMART Safety Group helps businesses comply with the tangled web of OSHA requirements and recommendations. It strives to significantly reduce the number of accidents, violations, workers comp claims, and insurance premiums. SMART Safety simply makes the workplace smarter about safety. Businesses that wish to poise their workplaces for safety success should call (844) 820-8098 today.

About SMART Safety Group:

Since 2003, SMART Safety Group has been safeguarding hundreds of employees in multiple industries ranging from food and beverage to construction, and even entertainment. SMART Safety believes in truly knowing a customer's business to develop the best safety program for the client. Its highly qualified team quickly integrates with customers' operations to drive safety excellence and establish long term partnerships. By reducing incidents and lost time, maintaining OSHA compliance and preventing fines, and lowering workers' compensation claims and insurance premiums, SMART Safety protects both employees and employers from the harmful consequences of unsafe work environments.

Check out SMART Safety's website: Website

Press Contact:

Sharon Roper

M16 Marketing

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(404) 407  5500

SOURCE SMART Safety Group

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Membranes that allow certain molecules to quickly pass through while blocking others are key enablers for energy technologies from batteries and fuel cells to resource refinement and water purification. For example, membranes in a battery separating the two terminals help to prevent short circuits, while also allowing the transport of charged particles, or ions, needed to maintain the flow of electricity.

The most selective membranes - those with very specific criteria for what may pass through - suffer from low permeability for the working ion in the battery, which limits the battery's power and energy efficiency. To overcome trade-offs between membrane selectivity and permeability, researchers are developing ways to increase the solubility and mobility of ions within the membrane, therefore allowing a higher number of them to transit through the membrane more rapidly. Doing so could improve the performance of batteries and other energy technologies.

Now, as reported today in the journal Nature, researchers have designed a polymer membrane with molecular cages built into its pores that hold positively charged ions from a lithium salt. These cages, called "solvation cages," comprise molecules that together act as a solvent surrounding each lithium ion - much like how water molecules surround each positively charged sodium ion in the familiar process of table salt dissolving in liquid water. The team, led by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), found that solvation cages increased the flow of lithium ions through the membrane by an order of magnitude compared to standard membranes. The membrane could allow high-voltage battery cells to operate at higher power and more efficiently, important factors for both electric vehicles and aircraft.

"While it's been possible to configure a membrane's pores at very small length scales, it's not been possible until now to design sites to bind specific ions or molecules from complex mixtures and enable their diffusion in the membrane both selectively and at a high rate," said Brett Helms, a principal investigator in the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR) and staff scientist in Berkeley Lab's Molecular Foundry, who led the work.

The research is supported by JCESR, a DOE Energy Innovation Hub whose mission is to deliver transformational new concepts and materials for electrodes, electrolytes, and interfaces that will enable a diversity of high-performance next-generation batteries for transportation and the grid. In particular, JCESR provided the motivation to understand how ions are solvated in porous polymer membranes used in energy storage devices, Helms said.

To pinpoint a design for a cage in a membrane that would solvate lithium ions, Helms and his team looked to a widely practiced drug discovery process. In drug discovery, it's common to build and screen large libraries of small molecules with diverse structures to pinpoint one that binds to a biological molecule of interest. Reversing that approach, the team hypothesized that by building and screening large libraries of membranes with diverse pore structures, it would be possible to identify a cage to temporarily hold lithium ions. Conceptually, the solvation cages in the membranes are analogous to the biological binding site targeted by small molecule drugs.

Helms' team devised a simple but effective strategy for introducing functional and structural diversity across multiple length scales in the polymer membranes. These strategies included designs for cages with different solvation strengths for lithium ions, as well as arrangements of cages in an interconnected network of pores. "Before our work, a diversity-oriented approach to the design of porous membranes had not been undertaken," said Helms.

Using these strategies, Miranda Baran, a graduate student researcher in Helms' research group and a Ph.D. student in the Department of Chemistry at UC Berkeley and lead author on the paper, systematically prepared a large library of possible membranes at the Molecular Foundry. She and co-authors experimentally screened each one to determine a leading candidate whose specific shape and architecture made its pores best suited for selectively capturing and transporting lithium ions. Then, working with Kee Sung Han and Karl Mueller at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a DOE user facility at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Baran and Helms revealed, using advanced nuclear magnetic resonance techniques, how lithium ions flow within the polymer membrane compared to other ions in the battery.

"What we found was surprising. Not only do the solvation cages increase the concentration of lithium ions in the membrane, but the lithium ions in the membrane diffuse faster than their counter anions," said Baran, referring to the negatively charged particles that are associated with the lithium salt when it enters the membrane. The solvation of lithium ions in the cages helped to form a layer that blocked the flow of those anions.

To further understand the molecular reasons for the new membrane's behavior, the researchers collaborated with Artem Baskin, a postdoctoral researcher working with David Prendergast, another investigator in JCESR. They performed calculations, using computing resources at Berkeley Lab's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), to determine the precise nature of the solvation effect that occurs as lithium ions associate with the cages in the membrane's pores. This solvation effect causes lithium ions to concentrate more in the new membrane than they do in standard membranes without solvation cages.

Finally, the researchers investigated how the membrane performed in an actual battery, and determined the ease with which lithium ions are accommodated or released at a lithium metal electrode during the battery's charge and discharge. Using X-ray tools at Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source, they observed lithium flow through a modified battery cell whose electrodes were separated by the new membrane. The X-ray images showed that, in contrast to batteries that used standard membranes, lithium was deposited smoothly and uniformly at the electrode, indicating that the battery charged and discharged quickly and efficiently thanks to the solvation cages in the membrane.

With their diversity-oriented approach to screening possible membranes, the researchers achieved the goal of creating a material that helps to transport ions rapidly without sacrificing selectivity. Parts of the work - including component analysis, gas sorption, and X-ray scattering measurements - were also supported by the Center for Gas Separations Relevant to Clean Energy Technologies, a DOE Energy Frontier Research Center led by UC Berkeley.

Future work by the Berkeley Lab team will expand the library of membranes and screen it for enhanced transport properties for other ions and molecules of interest in clean energy technologies. "We also see exciting opportunities to combine diversity-oriented synthesis with digital workflows for accelerated discovery of advanced membranes through autonomous experimentation," said Helms.

###

- By Rachel Berkowitz

The researchers also received support from the DOE Office of Science and the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy's (ARPA-E's) IONICS program.

The Molecular Foundry, the Advanced Light Source, and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center are DOE Office of Science user facilities at Berkeley Lab. Respectively, these user facilities support polymer synthesis and characterization; single crystal measurements; and computation.

The Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (https:/ / www. emsl. pnnl. gov/ ) is a DOE Office of Science user facility at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest scientific challenges are best addressed by teams, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (http://www. lbl. gov/ ) 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.
Trump-Era Official Settles With OSC Over Hatch Act Violation

Lynne Patton, a former Trump administration appointee, reached a settlement with the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) after being accused of violating the Hatch Act, a law that bars public officials from using their position to engage in political activity.

Patton, who served as Region II Administrator for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) from 2017 to earlier this year, admitted to breaking the regulation by producing a video about housing conditions for the Republican National Convention (RNC), according to an OSC press release.

As a HUD employee, Patton met with residents of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and recruited some of them to appear in a video explaining how their living conditions had improved under the tenure of President Donald Trump.

By using information and NYCHA connections available to her solely by virtue of her HUD position, Patton improperly harnessed the authority of her federal position to assist the Trump campaign in violation of the Hatch Act, OSC said.

As part of her settlement, Patton admitted she acted in violation of the Hatch Act, and agreed to accept a 48-month ban from federal employment and pay a $1,000 civil fine.

No length of punishment will ever be able to outlast the permanent positive trajectory upon which NYCHA is now advancing thanks to the Trump administration and my amazing HUD team, she said in a statement to The Washington Post.

Patton, in a statement to The New York Times in August 2020, denied that any of the participants in the video had been misled about the purpose of the video, saying, Each participated regardless of political party because they recognized the importance of having a voice on the national stage and the undeniable improvements that have transpired under this administration.

This is not the first time Patton has been found to have violated the Hatch Act, with an OSC letter from September 2019 (pdf) noting two complaints against herone for a series of Twitter likes and another for displaying a Trump campaign hat in her HUD office. Although OSC found those actions violated the Hatch Act, no disciplinary action was taken.

Ms. Patton has been advised that if in the future she engages in prohibited political activity while employed in a position covered by the Hatch Act, we will consider such activity to be a willful and knowing violation of the law, which could result in further action, it added.

Patton is among several Trump administration officials to have been accused of Hatch Act violations, with the OSC previously recommending that then-White House counselor Kellyanne Conway be fired for several infractions.
YEREVAN, APRIL 7, ARMENPRESS. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan, who arrived in Moscow on a working visit today, will discuss issues relating to the bilateral agenda, the integration processes and the implementation of the trilateral joint statement over Nagorno Karabakh, Russian presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

The inter-governmental commission is working actively, from our side the chairman of the commission is deputy prime minister Overchuk. There is a talk also about the integration processes as we are in close economic partnership both with Armenia and within the CIS, the EAEU and the CSTO. And of course, the issue on how the trilateral joint statement over Karabakh is being implemented, how the peaceful life is going on in the region, the development and unblocking of transportation infrastructure will be discussed, the Kremlin spokesperson said.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
A voter casts ballot at a polling station at Itaewon Elementary School in Yongsan District, Seoul, Wednesday, when by-elections for new Seoul and Busan mayors took place. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul



Busan citizens pin high hopes on new airport



By Nam Hyun-woo



Residents of Seoul and Busan cast their ballots Wednesday to elect new mayors who will manage the country's largest and second-largest cities.



Since the by-election day was not designated as a holiday, citizens having to go to work or school formed long queues in front of polling stations in Seoul and Busan from early in the morning.



"I came to vote early because our company guideline was to vote before coming to the office," Shin Chae-eun, an office worker, said at a polling station in Mapo District in Seoul at around 7 a.m. "It was a bit of surprise that so many people were waiting."



As the by-elections marked the second election taking place here amid the COVID-19 pandemic following last year's general election, voters seemed to be accustomed to the hygiene requirements before casting their ballots. Election staff took the temperature of voters, who had to wear face masks and disposable gloves provided at the polling stations to prevent potential contamination.



"As we already experienced an election last year, the process seems to be smoother than then," a voter in her 40s said at a polling station in Samcheong-dong.



Minor incidents were reported at some polling stations. In Busan, a man in his 40s was taken to hospital by local police after breaking a glass door at a polling station in Sasang District. At another in Ahyeon-dong, Seoul, a man in his 50s attempted to damage a ballot box and is currently undergoing police questioning.





A voter using a crutch enters a polling station in Hapjeong-dong, Seoul, Wednesday, to cast a ballot to select the new Seoul mayor. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul



Opinions for new mayors



As of 11 p.m., Oh Se-hoon of the main opposition People Power Party (PPP) was leading Park Young-sun of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) 56.6 percent to 40.4 percent. Park Heong-joon, PPP candidate for Busan mayor post, was also ahead of DPK's Kim Young-choon by 63.1 percent to 34.2 percent.



Voters expressed various opinions on what they expected from the new Seoul and Busan mayors, with the issue of real estate and home prices at the top of their list of matters of concern.



However, the voters said they don't expect the new Seoul mayor to bring big changes to the landscape of the city. They demanded the mayor focus on realistic goals that can be achieved within their one-year term.



"Candidates are pouring out pledges on housing and transportation which are bound to make Seoul a massive construction site," said Choi Yong-jin, 55, a self-employed worker in Mapo District.



"Given that the new mayor has only slightly over one year in office, I don't believe many of the pledges will actually happen. Rather, I hope the new mayor will come up with policies that can yield results during the short period, or make sure the policies are consistent regardless of which party wins the next local election."









Among major candidates for the Seoul mayoral post, Oh of the PPP and his rival Park of the ruling DPK have placed housing and construction policies as the backbone of their pledges.



Of them, Oh promised to offer 360,000 new homes over the next five years, and said he will encourage the private sector to provide 185,000 of them as remodeled homes by lifting certain regulations.



Given the short term of the new Seoul mayor, however, there is growing skepticism as to whether any of their pledges can be realized.



"I have been living in Seoul for five years and find home prices and rent in the city to be really volatile," said Kim Seul-gi, 22, an office worker. "I do want the mayor to ease citizens' concerns on homes, but I'm not sure whether the pledges will be effective."



Kim Jae-yoon, 41, an office worker in Jongno District, said it was unfortunate that everything about the election was focused on real estate.



"Even though there seems to be a plenty of pending issues, such as the environment and social welfare, candidates are dishing out unrealistic real estate policies," Kim said. "I hope the new mayor and the elected party will expand their scope into various fields and find out what is really necessary for citizens."



Voters also called on the new Seoul mayor to transcend partisan politics and focus on making Seoul a better place to live in.



"Some say the gender equality issue is important, while others say real estate policy is crucial, but all I see is that the candidates are trapped in partisanship and using smear campaigns accusing each other of real estate speculation," said Park Jun-sung, 28, a graduate school student.



"Rather than supporting a certain candidate or a party because of their policies, it is like voting for somebody because I don't like the opposing party. No matter who becomes the mayor, I hope the person won't get bogged down by political bickering."



Kim Jina, 34, who works in the services industry, also expressed her hope that the new Seoul mayor will be able to separate politics from work and make efforts for the welfare of Seoul. "Especially, I hope the mayor will pay greater attention to people who have fallen through the cracks of the social welfare system," she said.





Citizens vote for Busan mayor at a polling station set up inside a clothing store in the Jung District of the city, Wednesday. Yonhap
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Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, on Wednesday, paid a condolence visit to the widow of the late Afenifere Spokesperson, Yinka Odumakin, at their residence in Omole area of Lagos.

Mr Soyinka described the late Mr Odumakin as a persistent and brave fighter.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Mr Odumakin, 56, died on Friday after battling with respiratory problems occasioned by COVID-19 complications.

In the condolence register, Mr Soyinka said: Farewell to a doughy fighter.

Similarly, a former Speaker, House of Representatives, Dimeji Bankole, said the late Mr Odumakin struggled for human rights and lived till end.

Thank you for everything and rest in peace, he prayed.

According to a veteran Nigerian broadcaster, Bisi Olatilo, Odumakin left the way strong people leave.

NAN reports that Mr Soyinka and others were all received by his widow, Joe Okei-Odumakin, who is also a rights campaigner and president, Women Arise. (NAN)
Two brothers are suing a Florida police department for a 2017 altercation where officers detained the pair while using excessive force, believing Star Trek paraphernalia hanging in their home were weapons.

Raymond and Randall Purcell are seeking a minimum of $75,000 in damages, naming Fort Lauderdale police officers Steven Pohorence and Alexander Paul and the city as defendants in their lawsuit filed Monday.

Pohorence made national headlines last year in a separate incident when he was charged with first-degree misdemeanor after he was seen on video pushing a kneeling woman during George Floyd protest in the city last year.

The suit alleges that Paul hit then-62-year-old Raymond with the butt of his gun, slammed him to the ground and pulled his arm so roughly that 'Raymond heard a snap in his arms and went limp,' the Miami Herald reports.

Raymond and Randall Purcell are suing Fort Lauderdale police officers Steven Pohorence and Alexander Paul and the city for a 2017 altercation where officers detained the pair while using excessive force, believing Star Trek paraphernalia hanging in their home were weapons

Paul then allegedly punched Raymond in the face 'with so much force that it knocked Raymond's acrylic partial dentures out of his mouth.' Raymond pleaded with Paul while the beat down occurred, according to the suit, telling the officer he was disabled.

And when his brother tried to intervene, Pohorence stepped in and kicked Randall before placing his foot on the man's face. Randall was left with a half-inch cut near his eye, the suit states.

'As a direct and proximate result of the city's negligent supervision, retention and training of defendants Pohorence and Paul, [the Purcells] were subject to injury, including deprivations of their civil rights and state law rights,' the brothers' attorneys asserted in their complaint.

Raymond had called police to the home after he and his wife's car had been keyed, allegedly by a relative, according to a news release for the lawsuit.

Officers refused to make an arrest, to the disappointment of Raymond, claiming that the damage appeared to be under $1000 and adding that the relative was no longer on the property.

Raymond hit the hood of his car, and while in his garage he also tossed a flashlight in the opposite direction of where the officers were standing, according to the suit.

Pohorence made national headlines last year when he was charged with first-degree misdemeanor after he was seen on video pushing a kneeling woman during George Floyd protest in the city last year

As Raymond attempted to go back inside his home, officers rushed him and detained the man and his brother.

Both Paul and Pohorence said in their depositions that they felt threatened by the bothers because they knew Raymond had a concealed firearm permit and a firearm in the home. Paul added that they saw 'weapons all over the wall.'

The weapons had actually been Star Trek memorabilia and decorative blades, the suit reads.

Both officers shared that they did not have probable cause to arrest Raymond.

'We were detaining him for an officer-safety issue,' Pohorence said in hia deposition.

The lawsuit states that the brothers 'suffered damages, including mental anguish, bodily injury, pain and suffering, humiliation, embarrassment, loss of earnings, and loss of ability to earn money.'

Pohorence has been reviewed by FLPD's internal affairs unit for using force 79 times in the less than four years he has been with the department, He is currently on administrative leave without pay following the shoving incident

The suit also mentions that the FLPD internal affairs probe into the officers conduct concluded in 2019 that the two were cleared of wrongdoing. The files were never sent to the Citizens' Police Review Board, which reviews investigation and recommends disciplinary actions once completed by internal affairs.

'The city and its Police Department supervisors and superiors knew its officers were initiating unlawful searches and seizures as well as using excessive force against Fort Lauderdale civilians and residents,' the suit reads. 'It took no action to train or discipline its police officers to avoid the constitutional violations discussed in this Complaint.'

The brother's lawyer said that it was 'unsurprising' that the internal affairs investigation cleared the officers of wrongdoing, vowing that he and his co-counsel - Ben Kuehne - would 'relentlessly seek justice' for the Purcells.

'It is unfortunate and unsurprising that the Fort Lauderdale Police Department's internal affairs investigation cleared both officers of wrongdoing,' the Purcells' attorney, Michael T. Davis, said in a statement.

'It is yet another example of the need for a system in which these types of investigations seek justice rather than justification.'

Pohorence has been reviewed by FLPD's internal affairs unit for using force 79 times in the less than four years he has been with the department, He is currently on administrative leave without pay following the shoving incident.

Paul is currently being sued for shooting Broward resident Melvin Wring in a June 2019 incident at the Broward County Transit central bus terminal. Wring is seeking $30,000 for the shooting and and alleges unnecessary deadly force, asserting he posed no threat.
A business owner in Tauranga is desperately on the hunt for a new location as Tauranga City Council commence with plans to demolish his currently leased property.

Gregg Thompson opened the doors to Fixation Coffee Roasters on Dive Crescent in 2007.

He was always aware that, eventually, he would have to move.

An original rolling monthly rental agreement with council was changed by former Mayor Greg Brownless to ensure that Gregg and the team at Fixation received a six-month notice.

That was issued in December and Gregg will have to vacate the premises by the end of May.

We have been tentatively looking for a new spot to shift our plant and equipment for the past two years but have been very seriously looking for the last six months, says Gregg.

We have driven all commercial real estate agents nuts and we still are.

Unfortunately, any suitable units do not currently line up with the current timeframe, leaving Gregg in limbo.

There are a few places that are suitable that might be coming up but they are few and far between, he says. Unfortunately the time they are going to be available doesnt line up.

Tauranga City Council has confirmed that the building is set for demolition by the end of June. The plan is to use the area to increase the capacity of the current car park adjacent to the Fixation lot. However, TCC stated the decision is not related to the recently aborted car parking plans at Harington St.

The building has failed its seismic strength test and was issued a notice to confirm it is an earthquake prone building in 2011, according to TCC.

Other properties along the same stretch of road, previously occupied by Iron Design and Makz Gear, have also been served seismic issue notices. They have since relocated.

But Gregg feels the seismic issues are being used as a means to rush the businesses out of the council owned properties.

I feel they are using that as a way to get rid of us, says Gregg, who states he has even offered to pay for seismic strengthening and an increase in rent to remain in the current location, but were denied.

Tauranga City Council states that the building only meets 13 per cent of the earthquake standard and would therefore require significant repair to meet specifications.

The decision was made by Council to demolish the building rather than repair it, as the repair costs were not considered an efficient use of funds, says TCC director of spaces and places, Paul Dunphy.

As Gregg makes abundantly clear, he has always been aware that his time at the current location would be coming to an end and is not disputing that fact.

Fixation, which sells wholesale, online and runs as an espresso bar, has unique needs which require a certain type of unit.

Gregg states that the roaster itself cannot be out of use for more than a few days, at a stretch a week.

Finding a suitable commercial space for the businesss requirements is proving difficult and Gregg was hoping the council would be flexible enough to allow him a short extension.

We are not trying to refuse to move, we never have, says Gregg.

We have literally begged council to let us stay another couple of months but they have said flat out no.

They told us that come June 1, if we are not out, they will change all the locks, we will not be allowed in, their people will take the equipment, dismantle it, store it all and Ill be liable for reparation costs.

Unfortunately for Gregg, TCC have confirmed there is no chance of an extension to Fixations current lease.

Under the original notice, demolition must be completed by June 22, Paul explains.

The building has been tenanted by Fixation for some time, and their lease has been extended on short-term agreements because of the buildings imminent fate. They were aware that the building would be demolished. The current end date of the lease is May 30.

For Gregg, the hunt for a new location goes on and he is hopeful something that fits his needs becomes available in time.

Hopefully somebody knows of the perfect spot for us and can help us out.

At the moment we are faced with an urgency measure to shift the roaster to a temporary location just to keep the business going.

In the meantime he remains frustrated with what he perceives as dogmatic bureaucracy from council.

They are just digging their heels in, he says. That is what it feels like.

They are potentially threatening the business that we have built up since 2007. Theres three peoples livelihoods here.
POINTE BLANCHE:--- Port St. Maarten Management is very pleased that Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL) will resume cruise calls to the destination starting in August with the Norwegian Gem.



The port had strategic discussions with NCL resulting in Port St. Maarten being one of the first destinations among others to receive cruise calls. The port will also be looking for additional opportunities and will continue to actively engage with the industry.



NCL is one of the three cruise brands within the Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. Portfolio. The other two brands are Oceania Cruises and Regent Seven Seas Cruises. The three brands have a combined fleet of 28 ships.



NCL President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Harry Sommer announced on Tuesday that its resumption of cruising will commence on July 25 with new itineraries sailing from Europe and the Caribbean.



The Norwegian Gem will carry out seven-day cruises starting on August 15 sailing from La Romana in the Dominican Republic. The Gem will be visiting four destinations including St. Maarten and two days at sea. The ship will operate at a reduced capacity.



Norwegian Gem has a guest capacity of 2394 and 1070 crew. The vessel has a gross tonnage of 93,530 and an overall length of 965 feet. Built-in 2007, the Gem was refurbished in 2015.



NCL Holdings launched its SailSAFE Health and Safety program, which is founded on three pillars: 1) Safety for guests and crew with vaccination requirements, universal COVID-19 testing, and enhanced health screening protocols; 2) Safety aboard with medical-grade air filtration, increased sanitation measures and enhanced medical resources; and 3) Safety ashore through the collaboration with land-based tour operator partners to extend health and safety measures to each destination.



One year has passed when the cruise industry suspended sailings and now the industry is making a comeback. Port St. Maarten will continue to look for opportunities to grow the sector once again which came to a complete standstill with the pandemic. We have the Royal Caribbean Group homeporting out of the country in June and now commercial cruise calls in August.



The cruise industry has been working and refining their existing health and safety protocols for their guests and they are confident that the measures they have taken will enhance the visitor experience offering the healthiest and safest vacation at sea.



We would like to once again call on the population to register for the COVID-19 vaccine. It is very important that the majority of the populace is vaccinated reaching herd immunity of at least 70 per cent. This will send a strong signal to the tourism and travel trade including the cruise industry that destination St. Maarten is a safe destination to visit.



The cruise industry has its own safety ashore criteria and are working in collaboration with land-based tour operator partners to extend health and safety measures to each destination, and therefore, St. Maarten as a cruise destination has to also meet those requirements, and a vaccinated population will fast-track the recovery of cruise tourism. Dont forget to register for your vaccine, Port St. Maarten Management said on Tuesday.



To register for the vaccine, you can do so via the online registration form which is available in English, Spanish, and Creole at the following link: https://forms.sintmaartengov.org/form.aspx?v=OGtn05kNmb



For paper-based registration, the COVID Vaccine Registration Form can be picked up at several locations, including the Collective Prevention Service (CPS) at the Vineyard Office Park Building, the Division of Labor Affairs at the Simpson Bay Public Service Center in Simpson Bay, Doctors offices, the Government Administration Building, and select pharmacies.



Both Cole Bay & Dutch Quarter Community Helpdesks are currently equipped to provide information and can assist persons with registration at either location.
Morgan Stanley sold about $5 billion of Archegos' stocks the night before the fire sale hit rivals, according to reports.

The investment bank and financial services company had the consent of Archegos, run by former Tiger Management analyst Bill Hwang, to shop around its stock late last month, according to a report by CNBC that cited people with knowledge of the trades.

The bank offered the shares at a discount, telling the hedge funds that they were part of a margin call that could prevent the collapse of an unnamed client.

Morgan Stanley sold roughly $5 billion in shares from Archegos late on Thursday March 25 before news of the doomed private investment firm was made public

Morgan Stanley has so far declined to comment on the trade which saw it quietly unload some of its risky positions to hedge funds.

In total, Morgan Stanley, who was was the biggest holder of the top 10 stocks traded by Archegos at the end of 2020 with about $18 billion in positions, sold about $5 billion in Archegos stock in order to avoid suffering losses of their own which could well have totaled more than $10 billion.

Morgan Stanley didn't share the information it had with stock buyers. The Archegos shares it was selling comprised of various names including Baidu and Tencent Music.

The sell off was the start of tens of billions of dollars in sales by Morgan Stanley and other investment banks starting the very next day.

Morgan Stanley sold about $5bn in Archegos stock to avoid suffering losses of their own which could well have totaled more than $10 billion according to CNBC reporter Hugh Son, pictured

Some of the clients felt betrayed by Morgan Stanley because they didn't receive the context in which the sale was taking place.

It was later revealed in press reports that Hwang and his brokers got together in an attempt to unwind his positions in an orderly manner.

Archegos, run by former Tiger Management analyst Bill Hwang, pictured, was fully aware that Morgan Stanley was looking to unload its stock along with Goldman Sachs

CNBC notes that such a meeting effectively confirms that some bankers at Morgan Stanley knew the extent of the selling and that Hwang's firm was likely to fail.

Morgan Stanley and their rival Goldman Sachs were able to avoid massive losses after the firms got rid of any shares tied to Archegos.

'I think it was an "oh s***" moment where Morgan was looking at potentially $10 billion in losses on their book alone, and they had to move risk fast,' the person with knowledge said.

Other firms were less fortunate with their timing.

Credit Suisse was the second most exposed firm with about $10 billion in stock.

On Tuesday, Credit Suisse said it would take a hit of $4.72 billion from its dealings with Archegos Capital Management, prompting it to overhaul the leadership of its investment bank and risk divisions.

Media stocks that made up the Archegos fund are down as much as 50 per cent

The firm also cut its dividend and halted share buybacks.

Other banks with exposure to Archegos, include Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Deutsche Bank AG unwound their trades.

Goldman Sach's sale of $10.5 billion in Archegos stock was reported after the bank emailed its clients but Morgan Stanley's was essentially kept hidden because the bank dealt with less than six hedge funds.

Once Morgan Stanley and Goldman began to sell their first blocks of shares, other prime brokers including Credit Suisse then exercised their rights, seized the firms' collateral and sold off their positions.

In a further twist, some of the hedge fund investors who had managed to sell off ahead of the crowd ended up buying more stock from Goldman at a 5 to 20% discount.

Although the stocks fell the following day, they ended up rebounding allowing While hedge funds to unload for a profit.

'It was a gigantic clusterf*** of five different banks trying to unwind billions of dollars at risk at the same time, not talking to each other, trading at wherever prices were advantageous to themselves,' a source said to CNBC.

Credit Suisse said it would take a hit of $4.72 billion from its dealings with Archegos Capital Management

Investment bank Credit Suisse revealed on Tuesday that it is to overhaul the leadership of its risk and investment banking divisions after revealing the financial services firm took at $4.7 billion hit after the Archegos Capital Management that imploded.

The structure of Credit Suisse's investment bank will be scrutinized closely by incoming chairman Antonio Horta-Osorio as the bank aims to boost risk management after racking up billions in losses.

The scandal-hit bank now expects to post a loss for the first quarter of around $960million. It is also suspending its share buyback plans and cutting its dividend by two thirds.

Credit Suisse's chief risk and compliance officer Lara Warner (pictured) and the investment bank head Brian Chin have both been axed

Brian Chin, CEO of its investment bank, is also stepping down

Switzerland's No. 2 bank, which has dumped over $2 billion worth of stock to end exposure to the New York investment fund run by former Tiger Asia manager Bill Hwang, said Chief Risk and Compliance Officer Lara Warner and investment banking head Brian Chin were stepping down following the losses.

Warner and Chin are paying the price for a year in which Credit Suisse's risk management protocols have come under harsh scrutiny. JPMorgan Chase & Co analysts estimate that combined losses from the Archegos scandal could add up to $7.5 billion.

Australian Warner only took on the risk management and compliance role in August last year, having previously been group head of compliance and chief financial officer of the investment bank. Chin ran the bank's global markets unit between 2016 and 2020 before it was rolled into the investment bank.

'The significant loss in our Prime Services business relating to the failure of a US-based hedge fund is unacceptable,' Credit Suisse Chief Executive Thomas Gottstein said in a statement. 'Serious lessons will be learned.'

'That is with certainty one of the core strategic themes that the board under the new chairman, together with the bank's executive leadership, will be focusing on,' Gottstein told Swiss, German-language daily newspaper, Neue Zuercher Zeitung on Tuesday.

'There are no sacred cows,' Gottstein continued. 'What we can already say is, we will be taking risks out of certain parts of investment banking. That certainly includes the Prime Services business' that serves hedge funds like Archegos.

The bank's board has also launched an investigation into the Archegos losses while proposed bonuses for executive board members have been scrapped.

'It's a challenge to manage a global bank during a pandemic over Zoom,' Credit Suisse Chief Executive Thomas Gottstein said in an interview. 'I'm convinced that in the era of COVID-19 the scrutiny of risk business, whether for banks or insurers, has grown more difficult.'

Behind the Archegos meltdown: How company's founder suffered 'one of the biggest losses of personal wealth in history'

By Martin Gould for Dailymail.com

For a multi-billionaire, Archegos founder Bill Hwang's life is modest.

Sure, his 6,400 sq ft home is gorgeous by any standards, but it's dwarfed by those of his neighbors.

His black Mercedes CLK reeks of class, but it has nothing on the $325,000 orange McLaren 720S that roars out of the driveway of the house across the street.

He sent his daughter Joanne to Fordham University in the rough-and-tumble Bronx, a good private school, but no Harvard, Yale or Stanford.

Yet up until last month Hwang, 58, was one of the richest people in America, amassing a vast $10billion fortune that hardly anyone knew about.

Now his world has gone kaput and through a series of disastrous miscalculations, he has lost it all.

Bill Hwang, real name Sung Kook Hwang, was spotted outside his Tenafly, New Jersey home on Tuesday amid the fallout from the collapse of his New York-based firm Archegos Capital Management last month

The multi-billionaire, pictured with his wife Becky and their daughter in an undated photo, saw his entire fortune wiped out after his company defaulted on margin calls last month

Hwang and his wife Becky, 54, live quietly in an affluent, predominantly Asian area of Tenafly, New Jersey, a half-hour drive from his 38th floor office on Manhattan's 7th Avenue

Hwang's New York-based firm is at the center of the crisis that caused shares of major investment banks Nomura and Credit Suisse to tumble after they issued profit warnings when Archegos defaulted on margin calls last month.

His fall has roiled the international money markets. Two international banks are forecasting monumental losses and the full effects of Hwang's mistakes will take months to be realized. In total, banks worldwide are expected to lose around $6billion.

Hwang  real name Sung Kook Hwang  has had a checkered history. Phenomenal success was followed by disgrace when he had to pay $44million for insider trading.

That led to Wall Street blacklisting him, but, slowly and surely, as his financial successes piled up, he worked his way back into the banks' good graces and one-by-one they started doing business with him.

Now, they may well wish they hadn't.

Hwang is the epitome of the American immigrant success story. His father was a Korean pastor who came to the United States when Hwang was still a child. For a while his mother was a Christian missionary in Mexico.

Hwang, who earned business degrees at UCLA and Carnegie Mellon, wears his Christian faith on his sleeve.

Prior to the fiasco, very little was known about Hwang, despite him being one of the richest people in the country. He is the son of a Korean preacher and had spoken of his Christian faith on social media and in interviews

Hwang appears to wears his Christian faith on his sleeve. In a 2018 interview (above) he explained how his religion influenced his business practices

Hwang and his wife bought their 6,400 square foot home new for $3.5million in 2008

'When we create good companies through the capitalism that God has allowed, it enhances people's lives,' he said in a 2019 video posted online. 'God delights in those things.'

In another video, this time for the Fuller Foundation, he said: 'It's not all about money. God certainly has a long-term view. It's really helping a lot of people learn how to invest well and use capitalism to help human society advance.'

He even said his large stake in the social media group LinkedIn wasn't just to make money.

'LinkedIn is about helping people realize their job potential. Do I think God loves it? Of course.

'I'm like a little child thinking where can I invest to please our God?

'Remember Jesus saying 'my Father is working therefore I am working?' So God is working, Jesus is working and I am working.

'And I'm not going to retire till he pulls me back.'

He claims to read the Bible for three hours a week, saying it takes him about 85 hours from cover to cover.

Hwang, who managed about $10 billion of family money through Archegos, has been known to use out-sized leverage to magnify his bets in American, European and Asian markets

Archegos Capital Management is based in this office on 7th Avenue in Midtown Manhattan

'Some books are three minutes, Psalms is about six hours,' he said in a YouTube video extolling the virtues of reading the Bible communally.

He rarely socializes.

'Even on Wall Street, few ever noticed him,' reported Bloomberg Wealth. 'Until suddenly everyone did.'

Hwang and his wife Becky, 54, live quietly in an affluent, predominantly Asian area of Tenafly, New Jersey, a half-hour drive from his 38th floor office on Manhattan's 7th Avenue. They bought their home new for $3.5million in 2008.

They have a 22-year-old daughter Joanne, who graduated from Fordham last year and now works as a graphic designer in New York.

He has a charity, the Grace and Mercy Foundation, with $590million in assets according to tax filings.

He donated $20million in Amazon stock to the charity last year, giving him a major tax break.

He has also handed over one million Netflix shares as well as smaller amounts of stock in Facebook, Hawaiian Airlines and Expedia.

In 2013, Hwang went onto turn his fund into a family office and renamed it Archegos Capital Management to run his private wealth. As a family office, Archegos doesn't have any obligation to register with the SEC - even though it has billions of dollars in exposure to publicly traded US companies

From 2007 to 2018 his foundation distributed nearly $80million, with the amounts steadily increasing over time, according to Forbes. Most of it went to Korean Christian causes.

Bill Hwang started out as a stock salesman for Hyundai Securities in the 1990s then went to work for legendary investor Julian Robertson at Tiger Management -becoming one of his so-called Tiger Cubs.

Robertson, now 88, said he was 'very sad' about his acolyte's fall.

'I'm a great fan of Bill and it could probably happen to anyone. But I'm sorry it happened to Bill.' he told Business Insider on Monday.

Hwang went on to found Tiger Asia Management with $25 million of Robertson's money, growing the fund to $5billion. But then it came crashing down when he was accused of insider trading in 2012.

Wall Street wouldn't work with him for many years after he agreed to pay $44million in penalties and he shuttered his company.

Then he founded his private investment firm, Archegos Capital Management, and his genius at picking stocks started to persuade the banks that he could no longer be ignored and they started doing business with him again.

The last to capitulate was Goldman Sachs, which only agreed to work with him again last year after bankers lobbied the company's risk department.

They noted that under Hwang's stewardship, Archegos had grown from assets of $200million when he founded it in 2012 to more than $10billion  a rise of 4,900 per cent  and, they claimed, the reward was worth the danger.

What is a margin call? A margin call is when a bank asks a client to put up more collateral if a trade partly funded with borrowed money has fallen sharply in value. If the client cannot afford to do that, the lender will sell the securities to try to recoup what it is owed. In this case, Archegos Capital is said to have defaulted on margin calls. Advertisement

How wrong they were.

Goldman and Morgan Stanley had to sell off more than $20billion of Hwang's holdings on Friday alone in what has been described as a 'fire sale' and 'the biggest sell-off in a decade.'

Three other banks, Credit Suisse, the Japanese giant Nomura and UBS are continuing to offload. Credit Suisse's stocks fell 16 per cent due to Hwang's miscalculations, Nomura fell 16.3 per cent.

Credit Suisse said its loss 'could be highly significant and material to our first quarter results.' Nomura is calculating on a $2billion loss.

Karen Kessler, spokesperson for Archegos said in a statement: 'This is a challenging time for the family office of Archegos Capital Management, our partners and employees. All plans are being discussed as Mr. Hwang and the team determine the best path forward.'

Hwang controlled what is known as a 'family office,' a wealth management shop that caters to just one ultra-high-worth individual.

That individual was Hwang himself.

The problem was that Hwang invested in a relatively limited number of companies with several of them hitting trouble at the same time.

Top of the list was ViacomCBS, the parent company of the broadcasting network that had seen its stock rise from $12.79 in March last year to more than $97 a year later. But then it issued millions of new shares to pay for CBS's planned streaming service and the stock price collapsed by more than 50 per cent.

Another media company, Discovery Communications had a similar rise and fall  from $19.27 in October to a high of $77.27 five months later only to plummet to a little over $41.

Credit Suisse and Nomura are now facing billions of dollars in losses as a result of Hwang's firm defaulting on margin calls, putting investors on edge about who else might have been caught out

It too plans a streaming service but investors believe Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+ hold such a lead in that field, newcomers will struggle to make a profit.

A handful of Chinese companies also hit trouble and all of a sudden Archegos couldn't find the cash to meet the banks' calls for more collateral - and the gig was up.

Together the banks had loaned Archegos tens of billions of dollars, raking in massive bonuses for a select few bankers. 'Greed trumped fear,' said one investment banker.

Bloomberg Wealth called Hwang's prosperity 'one of the world's great hidden fortunes.'

And Mike Novogratz, a former partner at Goldman Sachs who's been trading since 1994 described Hwang's fall as 'one of the single greatest losses of personal wealth in history.'
Moscow court seizes property of Promsvyazbank ex-owners Ananyevs worth $1.5 billion

 RAPSI, Vladimir Burnov

14:21 07/04/2021

MOSCOW, April 7 (RAPSI)  The Moscow Commercial Court, at the request of the National Bank Trust, has arrested funds and other property of the former owners of Promsvyazbank Alexey and Dmitry Ananyevs, as well as those of ex-top managers of Avtovazbank in the amount of over 113 billion rubles (about $1.5 billion), the court ruling reads.

Taking into account that the failure to take interim measures might complicate the execution of this judicial act, as well as in order to prevent damage to the claimant, the court found it necessary to seize the property of the defendants.

The decision to take interim measures was made in the framework of a lawsuit the Trust Bank filed to recover more than 113 billion rubles ($1.5 billion at the current exchange rate) from the Ananyevs, Oleg Vdovin and Nikolai Taran.

In October 2020, the Russian Supreme Court dismissed Dmitry Ananyev's complaint against the ruling on declaring him bankrupt. The objections set out in the complaint do not indicate the presence of any significant violations of substantive law and (or) procedural law and cannot serve as sufficient grounds for canceling the contested judicial acts, the Supreme Court noted then.

The Ninth Commercial Court of Appeals declared Ananyev bankrupt on June 15, 2020 at the request of Nastyusha Grain Company, and a debt restructuring procedure was introduced with respect of that person The board of appeals canceled the determination of a first instance court of November 25, 2019, by which the proceedings on the banker's insolvency sought by the company were terminated.

In a complaint submitted by Ananyev to the Supreme Court, he asked to cancel the decision of the Court of Appeals and refer the case for a new trial.

In also worth noting that in September 2019, the Russian Supreme Court dismissed Ananyevs move to cancel the decision on the initiation of the respective bankruptcy case.

Earlier, in June 2019, the Moscow Commercial Court dismissed a request to seize Ananyevs property worth 2.8 billion rubles ($36 million) when examining his bankruptcy case.

At that time the court established that the applicant had not presented evidence proving that the failure to take interim measures could complicate or make impossible the execution of the respective judicial act.

However, on May 29, 2019, the Moscow Commercial Court satisfied an application of Promsvyazbank seeking to seize the property of the former owners of the bank, Alexey and Dmitry Ananyevs, in the amount of 282.2 billion rubles ($3.6 billion) in the framework of a claim to recover losses in the amount of 282.2 billion rubles from twelve former top managers of the bank.

On December 15, 2017, the Central Bank of Russia introduced a temporary administration for the management of Promsvyazbank. The functions of the provisional administration were entrusted to the Management Company of the Banking Sector Consolidation Fund.

As a measure aimed at improving the financial stability of the bank and ensuring the continuity of its activities in the banking services market, it is planned that the Central Bank will participate as an investor using the funds of the Banking Sector Consolidation Fund.

In October 2019 the Moscow City Court upheld the arrest of Alexey and Dmitry Ananyevs in absentia in a criminal case over embezzlement on an especially large scale, as the press service of the court informed RAPSI.
NEW IBERIA, La. - The Board of Directors announced the 79th Louisiana Sugar Cane Festival & Fair will be held on its traditional last full weekend of September 23-26, 2021 in New Iberia.

The festival will put into place recommended best practices as per the State Fire Marshals guidelines. The schedule of events will be announced at a later date.

About the Festival:

The Louisiana Sugar Cane Festival is a fun-filled five day event honoring Louisianas sugar cane industry with activities for the whole family. It kicks off on Wednesday with carnival rides, followed by the art and photography show and the livestock show on Thursday. Then comes the traditional Blessing of the Crops on Friday morning followed by the Childrens Parade and the Candy Toss parade in the evening. The Fais Do Do's light up downtown New Iberia on Friday and Saturday night.

Receptions in honor of King Sucrose and festival honorees continue throughout the weekend with the choosing of the new Queen Sugar and the Coronation Ball on Saturday evening. The festival ends on Sunday with the new Queen Sugar and King Sucrose reigning over Sugarland in the Royalty Parade.

For more information, contact Lisa Duhe Lourd, Media Chair (843) 816-2209, visit www.HiSugar.org and follow the festival on Facebook.
Foreign Affairs Minister Bogdan Aurescu will pay an official visit to the Italian Republic on Wednesday at the invitation of his counterpart, Luigi Di Maio, a release from the Foreign Affairs Ministry (MAE) informs.

According to the said release, sent to AGERPRES, the head of the Romanian diplomacy will have a round of consultations with Di Maio and a meeting with the President of the Italian Senate, Maria Elisabetta Alberti Casellati, agerpres.ro confirms.

Minister Aurescu will address with his counterpart "concrete ways of strengthening cooperation between Romania and Italy, politically, economically and sectorally, and will emphasize the importance the Romanian community in Italy has in the whole bilateral relationship," the source said.

The consultations between Aurescu and Di Maio will also focus on the priorities of the European agenda, with a focus on cooperation at EU level in combating the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and increasing the Union's resilience, the upcoming debates at the Conference on the Future of Europe, the implementation of measures aimed at economic recovery, the Union's enlargement policy, and the revitalisation of the Eastern Partnership.

At the end of the bilateral consultations, the two chiefs of diplomacies will deliver a joint press declaration.

Minister Bogdan Aurescu's agenda will also include a discussion in video-conference format with the heads of the Romanian consular offices in Italy, in which the MAE priorities regarding the reform of consular services will be addressed, as well as topical matters related to the specifics of the Romanian community in Italy.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs will also participate in a ceremony to decorate people who have carried out charitable actions in support of the Romanian community during the pandemic crisis.
A Japanese patrol plane flying over the disputed islets known as the Senkaku islands in Japan and Diaoyu islands in China, located in the East China Sea on October 13, 2011. Muji has drawn the ire of Beijing over the Senkaku islands issue. (JAPAN POOL/AFP/Getty Images)

Beijing Tests Biden Administration With Provocations in Disputed Waters

The Chinese communist regime has recently intensified its provocations against Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines in disputed waters. Various international media reports pointed out that Beijing is testing the Biden administration to see if the United States will take concrete action after pledging to work with Asian allies to contain China.

The tension between China and Japan has recently intensified as Beijing announced last week that Tokyo must abandon all claims of sovereignty over the disputed Senkaku Islands. The Senkaku are an uninhabited chain of islands in the East China Sea that Japan has controlled for decades, but Beijing has recently claimed the islands as its own territory.

On April 4, the Joint Staff of the Ministry of Defense of Japan stated that Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning and five frigates have passed Miyako Straita key waterway between Japans Okinawa Island and Miyako Island to the Pacific Ocean.

U.S. Marine Air Station Futenma in Ginowan, Okinawa, southern Japan, on Jan. 27, 2018. (Kyodo News via AP)

The dispute between Taiwan and China over control of the Taiwan Strait has also escalated. The Chinese regimes military aircrafts have entered Taiwans air defense identification zone (ADIZ) more frequently. The most serious provocation occurred on March 29, when Chinas Air Force conducted an exercise involving 10 fighter jets flying into Taiwans ADIZ.

The dispute between China and the Philippines has intensified last month. Since March 7, about 220 Chinese ships have been seen in the waters around disputed Whitsun Reef of the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. The Philippine government considers the vessels to be Chinese maritime militia ships, and lodged a diplomatic protest and demanded China to remove its ships from the disputed waters.

Chinas Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Hua Chunying said on March 22 that the ships were fishing boats that were taking shelter from the wind and the Philippines should look at the situation in a rational light.

However, the Chinese vessels have not left the area and there are more than 40 Chinese ships in the waters around Whitsun Reef. The Philippine Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned on April 5 that as long as the Chinese ships are still there, they will issue diplomatic protests every day.

The United States also expressed concern over Chinas aggression in the region. At the NATO meeting on March 23, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken called out Chinas militarization of the South China Sea, saying it violates international laws.

On March 28, Blinken tweeted in support of the Philippines: We will always stand by our allies and stand up for the rules-based international order.

The Philippines claims the resource-rich Spratly as its territory, citing the island chain is within its exclusive economic zone (EEZ). China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei also claim sovereignty over it.

In 2016, the Hagues Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling on the South China Sea was in favor of the Philippines EEZ claim over Chinas historical claim. However, China rejected the ruling and has been building artificial islands in the disputed waters and military facilities on disputed islands it occupied.

China asserts that it holds exclusive rights to more than 80 percent of the South China Sea, encompassing an area of 1.4 million square miles in the Pacific Ocean that holds up to 22 billion barrels of oil, and 290 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Various international media outlets reported that Beijings recent aggressive moves in the Indo-Pacific region are a test for the Biden administration. The Chinese regime wants to see if Washington will work with its allies in the region to contain the CCP. In mid-March Blinken visited Japan and South Korea and affirmed U.S. commitment to its Asian allies.

U.S.-based China affairs commentator Zhong Yuan believes that the CCP has made a serious misjudgment of the United States. It [the regime] has repeatedly adopted a confrontational strategy of proactive military and diplomatic actions, trying to force the Biden administration to step back and give in. But, it failed to achieve its goal. While the CCP was putting itself in the dilemma, it also messed up China-EU relations, Zhong wrote in his article, which was published in The Epoch Times.

Zhong pointed out that the CCP has recently stepped up confrontation with the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, and that Beijing blames Washington for not cooperating with China.

On April 5, state-run media Xinhua published an article in which it interviewed Foreign Affairs Minister Wang Yi, titled, Wang Yi: China Doesnt Recognize a Superior Country. On the same day, Xinhua published another article, The Chinese Navys Liaoning Ship Carrier Formation Launches Open Sea Training, while Liaoning passed through the Miyako Strait near Okinawa and bypassed eastern Taiwan.

Wang told Xinhua in the interview: China and the United States should have more dialogue and cooperation in the region, and less competition and confrontation. He emphasized, China does not recognize that there is a superior country in the world, or accept that things in the world can only be decided by one country.

Zhong believes that Wangs remarks reflect the top leaderships stancethe CCP is ready to carry out a full-scale confrontation with the United States.
A Washington County judge last week threw out evidence from a wiretap in a pending murder case, finding that Oregons law allowing a deputy district attorney -- not the countys top prosecutor -- to apply for the wiretap violated federal law.

The decision could put any future state-issued wiretap orders in jeopardy if the applicants are anyone but the state attorney general or a countys district attorney.

The Oregon Department of Justice and Attorney General Ellen F. Rosenblum are reviewing the judges ruling, said Kristina Edmundson, a department spokeswoman.

Defense lawyer Kevin Sali sought to suppress wiretap evidence against his client in a Hillsboro homicide case. Police captured the suspects text messages and other phone communications under a state court order.

Sali argued that the federal Wiretap Act sets out clear procedures that must be followed when government officials wish to intercept wire, electronic or oral communications.

The federal act also establishes minimum requirements for state court-issued wiretap applications, namely that the the principal prosecuting attorney of any State, or the principal prosecuting attorney of any political subdivision must be the one to apply for such an order.

Oregon law, he argued, is inconsistent with the federal law, in that it allows the district attorney to designate a deputy district attorney to apply for the judges order.

Sali cited rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to back up his motion.

In the Hillsboro case, two Washington County senior deputy district attorneys described themselves as being authorized by (then) District Attorney Robert Hermann for Washington County, Oregon when they applied for the judges wiretap order, yet there was no evidence of any personal review or other involvement of Hermann, Sali argued.

Washington County Circuit Judge Janelle Factora Wipper sided with Sali.

States are prohibited from creating less restrictive laws than the federal code, Wipper ruled Friday.

In this case, because the official responsive to the political process did not indicate that he or she was aware of the wiretap application, the evidence gained in response to the wiretaps are suppressed.

Prosecutors said Langston Amani Harris, 23, robbed and killed Jose Raul Boyzo-Hernandez, 22, after Boyzo-Hernandez had arranged by phone to have a prostitute come to his apartment on Sept. 20, 2017.

Harris and a co-defendant, Terrayla Sterling-Clark, are accused of showing up instead to rob Harris, according to court documents. When Boyzo-Hernandez resisted turning over his money, Harris shot him in the face, prosecutors said. Boyzo-Hernandezs body was found later that morning.

Investigators first obtained search warrants for Boyzo-Hernandezs phones and then applied for wiretap applications for the phone numbers he exchanged text messages with before he was killed , according to court records.

The wiretaps, prosecutors said, showed Boyzo-Hernandez used his phones to respond to a prostitution ad on backpage.com by calling a number associated with Harris.

Boyzo-Hernandez exchanged texts to negotiate a prostitution encounter, sent a photo of a large amount of cash and made outgoing calls, prosecutors said.

Harris has pleaded not guilty to first-degree and second-degree murder, first-degree robbery, being a felon in possession of a firearm, promoting prostitution, tampering with a witness and racketeering.

Sterling-Clark, 23, pleaded guilty to second-degree robbery in the case and was sentenced last April to seven years and six months in prison. As part of the plea, prosecutors said they would resolve her other pending murder, racketeering and prostitution charges upon her continued cooperation with law enforcement and truthful testimony in Harris trial, according to court records.

Sali, representing Harris, argued in court that the Oregon Department of Justice has been extensively put on notice of the legal questions surrounding the states wiretap law and practices.

And, despite a recent ruling by the 9th Circuit on the matter, the prosecutors in this case simply made a bet that their own contrary interpretation of the law would eventually carry the day, he wrote in court records.

Washington County prosecutors had defended the wiretap order, saying the 9th Circuit ruling wasnt binding on the Oregon court and that such wiretap orders must only conform to federal constitutional standards.

The wiretap order in this case was applied for by a deputy district attorney, by and through the then district attorney of Washington County, John Gerhard, senior deputy district attorney, wrote to the court.

State law allows a principal district attorney to authorize and appoint a deputy to apply for a wiretap order, said John Gerhard, senior deputy district attorney.

He urged the Washington County judge to value substance over form and deny Salis motion.

The Oregon wiretap statute is good law and complies with state and federal constitutional standards, Gerhard wrote. The attorneys and law enforcement officers in this case complied with Oregon legal requirements.'

Sali pointed out that an Aug. 2, 2017, ruling by the 9th Circuit held a wiretap invalid in an Arizona case, Villa v. Maricopa County, because a deputy prosecuting attorney had applied for the order. The ruling came nine months before the first wiretap application in the Hillsboro murder case.

Federal law sets minimum procedural requirements for state and federal orders authorizing wiretapping.

These requirements are a floor, not a ceiling, the 9th Circuit opinion said. States may choose to enact wiretapping statutes imposing more stringent requirements, or they may choose to forego state-authorized wiretapping altogether.

The purpose of the federal act is to make sure that a publicly responsible official subject to the political process personally approves a wiretap application, the appeals court ruled.

It is therefore not sufficient for the principal prosecuting attorney to state that he or she is generally aware of the criminal investigation, that he or she authorizes a deputy to seek wiretaps, and that his or her deputy has been authorized to review and present to the court the evidence in support of the wiretaps, the ruling said.

The appeals court further wrote that, Congress wanted each application passed upon by one of the highest law enforcement officials in the government (.)...The Congress expected them to exercise judgment, personal judgement, before approving any application.

-- Maxine Bernstein

Email mbernstein@oregonian.com; 503-221-8212

Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian
The mega-plan to finance redeveloping Penn Station New York by allowing up to 10 new skyscrapers to be built in the surrounding mid-town Manhattan neighborhood around the subterranean station is running into some towering opposition.

A coalition of planning groups, transportation advocates, community boards and property owners have opposed the plan, which was announced by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in late February.

A demonstration is planned for noon Wednesday in front of the Hotel Pennsylvania, one of many historic buildings in the area that includes a church, that would be demolished and redeveloped.

Proceeds from the construction would finance the redevelopment of Penn Station, which includes construction of a proposed nine-track addition south of Penn Station to accommodate NJ Transit trains and improvements for the twin subway stations that service it. The underground station also would be redeveloped at an unspecified cost.

Opponents said the plan seeks to use the states power to raze several adjacent historic blocks without meaningful input from the city or community and allow Vornado Realty Trust to build 10 new skyscrapers. The plan also fails to address the core issues of Penn Station, including below ground mass transit, the coalition said in a statement.

The coalition, which includes Human-Scale NYC, ReThinkNYC, The City Club of New York, Congress for New Urbanism  NYC, the 29th Street Neighborhood Association, Untapped New York, Tri-State Transportation Campaign, TakeBackNYC, and the Victorian Society New York, also said it plans to outline alternatives that would address solutions to the transit facilities.

...There is a General Project Plan for development without a full understanding of the Master Plan for Penn Station, said Brian Fritsch, a spokesman for the Regional Plan Association. There needs to be a great plan for Penn Station, and all the partners need to first come together around that. Once we have that, the rest of these things can be figured out.

The Penn South-annex concept was criticized by transit advocates when it was announced in 2020, prior to the release of the General Project Plan and Environmental Impact Statement in February.

That plan would move NJ Transit trains off tracks 12 to 5 in the center of Penn Station and gives the best track real estate to Amtrak, the LIRR and Metro North, transit advocates said.

While most tracks, except tracks 1 to 4, are through tracks, all the tracks in Penn South also would be a dead-end to go anywhere except back to New Jersey, advocates said.

Now, many NJ Transit trains unload, go east and are parked in the Sunnyside yard in Queens until the evening rush. The addition plan kills access to Sunnyside yard if NJ Transit trains have no access to tracks that allow them to travel east, advocates said in 2020.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Larry Higgs may be reached at lhiggs@njadvancemedia.com.
New COVID-19 case counts have plummeted in Oregon since late last year, but the state is experiencing a change in who is testing positive. Since January, the share of new cases in Oregonians aged 10 to 19 has grown by roughly 50% while the proportion of those aged 20 to 50 has shrunk, according to an analysis by The Lund Report.

This shift appears to be part of a national trend. Nationwide weekly data collected by the American Academy of Pediatrics show a similar rise in the percentage of new cases in the young. Hospital admission data exhibit the same pattern: The fraction of patients admitted to a hospital for COVID who are under 19 has nearly doubled since January.

Still, adults account for the vast majority of hospitalizations. Reports by 48 states and Washington D.C. to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services show there were more than 2.3 million suspected or confirmed COVID hospital admissions in adults since last Nov. 1 through last Saturday. That compares with 81,300 hospitalizations in children.

Unlike elderly adults, which face the highest risk of death and severe disease from COVID, the vast majority of children experience only mild symptoms, most commonly cough, fever, headache and runny nose. Also, just two Oregonians younger than 20 have died. In contrast, about 490 between 50 to 69 years old have died, and there have been more than 1,850 fatalities among those aged 70 and over.

The changing case demographics come at an awkward time for policymakers set on reopening schools. Limited data on the severity of variants in children make it hard to rule them out as a contributing factor. Theres no national dataset of school attendance policies, and few useful metrics on child behavior, leaving researchers without key tools.

But the same circumstances also offer hope: This early evidence suggests the vaccines are working. Its not so much that kids are getting hospitalized any more, its that the elderly are getting sick less. A study of nearly 600,000 vaccinated Israelis published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that in the first few weeks after the first shot of immunization, severe COVID cases fell more quickly than overall infections.

Also in Israel, which has the worlds highest rate per capita of vaccinated people, theres been a sharp rise in cases in Israeli youth, according to a report last month in the British Medical Journal. The journal also reported that 60% of cases in a village in northern Italy were found in children of primary or infant school age. That trend has prompted concern among Italian health care professionals.

The trends been much less visible in the U.S., in part because of data collection problems dating to the Trump administration.

But when The Lund Report shared its analysis with researchers, they said it might very well be that the vaccines are having an effect.

It makes sense, said Dr. Sean OLeary, vice chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases. We dont have any hard data saying thats whats happening, but it makes sense that we may see some shifting demographics as a result of mass immunizations, he said. We know the vaccine works.

The rate of pediatric COVID has climbed steadily through the pandemic, which probably represents a real rise in children getting infected relative to older populations, not that the virus is getting more severe in children, OLeary said, although the increase last spring and summer probably represented added testing capacity. The U.S. has been somewhat successful at cutting the spread among seniors, he added.

In Oregon, the last state in the country to vaccinate seniors living in the community, health officials have administered at least one dose to more than 540,000 people aged 65 and over, according to the Oregon Health Authority. Thats about 70% of that population based on estimates by Portland State Universitys Population Research Center.

But immunizing those who are already hunkered down may have less impact on cutting virus counts overall than vaccinating those who are most at risk, like essential workers. Case counts have fallen farthest in those aged 20 to 50, which includes a large fraction of those vaccinated in Oregon first: medical workers and teachers.

Another factor to consider is the spread of variants -- from Britain, South Africa and Brazil -- and ones emerging in the United States.

Im not aware of any strong evidence suggesting that any of these variants are either any more severe in children than the variants that have been circulating in the U.S. or that they are disproportionately more infectious in children than adults compared to prior variants, OLeary said.

With so many competing factors, the relative weight of each is hard to untangle. But some of the most commonly cited factors for a rise in cases among younger people -- the timing of household spread, availability of testing and the role of college students -- seem unlikely to wholly explain the trend.

Data from college campuses

Cases in college students are a clear contributing factor, said Dr. Chunhuei Chi, professor of international health at Oregon State University and director of its Center for Global Health. OSU saw a substantial rise in COVID cases on its Corvallis campus in February, although the numbers have fallen in recent weeks.

Chi said OSU was testing every student who lived in the dorms weekly, noting that simply testing more frequently is likely to turn up a greater fraction of asymptomatic cases that might otherwise have slipped under the radar. Chi said hes talked to students whod caught COVID multiple times, and said mild cases of COVID may convey a much shorter period of natural resistance. (OLeary, of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said that this was possible but not clearly established by research.)

OSUs approach isnt the only way colleges are confronting the COVID crisis. COVID case counts at Portland State University have largely followed trends in the city, said Dr. Mark Bajorek, the universitys director of health services. Testing is voluntary and has dropped from 30 to 40 tests a day at the epidemics winter peak to five to 10 of late. Bajorek noted some students with possible exposure but no symptoms were less than enthusiastic about getting tested: Do I really want to know? some asked.

Disentangling the impact of collegiate COVID cases is hard, but a national collection of case counts among the young conducted by the academy provides a natural experiment. Most states track children as being either under 18 or under 20. Comparing the two tells us something about what young adults aged 18 to 19 are up to.

After removing states identified by the academy as having inconsistent data, theres a clear increase in the states tracking kids under 20 around back-to-school time. But data for the states tracking kids have risen nationally for those under 18 since January too in a way it didnt last fall.

Another contributing factor to the case count is timing. In Oregon, cases among children have often peaked a week later than in adults, a trend that appears to reflect patterns of testing (children get tested after an adult tests positive) and transmission. Oregons most recent report on COVID in children, from January, found that 47% of cases in children came from household spread as opposed to 20% in adults.

With kids cases lagging adults, its just simple math that the share of cases in kids would rise as the adult cases decline. But this trend should vanish about a week after cases have leveled out. But thats not happened: To date, the trend has persisted in Oregon even after case counts have stopped falling as fast.

Data on whos getting seriously ill from of COVID in Oregon are less complete. Federal hospitalization records in both Oregon and Washington have errors in the count of children admitted with suspected COVID every day for at least the last four months. Before Oct. 19, Oregon never had more than 15 children admitted with suspected COVID in a day. Every day since, the state has reported having more than 30, even though that makes no sense whatsoever when compared to the trend in adults.

Bill Hall, a deputy assistant secretary for public affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, acknowledged the issue and said a data quality team was reviewing it. But he didnt respond to questions from The Lund Report about how it had occurred or when it would be fixed. Politico also recently reported that the agencys inspector general was probing data collection failures at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It said that the lack of race data in case counts under the Trump administration was the initial focus.

Some states have been certified to collect data directly from hospitals and pass it on to federal agencies -- but not Oregon or Washington. An HHS document notes that Oregon was in process for certification in December.

Jonathan Modie, a spokesman for Oregons Health Authority, declined to say what the states reporting status was or shed any light on where the erroneous data came from.

A more comprehensive view of whos being hospitalized should be possible in the United States. HHS has requested that hospitals provide COVID admission counts in 10-year age ranges. But these data are absent from state files and not usable in facility-level files, which redact patient counts less than four.

Hall declined to respond to questions about this.

Little known about variants

Perhaps the biggest source of uncertainty, though, is the role of variants. Just a fraction of confirmed COVID cases are being sequenced in Oregon right now.

Oregon State was sequencing about 100 to 200 cases a week, including wastewater samples, according to Brett Tyler, director of OSUs Center for Genome Research and Biocomputing. We have not detected any variants of concern (i.e. UK, Brazilian, South African) recently, he said by email.

At Oregon Health & Science University scientists aim for 200 or 250 sequences a week; researchers at the University of Oregon are analyzing 25, though its lab could ramp up, a spokeswoman said.

Thats not enough analysis to provide a clear picture of trends.

The New York Times estimated Oregon has sequenced less than 2% of cumulative cases to date.

In January, OHSU found that the variant B.1.1.7, the variant that emerged in the United Kingdom, is in Oregon. Since then, OHSU researchers found a novel variant in Oregon with a feature -- fittingly known as eek -- that researchers believe may make it more resistant to the vaccine. Even as case counts have fallen, the B.1.1.7 variant case count has grown, with some estimating that it will be the dominant form of COVID-19 in the U.S. in the spring. A dashboard from genomic testing company Helix recently found the B.1.1.7 variant in about 30% of samples.

Limited sequencing in the U.S. has reduced the countrys ability to know for sure what is going on, said Dr. Maureen Hoatlin, a biomedical consultant and recently retired faculty member at OHSU. What happens in Europe is often observed later in the U.S., she said by email.

In Italy, doctors specifically raised the alarm over the possibility of the B.1.1.7 variant spreading more widely in children.

We are flying blind in the U.S. with regard to the variants, Hoatlin said.

-- Jacob Fenton of The Lund Report
OTTAWA - NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is standing by several controversial proposals from rank-and-file party members while rejecting more extreme ones  including a call to abolish the military  ahead of this weekend's policy convention.

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh holds a press conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

OTTAWA - NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is standing by several controversial proposals from rank-and-file party members while rejecting more extreme ones  including a call to abolish the military  ahead of this weekend's policy convention.

Singh's tightrope walk has him hovering between the party's grassroots and the broader Canadian public, with an eye to pleasing enough of both to boost New Democrats above their fourth-place ranking in the House of Commons in a potential election this year.

A resolution from the NDP's Spadina-Fort York riding association commits to "phasing out" the Canadian Armed Forces and retraining service members into civil service roles.

"I don't agree," Singh said at a virtual press conference Wednesday.

He said the military provided critical support at long-term care homes during the COVID-19 outbreaks last year, and he has called for further deployment to assist in the vaccine rollout.

Singh declined to take a stance on potential policy planks that demand the removal of all statues of Sir John A. Macdonald and the addition of Indigenous symbols to the Canadian flag. But he sympathized with the ideas behind them.

"Weve got to be very aware of the message certain monuments and statues send in public spaces, and be open to moving with the times," Singh said.

If the legacies symbolized by a particular figure, image or building name are unwelcoming or disrespectful of "Indigenous persons and diversity," they may need to be relocated, redesigned or retitled, he said.

"There always will be a place for remembering our history, and sometimes that place maybe is best served in a museum or in history books, and not always in public places."

Macdonald was Canada's first prime minister but his role in establishing colonial systems, including Indian residential schools, has led to calls for multiple statues across the country to come down.

Singh also weighed in on a proposed resolution condemning Quebec's Bill 21, which bans religious symbols such as turbans, kippas and hijabs for employees of the state deemed to be in positions of authority, including police officers and teachers.

Singh called the law "discriminatory," particularly against women, but acknowledged the importance of separating church and state.

NDP members from across the country have cast their ballots on more than 400 proposed resolutions to determine which will make the short list of 70 for delegates to vote on at the party's first policy convention since the 2019 federal election, running Friday through Sunday.

New Democrat speakers will include B.C. Premier John Horgan, Andrea Horwath and Rachel Notley  Opposition leaders in Ontario and Alberta respectively  and former federal party chief Ed Broadbent.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 7, 2021.
A surf lifesaving volunteer has been banned from working with children after exhibiting 'extremely inappropriate' behaviour towards his daughter's friend - but has faced no charges.

The man, aged in his 60s, showered with the 'vulnerable' 16-year-old girl and shaved her pubic region, slept in the same bed as her twice and bought her underwear in 2018.

The volunteer and engineer by trade claimed the girl 'was an adult in that situation' and said she made sexual advances towards him, The Courier Mail reported.

The man, a senior figure in Queensland surf lifesaving, was banned from volunteering and from working with children after 'extremely inappropriate' behaviour towards his daughter's 16-year-old friend

It was revealed in the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal that the girl had suffered previous sexual abuse and had been 'sexualised from a young age'.

'She was a child. Boundary violations are unacceptable,' a tribunal member said.

'Entering the shower to shave the child's pubic region - even if at her request - was extremely inappropriate.'

The man, who was well-educated and held senior positions in the surf lifesaving community, was investigated by Surf Life Saving Queensland over his behaviour.

He was suspended from club volunteering for three years after the incidents in 2018, before the director-general of the Department of Justice banned him from working with children.

He appealed the ban but it was upheld on January 6 this year.

The tribunal heard he lacked insight into the impact of his behaviour and failed his duty to provide a safe environment for the girl.
When COVID vaccines first opened to Louisiana residents over 70 in January, there was a mad scramble for appointments. Overloaded phone systems shut down as seniors called for hours to get an appointment. Lines stretched outside pharmacy doors. In Jefferson Parish, 500 appointments were snapped up in five minutes at the Alario Center in mid-February.

But by the time the state opened vaccines to anyone 16 and older last week, appointments at many hospitals and clinics were wide open. Clinics found themselves with extra doses on the verge of expiring. LCMC Health started allowing walk-ins for first appointments a day before the expansion. Ochsner Health, the states largest health care provider, has open availability on its vaccine appointment page. And an analysis from GoodRx, a company that tracks drug prices, found that 48 of Louisianas 64 parishes had vaccine availability at Walmart and CVS pharmacies.

Weve hit the low-hanging fruit of people who are very anxious, I want to be vaccinated yesterday, said Dr. Jeffrey Elder, LCMC Health medical director of emergency management who oversees the systems mass vaccination effort at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. Now, were in the trenches.

The change in vaccine demand and supply represents a shift that public health experts knew was coming, but did not expect this soon, said Elder, a situation spurred by the supply increase. And it could be a sign that Louisiana may have a lot of work ahead.

I think it would be a fallacy to think we can coast from here, said Dr. Joe Kanter, Louisiana Department of Health state officer. Kanter noted that the state received 150,000 doses this week compared to around 90,000 weekly doses a month ago.

But even considering increased supply, there are signs that Louisiana may have a harder time giving out the vaccine than other states. Louisiana ranks in the bottom five for a persons likelihood of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, according to a recent survey by the U.S. Census Bureau. Only about 36% of adults said they hadnt received a vaccine yet but would once it is available. The U.S. average is about 51%.

At the same time, Louisiana is not keeping up with the national average for the percentage of the population vaccinated, hanging in the bottom six states at about 28%. Its also in the bottom eight for the number of doses still sitting on shelves, having used 73% of its vaccine supply, down from a high of 88% in mid-February, according to data collected by USA Facts.

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Its not so much that demand has completely fallen off. Officials at LCMC Health and Ochsner Lafayette General Medical Center said appointments remained steady last week at about 1,000 per day. But with vaccine shipments larger than ever, that means many appointments are going unfilled.

Our Lady of Lake Medical Center in Baton Rouge has been jabbing thousands of arms on the weekends and hundreds during the week. But just before eligibility was expanded, officials at the state's largest hospital say they noticed some appointment slots werent filling up as fast as they had been before the governor expanded eligibility to adults and older teens.

You could tell the interest is waning, said Dr. Catherine ONeal, OLOL's chief medical officer.

O'Neal said its difficult to read the states trajectory with its effort to vaccinate enough people to effectively end the pandemic, but the toughest work is ahead.

That last push will be the hardest, ONeal said. It will be convincing people who really arent ready to get the vaccine that they need to get it to end the pandemic.

The state hasnt yet reached the very last push, but it may need to adapt its approach as challenges to vaccinate people change, according to Charles Stoecker, a Tulane University health care economist who studies vaccine policy.

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Hesitancy is on a continuum, said Stoecker. As you move from these efficient mass vaccination sites and think about moving those sites to the people, this is when you get start getting into outreach and mobile vaccination units and start chipping away at that.

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And there is evidence that changing the strategy might make a difference in the state's race to vaccinate as many people as possible before a variant of the virus challenges the vaccine's effectiveness.

When NOLA Ready sent out a text message last Wednesday to residents that a local clinic needed to give out 40 expiring doses by the end of the day, there was a line out the door, even as appointments went unfilled at mass vaccinations throughout the city. The clinic, Odyssey House Louisiana Community Health Center, vaccinated around 60 people before it had to turn people away at the door.

There are tons of people who want it, and there are providers who have it, said Dr. Jennifer Velander, chief medial officer at Odyssey House. But there doesnt seem to necessarily be the best way to direct those people where to go. And so people are left calling around and not knowing where to look.

Some people who showed up needed a second dose after having trouble scheduling it in a convenient place, like Cliff Swanberry and William King, friends who got the first dose in Mississippi. And others happened to get the text when they were free from jobs with non-standard hours.

Were open during the day and Im off by three, and most places only give it until four, said Jordan Candies, a server at Elizabeths in the Bywater. She hopped in her car after friends forwarded her the text and got one of the expiring doses during her day off.

Patricia Thompson, spokesperson for Ochsner Lafayette General Medical Center, said the hospital is focusing on outreach to underserved communities, including Acadianas Black and Latino communities, by shifting its main clinic location to the Martin Luther King Recreation Center through May 30 and partnering with Asociacion Cultural Latino-Acadiana for a vaccination clinic at the Robicheaux Recreation Center on April 11, including disseminating fliers in Spanish.

The hospital will also increase inventory of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine as interest in the single-shot vaccine rises.

One of the biggest challenges remains educating the community about the vaccine eligibility expansion, ensuring people are aware that doses are available and removing perceived hurdles to scheduling.

I was having a conversation with someone yesterday and they still thought it was 65 and up for eligibility, Thompson said.

Staff writer Jeff Adelson contributed to this report.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 7)  China's intrusion of the Julian Felipe Reef in the West Philippine Sea would not affect the bilateral relations and vaccine cooperation between the two countries, President Rodrigo Duterte said.

In a briefing on Tuesday, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque read out a statement from Duterte, which noted that the Philippine government will continue to resolve issues surrounding Julian Felipe, also known as Whitsun Reef, "through diplomatic channels and peaceful means."

Whatever differences we have with China will not define our bilateral relations and it will not be an obstacle to the overall positive trajectory of our bilateral friendly relations and our deepening cooperation in the pandemic response, including vaccine cooperation and in post-pandemic economic recovery," Roque quoted Duterte as saying.

Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr., who was also present in the briefing, said that issues in the West Philippine Sea are separate from China and the Philippines' pandemic response.

Over the weekend, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana reiterated the government's demand for China to withdraw its vessels, saying he is no fool to believe the excuse that the ships are there to seek shelter from rough seas. The Chinese Embassy in Manila dismissed this as an unprofessional remark, and insisted that Julian Felipe Reef, which it calls Niu'e Jiao, is part of what it claims as Nansha Islands.

READ: I am no fool. Leave now,' Lorenzana tells Chinese vessels at West PH Sea

The Department of Foreign Affairs backed Lorenzana, noting that it will lodge a diplomatic protest for every day that China fails to withdraw its fishing vessels and maritime assets in Julian Felipe Reef and in the Philippines' maritime zones. It first sent a diplomatic protest against China's intrusion in Julian Felipe on March 21.

But for lawmakers like Senator Risa Hontiveros, this move would not stop incursions as China refuses to heed numerous calls to respect the country's sovereignty. She said the DFA and the Defense Department should instead talk to partners within ASEAN and stand together against China's bullying.

In 2016, an arbitral tribunal invalidated Beijing's sweeping claims in the disputed waters and recognized the Philippines' sovereign rights within its EEZ that China contests. China has repeatedly rejected the landmark ruling.
A serial drink driver was given one of Western Australias harshest sentences over the accidental slaying of two 27-year-old women on Perths roads in May last year, but wasnt barred from driving ever again.

Supreme Court Justice Bruno Fiannaca sentenced Shane Bradley Pearce, 50, to 11 years jail, with parole after nine years and the chance five years after his release to overturn his 10-year licence disqualification.

Lauren Prothero, 27, and Paige Ward, 27, died at the hands of drunk driver Shane Pearce. Credit:Nine News

Justice Fiannaca did not think a lifetime driving ban would be appropriate since Pearce would still be quite advanced in age.

Pearce had four times the legal blood alcohol limit, with a reading of 0.21, when he sped at 123km/h through a red light at an intersection in Cooloongup at 7.42pm on May 29.
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Australia's COVID-19 vaccine rollout has been much maligned recently, as it's become clear we're way behind schedule.

So far Australia's average daily rate since the rollout began in late February is around 22,000 doses a day according to my calculations. To achieve herd immunity, I calculate we'll need to vaccinate 85% of the population, using a combination of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines. To achieve this by the end of March 2022, I calculate we need to vaccinate at least 133,000 people a day until December 31, and then around 79,000 a day in the first three months of 2022.

Mass vaccination sites are urgently needed. Current av. rate after last 6 weeks is just 22,000 doses/day. I calculate to have 85% population vaccinated by end of year we need 133,000/day every day from tomorrow to Dec 31 plus 70,000/day every day from Jan 1-Mar 31 2022.  Mary-Louise McLaws (@MarylouiseMcla1) April 5, 2021

One way to achieve this would be to stop relying on small GP and respiratory clinics and urgently move towards using mass vaccination hubs.

However, we don't yet have enough of the AstraZeneca vaccine to service large vaccination hubs. This I think is one reason why Australian authorities have not yet planned to use them.

What are mass vaccination sites?

Mass vaccination means vaccination on a large scale in a short time. Locations for mass vaccination would include stadiums and sportsgrounds, schools, parks, places of worship, and shopping centers.

This is what's being done in countries like Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States.

According to the latest data, Israel has given at least one dose to 60% of its population; that figure is 46% in the UK and 32% in the US.

In Australia we've given about 850,000 COVID vaccine doses, which is roughly 4% of the adult population.

As Australia moves into phase 1B of the rollout and beyond, the federal government's plan has been to rely solely on GP, respiratory clinics and eventually community pharmacies. This plan presumes we're all middle class and have the ability to access a local GP during work hours or early evenings. But many people who are unemployed, disadvantaged, working multiple part-time jobs, disaffected or can't get away from work might not be able or willing to visit a GP clinic in their neighborhood.

Instead, many might be more comfortable going to a mass site. For the placement of mass vaccination facilities to improve uptake of the vaccine, authorities should consult demographers who can identify the location of vaccination hubs to be most effective in attracting the most people.

We can't rely on small GP clinics alone

Relying on small GP and respiratory clinics means the rollout is progressing very slowly. Local clinics might vaccinate around 50 people per day, depending on the size of their clinic. They also need to ensure physical distancing that allows space for people to wait for 15 minutes after their vaccination while they are monitored for any side effects.

GPs also need to continue to see patients with various health and well-being needs they should not ignore, even in a pandemic.

Federal Deputy Chief Medical Officer Michael Kidd said mass hubs were "not off the agenda". And today, the NSW government announced it will be setting up a mass COVID vaccination hub in Homebush, in Sydney's inner west.

This is a good start but we need many more mass vaccination sites before we can get close to reaching the daily target.

So far there isn't a formal plan detailing how the federal or state governments will introduce mass vaccination hubs in the COVID vaccine rollout.

Vaccine supply is the crucial issue

Vaccination is a huge logistical challenge amid a global pandemic and there's an element of authorities learning to build the ship while it's sailing.

Australian governments may also not yet be able to supply sufficient vaccines for mass vaccination hubs.

The federal government has repeatedly said Melbourne-based biotech company CSL will be producing one million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine a week. It's yet to reach that target, and it's not yet clear exactly when it will.

But let's look at that target and presume CSL reaches it soon. One million doses divided by seven days a week equals about 142,000 doses a day. This is only just on the cusp of being sufficient to reach our daily vaccination target. But it doesn't take into account other delays that might occur such as problems with distribution, loss of stock, logistical hurdles, and bottlenecks at vaccination clinics.

In outbreak management you plan for the worst-case scenario. So when setting goals you should plan forward and look backwards to identify weaknesses in the plan, such as not receiving enough vaccine and logistical issues. You must also allow a buffer if things go "pear shaped".

The fact we're already behind the federal government's initial target of vaccinating all Australian adults by the end of October this year suggests its plans were idealistic. It's difficult to make further assessments without full transparency around vaccine supply and distribution.

This 3.1 million doses thing is very simple. Please stay with me: Australia was expecting 3.8 million AstraZeneca doses from factories in Europe. About 700k doses have been shipped. The rest? Well we know the European Commission and Italy formally blocked 250k doses last month  Bevan Shields (@BevanShields) April 6, 2021

There have been issues with Europe blocking and slowing supply. Planning appropriately for the rollout would have included considerations for delays for approval and batch testing. It begs the questions of why 2.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine are currently waiting for batch testing.

Authorities should be fully transparent about issues relating to vaccine supply, batch testing and distribution, so the public can feel fully informed and engaged in the vaccine rollout.

Great examples of transparency in vaccine rollouts can be seen in New Zealand and Canada. NZ includes weekly adverse reaction reports where people can read about vaccine side effects. Greater transparency like this can reduce anxiety, hesitancy and conspiracy theories.

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The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has criticised Facebook for a lack of communication over how and when at least 1.3 million Irish mobile phone numbers came to be publicly leaked and shared.

The breach, which is part of a global leak of more than 500 million accounts, has left more than a quarter of Irish mobile phone users open to more fraudulent calls, scam texts and bogus WhatsApp messages.

It has also left thousands who are in sensitive work positions  from prison officers to gardai and womens refuge managers  vulnerable to harassment or stalking through their mobile numbers being made public.

The DPC attempted over the weekend to establish the full facts and is continuing to do so. It received no proactive communication from Facebook. Through a number of channels, it sought contact and answers from Facebook, said a spokesperson for the Irish DPC.

Facebook Ireland responded to queries about the leak with a two-sentence statement.

This is old data that was previously reported on in 2019, a spokesperson told the Irish Independent.

We found and fixed this issue in August 2019.

The social media giant is arguing that because the bulk of the data leak happened before the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May 2018, it does not have to take any further action in relation to the matter.

Because the scraping took place prior to GDPR, Facebook chose not to notify this as a personal data breach under GDPR, said the DPC.

There has been widespread criticism of Facebook for its lack of action on the issue. Unlike most data breaches where email passwords can be reset, most people do not change mobile numbers.

The Irish regulator is now warning of risks around spam and security, saying: Risks arise for users who may be spammed.

Users also need to be vigilant in relation to any services they use that require authentication using a phone number in case third parties are attempting to gain access.
Photo: C Flanigan/Getty Images

Two women have accused electronic DJ Bassnectar of sex trafficking, claiming in a new lawsuit that he had sexual relationships with them as minors and solicited explicit photos of them at the time. The complaint, obtained by Vulture, was filed in Tennessee on behalf of two women, Rachel Ramsbottom and Alexis Bowling, alleging the producer used his power and influence to groom and ultimately sexually victimize underage girls. Mitchell Schuster, the attorney representing Bassnectar, born Lorin Ashton, told Vulture in a statement, These outrageous claims  which were clearly designed for the media, rather than for the courts  are completely without merit, and we eagerly look forward to proving so.

Allegations that Ashton groomed and sexually abused underaged women first emerged in June 2020, on the Instagram account @evidenceagainstbassnectar. In July, Ashton said on social media he was stepping back from music to take responsibility and accountability amid the allegations. The rumors you are hearing are untrue, he added, but I realize some of my past actions have caused pain, and I am deeply sorry. Ashton DJd since the late 1990s, and first performed as Bassnectar in 2002. By the EDM boom of the early 2010s, he was a popular festival performer with a dedicated fanbase of Bassheads.

Both Ramsbottom and Bowling were underage fans of Bassnectar when Ashton reached out to them on Twitter, per the lawsuit. Ashton first direct-messaged Ramsbottom in September 2012 and knew she was underage, the suit claims, even discussing her high school coursework. In May 2013, he allegedly invited Ramsbottom to his Memphis hotel and had sex with her, paying her $1,000 afterward. Weeks later, per the lawsuit, Ramsbottom stayed in a Nashville hotel room with Ashton for four days, having sex with him multiple times. Ashton required Rachel to hide when room service arrived and became angry when Rachel answered the phone, according to the suit. During their relationship, Ramsbottom also sent sexually explicit photos to Ashton at his request, the suit adds.

Ashton first direct-messaged Bowling on Twitter for her 17th birthday, according to the lawsuit. Bowling met Ashton after a Las Vegas show in April 2014, when she was unable to enter the venue because she was under 18. She then met Ashton outside his hotel afterward, where they kissed for around six hours, per the suit  after which Ashton paid her $300. In July, Ashton visited Bowling in Kentucky, where she lived. He allegedly had sex with her at his hotel and paid her $1,600 afterward; the suit claims Ashton continued to meet her for sex in Kentucky through August. Additionally, Bowling also allegedly sent explicit photos to Ashton at his request.

Ashton was allegedly fascinated with the movie American Beauty  about an adult man infatuated with an underage girl  according to the suit, which claims he recommended it to both women. The suit alleges Ashton reached out to Ramsbottom in 2016, in the wake of the #MeToo movement, and later offered to pay for her therapy in 2019. Ramsbottom spoke to him about his abuse in summer 2020, according to the suit. Bassnectar admitted that he engaged with multiple women who were too young, and acknowledged in his own words that there was an imbalance of power dynamic due to his age, the fan/celebrity dynamic, his male privilege, and his celebrity privilege, according to the suit. Ashton also reached out to Bowling in summer 2020, in an attempt to maintain Alexiss loyalty and prevent her from speaking out against his unlawful conduct, according to the suit.

The suit not only names Ashton as a defendant, but multiple of Ashtons companies as Bassnectar, along with Red Light Management and C3 Presents. (Red Light and C3 have not responded to requests for comment.) This lawsuit is about seeking justice not just against Bassnectar but against the corporations that cooperate in and help facilitate the abuses he is alleged to have committed, Brian Kent, one of the attorneys representing Rambsbottom and Bowling, said in a statement announcing the filing on April 5. And Ashtons relationships with underage girls were allegedly an open secret. It was a running joke among those associated with Bassnectar, the suit claims, that he would have to find a date at a high school dance.
When officials and agencies use interactive social media in these ways, they create spaces that play important functions in our democracy. Their accounts can be sources of official information, channels through which citizens can petition their representatives for redress of grievances (as the First Amendment puts it) and forums in which citizens can exchange information and ideas. The same reasoning that led the appeals court to hold that Mr. Trump couldnt constitutionally block critics from his Twitter account makes clear that other government actors who engage in similar conduct do so at their peril.

In fact, since we filed the case, almost a dozen other courts have applied the First Amendments public forum doctrine in cases involving the social media accounts of legislators, mayors, city councilors and sheriffs. The effect of these judicial rulings extends beyond the litigants. Made aware of these rulings, many public officials who were excluding people from their accounts based on viewpoint have voluntarily changed their practices.

These rulings also have implications for government-run accounts on platforms other than Twitter. The Army and Navy have been using Twitch, a gaming platform, to livestream e-sports as part of their recruiting efforts. Those who watch these multiplayer video games on the militarys Twitch channels can also exchange messages in moderated forums. The exchanges can be wide-ranging, but until recently moderators made a practice of ejecting participants who asked questions about war crimes. Moderators changed course only after the courts decision in Mr. Trumps case was brought to their attention.

These developments in the law, and in the practice of government agencies and officials, should be welcomed. The technology may be new, but the rule that government actors cant exclude people from public forums on the basis of viewpoint has been practically synonymous with the First Amendment for decades. Its a good thing that speakers who were previously silenced can now voice their dissent, that public officials who were previously shielded from the views of their constituents are now exposed to them and that digital forums that were previously echo chambers are now more ideologically diverse.

Over the next years, the courts, legislatures and the public will have to answer a slew of thorny questions about free speech and social media, including about the extent of Congresss power to regulate the companies. As Justice Clarence Thomas noted Monday in connection with the Supreme Courts order, some of these questions were presented starkly by the major social media companies decision to deplatform Mr. Trump after the siege on the Capitol. In comparison with these questions, the one presented by our case was easy.

But if the proposition that government officials may not exclude speakers from public forums because of their political views is straightforward, its also foundational to our democracy. Even those disinclined to thank Mr. Trump for anything can perhaps thank him for having given the courts an occasion to reaffirm this basic principle.

Jameel Jaffer is the executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. Katie Fallow is a senior staff attorney at the institute.

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BETTER SAMARITAN: Do you remember the day that you arrived in the U.S.?

CHONG: I was four years old when I arrived in the United States in August of 1980. I remember our experience of traveling to the US. When we were at the airport in Bangkok, we came across an escalator, which we have never seen before. While we were on the escalator going up, my mom's flip flop got caught and fell backwards. As she went backwards trying to catch it, my brother and I were very scared as we didnt know if she would ever get back up and we may be separated. My younger brother was screaming, because we were afraid that if mom kept going, she was never gonna make it with us [onto the flight].

I remember, vividly, our first day of school [in Minneapolis] after we arrived. When we went to school, it was the first day of snow as well. Once we arrived at school, next thing I knew, the three of us, my older brother, my younger brother, and myself were sent to the principal's office because we showed up on a snowy day to school in shorts and flip flops. The teachers and principal kind of went crazy. Trying to figure out why the heck these kids were coming to school unprepared.

We didn't know, that's all we had. We thought that was normal. It's part of what we had to learn how to endure. I mean, we live in the jungles of Laos and Thailand where we endure the weather. You know, you don't necessarily have clothes to wear to adjust for the weather. You just endured the cold or the heat whenever it comes. You endure the rain when it's the monsoon season.

But the teacher got with the principal and quickly that afternoon, they got us each a jacket to wear home. That experience in of itself was a rude awakening for a lot of Minneapolis schools. With the sudden influx of refugee kids, teachers, in particular, didn't know what to expect, how to deal with and how best to support them. So I think that was really a learning process for them as well.

BETTER SAMARITAN: So I wonder, first of all, if they're better at it now. Has Minneapolis become kind of a hub for Hmong refugees because of existing families?

CHONG: Certainly, the social service industry in the city has really grown. And people always ask, Why so many refugees want to move to the Twin City when it's so cold? A lot of the refugees are from Africa, South Asia, the Middle East where the climate they are used to is the desert, or the jungle. So, why would they want to move to Minnesota. With all the snow?

The number one reason is that Minnesota, the Twin City in particular, has one of the best social service programs in the nation. My parents were part of the earliest refugee group that settled in MN. Which brought in a new dynamic for the community on how to support these newly arrived refugees.

BETTER SAMARITAN: So what were some of the other experiences with individuals trying to help you either in the church or outside of the church?

CHONG: So for the first four to five years, my mom was taught a number of things such as how to sew, but had no way of using the skill at home as she did not have a sewing machine. So she never could do anything meaningful with the skill set that she's learned.

So my parents faced a lot of the challenges. The few support my parents did received was more enabling. They were never really taught to be self sufficient taking care of themselves. They were always dependent on whoever was helping them. From employment to housing and so on.

They would do it for you: for example, Here's a job. I already talked to the manager.

BETTER SAMARITAN: So she was taught to sew, but nothing else.

CHONG: Yes, again, Im not trying to say we're not appreciative and grateful. It's that concept of dependency. They teach you how to do certain things, but they never really teach you how to do that for yourself. They would do it for you: for example, Here's a job. I already talked to the manager. But you don't have the relationship, you don't even know how to go looking for a job, where to find one or how to apply for one or to participate in a job interview. You have to always go back to the agency for help if and when you need another job.

So the concepts of empowermentto me, I felt like it never really came about, particularly for my parents. In the 90s when the next influx of Hmong refugees and the Somali refugees started coming. That's when the mindset started shifting to say we need to do a better job education refugees to become self-sufficient. Turning from enabling to empowering people to be independent.

The churches felt like they have a mission, which is to lead people to Christ. And they will help you so long as they have that opportunity to do so. And that was fine for my family, because we were already Christians. But there were a lot of families that didnt want or didn't appreciate it. There were lots of families who just put up with it, because they needed the help. They let their kids go to church, so they would receive the support but really did not care for it.

If I had to go back and talk to these individuals, I would certainly say your approach is incorrect. The best way to share your faith is to live it out. The way that God is saying, we ought to love one another as we love ourself.

My belief is that I need to love them into the kingdom and serve them in the way that God would expect me to serve with love and dignity. When I did that, I got so much more opportunity to share with them about God than I ever wanted. After theyve been resettle for a while and gotten to know how life is like here in the US. I got so many refugees coming back in two or three years later and they'll say to me, why do you work here? Bingo, I would be like, I'm glad you asked. So I get to share my faith and why I do this work. The most important part of this is, now they are ready to hear and listen. It is not forced.

I was always good enough to be helped, but never good enough to walk alongside them.

One of my biggest disappointments in the refugee resettlement world at that point was, I was always good enough to be helped, but never good enough to walk alongside them. The relationships that I thought were friendships were never really true friendships because I was someone in need of their help. They were there to help me, the savior mentality. I needed to be saved. Never once was I ever good enough for them to say, can I just be your friend?

[One former friend]he was the leader of our youth group in the church that was providing support services for my family. He was always there to support me, to pray for me, to counsel me, and to help me with school challenges. I remember this specific incident when he was struggling with something personal. I don't know what it is, but I can tell he was struggling. One day I said to him, is there something that I can pray for you? And he just said, No, I'm good, and walked away. No matter how many times I asked, he would never share anything with me.

Something struck me from that experience. I was only there for him to help not the other way around. That experience turned me away from working with volunteers. I mean, every chance I got from that point on, I told my parents, we dont need volunteers in our lives. I said to my parents, we don't need people coming to our house as if we need a hand out. We're not good enough for them. They just want to use us for their benefit.

It wasnt until I worked for World Relief that I got a different perspective and viewpoint on what true volunteers are supposed to be.

So I really frowned upon and hated volunteers. I put up walls against volunteers all the way into my adult life. It wasnt until I worked for World Relief, that I got a different perspective and viewpoint on what true volunteers are supposed to be. I learned a new concept that we are here to build long lasting relationships and true friendships. Yes, we are meeting some basic needs, but you can still do all that through building relationships. Refugees have so much to teach us as much as they need support to learn how to navigate through our complex system in the US.

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My encouragement for anyone who is truly looking to welcome the stranger and love your neighbors, is to understand that it starts with the motivation of the heart. We are called to love and love goes beyond just material things. The most important thing to a refugee, new to another world that does not know anyone, is a friend.

Chong Bee Vang is a former refugee from the jungles of Laos. He belongs to a small ethnic minority group called Hmong. He came to the United States as a refugee due to the Hmongs alliance to the United States during the Vietnam War. He served the refugee community with various non-profit organizations, serving in various roles from immigration legal representation and social services support, including being the Executive Director for an ethnic community-based organization for over 15 years. He holds a BA in Organizational Leadership and a Masters in Business Administration from Bethel University in Minnesota. Chong Bee currently serves as the Executive Director of Advancement for Family Life Radio. He leads the Advancement Department in cultivating Ministry Champions to invest in radio ministry to inspire and equip individuals and families to live an intentional life in Christ.
PHOENIX, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Tesis Labs, the leader in targeted genetic sequencing, announced its plans to expand to the Phoenix/Scottsdale area, offering targeted genetic sequencing services to healthcare providers in the western U.S. The new lab will be located in Scottsdale.

The Scottsdale lab will provide the additional capacity to handle the growth of the Company's collaborative initiatives with large medical companies and research organizations looking to develop pharmaceuticals that impact the human genome, medical devices and large medical organizations focused on an improvement in the quality of care. The primary focus of the facility will be on high-complexity molecular and next-generation sequencing (NGS) testing to detect chronic and hereditary conditions such as cancer, heart disease, lung disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer's. Also, the lab will offer Infectious Disease testing, including COVID-19, respiratory pathology, wound and other molecular testing.

"Tesis Labs's expansion is a positive reflection on Arizona's high-quality healthcare and bio-tech community. Arizona offers convenient access to states west of the Rockies, along with the clinical and bio-tech expertise needed to support next generation genetic opportunities," stated Arizona Governor Doug Ducey. "Our success in being able to encourage Tesis Labs to anchor its largest facility in Arizona is a confirmation of the positive business environment in our state.

"Genetics and hereditary markers are playing an increasing role in preventive medicine. With earlier identification of disease markers, physicians, patients and families can make more informed prevention and treatment decisions," said Ron King, Tesis Labs Chief Executive Officer. "Expansion to Arizona affords Tesis Labs and its team of experts the capacity to accommodate our substantial growth from our assertive collaboration efforts with healthcare partners from across the U.S."

The lab is planned to open in early November. According to King, the Scottsdale lab will be the company's largest in terms of testing capacity and will involve an investment of tens of millions of dollars into the facility and local support operations.

"We are excited to offer our specialized services to Arizona and the western U.S.," added King. "Tesis' goal is to offer patients and clinicians the science and experts to identify and support clinical diagnosis and care, as easily and conveniently as possible."

Tesis uses a genetically integrated medical platform for targeted genetic sequencing and comprehensive genetic data collection to fuel chronic disease management breakthroughs. The company's existing labs are in Denver, Lafayette, Colo. and Houston.

About Tesis Labs

Tesis Labs' genetically integrated medical platform has revolutionized targeted genetic sequencing. Our mission is to change medicine by providing physicians, hospitals, and researchers with the tools to help patients treat and overcome major chronic conditions such as heart disease, lung disease, cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer's through advanced genetic testing. Tesis offers healthcare providers and physicians access to our unique genetic testing and precision medicine, enabling them to create personalized care plans for treating chronic diseases  individually and across generations. We also enable medical device companies and pharmaceuticals to bring new products to market and create a robust repository of genetic data and research. Visit www.tesislabs.com to learn more.

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(ANSA) - ROME, APR 6 - Demonstrators calling for an end to COVID-19 lockdowns and the reopening of shops and restaurants clashed with police outside the Lower House of parliament in Rome on Tuesday.

Among the protesters were members of Italexit, a movement started by former 5-Star Movement (M5S) Senator and journalist Gianluigi Paragone, who has been among the most vocal proponents of reopening Italy.

Another protester was dressed like the Q-Anon member who was among Trump supporters who raised Congress on January 6. (ANSA).


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Jim Acostas mother recently sent him a text about his first stint as a weekend anchor for CNN. She loved his expression, perhaps with good reason. I think my mother hasnt seen my smile on TV in four years, he says.

Wearing a grim visage might have come naturally. Acosta spent the past few years as CNNs chief White House correspondent. The job is already a tough one that typically demands round-the-clock focus. In addition to covering the previous administration, however, Acosta frequently clashed with President Donald Trump on camera, and generated more than a few headlines about the network and himself in the process.

But Trump didnt win a new term in office. And Acosta did.

The CNN veteran this past weekend was set loose on new terrain. As part of an overhaul of some parts of CNNs daytime schedule, the network gave Acosta five weekend hours across Saturday and Sunday that he hopes to turn into a place for deeper dives into important stories and longform newsmaker interviews The move gives more weekend hours to two news veterans, Acosta and Pamela Brown. Its his first crack at being a full-time anchor.

Im trying to move the ball forward on the weekends, which is sometimes tough, Acosta says during an interview earlier this week. Some people saw him as confrontational in the past, he acknowledges, but he sees himself as a a hard news guy. I like to see things covered that way. I was aggressive covering the White House, and I will be aggressive in trying to anchor the news on the weekends.

Acosta is the latest in a parade of news personnel who get tied very closely to a particular set of headlines, and then must work to move on to new frontiers. He stood at the center of a historic clash between the White House and one of the biggest outlets that cover it. President Trump derided CNN on camera many times after Acosta asked him questions, and the White House tried to take away the correspondents press pass, setting in motion a landmark court case in which the WarnerMedia-backed news outlet took the Trump administration to court  and prevailed.

We didnt have a choice but to stand up for ourselves, says Acosta of the White House press corps during Trumps time in office, adding: I do think that we were thrust into a position we didnt want to be in, but I think it was the right decision.

Being at the center of such an intense news cycle brings new exposure for on-air journalists, and sometimes, new opportunities. A young MSNBC correspondent named Ashleigh Banfield became strongly associated with coverage of New York City in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and soon began traveling the globe on behalf of the network. Arthur Kents coverage of the war in the Persian Gulf for NBC News won him the colorful sobriquet Scud Stud. Wolf Blitzer won renown for his time spent chronicling the Gulf War in Kuwait for CNN, which helped build a durable career at the network.

Yet the news cycle never stays fixed on a single moment. Eventually, a journalist must move on to other stories.

It was a surreal experience, says Acosta of the job he just left. Your family worries about you. Your friends worry about you. I worry about my colleagues who are all going through it. But Im ready to turn the page, and I think there is something to be said about being stronger in the broken places.

He plans to use his recent past to augment his present. I was telling one of our executives that my best stories are still to come, says Acosta.  I dont think of the Trump presidency as the defining story of my career.

His first weekend on air was spent giving viewers the latest details on coronavirus vaccinations and the Derek Chauvin trial. He also ceded time to correspondent Gary Tuchman, who delivered an in-depth look at young children who had volunteered to get vaccinated as part of a broader test. I want to make sure the show is a place to showcase some of the great pieces our correspondents are doing during the week, Acosta says. I also relish the opportunity to have extra time to tell a story. I think the show is going to be an outlet for that.

His theory is that weekend viewers are willing to give a little more of their time to watch, and will be interested in a 20-minute interview with a person in the headlines. Acosta also intends to tackle some of the bigger issues of the day, including how disinformation is passed along; the nations need for new infrastructure; healthcare; and immigration. He intends to work his source list from time spent covering Obama, Trump and Biden and book some guests himself when warranted. He also wants to examine some of the after-effects of Trumps time in office. The more sunlight we put on these crazy conspiracy theories and bad-faith efforts to spread disinformation, the better off the public is going to be, he says.

His time on CNN wont be relegated to Saturday and Sundays. Acosta has also been named CNNs chief domestic correspondent and, as time passes, is likely to travel around the nation during the week.

On his first weekend, he signed off each evening by telling the audience he was reporting from Washington. He hopes viewers will still see him as a journalist who likes to wear out shoe leather. I want to make sure that its still part of my DNA.

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New Delhi, April 7 : The Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to entertain a plea filed by BJP leader Okram Henry Singh seeking direction to the Election Commission to hold the pending bypoll for Manipur's Wangkhei Assembly constituency.

A bench headed by Chief Justice S.A. Bobde and comprising Justices A.S. Bopanna and V. Ramasubramanian said: "We are not a one stop solution for every problem in the country." The bench told senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, representing Singh, to move the High Court in the matter. Rohatgi submitted that more than six months have elapsed since his client had resigned as an MLA from the constituency, yet the Election Commission has not conducted the bypoll. However, as the bench insisted the petitioner should the move the High Court. After a brief hearing in the matter, Rohatgi agreed to withdraw the plea.

The top court, in its order, said: "Mukul Rohtagi, learned Senior Counsel appearing for the petitioner, prays for withdrawal of this petition with liberty to approach the High Court. Prayer is allowed. Accordingly, the writ petition is dismissed as withdrawn with the liberty aforesaid." Singh had contended that he was elected as a Member of Legislative Assembly from Wangkhei constituency in March 2017 on a Congress ticket. But he resigned and joined another political party in August 2020, due to ideological differences and sought that elections should be conducted in accordance with the provisions of Section 151 A of the Representation of the People Act. According to Singh's plea, his resignation was accepted on August 11 last year.

Singh said he was appointed as a Cabinet minister on September 24, 2020, therefore he cannot continue as a minister beyond 6 months from this date, since he is not a member of the Assembly. He had also sought a relaxation of the 6-month condition mentioned in Article 164 (4) from continuing as a minister, against the backdrop of the situation arising out of Covid-19 pandemic.
There was an impromptu chat that took place in the aftermath of Real Madrid's Champions League quarter-final first-leg tie against Liverpool on Tuesday night, with Florentino Perez and Vinicius Junior catching up with Fabinho in the tunnel.

Florentino had come down to see the Real Madrid players after the 3-1 victory, while Vinicius had just finished his TV commitments after being named man of the match. Upon seeing Fabinho, the Real Madrid president discussed the Brazilian's days playing for Castilla in the 2012/13 campaign.

"With us you played as a right-back," Florentino recalled to Fabinho.

"Yes, but to play right-back now... What a player you have in Vinicius," the Liverpool player responded.

Vinicius scored two goals in the victory and his impressive performance was recognised by Fabinho.
Authorities are offering a $2,500 reward for information leading to the arrest of a man sought in a Bridgeton killing.

Tyzir Hall, 21, of Clementon, is charged in a Feb. 8 shooting that claimed the life of Shaheed Little, 31, of Sicklerville, and wounded two others, according to the Cumberland County Prosecutors Office.

Officials said Hall should be considered armed and dangerous.

Bridgeton police responded to a home on the 400 block of South Avenue around 3:45 p.m. for a report of shots fired and found Little, who was pronounced dead at the scene. A man and woman suffered gunshot wounds and were taken to Cooper University Hospital in Camden, authorities said.

Prosecutors announced charges against Hall in March, including first-degree murder, two counts of attempted murder, aggravated assault and weapons offenses, and asked for the publics help in locating him.

The U.S. Marshals Service is now offering the reward.

Anyone with information should contact U.S. Marshals Detective Gregory Austin at 609-477-8888 or the U.S. Marshals Service at 1-800-336-0102. Information may also be shared anonymously on the prosecutors office website by visiting CCPO.TIPS.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com.
Unusually heavy traffic was seen at several places in the national capital post 8.30 pm on Tuesday as people scrambled to get home before the night curfew began at 10 pm.

Many who were caught off guard by the government's night curfew announcement and tried to get e-passes complained that websites of both the government and police were choked due to heavy traffic.

"I tried for several hours to get an e-pass but the sites had crashed. I started early to get home in time for the curfew but the traffic was unusually heavy today," a commuter said.

Stuck in traffic, some commuters took to Twitter to share their ordeal.

"There is massive traffic congestion at the Delhi-Meerut Expressway near Ghazipur," a commuter tweeted.

Another said there was heavy traffic at the Delhi-Ghaziabad elevated highway.

Sachin Singh, who works with a Noida-based private organisation, said, "There was heavy traffic near Ghazipur on Tuesday evening when I was returning home from office. I managed to reach my place by taking a shortcut."



In view of rising COVID-19 cases in Delhi, the Arvind Kejriwal government on Tuesday imposed a seven-hour night curfew, from 10 pm to 5 am, with immediate effect. The curfew will continue till April 30.

Those exempted from the curfew include pregnant women; patients; those travelling to and from airports, railway stations, state bus terminus on showing tickets; officials related to the functioning of offices of diplomats; and those holding any constitutional post on the production of valid identity card.

Central and government officials involved in emergency services such as health and family welfare and all related medical establishments, police, prisons, home guards, civil defence, fire and emergency services are also exempted.

Officials of district administration, pay and accounts office, electricity, water and sanitation, public transport, disaster management and related services, NIC, NCC and municipal services, and all other essential services will also be exempted from the night curfew on the production of a valid identity card.

People travelling during curfew hours for COVID-19 vaccination will require a soft or hard copy of an e-pass which can be obtained from the website www. gov.in.

(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.)
Chinas ambassador to Australia has told Canberra to stop criticising the country over human rights abuses in Xinjiang, saying nations should know Beijing will respond to any provocative actions that meddle in its internal affairs.

Cheng Jingye said he hoped relations between the two countries could be put back on track, but warned if we are provoked, we will respond in kind.

Journalists watching a video during a press conference with Chinese ambassador to Australia Cheng Jingye. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Mr Cheng made the comments during a two-hour press conference at his Canberra residence where senior Chinese officials and Uighurs were beamed in from Xinjiang to argue the rising criticism of Chinas re-education camps were based on Western lies, fabrications and anti-China forces.

The charm offensive on the Australian media came after months of growing international condemnation over the treatment of Uighurs in the far-western province, with a BBC report earlier this year airing first-hand accounts of systematic rape, sexual abuse and torture in the detention camps.
Iranian and Western officials commenced talks on Tuesday on reviving the embattled nuclear accord in 2015. This is amid the challenge of conflicting associations between Washington and Tehran. This punished United States sanctions on the Islamic Republic and Iran's actions to speed up its nuclear activity.

US, Iran on Nuclear Deal Revival

The 2015 nuclear agreement's parties, which placed restrictions on Iran's nuclear activity in exchange for lifting international sanctions on the nation, had stated on Friday, they would convene in Vienna for talks. Former President, Donald Trump's administration withdrew from the negotiation and imposed sanctions on Iran.

A broad roadmap designated to rescue the Iran nuclear deal undermined by the former president has been agreed upon in talks in Vienna. The initiative was to bring the US and Iran back into compliance in as short as two months.

Two working groups have been established to evaluate Iran's economic sanctions that the United States will need to lift to return to compliance with United Nations security council resolutions. The steps Iran will need to take to set forth nuclear program in line with the terms set out in the 2015 nuclear deal, reported The Guardian.

The dispute has been ongoing for months regarding who should take the first step towards resuscitating the 2015 deal. The US and Iran are currently engaged in indirect talks in Vienna, Austria. Representatives from six other nations involved in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) -- China, Russia, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the European Union -- are currently engaging in meetings, reported Aljareeza.

Iranian Daughter Executes Mother Under Law That Enables Children to Revenge on Their Parents

The United States and Iran are slated to start indirect talks on Tuesday in Vienna. The initiative is to recuperate the 2015 agreement that limited Iran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. The five other global powers are looking to bring the United States back into the 2015 deal and return Iran to its full adherence.

According to President Joe Biden, he would like to return to the landmark settlement. However, six remaining state parties need to think of a way for him to lift the sanctions established by the previous president and Iran to return to the agreed restrictions on its nuclear program, reported VOA.

Iran has stated it will not meet the United States in person until that transpires. Officials from France, the United Kingdom, and Germany are acting as mediators, alternating between two Austrian capital hotels.

Biden's administration participates in high-stakes many-sided deals this week that could ascertain the fate of the Iran nuclear negotiation. Although Iran and the US will not hold direct talks, both nations sent diplomats to Vienna for deals commenced on Tuesday and could be prolonged through the week.

The EU will host the meetings. It will work toward two independent agreements on how the United States and Iran could return to adherence with the negotiation's terms. Biden's predecessor withdrew from the settlement in 2018

Iran Denies Israel Agents Killed Al-Qaeda's No. 2 Leader in August in Tehran

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EDWARDSVILLE  An East Alton man has been charged with battering a disabled person at the Olin Building Apartments.

David J. Jackson, 45, of East Alton, was charged April 6 with aggravated battery, a Class 3 felony, and criminal damage to government supported property, a Class 4 felony.

The case was presented by the East Alton Police Department.

According to court documents, on April 1, Jackson  a resident of the Olin Building Apartments  allegedly pushed another man who was physically disabled. Jackson also damaged the drywall inside the lobby area of the building, which is operated by the Madison County Housing Authority. Bail was set at $30,000.

Other felony cases filed April 6 by the Madison County States Attorneys Office include:

 Jeffrey A. Hollenback, 36, Bethalto, was charged with two counts of aggravated battery, both Class 2 felonies. The case was presented by the Alton Police Department. On March 22 Hollenback allegedly pushed and struck two Alton Memorial Hospital security officers. Bail was set at $50,000.

 Benjamin R. Beckham, 19, of Edwardsville, was charged with aggravated battery, a Class 2 felony. The case was presented by the Glen Carbon Police Department. On March 5 Beckham allegedly punched a Glen Carbon police officer in the stomach. Bail was set at $50,000.

 Lonisha L. Moore, 25, and Joan M. Williams, 46, both of Sorento, Illinois, were charged with aggravated identity theft, both Class 2 felonies. The cases were presented by the Alton Police Department. Between Sept. 5, 2018 and Feb. 19, 2019 the two allegedly used the Social Security number of another person with a disability to fraudulently obtain services through Ameren Illinois in excess of $300. Bail was set at $40,000 each.

 Elijah J. Ruffin, 20, of Granite City, was charged with unlawful failure to register as a sex offender. The case was presented by the Granite City Police Department. OLn Feb. 14 Ruffin allegedly failed to register with the Granite City Police Department within three days after moving into his address. Bail was set at $25,000.

 Dylan G. Anthony, 18, of Chesterfield, Illinois, was charged with two counts of aggravated fleeing or attempting to elude a police officer, both Class 4 felonies. The case was presented by the Wood River Police Department. On April 5 Anthony allegedly was driving a BMW 335I when a Wood River police officer attempted to stop him. Anthony fled, reaching speeds above 21 miles per hour over the posted speed limit, and disobeying several traffic control devices. Bail was set at $30,000.

 Dorian C. Andrews, 33, of East St. Louis, was charged with domestic battery (second subsequent offense), a Class 4 felony. The case was presented by the Wood River Police Department. On April. 5 Andrews allegedly ripped the purse out of the hands of a family or household member, causing lacerations; pulled her hair; and hit her on the back of the head. It was noted he had a prior conviction for domestic battery out of St. Clair County in 2019. Bail was set at $15,000.
SEOUL  The couple saw brushes and paint cans in front of a paint-splattered canvas at a gallery in a Seoul shopping mall. So they added a few brush strokes, assuming it was a participatory mural.

Not quite: The painting was a finished work by an American artist whose abstract aesthetic riffs on street art. The piece is worth more than $400,000, according to the organizers of the exhibition that featured the painting.

Now its hard to tell where the artists work ends and the vandalism begins. Graffitied graffiti, a local newspaper headline said last week.

Either way, the piece, Untitled, by John Andrew Perello, the graffiti artist known as JonOne, is now a magnet for selfies. And on social media, South Koreans are debating what the vandalism illustrates about art, authorship and authenticity.
A consultant radiologist who secretly recorded strangers, work colleagues and even family friends using the toilet for sexual thrills was struck off with immediate effect today.

The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service began hearing evidence last week and reconvened this morning to announce the sanction to be imposed on 52-year-old consultant radiologist Mark McClure.

The tribunal has determined that the sanction that should be imposed is one of erasure, announced the chairperson.

She later declared the erasure will take effect immediately and will also cover the 28 days in which McClure can appeal the panels decision.

McClure has only recently been freed from prison having served four and a half months behind bars, including over Christmas, after he admitted 11 counts of voyeurism.

The MPTS hears cases against doctors where serious concerns have been raised and as a result, their fitness to practise has been called into question by the General Medical Council.

In McClures case, according to a statement on the MPTS website the tribunal will look into his two sets of offences, one dealt with in February 2017 where he was handed a probation order and again last December where McClure was handed a nine month jail sentence at Craigavon Crown Court.

Jailing McClure in December, Judge Patrick Lynch QC told the 52-year-old that as a highly respected and highly regarded senior consultant, he had abused that respect and trust to carry out his seedy offences in the toilets at Craigavon Area Hospital.

Perhaps even more repellent is that he carried out the same activity at his own home, recording and retaining material for his own sexual gratification, said the judge who expressed surprise that the maximum sentence for voyeurism was a two year jail term.

In addition to the jail sentence, McClure was ordered to sign the police sex offenders register for the next ten years and Judge Lynch said while some victims were fortunate to not even know they had been recorded, he had two victim impact statements which manifested the psychological distress McClures behaviour had caused.

Last November McClure, with an address on the Grange Road in Bangor, entered guilty pleas to 11 counts of voyeurism committed on various dates between 9 July 2014 and 23 December 2014.

Its the second time that McClure has been dealt with for voyeurism as four years ago in February 2017, he was handed a nine month probation order for trying to record ladies using the toilets in Hillsbrough Private Clinic.

Read More

It was that investigation which led to McClures second court appearance which related to three specific places where McClure recorded women using the toilet - a bathroom in his marital home, a disabled toilet at the medical education centre at Craigavon Area Hospital and a toilet in the radiography department of CAH.

In the offences he committed in February 2015, McClure secreted his iPhone in the air vent of the unisex toilet at Hillsborough Private Clinic and after his offences were uncovered by suspicious staff, police seized his phone, a computer and a memory stick.

When those pieces of hardware were eventually examined more than two years after they were first seized, cops uncovered covertly recorded video clips

Taking each location in turn, prosecuting QC Neil Connor described how two family friends were recorded using the toilet in McClures home which at that time, was a sprawling five bedroom house with grounds and stables on the Edentrillick Road in Hillsborough.

The position of the phone was such that both victims private parts were clearly visible on the recordings, said the barrister adding that the ladies had identified themselves from stills extracted from the footage.

Moving to the offences at the hospital which had been McClures primary employment as a consultant radiologist and a place where he had worked for 15 years, Mr Connor explained how McClure secreted his phone in the disabled toilet of the medical education centre and recorded a number of females using the facilities.

Three unidentified women were recorded, one of them twice, with that lady appearing to be a staff member as she had a lanyard around her neck, said the lawyer adding that in these clips, the private parts of two women were clearly visible while with the third the viewer could see her bare bottom.

As regards the footage taken at the radiography department, that footage differed slightly in that rather than hiding the phone and hoping it wasnt found, McClure took a real risk of being caught by holding his phone against what appears to be a gap in the door.

In this part of the offending pattern, the court heard that McClure recorded three women, two of whom remain unknown and one who has been identified as a former colleague.

Mr Connor said that akin to the offences at the private clinic, there were a number of clips which recorded McClure secreting his phone and positioning the camera in the toilet.

Arrested and interviewed about the charges, father-of-three McClure claimed he couldnt really remember if there was footage in the computer and memory stick as he he had been suffering from psychological and financial stress, even though he was in receipt of a not insubstantial income, said prosecuting counsel.

In his sentencing remarks, Judge Lynch revealed the monthly household income when he was married was around 15,000 but labelled McClures lack of memory claims as obvious lies.

He further revealed that according to reports from probation and a psychologist who has been treating McClure, his attitude to the offences was less than frank and forthcoming as he tried to minimise his involvement, denied an interest in voyeuristic behaviours and engaged in obfuscation when pressed about his behaviour.

He told McClure the fact that he recorded his victims was an aggravating feature, leaving them fearful of who all had seen it and whether it had been disseminated or uploaded to the internet.

Certainly theres no suggestion that they have been shared or uploaded but....that has causes a great degree of concern to the victims, said the judge.

The victims, Judge Lynch quoted from their statements, felt violated and deeply distressed at such an invasion of privacy with one having to undergo therapy and another finding herself habitually checking for hidden cameras in work.

He said while there were mitigating factors such as the delay in bringing the case to court and McClures guilty pleas, that must be put in the context of his offences and the aggravating features.

As well as the jail sentence, the judge also imposed a seven year Sexual Offences Prevention Order which compels McClure to register any mobile phone with police and to allow officers in to his home to check that he is complying.
Vermont's Governor Phil Scott, an "enlightened" RINO, previously condemned all Vermonters as backwoods racists and all Trump-supporters as white supremacists, joined those who label all Vermont police as racists based on manipulated statistics, and also exempted Black Lives Matter protesters from COVID restrictions while shutting down conservative political rallies. Now he is calling Vermonters racists yet again:

Vermont Gov. Phil Scott has condemned the "racist response" to his administration's decision to make Black, indigenous, and people of color of any age eligible for a coronavirus vaccine before residents of other races.

As Thomas Sowell explains in Discrimination and Disparities (p. 23), age is a better determinant of wealth than race. In Vermont, this is evident in numbers that show that BIPOC residents have lower home ownership and incomes than older whites  age explains those differences better than race (though another factor is that significant numbers of BIPOC have relocated to Vermont, including from foreign lands as impoverished immigrants, and this has greatly skewed Vermont's statistics  but that is another story). But in Vermont, this clear factual evidence is swept under the ideological carpet in favor of narratives that paint whitey as ubiquitous oppressor.

Scott perceives he is "rescuing" BIPOC people when in fact he is killing old white Vermonters using a warped ideology that also distorts scientific evidence. Old white Vermonters are more at risk of mortality than young blacks, and Vermont's demographics show that blacks are younger than whites (again, those new arrivals). Providing COVID vaccinations to the old in priority over the young is consistent with sound medical science; providing it to young BIPOC in preference to old whites is the opposite, and bases medical decisions on a racist ideology that is increasingly revealed to cause more new inequities than it eliminates (see Thomas Sowell, The Quest for Cosmic Justice).

Says Scott:

Unfortunately, the legacy of racism in America, and in Vermont, still drives a lot of anger and fear. Recently, my office, the Health department and those hardworking individuals getting us vaccinated, have been subjected to vitriolic and inappropriate comments in social media and other forums regarding this decision. This too is unacceptable. And it is evidence that many Americans, and many Vermonters, still have a lot to learn about the impacts of racism in our country and how it has influenced public policy over the years.

Notice how facts  why white old people should medically stand in line behind 16-year-old blacks  and the law  Bakke and other decisions  are both avoided: complaining is "not acceptable." This is evidence that Vermont's governor does not comprehend the science or the law, or why calling everybody a racist and playing the victim is growing tiresome.

Incorporating the obligatory George Floyd invocation, the governor carried the social justice game one more step:

And to my fellow Vermonters who find themselves the target of these comments and actions of prejudice, please know that we stand with you. Do not be intimidated by the hate speech. Do not allow these comments of racism to keep you from getting vaccinated or from anything you deserve as members of the Vermont community.

When white Vermonters sue the state because of dead loved ones killed by Governor Scott's unconstitutional race-based decision, and invoke Bakke and other existing legal precedents, will Governor Scott malign them as racists?

It is not racist hate speech to challenge Governor Scott's patently racist, medically spurious, unilaterally declared edicts, which threaten elderly Vermonters with a miserable death. More and more Vermonters are standing up bravely to ask these logical (and legal) questions  refusal to answer them will no longer be tolerated.

Calling Vermonters and their history "racist" is not an effective evasion of accountability to science and the Constitution.

Image: U.S. Air National Guard photo by Master Sgt. Sarah Mattison.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
TORONTO, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - NEW WAVE HOLDINGS CORP. (the "Company" or "New Wave") (CSE: SPOR) (FWB: 0XM2) (OTCPK: TRMNF) an investment issuer that provides capital and support services, announced that it will set forth its plans to aggressively increase its brand presence on Walmart.com.

Way of Will, a growing health and wellness company known for its natural, aromatherapy-based products, will be putting its plans into motion to grow the brand's presence on Walmart.com. The goal is to leverage online sales through the retail giant's prominence as the second-largest e-commerce business in the U.S. by optimizing rich media content and partnering with a third-party logistics company to allow for two-day shipping via Walmart.com. Successful implementation of this strategic approach is expected to yield a 350% growth in online sales for Way of Will.

In order to ensure successful scalability on Walmart's e-commerce platform, the natural wellness brand will be:

Partnering with leading RMC marketing agency, Seller Interactive, to produce rich media content for Walmart.com

Entering into an agreement with 3PL provider, Deliverr, to fulfill orders

Obtain Walmart's Pro Seller Badge and make two-day delivery available for customers

"Based on our success the past year on Walmart.com, we're looking forward to expanding our brand presence there, along with our product selection," said Willie Tsang, founder and CEO of Way of Will. "Working with Deliverr will help us maximize efficiency and ensure that we keep up with the anticipated exponential sales growth on Walmart. We're confident that, with the current growth strategy in place, we will be able to scale seamlessly and continue to see sales growth month over month."

ABOUT NEW WAVE HOLDINGS CORP.

New Wave Holdings Corp. (CSE: SPOR, FWB: 0XM2, OTCPK: TRMNF) is an investment issuer focused on the burgeoning nutraceutical and psychedelic sector and support for adaptive and progressive health and wellness products and therapies. New Wave subsidiaries contain various health and beauty products within its portfolio of non-psychoactive plants and fungi as it continues to expand its product distribution through vertical integration to provide end to end solutions while capturing a high margin business model.

Investors interested in connecting with New Wave Holdings can learn more about the company and contact the team at http://newwavecorp.com.

Information relating to WAY OF WILL INC., contained in this news release was provided by WAY OF WILL INC. and/or its agent and has not been independently verified by the Company. The Company does not take responsibility for the accuracy of such information.

The CSE has not in any way passed on the merits of the Acquisition, and neither has approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release. Neither the CSE nor its Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION DISCLAIMER

Certain statements contained in this news release may constitute forwardlooking information, including but not limited to, applicable regulatory approval in connection with the Acquisition, the closing of the Acquisition, expansion of operations, size and quality of future tournaments and projections regarding attendance at future events. Forwardlooking information is often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "anticipate", "plan", "estimate", "expect", "may", "will", "intend", "should", and similar expressions. Forwardlooking information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated in such forwardlooking information. The Company's actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in this forwardlooking information as a result of competitive factors and competition for investment opportunities, challenges relating to operations in international markets, transaction execution risk, changes to the Company's strategic growth plans, and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the Company. The Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forwardlooking information are reasonable based on current expectations and potential investment pipeline, but no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct and such forwardlooking information should not be unduly relied upon. Any forwardlooking information contained in this news release represents the Company's expectations as of the date hereof and is subject to change after such date. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forwardlooking information whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities legislation.

SOURCE New Wave Holdings Corp.

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Paleontologists have discovered two new species of mammal-like, burrowing animals that lived about 120 million years ago in what is now northeastern China. The new species, described today in the journal Nature, are distantly related but independently evolved traits to support their digging lifestyle. They represent the first "scratch-diggers" discovered in this ecosystem.

"There are many hypotheses about why animals dig into the soil and live underground," said lead author Jin Meng, a curator in the American Museum of Natural History's Division of Paleontology. "For protection against predators, to maintain a temperature that's relatively constant--not too hot in the summer and not too cold in the winter--or to find food sources like insects and plant roots. These two fossils are a very unusual, deep-time example of animals that are not closely related and yet both evolved the highly specialized characteristics of a digger."

The fossil mammaliamorph species--predecessors to mammals--were discovered in the Jehol Biota, which represents the Early Cretaceous epoch, about 145 to 100 million years ago. One is a mammal-like reptile called a tritylodontid and is the first of its kind to be identified in this biota. About a foot in length, it was given the name Fossiomanus sinensis (Fossio, "digging" and manus "hand;" sinensis, "from China"). The other is named Jueconodon cheni (Jue, "digging"--Chinese pinyin--and conodon "cuspate tooth"; cheni for Y. Chen, who collected the fossil). It is a eutriconodontan, a distant cousin of modern placental mammals and marsupials, which were common in the habitat. It is about 7 inches long.

Mammals that are adapted to burrowing have specialized traits for digging. The researchers found some of these hallmark features--including shorter limbs, strong forelimbs with robust hands, and a short tail--in both Fossiomanus and Jueconodon. In particular, these characteristics point to a type of digging behavior known as "scratch digging," accomplished mainly by the claws of the forelimbs.

"This is the first convincing evidence for fossorial life in those two groups," Meng said. "It also is the first case of scratch diggers we know about in the Jehol Biota, which was home to a great diversity of life, from dinosaurs to insects to plants."

The animals also share another unusual feature: an elongated vertebral column. Typically, mammals have 26 vertebrae from the neck to the hip. However, Fossiomanus had 38 vertebrae--a staggering 12 more than the common state--while Jueconodon had 28. To try to determine how these animals got their elongated trunks, the paleontologists turned to recent studies in developmental biology, finding that the variation could be attributed to gene mutations that determine the number and shape of the vertebrae in the beginning of the animals' embryotic development. Variation in vertebrae number can be found in modern mammals as well, including in elephants, manatees, and hyraxes.

###

Other authors on the study include Fangyuan Mao from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the American Museum of Natural History, Chi Zhang from the Chinese Academy of Sceinces, and Cunyu Liu from the Beipiao Pterosaur Museum of China.

This study was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, grant no.s 41688103 and 42072002; the Chinese Academy of Sciences Strategic Priority Research Program, Youth Innovation Promotion Association, and 100 Young Talents Program; and the Kalbfleisch Fellowship of the American Museum of Natural History's Richard Gilder Graduate School.

Study DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03433-2

ABOUT THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY (AMNH)

The American Museum of Natural History, founded in 1869 and currently celebrating its 150th anniversary, is one of the world's preeminent scientific, educational, and cultural institutions. The Museum encompasses more than 40 permanent exhibition halls, including those in the Rose Center for Earth and Space, as well as galleries for temporary exhibitions. The Museum's approximately 200 scientists draw on a world-class research collection of more than 34 million artifacts and specimens, some of which are billions of years old, and on one of the largest natural history libraries in the world. Through its Richard Gilder Graduate School, the Museum grants the Ph.D. degree in Comparative Biology and the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) degree, the only such free-standing, degree-granting programs at any museum in the United States. The Museum's website, digital videos, and apps for mobile devices bring its collections, exhibitions, and educational programs to millions around the world. Visit amnh.org for more information.
Russian President, Vladimir Putin has signed legislation formally granting him the right to stay in power until 2036. Putins second consecutive and fourth overall presidential term ends in 2024, the year when Russias previous Constitution would have required him to step down.



But an overhauled Constitution that Russians approved in a nationwide vote last year allows Putin to run for two more six-year presidential terms.



If elected both times, he would remain president until 2036, surpassing Josef Stalin as the longest-serving leader of Russia since Peter the Great.





The law which was signed on Monday April 5 by the 68-year-old leader, resets his number of terms served, allowing him to extend his 20-year rule until he turns 83.





Former President Dmitry Medvedev, who served in 2008-2012 when Putin was constitutionally mandated to step down after his first two consecutive terms, is also granted the right to run two more times.



Putin has previously said he hasnt yet decided whether to run for president again, saying 2024 is still far off.













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A former Fort Bragg soldier was sentenced to more than 12 years in federal prison on Tuesday for staging the kidnapping of a 12-year-old girl and leaving behind a ransom note to throw off authorities.

James Murdock Fletcher Peele, 21, pleaded guilty June 26, 2020, to transportation of a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, court records show. In exchange for the plea, a count of sexual abuse of a minor was dismissed. U.S. District Court Judge Louise Wood Flanagan sentenced to 151 months, or 12.5 years in prison. He will receive credit for the time he's served since his arrest.

The case began the morning of Oct. 21, 2018, when a New Bern grandmother found a ransom note demanding $20,000 in her 12-year-old granddaughter's empty bedroom, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina.

Investigators found mulch from the yard on the child's bed and smudges on the window but no sign of forced entry. While reviewing the granddaughter's Facebook page, they noted that Peele was listed as her boyfriend.

That same day, agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation found Peele and the girl in his barracks room on Fort Bragg. A forensic examination confirmed that Peele had recently had sexual intercourse with the girl, the release said.

During the investigation, law enforcement interviewed a friend of Peele's, also a soldier stationed at Fort Bragg, who described how a week before the staged kidnapping, Peele had asked for a ride to his "girlfriend's" house in New Bern. Peele had claimed the girl was 18 years old, the friend said.

When they arrived, however, Peele instructed the friend to park at a vacant house nearby, and Peele entered the home through a window. The friend said he also entered the room and became concerned about the girl's age after noticing childlike decor, including middle school photographs and a hamster. The friend explained to investigators that he had become disgusted and left the room when Peele and the minor began kissing.

Investigators determined that after staging the kidnapping, Peele drove the minor victim to his parents' home in South Carolina where he introduced her as his girlfriend and claimed that she worked in a sewing shop, the release said. The two stayed for less than 30 minutes before Peele's sergeant called him back to Fort Bragg.

Upon his return to North Carolina, the girl waited in his barracks room while he met with his sergeant, Peele's roommate told investigators.

The victim, who told investigators that she and Peele had been involved in a sexual relationship, said that when she told him her true age, he responded that age is just a number. She admitted that she had not been kidnapped but denied coming up with the idea to stage a kidnapping, the release said.

Peele made a videotaped confession during which he admitted to having sex with the minor victim and to writing the ransom note, the release said.

He claimed the victim had asked to leave with him and had come up with the idea of staging a kidnapping. Peele also claimed that he believed the victim was 18 years old, but he admitted that he saw her at a sleepover with friends who looked very young, including one girl whose age he had seen to be 12 years old, according to the release.

At the time of his arrest, Peele, originally from Chesterfield, South Carolina, was a private second class stationed with the 82nd Airborne Division.

Upon completion of his active prison term, he must serve 10 years on supervised release, court records show.

This article is written by F.T. Norton from The Fayetteville Observer, N.C. and was legally licensed via the Tribune Content Agency through the Industry Dive publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@industrydive.com.
[April 07, 2021] B3 Insight Welcomes Respected Industry Veteran David Hicks to the Team

DENVER, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- B3 Insight is proud to welcome David Hicks as its new Executive Vice President of Business Development. CEO and co-founder Kelly Bennett is enthusiastic about Hicks joining B3 and his impact on the company. "We have built an incredible depth of expertise and strong customer relationships. I'm excited to add David's?extensive industry and corporate development experience as we look toward the next phase of growth at B3". David Hicks' rich career in energy spans operations and business, data, and technology development with specific experience within upstream exploration - most recently as Senior Vice President and Partner at IHS Markit Ltd., leading the Global Upstream Energy sector. His experience in accelerating growth strategies, business development, strategic alliance management, and pioneering complex technical design development will be a great benefit to B3 Insight. Hicks began his career as an exploratin geologist with ExxonMobil, becoming an accomplished leader with over 25 years of progressive global experience. He has been?intensely involved in the energy transition field and understands first-hand the critical role water plays in business viability. "Water management has been overlooked in some respects but is very much a key component for successful companies." Hicks notes. "B3 helps companies across the energy market understand the full ecosystem of water, improve operational efficiencies , and get a better handle on ESG initiatives, among other things. With growing urgency around all things water, B3 is poised to make a great impact on the industry, and I look forward to being part of it."



Hicks is a member of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists and American Association of Petroleum Geologists and splits his time between Texas and Colorado. About B3 Insight:

B3 Insight is building the definitive source for water data. We empower smart water management with data-driven intelligence for responsible and profitable decisions about water resources. Customers evaluate assets, enhance operational efficiencies, mitigate risk, allocate capital, and benchmark performance while saving significant time, investment, and resources  all with one intuitive platform. Our proprietary data process enables us to gather, clean, and relate millions of natural resource data points, turning disparate information into the most widely used and trusted water data insights. In today's ever-changing, data-driven business our commitment to information quality remains the principal focus creating the utmost confidence in your data. For more information, please visit www.B3insight.com.

Contact: Sarah Willard | 303.309.4078 | swillard@b3insight.com View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/b3-insight-welcomes-respected-industry-veteran-david-hicks-to-the-team-301264056.html SOURCE B3

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(Newser)  A family returning to New Jersey after celebrating Passover in Florida was briefly kicked off a Spirit Airlines flight Monday after a mask incident. In a confrontation caught on video by another passenger, a flight attendant can be seen telling Ari and Avital Eisenberg they need to deplane due to "non-compliance." The couple is wearing masks in the video other than moments where Ari Eisenberg briefly pulls his down to talk, and fellow passengers speak up to support them. But their newly 2-year-old daughter, sitting on a pregnant Avital Eisenberg's lap eating yogurt, is not wearing a face covering. Their 7-year-old son, who has special needs, cannot be seen in the video; the couple tells Fox News they promised to do their best to keep his face covering on, but that he has seizures that can be brought on by his mouth being covered.

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The family was eventually allowed back on the flight. (There are some reports that all passengers were made to deplane, as well as some reports that the flight attendant involved did not get back on the plane.) In an initial statement after the incident, Spirit Airlines said the adults had not complied with mask requirements, but later changed the wording to say there had been "compliance issues with the federal mask requirement." The airline has also said the adults were out of compliance prior to videos being filmed. Only children under the age of 2 are exempt from the airline's mask policy, but masks are allowed to be removed while eating or drinking, and some exceptions can be made for travelers with special needs. Through a lawyer, the family has publicly asked Spirit to apologize, the Asbury Park Press reports. (Read more Spirit Airlines stories.)
TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / April 7, 2021 / CANAQUEST MEDICAL CORP (OTC PINK:CANQF) (the "Company" or "CanaQuest"), an award-winning Life Science/Pharmaceutical company developing health and wellness products combining cannabinoid molecules with pharmaceutical-grade botanical compounds, today announced that Rob Rinderman has joined CanaQuest as its new Director of Communications. Mr. Rinderman will focus on managing a proactive investor relations and corporate communications program, further expanding investor community and media awareness about the company's material corporate developments and future prospects.

"We are delighted that a seasoned communications professional with decades of financial experience has agreed to join our team at this important time in our corporate evolution," stated CanaQuest President Paul Ramsay. "We believe adding a veteran like Rob to help us present our story to a wider and receptive audience is a key asset for us moving forward."

Mr. Rinderman brings 35+ years of Wall Street investment industry experience to CanaQuest. After beginning his career in the early 1980s on the American Stock Exchange as a trader and arbitrageur he pivoted his career in the first half of the 1990s to spearheading proactive investor relations programs on behalf of dozens of public companies across multiple sectors and cap sizes, including multibillion-dollar valuations. Mr. Rinderman has guided companies through the IPO process, follow-on capital raises, acquisitions, and crisis communications. He has also worked as a licensed investment banker, passed the CFA Level One, and has an MBA from NYU Stern School.

Rob Rinderman added, "I am very excited to join the CanaQuest senior team at this critical corporate inflection point, reflecting a strong foundation built over recent years. Multiple positive developments are converging including demonstrable progress toward a regulatory pathway, completed pre-clinical trials, plus a strong academic research partnership with Dr. Laviolette (Western University), who recently had a peer-reviewed article published in the European Journal of Neuroscience. CanaQuest has strategic alliances in place for product production, distribution and industry education, an imminent direct-to-consumer (D2C) e-commerce launch, IP asset filings, recent BUY-rated investor research coverage, and the Company also recently received international CBD - R&D award recognition."

For more information on Rob Rinderman - https://www.linkedin.com/in/robrinderman/

CanaQuest Medical Corp is an award-winning Life Science/Pharmaceutical company developing health and wellness products combining cannabinoid molecules with pharmaceutical grade botanical compounds. CanaQuest has identified the regulatory pathways to obtain Drug Identification Numbers (DINs) for its two Master Formations, MentanineRx, and MentabinolRx, in Canada and the USA. The Company will soon be selling both products through ADC BioMedical Corp, its wholly-owned subsidiary, which was awarded a Cannabis Medical Sales, Import/Export License, from Health Canada under the Cannabis Act. CanaQuest is partnered with a Western University team led by Dr. Steven Laviolette, who has decades of research experience focused on novel pharmacotherapies addressing anxiety, depression, addiction, schizophrenia, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

CANAQUEST CONTACT:

Rob Rinderman, Director of Communications

CanaQuest Medical Corp

rob@canaquest.com

Tel: 973.525.6285

SOURCE: CanaQuest Medical Corp.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/639239/CanaQuest-Medical-Corp-Appoints-Investor-Relations-and-PR-Veteran-Rob-Rinderman-as-its-New-Director-of-Communications




Haiti - FLASH : Haiti refuses a donation of 756,000 doses of the WHO AstraZeneca vaccine





Haiti, refused a donation of 756,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO) via the Covax mechanism, reported Tuesday April 6, according to the Spanish news agency EFE who quotes a high-ranking source requesting the anonymity within the Haitian Government.



According to this source the Haitian Government refused to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine, manufactured under license by "Serum Institute of India" because of "the global unrest surrounding this vaccine", considering that the population of Haiti "would not accept it".



The Haitian authorities have asked the WHO to send vaccines from other laboratories to Haiti, including the vaccine from Johnson & Johnson laboratories which requires only one injection and which can be stored at temperatures between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius. But the World Health Organization is "reluctant" to accept Haiti's demands, reminding Haitian authorities that "the deadlines are running out".



Note that Haiti is one of the four countries in the world (out of 192 infected with Covid-19) not to have started to vaccinate its population against the coronavirus according to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director General of WHO.



Note that according to figures from the Ministry of Public Health Haiti would be relatively unaffected by the coronavirus, with a total of 12,803 confirmed cases (as of March 28, 2021 latest data available https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-33419-haiti-covid-19-haiti-special-report-382.html ) confirmed cases throughout the national territory since the first case (March 19, 2020 https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-30319-haiti-health-origin-of-the-first-2-cases-of-covid-19-in-haiti.html However, many experts believe that these data do not reflect the true extent of the pandemic in Haiti due to the limited capacity detection of the virus in the country.



Find out more about COVAX :

Covax is an initiative led by the World Health Organization (WHO) is the result of an extraordinary and unique global collaboration, with more than two-thirds of the world engaged (Governments, World Health Organizations, laboratories, scientists, the private sector, civil society and philanthropy), with the aim of providing innovative and equitable access to COVID-19 diagnostics, treatments and vaccines regardless of people's wealth.



COVAX has the largest and most diverse portfolio of COVID-19 vaccines in the world, and as such represents the world's best hope for an early end to this pandemic.



So far COVAX has shipped more than 36 million doses of vaccine to 86 countries as of April 5, according to the UN spokesperson.



SL/ HaitiLibre


















The government was originally scheduled to implement four labour codes from the beginning of the current financial year. However, it was deferred due to the ongoing state assembly elections and states not framing their own rules.

While the union labour ministry has finalised rules relating to these codes, it is not clear whether they have addressed all the concerns of India Inc and others. Before this, the ministry had come out with draft rules on these codes. Let us see what would be the scene of labour codes had these come into effect from April one this year with draft ...
Contributed photo / Community Health Center

MIDDLETOWN  The Middletown-based Community Health Center was one of only 20 COVID-19 vaccination hubs in nation to receive eggs from President Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden after the White House Easter egg roll was canceled due to the pandemic.

The unexpected delivery Friday, to several vaccination sites in Connecticut, including the mass site near Wesleyan University in Middletown, consisted of 800 purple and gold, wooden Easter eggs directly from the White House, according to a press release. Biden and the First Lady selected health care providers on the front lines of the countrys vaccination efforts to receive the eggs, the CHC said.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday advocated vaccination for all and said every Indian deserves the chance to a safe life, after the resurgence of Covid cases in the country.

"It's ridiculous to debate needs & wants. Every Indian deserves the chance to a safe life. #CovidVaccine." he said.

Its ridiculous to debate needs & wants.



Every Indian deserves the chance to a safe life. #CovidVaccine  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) April 7, 2021

Rahul Gandhi's comment came in the wake of health secretary saying on Tuesday that vaccines are given to those who need it the most.

Another Congress leader Manish Tewari too attacked this theory and said, "This is the most obtuse gibberish. Only a Bureaucrat can say it with a masked straight face. Does Virus have an age distinguishing vector coded into it's genome sequence? Do young not deserve protection when you are exporting the vaccine to everybody and their grandmother?"

As per reports Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan had said that, "The aim of vaccination is not to administer to those who want it but to those who need it."

India on Wednesday recorded 1,15,736 new Covid-19 cases, the biggest-ever single-day surge since the onset of the pandemic early last year, taking the overall tally to 12,801,785.

Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab have shown a steep rise in the daily new cases.

The Central Government has rushed 50 high-level multi-disciplinary public health teams to 50 districts across Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Punjab in view of the recent very large numbers of daily new Covid-19 cases and daily mortalities being consistently reported by these States.
Hunter Biden, the son of US President Joe Biden, has admitted that a laptop, which he is alleged to have left at a repair shop in Delaware and the contents of which led to controversy in the run-up to last year's presidential election, could be his.

But most US reports about the interview focused instead on other aspects, such as his drug use.

An article in the New York Post, on 14 October 2020, headlined Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad, could not be posted on Twitter while Facebook placed restrictions on the distribution of the story.

The curbs led to an almighty uproar, with claims that the two technology companies were trying to prevent negative coverage of the older Biden, with the presidential election barely a month away.

The contents of the laptop included emails that were at the centre of the Post series, which focused on Hunter's business dealings in Ukraine and elsewhere.

A day after it blocked the article, which contained some damaging allegations about the older Biden too, Twitter suffered an outage.

Numerous emails from Hunter were published as part of the article, and their veracity was not questioned.

Twitter refused to allow the article to be posted and blocked anyone who tried to do so.

Apart from the emails, the article contained photographs and a video of a drug-fuelled sexual escapade.

One email said the older Biden had met a top executive at the Ukrainian firm Burisma at his son's urging. The older Biden has stated in the past that he has not spoken to his son about his overseas business dealings.

During an interview on the CBS Sunday program, to promote a book written by him and being published by a CBS affiliate, Hunter first said, "I really don't know", when asked by interviewer Tracy Smith whether the laptop was his.

But when he was pressed as to whether the device belonged to him, he said: Of course certainly  There could be a laptop out there that was stolen from me.

"It could be that I was hacked. It could be that it was the that it was Russian intelligence. It could be that it was stolen from me. Or that there was a laptop stolen from me.

Prominent American journalist Glenn Greenwald told the Fox News show MediaBuzz on Sunday: "We should be revisiting it [the laptop story] regardless because the real story was not just what those documents showed about Biden and China and Ukraine, but also the abuse of power by Facebook and the Democrats to censor a major story right before an election. It was incredible interference and manipulation from the right to vote and the right to be heard."

Comedian Jimmy Dore, who comments frequently on US political developments, put out a video focusing on Hunter's admission.
Ukraine is ready to fully ensure Qatars food security and export high-quality agricultural products.

The possibility of supplying Ukrainian food products to other countries in the region through Qatar is also being discussed, Deputy Head of the Presidents Office Ihor Zhovkva told Ukrinform.

Ukraine is ready to fully ensure Qatars food security by exporting high-quality agricultural products. Moreover, during the talks, the leaders discussed the possibility of using Qatars logistics network to supply Ukrainian food products to other countries in the region, Zhovkva said.

He added that during the visit of President Zelensky to Qatar, the Ministry of Agrarian Policy of Ukraine signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Hassad Food, Qatars premier investor in the food and agri-business sectors. According to the Deputy Head of the Presidents Office, this document will simplify and speed up the level of Ukraine-Qatar communication in the field of food security.

As reported, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky and First Lady Olena Zelenska made a visit to the State of Qatar on April 5.

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Tasmanian Labor election candidate Ben McGregor quit over a complaint about text messages sent seven years ago

A Tasmanian Labor election candidate has quit over a complaint about text messages sent seven years ago and accused party members of weaponising outrage about the treatment of women.

Ben McGregor attacked the credentials of state Labor leader Rebecca White on Wednesday while announcing he was pulling out of the race for the Hobart seat of Clark.

'Over the past couple of days, reactionary elements within the Tasmanian branch of the ALP have launched extraordinary attacks against progressive people in the party in an attempt to further their personal political agendas,' he told reporters.

'A complaint has been made to the Labor party by a person in relation to two text messages I sent seven years ago.

'Though it does not allege sexual misconduct or sexual harassment, its purpose is appallingly clear.

'The complaint seeks to pervert and weaponise the current justified public outrage about the treatment of women in this country for selfish, tawdry and political purposes.'

Mr McGregor did not reveal what was written in the text messages but said they were part of a broader conversation and banter between a group of friends.

'At the time the person noted to myself, during the the conversation, that she felt uncomfortable with a word I used,' he said.

'At that time I apologised via text and noted that I would not use that word again with her.

Ben McGregor attacked the credentials of state Labor leader Rebecca White on Wednesday while announcing he was pulling out of the race for the Hobart seat of Clark

'I then subsequently apologised in person the next chance I got and then again at a later time. This person has not complained about the text message in the six years following.'

It is the latest hurdle in Labor's campaign to topple the Liberal government at the May 1 poll after a bitter internal preselection stoush came to a head on Tuesday.

Labor's national executive was forced to intervene at Ms White's request and endorse popular mayor Dean Winter as a candidate after he was snubbed during preselection.

Mr McGregor, the party's state president, said proper internal processes around complaints had not been followed.

'There has been no investigation. Witnesses have not been interviewed. I have not been afforded the basic courtesy of providing my side of the story,' he said.

Mr McGregor did not reveal what was written in the text messages but said they were part of a broader conversation and banter between a group of friends

'I've been accused internally, this information has then found its way into the media. This appears, for all intent, a smear campaign to hurt me and my nomination.

'Rebecca has failed in providing leadership here. She has seen an opportunity to rid herself of factional challenge.

'She has been more focused on ensuring a current mayor gets preselected than worry about her party or its members.'

Mr McGregor said he was contacted about the text messages on March 28 in an 'aggressive and threatening' Facebook message.

He said Ms White contacted him on Monday afternoon and told him he had to resign or she would publicly disendorse him.
When Dr. Shantel Hebert-Magee took over in January as the Louisiana Department of Healths medical director for the New Orleans region, there were plenty of jobs to keep her busy.

Coronavirus cases were surging in Louisiana and across the U.S. hospitals were again starting to fill up. At the same time, the first, precious doses of the coronavirus vaccine were becoming available for health care workers. And the planning for how to get vaccines in the arms of every Louisiana resident was well underway.

There were a lot of coals in the fire that required my immediate attention, said Hebert-Magee. With vaccinations beginning, her job was to continue the momentum.

The work isnt nearly complete, with tens of thousands more arms left to be jabbed, but with vaccinations expanding and cases reaching some of the lowest levels in months, Hebert-Magee has been able to start thinking about what comes after the pandemic, and how her role as the Health Departments regional head will shift in the coming months and years.

Once we get past COVID, I hope I can help people navigate through the waters of health care and get them access to services, she said.

Since she was young, Hebert-Magee has been around health care. Her mother was a certified nurses assistant and her grandmother worked in various custodial occupations within hospitals. She remembers late evenings as a young girl drawing in her coloring book as her mother tended to patients. After-school care was never an option, and she would sit quietly, observing everything.

After graduating from Mount Carmel Academy in New Orleans, Hebert-Magee went on to Clark Atlanta University before earning her medical degree at Georgetown University School of Medicine. She later received a masters degree in public health from Harvard University.

The top echelons of academic medicine were a far cry from what she said was a modest upbringing. Growing up, she slept with a coat on to keep warm, and her kitchen consisted of a hot plate and cooler. Dinner often included Spam, sardines, Vienna sausages or other canned foods, she said.

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+3 Movie tickets, donuts, drinks, more: Freebies on offer for COVID vaccination The best thing about getting a COVID vaccine is undoubtedly the protection from the virus and the peace of mind it brings.

Hebert-Magee said she sometimes felt like a statistic rather than a patient when she saw doctors and nurses. And she saw firsthand how Black people can be lost in the health care system. Her great-aunt would struggle with pain under her arms when she would visit Hebert-Magee at Clark. She said doctors downplayed the seriousness of her aunt's concerns and ignored her medical history, only for her to later be diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer.

Hebert-Magee hopes that in her new job, shell be able to create open conversations for marginalized communities that are skeptical of health care. But first, she and her team need to get through the pandemic. And currently, the critical step is getting everyone vaccinated.

Nearly 800,000 people in Louisiana are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus as of this week. In early March, the Health Department announced the first mass vaccination event using the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and many more of those events have come since then.

Having the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is going to be a game changer, said Hebert-Magee.

The single dose vaccination, as opposed to the two dose-regimen of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, allows for an easier process that could reach more people faster.

+13 Vaccine appointments in Louisiana are going unfilled - sooner than officials thought When COVID vaccines first opened to Louisiana residents over 70 in January, there was a mad scramble for appointments. Overloaded phone system

Hebert-Magee has been seeking partnerships with churches, community centers and venues that do not look like a typical hospital to create a comfortable space for individuals wanting to take the vaccine. She recognizes that people are deliberating on the vaccine and that there is still a feeling of uncertainty, which means helping them find trustworthy sources of information.

This is atypical and unprecedented, Hebert-Magee said. I think many people are looking for a message from people they find more reliable and trustworthy, like their primary care physicians or close relatives.
ALBANY  Say goodbye to Scott Street.

The city is planning to sell the 245-foot strip of asphalt connecting Leonard and Krank streets to South End Development, LLC, as part of the companys vision to build The Seventy-Six, a massive mixed-use property along Second Avenue.

While the name Scott Street will disappear from city maps forever, the physical street isnt totally going away. Under the developer's proposal, the street would become a privately owned pedestrian walkway to the storefronts planned for the project. The purchase wont displace any city residents  the properties on both sides of Scott Street are already owned by South End Development or 76 South Holdings LLC.

In a city as old as Albany, it's far from the first time a street has had to make way for a new development. The city has periodically sold or conveyed "paper streets"--those that exist only on planning maps but aren't developed--and cut others in half to squeeze in a development. Larger projects, like the Empire State Plaza, Interstate 787 and the Harriman State Campus pushed other physical streets out of existence.

On Monday evening, the Common Council voted to decommission Scott Street, which allows the Planning Department to remove it from city maps. It also gives the citys corporation counsel the ability to negotiate the sale with South End Developments attorneys and for Mayor Kathy Sheehan to sign the sales contract.

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Jahkeen Hoke, chief development officer for South End Development, could not be reached for comment. Hoke was recently named co-chair of the city's COVID Recovery Task Force.

Its still unclear how much the city might agree to sell the land for but a report that South End Development had prepared gives a hint. The report says the roughly 11,000-square foot parcel of land is worth around $272,512, based off sales of similar property appraisals in the city and a price of $22.96 per square foot.

But the report doesnt propose writing the city a check for that amount. Instead, the developers offer to make improvements to city-owned infrastructure in the area that they say are worth over $1.1 million, more than four times the lands appraised value.

Now that we have permission to do that from the council, what well do is enter into some discussions with them on the actual consideration, fair market value and transfer, said Corporation Counsel Marisa Franchini. We havent agreed to anything at this point.

Some of those proposed improvements would likely need to have been made anyway, although the report says theyre not necessary for the projects development.

They include installing more than 1,000 feet of separate storm sewer infrastructure, which would keep more than 8 million gallons of water out of the combined sewer system, more than 1,400 feet of water mains on surrounding streets as well as widening and repaving parts of Leonard, Krank, and Seymour streets around the property, as well as installing new sidewalks and curbs.

The Seventy-Six project is ambitious  an estimated $140 million development that relies on solar arrays for power and will collect rain and wastewater to be recycled and reused.

Were reaching the highest sustainability we can obtain, Corey Jones, of South End Development LLC said when he initially pitched the project to area residents nearly three years ago. It will produce enough energy to go back to the grid.

The city gave conditional approval for the first phase of the project late last year, but the developers still have to meet some requirements with the county and state before they can break ground, due to its unique approach to energy consumption, said Brad Glass, the citys planning director.

Its got to the point where it was sufficient to greenlight the project but there were still details that needed to be worked out on paper, he said. If they pull it off, I think itd be great for the neighborhood and the city, its certainly an area in need of investment.

The first phase includes 184 affordable and market-rate apartments, according to city planning documents. The proposal includes a possible 9,700-square foot grocery, though its unclear if that would be a brand-name grocer or a store run by South End Development.

Though that first phase will include buildings of at least six stories, the developers are taking advantage of the sharp grade in the area and they will appear close to four stories tall.

The developers have said they envision four buildings with up to 250 apartments and 50,000 square feet of retail space.

Councilwoman Sonia Frederick, who represents the area, had heard from business owners looking to open in the planned retail space.

"It's definitely a very ambitious, forward-thinking model that I'm very excited see come to fruition and I'm really hopeful that everything goes forward according to plan," she said.
(Newser)  In 2019, then-White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham claimed aides of former President Obama had left disparaging notes around the White House for members of former President Trump's administration to find. At Inauguration Day, "Every office was filled with Obama books, and we had notes left behind that said 'You will fail,' 'You arent going to make it,'" Grisham told a radio show, before clarifying that she was speaking specifically of messages left in the press office. An aide went on to describe notes "taped up in the cupboards," per the Washington Post. Now, we may have some key context courtesy of Dave Chappelle. Appearing on Naomi Campbell's YouTube talk show No Filter with Naomi, the comedian said he saw celebrities leaving the notes during one of President Obama's "last big parties," per Mediaite.

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"Remember when the Trump administration moved in, they said, 'The Obama staff left dirty notes for us in all the drawers and all the cabinets,'" Chappelle told Campbell in a video released Tuesday. "Now, I saw this happening. I'm not gonna say who did it. But it was celebrities writing crazy s--t, putting it all over there," he said. "So when I saw that news I laughed real hard." Obama aides had denied Grisham's claim, with national security adviser Susan Rice calling them a "bald-faced lie," per HuffPost. Campbell, who laughed through Chapelle's telling, described it as "a fun night" and said Obama had returned to the festivities after leaving "because the music was so good." Chappelle said it was an "arresting sight" seeing a Black president part the crowd, which included many Black people. Then he dabbed. "And the crowd went wild," Chappelle said. (Read more White House stories.)
Greg Sukiennik has worked at all three Vermont News & Media newspapers and was their managing editor from 2017-19. He previously worked for ESPN.com, for the AP in Boston, and at The Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, Mass.
Two mothers are to press ahead with a constitutional challenge to Irelands mandatory quarantine regime, even though they will be released long before the lawsuit can be decided.

Under a timetable set by the High Court, it will be April 20 at the earliest before a date can be set for the hearing of the action by Niamh Mulreany (25) and Kirstie McGrath (30).

By that stage they will have completed the 12-day hotel quarantine they allegedly sought to avoid after returning from a trip to Dubai.

An informed source said the two friends would persist with the legal challenge because they did not want to have potential criminal convictions.

Read More

Both were charged with breaching the Health Act after allegedly refusing to go to a quarantine hotel after arriving at Dublin Airport on Friday. They have denied the charges.

The two women had been in Dubai for breast-enhancement surgery but did not go ahead with the procedures.

They claimed they had been gifted the trip and that when they left for Dubai they had been unaware of the requirement to quarantine on their return and could not afford to pay for it.

Ms Mulreanys parents Eddie Freeman and Sabrina Mulreany have claimed the two women were being treated worse than animals and that the matter had turned into a complete circus.

The affair took a further twist yesterday when it emerged Ms McGrath returned a false positive for Covid-19 while being held at the Dochas Centre womens prison in Mountjoy at the weekend.

Further tests carried out by the HSE on Sunday night  after the High Court ordered their release from prison and transfer to a quarantine hotel  returned negative results.

Ms Mulreany, of Scarlett Row in Dublin, and Ms McGrath, from Rialto in Dublin, had already had three negative PCR tests and an antibody exam.

One ground of the constitutional challenge is expected to focus on the proportionality of requiring them to quarantine in circumstances where they had tested negative several times already.

Another potential ground being examined by their legal team is that the legislation has created a rare absolute liability offence, for which no defence is available. A further potential ground is whether it is lawful for an appeals officer to restrict their liberty.

The pair were granted bail at Tallaght District Court on Saturday but remained in custody and were detained at the Dochas Centre because they hadnt the funds to pay bonds and independent sureties.

On Sunday the High Court ordered they be allowed leave prison, but directed they continue to quarantine at a designated hotel.

Ms Mulreanys parents confirmed both women returned negative results to Sunday nights tests.

Her mother Sabrina, who is a frontline worker, said: Niamh and Kirstie are being made examples of. Its as simple as that and the question has to be asked, why?

When those girls got on to the plane in Dubai they did not have Covid-19.

The girls left Ireland on the morning of March 24 and the new rules on quarantining did not come in until March 26, two days later, so why is this happening? These two girls are not statistics and what is happening is having an awful effect on them.

She claimed the two women had been treated worse than animals.

They were kept in awful conditions in prison and left in a Garda van for almost four hours in the heat prior to their court appearance on Saturday as they could not enter the courthouse due to Covid-19 restrictions, she said.

Both girls are suffering psychologically, as we all are.
Chinas crude oil imports are estimated to have declined by 8.81 percent month over month in March to stand at 11.26 million barrels per day (bpd), energy analytics services provider OilX said, noting that its assessment doesnt show massive crude flows from Iran into China last month.

In recent weeks, various reports have suggested that China has been considerably boosting its crude oil imports from Iranso much so that the ports in the Shandong province, where most independent refiners are based, are experiencing tanker traffic congestions.

According to some estimates, China was taking in some 856,000 bpd or even closer to 1 million bpd of Iranian crude oil in March, more than double compared to February.

There has been a lot of chatter in the market about Iranian crude exports stealthily reaching China. We believe that the magnitude of the flows reported is not aligned with our assessment of Iranian exports and Iranian floating storage decreases, OilX oil analysts Juan Carlos Rodriguez and Valantis Markogiannakis wrote in a report on Tuesday.

OilX analysts believe that the long-term implication of the strategic partnership announced last week between the two countries and the ongoing nuclear talks are far more important, they added.

OilX thus estimates that Chinese imports moderated to 11.26 million bpd in March, which was still an increase by 14.45 percent over March last year, when China was under lockdown at the start of the pandemic.

In addition, crude flows currently underway to China remain flat for April, according to OilX Research.

The assessment for the March crude flows to China showed that imports from the Middle East, excluding Iran, dropped the most month over month, with the biggest declines seen in imports from Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Imports from the North Sea and Brazil, on the other hand, surged the most, OilX said.

Year over year, Chinas crude oil imports increased the most from the United States, Norway, and the UK. Imports from Norway and the UK hit record highs, thanks to increased purchases of crude from the Forties and Johan Sverdrup fields, OilX data showed.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
NEW YORK, April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bernstein Liebhard, a nationally acclaimed investor rights law firm, reminds investors of the deadline to file a lead plaintiff motion in a securities class action lawsuit that has been filed on behalf of investors who purchased or acquired the securities of MoneyGram International, Inc. (MoneyGram or the Company) (NASDAQ: MGI) from June 3, 2019, through February 22, 2021 (the Class Period). The lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California alleges violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.



If you purchased MoneyGram securities, and/or would like to discuss your legal rights and options please visit MoneyGram Shareholder Class Action Lawsuit or contact Matthew E. Guarnero toll free at (877) 779-1414 or MGuarnero@bernlieb.com

The complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, defendants made materially false and/or misleading statements, as well as failed to disclose to investors: (1) XRP, the cryptocurrency that MoneyGram was utilizing as part of its Ripple partnership, was viewed as an unregistered and therefore unlawful security by the SEC; (2) in the event that the SEC decided to enforce the securities laws against Ripple, MoneyGram would be likely to lose the lucrative stream of market development fees that was critical to its financial results throughout the Class Period; and (3) as a result, defendants public statements were materially false and/or misleading at all relevant times.

On February 22, 2021, MoneyGram filed its annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020, disclosing to shareholders that it was possible that MoneyGram will not resume transacting with Ripple under the commercial agreement and will be unable to receive the related market development fees in 2021 and beyond.

On this news, MoneyGram securities fell 33.2%, from a closing price on February 19, 2021 of $10.87, to a closing price on February 23, 2021 of $7.26 per share.

Story continues

If you wish to serve as lead plaintiff, you must move the Court no later than April 30, 2021. A lead plaintiff is a representative party acting on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation. Your ability to share in any recovery doesnt require that you serve as lead plaintiff. If you choose to take no action, you may remain an absent class member.

If you purchased MoneyGram securities, and/or would like to discuss your legal rights and options please visit https://www.bernlieb.com/cases/moneygraminternational-mgi-shareholder-class-action-lawsuit-stock-fraud-368/apply/ or contact Matthew E. Guarnero toll free at (877) 779-1414 or MGuarnero@bernlieb.com.

Since 1993, Bernstein Liebhard LLP has recovered over $3.5 billion for its clients. In addition to representing individual investors, the Firm has been retained by some of the largest public and private pension funds in the country to monitor their assets and pursue litigation on their behalf. As a result of its success litigating hundreds of lawsuits and class actions, the Firm has been named to The National Law Journals Plaintiffs Hot List thirteen times and listed in The Legal 500 for ten consecutive years.

ATTORNEY ADVERTISING.  2021 Bernstein Liebhard LLP. The law firm responsible for this advertisement is Bernstein Liebhard LLP, 10 East 40th Street, New York, New York 10016, (212) 779-1414. The lawyer responsible for this advertisement in the State of Connecticut is Michael S. Bigin. Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome with respect to any future matter.

Contact Information

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Bernstein Liebhard LLP

https://www.bernlieb.com

(877) 779-1414

MGuarnero@bernlieb.com




(Newser)  A California prosecutor filed 33 criminal charges Tuesday against troubled Pacific Gas & Electric for a 2019 wind-driven wildfire officials blamed on the utility, accusing it of injuring six firefighters and endangering public health with smoke and ash. The company denied that it committed any crimes even as it accepted that its transmission line sparked the blaze. The Sonoma County district attorney charged the utility with five felony and 28 misdemeanor counts in the October 2019 Kincade Fire north of San Francisco. The blaze burned more than 120 square miles and destroyed 374 buildings. The 33 charges include recklessly causing a fire with great bodily injury to six firefighters, named only as John Does #1-#6, the AP reports.

story continues below

Fire officials said a PG&E transmission line sparked the fire. The utility said it hadn't seen the report or evidence gathered by state fire investigators, but it will accept the finding that its transmission line caused the fire "in the spirit of working to do whats right for the victims." "However, we do not believe there was any crime here," the company said in a statement. PG&Es alleged criminal negligence in the Sonoma County wildfire occurred while the company was still mired in a bankruptcy triggered by a series of deadly infernos that were ignited by the utilitys crumbling equipment during 2017 and 2018. The most lethal wiped out the entire town of Paradise. PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 felony counts of involuntary manslaughter last June, but no one from the company went to prison.

(Read more California wildfires stories.)
Big Tech Wins at the Supreme Court, Software Entrepreneurs Lose

Commentary

In the early days of software, those against patenting software argued that copyright protection would suffice.

They got their wish with the Supreme Courts decision in Alice v. CLS Bank (pdf) that effectively made software unpatentable. The recent decision in Oracle v. Google (pdf) gave a big win to Google and effectively makes software uncopyrightable, too. Who gains from this? Big Tech. Who loses? Individual software innovators and entrepreneurs.

In its Alice decision, the Supreme Court explicitly stated that software is patentable but then went on to describe as unpatentable any invention that had the characteristics of software. Similarly, in the Google decision, the court said that software is copyrightable but there are fair use exceptions; they then went on to describe how to claim this exception for virtually any copied software.

At issue was the code for application program interfaces (APIs), which are like the names and addresses of program functions such as calculating a square root or recognizing a persons face from a picture. Just like mail cant get to a specific person without that persons name and address, programmers can only use software functions by knowing the APIs.

Oracle created the Java system and created APIs to access the Java functions. Oracle then spent time and money teaching programmers about the APIs. Google created the Android system but didnt want to spend time and money teaching programmers, so they decided to use the exact same APIs as Oracle. They tried to license them from Oracle but couldnt reach a deal, so they just copied them. Specifically, they copied 37 APIs, which consisted of 11,500 lines of code.

The fair use doctrine is defined in Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act and dates back to the original act in 1778, though it wasnt explicitly stated until the Copyright Act of 1976. The concept is that there are certain situations in which the government should allow copying because it benefits society. These exceptions to copyright infringement are generally used, for example, to allow teachers to teach about a novel or for a news show to broadcast important pictures of a war or crime scene, or for a parody to make fun of a song.

There are four criteria for determining whether a copy is fair use:

The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; the nature of the copyrighted work; the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

In discussing the four factors of fair use, the Supreme Court got it wrong on every single count, if you look at more than 200 years of copyright law and 41 years of software copyright law.

With respect to the purpose and character of the use, the court claimed that Googles use of Oracles APIs was transformative. A work is transformative when its used for a different purpose than the original. For example, computer code could form the background of a painting because the painting isnt used to control a computer. However, Google stated that its reason for copying the APIs was to give an interface to programmers that they already knew. In other words, the APIs were used for the same purpose as the original and thus not transformative.

With respect to the nature of the copied APIs, the court claimed that the copyrightability of the APIs derives from the value that those who do not hold copyrights, namely, computer programmers, invest of their own time and effort to learn the APIs system.

In other words, the court claimed that the copying was fair use because of the large number of programmers who utilized the code. With this logic, it would be fair use to incorporate popular novels such as Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone into other novels because of its large fan base.

With regard to amount and substantiality, the Supreme Court stated that the 11,500 copied lines of code only amounted to 0.4 percent of the entire 2.86 million lines of Oracles Java code. Yet, as I have argued many times successfully in court, substantiality isnt determined by percentages of overall code any more than copying an authors book is fair use if only one of many books is copied. Substantiality is determined by how important the code was in and of itself to the copyright infringer. Google found it important enough to copy the code without a license and risk a multibillion-dollar lawsuit.

With regard to market effect, the Supreme Court stated that Oracle had failed in its attempt to create a Java system for a smartphone while Google had succeeded. Therefore, they concluded, the copying had no effect on the market. This is like saying that after I stole your car, you never drove that car. The court ignored the fact that the Android operating system with the copied APIs replaced Oracles system in the Amazon Kindle and reduced Oracles revenues from Samsung because Google gave out its operating system for free. The court also ignored the revenues lost to Oracle if Google had legitimately licensed the API code from Oracle.

The Supreme Court even got case law wrong when it stated that similar examples of copying of software code were allowed by the courts as fair use. It cites Sony v. Connectix and Sega v. Accolade as examples, but in those cases, the code was copied only by the developers in an attempt to understand the system. Thats an educational fair use. They then wrote their own completely different code for their production systems. The copied code was never included in a system that was sold to the public.

The Supreme Court even misunderstood the U.S. Constitution when it stated, The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts. The full quotation from Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 of the Constitution is, To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

The court has a shortsighted understanding of copyright law, not realizing that taking away an authors rights in one situation may have an immediate benefit to society, but in the long run, authors will stop writing altogether, which is a huge disadvantage to society. The Founding Fathers understood that rewarding the labor of authors was a requirement for promoting such progress, not a side effect of it.

In his very clearly worded dissenting opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas explained all of these issues and described the majoritys fair use analysis as fundamentally flawed. He also stated that this order will eviscerate U.S. copyright law as Congress wrote it with regard to software.

Companies must now keep their software code secret and never release code to the public unless theyre willing to give up all rights in it. Ironically, the open-source software advocates who are applauding this ruling will find their business model diminished. Knowing that their code can be wantonly copied, companies will be reluctant to donate any of their code to the open-source community.

And most disturbingly, independent software developers and startup companies can have their software code copied without recourse of patent protection or copyright protection. Theres now less incentive for software innovators to invent and startup companies to get investment because Big Tech can copy the software of others without consequences.

Disclaimer: The author was an expert in this case, working for Oracle.

Bob Zeidman is the creator of the field of software forensics and the founder of successful high-tech Silicon Valley firms, including Zeidman Consulting and Software Analysis and Forensic Engineering. He is the author of textbooks on engineering and intellectual property as well as screenplays and novels. His latest novel is the political satire Good Intentions.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Secondary school students have been forced to sit at desks in doorways in order to socially distance, a teachers conference has been told.

ASTI president Ann Piggott told delegates they do not have the luxury of large classrooms the size of convention centres.

Rooms are cramped, tables are more spread out, but with a teacher, students, and perhaps two special needs assistants, this can generate 33 people in a room where viruses are most probably airborne, she said.

Over the cold winter, classrooms had little spare space although the staggered restart last month helped ensure classes could use bigger rooms, she said.

Delegates backed a motion calling for a limit of 24 students per class, and up to 20 in practical subjects.

Read More

Deirdre MacDonald, of the Wexford Tony Boland branch, proposing the motion, said everyone has heard so much about wellbeing during the pandemic but action is needed.

She said finding time to get to know students, their personalities, talents, difficulties, and learning styles is directly linked to class size.

The issue could be addressed by reducing class size in line with international best practice, she added. This would give real meaning to what has to date only been trite words on wellbeing and welfare from the Department of Education, she said.

English and religious education teacher Therese Glennon said relationships in the classroom are important academically and for good mental health. She said it takes 10 to 15 minutes to correct a students work, so that would mean over seven hours with a class of 30.

The INTO called for a reduction in the size of primary school classes, to bring them into line with, or lower than, the EU average.

Proposing the motion that was unanimously adopted, INTO executive member Carmel Browne said the average class size in Ireland was 24, compared with an EU average of 20, with one in five children being taught in a class with 30 or more pupils.

The impact of supersized classes was never more evident than when the Covid pandemic hit in 2020.

The stark reality is that social distance is an impossibility in large classes in cramped classrooms. Keeping an adequate distance between pupils, or even groups of pupils, in the average Irish classroom, is an impossible task, she said.

Read More








The United States government, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), is providing an additional $1,000,000 to support the efforts of the Government of Armenia to respond to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, bringing USAIDs total funding to date to combat COVID-19 to more than $11 million. This includes emergency funding to address immediate health needs and efforts to address the secondary and tertiary impacts of the pandemic on democratic development and economic growth. Armenian News-NEWS.am has learned about this from USAID Armenia.

USAID is awarding the funds to UNICEF to provide targeted technical assistance to support and ensure effective implementation of COVID-19 vaccination efforts in Armenia, in accordance with the National Deployment Vaccination Plan.

Lynne M. Tracy, U.S. Ambassador to Armenia, stated: Throughout the pandemic, the United States has partnered with Armenia in its fight against COVID-19. Through this new assistance, we will continue working together to overcome COVID-19 and prepare for future public health threats.

The United States has worked closely with Armenia throughout the duration of the pandemic to protect public health and strengthen the response to COVID-19. This cooperation includes: providing funding to strengthen laboratory capacity and management of severe cases; securing essential equipment; supporting vulnerable households and children; bolstering the Government of Armenias crisis communications; enhancing emergency preparedness and response; and promoting resilience and economic stability through grants to small businesses, civil society, and media.

The United States continues to demonstrate its global leadership in public health and humanitarian assistance in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, building on the more than $140 billion in U.S. Government support for global health programs and increasing the capacity of local healthcare systems since 2001.
WASHINGTON  Texas is yet again pushing back on President Joe Bidens efforts to undo Trump-era immigration policies, this time targeting the new administrations move to narrow deportation targets, which Attorney General Ken Paxton says has left the state picking up the federal governments slack.

The Texas Republican on Tuesday filed a lawsuit, joined by the Louisiana attorney general, challenging new enforcement priorities the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The department no longer prioritizes the deportations of immigrants living in the U.S. without legal authorization who are convicted of drug offenses or crimes of moral turpitude, such as evading arrest or fraud.

Paxton claims immigration law requires the administration to deport such individuals.

LEADING THE CHARGE: Texas Republicans battle Biden on oil, immigration, guns

President Bidens outright refusal to enforce the law is exacerbating an unprecedented border crisis, Paxton said in a statement. The Biden administration is demonstrating a blatant disregard for Texans and Americans safety.

Immigration attorneys on Tuesday questioned Paxtons logic, saying the lawsuit appears to admit the state is illegally jailing immigrants even after the federal government has rescinded its requests that they remain incarcerated.

Kate Huddleston, an attorney for the ACLU of Texas, said Paxtons latest suit is yet another baseless, xenophobic attempt to distract from the real problems facing the state of Texas.

Texas does not have veto power to force this administration to continue the Trump administrations policies, Huddleston said.

Paxton has sought to make Texas the leader in pushing back on Bidens policies on immigration, energy and more. Last month he led 13 other Republican attorneys general in asking the Supreme Court to allow them to defend a Trump-era rule that made it harder for immigrants to obtain green cards if they rely on safety net programs, such as Medicaid or food stamps. He also led a group of 19 other Republican attorneys general in suing Biden for revoking the 2019 presidential permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, arguing the president cant change energy policy set by Congress.

The most recent lawsuit is a sort of spinoff from an earlier case Paxton filed which led a federal judge to block Bidens order halting certain deportations for 100 days.

TEXAS TAKE: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox

Bidens White House has said the deportation pause was meant to give the Department of Homeland Security time to recalibrate and focus on the highest enforcement priorities for securing the southwest border and national security.

Now Paxton is targeting the administrations early steps in redefining its goals.

The Biden administration took steps to narrow deportation targets that the Trump administration had broadened to include immigrants without serious criminal records. Homeland Security in February issued temporary guidance to only go after those with aggravated felonies, people considered national security threats or those who crossed the border illegally after Nov. 1.

Paxtons lawsuit claims the guidance has led Immigration and Customs Enforcement to revoke dozens of requests from Texas jails to detain immigrants. The federal government has also declined to take custody of some it had previously sought, the lawsuit says.

Of course, the States of Texas and Louisiana must do what they can to protect their citizens, so some of these criminal aliens have remained in state custody at the states expense, the lawsuit says.

Immigration attorneys and advocates were questioning that move on Tuesday.

Leon Fresco, an immigration attorney in Washington, D.C., said that unless the state was jailing them for a separate crime, they have no legal justification to hold them after ICE rescinds detainer requests.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy counsel at the American Immigration Council  a D.C. think tank that opposed Trumps immigration policies  called it the worst political theater.

Uh, is Texas admitting *in their lawsuit* to illegally holding people after theyve finished serving their sentences, in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment? Reichlin-Melnick tweeted. If so, that is just flagrantly unconstitutional.

Paxtons office did not respond to a request for more information on those still in custody.

Paxton, meanwhile, says the administration failed to give Texas warning about the change in policy, despite an enforcement agreement with DHS that says the state will help with immigration enforcement, but requires DHS to consult Texas before taking administrative actions.

Fresco said the courts have tended to grant presidents freedom in deciding enforcement priorities, though he said Paxtons arguments are new.

At the end of the day, the administration has broad discretion over who to deport, when to deport them and for what reason to deport them, Fresco said.

The lawsuit comes as Texas Republicans have sought to keep a focus on an influx of migration at the border that they call a crisis of Bidens creation  blaming his shifting immigration policies, despite the fact that border crossings were on the rise while Trump was still in office and similar surges have occurred in past years, including 2019 and 2014.

The Biden administration has said it is still turning away the majority of those seeking to enter the country at the southern border, though thousands of migrant children and a growing number of families seeking asylum have been let in.

Paxton, who was indicted by a grand jury in 2015, is still awaiting trial on state securities fraud charges. He is also the focus of an FBI investigation into allegations that he used his office to benefit a political donor. Paxton has denied wrongdoing in both cases.

ben.wermund@chron.com
President Joe Biden talks to a person receiving a COVID-19 vaccination shot as he visits a vaccination site at Virginia Theological Seminary, Tuesday, April 6, 2021, in Alexandria, Va. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Joe Biden announced Tuesday that he's bumping up his deadline by two weeks for states to make all adults in the U.S. eligible for coronavirus vaccines. But even as he expressed optimism about the pace of vaccinations, he warned Americans that the nation is not yet out of the woods when it comes to the pandemic.

"Let me be deadly earnest with you: We aren't at the finish line. We still have a lot of work to do. We're still in a life and death race against this virus," Biden said in remarks at the White House.

The president warned that " new variants of the virus are spreading and they're moving quickly. Cases are going back up, hospitalizations are no longer declining." He added that "the pandemic remains dangerous," and encouraged Americans to continue to wash their hands, socially distance and wear masks.

Biden added that while his administration is on schedule to meet his new goal of distributing 200 million doses of the vaccine during his first 100 days, it will still take time for enough Americans to get vaccinated to slow the spread of the virus.

But he expressed hope that his Tuesday announcement, that every adult will be eligible by April 19 to sign up and get in a virtual line to be vaccinated, will help expand access and distribution of the vaccine. Some states already had begun moving up their deadlines from the original May 1 goal.

President Joe Biden applauds as a person receives a COVID-19 vaccination shot as he visits a vaccination site at Virginia Theological Seminary, Tuesday, April 6, 2021, in Alexandria, Va. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

"No more confusing rules. No more confusing restrictions," Biden said.

Biden made the announcement after visiting a COVID-19 vaccination site at Immanuel Chapel at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria. During his visit, he thanked everyone for administering the shots and for showing up to receive them.

"That's the way to beat this," Biden said. "Get the vaccination when you can."

The president also said no one should fear mutations of the coronavirus that are showing up in the U.S. after being discovered in other countries. He acknowledged that the new strains are more virulent and more dangerous, but said "the vaccines work on all of them."

Biden also announced that 150 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been shot into arms since his inauguration on Jan. 20. That puts the president well on track to meet his new goal of 200 million shots administered by his 100th day in office on April 30.

President Joe Biden delivers remarks about vaccinations, in the State Dining Room of the White House, Tuesday, April 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Biden's original goal had been 100 million shots by the end of his first 100 days, but that number was reached in March.

Still, he acknowledged Tuesday that his administration fell short of its goal to deliver at least one shot to every teacher, school staff member and childcare worker during the month of March, to try to accelerate school reopenings. Biden announced the target early last month and directed federal resources toward achieving it, but said Tuesday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that about 80% of teachers, school staff and childcare workers had received a shot.

Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, also spent the day Tuesday focused on promoting the COVID-19 vaccine, each touring a vaccination center, Harris in Chicago and Emhoff in Yakima, Washington.

Harris praised the workers and those receiving their vaccine at a site set up at a local union hall, and spoke of spring as "a moment where we feel a sense of renewal."

"We can see a light at the end of the tunnel," she said.

President Joe Biden delivers remarks about vaccinations, in the State Dining Room of the White House, Tuesday, April 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Some states are making plans to ease their health restrictions, even as the country is facing a potential new surge in virus cases.

On Tuesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, warned that the country is in a "critical time" because "we could just as easily swing up into a surge."

"That would be a setback for public health, but that would be a psychological setback, too," he said during an interview with the National Press Club. He noted that Americans are experiencing "COVID-19 fatigue" after more than a year of lockdowns and restrictions to public life aimed at slowing the spread of the virus.

Biden and many of his advisers have warned against reopening the economy too quickly and easing mask mandates, at the risk of driving a fresh surge in virus cases.

"We just don't want to have to go back to really shutting things down. That would be terrible," Fauci said.

President Joe Biden speaks with health care workers as he visits a vaccination site at Virginia Theological Seminary, Tuesday, April 6, 2021, in Alexandria, Va. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

But Biden's announcement of the April 19 deadline was aimed at injecting optimism into a public that's grown weary of the restrictions, and it comes as a flood of vaccine is being sent to states this week.

Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus coordinator, told governors Tuesday during a weekly conference call that more than 28 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines will be delivered to states this week, White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced at her daily briefing.

That allocation brings the total amount of vaccine distributed over the past three weeks to more than 90 million doses, Psaki said.

At least a dozen states opened eligibility to anyone 16 and older on Monday alone, while New Jersey and Oregon announced this week that all residents 16 and older will become eligible on April 19.

The president had announced just last week that 90% of adults would be eligible for one of three approved COVID-19 vaccines by April 19, in addition to having a vaccination site within 5 miles of their home.

President Joe Biden delivers remarks about vaccinations, in the State Dining Room of the White House, Tuesday, April 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Joe Biden delivers remarks about vaccinations, in the State Dining Room of the White House, Tuesday, April 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

But eligibility isn't the same as actually being vaccinated. Being eligible means people can sign up to reserve their place in a virtual line until they can schedule an appointment.

"That doesn't mean they will get it that day," Psaki said, speaking of a vaccine shot. "It means they can join the line that day if they have not already done that beforehand."

Seniors still waiting to be vaccinated should seek appointments quickly "because the lines are going to become longer" after April 19, Psaki said. "There are going to be more people waiting."

The White House said Monday that nearly 1 in 3 Americans and over 40% of adults have received at least one shot, and nearly 1 in 4 adults is fully vaccinated. Seventy-five percent of people older than 65 have now received at least one shot, and more than 55% of them are fully vaccinated.

Two of the three vaccines requires two doses administered several weeks apart. The third vaccine requires just one shot.

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.
Chennai, April 7 : Actor-turned-politician R. Sarathkumar and his actor-producer Radhikaa were sentenced to a one-year jail term by a special court here in a cheque bouncing case.

A firm Magic Frames in which Sarathkumar a former law maker, Radhikaa and Listin Stephen had borrowed Rs.1.5 crore from Radiance Media in 2014.

Sarathkumar had also borrowed Rs.50 lakh from Magic Frames.

The cheques issued by Sarathkumar as repayment of the loan bounced and hence the case.

Hearing the case, the special court sentenced Sarathkumar, Radhikaa and Stephen for one year jail term.

Sarathkumar has floated the AISMK party and has aligned with actor Kamal Haasan floated Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM) party for the April 6 Tamil Nadu assembly polls.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 21:06:55|Editor: huaxia

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BAGHDAD, April 7 (Xinhua) -- A total of 60 militants of the Islamic State (IS) group were killed in earlier airstrikes in a mountainous area in Salahudin province, north of Iraq's capital Baghdad, the Iraqi military said on Wednesday.

The Iraqi aircraft, in coordination with the Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS), conducted airstrikes on IS hideouts on March 25 in Himreen mountain range, leaving 60 IS militants killed, Yahia Rasoul, spokesman of the Commander-in-Chief of the Iraqi forces, said in a statement.

On March 24, Rasoul said in a statement that the Iraqi security forces, backed by U.S.-led coalition and Iraqi aircraft, launched the offensive on March 9 and continued for 14 days in the Makhmour mountain range in Iraq's northern province of Nineveh, destroying 120 IS positions and killing 27 IS militants.

According to Rasoul, March's offensive forced the IS militants to flee to alternative hideouts in Himreen Mountain in Salahudin province.

The mountains and vast rugged areas north of Baghdad have witnessed intense activities of the IS militants during the past months, despite repeated military operations to hunt them down.

The security situation in Iraq has been improving since Iraqi security forces fully defeated the IS militants across the country late in 2017.

However, IS remnants have since melted in urban areas or deserts and rugged areas, carrying out frequent guerilla attacks against security forces and civilians. Enditem
GUANGZHOU, China, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- China International Furniture Fair (Guangzhou) ("CIFF Guangzhou") wrapped up its highly successful 47th edition on March 31. Held over eight days, across 750,000 sqm of exhibition space, the 47th edition of CIFF Guangzhou welcomed 4,000 exhibitors and over 357,809 visitors, a 20.17% increase compared with the pre-pandemic edition in 2019. At the same time, CIFF's online exhibition platforms garnered over 7.6 million views.

CIFF Guangzhou brought together brands and attendees from the industry's upstream and downstream with dozens of cutting-edge themed exhibitions and forums, ranging from high-end design and the latest styles to material trends and smart technologies. Focused on the full supply chain from design to manufacturing and consumers, the fair covered multiple segments: home furniture, home decor and home textiles, outdoor leisure, office furniture, furniture machinery and raw materials.

"The needs and requirements of the furniture industry have evolved in the context of the pandemic. That's why this year, CIFF Guangzhou promoted the value of original design while creating an upgraded business model in touch with the latest circumstance. Our goal is to improve quality while maintaining stability, nurture design innovation, connect the extraordinary domestic market with export opportunities, strengthen the industry chain, and improve digital services," said Xu Bing, Deputy Director of China Foreign Trade Center.

Earlier this year, CIFF Guangzhou launched a repositioning strategy anchored in "design trends, global trade, full supply chain", which highlights the role of original design in the furniture industry. It invited prominent design players from all over the country to participate in the exhibition and hosted a number of design-related themed exhibitions and events, such as the CIFF Design Spring, CMF Trend LAB, and D2M Lab. Fully leveraging the advantages of its exhibition platform, CIFF Guangzhou strengthened the connection between exhibitors and leading designers with multiple activities in different forms.

In a bid to empower and strengthen cross-border cooperation, CIFF Guangzhou organized multiple forums and events to explore trade opportunities. In addition, CIFF also hosted an online meeting for overseas buyers this year, creating a cloud-based bridge for exhibitors to connect with overseas merchants who could not attend in person and share domestic and international development opportunities. By integrating the full supply chain and tapping into its omni-channel resources, CIFF Guangzhou has supported the world's furniture industry to embrace innovation and development in the post-pandemic era.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1481560/CIFF_47_1.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1481574/CIFF_47_2.jpg
An explosion destroyed the front of a Philadelphia row home Tuesday, and a passerby rushed in through the flames to save a 61-year-old mans life.

The blast occurred around 1:20 p.m. at Algard and Levick streets in Northeast Philadelphia, echoing what neighbors described as a big bang through the neighborhood, NBC 10 is reporting.

Rakym Dyer was visiting the neighborhood when the explosion happened, and he told NBC 10 that he knew someone was inside.

I heard him crying and screaming so I went to help him out the best I could, Dyer told the station.

He had to put out the flames that were spreading on the stairs first. He told NBC 10 he then rushed upstairs and found a man who was on fire, so Dyer found an extinguisher and used that to put out the flames on the 61-year-old.

He picked him up, put him on his shoulder and carried him downstairs, reports indicate.

I cant believe I went in there. But once I heard people screaming, I wanted to go help him, Dyer told NBC 10. I would want someone to help my mom or my grandpop or somebody like that. Or my friend.

The 61-year-old was rushed to the hospital and is in stable condition, and a second man was treated for smoke inhalation, reports indicate.

Fire crews rushed to the scene and found the front of the building missing and collapsed with the second floor on fire, reports indicate.

Crews got the fire under control in about a half hour. The explosion left debris and bricks all around, according to reports.

What caused the explosion is not yet known. The incident is under investigation.
Hendrickson said he would love to see a 40% turnout for consolidated elections. Presidential elections usually draw out 75% to 80% of voters in Kankakee County, and the gubernatorial race draws 65% to 70% of voters, he said. But municipal election candidates could never match the financial contributions of presidential or gubernatorial races, he said, creating a mismatch in how much information is available on local candidates.
Frontrunners for Tibet's next exile leader Penpa Tsering (left) and Aukatsang Kelsang Dorjee (right) are shown in undated photos.

Tibetans living outside their China-ruled homeland will go to the polls April 11 in a third and final casting of ballots for leader, or Sikyong, of Tibets Dharamsala, India-based exile government, the Central Tibetan Administration, with final results announced on May 14.

Lobsang Sangay, a Harvard-trained scholar of law, has served two consecutive five-year terms as Sikyong, an office filled by candidates elected since 2011 by popular vote, and will leave that post when his present term expires in May.

The Tibetan diaspora is estimated to include about 150,000 people living in 40 countries, mainly India, Nepal, North America, and in Europe.

Penpa Tsering, a former speaker of Tibets exile parliament, and Aukatsang Kelsang Dorjee, a former representative of Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lamafrontrunners in the current race after prevailing in earlier votingare pledging strengthened efforts to win greater freedom in Tibet, with plans for outreach to foreign governments and support groups worldwide.

Tibets new Sikyong must continue to push for talks with China on greater autonomy for Tibet, but I am not very hopeful that the Chinese government will initiate a dialogue with the Tibetan administration, Aukatsang said, speaking to RFAs Tibetan Service in a recent interview.

So we must work towards enhancing the Tibetan freedom struggle, and the Tibetan administration must focus more on that struggle than on the administration alone, Aukatsang said. Engaging and garnering support from the Indian government and its citizens is something I will work more towards.

Also speaking to RFA, Penpa Tsering promised to pursue all possible ways to communicate with China, whether its directly or indirectly.

But until Tibets issue is resolved, my primary focus of work will be to make sure that Tibetans inside Tibet are happy, and also to find ways to reject Chinas assimilationist policies on Tibets language, culture, religion, and environment, along with the growing influx of Chinese [migrants] into Tibetan areas.

These issues will remain the most important, and only after these will come the issue of looking after the welfare of the Tibetans living exile, Tsering said.

Parliament members chosen

The May 14 election results will also seat 45 members of the exile Tibetan Parliament in its new, seventeenth session, with 10 candidates representing each of Tibets three traditional provincesU-tsang, Kham, and Amdoand two representatives from each of Tibets four major schools of Buddhism and the pre-Buddhist Bon religion.

Two members will also be voted in to represent each of the exile Tibetan communities in North and South America and Europe, and one from Australia and Asia, excluding India, Nepal, and Bhutan.

In interviews with RFA, Tibetan residents of India expressed different levels of familiarity with the candidates on offer, with some saying they were well informed, and others admitting to confusion.

Ive thoroughly studied the background of all these candidates, because they will be representing six million Tibetans, said Lobsang Lungtok, a resident of South India, including in that figure the number of Tibetans still estimated to be living in their traditional homeland.

I want honest and dedicated persons to be present [in parliament], he said.

Because there are so many candidates running for parliament, I am very confused, Tenzin Choekyi, another South India resident, said. Therefore, I am relying on the news media and social media such as Facebook to help me make my decisions.

Formerly an independent nation, Tibet was invaded and incorporated into China by force 70 years ago, following which the Dalai Lama and thousands of his followers fled into exile 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 Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) and the Dalai Lama have instead adopted a policy approach called the Middle Way, which accepts Tibets status as a part of China but urges greater cultural and religious freedom, including strengthened language rights, for Tibetans living under Beijings rule.

Both frontrunners in the current contest for Sikyong support the Middle Way.

Partial success seen

The outgoing Sikyong, Lobsang Sangay, has had some success in his two terms of office, winning an annual commitment from the United States of $9 million and a large grant from Congress to support the Tibetan exile community, two Western experts on Tibet wrote in a March 31 article in East Asia Forum.

But Sangay had no success in the exiles primary objective: persuading China to allow Tibet a high degree of autonomy in return for the Dalai Lama accepting Chinese sovereignty over his former country, said Robert Barnet, of Londons School of Oriental and African Studies, and Cornell Universitys Allen Carlson.

The challenge facing Tibets exile leadership now will be to move away from media campaigns and appeals for legislative support to detailed, pragmatic strategies demonstrating shared interests with [other] governments, Barnett and Carlson wrote, adding that deepened relations with Indias leaders will be especially important.

But while Indias hospitality towards the exiles has been unwavering, its strategic interests generally converge with those of the exiles only when its relations with China sour, they wrote.

A strategy needs to be developed that is seen by New Delhi as benefiting its interests in fair weather or foul," Barnet and Carlson said.

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.

Reported by Kalden Lodoe and Tashi Wangchuk for RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Written in English by Richard Finney.
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New Delhi: An e-Challan is a software application having Android based mobile app and web interface. It has been developed for the purpose of providing an comprehensive solution for Transport Enforcement Officers and Traffic Policemen as well as to offer convenience to vehicle owners.

What is e-challan?

e-challan is end to end automated system with digital interface is integrated with Vahan and Sarathi applications and provides a number of user-friendly features while covering all major functionalities of related to the Traffic System.

A Delhi police traffic website outlines the following customized interfaces for the stakeholders:

 Enforcement officers

 Citizens (private or commercial car owners/drivers)

 State transport office

 Regional transport/Traffic office

 NIC admin

 Ministry of Road and Transport

The application introduces a novel concept of using mobile based app for issuing e-Challan. The mobile based access to the system is available only to enforcement officers through android smart phones. While the web based access is available to all the rest of the stakeholders, mobile based access ensures the services are available anytime anywhere. This application is built in line with the requirements of Vahan 4 and Sarathi 4 and shall be accessing and updating data from/to national databases.

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) introduced Parivahan web interface for tracking digital traffic and challan solution using which you check your e-challan status online.

How to check e-challan status online?

Visit https://echallan.parivahan.gov.in/

You can choose various options like Challan Number, Vehicle Number or DL Number to check status of e-challan.

After choosing the required option punch in the captcha code and select 'Get Details'.

Live TV

#mute
SALISBURY, England, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Ploughshare Innovations, the technology transfer office for the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), is pleased to announce the appointment of a new Non-Executive Director to its board.

Ploughshare is pleased to welcome Rebecca Saunders Jones to its board. Rebecca is the Chief of Staff to the Division Head of Dstl's new Exploration Division and brings expertise in strategic development, business operations and organisational change.

Simon Devonshire, Chairman of Ploughshare Innovations, on welcoming Rebecca said:

"The UK Government invests billions of pounds in scientific research. Ploughshare helps identify and deploy innovations to benefit society and our customers most. Given Becca's extensive career and leadership at Dstl, we look forward to harnessing her expertise to maximise that positive impact."

Rebecca, who has a technical background in Human and Social Science, spent the first part of her career providing advice to defence and security customers on the design of military vehicles.

Since joining Dstl 13 years ago, she has followed a career in leading people and capabilities, and initiating organisational change programmes. The strategic direction aspect of her role has seen her have a leading responsibility in establishing Dstl's Exploration Division, which aims to bring organisations together to identify, assess and promote novel technology, concepts, systems and strategy for defence and security.

Rebecca, who is passionate about unlocking the potential in other people and organisations, said:

"Ploughshare Innovations is embarking on a new strategic direction and I am thrilled to be part of the team that will truly unlock the potential of this business. Ploughshare is a hub for fantastic defence and security innovations that can benefit wider society, and I am looking forward to using my knowledge and networks to ultimately get the best scientific discoveries into mass adoption."

Rebecca was appointed to the Ploughshare board in February 2021.

Notes to editors

Dstl unveils new Exploration Division

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/dstl-unveils-new-exploration-division

About Ploughshare Innovations

Ploughshare Innovations is the technology transfer organisation for the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl). It turns 'swords into ploughshares' by enabling businesses to gain access to defence and security technology developed by leading government laboratories. Ploughshare ensures Government technology is put to good use and benefits the UK, society as a whole, and humanity by applying innovative technology to improve people's lives. Since its creation in 2005, the company has licensed more than 120 technologies and attracted 140 million of investment. www.ploughshareinnovations.com

About Dstl  The science inside UK defence and security

The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) delivers high-impact science and technology (S&T) for the UK's defence, security and prosperity.

Dstl is an Executive Agency of the MOD with around 4,500 staff working across four sites; Porton Down, near Salisbury, Portsdown West, near Portsmouth, Fort Halstead, near Sevenoaks, and Alverstoke, near Gosport.

What we do:

Research  original research and concepts, creating new capabilities for defence and security

Requirements and Evaluation  Dstl S&T support to assess, evaluate and deliver current and next generation capabilities

Specialist Advice & Services  our knowledge and facilities are ready to meet priority needs

Operational Support  rapid and deployed S&T to meet the urgency of operations

Dstl is a proven national asset, giving the UK clear advantage across science, technology, cyber and information.

SOURCE Ploughshare Innovations
The smartphone image sensor market grew to $15 billion last year, up 13% year over year, according to data by Strategy Analytics. This is despite an 8.8% decrease in smartphone shipments compared to 2019.

Sony remains the market leader with a 46% share. The company improved its numbers compared to the first half of 2020 when it had a 44% share. However, its dominance continues to be challenged by Samsung.

The Koreans hold a 29% share as the second half of last year wasnt as kind to them as the first when they had a 32% slice. OmniVision is in third place with 10% (up from 9% in H1).

Sony suffered collateral damage as it is a key supplier to Huawei, whose shipments fell sharply last year (the company dropped out of the Top 5, the split with Honor didnt help the situation). The analysts predict that Sonys position will be increasingly under threat by its rivals.

Last year smartphones had a higher camera count on average with higher resolution sensors to boot. However, while the pandemic didnt decrease demand for sensors, SA warns that the global semiconductor shortage could cause issues.

The demand momentum for smartphone CIS, driven by the expansion of multiple cameras and superior photography capabilities in smartphones, will propel the image sensor market growth. However, the semiconductor shortages could create challenges in meeting the CIS demand, said Stephen Entwistle, Vice President of the Strategic Technologies Practice at Strategy Analytics.

Source
Aveva, a global leader in industrial software, has reinforced its continued commitment to drive Sustainability through its Action for Good program through which 1% of its after-tax profits go to assisting global communities.



As part of the program, employees at Aveva have committed to support three charities: WaterAid, CALM and Save The Children with initiatives that not only align to its Sustainability program but reflect the need to step up support for vulnerable populations disproportionately at risk from the negative impacts of the pandemic.



Transforming Millions of Lives with Clean Water



Through its products and innovation, Aveva empowers municipalities to maximize operating efficiency in water and wastewater facilities around the world. Beyond the positive impact it can have through its products, the company is committed to building a network of collaborators that can help us to reach those most in need on critical issues like access to clean water, one our areas of focus under the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals framework.



WaterAid, the international non-governmental organization that focuses on water, sanitation, and hygiene globally, was selected by Aveva employees to receive just over USD $100,000 equating to providing clean water for 5,000 people. WaterAid aims to use its donations to provide running water and sanitation to recipients in 28 countries, including Rwanda, Malawi, Niger, and Colombia.



Walking for Wellbeing



Improving employee wellbeing, with a focus on mental health, is another long-standing priority area for Avevas business. We recognize mental health issues have taken on increasing significance during the pandemic. In October 2020, Aveva employees came together to raise money while simultaneously spending time outdoors and in turn improving their own mental wellbeing.



Over 120 Aveva employees across Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) joined the Lost Hours Walk, organized by CALM (the Campaign Against Living Miserably), to increase awareness of suicide prevention. The organized walks raised enough money to fund 2,400 potentially life-saving calls.



Improving Education for The Next Generation



Avevas employees have also chosen to donate $130,000 to Save The Children which helps to improve the lives of children through better education, healthcare, and economic opportunities. Save The Children works in over 100 countries and just last year alone helped 1.7 million children and supported 88 health facilities and 23 hospitals.



Gemma Sherrington, Executive Director of Fundraising and Marketing, commented: I would like to say a huge thank you to all the staff at Aveva! We are incredibly grateful to everyone who voted for Save the Children to receive this amazing donation. The generous support of colleagues at Aveva will allow our colleagues in the UK, and around the world, to continue to help combat Covid-19 as well as continuing our other vital work.



Lisa Johnston, Chief Sustainability Officer, Aveva commented: The pandemic has exacerbated the need for humanity to step forward and rally around people and groups or communities who are underserved in a multitude of ways. Our employee wellbeing during this time has been fundamental and so we encourage our colleagues to commit their spare time to supporting both humanitarian and environmental initiatives, in line with our global Sustainability program.  TradeArabia News Service


The United States must remove all its sanctions against Iran in one step if it seeks to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said.

The Joint Commission of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known as the Iran nuclear deal, resumed talks in Vienna on Tuesday, with lifting sanctions on Iran and nuclear implementation measures at the top of the agenda.

"They (Americans) have left the JCPOA, and they have imposed sanctions. So obviously if they want to come back, they will have to lift all those sanctions, all together, in one step," Araqchi, who led the Iranian delegation in the Vienna talks, told Press TV.

Meanwhile, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency, Araghchi told the commission meeting that lifting U.S. sanctions is the first and most necessary step to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.
Complaints about parcel delivery cover are rocketing as couriers wriggle out of paying customer claims.

Most major delivery firms offer people the option to pay extra to cover their packages against theft and damage.

But the small print is littered with dozens of exclusions, leaving customers out of pocket when they try to get their money back.

While it's common for couriers to offer free cover for low-value parcels, some will charge 100 for more valuable items.

Most major delivery firms offer people the option to pay extra to cover their packages against theft and damage. But the small print is littered with dozens of exclusions

Experts have slammed the plans as 'virtually useless' for many customers.

One of the companies, DPD, refuses to pay out for more than 170 selected items, including alcoholic drinks, watches and tickets for events.

In some cases, customers have reported being sold worthless cover online even after specifying the item they are sending.

Complaints about parcel cover have soared 139 per cent over the past two years, with 1,989 gripes recorded by complaints site Resolver last year.

Each courier has its own excluded items list; this typically includes plants, glasses and jewellery.

But TNT will not cover the full value of laptops, while DHL has antiques, works of art and silverware on its list. Royal Mail courier Parcelforce excludes electric scooters and hoverboards.

Alex Neill, Resolver chief executive, says: 'People are increasingly reliant on delivery companies for sending gifts to loved ones and arranging the safe delivery of vital supplies.

TNT will not cover the full value of laptops whilst Parcelforce excludes electric scooters

So, it's disappointing to see big-name firms with pages of sneaky exclusions that render this cover virtually useless.'

As such companies offer 'compensation cover', rather than insurance, unhappy customers cannot take their complaints to the Financial Ombudsman.

Dean Griffin was left almost 1,300 out of pocket after a camera he sent to Denmark was damaged.

He had paid Parcelforce Worldwide 42.75 for extra cover. But the firm rejected his claim because cameras were excluded in its small print.

Dean, 57, a business consultant from Kent, says: 'I couldn't believe it. I had stated what I was sending on the form.'

Parcelforce has since said that cameras are not in fact excluded, and now Dean has received a full payout.

A Parcelforce spokesman says: 'We have apologised to Mr Griffin. Although such errors are rare, we are making changes to our processes to prevent mistakes from happening in the future.'

f.parker@dailymail.co.uk
Small British chocolate makers emphasizing ethically sourced ingredients and bespoke batches became big sellers in Europe in recent years but have been nearly impossible to find there since January, David Segal reports for The New York Times.

We have customers complain to us all the time, Why cant I buy my favorite British chocolate? said Hishem Ferjani, the founder of Choco Dealer in Bonn, Germany, which supplies grocery stores and sells through its own website. We have store owners with empty shelves.

We have to explain, its not our fault, its not the fault of the producer. Its Brexit, he said.

Chocolate is Britains No. 2 food and drink export, after whiskey, according to the Food and Drink Federation. Chocolate exports to all countries hit $1.1 billion last year, and Europe accounts for about 70 percent of those sales. In January, exports of British chocolate to Europe fell 68 percent compared with the same period the year before.
White House Seeks to Create Legal Ways for Central Americans to Immigrate to US: Envoy

The White House is looking to create ways for would-be asylum seekers from Central Americawho may otherwise seek to make the perilous trek north and cross the border illegallyto enter into the United States lawfully, President Joe Bidens special envoy Ricardo Zuniga said on April 6.

Zuniga, Bidens envoy to the so-called Northern Triangle countries in Central AmericaGuatelamala, Honduras, and El Salvadorsaid on a state visit to Guatemala that the White House was looking to offer protections to migrants amid a push by Biden to reshape the U.S. border policy and as the administration struggles to cope with a sharp rise in illegal border crossings.

The surge in illegal immigration from the three Northern Triangle countries has become one of the biggest political challenges to the Biden administration, with Republicans blaming the wave of illegal border crossings on a rollback of Trump-era immigration policies and on messaging that many would-be migrants and human traffickers are interpreting as an invitation to come to the United States.

Recent Reuters interviews with nearly two dozen migrants and more than a dozen people identifying themselves as smugglers found that many would-be illegal immigrants believe that theyre welcome to enter and stay in the United States.

Theres 100 days of free passage across the border, a Guatemalan smuggler told Reuters, referring to one prevailing perception. Supposedly the president is letting children in, another told the outlet.

Biden has pushed back against the notion that the border is open, and said his administration is continuing to quickly expel most adults and families under a public health order imposed at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak. But the administration is allowing teens and children, at least temporarily, to stay in the country.

While the Biden administration has sought to portray the spike in illegal crossings as a seasonal phenomenon, officials have, at the same time, rolled out more aggressive communications in a bid to discourage would-be illegal immigrants, in apparent acknowledgment that the message wasnt getting through.

Dont come over, Biden said in a March 16 interview with ABC News when asked to articulate his message to would-be border crossers. Dont leave your town or city or community.

It is a message that Zuniga reinforced in Guatemala, saying at a press conference, I want to emphasize that the U.S. border is closed.

A day after meeting with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei, Zuniga met most of the Guatemalan governments senior cabinet ministers to discuss how to improve security as well as economic and societal conditions that drive Guatemalans to migrate.

We are here to also talk about the need and the efforts of the White House to create legal means for migration so that people do not have to use irregular and dangerous routes, Zuniga said.

We also want to make sure that there are ways and means of accessing protection for people who require that protection.

The idea of establishing a more robust U.S. immigration presence in Central American countries to process asylum claims was recently floated by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who last week took a helicopter and boat tour of the border.

To quell the flow of illegal immigrants across the southern border, Manchin suggested beefing up border security, establishing a 90-day moratorium on immigration, and setting up a framework that would provide a process for people in the Northern Triangle countries to apply to come to the United States legally.

They should be able to go through the asylum processthe vetting processand do all the things that are necessary before they come here, Manchin said. It would be safer. It would be much more humane. It would be much more cost-effective for each one of them, and the sacrifices they make.

Manchin also called for immigration reform, which he said he and Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) would discuss with members of the Biden administration upon returning to Washington.

The Northern Triangle countriesthe poorest in the Western Hemispherehave long struggled with chronic gang violence and expansive criminal networks, such as the notorious Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13.

The Biden administration has said that one of its plans for stemming the flow of illegal immigrants is to address the root causes by providing assistance to countries people seek to flee.

Creating jobs, health care, and education were topics we discussed yesterday with the president, Zuniga said at the press conference. We continued to talk about the need to create the conditions for Guatemalans to live their lives with dignity and hope here in Guatemala.

As part of this effort, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced on April 6 that its deploying a disaster assistance response team to respond to what it said were urgent humanitarian needs in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

The United States, through USAID, has provided approximately $112 million in life-saving humanitarian aidincluding emergency food assistance, nutrition services, safe drinking water, shelter, programs to help people earn an income, and disaster risk reduction programs. Of this, $57 million is for people in Guatemala, $47 million in Honduras, and $8 million in El Salvador, the agency said.

Zuniga will also visit El Salvador later this week and discussed migration in a comprehensive fashion with Honduran Foreign Minister Lisandro Rosales on April 2, according to a ministry statement on April 5.

U.S. authorities caught more than 171,000 illegal immigrants along the U.S.Mexico border in March, the highest monthly total in two decades and the latest sign of the mounting humanitarian challenge confronting Bidens administration.

At the same time, a Customs and Border Protection official said on April 5 that well over 100,000 illegal border crossers have evaded capture by patrol agents so far this year, adding to the alarm already raised around the growing number of monthly apprehensions.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Gemini North spectroscopically resolves a pair of quasars that are closer together than any yet discovered in the distant Universe

Astronomers have found two close pairs of quasars in the distant Universe. Follow-up observations with Gemini North spectroscopically resolved one of the distant quasar pairs, after their discovery with the Hubble Space Telescope and Gaia spacecraft. These quasars are closer together than any pair of quasars found so far away, providing strong evidence for the existence of supermassive black hole pairs as well as crucial insight into galaxy mergers in the early Universe.

The quasars in each of the two pairs are separated by just over 10,000 light-years, suggesting that they belong to two merging galaxies [1]. Double quasars are scientifically interesting but rare objects -- particularly in the most distant reaches of the Universe -- and these are the most distant quasars found that are so close together. We see these quasar pairs as they existed roughly 10 billion years ago [2].

"We estimate that in the distant Universe, for every one thousand quasars, there is one double quasar. So finding these double quasars is like finding a needle in a haystack," commented Yue Shen, an astronomer at the University of Illinois and lead author of the paper announcing this discovery.

Quasars are the intensely bright cores of distant galaxies, powered by the feeding frenzies of supermassive black holes [3]. These energetic objects profoundly affect galaxy formation and evolution, making observations of quasar pairs in the early Universe a unique way for astronomers to investigate the evolution of merging galaxies. Quasar pairs also provide a natural laboratory in which to study the processes leading to the formation of binary supermassive black holes.

"This truly is the first sample of dual quasars at the peak epoch of galaxy formation that we can use to probe ideas about how supermassive black holes come together to eventually form a binary," elaborated team member Nadia Zakamska of Johns Hopkins University.

Finding the two quasar pairs was a daunting challenge, requiring a new method that combined data from several space and ground-based telescopes, including the international Gemini Observatory, a Program of NSF's NOIRLab. Quasar pairs at such large distances can only be resolved by sharp-eyed telescopes such as Hubble or Gemini, but observing time on these telescopes is too valuable to use it to sweep through large areas of the night sky in search of rare astronomical objects.

To focus their search, the researchers first identified 15 quasars for further investigation using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a three-dimensional map of objects in the night sky. From this list of 15 quasars, they then used observations from the Gaia spacecraft to identify four potential quasar pairs [4]. Finally, these candidates were imaged with the Hubble Space Telescope, which visually resolved two quasar pairs, giving this novel method a success rate of 50%.

The team then used the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on Gemini North (located on Maunakea in Hawai'i) to verify the discovery and further investigate one of the quasar pairs [5]. The combination of the sensitivity of GMOS and superb observing conditions allowed the team to resolve individual spectra from both quasars in the pair [6]. These spectra provided the team with independent measurements of the distance to the quasars and their composition, as well as confirming that the two quasars are indeed a pair rather than a chance alignment of a single quasar with a foreground star.

"The Gemini observations were critically important to our success because they provided spatially resolved spectra to yield redshifts and spectroscopic confirmations simultaneously for both quasars in a double," explained Yu-Ching Chen, a graduate student at the University of Illinois who is on the discovery team. "This method unambiguously rejected interlopers due to chance superpositions such as from unassociated star-quasar systems."

While the team members are confident in their discovery, there is a small possibility that they have actually observed double images of single quasars. These astronomical doppelgangers can be formed by gravitational lensing, which occurs when an intervening massive galaxy distorts and splits the light from a distant object, often resulting in multiple images of that object. The researchers are convinced that this is highly unlikely, however, as they could not detect any foreground galaxies in their observations.

With their method successfully demonstrated, the researchers now plan to search for more quasar pairs, building up a census of double quasars in the early Universe.

"This proof of concept really demonstrates that our targeted search for dual quasars is very efficient," concluded Hsiang-Chih Hwang, a graduate student at John Hopkins University and the principal investigator of the Hubble observations. "It opens a new direction where we can accumulate a lot more interesting systems to follow up, which astronomers weren't able to do with previous techniques or datasets."

"This exciting investigation illustrates yet again the discovery potential of combining archived survey data with new, focused observations from state-of-the-art facilities," said Martin Still, Gemini Program Officer at NSF. "The international Gemini Observatory proved to be the ideal instrument to confirm the identity of these black holes and characterize their environment."

###

Notes

[1] By comparison, our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is around 100,000 light-years across.

[2] Distance and time are entwined in astronomy. The farther away astronomical objects are, the longer it takes for their light to reach us on Earth. In the Solar System, for example, it takes sunlight just over 8 minutes to reach Earth, meaning we see the Sun as it was 8 minutes ago. On a far grander scale, we can observe distant galaxies as they were billions of years ago -- offering astronomers a window onto the early Universe. One pair of quasars has a redshift of 2.17, and the pair that Gemini spectroscopically resolved has a redshift of 2.95.

[3] As these black holes consume infalling matter from their surroundings, they produce an intense torrent of radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum. The amount of energy released is enormous, enough to outshine entire galaxies, and makes quasars bright beacons in the night sky.

[4] The European Space Agency's Gaia spacecraft measures the positions and distances of astronomical objects with painstaking precision. Gaia measures how the positions of stars subtly shift as Earth orbits the Sun, an effect known as parallax. Distant quasars are much too far from Earth to have measurable parallaxes, but the researchers realized that quasar pairs could mimic the motion of nearby stars. While these quasar pairs appear to be single points in the Gaia data, random fluctuations in the brightness of each quasar could make the pair resemble a nearby star "jiggling" from side to side. Identifying quasars with this apparent jiggling motion provided the team with a list of quasar pair candidates for further investigation with Hubble.

[5] The Gemini observations were awarded through Director's Discretionary Time (DDT), a small portion of observing time that is reserved for testing new methods or responding to unexpected astronomical events. DDT can also be used for high-risk, high-reward observations -- such as the ones in this discovery.

[6] The emission spectrum of an astronomical object is a measure of how intensely the object emits light at different wavelengths. This can provide astronomers with insights into the properties of an object, such as its chemical composition, mass, temperature, and distance.

More information

This research was presented in the paper "A hidden population of high-redshift double quasars unveiled by astrometry" in the journal Nature Astronomy.

The team is composed of Yue Shen (Department of Astronomy and National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Yu-Ching Chen (Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Hsiang-Chih Hwang (Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University), Xin Liu (Department of Astronomy and National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Nadia Zakamska (Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University), Masamune Oguri (Research Center for the Early Universe, Department of Physics, and Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, University of Tokyo), Jennifer I-Hsiu Li (Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Joseph Lazio (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology), and Peter Breiding (Department of Physics and Astronomy, West Virginia University).

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 (in cooperation with DOE's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory). 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.

Links

Research paper

Photos of Gemini North

Space Telescope Science Institute press release

University of Illinois press release Contacts

Xin Liu

University of Illinois

Email: xinliuxl@illinois.edu

Yue Shen

University of Illinois

Email: shenyue@illinois.edu

Hsiang-Chih Hwang

Johns Hopkins University

Email: hchwang@jhu.edu

Nadia Zakamska

Johns Hopkins University

Email: zakamska@jhu.edu

Amanda Kocz

Press and Internal Communications Officer

NSF's NOIRLab

Cell: +1 626 524 5884

Email: amanda.kocz@noirlab.edu
General Assignment Reporter

Chris Mays is a general assignment reporter for the Brattleboro Reformer. He has been with New England Newspapers Inc. since 2012.
A LOVE affair with a married neighbour has cost a Harare woman her marriage after her husband exposed her during a surprise birthday party where her relatives were gathered.

Martha Mashizha was recently sent packing by her husband Tafadzwa Alimoso, a haulage truck driver, after being exposed for cheating with their neighbour, Danmore Matika. Mashizha was forced to leave the family house in Glen View without her belongings and her relatives were reported to have followed in shame.

Matika  a businessman based at Glen View Area 8 Complex  confirmed sending love messages to Mashizha, but said the latter had four other lovers.

It is true that my messages to Mashizha were exposed, but her husband has not confronted me about it, said Matika. From what I have discovered, Mashizha has been seeing four other men and this was also exposed.

I have since stopped communicating with her and I heard that she was forced to pack her bags, but some of her belongings are still there.

From what I heard, it was not her first time to be exposed and she was forgiven before; maybe she might come back, said Matika.

He told H-Metro that Alimosos brothers and sisters teamed up to beat up his workers without confronting him.

On the day in question, Alimosos team deflated my vehicle tyres and I am yet to lodge a police report against them since they are now facing assault charges against my workers.

They claimed that they were looking for me and the case is under police investigation. Vakasvika pabasa pangu vachinzi vaida kundirova vakawana ndisipo kwavakurova vashandi vangu asi ini ndinogara panext door.

The whole neighbourhood is awash with the story, but to be honest, none of them decided to seek my comment about it.

Thank you H-Metro for seeking my side of the story and I am not happy with the attack on my workers considering that I stay next to their house.

A visit to Alimosos place saw him in a meeting with his relatives that included his mother and he confirmed the story.

Yes, there is an issue with our neighbour, but I want to know the person or people who took it to the media nekuti ini handiite zvemanewspaper, said Alimoso.

You can pen down what you have been told by those people talking about it and I will not allow any of my relatives including my mother to give a comment about it, said Alimoso.

Ndiye Taffy wacho ari kutaurwa nezvake; saka mamuona uye manzwawo zvaataura?

Alimosos mother said soon after his comment. Mashizha, a mother of four, could not be reached for comment and was reported to have been taken to her village.

One of the neighbours had no kind words for Alimoso, who would lie to his wife that he had gone to work for days.

No, we do not support Mashizhas illicit affair, but Alimoso has been taking days claiming to be at work leaving his wife sex-starved. We need our husbands close to us daily, she said. H Metro
Fremantle has announced an independent review of Neighbours following statements made by Indigenous actors Shareena Clanton and Meyne Wyatt.

Chris Oliver-Taylor, CEO Fremantle Asia Pacific, said: Fremantle is committed to providing an environment where employees and others in the workplace are treated fairly and with respect, and are free from unlawful discrimination, harassment, victimisation and bullying.

We do not tolerate behaviour that does not align to our Anti-Discrimination, Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO), Harassment & Bullying Policy and take all complaints very seriously, investigating all allegations fairly and thoroughly.

We have asked Campfire X, creative leaders in Indigenous Cultural Protocols, to conduct an independent review of Neighbours and the production process.

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The company recently signed a 10-year contract with Evergy Inc., which serves about 1.6 million customers in Kansas and Missouri, to buy energy generated at a wind farm in Kansas for its site in St. Joseph. The change will reduce carbon emissions at the site by 76 percent as part of a broader company commitment to environmental sustainability nationwide.

In North Brunswick, N.J., a Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health research and development site has transitioned to renewable energy by purchasing green power. A poultry-vaccine manufacturing plant in Gainesville, Ga., is on pace to become Boehringer Ingelheim's first major U.S. production site to go carbon neutral.

A company site in Barceloneta, Puerto Rico, plans to reduce its carbon footprint by about 30 percent a year by using natural gas to generate electricity. That process will create steam and hot water that the site will use in its everyday operations.

Boehringer Ingelheim's U.S. headquarters in Ridgefield, Conn., which employs about 2,500 people, transitioned to renewable energy last year.

In St. Joseph, Gainesville and Ridgefield, the company has taken a variety of other steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, installing LED lights and solar panels and implementing numerous projects to increase energy efficiency at several U.S. sites.

"From reducing our carbon footprint to reducing the amount of electricity and water we use, we are dedicated to providing a more sustainable future for the people and animals we serve and the communities where we live and work," said Jean-Michel Boers, President and CEO of Boehringer Ingelheim USA Corp.

Renewable-energy use has tripled in the United States in the last 20 years to account for 11 percent of U.S. energy consumption, the U.S. Energy Information Administration says. Renewable energy plays an important role in reducing the greenhouse-gas emissions that contribute to climate change.

"Boehringer Ingelheim is committed to making a positive impact on the environment now and into the future," said Randolph Legg, President and Head of the Commercial Business at Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health USA Inc. "As a company that thinks in generations, we know that an investment in environmental sustainability will pay dividends for years to come."

Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health

The lives of animals and humans are interconnected in deep and complex ways. We know that when animals are healthy, humans are healthier too. Across the globe, our 9,700 employees are dedicated to delivering value through innovation, thus enhancing the well-being of both.

Respect for animals, humans and the environment guides us every day. We develop solutions and provide services to protect animals from disease and pain. We support our customers in taking care of the health of their animals and protect our communities against life- and society-threatening diseases.

Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health is the second largest animal health business in the world, with net sales of $4.7 billion (4.1 billion euros) in 2020 and presence in more than 150 countries.

Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health has a significant presence in the United States, with more than 3,100 employees in places that include Georgia, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, New Jersey and Puerto Rico. To learn more, visit www.boehringer-ingelheim.us, www.facebook.com/BoehringerAHUS or www.twitter.com/Boehringer_AH.

Boehringer Ingelheim

Making new and better medicines for humans and animals is at the heart of what we do. Our mission is to create breakthrough therapies that change lives. Since its founding in 1885, Boehringer Ingelheim has been independent and family owned. We have the freedom to pursue our long-term vision, looking ahead to identify the health challenges of the future and targeting those areas of need where we can do the most good.

As a world-leading, research-driven pharmaceutical company, with around 52,000 employees, we create value through innovation daily for our three business areas: Human Pharma, Animal Health, and Biopharmaceutical Contract Manufacturing.

In 2020, Boehringer Ingelheim achieved net sales of around $22.33 billion (19.57 billion euros). Our significant investment of over $4.2 billion (3.7 billion euros) in 2020 (18.9% of net sales) in R&D drives innovation, enabling the next generation of medicines that save lives and improve quality of life.

We realize more scientific opportunities by embracing the power of partnership and diversity of experts across the life-science community. By working together, we accelerate the delivery of the next medical breakthrough that will transform the lives of patients now, and in generations to come.

SOURCE Boehringer Ingelheim, Inc.

Related Links

https://www.boehringer-ingelheim.com


Bay of Plenty

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Acclaimed noir thriller centres around an ex-police inspector searching for his missing daughter in Iraq, 10:55pm Thursday on SBS.

The Equalizer

No Activity (US)

Territory Cops

Cook Like An Italian

Murdoch Mysteries

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In a memo to staffers, George Cheeks, chief executive of ViacomCBS CBS operations said the companys probe continues. I want to be very clear that the external investigation under the direction of Keisha-Ann Gray at Proskauer Rose is not over and will continue, he wrote. We appreciate those who have already provided information to the investigators. If you would like to share something you believe is relevant, please contact Ms. Gray directly via her assistant, Gayathri Menon. We want all voices to be heard. This entire process, while sometimes painful and emotional, is an important step forward in living up to our promise of a safe, inclusive, respectful and equitable workplace for all of us.
Civil rights leaders taught us that a riot is the voice of the unheard. Looking at cascading events in the North, one has to ask what has not been heard in terms of those responsible for the violence. No catalogue of grievance has ever been more thoroughly thumbed through than those of loyalists and nationalists.

Both sides have never been found wanting when it came to ventilating their causes. Yet things seem to be heading in an alarmingly downward spiral.

On Monday afternoon, masked loyalist bands marched through streets in towns, including Portadown, Ballymena and Markethill. The PSNI is investigating the marches, which appear not to have been notified to the Parades Commission.

Since Easter, 41 members of the Norths police service have been injured. Justice Minister Naomi Long described a toxic combination of issues which have been floating around. Ms Longs Alliance Party wants to recall the Stormont Assembly to discuss the emergency this week.

Commenting on children being involved in the street violence, Ms Long said it was entirely depressing another generation of young people could end up with criminal records.

The young children are a concern, certainly. But the silence of leaders, veterans who know all too well what happens when matches are left deliberately close to the powder keg  with no adult to deal with the explosive potential  borders on the chilling.

The PSNI finds itself under-fire from the community it is sworn to protect. You have the absurdity of unionist leaders decrying the attacks while at the same time calling for the removal of its chief constable.

Things are taking on familiar patterns. It is only a matter of time before there is loss of life. Stoking up bonfires of community outrage while leaders sit about fiddling and streets go up in flames, is both a desecration of the Good Friday Agreement and an affront to democracy.

Sinn Feins flouting of Covid restrictions for the Bobby Storey funeral was rightly and roundly condemned.

There was a judicial process and it was decided no charges could be filed.

This clearly offended unionists, but demanding the head of the police force will not do anything to secure stability at a time of grave tension.

As Ms Long said: When you accuse them (the PSNI) of two-tier policing... you make them a lightning conductor for peoples anger.

In terms of Brexit, unionist leaders also led the charge, even though a majority did not support it.

Now they have their wish, they are bitterly opposed to the Protocol essential to prevent a hard Border and protect trade.

Looking back on the peace process, one-time Northern secretary Mo Mowlam said: People working together can overcome many obstacles, often within themselves, and by doing so can make the world a better place.

It behoves all who hold office in the North to make it a better place, not worse.
At least 100 killed in border clashes between Ethiopia's Somali and Afar regions - official

A general view shows a mosque located in the outskirts of Sariir in Somali Region, Ethiopia (Photo : REUTERS/Giulia Paravicini/File Photo)

Border clashes between Ethiopia's Afar and Somali regions have killed at least 100 people, a regional official said on Tuesday, the latest outbreak of violence ahead of national elections in June.



Around 100 civilians were killed since clashes broke out on Friday and continued through Tuesday, Ahmed Humed, deputy police commissioner for the Afar region, told Reuters by phone. He blamed the violence on an attack by Somali regional forces.



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Ali Bedel, a spokesman for the Somali region, said 25 people had been killed on Friday and an "unknown number of civilians" died in a subsequent attack by the same forces on Tuesday.



Both sides deny having initiated the attacks and blame the other for the violence. Reuters could not verify whether the 25 deaths claimed by the Somali official were in addition to the 100 deaths or included in that figure.



Clashes along the border predate the six-month-old conflict in the north that has pitted the federal government against the former ruling party of the Tigray region.



Yet the violence has intensified just as Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's government is trying to assert control over Tigray - underscoring how the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize winner is struggling to keep the country together. The election is regarded as a litmus test for the country's fragile unity, challenged by many newly resurgent regional and ethnically based parties.



"The Somali region special forces ... attacked the areas of Haruk and Gewane using heavy weapons including machinegun and rocket-propelled grenades. Children and women were killed while they were sleeping," Ahmed said.



In 2014 the boundary between the two states was redrawn by the federal government, then headed by a multi-ethnic ruling coalition, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). Three small towns were transferred to Afar from Somali, which has since tried to win them back.



As a result militias from the two eastern states have clashed before over their disputed boundaries. In October last year 27 people were killed in a wave of clashes over the border, with each side blaming the other.


[April 07, 2021] Cavitation Technologies, Inc. Signs a Pilot Test Agreement with Island Breeze Farms

Chatsworth, CA, April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NewMediaWire -- Cavitation Technologies, Inc. (OTCQB: CVAT) (BERLIN: WTC) has signed a pilot test agreement with Island Breeze Farms. The agreement is meant to evaluate CVATs technology and the growth of healthier cannabis plants with increased crop yields. Island Breeze Farms is a Licensed Cannabis grower in Southern California, operating a 130,000 square foot greenhouse facility.

CVATs technology and nanotech water system substantially increases the amount of molecular oxygen in water. As cannabis plant roots absorb the molecular oxygen, Nano bubbles continue to replace lost oxygen, resulting in a stable elevated level of oxygen. This stable elevated level of oxygen produces a cleaner and more efficient method of irrigtion, resulting in healthier plants with increased crop yield. Additionally, cavitation processed water will create a healthy soil environment without bacteria and fungi.



Roman Gordon, Global Technology Manager, commented, This pilot test agreement is a huge opportunity for our Company as our technology may have substantial commercial value in the cannabis industry. The global cannabis cultivation market size is estimated to surpass $123.9 billion this year and domestically, U.S. farmers have been licensed to grow 511,442 acres of cannabis  a 455 percent increase over 2018 levels. In California alone there have been over 5,800 State growers licenses issued. By utilizing our nanotech water system cannabis growers will have cleaner feed water and should expect to see healthier plants and increased yields in their crops. About Cavitation Technologies, Inc.

Founded in 2007, the company designs and manufactures innovative flow-through devices and systems, as well as develops processing technologies for use in edible oil refining, renewable fuel production, water treatment, and alcoholic beverage enhancement. The company's patented Nano Reactor systems and various technologies have over 40 patents issued and filed both domestically and abroad. http://www.ctinanotech.com/ Follow us on Twitter for real time updates: https://twitter.com/CavitationTech Like us on Facebook to receive live feed updates: https://www.facebook.com/ctinanotech Forward Looking Statement This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "may," "should," "potential," "continue," "expects," "anticipates," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates," and similar expressions such as, should expect to see healthier plants and increased yields in their crops by utilizing the nanotech water system. These forward-looking statements are based largely on the Company's expectations and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond the Company's control. Actual results could differ materially from these forward looking statements as a result of a variety of factors including, among others, the state of the economy, the competitive environment and our ability to perform as anticipated and other factors described in our most recent Form 10-K and our other filings with the SEC, including subsequent periodic reports on Forms 10-Q and 8-K. In light of these risks and uncertainties there can be no assurances that the forward looking statements contained in this press release will in fact transpire or prove to be accurate. The information in this release is provided only as of the date of this release, and we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this release on account of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by law. Cavitation Technologies, Inc.

8187180905

info@ctinanotech.com



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The Department of Social Protection has issued a warning over a sophisticated telephone scam which cons people into handing over sensitive financial information.

It is the latest elaborate fraud scheme in recent months with people previously warned of bogus callers offering to privately administer Covid-19 vaccines.

Today officials warned of the most recent scam which involves a customer being phoned by a person purporting to be a named official within the Department of Social Protection.

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The scammer then claims that the person has had their PPS number compromised and asks for them to verify their name, PPS number and in some instances their bank account details

It has been described as a sophisticated scam by the Department who have urged people not to engage with the callers or return calls to the numbers involved.

They have also warned people not to share any personal information with the scam caller.

If a person is in any doubt, they should take the callers name and phone the Departments helpline number 1890 800 024 (between 9am and 5pm Monday to Friday), they advised today.

Similarly, people who are managing social welfare applications online are reminded to ensure that they are using official Departmental websites.

The Department wishes to make it absolutely clear that we never request bank account or other financial institution account details from our customers by phone or SMS, a statement said.

It is just the latest scam the public have been warned about in recent months.

Earlier this year gardai advised of a separate potential scam relating to the Covid-19 vaccine.

Gardai said theyd become aware of members of the public having received fraudulent text messages and calls regarding Covid-19 vaccinations.

The text messages made requests for people to confirm private and sensitive information such as PPS number, date of birth and address.

Other people have received phone calls requesting they make an appointment for a COVID-19 vaccine jab at a random hospital. In most cases, the person receiving the call will say they are not in a position to travel to the hospital, gardai earlier this year.

This allows the caller to extract further personal details. Some individuals might confirm that they live alone or reveal their home address. The caller will then offer to come to their residence to administer a vaccine.

Gardai warned that vaccines are issued for free and not available privately, while the HSE will not call or text a person looking for payment.
US Rep. Alcee Hastings Dies at 84; was Impeached as Judge

Rep. Alcee Hastings, the fiercely liberal longtime Florida congressman who was dogged throughout his tenure by an impeachment that ended his fast-rising judicial career, died Tuesday. He was 84.

Hastings death was confirmed by his chief of staff, Lale M. Morrison. Hastings, a Democrat from the Fort Lauderdale area, announced two years ago that he had pancreatic cancer.

Hastings was known as an advocate for minorities, a defender of Israel and a voice for gays, immigrants, women and the elderly. He held senior posts on the House Rules Committee and the Helsinki Commission, which works with other countries on a variety of multinational issues.

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President Joe Biden called Hastings a trailblazing lawyer whom he admired for his singular sense of humor, and for always speaking the truth bluntly and without reservation.

Alcee was outspoken because he was passionate about helping our nation live up to its full promise for all Americans, Biden said in his statement.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Hastings leadership and friendship will be missed by his many friends in Congress.

But throughout his career, Hastings impeachment remained a nagging footnote. It was repeatedly invoked in news accounts and seen as derailing his ambitions for a greater leadership role.

That seems to be the only thing of significance to people who write, Hastings told The Associated Press in 2013, predicting that the impeachment would be in the lead paragraph of his obituary.

Despite his seniority, Hastings was passed over for chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee when the Democrats took control of Congress in 2006. But as he did time and again throughout his life, he insisted his fight wasnt over and that he wouldnt be discouraged.

Sorry, haters, he said when not chosen for the intelligence posting, God is not finished with me yet.

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Under Florida law, Gov. Ron DeSantis will call a special election in the coming months to fill the vacancy. Hastings district is overwhelmingly Democratic  he received 80% of the vote in November.

Hastings death, meanwhile, lowers the Democrats majority to a scant 218-211 in the House. Their narrow margin is forcing the party to muster nearly unanimous votes to push legislation through the chamber, and is bolstering Republican hopes for capturing House control in the 2022 elections.

There are six vacancies  four from seats that were held by Democrats, two by Republicans.

The seat won by Rep.-elect Luke Letlow, R-La., who died from COVID-19 before being sworn into office, will go to his widow, Julia Letlow, who won a special election. The rest are expected to be retained by the same parties that had held them.

Born Sept. 5, 1936, in Altamonte Springs, Florida, a largely black Orlando suburb, Hastings was the son of a maid and a butler. He attended Fisk University and Florida A&M. After earning his law degree he went into private practice, frequently taking civil rights cases pro bono. He made an unsuccessful bid for the Senate in 1970, then earned a state judgeship.

In 1979, President Jimmy Carter named him to the federal bench. He was the first Black person to hold a federal judgeship in Florida since Reconstruction.

From the start, his career was marked by controversy. His harsh criticism of President Ronald Reagan, his appearance at a 1984 rally for then-presidential candidate Jesse Jackson and other moves considered unusual for a sitting federal judge raised questions about his impartiality. But Hastings insisted he was doing nothing wrong.

Outside the courtroom, I speak out because Im a citizen and I have the interests of a great number people of this country at heart, he said. I think its better to have public officials express themselves. I dont think being a judge means Im neutered.

It wasnt long, though, before his judicial career was derailed. He became the first sitting U.S. judge tried on criminal charges.

Along with Washington lawyer William Borders Jr., Hastings was accused of soliciting a $150,000 bribe from two convicted racketeers seeking to shorten their sentences. Hastings contended Borders solicited the bribe without his knowledge.

Borders was convicted and sentenced to five years. Hastings was acquitted, but it didnt put an end to questions about his ethics, and a judicial panel accused him of fabricating his defense. Though Hastings contended Congress actions amounted to double jeopardy, the House impeached him in 1988 and the Senate convicted him in 1989.

A federal judge later reversed the impeachment, saying Hastings was improperly tried by a 12-member panel instead of the full Senate, but his exoneration was short-lived. Ruling later in the case of another ousted judge, the Supreme Court decided 7-2 that courts could not second-guess the Senates power to remove federal officials from office.

By then, Hastings had already won a seat in Congress in 1992, taking his oath before the same body that had impeached him.

Like so many other moves in Hastings life, his path to Congress had been a high-profile fight. He won the seat after two bitter runoffs fueled by accusations of racism in the largely Black district.

At one point, in his heated race against Lois Frankel, he snapped to a reporter for The Palm Beach Post, The bitch is a racist. He went on to win, though, and was easily re-elected time after time.

Frankel earned her own ticket to Congress 20 years later as a Democratic colleague of Hastings. She called him a friend Tuesday.

He was a fierce fighter for civil rights and racial justice, and a great partner in Congress when it came to serving south Florida, Frankel said in a statement.

Hastings remained no stranger to controversy, even in recent years. In 2011, a former aide filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against him, claiming he constantly hugged her against her will, pressed his cheek against hers and suggested they go to his hotel room. Hastings called them ridiculous, bizarre, frivolous accusations.

The House Ethics Committee cleared Hastings in 2014, finding no substantial reason to believe the allegations and a significant amount of evidence casting doubt on them.

Ive enjoyed some of the fights, and even the process of being indicted and removed from the bench, he told the AP in 2013. All of those are extraordinary types of circumstances that would cause lesser people to buckle. I did not and I have not.
"Provider and patient friendly technology-enabled solutions are more important than ever as the demand for mental and behavioral health services continues to rapidly increase," said Kimberly O'Loughlin, CEO of Therapy Brands. "We are excited to welcome KKR as our new investor, which brings a deep understanding of the healthcare sector and extensive experience in scaling technology-enabled platforms. This support will help us accelerate our mission of making it easier for providers to navigate an increasingly complex administrative landscape so they can spend more time and focus on delivering improved outcomes for their clients."

Therapy Brands' technology platforms address the underserved practice management needs of mental and behavioral healthcare professionals, including psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, social workers, ABA clinicians, addiction specialists and physical, speech and occupational therapists. Across its portfolio of leading brands  including TheraNest, ShareNote, CodeMetro, AccuPoint,DataFinch, TenEleven, Procentive, Fusion Web Clinic, and A2C  Therapy Brands offers comprehensive and customized practice management and EHR services along with integrated capabilities for telehealth, data collection and interoperability, revenue cycle management, e-prescribing and payments. Therapy Brands' technologies are purpose-built, focused squarely on improving the patient experience and decreasing the administrative burden for practitioners so they can spend more time focused on the health and well-being of their clients and businesses.



"We are delighted to be backing Therapy Brands at a time when there is increasing recognition and social awareness about the importance of mental health," said Max Lin, a KKR Partner who co-leads the health care industry team for KKR's Americas Private Equity business. "Therapy Brands has developed an impressive portfolio of best-in-class software tools and mission-critical solutions to help mental health providers modernize their practices. We look forward to working with the team in accelerating the growth of the platform and finding additional ways of delivering enhanced value to its clinicians."

"We formed the Therapy Brands platform to bring comprehensive technology solutions to this important end market within our healthcare system," said Marco Ferrari, a Managing Director at PSG. "We have been thrilled with our partnership with the Therapy Brands team and look forward to continuing this journey alongside KKR."

KKR is making its investment in Therapy Brands primarily from its Americas XII Fund. The investment adds to KKR's experience of investing in leading behavioral healthcare businesses, including Blue Sprig Pediatrics and BrightSpring Health Services, and in high-growth healthcare-related technology companies such as WebMD (Internet Brands) and Clarify Health. KKR has also established a strong track record of supporting leading vertical market software companies including Autodata, Epicor Software Corporation, Ipreo, Mitchell, MYOB and OptimalPlus.

Mark F. Vassallo, Managing Partner of Lightyear, stated, "The investment in Therapy Brands reflects Lightyear's ongoing thematic focus on the intersection of tech-enabled financial services and healthcare. Under our ownership, Therapy Brands has more than tripled in size through a combination of strong organic growth and nine strategic acquisitions. It has been a pleasure working with Kimberly and the Therapy Brands team, and we wish them continued success."

William Blair and TripleTree are acting as financial advisors and Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP as legal advisor to Therapy Brands. Kirkland & Ellis LLP is serving as legal advisor to KKR.

About Therapy Brands

At a time when the topics of digital connectivity and access to care are at the forefront of the cultural conversation in the U.S., Therapy Brands is equipping practitioners with effective solutions to address the growing needs of mental and behavioral health, substance use recovery, applied behavior analysis and rehabilitation populations. Through purpose-built, fully integrated practice management and EHR solutions provided by Therapy Brands, healthcare providers can improve patient quality of care and support better health outcomes for those they serve. Therapy Brands is headquartered in Birmingham, AL. For more information, please visit us at www.therapybrands.com

About KKR

KKR is a leading global investment firm that offers alternative asset management and capital markets and insurance solutions. KKR aims to generate attractive investment returns by following a patient and disciplined investment approach, employing world-class people, and supporting growth in its portfolio companies and communities. KKR sponsors investment funds that invest in private equity, credit and real assets and has strategic partners that manage hedge funds. KKR's insurance subsidiaries offer retirement, life and reinsurance products under the management of The Global Atlantic Financial Group. References to KKR's investments may include the activities of its sponsored funds and insurance subsidiaries. For additional information about KKR & Co. Inc. (NYSE: KKR), please visit KKR's website at www.kkr.com and on Twitter @KKR_Co.

PSG

PSG is a growth equity firm that partners with middle-market software and technology-enabled services companies to help them navigate transformational growth, capitalize on strategic opportunities and build strong teams. Having backed more than 65 companies and facilitated over 275 add-on acquisitions, PSG brings extensive investment experience, deep expertise in software and technology, and a firm commitment to collaborating with management teams. Founded in 2014, PSG operates out of offices in Boston, Kansas City and London. To learn more about PSG, visit www.psgequity.com.

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Stefano Sollima, the Italian director of Without Remorse, starring Michael B. Jordan as Navy SEAL John Kelly, says he likes to tell stories that are about real humans; not superheroes. Sollimas latest film, an adaptation of the Tom Clancy novel, finds the Black Panther star pursuing justice and unleashing hell in a high-octane spectacle that launches globally on Amazon Prime on April 30.

Realism has been Sollimas signature since breaking out internationally with naturalistic Neapolitan mob TV series Gomorrah, followed by hyper-violent but humanistic Sicario: Day of the Soldado, his first major studio feature, and cocaine-smuggling skein ZeroZeroZero, which tracks a shipment of drugs from multiple perspectives across three continents.

When Jordans then-producer Alana Mayo contacted Sollima about directing Without Remorse, he asked her to find out if Michael B was ready to shoot a film in which all the action is actually done by him, says the director. Because, he explains, the way I work, it would be really hard to shoot with stuntmen. Jordan, who is also a producer on the pic, thought that was an interesting challenge and did the bulk of the stunts himself.

Another challenge in bringing Without Remorse to screen was modernizing the original script, written a decade ago by Shawn Ryan (The Shield), and changing the 1970s Vietnam setting of Clancys 1993 novel. For that task, Sollima brought in screenwriters Taylor Sheridan, with whom hed worked on Soldado, and Will Staples.

What I love about Clancys novel is that its about war, but war is [just] the backdrop, says Sollima. Its not so much war thats important as much as the reasons for war.

Clancys accuracy in recounting the inner workings of geopolitics and his descriptions of operationally perfect military procedures are what the director wanted to convey. We kept the spirit of the book intact, Sollima says. But while maintaining the soul of the plot, they made several notable changes.

Without Remorse is the origin story of John Clark, one of the most popular characters in Clancys Jack Ryan franchise who, in Remorse, is called John Kelly and subsequently changes his identity to John Clark.

In Sollimas adaptation, after Russian soldiers kill Kellys family  including his pregnant wife  due to Kellys role in a secret operation against them in Syria  he goes on a mission seeking justice for their murders. While pursuing the assassins along with fellow SEAL Karen Greer (Jodie Turner-Smith) and CIA agent Robert Ritter (Jamie Bell), Kelly begins to uncover an international conspiracy that threatens to spark a war between the U.S. and Russia.

To ensure authenticity, prior to the 14-week shoot, done mostly in Berlins Babelsberg Film Studio but also in Washington D.C., the actors attended a boot camp run by retired Marine Buck Doyle and staffed by a team of military veterans.

But theres one key detail in Without Remorse thats deliberately unrealistic.

Welcoming Sheridans suggestion  and departing from the book  Sollima and the Without Remorse team decided that Navy SEAL Commander Greer should be played by a woman, which isnt the current state of affairs within the U.S. military.

I thought it was something we should do, because its obvious that going forward this will happen, so we just brought ourselves a bit ahead of the curve, says Sollima, who praises Turner-Smith for making her role as leader of a male SEAL team credible. Narratively, whats most important is that Greers rapport with Kelly is purely platonic, the director explains. The team made sure to avoid any reason why she and John could connect in a way that went beyond sharing a job and [the] military mindset thats behind the job.

Its [just] a military comradeship, says Sollima. [We wanted] to build a relationship that would eliminate from anyones mind the definition of gender.

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An arbitrator with the states Department of Labor Relations has ordered Pittsfield to allow a City Hall employee to resume using a vehicle for commuting purposes. Use of the vehicle, which was a condition of employment, had been revoked in fall 2019.
Alex Salmond has accused Nicola Sturgeon of failing to press the case for independence urgently enough in her time as first minister.

Mr Salmond is hoping for a triumphant Holyrood comeback in Mays election as leader of his new pro-independence Alba Party.

Ms Sturgeons predecessor said she had been too cautious.

Speaking on BBC Radio Scotlands Good Morning Scotland programme on Wednesday, Mr Salmond said: I think in terms of urgency, in terms of getting on with that job, I am not certain why the case has not been pursued as urgently as it should have been over the last five years, but it should be pursued now.

He claimed there was a growing realisation in Scotland that that should be done, adding: People will get very frustrated if we return pro-independence majorities and nothing happens.

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The Alba Party is fielding candidates in all eight regions on Holyroods list ballot, and Mr Salmond believes his party can help see a supermajority of MSPs in favour of independence elected on 6 May.

He said: Now I think a supermajority ... gives a much better chance of it happening in the next parliament than it happening in the last parliament.

Ms Sturgeon has already made clear that if she is re-elected to power next month, her immediate focus will be on continuing to tackle the coronavirus crisis.

But Mr Salmond said: I think the first job of that new parliament, with its supermajority, should be to pass a resolution in week one, instructing the Scottish government to open negotiations with the UK government on Scottish independence, that is the sort of urgency we want to inject into the independence debate.

If it is a debate that is presented as a Tory prime minister against a Scottish parliament, representing the Scottish people, the new declaration of independence, then Scotland will have a fundamental advantage in these negotiations.

Thats the importance of getting a supermajority and the opportunity presented by this election.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 4 June 2021 Balloonists take flight during the opening of the Midlands Air Festival in Alcester, Warwickshire PA UK news in pictures 3 June 2021 Members of the Household Cavalry during the Major General's annual inspection of the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment in Hyde Park, London PA UK news in pictures 2 June 2021 Hannah Vitos of the Blenheim Art Foundation, poses for a photograph next to artist Ai Weiwei's Gilded Cage (2017) sculpture in the grounds of Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Britain Reuters UK news in pictures 1 June 2021 People swim in the Sky Pool, a transparent swimming pool bridge across two exclusive residential blocks standing next to the US Embassy in Nine Elms, in London, Tuesday, June 1, 2021 AP UK news in pictures 31 May 2021 People enjoy the hot weather at Brighton beach Reuters UK news in pictures 30 May 2021 People venture into the sea as they enjoy themselves during a hot day on Brighton Beach AP UK news in pictures 29 May 2021 Swimmers at the Stonehaven Open Air Pool in Aberdeenshire, which reopens after lockdown restrictions were eased PA UK news in pictures 28 May 2021 Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures as he meets Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban at Downing Street in London REUTERS UK news in pictures 27 May 2021 White Pelicans in the sunshine in St James's Park, London PA UK news in pictures 26 May 2021 Boats are seen at Southsea Moorings in Portsmouth Reuters UK news in pictures 25 May 2021 York Glaziers Trust employees Kieran Muir (left) and Emily Price (right) remove a stained glass window panel at the start of a new five year, 5m project to conserve York Minsters South East Transept and its medieval St Cuthbert Window PA UK news in pictures 24 May 2021 Dark rain clouds above an oast house at Bewl Water reservoir near Lamberhurst in Kent during one of the rainiest Mays on record, with the UK seeing 131 per cent of the usual months rainfall already PA UK news in pictures 23 May 2021 The Premier League trophy with the Manchester City club colour ribbons on, at Etihad Stadium, prior to the last Premier League match of the season. City will finally pick up the trophy after they won the league on 11 May Getty UK news in pictures 22 May 2021 Gary Kenny lifts the Buildbase FA Vase Trophy after Warrington Rylands won the FA Vase Final against Binfield at Wembley Stadium Getty UK news in pictures 21 May 2021 A family buffeted by the wind whilst crossing the the Millennium Bridge in London, with wind and rain forecast to ravage the UK on the first Friday that people have been allowed to meet in large groups outside in England PA UK news in pictures 20 May 2021 Devon And Cornwall Police Demonstrate Their Skills For Policing The G7 Summit Getty Images UK news in pictures 18 May 2021 An employee stands before a costume for the Queen of Hearts by Bob Crowley on display at the Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London PA UK news in pictures 17 May 2021 Passengers prepare to board an easyJet flight to Faro, Portugal, at Gatwick Airport after the ban on international leisure travel for people in England was lifted following the further easing of lockdown restrictions in England PA UK news in pictures 16 May 2021 Emergency workers at the scene of a suspected gas explosion, in which a young child was killed and two people were seriously injured, on Mallowdale Ave Heysham which caused 2 houses to collapse and badly damaged another PA UK news in pictures 15 May 2021 Pro-Palestinian activists and supporters let off smoke flares, wave flags and carry placards during a demonstration in support of the Palestinian cause as violence escalates in the ongoing conflict with Israel, in central London AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 14 May 2021 Member of staffs tighten screws and paint a Marlin skeleton, before it goes on display at the Natural History Museum in London, as the museum prepares to reopen to the public on 17 May, following the further easing of lockdown restrictions in England PA UK news in pictures 13 May 2021 A worshipper at the Baitul Futuh Mosque in Mordon, south London, ahead of Eid al-Fitr. The celebration marks the end of the Muslim month of fasting, called Ramadan. PA UK news in pictures 12 May 2021 A couple have wedding photos taken in Westminster, London Getty UK news in pictures 11 May 2021 The sun rises on Coquet Island, off Amble on the Northumberland coast, where as many as 35000 seabirds cram onto this tiny island to breed PA UK news in pictures 10 May 2021 Newly elected for a second term Mayor of London Sadiq Khan during his signing in ceremony at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre on Londons Southbank PA UK news in pictures 9 May 2021 People mill around St. Michael's tower on top of Glastonbury Tor as it is seen through blooming yellow rapeseed on a day of mixed weather in Glastonbury, Somerset PA UK news in pictures 8 May 2021 Wales First Minister Mark Drakeford elbow bumps newly elected MS Labour candidates Elizabeth Buffy Williams, Rhondda, left, and Sarah Murphy, Bridgend & Porthcawl Labour, right, as they meet in Porthcawl, Wales PA UK news in pictures 6 May 2021 A group of five Sisters from Carmelite Monastery in Dysart cast their vote in the Scottish Parliamentary election at Dysart Community Hall, West Port, Dysart PA UK news in pictures 5 May 2021 Leader of the Labour Party Sir Keir Starmer (centre) with West Midlands Metro Mayor candidate Liam Byrne (far right) and Labour Deputy Leader, Angela Rayner (far left) during a visit to Birmingham, whilst on the election campaign trail PA UK news in pictures 4 May 2021 Artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey stand within 100 oak saplings which form part of a living art installation entitled Beuys' Acorns by the UK-based artist duo, outside the Tate Modern in London PA UK news in pictures 3 May 2021 Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie feeds the Gentoo penguins during a visit to Edinburgh Zoo on the campaign trail for the forthcoming Scottish Parliamentary Election on May 6 PA UK news in pictures 2 May 2021 Chelsea players celebrate their fourth goal during the Womens Champions League semi-final second leg against Bayern Munich, at Kingsmeadow Stadium in south west London. The Blues won the game 4-1, (and the tie 5-3 on aggregate) sending them through to their first Champions League final AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 1 May 2020 Demonstrators during a march through London during a 'Kill the Bill' protest Angela Christofilou UK news in pictures 30 April 2021 Shoppers queue outside Primark in Belfast as shops reopen and hospitality is able to open outdoors in Northern Ireland where lockdown restrictions have begun to gradually ease PA UK news in pictures 29 April 2021 Specialist operators at the Royal Air Force Museum Cosford, near Telford, Shropshire, clean the Hawker Hunter aircraft displayed within the museum's National Cold War Exhibition, during annual high-level aircraft cleaning and maintenance PA UK news in pictures 28 April 2021 Millions of tulips in flower near Kings Lynn in Norfolk, as Belmont Nurseries, the UK's largest commercial grower of outdoor tulips, offers socially-distanced visits to its tulip fields at Hillington to raise funds for local charity The Norfolk Hospice Tapping House PA UK news in pictures 27 April 2021 Paula Laughton checks one of the newly installed Lego models in the new Lego Mythica land at Legoland Windsor Resort PA UK news in pictures 26 April 2021 A red panda rests on a tree at Manor Wildlife park, which reopened its doors as lockdown restrictions continue to ease, in Tenby, Wales Reuters UK news in pictures 25 April 2021 Sheep climb the hillside as flames from a moor fire are seen on Marsden moor, near Huddersfield AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 24 April 2021 Supporters protest against Manchester United's owners, outside English Premier League club Manchester United's Old Trafford stadium in Manchester AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 23 April 2021 People enjoy the warm weather at City Hall near Tower Bridge in central London PA UK news in pictures 22 April 2021 Uyghurs during a demonstration in Parliament Square, London, which is being held ahead of a House of Commons debate, bought by backbench MP Nus Ghani, on whether Uyghurs in China's Xinjiang province are suffering crimes against humanity and genocide PA UK news in pictures 21 April 2021 People walk at the Taihaku Cherry Orchard in Alnwick REUTERS UK news in pictures 20 April 2021 People stand in front of anti Super League banners outside Anfield as twelve of Europe's top football clubs, including Liverpool, launch a breakaway league Reuters UK news in pictures 19 April 2021 Women enjoy sunny weather in Greenwich, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in London, Britain, Reuters UK news in pictures 18 April 2021 Stephen Maguire (right) of Scotland interacts with Jamie Jones of Wales during day 2 of the Betfred World Snooker Championships 2021 at The Crucible, Sheffield PA UK news in pictures 17 April 2021 Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburghs coffin, covered with His Royal Highnesss Personal Standard arrives by Landrover Defender at St Georges Chapel carried by a bearer party found by the Royal Marines during the funeral of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh at Windsor Castle Getty Images UK news in pictures 16 April 2021 Scotland's First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, checks the teeth of "Dentosaurus" during a visit to the Thornliebank Dental Care centre in Glasgow, as she campaigns ahead of the 2021 Scottish Parliamentary Election AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 April 2021 Myanmar's former ambassador to the UK, Kyaw Zwar Minn, outside his residence in north west London. The ambassador has been barred from entering the Myanmar embassy in Mayfair after he was removed from office PA UK news in pictures 14 April 2021 People take part in coronavirus surge testing on Clapham Common, south London. Thousands of residents have queued up to take coronavirus tests at additional facilities set up after new cases of the South African variant were found in two south London boroughs. 44 confirmed cases of the variant have been found in Lambeth and Wandsworth, with a further 30 probable cases identified PA

Mr Salmonds comments came as a new poll was released forecasting that the SNP would win a majority of seats in the election.

The Ipsos Mori poll for STV found that 53 per cent of respondents would back an SNP candidate. However, the partys support on the regional list has fallen by nine percentage points since the previous poll, to 38 per cent.

Only 3 per cent of voters said they would cast their list vote for Mr Salmonds Alba Party.

Additional reporting by Press Association
Todays Australian universities promise their students a world-class education, but what they offer is much less.

Though they do remarkably well in world rankings, these can be seriously misleading. World-class research perhaps, but this rarely translates into a world-class undergraduate curriculum in the humanities and social sciences. There simply arent enough teaching staff to deliver one.

Universities in Australia face a challenging time to maintain teaching quality. Credit:Wayne Taylor

In the QS World University Rankings, English language and literature studies at the University of Melbourne are ranked 18th in the world, between Canadas University of British Columbia and Cornell in the United States.

Drill down and you find that English and theatre studies at Melbourne lists 15 faculty members (excluding those in Australian Research Council-funded research-only positions), most of them professors doing little or no teaching. By contrast, English at UBC has 49 faculty listed on its web page, Cornell has 51, and in both theatre studies are in another department.
Foreign Minister of Poland Zbigniew Rau will pay a working visit to Ukraine at the invitation of Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Thursday, April 8.

"The ministers will hold talks on the entire range of issues on strategic partnership between Ukraine and Poland and will discuss further interaction in the political, security and cultural sectors, increasing the volume of trade and investment," the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry's press service said.

The foreign ministries' heads will also pay attention to the aggravation of the security situation in eastern Ukraine and in the temporarily occupied Crimea, discuss the buildup of Russian troops near the borders of Ukraine, the growth of the intensity of Russian propaganda.

"Dmytro Kuleba and Zbigniew Rau will discuss issues of cooperation between Ukraine and Poland within the international organizations and regional formats, including Lublin Triangle," the ministry said.
[April 07, 2021] Nokia and Lenovo conclude patent cross-licensing agreement

Press Release Nokia and Lenovo conclude patent cross-licensing agreement 7 April 2021 Espoo, Finland  Nokia and Lenovo conclude patent cross-licensing agreement. Nokia announced today that it has concluded a multi-year, multi-technology patent cross-license agreement with Lenovo. Under the agreement, Lenovo will make a net balancing payment to Nokia. The terms of the agreement remain confidential. The agreement resolves all pending patent litigation and other proceedings between the two parties, in all jurisdictions. Jenni Lukander, President of Nokia Technologies, said: We are delighted to have reached an agreement with Lenovo. The agreement reflects Nokias decades-long investments in R&D and contributions to cellular and multimedia standards. We appreciate, and very much respect, the constructive spirit Lenovo brought to our negotiations and look forward to working together to bring further innovation to their users around the world. John Mulgrew, Chief Intellectual Property Officer of Lenovo, commented: Our agreement with Nokia reflects the value of both Nokias technology leadership and Lenovos continued investment in 5G innovation. The global accord struck will enable future collaboration between our companies for the benefit of customers worldwide. Nokias industry-leading patent portfolio is built on more than 129 billion invested in R&D over the past two decades and is composed of around 20,000 patent families, including over 3,500 patent families declared essential to 5G. In addition to its leadership in cellular standards, Nokia has also contributed significantly to multimedia and video research and the development of industry standards over the course of more than 30 years. Nokia contributes these and other inventions to open standards in return for the right to license them on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. Companies can license and use these technologies without the need to make their own substantial investments in R&D.

Additional resources Webpage: Licensing https://www.nokia.com/licensing/ About Nokia

We create technology that helps the world act together. As a trusted partner for critical networks, we are committed to innovation and technology leadership across mobile, fixed and cloud networks. We create value with intellectual property and long-term research, led by the award-winning Nokia Bell Labs. Adhering to the higest standards of integrity and security, we help build the capabilities needed for a more productive, sustainable and inclusive world.



For our latest updates, please visit us online www.nokia.com and follow us on Twitter @nokia. About Lenovo

Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) is a US$50 billion Fortune Global 500 company, with 63,000 employees and operating in 180 markets around the world. Lenovos nearly 10,000 R&D employees have generated over 20,000 patents across a wide range of technologies, including computing, telecommunications, and artificial intelligence. Focused on a bold vision to deliver smarter technology for all, we are developing world-changing technologies that create a more inclusive, trustworthy and sustainable digital society. By designing, engineering and building the worlds most complete portfolio of smart devices and infrastructure, we are also leading an Intelligent Transformation  to create better experiences and opportunities for millions of customers around the world. To find out more visit https://www.lenovo.com , follow us on LinkedIn , Facebook , Twitter , YouTube , Instagram , Weibo and read about the latest news via our StoryHub . Media Inquiries:

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I have never lived in either London or New York, and thus have next to no experience with the hotbeds of English-speaking theater. Though I frequently travel to those cities, and social media posts of friends with their Broadway Playbills tantalize me, I live with an illness that makes it difficult to remain upright. That makes theater a tough experience: The first time I saw Hamilton, after I left the Richard Rodgers Theater I was too sick to remember most of what had happened. It was only through luck that I was well enough to see the musical a second time while on book tour, as well as Andrew Scotts award-winning London performance in Present Laughter. Each was exhilarating, but I was always painfully aware of my body. On other occasions, a sudden flare of symptoms could force me to leave or to forfeit a pricey ticket on the week of a performance.

When the pandemic forced the theater world into survival mode last spring, theaters had to figure out how to produce shows for homebound audiences. The Old Vic, where I saw Present Laughter the year before, featured Covid-friendly plays in which one actor, or two socially distanced actors, performed for the cameras. I watched Three Kings and Lungs while in bed  a disability-friendly arrangement  and was able to view the stage from different perspectives thanks to those cameras. Though Three Kings and Present Laughter each star Andrew Scott, the cameras close-ups showed off his face in a way that I was unable to witness from the cheap seats. I saw the dangerous curl of his smirk as he transformed from an innocent child to his drunken, miserable father, without adjusting his makeup or costume. I was able to admire that all the more in spotting the details that streaming theater illuminated.

Spurred on by the Playbill newsletter, I became obsessed with watching as much theater as possible under these new, more accessible conditions. I saw plays and readings in which the actors recorded themselves at home, using Zoom and Skype, technology that has often been associated with remote work and learning. Many people have become allergic to Zoom as a result of overuse, but as a tool, Zoom and its ilk are able to control what the viewer sees in a way different from typical stagecraft. When streaming Will Arberys play about conservative Catholicism, Heroes of the Fourth Turning, a Pulitzer finalist, I am allowed an intimacy with the characters that even able-bodied, front-row ticket holders would not ordinarily be able to witness, as the performers come in and out of darkened Zoom squares from their apartments. When Justin says, I just think proximity to L.G.B.T. is a threat to Christian children and families, his face is lit in part by a dangerous light that isnt simply the glow of my laptop screen. Every microexpression and ounce of fidgety wariness that his friend Kevin expresses in turn (But why cant we meet it, engage with it  ) is up close as well. They arent in each others spaces, but over Zoom, they are in mine. Each squares unique lighting conceals their apartments, emphasizing the actors; I might as well be with them in the wooded darkness.
On the occasion of World Health Day on April 7, the World Forum for Ethics in Business (WFEB) hosted a mega global virtual conference with the theme Changing Paradigms in a Pandemic World: How to regain trust? While two million people from over 90 countries poised to attend the virtual event, the keynote speakers included World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, global humanitarian and WFEB & Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, leaders from Suriname, Slovenia, Belgium, Mauritius, the United Kingdom, Oman, Guyana and Norway.

The entire event is being live-streamed. Here are the highlights of the opening and keynote panel discussion. The session was started with remarks by World Forum for Ethics in Business President Rajita Kulkarni Bagga followed by the founder of World Forum for Ethics in Business and Art of Living Foundation, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. WFEB is a registered public interest foundation based in Belgium with its mandate including "all manners of pursuing and establishing the indispensable ethical foundations of business in a globalised world".

Sri Sri Ravi Shankars speech read by Nair at WFEB

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's message was read out by Prashanth Nair, the trustee of Art of Living Foundation as Gurudev had a soar throat. Relaying Sri Sri Ravi Shankars remarks, Nair said, "this World Health Day is more significant than ever before" as the whole world's health is challenged like never before due to the coronavirus pandemic.

"While humanity is grabbling with COVID-19, there is so much confusion about its origin and cure. People are asking this question, How come a virus has rattled the world from nowhere? Health has no origin but the disease does. Health has no cause or reason but the disease does. Diseases occur when the laws of nature are violated. 2.8 million lives have been lost," Nair said while urging the world to unite and keeping aside the narrow ambitions for the sake of mankind.

He also noted that while COVID-19 vaccination is being rolled out across the world for prevention, "we also need to find a cure through Ayurveda, herbal and various other systems of medicines that are there on the panel". Apart from dealing with novel coronavirus outbreak in a holistic manner, Nair also said that people should aim for a world that is physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually "blossomed".

"Yoga, breathing techniques and meditation will help us end this. Lets join together and come up with an action plan for realising the above. Despite the dark clouds of gloom, silver linings will emerge light enough to bring hope. Mankind has fought against and prevailed over such threats before and it will definitely do so this time as well," said Nair before congratulating millions of healthcare workers and frontline workers, scientists and other workers for "selfless service".

WHO chief Tedros at WFEB

In his keynote address, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus started by thanking Sri Sri Ravi Shankar for inviting him. "It has been over 14 months since I declared COVID-19 a global health emergency," said Tedros before adding that the last year uncovered the "best and worst" of humanity.

WHO chief noted, "We have seen acts of incredible courage from health workers and from communities around the world on the daily basis. We have seen incredible efforts by ethical businesses to help people to thrive. But, the pandemic has also worsened."

Tedros also acknowledged how some businesses have been taking advantage of the grim situation at the expense of those in need. According to him, while the development of COVID-19 vaccines in record time has brought about a new sense of hope, it was already known that distribution will not be equitable. He said vaccine equality is the challenge of our time.

We also know from experience that market forces alone would not actually be equitable distribution of these life-saving tools. Vaccine equity is the challenge of our time. Looking at the current stage of vaccination of more than 520 million doses administered so far, 85% have gone to high-income or upper-middle-income countries while the low-income countries have received only 0.1%, he said.

The WHO chief said that inequality in vaccine distribution is not only a "moral outrage" but it is economically and epidemiologically "self-defeating". According to Tedros, vaccine inequality would also hamper economic recovery. Hence, the WHO chief said that it co-developed Covax along with its partners to distribute vaccines. He said, "this pandemic still has a long way to run" and noted the intense pressure on healthcare facilities across the world.

"The decisions we all make as leaders and individuals can be a difference between life and death. Over the past year, we have been reminded of some fundamental trusses that life is fragile, health is precious and that we are one humanity. We may have different cultures, languages but we share the same DNA, the same planet and the same hopes and dreams," the WHO chief said before urging the world to learn its lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic and businesses to acknowledge its impact and meets ethical standards. Tedros did not stay for the entire session and logged out as he had other commitments for World Health Day.

Image credits: AP/PTI


NEW YORK, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Khaled Salem, running for the U.S. Senate in New York against Chuck Schumer, today revealed a range of innovative and bold policy ideas for the U.S. in the Middle East and beyond. Khaled is concerned about human rights atrocities and questionable actions takenand not takenby the U.S. to defend vulnerable international populations from harm. As the CEO Of American Human Rights Organization, Khaled is active in global situations as an advocate for the best possible diplomatic relations outcomes in the Middle East.

The CEO Of American Human Rights Organization

"I believe that imminent withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan would be an unfortunate strategic decision, especially without reasonable diplomatic policy agreements in place," said Khaled. "The U.S. must not acquiesce without socioeconomic accords from Russia, China and Iran regarding essential policies which affect Afghanistan."

Khaled is also deeply concerned with Egypt potentially getting into in a war with Ethiopia. Mr. Salem Urges Egyptian President Abdul Fattah Al-Sisi, requesting that Egypt lease the Suez Canal to the State of Israel so that Israel itself can offer the best protection. "The State of Israel has the strength and ability to guard the Suez Canal from any armed attack," said Khaled. "If the President of Egypt misses the window of opportunity to safeguard the canal, he will probably lose his leadership and put the safety of Egypt at risk."

In his role as CEO of American Human Rights Organization, Khaled also seized the moment to send a serious message to the Arab Gulf States, imploring them to realize that the world has changed. China and Iran are threats on many levels, especially with terrorists and in the cyber security arena. "Leaders in this part of the world must negotiate with the USA for protection," said Khaled.

The candidate further suggested that anyone who invests in Turkish interests pull their money out of the country.

Khaled is asking the United States Department of State to start, as soon as possible, to make the place of birth optional on U.S. passports to protect dual citizens abroad from discrimination in most international Airports around the world.

Other key policy positions from Mr. Salem include:

Free university education for American students.

Tourist visas to the US must require travel medical insurance for entry.

Laws and procedures to reduce domestic violence nationwide.

A reduction in U.S. military activity and presence in the Middle East .

. A policy that requires these regions pay for American military services.

The establishment of a home loan program for middle class single parents.

Salem is running in the next general election, scheduled for November 8, 2022. Thirty-four of the Senate's 100 seats are being contested in these elections.

For more information, visit https://www.khaled2022forcongress.com/

https://www.americanhumanrights.org/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaBldfu_ma0

facebook.com/Khaledforcongress/

twitter.com/KhaledYork

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Naomi Watts is set to lead the cast of the English-language remake of the Austrian Horror film, Goodnight Mommy.

The Australian actress, 52, will star in and executive produce the Amazon Studios take on the psychological thriller, which was released back in 2014 and has gone on to become a cult hit.

The movie follows two twin brothers who, when sent to stay with their mother, are shocked to find her covered in bandages following a recent procedure.

Taking the lead: Australian actress Naomi Watts [pictured] is set to star in the English-language remake of Austrian horror film Goodnight Mommy

As her behaviour becomes increasingly erratic and unusual, the brothers become convinced that she is an imposter.

The boys' suspicion sets off a roller-coaster of emotional mind games and misunderstandings between the mother and her children that eventually explodes with irreparable and heartbreaking consequences.

The English-language remake will be directed by Matt Sobel from a script written by Kyle Warren.

Cult hit: She will star in and executive produce the Amazon Studios take on the psychological thriller, released back in 2014. The movie follows two twin brothers who, when sent to stay with their mother, are shocked to find her covered in bandages following a procedure

Scary games: The boys' suspicion sets off a roller-coaster of emotional mind games and misunderstandings between the mother and her children

While the original film's directors Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz will serve as executive producers alongside Naomi.

Amazon is producing the horror remake with indie label Animal Kingdom and the production company Playtime.

Goodnight Mommy is not Naomi's first horror movie or psychological thriller.

She has starred in The Ring and The Ring two, Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering and Funny Games.

Not her first time: Goodnight Mommy is not Naomi's first horror movie or psychological thriller. Pictured is a movie still from The Ring two

Family: In addition to a successful acting career, Naomi is a doting mother to two children - Sasha, 13, and Samuel, 12, who goes by his middle name Kai. Pictured: Naomi with her sons and her ex-partner Liev Schreiber in a TikTok video uploaded in May

Naomi is also working on a new movie called 'Infinite Storm'.

The film tells the story of Pam Bales, a mother, nurse and mountain guide who was on a lone trek up Mount Washington when she was caught in a blizzard, which led to the daring rescue of a stranger.

In addition to a successful acting career, Naomi is a doting mother to two children - Sasha, 13, and Samuel, 12, who goes by his middle name Kai, who she shares with ex-partner, actor Liev Schreiber.
STATEN ISLAND N.Y. Last week Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill that legalized the adult-use of recreational marijuana.

Now, new laws regarding growing, selling, and buying have been put into action.

Watch the video above to learn more about the legislation.

***

Legal weed in New York: Seniors, retirement homes and medicinal use

Legal marijuana in New York: How will it impact the black market on Staten Island?

For more legal marijuana videos check our YouTube playlist:
They met and fell in love on set of 2018 Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody.

And though Rami Malek is enjoying some downtime, his girlfriend Lucy Boynton is proving that The Show Must Go On.

The 39-year-old Oscar-winning actor was seen soaking up the sun while shirtless in Miami Beach on Monday while girlfriend Lucy, 27, braved the cold and rain to film across the pond in Liverpool.

Scroll down for video

Chill: Rami Malek was seen soaking up the sun while shirtless in Miami Beach on Monday

Squad goals: The 39-year-old Oscar-winning actor was surrounded by a gaggle of friends

Polar opposite: Meanwhile, Rami's girlfriend Lucy Boynton braved the cold and rain to film across the pond in Liverpool.

Rami looked like he didn't have a care in the world as he laid out on a sun lounger while surrounded by a gaggle of friends.

No doubt the talented actor was enjoying a day of fun in the sun as he sported a pair of swim trunks and brown sunglasses.

Rami and his crew were seen enjoying several laughs as they hung out in the party city.

Chill: Rami looked like he didn't have a care in the world as he laid out on a sun lounger

Hanging out: He had a smile on his face while looking at something on a friend's phone

Good vibes only: Rami and his crew were seen enjoying several laughs as they hung out in the party city.

An eyewitness told E! News that he was joined by five friends at the Soho Miami Beach house in addition to a group of beach goers who joined them after.

The source told the publication: 'They all talked and seemed to enjoy each other's company.'

And though several women gathered around Malek, his main concern was having a good time as the eyewitness said he was 'in a great mood and didn't seem to outwardly flirt or be romantic with any of the women.'

Relaxed: No doubt the talented actor was enjoying a day of fun in the sun as he sported a pair of swim trunks and brown sunglasses

'They all talked and seemed to enjoy each other's company': An eyewitness told E! News that he was joined by five friends at the Soho Miami Beach house in addition to a group of beach goers who joined them after

In for a good time: And though several women gathered around Malek, his main concern was having a good time as the eyewitness said he was 'in a great mood and didn't seem to outwardly flirt or be romantic with any of the women'

The source told the publication that Rami was 'very kind to everyone' he came across on the outing.

Meanwhile Lucy was seen on set in Liverpool as she is set to play screen siren Jean Courtney in The Ipcress File remake.

Despite the frosty weather in Liverpool, the actress wasted no time as she dashed from trailer to trailer in a T-shirt and skirt holding a toothbrush.

Dressed in all-blue, the Miss Potter star donned a flimsy T-shirt and plaid skirt, later layering up in a padded coat and donning cozy grey boots.

On the move: Lucy was seen getting into character as she dashed around the set of the ITV series The Ipcress File between scenes on Tuesday

Braving the chill: Despite the frosty weather in Liverpool, the 27-year-old actress wasted no time as she dashed from trailer to trailer in a T-shirt and skirt holding a toothbrush

Lucy's hair was styled in a glossy bob, while she accessorized with large pearlescent earrings.

The Ipcress File is an ITV six-part series remake of the 1965 British espionage film starring Michael Caine.

Filming began last month on Exchange Street West, close to Liverpool Town Hall, which had been transformed into 1960s London.

While most of the film is being filmed in Liverpool, shooting will move to Croatia later this year to continue filming.

One to watch: Lucy will play the glamorous Jean Courtney, originally played by Sue Lloyd (right) a beautiful young woman who plays the love interest of main character Harry Palmer

Blue-tiful! Dressed in all-blue, the Miss Potter star donned a flimsy T-shirt and plaid skirt, later layering up in a padded coat and donning cosy grey boots

Blonde bombshell! Lucy's hair was styled in a glossy bob, while she accessorised with large pearlescent earrings

Rami and Lucy have been dating since 2018 after meeting on the set of Bohemian Rhapsody.

They were seen at various red carpet events throughout 2018 but their rumored romance was not confirmed until April, when Us Weekly revealed that they were in fact dating.

The outlet's source said: 'They met while filming Bohemian Rhapsody in London. He is so into her. He goes and visits her in London all the time.'

Loved up: Rami and Lucy (seen in January 2020) have been dating since 2018 after meeting on the set of Bohemian Rhapsody

Rami finally publicly addressed their relationship in January 2019 at the Palm Springs International Film Festival.

He was accepting his Breakthrough Performance Award and said on stage: 'Thank you, Lucy Boynton.

'You have been my ally, my confidant, my love. Thank you so much.'

Bohemian Rhapsody won four of the five Academy Awards it was nominated for.

Along with Rami's win John Ottman took home the Best Film Editing honor, while team Paul Massey, Tim Cavagin and John Casali earned the Best Sound Mixing honor. The film also won Best Sound Editing for John Warhurst and Nina Hartstone.

The film also grossed more than $900 million worldwide.
OWOSSO, MI -- The Owosso barber who continued to cut hair despite COVID-19 restrictions issued by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer last year is appealing $9,000 in fines issued by the Michigan Board of Barber Examiners just last week.

An attorney for Karl Manke, 77, filed the appeal in Shiawassee Circuit Court Tuesday, April 6, claiming the board acted beyond the scope of its authority or jurisdiction; violated constitutional and statutory requirements; issued its decision without competent, material, and substantial evidence ; and acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner.

The Board of Barber Examiners voted to fine both Manke and his barbershop -- Karl Manke Main St. Barber & Beauty Shop -- $4,500 for three sanitation and equipment violations as well as for unlicensed hair cutting at the Michigan Capitol, according to the state Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs.

The Michigan Board of Barber Examiners was created by state law in 1980 to regulate the services of barbers, barber students, barber colleges, barber instructors, student instructors and barbershops in the state.

It is outrageous that the Whitmer Administration continues its vendetta against Karl Manke by imposing $9,000 in fines for having a comb in his pocket and for exercising his First Amendment right to protest the governors illegal, unconstitutional and unenforceable executive orders, David A. Kallman, Mankes attorney, said in a statement to MLive-The Flint Journal after the fines were issued.

For the board to impose these fines against Karl for a first offense after a 60 year career with no complaints is evidence of the states bias and vindictiveness, the statement says.

The Journal could not immediately reach a spokeswoman for Whitmers office for comment on the appeal on Tuesday, April 7.

Manke reopened his shop for customers on May 4, 2020 in defiance of an executive order issued by Whitmer that closed barber shops, salons and other non-essential businesses to slow the spread of COVID-19.

After Mankes license was suspended due to the barbers violation of the order, he engaged in barbering on the front steps of the Michigan State Capitol, which is not a licensed premises, according to a complaint by the state Department of Attorney Generals Licensing and Regulation Division on behalf of LARA.

In October, two misdemeanor criminal violations against Manke for violating Whitmers executive orders were dropped by the Shiawassee County prosecutor after the state Supreme Court ruled in October that the governor does not have the authority under state law to continue a state of emergency without the support of the Legislature.

I am happy that we are finally in a court that can rule on, and uphold, my constitutional rights. I am not a health threat to anyone, and my barbershop has not been a source of the spread of this virus. I just want to safely earn a living and have my rights respected, Manke said in a statement issued by Kallmans office. The courts have consistently upheld my constitutional rights affirming that the governors attempts to shut me down were out of line, and I trust we will prevail in court once again.

Read more:

Owosso barber fined $9,000 for haircuts at Michigan Capitol, other violations

Owosso barber says shop will stay open until Jesus walks in or until they arrest me

Michigan Supreme Court sides with Owosso barber, sends case back to lower court
NEW YORK, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Multimedia Plus, a training and communications technology company servicing leaders in the retail, restaurant, and hospitality industries, has announced Zoom integration as a key feature in the latest version of INCITE 6.5. INCITE, powered by QuizScore, ensures consistent communication of information and skills with a private broadcast network and analytics to meet the demands of today's companies. The INCITE connector for Zoom is now available at the Zoom App Marketplace: https://marketplace.zoom.us/apps/TCmJ5ZVQQdCAG6hgSqgoOw

Zoom Integration with INCITE Multimedia Plus, a training and communications technology company servicing leaders in the retail, restaurant, and hospitality industries, has announced Zoom integration as a key feature in the latest version of INCITE 6.5. INCITE, powered by QuizScore, ensures consistent communication of information and skills with a private broadcast network and analytics to meet the demands of today's companies. The INCITE connector for Zoom is now available at the Zoom App Marketplace: https://marketplace.zoom.us/apps/TCmJ5ZVQQdCAG6hgSqgoOw

Zoom integration allows management to invite attendees and track attendance seamlessly at QuizScore.com. Additionally, by leveraging the full power of INCITE, leadership can further ensure that a team isn't just present, but that they understand. The system easily allows users to add a pre-meeting assessment, a live meeting interaction or even post-meeting assessment to accurately measure the knowledge transfer and effectiveness of scheduled meetings.

Additional advancements in INCITE 6.5 include:

Pre-shift Health Check Screening module

Simplified login via faceID and touchID, key for personal phones

Phone optimized login and main menu

IP filtering to restrict access to content on personal devices only at work

"We heard from our clients that Zoom was a great solution for them, but they were missing the integrated attendance tracking and targeted invitations, as well as having metrics to measure whether knowledge transfer was happening," explains David Harouche, Founder, Chief Executive Officer, & Chief Technology Officer at Multimedia Plus. "Putting INCITE together with Zoom simply makes Zoom better by adding easy attendance tracking, easy invitations to defined employee groups and highly engaging knowledge checks."

ABOUT MULTIMEDIA PLUS

Keep your associates a click ahead of your customerTM. New York based Multimedia Plus (MMP) is transforming the way brands communicate globally. High success rates of the program are due to bite-size learning segments, fully customized programs, and the ability to easily track results that leads to greater communications and mentoring of staff. MMP's patented technology platform, INCITE powered by QuizScore, ensures performance and execution of company strategies  where it counts  with customers. The platform correlates to business results, offers real-time skill building, and utilizes low-bandwidth video. The company's programs are being used by brands globally and are translated into more than 22 languages.

Media Contact:

Nataly Blumberg

516-859-6665

[email protected]

SOURCE Multimedia Plus
Burma Myanmar Regime Detains Medics and Elected MPs

Clockwise from top left, Dr. Lin Su Nay Win, Dr. Kyaw Htin Win, comedian Zarganar and National League for Democracy MPs U Aye Khaing and U Ye Kyaw Thwin

Two pediatricians, two elected National League for Democracy (NLD) parliamentarians and a popular comedian were detained on Tuesday by Myanmars junta as it clamps down on the anti-regime movement.

The security forces violently abducted pediatricians Dr. Kyaw Htin Win and Dr. Lin Su Nay Win during a protest by health care staff in Mandalay, where more dawn protests were planned on Tuesday.

Soldiers and police opened fire on the medical protesters and their families, who were gathering at around 5:30am ahead of their daily dawn protest against the military regime.

Another doctor was shot in the hand, according to a protesting doctor.

Despite the violence, several other protests continued in the city.

At noon U Aye Khaing, an elected lawmaker for Kyaukpadaung Township in Mandalay Region, and an NLD executive committee member, was detained when he briefly visited his home.

U Ye Kyaw Thwin, the MP for Mawlamyinegyun Township in Ayeyarwady Region, was also detained while in hiding. His uncle, who was with him, was also reportedly detained.

Zarganar, a comedian also known as Maung Thura, was detained at his home in Tamwe Township, Yangon Region. No reason has been given for his abduction.

The military regime issues extensive daily lists of arrest warrants for cultural critics. More than 120 artists, celebrities, prominent figures, social-media personalities and journalists now face incitement charges and are in hiding.

Beauty blogger Win Min Than, who added to the list on Tuesday, was detained by troops at a hotel in Taunggyi, Shan State, where she and her mother were staying.

By Wednesday morning, the regime has killed at least 587 people, including more than 40 children, and detained around 3,000 people.



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Ithaca, N.Y. -- Ithaca police are asking for the publics help in finding a missing 23-year-old man.

Marquise Terry was last seen in the West Village Apartment Complex on March 13, police said in a statement Tuesday.

Terry is about 6 feet tall and weighs about 300 pounds, police said. He has brown eyes and black hair.

He was last seen wearing a black hooded sweatshirt.

Police ask that anyone who has seen Terry contact the Ithaca Police Department at 607-330-0000.

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.
Sanaa, April 7 : Yemen's Houthi forces on Wednesday claimed responsibility for a bomb-laden drone attack at the King Khalid Airbase in Saudi Arabia.

"Two drones hit sensitive targets inside King Khalid Airbase in Khamis Mushait city accurately," Yehya Sarea, the Houthi military spokesman, said in a statement aired by the group's al-Masirah TV.

Meanwhile, the Saudi-owned Alarabiya TV cited a statement by the coalition forces as saying that they intercepted and destroyed an explosive-laden drone launched by the Houthis towards Khamis Mushait, reports Xinhua news agency.

The Houthis have recently stepped up cross-border missile and drone attacks against Saudi border cities and oil facilities.

Most of the attacks were reportedly foiled by the coalition.

Yemen has been mired in a civil war since late 2014 when the Iran-backed Houthi militia seized control of several northern Yemeni provinces and forced the internationally-recognised government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi out of the capital Sanaa.

The Saudi-led Arab coalition intervened in the Yemeni conflict in March 2015 to support Hadi's government.
I think that few would deny that, in 2020, Anthony Fauci, the highest-paid federal bureaucrat in America, also managed to leverage himself into the position of the most consequential person in America. He had only to express a whim about the behavioral changes necessary to defend America against the dreaded Wuhan virus, and America bowed down. In 2021, even though he's proven to be consistently wrong, the all too powerful mainstream media still promote him as an oracle. It's doubtful that even Fauci's latest muddled statements about Texas will change that point of view.

The scientific process is a simple one: the scientist posits a theory or hypothesis, runs a carefully constructed experiment that will isolate data relevant to the hypothesis, and then analyzes those data to determine whether they support the hypothesis. However, for all the left's loudly touted allegiance to "SCIENCE," the fact is that leftists invariably theorize in advance of their data, and, when the data fail to support the theories, they jettison the data rather than the theories.

One would think that Anthony Fauci, a man who has spent decades of his life involved in scientific research, would understand how the scientific process works. As we've seen, though, Fauci seems guided by factors other than science  e.g., China's concerns, the World Health Organization's dictates, the ability to impose limits on American citizens, and the desire to eject Trump from the White House. On Tuesday, Fauci's unscientific biases again came to the fore when he was confronted by the fact that everything he predicted regarding Texas's new "no mask" mandate was wrong.

On March 2, Texas governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order ending mask mandates for individuals and limits on Texas businesses. Fauci instantly announced that Texas faced imminent disaster by doing this and that citizens should ignore the governor:

Asked what advice he would give to the states' residents, Fauci said: "My strong advice to them would be to continue to implement the public health measures. Now is not the time to pull back. "The good news is that we have vaccines coming online, you saw the curve of the infections per day coming down, but over the last seven days or so we've reached a bit of a plateau where the deflection of the curve isn't going straight down the way it was. "That's a bad sign, we've seen that before. We've seen that last summer when we were trying to so-called 'open up the economy and open up the country,' and then we had that really big surge. We were going in the right direction. Now's the time to keep the foot on the accelerator and not pull off because the thing that we don't want is yet again another surge. "So I would advise the people of Texas and Mississippi to just abide by the public health measures that we talk about all the time: Uniform wearing of masks, physical distancing, avoiding congregate settings, particularly indoors, washing your hands frequently, we just have to keep doing that because we know it works."

Fauci could not have been more wrong. With Texas residents released to live normal lives  leaving their homes, breathing fresh air, and getting back to business  case numbers decreased, rather than increased. This shouldn't have been surprising because it was consistent with data showing that, for the most part, the stricter the COVID rules imposed on people, the worse the states are doing.

At this point, if Fauci were indeed a scientist, he would have realized that his hypothesis was wrong, changed his mind based on the science, and changed his recommendations to America at large. But that's not how Fauci rolls. Instead, he insisted that the Texas data (as well as data from other freedom states) is "confusing" and launched into a bibble-babble of meaningless words to keep alive yet another failed Fauci fact:

Despite the failure of his forecast a month ago that Texas dropping its Covid restrictions would be disastrous, Fauci's now warning last nights Rangers game could spark another Covid wave. pic.twitter.com/uNemd4FMZl  Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) April 6, 2021

Even without nailing down the reasons behind Fauci's confused narratives, backtracks, errors, and pessimism, it's enough to know that, at this point in the Wuhan virus era, the best policy is to ignore Anthony Fauci's recommendations. As Groucho Marx perfectly said, "whatever it is, I'm against it!"

Image: Fauci confused by Texas data. Twitter screen grab.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
Food delivery is reportedly growing to become a $365 billion industry by 2030, and entities from DoorDash to ex-Uber CEO Travis Kalanick are investing in millions restaurants that have no dining room  but do have online pages for delivery.

But judging by reactions to a tale of an S.F. business allegedly impersonating two famous Japanese restaurants, many Bay Area diners still dont entirely trust online food delivery operations. When the story ran, readers reached out to The Chronicle in shock. They were often quick to cast blame and call out other potential fakes, illustrating the Bay Areas general paranoia over ghost kitchens, delivery apps and the tech-driven food economy.

The Chronicles Monday story detailed how a mysterious Mission District business has been using the names Blowfish Sushi and SF Wagyu Mafia to sell food on delivery apps. The original owners of those restaurants said the delivery pages were impersonators. To make matters more alarming to the owner of the original Blowfish, the new Blowfish opened in the same location with the same logo.

Now, many locals are wondering what is real and whats not.

One diner wrote in to accuse one of the countrys biggest ghost kitchen companies of opening the Mission District business as a test to see if it could get away with using more famous restaurants names. Another diner wondered if Mina Family Kitchen Dinner, a DoorDash listing serving a wide variety of dishes affiliated with Michael Minas restaurant group, was in fact actually affiliated with the celebrity chef. (It is.)

The menu offerings seemed too vast to be from the real Michael Mina, she wrote.

Other readers have suggested the delivery apps themselves are somehow behind the Mission District restaurant, even though most apps are not in the ghost kitchen business. In the case of DoorDash, which also runs some ghost kitchens, it aims to work with locals like RT Rotisserie and Italian Homemade Company. Regardless, some readers said the apps should still take some blame for allowing the allegedly fake Blowfish to operate at all.

Postmates, which still has an active listing for Blowfish Sushi, did not respond to a request for comment. Grubhub removed Blowfish Sushi and SF Wagyu Mafia on Tuesday, while DoorDash suspended Blowfish Sushi and said the company is investigating the restaurant.

For delivery apps, letting customers know that theyre trying to combat potential fraud can be challenging: Grubhub declined to say what they do exactly, noting that disclosing the measures that they take may lead to more people trying to work around those rules. Similarly, a DoorDash representative didnt go into detail but said the company has checks in place to make sure operators are running legit operations from a permits and food safety standpoint.

Many restaurants on the platforms are acting in good faith, but the reaction shows how anxiety over fakes has been ramping up for some time. This latest uproar feels similar to reader reactions in early 2020 to a story about Michelin-starred Thai restaurant Kin Khao getting listed on delivery apps without permission  and with a menu that didnt even belong to Kin Khao. At the time, Kin Khaos Pim Techamuanvivit called the listing a fake restaurant.

That incident led to a state law requiring delivery apps to have agreements with restaurants before serving their food alongside national coverage about delivery apps and ghost kitchens, delivery-only restaurants that exist only online. Usually, those ghost kitchens operate out of commercial kitchens, but some readers were disturbed when photos revealed certain San Francisco ghost kitchens were in fact trailers in parking lots. They didnt like the idea of an anonymous-looking trailer posing as several restaurants online and wondered how so much food  burgers, wings, pad Thai, tacos, salads  could all be made in one food truck-sized kitchen.

The new Blowfish does not fall into how some would define a ghost kitchen because people can walk up and order takeout from the restaurant. The new Blowfishs manager also told The Chronicle that they plan to offer indoor dining in the future under the name Chome, making it a regular, real restaurant.

But that doesnt account for SF Wagyu Mafia, which also appeared to be operating out of the Mission District space. Some might call that a virtual restaurant, an industry name for an additional delivery-only brand that operates out of an existing restaurant. Those operations arent all shady. San Franciscos beloved Square Pie Guys, for example, has also been successfully operating a fried chicken sandwich virtual restaurant called Hetchys Hots.

Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more.

Still, virtual restaurants can be confusing. Earlier this year, a virtual restaurant called @pizza debuted on Uber Eats, but its not really a virtual restaurant either. Its an umbrella brand for hundreds of real-life pizza restaurants who decided to use the @pizza name in the interest of better placement  and hopefully better sales  on Uber Eats.

The @pizza brand complicates the narrative around ghost kitchens and virtual restaurants even further. For many local diners, these mysterious businesses are bad and independent restaurants are good. But the restaurants that signed onto @pizza are independent restaurants, and therefore good... right?

And many ghost kitchens are real, independently operated restaurants, too. Oaklands popular Souley Vegan is on an expansion tear throughout the Bay Area  in CloudKitchens facilities. New Orleans-style favorite Brendas Soul Food just opened in San Jose, thanks to a ghost kitchen. The Mina Group operates more than the Mina Family Kitchen Dinner listing on Doordash  it also runs new online-only brands for burgers and fried chicken.

Ultimately, Bay Area diners just want to know where their food is coming from; this is a region that favors locally grown ingredients and supporting local businesses. Its part of why home-based restaurant pop-ups have proliferated during the pandemic  many diners are happy to buy food that was cooked in an unpermitted home kitchen as long as they know the chef who is preparing it.

At the same time, the Bay Area is known for being at the forefront of innovation and technology. Now, the regions reputations for food and technology are clashing. The result looks a lot like a counterfeit $180 sandwich.

Janelle Bitker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: janelle.bitker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @janellebitker
Although health authorities say they don't know whether the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine triggers possibly fatal blood clots, Australia will continue to distribute it.

Experts admitted they're unaware that AstraZeneca causes blood clots

Since several European patients experienced brain blockages leading to strokes, more than a dozen countries suspended the COVID-19 vaccine in March. Germany prohibits the vaccine for people under the age of 60, citing concerns that blood clots are more common in young people, especially young women.

European regulators are reviewing the evidence. Marco Cavaleri, head of vaccines at the European Medicines Agency, said on Tuesday that he claims a 'causal correlation' between the vaccine and the clots. Professor Brendan Murphy, Australia's Health Department Secretary, acknowledged on Wednesday that he does not know if there is a risk. "The government and the department have taken the position that protection is completely paramount," he said.

According to Daily Mail, an investigation was launched last month after a 44-year-old Melbourne man was admitted to hospital with blood clots after receiving the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. According to Australian health officials, blood clots occur in general life, and any adverse effects experienced after vaccination may be coincidental.

The MHRA, the UK's safety authority, has identified 30 rare clotting cases in 18.1 million doses, or about one in every 600,000. However, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) estimates that it could affect up to one in every 100,000 people under 60. Last week, the UK regulator chastised Germany for banning the vaccine in people under the age of 60, claiming there was "no evidence" to back those prohibitions.

On Tuesday, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged Britons to get the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. Cavaleri, the EU regulator's boss, told Italian media that there is a strong connection between the AstraZeneca vaccine and the hundreds of unusual blood clots that have been recorded worldwide from the tens of millions of AstraZeneca shots given out.

A press conference would be held as soon as the analysis was done, either on Wednesday or Thursday. The agency has consistently confirmed that AstraZeneca's vaccine is safe and that the benefits outweigh the risks.

WHO, Others, Warn Using Ivermectin as Treatment to COVID-19

AstraZeneca halts COVID-19 vaccine trial in children

The University of Oxford announced on Tuesday that it had halted a limited UK trial of the COVID-19 vaccine it produced with AstraZeneca Plc in children and teenagers as it awaits more information on rare blood clotting problems in adults who administered the vaccine. The trial's cancellation is the latest setback for the vaccine. It was once hailed as a game-changer in the battle against the pandemic after many countries restricted its use following reports of patient complications after vaccinations.

Oxford University reported no safety issues in the pediatric trial but that it would wait for advice from the UK medicines watchdog before administering any further vaccines, as per Business Today. In February, the university reported 300 volunteers aged 6 to 17 years old from the United Kingdom would be participating in the study.

AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine 'Vulnerable' to South African Variant, 'Professor Lockdown' Warns

AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine benefits outweigh risks, WHO claims

According to the World Health Organization's regulatory officer, there is no need to change the organization's determination that the AstraZeneca vaccine's benefits against COVID-19 outweigh the risks. In light of warnings of blood clots among people who have been vaccinated, the WHO is closely studying the latest data alongside European and other regulators, according to Rogerio Gaspar, WHO director of regulation and prequalification.

WHO plans to make a new review on Wednesday or Thursday after its own vaccine safety advisory committee meets. However, still, Gaspar claims there would be no need to change its recommendation that the benefits outweigh the risks. According to Gaspar, WHO has been in contact with some national and regional advisory panels to decide on the vaccine's regulatory status, US News reported. "At this point, there is no indication that the vaccine's benefit-risk evaluation has to be changed," he said.

Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 Vaccine Delivery Halts Following Factory Mistake

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The civic body on Wednesday issued an order, allowing home delivery of food and essential supplies through online service providers 24 hours on all days of the week during the ongoing state-wide coronavirus-induced restrictions.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) also allowed road-side food stalls, including fruit vendors, to provide parcel and take-away services during the weekend lockdowns.

"No person is allowed to stand there and consume food," reads the order issued after a meeting conducted by the state chief secretary with municipal commissioners and district authorities.

The order also said that during the weekend lockdown, take-away from the restaurants in person will not be allowed, although home delivery is allowed.

It added that the movement of maids, cooks, drivers, house help, nurses, and medical attendee providing service to senior citizens and ailing people at home will be allowed between 7 am and 10 pm on all days during the restrictions, including the weekend lockdowns.

Eye clinics and optician shops are allowed to function within the given time-frame given by the government of Maharashtra, it said.

In the order, the civic body also said that students and candidates will be allowed to attend various examinations, including the competitive exams, during the weekend lockdowns and their hall-ticket will be considered as valid for the same.

According to the order, one guardian or parent will also be allowed to travel with the student or candidate.

on Wednesday reported 10,428 new coronavirus cases and 23 fresh fatalities, which took its caseload to 4,82,760 and death toll to 11,851.

The state government on Sunday announced a weekend lockdown and night curfew during the weekdays from Monday to April 30, in addition to a slew of other restrictions like the closure of private offices, theatres and salons to curb the unprecedented surge in COVID-19 cases.

The weekend lockdown will start from 8 pm on Fridays and last till 7 am on Mondays. Besides, prohibitory orders will be in force during the daytime on weekdays.

(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.)
According to information published by Press TV on April 6, 2021, Iranian naval forces and a visiting flotilla of warships from the Pakistan Navy have staged joint exercises in the Persian Gulf, which extended to the Strait of Hormuz and the northern part of the Indian Ocean.

According to information published by Press TV on April 6, 2021, Iranian naval forces and a visiting flotilla of warships from the Pakistan Navy have staged joint exercises in the Persian Gulf, which extended to the Strait of Hormuz and the northern part of the Indian Ocean.

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Iranian frigate Alborz, Alvand class (Picture source: Mehr News Agency)

The Pakistan Navy flotilla was sent from Bandar Abbas to the region to hold a combined naval exercise in the waters of the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman, Staff Officer of the First Naval District of the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy Captain Reza Sheibani said on Tuesday.

He added that the joint drill was meant to improve the combat capabilities of the two countries naval forces and exchange information and military expertise.

The exercise sought to demonstrate naval prowess and ensure closer coordination. It also aimed to establish constructive and dynamic interactions in order to create lasting peace and security in the region, he said.

Sheibani further said the drills included aerial and maritime transfers, and a passing exercise (PASSEX)  meant to ensure that the navies are able to communicate and cooperate in times of war or humanitarian relief  in the waters of the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman during the war game.

He went on to say that the Iranian naval units, consisting of Alborz frigate, a missile-launching vessel and a helicopter, together with marine and logistics units of the Pakistan Navy were present in the joint naval exercise.

The Pakistani flotilla berthed at the southern Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas on Saturday for a three-day visit, and was officially received by the Iranian Navys officers.

The visiting flotilla consists of two vessels and is under the command of Commodore Khan Mehmood Asif.

During the visit, the Pakistan Navy delegates held meetings with Iranian Navy and military officials and discussed mutual areas of interest.

Iranian frigate Alborz, a British-made Vosper Mark V class frigate (known as the Alvand class in Iran), was commissioned in 1971 as part of a four-ship order.

Each ship is a 1,100-ton frigate with a crew of 125-146 and maximum speeds of 39 knots. Each is armed with one five-missile Sea Killer Mark II surface-to-surface missile launcher and one Mark 8 4.5" gun mount. The Sea Killer has a relatively effective beam-riding missile with radio command or optical guidance, a maximum range of 25 kilometers, and a 70-kilogram warhead.
There has been a 27pc increase in complaints about dog fouling to Dublin City Council in the last 12 months. Photo: Stock image

Audio devices are to be installed in a number of locations in Dublin city to encourage dog owners to clean up after their dogs.

This is part of Dublin City Councils new dog fouling campaign, as theyve seen a 27pc increase in the number of complaints about dog fouling in the last twelve months.

Dublin City Councils Litter Prevention Officer Bernie Lillis said that she plans to place the audio devices in non-residential areas so as to avoid excessive noise.

"The two places I have in mind for them in the very beginning would be Clontarf park and Sandymount park, she said. I want to put them in the Cabra area as well.

In addition to the audio devices, outdoor and digital adverts as well as a video and a radio ad have been created for this campaign, which will be rolled out in Dublin city from April 4 for a two week period.

The issue of dog fouling has now become a major issue in our public parks and open spaces in the city, Lord Mayor of Dublin Hazel Chu said.

There are some people in our community who are more at risk of coming into contact with dog waste and putting their health in danger, such as; wheelchair users, visually impaired people, babies and toddlers. Whether you own a dog or not, dog poo in our public spaces affects the whole community.

A working group has been set up to deal with the issue, and Ms Lillis said dog owners must be responsible.

I am urging dog owners/walkers to be responsible and to dispose of dog waste appropriately and do not leave the doggie bag on railings or in bushes or on the streets or footpaths, instead you should Bag it and Bin it.

A person in a wheelchair rings me from time to time says: I have to wear a pair of gloves on me every time I go out because the footpath that I travel in every day is full of dog poo. And my hands are just full of dog poo every day.

Recent research carried out by Behaviour & Attitudes for Dogs Trust revealed that 96pc of dog owners claimed they do pick up after their dog. Yet 57pc of people surveyed indicated that there is a big problem with dog fouling in their area.

Whats more, seven in 10 people claimed to have walked in dog poop on the street, while 51pc came across dog poop in their local park. Similarly 31pc rolled a buggy through dog foul, and 11pc rolled their wheelchair through it.

It is estimated that a single gram of dog waste can contain 23 million faecal coliform bacteria, which are known to cause cramps, diarrhoea, intestinal illness, and serious kidney disorders in humans.

The city council is urging dog owners to always pick up after their dog using a Poo Bag or a scooping device before disposing of it in the nearest litter bin or taking it home and placing it in their general household wheelie bin. Those who do not dispose of it properly can be fined 150 under the Litter Pollution Act.
Ashli Babbitts Manner of Death During Jan. 6 Capitol Breach Ruled a Homicide by DC Medical Examiners Office

The District of Columbia Office of the Chief Medical Examiner on Wednesday released the official cause of death for four people who died during the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, ruling that protester Ashli Babbitts manner of death was a homicide.

Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Francisco J. Diaz said the cause of death for Babbitt, 35, was a gunshot wound to the left anterior shoulder. Her manner of death was ruled homicide, his office said.

Authorities previously said Babbitt was shot by a police officer as she allegedly attempted to climb through a door window inside the Capitol building. The name of the officer has not been disclosed by local or federal authorities.

Homicide is one of the five categories medical examiners use to label manners and causes of death. Gregory G. Davis, the president of the National Association of Medical Examiners, told Time magazine years ago that it indicates merely someones intentional actions led to the death of another person. The other labels are natural, accident, suicide, and undetermined, Davis said.

Video footage that was uploaded online during the day of the breach showed Babbitt, a former U.S. Air Force service member, being shot by an officer through a door.

A lawyer for Babbitts family didnt return a voicemail. U.S. Capitol Police did not respond to a request for comment.

The attorney for the Capitol Police officer who shot Babbitt told news outlets several weeks ago that assertions he didnt issue a verbal warning before shooting is a false narrative.

Its a false narrative that he issued no verbal commands or warnings, the lawyer, Mark Schamel, told Real Clear Investigations. He was screaming, Stay back! Stay back! Dont come in here!

An unconfirmed report from the Wall Street Journal that cited anonymous sources said investigators in the shooting have recommended that the Capitol Police officer not be charged with a crime. However, the Department of Justice has not made a final decision on the case.

The medical examiners office released the cause and manner of death for three other protesters who partook in the breach.

Kevin Greeson, 55, died from hypertensive atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and his manner of death was ruled as natural, according to the medical examiners office.

Benjamin Phillips, 50, also died from hypertensive atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and his manner of death was natural, the office said.

Roseanne Boyland, 34, died from acute amphetamine intoxication and her manner of death was ruled as an accident, the office added.

Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died of natural causes.

On March 15, officials confirmed two suspects were arrested and charged with assaulting Sicknick on Jan. 6. Julian Elie Khater, 32, of State College, Pennsylvania, and George Pierre Tanios, 39, of Morgantown, West Virginia, were taken into custody on March 14 in connection with the incident, the Department of Justice said in a statement.

Khater and Tanios were allegedly observed in video footage on Jan. 6 working together to try to assault law enforcement officers with an unknown chemical substance, before spraying the officers in the eyes and face, according to the DOJ release.
Norm Cummings / Norm Cummings

NEW MILFORD  State officials have identified a Danbury man who died Sunday after a fall while hiking at Lovers Leap state park.

The man, identified Wednesday as Joao Paulo Lucas, 39, went for an Easter hike with his wife and children in the park when he separated from them at an overlook around 3:45 p.m., saying he was going to hike down further, according to reports.
BAY CITY, MI - History lovers will have to wait one more year to stroll through the annual River of Time Festival in Bay City after organizers announced that the 2021 event was canceled.

The annual event showcases various time periods and historical events, ranging from celebrating Native American Culture from the Civil War up to the Vietnam War. Historical reenactors and vendors set up camp at Veterans Memorial Park, across from the Bay County Community Center on Bay Citys West Side every year during the last week of September for the River of Time.

However, River of Time reenactors and organizers are currently contending with navigating and living through historic times themselves over the last two years as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic continues. The event was also canceled back in 2020 during the first year of the pandemic.

We felt pretty confident that with us being an outdoor event that we were going to be able to move forward this year but basically with the gathering restrictions that are still in place, which we have no idea what time those would change or they could even go backward at this point, there is no way that we could accommodate that number of people down at the park, said Shannon Rodriguez, River of Time Committee chairperson.

Organizers were also unable to secure insurance for the event, said Rodriguez, due to most carriers not writing policy for events at this time due to gathering restrictions.

According to Rodriguez, the event normally attracts up to 15,000 people. Each year the event is open on Friday prior to the actual public event to schoolchildren for a special learning experience. Rodriguez said that the 2019 event saw the largest turnout that organizers had ever seen, with upwards of 5,000 students walking through the River of Time.

She added that the fact that the event is held in a public park made crowd control and capacity limits impossible to enforce in adherence with COVID-19 guidelines.

Additionally, the way the park is set up with the Riverwalk we cant obstruct that access so we have no way of controlling flow in and out of the park and cap off a certain amount of people or anything like that, she said.

History lovers wont be completely out of luck this year, however. River of Time treasurer Josh Tuzas developed a plan to keep the annual event and history in the public eye. Historical reenactors will be walking around Bay City this summer on the weekends.

Please be sure to strike up a conversation, learn a little history, and maybe make a donation. Until we can gather in the park again, we need the communitys support to make sure we can put on the event you have come to know and love, said a statement from the River of Time organizers.

Tuzas came up with the idea when he and some other reactors decided to take a walk around the Tobico Marsh trail in Bay County while donning historical regalia. Tuzas said that he was dressed for the Korean War period with his son dressed for World War II. The two were joined with a handful of Vietnam War reenactors. While walking the trail and seeing the response from other walkers, Tuzas decided to make this an ongoing occurrence.

When we had a lot of people asking us where the reenactment was going on it gave me the idea on each walk to try out different locations around the city, he said.

While he doesnt have a firm schedule set yet, Tuzas said that he is planning on having reenactors walk around town all summer long. Walking around town is also giving reenactors to get out and share their craft after two years of event cancelations.

We spent a year trapped in our backyards. And we actually had some of our army canvas set up for several months in that thing yard said Tuzas.

Meanwhile, River of Time organizers are working on planning some other smaller fundraising opportunities this year. Rodriguez added that the cancellation has given the group some extra time to work on fundraising to make the River of Times post-COVID comeback bigger and better than before.

So hopefully with the added fundraising time, that will give us an opportunity to draw in some bigger acts and some bigger names and just really flush out the event and make up for these past two years, she said.

Rodriguez and Tuzas both expressed a determination to let the public know that the River of Time isnt going anywhere permanently and that it will be back.

We are grateful for our community loving the event and wanting to continue to support us, Rodriguez said. I just really want to reassure them that were definitely coming back as soon as we dont have any restrictions in place. Well be back and bigger and better than ever.

Tuzas added, We still want to put together the best show possible. And attract people from all over the state to come in also spend their money at the local businesses and rebuild the tourist market. And of course above all learn a little bit of history of the Bay Region and the state and its contributions throughout history.

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1. Another setback for AstraZeneca.

Britain said that it would offer alternatives to AstraZenecas Covid-19 vaccine for adults under 30 after European regulators described a possible link between the vaccine and rare blood clots. Above, the AstraZeneca vaccine being administered in Milan last month.

The governments announcement came after months of backing AstraZenecas shot  a heavy blow for the worlds most widely used vaccine and to the more than 100 countries relying on it, particularly in the global south. Europes medical regulator stopped short of advising that use of the vaccine be curbed in the bloc.
Times like these can often bring out the good in people. But they also trigger quite a lot of entrepreneurial sensors of the particularly opportunistic typethe kind usually described as war profiteering.

Many are trying to, by any means necessary, to grab a piece of pie either by adapting their business offerings to changing consumer or needs while others are just outright abusing relief funds.

From sellers on Amazon offering magic potions to kill the virus, and politicians and their patrons spouting all kinds of nonsense, to one thats gotten far less media attention so farthe mafiawelcome to the schemes of the century.

In Italys case, this is the traditional mafias time to shine.

Local media and European Union agencies suspect that the Ndrangheta and Camorra mafia organizations are upgrading their business models.

Even though mafia business structure has been present in the healthcare, construction, mortuary and waste disposal services in Italy for a long time, the pandemic and the chaos that ensued in Italys south was a unique opportunity for a mafia that has by now expanded its influence.

Last November, one top local politician was charged with laundering money through 'Ndrangheta-controlled pharmacies in exchange for mafia support.

Mafia have also seized the chaotic day to reach out to the struggling small and medium-sized companies.

According to some estimates, there are some 100,000 companies in Italy, mostly small and family owned, that are at risk of shutting down.

Local media reported that many struggling businesses started to receive unusual buyout offers, often much lower than their normal market price. The deal would be sweetened by instant cash payment. Others were offered cash injections. Still others had no choice at all.

The Bank of Italy reported recently that the number of suspicious financial operations increased by 7% last year to 113,000.

Yet, mafia have also entered the business of fighting Covid-19, trying to render themselves untouchable by being indispensable

Last May, the authorities intercepted a telephone conversation of a person suspected of being affiliated with the Camorra organization, saying that he is planning to turn his relatives car wash business into a sanitation company.

However, that activity is not really illegal as many businesses adopted to the pandemics needs. The real question is whether the carwash was a legit business in the first place.

Also, mafia groups have been reported to distribute food to the poor and provide interest-free loans in the southern part of the country.

Again, nothing illegal about it but distributing food parcels to the needy is an old mafia tactic, coined by Al Capone in the late 1920 with the goal of gaining credibility and stepping in as an alternative to the state.

However, mafia groups are now eyeing ways to infiltrate the European Union Recovery Fund, set up to help the economies of the state members. Italy was one of the worst hit European nations in regard to the pandemic and its economy contracted 8.9 percent last year.

Last December, the EU unlocked an $890 billion Recovery Fund and Italy is projected to be the biggest recipient of the fund, set to receive about $235 billion, 60 percent of it in cheap loans.

Last years unchecked and easy buyouts of struggling businesses by mafia groups means that they might be first in line to get EU aid.

The mafia has been choosing the companies that are best-placed to take part in recovery fund tenders, especially in the health and infrastructure sectors where a great deal of money will be spent, Maurizio Vallone of the Antimafia Investigative Directorate told Bloomberg.

Still, misuse and abuse of funds is a global problem, and no country is immune to it.

In the US, the authorities charged 474 people with trying to steal more than $569 million from the Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security Act passed in March 2020.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-08 03:07:55|Editor: huaxia

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BEIRUT, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis said here Wednesday that his country is working on accelerating the political solution in Syria and the return of displaced Syrians to their homeland the soonest possible, the National News Agency reported.

Cassis' remarks came during his meeting with Lebanese President Michel Aoun at Baabda Palace.

Cassis emphasized Switzerland's willingness to provide necessary assistance to Lebanon in social, economic and financial fields.

He also stressed his country's interest to see a political solution to the governmental deadlock in Lebanon which would encourage the international community to provide support for the country.

Cassis' visit to Lebanon aims at following up on projects funded by Switzerland in the country in addition to checking the situation of Syrian and Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Enditem
Labour has accused Boris Johnson of breaching the ministerial code over a political attack he made on London mayor Sadiq Khan at a Covid-19 press conference on Monday.

The party's deputy leader Angela Rayner has written to the Cabinet Office secretary Simon Case demanding an investigation into the incident after the PM claimed Mr Khan was "blowing" Transport for London's (TfL) finances through an "irresponsible" fares policy - allegations that the mayor rejects.

His comments came during the purdah period for the London mayoral election on 6 May. Purdah places limits on government activity around at elections.

Labour claims Mr Johnson's "unprompted" remarks are a breach of the ministerial code, which sets out that "official facilities and resources may not be used for the dissemination of party political material".

Read more:

In her letter to Mr Case, who is head of the civil service, Ms Rayner accused the prime minister of making "false statements".

The MP for Ashton-under-Lyne said it was extremely concerning that public resources are being "deliberately used during a pre-election period to influence the outcome of an election."

The prime minister's comments were made from Downing Street's new 2.6m media briefing room and aired on the UK's public service broadcaster, the BBC, which is bound by strict impartiality rules during purdah.

Ms Rayner added: "The attack was political in nature, unprompted, and entirely unrelated to either the topic of the press conference or the question the prime minister was asked."

She is calling for the prime minister to apologise for the remarks and demanding that Mr Case fully investigates the incident.

Asked at the 5 April press conference about government support for London's pandemic recovery, the prime minister said: "As for the finances of TfL, I must respectfully remind you that I left them in robust good order and it is not through any fault of my own that the current Labour mayor decided to blow them on an irresponsible fares policy.

"We're doing our best to help them out and will continue to do so. But I'm afraid you've got to look at some of the decisions that were taken by the current Labour mayor as well."

Mr Khan said on Tuesday: "If he's (Boris Johnson) going to use a government platform to talk politick, he should at least tell the truth.

"It is a fact that when I became mayor the TfL's deficit was more than 1.5 bn. I reduced it by more than 71 per cent before the pandemic. But also he increased TfL's debt by more than 7 bn.

He added: "I think it is inappropriate for all of us to follow the rules and abide by the rules, and Boris Johnson to yet again break the rules in the way he's done.

"Firstly, during the purdah period using a government platform to attack a Labour candidate. But secondly, to tell lies."

The Independent has contacted Downing Street and the Cabinet Office for comment.
A STUDENT who noticed a man masturbating in a car used her phone to record the vehicle, resulting in a prosecution coming before a court in Offaly.

Tullamore District Court was told that Denis Legac, 39, Ballinaminton, Tubber, Clara, was seen in a distinctive yellow Mini Cooper by an 18-year-old girl as she walked from school in Kilbeggan, Co Westmeath.

The student first noticed the car at the roundabout near the post office after she had come from the secondary school at about 5.10pm on January 30, 2020.

Sergeant James O'Sullivan told the court she continued walking along Main Street in the town because she was on her way to a friend's house on the Clara Road.

At Kilbeggan distillery she saw the same car parked on her side of the road with its passenger window down.

As she passed she saw the sole occupant masturbating. She kept on walking and the defendant did not speak to her.

Sergeant O'Sullivan said the student had the presence of mind to video his car as she passed it and he was then identified from the footage when the car was traced.

Mr Legac attended at Athlone Garda Station by appointment and admitted the offence, telling gardai that he was watching a video on his phone at the time.

Sergeant O'Sullivan said the accused had no previous convictions.

When Judge Mary Cashin was informed there was no impact statement from the student she said the prosecution should canvass the matter with her.

She said she would adjourn the prosecution to April 28 next.

A guilty plea to an offence under Section 45 of the Criminal Law Sexual Offences Act was entered by Patrick Martin, solicitor.

Mr Martin said his client had brought 500 to court as a gesture and that could be handed over.

Judge Cashin, a visiting judge at Tullamore Court on Wednesday, said the court would not accept the money at this time.

She noted the plea of guilty and said the judge for the district would deal with the offer, along with the question of whether there would be a victim impact statement, on April 28.
Concerned Shareholders provide actual answers to the questions posed in Fancamp Exploration Ltd. press release dated March 29, 2021

Montreal, Quebec--(Newsfile Corp. - April 7, 2021) - Incumbent director of Fancamp, Dr. Peter H. Smith, who, together with joint actors, holds directly and indirectly an aggregate of 15,854,097 shares, representing approximately 9.55% of the Company's issued and outstanding common shares of Fancamp Exploration Ltd. ("Fancamp" or the "Company") (the "Concerned Shareholders"), regards the Company's March 29, 2021 press release as another example of the Company's arrogance and lack of respect for its true owners - YOU, the shareholder. Fancamp's press release purports to answer a number of "frequently asked questions" but in reality, they do not provide truthful accurate answers in a clear and transparent manner. If anything, the Company continues to propagate falsehoods and twist the narrative in favour of the entrenched board and management.

The Concerned Shareholders will do what Fancamp clearly is unable to do and provide the appropriate answers to the questions that were posed.

Q1: How does Fancamp benefit from the business combination with ScoZinc?

A: The business combination with ScoZinc Mining Ltd. ("ScoZinc") (the "Transaction") has not been determined to have any value to the current shareholders of Fancamp. The board and management of Fancamp state over and over that, although they were not legally required to, management of Fancamp commissioned a fairness opinion by Ernst & Young Global Limited ("E&Y") (the "E&Y Fairness Opinion") in respect of the proposed Transaction. In our Concerned Shareholders' March 24 news release, we asked Fancamp to be transparent and let the shareholders review the E&Y Fairness Opinion and come to our own conclusions, which it has failed to do.

As a member of Fancamp's board of directors, Dr. Smith was asked to review and rely on the E&Y Fairness Opinion in making a determination as to whether, as a board member, to approve the Transaction. Dr. Smith had concerns relating to the E&Y Fairness Opinion, and therefore has retained Evans & Evans, Inc. ("Evans & Evans") as his personal financial expert to comment and provide advice in connection with his review of the E&Y Fairness Opinion. The advice provided to Dr. Smith by Evans & Evans following their review of the E&Y Fairness Opinion raised a number of serious concerns about the basis of the opinion and conclusions drawn by E&Y in the E&Y Fairness Opinion. Several key concerns raised by Evans & Evans include:

It would appear that little investigation and analysis was undertaken with respect to the underlying assets of Fancamp and a rationalization of the share price to net asset value ("NAV").

E&Y does not include a Price to Net Asset Value ("P/NAV") for the guideline companies or precedent transactions as it relates to ScoZinc. In the view of Evans & Evans, this is a standard approach for companies at the pre-feasibility or feasibility stage.

The lack of a consideration of a market approach for either of the Companies has the impact of potentially over-valuing ScoZinc and its assets and under-valuing Fancamp and its assets.

There is no discussion of the financing history of ScoZinc.

A market approach results in a much lower value for ScoZinc than implied by the combination of the Asset Approach and the Income Approach utilized by E&Y. Given the wide disparity in the values being placed on similar assets in the market, ScoZinc's limited financing history and the volatility of the zinc market, it is unusual, not to consider a market approach. The value implied for the Scotia Mine in excess of the market capitalization and peer analysis, implies a premium for the Scotia Mine that is never rationalized in the written documents.

These concerns call into question the mandate given to E&Y by Fancamp's management. Reading these points will highlight to Fancamp shareholders how little regard the entrenched board and management have for your investment.

These concerns raised in the Evans & Evans report emphasize the importance of transparency. Fancamp's entrenched board and management can continue to state they have a fairness opinion prepared by E&Y but as you can see from above, the fairness opinion cannot be given any weight unless shareholders are given an opportunity to review and draw their own conclusions as to the mandate, parameters and limitations of the E&Y Fairness Opinion. The Concerned Shareholders demand that the Company make the E&Y Fairness opinion available for review so that all Fancamp shareholders can arrive at their own informed conclusions.

Q3: Are Fancamp shareholders being diluted?

A: The short answer and the only answer is YES. However, the Fancamp entrenched board and management refuse to state plainly for shareholders the basic fact that this Transaction will result in the issue of approximately 84.5 million shares to bring the Fancamp issued and outstanding share count to approximately 250.5 million representing dilution to existing Fancamp shareholders of 33.7%. On a fully diluted basis existing Fancamp shareholders will be giving 44.3% of THEIR company to ScoZinc shareholders and the share structure will increase by an aggregate of 317.0 million shares! The response to their own question is filled with words that in the end are there to confuse and baffle its readers when the very truth of the matter is that Fancamp shareholders will be severely diluted.

Furthermore, it is precisely this dilution that the current board and management are counting on to entrench their position and ensure their ability to maintain their positions in the face of the Concerned Shareholders' wish to see them removed. Management is unfairly and unjustifiably refusing to call its long overdue annual general meeting until AFTER the closing of this dilutive and ill-advised transaction so that the voices of the TRUE owners of Fancamp, YOU, its current shareholders, are muted by the 84.5 million shares to be issued under the ScoZinc Transaction.

Q4: What was the process to determine that the Transaction was beneficial to Fancamp Shareholders?

A: In Fancamp's March 18, 2021 news release they state that "[t]he Transaction was the result of a transparent, credible and thorough process with input from Fancamp's independent financial and legal advisors". This was repeated in its March 29, 2021 news release. However, the Concerned Shareholders completely disagree with this assertion of "independent advice". From our observation, Fancamp did not have independent financial and legal advisers. The only financial advisors that the entrenched board and management have disclosed to date are E&Y who, to Dr. Smith's understanding were retained, presumably by management of Fancamp, prior to disclosure of the proposed Transaction to the independent members of Fancamp's board of directors and, at least to the knowledge of Dr. Smith as an independent director, without prior board approval. By definition, an "independent advisor" to an issuer's board would be independent of that issuer's management.

Furthermore, with respect to independent legal advisors, the disclosure contained in Fancamp's March 18, 2021 news release, the only legal advisors to Fancamp are corporate counsel Lavery de Billy, LLP ("Lavery"). Under the terms of the arrangement agreement in respect of the proposed Transaction that is posted under Fancamp's SEDAR profile, ScoZinc is required to work with Fancamp's legal counsel to prepare its management information circular (the "ScoZinc Circular") to be provided to ScoZinc's shareholders in connection with their review and approval of the proposed Transaction (an opportunity that Fancamp's board is denying its own shareholders). In other words, Fancamp's legal counsel, are providing corporate and securities law legal advice to ScoZinc, as well as advising Fancamp, in connection with the proposed Transaction. Moreover, the Arrangement Agreement allows ScoZinc to request Fancamp's counsel to prepare the circular. Given that the circular discloses that ScoZinc is incurring $50,000 for all expenses, including financial, printing, legal etc., we can assume that ScoZinc had Fancamp's counsel prepare its circular. This strange state of affairs, seems to be confirmed by the disclosure contained in the ScoZinc information circular in respect of the proposed Transaction, which references Lavery de Billy, LLP under the heading "Legal Matters", and makes no mention of any independent legal counsel to ScoZinc under that heading.

The ScoZinc circular itself suffers from many other deficiencies including the fact that although it is stated that a special committee was formed, it does not set out who was on the special committee, its mandate or its involvement in negotiations. The ScoZinc circular also contains a fairness opinion from Devon Capital which suffers from many of the same deficiencies as the E&Y Fairness Opinion. The Devon Capital fairness opinion does not disclose sufficient experience to support the opinion, Devon Capital participated in a private placement of ScoZinc in May 2020 resulting in a question of independence, Devon Capital relied on information from management without independent verification and it contains no analysis and is simply a conclusory statement that should be given little weight.

Q7: Why are Fancamp shareholders not able to vote on the Transaction?

A: The March 18, 2021 news release says that Fancamp is eager to hold its AGM (similar statements are made in its March 29, 2021 news release) and it also states:

"While the Activists have demanded that the Corporation incur additional expenses by conducting an unnecessary shareholder vote on the Transaction or hold its AGM prior to completing the Transaction, under applicable securities regulations, the Transaction is an arm's length transaction. Accordingly, no approval is required from the shareholders of the Corporation."

The Concerned Shareholders take exception with Fancamp's continued statements intending to intentionally mislead shareholders by continuing to refer to the proposed Transaction with ScoZinc as an "arm's length transaction". As disclosed in Fancamp's and ScoZinc's own joint news release dated February 18, 2021, Mr. Ashwath Mehra is currently a director of Fancamp and ScoZinc, making the proposed Transaction a non-arm's length transaction pursuant to the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange. Furthermore, although not stated in Fancamp's news releases, Mr. Mehra has a personal interest in the transaction as a significant shareholder of ScoZinc holding approximately 18.66% of the outstanding shares in the capital of ScoZinc on a partially diluted basis. The Concerned Shareholders further note that in Fancamp's February 18, 2021 news release, Fancamp conceded that this is a non-arm's length transaction according to Exchange policies, though it neglects in its subsequent news releases to make such a statement.

In addition, in Fancamp's March 29, 2021 news release the Company tells shareholders that ScoZinc made a proposal to Fancamp in respect of the proposed Transaction on November 9, 2020, however details of such proposition were not provided to Fancamp's board of directors until December 4, 2020 Of particular interest to Fancamp's shareholders is that in the ScoZinc's Circular, it is disclosed that Fancamp's other director and Chairman, Mark Billings, resigned from ScoZinc's board of directors on December 2, 2020, just two days before the proposal was to be presented to Fancamp's board, presumably to permit him to vote on the proposed Transaction. In other words, during the period from November 9th to December 2, 2020, presumably while the terms of ScoZinc's proposal were being examined and negotiated, Mr. Billings was a director of both Fancamp and ScoZinc.

The Concerned Shareholders also consider Fancamp's protestations with respect to the potential cost to shareholders arising in connection with Fancamp shareholders being granted the opportunity to vote on the Transaction disingenuous and misleading. As previously noted, the costs associated with holding its annual general meeting (its "AGM") within the time periods prescribed under applicable corporate law are an obligation that the Company already shoulders.

The Concerned Shareholders acknowledge that by granting the Fancamp shareholders the right to vote to approve or reject the proposed Transaction at the AGM, the Company may incur some costs in connection with the preparation of prospectus-level disclosure concerning the proposed Transaction in its AGM management information circular. However, this disclosure has now already been prepared and disseminated in the ScoZinc Circular. Furthermore, as noted above, it appears that, notwithstanding that Fancamp shareholders are being denied the opportunity to vote, Fancamp has elected to shoulder the very cost of the preparation of such documentation that the entrenched board and management are purporting to object to, with Fancamp's counsel seemingly having been responsible, at least in part, for the preparation of the ScoZinc Circular.

It is our opinion that the reason that Fancamp does not want a shareholder vote on the Arrangement is to ensure the Arrangement closes and with the issuance of the additional shares to the ScoZinc shareholders, it will dilute existing Fancamp shareholders significantly, and ensure the election of the management slate at the AGM. By delaying the AGM, Fancamp can both ensure that the dilutive, non-arm's length ScoZinc transaction, that shareholders should be given the right to vote on will occur and also to entrench their own board positions.

Advisors

The Concerned Shareholders have retained Gryphon Advisors Inc. as its strategic shareholder services advisor. Farris LLP is acting as legal counsel to Dr. Smith.

For more information regarding the Concerned Shareholders' position please contact:

Gryphon Advisors Inc.

Tel: 1-833-461-3651

Email: inquiries@gryphonadvisors.ca

Information in Support of Public Broadcast Solicitation

The information contained in this press release does not and is not meant to constitute a solicitation of a proxy within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Although the Concerned Shareholders have approached several nominees for election to the Company's board of directors at the company's next general meeting of shareholders, there is currently no record or meeting date set and shareholders are not being asked at this time to execute a proxy in favour of any matter. In connection with the meeting, the Concerned Shareholders may file a dissident information circular in due course in compliance with applicable securities laws.

The information contained herein, and any solicitation made by the Concerned Shareholders in advance of any general meeting of shareholders, or will be, as applicable, made by the Concerned Shareholders and not by or on behalf of the management of Fancamp. All costs incurred for any solicitation will be borne by the Concerned Shareholders, provided that, subject to applicable law, the Concerned Shareholders may seek reimbursement from Fancamp of the Concerned Shareholders' out-of-pocket expenses, including proxy solicitation expenses and legal fees, incurred in connection with a successful reconstitution of the Company's board of directors. The Concerned Shareholders are not soliciting proxies in connection with a general meeting of shareholders of the Company at this time.

The Concerned Shareholders may engage the services of one or more agents and authorize other persons to assist in soliciting proxies on behalf of the Concerned Shareholders. Any proxies solicited by or on behalf of the Concerned Shareholders, including by any other agent retained by the Concerned Shareholders, may be solicited pursuant to a dissident information circular or by way of public broadcast, including through press releases, speeches, or publications and by any other manner permitted under Canadian corporate and securities laws. Any such proxies may be revoked by instrument in writing executed by a shareholder or by his or her attorney authorized in writing or, if the shareholder is a body corporate, by an officer or attorney thereof duly authorized or by any other manner permitted by law.

The registered address of Fancamp is located at 3200 - 650 West Georgia Street, Vancouver, BC, V6B 4P7. The mailing and head office address of Fancamp is 7290 Gray Avenue, Burnaby, British Columbia V5J 3Z2. A copy of this press release may be obtained on Fancamp's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/79678
Researchers on Tuesday revealed details of a new banking trojan targeting corporate users in Brazil at least since 2019 across various sectors such as engineering, healthcare, retail, manufacturing, finance, transportation, and government.

Dubbed "Janeleiro" by Slovak cybersecurity firm ESET, the malware aims to disguise its true intent via lookalike pop-up windows that are designed to resemble the websites of some of the biggest banks in the country, including Itau Unibanco, Santander, Banco do Brasil, Caixa Economica Federal, and Banco Bradesco.

"These pop-ups contain fake forms, aiming to trick the malware's victims into entering their banking credentials and personal information that the malware captures and exfiltrates to its [command-and-control] servers," ESET researchers Facundo Munoz and Matias Porolli said in a write-up.

This modus operandi is not new to banking trojans. In August 2020, ESET uncovered a Latin American (LATAM) banking trojan called Mekotio that displayed similar fake pop-up windows to its victims in an attempt to entice them into divulging sensitive information.

But Janeleiro stands out for a number of reasons. One, the malware is written in Visual Basic .NET, which the researchers say is a "big deviation" from the Delphi programming language that's usually preferred by the threat actors in the region. It also doesn't rely on custom encryption algorithms or additional layers of obfuscation and even reuses code taken from NjRAT, a rarity among LATAM banking trojans.

The attack commences with a phishing email that purports to be an unpaid invoice, which contains a link that, when clicked, downloads a ZIP file. The archive comes with an MSI installer that loads the main trojan DLL, which subsequently fetches the IP addresses of the command-and-control (C2) servers from a GitHub page apparently created by the malware authors. The last link in the infection chain involves waiting for commands from the C2 server.

Thus in the event, a user visits the website of a banking entity of interest, Janeleiro connects to the C2 server and dynamically displays the fraudulent pop-up windows, and captures the keystrokes and other information entered in the fake forms.

ESET said it discovered four versions of Janeleiro between September 2019 to March 2021.

This is not the first time banking trojans have been spotted in the wild that have singled out Brazilian users. Last year, Kaspersky detailed at least four malware families  Guildma, Javali, Melcoz, and Grandoreiro  which were found to target financial institutions in Brazil, Latin America, and Europe.

Then earlier this January, ESET revealed a new Delphi-based banking trojan named "Vadokrist" that was found to target Brazil exclusively while sharing similarities with other malware families like Amavaldo, Casbaneiro, Grandoreiro, and Mekotio.

"Janeleiro follows the unique blueprint for the core implementation of the fake pop-up windows as many LATAM banking trojans, this does not seem to be a coincidence or inspiration: this actor employs and distributes Janeleiro sharing the same infrastructure as some of the most prominent of these active malware families," the researchers concluded.
General Motors GM vehicle sales in China totaled 780,000 units for first-quarter 2021, surging 69% from the corresponding quarter of 2020, which was badly hit by coronavirus woes. Things started looking up since the second half of 2020 and the recovery has continued since then. The company aimed at strengthening product line-up, with more customer-centric products and focus on customer experiences, to revive sales in China  which is the worlds largest auto market. Aggressive portfolio optimization with high-end sport utility vehicles (SUVs), multi-purpose vehicles (MPVs) and luxury vehicles have yielded positive results.

Highlights of the Brand Performances

The mass-market brand Buick deliveries witnessed 73% growth in the first quarter from the prior-year level to more than 224,000 units. Sales of GL8 MPV, Envision SUV and LaCrosse sedan topped 42,000, 29,000 and 13,000 units, respectively.



The luxury brand Cadillac deliveries topped 57,000 units in the quarter under discussion, marking a year-on-year jump of 114%. Its SUV portfolio  comprising XT4, XT5 and XT6  registered solid performance, with collective sales of more than 34,000 units.

The no-frills brand Wuling sales doubled year over year to more than 347,000 units, as the brand maintained its dominant position in commercial vehicles. Sales of Hong Guang mini-EV exceeded 72,000 units, retaining its position as the best-selling green vehicle in the country.

Chevrolet recorded sale of more than 64,000 vehicles in the first quarter, reflecting a 27% year-over-year rise. Improvement in the brands SUV mix, led by Blazer and revamped Equinor, aided the sales growth. Also, sales of Malibu XL flagship sedan surpassed 13,000 units.

Baojun sold more than 86,000 units in the January-March period. In a bid to increase its appeal to the youth generation, the brand is adding the Valli midsize wagon passenger vehicle to its lineup.

Story continues

GMs Big EV Push

Amid heightening climate-change concerns, the Chinese government is more inclined toward companies offering green transportation services. General Motors is leaving no stone unturned to demonstrate its EV prowess in the nation. The U.S. auto giant is speeding up the development of advanced technologies in China to enable an all-electric future.

General Motors own modular battery platform, Ultium Drive system, will aid the company to undergo a transition to an all-electric portfolio down the road. The companys next-generation EVs (across all brands) in China will be powered by Ultium Drive. It should be noted that the Cadillac LYRIQ SUV would be the first Ultium-powered vehicle to be rolled out in China at Auto Shanghai 2021 later this month.

The auto giant plans more than 40% of its launches in China in the upcoming five years to be NEVs, in sync with the companys goal of building a zero-emission future. General Motors  which shares space with Ford F, Tesla TSLA and Volkswagen VWAGY  currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

The Hottest Tech Mega-Trend of All

Last year, it generated $24 billion in global revenues. By 2020, it's predicted to blast through the roof to $77.6 billion. Famed investor Mark Cuban says it will produce "the world's first trillionaires," but that should still leave plenty of money for regular investors who make the right trades early.

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The IYSSE at NYU is hosting an online meeting this Thursday at 7 p.m. EDT: The Columbia strike and the way forward for graduate workers. We encourage Columbia graduate students to join this meeting and share it with your friends and colleagues.

On Friday, the Graduate Workers of Columbia (GWC), affiliated with the United Auto Workers union (UAW), agreed to a strike pause with Columbia University after nearly three weeks of striking. The agreement was reached behind the backs of the rank-and-file members who overwhelmingly wanted to continue the strike until their demands were met.

The maneuver by the UAW came just as the strike would have had its deepest impact, days before the grading period. By Monday evening, that is, three days later, the UAW made clear to its members that the pause for them really meant an end to the strike. None of the main demands of the strikers have been met.

Columbia University has insisted on a contract that would not just fail to meet graduate student demands, but, in fact, involve a pay cut. The administration, which is run by billionaires and multi-millionaires and oversees an endowment of $11.3 billion (more than the GDP of many small countries, and half the GDP of countries like Somalia), has insultingly claimed that there is no money to pay for the most basic social needs of graduate students. In reality, the university, much like the ruling class as a whole, seeks to implement COVID austerity in an effort to fundamentally restructure class relations.

New York University campus in Manhattan (Photo: nyu.edu)

Many graduate students are rejecting the attempts to sell out the strike and, despite the best efforts of the UAW and Columbia University, it is not over. There is enormous support for the continuation of the strike among the rank-and-file members and anger about the union.

The International Youth and Students for Social Equality has called on students to hold a mass membership meeting, repudiate the existing bargaining committee and elect their own strike committee to continue the struggle.

So far, the efforts by graduate students to continue the strike have been dominated by a reform caucus of the UAW, which promotes the illusion that the UAW, through sufficient militancy from the rank-and-file, can be pressured to the left. While employing radical sounding rhetoric, the reform caucus is, in fact, opposed to a break with the UAW. It has made no attempt whatsoever to broaden the strike and appeal to workers outside Columbia University.

This, however, is the only way that the struggle can be carried forward. The role of the UAW in the strike is not an aberration, and any attempt to reform it is a dead end. The UAW is not a workers organization, but functions as an arm of corporate management and the state. Its officials who work to stifle open struggles by workers and sell them out whenever they occur earn hundreds of thousands of dollars every year.

The UAW official who has participated in the Columbia bargaining sessions, Gordon Deane, is a case in point. As the assistant director of the UAW 9A region, which covers much of the North East, including the New York City metropolitan area, Vermont, and Massachusetts, he takes home an annual salary of $167,208.

It is, therefore, no accident that the UAW has sabotaged the Columbia strike from the beginning, including by providing such meager strike pay that it effectively facilitated Columbias efforts to starve graduate students into submission.

Above all, the UAW has sought to isolate the strike, even from the struggle at New York University (NYU), where graduate students are now preparing to go on strike during finals season. An ongoing strike authorization vote is set to end later this week. In the last bargaining session on Tuesday with GSOC-UAW, the NYU administration offered only one proposal for extending paid parental leave from four to six weeks.

NYU has consistently refused to budge on any of the major demands made by graduate students for higher wages and health care, even though GSOC-UAW has made one concession after another in over nine months of bargaining.

Over 70 undergraduate Teaching Assistants (TAs) in the General Engineering program at NYU, who are not unionized, also launched a strike on Monday, one of the first of its kind in US history. In response to a request by the World Socialist Web Site, they explained that they were demanding a wage increase from $16.50 per hour to $25 an hour to adequately compensate TAs for the amount of work that we take on in running this course and for the required technical skills that we are expected to know.

General Engineering TAs carry a tremendous workload each semester, they added, conducting recitations for students, leading and assisting their lab experiments as well as grading lab reports, lab presentations, and quizzes.

This workload has only increased over the last year as TAs were forced to remodel the course to include in-person, hybrid, and remote options for students.

The union and the ruling class are so concerned with isolating and defeating the strike at Columbia because they are keenly aware that, one year into the pandemic, conditions are rife for a social explosion. In the US and internationally, workers have been forced back into factories and workplaces to ensure that profits continue to flow. This policy has caused countless infections and deaths. Now, as the coronavirus continues to rage, teachers are being forced back into schools across the country.

New York City epitomizes the staggering levels of social inequality that dominate capitalist society. The city is home to Wall Street, the center of the multi-trillion-dollar hand-out of March 2020, and no less than 92 of Americas richest billionaires. During the pandemic, New York billionaires collectively increased their wealth by $81 billion to more than $600 billion. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of workers have seen their jobs destroyed. City-wide unemployment now stands at 12.6 percent, twice the national average.

In Bronx County, which includes some of the most impoverished working-class communities in the country, unemployment stood at 17.7 percent, up from 4.6 percent last February. Over 1.66 million residents were enrolled for food stamp benefits in January, and food pantries had to provide nearly 100 million pounds of food since the beginning of the pandemic, a nearly 61 percent increase over the same period the prior year.

Columbia graduate students who are determined to continue their struggle and win cannot make one step forward without breaking out of the straitjacket of the UAW. Instead, they should make a conscious turn to the working class and fight for the expansion of the strike.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 05:02:05|Editor: huaxia

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GAZA, April 6 (Xinhua) -- A high-ranking Egyptian security delegation arrived in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday to hold talks with the leaders of the Palestinian Resistance Movement (Hamas), Palestinian sources said.

The members of the delegations crossed into the besieged Gaza Strip through the Erez crossing between the coastal enclave and Israel, the sources said on condition of anonymity.

The sources declined to reveal more details on the purpose of the sudden visit, saying that the schedule of the visit was unclear.

Major General Ahmed Abdel Khaleq, chief of the Palestinian affairs in the Egyptian General Intelligence Service, heads the delegation, according to the sources.

Hamas has been ruling the Gaza Strip since 2007, when it seized control of the territory and ousted the security forces of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The visit of the Egyptian delegation, the first since December 2020, was made as the Palestinians are preparing to hold the legislative elections in the Palestinian territories.

Egypt sponsored two rounds of intra-Palestinian national dialogue in Cairo in February and March on holding the legislative elections scheduled on May 22 in the Palestinian territories.

In January, Abbas announced the 2021 general elections will include the legislative elections on May 22, the presidential elections on July 31, and the elections of the Palestinian National Council, the highest decision-making body of the Palestine Liberation Organization, on Aug. 31.

The last Palestinian presidential elections were held in March 2005, and the legislative elections in January 2006. Enditem
A fresh case of insolvency has been filed against the subsidiary of Oyo over a dispute of Rs 16 lakh. The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) has admitted the case and ordered the commencement of corporate insolvency proceedings on March 31, 2021. The NCLT has ordered the creditors of Oyo Hotels and Homes Private Limited (OHHPL), Oyo's subsidiary, to submit their claims by April 15 to the interim resolution professional (IRP) based in Ahmedabad.

Oyo, however, has challenged the NCLT order against its subsidiary. In an official statement, Oyo said that it's surprised to hear that NCLT has admitted a petition against OHHPL in a contractual dispute. "We have filed an appeal. The matter is sub-judice and we would refrain from commenting further on the merits of the matter at this stage. We have strong faith and belief in our judicial system," said an Oyo spokesperson.

Oyo claims that the Rs 16 lakh in dispute has already been paid to the claimant under protest by the entity with whom the dispute was raised (which is separate from OHHPL).

Meanwhile, Oyo Founder and CEO Ritesh Agarwal has dismissed rumours that Oyo has filed for bankruptcy. He has clarified the misinformation is linked to the Rs 16 lakh dispute.





OYO has paid that under protest and amount already banked by the claimant. OYO has also appealed with the NCLAT about the matter. OYO is recovering from the pandemic steadily and our largest markets are operating profitably. 2/3  Ritesh Agarwal (@riteshagar) April 7, 2021

This is not the first time Oyo has been in the bankruptcy soup. In 2020, for instance, Hyderabad-based Conclave Infratech had reportedly filed an insolvency application against Oyo's parent company Oravel Stays Pvt Ltd over unpaid dues. Oyo has been in the cross hairs of some of its hotel partners. These hotel partners allege that Oyo is following unfair business practices, and a bunch of them have snapped ties with the hotel chain over the past two-three years.

Due to pandemic, the past one year has been tough for the entire hospitality sector, and SoftBank-backed Oyo is no different. Early last year, Oyo had to scale down its operations by exiting out of some 200 cities, laying off employees, and restructuring its businesses.

Also read: New COVID-19 wave hits hospitality sector; Mumbai, Bengaluru hotels worst sufferers

Also read: 'Structure your thoughts': Oyo's Ritesh Agarwal tells budding entrepreneurs

Also read: Will Oyo be forced to give 7% equity to Zostel?
J. B. Shurk, writing at the American Thinker, says:

Woke Coke seems less concerned with selling sugar water these days than selling Americans on the idea that whites are not worthy of respect or equal protection under the law. A few weeks ago, a whistleblower revealed Coca-Colas discriminatory employee training program equating racism with whiteness. In a series of online work assignments, Coke goes so far as to instruct its white employees to, try to be less white. How does one be less white? Coke answers that explicitly: by being less oppressive, arrogant, certain, defensive, and ignorant, and being more humble and break[ing] with white solidarity. For Coke, judging people based on the color of their skin is not only tolerated but also company policy.

If the companys de-whitening efforts werent sufficient proof that Coca-Cola prioritizes a persons skin color over a persons talents and individual character, it drove the point home with a letter sent to its outside legal counsel demanding that law firms assign attorneys representing the Coca-Cola Company based, not upon the quality of lawyers work, but rather upon lawyers racial classification. Going forward, Coke will penalize and reduce its fees to law firms unable to hit certain racial quotas.

Now Coca-Colas CEO is joining other race hucksters to claim that sensible voter ID laws meant to curb fraud in Georgias elections should be seen as nothing short of white Americans attempt to disenfranchise black voters  a loaded accusation not based in reason or analysis of the laws merits but rather in raw emotionalism intended to pit one group of Americans against another.

Surely a company that regurgitates nasty racial stereotypes against whites so effortlessly while seeking to eliminate them from its workforce doesnt really believe white people can ever scrub all that icky whiteness away for good, no matter how many rounds of re-education they are forced to endure. As Coca-Colas training materials suggest, racism is just part of whites DNA. Perhaps the company could have saved future employees a lot of trouble by simply hanging a sign on its front door reading, No Uppity Whites Allowed.

Racial stereotypes, racial classifications and quotas, explicitly racist indoctrination  why is Coca-Cola so obsessed with discriminating against people based on the color of their skin rather than evaluating all of the individual characteristics that make each person a unique member of the human race? Perhaps racism is in the companys own DNA, not at all different from the way the beverage company judges white Americans as racists for historical injustices in which they claimed no part

Did you know that Nazi Germany was one of Coca-Colas biggest markets? Have you ever seen an official Coca-Cola advertisement promoting the companys partnership with the Nazis during the 1936 Olympics under a jingoistic tagline  One people, one country, one drink, Coke is it  that would have made Adolf Hitler proud? No?

Does Coca-Cola not highlight its financial history with Nazi Germany when crowing about its racial purity tests today? Or the fact that Germanys inconvenient declaration of war against the United States made it sufficiently difficult for Coca-Cola to maintain its prominent reputation within the Reich that the companys German representatives repurposed the operations of hundreds of bottling plants toward the production of a new drink called Fanta to serve thirsty German soldiers throughout the war? Does the Coca-Cola Company not brag about Fantas wartime genesis as a Nazi beverage? How strange.

One would think that a company so dedicated to rooting out white supremacy that it forces its white employees into racial re-education training seminars would first want to take a hard look at its own rather awkward historical relationship with actual white supremacists intent on building a world-dominating master race. Thats what racial justice requires, right  the punishment of one generation of Americans for the sins of generations past? So why should Coca-Colas questionable corporate history be off-limits when it goes out of its way to demonize white Americans for no other reason than the color of their skin?

On the other hand, everything about Coca-Colas racial indoctrination program today sounds as if it could be ripped right from the pages of Nazi Germanys own race laws, with Jews and other undesirables being crossed out and whites scribbled in their place. All the racial animosity that nearly destroyed humanity last century is back in woke form, and some of the same companies that underestimated the Nazi threat then are underestimating the evil intent of the new racialist agendas that are taking over the corporate world today. Isnt that, after all, why Critical Race Theory exists  so that pretend intellectuals can repackage discredited race-based theories from the past into academic language that can be used once again to justify outright racism? If so, 2021 Coke and 1936 Coke still have much in common. The only thing really differentiating the symbolism of a Nazi swastika and a Black Lives Matter clenched fist, after all, is which racial group is being targeted and which racial group is doing the targeting.

There is nothing new under the sun. Perhaps if Coca-Cola were capable of seeing the similarity between the racial grievances of its old Nazi partners and those of its new woke ones, it wouldnt be so enthusiastic to repeat history all over. And maybe if Coke remains so intent on cancelling white Americans for the problems it sees in Americas history, then Americans should cancel Coke for the problems it overlooked in Nazi Germanys.

Source: Maybe Coke Should Be Cancelled for Its Nazi Past - American Thinker

Hat tip to Carole Gunn for sending us this link.
(CNN)-- Two teenage girls have been charged in the carjacking death of a man this week in Washington, DC, police say.

Mohammad Anwar, 66, of Springfield, Virginia, was killed Tuesday afternoon near Nationals Park, the Metropolitan Police Department said in a statement.

Anwar was working as an Uber Eats driver, says a GoFundMe page set up by his family.

The girls, 13 and 15, assaulted Anwar with a Taser while carjacking him, which led to an accident in which he was fatally injured, police said.

The girls were charged with felony murder and armed carjacking, police said.

The younger girl is from the southeast section of DC, the older from Fort Washington, Maryland, police said.

Anwar immigrated from Pakistan in 2014, his family said on the GoFundMe page.

He "was a beloved husband, father, grandfather, uncle, and friend who always provided a smile when you needed one. He leaves behind a family, near and far, who cherish, love, and miss him dearly," the family said.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.  When service at the bar became illegal in New York City after March 15 due to the pandemic, business models like those of the neighborhood watering hole genre seemed cut off at the knees. On the contrary, West Cork Union Halls owners decided over the summer to switch gears and go full-blown restaurant with pub grub at its core.

Joanne Meurer and her sons, Kevin Jr. and James, now operate the bar. (Staten Island Advance/Pamela Silvestri)

Joanne Meurer and her sons, Kevin Jr. and James, took over the West Brighton bar in July after the familys patriarch, Kevin, lost a battle with cancer. Joanne knew at the time it was fight or flight for the clans business. And although new to the deed of actually running a bar, Joanne vowed to keep it going. With a kitchen already in place from a former rendition of 502 Henderson Avenue known as Swansons Deli, the West Cork Union Hall ventured into a new era with food served alongside brews and Jameson shots. Manager Tamara Soto does the cooking along with Chris Lavelle and Joe Flack.

Now, there is an outdoor section for patrons to socially distance and dine on $15 Sunday brunches. Eats include a bacon n mac n cheese topped hot dog, bacon burger, cheesesteak with peppers and onions plus nachos, wings and fries. Hours are from noon until 11 p.m.

Event organizer John Strandberg will bring a complimentary American beer tasting to West Cork on Wednesday, April 14. Seating starts at 6 p.m. and the program rolls at 7 p.m. through 10 p.m. Food is available for purchase. There will be at least three guest speakers to chat about the beers on deck. Reservations can be made by direct message to the @AllDayEveryDaySI page on Instagram to Strandberg.

Also at West Cork, artist Chris Martin who doubles as a bartender, features his woodwork signs, patriotic art and t-shirts in support of the NYPD, EMT and FDNY. These are displayed around the restaurant and are for sale.

Bartender Chris Martin (Staten Island Advance/Pamela Silvestri)

Advance Facebook Top Fan Jason McGinley recalls the Henderson Avenue spot in its prior formats. He noted its history in The Dishs comment section, It was the Buzz Inn....[the] family also owned the deli next door called Swansons. [The] candy shop called Franks a few doors down that had a proper soda fountain. Great memories. The West Cork Union Hall address served as homes to Arlenes and the Rec Room.

Check out this weeks Dish broadcast in rerun by clicking here. To watch the Wednesday show live and participate in the conversation, go to the Staten Island Advance Facebook page at 11:30 a.m.

Pamela Silvestri is Advance Food Editor. She can be reached at silvestri@siadvance.com. West Cork Union Hall is located at 502-504 Henderson Ave., 718-442-2133; West Cork via Facebook.

The crew at West Cork from left to right: Chris Martin, Tamara Soto and Joanne Meurer. John Strandberg stands in the front. (Staten Island Advance/Pamela Silvestri)

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Dhaka, April 7 : At least 20 people were injured in a blast at the residence of a Bangladesh municipality Mayor.

The incident took place at about 9 p.m. on Tuesday night when Haji Abdus Salam, the Mayor of Mirkadim municipality in Munshiganj district, was attending a meeting with councillors and other officials in the second floor of the building.

The injured people included four councillors and the Mayor's wife. Salam however, remained safe.

Twelve of the injured were immediately taken to the Sheikh Hasina National Institute of Burn and Plastic Surgery in Dhaka, while one person is undergoing treatment at Munshiganj General Hospital.

Meanwhile, physicians of the Dhaka hospital told the media that one of the patients has been taken to Intensive Care Unit (ICU) with 60 per cent burn injuries.

Abu Bakar Siddique, officer-in-charge of Munshiganj Sadar Police Station, said the reason behind the blast could not be ascertained immediately.
An Australian insurance company has posted an image asking the public to spot the four laws being broken - sparking an intense online debate.

The Royal Automobile Club of Queensland published the image on its Facebook page requesting followers to identify the four road rules not being adhered to - with many suggesting there were more.

The picture shows a young woman driving an older man with their dog seated in the back.

The RACQ confirmed the four laws being broken in the photo were: a dog unrestrained in the back seat; the woman having her phone on her lap; the man failing to wear a seat belt correctly; and the driver's view through the back of the car restricted by luggage.

Can you spot the four road rules being broken in this image?

Most people identified the obvious four laws being broken and correctly commented on the post - but there was disagreement over the number of illegalities.

Several users said there were five or even six road rules in dispute, noting the rear vision mirror was not correctly placed and the young woman's thumbs being tucked under the steering wheel.

One user said the fifth broken rule was the older man wearing 'two-tone pants' while another said it was a 'Taylor Swift CD playing'.

'Taylor Swift CD playing, passenger hasn't got a traveller, dog needs water, air con on low. Girl hasn't answered text message, and she has a Tik Tok notification. Whew, that was hard,' one person observed.

'Someone is on their bonnet taking photos. Very dangerous,' another said.

The RACQ confirmed the four laws being broken in the photo and the fines associated

In Queensland the woman would be hit with a $1,000 fine and four demerit points for having her phone on her lap while the unrestrained dog would attract a $247 fine.

She would also be fined $400 and three demerit points for her passenger not buckling up and $311 for blocking the rear view with luggage.

The amount would total $1,958 if she was caught by police driving as she appears in the photo.

A spokeswoman for the RACQ told Daily Mail Australia the post was designed to create awarnesss about safe driving.

'The penalty in Queensland for not wearing a seatbelt is $400 and three demerit points for drivers and passengers aged 16 years or older so both the occupants in the car could be fined,' she said.

'The others are unsafe behaviours, but theres no specific law in Queensland against them. A phone on your lap could be a potential distraction and we urge drivers to set their phones then leave them alone so theyre not tempted.

'An unrestrained pet in a car could be very dangerous, especially in a crash as it could become a missile. While in Queensland it is not an offence to have a dog unrestrained inside a car, you can be fined for having a dog on your lap while driving or if the dog interferes with the drivers control of a motor vehicle.

'While the back window isnt fully blocked, it could be obscuring the drivers view. While there are likely other mirrors available to use wed recommend you can see clearly though your rear-view mirror at all times. In extreme cases in Queensland it could be determined your vision is blocked and you dont have proper control of the vehicle and you could be fined $311.'
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Q: My son is intelligent, but he is not doing well in elementary school, despite working really hard. He has a hard time understanding what he is reading and I am worried he may have a learning disability. What can I do to help him?

A: Learning disabilities are common and may affect up to 20% of the population. When a child has difficulty mastering specific skills over time despite a good effort, it may indicate a learning disability.

Some symptoms that may be observed with learning disorders include: being a slow reader or struggling with reading comprehension; having a hard time remembering what was just read or what was just said; reversing letters or numbers in writing or reading after the first or second grade; having poor handwriting or difficulty using scissors; showing deficiencies in coordination; having a hard time understanding instructions or staying organized; and problems with recognizing patterns.

A learning disability is a neurological problem that impacts how the brain is able to perceive and understand information.

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It sounds like your son may have a specific learning disability (SLD). There are three broad categories of SLDs that include dyslexia, dyscalculia and dysgraphia.

Dyslexia is a reading disability that is a language-based processing disorder and has been an area of much research. It can affect ones ability to read, write, spell or verbally communicate effectively. Dyslexia is NOT a vision problem and cannot be treated with any type of vision therapy.

Dyscalculia is a learning disability with regard to mathematics and can be variable in the areas of impact.

Dysgraphia is a learning disability that affects writing. It may involve difficulties with handwriting, spelling and expressing ideas on paper.

Learning disabilities are not a sign of lower intelligence. In fact, there have been many well-known successful people with dyslexia. Pablo Picasso, Tom Cruise, Richard Branson, Steven Spielberg and Mohammed Ali have all had to learn to manage their dyslexia.

While any learning disability may be lifelong, individuals with a learning disability can be successful with supports. As a parent, you can help your son get the supports he may need to be more successful.

The first step is to contact his teacher, and possibly the schools special education coordinator, to request an evaluation for a learning disorder. Under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), children who have an SLD are eligible for special education services or accommodations at school.

The IDEA provides free, appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment, for ages 3-21 with an eligible disability.

There are 13 qualifying conditions, including autism, hearing or vision impairment, emotional disturbance, intellectual disability, orthopedic impairment, SLD, traumatic brain injury, speech or language impairment, and other health impairments (which may include such issues as attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder).

If he has a qualifying disorder that is adversely impacting his ability to learn, he may benefit greatly from specialized educational services. If he is eligible for special education, you will meet with a team at the school, which will include his teachers and, possibly, other professionals, to develop an individualized education program (IEP).

The purpose is to identify and implement the support services he needs to be successful and to learn effectively.

For example, he may benefit from specialized reading instruction in his regular classroom or be better served by a pull out time for specialized instruction.

For those students who do not qualify for special education services, another avenue of support is through Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

The 504 Accommodation Plan provides equal access to education and protects students with disabilities from discrimination.

To be eligible, a student must have a physical or mental impairment which substantially limits one or more major life activity.

The New Mexico Medical Home Portal (nm.medicalhomeportal.org) has a very helpful section under School Accommodations: IEPs, 504s & Health Care Plans on its website for more information and resources.

It is also important to schedule a visit with your sons health care provider to discuss this and to evaluate whether he may have other confounding factors.

For example, some kids who are struggling in school may also be dealing with such other issues as ADHD, poor sleep, anxiety, food insecurity and vision or hearing deficiencies, among other problems. It is critical to identify and treat issues that may be contributing to school struggles as soon as possible to enable kids to do their best in, and hopefully enjoy, school.

Melissa Mason is a general pediatrician with Journey Pediatrics in Albuquerque. Please send your questions to melissaemason@gmail.com.
Positive Technologies, a global cybersecurity company specialising in telecom security, announces the appointment of Santhosh Kumar as Managing Director to spearhead the companys Middle East and Africa and South Asia operations.

Positive Technologies unique cybersecurity products and services are designed to help operators stay secure and achieve their business goals. Currently, the companys solutions are being successfully deployed by a multitude of telecom operators, spanning 43 countries around the globe.

Kumar brings almost 20 years of experience within the technology industry, 10 of which were dedicated to cybersecurity. Prior to his appointment at Positive Technologies, Kumar held several regional leadership roles with renowned global companies, including Sophos and F-Secure, where he was recognised for his outstanding work which contributed to the exponential growth of those businesses. Moreover, Kumar has established a number of startups from the ground up to multimillion-dollar businesses.

Amit Nath, CEO of Positive Technologies said: Having almost two decades of experience under his belt, we believe that Kumar will play a pivotal role in delivering Positive Technologies global business acceleration strategy. Our objectives go beyond expanding our operations and footprint; in these unprecedent times, Covid-19 has significantly changed the way organisations work and forced them to expedite their digital transformation and security strategies, which has put CTOs and CIOs under immense pressure.

As a global leader in the telecom security industry, we take pride in our long-standing record within the cybersecurity industry and deep knowledge of telecom-related specialties; we felt compelled to play an active role in sharing our expertise and help in educating organisations on the risks cybersecurity threats impose on their continuity. We are positive that Santhosh Kumar will offer his unwavering commitment to this role, reinforce our existing relationships and foster new strategic alliances and more, Nath continued.

Kumar said: I am excited to be part of Positive Technologies team and embark on this aspiring journey in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. I would like to thank our CEO for his trust, and I look forward to scale-up our efforts in this region, work closely with all our partners and customers, and gain in-depth insights of the organisations and markets needs. I believe that with my experience and the backing of the unparalleled team of experts at Positive Technologies, we will be strongly positioned to collaborate further with our customers and create the right solution that is specific to their requirements and drive their business performance and value.

Positive Technologies have a long-standing relationship with most of the mobile operators in the Middle East region including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, amongst other countries. -- Tradearabia News Service
TSXV: VIPR, OTC:VIPRF

VANCOUVER, BC, April 6, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Silver Viper Minerals Corp. (the "Company" or "Silver Viper") (TSXV: VIPR) is pleased to provide shareholders an update on the La Virginia Project.

As we close out Q1 2021 and reflect on recent months, we are extremely pleased with where the Company is positioned. Our geological crews are working smoothly and safely in the field, thanks to comprehensive safety protocols which are now a routine part of camp life. In collaboration with our drilling contractor, we built a healthy working environment for our most valuable assets, our people. Recently, our team moved into a new office structure erected on site, a significant upgrade from the tents which also served as offices and dormitories since late 2018.

Today, fieldwork at La Virginia continues to expand knowledge along the known mineralized trends, and of course, diamond drilling also consistently adds to the knowledge of mineralized zones identified at the El Rubi discovery zone.

As you are aware, drilling successes at El Rubi over the last 6 months are cause for great celebration. A string of mineralized intervals has been reported from El Rubi over the past few months, not least of which being the extremely exciting high-grade zone from hole LV21-289, with a best interval of 19.30 metres averaging 363 g/t silver and 21.2 g/t gold. This interval reflects the El Rubi breccia, a northwest trending, silver-gold bearing fault zone forming the eastern limit of the mineralization at El Rubi. Also intercepted before the high-grade hit in the same hole is a broad zone of mineralization averaging 18 g/t silver and 0.69 g/t gold over a downhole length of 130 metres. See press release of the Company dated March 1, 2021. This style of mineralization has been observed on adjacent sections to the north and is thought to represent an extension of the "Western Zone", a broad area of disseminated mineralization occupying the footwall block of the El Rubi structure.

Entering Q1 2021, our focus was to produce the project's first ever mineral resource estimate, and I am glad to report this work is very close to completion. The footprint of the mineralized zone extends for about 500 metres in length within a corridor 250 metres wide. Drill intercepts have been made in this zone to a vertical depth of 300 metres.

Wireframes and block models are complete, and the process now awaits one of the final steps, which is pit shell design. For this stage to run efficiently, and to ensure the advantages of topography are realized, we require a detailed surface model. This surface model is especially important in projects affected by steep terrain, and we anxiously await receipt of a new Digital Elevation Model (DEM).

A detailed DEM produced from data collected by LiDAR technology can prove an extremely effective exploration tool. As such, we commissioned a drone-based survey to be run in late 2019. Unfortunately, apparent work backlogs in addition to Covid-19 related delays in early 2020 caused our job to be postponed several times. By late 2020, we decided to cancel the contract in favour of a fixed-wing LiDAR survey. Originally scheduled for January 2021, we encountered further, minor delays including increased wait times for logistics, permitting and international movement of equipment and staff during this difficult time. We are extremely pleased to report all challenges and delays have been overcome, and the aircraft was able to fly over the project last weekend.

The lead-time for delivery of the DEM is roughly 2-3 weeks from the date of flying. We expect to have this product in our hands, at the earliest, in about 2 weeks. At that time, we will send the data for inclusion in the pit shell design and would expect to have the preliminary resource numbers by the end of the month. We are all very excited for the arrival of those numbers, as a maiden resource is a major milestone for any project.

As you know, this project has a relatively short history, and early on, Silver Viper recognized the exciting potential of this under-explored region. When the project was acquired in June 2018, the historical dataset that accompanied it contained data from 188 drillholes, totaling about 52,635 metres drilled from 2010-2013. Prior to this, only limited artisanal style workings existed.

At the time of writing, Silver Viper is in the process of drilling hole LV21-298, its 110th drillhole on the project. To date, Silver Viper has added 30,595 metres of drilling to the database, the majority of which helped to define its newest mineralized zone, El Rubi. In 2021, we look forward to another large program to expand upon the maiden resource and to make brand new discoveries on some of the untested anomalies within the project.

I would like to thank our shareholders and colleagues for their support and patience as we move forward. Though the delays experienced have been frustrating, we are extremely thankful to our staff and contractors for their efforts to overcome the challenges facing our industry during this difficult time. We are excited to see progress, and we look forward to completion of the project's maiden resource estimate and the continued exploration on the El Rubi discovery. I believe we are in for another exciting year at La Virginia, and in the precious metals sector.

Dale Brittliffe, P.Geo., Vice President of Exploration, is the 'Qualified Person' under National Instrument 43-101 and has approved the scientific and technical information contained in this communication.

About the Company

Silver Viper Minerals Corp. is a Canadian-based junior mineral exploration company focused on precious metals exploration in the northwestern Mexican state of Sonora. The Company currently operates the La Virginia Gold-Silver Project. Silver Viper has 100% ownership of the La Virginia concessions acquired from the most recent operator, Pan American Silver Corp., and has an option to acquire a 100% interest in the Rubi-Esperanza group of claims internal to those concessions. Silver Viper is under management provided by the Belcarra Group, which is comprised of highly qualified mining professionals.

On behalf of the board of directors,

Steve Cope

President and CEO

Forward Looking Information

Information set forth in this press release contains forward-looking statements. 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 exploration and development, the ability of the Company to obtain additional financing, the need to comply with environmental and governmental regulations, fluctuations in the prices of commodities, operating hazards and risks, competition and other risks and uncertainties, including those described in the Company's financial statements 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, the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information.

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.

SOURCE Silver Viper Minerals Corp.

Related Links

https://www.silverviperminerals.com/


Srinagar, April 7 : Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah took the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday at Sheri Kashmir Institute Of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) at Srinagar.

Omar Abdullah took to Twitter and informed that he has taken the first COVID jab. He thanked the staff at SKIMS for the vaccination.

"Got my 1st dose of the COVID vaccine this morning. It was a smooth & painless affair. I'm grateful to everyone at SKIMS, Srinagar for vaccinating me today," Omar tweeted.

About reports that his father and former Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah who is undergoing treatment for COVID-19 at SKIMS, having again tested positive for COVID, Omar stated that it is not unusual and his father is responding well to the treatment.

"This is nothing unusual. COVID patients often test positive for quite a few days as the viral load reduces. The important thing is he is responding well to treatment & does not require any supplementary oxygen support." Omar tweeted.

Last month Farooq Abdullah had tested positive for COVID-19 days after he had taken the first COVID jab at SKIMS in Srinagar.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
TAMPA  Ryan Harrell, 41, and his wife Nicole have for years served members of the armed forces with their American Tattoo Society shops near military installations, including their flagship store just outside Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

But since last year, the couple has branched out, opening tattoo studios on base at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada and Tampas MacDill Air Force Base in March.

All of the branches of the service are looking at how they can do this in an effective way, and then theyre also looking at regulations, making sure that regulations match how the world is changing, Harrell said.

Related: More Military Exchange Locations to Get Tattoo Studios

As they worked to open their third on-base location in Texas in this month, Harrell spoke with the Tampa Bay Times about their business. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you open a studio on a military base?

It was a long, long process, but the Army and Air Force Exchange Service was with us the whole way. And we worked hand-in-hand with them to develop the regulations and how we would do things and our processes and procedures and all those sorts of stuff that they wanted to see from us.

What are some of the unique regulations you face by being on a military base?

I dont know that there are a whole lot of things that were doing on base that are different from our studios that are off-base. But being that there wasnt tattooing on it before, a lot of people had a lot of questions.

We track all of the lot numbers for the inks that we use, when we are tattooing. And thats not common. (Its in case theres a problem with the inks, such as someone having a reaction to one.) Outside of that, its really the same procedures and stuff that we do here in our off-base studios.

We just had to educate and inform the folks that were giving us the go ahead, we had to let them know this is how we do it and this is how we would do it if this came up or if this arose. We had some flights up to Dallas, to the Army and Air Force Exchange Service headquarters, to meet with vice presidents and stuff to go through and answer those questions in person.

How do you build customers on a base versus in a general commercial area?

Our off-base shops are extremely large. Our North Carolina shops are 7,000 and 5,000 square feet, respectively, and we have 20 artists at one shop and 11 at the other shop. We have to attract a lot more clientele, obviously, to keep everyone busy. But at our on-base locations, theyre much smaller. Nellis has four artists. And MacDill will have seven, when its all full of artists.

So its a little bit easier to keep their schedules full. Plus, tattooing and the military have gone hand-in-hand for as long as tattooing has been around. So once they heard that we were coming, and that there was a tattoo studio opening, we got a lot of interest. People wanted to see the portfolios.

So showing off the work and letting them know kind of how we operate has really helped us to draw in folks. Plus were in the exchange mall, on base. So its really easy to find us. Our artists and our counter staff are extremely good at both tattooing and taking care of the customer. So with our team, once we get them in the door and show what we can do, the word of mouth on base travels extremely fast.

We opened (at MacDill) Wednesday before the grand-opening week. And by the end of the week, Ian, the shop manager was pretty much booked out for a few weeks. And by the time the grand opening came around, he was booking into May.

We have a lot more retirees coming in (to MacDill) than we do at Nellis. Theres still a lot of retirees and veterans that come in.

Can you share some of your more popular designs or any restrictions you face in what you can do?

We will follow the guidelines, rules and restrictions for the tattoo policies for all the branches. And outside of our studio, we have these posters, which show the regulations for each branch.

And MacDill is a joint base. Every branch is represented there. So we have to be wary that the Marines can only get certain tattoos, they can only do in certain places. Pretty much all the other ones have dialed back all their tattoo restrictions.

The Marines are kind of the last holdout for it. We know well what we can and cant do with Marines, because we have a large shop outside of Camp Lejeune (in North Carolina), which is one of the largest Marine bases on the East Coast.

We know that the Marines like traditional tattoos and that they like tribal and traditional work. They also get our realism tattoos, black and gray, stuff like that. But the Air Force is more comics and anime. Its almost like a younger style of artwork that they like.

In the Army, infantry guys especially, they like larger black and gray. Theres a lot more memorial and military-style tattoos that come out of the Army and infantry guys than any of the other branches.

But the Navy guys are pretty wide open. They have the most relaxed tattoo policy. The Navy has historically been the tattoo branch. We verify what branch theyre in and that were staying within regulation.

This article is written by Ileana Najarro from Tampa Bay Times, St. Petersburg, Fla. and was legally licensed via the Tribune Content Agency through the Industry Dive publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@industrydive.com.
A woman receives a dose of AstraZeneca coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine during a mass vaccination program for Green Zone Tourism in Sanur, Bali (Photo : REUTERS/Nyimas Laula/File Photo)

Indonesia has reported its first case of a more transmissible new variant of the coronavirus known for reducing vaccine protection, but the government on Tuesday said vaccines being used in the country could withstand the mutation.



The new variant contains the E484K mutation found in variants first identified in South Africa and Brazil.



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It is nicknamed "Eek" by some scientists for its apparent ability to evade natural immunity from previous COVID-19 infection and to reduce protection offered by current vaccines.



Siti Nadia Tarmizi, a senior health ministry official, said on Tuesday that the one variant case had recovered and did not infect close contacts, adding that the vaccines currently available in Indonesia could withstand the mutation.



However, Herawati Sudoyo, deputy director for fundamental research at the government-funded Eijkman Institute, which specialises in medical molecular biology and biotechnology, said the vaccines' ability to withstand the mutation had yet to be determined.



The first case of the variant comes as the country prepares for a reduced supply of COVID-19 vaccines due to export curbs of AstraZeneca's shot imposed by manufacturer India to prioritise its domestic supplies.



Indonesia's health minister said on Monday only 20 million of the 30 million doses it had ordered for a March-April delivery were available due to the export curbs.



He called for the vaccination programme to be readjusted and prioritised for the elderly.



With around 1.54 million cases and 41,900 deaths so far, Indonesia has the highest caseload in Southeast Asia and one of the worst epidemics in Asia.



Its vaccination programme aims to inoculate 181 million people and is relying heavily on a vaccine developed by China's Sinovac due to shipment delays of the AstraZeneca vaccine.


Workers continue to make emergency repairs to the eastern span of the San Francisco Bay Bridge in San Francisco, Calif., on Oct. 30, 2009. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

The Trouble With Chinese Infrastructure

How collaboration with China left California with an unsafe bridge

Commentary

Last year, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden told reporters he would bar Chinese companies from building critical infrastructure in the United States. The Delaware Democrat and his press corps seemed unaware that Chinese companies were already building critical infrastructure in America.

Consider, for example, the new span of the Bay Bridge from San Francisco to Oakland, California.

The eastern span of the Bay Bridge, originally a double-deck suspension bridge built in the 1930s, was damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The bridge received a quick initial repair and reopened a month later. But it needed further work to make sure it could withstand large earthquakes. One option was a retrofit that was estimated to cost $250 million in 1992. Instead, California opted for a new bridge at an estimated cost of over $1 billion (pdf).

However, U.S. workers eager to participate in the bridge project would soon be disappointed.

California politicians rejected federal funding because it required that all steel be manufactured in the United States; they instead opted for a company that used some Chinese steel and Chinese labor as well. The bridge decks and materials were being constructed in China, leaving U.S. workers to assemble the parts, pour the concrete, and so forth.

Politicians selected the state-owned Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Co., which at the time had no experience building bridges. Zhenhuas 3,000 employees working on the project included steel-cutters, welders, polishers, and engineers.

By 2007, the Chinese materials had proved troublesome. Inspections at the Shanghai fabrication facility revealed fissures appearing in thick steel bars. In 2009, the company shipped from China the main bridge tower and 28 bridge decks. Engineers found hundreds of cracks in the welds, a violation of the contract, and every one of the 750 panels had to be repaired. In 2013, dozens of the long metal rods on the project snapped, and during storms, critical parts of the bridge filled with water.

All told, the bridge came in a full $5 billion over budgeta lot more than the $250 million estimated cost to retrofit the original structure. The new bridge also came 10 years late and is still riddled with safety issues. University of CaliforniaBerkeley structural engineering professor Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl, who in 2000 raised concerns about new bridge design not being earthquake-safe, told reporters he declines to use the bridge.

Then-Gov. Jerry Brown famously shrugged off the botched repair, saying [expletive] happens. When whistleblowers called for a criminal investigation, the states attorney general, Kamala Harris, ignored them. The boondoggle also failed to register with then-Vice President Joe Biden, who proclaimed last year that the Chinese are not bad folks and not competition for us.

With their Belt and Road Initiativealso known as One Belt, One RoadChina certainly appears to be direct competition for the United States. Beijings quest, as The New York Times once put it, was to become the worlds civil engineer. Other countries have since become wary.

Early this year, the government of Romania adopted a memorandum that would exclude China-based firms from public contracts for highway or rail projects. This comes at a time when Romania desperately needs to start infrastructure works, according to Deputy Prime Minister Dan Barna, amid concerns about companies that do not live up to European standards.

The Romanians may have taken note of the Bay Bridge boondoggle, where Chinese labor and materials didnt meet U.S. standards. But there is likely another reason that Romania has chosen to keep China at arms length.

Like millions of other Europeans, Romanians lived under the yoke of communism from 1947 to 1989, when the nation rose up and toppled the regime of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Based on that experience, Romania is reluctant to become entangled with Chinas communist regime. Strictly speaking, theres no need for any nation to hire any Chinese firm for any project.

Chinese participation in the Bay Bridge project cheated U.S. workers and taxpayers alike and also left California with an infrastructure project of questionable safety.

If a single component fails, the whole thing comes down, Astaneh-Asl says. Fracture critical bridges have been out of favor since the 1960s. And when you look at this new span, there are many things that can go wrong.

The test will come with the next earthquake. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, a major quake in the Bay Area is due by 2032.

Lloyd Billingsley is the author of Yes I Con: United Fakes of America, Barack em Up: A Literary Investigation, Hollywood Party, and other books. His articles have appeared in many publications, including Frontpage Magazine, City Journal, the Wall Street Journal, and American Greatness.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
A well-known female TV presenter received vile abuse online from a man who also threatened to rape her daughter, a court heard yesterday.

Carl Davies, 43, is accused of stalking the household name online for a period of ten months to July last year.

He allegedly sent a death threat to the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, and highlighted her home address.

Davies later sent threatening comments to a social media account belonging to the presenter, it is claimed, including one which said: 'Your daughter will be raped.'

The female presenter - who lived in a 'constant state of anxiety' during her alleged ordeal - won her fight to keep her name a secret until the Crown Court trial begins.

Public identification would further threaten the presenter and her family's safety and the naming ban was likely to improve the quality of evidence given, district judge Gwyn Jones was advised by a Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) lawyer.

Cooperation could also be diminished by fear or distress, the judge at Llandudno Magistrates' Court was told.

Carl Davies, of Flint, North Wales, has been accused of social media stalking a well-known TV presenter and her adult daughter - as the court agreed to keep her name a secret

Prosecutor Ceri Ellis-Jones said: 'These are exceptional circumstances.

'Reporting on these offences brings real risks of copycat offences.'

Davies, appearing on a video link at Mold courts, with his solicitor Euros Jones, was remanded on conditional bail until May 7 at Mold Crown Court.

The conditions included him not contacting the complainants nor approaching the presenter's workplace.

Judge Jones said the naming ban was the first application of its nature he had considered.

Cooperation was likely to be diminished by fear or distress, the judge at Llandudno Magistrates' Court (pictured) was told

'People in the public eye are no different to anyone else, save for their profile.

'The court should deal with all parties irrespective of who they are,' he remarked.

'I have to balance matters very carefully.'

Judge Jones added: 'I don't wish to take away the powers of any editor to report. But I have a duty to ensure victims and their views are taken into account.'

The stalking charges alleged 'serious alarm or distress' had been caused with threats and information posted online about the presenter and her property.
The Government is likely to extend the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme (EWSS) beyond the end of June as it seeks to phase out Pandemic Unemployment Payments (PUP) to encourage people back to work.

An analysis carried out by the Department of Finance last month on the EWSS found that it is an important tool for transitioning workers from social welfare payments to full employment, as well as helping businesses remain viable during the pandemic.

The scheme remains a significant support for businesses with about one-quarter of employers utilising the funding to maintain staff in their jobs. About 15pc of the workforce was backed by EWSS payments in January  proportionally higher than in November and December, the analysis found.

A final decision on the continuation of wage supports will be made at the end of the month after Q1 data has been made available and analysed, but Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe has said there will be no cliff edge to the scheme.

"Consideration is being given to the fact that continued support could be necessary beyond June to help maintain viable businesses and employment and to provide businesses with certainty to the maximum extent possible," a Department of Finance spokesperson said in a statement.

"As the revised plan is implemented, the EWSS will play an important role in getting people back to work as public health restrictions are eased, thereby reducing the numbers dependent on social welfare payments over time, including the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP)."

The Department has not decided what form the continued support will take, however, but will take into account emerging economic conditions as they become clearer in the coming months, the spokesperson said.

Chartered Accountants Ireland (CAI), whose members advise thousands of businesses around the country, are calling for the scheme to be retained in its present form rather than tweaked again to achieve different objectives.

"The EWSS is working well for businesses," said Nora Collender, professional tax lead with CAI. "This scheme and its terms and conditions should be retained to the end of the year rather than the introduction of a new scheme with new rules and regulations for Covid-impacted businesses to grapple with."

Separately, the EU has approved the Governments latest small business Covid-19 support scheme, the Small Business Assistance Scheme for Covid (SBASC) after it was announced last month.

The scheme offers up to 8000 in grants to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) between January and June this year.

It is open to companies in all sectors except banking, agriculture and fisheries, as long as they are not receiving other grants under the Covid Restrictions Support Scheme (CRSS) or Failte Ireland supports.

Neil McDonnell, Chief Executive of the Irish SME Association, said the scheme plugs a lot of the gaps that were left in the CRSS scheme.

We consider direct supports like these to be a small price to pay to keep the SME base functioning. Ireland remains in one of the most stringent lockdowns in the world, and ours is the longest-running, he added.

One in six Irish SMEs was in financial distress at the end of 2020, but Government support measures reduced the numbers by 40pc, according to new insolvency 'simulation' research published by the Central Bank yesterday.
For years as a teacher at Chicago Vocational High School, I was the unofficial narc of the schools west wing. Whether I had just entered the building on a snowy December morning or was parsing sentences on my classroom blackboard in midafternoon, I was the first to know when a student was lighting up a blunt under a stairwell or in a restroom stall. I would have to stop what I was doing, bust the offenders, collect their identification and walk them to the disciplinarians office.
Profiles in Moral & Ethical Leadership: The Legacy of President Jimmy Carter There are so many lessons aspiring changemakers can learn from President Carters courage and leadership, said Volcker Alliance president Thomas W. Ross.

Today, the Volcker Alliance will host a conversation in partnership with the Atlanta Film Festival and the new documentary CARTERLAND, which examines the life and presidency of Jimmy Carter. The virtual panel, Profiles in Moral & Ethical Leadership: The Legacy of President Jimmy Carter, will take place today, April 7, at 12:30 p.m. PDT/3:30 p.m. EDT. The event will feature Governor Kate Brown of Oregon, Governor Jay Inslee of Washington, and NextGen America founder Tom Steyer, all of whom are also featured in the film CARTERLAND. Moderated by Volcker Alliance president Thomas W. Ross, the discussion will cover perspectives on the moral and ethical leadership dilemmas arising from national crises including the pandemic, climate change, and ethics in government.

We are delighted and honored to host Governors Brown and Inslee along with Tom Steyer to discuss their own experiences and perspectives on what todays public leaders can learn from President Carter, said Volcker Alliance president Thomas W. Ross. There are so many lessons aspiring changemakers can learn from President Carters courage and leadership.

CARTERLAND tells the inspiring story of one of Americas most misunderstood and under-valued presidents, Jimmy Carter, and explores how Carters selfless leadership and moral integrity ultimately cost him the presidency. The film includes expert commentary from a range of politicians and scholars including all three panelists and Volcker Alliance board chairman and former New Jersey senator Bill Bradley. The documentary also contains one of the last recorded interviews of Volcker Alliance founder Paul A. Volcker before he died in 2019. Directed and produced by brothers Jim and Will Pattiz, the film will headline the Atlanta Film Festival from April 22 through May 2, officially premiering on April 24.

The time we spent with Paul Volcker was an incredibly meaningful part of producing CARTERLAND, said director Will Pattiz. It has been a pleasure partnering with the Volcker Alliance throughout the production process and to host this discussion.

Please click here to register or visit the Volcker Alliance website after the event to watch a recording of the panel discussion.

The Volcker Alliance empowers the public sector workforce to solve the challenges facing our nation. The nonprofit, nonpartisan organization is inspired by the legendary public service of our founder, Paul A. Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, and his vision of a public sector workforce with the experience, preparation, and commitment to ensure government is accountable and delivers with excellence. Visit volckeralliance.org to learn more. Follow us on social media @VolckerAlliance and subscribe to the Volcker Alliance newsletter for the latest news and developments. The Volcker Alliance is a 501(c)(3) organization.
Many peoples savings rates increased during lockdown due to being stuck at home. Now that the economy is reopening, you might find it harder to stick to your budget. Here are some strategies to help you save money during the reopening of the economy so you dont jeopardize your financial progress.

1. Use a Travel Rewards Credit Card

Now that the CDC has given the all-clear for vaccinated people to travel, youre probably itching to take a vacation. Getting a travel rewards credit card can help you earn cashback on your trip that you can save or put toward future travel.

If youre planning to fly, look into an airline rewards card like the Delta SkyMiles Platinum. If youre taking a road trip, look for credit cards that give you cashback for hotel stays and gas.

2. Invest Your Stimulus

Its tempting to spend your entire stimulus check now that the economy is reopening. But adding it to your emergency savings or investing it in your retirement account will put you in a much better financial position.

If you want to treat yourself, try spending just 10% or 20% of your check and investing the rest.

3. Cut Back on Eating Out

Another way to save money on reopening of the economy is to cook more meals at home. After being cooped up for a year, youd probably rather go out than eat in. But restaurant meals have a 300% markup, so they can really put a dent in your food budget.

Instead of eating out several times per week, try to cut back to weekends only. Your pocketbook and your waistline will thank you.

4. Save Money on Transportation

Some employers like Uber and Microsoft are already welcoming workers back to the office. Unless your company has given you the option to work from home permanently, youll probably be resuming your commute soon. That means youll be using a lot more gas.

Gas prices are currently on the rise, so transportation could eat up a big chunk of your budget when you return to the office. Here are some tips on how to keep your driving costs down:

Use apps like GasBuddy to find the cheapest gas prices

Buy discounted gas station gift cards on GiftCardGranny to save money

Use a credit card that offers points on gas

Increase your gas mileage by driving slower and avoiding idling

When the CDC says its safe, you could even carpool with another fully vaccinated coworker to save on transportation. You can also use these savings apps to automate your savings for this type of expense.

App Fess and minimum: Best for: Digit 30-day free trial period. $5 per month Setting aside automatically Acorns $1 per month Spare change investing. Qapital $3 membership Letting you set rules to automate savings.

5. Thrift Your Work Clothes

Many people (myself included) gained weight during lockdown. If youve packed on some pounds, your work clothes probably dont fit anymore.

Youll need to wear something more professional than sweatpants when you return to the office. But you dont have to spend hundreds of dollars on a brand new work wardrobe.

Instead of heading to the mall, try shopping at thrift stores or on clothing resale apps like Poshmark. They often have workwear that was never worn or gently used for a fraction of the price.

6. Dont Renew Your Gym Membership

Gyms have been allowed to open in many places with restrictions. But if you want to save money on reopening of economy, dont rush to renew your membership.

Instead of spending $50 per month on workout classes, try exercising outside. Now that the weather is getting warmer, you can get a great, free workout by going into nature.

Try hiking a local trail or walking around a park. If you own a bike or kayak, youll have even more exercise options.

7. Cancel Your Netflix Subscription

We all relied on our Netflix subscriptions to keep us entertained during lockdown. But now that you can safely hang out with your friends, you probably dont need it anymore. Consider cancelling some of your subscriptions to put some extra money in your pocket.

8. Stop Getting Groceries Delivered

Many people got their groceries delivered during the pandemic as a safer alternative to shopping in person. But if you used a service like Instacart, its likely you were overpaying.

According to NBC Los Angeles, Instacart marks up items anywhere from 15% to 17%. And thats without factoring in the tip and service and delivery fees. If youre vaccinated and can visit the grocery store safely, it may be cheaper to do so.

9. Keep Cutting Your Own Hair

Another way to save money on reopening of economy is to cut your own hair. Lots of people learned how to cut their own hair during the pandemic out of necessity.

If you keep doing it yourself instead of going to the salon, youll save a lot of money. The average mens haircut costs $28 while womens haircuts cost $44. Considering most people go for a trim once or twice a month, thats a good chunk of change.

If you didnt pick up any hairdressing skills during quarantine, see if you can get a friend to help you out instead.

10. Pick Up a Side Hustle

If you gave up your side hustle so you could quarantine properly, now may be a good time to pick up another one. As the economy reopens, businesses will need workers to pick up shifts. Once youre vaccinated you could get a side job and use the money to pad your savings.

You might be tempted to overspend in the coming months as the economy reopens. But if you stick to your budget, youll make a lot more financial progress.

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If you enjoy reading our blog posts and would like to try your hand at blogging, we have good news for you; you can do exactly that on Saving Advice. Just click here to get started.

Check out these helpful tools to help you save more. For investing advice, visit The Motley Fool.
The United States Agency for International Development USAID will provide Ukraine with special refrigerators necessary for transporting and storing the Pfizer vaccine, the press service of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine said.

"To support Ukraine's national response, USAID is helping prepare for Pfizer and other approved vaccines by providing direct support for ultra-cold chain storage/transportation and supporting public communications efforts to provide accurate information about vaccines," the message reads.

As reported, Ukraine signed an agreement with the American pharmaceutical corporation Pfizer for the supply of 10 million doses of vaccine against COVID-19, which was agreed in February by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and chief executive officer of Pfizer Albert Bourla.
ANKARA: Top officials of the European Union (EU) expressed willingness to work on a concrete agenda with Turkey to accelerate economy and migration cooperation between the two sides.

"The European Union is ready to present a concrete agenda to strengthen cooperation on economy and migration, and inter-societal ties," Michel said at a press conference.

The remarks came subsequent on European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on Tuesday, as per reports.

"The rule of law and respect for fundamental rights are core values of the EU, and we shared with President Erdogan our deep worries on the latest developments of Turkey in this respect," he added.

The EU expects Turkey to respect the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which has ruled for the release of jailed businessman Osman Kavala and former co-chair of pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtas, von der Leyen said. She further elaborated the areas where Ankara and Brussels can improve ties.

Climate change and public health will also be important topics in high-level dialogue, and thirdly, the EU wants to support Erasmus programs with Turkey for more mobility among people, she added.

According to the deal, Turkey promised to prevent migrants and refugees from crossing to Europe in exchange for aid and other political conditions.

Suez Canal Authority says, traffic slows in Suez Canal as oil tanker faces engine trouble

Bangladesh Blast: 20 injured at the residence of a municipal Mayor.

Israeli Parliament: Newly-elected Israeli lawmakers were sworn in amid uncertainties
A senior Palestinian official welcomed the move but said the Palestinian leadership, based in Ramallah, still hoped Mr. Biden would reverse several other measures carried out by the Trump administration.

This is a positive, important and constructive step in the direction of rectifying Palestinian-American relations, which the Trump administration destroyed, said Ahmad Majdalani, the social development minister of the Palestinian Authority. We believe it can be built upon by dealing with some other outstanding issues.

Senator Jim Risch of Idaho and Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, both Republicans, criticized the move in a joint statement, saying that resuming assistance to the West Bank and Gaza without concessions from the Palestinian Authority undermines U.S. interests.

They added that they would scrutinize the package to ensure it did not breach the Taylor Force Act, which prohibits the United States from providing direct economic aid to the Palestinian Authority until it stops payments to families of Palestinians who commit violence against Israelis or Americans.

Ned Price, the State Departments spokesman, said on Wednesday that the funding was absolutely consistent with American law. He indicated that any aid going to the West Bank and Gaza would be done through development partners and not through governments or de facto government authorities.

Many humanitarian groups criticized the Trump administration for having denied the United Nations agency money that it had been expecting, which hurtled it into financial crisis. Other countries helped plug some of the shortfall, but the agency has continued to operate under severe financial constraints.

United Nations officials were clearly primed for news of the resumption of aid before it was officially announced. Asked about the Biden administrations plan, a United Nations spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said that there were a number of countries that had greatly reduced or halted contributions, and that we hope the American decision will lead others to rejoin as UNRWA donors.
ROME, APR 7 - Italy's regions are set to be delivered 1.5 million more doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday. The nation's vaccination campaign, however, is still struggling to move up towards the target of half a million shots a day, in part because of problems with the jab made by AstraZeneca, which has announced another delay in supplies. The European Medicines Agency (EMA), meanwhile, is expected to give an update shortly on its position with regards to the AstraZeneca vaccine amid fresh concerns about possible links to a small number of cases of thrombosis. Up to now, the EMA has said that this vaccine is safe and effective, its benefits outweigh the risks and there is no evidence of a causal link between the cases of blood clots and the jab. So far around eight million people in Italy had had at least one doses.of a coronavirus vaccine. Of those over 3.5 million, 5.8% of the population, are fully vaccinated after having had two doses. (ANSA).
The removal of any US troops from would be orderly and in consultation with its allies and partners, the Biden Administration said on Tuesday.

State Department Spokesperson Ned Price said can never again become a platform for terrorist attacks that would threaten the US or its allies.

"President (Joe) Biden has been clear that he wants to see an end to our military presence in As he has said, as Secretary (of State, Tony) Blinken has said, as (Defense) Secretary (Lloyd) Austin has said, as others have said, we are committed to bringing a responsible end to the conflict, removing our troops from harm's way, and ensuring...importantly, that Afghanistan can never again become a platform, a launch pad, for terrorist attacks that would threaten the US or our allies," he told reporters at his daily news conference.

The recently-held NATO ministerial in Brussels there was an agreement on this issue and also on the path forward when it comes to Afghanistan, he said.

"The community is similarly united in the belief that there isn't a military solution to what we have long faced in Afghanistan. It's a conflict that has to end through a political solution and a comprehensive ceasefire, processes that are at their core Afghan-owned and Afghan-led," Price asserted.

At the same time, he conceded there was no update in terms of where the president may be thinking of post May 1 when the agreement with the Taliban inked by the previous Trump administration meets the deadline of withdrawal of troops. Biden has ruled out withdrawal of US troops by May 1.

"He has obviously spoken to this in the recent days, in the context of the impending May 1 deadline. What I can say is that any removal of troops, any withdrawal plan, would be orderly and it would, of course, be informed by those consultations with our partners and allies," Price said.

Reiterating that there is no military solution to this, he said that a comprehensive ceasefire and a political settlement has to be arrived at through diplomacy, and that is precisely what Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, what his team is engaged in.

"He is currently in Doha, meeting with both the Islamic Republic and the Taliban negotiating teams to push for further progress in negotiations and a reduction in that violence. He's also meeting with other partners to explore how it might be that the community can best help the two negotiating sides accelerate that process," Price said.

He said they want to create conditions that are conducive to those peace negotiations moving forward in a way that is constructive.

"We have also said in the recent days that levels of violence are unacceptably high, and we have consistently called on the Taliban to reduce those levels of violence. That is precisely because we want to create conditions that are conducive to those peace negotiations moving forward in a way that is constructive and in a way that is promising," he said.

"The extended Troikareleased a statement - it's now last month - calling for the Taliban not to launch a spring offensive and to avoid further casualties, helping to create, again, an environment that is, in fact, conducive to a negotiated political settlement that Ambassador Khalilzad, his team, and our partners are seeking to achieve," Price said in response to a question.

(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.)


Nangwarry-1 Production Test Update

Melbourne, April 7, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Vintage Energy Ltd ( ASX:VEN ) is pleased to provide an update on production testing activities for Nangwarry-1 in the onshore Otway Basin.- Continued strong CO2 gas flow from Top Pretty Hill Formation- Measured flow rates well in excess of those required for production purposes- Downhole gauges gathering pressure data over coming weeksNeil Gibbins, Vintage Managing Director, said "The production test of Nangwarry-1 continues to exceed expectations, with choked back flow rates of approximately 11 million standard cubic feet per day ("MMscfd") observed during an extended flow period at a relatively stable wellhead pressure of 1,415 psi. The well also delivered rates as high as 22 MMscfd (from choke calculations) over shorter periods.To put this flow rate into context, production of 150 tonnes per day of CO2 only requires a flow rate of approximately 3 MMscfd. Clearly this well has productive capacity in excess of this. The highly profitable Caroline-1 well flowed for almost 50 years with flows in the order of 2 MMscfd, producing almost 800,000 tonnes (~16 Bcf) over its life, which is less than the Best (mid case) estimate for Nangwarry-1.We are confident that, based on data to be collected from the shut-in over the coming weeks, Nangwarry-1 will exceed the current Best (mid case) estimate. Once we have this information, we will seek to expedite the next stage of activities and focus on the potential development of the reservoir.A stable source of food grade carbon dioxide is in high demand both here in Australia and globally. With the use of dry ice for storage of vaccines, and the need for carbonation in the production of soft drinks and beer, we believe that demand will only continue to grow over the coming years."Otway Basin - PEL 155 (Vintage 50%, Otway Energy Pty Ltd 50% and operator)Nangwarry-1 was perforated across the targeted zones in the Top Pretty Hill Formation with flow testing now complete. The well continued to produce strongly and delivered 10.5-10.8 MMscfd through a 48/64" choke at a flowing wellhead pressure of 1,415 psi over a 36 hour period. This flow was measured through a 3" orifice plate and choked back in order to analyse the well over this extended flow period with stable conditions. The well is very productive and, over shorter periods, has flowed at rates in excess of those measured during the extended flow test.During the latter part of the flow testing period, a production logging tool ("PLT") was made up, calibrated, and run into the hole to perform the production logging run. The logging passes across the perforations were run at 30, 60, 90 feet/min while flowing at a restricted rate by a 32/64" choke at approximately 6 MMscfd, and then by a 48/64" choke at approximately 11 MMscfd. The PLT data will now be assessed to determine the relative contributions from each of the perforated zones.Once the PLT was pulled from the hole, downhole gauges were programmed and run into the hole and set at 2,919 metres to record pressure data for the extended flow and shut-in period.Once the extended shut-in pressure data has been acquired and analysed, a more accurate volumetric estimate of the recoverable CO2 will be obtained. Prior to testing, gross recoverable estimates for Nangwarry-1 CO2 were estimated at: Low of 7.8 Bcf (3.9 Bcf net), Best of 25.1 Bcf (12.6 Bcf net), High of 82.1 Bcf (41.1 Bcf net) (refer ASX release dated 31 August 2020).The production test is a key milestone on the path to first production of food grade CO2. The production test will confirm volumes of saleable CO2 and allow the Joint Venture to consider appropriate debt funding options for the infrastructure required to produce food grade CO2. The co-produced methane (approximately 10%) will be used to power the production plant, with Supagas already commissioning preliminary design work for a skid mounted CO2 plant, in line with the MOU signed in 2020.A stable source of CO2 is currently in high demand. After producing CO2 for 50 years the Caroline-1 well ceased production in 2017. Caroline-1 is located within 40 kilometres of Nangwarry-1 and remains South Australia's most profitable well to date (refer to DMITRE, Otway Basin South Australian acreage release dated August 2012).Uses for food grade CO2 include refrigeration/dry ice (needed for storage of some vaccines), carbonation for soft drinks and beer, firefighting, medical devices and winemaking.To view tables and figures, please visit:About Vintage Energy Ltd

Vintage Energy Ltd (ASX:VEN) has been established to acquire, explore and develop energy assets principally within, but not limited to, Australia, to take advantage of a generally favourable energy pricing outlook.
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Senik and representatives of the Egyptian government and business have discussed the increase in trade and investment in Ukraine's economy.

On April 6, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Senik conducted talks with Deputy Minister of International Cooperation of Egypt Sherihan Bekhit, reads the report posted on the website of the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The parties agreed that Ukraine and Egypt have great opportunities to develop industries, energy, agriculture, tourism, and IT cooperation. Senik noted Ukraine's readiness to strengthen cooperation with Egypt in trade and investment, as well as seek ways to promote Ukraines products on Africa countries' markets.

The parties also discussed the preparations for holding the next meeting of the Intergovernmental Joint Commission in Cairo.

According to the ministrys press service, Dmytro Senik also met with Secretary General of the Federation of Egyptian Chambers of Commerce Dr. Alaa Ezz.

The Deputy Foreign Minister and the Secretary General discussed attracting new investments into the economy of Ukraine, confirmed the willingness to intensify B2B contacts between Ukrainian and Egyptian companies, including the signing of a Memorandum of Cooperation between the Council of Exporters and Investors at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and the Federation of Egyptian Chambers of Commerce, reads the report.

As part of his official visit, Senik also met with the Egyptian Space Agency Head Dr. Mohamed El Koosy.

The parties welcomed the positive experience of Ukrainian-Egyptian cooperation in the peaceful use of outer space. They also agreed to speed up the development of a memorandum on space industry cooperation between the two countries.

As a reminder, Egypt is a key economic partner of Ukraine on the African continent. In 2020, the total volume of trade in goods and services between Ukraine and Egypt amounted to $1.8 billion. Last year, Egypt was visited by 727,000 Ukrainian tourists. According to this indicator, Ukraine took first place among all foreign countries.

iy
Serum Institute would require around Rs 3,000 crore to ramp up production capacity for COVID-19 vaccines, said CEO Adar Poonawalla. He said that they will have to find innovative ways to build capacity and that they have already spent thousands of crores. Existing production capacity is "very stressed", said Poonawalla.

"We need roughly Rs 3,000 crore which is not a small figure considering we have already spent thousands of crores. We have to find other innovative ways to build our capacity so we can support our nation in light of COVID surge," Poonawalla said in an interview to NDTV.

Existing production capacity is "very stressed, to put it frankly," said Poonawalla. The company is producing around 60-65 million doses per month. It has given the government 100 million doses and exported 60 million. He said that SII is still short of its ability to supply to every Indian who needs the vaccine. "The globe needs this vaccine... we are prioritising the needs of India but we are still short of being able to supply to every India," he said in the interview.

Serum Institute hopes to increase production capacity of Covishield to 110 million per month from June onwards, he said. Poonawalla said that the company is producing 2 million doses per day currently.

Poonawalla said that SII is providing the vaccine at a subsidised rate. He added that the company is supplying the vaccine to the government at Rs 150-160. "It is not that we're not making profits... but we are not making super profits, which is key to re-investing," he stated.

The Serum Institute CEO said that the company needs Rs 3,000 crore to scale up. He said that they have written to the government on this subject, failing which SII would approach the banks for a loan.

Also read: Covishield 90% effective if doses given after gap of 2-3 months: Adar Poonawalla

Also read: SII chose to prioritise India for 2 months; vaccine exports likely to resume by June: Adar Poonawalla
(CNN) -- Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny is continuing his hunger strike despite having a high temperature and a bad cough, according to a post shared by his team on his official Instagram account.

Navalny went on hunger strike last week to protest against prison officials' refusal to grant him access to proper medical care. He had been suffering from acute back pain that had affected his ability to walk and his condition was being exacerbated by alleged "torture by sleep deprivation," one of his lawyers said last month.

Navalny said the prison didn't have the sustenance and nutrients required to keep inmates healthy, adding his temperature was recorded as 38.1 degrees Celsius (100.6 Fahrenheit) and that he had a severe cough.

The Kremlin said Tuesday that Navalny will not receive any special conditions or treatment during his time in prison. He has been tested for Covid-19 and the result is negative, Navalny's lawyer Vadim Kobzev told CNN on Wednesday.

In the post on Monday, Navalny also said there was a tuberculosis outbreak amongst his cellmates, with three out of the group's 15 prisoners recently hospitalized with the disease.

"And what? Do you think there is a state of emergency, ambulance sirens are blaring? No-one cares, the bosses are worried only about how to hide the statistics," Navalny said in the post.

A prominent opposition-linked doctors' union, Doctors' Alliance, scheduled a protest in support of Navalny on Tuesday outside the penal colony No.2 in Pokrov, where the Kremlin critic is being held. The group is run by an ally of Navalny who said the protesters will demand proper medical attention for the opposition figure.

Russian newspaper Izvestia on Monday quoted the Russian prison services (FSIN) as saying that Navalny has been moved to a "medical unit with acute respiratory infections" and that he has been tested for coronavirus. FSIN have not responded to a request for comment from CNN.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he's aware of reports that Navalny was in a medical unit but didn't elaborate further.

Peskov said Navalny's treatment was a matter for the prison services and that he would not get any special treatment.

"All the necessary activities are carried out there. And naturally, there can be no talk of any special conditions for one of the convicts. There are certain rules, including rules for the treatment of prisoners who are sick. Therefore, if we are really talking about a disease, then treatment will be provided at the prescribed level," the Kremlin spokesman said during a conference call with journalists on Tuesday.

'Practically exemplary' penal colony

In the post shared on Monday, Navalny also criticized Russian state media's recent coverage of conditions inside the penal colony.

Last week, a film crew from Russia's state-controlled TV network RT visited the prison with Maria Butina, a Russian gun-rights enthusiast-turned TV personality who now works for the network. The report said the prison was "practically exemplary."

Butina was convicted of conspiring to act as an agent for a foreign state in the United States and served more than 15 months behind bars in Florida. She pleaded guilty of trying to infiltrate conservative political circles and promote Russian interests before and after the 2016 presidential election.

Navalny pushed back against RT's assessment of the conditions.

"This is what our 'ideal, exemplary colony' looks like. Any prisoner prays to God not to get here, but inside there are unsanitary conditions, tuberculosis, lack of medications. Looking at the awful plates, in which they put our gruel, I am generally surprised that there is no Ebola virus here yet," Navalny said in the Instagram post on Monday.

"I have a legally guaranteed right to invite a specialist doctor at my own expense. I will not give it up, prison doctors can be trusted just as much as state TV," he added.

Navalny, a long-time critic of President Vladimir Putin, was jailed earlier this year for violating the probation terms of a 2014 case in which he received a suspended sentence of three and a half years. A Moscow court took into account the 11 months Navalny had already spent under house arrest as part of the decision and replaced the remainder of the suspended sentence with a prison term last month.

This story was first published on CNN.com, "Navalny says he's continuing hunger strike despite a high temperature and bad cough"
President Joe Biden has approved a disaster declaration in Kentucky from winter storms in February, Gov. Andy Beshear said last week.

The declaration is for harsh weather that hit the state from Feb. 8 to Feb. 19, including an ice storm that left more than 154,000 customers without electricity.

The declaration frees up public assistance in 44 counties for costs associated with debris removal, emergency protective actions and the restoration of damaged infrastructure. Beshear said damage assessments are ongoing and that a request could be made to add additional counties.

Damage assessments are projected to surpass $30 million.

Beshear declared a state of emergency Feb. 11, while 59 counties and 38 cities issued local emergency orders. The Kentucky National Guard assisted with the clearing of road, conducting wellness checks and helping residents out of their homes.

This declaration will make sure Kentuckians and our communities have the necessary resources to rebuild after the devastating ice storm that hit in February, Beshear said in a statement.

Every part of the state also will be eligible for hazard mitigation federal grants to prevent or reduce long-term risks from bad weather.

The statement also said the Federal Emergency Management Agency has completed damage assessments of more than 2,100 homes from record flooding last month. FEMA also is reviewing infrastructure damage assessments, and Beshear plans to submit an application for a second federal disaster declaration after the review is complete.

Residents can contact their local emergency management office with questions or additional reports of flood damage, the statement said.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Windstorm Kentucky
A Minnesota man, already serving a federal prison sentence for threatening and stalking a woman in Colorado, is now facing similar charges in Massachusetts, according to the U.S. Attorneys office.

Eric Bolduan, 46, of Rochester, Minnesota, was indicted this week on one count of transmitting in interstate commerce a threat to injure another person.

As alleged in the indictment, Bolduan downloaded images of a female student attending Boston College from her social media pages and from other publicly available sites, authorities said. Bolduan then located a pornographic image of a different female with a similar appearance and posted the images of the victim alongside the pornographic image to various pornographic websites in order to make it appear that the victim was involved in pornography.

Authorities said Bolduan then sent threatening and harassing emails to the woman. The U.S. Attorneys office cited a May 5, 2016, email as one example of threats.

Im going to find you this summer. Once Ive got you I will have my way with your body for several days, until I finally tire of you, he wrote. You will experience things that will give you nightmares for the rest of your life.

The threatening email told the woman shed never be the same again, authorities said.

To avoid detection, Bolduan allegedly sent the threatening emails to the victim using an email account that was not in his true name.

Records show Bolduan was sentenced to serve 14 years in federal prison in 2019 after he pleaded guilty to charges of stalking and making interstate threats to college students. The U.S. Attorneys Office in Massachusetts noted Bolduan is currently in custody at a Colorado federal prison.

According to the U.S. Attorneys Office in Colorado, Bolduan sent emails and text messages to a female student at the University of Colorado, threatening to kill her and her sister.

He then posted pictures of the victims face on pornography websites, listing her actual contact information, authorities said. His posts included pornographic pictures of women that were not the victim, but resembled her.

Bolduan sent messages to the victim, stating he planned on hunting her.

The investigation revealed that Bolduan sent similar emails, text messages, and posts to a total of four victims in Colorado, but also to other victims at universities and high schools across the country, authorities in Colorado said. The messages were sent not only to female victims, but also to other students, friends, and family members.

Bolduan will be required to register as a sex offender after he serves his sentence in the Colorado case.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday told students that one cannot be good at everything, but advised them to not run away from studying the subjects which they find difficult.

Interacting with students virtually during the annual 'Pariksha Pe Charcha' programme, Modi told students that he believes in reading and solving tough topics first, when the mind is fresh, and then moving on to easy topics.

Citing his own example as the Chief Minister of Gujarat and then as Prime Minister of the country, Modi said he likes taking up tough issues in the morning, and it helps him in quickly understanding those issues.

Also read: Kirana retailers better prepared for COVID-19 second wave

Successful people are not experts in all subjects, but they have a very good understanding of one subject, the Prime Minister said and urged students to not run away from tough subjects.

He said exams are just a small stop in life's journey and not the last chance, and asked students to take exams as an opportunity to prepare themselves for the long life ahead without feeling any pressure.

He asked students to utilise their free time to increase their curiosity and creativity. Modi said the world is changing quickly and this will provide a lot of opportunities. He asked students to skill themselves and take advantage of these opportunities.

Sharing the formula to sharpen memory, Modi asked students to 'involve, internalise, associate and visualise'. He also spoke about government's 'AtmaNirbhar Bharat' or self-reliant India programme, and urged students to make 'Vocal for Local' their life mantra.

Also read: Pre-packaged resolution for MSMEs: Govt sets minimum default threshold at Rs 10 lakh
A detail from Nydia, the Blind Flower Girl of Pompeii, 1853--54, by Randolph Rogers. Carrara marble; 36 18 inches by 17 14 inches by 25 14 inches. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. (Public Domain)

Taking You There: Love Amid Catastrophe With Nydia, the Blind Flower Girl of Pompeii

Several years ago, I commissioned a fine artist to paint my girlfriends favorite photo of her two teenage daughters. They were at New Yorks Metropolitan Museum of Art, one with her arm extended, tossing a coin into a large water bowl.

When the painting was completed, I was surprised that the artist had replaced the bowl with a statue. He said the sculpture added depth and enhanced the picture. I had to agree. But what was the piece? Research revealed that it was Nydia, the Blind Flower Girl of Pompeii.

A commissioned painting, Allison and Marissa at The Met by Jon Smith, was painted in 2010 and includes the statue Nydia, the Blind Flower Girl of Pompeii. (Courtesy of Wayne Barnes)

After nearly three decades in the FBI, my investigations have taken me to many cities. I always visit their museums. I finally saw the statue of Nydia in the Art Institute of Chicago, but it was 800 miles from The Met!

Another investigation took me to Birmingham, Alabama. In their Museum of Art, to my surprise, there was another statue of Nydia.

How was this possible? Was she on loan? How could there be more than one, even more than two?

Nydia, the Blind Flower Girl of Pompeii in the Birmingham Museum of Art. (Courtesy of Wayne Barnes)

The Birth of Nydia

Nydia was sculpted in 185354 by American Randolph Rogers. The quality and emotions portrayed in the piece are as riveting as the best of the ancient Greeks and, in the view of some, as Michelangelo had conceived.

An important facet of the industrial revolution was the ability to mass produce. Eli Whitney, of cotton gin fame, created a musket with interchangeable parts and contracted to sell 10,000 of them to the young American government in 1798. Before, if a part broke, a whole new musket was needed. But not anymore.

Rogers was not dealing with a weapon of war. He stood in front of a good-sized chunk of marble, and there was only one way to make what he produced: the old-fashioned way, with a mallet and chisel.

Rogers was born in 1825 in New York. He enjoyed wood carving but was unable to find work as an engraver. While he was working as a clerk in a dry-goods store, his employer recognized his natural ability for sculpting and paid the young mans way to Italy. He studied in Florence and opened his own studio in Rome in 1851. He lived there the rest of his life, producing dozens of works for European and American commissions.

Had he remained in America, his stone of choice might have been New England granite. But living in Italy, his blocks came from the same mountain where Michelangelo had chosen his raw material to make David, Moses, and La Pieta.

Nydia and Her Siblings

Rogerss Nydia is three feet tall, sitting on a raised two-foot base. There is great detail, with the lean of her body, a back toe barely touching the ground, the lavish folds of her tunic, the curls in her hair, and the distraught expression on her lovely face. She was so well-received that there would have been a market for more. Yet there was only one. Why should that have been so?

Nydia, the Blind Flower Girl of Pompeii, 185354, by Randolph Rogers. Carrara marble; 36 18 inches by 17 14 inches by 25 14 inches. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. (Public Domain)

Anyone who has strolled the museums of the world would realize that Rogers did something previously unimaginable. He and his studio of assistants created 167 images of Nydia in two sizes, each seemingly matching the original piece perfectly. It was an enormous quantity of art, but not mass produced, for each one had to be carved from a block of marble, carefully and lovingly chipped away. We can never know how many hours and days it took to bring each new flower girl to life.

Rogers didnt particularly like working with marble, but he made the first one the model for all the rest. After sculpting just so many pieces, he left it to his studio assistants to carry on with the work. No record was found of their names, but how many exceptional artisans with such talent could there have been? It sounds like it means the earth and art lovers have the ability to travel to a local museum. Even the wealthy in the mid-19th century could have an original Nydia on their palatial estate.

Had this ever been done beforecreating a large and intricate piece of art, a seemingly unique design, and then replicating it again, and again, and again?

Each of Frederic Remingtons bronze statues was cast from a single clay model. Lithographs and silkscreens mass produced two-dimensional replicas. But would Leonardo da Vinci have painted a second Mona Lisa?

The ancient Greeks created nearly identical statues, known as caryatids, ornate columns holding up tons of stone pediment on the Acropolisbut there were only six.

Caryatids on the Acropolis, the ancient Greek temple in Athens. (Thermos/CC BY-SA 2.5)

In todays age of 3D technology, layers of space-age plastic could create a full-sized knockoff of the blind flower girl. But it would be just that, more of a curio-shop purchase and not a truly magnificent image in marble. In the strictest capitalistic sense, Rogers was providing a unique supply for an obviously broad demand.

She Was Given Birth in a Book

Nydia was the most popular marble sculpture of the 1800s. She is based on a character in the 1834 novel The Last Days of Pompeii, penned by British author Edward Bulwer-Lytton. His inspiration had come from a painting he saw in Milan in 1833, The Last Day of Pompeii, by Karl Bryullov, showing the epic catastrophe of the Mt. Vesuvius eruption.

Karl Bryullovs The Last Day of Pompeii was exhibited in Milan in 1833. It inspired Edward Bulwer-Lytton to write his 1834 novel The Last Days of Pompeii, which, in turn, inspired Randolph Rogers to create the statue Nydia, the Blind Flower Girl of Pompeii in 185354. (Public Domain)

Had Bryullov not visited early excavations of Pompeii the year before, this sequence of events from the painting to the book, and then the creation of a blind flower girl in marble, would have remained a story relegated to the ashes of Pompeii. Rogers captured a crushing moment of anguish, which we now look back on as a wonderful yet devastating representation of one individuals plight when an entire city was lost through natural disaster.

The book was published nearly 1,800 years after the eruption, but the event was described at the time by Pliny the Younger. So there was accuracy to the backstory of life at the foot of Mt. Vesuvius, even if the tale was fictional.

British politician, poet, playwright, and novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who wrote the 1834 novel The Last Days of Pompeii, which, in turn, inspired Randolph Rogers to create the statue Nydia, the Blind Flower Girl of Pompeii in 185354. (Public Domain)

Pompeii was a thriving metropolis of 20,000 people. It was the seaside showpiece of the Roman Empire, but volcanoes show no discretion for when and where they erupt.

In one of the greatest excavation projects ever initiated, hollow chambers were discovered in the volcanic rock. Holes were drilled into them and filled with plaster of paris, then left to set. When the pumice was chipped away, they revealed preserved, but disturbing, images of many individuals. One cast was of a dog. Now on display near the archeological dig, it will forever reveal how this four-legged creature suffered in agony when overcome by the deadly hot ash that blanketed the city.

Taking You There

Nydia would walk to the fields on the outskirts of the city where flowers grew. Many pick them for their color, but Nydia was drawn by their fragrance.

She played a three-string lyre on a busy street corner, singing a lovely song and selling colorful and sweet-smelling garlands from her basket. Passersby would give her money.

Glaucus was a handsome nobleman, said to be a bit of a first-century gadabout, who threw the best parties and was known for enjoying wine and dice. He learned that Nydia, a slave girl, was being abused by her owners and tried to save her. She had always admired Glaucus, his robust voice and assertive ways. Though not jealous of Ione, his betrothed, Nydia still fell in love with him, knowing it would be unrequited.

At noon on Aug. 24 in the year A.D. 79, the earth began to rumble and the ground shook. A glowing red appeared to the north, the mountain spouting fire and ash, sending a plume 10,000 feet into the sky. While it was traveling heavenward, people realized it was coming from a hellish place deep within the earth.

A 2008 photo of the forum of Pompeii with the entrances to the Basilica (L) and Macellum (R), the Temple of Jupiter (C), and Mount Vesuvius in the distance. (Heinz-Josef Lucking/CC BY-SA 3.0 DE)

Lava moved down the five-mile hill, covering everything in its path. Above the flow were sulfuric fumes that strangled the breath of all living creatures.

Ash fell for many hours, not like a light winters snow, but layer upon layer of weight and pressure. The red-hot flakes fluttered down, paralyzing its victims in the permanence of how they had fallen in their torment at the moment of death.

Blazing projectiles were impossible to avoid. Vulcan was pitching an unending supply of fiery fragments skyward, which arced to the land with no consideration for wealthy or poor, master or slave, all racing to escape the inferno.

The streets were filled with smoke and death. Its estimated that more than 12,000 would die in the next few hours. Walking wounded could not see their hands in front of their faces and stumbled through a suffocating gray-orange cloud.

Detail of a downed columns Corinthian capital by Nydias foot, representing the destruction all around her. (Public Domain)

Nydias first thought was of Glaucus, and how she could save him. In moments, they were together, with his lover, Ione, close by.

Thousands of people were trapped as the earth spewed its liquid death. It was only Nydia, whose blindness for all her years, placed her at an unexpected advantage in the smoke-filled streets.

She told Glaucus to follow her, and he did, holding Iones hand tightly behind him. Just ahead, Nydia dashed down the street, weaving through the sounds of people rushing and the injured screaming. She knew her way well through the darkness. The grief and the fear on her face, the anguish of the moment, and the dread that she might not succeed in saving Glaucus brought her to tears.

Anguish on Nydias face that she might not be able to save Glaucus from the inferno. (Public Domain)

Down the streets they went, the wailing of so many nearby. Finally, they reached a place far enough away from the conflagration to be safe, but she knew Glaucus would never return the love of a slave girl. Later on, without peace, she drowned herself at sea.

The moment that Randolph Rogers chose to depictthis one scene from a lengthy bookbrings us right there, with natural destruction at its worst. Yet it was through the eyes of a young, blind flower girl that all of this would be seen.

Wayne A. Barnes was an FBI agent for 29 years working counterintelligence. He had many undercover assignments, including as a member of the Black Panthers. His first spy stories were from debriefing Soviet KGB defectors. He now investigates privately in South Florida.
Many people have been reportedly killed during a military operation on Tuesday in a community in Essien Udim Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State, Nigerias South-south.

The Nigerian military carried out aerial bombardment in the community  Ntak Ikot Akpan  which it said was targeted at miscreants who attacked and killed some police officers in the local government area recently.

The police, last week, confirmed that three of their officers were killed, while four were missing in the area.

The Nigerian Army said on Wednesday that those killed during the military operation were hoodlums. It did not, however, mention the number of people killed in the operation.

The operation was successfully executed and resulted in the dislodgment of the criminals while fleeing hoodlums were neutralised by the Air Component, the army spokesperson, Mohammed Yerima, a brigadier general, said in a statement.

Mr Yerima said normalcy has been restored in the area, and that people could now go about their businesses.

The identity of those behind the attack on the security agents and why they did it remained unknown as of the time of this report.

A police spokesperson in Akwa Ibom, Odiko MacDon, did not mention those responsible for the attack in a statement he issued on the incident.

The cause of the attack, he said, was unknown.

Whereas the remote and immediate causes of these unprovoked attacks are unknown, a discreet investigation is on the way to unravel the same and seek a lasting solution, he said.

The army statement also did not mention who was behind the attack on the police, apart from saying that some miscreants were trying to perpetuate crimes in the area.

The general security situation in Akwa Ibom state has been very peaceful until recently when the security situation around Essien Udim Local Government Area of the State became tense occasioned by activities of some hoodlums and criminal elements.

The miscreants exploited various avenues to acquire weapons to perpetrate their heinous crimes. In the past few weeks, the group has attacked various security agencies which resulted in the loss of lives and carting away of weapons.

The last incident led to the killing of some policemen including a CSP. The hoodlums continued to terrorise law abiding citizens through extortions and infringement on their rights, the army said in its statement.

The increasing attacks on police officers and police facilities in Nigerias South-east and South-south could complicate the worsening insecurity in the regions.

Essien Udim Local Government Area, which shares a boundary with the neighbouring Abia State, has been notorious for cult-related violence and killings.

About four weeks ago, some gunmen attacked a police station in the area and set fire on parts of the station and some old vehicles which were parked as exhibits inside the stations premises.

The attack was the second on police officers and police facilities in the area in less than one week.

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The Akwa Ibom State Government, on March 26, banned the use of motorcycles and tricycles from 6 p.m. to 7 a.m. in Essien Udim and two other nearby local government areas, in order to check criminal activities.
New Delhi, April 7 : A day after third phase of polling in West Bengal which witnessed incidents of violence, the BJP on Wednesday said that politicisation of administration and criminalisation of politics are two big offshoots of 10 years of Mamata Banerjee's rule in the state.

In a series of tweets, BJP National General Secretary (Organisation) B.L. Santhosh said, "Three phases of elections have witnessed 100 times more violence than four other states that went to polls put together." Along with West Bengal, Assembly polls were also held in Assam, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry. While polling has ended in all the four states, five phases of polling are still left in West Bengal.

"If not for ordinary voters, neutral election commission, vigilant central security forces this election would be like another Panchayat election where more than 20 thousand TMC workers got elected unopposed, only 34 per cent polling happened," he said.

In another tweet, Santhosh claimed that more than 2000 workers of West Bengal BJP who dared to contest and win had to shelter in neighbouring states for months together. "Even this election more than a dozen BJP workers have been killed, 14 West Bengal BJP candidates have been attacked," Santhosh said.

He further said that more than 1,000 violent incidents took place on three election days in Bengal, in more than 100 booths central forces had to ensure level playing field amidst non cooperation from local police and administration.

"None of this will be told to you by Derek O' Brien, Yashwant Sinha or Jaya Bachchan who are in a hurry to Save Democracy and will not tell the nation who is harming it. Voters in every village and mohalla want peaceful and fearless elections. They are fighting tooth and nail for it," he added.
MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP)  Former Vice President Mike Pence said Thursday that he wasnt sure that he and former President Donald Trump would ever see eye to eye over what happened on Jan. 6 but that he would always be proud of what we accomplished for the American people over the last four years.
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China to stage performances to mark CPC centennial

Xinhua) 10:23, April 07, 2021

BEIJING, April 6 (Xinhua) -- A total of 140 outstanding stage productions will be performed nationwide to mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

The theatrical performances, covering genres including drama, Peking opera, ballet and more, will be staged from April to July, according to a recent circular issued by the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles.

The productions will pay tribute to the birth anniversary of the CPC and the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects, the circular said.

Also staged will be remakes of some classic Chinese stage productions, including opera "The White-Haired Girl" and ballet "The Red Detachment of Women," the circular added.

The performances will also be available on online platforms such as xuexi.cn and official website of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, according to the circular.

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Bianji)
She announced last month that she's expecting her first child with husband Johnny Barbara.

But Devon Windsor barely showed as she headed out for a walk on Tuesday with her Labradoodle Winston.

The model, 27, wore a black and khaki tracksuit that showcased her lithe figure.

Sporty: Model Devon Windsor stepped out to walk her Labradoodle Winston around her Coral Gables, Florida, neighborhood on Tuesday wearing a black and khaki tracksuit

She stepped out in black trainers and wore her blonde hair in a bun on top of her head.

Her stroll took her around her neighborhood in Coral Gables, Florida, where she lives with businessman Barbara.

The couple married in late 2019.

Fresh air and exercise: The 27-year-old stepped out in black trainers and wore her blonde hair in a bun on top of her head. She checked her phone as she walked along

Missouri native Windsor took to Instagram on March 12 to share two black and white snaps of herself with Barbara.

She held the image of her ultrasound scan in the snaps as she shared her happy baby news.

In the caption she wrote: 'Mom & Dad. I'm pregnant!! Johnny and I are so excited to finally share the news with you guys!'

She added: 'I have dreamt of being a mama my whole life. We are so grateful for this little angel in my belly, and are so excited for this new chapter in our lives!'

Pregnant: Last month, the Missouri native announced via Instagram that she's expecting her first child with husband Johnny Barbara, whom she married in late 2019

Happy news: 'I have dreamt of being a mama my whole life,' she shared on Instagram. 'We are so grateful for this little angel in my belly, and are so excited for this new chapter in our lives!'

Windsor got her start as a model in St. Louis in 2008 when she was just 14.

A year later, she moved to Los Angeles and in 2010 she signed with IMG Models in New York.

Windsor became an in demand catwalk model and became a regular in the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show from 2013 onwards.
With the Oscars taking place later this month some of the team at Cartoon Saloon are hoping that they might be able to travel to an Academy Award hub in London to take part in the ceremony.

The main ceremony will take place at the Dolby Theatre on April 28 in Los Angeles.

It is the fifth time the Kilkenny-based animation studio has been nominated for an Academy Award and the third time for Tomm Moore, who co-directs their most recently Oscar-nominated film, Wolfwalkers, with Ross Stewart.

The film, which is set in medieval Kilkenny, is a powerful story steeped in folklore with the themes of nature, friendship and freedom running through the stunningly beautiful visual artwork. Wolfwalkers has already won numerous awards and critics have lavished praise on the latest offering from Cartoon Saloon.

Directors Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart are cautious about whether or not they will be able to travel to London because of Covid-19 but they have ruled out travelling to the live ceremony in Hollywood due to current travel restrictions.

We cant go to the ceremony in LA and the organisers said that there was going to be no virtual element like using Zoom - it was with be at the physical awards or nothing. Everyone was very frustrated.

Now they have announced that there will be a hub in London. They are way ahead in the vaccine rollout over there so it is very safe. We are the only Irish-nominated studio and we will be flying the Irish flag if we get to go, said director, Ross Stewart.

Co-director, Tomm Moore said that the decision is still up in the air.

We dont want to be that person who is the last one shot in the war and gets Covid, he said.

Moore has previously been nominated for an Oscar for two other Cartoon Saloon films - Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea and thinks this is their best chance to date of winning an Oscar.

Soul, produced by Pixar Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures is also nominated for an Oscar and is a strong contender according to critics.

Speculating on who might win this time around Moore says that it is not set in stone and that Apple is gunning for a win. Wolfwalkers is backed by Apple who are putting in a big effort in.

We have never been part of a campaign for a win before, added Moore.

Wolfwalkers is also nominated for a British Academy Film Award, which is a first for the studio. The ceremony will be broadcast by the BBC on April 10 and 11 and nominees will attend virtually.

We have never been nominated for a BAFTA before, it is great recognition, said Tomm Moore.

To win a BAFTA would be just as much an honour as getting an Oscar, added Ross Stewart.
Luis Alves Nogueira, 74, left, receives a dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine from a healthcare worker, in the Pupuri community along the Purus River, in the Labrea municipality, Amazonas state, Brazil, Friday, Feb. 12, 2021. Getting the vaccine to the world's farthest corners means delivering it by boat to Maine's islands, traveling by snowmobile to villages in Alaska and navigating complex waterways in Brazil's Amazon. (AP Photo/Edmar Barros)

After enduring 40-knot winds and freezing sea spray, jostled health care providers arrived wet and cold on two Maine islands in the North Atlantic late last month to conduct coronavirus vaccinations.

As they came ashore on Little Cranberry Island, population 65, residents danced with excitement.

"It's a historic day for the island," said Kaitlyn Miller, who joined a friend in belting out "I'm not giving away my shot!" from the Broadway show Hamilton when the crew arrived.

Around the world, it is taking extra effort and ingenuity to ensure the vaccine gets to remote locations. That means shipping it by boat to islands, by snowmobile to Alaska villages and via complex waterways through the Amazon in Brazil. Before it's over, drones, motorcycles, elephants, horses and camels will have been used to deliver it to the world's far corners, said Robin Nandy, chief of immunization for UNICEF.

"This is unprecedented in that we're trying to deliver a new vaccine to every country in the world in the same calendar year," he said.

Although the vaccination rollout has been choppy in much of the world and some places are still waiting for their first doses, there's an urgent push to inoculate people in hard-to-reach places that may not have had COVID-19 outbreaks but also may not be well equipped to deal with them if they do.

Nurses Kathy Cheney, wearing hat, and Maureen Giffen huddle on a wet and windy ride aboard a lobster boat on the way to set up a COVID-19 vaccination clinic, Friday, March 19, 2021, on Great Cranberry Island, Maine. Getting the vaccine to the world's farthest corners means delivering it by boat to Maine's islands, traveling by snowmobile to villages in Alaska and navigating complex waterways in Brazil's Amazon. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

"It's a race against the clock," said Sharon Daley, medical director of the Maine Seacoast Mission, which is providing shots on seven islands off the Maine coast.

And though coronavirus vaccinations can present unique challenges, including adequate refrigeration, health care providers are fortunate to have an infrastructure in place through the systems they use to conduct childhood vaccinations for measles and other diseases, Nandy said.

In the rough and roadless terrain of southwestern Alaska, the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp. chartered planes and used snowmobiles this winter to deliver the vaccine to nearly four dozen villages spread out over an area the size of Oregon.

The vaccination effort there began in December, when temperatures still hovered around minus 20 or minus 30 Fahrenheit (minus 20 to minus 34 Celsius) and workers had to ensure the vaccine didn't freeze in the syringes' needles. Despite the challenges, the health corporation delivered thousands of doses to 47 villages in a month. In one village, residents were anguished after COVID-19 killed one person and sickened two others, including the local health worker.

Nurses Sharon Daley, left, and Maureen Giffen fill syringes with the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine in a makeshift clinic in the kitchen of a community center, Friday, March 19, 2021, on Great Cranberry Island, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

"People were just really desperate to get vaccinated there, and it was pretty emotional to just kind of be able to bring something to them, to protect them," said Dr. Ellen Hodges, the health corporation's chief of staff.

In India, workers recently trekked to the tiny village of Bahakajari, a village along the mighty Brahmaputra River in the remote northeastern state of Assam, to start vaccinating its nearly 9,000 residents.

The vaccines were first sent to the nearest town, Morigaon, before they were driven the final leg by car. People from on a nearby island were brought to the health center by boat, and women in bright sarees and men lined up to get vaccinated. By the end of the day, 67 had received a shot, with officials planning to vaccinate 800 more within the next three days.

In Brazil, remote Amazon communities presented a challenge that meant traveling for hours on small planes and boats. Like many remote locales, getting the vaccine to the villages was important because most jungle communities have only basic medical facilities that aren't equipped to treat severe COVID-19 cases.

This December 2020 photo provided by Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corporation, Village Service Chief Dr. Elizabeth Roll holds a COVID-19 vaccine in Napakiak, Alaska. Getting the vaccine to the world's farthest corners means delivering it by boat to Maine's islands, traveling by snowmobile to villages in Alaska and navigating complex waterways in Brazil's Amazon. (Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corporation via AP)

Just like in other parts of the world, including the U.S., health care workers had to overcome the challenge of persuading some villagers that it was safe and important to get the shot.

"Vaccine hesitancy is a complex issue and it's extremely important that high quality information is provided to all groups within society," said a spokesperson for the public-private partnership GAVI, formerly the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, which is focused on improving vaccinations in poor countries.

In Maine, there was relief when the century-old Seacoast Mission took on the task of getting the vaccine to the islands.

For islanders, getting to the mainland in the best of circumstances would've meant a daylong trip to get the vaccine. Rough weather can delay ferries and mailboats, leaving residents stuck for days. And some are too infirm to travel.

Healthcare workers Diego Feitosa Ferreira, 28, right, and Clemilton Lopes de Oliveira, 41, travel on a boat to the Santa Rosa community, Amazonas state, Brazil, Friday, Feb. 12, 2021, to vaccinate residents with the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. Getting the vaccine to the villages was important since most jungle communities have only basic medical facilities that aren't equipped to treat severe COVID-19 cases. (AP Photo/Edmar Barros)

Nurse Sharon Daley, administers a COVID-19 vaccination to Hollie Stanley in a makeshift clinic in the kitchen of a community center, Friday, March 19, 2021, on Great Cranberry Island, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Health workers accompany elderly villagers in a boat as they cross the river Brahmaputra to reach a vaccination center for COVID-19 at Bahakajari village in an interior part of Indian northeastern state of Assam, India, Tuesday, March 23, 2021. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

Health workers Diego Feitosa Ferreira, 28, right, and Clemilton Lopes de Oliveira, 41, leave a home after a resident denied to be vaccinated against the new coronavirus, in the Capacini community, along the Purus river, in the Labrea municipality, Amazonas state, Brazil, Friday, Feb. 12, 2021. Getting the vaccine to the world's farthest corners means delivering it by boat to Maine's islands, traveling by snowmobile to villages in Alaska and navigating complex waterways in Brazil's Amazon. (AP Photo/Edmar Barros)

A health worker readies a COVID-19 vaccine as another comforts an elderly woman at a health center in Bahakajari village in an interior part of Indian northeastern state of Assam, India, Tuesday, March 23, 2021. In India, workers recently trekked to the tiny village to start vaccinating its nearly 9,000 residents. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

Elderly women wait to register for a COVID-19 vaccine in Bahakajari village in an interior part of Indian northeastern state of Assam, India, Tuesday, March 23, 2021. In India, workers recently trekked to the tiny village to start vaccinating its nearly 9,000 residents. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

Marc Nighman and Jonathan Partin leave the Sunbeam after receiving a COVID-19 vaccination, Friday, March 19, 2021, in Northeast Harbor, Maine. The 74-foot vessel operated by the non-profit Maine Seacoast Mission, seen in the background, has vaccinated hundreds of islanders. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Nurse Sharon Daley administers a COVID-19 vaccination to Oliver Blank, 18, Friday, March 19, 2021, on the island of Islesford, Maine. An exemption has been made to the vaccination age restrictions to allow younger residents on remote islands to receive their shot. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

John Zavodny, president of the Maine Seacoast Mission, left, registers residents for COVID-19 vaccinations in a library on the island of Islesford, Maine, Friday, March 19, 2021. "Life on the islands is remote. And it's isolated. And I think that isolation is both the attraction but the heart of the challenge," said Zavodny said. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Island residents, Lindsay Eysnogle, left, her daughter, Marina Pickering and Kaitlyn Miller, center, do a happy dance with Mitchell McCormick to celebrate their COVID-19 vaccinations, Friday, March 19, 2021, on Islesford, Maine. Getting the vaccine to the world's farthest corners means delivering it by boat to Maine's islands, traveling by snowmobile to villages in Alaska and navigating complex waterways in Brazil's Amazon. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Nurse Sharon Daley carries a cooler of COVID-19 vaccinations as she and her staff begin a journey to inoculate island residents, Friday, March 19, 2021, in Northeast Harbor, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

"Life on the islands is remote. And it's isolated. And I think that isolation is both the attraction but the heart of the challenge," said John Zavodny, the Seacoast Mission's president.

On a recent day, it was too windy to take the mission's boat that's equipped with medical gear, so a smaller one was used. The team also commandeered a lobster boat for the short trip to Little and Great Cranberry Islands.

Islanders are used to a certain degree of isolation, but this winter was particularly tough on Little Cranberry Island because the community couldn't even hold its potluck suppers or other regular gatherings due to coronavirus restrictions, said Lindsay Eysnogle, who teaches five children on the island ranging from pre-K to second grade.

The vaccine provides hope that islanders can resume something akin to normalcy.

"Omigosh we are so thrilled," she said. "This will provide relief from the level of isolation that we're unaccustomed to out here. It's just a relief."

Explore further Follow the latest news on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak

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Groove Wins Gold Stevie Award for Ethics in Sales

Groove, the leading sales engagement platform for enterprises using Salesforce, today announced that it has earned a Gold Stevie Award for Ethics in Sales as part of the 15th annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. The Ethics in Sales Award recognized Groove with its highest honor for best practices and achievements in demonstrating the highest ethical standards in the sales industry.

Successful long-term client relationships are built on trust, which is established early on in the sales process. As a result, Groove's co-founders built Groove to provide sales leadership with the accountability and visibility needed to manage an ethical sales team, and Groove is setting the standard with its own sales efforts.

Groove has nurtured a sales culture where honesty and principle are valued more than winning at all costs, and that approach has paid off. According to The Forrester Wave: Sales Engagement, Q3 2020, Groove's 92% renewal rate is the highest in the industry.

Groove also helps other organizations embrace ethical sales. Groove's sales engagement platform helps revenue teams be more productive, effective, and accountable. At its core, Groove ensures that sales activities are captured accurately and comprehensively. This enables companies to trust their CRM data and create a culture of accountability for their reps.

"Austin and I both left sales careers at Google (News - Alert) to start Groove, and from the beginning we knew we wanted to create a sales tech company that mirrored our values and commitment to ethical selling," said co-founder and CEO, Chris Rothstein. "From hiring people with integrity to building a platform that provides a foundation for accountability and trust, I couldn't be more proud of the company we've built."

Groove's commitment to meeting the needs of its customers and delivering on promises made during the sales cycle have translated into multiple customer service awards:







About the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service

More than 2,300 nominations from organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry, in 51 nations, were considered in this year's competition. Winners were determined by the average scores of more than 160 professionals worldwide on nine specialized judging committees. Entries were considered in more than 90 categories for customer service and contact center achievements, including Contact Center of the Year, Award for Innovation in Customer Service, and Customer Service Department of the Year; more than 60 categories for sales and business development achievements, ranging from Senior Sales Executive of the Year to Sales Training or Business Development Executive of the Year to Sales Department of the Year; and categories to recognize new products and services, solution providers, and organizations' and individuals' response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Learn more about the Stevie Awards at http://www.StevieAwards.com.

About Groove

Groove is the leading sales engagement platform for enterprises using Salesforce, specializing in ease-of-use, ease-of-administration, and cross-team collaboration. Built for the needs of full-cycle sellers, Groove automates non-sales activities so that pre- and post-sales reps can spend more time building relationships and generating revenue. On average, Groove gives revenue teams 20% of their time back to focus on higher-value activities. Groove's Salesforce-native architecture can be customized to align with industry-specific workflows while ensuring more accurate reporting and forecasting, lower compliance risk, and streamlined administration.

Over 50,000 sales representatives use Groove at some of the world's largest and fastest-growing companies, including Google, Uber, BBVA, and Capital One (News - Alert) . Groove has earned the highest customer satisfaction rating on G2 in the sales engagement category for over two years in a row.

Groove was named one of Inc. Magazine's Best Workplaces 2020 and is one of the 2020 Inc. 5000 fastest-growing privately held companies in the U.S. Groove also ranks #16 on the San Francisco Business Times' "fastest-growing private companies in the Bay Area in 2020" and #191 on the Deloitte (News - Alert) 2020 Technology Fast 500 list. Founded in 2014, Groove is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in San Diego and Seattle. To learn more, visit groove.co.

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The Russian Defense Ministry gave no details of the conversation, saying only that the two men spoke about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and other issues of mutual interest.

According to a longer readout of the phone call released by the Armenian Defense Ministry, Harutiunian and Shoigu focused on the activities of the Russian military base in Armenia as well as large-scale reforms launched in the Armenian army after last years war with Azerbaijan.

Harutiunian and the chief of the Russian militarys General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov, also discussed the reforms when they spoke by phone on March 23. Harutiunians press office said they agreed that a high-ranking Russian delegation will visit Yerevan soon for more detailed talks on the subject.

A delegation led by one of Gerasimovs deputies, Colonel-General Sergei Istrakov, already held weeklong negotiations with the Armenian armys top brass in Yerevan in January. Harutiunian said afterwards that the talks were aimed at assisting us in the reform and modernization of Armenias armed forces.

The minister said concrete recommendations have already been made on how to rearm the Armenian army in the current circumstances. He did not elaborate.

Harutiunians also asserted that that the Russian military base in Gyumri will be expanded in view of the post-war military-political realities in the region. He suggested that more Russian troops could be deployed to Armenias southeastern Syunik province.

Syunik borders districts southwest of Karabakh which were retaken by Azerbaijan during and after the six-week war stopped by a Russian-brokered ceasefire on November 10. Russia deployed soldiers and border guards to the region to help the Armenian military defend it against possible Azerbaijani attacks.

The Defense Ministry in Yerevan said security issues in Syunik were also on the agenda of Harutiunians latest phone call with Shoigu.

The conversation came as Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian flew to Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Pashinian announced plans to further deepen Russian-Armenian military ties shortly after the Karabakh war. He said his country now needs new security guarantees.
The victim of a Monday night killing in Newark was identified as a 45-year-old city man, authorities said.

Malik Fogler was fatally shot in the 1000 block of South Orange Avenue and died at the scene shortly after 9 p.m., according to the Essex County Prosecutors Office.

In a statement, the prosecutors office said the Essex County Homicide Task Force was investigating. Authorities did not immediately release more information on the attack.

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Noah Cohen may be reached at ncohen@njadvancemedia.com.
LOS ANGELESA former gay porn performer who appeared in numerous scenes for Raging Stallion and other studios under the name Logan McCree is now running for a seat in Scotlands parliament, representing the recently formed Scottish Family Party. But the German-born McCree, who is seeking office under his given name of Philip Tanzer, is running on an anti-porn platform. His party describes itself as pro-family, pro-marriage, pro-life, and Tanzer now says that he had a a negative view of the pornographic industry even before I joined it, but I needed the money, according to an interview by The Daily Mail.

The Scottish newspaper The National described the party as right-wing, pro-Brexit, anti-feminist, and noted that the partys leader Richard Lucas, has defended comments comparing same-sex marriage to incest.

Tanzer says that he identified as gay until the age of 32, but now says he is heterosexual and is in a relationship with a woman. On his Facebook page, he complains of what he calls LGBT indoctrination in school and in church.

In another Facebook post, Tanzer says, If you think EDUCATION should focus more on Math, Reading and Writing and less on LGBT, Black Lives Matter, and radical environmental activism, please 'like' and 'share' this message and consider voting for the Scottish Family Party.

He told The Daily Mail that he was pushed into identifying as gay, which he now says he was not.

As AVN reported last year, Tanzer  who moved to Scotland just eight years ago  was the subject of a 2020 BBC documentary titled I Am a Mens Rights Activist, which told the story if his journey into the mens rights movement, and his belief despite statistical evidence to the contrary that men are more likely to become victims of domestic violence than women.

A study by the United States National Institutes of Health, updated in February of this year, found that approximately one of every four women have been victims of domestic violence, compared to one of every nine men.

But he is now making opposition to his former profession  in which his credits span 10 years from 2007 to 2017, according to the Internet Adult Film Database  the centerpiece of his campaign for parliament.

I have seen the harm porn addiction can do. Not all my experiences with it have been negative though. I met some wonderful people, he told The Mail. One of the main reasons to run for the Scottish Family Party has been my experience and helping people learn from it.

Tanzer works as a hair stylist in Durness, a small village in the Scottish highlands, and also serves as a firefighter in that community, where he says that his past in the adult industry is no secret.

We would all have preferred it if he was a female porn actress. But he is what he is, The Mail quoted a fellow firefighter saying of Tanzer. None of us have a problem with his past. He's a damn fine guy.

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RENTON  A nursing home at 4430 Talbot Road S. sold for almost $3.4 million, according to King County records.

The seller was an LLC associated with Capital Foresight of California, which acquired the property in 2018 for $3.3 million.





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New Delhi, April 7 : The India and Saudi Arabia navies carries out a Passage Exercise (PASSEX) in the Persian Gulf on Wednesday.

The Indian Navy said that INS Talwar with Royal Saudi Naval Force Ship HMS Khalid carried out a maritime drill on April 6 in the Persian Gulf .

The short passage exercise could be a prelude to a full-fledged joint drill by the two navies later.

The Force said that INS Talwar is deployed for Operation Sankalp in the Gulf Region and had arrived at Jubail Port, Saudi Arabia on April 3.

The Indian Navy had commenced Maritime Security Operations named Op SANKALP, in the Gulf Region on 19 June 2019 to ensure safe passage of Indian Flag Vessels transiting through the Strait of Hormuz.

The deployment was done in the backdrop of the deteriorating security situation in the Gulf region, post attacks on merchant ships in the Gulf of Oman in June 2019.

PASSEXs are conducted regularly by the Indian Navy with units of friendly foreign navies, whilst visiting each other's ports or during a rendezvous at sea. The Indian Navy has carried out similar exercises with US, Vietnam, Russia among other friendly nations.

Both the Indian Army and Indian Navy are expected to carry out war games as part of bolstering military ties between the two countries.

The Indian Navy has been expanding its cooperation with other nations looking for close cooperatio keeping in mind China's increasing influence in the Indian Ocean Region.

From April 5, the Indian Navy for the first time is participating in multi-lateral maritime exercise La PArouse being conducted in the Eastern Indian Ocean Region.

The Indian Navy ships and aircraft are exercising at sea with ships and aircraft of the French Navy (FN), the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), the Japan Maritime Self Defence Force (JMSDF) and the United States Navy (USN) during the three-day drill.

Indian Naval Ships INS Satpura with an integral helicopter embarked and INS Kiltan, along with P8I Long Range Maritime Patrol Aircraft, are also participating.

The exercise La Perouse, led by French Navy, has participation by French Navy Ships Tonnerre, an amphibious assault ship and frigate Surcouf.

The United States Navy is represented in the exercise by amphibious transport dock ship Somerset. Her Majesty's Australian Ships (HMAS) Anzac, a frigate and tanker Sirius have been deployed by RAN for participation in the exercise while Japan Maritime Self Defence Ship (JMSDF) is represented by the destroyer Akebono.
Workers at a McCormick sauce factory in Melbourne, who have been on strike for nearly six weeks, must take warning from a recent meeting convened by the United Workers Union, (UWU). By inviting prominent Labor and Australian Council of Trade Union (ACTU) leaders to the picket line, the UWU is giving notice that it intends to follow the same script of betrayal that recently played out at a major Coles facility.

At Coles Smeaton Grange warehouse in Sydney, workers were locked out for some three months, as the UWU wore them down and refused to provide strike pay.

As at McCormick, Labor politicians and ACTU officials were rolled out by the UWU. While mouthing platitudes of support, their function was to maintain the isolation imposed on the workers by the UWU and to keep them trapped within the framework of the union as it prepared a sell-out deal with management.

The consequence of this operation was that the UWU pushed through an enterprise agreement in February that provided Coles with everything it wanted, including a mandate for the closure of the facility and the destruction of all 350 jobs there.

On April 1, the UWU brought senior Labor leader Tanya Plibersek and ACTU President Michele ONeil to address a gathering of McCormick workers.

Plibersek at the picket line (Credit: United Workers Union)

McCormick, a major US-based firm that makes herbs and spices as well as the sauces used by fast-food chains, is seeking to impose sweeping attacks on the wages and conditions of the workers. It is trying to abolish a four-day work week and other longstanding arrangements, in a move that would cost some workers hundreds of dollars a week.

Plibersek, a Labor powerbroker who is currently the shadow minister for education and for women, proclaimed: Well stand with you on the production line, well stand with the people that are stacking the food on the shelf. Plibersek condemned a five-year wage freeze, to which the McCormick workers have already been subjected, and declared that in [Prime Minister] Scott Morrisons Australia, its perfectly acceptable for everything to go up and for wages to flatline.

In reality, this is the program, not only of the Liberal-National Coalition, but also of Labor and their union allies.

Only one day before the McCormick rally, Plibersek participated in Labors online Special Platform Conference, where the party pledged to be an effective and collaborative partner with the business community. Labor is pitching itself as a reliable instrument to impose the demands of the corporate elite for a sweeping overhaul of workplace relations and conditions aimed at boosting profits at the expense of workers.

This has been Labors role for decades, especially since the 1980s when the Hawke-Keating governments oversaw the deregulation of the economy and the destruction of hundreds of thousands of jobs across manufacturing.

Plibersek herself was a leading figure in the federal Labor governments of 2007-2013. These introduced the Fair Work laws, which ban virtually all industrial action, presided over the destruction of most of what remained of the car industry and introduced major attacks on health, education and welfare. As health minister in 2012, Plibersek administered $400 million in cuts to the sector, resulting in the closure of hundreds of hospital beds.

When ACTU President Michele ONeil spoke, she took cynicism to new levels, telling the McCormick workers, You are not alone, youve got the whole trade union movement with you. ONeil used exactly the same phrase in a speech she delivered via video to the Smeaton Grange workers late last year.

ONeil said nothing about what this support would consist of. In fact the ACTU, as at Smeaton Grange, is doing everything it can to isolate the McCormick dispute and prevent it from becoming the focal point of a broader struggle.

Over the past year, the ACTU has taken the lead in suppressing any industrial or political action by workers. It has collaborated with the Liberal-National government throughout the pandemic, suspending penalty rates and set hours for broad sections of the working class.

ACTU Secretary Sally McManus told employers that they could get everything they want and worked hand in hand with then industrial relations minister Christian Porter, who described the union leader as his new best friend forever [BFF].

More broadly, all of the attacks imposed by employers during the past 12 months have been based on Labors draconian Fair Work legislation. It prohibits strikes outside set bargaining periods, bans secondary action, ensuring that stoppages remain isolated, and provides for continuous restructuring of wages and conditions.

But this modus operandi is coming under pressure. The workers at McCormick have been on indefinite strike since February 26, while the Coles Smeaton Grange staff held out for three months. This reflects a growing determination among workers to fight back against a corporate offensive that has been facilitated by the unions for decades.

Labor and the unions are intensely hostile to this emerging opposition. At Smeaton Grange, workers increasingly entered into conflict with the UWU, repeatedly voting down its sell-out agreements and denouncing the union bureaucrats for working with management against them.

To prevent this from happening at McCormick, a procession of Labor and union leaders have turned up to the picket to falsely assure the workers of their undying support. Their real aim is to keep the struggle restricted to a single workplace and to confine the workers within the parameters of the UWU.

On 4 March, Sally McManus, along with Victorian Labor senator Jess Walsh, went to the picket to speak about the damaging impact of wage stagnation. McManus could be considered an expert in the field having directly overseen the slashing of millions of clerical and hospitality workers wages, during 2020, as part of the ACTUs collaboration with the Morrison government.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese addressed the McCormick workers less than a week later. On Twitter he declared that Wages have gone nowhere in almost a decade. Work is getting less secure. Labor has a plan to fix this. But this is bluster. Wages have stagnated under every recent Labor government and rates of casualisation have soared.

Albanese attended a Coles Smeaton rally in December last year, where he denounced the actions of Coles as quite frankly a disgrace. His appearance occurred as the UWU was dropping its wage claim and adopting the companys pay offer.

As at Smeaton Grange, despite the various professions of support, the UWU and its union allies have refused to establish a permanent strike fund, instead calling for public donations that will be irregularly doled out to the workers.

The strikers last week voted down a company enterprise agreement, with more than 90 percent dismissing McCormicks offer. The experience at Smeaton Grange demonstrated, however, simply voting no is not enough.

The UWU, Labor and the unions are seeking to wear down the workers so that they are eventually compelled to accept a regressive enterprise agreement. The union officials responded to the no vote by immediately appealing to management for backroom talks and a new offer.

Not a single step forward can be taken within the framework of the union. A break with the UWU is required, along with the establishment of new organisations of struggle, including independent rank-and-file committees. These would break the isolation imposed by the union, and coordinate broader action by workers throughout the warehousing and logistics industry.

This is a political fight directed against the austerity agenda of the government, Labor, the unions, and the Fair Work legislation that they use to suppress any collective struggle. It requires a broader political movement of the working class, aimed at restructuring society on socialist lines, including placing the major corporations and the banks under public ownership and democratic workers control. That is the perspective fought for by the Socialist Equality Party.
Its no secret that demand for coronavirus vaccines continues to outpace supply, nearly four months after the first shots went into Lehigh Valley arms in mid-December.

But as eligibility opens this week ahead of April 19, when all Pennsylvanians 16 and older can get the vaccine, the states acting health secretary on Wednesday visited Allentown to help win over those who are hesitant to join the ranks of the inoculated.

We have not all shied away from explaining to folks that it really is the race of the variants versus the vaccine, Pennsylvania Department of Health Acting Secretary Alison Beam said during a visit to St. Lukes Hospital-Sacred Heart Campus. The vaccine is our offense, and so the more that we can get the vaccine into folks arms and get us protected is going to be our best offense allowing us to have our safe communities  and really returning to any sense of normalcy in our societies.

Beam was joined by Muslim leaders from the Lehigh Valley and Philadelphia in addressing vaccine hesitancy among minority groups across the state. Its a fight local NAACP leaders have also taken on, as well as the Hispanic Center Lehigh Valley in hosting vaccine clinics like the one offering 1,000 doses this week.

Reaching religious holdouts goes well beyond the Muslim community. White evangelical Christians also pose challenges over moral, medical and political objections, The New York Times reported this week.

Speaking on Wednesday in Allentown, Imam Sh Mohammad Elshinawy focused on Islams teachings that apply to the vaccination push.

Our community by and large, though my numbers are relatively anecdotal, have been either taking the vaccine or looking forward to doing that at the earliest possible time, due to a number of reasons, of them is that were all invested in our own lives and the lives of our loved ones but also because our religion, our Islam, teaches us very heavily that every Muslim has a personal, individual duty, whether part of a community or not, to be a civil servant, to be someone that recognizes that all of humanity is one family with one creator, and that one of the greatest ways to earn the love of our creator, almighty God, is to be most beneficial to humanity, said Elshinawy, who is religious director at the Islamic Education Center of Pennsylvania in Upper Macungie Township.

The founder of the Muslim Aid Initiative also spoke, about efforts to address not only with vaccine hesitancy in the Muslim community across eastern Pennsylvania, but to also distribute vaccine through a local clinic and help with other COVID-19 efforts throughout the pandemic. That has meant distributing personal protective equipment to medical personnel and local residents, supplying and delivering groceries to the community and hosting events to mitigate the impact of the virus.

We consistently serve all members of the local community, regardless of race, religion or socioeconomic status, said the groups founder, Rabiul Chowdhury. The purpose of the Muslim Aid Initiative is to disseminate accurate health information and resources to communities in the Greater Philadelphia Region.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health says that as of Wednesday, vaccine providers have administered nearly 5.8 million total vaccine doses, not including Philadelphia which is handling its own distribution. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data ranks Pennsylvania 11th among all 50 states with first doses administered to 35.4% of its eligible population, the department says. Over 2 million people are fully vaccinated, with a seven-day moving average of more than 85,800 people per day receiving vaccinations.

St. Lukes University Health Network is vaccinating up to 4,000 people a day at 11 hospital-based sites across the greater Lehigh Valley, said Frank Ford, president of the Sacred Heart Campus at 421 W. Chew St. This week, the network is marking 200,000 total vaccines administered.

Eligibility on Monday opened up to Phase 1B in Pennsylvanias distribution program, and will expand to Phase 1C on April 12 before general eligibility on April 19.

Supply continues to plague the rollout, with Pennsylvanias allocation of the one-dose Johnson & Johnson from the federal government dropping from around 160,000 doses to 20,000 doses next week, Beam said.

But the state still needs to continue to reach as many eligible residents as possible, as Pennsylvania this week joins New Jersey, New York, Florida and Michigan in reporting 44% of the nations new COVID-19 infections, or nearly 197,500 new cases, in the latest available seven-day period, according to state health agency data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

New virus variants are clearly one of the drivers in the increase, said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, chair of the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California at San Francisco. Failure to suppress the rise in cases will lead to more people getting sick and dying, she said, and drive increases in other parts of the country.

As more vaccine is becoming available across the state, and more Pennsylvanians are becoming eligible, we know there are individuals who are hesitant to get it, or still have questions about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine  and that is OK, Beam said Wednesday. We are continuously working to provide information to the public about the COVID-19 vaccine to ensure everyone has the proper information to make a decision on their own.

The vaccine is safe, effective and has gone through extensive clinical trials. Stopping a pandemic requires using all the tools available, and vaccines work with your immune system so your body will be ready to fight the virus if you are exposed.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg amidst growing tensions with Russia in East Ukraine. Over the past weeks, fighting has escalated in the Donbass region between the Ukrainian army and Russian-backed separatists. A civil war has raged there since the 2014 US- and German-backed coup in Kiev, which heavily relied on neo-Nazi forces.

The war has claimed over 14,000 lives and displaced millions. In the past three months, an estimated 40 people have been killed in the clashes. Separatists in East Ukraine claim that at least one child was killed in the fighting this week.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky [Credit: en.kremlin.ru]

Last weekend, Ukraine and NATO announced joint military exercises. Now, Zelensky is calling upon NATO to accelerate Ukraines admission to the military alliance. He urged NATO to strengthen its military presence in the Black Sea region, claiming that such a move would act as a powerful deterrent to Russia.

Following the meeting, Stoltenberg tweeted: NATO firmly supports Ukraines sovereignty & territorial integrity. We remain committed to our close partnership.

The meeting with Stoltenberg was preceded on Friday by a call between Zelensky and US President Joe Biden, who assured Ukraine would receive the full backing of Washington. On Monday, the US State Department declared that it found reports of Russian military movements on Ukraines border credible and demanded that Moscow explain the provocations. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson also spoke with Zelensky.

Later on Tuesday, Ukraines foreign minister declared that Kiev would not accept an invitation to conduct peace negotiations in Minsk, where they have been taking place since 2015, involving Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France.

The accusations of Russian aggression and provocations stand reality on its head. The conditions for the current escalation were created, above all, by the aggressive moves by US and German imperialism which, since the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, have pushed ever closer to Russias borders, above all through the eastward expansion of NATO.

In Ukraine, two coups were orchestrated by the imperialist powers in 2004 and 2014 to install pro-Western regimes that could play a key role in the war preparations against Russia.

Whatever his promises to fight for a peace deal, which played a key role in promoting Zelenskys election in 2019, he has effectively continued the policies of his predecessor Petro Poroshenko. Last month, the Ukrainian government proclaimed a strategy to recover Crimea, a strategically located peninsula in the Black Sea which was annexed by Russia following the 2014 coup. It then approved a new military strategy that focuses on preparing for war against Russia with NATO support.

Two days ago the Russian press reported that Ukraine had gathered an offensive force in the Donbass region and the region around the Crimean isthmus. There have also been numerous unconfirmed reports of Russian troop movements in and near Crimea. Canada and a number of European countries have issued warnings to be careful when flying over Ukraine. Canada discouraged its airlines from flying over East Ukraine and Crimea due to the unstable security situation.

The escalation of the situation by Kiev is being seized upon to further the anti-Russia campaign in the US and step up military involvement in the region. Ben Hodges, a former commander of US Army in Europe, demanded in the military magazine Defense One, that the US develop a strategy for the entire Black Sea region and make it clear that it is vital to American interests. He also called for more aid to Ukraine and strategic exercises in the region. In a similar vein, the foreign policy think tank Atlantic Council demanded that the US supply the Ukrainian Air Force with fighter jets, smart munitions and cruise missiles.

Under Trump, the US had begun delivering weapons to Ukraine, on top of channeling hundreds of millions of dollars into funding the Ukrainian military. In March, a bipartisan group of senators proposed another $300 million aid package.

The US has also played a key role in politically and financially supporting Ukrainian neo-Nazi forces, which in turn have been integrated into the Ukrainian state and government. Zelenskys minister of Internal Affairs, Arsen Avakov, is notorious for his ties to the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and similar far-right forces which had played a central role in the 2014 coup.

They have since been given virtual free rein to terrorize ethnic minorities and political opponents of the Ukrainian government and the far right. It is also primarily these forces that have been engaged in the fighting in East Ukraine.

The military confrontations in the Black Sea region are taking place in the context of rising geopolitical tensions, especially between the US and China but also between the imperialist powers. And the new Biden administration has embarked on an aggressive military course towards both Russia and China.

Just weeks after taking office, Biden bombed Syria, in a move that targeted not only Iran but also Russia and China. In an extraordinary breach of protocol, the US president called Russian President Vladimir Putin a killer. In response, the Kremlin recalled its ambassador to the US.

Fyodor Lukyanov, one of the leading Russian foreign policy pundits with close ties to the Kremlin, commented that this was not enough. He insisted that now was the time to make a break in US-Russia relations, further engagement is pointless for now.

In Russia, Zelenskys moves are seen as open preparations for war and have provoked considerable nervousness. Shamil Gareev, a military expert and reserve officer, told the Nezavisimaya Gazeta, The beginning of the NATO Defender Europe 2021 exercises clearly coincides with the media discussion of possible temporary plans of Kiev to initiate active military actions in the Crimea and Donbass. He added, It is not excluded that Kiev will initiate its main strike on the Donbass in May or possibly in early July.

Others are comparing the situation to the eve of the 2008 Georgian-Russian war, which brought the world to the brink of a confrontation between the US and Russia. The Kremlin has insisted that it does not want war with Ukraine but is now clearly making preparations for such a possibility.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has expressed anger, in particular, at Germany and France, accusing them of doing nothing to bring Ukraine to its senses. On Friday, German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer called for an even further increase in German military spending in an interview with the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland .

Kramp-Karrenbauer stressed that German military rearmament was not about doing the US a favor but rather served our own interests. She explicitly referred to China and Russia as the main targets of the buildup, calling Russia a very palpable threat, both on the level of conventional and atomic [warfare].

The interview received wide press coverage in Russia and was immediately discussed by the State Duma (Parliament)s committee for foreign affairs. While most media pundits and politicians tried to downplay it, suggesting that Berlin probably did not consider Moscow an enemy, it clearly raised concern.

In recent months, relations between Russia and Germany have soured considerably as Berlin has taken a leading role in the campaign over the right-wing Putin opponent Alexei Navalny .

There are ongoing conflicts within the German ruling class itself over its policy toward Russia. Many of these conflicts center on the German-Russian gas pipeline Nord Stream 2, which the US has sanctioned. In his first meeting with US Secretary of State Blinken, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas insisted that Germany would go ahead with the project despite US opposition.

A commentary by Daniel Brossler in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung on Tuesday demanded that, in response to the crisis in Ukraine, The West must threaten sanctions that hurt. It continued, Russias show of military force on the border of Ukraine should finally make the EU take a clear stance and act in a deterrent manner, together with the US. A war between Russia and Ukraine would have to signify the end of Nord Stream, he insisted. At least this must now be clearly stated.
Adding another school district fleet electrification program to its growing list of customers, AMPLY Power has been selected to manage the charging of electric school buses for the Palermo Union Elementary School District in Northern California. The zero-emission commitment from the school significantly lowers operating and fuel costs for the district to 50% of what it paid previously when charging its electric buses, as well as reducing the exposure of students and the local community to diesel particulate pollution.

The public school system in Northern Californias Butte County has contracted an energy rate of $0.10/kWh through AMPLYs fully-managed, turnkey charging services. The cost of electricity without managed charging could be as high as $0.20/kWh. In dollars per gallon terms, that energy cost means Palermo is effectively paying $1.19 a gallon to power its vehicles.

AMPLYs services for Palermo include supporting the sourcing of the final funding to secure the project, the installation of charging stations and onsite energy storage, warranty coverage, guaranteed uptime, a resilience plan, and energy bill management through 2026.





Palermos electric bus fleet makes up 80% of its total fleet, and currently includes five Lion Type-C electric buses, with a smaller Type-A Blue Bird electric bus planned for 2021. The hardware for the project includes six 16.2 kW Level 2 chargers, and approximately 700 kWh of lithium-ion battery storage.

AMPLY helped move the project forward and advocated for the district in its securing of $49,839 in funding from the Butte County Air Quality Management District. PG&E also provided $35,488 in charger rebates and make ready Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) incentives, bringing the total funding amount to $85,327. This financial support eliminated the need for any upfront investment by the school district.

Since most fleets have difficulty measuring the fiscal portion of energy usage, the ability to have full insight into a fixed rate allows for planning, financial management and budgeting that opens the door to scale zero-emission initiatives. With off-peak charging rates as high as 19 cents a kilowatt hour, and on-peak as high at 39 cents, the school district now has the peace of mind that it wont be hit with peak rates for charging or unexpectedly high utility bills. Vic Shao, founder and CEO of AMPLY Power

Palermo participated in PG&Es EV Fleet program, which helps customers convert their medium-duty, heavy-duty and off-road fleets to clean electric vehicles. PG&E helped the school district by designing, paying for and building out a large portion of the electrical infrastructure for their EV charging stations.

AMPLYs Charging-as-a-Service (CaaS) model goes beyond making it simpler for fleets to transition to electric. It assumes end-to-end responsibility for all charging aspects of the initiative, from cloud-based system design to installing local site controllers. Its proprietary back-end software and operational methods drive utility costs down by optimizing EV charging and other energy use at both public and private depots. Coupling this process with utility service upgrades as-needed enables the district to further scale its fleet electrification program.

AMPLY Power offers the only fully managed charging service to the public sector and commercial businesses looking for guaranteed performance and fixed fuel pricing for their electric vehicle fleets. Similar to how data centers optimize for high efficiency, low cost, and 99.99 percent uptime, the company takes on all components of fleet charging through its scalable Charging-as-a-Service approach. From system design and utility upgrades, to financing, charging infrastructure and maintenance, AMPLY allows fleet operators to expand their zero-emissions operations with confidence and ease, in exchange for an optimized, price-per-mile-driven fee.

Palermo Union School District is located in the northern part of Californias Sacramento Valley, just south of Oroville and 64 miles north of Sacramento, the state capital. The District includes parts of both the Lassen and Plumas National Forests.
From April to October of last year, Isbaih is alleged to have submitted applications on behalf of hundreds of Flash Tax customers, with documents containing false information regarding the customers businesses, such as gross revenues, expenses and numbers of employees, according to prosecutors.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 6)  The Philippine government is expecting to receive over 1.5 million doses from Chinese firm Sinovac Biotech and 500,000 doses from Russia's Gamaleya Research Institute this month, with possible shipments as early as next week, Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez said Tuesday.

Galvez told a Palace briefing at least 500,000 of the 1.5 million CoronaVac doses from Sinovac may arrive sometime next week, while Gamaleya's Sputnik V doses are seen to arrive on April 12.

He did not state whether the promised 500,000 Gamaleya shots for the month will be delivered in full next week, but more doses from the vaccine brand are seen in the succeeding months.

"Next week po baka dumating na ang 500,000 ng Sinovac so titingnan din natin ang Gamaleya, baka dumating din this coming April 12," he said.

[Translation: Next week, 500,000 doses will come from Sinovac and we are looking at the arrival of Gamaleya doses this coming April 12.]

Overall, the Philippines will likely receive two million doses from these vaccine brands within the month. The delayed batch of AstraZeneca doses via the World Health Organization-backed COVAX facility was not included in the list.

WHO Country Representative Rabindra Abeyasinghe on Monday said the expected supply of over 900,000 AstraZeneca doses may be reduced until vaccine production can accommodate the demand from other countries. The second batch of doses was supposed to arrive between March 24 and 26.

READ: WHO: Next batch of vaccines via COVAX may be further reduced due to supply shortage

Galvez said despite the "very constricted" AstraZeneca supply they are still holding negotiations with vaccine manufacturers abroad to accommodate the Philippines' needs. Over 525,600 doses from the British-Swedish drugmaker were already distributed to the country last month.

"With the global constriction ng AstraZeneca, most probably magkakaroon po talaga ng reduction but hopefully ang mga nakausap ng DFA (Department of Foreign Affairs), ni Sec. (Teodoro) Locsin, especially yung sa Europe at US, hopefully, magkaroon ng fruition ang aming negotiations," he said.

[Translation: With the global constriction of AstraZeneca, most probably there will be a reduction but hopefully, with the dialogue of the DFA, of Secretary Locsin with Europe and the US, our negotiations would come to fruition.]

Galvez said 825,662 Filipinos have already been vaccinated against COVID-19. Ramped up deliveries of vaccine doses at 20 million per month will start by August from different brands.
At the start of the first lockdown, we urged readers to be patient and not to chase refunds.

Businesses had been forced to close overnight and were struggling to get to grips with staff suddenly working from home.

So to support the travel and events industries, we advised that if you could afford to accept a credit note instead of a cash refund, or to rebook for a later date rather than cancel, you should.

After a year of constantly changing travel rules, people would rather have their money back for other uses, or to set aside for a new plan when things have settled

People have lost loved ones, or their own health has suffered and they can no longer travel. Others cannot afford to go away after losing their jobs or livelihoods. And some simply dont want to deal with any more uncertainty or disappointment.

After a year of constantly changing travel rules, they would rather have their money back for other uses, or to set aside for a new plan when things have settled.

Yet many loyal customers are now paying through the nose for their earlier generosity.

As we report, some firms are stubbornly refusing to swap vouchers for cash refunds, even in the most tragic circumstances.

Others will not extend expiry dates or allow people to transfer bookings to a friend or relative without paying a costly fee.

This is inexcusable, given many customers were misled into thinking they had no choice but to accept vouchers in the first place.

Meanwhile, Money Mails inbox is flooded every week with tales from readers at their wits end because companies will not respond to their calls and emails.

Many are still waiting for refunds for trips called off more than a year ago. While others who made travel plans through third-party booking sites are being passed from pillar to post.

And those who are due to travel in the coming weeks and months are being told they cannot have a refund because their trip hasnt technically been cancelled  even though it is currently illegal to travel overseas for a holiday.

Enough is enough. The Competition and Markets Authority did a brilliant job of standing up for consumers in the early days of the pandemic. And, over the past 12 months, the watchdog has issued several stern warnings where firms have failed to play fair. Yet it is clear from our overflowing postbag that the fight is far from over.

I have enormous sympathy for travel and events companies  but it is not down to customers to act as a bailout fund.

Lenders, beware

Last week, banks were given the green light to resume repossession proceedings where homeowners have fallen behind on mortgage payments, after a moratorium during lockdown.

Banking trade body UK Finance previously warned that home repossessions could surge tenfold in 2022, after millions of borrowers saw their incomes decimated last year.

More than 100,000 homeowners are still relying on mortgage repayment holidays.

So it would be unforgivable if lenders were to take advantage of the opportunity to bombard struggling households with threatening letters.

We will be watching.

Smart savings

Whenever someone asks me about smart meters, the conversation always seems to end with me raving about Hive - a smart thermostat which allows you to control your heating and hot water from your mobile phone.

It means you can turn the heating on while youre on your way home so its cosy when you get in - or ramp it up without even needing to get up off the couch.

You can also use it to control smart plugs, which are useful if, like me, you are forever wondering if youve left your hair straighteners turned on. Just one tap on the app and the plug is turned off.

One thing I could live without, however, is the regular emails comparing the temperature of my home to others in the region.

Although, if the intention is to guilt-trip me into turning down the thermostat, its working.

Hives most recent report showed that my flat was 0.5 degrees colder than other homes over winter.

v.bischoff@dailymail.co.uk
The nations under-20 youth and ethnic armed organisations are solidly backing the unarmed civil disobedience movement

by Ashok K Mehta

In his book, Coup dEtat, Edward Luttwak says that the coup is a more widespread way of changing governments than elections. In Myanmar, it is the coup-maker, the military itself, which has rubbished rigged elections pledging to hold fresh elections in its vision of transition to a disciplined democracy  probably rule by military in civilian clothes, somewhat like the Thailand model. The coup is being contested by the youth  Generation Z  who are below 20 years and have grown up under democratic rule since 2011. They are remote-controlled by a leaderless Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), linked closely to the Committee Representing National Parliament (CRPH)  the government-in-exile of recently-elected NLD lawmakers. Joining the alliance with fire power are at least eight Ethnic Armed Organisations (EAOs) who have broken the ceasefire. This combined resistance has forced the military to declare a unilateral month-long suspension of operations against the EAOs from April 1. Two months on, has the coup backfired?

On March 27, the Generals celebrated the Armed Forces Day when the single biggest carnage killed 114 protestors across 44 townships in Myanmar. Attending the parade was Col Ketan Mohite, the Indian Defence Attache, among officers from Russia, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam. The incumbent Army chief, Gen MM Naravane, was a Defence Attache more than a decade ago, such is the geostrategic significance of Myanmar for India. Two days later, the Defence chiefs of Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, South Korea, the UK and the US issued a collective statement condemning the use of lethal force against unarmed people by the Myanmar Armed Forces. It urged the MAF to cease violence and work to restore the respect and credibility it has lost through its actions.

India finds itself on the wrong side of the fence not for the first time though our diplomats are confident they can navigate the situation, thanks to the lessons learnt in the 1980s and 1990s. They are forgetting that Myanmar 2021 is very different from those days when people were poor and malnourished; today, they have a present and future from the gains of democracy between 2011-2020. The CDM believes it is succeeding in denying control of physical space and economy to the junta. In the forefront of street mobilisation are women, confronting the police every day. The CDM is pitching a non-violent campaign that is being projected as a front-runner for the Nobel Peace Prize, 2022. It has attracted $7 mn worth of support from well-wishers.

If the fighting intensifies between the EAOs and junta, it would engage not only the military against unarmed internal resistance but also three main dissident armed groups in the border regions  Karens, Kachins and Arakanese (Brotherhood Alliance) besides possibly other EAOs. A multiple front engagement would stretch the military and lead to civil war. The UN special envoy on Myanmar, Christine Burgene, told the 15-member UNSC on March 31 that the military was not capable of managing the country and warned that the situation could worsen into a bloodbath. Chinas muted criticism of the coup has led to anti-Chinese sentiment, resulting in 32 Chinese-owned factories being gutted. Beijings main concern is the security of the 770-km-long gas and oil pipelines worth $2.5 bn from the Yunan province to the Rakhine State as well as 38 projects linked to the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor. Beijing is also the lead player in the recent diplomatic moves between the junta and Asean.

Myanmars economy will soon be in tatters. The US sanctions have resulted in the suspension of bilateral trade and investment agreement, prevented the Generals from withdrawing $1 bn from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and targeted Generals and police chiefs and their businesses. Next could be the Generalised System of Preferences (GSPs) under which 5,000 products carry zero tariff. Japan, which provides the biggest development assistance  $1.8 bn in 2019  is transferring its business from military holdings to civilian companies. Whether combined resistance for the first time against the military results in the defeat of the junta is hard to tell. The Buddhist monks who led the saffron revolution in 2007 have not taken sides. India has taken a clear position: To not criticise the military for the coup but condemn violence against the CDM. This is not an ethical stance that India can sustain. But it has insurgency-related security interests along the border with Myanmar, strategic connectivity projects of its Act East policy and Indo-Pacific strategy as well as concerns about China boosting its influence at Indias cost, especially when the military looks towards India to balance China. Given these conflicting interests, New Delhi has to appear, and be even-handed, in reaching out to the CRPH and Myanmarese people. The Generals require a face-saving exit, not a protracted urban conflict or civil war.

(The writer, a retired Major General, was Commander, IPKF South, Sri Lanka, and founder member of the Defence Planning Staff, currently the Integrated Defence Staff. The views expressed are personal.)
ROME, APR 6 - Premier Mario Draghi is visiting Libya on Monday in his first trip to a foreign country as the head of the Italian government. The premier will be flanked by Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio.and will meet his counterpart, Abdul Hamid Dabaiba, in Tripoli. The aim of the trip is to have Italy again play a lead role on the stabilization of the north African country and to sign a series of agreements for economic investments and health-sector cooperation to combat COVID-19. (ANSA).
A 47-year-old Blossvale man was sentenced to nearly six years in federal prison for illegally having two guns and more than 100 rounds of ammunition as a convicted felon, according to federal prosecutors.

Joseph W. Cromp will spend 57 months in federal prison after he was found to have a Rohm .22-caliber revolver and an Izhmash SAIGA 7.62 x 39 mm AK-47, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Northern District of New York. Prosecutors said Cromp also had 113 rounds of rifle ammunition.

The guns and ammunition were seized Oct. 2, 2019 after Cromp had a confrontation with another man that day.

Cromp had previously been convicted of second-degree attempted assault in Oneida County Court in 2001.

He will also have to serve a three-year term 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.
Former Married at First Sight Natasha Spencer recently accused the Channel Nine show of 'normalising domestic violence'.

And now the 27-year-old is turning her attention to the toxic beauty industry, revealing she stopped getting lip filler after a 'botched' procedure four years ago.

The influencer told The Daily Telegraph on Wednesday she wishes she 'stopped sooner because I ended up looking distorted'.

'Distorted': Married At First Sight bride Natasha Spencer has taken aim at the toxic beauty industry, revealing she stopped getting lip filler after a 'botched' procedure four years ago

Natasha also acknowledged there is 'a lot more pressure' on women to plump up their pouts now than ever before.

She blamed Instagram in part for that pressure, claiming that 'a lot of people are going to plastic surgeons with photos of themselves with a filter on'.

Last year, Natasha became a marketing and communications executive for Lip MD, a lip-plumping product that's free of dermal filler.

The product uses a two-step process of an applied lip 'serum' combined with 'gentle suction' via a vacuum that plumps lips 'for about six hours'.

Trend: Natasha also acknowledged there is 'a lot more pressure' on women to plump up their pouts now than ever before

The former MAFS participant, who appeared on the show last year, has also weighed into the debate about Channel Nine's duty of care to contestants.

Following current star Bryce Ruthven's alleged gaslighting behaviour towards 'wife' Melissa Rawson on the show, Natasha has argued that Nine failed in its duty of care to her last year.

Natasha claims she suffered a total nervous breakdown during filming, and alleges production failed to appropriately deal with a troubling incident on set.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Channel Nine for comment.

Undue influence: She blamed Instagram in part for that pressure, claiming that 'a lot of people are going to plastic surgeons with photos of themselves with a filter on'

Past life: The former MAFS participant, who appeared on the show in 2020, has also weighed into the debate about Channel Nine's duty of care to contestants

Natasha has spoken out against production for not implementing trigger warnings before episodes or acknowledging potentially harmful behaviour that is being aired.

'Instead, they've normalised domestic violence on our screens,' she said. 'They've given people the idea that this is normal because it's appearing on our televisions.'

Natasha went on to quash arguments that participants 'know what they are signing up for' when applying for a dramatic reality television show like MAFS.

Allegations: Following current star Bryce Ruthven's (right) alleged gaslighting behaviour towards 'wife' Melissa Rawson (left) on the show, Natasha has argued that Nine failed in its duty of care to her last year

Angry: Natasha is one of more than 10,000 people who signed a petition demanding an apology from Channel Nine for its depiction of a problematic relationship

'Nobody signs up to become a victim of mental abuse on national television,' she said.

She argued that, as professional psychologists, the experts who made the match between Melissa and Bryce should have seen that she would be 'at risk'.

'She is quite obviously anxious attachment style and has a lot of insecurities... They've also screened Bryce who is a high rating narcissist and they've put them together,' she claimed.

Fuming: Natasha has spoken out against production for not implementing trigger warnings before episodes or acknowledging potentially harmful behaviour that is being aired

Natasha is one of more than 10,000 people who signed the petition demanding an apology from the network and the program.

She encouraged her 80,900 followers to do the same and send a clear message that 'we don't want to see this on our screens'.

Bryce has been widely criticised since the show's very first episode for appearing to gaslight and manipulate his bride.

On last Tuesday's episode, following weeks of tension, Bryce planted an unwanted kiss on fellow contestant Beck Zemek's cheek in an apparent attempt at humour.

The incident left Beck in a flood of tears while thousands of viewers expressed their outrage that the segment was allowed to air.
The House Republican campaign arm is employing an aggressive online fundraising strategy that tells potential donors who won't sign up for recurring contributions that they are a 'DEFECTOR' and that former President Donald Trump will be informed about it.

The fundraising by the National Republican Campaign Committee came to light just days after it was revealed the Trump campaign was forced to refund $122 million to online donors, many of whom claimed they had unknowingly signed up for recurring online donations.

The appeal comes at the bottom of a 'Trump Social Media Poll' that claims the former president is planning to launch a new social media sight 'very soon.'

U.S. President Donald Trump talks with U.S. Rep Jason Lewis (L) and Rep. Tom Emmer (C) the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, on October 4, 2018. The NRCC has conducted fundraising using pre-checked boxes and threatened to tell Trump they were a 'DEFECTOR' if it weren't checked

They can check a box donating from $35 to $5,000.

Then, a pre-checked yellow box tells them. 'We need to know we havent lost you to the Radical Left. If you UNCHECK this box, we will have to tell Trump youre a DEFECTOR & sided with the Dems. CHECK this box and we can win back the House and get Trump to run in 2024.'

Lower down inside the box, it says: 'Make this a monthly recurring donation'  which provides authorizations for deductions again and again.

BOXED IN: Donors were told if they unchecked a box 'we will have to tell Trump you're a DEFECTOR'

Another box linked flipping the House to GOP control to Trump running again for president. Former VP Mike Pence, a former House leader, is another potential contender

The offer describes '5X matching'

President Donald Trump's campaign had to pay $122 million in fines to donors to its 2020 campaign

Another pre-checked box explicitly ties a House Republican takeover to Trump running for reelection, and allows for an additional specific donation. The box states that: If you want Trump to run for President this is your LAST chance to FLIP the House.'

The fundraising was identified by former anti-Trump Republican operative Tim Miller in the Bulwark.

The site identified an an earlier version that said 'Check this box if you want Trump to run again. Uncheck this box if you do NOT stand with Trump.'

The appeal also offers to activate '5x matching'  a tactic Trump's campaign used repeatedly in the fall of 2020 without offering specifics or assurances that Trump himself provided the match.

Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, who chairs the NRCC, told Politico last month it would not be 'helpful' if Trump follows through on his threat to back primary opponents against 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him.

'He can do whatever he wants. But I would tell him that its probably better for us that we keep these people and we make sure that we have a majority that can be sustained going forward,' he said.

It follows a New York Times investigation that Trump has been forced to pay back $122 million to donors who were got saddled with recurring payments to his 2020 reelection campaign.

The donations poured in during the fall at a critical time in Trump's campaign against Joe Biden.

The pre-checked box is a fundraising tool by for-profit GOP firm WinRed, which was founded in 2019, the Times reported. Democratic group ActBlue also allows some prechecked donation boxes.

The report found Trump's campaign employed deceptive fundraising tactics that saw thousands of his supporters unwittingly sign up to give repeat contributions, when they had only intended to make a one-off payment.

The pre-ticked boxes on fundraising emails often buried under lines of fine print sparked thousands of complaints to banks and credit card companies.

Among the victims were elderly and military veterans, as well as some experienced political operatives, and many have been left with overdraft fees and busted credit card limits.

One victim, Stacy Blatt, was battling cancer and living in a hospice in Kansas City when he donated $500 last September, the New York Times reported.

Blatt was charged another $500 the next day, and then $500 each week until October, and it was only after his rent and utility bills bounced that his family discovered what had happened.

'It felt like it was a scam,' his brother Russell, who helped Stacy get to the bottom of what had happened, told the Times.

Blatt died in February.

The Trump campaigns dubious pre-checked emails first appeared in March 2020.

A bright yellow box began appearing in emails with the words: 'Make this a monthly recurring donation.'

Anyone making a donation would have to opt-out to avoid being charged repeatedly.
Ten House Democrats have now joined a lawsuit first filed by Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi accusing former President Donald Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani of stoking the MAGA riot that had many of them cowering in their offices while a mob ransacked the Capitol.

Joining the suit which relies on the Ku Klux Klan act and is joined by the NAAP, are prominent lawmakers including Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jerold Nadler of New York and Financial Services Committee chair Rep. Maxine Waters of California.

Also joining are Reps. Steve Cohen of Tennessee, Karen Bass of California, Barbara Lee of California, Pramilia Jaypal of Washington, Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey, Veronica Escobar of Texas, Hank Johnson Jr. of Georgia, Veronica Escobar of Texas and Marcy Kaptur of Ohio.

Each signed onto the suit in their 'personal capacity.'

House Judiciary Chairman Jerold Nadler has joined a lawsuit against former President Donald Trump and former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani over the Jan. 6th riot. The lawmakers were in the House House or its galleries when it happened

The lawsuit, one of a number of suits targeting Trump before and after he left the White House, includes personal testimonials from lawmakers who were stuck in congressional galleries.

It also names Oath Keepers and Proud Boys groups, whose members are accused of participating in the riot and were photographed there Jan. 6th.

Cohen, an outspoken critic of Trump's, contemplated his own mortality during the siege, according to the suit.

'Her heart began racing as she realized she might be trapped in the House Gallery,' the filing says of Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas).

HURT KNEE: Rep. Pramila Jaypal describes having trouble getting down on the floor when ordered to because of her recent surgery

MORTALITY: Rep. Steve Cohen contemplated where he would be buried as the riot raged

WHAT DOES THE KU KLUX KLAN ACT SAY? 'If two or more persons in any State or Territory conspire to prevent, by force, intimidation, or threat, any person from accepting or holding any office, trust, or place of confidence under the United States, or from discharging any duties thereof; or to induce by like means any officer of the United States to leave any State, district, or place, where his duties as an officer are required to be performed, or to injure him in his person or property on account of his lawful discharge of the duties of his office, or while engaged in the lawful discharge thereof, or to injure his property so as to molest, interrupt, hinder, or impede him in the discharge of his official duties.' Advertisement

'Anticipating that he might not emerge from the House Gallery alive, he began to contemplate whether he would want to be buried with his family in Memphis or at the Congressional Cemetery, it says.

Cohen states: 'As I sat in my office on January 6th with rioters roaming the hallways, I feared for my life and thought I was going to die.

'This invasion was a direct result of Donald Trump's rhetoric and words. His calls to gather in Washington on January 6th and his message to 'be strong' thwarted the functioning of our Constitution.'

Afterward, he developed difficulties falling and staying asleep, according to the filing.

Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas was filled with fear during the riot. 'Her heart began racing as she realized she might be trapped in the House Gallery,' it says.

Jaypal describes having trouble getting down on the floor when ordered to because of her recent surgery.

Thompson filed suit on February 16, following Trump's acquittal in the Senate during his second impeachment trial.

When she left the House chamber and finally arrived at a safe room, she was 'exhausted and drained by the throbbing pain in her greatly swollen knee.'

Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia says he was forced to stand with other lawmakers who 'could not socially distance' because of their number. Johnson, 66 at the time, feared that he would contract the coronavirus, at a time when the outbreak was raging.

The catalogue of injuries and distress include language common among personal injury claims against individuals or corporations. The suit seeks unspecified punitive and compensatory damages.

The suit was filed under the Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan Act., which prohibits violence or intimidation meant to prevent Congress or other federal officials from carrying out their constitutional duties.
A minor walks over others inside a pod for females at the Department of Homeland Security holding facility run by the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) in Donna, Texas, on March 30, 2021. (Dario Lopez-Mills - Pool/Getty Images)

Unaccompanied Minors to be Temporarily Housed at Long Beach Convention Center

Up to 1,000 unaccompanied minors who illegally crossed into the United States will soon be housed at Californias Long Beach Convention Center, the city council ruled in a unanimous vote.

Amid the ongoing crisis at the southern border, unaccompanied minors who are soon to be reunified with family members or sponsors will be allowed to seek shelter at the facility, in a move that will be fully funded by the federal government.

The Long Beach Convention Center will provide food, schooling, and medical and mental health care for as many as 1,000 unaccompanied minors at a time for up to three months, CBS Los Angeles reported.

The Long Beach City Council voted unanimously in favor of the request from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Refugee Resettlement, in a 9-0 vote.

Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia said Tuesday that the key component of the decision is that it will be temporary.

There is a firm Aug. 2 date that the contract will end, and that its important for us that this is focused on family reunification, Garcia told CBS Los Angeles.

The mayor noted that the request for assistance from the White House and the federal government was a moral obligation.

We have a massive humanitarian challenge that is happening across the border, he said. And we also know these are children and these are kids and our focus needs to be to ensure that these kids that are minors and that are here for a variety of reasons at no fault of their own need our help.

As an immigrant, I know how important it is to support all people, especially childrenand I am proud to support our country in this important work, he told ABC7.

The citys Convention Center joins a growing list of emergency intake sites and overflow facilities available to take in unaccompanied minors who enter the country illegally without an adult.

The Biden administration has been opening up such facilities to address the significant surge of illegal border crossings in recent weeks. It is seeking to build capacity for 13,500 beds, with the potential for additional capacity, in order to meet what has been a continuous flow of unaccompanied minors coming across the border.

More than 100,000 apprehensions of illegal crossers were made in FebruaryPresident Joe Bidens first month in officeand another 26,000 people evaded capture, according to internal data reviewed by The Epoch Times.

Border Patrol agents detained more than 150,000 immigrants in March, former Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan said on March 30, citing internal data he was provided by sources.

While the Biden administration has said that the border isnt open, Biden reversed or altered a number of key Trump-era provisions, which contributed to the surge, experts have told The Epoch Times.

Garcia thanked the city council after the vote in a statement on Twitter.

Thank you to the @LongBeachCity Council for unanimously (9-0) approving the temporary migrant family reunification center. These kids deserve our care, love, and support. We will work to ensure that every child is quickly reunited with family, he wrote.

According to CBS Los Angeles, the facility could house unaccompanied minors as soon as next week.

Janita Kan and Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.
The man shot and killed by a Franklin Township police officer Monday afternoon, after he allegedly stole a patrol vehicle, was identified Tuesday as a 41-year-old Cape May Court House resident, authorities said.

Police in the Gloucester County town responded to provide mutual aid after a crash near the intersection of Cumberland Road and Tuckahoe Road in Buena Vista in neighboring Atlantic County around 3 p.m., according to a statement from the New Jersey Attorney Generals Office.

After a Franklin officer got out his police vehicle, one of the drivers involved in the crash, identified Tuesday afternoon as Roy K. Jackel Jr., jumped in the patrol car and drove away, the office said.

Police then pursued the stolen patrol car, 6abc.com reported.

Jackel stopped the police car on East Oak Road in Buena Vista and an encounter with police ensued, authorities said. During the altercation, an unidentified Franklin officer shot and killed Jackel, the office said.

Officers provided medical assistance to Jackel until emergency medical personnel arrived and he was pronounced dead at the scene, authorities said.

No other details about the shooting were released Tuesday afternoon as the incident remained under investigation by the office. The Attorney General investigates all incidents where a person dies during an encounter with a police officer in the officers official capacity or while the victim is in custody.

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.
The Vice-Prime Minister, Minister of Education, Tertiary Education, Science and Technology, Mrs Leela Devi Dookun-Luchoomun, appeals to all parents whose wards are currently taking part in national exams to ensure that they are serene without being subject to any unnecessary additional stress for their exams, which are taking place in an exceptional context due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Ministry of Education has put into place all the established sanitary protocols to ensure that students take part in their exams in the best possible conditions.

Mrs Leela Devi Dookun-Luchoomun was speaking this evening at the seat of her ministry in Phoenix, on the various sanitary measures put in place to ensure the proper running of exams which have started on 22 March.

She also seized this opportunity to appeal to parents and all those concerned with the current examinations not to give into fake news.

VPM Dookun-Luchoomun reassured all parents that with the collaboration of the Ministry of Health and Wellness, all required sanitary precautions are being observed, such a cleaning and sanitising of classes before and after exams.

She pointed out that during exams time social distancing and proper wearing of masks are being respected and for the parents as well students of Philippe Rivalland RCA, the VPM gave the assurance that, after an invigilator was found positive to COVID-19, the classroom is not being used for exams.

She further called on parents not to gather into groups in front of school premises and centres where exams are ongoing while it is important for all to proceed in a disciplined manner for the well-being of the students and the personnel involved.

Furthermore, the Minister of Education appealed to parents not to give into fake news as it has been positively noted by the Mauritius Examinations Syndicate that most students are taking part in their exams.

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Last year, LeAnn Tacon retired after a 33-year career with the Mobile Fire Department, but her retirement was short-lived. Eight months later, she was named fire chief for the Daphne Fire Department just across the bay. I wasnt through, she says. I love being part of a fire department.

Since January, she has occupied a spacious corner office at Daphnes Fire Station No. 2  but she only spends about half of her time there, taking care of her administrative tasks. The rest of the time, shes in her element, either going on calls or visiting the three other fire stations under her supervision. (In June, the newest station will open, bringing the total in Daphne to five.)

When she was offered the position, LeAnn was ecstatic, she says. Before she was officially on the payroll, she went around to each station to introduce herself to the 60 or so firefighters working there. Recently, one of them gave her a tremendous compliment when he told her, I knew you were a firefighter in a chiefs shirt.

When she retired from the Mobile Fire Department, her coworkers presented her this plaque commemorating all the "firsts" in her 33-year career there. (Photo by Michelle Matthews)

That description sums up what LeAnn is all about. She never set out to be the first of anything, but a plaque in her office given to her upon her retirement commemorates a series of firsts in Mobile, where she was the fire departments first female firefighter, driver, captain and district chief. And now shes serving as Daphnes first female fire chief.

I just love the job of firefighting, she says.

No one could be prouder of her than her former coworkers  several of whom she trained  at the Central Fire Station in downtown Mobile. They still miss working with her and say she had a tremendous impact on the department. District Chief Jim Cox, who was promoted into her position as district chief, has known her for 20 years and says the fire station took on her personality a bit and that he kind of adopted her problem-solving skills.

To illustrate how organized she was, he pulls out a binder she made with every detail about how to plan an annual EMS Week cookout, set for May. Theres stuff she left for us all over because she knew wed need it, he says.

Shes a good person all around, says Capt. Charles Biggs.

Capt. Mack Weaver says LeAnn has been known to spend her off days mentoring her fellow firefighters to help them prepare for promotions. She has changed a lot of lives, he says. Within our culture, if you get the respect of the men, youve done something. She is well respected.'

I want to do that

Born in Mobile, LeAnn was raised in Montgomery and returned to Mobile, where she attended Murphy High School. She went to EMT school and worked for an ambulance company, where we would stand by at fires, she says. During the 1980s, an arsonist was setting fires in downtown Mobile, and LeAnn remembers watching the firefighters marching in like it was nothing, and they all seemed happy about it.

One night, as a building burned, she turned to a fellow EMT and said, I want to do that. Those people love their job. You can just see it.

She took Mobile Fire Departments written test and was one of 20 out of 1,000 applicants hired  and she never looked back. I belonged on a fire truck, she says. When she retired last May, I was just as happy on my last day as I was on my first day. Its the best job in the world.

Though she was the only woman in the fire department when she was hired in 1987, she insists she was never treated differently. It was like I had 500 big brothers, she says. She truly blazed a trail, whether she intended to or not. Mobile Fire Department now counts 23 female firefighters among its ranks.

There were more firsts to come when she was promoted to driver, then almost immediately to captain, then to district chief. LeAnn was the first female to hold any of those positions. Even when I became district chief, she says, I still loved to turn the lights on and go on calls. I still love to do it now.

Working at a fire station feels like being part of a family. Firefighters live together every third day, cook, pray and eat together, train together, she says. We see some of the worst of humanity and the best at the same time.

She considers herself to be an empathetic person, which has served her well over three decades of working for a fire department. We werent meant to go through the world alone, she says. When someone calls 911, it could be their worst day ever.

Recently, she received an email from a woman who said the Daphne Fire Department saved her husbands life. I sent it to the entire department, LeAnn says. Things that seem routine to us arent at all.

And even though shes in charge, she doesnt believe in operating with an iron fist, she says. I want these guys to know someone has their back. I want to inspire and motivate people.

Among the memorabilia in her office is an American flag made of old hoses from Truck 3, as well as some original bricks and roof tiles from her beloved Central Fire Station in downtown Mobile. Theres also a section of bricks still mortared together, the only thing remaining of a building after a fire she helped fight.

In her spacious office, Chief LeAnn Tacon displays some bricks and roof tiles that have a meaningful story behind them. (Photo by Michelle Matthews)

Mack, her former co-worker, retrieved the bricks for her as a souvenir of her courage. She did her job, she was brave, and she won the respect of an old-timer, he says  someone who, after seeing her in action, realized she was just as strong and capable as any male doing the same job.

She was always knowledgeable, fair and positive, he says. The biggest fire I ever fought, at the Masonic Lodge, was with her as captain. Shes a real aggressive firefighter.

One of the sentimental objects in Chief Tacon's office is this crayon drawing by her daughter, Bayleigh, who's now a student at the University of Alabama. (Photo by Michelle Matthews)

Jim, now serving in her former position as district chief, says that, as devoted as LeAnn was to firefighting, everyone knew that the most important thing in her world was her daughter, Bayleigh, now a first-year student at the University of Alabama.

Her goal when she retired was to buy Bayleigh a vehicle, he says. She bought her a nice, four-door Jeep to go off to college in.

When she was growing up, Bayleigh was considered the fire departments daughter, recalls Mack. Everybody yelled her name when she walked into the station.

She once drew a picture of her mom putting out a raging fire, with assistance from a tiny firefighter  Bayleigh  both with big smiles on their faces. The drawing is framed in LeAnns office where, years later, shes still smiling about her career, which she considers to be much more than a job.

Its a calling, she says.
Last May, Rodney Wheeler dialled 911 with a frantic plea for help: his wife had just plunged hundreds of feet over a steep cliff in a West Virginia national park.

Authorities quickly launched a massive search for Julie Wheeler, 44. For days, hundreds of volunteers, police, and professional rescuers trekked along the base of the New River where her husband said shed fallen, aided by helicopters and rescue dogs.

But Julie Wheeler had never gone missing. Three days after she supposedly fell off a cliff, authorities found her hiding inside a closet in the couples Beaver, West Virginia home.

In fact, the couple had tried to elaborately fake her death to help her avoid federal sentencing in a healthcare fraud scheme. They planned to eventually slip away and hide together.

On Monday, a federal judge sentenced Rodney Wheeler, 48, to two months in prison and six months of home confinement for his role in the plot. Julie Wheeler had already been sentenced to 54 months in prison for the healthcare fraud and the faked death scheme. A judge also ordered her to pay nearly $300,000 in restitution.

Read more:

Throughout the massive search effort, Rodney Wheeler repeatedly gave false statements to state and federal investigators intentionally designed to mislead them about his wifes whereabouts, the US Attorneys Office for the Southern District of West Virginia said in a news release. The purpose [of] Rodney Wheelers false statements was to continue the Wheelers ruse that she had fallen and was missing.

The couple shared a home in Beaver, a small town in the southern part of the state with less than 2,000 residents. In 2011, the Wheelers, who have two sons, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, the Register-Herald reported.

Julie Wheeler was the owner and operator of JRW Home Health Support Services, court records show. In 2016, a Veterans Affairs office hired her company to help a veteran diagnosed with spina bifida. But investigators later found that Julie Wheeler inflated her work hours to get nearly $470,00 (340,912.15) in inappropriate fees from the programme.

She was charged with fraud in September 2019 and later pleaded guilty. She was scheduled to be sentenced on June 17.

But on May 31, her husband reported that she had slipped off the Grandview Overlook in the New River Gorge National Park. The overlook sits 1,400 feet above the New River and its watershed.

Rodney told police that hed been hiking with his wife and son when Julie went to search for an earring off the trail and slipped off the overlook, according to the Register-Herald.

The National Park Service scrambled rescue teams. Helicopters provided by the states Air National Guard hovered from the air while rappelling experts descended the cliffs and rescue dogs with their handlers scoured the ground.

Meanwhile, Rodney told the probation officers his wife was supposed to report to before her sentencing that she had disappeared in the park.

The following day, Rodney took to his Facebook account to share more details of his wifes accident and to ask friends and relatives to pray for her safe return, according to the criminal complaint.

[T]he accident at Grandview yesterday involved my wife . . . They have not found her yet but I am holding out hope that she will be found and she is ok . . . I am heartbroken and lost right now but I have to have faith . . . Please give us time to [work] through this and please keep us in your thoughts and prayers, Rodney wrote.

At first, rescuers had reason to believe his story: They found a shoe and cellphone supposedly belonging to Julie at the base of the cliff. Meanwhile, authorities from the probation office and the rescue crews repeatedly came to the couples home in Beaver to talk to Rodney, who stuck to his story.

In fact, Julie had been hiding a few feet away inside the home the whole time. On 2 June, 2020, police found her inside the closet. The shoe and cellphone at the base of the cliff had been planted by the couple, police said.

Both Julie and Rodney were swiftly arrested. Soon after, both admitted they conspired to fake her disappearance to avoid her sentencing in the healthcare fraud case.

The Washington Post
Jordan Customs in its capacity as Vice-Chair of the WCO Council for the North of Africa, Near and Middle East (MENA) region, organized a virtual Regional Meeting of Directors General of Customs on 4 April 2021. The meeting was chaired by the Acting Director General of Jordan Customs, Jalal Salem Qudah and brought together representatives from sixteen of the eighteen Members of the region as well as the Regional Office for Capacity Building (ROCB), the Regional Intelligence Liaison Office (RILO) and the League of Arab States.

WCO Secretary General Dr. Kunio Mikuriya described the current WCOs priorities related to COVID-19, the outcome of the recent Finance Committee and the proposal on how to implement the future WCO priorities and the working methods with Directors General of the MENA region.

During the meeting, the outcome of the December Policy Commission and Council, the use of the Arabic language at the WCO, and its future funding arrangements were discussed.

Directors General shared their experiences on mitigating the effects of COVID-19, reviewed the regional capacity building and information exchange activities facilitated by the ROCB and the RILOs. The meeting approved the decisions to establish a working group to develop the regional strategy, launch a regional electronic journal, and enhance communication between Members and the regional structure. The meeting also discussed alternative sources of funding for the WCO in the future and reviewed the current disposition of the regional Technical Attache and its future arrangement.

All the participants appreciated the Jordan Customs preparation and conduct of the meeting.
- By Sydnee Gatewood





Oil prices rose on Tuesday morning as a result of a drop in the U.S. dollar, making crude more attractive following the over 4% loss incurred on Monday on the prospect of producers returning more than 2 million barrels per day of supply to the market by July.

Brent crude futures increased 1.3% to $62.98 cents a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate crude futures gained 1.4% to $59.45 per barrel.





5 Oil Companies to Consider as Crude Prices Rise

As a result of these developments, investors may be looking for opportunities in the energy industry. According to the GuruFocus All-in-One Screener, a Premium feature, oil and gas companies that trade below the Peter Lynch value of 15, have GF Valuations that range between modestly undervalued to fairly valued and have a predictability rank of at least one out of five stars include Holly Energy Partners LP (NYSE:HEP), Magellan Midstream Partners LP (NYSE:MMP), Mesa Royalty Trust (NYSE:MTR), Overseas Shipholding Group Inc. (NYSE:OSG) and TC Pipelines LP (NYSE:TCP).

Holly Energy Partners

Holly Energy Partners (NYSE:HEP) has a $2.04 billion market cap; its shares were trading around $19.13 on Tuesday with a price-earnings ratio of 11.97, a price-book ratio of 5.38 and a price-sales ratio of 4.1.

The Dallas-based midstream company provides pipeline, terminal and storage services to transport natural gas and crude oil.

Based on a GF Value of $22.11 and a price-to-GF Value ratio of 0.87, the stock appears to be modestly undervalued.

5 Oil Companies to Consider as Crude Prices Rise

The GuruFocus valuation rank of 9 out of 10 also points to undervaluation.

GuruFocus rated Holly Energy's financial strength 3 out of 10 as a result of low interest coverage. The Altman Z-Score of 1.33 also warns the company could be at risk of bankruptcy if it does not improve its liquidity position. The return on invested capital, however, surpasses the weighted average cost of capital, indicating good value creation.

Story continues

The company's profitability fared better, scoring a 7 out of 10 rating on the back of margin and returns that outperform a majority of competitors as well as a moderate Piotroski F-Score of 5, which suggests business conditions are stable. Due to recording a decline in revenue per share over the past five years, the one-star predictability rank is on watch. According to GuruFocus, companies with this rank return, on average, 1.1% annually over a 10-year period.

No gurus are currently invested in the stock.

Magellan Midstream Partners

Magellan (NYSE:MMP) has a market cap of $10.01 billion; its shares were trading around $44.89 on Tuesday with a price-earnings ratio of 12.42, a price-book ratio of 4.35 and a price-sales ratio of 4.17.

Headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the company owns and operates ammonia and petroleum pipelines in the Mid-Continent oil province.

With a GF Value of $54.47and a price-to-GF Value ratio of 0.82, the stock appears to be modestly undervalued.

5 Oil Companies to Consider as Crude Prices Rise

The GuruFocus valuation rank of 8 out of 10 also leans toward undervaluation.

Magellan's financial strength was rated 3 out of 10 by GuruFocus. As a result of issuing approximately $474.84 million in new long-term debt over the past three years, the company has weak interest coverage. The Altman Z-Score of 1.71 also warns of potential bankruptcy risk as assets are building up at a faster rate than revenue is growing. The ROIC also eclipses the WACC, indicating good value creation.

The company's profitability scored an 8 out of 10 rating. While the operating margin is in decline, Magellan is supported by returns that are outperforming a majority of industry peers as well as a moderate Piotroski F-Score of 5. The three-star predictability rank is on watch as a result of revenue per share declining over the past 12 months. GuruFocus says companies with this rank return an average of 8.2% annually.

With 0.29% of outstanding shares, First Eagle Investment (Trades, Portfolio) is Magellan's largest guru shareholder. David Tepper (Trades, Portfolio), Louis Moore Bacon (Trades, Portfolio), Pioneer Investments (Trades, Portfolio), George Soros (Trades, Portfolio), First Pacific Advisors (Trades, Portfolio) and Bruce Berkowitz (Trades, Portfolio) also own the stock.

Mesa Royalty Trust

Mesa Royalty Trust (NYSE:MTR) has a $9.37 million market cap; its shares were trading around $5.20 on Tuesday with a price-earnings ratio of 9.71, a price-book ratio of 3.73 and a price-sales ratio of 9.42.

The Houston-based company owns overriding royalty interests in various oil and natural gas-producing properties in the Hugoton area of Kansas and the San Juan Basin of New Mexico and Colorado.

Trading with a GF Value of $5.14 and a price-to-GF Value ratio of 0.97, the stock appears to be fairly valued currently.

5 Oil Companies to Consider as Crude Prices Rise

Mesa Royalty's financial strength was rated 8 out of 10 by GuruFocus. Despite having no long-term debt and a comfortable level of interest coverage, the Altman Z-Score of zero warns the company could be at risk of going bankrupt. The ROIC significantly surpasses the WACC, indicating good value creation.

The company's profitability scored a 7 out of 10 rating. Although the operating margin is in decline, the returns outperform a majority of competitors. Mesa Royalty also has a moderate Piotroski F-Score of 4, but the one-star predictability rank is on watch as a result of revenue per share declining over the past five years.

No gurus are currently invested in the stock.

Overseas Shipholding Group

Overseas Shipholding (NYSE:OSG) has a market cap of $187.65 million; its shares were trading around $2.15 on Tuesday with a price-earnings ratio of 6.55, a price-book ratio of 0.49 and a price-sales ratio of 0.47.

Headquartered in Tampa, Florida, the company operates a fleet of oil tankers and oil tug-barges.

With a GF Value of $2.26 and a price-to-GF Value ratio of 0.98, the stock appears to be fairly valued currently.

5 Oil Companies to Consider as Crude Prices Rise

Overseas Shipholding's financial strength was rated 3 out of 10 by GuruFocus on the back of poor interest coverage and a low Altman Z-Score of 0.3. The WACC also eclipses the ROIC, indicating issues with creating value.

The company's profitability did not fare much better, scoring a 4 out of 10 rating. Despite having a declining operating margin, Overseas Shipholding was supported by strong returns that outperform a majority of industry peers and a moderate Piotroski F-Score of 6. Although the company has recorded a decline in revenue per share over the past five years, it still has a one-star predictability rank.

John Paulson (Trades, Portfolio) is Overseas Shipholding's largest guru shareholder with a 7.3% stake. Jim Simons (Trades, Portfolio)' Renaissance Technologies also owns the stock.

TC Pipelines

TC Pipelines (NYSE:TCP) has a $2.21 billion market cap; its shares were trading around $30.21 on Tuesday with a price-earnings ratio of 7.75, a price-book ratio of 3.01 and a price-sales ratio of 5.4.

The Houston-based company owns and operates a pipeline network that transports natural gas.

Trading with a GF Value of $30.71 and a price-to-GF Value ratio of 0.98, the stock appears to be fairly valued currently.

5 Oil Companies to Consider as Crude Prices Rise

GuruFocus rated TC Pipelines' financial strength 3 out of 10. In addition to weak interest coverage, the company has a low Altman Z-Score of 1.02, indicating the potential for bankruptcy. The ROIC only slightly surpasses the WACC, indicating there is value creation.

The company's profitability fared better, scoring a 7 out of 10 rating on the back of strong margins and returns that outperform a majority of competitors. TC Pipelines also has a high Piotroski F-Score of 7 and a one-star predictability rank.

No gurus are currently invested in the stock.

Disclosure: No positions.

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(Alliance News) - The European Medicines Agency said it is to give its findings on a possible link between AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine and rare blood clots later Wednesday.

A virtual media conference will be held at 4:00 pm local time, 1400 GMT, the Amsterdam-based EU drug regulator said, cautioning that the timing could change.

"EMA is holding a virtual press briefing on the conclusion of the evaluation of a safety signal with Vaxzevria (formerly Covid-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca) relating to cases of thromboembolic events by EMA's safety committee," it said in a statement.

EU health ministers are to hold a video meeting on the issue following the EMA's media conference, Portuguese authorities, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, tweeted.

The events come amid mounting questions over the AstraZeneca vaccine after national regulators in EU countries detected dozens of cases of people with clots in blood vessels draining from the brain after receiving jabs.

A causal link is suspected, at least for relatively younger adults up to around age 55-60, though this has not been confirmed so far.

Several EU countries have restricted use of AstraZeneca's vaccine for those under that age threshold, and a British trial of the vaccine on children has been halted.

The EMA and the World Health Organization have said that, even if there was a link, the benefits of using AstraZeneca's vaccine outweighed the risk.

EMA chief Emer Cooke and senior officials from the agency will take part in the press conference.

A senior EMA official was quoted in Italian media on Tuesday as saying that there was a connection between the AstraZeneca jab and clots, and that the agency would announce it soon.

"In my opinion, we can say it now, it is clear there is a link with the vaccine," EMA head of vaccine strategy Marco Cavaleri told Italy's Il Messaggero newspaper in an interview. "But we still do not know what causes this reaction."

However the EMA said later on Tuesday it had "not yet reached a conclusion and the review is currently ongoing".

source: AFP

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - April 6, 2021) - INCA ONE GOLD CORP. (TSXV: IO) (OTC Pink: INCAF) (FSE: SU92) ("Inca One" or the "Company") a gold producer operating two, fully permitted, mineral processing facilities in Peru, announces the change of its symbol from IO to INCA.

The common shares of the Company will begin trading under the new symbol "INCA" on the TSX Venture Exchange at market open on April 9, 2021. The CUSIP (45328X305) will remain the same.

About Inca One

Inca One Gold Corp is a TSXV listed, gold producer operating two, fully permitted, gold mineral processing facilities in Peru. The Company has produced in excess of 92,000 ounces of gold, generating over US$125 million in revenue from its first 6 years of operations. Inca One, is led by an experienced and capable management team that has established the Company as a trusted leader in servicing government permitted, small-scale miners in Peru. Peru is the world's seventh-largest producer of gold and its small-scale mining sector is estimated by government officials to be valued in the billions of dollars annually. Inca One possesses a combined 450 tonnes per day permitted operating capacity at its two fully integrated plants, Chala One and Kori One. To learn more visit www.incaone.com.







Figure 1. Inca One's gold processing facilities in Peru (left: Chala One facility; right: Kori One facility)

To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/2645/79639_bdd8593fe4915893_001full.jpg

On behalf of the Board,

Edward Kelly

President and CEO

Inca One Gold Corp.

For More Information Contact:

Konstantine Tsakumis

Inca One Gold Corp.

ktsakumis@incaone.com

604-568-4877

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.

Statements regarding the Company which are not historical facts are "forward-looking statements" that involve risks and uncertainties. Such information can generally be identified by the use of forwarding-looking wording such as "may", "expect", "estimate", "anticipate", "intend", "believe" and "continue" or the negative thereof or similar variations. Since forward-looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature, they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results in each case could differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements due to factors such as: (i) fluctuation of mineral prices; (ii) a change in market conditions; and (iii) the fact that future operational results may not be accurately predicted based on this limited information to date. Except as required by law, the Company does not intend to update any changes to such statements. Inca One believes the expectations reflected in those forward-looking statements are reasonable but no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct and such forward-looking statements included herein should not be unduly relied upon.

This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state in which such offer, solicitation, or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/79639
New Delhi: Naxals have issued a purported statement claiming that they had abducted a CRPF jawan during a recent gun battle with the security forces in Chhattisgarh's Bijapur district and have set a condition for his safe release.

According to their letter, Naxals have sought some mediators for the abducted CRPF commandos release.

A two-page statement reportedly issued by Dandakarnya Special Zonal Committee (DSZC) of the CPI (Maoists) said the abducted jawan "will be safe in their custody" and would be handed over to the police after mediation.

In Bijapur attack,24 security personnel lost lives,31 injured & 1 in our custody. 4 People's Liberation Guerrilla Army personnel lost lives. Ready to negotiate with govt,they can announce mediators. Will release him. Police Jawans not our enemies:Communist Party of India (Maoist) pic.twitter.com/oMRFZaiBeb  ANI (@ANI) April 7, 2021

The statement is being looked into, a senior security officer and a CRPF commander said.

Twenty-two personnel from various security forces like the Commando Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA) of the Central Reserve Police Force, its Bastariya battalion and those from the District Reserve Guard and STF of the Chattisgarh Police were killed in the ambush that took place along the Bijapur-Sukma border on Saturday.

Thirty-one jawans were injured while CoBRA commando Rakeshwar Singh Minhas, belonging to its 210th battalion, went missing after the gunfight and was stated to be taken hostage by the Naxalites.

The security forces had claimed that they recovered the body of a female Maoist from the spot. Signed by the spokesperson of the DSZC, Vikalp, the statement said the government should declare the name of some "mediators for the release of the captured jawan".

The statement claimed that the ultras looted 14 weapons, over 2,000 bullets and some other communication gadgets of the troops who were killed. The statement added that four Naxals were killed in this ambush and added that they could not pick one body.

(With Agency inputs)

Live TV
New Delhi: Amid growing concerns over fast-rising cases of COVID-19 infections, India on Wednesday recorded 1,15,736 new coronavirus cases, taking the total tally in the country to 1,28,01,785.

According to the Health Ministry data released at 8 AM, the death toll increased by 630 to 1,66,177. The is the biggest one-day rise in cases in the country ever since the pandemic began.

According to the Health Ministry, there are currently 8,43,473 active cases across the country, while 1,17,92,135 patients have been discharged, with 59,856 discharges reported in the last 24 hours.

As many as 25,14,39,598 samples have been tested for COVID-19 up to 6 April, of which 12,08,329 samples were tested on Tuesday, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said. Meanwhile, more than 8.70 crore vaccine doses have been administered till now, ever since India's inoculation drive began on 16 January.

On Tuesday night, India recorded over 1.07 lakh new cases of infection, the highest one-day spike in COVID-19 cases amid warning from the Centre that the next four weeks are "very very critical".

According to the daily numbers announced by various states and union territories, the nationwide tally of new cases reported on Tuesday night crossed the 1.07 lakh mark, the highest ever in India since the first case of the deadly virus was reported on January 30, 2020.

The number of cases breached the 1-lakh mark for the second time in three days. India on Sunday registered an all-time high of 1,03,558 cases in a span of 24 hours. In the wake of rising COVID-19 cases, the Centre sought people's participation to control the second wave of the pandemic.

As the Centre warned that COVID-19 is spreading faster in the country than during the last year, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said it seems that people have given 'Tilanjali' (abandon) to measures like wearing masks to combat the disease.

Facing growing calls for expanding the COVID vaccination drive to cover all age groups, the Centre also appeared to be veering towards the view to make those above 18 years eligible for the jabs. At present, only those above 45 years are allowed to take the vaccine.

Delhi also joined a growing number of states to impose a night curfew in view of the surge in coronavirus infections as the national capital recorded 5,100 fresh cases on Tuesday, the highest this year. The curfew from 10 pm to 5 am will be in force with immediate effect till April 30.

NITI Aayog Member (Health) Dr V K Paul said the pandemic situation in the country has worsened with a sharp rise in cases, and a large part of the population is still susceptible to the virus.

"People's participation is vital to control the second wave. The next four weeks are going to very critical. The entire country has to come together and make efforts to fight the pandemic."

"The intensity of the pandemic has increased and it is spreading faster than last time. In some states, it (the condition) is worse than others but the upswing (in cases) can be observed across the country," he said.

Centre urges people to follow COVID-appropriate behaviour

The tools to fight the pandemic remain the same. COVID-appropriate behaviour, containment measures, testing have to be implemented more efficiently, medical infrastructure has to be ramped up and vaccination drive intensified, he underlined.

COVID-appropriate behaviour like wearing masks, staying away from crowds have to be followed in a campaign mode, Paul reminded people.

He said the number of coronavirus cases is increasing and along with that mortality is also on the rise. "Still, in terms of the population size and in terms of deaths per million we are doing well and the pandemic is in control."

Factors leading to a spike in COVID cases

Minister Vardhan highlighted that one of the major reasons for the surge in cases in almost all parts of the country, more specifically in 11 states, was people becoming lax towards following COVID appropriate behaviour and urged them to take up mass awareness campaigns to re-instill the importance of such measures among the population.

It seems that people have given 'Tilanjali' (abandon) to measures and steps that can protect them from COVID such as mask-wearing, avoiding gatherings and maintaining physical distancing, which I have been calling as Social Vaccine and are as important as the vaccines that we now have," he was quoted as saying in an official statement released after he chaired a comprehensive and detailed review of the COVID cases, vaccination status and challenges being faced by the 11 states.

#COVID19                     COVID Appropriate Behaviors             ,                   pic.twitter.com/OukUnHeWnH  Dr Harsh Vardhan (@drharshvardhan) April 5, 2021

Super spreader states

The states are Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab and Rajasthan.

A total of 96,982 cases have been reported in a span of 24 hours, while the death toll increased to 1,65,547 with 446 daily new fatalities, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated at 8 am.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in an advisory urged private TV channels to disseminate messages for COVID-appropriate behaviour and vaccination of the eligible age group to create greater awareness among people.

The Centre while responding to growing demands that the age limit for COVID-19 vaccination be relaxed in view of the spike in cases, said the aim is to protect those who are most vulnerable, and not to "administer the vaccine to those who want it but to those who need it".

The 10 districts with the highest number of new cases are Pune, Mumbai, Thane, Nagpur, Nashik, Bengaluru Urban, Aurangabad, Ahmednagar, Delhi and Durg. Maharashtra because of its share in total number of cases as well as in total deaths, and Punjab and Chhattisgarh because of their share in the number of deaths. Maharashtra on Tuesday recorded 55,469 new cases, a state health official said in Mumbai.

India's COVID-19 cases per million in India are still among the lowest. India has 9,192 cases per million while countries like the US has 91,757, France 71,718, and the UK 64,216.

The Union Health Ministry said more than 43 lakh COVID-19 vaccine doses were administered in a span of 24 hours on April 5, the highest single-day coverage till now, taking the total doses given in the country so far to 8,31,10,926.

The Indian Medical Association (IMA) has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi suggesting that vaccination be allowed for all people above the age of 18 years.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his Maharashtra counterpart Uddhav Thackeray on Monday also requested PM Modi to relax the age limit for the vaccination. Karnataka, Punjab and Rajasthan had also made similar suggestions in recent weeks.

(With Agency Inputs)

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A Decatur man faces a host of charges in connection with two fires set Tuesday morning.

Decatur police say Bernard Obrian Driskell, 35, is being held in the Morgan County Correctional Facility on $152,800 bond.

Firefighters responded to a house fire at 1009 Hillwood Drive S.W. at about 7:10 a.m. Tuesday. There was also a vehicle fire at La Quinta Inn at 918 Beltline Road S.W. A woman at La Quinta told police that Driskell had made threats to kill her. Police developed Driskell as a suspect in the fires.

Later in the day, he was seen driving in northwest Decatur. Police said he was arrested after a vehicle pursuit with no injuries or property damage. He was found with a firearm and some cocaine, according to police.

Driskell has been charged with two counts of second degree domestic violence, second degree arson, attempting to elude, drug possession, reckless endangerment, certain person prohibited to possess a firearm, driving with a revoked license, running a stop sign, reckless driving and speeding.
A 12-minute video of Gwyneth Paltrow taking viewers through her skincare routine horrified skincare experts last week.

Their main issue with the post by vogue.com was what they perceived to be her irresponsible attitude to sun protection.

'There are a lot of really harsh chemicals in conventional sunscreen so that's a product I really want to avoid,' she proclaimed.

She opted instead for what she called 'a clean mineral sunscreen brand' before confiding: 'I'm not a head-to-toe slatherer of sunscreen, but I like to put some on my nose and the area where the sun really hits.' Then she daintily applied a smear to her nose and under her eyes.

A video of Gwyneth Paltrow (pictured) taking viewers through her skincare routine horrified skincare experts last week as they slammed her attitude to sun protection as 'irresponsible'

'Not only is Gwyneth wrongly applying SPF  you need around half a teaspoon for your face and neck  but she is presenting biased, wrong and dangerous information,' says Dr Sonia Khorana, a GP and dermatology doctor based in the West Midlands.

'Not using sunscreen properly puts you at risk of skin cancer and 80 to 90 per cent occur on the face or neck. She has such a large platform, it's sad she's providing inaccurate information.'

While a spokesperson for Paltrow's Wellness brand Goop later claimed the video had been edited, other skincare tips in her video were considered problematic by dermatologists, such as her daily use of a gritty glycolic acid exfoliator on dry skin, which can damage the skin barrier.

This isn't the first time Paltrow's 'advice' has incurred the wrath of the medical community. Last year NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens criticised a Netflix series from Goop which showcased alternative therapies.

Gwyneth (above) claimed there were 'harsh chemicals' in 'conventional sunscreen' that she wanted to avoid and instead used what she called 'a clean mineral sunscreen brand'

The 'dubious products and dodgy procedures' posed a 'considerable health risk' to the public, he said.

A spokeswoman for Goop said the company was 'transparent' about the fact they 'cover emerging topics that may be unsupported by science or may be in early stages of review'.

Gwyneth has also advocated a vagina steaming treatment with 'real healing properties', forcing gynaecologists to point out that, far from healing, it can affect the healthy balance of bacteria, causing irritation and infection.

But is her most damaging legacy her insistence on referring to beauty products as 'clean'? Gwyneth is at least partly responsible for the current 'clean beauty' mania.

There are almost four million posts on Instagram with the hashtag #cleanbeauty, and in the past ten years, Google searches for the term have increased ten-fold.

The trouble is, it means nothing. 'Under UK cosmetics legislation, there is no legal definition of the word 'clean',' says Dr Emma Meredith, director general of the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Perfumery Association (CTPA).

As a result, different brands interpret it in different ways. For some it may mean not using ingredients of animal origin; for others, excluding ingredients they call 'nasties'.

'Clean' is just another marketing buzzword,' says Millie Kendall MBE. 'I still don't understand what it means, and I'm CEO of the British Beauty Council.'

It's not just that 'clean' doesn't mean anything  or worse, can mean any number of things  it's what it implies about any product that isn't labeled 'clean'.

People assume products without the buzzy label are 'dirty', packed with 'toxins' or 'chemicals'.

Dr Sonia Khorana, a GP and dermatology doctor, criticised her for 'wrongly' applying SPF and said Gwyneth's 12-minute video (above) spread 'dangerous information'

'This sort of misinformation is very damaging for the reputation of the industry,' says Millie, who believes part of the issue is the number of people with large followings on social media, who don't have any training or knowledge.

'Anyone can pick up a camera and share information with a very large group of viewers, but that doesn't mean it's accurate.'

In the Vogue video Paltrow talks about 'crazy ingredients  like antifreeze' being in moisturisers.

But as Dr Meredith explains, the truth is 'while some cosmetic ingredients may have other useful properties, their use in cosmetics is rigorously assessed for safety.

'Propylene glycol's use in antifreeze is not relevant to its safe use in cosmetics, just as the corrosive nature of acetic acid [used to remove rust] is not relevant to its use in food as vinegar.'

It's like saying you're ingesting perfume when you drink wine because both contain ethanol.

Dr Meredith, a pharmacist with a PhD in skin pigment and malignant melanomas, adds: 'There are more than a thousand ingredients banned from cosmetics, while others can only be used subject to specific restrictions.'

While anyone can get an allergic reaction to anything, if you can buy the product in Britain you can be sure the formulation has been screened to ensure any risk is extremely low  regardless of whether or not it has the word 'clean' on it.

Not only is the 'clean' label confusing, the resulting panic it causes can be dangerous. Take parabens  natural preservatives found in fruit such as raspberries. They were demonised by a widely reported, yet potentially flawed, piece of research linking them with breast cancer.

The result? Manufacturers bowed to public pressure and started going 'paraben-free'.

A spokesperson for Paltrow's Wellness brand Goop claimed the video had been edited, but Gwyneth's (pictured in June 2018) other tips were considered problematic by dermatologists

But as Sam Farmer, whose toiletries for young people include parabens, explains, this caused problems of its own.

'When companies moved away from parabens, they needed another inexpensive, effective preservative,' he says.

'Methylisothiazolinone (MI) had long been used in shampoos and other wash-off products, but formulators knew it was not advisable to use it in leave-on products, such as sun cream.

'But in the rush to replace parabens, this seems to have been forgotten.'

The result is that some consumers buying paraben-free products are getting sensitivity reactions to MI on their skin, so they can no longer use any products that contain it.

One dermatologist described it as 'a worldwide epidemic of allergic contact dermatitis from MI'. The last word goes to Dr Khorana (@dermgp on Instagram).

'Celebrities have a responsibility to make sure the information they're sharing is safe,' she says, 'because giving biased opinions on topics they're not experts in, without reference to evidence, can be damaging and dangerous.'
Mexico City:

The death toll from Mexico's Sept. 19 earthquake increased to 344, with 205 of the deaths counted in the nations capital, Mexico city.. National Civil Defense chief Luis Felipe Puente announced the new figure via Twitter as recovery teams pulled some of the few remaining bodies out of collapsed buildings in Mexico City.

Most of the capitals collapse sites have already been cleared of rubble.

President Enrique Pena Nieto said that preliminary accounting suggests damage from the magnitude 7.1 quake and another powerful one earlier in southern Mexico could cost upward of $2 billion (38.1 billion pesos).

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Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 23:10:22|Editor: huaxia

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-- It's not that the WHO has run out of choices of disease types, or the world was free from specific health threats; it is just the still-ravaging pandemic has attested to the fact that unfairness and inequality, especially in addressing such global challenges as COVID-19, are actually more lethal than any specific disease.

-- As most people thought that they have finally got to see the light at the end of the tunnel as the COVID-19 vaccines have been rolling out, inequality and unfairness in vaccine distribution are waking those in poor countries up to the cold truth that it is just a false dawn amid the gloom.

-- To achieve the final victory in this global fight, all countries need to take real actions to ensure fairness and equality, rather than just make empty talks and hollow promises. After all, in such a closely linked world, no one would keep safe until everyone is safe.

BEIJING, April 7 (Xinhua) -- World Health Day 2021 is being commemorated globally on Wednesday, under the theme of building a fairer, healthier world.

In contrast to its previous themes, which typically focused on some specific types of disease or health threats like diabetes and food safety, this year the World Health Organization (WHO) chose a more general and abstract theme for the yearly event.

It's not that the WHO has run out of choices of disease types, or the world was free from specific health threats; it is just the still-ravaging pandemic has attested to the fact that unfairness and inequality, especially in addressing such global challenges as COVID-19, are actually more lethal than any specific disease.





WORSENING SITUATION

The pandemic that poses equal threats to all is another litmus test for the unfairness and inequality in human society.

As some developed countries have been rapidly rolling out their vaccination programs, making progress in clinching a full recovery, people in many other countries are suffering from the latest resurgence of COVID-19 infections.

Photo taken on April 3, 2021 shows the newly-arrived COVID-19 vaccines purchased from China at Tbilisi International Airport, Tbilisi, Georgia. (Health Ministry of Georgia/Handout via Xinhua)

In Argentina, Health Minister Carla Vizzotti warned that a second wave of COVID-19 infections "is already a fact" in the country. While in its neighboring Brazil, the national count of COVID-19 cases has just crossed the grime milestone of 13 million.

Hospitals are being overrun by patients; intensive care units in some worst-affected cities are more than 90 percent full. The same plight prevails in other countries like Turkey, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Worldwide COVID-19 deaths are also rising once again, hurdling towards a new threshold of 3 million, with some countries and cities like Brazil, Bangladesh, and India's Mumbai having just recorded their highest number of daily deaths.

A health worker takes a swab sample from a vegetable vendor to test for COVID-19 at a vegetable market in Mumbai, India, March 18, 2021. (Photo by Fariha Farooqui/Xinhua)

According to a tally from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, it took more than one year for the global COVID-19 death toll to reach 2 million, but the next 1 million deaths would be added in just about three months.





FALSE DAWN

As most people thought that they have finally got to see the light at the end of the tunnel as the COVID-19 vaccines have been rolling out, inequality and unfairness in vaccine distribution are waking those in poor countries up to the cold truth that it is just a false dawn amid the gloom.

"COVID-19 has exacerbated inequalities both between and within countries," said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a press briefing on Tuesday. "It's a travesty that in some countries health workers and those at-risk groups remain completely unvaccinated."

While some developed countries have hoarded vaccines far in excess of their needs, many people in developing countries are waiting in desperation for their first doses.

Members of the National Guard help drivers check at a COVID-19 vaccination site on the campus of California State University of Los Angeles in Los Angeles County, California, the United States, Feb. 22, 2021. (Xinhua)

In Kenya's capital Nairobi, people have to wait in long queues and jostle for jabs, with some elderly people reportedly getting up as early as 6 a.m. to get inoculated, only to return home to try their luck again the next day.

The latest data from the Duke Global Health Innovation Center Launch and Scale Speedometer, which monitors COVID-19 vaccine purchases, finds that high-income countries already own more than half of all global doses purchased, and it is estimated that there will not be enough vaccine doses to cover the world's population until 2023.

"Many high-income countries have hedged their bets by advance purchasing enough doses to vaccinate their population several times over," it said in a study.

None of the middle- and lower-middle income countries have enough to vaccinate their entire populations. At the same time, Canada has purchased enough to vaccinate its population five times over, said the study.

"We are fighting a very primitive organism, something between alive and dead, very organized, functioning as one, so I think we need to function as one on a global level," said Jelena Begovic, director of the Institute of Molecular Genetics and Genetic Engineering of University of Belgrade.

A resident receives a shot of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine at Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya, March 5, 2021. (Photo by Joy Nabukewa/Xinhua)

"Unfortunately, I am not seeing this, particularly in events concerning vaccination," she noted.





MORAL FAILURE

The "inequitable" vaccine distribution was a "catastrophic moral failure" and a "failed opportunity," Michael Ryan, executive director of WHO Health Emergencies Program, said in March.

Actually, many of those developed countries have once made announcements calling for equality and fairness in the global fight against the pandemic.

However, it is easier to make the pledge to ensure equal access of all countries, rich or poor, big or small, to the COVID-19 vaccines than put it into practice, especially when the vaccines are in short supply.

"Solidarity is only expressed in media declarations. In the talks behind the closed doors, there is not any," Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis told journalists, criticizing some countries' monopoly on vaccine distribution.

According to Leon Laulusa, executive vice president of Paris-based ESCP Business School, at least 75 percent of the world's population must be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity, or nearly 6 billion people, which would take at least 12 billion doses for a double injection.

To achieve the final victory in this global fight, all countries need to take real actions to ensure fairness and equality, rather than just make empty talks and hollow promises. After all, in such a closely linked world, no one would keep safe until everyone is safe.

In this sense, China has taken more than its due responsibility. According to the latest data, China has been providing vaccine aid to 80 countries and three international organizations, exporting vaccines to more than 40 countries, and cooperating with more than 10 nations in vaccine research, development and production.

Workers unload China's Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccines, donated by the Chinese government to Ethiopia, at the Addis Ababa Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, March 30, 2021. (Photo by Michael Tewelde/Xinhua)

As noted by some analysts, unfairness and inequality revealed in the process of vaccine distribution are just another embodiment of the social gaps and discrimination that have long been existing in some Western countries.

And by the same token, to win the global anti-pandemic fight, and build "a fairer, healthier world," those countries need to do more. (Video reporters: Wang Ping, Zhao Feifei, Chen Jing, Jin Jing, Wang Shang, Hao Yalin, Liu Ying, Cheng Xin, Zuo Wei; Video editors: Peng Tianxiao, Guo Yuqi, Ma Huaizhao)
Gandhinagar, April 7 : After the Gujarat High Court's advice to impose lockdown or curfew in Gujarat for 3-4 days to curb the pandemic outbreak, the Gujarat government announced that night curfew will be clamped in twenty other major cities from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. starting Wednesday till April 30. Night curfew is already in place in four major cities of Gujarat.

There has been a significant rise in the number of coronavirus cases, especially in financial capital of the state, Ahmedabad and the Diamond City Surat. Even as the Gujarat High Court made an observation and advised the government to impose a 3-4 day lockdown or curfew on weekends, Tuesday saw the highest spike of positive cases of 3,280, following which the government decided to impose a night time curfew in twenty major cities of Gujarat, apart from the four major cities Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara and Rajkot where night curfew is already effective from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m.

The government has also banned political or social gatherings till April 30 and reduced the number of guests who can attend a marriage ceremony to hundred from two hundred. Other gatherings have also been limited to a maximum of fifty.

Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani chaired a high powered core committee meeting late on Tuesday evening where the decision to impose night curfew was taken.

"The High Court gave some suggestions and we have decided on it. Earlier we had imposed a curfew in four major cities of the state. Now we have decided to clamp night curfew in 20 other cities," Rupani said.

The CM also informed that the central government will send a team of medical experts to Gujarat which will help the state government devise a strategy to check the rise in the cases.

Apart from Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara, Rajkot where night curfew is in force, other sities where this has been extended include Jamnagar, Bhavnagar, Junagadh, Gandhinagar, Anand, Nadiad, Mehasana, Morbi, Dahod, Patan, Godhra, Bhuj, Gandhidham, Bharuch, Surendranagar and Amreli.
[April 07, 2021] Russia's Largest Internet Provider Mail.Ru Selects HID Global for Enabling Secure Access Control Using Smartphones

HID Global, a worldwide leader in trusted identity solutions, today announced that Mail.Ru has chosen its HID Mobile Access solution for secure and convenient access control using smartphones and other mobile devices. Mail.Ru reaches over 91% of all Russian internet users via its mail platform and social networks. The company has more than 7,000 employees and a high volume of visitors to its Moscow offices, necessitating an access control solution that provides best-in-class security and a seamless user experience. Mail.Ru was seeking a mobile solution that would easily integrate into its own smartphone app to allow employees and visitors to easily switch from using physical access cards to mobile IDs stored on their smartphones. "We considered several solutions and decided in favor of HID Global. Their reputation for reliable and secure solutions greatly contributed to our decision," said Andrey Evtyushin, Mobile Development Team Leader Business Process Management Department, Mobile Development Group, Mail.Ru Group. "It was also important that HID Global provided the most convenient software development kit (SDK) for iOS and Android (News - Alert) platforms to integrate into our mobile application, compared to other competitor solutions." HID Global worked closely with local integrator partner AAM Systems to install 300 HID readers and issue 3,200 HID Mobile IDs to enable employees to use their smartphones for access control. The HID Mobile Access solution makes it possible for Mail.Ru to easily manage off-hours access and configure individual users' security rights, as well as enable easy movement of people within the building while maintaining security. Seos credential technology, which powers HID's solution, also enables robust mobile IDs security. Access to Mail.Ru's global network of offices is centrally managed through HID's cloud-based portal, and provisioning is done over the air to deliver mobile IDs to users' phones via a mobile app. This makes it easy to add, remove or change access rights as required. "HID Mobile Access provides an ideal mix of security, convenience and flexibility; our SDK means customers can tailor the user experience so it is unique to them and on brand," said Harm Radstaak, Senior Vice President and Head of Physical Access Control Solutions with HID Global. Mail.Ru use the HID Mobile Access SDK to integrate the mobile solution into its own company application to offer a consistent user experience across different mobile devices and operating systems, including iOS and Android. The solution enables Mail.Ru to also provide visitors with building access so contractors, vendors and event attendees can use mobile IDs on their personal devices as part of Mail.Ru's holistic approach to maintaining high levels of security.



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Visit our Media Center, read our Industry Blog, and follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. About HID Global HID Global powers the trusted identities of the world's people, places and things. We make it possible for people to transact safely, work productively and travel freely. Our trusted identity solutions give people secure and convenient access to physical and digital places and connect things that can be accurately identified, verified and tracked digitally. Millions of people around the world use HID products and services to navigate their everyday lives, and billions of things are connected through HID technology. We work with governments, educational institutions, hospitals, financial institutions, industrial organizations and some of the most innovative companies on the planet. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, HID Global has over 4,000 employees worldwide and operates international offices that support more than 100 countries. HID Global is an ASSA ABLOY Group brand. For more information, visit www.hidglobal.com.  2021 HID Global Corporation/ASSA ABLOY AB. All rights reserved. HID, HID Global, the HID Blue Brick logo and the Chain Design are trademarks or registered trademarks of HID Global, ASSA ABLOY AB, or its affiliates(s) in the US and other countries and may not be used without permission. All other trademarks, service marks, and product or service names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005212/en/

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Gov. Doug Ducey has signed legislation giving businesses, nursing homes and others a broad shield from lawsuits related to COVID-19, making Arizona the latest state to limit liability after the pandemic.

Republican lawmakers approved the legislation in party-line votes in the House and Senate last week, saying businesses struggled during the pandemic and shouldnt have to worry about the potential for frivolous lawsuits.

The measure was fiercely opposed by consumer advocates and lawyers, who say it will reward bad actors who flouted health guidance and endangered their workers or the public. They say theres been no deluge of COVID-19 lawsuits.

Business and medical interest groups have pushed hard for a liability shield since the start of the pandemic. The Arizona bill is one of dozens introduced across the country and in Congress.

Ducey called for the measure in his State of the State address in January.

The bill raises the bar for winning a pandemic-related lawsuits against businesses, health care providers, nursing homes, nonprofits, governments, churches and schools. Instead of proving negligence by a preponderance of the evidence, plaintiffs would have to prove gross negligence or willful misconduct by clear and convincing evidence.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics COVID-19 Arizona
OSLO (dpa-AFX) - Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. (AJG), an insurance brokerage, risk management and consulting services firm, announced Wednesday the acquisition of Norway-based Parisco AS. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Parisco, founded in 2001, is a marine and energy broker that serves contractors, offshore service vessels, exploration and production, shipping, passenger vessels and renewable energy clients. In the deal, Dag Magne Torjussen and his team will join forces with Oslo-based Bergvall Marine, Gallagher's existing specialist marine broker in Norway, under the direction of Anders Mjaaland, Managing Director. Patrick Gallagher, Jr., Chairman, President and CEO, said, 'Parisco is a high-quality marine insurance specialist known and respected by our Bergvall colleagues in Norway for 20 years. Their union will deliver outstanding capabilities to our customers across the marine, energy and renewables sectors in Norway.' Rolling Meadows, Illinois -based Arthur J. Gallagher has operations in 49 countries and offers client service capabilities in more than 150 countries. 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 federal grand jury has formally indicted a New Jersey man accused of starting a fight that forced a Florida-bound airliner to make an emergency landing in Charleston last month.

John Yurkovich Jr. faces one count of assault within special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States, according to the indictment, which was filed on April 6.

"This his entire incident is very uncharacteristic of John," Rose Mary Parham, his attorney, told The Post and Courier. "He is a loving husband and father and successful entrepreneur and businessman."

The 45-year-old Millstone Township, N.J., resident also faces one count of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine. That charge is being handled in state court.

Yurkovich had been flying from Newark, N.J., to Miami, but pilots made an unplanned landing at Charleston International Airport after a fight broke out in the cabin.

A passenger told police Yurkovich seemed agitated upon returning from the bathroom and took out pills from his carry-on bag. He began screaming and thrashing, according to an incident report, then punched a neighboring passenger and broke the mans glasses.

Everyone involved declined hospital treatment.

A doctor on board gave Yurkovich a shot of Benadryl to subdue him, authorities said. By the time authorities boarded the plane, they found Yurkovich face down on the floor with a belt and zip ties binding his hands behind his back.

His shirt had been pulled over his head, according to an incident report, and one officer found about 1.5 grams of a white crystal substance in his pocket.
WASHINGTON -- U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has expressed his support for U.S. international media amid concerns over Russian efforts to shut down and muzzle RFE/RL under its controversial foreign agent law.

Blinken met on April 6 with the acting head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), Kelu Chao, to discuss the vital role that free and independent media play in the preservation and promotion of democratic principles worldwide, State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.

Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor has hit RFE/RLs Russian-language services with fines of nearly $1 million in recent months for around 400 violations related to failure to comply with burdensome restrictions of the foreign agent law.

Blinken tweeted afterward that the two "discussed our shared concern over Russia's efforts to close Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and silence this valued source of independent reporting." He called the meeting "insightful."

Chao said she was encouraged by Blinkens concern about Russia's excessive labeling requirements and exorbitant fines targeting RFE/RL.

The secretary agreed that the Russian governments efforts to silence independent journalism only harm the citizens it is meant to serve, she said, according to a USAGM statement.

USAGM networks include Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA), the Voice of America (VOA), the Middle East Broadcasting Network (MBN), and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB).

"The editorially independent reporting of these networks is particularly important in countries with repressive media environments, including where independent journalism is censored or freedom of expression is restricted or punished," Price said.

Blinken expressed his strong support for all of USAGMs global networks during the meeting, the USAGM statement said.

First passed in 2012 and expanded several times since, the foreign agent law gives authorities the power to brand nongovernmental organizations, human rights groups, and news media deemed to receive foreign funding for political activity as foreign agents.

In 2017, Russian regulators put RFE/RL's Russian Service on the list, along with RFE/RL's regional Russian-language news services and Current Time, the network run by RFE/RL in cooperation with Voice of America. The law also puts RFE/RL journalists at risk for criminal prosecution.

Among other things, the law requires news organizations that receive foreign funding to label content within Russia as being produced by a foreign agent. The announcement must be twice as large as the font size used for the headline of the article. For video materials, the text must occupy at least 20 percent of the screen and be shown for at least 15 seconds.

Russian regulators have singled out RFE/RL, whose editorial independence is also enshrined in U.S. law, over other foreign news operations in Russia.

An independent nonprofit corporation that receives funding from the U.S. Congress, RFE/RL has not complied with the "foreign agent" law.

Given that USAGMs legislatively mandated firewall prohibits its networks from accepting editorial direction from the U.S. government, RFE/RL and VOA refuse to label their content in such a wholly inaccurate manner, the USAGM statement said.

The mounting fines could potentially force the company to shutter its presence within Russia.

The only other news organizations to be hit with the foreign agent designation and ordered to label their content, but not yet fined, are VOA and a small Czech outlet called Medium-Orient -- neither of which currently have a physical presence in the country.

Press watchdogs have said the effort appears aimed at closing down all of RFE/RLs operations in Russia, which currently reach nearly 6.7 million people a week.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has said Russia should repeal the foreign agent law and ensure that the countrys regulator is not used to censure journalists and harass and threaten media organizations.

Amnesty International has said Russias foreign agent law further erodes freedom of expression and association in that country.
When she found the appointment in Springfield, she booked it right away and was fully prepared to make the trip, which would take more than three hours each way, she said. Instead, after learning about the FEMA-run drive-thru COVID-19 mass vaccination clinic in Gary, she hopped on the website and made an appointment.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-08 01:15:37|Editor: huaxia

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Photo taken in Arlington, Virginia, the United States, on April 7, 2021 shows a screen displaying International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva speaking at a virtual press conference during the IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings. Kristalina Georgieva on Wednesday urged policymakers to take the right actions by giving everyone a fair shot, as global economy is seeing a multi-speed recovery. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

WASHINGTON, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva on Wednesday urged policymakers to take the right actions by giving everyone a fair shot, as global economy is seeing a multi-speed recovery.

"The good news is that there is light at the end of the tunnel. After the worst global recession since the second world war, the recovery is underway," Georgieva said in her opening remarks at a virtual press conference during the IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings.

And yet, while there is light, the crisis continues to cast a dark shadow, Georgieva said.

"Economic fortunes are diverging dangerously. A small number of economies, led by the U.S. and China, are powering ahead - while poorer countries are falling behind in this multi-speed recovery," Georgieva said.

"We also face extremely high uncertainty, especially over the impact of new virus strains and potential shifts in financial conditions," she continued, adding that there is the risk of further economic scarring.

As the IMF releases its Global Policy Agenda, Georgieva highlighted three priorities, the first which being a fair shot at the vaccine.

Noting that vaccine policy is economic policy, the IMF chief said faster progress in ending the health crisis could add almost 9 trillion dollars to global GDP by 2025, while adding that this window of opportunity is closing fast.

"Governments must show the same sense of urgency and collaboration to provide vaccines to everyone - everywhere," she said.

In order to give everyone a fair shot in recovery, Georgieva said policymakers should support vulnerable households and viable firms amid the crisis, adopt targeted fiscal measures and maintain favorable financial conditions.

Once the health crisis is over, she said, governments should gradually scale back support programs - while scaling up targeted hiring subsidies and retraining and reskilling, which is particularly important for young people and women, who have suffered more in the crisis.

Looking ahead, the focus should be on scaling up public investment - in green projects and digital infrastructure, in people's health and education - to ensure that everyone can benefit from the historic transformation to greener, smarter, and more inclusive economies, she said.

Countries will need sufficient public revenues and more efficient spending, said the IMF chief. In many cases, this will mean more progressive taxation, and international agreement on questions like minimum taxation for companies, she added.

The IMF has so far supported 86 countries with over 110 billion dollars, using a variety of instruments. It has also supported 160 countries through technical assistance and training.

The multilateral institution will propose a new Special Drawing Rights (SDR) allocation of 650 billion dollars. "This will help address the long-term global need for reserve assets and provide a substantial liquidity boost to all our members, especially the most vulnerable," Georgieva said. Enditem
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene temporarily suspended from Twitter after Easter post due to 'error'

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Freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., was temporarily suspended from Twitter on Sunday morning shortly after posting a spiritual Easter message. Twitter reversed course and called the issue a technical error.

Not long after posting a photo of three crosses with the caption, Happy Easter, everyone! He is risen, Greene received a notification from Twitter notifying her that she violated the platforms rules, which led to the temporary limitation of her account.

The message explained that Greene would be unable to tweet, retweet or like tweets for 12 hours.

A Twitter spokesperson told The Christian Post in an email on Monday that Greenes suspension was not due to an Easter post and was a mistake.

We use a combination of technology and human review to enforce the Twitter Rules across the service, a Twitter spokesperson said. In this case, our automated systems took enforcement action on the account referenced in error. This action has been reversed, and access to the account has been reinstated.

The freshman congresswoman, a conservative Christian and staunch pro-life, pro-gun Trump supporter, posted on the Twitter alternate platform Gab in response to being locked out of her Twitter account.

Was it my Christian faith, Greene wrote on Sunday.  Message to Big Tech: ILL NEVER STOP!!! You cant silence me. You cant stop me. The People are with me. And so are the greatest conservatives especially President Trump!!

Greenes post also asked if her suspension was the result of her opposition to abortion, support for the Second Amendment, desire to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, opposition to mandated vaccine passports or her call to stop socialism.

Greene posted on Gab in response to Twitters explanation, claiming no one believes Twitters statement that her accounts suspension was an error. She argued, they want to silence me.

Greene has been suspended from Twitter three times this year. The Easter suspension marked the second time in less than a month.

Twitter suspended Greene from the platform for 12 hours on March 19 in an error that was not resolved until after the 12 hours elapsed, Greene posted.

According to Greene, the suspension came on the same day Democrats introduced a resolution to expel her from Congress.

Greenes account was previously suspended for multiple violations of Twitters civic integrity policy in January.

The January suspension came after Greene had a Twitter dispute with a Georgia voting systems manager who accused her and others pushing claims of voter fraud of lowering Republican voter turnout for the Senate runoff election, Forbes reported.

Last week, Greene introduced the We Will Not Comply Act to allow people to sue if they are discriminated against because they didnt get a COVID-19 vaccine and the Fire Fauci Act to cut the salary for the federal governments leading infectious disease expert.

House Democrats and some Republicans voted to remove the Georgia businesswoman from her two committee assignments  Committee on Education and Labor and the House Budget Committee  due to previous comments involving QAnon conspiracies, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim views, among other controversial posts, according to Fox News.

"These were words of the past, and these things do not represent me," Greene said in a floor speech regarding her past views and statements. "They do not represent my district, and they do not represent my values."

Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube permanently banned President Donald Trump following the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6. Trump has since promised to return to social media with his own platform in the coming months.

In a later post on Easter Sunday, Greene said she is looking forward to Trump's platform.

Facebook removed an interview with Lara Trump and her father-in-law last week and said any content "in the voice of Donald Trump" would be removed, Fox News reported.

As more conservatives have been censored by the leading social media platforms for expressing their views, websites such as CloutHub, Parler and USA.Life are emerging as alternative options for free speech.
The oldest DNA ever found in human remains belongs to a woman who lived in Czechia more than 45,000 years ago, a study has found.

Analysis of her skull reveals she was among the first batch of Homo sapiens to live in Eurasia after our species migrated out of Africa.

It is believed the woman, dubbed Zlaty kun, may have had Neanderthal ancestors as little as six or fewer generations in her past.

The finding reinforces that humans mated with Neanderthals shortly after we first reached Europe between 50,000 and 45,000 years ago.

This mating event saw humans absorb some Neanderthal genes which survive in all modern people except Africans.

Neanderthals would go extinct shortly afterwards, with some researchers saying competition with Homo sapiens and a changing climate was to blame.

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Pictured, the skull of a modern human female individual dubbed Zlaty kun. The genetic material obtained from this specimen is thought to be the oldest human DNA found in Europe and proves Homo sapiens mated with Neanderthals shortly after arriving in Europe

Pictured, excavations at Bacho Kiro Cave in Bulgaria. Several modern human bones were recovered from this layer along with a rich stone tool assemblage, animal bones, bone tools, and pendants

Timeline of human mating with Neanderthals 50,000 years ago: Humans migrate out of Africa Around 48,000 years ago: Admixture event between Neanderthal and Homo sapiens. Humans mate with Neanderthals for the first time 45,000 years ago: Oldest surviving human fossils in Europe lived 40,000 years ago: Neanderthals went extinct Advertisement

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany tried to date the skeletal remains using radiocarbon isotopes, the traditional and widely-used method for figuring out when a fossil lived.

However, contamination of the remains made this impossible.

But Neanderthal DNA can be used as a proxy for dating because the length of its segments in the genetic code decreases steadily over generations.

The researchers found in their study, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, that Zlaty kun has long strips of uninterrupted Neanderthal DNA scattered throughout her genome, indicating she lived not long after humans mated with Neanderthals.

'The results of our DNA analysis show that Zlaty kun lived closer in time to the admixture event with Neanderthals,' says Kay Prufer, co-lead author of the study.

In fact, the team estimate that Zlaty kun lived just 2,000 years after the first interspecies trysts between humans and Neanderthals.

The DNA from this person and their population is not seen in modern-day people in either Asia or Europe, where Homo sapiens later colonised, the researchers found.

'It is quite intriguing that the earliest modern humans in Europe ultimately didn't succeed!' says Johannes Krause, senior author of the study and director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

This evidence, the academics say, means the Czechia individual is almost certainly older than other contenders with a claim as the earliest human fossil in Europe.

Pictured, micro-sampling the bone of Zlaty kun from the base of the skull in the clean room at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History

It is believed the Czech woman, dubbed Zlaty kun, may have had Neanderthal ancestors as little as six or fewer generations back

Two studies published today look at the genetic information of Homo sapiens and how much Neanderthal DNA was in their genomes. One study was based in Czechia and one was in Bulgaria

Professor Chris Stringer, research leader in Human Evolution at the Natural history Museum who was not involved in the research, said: 'The Zlaty kun partial skull and skeleton were discovered in 1950, and thought to be only about 15,000 years old.

'New analyses of the woman's skull have radiocarbon dated it to about 34,000 years old, but genomic data suggests it is at last 10,000 years older than that, and may represent one of the oldest modern humans known from Eurasia so far.'

Last year, researchers discovered human remains in a Bulgarian cave called Bacho Kiro which they said likely lived alongside Neanderthals.

The cave was first discovered and excavated in the 1970s and is located three miles (5 km) from the town of Dryanovo.

Pictured, the intact tooth of a person found in Bacho Kiro cave in Bulgaria. Genome-wide data from this individual indicates that he had a Neanderthal ancestor less than six generations before he lived

Pictured, the entrance to the Bacho Kiro Cave. The excavations are just inside the entrance and to the left. The cave extends over 3 km and is a popular tourist destination

A study also published today in the journal Nature revealed further insight into these remains and found they lived between 45,930 and 42,580 years before present.

This finding backs the claims made last year that humans likely lived alongside Neanderthals for millennia before our cousin species went extinct around 40,000 years ago.

Analysis of their genomes found the three oldest people buried in the cave have more than three per cent Neanderthal DNA in their genome.

Analysis of the fossilised human remains found the people regularly hunted bison and deer while also turning animal teeth into fashion accessories - something that Neanderthals are also known to have done.

Pictured, excavations at Bacho Kiro Cave. The excavator in the front is recording artifacts (each marked with a colored pin). The bags with barcodes are for individual artifacts once their position has been recorded with a total station

A map showing the relative dates at which humans arrived in the different Continents, including Europe 45,000 years ago. All humanity began in Africa, and moved beyond it after dispersing throughout the continent over thousands of years

Several cave bear teeth which had been turned into personal ornaments were also discovered at the Bulgarian site.

Professor Stringer adds that the findings indicate there were 'multiple pulses' of Homo sapiens dispersing across Eurasia.

He believes that the different waves of Homo sapien colonisation would explain why the Zlaty kun lineage was unsuccessful. This would also mean there were various interbreeding events with Neanderthals, he adds.
European TOUGHBOOK Police Forum registrations open

BRACKNELL, UK. 6th April 2021 ? Registrations are now open for the European TOUGHBOOK Police Forum designed to bring technology experts and international police forces together to discuss how technology is shaping the future of law enforcement. The free online event takes place from 13:30-16:15 BST (14:30-17:15 CET) on April 20th. Click here to register: https://hopin.com/events/european-toughbook-police-forum#booths.

Among the speakers, the London Metropolitan Police Force will discuss how its officers are using mobile computing devices on patrol and in vehicles for effective policing. Chesapeake County Police from the US will explain how it is using technology for electronic ticketing.

Additional speaker topics include how to customise critical technology, the use of the Android operating system for public safety purposes, the importance of 5G for policing, the latest on Control and Command software and how the next generation Panasonic TOUGHBOOK solutions can assist in policing.

?Digitalisation is fundamentally changing the way work and no more so than in the world of law enforcement,? said Peter Thomas, Defence Industry Regional Manager for Panasonic Mobile Solutions Business Division Europe, at Panasonic TOUGHBOOK. ?As police forces grapple with how best to use and deploy technology to improve public safety, this forum is a unique opportunity to bring technology and policing professionals together to share how the latest solutions are being used successfully and to learn more about how new developments in hardware, communications and applications. I would urge all police force representatives with a technology responsibility or interest to register today.?

For more information, visit: https://hopin.com/events/european-toughbook-police-forum
A father whose little boy died in suspicious circumstances is fighting for separated parents to be told when their child is treated for life-threatening conditions.

An autopsy found the Melbourne man's two-year-old had suffered injuries including broken bones and bruising before his death six years ago in hospital.

Four months earlier the child had been rushed to hospital for life-saving treatment after choking.

A father whose little boy died in suspicious circumstances is fighting for separated parents to be told when their child is treated for life-threatening conditions (stock image)

The boyfriend of the boy's mother was charged with murder over the child's death, but charges were later dropped.

The father told Victoria's Coroners Court on Wednesday that he had fought for six years for an inquest to shed light onto the circumstances of his little boy's death.

He's hoping it will lead to greater rights for parents who have joint custody of their children, or those who don't have custody.

The man shared custody of his two young sons with his former wife.

While he had no concerns about their safety with her, he didn't know then how much time they were spending alone with her boyfriend.

The man teared up as he praised doctors and nurses at Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital for their care of his son.

He believes when a child is taken to hospital in an emergency that staff should be required to notify both parents.

He said he understood various parenting order scenarios might make it difficult for them, but at the very least he hoped he would have been notified that his son had been treated.

'I think I can confidently speak on behalf of every parent in Victoria, Australia, the world that ... both parents, regardless of whether they're living in the same house or not, (should) be contacted and made aware of the circumstances around the emergency,' he said.

He said he was only told after the incident and that the information he received from the boy's mother was limited.

The father is also fighting for non-custodial and joint-custodial parents to be notified of any involvement by children's services or intervention orders relating to their children.

He only learned later about a chain of events involving intervention orders that had been sought by police and rejected by the mother.

The inquest heard the mother's former boyfriend later had been investigated over an incident involving another child.

The man faced a series of charges after the young son of another girlfriend ingested methamphetamine, believed to have come from him.

Those charges were dropped after prosecutors were unable to prove the child suffered any injury.

But he admitted drug possession charges, aggravated by the boy's exposure to the drug.
[April 07, 2021] Lisa Detanna Hosts Barron's in Education Interactive Session at UCLA School of Business

Lisa Detanna, Managing Director - Senior Vice President, Investments of Raymond James located at 9595 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills CA (News - Alert) is working with Barron's in Education to celebrate women's history month. Lisa will be hosting an interactive session with Barron's in Education and the UCLA School of Business students discussing "Common Myths of Investing." The Barron's in Education program provides educational opportunities by connecting real-world business events & analysis to textbook theory, fostering professional growth by exposing students to a wide range of careers in global business, and share knowledge from the world's top financial professionals. UCLA School of Business is now just one of many schools in the country to have this unique program. Joe Lanza, Director of Financial Education at Barron's Group, said, "Our national program introduces business students to financial executives, global markets, and real-time financial news. It promotes financial proficiency by connecting textbook theory to real word analysis and exposes students to an array of business careers. We appreciate the generosity and expertise that Lisa and industry experts provide in the program." Lisa, who joined Raymond James in 2011, has more than 30 years of experience in the financial services industry. Lisa Detanna, who manages more than $1.5 Billion in client asses, offers her clients Estate and Trust Review, Multi-Generational Wealth Planning, Financial and Retirement planning, Investment Management, Insurance Review and Protection of Assets, Concierge Services in a Multi Family setting.



To reach Lisa or the advisors at Raymond James, more information can be found at Global Wealth Solutions Group or by calling 310-285-3906 About Barron's in Education

Source (News - Alert) : 04/02/2021. Data as of 3/10/21. (March 2021) The Barron's in Education mission is to connect business with academia to enhance financial proficiency; aiding the development of the next generation of business leaders and advisors. At Barron's, we want to spark new thinking on this topic and help put a highly valued and highly educational financial publication in the hands of the next generation of college, university and high school students. For nearly a century, our readers have ranked as many of the most successful business leaders and investors in the world, so this only seems logical. https://www.barrons.com for more information. About Raymond James & Associates As of 12/31/2020. Raymond James & Associates, Inc., member New York Stock Exchange/SIPC, which has built a national reputation for more than 58 years as a leader in financial planning for individuals, corporations and municipalities, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Raymond James Financial, Inc. (NYSE-RJF), a leading diversified financial services company with approximately 8,200 financial advisors throughout the United States, Canada and overseas. Total client assets are $1.02 trillion. Additional information is available at raymondjames.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005759/en/

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Cybersecurity

Top cyber slots still unfilled amid multiple crises

Christopher Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is continuing to call on the Biden administration to nominate someone to fill his old post, citing the job's importance in shaping the federal government's future networks.

There is a "need for somebody to be setting a vision for what the federal civilian executive branch, the dot-gov, what does it look like in three to four to five years?" Krebs said on Wednesday during a virtual forum hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "How do we set budgets across the various agencies so they're putting their part into the pot?"

He cited issues with agencies "paying up for some of the security services that CISA has been offering through" the Continuous Diagnostic and Mitigation program.

A group of lawmakers have also grown frustrated with the lack of a CISA nominee as well as a national cyber director. Although, Krebs last week said on Twitter the establishment of a national cyber director is one of the few recommendations that he disagreed with from the congressional Cyberspace Solarium Commission.

Media reports in February indicated President Joe Biden intends to nominate Department of Homeland Security veteran and Washington lawyer Rob Silvers as CISA's next director.

With neither a permanent CISA director or national cyber director in place, Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology, has led the government's response to the cybersecurity issues it is facing.

Neuberger has largely earned praise from lawmakers and analysts for her work, but Michael Daniel, formerly a cybersecurity official on the National Security Council and now president and CEO of the Cyber Threat Alliance, said during the same panel the National Security Council cybersecurity lead is not a sufficient replacement for the anticipated national director.

There are two things, he said, that the NSC is not well-positioned to do: interacting with the private sector and interacting with Congress.

"That's why I think having a national cyber director that is an office within the broader executive office of the president -- so those set of agencies that directly support the White House -- is critically important because it can take on those functions," Daniel said.
Chennai, April 7 : Political parties of Tamil Nadu, especially the Dravidian majors are in calculation mode with permutations and combinations on the poll outcome.

Parties have started trying to decipher who will benefit from the 71 per cent voting that took place on April 6. While in 2011 and 2016, AIADMK-led front had benefited from the higher percentage, DMK leadership dismissed this and was of the opinion that the front would win a comfortable majority.

While almost all national level opinion polls have predicted a landslide for the DMK front, political observers and election analysts prefer to be modest and vouch for a win for the DMK but not with a huge majority.

DMK leader Duraimurugan while speaking to IANS said, "It will be DMK all the way and as a political worker who has been in the grassroots level across Tamil Nadu, I could easily find a wave in favour of the DMK. We will win with a huge majority and the results will surprise our opponents." However political observers begged to differ. C. Rajeev of Centre for Policy and Development Studies, a Think tank based out of Chennai while speaking to IANS said, "It is a close neck and neck fight. While at the superficial level we could find a wave in favour of the DMK, I think it is confined to the urban centres, and rural Tamil Nadu seems to have preferred the AIADMK. The anti-incumbency factor is much less during the Edappadi K Palaniswami regime and this might have worked in favour of AIADMK at the grassroots in rural areas. Whoever wins it is a close contest." Of the 6.29 crore eligible voters of Tamil Nadu, 4.51 crore had cast their votes and this was a welcome sign as far as election amidst Covid is concerned.

This sizable voter turnout has given hopes to the AIADMK camp as low turnout means support for the cadre based DMK and the higher turnout can give a slight edge to the AIADMK. While the cadre based BJP is with the AIADMK in its alliance, the saffron party is not much a force to reckon with in Tamil Nadu and in several constituencies where the party contested, there were not even booth agents. Both the Dravidian majors had put up several temporary booths outside the election centres to assist the voters and here the BJP had lagged behind.

AIADMK Chennai city leader M. Senthilanathan while speaking to IANS said, "AIADMK led front is winning this election leaving aside the anti-incumbency disadvantage. The government had done several good things for the people and it was effectively communicated to the grassroots level and this will definitely see the AIADMK front through and win with a comfortable majority. In urban areas it's a neck and neck race but in rural Tamil Nadu it is advantage AIADMK." While it's a long waiting time to get the clear results on May 2, the parties are taking up reports from each booth and trying to work out the results.
Sources say that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is considering rebuilding what remains of Trump's border wall. As soon as President Biden took office, he stopped constructing the wall and started his ill-fated border policy.

DHS Secretary Mayorkas is thinking of finishing what Trump began

Reports say that Secretary Mayorkas of the Department of Homeland Security is considering plugging the gaps in the unfinished border wall. As the holes remain, illegals, coyotes, and criminals have exploited to bypass the border patrol, reported Newsmax.

The Washington Times reported that rebuilding the border wall came about when the DHS secretary had a conversation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement staffers who voiced their concerns about the unfinished wall that lay in open gaps.

Staffers asked what Mayorkas would intend to do after their long talk about what happens next. He then said that even if President Joe Biden stopped building Trump's wall, the gaps could be finished in the wall as a technicality. The Washington Times noted that based on Mayorkas admission, the gaps could be covered.

Based on the transcript of the meeting with ICE that the outlet reviewed, the Customs and Border Protection responsible for the wall forwarded a plan that it had and what it needs to see the wall repaired and finished.

The Washington Times quoted DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on his statement to ICE staff during their discussions. "It's not a single answer to a single question. There are different projects that the chief of the Border Patrol has presented and the acting commissioner of CBP presented to me."

Poll Says Biden's Handling Of the Border Crisis, Not Acceptable

"The president has announced explicitly that the emergency that caused the [Department of Defense] to commit funds to the building of the border wall is no longer in place. However, this leaves space for the government, as part of the administration, to make decisions about specific areas of the wall that need renovation and specific tasks that must be completed." This quote came from the Daily Political Newswire.

Mayorkas cited parts of the wall: the gaps, gates, and parts where Trump's wall should be standing, although the technology to finish its border wall is not executed yet.

The past acting commissioner of CBP, Mark Morgan, who was under former President Donald Trump, told a different DHS secretary Mayorkas statements. He harshly called the Biden administration's failure to solve the border crisis, saying that Mayorkas statements had no weight; it is untrue with misdirection to prevent more blame on the White House. He said the CBP has to provide suggestions on how to deal with restarting the border wall.

When Trump left office, about 460 miles were constructed that stopped most illegals from crossing over to the United States. Where the gaps are, it is easy to cross over on foot. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says he is considering if parts of the wall are covered, but as Commissioner Morgan said, it just baits to redirect attention from the White House.

US Border Officials Say Among All the Migrants, 861+ are Criminals

Joe Biden's Policies to Blame for Sending Children to U.S. Border

Biden Administration to Use Taxpayers' Money to Pay for Migrants' Hotel Accommodations

@ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
PLA carrier, warplanes surround Taiwan in drills, in show of capability to cut off foreign intervention

Global Times) 09:40, April 07, 2021

A J-15 carrier-borne fighter jet takes off from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Liaoning during a maritime training exercise on July 1, 2017. The Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning and its carrier strike group carried out realistic training in an undisclosed sea area on July 1, 2017. (eng.chinamil.com.cn/Photo by Li Tang)

A Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft carrier task group was training in the east of Taiwan island as at least 10 PLA warplanes appeared in the west of the island in a routine exercise on Monday, indicating that the island is surrounded from the east with an aircraft carrier task group and by land-based PLA forces on the west.

Chinese mainland analysts said on Tuesday that this tactic can isolate the island's forces from foreign intervention and break Taiwan secessionists' illusion that US or Japanese forces could come to their aid if circumstances arise.

More PLA forces, including a second aircraft carrier and amphibious assault ships, could participate in similar exercises in the future, they predicted.

Some 10 PLA aircraft, namely four J-16 and four J-10 fighter jets, a Y-8 anti-submarine warfare aircraft and a KJ-500 early warning aircraft, entered Taiwan's self-proclaimed southwest air defense identification zone on Monday, the island's defense authorities said in a tweet post, with the illustration attached showing that the Y-8 anti-submarine warfare aircraft flew to the southeast side of the island. Also on Monday, PLA Navy spokesperson Senior Captain Gao Xiucheng announced that the Liaoning aircraft carrier task group was conducting exercises near the island of Taiwan as part of annually scheduled regular training.

The carrier task group passed through waters between Okinawa Island and Miyako Island and sailed south toward the Pacific Ocean on Saturday, Japan's Ministry of Defense Joint Staff said in a press release on Sunday, indicating that the Liaoning was likely training in waters east of Taiwan island.

This means that the island was surrounded by land-based PLA forces including warplanes from the west, and an aircraft carrier task group on the east, analysts said.

"The exercise showed that the PLA is capable of surrounding the island of Taiwan, isolating its troops and leaving them nowhere to run and no chance to win if circumstances arise. Attacking from all directions makes the enemy difficult to defend since they have no idea where the main forces could come from," Shi Hong, executive chief editor of the Chinese mainland magazine Shipborne Weapons, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

Another purpose is to control and seal off foreign intervention when necessary, since the US and Japan could send reinforcements from the east, Shi said, noting that by deploying a carrier task group there, supported by land-based aviation forces and the Rocket Force, the PLA could let these foreign forces fail to meet up with Taiwan secessionists.

The regular exercises by warplanes and warships are deterrents and warnings against Taiwan secessionists and foreign forces that are attempting to interfere in China's internal affairs by sending the wrong signals to Taiwan secessionists, Shi said.

Taiwan secessionists are rampant due to their illusion that countries like the US and Japan will support them if a situation arises, and the PLA is showing that it can not only crack down Taiwan secessionists, but also let foreign interfering forces suffer consequences, Shi said, noting that by cutting off foreign forces, Taiwan secessionists would also lose their psychological support.

Similar exercises will be conducted on a regular basis in the future, the PLA Navy spokesperson said in a statement on Monday.

For future exercises, the PLA could also send the Shandong, China's second aircraft carrier, and the Type 075 amphibious assault ships, together with other destroyers and frigates, Shi said.

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Bianji)
ThreatQuotient Closes $22.5 Million in New Financing to Accelerate Innovation and Execution

Continued momentum in 2020 including record bookings, new customers and revenue growth garners attention of new investorsLondon, UK. ? 6th April, 2021  ThreatQuotient, a leading security operations platform innovator, today announced it has closed $22.5 million in new financing, including a combination of equity and debt financing. The investment syndicate includes New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Adams Street Partners, Escalate Capital, Blu Ventures, Cisco Investments and Gaingels, who took notice of the company?s significant momentum in 2020, specifically their record bookings and revenue growth. ThreatQuotient plans to leverage this financing to accelerate execution of new innovations currently in development.

?As a result of strong performance in 2020, we welcomed an opportunity to secure additional funding and add new investors to our syndicate. ThreatQuotient is meeting a critical need for security operations solutions, and we have significant expansion plans to continue this momentum,? said John Czupak, President and CEO, ThreatQuotient. ?I am incredibly proud of our team?s efforts and record setting performance in a challenging 2020. I thank all of our investors for their interest and support, and I look forward to our continued momentum and success.?

Notable ThreatQuotient achievements in 2020:

? Signed a record number of new customers, who are leveraging the ThreatQ platform for a variety of use cases as well as the ThreatQ Investigations cybersecurity situation room

? Closed multiple seven figure deals and achieved a record number of transactions

? Launched a new Hosted Service of the ThreatQ platform to great reception, comprising over 10% of new bookings

? Became the first threat-centric security operations platform to be approved for a DoD-wide ATO

? Doubled their global footprint in 2020 with customers in 12 new countries and became the first threat intelligence platform provider offering local support from Spain as a result of the company?s expansion into Iberia

? Awarded U.S. Patent 10,902,114, ?Automated Cybersecurity Threat Detection with Aggregation and Analysis? as the company?s first non-provisional patent

ThreatQuotient has been recognised for product excellence and industry leadership by several award programs in 2021. The company won four 2021 Globee Cybersecurity Excellence Awards, including: Gold for Security Investigation, Silver for both Threat Intelligence Technology and Hot Security Company of the Year, and Bronze for Threat Hunting, Detection, Intelligence and Response. ThreatQuotient also won three 2021 Cybersecurity Excellence Awards: Gold for Security Investigation, and Silver for both Threat Detection, Intelligence and Response and Best Cybersecurity Company. Additionally, ThreatQuotient was recognised as McAfee Partner of the Year for the second consecutive year and the company was listed in the 2021 CRN Partner Program Guide.

Investor Testimonials

?ThreatQuotient gives SOC analysts, incident responders and threat analysts unmatched flexibility, visibility and control over their company?s alerts and unique threats that they can?t get from other security operations solutions. NEA is confident that ThreatQuotient?s continued momentum will lead to further market capture.?  Peter Barris, Managing General Partner, NEA

?Since we first invested in ThreatQuotient in 2017, their team has continued to prove to the market that there is a critical need for cybersecurity solutions aimed at security operations. Their attention to detail for customer needs and innovative approach to solving challenges are just a few reasons we are pleased to expand our investment in ThreatQuotient.?  Fred Wang, Partner, Adams Street Partners

?Escalate has been impressed with ThreatQuotient?s approach to solving major challenges within the cybersecurity industry, as well as the company?s growth to date. We are pleased to join this investment syndicate as an investor in ThreatQuotient, and look forward to their continued innovation which will support security operations teams in prioritising, improving detection and accelerating response.?  Chris Julich, Managing Director, Escalate Capital Partners

?As the largest investor network focused on supporting and investing in the best venture-backed companies that embrace and value diverse leadership, including LGBTQ+, Gaingels is proud to participate in this financing. We are resolved on helping ThreatQuotient grow and scale while strengthening its prospects of success by building a culture that reflects the diversity of its executive teams, staff and customers.?  Lorenzo Thione, Managing Director, Gaingels

Leading global companies use ThreatQuotient?s solutions as the cornerstone of their security operations, including Fortune 100/500, major retail and hospitality, healthcare, technology, finance, and defense customers globally. To learn more about ThreatQuotient?s award-winning solutions and market leading capabilities, please visit www.threatquotient.com.
English Lithuanian

Special closed-ended type private equity investment company INVL Technology, identification code 300893533, the registered address Gyneju str. 14 Vilnius, Lithuania (hereinafter  the Company or INVL Technology), informs that on the initiative and decision of management company UAB INVL Asset Management (hereinafter  the Management Company) the General Ordinary Shareholders Meeting (hereinafter- the Meeting) is to be held on 29 April 2021.

The place of the Meeting: the office of INVL Technology, the address Gyneju str. 14, Vilnius.

Considering that the quarantine announced in the territory of the Republic of Lithuania by Government Resolution No. 1226 of 4 November 2020, was extended until 30 April 2021 - the management of the Company strongly urges the shareholders of the Company to exercise the right to vote on the issues on the agenda of the Meeting by submitting duly completed general ballot papers to the Company. More information on the rights and obligations of shareholders is provided at the end of this notice.

The Meeting will start at 8:30 a.m. (registration starts at 8.00 a.m.).

The Meetings accounting day 22 April 2021 (the persons who are shareholders of the Company at the end of accounting day of the Meeting or authorized persons by them, or the persons with whom shareholders concluded the agreements on the disposal of voting right, shall have the right to attend and vote at the Meeting).

The total amount of the shares of the Company and the amount of shares granting voting rights during the Extraordinary General Shareholders Meeting is the same and amounts to 12,175,321 units.

Agenda of the Meeting:

Presentation of INVL Technology annual report for 2020 Presentation of the independent auditor's report on the financial statements and consolidated annual report of the INVL Technology Regarding the assent to the remuneration report of INVL Technology, as a part of the consolidated annual report of INVL Technology for the year 2020 Approval of financial statements for 2020 of INVL Technology Deciding on profit distribution of INVL Technology Presentation of the "INVL Technology" company's competence to adopt "INVL Technology remuneration policy Regarding purchase of own shares of the special closed-ended type private equity investment company INVL Technology Regarding the formation of the Supervisory Board of INVL Technology and the election of members of the Supervisory Board Regarding the approval of INVL Technology Supervisory Board remuneration policy Regarding the determination of the remuneration of the independent member of the Supervisory Board of INVL Technology Regarding the amendment of the Articles of Association of INVL Technology, the approval of the new version of the Articles of Association and the appointment of a person authorised to sign the new version of the Articles of Association Regarding the approval of the new wording of the Policy for INVL Technology Transactions with Related Parties Regarding the election of members of the Audit Committee of INVL Technology Regarding the Report of the Audit Committee of INVL Technology

Draft resolutions of the Meeting:

Presentation of INVL Technology annual report for 2020

1.1. Shareholders of INVL Technology are presented with the annual report of the Company for 2020 (there is no voting on this issue of agenda).

Presentation of the independent auditor's report on the financial statements and consolidated annual report of the INVL Technology

2.1. Shareholders of INVL Technology are presented with the independent auditor's report on the financial statements and annual report of the Company (there is no voting on this issue of agenda).

Regarding the assent to the remuneration report of INVL Technology, as a part of the consolidated annual report of INVL Technology for the year 2020

3.1. To assent to the remuneration report of INVL Technology, as a part of the annual report of INVL Technology for the year 2020 (attached).

Approval of financial statements for 2020 of INVL Technology

4.1. To approve financial statements for 2020 of INVL Technology.

Deciding on profit distribution of INVL Technology

5.1. To distribute profit of the special closed-ended type private equity investment company INVL Technology as follows:

Article (thousand EUR) Retained earnings (loss) at the beginning of the financial year of the reporting period (2019); 7,005 Net profit (loss) for the financial year; 4,767 Profit (loss) not recognized in the income statement of the reporting financial year; - Transfers from reserves; - Shareholders contribution to cover loss (if all or part of loss is covered by the shareholders) - Distributable profit (loss) in total; 11,772 Profit distribution: - Profit transfers to the legal reserves; - Profit transfers to the reserves for own shares acquisition - Profit transfers to other reserves; - Profit to be paid as dividends; - Profit to be paid as annual payments (bonus) and for other purposes; - Retained earnings (loss) at the end of the financial year. 11,772

6. Presentation of the "INVL Technology" company's competence to adopt "INVL Technology remuneration policy

6.1. Shareholders are acquainted that in accordance with Article 15 of the Law on Alternative Managers of Collective Investment Undertakings of the Republic of Lithuania, INVL Technology is subject to the Remuneration Policy for Employees Making Decisions on Risk Taking prepared by the Management Company and its approval is within the competence of the Management Company of INVL Technology.

6.2. Taking into account the Company's consultations with the Supervisory Authority, INVL Technology infoms that in the future the Management Company will approve changes of the Remuneration Policy for Employees Making Decisions on Risk Taking without a separate approval (decision) of the General Meeting of Shareholders of INVL Technology and will publish the current version of the Management Company's Remuneration Policy for Employees Making Decisions on Risk Taking on the Company's website.

6.3. On 21 December 2020, the Management Company has approved a new wording of the Remuneration Policy for Employees Making Decisions on Risk Taking, which applies to the Company.

6.4. No decision is taken on this item on the agenda.

7. Regarding purchase of own shares of the special closed-ended type private equity investment company INVL Technology

7.1. To authorise the Management Company to use the formed reserve (or the part of it) for the purchase of own shares and to purchase shares in INVL Technology by the rules mentioned below:

The goal for the purchase of own shares - discount reduction between the net asset value and the market share price of INVL Technology and the possibility to sell its shares to the shareholders; The maximum number of shares to be acquired could not exceed 1/10 of the authorised capital INVL Technology; The period during which INVL Technology may purchase its own shares is 18 months from the day of this resolution; The maximum and minimal shares acquisition price of INVL Technology: the maximum one share acquisition price  the last announced net asset value per share, the minimal one share acquisition price - EUR 0,29; The conditions of the selling of the purchased shares and minimal sale price: the acquired own shares may be annulled by the decision of the General Shareholders Meeting or by the decision of the Board of the Management Company granted the right to acquire the shares for the employees upon conditions of the Rules for Granting Equity Incentives, or sold by the decision of the Management Company on condition the minimum sale price of own shares shall be equal to the last net asset value and the procedure of selling the shares shall ensure equal opportunities for all shareholders to acquire the said shares; The Management Company is delegated on the basis of this resolution and the Law on Companies of the Republic of Lithuania to organise purchase and sale of own shares, to organise purchase and selling procedure of own shares and to determine an order and timing for purchase and sale of own shares as well as the amount of shares and shares price, and to complete all other actions related with purchase and sale procedure of own shares.

8. Regarding the formation of the Supervisory Board of INVL Technology and the election of members of the Supervisory Board

8.1. Pursuant to Article 19(2) of the Law on Companies of the Republic of Lithuania, to form a collegial supervisory body of INVL Technology - the Supervisory Board, and to elect the following persons as its members for a term of 4 (four) years:

1) Audrius Matikiunas (personal code and place of residence undisclosed);

2) Indre Miseikyte (personal code and place of residence undisclosed);

3) Gintaras Rutkauskas (independent member) (personal code and place of residence withheld).

8.2. The members of the Supervisory Board will be able to take up their duties only after (i) their nominations are approved by the Bank of Lithuania, (ii) the amended Articles of Association of the Company are entered in the Register of Legal Entities of State Enterprise Centre of Registers and (iii) the amendments thereto are approved by the Bank of Lithuania.

8.3. To authorise the Management Company of INVL Technology to sign, deliver and collect any and all documents and perform all necessary actions in connection with the present Decision.

9. Regarding the approval of INVL Technology Supervisory Board remuneration policy

9.1. In accordance with Article 37(3) of the Law on Companies of the Republic of Lithuania, to approve of INVL Technology Supervisory Board remuneration policy

9.2. It should be noted that the Remuneration Policy for Employees Making Decisions on Risk Taking approved by the Board of the Management Company shall remain in force and shall be applied by INVL technology.

10. Regarding the determination of the remuneration of the independent member of the Supervisory Board of INVL Technology

10.1. To set the hourly remuneration of the elected independent member of the Supervisory Board of INVL Technology at EUR 145 per hour (before taxes) for his/her service on the Supervisory Board of INVL Technology.

11. Regarding the amendment of the Articles of Association of INVL Technology, the approval of the new version of the Articles of Association and the appointment of a person authorised to sign the new version of the Articles of Association

11.1. In light of the decisions of this General Meeting of Shareholders on item 8 of the agenda, to approve a new version of the Company's Articles of Association (the draft of the Articles of Association is attached hereto), by replacing the entire text of the Articles of Association (without further approval of the amendments of individual clauses of the Articles of Association).

11.2. To authorise Kazimieras Tonkunas (with the right to sub-delegate) to sign the new wording of the Company's Articles of Association and to register it in accordance with the procedure established by the legislation and the General Meeting of Shareholders.

12. Regarding the approval of the new wording of the Policy for INVL Technology Transactions with Related Parties

12.1. In view of the decision of this General Meeting of Shareholders on item 9 of the agenda and in accordance with Article 32(1)(3) of the Law on Companies of the Republic of Lithuania, to approve of a new wording of the Policy for Transactions with Related Parties.

13. Regarding the election of members of the Audit Committee of INVL Technology

13.1. In view of the fact that the term of office of the members of the Audit Committee of INVL Technology expires in 2021, Dangute Pranckeniene (independent member) and Tomas Bubinas (independent member) shall be elected to the Audit Committee of INVL Technology for a new 4 (four)-year term.

14. Regarding the Report of the Audit Committee of INVL Technology

14.1. In accordance with the rules of procedure of the Audit Committee of INVL Technology (approved on 27 April 2017 by decision of the General Meeting of Shareholders of the Company), the shareholders are hereby briefed on the activity report of the Audit Committee of INVL technology (attached)(no decision is taken on this item of the agenda).

The documents related to the agenda, draft resolutions on every item of the agenda, documents that have to be submitted to the General Shareholders Meeting and other information related to the realization of shareholders' rights are published on the Companys website www.invltechnology.lt section For investors, and also by prior agreement available at the premises of the Company, located at Gyneju str. 14, Vilnius (hereinafter  the Premises of the Company) during working hours. Considering that on the day of publication of this notice, quarantine is in force on the territory of the Republic of Lithuania, which was extended until 30 April 2021 - we invite the Company's shareholders to give priority to getting acquainted with the information provided in the "For investors" section of the Company's website. Phone for information +370 5 279 0601.

The shareholders are entitled:

to propose to supplement the agenda of the Meeting submitting draft resolution on every additional item of agenda or, than there is no need to make a decision - explanation of the shareholder (this right is granted to shareholders who hold shares carrying at least 1/20 of all the votes). Proposal to supplement the agenda is submitted in writing sending the proposal by registered mail to the Company at Gyneju str. 14 LT-01109 Vilnius, Lithuania, or, by prior agreement, delivered in person to the representative of the Company at the Premises of the Company on business hours or by sending proposal to the Company by e-mail info@invltechnology.lt (considering that the quarantine is in force - priority is given to submitting tenders by e-mail and/or registered mail). The agenda is supplemented if the proposal is received no later than 14 days before the Meeting. In case the agenda of the Meeting is supplemented, the Company will report on it no later than 10 days before the Meeting in the same way as on convening of the Meeting; to propose draft resolutions on the issues already included or to be included in the agenda of the Meeting at any time prior to the date of the Meeting (in writing, sending the proposal by registered mail to the Company at Gyneju str. 14 LT-01109 Vilnius, Lithuania, or, by prior agreement, delivered in person to the representative of the Company at the Premises of the Company on business hours or by sending proposal to the Company by e-mail info@invltechnology.lt (considering that the quarantine is in force - priority is given to submitting tenders by e-mail and/or registered mail) or in writing during the Meeting (this right is granted to shareholders who hold shares carrying at least 1/20 of all the votes); to submit questions to the Company related to the issues of the agenda of the Meeting in advance but no later than 3 business days prior to the Meeting in writing sending the proposal by registered mail to the Company at Gyneju str. 14 LT-01109 Vilnius, Lithuania, or, by prior agreement, delivered in person to the representative of the Company at the Premises of the Company on business hours or by sending proposal to the Company by e-mail info@invltechnology.lt (considering that the quarantine is in force - priority is given to submitting tenders by e-mail and/or registered mail). All answers related to the agenda of the Meeting to questions submitted to the Company by the shareholders in advance, are submitted in the Meeting or simultaneously to all shareholders of the Company prior to the Meeting. The Company reserves the right to answer to those shareholders of the Company who can be identified and whose questions are not related to the Company's confidential information or commercial secrets.

The shareholder participating at the Meeting and having the right to vote, must submit the documents confirming personal identity. A person who is not a shareholder shall, in addition to this document, submit a document confirming the right to vote at the Meeting. The requirement to provide the documents confirming personal identity does not apply when voting in writing by filling in a general ballot paper.

Each shareholder may authorize either a natural or a legal person to participate and to vote on the shareholder's behalf at the Meeting. An authorised person has the same rights as his represented shareholder at the Meeting unless the authorized person's rights are limited by the power of attorney or by the law. The authorized persons must have the document confirming their personal identity and power of attorney approved in the manner specified by law which must be submitted to the Company no later than before the commencement of registration for the Meeting. The Company does not establish special form of the power of attorney. A power of attorney issued by a natural person must be certified by a notary. A power of attorney issued in a foreign state must be translated into Lithuanian and legalised in the manner established by law. The persons with whom shareholders concluded the agreements on the disposal of voting right, also have the right to attend and vote at the Meeting.

Shareholder is entitled to issue power of attorney by means of electronic communications for legal or natural persons to participate and to vote on its behalf at the Meeting. No notarisation of such authorization is required. The power of attorney issued through electronic communication means must be confirmed by the shareholder with a safe electronic signature developed by safe signature equipment and approved by a qualified certificate effective in the Republic of Lithuania. The shareholder shall inform the Company on the power of attorney issued through the means of electronic communication by e-mail info@invltechnology.lt not later than on the last business day before the Meeting. The power of attorney and notification must be issued in writing and could be sent to the Company by electronic communication means if the transmitted information is secured and the shareholder's identity can be identified. By submitting the notification to the Company, the shareholder shall include the internet address from which it would be possible to download software to verify an electronic signature of the shareholder free of charge.

The Company is not providing the possibility to attend and vote at the Meeting through electronic means of communication.

Shareholders of the Company are urged to use the right to vote on the issues in the agenda of the Meeting by submitting properly completed general voting bulletins to the Company in advance. The form of general voting bulletin is presented at the Company's webpage www.invltechnology.lt section For Investors. If shareholder requests, the Company shall send the general voting bulletin to the requesting shareholder by registered mail or shall deliver it in person no later than 10 days prior to the Meeting free of charge. If general voting bulletin is signed by a person authorized by the shareholder, it should be accompanied by a document certifying the right to vote.

Considering the that the quarantine announced in the territory of the Republic of Lithuania by Government Resolution No. 1226 of 4 November 2020, was extended until 30 April 2021 - the management of the Company strongly urges the shareholders of the Company to exercise the right to vote on the issues on the agenda of the Meeting by submitting duly completed general ballot papers to the Company. All alternatives for participation in the Meeting:

__________

Alternative No. 1:

A shareholder or person authorised by them should complete and sign a written voting bulletin and send it to the Company by e-mail ( info@invltechnology.lt ) and send the original bulletin by registered or ordinary post to the address Gyneju str. 14, LT-01109 Vilnius. Properly completed written voting bulletins may be sent by registered or ordinary post to the address Gyneju str. 14, LT-01109 Vilnius without submitting a copy to the e-mail address specified or delivered in person to the Company on business days at the Companys registered address mentioned above (considering that the quarantine is in force - priority is given to submitting tenders by e-mail and/or registered mail). Along with a bulletin, a document confirming the right to vote must also be sent. Those voting bulletins shall be deemed valid which are properly completed and are received before the start of the general shareholders meeting.

__________

Alternative No. 2:

A shareholder or person authorised by them should complete a written voting bulletin, save it on their computer and sign it with a qualified electronic signature. Send the written voting bulletin which is properly completed and signed with a qualified electronic signature to the Company by e-mail at info@invltechnology.lt .

The Company suggests using the following free qualified electronic signature systems: Dokobit and GoSign

__________

Alternative No. 3:

If shareholders of the Company do not have the possibility to use voting alternatives No. 1 or No. 2, the Company will provide conditions for the shareholders or persons duly authorised by them to come on 29 April 2021 to the address Gyneju str. 14 in Vilnius, to the Companys Meeting.

We stress that safety recommendations must be followed by shareholder regarding the use of safety measures and maintaining distance.

The person authorized to provide additional information:

Kazimieras Tonkunas

INVL Technology Managing Partner

E-mail k.tonkunas@invltechnology.lt

Attachments
A local data-gathering organization recently released several polls ahead of the City of San Antonio's municipal elections May 1.

Along with the race for mayor, all 10 of the city council seats are up for grabs. Voters will also decide on Proposition B, a measure that will determine whether to repeal the San Antonio Police Department's collective bargaining rights.

In one of the polls released by Bexar Facts this week, 63 percent of people surveyed said they are certain to vote in the election and another 21 percent said they are likely to vote.

In the mayoral election, Mayor Ron Nirenberg is fighting to keep his seat against 13 other candidates, including 2019 adversary Greg Brockhouse.

Fifty-six percent of those polled said they are planning to vote for Nirenberg while 21 percent are going with Brockhouse, according to the Bexar Facts poll. Denise Gutierrez-Homer is far behind the frontrunners at 4 percent. The remaining 19 percent said they were choosing another candidate or haven't decided who to vote for.

ON EXPRESSNEWS.COM: FAQ: San Antonio city election in May 2021

Nirenberg has a 66 percent approval rating among those who took part in the poll. Among Latinos and other voters of color, the mayor has a 54 and 53 percent approval rating, respectively. He only has an 18 percent approval rating among Republicans but a 71 percent approval rating with Democrats.

Ahead of the election, San Antonians said there were a number of issues they want the local government to address, according to Bexar Facts. Fifteen percent of those surveyed said infrastructure repair and improvements was most important to them while 14 percent said homelessness was their top priority. Another 14 percent said safety and crime was their biggest issue. Only 8 percent said the coronavirus pandemic needed to be addressed.

When it comes to Prop B, 39 percent of those polled said they would vote against it, another 34 percent said they are for it and 28 percent are undecided, Bexar Facts' data shows.

A majority of those surveyed said they would vote for Proposition A, the measure that would allow the city to issue certain bonds for public purposes and improvements that will be used to renovate, improve and repair public works. Fifty-six percent said they are in favor of the measure while 27 percent said they are against it.

Early voting is from April 19-27.

taylor.pettaway@express-news.net
TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / April 7, 2021 / Gratomic Inc. ("GRAT", "Gratomic" or "the Company") (TSXV:GRAT)(OTCQX:CBULF)(FSE:CB82) is pleased to welcome Nico Scholtz Pr. Sci. Nat. (Reg. No. 400299/07) to the team. Nico is a Qualified Person (QP) under the JORC, SAMREC and National Instrument (NI) 43-101 legislation. With 20 years' experience in delineating and managing mineral exploration and near production projects globally, Gratomic is pleased to add Nico's experience to our Aukam Graphite Project in Namibia.

Nico is expected to arrive on the Aukam site tomorrow, April 8, 2021, where the drilling teams are currently running the infill drilling programs.

His experience in managing multiple exploration programs in early and advanced stages as well as using multidisciplinary techniques in mineral exploration, Nico has experience in precious and base metals projects in Botswana, China, Cote D'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Mozambique, Mali, Namibia, Suriname, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, serving as Chief Consulting Geologist and QP on several of the aforementioned. Scholtz also filled the role of QP in various projects that included rare and industrial metals, precious stones, fossil fuels, and uranium.

Scholtz obtained a M.Sc. degree (2003) in Geology at the University of the Free State, South Africa and was subsequently employed as lecturer at the same University (2004 to 2006). He authored and co-authored multiple scientific papers in peer reviewed journals and books and presented numerous oral and poster presentations at local and international scientific conferences. He has consequently been invited as guest speaker to various Scientific Symposiums in South Africa, Namibia and Europe with emphasis on mineral exploration in Africa.

"I would like to offer Nico a warm welcome to the Gratomic team. His experience and knowledge will be crucial to allow the Company to achieve its goals of reporting the results of its infill drilling program, and by joining efforts with Corne Coetser, our Head Geologist, we will have a top class team of Geology experts," commented Armando Farhate, COO & Head of Graphite Marketing and Sales.

Arno Brand, CEO & President said, "As a fellow Namibian, I have known Nico for a long time and have seen him at his best and couldn't be more thrilled to bring that experience to Gratomic."

About?Gratomic?Inc.

Established in 2014,?Gratomic?is focused on introducing carbon-neutral, eco-friendly, high purity vein graphite to the global Electric Vehicle and Energy Storage supply chains.?Gratomic?is anticipating full operational capabilities in 2021.?

Gratomic?is in the process of solidifying its plans for?the micronization, spheronization, and coating?of its Aukam vein 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 battery grade standards for use in Li-ion battery anodes.? The Company's recent collaboration agreement with Forge Nano has advanced developments on its graphite finalization phase.

Forge Nano is a global leader in surface engineering and precision nano-coating technology, using Atomic Layer Deposition. Forge Nano's proprietary technology and manufacturing processes make angstrom-thick coatings fast, affordable and commercially viable for a wide range of materials, applications and industries. Forge Nano's suite of ALD and PALD products and services covers the full spectrum from lab-scale tools to commercial-scale manufacturing systems.?

GRAT 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 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 OTCQX 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 at gratomic.ca/contact/ to be added to our email list.?

"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/639351/Gratomic-Appoints-Nico-Scholtz-as-Qualified-Person-for-Aukam-Resource-Drilling
New Delhi, April 7 : The Supreme Court said it was shocked by the Allahabad High Court order, which summoned Uttar Pradesh government officers in a contempt case, despite the proceedings having been stayed by it.

A bench comprising Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Hemant Gupta said: "The frequent, causal and lackadaisical summoning of high officials by the Court cannot be appreciated. We may add that this does not mean that in compelling situations, the same cannot be done but the object cannot be to humiliate senior officials." The bench noted that the trust, faith and confidence of the common man in the judiciary cannot be frittered away by unnecessary and unwarranted show or exercise of power.

"Greater the power, greater should be the responsibility in exercising such power," it said.

The top court said once the order of which contempt was alleged was stayed, there would be no cause for calling the officers as there was no question of any non-compliance of the order.

Its order came on a plea filed by the Uttar Pradesh government through advocate Vishnu Shankar Jain.

Noting that the apex court "has even on various occasions through judicial pronouncements deprecated the practice of unnecessarily calling officers to Court", the bench said that it is not as if this aspect was not brought to the notice of the judge dealing with the contempt petition, as an application was filed for exemption from personal appearance.

"However, the exemption from personal appearance was granted only for the date of March 2, and the matter was listed on April 8, once again directing both the officers to remain present in court in pursuance to an earlier order dated February 5," it observed.

The bench said it was unnecessary harassment of the officers and there was no occasion to pass the order on March 2, which has resulted in the petitioners being compelled to move the present application.

The top court stayed the order passed by the High Court's Lucknow bench to "make it clear the no presence of any officer concerned is required".

"As and when, if the occasion so arises, for restarting the contempt proceedings, the matter will be placed before a bench of another judge," it said, adding that the copy of this order should be placed before the judge concerned and the Chief Justice.
The number of coronavirus cases in India hit a record daily high since the outbreak of the pandemic in the country with over 1.07 lakh new infections reported on Tuesday, according to the data provided by governments of various states and Union territories.

The number of coronavirus cases breached the 1-lakh mark for the second time in three days with the central government asserting that one of the major reasons for the surge in infections was people becoming lax towards following Covid-appropriate behaviour.

According to the daily numbers announced by various states and UTs, the nationwide tally of new cases reported on Tuesday crossed 1.07 lakh mark, the highest ever in India since the first case of the deadly virus was reported in January 2020.

The states and UTs reporting a large surge included Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Punjab, Chandigarh, Gujarat and Rajasthan, while several other states also reported a lot more new cases than in the recent past in what is being called the second wave of this deadly pandemic.

Among the states with a rapid surge in infections, Maharashtra reported 55,469 cases, Chhattisgarh 9,921 cases, Delhi 5,100 cases, Gujarat 3,280 cases and Rajasthan 2,236 cases. Among southern states, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Telangana also reported high daily figures.

Some states or UTs were yet to announce their tallies for new cases during the day and therefore the overall nationwide tally for the day could be higher than 1.07 lakh.

Read | Covid-19 vaccine doses administered in India cross 8.4 crore: Union Health Ministry

The Health Ministry data updated at 8 am on Tuesday morning showed that a total of 96,982 cases have been reported in a span of 24 hours.

The data on Monday morning showed 1,03,558 single day new coronavirus infections in a span of 24 hours.

Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, who reviewed the Covid-19 situation and the progress of vaccination in Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab and Rajasthan, said these 11 states together contributed 54 per cent of the total cases and 65 per cent of the total deaths in the country, with a disproportionately high number of deaths in Maharashtra and Punjab.

Vardhan noted that since February, these states have witnessed a steep increase in cases, the majority of which have been reported in the younger population of 15-44 years, the Health Ministry said in a statement.

The minister highlighted that one of the major reasons for the surge in cases in almost all parts of the country, more specifically in these 11 states, was people becoming lax towards following Covid appropriate behaviour and urged them take up mass awareness campaigns to re-instill the importance of such measures among the masses.

The health minister chaired a comprehensive and detailed review of the Covid-19 cases, vaccination status and challenges being faced by the states in management of coronavirus.

Also Read | Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan reviews Covid-19 situation of 11 states

At a media briefing, NITI Aayog Member (Health) Dr V K Paul said the pandemic situation in the country has worsened with a sharp rise in cases and a large part of the population is still susceptible to the virus.

The tools to fight the pandemic remain the same and Covid-appropriate behaviour, containment measures, testing have to be implemented more efficiently, medical infrastructure has to be ramped up and vaccination drive intensified, he said.

Covid-appropriate behaviour like wearing masks, staying away from crowds have to be followed in a campaign mode, Paul said.

Amid the spike in coronavirus cases, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will interact with chief ministers on Thursday to discuss the Covid-19 situation and the ongoing vaccination drive.

Modi's last interaction with chief ministers was on March 17 during which he had expressed concern over the rise in Covid-19 cases in parts of the country and called for "quick and decisive" steps to check the "emerging second peak".

The Centre also said on Tuesday an increase in the intensity of the pandemic has led Covid-19 to spread at a faster pace than last year and the next four weeks are very critical.
Presidential aide, Lauretta Onochie, has said that the wailing of some Nigerians will not stop President Buhari from embarking on his medical trips. Lauretta said this while reacting to the criticism that has trailed the president's decision to go to the UK for his routine medical checkup.



In a post shared on her social media handles, Lauretta said the President will continue to embark on the medical trips until he leaves office in 2023.



Her post reads;



''TWO MORE YEARS OF WAILING.



We have been here since 2016. Its been the same wailing. So the response will also be the same.



I do not understand why the pandemic has negatively affected certain people more than the rest of us.



People across the world, have personal physicians. President Buhari is not an exception. People go to wherever their personal doctors are especially one they have seen for decades.



Pres.Buhari won't dump his doctor of about 40 years so that wailers can be happy. That's blackmail. Thankfully, he doesn't pay blackmailers.



When he took ill in 2016, everything was explained. I was running from one media house to the other like a headless chicken, educating us on the psychology of the relationship between a patient and his or her long-standing doctor.



Thankfully, he made a full recovery.



In 2017, 2018 and 2019, he went for #CheckUps. In 2020 he went before the beginning of the pandemic. The same wailing and the same explanations.



I do not know any man who will have a different barber cut his hair when the one he is used to, is not available.



I don't know any lady who would have her hair or nails done by a different hair dresser or technician from her usual, let alone, change her doctor.



But it goes to show that many of us do not go for checkups because we do not understand what it means. We only see doctors when we are unwell. Those who take their health seriously, have annual checkups. That's what President Buhari is attending to.



The same wailers told their gullible followers that the man in the Villa, is not President Buhari. So, why bother?



The fact remains that if President Buhari chooses, he will go for checkups in 2022, and 2023. Then from 2024, when he will not need to inform Nigerians, he will continue to go. Its his choice to go or not to go.



Wailing cannot take away his rights to see his personal doctors. So, wailers must get ready for two more years of wailing.''

Source: LIB









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South Africa: SA signs deal with Pfizer for 20 million vaccines

South Africa has signed a deal for the procurement of 20 million doses of Pfizer vaccines.

According to the announcement made by Health Minister, Dr Zweli Mkhize, payment processes are also underway to close the deal in the next few days.

In addition, with the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) agreement also fully concluded, Mkhize believes that this sets the stage for a significant and rapid expansion of the country's COVID-19 vaccination programme.

We can also confirm that the final tranche of 200 000 Johnson & Johnson doses for the Sisonke Protocol is expected to arrive on 10 April 2021. These doses will take us to the last mile of the Sisonke Protocol, which is set to become one of the most seminal studies in the history of the pandemic, the Minister said on Monday.

According to the latest information, the number of healthcare workers vaccinated now stand at 272 438 as of 6 April 2021.

Likewise, he said the country will also embark on an implementation study with a limited number of Pfizer doses used amongst healthcare workers, which he describes as another valuable contribution to the science of mass vaccination.

In preparation for the mass vaccination campaign, we have undertaken a deep study of the Sisonke Protocol to draw lessons from the programme and enhance the efficiency of future operations.

In addition, stakeholders have continued to be engaged across all sectors to sensitise government to the needs of various communities.

Upon deeper inspection and reflection, the Department of Health has worked on a revised strategy to ensure that the vaccination campaign targets the most pressing public health and the economic relief that vaccination should achieve. These revisions will require extensive yet urgent consultation to ensure that the final programme expresses the will of the people, said the Minister.

Upon completion of the ratification process, the department will announce the details of the revised vaccination programme to the public and call on the first group of eligible citizens to register on the Electronic Vaccination System.

I wish to thank all government officials, business partners and social partners who are working around the clock to ensure that the programme is efficient, safe and exemplary. We look forward to announcing the details in the days to come, he added.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2021-04-07. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
With lawmakers taking widely different stances on what would be best for consumers, the Florida Senate on Wednesday passed a major property-insurance bill that targets roof-damage claims and litigation against insurance companies.

Supporters of the bill (SB 76) said lawmakers need to approve it to curb soaring insurance rates for homeowners. They said private insurers are grappling with large financial losses that have led to rate increases and customers shifting to the state-backed Citizens Property Insurance Corp. for coverage.

This is not easy, I understand that, Senate Banking and Insurance Chairman Jim Boyd, a Bradenton Republican sponsoring the bill, said. This is important, and its necessary.

But some Democrats argued that proposed changes in the bill, including allowing insurers to limit amounts paid for roof damage, would hurt consumers and that the measure does not guarantee rates will decrease.

Senate Minority Leader Gary Farmer, D-Lighthouse Point, accused insurers of cooking their books, plain and simple. He said Florida went 10 years without a major storm, and insurers were swimming in profits.

This crisis is manufactured, said Farmer, a plaintiffs attorney who is frequently critical of insurance companies. It is flat-out manufactured.

Farmers comments drew a sharp response from Boyd, who described them as a gross mischaracterization of what is happening in the insurance industry.

Some of the comments border on slanderous in my view, said Boyd, an insurance agent.

Rate increases last year

The debate comes after state regulators last year signed off on dozens of rate increases topping 10%. Also, as the market has tightened, Citizens Property Insurance, which was created as an insurer of last resort, has gained more than 100,000 policies during the past year.

The Senate bill, in part, seeks to address arguments by insurance companies that questionable, if not fraudulent, roof-damage claims are driving up costs. The industry and some lawmakers point to contractors soliciting homeowners to file claims to get new roofs.

Story continues

The Senate bill would create what is described as a reimbursement schedule that would allow insurers to sell policies that would provide reduced payments for repairing or replacing roofs over 10 years old. For example, insurers could reimburse 70% of the costs for metal roofs over 10 years old and 40% of the costs for concrete-tile and clay-tile roofs.

The change would effectively shift more costs to many homeowners when they have roof damage.

Boyd has said customers would be able to buy additional coverage for roof damage and that the proposal takes into account that roofs have life expectancies. But critics contend the change could lead to large, unexpected costs for homeowners who sustain roof damage.

I think thats a really dangerous road to go down for consumers to reduce coverage, Sen. Tina Polsky, D-Boca Raton, said.

Litigation protection, too

The bill also seeks to reduce litigation against insurers, in part by limiting fees paid to attorneys who represent plaintiffs. Bill supporters blame lawsuits for increasing costs, while opponents say homeowners are forced to go to court because insurers dont properly pay claims.

Florida allows plaintiffs to collect attorney fees when they prevail in cases against insurance companies, with the amounts typically set by a calculation of the number of hours spent on a case and a reasonable hourly rate.

But courts also can approve what are known as contingency risk multipliers that increase the fees. Under the Senate bill, however, contingency risk multipliers could only be awarded in a rare and exceptional circumstance with evidence that competent counsel could not be retained in a reasonable manner.

The Republican-controlled Senate voted 27-13 to approve the bill, largely along party lines. Sen. Ray Rodrigues, R-Estero, was the only Republican who voted against the bill, while Sen. Lauren Book, D-Plantation, Sen. Randolph Bracy, D-Ocoee, Sen. Jason Pizzo, D-North Miami Beach, and Sen. Linda Stewart, D-Orlando, supported it.

House bill is quite different

With the legislative session scheduled to end April 30, the Senate would have to reach agreement with the House, which has moved forward with a far-different property insurance bill (HB 305). For example, the House bill would not allow insurers to provide reduced payments for roof damage.

Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, said opponents of the Senate bill dont get what is about to happen with increased insurance rates if the measure doesnt pass. He also alluded to the difficulty in reaching an agreement with the House.

We have to do this, and we have to stand strong as this bill comes around. Thats the other big challenge we have to face, Brandes said.

But Brandes comment about opponents not getting what is about to happen clearly irked Sen. Victor Torres, D-Kissimmee, and Sen. Perry Thurston, D-Fort Lauderdale. Torres responded to Brandes by citing veterans and seniors he represents who live on fixed incomes.

Thurston said, I obviously, too, dont get it.

You dont fix the problem by doing everything and putting all of the burden on the citizens, he said.
Journalist Vicky Xu Says CCP Targeting Her Online for Exposing Forced Labor in China

Vicky Xu, a Chinese researcher and journalist in Australia known for her reporting on the treatment of Uyghur Muslims in Chinas Xinjiang region, says agents acting on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) released a video online about her in an attempt to smear her reputation.

Xu hasnt been accepting media interview requests but has taken to Twitter on multiple occasions recently to set the record straight and expose the CCPs online disinformation efforts.

It seems some are under the impression that there exists a fake sex tape of me made by the Chinese government, she wrote on April 6.

This is false, as far as Im aware anyway. What they made was a YouTube video that told fictional stories about my [ex-boyfriends], now taken down. What a time to be alive.

She continued, switching to Chinese to tell Chinese netizens not to search for the video. This film does not exist. Why dont you reflect on yourselves? she wrote.

Those who support the party-state, why do you still want to watch me, a traitor reporters film? If you dont support the party-state, then you shouldnt follow the attack on a female reporter even more. You people, pshaw.

In referring to herself as a traitor, Xu sardonically borrowed a CCP talking point used to discredit her authority among Chinese internet users.

The video in question could not be found on YouTube but exists on the Chinese video platform Bilibili.

Once an enthusiastic supporter of the Chinese regime until she gained a different perspective after moving to Australia, Xu was instrumental in exposing its state-sponsored crimes against Uyghur Muslims in Mainland China through her reporting.

For her efforts, the CCP has retaliated against Xu by harassing, intimidating, and detaining her family back in China, she said.

In 2019, when Xu was working for the New York Times in Sydney, she reported on a case involving the detention in a brainwashing centre of two Uyghurs.

We asked the Chinese side to comment, and to our surprise, once the telegram was sent out, they were quickly released under international pressure, she wrote on Twitter on April 1.

After this article (was published), my family and friends in China began to be harassed and intimidated. My Uyghur friends told me at the time, Youve become like us now.'

In March 2020, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute published a report titled Uyghurs for Sale, which pointed out Uyghur Muslims forced labour was happening under the banner of aid work across Mainland China.

The report noted that 82 well-known brands in the technology, clothing and automotive sectors benefit directly from forced labour, including Apple, BMW, Gap, Huawei, Nike, Samsung, Sony, and Volkswagen.

But Xu says every person in the world is benefitting from forced labour in Mainland China.

The article points out the relationship between every ordinary person in the world and the Uyghur human rights crisis: every person is likely to be wearing the products of forced labor, Xu said.

I barely bought any new clothes or phones this year because I felt guilty when I went into the mall and saw the signs that I had written about, she added.

The report was cited by media outlets worldwide, prompting Chinas Ministry of State Security (MSS)an organisation equivalent to ASIO or the CIAto begin acting like a deranged stalky pathetic ex-boyfriend, she said.

At the same time, the Ministry of State Security began an increasingly alarming coercion against me and those around me, with people close to me being detained, interrogated, harassed, and isolated inside China, Xu said.

In late 2020, the Ministry of State Security people used the name of detective Thomas to spread pornography-like stories on YouTube in broken machine-translated English. I was [expletive]-shamed in a pornographic sex life expose.

Xu said the MSS had been thoroughly snooping through her life to dig up dirt.

To figure out every detail of my life, [including] my exes, my medical history, my friends, my hobbies and flaws, they have resorted to detention and interrogation of my loves ones, hacking, impersonation, video production of a fantasy version of my sex life, illegal botnets to spread those videos, and today a ton of WeChat articles calling me a female demon, she wrote on Twitter on March 29.

Xu said this has caused pain and heartbreak for herself and those around her, but she said she is getting used to it. She said she had been called many slurs online, from West-worshipping [expletive] to race traitor, to female demon who has sex simultaneously with 15 men and doesnt pay.

Xu spoke up on March 29 after her name began trending on the Chinese social media site Weibo, attracting 1.7 million clicks. Eventually, Weibo closed her account.

Im tweeting now because today is one of the worst days, and friends are starting to get worried, she wrote.

Its certainly bad, but its been worse for many others. Living in relative physical safety in Australia, I remind myself to keep writing and reporting, at the very least. Today Ive been doing that, and Ill do that tomorrow and the day after.

On April 6, she said the CCP is trying to drown her with spit, referring to the overwhelmingly negative comments made against her by Chinese internet users who have been stirred to anger by the CCPs efforts to malign her.

Honestly, sometimes it sucks to live this life, but Id watch the [expletive] out of this show, and like, drown me however you like. Ive definitely gotten better at swimming after living in Australia. Id totally surf on your spit waves anytime. Keep em coming, she said.
GREENE COUNTY, Ind. (WTHI) - Tuesday marked the first day, since July 2020, of Indiana downgrading from a mask mandate to a mask advisory.

As a refresher, businesses will be able to decide if they want to require masks or not. Schools, hospitals, and state buildings will continue to enforce the mandate. Local county health departments and governments will dictate the direction of each individual county.

As weve reported, Vigo County decided to go along with the state and lower the mandate to an advisory. Parke County announced on Tuesday via their Facebook page that they too are following the Governors advisory.

News 10 spoke with Shari Lewis at the Greene County Health Department on Tuesday. She says as long as the County remains in the blue color code category and has little to moderate spread, they will also follow the Governors advice. However, she says it goes further than that.

Its not mandated but strongly encouraged that people continue to social distance, continue to wear a mask, and most importantly stay at home when you are sick, Lewis said, With a mask mandate going to an advisory, we may see less people out and about masking. We definitely want to have more people vaccinated.

As a result of the states mask downgrade, the health department wants to make sure that people who want the vaccine have access to the vaccine. Greene County will be hosting a mass vaccination clinic Friday, April 9th, and Saturday, April 10th from 8 AM to 8 PM at the Greene County Fairgrounds.

Lewis says 8% of Greene Countys population is fully vaccinated right now, but the health department will have 1,500 Moderna vaccines ready to go this weekend to boost those numbers up.

We definitely want to increase those numbers, and the fastest to increase that is to ensure that our residents have access to the vaccine, Lewis concluded, Our best efforts are to have testing and vaccine available for those who want it and we will continue to do that.

Lewis says the Greene County Health Department prefers that you register at ourshot.in.gov for this weekends mass vaccination clinic. However, registration is not required.
Prayagraj : , April 7 (IANS) The Allahabad High Court has asked the Uttar Pradesh government to consider a night curfew situation as the state witnesses a surge in the number of coronavirus cases.

The court also asked the government to consider vaccination for all.

The court directed the state government to ensure Covid protocols are followed in nomination and campaigning in the ongoing Panchayat elections.

The directive has been given by a bench comprising Chief Justice Govind Mathur and Justice Siddharth Verma.

The court has ordered the police and district administration to make sure people wear masks.

The court directed that all citizens should be vaccinated and that officials should visit from house to house to vaccinate people.

The court has also asked the state government to consider crowd control in late evening celebrations as well as imposing a night curfew.

All schools in Uttar Pradesh, from Classes 1 to 8, have been closed till April 11.

Examinations will be conducted with Covid-19 protocol.
Members of the main opposition People Power Party cheer at party headquarters on Yeouido, Seoul, Wednesday, as the exit poll for the Seoul mayoral by-election showed a likely victory for the party's candidate Oh Se-hoon, front row second from right. Korea Times photo by Choi Won-suk









By Jung Da-min







The main opposition People Power Party's (PPP) victory against the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) in Wednesday's by-elections is expected to allow the former to take the lead in reorganizing the opposition and gain the upper hand in preparing for the presidential election next year.







In contrast, the DPK, which clinched a crushing victory in last year's April general election, is likely to lose its drive to push ahead with various reform policies and accelerate the lame-duck presidency for President Moon Jae-in.







The DPK had succeeded in winning a supermajority in last year's election with 180 National Assembly seats, or three fifths of the total.







Political watchers say the bye-election results will change the political landscape in the opposition's favor, with less than a year left ahead of the presidential poll.







The PPP's Seoul mayoral candidate Oh Se-hoon and Busan mayoral candidate Park Heong-joon won by a landslide in the by-elections against the DPK's candidates Park Young-sun and Kim Young-choon, respectively, according to the final official ballot count.







Experts say the results reflect public disappointment with the Moon administration, which has been aggravated by a housing scandal involving employees of the state-run developer Korea Land and Housing Corp. (LH), amid already high public anger over the government's failed real estate policies and soaring housing prices.






Visiting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Islamabad on April 7 that Russia will provide unspecified military equipment to Pakistan as the two countries increase cooperation to fight terrorism.

Russia and Pakistan will also conduct joint naval and land exercises, he said.

Lavrov's two-day visit marks the first to Islamabad by a Russian foreign minister in nearly a decade and is widely regarded as part of an effort to foster deeper bilateral relations that have warmed only recently.

Lavrov's meetings with Pakistani officials followed a stop in rival neighbor India and were expected to touch on efforts to establish peace in another neighboring country, Afghanistan.

We stand ready to strengthen the anti-terrorist potential of Pakistan, including by supplying Pakistan with special military equipment, Lavrov said.

Moscow has recently sought to assert greater influence in conflict-torn Afghanistan as the United States and other Western powers try to extricate themselves from a two-decade war.

Russia is also helping construct a gas pipeline between Pakistan's port city of Karachi and eastern Lahore.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said Islamabad welcomes Russian expertise on rail and energy-sector modernization.

Qureshi also said Pakistan will purchase 5 million doses of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19, which is being used in dozens of countries but has run into regulatory delays in the European Union.

Pakistans security establishment is seen as close to the Afghan Taliban, which is fighting the central government in Kabul amid stalled intra-Afghan peace talks, and is said to wield leverage to influence that militant groups actions.

A May 1 deadline is approaching for U.S. and other foreign troops to leave Afghanistan in line with an agreement Washington signed with the Afghan Taliban in Qatar in February 2020.

Afghanistan has seen a nationwide spike in bombings, targeted killings, and violence on the battlefield as common ground evades peace negotiators in Qatar.

U.S. President Joe Biden has warned the May withdrawal deadline will be difficult to meet, raising the prospect the entire agreement with the Taliban will unravel.

Later this month, Taliban and Afghan government representatives are expected to gather for a U.S.-backed international conference in Turkey meant to give new impetus to peace talks.

With reporting by AP and dpa
Stoyan Obreshkov Leads Entering Tonight's Irish Open Main Event Final Table at partypoker

April 06, 2021 Jason Glatzer

The 1 million guaranteed Irish Open 1,100 Main Event, the crown jewel of the Irish Open at partypoker, is coming down to its final stretch with the 1,880 entrant field down to just nine final-table hopefuls in search of the lofty 292,257 top prize.

Bulgaria's Stoyan Obreshkov leads the way after bagging 98,373,185 in chips, which is good for 141 big blinds.

Read on to learn more about Irish Open Main Event at partypoker.

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2021 Irish Open Main Event Final Table Chip Counts

Place Player Country Chips Big Blinds 1 Stoyan Obreshkov Bulgaria 98,373,185 141 2 Justin Ouimette Canada 70,706,284 101 3 Victor Hugo Bonifacio Brazil 40,027,234 57 4 Eduards Kudrjavcevs Estonia 39,987,150 57 5 Franco Spitale Argentina 33,282,003 48 6 Justus Held Austria 26,489,486 38 7 Pavel Veksler Ukraine 26,321,435 38 8 Julian Edward James Adamson Germany 25,404,520 36 9 Robin Andreas Berggren Sweden 15,028,078 21 Total 375,619,375 537 Average 41,735,486 60

Stoyan Obreshkov Leads the partypoker Irish Open Main Event Final Table

The final table will kick off tonight at 8:05 p.m. CEST (2:05 p.m. GMT) with blinds at 350,000/700,000/87,500a and increasing slowly at every 40 minutes. The action will be broadcasted on a small delay with hole cards exposed on the partypoker TV Twitch and YouTube channels with James Dempsey and Henry Kilbane providing a blow-by-blow commentary until a winner is crowned.

While Obreshkov is the clear table captain with nearly 100 million in chips, partypoker MILLIONS Online Mini Main Event winner Justin Ouimette isn't too far behind with 70,706,284.

There is a clear gap between the leading duo and the rest of the field but we wouldn't count the rest of the field out yet with many accomplished pros remaining including Victor Bonifacio, Eduards Kudrjavcevs, Franco Spitale, Justus Held, Pavel Veksler, Julian Adamson, and Robin Berggren.

Matt Staples

Meanwhile, partypoker Ambassadors Patrick Leonard and Matthew Staples were among the players to advance to Day 3 but no further. They were eliminated in 25th and 27th places respectively to collect a healthy 7,789 payout

Day 2 chip leader Maxim Mamonov had a similar fate but barely made it past the gate and was eliminated in 38th place for 6,202.

Final Table Payouts

The nine returning players are each guaranteed at least 22,481 for making the final table for their 1,100 buy-in with their eyes on the 292,257 top prize.

Place Prize 1 292,257 2 198,512 3 135,483 4 89,896 5 61,229 6 46,743 7 36,241 8 28,776 9 22,481

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AKRON, Ohio  Two men were wounded Monday night in separate shootings, according to police.

Officers met with a 40-year-old man at Summa Health Akron City Hospital at about 8:40 p.m. The victim had suffered a non-life-threatening gunshot wound to the body.

The man told police he was taking out the trash at his Kenmore neighborhood residence on the 2100 block of Fifth Street SW when two unknown males opened fire. The man was taken to the hospital in a private vehicle.

About two hours later, officers again were called to the hospital for a 28-year-old man who had been shot in the neck. The man tells police he was driving in the area of Seventh Avenue and Alexander Street in East Akron when he noticed he was being followed. The man says he got out of his car to investigate when two men in another vehicle got out and began firing.

The victims injuries are not life-threatening. No arrests have been made police continue to investigate both shootings.

Anyone with information can call detectives at 330-375-2490 or Summit County Crimestoppers at 330-434-COPS. Individuals also can send tips by texting TIPSCO to 274637. Callers can remain anonymous.

More crime-related content on cleveland.com:

Grand jury indicts Parma father accused of beating 5-year-old son to death with baseball bat

69 overdose deaths in March put Cuyahoga County on pace to match 2017s record number of deaths

Video shows RTA officer shove mentally-ill man off Cleveland rapid platform onto tracks

Bond set at $1 million for Lorain man charged in Easter Sunday deadly shooting

East Cleveland police officer injured in crash during pursuit
Western Australias nurses union boss says he raised red flags about the dire state of Perth Childrens Hospital with Health Minister Roger Cook a week before the state election  a claim Mr Cook flatly denied in a heated press briefing on Tuesday afternoon.

Australian Nursing Federation state secretary Mark Olson told 6PRs Liam Bartlett he would only call the minister on rare occasions, about four to five times a year when he had an urgent issue, so as not to waste his political capital.

Mark Olson (right) says he spoke to Roger Cook about the PCH emergency department problems last month.

In the wake of the tragic death of seven-year-old Aishwarya Aswath after a two-hour wait at PCHs emergency department on Saturday, it was revealed on Tuesday a nurse at the hospital had sent a letter to Mr Olson warning him of staffing levels and patient safety within the department.

The nurse said grave concerns over the issues had been raised at a meeting with hospital executives before Christmas. But further meetings were postponed. She said concerns were downplayed, dismissed or ignored by the executive team.
One in three COVID-19 survivors in a study of more than 230,000 mostly American patients were diagnosed with a brain or psychiatric disorder within six months, suggesting the pandemic could lead to a wave of mental and neurological problems, scientists said on Tuesday.

Researchers who conducted the analysis said it was not clear how the virus was linked to psychiatric conditions such as anxiety and depression, but that these were the most common diagnoses among the 14 disorders they looked at.

Post-COVID cases of stroke, dementia and other neurological disorders were rarer, the researchers said, but were still significant, especially in those who had severe COVID-19.

Although the individual risks for most disorders are small, the effect across the whole population may be substantial, said Paul Harrison, a professor of psychiatry at Oxford University who co-led the work.

Max Taquet, also an Oxford psychiatrist who worked with Harrison, noted that the study was not able to examine the biological or psychological mechanisms involved, but said urgent research is needed to identify these with a view to preventing or treating them.

Read More

Health experts are increasingly concerned by evidence of higher risks of brain and mental health disorders among COVID-19 survivors. A previous study by the same researchers found last year that 20pc of COVID-19 survivors were diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder within three months.

The new findings, published in the Lancet Psychiatry journal, analysed health records of 236,379 COVID-19 patients, mostly from the United States, and found 34pc had been diagnosed with neurological or psychiatric illnesses within six months.

The disorders were significantly more common in COVID-19 patients than in comparison groups of people who recovered from flu or other respiratory infections over the same time period, the scientists said, suggesting COVID-19 had a specific impact.

Anxiety, at 17pc, and mood disorders, at 14pc, were the most common, and did not appear to be related to how mild or severe the patients COVID-19 infection had been.

Among those who had been admitted to intensive care with severe COVID-19 however, 7pc had a stroke within six months, and almost 2pc were diagnosed with dementia.

Independent experts said the findings were worrying.

This is a very important paper. It confirms beyond any reasonable doubt that COVID-19 affects both brain and mind in equal measure, said Simon Wessely, chair of psychiatry at Kings College London.

The impact COVID-19 is having on individuals mental health can be severe, said Lea Milligan, chief executive of the MQ Mental Health research charity. This is contributing to the already rising levels of mental illness and requires further, urgent research.
Pistols and other weapons are displayed at a shooting range during the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival, a guns and gun culture in America, in Greeley, Pennsylvania on Oct. 12, 2019. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Arizona Governor Signs Bill to Defy Any New Federal Gun Control Laws

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed legislation on April 6 that would prohibit police and sheriffs in the state from enforcing new federal gun laws that may violate the Constitutions Second Amendment.

Proponents of the bill have argued that it would ensure that the rights of gun owners are protected from what they have described as potential overreach by the federal government, while critics say the law will undermine cooperation between Arizona law enforcement and federal officials.

The state of Arizona and its political subdivisions are prohibited from utilizing any financial resources or state personnel to administer, cooperate with or enforce any law, act, order, rule, treaty or regulation of the federal government that is inconsistent with any law of this state regarding the regulation of firearms, according to the text of the legislation.

President Joe Biden has said hes seeking a ban on certain firearms and gun magazines in the wake of two mass shootings last month. Top Democrats such as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said two House bills that expanded background checks would be taken up by the Senate, although its not clear when that will occur.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on April 7 that Biden will have more to say about gun control measures on April 8.

Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone said the Arizona law has a political motivation.

Its one of those emotional issues but as far as the impact on law enforcement, it will create confusion or challenges more than benefits or protecting the Second Amendment, Penzone told KTAR radio last week.

Gun control proponents such as Moms Demand Action and Everytown for Gun Safety sought to pressure Ducey into vetoing the measure. Moms Demand Action said it gathered more than 2,000 signatures in the state and presented them to the governors office.

Nobody is trying to take away your guns, not for the protection of your family, your property, nor your Second Amendment right to own them, Democratic state Sen. Lisa Otondo stated.

Meanwhile, gun sales across the United States have skyrocketed in recent months amid fears of instability over last summers Black Lives Matter protests and riots, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic.

About a week ago, the Arkansas Senate voted to block federal law enforcement officials from enforcing certain gun laws and regulations.

It is more important now than ever that we protect our state rights, Arkansas state Sen. Trent Garner, a Republican, said of the passage of the bill.

Once [Democrats in the U.S. Senate] get rid of the filibuster, guess what happens next? It is called packing the courts, he claimed, referring to statements by Democratic lawmakers who want to abandon the 60-vote legislative threshold in order to pass their agenda items.
Riot police officers leave a courthouse during the trial of 497 defendants, in Sincan, outside the capital Ankara, Turkey (Burhan Ozbilici/AP)

A Turkish court sentenced dozens of people, including former soldiers attached to the presidential guard regiment, to life imprisonment over their involvement in the 2016 failed coup attempt against President Recep Tayyip Erdogans government, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

A total of 497 defendants had been on trial since 2017 for attempting to seize the military headquarters in Ankara, occupying the headquarters of the state broadcaster TRT, and of forcing a television broadcaster to read out a statement on behalf of the coup-plotters.

The massive trial was one of hundreds of trials against suspected members of a network led by US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara accuses of orchestrating the failed attempt.

Mr Gulen, a former ally of Mr Erdogan, denies the accusation.

The court in the outskirts of Ankara sentenced 32 defendants to life, including six who received aggravated life terms without the possibility of parole, Anadolu reported.

Expand Close Lawyers leave the courthouse (Burhan Ozbilici/AP) / Facebook

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Among those sentenced to the aggravated life term is a former lieutenant colonel who forced the anchorwoman to read the statement, a former colonel accused of giving the order for the takeover of the TRT building and a former major who led a team that attempted to take over the military headquarters, the agency said.

The court also sentenced one person to 61 years in prison while 106 defendants received terms ranging from six to 16 years.

Other defendants were either acquitted or were not given prison terms, Anadolu said.

On July 15 2016, factions within the Turkish military used tanks, warplanes and helicopters in an attempt to overthrow Mr Erdogan.

Fighter jets bombed parliament and other spots in Turkeys capital.

Heeding a call by the president, thousands took to the streets to stop the coup.

A total of 251 people were killed and around 2,200 others were wounded.

Around 35 alleged coup plotters were also killed.

The government has designated Mr Gulens network a terrorist group, another claim he denies.

He lives in the United States.
Airline miles and hotel points are so 2010. The next round of credit card disruptors will offer something much more millennial  bitcoin rewards.

The recent mainstream adoption of bitcoin is getting yet another cashback boost, with rising fintech companies planning to release new credit cards that would offer a cashback on every purchase in bitcoin.

Considering the rapid appreciation of bitcoin in the last 12 months, the idea seems appealing to many, as they can potentially earn more than they spent in cashback.

Even the crypto skeptics would enter the cryptocurrency investment sphere by default, without risking their own money.

People are not interested in spending Bitcoin right now, but are interested in accumulating it. If people dont understand Bitcoin as money yet, they certainly will understand it as a better reward, Fold CEO Will Reeves recently said.

Fold, a San Francisco-based crypto startup, is one of the fintech companies that has released credit cards with bitcoin cashback.

Even though the cashback the customers are getting is 1% to 2%, for the last six months, customers are averaging 8.5% back on all of their purchases due to bitcoin's increase in value.

Currently trading at $58,000, Bitcoin has appreciated nearly 200% year-over-year.

Another fintech company for crypto investors, BlockFi, will offer a flat rate of 1.5% back in bitcoin on every purchase. So far, over 100,000 people have signed up.

The company said that the cashback will be converted into bitcoin tokens that the cardholder can withdraw, trade, or use as collateral for a crypto-backed loan.

This is yet another game in which traditional banks, still offering tired old rewards, is being left behind.

Chase Freedom Unlimited currently offers a sign-up bonus of $200 after spending $500 in the first three months from opening an account. In addition to 1.5% cash back on all purchases, it now offers bonus rewards on travel, as well as at restaurants and drugstores.

With a $0 annual fee, Discover offers 5% cash back on up to $1,500 in spending per quarter in categories that the customer activates.

Visa could blow them away. Last year, both Fold and BlockFi teamed up with payment facilitator Visa, which handles more than half of all credit card network purchase volume in the U.S.

Larger institutional investors, such as Visa, who jumped into the crypto market helped the drive of the recent surge in bitcoin to record levels.

In late January, Elon Musk added the word bitcoin to his Twitter profile. Just hours later, it caused a 15% rally in the currencys value. The tweet followed Tesla investing $1.5 billion in bitcoin.

Last October, payment company Square said it bought 4,709 bitcoins, worth approximately $50 million, which represents about 1% of Squares total assets.

PayPal secured the first conditional cryptocurrency license from the New York State Department of Financial Services, the first approved entity for a conditional Bitlicense in New York State.

And on Tuesday, Fidelity Investments and Square, among others announced they are forming a new trade group designed to lobby the regulatory environment around bitcoin. shape the way bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are regulated now that it is gaining so much mainstream attention.
POWAY, Calif., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Apricorn, the leading manufacturer of software-free, 256-bit AES XTS hardware-encrypted USB drives, today announced new findings from the Apricorn 2021 Global IT Security Survey, which found that, in some instances, respondents have placed unwarranted trust in their employees, household members and third-party vendors. More than 400 IT security practitioners across North America and Europe responded to questions about security practices and policies during remote working conditions over the past 12 months. The findings show that IT security professionals are concerned about the cyber risks brought about by remote work, with 75% putting COVID-centric policies in place, including use of two factor authentication (48%) and encryption of sensitive data (41%).

Sixty percent of respondents agree that COVID-induced remote work conditions have created data security issues within their organizations, with 38% noting that data control during the pandemic has been very hard to manage. Even with these data control concerns, nearly 20% admitted that their work devices have been used by other members of their household. This surprising statistic from seasoned IT security professionals highlights that remote work policies can cause employees to relax their security stance when working outside of the office setting.

Almost 70% of respondents want an encrypted USB policy within their organization, but 40% do not have plans to roll out a corporate USB program. Further, a concerning 45% of respondents allow the use of personal USB devices without corporate oversight, leaving it to the employee to decide which device to use, when to use them and for what data. Lack of control over writeable devices connected to corporate systems within the firewall creates a huge opportunity for attack, as evidenced by the fact that corrupted, unencrypted USB sticks are one of the fastest growing methods for malware introduction.

"People can be a huge asset to an organization's security culture but they need to have the right foundation, which comes from giving them the policies and tools needed to protect corporate data and assets beyond the corporate firewall," said Kurt Markley, U.S. Managing Director, Apricorn. "This research supports the importance of endpoint hardware encryption, particularly during remote working conditions that will likely continue for many organizations long after this pandemic is over. IT security professionals should have implemented corporate usage policies and provided secure devices that mitigate the inherent risk of a BYoD strategy a year ago. Those who haven't are extremely late on protecting internal systems from insecure and unmanaged devices, and need to put policies and devices in place immediately."

The research also showed misplaced trust in third party vendors. Ponemon reports that 53% of organizations have experienced a data breach as a result of a third-party vendor, yet more than a quarter of the Apricorn survey respondents (27%) expressed that they are not concerned about loss of data through third-party vendors and have increased the number of vendors with whom they work. When it comes to storing data in the cloud, respondents are conflicted. While 80% say they have offered a hybrid work option (remote work at least part of the time), a full 25% are not concerned about cloud security even though they have seen an increase in usage from disparate locations. Almost 30% are concerned but have strong processes for managing data stored in the cloud, and nearly 19% have the same concerns but no policies in place about how to store data in the cloud. These responses present conflicting trust issues: those that are over trusting with no concern over the storage of their data, and those that recognize that they should be cautious with the data they entrust to the cloud.

"The third-party vendor findings were a surprise given the large number of high-profile third-party breaches in recent years," continued Markley. "Misplaced trust is risky. Businesses must strengthen their security posture, consider security policies and processes related to how they handle data, and make policy adjustments inside organizations and within agreements with partners. The use of hardware encrypted USBs and hard drives can be beneficial in these circumstances, providing the ability to securely store data offline and move it between locations securely."

Additionally, half of respondents (49%) noted that individual employees in their organization do not consider themselves as targets that attackers can use to access company data, illustrating either extreme trust in company security policies (31%) or a naivety about attacker's interest in individual targets (18%).

"In many cases, successful attacks target employees, so if they are unprepared or untrained, they are a risk," continued Markley. "For large companies like Ford, CVS Health, and Fidelity Investments who will continue, and even increase remote working practices post-pandemic, employees must understand they are targets and the significant role they play in protecting corporate data and assets. The importance of creating a culture of security, educating users and vendors about security practices, and implementing policies such as end-to-end encryption cannot be overstated for helping organizations remain secure as their operating environments continue to shift."

To read the complete 2021 Apricorn Global IT Security Survey, please go to https://apricorn.com/2021-it-security-survey-results

Methodology

Comprising of 21 question and answer options and drawing 420 responses, the Apricorn 2021 Global IT Security Survey poll was issued through SurveyMonkey and was conducted over a three-week period from February 22 - March 14, 2021. Nearly 40% of respondents have 16  20 years working in IT security, with 25% responsible for making final decisions about IT purchases.

About Apricorn

Apricorn provides secure storage innovations to the most prominent companies in the categories of finance, healthcare, education, and government throughout EMEA, North America and Canada. Apricorn products have become the trusted standard for a myriad of data security strategies worldwide. Founded in 1983, numerous award-winning products and patents have been developed under the Apricorn brand as well as for a number of leading computer manufacturers on an OEM basis.

Media Contact

Sarah Hawley

e: [email protected]

tel: +1 480.292.4640

SOURCE Apricorn
The resignation of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Member of Parliament for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, from the Appointments Committee of Parliament (ACP) last Wednesday has heightened growing disagreements among some leading members of the largest opposition party.



Citing both personal and on principle as reasons for his resignation, the surprise move by Mr Ablakwa has sent out mixed signals within the NDC.



Although Mr Ablakwa insists his resignation is on principle, it is believed the real reason for his resignation has more to do with some anger against his colleague NDC MPs on the ACP and the Minority leadership for the approval of Mr Ken Ofori-Atta as Finance Minister.



Before vetting



Long before his vetting, the Finance Minister had come under a barrage of criticisms from the NDC, hinged on numerous allegations and supposed non-performance. Indeed, some supporters of the NDC in particular had expected his outright rejection by the ACP. But even before the whistle could be blown, Mr Ofori-Atta had been approved by consensus, compelling Ablakwa to resign and giving way to various interpretations and speculations.



Some other members of the NDC also called for a radical shift in leadership within the Minority Caucus.



Taking a cue from this and other emerging developments, the leadership of the NDC and the Minority Caucus in Parliament quickly arranged a meeting to iron out any differences that were going to frustrate the forward march of the party.



Excessive partisanship



Did Parliament really err in approving Ofori-Atta as Finance Minister or we were simply observing excessive partisanship at play?



The General Secretary of the NDC, Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, had given reasons the Minority Caucus on the ACP approved Ofori-Atta as Finance Minister. In multiple interviews, he said there was a consensus within the NDC's hierarchy that the Minority Caucus approve Ofori-Atta as to clear his mess because, in their estimation, he had performed abysmally and keeping him at the helm of affairs at the sensitive position would inure to the benefit of the opposition party in the 2024 elections.



Minority leader



The Minority leader, Mr Haruna Iddrisu, himself, also mounted a spirited defence regarding the decision of the Appointments Committee to approve President Akufo-Addos Ministerial nominees.



Addressing the House shortly before the Parliament went on Easter recess, he explained, We (the Appointments Committee) have acted in accordance to the law and we have acted in accordance to the 1992 Constitution.



He insisted that the 26-member Committee, particularly members of the NDC, meticulously interrogated the nominees as stipulated by law.



Principled stand



Inferring from the explanations given by Mr Nketiah and Mr Iddrisu, where lies Ablakwas principled stance? Was Ablakwa just being populist?



In this country, many people do not resign from their privileged positions on the basis of principles. For this reason, I respect and applaud the likes of Ablakwa for choosing to resign as a matter of principle. However, following from his resignation, many other people from across the political divide have described the move as a rushed one and are questioning the substance of that principle.



Be it as it may, could Ablakwa have gone about growing developments within his party differently and achieved a united outcome? Or is it the case that by his surprise move, he had simply shot himself in the foot, considering the fact that he is a young politician with a very bright future?



Only time will tell for being the lone ranger standing.



While others may commend him for his decision to resign, Ablakwas action could also be interpreted to mean that he cannot be trusted with a leadership position. That is because in the midst of challenges or troubles, he can easily abandon the ship.



This is one thing those seeking leadership positions must begin to look at. In the midst of challenges, they must stand together.



Expectations



For Ofori-Atta, in spite of all the brouhaha surrounding his approval, another great opportunity has been given him by President Akufo-Addo to offer the nation and its citizens good governance, as well as protect the public purse. It's time to move the people along the path of development.



The ball is in his court as the Finance Minister and he must work to escalate the process of efficiency in the management of the economy. There is no denying the fact that a lot more needs to be done to guarantee democratic accountability, the creation of jobs for the teeming unemployed and a dedicated funding source to deal with sanitation matters.



He is also expected to help reduce the debt level in the economy and position the country as a beacon of hope.



These are the wishes of many people and he cannot fail them.



Presidents charge



The President did not mince words when he reminded Ofori-Atta that despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Ghanas economy was one of the few in the world that recorded positive growth last year, and that ultimately what the people of Ghana expected was a visible improvement in their standard of living.



The Minister of Finance cannot and should, therefore, not lose sight of the Presidents caution by ensuring an increase in real wages for working people, enhancement of living standards and a rise in profits for all businesses.

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.

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A group of young women arrested in Dubai for taking part in a nude photoshoot will be deported, authorities said.

The group, thought to include around up to 14 women, were arrested for falling foul of the Emirate's strict decency laws after footage of them posing naked on a balcony in the Dubai Marina area were posted online.

All could have faced fines and prison sentences of up to six months for breaching the UAE's public decency law but Dubai's attorney general on Tuesday said they would instead be deported.

Eleven of the women involved are Ukrainian citizens, the country's ministry of foreign affairs confirmed. Oleg Nikolenko, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian ministry, said the women were detained "due to violation of the norms of public morality".

Neither Ukraine or the UAE have confirmed any of the womens identities.

Read more:

The swift deportation is rare for the legal system in Dubai, such cases typically go to trial or are otherwise adjudicated before deportation.

A Russian man was also arrested in connection, though it remains unclear if he was the photographer or someone who captured footage from a nearby balcony and shared it online.

Many of the models had previously travelled together for a Playboy Ukraine photoshoot, according to The Times.

Vlad Ivanenkoe, the magazine's editor-in-chief, said he did not know anything about the Dubai shoot.

Dubai police said the group had been arrested over "indecent video" that contravened Article 361 of the Federal Penal Code in the UAE.

Announcing the arrests on Saturday, police warned against "such unacceptable behaviours which do not reflect the values and ethics of Emirati society".

The city is a hugely popular destination for social media influencers and models who share pictures from some of the world's most glamorous hotels.

But foreigners have previously been sent to prison for breaching the UAE's strict rules on public behaviour and expression, which are based on Islamic, or Shariah, law.

Last November, the Emirates loosened laws covering alcohol, divorce and cohabitation for unmarried couples, in an attempt to make the country more attractive to foreign investment and tourism.

But laws covering public debauchery remain in the Federal Penal Code. The possession and sharing of pornographic material is also punishable with prison time and large fines.

Additional reporting by agencies
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-06 21:00:13|Editor: huaxia

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Aerial photo taken on July 13, 2020 shows an expedition vessel in the South China Sea. (Xinhua/Zhang Liyun)

BEIJING, April 6 (Xinhua) -- China urges the Philippines to stop baseless allegations on the South China Sea issue, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Monday.

It was reported that Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana urged the Chinese vessels that are still around the Niu'e Reef to leave early. Philippine Foreign Ministry also said that, based on the South China Sea arbitration and so-called award, the Philippines denies that the Niu'e Reef and its adjacent waters are traditional fishing grounds for Chinese fishermen.

In response, spokesperson Zhao Lijian said the Niu'e Reef is part of China's Nansha Islands and provides shelter from the wind for Chinese fishing boats traditionally. So it is normal for Chinese fishing ships to shelter near the reef from rough sea conditions.

He noted that the award from the South China Sea Arbitration Tribunal is illegal and invalid. He said China does not accept or recognize it and firmly opposes any claims and actions based on the award. China's sovereignty, rights and interests in the South China Sea conform to international law.

He said the Philippines attempted to use an illegal and invalid ruling to deny this sovereignty and rights in the South China Sea. It violated the United Nations Charter and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

It is hoped that the Philippines will take an objective and correct view and immediately stop baseless allegations to avoid negative impacts on bilateral relations and peace and stability in the South China Sea, Zhao said. 
Anthony Brett Banks, 30, formerly of Kannapolis, N.C., was sentenced by Judge Curtis L. Collier, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee at Chattanooga on Wednesday. As part of the plea agreement filed with the court, Banks agreed to plead guilty to a superseding indictment charging him with one count of transportation of child pornography, and one count of causing another person to transport and ship child pornography in interstate commerce.

Banks was sentenced to 480 months in prison, followed by 10 years of supervised release. Banks will be required to register with state sex offender registries and comply with special sex offender conditions during his supervised release.



The defendant sexually abused his 9-month-old biological daughter, created digital videos of the abuse, and traded several of the images with someone he met in an online room dedicated to sexually abusing animals. The person with whom the defendant swapped images was located in the Eastern District of Tennessee.

The US Attorneys Office, along with its law enforcement partners, is committed to apprehending child sex predators wherever they operate," said Acting United States Attorney Francis M. Hamilton III. "Todays sentence sends a strong message to sexual predators and demonstrates our commitment to protecting the communitys most vulnerable victims.

Each year, millions of children fall prey to sexual predators, said Homeland Security Investigation Nashville Special Agent in Charge Jerry C. Templet, Jr. HSI agents make it a top priority to protect vulnerable children from victimization by working with their law enforcement partners to investigate predators involved with the production, distribution and possession of child sexual abuse material and ensure they are held accountable for their heinous actions. I commend our agents for their tireless efforts in this case, which resulted in a guilty plea and a lengthy federal prison sentence for the offender.

The criminal indictment was the result of an investigation by the Hamilton County Sheriffs Office, HSI, and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation. This investigation was led by Task Force Officer Ed Merritt and Special Agent Dave Nalley of HSI and Special Agent Chris Munden of the NC SBI.

Assistant United States Attorney James T. Brooks represented the United States. This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006, by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by the United States Attorneys Offices and the Criminal Divisions Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, PSC marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims.

For more information about PSC, please visit www.justice.gov/psc. For more information about internet safety education, please visit www.justice.gov/psc/resources.html and click on the tab "resources.
Where do we go next? What do we do now?
When you enter an open house without your agent or broker, you have no representation and have placed yourself in a vulnerable position. The pleasant and seemingly helpful open house host is not there to represent your best interest. They are there to represent the seller's best interest.

Spring brings April showers, May flowers, and, of course, more open houses throughout the United States.

The home-buying advocates from the nonprofit National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents (NAEBA) encourage prospective homebuyers to retain dedicated, loyal representation before venturing out to open houses.

"Every buyer deserves an agent working exclusively for them on any property," said Lynn Spiegel, an exclusive buyer agent with Buyer's Edge, a real estate company serving the Greater Washington, DC area. "Should buyers visit an open house unrepresented, it is very likely they will wind up with a dual agency situation."

Dual agency occurs when one real estate agent or real estate brokerage represents both the home buyer and home seller in the same transaction. This arrangement is beneficial to the agent and real estate brokerage because they likely will receive a percentage of both sides of the sales prices.

'When you enter an open house without your agent or broker, you have no representation and have placed yourself in a vulnerable position," Ken Reid, the owner of Buyers Brokers of Arizona, said. "The pleasant and seemingly helpful open house host is not there to represent your best interest. They are there to represent the seller's best interest. They are there to sell you their client's home and collect information that will put their client in a better position to negotiate should you decide to make an offer on the home."

NAEBA members warn that casual conversation with a seller's agent at an open house may result in homebuyers revealing information that will be detrimental to their negotiating position.

"Agents like to talk and ask lots of questions to the people coming into the home," said Kad Mendoza, owner at exclusive buyer brokerage Mendoza Realty, which serves the Greater Atlanta area. "They might seem friendly and harmless, but their job is to sell the home at the best terms for their client. As the buyers let their guard down and speak freely, there is a good chance that they will divulge information that can negatively affect future negotiations."

A buyer agent is an essential set of other eyes looking at a home with their buyer clients' best interests in mind. Someone needs to see past the fancy kitchen and lush landscaping.

"Homebuyers often don't know what they should be looking at beyond layout, design, and decor," said exclusive buyer broker James Deskins, owner of The HomeBuyer's Advocate in Columbus, OH. "We are looking for the issues that will cost the buyer a bundle after moving in or that will potentially impact resale. Our loyalty is to the homebuyer, not the seller. We will provide a straightforward assessment of the property."

If possible, experienced homebuyer representatives suggest viewing a home privately with your buyer agent.

"Having other people in the home makes it very difficult to talk openly about the good points and bad points of a home," said Jon Boyd, owner of The Home Buyer's Agent in Ann Arbor, MI. "You shouldn't be saying nice things where the listing agent or other buyer groups might hear you, and at the same time, you can't be brutally honest where someone might hear you and take offense."

In many areas across the country, the spring 2021 housing market is red hot. Real estate inventory in many places is near or at historic lows, causing competition for homes. That competition has lead to rising home prices. Home-buying consumers definitely need guidance navigating this complex market for home buyers.

About NAEBA: Members of the National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents (NAEBA) believe there is a better way of working in the real estate industry. NAEBA members voluntarily dedicate their careers to exclusively representing home buyers, providing fiduciary-level duties to protect home-buying consumers.

Exclusive buyer agents are 100 percent loyal to home buyers 100 percent of the time and work at real estate brokerages that do not ever represent home sellers. NAEBA members are true buyer agents.

NAEBA members do not accept listings, advertise properties for sale, or represent home sellers; therefore, its members avoid the conflicts of interest common at traditional real estate companies, which attempt to represent both buyers and sellers in the same transaction.

Consumer advocates created NAEBA in the mid-1990s to fill the void faced by homebuyers and start a professional association that would provide home buyers a higher standard of ethics.

NAEBA also matches home-buying consumers with its members around the country for no additional cost.
Cuckoo wasps are the ultimate bad houseguests, hiding their eggs in other insect's nests and then allowing them to hatch and eat their 'siblings.'

Researchers in Norway were able to identify an entirely new cuckoo wasp based on a single specimen.

To infiltrate the homes of unsuspecting wasps, the killer insects mimic their hosts' pheromonesand to avoid inbreeding, each species of cuckoo wasp chooses a different host.

While the newcomer was visually and genetically almost identical to Chrysis brevitarsis, it spoke a different chemical 'language,' meaning it was an entirely new species

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Researchers in Norway were able to determine Chrysis parabrevitarsis was a new species because it used a different 'language' than a nearly identical species. Cuckoo wasps infiltrate nests by mimicking their victims' pheromones

Like the infamous cuckoo bird, cuckoo wasps deposit their eggs in other creatures' homesin this case, the hives of other wasps and bees.

Their larvae grow faster and hatch before the host's eggs, allowing them to devour their hosts' eggs, larvae and any food the host wasp has provided.

Though cuckoo wasps' shimmery metallic exteriors are eye-catching, even experts have a hard time differentiating different types.

Entomologists have struggled to classify different types of these jewel-toned wasps for more than 200 years, since they appear so similar and even genetic differences are microscopic.

Cuckoo wasps, like this Chrysis sexdentata, despot their eggs in another wasp's nest. Their larvae grow faster and hatch before their host's offspring, allowing them to eat their adopted 'siblings'

Researchers in Norway found themselves stumped by two cuckoo wasps, unable to determine if they were both Chrysis brevitarsis or if one was a new species.

'Normally we distinguish insects from each other by their appearance, but cuckoo wasps are so similar to each other that it makes it difficult,' said Frode degaard, an entomologist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

In the last decade, DNA barcoding has made it easier to distinguish different cuckoo wasps but it's not 100 percent effective.

'In this case, we had two cuckoo wasps with microscopic differences in appearance and very small differences in DNA,' degaard said.

Their solution, described in a new report published in the journal Insect Systematics and Diversity, was to look at the 'language' the two wasps used.

In order to infiltrate their victims' nests, cuckoo wasps learn to mimic the pheromones they emit to communicate with the rest of the hive.

WHY DO WASP STINGS HURT SO MUCH? Wasp stings tend to occur in the later summer months when the colony's social structure is breaking down. At this time, the group mindset is changing from raising worker wasps to raising fertile queens, who hibernate over the winter to start new colonies the following spring. Once the queen has laid eggs, she stops producing the hormone that keeps the colony organized. This leads to the wasps becoming confused and disorientated and they tend to stray towards sweet-smelling human foods, like ice cream and jam. Scare humans aggravate the insects with wafting hands and swatting magazines, making them prone to stinging. It is designed as a self-defense mechanism but, unlike bees, wasps can sting multiple times. The stingers remain intact and are often primed with venom which enters the bloodstream. Peptides and enzymes in the venom break down cell membranes, spilling cellular contents into the blood stream This can happen to nerve cells and these are connected to the central nervous system. This breach causes the injured cell to send signals back to the brain. We experience these signals in the form of pain. There are chemicals in the wasp sting which slows the flow of blood, which elongates the period of pain. Wasp stings can be uncomfortable, but most people recover quickly and without complications. Advertisement

To prevent interbreeding, closely related wasp species often have completely different languages, the authors explained.

Observing the two wasps, they confirmed they infiltrated different hosts and 'spoke' different languages.

'The evolutionary development associated with sponging off another species happens very fast,' degaard said.

'That's why you can have two species that are really similar genetically but still belong to different species.'

Because it's so similar to C. brevitarsis, degaard gave the new species the scientific name Chrysis parabrevitarsis, which means 'the one standing next to brevitarsis'.'

C. parabrevitarsis is so rare that only a single specimen has been found, on a sand dune in the Lista peninsula on Norway's southern tip.

It lives in forest clearings and makes its home in dead trees, according to the authors, and its preferred 'victim' is a subspecies of potter wasp.

For C. parabrevitarsis' common name, degaard coined the Norwegian term 'sporegullveps' or 'golden spore wasps,' because it's characterized by two identical spores on its middle tibiae.

Getting to name a species is a very special honor, he said.

'In a way, you place yourself in the perspective of eternity, because that species will always have that name. There's something very fundamental about it.'

Not all wasps are such moochers: In February, researchers in the UK reported on Neotropical paper wasps that 'babysit' for neighboring nests.

Paper wasps are named for the paper-like substance they create from chewed-up plant fibers to construct their nests.

Scientists at the University of Bristol studied some 20,000 baby paper wasps and their carers from 91 different colonies in Panama.

They found that, as colonies got larger, there was a surplus of labor that allowed some wasps to go off and help smaller colonies short on workers.

Since those distance colonies are still related, helping them thrive ensured the DNA they share with the 'nanny' wasp survives.

'These wasps can act like rich family members lending a hand to their second cousins,' said Patrick Kennedy, a research fellow in the School of Biological Sciences who examines animal altruism.

'If there's not much more you can do to help your immediate family, you can turn your attention to the extended family.'

Kennedy said the behavior was truly unusual 'when you consider that most wasps, ants and bees are extremely hostile to outsiders.'
President Nguyen Xuan Phuc took over duty from former President Nguyen Phu Trong at a ceremony on April 6.

Party General Secretary and former President Nguyen Phu Trong (third, right), former Vice President Dang Thi Ngoc Thinh (second, right), President Nguyen Xuan Phuc (third, left), Vice President Vo Thi Anh Xuan (second, left), and other officials at the duty handover ceremony on April 6

Party General Secretary and former President Trong warmly congratulated President Phuc and Vice President Vo Thi Anh Xuan on their elections to the positions by the National Assembly.

Looking back at two and a half years holding the Presidency, General Secretary Trong said he has done his best to perform the duties and authority of the State President in accordance with the Constitution and the law.

I have been able to complete many tasks, but there remains works that I am not satisfied with, Trong shared with participants at the ceremony.

He thanked former Vice President Dang Thi Ngoc Thinh for outstandingly fulfilling her duties, contributing to the outcomes of the tenure of the Presidency.

President Phuc emphasised that the past Presidency tenure has earned praises from the National Assembly. Despite numerous difficulties, the President has fully exercised his authority and effectively performed his duties in accordance with the Constitution and the law, thus making important contributions to, together with the entire Party, people and army, bringing into the play the patriotic tradition, the will and strength of the national unity bloc, building a clean and strong Party and political system, and continuing to push forward the cause of Doi Moi (renewal).

As the top leader of the Party and the State, Nguyen Phu Trong has always upheld a high sense of responsibility and excellently performed his duties to the Party, the State, the National Assembly and the people, President Phuc said.

The task in this position is entirely new to me, which is a great honour which also comes with great responsibility, he said, adding that he hopes to receive assistance and help from other leaders, former leaders of the Party and State, as well as coordination and support of central and local agencies, in order to fulfill his duties./. VNA

Pham Minh Chinh elected as Prime Minister of Vietnam Mr. Pham Minh Chinh, Politburo member, head of the Party Central Committee's Organisation Commission and deputy to the 14th legislature, was elected as Vietnam's Prime Minister at the 11th session of the 14th National Assembly this afternoon.

Nguyen Xuan Phuc elected as State President The National Assembly (NA) elected Nguyen Xuan Phuc, Politburo member of the 13th tenure and a deputy of the 14th legislature, as State President for the 2016-2021 term on April 5 morning, during the 14th legislatures 11th sitting.
Out of a field of over 80 proposals by organizations in Africa -- many working in collaboration -- The Governance Lab (GovLab) at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, L'Agence Francaise de Developpement (AFD), and Expertise France chose seven projects to receive the #Data4COVID19 Africa Challenge. The challenge seeks to address the social, economic, and health challenges resulting from COVID-19 in Africa through new collaborations around non-traditional, non-statistical datasets.

Following a call for innovative proposals that ran from December 15, 2020 through February 5, 2021, and with the input of a panel of outside data experts, The GovLab, AFD and their partners selected the following:

Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement (Mali) will seek to quantify missed opportunities for COVID-19 screening in vulnerable populations (such as people with HIV).

'Universite Alioune Diop de Bambey (Senegal) will investigate how the crisis impacted the students pursuing higher education and which action can be taken to support them.

Nigeria Centre for Disease and Control (Nigeria) will study the social, economic, and political factors that influence individual knowledge and perception of COVID-19.

Code for Africa (Nigeria, Senegal) will develop an "African COVID-19 Vulnerability Index" in coordination to give leaders up-to-date and granular resources.

The Population Council of Kenya (Kenya, Zimbabwe) will examine how perceptions of COVID-19 and vulnerability to it affect adoption of protective behaviors among different subgroups.

Institut National d'Hygiene Publique (Cote d'Ivoire) will study how organizations can track the spread of acute respiratory tract infections with various datasets.

Data Science Institute - INPHB CI (Cote d'Ivoire) will seek to understand public needs and concerns about government actions taken amid the pandemic.

Though there's been much progress around the world to develop collaborative data ecosystems that can improve people's lives, there are still significant gaps. By funding this new and innovative work, we hope to build the data infrastructure needed to tackle the pandemic and other dynamic societal threats." Stefaan Verhulst, Co-Founder and Chief Research and Development Officer, The GovLab

"Creating an environment to enable multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder collaboration for innovation to provide actionable strategic insights and contextual intelligence that leverage on data to address issues related to the COVID19 crisis is at the core of this initiative", said Thomas Melonio, Executive Director of Innovation, Research & Knowledge at AFD. Peter Addo, AFD data specialist and Director of Datalab, echoed this point, noting, "This initiative is part of AFD's effort to prioritize investments in data and the Fourth Industrial Revolution to contribute to an innovation-led, knowledge based economy in Africa."

"The important number of proposals received is a genuine proof that there is a real need for data related support in Africa," said Beata Suszterova, project coordinator within Expertise France. "The selected proposals are all very relevant and we are looking forward to working with our African counterparts on this data challenge."

In addition to funding, funded projects will have access to a Situation Room, an online meeting place where funded researchers and select data experts can meet to discuss their current work, brainstorm solutions to major challenges, and share findings. This resource will enable peer-to-peer learning and broaden the impact and reach of each individual project. Data-driven professionals interested in providing support can send an email inquiring at [email protected]

AFD and its partners will remain engaged and help manage the Situation Room. It will also communicate outcomes as they emerge. Organizations are encouraged to visit https:/ / datachallenge. africa for more information on forthcoming work.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-08 04:45:30|Editor: huaxia

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CAIRO, April 7 (Xinhua) -- An Egyptian top court sentenced nine people to life imprisonment and acquitted 41 others on Wednesday over charges related to terrorism in Upper Egypt's Sohag province in 2015, state-run Al-Ahram news website reported.

The Court of Cassation, whose rulings are final and unappealable, also sentenced a convict to 15 years in jail, three convicts to 10 years and four others to five years.

A life sentence in Egypt is 25 years.

Dating back to 2015, the case originally involved 190 defendants, and 66 of them are in custody while the rest are fugitives.

Those arrested were hiding in a cave in Sohag with weapons and ammunition in their possession. The prosecution accused them of planning terrorist operations, targeting police personnel and premises, and attempting to topple the regime. Enditem
New Delhi, April 7 : Database company Redis Labs on Wednesday said it has closed $110 million (about Rs 818 crore) in financing led by a new investor, Tiger Global, which brings the company's valuation to more than $2 billion.

The company's Series G round also includes participation from another new investor, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, and existing Redis Labs investor TCV.

Additionally, Tiger, SoftBank, and TCV acquired additional ownership as part of a $200 million secondary transaction.

Founded in 2011 by Ofer Bengal (CEO) and Yiftach Shoolman (CTO), Redis Labs has now raised a net amount of $347 million.

The company said it will continue to invest in expanding its global footprint.

The company's existing investors include Bain Capital Ventures, Francisco Partners, Goldman Sachs Growth, Viola Ventures, TCV, and Dell Technologies Capital.

"We founded Redis Labs with the idea that the future of the database market would be defined by performance, where Redis excels.

"Through the dedication of our team, Redis has become an enterprise-grade data platform to tackle nearly any real-time use case across every industry.

"Partnering with exceptional new investors such as Tiger Global and SoftBank, in addition to the continued belief of our existing investors like TCV, validates our mission to make Redis the de facto real-time data platform companies choose to meet their customers' expectations," Bengal said in a statement.

Redis Labs said closed an "exceptional fiscal year" ending in January 2021 as the need for real-time data collection and analytics has accelerated for every business.
MONTREAL, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Solmax, the global leader in the production of high-quality polyethylene geomembranes for industrial and environmental applications today announces it has reached an agreement with Koninklijke Ten Cate (the Netherlands) on the acquisition of TenCate Geosynthetics, a global provider of geosynthetics and industrial fabrics. Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (CDPQ) and Fonds de solidarite FTQ, Solmax's long-term financial partners, are both investing in this transaction.

"This is the joining of two leading companies in their respective segments, recognized globally for the quality of their products and services, that are bringing their geosynthetic products together under the same roof for the first time. This transaction will increase their products' use in civil engineering, road infrastructure, hydraulic and environmental works," said Jean-Louis Vangeluwe, President of Solmax. "The size, capacity for innovation, geographic reach and resources of the new organization will further enhance the better position of geosynthetics as important products in the construction sector. This is a game changer in the history of geosynthetic manufacturers that develop lesser-known engineered products that are essential to protecting the environment and developing infrastructure projects."

"I am highly pleased to position our company alongside Solmax. We both are among the leaders in our respective segments and now we will join together to create a stronger global leader in geosynthetics. The long-term vision of Solmax around sustainability aligns very well with that of TenCate Geosynthetics, and I am energized to lead my team confidently into this new business environment where we can contribute even more value together", said Wally Moore, CEO of TenCate Geosynthetics.

"CDPQ is proud to further support Solmax in a transformative acquisition that will enhance its position as a global industry leader. Since our initial investment, Solmax has enjoyed rapid expansion through organic growth and acquisitions, resulting in a tenfold increase in size in less the four years. I would like to commend the management team's excellent work, vision and exemplary integration ability, as well as the Board of Directors for its support throughout this growth plan," said Kim Thomassin, Executive Vice-President and Head of Investments in Quebec and Stewardship Investing at CDPQ.

"The Fonds de solidarite FTQ has been supporting Solmax for the past 25 years. Once again, we are proud to invest in the company's international growth, allowing Solmax to strengthen its position as a global leader in the geomembrane market. Thanks to founder Jacques Cote's vision, CEO Jean-Louis Vangeluwe's leadership, and the expertise of its teams, Solmax is proof that protecting the environment and good quality jobs can go hand-in-hand. Following the acquisition of TenCate, Solmax will offer even more innovative products that shield the soil, water and air from toxins and pollutants," said Janie Beique, President and CEO of Fonds de solidarite FTQ.

"I'm delighted to see the family grow again. The addition of TenCate Geosynthetics to Solmax will have a positive overall effect on the geosynthetics sectors. Together, with our products, services and available resources, we will be able to make an impact on the quality of lives of individuals and society as a whole. I would also like to acknowledge the support of CDPQ and Fonds de solidarite FTQ in this transaction. They are two long-term partners that are always there for our business-transforming projects," concluded Jacques Cote, Founder and Executive Chairman of the Board of Solmax.

The financial terms and conditions of the transaction were not disclosed. The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2021 and is subject to customary approvals by regulatory authorities. The agreement is also subject to completion by TenCate Geosynthetics of applicable employee participation procedures, including consultation with its works council in the Netherlands.

Barclays acted as exclusive financial advisor and Jones Day acted as legal advisor to Solmax. Barclays and TD Securities are acting as underwriters, joint bookrunners and joint lead arrangers for the Solmax senior credit facilities. William Blair International Limited acted as exclusive financial advisor and Clifford Chance LLP acted as legal advisor to TenCate.

ABOUT SOLMAX

Groupe Solmax is a worldwide leader in the manufacturing of PE geomembranes and offers high-standard containment solutions. Its products are sold in over 60 countries. They are used by the major industrial companies in the mining, energy, waste management, water, and civil engineering sectors. Solmax's products are used to protect soils from contamination in applications as critical as the landfills of the world's most populated cities to the tailings or heap leach pads of mining operating in environmentally fragile ecosystems.

ABOUT TENCATE GEOSYNTHETICS

TenCate Geosynthetics is a global leader in developing solutions and systems for infrastructure in transportation, building sites, water management, natural resources, and environmental market applications, and is also active in agricultural, horticultural, recreational, and other industrial applications. The company value is delivered to the market through synthetic nonwovens, wovens, geogrids, geotextile tubes and other products, and through the knowledge and experience that support these applications. TenCate Geosynthetics has 9 production locations across the world suppling products into more than 100 countries through a vast network of diverse customers.

ABOUT CDPQ

At Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (CDPQ), we invest constructively to generate sustainable returns over the long term. As a global investment group managing funds for public retirement and insurance plans, we work alongside our partners to build enterprises that drive performance and progress. We are active in the major financial markets, private equity, infrastructure, real estate and private debt. As at December 31, 2020, CDPQ's net assets total CAD 365.5 billion. For more information, visit cdpq.com, follow us on Twitter or consult our Facebook or LinkedIn pages.

ABOUT FONDS DE SOLIDARITE FTQ

The Fonds de solidarite FTQ is investing in a better society thanks to its over 700,000 shareholder-savers. Through its private equity and venture capital investments, the Fonds seeks to have a positive impact on society, namely in the health, environmental and innovation sectors. With net assets of $15.6 billion as at November 30, 2020, the Fonds supported over 3,300 partner companies and more than 220,000 jobs. To find out more, visit fondsftq.com

SOURCE Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec

Related Links

https://www.cdpq.com/


The banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) issued an open letter on Tuesday mentioning its willingness to negotiate with the Central government. The banned outfit also proposed the Centre announce mediators in order to release the captivated jawan.

"In the Bijapur attack, 24 security personnel lost their lives and 31 of them injured. One jawan is in our custody. Four People's Liberation Guerrilla Army personnel lost their lives. We are ready to negotiate with the government. They can announce mediators. We will release him (captive jawan). Police jawans are not our enemies," read the letter.

Meanwhile, the Director General of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) Kuldiep Singh on Tuesday said that security forces fought with 700-750 trained Naxals, broke the ambush and neutralised more than 28-30 Naxals, secured weapons and rescued injured jawans in the Bijapur operation.

Speaking to ANI, Singh said, "It was a search and destroy operation. The forces went to the area on April 3 and searched the area in the early morning light. When they were returning after the search, Naxals who had set up an ambush, started randomly firing at the security forces using countrymade Under Barrel Grenade Launcher (UBGL) and large numbers of light machine guns (LMG) and other automatic weapons. There were approximately 700-750 Naxals with whom forces fought and broke their ambush."

DG also said that Naxals have said that 28 Naxals have died in the operation but since they do not reveal the actual number of casualties, it would be more than that.

When asked about the missing jawan who is reportedly abducted by Naxals, DG said, "One jawan Rakeshwar Singh Manhas is still missing. Rumours are that he is in the captivity of Naxals. Currently, we are verifying the news and planning an operation in that regard."

22 security personnel lost their lives while 31 sustained injuries in an encounter that broke out between security forces and Naxals along the Sukma-Bijapur border on Saturday after a party of jawans were ambushed by Maoists near Jonnaguda village.

(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| 2021-04-08 00:25:44|Editor: huaxia

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ALGIERS, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Algeria on Wednesday reported 125 new COVID-19 cases, raising the total number of confirmed cases in the North African country to 117,879.

The death toll from the virus rose to 3,112 after four new fatalities were added, said the Algerian Ministry of Health in a statement.

Meanwhile, 96 more patients recovered from the disease, bringing the total number of recoveries in the country to 82,096, the statement added.

A donation of Chinese Sinopharm vaccines arrived in Algeria on Feb. 24 to help combat the pandemic. Enditem
FLINT, MI -- Three men will soon walk out of the Genesee County Jail with ServSafe food and beverage certificates, two job offers and a chance at a new life thanks to their graduation from the Genesee County Sheriffs Offices IGNITE program.

Joe Flynn Walker, 33, Delante T. Darrough, 32, and Dallas Whiting-Popielski, 30, all graduated from the program Wednesday, April 7, increasing the total number of graduates who left and will leave jail with a job offer to 18, Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson said.

Swanson and U.S. Dan Kildee, D-Flint Twp., were both in attendance for the graduation ceremonies, which featured surprise visits from family members and a speech from Whiting-Popielski.

The April 7 ceremony was the second graduation after Leon Mize, 50, was the first inmate to graduate from IGNITE in December 2020.

Who wouldve thought that at the Genesee County Jail, an inmate would be given a graduation certificate by the United States House of Representatives, Swanson said. Only in Flint.

The IGNITE (Inmate Growth Naturally and Intentionally Through Education) program was announced in September 2020 by a partnership of the Genesee County Sheriffs Office and Mt. Morris Consolidated Schools.

It is designed to end generational incarceration by giving inmates the option to not only earn their GED, but enroll in college courses, earn a food and beverage certification and obtain a Commercial Drivers License.

Ive seen government programs all across the world  I cannot think of a more impressive display of how to use the tools of government to affect the trajectory of the lives of people, Kildee said. ... Im going to do everything in my power to make sure (Swanson) has the help he needs and the resources he needs to make sure this continues.

Whiting-Popielski, originally from Brooklyn, New York, said the ceremony almost brought him to tears.

When he was incarcerated for a domestic altercation with his girlfriend, Whiting-Popielski was depressed and didnt look forward to the future, he said.

The biggest thing this taught me was how to have self-value and self-worth, Whiting-Popielski said. I have the opportunity to not just leave this place, but to leave as a productive member of society.

To come here and be given the opportunity to change my life  Im eternally grateful.

Whiting-Popielski is planning to stay in the area after he gets out of jail to take advantage of the two job offers.

The Genesee County Community Action Resource Department, which sends out about 2,800 meals each day, and the Starlite Diner & Coney Island both partnered with the sheriffs office to recruit the graduates.

Walker also nearly came to tears during the ceremony when he walked across the conference room to give his mother a hug for the first time in five months.

I knew it was a big deal, but I didnt expect everyone to turn out as they did, he said. There was a lot of encouragement during the ceremony.

Walker doesnt know exactly when hes getting out of jail yet, with a court date scheduled soon, but this ceremonys energized and surprised him. He was brought in after a domestic incident in 2020.

Darroughs mother and sister watched the ceremony via Zoom. Hes getting out of jail Wednesday after a bond violation and plans to immediately take advantage of his two new job opportunities.

Sometime in the future, he wants to open his own soul food restaurant in the city.

I was nervous but getting this certificate  I know I made a mistake being here but I did something with my time instead of sitting on my butt, Darrough said. It gave me a sense of rehabilitation, it gave me skills Ive never had, so this growth and development is helping me out a lot.

IGNITE will soon offer services to any former Genesee County Jail inmates in a new building announced in March. The facility is on track to open at the end of April, Swanson said.

Its goal is to continue to reduce recidivism by offering 12 different programs, counseling services and other support services for those formerly incarcerated.

As of March 26, the IGNITE program had 365 students enrolled and 51 GEDs achieved to date, according to its website.

Read more on MLive:

New facility to provide education for any former Genesee County Jail inmate with a felony

New inmate education program hopes to end generational incarceration

Another goal to achieve: Former Flint inmate describes life anew as community cook
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 19:14:25|Editor: huaxia

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TEHRAN, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Iran's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday confirmed the explosion in the country's commercial ship Saviz, according to the Iranian Students' News Agency.

The Iranian commercial ship was slightly damaged in the explosion in the Red Sea off the coast of Djibouti on Tuesday, Saeed Khatibzadeh, spokesman for the foreign ministry, was quoted as saying.

"Fortunately, no casualties were reported in the accident," said the spokesman.

The civilian ship was stationed in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden to provide maritime security in the shipping line and to fight pirates, Khatibzadeh was quoted as saying.

The ship acted practically as the country's logistics station for technical support in the Red Sea, said Khatibzadeh, adding that its specifications and mission had already been reported to the International Maritime Organization.

The cause of explosion is under investigation, and Iran will take all necessary measures through international bodies in this regard, he added. Enditem
After two deployments to Iraq and one to Afghanistan as a fire support specialist, Matt Noe left the Army and pursued his lifelong dream of owning his own business. He quickly learned just how much work starting a business can be, so he opened a franchise.

We may be familiar with the ever-present fast food franchises that dot landscapes worldwide, but any business or business type can be a franchise. Franchisees start their own business but use a proven, workable system and distribution networks while paying a franchisor for the name, marketing, products, services and quality control.

Franchisors also provide ongoing education and training, along with manuals and business advice to their franchisees. This is the setup that Noe was looking for, but he didnt know what he would open.

I looked at everything that interested me, he told Military.com. I looked at gyms, security companies, everything, but then I found Fastest Labs.

Fastest Labs is a drug and DNA testing company focused on providing fast results. For Noe, this was the perfect business. He liked the company, the profit margins it offered and it was something he thought he would enjoy.

Noe says his military service helped prepare him for the effort and organization required to get started, and he has a few words of advice for anyone looking to get into any business, franchise or not.

1. Contribute to your community.

Opting for a drug and DNA testing company over a restaurant franchise gave Noe the opportunity to continue serving his local area, Columbus, Georgia. Since being motivated is an essential element to being a successful business owner, the tradition of service Noe picked up in the Army continued into his civilian life.

I love doing DNA testing, and I love helping families out here, he says. Opening any business can be a challenge, but every day I walked in the door, I kept that mindset.

(Courtesy of Matt Noe)

2. Understand your industry.

Everyone in the military, including Noe, has undertaken a drug test at some point. So he knows what its like to be on one side of drug testing. He had some idea of what the job would entail. Still, he had room to grow.

DNA testing was a lot to learn, and with everything else, it was like drinking from a fire hose, he says. Youre doing everything from tracking specimens to creating invoices and running the books.

3. Focus on the skills needed, not the daily tasks.

Noe had to take classes and obtain his certification before opening a franchise while running a successful business at the same time. He wasnt concerned with what he had to do in the course of his day. He knew that if he was trained properly, he could get there.

He advises new business owners not to get hung up on technical tasks required and instead focus on the skills needed to be successful. In the military, he learned to solve problems creatively and manage his time, and that sees him through most of the daily tasks.

4. Have the financial talks early on.

Noe left the military in 2011 and started his business in 2020 during a global pandemic. Luckily for him, his fiancee helps with some of his business operations. The couple decided very early to start saving to open their own business and, knowing the work involved, were mentally and financially prepared.

Im fortunate enough to have her here now, Noe says of his fiancee, who helps with the accounting for the business. She helps me out with that and helps the business to grow.

-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on Facebook.

Want to Know More About Veteran Jobs?

Be sure to get the latest news about post-military careers as well as critical info about veteran jobs and all the benefits of service. Subscribe to Military.com and receive customized updates delivered straight to your inbox.
Boris Johnson has hinted that rapid Covid-19 testing could be introduced for travellers, simplifying the current elaborate process of returning to the UK

The prime minister said he wanted to make travel abroad easy and cheap after criticism from the airline industry that current requirements for PCR tests are too onerous.

The boss of easyJet Johan Lundgren over Easter questioned the government's insistence of testing travellers using conventional Covid-19 tests, which are thought to be more accurate than rapid tests.

Speaking on Tuesday Mr Johnson said vaccine passports would be a "fact of life" for people travelling internationally in future.

The government hopes to reopen international travel on 17 May but says whether this happens will depend on the state both the UK and other countries are in.

Read more:

Mr Johnson has said only that he has not "given up on the idea". The government is worried that new Covid variants brought back from abroad could undermine the process made with the UKs vaccination programe.

Asked about the easyJet boss's comments about whether rapid lateral flow tests could replace slower PCR tests in the requirements for travellers, Mr Johnson told reporters he had raised the issue himself at the weekend.

"I do think we want to make things as easy as we possibly can ... The boss of EasyJet is right to focus on this issue, we're going to see what we can do to make things as flexible and as affordable as possible," he said.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 4 June 2021 A couple take photos of each other on a rainbow flag-themed path during pride month at Samyan MRT station in Bangkok, Thailand Reuters World news in pictures 3 June 2021 Sebastien Ogier steers his Toyota Yaris WRC with co-driver Julien Ingrassia during the shakedown at the Rally of Sardegna and fifth round of the FIA World Rally Championship AFP/Getty World news in pictures 2 June 2021 Smoke rises from a fire onboard the MV X-Press Pearl vessel as it sinks while being towed into deep sea off the Colombo Harbour, in Sri Lanka June 2, 2021 Sri Lanka Airforce via Reuters World news in pictures 1 June 2021 A girl runs through a fountain outside a shopping mall on International Children's Day in Beijing on June 1, 2021, a day after China announced it would allow couples to have three children. AFP/Getty World news in pictures 31 May 2021 In this handout image courtesy of the US Coast Guard the Coast Guard Cutter Resolute small boat crew rescues 8 people from the water approximately 18 miles southwest of Key West, Florida AFP/Getty World news in pictures 30 May 2021 A fishing boat sails in the sea-snot covered Marmara sea near Istanbul, Turkey EPA World news in pictures 29 May 2021 Smoke billowing from the Singapore-registered container ship MV X-Press Pearl, which has been burning for the tenth consecutive day in the sea off Sri Lanka's Colombo Harbour, in Colombo Sri Lanka Air Force/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 May 2021 Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis accompanied by his dog Peanut welcomes European Council President Charles Michel at the Maximos Mansion in Athens, Greece Reuters World news in pictures 27 May 2021 A man waits to receive a dose of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine, in the rooms of the Claudia Comte exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Castello di Rivoli near Turin AFP/Getty World news in pictures 26 May 2021 A girl, with her face painted with the colours of the opposition flag, looks on during a demonstration against Syria's President Bashar al-Assad and presidential elections, in the opposition-held Idlib, Syria Reuters World news in pictures 25 May 2021 A Buddhist monk climbs atop a giant statue of Buddha, to wash and decorate on the eve of Buddha Purnima, a holiday traditionally celebrated for Buddha's birthday also known as Vesak celebrations, in Bhopal AFP/Getty World news in pictures 24 May 2021 Lava from the eruption of Mount Nyiragongo cuts through Buhene north of Goma, Congo AP World news in pictures 23 May 2021 Cyclists at the start of the 15th stage of the Giro dItalia, a 147km race between Grado and Gorizia AFP/Getty World news in pictures 22 May 2021 Swiss Guards take their position prior to the arrival of the European Commission President at San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican for a private audience with the Pope AFP/Getty World news in pictures 21 May 2021 A dog that has been trained to sniff out the coronavirus disease, screens a sweat sample at Chulalongkorn University, in Bangkok, Thailand Reuters World news in pictures 20 May 2021 Ferrari's Carlos Sainz Jr in action during a F1 practice session at the Circuit de Monaco in Monte Carlo Reuters World news in pictures 18 May 2021 Horse-drawn carriages drive through the mudflats near Cuxhaven, northern Germany dpa via AP World news in pictures 17 May 2021 Kanoya Onishi in action during the Cycling BMX Free Style of Tokyo 2020 Olympics test event at Ariake Urban Sports Park in Japan EPA World news in pictures 16 May 2021 Rescuers carry Suzy Eshkuntana, 6, as they pull her from the rubble of a building at the site of Israeli air strikes, in Gaza City Reuters World news in pictures 15 May 2021 A ball of fire erupts from the Jala Tower as it is destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza city AFP/Getty World news in pictures 14 May 2021 Muslims offer Eid al-Fitr prayers inside the Baitul Mukarram Mosque in Dhaka, Bangladesh AP World news in pictures 13 May 2021 Muslim girls ride on a mini train after attending the Eid Al-Fitr prayer that marks the end of the Holy month of Ramadan at Uhuru Park in Nairobi, Kenya AFP/Getty World news in pictures 12 May 2021 Israeli artillery fire as the escalation continues between Israeli army and Hamas at the Gaza Border EPA World news in pictures 11 May 2021 Maya Nakanishi competes in the womens long jump - T64 category during a para-athletics test event for the 2020 Olympics at the National Stadium in Tokyo AFP/Getty World news in pictures 10 May 2021 A Palestinian man helps a wounded fellow protester amid clashes with Israeli security forces at Jerusalems Al-Aqsa mosque compound, ahead of a planned march to commemorate Israels takeover of Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War AFP/Getty World news in pictures 9 May 2021 Falconer Giovanna Piccolo performs with her Eurasian eagle-owl at 'Roma World' theme park, during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in Rome Reuters World news in pictures 8 May 2021 Las Vegas, Nevada, USA; Vegas Golden Knights goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury (29) is introduced as a starter against the St. Louis Blues at T-Mobile Arena. USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 6 May 2021 Buddhist monks and believers attend a lantern parade in celebration of the upcoming birthday of Buddha at a temple in Seoul, South Korea Reuters World news in pictures 5 May 2021 Russian MiG-29 jet fighters of the Strizhi (Swifts) and Su-30SM jet fighters of the Russkiye Vityazi (Russian Knights) aerobatic teams fly in formation over the Cathedral Square of the Kremlin in Moscow during a flypast rehearsal for the WWII Victory Parade AFP/Getty World news in pictures 4 May 2021 An elevated metro line collapsed in the Mexican capital on Monday, leaving at least 23 people dead and dozens injured as a train came plunging down, authorities said AFP/Getty World news in pictures 3 May 2021 Lightning bolts strike buildings during a thunderstorm in Bangkok AFP/Getty World news in pictures 2 May 2021 Samaritan worshippers arrive to take part in a Passover ceremony on top of Mount Gerizim, near the northern West Bank city of Nablus AFP/Getty World news in pictures 1 May 2021 A Gilet Jaune, or yellow vest, protestor stands in front of a burning barricade holding his hand up with an inscription calling for President Macron to resign as May Day Protest turn violent near Place de la Republique in Paris, France Getty World news in pictures 30 April 2021 A demonstrator from the Rio de Paz human rights activist group digs a symbolic grave in front of rows of bags symbolising bodybags on Copacabana beach, during a protest against the Brazilian governments handling of the coronavirus pandemic, in Rio de Janeiro AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 April 2021 An aerial picture shows dead carp fish flushed to the shores of al-Qaraoun reservoir in Lebanons Western Beqaa District in the countrys east. Tonnes of fish have washed up dead on the shoreline of the highly polluted artificial reservoir in eastern Lebanon in recent days AFP/Getty World news in pictures 28 April 2021 Health workers wearing PPE attends to coronavirus patients inside a banquet hall temporarily converted into a covid care centre in New Delhi AFP/Getty World news in pictures 27 April 2021 The full moon, known as the Super Pink Moon rises behind the Statue of Liberty in New York City, Reuters World news in pictures 26 April 2021 Balinese people lay wreaths with names of the crew on board the sunk Indonesian Navy submarine KRI Nanggala during a prayer at the sea near Labuhan Lalang, Bali, Indonesia EPA World news in pictures 25 April 2021 An Ethiopian Orthodox Christian worshipper walks around the Edicule, the place believed to be where Jesus Christ was buried, during Palm Sunday celebrations at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem AFP/Getty World news in pictures 24 April 2021 Fans of Wuhan Three Towns FC cheer for their team during the 1st round match Wuhan Three Towns FC and Beijing Institute of Technology FC during Chinese Football League One in Wuhan, China Getty World news in pictures 23 April 2021 A girl prays in front of the Dome of the Rock, in the compound known to Muslims as Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount, in Jerusalems Old City, on the second Friday of the holy month of Ramadan, as coronavirus restrictions ease around the country, in Jerusalem Reuters World news in pictures 22 April 2021 People walk through the art work 'THE SPIRITS OF THE PUMPKINS DESCENDED INTO THE HEAVENS' by Yayoi Kusama, during the press preview of a retrospective exhibition of the Japanese artist at the Martin Gropius Bau museum in Berlin, Germany AP World news in pictures 21 April 2021 Hungary's Sara Peter competes in the Women's floor qualifications during European Artistic Gymnastics Championships at the St Jakobshalle, in Basel AFP/Getty World news in pictures 20 April 2021 South Korea university students gets their heads shaved during a protest against Japan's decision to release contaminated water from its Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea, in front of the Japanese embassy, in Seoul Reuters World news in pictures 19 April 2021 A spectator wearing a football jersey of Argentina's forward Lionel Messi attends the ATP Barcelona Open tennis tournament singles match between Japan's Kei Nishikori and Argentina's Guido Pella at the Real Club de Tenis in Barcelona AFP/Getty World news in pictures 18 April 2021 People raise their fist during a demonstration near the George Floyd Memorial in Minneapolis, Minnesota AFP/Getty World news in pictures 17 April 2021 Security personnel stand guard outside a polling station during the 5th phase of West Bengal's state legislative assembly elections in Kolkata AFP/Getty World news in pictures 16 April 2021 Palestinians take part in the first Friday prayers of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, Islam's third holiest site, in Jerusalem's Old City AFP/Getty World news in pictures 15 April 2021 A firefighter inspects the site of a car bomb attack in Sadr City district of Baghdad, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 14 April 2021 This picture shows the 100 days countdown till the start of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games displayed on the illuminated Tokyo Skytree in Tokyo on April 14, 2021 AFP/Getty

"I do want to see international travel start up again. We have to be realistic... we can't do it immediately. But that doesn't mean that we've given up on May 17."

Lateral flow tests are becoming more established in the UK, with the government from this Friday relying on them for mass population testing.

In that context the government says it believes false positive results from the quicker tests are rare, at fewer than one in every 1,000 lateral flow tests.

The government is currently wrestling with the question of vaccine passports for international travel and domestic events. Mr Johnson has said he believes ceritifcates marking testing, immunity, and vaccination status will be part of international travel as the world reopens from the current wave.
Syndicated loans in the Mena region picked-up significantly after the start of the pandemic, with issuance volume increasing by almost 150% from $8.7 billion to $25.3 billion in the first quarter (Q1) of 2021, said Bloomberg in a new report.



HSBC managed to secure first place, after coming in at second place in Q1 2020 and 2019 in the role of bookrunner, and managing to beat First Abu Dhabi bank under the same role by a margin of nearly $40 million, according to the latest EMEA Capital Markets Tables, representing the top arrangers, bookrunners and advisors across various deals including syndicated loans, bonds, equity and M&A transactions in the first quarter 2021.



Saudis Public Investment Fund was the biggest deal on the Mena borrower loans table with $15 billion, with nearly 14 major banks taking part. The region also saw its first sustainability linked loan of $1.75 billion raised by Emirates NBD, being the third largest deal in the region, after the Ministry of Finance Oman deal of $2.20 billion.



Bonds and sukuks: 2021 had a steady start in the Mena bonds and sukuk environment, with volumes increasing by 100% to $41.1 billion, the highest Q1 on record. The second highest volume on record was Q1 2019, with volumes of $35.9 billion. HSBC surpassed Standard Chartered this quarter, moving up to the top underwriter in the region. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been the top issuer in the region, issuing about $7 billion worth of international bonds, contributing about 40% of total Mena Bonds volume.

Global sukuks and Islamic financing: Total volumes increased by 7.1% compared to Q1 2020. Emirates NBD has secured a position amongst the top 10 banks as manager/book runner, racing up by 14 places. Riyad Bank, HSBC and Warba bank are among the local banks that secured positions among top 10 managers and bookrunners.



The ISDB Corporate bond and the NCB tier 1 sukuk are the top two deals that have led to a combined increase of $3.75 billion in volumes this quarter. In the loans space, we also saw a first issuance from ICD Brookfield undertaking a loan of AED2.3 billion ($626 million) in January 2021.



Bloombergs league tables are a one-stop shop for constant and timely access to the most comprehensive information available on capital markets representation.  TradeArabia News Service
She regularly sends temperatures soaring with her sizzling snaps.

And Demi Rose put on a typically jaw-dropping display as she posed topless in a PrettyLittleThing skirt for a new photoshoot on Wednesday.

The model, 25, left almost nothing to the imagination in the sexy snap, as she posed in just the nude skirt and a pair of heels.

Wow! Demi Rose put on a typically jaw-dropping display as she posed topless in a PrettyLittleThing skirt for a new photoshoot on Wednesday

The Instagram sensation wore her blonde locks in loose beachy waves and sported a full face of make-up in a neural pallet.

It comes after she marked Easter weekend with a pair of sizzling Instagram snaps.

Demi hopped up onto the kitchen counter of her Ibiza home for the snap, going bra-free in an open white shirt which she tied stylishly into a knot.

With her brunette hair swept up into a bun as she peeled an orange, Demi teamed her shirt with nothing but a pair of tropical bikini bottoms.

Stunning: It comes after she marked Easter weekend with a pair of sizzling Instagram snaps

The barefoot beauty opted for glam makeup and captioned her snap: 'An Easter weekend morning. I just want to say I love you Jesus. Thank you for all you did for us - an admirer.'

Demi has been posting a slew of scantily-clad snaps while enjoying the sunny climes of Ibiza.

On Tuesday, the star put on another sizzling display on Instagram as she posed topless in white tie-up corset for a photoshoot with PrettyLittleThing.

The buxom model put on a very racy display as she covered her ample cleavage with a bouquet on flowers.

The mesh corset highlighted Demi's tiny waist as she posed up a storm in matching white knickers.

Sizzling: The model set pulses racing as she hopped up onto the kitchen counter of her Ibiza home for the snap, going bra-free in an open white shirt which she tied stylishly into a knot

Racy: Demi has been sharing a slew of snaps from her sunny travels in recent months  including trips to the Maldives and Tanzania

Demi has been sharing a slew of snaps from her sunny travels in recent months  including trips to the Maldives and Tanzania.

Last week the Demi looked sensational as she posed up a storm in a tiny white bikini top, leaving the straps untied and garment precariously placed over her ample assets.

Demi flaunted her killer physique in a pair of purple and white tracksuit bottoms, making sure to showcase her taut midriff as she snapped a selfie.

The brunette beauty wore her long locks down, letting them cascade over her toned frame and flow into a gentle curl.

Despite her confident display, the Wolverhampton-born beauty recently spoke to MailOnline about how she shot to stardom at the age of 14 after being bullied in school - before going on to sign for a modelling agency at the age of 18.

Demi recalled: 'I was bullied in school, I wanted to make friends outside of it so I ended up spending a lot of time online.

'I was even interested in virtual reality as a kid, I was always on the computer and then MySpace came around and I found my calling.'
Tuesday's talks included a meeting of the remaining parties to the original deal -- Iran, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia -- in a group called the Joint Commission, chaired by the European Union. The United States did not attend.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018, prompting Iran to steadily overstep the accord's limits on its nuclear program designed to make it harder to develop an atomic bomb -- an ambition Tehran denies.

European intermediaries have started shuttling between Iranian and U.S. officials in Vienna as they seek to bring both countries back into compliance with the accord, which lifted sanctions on Iran in return for curbs to its nuclear program.

Iran and world powers held what they described as "constructive" talks on Tuesday and agreed to form working groups to discuss the sanctions Washington might lift and the nuclear curbs Tehran might observe as they try to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.

While neither Washington nor Tehran say they expect any quick breakthroughs from the talks, both they and the EU described the early exchanges in positive terms.

"Constructive Joint Commission meeting. There's unity and ambition for a joint diplomatic process with two expert groups on nuclear implementation and sanctions lifting," EU chief coordinator Enrique Mora said on Twitter. "I will intensify separate contacts here in Vienna with all relevant parties, including U.S.," he added.

The two expert-level groups have been given the task of marrying lists of sanctions that the United States could lift with nuclear obligations Iran should meet, and reporting back on Friday, when the Joint Commission will meet again.

"The talks in Vienna were constructive ... our next meeting will be on Friday," Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Abbas Araqchi told Iranian state television.

"It is a welcome step, it is a constructive step, it is a potentially useful step," State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters in Washington, even as he repeated the U.S. expectation that the indirect talks would be "difficult."

A resolution of the nuclear issue could help ease tensions in the Middle East, notably between Iran and Israel, as well as with U.S. Sunni Arab allies such as Saudi Arabia, who fear the possibility of Shi'ite Iran obtaining nuclear weapons.

In a possible sign of such strains, an Iranian cargo ship came under attack in the Red Sea, Al Arabiya TV reported, citing unnamed sources, and semi-official Iranian news agency Tasnim said the vessel was targeted by a limpet mine. Al Arabiya cited its sources as saying the ship was attacked off Eritrea and was affiliated with Iran's Revolutionary Guards but gave no evidence to support the assertion.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, U.S. officials told Reuters the United States did not carry out such an attack.


A western Sydney store manager who allegedly imported 25 kilograms of methamphetamine and cocaine concealed in electronic motors and pool pumps to his work is facing life behind bars if convicted.

The investigation, known as Operation Joffre, began in September last year after ABF officers noticed two parcels from Italy each containing five kilograms of cocaine and three consignments from America containing 20 kilograms of methamphetamine.

Authorities will allege the packages containing the drugs were addressed to Nathen Mallard at his work address. Credit:AFP

Authorities will allege in court that Nathen Mallard, 35, used his position as a store manager to have the drugs delivered to his workplace in Silverwater. Authorities say the business had no knowledge of Mr Mallards alleged activities.

In mid-September 2020, AFP officers executed a search warrant at the business premises in Silverwater, where officials spoke with Mr Mallard. A number of items were seized, including an electric motor.
[April 07, 2021] Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP, a Leading Securities Fraud Law Firm, Announces Investigation of Ubiquiti Inc. (UI) on Behalf of Investors

Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP ("GPM"), a leading national shareholder rights law firm, today announced that it has commenced an investigation on behalf of Ubiquiti (News - Alert) Inc. ("Ubiquiti" or the "Company") (NYSE: UI) investors concerning the Company's possible violations of the federal securities laws. If you suffered a loss on your Ubiquiti investments or would like to inquire about potentially pursuing claims to recover your loss under the federal securities laws, you can submit your contact information at https://www.glancylaw.com/cases/ubiquiti-inc/. You can also contact Charles H. Linehan, of GPM at 310-201-9150, Toll-Free at 888-773-9224, or via email at shareholders@glancylaw.com to learn more about your rights. On January 11, 2021, Ubiquiti disclosed that a breach involving a third-party cloud provider had exposed customer account credentials. On this news, Ubiquiti's share price fell $13.69 per share, or 5%, over the next two trading days, damaging investors. Then on March 30, 2021, the Krebs on Security posted an article entitled "Whistleblower: Ubiquiti Breach 'Catastrophic'" stating that "[n]ow a source who participated in the response to that breach alleges Ubiquiti massively downplayed a 'catastrophic'incident to minimize the hit to its stock price, and that the third-party cloud provider claim was a fabrication." Further, the article quoted a letter from the source to the European Data Protection Supervisor stating "[i]t was catastrophically worse than reported, and legal silenced and overruled efforts to decisively protect customers" and "[t]he breach was massive, customer data was at risk, access to customers' devices deployed in corporations and homes around the world was at risk."



On this news, Ubiquiti's share price fell $27.78, or 7%, to close at $349.00 per share on March 30, 2021. The stock price continued to decline by $50.70, or 14.5%, over the next trading session to close at $298.30 per share on March 31, 2021, thereby injuring investors further. Follow us for updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook.

Whistleblower Notice: Persons with non-public information regarding Ubiquiti should consider their options to aid the investigation or take advantage of the SEC (News - Alert) Whistleblower Program. Under the program, whistleblowers who provide original information may receive rewards totaling up to 30 percent of any successful recovery made by the SEC. For more information, call Charles H. Linehan at 310-201-9150 or 888-773-9224 or email shareholders@glancylaw.com. About GPM Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP is a premier law firm representing investors and consumers in securities litigation and other complex class action litigation. ISS Securities Class Action Services has consistently ranked GPM in its annual SCAS Top 50 Report. In 2018, GPM was ranked a top five law firm in number of securities class action settlements, and a top six law firm for total dollar size of settlements. With four offices across the country, GPM's nearly 40 attorneys have won groundbreaking rulings and recovered billions of dollars for investors and consumers in securities, antitrust, consumer, and employment class actions. GPM's lawyers have handled cases covering a wide spectrum of corporate misconduct including cases involving financial restatements, internal control weaknesses, earnings management, fraudulent earnings guidance and forward looking statements, auditor misconduct, insider trading, violations of FDA regulations, actions resulting in FDA and DOJ investigations, and many other forms of corporate misconduct. GPM's attorneys have worked on securities cases relating to nearly all industries and sectors in the financial markets, including, energy, consumer discretionary, consumer staples, real estate and REITs, financial, insurance, information technology, health care, biotech, cryptocurrency, medical devices, and many more. GPM's past successes have been widely covered by leading news and industry publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Reuters (News - Alert), the Associated Press, Barron's, Investor's Business Daily, Forbes, and Money. This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and ethical rules. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005259/en/

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PHOENIX  Pima County can continue to enforce its face-mask mandates to reduce the spread of the coronavirus in spite of an executive order issued by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey that bars local orders, according to an informal opinion issued by Arizonas attorney general Tuesday.

However, the opinion issued by Attorney General Mark Brnovichs office said the governor could order the state health department to issue rules barring local mandates or ignore the opinion and try to enforce his executive order on his own.

Three Republican lawmakers sought the opinion late last month after Pima Countys health department said it would continue to enforce its mask mandate despite Duceys new order barring local rules. Ducey cited lower COVID-19 cases and rising vaccination rates to end most business restrictions and revoke the ability of cities and counties to issue mask mandates.

The opinion comes on the same day that Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego said she would keep the citys mask mandate in place.

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I stand with the majority of the Phoenix City Council who agree that the governors unilateral decision to order cities to abandon mask requirements is a case of significant government overreach, Gallego said in a statement. The governors authority is not without limits.

Ducey has said local mask mandates were rarely enforced. But Pima County health officials argued they were instrumental in getting people to follow the recommendations of public health experts, who said masks are instrumental in limiting the spread of the virus. Flagstaff and Tucson also kept their mandates in place.

The opinion written by Brnovichs solicitor general, Beau Roysden, said the governors executive orders are based on a section of Arizona law outside of the health code, which Pima County is using to enforce its mask mandate. Thats why it is possible for the state health department to issue rules, although those can take time to adopt.

Duceys spokesman, C.J. Karamargin, said his office is reviewing the informal opinion, what impact it has or authority it may assert.

But given local governments inability, ineffectiveness and unwillingness to enforce mask ordinances when they were most necessarily, we believe it is largely inconsequential, Karamargin said.

Attorney general opinions, formal or not, do carry the force of law.

Tuesdays developments came as Arizonas daily rate of additional confirmed COVID-19 cases continued to creep upward while the daily rate of related deaths is down.

The state reported 570 additional confirmed cases and six deaths, increasing the pandemic totals to 845,480 cases and 16,996 deaths, according to the states coronavirus dashboard.

According to Johns Hopkins University data, the seven-day rolling average of daily new cases increased over the past two weeks, rising from 479.4 on March 21 to 631.1 on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the rolling average of daily deaths dropped from 27.4 to 12.2 during the same period.

The number of COVID-19-related hospitalizations continued to hover in the 500 to 600 range, with 546 patients occupying inpatient beds as of Monday, up from 516 on Sunday, the states dashboard indicated.

The number of people in Arizona who have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine rose to nearly 2.4 million, or 33% of the population, according to the dashboard.

The number of infections is thought to be far higher than reported because many people have not been tested, and studies suggest people can be infected with the virus without feeling sick.

___

Associated Press reporter Paul Davenport contributed.
$10m raised to date from OTB Ventures, Credo and high net worth investors

>300% growth expected in year ahead to achieve run-rate revenues in excess of $5m

Experienced senior team extended, with workforce to increase by 30%

Leadership in telecoms, expanding into new markets with first agreement in North America

SEGRON, a leader in the next generation of active testing, today announces the completion of a new round of funding, bringing total capital raised to-date up to $10million. The funding round, led by OTB Ventures and Credo, comes amid significant momentum for the business, having achieved a leadership position in automation services for the telecoms industry. Proceeds from the raise will be used to fund international growth and expand into new industry verticals that are seeing a resurgence of demand and accelerated digital adoption as a result of the progression of the Covid-19 pandemic.

International scale to capture a $35bn market opportunity

SEGRON offers automated solutions to test new digital services in any location, with any device, anytime. SEGRON's leadership position in test automation solutions for the telecoms ecosystem enables operators including Telefonica, T-Mobile Group and Swisscom to ensure optimal service quality for end-subscribers while enabling faster go-to-market for next-generation 5G and IoT services.

SEGRON's success with telecoms operators in the European Union is now attracting attention from a wide array of international players in the global telecoms market. With Covid-19 increasing demand for telecoms services SEGRON has become an attractive partner for telecoms operators facing increased pressures to roll out next-generation networks at pace. This includes expansion into North America with a new agreement with a Canadian telecoms operator. In the year ahead, SEGRON is expecting to expand its global presence further to Middle East and Africa and the Asia-Pacific region.

Expanding from telecoms industry to e-commerce, automotive and consumer electronics

Automated testing also enables businesses undergoing rapid digital transformation to accommodate the growing list of testing requirements to ensure a high-performing user experience. SEGRON's leadership in the telecoms industry has built momentum to expand into e-commerce, automotive and consumer electronics, with the first major OEM announced in the consumer electronics industry today as global handset manufacturer. The advanced AI based testing automation solution helps to keep pace with the mobile devices evolution, ensuring day 1 availability even with pre-released devices for testing automation.

Today's new funding enables SEGRON to further expand into these adjacent industries and deploy automated testing solutions to enhance the end user experience while shortening the time-to-market for new products and services. In the next few years, the Company will focus on AI and anticipates the launch of a new product, Global Service Enabler in April 2021 which helps verify the performance of digital services over international and roaming networks from any location.

With the market dynamics in telecoms and new industry verticals, SEGRON anticipates growing by over 300% in the year ahead to achieve annual recurring revenues in excess of $5m on a run-rate basis.

According to Global Market Insights, the automation testing market is expected to grow at 15% CAGR between 2020 and 2026, reaching an estimated global market value of $35bn.

Hiring new talents for accelerated growth

In conjunction with today's new funding round, SEGRON also announces the appointment of three new executives to the senior management team Jean-Philippe Leloup joins as Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Rita D'Agostino joins as Chief Marketing Officer and Martin Hochmeister joins as Chief Revenue Officer.

Martin Hochmeister joined with leadership experience in technology business environments, most recently with automation business Scanpoint GMBH where he ran sales and marketing as the business scaled-up its growth within Europe. Rita D'Agostino joined SEGRON with international experience in digital marketing and big data. Rita's background is in the automotive industry, with a career spanning Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Kia Corporation and Maserati.

Jean-Philippe Leloup joined SEGRON from IDI Group LLC, an investor in early stage companies playing an active role in business development and value creation. Similar to Rita D'Agostino, Jean-Philippe previously worked in the automotive industry, leading Ferrari's business operations in central and eastern Europe before building Maserati Commercial as a new division within the Italian automaker.

Wireless connectivity in the automotive industry makes SEGRON a highly compelling partner for automotive OEMs looking to adopt technologies ranging from automated robotic assembly lines to self-driving cars. The vast bandwidth and low latency of wireless communication between devices and control systems require continuous and fully automated testing, creating a new market opportunity for SEGRON's automation solutions.

As SEGRON looks to expand its industrial scale in new industries and international markets, it is anticipated that its workforce will increase by 30% by the end of 2021.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210406005984/en/

Contacts:

Rob Mindell Valerija Cymbal

FTI Consulting

T: +44 20 3727 1000
This editorial appears in the April 9, 2021 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

EDITORIAL

Blinken and Pompeo Agree:

Death to Syrian Children

[Print version of this editorial]

April 1The dire situation in Syria is becoming one of the critical junctures in the intensifying battle between the genocidal policies of the British Empire and a new paradigm based on peace through development. After ten years of warfare in Syria, instigated and orchestrated by the Obama Administration with the intention of bombing it into oblivion, arming terrorists to destroy its social and political structure, assassinating its head of state, and looting its raw materialsi.e., precisely what George W. Bush did in Iraq and Barack Obama did in Libyathe nation is teetering on the brink of Hell.

Cardinal Mario Zenari, the Apostolic Nuncio to Syria during these past ten years of war, told the Catholic News Agency on March 25:

Peace, I repeat, will not come to Syria without reconstruction and without economic recovery.... But how long will Syrians have to wait? Time is running out. Many of the people have lost hope. Urgent and radical solutions are needed. About 90% of Syrias population is living below the poverty linethe highest percentage in the world.

There are mile-long queues for a loaf of bread or a gallon of gasoline in Damascus, and electricity availability is down to three hours a day. Although fighting is largely over, millions of refugees are unable to return home, due to unilateral U.S. sanctions, which intentionally prevent any reconstructionsanctions imposed under former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo but continuing under Secretary Antony Blinken. President Trumps expressed intentions to end the illegal and pointless war were flatly rejected by the nations military leaders, who obey the orders of their Commander-in-Chief now only when they agree with them. The only reason Syria even survives as a sovereign state is because Russia intervened, joining in a war against the terrorists and defending the sovereign government under President Bashar al-Assad.

On March 29, the UN Security Council held a forum on the situation in Syria, in which the evil of the war party was on full display. Speaking for war and genocide was President Joe Bidens Secretary of State Blinken, who, as Deputy Secretary of State under Obama, advocated all-out war and regime-change against President Assad. At the UN he had the gall to shed a tear for the urgent needs of the Syrian people that weve heard described so eloquently today. Its clear that those needs, including having enough to eat, and access to medicine, are not going to be met by the Assad regime. Not a soul at that meeting was unaware that the U.S. sanctions are intended to be certain that Assad is unable to feed his people.

As Col. Richard Black (ret.) told the Schiller Institute conference on March 21, Sanctions do nothing but attack the innocent, the poor, the helpless! They are the most cruel and barbaric type of warfare that we can wage.

Responding to Blinken from Russia was Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin:

The reaction of Washington and Brussels to the call of the UN Secretary General to ease and lift unilateral sanctions amid the coronavirus pandemic was, on the contrary, to tighten, in an unprecedented way, the restrictions adoptedbypassing the UN Security Councilincluding the introduction of the infamous Caesar Act in June 2020. Unfortunately, the honorable representative of the U.S. and other Western colleagues spoke about a lot of things in todays speeches, but not the U.S. and EU sanctions and their dramatic negative effect on ordinary Syrians.

Vershinin added:

Reports continue to come in that American convoys are trucking out oil and grain from Syria to Iraq daily, while Syrians are suffering from acute shortage of basic products, including bread and petrol..., while the country is simultaneously suffocated with unilateral sanctions which essentially are a form of collective punishment.

How can a nation claiming to be concerned with human rights impose deprivation, and even starvation, through sanctions and war, upon millions of children in Syria, as well as in Yemen? How can a nation which has killed millions of innocent Muslims in order to achieve regime-change in Iraq, Libya, and Syria, then claim moral purity regarding Islam by declaring China guilty of genocide against the Uyghursas both Pompeo and Blinken have donewhen any one of their representatives need only travel to Xinjiang to see that it is a total lie?

There has been a drastic failure of morality in the trans-Atlantic worldfailing to counter the COVID-19 pandemics course of death, failure of compassion for the victims of their wars and sanctions, failure to address the most profound violations of human rightspoverty and starvationeven within their own countries.

The Schiller Institute and the LaRouche Organization are creating the institutional means through which political leaders and concerned citizens can, and must, act to reverse this evil, and to inspire the world to restore a world worthy of the dignity of man, through international cooperation to restore a love of science, of beauty, of Classical culture and human progress.

This issue of EIR contains the transcripts of the third of four panels, The Indo-Pacific, the Caucasus, Eastern Europe, and Southwest Asia: Pivots for War, or Peaceful Development with the New Silk Road, at the March 20-21 conference of the Schiller Institute, The World at a CrossroadTwo Months into the New Administration, with presentations by political leaders from Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan, as well as from Europe and the United States.
Calgary, Alberta--(Newsfile Corp. - April 7, 2021) - ARROW Exploration Corp. (TSXV: AXL) ("Arrow" or the "Company") is pleased to provide an update with respect to the potential for natural gas production from the Company's 03-26-52-23W5 well located at West Pepper, Alberta.

Potential for Production from West Pepper Well, Alberta

Arrow is evaluating the potential for the tie-in of behind-pipe natural gas from the 03-26-52-23W5 exploration well (the "3-26 Well") located at West Pepper, Alberta during Q3 2021. The Company expects to provide a further update with regards to its plans for the 3-26 Well in the coming months.

In January 2017, the 3-26 Well was drilled by Front Range Resources Ltd. ("Front Range"), the predecessor company to Arrow, to a total measured depth of 5,960 metres (3,689 metres TVD) with a 1,930 metre horizontal leg in the Upper Montney. The 3-26 Well was completed with a 31-stage slick-water frac with an average of approximately 38 tonnes of proppant placed per stage.

Over the initial 48 hours of the 278 hour flow test period, the 3-26 Well flowed at an average rate of approximately 5 MMscf/d of natural gas (0.04% H 2 S) at a flowing casing pressure of 3,778 kPa (548 psi). No natural gas liquids were recovered during the test. Load fluid volumes representing 16% of total load fluid were recovered. Initial results from an injection fall-off test indicated a reservoir pressure of up to 48 MPa. Drilling and completion operations were on time and on budget.

In a subsequent test in May 2017, 3,800m of 2 3/8-inch tubing was run into the well to ready it for production. A static gradient was performed prior to flow testing and the well exhibited reservoir pressure of 43,500 kPa (6,300 psi), representing 14% overpressure. The 3-26 Well was then opened to flow and demonstrated a sustained rate at 7.5 MMscf/d at 16,500 kPa (2,400 psi). The test results are not indicative of long-term well performance or of the ultimate recoveries from the 3-26 Well.

In February 2021, the Company retained the services of an independent oil & gas engineering consultant (the "Consultant") to assist Arrow in preparing an economic analysis ("Analysis") of a potential tie-in of the 3-26 Well.

In summary, the conclusions of the Analysis included:

Estimated on-stream costs of approximately C$1.3 million for a 650 metre tie-in to a pipeline with excess capacity;

An estimated initial production rate of 5.5 MMscf/d from the 3-26 Well;

A payback of approximately 11 months (pre-tax) assuming an AECO natural gas price of C$2.75/GJ; and

No expected natural gas plant capacity constraints.

In summary, the material assumptions and calculations of the Analysis included:

Current capital and operating costs, gathering, processing, and sales information and fees, and regulator and surface land requirements;

Recoverable gas was calculated using volumetric gas-in-place and recovery factors appropriate to Montney tight gas fields with enhanced permeability layer and supported by analogue well performance in the Montney Smoky field;

Capital costs were estimated assuming standalone well costs;

Existing pipeline rights-of-way for the 3-26 Well have expired and will have to be re-surveyed and re-acquired; and

Deposits for gathering and processing fees and refund of any LLR monies was not included in Analysis.

Readers are cautioned that the Analysis was not prepared in accordance with the reserve reporting requirements of National Instrument 51-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Oil and Gas Activities ("NI 51-101").

Resource Report

As per the resource report (the "Resource Report") prepared by GLJ Petroleum Consultants in accordance with the requirements of National Instrument 51-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Oil and Gas Activities ("NI 51-101"), effective as of March 31st, 2017 and announced by Front Range in a press release dated April 6th, 2017, a range of contingent and prospective resource estimates (low, best and high) were prepared by GLJ. The Resource Report estimated Petroleum Initially-in-Place ("PIIP"), both discovered and undiscovered, as well as recoverable contingent and prospective resources over the Pepper, Alberta property.

With respect to that portion of the PIIP that is discovered, there is uncertainty that it will be commercially viable to produce any portion of the resources. With respect to that portion of the PIIP that is undiscovered, there is no certainty that any portion of the resources will be discovered, and if discovered there is no certainty that it will be commercially viable to produce any portion of the resources.

In summary, the Resource Report best estimate gross unrisked contingent resources is 57.6 MMBoe (including 7.5 MMbbl of natural gas liquids). In addition, the Resource Report best estimate of gross unrisked prospective resources is 62.1 MMBoe (including over 8.0 MMbbl of natural gas liquids). The 2016-2017 winter drilling program consisted of two horizontal Montney wells, including the 3-26 Well and the 6-28-52-22W5 horizontal development well located at East Pepper, Alberta (the "6-28 Well"). The Resource Report was based, in part, on the results of the 3-26 Well and the 6-28 Well.

The Company refers readers to the additional information provided below with respect to certain definitions and methodologies used in the Resource Report.

(1) Petroleum Initially-in-Place (PIIP) was calculated in the Resource Report for gas volumes over the Pepper property. PIIP was divided into Discovered PIIP and Undiscovered PIIP, with Discovered PIIP being assigned to lands within two miles of a measurable hydrocarbon test.

(2) Contingent resources are defined as those quantities of petroleum estimated, as of a given date, to be potentially recoverable from known accumulations using established technology or technology under development, but which are not currently considered to be commercially recoverable due to one or more contingencies. Contingent resources have been assigned to lands within 2 miles of the successful test results. There is no certainty that it will be commercially viable to produce any portion of the contingent resources. The estimates of contingent resources involve implied assessment, based on certain estimates and assumptions, that the resources described exists in the quantities predicted or estimated, at a given date, and that the resources can be profitably produced in the future. Actual contingent resources (and any volumes that may be reclassified as reserves) and future production from such contingent resources may be greater than or less than the estimates provided, and variances may be material.

(3) Prospective resources are those quantities of petroleum estimated, as of a given date, to be potentially recoverable from undiscovered accumulations by application of future development projects. There is no certainty that any portion of the prospective resources will be discovered. If discovered, there is no certainty that it will be commercially viable to produce any portion of the prospective resources. The estimates of prospective resources involve implied assessment, based on certain estimates and assumptions, that the resources described exists in the quantities predicted or estimated, at a given date, and that the resources can be profitably produced in the future. Actual prospective resources and future production from such prospective resources may be greater than or less than the estimates provided, and variances may be material.

(4) The contingent and prospective resources have been risked for the chance of commerciality. The chance of commerciality (CoC) is defined as: CoC = chance of development x chance of discovery, where the chance of discovery for contingent resources is equal to 1.0. The summary of the contingent resource risking factor for the Pepper property is as follows:

Maturity Subclass Unclarified

Economic Factor 0.70

Technology Factor 1.00

Development Plan Factor 0.70

Timeframe Factor 0.70

Other Contingency Factor 1.00

Chance of Commerciality 0.34



(5) Column total does not add exactly due to rounding.

The Resource Report was subject to considerable uncertainty due to the scarcity of high quality log data, mostly due to bad hole in the majority of the offsets that were drilled to deeper targets, and a lack of core data in general, with no core analysis available in the silty, tight looking Montney sediments in the area.

The Company cautions that the economic case for the development of the contingent and prospective resources presented herein will be dependent upon favourable results of additional testing and/or drilling in the project area. The early stage of the project necessitates the consideration of risk factors with respect to the Resource Report. Additional well and/or well test data may positively or negatively impact these risk factors.

The contingent resources have been risked for the chance of commerciality, or commercial development, defined as the probability of the chance of discovery and the chance of development. For contingent resources, the chance of discovery is equal to one. The chance of development is the estimated probability that once discovered, a known accumulation will be commercially developed, and has been estimated at 0.34 for the contingent resources. The contingent resources have established technology status.

Contingent resources can be sub-classified based on their project maturity sub-class which help identify a project's change of commerciality. All of the contingent resources identified in the Resource Report have been classified as "development unclarified", which is defined as contingent resources when the evaluation is incomplete and there is ongoing activity to resolve any risks or uncertainties. The contingent resources are located in a region of little Montney development. For contingent resources to be converted into reserves, management needs to confirm productivity for development not immediately offsetting existing wells/tests, and then develop firm plans including timing, infrastructure and the commitment of capital. Confirmation of commercial productivity is generally required before the Company can prepare firm development plans and commit the required capital for the development of the contingent resources. Additional contingencies are related to the current lack of in-field infrastructure required to develop the resources in a relatively quick time frame.

In addition, a portion of the resources have been classified as prospective resources. This accounts for areas of the Pepper property that is not within range of commercially tested wells. In addition to the development risk of 0.34, the prospective resources are further risked for chance of discovery using a factor of 0.90, resulting in a chance of commerciality of 0.31.

About ARROW Exploration

Arrow Exploration Corp. (operating in Colombia via a branch of its 100% owned subsidiary Carrao Energy S.A.) is a publicly-traded company with a portfolio of premier Colombian oil assets that are under-exploited, under-explored and offer high potential growth. The Company's business plan is to expand oil production from some of Colombia's most active basins, including the Llanos, Middle Magdalena Valley (MMV) and Putumayo Basin. The asset base is predominantly operated with high working interests, and the Brent-linked light oil pricing exposure combines with low royalties to yield attractive potential operating margins. Arrow's 50% interest in the Tapir Block is contingent on the assignment by Ecopetrol SA of such interest to Arrow. Arrow's seasoned team is led by a hands-on executive team supported by an experienced board. Arrow is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "AXL".

For further information contact:

Marshall Abbott

Chief Executive Officer

mabbott@arrowexploration.ca

(403) 651-5995

(or)

Max Satel

VP Corporate Development & Investor Relations

msatel@arrowexploration.ca

(416) 904-2258

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV) nor its regulation services provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSXV) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward-looking Statements

This news release contains certain statements or disclosures relating to Arrow that are based on the expectations of its management as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to Arrow which may constitute forward-looking statements or information ("forward-looking statements") under applicable securities laws. All such statements and disclosures, other than those of historical fact, which address activities, events, outcomes, results or developments that Arrow anticipates or expects may, could or will occur in the future (in whole or in part) should be considered forward-looking statements. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of the words "continue", "expect", "opportunity", "plan", "potential" and "will" and similar expressions. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release reflect several material factors and expectations and assumptions of Arrow, including without limitation, Arrow's evaluation of the impacts of COVID-19, the potential of Arrow's Colombian and/or Canadian assets (or any of them individually), the prices of natural gas prevailing in Alberta, the forecast capital costs of tying-in the 3-26 Well, the forecast operating costs associated with the 3-26 Well, the forecast initial production and the subsequent production performance of the 3-26 Well, the expected availability of pipeline capacity to tie-in the 3-26 Well, and Arrow's business plan to expand oil and gas production and achieve attractive potential operating margins. Arrow believes the expectations and assumptions reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable at this time but no assurance can be given that these factors, expectations and assumptions will prove to be correct.

The forward-looking statements included in this news release are not guarantees of future performance and should not be unduly relied upon. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date hereof and the Company undertakes no obligations to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless so required by applicable securities laws.



NOT FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES OR FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/79694
The publisher Simon & Schuster has awarded Mike Pence a two-book deal for an autobiography to be published in 2023.

The former vice president under Donald Trump said his forthcoming autobiography follows the story of my life in public service to the American people, from serving in Congress, to the Indiana governors office and as vice president of the United States, according to the publishers announcement.

Simon & Schusters senior vice president Dana Canedy said the book tells an American story of extraordinary public service during a time of unrivalled public interest in our government and politics.

His revelatory autobiography will be the definitive book on one of the most consequential presidencies in American history, according to a statement.

The announcement follows the publishers cancellation of another Trump-associated official, Republican Senator Josh Hawley, following his objection to the 2020 presidential election results, after the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January, which was fuelled by the false narrative promoted by the former president that the election was stolen from him and his supporters.

Read more:

As a publisher it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and viewpoints, the publisher announced at the time. At the same time we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens, and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat to our democracy and freedom.

Mr Trump criticised his then vice president after Mr Pence said he would not toss out Electoral College votes to secure a win for the administration.

Weeks later, in an op-ed column for The Daily Signal, he expressed doubts over election integrity, citing significant voting irregularities, despite assurance from elections officials across the US about the security of the election, and no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

In the column, he described he deadly riots at the Capitol  during which pro-Trump mobs sought to hang him and target other lawmakers as a joint session of Congress convened to certify election results  as tragic, but added that they deprived the American people of a substantive discussion in Congress about election integrity in America.

Following his departure from the White House, Mr Pence joined right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation as a distinguished visiting fellow.

Foundation President Kay James said in the statement that Mr Pences allegiance to the Constitution and commitment to advancing a conservative policy agenda make him an outstanding fit for The Heritage Foundation.

On Wednesday, Mr Pence launched an advocacy group  Advancing American Freedom  to build on the success of the Trump administration, suggesting the former VP is mulling a run for the GOP nomination for the 2024 presidential race.

Conservatives will not stand idly by as the radical Left and the new administration attempt to threaten Americas standing as the greatest Nation in the world with their destructive policies, he said in a statement announcing the group.

The advisory board includes former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, former economic adviser Larry Kudlow, and Seema Verma, who served as an administrator for Mr Trumps Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The School Committee on Monday approved a $14 million budget for fiscal 2022. PreviousNext

Lenox School Committee Approves Budget, Sees Partial Return to In Person

LENOX, Mass.  Schoolchildren returned to Morris Elementary on Monday as the state ordered schools to begin full in-classroom learning this week.

"We had a fantastic first day back to school," Principal Brenda Kelley said at Monday's School Committee meeting, thanking parents for their patience as the school returned to in-person learning following a three-week closure. Morris had been using remote and hybrid schedules since reopening last fall.

Resumption of classes at the middle and high school levels remain about three weeks away, due to an asbestos remediation issue, though interim Superintendent William Cameron said he definitely anticipates this will occur by the state deadline of April 28.

"We do expect to reopen the building to full time in person instruction the week of April 26," Cameron reported, and that by the deadline "we fully intend to be open for the middle school, and hopefully for the high school as well, for students and families who want their children to return to school."

The asbestos was discovered after a windstorm in late February knocked debris from the ceilings in classrooms, offices and part of the cafeteria  all in the oldest parts of the building. The particulates were determined to be vermiculite, a fire retardant assumed to contain asbestos because it was applied in the 1960s.

The superintendent said the district is working with parents to clarify which students will be in person and which will be continuing remotely. Students have the choice to remain remote through the end of the school year, though Cameron said there is no indication a remote option will be offered in Massachusetts schools in September.

The committee approved a revised budget proposal for the fiscal 2022, representing a compromise reduction of almost a quarter-million dollars from an earlier version brought forward in March.

The new total operating budget of $14,198,717 approved by the committee Monday brings the increase over this year's budget down to 3 percent, compared to an increase of more than 7 percent in the school department's earlier ask.

Assistant Superintendent of Business & Operations Melissa Falkowski said the reductions were arrived at by making cuts of 10 percent to supply line items (such as postage, equipment), a 50 percent reduction in textbook increase, reductions to new hire salaries and complete elimination of the field trip budget for the 2021-22 school year.

"I believe this budget will help maintain the quality of our schools, while maintaining the town's support for this and future budgets," said Committee member Molly Elliot, who had been a proponent of the reduction.

"I was not terribly optimistic that we could get to three, I was thinking maybe we could get to three and a half," said School Committee Chair Robert Vaughan, who congratulated Falkowski and Cameron on the task.

Following the committee's unanimous approval of the expenditures and receipts, Lenox residents will now be asked to appropriate a total of $10,938,717 in fund at town meeting for the FY22 school budget.
By Paige Fry, Chicago Tribune (TNS)

CHICAGO  A 1-year-old boy was in critical condition after being shot in the right temple while in a car involved in a road-rage shooting, according to Chicago police.

Witnesses called police just after 11 a.m. when they heard shots fired on South Lake Shore Drive downtown, police said. A woman was seen getting out of the car with a toddler, and she and the child were taken by an unknown person to Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

The shooting was motivated by road rage, Central District Cmdr. Jake Alderden said at a news conference outside Northwesterns emergency center. The shooter and the victims did not appear to know each other, Alderden said, but the dispute was believed to be over someone not letting another driver into their lane of traffic.

The boy was in a child safety seat in the back seat of the car, a white Lincoln, according to a police report that cited preliminary information. His grandmother was in the front passenger seat and her boyfriend was driving.

A witness told police that an SUV and the Lincoln began driving erratically and an altercation started somewhere between 35th Street and 31st Street on Lake Shore Drive, the report said.

Around Roosevelt Road, someone in the SUV began firing shots at the Lincoln, hitting it several times and hitting the boy, the report said. Another witness said the grandmothers boyfriend returned fire.

Shots were fired for about two blocks in the northbound lanes from the 1100 block of South Lake Shore Drive to the 900 block, Alderden said. Ten 9 mm shell casings were found along those two blocks, the report said.

The child was shot in the head, and the car he was in crashed at Monroe Street, Alderden said. Thats when a good Samaritan driving a gray Tesla took the toddler and woman to the hospital, as well as a man who was in the vehicle.

The grandmothers boyfriend was arrested at Northwestern Memorial Hospital for having a 9 mm Bersa handgun, the report said.

Detectives were investigating whether the gun was legally owned, police spokesman Tom Ahern said.

Police also did not immediately offer details on the vehicle from which the shots that struck the toddler were fired.

The child eventually was transferred from Northwestern to Luries Children Hospital in critical condition, police said.

More: It gives us some peace: Family reacts to arrest in Pa. mothers death during road-rage incident
Asia stocks edged higher at the open, with global markets poised at all-time highs as investors assess the pace of the recovery from the pandemic. Treasuries held gains.

Equity benchmarks in Japan, Australia and South Korea advanced. U.S. futures were in the green after technology companies led a modest decline in the S&P 500 Index on Tuesday, offsetting gains in retailers. The Nasdaq 100 also retreated in low activity. Volume on U.S. exchanges slipped below 10 billion shares for the first time this year.

Oil fluctuated as the International Monetary Fund upgraded its global growth forecast for the second time in three months, countering concerns about flare-ups in Covid-19 infections in parts of the world. The dollar stabilized after dropping against major peers.

Traders are taking heart from the assurance of continued central bank support and an improving growth outlook. The IMF opened its spring meetings with forecasts for the strongest global expansion in at least four decades. Concerns about higher borrowing costs destabilizing the market have also eased, with bond yields subsiding as traders pull their more-aggressive positioning for Federal Reserve policy tightening.

Central banks are continuing to keep interest rates so low so people are looking for some place to put their money where they can get a return," Sarah Hunt, Alpine Woods Capital Investors associate portfolio manager, said on Bloomberg TV. I think thats also why you have stocks priced somewhat for perfection."

The latest U.S. labor-market data showed U.S. job openings rose to a two-year high in February, led by gains in some of the industries hardest hit during the pandemic.

Meanwhile, the fallout from the blowup at Archegos Capital Management is still playing out, as Credit Suisse Group AG unloaded more than $2 billion of shares in the latest block trades stemming from the liquidation of Bill Hwangs fund.

Some key events to watch this week:

 The 2021 Spring Meetings of the IMF and the World Bank Group take place virtually. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell takes part in a panel about the global economy on Thursday.

 The Fed publishes minutes from its March meeting on Wednesday.

 Japan releases its balance of payments numbers Thursday.

 Chinas consumer and producer prices data are due Friday.

These are some of the main moves in markets:

Stocks

 S&P 500 futures rose 0.1% as of 9:07 a.m. in Tokyo. The S&P 500 fell 0.1%.

 Topix Index rose 0.4%.

 Australias S&P/ASX 200 Index rose 0.2%.

 South Koreas Kospi Index rose 0.2%.

Currencies

 The yen was at 109.86 per dollar.

 The offshore yuan was at 6.5460 per dollar.

 The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was little changed.

 The euro traded at $1.1871.

Bonds

 The yield on 10-year Treasuries was at 1.66% after falling four basis points.

 Australias 10-year Treasury yield fell two basis points to 1.76%.

Commodities

 West Texas Intermediate crude was little changed at $59.31 a barrel.

 Gold was at $1,741.98 an ounce.

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Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced they are producing their first Netflix series under their Archewell Productions.

The Netflix series will be about The Invictus Games, which is a tournament for wounded veterans. Prince Harry founded the said practice in 2014, according to a CBS News report.

The docu-series will be featuring some competitors from Invictus Games. It currently has a working title, "Heart of Invictus."

The series will show all service members who have suffered life-changing injuries or illnesses as they prepare for the said game, to be held in 2022.

"Since the very first Invictus Games back in 2014, we knew that each competitor would contribute in their own exceptional way to a mosaic of resilience, determination and resolve," Prince Harry was quoted in a U.S. Magazine report.

Prince Harry said that he could not be more excited for the journey ahead, adding that he is proud of the Invictus community for continuously inspiring global healing, human potential, and continued service.

READ MORE: Prince Harry Is Being Advised to Return Home to U.K. to Bid Prince Philip a Final Goodbye

Deal With Netflix

The couple was reported to have signed in September 2020 a multi-year deal with Netflix to produce documentaries, films, scripted series, and children's programming.

This was eight months after their announcement to decide to step away from their royal duties.

The couple said that making inspirational family programming is important to them, being new parents. They added that Netflix will help them in sharing content that unlocks action.

The project will be directed by Oscar-winning British director Orlando von Einsiedel and produced by Joanna Natasegara, according to a People report.

Prince Harry will also appear in the said docu-series.

Co-CEO and Chief Content Officer of Netflix Ted Sarandos said that Archewell Productions is building an ambitious threshold that mirrors the values and causes that the couple holds dear.

Sarandos added that it has been clear that the Invictus Games hold a very special place in their hearts since he met the couple.

"And I couldn't be happier that their first series for Netflix will showcase that for the world in a way never seen before," Sarandos was quoted in a report.

Invictus Games

The fifth and annual Invictus Games were schedule in The Hague, The Netherlands in 2020. However, due to the pandemic, this was postponed from 2020 to 2021.

This was then rescheduled to 2022, still due to the pandemic.

The annual games started when Prince Harry visited the Warrior Games, which is a competition for wounded servicemen held by the U.S. Department of Defense.

He was inspired by the organization and got the idea to bring it back to the U.K., according to a Town and Country Mag report.

A total of 500 competitors from 18 nations will be participating in the competition.

The participants will be coming from the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Denmark, Estonia, France, Georgia, Germany, Iraq, Italy, Jordan, and New Zealand. There will also be participants from The Netherlands, Romania, Ukraine, Belgium, and the Republic of Korea.

READ NEXT: Royal Family Snubs Prince Harry, Meghan Markle's Offer To Help Search for 'Diversity Czar'

WATCH: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Announce Much-Anticipated Netflix Series -from The Royal Family Channel






Every day, Dr. Leslie Miller of Fairfield thinks about selling her practice to a hospital health system.

Everybody who is in this environment thinks every day of throwing in the towel and joining a hospital, said Miller, a sole practitioner in primary care for 20 years.

The business side is the problem, she said, referring to expensive and time-consuming requirements of medical insurance and government regulations.

Dr. Khuram Ghumman took the unusual route of working in a hospital system first, then going into private primary care practice because he objects to the corporatization of health care. He said conflicts of interest can arise if an owner and its employed physicians have different objectives.

I wanted to be responsible to my patients, Ghumman said.

Nationally and in Connecticut, hospital systems and private businesses are increasingly buying private medical practices and taking over their business operations. American Medical Association statistics show just 46 percent of physicians owned their own practices in 2018, down from 75 percent in 1983.

In Connecticut, hospital health systems range from large groups, such as Yale New Haven Health Services and Hartford Health Care, to systems owned by one hospital, such as UConn Health. They are all non-profit except Prospect CT Medical Foundation, a for-profit company that owns Waterbury, Manchester and Rockville hospitals.

There are other medical systems as well, such as ProHealth Physicians, owned by Optum, a division of the company that owns the insurer United Healthcare. Private equity firms have also invested in medical practices, including orthopedic and emergency medicine groups.

An area of active practice acquisition is primary care, at a time when demand for preventive health care is rising along with an aging population.

Primary care practitioners in hospital systems practices of 30 or more doctors increased from 1,100 in 2016 to 1,441 in 2019 - a 31 percent rise, according to data from the state Office of Health Strategy. At Yale they rose from 368 to 491, (33 percent); Hartford Health Care from 73 to 198, (171 percent); and Middlesex Health System from 32 to 38, (19 percent). The acquisitions include doctors, physician assistants and nurse practitioners.

Hospital health systems say that they provide improved, streamlined and coordinated care because primary care providers and specialists can work together and have easier access to patients medical records.

But studies report that acquisitions are driving up the cost of health care and doctors lose the freedom to manage their own scheduling.

Ghumman, who practices in East Granby, said he spends an hour with patients on physical exams and a half-hour on follow-up visits. I just want to pose the question to physicians: who do you work for? he asked.

Miller said she prefers her autonomy, is comfortable with the way she runs her practice, likes the intimacy of it and the ability to give patients the choice of going to a solo practitioner.

Dr. Andrew Wormser, a New Haven internist affiliated with Yales Northeast Medical Group, said there is some lack of autonomy, but added they still give us enough that we can practice the way we want to.

Wormser is part of the Connecticut Medical Group, established by a group of physicians in the 1990s to pool resources. He explained that a more complex regulatory climate and the resultant need for investment in electronic medical records prompted the sale of the practice to Yale in 2012. Under the arrangement, the 31 physicians are contractors, not employees, but Yale owns the business. The hassles of running the office are no longer there, which is a lot, Wormser said.

C-HIT requested interviews with officials of Yale New Haven Health, Hartford Health Care, Trinity Health of New England and the Connecticut Hospital Association; none were granted. CHA provided a statement, saying: Partnerships between hospitals and health systems and physician practices preserve and expand access to care, support care improvement and often enable new value-based care arrangements.

Isaac Kastenbaum, vice president of the nonprofit Primary Care Development Corporation, said that primary care practices are particularly ripe for acquisition or merger.

Whats required of a primary care practice today is very different from what was required 20 years ago, he said.

Regulatory and insurance requirements necessitate an amount of staffing, technical expertise and capital that independent practices just cant raise by themselves for the most part, or its very difficult, said Kastenbaum, whose organization provides loans and technical assistance to primary care providers.

Financial losses and costs connected to practicing medicine during the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated pressures on private practitioners, said Dr. Gary Price, president of the national Physicians Foundation and a Clinton plastic surgeon. COVID made a bad situation much, much worse, he said.

Independent practices are also threatened because young physicians dont want to run businesses. They want to be employees focused on practicing medicine and having a balanced lifestyle, said Victoria Veltri, OHS executive director.

States Effort: Improve Health Care, Control Costs

The OHS is spearheading a project to increase spending on primary care in an effort to improve health, control long-term health costs, improve access to and quality of preventive care, and address social determinants of health. A 2019 report on 29 states put Connecticut at the bottom of primary care spending, defined as physician care in offices and outpatient settings. The report by the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative and the Robert Graham Center found Connecticut spent 3.5 percent of its health care spending on such primary care between 2011 and 2016.

The states goal is for primary care to account for 10 percent of overall health care spending by 2025. A better-resourced primary care system can create a better outcome for patients and lower overall health care spending over time, Veltri said.

She said that there is growing interest in team-based care to address a range of patient needs. That means that primary care practices could include, for example, social workers and pharmacists in addition to medical practitioners.

Thats how primary care is evolving, she said. Were trying to keep people healthy. Were trying to intercede early in health care issues and address things like social determinants of health, social drivers of health, she said.

This is occurring at a time when shortages of primary care physicians are projected through 2033, new doctors are turning to more lucrative specialties to help pay for medical school debt, and Connecticut is having a difficult time attracting doctors. According to an Association of American Medical Colleges report using 2018 data, Connecticut ranked 41st in the country in retaining doctors who either attended medical school or trained as residents in the state.

Meanwhile, a proposed law would give the state more oversight over medical practice acquisitions by allowing state review for acquisitions of any size, instead of the current minimum of eight physicians. It would also remove the existing presumption of approval.

You could be a Yale or Hartford Health Care or Nuvance and could acquire a practice of seven, another practice of seven, another practice of four, another practice of five and it isnt subject to state review, Veltri said, explaining that lack of review prevents opportunities to limit increases in health care costs. Costs for patients and the Medicare program are higher in hospital-owned practices, according to the Physicians Advocacy Institute.

Hospitals and physicians opposed the proposal at a recent legislative hearing. Dr. Jeffrey Cohen, head of clinical services for Hartford Health Care, said his system acquired 30 practices with less than eight physicians in the past three years, adding that there are few medical practices with eight. He warned that independent doctors could go out of business waiting for the reviews to be conducted.

In a statement, the Connecticut State Medical Society said that many small group medical practices are barely surviving, but said, it is not in the purview of the legislature to dictate under what circumstances physicians may decide to sell their practices. The medical society said that the state should focus instead on issues that burden independent physicians, such as insurance coverage contracts that dont allow doctors to negotiate rates, exclusionary policies and high malpractice rates.

Managing His Own Practice

Ghumman said he is spared many administrative tasks because of his practices structure, with seven physicians, five nurse practitioners, a physicians assistant, and sufficient office staff to handle business operations. If you have systems in place that are working for you and your patients, you can still do without having to be a part of a large corporate system, he said.

He compared the current health care landscape to when most independent pharmacies were pushed out of business by competition from chains, eliminating the choice of going to a small pharmacy.

If you lose the ability to make choices in health care, thats a sad day for everyonenot just doctors, but patients, he said.

This story was reported under a partnership with the Connecticut Health I-Team ( c-hit.org ), a nonprofit news organization dedicated to health reporting.
A woman who complained after a judge telephoned her after hearing her case to say she was very beautiful said she was shocked to discover no action will now be taken over the matter.

The woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, lodged a complaint but no action was taken against the judge  or the investigating gardai whom she claimed had initially tried to blame her for the contact.

Gardai decided, following an investigation into her complaint, that there was no criminal element to the matter and ruled out any further action.

At one point, the woman said it was suggested to her by a garda that it was a simple boy meets girl scenario.

Now, the Garda Siochana Ombudsman Commission (Gsoc) has concluded a near-four-year investigation into the matter with a recommendation that no action be taken.

In a Gsoc letter  seen by the Irish Independent  investigators said they found no evidence the officers involved had mishandled the womans complaint.

It said: The investigation report was forwarded to the Garda Commissioner on March 25. The Garda Ombudsman has been notified that no Garda member has been found in breach of the Garda Siochana Discipline Regulations, 2007. Gsoc shall take no further action in this case.

The woman said she feels badly let down by the entire justice system. During a court hearing in 2016, the judge asked for the phone numbers of both the woman and the other party to be called out during a hearing in his private chambers.

She left court and later noticed a missed call. When she rang back, she claimed the man who had rung her was the judge.

The womans statement of complaint revealed her sworn recollection of the subsequent conversation: No, everything is good with the case. I just wanted to talk to you. You looked very beautiful today, the woman said the judge told her.

The woman later met the judge for coffee, afraid of the consequences for her ongoing case if she refused to meet him.
The Post and Courier provides a forum for our readers to share their opinions, and to hold up a mirror to our community. Publication does not imply endorsement by the newspaper; the editorial staff attempts to select a representative sample of letters because we believe its important to let our readers see the range of opinions their neighbors submit for publication.
PARLAMENTUL REPUBLICII MOLDOVA

 2010

The Moldovan Parliaments website design was supported by the Democracy Support Programme in Moldova"  an initiative financed by the European Union and implemented by the Council of Europe
2 1 of 2 Brett Coomer, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer Show More Show Less 2 of 2 Brett Coomer, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer Show More Show Less



United Airlines catering workers Wednesday protested the carriers potential effort to outsource in-flight catering, which could lead to hundreds of local job losses.



The workers, joined by U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, a Houston Democrat, picketed near the John F. Kennedy Boulevard entrance to George Bush Intercontinental Airport, holding signs that read United: Taxpayer Bailout and United: Am I getting fired?

Garcia said in an email Thursday morning that she is strong supporter of unions and of President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, a COVID-19 stimulus package.
About 140 former national security, military and elected officials, including three former defense secretaries, are urging Congress to establish a bipartisan, 9/11-style commission to investigate January's attack on the U.S. Capitol.

In an open letter addressed to lawmakers and published Tuesday, the group said the Jan. 6 riot was a sign of an "exigent and growing threat," making such a commission even more important. And failing to use the entire slate of tools available to understand the attack and address its causes would leave the nation vulnerable to attack again, they said.

"The events of January 6th exposed severe vulnerabilities in the nation's preparedness for preventing and responding to domestic terrorist attacks," the letter said. "The immediate security failings that permitted a lethal breach of the Capitol complex by armed extremists raise serious questions and demand immediate solutions."

Read Next: Guard Troops Rapidly Deploy to US Capitol After Attack on Police

The attack, they said, was "also the result of complex national security threats," including coordinated disinformation campaigns, opaque financing of extremist networks, possible foreign influence and white supremacist violent extremism.

"Understanding how these forces culminated in an attack on the infrastructure of our democracy is critical to preventing future attacks," the letter said.

The signers include former defense secretaries William Perry and William Cohen, of the Clinton administration, and Chuck Hagel of the Obama administration. Former Homeland Security secretaries Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, of the George W. Bush administration, and Obama-era secretaries Jeh Johnson and Janet Napolitano also signed it.

Former Coast Guard commandants Thad Allen and James Loy; retired Marine Gen. James Cartwright, who served as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; former Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli; and retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, who formerly led the CIA and NSA, also signed the letter.

The officials want the independent commission to investigate the attack and its direct causes, and make recommendations to prevent such attacks in the future and strengthen democratic institutions to make them more resilient.

In the letter, the officials noted that the independent 9/11 Commission worked alongside and complemented parallel investigations by Congress and law enforcement. A new commission on the Capitol attack could play a similar role, supporting the work of the legislative and executive branches.

"Commissions -- properly empowered, resourced, and led -- can establish a full picture of events and an analysis of their causes, from which nonpartisan recommendations can authoritatively flow," the letter said.

According to a report from the Congressional Research Service, updated two weeks after the January attack, commissions of this kind are typically established by congressional statute, or by the president or departmental heads under their own authorities. Congress has formed more than 150 commissions since 1989, tackling subjects such as government contracting during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, weapons of mass destruction proliferation, and opioid trafficking.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has called for a commission on the Capitol attack, but disagreements between Republicans and Democrats over its potential scope and structure have stymied its creation. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in February objected to Pelosis proposal to give Democrats more seats than Republicans, and objected to its scope, ABC News reported. McConnell said a commission could either keep a tight focus on the Capitol attack, or examine the full scope of political violence in America, but that Pelosis plan for the commission would land at some artificial politicized halfway point.

Pelosi accused McConnell of minimizing the attacks and trying to water down the commission's focus.

The letter was organized and released by the group Protect Democracy, which was formed in 2017 "to prevent American democracy from declining into a more authoritarian form of government," according to its website.

The attack on the Capitol, launched in an attempt to disrupt Congress certification of Joe Bidens election as the nations 46th president, resulted in the deaths of five people, including one Capitol Police officer who authorities said was sprayed by a chemical substance that may have been bear spray, and four rioters.

Since then, the National Guard has remained in Washington to protect the complex, and security on Capitol Hill has dramatically increased. The relatively high representation of people with military service among the rioters also alarmed Pentagon leaders, who have increased their focus on rooting out political extremists from the ranks.

-- Stephen Losey can be reached at stephen.losey@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @StephenLosey.

Related: DC, Capitol Police 'Stunned' at Slow National Guard Response During Jan. 6 Riot
Union Health Ministry, in a letter to states and union territories, has suggested that COVID-19 vaccination sessions may be organised at government and private workplaces. Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan asked additonal chief secretaries, principal secretaries and secretaries in health department of states and UTs to initiate due consultations with public and private sector employers and management to prepare for workplace coronavirus vaccination drives.

Vaccination centres at workplaces may be launched across states and UTs from April 11, Bhushan stated. Organising vaccination drives at workplaces will not only be convenient for employees, but will also reduce the risk of exposure to coronavirus, he added.

From April 1, 2021, the nationwide COVID-19 vaccination drive has been extended to all citizens aged 45 years or above. A substiantial portion of population above 45 years of age is employed in the organised sector and works in government and private offices, manufacturing or services, Bhuhsan noted.

ALSO READ: COVID-19 vaccination: India surpasses US; 8.70 crore shots administered so far

"In order to increase the access of vaccine to these populations, COVID-19 vaccination sessions may be organised at workplaces (both public and private) which are having about 100 eligible and willing beneficiaries by tagging these work places with an existing COVID Vaccination Centre (CVC)," Bhushan wrote.

The guidelines for undertaking COVID vaccination at workplaces stated that District Task Force (DTF), chaired by District Magistrate and Urban Task Force (UTF) chaired by Municipal Commissioner will identify suitable workplaces after delibrations with relevant employers or head offices. Workplace management will appoint a senior staff member as Nodal Officer to coordinate with district health authorities or private CVCs and support vaccination activities. The Nodal Officer will be responsible for registration of beneficiaries, availability of physical and IT infrastructure, oversight to vaccination, etc.

Employees aged 45 years or more will have to register in Co-WIN portal prior to vaccination. On-the-spot registration facility will also be available for them at workplace vaccination centres.

ALSO READ: COVID-19 vaccination: How to find nearest centre on Google Maps; check out steps

Every government workplace CVC will be tagged to the nearest CVC in a government medical facility, whereas private workplace CVCs will be tagged to the nearest CVC in a private medical facility. These medical facilities will be responsible for deploying vaccination teams at workplace CVCs.

Vaccination sessions can begin at workplace CVCs once at least 50 beneficiaries get registered for vaccination. In-charges of the supervising medical facilities will plan vaccination sessions at workplace CVCs. They will also be responsible for providing vaccines to workplace CVCs. The vaccination schedule may be formed and disseminated up to 15 days in advance.

ALSO READ: Vaccine shortage in Maharashtra; inoculation centres send back people

(Edited by Vivek Punj)
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
WASHINGTON, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Driven by historic mortgage origination activity, the American Land Title Association (ALTA), the national trade association of the land title insurance industry, reported title insurance premium volume increased 21.7 percent during 2020 when compared with the same period a year ago.

The title insurance industry generated $19.2 billion in title insurance premiums during 2020 compared to $15.8 billion during 2019, according to ALTA's Market Share Analysis.

"At the start of the pandemic in early 2020, it was very a very uncertain time, with few in the industry clear on what the road ahead looked like for the industry and those we serve. As the year progressed, however, the purchase market remained robust alongside strong refinance activity overall, generating significant title insurance premium volume," said Diane Tomb, ALTA's chief executive officer. "We do not expect 2021 will have the same level of refinance activity, but the residential purchase market appears to be holding steady. The true test of whether 2020 volume represents a unique event will be whether the historically low inventory of homes for sale continues into the summer."

In terms of market share, the Fidelity Family of title insurance underwriters captured 33.9 percent of the market, followed by the First American Family (23.3 percent), the Old Republic Family (15.0 percent) and the Stewart Family (9.6 percent). Independent title insurance underwriters comprised 19.2 percent of the market.

Overall, total operating income for the industry was up 17.60 percent, operating expenses were up 17.01 percent, and loss and loss adjustment expenses were down 7.89 percent. In 2020, the industry paid more than $469 million in claims.

"Title insurance professionals worked tirelessly to innovate and serve the needs of their communities, keep the real estate market moving and supporting the overall economy throughout the COVID-19 pandemic as essential businesses," Tomb said. "I am very proud to work in an industry full of people who are willing to roll up their sleeves, dive in and get the job done, with a relentless focus on their customers."

Click here for more market share data. ALTA expects to release Q1 2021 market data around June 1.

About ALTA

The American Land Title Association, founded in 1907, is a national trade association representing more than 6,400 title insurance companies, title and settlement agents, independent abstracters, title searchers, and real estate attorneys. ALTA members conduct title searches, examinations, closings, and issue title insurance that protects real property owners and mortgage lenders against losses from defects in titles.

Contact: Megan Hernandez

Office: 202-261-0315

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE American Land Title Association

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www.alta.org


Russian commercial court fines company $2 mln for polluting Black Sea

 flickr.com/ Ekaterina Kuzmina

12:37 07/04/2021

MOSCOW, April 7 (RAPSI)  The Commercial Court of a southern Russian region Krasnodar Krai has satisfied a claim of the local office of the Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources (Rosprirodnadzor) against OOO Inmorterminal as to compensation of the damage caused to the Black Sea by this company in the amount of more than 145 million rubles (about $2 million), the body informs.

According to the environmental watchdog, on June 2, 2019, a road traffic accident occurred in the city of Novorossiysk with the participation of a vehicle operated by Inmorterminal; the said vehicle transported oil products. As a result, oil products got into the city storm collector, and then into the Black Sea.

Rosprirodnadzor noted in its claim that the flow of oil products into the water body continued for several months; all that time, rescue operations were carried out. According to the experts of the local office of the body, the damage to the Black Sea made about 157 million rubles ($2 million at the current exchange rate).

Due to the fact that Inmorterminal failed to voluntarily repay the said damages, the body turned to the Commercial Court of the Krasnodar Krai, which, taking into account that the company had spent certain funds to eliminate pollution and overcome its consequences, reduced the amount of damage by 11.1 million rubles ($143,000), Rosprirodnadzor said in the statement.
MADRID, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The telecommunication and posts regulatory authority (ARPT) of the Republic of Guinea and the company Global Voice Group (GVG) are proud to announce the establishment of a new partnership between the two organizations. Signed in Conakry on 1 April 2021 by the respective directors, Mr Yacouba Cisse and Mr James Gabriel Claude, the agreement provides for the deployment of a leading-edge mobile and digital ecosystem regulation platform in Guinea.

The installation of this digital platform will begin on 1 June of this year. To this day, this is the most ambitious project for the digitization of the country's regulatory tools. It encompasses major aspects such as the regulatory management of mobile and digital identities, interconnectivity, data services and mobile money. The contract stipulates that GVG will be responsible for the deployment of the platform, as well as for the related technical operations, over a five-year period at the end of which the company will transfer the platform's ownership to the ARPT. The general purpose of the platform is ambitious: promote and sustain trust and inclusiveness in the mobile and digital ecosystem, for the benefit and fulfillment of all Guineans. To achieve this, the platform implements data-driven regulatory technologies that will guarantee regulatory compliance in this ecosystem, as well as the alignment of the latter with the State's digital development and inclusion guidelines.For GVG, which is honored to have Guineans within its team, this return to Guinea represents an opportunity to contribute to the flourishing of a rapidly developing digital society. As stated by James Claude, the company's CEO: "We enjoy a privileged relationship with Guinea, which was one of the first African nations to deploy our former platforms, ten years ago. We recognize ourselves in the visionary spirit of its leaders, especially those of the ARPT. Our visions truly are in alignment with one another. We are convinced that we can bring tangible answers to the regulator's new requirements in the current and future Guinean telecom environment through our new technologies, which have significantly evolved over time."For his part, the ARPT's Director General, Mr Yacouba Cisse, highlighted the advent of a digital approach to regulation. According to him, there exists a firm consensus in the African regulatory domain as regards the digitization of regulatory tools. "The ARPT proved to be a pioneer in this area", he recalled, "by digitizing the national and international interconnections as soon as 2009. The new digital tools we are implementing go much further. They cover all aspects of the mobile and digital ecosystem that are likely to affect the Guinean subscribers, who must be protected by an effective regulatory framework." About Global Voice Group

Founded in 1998, GVG is a world-class provider of ICT and RegTech solutions whose main offices are situated in Spain and South Africa. Through Big Data analytics, GVG helps governments and authorities make a success of their digital transformation and efficiently promote compliance and true inclusiveness in the digital ecosystems. GVG monitors, collects and analyses the data originating from crucial economic sectors, and transforms them into actionable information, thus ensuring that the decision-making process is based on reliable data.

View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/global-voice-group-assists-the-arpt-guinea-in-achieving-its-vision-of-an-inclusive-and-well-regulated-digital-guinea-301263391.html

SOURCE Global Voice Group
Police officers escort a prison van carrying Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Andy Li as it is leaving court in Hong Kong (Kin Cheung/AP)

Three veteran Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, including well-known publisher Jimmy Lai, pleaded guilty to taking part in an unauthorised rally that led to violence between police and participants.

The charges carry prison terms of up to five years.

Lee Cheuk-yan, an ex-politician, and Yeng Sum, former chairman of the Democratic Party, were released on bail.

Mr Lai was returned to jail as he is already being held on other charges related to his outspoken opposition to Chinas crackdown on civil liberties in the former British colony.

Expand Close In this image made from video, pro-democracy activist Lee Cheuk-yan, left, and his supporter Cyd Ho, raise five fingers (Rafael Wober/AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp In this image made from video, pro-democracy activist Lee Cheuk-yan, left, and his supporter Cyd Ho, raise five fingers (Rafael Wober/AP)

Walking out of the courthouse in Wanchai district, Mr Lee said that despite pleading guilty, he and the others saw no fault in their actions.

Today we plead guilty to the charges, but we have done no wrong.

This is an act of civil disobedience.

We want to reclaim our right to demonstration and we affirm the right of people, that we have the right to come out to march, Mr Lee said.

And we believe that history will absolve us, because we believe that any political progress, and the progress and rights of the people, have to be reclaimed by the people by exercising their rights to come out to march, Mr Lee said.

The court was shown videos of the three at the August 31 2019 event that led to clashes in various parts of the cramped city of more than seven million that was stirred by anti-government protests at the time.

The pleas appear to be another blow against the opposition movement after seven of Hong Kongs leading pro-democracy advocates, including Mr Lai and an 82-year-old veteran of the movement, were convicted last Thursday of organising and participating in a march during the 2019 protest movement.

Separately, one of a group of activists detained at sea as they sought to flee Hong Kong by speedboat was brought to court Wednesday amid extraordinary security.

A fleet of motorcycles and police cars along with helmeted officers toting shotguns and machine guns accompanied Andy Li, who is charged with collusion with foreign forces under a new national security law, as well as unlicensed possession of ammunition and conspiracy to assist offenders.

Mr Li was first charged with collusion last August under the national security law imposed last year.

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He had been one of 12 Hong Kong residents detained by mainland Chinese authorities on a boat in late August 2019, sentenced to seven months in prison, and returned to Hong Kong on March 22.

Mr Lis story then took a twist reflective of Chinas opaque legal system.

His family was unable to contact him for days after his return to Hong Kong.

Then, a lawyer unknown to Mr Lis family appeared to represent him.

That lawyer, Lawrence Law, was also at court on Wednesday.

Mr Law works at Olympia Chambers, which last week issued a statement saying that Mr Law has no duty to inform the press about the details of his instructions, and/or to the family members of Mr Li.

It said Lawrence Law was instructed through a private firm of solicitors to appear, but no other information was provided.

Mr Lis court appearance Wednesday was his first time in court after completing the mandatory 14-day coronavirus quarantine on return from mainland China.

He is now back behind bars until his next hearing on May 18.

Expand Close Solicitor Trevor Chan, lawyer of Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Andy Li, leaves court (Kin Cheung/AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Solicitor Trevor Chan, lawyer of Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Andy Li, leaves court (Kin Cheung/AP)

The national security law requires judges to deny bail unless they are convinced the accused will not again commit the crime of which they have not yet been found guilty.

Eight of the activists had been jailed in the southern city of Shenzhen and returned to Hong Kong in batches, according to a police statement on Monday.

The group was detained at sea in August last year during an attempt to reach self-ruled Taiwan.

Many were facing prosecution in Hong Kong because of their past involvement in the 2019 protests.

The governments in Hong Kong and Beijing have been pursuing opposition figures to exert greater control over the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.

Hong Kong had enjoyed a vibrant political culture and freedoms not seen elsewhere in China during the decades it was a British colony.

Beijing had pledged to allow the city to retain those freedoms for 50 years when it was handed control of the territory in 1997, but recently ushered in a series of measures that many fear are a step toward making Hong Kong no different from cities on the mainland.

The 2019 protests were sparked by opposition to a bill that would have allowed suspects to be extradited to mainland China to face long periods of detention, possible torture and unfair trials.

While the legislation was eventually withdrawn, the protesters demands expanded to include calls for full democracy.

Beijing ignored them and responded by clamping down even harder, including imposing the national security law and changes last month that will significantly reduce the number of directly elected seats in Hong Kongs legislature.

As a result, most of Hong Kongs outspoken activists are now in jail or in self-exile.
Vietnamese people are paying up to 43% of total medical expenses, two times higher than recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), according to Dr. Le Van Kham, Director of the Department of Health Insurance, Ministry of Health.

Dr. Le Van Kham, Director of the Department of Health Insurance, Ministry of Health. Photo: Thuy Hanh

Kham spoke on the sidelines of the seminar on financial mechanisms in health care on April 6 that nearly 91% of Vietnamese people have health insurance but they still have to cover up to 43-44% of the total medical expenses. This is a high rate compared to many countries in the world.

In developed countries, this rate is only 14%, and according to WHOs recommendation it is about 20%. High spending on medical treatment causes many families to become poorer.

On average, each Vietnamese is examined 2.1 times per year with an average expense of $129/person, of which 37% is for medicines. Vietnam ranks above Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar, but below countries in the region such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Malaysia in this regard. Thai people spend nearly $300/person/year while it is VND12 million for Malaysia.

Our desired goal is that by 2025, healthcare expenses covered by households will fall to less than 35% and below 30% by 2030. However, this is a very big challenge," Kham said.

According to Kham, in order to reduce this rate, health insurance premiums should be higher to expand coverage and increase benefits for medical examination and treatment. If the premium is increased, it is necessary to control spending of healthcare insurance at hospitals. Currently, health insurance is paid based on the service fee.

Kham said that this method has the potential to increase costs because health facilities always try to provide more services to get health insurance money.

Therefore, from July 2021, the Ministry of Health will begin applying the payment method based on diagnosis, predetermining the amount of money for each diagnosis. This model has been piloted in Quang Ninh, Yen Bai, Can Tho, and it was very effective.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Kim Phuong, WHO's health finance expert, said that the health insurance fund of Vietnam is not being used appropriately. Increasing premiums is also a solution, but the proper use of services is also very important.

The health insurance fund of Vietnam annually spends about VND100 to VND120 trillion on medical expenses. Over the past four years, the revenue was always lower than expenditures, so the state had to use a reserve fund to maintain operations. Currently, the reserve fund has only about VND35 trillion.

Thuy Hanh

A roadmap for private healthcare investment Vietnams healthcare sector has taken on a number of policies to increase its attraction to both domestic and overseas private investors, thus enabling it to fulfill future goals.
Recent research shows that the number of religiously unaffiliated is increasing in Thailand, more now than a decade ago. Many students oppose the compulsory teaching of religion in school. At the same time, conversions to Catholicism are growing, after a path of search and study.

Bangkok (AsiaNews/EdA)  For nearly 10 years, more and more Thais have described themselves as religiously unaffiliated, this according to the Pew Research Center. Many Thai students also oppose compulsory religious education in school. Paradoxically, this may lead some to a more freely chosen personal quest for meaning. For example, Thanatos Sriyotha, a 20-year-old programmer, looked for meaning in his life. For about ten years, I was an atheist. Baptised last Ester Sunday, he explains that Christianity is a religion of freedom for him.

According to studies by the Pew Research Center (a Washington-based think tank), the number of Thais who are religiously unaffiliated is higher now than a decade ago. Recently, some students oppose compulsory religious instruction in the national education curriculum. They even call for religion courses to be optional, so that each can be free to choose according to their interest and learn about other spiritualities in the world. For some young people, this demand could open up a path towards a more freely chosen personal life.

Currently, many Catholic chaplaincies include both Catholic and non-Catholic members. Non-Catholic students are very visible. They are as active and engaged as others, said Chontawat Wano, a young Jesuit-in-training who heads the Catholic Student Network of Thailand, a Jesuit organisation that supports Catholic students in Thailand.

Everything turned upside down from that meeting

I was on a quest, said Chaturawit Saenchum, 17, who was baptised this year. Speaking about his his life before his conversion to Catholicism, the high school student said he was searching for meaning and a reason to exist, reading a lot and meeting members of various religions. I learnt about several religions, he added. I talked to imams, and during my studies in Japan, I participated in religious debates between Buddhist monks. But it was a talk with a Sister of St Paul de Chartres, at a Catholic college in Bangkok, that was a trigger for him.

Curious about Christian life, he approached the Sister and asked her: How did you become a nun? Everything turned upside down from that meeting, he said. She helped him make an informed choice. For Chaturawit, she was like a guide, who confirmed that I was on the right path, on the way towards conversion and the request for baptism.

Thanatos Sriyotha, a young programmer in his twenties, also looked for something to give his life some meaning. He explained that For about ten years, I was an atheist. For him, Christianity is a religion of freedom. At the age of 15, he became interested in it. But his choice to connect with the Church was made only on the day he was able to lead his own life. As soon as I started making a living, I began to find time to read books about philosophy, religion and spirituality, and then I felt that the Catholic Church was calling me.

A path that opens up horizons

The desire for God can sometimes remain hidden for years. This was the case of an older man, 40, who preferred not to give his name. He had already asked himself many questions starting at the age of 12. Born into a Buddhist family, it seemed essential to him to know Buddhism first before thinking about a possible conversion. I lived like a true Buddhist. I became a monk. I also went to a retreat in a temple as soon as I had time. Yet, he always felt that he could not fill a kind of void in him.

For Thanatos, the Christian faith turned things upside down. I can better recognise human values. Before, I could not understand why some people were opposed to the death penalty, why we had to take care of the poor, and many other things like that. Today, he understands all this without the need for explanations or theories. More importantly, his choice to become a Christian allows him to be himself and forever free.

For some Thai youth, the path to the Christian faith appears like a road that opens horizons and gives their lives as young adults a meaning they often unconsciously sought.
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Kamala Harris has still to visit the US-Mexico border or even hold a press conference about her new duties in the two weeks since being tasked with addressing the migrant crisis.

The Vice President spent Easter weekend at her Brentwood home in Southern California where she baked a 'beautiful' roast pork with rice and peas, but did not find time in her schedule to visit the nearby border.

In the past two weeks she has also visited Connecticut for a talk with the Boys and Girls Club of New Haven, traveled to Oakland to meet with Gavin Newsom to show support amid his potential recall election, and made a trip to a bakery in Chicago.

Harris has also been busy moving into her new residence at the Naval Observatory just days after she complained about living out of suitcases while it was being renovated.

On March 24, she was tasked with leading the efforts to tackle the 'humanitarian crisis' amid a surge of migrants trying to enter the US since Joe Biden's administration came into office.

New government statistics released last week revealed that 171,000 migrants were caught by US authorities at the border in March - the highest monthly total in two decades.

It comes as Biden's Homeland Security head is looking to crack down on illegal immigration by taking more legal action against border jumpers and targeting US cities that act as a safe haven.

Since being appointed Border Czar, the Vice President has jetted all over the US without visiting the 'humanitarian crisis' in the south

Hello, Goodbye: Vice President Harries turns and waves goodbye to Los Angeles as she boards Air Force Two for her journey to Chicago

Harris found time to meet bakers at the Brown Sugar Bakery in Chicago on Tuesday where she was presented with cakes

Harris speaks at the West Haven Child Development Center in Connecticut on March 26 during a visit to promote the administration's $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan - two days after the White House put her in charge of the border

She made time to visit children at the West Haven Child Development Center in Connecticut shortly after being appointed the new Border Czar

A migrant boy, who was abandoned in southern Texas after crossing over from Mexico, was recorded on video in tears and asking a U.S. Border Patrol agent for help last Thursday. The child had spent the night in the desert after he was abandoned by the group of migrants he had crossed the border with and feared he would be 'abducted.' U.S. Customs and Border Protection has not released the child's age or nationality

Kamala's schedule since becoming 'Border Czar' March 25 - Washington DC: Virtual Passover March 26 - New Haven, Connecticut: meeting with Boys and Girls Club and education leaders March 27-28 - Washington DC: no public commitments March 29 - Washington DC: Covid briefing and delivering pandemic remarks March 30 - Washington DC: Signed the PPP extension into law and spoke with Guatemalan President April 1 - Washington DC/Los Angeles, California: Met with stakeholders before traveling to her Brentwood home April 2-4 - Los Angeles: At home with no public commitments April 5 - Oakland, California: Met Gavin Newsom, toured water treatment plant and met business leaders April 6 - Chicago, Illinois: Toured a Covid vaccination site before returning to Washington DC Advertisement

The total includes about 19,000 unaccompanied migrant children and 53,000 family members traveling together, the preliminary figures showed.

The March arrest totals at the US-Mexico border represent the highest monthly level since April 2000 when border patrol agents caught more than 180,000 migrants.

But Harris has stayed publicly silent on the issue and has not held a press conference or major interview about her new duties she was assigned them two weeks ago.

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich invited the Vice President on a tour of the border this month in a letter on Friday.

He wrote: 'Recently, you stated, "You have to see and smell and feel the circumstances of people to really understand them." With that in mind, I formally invite you to join me for a tour of the southwest border in Arizona later this month.

'It will provide firsthand insight into what Arizonans, law enforcement officials and migrants are experiencing. I will make myself available any day of your choosing.'

Shortly after her appointment, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey also branded Harris 'the worst possible choice' to lead the border team, saying Biden had 'completely trivialized the issue by putting someone in charge who flat out just doesn't care'.

Ted Cruz added 'she is not going to be able to solve this crisis', branding it Biden's 'biggest political mess'.

Biden initially said his vice president would be in charge of returning migrants to their home countries in her new role.

He said: 'The vice president has agreed... to lead our diplomatic effort and work with those nations to accept the returnees, and enhance migration enforcement at their borders.'

The White House later claimed Harris was not directly involved with the border crisis but was instead addressing its 'root causes'.

Her schedule shows that since she was tasked with helping the crisis, she has largely remained in Washington DC.

On March 25, her only public duty was the White House's virtual Passover celebration with her husband Doug Emhoff, while the following day she visited New Haven, Connecticut, to meet with the Boys and Girls Club.

She spent the weekend in Washington DC with no public commitments, before receiving a Covid briefing and joining Biden for a speech on their pandemic response on the Monday.

On Tuesday March 30, Harris received the President's daily brief in the morning before signing the PPP extension into law in the Oval Office.

A makeshift camp of migrants sits at the border port of entry leading to the United States in Mexico

She spent Easter weekend at her Brentwood home before meeting with Gavin Newsom on Monday in a show of support to the beleaguered California governor

Homeland Security chief wants to prosecute MORE illegal immigrants DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is looking to crack down on illegal immigration by taking more legal action against border jumpers. 'I see cases now where we apprehend and remove individuals that I think need to be prosecuted criminally,' he said in a virtual town hall. 'Quite frankly, I'm going to have to understand why some of these individuals are not subject to a Title 8 USC 1326 case and I intend to work with the DOJ in that regard,' he added. Entering the U.S. illegally is a misdemeanor under Title 8 Section 1325. Furthermore, reentering the country after being ousted is a felony under Title 8 Section 1326. Mayorkas told ICE employees that DHS will also take on so-called sanctuary cities that refuse to work with the agency to turn over illegal immigrants hiding out there. He also vowed during the meeting, according to notes of the conversation reviewed by the Washington Times, that he is opposed to some more progressive immigration and border protection policies, like the push from the far left to totally abolish ICE. Advertisement

She also carried out the only known work related to the border since being appointed Border Czar as she held a phone call with President Alejandro Giammattei of Guatemala.

So far, 64,000 migrants out of the 350,000 who have been caught by US authorities at the border were Guatemalan.

A statement said: 'They discussed the significant risks to those leaving their homes and making the dangerous journey to the United States, especially during a global pandemic.'

The following day, she led a discussion with faith leaders where she encouraged their communities to take up the vaccine.

She returned home to California on Thursday, April 1, her third visit during the administration.

Harris spent the weekend at home where she baked a 'beautiful' roast pork with rice and peas, according to the LA Times.

She had no public events over the weekend until she traveled to her hometown of Oakland on Monday where she met with California Gov. Gavin Newsom and gave her support as he faces a potential recall election.

The Vice President toured a water treatment plant to highlight the benefits of the American Jobs Plan and held a 'listening session' with business owners.

She said during her visit to the East Bay Municipal Utility Districts Upper San Leandro treatment plant, in an area affected by drought: 'For years there were wars fought over oil. In a short time there will be wars fought over water.

'We must address inequities in access to clean water, at local state federal levels, understanding opportunities to build back up infrastructure around water.'

Republican National Committee spokesman Keith Schipper said: 'It's been nearly two weeks since Vice President Kamala Harris was named manager of the Biden Border Crisis, and while she has made time to return home to the Bay Area, Harris has refused to visit the border  which is only 500 miles from her location today  to survey the crisis firsthand.

'Californians don't find this border crisis funny and demand the so-called manager get to work fixing the problem this administration created.'

On Tuesday, Harris traveled to Chicago where she toured a Covid vaccine site before returning to Washington DC.

The March arrest totals at the US-Mexico border represent the highest monthly level since April 2000

Harris visited the Brown Sugar Bakery in Chicago on Tuesday after touring a Covid vaccine site

Harris exits Air Force Two on Tuesday on arrival at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., as she returns to Washington from Chicago

Harris speaks about investing in small businesses using community banking at Red Door Catering in Oakland

Upon her return to DC, Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff moved in to their official residence, just days after it emerged she was unhappy about living out of suitcases while it was being renovated.

The Naval Observatory - the VP's official residence - has been out of action for more than two months while it undergoes much-needed updates.

The pair had been living at Blair House, across the road from the White House, since January - an arrangement that was reportedly beginning to wear on Harris.

'She is getting frustrated,' an administration official told CNN, noting that every day her desire to move into her designated house grows more intense.

But it seems that she has now had the green light to move into the official property.

Just days before she was tasked with addressing the migrant crisis, Harris laughed when she was asked if she would visit the border.

She was in Jacksonville to address food insecurity and vaccinations when asked if she had plans to visit the border.

Harris replied laughing: 'Not today. But I have before and I'm sure I will again.'
Imperial Valley News Center

San Diego Home Cooking Chain Manager Sentenced to 30 Months in Prison for Employment Tax Fraud

San Diego, California - A California restaurant chain manager was sentenced today to 30 months in prison for employment tax fraud.

According to court documents, Aleksandar Sreckovic, of San Diego, was a manager for San Diego Home Cooking, a restaurant group with over 110 employees and five restaurants in the San Diego area: Cafe 56 & Bar and Mission Valley Cafe & Bar in San Diego, Lake Murray Cafe in La Mesa, Lakeside Cafe in Lakeside, and Centre City Cafe in Escondido. Sreckovic had significant control over the finances of San Diego Home Cooking and had a duty to account for and pay employment taxes on behalf of the companys employees to the IRS.

In November 2014, Sreckovic directed an outside payroll company to stop making employment tax payments to the IRS. From the last quarter of 2014 through the last quarter of 2017, Sreckovic did not file employment tax returns, nor did he pay employment taxes for San Diego Home Cooking. Instead, Sreckovic paid other creditors and his own personal expenses. In total, Sreckovic caused a tax loss of over $1.5 million.

In addition to the term of imprisonment, U.S. District Judge Cathy Ann Bencivengo ordered Sreckovic to serve one year of supervised release and to pay approximately $2.3 million in restitution to the United States.

Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg of the Justice Departments Tax Division and Acting U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman for the Southern District of California made the announcement.

IRS-Criminal Investigation investigated the case.

Trial Attorney Matthew Hoffman of the Justice Departments Tax Division and Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Galvin of the Southern District of California prosecuted the case.
Taiwans foreign minister said the island will defend itself to the very last day if attacked by China.

Joseph Wu said Chinas attempts at conciliation while engaging in military intimidation are sending mixed signals to the islands residents.

China claims Taiwan as its own territory to be won over peacefully or by force.

Mr Wu noted China flew 10 warplanes into Taiwans air defence identification zone on Monday and deployed an aircraft carrier group for exercises near Taiwan.

We are willing to defend ourselves, thats without any question, Mr Wu told reporters.

We fill fight a war if we need to fight a war, and if we need to defend ourselves to the very last day, then we will defend ourselves to the very last day.

Expand Close Taiwan Coast Guard ships and a helicopter take part in a search-and-rescue operation during an offshore anti-terrorism drill (Chiang Ying ying/AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Taiwan Coast Guard ships and a helicopter take part in a search-and-rescue operation during an offshore anti-terrorism drill (Chiang Ying ying/AP)

China does not recognise Taiwans democratically elected government, and leader Xi Jinping has said unification between the sides cannot be put off indefinitely.

On the one hand they want to charm the Taiwanese people by sending their condolences, but at the same time they are also sending their military aircraft and military vessels closer to Taiwan aimed at intimidating Taiwans people, Mr Wu said at a ministry briefing.

The Chinese are sending very mixed signals to the Taiwanese people and I would characterise that as self-defeating, Mr Wu said.

The vast improvements in Chinas military capabilities and its increasing activity around Taiwan have raised concerns in the US, which is legally bound to ensure Taiwan is capable of defending itself and to regard all threats to the islands security as matters of grave concern.

Chinas military said on Monday the new naval drills were meant to help it safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests, terms often interpreted as being directed at Taiwans leadership that has refused to give in to Beijings demands that it recognise the island as part of Chinese territory.

Expand Close Chinese President Xi Jinping (centre) has said unification with Taiwan cannot be delayed indefinitely (Lintao Zhang/AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Chinese President Xi Jinping (centre) has said unification with Taiwan cannot be delayed indefinitely (Lintao Zhang/AP)

Taiwan and China split amid civil war in 1949, and most Taiwanese favour maintaining the current state of de facto independence while engaging in robust economic exchanges with the mainland.

China has also created conditions for greater economic integration, while also targeting some communities such as pineapple farmers in hopes of weakening their support for the islands government.

Chinese diplomatic pressure has been growing also, reducing the number of Taiwans formal diplomatic allies to just 15 and shutting its representatives out of the World Health Assembly and other major international forums.
1. Roads. The citys roads are a mess. Significant resources are needed to fix them.

2. Public safety. The crime rate is too high. Police pay and resources come first.

3. More city programs. The city must invest more in city programs and services.

4. Comprehensive plan. The city needs to focus on rebuilding and rebranding.

5. Cut city spending. City officials must get serious about trimming the budget.

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Raspanti, a lifelong resident of Park Ridge, is retired after a career in sales at FM Global, a commercial insurance company in Park Ridge. He last ran for alderman of the citys 5th Ward in 2019, but was defeated by Ald. Charlie Melidosian, who had been appointed to the seat two years earlier.
Hans Kung, controversial theologian censured by John Paul II, dies at 93

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Hans Kung, a controversial Swiss Catholic theologian, professor and priest, who was once censured by the late Pope John Paul II, has died at age 93.

Kung, who was known to be critical of Catholic theology, passed away at his home in Tubingen, Germany, on Tuesday, according to a report by Vatican News.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, himself the subject of critique by Kung, released a statement quoted by Vatican News commending the late theologian for trying to revive the dialogue between faith and the natural sciences and to assert, with regard to scientific thought, the reasonableness and necessity of the Gottesfrage (the question about God).

Roger Haight, a Jesuit and scholar in residence at Union Theological Seminary in New York, wrote Tuesday that Kung was no passive pietist, nor did he lack self-confidence.

Like the course of emergent complexity in evolution, one can detect an expanding capaciousness in the tasks that Hans Kung undertook in the course of his amazingly productive career as theologian, ecumenist, religionist and finally a moral leader of humanity, wrote Haight.

 the Catholic Church, Christianity, other religions and all humanity in a recognizable way are his beneficiaries.

Born in Sursee, Switzerland, on March 19, 1928, Kung became a priest in 1954 and then a professor of Catholic theology at the University of Tubingen.

He participated in the Second Vatican Council, where he first dialogued with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI.

Kung garnered much controversy in the Catholic Church for his criticism of certain teachings, notably the concept of Papal Infallibility, which claims that when speaking on matters of faith the pontiff cannot err, as well as mandatory clerical celibacy.

In December 1979, not long after Pope John Paul II became head of the Catholic Church, Kung was censored by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Kung, in his writings, has departed from the integral truth of Catholic faith, and therefore he can no longer be considered a Catholic theologian nor function as such in a teaching role, declared the Congregation at the time.

Despite the differences with high-ranking Church authorities, Kung continued to write, teach and critique the Catholic Church, all while remaining a priest.

Many Catholic theologians have no longer critically examined the infallibility ideology for fear of ominous sanctions as in my case, and the hierarchy tries as far as possible to avoid the subject, which is unpopular in the church and in society, wrote Kung for the National Catholic Reporter in 2016.

That is why the following question is more urgent than ever: Where is the church  which is still fixated on the infallibility dogma  heading at the beginning of the third millennium?

In 2017, as the start of the Reformation turned 500, Kung advocated for reconciliation between the Catholic Church and Protestant denominations.

This included a call to overturn Reformation era excommunications of Protestant leaders, to formally recognize Protestant ministries, and to advance mutual Eucharistic hospitality.

May the pressure exerted by theologians, grass roots Christians, Christian communities and many committed men and women help the church leadership in Rome and elsewhere, which is so often hesitant and afraid, not to miss this historic opportunity but to wake up, he wrote, as quoted by The Tablet.

In todays world, Christianity will only come across as credible if it presents itself in truly reconciled diversity.
FRAMINGHAM, Mass., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- One of the longest tenured cannabis businesses in Massachusetts, MCR Labs is hosting a virtual event on April 22 entitled "The Evolving Cannabis Industry" as part of National Cannabis Awareness Month. The event will feature presentations looking back at advances in cannabis science and transformations in the industry since legalization plus a panel discussion with industry insiders from a variety of cannabis-related sectors and backgrounds.

"When you consider the barriers this industry is up against, you can't help but be impressed with how much progress has been made," said Jonathan Wani, MCR Labs Director of Business Development. "We're hoping this event gives newer or aspiring business operators, as well as members of the public who tune in, an idea of just how far the cannabis industry has come in spite of federal prohibition and lingering social stigma."

"The Evolving Cannabis Industry" will feature a presentation from Wani on how the industry has progressed since legal operations began, and his colleague Scott Churchill, MCR Labs Director of Scientific Operations, will present on how cannabis science and testing have advanced and what innovations are still to come.

"Everything has improved so much from those early days, from the equipment we're using to the number of active compounds, cannabinoids and terpenes, that we're able to detect now," said Churchill. "Plus, there are some incredibly exciting developments in the works at MCR and at other labs around the country that I think will enable significant progress for growers and product manufacturers in the coming years."

The event will end with a panel discussion moderated by community advocate and grassroots cannabis reporter Grant Smith, President of The Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition. The panel of experts will include cannabis business leaders Shanel Lindsay of Ardent Cannabis and Noni Goldman of The Hub Craft, clinician Dr. Jill Becker of InhaleMD, and cannabis beat reporter Jessica Bartlett of the Boston Business Journal who will all share their unique observations about how the industry has developed since legalization and offer their predictions for the future.

MCR Labs' "The Evolving Cannabis Industry" event will take place virtually on Thursday, April 22 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Those interested to view the event live can register at the event homepage, and all the talks will be posted on the MCR Labs YouTube page after the event concludes.

About MCR Labs: MCR Labs is the first independent cannabis testing laboratory to be certified by the state of Massachusetts. We are ISO/IEC 17025:2017 accredited providers of analytical cannabis product testing and R&D services committed to assisting licensed marijuana establishments, patients, researchers, entrepreneurs, and advocates. Our team of chemists and pharmaceutical scientists are dedicated to advancing public health and safety through leading-edge chemical analysis of cannabis products and offering unparalleled guidance and support for partners, regulators, and the communities we serve. For more information visit http://mcrlabs.com.

SOURCE MCR Labs

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Target stores across Queensland are going to start shutting down from this weekend.

Stores in Longreach, Kippa-Ring in Brisbane, The Willows in Townsville and Cairns will start closing from April 10.

The clothing retailer announced in May 2020 that it would close 75 shops across Australia, while 92 others would be rebranded as Kmart.

Dozens of Target stores in Queensland are going to start shutting down from this weekend. Pictured: A closed shop in Melbourne

WHICH AND WHEN STORES WILL CLOSE Longreach in Central QLD - April 10 Clifton Beach in Cairns, QLD - April 17 Kippa-Ring in Brisbane, QLD - April 24 Central Cairns, QLD - May 1 The Willows in Townsville, QLD - June 5 Advertisement

Target shops in the Caboolture regions will not be changed.

Stores will be clearing out shelves and selling clearance stock before shutting doors, so customers may be able to grab a bargain.

'We want to thank our teams, the local communities and all of our customers for shopping with us over the years and hope they will consider visiting us online,' a Target spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia.

'Our focus is on supporting our team through this time as we work through finding suitable redeployment within other Wesfarmers businesses as well as with other employers in town.

'The wellbeing and health of our team is our number one priority. Any permanent team members who we are unable to secure suitable redeployment will have access to all their entitlements.'

Kippa-Ring Shopping Centre manager in Brisbane Jennifer Spratling said the closure had been planned well in advance.

The Kippa-Ring store in Brisbane (left) and the Clifton Beach shop in Cairns (right) will be closing

'We have been working closely with Target for some time in planning for this departure, confirmed in early 2020, which provided us with the valuable opportunity to unlock retail space and enhance the Centre's retail mix in line with our long-term masterplan,' she said.

'At this stage we are working to finalise our plans for this space so it is still too early to share specific details, but we look forward to making some exciting announcements in the near future.'

Most of the Target closures will be in regional areas.

50 Target Country stores will be closed and up to 25 large format city-based shops will close their doors.
Supreme Court Justice Andrew Beech has encouraged a resolution to the ongoing feud between Perth Childrens Court Magistrate Catherine Crawford and the courts state president, Hylton Quail.

As a district court-appointed judge overseeing the Childrens Court, Judge Quail is being sued by Ms Crawford over an alleged push to move her back to the Perth Magistrates Court, citing a letter on December 8 and an email on January 21.

Childrens Court of WA President Hylton Quail has yet to file a defence against claims he pushed out magistrate Catherine Crawford. Credit:Online

Ms Crawford has claimed under the Magistrates Act of 2004 that it was the role of the Chief Magistrate Steven Heath to order her alleged transfer to the adult court and Judge Quail has no power to transfer her to Perths central law courts.

Judge Quail has yet to file a defence, with his lawyer Eric Heenan telling the court that he was awaiting advice over a potential strikeout application from a senior counsel who was currently before the High Court of Australia.
YEREVAN, APRIL 7, ARMENPRESS. Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigoryan received Ambassador of Poland to Armenia Pawel Cieplak, the deputy PMs Office told Armenpress.

Deputy PM Grigoryan thanked Poland for the support provided to Armenia in fighting coronavirus and introduced him on the current situation in the country caused by the pandemic and the recent war, as well as the governments efforts on solving humanitarian and socio-economic problems.

The sides discussed the opportunities of developing the economic relations between the two countries. In this context the Ambassador expressed the readiness of the Polish government to expand the economic cooperation with Armenia.

The Ambassador informed the deputy PM about the new humanitarian aid for fighting COVID-19 which will arrive in Armenia in mid-April. The Ambassador also informed about the assistance provided to the displaced residents of Artsakh, which, he added, will be provided through an international NGO.

A number of other issues of mutual interest were also discussed during the meeting.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
Several new flights have been added at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in the past month. The news comes amid renewed interest in travel as more people get vaccinated against the coronavirus.

Here's a look at what's been announced.

New airline, new flights to Florida

Silver Airways, a regional airline that focuses on Florida, will start operating in June from the Kenner airport. Silver will offer direct flights twice a week to Jacksonville, Florida.

The airline is offering special fares starting at $79 for the new direct flights from June 3 to July 11. See availability.

New airline, new flights to Mississippi Delta

Boutique Air will start scheduled and charter flights from MSY on April 22.

The San Francisco-based micro airline offers a "concierge-style" flight service on small propeller-driven planes that have eight passenger seats.

Boutique will fly two round trips to Greenville, Mississippi, on Thursday, Friday and Sunday.

See what new micro airline is added to Armstrong International airport roster from April Boutique Air will start scheduled and charter flights from Louis Armstrong International Airport starting April 22, the airline said Tuesday.

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

American Airlines adds direct flights to Austin

American Airlines is adding a daily nonstop flight from New Orleans to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport starting May 6.

The airline attributed the additional flights to the "anticipated increase in business travel this summer."

American is the second-largest carrier by volume in New Orleans, trailing Southwest Airlines, which also offers service to Austin.

American Airlines is adding non-stop service from New Orleans to this popular Texas destination New Orleans travelers flying to and from Texas' fourth-largest city will soon have another option in a welcome bit of good news for Louis Arms

Southwest to resume flights to Cancun

Southwest Airlines expects to resume its nonstop flight to Cancun on April 17, the first international flight from the airport in more than a year since the coronavirus pandemic crippled the travel industry.

It is not yet clear when the other nine carriers with international flights from New Orleans will resume service. British Airways had been taking bookings to resume flights from London to New Orleans in early March, but tight international travel restrictions between the two countries meant those flights had to be postponed.

+12 New Orleans airport sees traffic rebound; see which international flight is returning New Orleans Louis Armstrong International Airport said last weekend's passenger traffic rose to the highest level since the beginning of the p

Staff writers Anthony McAuley and Kyle Whitfield contributed to this story.
This job expired on 3 May 2021.
Gov. Beshear Provides Update on COVID-19

By West Kentucky Star Staff

FRANKFORT - On Saturday, Governor Andy Beshear updated Kentuckians on the latest coronavirus information from across the state.The governor said 1,859,277 Kentuckians had received at least their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.There were 544 new cases reported on Saturday, raising the state's total to 448,757.Kentucky's positivity rate currently stands at 3.32 percent.
Raleigh Police Chief Banned Use of Clearview

Raleigh, Charlotte Among Top Clearview Users in NC

Wake, Mecklenburg ABC Boards Use Clearview

(TNS)  More than 60 law enforcement agencies across North Carolina likely used a controversial facial recognition service built using billions of photos collected from social media users without their consent.That's according to an analysis from, which Tuesday published data from a trove of leaked documents detailing the client list of Clearview AI, a technology startup that has pitched its app as a groundbreaking tool for criminal investigators. Since its launch in early 2018, the company has touted success stories that include the identification of suspects in crimes against children  including one man who faces child porn charges in Raleigh  as well as pro-Trump rioters who breached the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.With a single photo, the company says its app can identify a suspect in seconds, linking them to public social media profiles and related images with a level of accuracy that far exceeds anything else on the market. That algorithmic power comes from data  your data, specifically  since Clearview built its facial recognition algorithm using billions of photos scraped from social media sites contributed by millions of unsuspecting users.The company's practices have raised the ire of social media giants and privacy advocates alike. Facebook, Google and other tech firms have demanded Clearview stop hoovering up user images for its ever-evolving algorithm. And groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have grown increasingly concerned about the implications of a world where practical anonymity is no longer possible.That criticism has morphed into lawsuits against the company in several states, as well as broader moratoriums in multiple cities banning the use of facial recognition software by government and, in some cases, private companies.In North Carolina last year, Raleigh Police Chief Cassandra Deck-Brown banned her officers' use of Clearview six months into a yearlong contract with the company. The move came weeks afterraised questions about whether use of the service violated the Raleigh Police Department's own policies.Records released by the department show the app ultimately led to charges for at least one suspect: James Mero, who in 2019 was arrested and charged with more than 30 crimes related to fraud and sexual exploitation of a minor. Details of that case made it into the company's marketing materials.Until now, there's been little disclosure from Clearview users  or Clearview itself  on how often the service has identified members of the public.Even the app's use locally has been murky. A Raleigh police spokesperson told WRAL last year that "there is no way to accurately gauge or gather" data on how many sworn officers or civilians used the service because the company was at times communicating directly with officers about free trials and demos.Nationally,revealed in February 2020 that paying clients of Clearview included not just law enforcement agencies, but schools, major companies and even the NBA. And following reporting that first revealed the widespread use of Clearview to the general public,showed how high-profile users deployed the app at parties, bars and, in one SoHo restaurant, to identify the unknown date of one billionaire's daughter.But's latest report reveals far more detail about Clearview's client list, including how often users employed the technology to identify people.The news organization's searchable database lists 64 state, county and municipal law enforcement agencies, some of which the records show used the service 1,000 to 5,000 times through February 2020.But the data comes with plenty of caveats. Hundreds of organizations in the list denied using Clearview altogether, and more than 1,000 didn't respond to requests for comment. And because of direct communication between the company and officers or free demo offers, some organizations said they were unaware that the app was in use.Among the top users in thedata in North Carolina were police departments in Raleigh, Fayetteville and Charlotte with a reported 1,001 to 5,000 uses.A spokesperson with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police department did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday afternoon.In Raleigh, police spokesperson Dia Harris said Tuesday afternoon "there is no way to corroborate" the number of searchesattributed to the agency.In a statement, Fayetteville Police Department spokesperson Sgt. Jeremy Glass confirmed the agency has used the service since a trial starting in December 2019 and became licensed users in September 2020. He said the department follows the company's usage policies, which among other things require that the facial recognition app only be used for law enforcement purposes."Over the course of the almost year and a half that we have been Clearview users, it has been a strong asset in our toolbox, generating numerous leads for investigators by efficiently searching open source records," Glass said. "From banking fraud investigations to Human Trafficking investigations, the introduction of AI technology greatly reduces the chance of human error during a manual search process of open source records."Since December 2019, Glass said the department has run 3,000 searches with Clearview AI, returning about about 1,700 matches.Police departments in Mooresville and Cary, along with alcoholic beverage control agencies in Wake and Mecklenburg counties, were also near the top with 501 to 1,000 uses.A spokesperson with the city of Mooresville didn't respond to a request for comment Tuesday afternoon.Cary Director of Public Safety Allan Cain, however, confirmed in an interview with the N&O that the town police department used a trial of the service for about four months, ending in late February."It's a great technology to use in some applications, but it did not suit our department at the time," Cain said.During that trial, Cain said, the department used the app "fewer than 600 times"  an average of four to five times a day."I can't say if that's a lot or not," he said, adding that the results were never used to bring any criminal charges.Some of those uses may have been unauthorized, Cain said, since Clearview regularly offered free trials directly to officers without the knowledge of department leadership.Julia Paul, a spokesperson with the Mecklenburg County ABC Board, confirmed that the organization's law enforcement arm used Clearview during a free trial, but "opted not to contract nor use the tool after the demo period ended in 2020." She said the agency did not track the number of times its staff used the app."The software was never used to bring charges against any individuals," Paul said.Wake County ABC Board law enforcement Chief Kevin Lawrence said the app is still in use by his investigators.Only 11 North Carolina agencies in's list responded to the publication's request for comment. Several said investigators only used it during a trial or demo period, and others denied using it altogether.Ann Webb, senior policy counsel for ACLU North Carolina, said's reporting highlights the group's concerns over the lack of regulation around the technology. What's needed now, she said, are community conversations about the use of facial recognition "before this spirals out of control.""Clearview's facial surveillance technology as used by law enforcement is an extreme invasion of privacy in that it gives the government unprecedented power to track everyday movements," Webb said.Clearview AI did not respond to a request for comment on's reporting Tuesday afternoon.In addition to private lawsuits, some state attorney generals have also moved against the company. In Vermont, Attorney General T.J. Donovan sued the company over violations of the state's consumer protection and data privacy laws. And shortly after' initial report on Clearview in 2020, New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal ordered police in the state to stop using the service.N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein has not followed suit."Our office is paying close attention to this but hasn't taken any formal action at this point," Laura Brewer, a spokesperson for Stein, said in a statement.
KYODO NEWS - Apr 7, 2021 - 23:22 | All, Japan, 3/11 Fukushima

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said Wednesday his government will soon decide whether to release treated radioactive water accumulating at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea despite strong opposition by fishermen.

While a government panel last year recommended the ocean release of treated water, which is said to pose little risk to human health, as one of the realistic options, the fisheries industry and some local governments opposed the proposal out of concern that consumers would shun seafood caught nearby.

"I want to make a decision in a few days" on the disposal method of the water, Suga told reporters after meeting with Hiroshi Kishi, head of the national federation of fisheries cooperatives known as JF Zengyoren, over the issue at the premier's office in Tokyo.

Kishi told reporters that he said during the meeting, "There is no change in the least" in his organization's opposition to the idea of releasing the water used to cool down melted nuclear fuel into the sea.

Kishi quoted Suga as telling the group head, "The government will decide on the policy, based on experts' proposal that the best way is to release the water into the sea."

But he said, "It is inevitable that there would be reputational damage regardless of how the water will be disposed of, whether into the sea or into the air."

"I want the government to clarify how it intends to respond to such reputational damage," he said.

Asked about the strong local opposition regarding the discharge of the water into the sea, Suga said he is aware that many people have such views in Fukushima.

The government has said it could not keep postponing a decision on the disposal issue, given storage capacity for water tanks at the Fukushima Daiichi complex is expected to run out as early as fall next year.

It asserts that space needs to be secured on the premises, such as for keeping melted fuel debris that will be extracted from the damaged reactors, to move forward the decades-long process of scrapping the complex.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has backed the Japanese government's plan to dispose of the water, saying, releasing it into the sea meets global standards of practice in the nuclear industry.

The Geneva-based body's Director General Rafael Grossi, during his visit to the Fukushima complex in February, said this is a common way to release water at nuclear power plants, even when they are not in emergency situations.

But safety concerns persist, with 15 countries and regions still restricting imports of Japanese agricultural and fishery products more than 10 years after the Fukushima nuclear crisis, caused by a devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

In addition to the local fishery industry, neighboring countries such as China and South Korea have expressed wariness over the discharge of water from the Fukushima plant into the environment.

The Fukushima Daiichi power plant, which suffered core meltdowns due to the natural catastrophe, continues to generate massive amounts of radiation-tainted water after being used to cool melted fuels.

The water is treated using an advanced liquid processing system, or ALPS, to remove most contaminants and stored in tanks on the complex premises. The process, however, cannot remove tritium, a radioactive byproduct of nuclear reactors.

In February last year, a government panel proposed various options for disposing of the water, including releasing it into the ocean as well as evaporating it.

The following month, TEPCO drafted a plan to dilute the water to below the legal limit for concentration of radioactive materials before dumping it in the sea.

The government had initially hoped to make a decision on the discharge of the treated water in October last year but later decided it would need more time for discussions.

In February last year, a government panel proposed various options for disposing of the water, including releasing it into the ocean as well as evaporating it. The following month, TEPCO drafted a plan to dilute the water to below the legal limit for concentration of radioactive materials before dumping it in the sea.

Related coverage:

Fukushima tries to update image with new multilingual website

Japan asks IAEA to verify safety over Fukushima water release

Fishers decrease 24% in 3 Japan prefectures hardest hit by 2011 disaster
COVID-19 related deaths worldwide crossed 3 million on Tuesday, according to a Reuters tally.

Chinas service sector has gathered steam with the sharpest increase in sales in three months.

S&P/ASX 200 (INDEXASX:XJO) is rising for a fourth consecutive session with the index adding 0.20% to 6900 points by 1.13 pm, trading near fresh 13-month highs.

Gains have been widespread with nearly every sector in the green with the IT sector leading improvements along with healthcare and property.

Travel stocks have gained following yesterdays announcement that the Trans-Tasman travel bubble will begin on April 19.

Qantas ( ) rose 3.3%, Flight Centre ( ) gained 1.7% and Webjet ( ) advanced 0.7%.

4.5% growth forecast for Australia

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has upgraded its global economic forecasts, including for Australia.

The IMF is expecting the Australian economy to grow by 4.5% this year and 2.8% in 2022. In January, the IMF had expected the economy to grow by 3.5% in 2021.

Top gainers

Todays top gainers on the ASX include ( ) (+13.58%), ( ) (+28.57%), ( ) (+28.24%), Imugene Limited ( ) (+13.08%), Kneomedia Ltd ( ) (+12.50%), ( ) (+9.84%) and ( ) (+28.57%).

Proactive news headlines:

Alta Zinc hits thick, high-grade zinc and lead in maiden Ponente drilling at Gorno Project in Italy with silver to boot

( ) (FRA:8EE) has received thick, high-grade zinc and lead results from the first drill pad of its maiden drilling program at Ponente area of the Gorno Project in Italy with added silver.

Auteco Minerals discovery of more high-grade gold provides momentum to upcoming resource increase

Auteco Minerals Ltds ( ) ( ) strategy to upgrade and grow the 1-million-ounce inferred resource at its Pickle Crow Gold Project in Canada continues to deliver strong results with the discovery of more high-grade mineralisation.

Perseus Mining results demonstrate organic growth potential of gold inventory across multi-mine asset portfolio

( ) ( ) ( ) (FRA:P4Q) has demonstrated potential for organic growth of gold inventories across its multi-mine asset portfolio in Cote dIvoire with further broad high-grade results from regional drilling at Sissingue and Yaoure.

K2fly on the move with record quarterly invoices of $2.06 million, ARR up 26% and TCV up 56%

( ) experienced a record invoicing quarter, with A$2.06 million in invoices raised in the March quarter, a 28% increase on the A$1.61 million of the corresponding quarter of FY20.

Castillo Copper to resume aggressive exploration of flagship Mt Oxide Project with 11 new targets and copper-focused pipeline

s ( ) ( ) ( ) geology team plans to return this month to the flagship Mt Oxide Project within the Mt Isa copper belt in Queensland following the wet season.

Miramar Resources set for busy period as it kicks off drilling after gathering data for highly prospective gold projects

( ) has kicked off drilling at its highly prospective gold projects in world-class locations and is progressing various other projects through permitting and or tenement grant.

CV Check completes Bright People Technologies acquisition

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The death of a Bowling Green State University student who passed away after allegedly participating in a fraternity hazing ritual has been ruled an accident.

Stone Foltz, 20, who was a sophomore business major at the Ohio university, died in hospital on March 7 - three days after he was allegedly forced into a drinking ritual while pledging Pi Kappa Alpha's Delta Beta chapter.

Foltz was found unconscious by a roommate on March 4 after members of the fraternity allegedly dropped him off at his apartment. He was put on life support and died after his family arranged for his organs to be donated.

On Wednesday, Lucas County Coroner Dr. Diane Scala-Barnett declared Foltz died 'of fatal ethanol intoxication during hazing incident.'

'Manner of death: Accident  College fraternity induction ritual,' she wrote in the autopsy report, obtained by NBC 4.

Last week, university officials revealed they have reason to believe that, on the night of Foltz's death, new pledges were blindfolded and taken into a basement where they were encouraged to down an entire bottle of alcohol each.

The bottle was reportedly equivalent to 40 shots.

No criminal charges have yet been filed in the case.

Stone Foltz, 20, who was a sophomore business major at the Ohio university, passed away in hospital on March 7 - three days after he was allegedly forced into a drinking ritual while pledging Pi Kappa Alpha's Delta Beta chapter

The fraternity house of Pi Kappa Alpha's Delta Beta chapter is pictured. The fraternity could now be completely removed from the university

Bowling Green State University is pictured. School officials have placed the fraternity on suspension and its Greek letters have been removed from its on-campus residence

However, last Friday, Bowling Green State University charged the fraternity with six code of conduct violations.

Pi Kappa Alpha's Delta Beta chapter was officially charged with one count of 'hazing', four counts of 'offenses against persons' and one count of 'offenses disrupting order or disregarding health and safety'.

The case is set be adjudicated within the university by April 13, and could lead to the suspension and expulsion of certain students or the complete removal of the fraternity.

Bowling Green State has currently placed the fraternity on suspension and its Greek letters have been removed from its on-campus residence.

Last month an anonymous student told local news network WTOL about the initiation pledge that new fraternity members are allegedly forced to undergo.

'We have to drink a handle of any alcohol that our big gives us. We have to finish the whole thing in the time we're there before we leave,' the stated.

'I've never seen my roommate more drunk in his entire life. He immediately went to the bathroom and was throwing up in the toilet for just 15 minutes to an hour and making himself vomit,' the student continued.

Bowling Green State University has charged Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity with violating six code of conduct rules after sophomore Stone Foltz died following a hazing ritual

Foltz's distraught parents Cory and Shari are calling for individual members to be charged over their son's death

Meanwhile, Foltz's distraught parents are calling for individual members to be charged for their son's death.

'To me he was forced into something, the outcome is he was murdered,' Shari Foltz told GMA last week.

'There needs to be harsher punishment. You get a slap on the hand for basically doing these things and killing someone. If it's a felony, don't you think they're going to think twice before doing something like this?'

Speaking of her son's death, she declared: 'I can't describe the pain - there's a piece of my heart that's gone. It's just unimaginable, I can't even explain to you.'

'I can't describe the pain - there's a piece of my heart that's gone. It's just unimaginable, I can't even explain to you': Shari is pictured with Stone at his high school graduation
Dublin, April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Solar Energy Market - Forecasts from 2021 to 2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The global solar energy market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 5.12% over the forecast period to reach a market size of US$267.747 billion in 2026 from US$68.579 billion in 2019.



The global solar energy market is growing at a significant rate in the recent years and have been expected to increase more in the upcoming years. The major driving forces for such a growth in this market are increasing concerns of the economies towards the environment sustainability and decarbonization making the power energy companies to improvise their technology towards renewable sources in an efficient way. To support this, governments are also providing the rebate policies to further promote the renewable energy market. Solar energy comes up as third renewable source of energy across the world, and one of the reliable sources from household consumption's point of view. People can have solar energy systems at their rooftops and though, the main concern for the general people to use the cost and the space of plantation of the solar energy. The COVID-19 has slowed the progress a little, but as per IEA report, the renewable energy sector is most resilient to the crisis and will continue to grow as forecasted. Despite the disruption in each sector, solar energy is expected to remain resilient in 2020. However, irrespective of the growing revenue, the cost of production for companies is also decreasing due to government policies, thus, increasing the scope of future strategic investment for the companies in the coming years.



In the upcoming years, all the countries have potential growth of the solar energy, Germany, India, and US are having the significant potential to grow. India is planning to increase the dependency of electricity more on the renewable sources to 55% by 2030 as the demand has been projected to increase by 15280 TWH by 2040 and investments will increase to US$ 500 billion by 2028 (source: IBEF). It can be noticed that there may be a growth of the PV solar plants in the coming period due to cost-competitiveness. While US has accounted for the 8300 MW installed capacity in 43 states in 2019, representing over 70% of all the commercial solar capacity installed in the US (source: SEIA)). The top companies of the US are also shifting their technology towards the solar energy, having Apple and Amazon having the highest installed capacity among them



Technology insights



There are mainly 4 types of technology used, among which thin film sheet is acquiring a significant share in the solar projects, mainly in commercial and utility-scale projects due to the light weight and low cost of installation. Although, thin sheets are having the less effectiveness as compared to the crystalline silicon segment (both mono and poly) which is mainly used in the premium segment of the solar market at present



Solar energy can be captured for electricity production using:

A solar or photovoltaic cell, which converts sunlight into electricity using the photoelectric effect. Typically, photovoltaics is found on the roofs of residential and commercial buildings. Additionally, utilities have constructed large (greater than 100 MW) photovoltaic facilities that require anywhere from 5 to 13 acres per MW, depending on the technologies used.

Concentrating solar power, which uses lenses or mirrors to concentrate sunlight into a narrow beam that heats a fluid, producing steam to drive a turbine that generates electricity. Concentrating solar power projects are larger scale than residential or commercial PV and are often owned and operated by electric utilities.

Solar hot water heaters, typically found on the roofs of homes and apartments, provide residential hot water by using a solar collector, which absorbs solar energy, that in turn heats a conductive fluid, and transfers the heat to a water tank. Modern collectors are designed to be functional even in cold climates and on overcast days.

With the anticipated improvements in technology and increased supply of panels from China/Europe, the capital costs are expected to stabilize at lower levels. As a result, investors/developers are expected to focus on the commercial viability of solar projects



By location, the global solar energy market is segmented as rural and urban areas. The rural areas have the potential growth of the solar energy as the countries are providing incentives to the companies who will establish the solar power plants in rural areas. This will lead to the improvement of the living standard of the people and improvise the areas as well. In many countries, it has one of the lowest costs - both in residential and commercial applications, but also increasingly in the utility-scale field, even if external costs are not added to fossil fuels and nuclear power. Still, solar power's share is in most markets is insignificant, although, decarbonization through electrification of heat, transport and power sectors offer huge solar business opportunities. While digital solar & storage business models are taking off for residential and commercial consumers, smart building technologies reveal their potential to optimize self-consumption rates of the building stock and smoothen grid feed-in, which enables a cleaner yet reliable electricity supply.



In Germany, a market introduction program for residential storage systems limits the feed-in behavior of PV systems to less than 50% of its maximum output. Due to this limitation, the feed-in during peak generation is reduced. Applying an optimized generation and storing strategy allows to increase the existing grid capacity for PV power. This allows to integrate more renewable electricity within the same grid design, avoiding network upgrades. Solar &Storage shall have a right for grid connection and fair, consumer contract level metering costs



So far, only five CSP projects, namely, ACME solar tower (2.5 MW), Dhursar (125 MW), Godawari solar project (50 MW), Megha solar plant (50 MW), and national solar thermal power facility (1 MW) have started operations in India. Owing to factors, such as, huge capital expenditure, difficulty in securing land and water, and insufficient DNI data, other projects have been delayed. By 2030 at the latest, and in some markets earlier, solar PV is expected to deliver the lowest cost of energy for new power generation installations. This decline reflects a series of technological improvements mainly driven by: -Increasing module efficiency (i.e., using better manufacturing techniques and new cell structures)7-Reducing overall usage of material content, in addition to the effect of rising module efficiency through reducing wafer thickness, decreasing silicon losses, silver paste, etc.8-Improvements in manufacturing processes, which increase throughput, reduce labor costs, and achieve greater economies of scale.



As per WE Forum, India will need to double its electricity output by 2030 to meet this massive rise in demand, while also honoring its commitment to reduce its carbon footprint by 35% from 2005 levels. This would require roughly half the additional output to come from renewables, which translates to adding 25 GW of renewable capacity annually until 2030. An expansion of this magnitude will require funding of around $76 billion to 2022, growing to $250 billion during 2023-30, as per India's Economic Survey 2018-19. Therefore, on an annualized basis, investment opportunities of over $30 billion are expected to emerge in the next decade and beyond, about three times current levels - clearly indicating a huge and untapped investment potential



Supportive Government Policies Driving the Market

The country has identified the potential of renewable energy, such as solar and wind, in decarbonizing the economy and meeting targets as per the Paris Agreement, and the Government of India has been bent towards increasing the share of renewables in the country's energy mix.

The government is aiming at 25,750 megawatts (MW) of new power generation capacity from solar plants under the ambitious Pradhan Mantri Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthaan Mahabhiyan (PM-KUSUM) scheme by 2022, with total financials of more than Rs. 32,000 crores.

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy had launched the scheme in 2019, with three components -- installation of 10,000 MW capacity through small renewable energy-based power plants of capacity up to 2 MW each on barren or fallow land of farmers; installation of 17.5 lakh standalone off-grid solar water pumps; and solarization of 10 lakh existing grid-connected agriculture pumps.

Moreover, the government in planning is to add 175 GW of renewable energy by 2022 which includes 100 GW of solar and 60 GW of wind energy. The country has spent more on investment in solar PV than in all fossil fuel sources of electricity generation together. Therefore, the government schemes and plans to increase the renewables share in energy mix is expected to drive the solar energy market in India.

With the government promoting solar installation in the rural areas by providing subsidized solar panels and another incentive, the solar PV installation is expected to increase during the forecast period and is expected to drive the market.

Concluding, the solar energy market is having the potential growth in the upcoming years, mainly in PV solar system due to lower costs, easy installation and potential government policies which will promote the environment sustainability as well



Key Topics Covered:



1. Introduction

1.1. Market Definition

1.2. Market Segmentation



2. Research Methodology

2.1. Research Data

2.2. Assumptions



3. Executive Summary

3.1. Research Highlights



4. Market Dynamics

4.1. Market Drivers

4.2. Market Restraints

4.3. Porters Five Forces Analysis

4.4. Industry Value Chain Analysis



5. Global Solar Energy Market Analysis, By Product type

5.1. Introduction

5.2. Silicon

5.3. Thin Sheet

5.4. Poly-crystalline

5.5. Mono-crystalline



6. Global Solar Energy Market Analysis, By Area

6.1. Introduction

6.2. Rural areas

6.3. Urban areas



7. Global Solar Energy Market Analysis, By technology

7.1. Introduction

7.2. PV

7.3. CSP

7.4. Solar heating and cooling



8. Global Solar Energy Market Analysis, By Application

8.1. Introduction

8.2. Residential

8.3. Commercial/Industrialization



9. Global Solar Energy Market Analysis, by Geography

9.1. Introduction

9.2. North America

9.3. South America

9.4. Europe

9.5. Middle East and Africa

9.6. Asia



10. Competitive Environment and Analysis

10.1. Major Players and Strategy Analysis

10.2. Emerging Players and Market Lucrativeness

10.3. Mergers, Acquisitions, Agreements, and Collaborations

10.4. Vendor Competitiveness Matrix



11. Company Profiles

11.1. Jinko Solar (China)

11.2. JA Solar Technology Co Ltd (Parent company - China)

11.3. Trina Solar (China)

11.4. LONGi Solar

11.5. Canadian Solar

11.6. Hanwha Q-CELLS (South Korea)

11.7. Risen Energy (China)

11.8. GCL-SI (China)

11.9. First Solar (US))

11.10. Talesun Energy

11.11. SunPower Corporation (US)

11.12. Adani Group (India)

11.13. Azure Power Global Limited (India)

11.14. Tata Power (India)

11.15. Sunways AG (in doubt)

11.16. Motech Industries (Taiwan)

11.17. Urja Global Ltd (India)

11.18. Waaree group (India)

11.19. BrightSource Energy Inc (US)

11.20. eSolar Inc (US)

11.21. Yingli Solar

11.22. Wuxi Suntech Power Co Ltd



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/3ybv4y
Both societies have had an intense, roiling experience with a highly polarizing, but incredibly media savvy, populist leader ready to break all the rules and weaken the restraints of their judicial system, state bureaucracy and traditional media unlike any leader before them.

Indeed, Netanyahu and Donald Trump were each so polarizing that they both stimulated breakaway factions within their own parties: Anyone but Bibi and Never Trump. But because their enemies hate each other as much as they hate Bibi and Trump, their ability to create broad-based alternatives has been limited.

Finally, huge, long-developing demographic changes have reached a tipping point in both societies.

In America, its projected that the country will become majority minority around 2045, when whites will make up roughly 49.9 percent of the population. The new majority will be about 25 percent Hispanic, 13 percent Black, 8 percent Asian descent and some 4 percent multiracial.

This has intensified polarization, as the Trump G.O.P. has played on the fears of that tipping point and sought to constrict legal and illegal immigration and, more recently, voting rights to preserve the powers of the shrinking white majority. The left has gone to the other extreme, increasingly defining people by their race, religion, sexual orientation or power/powerlessness status, not by what we all have in common as Americans.

Israels most important demographic tipping point, though, is not the one you think  i.e., not just with the Arabs  its with its exploding ultra-Orthodox Jewish population, argues Dan Ben-David, a Tel Aviv University economist, who heads the Shoresh Institution for Socioeconomic Research.

Despite currently being the home to some of the worlds best universities and a phenomenal high-tech sector, explained Ben-David, Israel is a nation where about half of its children  primarily ultra-Orthodox (known in Hebrew as the Haredi Jews), Israeli Arab and non-Orthodox Jews living in the countrys peripheries  are receiving a third-world education, and they belong to the fastest growing parts of the population.

Haredi families, he said, now average seven children, and in 50 percent of their households the men do not work, but instead engage in religious study thanks to government subsidies; do not serve in the army; and generally deprive their children of the core curriculum in math, science, computing and reading  which is mandated by law in every developed country, other than Israel  that could give them economic independence as adults and likely loosen the grip of the religious establishment on them.
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga greeted US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Photo: AFP

Japan has been quite noisy recently in terms of China affairs. In coordinating moves with the US, it has ratcheted up maneuvers such as meddling in issues of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Xinjiang, all China's internal affairs and demonizing China's coast guard law, all of which are attempts to contain China.

This shows Japan's lack of independence in its diplomacy and the profound influence the US can exert on it. Japan has always been restrained by the US in many agendas such as Japan's diplomacy and China-Japan relations. Even in the Japan-US alliance, despite calls for an equal relationship from both sides, the posture of Japan leaning toward the US has never changed.

Japan tried to be diplomatically independent and act like a major power during the rule of former prime minister Shinzo Abe. But such independence and the ambition of being a major power were subject to US global strategic planning. As strategic competition between China and the US becomes increasingly intense, the shortfall of Japan's lack of independence is clear - it is still deeply influenced by US strategic arrangement and pressure.

The shift of Japan's attitude toward China is clearly shown in its latest round of anti-China moves. Japan remained tepid toward China and did not initiate major provocations in China relations during the latter stage of Abe's rule. When delivering his first policy speech since taking office, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said a stable relationship between China and Japan is essential and that he hopes to cooperate with China on common issues. What prompted the shift of Japan's attitude?

First, Suga was supposed to inherit Abe's policies at the very beginning of his tenure. But faced with blows from the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic, the tough task of economic recovery and the bumpy process to host the Olympic Games, his support base has become shaky and his approval rate is sliding. At this moment, hyping China agendas can shift the Japanese public's criticism away from his cabinet.

Second, the Biden administration is skilled in dealing with relations with allies. Biden stresses cooperation within multilateral mechanisms, and Japan is an important partner in this. The US has imposed pressure on Japan regarding China's domestic issues and the territorial disputes between China and Japan, which made Japan take radical approaches in China relations.

The Japanese invasion of China in history deeply hurt China. Now China has become more powerful than Japan, but Japan treats China with unwarranted prejudice. The US conquered Japan during World War II, and now Japan still serves as a pawn of the US. Japan's diplomacy in nature is subordination to power. The rule of strength has been deeply rooted in Japan's diplomacy since the Meiji Restoration - it attaches to whoever is in power. This is particularly shown in the Japan-US alliance.

Japan is a strategically short-sighted country. It should be able to see that China's rise is unstoppable, but it is still easily enticed by short-term gains. It only deems China's rise and China's economic development as a military and security danger, but ignores China's future role in stabilizing East Asia and even the entire Asia-Pacific.

Now Japan has clearly chosen to stand by the US. The biggest loss for Japan is that its status as a major power will not be lifted as it wishes, because a Washington-leaning Tokyo will not have independent policies. In East Asia, if a power wants to win respect from regional countries, a precondition is that it should not act as a willing puppet of the US.

Last year, 15 Asia-Pacific nations signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. If the US was included in the negotiations, probably the pact couldn't have been signed even now. The Japan-led Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership was signed after the US withdrew. Japan is clear about the US' role as a destabilizing factor in regional economic cooperation.

China-Japan relations haven't come to the lowest point yet. The lowest point in bilateral relations since the two established diplomatic ties took place when former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi made several visits to the Yasukuni Shrine and when Japan illegally nationalized the Diaoyu Islands. Judging from the current situation, there is buffer room.

Australia serves as a lesson. But the degree of their dependence on China and their geographic closeness to China is different. As neighbors, China and Japan have deep economic, historical and cultural relations. It remains to be seen if Japan will become the next one in the region that ties itself to the US chariot regardless of the consequences.
A suspect is in custody after police exchanged fire with gunmen in Brooklyn Tuesday night.

Video Transcript

- We're following some breaking news at this hour. Right now, this breaking news out of Brooklyn where police exchanged gunfire tonight with gunmen at the Summer Houses in Bed-Stuy. The NYPD says housing officers were on routine patrol when they saw people shooting at each other. Police also fired their guns. But at this time, there are no reports of anyone actually being hit. The two officers were taken to the hospital. One person is under arrest, and police may be pursuing another suspect right now who is believed to be hiding out in a building.
The British Prime Minister has urged people to get their Covid-19 vaccine when invited, after concerns were raised about potential side effects of the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab.

Boris Johnson said getting the population vaccinated was the key thing.

It comes as regulatory bodies from the UK and Europe are assessing data on the jab and a potential association with a rare form of blood clot.

And the World Health Organisation (WHO) has confirmed that it will also convene a panel of experts to assess the information.

The WHO and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) have confirmed they will publish findings later this week.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited the AstraZeneca site in Macclesfield, Cheshire (PA)

Mr Johnson defended the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine as he visited the pharmaceutical giants manufacturing plant in Macclesfield.

On the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, the best thing people should do is look at what the MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) say, our independent regulator  thats why we have them, thats why they are independent, he said.

Their advice to people is to keep going out there, get your jab, get your second jab.

He added: The best thing of all is to vaccinate our population, get everybody out getting the jab, thats the key thing and thats what I would advocate, number one.

(PA Graphics)

It comes after reports that a senior EMA official told an Italian newspaper there appears to be an association with the vaccine and rare blood clots.

Marco Cavaleri, head of vaccines at the EMA, is said to have suggested a clear link, though admitted there was uncertainty how the vaccine would cause the complication.

When asked about the remarks, Dr Rogerio Pinto de Sa Gaspar, director of regulation and prequalification at the WHO, said: As we were in this briefing, there was a denial from the European Medicines Agency concerning the existence of the link.

The EMAs said that its safety committee has not yet reached a conclusion and the review is currently ongoing but it is expected to announce findings on Wednesday or Thursday.

Dr Pinto de Sa Gaspar added: There is no link for the moment between the vaccine and thrombolytic events with thrombocytopenia.

There are a number of committees and regulatory authorities looking at data and new data is coming every day and [they are] assessing those data.

Of course its under evaluation and we wait for some feedback from those committees in coming days and hours.

The appraisal that we have for the moment, and this is under consideration by the experts, is that the benefit-risk assessment for the vaccine is still largely positive.

He added: For the time being there is no evidence that the benefit-risk assessment for the vaccine needs to be changed and we know from the data coming from countries like the UK and others that the benefits are really important in terms of reduction of the mortality of populations that are being vaccinated.

Meanwhile he announced that the WHO will convene its Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety to examine the data.

So we expect that probably by the end of Wednesday or Thursday we might have a fresh conclusive assessment from our experts, he added.

But at the present moment we are confident that the benefits risk assessment for the vaccine is largely still positive.

The EMA has previously said that there is no evidence to support restricting the use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine in any population.

But it will publish the findings from its safety committee either on Wednesday or Thursday.

The British regulator  the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA)  is also investigating reports of a very rare and specific type of blood clot in the brain, known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST), occurring together with low levels of platelets (thrombocytopenia) following vaccination.

It has not confirmed when it will report its findings.

A number of countries have suspended the use of the jab among younger people.

(PA Graphics)

The MHRA has said it identified 30 cases of rare blood clot events out of 18.1 million doses of the jab administered up to and including March 24.

There have been seven deaths among the 30 cases.

But the regulator said the benefits of the vaccine in preventing coronavirus outweigh any risks and it urged the public to continue coming forward for the jab.

MHRA chief executive Dr June Raine said: People should continue to get their vaccine when invited to do so.

Our thorough and detailed review is ongoing into reports of very rare and specific types of blood clots with low platelets following the Covid-19 vaccine AstraZeneca.

No decision has yet been made on any regulatory action.

The 30 cases in the UK include 22 reports of CVST and eight of other thrombosis events with low platelets.

CVST clots stop blood draining from the brain properly.
The National Assembly (NA) passed a resolution on the election of chairpersons of a number of NA Committees on April 7, with approval of all 463 deputies present at the session.

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According to the resolution, Nguyen Dac Vinh, member of the Party Central Committee and member of the NA Standing Committee, was elected as Chairman of the 14th NAs Committee for Culture, Education, Youth and Adolescents.

Le Quang Huy, member of the Party Central Committee and member of the NA Standing Committee, has become new Chairman of the NA Committee for Science, Technology and Environment.

Meanwhile, Vu Hai Ha, member of the Party Central Committee and member of the NA Standing Committee, will hold the post of Chairman of the NA Committee for External Relations.

The resolution took effect as soon as it won the approval of the legislature.

Also at the session, Bui Van Cuong, member of the Party Central Committee and member of the NA Standing Committee, was elected Secretary General of the 14th legislature.

A resolution on his election won approval votes of all 465 deputies present at the working session or 96.88 percent of total NA deputies, and came into force right after that.

Tran Sy Thanh, member of the Party Central Committee and Vice Chairman of the NA Office, has become new State Auditor General after a resolution on his election gained approval votes of all 462 participating deputies.

During the morning working session, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh submitted a proposal on the relief of a number of Deputy Prime Ministers, Ministers and Government members.

NA Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue, who is also Chairman of the National Election Council, presented proposals on relieving several Vice Chairpersons and members of the NEC.

State President Nguyen Xuan Phuc also proposed the relief of a number of members of the Council on National Defence and Security.

The proposals were then discussed in groups, with discussion outcomes to be presented in the afternoon.






[April 07, 2021] Kneat Announces $17.5 Million Bought Deal Public Offering

/NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES/ HALIFAX, NS, April 7, 2021 /CNW/ - kneat.com, inc. (TSXV: KSI) ("Kneat" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has entered into an agreement with a syndicate of investment dealers co-led by Cormark Securities Inc. and CIBC Capital Markets Inc. (collectively, the "Underwriters") pursuant to which the Underwriters have agreed to purchase 5,833,500 common shares (the "Common Shares") from the treasury of the Company, at a price of $3.00 per Common Share (the "Offering Price") and offer them to the public by way of short form prospectus for total gross proceeds of approximately $17,500,500 (the "Offering"). The Company has granted the Underwriters an option (the "Over-Allotment Option") to purchase up to an additional 15.0% of the Common Shares of the Offering on the same terms exercisable at any time up to 30 days following the closing of the Offering, for market stabilization purposes and to cover over-allotments, if any. In addition, the Company intends to complete a concurrent non-brokered private placement of Common Shares at the Offering Price to certain shareholders for aggregate gross proceeds of approximately $2.0 million (the "Concurrent Private Placement"). The Common Shares issuable pursuant to the Concurrent Private Placement will be on the same terms as those issuable pursuant to the Offering, except that they will be subject to a statutory four month hold period in accordance with applicable securities laws. The Company intends to use the net proceeds of the Offering and Concurrent Private Placement for growth initiatives, working capital and general corporate purposes. Closing of the Offering is expected to occur on or about April 28, 2021 and is subject to regulatory approval including that of theTSX Venture Exchange.



The Common Shares to be issued under the Offering will be offered by way of a short form prospectus in each of the Provinces of Canada, except Quebec, and may be offered in the United States on a private placement basis pursuant to an exemption from the registration requirements of the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and applicable state securities laws, and certain other jurisdictions outside of Canada and the United States. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of the securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. This press release does not constitute an offer of securities for sale in the United States. The securities being offered have not been, nor will they be, registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and such securities may not be offered or sold within the United States absent registration under U.S. federal and state securities laws or an applicable exemption from such U.S. registration requirements.

About Kneat Kneat, a Canadian company with operational headquarters in Limerick, Ireland, develops and markets the next generation Kneat Gx SaaS platform. Multiple business work processes can be configured on the platform from equipment to computer system validation, through to quality document management. Kneat's software allows users to author, review, approve, execute testing online, manage any exceptions and post approve final deliverables in a controlled FDA 21 CFR Part 11/ Eudralex Annex 11 compliant platform. Macro and micro report dashboards enable powerful oversight into all systems, projects and processes globally. Customer case studies are reporting productivity improvements in excess of 100% and a higher data integrity and compliance standard. For more information visit www.kneat.com. Cautionary and Forward-Looking Statements Except for the statements of historical fact contained herein, certain information presented herein constitutes "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. Such forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, information relating to the proposed Offering, the Concurrent Private Placement and the use of proceeds. While such forward-looking statements are expressed by Kneat, as stated in this release, in good faith and believed by Kneat to have a reasonable basis, they are subject to important risks and uncertainties. As a result of these risks and uncertainties, the events predicted in these forward-looking statements may differ materially from actual results or events. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, given that they involve risks and uncertainties. Kneat does not undertake any obligation to release publicly revisions to any forward-looking statement, except as may be required under applicable securities laws. Investors should not assume that any lack of update to a previously issued forward-looking statement constitutes a reaffirmation of that statement. Continued reliance on forward-looking statements is at an investors' own risk. 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. SOURCE kneat.com, inc.

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President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky informed Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau of the aggravation of the security situation in eastern Ukraine.

"Over the truce since July 27 last year, 28 soldiers have been killed in the shelling in Donbas, 24 of them this year. Since March 26 alone, we have lost eight soldiers. Every day of the war claims the lives of brave, patriotic people who must build the future of Ukraine," the President said, the press service of the Head of State informs.

The President of Ukraine informed the Prime Minister of Canada about the constant ceasefire violations in Donbas, which lead to an increase in casualties among the Ukrainian military, as well as an increase in the military threat to Ukraine from Russia.

Volodymyr Zelensky stressed the need to step up international pressure on Russia to prevent further escalation.

He also thanked for the cooperation within the Canadian military training mission UNIFIER and suggested considering the possibility of expanding the training program for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in particular, increasing the number of Canadian military instructors.

In addition, the President stressed the importance of a possibility for Ukraine to obtain the NATO Membership Action Plan.

"As a special partner of Ukraine, Canada could take the lead among the allies who support a MAP decision for Ukraine. Canada's assistance will be an important signal of support from true friends," Volodymyr Zelensky said.

The President of Ukraine once again invited Justin and Sophie Trudeau to the inaugural summit of the Crimean Platform in Kyiv on August 23 this year and to the celebration of the 30th anniversary of Ukraine's independence.

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President Nguyen Xuan Phuc, 67, on April 5, took the oath of office before the National Assembly, people, and voters. This is the first time that an incumbent Prime Minister was elected State President.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc (first right) talks to merchants

In the last five years, the achievements created by Mr. Phuc and the Government with innovation, dynamism and strong determination to implement tasks have helped the "Vietnamese vessel fulfill a journey full of storms of difficulties and challenges".

Frequent trips to localities

Burdened with heavy responsibility, how will the Prime Minister steer the government vessel? This was the question raised by many people when Phuc took office, warning that this would be a very difficult tenure for the Government and Prime Minister Phuc.

However, the concern was lifted after the first Government regular meeting. The Prime Minister decided that the Government has to shift from one that gives administrative orders to a "tectonic" Government that serves people. He also showed strong determination to build an upright, transparent and effective Government which says no to corruption, wrongdoings and lavishment.

Just within one month, the Prime Minister left an imprint wherever he set foot. On April 17, he was present in Quang Tri. On April 22, he came to Lai Chau and on April 24, he was in Quang Nam. He attended investment and tourism promotion conferences and groundbreaking ceremonies to kick off large projects.

One week later, he flew to HCM City on April 29 and came to Dong Nai on April 30, where he presided over an online conference with 500 businesses and dialogue with 3,000 workers.

On May 1, he visited Ha Tinh to have an urgent working session with the provincial peoples committees of the central region on the sea environment disaster.

As head of the Government, the Prime Minister pursues the motto talk the talk, walk the walk. During the tenure, the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Ministers took 570 trips to localities, agencies and hotspots.

As National Assembly Deputies commented, the Government of the last tenure was one with a passion to build a powerful Vietnam with the image of a motivated and dynamic Prime Minister.

Speaking before the National Assembly when the tenure began, I said Vietnam ranks 14th in the world in terms of population, but its economy ranks 48th. We can take pride now that Vietnam has surpassed 11 other countries to jump to the 37th position, Mr. Phuc said before the National Assembly on March 29.

Though the way ahead is still full of difficulties and challenges, we believe that Vietnam will soon become a higher average income country and join the group of developed countries with high income by 2045, Phuc said.

However, he admitted that many problems still exist. There are still many issues of public concern. Some state officers are indifferent and insensitive to peoples problems. They are indecisive and not determined in dealing with issues. They dont do what they promise and hesitate to collide with others, so wrongdoings are not condemned.

The Prime Minister close to people

Being close to people, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has left good impressions among the people and social circles.

At the first glimmer of daylight one day in September 2016, the petty merchants at a big wholesale market in Hanoi were surprised when Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and a group of officials came to the market to survey the situation.

The actions taken by the head of the Government received strong support from people. They were touched by the Prime Ministers visits and sincere concern for them.

Visiting stalls at the market and talking to merchants, the Prime Minister told them to maintain their business ethics and not trade fruits soaked in toxic preservatives which may harm consumers health.

In October 2016, prior to the working session with HCM Citys leaders, the Prime Minister took an inspection tour to a catering company and examined supermarkets food trade.

He even examined the broth at a street pho shop. The street pho shop on Nguyen Hau street in Tan Phu district once received a special guest  Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and the Government members.

He checked every bowl at the shop carefully to find if the bowls were clean enough. He asked the shop owner how to cook pho and invited all the officers escorting him to eat pho. The owner and everyone else was surprised when the Prime Minister stood up and paid for the pho and coffee for all members.

After eating pho and drinking coffee, Mr. Phuc wished the owner prosperity and told her to strictly follow necessary steps to ensure food hygiene.

During his Prime Minister tenure, Phuc has held three dialogues with farmers, three with factory workers, one with youth, and one with young entrepreneurs.

The people in the areas usually hit by natural disasters have become familiar with the image of the Prime Minister, wearing a soldiers hat, going to the center of the floods to give his regards and encourage local people.

In the 2020 flood season, many online meetings were organized urgently, and many instructions and letters of encouragement were released to help local authorities and people overcome natural disasters.

Suffering from floods and storms, one after another, we need to keep an iron will and be optimistic, Phuc said when visiting people in Hien Ninh Commune in Quang Binh province, the most seriously flooded area.

The Prime Ministers inspection tours showed his passion to bring "peace and warmth" to people.

The actions taken by the head of the Government received strong support from people. They were touched by the Prime Ministers visits and sincere concern for them.

Moc Mien

PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc meets Hai Phong voters Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on March 7 met with voters of the northern port city of Hai Phong, briefing them on the outcomes of the work of the National Assembly deputies of the city.
Kerri-Anne Kennerley has addressed the parliamentary sexual misconduct scandals that have rocked Canberra in recent weeks.

The TV veteran, 67, told The Daily Telegraph's Confidential in a recent interview that men in general are not to blame when it comes to sexual violence against women.

'Most [men] are actually fantastic. They want to help, they see the reasoning (behind inclusive discussions),' the former Studio 10 host said. 'There is only a small percentage of people who clearly have issues in their life.'

Weighing in: Kerri-Anne Kennerley (pictured), 67, addressed the parliamentary sexual misconduct scandals in Canberra in a recent interview with The Daily Telegraph's Confidential - and said that 'most men are actually fantastic' and 'want to help'

Kerri-Anne previously told Daily Mail Australia that she wants to see 'just as many men marching side by side' with women at justice rallies, as sexual harassment is a 'social issue' that impacts everyone.

'I think the next march, I want to see just as many men marching side by side with women, because it is not a female sexual harassment issue,' she stated.

'It's a bullying issue, it's a social issue.'

Views: 'Most [men] are actually fantastic. They want to help, they see the reasoning,' the former Studio 10 host said. 'There is only a small percentage of people who clearly have issues in their life.' Pictured at the premiere of Hamilton in Sydney last month

'I think it's important to have people standing side by side to say this behaviour - whoever it's happening to - is not good enough,' the media doyenne added.

'Everybody has to get involved.'

Last month, tens of thousands of people took to the streets across the country to protest against sexual violence against women in the wake of rape allegations that have rocked the government.

'Everybody has to get involved': Kerri-Anne previously told Daily Mail Australia that she wants to see 'just as many men marching side by side' with women at justice rallies, as sexual harassment is a 'social issue' that impacts everyone

Protests: Last month, tens of thousands of people across the country took part in the #March4Justice to protest against sexual violence against women in the wake of rape allegations that have rocked the government, with a major demonstration in Canberra

The #March4Justice rallies were held in more than 40 Australian cities and towns, with a major demonstration taking place in Canberra where the nation's parliament is located.

The crowd gathered outside Parliament House holding aloft placards with slogans including 'You're Not Listening', 'How Many Victims Do You Know?' and 'I Believe Her'.

It comes after Brittany Higgins, a political adviser to the Liberal Party, came forward with allegations that she had been raped inside the parliament building in 2019 - saying she had been 'silenced' by party officials.

Speaking out: It comes after Brittany Higgins (pictured in white), a political adviser to the Liberal Party, came forward with allegations that she had been raped inside the parliament building in 2019 - saying she had been 'silenced' by party officials

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has come under intense scrutiny after denying that he knew of Ms Higgins' allegations at the time - despite several senior advisers being aware - and for the way he has addressed her accusations since.

In response to increasing pressure, the Prime Minister revealed his new cabinet after being forced to make changes with two ministers on medical leave and the government engulfed in scandals stemming from the treatment of women.

Attorney-General Christian Porter and Defence Minister Linda Reynolds have both been stripped of their current portfolios and demoted - but will remain in cabinet.
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User reports estimate the perceived ground shaking intensity according to the MMI (Modified Mercalli Intensity) scale

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San Isirdo de El General / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / complex rolling (tilting in multiple directions) / 2-5 s : Loud boom followed by windows and doors making noise. The floor family almost fell over and the curtains were moving. This made a lot of noise. My friend had just dropped me off and he said he thought his truck was hit by another car that's how strong it was. | 3 users found this interesting.

Villa Nueva Perez Zeledon / Light shaking (MMI IV) / both vertical and horizontal swinging / 5-10 s : I heard noises, which is unusual. Both sideways and up and down, lots of rattling of stuff in my house. Different than normal for here. | 2 users found this interesting.

La Ceniza Perez Zeledon (10.7 km E of epicenter) [ Map ] / Very weak shaking (MMI II) I'm just outside and my wife in the kitchen. Short burst of movement very quick. Just enough time to know the sensation. (reported through (reported through our app / Very weak shaking (MMI II)

Alfombra, Costa Rica / Light shaking (MMI IV) / 1-2 s : Pretty good jolt. A little different movement then most. Usual movement is east/west here. This moved west/north today. I went out to check the house. No apparent damage.

Tinamastes, Costa rica (2.2 km SE of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s : The windows were moving, shaking a lot.

24.3 km SSE of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 2-5 s : Sitting in a beach chair near Uvita. Three of us felt it, like someone was shaking our chair.

1.5 km N of epicenter [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / rattling, vibrating / very short : Heard a bang. Felt a huge jolt. Doors and windows rattling.

San Francisco de Rivas, Perez Zeledon, San Jose (22.4 km NE of epicenter) [ Map ] / not felt : nothing

Uvita (17.9 km SSE of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / both vertical and horizontal swinging / 10-15 s

Platanillo de baru (2.8 km ENE of epicenter) [ Map ] / Very weak shaking (MMI II) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s

Uvita (16 km SSE of epicenter) [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / rattling, vibrating / 1-2 s

28.8 km SSE of epicenter [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / rattling, vibrating / 5-10 s

17 km SSE of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 5-10 s : Lots of movement the house shook.

Uvita (17.9 km SSE of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / both vertical and horizontal swinging / 10-15 s

Uvita (2.5 km SSW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / 5-10 s

Ojochal de Osa (40.8 km SSE of epicenter) [ Map ] / Very weak shaking (MMI II) / simple rolling (tilting sideways along one direction) / 2-5 s

24.9 km SSE of epicenter [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / vertical swinging (up and down) / 2-5 s

28.8 km SSE of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s

12.1 km SSE of epicenter [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / vertical swinging (up and down) / 2-5 s (reported through our app / Weak shaking (MMI III) / vertical swinging (up and down) / 2-5 s

Platanillo (4.3 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / 2-5 s (reported through our app / Light shaking (MMI IV) / 2-5 s

Tinamaste, Costa Rica (1.1 km SE of epicenter) [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / single lateral shake / 1-2 s A single big shake. Like the house got hit by a truck. (reported through (reported through our app / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / single lateral shake / 1-2 s

Platanillo / Light shaking (MMI IV) / both vertical and horizontal swinging / 1-2 s : Very short earthquake

2K north of tinamastie costa rica / Very weak shaking (MMI II) / rattling, vibrating / 1-2 s

tinamaste / Light shaking (MMI IV) / 10-15 s

In Perez Zeledon, Costa Rica / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 1-2 s : Felt a side shake then a snap

Tinamaste / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 2-5 s

In Perez Zeledon, Costa Rica / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 1-2 s : Felt a side shake then a snap

Tinamaste / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / 2-5 s

Platanillo, San Jose province, CR / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 5-10 s

Escalares Mountain / Light shaking (MMI IV) / 5-10 s : Shaking with object rattling inside. Pictures on wall shifted.

Platanillo / Light shaking (MMI IV) / both vertical and horizontal swinging / 1-2 s : Very short earthquake

San juan Bosco / Weak shaking (MMI III) / 1-2 s
A Boeing 737 MAX airplane lands after a test flight at Boeing Field in Seattle, Washington, U.S. June 29, 2020. Photo by Reuters/Karen Ducey.

Vietnam's Transport Ministry has allowed the Boeing 737 Max aircraft to pass through the countrys airspace after two years.

The decision was taken following a proposal made by the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) last month, citing Boeings efforts to address technical issues of the aircraft and assessments by aviation authorities in the U.S. and Europe.

However, the ministry has ordered CAAV to continue monitoring related issues and updating itself with information from peers in China, Australia and Russia, countries that have not yet opened up their airspace for this aircraft model.

The ministry also said that after these countries lift their respective bans on the aircraft and if it meets Vietnamese regulations, the CAAV can report it for the ministry to consider permission for the aircraft to operate in and be imported into Vietnam.

The U.S. allowed the Boeing 737 Max to resume operations in December and Europe did so in January.

The Boeing 737 Max aircraft was grounded worldwide in March 2019 after 346 people were killed in two crashes in the space of a few months in Indonesia and Ethiopia.
Louis Vuitton has been mocked for selling a bag that looks like a plane - and comes with a 'ridiculous' 28,210 price tag.

The controversial Louis Vuitton Fall/Winter 2021 Airplane Bag by Virgil Abloh was shared on Twitter by Saint - and features everything from the engine nacelles and wings to stabilisers, which are covered with the dark, masculine Monogram Eclipse canvas.

While the French Fashion house has some more popular pieces that are often spotted on the high-street, there latest release seems to have caused quite the stir online.

'You can buy an actual plane for less,' noted one shopper, while a second mocked the design and joked: 'Where's my chapstick? Have you checked the cockpit?'

Louis Vuitton has been mocked for selling an plane-themed purse which comes with a 'ridiculous' $39,000 price tag (pictured)

The accessory, designed by Virgil Abloh, features everything from the engine nacelles and wings to stabilisers, which are covered with the dark, masculine Monogram Eclipse canvas (pictured)

The pricey bag caused quite the stir online, with one joking: You can buy an actual plane for less' (pictured)

Abloh's pricey Fall/Winter 2021 line is inspired by the tourist vs. purist archetypes, which are contrasting masculine sterotypes.

'It's my organizing principle for my point of view when I make things,' he said, speaking to Vogue in January. 'A tourist is someone who's eager to learn, who wants to see the Eiffel Tower when they come to Paris. The purist is the person who knows everything about everything.'

The designer told how his line is an autobiographical exploration of his African American heritage and was created as a mean to express his experiences as an African American creative director in Europe.

However, many struggled to see past the hefty price tag.

Taking to the comments section, one person asked 'who the hell is going to be carrying a damn plane around though?' to which someone else chipped in: 'Rich people with no fashion taste' (pictured)

'One can buy a real plane for that amount,' wrote one, while a second commented: 'I'll glue some handles on a Cobra Rattler and I'll sell it for half as much.'

A third added: 'I have the means to procure anything I desire, so my statement is not made due to envy. If the world's most beautiful women carried this bag, I would literally walk in the opposite direction.'

And when another asked 'who the hell is going to be carrying a damn plane around though?' someone else chipped in: 'Rich people with no fashion taste.'

Elsewhere, others saw the opportunity to crack some plane-related jokes.

'Now that's some fly s**t,' joked one, while a second commented: 'I'm going to steal this and run down the street with it flying over my head while making plane noises.'
New Delhi: Russia has offered to provide Pakistan with Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccines which are being produced in countries like India. Moscow has already sent Pakistan 50,000 doses of vaccines, and will soon send 150,000 more doses.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, standing alongside Pakistan Foreign Minister SM Qureshi, said, "We have a number of foreign partners to produce the vaccines. Vaccine production is up and running in India, Korea, Belarus, and other countries. So these vaccines can be supplied to Pakistan. As much we can, we will be helping Pakistan to order to cover the demand.".

The Russian Direct Investment Fund, which is behind Sputnik V, and Indian company Virchow Biotech have announced an agreement to produce 200 million doses per year of Sputnik V.

Pakistan had given approval for Sputnik V in February and was the 22nd country to do so. The 2-shot vaccine has an efficacy of 91.6%.

Qureshi said, "Russia is a fairly advance country in health carewe have expressed our interest in commercial import of this vaccine, but keeping in view the population of the countrywe feel there are great opportunities of local production, we would be very keen to discuss with Russian to facilitate local production"

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov is in Pakistan for a 2-day visit, the first such visit by Russian FM since 2012. During his visit, he held talks with his counterpart Qureshi and called on Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Live TV
Ree Drummond has grown famous in her role as the star of Food Networks The Pioneer Woman. Since launching her blog back in 2006, Drummond has become a household name for her hearty recipes, which she feeds to her husband, Ladd Drummond, and four children.

Though Drummond has settled in nicely to life on the ranch, she wasnt shy about the difficulties she faced when she and Ladd were first married.

Ree Drummond with her husband, Ladd Drummond, in New York City in 2017 | Monica Schipper/Getty Images for The Pioneer Woman Magazine

Ree Drummond has built an empire alongside her husband, Ladd

Drummond married her husband, Ladd, back in 1996. After settling into life on his Oklahoma farm, the couple welcomed four children. Drummond chose to homeschool her little ones. Raising four kids on a massive ranch wasnt easy, so Drummond started blogging about her experience to anyone who wanted to listen.

The blog, which launched in 2006, grew quickly. Eventually, it led to a Food Network show; The Pioneer Woman premiered in 2011. From there, Drummonds empire continued to expand. She wrote various cookbooks and childrens books and eventually developed a cookware line. Later, Drummond and her family opened up The Mercantile (her home goods store and restaurant), plus a bed and breakfast in downtown Pawhuska, Oklahoma, where they live. In 2017, Drummond launched The Pioneer Woman Magazine, and shes showed no signs of slowing down.

Ree Drummond with her husband and three younger kids, Todd (left), Bryce, and Paige. | Monica Schipper/Getty Images for The Pioneer Woman Magazine

RELATED: The Pioneer Woman: Ree Drummonds Picnic Pasta Salad Recipe Is the Perfect Springtime Dish

Ree Drummond admitted she faced bumps in the road after marrying Ladd

Though Drummond has built a life anyone would dream of, she never pictured herself settling down with a rancher. In an interview with ABC, Drummond said her friends thought she would be the last person to ever settle down in Oklahoma. Though she loves Ladd, she admitted things werent easy at first.

I had all the bumps in the road, the transitions that come from that, Drummond said of her life after marrying Ladd and moving out to the country. Getting up when its still dark outside  that was hard to get used to  Trying to figure out how to ride horses and work cattle  It was tough, and it took a long time to get used to it.

Drummond was born and raised in Oklahoma, but she clarified that she did not live the way she does now. I lived in a nice town, took ballet class, went to the opera, she said. Drummond also went to college in Los Angeles and had plans to attend law school in Chicago before meeting Ladd. She chose to put those plans on hold when the two started dating, and life has clearly taken her in another direction.

Ree and Ladd Drummond appear to have a loving life together

Though Drummond had plenty of adjusting to do when she met Ladd, the two have clearly built a dream life together  and it seems she couldnt be happier with her decision to marry the rancher. The couples kids help out on the farm, though they do seem to be going in their own directions. Drummonds oldest daughter, Alex, has been living in Texas and is set to wed in early May. Drummond recently held Alexs bridal shower and posted photos to The Pioneer Woman blog.

Drummond and her husband have expanded into Pawhuskas town center with their projects, and they seem to be enjoying the adventures life has given them.
Artist Sculpts American Flag Homage to 2020 Tornado Victims, Heroic First Responders

An artist has donated a lovingly crafted American flag sculpture in memory of the 2020 Easter tornado in Jones County, Mississippi.

The tribute pays homage to the lives lost and the heroes who stepped up to help during the crisis.

Artist Jason Saulpaw presented his handiwork in an April 3 ceremony at the Laurel Veterans Memorial Museum. Local residents and representatives attended, honoring efforts to restore their town after the April 12 storms last year.

The 49-year-old works in retail management, but runs his passion project, The Patriot Art Company, sculpting flags off hours.

Recalling the storms looming near his neighborhood and calls to evacuate, he told The Epoch Times, I got out of my place  I thought I was going to a safer area.

But it turned out I put myself in the path of worse than I would have been if I just stayed home.

The artist watched the storm unfold from a friends house. Leaving the area to check on his home, he witnessed a second tornado pass through the town, hitting two homes.

Saulpaw described it as another close call for the day.

He recalls chaos, but also people coming together in the aftermath: to share food, water, and supplies; to restore power and clear properties; and transport injured people to hospital.

Facebook was lit up with messages from locals checking in on neighbors. Helpers loaded up gear, such as chainsaws and tractors, and headed to the worst-hit areas to help.

Saulpaw recalls one man from Alabama who passed away during the cleanup, and three other locals who died.

And despite division often portrayed in the media, Saulpaw saw only unity during the crisis. It didnt matter who you are, what you had, what color you were, he said, everybody was helping everybody.

He also joined in the efforts while maintaining his full-time job. He is proud of the selflessness demonstrated by local first responders, fire department, EMTs, and law enforcement officers, he said.

During those few days, that feeling turned into a desire to create.

It hit me that I needed to try to collect some of the debris and memorialize the situation  all the good people that came together to help each other, he explained.

I didnt want anything for it; I just wanted to give the community something back.

Saulpaw crafted the American flag from a base of wooden planks, which he supplied, and added smaller elements from donated debris.

The finished work displays stars and stripes in rusticated style with relief carvings of various patriotic designs. The memorial took three months to complete.

The hardest part, said Saulpaw, was the carving. Your hands cramp up pretty good after [youve] been doing it for a few hours.

Saulpaw reached out to Laurel city officials, locals, and the Laurel Veterans Memorial Museum. Law enforcement and local biker clubs even escorted the artwork to the museum where it was presented.

Obviously we saw the loss of life and destruction, said PJ Weeks, Pastor of First Baptist Church, Soso, during the presentation.

But Gods grace through it all in bringing so many people, so many heroes, from our next-door neighbors to people down the road in other counties and other states.

Saulpaw told The Epoch Times he felt he had to contribute the work, adding that one of his simple rules to live by is to wake up every day and try to do the right thing.

When times get easy, people forget  they go right back to their old ways, he reflected.

I think [we] would be light years ahead if everybody would remember disaster times like that, when everybody came together like brothers and sisters and helped each other.

It was basically all for one and one for all.

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 at TheEpochTimes.com/newsletter
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Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) greets supporters as he announces his campaign for U.S. Senate during a rally in Huntsville, Ala., on March 22, 2021. (Kim Chandler/AP Photo)

Trump Endorses Mo Brooks for Senate Run

Former President Donald Trump endorsed Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) for his Senate run Wednesday morning, giving his staunch supporter real treasure for the 2022 Senate race in a state deemed safe red.

Few Republicans have as much COURAGE and FIGHT as Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks, Trump said in his statement, calling Brooks a great conservative Republican leader.

On March 22, Brooks announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate seat to be vacated by 86-year-old Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), who wont seek reelection after serving the Senate for 6 terms.

Mo Brooks is pro-life, loves our Military and our Vets, will protect our Second Amendment, combat the Biden open borders agenda, is fighting for voter integrity (like few others), and was the Co-Chair of our winning, and record-setting, Alabama campaign in 2020, Trump continued in his statement.

Brooks fiercely supported Trump in the last election. He was the first congressman to publicly announce that he would challenge Electoral College votes during the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6. He was also the first congressman to sign an objection.

I led the charge in Congress to promote honest and accurate elections. At first, my fight was pretty darn lonely. But over time, 140 congressmen and senators joined my fight against voter fraud and election theft, Brooks said when he announced his run for Senate.

Trump won Alabama by 62 percent in 2020. That was the fifth election in a row in which a Republican nominee won over 60 percent of the vote in Alabama. In a state like this, Trumps endorsement would make Brookss win almost certain due to Trumps dominant approval ratings among Republican voters.

Another candidate for Alabamas U.S. Senate seat is Lynda Blanchard, Trumps former ambassador to Slovenia, who announced her run in February.

Blanchard indicated on Wednesday morning that she wouldnt drop out of the race, saying that she is steadfast in her support of Trump.

Stephen Miller, senior adviser to former President Donald Trump, speaks in support of the U.S. Senate candidacy of Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) in Huntsville, Ala., on March 22, 2021. (Ivan Pentchoukov/Epoch Times)

Trumps endorsement for Brooks is no surprise, considering Brooks staunch support during the last presidential election. Another indicator is Stephen Miller, a former senior adviser to Trump, who delivered a passionate endorsement speech at Brooks kick-off event last month.

Mo Brooks has my Complete and Total Endorsement for the U.S. Senate representing the Great State of Alabama. He will never let you down! Trumps statement concluded.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 7)  Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte quietly flew to Singapore this week for "personal health management."

In a statement on Wednesday, the presidential daughter disclosed that she is on a five-day leave, claiming that she was granted a travel authority by the Department of the Interior and Local Government.

"I am on leave from April 6-10, 2021," she said. "I have a travel authority to Singapore from the DILG. The reason is personal health management."

Duterte reportedly flew from Davao to Ninoy Aquino International Airport on board a Philippine Airlines flight on Tuesday, before heading to Singapore.

She claimed that all protocols for her return to Davao City, including RT-PCR testing and 14-day quarantine, have already been pre-arranged.

The mayor did not provide other details of her trip. She also took a week-long medical leave in September 2020.

The Greater Manila area is currently under the enhanced community quarantine. The government, however, has not imposed any limitations on outbound flights of residents from other areas despite rising COVID-19 cases.
Zimbabwean import ban raises supply concerns

07 April 2021

Zimbabwean retailers are concerned over the capacity of local cement companies to satisfy demand after a cement import ban has been implemented.

However, the government is keen to protect jobs and its import ban (SI 89 of 2021) has sparked fears that the move might trigger collusion among local cement producers, causing prices increases and cement shortages.

"The local content policy strives to increase the consumption of local produce and it harnesses the creation of jobs so we thank Government for coming up with such a policy measure," says Munyaradzi Hwengwere, Buy Zimbabwe's executive director.

Meanwhile, Lafarge Cement Zimbabwe CEO, Precious Nyika, allayed fears of cement shortages in the country. "We have worked hard as Industry over the last couple of years reducing the price of cement from around US$10 per bag to the current US$7.5. The country has an annual capacity of 2.6Mt against the demand of 1.4Mt so we can meet the demand," she said.

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HELSINKI - Greenland is holding an early parliamentary election Tuesday focused in part on whether the semi-autonomous Danish territory should allow international companies to mine the sparsely populated Arctic island's substantial deposits of rare-earth metals.

Part of the region fighting the upcoming election to Greenland parliament, in Nuuk, Greenland, Tuesday March 30, 2021. The autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, Greenland, will hold an election to its Parliament consisting of 31 members, on April 6, 2021. (Emil Helms/Ritzau via AP)

HELSINKI - Greenland is holding an early parliamentary election Tuesday focused in part on whether the semi-autonomous Danish territory should allow international companies to mine the sparsely populated Arctic island's substantial deposits of rare-earth metals.

Lawmakers agreed on a snap election after the centre-right Democrats pulled out of Greenland's three-party governing coalition in February, leaving the government led by the centre-left Forward party with a minority in the national assembly, the 31-seat Inatsisartut.

One of the main reasons the Democrats withdrew was a deep political divide over a proposed mining project involving uranium and rare-earth metals in southern Greenland. Supporters see the Kvanefjeld mine project as a potential source of jobs and prosperity.

Outgoing Prime Minister Kim Kielsen pushed to give the green light to mine owner Greenland Minerals, an Australia-based company with Chinese ownership, to start operation. Erik Jensen  Kielsens recent successor as Forward party leader  is more hesitant and has been opposed to granting outright a mining license to the company.

Recent election polls showed the left-leaning Community of the People party (Inuit Ataqatigiit), a staunch opponent of the mine project, in position to become the largest party in the Greenlandic Parliament.

The opposition party has claimed that a majority of Greenlands 56,000 inhabitants, most of them indigenous Inuit people, are against the project, largely for environmental reasons.

Observers stress political surveys in Greenland have proved to be uncertain, and the over 30% support level enjoyed by the Community of the People party in pre-election polls may not necessarily hold.

A third of the voters decide at the last minute, and the support for (Community of the People) is overestimated, said political scientist Leander Nielsen at the University of Greenland, as quoted by the Norwegian news agency NTB.

One of the Forward's party's initial justifications for granting a mining license to Greenland Minerals was that the proceeds from the project would strengthen Greenlands economy and thus help in efforts to disengage the island completely from Denmark through independence  an ambition nurtured by Forward, the Community of the People and some other parties.

In the past, I was very preoccupied with the fact that, of course, we must be independent. And so will we one day, Greenland resident Lise Svenningsen told the Danish public broadcaster DR. But I think that we should focus much more on the conditions of the population, and that politicians should try to act on things they promise year after year.

The mining proposal is relevant beyond Greenland. The largely ice-covered island has the worlds largest undeveloped deposits of rare-earth metals, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Estimates show the Kvanefjeld mine could hold the largest deposit of rare-earth metals outside China, which currently accounts for more than 90% of global production.

Rare-earth metals are used in a wide array of sectors and products, including smartphones, wind turbines, microchips, batteries for electric cars and weapons systems.

In 2019, former President Donald Trump floated an idea to buy Greenland for the United States from Denmark for strategic reasons. The initiative was met with uproar in Copenhagen and dismissed as an absurd idea. However, international interest in Greenland has continued as major powers  the U.S., China and Russia  are racing to establish their presence in the Arctic.

Washington opened a U.S. consulate in Nuuk, Greenland's capital, last year as part of a new Arctic strategy adopted by the Trump administration.

Under a 1951 deal, NATO member Denmark has allowed the U.S. to build bases and radar stations on Greenland. The U.S. Air Force currently maintains one base in northern Greenland, Thule Air Force Base, 1,200 kilometres (745 miles) south of the North Pole.

Greenland, the worlds largest island that is not a continent, has its own government and Parliament, and relies on Denmark for defence, foreign and monetary policies.

Voting in Tuesday's election is set to end at 2200 GMT. Initial results are expected on Wednesday.
At least 20,000 people from Myanmars Karen ethnic group, many of whom are Christian, have been displaced due to continual airstrikes that began on March 27, two months after the military coup. A rights organization reports that military forces are also bombarding civilians in their homes.

Airstrikes by the Myanmar army have targeted civilians, schools and medical clinics in northern Karen state, according to the Free Burma Rangers, an organization that provides humanitarian services in war-torn areas.

In an April 5 report, FBR noted that at least 14 people were killed and 40 more were injured on April 1, including women and children, by airstrikes in Dwe Lo Township of Karen states Papun district.

Many others have been killed and wounded in the ethnic minority areas during the campaign. Homes and stores have been destroyed.

Source:The Christian Post
[April 07, 2021] Mission Barns Raises $24M Series A to Scale Up its Cultivated Fat Technology and Build Pilot Production Facility

Silicon Valley-based cellular agriculture company Mission Barns today announced a $24M Series A to scale up its cultivated fat technology and build a pilot manufacturing plant in the Bay Area. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005738/en/ Mission Fat developed by the Mission Barns team. (Photo: Business Wire) Mission Barns is focused on cultivating animal fat-without the animal. Its technology platform enables starting from a handful of pork, poultry, or beef cells and feeding them a plant-based feedstock inside a cultivator. Over a short period of time, the novel process creates real, pure animal fat that delivers the mouthfeel and flavor of meat without raising and slaughtering live animals, and uses a fraction of the carbon emissions, water, and land required by conventional animal agriculture. The first commercial application of Mission Fat is in plant-based meat. Consumers repeatedly cite flavor, mouthfeel, and meatiness as the leading hurdles to regularly purchasing plant-based meat products. CEO Eitan Fischer said: "Time and again, we see that the addition of Mission Fat to plant proteins makes alternative meat products in any number of categories far outperform the incumbent plant-based options." The company has developed products incorporating Mission Fat in various categories both on its own and through collaboration with leading eat companies and plant protein partners. Applications include: bacon, breakfast patties, burgers, nuggets, dumplings, hot dogs, poultry sausages, meatballs, and more.



The Series A funding will be used to scale up and commercialize its Mission Fat technology. Global food and agriculture investors participated in the round, including Lever VC; Gullspang Re:Food (Oatly); Humboldt Fund (NotCo & Geltor); Green Monday Ventures (Beyond Meat & Perfect Day); Enfini Ventures (Impossible Foods & Memphis Meats); and a European meat company. Other investors in the round included Blue Ledge Capital; Prithvi Ventures; and Joyance Partners. A number of Seed investors increased their stake in the company including Global Founders Capital ( Facebook (News - Alert) & LinkedIn); Point Nine Capital (Delivery Hero); Better Ventures; and Cantos Ventures.

Nick Cooney, Managing Partner of Lever VC, said: "I've been sampling plant-based meats for 20 years from a huge variety of brands globally, and have never tasted anything as meat-like as products containing Mission Fat. This is going to be a game-changer for the alternative meat sector, because it's going to help brands around the world have a dramatically better product almost overnight." Mission Barns' team includes senior biotechnology experts from Genentech & Sigma-Aldrich; culinary leaders from Michelin-starred The French Laundry & Thomas Keller Restaurant Group; and veterans from other cellular agriculture companies including JUST & Memphis Meats. The company has been growing quickly and is actively looking for passionate team members who want to be on the forefront of revolutionizing the global food system. A large number of technical and non-technical roles can be found on its careers page: MissionBarns.com/Careers Mission Barns is partnering with leading meat and alternative protein companies globally, and is open to further partnership opportunities to utilize its Mission Fat technology: partnerships@missionbarns.com About Mission Barns Established in Berkeley, CA (News - Alert) in 2018, Mission Barns is focused on cultivating animal fat-without the animal. Its technology platform enables starting from a handful of pork, poultry, or beef cells and feeding them a plant-based feedstock inside a cultivator. Over a short period of time, the novel process creates real, pure animal fat that delivers the mouthfeel and flavor of meat without raising and slaughtering live animals, and uses a fraction of the carbon emissions, water, and land required by conventional animal agriculture. For more information, please visit www.missionbarns.com View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005738/en/

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A joint research team led by Dr. MAO Fangyuan and Dr. ZHANG Chi from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Prof. MENG Jin from the American Museum of Natural History have discovered two new species of mammal-like, burrowing animals that lived about 120 million years ago in what is now northeastern China.

The new species, described in Nature on April 7, are distantly related. However, they independently evolved traits to support their digging lifestyle. They represent the first "scratch diggers" discovered in this ecosystem.

"There are many hypotheses about why animals dig into the soil and live underground," said Prof. MENG, lead author of the study. "For protection against predators, to maintain a temperature that's relatively constant, or to find food sources like insects and plant roots. These two fossils are a very unusual, deep-time example of animals that are not closely related and yet both evolved the highly specialized characteristics of a digger."

The fossil mammaliamorph species--predecessors to mammals--were discovered in the Jehol Biota, which represents the Early Cretaceous epoch, about 145 to 100 million years ago.

One is a mammal-like reptile called a tritylodontid and represents the first of its kind to be identified in this biota. About a foot in length, it was named Fossiomanus sinensis. The other one, Jueconodon cheni, is a eutriconodontan, a distant cousin of modern placental mammals and marsupials, which were common in the biota. It is about seven inches long.

Mammals that are adapted to burrowing have specialized traits for digging. The researchers found some of these hallmark features, including shorter limbs, strong forelimbs with robust hands, and a short tail, in both Fossiomanus and Jueconodon. In particular, these characteristics point to a type of digging behavior known as "scratch digging," accomplished mainly by the claws of the forelimbs.

"This is the first convincing evidence for fossorial life in those two groups," said Dr. MAO. "It also is the first case of scratch diggers we know about in the Jehol Biota, which was home to a great diversity of animals, from dinosaurs and insects to plants."

The animals also share another unusual feature: an elongated vertebral column. Typically, from the neck to the hip, mammals have 26 vertebrae. However, Fossiomanus had 38 vertebrae--a staggering 12 more than the usual number--while Jueconodon had 28.

To try to determine how these animals got their elongated axial skeleton, the paleontologists turned to recent studies in developmental biology, finding that the variation could be attributed to gene mutations that determine the number and shape of the vertebrae during early embryonic development of these animals. Variation in vertebrae number can be found in modern mammals as well, for example, in elephants, manatees, and hyraxes.

###

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Chinese Academy of Sciences Strategic Priority Research Program, the Youth Innovation Promotion Association, and the Kalbfleisch Fellowship of the American Museum of Natural History's Richard Gilder Graduate School.
Editor

Darren Marcy, a journalist since 1992, is the editor of the Manchester Journal. A New Mexico native, he previously worked for newspapers in the Land of Enchantment before moving to Vermont in 2004. He joined the Journal in October 2018.
India Helps Crush the Great Reset and Green New Deal

April 6 , 2021 (EIRNS)In a second No, Indias Energy Minister Raj Kumar Singh said at a March 31 International Energy Agency meeting on climate change that net zero carbon is pie in the sky, no matter when you pledge it for. At a meeting supposed to be preparatory to the COP26 in Scotland last month, Singh said,

I would call it, and Im sorry to say this, but it is just pie in the sky. What we hear is that ... 2060 is far away and if the people emit at the rate they are emitting the world wont survive, so what are you going to do in the next five years.... You have 800 million people who dont have access to electricity. You cant say that they have to go to net zero. They have the right to develop, they want to build skyscrapers and have a higher standard of living; you cant stop it.

Chinas minister Zhang Jianhua also spoke at that IEA meeting, but when invited to a formal pre-meeting for COP26by the U.K., remember, which is its hostChina declined the invitation.

John Kerry, in Delhi last week for the same IAE meeting, happened to meet Sergey Lavrov, who was in India on the worlds real business (see separate report). Kerry was perhaps trying to gauge whether Russia would attend Joe Bidens April 22-23 Earth (or dearth) summit. But at the IEA meeting Kerry appeared to be criticizing long-term pledges to net-zero carbon, like Chinas 2060 pledge. Avoid the happy talk and recognize that this challenge is global, Kerry chided.

The real challenge is the power to develop, as Minister Singh made clear. The only power that can meet that global challenge is nuclear fission and, as soon as possible, fusion.

These are blows against the royal familys Green Deal which can be amplified in the United States. Americans do have plentiful electricity, but a steadily increasing share of it doesnt work. In 2020 the percentage of companies which reported suffering blackout problems every month leaped from 20% in 2020already very highto 44% in 2020. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission attributed this to the increasing share of renewable (interruptible) power sources.

This destroys an economys productivity, exactly as described in EIR Special Report and The LaRouche Organizations mass pamphlet, The Great Leap Backward.

In a sign of political pressure for nuclear rising, President Joe Bidens climate advisor, Gina McCarthy, told press on April 2 that nuclear energy will be included in the Administrations so-called Clean Energy Standard, which is intended to be a requirement for electric power utilities and generators.
TANAKA Memorial Foundation Announces FY2020 Precious Metals Research Grants Recipients

TOKYO, Mar 31, 2021  (ACN Newswire)  The TANAKA Memorial Foundation\-\-s Representative Director, Hideya Okamoto, announced the recipients of the FY2020 Precious Metals Research Grants.

Following a rigorous screening process, the Gold Awards, each for 2 million yen, were presented to Professor Yasushi Sekine and Professor Hideyuki Murakami, both of Waseda University. In addition, three research projects received Silver Awards, and four Young Researcher Awards were presented.

The TANAKA Memorial Foundation undertakes programs designed to foster developments in new precious metal fields while contributing to the advancement of science, technology, and socio-economics for the overall enrichment of society. The research grant program was launched in FY1999 and has continued each year since with the goal of supporting the various challenges of the \new world opened up by precious metals.\ This year, the program\-\-s 22nd year, a total of 171 applications were received in a wide range of fields where precious metals can make contributions to the research and development of new technologies. A total of 16.1 million yen in research grants was awarded for 26 projects.

The names of the two Gold Award recipients, their research, and the reasons for their selection are below.

 Professor Yasushi Sekine, Waseda University

Development and application of precious metal catalytic reactions with unconventional low-temperature action using surface protonics

This research seeks to develop solid catalyst reactions at low temperatures (from room temperature to 200 degrees) using surface protonics. This research and development was highly rated for its potential contributions to the SDGs and ESG investment as well as its ability to make major contributions to the government\-\-s target of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.

 Professor Hideyuki Murakami, Waseda University

Development of oxidation resistant Ir-based high-entropy alloy

This research seeks to develop high-entropy alloys, a new category of metal materials that are currently the focus of significant attention, using an iridium (Ir) based alloy to create a material with excellent high-temperature characteristics and oxidation resistance. This research was highly rated because it may lead to a solution to the problem of Ir depletion at high temperatures in the range of 1,000 degrees Celsius and may improve ductility, which is an issue for Ir alloys.

Three Silver Awards, four Young Researcher Awards, and 17 Encouragement Awards were also granted. The recipients and an overview of the Precious Metals Research Grants are indicated below. Applications for the FY2021 research granted are scheduled to open in the fall.

List of FY2020 Precious Metals Research Grants Recipients

 Platinum Award (0 award, 5 million yen)

Non granted

 Gold Award (2 awards, 2 million yen each)

Yasushi Sekine, Professor, Waseda University

Development and application of precious metal catalytic reactions with unconventional low-temperature action using surface protonics

Hideyuki Murakami, Professor, Waseda University

Development of oxidation resistant Ir-based high-entropy alloy

 Silver Awards (3 awards, 1 million yen each)

Ryuji Tamura, Professor, Tokyo University of Science

Precious metal hyper-materials

Masahito Inagaki, Researcher, Nagoya University

Development of nucleic acid cutting technology using silver nano-particles and pharmaceutical development applications

Tatsuya Oshima, Professor, University of Miyazaki

Search for and discovery of optimal ion solvation extraction agent for gold extraction and separation processes

 Young Researcher Awards (4 awards, 1 million yen each)

Noriyuki Uchida, Specially Appointed Assistant Professor, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology

Photonic precious metal crystal sensors made primarily from water

Yuki Ueda, Researcher, Tokyo Institute of Technology

Development of precious metal element separation and recovery processes using the hydrophobicity of fluorous solvents

Rajashekar Badam, Senior Lecturer, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

IrO2-based organic-inorganic hybrid catalyst with strong metal-base interaction with efficient oxygen generation catalytic activity suitable for water decomposition

Yohei Ishida, Assistant Professor, Hokkaido University

Self-synthesis of multi-element alloy clusters using nano-chemical reaction fields

 Encouragement Award (17 awards, 300,000 yen each)

Shunsuke Shiba, Assistant Professor, EHIME University

Takayuki Iseki, Specially Appointed Prof., Osaka University

Chen Chuantong, Associate Professor, Osaka University

Kohsuke Mori, Associate Professor, Osaka University

Hiromi Yuasa, Professor, Kyushu University

Yoshikazu Hirai, Assistant Professor, Kyoto University

Ken-ichi Fujita, Professor, Kyoto University

Ryo Kasuya, Senior Researcher, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology

Masahiro Aoyama, Assistant Professor, Shizuoka University

Daisuke Nagai, Associate Professor, University of Shizuoka

Takanari Ouchi, Research Associate, The University of Tokyo

Takuto Soma, Assistant Professor, Tokyo Institute of Technology

Kohei Fujiwara, Associate Professor, Tohoku University

Atsushi Satsuma, Professor, Nagoya University

Naoki Ishimatsu, Assistant Professor, Hiroshima University

Takuya Yamamoto, Associate Professor, Hokkaido University

Yoshiaki Nishijima, Associate Professor, YOKOHAMA National University

Overview of the 2020 Precious Metals Research Grants

Conditions:

Research content that falls under any of the following

 New technology related to precious metals

 Research and development related to precious metals that bring about innovative evolution in products

 Research and development of new products using precious metals

*Precious metal refers to eight elements of platinum, gold, silver, palladium, rhodium, iridium, ruthenium and osmium.

*If development is conducted jointly (or planned to be) with other material manufacturers, please indicate so.

*Products that have already been commercialized, put to practical use, or that are planned are not eligible.

Grant Amounts:

 Platinum Award: 5 million yen (1 award)

 Gold Award: 2 million yen (1 award)

 Silver Awards: 1 million yen (4 awards)

 Young Researcher Awards: 1 million yen (2 awards)

 Encouragement Award: 300,000 yen (several awards)

*The grant amount is treated as a scholarship donation.

*Awards may not be granted in some cases.

*The number of awards is subject to change.

Eligible Candidates:

 Personnel who belong to (or work for) educational institutions in Japan (universities, graduate schools, or technical colleges) or public and related research institutions may participate.

*As long as the applicant is affiliated with a research institution in Japan, the base of activity can be in Japan or overseas.

*The Young Researcher Awards are for researchers under the age of 37 as of April 1, 2020.

Application Period:

 9am, September 1, 2020 (Tue)  5pm, November 30, 2020 (Mon)

Inquiries Concerning the Research Grant Program:

Precious Metals Research Grants Office

Marketing Department, TANAKA Kikinzoku Kogyo K.K.

22F Tokyo Building, 2-7-3 Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-6422

TEL: 03-6311-5596 FAX: 03-6311-5529 E-mail: joseikin@ml.tanaka.co.jp

TANAKA Memorial Foundation website: https://tanaka-foundation.or.jp

Press release in PDF: http://www.acnnewswire.com/pdf/files/20210331_EN.pdf

TANAKA Memorial Foundation

Established: April 1, 2015

Address: 22F Tokyo Building, 2-7-3 Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo

Representative: Hideya Okamoto (Senior Advisor to TANAKA Holdings Co., Ltd.)

Purpose of Business: To provide grants for research related to precious metals to contribute to the development and cultivation of new fields for precious metals, and to the development of science, technology, and the social economy.

Areas of Business:

 Provision of grants for scientific and technological research related to precious metals.

 Recognition of excellent analysis of precious metals and holding of seminars and other events.

TANAKA Kikinzoku Kogyo K.K.

Headquarters: 22F, Tokyo Building, 2-7-3 Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo

Representative: Koichiro Tanaka, Representative Director & CEO

Founded: 1885

Incorporated: 1918

Capital: 500 million yen

Employees: 2,393 (as of March 31, 2020)

Sales: JPY 992,679,879,000 (FY2019)

Main businesses: Manufacture, sales, import and export of precious metals (platinum, gold, silver, and others) and various types of industrial precious metals products.

URL: https://tanaka-preciousmetals.com

Press Inquiries

TANAKA Holdings Co., Ltd.

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The beginning of the school year when you got to show off your new duds, new cars, new looks!

Sports! Playing, cheering, watching high school athletics.

The arts: Dramatic arts, musical groups and shows, graphic arts groups, debate, etc.

The prom! No dancing the night away or punch bowl antics.

The daily interactions. Just being with the group, hanging with friends and classmates.

Access to college recruiters and advisors  its harder to line up higher education.

Walking onstage to get a diploma while all the family is watching with everyone elses family.

Vote

View Results
Vikram Sinha is a veteran of the telecoms industry, having spent 10 years with Bharti Airtel across India and Africa before moving to the Ooredoo Group.

At this company, he began his tenure in the Maldives before moving to Myanmar, and after two years in this challenging greenfield market he was transferred to Indonesia where he remains as COO of Indosat Ooredoo. The market is one of Asias most populous, with incredibly varied income levels and challenging geographies, and DT Editor James Barton caught up with Vikram to discuss the state of play in Indonesia.

What were the key positives and negatives of Indosats situation when you arrived in Indonesia?

Indosat is a very strong brand in Indonesia; its over 53 years old! In my first three months here I travelled across the geographies and began to recognise the power of this brand. Unfortunately, we had some parts of our strategy wrong and 2018 was a catastrophic year for us, during which the company lost 25% of its value. I was brought here to turn this around, and after eight quarters its been a good run but more importantly the legacy is very strong.

How is the strategy going?

We have completed two years of the three-year turnaround strategy and were into the ninth quarter. We had a few objectives, and the first was to invest close to US$2 billion into our network coverage, especially on 4G. The second was to make Indosat the most trusted brand in the market, and the third was to move to sustainable profitability. By doing this, we wanted to become the fastest growing telecom brand in Indonesia.

Looking at the latest report from OpenSignal, we have the rising star in most parameters; weve been able to execute our investment strategy and its showing results, and according to their latest report on brand finance Indosat is the sixth-fastest growing brand globally. Were approaching two years of back-to-back double digit revenue growth across 2019 and 2020, and EBITDA is growing faster than revenue due to cost restructuring. The importance of a strong brand should not be underestimated, but if you have this and also get your commercial execution right, you can get fast results.

Your digital strategy has been a core pillar of this  was that already the case or has it shifted more in this direction due to the pandemic?

In a strange way, there has been a silver lining of Covid for the telco sector  it has pushed the importance of connectivity to the forefront, whether among policymakers or governments, everyone now understand the importance. In terms of digital, we realised that you can do everything on your own so we took a new strategy of partnerships and collaboration, working with some of the worlds biggest tech firms such as Google and Facebook as well as developing our own digital applications and strategies. We used to see around 20% of our total recharges made via digital channels and this figure has now crossed 40% within one year; its important to keep track of the customer, sometimes they adopt online channels rapidly and operators react slowly, so we take care to keep up.

As a company, when it comes to digital the last year has been very good, and this success needs to extend to other companies in the market. Small and medium enterprises must do well in order to improve Indonesias economy, so we need to support them and help them switch to digital channels. When nearly everybody is working from home, new approaches are required and theres a lot we were able to do for them.

What kind of initiatives did you enable?

Small and medium sized enterprises contribute around 60-65% of Indonesias GDP. The government is trying to do a lot to support them, and to help them we launched Cloud Connect, which is a very simple plug & play platform to help them continue business activities. We were able to launch a fully secure platform within one month, which was crucial; nobody thought thered be such a sudden lockdown and these companies have to ensure that theyre able to sell their products, so this platform proved popular.

We also worked with Facebook on an initiative called Facebook 101, which was aimed at bringing small unconnected villages online. Its easy to think that all of Indonesia is like Jakarta, but there are a lot of islands and rural environments that are very remote and challenging to connect. Another way that we sought to ignite the economy was to help develop and promote local content. There are talented local artists and organisations who need help with this; content consumption is of course on the rise but its both desirable and economically sensible to help push locally produced content  it helps keep local money circulating in the local economy instead of sending it overseas.

What kind of local investment initiatives have you been involved with?

People in Indonesia really believe in giving back to their society and community, and as Indosat we have a larger role to play. IDCamp (Indosat Ooredoo Digital Camp) is one of our corporate social responsibility programmes through which weve been able to help create digital talent; it has already reached more than 30,000 students and were also looking at initiatives with disabled children to teach coding and other skills. Theres a lot of talent in Indonesia, and these initiatives help to nurture this.

On a broader spectrum, what are the trends you see across the sector?

The industry faced declines of 1-2% last year, but despite this we were able to grow around 7-8%, and I expect the industry to recover during 2021, growing by up to 3-4%. In terms of Covid, things are looking a little better but theres a long way to go. Whats more important is that the government never implemented a full lockdown; they instead mandated social distancing and managed it quite well, striking a good balance between taking care of the populace and enforcing strict controls. With vaccines on the way, there are some good initiatives to ensure that the hotspots such as Jakarta and Bali are treated at a faster rate, but it will be some time before things are back to normal. Fortunately, the telecom industry is one of the least impacted, and the importance of the sector is increasing significantly. We have to play an active role in helping the economy.

The Indonesian government recently overturned its move to award digital dividend spectrum in the 2300MHz band  do you think this will adversely affect digital transformation in the market?

When the spectrum was put up for auction we evaluated it very carefully, but we felt that it didnt make sense for us at that point. The government has now put the same spectrum up for auction with one change to the rules  operators are now able to acquire more than one 10MHz block. We are reevaluating this, but the bigger picture is that 2300MHz spectrum is not the most efficient for 5G; the lower bands are better for this so were waiting for that.

Is Indonesia ready for 5G?

Its a matter of time, and 5G has a lot of potential to help industrialization and the digital economy. The partner and device ecosystem will be important, but the right use case will also be crucial. Were investing to make sure were 5G-ready, deploying fibre to our sites, and this takes years. Were waiting for the right time; in my opinion, in Indonesia it will be 2023 before 5G makes commercial sense.
Combination will significantly increase global access to those seeking to live, work, or study in Canada

BALTIMORE, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Prometric Canada Testing Services ("Prometric") announced today that it has signed a share purchase agreement to acquire Paragon Testing Enterprises ("Paragon"), a subsidiary of the University of British Columbia (UBC).

Paragon is Canada's largest provider of high-stakes English language proficiency tests. The company's tests include the Canadian English Language Proficiency Index Program (CELPIP) for Canadian permanent residence and citizenship and the Canadian Academic English Language Test - Computer Edition (CAEL CE) for study at post-secondary institutions across Canada. The acquisition will significantly increase global access to the Paragon tests that are currently administered at 60 test centres across Canada and at 15 locations in the United States, China, India, Philippines, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates. Paragon's CAEL Online test is currently available in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, and Japan.

Roy Simrell, President and CEO of Prometric Canada's parent company Prometric LLC, said, "The addition of Paragon to the Prometric family represents a significant opportunity to leverage our secure, reliable global assessment solutions including in-centre and online remote capabilities, our innovative technologies, and our global presence to increase accessibility to the CELPIP and CAEL CE examinations for people around the world. Paragon has a well-earned reputation for expertise in test research and construction, as well as customer service excellence. These qualities are aligned with Prometric's own corporate culture, values, and strategic focus. We look forward to achieving high levels of growth in collaboration with the Paragon team."

Donald Wehrung, President and CEO of Paragon, said, "We have been delivering tens of thousands of CELPIP and CAEL English proficiency tests annually, representing a leadership position in the Canadian language assessment market. With Prometric's global scale, resources, and experience we believe that we can move faster, reach farther, and aim higher as we compete to expand our English language proficiency tests internationally."

J.P. Heale, Managing Director University-Industry Liaison Office at UBC, said, "This agreement further enhances UBC's track record of creating research-based spinoff companies that generate national and global impacts. The acquisition of Paragon will allow Prometric to further its worldwide reputation as the provider of the most secure and reliable testing network. They are the ideal partner to take Paragon to the next level, especially into international testing."

About Prometric Canada Testing Services

As a global leader in test development, testing delivery, and candidate services, Prometric partners with the world's top credentialing and licensure organizations to design and deliver leading exam programs that help individuals advance their careers and serve their communities. Our integrated, end-to-end solutions provide exam development, management, and distribution that set the industry standard in quality, security, and service excellence. Prometric leverages our proprietary platform, advanced technologies, and vast operational experience to deliver an exceptional user experience on our world-class secure testing network. Today, we are paving the industry's path forward with new solutions and innovation to ensure reliable access to secure assessments anytime, anywhere. For more information, visit https://www.prometric.com or follow us on Twitter at @PrometricGlobal and www.linkedin.com/company/prometric/.

About Paragon Testing Enterprises

Paragon Testing Enterprises was incorporated in 2009 to commercialize UBC's English language proficiency tests, and it has grown rapidly since it was created. This growth is reflected in the increasing number of tests delivered annually from thousands to tens of thousands, the number of its computer-delivered test centres from two to more than 70 worldwide, the number of full-time and casual employees from 16 to over 300, and the scope of its offices that are now in Vancouver, Toronto, and Singapore. For more information, visit https://www.paragontesting.ca/, follow us on Twitter at @Paragon_Testing, @CELPIPTest, @CAELTest, and https://www.linkedin.com/company/paragon-testing-enterprises-inc/.

About UBC

The University of British Columbia is a global centre for research and teaching, consistently ranked among the top 20 public universities in the world. Since 1915, UBC's entrepreneurial spirit has embraced innovation and challenged the status quo. UBC encourages its students, staff, and faculty to challenge convention, lead discovery, and explore new ways of learning. At UBC, bold thinking is given a place to develop into ideas that can change the world.
Regulatory News:

Pershing Square Holdings, Ltd. (LN:PSH) (LN:PSHD) (NA:PSH) today released its regular weekly Net Asset Value ("NAV") and performance returns on its website, https://www.pershingsquareholdings.com/company-reports/weekly-navs/. The NAV and returns were computed as of the close of business on Tuesday, 6 April 2021.

PSH NAV per share as of close of business on 6 April 2021 was 50.15 USD 36.27 GBP and year-to-date performance was 10.5%.

Weekly net asset value ("NAV") is calculated as of the close of business on each Tuesday and posted on the following business day. In the event that Tuesday is not a business day, the Company will calculate the close-of-business NAV as of the business day immediately preceding that Tuesday. The end-of-month NAV is calculated as of the close of business on the last day of the month and posted on the following business day. For weeks that include a month-end NAV report, PSH will provide only the month-end NAV and not report the Tuesday NAV. Monthly NAVs are published in accordance with the Decree on Conduct of Business Supervision of Financial Undertakings under the Wft (Besluit Gedragstoezicht financiele ondernemingen Wft).

Performance is presented on a net-of-fees basis and reflects the deduction of, among other expenses: management fees, brokerage commissions, administrative fees and accrued performance fees, if any. The performance figure includes the reinvestment of all dividends, interest and capital gains. Depending on the timing of a specific investment, net performance for an individual investor may vary from the net performance as stated herein. Net performance is a geometrically linked time weighted calculation.

Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. All investments involve risk including the loss of principal.

About Pershing Square Holdings, Ltd.

Pershing Square Holdings, Ltd. (LN:PSH) (LN:PSHD) (NA:PSH) is an investment holding company structured as a closed-ended fund that makes concentrated investments principally in North American domiciled companies.

Category: (PSH:WeeklyNAV)

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005963/en/

Contacts:

Camarco

Ed Gascoigne-Pees Hazel Stevenson +44 020 3757 4989, media-pershingsquareholdings@camarco.co.uk
In this photo from March 17, a child puts her mask back on after finishing lunch at a socially distanced table in the cafeteria of Medora Elementary School in Louisville, Ky. Jon Cherry/Getty Images/TNS
An American carrier group entered the South China Sea three days ago to carry out another FONOP (freedom of navigation operations) near areas China is trying to take from other nations that have long owned them. This is the second FONOP for this carrier group in the South China Sea this year. In 2020 the U.S. carried a record 13 FONOPS in the South China Sea. This was up from nine in 2019. Even more FONOPS were carried out in the South China Sea by other nations opposing the Chinese claims.

In addition to more FONOPS, in mid-2020 the Americans took a stronger stand against Chinese aggression by declaring Chinese claims to offshore resources across most of the South China Sea as completely unlawful. This included the Chinese campaign of bullying other nations to gain exclusive control of these resources. In 2016 an international court ruled against China and stated that occupying uninhabitable rocks and building artificial islands did not confer an EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone). Ownership of rocks gets you, at best 22 kilometers of territorial waters from the edge of each rock rather than 360 kilometers for EEZ rights. Before this change the U.S. merely called for China to comply with the court ruling, something China said it would not do even before the court completed its deliberations. The Americans did continue to carry out aerial and naval FONOP with warships to assert the right of innocent passage. This annoyed the Chinese, who claimed most of the South China Sea was under Chinese control and no foreign ship or aircraft could enter without permission. China has been claiming areas long recognized as belonging to Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan and the Philippines. That has caused all these nations, plus the United States, Japan and South Korea to form an alliance to halt Chinese aggression.

In response to all this opposition, China has become more aggressive in word and deed. This includes a January 2021 announcement that a new Chinese law authorized their navy and coast guard to use lethal force to protect Chinese coastal waters, including those that are disputed by other nations. In other words, Chinese coast guard and navy vessel commanders have the authority to open fire on trespassers, even when international courts have declared China the outlaw and trespasser in the South China Sea. Until this new permission to open fire law, Chinese armed coast guard and navy vessels had only been used to intimidate trespassers and had never opened fire. There has been violence in the form of bumping or even ramming trespassers. This has led to the other countries threatening to send warships to defend their territory. Until now this would usually cause the Chinese warships to back off. But the new law allows Chinese captains to order crews to prepare for combat and use the fire control radars to concentrate on possible targets. In the Chinese playbook this means the Chinese want to goad someone else to open fire first, which would make China the designated victim (according to Chinese media) and justified in unleashing violent and probably overwhelming retaliation.

The latest escalation is the use of large (over 200) numbers of fishing boats inside the Julian Felipe Reef, which is 324 kilometers west of Palawan, one the main Filipino islands. The reef is part of the Spratly Island. The nearest undisputed Chinese territory is 1,148 kilometers away from the reef. China is using illegal claims on other South China Sea islands or reefs to justify its claim Julian Felipe Reef. In this case there is another problem. Julian Felipe Reef was not legally land that could be claimed until about five years ago. As happens often in the South China Sea, reefs grow and shrink because of the natural movement of sand. Parts of Julian Felipe Reef had long emerged from the water only during low tide. According to international law, that did not qualify as land. There are suspicions that China covertly did some dredging at Julian Felipe Reef to get the permanent sand to show. This is unlikely because commercial satellite coverage of the South China Sea has been nearly constant for over a decade.

This satellite coverage and the growing number of visits by Filipino air force and coast guard patrols plus fishermen operating there has provided an accurate record of increased Chinese activity there. This has shown Chinese fishing boats and naval militia (fishing boats not currently equipped for fishing) showing up at Julian Felipe Reef since November 2020. By mid-March 2021 there were over 200 Chinese naval militia fishing boats inside the reef. Most of them were lashed together in groups of five to twenty boats that formed patterns preventing real fishing boats from operating inside the reef. Most fishing boats in the South China Sea are trawler type boats. These boats deploy their nets and then move through an area containing a lot of fish and haul their catch on board and into a refrigerated compartment. Many of the Chinese militia boats are formally called "freezer trawlers." These ships are up to 100 meters (320 feet) long and have facilities onboard to store hundreds of tons of frozen fish. These ships normally stay at sea months at a time and have crews of 14-30.

The number of Chinese trawlers has expanded enormously since 1985 when there were only 13. Now there are over 2,400 of them operating worldwide. China helped with this expansion by subsidizing ocean-going fishing boats. Those subsidies have since been withdrawn but meanwhile, the number of larger (than 100 meter) freezer trawlers has grown and these are meant for use in far distant waters.

China claimed all those Chinese fishing boats were taking shelter from bad weather. This is often the case with reefs in the South China Sea, but there was no correlation between the presence of Chinese boats inside the reef and the actual weather in the area. The Chinese claims dont stand up to close scrutiny. With so many cellphone videos and high-res images from aircraft and warships available, all China can do is keep lying and do it aggressively and with assurance that no one will do much about it.

The Chinese naval militia has been a major factor in Chinese intimidation operations in the South China Sea. This militia has been around since the 1950s but never used this aggressively. For example, during the first three months of 2019 China deployed 900 navy, coast guard and naval militia ships around Pagasa Island to block access to fishing areas that Filipinos have been using for centuries. International law makes it clear that these are Filipino waters but the Chinese naval effort, and base constructed on Pagasa, challenge Filipino ownership blatantly and often physically.

Since 2015 China has hired several hundred Chinese fishing boats and their crews as a part-time naval militia to conduct a blockage of bits of land in the South China Sea that the Philippines physically occupies, hoping to block supplies and force the Filipinos to evacuate these outposts so that China can take possession. The Chinese fishermen dont mind the militia work, seeing it as something of a paid vacation with overtones of patriotic service to the state. The militia boats are not true volunteers. When the government requests a Chinese fishing boat work for the militia the boat owner complies. Sometimes boat owners grumble when they are called up during a prime fishing season, but refusal is not an option and they make the best of it.

The Philippines appears to get most of the unwanted Chinese attention in the South China Sea because the Philippines has the most to lose. In terms of land area, the 7,600 islands that comprise the Philippines amount to only 300,000 square kilometers (120,000 square miles) of land area. Compare this to China, with 9.6 million square kilometers of land. According to international law, the Philippines controls (via its EEZ or Exclusive Economic Zone) water areas covering 2.26 million square kilometers. By the same standards the Chinese EEZ waters comprises 877,000 square kilometers. The Philippines is also the weakest (in military terms) nation China is seizing territory from, and their mutual defense treaty with the United States is not always adequate to deal with the Chinese tactics. Moreover, the American government can change readily every four years because of presidential elections. The current U.S. president is seen as less steadfast in dealing with China. So far that has not been the case, but the new American government has only been in power since January 2021.

April 6, 2021: President Duterte announced that the Philippines would seek a peaceful solution to the dispute over Whitsun Reef. Duterte deliberately used the international name for the reef, which is also known as Julian Felipe Reef because that is what Filipinos call it and until China came along the Philippines had the strongest claim on the, until recently underwater, reef. Such a reef is valuable because it is prime fishing grounds and does provide some shelter from large waves during bad weather. Duterte has tried playing nice with the Chinese but so far has been burned more often than benefitted from this approach.

April 5, 2021: In the north (Isabela province) troops accepted the voluntary surrender of two of the most senior NPA (New Peoples Army) leaders. The surrenders took place separately over the last few days. The NPA has long been active in this area and were now generally regarded as bandits who still believed in communism.

April 3, 2021: The Filipino Defense Secretary demanded that Chinese vessels leave Julian Felipe Reef. China quickly responded that the reef belonged to China, the Chinese ships were seeking shelter from bad weather and the Philippines had no right to make demands. There were still 44 Chinese vessels inside the reef and the weather had been calm for over a week. This is typical Chinese behavior towards the Philippines.

April 2, 2021: In the south (Davao de Oro province) troops encountered sixteen armed NPA rebels and after a brief gun battle the communist rebels fled, leaving behind two assault rifles and other equipment. Apparently, some of the rebels were wounded and dropped gear to remain mobile. That is what often happens in situations like this. Among the items left behind were useful documents describing local NPA activities. The NPA has been active for 52 years, during which their activities left over 50,000 civilians, 13,000 soldiers and police and over 20,000 NPA members dead or missing. The communist rebels are fading away, but slowly and remnants have turned to banditry while still claiming to be communist rebels.

April 1, 2021: In the south ( Maguindanao province) two weeks of renewed BIFF (Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters) violence has caused 66,000 people to flee their homes to avoid the fighting. As recently as February eleven local BIFF members surrendered, along with their weapons. The amnesty program makes it possible to the eleven to return to civilian life if none have committed major crimes. The former BIFF members complained of constant pressure from the security forces and no financial support from BIFF leadership. It is unclear how many active BIFF members there still are in the area but two weeks of intermittent gunfire at troops near inhabited areas has caused panic among local civilians. The BIFF gunmen keep moving, avoiding a prolonged fight with the troops. It appears there are at least a dozen diehard BIFF members in the area and the army has called on the local Bangasamoro government to help.

BIFF was originally formed to demand independence for the Moslems in the south. By 2014 the majority of Moslems and Christians in the Philippines agreed to an autonomous Moslem region on the southwest coast of Mindanao (the large southern island) and the string of smaller islands (Sulu, Basilan, Tawi, Tawi) extending from southwestern Mindanao towards Malaysia. The new Moslem entity (Bangasamoro) has more autonomy, but makes the Moslems down there responsible to maintaining the peace. This is no small matter because, more than elsewhere in the Philippines, the Moslem south has long had many more clan militias that believed it was their right to engage in private wars. Not all the clans share the official attitudes about who has the right to make war in Bangasamoro.

Bangasamoro governs the four million Moslems in Mindanao and even more Christians. Filipino Moslems are outnumbered by Christians who had moved south during the last half century. Nationwide there are about 11 million Moslems and over 90 million Christians. The Christian Filipinos are better organized, more industrious and more economically successful. The Moslems believe they should run Mindanao even if they are the minority, because Mindanao is the local "Islamic homeland." While some in the government are willing to concede this, the Christian majority in Mindanao (and the rest of the Philippines) does not. Because of this groups like BIFF, ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) and Abu Sayyaf are treated as outlaws in Bangasamoro and have lost support and members since 2014, but are still active.

March 28, 2021: The government revealed that air force jets had been making daily flights over Julian Felipe Reef. Filipino warships had also increased patrols near the Reef. No Chinese warplanes or warships had been encountered even though China had warned the Philippines to keep its military ships and aircraft away from areas that China claims ownership of. A meeting between Chinese and Filipino military officials to discuss the situation ended with the Chinese repeating that the Chinese vessels were not military and that there was no Chinese military activity around Whitsun Reef.

March 23, 2021: In the south (Tawi-Tawi province) troops tracked down two Abu Sayyaf gunmen and after a brief gun battle, killed both of them.

In the north (Isabela province) troops and police encountered a large group of armed NPA members and in a three-hour gun battle killed six of them. The others fled, some leaving weapons and equipment behind.

March 20, 2021: In the south (Tawi-Tawi province) marines found a group of Abu Sayyaf gunmen and four Indonesian sailors they were holding for ransom. The five Abu Sayyaf gunmen and four Indonesian hostages were caught after the group attempted to flee by boat from nearby Sulu province in an attempt to reach nearby Malaysia. One hostage was left behind and rescued by troops. After over a day at sea, their boat capsized in bad weather off Tawi-Tawi province and the marines caught up with the group shortly after they came ashore. After a brief gun battle the Abu Sayyaf leader was mortally wounded and his four followers surrendered with the remaining hostages. The dead Abu Sayyaf leader was one of the most active planners of kidnapping operations in the area and had been long sought by the security forces.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - April 7, 2021) - Forum Energy Metals Corp. (TSXV: FMC) (OTCQB: FDCFF) ("Forum") has started a gravity survey on its Wollaston Uranium Project, located 10km south of Cameco's Rabbit Lake uranium mill and immediately east of the all-weather road to Orano's McClean Lake uranium processing plant.

"The gravity survey is designed to detect areas of alteration within north-south bends along a number of electromagnetic (EM) conductors on the project," stated Ken Wheatley, Forum's VP, Exploration. "Alteration halos may be formed during the creation of uranium deposits along EM conductors. The Wollaston Project lies immediately outside the Athabasca sandstone basin so the alteration halos will be limited to the basement lithologies, creating a much tighter target for drilling. Approximately 2,000 readings at 100m x 100m spacings on two priority grids will be taken."







Figure 1: Gravity Grids (yellow) in Progress on the Wollaston Project

To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4908/79641_8e5035f494289882_003full.jpg

The Wollaston Uranium Project is located along the margin of the Athabasca sandstone basin and boasts both road and power access, along with its proximity to two uranium mills and ten mines/deposits within 35km of the property. The target mineralization is a shallow, basement-hosted uranium such as the Eagle Point deposit (140 million pounds uranium) found at the Rabbit Lake mine site 25km to the north.

Forum staked the current claims less than a year ago based on 40+ years of uranium exploration experience in the selective identification of the highest potential conductive trends that remain untested or under-explored. A compilation of historic drilling, geophysics and prospecting on the project have outlined over 30km of prospective conductive trends, several unexplained uranium boulder trains on surface and a number of untested drill targets.

Ken Wheatley, P.Geo., Forum's VP, Exploration and Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the contents of this news release.

About Forum Energy Metals

Forum Energy Metals Corp. (TSXV: FMC) has three 100% owned energy metal projects being drilled in 2021 by the Company and its major mining company partners Rio Tinto and Orano Canada Inc. for copper/silver, uranium and nickel/platinum/palladium in Saskatchewan, Canada's number one rated mining province for exploration and development. In addition, Forum has a portfolio of seven drill ready uranium projects and a strategic land position in the Idaho Cobalt Belt. For further information: www.forumenergymetals.com

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Richard J. Mazur, P.Geo.

President & CEO

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:

NORTH AMERICA

Rick Mazur, P.Geo., President & CEO

mazur@forumenergymetals.com

Tel: 778-772-3100

UNITED KINGDOM

Burns Singh Tennent-Bhohi, Director

burnsstb@forumenergymetals.com

Tel: 074-0316-3185



To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/79641
"HighByte Intelligence Hub enables me to easily model dataadding context, segmenting, and publishing data to the unified namespace", said Tim Burris, a software architect at Ectobox . Ectobox is an industrial intelligence solutions company specializing in data-driven manufacturing, ISA-95, and software consulting and development for their clients. "The time HighByte Intelligence Hub has saved me is incredible. I'm using the flow capabilities, updated SQL connecter, and REST input to reduce custom code and deliver a maintainable integration solution to our clients. It's a game changer."

HighByte works with a network of system integrators and international distributors to take HighByte Intelligence Hub to market, serving customers in a wide variety of vertical markets including biotechnology, packaging, industrial products, and academic labs. "This release focused on meeting the needs of our customers and partners with a more sophisticated solution that can handle complex data," said HighByte CEO Tony Paine. "HighByte Intelligence Hub is ready to support Edge-to-Cloud and Cloud-to-Edge use cases."

HighByte Intelligence Hub is an Industrial DataOps application designed for scale. The latest release includes support for complex data sets that can be processed through HighByte Intelligence Hub's modeling engine, transforming and contextualizing information at high volumes. The release also includes new codeless connections for CSV files and JDBC drivers, significant improvements to existing SQL, MQTT, and OPC UA connectors, multiple flow inputs and outputs, array handling, and REST templates. Security enhancements include secure connections over MQTT with SSL encryption as well as payload encryption and usernames and passwords for OPC UA connections.

To learn more about the release and see a live demonstration of the software, please register for the "Unified Namespace and Cloud-to-Edge: New Use Cases for Industrial DataOps" webinar on April 14, 2021 at 11AM ET.

Additional Resources

About HighByte

HighByte is an industrial software development company in Portland, Maine building solutions that address the data architecture and integration challenges created by Industry 4.0. We've developed the first DataOps solution purpose-built to meet the unique requirements of industrial assets, products, processes, and systems at the Edge. Learn more at https://highbyte.com.

HighByte is a registered trademark of HighByte, Inc.

Media Contact

HighByte

Torey Penrod-Cambra

Chief Marketing Officer

+1 844.328.2677 x701

[email protected]

SOURCE HighByte

Related Links

www.highbyte.com


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German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz gestures as he holds a news conference in Berlin, Germany, March 24, 2021. REUTERS-Yonhap



Germany and France on Tuesday welcomed a promise by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to work on a global corporate minimum tax rate as a step towards making a landmark deal achievable, but low-tax Ireland voiced reservations.



Negotiators are racing to agree to a minimum corporate tax by midyear as part of efforts by more than 140 countries to update the rules for taxation of cross-border commerce for the first time in a generation.



The aim is to discourage multinationals from booking profits in low-tax countries regardless of where their income is earned.



Yellen confirmed she was working to agree with counterparts on a global floor on company taxes ahead of a G20 meeting this week. While she left open what rate that could be, the Biden administration wants a minimum tax on U.S. corporations of 21% no matter where they earn the income, up from 10.5% currently.



"I'm in high spirits that with this corporate taxation initiative, we'll manage to put an end to the worldwide race to the bottom in taxation," said German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, a firm backer of the initiative.



He said any deal must include rules on how to tax cross-border business by digital tech giants, which is the second focus of international tax talks under way at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).



French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, who had clashed with former U.S. President Donald Trump's administration over international taxation, said he welcomed Yellen's pledge.



"A global agreement on international taxation is now within reach," he said. "We must seize this historic opportunity."



The proposed U.S. minimum is higher than that discussed so far at the OECD, which has been closer to 12.5% and happens to be the current Irish corporate tax rate.



It was unclear what progress G20 finance leaders may be able to make in tax discussions on Wednesday.







U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen attends an economic briefing with U.S. President Joe Biden in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, U.S., March 5, 2021. REUTERS-Yonhap
In medicine, we are constantly balancing risk and reward. Nearly all medicines and many therapeutic treatments involve risk to the patient we hope to help. It's time we use this same intellectual exercise to create a reasonable inquiry into the risks we took when responding to COVID-19 and balance it against the reward. If nothing else is accomplished, a better plan for future societal responses can be formulated. And if we recognize and remedy our failures in time, maybe we'll still have a recognizable United States of America.

We have the benefit of hindsight, so we can look at the results objectively. The reward? Although we've lost well over 500,000 American lives to COVID-19, it could have been far worse. Even though the number is in question (as there were economically rewarding incentives to list COVID-19 as a cause of death when it could have had little to do with a person's demise), it is still a frightening and increasing number.

But our methods to mitigate COVID-19 come at a terrible societal cost. People will die from the fallout from the governmental response. Meanwhile, politicians and the media are transparently manipulating "the science," justifying bad and ineffective policies to erode the whole idea of the United States of America, ignoring the toll their decisions have wrought. They ignore real science, studies replicated over years, that easily prove that the COVID-19 response they chose to follow will kill far more people than it saves.

On top of that, the consequences of the world's response have resulted in what will be millions of deaths worldwide, far outweighing mortality from the virus itself. Even knowing this, even when we are aware that the cure is worse than the disease, we remain compliant in the middle of a fear-stoked roar from complicit mainstream media and politicians, doubling down on bad policy and poorly substantiated recommendations.

Studies are accumulating estimations of potential deaths from the consequences of the lockdowns, school closings, and business closures. A recent Bureau of Economic Research study suggests that just the "unemployment shock" in America will lead to a 3% increase in mortality projected out over the next 15 years. This translates to roughly 890,000 additional deaths.

Scores of health issues that have been undiagnosed, untreated, and made worse by the isolation, depression, obesity, and substance abuse associated with the pandemic will pile up bodies in the next months to years. As an example, preventable deaths from missed breast and colorectal cancer diagnoses this past year are estimated at 10,000. Deaths of despair, suicide and drug abuse, are predicted by the mental health resource PSYCOM to be increasing by 75,000 this year. This includes a 30% increase in suicide in the military since COVID-19.

BIS Bulletin describes a nexus between recessions and mortality, with an increase in mortality rates by a third versus non-recession periods. It is exaggerated in poorer countries. Similarly, child mortality rises to 110 per a thousand compared to 78 in regular times. It is an established fact that there is increased mortality of those living in poverty, and nothing ensures poverty more than inadequate education. Remote schooling is sure to prove ineffective. Again, this will disproportionately hurt the poor, and it will be the gift that keeps on giving for years to come.

There were economic good times prior to the virus. The truth is that this recession was a predictable consequence of our response. It was a choice made because the CDC, whose original purpose was to help us in our fight against viral pandemics, believed that this was the long feared virus that would prompt "DEFCON 4." It is well known that lockdowns lead to a sharp decline in economic activity. The CDC is aware of the potential increase in mortality caused by recessions and lockdowns. Yet it chose to push this response.

Worldwide shutdowns inspired by our CDC and other countries' health organizations are estimated by economists at the IMF to have caused a 9-trillion-dollar cumulative loss of global GDP. The probable deaths from starvation arising from the agricultural consequences of COVID-19 alone will number in the millions. Again, this will be affecting the poorest countries disproportionately.

Apparently, the optics of standing by and allowing the virus to succumb to herd immunity, something that would undoubtedly have been horrifically portrayed, given the media of today, was too much when held up against the predictably greater loss of life caused by the response. Why else would the CDC chose this path? It did it because those running it knew that the media would hide or obfuscate the costs of the response. They did it because the deeply entrenched bureaucrats within the department hated their president and worried about his re-election.

The most shocking result of the COVID-19 response is the ease with which United States citizens gave up their freedoms. Americans just said "sure!" when the government arbitrarily took away our ability to run our businesses, attend church and school, and move freely. Even when the rules and regulations were shown to be more destructive than beneficial, they acquiesced. Even when the media bias was glaringly apparent, Big Tech was found to be using the pandemic to extend their power, and science was nakedly politicized, they bent over and took it. They said "OK" when mainstream media, Big Tech, and college campuses used cancel culture to silence critics.

Most disturbingly, they suspended their need for truth. They chose not to interfere with the narratives being pushed by government, media, tech, and academia, despite the ever more obvious lies.

A lie told a thousand times becomes the truth, or so we were warned by Joseph Goebbels, the famed Nazi. So, we give up what it means to be an American to go along with the lies. We give up our desire to use our own free will and be responsible for our choices. And we give up our rights as Americans and obey a federal government that is following an unconstitutional agenda.

Following our politicians into a future with no "Land of the Free" will be incalculably destructive to the world. Having no promise of American ideals for the world to aspire will have untold costs. We are suspending respect for truth for a promise of safety, watching our country disappear. A world without the USA will be unsafe, unpredictable, and devoid of dreams of freedom.

Image via Max Pixel.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
Wrong Criminals Ruin Liberal Media Narrative

Commentary

It looked like red meat for liberal, woke media. On March 29, a 65-year-old woman of Filipino descent was punched and kicked in New York City in broad daylight by an attacker who allegedly made anti-Asian statements. The attack, two weeks after spa shootings in Atlanta that killed eight including six women of Asian descent, looked like it would add fuel to news coverage of an increase in anti-Asian violence.

But it wasnt the perfect crime story. Unlike the white, presumed racist arrested in the spa shootings (though he and police denied a racial motive), the New York attack suspect wasnt an alleged white supremacist methodically acting out hate crimes. Instead, police arrested Brandon Elliot, 38, a parolee of color convicted of previously killing his mother.

Certainly a suspect like Elliotdisturbed enough to commit matricide and not whitecouldnt be a poster child for anti-Asian hate. Alleged Asian hatred was clearly not his only issue, and highlighting criminal suspects of color could reinforce stereotypes. Moreover, his release on parole could raise disturbing questions about New Yorks judicial system. The story was rapidly jettisoned from headlines, unlike the spa shootings, which are still getting play, especially because the suspect was found to be religious.

The Atlanta spa shootings on March 16 supported the dominant liberal media narrative that white supremacy threatens immigrants, people of color, women, and low-wage workers, and detailed profiles soon surfaced of the victims. But fewer profiles were written six days later when 10 died at a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colorado, even though their numbers were higher and included a police officer.

Why the downplay? The dead werent primarily ethnic minorities and the suspect was a 21-year-old Muslim American named Ahmad Al Aliwi Al-Issa, originally from Syria. Strong coverage could encourage Islamophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment, according to liberal media. Like the New York City attack, the King Soopers story quickly dissolved.

Two days later, another shameless attack occurred: an attempted carjacking in Washington, D.C. that took the life of a 66-year-old Pakistani immigrant who was an Uber Eats delivery driver. Mohammad Anwar, a father of three, was killed as the alleged carjackers drove his car away while he was hanging on the outside.

Few could imagine a more brutal and heartless crime against a powerless person, and the story could have remained a headline for weeks except for one fact: police arrested teenaged girls, aged 13 and 15, in the lethal carjacking, not a white male. Children allegedly killing immigrants isnt a story liberal media want to report. The girls had allegedly premeditated their carjacking crime and came armed with a stun gun, authorities said. The story was dropped like a hot potato.

Liberal medias infatuation with white male perpetrators and perfunctory treatment of other perpetrators is hardly new. Who remembers when college student Mollie Tibbetts disappeared while jogging in 2018 in Brooklyn, Iowa, and was later found dead in a cornfield? Murdered co-ed stories are notoriously clickbait for news outlets because of the sexual overtones and the audience of college and university readers and viewers whom the stories typically draw. But instead of a white male perpetrator, hopefully a frat boy, police arrested Cristhian Bahena Rivera, who had been in the United States illegally, in connection with Tibbettss death.

The story became radioactive. Media give wide berth to stories about illegal immigrants committing crimes in the United States (or joining gangs) because they lend credence to anti-open border arguments. Conservative columnist Ann Coulters 2016 book Adios, America, documented page after page of shocking crimes committed in the United States by illegal immigrants that were cavalierly ignored by mainstream media. Her book was ignored, too.

The trial of Rivera hasnt occurred yet, but the story is safely out of national news and has become a local story.

As I write this, another crime story with the wrong suspect has surfaced. On April 2, a U.S. Capitol Police officer died and another was wounded when a vehicle rammed a police barricade outside the Capitol building. News media were likely expecting a redux of the Jan. 6 riot by conservative white people. But instead, police identified the suspectwho was shot and killedas Noah Green, a 25-year-old African American.

While media probe the suspects motives and compare this U.S. Capitol violence with that on Jan. 6, one fact is already clear. The story will evaporate soon.

Martha Rosenberg is a former advertising copywriter who knows a lot about marketing. She began as an investigative journalist and since has been on TV and radio as a health expert. Martha has taught about drug marketing tactics at a Chicago medical school and is part of the FDA press corps. Her book Born with a Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks, and Hacks Pimp the Public Health, exposes what goes on behind the scenes in the food and drug industries.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
2021-04-07

Maeci

Benedetto Della Vedova, Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation participated in the Steering Committee's first meeting on policies to prevent and combat discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

The Steering Committee, established by the Minister for Equal Opportunities Elena Bonetti, aims to contribute to the multiannual National Strategy's definition to combat discrimination against LGBTI people according to the strategic guidelines on the issue adopted last year, for the first time, by the European Commission for the five years 2020-2025.

In addition to Minister Bonetti and Deputy Minister Della Vedova, the meeting was attended by Ministers Dadone, Cartabia and Messa, and representatives of the Ministries of Health and Labour, the Departments for European Policies and Sport, and the Istituto Superiore di Sanita (The Italian National Institute of Health).

Deputy Minister Della Vedova reiterated the need to adopt active policies to address the inequalities affecting LGBTI people in his speech. All the administrations involved sheared these policies.

"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation- underlined Della Vedova - is actively engaged in the fight against all forms of discrimination. Also, it is involved in the promotion and protection of LGBTI rights in all multilateral forums to which it is a party, first and foremost the United Nations. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation is also committed at the national level, thanks to the work of the Interministerial Committee on Human Rights, CIDU, headquartered at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs".

The Deputy Minister then recalled the upcoming Italian Presidency of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe from November 2021 to May 2022, a significant opportunity to further enhance Italy's commitment to the protection of LGBTI rights. "Italy could give an important signal - highlighted Della Vedova - if it arrived at the appointment of the Presidency having ratified Protocol no. 12, concerning the general prohibition of discrimination, to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms". The Protocol, signed in 2000, has not yet been ratified, so the ratification bill's advancement, deposited in the Chamber at the beginning of the legislature but never scheduled, would provide a fundamental legal framework for the recognition and protection of LGBTI rights.
By Trudy Rubin



When President Joe Biden agreed with a newscaster that Vladimir Putin was "a killer," I initially thought it a tactical error.



Not that the Russian leader isn't a killer, having sent agents to murder dissidents abroad and to poison opposition leader Alexei Navalny at home  not to mention the murders of scores of other Russian activists and journalists on his watch.



Yet I thought it preferable to confront Putin in private, letting him know that, unlike Donald Trump, Biden and U.S. allies rejected the Russian's fake denials. That way, necessary business could still be done with Moscow, but in a no-nonsense, no-illusions fashion.



However, it appears that Putin  despite his put-on pique at Biden's "killer" label  doesn't care if the world sees him kill Navalny. As soon as the opposition leader returned home from lifesaving treatment in Berlin, he was jailed on trumped-up charges and sent to one of Russia's most notorious prisons. Having fallen seriously ill again, denied medical care, he has gone on a hunger strike and could die in prison.



Putin clearly believes he can kill opposition leaders with impunity, just as China's Xi Jinping believes he can crush Hong Kong democracy and imprison a million Uyghurs with impunity. U.S. and European sanctions haven't stopped either leader in their push to prove authoritarian systems are tougher than democracies.



Navalny's present peril provides a warning that democracies must find a more effective way of pushing back.



This 44-year-old Russian anticorruption fighter, who has amassed a grassroots network of followers across the country via social media, has been locked up in the maximum security Pokrov IK-2 penal colony known for its harsh treatment.



Labeled a "flight risk"  despite the fact he voluntarily returned from Germany  Navalny is awakened every 90 minutes by guards with flashlights. This for someone still suffering the effects of being poisoned by a variant banned Soviet-era nerve toxin, who is now unable to feel his right leg and suffers severe pain.



"I have the right to call a doctor and get medicine. Neither of which I am given, stupidly," he said in an Instagram post in his name. He reported he had received six reprimands during two weeks in prison for violations such as getting up 10 minutes early or wearing a T-shirt to meet his lawyer.



Such reprimands mean Navalny can be denied early release, and can be sent to a freezing solitary cell with brutal regulations, according to Yevgenia Albats, an independent Russian journalist and friend of Navalny's.



"It's not about justice. It's about torture," Albats told me by phone from Moscow. "They [the Kremlin] feel they can do what they want. They killed people all around Europe and Putin got away with it. World leaders say harsh words, but nothing happened."



And in the meantime, an ailing Navalny could die.



The opposition leader apparently enraged the Russian president with brilliantly produced YouTube videos, including one about a vast Black Sea coastal palace built for Putin complete with drone footage of the mansion. The video garnered more than 90 million views.



And the Russian leader must fear Navalny's appeal to the younger generation, even though the political activist has been banned from running for any office, and thousands of his supporters have been jailed. Doctors who first treated him in Russia when he was poisoned keep on dying.



The attack on Navalny is reminiscent of the unsolved murder of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, cut down by bullets in 2015 right in front of the Kremlin.



And Navalny's plight recalls the awful death of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer for an international capital fund who discovered a massive tax fraud by Russian Interior Ministry officials. He was arrested in Moscow by those very officials, and allowed to die in 2009 in prison in agonizing pain from acute pancreatitis, having been refused medical care.



What is so shocking about Navalny's case is the apparent sense of impunity in the Kremlin. So-called Magnitsky sanctions for human rights violations, passed by the U.S. Congress in the murdered lawyer's name, have not deterred the Kremlin, nor have economic sanctions on Russia changed Putin's behavior  on assassinations, or hacking U.S. institutions, or pulling troops out of Crimea or eastern Ukraine.



Given Putin's neuralgia about Navalny, it's not likely more sanctions would win his release. When I asked Albats if Navalny would go into exile in order to save his life, her reply was a swift "No." He returned from Germany knowing the risk, she said.



But it is vital for Biden and NATO allies to make clear to Putin that Navalny's death would be a red line. That alone might prevent his murder in prison and gain him vital medical care.



And the treatment of Navalny is a warning that the United States and Europe must find a way, together, and beyond sanctions, to convince Putin he can't mock international norms with impunity. Perhaps Navalny's case will finally persuade Germany to accept freezing construction on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia.



As for the United States, the biggest imperative, as Biden knows, is for the country to rebuild its infrastructure and reinvigorate its technology  so autocrats will take it seriously once more.



Trudy Rubin (trubin@phillynews.com.) is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer. This article was distributed by Tribune Content Agency.


Swedish gaming gear brand Xtrfy has entered the South African market.

This forms part of Xtrfys impressive global expansion in which it added over 25 new countries to its distribution network in 2020.

Xtrfys well-renowned range of ultra-light mice, keyboards, headsets, and other peripherals are now available to stores across the country through distributor Mikyla Homes.

Were excited to finally be able to offer our products to consumers in South Africa, said Xtrfy European Sales Manager Johan Waltare.

Weve seen a great interest in our products from South African gamers, and we see potential in this market  a potential that were looking forward to seizing by the help of our new partners in Mikyla Homes.

Mikyla Homes founder George Popovich thanked Xtrfy for giving the distributor the opportunity to represent its brand in South Africa.

We are excited to be able to introduce the South African gaming community to such an innovative brand who produces high-quality products at affordable prices, said Popovich.

We are sure the South African gaming community will take well to the brand and are looking forward to a long and successful relationship with Xtrfy.



Xtrfy

Xtrfy has developed a reputation for its pro-level gaming peripherals and works with some of the worlds top players to achieve this.

Its products are based on proven technologies to offer the best experience possible to Xtrfy users.

All Xtrfy equipment is designed from the ground up at the companys offices in Skane, Sweden  which has been the case since their start in 2013.

The company is currently working on its fourth generation of awesome gaming gear, which South Africans can get their hands on at the following retailers:

Contact Mikyla Homes about becoming a Xtrfy reseller.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold plans to report raising a record-setting $283,714 for the just-completed first quarter of 2021, her campaign said Tuesday  more than any candidate running to be the state's top election official has ever raised in a quarter.
Iowa will pay $225,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a man who was injured when a state trooper knocked him over and put his knee on his neck during a 2017 traffic stop, according to documents.

The payment to Bryce Yakish ends a lawsuit he filed against the state and former Iowa State Patrol trooper Robert Smith in 2019, months after a sheriff released dash camera video of the arrest. The lawsuit alleged that Smith assaulted and falsely arrested Yakish, lying about what happened.

The case also prompted scrutiny into other allegations of misconduct against Smith, who left the patrol in 2018 after a 30-year career. He was later hired as an officer in the small town of Durant but resigned after the videos release. Smith was also accused of using excessive force against a woman during an arrest in Durant.

Cedar County Sheriff Warren Wethington released the video in 2019 after announcing that he would no longer book any suspects arrested by Smith at his jail because he could not vouch for the officers credibility. Prosecutors also dismissed several cases brought by Smith, saying he was no longer a credible witness.

Wethington said that federal agents contacted him during an investigation of Smith, and that the inquiry appears to remain open. Federal court documents show a grand jury has been investigating allegations of civil rights violations against an unidentified trooper.

One of Yakishs attorneys, Martin Diaz, said the state produced Smiths personnel file during the litigation but declined comment on its contents, saying they are subject to a confidentiality order.

Diaz praised the state for settling the case.

I think the behavior of the trooper in this case was so over the top that we just didnt get the pushback we normally would, he said. The state recognized it had a problem and I think the resolution is a good one.

The video shows Smith pulling Yakish over for speeding on his motorcycle on Sept. 25, 2017, at a gas station off of Interstate 80 near West Liberty. What appears to be a routine stop escalates immediately when Smith runs from his car with his gun drawn and pointed at Yakish, who was 20 at the time.

Smith uses his left hand to strike the face shield of Yakishs helmet, knocking him backward onto his motorcycle. Yakish and the vehicle fall to the ground. Smith briefly puts his knee on Yakishs neck while handcuffing him, the lawsuit alleged. Yakish is repeatedly heard complaining of neck pain.

Smith falsely accused Yakish of trying to flee and charged him with eluding law enforcement, even though Yakish stopped immediately after Smith activated his patrol cars lights and siren. That charge was dropped after a prosecutor reviewed the video and concluded it was baseless.

Yakish lost his license because of the arrest, his motorcycle was impounded and he spent the night in jail. The lawsuit said a chiropractor later treated him for neck pain.

The Iowa attorney generals office represented Smith because he was on duty at the time, and the State Appeal Board last month approved using general tax funds for the $225,000 payout.

Solicitor General Jeff Thompson said at that meeting that it was in the states best interest to resolve the claim, noting that the state faced some difficulty on the liability side and could be required to pay Yakishs attorneys fees if it lost at trial.

AP reporter David Pitt in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this story.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits Iowa
REDWOOD CITY, Calif., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Nevro Corp. (NYSE: NVRO), a global medical device company that is providing innovative, evidence-based solutions for the treatment of chronic pain, today announced that the company will report its financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2021 after the market closes on May 5, 2021.

Management will host a conference call on May 5, 2021 to discuss first quarter 2021 financial results. The call will begin at 1:30 pm PT/ 4:30 pm ET. Investors interested in listening to the call may do so by dialing (833) 968-2321 in the U.S. or +1 (778) 560-2840 internationally, using Conference ID: 6194499. A live webcast of this event, as well as an archived recording, will be available in the Investors section of Nevro's website at www.nevro.com .

Internet Posting of Information

Nevro routinely posts information that may be important to investors in the "Investor Relations" section of its website at www.nevro.com. The company encourages investors and potential investors to consult the Nevro website regularly for important information about Nevro.

About Nevro





Headquartered in Redwood City, California, Nevro is a global medical device company focused on providing innovative products that improve the quality of life of patients suffering from debilitating chronic pain. Nevro has developed and commercialized the Senza spinal cord stimulation (SCS) system, an evidence-based, non-pharmacologic neuromodulation platform for the treatment of chronic pain. HF10 therapy has demonstrated the ability to reduce or eliminate opioids in 65% of patients across six peer-reviewed clinical studies. The Senza System, Senza II System, and the Senza Omnia System are the only SCS systems that deliver Nevro's proprietary HF10 therapy. Senza, Senza II, Senza Omnia, HF10, Nevro and the Nevro logo are trademarks of Nevro Corp.

To learn more about Nevro, connect with us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Investors and Media:

Julie Dewey, IRC

Nevro Corp.

Vice President, Investor Relations & Corp Communications

650-433-3247 | [email protected]

SOURCE Nevro Corp.

Related Links

http://www.nevro.com


In addition, Moscow is stating  as well as otherwise signaling  that diplomatic relations with the West in general, and the U.S. in particular, are deteriorating seriously, perhaps ominously. Russias Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has declared that dealings with Washington have hit the bottom.
Police in the northern province of Hai Duong said on Tuesday that they had recently broken up a ring that brought people illegally to Vietnam, arresting a number of suspects.

The provincial police determined that 35-year-old Pham Thi Ha in Tu Ky District was the mastermind behind the ring.

Ha used to work in China and got to know some people, who later became members of her racket.

She used Chinese mobile social networking app WeChat and lingo for her business affairs, and constantly changed times and dates, locations and methods of transporting border jumpers to avoid the polices attention.

After clearly understanding the operations of the ring, the Tu Ky District police, in coordination with their provincial superiors, arrested Ha while she was assisting six Chinese people in making illegal entry into Vietnam on the morning of March 24.

The police scouts had previously discovered Has connection with a Chinese citizen acting as an intermediary between her and the group of two Chinese women and four Chinese men.

A group of six Chinese people, who made illegal entry into Vietnam, at the police station in Hai Duong Province, Vietnam. Photo: Hai Duong Police

Ha and Nguyen Xuan Thang hailing from the same district used two cars to pick up the six-member group at their rendezvous at Bong Lau Pass in northern Lang Son Province, which borders China, and took them to a hotel in Tu Ky Town.

Ha, Thang, and the entire Chinese group were arrested before they could leave for Ho Chi Minh City as planned.

At the police station, Ha admitted she had successfully helped many other Chinese people illegally enter Vietnam, using her personal car.

She and the members in her ring shared the wage paid, averagely VND30 million (US$1,300) each, after each successful trip.

The police have found out that Ha had carried out ten cases of illegally transporting over 30 Chinese people into the country.

She received more than VND100 million ($4,350) in total from these affairs.

Based on the collected evidence, the Hai Duong Province police started legal proceedings against Ha and Thang while expanding the investigation into the case.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Rotunda Rumblings

The doctor is out: Former Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton announced Tuesday she would not seek the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in 2022, Seth Richardson reports. Some Democrats had been pushing heavily for Acton to jump into the race for the open Senate seat since last year, with pressure increasing on the former mainstay of coronavirus briefings following Republican Sen. Rob Portmans announcement he wouldnt run again in 2022. The move seems to clear a path for Rep. Tim Ryan, whos expected to run, although it could invite other Democrats considering the race to jump in.

Moreno motors into Senate race: Positioning himself as a conservative outsider businessman in the mold of former President Donald Trump, Westlake car dealer and tech entrepreneur Bernie Moreno announced Tuesday that hes running for Portmans Senate seat, Sabrina Eaton writes. The announcement from Moreno, 54, said hes entering the 2022 race as a Republican to stop the socialist agenda, protect Trumps gains and protect the American dream. Its his first bid for public office.

Green for blue: A bipartisan pair of Ohio state senators have proposed borrowing $1 billion over 10 years to pay for H2Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWines water quality program. Per Andrew Tobias, Sens. Theresa Gavarone and Kenny Yuko are sponsoring Senate Joint Resolution 2, which if approved by the legislature would place the bond issue on the November 2022 ballot. A similar measure failed to move in the last General assembly, although the resolutions sponsors said theyre optimistic there will be more support this time.

Not vouching for vouchers: The Cleveland law firm of Walter Haverfield is preparing a lawsuit on behalf of about 70 school districts that plan to challenge Ohios private school voucher laws. Laura Hancock reports that many people involved were also involved in the 11-year DeRolph v. Ohio case in which the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that the funding system for public schools was unconstitutional.

STEMM scholarships: The state announced the recipients of $69.8 million in Choose Ohio First scholarship dollars, which go through institutions to students in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine programs. Emily Bamforth reports that there are a significant amount of new colleges participating. Who is eligible and the application process depends on the school.

Heavy lift: Officials with the Cleveland Indians say they welcome DeWines lifting of restrictions on outdoor events, but said they likely wont do anything different until May. Per Paul Hoynes, a top spokesman for the team said workers spent weeks blocking off seats to configure the stadium for 30% capacity. The soonest the team might boost its capacity is a series against the New York Yankees that starts on April 22.

Giving it a shot: The Cincinnati Reds are offering $10 discounted tickets to fans who can display a valid COVID-19 vaccination card. The deal is part of a regional campaign that aims to get 80% of the region vaccinated before July 4, according to The Enquirers Briana Rice.

Browns books: Cuyahoga County Councilwoman Shontel Brown reported raising $680,000 since the beginning of the 11th Congressional District special election, Seth Richardson reports. The $640,000 raised since the beginning of the year are a marked improvement over the $40,000 she raised in December 2020, but is still dwarfed by former state Sen. Nina Turners sum in their bids to succeed former Rep. Marcia Fudge.

Fraud charges: Kelli Prather, a perennial candidate from Cincinnati who ran and lost in the 2016 Democratic U.S. Senate primary, was indicted Tuesday on COVID-19 fraud-related charges. The Cincinnati Enquirers Sharon Coolidge and Kevin Grasha write that Prather faces charges after federal authorities say she sought more than $600,000 in coronavirus relief and fraudulently received about $19,800 for six businesses that werent actually operational.

Wrong direction: New coronavirus cases in Ohio jumped 16.5% in the last week, and hospitalizations increased to their highest level this month, despite increasing numbers of people vaccinated for the virus, Rich Exner reports in his weekly deep dive into coronavirus trends.

Tuesday totals: Hancock reports 98 new coronavirus-related deaths and 1,871 new COVID-19 cases in Ohio on Tuesday.

Meet the neighbors: A group of Asian-Americans in Upper Arlington, the Columbus suburb where Lt. Gov. Jon Husted lives, say they will meet with Husted on Friday to discuss a controversial tweet in which Husted referred to the coronavirus as the Wuhan virus, according to the Associated Press.

HUD Money: The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development led by former Warrensville Heights Rep. Marcia Fudge announced Tuesday that it will allocate more than $698 million in Housing Trust Fund money around the nation, more than double last years $322.6 million. HUD estimates the money will provide more than 5,400 additional affordable housing units. Ohio is slated to get $21,186,076. Too many Americans are struggling to keep or find an affordable home, Fudge said.

Dominion at the court: The bipartisan Stark County Board of Elections sued county commissioners last week in the Ohio Supreme Court because they failed to pay for Dominion voting machines, writes The Repositorys Cassandra Nist. The elections board voted unanimously to use the machines but Republicans on the commission nixed the purchase, citing the cost and Stark County supporters of Donald Trump being opposed to the purchase. The former president has falsely claimed that Dominion machines were hacked or inaccurate and caused him to lose the election.

Shot down: Ohioans arent required to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, but state Rep. Jennifer Gross has introduced legislation to ensure people can opt out of getting one. House Bill 248, the Vaccine Choice and Anti-Discrimination Act, would authorize Ohioans to refuse any vaccination  not just for the coronavirus  on the grounds of natural immunity, medical reasons, or reasons of conscience, including religious convictions (similar to existing exemptions for Ohio schoolkids getting immunized). Gross, a West Chester Republican, recently told the Dayton Daily News that she wants to wait for a couple of years before deciding whether to get a COVID-19 vaccine herself, as shes concerned about some information coming out about the vaccinations.

Parental advisory: Ohio House Republicans have introduced the Parents Right to Know Act, which would require school officials to provide parents with any sex ed instruction and supplemental materials provided to their children besides abstinence-related teachings. House Bill 240 would require the State Board of Education to conduct yearly audits to ensure the law is being followed and allow parents who arent given such materials to sue the school district. HB240 would further require sex ed courses to include risk avoidance to alcohol, drugs, dating violence, bullying, gambling, pornography and human trafficking.

Its on: Early voting began Tuesday for the May primary, which includes 251 local ballot issues across the state, according to Secretary of State Frank LaRose. The election is on May 4.

Tax facts: Ohio took in $1.6 billion in taxes in March, $41.4 million, or 2.6% above estimates. Leading the way were taxes on auto sales, which were $32.3 million, or 23.5% above estimates. That marked the 10th month in a row that the states auto sales tax revenues exceeded estimates. The states tax revenues now are $763.4 million above estimates for the year  a key number as state lawmakers continue work on the next two-year state budget proposal.

Lobbying Lineup

Here are five lobbyists who are registered with the state as agents for American Electric Power:

Thomas Froehle Maria Haberman Chad Hawley Troy Judy Markee Osborne

On The Move

Rob Nichols will be Secretary of State Frank LaRoses new press secretary. He previously held the same job under former Gov. John Kasich, and most recently worked for the Ohio Business Roundtable.

LaRose has chosen Inez James to serve on the Lorain County Board of Elections. She was an alternative name suggested by local Democrats, according to the Elyria Chronicle Telegram.

Birthdays

State Rep. Michael Loychik

Ex-state Sen. Edna Brown

Ex-state Rep. Brian Hill

Straight From The Source

Let me be clear, I believe receiving the vaccine is a personal choice and I do not support any effort to mandate it. And after consultation with my medical provider regarding the safety of the vaccine, I found it is safe and effective.

-State Rep. Haraz Ghanbari, a Perrysburg Republican, in a statement he issued after getting the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on Tuesday.

Capitol Letter is a daily briefing providing succinct, timely information for those who care deeply about the decisions made by state government. If you do not already subscribe, you can sign up here to get Capitol Letter in your email box each weekday for free.
ROTTERDAM  In between tears, Brian McGarry recalled how the debilitating pain of dealing with Stage 4 prostate cancer got so bad six weeks ago that he called hospice care and was ready to throw in the towel.

When youre in pain, its not worth living, said McGarry , a Rotterdam Republican who serves on the Schenectady County Legislature, adding he couldn't focus and was sleeping in 3o-minute blocks.

His wife, Patty McGarry, who doubles as his caretaker, said "the big difference was once the pain management got under control, it was like a 180 (degree turn). Brian chimed in that once the pain subsided he started to once again "focus on life" and the simple things in life like brunch and dinner.

Today, the Rotterdam father of six adult children, who turns 64 later this month, spends most days with Patty at Sheba Medical Center in Tel HaShomer in Israel where he's days away from getting his first dose of lutetium-177, a drug gaining popularity as a way to treat advanced cancer. The drug is still in clinical trials in the United States for prostate cancer.

Im at the 11th hour where Im ready, lets get this going, said McGarry.

McGarry recalled how having to take the nonstop 11-hour flight from Kennedy Airport to Tel Aviv on March 11 by himself was one of the hardest decisions he ever had to make.

Patty was supposed to travel with him but she wasnt listed in the paperwork that granted her husband the special exemption for the trip. She made the journey to the Middle East the next day.

He was forced to have partial hip replacement March 25 to repair a fracture, a common occurrence, McGarry said, when cancerous bones are located next to healthy ones. If the bloodwork looks good, the first of what will be a total of four applications of the lutetium-177 therapy, which is flown in from Germany or Australia, could occur as early as Sunday.

It will definitely help me, to what extent is the variable will it give me years, will it give me months? Only God knows, he said.

The former educator who also ran a photography business, explained that he must undergo a PSMA PET scan, that identifies markers on tumors, and they give you the (lutetium-177) which lands right on the tumor site and releases low-dose radiation over a period of time to kill the tumor.

After that hell be in quarantine at the hotel by himself for three days.

For 72 hours, I cannot be in the same room with my wife, so thats the issue right now  Am I self-sufficient enough to be by myself and take care of myself for three days? he said. He said nausea is one possible side effect but patients who have had the therapy have not reported any other adverse effects.

McGarry will have to wait between three-to-nine weeks for the second treatment, a process that McGarry will have to endure three more times for a total of four applications.

Then I go home, and a period of time goes by, and I come back over and I guess do it again, added McGarry.

His friends back in Rotterdam and rural Schenectady County have set up a GoFundMe page to help the McGarrys with mounting medical bills that between the lutetium treatments and partial hip replacement stand at around $100,000. As of Tuesday afternoon, the site had raised $44, 605, with 41 messages from friends expressing well-wishes to the family.

He recounted about a half dozen people reached out to him about starting the GoFundMe page, which he turned down. Eventually, Deborah Proulx of Duanesburg, a family friend, convinced him it do it. The site has been up since March 15.

"The response was immediate, and we had raised in one day, $25,ooo," said Proulx, whose two children had Brian McGarry as a teacher. She recounted having a conversation not long after that when McGarry wanted to take take the site down.

"I just said you've made an impact on so many people, and to maybe look at it as a gift that so many people want to give for themselves as well as for him," she added. "There's peace and joy in giving."

Hes hoping his health insurance company, which has told him to keep all his receipts, will also pick up some of the medical bills.

McGarry said he is humbled and overwhelmed by all the love from the community. He tries to keep everyone updated on his progress on Facebook.

That long gruelling journey from Rotterdam to Israel, with stops in Houston, began in earnest in January 2014 when McGarry was diagnosed with Stage 4 prostate cancer. Since then, hes made dozens of trips to a University of Texas MD Cancer Center in Houston for trial treatments, noting that over the years the cancer has waxed and waned from a raging fire to little embers that are just harmless.

In hindsight, McGarry realizes getting his blood tests done regularly to determine his PSA levels instead of once in nine years since he was 47-years old might likely have saved him a lot of pain and heartache.

If I had just had annual check ups, if I had just went and had blood work for my PSA, this all could have been avoided, Im so discouraged in myself," adding with a chuckle, "I feel like walking up to every guy in the street and say 'what's your PSA?"

Patty McGarry said despite all the pain racking her husband's body that he mostly maintains a healthy attitude that uplifts her and their children.
A giant white-tailed eagle reintroduced to the Isle of Wight has flown 29 miles across the Channel to France in just 40 minutes.

Known as the 'flying barn door' due to their huge size, seven juvenile white-tailed sea eagles were restored to the island last summer as part of a five-year project.

One of them, a young male identified as G463, travelled between Dungeness and Boulogne-sur-Mer at around 1pm yesterday.

He then flew a further 105 miles (169km) through northern France before stopping near Saint-Quentin, according to his tracker.

White-tailed sea eagles which have a wingspan of up to 8ft (2.4m), had not been recorded in England since 1780 when they were hunted to extinction.

A young male white-tailed eagle identified as G463 (pictured above) travelled 29 miles between Dungeness and Boulogne-sur-Mer at around 1pm yesterday

The route taken by G463 yesterday. The Roy Dennis foundation said: 'G463 made light work of the flight to France today, flying 47 km between Dungeness and Boulogne-sur-Mer, between 13:05 and 13:45 aided by a strong NW tailwind'

The reintroduction makes them Britain's biggest native bird.

Describing the French outing, the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation, which released the bird on the Isle of Wight last summer, said: 'We wondered how long it would be before one of the young birds crossed the English Channel.

'It made the crossing between 13.05 and 13.45, aided by a strong north-westerly tailwind. It will be fascinating to follow his explorations on the continent.'

A five-year reintroduction project on the island began in 2019 involving Forestry England and the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation.

The first group of eagles, released in 2019, are all back on the Isle of Wight or in the local region after exploring widely across England, says the charity.

Natural England has issued a licence for the release of up to sixty birds to the charity.

The project will see the birds released annually, but they are not expected to breed until 2024. So far 13 sea eagles have been released, but three have died.

In the Spring of 2020 the eagles released the previous year started to make their first major exploratory flights, tracked by solar-powered satellite tags on their bodies.

The young male then flew a further 105 miles (169km) through northern France before stopping near Saint-Quentin, according to his tracker

They have been spotted by nature lovers as they ranged as far away as Scotland, Yorkshire and Norfolk.

Their flights took them over populated places, including central London, giving people living under lockdown a chance to see a long-lost natural sight.

The white-tailed eagle has a black-ridged tail, golden eyes and have yellow talons, legs and beaks.

It is the largest bird of prey in the UK with a wingspan pushing eight feet (2.4 metres) and a body length of up to three feet (90cm).

The species suffered huge declines in Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries and is still persecuted by gamekeepers because it feeds on birds, rabbits and hares.
Jen Sheahan and her late 1800s artisan cottage in Dublin has been named the winner of RTE's Home of the Year 2021 award.

The seventh series of Home of the Year saw the three judges visit 21 homes across the country, but Ms Sheahans home was chosen as the ultimate winner.

Speaking of her happiness at winning, Ms Sheahan said: I feel complete and utter shock - Im floating on air. I'm so thrilled to pieces I cant believe it.

My home is little and it needs to have a lot of dual functions so it might be small, but a lot can be done in a small space thats really just made for me. Its just incredible I would never ever have thought that it would be me standing here, she said.

Ms Sheahan said shes wanted a cottage like hers for a long time, and was delighted when one came on the market in 2019. It needed a lot of work as it was damp, had no central heating and the toilet was outside.

A complete renovation was done by Ms Sheahan, who knocked all internal walls, dug up the floor and lowered it, plus added on an extra floor to make it a two-storey house. There are also clever storage solutions throughout this home.

Ms Sheahan describes her style as modern, playful and colourful. She loves that it is fun, comfortable and loves to see peoples reactions when they see a feature such as her disco ball light in her brightly coloured downstairs toilet.

Speaking about her win, judge Hugh Wallace said: You know arriving up to this cottage was a treat. You knew something special was going on.

Entering the living/kitchen/dining area was terrific because its such a small footprint of the house. They created so much space in that area around the dining table with all their memorabilia, pictures, little bits and pieces and I thought it was terrific.

Expand Close Jen Sheahan's living area which faces out onto a quirkiy-designed patio / Facebook

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The home has been re-imagined and oozes with the personality and style of the homeowner - the design, layout and functionality of this home was a real surprise.

Similarly, judge Amanda Bone said: Jen's home is very cleverly thought out in terms of the layout, particularly the open plan kitchen, dining and living area and even though the ceilings are low, because of the light, it feels much more spacious.

The home that won is all about what can be achieved with clever design in such a small space. Definitely a unique home and a well-deserved winner.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Inside RTE Home of the Year 2021 winner Jen Sheahans 1800s Dublin cottage Close A fol-out table and chairs hang neatly on the fence to create space when they're not being used A disco ball in the bathroom - why, of course! Jen Sheahan's living area which faces out onto a quirkiy-designed patio / Facebook

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Judge Suzie McAdam discussed the competition as a whole, saying: It was always going to be extremely hard this year to pick a winner - the standard has been exceptional.

There are some homes that have taken my breath away - theyve created an incredible ambiance - perfect use of colour, incredible renovations - there are quite a few Id like the keys to.




MBABANE  Following the online petition by SWEET members, demanding to get back money they paid through savings and buying shares, the Central Bank of Eswatini has confirmed that it was conducting investigations into the fund.

Last Monday, this publication reported that members of the Swaziland Women Economic Empowerment Trust (SWEET) launched an online petition and demanded that the people responsible for taking their monies should be taken to task, and their monies be returned. Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Thuli Dladla, who was the liaison officer, was quoted having confirmed that she was aware of the history of the investment.

Explained

Dladla explained that there was a delay in paperwork by Farmers Bank, which was the mother body of the company (SWEET), and that there was about E27 million at Swaziland Building Society which had the members names. She said the Central Bank of Eswatini had records of the members who had joined the fund and was currently investigating the matter. Dladla assured members who invested that they would get their dues once the Central Bank had concluded the investigations.

In a press statement released yesterday by Central Bank Governor Majozi Sithole, he said the bank jointly with the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) confirmed that a joint team had been established by the two regulatory authorities. Sithole highlighted that these were launched to look into the affairs of SWEET Trust Fund and its affiliates. This was after the regulatory authorities received complaints from some members of SWEET that the offices in Manzini have been closed without due notice to members, said the governor. He elaborated that the joint CBE/FSRA team was currently on site, investigating the operations of SWEET and its affiliates and the reason that SWEET offices remain closed. Sithole revealed that the evaluation of SWEET affairs and activities were being undertaken in the backdrop of SWEET mobilising share contributions and savings deposits from members of the public, and were consistent with the pertinent provisions of Section 39 of the Financial Institutions Act (2005).


Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - April 7, 2021) - Golden Independence Mining Corp. (CSE: IGLD) (OTCQB: GIDMF) (FSE: 6NN) (the "Company" or "IGLD") announces that it is increasing the size of its previously announced proposed non-brokered private placement financing (the "Private Placement"). As per the Company's March 31, 2021 news release, the Private Placement was to be up to 10,000,000 units ("Units") a price of $0.25 per Unit to raise gross proceeds of up to approximately $2,500,000. The Private Placement will now be for up to 11,200,000 Units to raise gross proceeds of $2,800,000. The closing of the financing is anticipated to occur on April 9, 2021. All other terms of the Private Placement remain unchanged.

All securities issued pursuant to the Private Placement will be subject to a four-month hold period from the date of issuance. Completion of the Private Placement is subject to the approval of the Canadian Securities Exchange.

About Golden Independence Mining Corp.

Golden Independence Mining Corp. is an exploration company currently focused on exploring the advanced-stage Independence property located in the Battle Mountain-Cortez Trend, Nevada and the Champ precious metal property near Castlegar, British Columbia. The Independence property benefits from over US$25 million in past exploration, including over 200 holes drilled, and is located adjacent to Nevada Gold Mines' Phoenix-Fortitude mining operations in the Battle Mountain-Cortez trend of Nevada.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

Christos Doulis, Chief Executive Officer

Telephone: 1.647.924.1083

Email: christos@goldenindependence.co

Forward-Looking Information

This press release contains forward-looking information (within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation) that involves various risks and uncertainties regarding future events. Such forward-looking information includes statements based on current expectations involving a number of risks and uncertainties and such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance of the Company, and include, without limitation, statements regarding completion of the Private Placement. There are numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and the Company's plans and objectives to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking information in this news release, including without limitation, the following risks and uncertainties: (i) the risk that the Canadian Securities Exchange will not accept the terms of the Private Placement; (ii) the risk that the Company will not be able to locate suitable purchasers for the Private Placement; and (iii) management's discretion regarding the use of proceeds. Actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. This forward-looking information is based on estimates and opinions of management on the date hereof and is expressly qualified by this notice. Risks and uncertainties about the Company's business are more fully discussed in the Company's disclosure materials filed with the securities regulatory authorities in Canada at www.sedar.com. The Company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking information or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from such information unless required by applicable law.

NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION OR DISSEMINATION INTO THE UNITED STATES OR THROUGH U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/79682
A close call between a two passenger planes above Sydney airport was the result of another aircraft mishearing directions from the control centre, an investigation has found.

A Singapore Airlines flight was preparing to land in Sydney on February 9 2020 but bad weather left the pilots of the Airbus A380 unable to land on the first attempt.

The crew advised Sydney Airport air traffic control of the missed approach and were told to turn right onto a heading of 270.

A close call between a two passenger planes above Sydney airport was the result of another aircraft mishearing directions from the control centre, an investigation has found

However the pilots misheard the instruction and turned left.

The plane was then on a path that would bring it too close to another passenger plane and was ordered to turn right and immediately climb.

The second passenger plane was also instructed to turn right to maintain the necessary separation between the aircraft.

However that order then left the second plane flying too close to a third passenger plane.

The situation was resolved without any further incident but could have been avoided altogether if air traffic control had responded differently, an investigation by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau found

The situation was resolved without any further incident but could have been avoided altogether if air traffic control had responded differently, an investigation by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau found.

The pilots of the Singapore Airlines flight were likely experiencing a high workload managing a high-energy aircraft state and recovering from difficult winds and the missed approach, ATSB acting Director of Transport Safety Kerri Hugh said.

Air traffic control missed an opportunity to confirm the order had been correctly noted, she said.

'The flight crew omitted the direction of the turn from their readback, which was not corrected by ATC.

'This was a missed opportunity to correct the misheard instruction.

'This incident highlights the importance of flight crew completing full readbacks, as well as controllers correcting any readback discrepancies immediately.'
New Delhi:

The landmark decree to allow Saudi women to drive after decades of struggle against the patriarchal rule has not gone down with some.



A man has been arrested for allegedly threatening to attack women drivers, the Interior Ministry said on Friday.



While Many Saudis welcomed Tuesday's announcement by King Salman lifting the ban by next year, some expressed confusion or outrage after the reversal of a policy that has been backed for decades by prominent clerics.



The ministry said on Twitter that police in the kingdom's Eastern Province had arrested the suspect and referred him to the public prosecutor.

Read | Historic! Saudi Arabias King Salman orders driving licenses for women



"I swear to God, any woman whose car breaks down - I will burn her and her car," said a man wearing a traditional white robe who appeared in a short video distributed online earlier in the week.



The authenticity of the video has not been verified. But the Eastern Province's police spokesman has reportedly revealed to Saudi media that the man in custody was in his 20s and that the arrest had been ordered by its governor.



Separately, the local media reported late on Thursday that authorities directed the interior minister to prepare an anti-harassment law within 60 days.



The directions cited "the danger posed by harassment ...and its contradiction with the values of Islam".

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Fremantle Media has appointed an independent review of Neighbours after actress Shareena Clanton accused the Channel 10 soap of racism.

In a lengthy Instagram post on Tuesday, Shareena, 30, alleged producers fostered a toxic workplace environment and that the show was a 'culturally unsafe space'.

Fremantle Asia Pacific CEO Chris Oliver-Taylor told TV Tonight 'all complaints are taken seriously and we are investigating all allegations fairly'.

Investigation: Fremantle Media has launched an independent review of Neighbours after actress Shareena Clanton (pictured) accused the show of racism

'Fremantle is committed to providing an environment where employees and others in the workplace are treated fairly and with respect, and are free from unlawful discrimination, harassment, victimisation and bullying,' Mr Oliver-Taylor added.

'We do not tolerate behaviour that does not align to our Anti-Discrimination, Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO), Harassment & Bullying Policy and take all complaints very seriously, investigating all allegations fairly and thoroughly.'

Fremantle has asked Campfire X, creative leaders in Indigenous Cultural Protocols, to 'conduct an independent review of Neighbours and the production process'.

Wentworth star Shareena had accused Neighbours of racism in an Instagram post on Tuesday, and vowed to never work on the show again.

Among several complaints, the Aboriginal actress accused a staff member of making crude remarks and claimed she heard the N-word used on set twice.

Allegations: Shareena (pictured) alleged on Instagram on Tuesday that producers fostered a toxic workplace environment and that the show was a 'culturally unsafe space'

'I'm struggling to post anything positive about the months I endured on Neighbours after multiple racist traumas and navigating ongoing counselling from this highly problematic show,' she wrote.

'It's been lonely, triggering and traumatising to work in such a culturally unsafe space.'

While she didn't name specific staff members, Shareena listed several 'racist' and problematic incidents she apparently witnessed during filming.

She claimed: 'A [staff member] thought it funny and appropriate to openly laugh at the word 'cum slut' by a cast member who loudly spoke about 'cum', 'cum', 'cum' in front of other cast and crew.

'Due to my insistence of engaging a Wurundjeri Elder to be included for ongoing cultural safety reasons like cultural protocols followed and debriefing, I was told 'this is not a film production, Shareena' and that 'we simply don't have the budget'.

'The humble few hundred dollars a week Aunty and I proposed was in contrast to the thousands of dollars actors were receiving each pay. I paid Aunty directly out of my own income to make up for this lack of budget.'

She continued: 'A senior staff member openly laughed whilst using the term 'slave driver' in reference to him 'working hard'. My management at the time didn't help as they endorsed/encouraged this 'office banter'. I fired the agent.

'Overt and covert levels of racism were rife, often disguised as 'jokes', like a white actress openly calling another actress of colour a 'lil' monkey'.'

'Twice I endured the N-word openly being used on-set and in the green room. I was even told to 'go somewhere else' by staff when confronting the actor directly because I was making others 'uncomfortable',' she added.

'A white actress openly laughed at the racist N-word to only lie about laughing about it when questioned by HR. She said that I 'misconstrued' what she was 'laughing at' and that she was laughing at 'something else'. That is a blatant lie.

'The retaliation for calling out this misconduct and racism often left me ostracised and further marginalised. What was meant to [be an] HR follow-up [to] discuss this led to them saying they were unsure of 'what else they could do'.'

Accusations: Among several complaints, Shareena accused a staff member of making crude remarks and claimed she heard the N-word used on set twice

Shareena's guest appearance on Neighbours is set to air next week.

A Freemantle spokesperson told TV Blackbox: 'Neighbours strives to be a platform for diversity and inclusion on-screen and off-screen.

'Our quest is always to continue to grow and develop in this area and we acknowledge that this is an evolving process.'

'Shareena's involvement in the creative process and on set was invaluable and hugely educational and will benefit the series moving forward.

'There have been significant and lengthy discussions with Shareena during her time on Neighbours and we will continue to work with all cast and crew to ensure Neighbours continues to be a fully inclusive environment.'
New York, April 06, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Coal Bed Methane Market Research Report by Technology, by Application - Global Forecast to 2025 - Cumulative Impact of COVID-19" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p06045473/?utm_source=GNW



Market Statistics:

The report provides market sizing and forecast across five major currencies - USD, EUR GBP, JPY, and AUD. This helps organization leaders make better decisions when currency exchange data is readily available.



1. The Global Coal Bed Methane Market is expected to grow from USD 12,947.58 Million in 2020 to USD 17,236.68 Million by the end of 2025.

2. The Global Coal Bed Methane Market is expected to grow from EUR 11,352.68 Million in 2020 to EUR 15,113.44 Million by the end of 2025.

3. The Global Coal Bed Methane Market is expected to grow from GBP 10,092.56 Million in 2020 to GBP 13,435.88 Million by the end of 2025.

4. The Global Coal Bed Methane Market is expected to grow from JPY 1,381,834.87 Million in 2020 to JPY 1,839,590.53 Million by the end of 2025.

5. The Global Coal Bed Methane Market is expected to grow from AUD 18,801.60 Million in 2020 to AUD 25,029.95 Million by the end of 2025.



Market Segmentation & Coverage:

This research report categorizes the Coal Bed Methane to forecast the revenues and analyze the trends in each of the following sub-markets:



Based on Technology, the Coal Bed Methane Market studied across Enhanced Coal Bed Methane Recovery, Exploration & Drilling, Fracturing Fluid, and Potential Impact Of Technology Advancement. The Exploration & Drilling further studied across Costs Associated With Cbm Horizontal Drilling, Fracture Stimulation, Horizontal Drilling, and Water Usage Issues. The Fracturing Fluid further studied across Chemical Additives Requirement For Cbm Operations, Proppant Requirement For Cbm Operations, and Water Requirement For Cbm Operations.



Based on Application, the Coal Bed Methane Market studied across Commercial Utilization, Industrial Utilization, Power Generation, Residential Utilization, and Transportation.



Based on Geography, the Coal Bed Methane Market studied across Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe, Middle East & Africa. The Americas region surveyed across Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and United States. The Asia-Pacific region surveyed across Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand. The Europe, Middle East & Africa region surveyed across France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, United Arab Emirates, and United Kingdom.



Company Usability Profiles:

The report deeply explores the recent significant developments by the leading vendors and innovation profiles in the Global Coal Bed Methane Market including AGL Energy Ltd, Baker Hughes Holdings LLC, Bg Group PLC, Black Diamond Energy, Inc., Blue Energy Ltd, Bp PLC, China United Coalbed Methane Co, ConocoPhillips Company, Dart Energy Ltd, Encana Corp, Far East Energy Corp, Fortune Oil PLC, G3 Exploration Ltd, Gazprom PJSC, Great Eastern Energy Corp. Ltd., Green Dragon Gas Ltd., Halliburton Co, Metgasco Ltd, Nexen Inc, Origin Energy Ltd, Petroliam Nasional Berhad, Pioneer Natural Resources Company, Quicksilver Resources Inc, Reliance Power Limited, Santos Ltd., and Senex Energy Limited.



Cumulative Impact of COVID-19:

COVID-19 is an incomparable global public health emergency that has affected almost every industry, so for and, the long-term effects projected to impact the industry growth during the forecast period. Our ongoing research amplifies our research framework to ensure the inclusion of underlaying COVID-19 issues and potential paths forward. The report is delivering insights on COVID-19 considering the changes in consumer behavior and demand, purchasing patterns, re-routing of the supply chain, dynamics of current market forces, and the significant interventions of governments. The updated study provides insights, analysis, estimations, and forecast, considering the COVID-19 impact on the market.



FPNV Positioning Matrix:

The FPNV Positioning Matrix evaluates and categorizes the vendors in the Coal Bed Methane Market on the basis of Business Strategy (Business Growth, Industry Coverage, Financial Viability, and Channel Support) and Product Satisfaction (Value for Money, Ease of Use, Product Features, and Customer Support) that aids businesses in better decision making and understanding the competitive landscape.



Competitive Strategic Window:

The Competitive Strategic Window analyses the competitive landscape in terms of markets, applications, and geographies. The Competitive Strategic Window helps the vendor define an alignment or fit between their capabilities and opportunities for future growth prospects. During a forecast period, it defines the optimal or favorable fit for the vendors to adopt successive merger and acquisition strategies, geography expansion, research & development, and new product introduction strategies to execute further business expansion and growth.



The report provides insights on the following pointers:

1. Market Penetration: Provides comprehensive information on the market offered by the key players

2. Market Development: Provides in-depth information about lucrative emerging markets and analyzes the markets

3. Market Diversification: Provides detailed information about new product launches, untapped geographies, recent developments, and investments

4. Competitive Assessment & Intelligence: Provides an exhaustive assessment of market shares, strategies, products, and manufacturing capabilities of the leading players

5. Product Development & Innovation: Provides intelligent insights on future technologies, R&D activities, and new product developments



The report answers questions such as:

1. What is the market size and forecast of the Global Coal Bed Methane Market?

2. What are the inhibiting factors and impact of COVID-19 shaping the Global Coal Bed Methane Market during the forecast period?

3. Which are the products/segments/applications/areas to invest in over the forecast period in the Global Coal Bed Methane Market?

4. What is the competitive strategic window for opportunities in the Global Coal Bed Methane Market?

5. What are the technology trends and regulatory frameworks in the Global Coal Bed Methane Market?

6. What are the modes and strategic moves considered suitable for entering the Global Coal Bed Methane Market?

Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p06045473/?utm_source=GNW



About Reportlinker

ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



__________________________
[April 07, 2021] New IDC MaturityScape Offers IT Organizations a Framework for Building a Competitive, Adaptable Future Enterprise

As CIOs and business leaders respond to the cratered business landscape left by the COVID-19 pandemic, political upheavals, economic volatility, and climate change, they face the most difficult challenge of their careers. Some leaders will try to recapture a "better past," while others will leave the past behind and drive forward to a "breakthrough future." The new IDC MaturityScape: Future IT ( IDC (News - Alert) #US47174621) was developed to help IT leaders understand what that future breakthrough looks like and the stages they need to go through to achieve it. Armed with this insight, CIOs and line of business executives will be better positioned to deliver the future that they and their businesses need to not only survive but thrive as a future enterprise. The IDC MaturityScape methodology identifies specific business and technical outcomes, investments, and priorities that are needed for enterprises to navigate critical business and IT transitions and transformations. This new study explores three facets of IT: IT organization , tasked with overseeing and enabling the adoption, deployment, and management of digital technologies for the advancement of the organization's mission.

, tasked with overseeing and enabling the adoption, deployment, and management of digital technologies for the advancement of the organization's mission. IT function , which extends beyond the borders of the IT organization to the enterprise and its ecosystems in applying digital technologies to solve business problems and leverage opportunities.

, which extends beyond the borders of the IT organization to the enterprise and its ecosystems in applying digital technologies to solve business problems and leverage opportunities. Information technologies, comprising the digital technologies and use cases that increasingly constitute the core business. Further, the new MaturityScape provides a framework for identifying the stages, critical measures, outcomes, and actions required for IT organizations to effectively evolve to an agile and adaptive organization, a critical enabler of the creation and evolution of the future enterprise. The new study enables business and technology executives to identify areas in need of enhancement in five key areas or disciplines: Leadership and governance

Trusted and secure enterprise

Digital infrastructure

IT products and services

Innovation and intelligence



Serge Findling, vice president of research with IDC's IT Executive Programs (IEP) notes, "As IT becomes the operating system of the business, CIOs must reinvent their IT organization to deliver the capabilities of a successful, competitive, and adaptable future enterprise. In a time of multiple crises and market turbulence, rethinking what components are critical and assessing where the organization stands in this new lens is essential for creating effectiveness." Copies of this report are available to qualified members of the media. To request a copy of the report, or to schedule a one-on-one interview with Serge Findling, please contact Sarah Murray at 781-378-2674 or sarah@attunecommunications.com.

About IDC International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. With more than 1,100 analysts worldwide, IDC offers global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. IDC's analysis and insight helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based technology decisions and to achieve their key business objectives. Founded in 1964, IDC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG), the world's leading tech media, data and marketing services company. To learn more about IDC, please visit www.idc.com. Follow IDC on Twitter (News - Alert) at @IDC and LinkedIn. Subscribe to the IDC Blog for industry news and insights: http://bit.ly/IDCBlog_Subscribe. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005263/en/

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The 11th Congress of the Aliansi Jurnalis Independen (AJI) was characterised by change. New leaders were elected, new structures were created and a new format was used to hold the congress, writes Ratna Ariyanti.

The 11th Congress of the Aliansi Jurnalis Independen (AJI) saw the election of a woman to an executive position for the first time in 20 years. Credit: AJI Indonesia / Facebook

New Leaders

The winds of change swept through the 11th Congress as new journalists were elected to key roles. Ika Ningtyas, a freelancer and fact-checker for Tempo, was elected as Secretary-General and Sasmito Madrim, a journalist for VoA Indonesia, as Chairman. There was a ballot for both positions and the result was tight. Sasmito and Ika ran on a ticket against the incumbent, Revolusi Riza, Deputy Editor in Chief at CNN Indonesia and his running mate, Dandy Koswara, the Head of Division at Anadolu Agency. Revolusi and Dandy got 109 formal votes while Sasmito and Ika got 119.

New Structures

New life was breathed into the structures of AJI with changes to the organisations rules, code of ethics, code of conduct and list of programs. There were revisions to AJIs constitution and articles of association. Congress delegates agreed to add two new chapters, one in Pangkalpinang, Bangka Belitung and one in Samarinda, East Kalimantan. In total, AJI now has 40 chapters throughout the country. Congress also highlighted sexual harassment as a serious offense and included sanctions in its code of conduct.

New Format

The inaugural virtual congress of AJI was attended by 600 people from delegations spanning the width and breadth of Indonesia. Abdul Manan, the previous AJI Chairman, said that the 11th Congress made history, In general, the congress went well. Only we slightly miscalculated the number of days. We assumed it was only for two days, but it turned out we ran out of time and we needed to extend the congress for 1.5 days. In total, we met for 3.5 days.

Although in general the congress went smoothly, some challenges did arise, including the three different time zones in Indonesia, the different quality of internet access between cities and technological glitches. In addition to that, organisers, the national board committee, and participants were not located in the same place, meaning coordination was delayed.

New Female Governance

The 11th Congress saw a remarkable rise in female leadership. Ika is the first female General Secretary of AJI. Although the organisation has consistently fought for gender equality, the last time it had a female in an executive role was when Ati Nurbaiti, formerly a Jakarta Post journalist, became the chairwoman in 2001. Ati, now retired, continues to help AJI as an Advisory Committee member.

Ika said that not having a female in the executive leadership for 20 years was one of the reasons that inspired her to nominate, In general, AJI only had around 20% of females in its board committee. The small representation is basically replicating the media industry in Indonesia where we only have few female media workers. Only around 6% of those total workers are at the decision-making level. I want to contribute more so that we can have more females in our alliance.

In the previous board, Ika has served as the AJI Coordinator for Central Java, Yogyakarta, and the East Java region. She noted the importance of regional involvement, As an organisation which is supported by 40 chapters in different provinces, it is very important that we emphasise local perspectives in our decision-making process. It is also essential to engage more with them to tackle different challenges in press freedom as well as to improve journalists welfare.

New Era

The new board committee, which includes increased representation from women and from journalists based outside of Jakarta, has stated that their focus will be on developing new protocols and guidelines for sexual harassment responses, tackling digital attacks, ending impunity and developing programs to increase journalists skills. The committee will ramp up its effort to assist journalists who were laid off from media houses. They also announced various fellowships aimed at giving freelancers income during the pandemic.

Manan said the previous board had significant achievements, particularly in terms of initiating collaboration in the investigation project between newsrooms, called IndonesiaLeaks, and in fact-checking projects, which are essential amidst a flood of disinformation. He highlighted the advocacy of his era which succeeded in pressuring President Joko Widodo to withdraw his decision to pardon criminals who have murdered journalists. Manan, who is now helping the current board as a member of the ethical committee, said he believes the new Chairman and Secretary-General will be able to run AJI in these difficult times, as the pandemic ravages the people of Indonesia.

Ratna Ariyanti is the International Federation of Journalists South East Asia specialist.
Information stolen from a property valuation firm was posted to the dark web using the same username the companys former CIO used on his private email account, a court has been told.

IT contractor Stephen Bruce Grant, 51, is on trial in the NSW District Court for allegedly taking the personal information of more than 270,000 people from the systems of LandMark White and posting it online.

He is facing 22 charges, including 15 counts of dealing with identity information to commit an indictable offence, and has pleaded not guilty.

On trial: Stephen Grant. Credit:Facebook

Prosecutors allege that Mr Grant used fake accounts, including in his colleagues names, but was still able to be linked to the incidents.
A central Pennsylvania drug dealer who kept selling heroin out of his bedroom window after a customer died of an overdose didnt receive a manifestly excessive punishment when he was sentenced to decades in prison, a state appeals court panel ruled Wednesday.

The Superior Court decision by Judge Victor P. Stabile states that Kim Burgess Jr. was under house arrest when he was selling drugs out the window of his Lancaster home.

Burgess, now 41, is serving a 23 - to 62-year prison term on his 2019 conviction by a Lancaster County jury on charges including drug delivery resulting in death.

Kim Burgess Jr.

Jeannie Heiser, the victim in the case, was found dead by her sister in October 2017 soon after telling her sister she had just used some heroin that was really strong. Heisers death was attributed to acute fentanyl toxicity.

Burgess arrest resulted from a complicated investigation that involved witness who admitted they initially lied as well as the backtracking of calls to and from a burner phone that Burgess used under an assumed name to deal with customers. Police said they determined Burgess provided the lethal dose of heroin/fentanyl to Heiser in a deal arranged through another of his female customers.

The Superior Court upheld Burgess convictions and prison sentence despite his claims that prosecutors were allowed to present to the jury inadmissible testimony from several witnesses, including convicted felons.

Stabile found that testimony was in fact allowable. He agreed that the testimony of a detective went too far when the officer more or less vouched for the credibility of some other prosecution witnesses but found the error didnt alter the outcome of Burgess trial.

The properly admitted and uncontradicted evidence of guilt was so overwhelming and the prejudicial effect of the error was so insignificant by comparison that the error could not have contributed to the verdict, Stabile wrote.

He backed Burgess prison sentence after citing county Judge Donald R. Totaros reasons for imposing it.

Totaro noted that Burgess had been charged with crimes 15 times between 1997 and 2019, had repeatedly violated probation sentences and had failed at attempts to overcome his drug addiction. He concluded that Burgess drug dealing was motivated by greed.

This was not a case of trying to punish someone who suffers from addiction, but rather an individual who is profiting from it, Totaro said of the sentence he imposed.
A top FBI intelligence analyst under investigation for failing to properly vet the Steele dossier before it was used to obtain invalid warrants to spy on a former Trump campaign aide appears to have violated his own Golden Rule for government spying.

A member of the International Intelligence Ethics Association, Brian Auten has lectured since 2010 on Intelligence and Statecraft at Patrick Henry College in Virginia, where until recently he was listed as an adjunct professor.

"National security investigations are not ethics-free, Auten wrote in a magazine article published on Sept. 23, 2016, as he was using the thinly sourced, error-ridden and uncorroborated dossier to try to support a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to electronically eavesdrop on Trump adviser Carter Page.

When I teach the topic of national security investigations to undergraduates at a Christian college, he added, "we cover micro-proportionality, discrimination, and the 'least intrusive standard' via a tweaked version of the Golden Rule  namely, if you were being investigated for a national security issue but you knew yourself to be completely innocent, how would you want someone to investigate you?

When Senate investigators last year quizzed him about his magazine remarks, however, Auten denied teaching about such ethical matters.

"Do you teach a course or have you ever that deals in some way, shape, or form with the ethics of intelligence or, more specifically, the ethics of spying? asked Arthur Baker, then-senior investigative counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee, during a closed-door hearing last October  the transcripts of which were only recently released.

"I've never taught a course on that, no, Auten replied. "I have written an article about the ethics of spying. I've just never taught a course on the ethics of spying."

He seems to have been splitting hairs here. In his 2016 Providence Magazine article -- headlined "Just Intelligence, Just Surveillance, and the Least Intrusive Standard  Auten wrote that when he taught his national security class at Patrick Henry, he covered the ethics of the government conducting surveillance and investigations of subjects. He suggested the FBI should apply the least intrusive standard when it considers surveilling citizens under investigation to avoid harm to a subjects reputation, dignity and privacy.

Brian Auten is no longer listed among the colleges adjunct professors. He was removed from the Patrick Henry website after RealClearInvestigations published a story last July first identifying him as the anonymous Supervisory Intelligence Analyst" singled out in a report by the Justice Departments inspector general for cutting corners in the dossier verification process. The FBI heavily relied on the discredited dossier to monitor Page as an alleged Russian agent for almost a year. Page was never charged with a crime and is suing the FBI, including Auten, for $75 million.

Auten also is no longer listed as a member of the college's Strategic Intelligence Board of Advisors. Patrick Henrys communications director did not reply to requests for an explanation for Autens removal from the website. But a faculty spokesman confirmed over the phone that he is no longer teaching there.

This is not the first time Congress has questioned Autens own ethics. Last year, former Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chair Ron Johnson doubted the analysts candor in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray.

"We are deeply troubled by the grossly inaccurate statements by the Supervisory Intelligence Analyst, they wrote.

The senators were referring to answers Auten gave Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz regarding dossier author Christopher Steeles primary source, Igor Danchenko, whom RCI also first outed. According to internal FBI documents recently declassified by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Danchenko had been under FBI counterintelligence investigation as a possible Russian agent from 2009-2011. As early as January 2017, Auten learned that some of Steeles reporting possibly was part of a Russian disinformation campaign, and in February 2017, he received a second report that another part of Steeles reporting was the product of [Russian Intelligence Services] infiltrating] a source into the network.

Yet Auten, who remains in his position at FBI headquarters, told Horowitz's inspectors that he had no information as of June 2017 that Steeles election reporting source network had been penetrated or compromised [by Russian intelligence].

Auten is still supervising analysts at FBI headquarters. He also lectures and helps train rookie analysts and agents at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va.
During the final weeks of President Donald Trump's administration, Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz asked the White House for a blanket presidential pardon --- a request that was ultimately not granted, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Gaetzs seeking of a preemptive pardon for crimes that may have been committed was first reported by the New York Times.

Trump was aware of Gaetzs request, but the idea was quickly dismissed inside the White House, sources told ABC News.

MORE: Rep. Matt Gaetz denies sexual relationship with underage girl amid reports of DOJ investigation

The Department of Justice is investigating whether Gaetz had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl and paid for her to travel with him, potentially violating sex trafficking laws.

PHOTO: Rep. Matt Gaetz accompanies President Donald Trump to Game 5 of the World Series baseball in Washington, Oct. 27, 2019. (Andrew Harnik/AP, FILE)

Gaetz, who has denied any wrongdoing, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.

The investigation targeting Gaetz was launched last year when Trump was still president, sources familiar with the matter have told ABC News. Its not clear whether the White House or Gaetz were aware of the ongoing investigation at the time. Then-Attorney General Bill Barr was briefed on the investigation's progress several times, the sources said.

MORE: Feds looking at alleged payments Rep. Matt Gaetz made to women and online solicitation: Sources

Gaetz previously voiced his support for Trump's presidential pardons, appearing on Laura Ingraham's Fox News show on Nov. 24 to declare that Trump should "pardon Michael Flynn, he should pardon the Thanksgiving turkey, he should pardon everyone from himself to his administration officials to Joe Exotic if he has to."

MORE: Matt Gaetz's controversial rise to MAGA stardom faces renewed scrutiny amid DOJ probe

"Because you see from the radical left a bloodlust that will only be quenched if they come after the people who worked so hard to animate the Trump administration with the policies and the vigor and the effectiveness that delivered for the American people," Gaetz said. "So I think the president ought to wield that pardon power effectively and robustly."

Gaetz, under investigation for sex allegations, sought blanket pardon from Trump: Sources originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
Ethiopian official says CPC serves the Chinese people wholeheartedly

08:54, April 07, 2021 By Zhou Zhuobin ( People's Daily

The people-centered philosophy is the key to the success of the Communist Party of China (CPC), a senior official from Ethiopia's ruling Prosperity Party has said.

Making the remarks in a recent interview with People's Daily, Bikila Hurisa, head of the Ethiopian party's public and international relations, stressed that China has achieved a real miracle by lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and building a moderately prosperous society. "Developing countries, including Ethiopia, could learn from what China has done over the past decades," he said.

Aerial photo taken on June 14, 2020 shows a relocated area by the Gaqu River in Chido Township of Dengqen County in Qamdo, southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region. Qadom City has witnessed a total of 194,600 residents, 38,400 households, 1,127 villages and 11 counties get rid of poverty thanks to the poverty alleviation efforts. (Xinhua/Tian Jinwen)

Observing China's development for a long time, Hurisa believed that the most important secret behind this miracle is that the CPC serves the Chinese people wholeheartedly. "The CPC truly understands the real problems facing the Chinese people. Besides, the CPC have created effective democracy and governance.

He said that the Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era was people-oriented, the interests of people being put in the first place and development fruits sharing by all people. "Under the guidance of the Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era put forward by President Xi Jinping, China has made new development achievement one after another. China's political ideology is in accordance with the country's situation and also sets a good example for the rest of the world, gaining more and more understanding and appreciation from international society.

"China's success also proves that 'coping and pasting' philosophical ideologies or lines from other countries to one specific country will not help in solving local problems," he added that any country needs to find its own way to achieve better development.

The second secret behind the miracle in Hurisa's opinion is that the Chinese government has attached great importance to science, technology and innovation, which he said has helped a lot in solving the real problems facing the Chinese people. "Investments in research and development, innovations and technology have significantly helped China promote investment, employment and entrepreneurship that are locally based, as well as home-grown creativity," he said.

"The third secret I see is the China's determination to open itself to the world. The opening up strategy has benefited not only the Chinese people, but also the global economy," he added.

Hurisa also mentioned the close interaction between CPC and Prosperity Party, Ethiopia's ruling party. "Over the last several years, the role of China in Ethiopia's development efforts is very significant in politics, economy and society, and we appreciate that. The two parties' mutual communication and exchange deepens the bilateral relationship and people-to-people understanding between the two countries. We expect a lot from the Chinese Communist Party in terms of sharing experience, sharing wisdom and assisting in capacity building efforts.

Last May, the Prosperity Party held a seminar with the International Department of the CPC Central Committee on Covid-19 prevention, economic and social development, poverty alleviation, fighting Covid-19 together in solidarity and building China-Africa community with a shared future.

In February, Hurisa took part in the "Stories of CPC" Thematic Briefing on Xinjiang co-organized by the International Department of the CPC Central Committee and the CPC Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Regional Committee via video connection. He said that "we can see CPC's strong leadership and sense of responsibility in China's poverty alleviation. Poverty is the common challenge facing people all around the world, and the Prosperity Party can surely learn from China on shaking off poverty.

For many years in a row, China has become Ethiopia's largest trading partner, largest source of foreign direct investments (FDI) , and largest project contractor. Ethiopia's first toll highway, first wind power project, first Addis Ababa light rail, first modern railway(Addis AbabaDjibouti Railway), and the industrial parks along the railway, represent the fruitful achievements of China-Ethiopia cooperation and demonstrate Ethiopia's industrialization and modernization process. "The Ethiopian people have benefited a lot from the China's investment. China's opening up has not only benefited the Chinese people, but also the global economy," Hurisa said.

Hurisa also praised China for successfully building a moderately prosperous society, achieving the country's first Centenary Goal. "This is a very important and historical achievement especially when celebrate the 100 years of the CPC's anniversary. I really want to extend my sincere congratulations to the CPC who has made the miracle happen and the people of China who are benefiting from this miracles achievement.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
With a newfound interest in infrastructure investment and the introduction of a multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure bill by the current Administration into the U.S. Congress, it is reasonable to expect continued growth in the construction and infrastructure industry, which is already worth $2.1 trillion or about 4% of GDP.

Industrial engineering and construction costs are rising despite technological advancements that have led to increased productivity in other industries such as manufacturing. Given that the project execution approach for designing and building new industrial assets has not meaningfully changed in the last 60 years, the time is right for innovators to address better ways to conceptualize, design, engineer, develop, and complete large-scale projects.

According to some analysts, over 80% of large projects go at least 20% over budget and 20% over schedule. Frustration with these serious challenges has driven the industry to develop and adopt a new project execution methodology called Advanced Work Packaging (AWP).

AWP has revolutionized construction with its ability to efficiently plan, design, and execute industrial projects. Compared to the traditional waterfall approach to project management, AWP is more iterative, adaptable, and flexible.

We caught up with Josh Girvin, Chief Executive Officer of O3, a Birmingham, Alabama-based AWP project management solution firm, and developer of a web-based application supporting the use of AWP for the entirety of a project's life cycle from the idea through to operations.

"It has never been more urgent to dramatically improve outcomes in the construction industry," Girvin said, "and with modern tools, we can complete projects faster, avoid the risks of cost overruns, and benefit from transparency in every aspect of the project as it rolls out."

AWP processes create defined "work packages" that contain all the key information needed by a construction team. Construction crews receive an "installation work package," for example, which contains the drawings, materials, equipment, permits, scope, scaffolding, safety analysis, and anything else which would be necessary for completion.

"By organizing the work into these packages, workers are able to stay focused," Girvin explained. "They don't need to figure out what to do next or find materials to do work, as it is all contained in the package."

The optimal sequence for these packages' completion is pre-determined by a planning team to mitigate possibilities of delays, and based on proven results, the Construction Industry Institute (CII) has recognized AWP as a best practice and documented increases in labor productivity of 25% when deployed. Additionally, projects using AWP have been found to be safer as upfront planning helps identify and remove obstacles to the execution of tasks.

Recognizing that AWP was poised to transform the way the industrial construction industry works, Josh Girvin, Mandi Coker, and Jared Elliott came together to form O3 six years ago.

"One of O3's main advantages is the experience of our team," Girvin said. "Between the founders, O3 benefits from over 30 years of experience in the industry."

Girvin also serves as the co-chair of the Construction Industry Institute committee charged with standardizing the category definitions of AWP project maturity, as well as the associated ROI for the varying levels of AWP investment.

Girvin was also awarded the BBJ award for Best Birmingham CEO.

O3 serves clients all over the world on projects ranging from a total cost of $70 billion with some of the world's largest owners of industrial capital assets to small maintenance projects with a cost of $50k at existing operating facilities. The company currently maintains an office in Singapore to facilitate and support its Asian and Pacific partners and clients.

"Construction is one of the few industries which will always be stable even in a constantly changing landscape and economy," Girvin explained. "With growth forecasts changing with the economic recovery and greater public and private partnership, the AWP movement will also advance.

Major public and private investors have begun mandating the use of AWP on their projects across industries including Oil & Gas, Chemical, Power, Mining & Metals, and Infrastructure."

On April 13, Girvin will be moderating a panel at The Frontier Conference 2021, where they will discuss: Energy Transition: What Technologies are Leading Power Generation and Distribution? Visit www.thefrontier.co/agenda to learn more and register to attend.

Edited by Maurice Nagle
TORONTO, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Bank of Montreal (BMO) (TSX:BMO) (NYSE:BMO) today announced the election of Madhu Ranganathan and Stephen Dent to BMO's board of directors following its Annual Meeting of Shareholders.

"We are pleased to welcome Steve and Madhu to the Board of Directors," said George Cope, Chair of the Board, BMO. "Their knowledge and experience will be an excellent complement to the talented group of individuals serving on our Board."

Madhu Ranganathan is the Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at OpenText. She brings more than 30 years of financial leadership experience, with an innovative Silicon Valley technology driven background with deep operational focus in software, hardware and tech-enabled services businesses.

Prior to joining OpenText in 2018, she spent 10 years as the Chief Financial Officer of [24]7.ai, a global customer experience software and services company. Throughout her career she has served in various roles with innovative technology companies, and major accounting and financial services firms.

Ms. Ranganathan currently serves as a Board Member & Audit Committee Chair for Akamai Technologies. She is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, India and a Member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. She holds an MBA from the University of Massachusetts and a BS Accounting from the University of Madras.

Stephen Dent is a Managing Director and co-founder of Birch Hill Equity Partners, a Toronto-based private equity firm. Mr. Dent has over 30 years of experience in private equity and deep expertise in capital allocation, strategic planning, accounting and finance.

Prior to his current role, he spent 15 years at a major Canadian chartered bank culminating in a senior role leading the Canadian private equity division of the bank.

He is a Member of the Business Council of Canada. He is involved in the founding and ongoing support of Our Children's Medicine; an organization promoting Indigenous employment with leading Canadian companies. He is also involved in the founding and ongoing support of the Birch Hill Scholarship Program; supporting business school education for Indigenous youth. He holds a BBA from Wilfred Laurier University and an MBA from the Ivey School of Business at Western University.

Election of Board of Directors

At the annual meeting, all the director nominees listed in the bank's management proxy circular dated February 11, 2021 were elected. The detailed results of the vote for the election of directors are set out below.

Each of the following 13 directors proposed by management was elected as a director of BMO:

Nominee Votes For Votes Withheld Janice M. Babiak 299,680,685 98.67% 4,050,330 1.33% Sophie Brochu 301,988,463 99.43% 1,742,548 0.57% Craig W. Broderick 302,562,672 99.62% 1,168,343 0.38% George A. Cope 297,873,529 98.07% 5,856,768 1.93% Stephen Dent 302,858,750 99.71% 872,265 0.29% Christine A. Edwards 301,385,255 99.23% 2,344,442 0.77% Dr. Martin S. Eichenbaum 302,522,147 99.60% 1,208,616 0.40% David Harquail 302,882,265 99.73% 818,750 0.27% Linda S. Huber 302,842,503 99.71% 888,512 0.29% Eric R. La Fleche 301,235,814 99.18% 2,495,201 0.82% Lorraine Mitchelmore 302,157,409 99.48% 1,573,606 0.52% Madhu Ranganathan 301,330,217 99.21% 2,400,806 0.79% Darryl White 302,828,132 99.71% 872,891 0.29%

Final voting results on all matters voted on at the Annual Meeting of Shareholders held earlier today will be published shortly on www.bmo.com, and filed with Canadian and U.S. securities regulators.

About BMO Financial Group

Serving customers for 200 years and counting, BMO is a highly diversified financial services provider - the 8th largest bank, by assets, in North America. With total assets of $973 billion as of January 31, 2021, and a team of diverse and highly engaged employees, BMO provides a broad range of personal and commercial banking, wealth management and investment banking products and services to more than 12 million customers and conducts business through three operating groups: Personal and Commercial Banking, BMO Wealth Management and BMO Capital Markets.

For News Media Enquiries: Paul Lehmann, Toronto, paul.lehmann@bmo.com, (416) 867-3996; For Investor Relations Enquiries: Christine Viau, Head, Investor Relations, Toronto, christine.viau@bmo.com, (416) 867-6956; Bill Anderson, Director, Investor Relations, Toronto, Bill2.Anderson@bmo.com, (416) 867-7834
One person died of injuries sustained in a fire in Budapests St Margit hospital, the official website of the Hungarian police reports.

The fire erupted early in the morning on Tuesday. Furniture combusted in an 8 sqm area of which the police have evacuated two people, police.hu said. One of them died later on Tuesday.



The storey where the fire erupted was evacuated, and firefighters extinguished the fire before it could spread to other wards, the national disaster management authority stated.



Update:

Another patient caught in the flames was transferred to Budapest's Honved Hospital and is still being treated, his condition is serious but stable, the hospital's press service has informed MTI.



According to Telex.hu one of the police officers had to be treated for mild smoke poisoning. Police have launched an investigation into 'negligent homicide'.



Due to the fire, firefighters and police escorted 37 people to the other wing of the building.



Szent Margit Korhaz is located at 1032 Budapest, Becsi ut 132.





MTI Photo: Zoltan Mihadak
An Australian-Italian team used a Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) telescope to discover one of the most mysterious anomalies in space. The jellyfish-shaped cluster was discovered in a galaxy known as Abell 2877. The massive entity extends for more than one million light-years and is made of plasma. From Earths perspective, the entity looks abnormally like a Jellyfish which is why it has been bestowed the name USS Jellyfish.

Study lead and PhD candidate Torrance Hodgson, from the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) said the team observed the cluster for 12 hours at different radio frequencies. In fact, the USS Jellyfish can only be viewed at a very narrow band of low frequencies under 200 Mhz. The reason why it has gone unnoticed for so long is that the cluster is invisible to most radio telescopes in the world. It is also the reason why the cluster is called USS Jellyfish where the abbreviation stands for Ultra-Steep-Spectrum.

 ICRAR_VIMEO

As you turn up the frequency dial, its brightness drops off exponentially, quickly rendering it completely undetectable to conventional, higher-frequency radio telescopes, Hodgson said in the academic paper.



The scientists explain that the USS Jellyfish phenomenon is due to a very rare sequence of events that played out over two billion years ago. The Jellyfish structure is scattered between galaxies that may have contained energetic cores referred to as active galactic nuclei (AGN). These nuclei emit massive amounts of light and massive black holes at the centers of each galaxy.

 ICRAR_VIMEO

"Then quite recently, two things happened -- the plasma started mixing at the same time as very gentle shock waves passed through the system. This has briefly reignited the plasma, lighting up the jellyfish and its tentacles for us to see the paper said.



The MWA telescope, a precursor to the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is located at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in remote Western Australia. The site has now been chosen for the construction of low-frequency antennas for the SKA. The SKA will give researchers an unparalleled view of the low-frequency Universe according to Professor Johnston-Hollitt, Mr. Hodgsons supervisor and co-author.

Source: The Astrophysical Journal
From April 6 to April 15, 2021, customers can purchase Phu Quoc We Go combo to fly directly from Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, Thanh Hoa, Hai Phong, Nha Trang, Da Lat, Vinh to Phu Quoc and experience the first sleepless super complex in Vietnam - Phu Quoc United Center for 3 days 2 nights with the time to stay from April 21 to May 30, 2021.

The cooperation of Vinpearl and Vietjet offers customers countless incentives such as round-trip flight tickets including 7kg of hand baggage, 20kg of checked baggage, 2 nights of stay at Vinpearl hotels and resorts in Phu Quoc including breakfasts, a voucher of 300,000 VND per user for culinary services and shopping at Grand World, etc.

Hurry up and book your combo at www.vinpearl.com and experience the beautiful Pearl Island with friends, family, relatives, etc. Safe and happy flights of Vietjet - the airline has been certified with seven-stars rating for Covid-19 compliance is ready to welcome the people and visitors on experiencing new journeys with modern aircraft, comfy leather seats, 9 delicious hot meals, dedicated and friendly cabin crews.



Dont forget to fully comply with the mandatory health declaration via https://tokhaiyte.vn, save and show the information upon checking in at airports as well as wearing face masks during your flight to protect yourself and your community.

The new-age carrier Vietjet has not only revolutionized the aviation industry in Vietnam but also been a pioneering airline across the region and around the world. With a focus on cost management ability, effective operations and performance, Vietjet offers flying opportunities with cost-saving and flexible fares as well as diversified services to meet customers demands.



Phuong Tuyen
He's been facing mounting speculation that he'll be the next James Bond since announcing his exit from Netflix hit Bridgerton.

And Rege-Jean Page has now admitted that he's 'flattered' to be included among a host of British stars tipped for the iconic role.

He told The Mirror: 'Ah, the B word. I think that if you are British and you do anything of note, that other people take notice of, then people will start talking about that.'

In the running? Rege-Jean Page has said that he's 'flattered' to be included among a host of British stars tipped to become the next James Bond

Rege-Jean added: 'I think that's fairly normal and I'm flattered to be in the category of Brits that people have noticed. Nothing more  or less  than that.'

However despite being the bookies favourite, Rege-Jean said he was bemused by the idea of making any plans at 'this moment in history' and has 'given up' doing so.

The hunky star also admitted that he can be a bit of a 'racehorse', often signing onto a project and focussing completely on it with the 'blinders on'.

His comments comes after bookmakers Coral revealed that the newcomer is hot favourite to play the iconic spy role following Craig's departure from the franchise.

Gearing up for 007? The actor, 31, recently announced he would not be returning to Bridgerton for series two, sparking more speculation he could become Bond (pictured in January 2020)

Rege-Jean's odds have been slashed to 5-2, overtaking long-running favourites Tom Hardy and James Norton - who had previously been the top picks at 3-1.

Huge stars including Idris Elba, Sam Heughan, Richard Madden and Henry Cavill are all currently trailing behind the others on 10-1

A spokesman for the bookmakers said: 'The news that Rege-Jean Page will not be returning for the second series of Bridgerton has prompted plenty of bets from punters who believe he'll make the perfect James Bond.

'We now make him favourite, ahead of Tom Hardy, for who succeeds Daniel Craig as 007.'

The upcoming Bond film, No Time To Die, is currently slated for release in the UK in September and will be Daniel Craig's final outing as the spy.

Final film: Daniel Craig's last outing as Bond will be in upcoming move No Time To Die, which is currently slated for release in September after several Covid delays

Back in January, Rege-Jean hinted that he could be a good contender to succeed Daniel Craig as James Bond.

After being announced as favourite at the time, Rege-Jean added fuel to the fire when he took to Twitter to share a glimpse of his character Simon Bassett, Duke Of Hastings, and referenced 007's iconic drink order as he wrote:

'Regency, royalty Shaken and stirred.'

The speculation over Rege-Jean's Bond future hit fever pitch after the news broke that he won't be returning to Bridgerton for a second series.

The Hollywood Reporter wrote this week: '[According to a source] Page was offered an opportunity to return as a guest star in three to five episodes of season two - at a rate of $50,000 [36,000] an episode - but declined for a multitude of reasons.'

They went on to note that his 'burgeoning film career' is one of the reasons.

Rege-Jean later confirmed the show had a 'one-season arc' and his character's story was finalised in one series and he never intended to return.

Hint: After being announced as favourite at the time, Rege-Jean added fuel to the fire when he took to Twitter to share a glimpse of his Bridgerton character Simon Bassett, Duke Of Hastings, and referenced 007's iconic drink order

He told Variety: 'It's a one-season arc. It's going to have a beginning, middle, end  give us a year. That's interesting, because then it felt like a limited series. I get to come in, I get to contribute my bit and then the Bridgerton family rolls on.'

The hit Netflix series took to its official Twitter account to reveal that the actor won't be appearing on season two.

The account confirmed that Rege-Jean's on-screen wife Phoebe Dynevor will return for the next instalment of the streaming phenomenon.

Rege-Jean, who is set to star in The Gray Man, also took to Instagram to confirm the news as he emotionally said it had been a 'pleasure and a privilege to be your Duke'.

In a tongue-in-cheek statement penned as the mysterious show lead Lady Whistledown, Bridgerton tweeted: 'Your Grace, it has been a pleasure.'

Shock: The speculation Rege-Jean's Bond future hit fever pitch after the news broke that he won't be returning to Bridgerton for a second series (pictured in character)

The statement read: 'Dear Readers, while all eyes turn to Lord Anthony Bridgerton's quest to find a Viscountess, we bid adieu to Rege-Jean Page, who so triumphantly played the Duke of Hastings.

'We'll miss Simon's presence onscreen, but he will always be a part of the Bridgerton family.

'Daphne will remain a devoted wife and sister, helping her brother navigate the upcoming social season and what it has to offer  more intrigue and romance than my readers may be able to bear. Yours truly, Lady Whistledown.'

Rege-Jean later confirmed his show exit in his own statement posted to Instagram where he shared a picture of himself in character and behind-the-scenes.

He penned: 'The ride of a life time. It's been an absolute pleasure and a privilege to be your Duke.

'Joining this family - not just on screen, but off screen too. Our incredibly creative and generous cast, crew, outstanding fans - it's all been beyond anything I could have imagined.'

Signing off his message, he added: 'The love is real and will just keep growing .'
Shahjahanpur : , April 7 (IANS) The 28-year-old man, whose body was found beneath a car in the Tilhar area of Shahjahanpur on March 4 and was said to have died in an accident, was actually murdered by his wife and her paramour.

The police now claim to have cracked the case.

During the investigation, the police found that the murder was a result of an illicit relationship between the victim's wife Madhu and his best friend Mukesh Yadav. Both had hatched a conspiracy to kill the victim.

Both have been arrested and sent to jail.

Additional Superintendent of Police (rural) Sanjeev Bajpai, said Dhanpal's body was found underneath the car of Mukesh on a connecting road to the Rajanpur village and it appeared that the victim was run over by the same car.

The police registered an FIR against the unidentified for the murder and launched an investigation.

Police said during the investigation, it was found that Dhanpal, son of an ex-army man, used to work in a private firm in Gurugram and had returned home along with his wife and their son a month ago.

During this period, he came to know about his wife's affair with Mukesh, a Gurugram resident.

Mukesh had come to Tilhar on a fateful day.

The police arrested Mukesh on Monday evening and during interrogation, he confessed to have run over his friend on Madhu's instructions.

"He was fleeing the spot, but his car got stuck in the mud and he had to leave the car with the body. We have arrested both accused and booked them under sections 302 (murder) and 120b (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC. They have been sent to jail," the ASP said.
Ramallah, April 7 : Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas-led Fatah party and the Islamic Hamas movement have accused Israel of interfering in the upcoming legislative elections scheduled for May 22.

Jamal Muheisen, member of the Fatah Central Committee, said a statement issued on Tuesday that Israel is interfering in the Palestinian elections by arresting candidates in the West Bank and East Jerusalem,reports Xinhua news agency.

"Israel arrested on Tuesday morning four candidates who are on Fatah electoral list from East Jerusalem shortly before holding a meeting to discuss preparing their campaign for running in the legislative elections," Muheisen said.

"Israel is banning all kinds of activities in East Jerusalem that are related to the Palestinian elections, mainly holding rallies and meetings in the city." Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Fawzi Barhoum said that the Israeli army arrested one of the group's electoral candidates from his home in the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

"Arresting one of our candidates is a blatant interference in the Palestinian elections and reflects the endless Israeli attempts to sabotage the electoral process," Barhoum said.

He called on the international community and the international human rights organisations to immediately act to protect the Palestinian electoral process and put an end to the Israeli measures and violations against the Palestinians.

Palestine has also addressed letters to international parties, urging them to exert pressure on Israel to allow holding the Palestinian elections in East Jerusalem.

In February, Palestine announced that it officially addressed the Israeli government, requesting it to allow the Palestinians in East Jerusalem to participate in the legislative elections.

Last week, the Palestinian Central Elections Commission announced that 36 electoral lists have got registered for the legislative elections.

Among the 36 competing lists are Hamas and Fatah. The rest include left-wing parties, independent figures, youths and women.

Besides the legislative polls, the presidential elections will take place on July 31, while the elections of the Palestinian National Council, the highest decision-making body of the Palestine Liberation Organization, is slated for August 31.

The last Palestinian presidential elections were held in March 2005, and the legislative polls in January 2006.
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 in Washington on Sept. 25, 2015. (Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images)

Biden Says He Hasnt Spoken to Chinese Leader About Virus Origins

U.S. President Joe Biden said on April 6 that he hasnt talked to Chinese leader Xi Jinping about the origins of the CCP virus, which causes COVID-19.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Biden was asked, Have you had the chance to ask him [Xi] if these reports are true, that China maybe misled the world at the beginning?

I have not had that conversation with President Xi, the president responded.

Bidens comment calls into question how hard his administration will push China to be transparent about COVID-19, especially since Biden and Xi have had a relationship that dates back years.

Last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was elusive when he was asked whether Washington would hold Beijing accountable for how it handled the pandemic.

In a 2020 speech to the United Nations General Assembly, former President Donald Trump said the world must hold China accountable for their actions with regard to the pandemic.

On March 30, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a report concluding that the CCP virus having leaked from a lab was extremely unlikely, reinforcing the Beijing regimes longstanding denial that its Wuhan Institute of Virology was the source of the pandemic. The report was based on the findings of a team of Chinese and foreign experts who had visited Wuhanthe Chinese city where the first coronavirus cases were discoveredearlier this year.

Many have pointed to the Wuhan lab as the possible source of the virus, including former U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Robert Redfield. In January, the U.S. State Department released a fact sheet stating that it had reason to believe several researchers at the institute fell ill with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses in the autumn of 2019.

Meanwhile, the report also didnt refute another Beijing claim, saying it was possible the virus originated from contaminated cold-chain food. China has said it suspected frozen food imports could be contaminated with the virus.

The report has since been heavily criticized. On March 30, 14 nations including the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom issued a joint statement questioning the report, while calling for a transparent and independent analysis and evaluation.

Several U.S. lawmakers also criticized the report as biased.

The World Health Organizations report is nothing more than a product of Chinas propaganda machine, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, said in a statement.

From the onset of this investigation, the Chinese Communist Party was given permission by the WHO to manipulate the reports data, exclude American scientists, and produce the reports final conclusions. This is a blatant attempt by China to alter reality and hide the truth.

Fabian Leendertz, a veterinarian and microbiologist at the Robert Koch Institute in Germany and one of the experts that went to Wuhan for the fact-finding mission, told Science Magazine that the report was a compromise between experts.

And in a compromise, you have to respect the others views, Leendertz stated.

Wuhan resident Zhang Hai told Radio Free Asia on March 31 that the Chinese authorities should stop claiming that the virus originated from imported frozen food packages. Zhang is known for having filed a lawsuit against the Wuhan municipal government seeking compensation for his late father, who died of COVID-19 in February last year.

If it did come to China in frozen food, then why wasnt there an outbreak overseas first? Why did the outbreak happen in China? Zhang said.

Now such an important question has become embroiled in the bureaucracy of the WHO, and now it hasnt been properly investigated, he said, adding that the WHO has become a puppet of the Chinese regime.
Canadian pastor says attacks on church services bring back memories of communism

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A Canadian pastor who kicked police out of his church after they tried to shut down a worship service during Holy Week said the actions of law enforcement bring back memories of communism under the Soviet Union.

Pastor Artur Pawlowski, who was born in Poland and lived under Soviet rule during part of his childhood, received plaudits from people worldwide for his actions in forcefully ordering law enforcement officers  including a police officer and public health officer  off the church's property after they interrupted a Passover mass at Street Church in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. A video documenting his encounter with the local law enforcement went viral, receiving more than 3 million views.

Throughout the video, Pawlowski is seen telling law enforcement officials to get out. He also commanded that they dont come back without a warrant and called them Gestapo and Nazi psychopaths. About a minute after the video started, they began to depart from the property.

Calgary Police Service released a statement suggesting that their presence at the church was justified because of a concern that people in attendance were not adhering to the governments COVID-19 public health orders, which are in place to ensure everyones safety.

Pawlowski, who grew up in Poland when the country was under a communist dictatorship, appeared on Fox News Primetime Tuesday night to discuss the exchange. Host Mark Steyn noted that Pawlowski grew up behind the Iron Curtain, adding, What happened to you over Easter is exactly, I take it, why you didnt want to stay behind the Iron Curtain.

I grew up under communist dictatorship behind the Iron Curtain, under the brute of the Soviets, and Im telling you thats no fun at all. It was a disaster, Pawlowski recalled. Police officers could break into your house, five in the morning, they could beat you up, torture you, they could arrest you for no matter what reason.

It was like a  flashback when those police officers showed up at my church. Everything kind of came back to life from my childhood, he said. And the only thing I could do is to fend off the wolves as a shepherd, and I used my voice to get rid of them. They were illegally encroaching on our rights during the most holy days during the Passover celebration.

I was a little bit shaken. But I did what every shepherd, right now, on the planet Earth, should be doing: Fend off the wolves. We as lions should never bow before the hyenas, and thats what they are right now, Pawlowski added.

Steyn noted that a lot of the things that have become accepted in the last year, for example, New York police kicking a woman to the ground because shes not wearing a mask (and) governors of American states and Canadian provinces telling you whether youre allowed to have your granny or your aunt over for Christmas or Thanksgiving are examples of the tight, 24/7 control that most communist countries lived under for half a century.

He asked Pawlowski: Is it all beginning to look worryingly familiar to you, the way people accept it?

Pawlowski answered in the affirmative: I have been warning Canadians for the past 16 years that thats whats coming. I could smell it; I could see it at every corner. The implementation of what we are seeing now, it  started  about 20 years ago.

Growing up under communist dictatorship, I mean, thats a disaster, thats hell on Earth, and I see it already in our western democracies, he continued. The only way I know how to fight them is 1981  that I witnessed millions of Poles taking to the streets and saying to them No more. Get out of our country. Get out, stop.

Millions of Poles took it to the streets during Solidarity, Lech Walesa, and they won their freedom. He suggested that a similar movement was needed in western democracies to ensure that politicians will give up the emergency powers they have enjoyed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Those people will never give up their new gained powers, Pawlowski predicted. Youve got to demand those rights back; you have to fight for your rights. Theyll never give it back to you freely.

Pawlowski urged the residents of Canada, the United States, and other western democracies to get them out of your properties, out of your businesses, out of your churches. He then urged viewers to open up, open the churches.

Clergymen should unite and start pushing this darkness away. We should come and take to the streets and say, No more lockdowns, no more restrictions. We will not put up with this anymore. We are fighting back.
The decision to vaccinate based on age rather than key-worker status has pushed teachers down the queue. Comparisons with retail workers are pointless.

1. Retail customers do not remain on the premises, in close proximity to the staff, for hours at a time.

2. Retail customers are adults, by and large. They are better at social distancing, and at observing the pandemic restrictions, than teenagers and children.

3. Retail customers tend not to use the toilet on the premises and in the infrequent instances when they do so, they do not require assistance or supervision.

4. Retail customers travel to the shop independently, usually in singly occupied cars. Schoolchildren tend to travel to school in densely congregated buses.

5. Our test-and-trace system (such as it is) identifies infected adults far better than it does infected children.

Our retail workers have fed us for a year.

They dont get paid very well. But the points above are relevant to any comparison.

Michael Deasy

Carrigart

Co Donegal

Teachers should know their place

So the three teacher unions are threatening industrial action over the Governments revised vaccination strategy.

What a self-entitled lot  they should try to be a better example of togetherness, but they have misjudged the public mood.

May I salute the employees of the supermarkets  now, they are true heroes and do their work with a smile and with empathy.

Tom Mulcahy

Cobh

Co Cork

Catholic moral teaching is clear

Nick Folley (Irish Examiner, Letters, April 1) is right to defend the absolute clarity of Catholic moral teaching.

The muddled Church of Ireland tradition can feel very different. Five evangelists were ordained in the Down and Dromore diocese in 2017, after a two-year course involving New Wine Ireland, based in Belfast.

Two of us had very serious concerns.

The response of the denomination left me disillusioned. Clear moral teaching, properly applied in an honest and transparent way, is a great credit to the Catholic tradition.

Dr James Hardy

Belfast

Northen Ireland

No sin in not wearing a mask

Fr Tim Hazlewood has criticised Bishop Alphonsus Cullinan for not wearing a mask while celebrating Mass with some priests who, presumably, had no objection to doing so.

Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, Alphonsus Cullinan.

You say Fr Hazlewood is a leading member of the Association of Catholic Priests. It seems to be characteristic of that association that its members dont attach much value to the sacraments, and to the Mass in particular.

Michael ODonovan

Co Wexford

Praise of UK is undeserved

Michael Henchion says that the UK government deserves praise, while the EU deserves criticism, for their Covid-19 measures and vaccination programme (Irish Examiner, Letters, April 5). That is open to challenge.

The death rate from Covid-19 in the UK is much higher than in most of the EU and is more than twice the death rate in this country.

Not alone that, but some of the highest instances of the disease in this country are in counties along the Northern Ireland border.

In addition, while the UK has received all of its orders of the vaccine, one of the main suppliers to the EU has had a huge shortfall in the target it signed up to meet.

That has contributed to the slowness of rollout in the EU.

Citing the vaccination issue  over which there are major questions in relation to fairness of supply  as evidence of the UKs administative prowess is not right.

In the Covid-19 issues over which it has control, Ireland has been much more successful than the UK.

A Leavy

Sutton

Dublin 13

Why Cork vaccine centres closed?

Great to see the mass vaccination centres in the Helix and The Aviva apparently going strong.

Made it all the more disappointing to see all three Cork City centres  at City Hall, Munster Technology University, and Pairc Ui Chaoimh  apparently out of action for most of the weekend. Is there a reason?

Brendan Ryan

Montenotte

Cork City

Lets not regress on transgender rights

A number of letters have been printed in newspapers recently suggesting that there was no campaign for the Gender Recognition Act in 2015. This is despite the fact that there were many campaigns over the years and many court cases.

We must not fall into any false narratives, when there were campaigns and there was support for the Gender Recognition Act.

I do not understand why there is such a campaign starting in 2021, when there was a review of the act in 2018.

Transgender people having their rights and their identity respected does not take rights or respect away from anyone else. This is a campaign that is fighting to take rights and respect away from people who have been denied it.

We must move forward and ensure that Ireland is a country that enshrines equality for all.

We must not regress and take hard-fought wins away from people.

Stephen Spillane

Wilton

Cork City

Where is the guilt in flying home?

The treatment of the two women who were arrested for allegedly refusing to enter hotel quarantine after returning from Dubai is very alarming.

Kirstie McGrath: one of the two women who were arrested for their alleged refusal to enter hotel quarantine.

During their court appearances, the private reason for their trip  cosmetic surgery, which they did not undergo  was reported.

The women, both mothers, would have been unable to pay the hotel fees and would not have been allowed to have their children with them. They were granted bail, but, unable to pay, they were incarcerated in Mountjoy prison. They have since been released into a hotel.

Was this tough treatment necessary?

Where is their guilt in arriving home from a foreign land? They each had three Covid-19 tests in the previous week.

The laws of our land have become a plaything for airport security staff  and for the gardai and courts  to be interpreted on an ad-hoc basis; and depending on who is to be punished. Will these draconian new laws be ditched as soon as Covid-19 is gone? Dont hold your breath.

The new criminals are all of us, going about our daily business, unaware we are all in danger of falling victim to the latest fad, the latest novelty justice.

Robert Sullivan

Bantry

Co Cork

Taxpayer will get bill for Dubai trip

On arrival at Dublin Airport from Dubai, two Irish women allegedly refused to quarantine in a hotel and were arrested.

Their solicitor said that they werent aware of the quarantine requirements. If thats the case, they must be the only two people in the country who are not. Their trip, hotels, and cosmetic procedures were funded by relatives and friends. Since they werent aware of the quarantine requirements, they must also have been unaware of the 5km rule. From their addresses, it is clear that they had to travel well outside the 5km limit to reach the airport. Were they fined for that breach?

On arrest, they are entitled to free legal aid: ie, free to them, but not to the taxpayer.

Then, theres an appeal to the courts, for which they must each have barristers  again free to them  and while they must fulfil the hotel-quarantine requirement, it is no problem if they cannot afford it, because theres a waiver scheme, and the compliant taxpayer will be happy to foot the bill.

And those considerate lawyers, on behalf of the two ladies  and on behalf of all of us  are taking a constitutional challenge on the mandatory quarantine issue, and the taxpayer will pay the fees. The compliant taxpayers will have a huge bill when this pandemic is over, and, in the meantime, have to watch the dramas of the non-compliant.

J Kennelly

Inniscarra

Co Cork
THE LIMERICK Home of the Year contestants have fallen marginally short of the winning spot in the grand final of the popular RTE series.

Two Limerick families had secured a spot in this years final of Home of the Year, Saara McLoughlin with her family, and young couple Kate and Cian ODriscoll.



Both families missed out on being crowned owners of Home of the Year, losing to Jen Sheahan and her late 1800s artisan cottage in Dublin.



However, before the final even began, both Limerick families expressed that they were just happy for the experience and no title was that important.



There have been so many stunning homes that didnt even make it to the final, said finalist Saara, I feel very, very lucky because there could have been so many other houses in the final instead.



Kate expressed a similar sentiment saying Im just happy to get into the final. It would obviously have been great if we won but there are some houses that equally deserve it.



Both homes were heavily praised throughout the course of the final episode in the series with judge Hugh Wallace saying of Saaras house in Annacotty: There is nowhere in this home that hadnt been touched by the creativity of the homeowner.



The Dublin home of Kate and Cian ODriscoll, who hail from Raheen and Ennis Road respectively, also received high praise from the judges and even made it into the final three homes chosen by the judging panel. Judge Amanda Bone described the house as calm and elegant with a clever extension.



The judges had a tough time choosing the winner, with Hugh especially heartbroken to eliminate Saaras home from the competition. The individuality in this home, this show is Home of the Year and I think this is a home of the year, he announced as he tried to convince the judges that Saaras house deserved a winning spot.



Unfortunately, his convincing was not enough and Limerick went home empty handed. Limerick native, judge Suzie McAdam captured the mood of the episode saying: "It was always going to be extremely hard this year to pick a winner - the standard has been exceptional.



As this season of Home of the Year comes to a close, Saara encourages Limerick people to enter their homes into the show and hopefully we can have a Limerick winner next year!
Citing Marsy's Law  Florida's constitutional amendment granting privacy rights to crime victims  the 1st District Court of Appeal ruled Tuesday that municipalities cannot make public the names of police who shoot citizens if the police officers themselves were crime victims, which is almost always the case in police shootings.

What happened: Two Tallahassee police officers who fatally shot suspects in different incidents argued in a lawsuit that the city shouldn't release any information that would personally identify them as the shooters.

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The city and the news media argued that the records identifying the cops were public records under the Florida Constitution, and that law enforcement officers acting in their official capacities cannot be victims.

The trial court ruled for the city and media, saying the "court cannot interpret Marsys Law to shield police officers from public scrutiny of their official actions."

But, but, but: In a blow to Florida's friendly public records law, the appeal court found that Marsy's Law doesn't exclude "law enforcement officers ... from the protections granted crime victims."

The court said keeping an officer's identity private wouldn't stop an internal affairs investigation or grand jury proceeding, and wouldn't stop a state attorney from deciding the officer was not a victim and bringing charges.

This story first appeared in the Axios Tampa Bay newsletter, designed to help readers get smarter, faster on the most consequential news unfolding in their own backyard.

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Oneonta, N.Y.  A man fatally shot by an Oneonta police officer Tuesday has been identified, according to the New York State Police.

Tyler R. Green, 23 of Oneonta, was armed with a knife when officers responded to a domestic incident at about 12:57 p.m., on River Street, troopers said.

The circumstances of the incident have not been released by police.

Oneonta police Sgt. Ralph Pajerski was identified as the officer who fired the fatal shot, troopers said.

Green was airlifted to the Albany Medical Center where he was pronounced dead, troopers said.

A State police spokesperson said most questions will be directed to the New York State Attorney Generals Office.

The AGs office has the authority to investigate police shootings if a suspect is killed by police and there is a significant question whether he or she was armed at the time of the shooting.

Other cases where the AG has taken control include the fatal shooting by police of Jamesville teen Judson Albahm in March, and the 2019 fatal shooting by police of Syracuses DeWayne Watkins.

Staff writer James McClendon covers breaking news, crime and public safety. Have a tip, a story idea, a question or a comment? Reach him at 914-204-2815 or jmcclendon@syracuse.com.
EXTON, Pa., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- SCTE, the cable telecommunication industry's leading applied sciences organization, today unveiled significant updates to its nationally-recognized Broadband Premise Installer (BPI) and Broadband Premises Technician (BPT) certifications.

"SCTE's new broadband premises learning modules incorporate the latest developments in residential services in a more interactive learning system. As our world becomes more connected, investing in a highly-trained workforce will be a key factor in maintaining consistency and quality across the industry," said Robin Fenton, vice president, membership and learning operations, SCTE. "In addition, having each technician complete a competency-based certification exam will enhance the in-home customer experience and put more workers on a path to support the smart home of the future."

BPI certification is geared toward entry-level professionals interested in working for a cable operator, contractor or vendor, and demonstrates an ability to install basic residential telecommunications services (video, voice and data). The corresponding BPI training series is comprised of three courses focused on safety, customer service and installation fundamentals. The Spanish version is scheduled for release later this year.

The BPT certification demonstrates an experienced technician's ability to troubleshoot common issues in the field. The three courses that make up the BPI series also act as the foundation of the four-part BPT series. The BPT training series culminates in a fourth, interactive course covering the fundamentals of troubleshooting the hybrid fiber coax and passive optical networks underpinning residential services, including Wi-Fi, home networking, MoCA and untethered devices. Upon the successful completion of the BPI or BPT series courses, learners are prepared to pass the associated certification exam.

SCTE's BPI and BPT series are available via instructor-led, onsite boot camps or self-paced online courses on a new learning management system (LMS), which launched in September 2020. The new LMS features enhanced analytics, streamlined navigation, a gamification-style leaderboard and more. Both series use CORTEX NetworkSims 3D technology to simulate hands-on training and demonstrate eBook concepts in real-life scenarios as well as mobile VirtuGame challenges to engage learners and reinforce knowledge retention.

"Innovation and implementation should go hand-in-hand. Cable's greatest strength is its people, and SCTE is proud to equip our colleagues in the field with the skills to advance as individuals and help our industry realize the promise of advanced connectivity," Fenton continued.

SCTE's learning and development (L&D) program is designed to serve cable professionals at all levels. It includes more than 1,000 learning modules, 12 industry certifications, live and on-demand webinars, and leadership institutes facilitated in partnership with Dartmouth College, and the Georgia Institute of Technology. Taking place from October 11-14, 2021 in Atlanta, SCTEISBE Cable-Tec Expo will once again offer an L&D track exploring innovative strategies for training adult learners and the annual Fall Technical Forum, featuring educational workshops presented by the industry's leading experts.

About SCTE

SCTE is envisioning the future of connectivity, today. Through technological leadership and innovation, SCTE has served as the applied science leader for the cable telecommunications industry for more than five decades. As a not for profit, member organization, SCTE moves member companies forward through continuous training for the workforce of tomorrow and by putting leaders into the conversations that matter. SCTE is the force behind the annual SCTEISBE Cable-Tec Expo, the largest cable telecommunications and technology tradeshow in the Americas. SCTE is a subsidiary of CableLabs. More at www.scte.org.

SOURCE Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE)
'Did Anyone See This Coming?': Richa Chadha, Hansal Mehta & Others React As Govt. Dissolves Film Certification Appellate Tribunal

Criticising the government's decision to do away with the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT), filmmakers Vishal Bhardwaj, Hansal Mehta and Guneet Monga on Wednesday said the move felt "arbitrary" and "restrictive".

The FCAT was a statutory body constituted to hear appeals of filmmakers aggrieved by the cuts suggested by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC).

The Tribunals Reforms (Rationalisation and Conditions of Service) Ordinance, 2021, issued by the Ministry of Law and Justice, was notified on Sunday. The ordinance abolishes certain appellate tribunals and transferred their functions to other existing judicial bodies.

With the amendment in the Cinematograph Act, the appellate body will now be the high court.

Mehta took to Twitter and questioned the decision, calling the move "arbitrary."

"Do the high courts have a lot of time to address film certification grievances? How many film producers will have the means to approach the courts?

"The FCAT discontinuation feels arbitrary and is definitely restrictive. Why this unfortunate timing? Why take this decision at all?" the "Scam 1992" filmmaker wrote.

Do the high courts have a lot of time to address film certification grievances? How many film producers will have the means to approach the courts? The FCAT discontinuation feels arbitrary and is definitely restrictive. Why this unfortunate timing? Why take this decision at all?  Hansal Mehta (@mehtahansal) April 7, 2021

Bhardwaj, who has often spoken out against censorship, said, "Such a sad day for cinema."

Such a sad day for cinema



FILM CERTIFICATION APPELLATE TRIBUNAL ABOLISHED | 6 April, 2021



https://t.co/MoqSGROdLP  Vishal Bhardwaj (@VishalBhardwaj) April 6, 2021

How does something like this happen ?



Who decides ? https://t.co/04uXPQx1dW  Guneet Monga (@guneetm) April 6, 2021

In recent past, several films, including Monga's 2016 drama "Haraamkhor", filmmaker Alankrita Shrivastava's "Lipstick Under My Burkha" (2017) and Nawazuddin Siddiqui-starrer 2017 drama "Babumoshai Bandookbaaz", were cleared by FCAT.

While the CBFC had refused to certify "Haraamkhor" and "Lipstick Under My Burkha", the then Pahlaj Nihalani-led board had ordered 48 cuts in "Babumoshai Bandookbaaz".

Filmamker Anurag Kashyap had also approached the appellate tribunal against the cuts suggested by the CBFC for his production, "Udta Punjab".

Sharing Bhardwaj's tweet, Monga wrote, "How does something like this happen? Who decides?"

"Scam 1992: Harshad Mehta Story" co-director Jai Mehta also criticised abolition of FCAT and wondered how could this "happen overnight."

"Did anyone see this coming?" he tweeted.

What the hell?!

The Film Certification Appellate Tribunal has been abolished?! How does this happen overnight? Did anyone see this coming?#CBFC#FCAThttps://t.co/N4gFvDQDUP  Jai Mehta (@JaiHMehta) April 6, 2021

In February, the government introduced a bill to abolish some tribunals where the public at large is not litigant.

The bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha by Minister of State for Finance Anurag Singh Thakur.

Since the bill could not get the parliamentary nod, an ordinance was issued.

The Government of India began the process of rationalisation of tribunals in 2015. By the Finance Act, 2017, seven tribunals were abolished or merged based on functional similarity and their total number was reduced to 19 from 26.
Prosecutors raised concerns today about whether the presence of scores of uniformed police officers could intimidate jurors in the murder trial of a Huntsville police officer next month.

Madison County Chief Trial Attorney Tim Gann asked Circuit Judge Donna Pate if she would consider ordering that police officers who attend the trial wear plain clothes, rather than uniforms, unless they are testifying or on duty.

Gann said he anticipates that scores of officers will attend the trial of William Ben Darby, who is accused of murder for shooting a man who had been threatening to kill himself with a gun.

Its not uncommon for officers to pack a courtroom when police officers are on trial, or when someone else is on trial for killing an officer. And Darbys case has divided Huntsville city officials and county prosecutors from the beginning.

Gann said in the past cases when someone was on trial for capital murder of a police officer in Madison County, judges have required that officers who are trial spectators wear plain clothes. Judges in other states have issued such orders, including during the trial of a man accused of killing a deputy in Florida.

Gann said he fears a crowd of uniformed officers could cause unreasonable angst for jurors who are deciding whether to convict Darby of murder.

I think it would have an effect on the jury, Gann told the judge during a pretrial hearing today. It is of great concern to me.

Pate did not immediately issue an order regarding officers in attendance.

Darby is scheduled to go on trial May 3 at the Madison County Courthouse in downtown Huntsville. He is charged with murder for shooting and killing Jeff Parker, a 49-year-old suicidal man, on April 3, 2018.

Darby remains on desk duty at the police department and continues to be paid by the city. Elected city leaders also agreed to pay for his criminal defense with public money, while county prosecutors said the evidence supported a criminal charge.

On the day of the shooting, Parker called police to his home on Deramus Avenue in west Huntsville and said that he was armed and suicidal. Two other officers were already at the home when Darby arrived, grabbed a shotgun from his patrol car and sprinted toward the front door.

Body camera video, played in court two years ago, showed Officer Justin Beckles standing near the front door while Officer Genisha Pegues talked to Parker inside the house. Parker was sitting on a couch with a gun to his head.

Pegues previously testified that she was de-escalating the situation before Darby arrived.

Darby shouted for Pegues to Point your f---ing gun at him, video footage showed. Seconds later, Darby pushed past Pegues and Becklesboth his senior officersand told Parker to drop the gun. Within 11 seconds of entering the home, Darby shot Parker in the face, video footage showed.

Huntsville city officials have declined to release the video footage to the public, but it was shown in court during an immunity hearing two years ago. Darby testified that he was protecting himself and the other officers and asked a judge to dismiss his murder charge. The judge declined and set the case for trial.

The trial was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

About a month after the deadly shooting, the Huntsville Police Department announced that an internal review board had cleared Darby of wrongdoing. About three months later, the Madison County District Attorneys Office took the case to a grand jury, which indicted Darby on the murder charge.

At the time, Broussard said prosecutors took the case to the grand jury because he was gravely concerned about Darbys actions.

We review evidence and we get that evidence to the grand jury, Broussard said.

Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle and Police Chief Mark McMurray said the officer did nothing wrong and isnt a murderer.

We have a different opinion than the district attorney has, Battle said after Darbys arrest.
Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield says all New Zealand's district health boards are now operating vaccination programmes, and vaccine numbers are likely to increase further.

He was speaking at today's Covid-19 vaccine update, alongside Associate Health Minister Peeni Henare.

Bloomfield says 90,286 vaccine doses administered have been administered as of midnight last night, and New Zealand is likely to hit the 100,000 milestone in the next couple of days.

Vaccination numbers dipped over the Easter weekend, and Bloomfield expects 35,000 people will be vaccinated per week. New Zealand is in a position where it can take a measured and steady approach to the rollout, he says.

"Australia and NZ are the first two countries to approve the Pfizer vaccine under a proper approval process not under an emergency measure.

"We have made a very good start to this programme, we are delivering a safe programme for New Zealanders ... and now it is starting to ramp up."

He says 147 adverse reactions to the vaccine have been recorded, and three of those cases are considered serious. All those involved an allergic reaction of some kind and no new safety concerns have been identified in New Zealand.

New Zealand has four advance-purchase arrangements with four different manufacturers and they are all still in place, Bloomfield says.

The next vaccine to be considered by health authorities in New Zealand is the Jansen vaccine and they will meet next week, he says.

Potential disruptions could come into place with the delivery of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines and that is why the four other agreements are still in place, however, there have been no hints of disruptions yet, Bloomfield says.

"We want to make sure we have more than one option available."

The vast majority of the 86 applications for an early vaccine were Olympians, Bloomfield says.

Every week on Wednesday there will be a vaccination update on the Ministry of Health website.

Henare received his first Pfizer vaccine dose at a clinic in Porirua this morning.

He is one of several politicians with a health-based portfolio who have been invited to get the immunisation early, in an attempt to boost confidence in its safety.

The minister is encouraging Maori to follow his lead and get vaccinated against Covid-19, and has been travelling around the North Island engaging with Maori communities in an effort to inform and combat vaccine hesitancy.

He says he is feeling well after the vaccination and looking forward to continuing to advocate for the vaccine.

"I look forward to spreading the message around the vaccine and its efficacy and supporting it amongst our communities."

Henare says the Ministry of Health has been in talks with 62 Maori health providers about the $11 million in funding the government has allocated for equitable rollout of the vaccine for Maori.

He says iwi leaders and communications have been used to reach "as many of our people as possible".

Henare says his thoughts are with Minister Kiri Allan and her whanau. Allan publicly revealed yesterday she had been diagnosed with stage-three cervical cancer.

Health Minister Andrew Little, who also received his first Pfizer jab this morning, says about 6000 people a day are being immunised and that figure will have to rise.

He is hoping vaccination numbers will increase to about 10,000 a day by the end of this month.

-RNZ.
Bridgerton star Rege-Jean Page responded to The Hollywood Reporter's story that he was allegedly passed over for a TV role because of his race.

On Tuesday, THR published an interview with actor Ray Fisher about his allegations against Justice League director Joss Whedon, who has been accused of racist and sexist behavior. Also named in the expose was Geoff Johns, former co-chairman of DC Films who was a producer on the movie. Fisher said he heard about problematic incidents allegedly involving Johns outside of Justice League, like that he quashed the idea of Page being cast in Syfy's Krypton TV series because the actor is Black.

Page auditioned for the role of Superman's grandfather, but Johns, who was overseeing the project, said Superman could not have a Black grandfather, multiple sources tell THR. Through a rep, Johns didn't deny the accusation, explaining he thought fans expected the character to look like a young Henry Cavill. (Cavill plays Superman in the DC Universe.)

Page reacted to the story on Wednesday, tweeting, "Hearing about these conversations hurts no less now than it did back then. The clarifications almost hurt more [to be honest]."

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After breaking out on Netflix's megahit Bridgerton, the 31-year-old British-Zimbabwean actor has become one of the hottest stars in Hollywood. So hot, in fact, he's in the position to turn down roles.

According to a separate THR report, Page declined the option to return as a guest star for Season 2 of Bridgerton. He was apparently offered $50,000 per episode with Netflix and Shondaland hoping he'd appear in three to five episodes. The actor, who only had a one-year contract, passed for many reasons  his exploding film career being one. But Bridgerton fans have been in mourning since last week's announcement.

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The Hinsdale Select Board meets March 24, using new technology that enhances its ability to conduct meetings via Zoom. Residents of the town pitched in to buy a 70-inch screen to augment their meeting platform. The Select Board members sit socially distanced in the room with a remote camera that swivels to the speaker. With the public participating from home, the bigger picture allows board members to have a better visual of the remote speaker.
worked with other democracies to help its diplomatic ally Paraguay get COVID-19 vaccines after China put pressure on the South American country to ditch Taipei in exchange for shots, and India stepped in to help, Taiwan's foreign minister said.

Chinese-claimed has formal ties with only 15 countries, and Beijing, which asserts that the island does not have the right to diplomatic recognition, has stepped up efforts to coax them away.

said last month it was helping Paraguay, its sole diplomatic ally in South America, buy Covid-19 vaccines after protests there over the government's handling of the health crisis.

Speaking on Wednesday, Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said China, which has been distributing in various places the vaccines it has developed, was "flexing its muscles" with its vaccine diplomacy, in particular in South and Central America, where Taiwan has five allies.

"If you look at those countries that are receiving the Chinese vaccines, whether it's Brazil or Chile or El Salvador, I think it's having lots of impact on our diplomatic allies," he said.

In Paraguay, the Chinese government was "very active" in saying to the public that if Paraguay severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan they would get millions of doses of China's vaccines, which put pressure on Taiwan to help, Wu added.

"In the last few weeks, we have been speaking to like-minded countries, including Japan, the United States, India etcetera, and India fortunately has been able to provide some COVAXIN vaccines to Paraguay," he said, referring to a shot developed by India's Bharat Biotech and a state research institute.

India has already shipped 100,000 doses to Paraguay and there will be another 100,000, Wu added.

China has denied trying to entice Paraguay with vaccines.

Wu also noted the U.S. commitment to help provide vaccines worldwide.

"The most important trend is the Indian government who is willing to help, and the United States who has decided they want to help, and I think this is going to relieve a lot of pressure for a lot of countries."

India says it shipped 100,000 COVAXIN doses to Paraguay on March 26 as a gift from the Indian government. The United States, India, Japan and Australia are working to counter China with a billion-dose vaccine pact.
A Queensland man will appear in court on Thursday over child exploitation offences. A report from the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children in the United States suggested a Queenslander was uploading child abuse material using a Google account. The man will appear in the Brisbane Magistrates Court on Thursday. Credit:Robert Shakespeare The tip led to detectives finding two laptops, an iPad and five USBs allegedly containing child abuse material during a raid at a Gailes address in Ipswich on January 28. Three mobile phones and two external hard drives were also found and seized for forensic analysis.

The 35-year-old man was later charged with three counts of possessing child abuse material obtained or accessed using a carriage service and five counts of possessing child exploitation material, as well as unrelated state offences. The maximum penalty for these Commonwealth child abuse material offences is 15 years imprisonment. He is due to appear in Brisbane Magistrates Court. AFP Detective Superintendent Child Protection Operations Paula Hudson said the AFPs international partnerships were vital in stopping those spreading child abuse material online. Our message to offenders accessing, transmitting and exchanging child abuse material is that the AFP will not stop investigating those responsible for spreading this abhorrent material and bringing them before the court, she said.
AG Dana Nessel Files Motion in Case Against Sidney Powell

AG Dana Nessel Files Motion in Case Against Sidney Powell

Kelly Rossman-McKinney 517-512-9342 Attorney General

April 7, 2021

LANSING  Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel filed a motion to include new information in a case involving three Michigan attorneys and one Texas attorney who pursued a frivolous lawsuit in an effort to disenfranchise Michigans voters and undermine public trust in the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

The new filing seeks to bring forward relevant statements made by Texas attorney Sidney Powell in a motion she filed in a case involving Dominion Voting Systems. Powell made multiple stunning admissions regarding her own statements, even going so far as to say, no reasonable person would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact.

In January, Nessel filed a motion for sanctions against Michigan attorneys Greg Rohl, Scott Hagerstrom and Stefanie Junttila, along with Sidney Powell, for pursuing the case that was frivolous and practically moot from its inception. That motion, filed with federal Judge Linda Parker of the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan, seeks to recover attorneys fees totaling approximately $11,000.

These attorneys seemingly made statements they knew were misleading in an effort to further their false and destructive narrative, said Nessel. As lawyers, fidelity to the law is paramount. These individuals worked to further conspiracy theories in an effort to erode public trust in government and dismantle our systems of democracy. Their actions are inexcusable.

Court filings in King v. Whitmer, which sought to overturn President Joe Bidens electoral victory in Michigan, were legally frivolous and supported by false evidence. The court swiftly denied the plaintiffs any relief on numerous grounds. Similar lawsuits were filed in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona, and all failed. Attorneys Powell and Junttila went so far as to brazenly lie in a filing to the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming that the Michigan Legislature had endorsed competing slates of Republican and Democratic electors, when in reality, the Legislatures leaders stood by the slate of electors chosen by Michigans voters.

A copy of the motion is available here.
Credit: Jet LunaThe worlds of rockabilly and ballet collide in a new collaborative dance production that features a performance by the Complexions Contemporary Ballet company set to three songs from Stray Cats bassist Lee Rocker's recently released solo album, Gather Round.

The filmed presentation, also called "Gather Round," was commissioned by California's Laguna Dance Festival and will get its premiere as a free, online event that will be streamed on April 25 starting at 5 p.m. PT.

The performance will feature three short dance duets set to a trio of Rocker compositions -- "Gather Round," "The Last Offline Lovers" and "When Nothing's Going Right." As a press statement notes, the pieces will salute rockabilly music while celebrating "the joy of living life, in all of its complexities."

"Gather Round" will be part of a full-length ballet that will be performed by the Complexions company in 2022 in Laguna Beach, California.

"I'm thrilled and honored that the Complexions modern ballet company has chosen to choreograph and dance to music from my newest album Gather Round," says Rocker. "In previous years, Complexions has created groundbreaking performances featuring the music of David Bowie and Lenny Kravitz. Thank you for the incredible choreography, dancers, and concept."

You can check out a trailer for "Gather Round" at Vimeo.com.

Following the screening, a discussion about the film featuring Rocker, choreographer Dwight Rhoden, the dancers and others involved in the production will premiere at 5:30 p.m. PT. Reservations are required, and can be procured for free at LagunaDanceFestival.org.

Gather Round Trailer from Laguna Dance Festival on Vimeo.

By Matt Friedlander

Copyright  2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
Ned Gerard / Hearst Connecticut Media

STAMFORD  The citys health department is working with local shelters to launch a vaccination program for the homeless as part of an effort to increase vaccination rates among socially vulnerable communities, the head of the department said Tuesday.

While the homeless shelters have been vaccinated in the past, we recognize that their residents are mobile, so we want to ensure that the herd immunity in the homeless shelters remain high, Dr. Jennifer Calder said during Mayor David Martins weekly COVID update via livestream.
The terms of the transaction have not been disclosed and closing is subject to customary closing conditions.

ATLANTA, GA / ACCESSWIRE / April 7, 2021 / Trust Stamp (OTCQX:IDAI, Euronext Growth: AIID ID), a global provider of AI-powered identity services for use across multiple sectors, announces a fourth strategic investment from National Association of Realtors' venture capital fund, Second Century Ventures (SCV). This US $1.5 million investment into the Company's Regulation D (Reg D) round of funding is a continuation of the five-year relationship that began with the company's participation in SCV's vertical tech accelerator program, REach, in 2015.

The participation by SCV in the Reg D offering is deemed to be a Related Party transaction pursuant to rule 5.18 of the Euronext Growth Dublin rules, as Mark Birschbach serves as a non-executive director pursuant to a right of appointment granted to Second Century Ventures LLC. The Directors (excluding Mark Birschbach), having consulted with the Company's Euronext Growth Adviser, confirms the terms of the participation of SCV to be fair and reasonable insofar as Shareholders are concerned.

The Company previously announced the Reg D offering component of a US $5 million round of funding on 24th March 2021, intended to further strengthen the Company's sales and marketing initiatives and to accelerate productisation of its intellectual property to meet growth in commercial opportunities. Further details in relation to possible participation in the Reg D offering are available on the Company's website: Investors | Trust Stamp.

Since the announcement, Trust Stamp has raised $2.5 million, amounting to half of the total round from two of their earliest investors, FSH Capital and SCV. This comes in addition to over $1.5 million contracted by accredited investors, most of whom participated in the Company's $10 million Series A round of funding one year prior. In response to interest from existing Shareholders, Trust Stamp announced a second tranche of the Reg D offering with a reduced minimum investment of $5,000 and a subscription price of $19.19 on 06 April 2021 to increase accessibility after contracting over $4 million with a $25,000 minimum investment in three weeks.

SCV became Trust Stamp's first corporate partner and investor in 2016 when they participated in the company's Pre-Seed round while funding the launch of the Trust Stamp App for Realtors. As the first market-proven application of Trust Stamp's innovative technology, the tool serves to verify identity and establish trust at the onset of a business relationship for real estate professionals. SCV later contributed to Trust Stamp's Seed round of funding in 2017 and Series A round of funding in 2020.

Joshua Allen, EVP for Strategic Investments, Mergers and Acquisitions and Executive Director to the Board of Trust Stamp commented: "We are delighted to further strengthen our relationship with SCV, whose involvement over the last five years has enabled us to capitalise on strategic growth opportunities, execute on our ambitions in the rapidly involving digital identity space, and reach a valuation of more than ten times that at the time of their first investment.

Their ongoing support highlights a long-term commitment to innovation in the intersection of financial services, real estate, responsible digitisation, and trust, and they have excelled at providing guided autonomy for Trust Stamp leadership to shape the values and mission of our company."

Enquiries

Trust Stamp Tel: +356 27112981

Gareth Genner, Chief Executive Officer

Nisha Naik, Executive VP of Communications

Davy (Euronext Growth Advisor) Tel: +353 1 679 6363

Fergal Meegan / Barry Murphy

Powerscourt (Financial Public Relations) Tel: +353 87 236 5973

Eavan Gannon Email: Truststamp@powerscourt-group.com

About Trust Stamp

Trust Stamp is a global provider of AI-powered identity services for use in multiple sectors including banking and finance, regulatory compliance, government, real estate, communications, and humanitarian services. Its technology empowers organisations with biometric identity solutions that reduce fraud, protect personal data privacy, increase operational efficiency, and reach a broader base of users worldwide through its unique data transformation and comparison capabilities.

Located in six countries across North America, Europe and Asia, Trust Stamp trades on the OTCQX Best Market (OTCQX: IDAI) and is listed on Euronext Growth in Dublin (Euronext Growth: AIID ID). Founded in 2016 by Gareth Genner and Andrew Gowasack, the company now employs over 60 people with flagship customers including Mastercard International and FIS.

This information is provided by RNS, the news service of the London Stock Exchange. RNS is approved by the Financial Conduct Authority to act as a Primary Information Provider in the United Kingdom. Terms and conditions relating to the use and distribution of this information may apply. For further information, please contact rns@lseg.com or visit www.rns.com.

SOURCE: T Stamp Inc

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/639259/T-Stamp-Inc-Announces-Strategic-Investment-from-Second-Century-Ventures
Vietnamese have to pay nearly half their own medical expenses, twice the rate recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Specifically, 43 percent of medical costs have to be personally covered, which is "quite high compared with many other countries," Le Van Kham, head of the health insurance department under the Ministry of Health, told a Tuesday conference on healthcare.

The same rate in developed countries is often around 24 percent, he added.

Vietnamese on average go for medical checkups 2.1 times a year, spending an average $129 per person. Around 35-37 percent of the cost goes to medicine, according to the ministry.

While about 91 percent of Vietnamese have health insurance, they still have to cover around 43-44 percent of their medical bills, it added.

Such an amount places Vietnam above Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar regarding personal payments for medical costs, but still below Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia.

"By 2025, we want families to only have to cover less than 35 percent of their medical bills, and by 2030, less than 30 percent. However, it's a big challenge and not much has changed in the past several years," said Kham.

To pay less from their own pockets, Vietnamese should readjust their insurance contributions to cover more categories. Increased contributions could come from state-subsidized sources, business income or personal income. The current insurance contribution rate is 4.5 percent of one's basic salary.

However, who should increase their insurance contributions and by how much should be considered beforehand, Kham stressed, adding hospital spending efficiency also needs to be taken into account. He said current health insurance schemes help patients pay for individual services, but that this could lead hospitals to intentionally provide patients with more services to obtain more insurance money.

Starting July, the Health Ministry would apply a new payment method, where inpatients would know how much they would have to pay for each of their diagnosis. That way, doctors could give patients the most appropriate and cost-efficient treatment plan, said Kham. Such a model is currently being tested in certain localities like Quang Ninh, Yen Bai and Can Tho with promising results, he said.

According to a WHO financial expert, Vietnams health insurance coverage a decade ago was only 50 percent, and its citizens have to pay around 49 percent of their medical bills out of their own pockets. While insurance cover has significantly increased since then to around 91 percent, the amount of money patients have to pay for medical services has not proportionately decreased as planned.

It means Vietnams health insurance fund has not been used effectively, and while raising insurance contributions could be a solution, it would be meaningless if the services they provide are not used appropriately, the expert stated.

Each year, Vietnams health insurance fund spends up to VND120 trillion ($5.2 billion) on average for diagnosis and treatment. Throughout the last four years, the fund has been decreasing, forcing the government to use another emergency fund to keep the system afloat. Right now, around VND35 trillion is left in the fund.
Union Home Minister is scheduled to conduct four roadshows in poll-bound on Wednesday.

The first roadshow will take place in Singur at 12 PM. The second roadshow will take place in Domjur at 1:35 PM. The third one in Howrah Madhya at 3 PM and the last roadshow will take place in Behala Purba at 4:40 PM.

A tweet put out by Shah's office yesterday said:, "Schedule of Union Home Minister Shri Amit Shah's roadshows in tomorrow, 07th April 2021. 1) Singur at 12 PM 2) Domjur at 1:35 PM 3) Howrah Madhya at 3 PM 4) Behala Purba at 4:40 PM."

Union Home Minister on Tuesday appealed to the voters of West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Puducherry to exercise their franchise in huge numbers.

He appealed to the people of to vote for peace, prosperity, and development of the state.

"Only a strong and decisive leadership can make Bengal self-reliant by ensuring peace, prosperity and development in the state. So, be sure to vote and be a partner in the development of Bengal," he said in a subsequent tweet.

West Bengal has witnessed three out of the eight phased polls to the 294-member state Assembly. Counting of votes will be held on May 2.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
As a president, Joe Biden is a mess, always wrong on every foreign policy decision, as Bob Gates used to say. One of his biggest, among many, is his hideous decision to halt construction of President Trump's border wall, which has since led to hundreds of thousands of illegals pouring in. Being Incompetent Joe, he didn't see it coming.

Now old Joe's got no choice but to backtrack. According to the Washington Times:

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told department employees he may restart border wall construction to plug what he called "gaps" in the current barrier. In a conversation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees last week Mr. Mayorkas was asked about his plans for the wall and he said that while President Biden has canceled the border emergency and halted Pentagon money flowing to the wall, "that leaves room to make decisions" on finishing some "gaps in the wall." Mr. Mayorkas, according to notes of the ICE session reviewed by The Washington Times, said Customs and Border Protection, which oversees the wall, has submitted a plan for what it wants to see happen moving forward. "It's not a single answer to a single question. There are different projects that the chief of the Border Patrol has presented and the acting commissioner of CBP presented to me," the secretary said.

This is pretty pathetic. All he had to do was check his urge to issue that executive order and find out what would happen and listen to the findings. He didn't do any of that. Like a crazy old man, he just couldn't resist whipping out that pen and that phone. With the backtrack, he now looks like a third-world clown dictator. Hugo Chavez used to be like that.

But zero doubt about it: He's made a mess. Instead of setting into a place a plan for orderly migration, he happily assured illegals first that all comers were welcome, complete with free health care, dating from his political campaign. When the surge began in November and December, it took him until January to state that his goodie program would apply only to illegals who arrived before Jan. 1. Once in office, he got out his pen and his phone, halting border wall construction and praising himself as "more humane" in his policy, particularly with regard to children traveling alone.

How humane was that? Well, the latest story out there was of the 10-year-old boy left crying all alone in the blazing hot wasteland desert, dumped by human-smugglers on the premise that he'd somehow be "found" by the border patrol, and who no doubt assured his parent or parents that his secure entry into the U.S. would be "guaranteed," as the Facebook ads say. I wrote about that racket yesterday. Some kids dumped in the wasteland desert all alone by smugglers aren't so lucky. Filmmaker Namrata Singh Gujral made a movie called America's Forgotten last year that started with the terrible story of a little Indian girl dumped in the desert by smugglers who also expected the Border Patrol to find her and care for her. They didn't  until she was dead of thirst and heat.

And the border? The disaster just keeps growing. A recent report from Rick Moran at PJMedia, citing news sources, found that the border surge in April is about to get worse than March, where apprehensions spiked 70% to 171,700 over February. And here's the money part: voters blame Joe Biden for the whole thing, big majorities among independents and near unanimity among Republicans and large pluralities among Democrats. And get this: a big majority of Latino voters. According to One News Now:

A new nationwide poll revealed on Tuesday that a majority of Americans believe President Joe Biden is the cause of the current crisis taking place at the United States' southern border. A new NPR/Marist poll conducted from March 2225 on more than 1,300 Americans from coast to coast divulged that 53% of Americans disapprove of Biden's handling of immigration, while only 33% approve of his performance  namely at the border.

With the border escalating into a full blown crisis, Joe first tried to fob off the job of fixing the matter on others. Besides blaming President Trump, and lying to the nation that there was no crisis, just a little seasonality, you see, he's named Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the border control efforts, quite possibly as a means of putting her name on the disaster, too, payback being a b---- as the saying goes.

That's a mess, too. Kamala is literally doing nothing. She's focused on her office decorations, including an expensive kitchen renovation if the Daily Mail's sources are to be believed. And in her first response to it, she's hastened to distance herself from the border mess, claiming she's just going to do the diplomacy. She's not  that's a job so far that's been left to the pros.

Pro diplomats had a good treaty with Central American nations under President Trump to work with, and now with Joe destroying those treaties, they're left with just "persuasion."

Those pro diplomats down in Guatemala and environs, according to the Salvadoran press, such as special envoy Ricardo Zuniga and State Department spokesman Ned Price, can't do much, either, though it's a lot more than Harris.

They're lecturing Central American officials on "strengthening democracy," "the importance of rule of law," "separation of powers," "silencing the independent press," and other blah blah blah they've heard from U.S. and European officials for years and years and years.

It's gotta be especially galling now, given that Biden has now embraced those very practices here in the States. Anyone heard of "executive orders"? That, and all that other stuff, silencing the press and what have you, are standard practice here with Joe in the saddle, for sure. The U.S. under Biden is in no position to be lecturing others now that it's embraced a solidly third-world one-party-state political model, and in Central America, that will be noticed behind the scenes, though there may be some lip service in agreement to ensure the foreign aid keeps coming.

And the treaties we had were flushed down the toilet with a stroke of Joe's pen.

Meanwhile, still no sign of Kamala, who, rest assured, knows less, much, much, much less, about Latin America than Zuniga.

With no solution on the border and only his only platitudes and blame-shifting to lean on, Joe has little choice but to put back up at least some of the border wall. No more talk about tearing it down. The sad little kids abandoned stories are only going to get bigger as the April surge follows, and the Washington Times notes that Biden's pen-and-phone rescission of the border wall costs the feds millions in abrogated contracts, too.

Returning to border wall construction, which even New York Times #NeverTrump columnist Bret Stephens now advocates (after assuring his readers he still retains "disgust" for Trump), is probably one of the few, the very few, things that Joe can do to get the situation under some tiny semblance of control, and it won't come instantly. Biden administration officials euphemize the situation as a matter of plugging holes, but in reality, it's a self-set political brushfire. Biden thought it would be nothing, but far from a mere hole; it's a conflagration coming to get him.

Image: Screen shot from a camera aimed at a television broadcast, filtered with FotoSketcher.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
Mr. Abdul Aziz Ibrahim (Photo: VOV)

"Vietnam is a great tourist destination for foreign tourists", Mr. Abdul Aziz Ibrahim shared during the second generation program conducted by Egypts Nile TV television channel. He realized that Vietnam was really beautiful, with a unique natural landscape stretching across a country with seas, mountains and forests.

During his 3 years in Vietnam, Ibrahim visited many places and took beautiful photos of natural landscapes and daily life of Vietnamese people in many regions. He is drawn by Vietnam with its beautiful landscapes making it truly an attractive destination for foreign tourists.

Although he has traveled to many places in Southeast Asia such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, and Cambodia, Vietnam still left a deep impression on him of the cultural and customs diversity, friendly Vietnamese people with spirit of hard working and arising in difficult circumstances.

Ibrahim said that since once visiting and witnessing the beauty of the country and people of Vietnam, it inspired him to pursue a career as a photographer so he can visit, explore life and record good moments of life./.
Samsung headquarters in Seoul / Korea Times file



By Kim Hyun-bin



Samsung Electronics said Wednesday that it recorded an estimated 9.3 trillion won ($8.3 billion) in operating profit in the first quarter, up 44.2 percent from a year ago, on the back of solid sales of smartphones following the release of its flagship Galaxy S21 series.



In a preliminary earnings report, the electronics giant estimated total sales to have jumped 17.5 percent to 65 trillion won in the first three months of 2021 on a year-on-year basis.




The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) announced Tuesday that it had reached a tentative deal for a new labor agreement with Warrior Met Coal in Central Alabama and was moving to end the strike by 1,100 miners that began on April 1. The UMWA has not released any of details of the agreement, which is supposed to be presented to striking miners Wednesday before they vote on it Friday, with less than 48 hours to study and discuss the agreement.

Less than a week ago, UMWA President Cecil Roberts claimed that union and company negotiators were at loggerheads and that Warrior Met Coal was going backwards regarding a fair agreement that recognizes the sacrifices our members and their families made to keep this company alive. Since then, the company has shown no sign of conceding anything. On the contrary, it has brought in strikebreakers, which have been escorted through the miners picket lines by armed private security guards and Alabama state troopers.

School bus full of strikebreakers crosses miners picket line (Photo: Friends of Coal Alabama)

Any deal reached on this basis by the UMWAwhich has a long record of corporatist collusion with the coal companiescan only be another sellout, which rank-and-file miners should resolutely reject. On social media, Warrior Met miners denounced Roberts and called for a no vote.

One worker commented: Union Brothers and Sisters stand your ground. In 2016 the UMWA said they fought for us. All they did was line their pockets and screw everyone else. They allowed the company to hand us the shit contract. Dont let them talk you into another one saying this is the best we can get. Say no and stop the coal. Look at Warrior Met Coals earning and the numbers. Learn how the market really works, they have been scamming the system the entire way. Hell, they could pay you three times what youre making now and it wouldnt be a drop in the bucket.

Another wrote: Cecil Roberts is a joke! Peabody has been laid off 6 months! Not a peep out of him! Union has to stick together! Do not cave in! Another miner added, I was there in 2016. Talked strike but leaders wouldnt take part. Then said we had to take what they offered or be jobless.

Striking miners in Brookwood, Alabama (Photo: Friends of Coal Alabama)

There is popular support for the striking miners, but the UMWA, the United Steelworkers and other area unions are deliberately isolating the strike while the union bureaucrats hope to starve workers into submission.

In the early 1980s, then-UMWA President Richard Trumka (the current AFL-CIO president) and his vice president, Cecil Roberts, introduced the selective strike policy, overturning the miners long-standing tradition of no contract, no work and national strikes, instead forcing individual sections of miners to confront the power of giant corporations and government on their own.

This disastrous policy led to the defeat of the strikes at AT Massey (19841985) and Pittston (19891990) and gave the coal bosses a green light to utilize the bankruptcy courts and dummy companies to wipe out tens of thousands of jobs and tear up the wages, conditions and pensions won by miners through a century of class struggle.

Warrior Met emerged out of the restructuring of the US coal industry over the last decade, including the bankruptcy of Warrior Mets predecessor, Walter Energy, and major producers like Peabody, Alpha Natural Resources and Patriot Coal. The Alabama mines closed by Walter Energy in 2015 were reopened the following year under the nameplate of Warrior Met Coal, whose corporate board included many of the same executives, including former Walter Energy CEO Walter J. Scheller, III, also a former executive at Peabody and Consol Energy.

In 2016, the UMWA agreed to a $6-per-hour wage cut, along with other cuts to benefits and pensions. In the five years since, the union has also enforced managements grueling work schedules and its hated four strike policy, which allows management to fire workers automatically if they miss four days of work over a period of 15 months.

As a result of these concessions, Warrior Met has become one of the top metallurgical (met) coal producers in the US. The company boasts that it is a large scale, low-cost U.S. based producer and exporter of premium met coal operating two highly productive underground mines in Alabama, Mine No. 4 and Mine No. 7, located in Brookwood, Alabama, 40 miles southwest of Birmingham and near Tuscaloosa. The nearly 8 million tons of coal produced by the Warrior Met miners each year are sold to US steelmakers and exported through the Port of Mobile to steel companies in Europe, Asia and South America.

After lobbying state officials to classify mineworkers as essential, the company has seen its share value on the New York Stock Exchange almost double over the last year, despite a loss of $35 million during the pandemic-induced downturn, compared to a net profit of $302 million in 2019. While demanding more concessions from workers, citing the volatility of coal prices, Scheller pocketed $4 million in compensation last year.

The Warrior Met coal miners are not just fighting for themselves but for the entire working class, which has suffered more than a year of preventable deaths and a devastating economic and social catastrophe, even as the stock market and the private fortunes of the billionaire pandemic profiteers have skyrocketed. There is a growing mood of resistance in the working class. This is expressed by the increase in strikes. For more than a month, 700 nurses at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts, have been on strike against Tenet Healthcare for improved wages and safe patient ratios. In New York City, 3,000 graduate student workers at Columbia University have waged a three-week strike, in the face of sabotage by the United Auto Workers union, for decent wages and health care against the millionaires and billionaires on the universitys board of trustees.

In every case, workers find themselves in a struggle not just against the corporations and the two big business parties, but the trade unions, which function not as organizers of working-class struggle but as strikebreakers and tools of corporate management.

The betrayal of the Warrior Met workers by the UMWA should be taken as a firm warning by the Amazon workers in Bessemer, just 25 miles away, of what they can expect if the campaign by the Biden administration and the Democrats to bring in the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) to contain the struggle of Amazon workers is successful.

Instead of ending the strike, Warrior miners should elect a rank-and-file strike committee to expand the struggle, demanding a nationwide miners strike and solidarity action from workers throughout the area. Delegations of striking miners should be deployed to the US Steel and US Pipe mills in the nearby Birmingham, the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, the Constellium aluminum plant in Muscle Shoals, the Mercedes Benz plant in Vance and schools in Birmingham, Montgomery and other cities where educators are fighting the deadly back-to-school policy.

Preparations should be made now for a general strike to defend the social rights of the working class for safe and secure jobs and living wages, and the shutdown of non-essential production and schools, with full compensation to workers, until the pandemic is contained.

History of class struggle

There are heroic and powerful traditions of rank-and-file militancy and socialism in Alabama, particularly among coal miners. As historian Ronald Lewis noted, as early as the late 19th century Alabama mineworkers were involved in biracial unions, including the Knights of Labor and the United Mine Workers of Alabama (separate from the official UMWA). They were also involved in various working-class and socialist parties, including the Greenback-Labor party, that emerged after the great railroad strike of 1877. These organizations united black and white workers against Jim Crow segregation. As one white miner in 1880 observed, We who are compelled to work side by side with [the Negro] must drop our prejudice and bigotry. This is the lever thats keeping labor in bondage to capital.

The coal bosses maintained a brutal system of convict labor, exploiting mostly African American men who were framed up on petty charges, in order to lower labor costs and prevent unionization. As one mine operator cited by Lewis told an Alabama legislative committee in the 1880s, convict labor competing with free labor is advantageous to the mine owner. If all were free miners they would combine and strike, and thereby put up the price of coal, but where convict labor exists the mine owner can sell coal cheaper. This system of forced labor was not abolished until 1928.

In 1894, 1904 and 1908, the United Mine Workers District 20, which united black and white workers, waged strikes and other struggles that were ultimately crushed by company gun thugs and state militia called out by Democratic governors. They also confronted the propaganda of the Birmingham Age-Herald, which denounced the UMWA for Bolshevism and fomenting social equality between blacks and whites. The defeats all but eliminated the UMWA in Alabama, until the revival of struggles in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. These years saw armed marches of miners, rebellions against UMWA leaders and the 1943 strike in defiance of the wartime ban on strikes.

These traditions of working-class solidarity and socialism must be revived today. But this requires building new organizations of struggle, independent of the UMWA and the other pro-capitalist and nationalist unions, which long ago abandoned the interests of the working class. The building of rank-and-file committees to fight the sacrifice of lives to corporate profit must be combined with the building of a powerful political movement for socialism and the reorganization of economic and political life to meet the needs of the working class around the world.

For more information about building rank-and-file committees and to share your story, contact the WSWS today.
A global health crisis that could have brought humanity together in a spirit of solidarity was instead exploited by dictators and autocrats across the world to crack down on peaceful opponents, roll back democratic gains and step up surveillance efforts, according to a report issued on Wednesday by Amnesty International.

Governments across the world, but especially in the Middle East and North Africa region dominated by corrupt, repressive autocratic regimes, used the Covid-19 pandemic to silence, harass, arrest and even kill citizens, including the frontline health workers whom they publicly lauded as heroes of the pandemic.

Amnestys 408-page The State of the Worlds Human Rights also identifies trends in inequality and discrimination that it says likely exacerbated the pandemic, which continues to wreak havoc across the planet.

Pandemic times laid bare the devastating consequences of abuse of power, structurally and historically, said an introductory note by Agnes Callamard, the new director general of Amnesty. The Covid-19 pandemic may not define who we are, but it certainly has amplified what we should not be.

The report details how governments ruthlessly exploited the pandemic to deepen attacks on human rights and freedom of expression.

Read more:

Across the world, law enforcement used the pandemic as an excuse to block demonstrations against state violence, political repression or even mishandled Covid measures. Under the guise of enforcing lockdown rules, for example, nurses in Zimbabwe were arrested for protesting to improve their salaries and work conditions.

Hamfisted security measures meant to enforce public health frequently created far more risks. In Albania, police shot dead a 25-year-old man while enforcing quarantine measures, prompting days of protests and rioting where more people were assaulted and arrested by security forces. In Angola, police stopped and hassled a 20-year-old for not wearing a mask, firing a gun next to his ear and ultimately causing him to die of heart failure.

Authorities across the world issued laws criminalising criticism of the pandemic. Journalists in nations that included Venezuela, Egypt, India, Iran, Nepal, Niger and the Republic of Congo were harassed or arrested for criticising or even reporting on government handling of the health crisis.

Autocratic regimes in Algeria, Jordan and Morocco imposed states of emergency that criminalised legitimate expression about the pandemic.

Irish police arrest a woman on OConnell Street in Dublin city centre ahead of a planned anti-lockdown protest in March (PA)

Within days of the news of the Covid-19 outbreak, authorities in several countries across [Asia] tried to suppress information about it and punished those who criticized government actions, said the report, identifying China and Indonesia as particularly egregious violators of press freedoms.

In eastern Europe, citing national security concerns related to the public health, governments rushed through legislation to bolster surveillance capabilities. Other rightwing governments used the pandemic as an excuse to ram through long-coveted social measures, such as restricting access to abortion and womens health services, or to deny hormone therapy to trans people.

Israel used the pandemic to extend use of electronic surveillance capabilities usually targeting Palestinians to to trace Covid infections. Lithuania amended a law on electronic surveillance to allow the government to track peoples movements without judicial approval in order to quell the spread of the virus.

Particularly vulnerable were refugees and migrants in nations where they were forced to continue working or crowded into camps and detention centres without proper protections. Despite the lockdown measures, police in France continued to forcibly evict refugees and migrants from informal camps, effectively turning them into potential spreaders of the coronavirus.

While some governments took steps to release detainees to curb the spread of Covid-19, overcrowding and unhygienic conditions in places of detention endangered inmates, said the report. Continuing forced evictions increased peoples exposure to the virus by making them homeless.
Dave Chappelle claims that celebrity guests partying the night away at a farewell event for Barack Obama were behind the 'dirty' notes the Trump Administration found throughout the White House.

The 47-year-old comedian appeared on supermodel Naomi Campbell's show, 'No Filter with Naomi' where he said that he saw first-hand celebrities putting notes in drawers and cabinets during the former president's farewell party.

Chapelle did not specify when the farewell party was held but many celebrities attended a gathering on January 6, 2017, two weeks before the inauguration.

'Remember when the Trump administration moved in they said, 'the Obama staff left dirty notes for us',' he said.

'I saw this happening. I'm not going to say who did it, but it was celebrities writing all this crazy sh*t and putting them all over there. And I saw them doing it so when I saw that on the news I laughed real hard.'

Dave Chappelle told Naomi Campbell that he saw celebrities writing notes in White House offices during President Obama's final White House party

Chapelle added: 'It was one of the last big parties the Obamas threw and I'm not gonna say those celebrities' names ... There was a thing.'

Former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a 2019 radio interview that Obama aides had left nasty notes along with Obama books in every office.

'We came into the White House, I'll tell you something. Every office was filled with Obama books and we had notes left behind that said 'you will fail,' 'you aren't going to make it.'

President Barack Obama gives remarks during a 2016 concert at the White House attended by both Dave Chappelle and Naomi Campbell

Grisham later backtracked on her claim, saying that the notes were only left in the press office.

'I certainly wasn't implying every office had that issue. In fact, I had a lovely note left for me in the East Wing, and I tracked the woman down and thanked her. I was talking specifically about our experience in the lower press office - nowhere else. I don't know why everyone is so sensitive!'

Obama's national security advisor Susan Rice called the claim a 'bald faced lie.'

Star-studded: John Legend, DJ Cassidy, Chrissy Teigen, Jerry Seinfeld, and Jessica Seinfeld take a selfie at the final White House party with the Obamas

Former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham claimed aides from the Obama administration left 'you will fail' notes in offices for Trump

But now, Chapelle appears to back up the claim that nasty notes were in fact left in the White House, and puts the blame on celebrities.

While he didn't reveal who wrote the notes or specify which party was the night in question, the Obama's final farewell bash was notably attended by several A-listers, including Chappelle.

Several stars who have spoken out publicly against former President Donald Trump were in attendance at the final White House party on January 6, 2017, according to social media posts.

Chrissy Teigen, who was blocked by President Trump on Twitter, was a guest along with her husband John Legend.

They were spotted in a photo that included comedian Jerry Seinfeld who said he would never invite Trump on his show, 'Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.'

Comedian Billy Eichner, a critic of Trump, was also in attendance at the farewell party.

Other attendees included Nick Jonas and Chance the Rapper, who have both posted about their political views on social media.

While phones were not allowed inside the farewell party, Bradley Cooper, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Robert De Niro, Stevie Wonder, and Jon Hamm were a few of the other big names reportedly partying that night at the White House.

Comedian Billy Eichner, a critic of Trump, was in attendance at the Obama's final White House party (left); and Chance the Rapper (right) attended the January 6, 2017 farewell party for President Barack Obama

President Obama's final farewell bash was attended by stars including Jay Pharoah, Kelly Rowland, Wale, Usher, and La La
Just a week after two Knives Out sequels were announced on Netflix, new details reveal just how lucrative the deal really is.

The deal was quite the surprise, since it was believed that Lionsgate was planning on distributing the sequels like they did with the original 2019 thriller.

New details have surfaced about the deal through a new report from The Hollywood Reporter, revealing returning star Daniel Craig, writer-director Rian Johnson and producer Ram Bergman would each walk away with $100 million each.

Lucrative: Just a week after two Knives Out sequels were announced on Netflix, new details reveal just how lucrative the deal really is

Producer and director: New details have surfaced about the deal through a new report from The Hollywood Reporter , revealing returning star Daniel Craig, writer-director Rian Johnson (right) and producer Ram Bergman (left) would each walk away with $100 million each

The deal was originally believed to be worth more than $450 million total, with THR now confirming its worth at $469 million.

The report also reveals that the deal gives Johnson, who will both write the script and direct the sequels, has been given, 'immense creative control.'

The director does not have to take any notes from the streaming service, with the only contingencies in place being that Craig must star in both movies, returning as Detective Benoit Blanc, and they must have at least the budgets of the first movie, said to be $40 million.

Immense creative control: The report also reveals that the deal gives Johnson, who will both write the script and direct the sequels, has been given, 'immense creative control'

When all is said and done, Craig, Johnson and Bergman are poised to walk away with $100 million each, though no further details about their deals were given.

Both Johnson and Bergman retained the full rights to the Knives Out franchise themselves, with their company T-Street striking a one-movie deal with Media Rights Capital to finance the first Knives Out.

An MRC rep said the company was 'proud' to have partnered with Johnson and Bergman for Knives Out, adding they, 'have always controlled the rights to the franchise.'

Big deal: When all is said and done, Craig, Johnson and Bergman are poised to walk away with $100 million each, though no further details about their deals were given

Full rights: Both Johnson and Bergman retained the full rights to the Knives Out franchise themselves, with their company T-Street striking a one-movie deal with Media Rights Capital to finance the first Knives Out

While both Johnson and Bergman are said to be big believers in the theatrical experience, that was before the COVID-19 pandemic happened.

Johnson and Bergman had hoped to start production this summer, and as they questioned the viability of a theatrical experience amid the pandemic, they shopped the sequel to streamers, with Netflix landing a pair of follow-ups.

A source stressed that the questionable viability of the theatrical experience with the pandemic became a 'perfect storm,' with an insider stressing, 'This would not have happened a year ago.'

Perfect storm: A source stressed that the questionable viability of the theatrical experience with the pandemic became a 'perfect storm,' with an insider stressing, 'This would not have happened a year ago'

The original Knives Out earned $311 million worldwide from just a $40 million budget, and while sources admit Netflix 'overpaid' for the franchise, it's worth it.

'Yes, its overpaying, but Netflix is playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers,' another source said.

'It takes a proven theatrical commodity off the board and puts it in their pocket. And its another way they re-educate audiences to think of streaming and their company above a studio,' the source added.
Green growth strategy receives helping hand

Clean energy is one of the focal points that the international community is encouraging Vietnam to implement in its National Green Growth Strategy for the 2021-2030 period, with a vision to 2050, and representatives of embassies and international organisations at the consultative conference organised by the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) last week discussed opinions for this strategy.

Emphasing the importance of clean energy in the green growth process, British Ambassador to Vietnam Gareth Ward said, This consultation is useful because Vietnam will be recovering faster from the pandemic than most countries and theres a lot of supply chain relocation into Vietnam happening, which also means a lot of opportunities to do things differently. So, we very much welcome the national green growth strategy.

Energy is a sector requiring great attention as it is also the major source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Vietnam has a very large potential in wind and solar, and the country could be much quicker in establishing a stable supply in time. I think there should be a particular focus in the strategy on attracting public investment into the grids resilience for renewable energy, Ward said.

Some international investors have expressed their interest to invest in the green energy sector, he added. So, green finance is a sector that Vietnam can develop with green bonds and investment funds, while simultaneously setting standards that will change the calculations of the banking system, he added.

Ambassador of Spain to Vietnam Maria del Pilar Mendez Jimenez said, I would encourage Vietnam very much to develop green energy because we are aware of how important energy, solar wind and water are. There are also Spanish companies that are willing to cooperate with Vietnam in this regard.

The Politburos Resolution No.55-NQ/TW dated October 2, 2020 on the orientation of Vietnams National Energy Development Strategy until 2030 and outlook to 2045 already points towards cleaner and greener energy. The resolution states that renewable energy sources in the primary energy mix should sit somewhere between 15-20 per cent by 2030 and 25-30 per cent by 2045. The government also targets to reduce GHG emissions from energy activities by 15 and 20 per cent by 2030 and 2045, respectively.

A McKinsey study shows Vietnam has tremendous natural endowments, yet the countrys market for renewables remains in its infancy, with a grid scale of only about 200MW from solar and wind online.

A successful renewables-led pathway includes building out the countrys wind and solar generation capabilities to 39GW and 61GW by 2030, respectively, the study stated. This would be five times more than Vietnams current energy plan and would need to be supplemented by natural gas and battery storage.

International organisations have been working to help Vietnam promote energy. The GIZ Energy Support Programme is supporting the Vietnamese government in developing renewables by addressing barriers. GIZ works on several levels with the Ministry of Industry and Trades Electricity Regulatory Authority of Vietnam and other institutions to implement aspects of Vietnamese policies.

Along with the importance of energy development in realising the national green growth strategy, onlookers have pointed out there that shortcomings remain. British Ambassador Ward said, All countries that are setting their targets not only need to look at growing renewables, they also need to look at the way to phase out coal and other brown energy sources.

Though highly valuing the green growth strategy, Dong-bae Kim, Economic Minister-Counsellor of the South Korean Embassy in Hanoi also raised concerns over how it relates to the National Power Development Plan 8, especially in the power generation.
Rumours suggest former Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi could be involved in plans for a new Saudi Arabia-backed Formula 1 team.

Renzi, who is now a senator for Florence, caused a stir when he was spotted in the paddock of the 2021 season opener in Bahrain with Crown Prince Salman.

"I'm used to this sort of flak," Renzi told Ansa news agency when confronted with criticism that he had left Italy under lockdown to attend the race.

Italian media reported that prior to touching down in Bahrain, Renzi had been in Saudi Arabia, which is scheduled to host its first F1 race in Jeddah in December.

But the specialist Italian magazine Autosprint went a step further, speculating that Renzi could in fact be involved in a Saudi-backed plan to establish a new F1 team.

(GMM)
3.1 Million Doses of AstraZeneca From EU Did Not Turn Up: Australian PM

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has pushed back against allegations he criticised the European Union over delays in the arrival of the AstraZeneca vaccine on Tuesday.

Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, he said that he had simply stated a fact that 3.1 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine did not arrive in Australia from the European Union (EU) by the end of March as initially planned.

3.1 million of the contracted vaccines that we had been relying upon in early January, when wed set out a series of targets, did not turn up in Australia, Morrison said.

The federal government had originally contracted for 3.8 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in September 2020. But in early January the government was told that only 1.2 million doses out of the original 3.8 million would be delivered500,000 in February and 700,000 in March.

However, this delivery was then impacted by vaccine shortages in Europe, which saw AstraZeneca told to reduce the number approved to export to Australia reduced to 250,000 after European Commissions president Ursula von der Leyen told Morrison that the EU would need more time to consider the proposal.

The European Union then denied export to Australia of those 250,000 doses on March 3, reported German media outlet DW, after Italybacked by the ECblocked a shipment of 250,000 AstraZeneca jabs because the company did not fulfil the EUs own contract to deliver 100 million doses of the vaccine ordered for the period from December to March.

The Vaccine Roadmap (pdf) notes that the Australian Governments investment in COVID-19 vaccines exceeds $6 billion (US$4.6 billion). Included in this is the purchase agreements for 53.8 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, a large proportion of which will be made in Australia following an approval by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) for Australian company CSL to manufacturer the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The European Union has faced scrutiny for the move with other countries accusing the bloc of vaccine nationalism.

However, the President of the European Council Charles Michel said this was not the case at all reported Reuters. He said that they only wish to stop companies from which we have ordered and pre-financed doses from exporting them to other advanced countries when they have not delivered to us what was promised, Michel said.

The EU has never stopped exporting, he said.

A laboratory technician supervises the large-scale production and supply of the University of Oxfords AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine at the Italian biologics manufacturing facility in Anagni, Italy, on Sep. 11, 2020. (Photo by VINCENZO PINTO/AFP via Getty Images)

Vaccine Rollout Not Impacted Australian Government Says

On Wednesday, Professor Brendan Murphy assured Australia that these issues would not affect the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine.

The point I want to make again is that our vaccine rollout is going well, Murphy said.

The only thing that is limiting the rollout is vaccine supply. And obviously, the initial issue with vaccine supply related to that 3.1 million doses of AstraZeneca which really put us back in those first weeks because we didnt have those doses. Now that we do have the CSL doses, which are starting to increase progressively, that is the limiting step is the international supply of Pfizer and the amount that were getting out of CSL, which was progressively increasing, he said.

The news of the vaccine delays comes as Australia recorded its first incident of a 44-year-old man being hospitalised for blood clots following an injection of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Professor Michael Kidd, Acting Chief Medical Officer for the Australian Government Department of Health, said in an interview with ABC that the case was very concerning. Experts from the TGA were looking into the report.

Currently, twenty countries globally have suspended or delayed their AstraZeneca vaccinations rollout due to concerns over the links between the vaccine and blood clots in healthy people who received the jab.
Betterworks, who closes the loop between people, strategy and results, enabling organizations to align even their most sprawling, dynamic teams, today announced that SelectSoftware Reviews has awarded the company with its 2021 Top Performance Management Software Rating.

Select Software Reviews spends hundreds of hours researching the best HR and recruiting software, so you dont have to. They never take money from vendors during the research phase and rely heavily on practitioners and experts to help them recommend the right software.

Performance management systems and OKR software have typically been part of the annual review process that gives the employee a snapshot through a superficial performance appraisal. However, this category of HR software is evolving quickly and has become an important part of any company's talent management strategy, said Phil Strazzulla, founder at Select Software. We've spent a lot of time researching this space and continue to stay on top of the latest developments. Our goal here is to provide vendors we believe in for you to do demos with, along with everything else we think you need to be successful in implementing a new performance management system including the key benefits, pitfalls, thoughts on ROI, and more.

Betterworks continues to be recognized as a leader in performance management software in unbiased reviews, said Doug Dennerline, CEO and Executive Chairman of Betterworks. We're proud of our driven product and engineering teams, who are working to develop new integrations and upgrades that further close the loop between people, strategy, and results."

About Betterworks

Betterworks closes the loop between strategy, people, and results, enabling organizations to align even their most sprawling, dynamic teams.

Industry leaders such as Intuit, Freddie Mac, Asurion, Udemy, Vertiv, HCSC, and University of Phoenix rely on Betterworks to accelerate strategic growth by supporting transparent goal setting, enabling continuous performance, and gleaning real-time employee engagement insights.

Betterworks is backed by Kleiner Perkins and Emergence Capital. John Doerr, iconic investor, OKR pioneer and author of New York Times Best Seller Measure What Matters, serves on the board, and Josh Bersin, global HR thought leader, serves as advisor. For more information, visit http://www.betterworks.com.

About SSR

Buying HRTech is hard. There are too many vendors, and too many pitfalls. Its no wonder sales cycles are so long, and many practitioners are confused on how to move forward even when they have conviction around a given initiative.

SelectSoftware is the first expert-driven HR Tech review website designed to allow practitioners to efficiently discover and engage the best vendors in a given category.

Our research process rigorously evaluates the various vendors in a given space, and then writes up definitive content to assist HR teams in the buying process. This results in better outcomes for our community of HR professionals. It also rewards the best vendors through exposure and shortened sales cycles.


CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The team behind Mobicard, an exclusive and revolutionary digital business card platform exchange, has outlined the top five networking tips for professionals looking to develop and maintain beneficial working relationships with reputable members of their respective industries. The following tips can come in handy, whether during an in-person networking event or an online meet-and-greet chat room:

1. Find a Doppelganger: When surveying a room, whether it be physical or digital, it is helpful to look for people who have followed similar trajectories prior to where they are today. The goal is to ultimately be as successful as possible within the chosen role, so try to find someone that has been in the same current position. They can provide key insight as to how they leveraged their strengths, overcame their weaknesses, and dealt with challenges those in the role typically face. This knowledge could potentially be crucial to future success, so every effort should be made to find a professional doppelganger.

2. Hands Up, Not Out: It is important not to engage in one-sided conversations where one person is solely seeking the value that they will get from the relationship. It is even more important to avoid being that person. Asking for a handout at the beginning of a relationship is never wise. In fact, doing the opposite is recommended. Networkers should raise their hand when the other person discusses the issues that they are facing. They should try to find ways in which they can provide value and help them overcome the business challenges that stand in the way of their success.

By taking this initiative, the networker demonstrates their willingness to put meaningful effort into the working relationship. If everything goes well in this regard, they can then extend their hand - with their business card in it. If networkers really want to make a good impression, they should pass out their Mobicard. The Mobicard platform gives users the ability to exchange names, professional titles, contact information, videos, websites, email addresses, social media sites, Google driving directions, and even personalized audio voice recordings. Now that is a great way to make a good impression.

3. Ditch the Pitch: Elevator pitches should stay in the elevator. Very rarely will someone enjoy a calculated message that sounds like it should be a pre-recorded voicemail answering machine. It is best to opt for authenticity instead. A real conversation that sounds genuine and candid will go over much better than something that feels rehearsed from a script.

4. Time is Money: There is a reason that TED Talks have a timer at the bottom of the stage facing the presenter. Even if the networker's conversation is riveting and informative, it is important to be cognizant of the audience's time. Discussions should be wrapped up in a timely manner. The networker can always follow-up at a later point if they want to continue the conversation.

5. Humanity is Key: It is a good idea for the networker to go to the bar, even if they are not going to drink. They should feel comfortable talking about things outside of work. When the opportunity presents itself, they show their human side. These types of events can grow tiresome, especially after a long day of discussing work-related topics. A conversation about something new may just be the key to walking away from the event with a great professional relationship.

"Networking can be hard, and the ongoing pandemic has not made anything easier," said Joshua Sodaitis, CEO of Mobicard. "Our platform is built to help create a seamless networking experience, and we hope that we can provide our customers with additional advice when it comes to meeting new people and creating mutually beneficial relationships as well."

Networkers can sign up for the MobiCard app free of charge in their app store today. The first 250,000 users will have free access to all features.

To learn more about how MobiCard is changing the networking game through its comprehensive and customizable platform, please visit https://www.freemobicard.com.

About MobiCard:

MobiCard has created a game-changer in the networking arena thanks to its exclusive and revolutionary, customizable digital business card platform. This flexible and robust application makes exchanging contact information virtually a seamless experience. There's no limit to the creativity and ingenuity this app can provide for businesses and professionals alike as it provides an innovative networking solution that'll disrupt the traditional paper business card business.

Media Contact:

Morgan McAbee

[email protected]

SOURCE MobiCard Inc.
According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, about 8 percent of the more than 617,000 bridges in the U.S. are structurally deficient and need repair. FRP composites offer a low-cost, low-maintenance option and the new structure in rural Tennessee and is intended to demonstrate the benefits of composite materials for rural bridge work.

"This composite bridge has already made a positive impact on Morgan County," said Morgan County Highway Superintendent Joe Miller, who added county officials were looking for a low-maintenance bridge that could be installed fast and at a lower cost than traditional methods. "We have numerous bridges within the county and hundreds across the state that are in need of repair and could benefit from this technology."

For Morgan County, the lightweight, easy-to-install bridge comes at no cost, courtesy of the composites industry. Working together under the umbrella of the Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation, or IACMIThe Composites Institute, almost a dozen private companies led by Tennessee-based Composite Applications Group (CAG) partnered with industry organizations and university researchers to make the composite bridge a reality.

Developed by Structural Composites Inc. (SCI), the 16-feet-long and 25-feet-wide bridge deck is engineered for high-strength and is 90 percent lighter than concrete. It has two 8-by-25-foot corrosion resistant FRP deck panels that were fabricated off-site in a controlled environment.

Because the completed bridge sections were so lightweight, they could be transported to the bridge site and installed in one day using a forklift, reducing installation time and energy costs by requiring less construction equipment for on-site preparation.

IACMI Technology Manager John Unser, who is also vice president of program and project management for CAG, said composites have been used for bridge deck applications for more than 20 years and have exceeded all performance and safety standards set by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO). But when it comes to composite bridge decking, he said, many transportation departments across the country, especially those from smaller jurisdictions, are not familiar with the technology.

IACMI and its industry partners are developing a comprehensive case study based on the Morgan County bridge project, including comparing total costs of a typical concrete bridge and one using an FRP bridge deck. Unser said the results will be shared with federal, state and local officials, transportation departments and the civil engineering community so FRP composites will be more a "known" to them.

University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) researchers and engineering students from the Fibers and Composites Manufacturing Facility are part of the bridge partnership. They embedded smart fiber optic sensors developed by Luna Innovations into the bridge surface during production. These high-density sensors are being used to monitor the composite deck system over time to give critical performance and safety data, thus providing a sustainable solution for aging infrastructures such as bridges. In addition, wireless technology developed at UT is being utilized for monitoring the response of the bridge system and traffic counts remotely via cloud computing.

"Lack of durability data is one of the major barriers of the adoption of novel and advance materials including carbon, basalt, or glass fiber reinforced polymeric composites in civil infrastructure," said Dayakar Penumadu, the Fred N. Peebles Professor in the Tickle College of Engineering at UT and Characterization Fellow for Materials and Processing for IACMI.

Penumadu added, "this is a major obstacle for integrating new materials and structures quickly and thus require successful demonstration as being done through this IACMI project. Bridge decks are the most damage prone elements, and we are integrating smart sensors distributed throughout the composite bridge deck that will provide us valuable performance data with time for years to come."

To learn more about the Morgan County bridge project and how FRP bridges offer a sustainable solution to the nation's crumbling infrastructure, visit www.compositebridge.org.

Collaborative Partnership

Led by IACMI, CAG, and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, a collaboration of private companies contributed expertise and materials such as adhesives, epoxies, coatings and resins, preforms and reinforcements to the Morgan County bridge project. These include SCI, McKinney Excavating Inc., Luna Innovations, Steffen Structural Engineering, Neel-Schaffer Inc., Interplastic Corporation, Engineered Bonding Solutions LLC, West System, Superior Fiberglass, METYX Composites and Compsys, Inc.

About IACMI  The Composites Institute

The Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation (IACMI), managed by the Collaborative Composite Solutions Corporation (CCS), is a partnership of industry, universities, national laboratories, and federal, state and local governments working together to benefit the nation's energy and economic security by sharing existing resources and co-investing to accelerate innovative research and development in the advanced composites field. CCS is a not-for-profit organization established by The University of Tennessee Research Foundation. The national Manufacturing USA institute is supported by a $70 million commitment from the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Manufacturing Office, and over $180 million committed from IACMI's partners. Learn more at IACMI.org. Follow @IACMIhq on Twitter, or LinkedIn, or @IACMI on Facebook.

SOURCE IACMI - The Composites Institute

Related Links

https://iacmi.org/


Arkansas lawmakers overwhelmingly rejected a veto from Gov. Asa Hutchinson over a bill that would ban experimental puberty blockers, hormonal drugs and the surgical mutilation of minors suffering from gender dysphoria.

The Arkansas House voted 75-25 and the Senate 25-8 on Tuesday afternoon to override the veto on House Bill 1570, also known as the Save Adolescents From Experimentation Act.

Arkansas is the first state in the nation to ban the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and elective cosmetic gender surgeries  the mutilation of sex organs  on gender dysphoric youth. A handful of other states, mostly across the Southern U.S., are considering similar legislation.

Republican state Rep. Robin Lundstrum of Elm Springs spoke in support of the bill, stating that medicine sometimes is wrong. We should never experiment on children. Ever.

Source:The Christian Post
A group of people, mostly elderly, crowds a corner of Jongno 3-ga road in Seoul's Jongno District. Korea Times file



South Korea's population continued to decrease during the first quarter of this year as deaths outnumbered births, government data showed Wednesday.



As of March 31, the nation's registered population stood at 51,705,905, down 0.24 percent from 51,829,023 tallied at the end of 2020, when the population fell for the first time on record, according to census figures from the Ministry of Interior and Safety.



Natural decrease accounted for 10,370 while the remaining 116,177 people were deregistered after a residency survey. The number of newborns totaled 68,099, surpassed by 78,469 deaths during the three months.



The number of births decreased 7.6 percent from the same period of last year and 45.7 percent from 10 years ago. The number of deaths dropped 3.5 percent from the same period of last year, but increased 15.5 percent from a decade ago.



Women outnumbered men by 25,918,515 (50.1 percent) to 25,787,390 (49.9 percent), down 0.27 percent and 0.21 percent, respectively, from the end of last year.



The data also showed the number of youths continued to decline while the number of seniors increased.



At the end of the first quarter, there were 7.65 million children (0-17 years), 8.46 million adolescents and youths (9-24 years), and 10.45 million young adults (19-34 years), making up 14.8 percent, 16.4 percent and 20.2 percent of the total population and down 2.8 percent, 2.7 percent, and 1.1 percent, respectively, from the same period last year.



In contrast, the number of people aged 65 and older increased 4.7 percent year-on-year to 8.57 million, accounting for 16.6 percent. The number of seniors exceeded that of adolescents and youths for the first time.



The number of households increased to a record high of 23,157,385, up 0.28 percent from the end of 2020.



The size of households shrank to an average of 2.23 persons, compared with 2.24 at the end of last year. The number of single-person households stood at 9,139,287, making up 39.5 percent of the total, the highest on record.



Of 17 metropolises and provinces, only Gyeonggi Province and the city of Sejong reported an increase in population. Seoul saw its population drop by 69,981.



With 26,000,782 residents, Seoul, Gyeonggi and Incheon accounted for 50.2 percent of the total population. (Yonhap)


Queen Maxima of the Netherlands is known for her impeccable sense of style and penchant for colour.

And the royal, 49, further cemented her fashion credentials today as as she wrapped up warm for Dutch spring in a colourful patterned coat and black leather gloves for a working visit to the Valentine School and Huntsman Holland BV in Rotterdam.

Donning a chic yellow and blue felt-style coat with a large square pattern over wide-leg black trousers and matching black polo neck top, the Queen looked at ease as she visited the centre.

Queen Maxima of the Netherlands is known for her impeccable sense of style and penchant for colour. And the royal, 49, further cemented her fashion credentials today as as she wrapped up warm for Dutch spring in a colourful patterned coat and black leather gloves for a working visit to the Valentine School and Huntsman Holland BV in Rotterdam

Donning a chic yellow and blue felt-style coat with a large square pattern over wide-leg black trousers and matching black polo neck top

Making certain her coat was the statement piece, the monarch also donned black leather clothes and a coordinating plain black face mask.

Wearing her coat draped over her shoulder, in the 'shrobe' style, Maxima followed in the footsteps of Meghan Markle and Anna Wintour who often sport the trendy style.

Maxima's visit was focused on pilot projects on the introduction of self-testing and rapid testing in education and industry to combat the coronavirus in the Netherlands.

Keeping her blonde hair loose and staying Covid-safe in a face mask, the royal sported light eye make up, with black eyeliner and mascara highlighting her hazel eyes.

Making certain her coat was the statement piece, the monarch also donned black leather clothes and a coordinating plain black face mask

Wearing her coat draped over her shoulder, in the 'shrobe' style, Maxima followed in the footsteps of Meghan Markle and Anna Wintour who often sport the trendy style

Last month, the royal gave a short speech during a meeting with entrepreneurs for Qredits Microfinance Netherlands - a non-profit credit organisation offering training and business loans to aspiring businesses.

Mother-of-three Maxima looked effortlessly chic in a long sleeved animal print maxi dress paired with a vibrant red cape as she addressed small and medium-sized enterprises from a studio in The Hague today.

An international financier by training, Maxima was born in Argentina and married into the Dutch royal family in 2002, three years after meeting her husband-to-be in Seville, Spain.

Maxima's visit was focused on pilot projects on the introduction of self-testing and rapid testing in education and industry to combat the coronavirus in the Netherlands

Keeping her blonde hair loose and staying Covid-safe in a face mask, the royal sported light eye make up, with black eyeliner and mascara highlighting her hazel eyes

The mother-of-three daughters, Catharina-Amalia, 17, Alexia, 15, and Ariane, 13, married into the Dutch royal family in 2002.

She wasn't joined today by her husband Willem-Alexander, 53, who became king after his mother, Beatrix, abdicated in April 2013 after 33 years as reigning monarch.

Queen Maxima has reportedly said that she had no inkling that Willem-Alexander was heir to the throne when they first met.

The mother-of-three daughters, Catharina-Amalia, 17, Alexia, 15, and Ariane, 13, married into the Dutch royal family in 2002.

She wasn't joined today by her husband Willem-Alexander, 53, who became king after his mother, Beatrix, abdicated in April 2013 after 33 years as reigning monarch
Australians could travel quarantine-free to countries across the Asia-Pacific within months after New Zealand re-opened the border with its trans-Tasman neighbour.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced on Tuesday she would welcome Australian travellers without the need for quarantine from April 19.

Her Australian counterpart Scott Morrison later said he was in 'no position' to say when the next two-way travel corridor would be opened.

But the federal government is already in talks to create more travel bubbles with other countries in the coming months - which could include Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Fiji and the Cook Islands.

Daily Mail Australia has listed below the countries Australians could soon visit if coronavirus vaccination rates increase and community transmission remains low.

Scroll down for video

The Australian government is in talks to open a travel bubble with Singapore in the coming months

Singapore

Singapore Transport Minister Ong Ye Kung this week said Australia - along with New Zealand and Brunei - were the front-runners to set up a travel bubble with the Asian country.

'We are exploring with several countries and regions, including Australia, on the mutual recognition of vaccination certificates,' he said.

'The certificates can be physical or digital, and we will need them to be secure, tamper-proof and verifiable.'

Tourism minister Dan Tehan said last month the federal government had scheduled talks with Singaporean officials on the matter.

'One of the keys is making sure that we can get that vaccine passport validated,' he told the Today show.

'That will enable that two-way travel to occur, hopefully without quarantining down the track.

'What we need to do is get people moving again with the confidence to travel.'

Japan

The last major update on an Australia-Japan travel bubble was last October when Mr Morrison said the concept was still a long way from becoming reality.

'Further afield, places like South Korea, Singapore and Japan, we have had good discussions with them but I think that is a bit further off,' he said.

'We have to go cautiously on this, very, very cautiously. Covid-19 hasnt gone anywhere. Its still there, and it is no less aggressive today than it was six months ago.'

Japan is still recording high coronavirus transmission rates - confirming 2,458 new Covid-19 cases on April 5.

South Korea's aviation industry is expected to benefit from plans to open travel bubbles with Covid-safe nations

The Cook Islands

Ms Ardern has already confirmed she is in talks with the islands' leader Mark Brown to set up a travel bubble in May.

That means an Australian equivalent with the South Pacific nation could also be on the horizon.

'We are ready for business, and we are looking forward to the commencement in May,' Mr Brown said.

The Cook Islands are Covid-free and Ms Ardern said Kiwis carried 'a lot of responsibility' not to import the virus there from New Zealand.

Pictured: Muri Beach in the Cook Islands. The Pacific nation is already in talks with New Zealand about potentially setting up a travel bubble

South Korea

Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki said last month the country was planning to 'push ahead with the signing of "travel bubble" agreements'.

The travel bubbles will run alongside sightseeing 'flights to nowhere' flights for travellers within South Korea.

The country's aviation industry is expected to benefit from the plans after being hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Last month, South Korea's number of new Covid-19 cases dropped below 500 a day - sparking hope its borders could soon open again.

Fiji

Last month, the Pacific nation went 320 days without a community case of Covid-19.

New Zealand though has yet to open its borders to Fijians, despite Ms Ardern having already established a one-way travel bubble with the Cook Islands.

Japan is still recording high coronavirus transmission rates but Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison in October said the concept was still a long way from becoming reality

Ms Ardern said she wanted to finalise requirements on QR codes, contact tracing and testing before opening a bubble with Fiji.

She said an expanded Australasian travel bubble could include Fiji later in 2021.

Thailand

Despite having a population of just under 70 million, Thailand has recorded fewer than 200 cases almost every day for the past month.

The country has maintained its low case numbers by closing its borders to nearly all foreign nationals during the pandemic.

The Thai Government was originally hoping to fully open its borders in March 2021 but have still yet to establish bubbles with its geographical neighbours like Vietnam and Laos.
I look at it as a fresh, new board, with new ideas, he said. I dont think there are any single-issue candidates. Its just some of our residents who want to give back to the community, and thats a good thing.
The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the PLI (Production-Linked Incentive) scheme for air conditioners (ACs), and high efficiency solar PV modules, said Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal while addressing media on cabinet decisions.

"Govt. led by PM @NarendraModi ji approves PLI scheme for Air Conditioners & LED lights to make manufacturing in India globally competitive. India's growth story will be led by its flagship PLI Scheme, boosting capability of local industry & job growth," Goyal tweeted as well.

Govt. led by PM @NarendraModi ji approves PLI scheme for Air Conditioners & LED lights to make manufacturing in India globally competitive.



India's growth story will be led by its flagship PLI Scheme, boosting capability of local industry & job growth.#PLIforAatmanirbharBharatpic.twitter.com/nqgdcXRKBS a Piyush Goyal (@PiyushGoyal) April 7, 2021

The PLI scheme, which aims at boosting domestic manufacturing in the country, is a central government initiative to make the indigenous industry globally competitive and aimed at the production of high-value export-oriented items.

Also Read: Global firms expand production in India after govt woos investors with PLI scheme

The Union Cabinet had last week given its nod to a scheme to promote processed food manufacturing, with a projected cost of Rs 10,900 crore to the exchequer over the next six years.

The government had earlier granted approval to Rs 15,000 crore worth of incentives for domestic manufacturing of pharmaceuticals and also earmarked Rs 7,350 crore for the production of tablet computers, laptops, all-in-one personal computers, and servers in the country.

Overall, 13 PLI schemes are being implemented by the central government, comprising those for white goods, automobiles, textiles, IT hardware, and chemical cells.
epher Edith Stephanie Smith, 14, failed to come home on Monday night

Perth teenager Jenepher Edith Stephanie Smith last seen around 5.20pm in the Middle Swan area on Tuesday evening

A desperate search is underway to locate a 14-year-old girl missing after she didn't come home on Tuesday night.

Police are concerned for the welfare of Jenepher Edith Stephanie Smith who was last seen in Middle Swan, in Perth's north east, about 5.20pm on Tuesday.

Jenepher is about 150cm tall, fair skinned with a medium build, shoulder length brown hair, and green-blue eyes.

She was last seen wearing a tie-dye trousers and a black t-shirt.

A comment on social media responding to a post from the Western Australia Police Force suggested Jenepher was seen getting off a train at Stirling, north of Perth's CBD, on Tuesday.

But as of Wednesday morning, her exact whereabouts remain unknown.

Anyone who sees Jenepher is encouraged to call police immediately.

According to statistics obtained from the Australian Federal Police and the National Missing Persons Coordination Centre, roughly 25,000 children are reported missing in Australia each year.

About a third of missing persons tend to go missing more than once, and are often located at a friend's house.
Rep. Alcee Hastings, a former federal judge who, despite being impeached and removed from the bench, was elected to Congress, where he championed civil rights and rose to become dean of the Florida delegation, died Tuesday. He was 84.

Lale Morrison, his chief of staff, confirmed the death. He provided no other details.

Hastings, a Democrat, had announced in early 2019 that he had pancreatic cancer. He continued to make public appearances for a time but was unable to travel to Washington in January to take the oath of office.His death reduces his partys already slim majority in the House of Representatives, which is now 218-211, until a special election can be held to fill his seat. His district, which includes Black communities around Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach as well as a huge, less populated area around Lake Okeechobee, is reliably Democratic.

A strong liberal voice, Hastings was a pioneering civil rights lawyer in the 1960s and 70s in Fort Lauderdale, which at the time was deeply inhospitable to Black people. Throughout his career he crusaded against racial injustice and spoke up for gay people, immigrants, women and the elderly, as well as advocating for better access to health care and higher wages. He was also a champion of Israel.

He achieved many firsts. He was Floridas first Black federal judge and one of three Black Floridians who went to Congress in 1992, the first time Florida had elected African American candidates to that body since Reconstruction. He served 15 terms in the House, longer than any other current member, making him dean of the delegation.

He had earlier in his career been the first Black candidate to run for the Senate from Florida.In 1979, he was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. In 1981, he became the first sitting federal judge to be tried on criminal charges, stemming from the alleged solicitation of a bribe. The case ended up before the House, which impeached him in 1988. The Senate convicted him in 1989 and removed him from the bench.But it did not bar him from seeking public office again, and he went on to win his seat in Congress three years later. He took the oath of office before the same body that had impeached him.

If his wings were clipped in Washington, Hastings was adored at home, where his early fights for civil rights and his outspokenness helped him easily win reelection for nearly three decades.

In a 2019 review of his career, The Palm Beach Post described him as a man with immense gifts  boldness, intellect, wit  who repeatedly and brazenly strides close to the cliffs edge of ethics, unconcerned that scandal could shake his hold on a congressional district tailor-made for him.

Alcee Lamar Hastings was born Sept. 5, 1936, in Altamonte Springs, a largely Black suburb of Orlando. His father, Julius Hastings, was a butler, and his mother, Mildred (Merritt) Hastings, was a maid.

His parents eventually left Florida to take jobs to earn money for his education. Alcee stayed with his maternal grandmother while he attended Crooms Academy in Sanford, Florida, which was founded for African American students and is now known as Crooms Academy of Information Technology. He graduated in 1953.

He attended Fisk University in Nashville, graduating in 1958 with majors in zoology and botany, and started law school at Howard University before transferring to Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University in Tallahassee. He received his law degree there in 1963.

As a student, he was involved in early civil rights struggles. Recalling a drugstore sit-in in North Carolina in 1959, he later said: Those were the early days of the civil rights movement, and the people in Walgreens were breaking eggs on our heads and throwing mustard and ketchup and salt at us. We sat there taking all of that.

He went into private practice as a civil rights lawyer in Fort Lauderdale. When he arrived, according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel, a motel wouldnt rent him a room; throughout much of the 1960s and 70s, parts of the county were dangerous for Black people.

At a luncheon honoring Hastings in 2019, the newspaper said, Howard Finkelstein, a former Broward County public defender, called him a howling voice trying to change Broward from a little cracker town that was racist and mean and vicious.

Hastings filed lawsuits to desegregate Broward County schools. He also sued the Cats Meow, a restaurant that was popular with white lawyers and judges but would not serve Black people. The owner soon settled the lawsuit and opened the restaurants doors to all.

Hastings ran unsuccessfully for public office several times, including for the 1970 Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate. He wanted to show that a Black man could run, but he received death threats in the process.

Rep. Charlie Crist, who was a Republican when he was governor of Florida but who later became a Democrat, said in a statement Tuesday that he had long admired Congressman Hastings advocacy for Floridas Black communities during a time when such advocacy was ignored at best and actively suppressed or punished at worst.

Gov. Reuben Askew appointed Hastings to the circuit court of Broward County in 1977; the swearing-in ceremony was held at a high school he had helped desegregate. Two years later, President Jimmy Carter named him to the federal bench.

But in 1981, Hastings was indicted on charges of soliciting a $150,000 bribe in return for reducing the sentences of two mob-connected felons convicted in his court.

A jury acquitted him in a criminal trial in 1983 after his alleged co-conspirator refused to testify, and Hastings returned to the bench.

Later, suspicions arose that he had lied and falsified evidence during the trial to obtain an acquittal. A three-year investigation by a judicial panel concluded that Hastings did in fact commit perjury, tamper with evidence and conspire to gain financially by accepting bribes.

As a result, Congress took up the case in 1988. The House impeached him by a vote of 413-3. The next year, the Senate convicted him on eight of 11 articles and removed him from the bench.

Despite his tainted record, Hastings was elected three years later to represent a heavily minority district.

His impeachment was never far from the surface in the House. This was evident after the Democrats took back control in 2006. Hastings was in line to become chairman of the Intelligence Committee. Republicans started using his history against the Democrats, prompting Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, to give the chairmanship to someone else.

Hastings survivors include his wife, Patricia Williams; three adult children from previous marriages, Alcee Hastings II, Chelsea Hastings and Leigh Hastings; and a stepdaughter, Maisha.

Hastings never sponsored major legislation, but he could be counted on to express himself freely. He had a particular loathing for President Donald Trump, whom he once called a sentient pile of excrement.

Saying what was on his mind was long a habit of his. It started getting him in trouble as soon as he was appointed to the bench, when he veered from judicial norms, criticizing President Ronald Reagan and appearing at a rally in 1984 for the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was running for the Democratic presidential nomination.

But Hastings saw nothing wrong with giving his views; just because he was a judge, he said, that did not mean he was neutered. As Crist said, Hastings was never afraid to give voice to the voiceless and speak truth to power.

Nor was his self-confidence ever checked.

Ive enjoyed some of the fights, and even the process of being indicted and removed from the bench, he told The Associated Press in 2013. All of those are extraordinary types of circumstances that would cause lesser people to buckle. I did not and I have not.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Phanes Group, an international solar energy developer headquartered in Dubai, said it has signed a power purchase agreement and investment agreement with Uzbekistan for a 200MW  grid-connected solar PV plant in the country's Navoi region.

The deals, include the technical and commercial terms for building, owning and operating the solar plant including the facilities connecting to Khimiya 220/110 kV substation, were signed with National Electric Grid of Uzbekistan, IA with the Ministry of Investment and Foreign Trade last week, said the statement from Phanes.

This ground-mounted project will significantly boost Uzbekistans current solar PV installed capacity and contribute to the governments plans to boost energy generation capacity to 30 GW, including 5 GW of solar by 2030.

"Uzbekistan earned the Economists title of country of the year in 2019 and the nation is now regarded as a rising powerhouse in Central Asia," remarked Martin Haupts, CEO of Phanes Group.

"With this agreement we share the vision for Uzbekistans clean energy ambition and reaching its climate action goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) and dependency on fossil fuels," stated Haupts.

Welcoming the strategic agreements, Sherzod Khodjaev, Deputy Minister of Energy of Uzbekistan, said: "Our country is strongly committed to a low-carbon strategy and increasing the share of renewable energy in our energy mix. Solar energy is an important part of this strategy and Phanes Groups assistance will contribute to the success of this latest project."

Ravnaq-bank is acting as a coordinator between Phanes Group and the state organizations of Uzbekistan.

Earlier, Ravnaq-bank and Phanes Group signed a memorandum of cooperation and cooperation in implementation of projects and initiatives.

Ravnaq-bank CEO Tursunov Iskandar Bakhtinurovich said: "Today, renewable energy sources generate high interest among the industry community, and Uzbekistan also strives to follow modern trends in development of the power industry; especially as our country has a great natural, technical and economic potential for the large-scale implementation of such projects.

Founded in 2001, Ravnaq-bank today offers businesses and individuals a full range of banking services and upgrades its customer service to the international level, thus contributing to the development of the banking industry and economy of Uzbekistan.
A mass vaccination clinic capable of inoculating tens of thousands of people against COVID-19 every week will soon open in Sydney to supercharge the states rollout.

The mass vaccination hub at 1 Figtree Drive, Sydney Olympic Park in Homebush will be equipped to administer 30,000 vaccine doses a week to the general public.

NSWs mass COVID-19 vaccination facility at Sydney Olympic Park. Credit:Real Commercial

Another 30,000 doses will be delivered via 100 state-run vaccination clinics across NSW, Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced on Wednesday.

But NSWs ability to deliver 60,000 doses per week was dependent on the federal government supplying the vaccine, Ms Berejiklian said, claiming the clinic could be up and running by May if supply is available.
Singapore: The Philippines has threatened to expel a Chinese diplomatic spokesman in Manila in the latest twist of an intensifying row with the superpower over territory in the South China Sea.

The Defence and Foreign Affairs ministries in the Philippines have been up in arms for a fortnight over the presence of 220 fishing boats suspected to be manned by Chinese maritime militia at Whitsun Reef, with statements flying back and forth over the alleged incursion into the Philippines exclusive economic zone.

A satellite image shows Chinese vessels anchored at Whitsun Reef, located in the disputed South China Sea. Credit:Maxar Technologies via AP

With dozens of the vessels remaining in the area, Secretary of Foreign Affairs Teddy Locsin jnr said on Wednesday he was firing off another diplomatic protest to Chinas embassy and would continue objecting every day until the last ones gone like it should be by now if it is really fishing.

The Philippines has had its navy patrol near the disputed reef in the Spratly Islands since the discovery of the Chinese flotilla last month and has rejected Chinas claims they are merely fishing boats, with Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana saying they represented an utter disregard for international law and revealed Chinas intent to further occupy features in the West Philippine Sea.
Mr. Foures surveilled hundreds of job applicants, gleaning information from social media and other sources to speed vetting and hiring as Ikea expanded in France. He also did background checks on unsuspecting customers who tangled with Ikea over big refunds. He insisted that he had never broken the law in gathering background material.

Some Ikea managers tapped police sources to gain access to government databases for job applicants at up to nine stores, seeking records on drug use, theft and other serious offenses. People whose files turned up dirty would not be hired, according to plaintiffs lawyers. As in the United States, applicants in France must consent to background checks.

The surveillance encompassed career workers. In one case, Mr. Foures was hired to investigate whether Ikea Frances deputy director of communications and merchandising, who was on a yearlong sick leave recovering from hepatitis C, had faked the severity of her illness when managers learned she had traveled to Morocco.

He engaged a contact to pose as an airline worker and ask the 12-year Ikea employee, Virginie Paulin, to furnish copies of her passport stamps to win a free ticket offer. The passport confirmed her travel to Morocco.

Excellent! Mr. Baillot, the chief executive at the time, wrote in an email to Mr. Paris and Claire Hery, who was the director of human resources. Well do more checks after Christmas to corner her, he wrote. (Ms. Herys lawyer, Olivier Baratelli, said there was no evidence she had been aware of systemic surveillance. The charges against her were dropped.)
(Natural News) The state of Michigan reported its first confirmed case linked to the Brazilian strain of the Wuhan coronavirus. A resident in Bay County was found to have the so-called P1 variant, which is believed to be more contagious than earlier variants and can re-infect patients more easily.

Local health authorities reported on April 1 that the first confirmed case was found in the Bay County resident and that they were looking at the persons exposure history. They informed the infected individual and all his close contacts to quarantine themselves for 14 days. A report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that as of April 5, there were 289 cases linked to the P1 strain in 25 jurisdictions.

Prior to the discovery of the P1 infection, the Great Lakes State previously reported other Wuhan coronavirus variants in its territory. The B117 strain from the U.K. and the South African B1351 strain have also been found in the state  with the British variant already widespread in 51 Michigan counties. According to the same CDC report, the state reported 1,649 cases linked to the B117 variant.

Nick Loman, a microbial genomics and bioinformatics professor at the University of Birmingham, said the P1 variant possesses certain mutations that are predicted to change the behavior of the virus. He added that these mutations have also been found in other so-called variants of concern. Loman said these mutations include E484K which undermines the effectivity of antibodies against the virus, and N501Y which is connected to increased transmissibility.

Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Director Elizabeth Hertel expressed concerns about the P1 variant. The director emphasized the need to wear masks, maintain social distance, wash hands and get the COVID-19 vaccine while doing what works to slow the spread of the virus. Face coverings are already required in the state and vaccines are also made available to Michigan residents starting April 5.

The P1 variant is causing concern in a number of countries fighting COVID-19

A Guardian report from March 2021 elaborated on the origins of the P1 variant. It was first discovered in the city of Manaus in the northwestern Brazilian state of Amazonas, which led to its nickname the Manaus variant. Outside Brazil, the P1 strain was first detected in Japan  latching on to people who came from the capital of Amazonas state. (Related: Another Plandemic? P1 said to be a different pandemic from the one we saw last year  Brazil is the target.)

British health authorities raised the alarm bells over the new variant in March 2021, the Guardian piece said. A total of six cases were detected in the U.K.  three in England and three in Scotland.

An article by The Conversation further explained why the P1 strain is of utmost concern. It said that based on evidence, the variant has a higher chance of infecting people who received the AstraZeneca Wuhan coronavirus jab compared to earlier variants. This is because the mutations have reshaped the spike protein on the outside of the virus, making antibodies generated by the immune system unable to bind to it. Thus, the virus skirts immunity generated by vaccines or earlier infections.

However, U.S. News reported that preliminary studies demonstrate the AstraZeneca jabs effectivity against the P1 strain. Meaning, the existing vaccine does not need to be modified to address the new coronavirus variant. Fiocruz Director Mauricio Zuma confirmed the news on March 8. The Fiocruz research institution serves as Brazils public health body.

Meanwhile, another strain of concern emerged from Brazil. The P2 variant was first identified in the city of Rio de Janeiro while a number of cases were also found in Manaus. The P2 strain is widespread in Brazil and is similar to the more contagious P1 variant, but it contains fewer deadly mutations compared to its relative. (Related: Brazil relives the worst of the pandemic as coronavirus cases and deaths surge anew.)

Visit Pandemic.news to read more articles about Wuhan coronavirus variants.

Sources include:

TheEpochTimes.com

CDC.gov

TheGuardian.com

TheConversation.com

USNews.com

AA.com.tr
Peter Stefanovic and his wife Sylvia Jeffreys welcomed their newborn son Henry on Saturday, just 14 months after the arrival of their first son, Oscar Hamilton.

And after sharing the exciting news on the Today show on Wednesday, newsreader Alex Cullen joked about Peter, 39, having 'Irish twins'.

Peter's brother Karl Stefanovic told viewers: 'Some happy news to share. The Today show family has grown by one.'

Joking! Today show newsreader Alex Cullen (pictured) joked about Peter Stefanovic having 'Irish twins' after the Sky newsreader welcomed his second son with wife Sylvia Jeffreys on Wednesday

'Fill-in Today host Leila McKinnon added: 'Our Today Extra host Sylvia Jeffreys gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, Henry George Stefanovic.'

Proud uncle Karl revealed his baby nephew was born on Easter Saturday, weighing 3.5kg.

'Mum is doing fantastic, I spoke to my bro, too... he was downing a Rockford Basket Press [a shiraz] at the time and enjoying being a father again,' he said.

Alex, who is expecting to welcome his third child with wife Bonnie Campbell, then added: 'They call them Irish twins when they are so close together.'

The phrase 'Irish twins' refers to siblings being born one year apart.

Growing family: Today Extra host Sylvia (pictured with husband Peter) announced she'd given birth on Wednesday and posted two very sweet pictures of her newborn

Today Extra host Sylvia announced she'd given birth on Wednesday, and posted two very sweet pictures of her newborn.

The 34-year-old also revealed she and Peter had named their bundle of joy Henry.

'Henry, our gorgeous, healthy little boy makes us a family of four. His proud parents couldn't be happier. His big brother is learning to be gentle. Big love all around,' she wrote on Instagram, alongside photos of Henry wrapped in a hospital blanket.

Baby joy: The 34-year-old also revealed she and Peter had named their bundle of joy Henry

'Henry, our gorgeous, healthy little boy makes us a family of four. His proud parents couldn't be happier. His big brother is learning to be gentle. Big love all around,' she wrote, alongside photos of Henry wrapped in a hospital blanket

Last year, Sylvia and Peter welcomed their first son, Oscar Hamilton, now one.

Just eight months after Oscar's birth, the Channel Nine presenter revealed she was pregnant with her second child.

Sylvia conceived her first son Oscar via IVF, but has said her second pregnancy was 'spontaneous'.

Baby makes four! Last year, Sylvia and Peter welcomed their first son, Oscar Hamilton

'We hadn't planned to go down that path so soon, but having had not an entirely easy path the first time around you can't be anything but thankful and grateful to have fallen pregnant this way,' she told The Australian Women's Weekly.

She said many people had advised her against having boys 15 months apart, but she insisted they wouldn't have it any other way.

'I know it will be a lot to keep up with two turbo little boys, but for now I'm just embracing the beautiful chaos,' Sylvia added.
Mumbai, April 7 : The controversial arrested-suspended police official Sachin Vaze was apparently a privileged and blue-eyed boy of former Mumbai top cop Param Bir Singh, as per a report submitted by Mumbai Commissioner of Police Hemant Nagrale to the Maharashtra Home Department.

Starting with his reinstatement, the report details Assistant Police Inspector (API) Vaze's nine-month long tenure in the elite Crime Intelligence Unit (CIU) of Mumbai Police's Crime Branch and says he was reinstated by Singh in June 2020, after a decision of the Police Establishment Board, despite opposition from top police officers then.

Two Police Inspectors (PI) - Sudhakar Deshmukh and Vinay Ghorpade - were transferred to Units 01 and 10 ostensibly to make way for Vaze, who was of a lower API rank, but was posted as in-charge of the CIU which was a higher, PI level post.

"As per the information given on telephone, the then Jt. CP (Crime) has strongly opposed for posting of Sachin Vaze. But at the insistence of the then CoP (Singh), the then Jt. CP (Crime) unwillingly issued the office order for posting of Vaze at CIU," says the damning report, posted by Maharashtra Congress Spokesperson Sachin Sawant.

Earlier, after his suspension period ended on June 5, 2020, Vaze was reinstated and posted in a non-executive post at the Armed Police Forces on June 8, 2020, but barely a couple of days later he landed the plum appointment at the CIU.

Upon joining the CIU, Vaze reported directly to Singh bypassing all rules, strictly prohibited his (CIU) colleagues from reporting to other Crime Branch officials, and would convey important decisions to the Crime Branch officers.

"Vaze has not followed the rules and he directly and independently reported to the then CoP (Singh) and he investigated under his guidance, was following the guidelines of (Singh) about raid on illegal activities, whom to arrest or not, to call whom as witness and accused of sensitive crimes," stated the report.

He also took up points of the CIU in remands, bail, anticipatory bail pleas and other critical decisions, and if he required manpower for various investigations, it was given as per Singh's directions.

It added that Vaze was present in all important matters like the TRP case, Dilip Chabria (sports cars scam) case and the SUV Scorpio abandoned near the home of industrialist Mukesh Ambani. He also accompanied Singh to an important briefing to the minister.

As the in-charge of CIU, Vaze was given a Tata Sumo, an Innova and a Scorpio for official purposes, but he was found to be using mainly "high-end luxury cars like Mercedes Benz, Audi, etc. and other private vehicles to reach the office other than these three government vehicles".

In March, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested Vaze for his alleged role in the planting of a SUV with 20 gelatin sticks and a threat note near the home of industrialist Mukesh Ambani on February 25, followed by the mysterious death of Thane businessman Mansukh Hiran on March 5.

After these cases erupted, Singh was shunted out and posted as the Commandant General, Home Guards, following which he shot off a 'letter-bomb' targeting former Home Minister Anil Deshmukh, who quit after the Bombay High Court ordered a preliminary probe by the CBI into Singh's allegations.

Congress leader Sachin Sawant said that the report "sheds light on the close relationship between Vaze and Singh", how he worked directly under Singh's guidance.

"All the points raised by me in my press conference were found true. Untruth of BJP has been exposed again," Sawant said.

Interestingly, Commissioner of Police Nagrale's report has come into the public domain just as Singh was called this morning by the NIA to record his statement in the Vaze case.

(Quaid Najmi can be contacted at q.najmi@ians.in)
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / April 7, 2021 / Legend Power Systems (TSXV:LPS)(OTCQB:LPSIF), a global leader in commercial electrical system solutions, today announced that the City of New York acting through its Department of Citywide Administrative Services ("DCAS") has contracted Legend Power Systems to provide a two system, SmartGATE Platform demonstration in one of its schools. The City of New York owns and operates over 4,500 buildings which in addition to schools, includes other agencies such as Police, Fire, Libraries, Offices, and Museums.

New York City has set a goal of reducing GHG emissions 80% by 2050. As part of the plan for reaching the City's goals, DCAS has identified the benefits of exploring emerging technologies through the Innovative Demonstrations for Energy Adaptability ("IDEA") program, such as Legend's SmartGATE, and has determined that a demonstration project is in the City's best interest. Upon completion of the demonstration and pending validation by a third-party entity, if SmartGATE is deemed a success, then New York City Departments and Agencies may choose to advance contracts with Legend for SmartGATE solutions.

"New York City represents a significant market for Legend Power and DCAS is responsible for thousands of municipal buildings which we expect will benefit from SmartGATE solutions," remarked, Randy Buchamer, President and CEO of Legend Power. "We have invested significant time and resources in developing this opportunity and anticipate a successful demonstration of SmartGATE's capabilities will be a key driver of growth for years to come."

DCAS is the department of the government of New York City responsible for providing shared services to support the operations of city government. This includes managing, leasing, and purchasing city real estate property and other city-owned public buildings, as well as handling energy management for city government. The IDEA program is one of the agency's key energy conservation programs. During 2019 DCAS's procurement arm awarded $US 1.7 billion in new contracts.

About SmartGATE

SmartGATE is an industry-leading, turnkey solution which identifies and fixes underperformance and waste in the electrical system of a commercial building. These performance issues often impact key areas of commercial real estate metrics including occupant safety and satisfaction as well as financial performance. This waste can also lead to higher operating costs, lower net operating income and other potential financial risks to the building owner, including adverse tenant experiences.

About Legend Power Systems Inc.

Legend Power Systems Inc. provides an intelligent energy management platform that analyzes and improves building energy challenges, significantly impacting asset management and corporate performance. Legend's proven solutions support proactive executive decision-making in a complex and volatile business and energy environment.

For further information, please contact:

Steve Vanry, CFO

+ 1(604) 671-9522

svanry@legendpower.com

Sean Peasgood, Investor Relations

+ 1(647) 503-1054

sean@sophiccapital.com

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward-Looking Statements

This Press Release may contain statements which constitute "forward-looking information", including statements regarding the plans, intentions, beliefs and current expectations of the Company, its directors, or its officers with respect to the future business activities and operating performance of the Company. The words "may", "would", "could", "will", "intend", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect" and similar expressions, as they relate to the Company, or its management, are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future business activities or performance and involve risks and uncertainties, and that the Company's future business activities may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors. Such risks, uncertainties and factors are described in the periodic filings with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities, including the Company's quarterly and annual Management's Discussion & Analysis, which may be viewed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should assumptions underlying the forward-looking statements prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein as intended, planned, anticipated, believed, estimated or expected. Although the Company has attempted to identify important risks, uncertainties and factors which could cause actual results to differ materially, there may be others that cause results to not be as anticipated, estimated or intended. The Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update these forward-looking statements other than as may be required by applicable law.

SOURCE: Legend Power Systems Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/639227/Legend-Power-Chosen-by-City-of-New-York-for-Installation-of-SmartGATE-Platforms-in-Demonstration-Agreement
Wednesday, 07 April 2021 12:39:42 (GMT+3) | Istanbul

In the January-February period this year, Colombia exported 14,715 mt of ferronickel, up 37.8 percent, with a value of $62.12 million, rising by 52.9 percent, both year on year, as announced by the Colombian National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE). In February, Colombian ferronickel exports amounted to 6,491 mt and were worth $28.64 million, compared to 551 mt and $1.83 million in the same month last year, respectively.

In the January-February period, Colombias iron and steel export volume totaled 19,210 mt, falling by 23.4 percent, with a value of $72.42 million, up by 8.9 percent, both on year-on-year basis. In February, Colombian iron and steel exports amounted to 8,734 mt, up by 98.8 percent, and were worth $33.48 million, increasing by 232.2 percent, both compared to the same month of 2020.
The treatment of members of An Garda Siochana in the national vaccination programme is shocking, according to GRA members, who have expressed their dismay at the news that gardai are no longer considered a high-risk group.

Last week, it was announced that, on the advice of the National Immunisation Advisory Committee (Niac), the initial vaccination programme will be overhauled to an age-based system after those aged 70 and older and those with underlying conditions have been vaccinated.

The move sparked serious concern among some groups, with teachers and gardai feeling particularly let down by the government.

Local GRA representative Dave Conroy said that, following 14 months of Covid checkpoints, breaking up house parties and putting their own health at risk in the name of public safety, gardai across the country are feeling severely let down.

With the recent announcement of changes to the vaccination roll-out, GRA members throughout the country and in the Roscommon Longford division feel abandoned by the government, he told the Longford Leader.

They see themselves as first responders on the frontline in dealing with every issue that has been thrown at them in this pandemic for the last 14 months.

Theyre now seeing fellow blue light emergency personnel such as ambulance, fire service, army personnel being vaccinated and are dismayed and aggrieved that they have been let down by the government.

Tanaiste Leo Varadkar last week challenged his critics to come up with evidence to prove that gardai and teachers were at risk of getting seriously ill from Covid-19 after plans to change the vaccination roll-out programme came under fire by TDs and Senators.

The Tanaistes comments that there is no evidence gardai are in direct danger left garda members dismayed, said Gda Conroy.

Id like to see the Tanaiste step into a gardas shoes for a 12 hour shift and face the daily challenges the gardai have to face and then come back and tell us gardai are not at risk.

On a daily basis, gardai are dealing with persons who are non-compliant with legislation and with guidelines, placing gardai in direct contact with Covid-positive people.

This causes danger to one, the garda, two, the gardas family when they go home after work, and three, the people they have to have normal interactions with on a daily basis.

President of the GRA Frank Thornton has said that gardai will not forget the way they have been treated during this crisis.

We are the second pillar of the response to the pandemic and we are now being told that we are no more at risk than someone who can work from home, he said.

No-one else in Irish society is expected to wrestle with people who may be infected or refuse to wear masks or are in home quarantine because they are coming from a high-risk country.

The treatment of members of An Garda Siochana is shocking. We have endured so much, given so much, and received little or nothing from this Government.

Cathaoirleach of Longford Municipal District Cllr Peggy Nolan agreed that an age-based roll-out would be the most effective way to get the vaccine administered as quickly and efficiently as possible but stressed that frontline staff such as teachers and gardai should absolutely be vaccinated as a matter of urgency.

Age is the only database we have at the moment. There is no database and there is no app where we could be notified by phone or by email about our vaccinations. The only people with the stats are our GPs, she told the Longford Leader.

I absolutely agree that the vaccine should be rolled out on an age basis. However, if the people in charge were doing their job right, our teachers and our gardai and our frontline workers would already be vaccinated. But they didnt.
Pictured: Azam Mangori, who was today jailed for life over the murder of Lorraine Cox

The girlfriend of a murder victim has revealed they were planning to have a child together before she was killed by a failed Iraqi asylum seeker.

Azam Mangori targeted Lorraine Cox, 32, as she walked home from a night out and took her back to his flat in Exeter, Devon.

Mangori killed Ms Cox, and attempted to dispose of her body by cutting it up into seven pieces and dumping them in woodland.

He was today jailed for life and told he must serve a minimum of 20 years before he will be considered for parole.

Elise Fallow, 28, said she had plunged into daily despair after losing the love of her life, and that a part of her had now died.

In a victim impact statement, Ms Fallow told Exeter Crown Court: 'Attempting to put into words the ways losing Lorraine has impacted my life seems impossible.

'I genuinely cannot think of a way that her death has not affected me.

'I am not the person I was seven months ago. That person died the moment I found out the woman I loved had been murdered.'

The mother-of-one said previous anxiety and depression had returned and she now had symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Ms Fallow described the week-long hunt for the missing Miss Cox as only 'prolonging the agony' she was going through.

'While the murder of Lorraine is something I will never recover from, the subsequent knowledge that she had been disarticulated haunts my waking and sleeping hours,' she said.

Mangori targeted Lorraine Cox (above), 32, as she walked home from a night out and took her back to his flat in Exeter, Devon

The victim's partner Elsie Farrow told the court how she and Ms Cox were planning on having a child together ahead of the tragedy. Pictured: Mangori and Ms Cox in Exeter

'While Lorraine was missing but assumed alive there was still hope. On September 9, all hope was lost.'

She described how she was now the shell of the person she was before Miss Cox's murder at the hands of Iraqi national Mangori and had become reclusive.

'Every day I think about things that will never happen again. We will never have another kiss, another cuddle and we'll never be able to hold hands,' she said.

'I will never see her smile or hear her infectious laugh in person.

'I do not enjoy happiness or comfort anymore. No matter what happens in my life now, nothing will ever bring me back from the brink of despair that I feel each and every day.

'It is a constant battle to keep my head above water and to find the motivation to do anything productive. I push everyone away and I have become somewhat of a recluse.

'I could stand here all day and speak of the ways Lorraine's murder has impacted me, but I am aware there are many ways that have not reared their head at present.

'I am the shell of the person that Lorraine knew. Although I am still breathing, I am not living.

'Nothing will stop the pain I feel each day. The love of my life is not by my side.'

Passing sentence, Mr Justice Garnham said Mangori had suffocated Miss Cox with a T-shirt she had been wearing, which was later found in her mouth.

The court heard the defendant had attempted to cover up his crimes by putting the victim's sim card in his phone and posting on social media to convince loved ones she was alive.

'Rather than reporting her death to anyone, you kept her decomposing body in your bedroom for the next eight days,' the judge said.

'You purchased the necessary equipment from nearby shops and then set about cutting up her body with a view to disposing of it.

CCTV footage of Azam Mangori, who has been convicted of the murder of Lorraine Cox

Mangori today jailed for life and told he must serve a minimum of 20 years

'You disarticulated her arms at the shoulder, her upper legs from her pelvis, and her lower legs from the knees.

'With the exception of her left lower leg and her kneecaps, you wrapped all her limbs in black plastic bin liners and dumped them unceremoniously in the waste bins behind the restaurant in anticipation of them being removed by council refuse collectors.

'Her lower left leg and kneecaps have never been recovered.

'Then on September 8, you placed her torso and head in a large plastic holdall and took it by taxi to Tinpit Hill on the outskirts of the city where you buried it beneath bracken and branches.'

He added: 'Exactly what happened will never be known but something happened in your bedroom which caused you to decide to kill Lorraine Cox.

The court heard Lorraine was last seen in September last year while walking home from a night out

'You ended the life of a bright, vivacious and intelligent young woman who had her whole life ahead of her.

'Your cowardice in failing to report her death only served to compound the loss and hurt.'

The court heard Ms Cox was last seen in September last year while walking home from a night out.

Her family did not know her whereabouts for about a week before Mangori was arrested by detectives.

The trial heard Mangori had a 'morbid interest in amputation' and days before and after the murder had looked at images relating to the subject.

He also looked at videos of people with amputations, deformities, and a woman's leg with cramp.

After the murder he bought items to dispose of her body, including a trowel after viewing a website entitled: 'How to dig a grave by hand.'

He left her body in his room for several days before wrapping her in clingfilm, bin liners and tape, claiming that she died suddenly after sex in his bedroom after drinking and taking drugs.

Mangori was convicted of murder and had previously admitted a separate charge of preventing Ms Cox's lawful burial.
A Texas mother who called 911 from a suburban Dallas police department to admit she had killed her two young daughters has been charged with two counts of capital murder, police said Tuesday.

Madison McDonald, 30, told Irving police officers she had 'sedated and smothered' her children Archer Hammond, 6, and one-year-old Lillian Mae McDonald.

Police said McDonald walked into the Irving Police Department at about 10pm Monday and used the phone in their lobby to call 911.

She told dispatch officers that she had 'sedated' Archer and Lillian before tucking them into bed and smothering them to death.

When officers arrived in the police lobby, McDonald began 'talking about her how her kids were abused and that she would do anything to protect her children - including "eliminating them''', according to a police affidavit.

Madison McDonald, 30, told Irving police officers she had 'sedated and smothered' her children Archer Hammond, 6, and one-year-old Lillian Mae McDonald

McDonald told police she had smothered and killed her one-year-old daughter Lillian Mae McDonald (pictured) and her six-year-old daughter Archer

Officers then went to the Anthem Apartments where McDonald lives and found both girls dead in separate bedrooms.

McDonald was then arrested and charged with the murder of her two daughters.

Irving police spokesman Officer Robert Reeves said that McDonald believed she killed the girls by smothering, but the medical examiner's office will determine the cause of death.

He added that McDonald's demeanor was 'calm' when officers approached her at the police station lobby.

Police said McDonald (pictured) walked into the Irving Police Department at about 10 p.m. Monday and used the phone in their lobby to call 911

Reeves said they were still trying to determine what led to McDonald killing her children.

'We might not ever know the why because there's not going to be a definition or a reason that would ever justify the murder of two small children,' Reeves said.

McDonald was being held in Irving jail on no bond. Jail records do not list an attorney for McDonald who could comment on the allegations.

Reeves said police had been to McDonald's apartment previously but that he could not give details due to the nature of the calls 'and the privacy that's required by those.'

Tim Hammond, the father of six-year-old Archer, paid tribute to his 'sweet girl' in a Facebook post.

He said: 'I have no words. Thank you guys for reaching out. I don't know how to process this, or if it's possible to do so.

'If I didn't respond please don't take it personally it is appreciated I just don't know what can be said. She was such a sweet girl and brought so much light to everyone she met.'

Lilian's father Chris McDonald posted a picture of the toddler saying: 'Daddy loves you forever my sweetheart Lillian'.

A GoFundMe page has been set up to pay tribute to one-year-old Lillian and help her father Chris pay for her funeral expenses.

The post read: 'If you are friends with Chris you know that his daughters are the light of his life. Lilian was his youngest daughter and she just adored her daddy.

'When Chris walked into the room you could see the light and love he had for Lilian. Every interaction Lillian was smiling, laughing, and playing with her daddy.'
FORT WORTH, Texas  Following the devastating impact of Winter Storm Uri on the Texas community earlier this year, American Airlines partnered with the just keep livin foundations Texas Relief Fund to help those in need recover. As part of Were Texas, a star-studded virtual fundraiser presented by just keep livin foundation founders Matthew and Camila McConaughey on March 21, AAdvantage members were able to earn 10 miles for every dollar donated to the fund through the end of March, with 100% of donations dedicated to supporting charities providing critical relief services throughout the Lone Star State.

In total, 7,834 AAdvantage members came together to donate $867,899.15 in support of the fund.

We are so thankful to American Airlines for their generous support to the Were Texas Virtual Benefit Concert that will help the people of Texas repair, recover and revive after Storm Uri, Matthew McConaughey said. Thank you to American for being great friends to the just keep livin foundation and for helping out in this time of real need.

The Texas Relief Fund is focused on providing safety and critical resources to those affected by the devastating winter storms and supporting volunteers in their efforts throughout the long-term recovery process.

American is proud to call Texas our home, said Kyle Mabry, Americans Vice President of Global Sales and a lifelong Texan. Our purpose is to care for people on lifes journey, and that extends beyond our airline and into the communities we serve. This donation to the Texas Relief Fund will make a difference for those who need it most.

As a Texas-based company for more than four decades, many American team members and their families were personally impacted by Winter Storm Uri. The airline provided team members more than $111,000 in direct assistance through grants from The American Airlines Family Fund.

The American Airlines Family Fund, administered by Emergency Assistance Foundation, is a public, nonprofit 501 (c)(3) organization that was created to help team members who are facing financial hardship immediately after a natural disaster or an unforeseen catastrophic situation that threaten their health and welfare. The Family Fund relies primarily on individual donations from team members and support from American Airlines to fund the program.

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About American Airlines Group

Americans purpose is to care for people on lifes journey. Shares of American Airlines Group Inc. trade on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol AAL and the companys stock is included in the S&P 500. Learn more about whats happening at American by visiting news.aa.com and connect with American on Twitter @AmericanAir and at Facebook.com/AmericanAirlines.
A convicted Rochdale grooming gang leader says he does not expect to be deported for his crimes - in a kick in the teeth to the scandal's victims.

Qari Abdul Rauf, 51, was warned he would be sent back to Pakistan more than six years ago after serving a prison sentence for his offences.

But it emerged this week that he is still living freely in the Greater Manchester town, to the fury of his victims, campaigners, and local residents.

Speaking today for the first time since his presence back in Rochdale was revealed he arrogantly admitted that even he is surprised that there has not been any move to get him out of Britain.

Asked by MailOnline if he was surprised he had not been deported, Rauf admitted: 'Yes'. When pressed again if he expected to be removed soon, he added: 'No I don't think so'.

The Muslim preacher, who has been seen shopping in Rochdale, then jumped in his car and left his semi-detached home.

Qari Abdul Rauf, 51, was warned he would be sent back to Pakistan more than six years ago

Six years later Rauf has been spotted shopping for food in Rochdale at a local supermarket

The convicted child trafficker was seen at a local Lidl stocking up on supplies on Monday

He traveled to the supermarket by car from his home which is near the large food store

One neighbour said: 'I'm angry he's still here.

'You see children playing in the street by his home and I don't understand why he hasn't been removed.

'I don't feel safe with him here.'

'Former police officer Maggie Oliver, 65, who quit Greater Manchester Police over its lack of action over the scandal, said the sight of Rauf 'made her blood boil'

She said: 'The victims have been treated disgracefully and he is carrying on as if he's done nothing wrong.

'The public and the victims see the criminal justice system failing them. Sadly it does not surprise me he hasn't been deported.'

The Rochdale grooming gang's abuse was dramatised in a BBC programme called Three Girls

Abdul Rauf was pictured in Rochdale years after the Home Office said he would be deported

Abdul Rauf in Rochdale back in 2019 wearing exactly the same clothes as he sported this week

And local MP Tony Lloyd (Labour) said the failure to deport him showed 'grossly unacceptable inaction'

Rauf was jailed in 2012 for the scandal which was later dramatised in the BBC drama 'Three Girls'.

He got six years after being convicted of conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with children under 16 and trafficking for sexual exploitation.

But he was freed on license in November 2014 after just two and a half years in prison.

He then returned home to his wife and five children.

The Home Office told him he would be stripped of his UK citizenship in 2015 and returned to his native Pakistan with fellow abusers Abdul Aziz, 50, and Adil Khan, 51.

He lost an appeal in 2018 against the ruling to strip them of their citizenship rights but it's understood he still has the right to a further appeal against deportation before it can be enforced.

A Home Office spokesman said the case had been reviewed recently and that it 'intends to update the victims through the proper channels when we can.'
Banda: After spending over two years in a Punjab prison, gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari was brought back to Banda jail in the wee hours of Wednesday.

Ansari was ferried in an ambulance guarded by a strong posse of gun-toting security personnel throughout his 900-km journey from Rupnagar to this Uttar Pradesh town in the Bundelkhand region.

Acting on a Supreme Court order, the Uttar Pradesh Police took custody of the 57-year-old BSP MLA at Rupnagar jail on Tuesday to bring him back to Banda prison. It took around two hours to complete the formalities before he was handed over to the UP Police after a medical check-up.

Once the convoy entered the state on Tuesday evening, the fleet of security vehicles of the Uttar Pradesh Police, which included an ambulance equipped with all life-saving equipment to meet any exigency en route to Banda, a journey that takes around 14 hours from Ropar, and an anti-riot police vehicle 'Vajra' whizzed past the newly-laid expressways.

Before the convoy entered Banda jail at 4.30 AM, it slowed down near Kanpur Dehat as some stray animals blocked the road along a patch of thick forest. While heavy security arrangement was made by the Punjab Police outside Rupnagar jail, the Banda prison area looked like a cantonment zone with policemen keeping a hawk-eyed vigil all around.

The police convoy entered Uttar Pradesh through the Eastern Peripheral Expressway in Baghpat around 6.00 PM, Allahabad zone Additional Director General of Police Prem Prakash informed.

The Uttar Pradesh team had reached Rupnagar police lines at 4.30 am on Tuesday and left for the jail around noon for the transfer. The convoy left the jail premises at 2:08 pm taking a side gate, dodging mediapersons waiting outside the main gate. As the convoy took the Ambala road, some media vehicles gave a chase but soon gave up.

The five-time MLA will cool his heels in barrack number 15 of the Banda district jail, where he was lodged in the past before being shifted to Punjab. Additional police force has been deployed at the jail at the request of prison authorities.

Mukhtar Ansari will be guarded by three security personnel round-the-clock inside the barrack. "Security personnel have been posted inside as well as outside the jail premises," Banda jailor Pramod Tiwari said.

"In barrack number 15, where Ansari will be kept, arrangements for light, drinking water and cleanliness have been beefed up," he said. Tiwari said access to the barrack has now been denied to other jail inmates. The main prison complex gate, which generally remains open, will now be kept closed. Only those jail staff reporting for duty will be allowed in after proper screening, he added.

High towers have been put up outside the jail and extra police pickets have also been set up to keep a watch on every visitor. Meanwhile, the principal of Government Medical College, Banda, Dr Mukesh Kumar Yadav said a panel of four doctors has been constituted on the apex court's directions to monitor Ansari's health.

Mukhtar Ansari was lodged in Rupnagar jail in January 2019 in connection with an extortion case. The legislator from Mau in eastern Uttar Pradesh is facing 52 cases in the state and elsewhere, and 15 of them are in the trial stage.

The BJP-run Uttar Pradesh government had accused the Congress government in Punjab of shielding Ansari for several months by not letting the state take custody. Punjab's home department had asked the Uttar Pradesh government to take Ansari's custody by April 8, following the March 26 Supreme Court order that had set a two-week deadline.

The apex court had noted that Ansari was allegedly involved in cases of murder, attempt to murder, cheating and conspiracy, apart from offences under the Gangsters Act. It said his custody was being denied to the Uttar Pradesh Police on trivial grounds under the guise of medical issues.

The SC also said a convict or an undertrial who disobeys the law of the land cannot oppose his transfer from one prison to another and the courts cannot be helpless bystanders when the rule of law is being challenged with impunity.

As Uttar Pradesh takes charge of the high-profile undertrial, his wife Afshan Ansari moved the Supreme Court seeking directions to the state authorities to ensure his safety, including from a police encounter.

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Brazils Bolsonaro ignores calls for lockdown to slow virus View Photo

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP)  Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said on Wednesday there would be no national lockdown, ignoring growing calls from health experts a day after the nation saw its highest number of COVID-19 deaths in 24 hours since the pandemic began.

Brazils Health Ministry registered 4,195 deaths on Tuesday, becoming the third country to go above that threshold as Bolsonaros political opponents demanded stricter measures to slow down the spread of the virus.

Were not going to accept this politics of stay home and shut everything down, Bolsonaro said, resisting the pressure in a speech in the city of Chapeco in Santa Catarina state. There will be no national lockdown.

Brazils conservative president also defended the use of so-called early treatment protocols, which include anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine. No scientific studies have found the drug effective to prevent or treat COVID-19.

There is not enough vaccine today in the world. We need to find alternatives, he said.

The number of deaths in Chapeco linked to the virus has finally come down after some very difficult weeks. Intensive care units had surpassed capacity, forcing authorities to transfer infected patients to hospitals in other states.

Last month, the city implemented some restrictions on the economy for two weeks, but Bolsonaro attributed Chapecos recent success to the use of early treatment protocols, newspaper Estadao reported.

In an open letter published Tuesday in newspaper O Globo, the Brazilian Association of Collective Health, which counts nearly 20,000 members, called for a three-week nationwide lockdown.

The serious epidemiological situation that is leading to the collapse of the health system in several states requires the immediate adoption, without hesitation, of strict restrictive measures, the statement said.

Intensive care units in most Brazilian states have an occupation rate above 90%, though figures have been stable since the past week.

The Supreme Court is ruling today on the reopening of religious buildings nationwide. Many local authorities decided to ban large religious gatherings in spite of a federal government decision to label them as part of essential services.

There is no Christianity without community life, argued Brazils solicitor general Andre Mendonca, an evangelical pastor, before the Supreme Court on Wednesday. True Christians are never willing to kill for their faith, but they are always willing to die to guarantee freedom of religion and worship.

The preliminary results of an ongoing study involving 67,700 healthcare workers in Manaus, where a more contagious variant of COVID-19 was detected this year, seemed to confirm earlier findings that Chinas Sinovac vaccine is effective against the virus. The press release published Wednesday mentioned a 50% efficacy rate after the administration of just one of the vaccines two doses.

The study has not yet been published or peer reviewed. Several health experts consulted by The Associated Press said it was not possible to properly evaluate the preliminary findings without access to the studys methodology and full results, but all agreed to say that it was promising.

The study involves researchers from Stanford University School of Medicine, the Yale School of Public Health and Brazils state-run Fiocruz Institute, among other insitutions.

In its own preliminary study, Sao Paulos Butantan institute had also found in March that the vaccine was effective against the P1 variant.

By DIANE JEANTET

Associated Press
David "Eli" Israelian is cofounder of the mental health nonprofit Painted Brain, a 2020-21 Community Impact Arts Grant recipient. On Tuesday, county supervisors supported expansion of the grants. (David Israelian)

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to designate April as "Arts Month" and to commit to investing in arts programming provided by social service and social justice nonprofits.

The move was meant to recognize the role that art and culture play in healing after more than a year of pandemic struggles. The motion, by supervisors Holly J. Mitchell and Hilda L. Solis, cited studies illuminating the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention findings from June that 13% of adults in the U.S. increased their substance use during the pandemic and 11% considered suicide during that time.

It also cited a University of Pennsylvania study, conducted between 2014-2016, on the positive effects of cultural resources in lower-income neighborhoods, among them an 18% drop in serious crime and a 5% decrease in obesity.

The trauma, isolation, and hardship experienced by Angelenos throughout the COVID-19 pandemic has made clear the need for a renewed commitment to enhancing community well-being, the motion said.

The arts can have a significantly impactful role in enhancing community well-being."

The motion proposed an examination of the countys available funding to continue and expand the Department of Arts and Cultures Community Impact Arts Grants. The funds go to social service and social justice nonprofits using culture to serve the homeless, at-risk youth, immigrants, veterans and others in often racially diverse communities.

The grant program is an effort to ensure that arts funding is "equitably provided to organizations serving underserved communities and marginalized populations throughout the county, the motion said, especially those organizations lacking access to traditional arts grants.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
NEW ORLEANS (AP)  Conservation groups sued on Tuesday to reverse changes made under former President Donald Trump to rules protecting sea turtles, even though federal regulators said a week ago that they were reconsidering some of those changes.

The groups hope President Joe Biden's administration will change the rules, but the possible revisions outlined recently may not go far enough, said Jaclyn Lopez of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the three groups.

+5 Environmental group to sue over sea turtle protections in Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic The fisheries service scaled back plans to make inshore shrimpers put turtle escape hatches into their nets.

"We're hopeful they will do something and do something soon, but we're not going to sit back and wait," she said. "This is decades in the making and our patience has run out."

"We are aware of this filing and are reviewing it," Allison Garrett, a spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's fisheries service, said in an email.

The current rule would hurt five endangered and threatened sea turtle species, especially Kemp's ridleys, the smallest and most endangered, the groups' news release said. Kemp's ridleys swim throughout the Gulf and along the Atlantic Coast to New England, nesting in Mexico and along the Texas coast.

NOAA Fisheries said last week that it was delaying implementation of the rules from April 1 to Aug. 1 and that it was reconsidering some of them.

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

Lopez said her group, Defenders of Wildlife and Turtle Island Restoration Network want NOAA Fisheries to return to rules it proposed in 2016. Those would require escape hatches for sea turtles in three kinds of inshore shrimp trawls, pulled by boats of all sizes.

The Trump administration required them only on the most common sort, called skimmer nets, and only on those pulled by boats at least 40 feet (12 meters) long.

Earthjustice filed the suit in federal court in the District of Columbia.

"We don't feel it'll be too heavy a lift," since the nets were thoroughly evaluated before the 2016 proposal, Lopez said.

"They've already done the legwork. We're hopeful it has the political will this time," she said.

+5 Louisiana to help pay for devices that can save sea turtles from shrimp nets Louisiana is starting a financial assistance program to help shrimpers buy new gear to make their nets less lethal for endangered sea turtles.

 JANET McCONNAUGHEY Associated Press
A single Australian woman has slammed online haters for trying to body shame her and shared a 'chubby, gap tooth, re-growth' picture of herself in a bikini on the beach to prove her confidence.

Alita Brydon, 36, has worked hard to learn how to love her body - she thinks she looks amazing and her legion of fans agree.

The Melbourne woman runs a Facebook Page where people can anonymously share details of their bad dates, seek advice and feel like part of a community as they search for love.

Alita Brydon, 36, has worked hard to learn how to love her body - she thinks she looks amazing and her legion of fans agree

The Melbourne woman runs a Facebook Page where people can anonymously share details of their bad dates, seek advice and feel like part of a community as they search for love

Her aim is to empower single men and women, helping them build confidence and self love - putting her at odds with the online bullies.

Alita recently posted a picture of herself standing on a beach in a bikini after some trolls slammed her over her weight, teeth and hair.

'Confidence isn't an act. I reckon I look fantastic. Allow me to bless the internet with another chubby, gap tooth, re-growth hair image of myself,' she posted.

She went on to say there will always be people who try to tear others down based on their appearance to try to force them to give up their voices.

But the woman is determine to remain confident and to continue to inspire women to be strong whether they are single or not.

I need a man who will honk for chonk - I'm done with the days when I felt my body was holding me back from romantic success

And the post was met with overwhelming support, more than 1200 people leaving comments and another 10,000 'liking' the post within hours of it being posted on Tuesday night.

'Yay, more of this,' one woman commented on the powerful post.

'I love confident people who acknowledge and accept their flaws, I personally find it attractive,' another woman said.

'You are beautiful and have inspired me to feel comfortable in my own skin - and to rock a bikini! Wobbly bits and all. Not my problem if people can't handle all this awesomeness,' said another woman.

Others begged the social media star, who has over 150,000 followers, to never change.

She is determine to remain confident and to continue to inspire women to be strong whether they are single or not.

'One day people will wake up to the idea that the ideal body is an unattainable sham sold to us by the beauty industry and that if we'd been told for countless years that having cellulite was hot, we'd all be trying to attain that ideal,' another woman said.

Others praised Alita for running a page which empowers daters to feel good about themselves and 'letting everyone know you don't need to be able to rock a size-8 bikini' to be beautiful.

And it wasn't just women supporting the brave post.

'You look exactly like you're meant to. Which makes you perfect. It makes us all perfect,' one man said.

'So glad you posted this. The number of people you are touching in a positive way is all that matters,' said another man.

Alita has previously revealed her longest relationship, the one she has with her 'beloved rig', is one she often keeps private.

'There were moments in my dating life where I felt my body was holding me back. I've never been a slim woman. Now, I can see it is my biggest ally in dating and in life,' she said in a post last month.

She listed her attributes as having delightful nugget chub, sexy softness, a cute belly and sturdiness.

Alita has previously revealed her longest relationship, the one she has with her 'beloved rig', is one she often keeps private

She also said she loves they way her body looks because 'it is the body of someone who enjoys life'.

'There are lots of dudes who aren't into what I've got. That's ok. I need a man who will honk for chonk. I'm done with the days when I felt my body was holding me back from romantic success,' she said.

Some people did continue to body-shame the 36-year-old but she simply posted a selfie pulling a face.

'To the six people who were so upset by my body they had to leave salty comments, here's another for you. Does this suit your body standards?' she said on the photo.
Budget airline Ryanair has said it expects losses for the last financial year will be lower than it originally forecast, although it still predicts them to be at least 800million.

Its previous guidance estimated losses for the 12 months to March 31, which saw air travel plummet across the world due to the coronavirus crisis, would be between 850million and 950million (or 732million to 818million).

Ryanair now envisions net losses of 689million to 732million, having recorded profits of 1billion the year before, and is not providing profit guidance for the current fiscal year.

Not taking off: Because air travel plummeted across the world due to the coronavirus crisis, the firm envisions net losses for the last financial year of 689million to 732million

The Dublin-based firm thinks there will be a significant revival in business over the next year, but it stated that the sluggish vaccination rates in Europe would damage demand.

Due also to travel curbs and lockdowns during the Easter period and an expected delayed recovery in traffic over the summer, it anticipates passenger numbers will hit the lower end of its earlier guided range of 80 million to 120 million.

Yesterday, Ryanair revealed it only flew 500,000 passengers in March compared to 5.5 million in 2020, when European governments began imposing tighter lockdown restrictions in response to the Covid-19 disease.

Today, it announced that 27.5 million people travelled with them in the last financial year against 148.5 million in the preceding 12 months.

April 2020 saw the biggest year-on-year drop in customer numbers, falling by 99.6 per cent to about 40,000, while July was its best-performing month, although passenger totals still declined by more than half on the same month in 2019.

Chief executive Michael O'Leary has strongly criticised the policy of lockdowns and quarantines because of their impact on the airline and tourism sectors.

Lockdown critic: Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary has strongly criticised the policy of lockdowns and quarantines because of their impact on the airline and tourism sectors

The UK government has banned Britons from going abroad for holidays and instituted limits on staying overnight in domestic accommodation until May 17.

O'Leary has expressed more optimism in recent months following the coronavirus vaccine's rollout, but told ITV's Good Morning Britain last week that it was 'certainly foolhardy' to book a holiday in April or May.

The outspoken boss was one of eight airline industry leaders who sent a letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson last week urging him to give them the green light for international travel within weeks.

In the letter, which was published by the Sun newspaper, CEOs from British Airways, EasyJet, as well as trade body Airlines UK among others, said vaccinated travellers should not be subject to restrictions.

Prohibition: The UK government has banned Britons from travelling abroad for holidays and instituted limits on staying overnight in domestic accommodation until May 17

It added: 'There can be no economic recovery without aviation, and we are confident we have the tools to enable a safe and meaningful restart to air travel in May.'

The group recommended introducing a risk-based 'traffic light' system for overseas travel, where holidaymakers can go to low-risk countries without any 'special requirements.'

In a coronavirus press briefing on Monday, Boris Johnson confirmed that the government was adopting a new traffic light system, as he also advised people to avoid booking foreign holidays 'until the picture is clearer.'

Travellers to countries rated 'green' will be required to have tests both before and after departure but will not need to isolate on return, while visitors to 'amber' or 'red' countries will have to isolate.

Shares in Ryanair were up by 0.4 per cent to 16.87 during the late afternoon today.
According to the company, the project is highly prospective for nickel-sulphide discoveries, including of the Nova magmatic style which was overlooked by previous explorers.

( ) has outlined exploration activities at its 100%-owned East Laverton Nickel Project in Western Australia, which is spread over 400 square kilometres area and has potential to host massive nickel-sulphide deposits of both the magmatic and komatiitic types.

Plans include a 45-day modern ground-based moving-loop electro-magnetic survey (MLEM) with the objective of finding Nova scale conductors.

The company applied for the ground in 2018 with one tenement granted last year and the other two expected to be granted shortly following progress on negotiations of a Heritage Protection agreement with the Nyalpa Pirniku Traditional Owners.

According to GSN, there is a new level of understanding in WA on the formation of nickel-copper sulphides within magmatic rocks, leading to a wave of new discoveries such as the Nova-Bollinger deposit in 2012 and more recently, Legend Mining Ltds ( ) Rockford Project and Chalice Mining Ltds ( ) ( ) Julimar Project.

Highly prospective for nickel-sulphide

GSNs chief executive officer Sean Gregory said: GSNs exploration portfolio is characterised by large prospective landholdings with more than 1,000 square kilometres at Edinburgh Park in North Queensland, more than 450 square kilometres in the Duketon Belt, Laverton and an additional over 400 square kilometres at East Laverton.

East Laverton is highly prospective for nickel-sulphide discoveries, including of the Nova magmatic style which was overlooked by previous explorers who were focused on other commodities and deposit types.

We look forward to the results of the planned ground MLEM survey, which will be the first modern EM over this target and will be aided by an alternative geological interpretation that places the prospective basal contact in the northeast, rather than the southwest.

GSN now has exposure to gold at all of its projects and the added benefit of copper and other metals in North Queensland and also nickel-sulphide at East Laverton.

Planned ground electromagnetic survey

Recent work by leading exploration and geophysical consultants Newexco contends that the basal part of the Diorite Hill ultramafic sequence is in the northeast rather than the southwest as previously thought.

Newexco suggests the next steps to explore the project for massive nickel-sulphide accumulations using a MLEM survey.

Diorite Hill will be tested using 43 400-metre loops at a broad 1,200 x 1,200-metre spacing with four high sensitivity sounds taken 400 metres from the loop centres.

This is designed to detect any conductive sources of a Nova style and scale.
We have people who follow health threats all over the world as they develop. In late 2019, they started to see reports from China of an unusual respiratory disease and they were trying to understand what it might potentially be.

The first meeting I remember about Covid-19 was in early January 2020. My colleagues had previously been looking at what happened with the coronaviruses that cause MERS and SARS. While these hadnt spread to a great extent, we were very aware something like this could emerge as a potential problem.

At this stage it wasnt clear how far this would spread, but we could see what was happening inside China with their lockdowns. Even if the disease had not spread outside China, this was something we were paying attention to because a lot of the active pharmaceutical ingredients for medicines used in Europe come from manufacturers in China. There was the possibility the lockdowns would have an impact on the global supply chain for medicines.

So, the first steps I took in early January were to contact pharmaceutical industry associations so they could start preparing for that disruption. At the same time we were preparing for the possibility the virus would spread.

The EMA has an established public health threat plan that we revamped significantly following the lessons we learned in 2009 with the H1N1 flu pandemic. This meant we had significant planning in place and we very quickly launched the EMAs Task Force (ETF) on Covid-19. This brought together experts on vaccines and therapeutics drugs from all over Europe.

I dont think many of us expected vaccines to advance so soon. At the beginning of the pandemic it seemed more likely it would be therapeutics  the medicines to treat the viral infection  that we would be seeing first.

As a regulatory body, we need specific answers to a range of questions about safety and how effective a medicine or vaccine is before we can authorise them.

We wanted to help developers to build clinical trials that would give us the answers we needed and offered scientific advice very early to help do that. This included what size of clinical trials we might need, what levels of efficacy we would be looking for and what clinical endpoints would be relevant  (for therapeutics this can involve) things like levels of hospitalisation, time spent in hospital, time spent on oxygen, mortality rates.

Its not just the 900 or so EMA staff in Amsterdam who are evaluating the medicines, but we are working with about 4,500 experts from the European Medicines Network. We were also reaching out to other international regulators like the FDA in the US, Health Canada, SwissMedic, MHRA UK and the PMDA in Japan. Covid-19 is a global problem so it was important we were giving the same advice compared to these regulators otherwise it would create confusion and make consistent clinical trials and manufacturing very difficult.

There were a lot of researchers who started small clinical trials with medicines that were already available to see if anything could work to dampen the acute respiratory distress caused by the virus. Often these were not big enough to deliver a result on their own and led to a lot of controversial discussions about hydroxychloroquine, for example.

It was really important that these were tested as part of large, randomised trials capable of giving definitive evidence. In the case of hydroxychloroquine, it turned out it didnt work. But there were others such as dexamethasone (where large clinical trials showed it as effective in treating severe Covid-19) where we quickly reviewed the information so we could deliver a position that could help guide clinical practice in Europe.

But contrary to what the initial expectation was, by the last quarter of 2020 we started to see clinical trial results of vaccines that were showing some really high level of efficacy. Vaccine development had been accelerated to squeeze into less than a year what would normally take 5-15 years of development, but without diminishing the standards.

There were a number of reasons for this: the clinical trials themselves were very large and since the disease itself was so prevalent, they got the numbers needed in a short period of time. Manufacturers also built factories and developed facilities ahead of when they would have normally  there was a large investment at risk, as typically they would wait for the trials to finish.

Once there was a sufficient level of evidence that a vaccine was looking promising, we switched into what we call rolling review. Normally developers wait until they have a complete dossier on all the trials and manufacturing. It comes to us in a big package on what we call day zero, and we start the evaluation process that lasts a year or more.

With rolling review, however, as results from clinical studies, manufacturing data or non-clinical results become available, we ask questions and get them to resolve issues  such as asking them to do different tests or changing things in the manufacturing process. It means by the time we reach what would normally be day zero of the process, we have all the information needed for it to become a formal marketing application, which then only requires a few weeks to a couple of months to finalise.

I'm not sure we can maintain this pace of work long-term as we have people working around the clock, but there are definitely lessons about how we work remotely, share information and collaborate that could help us in the future.

For all of us involved in this work, we have been very aware that the timeframes we have been working to are very important. The public health need is enormous and unwavering. We would see numbers of cases and deaths come out day after day, and we naturally want that to change. But at the same time we need to make sure that any of the vaccines and medicines we approve to try to change the situation are safe and that people can trust those medicines. It had to be a careful scientific evaluation.

I'm not sure we can maintain this pace of work long-term as we have people working around the clock. Dr Fergus Sweeney, Head, Clinical Studies and Manufacturing Taskforce, European Medicines Agency

There is a huge sense of pride within the EMA and among the experts who we have worked with that we are all contributing to something that is making a difference on a global scale. And the work done during the pandemic will have long lasting impacts too.

There has been a major step forward in public health in terms of our understanding of vaccines and developing new types of vaccines such as the mRNA vaccines. It has shown (the different vaccine platform technologies) can be quickly adapted, which will be important not only for dealing with new Covid-19 variants we are starting to see emerging, but also for whatever the next pandemic might be. They could be useful in the annual influenza vaccination campaign or for other diseases.

The pandemic has also generated a large amount of information about manufacturing and the efficacy and safety of these vaccine technologies. It has opened up enormous opportunities for public health which would have taken years under normal circumstances.

In the meantime we have other vaccines coming through that we are continuing to assess. We also have a very big job as the various vaccines are given to millions and tens of millions of people to make sure that they continue to be safe  if there are rare events we are picking them up and monitoring for safety. This is something we do for all medicines and vaccines but the scale is very different here.

We also need to understand whether vaccinated people can transmit the virus or not. We are working to (authorise manufacturing sites to) increase vaccine production. At the same time we are also seeing some therapeutics now coming through such as monoclonal antibodies  antibodies produced in the laboratory  that can be used to protect and treat people whove already got an infection. We are still evaluating antiviral medicines and immune system modulators that can help to treat the later phases of serious disease.

We are now just entering a phase where the medical community is trying to understand what the long-term consequences will be for people who have been infected with Covid-19 and are now suffering what is often referred to as long Covid. There seem to be different symptoms in different people and how those people are going to be treated will be a growing issue in the coming years.

There is a lot still to be done and the pandemic is far from finished.

As told to Richard Gray.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

If you liked this article, please consider sharing it on social media.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 19:24:31|Editor: huaxia

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MANILA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Filipinos aged 60 and above can now receive China's Sinovac vaccine after the Philippines' Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allowed its use for senior citizens on Wednesday.

"After considering the recommendation of the (vaccine) experts and the current situation of high COVID-19 transmission and limited available vaccines, the FDA is allowing the use of Sinovac on senior citizens," FDA Director General Enrique Domingo said in a statement.

Domingo added that the vaccination "should be preceded by an evaluation of the person's health status and exposure risk to assure that benefits of vaccination outweigh risks."

The Philippines kicked off its vaccination drive on March 1, a day after China's first batch of donated COVID-19 vaccines arrived in Manila.

The Philippines, with a population of about 110 million, now has 819,164 confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 14,059 deaths. Enditem
The European garment sector is increasingly concerned about how the six-day stranding of the 400-metre-long Ever Given cargo ship in the Suez Canal will affect its supply chain. It has also been assessing the lessons for future contingency plans regarding such cargo transport pinch-points.

Most garments imported into Europe reach the continent by ship, the majority in containers from Asia through the narrow Suez Canal, which is just 205 metres wide and links the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. The Ever Given became stuck on 23 March on its way to Rotterdam from Malaysia and was freed on 29 March.

Despite this success, ports and logistics companies across Europe are bracing for container traffic congestion as the hundreds of Europe-bound vessels that were stuck below the 193km long Suez Canal are all set to arrive simultaneously in the coming days.

Another wave of container ships is expected to arrive several days afterwards, when vessels that circumvented the logjam by rerouting via the Cape of Good Hope arrive. This route takes Asia to Europe traffic 26 days longer to arrive and pushes ships past the treacherous and sometimes dangerous waters south of the Cape, off South Africa.

Industry observers speaking to just-style.com predict the main impact on the European garment sector will be caused by the looming container congestion in European ports, delaying bookings for export containers that head back to Asia. This, in turn, means that the containers will not be in Asia when they are needed.



The immediate impact of the Ever Given mishap is not going to be dramatic for the clothing supply chain, as the spring-summer collection had already arrived and is on its way to be distributed to retailers, says Tanja Croonen, a spokeswoman for German clothing-makers association, GermanFashion.

But the autumn-winter collection is due to be shipped out of China in May, and the containers needed for that might not be available in Chinese ports by then.

Croonen adds the disruption also comes at a particularly sensitive time, given the upheaval caused by the Covid-19 pandemic to retail sales and associated supply chains. The latest data shows Germanys clothing sales dropped by a whopping 50% year-on-year in January due to lockdown measures. Freight costs had already been hovering at high levels, owing to the global logistics sector suffering from manpower and container shortages caused by Covid-19 lockdowns that began in early 2020.

UK-based maritime research consultancy Drewry predicts there will now be a rush by companies to use air freight to avoid stock-outs, shipping capacity shortages and further increases in shipping transport costs. The cost to industry is hard to forecast, but it will run into tens of millions of dollars, Philip Damas, Drewrys managing director  head of supply chain advisors, said in a note.

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Unsurprisingly, the UK Fashion & Textile Association (UKFT) is growing uneasy, too.

Huge amounts of fashion and textiles are moved around the world by ship and much of it passes through the Suez Canal, says UKFT CEO Adam Mansell. We cant be precisely sure of the impact at this stage, but we are monitoring the situation closely.

Container wave

Ports across Europe are now preparing for the arrival of the container wave. Germanys largest port Hamburg is in the process of renting an additional 100,000 square metres to store containers. Trucks bringing in containers loaded with export goods have been instructed to not arrive earlier than 48 hours prior to an exporting vessels arrival.

Similarly, the Port of Antwerp in Belgium has set up a seven day timeframe within which export containers for Middle East and Far East bound vessels are accepted. The Port of Piraeus in Greece has shifted to cargo handling on a 24-hour basis for as long as necessary.

Longer-term impact

The longer-term impact of the big backlog at the Suez Canal is still evolving, according to Nexxiot, a Switzerland-based company that places real-time tracking devices on containers to enable customers to navigate bottlenecks through last-minute adjustments.

Nexxiots co-founder Daniel MacGregor told just-style that additional capacity on so-called New Silk Road trains on rail routes augmented by Chinas belt-and-road infrastructure investment policies remains too limited to make a mark on the problem. Meanwhile, air freight capacity also remains limited due to the suspension of passenger flights that usually carry the bulk of global air cargo flows in aircraft bellies.

Another contributor to the insufficient logistics capacity  making accidents such as the Ever Green blockage more damaging  is the shift towards more end-consumer freight resulting from people ordering goods directly from China via online platforms, MacGregor says. For fashion, this leads to a speed-up of trend cycles, and whenever there is a supply side delay such as the one caused by Ever Given, the wholesalers and retailers get real problems with managing the trend cycles.

MacGregor adds this is especially the case for companies that use vessels as floating warehouses, a move that has been accelerating in recent years amid the growing preference towards using ever-larger vessels. The Ever Given, for instance, can carry up to 20,000 containers.

US implications

The disruption caused by its running aground amidst high winds and a sandstorm is likely to be felt in the US as well as Europe. Satish Jindel, president of ShipMatrix, a Pennsylvania-based shipment technology provider, predicts that the delay in Europe-Asia container shipping will reduce the availability of ocean and air freight containers globally, which will also lead to higher costs for North American companies.

Nevertheless, it is currently not the peak season for anyone in the clothing industry, so apparel-makers will probably not be willing to pay a premium for shifting from ocean to air freight, Jindel says.

In the longer term, the Ever Given fallout should lead to a shift away from very large vessels generally and to an extra charge for very large vessels at the Suez Canal specifically, he adds.

Will the accident increase the pressure on European garment brands to increase near-shoring sourcing, to reduce their vulnerability to such logistics bottlenecks?

GermanFashions Croonen is not convinced that the Ever Green incident will push brands to buy more product in Eastern Europe and North Africa instead of Asia. Eastern Europe suffers from a serious shortage of workers felt by industries across the sector, and even though there had been some talk in the past about bringing production to Northern Africa, latest data are not showing any momentum.

For further just-style insight on the grounding of the Ever Given and the implications for global trade, click on the following links:
The troubled visa program intended to help Afghans and Iraqis who aided U.S. forces by serving as translators or in other civilian jobs is still failing them, a new study found -- and may actually "be doing more harm than good."

The U.S. government's inability to effectively run the Special Immigrant Visa program and follow through on the promises it made to many workers has badly damaged its reputation in Afghanistan, according to the report.

More than 18,000 Afghan applicants, along with more than 45,000 of their immediate family members, had received U.S. visas as of 2020, according to the report, "The Costs of Working with Americans in Afghanistan: The United States' Broken Special Immigrant Visa Process."

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But serious problems with the visa program's application process and bureaucratic red tape have left another 18,800 applicants stuck in a backlog, the report said -- and the lives of thousands of those applicants are still at risk.

The report, released Monday, was produced as part of the Costs of War project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Researchers interviewed more than 150 visa applicants and recipients since 2016, and reviewed other studies on the program.

The visa program is "well-intentioned" and benefits those who can successfully navigate the process, the report said. But the way it is set up puts applicants' lives at risk and "leaves them vulnerable to exploitation before, during and after the process," it added.

As applicants wait in Kabul, desperate for a way to speed up the process, they risk being taken advantage of by alleged "travel agents" or other brokers who promise they will help, the report found. In some cases, those brokers offer to sell forged threatening letters, purportedly from the Taliban, to help them prove they are in danger; they can charge applicants hundreds of U.S. dollars for help.

Applicants can also be targeted by criminal groups who think they are wealthy, or political groups because they worked with Americans or are viewed as having a weak commitment to Islam, the report said.

The U.S. lacks a coherent, effective strategy to support the local workers who put their lives on the line to help Americans, the report said. That, combined with America's failure to put the program in place as it was originally envisioned, leaves many applicants stranded in Afghanistan or elsewhere, in danger of being attacked by the Taliban or other criminal groups, and at risk of exploitation, researchers concluded.

But even those who do obtain a visa are often disappointed by the lack of support they find once they make it to the United States and resettle, the report found. The program needs to do much more to prepare visa recipients and their families for the challenges they will face in the U.S., such as finding jobs, and support them after they arrive, it added.

The U.S. set up the Special Immigrant Visa program in 2008 to help Iraqi translators who worked for the U.S. military during the war there. A parallel program in Afghanistan soon followed, first to help Afghans who served as translators, and then other civilians who did other jobs for the U.S. for at least two years.

With many Afghans who worked for or otherwise supported Americans facing "life or death" threats from insurgent or criminal groups, making them not even safe in their own homes, such a program is vital, the report said.

And as the U.S. weighs whether to withdraw its remaining troops -- estimated to number roughly 3,500 -- from Afghanistan as part of a negotiated peace process with the Taliban, Afghans facing a fractured and stalled visa process could face even more danger this year, the report said.

But the visa program is slow and inefficient and typically takes more than two years to process applications, it found. From the start, the program struggled to keep up with the pace of applications, and the State Department has been slow to process them.

Staffing problems at the State Department regularly hamper the special visa process for Afghans. A State inspector general report last year found that as the number of applications increased since 2016, staffing levels at State offices that process them remained unchanged and were not enough to cut the backlog. State's IG said that officials in the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa Unit estimate they would need at least 50 more staff members to fix the backlog and issue visas within nine months.

As of 2019, the Costs of War report said, State had just one analyst running security checks for the entire 18,000-applicant backlog. And between 2017 and 2020, it said, the role of senior coordinator to oversee the whole process remained vacant.

Several computer systems needed during the interagency and security check processes also can't talk to each other, further slowing down processing at all stages.

These delays can be fatal. The report said that at least hundreds of Afghans who were awaiting visas have already been killed for their work with Americans, and the lives of thousands more are at risk.

The visa program is viewed by many in Afghanistan as "largely ineffective," the report found. Afghans who were interviewed saw the program's shortcomings as evidence of America's lack of commitment to those who had helped them -- at best.

At worst, the interviews found, Afghans saw the failings of the visa process as evidence of corruption. Often, the report said, paying an agent for help was the only way for an Afghan to get a visa.

The U.S.' inability to promptly help Afghans who worked with the military find new homes is markedly different from the situation at the end of the Vietnam War, according to the report. Then, more than 100,000 Vietnamese who had worked with or otherwise allied with the U.S. government were flown to Guam, and then usually granted permission to immigrate to the United States.

But in Afghanistan, the U.S. government made no similar efforts to protect friendly Afghans. Several applicants who came from rural areas were forced to move to Kabul to wait for interviews and medical examinations, at considerable expense and increased risk.

Afghan applicants -- both those who were successful and unsuccessful -- told interviewers that the bureaucratic procedures and paperwork are confusing, and getting the right documents proves difficult. In many cases, Afghans have had a hard time getting a letter of recommendation from their U.S. employer, since those supervisors turn over quickly and can be hard to get in touch with once they are no longer in Afghanistan.

Some applicants have a hard time proving they are in danger, the report said. Those who receive a threatening "Night Letter" from the Taliban often have the most success. But other applicants said their threats came verbally, to family members from Taliban-connected neighbors, or were ambiguous.

And with the process proving so slow, confusing, and expensive, the report said, Afghan applicants found themselves unable to make decisions about the future, such as whether to sell land or a home.

President Joe Biden in February issued an executive order calling for a review of the Afghan and Iraqi visa programs. But, the report said, while the review is a good start, it must take a closer look at the real, on-the-ground problems Afghans face with the program and the costs they suffer or it will likely result only in "bureaucratic tinkering" that doesn't truly fix things.

The report recommended that the U.S. rethink how the program defines threats applicants face, and the service they provided, and how applicants can prove each. And the program needs to do a better job differentiating between applicants who face a serious threat and those who are in lesser danger, the report said.

It also suggested temporarily moving those applicants who are in the most danger to another, more secure country, as happened after Vietnam.

And it recommended that the U.S. government create a database of contractors in conflict zones to help process applicants after future conflicts. This would allow applicants to quickly prove they had worked for the United States, and more easily contact former employers, the report said.

-- Stephen Losey can be reached at stephen.losey@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @StephenLosey.

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A fallen tombstone in an old cemetery on a farm outside Rectortown marks the grave of a man who killed a neighbor in 1859 and set in motion events that made a little blue-eyed, flaxen-haired enslaved girl a poster child for abolition during the Civil War.

In 1863, when Fannie Lawrence was 5, a famed abolitionist preacher in New York had her pose Shirley Temple-like in fancy dresses, then the photos were sold to raise money from sympathizers of the movement.

The Library of Congress has an online exhibit on Fannie Lawrence. And her tale is detailed in a 2015 account, A Sad Story of Redemption, written by Page Johnson, editor of a newsletter for Historic Fairfax City, a group dedicated to preserving local heritage.

Johnson drew largely on the 1893 autobiography of Catherine S. Lawrence, an ardent anti-slavery and temperance crusader from upstate New York who had come to Virginia to nurse Union soldiers at a tent hospital on the grounds of the Episcopal Seminary in Alexandria.

Fannie and two older sisters, Viana and Sally, were among several children of three enslaved women who had been impregnated by their owner, Charles Rufus Ayres. He was a wealthy young Virginian who studied at Yale and the University of Virginia to practice law, but instead owned a mill and farmed 500 acres outside Rectortown with at least 12 enslaved workers.

Despite his dependency on slavery, he was a Union man, Johnson wrote, and in his will, the 32-year-old Ayres promised the three women their freedom and money for them to move north and to pay for their childrens education when he died.

The 1857 will came into force sooner than Ayres could have imagined. A bitter quarrel with a neighbor, William Wesley Phillips, over a gate ended in an exchange of gunfire on Nov. 11, 1859. Ayres  whose shot missed  was mortally wounded by Phillips and his 18-year-old son, Samuel, who also fired. Father and son were convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to three years in the state penitentiary in Richmond, which was soon to be the capital of the Confederacy.

Ayres testamentary wishes did not go to plan. The women -- including Fannies mother, Mary Fletcher, who had still-enslaved children in the area -- at first forsook freedom and elected to remain in Virginia, living with Ayres kindly mother. When she died, Fannie, Viana, Sallie and many others escaped Rectortown, eluded Confederate patrols and wild hogs for more than 40 miles, and made it safely behind Union lines to Fort Williams in Alexandria near the seminary.

According to Lawrences autobiography, Viana, at 10 or 12 the eldest sister, pleaded for her to adopt 4-year-old Fannie. The nurse agreed to temporarily take the beautiful child and I soon became very much attached to her.

Lawrence wound up keeping her and taking her to New York, where she had Fannie christened at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn by the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Toms Cabin. Beecher paraded the redeemed slave child, as he called her, before his congregation, baptized her as Fannie Virginia Casseopia Lawrence and took up a collection reportedly of $1,200, although Lawrence said she never received any of the money. He warned that her light skin put her in danger of being abused by slavemasters or sold into prostitution.

Look upon this child, the preacher urged. Tell me, have you ever seen a fairer, sweeter face? This is a sample of the slavery which absorbs into itself everything fair and attractive. The loveliness of this child would only make her so much more valuable as a chattel.

He sent Fannie to the studio of a Brooklyn photographer to pose in formal dresses, sometimes with her adoptive mother. The daguerreotypes, photographs developed on special silvered plates, were mounted on cartes de visite, calling cards that were popular in that era, and sold to abolitionist sympathizers. Fannie posed at least 17 times in Brooklyn and elsewhere.

The cards were wildly popular in the North, making Fanny the most photographed slave child in history, Johnson wrote in A Sad Story of Redemption.

Lawrence took Fannie on tours to sing at churches and may have profited herself from sales of the cards.

The story has no happy ending for Fannie or her sisters. Lawrence went back to Virginia to retrieve Viana and Sallie with the idea of placing them in good Christian families in New York who promised to educate them. Instead, they used them as servants. Sallie died of consumption in 1867. Viana lived just four years more.

Fannie reached adulthood, but against her adoptive mothers wishes married one whom I opposed, knowing his reckless life rendered him wholly unfit for her, Lawrence said. The husband abandoned Fannie with an infant daughter, leaving them to destitution. When Fannie died, her double orphan child was left unprotected and unprovided for, only as far as the small savings of her mothers hard labor will go.

My three Southern children are all laid away, for which I thank my heavenly Father, Lawrence wrote in the autobiography, titled Sketch of the Life and Labors of Miss Catherine S. Lawrence, Who in Early Life Distinguished Herself as a Bitter Opponent of Slavery and Intemperance.

The Civil War nurse died at 84 in 1904.

After serving his prison term, Phillips farmed his land without slaves and died in 1876 at 51. He lies near a second toppled stone marking the grave of a neighbor, William Fletcher, who died in 1856. It is not known whether Fannies mother, Mary Fletcher, belonged to William Fletcher.

After the deadly quarrel, Ayres, Fannies father, was given a large funeral and interred in a churchyard cemetery in Rectortown.

As for the most photographed slave child, it isnt known how or when Fannie died or where she is buried.

Christopher Connell is a freelance writer, working with the Piedmont Journalism Foundation.
Apple's iPhone flagships are currently dominating the smartphone market, thanks to the tech giant company's new features that certainly make users' experience better than ever.

However, phone analysts claim that people can still further improve their iPhone experience.

All they need to do is change some of the smartphone's settings.

According to CNET's latest report, Apple's newest iPhone SE and iPhone 12 smartphones can deliver an all-around excellent experience for many users.

Right now, all these products are already using the giant tech firm's latest iPhone system, iOS 14, which offers an overflowing advantage features. On the other hand, iOS 14.5, the upcoming system version of the iPhone, will soon arrive.

Once it is released, iPhone users can expect improved face unlock, new Siri voices, and more enhancements.

Since it is still in the process, here are the settings you can change to improve your smartphone experience.

iPhone Settings you should change

Turning off iPhone's 5G coverage

The first thing you need to do is go to your mobile's Settings app. After that, you need to click the Cellular Data option and go to advanced options. Once you are there, all you need to do is tap the Voice & Data option then click LTE.

Also Read: LG Officially Announces Scrapping of Smartphone Production, To Focus Instead on 6G Technology, Smart TV

Allow all notifications on iPhone's lock screen

To do this, you need to go to your Settings app. After that, you must click the Notifications option and go to Show Previews section. Once you are there, you can now click the Always to show all your notifs on your device's lock screen.

Fancy wallpapers

Fancy wallpapers are very easy to access. The first thing you need to do is open your Settings app. Once you are in the Settings section, you can now select the Wallpaper option. After that, you need to turn on the Dark Appearance Dims Wallpaper option. Now, you must choose your wallpaper. Once you have your desired display, you can now click it. These wallpapers also offer Stills and Live versions. If you want to know more details, you can click this link to see other settings you can change.

Other iPhone tricks you can try

Aside from the mentioned settings, Pocket Link stated that there are also some tricks you can try to make your iPhone experience more enjoyable. Here are some of them.

Adding widgets to your device's home screen

Preventing new apps from appearing on your home screen

Changing email apps and default browser

Using the back of your iPhone to take screenshots

Removing the entire home screens

Making a custom dark mode schedule

For those users who want to see the exact steps on how to do these tricks, all you need to do is click here.

For more news updates about iPhone tricks and other smartphone guides, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

Related Article: Future iPhones May Predict When it Is Likely to Run Out of Charge, Plus New Underwater Features

This article is owned by TechTimes

Written by: Giuliano de Leon

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Samsung and MediaTek have announced a partnership to bring WiFi 6E enabled 8K TV later this year. This is not the first time both companies are collaborating as they have worked previously to launch the worlds first WiFi 6 enabled 8K TV as well. The Samsung 8K QLED Y21 smart TV is powered by the MediaTek MT7921AU chipset and offers improved connectivity.

Consumers depend on fast, reliable connectivity, whether they are using their TV for streaming, gaming or following along with workouts. Our collaboration with Samsung has been instrumental in bringing consumers the latest smart TV technology to support these uses and beyond. With our advanced connectivity technologies  including WiFi-6 support  integrated into Samsungs 8K TVs, were driving the premium smart TV segment forward globally, said Jerry Yu, MediaTek Corporate Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Intelligent Devices Business Group.

MediaTeks latest chipset brings in support for WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 offering upto 1.2Gbps data throughput that allows uninterrupted streaming and gaming sessions. Furthermore, the WiFi 6E offers significant gains over the previous generation such as faster multi-gigabit data throughput, ultra-low latencies and the latest security features.

Hows WiFi 6E different from WiFi 6?

The WiFi 6E is the next generation of WiFi standard, succeeding the WiFi 6. Unlike WiFi 6 which operates on 2.4GHz and 5GHz radio bands, the WiFi 6E (E stands for Extended) also operates on the 6GHz band. Overall, this helps in minimizing network congestion which could be useful in areas with different networks.

The WiFi 6E has more wireless bands for operating on the 6GHz frequency that ranges from 5.925GHz to 7.125GHz. This results in faster speeds and seamless connectivity features for AR/VR, 8K streaming and more.
Armenian News - NEWS.am presents the daily digest of Armenia-related top news as of 07.04.21:

Armenia ex-President Robert Kocharyan has been acquitted.

After the change of power in Armenia in 2018, the most controversial case of the constitutional order overthrow, or the so-called "March 1" case, collapsed on Tuesday.

Kocharyan, who served as president for a decade, was charged with acting unlawfully during protests in 2018 over his decision to introduce a state of emergency in March 2008 following a disputed election. At least 10 people were killed in clashes between the police and protesters.

Thus, the Court of First Instance, based on the decision of the Constitutional Court to declare Article 300.1 of the Criminal Code unconstitutional and invalid, terminated the criminal prosecution against four former high-ranking officials accused under that article. The court acquitted them and terminated the case.

With this case, a new phase of PM Nikol Pashinyan's three-year rule began back in 2018. Pashinyan had built his 2018 election campaign almost entirely on the promises of inciting hatred against the main defendants in the "March 1" case, in particular, second President Robert Kocharyan.

During the past three years, Robert Kocharyan spent about 500 days in prison. Robert Kocharyan was released three times by the decision of different courts. And even though he did not violate the regulations, the prosecutors were submitting motions to detain him again, and other judges were granting these motions.

The results of the upcoming elections will show what the bloc led by Robert Kocharyan will achieve, but the first major victory of Kocharyan and his team is already a reality: he has been acquitted.

Armenias Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met on Wednesday in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The leaders of the two countries discussed strategic issues on the agenda of Armenian-Russian relationsin particular, trade and economic ties, energy, security, strategic investments, health care.

During the meeting, Putin noted that the volume of trade between Russia and Armenia, which has decreased due to the COVID-19 pandemic, can be restored and increased soon.

Meanwhile, Pashinyan proposed to build a new nuclear power plant in Armenia with the participation of Russia.

Russian president, in turn, noted that the restoration of trade and economic ties and transport routes in Nagorno-Karabakh is the most important task of post-conflict reconstruction in the region and the development of Armenia.

Talking about Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh [Artsakh], Pashinyan noted that the presence of Russian peacekeepers is becoming the most important factor of stability in the region.

The sides also touchef upon the COVID-19 situation amid vaccine supplies. Russian President Armenian PM spoke about Russia-made Sputnik V vaccine supplies to Armenia.

Pashinyan noted that Armenia will receive a batch of Russian vaccine in the coming days. "But that's only 15,000 doses, and we need a million," he noted.

"Our production is being promoted. We are talking about a fairly large volume of production of this drug. So I think we will solve this issue," Putin, in turn, said.

Meanwhile, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu on Wednesday had a phone talk with Armenian Defense Minister Vagharshak Harutyunyan. The defense ministers discussed the situation in connection with settlement in Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as other issues of mutual interest.

The Azerbaijani side has transferred another dead body to the Armenian side.

According to preliminary data, the dead soldier has been a participant in the recent hostilities in Artsakh [Nagorno-Karabakh].

The total number of dead bodies foundor transferred to the Armenian sidefrom the areas now outside Artsakh's jurisdiction ever since the ceasefire last November is now 1,530, and according to preliminary data, 27 of them are of civilians.

The womens action of protest initiated by the opposition VETO movement of Armenia took place in Yerevan on Wednesday. The women were marching from Charles Aznavour Square to the main government building. They tried to enter the building, and as a result, clashes occurred between the police and these protesters.

Fifteen citizens have been apprehended at the government building courtyard.

During the protest, police officers even tried to apprehend Varduhi Ishkhanyan, wife of the opposition Homeland Salvation Movements candidate for Prime Minister of Armenia Vazgen Manukyan.

Police were pulling Ishkhanyan from her hands and neck, but they let her go after being reproached and shamed by the other demonstrators.

From April 8 to 9, Azerbaijan will conduct joint operative-tactical military exercises along with Turkey, the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan reports.

The drills will be conducted at the all-army polygons deployed in various directions of the Azerbaijani army's responsibility zones.

As of Wednesday morning, 1,025 COVID-19 new cases were confirmed in Armenia, and the total number of these cases has reached 198,898 in the country.

Also, 20 more deaths from COVID-19 were registered, making the respective total 3,647 cases.

The number of people who have recovered over the past one day is 626, the total respective number so far is 178,227.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 11)  Local government units in Metro Manila and four adjacent provinces started providing emergency subsidy last week to their residents as they continued to be under enhanced community quarantine.

Almost 23 million beneficiaries from low-income households in Metro Manila, Cavite, Laguna, Bulacan, and Rizal  collectively known as the NCR Plus  are expected to benefit from the government's social amelioration program.

Each qualified resident may receive cash or in-kind assistance of 1,000 each or up to a maximum 4,000 for a family. The amount is described as measly compared to the 5,000 to 8,000 worth of subsidy provided under the Bayanihan to Heal As One Act or Bayanihan 1 in 2020 amid the raging health crisis.

The following are Metro Manila LGUs that have posted information on the schedules of their subsidy distribution as of April 11, Sunday:

Caloocan

The local government of Caloocan started distributing cash aid to qualified beneficiaries on April 7.

Mayor Oscar Malapitan reminded residents to wait for a text message confirming their reference number and schedule before heading to their designated sites to claim their subsidy. Over 1,500 residents per venue will be accommodated per day.

Mandaluyong

Mandaluyong City posted last Tuesday a list of residents eligible for cash aid. Announcements on the schedule of distribution will be done by their respective barangay offices, the city government said.

Manila City

The local government of Manila started the rollout of its cash aid for residents on April 6. Distribution is scheduled per district. Members of the Tricycle Operators and Drivers' Association are also included in the list.

Marikina

Marikina Public Information Office has posted the schedule of distribution and beneficiaries who will get the subsidy for 14 barangays from April 12 to 15.

The local government already started the rollout of aid for residents of Barangay Kalumpang and San Roque on April 9.

Paranaque

Social Welfare Secretary Wendel Avisado and Interior Secretary Jonathan Malaya spearheaded the first day of cash payout in Paranaque on April 7.

Some 1,800 beneficiaries were initially identified, but the city government said over 155,000 households are being targeted to get aid.

Pasay

Pasay City Public Information Office announced on Tuesday that residents must coordinate with their barangays to check their eligibility for cash aid. A schedule for payout will be provided.

For senior citizens and persons with disability, representatives of the City Treasury Office will go to their residences to deliver their aid.

Pateros

The Pateros local government will start providing cash aid to its beneficiaries on April 12, according to Mayor Miguel Ponce.

Quezon City

Quezon City started the distribution of its cash aid to 40 barangays which were directly hit by stricter lockdown rules. Residents must coordinate with their barangays to check their eligibility.

Only 2,000 beneficiaries can be accommodated for each distribution center per day, starting 11 a.m.

San Juan City

San Juan City started the rollout of its financial aid on April 8, Thursday at 10 a.m., according to Mayor Francis Zamora. The first distribution took place at the St. Joseph Barangay Hall.

Zamora said the list of beneficiaries was from the Social Welfare Department and covers beneficiaries of last year's cash aid program, as well as those who were waitlisted, and families included under the 4Ps program.

Each head of the family will receive P1,000 for each member of the family up to a maximum of four members or a maximum of P4,000 per household. Up to 50 individuals will be allowed in the distribution venue every hour to avoid overcrowding, the mayor added.

Taguig

The local government of Taguig also started the provision of cash assistance to its residents on Wednesday.

Distribution is also scheduled per barangay. Qualified beneficiaries must enforce health protocols when getting to their designated sites.

Valenzuela

Qualified beneficiaries from Valenzuela may go to their designated sites to get their subsidy. Schedule of payout for each barangay is posted on the local government's Facebook page. Rollout started on April 8.

Other LGUs in Cavite, Laguna, Rizal and Bulacan have also started distributing aid to their residents onsite. However, cities like Binan and Sta. Rosa in Laguna opted to conduct a house-to-house distribution to reduce transmission. Residents must only provide a photocopy of their ID and cash aid forms once the distribution team drops by their residence.

Budget Secretary Wendel Avisado has said 11.2 million Metro Manila residents will receive the supplemental aid, along with 3 million residents of Bulacan, 2.6 million from Rizal, 2.7 million from Laguna, and 3.4 million from Cavite.

This story will be updated as more information on the subsidy rollout on other areas comes in.
The Air Force's new F-15EX fourth-plus generation fighter has been named the Eagle II in a salute to its predecessor, the F-15 Eagle, officials said during an unveiling ceremony Wednesday.

The announcement was made by Lt. Gen. Mike Loh, Air National Guard director; Lt. Gen. Duke Richardson, military deputy for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics; and Leanne Caret, president and chief executive officer of Boeing Defense, Space & Security at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, where the first F-15EX is undergoing test and evaluation.

"The arrival of these aircraft is very timely," Loh said during the ceremony. "We must ensure that we have the most capable combat aircraft defending our shores during this time of great power competition."

Air Force fighters including the F-15, F-16 Fighting Falcon and the F-22 Raptor often are tasked with addressing airspace violations and intercepting aircraft approaching U.S. airspace.

Read Next: Drone-Ception: Valkyrie Drone Launches Mini-Drone in New Air Force Test

The F-15EX is the service's first fourth-generation fighter program in more than 20 years.

The Boeing-made fighter completed its maiden flight at St. Louis Lambert International Airport, Missouri, in February.

Following the successful flight, the Air Force accepted the first F-15EX at Eglin March 10; the second is expected to arrive this month. The remaining six aircraft should be delivered in fiscal 2023, according to the service.

Last year, the Air Force awarded Boeing an estimated $1.2 billion contract to build the multirole F-15EX fighter, using the same design as the F-15, but incorporating modernized electronics and technology.

The contract covers eight jets, including initial design; development, test and certification; spare parts and support equipment; training and technical data; and delivery and sustainment costs.

According to Boeing, the F-15EX will be able to "launch hypersonic weapons up to 22 feet long and weighing up to 7,000 pounds." The company has said the fighter will be equipped with improved avionics and radars and can carry more than two dozen air-to-air missiles. By comparison, F-15s can carry a mixed load of four AIM-9 Sidewinder and four AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile, or eight AMRAAMs.

Equipped with "the world's fastest mission computer," the F-15EX will also feature the Eagle Passive/Active Warning and Survivability System, or EPAWSS, which will heighten its threat assessment abilities and survivability with advanced electronic warfare technology, Boeing said in its release.

The first eight F-15EX aircraft will be based at Eglin because of the testing wing at the base. Following operational tests at Eglin, the first plane will be operated by the Air National Guard, Loh said.

The service has said the aircraft's most significant upgrade will be its open mission systems architecture, allowing software to be upgraded and installed more easily.

Officials voiced concerns in 2017 about the aging F-15.

"We are already having serious problems with that airframe, with metal fatigue within the longerons on the side of the aircraft," then-Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said during a May 2019 forum.

Richardson on Wednesday said that 75% of the older F-15 C/D fleet is flying "well beyond" its service life.The service has more than 230 C and D models in its inventory, with an average lifespan of 35 years.

The Air Force expects to keep a mix of fourth- and fifth-generation aircraft through the 2030s, officials have said.

In 2019, senior defense officials with the Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office said they opted to pursue the F-15EX because the aircraft would help keep a diverse and "robust industrial base" while providing "a higher-capacity" combination alongside the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

The Air Force intends to build an inventory of at least 144 F-15EX aircraft over the next decade, but the contract with Boeing gives the Air Force the option to purchase up to 200.

The service is developing a "TacAir study," which will determine the right mix of aircraft for the future inventory and assess how future fighter concepts will fit into the current mix of fourth- and fifth-generation fighters.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles "CQ" Brown said in February this could include bringing on another new fighter jet to replace the 40-year-old F-16.

-- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @Oriana0214.

Related: Air Force General: Field This Next-Gen Fighter in Time to Beat China
Biden, for example, suggested that the law would close polling places at 5 p.m. It wont. As is already the law, local governments must keep polling places open until 5 p.m. and can keep them open until 7 p.m. (CNNs Daniel Dale and The Posts Glenn Kessler have both laid out Bidens incorrect assertions.)

The entire existence of the legislation in question is premised on a pernicious lie, The Bulwarks Tim Miller wrote. But for some reason Biden & many other Dems are grossly exaggerating the specifics of what it actually does. In some cases, Democrats appear to be talking about provisions that the Georgia legislature considered but did not include.

What about the impact of the provisions that really are in the law? Thats inherently uncertain. But The Timess Nate Cohn has argued that the effects will be smaller than many critics suggest. He thinks it will have little effect on overall turnout or on election outcomes.

He points out that the law mostly restricts early voting, not Election Day voting. Early voters tend to be more highly educated and more engaged with politics. They often vote no matter what, be it early or on Election Day. More broadly, Nate argues that modest changes to voting convenience  like those in the Georgia law  have had little to no effect when other states have adopted them.

Of course, Georgia is so closely divided that even a small effect  on, say, turnout in Atlanta  could decide an election. And the law has one other alarming aspect, as both Nate and The Atlanta Journal-Constitutions Patricia Murphy have noted: It could make it easier for state legislators to overturn a future election result after votes have been counted.

The bottom line

The new Georgia law is intended to be a partisan power grab. It is an attempt to win elections by changing the rules rather than persuading more voters. Its inconsistent with the basic ideals of democracy. But if its intent is clear, its impact is less so. It may not have the profound effect that its designers hope and its critics fear.

Substacks Matthew Yglesias offers a helpful bit of context: Georgias law is based on a big lie, he writes, which certainly is worrisome. But the impact is likely to be modest, he predicts. And for people worried about the state of American democracy, laws like Georgias are not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that the Electoral College, the structure of the Senate and the gerrymandering of House districts all mean that winning public opinion often isnt enough to win elections and govern the country.
The U.S. Border Patrol's chief patrol agent of the Rio Grande Valley area said that migrant families are sending back their children alone to cross into the United States for another try.

"What we are seeing, more and more, is the families are self-separating in Mexico," Brian Hastings, who leads the busiest Border Patrol sector in the U.S., was quoted in a KVIA report.

There were around 435 incidents on the southern border where children were arrested for crossing the border alone after previously being expelled with their families in compliance with the pandemic health order.

READ NEXT: Defense Department Halts Border Wall Building as It Reviews Biden's Order

Children Alone

One 10-year-old boy was found alone in a field on the morning of April 1 after being left by the group he was traveling with.

Hastings said that the boy had been left for around four hours. When the child woke up, he did not know where he was or where to go.

"It's that I was coming with a group and they abandoned me and I do not know where they are at," the boy said in Spanish, as reported by the Daily Mail.

The agent asked the boy if he had been instructed to come to ask for help. However, the child said no and answered that somebody could abduct him and he does not know where to go.

The CBP did not reveal the child's nationality.

Meanwhile, CBP El Paso sector chief Gloria Chavez said that parents should think about their children's conditions each time they are sent alone to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.

Chavez called on migrant families to reconsider as it is very dangerous to expose the children in the journey to cross the U.S.-Mexico border.

Meanwhile, 40 percent of Americans are disapproving U.S. President Joe Biden's handling of unaccompanied children at the U.S. southern border, while 24 percent approve of Biden's policies.

Thirty-five percent do not have an opinion on the matter, according to a USA Today report.

Addressing Border Crisis

Biden has tasked Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the administration's efforts to address the serious increase in illegal crossing at the border.

The president said that Harris is the most qualified person for the job, noting her work as the state attorney general of California.

Recent reports also said that the Biden administration is eyeing to restart the construction of the southern border wall as gaps left by the sudden stagnation of the project are being used by migrants to illegally enter the U.S.

Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas discussed the plan with the department's employees.

On Feb. 11, Biden has suspended the border wall construction, which was one of former U.S. President Donald Trump's major immigration projects.

The Government Accountability Office launched an inquiry last month in connection to Biden stopping the funding for the border wall construction project.

A public affairs officer for the GAO, Charles Young, said they were probing whether the president legally allowed to end the construction of the border wall.

Meanwhile, CBP and the Health and Human Services are still scrambling to find additional facilities for the migrants.

READ NEXT: Illegal Migrants Deported Back to Mexico Say Biden Fails to Keep His Promise

WATCH: Unaccompanied migrant minors sent to temporary detention centers after crossing into U.S. - from CBS This Morning






United Steelworkers Local 6943 announced Monday that it reached an agreement with management at the Bradken electric arc steel mill in Atchison, Kansas, shutting down the two-week-long strike by about 60 hourly workers.

Workers produce locomotive rail and transit components and assemblies, mining, construction, industrial and military castings and general steel castings at the Atchison mill.

Signs for a Bradken Inc. foundry are displayed next to photos of metal being processed, in Tacoma, Wash. [Credit: AP Photo/Ted S. Warren]

The USW billed the Bradken struggle as an unfair labor practice strike as it has with the ongoing Allegheny Technologies, Inc. (ATI) strike by over 1,300 workers across nine states. The union, meanwhile, raised no concrete demands over wages, health care benefits, safe working conditions, shorter working hours and other vital issues.

From the start, the USW insisted that the strike was for the purpose of convincing corporate management to bargain in good faith. During the first week of the strike in Atchison, Local 6943 President Gregg Welch told the Atchison Globe bluntly that service bargaining and unfair labor practices are why were doing this. Its not about protecting our seniority rights and keeping our senior people working.

The unfair labor practice strike provided the cover needed by the USW to posture as a militant defender of workers rights, while raising no demands that would protect the day-to-day interests of the workers against attacks by management. However, it allowed the USW to continue its corporatist agenda of maintaining a seat at the table with the company in overseeing the exploitation of workers at the mill.

As Welch told MSCNews.net after the contract vote on Monday, [We negotiated management rights] to where I really think the union can have a say in what goes on in the foundry, as far as the union seat at the table in negotiating policies and trainings and things like that.

Bradken-Atchison Vice President of Operations Ken Bean, speaking to the same news outlet declared, Obviously, were excited the strike is over...Were very pleased we were able to work with the USW to make the needed changes to the contract to ensure the viability of Atchison & St. Joseph and position the sites for future success.

Bean is the same corporate officer who was widely denounced by striking workers for issuing a letter encouraging workers to resign from the union in order to cross picket lines to scab during the strike under conditions where the USW had refused to issue strike pay despite sitting on over $150 million in its strike fund. Now, Bean applauds the USW bargaining committee for being so accommodating to Bradkens demands.

Although the strike at Bradken was small and limited by its official character as an unfair labor practice strike, the militancy of the workers at the mill and their support among the working class in the area are a part of a groundswell of working class opposition to the austerity policies of the ruling class worldwide. Under conditions of rising social discontent, even this small spark was enough to make the corporation and the USW bureaucracy very nervous.

The USW was determined not to allow the strike to expand out of its control and link up with the struggles of other sections of workers. The USW consciously blacked out information on negotiations from the press. It isolated workers from their brothers and sisters at ATI, whose strike coincided with the struggle at Bradken for nearly one week. Along with the United Mine Workers of America, it has isolated steelworkers from 1,100 striking mineworkers at Warrior Met Coal in Alabama.

When Bradken brought strikebreakers across the picket lines to continue production, the USW took no substantive measures to mobilize the working class to stop production, weakening the position of the workers. Neither did the USW mobilize any real fight against intimidation tactics employed by Bradken, such as working with the local government to hire local cops to intimidate workers around the plant and placing restraining orders limiting pickets on city sidewalks.

Since adopting the policy of corporatism in the 1980s, like other unions, the USW has worked openly as a partner with company managers in increasing the competitiveness and economic viability of the corporations under conditions of deepening economic crisis. At ArcelorMittal, US Steel, and other major corporations, it has set up join labor-management committees in which it plays a role by offering to suppress the struggles of workers in return for cushy jobs and other perks.

Voting on the contract concluded Monday at the Atchison Event Center, but there is no indication of how many members voted for or against the contract, and under what conditions voting took place. Unlike the contract struggles of workers at US Steel and (former) ArcelorMittal USA in 2018, the USW did not even report any highlights of the contract in the press or on its social media pages or official web page.

During the strike workers contacted by the World Socialist Web Site stated that they were unaware of any concrete demands in the contract, but had only been told that management was trying to take away the unions collective bargaining rights. As one worker said, They are basically changing all the management rights to eventually kill our union, seniority, and what I feel [are] basic human rights.

Workers have every right to organize a fight based on what they need, irrespective of what company management or their USW partners say they are willing to give. This requires the building of an independent rank-and-file committee democratically controlled by the workers themselves.

Any claims by management that there is no money are a patent lie. Bradken is a subsidiary of Hitachi Construction Machinery Co., which recorded $2.27 billion in gross profit in 2020, a drop from $2.68 billion in 2019, but still well above its 2017 gross profit of $1.57 billion. Bradken is incorporated in the state of Delaware, a notorious tax haven. Bradkens other North American plant in Tacoma, Washington, is also very profitable, as the US Navys leading supplier of high-yield steel for its submarines.

In spite of its efforts, the USW was unable to keep the struggles of the Bradken workers and ATI workers totally isolated. The WSWS was and continues to be the only organization fighting to link these struggles together and connect workers across workplaces and industries, as well as state and national boundaries, in a common struggle for their demands against the capitalist system.

At the ATI picket lines, a worker at the ATI Vandergrift plant near Pittsburgh told WSWS reporters that they were in solidarity with the Bradken workers, adding, They have my full support.

The outcome of the Bradken strike is a warning to ATI workers. Important lessons have to be drawn from this struggle. In the first place, workers must recognize that the USW is not a workers organization. It has not been for decades, and it cannot be transformed into one. It exists as an arm of corporate management, and the outcome of the Bradken struggle reveals this quite nakedly.

On the other hand, steelworkers have powerful allies in the international working class. The USW and other unions, as well as the Democratic and Republican parties, constantly pit workers against one another in different workplaces, industries and in different countries. Workers must reject the notion that other workers are their competitors and recognize that all are part of a common struggle against the same capitalist class enemy. To break from the isolation that the unions seek to impose, workers must elect rank-and-file committees to organize their struggles and decide democratically on a set of demands based on their needs, linking up with other workers in a powerful movement to fight for them.

Last, workers must reject the pro-capitalist program of the trade unions and their subordination to the big business Democratic and Republican parties. Only socialism can achieve equality for the working class, a system in which the workers themselves control production and distribution of the goods that they produce, to meet the needs of society and not the profit interests of a few.

This is a political struggle. As much as it requires that workers break with the unions and the two pro-corporate political parties, it also requires the vast productive forces of society to be reorganized on a high principle: socialism, production for human need, not profit, under the democratic control of the working class.

To organize a rank-and-file committee at your workplace, contact workers@wsws.org today.
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Walk past Alliance Morgan McKinzie High School in East Los Angeles and you might notice a striking image of a muscled man shielding himself from a rain of swords. It's one of 19 sections in "The Story of Our Struggle," an eleven-foot-high, five-foot-long fired-ceramic tile mural that charts Chicano history from pre-Columbian times to the present. In rich jewel tones, it depicts Aztec civilization, the Spanish conquest of Mexico and the loss of Mexican land to the United States. Although sweeping in its subject matter, the work is as much a personal reckoning as a cultural one.

The mural was created by artist and educator Johnny D. Gonzalez, aka Don Juan. Born in 1943 in the Mexican state of Aguascalientes, he came to California as a young child. Unable to speak English, he was ridiculed by his schoolmates for his thick accent.

"My introduction to the country was fear of being beaten up because I was Mexican. My brother was getting beaten so, being five years old, I didn't want anybody to know that I was born in Mexico," Gonzalez says.

The reconstructed "The Story Of Our Struggle" mural at Alliance Morgan McKinzie High School in East Los Angeles. (Chava Sanchez/LAist)

Growing up in East L.A. in the 1950s and '60s, he took little pride in his Mexican heritage and, like many immigrants, he worked hard to assimilate.

Music and art were his salvation. "His mom said that he was drawing before he could walk," says his partner, the multi-talented Irma Beserra Nunez. She serves as the Vice President of the L.A. City Human Relations Commission, the Co-Chair, Lead Advocate, and Artist Spokesperson for the Coalition To Save The First Street Store: Chicano Historical Monument and as a cultural educator.

Irma Bessera Nunez and Johnny D. Gonzalez fought hard to preserve his mural, "The Story Of Our Struggle," which covered the facade of the old First Street Store in East Los Angeles. A recreated version of the mural now covers the facade of Alliance Morgan McKinzie High School. (Chava Sanchez/LAist)

As a young man, Gonzalez illustrated advertisements and played in the popular rock band Leggeriors. Although he loved music and drawing, he wanted more. "My dream was always to travel," he says.

Gonzalez had been obsessed with geography books since childhood. He loved looking at pictures of foreign monuments such as the Great Wall of China.

Alienated by the racism he experienced growing up, Gonzalez had avoided becoming an American citizen until the late '60s when he realized the benefits of having a U.S. passport. "I became an American citizen so I could leave the country," Gonzalez laughs.

In the fall of 1969, he hopped on the R.H.M.S. ELLINIS, an ocean liner headed to Europe. To pass the time on the nine-day journey, Gonzalez played his guitar. His fellow travelers -- a mix of Europeans, old hippies and East Coast residents -- began asking him to play the Mexican folk songs he had learned as a child.

"I was shocked that they knew about these songs and I was amazed that I knew two languages. They said, 'Could you translate what it means? Because we grew up hearing these songs but we didn't know what they meant.' I became a celebrity on the ship," Gonzalez says.

Three sections of the reconstructed "The Story Of Our Struggle" mural at Alliance Morgan McKinzie High School in East Los Angeles. (Chava Sanchez/LAist)

Over the next four months, he travelled to 14 countries, enthralled by Gothic and Renaissance architecture as well as artworks like Lorenzo Ghiberti's "Gates of Paradise" and Michelangelo's "Tomb of the Medicis," both in Florence, Italy.

It was a transformative experience for Gonzalez. "Coming from East L.A. and seeing their architecture and monuments -- all this culture and art -- I thought I had died and gone to art heaven," he says. In Spain, "That was the first time in my life that I felt I was being treated with respect for being Mexican."

He devouring books on the history of Mexico, which he hadn't been taught as a child. "I started thinking, 'Spain comes in to conquer us, and France and then all these different countries. So we're having invasions and then we're weak and then they come and invade us again.' And I started thinking, 'No wonder we haven't progressed. We're always being attacked.' That was my inspiration for 'The Story of Our Struggle.'"

When Gonzalez returned to East L.A., he began working at a fever pitch to draw up plans for a massive East L.A. cultural heritage site called El Monumento de la Raza. In the spring of 1970, he wrote an eight-page initiative, "Project: East L.A. to Tourist Attraction," which stated, "In Europe, all roads lead to Rome. In Southern California, all freeways lead to East Los Angeles."

Three sections of the reconstructed "The Story Of Our Struggle" mural at Alliance Morgan McKinzie High School in East Los Angeles. (Chava Sanchez/LAist)

Gonzalez proposed transforming East L.A. into a cultural destination similar to the ones he had seen in Europe. He began meeting with local leaders and business owners to figure out how to make that happen.

"Scholars [including Dr. Karen Mary Davalos in her article All Roads Lead to East L.A.] have said that it's the first cultural heritage tourism initiative. The key thing about Juan's concept is that it wasn't just murals. It was architecture, monuments, murals and public art. His whole focus was to transform the outdoor physical environment," Nunez says.

Although the project was never realized, Gonzalez and his brother Jose Luis threw themselves into opening what would become Goez Art Studios and Galleries at 3757 East First Street. It was the country's first art studio and apprentice program dedicated to Chicano artists.

The Goez Guide to the Murals of East Los Angeles, 1975, is street map of murals in East Los Angeles, Boyle Heights, City Terrace and El Sereno. (John D. Gonzalez/Los Angeles Public Library Collection)

Gonzalez's cultural awakening coincided with a critical moment in Chicano history.

During the '60s and '70s, Chicano youth around the country, particularly in East Los Angeles, banded together to fight institutionalized racism. High school students staged walkouts (known as blowouts) to protest poor educational opportunities and LAUSD discrimination. The Chicano Moratorium held marches to oppose the Vietnam War as well as boycotts, rallies and protests to support the United Farm Workers, who were fighting for fair wages and humane working conditions. In the book Give Me Life: Iconography and Identity in East Los Angeles, Holly Barnet-Sanchez and Tim Drescher write:

"In East Los, the period elicited a general sense of both desperation and possibility, frustration to the breaking point and the potential of new horizons, with residents daily experiencing both poles of these dialects. Problems included substandard housing, job hiring discrimination, lack of access to insurance, and increasing gang problems on the one hand and police brutality toward Mexican Americans on the other."





The original facade of the First Street Store in East Los Angeles, circa 1950s-1974. (Courtesy of Johnny D. Gonzalez and Irma Beserra Nunez)

"Sometimes a department store is more than a department store. It can be a gathering place and a symbol of economic independence. First Street was all of that for East L.A. It wasn't as fancy as the department stores that once thrived downtown -- May Co., Broadway, Robinson's. But to many on the Eastside -- immigrants without the money for downtown prices -- First Street was a touch of class within walking distance or a short ride. When people said they were 'going to First Street,' it was understood that they meant the store, not the street."





In September 1970, Gonzalez met with Bob Kemp, the owner of the First Street Store . The budget department store, opened in 1924, was where everyone in East L.A. -- at the time a mix of Eastern European, Latino and Asian immigrants -- shopped. According to Hector Becerra of the Los Angeles Times The store was already a consumer landmark. Gonzalez wanted to make it a cultural one.

He presented Kemp with a sketch of "The Story of Our Struggle," which fused Mexican-style murals with European touches and architectural elements from California missions. Kemp loved the idea but was hesitant. Tensions were high in East L.A. due to the killing of civil rights activist and reporter Ruben Salazar during the National Chicano Moratorium March on August 29, 1970.

Kemp held onto the sketch and drafted Gonzalez's studio to create another mural (now lost) inside the store. The job was given to artist Richard Jimenez, a member of the Goez team.

In December of 1973, with tensions in East L.A. temporarily settling down, Kemp finally greenlit "The Story of Our Struggle."

Working with fellow Goez artists Robert Arenivar and David Botello, Gonzalez finalized the design for the murals and the architectural facade. Goez had the tiles made in Guadalajara, Mexico at the studio of ceramicist Joel Suro Olivares.

Framed by arches, the panels told a multi-generational story, illustrating pivotal moments from Mexico's past.

"The Return of Quetzalcoatl" depicted the arrival of Spanish colonizer Hernan Cortez in 1519, whom Aztec leaders supposedly believed was the Mesoamerican god Quetzalcoatl. "Eradication and Absorption of Mexican Culture and Knowledge," a panel that shows a man on a horse tangled up in creeping vines, represents the pain of assimilation. The last panel, "Hope for a Brighter Tomorrow," portrays Chicano men and women looking toward an unseen but hopefully more equitable future.

The completed "Story Of Our Struggle" integrated mural by Johnny D. Gonzalez, David Botello and Robert Arenivar at the First Street Store in East Los Angeles. (Courtesy of Johnny D. Gonzalez and Irma Beserra Nunez)

Once completed, "The Story of Our Struggle" attracted national attention and inspired more murals around East L.A.

A story in the April 7, 1975 issue of Time magazine described the "East L.A. Chicano Mural Movement":

"The Message that came through is pride in the Chicano heritage. One series of... murals, called "The Story of Our Struggle," shows events from Mexico's loss of the Southwest in 1848 to a present-day farm unionist cutting the chains that bind a fallen comrade. So well does the series trace the rise of chicanismo that elementary school classes are brought to study the murals as part of their history lesson."





September 15, 1985: A 200-foot mural depicting Mexican American history is unveiled in Echo Park in time for Mexican Independence Day. Located at Morton Street and Morton Place, near Elysian Park, the work was painted by more than two dozen local youths. (Mike Sergieff/Herald Examiner Collection/Los Angeles Public Library Collection)

The Kemps were thrilled to have the monument on the front of their department store. "We were very proud of that, and so were the residents. They all thought it was a very nice tribute to them," Olive Kemp, wife of Bob Kemp, told the Los Angeles Times in 2007.

Gonzalez would go on to have a prolific career as an artist, activist and educator. After completing "The Story of Our Struggle," he began leading bus tours that highlighted more than 100 local murals. In 1983, he partnered with Nunez, and together they created the New Barrio Lifestyle Campaign Cultural Arts Education Program, which brings Chicano history and culture to Californians through the arts. They also created murals with students around the state, including "The Color of America," a three-story mural at Redlands High School in San Bernardino County.

Economics eventually brought Gonzalez back to "The Story of Our Struggle." In 2007, the First Street Store closed after 80 years. The site was purchased by Alliance College Ready Public Schools and the building was threatened with demolition.

Three sections of the reconstructed "The Story Of Our Struggle" mural at Alliance Morgan McKinzie High School in East Los Angeles. (Chava Sanchez/LAist)

Nunez and Gonzalez sprung into action. With the help of the Los Angeles Mural Conservancy, the Los Angeles Conservancy and lawyer Susan Brandt-Hawley, they fought to save mural.

"I was teaching older adult education at the time in the Eastside and in the Valley. My students in the Valley were predominantly Jewish. Many of them grew up in Boyle Heights. Even though the Jewish community has primarily moved out, they were here when they were young so they wrote letters," Nunez says.

In 2013, the multi-ethnic Coalition to Save the First Street Store reached a compromise with McKinzie High and the city of L.A. -- not a given. (Look at what's happening to many of Millard Sheets' murals.)

Rebuilding the facade of the First Street Store in 2017. (Courtesy of Irma Beserra Nunez)

They decided to save the mural, while making way for the new construction. The new landmark, "The First Street Store: Chicano Historical Monument," would be a feat of artistic preservation and architectural progress. The original building was torn down and the tiled mural placed in storage. Gonzalez was tasked with recreating the new facade, making it a more exhaustive work than the one he had created almost five decades prior.

In 2016, the new facade was completed. The tiled murals were reinstalled and a new high school complex built behind it. But Gonzalez's vision isn't yet complete. He and Nunez are raising funds to add a fountain featuring the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl and a sidewalk with Aztec designs in front of the facade.

A rendering of the completed "The Story of Our Struggle" mural by Johnny D. Gonzalez. (Courtesy of Irma Beserra Nunez)

Gonzalez and Nunez want to help revitalize this portion of First Street. Once a a hub of culture and commerce where East L.A. residents shopped, banked and ran errands, now, "They call it La Calle Fantasma, the Ghost Street," Gonzalez says.

"We're hoping we can have at least one block that we could utilize as a sample to motivate and inspire elected officials, community leaders and grassroots communities," Nunez says.

The past year has halted their dreams of a First Street revitalization. Plans for the fountain and sidewalk at the First Street Store were put on hold due to COVID-19. In September 2020, the block suffered a setback when a five-story housing complex that was under construction caught fire.

"This project was designed to provide desperately needed low-income housing for families and veterans as well as retail space to help generate economic development," Gonzalez says.

The reconstructed "The Story Of Our Struggle" mural at Alliance Morgan McKinzie High School in East Los Angeles. (Chava Sanchez/LAist)

On the positive side, plans to quickly rebuild the apartment complex are in the works. Gonzalez and Nunez continue to pursue Revitalization Innovations: Chicano Cultural Community Educational Tourism, a project that aims to bring tourism and educational opportunities to East Los Angeles. Like almost everyone else, their lives were derailed by the pandemic. But they have hope that a new day is rising in East LA.

"This is actually the beginning of what we hope is going to be a new renaissance," Nunez says. "We can't just allow the destruction of our communities, again and again. It's the story of our struggle and it is ongoing. It's the hope for the future."

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Punchestown racecourse today announced that the entire site will be closed to the general public from and including Friday 23rd April to Monday 3rd May as the 2021 Punchestown Festival gets underway.

This closure is necessary for the health and safety of the public and participants involved in what is categorized as an elite sporting event.

In addition, half of the famous Punchestown venue has been taken over by the HSE as both a Covid-19 testing and vaccination centre. Therefore the site is going to become increasingly busy in the coming weeks with people travelling to the HSE Covid-19 centres along with racecourse machinery in operation.

It was over a year ago that Conor ONeill, CEO Punchestown Racecourse, opened the gates of the privately owned venue so the public could enjoy and avail of the grounds as a safe outdoor recreational space.

Since then the popularity of Punchestown for walking and recreation has grown beyond expectation and as a result presented some serious challenges for the racecourse team. Whilst the majority of visitors adhere to the simple rules that are requested there are some serious issues with waste, dogs off leads and a lack of cooperation with racecourse staff that may jeopardise the availability of the venue to the community going forward.

Conor ONeill said: Punchestown is a very special place and is close to the heart of so many people and we are glad to see so many members of the local community enjoy it as much as we do. We see it as a very beneficial asset to the local community and we want that to continue. The setting is beautiful and unique however we must remember that it is essentially a working site the very same as a farm or a factory campus. Over the coming weeks the track team will be extremely busy preparing what is an internationally renowned racecourse for one of the biggest sporting events in Ireland and the UK. Couple this with increased traffic flow to the HSE Covid-19 testing and vaccination centres and the Punchestown site becomes extremely active.

ONeill continued: Having lost the 2020 Festival entirely it is essential that we deliver a top quality event this year albeit behind closed doors. The message is clear and not one we ever thought wed be saying but as we approach the end of April we ask that all public, with the exception of HSE staff, vaccine and test recipients with pre-arranged appointments , racing staff, participants and personnel not to visit Punchestown. We have already invested in security personnel to keep walkers off the track on normal race days and unfortunately, due to the popularity of the site, will have to significantly increase these measures further to ensure that the we can successfully stage the Punchestown Festival under the appropriate protocols.

ONeill concluded by saying By opening the course to the public for recreational purposes, providing a venue for Covid-19 testing and now working with the HSE to provide a vaccine centre we hope people agree that Punchestown has played a significant part and contributed to the cause. Now we need the public to help us by not visiting Punchestown in the coming weeks and letting the team get on with the business of the 2021 Punchestown Festival so that it can continue to be the fantastic amenity that we all love and enjoy. We truly hope that this time next year we will be inviting everyone to join us for a very special Punchestown festival but in the meantime please stay safe and stay away!

The 2021 Punchestown Festival will take place from Tuesday 27th April to Saturday 1st May with full coverage available on RTE and Racing TV. Get involved on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for news and competitions on www.punchestown.com.
Mumbai, April 7 : The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has proposed to constitute a Committee to undertake a comprehensive review of the working of Asset Reconstruction Companies (ARCs) in the financial sector ecosystem.

The committee would recommend suitable measures for enabling ARCs to meet the growing requirements of the financial sector as cases of non performing assets (NPAs) rise and there is a need to reconstruct such assets. Already a new bad bank has been proposed in this year's Budget towards this goal.

RBI in its statement on developmental and regulatory policies said that while ARCs have grown in number and size, their potential for resolving stressed assets is yet to be realised fully. The need for a committee has been felt in this regard, it added.

After enactment of Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest (SARFAESI) Act in 2002, regulatory guidelines for Asset Reconstruction Companies (ARCs) were issued in 2003 to enable development of this sector and to facilitate smooth functioning of ARCs.

Details of the constitution of the committee and its terms of reference will be announced separately.
JUNO BEACH, Fla., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- NextEra Energy Partners, LP (NYSE: NEP) today announced that it plans to report first-quarter 2021 financial results before the opening of the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday, April 21, 2021, in a news release to be posted on its website at www.NextEraEnergyPartners.com/FinancialResults. An advisory news release will be issued over PR Newswire the morning of April 21, with a link to the financial results news release on NextEra Energy Partners' website. As previously announced, NextEra Energy Partners will make available its financial results only on its website.

Jim Robo, chairman and chief executive officer of NextEra Energy Partners, Rebecca Kujawa, chief financial officer of NextEra Energy Partners, and other members of the senior management team will discuss the first-quarter 2021 financial results during an investor presentation to be webcast live, beginning at 9 a.m. ET on April 21. Results for NextEra Energy, Inc. (NYSE: NEE) also will be discussed during the same investor presentation.

The listen-only webcast will be available on NextEra Energy Partners' website by accessing the following link: www.NextEraEnergyPartners.com/FinancialResults. The financial results news release and the slides accompanying the presentation may be downloaded at www.NextEraEnergyPartners.com/FinancialResults, beginning at 7:30 a.m. ET on the day of the webcast. A replay will be available for 90 days by accessing the same link as listed above.

NextEra Energy Partners, LP

NextEra Energy Partners, LP (NYSE: NEP) is a growth-oriented limited partnership formed by NextEra Energy, Inc. (NYSE: NEE). NextEra Energy Partners acquires, manages and owns contracted clean energy projects with stable, long-term cash flows. Headquartered in Juno Beach, Florida, NextEra Energy Partners owns interests in geographically diverse wind and solar projects in the U.S. as well as natural gas infrastructure assets in Texas and Pennsylvania. For more information about NextEra Energy Partners, please visit: www.NextEraEnergyPartners.com.

SOURCE NextEra Energy Partners, LP

Related Links

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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.
ONE hundred years ago Brigadier Sean Finn, Commandant of West Limerick IRA, was shot and killed by Crown forces.

His death saved many other men. Born in Rathkeale in 1897, Mr Finns family had a grocery and bakery business. Growing up he became very interested in all aspects of Irish culture. At a very age his ability to lead and inspire others was apparent. In 1915, Mr Finn became Captain of the Rathkeale Volunteers.

After 1916 he became very active and organised different Companies in the West Limerick area. Subsequently, in recognition of his outstanding personal courage and dedication, he was appointed Brigadier Commandant of the five West Limerick battalions.

Mr Finn and his flying columns made west Limerick untenable for the British.

Even in death he managed to save many of his friends and fellow Volunteers. It occurred on March 30, 1921. Jimmy Collins, later a TD, a grandfather of current Minister Niall Collins, was present at the ambush.

A witness statement given by Mr Collins, of the West Limerick IRA, describes what happened that fateful evening.

Three lorry loads of RIC and Black and Tans arrived either from Adare and Newcastle West, wrote Mr Collins. Mr Finn heard shots fired from where he was billeted in the Ballyhahill area. He and a number of others ran for their rifles, gave the alarm and came out to investigate.

By this time , the lorries had come within a few yards of them. While all of the IRA men were running through a ploughed field, in single file, Finn was mortally wounded and another IRA man, named Quane, was wounded through the jaw.

The death of Finn saved the other men. When the RIC and Tans saw his dead body, they were so anxious to collect it they failed to follow up the retreating men, thus saving them from certain death, wrote Mr Collins in his witness statement.

One hundred years later, his grandson Minister Niall Collins laid a wreath on behalf of the Collins family at the grave of the late Mr Finn in Rathkeale Cemetery.

I felt obliged to mark the occasion on behalf of my family and the wider community as a local TD. Unfortunately we cant at this time give these men the proper recognition which they deserve on the 100th anniversary of their deaths but in time, when circumstances allow, we will organise a more fitting commemoration, said Minister Collins.
Anne OSullivan with her beloved son Mark, who was murdered by his brother and dad on the family farm in Co Cork last year.

A MOTHER who lost her husband and two sons to an horrific murder-double suicide six months ago has died after a long battle against illness.

Anne O'Sullivan (61) was already battling a long-term health condition when her husband, Tadg (59) and youngest son, Diarmuid (23), fatally confronted her eldest son, Mark (25), after a dispute over a 2m Cork farm inheritance tragically escalated.

It is understood from local sources she died in the early hours of this morning after being cared for in a hospice over recent times.

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The mother of two turned 61 just last week.

North Cork sources said she had been very ill over recent weeks.

On October 26, Tadg and Diarmuid confronted Mark in the bedroom of the family home at Assolas outside Kanturk in north Cork and shot him multiple times.

Anne, who was also in the farmhouse, was left unharmed by her husband and youngest son though they took her mobile phone - forcing her to run to a neighbour's house to raise the alarm.

Mark was later found dead in his bedroom by Gardai.

The bodies of his father and younger brother were located by Gardai some 600 metres from the farmhouse off the Castlemagner-Kanturk road.

Both had sustained a single fatal gunshot injury and were found at a field known as 'The Fort', adjacent to an old fairy fort.

Two rifles were found nearby.

Three legally held firearms in total were recovered by Gardai from both scenes - two rifles and a shotgun.

The triple tragedy was sparked by a bitter dispute over a family will which apparently would have seen Mark inherit a substantial local farm holding of more than 140 acres.

In contrast, his younger brother apparently felt he was excluded from any significant inheritance - and was supported by his father.

Attempts to resolve the dispute failed and Mark was confronted by his father and younger brother amid mounting tensions over the impasse.

Documentation in respect of the dispute was found near the bodies of Tadg and Diarmuid - and legal letters were found by Gardai at the property itself.

Mrs O'Sullivan had only returned to the Assolas farmhouse some 36 hours before the tragedy having travelled to a medical appointment in Dublin with her eldest son.

The mother of two - who worked for years as a nurse at Mt Alvernia Hospital outside Mallow - attended both the Requiem Mass of Tadg and Diarmuid and later the Requiem Mass of her son, Mark.

Mark, a trainee solicitor, was hailed as "the greatest son a mother could have."

His Requiem Mass heard that "the bond between them (Anne and Mark) was unbreakable."

"Mark had such a big heart and so much love to give...I can't imagine how much effort and love he put into being Anne's son," his best friend Sharmilla said.

No funeral arrangements have been confirmed.
LOS ANGELESAdult star Brooklyn Gray has landed the Twistys Treat of the Month honor for April.

Up-and-coming industry photographer and director, Eva Gala, shot and directed Grays Treat of the Month photoset, which was produced by Holly Randall.

Click here to see Brookyns Twistys Treat of the Month spotlight.

This is one of my most exciting and breathtaking releases, Gray said. Twistys has given me the chance to show the world a little more about who I am and showcase myself in a very honest way, which means so much to me. It was grimy; it was exhilarating; it was edgy, and chic. The crew was phenomenal.

It was a lot of hard work and these scenes set the tone for the quality and body of work Ive yet to create.

The 22-year-old Gray is under new managementand new bookings can be made via [email protected].

Ive worked so hard to get here, and this is just the beginning, Gray, a native of Miami who made her industry debut in the spring of 2019, continued. Im now self-booking and have cultivated a phenomenal private management team who truly believe in me and see my maximum potential, and I am so blessed to be working alongside them. The world is about to see what Brooklyn Gray is really about.

Brooklyns Treat of the Month solo set showcases her background in acting, dance and singingshe had experience in black box theater before adult.

The scene for her photoshoot was set in the dark, sultry grime of a downtown LA warehouse., where Twistys said she "juxtaposed grunge with striking radiance and grace, dancing amidst silks in a smoke suffused room.

Grays set also sees the former gymnast restrained, bound in bondage by merlot-hued ribbon. Last, she enlivened the warehouses desolate confines, wearing no more than a corset with a myriad of wing-like fabrics billowing from her torso.

Brooklyn brings a vivacious tenacity to all her projects, and leaves you feeling full, but wanting more, said a Twistys rep.

Photography by Eva Gala courtesy of Twistys.com
The man, who had his drivers side window down on his Tesla because it was so warm, said there were gawkers who drove past and then sped away. But the man, who requested that he not be identified, said his adrenaline kicked in.
Kanga Kits closes down, business up for sale

We are now closed !!!

We are sorry to say to our customers old and new that we have taken the decision to Retire.

This due to continued ill health from Arthritis which is not getting any better.

In the meantime we will prepare the business for sale, and be available to answer questions



https://www.kanga-products.co.uk/
Bison once thrived in this part of the country, munching away on the tallgrass prairies that covered Illinois before settlers plowed them to grow crops. Of course, the animals once thrived over much of the continent, numbering more than 20 million, until relentless hunting came very close to wiping them out. Now, anyone who wants to see them up close may be advised to visit national parks like Yellowstone, which has more bison than any other site in the country.
Shamli : , April 7 (IANS) Azeem Mansuri's dream is finally set to turn into reality.

He will marry Bushra of Hapur next year.

Azeem, who is just over two feet tall, is elated that his bride-to-be is almost the same height.

Azeem's parents went to Majidpura in Hapur, earlier this week, met 21-year-old Bushra and fixed the marriage with a 'shagun' and an engagement ring.

Bushra is doing her graduation and the wedding will take place next year.

Bushra told local reporters, "Azeem will take me on a tour after our marriage. He and his family are good and love me. My parents are also searching for a groom for my sister and once we find a good boy for her, our weddings will take place." Azeem, meanwhile, is dancing with joy. He said, "I am very happy now, my dream has come true. After the wedding, I will take my bride on 'umrah' in Saudi Arabia to thank the Almighty." Finding a bride was a tall order for Azeem who had even approached a local police station to ask them to get him married.

He made a similar request to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath through a letter and also to former Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav.

Azeem, 26, is a class 5 dropout who runs a cosmetics store in Kairana. He started getting proposals after his story hit the headlines.

The youngest of six siblings, Azeem has faced taunts and insults in school.
Hops & Hounds is a massive patio oasis known for being pet-friendly, but we didn't realize that included owls (and the business didn't either).

The Northeast Side bar and restaurant is currently handling a situation where a family of owls has found a home in one of its trees near their sprawling patio at 13838 Jones Maltsberger Road. The popular hangout is not far from the front gates of McAllister Park.

Joshua Giles, the general manager for Hops & Hounds, told MySA.com the family consists of three or four owls, and one of them is aggressive. While Giles said he is always worried about the small dogs (like Chihuahuas), he said the aggressive owl seems to only swoop at men and large dogs. The owl truly doesn't give a hoot.

READ ALSO: Corpus Christi jetty out of commission for repairs

Giles suspects the owl may be protecting the nest, which is leading to the aggressive behavior.

"Most people find it super interesting, but they are big," he said. "The biggest one has got to have somewhere between a 5- to 6-foot wingspan."

The bar manager isn't just winging it with owl duty. Giles said they've reached out to hawk experts who told them there's not much they can do. However, they've also contacted a Texas Game Warden who Giles is waiting to hear back from.

Clifford Shackelford, a biologist with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, said no Texas agency will relocate the owls because they are a native and protected species in Texas. He said the bar and its patrons will have to learn to live in harmony with the feisty fowl Shackelford identified as a barred owl.

READ ALSO: Daily train connecting San Antonio to Los Angeles back on track after pandemic

"What's happening is that the bird is being a good adult parent for its eggs laid in a nest, and we can't fault them for that," he said.

Shackelford said the owls get really upset and peeved when people imitate its distinctive hooting (so don't mimic or bark at them). He also mentioned the bar should put up patio umbrellas at the moment to avoid any conflict during this breeding season.

"This is very unusual because where I live, we have multiple pairs of that species living in the neighborhood, and no one has ever complained about barred owls," Shackelford said. "That's why I'm thinking it must be getting pissed off by someone making noises at it."

For now, the bar is advising others to be cautious near its back deck area until it comes up with a solution that is fair for the owls and safe for its patrons. So, if you're in the area, keep your eyes open, Giles said.
MOSCOW, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The virus that hit us hard is here until at least the Fall or even the end of year, according to Russian astrologer Tatiana Borsch.

In her 2021 forecast, she predicted this year starting with January to March will be challenging. That's when the second coronavirus wave hit with the reintroduction of a world-wide lock-down having a negative impact on society and the economy. It also led to countless protests and clashes with police around the world.

If you've ever wondered what it's like to forecast the future, An Astrologer's Notes is for you. Borsch shares her personal experiences and insights working as a professional astrologer for more than 30 years. Tatiana Borsch has a career spanning more than 30 years as a renowned Russian astrologer, writer, and award-winning documentary film producer. Tatiana has an outstanding track record as a professional astrologer and has made guest appearances on many popular television shows. She is the author of more than 40 books including the Complete Horoscope book of annual astrological forecasts.

"Other critical periods to watch this year are May to the first half of July and December to January 2022. We can witness a reemergence of old problems and even an uprise of new ones," said Borsch.

Borsch is a popular Russian astrologer known for her accurate predictions. She accurately predicted the current global economic crisis and sudden events of 2020 in a 2019 SWAAY Magazine article.

"I was called the most depressing astrologer ever, but you should replace the word 'depressed' with 'realistic.'" Of course, everyone prefers to hear only positive predictions. My job is to tell it like it is and not sugarcoat it," said Borsch.

A good astrologer warns about possible challenges, while suggesting solutions. That's what she has been doing with her extensive astrological practice and writing career. Her books include the Complete Horoscope of annual astrological forecasts and recently published An Astrologer's Notes.

If you've ever wondered what it's like to forecast the future, An Astrologer's Notes is for you. Borsch shares her personal experiences and insights working as a professional astrologer for more than 30 years.

But not everything in her predictions is doom and gloom. Borsch has already started her new book Complete Horoscope 2022, which would be out this summer, and sees that next year will be more favorable.

In her recent article How Does Horoscope Work: The Astrologer's Insights, dedicated to International Astrology Day, Borsch gives her insights for 2022 while answering some popular astrology questions.

"Once we finish 2021, the first half of 2022 will bring more favorable conditions. The world will start to recover. However, the second part of 2022 looks a bit tense. International relations may be strained. There will be another round of escalation in the world," said Borsch.

The world is going through a crucial transitional period and 2020 marked the final year of the Age of Pisces and 2021 as the first year of the Age of Aquarius.

"We are witnessing the birth of a new world. Birth is always a painful process, and a mother's body undergoes significant changes, but the fact remains that birth is also a great joy for parents and loved ones. The same can be said for this period," said Borsch.

Children born at the end of 2020 and at the beginning of 2021 will show unusual abilities and the skies will grant them talents of scientists and inventors. With time they will become true initiators of progress in their fields.

"These will be the real Indigo children that are clever, spiritually developed and talented," she said.

The Age of Aquarius also brings a significant change in values, and how individuals treat each other. Today, many people value money and judge others on their wealth. The Age of Aquarius brings a different energy to the world. It validates the triumph of thought and the spirit rather than the power of money.

"During this new period, people will value other individuals and their potential. It is also associated with turbulent global developments, a revolution in the economy, culture, with new views on religion and relationships," said Borsch.

Meet Astrologer & Author Tatiana Borsch

Tatiana Borsch has a career spanning more than 30 years as a renowned Russian astrologer, writer, and award-winning documentary film producer.

Tatiana has an outstanding track record as a professional astrologer and has made guest appearances on many popular television shows. She is the author of more than 40 books including the Complete Horoscope book of annual astrological forecasts. Complete Horoscope 2021 is now her third English edition.

Tatiana is also the founder of the AstraArt production company, which created more than 150 documentary films since 2002. She has received numerous awards for films broadcasted across Russia and other countries.

Her recent book An Astrologer's Notes: Real-life stories on how the stars shape our lives is available at all online bookstores.

Tatiana offers free weekly horoscopes on Instagram and Facebook. For more information about Tatiana visit her website. To arrange an interview, contact Alex Viner at +35797837153 or [email protected].

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:

Alex Viner

Tatiana Borsch

Website: http://www.tatianaborsch.com/

Moscow, Russia

Email: [email protected]

Telephone: +35797837153

Social media weekly horoscopes

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tatiana_borsch/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Tatiana-Borsch-1855585614490721

SOURCE Tatiana Borsch

Related Links

https://tatianaborsch.co


Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 16:54:51|Editor: huaxia

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LAGOS, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Nigeria has received 100,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines from India, a senior official has said.

This will further boost the number of Nigerians to be vaccinated, Boss Mustapha, chairman of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 and secretary of the government of the federation, told reporters at a press briefing in Abuja on Tuesday.

The "Covishield" is the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines manufactured by the Serum Institute of India.

The frontline medical personnel, strategic leadership, and those above the age of 50 years across the nation would be vaccinated first.

As of Monday, a total of 963,802 persons in Nigeria had received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

"The objective is to vaccinate 70 percent of Nigeria's population between 2021 and 2022," he said.

The country has recorded a total of 163,388 confirmed COVID-19 cases with 2,058 deaths, and 153,630 have recovered as of Tuesday night, according to data from the Nigeria Center for Disease Control. Enditem
Nothing says luxe like lazing around in our linen sheets from Parachute Home...except maybe doing it in linen PJs which, yay, just dropped and are available for shopping IRL at the brand's Hayes Valley store.

Plus, we discovered Harper the Label's effortless leather handbags, McEvoy Ranch's line of CBD wellness products, and Aliya Wanek's cropped and relaxed sweatshirtsa hot commodity that's at last back in stock (don't dawdle, though).

Dreamy PJs alert! Parachute is taking over your whole sleep situation. (Courtesy of Parachute) We should all be grateful to Parachute for getting in between our (its?!) sheetsthe brand's new line of linen loungewear and pajamas debuts today. If the women's tanks, tops, shorts, pants, sleep shirts and (unisex) robes are as delish as the brand's bedding, we're so in. And they should be considering they're made in Portugal of the same lightweight, breathable, and utterly unfussy linen. They also emit the same laid-back, Cali vibe. The pieces come in neutral shades of bone, coal, and clay. Match or contrast with your duvet cover as the mood strikes. // Parachute loungewear is available in sizes XS-XL and retails for $49 to $99. Shop IRL at 445 Hayes St. (Hayes Valley) or online at parachutehome.com.

Hear ye, hear ye! This East Bay handbag line comes with a side of poetry. (Courtesy of Harper the Label) When Claire Harper decided to start a handbag line, incorporating her original poetry was a given. As a designer, sculptor and poet, the East Bay dweller felt no need to adhere to any artistic boundaries. Thank goodness for that. The result is a collection of beautifully crafted leather bags, each with a line of embossed prose hidden on the back or underside of a strap. We love the idea of carrying around a little literary secret (shh!). Harper the Label serves up three simple, subtly sculptural stylesa clutch, crossbody, and backpackavailable in shades of black, saddle, and walnut. The European leather is certified chrome-fee (i.e. tanned not with harmful chemicals but with organic materials like leaves, bark, and seed pods) and the bags are made in a small NYC factory. Not sure which color you want? Order a leather swatch kit for a buck. // Harper the Label bags range from $485 to $695. Shop online at harperthelabel.com.

Calm down with fresh CBD products from McEvoy Ranch. (Courtesy of Ode Oasis) No one loves new stuff from Bay Area makers more than we do. Indeed, cartwheels were turned when we learned of the Ode Oasis launch. They're from Petaluma's McEvoy Ranch, a ginormous working organic ranch that produces award-winning olive oils, small-lot wines, and yummy olive-oil-based skincare products. The new crew of wellness productsmade with premium full-spectrum CBDis designed to bring tranquility and focus to everyday living. The lineup includes three tinctures: Calm and Clarity, made with 1000mg of beneficial cannabinoids and naturally occurring terpenes, and Calm Pet (Fido needs to chill, too). Rounding out the collection is the Ginger Lemon CBD Honey Stick for tea and other hot drinks, and two body balms, Soothe and Relief. The former is a rich body cream made with shea butter, lavender, and organic EVOO for hydration, while the latter is an all-purpose blend of coconut oil, lavender, and organic olive oil. Note: The CBD used in these products is non-psychoactive. // Ode Oasis products ($5-$68) are available at odeoasis.com.
A Co Limerick GP has said that his practice will not participate in the next phase of the vaccine rollout because of intimidating calls he and his staff have been receiving from people complaining that they or their relatives did not receive the vaccine.

Dr Kieran Murphy, speaking to RTE radios Liveline from his hospital bed at University Hospital Limerick, said that there were unrealistic levels of expectations about the vaccination programme and that the sooner the age-based scheme commenced, the better.

There can be no quibble about a date of birth, he said.

Dr Murphy said that his staff had taken as much as they could take so they were stopping the vaccination programme at his practice.

He said that he and his staff had been awake at night worrying about how the programme would work, which, coupled with the intimidating calls, meant they "could not take any more of it."

Over the Easter weekend, Dr Murphy became unwell and was hospitalised.

I got an episode, they feel that stress may have had a part to play. I didn't physically feel stressed, but the level of stressors in the past number of months has been gigantic.

Dr Murphy paid tribute to the HSE for the roll out of the vaccination programme, although he acknowledged that some of his deliveries were at short notice.

The HSE has done an incredible job in the circumstances, things that would have taken years to put in place before the pandemic have been put in place in a week.

The problem was the shortage of supply, he said. We were warned that there would be less than adequate quantities of the vaccine in our second and third deliveries and the problem with that was that we had arranged that we were going to vaccinate all of a particular age group and it meant that only some of that age group were vaccinated.

We live in a very small community so the word got out that some people, particularly in the age range 75 to 80, had been vaccinated while others hadn't, and we then began getting intimidating phone calls as to why particular people had been vaccinated and others hadn't.

I think the thing that the general public don't realise is the level of work that goes into a practice to organise the vaccines and to be as fair as we possibly can in allocation.

These people who weren't vaccinated just had to wait two weeks until we got a further delivery to get their vaccine, but it came across as a sense of entitlement as to why they were left out while other people got their vaccines.

As a result of that we've decided that we can't really take part in the next phase of vaccination which is the high-risk group because determining who is high-risk and who isn't is very difficult, it's not black and white  age groups are black and white.

"And I think the Government is right to stick to age groups despite the increased risk for gardai and teachers because it is the only way you can be as fair as you can without having complications of people asking why were we left out. So and so got a vaccine and I didn't.

Dr Murphy explained that he and his staff were getting threatening calls from people as to why they or their relatives had not been vaccinated when other people in the same age group who are often their cousins or their neighbours had been vaccinated".

He added: Even when I explained it was purely due to a lack of supply of vaccine, we were able to do all of our over 85s and they've all had their second doses, they weren't listening.

The calls were intimidating more than threatening, he said.

It was really they felt that they had been deliberately left out, that they had been deliberately slighted, that we had favoured other people ahead of them for our own nefarious reasons, which was absolutely untrue, we went to great efforts to try to be absolutely as fair as we could be in allocation of the vaccines."
This past winter was drier than normal over the Great Lakes drainage basin. As a result, the Great Lakes water levels continue to decline faster than the typical late winter decline.

At this time last year, Lake Michigan and Lake Huron were at all-time record high water levels for late March and early April. A good comparison is the lake level currently to the lake level last year at this time. Lakes Michigan and Huron are the same lake level because of the free flow of water through the Mackinac Straits. Lakes Michigan and Huron are 10.8 inches lower at the end of March 2021 compared to one year ago. This drop in water levels has put a significant distance between the current water level and the devastating record high water level last year.

Here is a water level graph going back a long time. Look at the water declines on the far right edge of the graphs.

Great Lakes water levels back to 1918

Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron and Erie water levels have dropped in the past year, but still significantly higher than the long-term average. Lake Ontario has dropped below the long-term average.

The graphs below show the water level forecasts for the next six months. The green dot is the most likely water level. The red line is the current water level, and the blue line is last years record or near-record water levels. The purple dot is the long-term average water level for that month.

.

Great Lakes water level forecast for next six months

Lakes Superior and Erie are expected to hang around one foot above average this summer, but well below record levels. Lakes Michigan and Huron should be around one foot below record levels and two feet above the long-term average. So Lakes Michigan and Huron will still have higher than average water, but not devastating, damaging high water levels. Lake Ontario is going to be just below normal through the summer.

The big reason for the lower water levels is drier than normal weather. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced that January 2021 was the driest on record for the entire Great Lakes drainage basin. February and March had around 50 percent of the normal precipitation over the drainage basin. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says that over the past year, precipitation over the Great Lakes drainage basin is about 18 percent lower than normal.

So long-term drier weather in the past year, and significantly drier than normal weather in the past three months have allowed the Great Lakes water levels to drop a meaningful amount.
NEW YORK, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Chesterfield Faring, Ltd. is pleased to announce that Steven Weiss has joined our NYC office. Steven will be working in a dual capacity as both our Acting CTO and a Managing Director. In his capacity as CTO, he will oversee the deployment of the firm's new state of the art investor portal. He will innovate our origination platform to streamline deal acquisition and accelerate the deal closing process. Steven has long term relationships developed during his career deploying equity and debt trading platforms for Fortune 100 financial institutions such as Merrill Lynch, Citibank, and Credit Suisse.

In 1996, he joined ABC News/Disney setting up live computing platforms for Peter Jennings, Barbara Walters, and GMA live broadcasts covering the political elections. Furthering his career, he was hired by the Interactive Corporation (IAC) formerly USAI (Barry Diller) where he focused on inside investment banking and technology integration for M&A activity by acquiring the growth technology companies of Ticketmaster, Expedia, and Match working with Barry Diller.

Steven has the rare combination of business acumen, investment banking experience, and integrating state of the art technology to create competitive streamline platforms. As Chesterfield remains in the forefront of creating new financing structures and optimizing capital stacks for corporate and real estate investments, Steven will integrate technology to make investments far more accessible to more investors.

In 2004, he built the new standard by creating a streamlined online loan auction platform that sold over $2.0 billion of performing, non-performing, REO, and sub-performing loans for lending institutions. The platform was used by The Carlton Group from 2004-2009 and was the foundation for their crowdfunding portal until 2019.

Using his relationships post 2009 Recession, he closed $400 million in difficult financings such as land acquisition and ground up construction loans (A&D Loans) for major institutional clients including notable players such as the Bluerock REIT, Savanna, Cohen Equities, and Vladislav Doronin's OKO Development to build high rise condo and office projects in both Manhattan and Miami CBD locations.

In 2016, he personally handled all origination and placement activities for the Chairman of The Carlton Group undertaking both direct principal investment and the Chairman's direct clients. Steven still retains all of his lengthy industry relationships.

Steven is a proud alumnus of the University of Delaware where he obtained a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration with a special concentration in Financial Management.

Media contact:

Lawrence Selevan

[email protected]

212-405-2492

SOURCE Chesterfield Faring, Ltd.
Ever Given, a Panama-flagged cargo ship, that is wedged across the Suez Canal and blocking traffic in the vital waterway is seen Saturday, March 27, 2021. Tugboats and a specialized suction dredger worked to dislodge a giant container ship that has been stuck sideways in Egypt's Suez Canal for the past three days, blocking a crucial waterway for global shipping. (AP)

SUEZ: Two additional tugboats sped Sunday to Egypts Suez Canal to aid efforts to free a skyscraper-sized container ship wedged for days across the crucial waterway, even as major shippers increasingly divert their boats out of fear the vessel may take even longer to free.

The massive Ever Given, a Panama-flagged, Japanese-owned ship that carries cargo between Asia and Europe, got stuck Tuesday in a single-lane stretch of the canal. In the time since, authorities have been unable to remove the vessel and traffic through the canal  valued at over $9 billion a day  has been halted, further disrupting a global shipping network already strained by the coronavirus pandemic.

The Dutch-flagged Alp Guard and the Italian-flagged Carlo Magno, called in to help tugboats already there, reached the Red Sea near the city of Suez early Sunday, satellite data from MarineTraffic.com showed. The tugboats will nudge the 400-meter-long (quarter-mile-long) Ever Given as dredgers continue to vacuum up sand from underneath the vessel and mud caked to its port side, said Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, which manages the Ever Given.

Workers planned to make two attempts Sunday to free the vessel coinciding with high tides, a top pilot with the canal authority said.

Sunday is very critical, the pilot said. It will determine the next step, which highly likely involves at least the partial offloading of the vessel.

Taking containers off the ship likely would add even more days to the canals closure, something authorities have been desperately trying to avoid. It also would require a crane and other equipment that have yet to arrive.

The pilot spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity as he wasnt authorized to brief journalists.

On Saturday, the head of the Suez Canal Authority told journalists that strong winds were not the only cause for the Ever Given running aground, appearing to push back against conflicting assessments offered by others. Lt. Gen. Osama Rabei said an investigation was ongoing but did not rule out human or technical error.

Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement maintains that their initial investigations rule out any mechanical or engine failure as a cause of the grounding. However, at least one initial report suggested a blackout struck the hulking vessel carrying some 20,000 containers at the time of the incident.

Rabei said he remained hopeful that dredging could free the ship without having to resort to removing its cargo, but added that we are in a difficult situation, its a bad incident.

Asked about when they expected to free the vessel and reopen the canal, he said: I cant say because I do not know.

Shoei Kisen Kaisha Ltd., the company that owns the vessel, said it was considering removing containers if other refloating efforts failed.

The Ever Given is wedged about 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) north of the canals Red Sea entrance near the city of Suez.

A prolonged closure of the crucial waterway would cause delays in the global shipment chain. Some 19,000 vessels passed through the canal last year, according to official figures. About 10% of world trade flows through the canal. The closure could affect oil and gas shipments to Europe from the Middle East. Already, Syria has begun rationing the distribution of fuel in the war-torn country amid concerns of delays of shipments arriving amid the blockage.

As of early Sunday, over 320 ships waited to travel through the Suez, either to the Mediterranean or the Red Sea, according to canal services firm Leth Agencies. Dozens of others still listed their destination as the canal, though shippers increasingly appear to be avoiding the passage.

The worlds biggest shipping company, Denmarks A.P. Moller-Maersk, warned its customers that it would take anywhere from three to six days to clear the backlog of vessels at the canal. Already, the firm and its partners have 22 ships waiting there.

The current number (of) redirected Maersk and partner vessels is 14 and expected to rise as we assess the salvage efforts along with network capacity and fuel on our vessels currently en route to Suez, the shipper said.

Mediterranean Shipping Co., the worlds second-largest, said it already had rerouted at least 11 ships around Africas Cape of Good Hope to avoid the canal. It turned back two other ships and said it expected some missed sailings as a result of this incident.

MSC expects this incident to have a very significant impact on the movement of containerized goods, disrupting supply chains beyond the existing challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, it said.
Apr. 6Police identified the man shot and killed Monday at the South Capitol Rail Runner station as 24-year-old David Hernandez of Santa Fe.

Santa Fe Police Department Capt. Anthony Tapia said Hernandez was one of two people shot at the station at about 3:45 p.m. Hernandez was killed at the scene, while the other victim was transported to an area hospital.

Tapia said the second victim is a 38-year-old man who is in critical condition. His identity has not been released.

Santa Fe police continue to hunt for suspects in the shooting.

Jesus Antonio Laetz-Marin said he heard one gunshot followed by four others while working with his construction crew off Alta Vista Road, just a few steps from the Rail Runner platform where Hernandez died. Marin works with for a construction company doing work nearby.

"When that happened, we were talking about the job, but then we saw the cops coming in and go to the other side," he said. "That's when we saw the two people who looked like they were dead and I told my guys 'Let's get out of here.'"

Police are looking for a gray or light-colored four-door sedan. Tapia said the occupants of the vehicle may have seen what happened.

A spokeswoman for the Rail Runner said there were no trains at the South Capitol station at the time of the shooting. The closest train was located at the Santa Fe Depot.

This is a developing story and will be updated.
20K displaced as Myanmar airstrikes target ethnic Karen civilians, destroy homes

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At least 20,000 people from Myanmars Karen ethnic group, many of whom are Christian, have been displaced due to continual airstrikes that began on March 27, two months after the military coup. A rights organization reports that military forces are also bombarding civilians in their homes.

Airstrikes by the Myanmar army have targeted civilians, schools and medical clinics in northern Karen state, according to the Free Burma Rangers, an organization that provides humanitarian services in war-torn areas.

In an April 5 report, FBR noted that at least 14 people were killed and 40 more were injured on April 1, including women and children, by airstrikes in Dwe Lo Township of Karen states Papun district.

Many others have been killed and wounded in the ethnic minority areas during the campaign. Homes and stores have been destroyed.

In a report published Wednesday, FBR noted that the Burma army is attacking people in their homes throughout the Papun district.

The organization shared the names and pictures of two villagers killed in different attacks in the last several days.

Last Friday, the Burmese army shot three mortars into Ler Day Kaw Village in Butho Township. According to the report, one round killed 55-year-old mother of six Naw Mu Toh and injured her husband, Saw Mya Aung.

FBR reports that on March 30, military aircraft dropped nine bombs in Mae Kaw Law Village. Seventy-six-year-old Saw Pah Lo Poe was killed by one of the airstrikes.

On Feb. 1, the military detained civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi in response to her National League for Democracy partys landslide victory in last years election. The coup makes an army general the de-facto leader of the country. Protests against the coup have been met with force as the military has reportedly killed hundreds since Feb. 1.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a United Kingdom-based advocacy organization, stated that while the Myanmar military has reportedly declared a ceasefire, displaced civilians fear this is only a delaying tactic and remain in hiding.

The army has not only totally broken a ceasefire agreed almost a decade ago, but it is using such force that it is creating a humanitarian crisis on its borders at the same time as using lethal force to crackdown on protests in the cities and towns, Benedict Rogers, CSWs senior analyst for East Asia, said.

[The military] is perpetrating grave human rights violations that may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, and the international community must act urgently to prevent this escalating further. We need more robust, coordinated, targeted sanctions against the military and its enterprises, and a global arms embargo. Failure to act urgently and with every tool available will result in a humanitarian disaster in the country.

Myanmars ethnic minorities, including Christians, live in the various conflict zones across the countrys borders with Thailand, China and India.

Last month, the United States imposed sanctions and restricted American dealings with two giant holding companies connected to the Myanmar military.

In a statement, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the Burmese military has taken increasingly disturbing actions aimed at their own citizens. The U.K. announced similar actions.

On March 27, the Myanmar army killed at least 114 people who were protesting against the coup.

Nearly 600 people have been killed by the military since the Feb. 1 coup, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. The organization reports that there are over 2,847 people under detention as of Wednesday.

Christians make up just over 7% of the majority-Buddhist nation. Formerly known as Burma, the country is ranked No. 18 on Open Doors USAs 2021 World Watch List of 50 countries where Christians face the most severe persecution.

Rights groups have warned that the militarys consolidation of power will only make things worse for religious minorities and have urged the international community to take action against the abuses being perpetrated by the military regime.

The military is notorious for its relations with the ultranationalist ultra-Buddhist group the Ma Ba Tha, International Christian Concern's Southeast Asia Regional Manager Gina Goh previously said. The military together with Ma Ba Tha has targeted the Muslims in the country, but they also go after Christians. Once they get a hold of the power, they might resort to things they were doing before they passed the power to the civilian government. They kill. They rape minority Christians.
For Subscribers Mom shares story of son's suicide, shines light on teen mental health

After Aiden Alexander's suicide, his family wants to break the stigma associated with suicide so more youths can be helped.
Canberra, April 7 : Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Wednesday called on the European Union (EU) to release doses of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine.

Morrison said that delays to Australia's vaccine rollout were a matter of "straightforward maths" with AstraZeneca blocked from exporting more than 3 million doses, reports Xinhua news agency.

"It's straightforward maths - 3.1 million out of 3.8 million doses did not come to Australia," he told reporters in Canberra.

"That obviously had a very significant impact on the early rollout of the vaccination program, until we got into a position when the domestically produced AstraZeneca vaccine would be in place." Earlier the European Commission said that only 250,000 doses of the vaccines had been formally blocked.

In response, the Australian government said in a statement that the Commission was "arguing semantics".

Morrison has previously announced that 1 million of the vaccines will be redirected to Papua New Guinea (PNG) if they are allowed to leave Europe.

On Wednesday, the Prime Minister said he would write to the EC asking that they be exported.

Morrison was joined by Brendan Murphy, the Secretary of the Department of Health, who said that the domestic production of AstraZeneca vaccines was continuing to escalate but had not reached the goal of manufacturing 1 million doses per week.

So far about 920,334 vaccines had been administered in Australia, short of the government's initial target of 4 million by the end of March.
TORONTO, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Canada Nickel Company Inc. ("Canada Nickel" or "the Company") (TSXV: CNC) (OTCQB: CNIKF) is pleased to announce that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding ("MOU") with Taykwa Tagamou Nation ("TTN"), regarding the financing of the Company's expected Mine Fleet for the Crawford Nickel Cobalt Sulphide Project ("Crawford").

"We welcome TTN as our partner in this initiative and acknowledge TTN's ongoing commitment to protect and enhance the land and resource-based economy within their Traditional Territory. Canada Nickel actively looks for ways to increase involvement in Crawford's development from the local Indigenous communities through innovative partnerships that provide opportunities for mutually beneficial business ventures," said Mark Selby, Chair and CEO of Canada Nickel.

"This initiative has the potential to substantially reduce initial capital requirements and improve Canada Nickel's ability to finance Crawford and advance it to development. Combined with our previously announced MOUs with TTN and Glencore, it also creates the potential for a much lower capital cost startup," said Selby.

Under the terms of the MOU, TTN will seek favourable financing terms to participate in the financing of all or a portion of the heavy mining equipment fleet required for Crawford's operation. Training and associated employment opportunities will also be available to TTN where specialized maintenance and operation is required for the equipment and where that equipment is financed or owned in whole or in part by TTN.

"Our community is proud of our continued innovative approach to business development partnerships  and our most recent MOU with Canada Nickel is no exception. TTN has been working diligently to address the financing, capacity, scale, policy limitations, jurisdiction questions, and project timeline challenges to initiate, construct and put into operation development partnerships within our Traditional Territory," said Chief Bruce Archibald, Taykwa Tagamou Nation. "Canada Nickel continues to set a precedent by ensuring First Nation communities who have the financial backing to reduce capital start-up costs are not just those that need to be consulted with, but rather, are true business partners that will benefit their communities and the Northern Ontario economy writ-large."

TTN Councillor and Economic Development Officer Derek Archibald added, "This MOU compliments TTN's Economic Development Strategy. We want to move away from the rigid limitations of Impact Benefit Agreements to having a true seat at the table, where opportunities are continually created. Not only is this the most effective way to see the Crawford project move ahead at a lower capital cost, but it also ensures we are full participants with developments occurring in our Traditional Territory over time. With CNC and this MOU, we are leaving our lands and economy in an even better place for the next seven generations of our Nation".

This is the second agreement reached between the Company and TTN following the announcement by the Company in December 2020.

Greg Rickford, Minister of Energy, Northern Development and Mines; Minister of Indigenous Affairs for Ontario congratulated both parties on reaching such an agreement.

"Our government is proud to support innovative First Nation-industry partnerships that support economic growth across Northern Ontario. I am pleased to congratulate Canada Nickel and Taykwa Tagamou Nation on their progress on their MOU and partnership," said Greg Rickford, Minister of Energy, Northern Development and Mines, Minister of Indigenous Affairs. "With TTN's leadership in the region, the Crawford-Nickel Cobalt partnership is well on its way to produce responsibly-sourced, GHG-emissions free nickel and cobalt and deliver meaningful training and career opportunities for local community members."

TTN Electrical Transmission Project

Canada Nickel and TTN had previously announced (see Canada Nickel press release dated December 16, 2020) that TTN has arranged access to capital so that it can own and develop the electrical transmission assets that will be necessary to supply Crawford with cost-effective and reliable power. TTN's operating company, Transmission Infrastructure Partnerships 1 Ltd., has been working with Canada Nickel in discussion with the IESO and Hydro One. Together these organizations have taken the first steps to hooking the Crawford mine up to the power grid by launching a Systems Impact Assessment Study.

About TTN

As a signatory of Treaty 9, Taykwa Tagamou Nation is a Mushkegowuk Cree community located near Cochrane, Ontario and maintains the traditional territory within the Abitibi, Moose, and Mattagami River basins, including areas on both sides of the Highway 101. TTN is actively involved in forestry operations, mining, and hydro development.

About Canada Nickel Company

Canada Nickel Company Inc. is advancing the next generation of nickel-cobalt sulphide projects to deliver nickel and cobalt required to feed the high growth electric vehicle and stainless steel markets. Canada Nickel Company has applied in multiple jurisdictions to trademark the terms NetZero Nickel, NetZero Cobalt, NetZero Iron and is pursuing the development of processes to allow the production of net zero carbon nickel, cobalt, and iron products. Canada Nickel provides investors with leverage to nickel and cobalt in low political risk jurisdictions. Canada Nickel is currently anchored by its 100% owned flagship Crawford Nickel-Cobalt Sulphide Project in the heart of the prolific Timmins-Cochrane mining camp.

Cautionary Statement Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains certain information that may constitute "forward-looking information" under applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward looking information includes, but is not limited to, future exploration and development results, and corporate and technical objectives. Forward-looking information is necessarily based upon a number of 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 information. Factors that could affect the outcome include, among others: future prices and the supply of metals, the future demand for metals, the results of drilling, inability to raise the money necessary to incur the expenditures required to retain and advance the property, environmental liabilities (known and unknown), general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties, results of exploration programs, risks of the mining industry, delays in obtaining governmental approvals, failure to obtain regulatory or shareholder approvals, and the impact of COVID-19 related disruptions in relation to the Company's business operations including upon its employees, suppliers, facilities and other stakeholders. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. All forward-looking information contained in this press release is given as of the date hereof and is based upon the opinions and estimates of management and information available to management as at the date hereof. Canada Nickel disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

SOURCE Canada Nickel Company Inc.

Related Links

https://canadanickel.com/


Criminal Complaint

A New Jersey man accused of being at the front line of violence during the Jan. 6 insurrection boasted about his involvement onlinethen googled Countries where you can buy citizenship once he realized he would probably be caught, prosecutors say.

Christopher Joseph Quaglin was arrested Wednesday in New Brunswick, New Jersey on a slew of charges, including assaulting an officer and civil disorder. Prosecutors allege that he can be seen in a black helmet, gas mask, and a MAGA shirt repeatedly assaulting several cops guarding the Capitol, according to a criminal complaint.

Quaglin spent months prior to Jan. 6 posting online about conspiracy theories, including his anger over purported fraud associated with the 2020 election, and about going to the Capitol on Jan. 6. He had multiple Facebook and Instagram accountsand had been banned multiple times for inflammatory postsbut frequently posted election gripes on an account under the name Chris Trump.

Im going to war, Quaglin wrote on Nov. 5 to a Facebook friend. Im writing my letter to my wife and people will have it. But I might not even make it back.

They Arent Doing Shit: This Capitol Cop Is Mad as Helland Calling It Quits

Im bringing the big cock, he wrote in another message. Im really ready to just the kamikaze. The next day, he wrote to another Facebook friend: Looking forward to war.

The complaint states Quaglin posted about the gas mask, helmet and bear spray he would bring to the event, and encouraged others to come to D.C. on Jan. 6. He even offered up an extra double twin bed in his hotel room.

Trump is speaking and everyone is walking there, Quaglin said in one video before pointing to the Capitol and holding up his gas mask to show he is ready. We will see how it goes. Proud of our boy.

Quaglin was captured in several videos attacking numerous officers and grabbing a barricade. Criminal Complaint

On the day of the riot, prosecutors allege, Quaglin was in the front line of the rioters attempting to breach the Capitol through the Lower West Terrace doors.

Story continues

He started out by verbally accosting cops guarding the building, the complaint says. Soon after, videos show him grabbing one cop by the neck, physically strik[ing] and shov[ing] another cop, ripping a barrier fence, grabbing an officers shield and lunging at a D.C. cop.

You dont want this fight. You do not want this fucking fight. You are on the wrong fucking side. Youre going to bring a fucking pistol, Im going to bring a fucking cannon, a seemingly unprovoked Quaglin can be heard saying in one video. You wait! You wait! You wait! Stay there like a fucking sheep! This guy doesnt know what the fuck is going on.

In what appears to be the most violent altercation, Quaglin can be seen on Capitol Police surveillance footage pushing his way to the front of a large crowd attempting to push past the police guarding the Capitol doors.

Quaglin continues to try to push past the law enforcement officers guarding the Lower West Terrace Exterior Doors for approximately the next 15 minutes during which he can be seen on video attacking officers with a stolen riot shield and spraying them with a chemical irritant, the complaint states, noting that one of the officers was sprayed directly in the face.

Quaglin allegedly shoved officers guarding an entrance, grabbed a police shield and armed himself with pepper spray. Criminal Complaint

Prosecutors state they believe Quaglin used MK-9 OC spray, or pepper spray, during the attack. Once at the front of the line, he pushed, hit, and shoved officers with a riot shield before he finally gained entry.

Prosecutors state that Quaglin livestreamed the whole day and the videos were handed over by a tipster.

Quaglin even pointed directly to his involvement in a Facebook Live after the riot. When you guys see the footage, I was the guy in red, white, and blue uhh hoodie and black helmet...Im absolutely on a loop on Fox News...I got punched pretty good...It was a great time, I got bumps and bruises, he said in the selfie-style livestream.

In another video, a shirtless Quaglin appears to be cooking a steak in his shower as he states he got pepper-sprayed like twenty fucking times, Im sure Im going to make the news, the complaint says.

Prosecutors note that, in the days after Jan. 6, Quaglin repeatedly Googled his involvement in the riots, including multiple searches for guy gets bear sprayed at capital and the FBI seeking information page. Seemingly fearing his impending arrest, Quaglin also searched Countries where you can buy citizenship, residency, or passport.

Andrew Jackson Morgan, a Texas resident and self-described law enforcement auditor, was also charged Wednesday for his role in the riot. Prosecutors allege he can be seen in videos encouraging rioters to break into the Capitol and filming them.

I want my bullet and goin in my house, Morgan can be heard yelling in the video as he walks up a stone railing, according to a criminal complaint.

Morgan only entered the Capitol briefly before he was met by a wall of cops. During a stand-off, Morgan can be heard encouraging the crowd to take the building and repeating I want my bullet.

The complaint states that federal authorities were able to identify Morgan as the creator of the YouTube channel Political trance Tribune, where he presents himself as a law enforcement auditor who routinely videotapes officers as they are conducting traffic stops and/or other law enforcement duties in the public.

Andrew Morgan Criminal Complaint

When authorities executed a search warrant at Morgans house last month, he told FBI agents he wanted to tell his story. He said he went to D.C. because something unprecedented was going to happen and he wanted to cover the events because he is an independent journalist and civil rights auditor. His wife also told the FBI she drove Morgan to the Capitol with a group of political auditors who she said sometimes refer to themselves as independent patriots.

Morgan reiterated he was there was a chameleon, the complaint states. He said he wishes now that he had not said the things that he did, but just filmed the events.

Morgan also told authorities he was concerned that the government has been hijacked and was concerned why Mike Lindell's video about election fraud was banned. He is like-minded with the Founder's of the country and with QAnon. He has come to realize that the people in power keep power through child pedophilia. They use child pedophilia to control the masses, he allegedly said.

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The High Commission of Pakistan in India has issued 1,100 visas to Sikh pilgrims to participate in the annual Baisakhi celebrations being held from April 12 to 22.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 7th Apr, 2021 ) :The High Commission of Pakistan in India has issued 1,100 visas to Sikh pilgrims to participate in the annual Baisakhi celebrations being held from April 12 to 22.

Under the framework of the Pakistan-India Protocol on Visits to Religious Shrines of 1974, a large number of Sikh Yatrees from India visit Pakistan to observe various religious festivals/occasions every year, a press release Wednesday said.

"The issuance of pilgrimage visas is a part of the Government of Pakistan's efforts for facilitating visits to religious shrines. This also reflects the commitment of the Government of Pakistan to faithfully implement the bilateral Protocol on Visits to Religious Shrines.

Pakistan takes pride in preserving sacred religious places and extending all possible facilitation for the visiting pilgrims of all faiths," it further added.

These visas have been issued as a "special gesture" by the Government of Pakistan in view of the importance of the event for Sikh marking the start of their new year.

On the occasion, Pakistan high commission also extended special felicitations to all those celebrating this auspicious occasion and wished them a fulfilling yatra.
President Joe Biden speaks about jobs and the economy as Vice President Kamala Harris listens, at the White House in Washington on April 7, 2021. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

White House Willing to Negotiate Corporate Tax Rate, but Holding Firm on Big Infrastructure Bill

President Joe Biden is willing to go lower on his proposed corporate tax rate but is holding firm on a big infrastructure plan.

Biden wants to increase the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent to help pay for his $2.2 trillion infrastructure proposal.

The president told reporters after giving a speech at the White House in Washington on infrastructure on Wednesday that hes wide open to going lower on the rate.

But we got to pay for this, he added. Theres many other ways we can do it, but Im willing to negotiate that. Ive come forward with the best, most rational, way in my view, the fairest way to pay for it. But there are many other ways as well, and Im open.

The one exception on ideas Biden will accept is increasing taxes on people making less than $400,000 a year.

Gina Raimondo, Bidens secretary of commerce, told reporters during a separate briefing that Biden plans to sit down, listen, and engage with Republicans and business leaders, along with Democrats, to hammer out the final details of the infrastructure bill.

There is room for compromise, that is clear, she said.

Our proposal is to invest in eight years and pay back over 15. Now we can have a discussion about that. Should we pay it back over 20 instead of 15? Is the rate not quite 28? Is it something lower? So we want to compromise. What we cannot do and what I am imploring the business community not to do is to say, We dont like 28. Were walking away. Were not discussing. Thats unacceptable. Come to the table and problem solve with us to come up with a reasonable, responsible plan.

Officials also indicated that the administration would not back any proposals that come in too low, such as one floated by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) that would cost $615 billion.

Blunt has argued that Biden would have an easy bipartisan win if Biden cuts things that have little to do with infrastructure.

If wed go back and look at roads and bridges and ports and airports, and maybe even underground water systems and broadband, youd still be talking about less than 30 percent of this entire package, Blunt said on Fox News Sunday.

Obviously Democrats have figured out that infrastructure is something we need and something thats popular, and so theyre trying to take 70 percent of this bill and call it infrastructure in a new way than weve ever talked about infrastructure beforeand that means youre looking at another partisan package just like we had with COVID, he added later.

Raimondo said the administration would hold discussions but warned officials not to come back and say we only need a half a billion dollars of infrastructure.

Because if we do that, well be in the same place or a worse place 10 years from now. So yes, reasonable people can disagree. Well find compromise, but lets go big and lets do whats required, she said.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo speaks during a press briefing at the White House in Washington on April 7, 2021. (Evan Vucci/AP Photo)

Biden promised during his campaign to unify the country but has struggled to draw Republican support for his grand idea. Democrats were forced to resort to budget reconciliation to ram through his COVID-19 relief package. The method dropped the number of required votes in the Senate from 60 to 50. Zero Republicans in either chamber backed the bill.

Biden plans to meet with members of Congress when they return to Washington next week, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday.

So far, most Republicans have signaled they dont like Bidens infrastructure plan, with similar complaints of extraneous spending.

What the president proposed this week is not an infrastructure bill, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said Sunday on NBCs Meet the Press.

Its a huge tax increase, for one thing. And its a tax increase on small businesses, on job creators in the United States of America.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters in Kentucky on Wednesday that he could back a smaller plan.

If we could agree on what the definition of infrastructure isand I think it clearly must include roads and bridges and broadbandthere may be a way forward. But it needs to be credibly paid for, not through completely revisiting the tax reform act of 2017, he said.

The 2017 bill, signed by then-President Donald Trump, cut corporate tax rates by 15 percent and lowered taxes for most households.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said recently on Capitol Hill that she wants to see funding for physical, traditionalexcept for broadbandinfrastructure. She expressed concern that the same reconciliation tactics would happen despite the White Houses statements on wanting to work with Republicans.

Democrats can use reconciliation again for the bill, the Senates chief rules expert decided this week.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumers (D-N.Y.) spokesman said the opinion is an important step forward that this key pathway is available to Democrats if needed.

The Senate is split 50-50 but Vice President Kamala Harris can cast tiebreaking votes in her role as president of the body.
Photo: The Canadian Press

Requiring proof of vaccination against COVID-19 could be the next point of contention between Canada and the United States.

A new online Leger poll suggests a deep divide among both Canadians and Americans when it comes to the idea of vaccine "passports."

The poll was conducted last month for the Association for Canadian Studies and the Canadian Institute for Health Research at the University of Manitoba.

It found 52 per cent of Canadian respondents supported showing proof of vaccination, compared with 43 per cent of Americans.

Among U.S. respondents, 36 per cent opposed the idea, compared with 33 per cent of Canadians surveyed.

Online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.

The White House said Tuesday it won't impose a federal requirement, while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has signalled willingness to consider it.

"We will continue to work with our partners in the United States and internationally to ensure that this is done properly," Trudeau said Tuesday about how best to reopen the Canada-U.S. border.

"We have already seen the importance of proof of vaccination for international travel ... in a pre-pandemic period in recent years. It will surely be important, but the details of what we are going to do about it, we are still fine-tuning."

White House press secretary Jen Psaki was unequivocal when she ruled the idea out Tuesday  an indication that requiring proof of vaccination would be a tough sell in a country that prizes individual liberties.

"The government is not now, nor will we be, supporting a system that requires Americans to carry a credential," Psaki said.

The priority for the White House will be to protect the "privacy and rights" of U.S. residents "so that these systems are not used against people unfairly," she said.

"There will be no federal vaccinations database and no federal mandate requiring everyone to obtain a single vaccination credential."
Behind all the various vague and meaningless claims by trade union officials and Labor Party representatives last week at their Special Platform Conference about standing up for workers, the event amounted to a pledge to work closely with big business to deepen the assault on jobs and conditions.

In the platform, passed unanimously, Labor committed itself to boost productivity and build a more dynamic economy through a greater partnership between workers, their unions, business, community and government.

ACTU President Sally McManus

This partnership involves the unions doing everything possible to suppress workers struggles, while Labor implements ever-greater demands to boost company profits, intensifying the cuts already made during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The platform vows to develop a diverse and dynamic business sector and make the Australian economy more productive and internationally competitive. Falsely, it claims that this will produce secure, well-paid jobs, when the bitter experiences of the past four decades prove the opposite.

The platform is explicit in pledging that Labor and the unions will step up their collaboration with employers to enforce the ratcheting up of the corporate agenda. Labor will be an effective and collaborative partner with the business community to help achieve this, it states. Labor will work with unions and business to support greater industry and workplace collaboration.

That means stepping up the drive by Labor and the unions, especially since the Hawke and Keating Labor governments of 1983 to 1996, to enforce competitive conditions on workers, pitting them against their fellow workers globally. This will include the destruction of thousands more jobs, including by the retail and logistics chains, telecommunications companies and airlines.

Aware of the immense discontent brewing in the working class, speakers at the conference declared that only the great values of Labor would protect jobs, stem casualisation, defend penalty wage rates and increase the minimum wage. Yet no such commitments exist in the platform: not even for a minimum wage or the right of casual workers to demand permanent employment.

Instead, the document simply states that Labor supports an unspecified living minimum wage, and penalty rates as a means to compensate workers for working excessive or unsociable hours. It claims that Labor will adopt a workplace relations system to reduce insecure work, but avoids defining casual work, let alone guaranteeing any right to secure employment.

The mechanism for enforcing regressive workplace agreements would be a strengthening of the Fair Work Act (FWA), which was imposed on workers by the Rudd-Gillard Labor government of 2007 to 2013. This legislation, ruthlessly backed by the unions, outlaws all solidarity or economy-wide strikes and any industrial action whatsoever outside narrow bargaining periods at individual workplaces.

The platform promises to amend the FWA to facilitate multi-employer collective bargaining. Under the guise of protecting low-paid employees, this seeks to give unions coverage over entire industries and enable them to reverse their collapsing memberships.

The platform underscores Labors reliance on the unions to enforce the dictates of big business. Accordingly, union officials were featured in every session of the conference, and Australia Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) secretary Sally McManus was allocated an extended address.

Her speech should be taken as a warning that the unions close collaboration with the employers and the Liberal-National Coalition government throughout the pandemic will only escalate. She began by praising workers who got us through the pandemic. These were the workers, including construction, mining and warehouse workers, whom the unions insisted must remain on worksites despite the COVID-19 risk to their health and lives.

McManus flatly defended the unions participation in five months of backroom talks last year with the government and business groups to draft a new industrial relations bill. We knew we were going into a lions den, but we did so to argue our case, listen to business, and put forward solutions, she declared.

During the more than 140 hours of negotiations with big business, behind the backs of workers, McManus worked so intensively to negotiate agreements that would allow the further gutting of workers conditions that the then Workplace Relations Minister, Christian Porter described her as his BFF [Best Friend Forever].

At the conference, McManus lamented the eventual breakdown of the talks. Even when the ACTU reached agreement with the BCA [Business Council of Australia], on simple changes that would take the country forward, the Liberal Party reverted to type. Even when we did the hard work for them, they still said no.

The agreement reached with the BCA involved fast-tracking union-negotiated enterprise agreements in return for scrapping the Better Off Overall Test (BOOT), which purportedly prevents workers being worse off under a new enterprise agreement.

In reality, the BOOT has long facilitated union-supervised sell-outs of basic conditions and jobs. However, even that pretence of protection of workers was to be scrapped under the BCA-ACTU deal.

When the governments IR bill eventually passed in parliament, the collapse of the ACTUs backroom agreements meant that the legislation was a rump, delivering the employers only more ability to deny permanency to casuals. The government was compelled to drop virtually all other aspects of the bill to win the support of right-wing populist cross-benchers.

Outraged, the Australian Financial Review declared: IR debacle is a lesson in how to waste a crisis. Its editorial said the Coalition had committed a profound failure to seize on the pandemic crisis to implement a Hawke-Keating-sized reform agenda to achieve significant incentive-sharpening micro-economic reform.

This reference to Hawke and Keating was a reminder of how their Labor governments worked closely with the unions, via a series of Accords, to impose a sweeping assault on workers jobs, conditions and basic rights that earlier Liberal-National governments had been unable to implement.

At last weeks conference, Labor and the unions put themselves forward as the partnership that, unlike the present unstable Coalition government, could deliver the requirements of the ruling capitalist class in this period of crisis, social unrest and war preparations.

To signal the unions full commitment to this collaboration, McManus concluded her speech by saying: I commend the platform on behalf of the union movement.
The family of a retired factory worker who died from an illness caused by exposure to asbestos has expressed concern that other employees at a former tyre factory in Dublin may be unaware of the risk to their own health.

Elizabeth Sullivan told an inquest into the death of her father, Patrick Byrne, that she hoped there could be some form of inquiry to establish if other people who worked at the former Semperit tyre factory in Ballyfermot may also have been exposed to asbestos.

Dublin Coroners Court returned a verdict of death due to occupational-related disease as Mr Byrne (85) of St James Road, Walkinstown had died from malignant mesothelioma  a form of cancer caused by inhaling asbestos fibres which affect the lungs and heart.

The Semperit tyre factory on Killeen Road, Ballyfermot was in operation before its closure in December 1996 with the loss of 650 jobs.

The inquest heard Mr Byrne, who was a non-smoker, joined Semperit in 1974 and worked there for 20 years until his retirement.

Ms Sullivan told the Dublin Coroners Court that she was concerned that other former Semperit staff might not be aware of mesothelioma and how it could affect them.

She told coroner, Dr Clare Keane, that her father had experienced a strange stabbing, severe pain in his chest for about a year before his death on March 19, 2020.

Ms Sullivan said her father had only started working in the Semperit factory in his 40s, while many staff had worked there even longer and could be facing similar health problems now.

My father was in great, unusual pain. It was very difficult to understand and if other men are facing that I would like that they could be helped, said Ms Sullivan.

She added: I really believe there must be an awful lot of people out there that are suffering the way my father suffered without knowing why they are suffering. And to me thats the most important thing that needs to be addressed.

The inquest heard Mr Byrne had been referred by his GP for an urgent chest X-ray in Tallaght Hospital in February 2020 after which he was confirmed as having malignant mesothelioma.

In written evidence, Professor Stephen Lane, a consultant respiratory and general physician at Tallaght Hospital, said Mr Byrne had a significant exposure to asbestos in the past.

The inquest heard Mr Byrne was not deemed suitable for chemotherapy as the risk of treatment outweighed any marginal potential benefits.

In response to a query from Mr Byrnes family about holding an inquiry into asbestos-related illness at the Semperit plant, Dr Keane said the coroners office had previously been in contact with the Health and Safety Authority as a result of asbestos-related deaths.

Dr Keane said the HSA had confirmed it was active in raising public awareness about mesothelioma, particularly among targeted workers in the construction and demolition industry who were most at riskfrom inadvertent exposure to asbestos as well as the owners of buildings built before 2000 which were more likely to contain the material.

She said the HSA agreed with a previous recommendation of the Dublin Coroners Court that further sources of information and support to individuals who may have been exposed to asbestos in their previous occupations would be beneficial but the HSA believed it was a matter for the Department of Health and HSE to consider.

Offering condolences to Mr Byrnes family on his death from a difficult and aggressive form of cancer, Dr Keane said she would raise the issue with the HSA again.
A retiring PSNI officer was paraded out of his police station as he left for the final time after four decades of service.

A 42-year career featuring memorable highs and devastating lows passed in a flash, said former chief inspector Roy Robinson.

Just a week after leaving the PSNI, the Enniskillen man is already considering his next step.

Having had many close calls with death, penning a memoir is top of the list for the self-confessed "cat with nine lives".

Three battles with cancer, a heart attack, two motorcycle accidents and twice almost drowning in Lough Erne did not deter him from his work.

"God has brought me through so many incidents during my career and illnesses. I dont know how I survived all those things, but I did," he said.

"I always thought if I died I would let everyone down, so I owe a tremendous debt to our wonderful health service.

"Some of my relatives are miracle survivors, so it seems to run in the family."

Mr Robinson grew up in Churchill, a village near Enniskillen. His first home had neither electricity nor running water.

It was in those early days that he developed a yearning to make a difference in life by becoming a police officer.



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His dream came true years later when he signed up for the RUC Reserve.

The popular policeman has always worn his heart on his sleeve, whether when comforting the grieving, sharing a joke with royalty or exchanging pleasantries with protesters.

But it is his huge contribution to the local community for which he will be remembered.

Aged 55, the married father-of-two left Enniskillen to become chief inspector of the mid-Ulster region, a role in which he believed he would finish his career.

However, a health scare led him back to the town for his final two years in the force.

"In February 2018, I was rushed to the South West Acute Hospital after suffering a heart attack when I took ill at a Sunday church service," he said.

"After a quadruple heart bypass, I was once again very grateful to still be around."

The devoted Christians proudest moment is receiving an MBE for services to the public from the Queen in March 2011.

Nine years earlier, he saluted the monarch on her historic visit to Enniskillen, during which she visited St Macartins Cathedral and St Michaels Church.

He was tasked with looking after protesters at the G8 summit in 2013 and got on so well with a number of them that they now exchange Christmas messages.

Reflecting on his career, Mr Robinson recalled a memorable encounter with two nuns.



Expand Close Chief Inspector Roy Robinson who has just retired from the PSNI after over four decades pictured on his last day in Enniskillen. / Facebook

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Whatsapp Chief Inspector Roy Robinson who has just retired from the PSNI after over four decades pictured on his last day in Enniskillen.

"I (came) across them on a winters night in the 1980s. (They had) a flat tyre," he said.

"I got out in the rain and changed the wheel. Even though I was all wet and my hands were dirty, they asked me to come back to the convent for tea and to get warmed up.

"Years later, I was on a promotions board and one of the candidates we promoted to inspector was a relation of one of the nuns.

"You just never know when you do somebody a good turn in life how things will work out."

But there were also darker days, such as the Enniskillen bomb in 1987 and the Omagh bomb in 1998.

On his final day on the beat last Wednesday, two people were uppermost in Mr Robinsons mind: murdered police officer Ronan Kerr and Monaghan man Kieran McAree.

Constable Kerr (25) was killed in a booby-trap blast outside his home in Omagh as he prepared to start his first shift in Enniskillen. He had just completed his police training, which included 10 weeks with Mr Robinson.

No one has been convicted of his murder, although one person was jailed for offences connected to the investigation.

When Kieran McAree went missing in 2014, it prompted one of the biggest search operations Enniskillen had ever seen. His body was found 64 days later.

Mr Robinson and six of his colleagues attended the young mans funeral in Emyvale, where they received a standing ovation and joined locals to form a guard of honour. He still keeps a card with Kierans photo in his wallet.

"As I finished up, I phoned the McAree family and Ronans mother, Nuala, to pay my respects to them both," he said.

"I still hope and pray that one day those responsible (for killing Mr Kerr) will be caught.

Mr Robinson was paraded out of Enniskillen PSNI station to the sound of The Enniskillen Dragoon, played on the pipes by a colleague.

For the retired policeman, it was like he was passing out all over again.

"Just like one of the new recruits would do, when I got to the front gate, I threw my hat in the air to signal that I was finished," he said.

"I will put the feet up for a while, but I would like to do some voluntary work with cancer and heart charities.

"I have often been told I should write a book and I think there is one in me."
Keir Starmer apologizes for visiting church that adheres to Christian doctrine on sex after LGBT backlash

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Sir. Keir Starmer, leader of the U.K.'s Labour Party, was forced to apologize for visiting a church on Good Friday that critics have attacked as being anti-LGBT for adhering to biblical sexual ethics.

In a since-deleted video, Starmer praised Jesus House for All the Nations on Friday as being a "wonderful example" of a church serving its community during the coronavirus pandemic, including acting as a vaccination center and running a food bank.

I recently visited @JesusHouseUK to hear about their crucial work in the community, Starmer announced in a tweet that has also been deleted. Churches across the country have played such a vital role in the fight against the virus. I hope everyone has a good, restful and safe Easter weekend.

The London-based church has long been attacked by LGBT activist groups, and some journalists, for refusing to kowtow to secular views on homosexuality, same-sex marriage and sexual orientation.

Following backlash from LGBT activists and Labour Party members who identify as LGBT or allies, Starmer said he regretted his decision to visit the church.

On Monday, Starmer said he accepted critics' assertions that his visit to the church was a "mistake" and stressed that he was "not aware" of the church's views on sexuality.

Starmer issued an apology on Twitter, saying: I completely disagree with Jesus Houses beliefs on LGBT+ rights, which I was not aware of before my visit. I apologize for the hurt my visit caused and have taken down the video. It was a mistake and I accept that.

In 2006, The church's Senior Pastor, Agu Irukwu, joined over 250 clergy in signing a letter expressing their concerns with the then-Labour Party's "Equality Act (Sexual Orientation Regulations)," which they deemed as Christianophobia.

The letter, published in The Telegraph at the time, said in part:

"We write as pastors on behalf of tens of thousands of black British Christians. Many members of our congregations in London left their home countries to come to England to experience the freedom of living according to their Christian beliefs in a Christian democratic country. ... The regulations force Christians in churches, businesses, charities and informal associations to accept and even promote the idea that homosexuality is equal to heterosexuality."

I completely disagree with Jesus Houses beliefs on LGBT+ rights, which I was not aware of before my visit. I apologise for the hurt my visit caused and have taken down the video. It was a mistake and I accept that.  Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) April 5, 2021

Starmers apology came after The Labour Campaign for LGBT+ Rights published a statement describing Jesus House as a church well known for its connections to conversion therapy, and more broadly anti-LGBT+ views. The group noted that Starmer characterized Jesus House as a wonderful example of a church serving their community and slammed his visit to the church as unacceptable.

The Labour Campaign for LGBT+ Rights maintained that as a bare minimum [Starmer's] video should be deleted, and a public apology (should be) made by the Leader of the Opposition himself. They added, We all still believe that the surest way to achieve LGBT+ equality is through the Labour Party, but the events of the last few days have set that cause back.

Our full statement in light of comments today from a Shadow Cabinet Member that attempt to justify Keir Starmer's visit to Jesus House.



The video should be deleted and a public apology made by the Leader himself. We also expect him to attend our meeting with his team this week. pic.twitter.com/HVXYCWkw1P  LGBT+ Labour (@LGBTLabour) April 5, 2021

Following Starmers apology, the group thanked the Labour Party leader for deleting the video and apologizing for visiting the church: We are pleased that you have recognized this mistake. ..."

While Starmers apology drew praise from LGBT activist groups, he received criticism from those on the other side of the aisle. Brendan ONeill, the publisher of Spiked, wrote an op-ed for the Spectator titled Starmer Was Wrong to Say Sorry for Visiting Jesus House.

According to ONeill, The Christians at Jesus House are guilty of nothing more than holding traditional Christian beliefs. He suggested that a headline from The Guardian titled Keir Starmer criticized over visit to church where pastor opposed same-sex marriage might as well read Starmer criticized for visiting a Christian church that adheres to Christian doctrine.

This is crazy. Over Easter I also visited a church that opposes same-sex marriage. The Catholic Church. Just a couple of weeks ago the Vatican reiterated that the Catholic Church cannot bless same-sex unions, because God does not and cannot bless sin. So Starmer should never visit a Catholic institution, either? ONeill asked.

In apologizing for visiting Christians who hold biblical beliefs about homosexuality Starmer has insulted vast numbers of people. It is he who has behaved in an intolerant way, because he has essentially said that he will not associate with any religious group that doesnt agree with his views on same-sex issues. To turn your back on good people because they disagree with you on sexual or social matters is a species of dogmatism, too.

Starmer is not the first politician to face criticism for visiting Jesus House. Last month, Prime Minister Boris Johnson stopped by the church to examine the incredible work being done by the vaccination teams  bringing people in from the Brent Cross area. He documented his appearance at Jesus House on Facebook, crediting the efforts of people like these here at Jesus House today for helping vaccinate 21 million U.K. residents.

As The Daily Mirror reported, Johnsons press secretary Allegra Johnson defended his trip to the church as a profitable visit where he was able to meet black community leaders and work to increase vaccine take-up and deal with vaccine hesitancy. She also stressed that this is a government that is fully committed to advancing LGBT rights and championing equality.

In 2017, Theresa May, who at the time served as prime minister and continues to be a member of Parliament for the Conservative Party, visited the church, which she praised as one of the most lively growing churches in the U.K. In response to criticism for visiting the church, a Conservative Party spokesperson touted Mays strong record on LGBT+ equality and commitment to advancing equality for LGBT+ people at home and abroad.

Public opinion polling has indicated that the overwhelming majority of U.K. residents support same-sex marriage, which became legal in 2014. According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted from 2015 through 2017, 77% of Britons favor allowing same-sex couples to marry. For comparison, support for same-sex marriage has reached 68% in the U.S., according to a poll released by the Public Religion Research Institute earlier this year.
The National Communication Authority (NCA) and other bodies including the National Media Commission (NMC) have been blamed for the influx of money doublers, Mallams, others on some TV and radio stations.



This comes on the heels of the arrest of two teenagers, a 16- and 17-year olds for the murder of a 10-year-old for alleged ritual purposes.



Felix Nyarko and Nicholas Kini allegedly conspired and killed Ishmael Mensah on Saturday, 3rd April 2021.



Information gathered when the two appeared in court today indicated that they were inspired by a show they watched on television.



Meanwhile, some pundits who have been contributing to discussions surrounding the murder of Ishmael have blamed the NCA and other bodies for allowing such programmes on television.



However, lawyer Yaw Boadu-Ayeboafoh, Chairman of the National Media Commission said blaming NMC will be unfair.



"It is everyone's responsibility to deal with situations like this . . . the National Media Commission works within the framework of the law, the constitution shows us how to go about these things . . . about 4 to 5 years ago the NMC proposed a law and parliament passed it, so the radio and Television stations owners sent us to court . . . it even landed in the Court and the Supreme Court ruled in their favour, and so I don't understand why we are being blamed now . . . it's not like we don't know our job; our hands are tied . . ." he stated in an interview on Kumasi based Hello FM.







Source: Rebecca Addo Tetteh/Peacefmonline.com









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Fears that Brexit would push up the price of bread in Ireland have receded.

Analysis of the complex Brexit rules has indicated it would be an issue only if the UK and EU wheat crops are so poor that more than 15% of Canadian wheat would have to be included in flour sent from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, and then exported south across the border for bread making.

That is the source for most of the flour for baking bread in Ireland. The equivalent of 210,000 tonnes of milling wheat is imported into the Republic as flour each year, mostly from two mills in Belfast, and originally from across the Irish Sea, in Great Britain.

While the EU/UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), and the accompanying Northern Ireland protocol, allow tariff-free trade between the EU and UK, this is under the condition that Rules of Origin criteria are met.

Exports from the UK to the EU are tariff-free, but only if 15% or less of the wheat from which the flour is made is not of UK or EU origin.

Over 15%, the complex Rules of Origin in the TCA kick in. If flour destined for export from Belfast south across the border exceeds the 15%, the EU tariff of 172 per tonne applies to these flour exports, unless it can be proved that the flour is not at risk of entering the Republic of Ireland.

The UK flour milling industry has been advised by the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) that traders examine their eligibility under the TCA, before exporting.

But Rules of Origin have had only limited effect on the UK milling sector so far, since the UK left the EU customs union on January 1, according to the AHDB, which says the sharp rise in wheat prices has been more of an issue (wheat export prices rose 20% in the past year, and ex-farm prices in the UK rose about 60% in the past 18 months).

With only 7-8% of wheat milled by UK millers coming from outside the UK or EU (but this amount will vary for individual milling businesses), the 15% threshold to meet Rules of Origin criteria for flour exports is unlikely to cause widespread issues, said the AHDB.

In the past 10 seasons, the proportion of imported wheat milled into flour in the UK has averaged around 16%. Smaller UK wheat crops, or poorer grain quality, trigger higher imports (some British millers fear that the UK wheat crop will decline).

The imported wheat comes mainly from Canada, France and Germany. Canadian wheat blends well with UK wheat and has higher protein levels and very strong gluten.

Only 5% on average of the flour produced in Great Britain is exported, if flour sent to Northern Ireland is included. Nevertheless, a no-deal Brexit would have seriously damaged the UKs flour milling sector, because tariffs of up to 50% would have ruled out exports to the EU.

The UK Flour Millers organisation had warned a no-deal Brexit would have meant job losses and threatened the closure of some mills.

Ireland had stockpiled flour and sourced alternative supplies from Europe in case an agreement wasnt reached  which some industry sources said would have added as much as 15c to the price of a loaf here in Ireland.

Looking ahead, sourcing alternative flour supplies from Europe is not an attractive option, because of the much higher transport costs it would bring.

And continental flour specifications are less suitable for Ireland, if Brexit makes flour from the UK too expensive.

There are genuine problems with flour, cars, and a number of products, mainly linked to Rules of Origin issues, said Foreign Affairs and Defence Minister Simon Coveney.

The answer in that regard is to alter supply chains, which is what has already happened, he told Senators in a recent debate on the withdrawal of the UK from the EU.

He revealed that corn flakes sold in Ireland are produced in Spain, by and large. They go to a redistribution centre in the UK, and are re-distributed into the UK and Ireland supply chain from there.

However, because they are repackaged and re-boxed there, a tariff applies. Retailers are looking at redesigning their supply chains in order to be able to source products in a way that does not involve tariffs.

There is more that we can do, but the UK Government has to be willing to work with us.

For example, if we could conclude a sanitary and phytosanitary agreement between the EU and the UK, it would significantly impact, in a positive way, in the context of reducing checks on live animals and food products, because we could see alignment around sanitary and food safety standards and issues pertaining to live animals, etc.

We know we could do that, but the British Government has decided that it does not want to do it, because it does not want alignment with the EU.
[April 07, 2021] Argonne National Laboratory a Founding Partner in Nation's First Startup Accelerator Program Dedicated Exclusively to Quantum Information Sciences

The U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory is a founding partner of Duality, the first program in the nation that is dedicated to accelerating startup companies focused on quantum science and technology - a rapidly emerging area that is poised to drive transformative advances across multiple industries. The University of Chicago's Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the Chicago Quantum Exchange, which are co-leading Duality, announced today the launch of the program. In addition to Argonne, the other founding partners are the University of Illinois at Urana-Champaign and private-sector-led non-profit P33.



The program's purpose is to help quantum startups bridge the gap between the laboratory and the marketplace that is often a critical barrier to success for emerging technologies. The launch of Duality comes at a time when countries around the world are racing to unlock the potential of quantum technology, which could transform industries in the same way the internet has reshaped the world in recent decades.

The Chicago area has emerged as a leading global quantum center. Last year, it was announced that three of eight federally funded quantum information science research centers and institutes would be based in the region. "Argonne is excited to partner with our academic and industrial collaborators as we make the Chicago region a focal point of quantum innovation," Argonne Laboratory Director Paul Kearns said. "Duality will provide inventors and entrepreneurs from across the U.S. the powerful facilities, tools, and talent that are needed to move transformative discoveries into applications. This will inspire an even more robust environment for future innovations, which will help maintain American scientific leadership in quantum science and technology." With a $20 million investment, Duality will help up to 10 quantum startups per year grow their businesses in the Chicago area. The program will be based within the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Chicago Booth is widely known for its thought leadership - with nine Nobel (News - Alert) laureates - and its impact on the global business community. Duality will soon begin taking applications through its website for the first cohort. Companies are invited to apply and will be considered on a rolling basis until May 14, 2021. Actively promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, the program seeks a range of diverse applicants in terms of race, gender, and ethnicity. Link to full story. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005894/en/

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Falun Gong practitioners march in Manhattan to celebrate "May 13 World Falun Dafa Day" on May 15, 2015. (The Epoch Times)

Sydney Man Calls Officials in China Arresting People of Faith, Implores Them to Change

A Sydney man has been making direct phone calls to Chinese officials in a remarkable attempt to convince them to stop arresting people of faith in Mainland China, and hes doing it one phone call at a time.

The man, named only Yan for his safety, said he takes the time each week to make some international calls to China, contacting the public security authorities, the police, procuratorial organs, and courts. He speaks in Chinese and attempts to change the minds of any individuals who are participating in one of the worst persecutions ongoing in the country.

Yan is a Falun Gong practitioner, and hes not the only person who makes these daring calls to connect with perpetrators of human rights abuses in China.

Falun Gong is a spiritual practice that originated in China in 1992. By the end of the decade, 70 to 100 million people were practicing, according to official estimates at the time. Threatened by its popularity, the then-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Jiang Zemin launched a campaign in 1999 to eradicate the practice. Since then, millions of Falun Gong practitioners have been imprisoned while hundreds of thousands have been tortured, according to Faluninfo.net.

In carrying out his efforts, Yan told The Epoch Times that he takes a more direct approach to affect change because, as an overseas Chinese, he doesnt face the same obstacles in making such calls as would people of faith in Mainland China, who would face direct retribution.

We can even call Jiang Zemin from here, he said.

Yan believes his efforts help to change the attitudes of people who have been taken in by the CCPs propaganda. In order to justify its persecution of Falun Gong, the CCP relies on its state-owned media to slander the practice and practitioners.

Recounting a recent experience, Yan explained how in March he was spurred into action after reading a report on Minghui.org, a website dedicated to tracking the persecution of Falun Gong. The report described the recent detention and torture of five Falun Gong practitioners in northern China.

According to the Minghui report, five Falun Gong practitioners in a northern county were kidnapped during the Chinese New Year. Four of them were placed in a detention center, and another one suffered serious physical harm. Seven CCP officials were reportedly involved in the kidnapping, including the Secretary of the Political and Legal Committee, a National Security Captain, and several police officers.

Yan said he immediately jumped into action and soon found 11 phone numbers registered to the officials involved via online search engines.

He started dialing.

It took him five days to get in touch with one of the officials, the National Security Captain.

After giving the man a friendly New Year greeting, Yan said he went straight to the point.

Captain, on the second, third, and fourth days of the Chinese New Year, you led a team to arrest five Falun Gong practitioners, he said. Their families spent the New Year in tears, and they themselves spent the New Year in detention. Everyone has a conscience. How do you feel about it? Have you ever thought about it? Did you and your family have a happy and unworried New Year?

Falun Gong practitioners gathered across the street from the Chinese Consulate General in New York, displaying banners that read Bring Jiang Zemin to Justice and The Crime of Genocide. (Dai Bing/The Epoch Times)

Is it wrong for Falun Gong practitioners to be good people? Do you know that the whole world supports Falun Gong, only the CCP persecutes it? Persecuting good and kind people. We cant do these things anymore! Yan said.

During the phone call, which lasted 15 minutes, Yan also told the official there is no legal basis in China for persecuting Falun Gong. He also informed the official that former CCP leader Jiang Zemin is being prosecuted in more than 30 countries now, and explained how on last years International Human Rights Day, the U.S. government sanctioned 17 perpetrators of human rights abuses, one of whom was a policeman at a local station in Xiamen, China.

He also spoke about the CCPs forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners.

From Jiang Zemin down to an ordinary policeman, all those who participated in the persecution are being held accountable, Yan told the captain. The CCP has deceived and used you in a political campaign, but after using you, it will forsake you in the end. You have to know that todays participation is evidence of future sentencing.

Upon hearing this, Yan said the captain said, Thank you for telling me this. I got it.

In the following days, Yan was also able to contact another four officials, including the Political and Legal Committee Secretary and three police officers. He said that three of them listened to Yan for more than 10 minutes.

Falun Gong practitioners re-enact the CCPs live organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners as described by witnesses. (Tang Bin/The Epoch Times)

Yan believes the calls are like a lifeline for those in China who have been blindly following the orders of the CCP, giving them a chance to choose between right and wrong.

In his conversations, he urges those in power to help practitioners escape the state-sponsored persecution.

But he noted that despite the calls and recent build-up of international pressure on the CCP, the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners is ongoing in China.

Yan also said that the CCPs persecution of Falun Gong was escalating, citing two of the most recent campaigns, Knock Door and Zero-Out. These campaigns are a continuation of the ongoing campaign to eradicate the spiritual practice in China which began two decades ago.

Zero-out means getting the roster of Falun Gong practitioners in 1999 when the persecution first started, Yan said. Harassing them one by one and asking: Do you still practice Falun Gong? If they do, they will be forced to renounce their faith, otherwise they will be put into prison, tortured  their children will be implicated. All those kinds of things.

When asked about what he wants the readers of English Epoch Times to know about China and the persecution, Yan said many western people could hardly understand or accept the evilness of the CCP and he urged them to start taking affirmative action against the regime.

People in democratic countries are usually very kind. They didnt believe the CCP is that evil in the past, Yan said. The spread of the CCP virus has awaked people in the west slowly, but the recognition is not that thorough yet.

Yan hopes that as people become aware of the dangers associated with CCP, that more democratic countries will start sanctioning the Chinese regime for its domestic human rights abuses.

That will be the time of death for the CCP, he said.
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Following the recent attacks on the facilities of the Nigerian Police and Correctional Services in Imo, the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Hakeem Odumosu, has put police officers in Lagos on red alert.

This was contained in a statement released on Wednesday by Muyiwa Adejobi, the Lagos police spokesperson.

Mr Adejobi, a chief superintendent of police, said Area commanders, Mobile Police Commanders and Tactical Operational units were summoned by the police boss to deliberate and review operational strategies of the command towards forestalling any attacks in the state.

According to the official, the police boss also met with the Controller of Correctional Service Lagos State, Francis Adebisi, on Wednesday, to discuss tactics to prevent attacks on police and correctional facilities in the state.

The Commissioner of Police, Lagos State, CP Hakeem Odumosu, in a bid to be proactive to (in) fortifying security in and around Police formations and Correctional Centres in Lagos State, has summoned the Area Commanders, Mobile Police Commanders and Commanders of the Tactical Operational Units of the command to deliberate and review operational strategies of the command towards forestalling any attacks in the state.

The meeting that was held on Tuesday 6th April, 2021, in the Conference Hall, State Headquarters, Ikeja, had in attendance the Deputy Commissioners of Police, Operations, Administration and State CID, Panti respectively, the fourteen (14) Area Commanders, Police Mobile Force Commanders, Commanders of Rapid Response Squad and Taskforce, Commanders of the Special Squad and Strike Team and the State Intelligence Bureau of the command.

The Commissioner of Police engaged them in an interactive session to assess and brainstorm on having better security structures in the state and to prevent any attacks on police formations, correctional centre and vulnerable places within Lagos State, the statement reads.

Mr Adejobi said the meeting agreed on many strategies to be adopted including robust intelligence gathering, surveillance, sectorising the state for easy policing, constant patrol and deployment of personnel to strategic places and multi agency collaboration amongst others.

He added that the police boss promised the Controller to sustain the deployment of mobile police to correctional facilities in the state.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how gunmen attacked the headquarters of Imo Correctional Service, set over 1500 inmates free, and burnt police vehicles and posts.

Less than 48 hours after the attack, another police division in Ehime/Mbano in Imo was burnt down, alongside vehicles.

Mr Odumosu has called on men of the Lagos police command to tighten security in the state, especially at the correctional facilities and across all police divisions.
Alex Salmond was blasted today after downplaying global political interference by Vladimir Putin - while continuing to host a programme on a Russian-controlled television station.

Scotland's former first minister refused to outright condemn the autocratic leader over claims he interfered in US elections and the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.

And in a heated radio exchange he also refused to blame Mr Putin for the 2018 nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury that left a woman dead and four others - including a police officer - seriously injured.

The Alba Party leader, who is hoping to win a Holyrood seat in May's elections as a launchpad for independence, has hosted The Alex Salmond Show on the Kremlin-controlled Russia Today (RT) station since 2017.

In relation to his programme he was grilled on BBC Good Morning Scotland today on the actions of Mr Putin.

Asked about claims that Russia was involved in attempting to steer the result of the 2014 referendum, he said: 'Anyone who analysed the evidence that was suggested would think it laughable in my opinion.'

Scottish Conservative election candidate Annie Wells said: 'This car-crash interview only served to highlight again that Alex Salmond is not fit to hold public office.

Scotland's former first minister refused to outright condemn the autocratic leader over claims he interfered in US elections and the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.

And in a heated radio exchange he also refused to blame Mr Putin for the 2018 nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury that left a woman dead and four others - including a police officer - seriously injured.

Mr Salmond today also clashed with GMS host Gary Robertson over the Salisbury poisoning, when asked three times if he believed Mr Putin was behind the attempt on the life of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia (pictured)

Galloway takes legal action over TV snub Ex-labour MP George Galloway is taking legal action after his All for Unity party was excluded from the latest TV debate of the Scottish election campaign. The former MP hit out at broadcaster STV for what he branded a 'blatantly unlawful decision'. As well as being excluded from next week's TV debate - which will feature the leaders of the five parties currently represented at Holyrood - Mr Galloway complained the channel was doing a one-to-one interview with Alex Salmond, the former Scottish first minister whose new Alba Party is running only on the regional list, as All for Unity is. Announcing the move on Twitter, Mr Galloway said that the broadcaster, which he dubbed 'SNPTV', would now 'face us in court'. The STV leaders' debate, which is taking place on Tuesday April 13, will see SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon take on Douglas Ross of the Scottish Conservatives, Labour's Anas Sarwar, Willie Rennie of the Scottish Liberal Democrats and Scottish Green Party co-leader Patrick Harvie. Linda Grimes Douglas, head of news and current affairs at STV, said: 'It's a hugely exciting time for Scottish politics and our team is primed and ready to bring viewers the most comprehensive coverage of Election 2021. 'From our leaders' debate and one-to-ones on Scotland Tonight, to analysis and on-the-night updates as part of special programming - alongside fully comprehensive ongoing updates from across the country on STV News At Six - we've got it covered.' Advertisement

'Alex Salmond may not have seen the relevance of being questioned about his links with Russia but voters will be astonished at his continued lack of moral judgement.

'Scotland deserves better than the former First Minister and his backers pursuing their separatist dream immediately after the election if they achieve a super-majority for independence.'

Last year it was revealed Russia tried to influence 2014 Scottish independence referendum.

MPs and peers on the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) carried out an investigation into the threats Moscow poses to Britain.

It found that the Russian attempts to influence the 2014 referendum were 'the first post-Soviet interference in a Western democratic election'.

The 50-page report was the result of an 18-month investigation by the former Intelligence and Security Committee, chaired by former Attorney General Dominic Grieve.

Mr Salmond today also clashed with GMS host Gary Robertson over the Salisbury poisoning, when asked three times if he believed Mr Putin was behind the attempt on the life of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

A pair of Russian assassins travelled to Salisbury in March 2018 in an attempt to kill former spy turned double agent Mr Skripal with military-grade nerve gas.

While they survived the assassination attempt, local woman Dawn Sturgess died after coming into contact with a perfume bottle used to carry the Novichok.

The attack sparked global outrage and a string of diplomatic reprisals against Russia.

But asked about the case today, Mr Salmond told GMS: 'The evidence was presented at the time and I'm struggling to understand what this has to do with a Scottish election campaign.

'It's perfectly legitimate for you to ask me about the programme I produce, along with others for broadcast on RT.'

Asked again by Mr Robertson, he added: 'Evidence came forward and was contested  the evidence came forward and people can see it for what it is.'

Asked about the widely held belief that he interfered in the 2016 election to help elect Donald Trump, Mr Salmond said: I thought the evidence for that was very slight.'

The interview came after Mr Salmond yesterday demanded fresh Scottish independence talks start immediately after May's Holyrood elections if separatist parties achieve a 'super-majority' of seats.

Launching his new Alba Party's election campaign today the former SNP First Minister said that discussions with Westminster should begin in 'week one' of the new assembly.

A poll at the weekend suggested pro-independence parties are on course to win 79 of the 129 seats available on May 6.

With a swipe at Boris Johnson's refusal to allow a new referendum, Mr Salmond said: 'The Tory Prime Minister must not be allowed to cast this great debate as party against party, Prime Minister against First Minister. If he does that, Scotland will lose.

'This needs to become what we all know it to be - a Tory Prime Minister standing against the will of Scotland's Parliament representing Scotland's people.

'Boris Johnson has already declared he will ignore an SNP victory as a basis for a referendum. But even if he can ignore a party, he cannot ignore a Parliament and a nation.'

Current SNP policy is to hold a referendum, with or without consent from the UK Government, if an independence majority is elected on May 6. However, the party has said any referendum, which could be challenged in the courts by Westminster, would only take place after the pandemic is over.

The Alba Party leader made what he called the 'declaration for Scotland', on the 701st anniversary of the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath, in which Scottish leaders including Robert the Bruce vowed not to be subjugated by England.
New York, New York--(Newsfile Corp. - April 7, 2021) - UGE International Ltd. (TSXV: UGE) (OTCQB: UGEIF) (the "Company" or "UGE"), a leader in commercial and community solar energy solutions, is pleased to announce that it has signed agreements to develop, build, own, and operate two additional rooftop community solar projects in New York City, adding to its existing portfolio.

The two projects, located in Queens and Staten Island, will together add over 1MW of solar capacity to the ConEdison grid, with generated electricity sold to residents of New York City. Both solar projects are with new real estate clients that own multiple properties, leaving room for future portfolio expansion. Together these two projects add USD$1.9 million to UGE's project development backlog.

For both solar projects, roofing upgrades are being provided to the building owners as part of their compensation. Updating a building's roof is one of the most expensive capital improvements for real estate owners, but with UGE's end-to-end model, the cost can instead be worked into the solar project's economics.

"We know that many building owners put off roof replacements because of the upfront cost," said UGE USA's Managing Director, Mateo Chaskel. "By folding this into our solar offering, the revenue generated by the energy makes the roof replacement possible with zero upfront cost, while increasing the building's value, a win-win for owners."

Ultimately, both real estate owners will host community solar systems in exchange for roofing upgrades and annual lease payments over at least 25 years. In return, UGE will build, own, and operate the projects, providing cheaper, clean energy to subscribers throughout New York City.

Interested consumers can visit www.ugei.com/community-solar-marketplace to view current opportunities to sign up to receive solar energy in the areas where UGE has open projects.

About UGE

UGE develops, owns, and operates commercial and community solar projects in the US and strategic markets abroad. Our distributed energy solutions deliver cheaper, cleaner energy to businesses and consumers with no upfront cost. With over 400MW of global experience, we work daily to power a more sustainable world. Visit us at www.ugei.com.

For more information, contact UGE at:

+1 917 720 5685

investors@ugei.com

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain information set forth in this news release may contain forward-looking statements that involve substantial known and unknown risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond the control of the Company. Forward-looking statements are frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "continue", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate", "may", "will", "potential", "proposed" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. These statements are only predictions. Readers are cautioned that the assumptions used in the preparation of such information, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be imprecise and, as such, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements. Forward looking statements include, but are not limited to, the anticipated closing of the Offering, the anticipated use of proceeds, and the receipt of regulatory approvals, including the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange. The Company assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Market Regulator (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/79649
Trials to Victory: a poignant account about suffering from abuse, thinking of giving up, eventually finding hope, and trusting Christs grace and salvation. Trials to Victory is the creation of published author Barbara Lewis, a first-time author at age fifty-eight. She is a Christian woman and currently resides in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Lewis shares, Bethany is a victim of domestic violence in the hands of her husband. She has a strong faith in God, and He provides a solution that gives her victory with strong Christian friends and a new church. Intertwined is the opportunity for a Christian romance and suspenseful crime stories involving Christian friends in law enforcement.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Barbara Lewiss new book is a stirring novel that carries the triumphant journey of an abused wife finding shelter in the hands of God.

The author lays down her story in the hopes of bringing inspiration and strength to others who are struggling in similar situations.

View a synopsis of Trials to Victory on YouTube.

Consumers can purchase Trials to Victory at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about Trials to Victory, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
IMF upgrades global growth forecast to 6 pct, highlights divergence in recovery

Xinhua) 09:27, April 07, 2021

International Monetary Fund (IMF) Chief Economist Gita Gopinath speaks at a virtual press briefing during the World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings in Washington D.C., the United States, April 6, 2021. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

-- The IMF expected the global economy to grow by 6 percent in 2021, but warned recoveries are diverging dangerously across and within countries.

-- The United States would be the only large advanced economy projected to surpass the level of GDP it was forecast to have in 2022. It is expected to grow by 6.4 percent this year.

-- China is projected to grow by 8.4 percent in 2021, 0.3 percentage point above the January forecast.

WASHINGTON, April 6 (Xinhua) -- The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday projected that the global economy will grow by 6 percent in 2021, 0.5 percentage point above the January forecast, according to the latest World Economic Outlook (WEO).

"Thanks to the ingenuity of the scientific community, hundreds of millions of people are being vaccinated, and this is expected to power recoveries in many countries later this year," IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath told a virtual press briefing during the World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings.

She noted that economies also continue to adapt to new ways of working despite reduced mobility, and large economies, particularly the United States, have rolled out additional fiscal support, both of which have helped improve the outlook.

Nonetheless, the future presents "daunting" challenges, said the IMF chief economist. "The pandemic is yet to be defeated and virus cases are accelerating in many countries," she said.

Noting that there's uncertainty surrounding the forecast, Petya Koeva Brooks, deputy director of the IMF's Research Department, told Xinhua in a remote interview Tuesday that the chief source of that uncertainty is the path of the pandemic and the vaccination process.

In the baseline, the IMF assumes that there's wide availability of vaccines in the second half of this year in advanced economies, as well as some emerging markets, but for the rest of the world, the wide availability would occur only in 2022 or even beyond, Brooks said.

In a downside scenario, with delayed vaccination and a more difficult path of the pandemic, global economy is expected to grow by 4.5 percent, 1.5 percentage points lower than in the baseline projection, according to Brooks.

At the virtual press conference, Gopinath told reporters that recoveries are diverging dangerously across and within countries, as economies with slower vaccine rollout, more limited policy support, and more reliant on tourism do less well.

She urged policymakers to take a "tailored" approach in providing support, with policies well-calibrated to the stage of the pandemic, the strength of the economic recovery, and the structural characteristics of individual countries.

"Governments will need to build back the fiscal positions after this crisis. And the hope is that they will build forward better to have more inclusive, sustainable, green economies," said the IMF chief economist.

The WEO report also noted that uneven recoveries are occurring within countries as young and lower-skilled workers "remain more heavily affected," and women have also suffered more, especially in emerging market and developing economies.

Photo taken on March 30, 2021 shows an exterior view of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) headquarters in Washington, D.C., the United States. (Photo by Ting Shen/Xinhua)

"In the next stage, what would be most important is to kind of withdraw those (job retention) schemes gradually, and then to help people reallocate, acquire new skills, which would make them competitive in the new sector," Brooks told Xinhua.

The latest WEO showed that the United States would be the only large advanced economy projected to surpass the level of gross domestic product (GDP) it was forecast to have in 2022 in the absence of this pandemic. The U.S. economy is expected to grow by 6.4 percent this year, after a 3.5-percent contraction in 2020.

Other advanced economies, including those in the euro area, will also rebound this year but at a slower pace, the report noted.

Among emerging markets and developing economies, China is projected to grow by 8.4 percent this year, 0.3 percentage point above the January forecast, according to the report.

The upward revision, Gopinath said, reflects improved external environment, with stronger global growth and U.S. COVID-19 relief package, which have increased the demand for China's products.

Noting that China has seen a very strong recovery, the IMF chief economist said the recovery is "somewhat unbalanced," as it's still heavily reliant on public support and public investment, and private consumption has not recovered as fast as hoped.

"So, to make this a durable recovery, our hope is that fiscal measures and other support measures would work in the direction of supporting the recovery coming from the private sector, as opposed to the public sector," she said.

Noting that withdrawing policy support prematurely would expose the economy to additional risks, Brooks advised Chinese policymakers enhance the safety net, which would enable China to be on the rebalancing path, and benefit the economy in the medium to long run.

While China's economy had already returned to pre-pandemic GDP in 2020, many other emerging markets and developing economies are not expected to do so until 2023, the WEO report showed.

The newly released report projected the global economy to expand 4.4 percent in 2022, 0.2 percentage point above its January forecast. In 2020, global economy saw an estimated historic contraction of 3.3 percent, according to the IMF.

(Web editor: Guo Wenrui, Bianji)
When Megy Gough rallied 30 vendors to gift a $50,000 wedding to a couple who survived cancer, she had no idea just two years later she would be battling the same devastating disease.

In November 2019 the Gold Coast hairdresser was diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer after brushing off occasional stomach pains and fatigue as a sign she was just overworked.

The disease had already spread to her liver and lymph nodes, giving her a prognosis of just three to five years to live, with doctors declaring her cancer 'inoperable'.

But the mother-of-one is determined to watch her four-year-old daughter, Harper, grow up.

Megy Gough, 31, (pictured) was diagnosed with stage four bowel cancer in November 2019 after brushing off her symptoms - occasional stomach pains and fatigue - as exhaustion

'My heart breaks at the thought of not being able to watch her grow up to be the woman that we're raising her to be. But, for her I know I have to fight this disease,' Mrs Gough told the Gold Coast Bulletin.

As the 31-year-old straps in for the fight of her life, her family are struggling to make ends meet as they pay for her treatment, with husband Justin unable to work as they care for their little girl together.

The couple, who lost their jobs at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, are desperately trying to fund integrative oncology, which is not covered by Medicare and will cost more than $50,000.

Although doctors say it won't cure her disease, it will buy her time - but the little money they have has to go towards putting food on the table.

Just four years ago after her business The Style Room enjoyed a successful first year, Mrs Gough decided to give back to the community and help a cancer-stricken couple.

Mrs Gough (pictured with husband Justin and daughter Harper) was told she only has five years to live - but she is determined to watch her little girl grow up

She mustered dozens of vendors to donate their services for a $50,000 wedding as a present for Rebecca Limb and Matt McLean, who later became her friends.

'After the wedding I was providing her with assistance around growth shampoos, to help with her hair regrowth after her chemotherapy. Now the tables have turned. I could never have imagined that I would be walking down the same tough road though just a couple of years later,' she said.

In the midst of working on her new business, Mrs Gough said she missed the key signs something was wrong with her health - putting her symptoms down to exhaustion.

She made her health a 'last priority', delaying a doctors visit for six months thinking it was unimportant and could be dealt with later - a decision she says is the 'biggest regret of her life'.

After her diagnosis, Mrs Gough underwent 17 rounds of chemotherapy after she could not find any doctors in Queensland willing to give her surgery.

She eventually found a Sydney doctor to take on her case, who gave her a peritonectomy in August to remove half of her bowel and 75 per cent of her liver, gallbladder, appendix and stomach lining.

The Gold Coast couple lost both their jobs during the Covid-19 pandemic and have been struggling financially as Mrs Gough undergoes gruelling cancer treatment

But the family received more devastating news just months later when two nodules found in a scan had become active and cysts on her ovaries were determined to possibly be cancer.

Her gruelling treatments continued into this year, with the young business owner undergoing surgery last month to remove spots on her lungs.

She ended up in an induced coma for five days with liver failure and a collapsed lung due to surgery complications.

Despite the harsh physical effects of treatment, Mrs Gough remains positive and is set on doing all it takes to give her more time with her family.

While she has always found it difficult to ask for help, her sister has set up a GoFundMe page to help the family through their financial hardship.

'I've always struggled and hated asking for help. I would prefer to help. But I realised you either ask for help or you could potentially never see your daughter grow up.'
(Newser)  Militants armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades launched a series of coordinated attacks overnight in southeastern Nigeria, targeting a prison where more than 1,800 inmates then managed to escape, authorities said Monday. The attacks began around 2am in the town of Owerri in Imo state and lasted for about two hours, according to local resident Uche Okafor. Gunmen also assaulted various other police and military buildings, the AP reports. "Efforts are in top gear to re-arrest the fleeing detainees," said Nigeria prison spokesman Francis Enobore, adding that 35 other inmates stayed behind during the prison break. One inmate was killed in a stampede after militants got into the prison yard. Anti-government separatists have been active in that part of the country for some time, the New York Times reports.

story continues below

The coordinated attacks come less than two weeks after another wave of violence in southeastern Nigeria, when at least a dozen security officers were killed during attacks on four police stations, military checkpoints and prison vehicles. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the Monday attack, but the Nigeria inspector general of police blamed a paramilitary wing of a secessionist movement active in the region called the Eastern Security Network. The ESN has said it is fighting for the protection of the Igbo people from foreign armed invaders killing their people. Police said the militants were heavily armed with machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and improvised explosive devices during the overnight violence. The attempt by the attackers to gain access to the police armory at the headquarters was totally and appropriately resisted, a police statement said. (Read more Nigeria stories.)
Local news didn't cover this contest and so urban activists turned to social media backed by HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS WORTH OF ELECTION DARK MONEY to earn a solid victory.



Check the numbers confirmed about half an hour ago . . .



Kansas City School Board At-Large

Tanesha Ford - 8,319 -56.3%



Patricia Mansur - 6,446- 43.7%

Kansas City School Board Sub-District 5

Kandace Buckner - 1,813 50.7%



Bruce Beatty - 1,765 49.3%

We'll talk about this in the morning but for now it looks like Dr. Bedell won't be getting that $282K salary and Kansas City public schools will soon go through more upheaval.



Developing . . .
YEREVAN, APRIL 7, ARMENPRESS. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan says there is no misinterpretation between the leaders of Armenia and Russia in terms of solving the issue of Armenian prisoners of war who are held captive in Azerbaijan.

I want to highlight your contribution to the stabilization of the situation in our region, especially after the war. I want to state that there is a very important issue in this context which is not solved yet. The talk concerns the issue of the prisoners of war, hostages and other detained persons. As we have repeatedly discussed, all hostages, prisoners of war and other detained persons must be returned to homeland according to the November 9 statement. Unfortunately, we still have detained persons in Azerbaijan. I am very happy that we do not have misinterpretation in solving this issue, Pashinyan said at the meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
Tyler Asman is hired to lead operational effectiveness and Marianne Palacios is promoted to lead collaborator experience

SALT LAKE CITY--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Nightingale College, a national leader in distance learning nursing education programs, today announced two new vice presidents to provide leadership as the College seeks accreditation from Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU). Marianne Palacios is the new VP, Collaborator Experience  the Colleges human resources function  and Tyler Asman is the new VP, Operational Effectiveness.

Nightingale College recently achieved candidacy status with NWCCU, a regional accreditor. The non-profit membership organization granted the pre-accreditation status and praised the College for reaching out to rural and underserved learners, fostering a culture of collaboration and providing extensive wraparound learner services. The Colleges recent accreditation achievement and its commitment to institutional excellence contributed to the addition of Tyler Asman and the promotion of Marianne Palacios.

We are fortunate in bringing these two strong women leaders to help us meet the growing and diverse needs of our learner community, collaborators and faculty, said Mikhail Shneyder, president and CEO of Nightingale College. Both Marianne and Tyler bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to help us navigate the unique challenges of providing nursing education to underserved populations and geographies.

Tyler Asman is an experienced professional in business administration, organizational development, operations and consulting. She will be taking leadership over operations and IT for Nightingale. Asman previously oversaw learning and improvement for United Way of Salt Lake, earning national recognition for innovations in education as well as fundraising and recruitment. She holds a masters degree in social work and a bachelors degree in English from the University of Houston.

Marianne Palacios is a highly knowledgeable professional with more than three decades of experience developing and overseeing human resources for companies throughout the Western U.S. She will oversee leadership development, succession planning, overall collaborator relations, talent acquisition, benefits, compensation, and compliance. Palacios holds a bachelors degree in psychology from Weber State University and has completed graduate courses in HR management at Utah State University.

Nightingale College offers a prelicensure bachelors degree in nursing, as well as RN-to-BSN program and a masters degree in nursing education. The College is introducing its practical nursing (PN) diploma program in May 2021.

For more information about Nightingale College, please click here.

About Nightingale College

Founded in 2010 and headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, Nightingale College is a pioneer in distance education for prelicensure nursing; it offers nursing programs at diploma as well as associates, bachelors, and masters degree levels. The College is dedicated to improving demographic, socioeconomic, and geographic access to nursing education and is enrolling learners across the United States, with supervised on-ground field experiences (SOFE) regions in Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Wyoming. To learn more about Nightingale College, its mission and programs, visit www.nightingale.edu.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210405005406/en/

Shannon Michael, Nightingale College

smichael@nightingale.edu

Source: Nightingale College
STEPANAKERT, APRIL 7, ARMENPRESS. President of the Republic of Artsakh Arayik Harutyunyan has addressed a congratulatory message on the Motherhood and Beauty Day, the Presidential Office told Armenpress.

The message says:

Dear mothers, sisters, grandmothers, women and daughters,

Usually, we are addressing our congratulations and sincere words of gratitude to you on this day, wishing you to always be healthy and happy, that your homes are filled with peace.

However, today the contradictory feelings exist in our souls: on the one hand, the pain, the sufferings which are impossible to mitigate with any word, and on the other hand  the imperative of finding a new strength and surviving.

Today, I first of all bow my head for all those mothers, sisters and daughters whose beloved ones have fallen for the defense of the Homeland, before those who are still waiting for their beloved ones. Let your dreams become true.

Dear women in Artsakh, Armenia and the Diaspora,

The Armenian woman has always been distinguished with her tenacity, wisdom and unconditional dedication. God bless you and your families.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
Tishaura Jones became the first Black woman to be elected mayor of St. Louis on Tuesday and later this month will begin leading a city confronting a high homicide rate, disturbances at the city jail and challenges related to the coronavirus pandemic.

Ms. Jones, the citys treasurer, received about 52 percent of the vote over her opponent, Alderwoman Cara Spencer, who had nearly 48 percent, according to unofficial results posted to the citys website. Ms. Jones will be sworn in on April 20.

Making history as the first Black woman mayor is not lost on me at this moment, she said in an interview on Wednesday. Im also looking at how little girls will look at this moment going forward and will see that they can be anything and that they have a mayor that looks like them.

Ms. Jones, a Democrat, said she decided to run for mayor in part because of her experience raising a 13-year-old son in north St. Louis. A gun was pulled on him once as he crossed the street to his grandfathers house, she said, adding that, like many Black parents, she has had the talk with him about how to handle himself in an encounter with the police.
Edgar Degas | Portrait of Madame Ducros

By:Liu Xutong | From:englishi.eastday.com | 2021-04-07 13:53

1858

Oil on canvas

33x24cm

MuseeMarmottanMonet,

Academiedesbeaux-arts,Paris

Madame Ducros, born Marie Mathilde Amelie Olivier de Vezin (1810date unknown), belonged to a Creole family in Louisiana. As a relativeofMichel Musson (18121885), Degass maternal uncle, who lived in New Orleans and worked in the cotton trade, she visited the Degas family when staying in Paris. This was before July 1856, when Degas set off for Italy, where he would stay until his return in April 1859. She was accompanied by her daughter Marie-Lucie (18261912), her second husband, and her two daughters by her first marriage, Angele and Gabrielle Toutant Beauregard (dates unknown). From a letter dated 13 August 1858, sent to the painter in Florence by her father, Auguste De Gas (18071874), we know that Degas painted portraits of the three adults and made drawings of the children.

This confidently executed portrait, which was probably a study for the more ambitious painting held at the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg, is handled allusively in order to exploit broad zones of colour.
A lengthy essay, a regurgitated CV and no central point are just three of the mistakes job-seekers make with their cover letters.

And while you might spend less time on them than on your CV, a cover letter can be the difference between getting an interview and being passed over.

Speaking to job website Seek, the founder and consultant at recruitment company Milkshake Group Sian Havard shared five ways you can improve your cover letters.

A lengthy essay, a regurgitated CV and no central point are just three of the mistakes employers see job-seekers make with their cover letters on a daily basis (stock image)

1. Make sure you have a cover letter

It might not be the first thing that many employers look at, but not having a cover letter will immediately put you at a disadvantage.

'All employers and recruiters ask for different things in their application processes, but it's generally expected that you include a brief, relevant cover letter,' Sian told the publication.

If you fail to do this, your application will probably be ignored, she added.

Many companies do their cover letters in different forms, so the recruitment expert recommends you take the time to have a look in the job specifications to see whether it states your letter should be attached as a Word document or merely in the body of your email.

Make sure that it's well-written and doesn't possess any spelling or grammatical mistakes.

That way, you know you'll be starting off on the right foot.

2. Keep it brief

Sian explained that there is nothing worse than an overly long cover letter, which merely shows that the job-seeker didn't know what to include and what to leave out.

'Any email or attachment you send to a company you'd like to work at demonstrates how you might communicate with people inside and outside of the company if you worked there,' she said.

Therefore, if you are long-winded, you are instantly showing that you are not an effective communicator.

The general rule of thumb is four or five short paragraphs and never more than one page.

If you find you are writing more when applying for a job, you simply must cut back.

A leading recruiter said the most important thing is that you get to the point of your cover letter, know who you're talking to and address them accordingly (stock image)

3. Get to the point

In a similar vein to keeping it brief, it's vital to reach the point of your cover letter sooner rather than later.

Sian said that the opening sentence of your cover letter should include both your objective and your 'most recent qualifications' so that the employer knows where they stand with you.

Leave the least important filler content to the end, and even with that, question whether it's really necessary to include it at all.

4. Do not regurgitate your CV

One of the biggest mistakes many people are guilty of with cover letters is regurgitating their CV - with different words.

'Include things like how you found out about the role, why you're interested in applying for it, and any relevant understanding you have about the position and the company,' Sian said.

It should never be repeating content from your CV.

5. Know who you're talking to

Finally, the job expert said a cover letter is no good unless you know who you are talking to - and target it accordingly.

They should always be addressed to that person, and if you are simply not sure then it's best to keep it formal and write 'To whom it may concern'.

Most people do not like being addressed by the company name, so try and tailor your application to make it as personal as possible.

Careers and LinkedIn expert Sue Ellson (pictured) said some of the top mistakes to avoid are including a cover letter that talks to the key words of a job, but a CV that features none of them

What are the best things to include in your CV? List all forms of education  high school, tertiary study, online courses, diplomas, certificates, apprenticeships Display relevant training, the institution and completion year for each course completed Include all past job titles, duties involved and expertise Alter your resume for every job and relate your responsibilities and experiences to the position advertised Share your significant achievements well Write a succinct summary explaining career objectives and value to the organisation Clearly highlight core skills by using bullet points List the most recent and relevant position first to showcase skills and knowledge List your interests and hobbies Provide a good summary to showcase experience Source: Seek Advertisement

Speaking previously to FEMAIL, careers specialist and LinkedIn expert Sue Ellson revealed her steps to writing the perfect CV - and the top mistakes to avoid.

'So many times people will write a cover letter that perfectly matches the job description and then not include any of those key words in their CV,' she told Daily Mail Australia.

'This means that when a job system scans the contents, it doesn't find any of the key words it is looking for.'

Sue said other common mistakes include spelling errors and poor formatting which looks untidy.

'It isn't uncommon for people to exclude their email address and phone number from their resume, which should be avoided,' she added.

'I would also add that a modified LinkedIn URL should also be included so employers can have a look at your job history.'

For those looking to use the isolation period during the coronavirus pandemic as a time to update their CV, Sue recommends you be sure to include your previous jobs, experiences, skills, achievements, volunteer work (if any), interests and how the employer can contact you.

'The achievements need to describe your value in terms that the employer understands, so if you are switching careers, you need to focus on your transferable skills as well as document your other skills,' Sue said.

You should also take the time to practice writing the perfect cover letter, and also update your LinkedIn profile so that it's relevant with your experience.

A good cover letter should predominantly outline and summarise your resume and why you are best suited for the job position available.

For more information about Sue Ellson, please click here.
Ants react to social isolation in a similar way as do humans and other social mammals. A study by an Israeli-German research team has revealed alterations to the social and hygienic behavior of ants that had been isolated from their group. The research team was particularly surprised by the fact that immune and stress genes were downregulated in the brains of the isolated ants. "This makes the immune system less efficient, a phenomenon that is also apparent in socially isolating humans - notably at present during the COVID-19 crisis," said Professor Susanne Foitzik, who headed up the study at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU). The study on a species of ant native to Germany has recently been published in Molecular Ecology.

Effects of isolation in social insects little studied so far

Humans and other social mammals experience isolation from their group as stressful, having a negative impact on their general well-being and physical health. "Isolated people become lonely, depressed, and anxious, develop addictions more easily, and suffer from a weakened immune system and impaired overall health," added Professor Inon Scharf, lead author of the article and cooperation partner of the Mainz research group at Tel Aviv University in Israel. While the effects of isolation have been extensively studied in social mammals such as humans and mice, less is known about how social insects respond in comparable situations - even though they live in highly evolved social systems. Ants, for instance, live their entire lives as members of the same colony and are dependent on their colony mates. The worker ants relinquish their own reproductive potential and devote themselves to feeding the larvae, cleaning and defending the nest, and searching for food, while the queen does little more than just lay eggs.

The research team looked at the consequences of social isolation in the case of ants of the species Temnothorax nylanderi. These ants inhabit cavities in acorns and sticks on the ground in European forests, forming colonies of a few dozen workers. Young workers engaged in brood care were taken singly from 14 colonies and kept in isolation for varying lengths of time, from one hour to a maximum of 28 days. The study was conducted between January and March 2019 and highlighted three particular aspects in which changes were observed. After the end of their isolation, the workers were less interested in their adult colony mates, but the length of time they spent in brood contact increased; they also spent less time grooming themselves. "This reduction in hygienic behavior may make the ants more susceptible to parasites, but it is also a feature typical of social deprivation in other social organisms," explained Professor Susanne Foitzik.

Stress due to isolation adversely affects the immune system

While the study revealed significant changes in the behaviors of the isolated insects, its findings with regard to gene activity were even more striking: Many genes related to immune system function and stress response were downregulated. In other words, these genes were less active. "This finding is consistent with studies on other social animals that demonstrated a weakening of the immune system after isolation," said Professor Inon Scharf.

The discovery by the team of biologists led by Professor Susanne Foitzik is the first of its kind, combining behavioral and genetic analyses on the effects of isolation in social insects. "Our study shows that ants are as affected by isolation as social mammals are and suggests a general link between social well-being, stress tolerance, and immunocompetence in social animals," concluded Foitzik, summarizing the results of the Israeli-German study. Foitzik is also collaborating with her Israeli partner Professor Inon Scharf and with co-author and group leader Dr. Romain Libbrecht of JGU on a new joint project on the fitness benefits and the molecular basis of spatial learning in ants, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

###

Related links:

https:/ / www. blogs. uni-mainz. de/ fb10-evolutionary-biology/ research-groups/ group-foitzik/ - Evolution and Behavioral Ecology of Ants group at the JGU Institute of Organismic and Molecular Evolution

Read more:

https:/ / www. uni-mainz. de/ presse/ aktuell/ 10918_ENG_HTML. php - press release "Communication and waterproofing: Melting properties determine the biological functions of the cuticular hydrocarbon layer of ants" (26 Feb. 2020) ;

https:/ / www. uni-mainz. de/ presse/ aktuell/ 7703_ENG_HTML. php - press release "Arms race between ant societies: Gene activity in defenders depends on invading slavemaking ants" (28 Feb. 2019) ;

https:/ / www. uni-mainz. de/ presse/ aktuell/ 5983_ENG_HTML. php - press release "A study of ants provides information on the evolution of social insects" (10 Sept. 2018) ;

https:/ / www. uni-mainz. de/ presse/ aktuell/ 5412_ENG_HTML. php - press release "Brood care gene steers the division of labor among ants" (19 June 2018) ;
Dublin, April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Gaming Controller Market Forecast to 2027 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis by Product, Compatibility, Connectivity, Distribution, and End User" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The global gaming controller market was valued at US$ 1,663.5 million in 2019 and is projected to reach US$ 2,973.5 million by 2027; it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8.0% from 2020 to 2027.



North America dominated the gaming controller market in 2019 with a share of 25.86%. The US, Canada, and Mexico are major economies contributing to the gaming controller market in North America. The video game controllers, such as consoles, are going through constant transition over the years. From blocky and basic nature of controllers to new and futuristic look of PlayStation 5's upcoming DualSense controller, the gaming controller is experiencing technological changes. With changing era of consoles, advent of cloud gaming is a sign of evolution in future games.

For instance, GameSir X2 supports various popular cloud gaming platforms such as Google's stadia, Microsoft's xCloud, and Vortex. Similarly, Razer, a global lifestyle brand for gamers has stated about availability of Razer Kishi Universal Gaming Controller for iPhone. The new controller exhibits feature of clickable analog thumbsticks, an 8-way D-pad, and range of face & multi-function buttons. Moreover, Nintendo of America is planning to sell single joy-con switch controllers in the region. Therefore, key steps by companies with respect to gaming controllers in projected to fuel the market growth during the forecast period.



Europe stood second in the gaming controller market with a decent market share in 2019, and it is anticipated to register the highest CAGR from 2020 to 2027. Europe comprises developed economies such as Germany, France, the UK, and Italy. Germany, the UK, France, Italy, and Spain are the prominent markets having high gaming revenues. Germany is a highly valuable video game market of the Western Europe, followed by the UK and France. With over 90% adoption of smartphones in the European region, more than 30% of the European population plays online games on their smartphones. In addition, there are around 2,000 gaming firms in the UK engaged in the business of developing games for escalating gaming market. The high penetration of smartphones in the region is projected to fuel the significance of controllers, such as gamepad, compatible for smartphones.



The gaming controller market players mainly perform several strategies to expand their business and maintain their brand name globally. For instance, in 2020, Scuf Gaming International, LLC, launched high-performance gaming controllers for Call of Duty League to bring fans new, official league controllers, featuring team colors and logos.



Reasons to Buy

Highlights key business priorities in order to assist companies to realign their business strategies.

The key findings and recommendations highlight crucial progressive industry trends in the gaming controller market, thereby allowing players to develop effective long-term strategies.

Develop/modify business expansion plans by using substantial growth offering developed and emerging markets.

Scrutinize in-depth global market trends and outlook coupled with the factors driving the market, as well as those hindering it.

Enhance the decision-making process by understanding the strategies that underpin commercial interest with respect to component, application and vertical.

Key Topics Covered:



1. Introduction



2. Key Takeaways



3. Research Methodology

3.1 Coverage

3.2 Secondary Research

3.3 Primary Research



4. Gaming Controller Market Landscape

4.1 Market Overview

4.2 PEST Analysis

4.2.1 North America

4.2.2 Europe

4.2.3 Asia Pacific

4.2.4 Middle East & Africa

4.2.5 South America

4.3 Ecosystem Analysis

4.4 Expert Opinion



5. Gaming Controller Market- Key Industry Dynamics

5.1 Market Drivers

5.1.1 Growing gaming industry

5.1.2 Technological advancements in gaming accessories

5.2 Market Restraint

5.2.1 Use of mobile phones as a console

5.3 Market Opportunity

5.3.1 Adoption of smartphone gaming controllers

5.4 Future Trend

5.4.1 Emergence of advanced gaming products

5.5 Impact Analysis of Drivers and Restraints



6. Gaming Controller Market - Global Analysis

6.1 Gaming Controller Market Global Overview

6.2 Market Positioning - Five Key Players



7. Gaming Controller Market Analysis - By Product

7.1 Overview

7.2 Gaming Controller Market, by Product (2019 and 2027)

7.3 Gamepad

7.3.1 Overview

7.3.2 Gamepad: Gaming Controller Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million)

7.4 Joystick

7.4.1 Overview

7.4.2 Joystick: Gaming Controller Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million)

7.5 Trackball

7.5.1 Overview

7.5.2 Trackball: Gaming Controller Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million)

7.6 Throttle Quadrant

7.6.1 Overview

7.6.2 Throttle Quadrant: Gaming Controller Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million)

7.7 Light Gun

7.7.1 Overview

7.7.2 Light Gun: Gaming Controller Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million)



8. Gaming Controller Market Analysis - By Compatibility

8.1 Overview

8.2 Gaming Controller Market, by Compatibility (2019 and 2027)

8.3 PC and Mobiles

8.3.1 Overview

8.3.2 PC and Mobiles: Gaming Controller Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million)

8.4 Console

8.4.1 Overview

8.4.2 Console: Gaming Controller Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million)



9. Gaming Controller Market Analysis - By Connectivity

9.1 Overview

9.2 Gaming Controller Market, by Connectivity (2019 and 2027)

9.3 Wireless

9.3.1 Overview

9.3.2 Wireless: Gaming Controller Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million)

9.4 Wired

9.4.1 Overview

9.4.2 Wired: Gaming Controller Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million)



10. Gaming Controller Market Analysis - By Distribution

10.1 Overview

10.2 Gaming Controller Market, by Distribution (2019 and 2027)

10.3 Online

10.3.1 Overview

10.3.2 Online: Gaming Controller Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million)

10.4 Offline

10.4.1 Overview

10.4.2 Offline: Gaming Controller Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million)



11. Gaming Controller Market Analysis - By End-User

11.1 Overview

11.2 Gaming Controller Market, by End-User (2019 and 2027)

11.3 Personal

11.3.1 Overview

11.3.2 Personal: Gaming Controller Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million)

11.4 Commercial

11.4.1 Overview

11.4.2 Commercial: Gaming Controller Market - Revenue and Forecast to 2027 (US$ Million)



12. Gaming Controller Market - Geographic Analysis

12.1 Overview

12.2 North America: Gaming Controller Market

12.3 Europe: Gaming Controller Market

12.4 APAC: Gaming Controller Market

12.5 MEA: Gaming Controller Market

12.6 SAM: Gaming Controller Market



13. Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Global Gaming Controller Market

13.1 North America: Impact Assessment of COVID-19 Pandemic

13.2 Europe: Impact Assessment of COVID-19 Pandemic

13.3 Asia Pacific: Impact Assessment of COVID-19 Pandemic

13.4 Middle East and Africa: Impact Assessment of COVID-19 Pandemic

13.5 South America Impact Assessment of COVID-19 Pandemic



14. Industry Landscape

14.1 Overview

14.2 Market Initiative

14.3 New Product Development

14.4 Merger and Acquisition



15. Company Profiles

15.1 Scuf Gaming International, LLC

15.1.1 Key Facts

15.1.2 Business Description

15.1.3 Products and Services

15.1.4 Financial Overview

15.1.5 SWOT Analysis

15.1.6 Key Developments

15.2 Sony Corporation

15.2.1 Key Facts

15.2.2 Business Description

15.2.3 Products and Services

15.2.4 Financial Overview

15.2.5 SWOT Analysis

15.2.6 Key Developments

15.3 Guillemot Corporation S.A.

15.3.1 Key Facts

15.3.2 Business Description

15.3.3 Products and Services

15.3.4 Financial Overview

15.3.5 SWOT Analysis

15.3.6 Key Developments

15.4 HORI USA

15.4.1 Key Facts

15.4.2 Business Description

15.4.3 Products and Services

15.4.4 Financial Overview

15.4.5 SWOT Analysis

15.4.6 Key Developments

15.5 Logitech

15.5.1 Key Facts

15.5.2 Business Description

15.5.3 Products and Services

15.5.4 Financial Overview

15.5.5 SWOT Analysis

15.5.6 Key Developments

15.6 NVIDIA CORPORATION

15.6.1 Key Facts

15.6.2 Business Description

15.6.3 Products and Services

15.6.4 Financial Overview

15.6.5 SWOT Analysis

15.7 Microsoft Corporation

15.7.1 Key Facts

15.7.2 Business Description

15.7.3 Products and Services

15.7.4 Financial Overview

15.7.5 SWOT Analysis

15.8 Nitendo

15.8.1 Key Facts

15.8.2 Business Description

15.8.3 Products and Services

15.8.4 Financial Overview

15.8.5 SWOT Analysis

15.9 Mad Catz Global Limited

15.9.1 Key Facts

15.9.2 Business Description

15.9.2.1 Products and Services

15.9.3 Financial Overview

15.9.4 SWOT Analysis

15.10 Razer Inc.

15.10.1 Key Facts

15.10.2 Business Description

15.10.3 Products and Services

15.10.4 Financial Overview

15.10.5 SWOT Analysis

15.10.6 Key Developments



16. Appendix

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/gwhto3
Fiona Coote is in a critical condition after undergoing the three-hour operation at St Vincents Hospital early yesterday morning. A hospital spokesman said yesterday there had been no deterioration in the crucial post-operative period.

Fiona was transferred in a serious condition from North Shore Hospital to Sydneys St Vincents in the early hours of yesterday morning. The operation, which began at 8 am, was performed by a team of doctors led by the head of the hospitals heart transplant unit, Dr Victor Chang.

Dr Chang said the operation was a success, but Fionas body will start rejecting the heart in about four days. The rejection process now has to be overcome, this may take months, he said. Dr Chang said the initial rejection usually lasted for about a week. The first 24 hours after the operation would cause the most concern, he said.

Doctors yesterday refused to release details of the heart donor, but Dr Chang said the size of the heart was perfect, age compatibility was good and tissue matching was excellent.

The donor of Fionas heart could have been aged up to 45 years, but not younger than herself. A donor must have blood group and tissue compatibility with the patient. Doctors spent several hours on Saturday night checking such details before the operation was approved.

Fiona was rushed to Sydneys North Shore Hospital from Manilla, a small town near Tamworth, last Thursday. She has a rare condition called cardio-myopathy, which causes the heart to stop contracting and pumping properly. It usually affects young people.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 14:52:39|Editor: huaxia

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A family wearing face masks ride on a motorbike in northwest Pakistan's Peshawar on April 7, 2021. As Pakistan is struggling to contain the third wave of COVID-19, the country reported 4,004 new COVID-19 cases over the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 700,188, the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) said on Wednesday. (Photo by Saeed Ahmad/Xinhua)

ISLAMABAD, April 7 (Xinhua) -- As Pakistan is struggling to contain the third wave of COVID-19, the country reported 4,004 new COVID-19 cases over the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 700,188, the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) said on Wednesday.

The country's southern Sindh province has been the worst-hit with 267,238 cases followed by east Punjab province where 237,594 people have been tested positive, the NCOC said in a statement.

A total of 102 people died across the country during the last 24 hours, raising the death toll to 15,026, the official statement said, adding that 4,529 patients are being treated in hospitals across Pakistan.

Urging the Pakistani people to strictly follow standard operating procedures to stop the spread of the virus, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran khan said that the third wave of COVID-19 is extremely dangerous in comparison to the previous two waves.

"We have so far been protecting our people. We are not imposing a complete lockdown or closing our factories. We are only imposing minor restrictions so that this wave does not spread rapidly. But if this spreads, it will have a very negative impact and we will be forced to take steps," Khan said in a recent interactive session with the public.

To counter the deadly third wave, Pakistan has recently taken several measures by banning all kinds of both indoor and outdoor mass gatherings, closing educational institutions in some areas of the country and suspending inter-provincial transport two days a week from April 10 to 25.

Asad Umar, chief of the NCOC, said on Tuesday that increased restrictions, broader lockdowns and strong enforcement of standard operating procedures have started showing their effect.

The rising trend of positivity rate has been flattened, but the number of critical patients and mortality will stay at high levels for some time due to the momentum of last two weeks, Umar said.

Meanwhile, the country's COVID-19 vaccination campaign is in full-swing, with authorities urging eligible citizens to get themselves vaccinated against the disease.

So far, more than 1 million people have been vaccinated, and the total number of people who have registered themselves for vaccination is now over 2 million, according to the NCOC chief.

Pakistani health experts believe that the variant of COVID-19 initially discovered in Britain has been behind the surge in the number of infections in the country.

"The new variant seemed to be more contagious and deadly, and the only way we can control it is to shut all kinds of activities that may play role in the spread of the disease," Ejaz Ahmad Khan, an infectious disease specialist at the Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad, told Xinhua.

He said the government is trying hard to control the situation, but cooperation of the Pakistani people is also very important. "Solely the government cannot take control of this fatal disease without our help." Enditem
On the evening of April 2, the search phrase H&M relation to problematic map" suddenly topped searches on the Chinese social network Weibo. As of 9:30 am on April 3, it had reached 410 million readers.

The source was originally posted by a WeChat account of Netcom Shanghai, which said that a social network user reported to authorities "a problematic China map" on H&M's official website (hm.com) and that H&M edited the map right after receiving a request from the Chinese authorities.

Information shared by Chinese media and celebrities, along with a map showing the 'cow's tongue line'. (Screenshot).

The information was subsequently reported by the People's Daily, the Chinese central television agency CCTV and many other newspapers. The specific content is as follows:

"Recently, netizens reported to authorities that on H&M's official website (hm.com), a 'problematic Chinese map' appeared. The Shanghai Department of Natural Resources and Planning immediately asked H&M to quickly rectify.

After receiving the notice, Haines Morris Co., Ltd (Shanghai Haynes Morris Commercial) - the company that operates H&M's official website - corrected the mistake immediately. The Shanghai Department of Natural Resources and Planning and the Shanghai Internet Information Office had a meeting with them.

During the meeting, the two agencies seriously pointed out the violation of H&M and ordered H&M to set up a network in accordance with the law, to seriously study the 'Chinese Cyber Security Law', 'Chinas mapping law', 'Map management regulations'... together with other laws and regulations, to build a solid sense of national maps, to correctly implement 'rules of map use'.

The two agencies clearly defined that the person in charge of the business must preside over the reorganization of the website content. The management body will supervise and monitor this task in the coming time. The Company (H&M) said it had accepted the management bodys warning and would implement practical corrections.

By the evening of April 3, this was still a hot topic on Chinese and Vietnamese social networks. Many Vietnamese netizens shared images and hashtags with information that H&M had posted a map of China's illegal "cow's tongue line", and they called for a boycott of this brand.

So what is the "problematic map" mentioned by the Chinese media? How is it related to the illegal "cow's tongue line" that Vietnamese netizens condemned?

It is not clear what content the Chinese authorities asked H&M to correct, or whether they asked H&M to show the "cow's tongue line" in the previous map, but according to Chinese authorities, the map that does not have a serial number or wrong country boundaries (including the 'cow's tongue line'), omitting islands such as Dieu Ngu (Diaoyu Island), Chiwei Island, Hainan Island and Taiwan is considered problematic.

There is no information about whether or not H&M has confirmed that it has officially corrected the map.

In latest news, the cross-border e-commerce platform Fado.vn, on April 7, officially announced its indefinite halt of trading items from H&M, following the "problematic map" case, reported Vietnam Plus.

According to Vietnam Plus, CEO of Fado Dat Pham said the suspension of the sale of H&M products on the platform began at 0:00 hours April 7. He said as the Fado.vn team are Vietnamese, they do not cooperate with brands that are disrespectful to Vietnams territorial sovereignty.

H&M is now running 12 stores in Vietnam, with the first store opened in Ho Chi Minh City in September 2017.

Phong Vu
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- If the Indians get 85% of their traveling party vaccinated, many of the health and safety protocols in place to prevent the spread of the coronavirus will be loosened. Apparently that 85% will not include right-hander James Karinchak.

While part of the Indians traveling party was being vaccinated at Progressive Field during Wednesdays off-day, Karinchak added an anti-vaccine post from Jay Nera to his Instagram story. The post used a quote attributed to Hermann Goering, a convicted war criminal and a leader of the Nazi party during World War II, about how it is possible to control people through fear.

Karinchak later removed the post. The Indians have had several several conversations with Karinchak about his use of social media.

Players and staff members are not required to be vaccinated, but MLB and the MLBPA have strongly suggested it. Still, if someone doesnt want to be vaccinated, thats their decision.

Thats everybodys personal choice, said manager Terry Francona. You cant make somebody do that. That wouldnt be right. Like I said, I hope we get to a certain amount though, where we are able as a team to relax some of the restrictions. That would be helpful. And our people do a good job of explaining things to the players so they can make an informed decision.

Vaccinations will also be made available to the Indians traveling party on Thursday, which is another off day.

A variety of Cleveland Indians face masks available online today. (Fanatics.com)

New Indians face masks for sale: Heres where you can buy Cleveland Indians-themed face coverings for coronavirus protection, including a single mask ($14.99) and a 3-pack ($24.99). All MLB proceeds donated to charity.

Buy Indians gear: Fanatics, Nike, Amazon, Lids

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Aboriginal land managers are hopeful that they can reconstruct an ancient ceremonial stone arrangement in western Victoria that was damaged by a farmer.

Traditional owners reacted with shock and sadness after Adrian McMaster removed about 60 metres of stone from the site at Lake Bolac on Good Friday.

The scar on the landscape left after the stones were removed. Credit:Joe Armao

Mr McMaster inherited the property after his fathers death three years ago and said family knowledge of the exact details of the stones had since been lost.

Aboriginal Victoria began investigating the damage on Tuesday. Mr McMaster apologised for the removal, offering to work with Aboriginal people to replace the stones.
The latest New Jersey resident to be charged in the attack on the U.S. Capitol in January led the push into the building and assaulted a number of officers as he did so, including spraying a chemical irritant at those trying to stop the rioters from advancing, authorities allege.

Christopher Joseph Quaglin, of North Brunswick, was arrested Wednesday on charges of assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers or employees, civil disorder and obstruction of official proceeding, authorities announced.

He appeared virtually in federal court in Trenton in the afternoon, during a which a judge decided to release him on house arrest.

Dressed in a Make America Great Again shirt, a black helmet and a gas mask while armed with chemical spray, authorities say multiple videos show Quaglin as one of the aggressors in attempting to breach the Capitol on Jan. 6.

As he did so, according to the complaint against him, Quaglin was recorded on video allegedly assaulting multiple officers who were holding off the rioters. After the attempted insurrection, Quaglin bragged about his role in it on social media, posting that he was in the middle of it and was sure he was going to make the news, according to the criminal complaint.

Around 1:36 p.m. on Jan. 6, video shows Quaglin approach the police barrier outside the building and start screaming at them, according to the complaint.

You dont want this fight, he can heard yelling. You do not want this f------ fight. You are on the wrong f------ side. Youre going to bring a f------ pistol, Im going to bring a f------ cannon. You wait! You wait! You wait! Stay there like a f------ sheep!

Photos from the FBI show Christopher Quaglin, of North Brunswick. N.J. before or during the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Quaglin was arrested April 7, 2021 on federal charges accusing him of participating in the riot.

Quaglin then can been seen pushing the fence as officers stand their ground, documents said. Shortly thereafter, according to charging documents, video shows Quaglin shoving at least two officers as he continues to verbally berate them.

Less than an hour later, Quaglin can been seen with other rioters ripping down one of the barriers being used to keep the crowd out of the Capitol, documents said. At one point, Quaglin pushes an officer down, according to the complaint.

As the crowd began to converge on the building, Quaglin can been seen entering the tunnel at the Lower West Terrace and trying to push his way past the police officers guarding the door with other rioters, according to the complaint.

He is seen on video attacking officers with a stolen riot shield and spraying them with a chemical irritant, according to the complaint. He allegedly sprays one officer, who does not have a face shield or a gas mask, directly in the face, authorities said.

Another video in the tunnel shows Quaglin using a stolen shield to push up against law enforcement officers and then hitting that same (officer) in the side of the neck and face, according to the complaint.

Quaglin was eventually pushed out of the tunnel, the complaint says.

An electrician by trade, Quaglin was identified by a number anonymous tipsters, who sent authorities videos of Quaglin, who identifies himself on Facebook as Chris Trump, broadcasting live from the Capitol on Jan. 6. Some pictures of him show him wearing a helmet camera.

Trump is speaking and everyone is walking there, Quaglin says in one of the videos, according to the complaint. And I am walking there [showing capitol building to camera]. And I am ready [showing gas mask in hand]. We will see how it goes.

Photos from the FBI show Christopher Quaglin, of North Brunswick. N.J. before or during the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Quaglin was arrested April 7, 2021 on federal charges accusing him of participating in the riot.

When he arrived back to his hotel  where prosecutors say he booked six rooms and was actively recruiting others to join him in Washington, D.C.  Quaglin posted a video saying it was a great time.

When you guys see the footage, I was in the red, white and blue uhh hoodie and the black helmet, he said, according to the complaint. Im absolutely on a loop on Fox News. Quaglin says, according to the complaint.

In the days after the Jan. 6 attack, Quaglin checked up on the incident and his involvement, federal authorities say.

Several times he searched on Google, guy gets bear sprayed at capital and visited the FBIs webpage dedicated to the Capitol investigation.

On Jan. 20, 2021, the day President Biden was inaugurated, Quaglin visited a web page titled, Countries where you can buy citizenship, residency, or passport, the complaint against him alleges.

After the general election last November, hed posted on social media about how he was going to war, authorities said. Stand back. Stand by, Quaglin said on Nov. 6, quoting former President Donald Trump.

That same say day, he wrote to a person on facebook: Looking forward to a war, according to the complaint.

Quaglin is the latest person from New Jersey to be charged in relation to the attack on the U.S. Capitol. More than a dozen individuals are facing federal charges for allegedly breaching the government building.

In a sometimes contentious hearing in U.S. District Court in Trenton Wednesday afternoon, U.S. Magistrate Judge Zahid N. Quaraishi decided to release Quaglin to home detention on a bond signed by his wife.

The judge spoke directly to Quaglin, saying if he violated any of the conditions, future court appearances in New Jersey or Washington, D.C. would not be the same. I promise you...it will not be the same discussion with your counsel.

After deciding to release him, the judge granted federal prosecutor Christopher Matthews request to a one-day stay to consult a judge in Washington, D.C., where all Capitol-related cases are being prosecuted.

Defense attorney Carlos Diaz-Cobo portrayed Quaglin as a church-going father of an 8-week-old child and electrician for 15 years who had a job interview Wednesday before his arrest. Hes been out of work since November due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the hearing, on Zoom, Quaglins wife Moira teared up several times while holding and comforting their newborn.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Joe Atmonavage may be reached at jatmonavage@njadvancemedia.com.

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An elderly couple have said they would rather go to jail than take down the Australian flag flying in their yard amid a bitter feud with neighbours who want it removed after complaining it is an 'eyesore'.

Julie and Vaughan McLeod have had the national flag on display in the backyard of their home on Queensland's Sunshine Coast for more than two decades.

'Nobody's coming in here to take it down,' Ms McLeod told A Current Affair.

'At my age I don't care. They're not gonna run my life while I'm still left on this earth. If I want the flag I'm going to have it.'

The McLeod's claim they received permission to fly the flag when they moved into their unit complex in 1997 but the body corporate has now said no approval was granted and the couple have been unable to provide written evidence it existed.

Sunshine Coast couple Julie and Vaughan McLeod (pictured together) have been told they not allowed to fly an Australian flag in the backyard of their home

Poll Should the couple have to take down their beloved Australian flag? Yes No Should the couple have to take down their beloved Australian flag? Yes 105 votes

No 908 votes Now share your opinion





The couple have been told they must remove the flag after receiving 20 notices telling them they are in breach of body corporate bylaws - but they are refusing to take it down without a fight.

'I'll just go to jail, cause I'm not gonna be paying a fine and I'm not gonna take the flag down,' Ms McLeod said.

'It's staying there. People have come and gone and died for that flag. It's not coming down.'

Ms McLeod's daily ritual includes hoisting the flag every morning and taking it down of an evening but the three other neighbours in the complex want it gone.

'Eyesore, I couldn't get over that word. It's an eyesore, that's what they put on the form. How could you call that an eyesore?,' Ms McLeod said.

'They keep sending (the notices) and I keep writing back and saying, well I'm afraid we've got permission.'

The body corporate at the couple's unit complex have said the couple are in breach of body corporate bylaws by flying the flag

The couple's home, which they moved into in 1997, is adorned with Australian flags, which Ms McLeod saying 'people have come and gone and died for that flag'

Mr McLeod, who served in the airforce, said the couple were more than happy to provide an affidavit detailing how they received permission to fly the flag.

'I consider it a right to be able to show our flag. It's a symbol of our country and our culture,' he said.

'We are quite willing to do an affidavit, swear on the bible, that we have had permission. The fact the paperwork has been lost is not down to us at all.'

The couple have been locked in several bitter disputes with neighbours, including allegations Ms McLeod assaulted a neighbour. The case was dismissed due to a lack of evidence.

There have also been disagreements over garbage bins and cars in the driveway.

The flag debate has been sent to an adjudicator, who is expected to make a decision in the next six weeks.

Ms McLeod said depending on the outcome, she may consider court action.
NEW YORK and TEL AVIV, Israel, April 6, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- HASAQUE SPAC Advisors, the SPAC-focused investment advisor and research provider, today released a new market report, covering the top 30 Israeli-tech companies that could go public through a SPAC merger, according to HASAQUE's analysts. The report provides a business overview and key insights on each company, as well as founders' bios and contact details. According to Zvika Finkelstein, HASAQUE's Founder and CEO:

HASAQUE SPAC Advisors

"In light of the growing competition among SPAC sponsors to find the best companies to take public, we decided to launch a series of market reports that cover some privately-held companies that we believe could be a great fit to going public via SPAC. The new repot introduces the Israeli tech ecosystem as a fertile ground for acquisitions by US-listed SPACs, as more Israeli companies are discovering the SPAC route as a viable back door to Wall-St, while at the same time, many new SPACs mention the Israeli tech sector as a target area."

The new report, which is available now on HASAQUE's website, features some of the most promising privately-held technology companies that were either established in Israel, founded by Israelis, or have significant operations in Israel. The covered companies operate in a wide range of sectors including Fintech, Media, Healthcare, Agtech, Proptech, Foodtech, Insurtech, Gaming and Cybersecurity, among others.

About HASAQUE SPAC Advisors

HASAQUE is an alternative investment advisor which is purely focused on Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs). The company delivers agnostic analyses of SPAC transactions and business combinations across the US capital markets, offering the most comprehensive library of SPAC-focused due-diligence reports currently available on the market. For more information regarding HASAQUE's offerings, please refer to its website at HASAQUE.com

Disclaimer

Under no circumstances should any information contained above be construed as investment advice, or as an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities or other financial instruments. The financial instruments discussed above may not be suitable for all investors and investors must make their own investment decisions based upon their specific investment objectives and financial situation utilizing their own financial advisors as they deem necessary.

HASAQUE's research and advisory services are provided on a standalone basis. The company does not have a brokerage business, nor it holds any commercial relationships with companies under its coverage.

Contact Details

Laura Miscolzi / [email protected] / +972-842-0719

SOURCE HASAQUE SPAC Advisors

Related Links

http://www.HASAQUE.com


Jeramiah Caplinger, a 25-year-old Taylor resident who said he scaled a wall and entered the U.S. Capitol, is the seventh Michigan man arrested for participating in the Jan. 6 riot.

Caplinger, who was arrested Tuesday and released on bond, faces three federal charges for entering a restricted building, disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds and climbing in Capitol grounds. A federal criminal complaint filed by the FBI cited an MLive interview with Caplinger in which he explained how he traveled to Washington, D.C. at the call of former President Donald Trump.

Related: Fueled by rage over a stolen election, a Michigan man breached the U.S. Capitol after Trumps call to action

U.S. Magistrate Judge Curtis Ivy Jr. released Caplinger on April 6 on an unsecured bond of $10,000. Federal prosecutors requested that his case be transferred to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Caplinger told MLive earlier this year he drove to Washington, D.C. after Trump encouraged supporters to air their grievances about the election. Caplinger said he scaled a wall and entered the Capitol through an open doorway that was tightly packed with other protesters.

I dont think it was a great evil, Caplinger said of the Jan. 6 riot when interviewed by MLive. I think it was a great stupid thing when it came to breaking and destroying things, sure. Im sure we can all agree on that, but I will not sit here and allow people to constantly demonize, patronize, criticize and try to ostracize Trump supporters for doing what they believe in.

The FBI cited two tipsters that contacted federal agents with information about Caplinger.

The first tipster, who contacted the FBI on Jan. 16, provided Caplingers Facebook page and a screenshot from another Michigan man who tagged Caplinger in a video posted on Jan. 5.

A second tipster who identified themself as a person who worked with Caplinger contacted the FBI on Feb. 23. They said Caplinger became irate with coworkers about political topics, according to the criminal complaint. The coworker told federal agents that they identified Caplinger when watching a video posted to Twitter that showed Caplinger climbing a wall outside the Capitol.

The FBI identified Caplinger from videos that recorded him climbing an exterior wall and walking through the Capitol wearing a distinctive red Make America Great Again bucket hat. Caplinger could also be seen carrying a wooden stick bearing a Trump flag and the American flag.

During an interview with MLive, Caplinger displayed his homemade flagpole, which he said he built with a branch from a tree in his yard.

The FBI cited sections of the MLive article that described how Caplinger expressed rage over being told the election was stolen and later expressed no sympathy for lawmakers who thought they might die of rioters caught up to them. The criminal complaint also noted that Caplinger expressed interest in running for Michigans 12th state House District or the mayor of Taylor.

To have a regret means to have done something wrong, Caplinger told MLive.

READ MORE ON MLIVE:

Fueled by rage over a stolen election, a Michigan man breached the U.S. Capitol after Trumps call to action

Report on Antrim County error keeps battle over records going in lingering election lawsuit

How a fake lawyer and conservative outrage made Marlenas Bistro a national symbol of pandemic freedom
IRVINE, Calif., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- It is rare when a tax crime is so pervasive that it spawns a theatrical recreation of the crimes using A-list actors. However, that is exactly the impact the groundbreaking the Panama Papers investigation had on readers when it was published in 2016. The Tax Law Offices of David W. Klasing is here to discuss the details of the Panama Papers investigation and the legal consequences of that investigation for those involved in the tax crimes at issue.

The Panama Papers refers to the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation that looked into matters of alleged international tax crimes that centered around a law firm based in the country of Panama. Despite having 35 offices across the globe, the law firm of Mossack Fonseca was not widely recognized. However, it would later be discovered that this law firm played a major role in the alleged facilitation of tax evasion and other tax-related legal violations.

The investigation spearheaded by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) uncovered that the firm started by Jurgen Mossack and Ramon Fonseca allegedly helped politicians, well-known celebrities, drug and arms dealers, and others increase their wealth by using tax havens. Journalists were tipped off by an unnamed whistleblower who provided over 11 million documents such as bank statements and passport photos that were used when engaging in questionable business dealings.

As a result, many high-profile figures were arrested or forced to step down from their positions. For example, the Prime Minister of Iceland resigned, and the Prime Minister of Pakistan was eventually convicted for corruption. Mossack Fonseca would close its doors in 2017 amid the scandal.

The Panama Papers investigation and convictions serve as a reminder that taxpayers who seek to evade taxes using a complex scheme of offshore banking and non-disclosed foreign entities and investments may find that they face exposure. If you believe that you will be (or are) the subject of a high risk foreign account audit or criminal tax investigation, contact the dually licensed International Tax Attorneys and CPAs at the Tax Law Offices of David W. Klasing by calling (800) 681-1295 or scheduling online HERE.

See the full version of this article here.

Public Contact: Dave Klasing Esq. M.S.-Tax CPA, dave@taxesqcpa.net

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SOURCE Tax Law Offices of David W. Klasing, PC
A Taiwan Coast Guard member mans a machine gun at a fort on the Pratas Islands in the South China Sea, Jan. 27, 2000.

Taiwanese officials said Wednesday that they are willing to shoot down Chinese drones flying near Taiwan-occupied Pratas Island in the South China Sea, a response to what analysts view as the latest pressure tactic from Beijing.

Ocean Affairs Council Chairman Lee Chung-wei told Taiwans legislature that the coast guard had recently identified Chinese unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) operating near Pratas, which sits about 170 nautical miles to the southeast of Hong Kong in the northern part of the South China Sea.

Lee indicated that Taiwanese forces would open fire on UAVs that fly over the island, which is also claimed by China.

If we need to open fire, we will open fire, Lee said, noting that the drones have thus far only circled Pratas and that similar activity has not been observed near Itu Aba  Taiwans base in the Spratly Islands to the south.

Lee did not specify what kinds of drones China has been sending to Pratas.

These drone flights, which Lee described as gray zone activity, come as China is ramping up pressure on Taiwan.

Aircraft belonging to the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) have been conducting regular flights through Taiwans air defense identification zone (ADIZ) for months on end, including through the southwestern portion of the ADIZ near Pratas, Radio Free Asia (RFA), a sister entity of BenarNews, reported in February.

Taiwans Ministry of National Defense reported a record 20 PLA aircraft entering its ADIZ on March 26.

Jessica Drun, a non-resident fellow at the Project 2049 Institute, told RFA that these gray zone activities are an attempt to wear down Taiwan psychologically and from a resource perspective.

This is happening against the backdrop of ever-deepening U.S.-Taiwan ties, a domestic population in Taiwan that has more or less rejected Chinas framework for cross-Strait relations, and an increasingly assertive Beijing the world over, Drun said.

Although Taiwan is a self-governing democracy, Beijing claims Taiwan as its own territory, to be annexed by force if it deems necessary.

While the drones operating near Pratas are likely to be for reconnaissance or testing Taiwans resolve, PLA researchers have written about the possibility of using armed unmanned systems in combat scenarios that would involve Taiwan.

For instance, PLA researchers have recently published studies on using unmanned surface vehicles, drone swarms and helicopter-like UAVs during amphibious landing operations, such as efforts to invade Taiwan or seize small islands like Pratas and Itu Aba.

Michael Mazza, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said that Pratas Island may be an attractive target for China.

China might one day wish to occupy the islands, either as a first step in an assault on Taiwan, as a means of coercing Taiwan into unification, as a way to test international responses to an attack on one of Taiwans offshore islands, or as part of an effort to re-enforce control over the South China Sea, Mazza said.

Taiwan and China are just two of the claimants in the disputed South China Sea. The others are Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines 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.

Even as China has been turning up the heat to assert its sweeping land and sea claims in the South China Sea and to pressure Taiwan, other militaries are making their presence known as well.

A U.S. carrier strike group conducted a bilateral military exercise with the Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) in the South China Sea on Tuesday and Wednesday, the U.S. Navy announced in press release.

The two days exercise aims to strengthen the bilateral relations and military diplomacy, the RMAF said in its own statement. The exercises are to enhance the operational interoperability and overall cooperation among the two forces.

Dizhwar Bukhari in Kuala Lumpur contributed to this report.
Government hands over anti-trafficking report to US

THAILAND: A report has been submitted by Thailand to the US detailing its anti-human trafficking efforts in the hope of being upgraded from Tier 2 to Tier 1 in Washingtons Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, due for release in June.

crime

By Bangkok Post

Wednesday 7 April 2021, 09:06AM

Deputy government spokeswoman Rachada Dhnadirek. Photo: Government House.

Deputy government spokeswoman Rachada Dhnadirek said the government was aiming for Tier 1 after being ranked in Tier 2 for three consecutive years.

Tier 1 lists countries whose governments fully comply with the minimum standards set out in the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), while Tier 2 applies to governments that do not fully comply with the minimum standards, but which are making efforts to bring themselves into compliance.

In 2018, Thailand was upgraded from Tier 2s watch list to Tier 2 in recognition of significant strides made compared to the previous year.

Before that, Thailand was ranked in Tier 3 which is for countries whose governments do not fully comply with the minimum standards and are not making significant efforts to do so.

Thailand submitted the 2020 TIP Report on Feb 2 and a report on progress in its anti-human trafficking operations from January to March of this year to the US embassy on April 3, according to Ms Rachada.

This years submission includes statistics on arrests and punishments for human-trafficking offences as well as the implementation of the National Action Plan on Business and Human Rights. Thailand is the first Asian country to introduce such a plan, she said.

The country is processing human trafficking cases more quickly by shortening the investigation time from 118 days in 2015 to 70 days in 2020, Ms Rachada added.

The country has also developed procedures to help human-trafficking victims with differing sexualities and set up centres to help migrant workers with work-related problems.

Another important achievement was the use of the PROTECT-U application developed by the Social Development and Human Security Ministry, she said.

Available in seven languages, the app receives complaints from human-trafficking victims and provides them with access to protection.

Ms Rachada said Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha thanked all sectors, particularly the civil sector, for working together to prevent and suppress human trafficking in Thailand. Their cooperation had contributed to concrete achievements in the countrys anti-human trafficking efforts, she quoted him as saying.
The Clean Propulsion Technologies project consortium, led by the University of Vaasa, aims to develop radically new solutions for clean and efficient marine and off-road transport - a Finnish response to tightening emission legislation and growing global competition in these segments. Business Finland has granted research funding for six research organizations and nine companies to bring these new propulsion solutions from the research phase to real-world application.

- The common goal is to secure the position of global technology leader for the Finnish powertrain industry by creating a common vision and sustainable business solutions, says Associate Professor Maciej Mikulski from the University of Vaasa. Mikulski acts as the responsible leader of the Clean Propulsion Technologies project.

The research organizations and companies develop the most promising, innovative powertrain technologies for new products. These developments will secure compliance with emission and greenhouse gas regulations in both marine and off-road transport segments by 2035. In the long term, the goal will be achieved by developing a common technological roadmap for both sectors. The roadmap provides a consolidated plan for how to secure this compliance by 2050.

The most significant technological highlights of the expected project results are a groundbreaking medium-speed engine working in fuel-flexible RCCI (Reactivity Controlled Compression Ignition) mode and a high speed, hydrogen-fueled engine concept. The research will further focus on developments in advanced aftertreatment, hybrid propulsion technology and predictive powertrain control. The whole package forms an environmentally, socially and financially sustainable business model.

Business Finland has granted a remarkable 7.9 million euros in funding for the Clean Propulsion Technologies project.

- We foster the competitiveness of Finnish companies and bring together key players within the smart energy ecosystem to develop new solutions. The consortium project is a great example of a well-planned improvement to combustion and hybrid technology, which aims to make a leap in environmental improvement in the area of marine and off-road transport. Additionally, it offers a great opportunity to strengthen cooperation with common objectives between Finnish maritime, off-road companies, and research centers, says Esa Lindqvist, Ecosystem Lead, Business Finland.

According to Mikulski, the project is a first-ever collaboration of this magnitude between Wartsila and AGCO Power, two leading powertrain equipment manufacturers in Finland. This unique backbone, strengthened by the expertise of all project partners, tackles the growing global competition in these market segments.

- Developing concepts together within the Engine Research Initiative ecosystem and with other technology leaders is the most efficient way to find solutions including combustion engines for a sustainable and decarbonised future, say Christer Wik, Laboratory Manager and Lauri Pessinen, Project Controller, from Wartsila.

Finding new, effective, and clean solutions is also the key issue for AGCO Power.

- This project strongly supports AGCO Power's new technology research for a sustainable low-carbon future. The project also establishes a Finnish research network in this technology area, points out Kari Aaltonen, Director R&D from AGCO Power.

CPT consortium consists of six research organizations (University of Vaasa, Aalto University, Tampere University, Abo Akademi University, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology LUT) and nine companies (Wartsila Finland, AGCO Power, Meyer Turku, Napa, Dinex Finland, Proventia, Geyser Batteries, Bosch Rexroth and APUGenius).

The total project volume is approximately 15 million euros, out of which 7.9 M comes as Business Finland support. The companies and universities themselves fund the rest.

###

Further information

Merja Kangasjarvi, Development Manager, University of Vaasa, VEBIC, tel. +358 (0)29 449 8205, e-mail merja.kangasjarvi@uwasa.fi

Project Leader: Maciej Mikulski, Associate Professor, University of Vaasa, tel. +358 (0)29 449 8591, e-mail maciej.mikulski@uwasa.fi
[Updated] Since he will not be returning to the Netflix's series "Bridgerton" season two, Rege-Jean Page has been facing mounting speculation that he'll be the next James Bond.

With many fans and bookies really wanting him to succeed after Daniel Craig, the Zimbabwe-grown actor, finally revealed what he truly feels about all of it.

Speaking to The Mirror, Page said, "Ah, the B word. I think that if you are British and you do anything of note that other people take notice of, then people will start talking about that."

He also shared how "flattered" he is to be even considered for the Bond role.

"I think that's fairly normal, and I'm flattered to be in the category of Brits that people have noticed. Nothing more - or less - than that."

Despite being the favorite, Page said he was confused by the idea of making any plans during "this moment in history" and revealed that he has "given up" doing so.

The British hunk also admitted that he could be likened to a "racehorse" who often signs onto a project and focus entirely on it with "blinders on."

Rege-Jean Page the 'Hot Favorite' to Be the Next James Bond

Though it hasn't been confirmed, the actor who rose to fame thanks to playing the Duke of Hastings has won overtaken several 007 frontrunners.

Now, he's finally topped "Peaky Blinders" star Tom Hardy and James Norton to be the fan-favorite to replace Daniel Craig as the British spy after his final outing on "No Time To Die."

According to Coral (via NZ Herald), the 30-year-old now has odds of 5-2 to be cast as the next James Bond.

Hardy and Norton are in second place on 3-1, while Edris Alba, Henry Cavill, Richard Madden, and Sam Heughan are all on 10-1.

READ ALSO: 'Bridgerton' Cast Furious and Horrified After Intimate Scenes Made it to Obscene Websites

A spokesperson for the bookmakers revealed that after news of Rege-Jean Page will not be returning for the second season "Bridgerton," it immediately received lots of bets from punters who think he'll become the perfect 007.

"We now make him favorite, ahead of Tom Hardy, for who succeeds Daniel Craig as 007."

Heightened Speculation of Rege-Jean Page On Becoming the Next 007

In December, Rege-Jean Page shared a video of him on Instagram walking towards the camera as Simon Basset, the Duke of Hastings.

The caption that came with the video said, "Regency, royalty. Shaken and stirred."

Fans of the iconic James Bond character were drawn to the second phrase that sounds like the spy's classic "shaken, not stirred" martini order.

And now that he will no longer be returning to the hit Netflix series, and with the right age to be considered for these roles, Page now has more freedom to choose whatever he wants.

READ MORE: Rege-Jean Page Movies and TV Shows Update: Where To Watch Him Next After 'Bridgerton'

See Now: Famous Actors Who Turned Down Iconic Movie Roles
Award-winning producer Scott Rudin has been accused of physically assaulting his staff with a computer monitor and a baked potato as former employees described him as an 'absolute monster' who left them traumatized with his rage and workplace outbursts.

Several of Rudin's former staffers who worked for him at his Scott Rudin Productions spoke out about his alleged abusive and bullying behavior in a series of interviews with The Hollywood Reporter published on Wednesday.

The allegations leveled against the 62-year-old super-producer, which date back decades, range from physical and emotional abuse to bullying and mistreatment.

Many of the former staffers were entry-level employees who worked as assistants fresh out of college.

Rudin, whose latest production Woman In The Window starring Amy Adams will be released by Netflix next month, would not comment on any of the allegations made by his former staffers.

Several of Award-winning producer Scott Rudin's former staffers who worked for him at his Scott Rudin Productions spoke out about his alleged abusive and bullying behavior in a series of interviews with The Hollywood Reporter published on Wednesday

In one alleged incident in 2012, Rudin was accused of sending a bleeding male assistant to the hospital after smashing an Apple computer monitor on the employee's hand because he couldn't get a seat on a sold-out flight.

Staffers also detailed witnessing him throw laptops at walls, a stapler at a theater assistant and a glass bowl at another employee that smashed after hitting a wall.

In 2018, he threw a baked potato at his then-assistant for not telling him earlier that he had a meeting scheduled with someone from the New York based A24 media company.

'I went into the kitchen, and I was like, 'Hey, Scott, A24 is on the way up. I'm not sure what it's concerning,'' the unnamed employee said.

'And he flipped out, like, 'Nobody told me A24 was on my schedule.' He threw it at me, and I dodged a big potato. He was like, 'Well, find out, and get me a new potato'.'

Others described Rudin screaming at them from such a close distance that his spit landed on their faces.

'When you feel his spit on your face as he's screaming at you, saying, 'You're worth nothing,' it obviously makes an impact, and we're young,' one of his former assistants said.

'Over his long career, there are hundreds and hundreds of people who have suffered. And some have given up their dreams because he made them feel and believe that they can't do whatever it is they're trying to do.'

Of the films Rudin has produced, 23 have won Oscars and 151 have been nominated. He is pictured above with Meryl Streep on the set of The Hours in 2002

Rudin is among the most decorated in the industry and is among the few to have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Awards - otherwise known as EGOT status. He is pictured with Carole Shorenstein Hays, Viola Davis and Denzel Washington at the 2010 Tony Awards

Rudin is pictured second from left on the set of the 2002 film Changing Lanes with Ben Affleck (right) and director Roger Michell (left)

One former employee, Caroline Rugo, who worked as an executive coordinator for six months, said she could have sued Rudin but feared being blacklisted in the industry.

'Everyone just knows he's an absolute monster,' Rugo said.

Sources told THR that lawsuits or complaints against Rudin's bullying from employees were often quietly settled.

Some employees said he was also vindictive and would go as far as changing credits on IMDb that they had obtained working for him when they quit.

Rudin is among the most decorated in the industry and is among the few to have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Awards - otherwise known as EGOT status.

Of the films he has produced, 23 have won Oscars and 151 have been nominated. Rudin has also won 17 Tony Awards for his work on Broadway.

His film producing credits include: No Country for Old Men, Lady Bird, The Social Network and The Truman Show.

While many in the industry have faced a reckoning in the wake of Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo movement, Rudin's ex-employees say the super-producer has managed to continue on with his alleged abusive behavior.

No one who spoke to THR alleged sexual abuse of misconduct by Rudin.

Rudin is pictured on the New York set of Finally Famous with Chris Rock in 2014

His film producing credits include: No Country for Old Men, Lady Bird, The Social Network and The Truman Show. He is pictured above with The Social Network star Jesse Eisenberg (left) and True Grit star Jeff Bridges (right)

Separately from the allegations made by his staffers, Rudin's outbursts made headlines back in 2014 when emails he had written about stars, including Angelina Jolie, were leaked when Sony was the victim of hacking.

The most damning batch of emails that were leaked included one in which Rudin and Sony Pictures Chair Amy Pascal exchanged racist comments about President Barack Obama.

They spoke about what Pascal could speak to Obama about at a 2013 event and started listing off films about slavery and naming black actors.

Pascal stepped down as head of Sony in the wake of the hacking saga.

In a separate email, Rudin had called Angelina Jolie 'a minimally talented spoiled brat' while discussing who would direct her upcoming remake of Cleopatra.

Rudin issued an apology in the Sony hacking instance, saying the emails had been 'written in haste'.

'Private emails between friends and colleagues written in haste and without much thought or sensitivity, even when the content of them is meant to be in jest, can result in offense where none was intended,' Rudin said at the time.

'I made a series of remarks that were meant only to be funny, but in the cold light of day, they are in fact thoughtless and insensitive - and not funny at all. To anybody I've offended, I'm profoundly and deeply sorry, and I regret and apologize for any injury they might have caused.'
YEREVAN, APRIL 7, ARMENPRESS. A 72-year-old COVID-19 patient has died after jumping out of a hospital window in Yerevan, the healthcare ministry said.

The man had numerously refused medical treatment in the hospital, even after numerous meetings with psychologists, according to the healthcare ministry.

The patients body was found early Wednesday morning.

The authorities did not specify at which hospital the incident took place.

Police are working at the scene to determine the circumstances of the incident. Law enforcement authorities haven't yet commented.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan
The UK's medicines regulator on Wednesday said that under-30s in the country will be offered an alternative to the Oxford/ COVID-19 vaccine due to evolving evidence linking it to rare blood clots, even as the European Medicines Agency (EMA) concluded a "possible link" between the vaccine and rare clotting.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said that routine monitoring has concluded that there is a "strong possibility" that the vaccine has caused blood clots in an extremely small number of cases.

Its review had found that by the end of March, 79 people in the UK had suffered rare blood clots after the jabs 19 of whom died. The MHRA stressed that this was not proof the jab had caused the clots and maintains that the benefits of the vaccine to protect against COVID-19 continue to outweigh the risks.

No effective medicine or vaccine is without risk. While the clinical trials of vaccines allow us to assess common effects, very rare effects are only seen when the vaccine is used at scale, said Dr June Raine, MHRA chief executive.

I would like to reiterate that this is extremely rare," said Dr Raine.

She said as the balance of risk is in favour of older people, the advice would be for younger people to be offered alternatives by the National Health Service (NHS) either the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.

The MHRA advice for those who have received the Oxford/ vaccine and display certain symptoms after four days or more should speak to their doctors.

These symptoms include severe headache, blurred vision, chest pain, leg swelling, shortness of breath, persistent abdominal pain or unusual bruising. The advice for anyone who experiences blood clots and low levels of platelets after their first dose is that they should not have a second dose.

England's Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, described the latest developments as a "course correction", which is not unusual in vaccination programmes.

The conclusions of the MHRA, announced in a virtual briefing, came alongside a virtual briefing from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in Amsterdam which also revealed similar findings and said that the overall benefit-risk remains positive for the Oxford/AstraZeneca jabs.

EMA's safety committee has concluded that unusual blood clots with low blood platelets should be listed as very rare side effects of Vaxzevria (Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine), the EMA said.

People who have received the vaccine should seek medical assistance immediately if they develop symptoms of this combination of blood clots and low blood platelets, it said.

The EMA said one plausible explanation for the combination of blood clots and low blood platelets is an immune response, leading to a condition similar to one seen sometimes in patients treated with heparin (heparin-induced thrombocytopenia, HIT).

It has issued new studies and amendments to ongoing ones to provide more information on this.

The EMA said it carried out an in-depth review of 62 cases of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis and 24 cases of splanchnic vein thrombosis reported in the European Union (EU) drug safety database as of March 22, 18 of which were fatal.

(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.)
TORONTO - Freedom Mobile and its parent Shaw Communications Inc. will not participate in an upcoming wireless spectrum auction deemed crucial for the development of 5G networks  reinforcing widespread concerns about the state of competition in Canada's telecommunications industry.

A woman walks past the new rebranding sign of Freedom Mobile in Toronto on November 24, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

TORONTO - Freedom Mobile and its parent Shaw Communications Inc. will not participate in an upcoming wireless spectrum auction deemed crucial for the development of 5G networks  reinforcing widespread concerns about the state of competition in Canada's telecommunications industry.

As a result of Shaw's Freedom opting out of the 3,500 MHz auction, the remaining bidders  including Rogers, Bell and Telus  will face less competition for licences in the short term.

In the longer term, the Big Three may also face less competition for customers in many parts of the country because of the absence of a strong fourth carrier in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia, where Freedom had nearly two million subscribers at the end of 2020.

Questions about Freedom's future as an independent competitor have already been raised since Rogers Communications announced plans to buy Shaw and Freedom for $26 billion  subject to approvals.

A Freedom spokesman said the company had no comment about its absence from a list of applicants for the spectrum auction. A government official confirmed that Freedom had only until Tuesday to apply.

"I think with the discussions that we've had here, there should (ring) some alarm bells for Canadians," Earl Dreeshen, a Conservative MP from Alberta, said at a Wednesday virtual hearing into the Rogers-Shaw deal.

"The odd timing of this takeover merger, before the spectrum auction, puts a squeeze that's untenable for everyone," New Democrat MP Brian Masse said at the hearing.

Freedom has Canada's fourth-largest subscriber base but is still small compared with Rogers, BCE Inc. and Telus Corp., which collectively have more than 90 per cent of the market.

The list of 24 applicants posted by the Government of Canada includes the Big Three  as well as some smaller candidates, including Eastlink parent Bragg Communications and Videotron, which is owned by Quebecor Inc.

Other applicants for the auction include Saskatchewan Telecommunications (SaskTel), which is owned by the provincial government, publicly traded cable and internet provider Cogeco and TechSavvy  an Ontario-based private company that provides internet and TV services in several provinces.

Most Liberal and opposition MPs on the committee have expressed concern over the impact on competition and some have questioned how the announcement would affect the auction  but got no concrete answers from telecom executives who cited strict government confidentiality rules.

The same committee, which isn't a regulator but plays an advisory role, questioned CRTC, Competition Bureau and Department of Industry officials Wednesday as part of their hearings into the proposed Rogers purchase of Shaw.

For the most part, regulatory officials steered away from discussing the Rogers-Shaw deal  or the spectrum auction  because the matter is being reviewed.

However, an official from the Competition Bureau told the hearing that a study prepared for an earlier CRTC review concluded that prices are 30 to 40 per cent lower where there were four independent players.

On the first day of hearings, the committee also heard Rogers chief executive Joe Natale and Shaw CEO Brad Shaw say that a combination of their companies would make the combined business more competitive  particularly against Bell and Telus  if they can avoid duplicated investments on 5G and use the money to extend and improve their networks into rural and underserved areas.

A final list of bidders will be compiled on April 22.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 7, 2021.

Companies in this story: (TSX:RCI.B TSX:SJR.B, TSX:BCE, TSX:T, TSX:QBR.B, TSX:CGO, TSX:CGA)
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Single ladies of the five boroughs your prince has arrived. The catch: his throne is on Staten Island.

Pete Davidson, 27, has finally proved doubters wrong by moving out of his mother's basement and into a modest, $1.2million, two bedroom bachelor pad within New York City's favorite punchline.

The SNL comedian and star of The King of Staten Island's decision to remain in his hometown has sparked fierce online debate: Why would the funnyman worth an estimated $6million and with a string of high-profile romances to Hollywood's finest- Ariana Grande, Kaia Gerber- encamp on the much maligned, 'forgotten borough'?

'It doesn't matter what it looks like, even if it were a mansion, he's still in Staten Island,' wrote one commenter. 'It's NY redneck-ville,' said another.

Moving on up: SNL funnyman Pete Davidson, 27, purchased a luxurious high-rise apartment in his hometown of Staten Island, New York for a cool $1.2million. The move sparked fierce debate and left the internet divided over why the beloved casanova, with seemingly everything: money, star power and hordes of female fans chose to remain in his modest, working class hometown

Big changes: The 27-year-old SNL comedian is seen courtside at a New York Knicks game in March 2021. He revealed to fellow SNL star, Colin Jost that he was planning on moving out of his mom's basement in February: 'The thing is my mom is a lot like this show. No matter what I do, I'm never asked to leave. Also, they're both really old and noticeably fatigued'

The panoramic views of Manhattan's skyline elicited one user to joke that it's large windows would offer 'waterfront views of the bodies floating by'

One friendly commenter wrote that the apartment seemed nice and cozy, 'Not at all ostentatious and very livable looking!' While another remarked: 'It doesn't matter what it looks like, even if it were a mansion, he's still in Staten Island'

'Staten Island, where smells from long closed landfills always return. Nice view but keep the windows closed Pete,' mocked InformedCommenter

Congratulations are in order: The SNL comedian, long accused of being 'man child' has finally proved doubters wrong, much to the delight of his legions of female fans

CassaClaire on Twitter poked fun at the real estate listing's staged decor while another jokes that 'moments after moving in' the charcuterie board 'will be covered in weed'

In the latest sign that 'The King of Staten Island' was nothing less than a biopic starring the subject himself, Pete Davidson revealed on TikTok that he finally made the move out from under his mother's watchful eye into his own bachelor pad.

'I just moved out of my mom's house,' he said as he fumbled for keys. 'I'm fully out. I got a pad.'

It comes as great news for the casanova's legion of female fans. But the move has also left many scratching their heads over his decision to stick around Staten Island - the forsaken suburban wasteland forever marred by its reputation as a former landfill that breeds fist-pumping, orange skinned 'Guidos.'

As one user wrote, 'Ah Staten Island, all the drawbacks of New York City, and all the drawbacks of New Jersey, and none of the benefits of either one.'

People who know little about Staten Island tend to know this much: It is a historical haven for mobsters (Paul Castellano's former compound is a short drive from Vito Corleones home in the The Godfather), and it was also once the location of a 2,200-acre landfill that served as the city's dump between 1948 to 2001.

No love lost: The news sparked Twitter user, Asha Flingai to unleash a litany of complaints against Davidson, telling women that they 'deserve' better than someone who only just moved out of their mother's basement

Staten Island is forever marred by its reputation as a former landfill that breeds fist-pumping, orange skinned 'Guidos' and defined by what some call a 'suburban wasteland of nail salons and tasteless ornaments'

'I wonder if the smell of weed will cover the smell of landfill methane,' remarked one user touching upon Davidson's storied drug problem.

The $1.2million apartment features luxury amenities, high-end finishes and panoramic views of Manhattan. It sits a stone's throw from his mother's Sopranos-esque mansion, which he purchased for her in 2016 for $1.3million.

While some complimented the high-rise apartment's lofty ceilings and natural light, TallTulip wrote,'$1.2 Million apartment in Staten Island with a view of the BACK of the 'Statue of Liberty'..??'

Another joked that the large windows will provide ample 'waterfront views of the bodies floating by.'

Others dissected Staten Island's notorious reputation, 'LOL- nothing in Staten Island is worth 1.2 million. What a rip-off to live on that dump island, with crap views. Guess he can't leave his mommy.'

'I understand, it's where he grew up, but it's still Stagnant Island.'

In an increasingly gentrified and sanitized New York City, Pete Davidson's Staten Island high-rise will offer his glamorous girlfriends a refreshingly real look at the real city, the only problem for some is that it's 'too real'

Pete Davidson's conga line of girlfriends will no longer to contend with the watchful eyes of Pete Davidson's mother, but instead will get to enjoy the back view if the Statue of Liberty and the famous orange ferry that shepherds people to downtown Manhattan from the 'forgotten borough'

'Is that all he could afford?' questioned UrVoice on the humble abode. Davidson is estimated to be worth $6million.

'Nice cozy apartment with a stunning view... Not at all ostentatious and very livable looking....!' wrote Irreplacable from Vancouver, Canada. InformedCommenter responded: 'Probably has great views of the landfills.'

The high-rise bachelor pad comes four years after moving back into what Jezebel called 'his ancestral home,' following a nasty-breakup to his former-fiance, Ariana Grande. Since their 2016 split, Davidson has enjoyed a series of high profile romances to supermodel Kaia Gerber, actress Margaret Qualley, Kate Beckinsale and most recently with Bridgerton star, Phoebe Dynevor.

In a promotional video for Netflix, the 27-year-old comic laughed about living in the basement of his mother's home, which he nicknamed, 'the cave' and decorated with arcade games. He dubbed the en-suite bathroom a 'porno shower' and quipped that he never got to have his 'porno moment' because 'It's really hard when your mom is upstairs cooking.'

'He's like a magnet for money, success, and women. I. do. not. get. it,' weighed in one commenter.

Users rushed to his defense when lmfaoattheworld on Twitter asked 'Why is Pete Davidson so popular?' and didn't mince words when he labelled him an 'unfunny stereotypical Staten Island douchebag.'

The self-deprecating funnyman has also enjoyed making a mockery of his hometown in the past. In a 2017 episode of SNL, he explained: 'The reason Staten Island hates me is because I represent what they are: a mentally ill community college dropout who got a Game of Thrones tattoo before watching the show.'

'I know Staten Island isn't all heroin and racist cops, you know. It also has meth and racist firefighters,' quipped Davidson. He piled on: 'I'd be just as happy if there was no hurricane and Staten Island just fell into the sea," quipped Davidson.'

The man who has it all: Pete Davidson has enjoyed a series of high profile romances from Cazzie David, the daughter of comic Larry David (left) to his short-lived engagement with the popstar Ariana Grande (right)

Davidson dared supermodel, Kaia Gerber for a few months at the end of 2019. When they broke up, he said: 'Shes very young, and Im f****** going through a lot and it was before I went to rehab. Its just like, she should be having fun. She shouldnt have to worry about some dude that just has issues and s***'

For a little over two months in 2019, Davidson and the up-and-coming actress, Margaret Qualley (daughter of Andi Macdowell) enjoyed a very public romance, gallivanting across the globe together

Fans were shocked over the 21-year age difference during Davidson's brief romance with Kate Beckinsale in early 2019

Davidson's latest romance rumor links to Bridgerton star Phoebe Dynevor. According to The Sun, the pair are spending time together in London after meeting in New York City last month

Meanwhile one female fan takes to Twitter to lament her unrequited crush: 'I'm from Staten Island, I deal with depression and digestive issues, I'm hilarious and sexy, smoke weed all day and Pete Davidson isn't my perfect match????' Another user of the social media website said that women 'deserve better' than a man living in his mother's basement.

Davidson's move out of the basement comes at an opportune time as he is reportedly in a long-distance relationship with Bridgerton actress Phoebe Dynevor, 25, after being spotted by fans in her hometown of Altrincham, Greater Manchester.

'Today I found out that Pete Davidson is dating the actress from Bridgerton and I just have to wonder how he does it,' moaned Lily Guiney. Venture to say she's not a fan of The King of Staten Island.
San Francisco's school board has reversed its much-criticized decision to rename 44 schools that were named after 'controversial' historic figures, including American presidents Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

The city's Board of Education voted unanimously Tuesday to formally suspend its plan to strip the names off a third of San Francisco's public schools - a move that was criticized as cancel culture run amok.

The board had previously said the school names honored figures linked to racism, sexism and other injustices.

Among the schools set to be renamed were buildings named after writer Robert Louis Stevenson and Revolutionary War hero Paul Revere as well as longtime Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat who also was mayor of San Francisco starting in the late 1970s.

The school board, which convened over Zoom, didn't admit it had made a mistake. Instead, the board said it was reversing its renaming decision to avoid 'frivolous litigation' after being sued for violating the states open meeting law with its initial decision.

It initially voted to rename the schools back in January - a move that sparked an immediate backlash with critics slamming the decision as cancel culture gone too far and others pointing out significant flaws in the board's research, some of which was conducted on Wikipedia and all of which didn't consult historians.

Parents, students and elected officials also blasted the timing of the move when many felt the board should have been focusing on getting children back into the classroom as schools were still shuttered since last March.

The renaming debacle is just one of several controversies the San Francisco school board has faced during the pandemic.

Just last week, the board ousted one of its members from her role as vice president over anti-Asian American tweets she wrote in 2016. She is now suing the district and former board colleagues for $87 million, seeking damages.

Abraham Lincoln High School is seen in San Francisco. A San Francisco school board has reversed its decision to rename 44 schools that were named after historic figures including American presidents Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson

Former US Presidents Abraham Lincoln, left, and George Washington, right, are among 44 historical figures whose names were to be stripped from San Francisco schools

The board voted 6-0 Tuesday, rescinding its vote from January while hitting out at the suit saying it 'wishes to avoid the distraction and wasteful expenditure of public funds in frivolous litigation.'

Critics of the renaming process welcomed the backpedaling from the board.

Seeyew Mo, head of the group Families for San Francisco which opposed the renaming process and brought attention to its flawed research into the historical figures, said it appeared the board has come 'to their senses.'

'It feels like truth won this time,' said Mo, who also objected to the board's 'top-down process' in which a small group made the decision without the wider school community.

'I'm glad they've come to their senses - after lawsuits, and public pressure.

'A lot of people agree with the idea of revisiting names, but they just disagree with how it was done.'

However, the renaming saga may not be fully over, with the board still planning to revisit the matter after all students have returned full time to in-person learning.

No specific timetable has been given for this next step or for when all students will return to classrooms across the city.

The board initially voted 6-1 in late January to remove the names.

The renaming process was led by a committee created in 2018 to study the names of all 125 district schools amid a national reckoning on racial injustice that followed deadly clashes at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The committee determined that any figures who 'engaged in the subjugation and enslavement of human beings; or who oppressed women, inhibiting societal progress; or whose actions led to genocide; or who otherwise significantly diminished the opportunities of those amongst us to the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,' should not have schools named for them.

A total of 44 schools made the board's criteria for renaming.

Feinstein Elementary also made the list because when she was mayor in 1984, a decision was made to replace a vandalized Confederate flag that was part of a longstanding display outside City Hall.

When the flag was pulled down a second time, it was not replaced.

The main entry to George Washington High School is seen in San Francisco. The city's Board of Education voted unanimously Tuesday to formally suspend its much-criticized plan to strip the names of a third of San Francisco's public schools

Roosevelt Middle School was another on the San Francisco school board's hitlist

The January decision instantly sparked a backlash with critics arguing: the net was cast too wide, it had been based on inaccurate research and that it was political correctness and cancel culture gone too far.

The board was also blasted over the timing of the move.

At the time, all of San Francisco's public classrooms were closed due to COVID-19 restrictions and still are.

Some of the city's youngest students are expected to begin returning to in-person instruction this month after more than a year of distance learning because of the pandemic.

There is no timetable for middle and high school students to return.

Mayor London Breed, among others, called it 'offensive and completely unacceptable' for the board to focus on changing school names rather than getting children back into classrooms.

The renaming effort was also criticized for historical inaccuracies and shoddy research that included consulting Wikipedia rather than historians when deciding whose names were to be stripped.

Activist and teacher Jeremiah Jeffries served as committee chair on the task force and is said to have 'ridiculed' a proposal to bring in historians for consultation.

Jeffries reportedly stated: 'What would be the point? History is written and documented pretty well across the board. And so, we don't need to belabor history in that regard. We're not debating that. There's no point in debating history in that regard. Either it happened or it didn't.'

California Senator and former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein was supposed to have her name stripped from a city school as well because when she was mayor in 1984, a decision was made to replace a vandalized Confederate flag

He added: 'Based on our criteria, it's a very straightforward conversation. And so, no need to bring historians forward to say  they either pontificate and list a bunch of reasons why, or [say] they had great qualities. Neither are necessary in this discussion.'

Instead, committee members allegedly used references from Wikipedia and other non-scholarly sources to determine which personalities were racist and problematic.

This led to a number of mistakes including a renaming advisory committee wrongly accusing Paul Revere of seeking to colonize the Penobscot people.

It also confused the name of Alamo Elementary School with the Texas battle rather than the Spanish word for poplar tree.

According to Mission Local, one committee member urged that the name of acclaimed American poet James Russell Lowell should be stripped off a high school because a Wikipedia citation stated that he did 'not want black people to vote'.

However, that claim is false - and scholarly articles assert that Lowell 'unequivocally advocated giving the ballot to the recently freed slave'.

In February, board president Gabriela Lopez (above) admitted that 'mistakes' had been made in the selection and said the process would be paused until all children were back in school

Columnist and city scribe Carl Nolte hit out that 'while we're at it, what about renaming San Francisco', noting that the city was named by missionaries for a Roman Catholic saint.

'Clearly that fits the guidelines for a new name,' he wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle after January's vote.

Historian Harold Holzer called the school board's first stab at renaming an 'over correction.'

Holzer disagreed with deleting Abraham Lincoln's name from a high school, which the San Francisco committee said was due to the treatment of Native Americans during his administration.

'I know people want to be inspired and want not to be worshipping false idols,' said Holzer, a Lincoln Scholar and director of Hunter College's Roosevelt House of Public Policy Institute.

'But, honestly, to me there is still no better example of the American story at it's highest level of idealism than Abraham Lincoln.'

Activist Jeremiah Jeffries is said to have pushed back against consulting with historians over changes to the school names

In the midst of the Civil War in 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation that freed slaves in the Confederacy, among other achievements that included rising out of poverty to become president, fighting for equal opportunity and saving the country from splitting up.

'If Lincoln doesn't win, we're in big trouble,' said Holzer.

'The achievements so far outweigh the mistakes. I think he deserves adulation.'

In February, board president Gabriela Lopez admitted that 'mistakes' had been made in the selection and said the process would be paused until all children were back in school.

Lopez said when the board returns to the issue, it will engage historians for a 'more deliberative process.'

'We need to slow down and provide more opportunities for community input,' she said.

Since the renaming vote, the board has faced multiple lawsuits on a number of issues.

In March, a suit was filed by San Francisco attorney Paul Scott, whose children attend public schools, alleging the school board's renaming decision violated California's open meeting law and did not involve the community.

The San Francisco School Board voted to strip Vice President Alison Collins of her leadership title after anti-Asian tweets she penned in 2016 were recently unearthed

Several of the controversial tweets penned by Collins in December 2016 are pictured

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ethan Schulman issued a ruling calling on the board to do what the lawsuit requests - rescind the vote and dissolve the renaming advisory committee - or show by April 16 why it shouldn't be compelled to do so.

A separate suit was filed by City Hall and the mayor to pressure the school district and board to reopen classrooms more quickly.

Last week, the board was faced with another scandal as it voted to remove one of its members, Alison Collins, from her role as vice president and other titles over tweets about Asian Americans dating to 2016.

In the series of tweets she posted on December 4 2016, she referred to Asian Americans as 'house n***ers' and said they used 'white supremacist thinking' to get ahead.

'Where are the vocal Asians speaking up against Trump?' Collins asked in her Twitter thread.

'Don't Asian Americans know they are on his list as well? Do they think they won't be deported? profiled? beaten? Being a house n****r is still being a n****r. You're still considered 'the help''.

Collins resisted calls to step down but five board members voted to pass the No Confidence Resolution in her.

and last week sued the school district and five of her six colleagues, accusing them of violating her free speech rights.

She is seeking $87 million in damages.
A hairdresser in Banbridge has claimed some Stormont MLAs are availing of the black market and getting their hair professionally cut, despite close-contact services not being allowed to operate.

Sheila Hughes, who runs a hairdressing business in Banbridge, made the allegation during BBC Radio Ulsters Talkback show on Wednesday.

Explaining her business has been shut for 43 weeks, the hairdresser claimed that there was a black-market economy going on in Northern Ireland and proceeded to say Stormont MLAs were availing of the services of professional hairdressers.

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Not naming any specific member of the 90-member Assembly, Ms Hughes decried the fact that hairdressing was taking place right across the country against current Covid-19 regulations.

Non-essential retail and close-contact services such as hairdressers, beauticians and tattoo and piercing parlours, are currently closed.

From April 12 outdoor non-essential retail will reopen but this will not include hairdressers.

On Tuesday, the First Minister Arlene Foster said she hoped she would be able to provide dates for the reopening of hairdressers, with the Executive due to meet to discuss the further relaxation of restrictions in Northern Ireland.

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Ms Hughes suggested it was obvious that illegal haircuts were taking place as a result of being able to tell the difference when it is professionally done and called on the Executive to give a date when she could reopen her salon.

Hair grows half an inch a month, on average that is two inches at this stage. We only have to look at the black-market economy that is going on in Northern Ireland as far as hairdressing is concerned, she said.

Even our MLAs are availing of the black-market economy, which is contributing nothing to our healthcare, our education or our infrastructure. I dont have to say anybody's name.

I am absolutely stringent in everything we do within our salon. Yet it is all going on in the black-market economy.

BBC Talkback host William Crawley cut in to say there were many ways MLAs could be getting their hair cut without having to resort to illicit means. He himself confessed to cutting his hair and it looking terrible.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 16:49:30|Editor: huaxia

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KATHMANDU, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Nepal on Wednesday started administering the COVID-19 vaccines donated by China amid resurging COVID-19 cases.

A batch of COVID-19 vaccines developed by Sinopharm was delivered to Nepal late last month.

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, the Chinese vaccines are being administered from 23 hospitals located at seven districts including Kathmandu, most of them are in the country's capital and its adjacent areas.

"The vaccine is being inoculated among the people aged 18-59 years," Jhalak Sharma Gautam, chief of the National Immunization Program under the health ministry, told Xinhua on Tuesday.

Earlier the ministry said that people aged 40-49 years would be vaccinated.

According to the ministry, sanitation workers in the field of medicines, water and milk distribution, students studying in China but currently stuck in Nepal due to the pandemic, Nepali students preparing to leave for China for the higher study and people involved in cross-border trade between Nepal and China are being inoculated with the Chinese vaccines.

Raj Kumar Paraajuli, 39, is a Nepali PhD student who studies in Qingdao University, Shandong province of China. After being inoculated at the Civil Hospital in Kathmandu, he told Xinhua, "I am very happy. I wish to get the passport soon to return to China."

According to the ministry, people working in postal and telephone services, hotels and restaurants, public transportation services, electricity supply, storage and transportation of consumer goods are also the targeted group to be vaccinated.

Gautam said about 400,000 people will be inoculated with the first dose of Chinese vaccines initially. "Another dose will be given after 28 days," he said.

Nepal reported 260 COVID-19 cases on Tuesday. The number of COVID-19 cases went down below 50 per day early in March.

The Chinese vaccines arrived when Nepal was struggling to get enough vaccines from other sources to continue its vaccination drive. After starting the vaccination campaign on Jan. 27, Nepal has so far inoculated over 1.7 million people in two phases, the ministry said. Enditem
Before the white residents of Antioch burned down Chinatown in 1876, they banned Chinese people from walking the city streets after sunset.

In order to get from their jobs to their homes each evening, the Chinese residents built a series of tunnels connecting the business district to where I Street met the waterfront. There, a small Chinatown and a cluster of houseboats made up the immigrant settlement. If they ever felt safe there, it was fleeting. Above the tunnels and outside their doors, the threat of violence was simmering.

"The citizens of Antioch have been endeavoring to rid themselves of the Chinese for some time, the Sacramento Bee wrote in the spring of 1876.

Antioch Historical Society & Museum

The excuse they were waiting for came on April 29, 1876. According to newspaper reports, a doctor in Antioch made public the knowledge that a handful of young men he treated showed signs of venereal disease. The doctor pointed the finger at Chinese sex workers; he knew what he was doing.

Outrage ripped through the town. A mob quickly formed. Some urged murdering the women, but better counsels prevailed, a wire report recounted. Instead, the swarm of four dozen angry white men went door to door in Chinatown, telling the occupants they had until 3 p.m. to leave town  no exceptions. Young, old, men, women, healthy and deathly ill had just hours to pack up and depart.

It must have been an eerie sight: a crowd of frightened Chinese immigrants, their belongings knotted up into kerchiefs, standing silently in line at the dock, awaiting ferries to San Francisco and Stockton.

"The lightning of Caucasian wrath upon Mongolia has struck," the Mercury News wrote. But the spark it ignited had only just started to burn.

---

In the decades following the Gold Rush, no immigrant group was as loathed as the Chinese. That hatred became endemic to California, planted and nourished by politicians, city leaders and the media. Their xenophobic talking points will sound familiar today: outrage over low skill laborers taking jobs from white people, complaints that Chinese people failed to integrate into American society (while simultaneously barring them from schools, social gathering places and even public streets) and accusations of an invasion.

"Anti-Chinese sentiment is right, patriotic, and in every sense American, the Los Angeles Herald declared in 1876.

By the 1870s, California had moved from local ordinances, like Antiochs street ban, to creating entire anti-Chinese political parties. San Franciscan Denis Kearney, himself an immigrant from Ireland, formed the Workingmens Party of California. Its stated goal was to eradicate Chinese workers and its infamous slogan was: The Chinese must go! The state constitution ratified in 1879 had only one article that addressed a racial or ethnic group. Entitled CHINESE, it banned corporations from hiring Chinese or Mongolian people and specified "no Chinese shall be employed on any State, county, municipal, or other public work, except in punishment for crime." Three years later, the federal Chinese Exclusion Act would bar all Chinese laborers from immigrating altogether.

It was in this hateful, volatile atmosphere that white Californians began setting arson fires in Chinatowns. It was easy to burn down entire settlements because laws often restricted what parts of town they could live in, clustering everyone in the same few blocks.

The day after Antiochs Chinatown was emptied, it was physically eradicated. As churchgoers left Sunday services, rumors began to spread that some Chinese residents had returned home. No one now living can reveal what exactly happened next. But by 8 p.m., someone had set Chinatown on fire.

A crowd of onlookers and the local fire brigade looked on as flames engulfed homes and buildings. Very little was done to stay the progress of the fire, a wire report noted, although crews must have gone into action at some point to prevent white homes and businesses from being damaged. "The Caucasian torch," wrote the Bee, "lighted the way of the heathen out of the wilderness."

By morning, all but two of Chinatowns buildings were razed. The news was met with enthusiasm throughout the state.

"The actions of the citizens of this place will, without doubt, meet with the hearty approval of every man, woman and child on the Pacific coast," the Chronicle cheered, "and will go a long ways toward convincing the people of the Eastern States that the Chinese nuisance on our seaboard has assumed such vast proportions that it is beyond the pale of political issues and has come to be a disgrace that must be wiped out."

A few newspapers cautioned that legislation, not arson, was the preferred way to eliminate Chinese people from their communities. The only prominent voice against the Antioch violence was San Franciscos famed Emperor Norton, although his grievance was also colored by economic concerns.

"The Antioch riot is a disgrace to Americans," he wrote in an Oakland Tribune op-ed. "Now, therefore, We, Norton I., Dia Gracias Emperor, do hereby command the Grand Jury of Contra Costa County to indict the anti-Chinese leaders and have them brought to justice, and thereby protect the Americans and other foreigners and commerce in China."

For their part, the citizens of Antioch were largely unrepentant. The Antioch Ledger blamed the Chinese residents for the arson attack, writing, "had the women not returned, the property would have remained intact." A few days later, they lied again.

A large number of Chinamen quietly pursue their avocations in our midst, unmolested, they wrote. No Chinaman has ever been interfered with."

---

Antioch Historical Society & Museum

The events of 1876 had a century of ramifications for the demographics of Antioch. Although some Chinese people did eventually return to do business in the area, almost none felt safe permanently settling there again. Nearly 100 years later, the 1960 census recorded a little over 17,000 people living in the town; 99.6% were white. Just 12 residents were Chinese.

That finally began to change, however, in the '80s and '90s as Antiochs population boomed. The Contra Costa County town, ideal for commuters who couldnt afford San Francisco real estate prices, grew and changed. Sixty-two thousand people lived there in 1990 and 3,043 identified as AAPI.

The 2010 census showed white people had become the minority for the first time; 10% of the population is Asian American.

Below the waterfront part of town, some of the tunnels were occasionally resurfaced by construction work. They were remarkably sturdy with entrances framed in brick. During Prohibition, they were supposedly used by rum runners.

They were built, it seems, for centuries of use.
(Newser)  The awards show must go on. The Oscars are being held in person on April 25, and nominees and their guests will qualify as essential workers, just as workers for film and TV shoots have throughout most of the COVID-19 pandemic. That means even those who travel from outside the state or country will be able to attend the ceremony as well as pre-ceremony events, provided they abide by the organizers' quarantine and testing requirements, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences says in a letter obtained by Variety, which has all the details on when exactly various people from various locations must arrive in town, when they must test, etc. The ceremony will be broadcast from downtown LA's Union Station and the Dolby Theatre.

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Reaction ran the gamut from bewildered ("That's nice, but weird!" tweeted one commenter. "That puts them on a par with nurses? I know film has saved many people's lives, but this feels a bit odd.") to somewhat more aggressively disapproving: The AV Club's headline reads, "Oh great, Oscar nominees are 'essential workers' now," and writer Tatiana Tenreyro describes the awards ceremony as the "hottest superspreader event of the year." The Academy Awards is also adding an event space in London, and possibly others across Europe, for those nominees who would prefer not to travel. (Read more Academy Awards stories.)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 22:47:34|Editor: huaxia

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BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Brunei recorded 1,352.6 million Brunei dollars (1,009.5 million U.S. dollars) total trade for January 2021, down 25.1 percent year-on-year.

The latest International Merchandise Trade Statistics released Wednesday by the Department of Economic Planning and Statistics at the Ministry of Finance and Economy showed that Brunei's exports droped 45.7 percent year-on-year to 649.9 million Brunei dollars, which was mainly due to the decline in mineral fuel exports to 542.2 million Brunei dollars from 1,047.4 million Brunei dollars in January 2020.

Imports increased 15.4 percent to 702.7 million Brunei dollars compared to 608.8 million Brunei dollars in January 2020.

Mineral fuels recorded the highest contribution of total exports (83.4 percent) with a value of 542.2 million Brunei dollars.

The highest share of exports in January 2021 went to Japan (38.0 percent), followed by Singapore (20.8 percent) and China (13.2 percent).

The highest share of imports in January 2021 came from the United Arab Emirates (33.7 percent), followed by Malaysia (24.1 percent), Singapore (11.0 percent) and China (10.2 percent). (1 Brunei dollar equals 0.75 U.S. dollar) Enditem
Causality is a tricky thing to determine. If you were to say that the seeds of the new Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Hybris Mechanica Calibre 185 Quadriptyque were planted half a millennium ago by the heretical musings of an Augustinian monk in Saxon Germany, that might be difficult for some people to comprehend. It is a fact, however, that these heretical musings, otherwise known as Martin Luthers Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum of 1517, precipitated the Protestant reformation, leading to the French Wars of Religion (15621598), which drove French Protestant tradesmen and skilled workers to settle in exile in the Swiss Jura. Among those fleeing religious persecution were the LeCoultre family, who founded the village of Le Sentier in the Vallee de Joux. In 1803, Antoine LeCoultre was born; 30 years later he and his son Elie founded a watchmaking atelier on the southwest bank of the Lac de Joux. His spirit of perseverance and innovation are the touchstones of watchmaking at the manufacture we now know as Jaeger-LeCoultre, touchstones that are perhaps best exemplified through the Hybris Mechanica timepieces.

Reverso Hybris Mechanica Calibre 185  Jaeger-LeCoultre

It takes a kind of divine perspective to extract the threads of this story from centuries of European history, or at least a sense of presumption (some might say a hubristic sense of presumption) to think that your interpretation of the causal link between 16th century religious/political history and 21st-century watchmaking is the correct one. But it is an entirely appropriate attitude with which to approach the Hybris Mechanica pieces of Jaeger-LeCoultre. After all, it takes ambition to understand ambition.



The Hybris Mechanica family of timepieces from Jaeger-LeCoultre was established in 2003, with the Atmos Mysterieuse, and rapidly expanded to include other groundbreaking explorations of horology such as the Master Gyrotourbillon 1 (2004), the Reverso Grande Complication a Triptyque (2006) and the Master Compressor Extreme Lab (2007). More recently, the Master Ultra Thin Minute Repeater Flying Tourbillon (2014) and the Master Grande Tradition Gyrotourbillon Westminster Perpetuel (2019) have introduced new standards of watchmaking virtuosity. In context of the 21st century (and you could even make the argument to expand the parameters of this statement to include most of the 20th century too), there is no other sustained exercise of modern horology that has done as much as the Hybris Mechanica project to further the horizons of mechanical watchmaking.

Did you say quadriptyque?

The 16th timepiece in the Hybris Mechanica family, the Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Hybris Mechanica Calibre 185 Quadriptyque was presented at Watches And Wonders 2021: the most complicated and wearable Reverso ever made, the first wristwatch to present four faces of timekeeping display, and the first wristwatch to unite indications of the synodic, draconic and anomalistic lunar cycle.



Given the unique design of the emblematic Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso, there are four surfaces upon which it is possible to display information  the two faces (recto and verso) of the reversible case, and the two sides (interior and exterior) of the cradle. The Reverso Grande Complication a Triptyque (2006) utilised three of these surfaces, hence the name, and this years Quadriptyque, with 11 functions contained in a space measuring 51mm by 31mm by 15mm, fulfils the ultimate promise of the versatile Reverso by utilising all four surfaces.

Reverso Hybris Mechanica Calibre 185  Jaeger-LeCoultre

The recto face of the Quadriptyque indicates the hours and minutes (by hands), with a perpetual calendar and a one-minute flying tourbillon, opening this tour de force of haute horlogerie with a chapter thats all about La Grande Maisons expertise in traditionally prestigious mechanisms. Although the executions of both the perpetual calendar and the flying tourbillon appear quite standard, a closer study reveals that both these mechanisms have been reengineered to be as compact as possible.

More than muscial prowess

On the verso face of the Quadriptyque, the musical prowess of Jaeger-LeCoultre takes centre stage. A second time display, this time using jumping hours and peripheral minutes, is surrounded by the exposed components of a minute repeater. This is only the third execution of a minute repeater in a Reverso case, the previous two being the Reverso Repetition Minutes (1994) and the Reverso Repetition Minutes a Rideau (2011). Apart from showcasing all the well-known chiming innovations of Jaeger-LeCoultre such as the silent strike governor, the crystal gongs, square gong cross-sections and trebuchet hammers, the Quadriptyque features an all-new minute repeater innovation. Although Jaeger-LeCoultre has previously created minute repeaters that reduce the gaps of silence between hour-chimes, quarter-chimes and minute-chimes, the Quadriptyque eliminates them entirely, producing a seamless, fluid chime.

Reverso Hybris Mechanica Calibre 185  Jaeger-LeCoultre

The third chapter of the Quadriptyque, written on the interior face of the Reverso cradle, takes us into the cosmic realm of astronomical complication. For the first time in a wristwatch, displays of the synodic, draconic, and anomalistic lunar cycles are united. While most of us are familiar with the display of the synodic cycle  indicating the different phases of the moon  the draconic and anomalistic cycles are less well known. The draconic cycle tells us when the path of the Moon around the Earth intersects with the ecliptic (the Earths plane of orbit around the Sun). When one of these intersections occurs while the Moon is either in a full or new phase, an eclipse event is taking place on Earth. Combining the readings of both the synodic and draconic cycle therefore allows us to predict an eclipse. The anomalistic cycle display shows us the eccentric path of the Moon around the Earth, identifying the points at which the Moon is furthest from the Earth (known as apogee) and when it is nearest (known as perigee). When looking at the synodic and anomalistic displays together, we can predict when the phenomenon known as a supermoon will occur. This happens when the Moon is in its full phase, near or at perigee, and results in a Moon that appears almost 14% larger in the night sky.

Across space and time

The last chapter of the Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Hybris Mechanica Calibre 185 Quadriptyque is an epilogue, showing the phases of the Moon in the Southern Hemisphere on the exterior face of the watch cradle. Most watches that indicate the lunar cycle restrict themselves to Northern Hemisphere displays, and this final indication is emblematic not only of the Reverso philosophy (showing the other, unseen side of things) but also of the Hybris Mechanica ethos. When 99 percent of voices are all saying one thing, the 1 percent that constitutes a different perspective can reverberate across space and time.

Reverso Hybris Mechanica Calibre 185  Jaeger-LeCoultre

Which brings us back to the idea proposed in the first paragraph of this article, an idea that connects the Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Hybris Mechanica Calibre 185 Quadriptyque to the origins of a world-changing Reformation, an idea that we can stand by. History is made by those who stand by their beliefs despite being in the vast minority  as Martin Luther did when he nailed his revolutionary theses to the Wittenberg church door, as Jaeger-LeCoultre do every time they release a new Hybris Mechanica as a statement of excellence and progress. One pushed against the constraints of outdated, ossified doctrine; the other continues to redefine the limits of what we think we know about mechanical watchmaking. Challenge begets challenge. Thus do we expand our horological heaven.
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A day after it closed its gates in compliance to the nationwide strike embarked upon by the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP), The Polytechnic, Ibadan, has resumed academic activities.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that ASUP had, on Tuesday, declared an indefinite strike to demand the implementation of a new salary scheme for polytechnic lecturers.

Part of ASUPs demands includes the implementation of a new salary scale for polytechnic lecturers and payment of salaries and allowances to lecturers owed by some state governments.

On Tuesday, union members arrived at The Polytechnic, Ibadan, to begin enforcement.

We are not complying

Lecturers at the institution have, however, said they were not part of the ongoing nationwide industrial action called by the national body of ASUP.

A NAN correspondent, who visited the institution, observed that normal academic activities were going on, with students seen in their various classes receiving lectures.

One of the lecturers, Biodun Akere, told NAN that the school calendar was still running, adding that students had been receiving lectures unhindered since the commencement of the second semester of the 2019/2020 academic session.

Our students and lecturers are on campus, with normal academic activities going on unhindered.

We are not complying with the industrial action declared by ASUP because our local branch doesnt have any leadership as at present, Mr Akere said.

ALSO READ: Ibadan polytechnic shuts as ASUP begins strike

Another lecturer, who spoke under condition of anonymity, said the institutions chapter of ASUP had been without leadership since 2017, saying that this had accounted for the non-compliance with the national bodys directive.

When contacted, the Public Relations Officer of the polytechnic, Soladoye Adewole, said the institutions lecturers were not on strike and that normal academic activities were going on unabated.

Our lecturers are not on strike. We are running the semester as it should go, he said.

NAN reports that the polytechnic branch of ASUP was proscribed by management during the tenure of Olatunde Fawole as the rector, due to allegations of violation of electoral rules.

The face-off resulted in the polytechnic instituting legal action against the union under the chairmanship of Mr Ajadi Keleani, with the case still pending in the court.

(NAN)
Gruesome details have been revealed about a man's freak death after he fell onto a chainsaw while trimming hedges on Sydney's lower north shore.

Emergency services were called to a home on Smith Road in Artarmon just after 5pm on Tuesday following reports a man was seriously injured while trimming a hedge with a power tool.

It's understood the man aged in his 50s fell three metres from a tree before landing on a chainsaw, causing catastrophic damage to his arm.

Paramedics found the critically injured man suffering a cardiac arrest who had lost a massive amount of blood from the severe laceration.

Emergency services were called to Smith Road (pictured) in Artarmon on Tuesday after a man was critically injured while trimming a hedge. He suffered a cardiac arrest at the scene

He was rushed to Royal North Shore Hospital, where he later died.

Four ambulance crews and the Careflight Rapid Response Rescue Helicopter team were confronted with 'traumatic and chaotic scenes'.

NSW Ambulance Inspector Carolyn Parish praised the paramedics who worked hard to stabilise the man after he had lost a 'large amount' of blood.

'The patient had been using a power tool whilst hedging prior to the medical emergency,' Inspector Parish said.

'Paramedic crews did an amazing job in an understandably traumatic and chaotic scene.'
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VANCOUVER, BC, April 7, 2021 /CNW/ - Victory Metals Inc. (now named Nevada King Gold Corp. ("Victory") (TSXV: VMX) and Nevada King Mining Ltd. ("Nevada King"), a private B.C. company, are pleased to announce the completion of their previously announced plan of arrangement (the "Arrangement"). Pursuant to the Arrangement, Victory has acquired all the issued and outstanding shares of Nevada King ("Nevada King Shares") at an exchange ratio of 1.7022 common shares of Victory (the "Consideration Shares") for each Nevada King Share. Concurrent with the completion of the Arrangement, Victory changed its name to "Nevada King Gold Corp." ("Nevada King Gold" or the "Company"). Nevada King Gold is expected to begin trading on the TSXV at the market open on April 9, 2021 under the symbol "NKG". Immediately following completion of the Arrangement Nevada King shareholders held 50% of the issued and outstanding shares of Nevada King Gold. Nevada King Gold is focused on becoming a leading Nevada explorer and developer by leveraging off its large and strategic landholdings along the prolific Battle Mountain Trend.

Victory Metals Inc. (CNW Group/Victory Metals Inc)

Paul Matysek, Executive Chairman of Nevada King Gold, commented, "Along with assembling a commanding land position in one of the world's most prospective and prolific gold environments, Nevada King Gold has established a board and management with significant experience in the mining industry and, collectively among the members of the board and management, a history of previous cumulative M&A transaction value in excess of $5 billion over the past 15 years."

Collin Kettell, Chief Executive Officer of Nevada King Gold, stated, "Nevada King Gold is well capitalized with over $20M in cash and a plan to drill four of our district-scale projects in 2021. Since the announcement of the merger between Victory and Nevada King, several major mining companies have made multi-million-dollar commitments to enter and re-enter Nevada. This level of activity has been absent from the State for the past decade and we believe that this influx of capital represents the beginning of a new era in Nevada. We are excited to be positioned as one of the largest landholders in one of the world's most prolific gold mining belts."

Story continues

Highlights of the Arrangement

Nevada King Gold is a leading Nevada explorer and developer focused exclusively on the Battle Mountain Trend, one of the most endowed and prolific gold trends in the world.

Nevada King Gold is the fastest-growing mineral claim holder in the United States and now ranks as Nevada's fourth-largest active claim holder with 8,193 claims totalling 163,860 acres (663 square kilometres).

The transaction brings together two 100%-owned development stage assets:

Atlanta Gold Mine, Nevada  a past producing gold mine with recorded production of 110,000 ounces of gold and 800,000 ounces of silver (1975-1985). A recently completed National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101") compliant technical report dated October 29, 2020, by Gustavson Associates of Lakewood, Colorado, calculated a pit constrained, measured and indicated mineral resource of 11 million tonnes grading 1.3 g/t Au and 11.9 g/t Ag using a 0.35 g/t Au only cut off, containing 460,000 oz Au and 4,220,000 oz Ag; and an inferred mineral resource of 5.31 million tonnes grading 0.83 g/t Au and 7.3 g/t Ag, containing 142,000 oz Au and 1,240,000 oz Ag (see Table 1-1).

Table 1-1: Tabulation of Mineral Resources

Resource Category Tonnes (000's) Au Grade (ppm) Contained Au Oz (000's) Ag Grade (ppm) Contained Ag Oz (000's) Measured 4,130 1.51 200 14.0 1,860 Indicated 6,910 1.17 260 10.6 2,360 Measured + Indicated 11,000 1.30 460 11.9 4,220 Inferred 5,310 0.83 142 7.3 1,240

Iron Point Vanadium/Gold Project, Nevada  North America's largest mineralized vanadium footprint in a shallow, open-pittable configuration, currently moving towards a maiden NI 43-101 resource and Preliminary Economic Assessment, as well as a deep Carlin-style gold target currently being explored by joint venture partner Ethos Gold Corp.

These core assets are combined with a portfolio of district-scale exploration projects in the heart of the Battle Mountain Trend including Golconda Gold, Horse Mountain-Mill Creek, Lewis, Hilltop South, Buffalo Valley, Cedars-Carico Lake, Kobeh Valley, and Evana.

Change to the Board of Directors of the Company

Upon closing of the Arrangement, Dr. Quinton Hennigh was appointed to the Company's board of directors. Dr. Hennigh is a world-renowned geologist and the Founder & Chairman of Novo Resources Corp., a TSX-V listed gold explorer and developer. The addition of Dr. Quinton Hennigh to the Company's board of directors will be instrumental in guiding our exploration and development activities going forward. In addition to Dr. Hennigh, the Nevada King Gold board of directors will include: Paul Matysek, Collin Kettell, Craig Roberts and Doug Forster.

Conversion of Subscription Receipts

As a condition to the completion of the Arrangement, the Company was required to complete a financing of at least $8 million at a price per Consideration Share of not less than $0.50. Due to overwhelming demand and as previously announced on January 18, 2021 and December 23, 2020, the Company completed a non-brokered private placement financing of subscription receipts of the Company ("Subscription Receipts") for aggregate gross proceeds of $18,043,796.10 at a price per Subscription Receipt of $0.55 (the "Financing").

Upon the completion of the Arrangement, the Company has now satisfied all of the conditions to the release of the escrowed proceeds of the Financing and the conversion of the 32,806,902 Subscription Receipts issued pursuant to the Financing. The Company has provided notice to Alliance Trust Company, the subscription receipt agent, that the escrow release conditions have been met and the Company expects to receive the net proceeds of the Financing later today. The Subscription Receipts will be converted into 32,806,902 common shares of the Company.

About Nevada King Gold Corp.

Nevada King Gold is the fourth largest mineral claim holder in the State of Nevada, and the fastest growing mineral claim holder in the United States. Nevada King Golds owns a 100% interest in the Atlanta Mine, located 100km southeast of Ely, Nevada, and the Iron Point Vanadium Project, located 22 miles east of Winnemucca, Nevada. The Atlanta Mine is a historical gold-silver producer that currently hosts a NI 43-101 compliant mineral resource estimate constrained by a conceptual pit containing 11 million tonnes of measured and indicated resources grading 1.3g/t Au and containing 460,000 Au oz (Table 1-1). Inferred mineral resources are 5.31 million tonnes grading 0.83 g/t Au containing 142,000 Au oz. Past open pit production is reported to have been 110,000 oz Au and 800,000 oz. Ag (1975 - 1985). The Iron Point Vanadium Project is located within a few miles of Interstate 80, has high voltage electric power lines running through the project area and a railroad line passing across the northern property boundary. Nevada King Gold is well financed to advance the Iron Point Vanadium Project through resource estimation and initial feasibility study work. Nevada King Gold has a proven capital markets and mining team led by Executive Chairman Paul Matysek.

Mineral resources are not Mineral reserves and do not have demonstrated economic viability. There is no certainty that the mineral resources will be converted to mineral reserves. The quantity and grade are estimates and are rounded to reflect the fact that it is an approximation. Quantities may not sum due to rounding.

Kevin Francis, SME RM, of Gustavson Associates is the Qualified Person with responsibility for the mineral resource estimate. Mineral resources do not have modifying factors or dilution applied. Mineral resources are presented at a 0.35 ppm gold only cutoff grade and constrained by a pit optimization shell developed at $1500/ oz Au.

The technical information surrounding the recently released NI 43-101 compliant mineral resource for the Atlanta Mine has been reviewed and approved by Kevin Francis, SME RM, who is a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101.

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.

Cautionary Statements Regarding Forward Looking Information

This news release contains certain "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein, without limitation, statements relating to future operations and activities of Nevada King Gold, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are frequently, but not always, identified by words such as "expects", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "potential", "possible", and similar expressions, or statements that events, conditions, or results "will", "may", "could", or" should" occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements in this news release relate to, among other things, drilling plans for 2021, the expected benefits of the Arrangement, statements relating to the release of escrowed funds, managements expectations regarding Nevada King Gold and the Company's future outlook and anticipated events or results. Actual future results may differ materially. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Forward-looking statements reflect the beliefs, opinions and projections on the date the statements are made and are based upon a number of assumptions and estimates that, while considered reasonable by the Company, are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties and contingencies. Many factors, both known and unknown, could cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or achievements that are or may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and the parties have made assumptions and estimates based on or related to many of these factors. Such factors include, without limitation, the Company's failure to complete the Arrangement, the failure of the TSX Venture Exchange to approve the Arrangement and management's discretion to reallocate the use of proceeds. Readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release concerning these items. Nevada King Gold does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking statements of beliefs, opinions, projections, or other factors, should they change, except as required by applicable securities laws.

SOURCE Victory Metals Inc

Cision

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New Delhi: Union Home Minister Amit Shah is scheduled to hold four roadshows in the poll bound West Bengal on Wednesday (April 7) as a part of BJPs campaign for the upcoming state assembly elections.

The Union Home Minister will commence the series of his readshow from Singur at 12 pm, followed by the second roadshow in Domjur at 1:35 pm.

The Union Home Minister is also going to hold massive roadshows in Howrah Madhya at 3 pm and in Behala Purba at 4:40 pm.

"Schedule of Union Home Minister Shri Amit Shah's roadshows in West Bengal tomorrow, 07th April 2021. 1) Singur at 12 PM 2) Domjur at 1:35 PM 3) Howrah Madhya at 3 PM 4) Behala Purba at 4:40 PM," read a tweet posted by Amit Shahs office yesterday.

Schedule of Union Home Minister Shri @AmitShah's roadshows in West Bengal tomorrow, 07th April 2021. 1) Singur at 12PM

2) Domjur at 1:35PM

3) Howrah Madhya at 3PM

4) Behala Purba at 4:40 PM pic.twitter.com/M9g3WCehQ2  Office of Amit Shah (@AmitShahOffice) April 6, 2021

Earlier, on Tuesday, when four states and one Union Territory went for polling, the Union Home Minister appealed to the voters of West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Puducherry to exercise their franchise in huge numbers.

Additionally, the BJP leader appealed to West Bengals citizens to vote for peace, prosperity, and development of the state.

"Only a strong and decisive leadership can make Bengal self-reliant by ensuring peace, prosperity and development in the state. So, be sure to vote and be a partner in the development of Bengal," he said in a subsequent tweet.

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Your biggest mistake was not a mistake, it was a choice you made, she told Brown. Bad and illegal choices that resulted in an unimaginable reality, in the death of two men that were in search of the man doing something wrong, because it was their oath and they were doing the best they could at their jobs.
Former Big Brother star and influencer Skye Wheatley has been renovating a sprawling $975,000 Gold Coast mansion with her partner Lachlan Waugh since 2019.

While she's happily kept fans up-to-date with the process, Skye shared an emotional Instagram rant on Tuesday after receiving negative feedback about her bathroom.

A small detail in a recent before-and-after post sparked debate among her followers, and the 27-year-old was incensed by the 'nasty, judgmental' comments.

Scroll down for video

Dividing opinion: Skye Wheatley went on a massive Instagram rant against her followers after a small detail in a renovation post sparked fierce debate about a supposed 'design flaw'

The tirade started after Skye shared a picture of her renovated bathroom, where a towel rack was seen next to a toilet.

Many comments debated whether the towel rack was too close to the toilet, and wondered whether 'poo particles' would contaminate the towels.

'The towels are in the toilet, because there was nowhere else to put it... I don't know why people need to be rude and nasty. It's not your toilet or bathroom, so take a deep breath and move on,' Skye shared on her renovation page's Instagram Story.

'I get that not everyone has the same taste, but when you're doing it in a nasty way, it's like "am I coming to your page, and judging your home?"' Skye said.

Too close? The towel rack next to the toilet sparked fierce debate among Skye's followers

Detail: Many comments debated whether the towel rack was too close to the toilet, and wondered whether 'poo particles' would contaminate the towels

'If my poo particles are travelling THAT far, then my lord they need to be in the Guinness World Records. The only way poo is going to get on my towels is if I stood on the toilet to do a s**t!' she raged.

Raising her voice while filming in the echoing bathroom, she said: 'Thanks for your concerns, but I will be the only one p**sing and s**tting on my toilet. So, thank you for the concerns, but we're good here!

'There are going to be some things that are impractical and not perfect [with the renovations], but we've done the best that we can. Considering what this bathroom looked like before, this is the most beautiful, luxurious, comfortable bathroom for me.'

Skye, who is heavily pregnant, added: 'I'm sorry, I don't want to be a b***h... I'm just really hormonal at the moment, that's my excuse.'

'I'm sorry, I don't want to be a b**ch': Skye blamed her outrage on her pregnancy hormones, but insisted she was aware not all their renovations choices would be perfect or practical

Nicely done: Skye and her partner Lachlan Waugh (above) have kept fans up-to-date with the renovation, sharing before-and-after photos of how they've turned their crumbling home into a luxurious pad

Gruelling: The couple began renovating the pad in November 2019. Skye has previously said on Instagram that 'blood, sweat and tears' have gone into the renovation

Skye and Lachlan, who are expecting their second child this year, began renovating the property in November 2019.

They've kept fans up-to-date with the renovation process, sharing before-and-after photos of how they've turned their crumbling home into a luxurious pad.

In a previous video blog, Skye told how the 'abandoned' mansion came to be, saying: 'No one has lived here for six years.

Impressive: The home, known as La Casa Grande, has four bedrooms and a swimming pool and is being renovated in keeping with its Spanish style

'The owner was a Chinese man, and him and his wife wanted to send their children to a nearby school, and they were going to live there but... it never ended up happening.'

Skye said the pair 'fell in love' with the home when they bought it, even though it was so run down it looked 'haunted'.

The home, known as La Casa Grande, has four bedrooms and a swimming pool and is being renovated in keeping with its Spanish style.
Trump Doubles Down on Criticism of Far Too Weak Georgia Election Law

Former President Donald Trump on April 6 renewed his criticism of the recently enacted set of election reforms in Georgia, saying the new law failed to eliminate no-excuse mail-in voting and did away with signature verification, among other issues.

Georgias election reform law is far too weak and soft to ensure real ballot integrity! Election Day is supposed to be Election Day, not Election Week or Election Month. Far too many days are given to vote. Too much mischief can happen during this very long period of time, Trump said in a statement released through his Save America political action committee.

You saw that in the 2020 Presidential Election. Hows Ruby Freeman doing? the former president added, referring to the election official who was at the center of a controversy surrounding ballot-counting in Atlanta.

The new Georgia law, titled the Election Integrity Act of 2021, expands access to early voting by adding one Saturday and two optional Sundays to the existing three-week early voting period. Trump has long criticized extended early voting periods, including during his first public speech after leaving the White House. He told the Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida in February that elections should take place only on Election Day.

Georgias new law also preserved no-excuse mail-in voting. The act did away with signature matching in favor of verifying the identities of people voting by mail by requiring they submit their drivers license or state ID number. People without either form of ID can submit the last four digits of their Social Security number. Georgia had already required voters to present a physical ID to cast a ballot in person.

Governor Brian Kemp and Georgia Secretary of State should have eliminated no-excuse, widespread mass Mail-In Voting, gotten rid of the dangerous and unsecure Drop-Boxes, and should have kept and EXPANDED Signature Verification to do matches against the historical voter file, among other things! Hope the RINOs are happy, Trump said, using the acronym for Republicans in name only.

Kemp also caved to the radical left-wing woke mob who threatened to call him racist if he got rid of weekend voting. Well, he kept it, and they still call him racist!

The Election Integrity Act of 2021 limited, but didnt completely eliminate, absentee ballot drop boxes. The law requires the drop boxes to be placed inside buildings and mandates that they are monitored around the clock.

Kemp has defended the law from attacks from the left but hasnt publicly responded to criticism from Trump. The governors office didnt respond to a request for comment by press time.
The agreement, which came nearly a week after the April 1 budget deadline, is packed with proposals long favored by Democratic legislators, like raising taxes on the rich.

Much of the budget  which includes aid for renters, undocumented immigrants and business owners  is intended to fuel New Yorks recovery from an economically devastating pandemic.

The budget still needs to pass the Legislature and be approved by the governor. Here are three key elements in the states budget, explained:

[Whats in the states $212 billion budget deal.]

Tax hikes for the wealthy and corporations

Despite Gov. Andrew M. Cuomos longtime stance against raising taxes on the rich, Democrats managed to include a personal income tax rate increase on individuals making over $1 million and couples earning more than $2 million, and two new tax brackets for incomes over $5 million and $25 million.

The changes are expected to raise more than $4 billion in additional revenue each year, though Republicans have warned that tax hikes could drive wealthy residents out of the state.
MELBOURNE, Australia, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The most recent Quarterly Carbon Market Report from the Clean Energy Regulator stated that 7 gigawatts of new renewable energy capacity were delivered across Australia last year, thanks to the efforts of solar installers like Sunrun Solar. This beats the Regulator's original estimate (6.3GW) quite significantly.

Solar Panels Melbourne

With the demand for renewable energy only set to increase, so too will the vital need for high-quality solar panels in Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane, as well as provincial cities and regional towns. That means clean energy providers should be on their toes, ready to meet all their customers' needs.

To put the data into perspective, more than 350,000 small-scale solar systems were installed in 2020 across Australia, up 25% from 2019. Larger system installations were also up 40% from 2019. In regards to solar batteries, there were 2,677 installations that occurred during the time the solar panels were installed, and that is up 22% from 2019.

With the demand for solar panels growing, the cost of solar will continue to drop, meaning more households and businesses can not only justify solar but will be able to afford it.

Businesses such as Sunrun Solar, established solar panel installers in Melbourne, are already helping residential and commercial customers to reduce their energy costs through solar system installations. They've found that the attitudes of many Australians in relation to solar and other renewable energy have changed, as reflected in the Quarterly Carbon Market Report.

On average, Australia has added more than 6 GW of new renewable capacity each year. The report also showed that Australia met its Renewable Energy Target of 33,000-gigawatt hours, and the Regulator predicts this could reach 40,000 GWh by 2021, with growth expected to continue into 2022.

With changing attitudes around renewable energy and cheaper solar energy options available, Sunrun Solar expects that more homes and businesses will continue to turn to solar panels in Melbourne and across Australia.

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SOURCE Sunrun Solar
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The Federal Polytechnic Offa in Kwara State has been shut after its lecturers joined the nationwide strike of the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP).

Lecturers in polytechnics and monotechnics across Nigeria began the indefinite strike on Tuesday after a meeting with the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, failed to address their grievances.

They had given the government until March last year to meet their demands but shelved their threat of strike due to COVID-19.

The government failed to implement the needs assessment report of public polytechnics and colleges of education which the government carried out in 2014, the unions national president, Anderson Ezeibe, said.

Speaking with journalists, the chair of the Federal Polytechnic, Offa chapter of ASUP, Waheed Balogun, said the institutions lecturers will fully comply with the strike declared by the national body of ASUP.

Federal Polytechnic, Offa is in total compliance with the directive of the national body of ASUP to embark on industrial action to back up our demands.

We have given the federal government a one-year ultimatum since March 2020 to attend to our demands which include payment of 10 months arrears of minimum wage, non-payment of promotion arrears, non-implementation of the 2014 needs report and non-release of revitalization fund to the polytechnics despite assurances since 2017.

Other demands we made are non-reconstitution of governing councils in Federal Polytechnics and many state-owned Institutions. This has affected the appointment of Rectors and other Principal staff of the Polytechnics. For instance, Federal Polytechnic, Mubi and Bida are still having Acting Rector which does not exist in the Act of the Federal Polytechnics in the country.

The non-reconstitution of the Governing Councils by the Federal government has also affected the promotion of staff and has also undermined the renegotiation of the unions 2010 agreement with the government which was unilaterally suspended by government for over two years now, Balogun said.

The strike is total and there is no going back. We have just started a new session at the Federal Polytechnic Offa, from now henceforth, all academic activities have been suspended; there will be no lecture, no examination and marking of scripts will not be entertained by our members, he said.

Apart from the lecturers, resident doctors and judiciary workers are also on strike across the country.
The New is a fledgling plant-based protein business in Brazil, one of the worlds largest consumers of meat but where a market for alternatives is emerging. Dean Best speaks to co-founder Bruno Fonseca about financial backing The New has attracted from specialist investor Lever VC and his companys ambitions domestically and overseas.

just-food: How will the funding from Lever VC help your business?

Bruno Fonseca: A lot. Lever is a specialist in this industry, so, for us, it was a validation of what weve been doing for the last couple of years. Having a partner like Lever VC will help with our internationalisation plan. We are already in talks with distributors and partnerships in Europe and Asia. And, of course, we are using the cash to increase our marketing and sales team. We had a [fundraising] round before Lever VC and, with that money, we invested in an 80 tonnes-per-month capacity facility and built a lab to do R&D.

just-food: How much have you raised so far across the two rounds?

Bruno Fonseca: We are still running the Series A and we are not disclosing the value. The first round was with angel investors.



just-food: Tell me about your background and how The New came about.

Bruno Fonseca: Im a mechanical engineer, I didnt come from the food industry. I used to work with diesel engines. We had a project to reduce the CO 2 emissions of the engines. It was my first contact with the environments needs and I said to myself okay this is what I want to devote my life to, to protect our planet. Im a triathlete, so I love to do sport in nature. When I saw that my job is destroying the planet and I could switch to another area, I decided to move from the engine industry to agribusiness.

I thought at that time that agro would be related to the nature and the origin of food but, here in Brazil, agro is about things like GMO. In 2013, I decided to became an entrepreneur. I founded my first company. Its called Eat Clean and produces products like nut butter and supplements like protein shakes. In 2017, I saw the extrusion process being used with food and thought if we can replicate the texture, the mouthfeel, the taste, all the experience of animal protein, using plants, its pretty easy for people to switch their source of protein. I thought Okay, this is the future  but one condition. We have to do it in the healthiest way as possible. Since day one of The New, we havent used soy, gluten, any kind of allergens. Our protein is 100% pea protein.

just-food: When did The New launch its first product?

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Bruno Fonseca: October 2019.

just-food: Whats The New proposition?

Bruno Fonseca: In the plant-based meat category, we are the company here to replicate the taste of meat in the healthiest way. We are the first and the only food-tech producing it with no soy or gluten.

just-food: Plant-based meat is an emerging  but growing  category in Brazil. Are retail buyers starting to weigh up the difference between the types of products they could stock? And are consumers starting to think about the differences in the products ingredient lists and recipes as well?

Bruno Fonseca: Its just begun. At first, it was all new and seen as all of the same category but now they are starting to see Okay, this is different because theres no soy, no gluten. Or This is good because its reduced sodium or saturated fat. The consumers are beginning to understand the difference.

just-food: Brazil is one of the biggest meat consumers per capita globally. Describe a typical Brazilian consumer of plant-based meat.

Bruno Fonseca: Its a pretty good question because meat is part of our culture  and Brazil is a huge country. If you go to the south, in states like Santa Catarina, cities like Curitiba, meat is part of the culture because they are the states that farm the most animals. There we have a culture barrier we have to break. Thats why our marketing and branding position is you dont have to stop eating meat. You just have to give the plants a chance. We are not attacking your family business. We are here to add  because the population globally is going to grow and we have to deliver enough food to everybody.

The majority of our customers are aged from 26 to 40, men and women pretty well-divided, and the class is A and B. Brazil is a pretty poor country. If you go to the north east, classes C or D people cannot afford plant-based [products]. They also cannot afford good animal meat. They eat sausages and not premium meat. Their meal is not very good in terms of nutrition. Our goal is to provide good quality and a very healthy plant-based option to all but, nowadays, our folks are only Class A and B.

just-food: Is the market big enough for you to build a sustainable business moving forward?

Bruno Fonseca: We aim to take a part of the animal market. If we look at the current plant-based market, its not big enough but, when we see the population [growth] and the younger generations, they are pretty open to experience plant-based and they dont have the [meat] culture as strong as older generations. If you take a piece, a small piece of the animal industry, its already huge.

just-food: What do you think about the competition from the likes of JBS and BRF, major meat processors that have launched products in this area? Does competing with companies of that size worry you?

Bruno Fonseca: No, not at all. At first, it worried me a lot when JBS announced their plant-based line but I think more people every day dont only buy a product, they buy why you are doing what you are doing. So how can you be the guy who creates the problem and who now develops a solution to the problem that you create? It makes no sense and, luckily for us, customers notice. So, although [meat companies] do have plant-based lines, sales for them are not very high. They do a favour to us because, as they have a lot of money to invest in marketing, they teach the population. At the end of the day, they are more likely to help us than compete with us.

just-food: What are The News main domestic growth initiatives for 2021?

We plan to launch new versions of all products, reducing sodium, reducing fat, and also improving taste

Bruno Fonseca: We aim to keep up our innovation. Weve just launched a cod fish. Its a pretty popular fish here in Brazil. Our product is the only cod fish that mimics the taste of the animal version. Next, we plan to launch new versions of all products, reducing sodium, reducing fat, and also improving taste. Our aim in R&D is to make our own products obsolete. We are always developing our products. Another example thats part of our plan is a salmon product. Its 10% cheaper than the animal version. Salmon here in Brazil is expensive. We want to break the pattern that plant-based is expensive. This is part of the strategy for people from class C to be able to afford our products.

just-food: Are you looking to lower prices? How would you look to do that? Greater scale in your production?

Bruno Fonseca: Definitely, its a priority. We are also about to launch a nugget version. With this kind of product, we can have a very competitive price because of its formulation and, when you compare the nutrition facts between animal nuggets and our nuggets, we are way better than the animal version.

just-food: What proportion of the companys sales come from meat and seafood?

Bruno Fonseca: Its pretty well divided. We have cow, chicken and fish. It is around 30% each.

just-food: What are the companys annual sales?

Bruno Fonseca: We are on track to close this year at BRL10m (US$1.8m).

just-food: Is the business profitable?

Bruno Fonseca: We started profitable because we didnt have overheads. It was only me and a small team but, now that we are investing in people and team building, we are burning some cash to assemble a team, to keep up with innovation. We invest a lot in R&D and the sales force. We are starting to burn some cash in order to speed up the growth.

just-food: What are The News plans outside Brazil?

Bruno Fonseca: We have just started conversations and negotiations. Part of our plan is to say Okay, Brazil is overseas known as a country that produces food  and also meat. The Amazon rainforest is also a global asset. So, why not a start-up from Brazil that doesnt use soy? We are part of the solution to preserve our rainforest. Be part of the change. We would like to see by the end of this year our products on sale globally. We want to start with Europe and Asia. We are talking to partners in the Netherlands and the UK. Were talking to guys in Singapore. And, also here in Latin America, we are talking with our partner from Colombia.

just-food: Is The New more likely to launch first in markets that are closer to home like Colombia?

Bruno Fonseca: It depends on the partner. Before Lever VC, we were talking in Latin America because its closer but some contacts in Lever VCs network are pretty excited, especially with our fish. Thats why the conversations are so hot.

just-food: If you launch in Europe and Asia, youll be looking for manufacturing partners to make the products locally?

Bruno Fonseca: Probably yes, because of the logistics costs. One euro is around BRL6. Its a good thing to export but the frozen logistics costs are crazy.

just-food: Youre still in the middle of your Series A round. Do you think therell be a need for Series B next year or in 2023?

Bruno Fonseca: Its a good question. My mindset is to ensure the business is healthy and with no necessity for another round of raising. I want to have the control to decide if we are going to Series B or not. If we decided to go for Series B, it would be because we want to speed up the growth of the company, not because we need to pay the bills.

just-food: Whats your vision for the business in two to three years time?

Bruno Fonseca: I definitely want to grow globally and be one of the leaders of the category. I want to be together with Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods the leaders of the movement.

just-food: Where do you see your sales in three years time?

Bruno Fonseca: I want to get to 10x what we have in 2021.

just-food: What are the main challenges facing the business?

Bruno Fonseca: The main challenge is to keep building a team that is able and aligned with the vision to keep up with this kind of growth.

just-food: Would you look to partner with a larger player within the plant-based meat sector  or even with a meat processor interested in investing?

Bruno Fonseca: As long as we have control of the business and our communication. If we [partnered with] a slaughterhouse and they said You cannot say meat destroyed the country or You cannot say plant-based is healthier, thats a problem. But, if we make a JV with a company that say Okay, we are here to help, use our operation, use our structure, our sales force, our logistics, our distribution centres that makes sense. However, I think one of our best assets is the speed that we can innovate and launch products. If we are part of a huge company, I think we may be slow and we lose our biggest asset  the innovation and the kind of soul that a start-up has to have. We are here to make a difference. Its possible but it depends on the terms.
GAZA - Gaza on Tuesday registered a record number of new coronavirus infections, or 1,916 out of a total of 5,000 tests, according to the local health ministry.



Since the start of the pandemic in Gaza, the overall number of cases reported were 73,000, including 60,000 recoveries, while an additional 27,000 people have been vaccinated. The fatalities recorded were 642. Given the high percentage of new cases, authorities in Gaza have imposed the closure of schools and a nighttime curfew from 9 pm until 6 am. Moreover, vehicles were banned from Wednesday until Sunday to limit movement between different locations.



This measure was seen as very harsh since it was approved one week ahead of the start of the Islamic month of Ramadan, which requires adequate preparation.



In Israel, where the majority of the population has been vaccinated or has recovered, several hospitals have closed special coronavirus wards. The infected are about 500, including 480 who are currently in hospital. Yesterday, 300 new cases were recorded out of 60,000 tests.


A 27-year-old man on Tuesday, April 6 pleaded guilty to stealing customers luggage at Naivas and Quickmart supermarkets in the Nairobi city centre.

Kennedy Otieno, a hawker based in the city, was arrested on Monday, April 5. He was in possession of Naivas and Quickmart supermarkets luggage cards, black marker pens, and assorted papers in a green carrier bag.

A police report stated that he was readying himself for a heist at Quickmart Supermarket on Moi Avenue. As he was heading to the luggage station, members of the public thought he looked suspicious and pounced on him.

Otieno, however, managed to escape the mob before he later surrendered himself to police officers who were manning a nearby building.

The officers took him to the Nairobi Central Police Station where he admitted to creating supermarket luggage cards that he presented to steal customers luggage.

He told officers he resorted to stealing since hawking was not working out for him.

Otieno was arraigned before Nairobi Chief Magistrate Martha Mutuku on Tuesday, April 6, where he was charged with one count of preparing to commit a felony.

Speaking to K24 Digital, Otieno said he had been stealing customers luggage for a long time.

When I am lucky, I get money amounting to Sh1,000 or food like chapati, he said.

The case will be mentioned in two weeks time.
NEW ORLEANS (AP)  A state audit has found that Louisiana's labor department sent more than $405 million in state and federal unemployment insurance benefits to people who don't appear to have eligible for them. The audit estimates that total was paid out from January of last year through September. It's a time when claims skyrocketed because of the pandemic and total payments leapt to more than $6.8 billion in a few months. The Louisiana Workforce Commission doesn't dispute the report. In a response, it says the growth in applicants and legislative action giving employers more time to submit wage reports affected efforts to verify the accuracy of applicants' self-reported income.
Innovation, optimised workflows and excellence in customer experiences are all essential in today's rapidly changing world

LONDON, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In a video published on Business Reporter, Andy Fairchild, CEO of Applied Systems Europe, describes how the global pandemic has forced businesses, large and small, to change the way they operate. Strategies and processes that worked before are no longer optimal. Businesses must look to technology to innovate, to optimise operational workflows, and to ensure premium customer experiences.

The great recession triggered by the global financial crisis of 2008 forced businesses to rethink their processes and find new and less costly ways of operating. One result was the birth of cloud computing. Twelve years on, the global pandemic is having a similar result. Businesses are looking to add value and become more productive by generating better insights that can drive more effective decisions and by simplifying customer engagements as a way of increasing customer satisfaction.

To do this requires an investment in digital technology. The outcome will be businesses that are stronger, more resilient and with higher valuations. But the time to start transforming digitally is now. By adapting to the new digital norm, insurance brokers will build stronger bonds with their customers, equip their employees with the tools they need to work more intelligently and productively, and build more resilience and value into their businesses.

To learn more about digital transformation in the insurance industry, watch the video.

About Business Reporter

Business Reporter is an award-winning supplement published in the Sunday and Daily Telegraph, City AM and online, delivering news and analysis on issues affecting businesses to a global audience. It also hosts conferences, debates, breakfast meetings and exclusive summits.

www.business-reporter.co.uk

About Applied Systems

Applied Systems is the leading global provider of cloud-based software that powers the business of insurance. Recognized as a pioneer in insurance automation and the innovation leader, Applied is the world's largest provider of agency and brokerage management systems, serving customers throughout the United States, Canada, the Republic of Ireland, and the United Kingdom. By automating the insurance lifecycle, Applied's people and products enable millions of people around the world to safeguard and protect what matters most.

Applied Systems
An Accra Circuit Court has fixed April 14 to commence trial of Rosemond Alade Brown, aka, Akuapem Poloo, an Actress, who allegedly displayed her naked picture together with her son on social media.



This was after Rosemond and her lawyer Mr Andy Vortia had appeared before the court for case management conference.



The court presided over by Mrs. Christina Cann, stated that the evidence of prosecution witness Mr Bright Appiah, Executive Director of Child Rights International, would be taken at the next sitting and that the case investigator would also mount the witness box.



Mr Vortia prayed for a long adjournment as his client would be travelling to Nigeria where she had signed a contract for some movie production.



When the court demanded for the contract, Rosemond showed the court a copy of the contract on her phone.



The court noted that the contract was not signed.



Rosemond then explained that she left a signed copy at home.



Defence Counsel also informed the court that his client would also like to change her plea of not guilty to guilty.



Rosemond, a social media entertainer, has been charged with publication of obscene material, and two counts of engaging in domestic violence.



She has, however, denied the charges and is on a GH100,000 bail.



Police Chief Inspector Agartha Asantewaa, the prosecutor, told the Court that they were comfortable with the new date.



The case, as narrated by prosecution earlier, is that the complainant, Mr. Bright K. Appiah, is the Director of Child Rights International Ghana.



On June 30 last year, the prosecution said Rosemond celebrated her sons seventh birthday and took her nude pictures together with her son, who was also half naked and posted same on her Instagram page, which went viral on social media.



The pictures attracted comments, adding that the behaviour of the accused person undermined the dignity of her seven year old son among others.



The prosecution said the complainant petitioned the Director-General CID and the matter was referred to the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit (DOVVSU).



Rosemond, prosecution said, was arrested and in her caution statement, admitted posting the nude picture with her son unintentionally.



A write up accompanying the picture read: I am naked in front of you because this is how naked I was giving birth to you, so in case you find me lying somewhere dont pass by but see me as your mom who brought you to life.



The prosecution held that Rosemond deliberately posted the pictures.

Source: GNA









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The impact of myriad Chinese trade sanctions on Australian goods in the past year has been 'quite limited', with most exporters managing to find other markets, according to a new report.

China has targeted Australian beef, barley, coal, copper, cotton, seafood, sugar, timber and wine.

Before the sanctions, these exports were worth about $25 billion in 2019, or 1.3 per cent of gross domestic product.

As of end-January, the value of these exports to China had dropped to about $5 billion a year, the analysis by Lowy Institute chief economist Roland Rajah shows.

But most exporters - barring wine and beef producers - appear to have managed to shift their goods to markets other than China.

The impact of myriad Chinese trade sanctions on Australian goods in the past year has been 'quite limited', with most exporters managing to find other markets

'Looking at exports of barley, copper, cotton, seafood and timber, sales of these products to other markets rose sharply, but only after China's sanctions intensified in late 2020 - with the stark shift signalling this was indeed mostly a result of trade diversion,' Mr Rajah said.

'However, Australia's wine industry has struggled to make up for the loss of the premium China market.

'Total beef exports are also down, though this is more a reflection of supply-side issues after years of drought.'

The effect of China's trade sanctions on Australia's exports 'has been completely swamped by the booming iron ore trade - which China hasn't been game enough to touch'.

'Hence, the total economic impact of China's trade coercion against Australia seems to have been quite limited thus far,' Mr Rajah said.

Mr Rajah argues while China had targeted products for which it had alternative suppliers, there were also alternative buyers for Australian goods.

'And this shuffling of global trade is precisely the reason the damage inflicted on Australia has been limited,' he said.

China has targeted Australian beef, barley, coal, copper, cotton, seafood, sugar, timber and wine

The research published on Thursday comes after the federal government urged exporters to look for new Asian markets to combat the economic fallout of coronavirus and strained relations with China.

Trade Minister Dan Tehan on Wednesday released the final report of the Asia Taskforce - a joint project between the Asia Society and Business Council of Australia.

It provides a blueprint for Australia to compete more successfully in the region.

Mr Tehan said business and government needed to work together in order to keep trade with Asia moving.

'The Asia Taskforce does more than make the argument that businesses should expand into diverse markets across Asia,' he said.

The effect of China's trade sanctions on Australia's exports 'has been completely swamped by the booming iron ore trade - which China hasn't been game enough to touch'

'It advocates a 'Team Australia' approach and identifies practical, specific actions that business and governments can take to strengthen the presence of Australia, and our businesses, in Asia.'

The report proposes focusing on markets and sectors where Australia has competitive advantages, such as healthcare in Indonesia and financial services in Japan, as well as India, Vietnam and Korea.

However, also it found diversification does not replace the need to adjust to Australia's complex relationship with China.

Business Council chief Jennifer Westacott said the rise of Asian economies and their growing middle classes presented strong opportunities for Australian companies.

'But only if we grasp the opportunity,' she said.

'If we succeed, Australians will have the best standards of living in the world but if we fail, we run the risk of becoming a second-order economy in a thriving region.'
Jordan's King Abdullah II will issue a statement to the nation Wednesday for the first time since an alleged plot involving his half-brother Prince Hamzah, state television said

Amman, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 7th Apr, 2021 ) :Jordan's King Abdullah II will issue a statement to the nation Wednesday for the first time since an alleged plot involving his half-brother Prince Hamzah, state television said.

"His Majesty King Abdullah will deliver a message to Jordanians on Wednesday... after Prince Hamzah signed a letter affirming his loyalty to the king and the crown prince," the channel said.
Ask the Vet: What to Do If Your Dog Eats Chocolate

Q: Our dog Riley ate a lot of semisweet chocolate bits. His veterinarian advised us to use hydrogen peroxide to make him throw up. After Riley vomited all the chocolate, he was fine.

What are the toxic effects of chocolate? How much does it take to make a dog sick?

A: Before I became a veterinarian, one of my golden retrievers ate a big bag of Hersheys Kisses. His vet gave me the same adviceand up came all the Kisses, most still in their foil wrappers with the little paper plumes standing in salute.

Once I entered the veterinary field, I learned how dangerous chocolate can be for dogs. Part of the problem is that dogs devour chocolate until its gone, ingesting more than even I, who love the sweet, can eat at one sitting.

Fortunately, you witnessed Rileys indiscretion and acted quickly. If you hadnt, he might have experienced significant toxicity.

The clinical signs depend on the dose and type of chocolate. Toxicity follows ingestion of cocoa powder at a dose of 0.01 ounces per pound of the dogs body weight, baking chocolate at 0.02 ounces per pound, semisweet chocolate at 0.06 ounces per pound, and milk chocolate at 0.15 ounces per pound of body weight.

Knowing the type of chocolate ingested is important because various types contain different amounts of theobromine and caffeine, chemicals called methylxanthines (METH-ul-ZAN-theenes) that are toxic to dogs. Pure chocolate contains the most, while chocolate diluted with milk, sugar, and other ingredients has smaller concentrations.

Cocoa powder contains 800 milligrams of methylxanthine per ounce; baking chocolate, 440 milligrams per ounce; semisweet chocolate, 160 milligrams per ounce; and milk chocolate, 60 milligrams per ounce.

Methylxanthine doses of 10 to 20 milligrams per pound of the dogs body weight cause restlessness, vomiting, and diarrhea. At 20 to 25 milligrams per pound, dogs develop hyperactivity, agitation, and loss of coordination. Larger doses cause rapid heartbeat, abnormal heart rhythm, tremors, seizures, coma, and death.

So, a 50-pound dog that eats a 16-ounce bag of semisweet chocolate chips ingests 2,560 milligrams of methylxanthines, or 51 milligrams per pound of body weight, which may be fatal. Had the dog eaten the same amount of milk chocolate chips, he would have ingested 960 milligrams of methylxanthines, or 19 milligrams per pound, which would have been less toxic.

To make matters worse, dogs metabolize methylxanthines slower than humans. Therefore, these chemicals reach higher levels in dogs blood, and they remain there for up to three or four days.

If Riley ever raids the chocolate again, contact your veterinarian immediately or take him to an emergency clinic. Post these animal poison control phone numbers on your refrigerator:

ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center, 888-426-4435

Pet Poison Helpline, 855-764-7661

Q: My cat Purrdue fights me when I try to get her into her carrier for her twice-yearly visits to her veterinarian. How can I make this easier for both of us?

A: Enhance the appeal of Purrdues carrier by lining it with a thick towel and leaving it with its door open in a secluded corner of your home or inside an open closet. That way, shell learn to feel safe napping in her carrier or hiding there when guests visit your home.

If Purrdue ignores her special den, lay a trail of cat treats to the carriers door. Place a few treats and some catnip inside to encourage her to enter.

Spray the inside of the carrier with Feliway, the feline facial pheromone that signals relaxation and security.

Feed Purrdue near her carrier, gradually moving her food dish closer to the door and eventually placing it inside her carrier.

If these ideas dont help Purrdue feel content in her carrier, talk with her veterinarian about prescribing anti-anxiety medication to be given before her veterinary visits.

Lee Pickett, VMD, practices companion animal medicine in North Carolina. Contact her at AskTheVet.pet. Copyright 2021 Lee Pickett, VMD. Distributed by Creators.com
Two-time Oscar-nominated Samantha Morton is set to star as the nefarious Catherine de Medici in the new Starz Original series The Serpent Queen.Morton (Minority Report, The Walking Dead) will play Catherine in the series described as the dark legend centered on de Medici from writer and executive producer Justin Haythe (Revolutionary Road).The Serpent Queen is described as a cunning account of one of the most influential women ever to wear a crown. Considered an immigrant, common and plain, Catherine de Medici is married into the 16th century French court as an orphaned teenager expected to bring a fortune in dowry and produce many heirs, only to discover that her husband is in love with an older woman, her dowry is unpaid and shes unable to conceive. Yet, only with her intelligence and determination, she manages to keep her marriage alive and masters the bloodsport that is the monarchy better than anyone else, ruling France for 50 years.
Chennai, April 7 : Senior Congress leader and former Puducherry Chief Minister V. Narayanasamy on Wednesday expressed confidence that the high voter turnout in the Tuesday's Assembly election is a positive factor for his party.

In Puducherry, the voter turnout was 81.64 per cent. Yanam recorded the highest percentage, at 91.27 while Rajbhavan was at the lowest, at 73.24.

Talking to IANS, Narayanasamy said: "The higher voter turnout in Puducherry is a clear indication that people are with the Congress and our promises of loan rebate and government jobs have received a great response for the party in the state." In Puducherry, the Congress had suffered a severe jolt after several senior leaders including Minister Namasivayam quit the party and joined the BJP, leading to the fall of the Narayanasamy government.

The Congress-DMK combine were campaigning extensively against the "communal overtures" of the BJP-led front and the Congress was expecting that grass root issues between cadres of the All India NR Congress and those of the BJP-AIADMK may work in their favour.

While Union Home Minister Amit Shah had openly endorsed a BJP Chief Minister for Puducherry after elections, the party had to finally settle on AINRC leader and former Chief Minister N. Rangaswamy as the CM candidate if the NDA wrests power as AINRC was in a revolt mode against the BJP leadership. The Congress expects that this would work in its favour.

Narayanasamy said: "We had fought the election against religious and communal elements and even several parties which are with the BJP in the NDA are not happy with theit policies and programmes." The BJP leadership, however, dismissed the claims of the Congress.

"The BJP and other parties of the NDA will do extremely well in the elections and there is no problem between BJP and other coalition partners. We are heading for a resounding victory," party state President Swaminathan told IANS.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Rocky River schools Superintendent Michael Shoaf released results from an investigation into high school staff members accused of inappropriately discussing a student, which led to five teachers resigning and one retiring.

The investigation found photographs of a student, taken in a classroom, on the phone of one of the teachers, according to a statement from Shoaf sent out on Wednesday. Some teachers were also found to be in an inappropriate text chain regarding staff members, which did not contain photos of students.

Read the full letter from Shoaf at the bottom of this post.

Another teacher was under investigation regarding previous conduct, as a former student brought it up when the investigation was publicized. That teacher resigned.

In lieu of a lengthy employment termination process, the departure of these six staff members provides our school district with the swiftest route -- without litigation -- to provide 100-percent certainty that these individuals will not return to a Rocky River City School District classroom, the letter reads.

The school district will send findings to the Ohio Department of Education. Rocky River police initially closed their investigation into the incident, but reopened it on March 30.

Police did not specify what caused them to reopen the investigation, though a statement read that previously undisclosed information may exist that indicates evidence of criminal activity, allowing Rocky River police to reopen the criminal case involving several teachers employed by Rocky River High School.

Rocky River Teachers Association President David Opdycke, in an emailed statement on Wednesday, wrote while disappointed to learn of the resignations, he is grateful to them for choosing to put the community first with their decisions to step down.

Opdycke said after the district launched an investigation, sparked by a video which was released by the Rocky River police of two educators discussing a photo that a third educator had on his phone, officials found there were no sexually explicit photos and no grounds for criminal charges. He wrote that the photograph found on a phone was taken as evidence that the student was not wearing a mask.

After the investigation, it is clear that no students were put at risk by either the private text chain or photograph taken, the statement reads. Part of the healing process for students, staff and the Rocky River residents will be letting go of the anger and panic triggered by the false narrative in the community. Everyone needs to take a deep breath and realize that these teachers are leaving, not because of inappropriate pictures of a student passed around in a text chain, because that did not happen, but due to insensitive private communications and the media firestorm that made staying in Rocky River an untenable position.

Shoafs statement says that the photos were inappropriate enough to warrant concern because they violated Board Policy.

Full statement from Rocky River schools Superintendent Michael Shoaf:

As we have navigated the recent weeks, we have continually stressed the importance of providing a safe, healthy, and productive learning environment for our students. Throughout this difficult time, we have been focused on keeping students safe while gathering the necessary facts needed to ensure that our response was swift, focused, and accurate.

At this time, the district is announcing that five teachers have submitted their resignations and one teacher has submitted his retirement.

Upon learning of the incident involving high school staff members inappropriately discussing a student, we acted swiftly to protect the safety and well-being of students and immediately removed these staff members from the building using proper procedures. An investigation was launched, legal counsel was involved and the Rocky River Police Department (RRPD) was notified.

During the course of our investigation of the information contained in the video relating to three high school teachers, we learned of and obtained photographs of a fully-clothed student on the phone of one of the teachers. The photos, taken in a classroom, were inappropriate enough to warrant concern because they violated Board Policy. Law enforcement and the courts have been made aware of the circumstances and the pictures.

The investigation followed all applicable legal channels and protocols. Because of the thoroughness of the investigation, we learned that along with the three staff members, two additional high school teachers were involved in an inappropriate text chain regarding staff members. The text chain between these five individuals, which was private, did not contain photographs of students. Those staff members were immediately removed from campus. Subsequently, of these five teachers, four have resigned their employment and one has retired.

Due to the publicity associated with the investigation, a former student contacted the Rocky River City School District to express concern over another member of the high school staff regarding alleged inappropriate communication and contact which occurred in the past. This sixth staff member was immediately removed from the building and has since resigned his employment.

In lieu of a lengthy employment termination process, the departure of these six staff members provides our school district with the swiftest route -- without litigation -- to provide 100-percent certainty that these individuals will not return to a Rocky River City School District classroom.

Results from the districts investigation will be shared with the Ohio Department of Education Office of Professional Conduct who will utilize their authority to determine any further consequences  including review of licensure  through their own independent investigation. The district will also continue to cooperate with the RRPD as they continue their criminal investigation.

Let us be clear. The Rocky River City School District holds our staff to the highest professional and ethical standards and anything less than this is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. If the safety of a student is in question, it is the professional and ethical obligation of our staff members to report that situation to the proper individuals. This expectation has been made clear to our staff members on many occasions as well as during mandatory annual trainings. Any conduct to the contrary does not reflect the culture of the dedicated educators and staff of the Rocky River City School District.

Moving forward, we continue to be committed to creating a safe environment for all students that closely adheres to the values and priorities of the Rocky River community. As a district, it is our intention to use this matter as an opportunity to reinforce the high professional and ethical behavioral expectations we have for our staff. Assistant Superintendent Elizabeth Anderson will lead a healing initiative which will ensure student safety and reinforce staff training. The Rocky River High School counseling team, the McKeon Education Group and the Diversity Center of Northeast Ohio will all be involved in this initiative.

I want to thank the community for its patience during our investigative process and once again assure you that the safety and well-being of all students throughout the district will continue to be our number one priority.

Thank you.

Michael G. Shoaf

Superintendent

Full statement from Rocky River Teachers Association President David Opdycke

The safety and well-being of the students is always the top priority of the staff of the Rocky River City School District. As president of the Rocky River Teachers Association, I am disappointed to learn of the resignations of all of the members involved in recent investigations, but grateful to them for choosing to put the community first with their decisions to step down.

To be clear, the investigations into the video that was inadvertently recorded found that there were no sexually explicit pictures of students and no grounds for criminal charges. While there were photographs of a student on one phone of a teacher, those photographs were taken in a classroom setting to evidence that the student was not wearing a mask, and the photographs were not transmitted from one teacher to another. However, due to the ongoing distraction this has all created in the Rocky River community, the two employees in the video and the employee they were discussing on camera have chosen to resign.

In the course of the investigation into the video, private communications between those three employees and two other members came to light. Again, there were no photographs of students, inappropriate or otherwise, during those private communications; however, it did contain comments about other staff members of which these members were not proud. All of the teachers are deeply remorseful. The communication, while intended for private consumption only among the adults, has only created further distractions, so the two other employees have decided to step down.

A sixth employee, who was the subject of an unrelated investigation, has also chosen to resign rather than continue to allow the Rocky River schools community to be harmed by the ongoing, unfounded rumors these situations have spurred.

After the investigation, it is clear that no students were put at risk by either the private text chain or photograph taken. Part of the healing process for students, staff and the Rocky River residents will be letting go of the anger and panic triggered by the false narrative in the community. Everyone needs to take a deep breath and realize that these teachers are leaving, not because of inappropriate pictures of a student passed around in a text chain, because that did not happen, but due to insensitive private communications and the media firestorm that made staying in Rocky River an untenable position.

Rocky River teachers are among some of the best in the state. They are dedicated to their students safety and success, and the well-being of the entire community. It is the hope of the entire RRTA that the community can now begin to move forward and once again place their trust in the exceptional educators who work with their children every day.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has the first crack at forming Israel's next government, but the job could ultimately fall to a much less well-known figure: Naftali Bennett.

Why it matters: Bennett's right-wing Yamina party won just seven seats in the March 23 elections, but an unprecedented set of political circumstances has created an opening for the former defense minister and tech entrepreneur to replace Netanyahu, with the support of the center-left.

The state of play: For the fourth consecutive election, Netanyahu's Likud was the largest party, but his right-wing bloc failed to win a majority. He's now trying to cobble together a coalition while on trial for corruption.

Netanyahu cant reach out to the other side, because almost everyone outside the right-wing bloc has refused to join his government due to the corruption charges.

But Netanyahus center-left opponents, led by opposition leader Yair Lapid, are also short of a majority.

That leaves two wildcards: Bennett, a former Netanyahu ally now on the fringes of the right-wing camp, and an unaligned Islamist party called Raam.

Driving the news: Shortly before Netnayahu was awarded the mandate, Lapid made an audacious proposal: despite having won more than twice as many seats as Bennett, he was willing to serve under him if it meant getting rid of Netanyahu.

Lapid proposed a power-sharing deal that would make Bennett prime minister for two years, at which point Lapid would rotate in for an additional two years.

Lapid contended that all of the anti-Netanyahu parties should back Bennett to lead a government that would steer clear of controversial issues, make all decisions by consensus, and focus on the post-COVID-19 economic recovery.

Bennett didnt rule out that option, but the negotiations didnt materialize quickly enough to present any firm understandings to President Reuven Rivlin before he awarded Netanyahu the mandate.

Still, Bennett hinted on Tuesday that he would keep negotiating with Lapid behind-the-scenes.

Bennett said he would not sacrifice his positions in order to form a left-wing government, but stressed the need to form a government that will reflect a wide range of views and represent the Israeli consensus."

The other side: Netanyahu has 28 days to try and form a coalition. He starts with a right-wing bloc of 52 seats, and needs to reach 61 for a majority.

To get there, he'd have to bring his former protege Bennett back into the tent, and add Raam's four seats.

But that coalition would require the radical right-wing "Religious Zionism" party, which includes Jewish supremacists, to sit in the same coalition with Ra'am, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood movement.

Netanyahu is a master of the art of political survival, but he has a difficult task ahead of him.

What's next: If he fails, the most likely alternatives are a Bennett-Lapid government that would eject Netanyahu from power, or a fifth consecutive election in September.
COLUMBUS, Ohio  A recently introduced bill in the Ohio House would require insurers to cover the cost of hearing aids up to $2,500  $5,000 for both ears  every 48 months for children through age 21.

House Bill 198 is called Madelines Law, named after a Northeast Ohio girl whose parents brought the issue to the attention of state Rep. Casey Weinstein, a Hudson Democrat who sponsored a measure last year and is co-sponsoring the bill this year.

Many insurers consider hearing aids cosmetic. This came as a surprise to Madelines mother, Nadia Greenhalgh-Stanley. She and her husband, Shawn Rohlin, are Kent State University professors and assumed their insurance would cover Madelines hearing aids.

It was shocking something so developmentally necessary for a child to learn and communicate is treated the same as Botox or plastic surgery, she said. When we were getting our almost-three-year-old fitted for her hearing aids, the audiologist explained that we have 30 days to return them. I asked, Why would we return the hearing aids? And she responded, Sometimes people realize they cant afford them, and you have 30 days to return them. It was heartbreaking to realize so many families have to return them and have their children go without because of finances.

Madelines parents ultimately had the $5,000 to purchase the hearing aids.

Madeline, who was born with Connexin 26, a recessive gene responsible for about 10% of hearing loss in children, is now a thriving second-grader, top in her class in math and reading  which is possible because of the hearing aids, her parents said.

HB 198 is sponsored by Reps. Allison Russo, a Columbus-area Democrat, and Susan Manchester, a Western Ohio Republican.

Hearing aids can cost $5,000 to $6,000 per ear. They usually need to be replaced every three to five years, because the technology becomes outdated and they become unreliable, said Dr. Carrie Spangler, an educational audiologist at the Summit Educational Service Center, who was diagnosed with severe to profound hearing loss at age 4.

Its estimated that 400 children are born each year in Ohio who have hearing loss, she said. But hearing loss tends to be progressive, and older children sometimes need hearing aids, she said.

Research showed that special education in children with late or no intervention for hearing loss costs Ohio more than $400,000 by the time they graduate from high school, Russo said.

Any time were discussing a new insurance mandate, that tends to cause some concern about overall costs of insurance plans, Manchester said. But I think as Dr. Spangler pointed out, the number of children this would apply to is still relatively small to the overall population.

While the deaf and hard-of-hearing community may be small, the effect that this lack of coverage has on childrens hearing aids bears on families is immense, and its felt throughout the state, Weinstein said.

The Ohio Association of Health Plans, which represents insurance companies, hasnt discussed the bill with its leadership, and hasnt yet taken a position on the bill, a spokesman said.

More coverage:

2,064 new coronavirus cases reported in Ohio: Wednesday update

Judge temporarily blocks Ohios telemedicine abortion ban

98 new deaths reported of Ohio residents with coronavirus: Tuesday update

70 school districts preparing to sue Ohio over private school vouchers

Judge temporarily blocks Ohios enforcement of fetal remains abortion law

Ohio Medicaid chooses Aetna to manage care of kids with complex mental health needs
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 22:19:36|Editor: huaxia

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MOGADISHU, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Somali National Army (SNA) said its forces have taken over several bases which were under al-Shabab areas during early Wednesday operations in Galgaduud, in the central part of Somalia.

Mohamed Tahlil Bihi, SNA Infantry commander, said the 21st Division of SNA captured new bases in areas which are al-Shabab strongholds and inflicted heavy casualties on the militants.

"The bases were completely destroyed and terrorists suffered huge casualties," Tahlil told the state-owned Somalia National Television in Mogadishu.

The latest move comes after the SNA liberated Sinadhaqqo and Labi Dulle areas during operations conducted last week in Galgaduud in which dozens of terrorists were killed and weapons recovered.

Tahlil said the extremists were planning to carry out terror attacks in those regions, vowing that the troops will intensify operations against al-Shabab extremists in southern and central regions to liberate move regions.

The al-Shabab was routed from Mogadishu in 2011 by the 22,000-strong African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and has had to abandon most of its strongholds, but it still controls vast rural areas and remains the key threat to peace in Somalia and also carries out attacks in neighboring Kenya. Enditem
Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff moved in to their official residence on Tuesday night, just days after it emerged she was unhappy about living out of suitcases while it was being renovated.

The Naval Observatory - the VP's official residence - has been out of action for more than two months while it undergoes much-needed updates.

The pair had been living at Blair House, across the road from the White House, since January - an arrangement that was reportedly beginning to wear on Harris.

'She is getting frustrated,' an administration official told CNN, noting that every day her desire to move into her designated house grows more intense.

But it seems that she has now had the green light to move into the official property.

The couple flew into Washington DC at the end of a day that saw Harris in Chicago, and Emhoff in Washington state.

'Tonight when she returns, she will take Marine Two to the vice president's residence,' an official confirmed to The New York Times.

Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff moved in to the official vice presidential residence on Tuesday

The pair, seen together March 16, have been living at Blair House near the White House

Moving trucks were seen outside Blair House earlier this week as the couple readied to leave

Moving trucks have been seen outside Blair House this week, giving rise to speculation that the official residence was almost complete.

The Victorian home, which features a large veranda, a pool and a sunroom, sits on the grounds of the Naval Observatory in Northwest Washington.

When Mike Pence and his wife Karen moved out in January, the opportunity was seized for necessary upgrades, such as a new heating and air system, refurbished wooden floors and updated chimney liners.

According to two administration staff with knowledge of the ongoing updates to the residence, Harris, who likes to cook, requested work be done to the kitchen.

While Blair House is comfortable and luxurious, Harris has a tendency to prefer more informal, modern and sleek accommodations.

In January, Harris moved out of her minimalist condo in D.C. to Blair House.

Blair House has been called 'the world's most exclusive hotel' as it primarily is used as a guest house for visiting foreign leaders, dignitaries and other guests of the president.

But its formal role meant Harris could not put her own mark on the property.

The couple will be able to decorate the VP's official residence to their tastes.

Blair House is known for its luxury and museum-quality pieces of American history

There are more than 100 rooms, which are used to house official guests of the president, like visiting foreign dignitaries

Harris has a more informal style than that of Blair House. The guest room pictured is known as Mrs. Truman's Bedroom

Harris' condo in Washington was light and airy and modern, cohesive with her more informal style  unlike the formal and antique nature of Blair House

When Joe and Jill Biden lived there, they painted the walls the same blue as their Delaware home.

Harris and Emhoff are yet to designate an interior designer, with whom they will work, but Harris is said to be keen to reflect both her previous role as senator for California, and her status as the first person of South Asian and Caribbean descent to live there.

Structural repairs are paid for by the Navy.

Cosmetic upgrades are funded by the Vice President's Residence Foundation, which was started in 1991 after Vice President Dan Quayle began soliciting donations for various home improvements, including a $130,000 pool, a gym and a putting green.

In 2010, Biden joked: 'He's my favorite vice president,' adding that he was a big fan of the swimming pool.

'And my granddaughters love it.'

The Pence family are seen on the steps of the house in January 2017 before the inaugural balls

Joe and Jill Biden's favorite room in the Vice President's residence was the solarium (pictured)

A military harpist plays music during a Thanksgiving dinner hosted by the Bidens in 2010

George H.W. Bush is seen in the Vice President's residence in around 1983

The foundation also pays to hang artwork and install new drapes, and handles some larger projects.

It 'partnered with the Navy' for a major renovation during the Gore era that included the installation of a kitchenette on the second floor, so that the family would not have to travel to the service kitchen in the basement.

The foundation is run by volunteers appointed by the vice president who often help solicit private donations, and Harris has been working to select a five-person panel to serve on the foundation, her office said.

In 2018, it reported about $250,000 in contributions from donors, according to public filings.
The White House has responded to right-wing anger at Kamala Harriss trip to a Chicago bakery.

Fox News attacked the vice presidents visit to pick up a piece of German chocolate cake, even as she faces scrutiny for not having visited the overwhelmed southern border.

Ms Harris was in Chicago to visit a vaccination site and popped in to the Brown Sugar Bakery on the citys South Side while she was there.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki sharply dismissed the criticism during her media briefing on Wednesday.

The vice president was visiting Chicago actually to talk about Covid and the importance of communities getting the vaccine when it is available and accessible to them, said Ms Psaki.

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So, while she was there like many Americans she got a snack. I think she is allowed to do that.

Ms Harris stopped in Chicago on her way back to Washington DC from a weekend trip to California.

She could have gone to a million other places, but she came here, and Im grateful for that, one bakery worker told ABC7.

When Ms Harris arrived back in the nations capital on Tuesday evening she finally moved into the vice presidents official residence at the Naval Observatory, more than two months after her inauguration.

She and husband, second gentleman, Doug Emhoff had been staying at Blair House while the Navy carried out essential maintenance work following the departure of Mike Pence.
A skinny boy in white trousers, a dark jacket and a black ski mask, he emerges from the crowd to throw the first petrol bomb of the night at a police Land Rover in Carrickfergus. It misses and explodes beside a parked car.

He looks about 13. Somewhere, not far from where the riot is unfolding, his school uniform hangs waiting for a return to class after the Easter holidays next Monday.

He's likely to have started secondary school just 19 months ago; still finding his feet with the older lads, trying to fit in. Despite his youth, or maybe because of it, he's centre-stage on Monday night.

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A crowd of around 30 young people - mostly aged from 12 to 19 - took on the PSNI to the best of their ability as older men stood on the sidelines giving instructions and advice, keeping the kids "right" in their battle with police.

It started around 9.30pm and ended just before 1am. The PSNI helicopter was overhead for the early part of the night. Police attempted to move in around 10pm but then backed off.

If the history of Northern Ireland riots is ever written, this one won't merit a mention.

It paled into insignificance compared to the white hot hunger strike disturbances in republican areas in 1981.

But the point is that we are 40 years on. That skinny boy experienced nothing of the Troubles. He was born a full decade after the Good Friday Agreement.

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The children we saw in advertisements in 1998, as the governments sold us the peace accord, had a very different outlook.

That famous Northern Ireland Office commercial, where Van sings Days Like This, follows two boys spending the afternoon rolling down sand dunes and playing on the beach in perfect peace, hands holding pebbles, not petrol bombs. That future projected for our youth is a million miles from what we've witnessed in loyalist areas in recent days.

The peace dividend for them wasn't meant to be a criminal record.

Ask that skinny boy and his mates about the ins and outs of the Northern Ireland Protocol, and they wouldn't have a clue.

Our current trading arrangements aren't part of their everyday conversation.

A sense of betrayal by the British Government over the Irish Sea Border, and fury at Sinn Fein and the PSNI over the Bobby Storey funeral, is widespread in working-class loyalist areas.

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It has been intensified by some unionist politicians.

The disturbances are not spontaneous. Those organising "protests" on social media know full well what way they will likely work out.

The hand of certain paramilitary factions, meant to have left the stage a long time ago, is clear in some cases.

But many of the rioters themselves are just bored kids, looking for excitement in areas where they complain of having nothing else to do.

Staying out late, playing with the 'big boys' will have been the highlight of a dreary lockdown year.

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In 2009 and 2010 it was young republicans rioting in Ardoyne which hit the headlines. Youngsters, who should have long been in bed, hurled bricks, bottles and petrol bombs at the PSNI. Photos from Troubles archives show kids, much younger than today's teenage loyalists, out rioting on our streets.

There are countless 1980s images of primary school children armed with missiles, digging up roads for masonry to throw, standing at barricades with stockings over their faces, or proudly posing at burnt-out cars.

With longer evenings, the lifting of Covid restrictions, and the band season starting, the trouble on our streets will likely continue. It follows in a long tradition of inflicting misery on many, and harming the life chances of the youngsters taking part.
New York, April 7 : The risks of acute myeloid leukemia (AML)-- a type of blood cancer -- in children with Down syndrome is stronger than expected, according to a new study.

The study led by researchers from the University of Chicago, Davis Health and San Francisco, examined medical data of more than 3.9 million children born between 1996-2016 in seven US healthcare systems or in Ontario, Canada.

It showed that 2.8 per cent of children with Down syndrome were diagnosed with leukemia, compared to 0.05 per cent of other children.

Compared to other children, kids with Down syndrome had a higher risk of AML before 5 years of age and a higher risk of acute lymphoid leukemia (ALL) regardless of age.

In children with Down syndrome, ALL was more common between ages 2-4 years, while AML was more common in younger kids -- the highest during the first year of life.

For other children, AML incidence remained very low through 14 years, whereas ALL peaked at 3 years and steadily declined until 8 years.

Further, male children were more likely to be diagnosed with Down syndrome and more likely to develop leukemia than their counterparts, revealed the findings published in The Journal of Pediatrics.

"The good news is that childhood leukemia can be very treatable if caught early," said Diana L Miglioretti, Professor at the UC Davis Department of Public Health Sciences.

The researchers urged parents of kids with Down syndrome to keep an eye for signs of leukemia. Common symptoms include fatigue or pale skin, infections and fever, easy bleeding or bruising, shortness of breath and coughing. Parents are advised to talk to the pediatrician if their children exhibit any of these symptoms.

Moreover, exposure to higher levels of radiation such as CT scanning have shown increases in leukemia risk.

"Given the potential for ionising radiation to increase leukemia risk in children with Down syndrome, other non-ionizing radiation modes of imaging, such as ultrasound and MRI, should be used as the first line image tests," said Rebecca Smith-Bindman, professor at UCSF.
In 2010 Senator Carl Levin Agreed with The Auto Channel's Call for Mandated End to Gasoline

DETROIT - October 13, 2010: Speaking at the Business of Plugging In conference in Detroit today, U.S. Senator Carl Levin (Michigan) echoed many of the same proposals put forth more than two years ago by The Auto Channel in their white paper position "No New Gasoline Powered Vehicles...." Most notable was Levin's call for a federal mandate that eliminates gasoline as an engine fuel used in America.

Levin further agreed with The Auto Channel when he acknowledged that a robust alternative fuel and energy industry is the country's way out of the current economic depression.

To read the complete report "NO NEW GASOLINE-POWERED VEHICLES IN THE U.S. BY 2014...Can It Be Done?" CLICK HERE.

The following are the senators remarks, as prepared for delivery:

Good afternoon, and thanks for inviting me to talk about a subject thats close to my heart.

The work that you do is tightly entwined with what happens in Washington and other capitals around the world. If those of us who work in politics make the right decisions, we can make that work easier and expand its impact. If we mess up, we could squander much of the progress youve made, stand in the way of future progress, and dampen your ability to improve the world as much as we all believe you can, and as much as we need to.

So, Id like to talk about the intersection of public policy and the electric vehicle. I want to begin by praising some good things that government and the private sector are doing together to get the transportation sector plugged in. And then I want to have a conversation about some potential next steps that I believe are necessary to increase the pace of progress.

Lets start with a metaphor. We sit at the intersection of three powerful streams that are combining into one mighty river. In this unusual confluence three powerful drivers of public policy are pushing us in the same direction. Driver number one is the challenge of climate change. Driver number two is the national security challenges of our fossil fuel-based energy economy. And driver number three is the economic challenge of maintaining a robust manufacturing sector. The powerful river they combine to form is flowing, rapidly, toward a future dominated by electric vehicles.

There are boulders and rapids along the way. If we navigate correctly, we can get to that electric- vehicle future with greater certainty and speed. But there are also plenty of places where we can founder on the rocks.

Let me talk briefly about each of the three policy drivers  the tributaries of our mighty river  and how they combine.

The first, as I said, is climate change. Lets be clear: It is real. It is an urgent problem. Either we deal with it now, or our children and grandchildren have to deal with it later, when the remedies will be much more difficult, much more expensive, and much less effective.

Next is national security. There is also no question that our need for imported oil from unstable parts of the world, and the dependence of our military on fossil fuels, make our nation less safe. We got a vivid demonstration of this recently in Pakistan. Attacks on fuel convoys that supply our troops in Afghanistan showed just how much oil has become the lifeblood of our military, and how dependence on it is a huge vulnerability. As chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee  and simply as an American citizen  I see the necessity of reducing that dependence for the sake of our national security.

And the third policy driver is our need for a thriving manufacturing sector. To our detriment, more and more of the economic activity in our country has been directed at creating paper wealth  the kind of wealth that evaporated pretty quickly when the financial crisis hit. For too long weve paid far too little attention to manufacturing. Meanwhile, our competitors in places like China and Korea were pursuing policies that promoted manufacturing at our expense, with the result being the loss of millions of jobs.

None of these factors are especially new. Each has been building up for a long time. But for too long, we have been reluctant to acknowledge them and take steps to deal with them. Weve stood on the riverbank, watching the river flow by.

Why? Two impediments held us back.

The first was an ideological opposition to federal government support for manufacturing. For decades, any suggestion that government ought to act as a partner with manufacturers was labeled industrial policy, and that label was the kiss of death. While our government refused to partner with American manufacturers, our competitors were establishing partnerships and making investments to position their manufacturers for the future.

The second impediment is the ability of oil exporting nations to play us like a yo-yo. Some of you, like me, were around in the 1970s, when we had some very clear signals that our heavy reliance on foreign oil was not sustainable. We actually began to make progress. Then OPEC dropped the price of oil, and our independence effort withered. Oil ministers from these nations made it clear that they would keep the price of oil at a low enough level so that alternative energy sources wouldnt make economic sense. And that distracted us from the fact that ending our dependence on imported oil is in our long-term economic interest, beyond the need to end it for environmental and security reasons.

But we have, I believe, now begun to clear our eyes. We are no longer shackled by an ideological aversion to industrial policy. The administration understands that our manufacturers arent competing with foreign companies, but with foreign countries that support their manufacturers.

Our long-overdue understanding of what our companies are up against in a global economy is demonstrated in the area of electric vehicles. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act  the stimulus bill  included a $2 billion investment in advanced vehicle batteries and electric components. Thanks to that funding, an industry that barely existed in the United States a couple of years ago now has more than a dozen factories open or under construction to make advanced batteries and other electric-vehicle components, employing thousands of American workers. The Recovery Act also expanded the tax incentives available for buyers of plug-in hybrids, recharging equipment for plug-in hybrids, and battery electric vehicles.

And were even beginning to overcome the distractions of the oil-price yo-yo weve been subjected to for decades. Now, you will not convince many Americans that the price of oil is low. But the factors we talked about earlier, that oncoming river that is rushing to a new future, means our country is more focused on the long term than before. A recent poll by the Pew Center found that, when Americans are asked whether our highest energy priority ought to be keeping prices low or protecting the environment, the environment wins by 19 percentage points. And in April, a poll of those who have paid the highest price for our oil dependence  veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan  found that 79 percent of those veterans believe that ending that dependence is important to our national security.

So these three policy streams are so strong that we are no longer allowing ideological constraints or short-term price incentives to cloud our view.

But. Yes, there is a but.

We are pointed in the right direction now, but this is not some placid river. We have to remain focused if were to navigate our way around a host of challenges.

One of the major challenges we face is moving electric vehicles from a niche market to an affordable alternative for most American families. We know that the early generations of these vehicles are not likely to be affordable to the average family. I mentioned earlier the tax incentives contained in the Recovery Act for plug- in hybrids. The Act gives a tax credit of up to $7,500 for plug-in hybrids. Such credits can close the affordability gap and give consumers a powerful reason to choose an advanced vehicle.

But the affordability gap remains significant, even with the tax credits. And theres another problem. The $7,500 credit applies to only the first 200,000 sales from each manufacturer and then will phase out.

That creates an uncertainty that is hampering our ability to move electric vehicles into the mainstream. Manufacturers will be less certain they will have buyers for these advanced vehicles if the credits come with expiration dates.

We have taken some other steps to stimulate the market for alternative-energy vehicles. As early as 1992, Congress passed laws mandating that federal vehicle fleets contain a certain percentage of alternative-fuel cars and trucks. Other federal laws and executive orders followed. But each of these mandates has lacked teeth. Federal agencies are able to opt out or waive the mandates, by citing uncompetitive costs or a lack of available alternative fuels. Again, were pointed in the right direction but failing to move with real urgency.

The one set of rules with real teeth is CAFE fuel economy standards. But here, were rowing against the current. Until its restructuring in 2007, CAFE was an example of U.S. policy working against, not with, U.S. manufacturers. Its provisions discriminated against U.S.-made vehicles of the same efficiency as imports. Even with the worst of those discriminatory provisions now removed, CAFE forces auto manufacturers to focus on incremental improvements rather than dramatic leaps forward. CAFE is a row boat, when what we need is a high- tech whitewater raft, something to carry us with confidence toward our ultimate goal  affordable alternatives to the internal-combustion engine.

So what do we do? First, I think we need to end the uncertainty over tax incentives. Manufacturers need to know that there will be a market tomorrow for the products they are investing in today.

Second, we need to rethink the whole regulatory approach toward achieving advanced-technology vehicles. We should explore the possibility of requiring by a certain time, perhaps 15 years down the road, that the entirety of certain classes of vehicles be made up of plug-in hybrids, all- electric vehicles, fuel-cell vehicles or other alternatives to oil. We would need to include in any such proposal a strong government partnership, investing in research and development and in the infrastructure necessary to support these vehicles.

I know the idea of such a mandate would be controversial. Thinking it through and avoiding unintended consequences would be difficult. But the incremental gains of our current approach are achieved at great cost, in terms of resources and policy struggles. We should at least consider removing those high costs, along with the EPA- NHTSA-California regulatory regimes that has produced them, and putting in their place a longer-term approach that gets us to a better result.

None of this would be easy. But the rush of events surely justifies a fresh approach. Too much of our effort is now aimed at short-term goals  a few percentage points of fuel economy improvement each year. I believe we should try to end this incremental approach, which squanders opportunities to do more for our economy, more for our environment and more for our national security. Our goal should be nothing short of making electric vehicles affordable and attractive to every American family. That is where the roaring river can take us.

Thanks for inviting me to think a bit out loud with you. Good luck, not just for a successful conference, but in navigating the whitewater ahead.
FOR Deo Persad, who knew nothing but family, work, and church, life was complete.

That was evident in the trademark grin on his resting face, hence his nickname Smiley Boboy.

Then one day, his heart-warming and comforting smile, even when he was angry, was lost, and the man who never took a vacation day in his life walked out of his familys home on August 6, 2020, leaving confusion, hurt and grief at their doorstep.

On Deos 53rd birthday on December 14 last year there was nothing but hope that he would walk back into their lives.
[April 07, 2021] Prudential Financial, Inc. to Announce First Quarter 2021 Earnings; Schedules Conference Call

Prudential Financial, Inc. (NYSE: PRU) will release its first quarter 2021 earnings on Tuesday, May 4, 2021, after the market closes. The earnings news release, the financial supplement and related materials will be posted on the company's Investor Relations website at investor.prudential.com. Members of Prudential's senior management will host a conference call on Wednesday, May 5, 2021, at 11:00 a.m. ET to discuss with the investment community the company's first quarter results. Conference Call Information The conference call will be broadcast live over the company's Investor Relations website at investor.prudential.com. Plese log on 15 minutes early in the event necessary software needs to be downloaded.



Institutional investors, analysts and other members of the professional financial community are invited to listen to the call and participate in the Q&A by dialing one of the following numbers. All others may join the conference call in listen-only mode. Domestic: (877) 336-4437 (Toll Free)

International: (234) 720-6985

Access Code: 2805600

Replay Information The call will be made available from 4:00 p.m. ET on May 5 through May 19 via the following dial-in numbers: Domestic: (866) 207-1041 (Toll Free)

International: (402) 970-0847

Replay Code: 8223410 A replay will also be available on the Investor Relations website through May 19. Questions may be directed to Investor Relations at investor.relations@prudential.com. Prudential Financial, Inc. (NYSE: PRU), a financial wellness leader and premier active global investment manager with more than $1.5 trillion in assets under management as of December 31, 2020, has operations in the United States, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Prudential's diverse and talented employees help to make lives better by creating financial opportunity for more people. Prudential's iconic Rock symbol has stood for strength, stability, expertise and innovation for more than a century. For more information, please visit news.prudential.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005193/en/

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Rapper DMX is about to face the most critical day as he stays inside the ICU for more days.

In a new report posted by TMZ, the news outlet revealed that DMX already reached the most critical day in the hospital.

According to the rapper's manager, Steve Rifkind, his talent remains in a comatose. Unfortunately, DMX's condition also has not improved in the past few days.

"DMX is currently on life support and in a coma. There are multiple people with inaccurate information about his well-being and it is not helpful and productive," the manager added. "Tomorrow [Wednesday] he will undergo further tests on his brain function and his family will determine what's best from there."

Rifkind then expressed the family's appreciation for their prayers and support.

Due to this state, his attending physicians will reportedly perform a battery of tests. This procedure will help them find out whether his brain function is already coming back to normal or not.

For what it's worth, the brain damage that occurred after the heart attack deprived him of getting enough oxygen for nearly 30 minutes.

DMX Update

The new development came days after his family and friends held a prayer vigil for him outside the White Plains hospital.

In an exclusive clip by Fox News 5 reporter Lisa Evers, it can be seen that the Ruff Ryders to the Rescue Foundation hosted the meeting. They also continuously played the rapper's songs to pay him tribute.

"On Friday night, April 2nd, 2021, our brother, son, father, and colleague DMX, birth name of Earl Simmons, was admitted to White Plains (NY) Hospital, facing serious health issues. We ask that you please keep Earl/DMX and us in your thoughts, wishes, and prayers as well as respect our privacy as we face these challenges," the family said in their April 4th statement.

DMX suffered from a heart attack on Friday after his overdose triggered the heart condition. He has been known as a drug-dependent for a few years now.

During his interview with Dr. Phil back in 2013, he revealed that he learned to smoke and use drugs when a family member first gave him marijuana when he was 8 years old.

"It was something that drew me in, and trapped me, and just had a hold on me for a long, long time," DMX revealed.

A new update regarding his health status after the brain test is yet to be publicized.

See Now: Famous Actors Who Turned Down Iconic Movie Roles
Bengaluru, April 7 : In the wake of the Karnataka State Road Transport Employees League (KSRTEL) calling for an indefinite strike demanding their salaries be brought on par with other government employees, normal life was disrupted across the state on Wednesday.

Many passengers in Bengaluru were stranded at major bus terminals, including Majestic, Shantinagar, Shivajinagar, KR Market, Yeshwantpur. The busiest bus stations including Majestic, were deserted. Several commuters in the city had to rely on auto-rickshaws, cabs and private buses due to the strike.

Except Udupi and Dakshina Kannada districts in the state, where private bus operators control the market and state transport corporations are yet to make a major penetration, all other districts were severely affected by this protest.

The strike was almost total with most buses staying put in 238 bus depots across the state.

The workers of Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC), Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC), North Western Karnataka Road Transport Corporation (NWKRTC), and North Eastern Karnataka Road Transport Corporation (NEKRTC), under the banner of Karnataka State Road Transport Employees League have called for an indefinite strike starting from Wednesday, asking the government to implement the salary system as per the sixth pay commission.

"Nearly 1.37 lakh employees work in all four corporations which operate 238 depots across the state with a fleet of 20000 buses. Of these employees nearly 80 per cent are bus drivers, conductors, mechanics, while the remaining 20 per cent are support staff such as officers, depot managers, clerks and other class D staff members. All four corporations together operate 60,000 trips, which can never be matched by private operators," KSRTEL treasurer Jagadeesha R. told IANS.

He added that the KSRTEL committee members had toured almost one month before issuing notice to the state government and their meetings were not held secretly. "We held it openly and everyone knew about this day. If the government is trying to act this way, it only speaks about its double standards," he said.

Although, the state government took steps to deploy private buses, cabs and auto-rickshaws in cities like Bengaluru, Mysuru and other cities but it could not match the four road transport corporations bus services.

The Transport Department's repeated warnings to private operators not to overcharge, did not seem to have worked as there were complaints galore across the state that private operators were fleecing customers by charging hefty amounts of Rs 500 to Rs 1000 for a distance of 50 to 60 kms.

The Transport Department stated that it had issued a rate list for private buses, and commuters can lodge complaints if private vehicles are overcharging.

In a rare case, a few BMTC drivers from Shantinagar depot took the buses on to the streets, ferrying passengers for free.

"We are being blamed for causing inconvenience to the public, which is not our intention. Ferrying passengers for free is our way of saying it," Raju, a driver from Shantinagar depot, told media persons. He was garlanded by pro-Kannada activists for defying the call given by the KSRTEL.

Kodohalli Chandrashekhar, honorary president of KSRTEL which is spearheading the strike, said the employees were firm in their resolve and would not end the strike until their demands were met, even if it meant staying off the roads for several months. He blamed the State government for the inconvenience caused to the public.

"We had given a 21-day notice before the strike, but the state government did not act to resolve the issue. Even now the government is adamant and has ruled out negotiations," he said.
Beijing: In Beijing, the vaccinated qualify for buy-one-get-one-free ice cream cones. In northern Gansu province, a county government published a 20-stanza poem extolling the virtues of the jab. In the southern town of Wancheng, officials warned parents that if they refused to get vaccinated, their childrens schooling and future employment and housing were all at risk.

China is deploying a medley of tactics, some tantalising and some threatening, to achieve mass vaccination on a staggering scale: a goal of 560 million people, or 40 per cent of its population, by the end of June.

A McDonalds ice cream truck outside a vaccination centre in Beijing on Tuesday, offers a two-for-one promotion for those getting a COVID-19 vaccine. Credit:Gilles Sabrie/The New York Times

China has already proved how effectively it can mobilise against the coronavirus. And other countries have achieved widespread vaccination, albeit in much smaller populations.

But China faces a number of challenges. The countrys near-total control over the coronavirus has left many residents feeling little urgency to get vaccinated. Some are wary of Chinas history of vaccine-related scandals, a fear that the lack of transparency around Chinese coronavirus vaccines has done little to assuage. Then there is the sheer size of the population to be inoculated.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-08 00:34:04|Editor: huaxia

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YAOUNDE, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Cameroon's Minister of Social Affairs Pauline Irene Nguene on Wednesday pledged to crack down on human-trafficking rackets as well as any officials who may be involved in the malpractice.

The pledge was made by the minister during a meeting in the capital Yaounde to present a study conducted by the ministry and International Organisation for Migration (IOM) on the situation of human trafficking and smuggling of migrants in the Central African nation.

According to the study, most of those trafficked are women, children and people living with disabilities. Many people have become slaves.

Nguene said Cameroon will embark on an awareness campaign across the country to tackle the rising human trafficking.

Officials agreed that combating the vice which is a detriment to the lives of victims, families and communities required international cooperation. Enditem
From 1986 to 1989, I worked in the Xenix group at Microsoft. It was my first job out of school, and I was the most junior person on the team. I was hopelessly naive, inexperienced, generally clueless, and borderline incompetent, but my coworkers were kind, supportive and enormously forgiving  just a lovely bunch of folks.

Microsoft decided to exit the Xenix business in 1989, but before the group was dispersed to the winds, we held a wake. Many of the old hands at MS had worked on Xenix at some point, so the party was filled with much of the senior development staff from across the company. There was cake, beer, and nostalgia; stories were told, most of which I cant repeat. Some of the longer-serving folks dug through their files to find particularly amusing Xenix-related documents, and they were copied and distributed to the attendees.

If memory serves, it was a co-operative effort between a number of the senior developers to produce this timeline detailing all the major releases of Xenix.

I have no personal knowledge of the OEM relationships before 1986, and I do know that there were additional minor ports and OEMs that arent listed on the timeline (e.g. NS32016, IBM PS/2 MCA-bus, Onyx, Spectrix), but to the best of my understanding this hits the major points.

Since were on the topic, I should say that Ive encountered a surprising amount of confusion about the history of Xenix. So, here are some things I know:

Xenix was a version of AT&T UNIX, ported and packaged by Microsoft. It was first offered for sale to the public in the August 25, 1980 issue of Computerworld.

It was originally priced between $2000 and $9000 per copy, depending on the number of users.

MS owned the Xenix trademark and had a master UNIX license with AT&T, which allowed them to sub-licence Xenix to other vendors.

Xenix was licensed by a variety of OEMs, and then either bundled with their hardware or sold as an optional extra. Ports were available for a variety of different architectures, including the Z-8000, Motorola 68000, NS16032, and various Intel processors.

In 1983, IBM contracted with Microsoft to port Xenix to their forthcoming 80286-based machines (codenamed Salmon); the result was IBM Personal Computer XENIX for the PC/AT.

By this time, there was growing retail demand for Xenix on IBM-compatible personal computer hardware, but Microsoft made the strategic decision not to sell Xenix in the consumer market; instead, they entered into an agreement with a company called the Santa Cruz Operation to package, sell and support Xenix for those customers.

Even with outsourcing retail development to SCO, Microsoft was still putting significant effort into Xenix:

Ports to new architectures, the large majority of the core kernel and driver work, and extensive custom tool development were all done by Microsoft. By the time of the Intel releases, there was significant kernel divergence from the original AT&T code.

The main Microsoft development products (C compiler, assembler, linker, debugger) were included with the Intel-based releases of Xenix, and there were custom internally-developed toolchains for other architectures. Often, the latest version of the tools appeared on Xenix well before they were available on DOS.

The character-oriented versions of Microsoft Word and Multiplan were both ported to Xenix.

MS had a dedicated Xenix documentation team, which produced custom manuals and tutorials.

As late as the beginning of 1985, there was some debate inside of Microsoft whether Xenix should be the 16-bit successor to DOS; for a variety of reasons  mostly having to do with licensing, royalties, and ownership of the code, but also involving a certain amount of ego and politics  MS and IBM decided to pursue OS/2 instead. That marked the end of any further Xenix investment at Microsoft, and the group was left to slowly atrophy.

The final Xenix work at Microsoft was an effort with AT&T to integrate Xenix support into the main System V.3 source code, producing what we unimaginatively called the Merged Product (noted by the official name of UNIX System V, r3.2 in the timeline above).

Once that effort was completed, all Intel-based releases of UNIX from AT&T incorporated Xenix support; in return, Microsoft received royalties for every copy of Intel UNIX that AT&T subsequently licensed.

It will suffice, perhaps, to simply note that this was a good deal for Microsoft.
Seoul race jolts President Moons party

Conservative opposition candidates won in two mayoral races seen as a referendum on President Moon Jae-in and a bellwether for next years presidential contest.

Oh Se-hoon, the People Power Party candidate, beat Park Young-sun in Seoul by a margin of more than 18 percentage points, according to voting results announced by the National Election Commission. The Seoul mayor is considered South Koreas second-most powerful official after the president.

In Busan, Park Heong-joon, another candidate affiliated with the opposition party, beat his Democratic Party rival.

Context: The by-election in Seoul was called after Park Won-soon, the former mayor, died by suicide last year following accusations of sexual harassment. The former mayor of Busan, Oh Keo-don, stepped down after accusations of sexual misconduct.
ANN ARBOR, MI  Despite pushback from some landlords, Ann Arbor is banning criminal background checks of renters, with few exceptions.

City Council voted unanimously this week to give final approval to the citys new Fair Chance Access to Housing ordinance in hopes of ending housing discrimination against people with criminal backgrounds and helping formerly incarcerated residents return to society and lead productive lives.

Im delighted that were going to be moving forward on this, Mayor Christopher Taylor said, calling it an area of discrimination that has real-life consequences.

By banning the box with respect to leases, we will be expanding housing opportunities and the opportunities for returning community members to integrate fully back into our community, and that is a social good and Im proud were doing it.

Proposed law gives Ann Arbor renters 240 days before landlords can show occupied apartments

Council Member Lisa Disch, D-1st Ward, cited research showing people whove been incarcerated once are seven times more likely to experience homelessness.

That is not only a dangerous and precarious way to live, but it does make it really difficult to get a job and reenter society, she said. So, I think were doing a good thing here.

City officials have heard complaints from several landlords who argue the ordinance is taking away a tool they use to screen out housing applicants and keep their communities safe from dangerous criminals.

Theres some people that when they are released from prison they can move on into society, and theres other ones that still struggle with that, Charlie Foster, a longtime Ann Arbor landlord, told City Council last month. And I think as landlords we should have that right to have more checks put in the system than what you guys are offering us.

Council Member Travis Radina, D-3rd Ward, said hes grateful for the support for the ordinance from other community members.

I am incredibly enthusiastic about this, he said, arguing many people in the community will benefit from it.

The city also needs to continue working toward expanding affordable housing, he said.

$5.1M from new Ann Arbor affordable housing tax could go toward downtown high-rise

The new ordinance makes it illegal for landlords to inquire in any way about a housing applicants criminal history or require disclosure of criminal history, or to deny someone housing if such information is received.

Violators can face penalty fines up to $500 for each day a violation occurs, plus other possible enforcement action.

The ordinance makes exceptions for landlords required in some cases to take a persons criminal history into account.

That includes landlords who receive federal funding or accept tenants with federally subsidized housing vouchers.

The ordinance states it will not be a violation for a landlord to comply with federal or state laws that require them to exclude tenants based on certain types of criminal history. But in cases when that may apply, landlords still cant inquire about someones criminal history until after theyve determined the applicant is otherwise qualified to rent their apartment and theyve made a conditional offer of a lease.

That rental agreement would commit the landlord to providing the apartment as long as the applicant meets federal and state mandated criminal history criteria.

Under federal law, there are three categories of people not eligible for federally subsidized housing: people convicted of producing meth in federally funded housing, people on the lifetime sex offender list, and people using illegal drugs.

Council Member Elizabeth Nelson, D-4th Ward, credited one of her constituents, Aaron Suganuma, a formerly incarcerated resident, for raising the issues that led to the ordinance.

It feels to me like one of the best examples of how your local government works to reflect the interests and concerns that might start with an individual and then turn into a larger issue thats going to have a really positive impact on many, many more people, she said.

And so I just want to thank all the people who spent time and worked on this ordinance to make it happen, she said, thanking the citys Human Rights Commission and legal staff.

The Human Rights Commission approved a resolution recently citing estimates that one in three adults in the U.S. has an arrest or conviction record, and nearly half of all children have at least one parent with a criminal record.

The commission also expressed concerns that private criminal record databases from which landlords sometimes pull information are not always accurate.

It also pointed to the disparate impacts on Black people, who are more likely to be incarcerated.

The unmet housing needs of formerly incarcerated people in Ann Arbor are an acute challenge to dignity, public health and safety and equality, it stated. And statistical racial inequities at every stage of the criminal justice system translates into a racial disparity in access to housing.

Similar measures to prevent discrimination based on criminal history are being enacted or considered in other communities.

MORE FROM THE ANN ARBOR NEWS:

Ann Arbor mayor urges council to cut losses on short-term rentals and move on

Ann Arbor council unanimously supports developing unarmed 911 response program

Ann Arbor officials urge residents to get vaccinated, stay vigilant in fight against COVID

Ann Arbor administrator tells central park group to temper funding expectations

Sidewalk construction will create better pedestrian access along Ann Arbor road
A father whose children were allegedly murdered last year has said he received a beautiful letter from the late wife of Irelands chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan.

The bereaved man said he was sent a letter from Dr Emer Holohan, written before she passed away.

His young children were found dead at their home last year.

Owing to a Court of Appeal judgment last year in relation to Section 252 of the Children Act 2001, the Irish Independent regrets that it cannot name the man or his children.

Justice Minister Helen McEntee has made good on her pledge, together with Jim OCallaghan TD and Senator Michael McDowell to change the law in order that the child victims of crime can once again be identified. The amending legislation has now been passed by the Houses of the Oireachtas and is awaiting the signature of President Michael D Higgins at the time of writing.

The father thanked the Holohan family for sending the letter and paid tribute to Emer Holohan.

The man said yesterday: I received a beautiful letter today from a wonderful woman.

"She wrote to me during her illness but passed before she could post it.

Her letter stopped me in my tracks and Ive thought of nothing else all day.

"Id like to pay my respects here, the father said. Her family debated whether to send her letter to me and Im so thankful they did.

So thank you so much Tony, Clodagh and Ronan Holohan. May Emer rest in peace.
Queen Letizia of Spain has reworn one of her favourite jacket for the fifth time today.

The Spanish royal, 48, donned the colourful number from Spanish brand Uterque to visit the Mutua Madrilena in Madrid this morning.

She paired the jacket with sleek white trousers from Massimo Dutti, red swede heels from Uterque and a white cross-body bag from Furla with a purple top for a meeting with the Madrid-based insurance company.

Queen Letizia of Spain, 48, wore a beloved jacket from Uterque for the fifth time in six years as she visited the insurance company Mutua Madrilena in Madrid today

The mother-of-two paired the colourful jacket with a purple top and white trousers from Massimo Dutti

King Felipe VI's wife looked relaxed as she stepped into the company' headquarters for her meeting.

She styled her brown locks straight, into a bounce blow-dry and donned a splash of makeup to compliment her natural glow.

A dash of eye shadow and mascara highlighted her hazel eyes, while a splash of bronzer added some sunkissed colour to her cheek.

She first wore the jacket on 5th October 2015 for a meeting with the Royal Board on Disability at the Zarzuela Palace.

Letizia looked relaxed in the stylish outfit, which she accessorised with a Furla bag (left) and waved at royal fans on her way in (right)

A gentle breeze ruffled the royal mother-of-two's hair before she stepped into the building for her meeting

The jacket was part of the Spring-Summer 2015 'Ethnic' collection from Uteque, who are a sister brand of Zara.

She sported it twice in 2016, first in May to preside over the opening of the XI International Seminar on Language and Journalism, and again in October to attend the Medical College Headquarters to present a report related to the media treatment of disability.

More recently, she donned the number last year during a visit to Haro in July, where she met with several Spanish Autonomous Communities with the objective of supporting economic, social and cultural activity after the coronavirus outbreak.

She first wore the jacket on 5th October 2015 for a meeting with the Royal Board on Disability at the Zarzuela Palace. The jacket was part of the Spring-Summer 2015 'Ethnic' collection from Uteque, who are a sister brand of Zara. She is pictured in 2015

Letizia sported it twice in 2016, first in May to preside over the opening of the XI International Seminar on Language and Journalism (lef) and again in October to attend the Medical College Headquarters to present a report related to the media treatment of disability (right)

More recently, she donned the number last year during a visit to Haro in July, where she met with several Spanish Autonomous Communities with the objective of supporting economic, social and cultural activity after the coronavirus outbreak.

The Mutua Madrilena was founded in 1930 and provides a variety of insurance policies to their clients.

It was Letizia's first outing since the Easter weekend, which she celebrated with her family.

Each year, the Spanish royal family attend the Easter Mass at the Cathedral-Basilica of Santa Maria de Palma de Mallorca in Palma on the island of Mallorca, however, the celebrations were cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic this year.

Last week Letizia looked chic in a white peplum jacket teamed with stylish black trousers for a visit to Zaragoza.

Wearing a mask in keeping with Spanish regulations on coronavirus, pictured, Letizia sported a dash of makeup

The royal mother-of-two was the epitome of sophistication as she joined her husband King Felipe VI, 53, to celebrate the renowned Spanish artist Francisco Goya, who was born near the city in the town of Fuendetodos in 1746.

Wearing face masks, the couple met with members of the Goya Foundation in Aragon and the Goya Fuendetodos Cultural Consortium to mark the 275th anniversary of the birth of Goya.

Letizia paired her white jacket, which she first wore in July 2008, with a pair of cropped black trousers and trendy kitten heels with a bow on them.

She wore a black and white striped T-shirt underneath the jacket and kept her accessories to a minimum, wearing her usual rings and a pair of gold hoop earrings.

The Spanish monarch cut a casual yet stylish look for her meeting in Madrid today, embracing the warmer temperatures

Letizia kept her hair in a mid-height ponytail, and sported simple makeup with a small amount of brown eye-shadow and natural coverage foundation.

She kept herself safe during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic with a white face covering, while her husband also donned a face mask.

Meanwhile, King Felipe looked adoringly at his wife as she waved at crowds during the visit. He wore a pin-stripe suit with a classic white shirt, multi-coloured tie and smart black shoes.

The royal couple carried small bunches of flowers wrapped in pink tissue paper as they attended the event in the Spanish city. Crowds in face masks lined up along the city's streets to catch a glimpse of the royal couple.

Francisco Goya was a Spanish painter and printmaker during the Romantic movement and is known for his paints and drawings.

The royal mother-of-two, 48, was the epitome of sophistication as she joined her husband King Felipe VI (pictured centre), 53, to celebrate the renowned Spanish artist Francisco Goya, who was born near the city in the town of Fuendetodos in 1746

Queen Letizia of Spain (pictured) looked stylish in a white peplum jacket with cropped bell sleeves on a visit in Zaragoza today

He is often referred to as both the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns, as he was very successful during his lifetime and is now considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Goya suffered a severe and undiagnosed illness in 1793 which left him deaf and his work became darker and more pessimistic.

They have been keeping busy so far this year with royal engagements, and visited Andorra last week for their first state visit to the principality since King Felipe VI became King in 2014.
Rosso manager Joel Thomas said having the InterContinentals hotel quarantine arrival route just three metres from their front entrance was having a significant impact on business, but he hoped his loyal customers would continue to support the cafe. It does freak people out arriving and seeing all of this next door. But weve got to work with it, Mr Thomas said. When the buses arrive we have to clear out outdoor seating and close the front door ... This morning we had a cafe full of people, what are we supposed to tell them? The hotel manager, hes been a champion, but its hard.

COVID-19 Quarantine Victoria said all new arrivals would be sorted into groups at the airport depending on their health status. A man arrives at hotel quarantine on Thursday morning. Credit:Joe Armao Those with symptoms will be taken to the Holiday Inn on Flinders, those with complex needs will go to the Element Melbourne Richmond on Swan Street and those with standard requirements will go to the InterContinental in Collins Street. All but one of the passengers who arrived up until 7pm went to the InterContinental. The other was transferred to complex care at the Element hotel. Other hotels ready to be used for quarantine are the Novotel Ibis at Melbourne Central and the Pan Pacific at the Convention Centre.

The states hotel quarantine scheme was shut down for the second time in mid-February after a new strain of COVID-19 leaked from a quarantine hotel, forcing the government to halt overseas arrivals and leading to a five-day lockdown. Key features of the new hotel quarantine system Residents to be tested four times during 14-day stay, instead of twice.

Staff in hotel red zones fit-tested with high-protection N95 masks.

Online system for easier contact tracing of hotel quarantine staff and their households.

Memorandum of understanding with the Department of Health to clarify roles and responsibilities in hotel quarantine.

Independent ventilation assessment undertaken at all of the states quarantine hotels.

Arrivals to be capped at 800 a week, scaling up to 1120 by April 15.

Staggered meal times, room buffers and enhanced screening of prohibited devices in returned travellers luggage. Victorias disastrous second wave of COVID-19 in 2020 was also the result of mistakes in hotel quarantine and resulted in the first suspension of the program. COVID-19 Quarantine Victoria Commissioner Emma Cassar said on Wednesday that the restarted program would be reviewed daily to ensure all the recommendations from the most recent review of the hotel quarantine scheme had been implemented. We have done everything we can to make this as safe as we can, and will continue to ensure that the program keeps ahead of this virus, she said.

It isnt a risk-proof program, weve been clear on that, but what we can do is ensure that we are ... looking at the research and looking at what else we can do or other control measures that we need to put in place. All staff working in hotel quarantine have received at least their first dose of the vaccine. Ms Cassar said those unwilling or unable to get vaccinated would be offered other roles within CQV, if possible. Adult guests will be charged $3000 for the 14-day stay, while children will be charged $500. The fees have not been raised despite significant and costly modifications to the hotels. Ms Cassar said some returned passengers who have not tested positive to COVID-19 could be given exemptions to temporarily leave hotel quarantine on compassionate grounds.

Loading Officials are expecting 87 passengers to arrive on Friday, but the final figure is subject to change. Arrivals are capped at 800 people per week for the first week of the program and will scale up to 1120 by April 15. Acting Premier James Merlino said on Thursday he was confident medical staff at quarantine hotels are not working at more than one site. The Age reported that doctors working for Healthcare Australia were still working in second jobs, in breach of rules designed to reduce transmission risk.
Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Hon. Sara Adwoa Safo has urged the media, as a matter of urgency, to take a tough decision against spiritualists and occultists' advertisement on Television enticing young ones to engage in evil acts.



Hon Adwoa Safo was contributing to the recent gruesome murder of 10 years old boy at Kasoa.



In a statement signed and copied to Peacefmonline, she sent her heartfelt condolences to the family, particularly the mother of the deceased.



As a mother myself, with a son just around that age, I can imagine her pain and the anguish she is experiencing. The thought of any parent losing a child is unbearable especially under such dastardly circumstances. My heart really goes out to her.



I also plead with the media to take a tough stand against spiritualists and occultists who openly advertise on their platforms and entice these young ones to engage in these acts. It is time to take the moral right and uphold the values of our nation and safeguard the future of our kids and our dear nation in that regard, portions of the statement read.



Read the full statement below:



Statement By Minister Of Gender, Children And Social Protection On Gruesome Murder Of 10-Year-Old Boy At Kasoa



It is with deep sadness that I learnt of the death of a 10-year-old boy at Kasoa who was allegedly brutally murdered for ritual purposes.



My heartfelt condolences go to the family, especially the mother of the young boy whose life has been cut short in such a gruesome manner.



As a mother myself, with a son just around that age, I can imagine her pain and the anguish she is experiencing. The thought of any parent losing a child is unbearable especially under such dastardly circumstances. My heart really goes out to her.



It is disturbing that this grotesque act was committed by teenagers who are barely 16 and 17 years respectively who ideally should have exemplified honorable aspirations for their lives instead of this undignified way to enrich themselves.



This is unfortunately indicative of the reality and times we live in, where a section of our youth would go to every extent to live ostentatious lives without putting in any commensurate hard work and effort.



This disturbing act should be a wake-up call to all Ghanaians, that as a country, we will teach our children that there is dignity in hard work and with it comes the benefits thereof. We seem to have pushed aside the values and attributes of hard work, honesty and service to each other which are the building blocks of every fair and just society.



I also plead with the media to take a tough stand against spiritualists and occultists who openly advertise on their platforms and entice these young ones to engage in these acts. It is time to take the moral right and uphold the values of our nation and safeguard the future of our kids and our dear nation in that regard.



I urge all parents and guardians to be very much interested in the growth of, and also be protective of their wards.



It is refreshing that the Ghana Police Service acted swiftly and apprehended the suspects. I trust in their investigative prowess to unravel the probable motive behind this heinous crime and it is my hope that they will expedite their investigations so we can give the family of young Ishmael the justice and closure they deserve. Once the culprits, who unfortunately happen to be teenagers are tried and convicted, we will be willing and ready to absorb them into our Juvenile Correctional Centres under the Department of Social Welfare.



MINISTRY OF GENDER CHILDREN AND SOCIAL PROTECTION



P. O. BOX MBO 186



Ministries - Accra



In case of reply the number and date of this letter should be quoted



Our Ref: 



Your Ref: .



Tel/Fax No. 0302943172



Date: 6th April, 2021 REPUBLIC OF GHANA



Once again, my sincerest condolences to the family. We will be with you every step of the way.



Thank You.

Source: Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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A state judge recently ruled that two of the men who plotted to kidnap Michigans governor did not make terrorist threats because they used an encrypted chat app to do so.

Since federal agencies and lawmakers have been trying to get encrypted comms backdoored by arguing that they are the tool of choice for terrorists, we wont blame you if your double-take gave you whiplash. It already boggles the mind to see a terrorism charge dropped against people doing domestic terrorism things, like plan and coordinate to attack the Capitol, blow up a bridge to stop police, murder law enforcement that got in the way to kidnap a US state governor, and murder said governor. But hang on.

Just try not to strain anything when we tell you that the judges reason not to charge the foiled kidnappers for threatening an act of terrorism is because 12th District Court Judge Michael Klaeren said that using encrypted comms is the same as having private thoughts.

After onboarding new members through mediums such as Facebook, the groups conversations took place in encrypted chats, reported The Detroit News. Further:

"There has to be some form of intent here to incite mayhem," said Klaeren.

Klaeren added that an encrypted communication network, not accessible to the general public, was "in many respects no different than thinking the thought to yourself."

Some charges still stand; they "will face charges of gang membership, felony firearm possession and providing material support for terrorist acts, but not making terrorist threats." So, there's a terrorism-scented charge in there. Yet it just doesn't add up that one didn't stand because... encryption.

See no evil, hear no evil, charge no evil

Essentially, Judge Klaeren didnt think using encrypted comms to plot acts of, well, terrorism, met the statute for discussing terrorist plotting because the threats werent visible to the public. If we follow this logic, terrorists coordinating on Telegram, Facebook Messenger, or similar encrypted apps are simply engaging in idle musing.

According to witness testimony the six men who plotted to violently overthrow the government, kidnap and harm Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer used an app called Wire.

Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images

Designed for group planning, Wire provides the strongest security for organizations looking to protect their communications and document sharing. Engadget reached out to Wire for comment; the company had no statement to make at this time.

We have to wonder how up to speed Judge Klaeren is on a lot of things. For one, encrypted communications are not telepathy. Even if a conversation on Telegram is only between two people, it is not at all like the thoughts in your head; its a private room with a closed door.

"Under Michigan law," Engadget reported, "a person is guilty of making a terrorist threat if they 'threaten to commit an act of terrorism and communicate the threat to any other person'."

We presume there was more than one person in conversations among those who got the charges dropped. Though if you told us one of these kooks was having a big ol planning sesh on Wire with his imaginary Bald Eagle friend named Cooter, we wouldnt doubt you for a minute but only then the argument might hold a drop of water.

Luddite judge, meet the War on Encryption

Disturbingly, its among too many examples of judges, lawmakers and authorities making key, history- and life-altering decisions when they have absolutely no clue about how modern communication technologies work. Its reminiscent of Congressional hearings where Lindsey Graham complained to Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg about Snapchats addictive features, Missouri Representative Billy Long asked Zuck what Facemash was, and Florida Senator Bill Nelson asked him how to stop seeing ads for chocolate.

So, if you plot crimes like kidnapping and murder of a state governor through encryption, suddenly its not a terrorist threat or conspiracy anymore? The FBI might disagree.

How encrypted group comms work  that they are not thoughts you think to yourself  is a key part of prosecuting the January 6 Capitol rioters. Lets hope those cases dont come before Judge Klaeren (and well bet the FBI feels that way, too). In the March FBI Capitol riots indictment against the Proud Boys leaders, Count One for Conspiracy details the use of encrypted communications for group planning.

Judge Klaerens decision is whiplash-inducing for numerous reasons. Along with fresh worries about setting any precedent for Capitol riots cases, Klaerens private thoughts decision is beyond bizarre for those of us paying attention to the feds war on encryption. Federal and law enforcement arguments against keeping encrypted communications secure and intact are the opposite of what Klaeren just ruled.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

According to the FBI, encrypted comms are straight-up out loud zones for terrorist planning. In early March, FBI Director Christopher Wray told the House Homeland Security Committee the FBI was having a hard time disrupting domestic and foreign terrorists for reasons that included their frequent use of encrypted communications.

There are serious implications here. Aside from letting domestic terrorists off the hook for using a certain kind of app. If the 12th District Court decision by Judge Klaeren sets a precedent about encrypted communications and terrorists making plots, its a bad precedent.

Unless the judge just woke up from a coma, or returned from the Snap, theres no excuse. Even if Klaeren meant that the would-be kidnappers encrypted chats are somehow untouchable or unattributable, or if he meant that encryption-protected messages are essentially private thoughts because they cant be inferred  either way, its a big deal that this statement was made. And its one that could shift the debate if it holds up on appeal.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said the Iranian merchant ship received minor damage after the explosion in the Red Sea, stating that Tehran would handle the case through international organizations, Tasnim reported.

Khatibzadeh told reporters on Wednesday that the Iranian merchant ship Saviz suffered minor damage after an explosion in the Red Sea off the coast of Djibouti on Tuesday, April 6, at about 6 am local time.

An investigation is underway to find out the source of the explosion and how it happened, he added.

The spokesman explained that the civilian vessel was stationed in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden to ensure maritime security on shipping routes and to combat pirates, noting that its deployment had been announced in advance in coordination with the International Maritime Organization as a regulatory body.

Khatibzadeh noted that no one was killed as a result of the incident.

Technical investigations into the incident and its causes are ongoing, and Iran will take all necessary measures on this matter through international organizations, he said.
News that California will finally emerge from nearly all pandemic restrictions on June 15 included one glaring exception: The face coverings that have hidden our grins and grimaces for the better part of a year are not going away.

Given a chance to provide a glimmer of hope for ending Californias mask mandate, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the states health secretary, Dr. Mark Ghaly, firmly decided not to go there, saying there was no end date goal just yet.

Its the most powerful and important non-pharmaceutical intervention we can do to mitigate the spread of this disease, Newsom said during his briefing on Tuesday. We are committed to extinguishing this disease, and we dont have any short-term goals as it relates to lifting the mask mandate.

In the drive to make sure nothing goes wrong to throw off the promise of reopening the economy on June 15  the light at the end of this tunnel has never been brighter, Newsom says  the states leaders are sticking with a key strategy that has never wavered even as many other states were slow to impose mask mandates, quick to lift them, or never went there at all.

We can now begin planning for our lives post-pandemic, Newsom said, with a caveat. We will need to remain vigilant and continue the practices that got us here  wearing masks and getting vaccinated.

Ghaly said California has made incredible progress against COVID-19 thanks to masking as well as vaccination and stay-home practices. In order to take the next step, we must continue to do our part to keep this momentum moving in the right direction, and that means continuing to wear a mask and ensuring everyone who is eligible gets the vaccine.

In a possible hint of future easing of the mandate for less risky situations, Ghaly also said state officials are focused on making sure that as many Californians as possible are getting vaccinated and making sure that people are wearing masks in the highest-risk settings.

The message went down fine Wednesday morning at San Franciscos historic Tadich Grill, which reopened for business this week in the Financial District.

Stephen Lam / The Chronicle

When employees were gathered and told they would be wearing masks for the foreseeable future, Everybody was completely comfortable with it, said manager Kurt Niver. It looks like we may have to do this for a little while longer, and if thats what they ask for, well do it. Wed rather do it and reduce the spread than not and get shut down again.

For the most part, other Bay Area residents and businesses also have supported the mask mandate  and many seem fine with continuing it for now.

Reopening our economy also comes with the responsibility of continuing to embrace and follow the prevention measures we know work, Alfredo Pedroza, chair of the Napa County Board of Supervisors, said Wednesday. He said face coverings will be critical to safety as places like Wine Country welcome back tourists.

Any guest that comes to Napa, theyre made aware of that and were communicating it in advance, he said. Were making sure our residents and visitors alike understand the commitment to prevention measures (such as wearing masks) is still there, and its not optional.

The California mask mandate began in June, requiring those over age 2 to wear face coverings outside their homes and within 6 feet of others. Some Bay Area counties are even more restrictive, requiring masks at all times outside the home, whether others are around or not.

With the planned June 15 reopening, and a continued mask mandate, Gov. Newsom is hedging his bets, said Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease expert at UCSF and a strong, early advocate for masking. We have taken a cautious approach in California. ... Were at such a transition point with vaccines. No one wants to go the whole hog.

The mandate may remain in place long enough to protect those who cannot yet get vaccinated. Young children will most likely not be approved for vaccinations until late this year or early next. Californias public health officials will most likely take a gradual approach, first allowing those who are vaccinated to gather together maskless, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised.

At Green Apple Books in San Francisco, Masks are not really an issue, as both customers and employees comply with the requirement said co-owner Kevin Ryan. I think people would be more upset if we took the mask mandate away instead of enforcing it.

Its making people who are nervous  which is a lot of us  feel better about going out and being around people. I wouldnt go into a store that didnt have a mask mandate, not yet, he said. Were gonna follow city guidelines ... and were going to do whatevers going to make our employees and our customers feel more safe.

Last month, at least a dozen states  following the lead of Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott  lifted coronavirus restrictions and dropped their mask mandates in a rush to reopen their economies.

Newsom criticized Abbotts move as absolutely reckless.

President Biden also sharply rebuked those state leaders: The last thing we need is the Neanderthal thinking that in the meantime everything is fine, take off your mask, forget it, he said. It still matters.

Public health experts believe that masks are one of the most effective ways to prevent the spread of the virus, which travels through microscopic respiratory droplets produced when an infected person sneezes, coughs, talks, laughs or exhales. Masks block or at least limit exposure to those viral particles.

Masks are going to stay with us for a while, and theyll allow us to move to this more general risk-reduction strategy that the state is forecasting, said Dr. Nicholas Moss, the Alameda County health officer.

He said that reopening June 15 seems reasonable, but people should understand that not everything will go back to pre-pandemic normal, and masks will be a key part of that. Face coverings will give people a chance to try to get back to something that looks more normal at the individual level, he said. As the state further lifts restrictions, Things like masks and other individual-level prevention tools are really important.

George Lemp, an infectious disease expert and epidemiologist, retired from the University of California, said hed opt for dropping the mask mandate soon, maybe along with the June 15 reopening.

Masks may remain important for specific situations, such as international flights, but not for the indefinite future, Lemp said.

Losing masks is a visible sign that things are back to normal. We shouldnt have to walk around in masks forever, he said.

Gandhi said, a clean endpoint for the mask mandate would be once everyone who is eligible has had the opportunity to get their vaccinations.

A mandate has to be there for public health purposes based on a clear and present danger, she said. But how can you mandate something once you have applied the ultimate solution to be safe?

Chronicle staff writers Erin Allday and Meghan Bobrowsky contributed to this report.

Aidin Vaziri is San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: avaziri@sfchronicle.com
The will hear on Friday the plea of the wife of gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari seeking directions to the authorities to ensure that her husband's life is protected in the state besides being accorded fair trial in cases against him.

A bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan and R Subhash Reddy, as per the apex court's website, would hear on April 9 the plea of Afshan Ansari who has also expressed apprehension about possible attempts to eliminate her spouse in

police on Tuesday got Ansari's custody from its Punjab counterpart as per the direction of the apex court. He is accused of heinous crimes in several cases lodged against him in Uttar Pradesh.

The plea in apex court has alleged that there is a genuine, persistent and grave threat to Ansari's life in Uttar Pradesh and there are very high chances that he will be eliminated if adequate protection or safeguards towards his life are not directed by the apex court.

The plea said several attempts have been made on his life in the past by rival political enemies belonging to the ruling government in the state.

It sought direction that transit of her husband from one jail to another as also to the court be video-graphed at all times and be carried out in presence of officers of central police force such as CRPF.

The top court had on March 26 directed Punjab government to hand over the custody of Ansari, who was lodged in Rupnagar jail there since January 2019 in connection with an alleged extortion case, to the Uttar Pradesh police.

The fresh plea has sought directions to the Uttar Pradesh authorities to provide adequate safeguards and protection to her husband while he is shifted to district jail Banda in Uttar Pradesh from Punjab.

She has also sought directions to the authorities to provide protection to Ansari, an MLA from Mau constituency, while he is lodged in Banda jail or any other jail as may be decided by the special judge (MP/MLA court) in Allahabad and also while he is produced before the courts in Uttar Pradesh.

The plea has sought directions to the authorities to ensure that life of Ansari is protected and his rights under Article 21 of the Constitution are safeguarded while attending trial in all cases against him in Uttar Pradesh.

The threat to the life of the petitioner's husband (Ansari) is not merely an apprehension, but has also been substantiated in the past by several attempts made on his life by rival political enemies belonging to the ruling government in Uttar Pradesh, it claimed.

There is a hanging threat to the life of the petitioner's husband and there are very high chances that he will be eliminated if adequate protection or safeguards towards his life are not directed by this court, it said.

The plea has also referred to the encounter of gangster Vikas Dubey in Uttar Pradesh last year.

Similar reports are being given in the press in relation to the petitioner's husband herein, thus the petitioner prays that her husband's life may be protected while he is directed to attend trial in the state of Uttar Pradesh so that he does not meet a similar fate, it said.

The plea has sought direction that while Ansari is shifted to district jail Banda from Punjab or transferred from Banda prison to other jail, it should be done under the supervision and presence of a designated judicial magistrate.

The apex court had on March 26 directed the Punjab government to hand over Ansari's custody to Uttar Pradesh Police, saying the custody was being denied on trivial grounds under guise of medical issues.

The top court had said a convict or an undertrial prisoner, who disobeys the law of the land, cannot oppose his transfer from one prison to another and the courts are not to be a helpless bystander when the rule of law is being challenged with impunity.

The apex court had said it was open for the special court, constituted for MPs/MLAs at Allahabad, to continue him either in the District Jail at Banda or shift to any other prison in the state, if any need arises.

It had delivered the verdict on the plea of seeking a direction to the Punjab government and Rupnagar jail authority to immediately hand over the custody of Ansari, to the district jail Banda.

(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 international community should act collectively to ensure that refugees across the globe have equal access to COVID-19 vaccines, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement on Wednesday

UNITED NATIONS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 07th April, 2021) The international community should act collectively to ensure that refugees across the globe have equal access to COVID-19 vaccines, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement on Wednesday.

"On World Health Day, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is calling for concerted international action and solidarity to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 vaccinations, including for refugees and other forcibly displaced and stateless people," the statement said.

Some 153 states have adopted strategies that include vaccination of refugees, and 20 countries have already begun inoculating displaced populations, the UNHCR said. However, in many parts of the world, immunization remains a challenging task mostly due to the unequal availability of vaccines.

"The blatant imbalances observed in vaccine-sharing among states are counter-productive and shortsighted," UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi noted in the statement.

Besides, 85 percent of all refugees are hosted by countries that face financial challenges and need more support to address the urgent health needs, including COVID-19 vaccines.

To support these nations and respond to the impacts of the pandemic, the UN Refugee Agency said it urgently requires an additional $455 million. UNHCR added that to date, it has received only 13 percent of that appeal.
Momentum of political process in Mali must be maintained: Chinese envoy

Xinhua) 09:25, April 07, 2021

Bah N'Daw is sworn in as Mali's transitional president in Bamako, Mali, Sept. 25, 2020. (Photo by Habib Kouyate/Xinhua)

The Malian government has formulated the transitional action plan, and implementation is the main task for the next stage, a Chinese envoy said.

UNITED NATIONS, April 6 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese envoy said Tuesday that the momentum of the political process in Mali must be maintained.

The overall situation in Mali is improving. At the same time, the country faces multiple challenges, such as terrorism, COVID-19 and a humanitarian crisis. The international community should continue to focus on Mali and provide necessary support, said Dai Bing, China's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations.

The good momentum of the political process must be maintained. The Malian government has formulated the transitional action plan, and implementation is the main task for the next stage, he told the Security Council.

As the Malian government works to coordinate and advance preparation for the elections, positive efforts will also be needed to promote development, improve people's livelihood in a way that can bring more benefits to its people, he said.

The agreement monitoring committee has met for the first time in northern Mali, which is of great significance. The signatories to the peace agreement must consolidate the existing results, continue to develop mutual trust, achieve more results on issues such as the deployment of armed forces and the Northern Development Zone, properly handle the issue of re-opening negotiations on the relevant provisions of the agreement, and firmly advance the implementation of the agreement, he said.

Comprehensive policies must be implemented to improve the security situation in Mali, said Dai. "Terrorist activities are rampant in central and northern Mali with frequent attacks that have led to the continued deterioration of the security situation on the ground. A comprehensive military, political, economic, judicial, and social response must be adopted in accordance with the recommendations in the UN secretary-general's report."

Actions to combat terrorist organizations must be accompanied by efforts to eliminate the root causes of terrorism and extremism. There must be support to the Malian government so that it can continue to actively participate in anti-terrorism operations of the G5 Sahel (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger), he said.

The UN peacekeeping mission in Mali, known by its French acronym as MINUSMA, must focus on its core mandate and earnestly follow the principle of a Malian-led and Malian-owned process and strengthen its coordination and cooperation with regional organizations, said Dai.

People line up to register before receiving the COVID-19 vaccine in Bamako, Mali, on March 31, 2021. (Photo by Habib Kouyate/Xinhua)

MINUSMA must develop its roadmap based on the actual situation on the ground, and make sure that its implementation is coordinated and consistent. Foreign counter-terrorism operations in Mali need to respect Mali's sovereignty, abide by international humanitarian law, and protect the safety of Malian people, he said.

It is imperative to organize an effective response to challenges such as COVID-19, he said.

The pandemic has started to rebound in Mali, which has caused concerns. The international community should provide Mali with support to fight the disease, including ensuring timely and fair access to COVID-19 vaccines for those in need, he said.

As Mali's economy declined, about 800,000 people went back to poverty last year, with 3 million people in urgent need of emergency food assistance. A large number of people were displaced. The international community must increase assistance to ease the difficulties of the Malian people, he said.

Dai also called for efforts to ensure the safety of UN peacekeepers in Mali.

This year MINUSMA has suffered multiple attacks, during which 10 peacekeepers were killed. The safety of peacekeepers is an extremely urgent issue and is the responsibility of all parties, he said.

Attacks against UN peacekeepers must be investigated and perpetrators must be brought to justice. It is necessary to analyze the causes of the incidents and identify the weakest links so that practical effective measures could be adopted to ensure the safety of all peacekeepers, he said.

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Bianji)
It is not difficult to understand why many of us believe that what happens in that courtroom will render a verdict not just on Chauvin, but on the nation, on our self-appraised land of truths held self-evident, equality under the law, liberty and justice for all. Is any of that real? Does any of it mean anything? Many of us are looking to that Minneapolis courtroom for answers.
Page Content

On March 12, 2021, New York State enacted a law that requires all employers to provide their New York employees with up to four hours of paid time off per injection to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. At the time of enactment, the law did not provide guidance on certain key issues. Recently, the New York State Department of Labor published answers to some questions that many employers have been asking.

Covered Employers

All employers, including individuals, corporations, limited liability companies and associations, regardless of size, are required to provide paid leave under the law.

Number of Paid Leave Hours

The guidance states that employers must provide paid leaves of absence for "sufficient period[s] of time, not to exceed four hours per vaccine injection." While the guidance notes that the maximum paid leave period for a single injection is four hours, it also states that the law fails to define the term "sufficient period of time."

Absent further clarification from the New York State Department of Labor, some employers might want to consider adopting a conservative approach that would guarantee four hours of paid leave time per injection, unless and until an employee suggests that less time is needed.

Use of Leave

Employees can use this leave only for the receipt of their own COVID-19 vaccinations. Employees cannot use the paid leave provided under this law to assist other individuals in receiving the vaccine.

Notice

The law does not prohibit employers from requiring that employees provide notice before taking paid leave to receive COVID-19 vaccines. However, employers might want to consider the notice provisions under similar laws (e.g., New York State's paid sick leave law) when deciding whether to require a certain amount of notice.

Documentation

The guidance clarifies that an employer is not prevented from requiring proof of vaccination. "However, employers are encouraged to consider any confidentiality requirements applicable to such records prior to requesting proof of vaccination."

Retroactivity

Only employees who receive vaccinations on or after the law's effective date of March 12 are eligible for the paid benefits.

Key Takeaways

In light of this guidance, New York State employers may want to consider the following:

Reviewing the above requirements to ensure that practices comply with the law's obligations.

Determining whether and to what extent to request or require employee notice or documentation of vaccination.

Reviewing payroll practices to ensure they align with the requirements of the law and corresponding guidance.

Ensuring supervisory and managerial employees, as well as human resources professionals, are aware of and implementing the requirements of the law.



Kelly M. Cardin and Jessica R. Schild are attorneys with Ogletree Deakins in New York City.  2021 Ogletree Deakins. All rights reserved. Reposted with permission.
This coming Monday marks 60 years since the first human being left the Earth and reached space, and 40 years since the first space shuttle launch.

On April 12, 1961, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space, riding the Vostok 1 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in southern Kazakhstan. Twenty years later, on April 12, 1981, the space shuttle Columbia blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, marking the start of NASAs shuttle era.

The shared date is an apparent coincidence: Columbias originally planned maiden flight was postponed two days due to a technical problem, pushing its launch to Gagarins 20th anniversary. (The Challenger disaster in 1986 brought the shuttle program to its knees, but Columbias disintegration during reentry in 2003 sealed its fate. Upon completing its 30-year run in 2011, the program had been around for 60 percent of the entire history of human space flight.)

When I watched the brand new space shuttle Columbia  painted gleaming white this one time for the sake of appearance  jump off the launch pad as though it were some cocky young sprint runner showing off for the crowds, Gagarins flight already seemed like ancient history.

Although twice as many years have now passed since Columbias inaugural flight, one might have difficulty seeing double the amount of space flight progress.

The 20 years between Gagarin and Columbia were anything but ordinary however. During the first decade, the Apollo moon program pushed technology forward hard, and advances came extraordinarily fast. The Apollo moon landings were astonishing successes, but progress slowed once the goal was achieved, and humans got stuck in low earth orbit where we still are.

At the time of Gagarins flight, the Space Race, as it came to be known, already looked quite lopsided in favor of the Russians. They had launched Sputnik  Earths first artificial satellite  into orbit on Oct. 4, 1957. Just 3-1/2 years later, they launched the first human.

The Soviet government kept the great achievement of Gagarins flight under wraps until it was successfully completed, but when the announcement did come, it stunned the rest of the world and made the photogenic 27-year-old cosmonaut an international celebrity.

It is worth noting that Gagarin was not just the first human in space, but also the first to orbit the Earth  an achievement the U.S. wouldnt match for nearly another year.

Yuri Gagarin, a Russian test piolet, was the first person in space and the first to orbit the Earth.

The month following Gagarins flight, on May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard became the second human  and the first American  launched into space. But he flew a sub-orbital mission, following a planned arcing missile-like ballistic trajectory into space and back down.

Despite the fact that Shepard had not achieved orbit, his flight was widely heralded by Americans as the United States answer to the Soviets triumph. They paid little heed to the fact that Shepard had some manual control over his capsule, which he could pilot with attitude and retrorockets. Gagarin, on the other hand, was more like a passenger in a can.

In August of 1961, the Soviets launched the third human into space; Cosmonaut Gherman Tito orbited for a full day, circumnavigating our world 17 times. This striking achievement upped the ante and put the Soviets firmly in the lead.

The U.S. responded in October, 1961 by sending Virgil Gus Grissom up for Americas second suborbital flight. Unfortunately, Grissom  the fourth human in space  almost drowned in the Pacific when the hatch blew off his Mercury capsule after splashdown, and seawater flooded in.

Astronaut John Glenn  the fifth person in space  made it into orbit in February 1962, but he only circled the globe three times compared to Titos 17. The U.S., it seemed, was lagging.

Gagarins flight had already shocked the U.S. into higher gear, and shortly after it, on May 25, 1961, President Kennedy told a special joint session of Congress, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.

The race was on, and over time Kennedys directive would have the desired effect. Along the way, on Jan. 27, 1967, the three-man crew of Apollo 1, which consisted of Gus Grissom along with astronauts Ed White and Roger Chaffee, died in a launch pad fire during training.

The Soviet program was beset by even greater technical failures including the first fatality during an actual space mission. The crash of Soyuz 1 on April 23, 1967, remained largely unknown in the West due to state secrecy until about three decades ago when Glasnost (the new openness) and the breakup of the Soviet Union began shedding new light on this old mystery.

Similarly unknown was the Soviets massive and powerful N1 booster intended to carry Cosmonauts to the moon. While the U.S. forged ahead to success with the unsurpassed Saturn V rocket, the Soviets suffered failure after failure.

In the end, the triumph of the Apollo 11 landing in the moons Sea of Tranquillity on July 20, 1969 could not have been a more spectacular or decisive win. With the U.S.s successes, the Soviets abandoned their moon landing plans.

All early Soviet missions were carried out in secret, and after declaring the success of the Gagarin flight, they claimed that Gagarin landed on dry land in his Vostok 1 capsule. American flights and recoveries were witnessed by millions on live television, so everyone watching knew that the American astronauts stayed in their capsules from launch to splashdown.

Years later, as the veil of secrecy lifted, it was learned that Gagarin had actually returned from space in surprising fashion: He ejected from the capsule at 23,000 feet and parachuted the rest of the way down.

Dressed in his orange spacesuit and white helmet, the first human space traveler landed in a field near the Volga River, and walked toward some nearby frightened strangers where he cajoled a farmer and her daughter to let him call Moscow so authorities could come for him. The people knew nothing of his mission, so he was probably quite lucky. What a remarkable way to return.

Of course, luck  good and bad  contributed to the progress and setbacks of both space programs, but in the end, it was the more open American system that won out. This openness was a model whose influence can be seen around the world  on the ground and in orbit  to this day.

The last Shuttle mission was flown by Atlantis in July of 2011, and the Space Shuttle program formally ended on August 31, 2011. After that, American astronauts and those from other countries came to depend on the Russian Soyuz for trips to and from the International Space Station, which by-and-large had been built using the Shuttle.

Notably, with the exception of some early improvements and many newer modifications, the Soyuz shares the same basic design that came into use soon after Gagarin flew his Vostok capsule into history.

In an effort to gain space access from American soil, NASA funded Boeing and SpaceX for commercial development of human-rated space vehicles. So far, and to the surprise of many, only SpaceX has delivered, but astronauts can now launch from the U.S.

Find rise and set times for the sun and moon, and follow ever-changing celestial highlights in the Skywatch section of the Weather Almanac in The Republican and Sunday Republican.

Patrick Rowan has written Skywatch for The Republican since 1987 and has been a Weather Almanac contributor since the mid 1990s. A native of Long Island, Rowan graduated from Northampton High School, studied astronomy at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in the 1970s and was a research assistant for the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory. From 1981 to 1994, Rowan worked at the Springfield Science Museums Seymour Planetarium, most of that time as planetarium manager. Rowan lives in the Florence section of Northampton with his wife, Clara, and their cat, Eli.
Q. My daughters Vanguard UTMA has about $22,000 in Admiral shares with a $14,000 long-term gain and $700 short term gain if sold today. What is the tax treatment federally and for the state? Does she have to claim it on her tax returns or is there a way for me to claim it if I have long- and short-term capital losses carried forward to offset them? She has no income and will be 21 in a few months.

 Mom

A. This can be a tricky question.

If you opened a UTMA account for your daughter, she is the account owner and as the owner, she would be taxed on the gains from any sales. You are only the custodian.

The sales of her Vanguard account cannot be reported on your income tax return because you are not the owner of the account, said Patricia Daquila, a certified financial planner and certified public accountant with Peapack Private Wealth Management in New Providence.

Your carry forward losses cannot be used on your daughters tax return for federal taxes, she said, and New Jersey does not allow carry forward losses.

Your daughter would need to file both a federal and New Jersey income tax return to report the sale, Daquila said.

For federal taxes, if her total unearned income was more than $1,100, and if the total of her interest, dividends and other unearned income exceeded $2,200 and she is a full-time student at least 19 years of age and under the age of 24, she would need to use Form 8615, Daquila said. Form 8615 would calculate the tax based on your income and tax rate. This is otherwise known as the `kiddie tax which was meant to discourage parents from transferring investments to their children to save on taxes.

New Jersey does not have a kiddie tax and your daughters income tax would be based on her income bracket.

If her gross income was less than $10,000, then she would not even need to file a tax return for New Jersey, she said. If her income is approximately $14,700, her tax would be low for New Jersey.

If she waited until she was 21 and she is still your dependent and/or a full-time student, the federal taxation would remain the same and it would not tip the tax scale, Daquila said. When she is no longer your dependent or a full-time student, then her federal tax would be based on her income and not yours for tax purposes.

One possible strategy could be to split the sales over several tax years to minimize the gain in one year, Daquila said, suggesting you should consult with a tax professional who can look at your overall situation.

Email your questions to Ask@NJMoneyHelp.com.

Karin Price Mueller writes the Bamboozled column for NJ Advance Media and is the founder of NJMoneyHelp.com. Follow NJMoneyHelp on Twitter @NJMoneyHelp. Find NJMoneyHelp on Facebook. Sign up for NJMoneyHelp.coms weekly e-newsletter.
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Brossard, QC, April 7, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Diagnos Inc. ( CVE:ADK ) ( OTCMKTS:DGNOF ) ( FRA:4D4A ), a leader in early detection of critical health issues through the use of its FLAIRE platform based on Artificial Intelligence (AI), announces today the signing of an exclusive distribution agreement with Diagnos Europe GmbH ("Diagnos Europe"), a new partner for DIAGNOS to tackle the strategically important DACH countries in the European market (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) and the surrounding countries Poland, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein in order to prepare a successful market entry for the Company's products and services in Central Europe, a crucial territory for DIAGNOS with a significant market potential in access of more than 140 million people.DACH is an abbreviation and D stands for Deutschland (Germany), A, Austria, and CH, Confoederatio Helvetica, (Switzerland). Therefore, it refers to the mostly German-speaking center of Europe. The DACH economy is one of the most stable in the entire world since the end of World War II and it is by far the largest and most promising market for IT and AI in Europe. Diagnos Europe is fully specialized on go-to-market strategies and services in the DACH countries and have developed for DIAGNOS a variety of market entry strategies offering the Company a practical and effective launch pad into the DACH market.Just as the DACH region has become established as Europe's most important region for the optical market, DIAGNOS will be benefiting from the forthcoming market entry developments and has in addition that long tapping into European potential. The German market, in particular, plays a leading role in the optical industry and thus also for the Company and Diagnos Europe in terms of preparing the implementation of specific sales activities. Alongside the French market, which DIAGNOS is also targeting at the same time, the German-speaking market is the most important in Europe and also the most interesting for the company as a result of its stable growth rates over the past several years. For 2019, the German optical industry was able to record its most successful financial year in a decade, far outperforming other European markets (total sales compared to 2018 were up by 5.4% at EUR 4.7 billion; 2019 thus exceeding all expectations and a continuation of the growth trend that has persisted since 2011. Opticians and optometrists have continuously been able to look forward to a further increase in turnover, which rose to almost EUR 6.5 billion in 2019 and even more in 2020).The healthcare systems in the DACH region are among the best in the world. In Switzerland, in particular, the Healthcare Professions Act (Gesundheitsberufegesetz), which came into force at the start of the year, has placed the industry in a more important position in terms of healthcare. Optometric services, screenings and preventative eye health play an increasingly important role as well in the markets of Germany and Austria, which are similar despite the difference in size. Demographic changes and people's growing responsibility for their own health indicates that the positive forecasts for the future, which were made before the corona crisis, should continue to hold true, which is certainly a clear market potential for DIAGNOS in the DACH region.For example, a large majority of patients with diabetes who develop diabetic retinopathy have no symptoms until damage to their vision is irreversible. While annual ophthalmic screening is recommended for all those with diabetes, even in the developed world, typically less than half get screened. The number of diabetics in the DACH countries is evaluated at over 10 million in a total population of 140 million people. Adding to this is the limited number of ophthalmologists, healthcare providers with a retinal (fundus) camera, and a historical delay in ophthalmologist appointments for screening or remote image reading."Our goal is to launch our concerted European sales efforts in the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland), plus Poland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg in the heart of Central Europe. DIAGNOS' extensive network in these countries, combined with the Company's AI technology, provides the opportunity to access and serve a significant number of European patients with high levels of risk of losing their vision due to diabetes. There is an immediate need for DIAGNOS' AI technology to address the huge backlog generated by the pandemic", said Mr. Andre Larente, CEO of DIAGNOS."We understand the demand for early detection and treatment of the disease and the economics this represents in our market. Without a doubt, we'll accomplish the goal to enable DIAGNOS to access the specialists and patients in need by laying the foundation for DIAGNOS' European market entry", added Mr. Rolf Kaewel, Managing Director of Diagnos Europe."DIAGNOS complies with the highest standards in terms of delivering precision results and in real-time, so the referral of patients is done effectively. Our AI technology enhances the experience of the patient and our indications shows that at least 9% of referrals will be sent to the specialists so they can be treated properly," added Mr. Larente. "Europe is the region in the world with the largest population of diabetes between ages 0-14, and 20-79 and at least 75% live in urban areas where the prevalence is at least 12% or more creating a huge market potential for DIAGNOS", concluded Mr. Larente.To view the release, please visit:About DIAGNOS Inc.

DIAGNOS (CVE:ADK) (OTCMKTS:DGNOF) is a publicly traded Canadian corporation dedicated to early detection of critical health problems based on its FLAIRE Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform. FLAIRE allows for quick modifying and developing of applications such as CARA (Computer Assisted Retina Analysis). CARA's AI-based image enhancement algorithms provide sharper, clearer and easier-to-analyze retinal images. CARA is a cost-effective tool for real-time screening of large volumes of patients. CARA has been cleared for commercialization by the following regulators: Health Canada, the FDA (USA), CE (Europe), COFEPRIS (Mexico) and Saudi FDA (Saudi Arabia).

Additional information is available at www.diagnos.com and www.sedar.com
No matter the protections you have in place, the last defence for cyber security rests with the end user. How do you educate in a respectful, engaging way? I tried out Phriendly Phishing, built on this very premise, finding it reduced my risk and exposure to phishing and that my users enjoyed the process.

IT departments  like my very own  try to stop phishing emails reaching end users through a variety of technologies, but it is a never-ending battle to fight determined scammers and criminals who are constantly refining and improving their techniques.

At the end of the day, the last defence is always the end user's own astuteness and vigilance. This is why education is so vitally important.

I've been thinking on this problem for some time. What's the best way to train staff about phishing? Should it be in the company induction process? Is a single slide as I've seen companies do really achieving anything? How do you refresh the memory of long-standing staff?

Surveying the market yields a range of phishing tests; these will slam your users with fake phishing emails  harmless if clicked on, but reporting to you just how many people fell for the bait and thus have the potential to expose your network to harm. Coincidentally, even while writing this very story I received an ad from a large Australian telco offering their $5000 product to do this very thing.

I'd considered making my own phishing test; after all, why pay $5000 when I could send off my own barrage of tricky emails? Slap on a few logos, make a call to action: "Warning! This bad thing will happen unless you click here right now!" and send it off.

Yet, what does this really achieve? It helps measure how many people you can trick with an email deliberately crafted to trick, but it doesn't really teach those people how they were supposed to know better and as a result cannot ultimately lead to a decrease in risk because there is no education.

Phriendly Phishing says it's different, and I was keen to understand why. Before I tested the product I spoke to Damian Grace, and he was passionate about making a change in security awareness training.

Phriendly Phishing emerged, Grace said, when he lamented the lack of an effective training solution to help regular folk understand phishing attacks.

Grace was head of Ethical Hacking at Shearwater Solutions, an Australian security consulting firm, who used to perform standard phishing consulting just like I described above. They'd create the cleverest possible phishing email and send it to as many people within the target organisation as possible.

Yet, Grace reflected, he and the team at Shearwater were unsatisfied with these results. "People don't like being tricked," he told iTWire. "It can have a negative effect on the company."

Instead, he explained, he had a vision for phishing awareness training where people would want to be involved, where they'd be empowered to recognise phishing attempts and deal with them appropriately, both in their business and personal life.

"People aren't getting the education they require," Grace said. He looked at how awareness training was being performed. Some customers said they run an annual awareness campaign about phishing and expected better results, but yet these results never came: staff still kept falling for phishing emails.

I can relate from my own experience; I've seen phishing training which is just dull, and lifeless, and ultimately simply an academic paragraph on a slide during an induction  merely words to be glossed over, for the new staff member to say "Ok" to, neither the trainer nor staff member really understanding what the slide says.

During this review, Grace noted key points he felt would make an effective training system and went to market seeking a solution that met these criteria. Yet, no suitable education system existed which would give the user some way to really enjoy the experience and understand it, and provide solid anti-phishing skills. Instead, the option followed the same path of trick the user and put them offside.

Knowing there was a better way, and finding no existing option, Shearwater built it. Thus Phriendly Phishing was born.

A core principle from the start was to treat people with respect. There's often a perception that IT thinks of users as simply "dumb users" while in reality many security leaders Grace spoke to were passionate about making positive changes that benefited the organisation and staff alike and were seeking a product to help with this.

They wanted a product that took users on a journey of growing and learning, rather than simply tricking them with a one-off phishing email. This mindset, Grace says, is key to Phriendly Phishing's philosophy and approach.

It's not difficult to see why phishing works. It offers a big return to scammers, to criminals, for little investment. Many emails are purely opportunistic and work simply on massive volumes. Like sales calls, scams are a numbers game. Send a scam to a million people. Even if 90% are filtered out that's still 100,000 people who see it. Of those, the scammers bet there's a certain number who will click the link. Phishing isn't going away. It's easy, and it's profitable  and that's why it is essential any business invest in phishing education for its staff.

Among products I looked at, Phriendly Phishing stood out with these claims of respecting staff and helping them truly understand, through their own personal journey, how phishing risks an organisation's health, as well as arming people with real skills to identify and act on phishing emails.

The platform further seeks to measure how successful the training was, and to confirm to stakeholders' risk has been reduced.

I engaged Phriendly Phishing to see it myself on my business, a national publicly-listed company with 70 locations and almost 1000 staff. With a compressed two-week timeframe in mind, we ran this across 50 staff, which included the chief executive, senior managers, receptionists and a mixture of others.

Phriendly Phishing does its work in three phases. The first sets a baseline, informing the organisational risk to phishing as it stands, before any training. By necessity this is the send a simulated phishing message to all users approach to see who clicks, yet with two differences to the traditional approach by every other vendor.

For one, the results are anonymised. You'll know how many people clicked, even how many times people clicked, but not who. Secondly, if someone does click they are simply taken to a benign Google search page, leading them to believe the email failed, not that they did anything wrong. It's non-intrusive and isn't there to embarrass the user, but purely to gather a baseline.

For the administrator it's a different story; the baseline is vital and even sobering. Remember, it informs the risk to your organisation if a malicious phishing attack occurred right at that very second.

In my case, of the 50 staff, nine people clicked the link. One person clicked twice  I had 10 clicks from nine people out of 50 messages. Thats a risk of 18%. If this was a real phishing attack, Id have an outbreak on my hands. Imagine nine people in different locations executing a malicious payload at the same time.

The second phase follows on, and this is the education delivery which is a major distinctive of the product. Administrators can see who is yet to take training, along with individual progress and other metrics. I'll come back to the training momentarily.

Lastly, phase three sends periodic real-life phishing assessments to test your users remain alert after the training and that they absorbed its message. These assessments are graded in difficulty, from difficulty one which would be a fairly obvious and unsophisticated phishing scam, to difficulty ten which is very sophisticated and delivers phishing emails from registered domains that appear to be reputable domains. This time around the results are not anonymised and you will know who needs their training reinforced.

During this phase, not one staff member clicked any links during my test. My risk plummeted from nine people out of 50, or 18%, to zero out of 50 or 0%. That's impressive, though results will understandably vary. My test was in a compressed timeframe so the phishing assessments followed very closely from the training. While 0% would be wonderful for anyone to see, the important measure is the value ultimately trends downwards, even if it may rise and fall along the way.

At any point during the three phases, admins can monitor dashboards and run reports to keep abreast of progress and effectiveness. Each staff member is on their own journey.

The training component is so vitally important. Your staff cannot make a difference to your organisation's risk if they do not actually understand how to identify a phishing email or what to do about it.

Phishing training cant be technical; it must serve a wide audience, targeted to non-technical people in a way that supports learning.

I really liked Phriendly Phishing's training, with its acronym S.C.A.M.  users come to learn this means check the Sender, check the Content, check the Action, and Manage the email appropriately. S.C.A.M. also conveniently references the names of four cutesy characters who will help along the journey such as a slimy sender, a con man, an English teacher and a straight-by-the-book character. Its entertaining, its gamified with achievements, and importantly, its memorable. You get tested after each module with a short multiple choice quiz, and receive an award for passing.

The training was superb and my users absolutely loved it too. I was especially pleased the training impresses these concepts dont simply apply to the business, but also to home life. The bad guys will send phishing scams and ransomware to individual folk just as they will big business. I think understanding this helps get people more personally invested.

I asked my users for genuine feedback. They had these things to say:

I enjoyed completing this training. Even with some knowledge around Phishing and what to look out for I certainly learnt some new things. Definitely a useful tool for keeping it front of mind. I would recommend for the entire management team if it hasnt already been offered to them.

Ive just completed the training and learnt a couple of things I wasnt aware of before  I think it would be very useful for anyone who accesses emails at work (or at home).

I gave it a go, it was very easy to use and covered off well the fundamentals of avoiding a phishing scam.

I think this would be a great program to offer as reception training  specifically to those bigger locations who employ staff that are solely on reception and responsible for incoming emails. And, of course, managers.

Ongoing assessments follow training to ensure the lessons were understood and to gently assist staff who need more help or practice. The fake phishing attempts become more sophisticated as staff learn, and importantly, as staff demonstrate their abilities to recognise the hallmarks of fake emails, like hovering over a link to show the address it goes to and what may indicate an untrustworthy link.

During my time with Phriendly Phishing I found it's most certainly not a one-off trick your users and report on it test like the industry norm. Instead, it sets a higher standard, measuring ongoing organisational risk to phishing, while leading individuals on their own journey of phishing awareness.

In the admin console, I could group users in zones, I could report on who had started or finished the training, I could import users, I could do a great many things,

There's more to come with plans to add further innovations. A just-released product is the S.C.A.M Reporter Outlook Add-in, to allow you and your staff the capability of reporting a spam email in one click.

Phriendly Phishing is available as an annual subscription in units of 100 users, with no setup fees. User counts can be reassigned over time as staff come and go, and campaigns can be suspended as needed such as Christmas breaks.

During my time with Phriendly Phishing the benefits of running it as an ongoing training and assessment programme for existing staff and new starters were evident.

Phishing is a real risk, and phishing education and assessment is something that cannot be neglected. Phriendly Phishing is a product you could realistically embed into your company on-boarding or induction process, defending your assets in a way which delights your users.
Australia will continue to roll out the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine despite health officials admitting they do not know if it causes potentially deadly blood clots.

In March more than a dozen countries suspended the jab after a handful of European patients suffered brain blockages that can cause strokes.

Germany is still banning the vaccine for under 60s amid fears the clots are more prominent in young people, particularly young women.

In March more than a dozen countries suspended the AstraZeneca jab after a handful of European patients suffered brain blockages that can cause strokes

European regulators are reviewing the data and on Tuesday Marco Cavaleri, head of vaccines at the European Medicines Agency, said he believes there is a 'causal link' between the vaccine and the clots.

But Australia's Health Department Secretary Professor Brendan Murphy admitted on Wednesday that he does not know if there is a risk.

'At the moment, we don't have those answers,' he said.

'All I'm saying is that there is a lot of action at the moment analysing the information in Europe and in the UK and we are taking a very close interest in it.'

He said 'the government and the department have taken the view that safety is absolutely paramount'.

'The UK has had so much more experience than we have. They've got the better data,' he said.

'Europe has better data and that's why we're looking at their data to see whether this is a real problem and whether we need to do anything about it. All I'm saying is that this is a very active, ongoing review.'

Australia's Health Department Secretary Professor Brendan Murphy (pictured) admitted on Wednesday that he does not know if there is a risk of blood clots from the AstraZeneca jab

Last month an investigation was launched after a 44-year-old Melbourne man was hospitalised with blood clots after getting the jab.

Australian health officials have previously said that blood clots happen in general life and any adverse effects suffered after vaccination may be coincidental.

The UK's safety watchdog, the MHRA, has so far spotted 30 rare clotting events in 18.1 million doses  around one in every 600,000. But the EMA believes it may occur in up to one in every 100,000 under-60s.

Last week the UK regulator criticised Germany for suspending the jab in under-60s, arguing there was 'no evidence' to support age-based restrictions.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday called on Britons to still get AstraZeneca's jab.

'The advice to people is to keep going out there, get your jab, get your second jab,' he said.

EU regulator boss Mr Cavaleri told Italian media there's a clear association between the AstraZeneca vaccine and the dozens of rare blood clots that have been reported worldwide out of the tens of millions of AstraZeneca shots that have been given out.

'It is becoming more and more difficult to affirm that there isn't a cause-and-effect relationship between AstraZeneca vaccines and the very rare cases of blood clots associated with a low level of platelets,' Mr Cavaleri was quoted as saying.

Marco Cavaleri, vaccines head at the European Medicines Agency, said there is a 'link' between AstraZeneca jab and clots

Asked about Cavaleri's comments, the EMA press office said its evaluation 'has not yet reached a conclusion and the review is currently ongoing.'

It said it planned a press conference as soon as the review is finalised, possibly Wednesday or Thursday.

The agency has repeatedly insisted AstraZeneca's jab is safe and the benefits outweigh any risks.

AstraZeneca and Oxford University, which developed the vaccine, announced they were pausing the trial of their jabs in children while British regulators investigate the potential blood clot link in adults.

'Whilst there are no safety concerns in the pediatric clinical trial, we await additional information' from the British regulator, an Oxford spokesperson said in a statement.

In Geneva, the World Health Organization said its experts were also evaluating a possible link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and rare blood clots - and that it might have a 'fresh, conclusive assessment' before Thursday.

After suspending the jab last month, most EU nations restarted on March 19 - some with age restrictions - after the EMA said the benefits of the vaccine outweighed the risks of not inoculating people against COVID-19. At the time, the EMA recommended the vaccine's leaflet be updated with information about the rare clots.

Any further doubts about the AstraZeneca vaccine would be a setback for the shot, which is critical to Europe's immunization campaign and a linchpin in the global strategy to get vaccines to poorer countries.

The AstraZeneca vaccine is cheaper and easier to use than rival vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna and has been endorsed for use in over 50 countries, including by the 27-nation EU and the World Health Organization. U.S. authorities are still evaluating the vaccine.

AstraZeneca is on track to roll out a new booster vaccine that will tackle coronavirus variants by autumn, the firm said

Mr Cavaleri said while EMA was prepared to declare a link, further study was still needed to understand why and how the phenomenon occurs.

He said the rare blood clots, including some in the brain, coupled with a low level of blood platelets that may make people at risk of serious bleeding, 'seem to be the key event to study further.'

Mr Cavaleri promised more details soon, adding: 'In the coming hours, we will say that the link is there, how this happens we still havent figured out.'

Mr Cavaleri said the biological mechanism for how the vaccine might be causing the rare clots was still unknown and if it was linked to how the shot is made, other vaccines with similar technologies might also need to be evaluated.

He stressed the risk-benefit analysis remained positive for the AstraZeneca jab, even for young women who appear to be more affected by the clots.

'Let's not forget that young women also end up in intensive care with COVID. So we need to do very meticulous work to understand if the risk-benefit analysis remains for all ages,' he was quoted as saying.
South Asia, home to a quarter of the worlds population, has seen a surge of COVID-19 cases and deaths in recent weeks. The total number cases now stand at more than 14 million, up by approximately eight percent since March 20and over 195,000 deaths, a 3.5 percent increase in the same period.

The deadly consequences of this highly infectious disease for the regions nearly two billion inhabitants are the result of the criminal policies of South Asias ruling elites who have placed the profit interests of big business over human life.

A health worker checks the body temperature of a voter outside a polling station during the third phase of assembly election in Gauhati, India, Tuesday, April 6, 2021. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

Having largely ignored the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020, governments in South AsiaIndia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lankawere forced to declare lockdowns in March last year. These ill-prepared lockdowns, however, did not include effective mass testing procedures, contact tracing and adequate financial resources for the underfunded public health care systems and social support for millions of workers who lost their jobs and income.

Like their counterparts internationally, these governments began giving industries the go-ahead to begin reopening in late April. Lacking any real financial support, employees were compelled to return to their workplaces, despite unsafe conditions, paving the way for the current COVID-19 surge.

India is now a regional epicentre of the pandemic, with about 88 percent of total cases and 85 percent of total deaths in South Asia. On Sunday, the daily number of infections in India hit 100,000, a new record, taking the countrys total since the coronavirus struck to over 12.5 million cases with more than 165,000 deaths. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has insisted, however, that his government will not impose another national lockdown.

A recent statement from Modis office declared that the central government would maintain its mission-mode approach in the states and districts reporting high cases so that the collective gains of COVID-19 management over the last 15 months are not squandered. Modis claims of collective gains are a fraudthe massive increase of COVID-19 cases through the country is the result of his governments policies.

The statement declared that there would be a special campaign for COVID-appropriate behavior from April 614 with emphasis on 100 percent mask usage, personal hygiene and sanitation at public places, workplaces and health facilities. In other words, the responsibility for safe and healthy workplaces is being placed on ordinary working people, while big business maintains production and profits.

The Modi government is attempting to cover up its failure to contain the pandemic by claiming that it is carrying out the worlds largest vaccination program. The reality is that only five percent of the Indian population has received a COVID-19 vaccination.

Maharashtra remains the most seriously impacted Indian state. On Sunday, it recorded over 57,000 daily COVID-19 cases, a new state record, with Mumbai and Pune the two worst affected cities reporting 11,206 and 12,472 new cases respectively.

While Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray has been forced to declare a lockdown, all government offices and other industrial units, including construction sites, are allowed to maintain production at 50 percent capacity. This demonstrates that the Maharashtra government, a coalition of Thackerays fascistic Shiv Sena, Indian National Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party, supported by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Communist Party of India, has no differences with Modis criminally inadequate response to the pandemic.

Indias ill-equipped hospitals are being overwhelmed by the current coronavirus surge. On April 1, the BBC reported that the Kasturba Hospital, some 80 kilometres southwest of Nagpur in Maharashtra, one of Indias worst hit cities, is confronting a massive crisis. The COVID-19 ward with its 100 fewer beds, it said, is again filling up fast170 patients have been admitted in the last couple of weeks, and the 30-bed ICU is packed to the brim with very sick patients. Deaths are climbing.

Pakistan, which reported 5,020 daily COVID-19 cases on Sunday, has recorded 692,231 overall cases and 14,821 deaths in the past year. The more contagious UK variant is now dominant in the country. Prime Minister Imran Khan, however, has still not imposed a national lockdown.

On Sunday, Khan blandly declared that if the virus continues to spread like this, it will have a very negative impact, and we will be forced to take strict steps. He did not elaborate on what those strict steps would be. So far health and administrative authorities have only imposed a partial lockdown on affected areas in Pakistans largest province, Punjab, and in the northern part of the country.

In Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, infected patients are being turned away from hospitals because of lack of beds. On April 1, the Dawn newspaper reported that the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, which previously received emergency patients from across the country, could not take any more due to lack of beds.

The countrys current vaccination program covers a negligible portion of the population. As of April 1, only 800,000 doses had been administered in a country of 220 million people.

In Bangladesh, the total number of coronavirus cases stands at 637,364 with 9,266 total deaths. On Friday, it recorded nearly 7,000 daily cases, the highest since the outbreak of the pandemic, with 24 percent of those tested for COVID-19 found to be infected.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was forced to declare a weeklong lockdown starting Monday. State Minister for Public Administration Farhad Hossain declared that industries and factories will remain open, operating in shifts and supposedly following strict health protocols.

Bangladesh, whose underresourced hospitals are now being overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients, has only vaccinated about 5.5 million people, or less than 3.5 percent of its population.

An editorial in Saturdays Daily Star reported that the Mugda Medical College Hospital, which is dedicated to treating COVID-19, was turning away patients because it had no vacant beds. Health Minister Zahid Malik told the media that if the surge continued, Bangladeshi hospitals will not be able to accommodate and treat patients.

Sri Lanka has reported 93,436 total cases and over 581 deaths in the past 12 months. It is currently conducting just under 10,000 tests per day, one of the lowest in the region, and less than the previous inadequate daily rate between 15,000 and 20,000 tests, despite the threat of new variants spreading in the country.

The rise in COVID-19 cases is because the Rajapakse government has insisted that government offices and industries, as well as schools, should remain open. The countrys vaccination program is chaotic with just over 900,000, or less than 4.5 percent, of the population vaccinated.
A new joint-government initiative is to study how the rail network in Derry and the north west can be improved.

The North's Infrastructure Minister Nichola Mallon and the Republic's Minister for Transport, Eamon Ryan today announced the launch of an all-island Strategic Rail Review.

The review will consider how the rail network on the island of Ireland can improve sustainable connectivity between major cities, enhance regional accessibility including to the north west and support balanced regional development.

In addition, the review will consider the feasibility of high-higher speeds on the network and whether there is a potential to increase use of the network for freight.

Ms Mallon said the review will explore the opportunities to better connect communities and 'open up opportunities for our island economy'.

Travel by rail is an issue I am very passionate about and I believe it has massive untapped potential to deliver multiple benefits across our island, she said.

Since coming into office, I have been clear that it is my priority to address regional imbalance, tackle the climate crisis and better connect communities across Ireland.

"The all island Strategic Rail Review will allow us to consider our network across this island to view how we can improve it for everyone.

Building on our commitments in New Decade New Approach to progress a spine of connectivity, this ambitious review, in partnership, will look at opportunities to enhance rail across our island.

Now, more than ever our citizens deserve ambition in government and we need to take this chance for change to build back better for all peoples across Ireland.

This is an ambitious piece of work that will help inform our decision making and investment in our rail network for years to come. Its an exciting start of a journey, many have been waiting for.

Mr Ryan said he was a 'firm believer' in the potential of rail in supporting social and economic development .

This year is designated as the European Year of Rail and Im delighted to launch this strategic review of rail here in Ireland.

Im particularly pleased that well undertake this review on an all-island basis, working with our colleagues in the Northern Ireland Executive.

The review will look at how rail can help better connect cities and regions across the island and will complement the investment we already plan in our commuter rail networks.

The two ministers said that the Strategic Rail Review will be delivered by external consultants and overseen by the Department of Transport in co-operation with the Department for Infrastructure, supported by key stakeholders including the Commission for Rail Regulation, the National Transport Authority, Iarnrod Eireann and Translink.
The former Downing Street Chief of Staff under Tony Blair Jonathan Powell - who helped launch the Loyalist Communities Council - urged politicians not to play with matches in the wake of the violence and called for engagement with loyalist communities.

Mr Powell, who is not involved in the LCC, also told First Minister Arlene Foster to back off after her calls for Simon Byrne to resign.

Mrs Foster again reiterated her call for the PSNI chief constable Simon Byrne to resign, as she says the leadership of the police needs to change.

The DUP leader was speaking in the wake of days of violence across Belfast, Carrickfergus and Londonderry which saw loyalists clash with police on the streets.

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Forty-one police officers have been injured in the disorder across Northern Ireland and the Assembly at Stormont has been recalled from its Easter recess to meet on Thursday.

Mr Powell said: "I think playing with fire, in allowing this to be tied into identity politics and even violence, is a terrible mistake.

"I think people are playing with matches. I think it is really unwise, even given the turbulence caused by Brexit.

"I think that politicians trying to second guess the police when they are making operational decisions is really a mistake. I hope that the first minister will back off on this and allow the police to proceed with their job."

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Speaking the BBCs Good Morning Ulster on Wednesday, Mrs Foster revealed that she has not met with Mr Byrne and that he has not sought to meet her.

She said anger in the unionist community had been caused by what she called deferential treatment given to Sinn Fein during the Bobby Storey funeral and said Mr Byrne had been warned about specialised treatment for a political elite.

If I meet the chief constable I will simply repeat what I have said to him last Tuesday after the devastating report from the PPS. That he had lost the confidence of the unionist community and he should resign, she said.

I have made it perfectly clear, I believe that the leadership of the PSNI has compromised itself to a point where it needs to change.

I support all of those police officers who are having to deal with an outrageous couple of nights.

As a political leader and as a public representative, I dont just have a right to talk about these issues, I have a duty to call out things when they are not correct.

I have had a number of contacts, as indeed have all of my colleagues right across Northern Ireland, from ordinary police officers who feel let down by the leadership of the PSNI.

I spoke with Mark Lindsay of the Police Federation. My party colleagues have been speaking with their commanders right across Northern Ireland to help in any way they can and we will continue to do that.

Mrs Foster also condemned the malign influences as a cause for the violence and added that she supported the right for loyalists to protest in the appropriate way.

Stacey Graham, a loyalist community worker from the Shankill Road area said loyalists were getting increasingly frustrated after a perception communities had been left behind by the peace process.

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There has been a growing feeling that the Good Friday Agreement hasnt worked for loyalist communities. People really feel they have been let down and left behind and there is a serious disconnect to the political and social structure in Northern Ireland, she told the BBC.

Jonathan Powell - who also was involved in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement talks - said he disagreed with the comments.

"There is a problem that loyalists have got left behind," he said.

"They sort of lost their political voice. I think there needs to be an attempt to reach out to loyalists who are prepared to go down the political path."

I think the politics has got really quite hot in Northern Ireland. I think it is a mistake to try and make it [politics] interesting in the wrong way again with these kinds of issues. We should try and calm everything down. Lets get back to talking about things that really should matter to people.

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Speaking to BBC Radio 4s programme, Mr Lindsay said he didn't think the first ministers call for the chief constable to resign was a good or sustainable position.

"Our officers still require a chief constable and I think there needs to be some political will to actually either underpin or remove him, he added.

"The proper mechanism for that is the policing board, of which all political parties are represented. So they hired him two years ago and it's up to them then to make the decision around that.

Certainly our members are very disturbed around the political use of commentary that says the chief constable should resign."

Meanwhile, the EU ambassador to the UK has said those wanting an end to the Northern Ireland protocol do not have a better idea of how it should be replaced.

Joao Vale de Almeida told The Guardian, focus should be on making the protocol work. He said the EU would be constructive but it had to remain within the working of the protocol. He said he understood the complexities of Northern Ireland and had recently visited.

He said solutions would come from "implementing the protocol well".

[Lets] not forget the origin of the issues. We are talking about the impact of Brexit, which was decided by the British people, he said.

We are talking about the impact of the departure from the single market, which was decided on the British side as well.
While California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday the state's colored tier system of coronavirus restrictions could go away on June 15 if cases continue to decline, the so-called Blueprint for a Safer Economy continues to remain in place until then. Today, the state updated tier levels as usual.

Newsom said at a press briefing in San Francisco that 16 counties across the state moved to less restrictive tiers.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, Contra Costa, Napa and Sonoma counties jumped from the red to the less stringent orange tier. All other counties in the region have already advanced into the orange  except Solano, which is still in the red.

It's no surprise Solano remains in the red tier, and for some it may come as a relief that the county is staying put, as public health officials speculated the county could regress into the purple at some point soon.

Before the Easter holiday weekend, officials warned about a concerning increase in positive cases, with the bulk of new infections appearing in younger people not yet eligible for vaccination. Residents were asked to wear masks and not gather.

Too early to call it a surge now but that doesnt mean its not the beginning of a surge. Only time will tell, Bela Matyas, the county's health officer, told KRON. "We are now starting to get uncomfortably close to the level of the disease reported each day that would put us back in purple."

The state's color-coded reopening framework assigns a tier to each county, dictating which business sectors and activities can operate. The state announces new tier assignments on Tuesday, and on Wednesday counties can move forward with reopenings.

In Contra Costa, Napa and Sonoma counties, a move into the orange means beginning tomorrow, restaurants, movie theaters, gyms and places of worship can expand capacity of indoor operations. It also allows bars, winery tasting rooms, and non-essential offices to reopen with limits.

The state's system sorts counties into four tiers  "purple" (widespread), "red" (substantial), "orange" (moderate) or "yellow" (minimal)  that measure the spread of COVID-19 and dictate what types of businesses and activities are allowed to open. The system has been in place since August, but Newsom said today the state will get rid of the tiers beginning June 15 if hospitalization rates remain stable and low and vaccines continue to roll out at a steady pace.

"We are moving beyond the blueprint," said Newsom, referring to the Blueprint for a Safer Economy that has been in place since August. "On June 15, we will be moving beyond the blueprint and getting rid of the colored tiers. Well be getting rid of the dimmer switch."

With the end to the tier system, California will move into this next phase where the state is fully reopened.

Newom didn't provide specifics on what this means, but the state issued a press release stating "everyday activities" can resume and businesses can operate with "common-sense risk reduction measures, including encouraging all Californians to get vaccinated and mandating masking, to prevent illness and promote health."
When officials from CHI-St. Lukes The Woodlands Hospital called art teacher Suzanne Ettman and asked her to help develop a face mask design for the hospitals new Hello Humankindness campaign, she didnt hesitate to agree to assist with the effort.

It was like out of the blue, St. Lukes contacted us and asked us to take part and I said yes, Ettman recalled.

That collaboration led to the unveiling recently of a new face mask designed by fifth grade girl Isabella Del Valle, a student in Ettmans art classes at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic School.

It was a winning design with stars and Be Kind written on it, a result of Ettmans fourth and fifth grade art class students, who made dozens of designs and submitted them for review.

Now, the new design will be printed on masks that will be distributed to thousands of first responders such as EMTs, firefighters and police officers as well as hospital and health care staff, teachers, grocery store workers and other community volunteers, said a spokesperson for CHI-St. Lukes The Woodlands Hospital. .

On HoustonChronicle.com: Interfaith of The Woodlands keeps charity efforts going during pandemic

Jim Parisi, north Houston market president of St. Lukes Health, said the program to design the face mask with local students was, an extension of St. Lukes Healths new Hello humankindness movement. He said as a faith-based health care provider, one goal is empathy and compassion and spreading kindness and joy is part of healing.

According to a press release issued about the new face mask design, officials said the Hello humankindness program is, grounded in the belief that while medicine has the ability to cure, shared humanity and human connection has the power to heal body, mind and spirit.

Parisi said the effort was especially important due to the stress inflicted upon society as the coronavirus pandemic has altered the world over the past 14 months. Toss in political divisiveness and COVID-related stress and the idea of being more respectful to one another is heightened in importance, he added..

Weve been talking for some time about (the campaign) and we rolled it out internally, then now externally. It is really about taking care of peoples minds, bodies and spirit, not just sort of the physical part of it. Our thought was, were in the middle of a pandemic, wouldnt it make sense to reach out to an elementary school and get their feed back what human kindness means. We challenged them to design masks to potentially share with our first responders as a kindness gesture. What could be more important than to hear from these students on what kindness means.

On HoustonChronicle.com: John Cooper students, business owner make PPE gear for first responders

At the event with her parents and extended family, Isabella helped distribute masks to members of The Woodlands Fire Department and others, and in a press release from CHI-St. Lukes said she was happy to help with the masks and being kind to others.

Human kindness means to me, helping others and being nice to them, and giving them comfort. Being nice to others is a very important thing. I drew the design for this mask because I think that stars will brighten up your night and it will also brighten up some peoples hearts, she said a press release from hospital officials. I wear a mask because it protects other people from the virus. Now I can wear it and show people that I really like being kind to others, and wear something that proves it.

Art classes played role

Ettman, who teaches kindergarten through eighth grade art at the school at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church, said the project developed quickly once officials at CHI-St. Lukes contacted her. She also lauded the students for their creativity, noting she only gave them one theme: kindness.

I proposed this to fourth and fifth graders and they drew what they felt kindness is, Ettman said. Her whole family was thrilled. We had a really nice experience at the fire department presenting the masks to firefighters and police officers who attended. (Students) realize we all need to be kinder to each other. A lot of people mentioned how you cant see someone smile with the mask on and how the message on the masks we created would be so nice for officers or firefighters when they are helping someone.

Ettman said officials at CHI-St. Lukes choose two designs at first, but one that featured smart phone-like emoji imagery was eliminated as it was deemed it could violate copyright regulations.

I was pleased with what the kids came up with. I did not give them anything to go on, Ettman added. I asked them to make a mask with what you think kindness is.

The recent efforts from the students at St. Anthony school are part of a larger campaign of charity from students and youth across Montgomery County during the pandemic. Students from Conroe Independent School District schools as well as The John Cooper School have made or helped coordinate donations of face masks and other PPE since March of 2020. There was also a Help our Heroes PPE campaign in the first six weeks of the pandemic.

Parisi said officials were glad to showcase the facemasks and help inspire creativity from local youth in a positive manner. The campaign of kindness is part of the faith-based hospital system, now under the umbrella of CommonSpirit Health. He said the camaraderie and support from everyone in the community during the pandemic has been inspiring.

This is really just where we are in this world right now dealing with this pandemic and the stress and not being able to see peoples faces and smiles and things like that. To me it was the right time to talk about human kindness and the difference it can make in in our community and society, Parisi added. We wanted to recognize all our first responders, fire, police and EMS, the grocery store workers...(they) all are working and giving us access to the things we need. You have to start with small steps, several small things can really help.

jeff.forward@chron.com
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday projected that the global economy will grow by 6 percent in 2021, 0.5 percentage point above the January forecast, according to the latest World Economic Outlook (WEO).

"Thanks to the ingenuity of the scientific community, hundreds of millions of people are being vaccinated, and this is expected to power recoveries in many countries later this year," IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath told a virtual press briefing during the World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings.

She noted that economies also continue to adapt to new ways of working despite reduced mobility, and large economies, particularly the United States, have rolled out additional fiscal support, both of which have helped improve the outlook.

Nonetheless, the future presents "daunting" challenges, said the IMF chief economist. "The pandemic is yet to be defeated and virus cases are accelerating in many countries," she said.

Noting that there's uncertainty surrounding the forecast, Petya Koeva Brooks, deputy director of the IMF's Research Department, told Xinhua in a remote interview Tuesday that the chief source of that uncertainty is the path of the pandemic and the vaccination process.

In the baseline, the IMF assumes that there's wide availability of vaccines in the second half of this year in advanced economies, as well as some emerging markets, but for the rest of the world, the wide availability would occur only in 2022 or even beyond, Brooks said.

In a downside scenario, with delayed vaccination and a more difficult path of the pandemic, global economy is expected to grow by 4.5 percent, 1.5 percentage points lower than in the baseline projection, according to Brooks.

At the virtual press conference, Gopinath told reporters that recoveries are diverging dangerously across and within countries, as economies with slower vaccine rollout, more limited policy support, and more reliant on tourism do less well.

She urged policymakers to take a "tailored" approach in providing support, with policies well-calibrated to the stage of the pandemic, the strength of the economic recovery, and the structural characteristics of individual countries.

"Governments will need to build back the fiscal positions after this crisis. And the hope is that they will build forward better to have more inclusive, sustainable, green economies," said the IMF chief economist.

The WEO report also noted that uneven recoveries are occurring within countries as young and lower-skilled workers "remain more heavily affected," and women have also suffered more, especially in emerging market and developing economies.

"In the next stage, what would be most important is to kind of withdraw those (job retention) schemes gradually, and then to help people reallocate, acquire new skills, which would make them competitive in the new sector," Brooks told Xinhua.

The latest WEO showed that the United States would be the only large advanced economy projected to surpass the level of gross domestic product (GDP) it was forecast to have in 2022 in the absence of this pandemic. The U.S. economy is expected to grow by 6.4 percent this year, after a 3.5-percent contraction in 2020.

Other advanced economies, including those in the euro area, will also rebound this year but at a slower pace, the report noted.

Among emerging markets and developing economies, China is projected to grow by 8.4 percent this year, 0.3 percentage point above the January forecast, according to the report.

The upward revision, Gopinath said, reflects improved external environment, with stronger global growth and U.S. COVID-19 relief package, which have increased the demand for China's products.

Noting that China has seen a very strong recovery, the IMF chief economist said the recovery is "somewhat unbalanced," as it's still heavily reliant on public support and public investment, and private consumption has not recovered as fast as hoped.

"So, to make this a durable recovery, our hope is that fiscal measures and other support measures would work in the direction of supporting the recovery coming from the private sector, as opposed to the public sector," she said.

Noting that withdrawing policy support prematurely would expose the economy to additional risks, Brooks advised Chinese policymakers enhance the safety net, which would enable China to be on the rebalancing path, and benefit the economy in the medium to long run.

While China's economy had already returned to pre-pandemic GDP in 2020, many other emerging markets and developing economies are not expected to do so until 2023, the WEO report showed.

The newly released report projected the global economy to expand 4.4 percent in 2022, 0.2 percentage point above its January forecast. In 2020, global economy saw an estimated historic contraction of 3.3 percent, according to the IMF.
Workforce

EPA eliminates Trump workforce orders from labor contract

The Environmental Protection Agency rolled back the clock on portions of its collective bargaining agreement on official time, union office space, grievance procedures and more to eliminate provisions added during the Trump administration under an interim agreement.

The agreement, which takes effect April 7 and covers 7,500 EPA employees, is in keeping with an executive order from President Joe Biden eliminating multiple workforce policies put in place under the Trump administration to cut back on the amount of paid time employees can spend on union business and to eliminate union access to agency office space and infrastructure.

For now, the agency is reverting to the terms of a 2007 collective bargaining agreement to govern official time, grievance procedures and performance evaluations.

A telework provision in the 2020 agreement will remain in place with some adjustment. For the time being, a maximum telework policy is in effect because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Telework will be included in the next round of union-management negotiations.

"This is a huge step in the right direction," Gary Morton, president of American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, said in a statement. "The union won't stop fighting until we eliminate all of the anti-labor provisions forced on us by the previous administration."
An Alabama sheriff's deputy known as being a fan favorite on Live PD sobbed and began hyperventilating as she suffered a severe reaction to fentanyl she had touched during a drug raid.

Jefferson County Sheriff's Corporal Deanna Marshall, 33, was administered two doses of Narcan after she pulled over on the side of Interstate 65 to radio for help on March 27.

Marshall's intense reaction was captured on her body camera.

'I've seen how quick it can take someone over on the many times that I have worked overdose calls. I've actually used Narcan on someone. I've seen them blue,' Marshall said to AL.com.

Narcan is an antidote to an opioid overdose.

Scroll down for video

Jefferson County Sheriff's Corporal Deanna Marshall, 33, was administered two doses of Narcan after she pulled over on the side of Interstate 65 to radio for help on March 27

'I can control anything that I work with, but I couldn't control this because it was something that alters your mind and body that I didn't do to myself. It was a very helpless feeling.'

Marshall and other members of the Sheriff's Neighborhood Enforcement Team (SNET) were sent to a Warrior area home after receiving tips that there was heroin, methamphetamine and fentanyl inside. Authorities were also searching for two people they wanted to question.





'We were allowed access inside of the house and one of the suspects was there that we needed to talk to,' she explained. 'We saw paraphernalia and drugs in plain view and at that point we just did a walk through with the suspect with us.'

Marshall's intense reaction was captured on her body camera

She added: 'Heroin, fentanyl, loaded needles, empty needles, spoons, baggies that were open, baggies that were closed. Every drawer I opened, I found something. It was all over the dresser.'

Marshall even found 7.2 grams of crystal meth hidden in the floor vent of a bathroom where a woman had been taking a shower.

The deputy was responsible for collecting the drugs, and she wore gloves and a face mask as she collected the illicit items and placed them on a tray.

'There were so many things I had been touching, I guess my hand touched something that later touched something,' Marshall shared.

'When I left, I felt like I was just overheated. There was no AC in the house, we hadn't eaten lunch and we were in full gear. I didn't really think anything about it.'

Marshall had been driving the woman suspect to the downtown jail when the inmate recommended that she take the Interstate to get to Birmingham faster.

The deputy struggled on her ride, eventually asking the suspect if there had been fentanyl inside the house.

'She was like, "Yes," and I was stupid to even ask that question,' Marshall explained. 'At that point, I decided to radio it in. I pulled over on an exit ramp and radioed in that I felt like I was about to pass out.'

Marshall and other members of the Sheriff's Neighborhood Enforcement Team (SNET) were sent to a Warrior area home after receiving tips that there was heroin, methamphetamine and fentanyl inside. Authorities were also searching for two people they wanted to question

Marshall's reaction only got more intense as she spoke with the dispatcher and Sgt. Brandon Sunday, who was nearby and had just seen her patrol car on the interstate.

'It was out of my control so then I began to panic, and my adrenaline was going, which was accelerating it,' she described.

Even the woman inside the patrol car tried calming the deputy down.

'When she realized I was in full panic mode, I could hear her telling me to breathe, that it was OK and I was going to get through it,' Marshall said.

Marshalls suffered her reaction as she drove a woman suspect to a downtown Birmingham jail

Marshall stayed on call with the dispatcher as her team arrived at the scene, with Cpl. Ryan Holley getting to her first.

'I felt locked up. I turned in my seat and I was crying. I was like, "I don't feel good bro,"' she said.

'He grabs me, and I start walking out and I'm yelling at him that I'm numb. He dragged me from the side of the Tahoe to behind the Tahoe to get me away from the traffic. I was laying in his lap and he had both of my hands. He was trying to get me to calm down.'

'He was getting me to talk to him, to answer questions to distract me from the shock. I think it really did help. The right side of my body was locked up and my right hand was like a dinosaur hand. It was like when your foot falls asleep and it tingles and hurts and is numb. That was my whole body.'

It was then that deputies administered the life-saving nasal spray to Marshall.

'They said when they did the first Narcan, my eyes were constricted and then went to normal and then went back to constriction,' she said. 'They had to wait two or three minutes before the next dose, and then they did that dose.'

Marshall was taken to a local hospital, where she said that she also cried.

'I felt fine, but I didn't understand  that's how quick Narcan can reverse it,' Marshall said. 'One of the paramedics even said, "Are you mad at us for killing your high? We're so used to addicts getting mad at us for stopping it." I was crying like, "Thank you for stopping that terrible feeling."'

'It blows my mind why somebody would choose that. It's actually very sad. It was something that I could not help. I was helpless and I'm not OK with being helpless.'

It is unclear to the deputy how she came into contact with the fentanyl, however.

'I touched so many different things,' she said.

But ultimately, Marshall said she is thankful for her team for quickly coming to her rescue.

'I was scared I was going to die right then. It was my boys that got me,' she said. 'Theyre my brothers. It was teamwork, in a different way.'
Bao Viet Securities Company (BVS) expects Vietnam's stock market might attract up to US$1.4 billion from index tracking funds, if Vietnam is officially upgraded to a secondary emerging market by FTSE.

A man watching stocks in front of a screen.  Photo doanhnghiepvadautu.net.vn

In an assessment and classification result released at the end of March, FTSE acknowledged efforts of the State Securities Commission of Vietnam in improving the legal corridor, and as the revised version of the Law on Securities went into effect in January, it is expected to pave the way for improving the market's quality.

However, in practice, Vietnam's stock market continues to fail to meet the criteria for clearing operations under the Delivery vs Payment (DvP) model due to the requirement of depositing enough money in Clause 2, Article 7 of Circular 203/2015/TT-BTC, according to FTSE.

Therefore it continued not to meet the two criteria, including "Settlement Cycle (DvP)" - rated at Restricted, and the criterion "Settlement - rare incidence of failed trades" - was not rated.

As the market met seven out of nine conditions for being upgraded to the secondary emerging market offered by FTSE, the Vietnamese stock market continues to be on the watch list for upgrading to secondary emerging market of FTSE for the evaluation in September.

Despite that, BVS still maintains a positive stance on the prospect that Vietnam will be upgraded to a secondary emerging market by FTSE in its 2022 upgrade assessment.

In case of officially being upgraded to a secondary emerging market, BVS estimated that Vietnam's stock market will attract up to US$1.4 billion from funds tracking or benchmarking indices like the FTSE Global All-Cap, FTSE All-World and FTSE Emerging Markets.

Based on historical data of actual movements of global markets, at least three months, from September to December, before a stock market is officially upgraded to emerging market by FTSE, that market usually receives strong cash flows from foreign investors and enters an upwards trend, BVS said.

With the expectation that the Vietnamese stock market can be upgraded in two assessments of FTSE in 2022, BVSC expects that foreign cash flows may flood into the country's stock market from the second half of 2021.

Under FTSE's set of criteria, large-cap stocks are the most likely to benefit from the trend.

BVSC believes that with a positive macroeconomic outlook, being upgraded to secondary emerging market is a positive signal for the improvement of the market quality and will help the country's stock market attract investment flows.

VNS
China institutes new crackdown on 'illegal social organizations' to go after house churches

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China has launched a campaign to increase restrictions on five types of social organizations that the government has deemed illegal, which includes house churches that aren't members of the Chinese Communist Party-backed Three-Self Patriotic Association.

According to Radio Free Asia, Chinas Ministry of Civil Affairs recently announced a campaign to shut down organizations that aren't registered with authorities but have carried out activities in the name of a social organization, private non-enterprise unit or foundation.

Organizations that continue with their activities despite their revoked registration are also a target of the campaign, the ministry said.

Persecution watchdog group International Christian Concern reports that the five social organizations now deemed to be illegal include those that the regime has accused of committing fraud or engaging in economic, cultural or charity activities in the name of implementing national strategies.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs is also targeting organizations using the words China, Zhonghua, or National in their names, which are accused of "pretending to be subsidiaries of state organizations; those who join forces with legal organizations to deceive [the government]; organizing competitions in the name of celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP); planning activities that pretend to promote health, sinology, or mysticism, and those that hold gatherings in the name of religion," ICC adds.

Already, the campaign has been implemented in provinces including Sichuan. According to RFA, the Department of Civil Affairs in Sichuan published a list of 84 so-called Illegal Social Organizations on March 25 which names several Buddhist and Christian groups, including Early Rain Covenant Church, which has not been able to gather in person since the communist regime shut down the church in 2018.

Father Francis Liu from the Chinese Christian Fellowship of Righteousness told RFA, In the eyes of the Chines government, any religious group that refuses to submit to the CCP, or even charity groups, are seen as illegal organizations, for the government is fearful that these civil groups can become a force that overthrows them.

Christian charity Open Doors ranks China at No. 17 on its World Watch List of 50 countries where Christians are most persecuted.

A November 2020 report from the Pew Research Center showed that restrictions on religion in China had risen to a record level. Researchers found that China continued to have the highest score on the Government Restrictions Index out of all 198 countries and territories in the study.

A recent report revealed that Christians across China are being detained in secretive, mobile "transformation" facilities where they're subject to brainwashing, torture and beatings to force them to renounce their faith.

One Christian who was held captive for 10 months in a facility run by the CCP after a raid on his church in 2018 shared how he was held in a windowless room with no ventilation where he was subjected to various forms of torture.

He also revealed that most of his fellow inmates were also people who had been released on bail during criminal detention for taking part in church-related activities. Because police couldnt prosecute them for any particular crimes, they were sent to the so-called "transformation" facilities.

Boyd-MacMillan, director of Strategic Research at Open Doors, recently told the Express UK that Chinas Christian community might reach a staggering 300 million people by 2030. The CCP is increasingly concerned about the Christian population's growth, he said, and is cracking down on religion as a result.

"We think the evidence as to why the Chinese Church is so targeted, is that the leaders are scared of the size of the Church and the growth of the Church, Boyd-MacMillan said.

"And if it grows at the rate that it has done since 1980, and that's about between 7 [percent] and 8 percent a year, then you're looking at a group of people that will be 300 million strong, nearly by 2030. And, you know, the Chinese leadership, they really do long term planning, I mean, their economic plan goes to 2049, so this bothers them. Because I think if the Church continues to grow like that, then they'll have to share power."
Manhas went missing after a joint team of the CRPF and two other security forces clashed with Maoists at the borders between Chhattisgarhs Sukma and Bijapur districts on Saturday. (Photo: ANI)

SRINAGAR: The family of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) jawan who went missing during a deadly encounter with the NaxaliteMaoist militants in Chhattisgarh at the weekend has said that his photograph doing the rounds on an instant messaging platform is almost 12 months old.

It rejected the claims that it was snapped and released by Maoists after taking CRPFs Rakeshwar Singh Manhas, a resident of Jammu, "captive". Manhas went missing after a joint team of the CRPF and two other security forces clashed with Maoists at the borders between Chhattisgarhs Sukma and Bijapur districts on Saturday. As many as 22 security personnel were killed and many more injured during the encounter. However, the CRPF's Director General, Kuldiep Singh, had claimed inflicting huge losses on the Maoists. He also said there is no confirmation yet that Manhas has been held captive by Maoists.

The missing contable's family members, friends and neighbours held a protest demonstration along the Jammu-Poonch National Highway on Wednesday, demanding his safe release and strong action against Maoists. His cousin Praveen Singh Manhad said that the photograph of the missing jawan that has surfaced on social media with the message that he is safe in captivity is almost a year-old. "I had seen it on his phone during his last visit to home, he told reporters. He added that releasing the photograph through a social networking platform could be a "ploy" by Maoists.

He echoed the sentiment of Manhas's family and friends and said, "Our anxiety is increasing with every passing hour. We're concerned about his safety and security and urge the government to take swift and stern action to secure his return and against the Maoists."

A report said that several journalists in Chhattisgarh received the photo on their WhatsApp on Wednesday. The sender claimed that Minhas was not hurt in the captivity of Maoists.

On Monday, Manhas's five-year-old daughter Shragvi had appealed the Maoists "Please, release my father.
Longtime owner and racing school legend Skip Barber announced a new ownership structure for Lime Rock Park racetrack in Lakeville, according to a press release.

Barber, 84, has owned Lime Rock Park for 37 years. Hell remain a significant owner in Lime Rock Group, LLC and will continue to be a part of its management committee.

The Groups General Partners, Charles Mallory, Dicky Riegel and Bill Rueckert along with a group of private investors have assumed control of Lime Rock Park and are bringing outstanding new vision and vitality to Lime Rocks operations and to our local and regional community, Barber said. They are the ideal stewards of the Parks long and successful legacy. This is truly wonderful news for everyone involved with Lime Rock as we commence our 65th year of operations.

Riegel, the former President & CEO of Airstream, Inc. and COO of Thor Industries, Inc., will serve as Lime Rock Parks new CEO.

Lime Rock has been one of my favorite places and my home track for over 40 years; the same is true for my partners, Charles and Bill, both of whom consider Lime Rock a home away from home, Riegel said. All of us have deep roots in Connecticut and look forward to being active in the community and working collaboratively with the Town. To now be owners of this iconic and storied brand is a dream come true.

In 2020, Lime Rock Park postponed or canceled many of its events due to the coronavirus pandemic.

But the venue appears to be ready for action in 2021; its Trans Am Memorial Day Classic  a major spectator event for the racetrack  is currently scheduled for May 28-31, and theres a full lineup of other events on the venues website.

Lime Rock Groups investors include seasoned motorsports luminaries and automotive entities that will immediately drive new activity for the Park, including manufacturer and sponsor relationships, according to the release.

Most importantly, all of the Groups investors are passionate motorsports enthusiasts intent on burnishing Lime Rocks traditions and reputation while also evolving to meet modern demands.

michael.hamad@hearstmediact.com
Manitoba has a small window of opportunity to get as many high-risk people immunized as possible before more contagious variants of concern take footholds in the province.

Manitoba has a small window of opportunity to get as many high-risk people immunized as possible before more contagious variants of concern take footholds in the province.

Despite a massive influx of COVID-19 vaccine shipments in recent weeks, government is squandering that chance.

Tens of thousands of doses of the life-saving vaccine continue to pile up in freezers, with no plan to significantly draw down supply. Manitobas vaccine inventory has more than doubled over the past two weeks.

Doses received but not administered: Feb. 14  14,535 Feb. 21  23,384 Feb. 28  33,012 March 7  35,112 March 14  54,110 March 21  60,073 March 28  79,658 April 3  139,623 April 6  155,312 click to read more Feb. 14  14,535 Feb. 21  23,384 Feb. 28  33,012 March 7  35,112 March 14  54,110 March 21  60,073 March 28  79,658 April 3  139,623 April 6  155,312 Change in daily cumulative doses administered Daily (includes First Nations): March 27  5,385 March 28  5,026 March 29  4,733 March 30  5,282 March 31  7,466 *April 1-2  13,078 *April 3-4  5,981 April 5  6,630 *  province did not publish updates April 2 and 4  source: Manitoba government online vaccine dashboard Close

The province has received 372,030 doses but administered only 216,718 (58 per cent). The rest are either in storage or have been shipped to third parties, including medical clinics, pharmacies, and First Nations.

Despite repeated pledges by Manitoba officials to "drive down inventory," the surplus continues to grow.

In mid-March, the difference between the number of doses received and administered exceeded 50,000. Two weeks ago, it reached 79,658. After receiving shipments totalling more than 123,000 doses last week (which were scheduled more than two weeks ago), the inventory ballooned to 155,312, as of Tuesday.

With close to 50,000 scheduled to arrive this week and another 66,000 next week, that surplus is expected to remain largely unchanged until at least the end of the month. The province is projecting to administer 50,000-60,000 doses per week between now and April 25.

Manitoba is tied with Nova Scotia for last among the provinces in getting doses into arms.

Saskatchewan, which ranks first, has received 87,000 fewer doses than Manitoba but administered almost 11,000 more shots (even though its population is more spread out than Manitoba).

Saskatchewan is using drive-thru immunization clinics to help expedite its rollout. Some provinces have set up wait lists that allow people who have signed up to get immunized when surplus doses are available at the end of each day.

Manitoba is doing neither. It is lumbering along with a sluggish system failing to keep up with supply.

Pharmacies are clamouring for more doses. Doctors Manitoba says physicians are willing and able to help out by administering Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines in their clinics. So far, the province has only distributed limited amounts of the AstraZeneca vaccine to clinics and pharmacies.

The clock is ticking.

The province could soon be overwhelmed by more contagious variants (look to British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario). Yet, there is still no local sense of urgency to get needles into arms.

Johanu Botha, right, co-lead of Manitoba's Vaccine committee, and Dr. Joss Reimer, medical lead of the committee. (John Woods / Canadian Press files)

Manitoba has done a good job of limiting the spread of the novel coronavirus in recent months. It continues to have the lowest number of daily cases of COVID-19 per capita in the country west of the Maritimes.

The province reported an average of 78 new cases per 100,000 over the past 14 days, far below Ontario (231), Saskatchewan (248), Alberta (244), and B.C. (240).

Even after Manitoba eased restrictions in early March, for the third time this year, the provinces test positivity rate has remained relatively stable at about four to five per cent (up from three per cent on March 5). The number of COVID-19 patients in hospital, which has fallen during most of 2021, has also stabilized.

Government deserves credit for its prudent, gradual reopening plan. It has served the province well, but with variants of concern on the rise, that may not last.

Whats missing is an aggressive, urgent vaccination plan.

Provincial officials continue to play down the size of the growing inventory and claim theyre getting vaccines into arms almost as quickly as doses arrive.

It is a patently untrue statement.

If the province were administering shots that quickly, its inventory would not have soared from 35,112 to 155,312 doses over the past month. The province would have increased daily immunizations to keep pace with incoming supply.

It didnt. Its a clear case of incompetence.

The longer it takes the province to ramp up its vaccine rollout, the greater the risk of severe illness and death. These delays are reckless, putting Manitobans lives in jeopardy.

tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca
NORTHAMPTON  St. John Cantius needs a miracle.

The former Catholic church, built by Polish immigrants in 1904 and now facing demolition, needs someone with $2 million dollars and a lot of desire, said Northampton Ward 3 Councilor James Nash.

Or it needs the current owner, Holyokes OConnell Development Group, to get on board with a new plan rather than pushing forward its intention to demolish the church and construct as many as five townhomes in its place.

OConnell is already marketing other townhomes on the site for $750,000 each.

There is hope. The citys Central Business Architectural Committee voted Tuesday to reject OConnells demolition plan. A representative could not be reached for comment Wednesday about the companys next step.

At the same meeting, Nash announced that an anonymous donor has put up $50,000 in a bid to save not only St. John Cantius but to also St. Marys Church.

I dont think weve saved the church, Nash said Wednesday. I think weve bought a little time. My goal is just to keep the conversation going.

Matthew Welter, vice president of development for OConnell, gave a presentation Tuesday night saying the company has exhausted redevelopment options and the building is in poor shape.

Deborah M. Henson, president of the Ward 3 Civic Association, said she believes demolition opponents who spoke out Tuesday saying the damage is superficial and that the building could be put to commercial use.

Nobody wants this church torn down, she said. I just think there needs to be more research on this.

It troubles Henson that OConnells assertion that the building cant be economically turned into a restaurant, brewpub or other business is based on Northamptons economy as it stands now, during a pandemic that has closed restaurants and stifled tourism.

As we are moving, fingers crossed, to the end of this tunnel, she said, then maybe those financial conditions will change. It just seems like there are other options here.

At 10,544 square feet, St. Marys is larger than St. John Cantius, with a little more than 6,000 square feet. St. Marys is also in worse shape, advocates said, and would be a more complex redevelopment project.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield has the St. Marys property listed for sale, complete with its rectory and about 1.5 acres of land, at $2.9 million. It has been on the market since at least 2016.

OConnell bought the 2.23-acre St. John Cantius property a year for $1.6 million.

Both churches closed in 2011 as part of cutbacks ordered by the diocese.

Related content:
Francesca Paris is The Eagle's data and public records reporter. She was previously the North Adams reporter. A California native and Williams College alumna, she has worked at NPR in Washington, D.C. and WBUR in Boston. Find her on Twitter at @fparises.
in the country remained unchanged on Wednesday with oil marketing companies continuing on the pause mode and keeping and unchanged for seven consecutive day.

Accordingly, the pump price of and diesel remained at previous days level of Rs 90.56 and Rs 80.87 a litre respectively in the capital.

and diesel fell by 22 paisa and 23 paisa per litre respectively last week on Tuesday in the wake of the global softening of oil prices. OMCs have decided to pause price revision as they want to watch the crude price movement that has now fallen to around $62.5 a barrel from remaining above this level in much of the last week.

Across the country as well the petrol and remained static but its retail levels varied depending on the level of local levies on respective states. In Mumbai, petrol continues to be priced at Rs 96.98 a litre and diesel at Rs 87.96 a litre. Premium petrol, however, continues to remain over Rs 100 a litre in the city as is the case with several cities across the country.

Meanwhile, Strong economic data from China and the United States helped lift oil prices by more than 1% on Tuesday, recouping some of the previous session's losses. Brent gained 83 cents, or 1.3%, to $62.98 a barrel by 1:19 p.m. EDT (1719 GMT). U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude rose 91 cents, or 1.6%, to $59.56 a barrel.

Prices were buoyed as March data showed U.S. services activity touched a record high. China's service sector has also gathered steam with the sharpest increase in sales in three months.

In addition, England is set to ease more coronavirus restrictions on April 12, allowing businesses including all shops, gyms, hair salons and outdoor hospitality venues to reopen.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allies, known as OPEC+, agreed last week to bring back 350,000 barrels per day (bpd) of supply in May, another 350,000 bpd in June and a further 400,000 bpd or so in July.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. and MINNEAPOLIS, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Loyal Companion, part of the Independent Pet Partners (IPP), parent family of neighborhood pet wellness stores and ecommerce, added a new location to its already-existing 54 stores, all located along the northeast region. This new pet wellness store, offering food and supplies plus nail trims and grooming services, officially opened in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, on Feb. 25, 2021. The local team will celebrate with a series of events spanning April 7-11, 2021, known as "The 5 Days of Free."

Experience Pet Wellness at Old Town Virginia

Loyal Companion chose the city of Alexandria for its beloved downtown and nationally designated historic district on the Potomac River waterfront. This neighborhood, with its well-known King Street Mile, is lined with other locally independent businesses yet was in need of a pet retailer. "We see this as a great opportunity to serve neighborhood pet parents," says Brian Murphy, President of IPP. "The new live+work+shop development in Old Town with the 232 pet-friendly apartments is the perfect location. With over 27,000 pet parents within three miles of our store, Loyal Companion is excited to be a part of this tight-knit community to offer everything our neighbors may need for their beloved dogs and cats."

The very foundation of this Loyal Companion location and every location moving forward is the 5 Pillars of Pet Wellness. These pillars focus on helping pets live long, healthy lives, with store team members, also knowns as "pet foodies," having a combined million hours of training to help customers find the perfect food, toy, treat, supplement or accessory. "Most special about this location is that Alexandria will be one of the first Loyal Companion locations that is specifically designed and visually merchandized based on our core framework in the 5 Pillars of Pet Wellness," said Tricia Nichols, Chief Marketing Officer of IPP. "Nourishment, Play, Comfort, Companionship and Purpose drive the entire experience in the store, from product wayfinding to customer education and team member advice."

5 Days of Free

Starting on April 7 and running through the 11th, the store will celebrate with 5 Days of Free, each day focusing on one of the 5 Pillars mentioned above. During the events, the store will offer double rewards, free toys, free food samples, free advice from a trainer, free nail trims with a groomer and more. The events will take place at the store located at 923 N Saint Asaph St., Alexandria, VA 22314 from 10 a.m.-7 p.m. daily. For more details on the 5 Days of Free, visit loyalcompanion.com/oldtown.

Press Release Contact: Jessica Peterson | [email protected]

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Loyal Companion Old Town Virginia

Experience Pet Wellness at Old Town Virginia



SOURCE Loyal Companion
The Pound to Euro exchange rate has fallen to test lows of 1.163 after Sterling collapsed across the board on Tuesday. Why is the Pound so low?

The EUR rates did benefit from news that Germany, France can inoculate bulk of population by summer.

Pound Sterling had held a strong tone while UK markets were closed for the Easter holidays, but the UK currency dipped sharply on Tuesday as trading volumes recovered.

"Wow! What happened to GBP overnight? No idea" says Marshall Gittler, analyst at BDSwiss in a brief to clients on Wednesday. "Neither Bloomberg nor Reuters nor anyone else I could find had a good explanation of why GBP basically collapsed. It seems to have been a reaction against the big move on Monday April 5th, which took place while the UK was out for the Easter holiday.

"For GBP/USD, all that happened was that it unwound Mondays gains. The real move was vs EUR. EUR/GBP moved up substantially (shown as down in the graph below, to make the movement in the two pairs comparable). If you look at the graph at the bottom of this comment, youll see that EUR/GBP was the biggest mover of any of the pairs I track, rising 1.03% on the day."

Stuart Cole, chief macro strategist at Equiti Capital commented; It is the re-opening of London this morning that is seeing Sterling under some initial pressure, as sellers have returned and taken advantage of the rally seen over the last 24 hours or so.

The Pound to Euro (GBP/EUR) exchange rate also failed to break above the 1.1800 level and a quick retreat through 1.17600 (the important 0.8500 level in EUR/GBP) was an important element in clearing out long Pound positions.

Overall, GBP/EUR posted a sharp retreat to 1.1600 while the Pound to Dollar (GBP/USD) exchange rate also posted sharp losses to below 1.3800 despite a weaker US currency.

Pound Sterling Slides as UK Relative Advantage Questioned

The sharp Sterling retreat also illustrated the risk of a sudden shift in focus after markets being focussed in one direction for a prolonged period.

The narrative of UK vaccine out-performance and EU woes has been a dominant market focus over the past few weeks, but there was a notable shift in perspective during Tuesday as underlying assumptions were questioned.

Although confidence in the UK vaccination programme remains high, the emergence of more encouraging developments within the EU limited the potential for further Sterling support.

An internal memo from EU Commission suggested that the EU would achieve vaccination rates of close to 70% by the end of June, boosting confidence that there would be a sharp decline in infection rates during the second quarter.

MUFG noted the potential for improvement; If vaccination rates can pick up, which seems likely, and the economy begins to pick up helped by the EU fiscal program, the prospects for the Euro will improve and would be a signal to us of a turn higher in EUR/USD emerging in H2 2021.

On-going uncertainty surrounding the AstraZeneca vaccine and a reduction in UK supplies also limited potential Sterling support. There was, however, a positive factor as the Moderna vaccine will begin to be rolled out in the UK on Wednesday.

HSBC added; the memo is a reminder that the divergent pace of vaccine rollout is unlikely to have a permanent impact on relative FX performance. A new record high in European equity markets may also echo this optimism. We look for EUR-GBP to extend even higher in the coming quarters.

In contrast, ING expects only a short-lived setback for the Pound; fundamentals  above all, upbeat recovery expectations thanks to the vaccine-backed reopening of the UK economy  remain strong and should limit the scope for further short-term GBP downside.

US Dollar Dips to 2-Week Lows as Yields Retreat

The US Dollar posted 5-month highs last week as bond yields moved higher, but there was a significant reversal on Tuesday.

The US 5-year yield declined to around 0.87% from 14-month highs close to 0.99% on Monday.

The decline in yields had a significant impact in curbing dollar demand with markets less convinced that the Federal Reserve could be forced into an earlier policy tightening.
Suzuki Motor Corporation has signed a new distribution agreement with Malaysias Naza Group after an absence of almost six years from this market, according to local reports.

Naza Group confirmed it had appointed its Naza Eastern Motors subsidiary to take charge of Suzuki sales and aftersales operations of new generation models.

Suzukis previous Malaysian distributor was DRB-Hicom which also assembled the Swift hatchback at a plant in Pekan in Pahang state.

DRB-Hicom halted Suzuki sales in 2015 under a restructuring plan and the brands 29 dealers converted to Proton Edar outlets.

Naza Corporation Holdings CEO SM Nasimuddin said in a statement: It brings us great honour to be able to work with a Japanese automotive giant that successfully captured the hearts of Malaysian consumers during its years in the market.



The first Suzuki outlet will be a flagship 3S sales and service facility located in the Naza Automall in Petaling Jaya with the first model expected to be launched this month.
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BAGHDAD  Iraqs prime minister asked Irans leaders to rein in Iran-backed militias in Iraq and in a strongly worded message to Tehran, suggested he would confront the factions, two Iraqi officials said Wednesday.

Mustafa al-Kadhimis statement came as the third round of strategic talks with Washington got under way, the first under President Joe Biden. The talks  held virtually because of the pandemic  began in June and are expected to center on an array of issues, including the presence of remaining U.S. combat forces in Iraq and Iran-backed groups acting outside of state authority.

Iraq had requested the latest round, partly in response to pressure from Shiite political factions and militias loyal to Iran that have lobbied for the remaining U.S. troops to leave Iraq. Participants include U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale.

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Al-Kadhimi has walked a tightrope as he negotiates with the Americans while coming under growing pressure from local militias loyal to Tehran.

Last week, a convoy of heavily armed Shiite militiamen drove openly through central Baghdad, denouncing the U.S. presence and threatening to cut off al-Kadhimis ear, a display that clearly sought to undermine the premier.

Pressure has also come from cash-strapped Tehran as it seeks billions of dollars in payment for crucial gas and electricity supplies. Iraqi officials say the money is sitting idle in an account at the Trade Bank of Iraq because of U.S. restrictions and fears of sanctions.

In response to the ominous military-type parade by the militias, Kadhimi sent a strongly worded letter to Tehran, demanding Iran use its influence to halt these groups, two Iraqi officials said.

In the note, al-Kadhimi threatened to announce clearly who backs these groups and said he was willing to confront them, the officials said.

It was not immediately clear who the message was given to. The timing suggested al-Kadhimi, who has appeared powerless in confronting the militias, was looking to appease the Americans ahead of Wednesdays talks.

The message led to a two-day visit this week by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force chief Ismail Qaani to Baghdad, where he met with militia and Shiite political leaders and called for calm, according to a senior Iraqi Shiite politician.

The two Iraqi officials and the Shiite politician all spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

U.S.-Iraq ties plummeted after a Washington-directed airstrike that killed Iranian Quds Force commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad last year. At the time, outraged Shiite lawmakers passed a non-binding resolution to end U.S. troop presence in the country.

Iraqi and U.S. officials have said they support a scheduled withdrawal of forces from Iraq, but questions remain over time-frames and the scope of the threat posed by the Islamic State group. Iraqs Foreign Minister Fuad Hassan said in a statement during Wednesdays talks that Iraq still needs U.S. support related to training, arming and advising its military.

A group of Shiite militias on Wednesday issued a statement demanding that a scheduled withdrawal be set during the Iraq-U.S. talks.

A U.S. official last month said that the U.S. intended to use the meetings with Iraq to clarify that coalition forces remain in the country at the invitation of the Iraqi government and solely for the purpose of training and advising Iraqi forces and to ensure against an IS comeback.

Iraqis have often feel squeezed and pressured by both their allies, the U.S. and Iran.

In a positive sign, the Biden administration last month permitted a 120-day sanctions waiver for Iraq to continue importing energy from Iran, the maximum time frame allowed. Waiver renewals under former President Donald Trump were often for shorter periods and laden with conditions.

However, Iraqi officials say they require U.S. leniency to repay Tehran directly for the crucial energy imports, forgoing a complex payment system designed to evade U.S. sanctions over trading with Iran.

Iraq relies on Iranian supplies for a third of power needs, especially during peak summer months. Electricity cuts over payment issues resulted in violent protests in the southern province of Basra in the summer of 2018. As Iraq plans for nationwide parliamentary elections in October, the need to avoid unrest is high.

Currently, Iraq can pay Iran indirectly for the supplies in several ways. It can pay in humanitarian goods or medicines, cancel Irans foreign debt, and foot bills such as Iranian Embassy expenses, the costs of Iranian companies operating in Iraq and those of Iranian pilgrimages to Shiite holy sites in Iraq.

But doling out these payments has been difficult, partly because U.S. conditions are so strict.

___ Kullab contributed reporting from Istanbul.
The Carbon Chamber & Economic Development Corp. welcomes a new board member.

Maureen Donovan, assistant director of workforce development for Lehigh Carbon Community College, was appointed to her position on the CCEDC Board recently.

I am honored to be part of the CCEDC as they improve the quality of life in Carbon County, Donovan said. There are many exciting things that are happening in both the economic environment and lifestyle for people of Carbon. It is great to be part of a team that puts people first.

Donovan has also served as immediate past chairperson of the board at St. Lukes University Health System Miners and as past vice chair of Marian Catholic High Schools Board of Trustees, and currently serves as a board member for the Schuylkill County Chamber, as vice chair for the Tamaqua Area Community Partnership and works with Schuylkill Economic Development, to name a few.

She has also facilitated the Carbon Leadership Program, which focuses on adult leadership development programs by cultivating knowledgeable, skilled and action-oriented community leaders within the county.

Maureen brings with her a vast amount of experience in community service and will be an asset to the Chamber as we move forward in the coming years. We welcome Maureen and thank her for accepting a position on the Board, said Ronald Tirpak, vice president/vice chair of the CCEDC and of Carbon Engineering.

Donovan comes to the chamber with years of experience in programming, marketing, fundraising and event planning, as well as bringing a valued tie to the countys community college. She currently oversees the workforce training programs at the college, focusing on business and industry in the northern tier of Pennsylvania. Lehigh Carbon Community College serves more than 10,000 students per year from Lehigh, Carbon, Schuylkill and surrounding counties in more than 90 programs of study.
The Madhya Pradesh government has



decided to procure Remdesivir injections so that they could be provided free of cost for the treatment of critical COVID-19 patients from the economically weaker sections, Chief Minister said on Wednesday.

Remdesivir is considered a key anti-viral drug in the fight against COVID-19, especially in adult patients with severe complications.

Chouhan said the state government has also decided to set up one COVID-19 care centre in each district of state so that the infected people (who are advised home quarantine) having smaller houses can stay there.

He also said private hospitals will need to put up the rates of tests and treatment outside their facilities.

Chouhan announced various measures to curb the spread of the at the end of his 24-hour-long 'sit-in' which was aimed at raising the awareness among people about following the COVID-19 prevention guidelines.

"During the interaction with people, some of them raised concerns about the price and availability of Remdesivir injections. So, I have issued directives that a protocol be set for its use," Chouhan said after the end of his "Swasthya Agrah" (health request) campaign at the Minto Hall here.

As part of the protocol, doctors should determine whichpatient needs the Remdesivir injection, he said.

"This injection (Remdesivir) should be administered whenever necessary. I directed the officials to procure this injection at the government-level to deal with its shortage, so that the poor and middle-class people can be provided the injection free of cost," he said.

At several places, the Remdesivir injections are being administered without any need, he noted.

Chouhan informed that about 4,000 new cases of were reported in MP on Wednesday, and said the second wave of the viral infection in the state is "stronger and entire families are getting infected".

A lockdown is the last solution and before resorting to it, all other steps should be taken, he said.

"I believe that people can protect themselves if they adopt COVID-appropriate behaviour...I want 'Meri Suraksha Mera Mask' to become a public movement," the CM said.

The administration cannot fight this battle alone, the society also needs to come forward, he said, while informing about his interaction with religious leaders and social workers from across the state during his sit-in.

Chouhan said 34,000 people have registered themselves to serve as 'volunteers' for assistance in the vaccination process, to spread awareness about the mask rule and other prevention norms, and help patients in home and institutional quarantine, he said.

The number of COVID-19 patients has been going up and the state government will increase the availability of beds to 36,000 from the present 24,000. This will include 15,000 beds providing free treatment, he said.

Chouhan said the state government is also taking the help of private hospitals and allotting beds there.

In Bhopal, the government is reserving two private hospitals for the free treatment of people from lower and middle income groups.

Similarly, hospitals will be reserved in other affected cities of the state, he added.

Chouhan said people have also raise concerns about the higher rates of treatment in private hospitals.

"The state government has decided that such hospitals will need to display the rates of treatment and tests outside their facilities. We need their help. We will take action if such hospitals overcharge the patients. This is not the time to make money," the CM said.

He also announced to run the 'Kill Corona Campaign-2' in rural areas of the state under which house-to-house survey will be carried out to control the spread of the

Chouhan also said a protocol will be prepared for the admission of coronavirus patients in hospitals.

"Those who don't need hospitalisation will be quarantined at home and monitored through video calls twice a day," he said.

Health officials will also monitor such patients by conducting surprise visitsto their homes, he added.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Mumbai:

At least 27 people were killed and around 30 were injured in a rush-hour stampede on a foot overbridge (FOB) linking Elphinstone Road and Parel suburban railway stations in Mumbai, civic officials said.

The tragedy took place amid rain in the city around 10.40 am when the FOB was heavily crowded, a police official said.Police suspect a short-circuit with a loud sound near the FOB led to panic and people started running, resulting in the stampede.

According to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's (BMC) disaster control room, 22 people were brought dead to the KEM Hospital in Parel. Those injured were taken to various hospitals, he said.

Officials of the railway, police and fire brigade rushed to the site to carry out rescue operations.

The medical teams have also been rushed to spot, and rescue operations are underway. Accident Relief Medical Equipment Train reached & medical assistance being provided.

Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu and Prime minister Narendra Modi expressed condolences over the deaths caused by a stampede.

Naidu said he was shocked to learn about the incident. "My deepest condolences to the bereaved families who have lost their dear ones and wish a speedy recovery to the injured", he tweeted.



Prime Minister Modi tweeted " My deepest condolences to all those who have lost their lives due to the stampede in Mumbai. Prayers with those who are injured".

Railway Minister Piyush Goyal ordered a high-level inquiry into a stampede.

Also Read: Elphinstone Stampede: Death toll in Mumbai rises to 27; Maharashtra Govt, Railway Min order probe

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[April 07, 2021] Timothy E. Markey Promoted to Divisional Vice President within Great American's Property & Casualty Group

Great American Insurance Group is pleased to announce the promotion of Timothy (Tim) E. Markey to Divisional Vice President within its Fidelity / Crime Division. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005053/en/ Timothy E. Markey has been promoted to Divisional Vice President within Great American's Fidelity / Crime Division. (Photo: Business Wire) Mr. Markey joined Great American in 2017 as a Divisional Assistant Vice President. He has assumed roles of increasing responsibility and was named Head of Claims for Fidelity / Crime in early 2020. He is responsible for all aspects of the Division' claim handling, subrogation and litigation management, while also assisting with marketing and continuing education initiatives.



Mr. Markey brings over 25 years of industry experience to the role and has held leadership positions in several fidelity industry professional organizations, including his current appointment as Vice Chair of the Fidelity Claims Advisory Committee for the Surety and Fidelity Association of America. Mr. Markey earned a bachelor's degree in business management from the University of Scranton and a Juris Doctorate from Seton Hall School of Law. He is a member of the New Jersey bar.

About Great American Insurance Group Great American Insurance Group's roots go back to 1872 with the founding of its flagship company, Great American Insurance Company. Based in Cincinnati, Ohio, the operations of Great American Insurance Group are engaged primarily in property and casualty insurance focusing on specialty commercial products for businesses. Great American Insurance Company has received an "A" (Excellent) or higher rating from the A.M. Best Company for more than 110 years (most recent rating evaluation of "A+" (Superior) affirmed October 28, 2020). The members of Great American Insurance Group are subsidiaries of American Financial Group, Inc. (AFG), also based in Cincinnati, Ohio. AFG's common stock is listed and traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol AFG. On January 27, 2021, AFG announced that it entered into a definitive agreement to sell its annuity business to Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company. The sale is expected to close in the second quarter of 2021. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005053/en/

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OLD BRIDGE, NJ / ACCESSWIRE / April 7, 2021 / Blonder Tongue Laboratories, Inc. (NYSE American:BDR) announced today that it has received notice from NYSE American LLC ("NYSE American") that it is not in compliance with the continued listing standard set forth in Section 1003(a)(i) of the NYSE American Company Guide (the "Company Guide"). That section applies if a listed company has stockholders' equity of less than $2 million and the listed company has reported losses from continuing operations and/or net losses in two of its three most recent fiscal years.

The Company reported stockholders' equity of $1,237,000 as of December 31, 2020, the end of its most recent fiscal year, and has reported losses from continuing operations and/or net losses in each of its five most recent fiscal years, including the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020. This notice is in addition to the notice the Company received from NYSE American on June 10, 2020, notifying the Company that it was not in compliance with the continued listing standard set forth in Section 1003(a)(iii) of the Company Guide because the Company reported stockholders' equity of less than $6 million as of March 31, 2020 and reported losses from continuing operations and/or net losses in each of its five most recent fiscal years ended December 31, 2019 and the notice the Company received from NYSE American on December 9, 2020, notifying the Company that it was not in compliance with the continued listing standard set forth in Section 1003(a)(ii) of the Company Guide because the Company reported stockholders' equity of less than $4 million as of September 30, 2020 and reported losses from continuing operations and/or net losses in each of its five most recent fiscal years ended December 31, 2019.

The Company submitted a detailed financial plan to regain compliance with the listing standard set forth in Section 1003(a)(iii) to NYSE American, and on August 27, 2020, the Company received notice that its plan had been accepted and that the Company had been granted a plan period through December 10, 2021. The December 10, 2021 deadline for the Company to regain compliance with the listing standards applies to the noncompliance cited in all three of the notices received from NYSE American. As a result, the Company must be in compliance with Section 1003(a)(i), Section 1003(a)(ii) and Section 1003(a)(iii) by that deadline.

The listing of the Company's common stock on NYSE American is being continued during the plan period pursuant to an extension. During the plan period, the Company will be subject to periodic review by NYSE Regulation staff, including quarterly monitoring, to determine if the Company is making progress consistent with the plan. If the Company is not in compliance with the continued listing standards by December 10, 2021, or if NYSE Regulation determines that the Company is not making sufficient progress consistent with the plan, delisting proceedings will be instituted against the Company, as appropriate.

As disclosed in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, due largely to the continuing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Company has not met certain elements of the near-term milestones included as part of its plan to regain compliance with the listing standards. It is possible that NYSE Regulation will determine that the Company is not making sufficient progress consistent with its compliance plan and, as a result, may initiate delisting proceedings. The Company has provided and will continue to provide NYSE American with information regarding its compliance plan, including an updated plan. The Company cannot provide assurance that it will make sufficient progress to regain compliance with the listing standards by December 10, 2021, that the updated compliance plan the Company has submitted will be accepted without additional conditions being imposed, or at all, or that delisting proceedings may not be instituted based on the Company not meeting certain elements of its original compliance plan or any future failure to meet its updated compliance plan. If delisting proceedings are instituted, the Company would have the right to appeal any delisting determination.

Receipt of the notice does not affect the Company's business, operations or reporting requirements with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

About Blonder Tongue

Blonder Tongue Laboratories, Inc. is the oldest designer and manufacturer of telecommunications and cable television video transmission technology in the USA. The majority of our products continue to be designed and built in our state-of-the-art New Jersey facility, which has been the Company's home for more than 50 years. Blonder Tongue Labs offers U.S.-based engineering and manufacturing excellence with an industry reputation for delivering ultra-high reliability products. As a leader in cable television system design, the Company provides service operators and systems integrators with comprehensive solutions for the management and distribution of digital video, IPTV, and high-speed data services, as well as RF broadband distribution over fiber, IP, and Coax networks for homes and businesses. Additional information on the Company and its products can be found at www.blondertongue.com.

Safe Harbor" Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: The information set forth above includes "forward-looking" statements. The forward-looking statements relate to future events regarding such matters as anticipated financial performance, business prospects, technological developments, new products, research and development activities, and similar matters. In order to comply with the terms of the safe harbor provisions, the Company notes that a variety of factors could cause our actual results and experience to differ materially and adversely from the anticipated results or other expectations expressed in the forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties that may affect the operation, performance, development, and results of the Company's business include, but are not limited to, those matters discussed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020 in the sections entitled "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" and "Risk Factors," and in the same sections of the Company's subsequently-filed Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, as may be further updated by any Current Reports on Form 8-K that we may file. The words "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "project," "target," "intend," "plan," "seek," "estimate," "endeavor," "should," "could," "may" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. In addition, any statements that refer to projections for our future financial performance, anticipated growth trends in the Company's business, and other characterizations of future events or circumstances are forward-looking statements, including statements regarding the Company's ability to continue as a going concern, the Company's ability to maintain the listing of its shares on the NYSE American and the status of the Company's efforts to obtain forgiveness of the PPP loan and eligibility for such forgiveness. Readers also should carefully review the risk factors included in other documents the Company files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof, or, in the case of other documents referred to herein, the dates of those documents. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly revise or update these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that arise after the date hereof, except as may be required under applicable law. The Company's actual results may differ from the anticipated results or other expectations expressed in these forward-looking statements.

CONTACT:

Eric Skolnik

Chief Financial Officer

eskolnik@blondertongue.com

(732) 679-4000

Ted Grauch

Chief Executive Officer

tgrauch@blondertongue.com

(732) 679-4000

SOURCE: Blonder Tongue Laboratories, Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/639200/Blonder-Tongue-Announces-Receipt-of-Noncompliance-Notice-from-NYSE-American
A McDonald's worker has been branded the 'worst employee ever' after claiming he lifted the lid on the fast food chain - appearing to make 'half eaten' burgers and deliberately 'ruining' food with too much sauce or pickles.

The TikTok user, who is believed to be from the US and is known only as @mikky.d0, has racked up more than 3million views since February by filming himself and colleagues at work in one of the food giant's stores at an unknown location.

In one video viewed more than 1.8million times, the male worker, shows a Bacon McDouble with the bottom beef patty missing a chunk and the caption 'we got a little hungry'.

Meanwhile other clips show staff members piling huge handfuls of pickles on a burger that asked for extra pickles and drowning other food in 'extra' sauce.

In one shocking clip, which quickly went viral, the worker, showed off the meat with a significant chunk missing before covering it with a slice of cheese and the remaining ingredients, wrapping it up and sliding it towards the serving counter.

Enraged viewers interpreted this to imply the burger had been half eaten and were quick to blast the account saying 'you need to be jailed if that's real' and 'not in a pandemic WHAT'.

While some were quick to claim the burger with a 'bite' missing was a joke and hoped those involved were 'not gonna actually give it to somebody[sic]', others slammed it as 'not even funny' and questioned why the staff had not been 'sacked'.

One person wrote: 'People getting real bold forgetting the girl that licked ice cream in Tesco got 4 years in jail.'

One person wrote: 'In a pandemic, you are getting fired 100 per cent.'

A third said: 'This man is the worst employee I've ever seen.'

When one person questioned what the charges would be for such a stunt, the worker claimed it would be nothing as the staff member filmed implied the video was a joke.

In another clip where a customer requested extra tartar sauce on their Filet-o-Fish, footage showed staff overloading both buns with copious amounts of the condiment.

Followers slammed it as 'disgusting' after the employee squirted five hefty portions of the sauce on one meal before adding seven to another.

A TikTok user, who is believed to be male and from the US, has been going viral online after appearing to share the secrets from inside McDonald's kitchens

Clips show staff members piling huge handfuls of dozens of pickles on a burger that asked for extra pickles and drowning other food in 'extra' sauce (right), while he also showed off the company's 'fake' eggs (left)

One commenter said: 'Why do yall gotta make others ppl day s***ty.'

Another wrote: 'That's just madd disrespectful and would be p***ed if someone did that too u[sic].'

However a different clip showed him responding to a question from a viewer asking 'are the ice cream machines actually broken' by showing the machine working and stating: 'It works, we just don't like making them.'

One video left viewers horrified as the worker went into what appeared to be a McDonald's fridge where he showed off flat sheets of 'folded eggs' in plastic wrapping waiting to be warmed up - leaving commentators branding it 'nasty'.

The clip, which has the caption 'yall eggs be fake', shows the employee enter the store's walk-in fridge and show off a vacuum-packed bag of folded eggs, pre-mixed and waiting just to be heated up.

Many TikTok users were revolted by the video clips, with many calling the revelations 'nasty' and questioning if the videos could be a joke

One commenter wrote: 'I knew it McDonalds is trash and yall still like it[sic].'

Another person said: 'That's nasty af damn.'

One person commented: 'That why it taste like sponge[sic].'

A UK spokesperson for McDonald's said: 'To be clear, this video is not from the UK & Ireland market but rather seems to be from the US.'

McDonald's US confirmed they were 'actively investigating' as the food prep in the burger video did not meet the 'robust food quality and safety standards' they have in place.

The company said that all the eggs they serve in their restaurants 'start with real egg' but that omelette-style eggs are made in suppliers' kitchens before arriving at their restaurants in frozen form for a 'consistent shape'.

Commenting on the ice cream machine clip, McDonald's explained that the machines undergo regular cleaning, which 'may result in customers experiencing a longer wait time or soft serve machines that were unavailable'.

The company said they are consistently working with franchisees to improve and enhance the restaurant experience so customers 'can purchase the sweet treats they enjoy from their dessert menu where and when they want it'.
In the days after a Capitol police officer was killed in the line of duty, an effort has been organized to support his children.

U.S. Capitol Police Officer William Billy Evans was killed Friday after a man rammed a vehicle into him and another officer at a barricade outside the Capitol building.

The second officer was hospitalized Friday with injuries.

The man, since identified as Noah Green, was shot by officers after he exited the vehicle and lunged at officers, USCP Acting Chief Yogananda Pittman said.

Evans, a North Adams native, grew up in Clarksburg and graduated from Drury High School in 1998, according to public records and his Facebook page. He went on to attend Western New England University in Springfield before joining the Capitol police in 2003.

He served with the department for 18 years.

He is survived by his mother, Janice, and children, Logan and Abigail.

Billy was a loyal friend, loving son and brother, and above all, a beloved Dad. Billys two young children, Logan and Abigail, were his entire world, said Lindsey Taylor, a Capitol police officer who organized the fundraiser. From light saber duels, to countless arts and crafts together, to working their way through stacks of board games, to recently finishing the Harry Potter series, Billys entire world revolved around his children. Whatever they were doing, when they were together, they were bringing light to each others lives to Logan and Abigail, Billy has long been, and always will be, their #1 hero.

All proceeds from the fundraiser will be put into a trust under Logan and Abigails name, Taylor said.

The fundraiser was created on Wednesday and is the only fundraiser organized for and approved of by the Evans family. Other online fundraisers were created in the hours after Evans claiming to be created by surviving family members.

Evans will be honored at the U.S. Capitol next week. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Tuesday that he will lie in honor in the United States Capitol Rotunda.

It is now the great and solemn privilege of the House of Representatives and the Senate to convey the appreciation and the sadness of the Congress and Country for the heroic sacrifice of Officer Evans with a lying-in-honor ceremony in the U.S. Capitol, Pelosi and Schumer said in a joint statement. It is our hope that this tribute will be a comfort to the family of Officer Evans, particularly his children Logan and Abigail, as will the knowledge that so many Americans mourn with and pray for them at this sad time. May this tribute also be a source of comfort and an expression of gratitude to the U.S. Capitol Police Force, which has awed our nation with their courage and resilience during this devastating time.

A congressional tribute will be held at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, April 13, followed by a viewing period for members of the U.S. Capitol Police. Members of Congress are invited to attend the viewing period from 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. A ceremonial departure will occur at 6:30 p.m. Additional details will be announced at a later date.

Flags at the U.S. Capitol, White House and federal buildings were ordered to be flown at half-staff on Friday in his honor.

This marks the second time this year a Capitol police officer was killed in the line of duty.

Officer Brian Sicknick died of injuries sustained during the Capitol siege on Jan. 6.
During a brief hearing at Laganside Magistrates Court, the matter was adjourned until later this month. (stock picture)

The transfer of Ulster Banks business to parent company NatWest has been approved by Belfasts High Court.

A judge gave permission for the scheme after confirming all legal requirements were met and identifying no adverse impact on the few objectors.

On Wednesday, Mr Justice McFarland said: "I will therefore sanction the transfer scheme."

Ulster Bank made the court application in advance of the planned May 3 switchover date.

The transfer of the Northern Ireland business to NatWest is aimed at simplifying structures.

Customers will not see any changes to services, with Ulster Banks branding and branch network being maintained.

As part of the legal process under the Financial Services and Markets Act, notices were published in UK newspapers, as well as the London, Edinburgh and Belfast Gazettes.

Ruling on the application, the judge set out Ulster Banks history, from its beginnings in the early 19th Century to its current position within the NatWest Group.

Eight objections to the transfer scheme were put forward.

Only two of those who expressed opposition are understood to be customers of the bank The other six were customers of Ulster Bank Ireland, a related company in the Republic.

One of the objections involved a customer taking legal action against Ulster Bank Ltd.

But Mr Justice McFarland pointed out that the claim will continue and could, if successful, be enforced against NatWest.

"The transfer of any potential liability pursuant to the litigation from the transferor (with gross assets of 11.2 billion and net assets of 500 million) to the transferee (with gross assets of 311 billion and net assets of 18 billion) could be seen as a positive outcome, and in no way adverse to this objectors interests," he said.

Publicity about the planned move and court proceedings were undertaken in accordance with the statutory requirements, the judge held.

"I am satisfied that the people impacted by the transfer  customers, employees and interested third parties  have been properly advised and in terms which are readily understandable," he said.

Describing the formal objections very small in number, he added: "This has to be seen in the context of a bank which has in excess of 600,000 customers.

"Despite their expressed concerns, none of the objectors will be adversely affected by the transfer scheme."
CALGARY - Two First Nations are taking the Alberta government and its gaming commission to court over the province's entry into the online gambling sector.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, left, is greeted by Tsuut'ina Chief Roy Whitney, centre, and National Chief Perry Bellegarde as he arrives on the Tsuut'ina First Nation near Calgary, on Friday, March 4, 2016. Two Alberta First Nations are taking the Alberta government and the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission to court over their entry into the online gaming sector. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

CALGARY - Two First Nations are taking the Alberta government and its gaming commission to court over the province's entry into the online gambling sector.

Play Alberta, a provincially regulated site launched last fall, offers virtual slots and table games while casinos remain shut down due to COVID-19.

The province has said it expects the site to raise more than $3.7 million in 2021.

The Tsuut'ina and Stoney Nakoda First Nations in southern Alberta want the courts to shut down the site and have filed an application for a judicial review. They argue Alberta's move is an "unauthorized and impermissible" entry into the casino and gaming market.

"As our casinos remain closed during this pandemic, the provincial government through (the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission) has entered the gaming business," said Tsuut'ina Chief Roy Whitney at a news conference Wednesday.

"By entering online gaming, this government is taking away charity dollars, dollars that charities rely upon. For us, these charity dollars are used to support our health, education, housing and social programs."

Tsuut'ina operates the Grey Eagle casino on its land just southwest of Calgary. The Stoney First Nation has the Stoney Nakoda Resort and Casino in Kananaskis Country, a recreational area west of the city.

"Stoney and Tsuut'ina charities will ... not be able meet the needs of our people by losing money to the province," said Chief Clifford Poucette of Stoney Nakoda's Wesley band.

"Seventy-seven per cent of revenue generated for charities in First Nation casinos is spent on housing, infrastructure, education, and health.

"It is unfortunate that the province has put us in this position of having to take this action before the courts. However, this government has simply refused to enter meaningful discussions."

The application argues that the gaming commission has overstepped its jurisdiction by becoming a vendor of casino and gaming products and, as a regulator, is in a direct conflict of interest.

A spokeswoman for the commission said it isn't aware of the nature of the court application and couldn't comment.

But Heather Holmen said the commission recognizes the significant financial impact COVID-19 has had on businesses, charities and individuals.

"Like most jurisdictions in Canada, Alberta has recently started offering online gaming. As in all Canadian jurisdictions, online gaming is conducted and managed by the provincial authorities in accordance with the Criminal Code of Canada," she said in an email.

Brent Dodginghorse, a Tsuut'ina Nation councillor and chief executive officer of Tsuut'ina Gaming, said a moratorium on the creation and granting of new casinos in Alberta has been in place since 2008.

"During COVID, the province has closed casinos for a prolonged period of time, which also ensures that they are the only option available to those who want to play casino games," Dodginghorse said.

"We have taken the business risk of building and operating a casino and agreed to share revenue with the province. It is bad faith for the province to do anything with online revenue other than allocate it proportionately to existing casinos."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 7, 2021.

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WILMINGTON, Del., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In its mission to provide those with a passion for all things automotive with cost-effective and top-quality parts, Automotive Stuff is welcoming aboard three new performance parts-based brands: Overland Vehicle Systems, Blue Ox, and RaceChip. Automotive Stuff is an authorized retailer of all products on their website, honoring all manufacturer policies, including any full manufacturer's warranty that may exist.

Launched in 2018, AutomotiveStuff.com is the U.S. counterpart to TDot performance, the leading Canadian aftermarket auto parts company. The company sells hundreds of thousands of automotive performance products from hundreds of local and international brands. The store's goal is to provide vehicle owners the best possible experience when shopping for automotive parts. Overland Vehicle Systems, Blue Ox, and RaceChip are welcome additions to the Automotive Stuff lineup.

Overland Vehicle Systems

Overland Vehicle Systems offers outdoor gear, tools, equipment, and other automotive parts used for your off-roading adventures. Their design and product teams have extensive, off-road experience and are constantly communicating with the off-road communities to gather inputs and suggestions to further improve their products. They are fueled by the passion and aspirations for better outdoor products.

Blue Ox

Blue Ox supplies choice, premium towing products for every towing job, be it a small sedan or large-sized pickup trucks. The company has expanded its offerings to include tow bars to carriers to top-notch motorhomes and hitches. Blue Ox designs every part and accessory optimized for function that makes towing projects easy and hassle-free.

RaceChip

RaceChip prides itself in supplying satisfied drivers with performance customization to the smallest level of detail with their impressive product lineup. After entering the automotive parts market in 2008, the company has been able to develop innovative products like the first chip for diesel engines with pump nozzle technology.



About Automotive Stuff

Automotive Stuff is a major retailer of auto performance parts and accessories in North America. In Automotive Stuff's portfolio, there are over 200,000 performance products and accessories from over 250 renowned brands, such as Bilstein, BAK Industries, Edelbrock, WeatherTech, Megan Racing, Superchips, Energy Suspension, Covercraft, Husky Liners, EBC Brakes, Flowmaster, Hidden Hitch, K&N, and Magnaflow.

Media Contact

Company Name: Automotive Stuff

Contact: Charith Perera

Phone: 1-800-995-8177

City: Wilmington

State: Delaware

Country: United States

Email: [email protected]

Website: https://www.automotivestuff.com/

SOURCE Automotive Stuff

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SCAG Drafts Equity Plan for Communities of Concern

The Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) has drafted a plan that would incentivize private business owners to reflect more diversity in their companies to get city contracts.

SCAG, the nations largest metropolitan planning organization, has introduced a draft of a Racial Equity Early Action Plan to be voted on next month. It would reward contractors who conform to diverse hiring practices. Opponents have called the plan unnecessary and discriminatory.

Anaheim City Councilman Trevor ONeil, a SCAG board member, told The Epoch Times that he opposes the idea of local governments meddling in the hiring practices of private companies because federal law already prohibits discrimination in the workplace.

We dont need a new plan or committee filled with politicians, as is being proposed.  These kinds of policies inherently create division within these communities, in direct conflict with the stated intent of equity, ONeil said via email.

I support policies for hiring employees and contractors that provide access to everyone regardless of race, gender or other category. Vendors who want government contracts should ensure they are giving the best value for taxpayers and that they do not discriminate in their own hiring practices.

SCAG is responsible for implementing state affordable housing mandates for 191 cities throughout the region. A spokesperson for SCAG, who requested not to be identified, told The Epoch Times that the inclusive contracting plan under discussion is leveling the playing field.

Essentially, were working toward a practice of inclusive contracting to create an environment where businesses owned by people of color and/or women can participate  and compete fairly for government contracts, the spokesperson said in an email.

Communities of Concern

The overall plan calls for the appointment of officials to represent Communities of Concern, or disadvantaged communities, on SCAG committees. Communities of Concern are defined as those where more than 24 percent of households live in poverty, compared to 15 percent across the whole SCAG region, according to the SCAG spokesperson.

People of color are far more likely to live in Communities of Concern, where on average 92 percent of the population are minorities. Additionally, these communities experience higher rates of exposure to a wide range of environmental hazards than the region as a whole, the spokesperson stated.

Those hazards include higher concentrations of air and drinking water pollutants from various sources, including high traffic density, diesel emissions, and more toxic cleanup sites, she said. Minority and low-income populations are also more likely to experience the consequences of climate change, she said, including extreme heat and flooding because they have fewer resources such as air-conditioning or access to cooling centers and transportation options.

At its April 1 meeting, the SCAG Regional Council voted 623 in favor of a proposal to appoint representatives from Communities of Concern to SCAG policy committees.

SCAG represents six counties: Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Imperial.

ONeil, Orange County Supervisor Don Wagner, and La Habra City Councilman Tim Shaw voted against the proposal.

ONeil said before the vote, Weve been talking a lot about equity lately, and the intention of this is to be an equity proposal, but I think this change would actually create an inequity, first by singling out Communities of Concern and giving them an additional seat on policy committees that will result in overrepresentation from those communities.

He called the proposed change insulting because it suggests that current Regional Council representatives cannot adequately address their own jurisdictional issues.

Each of the Community of Concern representatives will get a seat and a vote at the policy committee level, but not at the Regional Council, where members vote to adopt official SCAG policies, according to ONeil.

So they wont have a seat on the Regional Council, only the SCAG committees, but the policy committees are where most of the issues are deliberated and hashed out before they are brought to Regional Council, he said.

The Plan

SCAGs spokesperson said the Early Action Plan is intended to guide and sustain SCAGs regional leadership in service of equity and social justice.

The plan lists four main goals:

Shift Organizational Culture to focus SCAGs internal work and practices on inclusion, diversity, equity and awareness.

Center Racial Equity in Regional Planning & Policy to bring equity into SCAGs regional planning functions.

Encourage Racial Equity in Local Planning Practices to promote racial equity in efforts involving local elected officials and planning professionals; and

Activate & Amplify to communicate broadly SCAGs commitment to racial equity and join with others in different fields and sectors to amplify impact.

SCAGs Regional Council has already adopted a resolution acknowledging systemic racism as a human rights and public health crisis and affirming SCAGs commitment to meaningfully advancing justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, the spokesperson said.

SCAGs recent proposals for greater equity in hiring and public contracts have come under fire from groups such as Californians for Equal Rights Foundation (CFER), who argue the plans would violate the California Constitutions ban on race-based hiring practices.

CFER Executive Director Wenyuan Wu told The Epoch Times that her foundation strongly condemns any attempt to encourage or promote racial preferences in public contracting and public employment.

Wu said SCAG is trying to skirt constitutional law. Theyve been very outspoken about their disappointment with the overwhelming defeat of Proposition 16, so they are trying every which way to  circumvent the legal implementation of Prop. 209.

In November, California voters rejected Prop. 16, which sought to overturn Prop. 209, the law that bans discriminatory or preferential action programs in the state based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin, in the operation of public employment, public education, and public contracting.
IDFC First Bank rose 2.26% to Rs 56.55 after the bank successfully raised about Rs 3000 crore through qualified institutional placement (QIP) route.

The capital raising committee of board of directors of the bank, at their meeting held on Tuesday (6 April 2021) approved allotment of 52.31 crore shares to eligible qualified institutional buyers at the issue price of Rs 57.35 per equity share. The QIP issue opened on 30 March 2021 and closed on 6 April 2021.

Allottees who were issued more than 5% of the total equity shares offered in the QIP are Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance Company (11.98%), Baillie Gifford Emerging Markets Equities Fund (11.39%), Baillie Gifford Pacific Fund (8.95%), BNP Paribas Arbitrage (8.62%), City Of New York Group Trust (8.53%), Baillie Gifford Emerging Markets Growth Fund (6.79%), HDFC Life Insurance Company (6.67%) and Tata AIA Life Insurance Company (5.83%).

The private bank intends to utilize the proceeds from the issue to enhance its capital adequacy ratio, in accordance with regulatory requirements, to support its balance sheet growth and other general corporate purposes.

IDFC First Bank was founded by the merger of IDFC Bank and Capital First in December 2018. The bank provides a range of financial solutions to individuals, small businesses and corporates. As of 31 December 2020, the bank has 576 branches and 541 ATMs across the country.

The bank reported a net profit of Rs 130 crore in Q3 FY21 as compared to a net loss of Rs 1,639 crore in Q3 FY20. Total income during the quarter improved by 0.7% year-on-year (YoY) to Rs 4711.72 crore.

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COLUMBIA CITY, Ind., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Farmland values across the Corn Belt and beyond showed remarkable strength in March, reflecting higher commodity prices, improved farm income and favorable credit conditions, according to R.D. Schrader, president of Schrader Real Estate and Auction Company .

"It's always important to remember that prices on a particular farm depend greatly on the land quality and location. But we've been seeing near record prices for farmland in some of our auctions. I would say this is the most favorable broad-based market we've seen in five or six years," said Schrader.

"Farmers are coming off a good year, and many are in a position now to expand their holdings, especially with the prospect of improved prices for their crops," said Schrader.

An auction of 1,120 acres in Weld County, Colorado, brought $13,684 per acre on the best land. The auction of land in Cass County, Missouri, brought as much as $7,437 per acre.

Demand for recreational land is also improved, he noted. An auction of 3,094 acres of recreational and timberland in south Georgia brought $5.37 million, or $1,736 per acre.

Schrader has also sold agricultural land in Indiana, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Illinois and Michigan so far in 2021.

The 2021 results continue to build on the gains of 2020. The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago reported that the price of "good" farmland rose 6 percent in 2020. That includes land in Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Those seeking to buy or sell land may visit www.schraderauction.com or call 800-451-2709.

Schrader Real Estate and Auction Company, based in Columbia City, Indiana, is a leading auctioneer of agricultural land and equipment throughout the United States. The company is a five-time USA Today/National Auctioneers Association Auction of the Year winner.

For more information:

Carl Carter, 205-910-1952

SOURCE Schrader Real Estate and Auction Company

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Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope said that vaccination centres in Maharashtra had to send back people due to lack of doses of the two approved coronavirus vaccines. Tope said that during a press briefing about the concerns he had shared with Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan on Tuesday evening.

"We do not have enough vaccine doses at various vaccination centres, and people have to be sent back due to a shortage of doses. We have demanded from the Centre that people of age group 20-40 years must be vaccinated on priority," he said.

Rajesh Tope said that the state currently has 14 lakh COVID-19 vaccine doses, which will get consumed in three days. He said that Maharashtra has asked for 40 lakh additional doses. While the Centre is giving the doses, the speed of delivery is slow. "I'm not saying that the Center is not giving us vaccines but the speed of delivery of vaccines is slow," said Tope.

The minister said that the Centre wants the government to vaccinate 6 lakh people each day and that they are at 4.5 lakh every day already. "We have accepted your challenge," he said.

The Health Minister also said that they are working on war footing to increase the number of beds. "We are working on war footing to increase the number of beds in Pune, Mumbai, Nashik and other parts of the state," said Tope.

He said that they are suspecting a new strain is infecting people at a faster pace. "We suspect that there is a new strain that is affecting people in a shorter duration of time. Samples have been sent to National Centre for Disease Control to ascertain this," he added.

Rajesh Tope said that the state is following the 3T principle strictly along with advisories by the Centre, including restrictions and night curfews. He added that vaccination centres in Maharashtra are sending back people due to lack of doses.

He said that increasing immunity and creating antibodies is the solution to ending the pandemic. "For that, vaccination needs to go up and that is why I am requesting you to please give us doses," he said to Dr Harsh Vardhan as mentioned in the press briefing.

Also read: Covishield 90% effective if doses given after gap of 2-3 months: Adar Poonawalla

Also read: SII chose to prioritise India for 2 months; vaccine exports likely to resume by June: Adar Poonawalla
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Jill Biden on Wednesday launched the 'next chapter' of Joining Forces, the initiative for military families she started with Michelle Obama during that administration.

'Service members cannot be focused on their mission if their families don't have what they need to thrive at home,' the first lady said in her announcement speech.

Wearing a necklace with a pendant bearing the name of her son Beau, Biden said her iteration of Joining Forces will focus on three items: employment and entrepreneurship opportunities for military families along with greater access to childcare, education for the more than 2 million children of enlisted parents and veterans, and the overall health and well-being of military families.

'How can we hope to keep our military strong if we don't give our family survivors and caregivers what they need to survive; if we don't act on our sacred obligation? And that is why we're here today and what Joining Forces is all about,' she said.

Biden carried over her work with military families to the Biden Foundation after she left public life as second lady of the United States.

When Joe Biden was elected president, she announced she would restart her and Michelle Obama's signature initiative, which saw the two women work together with military families and high-profile figures like Prince Harry.

Jill Biden launched the 'next chapter' of Joining Forces, the initiative for military families she started with Michelle Obama

The first lady wore a necklace with a pendant with the name of her son Beau; Beau Biden served in the National Guard before his death from cancer at 2015

Jill Biden talks to a staff member at Military One Source, an active duty military resource hub/call center for service members, their family and survivors, in Arlington, Va.

In her remarks at the White House, the first lady paid tribute to Michelle Obama, who started the project with her in 2011, and to her late son Beau, a National Guard veteran who died of brain cancer in 2015.

She also praised military families for the sacrifices they make.

'Military families are as critical to our national defense as a rudder is to a ship, and we must always act upon that truth,' she said.

She noted that just 1 per cent of the country serves in the all-volunteer military and that the Defense Department estimates a 22 per cent unemployment rate for military spouses.

'We can't expect to keep the best and brightest if our service members are forced to choose between their love of country and the hopes and dreams they have for their families,' she said.

'We have to help you carry this weight.'

Biden was joined at her announcement, virtually, by U.S. military families and others from around the world, a total of more than 100 people appearing in individual boxes on screens behind her on the stage.

The first lady visited military bases in California and Washington state earlier this month as part of a listening tour of families' need. She's also spoken with military children around the world via zoom to hear about their needs and met with military spouses.

Jill Biden was joined at her announcement, virtually, by U.S. military families and others from around the world, a total of more than 100 people appearing in individual boxes on screens behind her on the stage

Jill Biden speaks to military families after her announcement at the White House

Michelle Obama and Jill Biden started Joining Forces in 2011; above the two women with the Biden's dog Champ held an event at the vice president's house in May 2012

Jill Biden, Prince Harry, and Michelle Obama meet with military families at the White House during Prince Harry's May 2013 visit to the United States

After her announcement on Wednesday, the first lady visited Military OneSource in Arlington, Va., a call center operated by the Defense Department that provides 24/7 support to service members and their families on a range of issues from health care questions to taxes.

Erika Slaton, the Associate Director of the center, told the first lady: 'We have master's level consultants that are available 24/7 by phone, and live chat, and one of the top requested services through Military OneSource is spouse employment, followed by non medical counseling for those everyday and military life issues, and then our tech services.'

Biden toured the center and asked staff about the calls they receive.

'Thanks for helping our military members and their families ... and making their lives easier,' she told them.

She was accompanied in her visit by Charlene Austin, the wife of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and Hollyanne Milley, the wife of Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman.

Biden has hit the ground running as first lady, taking on multiple roles and projects for her husband's administration. She is helping him sell his American Rescue Plan to the public.

Her other causes are education - she is a teacher - and cancer research.
EAIGLE's COVID-10 screening system in Bruce Villa Manor The solution has made it much easier to monitor residents -Lisa Christo, General Manager at Bruce Villa Manor

Canadian companies EAIGLE and DataRealm have partnered to deploy EAIGLE's advanced crowd monitoring and thermal screening technology to help long-term care homes (LTC) in one of the hardest hit regions of COVID-19.

The elderly and care home staff are among the most at-risk people experiencing high levels of stress and exposure to COVID-19 during the pandemic, said EAIGLE Inc. CEO, Amir Hoss. Crowd monitoring provides a strong foundation in safety monitoring and infection control in the facilities where we care for loved ones.

Its no secret that Ontario's older population have been subjected to much of the brunt of the deadly pandemic; as of December 12, 2020, 63% of all COVID-19 deaths in Ontario have come from LTC home residents. From the communal nature of nursing homes, and the round-the-clock care needed for older adults with underlying medical conditions, consistent COVID-19 outbreaks amongst staff and residents continue to pose a threat to vulnerable elderly care facilities.

Managing crowded spaces, infection symptoms, and facility traffic flow is an integral step towards controlling and mitigating the spread of COVID-19. By optimizing occupancy data within long-term care homes, limiting occupancy into facilities by tailoring prevention control that fits different community needs, and screening staff and visitors that enter these facilities, facility management can enhance the application and oversight of resident care and reinforce infection prevention and control practices.

Crowd monitoring in the Windsor-Essex area, especially since its been one of the hardest-hit regions by COVID-19, will be crucial in bringing the visibility and traffic control we need to prevent new outbreaks in long-term care homes, said EAIGLEs Area Manager, David Howatson.

EAIGLE has partnered with DataRealm, a local tech company in Windsor, ON to support long-term care homes with its essential crowd monitoring and thermal screening technology, developed from EAIGLEs advanced AI computer vision software. Residents in care homes will be screened in high-traffic areas and in numerous locations daily with an efficient monitoring system that seamlessly integrates into daily routines and tasks in facilities. The system eliminates the inconvenience of laborious manual symptom checks and screening, providing care workers the capability to easily manage crowd sizes and emerging threats in facilities that house the elderly.

DataRealm is pleased to bring this great solution to our home community. Our team is proud to join the frontline fight against the spread of Covid 19 and its ongoing variants, said Dave Fortin, DataRealms President and Founder.

Funded by the Ontario government and the City of Windsor, the system will also actively screen employees, visitors, and family members of residents for signs of infection through EAIGLEs automated COVID-19 Screening Questionnaire, and provide non-invasive crowd temperature screenings multiple times a day to the care home residents.

They have implemented a real time infrared temperature monitoring system which will help us monitor body temperature of all our residents and staff 24/7, said Vino Patel, Owner of Bruce Villa Manor. This system will detect anyone running a high temperature and notify us immediately. This is one of many ways we are dealing with this pandemic.

The Ontario government has demonstrated a commitment in protecting residents and staff of long-term care facilities, investing at least $398 million during Ontarios second wave of COVID-19, to reduce the risk outbreaks in LTC homes caused by infection in communities. Recently, Ontario announced their commitment to train 400 more personal support workers to work in COVID-19 hotspots in order to handle staffing at nursing homes. And in the future, the government has promised to invest $1.9 billion annually in their new staffing plan until 2025, aiming to recruit up to 27,000 workers for long-term care homes.

To date, EAIGLEs crowd monitoring solution has helped companies around the globe in industries like healthcare, pharmaceuticals, hospitality, food manufacturing and retail with monitoring the safety and congestion of busy spaces. Through innovative features that monitor and control crowd flow, enforce anomaly detection, and provide real-time analytics, companies have been able to integrate automated risk assessments and enhance digital workplace communications through occupancy monitoring; readily optimizing operations and reducing labor cost to continue to enrich the infrastructure of buildings of the future.

About EAIGLE

EAIGLE is a Canadian AI software company that aims to offer cost-efficient and automated crowd monitoring, space optimization to help organizations in all industries monitor, secure, and protect their facilities and ensure fast and effective operations. Based in Markham, Ont., EAIGLE has risen within the Canadian AI tech scene to help engineer smart buildings and facilities while cultivating valuable customer experiences. The companys growth has seen extensive global reach, fostering strong partnerships across the world with companies like DataRealm in Windsor, ON and Detroit, MI, and ActOn in Hamburg, Germany

About DataRealm

DataRealm is a solution provider to manufacturers in North America and Mexico. DataRealms unique mix of capabilities allows them to solve a wide range of complex client issues, from controls engineering, automation of information systems, software development, artificial intelligence and mixed reality. Our business is providing customized services and solutions through a combination of professional skills, consultation, technical expertise and strategic partnerships with automation equipment fabricators, and hardware suppliers. We do this by having a clear understanding of our customers business objectives and recommending the best possible solutions to satisfy their diverse needs.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 12:57:53|Editor: huaxia

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TALUQAN, Afghanistan, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Six Afghan soldiers and eight militants were killed as Taliban militants stormed a military camp located in Ishkamish district in Afghanistan's northern Takhar province on Tuesday night, a local source said on Wednesday.

The clash erupted at midnight when the armed militants taking motorcycles to travel from nearby mountains attacked the joint Afghan security forces operating base near the district's bazaar and government offices, Abdul Raziq from Afghan army's 217 Pamir Corps told Xinhua.

The militants tried to take control over the security forces base, the source said, adding that their attack was repulsed.

Five of the Taliban militants were killed and five others wounded who attacked the same military camp in the weekend, according to Raziq. Enditem
(Newser)  Tiger Woods was driving in an unsafe manner at the time of his Feb. 23 car crash in California, and Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva on Wednesday detailed what that looked like. The data recorder from Woods' Genesis GV80 SUV showed that Woods failed to "negotiate the curve of the roadway" while traveling "at an unsafe speed for the road conditions" of 84 to 87mph, Villanueva said. The New York Times reports the speed limit was 45mph, and he was traveling 75mph when his car hit a tree. As for earlier reports that Woods never hit the brakes, the data recorder shows he applied 99% pressure to the accelerator throughout the crash, leading officials to believe he was trying to brake but his foot hit the gas unintentionally.

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Villanueva said there was no indication of any impairment and said police did not review whether Woods was texting because it was unnecessary to do so, per CNBC. The findings won't lead to a ticket, as being cited for reckless driving would require police to establish the 45-year-old had engaged in a number of violationslike changing lanes in an unsafe mannerleading up to the crash, or for there to be witnesses to his speeding. Villanueva also shot down any suggestions that Woods received "special or preferential treatment," calling that "absolutely false." (Read more Tiger Woods stories.)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 21:56:17|Editor: huaxia

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PHNOM PENH, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) are working together to ensure the continuation of learning for indigenous ethnic minority students as schools have been closed due to the current COVID-19 community outbreak, said a joint press statement on Wednesday.

UNICEF has procured 1,640 radios that will be delivered to indigenous ethnic minority students in the northeastern provinces of Kratie, Ratanakiri and Mondulkiri, the statement said.

These students are learning through the Education Ministry's multilingual education (MLE) radio-based program, just one of the distance learning modalities the Education Ministry introduced in the early days of the pandemic, it said.

"During these challenging times, I am pleased that the ministry is able to partner with UNICEF and the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) to deliver much needed distance learning opportunities for children engaged in multilingual education," Education Minister Hang Chuon Naron said.

"For the multi-lingual radio program to be truly impactful, it is important that parents support their children to continue to learn using this valuable service," he added.

The MLE radio program provides radio lessons for pre and primary school multilingual students in the Kroeng and Tumpoun languages in Ratanakiri province and in the Phnorng language in Mondulkiri province.

An estimated 1,527 students from 79 primary schools who don't currently own a radio will receive one, bringing lessons right into their home, the statement said.

In addition, 34 community preschool MLE teachers and 70 primary school MLE teachers will receive a radio for their teaching purposes to be used in the classroom or during distance teaching and learning activities.

The radios will be delivered in early April, it said.

"The provision of radios to children will enable the reach of the program to be significantly extended, which is very important during this time when schools are closed," Foroogh Foyouzat, representative of UNICEF Cambodia, said.

"This is an important initiative, which is helping to address the issue of learning losses due to the impact of COVID-19," she added.

Alice Albright, GPE's chief executive officer, said even brief interruptions in education could have devastating consequences on children's learning and wellbeing.

"These GPE funds will help Cambodia ensure that no child's education is left behind because of COVID-19," she said. Enditem
VANCOUVER, BC, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Trilogy Metals Inc. (TSX: TMQ) (NYSE American: TMQ) ("Trilogy Metals" or "the Company") announces its financial results for the first quarter ended February 28, 2021. Details of the Company's financial results are contained in the interim unaudited consolidated financial statements and Management's Discussion and Analysis which will be available on the Company's website at www.trilogymetals.com, on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on EDGAR at www.sec.gov. All amounts are in United States dollars unless otherwise stated.

First Quarter 2021 Results and Events Highlights

Q1 2021 comprehensive loss for the quarter of $4.5 million .

. Q1 2021 ending cash position of $9.6 million , a decrease of $1.5 million from the previous quarter.

, a decrease of from the previous quarter. 2021 budget of $27 million for the advancement of the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects, funded entirely by Ambler Metals LLC, with approximately $140 million dedicated to the advancement of the projects.

for the advancement of the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects, funded entirely by Ambler Metals LLC, with approximately dedicated to the advancement of the projects. Ambler Access Project granted 50-year right-of-way on federal lands.

Selected Results

The following selected financial information is prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP.

in thousands of dollars,

except for per share amounts Three months ended Selected expenses February 28,

2021 $ February 29,

2020 $ Mineral properties and feasibility study expenses - 1,545 General and administrative 401 651 Investor relations 154 126 Professional fees 229 668 Salaries 439 224 Salaries  stock-based compensation 2,148 1,196 Gain on derecognition of assets contributed to

joint venture - (175,770) Share of loss on equity investment 1,120 178 Comprehensive earnings (loss) for the period (4,516) 171,179 Basic earnings (loss) per common share (0.03) 1.22 Diluted earnings (loss) per common share (0.03) 1.16

For the three months ended February 28, 2021, the Company reported net loss of $4.5 million (or $0.03 basic and diluted loss per common share). For the comparable period in 2020, we reported net earnings of $171 million (or $1.22 basic and $1.16 diluted earnings per common share). This first quarter difference is primarily due to the $176 million gain on derecognition of mineral property assets contributed to Ambler Metals upon formation of the joint venture on February 11, 2020. This is offset by $1.5 million of mineral property expenses incurred during the first quarter of 2020. Furthermore, our share of loss in equity in investment is $0.94 million higher in the current quarter as the comparative does not include a full quarter of costs for the equity pick up; it reflects our pro rata 50% share of Ambler Metals' net loss from the formation of the joint venture on February 11, 2020 through to the end of the quarter on February 29, 2020.

Other variances noted for the comparable period were: i) a decrease in general and administrative expenses of $0.3 million, primarily due to $0.1 million in travel cost savings (due to COVID-19 travel restrictions), additional regulatory fees of $0.1 million included in the comparative quarter as well as $0.1 million recruiting fees incurred in the comparative period for which there is no current period cost; ii) a decrease of $0.4 million in professional fees as the comparative period includes charges for the research and implementation of new accounting standards and legal and accounting fees in relation to the formation and valuation of the joint venture, all of which do not have a current period comparative; iii) an increase of $0.2 million in salaries is due to the addition of management during the second half of the prior year, for which there is no prior year first quarter comparative; iv) an increase of $1 million in stock-based compensation driven primarily by a 0.9 million increase in the number of stock options that were granted and vested during the first quarter of 2021 versus the comparative period.

Ambler Access Project ("AAP")

During the quarter ended February 28, 2021, the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority ("AIDEA"), the United States Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service signed Right-of-Way agreements giving AIDEA the ability to cross federally owned and managed lands along the route for the AAP (formerly, Ambler Mining District Industrial Access Project or AMDIAP). The authorizing documents with the two agencies are the final federal permits required for the AAP.

2021 Operating Budget for the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects ("UKMP")

During the quarter ended February 28, 2021, the Company announced the approval of the 2021 program and budget of approximately $27 million for the advancement of the UKMP. The budget will be funded by Ambler Metals LLC ("Ambler Metals"), the Company's 50/50 joint venture with South32 Limited. Activities during the 2021 field season will include 7,600 meters of drilling at the Arctic project focused on extracting additional material for metallurgical work and for the conversion of mineral resources into the measured category, along with 7,000 meters of regional exploration drilling at drill-ready targets. During the 2021 field season, Ambler Metals will be adhering to strict COVID safety protocols and to Government of Alaska guidelines. Additional information on the summer field program will be provided when available.

Liquidity and Capital Resources

At February 28, 2021, we had $9.6 million in cash and cash equivalents and working capital of $9.2 million, which is sufficient to fund our ongoing operations for at least the next 12 months. The projects are fully funded by Ambler Metals and we do not anticipate needing to fund our 50% share of future expenditures to advance the projects until Ambler Metals' $145 million is spent.

Qualified Persons

Richard Gosse, P.Geo., Vice President Exploration for Trilogy Metals Inc., is a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. Mr. Gosse has reviewed the technical information in this news release and approves the disclosure contained herein.

About Trilogy Metals

Trilogy Metals Inc. is a metals exploration and development company which holds a 50 percent interest in Ambler Metals LLC which has a 100 percent interest in the UKMP in northwestern Alaska. The UKMP is located within the Ambler Mining District which is one of the richest and most-prospective known copper-dominant districts located in one of the safest geopolitical jurisdictions in the world. It hosts world-class polymetallic volcanogenic massive sulphide ("VMS") deposits that contain copper, zinc, lead, gold and silver, and carbonate replacement deposits which have been found to host high-grade copper and cobalt mineralization. Exploration efforts have been focused on two deposits in the Ambler mining district - the Arctic VMS deposit and the Bornite carbonate replacement deposit. Both deposits are located within land package that spans approximately 172,636 hectares. The Company has an agreement with NANA Regional Corporation, Inc., a Regional Alaska Native Corporation that provides a framework for the exploration and potential development of the Ambler mining district in cooperation with local communities. Our vision is to develop the Ambler mining district into a premier North American copper producer.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes certain "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and United States securities legislation including the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein, including, without limitation, statements relating to the planned expenditures and the anticipated drilling, the Company's ability to fund its operations, the requirement for additional funding at Ambler Metals and the perceived merit of the Company's properties are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are frequently, but not always, identified by words such as "expects", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "potential", "possible", and similar expressions, or statements that events, conditions, or results "will", "may", "could", or "should" occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements involve various risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Company's expectations include the uncertainties involving success of exploration activities, permitting timelines, requirements for additional capital, risks pertaining to the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19), government regulation of mining operations, environmental risks, prices for energy inputs, labour, materials, supplies and services, uncertainties involved in the interpretation of drilling results and geological tests, unexpected cost increases and other risks and uncertainties disclosed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended November 30, 2020 filed with Canadian securities regulatory authorities and with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and in other Company reports and documents filed with applicable securities regulatory authorities from time to time. The Company's forward-looking statements reflect the beliefs, opinions and projections on the date the statements are made. The Company assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements or beliefs, opinions, projections, or other factors, should they change, except as required by law.

SOURCE Trilogy Metals Inc.

Related Links

www.trilogymetals.com


In this file photo taken on January 07, 2021 Dr Nikki Kanani prepares to administer the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, at the Sunrise Care Home in Sidcup, south east London. A British trial of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine on children has been paused while regulators assess its possible link to blood clots, Oxford University, which helped develop the jab, said on April 6, 2021.(KIRSTY O'CONNOR / POOL / AFP)

The Moderna vaccine, which is already being delivered in Europe and the United States, joined ones from AstraZeneca-Oxford University and Pfizer-BioNTech in Britain's armoury against Covid-19.

The first jabs of the two-stage Moderna inoculation were injected at a hospital in Wales, in a timely diversification of Britain's rollout that was hailed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

"We have ordered 17 million doses that will be going into arms across the UK in the coming weeks. Please get your jab as soon as you are contacted," he tweeted.

Supply problems for AstraZeneca had threatened to complicate Britain's inoculation drive this month, and concerns are building over a potential link between the jab and rare blood clots among a small number of recipients.

Oxford University said late Tuesday that it had paused a British trial of the AstraZeneca vaccine on children.

The university said the trial had posed "no safety concerns", but that it was awaiting more data from Britain's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) before restarting the study.

The MHRA says it is looking into the cases of clotting, amid reports that the regulator may join some countries in the European Union in restricting access in younger age groups.

The MHRA reported over the weekend that there had been 30 blood clotting cases, seven fatal, out of 18 million doses administered in Britain.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is also looking anew at the issue, but so far the World Health Organization insists the jab is safe.

Kent Woods, a British former head of both the MHRA and EMA, told LBC radio that the risks of Covid were much higher and he had "no reservations" about the AstraZeneca vaccine.

But Maggie Wearmouth, a member of the government's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, told the Daily Telegraph that "perhaps slowing things down" with the rollout "until we're absolutely certain" might be wise.

Any delays could imperil the British government's phased easing of its current coronavirus lockdown, with all adults due to receive a first vaccine dose by the end of July.
Recent Exchange Rate Market Moves Overdone, Sell GBP/CHF, EUR/NZD and NOK/SEK

Foreign exchange analysts at TD Securities have recommended three further trades for April 2021, with the Pound Sterling and Norwegian krone now looking overvalued while the New Zealand dollar has weakened too far.

It recommends selling the Pound to Swiss Franc (GBP/CHF) exchange rate, Norwegian Krone to Swedish Krona (NOK/SEK) exchange rate and Euro to New Zealand Dollar (EUR/NZD) exchange rate.

Political Risks Reinforce Pound Sterling Overvaluation

The bank considers that the Pound Sterling is now over-priced against most European currencies. TDS expects that there will be a Sterling risk premium associated with the May Scottish parliamentary elections, a concern also shared by Credit Agricole.

GBP remains overpriced against most of the major European currencies on global growth and risk.

In contrast, it considers that the franc is now slightly undervalued.

In this context, it recommends selling GBP/CHF exchange rate at 1.3025 with a target of 1.2520.

The Norwegian krone has posted strong gains this year and moved above parity against the Swedish krona, but TDS considers that it has strengthened too far given the relative fundamentals between the two countries.

In March, the krone moved above parity for the first time in 12 months with highs above 1.0300.

The bank suggests selling the NOK/SEK at 1.0256 with a target of 0.9900.

Goldman Sachs still recommends a long GBP/CHF position and also expects NOK/SEK to make further gains.

TDS also considers that the New Zealand dollar has weakened too far over the past two weeks and is now undervalued on fundamental grounds. According to the banks model, the kiwi is now the most undervalued major currency.

It recommends selling the EUR/NZD exchange rate at 1.6715 with a target of 1.6100.

On a slightly short-term term view, TDS also expects that the New Zealand Dollar to Dollar (NZD/USD) exchange rate will strengthen to 0.7200 on a 2-week view.
The School Committee is updated on the full return to elementary classrooms this week.

Majority of North Adams School Personnel Have Received Vaccine Dose

NORTH ADAMS, Mass.  About two-thirds of School Department personnel have had at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine.

Superintendent Barbara Malkas, in updating the School Committee on the return to classrooms, said this covered all kindergarten to Grade 12 workers from teachers to cafeteria staff.

"A little bit more than two-thirds of our staff have had either their first dose of vaccine or have completed both doses of vaccine for Moderna or Pfizer, and many more were able to access the Johnson & Johnson one-dose vaccine," she said Tuesday night.

The state set aside several days to prioritize education system workers for vaccinations prior to the return to full-time in-person learning that began for elementary schools on Monday. Grades 7 and 8 will return April 28; a date for high schools is not yet set.

"So what had changed in order to have this come about now, right, why now is it safer? Or what do we know now that is different than what we knew when the initial guidance came out last July?" Malkas said. "For one thing, there has been a lot more a lot more research done with regards to contagion and the rate of infection. And we know that mitigation strategies such as mask wearing physical distancing personal hygiene protocols and disinfection protocols, really decrease your spread in schools."

There is very little difference in the rates of exposure between 3 feet versus 6 feet social distancing when masks are used, she said, and surveillance testing has allowed the school system to "really be responsive to the data."

All children are staying 3 feet apart seat edge to seat edge in the classroom and when they are taking mask breaks or eating, they are 6 feet apart. Teachers have a 10-foot instructional space 6 feet from the front row of desks.

All other protocols  hand washing, moving between classrooms  remains the same as with the hybrid model with the exception of busing since more students are now on being transported at the same time.

"Bus windows are open, regardless of the conditions of the weather," Malkas said. "So students are asked to dress for the weather conditions as opposed to the calendar or an expectation for spring weather in New England. ...

"Every effort is maintained to accommodate physical distancing while riding the bus."

The superintendent said it took a lot of effort between Dufour bus company and April Bentley, administrative assistant in Student Support Services, to create bus routes that would maximize space as much as possible.

Committee member Tara Jacobs asked for clarification because based on a memo to parents last week, it sounded like children would be shoulder to shoulder.

The state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is allowing two students per seat as long as masking and ventilation are being followed, Malkas said.

"So we have certain buses in the district particularly at the elementary level, those areas where we have a higher density of students, those buses in the past would have three students per seat, so they have been reduced to two students proceed in compliance with the expectations of DESE."

Director of Student Sevices Thomas Simon said the buses have a capacity of 71 but are running in the 25-student range. "The highest that we have is 33 on a bus, which would mean we've got a couple kids that are two to a seat."

Jacobs asked if they would be from the same family; Thomas said he did not know for sure but thought it likely.

"I know some bus drivers have been really diligent about assigned seats, so that the students are using the same seats," Malkas said. "And then they disinfect before and after each one."

The superintendent said there was an effort to make sure the district was "maintaining and promoting a healthy, safe and productive learning environment for our students and staff.

"So we wanted to make sure the protocols were in place to do that. And we wanted to have a focus on the social and emotional health, mental health of our students, that has been promoted as the reason for doing this now."

In other business, the committee approved the start of spring sports, with Jacobs voting no, subject to both the district's maintaining a hybrid or full in-person learning model and required testing for all participants.
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He managed his time very well as a seasoned academic and a successful administrator because he was raised in a generation where delivery and impact are the two most important things that are emphasised. In essence, there is a close relationship between being an academic and a leader because the two are mutually helpful.

Extensive academic research has cemented the place of mentoring and career guidance for people in contemporary times. The action of guiding people to choose a particular career path has no place in the Nigerian education system, especially during the heydays of colonialism and Nigerias post-independence era in the 1960s. The reason for this is not unknown. Then, there was a scarcity of academic graduates who understood the place of mentorship in the development of individuals, as a way of building a virile successor generation. In addition to this, not many career opportunities were available or open to individuals at that point in time.

Thus, individuals usually chose their career journeys on the basis of a factor associated with personal preferences or social pressure. It was more difficult because the availability of courses and career options determined, to a large degree, the career choices of the said society. This was the social and historical contexts in which Obafemi was raised, and therefore, he was affected by the same condition. For someone who would choose to be an academic, the assurance of that career choice was not something he had, even at the early period of his school days as an undergraduate. With no vital counseling, the prospect of being a future academic was not forthcoming. Still, the fact that he had engaged in a few commitments made it one of his career direction motivations.

Some of a teachers good qualities are aspects of his or her practical communication skills and persuasive ability demonstrated in speech situations. Teachers need excellent communication skills because it would help drive home their points into the students subconscious, and therefore help in the facilitation of a better understanding of a course or topic of discussion. In other words, a successful teaching-learning encounter depends mainly on the communication mastery of the person sharing information and knowledge. On the other hand, it is within the teachers intellectual duties to have solid persuasive skills because the act of teaching presupposes persuasion. Students are not objects into which one can spread an idea without interrogation. The people we call students are referred to as such because they can measure the content of a message passed on to them, examine the arguments, and sieve the content before digesting them in their minds. Therefore, without persuasive skills, getting messages to these individuals would be inarguably tricky because students are known to be especially sensitive to information they are given. Once they realise that the information is of no particular importance, they would become passive and uninterested in the whole process.

Meanwhile, Obafemi engaged in social activities that sharpened his communication abilities and increased his persuasive skills. As a university student, he was exposed to several group activities, such as the drama society, current affairs club, debating society, editorship of school magazines, among many other engagements. It was in these various areas that he had the opportunity to improve himself in many ways. For example, becoming a member of the drama society exposed him to audience dynamics and how to confront them in a public situation. It is incontestable that many individuals have glossophobia (fear of public speaking): they are challenged by speaking in public spaces because of the fear of losing their credibility, among other things. To be candid, people who confront a large audience for the first time are usually faced with this challenge. It requires a gradual engagement with the public before one can conquer the said fear. However, the situation was different for Obafemi because he belonged to a drama society where the opportunity to speak to an audience was offered to him on many occasions. Acting during this period involved speaking and also demonstrating his ability to speak to people directly. Without knowing it, he was being groomed in preparation for a teaching career without his knowledge. But if the drama society meant anything to him, it was that it exposed him to the act of speaking in public without nursing much fear.

We would be right to say that the university provided mentors and guides that helped Obafemi in his choice of a teaching and acting career. Because he was unsure of following this trajectory at the beginning of his academic enrollment, what life introduced to him in the university showed him his career journey. Being a member of the debating society improved his persuasive skills. To debate in Nigeria, tertiary institutions are meant to involve a series of mental gymnastics whereby one makes conscious efforts to keep ones brain fit and agile. Debating precludes shyness, and because one would be duty-bound to make people understand a situation from a persons perspective, one needs more than a substantial evidence of facts. One needs the ability to make them understand issues from ones standpoint. From what Obafemi implicitly conceded to, the debating club helped sharpen his communication skills and persuasive power. Without a doubt, a teacher would need these attributes in his/her desire to achieve a successful interaction with learners. Looking at this great mans social involvement, one would undeniably understand why his artistic productions are a reflection of brilliance and intelligence. Apart from dedicating his time to social events as a student, he belonged to a series of groups that added to his academic ingenuity.

Invariably, the other side of Obafemi, which teaching and acting have revealed, is his leadership. Apart from being a seasoned academic, Obafemi has a good record as an administrator. There are many indicators that he was built for purposeful leadership, and one can even notice this in his engagement as an undergraduate.

Being an editor of a magazine meant that Obafemi was better off in his mastery of the English language. For the Nigerians of the time, these are the different ways they understood what they would pursue as their career in the later stages of their lives. Perhaps after he was established as a public actor and figure whose competence in communication could not be contested, he dived into the stream of advocacy whereby he employed his communicational competence to challenge authority in a quest for equity and justice. Whereas society usually likes to celebrate the genius among students and individuals, they can be critical of them when they use their intellects to organise demonstrations, especially whenever they considered that there is injustice in the environment. In the case of Obafemi, he had once been a voice of freedom in a particular demonstration in his school, and because of the hostility of postcolonial African leaders to criticism of any colour, he barely escaped rustication for his involvement. Although the school was successful in repressing his voice after he engaged with the said affair and struggle, it ignited a passion in him to consider public speaking in his determination to educate people on essential ideas regarding their environment. Becoming a teacher readily came to mind. There are not many opportunities for people to carry a message to their desired audiences, but teaching offers this golden opportunity, as we all know. Also, the media presents a similar chance, and it is rewarding that he explored the options in these two career areas.

In the earlier times of Obafemi, if one did not belong to the political circle, the choice was limited to either becoming a teacher or belonging to the civil service. This was so because the government controlled the bulk of employment opportunities and there were not many private corporations to work for. This meant that Obafemi was open to serving as a civil servant, but he refused to follow directions for many reasons. He confessed that the countrys civil service was a site of vindictive politics where the superiors deliberately toyed with the future of their subordinates and thus prevented them from reaching their fullest potentials. He was not unaware of this decadence, and realising how being a victim of such an antagonistic system would compound his woes, it appeared preferable to consider a career in teaching, rather than subsume his future under the exceedingly corrupt and particularly disconcerting civil service system. He laments that authorities in the system always get themselves involved in actively denying their subordinates progress without necessarily having a reason for their actions, other than to be outrageously vindictive.

Bureaucratic decadence thrived for a long time because of the association of absolute power and authority among the occupants in office. Meanwhile, it has allowed the systems destabilisation because it especially discouraged individuals who would have added to the beauty of the civil service and crushed their productivity in the process. Anyone familiar with the destructive politics in this sector would run kilometres away from it. One of such individuals is Obafemi, who decided to move away from the possibility of functioning as a civil servant. Here, postcolonial politics is unraveled, and because it encouraged corruption and other forms of condemnable behaviours, it delimits the people from reaching their potentials. During this time, the foundation for Nigerias decline in economic and political virtues was sedimented and their moral decadence took off at an accelerated speed. The ubiquity of unpatriotic people in different parastatals in contemporary Nigeria started when the civil service, which constituted the labour force of the country, was treated with such a level of disdain and disrespect. Even though the country underwent a record-breaking economic transformation from its mono-economic business, the elite class extravagance negatively impacted the people as it impeded their progress.

These became the factors that determined the quality of individuals who enrolled in the civil service, and that also chased some individuals away. Because the teaching and acting sectors were comparatively better than others, they became the preference of this man who was already built with interest in sharing knowledge to impart to the people. Obafemi was aware, during these periods, that the inherent leadership deficit and moral decadence pervasive in the civil service are something to educate the citizens about, perhaps hoping that they would contribute positively in fighting the menace. He considered the classroom as the ground where challenges confronting the country would be appropriately corrected. The continuation of a decadent behaviour is naturally impossible when conscious efforts are made to educate the younger generation of the devastating consequences it would have on society. Teaching, therefore, became a natural call to service. It became the only platform where the construction of a better and fair society was possible. It was natural for someone who already developed reliable communication skills to consider teaching as the career choice to help him fulfill his God-given potential. Without mentoring and guidance, he dived into it and became successful.

Invariably, the other side of Obafemi, which teaching and acting have revealed, is his leadership. Apart from being a seasoned academic, Obafemi has a good record as an administrator. There are many indicators that he was built for purposeful leadership, and one can even notice this in his engagement as an undergraduate. He led several demonstrations to reveal the excesses among authorities while he was a student. In addition to this, teaching exposed him to the ills of academic inquiry in a country like Nigeria. It appears the solution to these challenges is naturally beyond the confines of a classroom teacher. The domain of making policies and formulating regulations is something beyond the capacity of a teacher. To provoke a noteworthy change in the polity, one must belong to the circle where decisions about education affairs are made. But for Obafemi, it became apparent that his road to academic leadership was to be littered with varying experiences of responsibility. It became necessary that he represented at the union level before he would ever taste administrative positions.

Having done essentially well at the union level, Obafemi eventually considered the administration assignment where he now functions, not as a union member but as a university head. But we should not be unfair to his step-by-step rise to the position of leadership. Unlike what we have in most places today, his ascension to the university head position was a product of his exceptional service at different levels.

He had information about the Nigerian Academic Staff Union of the Universities nature in his fingerprints, so the political dynamics of union affairs were not strange to him. Immediately after taking the role of the union secretary, he began to make substantial contributions in his capacity to impact the academic and political spectrum of the country. The union body is seen as the firebrand advocacy group to enable fairness on the part of the government. However popular, the political structure of the country was hijacked by the capitalist culture that had been deep-rooted in the nations political system. His generation was especially radical, committed in their assignments to the peoples emancipation and the enhancement of fair treatment of staff and students in tertiary institutions. Unionism became the only platform for the projection of their voices against the people in government, who are distracted by the euphoria of power to abandon their visions for personal aggrandisement. There were eminent personalities in the union during the time. Because they shared a common interest in determining a fair society, it became exceedingly difficult for a compromise of their moral principles.

Having done essentially well at the union level, Obafemi eventually considered the administration assignment where he now functions, not as a union member but as a university head. But we should not be unfair to his step-by-step rise to the position of leadership. Unlike what we have in most places today, his ascension to the university head position was a product of his exceptional service at different levels. He had been the Head of the English Department at the University of Ilorin and eventually graduated to the deanship of the Faculty of Arts. In these two positions, he served to point to innovations brought to leadership. He was student-friendly and became very active in the enhancement of the welfare of staff under him. Ascending into a greater position of power in an academic environment is a testament to ones progressional achievements. If a leader does not introduce new leadership trends or is operationally deficient in managing a team, the opportunity to function in greater positions would be taken away from him. However, this is not the case with Obafemi. Having served successfully well in the role of the headship of his department and deanship of his Faculty, he was promoted to fill in a Senate capacity. He was not unaware of the responsibility ahead of him, and he did fine in this capacity too. To cap it off, he was chosen as an administrative head by popular election.

What is needed anywhere in the world to promote an individual is his/her receipt of excellence in positions where s/he has been tested. For Obafemi, the evidence of success in the positions where he has been chosen are substantial. In a country like Nigeria, one earns the opportunity to be nationally known if one contributes immensely to the advancement of activities for which one is elected or selected. The name of Obafemi became a domestic affair because he represented well in union positions he has served at different times. This brought him some level of popularity, which eventually helped his upward mobility and career trajectory. He became actively involved in shaping the countrys education system in his position as the headship of department, deanship, and then in the school generally. But this would be surpassed by the positions allocated to him subsequently. Having realised how important he was in the various positions where he served, he was called to function in greater places where he would be of national importance to the country generally. In the year 2000, he was appointed as Chairman of the Governing Board of the National Commission for Museums and Monument.

This position was meant to corroborate the belief that he was exceptional and fruitful in the different capacities he has functioned in. From the experience of Obafemi, one would understand that a close connection lies between being determined and successful because a determined person would always look for opportunities to make an impact. Meanwhile, making an impact is the cornerstone of success because it would open the individual to a broader range of greater options. He became successful as a teacher because he was offered a chance to serve at a higher capacity, from where he once again demonstrated an uncommon level of control. The academic community where he functioned felt his presence and always celebrated his intellect. He became an invaluable addition to them with his highly innovative ways of handling leadership responsibilities. One of such skills is the ability to manage different people and harness their thoughts and ideas for the academic communitys common good. While he was a member of the union, he did not compromise the standards, and also when he found himself in administrative office, he was active and productive.

Before being appointed as the chairman of the Governing Board, he served in several positions with outstanding records of enviable achievements. When he served on the Board of Governors of the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital, he brought his leadership experience to bear on the Board, which he made notable contributions towards the enhancement of its success. However, one thing that stands out is that he was never distracted by these positions as to waiver in his commitment. Despite being bombarded with responsibilities, Obafemi found no difficulty in managing his business with respectable performance. He was highly successful because moving between his career work and newspaper column, to which he has dedicated most of his time, was more manageable. He admitted that every form of progress he made during his journey was his background as an academic. He has mastered the very act of giving priority to things that are considered very important. He managed his time very well as a seasoned academic and a successful administrator because he was raised in a generation where delivery and impact are the two most important things that are emphasised. In essence, there is a close relationship between being an academic and a leader because the two are mutually helpful.

Toyin Falola, a professor of History and University Distinguished Teaching Professor, is Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at The University of Texas at Austin.
Breaches in relation to the Davy bond-dealing scandal did not constitute criminal activity, the Central Bank has said in letter to TD .

In the letter to Social Democrats TD Roisin Shortall, the Central Banks top regulatory enforcer Derville Rowland said her agency hit Davy with a record 4.13m fine and a reprimand for serious regulatory breaches, but said those breaches are not designated as criminal offences under the MiFID regulations.

The letter dated March 31 was published by the Central Bank on April 7.

Responding to the letter on Wednesday night Deputy Shortall said she was surprised the notion of a criminal inquiry was dismissed so quickly, given comments from Ms Rowlands at the Oireachtas Finance Committee last month.

"This was a huge scandal, in the upper echelons of the financial world, and there has been no satisfactory resolution of the matter. I will be engaging further with the Central Bank and the Minister for Finance on this issue, Roisin Shortall said.

At the Finance Committee hearing in March Derville Rowland, the Central Bank's Director General, Financial Conduct, told TDs she planned to take up the Davy case with gardai and the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE).

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"But I absolutely intend to have a proactive discussion with a number of agencies about this, including An Garda Siochana and the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement, to sit down with them in the full facts of the information so that from their perspective they can consider this matter," she said last month.

However, in the later letter written in reply to queries on the case from Social Democrat Party co-leader Roisin Shortall, the Central Bank appears to dismiss the prospect of any criminal aspect to the Davy affair and pushed the question of corporate enforcement onto the ODCE.

Ms Shortall had asked: Did the activity that these 16 people at Davy engaged in constitute criminal activity in 2014, and does that activity currently constitute criminal activity? 

Ms Rowland replied: Davy admitted to four breaches of the MiFID regulations. Those breaches are not designated as criminal offences under the MiFID regulations. However, the breaches were very serious regulatory breaches and the public reprimand and financial sanction imposed reflect that.

Asked if the Central Bank had raised any issues with the ODCE, which is responsible for enforcing corporate governance standards for all companies, Ms Rowland said whether Davy executives and directors had complied with their responsibilities under the Companies Act, 2014 was a matter for the ODCE.

The Central Bank findings against Davy related specifically to breaches of regulation around control functions and policies rather than the controversial deal at the heart of the case.

Asked about the profits of that 2014 deal  where seller Patrick Kearney unwittingly sold Anglo Irish Bank bonds to 16 Davy employees after going to the broker to find a buyer only to later discover they were subsequently sold on for a higher price  Ms Rowland indicated that the issue had been settled in by a court action taken by the former client against the brokerage.

Ms Shortall asked: What happened to the money that was made from the transaction involved?

Ms Rowland replied: The Central Banks investigation concerned breaches of the MiFID regulations by Davy in relation to conflicts of interest, personal account dealing and provision of information to the compliance function. It is a matter of public record that the transaction that prompted the Central Banks investigation was the subject of civil proceedings between Davy and its client. It has been widely reported that those proceedings were settled between the parties. It is not a matter for the Central Bank to comment on the terms of that settlement.
BKU leader Rakesh Tikait said on Wednesday that the government should compensate of hilly areas for the damage to crops caused by wild animals.

Tikait said the government should also make arrangements for transporting the produce of from their farms to the wholesale markets.

Addressing a farmer 'mahapanchayat' at Haripur Tohana village near Paonta Sahib in Himachal Pradesh's Sirmaur district, the BKU leader said an arrangement should be made for on the lines of subsidy provided to sugar factories for transporting sugar to the ports.

"When the government wants to talk, we will talk to them, but we are also prepared for the agitation. The first phase of the agitation will continue till November-December and will be intensified after that if necessary," the BKU spokesperson said.

Addressing the first farmer 'mahapanchayat' held by the Samyukta Kisan Morcha in Himachal Pradesh, Tikait said the protest at Delhi borders the farmers would follow all guidelines as coronavirus cases continue to surge.

He underscored that they would continue with the agitation and not end it at any cost even if a curfew or lockdown is imposed.

Tikait said "three Ts will help the country win -- tanks with our soldiers at the China border, tractors of our farmers and Twitter used by the youth".

The BKU leader said the people of Himachal Pradesh would have to leave the hills and come down for the agitation to "save" their lands and livelihood.

Another farmer leader, Gurnam Singh Chaduni, said the farmers of the country would find it difficult to compete with US farmers if "one world, one market" system comes into force.

An average US farmer owns thousands of square kilometres of land and gets paid a hefty subsidy by the government, while over 80 per cent of farmers in our country own less than 2.5 acres of land, he added.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
KYODO NEWS - Apr 7, 2021 - 21:11 | All, World, Japan

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga is planning visits to India and the Philippines during the Golden Week holidays from late April, government sources said Wednesday, as Japan looks to strengthen ties in Asia to counter China's growing clout.

Japan seeks to reaffirm cooperation with the countries over its vision of a "free and open Indo-Pacific" region through the trips, which are subject to changes depending on the coronavirus situation.

The framework known as the Quad -- consisting of Japan, the United States, Australia and India -- has increasingly become the focus of efforts to counter China's growing economic and military influence.

The countries held the Malabar joint naval exercises last November in a show of force, while agreeing in a virtual summit to "meet challenges to the rules-based maritime order" in the South and East China seas, where China has made territorial claims that are fiercely contested by its neighbors.

Suga met with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison in November in Tokyo and is slated to visit the United States for talks with President Joe Biden next week, and is apparently seeking to further solidify the framework by meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Japan and India have also strengthened bilateral security ties in recent years, signing a military pact last September allowing them to exchange supplies and logistical support.

Suga and Modi are expected to discuss further tie-ups in outer space and cybersecurity, as well as cooperation on infrastructure projects and other economic issues.

According to the sources, Suga is also slated to meet with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, and they will discuss ways to deepen security and economic cooperation as this year marks the 65th year since the normalization of their diplomatic relations.
American culture is a grand mix of the old and the not so old, as we all know. As is true in other cultures, including the island culture here Read more
Rome, April 7 : There is a causal link between the coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and very rare cases of blood clots, although it remains unclear what the connection is and the possible causes are likewise still unknown, a senior European Medicines Agency (EMA) expert told an Italian on Tuesday.

"It is clear that an association exists" between the vaccine and the dozens of reported blood clots, said Marco Cavaleri, head of the EMA's health threats and vaccines strategy.

"Such cases are extremely rare, and the benefits (of the vaccine) still largely outweigh the risks," he stressed.

"Yet, it is becoming increasingly hard to say there is no cause-effect relationship between the vaccination with AstraZeneca and very rare cases of unusual blood clots associated with a low number of platelets," he said.

In its latest assessment of embolic and thrombotic events reported after coronavirus vaccination published on March 24, the EMA looked at 258 such cases (45 of them fatal) that occurred in Europe out of almost 20 million first doses of the vaccine administered, the Xinhua news agency reported.

On March 31, the agency explained that such an assessment did not unveil "any specific risk factors, such as age, gender or a previous medical history of clotting disorders for these very rare events." "A causal link with the vaccine is not proven but is possible, and further analysis is continuing," it added.

Cavaleri told the Italian newspaper on Tuesday that the assessment process was "far from over." The EMA is expected to provide a new evaluation on the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine soon, perhaps by late Wednesday, the European Union's (EU) Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said on Twitter on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the Italian Medicines Agency (AIFA) and the Health Ministry were also due to discuss the issue late on Tuesday, although the AIFA would reportedly not issue any new rule on the AstraZeneca vaccine's use pending the EMA's decision.

Like other EU countries, Italy on March 15 issued a "temporary and precautionary" ban on the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine following reports of a small number of clot deaths in the country.

Three days later, it resumed use of the AstraZeneca vaccine following the EMA's announcement that it was safe.

Also in March, the Italian branch of AstraZeneca said that "an analysis of safety data on over ten million doses administered has shown no evidence of an increased risk of pulmonary embolism or deep vein thrombosis in any age group, gender or batch." However, an official from the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday that there was "no link for the moment" between the AstraZeneca vaccine and blood clots, stressing that the benefits of the vaccine were "largely still positive" compared to its risks.

"We continue to see a number of events that are rare events. ... There's no evidence that the benefit-risk assessment for the vaccine needs to be changed," said Rogerio Pinto de Sa Gaspar, Director of Regulation and Pre-qualification of WHO, at a press conference.

The AstraZeneca vaccine was authorized for use in Italy on January 29 and is one of four vaccines currently approved against the coronavirus here, the others being those by Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson.

Italy's vaccination campaign is ongoing but it has been marred by a slow start and delays.

To date, the country has administered 11.3 million doses out of the 14.1 million doses available, according to the government. Over 3.5 million people have received both vaccine doses.

At a global level, 269 candidate vaccines are still being developed -- 85 of them in clinical trials -- in several countries including Germany, China, Britain, Russia and the US, according to data released by the World Health Organization on April 2.
Pence Launches Advocacy Group to Promote Conservative Policies and Thwart Radical Left Agendas

Former Vice President Mike Pence has announced the launch of Advancing American Freedom, a policy and advocacy group that will promote Trump-era policies and defend them from liberal attacks and media distortions, while seeking to thwart radical Left agendas that would threaten Americas freedoms.

Advancing American Freedom plans to build on the success of the last four years by promoting traditional Conservative values and promoting the successful policies of the Trump Administration, Pence said in an April 7 statement.

The launch comes as many conservatives look on with trepidation at both the enacted and expected policies of the Biden administration, fearful of a leftward lurch.

Conservatives will not stand idly by as the radical Left and the new administration attempt to threaten Americas standing as the greatest Nation in the world with their destructive policies, Pence added.

A promotional video accompanying the launch drove home the theme of growing conservative anxiety amid trends like cancel culture, the fossil fuel crackdown, more permissive border policies, the push for more spending on social programs, expectations of tax hikes, and fears of a major climate change-driven economic reset.

Advancing American Freedom will fight for policies that ensure economic prosperity, fight to protect our conservative values, and fight for a strong foreign policy agenda that protects Americatoday and for generations to come. Our conservative principles and values are under attack unlike ever before, the narrator says in the video, which also features a brief lookback on Pence in politics delivering his core message of faith, family, and freedom.

The organization will seek to merge traditional conservative values with former President Donald Trumps Make America Great Again policy agenda that the announcement credited for propelling the United States to new economic heights, and unprecedented strength and prosperity.

In ominous terms, the new groups director, Paul Teller, said those policies are now under threat.

The policies that led to those accomplishments are now under attack by the radical Left and the Biden Administration, and the foundation of our Nation is under siege, said Teller, who served as director of strategic initiatives for Pence when he was second-in-command at the White House.

The group will provide Pence with a platform to outline his policy agenda and build support among key Republicans without officially stepping into the 2024 presidential race. Trump has not ruled out another run for the White House, making it challenging for Pence to organize without alienating his former boss.

Pences aides brushed aside speculation that the organization is a vehicle for his presidential ambitions, telling the Washington Examiner that the focus is on developing a conservative policy agenda to parlay into Republican votes in next years mid-term elections.

Advancing American Freedom will engage in policy discussions and issue advocacy at both state and federal levels, and will propose conservative policy solutions around three pillars: the economy, foreign policy, and constitutional issuesin particular ones that center on American liberties and, presumably, threats to them, according to its website.

Pences first public speech is expected at the end of April at the Palmetto Family Councils annual fundraiser in South Carolina.
SCHUYLKILL HAVEN  Penn State Schuylkill has launched new programs focused on engaging with the local community.

Among the programs are expanded dual enrollment courses, high school faculty speakers and Spanish for the Workplace courses and training sessions.

Shannon Del Conte, director of community engagement, said working with the community beyond the campus is part of the schools mission.

Its very important as a Penn State campus to serve the communities in which we live, she said.

Dual enrollment

In the fall, Penn State Schuylkill will begin offering more dual enrollment programs for high school students.

Penn State Schuylkill has offered an Emerging Health Professionals dual enrollment program in partnership with the Schuylkill Technology Center, and it wanted to expand into other fields.

We are focusing on the majors we have on campus, as well as engineering and education, because weve received feedback from our local districts saying they have kids who are interested, Del Conte said.

During fall 2021 and spring 2022, students enrolled in the programs will be able to take courses on campus as well as have additional enrichment activities, which may involve having an industry expert come in to speak or provide a company tour.

Theyll have that class experience to figure out if that really is what they want to do, and theyre getting general education classes that are going to count towards their degree later, Del Conte said.

Penn State Schuylkill offers dual enrollment to high schoolers at a 50% tuition reduction, which Del Conte said will help students save money while they figure out what they might want to do.

It gets them on campus where theyre mixed in with traditional college students, she said. Its a great opportunity for students if they have an idea of what field they may be thinking about, so they can feel it out if its right for them or not.

Speakers bureau

Another program being offered for high school students is the Faculty Speakers Bureau for High Schools, in which Penn State Schuylkill faculty work with high school faculty to provide supplemental education in business, career planning, health sciences, humanities, social sciences and science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM.

Its designed to get our faculty in front of high school students so they can have that higher level college experience, Del Conte said. Its also designed to allow the high school teachers to supplement some of the things that theyre doing in the classroom.

Any high school teacher or guidance counsellor in the county can reach out about any subject they would want to have an expert teach their class.

We have faculty in all of our disciplines who are willing to participate, she said.

The program started this spring with virtual visits to the classrooms. Del Conte said it has been successful so far, with many teachers interested in English, career preparation, STEM and other fields.

We would love to have our faculty face to face with these students in the classroom in high schools once restrictions are lifted, she said.

The program, as well as the dual enrollment program, can expose students to fields of study they might be interested in, as well as help them decide what would be a good fit for them.

Its all about helping them make those decisions, she said. Its our way of helping to guide students, not necessarily to Penn State Schuylkill, but to anything.

Spanish for the workplace

Penn State Schuylkill has offered Spanish for the Workplace courses for a couple of years, Del Conte said, and hopes to see the program continue to grow.

The school offers public classes that anyone can enroll in, as well as private training sessions for businesses or organizations, to help people who might encounter Spanish speaking customers, clients or co-workers.

Its really a refresher, an intro and everything in between, she said. It gives you those basic conversational skills. It also teaches about cultural background so that youre really able to assist folks as best as possible.

Del Conte said the private training sessions have been helpful for workplaces with employees who speak Spanish and have experienced language barriers.

By offering this program, they were able to solve that problem so they still have their wonderful Spanish speaking employees, and now their manager can communicate with them, she said.

Classes and training sessions have been offered via Zoom this year. Del Conte said summer and fall course times have not yet been announced, but there will be summer training sessions offered at a discount for Schuylkill Chamber of Commerce members.
Ripple Science is being recognized as one of the 2021 awardees for the Michigan 50 Companies to Watch award, presented by Michigan Celebrates Small Business. Ripple Science will be honored at an awards ceremony during the 17th annual Michigan Celebrates Small Business gala event, July 20.

Ripple Science is an emerging innovative Saas and fast growing eClinical company dedicated to accelerating clinical trials through improved patient recruitment and retention. By adapting marketing and sales automation techniques to patient engagement Ripple speeds the enrollment process while reducing participant drop out rates. With consistently ever-growing communication tools and collaboration features, users are given the opportunity to upgrade functionalities at any time. Ripples research site teams achieve on average >96 percent patient retention.

Its a real honor to be recognized by the Michigan business community following a very competitive review. The team and our investors remain focused on building value, delighting our customers, and contributing to the economy in Michigan, commented Peter Falzon, Ripple Science President and CEO.

This years Michigan 50 Companies to Watch have made a substantial economic impact, totaling $365 million in total annual revenue for 2019. From 2016 through 2019, these companies generated $1 billion in revenue and added 723 employees (both in Michigan and out of state), reflecting a 101.9% increase in revenue and 93.8% increase in jobs for the four-year period. That translates into a 26.9% annual revenue growth and 24.8% annual growth in employees.

Michigans small businesses are the lifeblood of our local economies and play a vital role in making our communities attractive places to live, work, visit and play, said Josh Hundt, Chief Business Development Officer for the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. As the state continues to recover from the COVID-19 outbreak, we are honored to recognize and celebrate these small businesses, which demonstrate the resilience, innovation and grit that sets Michigan apart.

Companies nominated for the Michigan 50 Companies to Watch award must be second-stage companies, defined as having six to 99 full-time-equivalent employees and generating $750,000 to $50 million in annual revenue or working capital from investors or grants. Additionally, the companies must be privately held and headquartered in Michigan.

Judges from economic and entrepreneurship development organizations selected the 2020 winners. The judges evaluated the nominees demonstration of intent and capacity to grow based on the following:

Employee or sales growth

Exceptional entrepreneurial leadership

Sustainable competitive advantage

Other notable factors that showcase the company's success

Michigan Celebrates received 575 nominations for the Michigan 50 Companies to Watch award, which surpassed last years record of 425 nominations. In addition to a competitive landscape for this award, the businesses who are selected by the judges go through a rigorous due diligence process prior to the final decision.

Ripple Science accelerates clinical research with its secure, HIPAA-compliant suite of tools. By adapting sales and marketing automation to the process of patient recruitment, Ripple helps our customers recruit more participants, faster and reduces patients lost to follow-up.

Ripple Sciences flagship product, Ripple, is currently being used by research investigators at more than 100 academic and research centers around the world, including Johns Hopkins University, Pennsylvania State University, University of California Los Angeles, the Brain Research Foundation Canada, University of East Anglia (UK), Cognito Therapeutics (Boston, MA) and the University of Michigan.

To learn more, please visit: https://www.ripplescience.com

Michigan Celebrates Small Business (MCSB) is a collaboration of trusted statewide founding organizations who offer resources for small businesses. Since 2005, Michigan Celebrates Small Business awards gala has placed a spotlight on how small businesses positively impact our communities and state. The MCSB organization is focused on supporting, promoting and celebrating small businesses in Michigan.

The Manufacturing Growth Alliance is the Managing Partner of Michigan Celebrates Small Business. Founding sponsors are the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, PNC Bank, AF Group, and Dynamic Edge, Inc.

Information about Michigan Celebrates Small Business can be found at http://www.MichiganCelebrates.org.

Media Contact Information:

Anna Falzon Digital Marketing & Research Specialist

anna@ripplescience.com

734-644-4282
Investors of renewable energy development projects will be chosen through competitive tenders and they will set the minimum selling price of the output of their projects.

The Nhi Ha Solar Power Plant in Ninh Thuan Province. Investors of renewable energy projects will be chosen through competitive bidding. - Photo: VNA

The Ministry of Industry and Trade has directed the Electricity and Renewable Energy Department to coordinate with the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank to study bidding mechanisms for renewable energy projects which are projected to be applied after 2021, Thanh Nien Online newspaper reported.

The ministrys requirement is aimed at encouraging residents and enterprises to develop solar power projects mainly for their own use. In addition, the purchase prices of solar power will be set through bidding, instead of using a common price for the entire country as was the case earlier. The larger the projects, the lower the price of the output.

In late 2020, Vietnam Electricity Group (EVN) wrote to the Ministry of Industry and Trade proposing three bidding solutions.

Specifically, large projects with favorable connection conditions will be put up for bidding separately and added to the National Electricity Development Plan based on localities proposals and the Institute of Energys appraisal.

As for the second solution, tenders will be held for projects proposed by localities. These projects are appropriate to localities land use plans and investors will be responsible for facilities to connect these projects to power transmission lines owned by EVN.

In addition, tenders will be held in regions or transmission stations designated by the competent agencies.

Associate Professor Dr. Ngo Tri Long, former director of the Ministry of Finance's Price Market Research Institute, threw his support behind the plan to auction solar power projects, saying that the unchanged feed-in tariff for 20 years has resulted in many issues, including an overload on electricity transmission lines.

Bidding will help prevent the boom of solar power projects. Further, prestigious investors will be chosen to ensure the quality of projects, Long added.

According to Dr. Ngo Duc Lam, former deputy head of the Institute of Energy, the bidding of solar power projects is appropriate to the market mechanism and needed to regulate the market and control the development of solar power.

However, tenders must be held in line with the Law on Bidding to ensure fairness and transparency and should be piloted in rooftop solar power projects first, followed by other solar power projects.

SGT

Vietnam considers bidding on solar power prices A policy allowing investors to bid on solar power prices is being developed by the Vietnamese Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT). It is expected to be submitted to the Prime Minister this August and applied this year.
Beaumont Community Players stages at the Betty Greenberg Center for Performing Arts have been empty for more than a year  perhaps the longest fade to black the theater has ever known.

Friday, they will be back .

Its been 13 months since weve sold a theater ticket, Executive Director John Manfredi said. He is directing BCPs stage return performance of Jacques Lamarres I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti, based on the memoir of Guilia Melluci.

The show opens at the Betty Greenberg Center for Performing Arts on Friday at 7:30 p.m.

I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti Where: Betty Greenberg Center for Performing Arts When: 7:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 7:30 p.m. April 16-17 and April 22-24, 2 p.m. April 17 Cost: $250, includes dinner See More Collapse

The one-woman show stars longtime BCP cast member Ramona Young, who not only performs but cooks a full meal, including a handmade pasta main dish, served up to the audience throughout the course of the performance.

It starts with an antipasto course of traditional meats, cheeses, olives and grapes before moving into a salad, then the main course.

When playwrite Lamarre learned that Manfredi was Italian, he asked, as he did of other Italian directors, Youll be using your own sauce recipe, right?

He would.

The spaghetti bolognese is based on Manfredis grandmothers secret sauce recipe, so audiences can enjoy generations of Italian pasta tradition, he said.

Young had to learn the recipe and perfect it throughout weeks of rehearsal, while simultaneously learning pages of lines.

Its a tall order for any actor, but especially so after a year without memorizing lines of any number.

Its the first time Ive ever done a woman show, so I can check this off my bucket list, Young said. Its super exciting. Im so happy to be able to be part of something thats going to help our beloved BCP get back and ready to kick off the next season.

Young likes to cook and is no stranger to Italian cooking. But I never made pasta from scratch before. This is a rapid course in becoming proficient, she said.

Its also a rapid course in recovering from a global pandemic for Beaumonts community theater.

I had masks and gloves on our people in February, and we were among the first people to close in March (2020), Manfredi said. Weve been leading the curve in COVID safety and following the science from the get-go, and we will continue to do so.

A native of New York, whose population was hit hard at the pandemics beginning in the U.S., Manfredi knew of the worst-case scenario.

We have a lot of cast and volunteers that are older, so we werent taking any chances, he said.

BCP ran two performances online  one a locally written COVID-themed piece and the other a musical revue  but their usual summer workshops for children and seasonal performances were canceled.

As cases decline and vaccination rates increase, they found an opening for their return to the stage.

The logic of choosing this play as their return was two-fold. A one-woman show was safest - we have a very small footprint, Manfredi said, in terms of people gathered  but it also reflected the isolation many have experienced in the year-long pandemic.

Manfredi said they will still require masks to be worn in common areas, and will be small casting through the end of 2021. We hope in January 2022 to go to full capacity in shows.

Weve been really hit hard [by COVID], but weve been able to make it happen, Manfredi said of BCPs comeback, which the company hopes marks a turn in the pandemic tide.

The play theyve chosen is a monstrous undertaking, Manfredi said.

No other Texas theaters or non-union companies have produced the play because it required building a fully functioning kitchen, serving a meal for 12 people every night and more than $100 in nightly rehearsal food costs.

Its why ticket costs for the show run at $250 apiece, but its like running one whole season in one show, Manfredi said.

The company plans to use the kitchen set as a thematic point for their annual Southeast Texas New Play Festival.

This years challenge for original, local scripts will be plays set in the kitchen, Manfredi said.

Last year, they had 250 playwrights enter and hope as many or more will rise to the challenge this year.

Since weve built this dang kitchen, Manfredi said, theyre hoping to cook up as many creations as possible while getting back to a normal so many crave.

kbrent@beaumontenterprise.com
A 24-year-old carer today became the first person in Britain to get Modernas Covid vaccine as the roll-out was expanded in Wales  but England has to wait for another fortnight before it can use the jab.

Elle Taylor, from Ammanford, revealed she was 'very excited and happy' to receive the jab, adding that the nurses were lovely and it 'didn't hurt'.

'Im an unpaid carer for my grandmother so it is very important to me that I get it, so I can care for her properly and safely,' she said. 'My grandmother has had her first dose and she is going for her second dose on Saturday.'

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said he was 'delighted' the first dose of Modernas vaccine had been administered in the UK.

But confusion has erupted over the roll-out of the jab  the third to be deployed in Britain. No10's vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi yesterday revealed Moderna's shot would only be used from the third week of April.

Nicola Sturgeon, however, revealed hours later that the first batch had already arrived in Scotland, with sources saying it would be dished out later this week.

Britain is only expected to get 100,000 doses of Moderna's vaccine in April. Around five per cent of that supply has already been sent to one Welsh hospital trust, covering three regions. Wales has already moved on to offering over-45s jabs.

Ministers have bought 17million doses in total  enough for 8.5million people  and have planned for deliveries of the jab to 'significantly increase' in May. Leaked supply projections suggest No10 anticipated it would receive around 160,000 doses every week next month.

But with doubts mounting about the availability of AstraZenecas vaccine amid fears the jab could be banned for younger adults, the lack of supply leaves serious questions about whether or not Britain can push on with the inoculation drive.

No10 has repeatedly insisted it is on track to hit its goal of offering every eligible adult a jab by the end of July. And the drive must go smoothly if restrictions are to be eased drastically over the coming months.

But the Government has not factored in a potential ban on using AstraZenecas vaccine in the next phase of the roll-out. The jab is currently the main weapon in the countrys arsenal, with Pfizers supply being rationed for top-ups.

Health watchdogs are set to make a final ruling on the use of the vaccine in the coming days, with Government advisers saying that blood clot fears are being taken very seriously and hinting that Modernas jab could be reserved for under-50s.

Elle Taylor, 24, today became the first person to receive the Moderna jab in the UK. She said it would help her care for her grandmother 'properly and safely'

The UK has bought 17 million doses of the Moderna jab  enough for 8.5 million people

Ministers have bought 17million doses in total  enough for 8.5million people  and have planned for deliveries of the jab to 'significantly increase' in May. Leaked supply projections suggest No10 anticipated it would receive around 160,000 doses every week next month

More than 31million Britons have received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine in the UK

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE MODERNA COVID VACCINE? How effective is it against coronavirus? The phase three results suggested vaccine efficacy against the disease was 94.1%, and vaccine efficacy against severe Covid-19 was 100%. More than 30,000 people in the US took part in the trial, from a wide range of age groups and ethnic backgrounds. Two doses were given 28 days apart so researchers could evaluate safety and any reaction to the vaccine. The analysis was based on 196 cases, of which 185 cases of Covid-19 were observed in the placebo group versus 11 cases observed in the active vaccine group. Moderna also released data relating to severe cases. All 30 severe cases occurred in the placebo group and none in the group which had received the vaccine, known as mRNA-1273. How many doses of Moderna does the UK have? The Government has bought 17 million doses  enough to vaccinate about 8.5 million people. How does the vaccine work? The Moderna jab is a messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine. Conventional vaccines are produced using weakened forms of the virus, but mRNAs use only the virus's genetic code. An mRNA vaccine is injected into the body, where it enters cells and tells them to create antigens. These antigens are recognised by the immune system and prepare it to fight coronavirus. No actual virus is needed to create an mRNA vaccine. This means the rate at which the vaccine can be produced is accelerated. Is the vaccine safe? Moderna said the vaccine was generally well tolerated, with no serious safety concerns identified. Severe events after the first dose included injection-site pain, and after the second dose included fatigue, myalgia (muscle pain), arthralgia (joint pain), headache, other pain and redness at the injection site. But these were generally shortlived. Is the Moderna vaccine effective against variants? In late January, the company behind the vaccine said it was effective against both the strain first detected in south east England and the mutation which first emerged in South Africa. Moderna said laboratory tests found no significant impact on antibodies against the UK variant relative to prior variants. While there was a six-fold reduction in neutralising antibodies produced against the South African variant, the levels remained above those that are expected to be protective, Moderna said. What stage is the Moderna rollout at in each of the four UK nations? People in Wales will get first doses of the vaccine from Wednesday, at the West Wales General Hospital in Carmarthen. The rollout will begin in England 'as soon as possible this month', a Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said. Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the first batch of Moderna vaccines had arrived in the country on Monday and will be delivered over the coming months. It has not been confirmed when the rollout of Moderna will begin in Northern Ireland. Advertisement

Miss Taylor received the Moderna vaccine today at West Wales General Hospital in Carmarthen, after finding out last night she would be getting the jab.

Asked how she felt to be a trailblazer for millions, Miss Taylor said: 'I feel thrilled and really happy and honoured, and I just hope it goes well for everybody.

'It was great, the nurses were lovely and it didnt hurt.'

Miss Taylor also works at a further education college in Llanelli, near Swansea.

Carers were bumped up the jabs priority list by scientists to reduce the risk of them accidentally transmitting the virus to a vulnerable person.

Some 5,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine were delivered to the local Hywel Dda University Health Board yesterday, with more expected to arrive in the coming weeks.

A spokesman for the Welsh Government told MailOnline their NHS had delivered the doses as soon as they arrived, and that it couldn't speak for other nations.

It is unclear how many were sent to Scotland, but ministers have revealed they are being distributed using the Barnett formula  which entitles the nation to around 11,000 doses from the first delivery.

Separate leaked vaccine supply plans for Scotland revealed the nation was only expecting 4,000 doses in the week beginning April 4.

The Health Secretary said the achievement was only possible thanks to the UK Government's successful drive to secure vital vaccine supplies.

'The UK government has secured vaccines on behalf of the entire nation and the vaccination programme has shown our country working together at its best,' Mr Hancock said.

'Three out of every five people across the whole United Kingdom have received at least one dose, and today we start with the third approved vaccine. Wherever you live, when you get the call, get the jab.'

Welsh Health Minister Vaughan Gething said he was 'delighted' to see the roll-out bolstered further in Wales today.

'Our vaccine delivery continues to be a source of pride and hope for the future,' he added.

'A third vaccine for use in Wales significantly adds to our defences in the face of Covid and will help to protect our most vulnerable.

'Every vaccine given to someone in Wales is a small victory against the virus and we would encourage everyone to go for their vaccine when invited.'

Scientists found Moderna's shot was 94 per cent effective at stopping Covid infections in clinical trials and prevented hospitalisations and deaths in all recipients.

But there are concerns it may be less effective against the South African variant and other strains of the virus, like other vaccines.

A Columbia University study published last month found the shot triggered at least ten times fewer antibodies against the troublesome strain dubbed B.1.351 compared to the old virus.

But scientists cautioned these results were based on a small sample size of blood from just 12 people, and excluded other key parts of the immune system that fight viruses.

Moderna's shot is based on mRNA technology, like Pfizer's, which spark Covid-fighting antibodies by getting cells to manufacture spike proteins from the virus, which the immune system then learns to destroy.

Britain's supplies were manufactured in Switzerland and put into vials in Spain before being shipped to the UK.

Insiders told the Times that hundreds of thousands of doses were already in the UK.

But Department of Health bosses have repeatedly said their policy has always been to get jabs into people's arms as soon as the shots arrive.

They added the Moderna jab was set to be rolled out nationwide 'as soon as possible this month', but did not provide specific dates.

Britain's vaccine roll-out may be thrown off course in the coming weeks, if health chiefs suspend AstraZeneca's jab for younger adults.

Medical regulators are currently probing whether the AstraZeneca vaccine - the key shot in the UK's arsenal against the virus - is linked to cases of a rare blood clot called CVST, which can lead to a stroke.

WHICH VACCINES ARE BRITAIN USING? AND HOW EFFECTIVE ARE THEY? Pfizer-BioNTech Approved: December 2, 2020 Doses dished out: 10.8million* Doses ordered: 40million Phase 3 trials data Efficacy at blocking symptoms : 95%

Efficacy against severe illness: 100% Real world data: Efficacy at stopping transmission : 66%

: 66% Efficacy at blocking symptoms (one dose) : Between 57 and 61%

Efficacy against severe illness: 80% How it works: mRNA vaccine  Genetic material from coronavirus is injected to trick the immune system into making 'spike' proteins and learning how to attack them. Oxford-AstraZeneca Approved: December 30, 2020 Doses dished out: 15.8million* Doses ordered: 100million Phase 3 trials data Efficacy at blocking symptoms (one dose) : 70%

Efficacy against severe illness (one dose): 100% Real world data: Efficacy at stopping transmission : 70%

: 70% Efficacy at blocking symptoms : Between 60 and 73%

Efficacy against severe illness: 80% How it works: Adenovirus vaccine  To make the vaccine, the common cold virus is genetically modified to trigger it to make the Covid spike protein  which the virus uses to invade cells. When the vaccine is administered the patient's immune system attacks the spike protein by building antibodies, priming it to fight off Covid before it leads to an infection. Moderna Approved: January 8, 2021 Doses dished out: Zero Doses ordered: 17million Phase 3 trials data Efficacy at blocking symptoms : 94.1%

Efficacy against severe illness : 100 % Real world data: Efficacy at stopping transmission : Not known

: Not known Efficacy at blocking symptoms : 90%**

Efficacy against severe illness : Not known How it works: mRNA vaccine  both Moderna's and Pfizer and BioNTech's vaccines work in the same way. * the latest data goes up to March 21 ** data taken from a US study, joint with Pfizer. Other real world data comes from Public Health England in the UK Advertisement

Suspending AstraZeneca over 'blood clot' fears for under-50s would slow Britain's roll-out by up to 75% Britain's Covid vaccination drive could slow by at least 75 per cent if AstraZeneca's jab is banned in people under the age of 50, according to leaked figures which could demolish the Government's targets for inoculating young people. Vaccine delivery figures from Scotland that were leaked earlier this year show that the British-made vaccine makes up three-quarters of the country's jab supplies  but it is at the centre of growing doubts. The UK's medical regulator is considering suspending the AstraZeneca vaccine in younger Brits while it probes its link to deadly brain clots spotted in dozens of vaccinated people, with a decision expected as soon as today. European medical regulators will announce the conclusions of their investigation at 3pm, with Germany having already temporarily banned its use for under-60s and France making the same controversial move for under-55s. But the MHRA, which polices the safety of all vaccines in Britain, has yet to offer any updated guidance. It is said to be considering halting its use in under-50s, which could throw lockdown-easing plans into disarray. Boris Johnson plans to lift lockdown fully by June 21 as part of the last stage of his roadmap out of restrictions, but this relies on jabbing the remaining 21million unvaccinated adults, the vast majority of whom are under 50, by the summer. Officials have put the AstraZeneca jab at the heart of the country's rollout and the leaked delivery schedule reveal the Government is expecting it to make up 75 per cent of its Covid vaccine supplies over the next two months. The document, published on the Scottish Government's website in January and quickly taken down, showed Britain was anticipating about 29.4m doses of AstraZeneca's jab between April and the first week of June. By comparison, officials expected just 8.5m of Pfizer's vaccine in the next two months and 1m of the new Moderna jab, which is being rolled out for the first time in Wales today. However, the UK inoculation programme could be bolstered if two other promising jabs under review are given approval by the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency in the coming weeks. The chief scientist behind the US-developed Novavax vaccine, which Britain has secured 60million doses of, has said he expects it to be given the green light this month and rolled out in May. All of the Novavax supplies on order will be manufactured within the UK under a new Government deal announced last week, which could drastically speed up its distribution. Advertisement

European medical regulators are also reviewing the jab's safety and will announce the conclusion of their investigation at 3pm.

Germany has already temporarily banned the jab for under-60s and France made the same move for under-55s.

Dr Maggie Wearmouth, on the committee that decided the jabs priority list, today opened the door to 'slowing things down' until Britain's home-grown shot is branded completely safe.

She said: 'The issue is about safety and public confidence. We don't want to cover anything up that we feel that the public should be knowing. We're not here to blindly follow targets or due dates. We will do what is necessary for the British public.'

But leaked figures suggest Britain's Covid vaccination drive could slow by at least 75 per cent if AstraZeneca's jab is banned in people under the age of 50.

Oxford University last night halted trials of its Covid vaccine in children until the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) concludes its investigation.

Scientists have stressed cases of CVST - the medical term for the complication - are extremely rare and have only been spotted in 30 recipients of AstraZeneca's jab in Britain out of more than 18million doses delivered.

This equates to around one in 600,000 people. But experts say it may be more common in young women, who are known to be most at risk of the clots.

More than 31million Britons have already received their first dose, meaning No10 is currently on schedule to meet its target of offering a jab to all over-50s by mid-April.

Fellow Joint Committee of Vaccinations and Immunisations (JCVI) member Professor Adam Finn said the situation must be 'addressed urgently'.

Speaking in a personal capacity, he told BBC Newsnight: 'It's clear that everyone is taking these cases enormously seriously, we do need to get to the bottom of this.

'We are walking a tightrope here between the need for speed but also the need for clarity and scientific certainty about what's going on and of course the public wants to know, so very important issues that need to be addressed urgently.'

Yesterday the Prime Minister, who has himself had the AstraZeneca vaccine, called on the nation to get their jab during a visit to the Anglo-Swedish plant in Macclesfield.

He said the 'best thing' people can do is 'look at what the MHRA say', adding: 'Their advice to people is to keep going out there, get your jab, get your second jab.'

Sage adviser Professor Calum Semple echoed the PM's call and urged people to continue accepting the AstraZeneca jab.

He told Channel 4 News: 'For a middle-aged, slightly overweight man, such as myself, my risk of death is one in 13,000 - the risk of this rare clot, which might not even be associated with the vaccine, is probably one in a million.

'So I'm still going to say it's better to get the vaccine than not get the vaccine and we can pause and take time to carefully consider the value for children because they're not at risk of death from Covid.'

He added: 'If you've been called for the vaccine then you're in an age group that is very likely to benefit from the vaccine. So the bottom line is if you've been called for the vaccine I would urge you to take the vaccine.'

Several European countries have limited the AstraZeneca jab to older people or even suspended its use entirely following clotting in a tiny amount of cases.

One of the European drug regulator's senior officials yesterday claimed there is now a 'clear' link between the jab and CVST  a brain blockage that can lead to a stroke.

The risk of dying from Covid-19 is significantly higher than the rate of CSVT blood clots, which haven't even been definitively linked to the vaccines (Based on fatality estimates from Cambridge University and CSVT occurrences in Germany)

The roadmap out of lockdown in the four home nations: Where are they now, and what's coming next? SCOTLAND Latest lockdown easing - From April 5 barbers and hairdressers allowed to reopen alongside garden centres and homeware stores. Whats coming next? - From April 26, beer gardens and gyms will be allowed to reopen. From May 17, cinemas will open their doors again and four people from two households can meet indoors. Infection/deaths - 219,986 total cases with 7,614 deaths. ENGLAND Latest lockdown easing - From March 29 up to six people from different households can meet outdoors and you can enjoy most outdoor sports. What's coming next?  Beer gardens and restaurants with outdoor dining can reopen. Non-essential retail venues can also reopen from April 12. May 17 will see easing of international travel restrictions as well as the return of indoor mixing. On June 21, all legal limits on social distancing will be axed. Infections/deaths: 3,812,188 total cases with 127,616 deaths. WALES Latest lockdown easing - From March 27 'Stay local' rules scrapped and travel allowed within its borders. Six people from different households can meet indoors What's coming next? - Travel between Wales and the rest of the UK will be allowed from April 12 and all non-essential shops will be allowed to open. From April 26, outdoor hospitality will be given the green light. Indoor mixing will be allowed from May 10. Infections/deaths: 209,627 total cases with 5,511 deaths. N IRELAND Latest lockdown easing - From March 8 children in pre-school, nursery and primary one to primary three allowed back to the classroom. What's coming next? - Northern Ireland does not have a roadmap in the same way as other regions, but non-essential shops and travel is expected to come back soon. Infections/deaths: 117,503 total cases with 2,116 deaths Advertisement

Marco Cavaleri, head of vaccines at the European Medicines Agency (EMA), said that CVST  a brain blockage that can lead to a stroke  was occurring more often than expected in younger people.

Mr Cavaleri admitted that the body was still baffled about how the jab may trigger the rare complication.

Despite his comments, Mr Cavaleri's agency has repeatedly insisted AstraZeneca's jab is safe and the benefits outweigh any risks.

Last week it slapped down Germany for suspending its use in under-60s, arguing there was 'no evidence' to support age-based restrictions.

But at the same time, the watchdog paved the way for a potential U-turn, warning that the rate of the complication did appear to be slightly higher than expected in vaccinated under-60s.

Experts across the board say the evidence is now 'shifting' and that the jab is likely  in extremely rare cases  to cause the brain blockage.

It comes after it was claimed yesterday that thousands of doses of AstraZeneca's vaccine are being wasted in France following a 'wave of panic' triggered by its suspension.

And it was also claimed that EU officials are confident they will have enough doses to immunize the majority of their citizens by the end of June.

Britain is aiming to have offered a first dose to all adults by the end of July.

The World Health Organization still maintains there is 'no link for the moment' between the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine and blood clots.

Rogerio Pinto de Sa Gaspar, director of regulation and prequalification at the WHO, told a briefing today: 'The appraisal that we have for the moment, and this is under consideration by the experts, is that the benefit-risk assessment for the vaccine is still largely positive.'

He added: 'For the time being there is no evidence that the benefit-risk assessment for the vaccine needs to be changed and we know from the data coming from countries like the UK and others that the benefits are really important in terms of reduction of the mortality of populations that are being vaccinated.'

Scientists insist the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine outweigh any risks for elderly people  who are most at risk of hospitalisation or death if they catch the virus.

But they warn that the picture is 'more complicated' for young people.

Experts estimate the risk of dying of Covid for 25 to 44-year-olds is 0.04 per cent  or one in 2,500.

For comparison, the rate of CVST cases seen in Germany  which originally banned the jab for over-60s over the same blood clot fears  is around one in 90,000.

It is not clear how many younger adults will suffer the blood clots naturally  but officials admit the risk is higher in women under the age of 50.

Officials are working round-the-clock to disentangle the statistical risk, analysing the background rate of CVST as well as the reported rate among people given AstraZeneca's vaccine.
Press Release

7 April 2021

The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) has launched a new competition to identify the best ideas that will help rural communities recover from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Global Rural Tourism Startup Competition will also support the entrepreneurs and enterprises that can help rural communities seize the economic and social opportunities that will come as tourism restarts.

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The United Nations specialized agency has recorded rising interest in unique and authentic travel experiences, including in nature-based and outdoors tourism. With this trend expected to accelerate as tourism restarts, the Startup Competition is looking for those ideas that will help ensure rural communities are best-placed to benefit. The competition will also look for ideas that will help build resilience in rural communities.

The Competition aims to support rural tourism as a key tool to fight depopulation, promote inclusion and reduce regional inequalities in income and development as part of UNWTO's special focus on tourism for rural development.

Applications are now open for four categories:

People Leaving no one behind: Projects that incentivize the creation of jobs and opportunities, promote gender and youth empowerment, and build opportunities for vulnerable groups in rural areas.

Projects that incentivize the creation of jobs and opportunities, promote gender and youth empowerment, and build opportunities for vulnerable groups in rural areas. Planet  Building back better Projects related to the promotion and protection of natural resources, including addressing tourism's impact on climate change, we as well as waste and resource consumption.

Projects related to the promotion and protection of natural resources, including addressing tourism's impact on climate change, we as well as waste and resource consumption. Prosperity- opportunities for growth Startups that provide innovative solutions through new business models, instruments that promote access to finance, markets and marketing for tourism in rural areas.

Startups that provide innovative solutions through new business models, instruments that promote access to finance, markets and marketing for tourism in rural areas. Propulsion of Rural Tech  Implementation of new technologies to advance tourism and development in rural areas.

The deadline for applications is 1 July 2021. Winners will be invited to take part in the UNWTO General Assembly, to be held in Marrakesh, Morocco, this October.

The new competition builds on the success of UNWTO's search for the best startups in Spain. That initiative saw more than 150 projects put forward for consideration, with the winners receiving mentorship and support from the Spanish Government and Google. For this global edition UNWTO welcomes Viajes National Geographic as its media partner. It also enjoys the support of key institutional collaborators, namely Air Europa and Wakalua as Travel Partners alongside Amazon Web Services Activate, HePic, Impact Hub, the International Trade Centre, Fademur, The Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge of Spain, NEST Portugal, Telefonica Open Future and the TUI Care Foundation.

For more information and to apply, visit the UNWTO Startup Competitions and Challenges webpage.


A$7 Million Royalty Divestment Complete

Perth, April 7, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Horizon Minerals Limited ( ASX:HRZ ) is pleased to advise that the divestment of its interest in two gold royalties has been completed.As announced to the ASX on 29 March 2021, the Company agreed to divest 100% interest in the royalties to Vox Royalty Corp. ( CVE:VOX ) ("Vox").Under the Agreement, Vox will pay A$7 million in cash and shares on the following terms:- A$4 million in cash upon completion; and- A$3 million in cash or Vox shares at Vox's election (priced on a 30-day VWAP basis) upon Vox receiving cumulative payments of A$750,000 from the transaction royalties.All conditions precedent including third party documentation have now been completed and the A$4 million initial consideration payment received.Proceeds from the royalty divestments will add to existing cash reserves as the Company advances the consolidated Feasibility Study through to a development and financing decision in the second half of 2021.Cash at bank now stands at A$13.2 million plus listed investments totalling approximately A$5.2 million.About Horizon Minerals Limited

Horizon Minerals Limited (ASX:HRZ) is a gold exploration and mining company focussed on the Kalgoorlie and Menzies areas of Western Australia which are host to some of Australia's richest gold deposits. The Company is developing a mining pipeline of projects to generate cash and self-fund aggressive exploration, mine developments and further acquisitions. The Teal gold mine has been recently completed.

Horizon is aiming to significantly grow its JORC-Compliant Mineral Resources, complete definitive feasibility studies on core high grade open cut and underground projects and build a sustainable development pipeline.

Horizon has a number of joint ventures in place across multiple commodities and regions of Australia providing exposure to Vanadium, Copper, PGE's, Gold and Nickel/Cobalt. Our quality joint venture partners are earning in to our project areas by spending over $20 million over 5 years enabling focus on the gold business while maintaining upside leverage.
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Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  Two days before a critical deadline, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed civil rights legislation Wednesday that grew out of last years protests against racial injustice and police brutality.

It was one of 10 bills she approved  measures that expand the Local Economic Development Act, establish efforts to coordinate the expansion of broadband and adds a bit of sunshine to the states secretive capital outlay process.

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Most of the legislation faced a Friday deadline for approval.

The civil rights measure  one of the most fiercely debated of the 60-day legislative session  will allow the filing of lawsuits in state District Court to recover financial damages if a public agency or officer violates a persons rights under the state Bill of Rights.

The law will also bar qualified immunity as a defense to the claims, making New Mexico one of just a few states to ban the legal doctrine available in federal court.

The bills passage was vigorously opposed by city and county governments, along with some police chiefs and sheriffs. Opponents said public agencies already face significant legal exposure and the proposal will result in costly taxpayer settlements without actually preventing police misconduct or protecting New Mexicans civil rights.

In a written statement, Lujan Grisham said the newly created Civil Rights Act isnt an anti-police bill, and she knows public servants work hard to protect peoples rights.

But when violations do occur, she said, we as Americans know too well that the victims are disproportionately people of color, and that there are too often roadblocks to fighting for those inalienable rights in a court of law.

The proposal, House Bill 4, came about after Lujan Grisham and legislators established a commission last year to evaluate changes to New Mexicos civil rights laws. It was triggered by protests after the killing of George Floyd, a Black man who died in Minneapolis after a white police officer pressed a knee onto his neck.

Economic development

Lujan Grisham also signed a number of bills intended to support economic development  all of which passed the Legislature with bipartisan support.

One measure, Senate Bill 1 from last weeks special session, will revise the Local Economic Development Act to allow new incentives designed to recruit large companies to New Mexico.

The law will authorize some of the tax revenue generated by large-scale construction projects  $350 million or more  to be recaptured and used by the states closing fund to offset the costs of business expansions and relocations.

Supporters said the measure isnt designed for any particular project but that three companies interested in New Mexico could benefit from the law.

The governor also approved two bills intended to help oversee the expansion of high-speed internet as the state makes $130 million in funding available.

Senate Bill 93 establishes a state Office of Broadband Access and Expansion, and House Bill 10 creates the Connected New Mexico Council.

New Mexico has ranked among the worst states in broadband access. Twenty-one percent of students in public schools in the state live in households without internet subscriptions, according to a 2020 legislative report.

The digital divide is nothing new, but the pandemic made it clear that closing it must be a priority for New Mexico if were going to honor our commitment to provide every child with a full and equitable education, Public Education Secretary Ryan Stewart said in a written statement.

Also signed Wednesday was House Bill 55, requiring the publication of how legislators allocate their capital outlay money  a key transparency measure under debate for years.

Until this year, it had repeatedly won approval in the House only to die in the Senate. But voters shook up the composition of the Senate in last years elections, and the measure cleared both chambers easily in the 60-day session.

Lujan Grisham, a Democrat in her first term, also approved bipartisan legislation that will allow student-athletes at New Mexico colleges and universities to sign product endorsement deals and take other jobs. Senate Bill 94 would also prohibit penalizing a student-athlete for receiving food, shelter, medical expenses or insurance from a third party.

The law may put New Mexico in conflict with NCAA rules. But Sen. Mark Moores, an Albuquerque Republican and co-sponsor of the bill, said other states have passed similar legislation, putting pressure on the National Collegiate Athletic Association to modernize its rules for student-athletes.

Bills awaiting action

Lujan Grisham has now signed 126 bills passed in the 60-day session and vetoed one.

Thirty-one bills from the regular session are awaiting action by Friday, including proposals to allow medical aid-in-dying, require employers to offer paid sick leave to employees and setting the state budget for the coming year.

The governor has extra time to consider bills passed in last weeks two-day special session.

Proposals to legalize retail sales of marijuana and expunge cannabis convictions from court records face an April 20 deadline for action by Lujan Grisham.
Djibouti's President Ismail Omar Guelleh is expected to extend his two-decade rule of the tiny Horn of Africa nation as the country heads to the polls Friday.

Guelleh, 73, is facing political newcomer Zakaria Ismail Farah, his only rival after traditional opposition parties decided to boycott the election.

A businessman specialised in the importation of cleaning products, Farah, 56, is seen by observers as unlikely to pose a significant challenge to the strongman who has been in power for 22 years.

Djibouti is a largely desert country strategically situated on one of the world's busiest trade routes and at the crossroads between Africa and the Arabian peninsula, a short distance from war-torn Yemen.

Under Guelleh, the country has exploited this geographical advantage, investing heavily in ports and logistics infrastructure.

At the same time the country has seen an erosion of press freedom and a crackdown on dissent.

"Little by little, there has been a hardening of the regime since 1999," said Sonia Le Gouriellec, a political scientist who authored a book on Djibouti.

"The more it has opened to the world, the more it has closed internally."

Guelleh's predicted fifth term will be his last, under a 2010 constitutional reform which scrapped term limits while also introducing an age limit of 75 which would lock him out of future elections.

Djibouti's election campaign came as the country saw Covid-19 infection rates soar by 38 percent in the past week, with some 200 cases a day in the country of almost one million people.

The rate of positive tests is 23 percent.

Nevertheless thousands turned out for rallies for the ruling Union for the Presidential Majority (UMP), many without wearing masks.

Farah -- who had to renounce his dual French citizenship to join the race -- held a few small rallies before cancelling the rest in the 10 days leading up to the polls.

He complained that he was not offered security services for his rallies.

Story continues

The challenger, who has styled himself as the "flag bearer of poor Djiboutians", appeared with his wrists bound and mouth taped last month at one of his rallies to protest "unequal treatment".

In 2020 Guelleh faced an unusual wave of opposition protests, which were brutally suppressed, after the arrest of an air force pilot who had denounced clan-based discrimination and corruption.

And police broke up several spontaneous small protests against Guelleh's fifth term in the run-up to the election.

- Dependence on China -

Djibouti, which gained independence from France in 1977, has remained stable in an often troubled region, drawing foreign military powers such as France, the United States and China to establish bases there.

The country, seeking to become a trade and logistics hub, in 2018 launched the first phase of what will be Africa's biggest free-trade zone, financed by China.

The Asian powerhouse -- which sees Djibouti as a critical part of its "Belt and Road" global infrastructure initiative -- also funded the building of a railway to Ethiopia.

"Previously there were many alliances... What happened during the last mandate is that they fell into a... total dependence on China," Le Gouriellec said.

On the international stage Djibouti suffered a setback in its diplomatic ambitions in 2020 when it lost out to Kenya for a non-permanent seat at the UN Security Council.

The country's economy shrank by one percent in 2020, but is expected to grow seven percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Djibouti's GDP per capita is about $3,500, higher than much of sub-Saharan Africa, but some 20 percent of the population lives in extreme poverty and 26 percent are unemployed, according to the World Bank.

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In addition to dozens of health benefit choices for employers and consumers already in place, MemorialCare's most recent partnership with Blue Shield Trio HMO network is designed to deliver choice, affordability, coordinated care and convenient access.

"With our fully integrated ambulatory network of 225 healthcare locations, top hospitals and 13,000 physicians, nurses and other clinicians and support teams, MemorialCare was selected to join the Trio network based on our proven ability to deliver high quality, value-driven care and exceptional service at reduced cost to employers and consumers," says Barry Arbuckle, Ph.D., MemorialCare president and CEO.

MemorialCare affiliated physicians are locally and nationally recognized in their areas of expertise. The Trio HMO network alone includes nearly 1,000 MemorialCare physicians.

A non-profit, regional healthcare system serving nearly 2 million people living and working in Southern California, MemorialCare is frequently tapped to provide network depth to an increasing number of health-related organizations and local employers.

MemorialCare is increasing its number of community-based outpatient centers for ambulatory surgery, medical imaging, urgent care, breast health, physical therapy, kidney dialysis and comprehensive health services throughout Orange, Los Angeles and neighboring counties. MemorialCare also continues to recruit world-class physicians to several centers of excellence, including cancer, cardiology, pediatrics, orthopedic surgery, neurosciences, women's health and other specialty areasdrawing leading physicians choosing to join its expansive medical community.

About MemorialCare

MemorialCare's 225 locations include top hospitals - Long Beach Medical Center, Miller Children's & Women's Hospital Long Beach, Orange Coast Medical Center and Saddleback Medical Center; MemorialCare Medical Group, Greater Newport Physicians, MemorialCare Research, MemorialCare Select Health Plan and numerous outpatient ambulatory surgery, medical imaging, urgent care, breast health, physical therapy, dialysis and primary care and specialty care centers. Accolades include Best Health System, Best Workplaces, Top Performing Medical Groups, Magnet Nursing Excellence for all MemorialCare hospitals, 10 Largest Children's Hospitals, Top 50 U.S. Hospitals, Top 50 Cardiovascular Hospitals, Best Orthopedic Hospitals, 100 Best Hospitals-Spine and Prostate Surgeries, Best of Orange County and Long Beach Hospitals and Medical Groups honors from seven regional newspapers, U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals and "high performing" in 31 clinical categories, Newsweek Top 100 Hospitals, Best Maternity Hospitals, Best Hospitals in the World and more. Visit memorialcare.org.

About Blue Shield of California

Blue Shield of California strives to create a healthcare system worthy of its family and friends that is sustainably affordable. Blue Shield of California is a tax paying, nonprofit, independent member of the Blue Shield Association with over 4.5 million members, over 7,500 employees and more than $21 billion in annual revenue. Founded in 1939 in San Francisco and now headquartered in Oakland, Blue Shield of California and its affiliates provide health, dental, vision, Medicaid and Medicare healthcare service plans in California. The company has contributed more than $150 million to Blue Shield of California Foundation in the last four years to have an impact on California communities. For more news about Blue Shield of California, please visit news.blueshieldca.com.

SOURCE MemorialCare

Related Links

https://www.memorialcare.org


I've been a reporter and editor at Missouri community newspapers for 35 years and joined the Columbia Missourian in 2003. My emphasis at the Missourian is on local government and elections. You can reach me at swaffords@missouri.edu or at 573-884-5366.

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The Australian market finished higher for second straight session on Wednesday, 07 April 2021, on strengthening economic recovery hopes after better than expected construction sector and service sector activity reports. Meanwhile, upward revision of the world economy to 6% by the International Monetary Fund also supported market rally.

At closing bell, the benchmark S&P/ASX200 was up 42.16 points, or 0.61%, to 6,928.02. The broader All Ordinaries added 43.53 points, or 0.61%, to 7,177.44.

The International Monetary Fund expects world economic growth at 6% in 2021, up from a January prediction of 5.5%. The IMF expects the US economy to grow by 6.4% in 2021, up by 1.3 percentage points from the IMF's 5.1% 2021 projection in late January and nearly double the rate it estimated last October 2020. IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath said the improvement was largely due to increased fiscal support, including a new $1.9 trillion U. S. aid package, accelerated vaccinations and continued adaptation of economic activity to overcome pandemic restrictions. However, she warned that the pandemic was still far from defeated and coronavirus cases were still rising in many countries.

China's growth forecast for 2021 was raised by 0.3 percentage point to 8.4%, an increase that Gopinath said largely reflected external demand for Chinese exports, driven largely by the U.

S. stimulus spending. But she said that consumer spending in China was still lagging, and growth was primarily being driven by public investments.

All sectors finished in the green with energy, property and IT leading, up 1.4%, 1.22% and 1% respectively. Industrials, financials and telecom were the worst performers, up 0.3%, 0.4% and 0.4% respectively.

In company news, Resolute Mining (RSG) rallied after upgrading its projected production and expected costs at its Syama gold mine in Mali through to 2029.

ECONOMIC NEWS: Australia AiG Construction Sector Expands In March- Australia construction sector in Australia continued to expand in March, with a seasonally adjusted Performance of Construction Index score of 61.8, the latest survey from the Australian Industry Group showed on Wednesday. That's up from 57.4 in February and it moves further above the boom-or-bust line of 50 that separates expansion from contraction. The indexes for new orders, employment and supplier deliveries all hit record highs, as house builders nationwide scrambled to commence residential projects as soon as possible in order to meet the final Home Builder deadline. Capacity utilization surged up to 81.3 percent in March, towards its recent high in December.

Further, the latest survey from Markit Economics revealed on Wednesday with a services PMI score of 55.5. That's up from 53.4 in February, and it moves further above the boom-or-bust line of 50 that separates expansion from contraction. The survey also showed that its composite index climbed to 55.5 in March as well - up from 53.7 a month earlier.

CURRENCY NEWS: The Australian dollar traded down by 0.43% at $0.7632.

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Noem encourages Boys State participants to get involved

More than 250 young men who participated in American Legion Boys State this week were advised to say yes to as many opportunities as they can.
The University of Chicago's Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the Chicago Quantum Exchange today announced the launch of Duality, the first accelerator program in the nation that is exclusively dedicated to startup companies focused on quantum science and technology--a rapidly emerging area that is poised to drive transformative advances across multiple industries.

Duality's purpose is to help quantum startups bridge the gap between the laboratory and the marketplace that is a critical barrier to success for emerging technologies. Led by the Polsky Center and the Chicago Quantum Exchange, Duality is also reinforced by founding partners, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Argonne National Laboratory and P33.

The launch of the quantum accelerator comes at a time when countries around the world are racing to unlock the potential of quantum technology. The Chicago area has emerged as a leading global quantum center, notably last year when the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation announced that three of the eight federally funded quantum information science research centers and institutes would be based in the region. Quantum science and technology has the potential to transform industries in the same way that the internet has reshaped the world in recent decades, and leaders hope that the Chicago area is positioned to benefit as the center of the quantum world in the same way that Silicon Valley transformed as it became the center of the tech revolution.

With a minimum $20 million investment over the next 10 years from a broad ecosystem of corporate and academic partners, Duality will help up to 10 quantum startups per year grow their businesses in the Chicago area. The program will be based within the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, a global leader in management education. Chicago Booth is widely known for its thought leadership - with nine Nobel laureates - and its impact on the global business community.

The name Duality refers to a core principle of quantum mechanics, in which a single entity may act as both a particle and a wave. The name also evokes the accelerator's unique role of bringing together the dual expertise from both leading quantum scientists and business partners to grow and scale quantum startups. Duality will provide entrepreneurs with support from leading quantum researchers, as well as business and entrepreneurial expertise from Chicago Booth, Chicago Quantum Exchange's corporate partners, the Polsky Center's broad network, and the networks, facilities, and programming from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Argonne National Laboratory, and P33. Students and researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign will have the opportunity to collaborate with and learn from experts in this expanding quantum technology development ecosystem.

Duality is taking applications through its website for the first cohort. Companies are invited to apply and will be considered on a rolling basis until May 14, 2021. Actively promoting diversity, equity and inclusion, the program is seeking a range of diverse applicants, in terms of race, gender and ethnicity.

"The Chicago area has a vital role in generating new science and technology, and Duality will provide critical support to bring quantum science from breakthroughs in the laboratory to practical applications that can foster new businesses, create jobs and improve aspects of the quality of life," said Robert J. Zimmer, president of the University of Chicago. "This program leverages the unique strengths of the University of Chicago and our partners to convene industry, researchers and venture capitalists to realize the potential of quantum science while simultaneously providing mutual benefit to the research and academic mission of the University of Chicago."

The state of Illinois has made a strong commitment to support quantum research overall, and Duality will further enhance the region's ecosystem for technology development and commercialization.

"We are building the future of technology right here in Chicago," said Chicago Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot. "This program taps the extraordinary talent in the city across fields from science and innovation to entrepreneurship, manufacturing and development, and is a testament to the strengths of this incredible city and its residents."

The 12-month accelerator program will focus on supporting and advancing companies that are building quantum technologies, products and applications, and related enabling technologies. Starting virtually in July and continuing in person when COVID-19 restrictions lift, each cohort of companies will have the opportunity to access state-of-the-art facilities, office and lab space, and each startup will receive $50,000 in unrestricted funds.

"The region is uniquely positioned to lead in quantum engineering and other areas of deep tech, meaning the types of early-stage technologies that rely on fundamental scientific breakthroughs to move innovations into use in the world," said Juan de Pablo, vice president for national laboratories, science strategy, innovation and global initiatives at the University of Chicago. "The combined efforts of the partners in the Duality accelerator, along with our expanding global reach, will further elevate the scientific footprint of Illinois and the larger region."

A key feature of Duality is that it is based in Hyde Park on the city's South Side. The University of Chicago, along with partners at Argonne and UIUC, has been actively developing a blueprint for inclusive innovation in the context of quantum engineering and other emerging technologies, whose goal is to expand economic opportunities and drive economic inclusion for South Side residents and diverse businesses.

Derek Douglas, vice president for civic engagement and external affairs at the University of Chicago, noted, "our commitment to inclusive innovation means not only will investments in quantum research and innovation be creating new companies, but we will simultaneously be working in partnership to prepare South Side businesses to grow with these new companies, and residents for the jobs that such companies will generate. We want to continue working with our local communities and civic partners to bolster the access, education, and training needed to reach this goal."

"Quantum technology has the potential to revolutionize our everyday lives--from enabling secure communications to developing ultra-precise sensors that can help detect and treat disease," said David Awschalom, UChicago's Liew Family Professor in Molecular Engineering, director of the Chicago Quantum Exchange, and director of Q-NEXT, a U.S. DOE Quantum Information Science research center led by Argonne National Laboratory. "The accelerator will not only support the efforts of early-stage quantum startups to scale and grow their critical technologies and applications between the laboratory and the marketplace, but will also help to boost and expand the ecosystem."

"The Polsky Center was launched at Chicago Booth and has a proven track record of launching new startup companies and bringing groundbreaking ideas to market," said Jay Schrankler, associate vice president and head of the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and adjunct professor at Chicago Booth. "Deep tech innovations, such as quantum technologies, can take a longer time to reach market-ready maturity than typical business model innovations. Duality will provide the necessary infrastructure, guidance and world-class business training to ensure these new quantum startups are successful."

UChicago began building a quantum information science program in 2013 with the addition of quantum science faculty and resources. In 2017, the Chicago Quantum Exchange was created to bring together academia, industry, and government to advance the science and engineering of quantum information and train the quantum workforce of the future. Since then, the Chicago Quantum Exchange has scaled to include six academic institutions and national laboratories and more than two dozen industry, nonprofit, and international partners, making it one of the largest collaborative teams working on quantum information science in the world.

The quantum science ecosystem in the Chicago region has grown rapidly. In 2020, scientists from Argonne and UChicago launched a 52-mile "quantum loop" that was among the longest ground-based quantum communication channels in the country. Officials from the U.S. Department of Energy announced at the University of Chicago in July their plans to build a national quantum internet, which will create virtually unhackable networks to transmit information. The following month, the DOE and the National Science Foundation announced that three of the eight federally funded quantum information science research centers and institutes would be based in the Chicago area--including DOE QIS centers, one led by Argonne and one led by Fermilab, and a National Science Foundation quantum leap challenge institute led by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

###
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 22:42:14|Editor: huaxia

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MINSK, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Belarus' gold and foreign currency reserves decreased by 7.1 percent over the first three months of 2021, the country's central bank said Wednesday.

As of April 1, Belarus' gold and foreign currency reserves amounted to 6.94 billion U.S. dollars, decreasing by 528.5 million since the beginning of the year.

The central bank explained that the decrease was a result of the fulfillment of planned obligations in foreign currency.

The Belarusian authorities predicted the volume of gold and foreign currency reserves will decrease to 6 billion by the end of 2021.

In 2020, Belarus' gold and foreign exchange reserves fell by 20.5 percent to 7.47 billion dollars. Enditem
[April 07, 2021] WebMD launches WebMD PracticePro, the most comprehensive patient engagement solution for medical practices

NEW YORK, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- WebMD today announced the launch of WebMD PracticePro, a new feature-rich, all-in-one platform that enables medical practices to attract, retain and engage more patients. With 76 million monthly website visitors to WebMD.com and unprecedented domain authority, WebMD PracticePro is uniquely positioned to boost a practice's online visibility. The company's comprehensive platform enables doctors to be discovered by more patients online and engage patients throughout the patient journey. As an all-inclusive, fully-integrated solution, WebMD PracticePro helps medical practices: Attract patients with a Customized Website, SEO, Online Search Marketing, Social Media Services, Reputation Management and Listing Management.

with a Customized Website, SEO, Online Search Marketing, Social Media Services, Reputation Management and Listing Management. Manage more appointments with Online Booking, Automated Reminders & Confirmations, Two-Way Texting, Appointment Hot List, WebMD Phone Service and more.

with Online Booking, Automated Reminders & Confirmations, Two-Way Texting, Appointment Hot List, WebMD Phone Service and more. Automate patient visits with Patient Portal, Mobile App, Online Forms, and Mobile Check-In.

with Patient Portal, Mobile App, Online Forms, and Mobile Check-In. Engage and retain patients with Automated Recall, Targeted Campaigns, Patient Education, and more. "We collaborated with physicians to understand their pain points and build a product that would not only alleviate the day-to-day administration of unning a practice, but also facilitate patient acquisition and retention efforts," said Nick Saidiner , VP, Marketing, Internet Brands Health Division. "With WebMD PracticePro, physicians now have one, simplified solution for all their practice growth needs."



WebMD PracticePro seamlessly integrates with leading health care practice management systems or EHR platforms. The launch of WebMD PracticePro furthers a strategic shift from health information website to health patient engagement platform by seamlessly connecting consumers from trusted WebMD content to taking action on their health and getting the care they need.

For more information on WebMD PracticePro, visit www.webmdpracticepro.com About WebMD WebMD Health Corp., an Internet Brands Company, is the leading provider of health information services, serving patients, physicians, health care professionals, employers, and health plans through public and private online portals, mobile platforms, and health-focused publications. The WebMD Health Network includes WebMD Health, Medscape, Jobson Healthcare Information, prIME Oncology, MediQuality, Frontline, Vitals Consumer Services, Aptus Health, MedicineNet, eMedicineHealth, RxList, OnHealth, Medscape Education, and other owned WebMD sites. WebMD, Medscape, CME Circle, Medpulse, eMedicine, MedicineNet, theheart.org , and RxList are among the trademarks of WebMD Health Corp. or its subsidiaries. About Internet Brands Headquartered in El Segundo, Calif., Internet Brands is a fully integrated online media and software services organization focused on four high-value vertical categories: Health, Automotive, Legal and Home/Travel. The company's award-winning consumer websites lead their categories and serve more than 250 million monthly visitors, while a full range of web presence offerings has established deep, long-term relationships with SMB and enterprise clients. Internet Brands' powerful, proprietary operating platform provides the flexibility and scalability to fuel the company's continued growth. Internet Brands is a portfolio company of KKR and Temasek. For more information, please visit www.internetbrands.com. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/webmd-launches-webmd-practicepro-the-most-comprehensive-patient-engagement-solution-for-medical-practices-301263614.html SOURCE WebMD

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Abbie Chatfield has lashed out at Married At First Sight's Jason Engler, after footage emerged of him using a homophobic slur against his bisexual co-star Liam Cooper.

The former Bachelor star, 25, branded Jason a 'piece of s**t' on Tuesday night in a string of furious videos, after the shocking footage came to light earlier in the day.

In the two-minute video obtained by Daily Mail Australia, Jason, 35, had called Liam, 29, a 'full-blown homosexual' - even though he has made it clear he is attracted to both women and men - before later calling him 'ugly' and 'chubby'.

Fuming: Abbie Chatfield has lashed out at Married At First Sight's Jason Engler, after a video emerged of him using a homophobic slur against his bisexual co-star Liam Cooper

In her own video, Abbie raged: 'Usually, I would stay out of this MAFS bulls**t, [but] honestly mate, it isn't up to you to decide what someone's sexuality is.

'No matter how well you know them, it is not your f**king decision to say if someone is gay, straight, bi, he, she, they, them - whatever.

'Stay the f**k out of something that isn't your business.'

Abbie then shared her disgust that Jason appeared to use the word 'homosexual' as a negative term, adding: 'Second of all, you're saying he's a "full-blown homosexual" as if that's an insult. Is this 2003? Are we still doing that?'

Raging: In her video on Tuesday, Abbie fumed: 'Usually, I would stay out of this MAFS bulls**t, [but] honestly mate, it isn't up to you to decide what someone's sexuality is'

Angry: Abbie then shared her disgust that Jason appeared to use the word 'homosexual' as a negative term, adding: 'Second of all, you're saying he's a "full-blown homosexual" as if that's an insult. Is this 2003? Are we still doing that?'

After Jason ridiculed Liam for 'not going to the gym', Abbie added: 'Perhaps he has a personality that he can carry not having to work on his body every day to mask the fact that he is a homophobic, fat-shaming piece of s**t.'

She then went on to blast Liam's 'wife' Georgia Fairweather, who had laughed along with Jason in the leaked video.

'Georgia, babe. What are we doing?' she asked. 'You're sitting next to someone saying homophobic things and fatphobic things.'

'Full-blown homosexual': The shocking footage surfaced of Married At First Sight star Jason Engler (pictured) insulting his bisexual co-star Liam Cooper and calling him 'ugly' and 'chubby'

Slurs: Liam's own 'wife' Georgia Fairweather (left) laughs in the background as Jason (right) calls her 'husband' a 'full-blown homosexual' - even though Liam has made it clear he is attracted to both women and men

The shocking video was filmed and uploaded to Georgia's Instagram account in November as she and Jason were catching up Brisbane.

The clip also features fellow MAFS star Johnny Balbuziente, who giggles along with a visibly drunk Jason.

Jason's hurtful comments were made three days before Liam and Georgia filmed their final vows - which are yet to air on TV - and all but confirm the couple's split.

Spoiler alert: Jason's (left) hurtful comments were made three days before Liam and Georgia filmed their final vows - which are yet to air on TV - and all but confirm the couple's split. Liam and Georgia are pictured right on their wedding day

The video begins with Jason - who is shirtless, wearing two pairs of sunglasses and holding a glass of white wine - saying: 'Cheers to everyone. Can I just say one thing right now?

'He is not one hundred and ten per cent anymore I wouldn't give a s**t anymore, because we're free and we're going to run amok in Brisbane.'

Georgia can be heard saying off camera: 'Jason, tell them what you're talking about.'

'Can I say Georgia's husband, a**, w**ker, I can't remember what his name is - Liam - is 110 per cent and is a w**ker and Georgia is better than him.'

'He's ugly, fat, and he is chubby,' Jason continues.

'I'm by the pool and just want to say Georgia's husband is full-blown homosexual. He is ugly and chubby and doesn't go to the gym.'

Hurtful: Jason says, 'Georgia's husband is full-blown homosexual. He is ugly and chubby and doesn't go to the gym.' Meanwhile, fellow MAFS star Johnny Balbuziente (right) urges Jason not to post the video, and Georgia is heard laughing

Johnny, who is a musical theatre actor, also says, 'You're bi-what? Bisexual?' referring to Liam being openly bisexual.

Jason adds: 'He hasn't gone to the gym in 64 years. Georgia is way hotter than him and he is batting way above his average.

'She can't wait to say "shut your mouth and get out of here you chubby little w**ker" in a couple of days [at the final vows] and that's all I have to say about that.'

Regrettable comments: 'He hasn't gone to the gym in 64 years. Georgia is way hotter than him and he is batting way above his average,' Jason continues

Should know better: Johnny (pictured), who is a musical theatre actor, also says, 'You're bi-what? bisexual?' referring to Liam being openly bisexual

Johnny then urges Jason not to post the video, before Georgia is heard laughing as the footage abruptly ends.

A source close to Liam told Daily Mail Australia he felt 'absolutely betrayed and heartbroken' after watching the footage.

Liam is understood to have kept quiet about the video until he was reunited with his castmates at the Married At First Sight reunion in February.

Heartbroken: A source close to Liam told Daily Mail Australia he felt 'absolutely betrayed and heartbroken' after watching the footage

'He called Jason, Georgia and Johnny out at the reunion because it was disgusting, but they didn't own up to their actions,' the source said.

'They didn't say it wasn't okay or believe they did anything wrong Georgia and Johnny have LGBTQI family and friends but not one of them stopped Jason.

'How would Johnny's family feel if he heard that Johnny didn't stop this? Georgia's best mate who attended their wedding as a bridesmaid is also a gay man.'

Confronted: Liam is set to confront Jason, Georgia and Johnny about the video at the reunion

The source also revealed the video took a significant toll on Liam, who has 'struggled mentally' and 'lost a lot of weight' because of it.

Jason has since apologised for what he said in the video, after he was approached for comment.

'I would like to sincerely apologise for my comments in regards to a fellow MAFS participant's sexuality,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

'After a few too many drinks I made some inappropriate remarks that I am ashamed of and greatly regret. I will learn from this and try to become a better person from this experience.'

Liam, Georgia and Johnny have also been contacted for comment.
The election campaign in Armenia started to take shape: Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and former president Robert Kocharyan entered the picture. While leaders of the systemic and non-systemic opposition follow their traditional election strategy  it's not about winning, it's about taking part  real participants of the election process try to secure the backing of Moscow as political influence of Russia on Armenia has increased heavily after the defeat in the Second Karabkh War.

Both candidates chose the most available and logically measured strategies. Pashinyan announced his upcoming visit to Moscow and negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin on April 7th. The agenda of the summit is quite clear: Karabakh commitment compliance and upcoming early elections in Armenia. Such personal meetings are vitally important for Pashinyan as today Armenias security directly depends on Russian presence in the region while reputation of Armenian Premier is vulnerable because it is supported only by his electoral base.

Robert Kocharyan cannot afford an opportunity to meet Vladimir Putin personally. Even though in the early 2000s, there were highly trusted relations between them. At the same time, Kocharyan has unlimited opportunities to use Russian media space: the former president gives interviews to Russian media and participates in shows on federal channels. In his interviews, he criticizes the current authorities of the republic for shortsightedness and political bias and prizes the period of his presidency.

Both Kocharyan and Pashinyan are ready to closely cooperate with Moscow; however, the difference is in limits of cooperation. Just like Kocharyan, Pashinyan is ready to support political, economic, and infrastructural interests of Russia in the region, as well as to comply Karabakh commitments. However, unlike Kocharyan, Premier considers close cooperation with Armenias Western partners in the sphere of the post-war order. Kocharyan is less loyal to the West and entirely goes by Moscow as a mediator in settling post-war challenges between Baku and Yerevan.

At the same time, Kocharyan is not ready to sacrifice priorities of his clan, even if Moscow regional interests intersect with interests of leaders of the nonexistent unrecognized NKR. Pashinyan doesnt feel obliged neither to the Armenian military nor to Karabakh separatists. Pashinyan is a civil person who doesnt connect with military structures of Armenia. Many people understand that the defeat in the Second Karabakh War is a result of superiority of Azerbaijani armed forces.

Kocharyan is not ready to get rid of the longstanding ideology of separatism and revenge-seeking. He still thinks that Turkey and Azerbaijan are main threats to Armenias security. Meanwhile, Pashinyans foreign policy moves step-by-step toward revision of deeply-rooted relations between Armenia, Turkey, and Azerbaijan in favor of international detente.

Pashinyan is ready to do his best to stabilize internal political situation in the republic. Kocharyan cannot promise that no big political campaign against the current prime minister and his supporters will be organized; and as a result of it, whole Armenia could be shaken and the tense situation in border regions of the republic could become highly explosive. It may negatively influence implementation of de-blockade of borders and transport corridors interesting to Russia.

Moscow faces a difficult choice. On the one hand, there is a longstanding partner and supporter of a pro-Russian direction of Armenias development. On the other hand, there is an alien politician who, at the same time, is able to be the only guarantor of Karabakh commitments. The paradox is that a pro-Russian politician Kocharyan as the leader of Armenia doesnt attract Moscow.
Oregon legislators passed 10 police accountability bills through the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, marking a major bipartisan step toward law enforcement reform.

The bills include directives for investigating officers backgrounds more thoroughly before hiring them, regulating the types of munitions and weapons police can use, creating a public database with information about officers misconduct and discipline, and requiring officers to have specific identification on their uniforms when working in a crowd.

The House Judiciary Committee is chaired by Janelle Bynum, a Clackamas Democrat. Ron Noble, a McMinnville Republican, and Karin Power, a Milwaukie Democrat, are the vice chairs.

The bipartisan efforts were hailed by Republican lawmakers, Gov. Kate Brown and others.

In a statement released shortly after the bills passed through the committee, the House Republican caucus released a statement applauding the work of the committee.

I was honored to have been a part of this process, this was a team effort, Noble said. Im also thankful to Chair Bynum for her leadership to achieve true progress with bipartisan partnership.

Gov. Kate Brown tesitifed at Tuesdays session in support of the bills prior to the vote.

Im here tonight simply to encourage you to vote yes, she said.

In a statement released later Tuesday evening, Brown hailed the Public Safety Training and Standards task force, which she created last summer to review law enforcement training and practices. She said the recommendations of that group were reflected in one of the bills.

Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt also praised the efforts, calling them historic.

I applaud the Oregon Legislature for honoring and responding to the communitys demand for deep and transformative change in the relationship between law enforcement and the community they serve, he said in a statement.

Police accountability was at the top of the agenda for the Legislatures Black, Indigenous and People of Color Caucus at the beginning of the session.

The caucus introduced, drafted or planned to develop more than 40 pieces of legislation, including Bynums proposal to restrict law enforcements use of munitions and require thorough background checks and racial bias tests for all police hires.

Both Bynums bills passed through the committee on Tuesday.

Jayati Ramakrishnan; 503-221-4320; jramakrishnan@oregonian.com; @JRamakrishnanOR
Slidell Memorial Hospital's operating rooms are vintage: Built from 1959 to the 1970s, they range from 425 square feet to 575 square feet, smaller than the 600 square feet that is the minimum size today, hospital officials say.

The tight quarters make it harder for the public, not-for-profit hospital to attract specialists who use new equipment that just doesn't fit in the cramped, old rooms, hospital spokesperson Sam Caruso Jr. said.

Hospital officials are asking voters to approve a $23.1 million bond issue on April 24, with the money helping pay for a new three-story building on Florida Avenue, a $36 million project that will include seven new operating rooms on the second floor and an entire floor of negative pressure rooms, like those used for COVID patients and other infectious diseases.

The first floor will house engineering and other services that are currently in a warehouse building on the site that would be torn down to accommodate the new building.

The expanded facilities will also enable Slidell Memorial to offer a full range of surgical services to breast cancer patients who now must go elsewhere for reconstructive surgery, Caruso said.

St. Tammany Parish Hospital Services District No. 2 currently levies a 7-mill property tax from Slidell Memorial's last bond issue, approved in 2011 and used to build the heart center and new emergency department.

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+4 Before Slidell area casino can get on St. Tammany ballot, these bills must clear the legislature When the Louisiana Legislature convenes next week, lawmakers in both the House and Senate will consider bills that would ask St. Tammany Paris

The district includes the Slidell area, Lacombe and Pearl River, Hickory, the area north of Pearl River and the northern St. Tammany area, Wards 6, 7, 8 and 9.

A yes vote on April 24 would extend the current millage, now set to expire in 2036 when those bonds are paid off, to 2041 but at a reduced rate of 6.75 mills. The tax, which would generate $1.15 million a year, would cost the owner of a $200,000 home just over $84 a year.

Slidell Memorial will also put $14 million in cash reserves toward the project, with a groundbreaking anticipated at the end of this year and an opening in spring 2023.

Slidell Memorial Chief Operating Officer Holly Sanchez told the Slidell City Council last month that construction will bring 130 jobs. The hospital will also hire an additional 50 to 75 people for caregiver positions, she said.

Early voting is April 10 through April 17.
A sign reading "Welcome Back Now Open" is posted on the window of a Morton's Steakhouse restaurant as a man works inside during the COVID-19 pandemic in San Francisco, Calif., on March 4, 2021. (Jeff Chiu/File Photo via AP)

California Plans to Fully Reopen Economy on June 15

SACRAMENTOCalifornia will fully reopen its economy on June 15 if COVID-19 hospitalizations are low and stable, and vaccine supplies are plentiful enough for everyone over the age of 16 who wants to be inoculated, Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Tuesday.

The move to end pandemic restrictions in the most populous U.S. state comes as California continues to ramp up its vaccination efforts, with about 360,000 doses administered per day and 7.5 million people fully vaccinated.

We can now begin planning for our lives post-pandemic, Newsom said. We will need to remain vigilant, and continue the practices that got us herewearing masks and getting vaccinatedbut the light at the end of this tunnel has never been brighter.

If cases are low and vaccines readily available, businesses will be allowed to reopen fully, but they will still be expected to mandate mask-wearing and encourage people to become vaccinated, Newsom said.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks to reporters at AltaMed Urgent Care in Santa Ana, Calif., on March 25, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

California was one of the first states to shut down its economy as the pandemic began last year, and at one point had the tightest restrictions in the country. Some other states, including Texas, have already lifted most of their restrictions, but California would be the largest to do so.

Newsom, a Democrat, faces a likely recall election at a date yet to be set or affirmed, fueled by a combination of Republican activism and frustration over restrictions.

The announcement of plans to reopen the worlds fifth-largest economy in just over two months also comes as states including Michigan and Florida are seeing a resurgence of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, linked to contagious new variants of the virus as well as efforts to loosen restrictions.

In the bellwether county of Santa Clara, the center of the states Silicon Valley technology hub, officials last week warned that the fight against the pandemic was precarious, and said that the decline in case rates was stalling.

California has reported nearly 3.6 million cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and nearly 59,000 deaths, state records show. It reported 2,112 new cases on Monday.

By Sharon Bernstein
TORONTO - Some of the most active companies traded Tuesday on the Toronto Stock Exchange:

Toronto Stock Exchange (19,104.14, up 77.35 points.)

The Toronto-Dominion Bank. (TSX:TD). Financials. Down two cents, or 0.02 per cent, to $83.45 on 17.1 million shares.

Bombardier Inc. (TSX:BBD.B). Industrials. Up four cents, or 4.12 per cent, to $1.01 on 8.5 million shares.

TC Energy Corp. (TSX:TRP). Energy. Up 16 cents, or 0.27 per cent, to $59.01 on 6.6 million shares.

Bank of Nova Scotia. (TSX:BNS). Financials. Down 13 cents, or 0.17 per cent, to $78.18 on 5.9 million shares.

NextSource Materials Inc. (TSX:NEXT). Materials. Up one cent, or 2.67 per cent, to 38.5 cents on 5.7 million shares.

Crescent Point Energy Corp. (TSX:CPG). Energy. Down 10 cents, or 1.93 per cent, to $5.07 on 4.7 million shares.

Companies in the news:

Rogers Communications Inc. (TSX:RCI.B). Up 83 cents, or 1.4 per cent, to $59.52. Rogers Communications Inc. shouldn't be allowed to buy Canada's fourth-largest wireless service, Freedom Mobile, because it would undo attempts improve prices and services through competition, experts in telecommunications policy told MPs on Tuesday. In a third day of hearings into the Rogers proposal to buy Shaw Communications Inc., which owns Freedom as well as Western Canada's largest cable internet network, University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist said regulators should require a spinoff of the wireless assets before approving the deal. Shaw chief executive Brad Shaw and Rogers CEO Joe Natale told the same committee on March 29 that they'd be stronger competitors to Bell and Telus by combined their spending power and assets. That would allow an enlarged Rogers to reach more rural and underserved areas, they said. Under questioning from committee members, Geist  who holds the Canada Research Chair in internet and e-commerce law  said the "most palatable" outcome would be to have Shaw and Freedom remain independent rivals to Canada's biggest three biggest telecommunications companies (Rogers, Bell and Telus).

Cenovus Energy Inc. (TSX:CVE). Up 17 cents, or 1.8 per cent, to $9.68. The CEO of Cenovus Energy Inc. says the process to sell Husky Energy Inc.'s chain of retail fuel stations was halted at an "advanced" stage as part of the $3.8-billion all-stock takeover that closed early this year. In a fireside chat at the 2021 Scotiabank CAPP Energy Symposium, Alex Pourbaix said the proposed sale would have taken place at a low point in the fuel retailing business cycle and was stopped in hopes that the market for those assets would improve. Pourbaix predicted that vaccine rollouts and an economic recovery in North America suggest the upcoming driving season could be "off the charts," a promising prospect for the retail operations and also for refinery assets it purchased in the Husky deal. Cenovus spokesman Reg Curren said in a later email that Pourbaix was referring to the ongoing sales process, not a specific pending transaction for the retail assets. He said no other details would be released. Husky announced its plan to get out of retailing fuel to consumers after 80 years in the business in early 2019, putting on the block more than 500 service stations, travel centres, cardlock operations and bulk distribution facilities from British Columbia to New Brunswick.

Bombardier Inc.  Bombardier's corporate jet business could get a lift after VistaJet said it is expanding its aircraft purchases due to growing customer demand during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Malta-based company will add up to 12 Global 7500 aircraft and 10 Challenger 350s over the next two years to grow its fleet to more than 90 aircraft. It has taken delivery of the first two long-range Global planes and has been identified as the Challenger customer announced in December that was one of the largest jet orders of 2020. VistaJet, which sells use of its planes on an hourly basis, says the fleet expansion reflects "huge demand" from new corporations seeking "safer, more reliable and efficient" travel. It claims to have seen a surge of nearly 50 per cent in corporate interest globally since last July. Flight hours sold increased 23 per cent in the first quarter compared with a year earlier and new program members surged 90 per cent. Industry analyst Walter Spracklin of RBC Capital Markets says VistaJet's commentary and data reinforce the view that the pandemic has unlocked elevated demand for business jets from customers looking for safer and more reliable means of air travel in the current environment.

Toronto-Dominion Bank  A report by TD Bank suggests up to three-quarters of those working in the oil and gas sector could lose their jobs over the next three decades as Canada works toward its greenhouse gas emission targets. Ottawa has set a goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. The TD report says the government's commitment is critical to avoid the worst outcomes of climate change, but the cuts will need significant action. The report says that 50 to 75 per cent of those working in the oil and gas sector or between 312,000 and 450,000 people could be displaced by 2050. It says the clean-energy transition will create new job opportunities, but there is no guarantee that those hurt will stand to benefit from the change. The report says efforts and resources to cut emissions should be matched by efforts and resources to help workers displaced in the process.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 6, 2021.
Wrexham teenager awarded prestigious national media prize for sharing OCD journey

This article is old - Published: Wednesday, Apr 7th, 2021

An inspiring teenager from Wrexham battling Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) has been awarded a prestigious national media prize.

Coleg Cambria learner Faith Dodd has been named BBC Wales Young Reporter of the Year.

The 17 year-old, who is studying at the colleges Yale site, wrote 500 words about her OCD journey before capturing it on camera for a gripping short documentary.

Filmed by Dad Matthew  himself a former pupil at Yale  the video has been watched more than 117,000 times on the BBC Wales Facebook page and had many more views on the channels website.





A former pupil at Ysgol y Grango, Faith was thrilled to take the prestigious title and happy to be able to share her story with so many people, having had undiagnosed OCD for at least five years previously.

I saw the competition online and thought I would give it a go, it was an opportunity to talk about something very important to me, but I never expected to win, said Faith.

When I found out I was shocked but also really happy; I had to keep it a secret for a while which was difficult, then my dad and I had to quickly put together the film  its been a manic few weeks but the response has been insane.

OCD affects more than 750,000 people in the UK, and for those with Contamination OCD it has been a particularly harrowing 12 months, with the endless hand washing and use of sanitiser gels.

As an ambassador for OCD-UK, Faith can help young people in her position, and says taking on the role has helped her confidence.

A lot of the thoughts and actions we have our involuntary, its a rollercoaster ride and recovery isnt linear, there are constant ups and downs, she said.

Ive coped a lot better since becoming an ambassador as we have a group chat and can be there for each other, sharing stories and offering support when needed.

Faith added: OCD is anxiety-based, when people feel like they want something to be right its not just that, its that it has to be right or something bad will happen.

There are intrusive thoughts you know are irrational and do not make sense, but you have to do it.

The saddest thing is that everyone with OCD just wants to be happy and I am no different. It can be time consuming and tough, but we are helping each other and that has been crucial, especially during these challenging times.

Faith lauded the staff and students at Cambria for their support and credited dad Matthew, mum Donna-Marie and sister Evie as being a source of constant encouragement and positivity.

However, despite emerging victorious in one of the countrys top contests for young media talent  and studying for A Levels in Drama, Biology and Classical Civilisation at the college  she has a different vision for her future.

This has definitely given me a taste of journalism and lit a spark inside me, but my dream has always been to work in archaeology or zoology, said Faith.

But Ill definitely keep writing and sharing my story, especially for the many young people across the country who may be going through the same thing  it does help to know others are there for you and are able to help.

Drama lecturer Jayme Louise-Edwards praised Faith for the incredible achievement and added: She has managed to encapsulate in a short video and a few hundred words what many thousands of people are experiencing every single day. And to have won this award is remarkable, a true testament to her character.

We are all proud of Faith and so inspired by her story  congratulations, this is so well deserved.

You can watch Faiths OCD journey here. Visit www.cambria.ac.uk for more on the wide range of courses and qualifications available at Coleg Cambria.
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Talk about striking photographs.

These are the electrifying winners and finalists in the inaugural Storm Photos of the Year competition - and they show some of 2020's wildest weather.

There were two categories in the contest, Photographer of the Year and Photo of the Year, with entries pouring in from around the world, from the bright lights of Manhattan to the wilds of Australia.

U.S storm chaser Scott Peake won the Photo of the Year category with a stunning shot snapped near Ashby in Minnesota of a ferocious tornado at the end of a rainbow.

Meanwhile, Tim Baca from New Mexico claimed the Photographer of the Year award with a portfolio that judges deemed had 'a variety of compositions with subtle editing and great foregrounds'.

Mike Olbinski, an Emmy-award winning photographer and filmmaker who founded the Storm Photos of the Year contest, said that despite the challenging circumstances of 2020, the 'submissions were mind-blowing nonetheless [with] some absolutely insane captures, from close-range lightning bolts, stunning compositions and the raw power of tornadoes'. Twist your way down to see the cream of the crop...

This image, taken by Scott Peake near Ashby in Minnesota, claimed first place in the Photo of the Year category. It shows a tornado at the end of a rainbow that crosses a long road. You can make out the tornado's path from right to left as crops have been yanked from the soil

Two intense lightning bolts land in the Hudson River, framing Manhattan's One World Trade Center. The striking image was taken by Gary Hershorn, a finalist in the photo of the year category, from the shores of Jersey City. The judges applauded the photographer for his rare capture of 'upward streamers', which can be seen on the brighter strike on the right

Danijel Palcic took third place in the photo of the year category with this gorgeous shot snapped at sunset of a downburst of rain with two powerful lightning strikes hitting the coast of Croatia

George Paraskevaides captured this powerful lightning bolt hitting Nicosia in Cyprus, illuminating the whole city. The image was a finalist in the photo of the year category

Julien Stephant took this electrifying image, which was a finalist in the photo of the year category, in Genoa, Italy. It shows a 'waterspout tornado' moving towards an industrial port with bolts of lightning adding to the dramatic scene

Another photo taken by Scott Peake in Minnesota, this time of a powerful 'drill-bit tornado' leaving a cloud of debris in its path as it narrowly misses farmhouses on the right. It was a finalist in the photo of the year category

Tim Baca won the Photographer of the Year award thanks to a portfolio that judges said had 'a variety of compositions with subtle editing and great foregrounds'. This image by Tim shows menacing clouds in the countryside west of New Cordell in Oklahoma

This incredible long-exposure image captures flashes of lightning at Cuervo in New Mexico. The photo was taken by Photographer of the Year Tim Baca. The judges said of his work: 'Storm chasing and photographing on the fly can be difficult, but Tim managed to find gorgeous locations to place in front of some epic storms'

A monster storm brews over Sublette, Kansas, with dark thunderous shades bruising the sky and clouds swirling ominously. The unique formation was captured by Photographer of the Year Tim Baca

A rare upward lightning strike races skywards from the Seceda mountain in the Italian Dolomites. It was good enough in the judges' eyes to make photographer Bernard Geraghty a finalist in the photo of the year category

This mesmerising image was taken by Michael Morgan outside the rural town of Maleny in Australia. It took second place in the photo of the year category. It was praised by the judges for being more like a 'fine art photograph' with a 'beautiful composition of a lone tree, a grazing cow and a distant lightning bolt against a stormy sky'

Melanie Metz captured this rare scene of both a tornado and a rainbow. She shot the image in Dalton, Minnesota, and it was a finalist in the photo of the year category
[April 07, 2021] TopTutorJob Launches to Connect Teaching Job Seekers With Legitimate Schools

NINGBO, China, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- TopTutorJob (TTJ), a leading provider of international educator recruitment services in China, launched its brand-new website for educators and schools recently with the objective to ensure China as a top destination for international educators. TTJ launched its initial website in 2017, which found great success hunting the talent pool in an effective and competitive manner. TTJ has a mission to provide excellent job placement and the best in-house recruitment. According to Deloitte, the size of the Chinese education market will presumably reach 600 billion USD by 2023, with a compound annual growth rate of 11.3% from 2018 to 2023. The market demand and growth are on a constant surge. However, the job market mixes up plenty of opportunities with advertisements, creating an obstacle for foreign applicants to distinguish a legitimate and authenticated institution. That's where TopTutorJob comes in to settle any doubt. More than 500 positions are listed on TTJ's website, the reliability of employers is ensured in a strict manner and there is a minute chance of job fraud. After submitting a resume on the site, the applicant will have an assigned recruiter to considerately assist with the interview process and, eventually, receive the ideal job offer. While striving for efficient hiring and matching global candidates with the right positions from reputable schools, TTJ intends to equip them with comprehensive guides to China as well, which laid the foundation for the revision of the website. The new site is multifunctional for users. Along with the solid job openings and abundant school databases, professional career advice, original guides to Chinese cities, and key industry insights are all accessible.



The site was in beta for six months, gathering over 10,000 registered users soon after launching and bridging the gap between global educators and the Chinese K-12 education industry. "Currently, we are testing a new function to the talent pool and, hopefully, it could go live in the following month," said Hao.XU, founder and CEO of TopTutorJob. "This would allow school HRs to easily opt for qualified candidates and fill the vacancies in a shorter time, enhancing the quality and efficiency of recruitment." The newly launched website enables TopTutorJob to better realize its mission of connecting millions of educators from the globe with thousands of selected schools across China. Hao said, "In the near future, I'm confident in saying that TopTutorJob.com should be the first choice for any foreign teachers looking for jobs in China."

To learn more about TopTutorJob, visit www.toptutorjob.com or contact the TTJ Team at +86-400-119-8902 or welcome@toptutorjob.cn. Related Images toptutorjob-teaching-jobs-in-china.png

TopTutorJob - teaching jobs in China

TopTutorJob launches to connect teaching job seekers with legitimate schools in China.

View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/toptutorjob-launches-to-connect-teaching-job-seekers-with-legitimate-schools-301263962.html SOURCE TopTutorJob

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Molly Martens and her father Thomas have been granted release on bail with a bond of $200,000. They must hand in their passports and are also banned from any contact with the Corbett family.

Once the convictions were vacated, Molly and Thomas Martens were moved from prison to the custody of the prosecuting jurisdiction, Davidson County, according to Davidson County District Attorney Garry Frank.

According to FOX8 News "They are now back to the same point as they were when they were first indicted, and, just as they were at the beginning, they are being held with no bond"

According to 'The Dispatch' - "During the hearing, David Freidman, Martens' attorney, read a portion of a letter from the Department of Public Safety, which called Martens a "model inmate" and described the work she has completed as a janitor while he was incarcerated. Freidman also argued for a lower bond, saying that Martens isn't a flight risk as his wife has cancer, and he wants to be with her to take care of her. The defendants' attorneys said during court that they plan to pay the bond. The next court hearing in this case hasn't been scheduled yet. "

Molly Martens, Jason Corbett's wife, and her father, Martens, were convicted of second-degree murder in the case in 2017. They were both sentenced to between 20 and 25 years in prison by Davidson County Superior Court Judge David Lee.

The Martens made an application for bail at a hearing at 2pm local time (7pm Irish time) at Davidson County Courthouse, in Lexington, North Carolina. It is now expected that a retrial is the most likely next step. A statement from the Corbett Family has welcomed the news. (Click here)

Davidson County District Attorney Garry Frank told FOX8 that he "does not discuss pretrial matters and will neither confirm or deny any plea offers. He added that a retrial is not off the table"

Ive got a number of families, victims of homicides and other cases that have been waiting for their cases to be tried for a long time, Frank said before the decision. And weve been on an imposed sabbatical on that for the past year. The pursuit of justice is rarely easy and thats the guiding star that were trying to keep our sight on for all of this and were here for the duration.

NEW - Molly Martens and her father Thomas have been granted release on bail with a bond of $200,000 - also banned from any contact with #JasonCorbett family April 7, 2021

Breaking: Molly & Thomas Martens have been granted bail and will be released on a bond of $200,000. They must agree to surrender their passports & have no contact with the family of Jason Corbett. @rtenews pic.twitter.com/YiNpyCD6CP  Brian O'Donovan (@BrianOD_News) April 7, 2021

Molly Corbett and her father, Thomas Martens were granted bond ahead of their retrial.



State wanted bond raised to $1million, defense wanted lowered to less than initial bond but it was set at 200k, the bond set before initial trial. @WXII pic.twitter.com/HHyhmuBCSY  WXII Lee Anne Denyer (@WXIILeeAnne) April 7, 2021

In February 2020, the Court of Appeals overturned that conviction, saying Molly Corbett and Martens were unable to present a meaningful defense during their 2017 trial.

The North Carolina Supreme Court opinion, released in March of 2021, stated the original trial court erroneously omitted admissible testimony which could have played a vital role in the jurys decision to find Corbett and Martens guilty.

Prosecutors - who had expected the Supreme Court to ratify the original decision of the Davidson County murder trial conviction from August 2017 - are ready to proceed with a new trial though this is unlikely to be staged before 2022.

The original trial heard how Tom Martens, 68, and Molly Martens, 34, beat the 39-year-old businessman and father-of-two to death as he lay asleep in bed.

Tom Martens, a retired FBI agent, claimed he acted in self-defence and alleged Mr Corbett had been attacking his second wife, Molly, who is Mr Martens daughter.

The Limerick based Corbett family launched a petition on www.change.org called 'Retrial for Molly and Tom Martens' which has over 8,700 signatures.

The petition was set up for the attention of Garry Frank. (Davidson County District Attorney, Lexington, North Carolina) after the Martens murder convictions were overturned last month after they had served four years of 20-25 years sentences, and were then offered a deal to admit to manslaughter instead of facing a retrial  meaning they would likely serve only two additional years in jail.
(Natural News) The CDC is a criminal gangster organization that has repeatedly turned to bio-terrorism and media propaganda to gain money and power. All the way back in the 1980s, the CDC ran a nationwide AIDS terrorism campaign, claiming AIDS would affect straight, heterosexual men, sweeping across America and threatening the very existence of humanity. In truth, AIDS primarily affects homosexuals with multiple sex partners and street drug users who share needles. But the psychological terror campaign pushed by the CDC earned them a windfall of new funding from Congress, positioning the CDC as the authority to control all aspects of human behavior under the cover of preventing a pandemic.

After AIDS, the CDC ran more terror campaigns against America and the world, spreading mass hysteria over the H5N1 bird flu, then the Zika virus, and now covid. Its always the same playbook: Wildly exaggerate the risk, assert authority over all human behavior  the CDC now controls private rent contracts across the USA  and demand billions in new funding from the government.

Its all a criminal racket, because the other purpose in all this is to create demand for vaccines that enrich Big Pharma. The vaccines, then, are designed to spread more infectious disease, resulting in more outbreaks that the media leverages to whip up yet more mass hysteria, which sells more vaccines. The entire time, the CDC demands more power, more funding and more authority to control every human behavior.

The Disneyland measles scheme was a CDC black ops false flag mission to push vaccines in California

When people arent adopting vaccine mandates quickly enough, the CDC runs black ops teams to spread infectious disease, giving the media more fresh meat for their mass hysteria propaganda campaigns. A few years ago, the CDC partnered with California lawmakers and vaccine corporations to spread measles in Disneyland, resulting in a coordinated mass hysteria media campaign which, to no ones surprise, concluded with Big Pharma puppet Calif. State Sen. Richard Pan rolling out SB 277, the law that banned vaccine exemptions in California. The entire operation was planned from the start: Release the measles, ignite the media fear campaign, roll out the pre-written law, and get it passed during the emotional reaction phase of the media campaign.

The CDC is running the exact same playbook with covid, and because the CDC is a gangster criminal front for Big Pharma, theres nothing they wont do to keep a pandemic going. Thats why its rather straightforward to understand theyre going to release bioweapons pathogens in Texas and Florida  possibly new variants of covid  to try to crush those states resistance to vaccine passports.

Any state that denounces vaccine passports or vaccine mandates will be targeted by the CDCs black ops team, who run around the country with vials of pathogens like a scene out of the movie 12 Monkeys, releasing them in airports, bus stations and public venues.

We have now arrived at the point where our government is an active bioterrorism group that needs continues outbreaks, fear and public obedience to maintain its power. After all, evil Dr. Fauci directly funded the WIV gain of function research that led to the creation and release of the coronavirus bioweapon in the first place. The entire thing was engineered from the start and released on schedule to crush world economies, push mail-in voting for the U.S. election and initiate the global reset that will enslave humanity under the rule of anti-human globalists.

The CDC is happily playing right along, pushing deadly vaccines and releasing weaponized strains as needed to keep the entire scam going, all while demanding more vaccines, masks and social distancing.

We are all living under a criminal medical mafia that now acts as the greatest threat to humankind, while pretending to be our saviors. The CDC works for Big Pharma and the depopulation globalists, not the American people.

Listen to todays full podcast to learn more details that will shock you:

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DETROIT -- Police are investigating a drive-by shooting that left one person dead and two others in stable condition. Officers with the Detroit Police Department were called to the 6100 block of Lodewyck around 5:48 p.m. Tuesday for reports of a shooting.

When police arrived, they discovered a man in his 20s was fatally wounded and three other people had been shot. A 22-year-old man and a 19-year-old woman were transported to a local hospital for treatment and are listed in stable condition. The fourth victim, a 47-year-old man who was grazed by a bullet refused treatment.

Although the investigation is ongoing, police did say the victims were fired at by someone in a black vehicle, but the suspects are unknown at this time. Police are asking anyone with information on the shooting to call the Detroit Police Departments Homicide Unit at 313-596-2260 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-Speak Up.

READ MORE:

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Kabir Singh Actress Nikita Dutta Tests Positive For COVID-19, Is Quarantining At Home

Nikita Dutta, who played actress Jiah Sharma in Kabir Singh, is the latest celeb who has tested positive for COVID-19. Nikita had been going out to shoot for her upcoming film alongside Aditya Seal, which also marks the directorial debut of dancer Bosco Martis- Rocket Gang in Mumbai. The actress has confirmed the news herself.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Nikita Dutta  (@nikifying)

Talking to ETimes, Nikita said, Its all very unfortunate and frustrating, but acting teaches you to be patient. We have been trying to shoot the film since 2019, but we had to halt the schedule due to the pandemic. We resumed the shoot in December last year, but Bosco was detected with COVID; later, Aditya tested positive, and now, its me. I have been asked to quarantine at home for 10 days and take a test again.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Nikita Dutta  (@nikifying)

In fact, the actress had been planning to fly her mother down from Delhi to Mumbai. She could not do it, and now her mother has also fallen sick and has been rushed to the ICU, and Nikita cannot meet her. She added, My mother had to be rushed to the ICU due to some complications. Luckily, it wasnt because of COVID. I was about to fly her down to Delhi to see her, but I couldnt as I tested positive for COVID-19. Lets hope the vaccine reaches everyone soon.

Well, we hope that Nikita gets well soon, and can visit her mother. We are also praying that her mother gets back to the pink of her health.
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KIRKLAND  An old teardown four-plex at 315 Fifth Ave. S. in Kirkland sold for $3 million, according to King County records.

The buyer was Steeple Rock 2019 LLC, associated with Cordillera Group of Kirkland, which has filed plans to demolish the old structure.





. . .
Hyderabad, April 7 : With the resurge in the Covid cases in Telangana, Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has urged the people to strictly follow the Covid guidelines.

In his message on the World Health Day on Wednesday, he appealed to people to keep the environment clean and green, take nutritious food, keep a tab on healthy living and contain the spread of Covid-19.

KCR, as the chief minister is popularly known, stated in his message that health is wealth and the state government is working towards a healthy society. He said the development is possible only when people are healthy.

He said that the state government is implementing successfully several programmes and schemes towards improving the public health. The stat government has strengthened public health centres, hospitals and medical and health system.

He pointed out that the Basti Dawakhanas started in Greater Hyderabad have yielded good results and this would be replicated in other towns and cities. With these measures, the state government has brought the medical and health services to the doorsteps of people and improved the standards.

The state government also made available protein rich food by increasing the consumption of meat, fish, fruits and vegetables. A scheme has also been launched to set up integrated veg and non-veg markets all over the state.

The CM said the programmes launched under the Palle Pragathi and Pattana Pragathi have won several awards and showed that the state government is working for the public health. KCR said for the past one year, the state and its people could withstand the corona due to their basic good habits and their immune to diseases.

The Mission Bhagiratha Scheme which provided pure, safe drinking water to reach and every household in the state helped to increase the public health in a qualitative way. The KCR Kits Programme aimed at the well-being of the mother and child and has helped the women and child welfare immensely. With Kalyan Lakshmi and Shaadi Mubarak schemes, there is a fast decline in the child marriages and reduced infant female mortality rate.
For much of the 19th and early 20th centuries, American artists believed they lived in a cultural backwater. They yearned to sail to Europe to study painting and crane their necks at the Sistine Ceiling. But at a certain point, the direction of travel was reversed. New York became the imperial art capital, and European artists considered it obligatory to come here and meet the gang. When did that moment occur? Perhaps on Dec. 3, 1963, when Mario Schifano, a 29-year-old Italian artist enamored of novelty, arrived in New York.

His adventures in the New World are the subject of Facing America: Mario Schifano, 1960-65, a fascinating excavation of an overlooked figure at the Center for Italian Modern Art, which occupies a homey loft in SoHo. Although Schifano remains little-known in this country, he is celebrated in Italy as an avatar of postmodernism. He was also an outsize personality. A self-styled wild child in the countercultural tradition, he was jailed multiple times on drug-related charges and died in Rome of a heart attack in 1998, at the age of 63.

The show, curated by Francesco Guzzetti, is not a retrospective, but rather a spirited look at a moment when New York had a new intellectual heft. Schifano was so enthralled by the saturated atmosphere that he managed to make paintings that belong all at once to the opposing camps of Minimalism and Pop. By his own admission, he was obsessed with the art of Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Jim Dine, whom he knew casually, and who are represented here by intriguing, less familiar works.

From his American friends, Schifano adopted the then-radical idea that a painting is a physical object, as opposed to a window onto an imaginary world. He combined an American matter-of-factness with a suaveness that can put you in mind of Italian design and fast cars. Although he is often hailed as a pioneer of Italian Pop Art, the TV-shaped squares, stenciled numbers and advertising lettering inscribed in his work feel incidental compared to the material satisfactions of his high-gloss surfaces. He made his paintings by brushing household enamel paint onto plain brown wrapping paper, which was later mounted on canvas. The cheap paper allows the paint to sit on the surface and harden into a shell instead of sinking in.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled for Google this week in a major copyright case involving software company Oracle.

The two American technology companies were in a dispute over several thousand lines of computer code written by Oracle. The company said that Google had violated U.S. copyright law by copying the computer commands within one of its software products.

Google added the Oracle code to its own while developing the Android operating system. The code was used to create an application software interface, or API, for Android. APIs are the pieces of code that permit programs and apps to work together.

Software developers have created millions of apps for Android. The operating system now powers more than 70 percent of the world's mobile devices.

The Android system was released in 2007. To build it, Google wrote millions of lines of new computer code. But it also used about 11,500 lines of code copyrighted as part of Oracle's Java programming language. Oracle brought legal action against Google for violating its copyright and sought billions of dollars in payment.

In a 6 to 2 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a lower courts ruling that Googles use of Oracles code in Android was a copyright violation. Instead, the court ruled that Googles copying was lawfully permitted as fair use.

In his opinion for the court's majority, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote that Googles copying "took only what was needed" and was transformative." This is a word the court has used to describe copying that adds something new and important.

The legal dispute had continued in several courts for 10 years. Google won the first case when a judge rejected Oracles copyright claim. But that ruling was overturned by an appeals court. A jury then sided with Google, but an appeals court again disagreed.

Google had argued that it did not copy a computer program, but only used elements of the Java language in the development of its Android API. It added that using code in such a way had become common in the technology industry and that the practice was good for technical progress.

Google further explained that there can be no copyright protection for the purely operational, noncreative computer code it used.

In a statement after the ruling, Oracles executive vice president and general legal counsel, Dorian Daley, strongly disagreed with those arguments. She said Google stole Java and spent 10 years pressing its legal case only as a monopolist can.

This behavior is exactly why (governments) around the world and in the United States are examining Google's business practices," Daley added.

Google's senior vice president for global relations, Kent Walker, praised the courts ruling. "The decision gives legal certainty to the next generation of developers whose new products and services will benefit the public, he said.

Justice Clarence Thomas gave a dissenting opinion for the court that was joined by Justice Samuel Alito. The opinion said the court should have supported Oracle's copyright. It called the ruling "anything but fair" and noted that Apple and Microsoft had not copied to create their mobile operating systems.

Thomas wrote that the decision will harm competition. He argued the ruling will make it easier for "companies to freely copy libraries of declaring code whenever it is more convenient than writing their own. This, Thomas argues, will leave companies less willing to heavily invest as Oracle did to create well-organized libraries to compete with Android.

Matt Schruers is president of the Computer & Communications Industry Association. He praised the Supreme Courts ruling and said an Oracle victory would have harmed competition. He said that permitting fair use of programming elements will help technology companies create competing, interoperable products.

Im Bryan Lynn.

Bryan Lynn wrote this story for Learning English, based on reports from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse. Mario Ritter Jr. was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.

Quiz - US Supreme Court Backs Google in Major Copyright Case Start the Quiz to find out Start Quiz



____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

copyright  n. the legal right to be the only one to reproduce, publish, and sell a book, musical recording, etc., for a certain period of time

code  n. a set of rules used to instruct computers how to behave or do things

app  n. a program that runs on a computer or mobile phone that performs a special function

transformative  adj. causing a major change to something

monopoly  n. complete ownership or control of something

benefit  n. a helpful or good effect

convenient  adj. suitable for a purpose or need

interoperable  adj. able to be used together effectively
During the quarter, Annual Recurring Revenue increased 26% to A$2.9 million and Total Contract Value increased 56% to A$9.13 million compared to the corresponding quarter of FY20.

Cash available on March 31, 2021, was A$1.52 million, with A$1.58 million in receivables and no debt.

( ) experienced a record invoicing quarter, with A$2.06 million in invoices raised in the March quarter, a 28% increase on the A$1.61 million of the corresponding quarter of FY20.

Also adding to the company's sound financial footing was Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), which was up 26% to A$2.9 million, while Total Contract Value was 56% higher at A$9.13 million.

At the end of the March quarter, the company was debt-free and had cash available of A$1.52 million along with A$1.58 million in receivables.

Normal economic activity

The company stated: We are pleased to see that in Q3 K2fly returned to more normal contract signing cadence with four new software subscription contracts signed in the quarter, increasing invoicing (28%), ARR (26%) and TCV (56%) substantially.

The board believes that the slowdown in new contracts as a result of COVID-19 has now passed in most geographic locations and that normal economic activity across mining has returned.

Shares have been almost 7% higher to A$0.325 this morning.

Software as a service (SaaS)

In Q3 FY21 the company made substantial investments in the following ongoing strategic activities: a new release of the RCubed solution; the further enhancement of Model Manager, and Tailings; and a new solution currently named NextGen.

The new offerings form part of the companys land & expand strategy.

K2fly stated: We are confident that these investments will pay dividends in 2021 and beyond, especially in conjunction with our new SAP Endorsed Apps Certification bringing these to market.

Milestone Heritage agreements

In Q3 2021 the Heritage solution was sold successfully into both Rio Tinto Limited (ASX:RIO) (OTCMKTS:RTNTF) (FRA:CRA1) Iron Ore which signed a 3-year agreement and Griffith University which signed a 5-year agreement.

In addition, this solution was also expanding its footprint within Limited ( ) and ( ) (FRA:F5J) (OTCMKTS:MALRF).

The company is also in advanced discussions with other major mining organisations for global roll out of its land access solution.

RCubed deals in North America

The RCubed solution continues to grow its client base with new contract awards from USA Corp ( ) (FRA:185) (BMV:AA1) (VIE:ALCA) and Inc. ( ) (FRA:CDM1) (BMV:CDE)  both contracts with 5-year terms.

In addition, Newmont and Gold Fields Australia (a subsidiary of Gold Fields Limited ( ) (JSE:GFI) (FRA:EDGA)) had successful Go Live events with their implementation of the RCubed software.

TCV grew strongly in Q3 FY21 (56%).

SATEVA solutions

The SATEVA solutions continue to go from strength to strength with new purchase order cover gained from Roy Hill, FMG and Rio Tinto Iron Ore for a 63% increase for the quarter.

The company hopes that these offerings will soon become available for general release to all its clients and prospective clients.

Decipher acquisition complete

On March 31, 2021, K2fly completed the acquisition of Decipher for Mining from CSBP Limited a subsidiary of ( ) (OTCMKTS:WFAFF) (FRA:WF3).

The Decipher business provides cloud-based software-as-a-service technology and compliance solutions for mining industry customers and creates leading commercial off the shelf (COTS) end-to-end tailings management solution in support of GITS (Global Industry Tailings Standard).

CSBP now has a 10% shareholding in K2fly.
Odisha: Climate change is forcing Indians to migrate far from home

by Sibi Arasu

April 07,2021 | Source: Live Mint

Pratap Malik, who comes from Radhaballavpur village in Balasore district, Odisha, went to Bengaluru years ago in search of work, seeking an escape from the river that today is not so much near his familys home as in it. With every passing year, the flooding seems to become more frequent. See, my house is right next to the Kansa Bansa river, and since we are only 30km from the sea, we always receive plenty of rainfall, Malik says. The rainfall is irregular but when it rains heavily or when there is a cyclone, large parts of my house get engulfed by the river. In Bengaluru, Malik, 35, operates a 12-decibel power loom, weaving mosquito nets in a small industrial unit in the Pete Chennappa industrial area in the western part of the city, 1,600km from his village. The job is arduous, demanding at least 12 hours a day, six days a week. Since he earns around Rs.9,000 a month but can afford only Rs.2,000 as rent, he has taken up a room that is just a five-minute walk from his workplace. He shares the room with two cousins. Malik goes there for meals, his only breaks during the workday, and sleeps in the power-loom factory. The room is too small for the three of them to sleep in. The situation is far from ideal but Malik says he prefers Bengaluru to Radhaballavpur. Last years covid-19 lockdown only convinced him further that his decision to leave the village was the right one. We had gone back during the lockdown because we had no money or place to stay here, he said recently, having returned to Bengaluru in December after spending seven months in the village. Like many migrants, he and his relatives, including his family, started walking back to Odisha after the lockdown was announced in March last year. Thanks to some well-wishers, they were eventually able to board a train. Malik found work as a farm labourer in the village during the lockdown , but the pay, around Rs.200 per day, was paltry, he says. A government officer in Karnataka who comes from Odisha and two journalists helped him to set up a fish-farming businessbut there were just too few fish in the river. As soon as restrictions eased and Malik was able to return to the factory in Bengaluru, he did so, leaving his family in the village. In Bengaluru, no one might care whether we live or die as long as we work, but despite that I can make a better life for my family here than I can ever do in my village, says Malik, who has to take care of his parents, wife and childrena six-year-old and a one-year-old.



Running Out Of Options



All along Indias climate-sensitive Bay of Bengal coast, especially delta regions such as the Sundarbans, where the mighty rivers of the subcontinent empty out their water and sediments into the sea, millions are moving away because their homes and lands are being destroyed by what are increasingly seen as climate change-related events. According to the Migration Data Portal, which provides comprehensive global migration statistics, in the first half of 2020 alone, disasters displaced 9.8 million people and remained the leading trigger of new internal displacements globally. Five countries accounted for nearly 75 per cent of the new internal displacements due to disasters in the first half of 2020 with India leading the pack, accounting for nearly three million people, followed by Bangladesh (2.5 million), Philippines (811,000), China (791,000) and Somalia (514,000). Delta regions that are home to 500 million people worldwide will contribute an inordinate share to such migration, since these areas are considered climate change hot spots, places where high levels of exposure to climate stressors coincide with high levels of vulnerability. Low-lying regions and deltas face a high risk of flooding and storm surges even without these threats being exacerbated, as they are now, by climate change. Apart from extreme weather events, for example, large delta regions on Indias east coast, such as the Mahanadi delta and the Sundarbans, where the Ganga, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers join the sea, are exposed to a range of hazards such as sea-level rise, coastal erosion, flooding and salinisation. A 2018 research paper by the American Meteorological Society shows how the risk of pre-monsoon extreme rainfall has been heightened by anthropogenic climate change in Bangladesh. Just in the last two decades, the two delta regions have borne the brunt of at least 15 tropical cyclones, some of them among the worst ever to hit the subcontinent. Cyclone Aila in 2009 and Cyclone Amphan last year wreaked havoc, with Amphan coinciding with the pandemic-induced lockdown . According to Climate Change Migration And Adaptation In Deltas, a 2018 report by the Deltas, Vulnerability & Climate Change: Migration & Adaptation (Deccma) programme, an international initiative that studied conditions in the Volta in Ghana as well as the Ganga and the Mahanadi delta in India, a significant number of Indians for whom the eastern coast is home, and who still have a foothold in their homesteads, are moving thousands of kilometres, to cities, for work.



This is especially true for those who practise what is called circular migrationthe temporary and usually repetitive movement of a migrant worker between home and host areas. They move not so much out of need but out of the hope that they can make a better life for themselves and their families in the urban and peri-urban regions of Indias megalopolises. These migrants hope to return. But for those forced to flee, there is often nothing to return to. Migration is not new. Throughout history, human civilisation has been on the move. In India, people move within their state or the country, or abroad, for a variety of reasons: education, work and marriage. According to the 2011 census, more than 453 million Indians have migrated within the country. However, increasingly unliveable environments are fast joining the list of reasons for migration. In the Bay of Bengal region, in particular, rising seas, increasing salinity, and a reduction in fish catch caused by factors such as overfishing, water pollution and climate change have forced people to migrate not just in search of opportunities but also to avoid threats to their health and livelihoods.





Need For Migrant-Friendly Cities



World Migration Report 2015: Migrants And CitiesNew Partnerships To Manage Mobility by the UN International Organisation for Migration highlights the important role the migrant community plays in climate adaptation by sending home remittances that can help offset the distress caused by climate change. A growing number of research findings demonstrate that migration can have a transformative power, remittances could promote adaptation strategies and distress reduction as people adopt circular mobility patterns and livelihood strategies based on links to multiple locations, the report states. It also notes that migration has led to an informal process of skill development. In addition to remittances, migrant groups and associations can support various development and risk reduction projects in areas of origin such as food and water security, infrastructural provisions and technical support along with political mobilisation in support of the distressed population, the report explains. Simply put, they can send back money and support measures to improve life in their villages. Prof. S. Irudaya Rajan of the Centre for Development Studies in Kerala, who has been researching migration patterns in India and beyond for nearly four decades, says: The greatest single impact of climate change will be human migration. Urban planning that is sensitive and inclusive of migrants will be helpful in dealing with emerging challenges. Migration, when planned and voluntary, can serve as an essential coping strategy to climate stress. This cannot be an all-purpose solution but it can work.



The Migrant Story



South-east Bengaluru, home to many of the citys information technology (IT) parks and a stones throw from Bellandur Lake, heavily polluted by industrial waste, is also home to a construction workers colony. The colony, built in what used to be a coconut grove, is referred to as Bengali colony or Sobha Daisy colony, a reference to the eponymous residential apartments in the shadows of which the colony has been built. It is home to hundreds of migrant workers, mostly from West Bengal and Assam, who live in kutcha structures that are rented out to them for Rs.6,000 per month and upwards by a local landlord who owns the coconut grove. Anywhere from three-seven people live in each of these small homes. Most of the men work as construction labourers, putting in the work to build sprawling office towers and residential apartments in and around Bellandur, Whitefield and other areas nearby. The women mostly work as domestic help or as housekeeping staff once the apartments and buildings have come up. Theres a constant demand for their services in this sprawling peri-urban region. Hari Padha Mondal, 36, from the Hingalganj community development block of North 24 Parganas district in West Bengals Sundarbans region, lives in the colony with his wife Suparna and their two children, 11-year-old Sathi and six-year-old Hi Wong. He works as a construction labourer in one of the big developments nearby. I have a proper job here, Mondal says. In the village, this is not the case. Also, since I have come here, my family gets more respect back in the village. Besides, my father too migrated to work when he was young, so it felt only right that my siblings and I do the same. The Sundarbans region has watched its residents migrate for work for decades, primarily due to the hit farming has taken from rising sea levels and increasing salinity. In recent years, ever more frequent tropical cyclones have hastened the pace of migration. Popular destinations used to be the Andamans and, of course, Kolkata. Kolkata is about 65 hours by ship from the Andamans, which makes it easy for many workers to migrate there, temporarily or permanently. The increase in construction work in the last few decades has also led to an increased demand for labourers in the Andamans. But many are now choosing to migrate to southern cities, attracted by the employment opportunities created by a number of public and private infrastructure projects. Yet many still dream of returning home one day, when they have earned enough. My aim is to return to my village after 10 years or so and start an aquaculture and poultry business, Mondal says. I want to save enough money from my work here so I can build a good house in my village. His wife is quick to counter him. I like Bengaluru, and I want my family to be here only and for my kids to study here. The village has nothing to offer us any more, I am happier here than I will be back home, she says.



Growing Stress



Research conducted in 2018 by the Deccma project found that most migration is economically driven. The project, which surveyed 1,315 households in the Sundarbans region, found that 18% of households had migrants. In the Mahanadi delta region, the figure was 24%. They also discovered that environmental stresses are disrupting livelihood security and contributing to the economic circumstances that necessitate migration. Yet, the Deccma project adds, migration is still not among the top three most common adaptation strategies in any of the deltas. Prof. Tuhin Ghosh of the School of Oceanographic Studies at Kolkatas Jadavpur University, the India lead for the Deccma project, says: If you consider delta regions like the Sundarbans, it was full of forest, no one lived there. The first person there is a migrant and so will be the last person to reside there. So, when thinking about migration, it helps to understand human behaviour and their response systems. For many people, migration is another kind of opportunity. In the Anthropocene, no one in the delta regions is engaging in only one occupation. Everyone has multiple occupations and migration is another one they are exploring, and through this they are trying to get a foothold in peri-urban areas. Prof. Ghosh and his team spoke to over 1,500 residents in both the Mahanadi and Sundarbans regions as well as 1,500 migrant workers in the peri-urban regions of West Bengal and Odisha for their study. The project, which was carried out by academics and researchers in various delta regions around the world, took five years to complete.



If you go through migration patterns in India, a lot of people from places in southern India have migrated towards the Middle East, Prof. Ghosh says. The labour force to build cities is not there. There is an opportunity in this and so people are migrating there. The landless people migrate all around the year and usually they select bag factories, hosiery, etc. Landholders select construction work because in the monsoon there will be no jobs in construction, so they can come back to the delta and cultivate their own land and produce foodgrain for their year-long consumption. That is a clever way of seasonal migration that is happening today. During the nationwide lockdown last year, millions of people were forced to leave cities and trudge to homes thousands of kilometres away. Many lost their lives during this journey, while the many who chose to stay behind were on the verge of starvation. The question through that crisis was whether the migrants would ever return to the cities. Clearly, an overwhelming number have, or are doing so. We are poor people and did not understand what a lockdown meant. We had no idea how long it would continue. People kept saying it was for a few days but we soon realised we were running out of money and soon we were left without any income, says Malik. Cyclone Amphan had also damaged my house extensively and there was really little source of income in Odisha, definitely nothing like there is in Bengaluru. I decided to come back and hopefully I will be able to bring my wife and children here too within the next few months. She was also working here (as a helper in a garment factory) before and we are hoping she will get a similar job again, he says. In Bellandur, Mondal from the Sundarbans chose to stay back.  Thankfully, it was not so bad for us, he says, as we talk outside his home in Bengali colony. Mondal says both he and his wife, Suparna, began work as domestic workers as soon as the lockdown ended. Subrata Das, 25, from West Bengals East Midnapore district, also a resident of Bellandur, went back home during the lockdown. But like Malik, he too returned as soon as he could. Disasters are definitely an important reason I chose to come to Bengaluru, says Das, who works as a community manager at the Samridhdhi Trust, an NGO that provides education to children of migrant workers. In Midnapore, we are always being hit by one big cyclone after the other. I was 13 years old when Aila struck and I remember how all our village fields were completely flooded. Moreover, he says, there are hardly any good jobs in his village. I have finished my BSc chemistry, and like me there are many educated people in West Bengal but hardly any jobs for us, hence I decided to shift to Bengaluru, Das explains. Das and his sister, Pinky Bera, who studies nursing, live in Bengaluru while his parents and younger brother are in their village, on the fringes of the Sundarbans. I like my work here and I am also able to help other migrant workers. Even though this year has been really difficult because of the pandemic, I feel things are improving now for migrant workers here. Of course, I love my state and village but the city is better for economic reasons, Das says, adding: I am not really thinking about my future. I will probably decide in five years or so. We would love to settle in Bengaluru but it is so expensive, lets see what happens.
Seen above is headquarters of National Pension Service in Jeonju, North Jeolla Province. Yonhap



By Lee Min-hyung



The National Pension Service (NPS) is set to introduce tighter environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) criteria for companies that it seeks to invest in.



Under the tightened screening measures, the nation's largest pension fund will stop investing in any listed firm if it is found to have any problems involving the criteria. The NPS is set to introduce the move as early as the first half of the year. Details of the tightened screening measures have not been fixed yet.



The NPS considered adopting such a strategy in 2019, as part of its bid to expand socially responsible investments.



Also known as "negative screening," the toughened criteria will be used by the NPS to avoid investing in so-called "bad companies" that do not meet social and environmental standards. The term contrasts with "positive screening" under which investors focus on expanding investments in companies that contribute to favorable social and environmental changes.



Discussion over the early introduction of negative screening will pick up more steam amid the growing importance of ESG criteria after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Pension funds and investment firms here and abroad are underscoring the need for more companies to join the global ESG drive and widen investments in sustainable growth.



Last year, the NPS announced plans to invest half of its assets in ESG-active companies by 2022. The move is in tandem with major overseas pension funds, a number of which have already adopted negative screening and set up their own "investment blacklists" of companies that fail to adopt ESG criteria. They include players in the area of coal development or weapons manufacturing such as cluster munitions.



Given the NPS' massive influence in the domestic investment circle, stock prices of some ESG-inactive companies are expected to drop after the fund announces its negative screening plans.



"Discussions on specific measures for responsible investments are still underway, and we will confirm them after taking into account opinions from experts and diverse organizations," Health Minister Kwon Deok-chul said Feb. 24 following an NPS fund management committee meeting. He chairs that committee.



In Korea, the notion of ESG was relatively lesser known before the coronavirus pandemic engulfed the country in March 2020. But with a number of big companies in industries such as aviation and travel collapsing in its aftermath, more firms and institutional investors have started to realize the importance of ESG for sustainable growth.



Data also showed that more investors are paying attention to ESG funds. According to data from market tracker FnGuide, the value of socially responsible investment (SRI) funds here surged to 1.51 trillion won as of Feb. 5 this year, a fivefold growth from the end of 2019 when the total value of the SRI funds here stood at 318.4 billion won.



"More companies will have to adopt a stricter set of internal criteria to become more socially and environmentally responsible, as not just the NPS, but also other institutional investors here and abroad are moving to set tighter ESG rules before investing," an industry source said.


(TNS)  Something new will soon be in the air at the Pittsburg County Sheriff's Office.Sheriff Chris Morris said the sheriff's office has acquired a new Matrice 300 RTK model drone, also known as an unmanned aircraft system. It's filled with extra features he anticipates will help in protecting and serving the people of Pittsburg County. No one is operating the drone at this time though  because a company representative is expected to travel to the McAlester area in the next few weeks to provide in-person training for sheriff's personnel.Morris said there have been plenty of times when he's seen the need for a drone. Soon, enough officers should be trained as operators to enable the sheriff's office to utilize it whenever needed.In case of missing children, missing hunters or elderly citizens who have wandered away, it can be a highly valuable tool during searches, the sheriff noted. "It has heat sensors," Morris said, referring to the thermal imaging aspects of the drone. Morris said it has a great LED lighting system, capable of lighting up an area around a house at night."If we're doing a search, you can monitor a house," he said. The drone comes equipped with a camera, capable of taking video. Morris said it also comes equipped with a speaker system, which could be used to address an individual during a search, for example. He doesn't anticipate any problems with the drone's battery being "down" when it's needed. "It came with eight batteries," Morris said. He said he has the equipment to recharge all eight of them at once, if needed.It also has two controllers, which can be handled by two different operators. That gives one operator the capability of sending the drone in flight to a second operator located some distance away.For example, it could be flown from the sheriff's office to somewhere such as Longtown, in northern Pittsburg County, where a deputy waiting there could pick up operations with the second controller.Morris plans for multiple officers at the Pittsburg County Sheriff's Office to learn to fly the drone, including himself and Undersheriff Frankie McClendon. He expects them to obtain certification to operate it after successfully completing the training along with any other requirements.The drone, with all its additional features, costs approximately $32,000 and was paid for through contributions made to the Pittsburg County Sheriff's Foundation, Morris said. He said he appreciates the Pittsburg County Sheriff's Department being able to get the new equipment. "I'd like to thank the Sheriff's Foundation," Morris said. "They've taken care of us. This wouldn't be possible without the citizens and the businesses of Pittsburg County.""All of this is working to make the county better," said Morris. "It's good to know we have this."
Cho Hee-yeon, superintendent of Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE), makes a three-finger salute to show his solidarity with citizens in Myanmar, during a press conference at the education office building in Seoul, Tuesday. Courtesy of SMOE



By Bahk Eun-ji



The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE) said it has developed educational material to help students here understand the current pro-democracy protests in Myanmar against the military coup there, and the situation its citizens face.



The material, titled "Waiting for Myanmar's Spring," are aimed at helping students discuss social issues on diversity, human rights and peace, and to foster a sense of respect and solidarity, according to the education office, Tuesday.



Composed of workbooks and instructor manuals, the material depicts Myanmar citizens' activities to resist military suppression, as well as discussing the cultures of the two countries.



It has been developed for several levels, for elementary to high school students.



Each school can choose among the material and use it for any lessons on world history and social affairs among others.



SMOE Superintendent Cho Hee-yeon also expressed his condolences to the Myanmar citizens who have died in the violent military suppression of the civil movement, showing his solidarity by making three-finger salute, a symbolic gesture against the military coup.



"I am also eagerly waiting for the spring of Myanmar. As global citizens showing solidarity with citizens in Myanmar, we have developed material so that students can discuss the issue and foster a sense of respect and participation," Cho said during a press conference.



"Through the classes, I hope students can recognize keeping my neighbors' peace is keeping mine, and understand the various factors of civic movements and learn how individual acts can have an influence on all of society," he said.



"It's up to each school whether to use the material and have discussions on the Myanmar issue, but I hope as many schools as possible will do so."


With Bulgari, watchmaking and jewellery creativity play with time and space this. The Octo Finissimo Perpetual Calendar  a record in ultra-thinness  extends the hours almost to infinity (at least until 2100 when there will be the next exceptional non-leap year). And since time is not in short supply, the minimalist Octo Finissimo Tadao Ando inspires a certain Japanese serenity in the face of lifes vagaries. In a luxurious world of gems, the mysterious Serpenti Misteriosi Cleopatra Cuff summons up ancient Egypt against a backdrop of eyes edged with kohl, in Elizabeth Taylor style. To end a hectic day, four new Divissima and Astrale timepieces just slip onto the wrist for a chic evening around the Mediterranean.

Infinite Finesse

When it comes to extra-flat watches, Bulgari is like a sprinter running in perfect stride. Since 2014, the manufacture has obtained seven world records  an ultra-thin manual movement, an automatic, a minute repeater, a tourbillon, a GMT chronograph, a skeletonized tourbillon chronograph, and now a perpetual calendar. 408 components come together in a 2.75 mm calibre and in a 5.8 mm case. Despite this minimal thickness, the model displays everything it needs, exactly where it needs to be. A retrograde date, day, month, and retrograde leap year. This perpetual calendar is available in sandblasted titanium with an integrated bracelet  a favourite of the brand  or in a platinum version on an alligator strap.

Octo Finissimo Perpetual Calendar  Bulgari

Conceptual time

When a Japanese architect with a passion for glass, cement, and light joins forces with the Italian watchmaker, the hours get all philosophical. A new creation for the third year of the collaboration, the dial of the Octo Finissimo Tadao Ando  engraved with a spiral on blue lacquer  speaks of the passing of time. At five oclock, the golden crescent of the moon sparkles. In Japanese culture, the first phase of the moon (Mikazuki) symbolizes the transitory nature of time, hope, and future prosperity.

Octo Finissimo Tadao Ando Special Edition  Bulgari

Diamonds never change

The Serpenti Misteriosi Cleopatra interprets Bulgaris beloved snake in ancient Egyptian fashion and with a carat count worthy of a pyramid of treasure. The scales for this mysterious, supple rose gold cuff are represented by nine different types of gemstones, cut into hexagons. Amethysts and citrines, aquamarine, rubellite, chrome tourmaline, tanzanite and peridot come together for a total of 50 carats. Nearly 4,000 snow-set diamonds complete the bewitching reptile for a total of 470 hours of setting. A rubellite weighing nearly 10 carats conceals the snow-set diamond dial. Cleopatra  played at the time by Elizabeth Taylor, and photographed during the filming at Cinecitta with a Serpenti on her wrist  would have approved.

Serpenti Misteriosi Cleopatra  Bulgari

Cocktail time

What better way to celebrate the colours of life than with gems? Bulgari is inspired by the Golden Age of Rome with the reinterpretation of its Divissima and Astrale cocktail watches. The first, Divas Dream Divissima, recognizable by its fan motif, captures the pleasures of each day with two different variations. The first is entirely set with diamonds while the second is set with both emeralds and diamonds. Two precious Astrale pieces, created in joyful opulence, display diamonds along with faceted or cabochon-shaped gems. These chic and extrovert creations make the Dolce Vita come second nature.
John Larson

Larson is president of the Oregon Education Association. He lives in Hermiston.

As schools around the state implement plans to expand in-person instruction, Oregons students are still trying to navigate one of the most difficult years of learning in modern history. From losing loved ones to COVID-19, to adapting to distance learning, to processing the loss of a full year of regular social interactions, students have had their entire world turned upside down.

This spring, the majority of Oregons students will be returning to their neighborhood public schools in-person for the first time in more than a year. This expansion of in-person instruction provides an opportunity for our schools to begin the difficult work of helping students process the trauma of the last year and assisting students in addressing the learning gaps they might be experiencing. In order to accomplish this task, we need to ensure our schools are set up to provide a place of care, connection and stability for students. We absolutely cannot waste what precious time educators will have with their students on stressful, ineffective standardized testing.

Like many states across the nation, the Oregon Department of Education hoped to avoid a situation where our students were forced to spend a large portion of their in-person learning time on standardized testing, but the federal government denied its request for a waiver from federal testing requirements. The state is now seeking an amended waiver that would allow it to scale back how many exams students would have to take in relation to federal assessment requirements.

And while we support ODEs efforts to give our school districts as much flexibility as possible when it comes to federal and state testing requirements this year, we firmly believe that any amount of time spent on standardized testing this year is time wasted. In the few weeks that our students and educators will have together before the summer we should instead be giving our educators the flexibility to determine and meet the unique needs of each of their students.

Our local school districts can take action to ensure that the limited time our students have for in-person instruction is actually used to focus on students physical, social, mental and emotional needs  not on some two-dimensional multiple-choice test. They can follow the lead of the Ashland School District and make this years state testing an opt-in assessment rather than an opt-out assessment.

Currently, Oregon families have the right to opt their students out of state standardized tests. While this option has been growing in popularity over the past several years, there are still many families who might not know about this option or who might face additional barriers to opting their students out of testing. To address this issue, the Ashland School District School Board recently voted to switch the requirements for state testing  setting the default as students forgoing state testing while giving parents the option to opt their child into this years summative assessments. The Oregon Education Association supports this approach to the issue, and we encourage school districts throughout Oregon to take similar action.

Lets finish this most challenging of school years by expanding in-person instruction for our students while providing them with an education that meets their social and emotional needs, not by sticking them back in front of a computer screen so they can complete a meaningless standardized test.

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We werent supposed to have a vaccine by now. Less than a year ago, I wrote a story with the headline, It Will Probably Take Longer Than 12 to 18 Months to Get a Vaccine. This wasnt an off-the-cuff take, or a hunchit was based on interviews with experts and a whole lot of reading. I was trying to provide a measured guide to how experts were thinking about the timeline for inoculations, beyond predictions that kept giving us whiplash (and, I worried, false hope). Those predictions were splashy: In March of 2020, Anthony Fauci was saying that it would take at least a year to a year in a half to have a vaccine we can use; soon after, he went on the Today show estimating that January of the following year would be doable if things fall in the right place. Headlines repeating the optimism abounded.

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No one I spoke to for my Debbie Downer story disputed that this timeline was possible; they just emphasized that it would shatter records if it happened. Vaccines historically have taken at least a few years to develop, so a January timeline involved banking on a kind of shot that had never before made it to market (the mRNA vaccine). An analyst at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security told me it was important to pay attention to the caveat in Faucis optimistic timeline: Things rarely go perfectly. After watching what had happened with the virus in just those few disastrous months, thing rarely go perfectly made perfect sense.

Yet, as I type this, I have Pfizer mRNA in my body, bopping around to my cells. It feels like everyone I know has spent some chunk of the past week refreshing a page to find an appointment and then happily posting a vaccine selfie, which I think we have decided to call vaxxies. We are tsk tsking vaccine chasers and line skippers and trading tales of side effects. We are being urged to take whichever vaccine is easiest to acquire. Meaning we have multiple vaccines, inside of a yeareven if you start the clock at the first reports of pneumonia with an unknown cause in late 2019.

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And the good news about these vaccines just keeps coming. The vaccines are very, very effective at preventing severe illness, and hospitalizations, a finding from the original clinical trials that continues to hold up as more data are collected and new variants evolve. They are effective against asymptomatic infections, too, meaning that a vaccinated person isnt likely to quietly spread the virus around. There are inoculations for kids on the way. (Yes, the vaccines are not the same, but they are all good enoughamazing, really!that I feel fine talking about them as a group for these purposes.) Optimism, for once, seems to be winning. Or maybe its also that years and years of research boosted by a massive influx of moneythanks, Operation Warp Speedpaid off. In any case, my headline from May of last year  it was wrong, and by extension, I was wrong! It can be very good to be wrong. Mea culpaand hooray, lets plan a wild summer.

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And yet, as I look back at the kinds of caution experts urged in that piece, I see a lot that still applies. Yes, multiple vaccines passed the clinical trials with excellent data. Among three of them, there have been no concerns beyond some chills and fatigue. (Scientists are still looking into whats going on with blood clots that may in very rare cases be caused by AstraZenecas vaccinean issue that underscores how lucky we are to have multiple vaccines.) In the United States, we may have plenty of doses of the vaccine, between those that are currently available and those that the administration promises will be here soon. But having enough doses of excellent vaccines isnt the same as everyone having a shot. Its still difficult to get one if you dont have good internet access, or the ability to take off from work whenever and wherever you happen to be able to get an appointment. When we say weve gotten a vaccine in record time, its worth asking for whom. With 20 percent of adults fully vaccinated in the United States, were far, far ahead of much of the world. As we were jubilating over vaccinated elderly and health care workers, a December news report in the British Medical Journal cautioned that many poor countries will see almost no vaccine in 2021, which is bad news for a swift end to the pandemic.

Even here in the U.S., were getting ahead of our skis. Along with the vaccine rollout, some states have already been nixing restrictions, and the un- or semi-vaccinated among us are getting a little laxer with our safety calculations. We have the vaccines. Were still working on using them.
Germany has become the latest EU country to ignore advice from the bloc's own regulator after officials said under-60s who have received the AstraZeneca vaccine should be given an alternative jab for their second dose.

Berlin's vaccine commission, known as STIKO, today recommended they instead receive the Pfizer or Moderna jab.

Member states were thrown into a tailspin yesterday when the European Medicines Agency ruled there was no need to restrict the AstraZeneca jab to older people - which some countries have been doing for fear it causes blood clotting.

A meeting of EU health officials failed to coordinate a joint response, leaving each nation to set its own rules and go against the EMA advice.

Spain and Italy have since announced that they will restrict use of the jabs to those aged over 60.

Belgium has also said it will pause the use of AstraZeneca jabs for those aged under 56 for four weeks in the wake of the findings.

Meanwhile the Netherlands has restricted the jab to over 60s and France to over 55s, though both of those rules pre-dated the announcement. Neither country has made it clear yet whether that guidance will be changing.

In Britain, the government has advised that those aged under 30 should be offered an alternative to AstraZeneca if one is available minimise risk from clotting, but added that all age groups will still be routinely offered Astra.

Hungary, which has largely ignored EU guidance on vaccines to push ahead with one of the continent's fastest roll-outs, has said it will not restrict the Astra jabs.

At the same meeting of ministers, German Health Minister Jens Spahn also said he is opening bilateral talks with Russian to buy its Sputnik V vaccine - though only if it receives approval from Europe's medical regulator, sources said.

Dr. Peter English, who formerly chaired the British Medical Association's Public Health Medicine Committee, said back-and-forth over the vaccine could have serious consequences and prolong the pandemic - causing thousands of deaths.

'We can't afford not to use this vaccine if we are going to end the pandemic,' he said.

European health ministers have failed to agree joint guidelines for using AstraZeneca jabs, leaving a patchwork of rules across the continent that experts warn will undermine confidence

WHAT ARE THE BLOOD CLOTS LINKED TO ASTRAZENECA'S VACCINE AND WHAT SYMPTOMS DO THEY CAUSE? WHAT ARE THE BLOOD CLOTS LINKED TO ASTRAZENECA'S JAB? European health chiefs today ruled that AstraZeneca's Covid jab should come with a warning that, in very rare cases, it may cause potentially deadly blood clots. The EMA, which polices the safety of drugs used on the continent, spotted 169 cases of cerebral vein thrombosis (CVST) and 53 cases of splanchnic vein thrombosis (SVT), from 34million jabs. CVST occurs when a vein that drains blood from the brain is blocked by a clot. It can lead to a stroke. SVT is the same type of blood clot but it occurs in the digestive system. WHAT SYMPTOMS DO THEY CAUSE? The EMA said symptoms of the two blood clots included: Shortness of breath

Chest pain

Swelling of leg

Persistent stomach pain

Severe headache

Blurred vision

Skin bruising beyond the site of injection IS THERE ANY PROOF THE JAB CAUSES THE BLOOD CLOTS? Scientists have repeatedly insisted there is no proof yet that AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine causes the blood clots. But officials are still investigating the link and can't rule it out completely. Although there isn't any evidence that the clots are developing because of vaccinations, some academics have a theory that it is the immune reaction making it happen. Research teams in Germany and Norway claim the blood clotting issue may be caused by the jab, in very rare cases, making the body attack its own platelets. Platelets are tiny chunks of cells inside blood that the body uses to build clots to stop bleeding when someone is injured. But they can also make unwanted clots. Experts from Oslo and Greifswald University believe the jab could cause the body to produce antibodies  normally used to fight off viruses  which mistake platelets in the blood for foreign invaders and attack them. To compensate, the body then overproduces platelets to replace those that are being attacked, causing the blood to thicken and raising the risk of clotting. The researchers say the phenomenon is similar to one that can occur in heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT), when sufferers take a drug called heparin. HOW OFTEN ARE THE CLOTS OCCURRING? Figures presented by the EMA today  which took into account data up until April 4  suggested the clots were occurring once in every 150,000 jabs. They also said most of the cases had occurred in women under 60. The MHRA, which plays the same role in the UK, found 79 cases of clots in 20million doses by the end of March. Officials said the risk was around one in every 250,000 doses. They also insisted the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks for the vast majority of people  but that the ratio was more 'finely balanced' in younger people. EMA chiefs said that the clots were occurring more often than expected, prompting them to say the jabs need to come with the warning that it is a rare side effect. But it said the committee investigating the link did not conclude that age and gender were clear risk factors for the very rare side effects. WHICH COUNTRIES HAVE ALREADY RESTRICTED THE JAB TO OLDER PEOPLE? Germany last week temporarily banned the AstraZeneca vaccine for under-60s, while France took the same controversial move for under-55s. Iceland has restricted it to over-70s, while Finland, Sweden and Lithuania all say it can only be given to adults over the age of 65. Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Latvia have all suspended the jab completely, while regulators probe the link further. But the EMA refused to back any of the nations in their age-restricted roll-outs. Last week it publicly said there was no evidence to justify sweeping bans for younger people. WHAT DOES BRITAIN'S DECISION MEAN? The MHRA ruled that Britons under 30 should not be given AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine due to mounting evidence linking it to rare blood clots. More than 20million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have now been given in the UK, with the jab used as the main weapon in the UK's arsenal. The roll-out is unlikely to move on to under-30s for several weeks, perhaps months, meaning that supplies of the other jabs could be saved for younger adults. But, given that AstraZeneca's vaccine is the main driver of the campaign, the roll-out could be slowed if the change of heart on blood clots knocks public confidence in 30-50 year olds. Advertisement

In some countries, authorities have already noted hesitancy toward the AstraZeneca shot.

'People come and they are reluctant to take the AstraZeneca vaccine, they ask us if we also use anything else,' said Florentina Nastase, a doctor and coordinator at a vaccination center in Bucharest, Romania.

'There were cases in which people didn't show up, there were cases when people came to the center and saw that we use only AstraZeneca and refused (to be inoculated).'

Meanwhile, the governor of Italy's northern Veneto region said earlier Wednesday that any decision to change the guidance on AstraZeneca would cause major disruptions to immunizations - at a time when Europe is already struggling to ramp them up - and could create more confusion about the shot.

'Put yourself in the place of citizens - it is hard to understand anything,' Luca Zaia told reporters.

Fears about AstraZeneca's jab have been stoked by reporting around blood clots, even though Europe's own medical regulator, the World Health Organization, politicians and the drug-maker itself continue to insist the jab is 'safe and effective'.

Data collected by British regulators show that, of 20million doses of vaccine, there were 79 reports of clots, 19 of which proved fatal.

That means there is just a 0.000095% change of dying from the jab - far less than the risk of dying from Covid itself.

Jacques Battistoni, head of the French doctors' union MG, said: 'This time, the EMA confirms clearly that there is a link between vaccination and serious adverse effects. But these events are exceptional.

'Other medications also pose such risks.

'Will vaccination with AstraZeneca be harder? Most certainly. We will need to explain further and convince our patients that the benefits outweigh the risks, and that 'zero risk' just does not exist.

'We have a lot work ahead of us. However, we cannot give up on the AstraZeneca, we do not have enough doses to allow that.'

Professor Frederic Adnet, head of A&E at Avicenne Hospital in Bobigny, France, said: 'The EMA's communication today will undoubtedly affect confidence further in AstraZeneca's vaccine and have consequences on the vaccination deployment in France.'

The EU has ordered 400 million doses of AstraZeneca, and like the UK which is pencilled in for 100 million doses, any knock to confidence in the vaccines poses great risks to their respective programmes.

The EMA said they had found 169 cases of the rare brain blood clots known as cerebral vein thrombosis (CVST) and 53 cases of a separate blood clot called splanchnic vein thrombosis, out of 34 million doses dished out by April 4.

This is the equivalent of one blood clot for every 150,000 doses. But many of these clots would have occurred naturally, meaning the true risk will be smaller, the EMA said.

The EMA stated the risk of deadly side effects from AstraZeneca's vaccine is far lower than the risk of death from Covid.

It suggested the vaccine comes with a warning and individual countries decide who is vaccinated with what company's jab.

Britain's equivalent, the MHRA, said in its review it had found 79 patients who had suffered deadly blood clots in the brain or arteries out of 20 million Britons vaccinated by the end of March. This is a rate of around one in 250,000.

Nineteen of the patients died and three were under the age of 30.

The MHRA insisted there was still no concrete proof that the British-made vaccine is causing the clots, but admitted the link was getting firmer.

The review prompted the Government's vaccine advisory group, the JCVI, to recommend that people aged 18 to 29 be given an alternative jab, such as Pfizer or Moderna.

EMA boss Emer Cooke, however, sought to downplay any concerns about blood clots.

She said: 'These are very rare side effects. The risk of mortality from Covid is much greater than risk of mortality from these side effects.'

Dr Sabine Straus, the regulator's chairwoman, said the available data found a 'very rare event that might occur'.

She told a press conference: 'The frequency is difficult to assess, but we feel if you state the reporting rate is approximately one in 100,000 or even a little bit higher, that would reflect the risk.

'Based on that information we ask national vaccination authorities to make up their mind on who they would like to vaccinate with which kind of vaccine.'

EMA's Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee (PRAC) said the blood clots reported had been found in veins in the brain, the abdomen and arteries, combined with low levels of blood platelets and sometimes bleeding.

It said symptoms associated with the blood clots include shortness of breath, chest pain, swelling in the leg, persistent abdominal pain, severe headaches, blurred vision and tiny blood spots under the skin where the injection was administered.

Anyone who displayed them should seek medical attention, the EMA said.

The committee carried out an in-depth review of 62 cases of clots in the brain and 24 cases of clots in the abdomen as of March 22, with 18 of the combines cases proving fatal.

They came from reporting systems in the European Economic Area and the UK, from around 25 million people who had received the vaccine.

Ms Cooke said its review 'confirmed that the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine in preventing Covid-19 overall outweigh the risk of side effects'.

She said: 'Vaccination is extremely important in helping us in the fight against Covid-19.

'This vaccine has proven to be highly effective. It is saving lives, vaccination is extremely important in helping us in the fight against Covid and we need to use the vaccine we have to protect us from the devastating effects.

'We will continue to monitor the scientific evidence and issue further recommendations, if necessary, on the grounds of science and robust evidence.

'When millions of people receive these vaccines, very rare events can occur that were not identified in clinical trials.

'Our conclusion is that these clotting disorders are very rare side effects of the vaccine.'

Ms Straus said the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine in preventing Covid-19 overall outweigh the risk of side effects.

She said: 'This vaccine has proven to be highly effective, it prevents severe disease and hospitalisation and it is saving lives.

The EMA presented its review at a press briefing this afternoon, chaired by Emer Cooke (right), its executive director, Sabine Straus (centre), chair of PRAC, Peter Arlett, Head of Data Analytics and Methods Task Force

The risk of dying from Covid-19 is significantly higher than the rate of CSVT blood clots, which haven't even been definitively linked to the vaccines (Based on fatality estimates from Cambridge University and CSVT occurrences in Germany)

WHICH COUNTRIES HAVE SUSPENDED THE ASTRAZENECA VACCINE? NOT SUSPENDED Austria

Bulgaria

Cyprus

Ireland

Luxembourg

Portugal

Romania

Slovenia SUSPENDED FOR UNDER-30s United Kingdom SUSPENDED FOR UNDER-55s Belgium

France SUSPENDED FOR UNDER-60s Estonia

Germany

Italy

Spain SUSPENDED FOR UNDER-65s Finland

Lithuania

Sweden SUSPENDED FOR UNDER-70s Iceland SUSPENDED FOR ALL AGES Denmark

The Netherlands

Latvia

Norway Advertisement

'Vaccination is extremely important in helping us in the fight against Covid-19 and we need to use the vaccines we have to protect us from the devastating effects.

'Prac, after a very in-depth analysis, has concluded that the reported cases of unusual blood clotting following vaccination of the AstraZeneca vaccine should be listed as possible side effects of the vaccine.'

She added: 'I think that the cases that we have evaluated, the 62 together with the expert group, those cases provided quite good and extensive information.

'But nevertheless, the number is very limited. On the one hand, that's of course very good and fortunate that the number of cases is limited. At the same time, that also makes it very difficult to find common factors.

'And on the other hand, what we also know is a lot of cases that are spontaneously reported, they are not as complete as we would like to have them in order to further analyse them.

'So I would like to repeat again, my kind request for people who suspect that they might have a side effect, please report it, and report it as extensively, and as complete, as possible.'

Some 34million AstraZeneca jabs had been dished out in the EU by April 4, with 169 cases of CVS and 53 cases of splanchnic vein thrombosis. This is the equivalent of one in every 150,000 doses, according to Google.

The EMA said the updated figures  which were slightly higher than the headline numbers in the main release  did not change the recommendations.

Scientists believe the combination of clots and low blood platelets could be caused by an immune response leading to a condition similar to those seen in heparin patients.

Patients who use the blood thinner sometimes fall into heparin induced thrombocytopenia  a condition involving thrombosis.

It comes as a review by the UK drugs watchdog found that 79 out of 20million Britons vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine had suffered deadly blood clots in the brain or arteries by the end of March.

Leaked delivery schedules reveal the Government is expecting AstraZeneca's vaccine to make up 75 per cent of its Covid jab supplies over the next two months. The document, published on the Scottish Government's website in January and quickly taken down, showed Britain was anticipating about 29.4m doses of AstraZeneca's jab between April and the first week of June. By comparison, officials expected just 8.5m of Pfizer's vaccine in the next two months and 1m of the new Moderna jab, which is being rolled out for the first time in Wales today

The cases came at a rate of about one in 250,000. Nineteen of the cases died and three were under the age of 30.

Officials insisted there was still no concrete proof that the British-made vaccine is causing the clots, but admitted the link was getting firmer.

They reiterated that halting its use in under-30s was precautionary until they can sure-up the link between the vaccine and the clots.

Britons over that age are still being advised to get the vaccine because the risk of Covid far outweighs the chance of developing the extremely conditions.

But regulators said the balance of benefits and risks was 'more finely balanced' in younger people.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he will carefully follow the advice on the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine from the MHRA and JCVI but does not believe he will have to alter the schedule for easing the lockdown.

During a visit to Cornwall, he told broadcasters: 'I think the crucial thing on this is to listen to what the scientists, and the doctors, the medical experts, have to say.

'The MHRA is meeting, the JCVI is meeting, they'll be setting out the position and we will get on with rolling out the vaccine and obviously we'll follow very carefully what they have to say.

'I don't think anything that I have seen leads me to suppose that we will have to change the road map or deviate from the road map in any way.'
[April 07, 2021] Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP, a Leading Securities Fraud Law Firm, Announces the Filing of a Securities Class Action on Behalf of SOS Limited (SOS) Investors

Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP ("GPM"), a leading national shareholder rights law firm, announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of investors who purchased or otherwise acquired SOS (News - Alert) Limited ("SOS" or the "Company") (NYSE: SOS) American Depositary Shares ("ADSs" or "shares") between July 22, 2020 and February 25, 2021, inclusive (the "Class Period"). SOS investors have until June 1, 2021 to file a lead plaintiff motion. If you suffered a loss on your SOS investments or would like to inquire about potentially pursuing claims to recover your loss under the federal securities laws, you can submit your contact information at https://www.glancylaw.com/cases/sos-limited/. You can also contact Charles H. Linehan, of GPM at 310-201-9150, Toll-Free at 888-773-9224, or via email at shareholders@glancylaw.com to learn more about your rights. On February 26, 2021, Hindenburg Research ("Hindenburg") and Culper Research published reports regarding SOS, alleging that the Company was a "pump and dump" scheme that used fake addresses and doctored photos of crypto miners to create an illusion of success. The reports pointed out that SOS lists a hotel room as the company's headquarters and questioned whether SOS purchased minng rigs from HY International Group New York Inc. ("HY"), which appeared to be a shell company. They also claimed that FXK Technology Corporation ("FXK"), which SOS announced it would purchase, was actually "an undisclosed related party shell." Moreover, the reports noted that the photographed SOS "miners" weren't the A10 Pros the company claimed to own but were actually Avalon's A1066 miners. Hindenburg went even further and found the original images from SOS's site belonged to a rival RHY.



On this news, the Company's share price fell $1.27, or 21%, to close at $4.77 per share on February 26, 2021. After the end of the Class Period, between February 27 and March 3, 2021, Hindenburg subsequently provided additional information on SOS that further supported its earlier allegations, including pictures, highlighting, inter alia, how SOS had allegedly taken steps to hide the misconduct noted in the February 26, 2021 corrective disclosures.

The complaint filed in this class action alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and/or misleading statements, as well as failed to disclose material adverse facts about the Company's business, operations, and prospects. Specifically, Defendants failed to disclose to investors that: (1) SOS had misrepresented the true nature, location, and/or existence of at least one of the principal executive offices listed in its SEC (News - Alert) filings; (2) HY and FXK were either undisclosed related parties and/or entities fabricated by the Company; (3) the Company had misrepresented the type and/or existence of the mining rigs that it claimed to have purchased; and (4) as a result, Defendants' positive statements about the Company's business, operations, and prospects were materially misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis at all relevant times. Follow us for updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. If you purchased or otherwise acquired SOS ADSs during the Class Period, you may move the Court no later than June 1, 2021 to ask the Court to appoint you as lead plaintiff. To be a member of the Class you need not take any action at this time; you may retain counsel of your choice or take no action and remain an absent member of the Class. If you wish to learn more about this action, or if you have any questions concerning this announcement or your rights or interests with respect to these matters, please contact Charles Linehan, Esquire, of GPM, 1925 Century Park East, Suite 2100, Los Angeles California 90067 at 310-201-9150, Toll-Free at 888-773-9224, by email to shareholders@glancylaw.com, or visit our website at www.glancylaw.com. If you inquire by email please include your mailing address, telephone number and number of shares purchased. This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and ethical rules. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005395/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Just weeks after Gov. Charlie Baker signed into law an ambitious new climate plan, Democratic candidate for governor Ben Downing said Tuesday that if elected he would go further, pushing for Massachusetts to become the first state in the country to meet its full electricity demand with clean energy by the end of the decade and to run entirely on clean energy by 2040.

Downing, who was deeply involved in energy issues during his 10-year career as a state senator, focused on climate change for the first major policy rollout of his campaign. He said climate policy is where crises of public health, the environment and economic justice all come together.

I think Massachusetts has the potential to solve these big problems. What we havent had from our leadership is a sense of urgency and maybe on no other issue is that urgency needed than on climate, Downing said in a video posted briefly to Facebook on Tuesday afternoon.

The proposal calls for Massachusetts to speed up its transition to clean energy and to ensure that low-income neighborhoods and communities of color hurt by decades of pollution are positioned to take advantage of health and economic opportunities of the future.

He committed to having a full fleet of electric buses in at least 20 so-called environmental justice communities by 2024, and to supporting the divestment of all state-controlled pension funds from fossil fuel industries.

The clock has been ticking and it is ticking and every day that we dont act with that sense of urgency then the cost and the scale of what we have to do in a shortened period of time becomes that much tougher, Downing said.

Downings climate agenda was presented less than two weeks after Baker signed an ambitious new climate and emission reduction law that requires Massachusetts to be carbon-neutral by 2050, setting interim reduction targets between now and then and requiring major new offshore wind purchases.

Rather than pursue a goal of net-zero emissions that would still allow for fossil fuel consumption to be offset by other policies, Downing said his administration would pursue 100 percent clean energy a decade sooner than the current law.

The plan would also require that at least 50 percent of all climate spending in the state benefit those communities disproportionately impacted by decisions about where to site fossil fuel plants and other energy policies. Downing said that means investing in the Clean Energy Center to lure renewable energy companies to Massachusetts and working with community colleges, unions and other groups to train workers in those neighborhoods for jobs in the clean energy industry.

Baker has not yet said whether he will seek a third term in 2022, but over the course of his first two terms he has also pursued the development of the states first offshore wind farm, the purchase of hydropower from Quebec and developed his own roadmap to reduce emissions to at least 85 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

Downing is the only declared candidate on the Democratic side, though Harvard political theorist Danielle Allen is raising money and exploring a bid. Attorney General Maura Healey, another Democrat, has not made her plans for 2022 known.

Downing was supposed to release his climate plan on multiple social media channels on Tuesday morning, touting the launch of BEN TV as a communications tool that his team would use to roll out the campaigns policy agenda moving forward. However, his team experienced technical difficulties uploading the video, and postponed the release until Wednesday.

The video, viewed by the News Service, posted briefly on the candidates Facebook page and featured Downing being interviewed by his former Providence College professor Tony Affigne, an expert in environmental policy and politics. His campaign subsequently shared the full plan that will be posted to Medium.

For six of the 10 years Downing spent in the Senate, the Pittsfield native co-chaired the Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy, working on issues like broadband expansion and the development of solar and other clean energy industries.

When he left Beacon Hill, he joined the solar development company Nextamp as a vice president for new market development and sat on the board of the Environmental League of Massachusetts.

We have proven you can grow your economy and you can do right by the environment. This is about taking that to the next level, Downing told Affigne.

The East Boston resident said his experience with the State House debates over climate policy uniquely position him to navigate the politics of the issues and be ready to push forward and implement his plan.

If we get this right, we have the ability to capture the next generation of jobs here in Massachusetts, but we have to be intentional about that, Downing said.

To achieve 100 percent clean electricity by 2030, Downing said his administration would commit to producing 1.5 gigawatts of clean electricity a year for the next decade, increase requirements on utilities to purchase clean energy and make it easier to connect clean resources to the grid.

His plan also calls for the transition of all public fleets to electric vehicles, the use of electric vehicle purchasing incentives and the buildout of the infrastructure, such as charging stations, to support electric vehicles.

The Democrat said he would create a Race to Zero competitive grant program for municipalities to take part in efforts to rely 100 percent on clean energy by 2040, and would redesign utility rates to incentivize the transition to renewable energy resources.

Downing did not mention President Joe Bidens $2 trillion infrastructure proposal, but much of the spending in that plan would support the candidates clean energy ambitions, including funding that would help Massachusetts build electric vehicle charging stations and modernize the grid.

The American Jobs Plan sets a nationwide target of 100 percent clean electricity by 2035, five years slower than Downings plan for Massachusetts.

Downing said his plan would also give every department in state government a mandate to reduce its carbon footprint and consider climate change in all that it does.
OPEC and partners are betting on a significant boost in oil demand over the coming months as member states get ready to ramp up oil production. OPEC, Russia, and their allies are planning to increase oil production by 2.1 million bpd by as early as July this year, suggesting the confidence they have in a market rebound. The organizations output cuts of 7 million will be eased significantly each month between now and July.

Saudi Arabia is also expected to ease its voluntary output cuts to increase production by 1 million bpd by July.

The announcement to ease restrictions comes unexpectedly as the oil industry is once again suffering from increased Covid-19 restrictions as Europe and parts of Latin America go into a third wave of the pandemic.

Oil prices have dropped to the lowest in almost two weeks as European lockdown measures continue to be extended, leaving the market unsure of upcoming demand trends. Futures in New York fell 4.6 percent on Monday, from $64.86 a barrel on April 1 to $62.15, which decreased oil prices to below the U.S. crudes 50-day moving average.

OPEC will be hoping that prices remain generally high as production increases, relying on the international market to soak up the higher crude production by the summer months. However, it will be battling with restrictions on travel, closed businesses, and the new working-from-home norm. Related: Irans Comeback To Oil Markets Unlikely To Cause Price Crash

However, optimism around the vaccine rollout continues, as the U.K. has given the first vaccine to almost half of the population, and the U.S. to over 30 percent of the population. While vaccination programs in the rest of Europe and North America are moving at a slower rate, there is still hope that many countries will catch up by late 2021.

Vitol, the world's biggest independent oil trader, stated this week that it expects oil demand to increase over the next decade but warns jet fuel recovery will be slower. While certain oil sectors will remain stagnant, others are expected to increase, including light ends used in manufacturing.

Platts Analytics is also optimistic about the 2021 rebound, anticipating an oil demand growth of 5.9 million bpd this year, in comparison to the 9 million bpd decrease experienced in 2020. The firm expects demand to climb steadily before plateauing at an estimated 113.5 million bpd in the late 2030s.

The increase in demand will come predominantly from Asia, as China and Indias energy needs are steadily increasing as already developed markets, such as Europe and North America, are expected to stagnate.

OPEC+ is looking increasingly toward India and its oil refiners, as Saudi Arabia hopes to forge strategic relations with one of the fastest-growing downstream markets in the world. At present, the Arab Gulf States account for around 20 percent of Indias total import bill, which is dominated by oil and gas.

While Covid-19 restrictions continue to hamper oil demand, optimism around the vaccine rollout as well as increased demand from emerging markets suggests OPECs plan to ramp up production will be met with enthusiasm.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 20:13:26|Editor: huaxia

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HOHHOT, April 7 (Xinhua) -- A total of 631 China-Europe freight trains have passed through the border port of Erenhot in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region this year, according to the local customs bureau.

Imports carried by the trains include agricultural products such as sugar, sunflower seeds, flaxseed and sunflower oil, in addition to traditional commodities such as boards, wood pulp and other building materials.

Exported goods include high value-added commodities such as mechanical and electrical products, cars, complete sets of automobile parts, photovoltaic products, textiles, daily necessities and home appliances.

Erenhot Port is the only railway port between China and Mongolia, and there are 45 China-Europe freight train routes passing through the port. The routes begin in more than 40 cities across China and end in 60 destinations across 10 countries, including Hamburg, Rotterdam, Moscow and Warsaw. Enditem
Regulatory News:

Getlink (Paris:GET):

Given the current restrictions and in accordance with the measures adopted by the Government to slow the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, Getlink's combined general meeting of shareholders, scheduled for 28 April 2021 at 10:00 am, will be held behind closed doors, without the physical presence of its shareholders or any other persons entitled to attend.

Getlink has taken measures to facilitate remote voting, so that shareholders can vote without being present at the general meeting via remote voting solutions (postal or proxy voting) and online via the secure voting platform VOTACCESS.

To promote shareholder dialogue, which Getlink particularly values, an exceptional system will be put in place to broadcast the meeting live and a recording will be placed on the company's website.

Following the separation of the functions of Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and the gradual rotation of its members, the Board of Directors will propose at the general meeting that Yann Leriche, Chief Executive Officer, and Mark Cornwall, British contract employee representative, be appointed to the Board of Directors, following the end of Peter Levene's mandate and Tim Yeo's withdrawal1 for having now exceeded 12 years in post.

The Board of Directors is delighted with this evolution and the enrichment of employee representation on the Board. Jacques Gounon, Chairman of the Board warmly thanks Tim Yeo and Peter Levene for their invaluable contributions to the Board of Directors' work in preparing for Brexit and in the context of the Covid-19 crisis.

The Board exercised its responsibility by ensuring customer and employee safety, implementing measures to control operating costs and optimising investment spending. Getlink has not sought any government guaranteed loans, government guarantees or tax deferrals. As a solidarity-based contribution to the collective effort of employees on furlough, this was accompanied by a reduction in directors' fees and the remuneration of corporate officers and directors, as well as members of the executive committee and main senior executives.

Confident in its long-term outlook, Getlink confirms its commitment to shareholder return and will propose that the general meeting to be held on 28 April 2021, votes for the distribution of a dividend of 0.05 per share entitled to dividend.

The notice of the 7 April 2021 meeting2 includes the detailed agenda and the draft resolutions, as well as the main methods of participation and voting at this meeting. The opinion and the reports of the Board of Directors, including that on the draft resolutions, as well as the other preparatory documents and information relating to this meeting, can be viewed on the aforementioned website, made available or communicated to shareholders in line with the conditions and deadlines provided for by applicable legal and regulatory provisions. Shareholders are invited to regularly consult the section dedicated to the general meeting on the website www.getlinkgroup.com, in order to have access to the most up-to-date information about the meeting.

Yann Leriche, 47, graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique (1997), then the l'Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees, College des Ingenieurs and ESCP Europe, began his career in the public sector, first as a road infrastructure project manager, then in the construction and operation of public transit systems. After extensive experience at Bombardier Transport where he became head of the transport systems "Guided Light Transit" directorate, Yann Leriche joined Transdev group in 2008. Initially CEO of Transamo, he then became CEO of the German subsidiary Transdev SZ and subsequently deputy director of transit activities in North America in 2012. In 2014, he was appointed as group chief performance officer and a member of the executive committee. From 2017 to 2020, he was CEO of Transdev North America, in charge of the group's American and Canadian operations (17,000 employees, US$ 1.4 billion in revenue and serving more than 100 cities and urban areas with seven different means of transport) and was also in charge of the worldwide development of Transdev's autonomous vehicle activities. Yann Leriche joined Getlink SE as Chief Executive Officer in July 2020.

Mark Cornwall, 53, joined the Group in 1993, after participating in the construction of the tunnel for five years (Norwest Holst), on the construction of overbridge one. He then joined Balfour Beatty as an overhead linesman on the installation of the catenary system. On completion of the catenary system he then joined Eurotunnel as a Catenary Technician before being appointed Catenary Group Leader in 2009. During this time, he was appointed a Company Council Representative (a role in addition to Group Leader) then elected as Company Council Chief Representative in 2003. He has also had an active role on the European Works Council, working closely with his French colleagues for the past 18 years.

1 These changes will take effect at the end of the general meeting of 28 April 2021

2 BALO 7 April 2021

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005741/en/

Contacts:

Getlink

For UK media enquiriescontact

John Keefe on 44 (0) 1303 284491

Email: press@getlinkgroup.com

For other media enquiries contact

Anne-Laure Descleves on +33(0)1 4098 0467

For investor enquiries contact

Jean-Baptiste Roussille on +33 (0)1 40 98 04 81

Emailjean-baptiste.roussille@getlinkgroup.com

Michael Schuller on +44 (0) 1303 288749

Email:Michael.schuller@getlinkgroup.com
April 07 : Vijay Varma is on cloud nine these days as his latest released show 'OK Computer' which is currently streaming on Disney+Hotstar is getting great response from everyone. The show has now become the most watched show/film of the week across all platforms and the actor has thanked his fans for so much love.

Sharing a video with images from the show, he wrote, "Audience Zindabad. Most Watched show/film of the week across all platforms"

The series is directed by Anand Gandhi who is known for his film 'Ship Of Theseus'. It is first of its kind to be released in India. The audience is loving the series so much that it has become the most watched show/film of the week across all platforms.

It is a science fiction comedy that takes the audience to a parallel world's journey which is super advanced. The story revolves around the year 2031- where a hard boiled Cyber crime detective Saajan Kundu is called out of retirement when a self driving taxi is hacked and ordered to kill an anonymous human victim.

The series stars Radhika Apte, Vijay Varma, Rasika Dugal and Jackie Shroff and it is streaming on Disney+Hotstar.

We congratulate the team for this big achievement!
If you live in a big city in India, chances are youve either had your device snatched out of your hands or definitely know someone its happened to. Its the harsh reality of life in a big, Indian city but for one, Debayon Roy, a thief snatched his Samsung Galaxy S10+ right out of his hands but ended up returning the phone. Why, you ask? Well, it looks like the thief was a smartphone connoisseur and actually wanted a OnePlus 9 Pro (review) instead. Yes, you read that right. A report on MySmartPrice, states that the incident took place in Noida in the NCR region.

Man steals Samsung phone, returns it to owner as it wasn't a OnePlus 9 Pro

A legal journalist by trade, Debayon Roy was exiting the Secor 52 Metro station in Noida, UP when the said thief snaked out of the shadows and snatched his phone. Roy was in the process of sending a message and was not ready for his device to be whacked. He ran after the thief but was surprised to see the man running back towards him. The thief then handed over Debayans phone back to him and hit him with the classic, Bhai mujhe laga One Plus 9 pro model hai.. Which essentially translates to, Brother, I thought that this was a OnePlus 9 Pro.. We assume that Mr Roys world must have caved in on itself after such an experience. And, it looks like Samsung took a hard L in this incident as well.

To be fair, we did rate the OnePlus 9 Pro rather highly when we reviewed the device. The OnePlus 9 Pro is priced starting at Rs 64,999 for the 8GB+128GB variant and Rs 69,999 for the 12GB+256GB storage option. The OnePlus 9 Pro also features a 6.7-inch QHD+ (3216x1440 pixels) resolution AMOLED curved display with LTPO backplane technology and supports a 120Hz refresh rate.
After BJP West Bengal President Dilip Ghosh was attacked on Wednesday while he was visiting Cooch Behar in North Bengal, Ghosh has accused West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of perpetrating the attack. He has also urged the election commission to restrict Mamata Banerjee from holding any rally till the West Bengal Assembly election ends, otherwise it will lead to bloodshed.

Ghosh called for a press conference in the evening to share the details of the attack. He said, "Mamata Banerjee planned the attack. The police were there where my car was attacked. My PSO called the police headquarters but no help was sent to me."

Narrating the entire incident, he said, "I was in Sitalkuchi, Cooch Behar for poll rally. While it was going on people returning in vehicles from Mamata Banerjee's rally were threatening our workers, showing them sticks, creating tension. Police beat up our workers amid this."

"Later when our people started leaving, Police asked us to stop for a while. When I started leaving after all workers, Police left me & went away. I was then surrounded by hundreds of people who attacked us with sticks & bricks. I was injured, many vehicles vandalised," he added.

"Mamata Banerjee has been instigating people of a particular community for days. I think if EC doesn't look into it & make proper arrangements for security, free & fair polls will be difficult. Her rallies should be stopped otherwise there will be bloodshed in Bengal," he added further.

He also alleged that Mamata Banerjee's car was never stopped but BJP's cars were being attacked while adding that police lathi-charged the BJP workers.

People with TMC flags came with sticks and bricks and attacked the car, he said while addressing media. He also alleged that TMC is targeting EVMS and the election can be free and fair only if Central Forces are deployed.

BJP leader Saumitra Khan BJP leader Saumitra Khan and workers of the BJP have begun a protest in front of the Election Commission office in Kolkata over the attack on Dilip Ghosh's convoy in Sitalkuchi.

TMC has refuted all the allegations by the BJP and has contended that Dilip Ghosh's provocative statements might have caused the attack. TMC's Saugata Roy asserted that there was no TMC hand in the attack.

"I do not know the details, but the attack was not on Dilip Ghosh but on his convoy. The kind of comments he makes saying Mamata Banerjee should wear bermudas provokes people. I do not know the details of the incident so I can not say anything more. I agree it should not happen, but provocative statements cause such incidents," said TMC's Saugata Roy while speaking to Republic TV.

EC's notice to Mamata Banerjee

The election commission has already issued notice to Mamata Banerjee demanding an explanation in 48 hours over her appeals to the minority community in violation of the model code of conduct (MCC). Mamata Banerjee had appealed to the Muslim community not to divide their votes while asking the Hindu community to not come under the influence of the BJP. BJP's Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi had lodged a complaint to the Election Commission over the use of communal remarks. Upon inquiry, the Election Commission found it to be a violation of MCC and issued a notice to Mamata Banerjee demanding an explanation in 48 hours.

Moreover, BJP has also said it will file a complaint against Mamata Banerjee for her remarks against CRPF forces as the Bengal chief minister had called for a gherao of CRPF personnel which are deployed for providing security during the elections.

Three out of eight phases have been completed in West Bengal with the remaining phases to go to polls on April 10, April 17, April 22, April 26 and April 29. The counting of votes shall take place on May 2. The state has witnessed increasing political violence with attacks and killings of political workers from both BJP and TMC. Ahead of the elections, almost all leaders of BJP's top brass were attacked during their visits to the state. One of the major attacks took place on BJP National president JP Nadda's convoy in December while he was on his way to Diamond Harbour. Several leaders in the convoy including Mukul Roy and Sambit Patra were also left injured.
A Mexican congressional candidate on April 6 launched his election campaign from a coffin to raise awareness over thousands of deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic and cartel-related violence. A lower house candidate for the Encuentro Solidario party in the northern state of Chihuahua, Carlos Mayorga reportedly said that he was sending a stark message to all the politicians that people were losing their lives because of their indifference.

As per reports and images shared on social media, Mayorga arrived inside a gold-coloured casket at a campaign rally on a bridge between the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, Texas. While accompanied by his aides who were dressed in personal protective equipment (PPE). Mayorgas aides were also carrying bouquets of flowers to draw attention to the COVID-19 death toll in Mexico. As per the Johns Hopkins University tally as of April 7, 2,256,509 have been infected with novel coronavirus with 2,256,509 casualties.

As per reports, Mayorga said that politicians have remained silent about the high levels of organised crime. They have remained silent about the chaotic Covid-19 situation. Apart from people dying of novel coronavirus, reportedly over 300,000 people have been murdered in Mexico since the government deployed the military against drugs in 2006. Mayorgas campaign from coffin is for June midterm elections which also brought a wave of political violence with at least 16 candidates being reportedly murdered.

Asi es como Carlos Mayorga del PES inicia su campana: burlandose de la muerte de mas de 200,000 mexicanos por la pandemia.



Estas lacras son los aliados de Morena y enemigos de la comunidad LGBT. pic.twitter.com/bhfPjF2LDx  Luis GJ (@luis_gj) April 7, 2021

Quien fuera Carlos Mayorga para ya estar adentro de un ataud. pic.twitter.com/jT6JGEuGux  Carlos M Enrigue (@CarlosMEnrigue) April 6, 2021

8 Killed In Cartel Battleground

As per the Associated Press report, just earlier this week, eight bullet-ridden bodies were discovered in western Mexico township where drug cartels have been waging a war. Reportedly, the prosecutors office in Michoacan state said that eight bodies were of all men and were found in the township of Aguililla. However, the prosecutors did not mention how the bodies were mutilated but local media reports stated that they had been decapitated.

Further on March 29, Mexico revised its COVID-19 death toll, increasing the tally by nearly 60 per cent and surpassing Brazil with the worlds second-highest fatalities. As per the new tally, the deaths in Mexico jumped by 75,000 in just about a month and a half in December last year from the total grim milestone of 220,000.

Image credits: @CarlosMayorgaPeriodista/Facebook/@luis_gj/Twitter
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday urged NATO to speed up his country's membership into the alliance, saying it was the only way to end fighting with pro-Russia separatists.

Zelensky spoke with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg after an increase in clashes and Russian military movements on the border raised fears of an escalation of the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine.

In a tweet after the call, Zelensky said it was time for NATO to move forward with Ukraine's longstanding desire for membership.

He said Kiev was committed to defence reforms requested by the alliance in exchange for membership.

"But reforms alone will not stop Russia," said Zelensky, whose government has said it hopes to be invited this year to join a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP).

"NATO is the only way to end the war in Donbas. Ukraine's MAP will be a real signal for Russia."

Fears have been mounting of a major escalation of the conflict in eastern Ukraine, where government forces have battled separatists in the mainly Russian-speaking Donbas region since 2014.

Ukraine last week accused Russia of massing thousands of military personnel on its northern and eastern borders as well as on the Crimean peninsula annexed by Moscow.

The United States, the central power in NATO, stopped short of saying that Ukraine's membership had become more urgent and said Kiev must first complete reforms.

"We continue to urge the government of Ukraine to implement the deep, comprehensive and timely reforms necessary to build a more stable, democratic, prosperous and free country," State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters in Washington.

But he said President Joe Biden's administration supported the "open-door" policy of NATO and "the right of each sovereign country to choose for itself" whether to join the alliance.

Kiev's Western allies have rushed to its defense with a series of statements warning Russia against taking further action and seeking explanations for its troop buildup.

"We call on Russia to make their intentions more clear as to what they're doing with this array of forces along the border," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

- Four more soldiers killed -

On Tuesday, Stoltenberg said he had called Zelensky "to express serious concern about Russia's military activities in and around Ukraine and ongoing ceasefire violations".

"NATO firmly supports Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. We remain committed to our close partnership," he said.

The Kremlin has not denied the troop movements but insisted that Moscow was "not threatening anyone".

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Tuesday that NATO membership for Ukraine would do no good in resolving the conflict.

"We very much doubt that this will help Ukraine settle its domestic problem," Peskov said. "From our point of view, it will only worsen the situation."

"If you ask the opinion of several million people living in the self-declared republics (in the east) you will see that for them NATO membership is deeply unacceptable," he said.

The reports of a Russian buildup follow a dramatic increase in clashes along the frontline in recent weeks, with Ukraine announcing new deaths of its soldiers almost daily.

Zelensky on Tuesday wrote on Twitter that "since March 26 alone, we've lost 8 of our soldiers."

On Tuesday, Kiev announced that two soldiers were killed on the frontlines -- one by mortar fire, the other by an explosive device.

It also said another two were shot dead Monday after separatists opened fire on their positions with machine guns and grenade launchers.

The first incident took place near the city of Avdiivka, six kilometres (four miles) north of Donetsk, the separatists' de facto capital, and the second near the town of Zolote-4 in Lugansk region, the military told AFP.

- 'Retreat is not an option' -

At Ukrainian positions near Avdiivka on Tuesday, Kiev soldiers said that "retreat is not an option" in the event of an offensive.

"We'll kick the crap out of them", 35-year-old sergeant Vitaly, who goes by the nickname "Makhmud", told AFP.

Vitaly said that Western countries should stay alert because Russian President Vladimir Putin "wants to restore the USSR" and "Ukraine alone will not be enough for him."

Volodymyr, a 26-year-old soldier, said that the separatists had gone from firing "single shots" to now "systematically trying to destroy our positions" with shelling.

The conflict broke out in 2014 following Moscow's annexation of Crimea and has since claimed more than 13,000 lives.

The separatists are widely seen as having Russia's political and military backing, which Moscow denies.

Fighting had subsided before the recent outbreak of violence, with a ceasefire agreed last year having seen clashes drop to their lowest level in years.

Moscow and Kiev have accused each other of being behind the renewed clashes.

Copyright (2021) AFP. All rights reserved.

This article was written by Olga Shylenko from Agence France Presse and was legally licensed through the Industry Dive publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@industrydive.com.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 06:14:02|Editor: huaxia

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Pedestrians walk on a street in San Mateo, California, the United States, April 6, 2021. Governor of U.S. state California Gavin Newsom on Tuesday said the state is ready to fully reopen its economy by June 15 if vaccine and hospitalization numbers remain stable. (Xinhua/Wu Xiaoling)

SAN FRANCISCO, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Governor of U.S. state California Gavin Newsom on Tuesday said the state is ready to fully reopen its economy by June 15 if vaccine and hospitalization numbers remain stable.

Newsom made the announcement during a news conference in San Francisco.

"This is a big day in terms of the pandemic ... We will be moving beyond the blueprint and getting rid of colored tiers, moving past the dimmer switch. Getting rid of the blueprint as you know it today. That's on June 15 if we continue our good work," Newsom was quoted as saying in a report by The San Francisco Chronicle.

California is set to surpass more than 20 million vaccine doses administered, including 4 million in the state's hardest-hit communities, the governor's office said.

With hospitalizations continuing to steadily decline, Newsom said the next step in the COVID-19 pandemic recovery is moving beyond the state's Blueprint for a Safer Economy. Enditem
OTTAWA  A new grassroots group says its time federal parties promise to field Filipino-Canadians in key ridings as they pointed out the community has had no voice in the House of Commons since 2004.

OTTAWA  A new grassroots group says its time federal parties promise to field Filipino-Canadians in key ridings as they pointed out the community has had no voice in the House of Commons since 2004.

"If you want to represent Canadians of all groups, it is about breaking down those barriers for more marginalized communities that lack that representation," said Grant Gonzales, co-founder of the Filipino Canadian Political Association.

The non-profit, which registered a few months ago, advocates for a stronger voice in Parliament, noting one of the largest diaspora groups in Canada is virtually invisible on the federal scene.

The group analyzed 2016 census data and the tightest ridings in the 2019 federal election, and found 37 electoral districts where the number of people who identify as Filipino is more than the margin of victory. That includes six of Winnipegs eight ridings.

Filipino-Canadians are no strangers to the Manitoba legislature or Winnipeg city hall. The first Filipino elected to Parliament represented a Winnipeg riding. Rey Pagtakhan represented the Liberals in the former Winnipeg North-St. Paul riding from 1997 to 2004. No other Filipino-Canadian has followed in his footsteps.

Thats meant a lack of input on issues, such as the pandemics effect on personal care home workers, who include hundreds of Filipino-Canadians.

"Theyre out there, getting exposed to the pandemic and yet have no voice in the decision-making process," Gonzales said.

"Its hard to have a voice and to represent what the community is feeling, if you dont have that voice in elected office to drive that conversation."

Gonzales said its tough to gain political clout when the population is spread out as opposed to being in one or two cities.

He noted Filipinos have immigrated to Canada more recently than other ethnic groups, and report lower incomes than people of colour in Canada.

Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureuxs Winnipeg North riding has the highest proportion of Filipino-Canadians, accounting for one-third of its residents.

Lamoureux said Tuesday he hopes to see many Filipinos step forward to contest Liberal nominations.

"I think there is a movement, and I know the prime minister is very much keen and interested in seeing more diversity. I look forward to hopefully seeing a number of candidates," he said.

Gonzales said parties need to recruit members from his community.

"There are a lot of ethnic groups that feel they just dont have a place in the political process, which is an intimidating process to begin," he said. "Without the network, without the knowledge of resources that are available, or fundraising nobody wants to run."

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
Baby sea stars eat their siblings in what is an unexpected case of underwater cannibalism, according to scientists who accidentally observed the behaviour.

Experts from William & Mary's Department of Biology were trying to see how baby sea stars would react when a crab was introduced to their tank, but they started eating each other before the predator was introduced.

Forbes' sea stars are found on the East Coast of the US, the juveniles are about 1mm in diameter (0.04 inches) and adults can reach up to 5.9 inches in diameter.

To grow, the juveniles must eat, and the study authors found that young sea stars often turn on each other, with the larger creatures targeting their smaller siblings.

The females can produce up to 10 million eggs per year, and so study authors believe they developed juvenile cannibalism as a survival tactic.

Baby sea stars eat their siblings in what is an unexpected case of underwater cannibalism, according to scientists, who accidentally observed the behaviour

DEVELOPMENT OF THE FORBES SEA STAR The Forbes Sea Star female produces up to 10 million eggs every year. In their larval form they look like little spaceships floating in the water. As they grow they go through a metamorphosis into a form similar to the adult version. Some fall to the sea floor before they are developed and are eaten by their larger siblings. Others grow to become juvenile sea stars and settle on the floor. At this point some will consume their slightly smaller siblings by turning their stomach inside out. Once turned, they suck in their sibling and completely consume them, before returning to normal. Advertisement

Sea stars are also known as starfish, but scientists avoid using the term as the species is not a form of fish.

Cannibalism is widespread in nature, but their discovery marks a previously unknown example of cannibalism in marine invertebrates.

Little embryos of sea stars fly through the water and during this larval stage they look like 'weird little spaceships', according to study author Karina Brocco French.

The weird little spaceship stage lasts around a month, Brocco French said, before they metamorphose into juveniles, settling onto the sea floor.

Jon Allen said the juveniles are essentially pinhead-sized, star-shaped versions of their parents, and it is at this stage they engage in cannibalism.

It was already known that the juvenile sea stars would eat larva from stars that had fallen to the sea floor, this is the first time they've been shown eating their smaller, fully formed siblings.

Allen and Brocco French recorded cannibalism among the sea stars as early as four days post-metamorphosis - transition from larval form to juvenile stage.

'I'm convinced that if they could, they would eat each other during the little spaceship phase,' Brocco French said. 'But unfortunately, I don't think they have the ability to do that until they turn into little bitty sea stars.'

Allen said the larval sea-star spaceships eat algae, but 'when the spaceship lands, the juveniles on the bottom eat the larvae.'

When juvenile-eats-juvenile action occurs, a sea star is taking on a meal roughly the same size as itself, Brocco French explained, adding that 'they extrude their stomachs, kind of like turning it inside out like a plastic bag.'

'And then they sort of engulf whatever it is they're trying to eat, and start to break it down, and then absorb the broken-down stuff.

'So they don't need teeth or anything. They've got it covered.'

A sea star has multiple stomachs and the one used to consume their siblings is known as the cardiac stomach.

'Instead of putting their food in their mouth, they slide their stomach out of their mouth into their food,' Allen said.

Allen and Brocco French recorded cannibalism among the sea stars as early as four days post-metamorphosis - transition from larval form to juvenile stage

Their observations show that even the smallest differences in size can determine whether a star fish is going to be dinner or diner.

Allen said that in evolutionary context, sibling cannibalism provides an adaptive advantage to the individual sea star.

This is especially true when you consider the inevitable competition that results when a female produces five to ten million eggs each year.

Cannibalism is common in the animal kingdom, the practice has been documented in more than 1,300 species, vertebrates and invertebrates alike.

Their observations show that even minute differences in size can delineate the difference between the dinner and the diner

Brocco French and Allen suspect that cannibalism is even more widespread than that, likely to be common among small animals and animals in early growth stages.

Allen says he hopes the Ecology paper will represent an 'aha! moment' for researchers to look closely at the wide range of microscopic life.

'We think  anthropomorphizing  that cannibalism is terrible. No one should be cannibalistic, 'he said. 'But in nature, 'red in tooth and claw,' this is something that can be favoured. So it seems to be a strategy that's likely to be common.'

The findings were published in the journal Ecology.
President Joe Biden will unveil a series of executive actions aimed at addressing gun violence on Thursday and will announce a gun control advocate as the head of the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

The orders are the first of what is expected to be a series of actions by the Democratic administration, which has faced increased pressure to tackle the issue in the wake of mass shootings in Atlanta and Boulder, Colo.

'We know that Americans are dying from gun violence every single day in this country,' a senior administration official told reporters on a Wednesday briefing call. 'That's why we are pursuing an agenda that will address not only mass shootings, but also community violence disproportionately affecting Black and Brown Americans, domestic violence and suicide by firearm.'

Biden is expected to announce tighter regulations requiring buyers of so-called 'ghost guns' to undergo background checks and pistol braces that allow more accurate shooting.

The Department of Justice will also publish model 'red flag' laws for states to ban certain people getting weapons and will 'invest in community-based violence intervention'.

'Ghost guns' are normally assembled from parts and milled with a metal-cutting machine and often lack serial numbers used to trace them.

It's legal to build a gun in a home or a workshop and there is no federal requirement for a background check.

Biden is also planning to name gun control advocate David Chipman as his nominee to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The White House says Chipman, a veteran ATF agent, now advocates for 'commonsense gun safety laws'.

His announcement falls short of the sweeping crackdown on guns he campaigned on while his administration tries to figure out how to pass tougher legislation through Congress with stiff Republican opposition.

A few Republicans have expressed outrage at Biden's executive orders, which would have to be challenged in a court of law.

Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, who campaigned for Congress with her glock at her side, urged Republican state attorneys general to challenge the orders in court.

'Republican Attorney Generals, get ready to fight the Biden executive orders on gun control all the way! I'll be doing my part from the House! Let's ensure we stop this tyrant,' she tweeted.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas argued the answer wasn't more legislation but a crackdown on those who used guns in crimes.

'The right to keep and bear arms is fundamental for preserving our liberty. The answer is not to restrict the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens, the answer is to go after violent criminals and come down on them like a ton of bricks,' he tweeted.

And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia tweeted a photo of herself with an AK-47, writing: 'The right of the people to keep and bear arms SHALL NOT be infringed!'

President Joe Biden will unveil a series of executive actions aimed at addressing gun violence on Thursday, including background checks for people buying 'ghost guns'. Biden is also planning to name gun control advocate David Chipman (right) as his nominee to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives

The president will be joined by Attorney General Merrick Garland and Vice President Kamala Harris at the Thursday's event in the Rose Garden.

The ATF has not had a confirmed permanent director since 2015. It is currently run by Acting Director Regina Lombardo.

Biden has faced increasing pressure to act after a spate of mass shootings across the U.S. in recent weeks - including rampages in massage spas in Atlanta and a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado.

But the White House has repeatedly emphasized the need for legislative action on guns.

While the House passed a background-check bill last month, gun control measures face slim prospects in an evenly-divided Senate, where Republicans remain near-unified against most proposals.

The House measures would expand background checks to include private sales and close what is known as the 'Charleston loophole,' which allows a gun sale to go through if a background check isn't finished after three days.

But it's highly unlikely the measures would get the 60 votes needed to proceed in the 50-50 Senate. It's not just Republican objections, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia has expressed opposition to the House measures.

And Congress is no where close to approving what Biden called for during the presidential campaign: a ban on assault weapons and universal background checks.

BIDEN'S CRACKDOWN ON GUNS The Justice Department, within 30 days, will issue a proposed rule to help stop the proliferation of 'ghost guns.' We are experiencing a growing problem: criminals are buying kits containing nearly all of the components and directions for finishing a firearm within as little as 30 minutes and using these firearms to commit crimes. When these firearms turn up at crime scenes, they often cannot be traced by law enforcement due to the lack of a serial number. The Justice Department will issue a proposed rule to help stop the proliferation of these firearms. The Justice Department, within 60 days, will issue a proposed rule to make clear when a device marketed as a stabilizing brace effectively turns a pistol into a short-barreled rifle subject to the requirements of the National Firearms Act. The alleged shooter in the Boulder tragedy last month appears to have used a pistol with an arm brace, which can make a firearm more stable and accurate while still being concealable. The Justice Department, within 60 days, will publish model 'red flag' legislation for states Red flag laws allow family members or law enforcement to petition for a court order temporarily barring people in crisis from accessing firearms if they present a danger to themselves or others. The President urges Congress to pass an appropriate national 'red flag' law, as well as legislation incentivizing states to pass 'red flag' laws of their own. In the interim, the Justice Department's published model legislation will make it easier for states that want to adopt red flag laws to do so. The Administration is investing in evidence-based community violence interventions Community violence interventions are proven strategies for reducing gun violence in urban communities through tools other than incarceration. Because cities across the country are experiencing a historic spike in homicides, the Biden-Harris Administration is taking a number of steps to prioritize investment in community violence interventions. The Justice Department will issue an annual report on firearms trafficking In 2000, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) issued a report summarizing information regarding its investigations into firearms trafficking, which is one way firearms are diverted into the illegal market where they can easily end up in the hands of dangerous individuals. Since the report's publication, states, local, and federal policymakers have relied on its data to better thwart the common channels of firearms trafficking. But there is good reason to believe that firearms trafficking channels have changed since 2000, for example due to the emergence of online sales and proliferation of 'ghost guns.' The Justice Department will issue a new, comprehensive report on firearms trafficking and annual updates necessary to give policymakers the information they need to help address firearms trafficking today. Advertisement

The homemade firearms - often assembled from parts and milled with a metal-cutting machine - often lack serial numbers used to trace them

During his campaign, Biden promised to prioritize new gun control measures as president, including enacting universal background check legislation, banning online sales of firearms and the manufacture and sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

But gun-control advocates have said that while they were heartened by signs from the White House that they took the issue seriously, they've been disappointed by the lack of early action.

Biden himself expressed uncertainty late last month when asked if he had the political capital to pass new gun control proposals, telling reporters, 'I haven't done any counting yet.'

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said last month, however, that executive actions on guns were coming as well, calling them 'one of the levers that we can use' to address gun violence.

For years, federal officials have been sounding the alarm about an increasing black market for homemade, military-style semi-automatic rifles and handguns.

Ghost guns have increasingly turned up at crime scenes and in recent years have been turning up more and more when federal agents are purchasing guns in undercover operations from gang members and other criminals.

It is hard to say how many are circulating on the streets, in part because in many cases police departments don't even contact the federal government about the guns because they cant be traced.

Some states, like California, have enacted laws in recent years to require serial numbers be stamped on ghost guns.

The critical component in building an untraceable gun is what is known as the lower receiver, a part typically made of metal or polymer. An unfinished receiver - sometimes referred to as an '80-percent receiver' - can be legally bought online with no serial numbers or other markings on it, no license required.

A gunman who killed his wife and four others in Northern California in 2017 who had been prohibited from owning firearms built his own to skirt the court order before his rampage.

And in 2019, a teenager used a homemade handgun to fatally shoot two classmates and wound three others at a school in suburban Los Angeles.
Parents who clean dummies with sprays and wipes could increase the chances of their child developing food allergies, researchers say.

The findings were released by Barwon Health, a health care provider in Geelong, south-west of Melbourne, last Tuesday following a study of 787 infants from birth to the age of one.

Scientists from the Barwon Infant Study found that six-month-old babies who were given dummies sterilised with chemical-based cleaning agents were four times more likely to develop food allergies by their first birthday.

Chemical-based sanitisers are often sold as dummy cleaners and wipes.

Parents who clean dummies with sprays and wipes could increase their child's chance of developing food allergies (stock image)

Children whose dummies were boiled in water, rinsed under a tap or not washed at all had no increased risk of developing allergies, according to Professor Anne-Louise Ponsonby from the Florey Institute of Neuro Science and Mental Health.

'In 2018, dummy use by parents cleaning with their own mouths was actually associated with reduced risk of food allergy,' she told 9 News.

Professor Ponsonby also explained that experts do not know if the allergies are a direct effect of the chemicals themselves, or if they interfere with gut bacteria and weaken the youngsters' immune systems.

Experts said keeping dummies clean is important, but stressed the strong link between antiseptics and allergic reactions.

Professor Anne-Louise Ponsonby from the Florey Institute of Neuro Science and Mental Health (pictured) said children whose dummies were cleaned under a tap had no increased risk of allergies

'This research should not discourage the cleaning of dummies, as this is a vital step in keeping a child safe from the more immediate risk of infectious diseases,' Centre of Food and Allergy Research investigator Victoria Soriano said.

'There is also no evidence from this study that cleaning dummies by other methods is harmful.'

The findings, published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, will be reviewed by the the college of paediatric and government bodies before formal recommendations are made.

Up to 10 per cent of infants suffer from food allergies that cause life-threatening anaphylaxis.
CLEVELAND, Ohio  The idealized dreams of Ohio Democrats came to an abrupt end on Tuesday.

You can listen online here.

Dr. Amy Acton, the former director of the Ohio Department of Health who was a leading hopeful to run for Rob Portmans U.S. Senate seat, announced Tuesday she wont enter the race. Acton said she was deeply grateful for the outpouring of support, but she wants to step back from public life. In Cleveland, the city isnt really growing in population during the coronavirus pandemic ... its just losing fewer residents. And people in Bay Village are lamenting the cutting down of a 350-year-old oak tree.

Hear cleveland.com editor Chris Quinn discuss these stories and more in The Wake Up podcast.

The podcast is a summary of cleveland.coms morning newsletter The Wake Up. You can receive The Wake Up through email at 5:30 a.m. each weekday by subscribing here.

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If you use Stitcher, we are here.

RadioPublic is another popular podcast vehicle, and we are here.

On Google Podcasts, we are here.

On PodParadise, find us here.
The United States is still in a "life-and-death race" against coronavirus, President said as his administration raced through a record 150 million vaccine shots in just 75 days.

The new record is against his initial target of 100 million shots in 100 days. Biden has now set the goal of getting 200 million vaccines to his fellow countrymen in the first 100 days of his administration.

"But let me be deadly earnest with you: We aren't at the finish line. We still have a lot of work to do. We're still in a life-and-death race against this virus. Until we get more people vaccinated, we need everyone to wash their hands, socially distance, and mask up in a recommended mask from the CDC," Biden said at a vaccination site in a Virginia sub urb of Washington DC.

"Think about it this way: Better times are ahead. And, as I've said before, we can have a safe, happy fourth of July with your family and friends, in small groups in your backyard. The real question is: How much death, disease, and misery are we going to see between now and then?" he asked.

The number of new cases are going up and hospitalisation too has increased, Biden rued.

A record 554,064 Americans have lost their lives so far in the pandemic.

"That's lives that have been lost. What we do now is going to determine how many people we'll save or lose in the month of April and May and June before we get to July 4th," Biden said.

"So, please, until we're further along in this accelerating, successful, but still growing vaccination effort, please wash your hands. Practice social distancing. Wear a mask, as recommended by the CDC. Get vaccinated when it's your turn," he said and urged the American people to do their job.

Biden said beginning April 19, every adult in every state, every adult in this country is eligible to get in line to get a COVID vaccination.

Participating in a tour of a COVID-19 vaccination site, he met an Indian-American immigrant, Savia Khan. When asked by the president, she said she is from India. "Been to India, a number of times," Biden said.

"I raised my three kids here. Two--one is graduate, one is about to graduate, one is in 11th grade," Savia said. "I am proud to be part of America," she added.

"You are America. America is a nation of immigrants, that's who we are. And by the way, the vice president's mother was from India," Biden added.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
WASHINGTON  Vice President Kamala Harris has begun to assemble a team to assist her in efforts to stem the migration surge from several Central American countries into the U.S., which has created one of the Biden administrations first major challenges.

President Biden last month assigned Harris to take on this issue, similar to the role he played on migration in the Obama administration. Harriss task, according to a member of her team, is to lead diplomatic efforts to engage Mexico and the Northern Triangle to address the root causes of migration and to oversee the flow and use of U.S. aid, as opposed to more granular immigration-focused issues surrounding the U.S.-Mexico border.

Vice President Kamala Harris. (Ken Cedeno/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Critical to the efforts of the vice president, a relative newcomer to the issue, will be a few senior members of her own team, particularly national security adviser Nancy McEldowney and McEldowneys supporting staff, as well as several White House officials, including Roberta Jacobson, senior coordinator for the southern border; Juan Gonzalez, senior director for the Western Hemisphere on the National Security Council; and Ricardo Zuniga, special envoy for the Northern Triangle (which refers to three Central American countries: El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras).

Those four are no strangers to government service, and together are something of a dream team on migration issues, according to Dan Restrepo, a former principal adviser to President Barack Obama on Latin American affairs.

There's no better conceivable team when it comes to this issue, said Restrepo, who worked closely with Jacobson, Gonzalez and Zuniga during his tenure at the National Security Council, where he served as the senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs.

Roberta Jacobson, White House coordinator for the southern border, speaks during a press briefing on March 10 as press secretary Jen Psaki listens. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Restrepo described his former colleagues as deep policy experts, all of whom were present for the crisis involving Central American unaccompanied minors in 2014, during the Obama administration. They know how to make the U.S. interagency [process] function, he said, describing them as adept at managing the often confounding processes of the State Department and other parts of government.

Story continues

In March, before Biden put Harris in charge of this effort, the State Department announced Zunigas new role, marking the first time since the 1980s that the U.S. has appointed a special envoy for Central America, according to Foreign Policy.

Zuniga was critical to the creation of a multibillion-dollar aid package to Northern Triangle nations during the Obama administration and recently told Central American media that the U.S. is likely to push for good governance reforms above any forcible intervention tactic. Gonzalez told local media that the White House plans to set up a Northern Triangle anticorruption task force, though the administration has yet to release a firm timeline on that effort.

Ricardo Zuniga, President Biden's special envoy for the Northern Triangle, at a news conference in Guatemala City, Guatemala, on Tuesday. (Luis Echeverria/Reuters)

Zuniga and Gonzalez boast a close relationship with Biden on the issue, as both served at different times as senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council, which gives them substantial political credibility with the current administration and senior officials in the Northern Triangle countries as well as Mexico, Restrepo explained. Jacobson has substantial political capital with local officials as well, given her former rank as ambassador to Mexico.

These folks are folks who have very tight relationships with President Biden, quite frankly, from his time as vice president, and who obviously are working very closely with Vice President Harris now, Restrepo said. They come with that imprimatur, if you will, of the people who matter the most. These are people they trust, and that's known downrange.

The bulk of McEldowneys experience is in European affairs and in the Foreign Service, where she did stints as the U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria and held senior diplomatic appointments in Turkey and Azerbaijan. But former colleagues say that background will be an asset in working with U.S. diplomats. McEldowney is universally admired and respected by her State Department counterparts, said Kenneth Yalowitz, who served as a U.S. ambassador to Belarus and Georgia.

Nancy McEldowney, then principal deputy assistant secretary of state for European affairs, and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Bruce Swartz at a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee hearing in 2010. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

Yalowitz believes McEldowney will be a key adviser for Harris, who is going to need a lot of expert advice from diplomats who are used to negotiating through difficult conflict, especially regarding immigration. He believes the lessons McEldowney learned in dealing with the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute in Azerbaijan will be critical in tackling the Northern Triangle migration crisis.

She's very calm, she's very levelheaded. She's very thoughtful, very intelligent, just the kind of person that you would want to deal with a very, very complex issue, someone who can draw on her diplomatic experience and has seen issues from a variety of viewpoints, said Yalowitz.

Even with top-notch staff working with Harris on migration issues, Brett Bruen, former director of global engagement at the National Security Council under Obama, points out that El Salvador and Honduras are still without U.S. ambassadors. Bruen said the lack of installed diplomatic envoys to these countries is a major concern within the State Department.

Juan Gonzalez, senior director for the Western Hemisphere on the National Security Council. (Evan Vucci/AP)

They are strong Latin America policy hands, and they know the people, they know the issues, they're making a good effort, but they're not always latched up in the way that they should be with our embassies and with our career people, he said.

While Bruen, who has worked with the Northern Triangle advisers, believes the assembled team to be strong, he said officials in the department worry it is inevitable that current White House staffers will run into some roadblocks, given the vacancies. Without ambassadors, we don't have people who can meet with senior officials in the government, he said.

U.S. Border Patrol agents question a group of migrant families and unaccompanied children on March 25 after they crossed the Rio Grande into Texas. (John Moore/Getty Images)

The current highest-ranking officials within the embassies, known as charges daffaires, wont be enough, Bruen argued. You don't get the meetings, in many cases with the minister, certainly not with the head of state, and those are the meetings we need to be having, he said.

Good staff also cant necessarily solve a misplaced focus. Bruen said one problem with the Obama White House strategy toward Latin America was what he describes as its myopic focus on Cuba and on migrants. He and other regional experts believe the Biden White House needs to widen the aperture if it wants to achieve long-term success.

The reality is, we need a bigger Latin America strategy, because we continue to try to stick this Silly Putty into the dam that is pretty badly cracked, Bruen said. And unless and until we actually deal with the broader issue of what's happening in Latin America, we're just wasting a lot of Silly Putty.

____

Read more from Yahoo News:
TOLEDO, Ohio, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Toledo Edison, a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp. (NYSE: FE), is conducting tree trimming and other vegetation management work in communities across its northwest Ohio service area to help enhance service reliability for customers. This year's $7.7 million tree-trimming program will help keep power flowing to customers around the clock by preventing tree-related outages, such as those that can occur during the spring and summer storm season.

Since the beginning of the year, tree contractors have trimmed trees along nearly 450 miles of electric lines across the greater Toledo area. The company's program remains on track to complete an additional 1,100 miles of tree-trimming work by the end of the year.

The tree trimming is done on a four-year cycle. The program includes inspecting vegetation near the lines to ensure the trees are pruned in a manner that helps preserve the health of the tree, while also maintaining safety near electric facilities. Trees that present a danger or are diseased may be removed.

"Trees are a leading cause of power outages, and we complete proactive tree-trimming work each year to prevent tree-related outages during severe weather," said Rich Sweeney, regional president of Toledo Edison. "This work undoubtedly helps minimize the impact of weather-related outages to keep the power flowing safely and reliably to customers."

Tree trimming will be conducted in the following counties and communities this year:

Defiance  Ayersville , Defiance

 , Fulton  Delta , Wauseon

 , Henry  Liberty Center

 Lucas  Maumee , Sylvania , Toledo , Waterville and Whitehouse

 , , , and Ottawa  Genoa

 Sandusky  Woodville

 Williams  Edgerton , West Unity and Stryker

 , and Wood  Perrysburg and Weston

As part of its notification process, Toledo Edison works with municipalities to inform them of tree trimming schedules. In addition, customers living in areas along company rights-of-way also are notified prior to vegetation management work being done.

The vegetation management work is conducted by certified forestry experts under the company's direction, including Arbormetics Solutions, Jaflo Inc., Asplundh Tree Expert Company, Nelson Tree Service Inc. and Penn Line Service.

Toledo Edison serves more than 300,000 customers in northwest Ohio. Follow Toledo Edison on Twitter @ToledoEdison or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ToledoEdison.

FirstEnergy is dedicated to integrity, safety, reliability and operational excellence. Its 10 electric distribution companies form one of the nation's largest investor-owned electric systems, serving customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia, Maryland and New York. The company's transmission subsidiaries operate approximately 24,000 miles of transmission lines that connect the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions. Follow FirstEnergy on Twitter @FirstEnergyCorp or online at www.firstenergycorp.com.

Editor's Note: Photos of utility personnel trimming trees near FirstEnergy power lines are available for download on Flickr. A video explaining FirstEnergy's vegetation management techniques can also be found on YouTube.

SOURCE FirstEnergy Corp.

Related Links

http://www.firstenergycorp.com


(Natural News) I almost miss the days when the media was obsessing over everything Donald Trump did, said, or even how many scoops of ice cream he liked to eat with his pie, and lying about it all blatantly, because watching their death spiral just months after losing their golden goose, overwhelmingly shows they still havent quite hit rock bottom yet, but theyre trying really hard to find it.

(Article by Susan Duclos republished from AllNewsPipeline.com)

Andthey are in a race as to who can find it first!

It is actually painful to watch. The good news is the American people are also watching and the trust in the media and confidence levels are continuing to fall to new lows.

The MSM powers that be obviously thought that without Donald Trump in the White House they would have free reign to push all the fake news they wanted in order to help Sleepy Joe, because face it, Joe isnt exactly doing very well on his own.

Stuttering, bumbling, falling on camera, and listening to his puppet masters has not worked so well for him, so the MSM has taken on the role of Protect Joe Biden at all costs, which is proving to be much more a challenge than Attack Donald Trump at all costs.

Below we will go over the less-than-stellar content decisions from the MSM.

MSM TALKING HEAD LESTER HOLT: FAIRNESS IS OVERRATED

Let us take a look at some of the media antics this past week, which includes one well-known TV pundit claiming that fairness is overrated and that the idea that we should always give two sides equal weight and merit does not reflect the world we find ourselves in.

I am pretty sure that is so not part of the description from the Society Of Professional Journalists

Here are a few of the rules that apply from the SPJ:

 Support the open and civil exchange of views, even views they find repugnant.

 Never deliberately distort facts or context, including visual information. Clearly label illustrations and re-enactments.

Balance and fairness are also the cornerstone of professional journalism, especially those paid a small fortune to represent a major news outlet.or it was.

I put the word professional in quotes because mainstream media outs have billions of dollars behind them, and they claim to be fair and balanced, versus liberal or conservative websites not affiliated with a major news organization, that make their bias and angle clear.

Such as: All News PipeLine provides news from a conservative angle. We have no problem stating that clearly because we see so much mainstream liberal news reporting, we offer an overall balance by refusing to follow the preferred narrative of Democrats/Media.

Via ONA Ethics:

Balance and fairness are classic buzzwords of journalism ethics: In objective journalism, stories must be balanced in the sense of attempting to present all sides of a story. Fairness means that a journalist should strive for accuracy and truth in reporting, and not slant a story so a reader draws the reporters desired conclusion.

Despite being a conservative website, we still allow all opinions, even those we disagree with vehemently in our comment sections, because sites that only allow one opinion, or that dumped their comment sections so that other opinions cannot be seen on their websites, are acting no better than the MSM that refuses to address both sides of an argument, especially a political argument.

It is called free speech and many, even some on the right side of the political aisle, needs to re-learn the concept, in my opinion.

Ok, rant over, moving along now.

JOURNOS ATTACK, THEN PLAY THE VICTIM CARD

Journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has been doing an exemplary job in holding the media accountable, recently wrote Powerful media figures now invoke sexist and racist tropes to cast themselves as so fragile and marginalized that critiques of their work constitute bullying and assault.

On Sunday, the paper published and heavily promoted a repellent article complaining that defendants accused in the Capitol riot Jan. 6 crowdfund their legal fees online, using popular payment processors and an expanding network of fundraising platforms, despite a crackdown by tech companies. It provided a road map for snitching on how these private citizens  who are charged with serious felonies by the U.S. Justice Department but as of yet convicted of nothing  are engaged in a game of cat-and-mouse as they spring from one fundraising tool to another in order to avoid bans on their ability to raise desperately needed funds to pay their criminal lawyers to mount a vigorous defense. In other words, the only purpose of the article  headlined: Insurrection fundraiser: Capitol riot extremists, Trump supporters raise money for lawyer bills online  was to pressure and shame tech companies to do more to block these criminal defendants from being able to raise funds for their legal fees, and to tattle to tech companies by showing them what techniques these indigent defendants are using to raise money online.

Greenwald then provides more examples showing how the media is literally going after private citizens.

The more interesting part of this article is how Greenwald highlights that when the media pundit is called out for their enemy of the people reporting, they start wailing that are the victim and are being attacked.

Cue the tears.

Here is how it happened:

Sundays USA Today article which tried to destroy the ability of these criminal defendants to raise donations for their legal fees contained the names of three journalists in its byline. The lead reporter  the one who the papers editors put first, Brenna Smith  took to Twitter to boast of this monumental journalistic expose. After I saw several commenters criticizing the story, I added my own critiques of this story:

Greenwald tweeted in response to her sharing a story that she has the main byline, her name being listed first: Congratulations on using your new journalistic platform to try to pressure tech companies to terminate the ability of impoverished criminal defendants to raise money for their legal defense from online donations. Youre well on your way upward in this industry for sure.

From the reactions on social media, once would have thought Greenwald tried to kill the woman.

So they insist that by simply criticizing her and her co-writer who is a male ( I dont really care what he identifies as), that he is leading people to threaten her life.

You just cant make this stuff up.

My criticism of Carless, a white straight male listed last on the byline, attracted no criticism for some reason. But my criticism of Smith, the lead reporter, caused such an explosion of indignation and rage from the corporate media class that it caused my name to trend on Twitter (yet again) as a dastardly online villain: thats how grave my moral transgression was. What was my moral offense here? According to these media mavens and the self-serving, manipulative framework they are trying to implant, I did not voice criticisms of a piece of journalism in one of the most influential newspapers in the country. Instead  in their hands  they converted it, just as they did with criticisms of Lorenz, into a narrative in which I bullied a poor, fragile, young lady who is too weak and too vulnerable to handle public critique. They emphasized that she is just an intern: in their eyes the equivalent of a high school junior  even though she has a long history of writing deranged articles for the U.S.-Government-funded Bellingcat and was, at least in the view of her editors, competent and professional enough to be the lead reporter on what they treated as a major news story designed to harm the lives of numerous private citizens. If she is merely an intern, then why is she listed as the lead reporter on a major news story? And if her editors determine that she is capable of fulfilling that role, then you cant simultaneously demand she be treated like a young debutante off-limits from critique.

The lengthy piece is well worth the read, but Glenns conclusion gets straight to the bottom line:

This lowly tactic will succeed only if people are cowed and intimidated by it. It will fail, as it should, if people ignore it and treat them like any other power centers by freely expressing the criticisms you think their journalism merits regardless of what names they call you as a result.

In todays world it appears that the media seems to think they can attack private citizens, harass them, lie, push fake news, be activists for one political party, but if one dares criticize them for it, it is endangering and targeting them, rather than just calling them out for their own actions.

I dont always agree with Greenwald on his liberal social views and politics, but he has been a leading voice in trying to hold the media accountable, to the point where a site he co-founded censored his writing of a Hunter Biden piece before the election, so he walked away.

Related: Glenn Greenwald quits The Intercept over censorship of Hunter Biden article

Lesson for Greenwald here: Never give anyone the power to censor you on your own websitebecause they will.

DOES ANYONE CARE THAT BIDENS DOG POOPED IN THE HALLWAY?

My answer would have been a resounding no to this question, just last week, but apparently writers are the Associated Press (AP) thought it newsworthy that one of Joe Bidens dogs pooped in the hallway at the White House.

They titled their piece: Ruh roh! Biden pooch drops doggie doo in White House hallway.

Reporters accompanying Jill Biden on a trip to California spotted the brown stuff on the red-carpeted hallway as they waited just inside the mansion to be escorted to the first ladys motorcade.

To the AP this was worthy of an article.

I dont even know what to say to this fluff reporting.

When Trump was in office, no one cared for fluff piece, even the ice cream idiocy was to criticize how Trump got two scoops while others got one scoop, so they were using it to attack. Between softball questions, and protecting Biden from reality, the media has taken to defending him on a daily basis.

CREDIT WHERE IT IS DUE

While this next example personifies everything wrong with the mainstream media in this day and age, it also shows that some media writers try to fix their mistakes, even if the original mistake was part of the fake news parroted throughout the industry.

The Georgia election laws just passed has Democrats and the media (same thing, I know!) rushed to convince Americans that it would suppress votes, and limit opportunities for voters.

Everyone is mimicking the preferred narrative, including Joe Biden, but someone at the Atlanta Journal Constitution must have run across the truth and decided to offer a correction to their story:

Granted, corrections and/or edits to stories never get the same play as the original inaccurate news because not many would think to check back on a story they already read and believed, to even see the correction, but at least they did correct it, while other media outlets are still spewing nonsense about the law.

Of course had they read the bill before writing about it, this wouldnt have been an issue to begin with.

Related: This Is How You Do It: Fox Corrects Liberal Medias Lies on Georgia Voting Law

BOTTOM LINE

For over five years we believed the media could not go any lower than their disastrous reporting during the Trump administration, but unfortunately we have to admit we were wrong.

Not only could they get worse, they have.

It appears that they are in a race to see who can hit rock bottom the fastest.

Read more at: AllNewsPipeline.com and MediaFactWatch.com
- By GF Value





The stock of Brown-Forman (NYSE:BF.A, 30-year Financials) is believed to be modestly overvalued, according to GuruFocus Value calculation. GuruFocus Value is GuruFocus' estimate of the fair value at which the stock should be traded. It is calculated based on the historical multiples that the stock has traded at, the past business growth and analyst estimates of future business performance. If the price of a stock is significantly above the GF Value Line, it is overvalued and its future return is likely to be poor. On the other hand, if it is significantly below the GF Value Line, its future return will likely be higher. At its current price of $66 per share and the market cap of $32.9 billion, Brown-Forman stock gives every indication of being modestly overvalued. GF Value for Brown-Forman is shown in the chart below.





Brown-Forman Stock Shows Every Sign Of Being Modestly Overvalued

Because Brown-Forman is relatively overvalued, the long-term return of its stock is likely to be lower than its business growth, which averaged 4.5% over the past three years and is estimated to grow 3.31% annually over the next three to five years.

Link: These companies may deliever higher future returns at reduced risk.

It is always important to check the financial strength of a company before buying its stock. Investing in companies with poor financial strength have a higher risk of permanent loss. Looking at the cash-to-debt ratio and interest coverage is a great way to understand the financial strength of a company. Brown-Forman has a cash-to-debt ratio of 0.42, which is in the middle range of the companies in the industry of Beverages - Alcoholic. The overall financial strength of Brown-Forman is 5 out of 10, which indicates that the financial strength of Brown-Forman is fair. This is the debt and cash of Brown-Forman over the past years:

Story continues

Brown-Forman Stock Shows Every Sign Of Being Modestly Overvalued

It is less risky to invest in profitable companies, especially those with consistent profitability over long term. A company with high profit margins is usually a safer investment than those with low profit margins. Brown-Forman has been profitable 10 over the past 10 years. Over the past twelve months, the company had a revenue of $3.4 billion and earnings of $1.89 a share. Its operating margin is 31.51%, which ranks better than 92% of the companies in the industry of Beverages - Alcoholic. Overall, the profitability of Brown-Forman is ranked 8 out of 10, which indicates strong profitability. This is the revenue and net income of Brown-Forman over the past years:

Brown-Forman Stock Shows Every Sign Of Being Modestly Overvalued

One of the most important factors in the valuation of a company is growth. Long-term stock performance is closely correlated with growth according to GuruFocus research. Companies that grow faster create more value for shareholders, especially if that growth is profitable. The average annual revenue growth of Brown-Forman is 4.5%, which ranks in the middle range of the companies in the industry of Beverages - Alcoholic. The 3-year average EBITDA growth is 4.1%, which ranks in the middle range of the companies in the industry of Beverages - Alcoholic.

Another way to evaluate a company's profitability is to compare its return on invested capital (ROIC) to its weighted cost of capital (WACC). Return on invested capital (ROIC) measures how well a company generates cash flow relative to the capital it has invested in its business. The weighted average cost of capital (WACC) is the rate that a company is expected to pay on average to all its security holders to finance its assets. If the ROIC is higher than the WACC, it indicates that the company is creating value for shareholders. Over the past 12 months, Brown-Forman's ROIC was 18.92, while its WACC came in at 6.42. The historical ROIC vs WACC comparison of Brown-Forman is shown below:

Brown-Forman Stock Shows Every Sign Of Being Modestly Overvalued

In short, The stock of Brown-Forman (NYSE:BF.A, 30-year Financials) appears to be modestly overvalued. The company's financial condition is fair and its profitability is strong. Its growth ranks in the middle range of the companies in the industry of Beverages - Alcoholic. To learn more about Brown-Forman stock, you can check out its 30-year Financials here.

To find out the high quality companies that may deliever above average returns, please check out GuruFocus High Quality Low Capex Screener.

This article first appeared on GuruFocus.


Tauranga Library is celebrating the 150th anniversary of libraries serving the community.

The event is a celebration of the progression made by the library system since, on April 7 1871, three men had a meeting at the Masonic Hotel about providing reading material to the local community.

That meeting sowed the seeds that would eventually become the Tauranga Library as we know it today.

Several former members of staff, such as former library managers Sue Pharo and Jill Best, were in attendance at the library on Willow Street to look at how libraries have changed in the 150 year history.

City Council commissioners Bill Wasley and Stephen Selwood also attended the event.

Seedlings growing into a vast forest of information for all members of the community is certainly the theme of the librarys celebration.

Abby Wharne, an archivist and heritage specialist with Tauranga City Council, delivered an informative love letter to the library system in the form of a presentation complete with photos from down the years.

What was initially known as the Tauranga Mechanics Institute soon blossomed into a service for the community and Abby has clearly been moved by some of the stories she unearthed over the 150 year history of libraries in Tauranga.

As part of the librarys series of events a photo-documentary is also being collated by photographer Penelope Coleman

I am passionate about the library, says Penelope, who is dressed as a mechanic to celebrate the institutions origins. 28 years ago I came to Tauranga with my family and the first thing that we did was to come to the local library.

I felt like it was the hub of a wheel to have a place in the community that actually knows the community that is open seven days a week, Penelope continues.

Joanna Thomas, the current Tauranga Library manager, is also dressed up, in a flawless builder costume to signify the different edifices and structures which have incorporated the Tauranga library service for a century-and-a-half.

Hillary Beaton, executive director of Public Libraries of New Zealand, highlights just how important librarians are in New Zealand.

I would like to say that I think librarians are some of the more influential workforces in New Zealand today, she claims. Why? Because they engender places of equity, of social connection. When you look at the world today you can see how important that is. Librarians help make that connection.

In countries that invest in their libraries, they are in a different space.

In the UK, Brexit was a bit of a muck up. In a decade, Great Britain closed 800 libraries. Do the math. No wonder people didnt know how to vote, particularly if you are relying on social media.

Hillary then explained how with looking back to the genesis of the library the future 150 years becomes clearer.

As I understand it, 150 years ago a group of people led by three men, probably with three wives behind them asking for a library, decided to establish a library in Tauranga.

150 years ago. That thinking was advanced at that time. Digital media is the future and our libraries have been at the forefront of digital inclusion. I am so proud to represent this organisation.

To view the presentation Seeds of our Library: 150 Years of Engaging with the Community visit facebook.com/taurangacitylibraries.
2021-04-07

Maeci

Today the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Luigi Di Maio, met with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Romania, Bogdan Aurescu, at the Foreign Ministry.
China and the World Health Organisation's joint study into the origins of Covid-19 has not provided any credible answers, according to a group of international scientists.

Twenty-four top researchers from around the world said the report was tainted by politics and demanded a fresh investigation - even if Beijing refuses to cooperate.

The China-WHO fact-finding mission concluded that the virus did not leak from a laboratory in Wuhan but that bats and other wildlife likely transmitted it to humans.

It reignited accusations of a Chinese cover-up to exonerate Beijing of culpability for the outbreak and subsequent global pandemic.

Joint WHO-China study on the origins of COVID-19 says that transmission from bats to humans through another animal is the most likely scenario

The China-WHO fact-finding mission concluded that the virus did not leak from a laboratory in Wuhan

In an open letter the 24 scientists from Europe, the US, Japan and Australia said the study's conclusions were based on unpublished Chinese research, while critical records and biological samples 'remain inaccessible'.

Jamie Metzl, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank, who drafted the letter, said: 'Their starting point was, let's have as much compromise as is required to get some minimal cooperation from China.'

WHO Director General Tedros Adhanon Ghebreyesus said last week China had withheld data.

China's senior Covid-19 expert Liang Wannian denied this and appeared to rule out future joint investigations in China, saying the focus should shift to other countries.

Metzl said the world might have to 'revert to Plan B' and conduct an investigation 'in the most systematic way possible' without China's involvement.

China has rejected allegations that coronavirus leaked from a research laboratory in Wuhan, the city where it was first identified.

Jamie Metzl, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank, who drafted the letter, said: 'Their starting point was, let's have as much compromise as is required to get some minimal cooperation from China'

The joint China-WHO study said the lab leak was 'extremely unlikely', saying there was 'no record' that any laboratory had kept SARS-CoV-2-related viruses. Tedros said more research was required to 'reach more robust conclusions'.

Metzl said China should disclose information that would allow the lab hypothesis to be disproved.

'China has databases of what viruses were being held... there are lab notes of the work that was being done,' he said.

'There are all kinds of scientists who are actually doing the work and we don't have access to any of those resources, or any of those people.'

Fears of a whitewash emerged when the report was repeatedly delayed, prompting speculation Beijing was flexing its muscles to exonerate it.

During the pandemic China has been repeatedly accused of using smokescreen and suppression tactics - in the early stages silencing critics with an online crackdown.

The WHO has also come in for criticism - not least from ex-President Donald Trump - for being too friendly with China and not an effective scrutiniser.

The new Biden administration has also raised concerns that Beijing helped to write the report.

And Republican congressman Lee Zeldin said last week: 'Since the initial outbreak of Covid-19, the Chinese Communist Party has lied and covered-up to the world the pandemics origins.

'The World Health Organization has played along time and again as the Chinese Communist Party's useful idiots. A thorough and truly independent investigation is long overdue.'
CHICAGO, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In-depth analysis and data-driven insights on the impact of COVID-19 included in this U.S. data center market report.

The U.S. data center market is expected to grow at a CAGR of approximately 3% during the period 2020-2026.

Key Highlights Offered in the Report:

COVID-19 has been a strong catalyst for growth in the US data center investments in 2020, with significant growth in the Northern Virginia , Dallas , Silicon Valley, Chicago , Phoenix , and Atlanta data center market. 45+ hyperscale data centers with a capacity of 15 MW or more were opened or under construction in the US in 2020, contributing to over 70% of the overall investment received. In order to cater to the demand for low latency and additional data storage needs of its users, Facebook is currently investing in 17 data center building across 10 major cities in the US, in 2020. The market is witnessing new entrants such as PointOne, NOVVA, Cirrus Data Services, T-Rex, Archer Data Center, Cirrus Data Services, and Stratus DC Management, who will be major investors in the market during the forecast period. Over 25 states in the US offer specific tax incentives for building data centers, including Virginia , Illinois , Ohio , North Carolina , Alabama , New York , Arizona , and Nebraska .

Key Offerings:

Market Size & Forecast by Revenue | 2020-2026

Market Dynamics - Leading trends, growth drivers, restraints, and investment opportunities

Market Segmentation - A detailed analysis by IT Infrastructure, Electrical Infrastructure, Mechanical Infrastructure, Cooling Technique, Cooling Systems, General Construction, Tier Standards, and geography

Competitive Landscape - 6 IT infrastructure providers, 7 data center infrastructure providers, 7 data center contractors, 12 data center investors, and 84 other prominent vendors.

Get your sample today! https://www.arizton.com/market-reports/data-center-market-in-united-states

U.S. Data Center Market - Segmentation

The IT infrastructure market is growing due to increased investments in hyperscale infrastructure. Servers expect to generate the maximum revenue, followed by storage and network infrastructure segments. The high penetration of artificial intelligence-based infrastructure solutions due to exponential growth in data generation is likely to increase IT infrastructure demand.

The US market is likely to witness innovations in power infrastructure solutions to increase efficiency and reduce operational challenges. Datacenter operators such as Microsoft and vendors namely Rolls Royce Power Systems are exploring fuel-cell alternatives to data center generators due to increased concerns over carbon emissions. The diesel generator market expects to grow in the coming years, where fuel-cell could replace these systems by the end of the forecast period.

Data centers in South Eastern US adopt free-cooling techniques, including chillers and evaporate cooling solutions. Virginia supports up to 5,500 hours of passive-free cooling methods annually, thereby reducing the application of chillers. On the other hand, Alabama and Florida support around 3,500 hours and 3,000 hours of free cooling, respectively. South Eastern US is expected to observe investment in chillers supporting free cooling.

U.S. Data Center Market by IT Infrastructure

Servers

Storage

Network

U.S. Data Center Market by Electrical Infrastructure

UPS Systems

Generators

Transfer Switches and Switchgears

PDUs

Other Electrical Infrastructures

U.S. Data Center Market by Mechanical Infrastructure

Cooling Systems

CRAC & CRAH Units



Chiller Units



Cooling Towers, Dry Coolers, & Condensers



Economizer & Evaporative Coolers



Other Units

Racks

Others Mechanical Infrastructure

U.S. Data Center Market by Cooling Technique

Air-based Cooling Technique

Liquid-based Cooling Technique

U.S. Data Center Market by General Construction

Core and Shell Development

Installation and Commissioning Services

Engineering and Building Designs

Physical Security

DCIM/BMS

U.S. Data Center Market by Tier Standards

Tier I & II

Tier III

Tier IV

U.S. Data Center Market - Dynamics

About 47 hyperscale data centers were opened or under construction in 2020 and are expected to be operational by June 2021, with significant contributions from Facebook, Vantage Data Centers, QTS Realty Trust, Equinix, Aligned, Stream Data Centers, Digital Realty, Google, Apple, and COPT Data Centers. New entrants in the hyperscale space increased over the last year. In 2020, the market witnessed the entry of many new investors in hyperscale data center spaces that include T-Rex, Archer Data Center, PointOne, and Cirrus Data Services. These new entrants are expected to open the first phase of the facility by 2021. Facebook, which is involved in the development of 16 hyperscale data centers across the country with estimated cumulative investments of around $6.2 billion and total power capacity across all facilities of about 950 MW, is the major contributor. It is followed by Google with projects in Ohio, Texas, Nevada, and Alabama. Google is making an estimated investment of $2.4 billion across four data center facilities, adding a power capacity of around 265 MW in 2020.

Key Drivers and Trends fueling Market Growth:

COVID-19 Catalyst to Data Center Growth

Innovative UPS Battery Technologies

Adoption of 200/400GbE Switch Ports

Emergence of QLC NAND Flash Drives

U.S. Data Center Market - Geography

The states in South-Eastern US include Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Florida. The preferred investment locations in South-Eastern US include Virginia, Georgia, Texas, and Florida, owing to strong network connectivity, renewable sources of energy, and tax incentives. South-Eastern US is a developed data center market in the US. In 2020, around 35 data center projects were opened or under development in the region. The corresponding data center investment was over $6.5 billion. Colocation data center providers have a share of over 50% in the overall investment in the region. Colocation data center operators invested over $3.5 billion in the region in 2020, and the rest was contributed by hyperscale data center operators, namely, Facebook, Core Scientific, Apple, Microsoft.

Get your sample today! https://www.arizton.com/market-reports/data-center-market-in-united-states

U.S. Data Center Market by Geography

US

South Eastern US



Western US



South Western US



Mid-Western US



North Eastern US

Key Data Center Critical (IT) Infrastructure Providers

Cisco Systems

Dell Technologies

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)

IBM

Lenovo

NetApp

Key Data Center Support Infrastructure Providers

ABB

Caterpillar

Cummins

Eaton

Schneider Electric

STULZ

Vertiv Group

Key Data Center Contractors

AECOM

CORGAN

DPR CONSTRUCTION

Holder Construction Group

Jacobs Engineering Group

Syska Hennessy Group

Turner Construction

Key Data Center Investors

Apple

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

CyrusOne

Compass Datacenters (Root Data Center)

Digital Realty

Equinix

Facebook

Google

Microsoft

NTT Global Data Centers (RagingWire Data Centers)

Switch

Vantage Data Centers

Other Prominent Critical (IT) Infrastructure Providers

AccelStor Technologies

DataDirect Networks (DDN)

FUJITSU

Hitachi Vantara

Huawei Technologies

Infortrend Technology

Inspur

Intel

Micron Technology

MiTAC Holdings

Nimbus Data

Pivot3

QNAP Systems

Quanta Cloud Technology (Quanta Computer)

SAMSUNG

Seagate Technology

Silk Cloud Data Platform (Kaminario)

Super Micro Computer

Synology

Toshiba

VIOLIN (StorCentric)

Western Digital

Wiwynn (Wistron)

Other Prominent Support Infrastructure Providers

Airedale International Air Conditioning

Asetek

Bloom Energy

Condair Group

Cormant

Cyber Power Systems

Data Aire

Delta Electronics (Delta Power Solutions)

FNT Software

Generac Power Systems

Green Revolution Cooling (GRC)

Hitec Power Protection

KOHLER

Legrand

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation

Natron Energy

Nlyte Software

Rittal

Rolls-Royce Power Systems AG

Trane ( Ingersoll Rand )

) Tripp Lite

Yanmar Group (HIMOINSA)

ZincFive

Other Prominent Construction Contractors

Arup Group

Balfour Beatty US

BlueScope Construction

Clune Construction

Fluor Corporation

Fortis Construction

Gensler

Gilbane Building Company

HDR Architecture

HITT Contracting

Hoffman Construction

JE Dunn Construction Group

Linesight

Morrison Hershfield

Mortenson Construction

Rogers-O'Brien Construction

Structure Tone Organization

The Walsh Group

Other Prominent Data Center Investors

Aligned Energy

COPT Data Center Solutions (COPT DCS)

CoreSite Realty

Cyxtera Technologies

DataBank

Data Foundry

DC BLOX

EdgeCore Internet Real Estate

EdgeConneX

Flexential

FIFTEENFORTYSEVEN CRITICAL SYSTEMS REALTY

GIGA Data Centers

H5 DATA CENTERS

Iron Mountain

Quality Technology Services (QTS Realty Trust)

Stream Data Centers

Sabey Data Center

STACK INFRASTRUCTURE

T5 Data Centers

Explore our data center knowledge base profile to know more about the industry.

Read some of the top-selling reports:

Data Center Market in Latin America - Industry Outlook and Forecast 2021-2026

- Industry Outlook and Forecast 2021-2026 U.S. Data Center Power Market - Industry Outlook and Forecast 2021-2026

U.S. Data Center Cooling Market - Industry Outlook and Forecast 2021-2026

Data Center Market in Europe - Industry Outlook and Forecast 2021-2026

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Arizton Advisory and Intelligence is an innovation and quality-driven firm, which offers cutting-edge research solutions to clients across the world. We excel in providing comprehensive market intelligence reports and advisory and consulting services.

We offer comprehensive market research reports on industries such as consumer goods & retail technology, automotive and mobility, smart tech, healthcare, and life sciences, industrial machinery, chemicals and materials, IT and media, logistics and packaging. These reports contain detailed industry analysis, market size, share, growth drivers, and trend forecasts.

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Romania has very well succeeded in proving institutional capacity, community solidarity and the heroic devotion of its health workers, said WHO Regional Director for Europe Hans Kluge, as he participated on Wednesday in the event "Climate change, the human-nature relationship and public health" organized at the Cotroceni Presidential Palace on the occasion of the World Health Day, agerpres.ro confirms.

Romania is a positive example in the region, having taken comprehensive and timely measures to handle this unprecedented state of emergency. Despite the fact that this pandemic continues to raise problems, Romania has very well succeeded in proving its institutional capacity, community solidarity and the heroic dedication of its health workers. I am very happy that my native Belgium has acknowledged the merits of a Romanian doctor from Piatra Neamt, Catalin Denciu, declaring him the hero of the year 2020, said the WHO official.

At the end of 2020, doctor Catalin Denciu sustained serious burns while trying to save several patients from the fire that broke out at the ICU ward of the Piatra-Neamt County Emergency Hospital last November.

He was transferred to a hospital in Belgium for medical treatment. Another ICU doctor and two nurses were also slightly injured in the fire that also killed ten COVID-19 patients.

The WHO high representative also spoke at the event about the importance of the COVID-19 vaccination, as well as about the fact that the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has deepened social division.

With vaccination and the lessons learned during the crisis, this year we will be able to celebrate this day with a little more hope and optimism, but also with more caution and concern. When COVID hit, it hit a global community already characterized by inequality that has meanwhile grown further, harming societies and economies, forcing us to deal with the shortcomings in our lifestyle and the systems we have built, Hans Kluge said according to the official translation.

In the context of the pandemic, he said, communities and health systems have been put under "unprecedented" pressure.

The impact will be felt months and years from now. Multidisciplinary approaches and additional support from the communities and the health and social security systems are needed. Health services have been quite severely affected globally. Millions of people were left to bear the brunt in terms of emotional, social and economic welfare. Estimates suggest that because of the loss of jobs and income, the current crisis is pushing previously stable households into poverty, the WHO official said.

He also emphasized that the pandemic has caused gender inequalities, stating that recent data from several countries shows that the number of COVID-infected women who work in health services is two to three times higher than that of men.
A sketch of a swastika found in a suspected Baton Rouge serial killer's holding cell won't be used at the upcoming trial of the White man accused of killing two Black men and firing into a Black family's home in three September 2017 shootings, a prosecutor reluctantly told a judge Wednesday.

East Baton Rouge Parish Assistant District Attorney Dana Cummings added, however, that Kenneth Gleason's phone records contain repeated references to Adolf Hitler and "cleansing," and she said those records will be put before the jury.

+4 Alleged Baton Rouge serial killer Kenneth Gleason ruled sane during shootings; trial date set Kenneth Gleason, a suspected Baton Rouge serial killer accused of fatally shooting two men nearly three years ago, has been scheduled for a tr

Gleason's attorney, Ashly Van Earl, had filed a motion Monday asking that the swastika sketch found in Gleason's cell in 2017 not be allowed into evidence at the trial due to its prejudicial effect, and because prosecutors only turned over the actual artwork to the defense last month. The sketch was mentioned in a 2017 police report.

"The paper seized from Mr. Gleason's cell contains a sketch of a swastika which is historically associated with the NAZI Party of Germany (1932-1945.) This is merely a sketch," Earl wrote. "He is not charged with a hate crime, and as such (it) should be prohibited from being placed before the trier of the facts as it is highly prejudicial and would cast your Accused as a racist. This would divert the attention of the jury from its true calling  deciding the facts of the case."

Earl told state District Judge Beau Higginbotham during Wednesday's hearing that Gleason took a class in German while at LSU.

Cummings explained that the swastika sketch had been accidentally misfiled, and when Earl asked for it, investigators searched for it and located it.

In the end, the prosecutor decided out of an abundance of caution that she would not use the sketch in her case so that the trial, scheduled to start next Monday with jury selection, would not be delayed by any last-minute appeals.

"We're pleasantly surprised by the state's stipulation," Earl said after court.

The Associated Press reported in September 2017 that law enforcement found a copy of a Hitler speech during a search of Gleason's home. The wire service attributed that information to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing at the time.

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Gleason, 27, is charged with second-degree murder in the Sept. 12, 2017, slaying of Bruce Cofield and first-degree murder in the Sept. 14, 2017, killing of Donald Smart.

+4 For alleged serial killer Kenneth Gleason, judge says 'integral acts' can be used as evidence Nine hours after three shots were fired into a black family's Sandy Ridge Drive home just after midnight on Sept. 11, 2017, a worker at a Cour

Gleason also is charged with two counts of attempted second-degree murder stemming from a Sept. 11, 2017, incident in which he allegedly fired several shots into the home of the only Black family on the Sandy Ridge Drive block where he lived with his parents. Two men were inside but not injured.

Authorities have said the three nighttime shootings were apparently random and possibly racially motivated.

Cofield, 59, was shot as he sat at a bus stop on Florida Street near South Acadian Thruway. Smart, 49, was killed at the Alaska Street BREC park while walking to his overnight shift at Louie's Cafe.

Gleason is linked to Cofield's killing and the nonfatal shooting through DNA evidence, and to both fatal shootings and the nonfatal incident through ballistics evidence, authorities have said.

Prosecutors decided not to pursue the death penalty after consulting with Smart's family.

+4 Kenneth Gleason won't face death penalty in September slayings in Baton Rouge A prosecutor announced Wednesday she wont pursue the death penalty against a 24-year-old Baton Rouge man accused in the apparently random kil

Gleason would be sentenced to life in prison if convicted of first-degree murder. Second-degree murder also carries a penalty of life imprisonment.
It has been a decade since Apple integrated Siri right into its iPhone software and mainstreamed the voice-activated assistant. But the assistant is just one of the voice-powered tools in your smartphones ever-growing audio toolbox. Your device can also be a digital recorder, a dictation machine, a podcast production studio and more. Heres how to get things done with more talking and less typing.

1. Get More From Your Assistant

Youve probably already introduced yourself to Apples Siri, the Google Assistant for Android (and iOS) or Samsungs Bixby during your phones setup process. You may have even already tried it out by asking for the weather report or setting a timer. But the biggest challenge with using a voice assistant is knowing the various tasks the software can handle and the devices it runs on  which now include tablets, speakers, smart-home hubs, automobile systems and streaming TV boxes.
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice wants to eliminate his states income tax. Joe Manchin, West Virginias senior U.S. senator, wont let him.Manchin sponsored a last-minute amendment to the $1.9 trillion federal stimulus that prohibits states from using direct federal aid to pay for tax cuts. Its turned out to be one of the most controversial provisions in the entire, enormous package.Hes hurting his own people in the state of West Virginia, Justice said last month.Last week, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, along with a dozen other state AGs, filed suit to block the provision. Earlier, a group of 21 attorneys general had written to the Treasury Department, demanding clarification.Most observers believe that the Treasury will interpret the law narrowly. Rather than seeking to claw back funds from any states passing tax cuts or credits, the feds are considered likely to challenge only those states that clearly use federal dollars to pay for them. Nothing in the act prevents states from enacting a broad variety of tax cuts, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen wrote in a response to the AGs. It simply provides that funding received under the act may not be used to offset a reduction in net tax revenue resulting from certain changes in state law.But the fact that the law blocks federal money from being used even indirectly to pay for tax cuts has state officials not just worried but angry. Democrats in Washington and in the White House are not going to tell me, or the Georgia General Assembly, that we cant cut taxes for hard-working Georgians, Gov. Brian Kemp complained at a news conference last month.The stimulus funnels tons of money through states and localities in areas such as education, health care and transit. It also provides $350 billion in aid not directed toward particular program areas, including $195 billion for states. The whole idea, from the federal point of view, is to maintain or increase state and local spending  not to cut taxes.Its the indirect offset prohibition that opens up Pandoras box, says Jared Walczak, vice president of state projects at the nonprofit Tax Foundation. That starts to look like a broad prohibition.That prohibition lasts as long as the stimulus dollars are spent, which will be into 2024. And there are limits, Walczak notes, on where and how states can spend federal aid. They can use the money to address pandemic and health needs, for example. While those are clearly ongoing, much of the cost of vaccine supply and distribution has been underwritten by the feds. Other costs in these areas have already been addressed by last years federal CARES Act, which some states struggled to spend.About half the states have no revenue losses that they would be allowed to use federal funds to backfill. The stimulus money can also be used for certain types of infrastructure, such as water projects and broadband, but most infrastructure projects will (or wont) be funded by the enormous infrastructure package President Biden introduced last week.States can also offer supplemental pay to essential workers, but given the fact that's a brand-new concept  states using money to pay for salaries of private-sector workers at businesses such as grocery stores  its not yet clear how many of them will try the idea.Thats your list, Walczak says. Even if states had a long wish list of things theyd love to do with a bit extra, they probably cant do them with this money.States can send money to localities for certain purposes  but the act also requires cities or counties to put up matching funds of their own. Its not certain whether local governments will be able to use their pots of federal money to match state expenditures.Given all this, at least some states may find themselves in the unusual position of having surplus dollars, but not be able to cut taxes. Some states are still hurting financially, but overall state revenues ended up being flat in 2020, despite the nosedive last spring. Now, the economy is set to grow this year perhaps more rapidly than it has in decades.Clever budget officers will still be able to find ways of moving money around. If states have excess funds, they should be able to figure out how to cut taxes without any indication that the revenue is coming out of the federal largesse. Theres always a creative offset available.But the uncertainty means that state officials who want to cut taxes should wait on the rules coming from the Treasury. Its just one area among many where states, cities and counties are trying to plan without yet having formal guidance from Washington.The United States Congress decided that there were many, many questions we could decide in 30 days, says Gene Sperling, who is overseeing the stimulus rollout for the Biden administration.
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

The way we move says a lot about the state of our brain. While normal motor behavior points to a healthy brain function, deviations can indicate impairments owing to neurological diseases. The observation and evaluation of movement patterns is therefore part of basic research, and is likewise one of the most important instruments for non-invasive diagnostics in clinical applications. Under the leadership of computer scientist Prof. Dr. Bjorn Ommer and in collaboration with researchers from Switzerland, a new computer-based approach in this context has been developed at Heidelberg University. As studies inter alia with human test persons have shown, this approach enables the fully automatic recognition of motor impairments and, through their analysis, provides information about the type of the underlying diseases with the aid of artificial intelligence.

For the computer-supported movement analysis, subjects usually have to be tagged with reflective markings or virtual markers have to be applied to the video material produced in the framework of the assessment. Both procedures are comparatively complicated. Furthermore, conspicuous movement behavior has to be known in advance so that it can be further examined. "A real diagnostic tool should not only confirm motor disorders but be able to recognize them in the first place and classify them correctly," explains Prof. Ommer, who heads the Computer Vision group at the Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing at Heidelberg University.

Precisely that is made possible by the novel diagnostic method developed by his team, and known as "unsupervised behavior analysis and magnification using deep learning" (uBAM). The underlying algorithm is based on machine learning using artificial neural networks and it recognizes independently and fully automatically characteristic behavior and pathological deviations, as the Heidelberg scientist explains. The algorithm determines what body part is affected and functions as a kind of magnifying glass for behavioral patterns by highlighting different types of deviation directly in the video and making them visible. As part of this, the relevant video material is compared with other healthy or likewise impaired subjects. Progress in treating motor disorders can also be documented and analyzed in this way. According to Prof. Ommer, conclusions can also be drawn about the neuronal activity in the brain.

The basis for the uBAM interface is a so-called convolutional neural network, a type of neural network that is used for image recognition and image processing purposes especially. The scientists trained the network to identify similar movement behavior in the case of different subjects, even in spite of great differences in their outward appearance. That is possible because the artificial intelligence can distinguish between posture and appearance. Besides the recognition and quantification of impairments, a detailed analysis of the symptoms is also important. "To study them in detail, we use a generative neural network," says Prof. Ommer. "That way we can help neuroscientists and clinicians focus on subtle deviations in motor behavior that are likely to be overlooked with the naked eye, and make them easily visible by magnifying the deviation. Then we can exactly demarcate the type of disease in the individual case."

The research team has already been able to prove the effectiveness of this new approach with the aid of different animal models and studies with human patients. They tested, inter alia, the precision with which uBAM can differentiate between healthy and impaired motor activity. In their publication on the topic, the scientists report a very high retrieval rate both in mice and human patients. "In all, our study shows that, as compared to conventional methods, the approach based on artificial intelligence delivers more detailed results with significantly less effort," Bjorn Ommer emphasizes.

With respect to the application, the scientists hope that uBAM will be used both in basic biomedical research and in clinical diagnostics and beyond. Prof. Ommer: "The interface can be applied where traditional methods prove too complicated, tedious, or not efficient enough. Potentially it could lead to a better understanding of neuronal processes in the brain and the development of new therapeutic options."

Besides the Heidelberg researchers working with Prof. Ommer, scientists from the University of Zurich and University Hospital Zurich, Balgrist University Hospital and the Neuroscience Center Zurich were also involved in developing the uBAM interface. Part of the funding for the study came from the German Research Foundation as well as the Branco Weiss Fellowship Society in Science and the Swiss National Foundation. The results were published in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence.

Explore further Researchers develop computer vision technique to analyse stroke rehabilitation process

More information: Biagio Brattoli et al. Unsupervised behaviour analysis and magnification (uBAM) using deep learning, Nature Machine Intelligence (2021). Journal information: Nature Machine Intelligence Biagio Brattoli et al. Unsupervised behaviour analysis and magnification (uBAM) using deep learning,(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s42256-021-00326-x
After the change of power in the Republic of Armenia in 2018, the most controversial case of the overthrow of the constitutional order, or the so-called "March 1" case, collapsed on Tuesday. The Court of First Instance of the Republic of Armenia, based on the decision of the Constitutional Court to declare Article 300.1 of the Criminal Code unconstitutional and invalid, terminated the criminal prosecution against 4 former high-ranking officials accused under that article, acquitted them, and terminated the case.

With this, we can say that a new phase of PM Nikol Pashinyan's three-year rule began. Pashinyan had built his 2018 election campaign almost entirely on the promises of inciting hatred against the main defendants in the "March 1" case, in particular, second President Robert Kocharyan, making him the main person responsible for "March 1," and holding him accountable for it. Moreover, during these years, in order to neutralize the negative public reaction to all the big shortcomings of his government, Pashinyan has always played the card of the "March 1" case and manipulated it. And quite recently in the Republic Square in Yerevan Nikol Pashinyan even announced that the background of the murders in the "March 1" case has been solved.

During the past three years, Robert Kocharyan spent about 500 days in prison. His lawyers repeatedly petitioned the court to change the measure of restraint chosen for their client, taking into account that Kocharyan had no intention of hiding from the criminal case, which he proved by returning to Armenia from abroad after the criminal case was initiated and appearing before the body conducting the proceedings.

In the meantime, then President of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) Bako Sahakyan and former President Arkady Ghukasyan submitted a letter of pledge to change the detention of the second president, which was granted, but Kocharyan was returned to detention shortly after, after enormous pressure on the Court of Appeal. Courts of different instances were denying numerous motions of lawyers to change his measure of restraint, release him on bail, letters of pledge, arguing and substantiating all that, but most of those motions were being denied. During this period, Robert Kocharyan was released three times by the decision of different courts, and despite the fact that he did not violate the regulations, the prosecutors were again submitting motions to detain him again, and other judges were granting these motions.

Obsessed with having Kocharyan "sit" in prison, the revolutionary authorities of Armenia, particularly Prime Minister Pashinyan, have repeatedly resorted to gross violations of the law, which have been severely criticized by the public, professional, public and political circles, but in vain; the authorities were doing everything to achieve their goal.

In September 2018, the recording of a telephone conversation between the then director of the National Security Service Artur Vanetsyan and the head of the Special Investigation Service Sasun Khachatryan appeared on the Internet, which clearly showed that the persecution of ex-President Robert Kocharyan and CSTO former Secretary General Yuri Khachaturovwho is charged under the same casewas ordered by Nikol Pashinyan personally, and the task was to detain them at any cost. When President Kocharyan was released for the second time by a court decision, Pashinyan, being the country's prime minister, organized a blockade of the courts, persecutions began against Judge Davit Grigoryan, who had released Kocharyan, and public threats were being made against judgeseven by officials.

The defense team and the judge who released Kocharyan initially saw a problem with the constitutionality of the law underlying the criminal case and appealed to the Constitutional Court. Prime Minister Pashinyan made several unsuccessful attempts to change the composition of the Constitutional Court launched holding a budget-costly constitutional referendum by changing the article of the Constitution, which, however, was interrupted due to the coronavirus pandemic. In the end, bypassing some requirements of the legislation, Pashinyan removed Hrayr Tovmasyan from the post of the President of the Constitutional Court and inserted several judges he wanted into this high court.

During this whole process, many public and political figures, local and foreign lawyers, human rights activists have raised an alarm that the persecution of Kocharyan is obviously political, and the only purpose of changing the composition of the Constitutional Court is to get the desired decisions for the authorities, and especially in this case. But even with the desired composition of the Constitutional Court, Pashinyan could not provide the desired outcome for the decision, apparently because the renewed composition of the Constitutional Court was not even ready to make a decision contrary to the opinions of the Venice Commission and the ECHR just because Prime Minister Pashinyan wants it.

During these three years, Armenia went through many trials, including a disgraceful defeat and a war with thousands of casualties, and at the same time, the government considered second President Robert Kocharyan as its main political opponent.

Since coming to power, Nikol Pashinyan, waging a fierce struggle and aiming to neutralize Kocharyan from the political field by any means, got the opposite: the second president became the number one opponent for this government. He was the first to announce that he was going to run in the upcoming snap parliamentary elections in person and publicly expressed confidence that he would win. Kocharyan had expressed such confidence while waiting for the decision on the first arrest, when he announced that he would not avoid fighting with the investigation bodies and if necessary, he was ready for arrest, but he would fight, win and prove his innocence.

The results of the upcoming elections will show what the bloc led by Robert Kocharyan will achieve, but it can be stated that the first major victory of Kocharyan and his team is already a reality: he has been acquitted.
Photo Credit: Amtrak

On April 1, in response to Bidens American Jobs Plan, which allocates 80 billion in railway support, Amtrak announced intentions to expand their railway network  including trains running between San Antonio, Austin, Houston and Fort Worth. For those Texans thinking it may be too good to be true, you may be pleased to know Amtraks April 1 unveiling was not followed by coy April Fools from the rail companys CEO.

Amtraks plan, which details a network of over 30 new routes in 15 new states and connecting 160 new communities, is budgeted with Bidens new Jobs Plan. Though nothing is set in stone  Bidens funding is still reliant on Congress to pass  a new system suddenly appears much more possible.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation has voluntarily dropped its federal lawsuit against Alabama after the state amended its voter registration form requiring a religious oath.

Alabama was the only state in the country that required voters to register to vote on a form that required a so help me God oath without any secular option to verify statements on the form.

As part of the settlement, Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill has amended the form to allow voters to check a box that says, OPTIONAL: Because of a sincerely held belief, I decline to include the final four words of the oath above.

The lead plaintiff, atheist Randall Cragun, tried to register to vote in Alabama starting in November 2019. The Freedom From Religion Foundation said Cragun was told, There is no legal mechanism to register to vote in AL without signing the oath as it is stated.

Married couple Chris Nelson and Heather Coleman were also plaintiffs in the suit, and the foundation said they were able to register using the new form in March. Both of their registrations were accepted by Shelby County registrars, the foundation said.

We are glad that the state has  at least, begrudgingly  made some concessions to support state-church separation, and that freethinkers in Alabama will continue to push for these reforms, the couple said in a statement released by the foundation.

Because of this suit, I will finally be able to register to vote in Alabama, Cragun said. It is disappointing that the state prevented me from voting in the 2020 elections, but I am looking forward to participating in the future, and I now have a better appreciation of the value my voice and other individual voices contribute to shaping the state.

Following the introduction of this lawsuit, our office took action to see that an option was provided to voters to either swear a religious oath or opt out when registering to vote, Merrill said in a statement today. While the language so help me God has been included on voter registration applications since well before I took office, this issue was just brought to light, and we remain willing to accommodate all voters of Alabama. All registration applications, online or on paper, were updated on March 8, 2021 to include the option to opt out, if interested.
Local News, Health & Wellness, Press Releases

By Chris Boyle Published: April 07 2021

Approximately half of the Countys adult population has received their first COVID-19 shot.

Nassau County Executive Laura Curran announced that 500,000 residents will have received their first COVID-19 shot, or approximately half of the Countys adult population. With four County Department of Health vaccination sites, a designated hotline for seniors and veterans, robust partnerships with community providers, and a unique pre-registration vaccination website, Nassau County has become a model of the COVID-19 vaccination distribution in New York State. Nassau County currently has the highest percentage of residents (36.7%) with at least dose of the vaccine among New York State counties with population >500,000.

The County has been leading the State in vaccinations and we will continue to move full speed ahead to get our residents protected against this deadly virus. Thank you to the award-winning Department of Health and the fantastic Medical Reserve Corp. volunteers who have been doing an extraordinary job at swiftly vaccinating our population. The vaccine is our passport back to normal and we have been building up infrastructure as both supply and eligibly increase. I am proud that we have reached the milestone of half a million residents vaccinated, but we are not stopping here. Next week eligibility opens up to all residents 16 and up and Nassau County stands ready to get doses into arms, said Nassau County Executive Laura Curran.

The County Department of Health is running four vaccine distribution centers at Nassau Coliseum, Nassau Community College, LIU Post and the Yes We Can Community Center. In addition, the County has been partnering with Northwell Health and other medical partners to hold numerous pop-up distribution events -- targeting hard to reach populations.

The County also established a designated way for both veterans and seniors to receive appointments. Veterans can make an appointment through the Nassau County Veterans Service Agency by calling 516-572-6565. A hotline for seniors was also created to get shots in the arms of the vulnerable. Seniors can make an appointment by calling 516-227-9590.
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The sister of a married lawyer who died from a blood clot after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine today joined the legion of politicians and health experts encouraging people to continue taking up the jab and said: 'My brother was just extraordinarily unlucky'.

Yesterday health experts at the JCVI announced the vaccine created by Oxford University and produced by AstraZeneca would not be used for those under 30 following extremely rare cases of clotting - despite there being no proof that the vaccine causes the clots.

Boris Johnson also declared the jab was safe and will save lives after 79 clots were found in patients out of more than 20million doses delivered - and over-30s are still being given the jab because they are less prone to the clots.

Neil Astles, 59, who lived in a 275,000 detached house in Newton-le-Willows on Merseyside, became the UK's first named victim after passing away last weekend following 10 days of severe headaches and a steady loss of vision.

Mr Astles, who married his wife Carole in 1993 and worked as a council solicitor in nearby Warrington, died on Easter Sunday.

His sister Dr Alison Astles, a pharmacist at the University of Huddersfield, said her brother was a keen runner, was 'fit and healthy' and had no history of blood clots.

But he developed a headache about a week after his vaccination March 17. When his headaches and eyesight worsened, he was rushed to A&E at the Royal Liverpool Hospital by his brother, before being admitted to intensive care, where he died more than a fortnight later.

Dr Astles told the Daily Telegraph: 'Despite what has happened to our family, we strongly believe that everyone should go for their first and second doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Emotionally, we are completely and utterly furious. We are suffering. But there's nothing in our minds to be really furious about. My brother was just extraordinarily unlucky.'

Yesterday Britain's medical regulator the MHRA announced the vaccine created by Oxford University and produced by AstraZeneca would not be used for those under 30 following extremely rare cases of clotting. Boris Johnson also declared the jab was safe and will save lives.

According to the MHRA the risks because the chances of suffering blood clots after receiving the AstraZeneca jab was 0.000095 per cent. The BMJ said the risk is the same as being killed by a plane falling from the sky and crashing on your house.

Dr Alison Astles agreed and said: 'If we all have the vaccine, a few of us might have a blood clot but the evidence is that fewer people will die.'

But there are concerns public confidence will have been damaged by the change in policy, made worse by chaos in Europe where EU health ministers have failed to agree joint guidelines for who should be given AstraZeneca jabs as many nations reserved the use of the vaccine to the over-55s or over-60s while Germany has placed restrictions in all age groups.

The curbs came despite the head of the European Medicines Agency declaring there is 'no evidence' to support restricting the use of AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine.

As the public was urged to retain confidence in the AstraZeneca jab:

Coronavirus vaccines are 'breaking the link' between cases and deaths, experts behind a major surveillance study tracking England's outbreak revealed today;

Matt Hancock says Britain will hit its target to vaccinate all adults by the end of July - and says there is enough Pfizer and Moderna vaccine for the under-30s;

EU nations are limiting use of the AZ despite the head of the European Medicines Agency declaring there is 'no evidence' to support it;

Scientists said the UK was on track to achieve herd immunity at 74 per cent protection by Monday;

A major study found that infections in England have more than halved in the past month and the return of schools had little effect on the outbreak;

Infections fell by a third on last week to 2,763 daily cases recorded yesterday, while there were 45 deaths.

Neil Astles, 59, from Warrington, became the UK's first named victim after passing away on Easter Sunday following 10 days of headaches and loss of vision

His sister Dr Alison Astles, a pharmacist at the University of Huddersfield, said her brother was a keen runner, was 'fit and healthy' and had no history of blood clots

WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF THE RARE BLOOD CLOTS LINKED TO ASTRAZENECA'S VACCINE? MHRA chief executive Dr June Raine said anyone who has one or more of the below symptoms for longer than four days after vaccination should seek urgent medical advice. Shortness of breath

Chest pain

Swollen leg

Persistent stomach pain

Severe headache

Blurred vision

Skin bruising beyond the site of injection Advertisement

Mr Astles, who ran regularly, was fit and healthy with no history of blood clotting, according to Dr Astles.

Dr Astles, the subject lead for pharmacy at the University of Huddersfield, said: 'He had a headache which didn't go away and he felt a bit sick.

'But he carried on doing his work, went to the shops, driving around. And then on Friday night, his symptoms had become a great deal worse. And my other brother took him to A&E.

'At three o'clock the next morning, they transferred him over to the Royal Liverpool hospital to ICU.

'There was a strong suspicion right from the very beginning that it was the Astra vaccine because of his very low platelet levels.

'So he had a clot and a subsequent bleed on his brain, which was compressing his brainstem.

'He was probably brain dead on Saturday afternoon, but he was declared dead at 22 minutes past five on Sunday evening, when they turned off his ventilator.

'We were all around him at that point. The clot just compressed his brainstem such that his breathing wouldn't function.'

Dr Astles urged people to seek medical attention if they experience lasting headaches or sickness after taking the jab.

She added to the BBC that her brother was a 'much loved brother, husband and son'.

While the coroner has not yet reported the official cause of death, Mr Astles's diagnosis was 'cerebral sinus thrombosis and subarachnoid haemorrhage' with 'low platelets and extraordinarily high d-dimer' - a protein present in the blood when a clot has formed.

Britain will pass threshold for Covid herd immunity on MONDAY when more than 74 per cent of people will have protection against the virus, scientists say Britain is set to pass the threshold for herd immunity on Monday, scientists say. Modelling by University College London (UCL) suggests that 73.4 per cent of the population will have protection against Covid by April 12. The figures outdo pessimistic estimations by Imperial College this week - which suggested that just 34 per cent would have the vital antibody protection by the end of last month. Herd immunity is when an infectious disease stops naturally spreading in a population because enough people are protected against the disease. Scientists disagree on what the exact herd immunity threshold is but top US medical official Dr Anthony Fauci has previously suggested it could be as high as 90 per cent. The UK government's Chief Scientific Advisor Sir Patrick Vallance quoted a figure of 60 per cent back in March 2020 but scientists now believe it is much higher than that because the virus is more transmissible than previously thought. Imperial College's results formed part of data by SPI-M - whose calculations feed into the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE). SAGE released modelling in documents this week suggested that lifting lockdown curbs fully in June could lead to more than a thousand deaths a day this summer and push the NHS to the brink again. But UCL's data suggests Britain could be well on its way to lifting lockdown fully by June 21, the date set out in Boris Johnson's roadmap out of lockdown. Advertisement

Ministers, MPs, watchdogs and health officials yesterday blitzed the public with messages to try to shore up support for the AstraZeneca vaccine amid fears the new advice could dent confidence.

Boris Johnson said: 'As the regulators have said, this vaccine is safe, effective and has already saved thousands of lives  and the vast majority of people should continue to take it when offered.

'We will follow today's updated advice, which should allow people of all ages to continue to have full confidence in vaccines, helping us save lives and cautiously return towards normality.'

The Health Secretary Matt Hancock said everyone should take a vaccine when their time comes, and the risk of experiencing a brain clot was the same as 'taking a long-haul flight'.

He urged the under-30s, who will be offered an alternative vaccine to AstraZeneca, to take a jab to protect loved ones and avoid the risk of long Covid, adding there were was 'more than enough' Moderna and Pfizer for this age range.

In a round of broadcast interviews, Mr Hancock said vaccines are clearly breaking the link between Covid cases and deaths in the UK and were saving 'thousands of lives'.

He told Sky News: 'The number of people dying from Covid halved in the last nine days... and is down 90% from the peak.'

All vaccines in use in the UK were 'safe for all ages', but the 'extremely rare' risk of suffering a rare brain blood clot, and the tipping of the balance of risk for the under-30s, means they could be given other jabs instead.

Speaking directly to younger people who may be thinking they do not need a vaccine, Mr Hancock told BBC Breakfast: 'The vaccines are safe, and if you want to have the Pfizer vaccine or Moderna vaccine instead then that is fine.

'Covid is a horrible disease and long Covid affects people in their 20s just as much it seems as any other age group and can have debilitating side effects that essentially ruin your life.'

He added: 'The safety system that we have around this vaccine is so sensitive that it can pick up events that are four in a million (the chance of developing a rare brain blood clot) - I'm told this is about the equivalent risk of taking a long-haul flight.'

Mr Hancock said there were almost 10.2 million people aged 18 to 29 in the UK, of whom 1.6 million have had their first vaccine.

Boris Johnson said: 'As the regulators have said, this vaccine is safe, effective and has already saved thousands of lives  and the vast majority of people should continue to take it when offered'

Deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam underscored the improbability of suffering blood clots because of the AstraZeneca jab

In low Covid levels, every 100,000 vaccines prevents 0.8 ICU admissions from coronavirus in people under 30 but 1.1 people will suffer blood clotting after having the jab, making the threat higher than the virus itself

When there is medium prevalence, the threat of Covid still outweighs the chance of clots after AZ vaccine in every age group

When coronavirus is prevalent in society, 100,000 AstraZeneca vaccines prevent 127.7 Covid ICU admissions among 60 to 69-year-olds. For 20 to 29-year-olds, every 100,000 vaccine administered stops seven people in that age group from being admitted to intensive care with the disease

EU vaccine shambles continues as health ministers FAIL to agree a joint response to blood clot fears despite European regulators saying benefits far outweigh risks Europe's health ministers have failed to agree joint guidelines for who should be given AstraZeneca jabs - leaving each country to set its own rules as experts warn the patchwork approach could further undermine confidence in the vaccine. EU health ministers had met to discuss Europe-wide guidelines after the continent's medical regulator found that blood clots are a 'very rare' side effect of the jab. But the summit broke up on Wednesday without agreement, leaving member states to chart their own way forward with inconsistent rules. Spain, Italy and the Netherlands have restricted use of the jabs to those aged over 60, while in France the age limit is slightly lower at 55. Germany has also restricted routine use of the jab to over 60s, though those aged under 60 can still receive it if a doctor approves. At the same summit, German Health Minister Jens Spahn also said he is opening bilateral talks with Russian to buy its Sputnik V vaccine - though only if it receives approval from Europe's medical regulator, sources said. Meanwhile Belgium has placed a four-week ban on those aged under 56 getting the AstraZeneca shot. In Britain, the government has advised that those aged under 30 should be offered an alternative to AstraZeneca if one is available minimise risk from clotting, but added that all age groups will still be routinely offered Astra. Dr. Peter English, who formerly chaired the British Medical Association's Public Health Medicine Committee, said back-and-forth over the vaccine could have serious consequences and prolong the pandemic - causing thousands of deaths. 'We can't afford not to use this vaccine if we are going to end the pandemic,' he said. Advertisement

Professor Jeremy Brown, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), said that the benefit of vaccinating young people is not just preventing severe disease.

He told Sky News: 'It actually will prevent them catching Covid, and if they don't get Covid then the chance of developing so-called long Covid - the symptoms you get which many people get, about 10%, after they've had even a very mild infection - that will prevent that.

'It also allows younger people to visit their relatives who are elderly and more vulnerable to the disease, without the risk of infecting them.

'Lastly, there are social benefits which have been much discussed over the past few days - travel, for example. I think it's unlikely that people will be allowed to travel out of the country easily unless they have been vaccinated.'

Meanwhile, Professor Anthony Harnden, deputy chairman of the JCVI, explained that the chance of suffering a clot after a vaccine was much lower than for other medicines or during pregnancy.

'These are extremely rare events - much, much more rare than, for instance, clots due to common drugs that we prescribe such as the contraceptive pill; much rarer than clots during pregnancy; much, much rarer than clots due to Covid itself,' he told BBC Breakfast.

'We still feel this is a safe and effective vaccine where the benefits far outweigh the risks for the majority of people.

'In many ways, it's better to know the known than the unknown, so I would encourage anybody who's been offered either their first dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, and certainly their second dose, when there's been no cases (of clots) for second doses, to receive it when offered.'

Prof Harnden insisted 'the vaccination programme is going full steam ahead' across the UK and 'everybody should remain confident in it'.

Sir Keir Starmer said: 'The AstraZeneca vaccine is safe, effective and saving thousands of lives. Trust in our doctors and scientists. When it is your turn to get the jab, do so. My first dose was AstraZeneca and I look forward to getting my second dose when it is offered.'

Professor Wei Shen Lim, coronavirus chairman for the vaccines committee, said: 'The Covid-19 vaccines have already saved thousands of lives and the benefit for the majority of the population is clear  if you are offered a vaccine, you should take it.'

The blizzard of messages came after the MHRA announced at a press conference that those aged 18-29 will be offered an alternative to the AstraZeneca jab - either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines that are currently on stream.

England's deputy chief medical officer Professor Jonathan Van-Tam described the change of tack as a 'course correction that was 'quite normal'.

He told the briefing: 'This is a massive beast that we are driving along at enormous pace with enormous success, this vaccine programme.

Covid vaccines are 'breaking the link' between cases and deaths: Experts behind major surveillance study tracking England's outbreak say fatalities are still dropping despite infections levelling off Coronavirus vaccines are 'breaking the link' between cases and deaths, experts behind a major surveillance study tracking England's outbreak revealed today. Imperial College London epidemiologists found while Covid infections appeared to have levelled off in early April, fatalities linked to the virus were still falling - which would not have been expected during the first or second wave. More than 31million Britons - or three in five adults - have already received a jab, with separate experts today suggesting the speedy roll-out could see the UK hit herd immunity - when the virus stops spreading - next month. The REACT-1 study - which randomly swabbed 140,000 people in the latest round - also suggested Covid cases had more than halved in a month and fallen in every age group, adding the reopening of schools had little impact on the epidemic. They estimated 0.2 per cent of England's population, or one in 500, were infected between March 11 and 30 compared to 0.49 per cent in February, a fall of 60 per cent. The biggest drops were recorded in the South East, where prevalence went from 0.36 per cent in February to 0.07 per cent in March, in London (0.6 to 0.16 per cent), and in the East of England (0.47 to 0.15 per cent). They also suggested cases may have 'flattened off' in early April. But experts said this was nothing to worry about and insisted this was actually 'good news' because it means the slight easing of restrictions in late March has not caused a spike. Advertisement

'If you sail a massive liner across the Atlantic then it's not really reasonable that you aren't going to have to make at least one course correction during that voyage.'

The MHRA has not yet established a causal link between the cases of clotting and the AstraZeneca vaccine, although the regulator said the evidence was becoming 'firmer'.

The MHRA's chief executive, Dr June Raine, said there is a 'reasonably plausible' link between the AstraZeneca jab and rare blood clots.

She said: 'The evidence has accrued not only in numbers and kinds of cases but the pattern of those cases. So we feel it's a much more solid basis in our regulatory world to put in the side effect into our product information and that tells us it is a reasonably plausible link.'

However, she said the clots were 'extremely rare', adding: 'Based on the current evidence, the benefits of the Covid-19 vaccine AstraZeneca against Covid-19 and its associated risks - hospitalisation and death - continues to outweigh the risks for the vast majority of people.

'Our review has reinforced that the risk of this rare suspected side effect remains extremely small.'

The 79 cases occurred in 51 women and 28 men, aged from 18 to 79. Of the 19 who died, three were under the age of 30, the MHRA said.

Some 14 cases of the 19 were cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST), a specific type of clot that prevents blood from draining from the brain. The other five cases were other kinds of thrombosis in major veins.

Professor Sir Munir Pirmohamed, chairman of the Commission on Human Medicines, said: 'The early evidence suggests that this constellation of symptoms is caused by an immune response against platelets which allows the platelets to then lead to clotting in different parts of the body.

'But what we don't have clearly is the link between the vaccine and how the immune response becomes activated against the platelets.'

He said any risks from the jab had to be set against the fact around 30 per cent of people with Covid suffer low blood platelet counts, while Covid also 'causes clotting'.

Some 7.8 per cent of people with Covid suffer blood clots on the lungs, while 11.2 per cent will suffer deep vein thrombosis (DVT), he added.

He said there appears to be a 'slightly higher risk in the younger age group' of clots after the AstraZeneca vaccine, but the reason is 'not clear' with further work required.

Separately, a review by the European Medicines Agency concluded on Wednesday that 'unusual blood clots with low blood platelets should be listed as very rare side effects' of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.

Emer Cooke, executive director of EMA, said its review 'confirmed that the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine in preventing Covid-19 overall outweigh the risk of side effects', adding: 'Vaccination is extremely important in helping us in the fight against Covid-19.'

The EMA, which polices the safety of drugs used on the continent, spotted 169 cases of cerebral vein thrombosis (CVST) and 53 cases of splanchnic vein thrombosis (SVT), from 34million jabs. CVST occurs when a vein that drains blood from the brain is blocked by a clot. It can lead to a stroke. SVT is the same type of blood clot but it occurs in the digestive system

Is it safe for me to get my second dose of AstraZeneca's jab? What if I had blood clot symptoms first time round? Can I get mix-and-match to get Pfizer's instead? What are the alternatives for under-30s? And what are the tell-tale symptoms of blood clots?

Britons were once again left with a raft of questions over the safety of AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine after health chiefs today recommended it should not be given to under-30s because of its link to potentially deadly blood clots.

No10's jab advisory panel says healthy people aged 18 to 29 be offered either Pfizer or Moderna's vaccine instead, when the programme moves to younger groups in the coming months.

The Government, opposition politicians and medical experts tonight rushed to shore up confidence in AstraZeneca's vaccine, insisting that it was safe and the benefits far outweighed any risks for the vast majority.

Here MailOnline answers all of your questions about AstraZeneca's jab, revealing why it is safe for you to still get your second dose and what the alternatives are for under-30s.
Hundreds of biologically male prison inmates have sent in requests to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to facilitate their transfer to a women's prison because they believe their "gender identity" is female.

Some 261 biologically born male inmates may now be transferred to a women's prisons under the California law that allows it. The legislation known as S.B. 132 or "The Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act," was signed into law by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in September and took effect this year.

S.B. 132 requires the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to "house the person in a correctional facility designated for men or women based on the individual's preference." Inmates will then have the right to be placed in a correctional facility of their choosing based on their "gender identity."

This will also include programs such as the Alternative Custody Program, Custody to Community Transitional Reentry Program, Male Community Reentry Program, and Community Prisoner Mother Program.

According to FOX News, as much as 261 transgender identifying inmates have put in a request since January 1 this year, heightening fears among staff and inmates in women's prisons that the inpouring of biologically male inmates may lead to increased sexual violence. Prison guards have also begun warning female inmates that "men are coming" and to "prepare for the worst."

California's prison system has already transferred four inmates to the Chowchilla women's prison and approved 21 more gender-based housing requests. Of 261 requests, none were denied and only six inmates requested to be placed in a men's facility. Concerns that some men would pretend to have a female "gender identity" to be transferred to a women's prison and abuse the law has heightened.

The Daily Caller spoke to 41 year-old Tomiekia Johnson, a prison inmate at Chowchilla who has expressed concerns over the male inmates in California who will be transferred to women's prisons. She said, "[Staff] say we're going to need a facility that's going to be like a maternity ward. They say we're going to have an inmate program where inmates become nannies."

Terry Thornton, a prison spokeswoman, reassured FOX that the CDCR is "committed to providing a safe, humane, rehabilitative and secure environment for all people housed in its institutions," including women's prisons. She explained that S.B. 132 helps the prison system create a safer, more respectful environment for their transgender, non-binary, and intersex inmates whil preventing sexual abuse.

She added that the CDCR already has in place a classification process that reviews an inmate's history before and during his sentence, medical and mental health records, and safety concerns.

Thornton highlighted that the CDCR also abides by the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), which categorizes inmates as "at risk as a victim, at risk as an abuser, or not identified as being at risk." Based on these categories, they can identify which inmates cannot be housed in a cell with another.

For now, the transfers have slowed down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, FOX added.
COLUMBIA  Three weeks after passing legislation allowing trained gun owners to openly carry their weapons, the S.C. House approved ditching the need for any instruction to legally bear arms  visibly or hidden.

The measure approved 69-47 on April 7 allows any adult who can legally own a gun to publicly tote it without taking a class or passing a background check, making the state's 25-year-old concealed weapon permit law moot.

While advocates dub it the "constitutional carry" bill, pro-gun opponents called that a ruse.

"It's cleverly packaged. It's a ploy. By calling it 'constitutional carry' it implies that if you oppose it, you oppose the Constitution and you're against the Second Amendment," said Rep. Bart Blackwell, R-Aiken.

He should know. In a mudslinging GOP primary challenge last year, mailers and robocalls painted the CWP-holding Air Force veteran as trying to take constituents' guns away. But he's proof such ludicrous accusations can be successfully overcome, he said.

Once voters called his cellphone, printed on the mailers, "Every person I spoke to, without exception, said 'Thank you' for explaining that," he said. "I went from dirt bag to having their vote in a matter of minutes, once folks understood what the issue really was."

He unsuccessfully urged at least delaying a vote until next year, giving time to see what, if anything, the Senate does with a bill the House advanced last month making it unnecessary for CWP holders to conceal their handgun.

"Three weeks ago, training was good. Today, not so much," Blackwell said, arguing that sending the Senate two "diametrically opposed" bills on the same subject may kill the effort entirely.

The "open carry with training" proposal is seen as having a better chance in the Senate, which has repeatedly rejected bills over the past decade that would legalize gun-toting without formalized training. Law enforcement leaders oppose both measures.

Backers of so-called "constitutional carry" contend requiring a class to legally carry is against their constitutional rights.

But both measures would keep in place all existing laws on where people can and can't legally carry. For example, guns would remain off limits in schools, courts and any business that posts a sign prohibiting them.

Rep. John King, D-Rock Hill, challenged his colleagues to allow people to carry their guns on all public property, including Statehouse grounds.

"You have your marching orders to do 'constitutional carry,' but if you exclude public property, how is it truly constitutional carry?" he asked sarcastically. "If youre going to allow people to walk the streets of Columbia, Rock Hill, Lexington, Orangeburg County, why cant it happen at the state capitol?"

Rep. Kirkman Finlay, R-Columbia, said the reason he allows concealed guns in his restaurants is because he views CWP holders as "the safest group of individuals I can bring in my restaurants."

More than 560,000 South Carolinians hold a CWP, which requires taking an eight-hour class, passing a background check and putting fingerprints into the law enforcement system, according to the State Law Enforcement Division, which handles the permitting.

"We have a program now that works," said Finlay, who voted against the bill. "I have grave concerns were getting ready to see a very different profile."

The issue clearly divided the chamber's GOP majority. No Democrat voted for it.

Eleven Republicans voted "no," including House Majority Leader Gary Simrill of Rock Hill; Speaker Pro Tem Tommy Pope of York, a former solicitor; and former York County Sheriff Bruce Bryant of Lake Wylie.

Rep. Justin Bamberg, D-Bamberg, urged his colleagues to fight back against lobbying groups' nasty, potentially dangerous tactics.

In 2019, then-House Judiciary Chairman Peter McCoy beefed up his security after someone threatened on social media to shoot him. The post came after a lobbying group accused the Charleston Republican of holding up the no-permit-needed bill, calling him the "#1 enemy of restoring our gun rights."

In recent weeks, Palmetto Gun Rights has sent out mailers accusing GOP legislators of stabbing gun owners in the back for voting for open carry with training. The mailers featured a photo of a man with his back to the camera wearing a T-shirt with "insert knife" written across the top and six red, X marks in a triangle pattern.

"No matter how much we disagree on issues, there is a line that's unacceptable to cross," said Bamberg, who voted against the bill. "I've seen some of the mailers. ... You should let them know thats not OK."

No legislator should have to worry about a child going to the mailbox and coming back asking, "Daddy, why does this say, 'Insert knife here?' That is disgusting."

Palmetto Gun Rights, the state affiliate of the National Association for Gun Rights, did not return a phone message April 7.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 17:06:50|Editor: huaxia

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TEHRAN, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Iran's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday confirmed the explosion in the country's commercial ship in the Red Sea, according to the Iranian Students' News Agency.

The Iranian commercial ship was slightly damaged in the explosion in the Red Sea off the coast of Djibouti on Tuesday, Saeed Khatibzadeh, spokesman for the foreign ministry, was quoted as saying,

The cause of explosion is under investigation, he added. Enditem
Congress leader on Wednesday batted for COVID-19 vaccine for all, saying every Indian "deserves the chance to a safe life".

The health ministry on Tuesday said the vaccine needs to be given to those who need it and not those who want it. The COVID-19 vaccine is currently available to all Indians above the age of 45 years.

"It's ridiculous to debate needs and wants. Every Indian deserves the chance to a safe life," Gandhi said on Twitter, using the hashtag "#CovidVaccine".

He later shared a video of a person being beaten up by police in Indore for alleged violation of COVID-19 norms.

"Such type of shameful, inhuman behaviour in the name of enforcing Corona guidelines is unacceptable to the country. Where should the public go when policemen who are supposed to protect people commit such atrocities," he said in a tweet in Hindi.

Gandhi also lauded the health warriors on World Health Day and shared a picture of his with them on Instagram.

"Our healthcare workers are our warriors in this battle against the pandemic. I salute their commitment, bravery and dedication to protecting their fellow citizens. I also thank their families for their incredible sacrifice to the greater good," he said.

"As citizens we need to do our part to control this virus the best we can, so mask up & follow all COVID safety protocols," he also said in his post on World Health Day.

(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 Manitoba K-12 Education Review, which resulted in Bill 64 and the accompanying action plan, Better Education Starts Today (BEST), ignores the views of educators, promotes standardization and invites privatization.

Opinion

THE Manitoba K-12 Education Review, which resulted in Bill 64 and the accompanying action plan, Better Education Starts Today (BEST), ignores the views of educators, promotes standardization and invites privatization.

The proposed reforms undermine public education and are reflective of similar efforts across Canada to break into, and break, public education while still seeking to prosper from it. Persistent defunding and political rhetoric are being employed to justify the erosion of a public good  a strong public education system.

While family and community engagement in schooling are undeniably important, the proposed legislation grants incredible powers to parents who are not required to have expertise in the field. Parent volunteers will be given the authority to assess the effectiveness of programming, analyze student achievement, determine areas of focused improvement, and evaluate and hire teachers.

Carl DeGurse (Expertise should guide school plan, March 20), a parent and columnist, rightly states, "Its arrogant and ignorant to dictate to professionals about their field of expertise, whether its doctors about medicine or mechanics about vehicles." The persistent devaluing of teacher professionalism is not new. Historically, teaching has been viewed as "womens work," due to the conflation of teaching and motherhood  that is, if teaching is "natural" to women, then it is not a profession.

In the current political context, provincial governments rely on this teacher-as-mother narrative in order to dismiss and devalue teacher professionalism, to silence criticism from teachers, and to justify educational reforms that contradict research. Teacher professional judgment should not be replaced by individual parent and corporate interests.

The Manitoba government is using results from standardized test scores to claim there is a "crisis" that needs to be addressed; this crisis rhetoric relies on flawed logic and faulty understandings. While we reject the use of standardized test scores to represent the complexities of student learning, the Manitoba School Boards Association (MSBA) and others have reported that Manitoba performs at or above the national average.

Out of the approximately 80 countries tested, Canada routinely scores around No. 10 in the world. The sky is not falling.

Regardless of the governments skewed use of testing data, standardized test scores do not measure student learning. Standardized tests are often created by for-profit publishers who are distant from educational decision-making. Researchers of assessment emphasize that standardized tests cannot reflect the vast curriculum differences across countries; cannot measure complex understandings, critical thinking, or creativity; breed compliance; and value homogeneity (thereby devaluing diversity of students). Standardized testing values a standardized student.

Finally, as researcher Jim Silver pointed out (Bill 64 Earns a Failing Grade, March 29), the most significant indicator of educational success is socioeconomic status. The reliance on standardized test scores allows the government to distract the public from systemic issues that impact learning, and rationalizes spending on implementing more testing and developing more "monitoring systems."

All of this detracts from meaningful, in-classroom formative assessment (i.e., tools that teachers use to elicit understandings of students learning and then inform their practices). It will also reduce time and resources for meaningful curricular engagements, such as inquiry projects, arts productions and community activities. More testing does nothing to address poverty.

The BEST report and Bill 64 are riddled with the language of business: streamline, outcome, modernization, choice, efficiency  which places a market logic on all elements of education. Schools are not businesses, and students are not products. The persistent defunding of public education requires schools to focus on money-generation and therefore effectively corporatizes and privatizes public schools.

As the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has reported, this is manifesting in many forms across Canada, and includes advertising, public-private partnerships, corporate sponsorships, incentive programs, corporately produced curriculum, sales of services, user fees and reliance on fundraising. Canadian researchers Ee-Seul Yoon and Sue Winton have demonstrated that when schools increase their reliance on public-private partnerships, inequities are exacerbated and dependency on private funds is normalized.

Private corporations have private interests  and we have just witnessed the effects of this in the running of personal-care homes as private businesses. When public education is measured by economic interests rather societal ones, decisions about the purpose of education are informed by "efficiencies" and profits rather than by human, educational and public worth.

Bill 64 undermines teacher professionalism, increases standardization and normalizes the reliance on private funding. As Noam Chomsky has written, public education is the gem of strong democracies. Protecting our democracy relies on a public education system that values teacher professionalism, centres rich and meaningful curriculums, and is proudly and publicly funded.

Shannon D. M. Moore and Melanie D. Janzen are former teachers who currently serve as associate professors in the faculty of education at the University of Manitoba.
Greenlands left-wing environmentalist party, Inuit Ataqatigiit, won a victory in general elections on Tuesday after campaigning against the development of a contentious rare earths mine partly backed by China.

The party, which had been in the opposition, won 37 percent of the vote over the longtime incumbents, the center-left Siumut party. The environmentalists will need to negotiate a coalition to form a government, but observers said their election win in Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark that sits on a rich vein of untapped uranium and rare earth minerals, signaled concerns from voters over the impact of mining.

The people have spoken, Mute B. Egede, the leader of Inuit Ataqatigiit, told the Danish broadcaster DR, adding that voters had made their position clear and that the mining project in Kvanefjeld in the countrys south would be halted.

Greenland Minerals, an Australian company behind the project, has said the mine has the potential to become the most significant Western world producer of rare earths, adding that it would create uranium as a byproduct. The company did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the vote.
Members of the National Ambulance Service working at a walk-in test centre on the grounds of Grangegorman Primary Care Centre in Dublin (Brian Lawless/PA Wire)

Irelands walk-in Covid testing centres around the country have detected 609 positive Covid cases since they were set up on March 25, the HSE has said.

The temporary centres, set up in different parts of the country, were established to actively seek out unknown Covid cases in the community.

No appointment is necessary, and asymptomatic people living in areas where the infection levels were high were encouraged to attend.

The system went live on March 30, and by the end of yesterday 22,500 had been through the testing process and 609 were found to be positive.

Read More

This gives an overall positivity rate of 2.7pc but four walk-in centres in Dublin had positivity rates much higher than that. The lowest positivity rate was in Athlone.

Finglas had a positivity rate of 5.35pc; Blanchardstown was 4.14pc; Irishtown was 3.68pc; and Crumlin was 3.19pc.

The positivity results for the other centres were Naas 1.98pc; Athlone 0.86pc; Balbriggan 1.6pc; Ballinasloe 1.5pc; Tallaght 2.55pc; Tullamore 1.93pc; Navan 1.18pc; and Grangegorman 2.15pc.

The highest positivity levels were found in people in the 15-24 age bracket. Nearly half the attendees were in the 24-40 age group.

The centres are set up on a rolling basis in areas where public health workers have noted increased community transmission but the reasons for that transmission are unclear.

The focus will remain on Dublin because that is where 50pc of the national cases are coming from, said a HSE spokeswoman.

We are pleased that the walk-in centres are showing up cases that would otherwise have gone undetected and this is helping reduce further transmission.

Through the walk-in centres we have discovered family and workplace outbreaks through asymptomatic cases.

The centres in Finglas, Balbriggan and Crumlin remain open today, and decisions will be made on possibly opening other centres on Thursday and Saturday, she added.

Niamh OBeirne, HSE National Lead for Test and Trace, said testing will help health teams understand why and how the virus is spreading.

Increasing the number of people we test will help us better understand how and why the virus is spreading quicker in certain areas, she said.

Asymptomatic testing is another tool in our tool box to stop the spread of this virus, as one in five people who have Covid-19 do not display symptoms.

These walk-in Covid-19 testing centres make it easier and quicker for people living in the areas, who dont have symptoms of Covid-19, to get tested and ensure they are not able to spread the virus without realising it, she added.

The tests at the walk-in centres are free, and open to people aged 16 and over who do not have symptoms of Covid-19 but would like to be tested.

To avail of the service a person must live within 5km of the walk-in testing centre and have not tested positive for Covid-19 in the last six months

They must bring photo ID with them to the test centre and provide a mobile phone number so the results of the test can be communicated back to them.
Coles is set to release a lush homewares collection on Friday April 9 as part of the new 'Best Buys' range.

Affordable planter pots, rattan-style decor, scented candles, ottomans and framed prints will be the latest products to arrive on store shelves.

Customers can give their homes a designer look on a budget as prices start at only $6.99 and don't exceed $49.99.

The limited edition range, developed in collaboration with homewares brand Marketlane, includes over 30 coordinated pieces.

But the collection will only be available for a limited time across 200 Coles stores nationwide while stock last, so customers are urged to act quickly.

Affordable planter pots, rattan-style decor, scented candles and framed art prints will be the latest products to arrive on store shelves (water hyacinth storage baskets and ottoman pictured)

Hold fond memories in stylish photo frames, fill a dire wall with simplistic wall art or store bouquets of flowers in the glass vase set for $9.99

Redecorate your home with vanilla scented candles, planter pots on wooden legs and set of two ceramic pears - all priced at $6.99.

Hold fond memories in stylish photo frames, fill a dire wall with simplistic wall art or store bouquets of flowers in the glass vase set for $9.99.

The set of three woven hyacinth storage baskets priced at $29.99 will also likely be a popular buy among shoppers.

The collection will only be available for a limited time across 200 Coles stores nationwide while stock last, so customers are urged to act quickly

Those wanting to purchase the perfect matching side tables are in luck as the range includes a set of two metal tables for only $49.99 (pictured)

Those wanting to purchase the perfect matching side tables are in luck as the range includes a set of two metal tables for only $49.99.

Complete the look with the stylish marble side table for the same price, along with the $16.99 set of two hyacinth trays.

Plant enthusiasts will likely pick up the $6.99 etched planted pots with wooden legs and fiddle leaf plant in a basket for $49.99.

Plant enthusiasts will likely pick up the $6.99 etched planted pots with wooden legs and fiddle leaf plant in a basket for $49.99

Ensure the home is always smelling fresh with the $6.99 vanilla scented candle or fill an empty desk space with the adorable $9.99 novelty succulent plant

Coles General Manager for Non-Food Jonathan Torr said: 'Our homes have become our havens over the past year so we're thrilled to be joining forces with a new and emerging brand, Marketlane to offer our customers the opportunity to shop amazing value, on-trend homewares which they'd normally find in a department or homewares store.'

'The range is completely coordinated so, as part of their everyday grocery shop, customers can decorate their homes with pieces they know will work beautifully together.'

The products will be readily available across selected stores located in New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria, Western Australia, the Northern Territory, Tasmania and the ACT.

Shoppers are encouraged to visit the Coles website for further information regarding participating supermarket locations.
Australias election watchdog is investigating whether Facebook pages allegedly run by besieged Queensland MP Andrew Laming breached the Electoral Act, as they did not include political authorisation disclosures.

Mr Laming is on leave while he undertakes counselling and empathy training after being accused of harassing two women online and taking a photo of a woman with her underwear visible while she bent over.

Queensland MP Andrew Laming will not recontest the next election. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

The Australian Electoral Commission has confirmed it is investigating whether Mr Laming breached the Electoral Act.

The Guardian reported Mr Laming ran more than 30 pages and profiles on the social media platform masquerading as community pages, news sites and an educational institute.
DKB Luch, a Kyiv-based design & development firm incorporated with the state-owned Ukroboronprom defense industries group, has announced it secured first export deals for its new multiple launch rocket system Vilkha-M.

According to Defense Express, in Ukraine, the Vilkha-M has continued through the Official Qualification Trials (OQT) process that is potentially leading up to Approval for Service Use.

"First export contracts for the MLRS Vilkha-M upgrade are there and signed," Luch has reported on its official Facebook account.

Interestingly, in this context, the Vilkha-M has been able to find its initial export customers even before it completes its ongoing OQT program and is officially adopted by the Ukrainian military, the report said.

The announcement came amid official reports that announced numerous extensions of the time frame for completion of the OQT program for the "Vilkha-M MLR launcher and the 300-mm missile R624M."

As at the start of last year, there was talk about Q2 2020, then this deadline was postponed till the end of 2020, and, finally, Approval for Service Use was preliminarily scheduled for some day in Q1 2021.

Currently available information reveals that the Vilkha-M was latest test launched on March 22-23 from Ali Bay testing range, outside of Odesa.

The latest test launches were most likely carried out with the R624M Vilkha-M missile, but there has been no official information published on whether the test launches were successful.

op
When bars and restaurants closed at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, many state and local governments suspended alcohol regulations to allow customers to order takeout premixed cocktails and drink in newly expanded outdoor dining areas. Now that the end of the pandemic is in sight, hopefully, there's a battle brewing over whether to make those changes permanent, The Wall Street Journal reports.

"Before the pandemic, just a few places allowed bars and restaurants to sell to-go cocktails, including a handful of local areas such as New Orleans," the Journal reports. "Thirty-three states and the District of Columbia passed emergency orders greenlighting it during the pandemic," and Washington, D.C., "Wisconsin, Kentucky, Ohio, and Iowa have already made such allowances permanent, while other states extended permission into next year."

Opposition to such moves is coming from beer distributors, liquor and convenience stores, and grocers' associations, as well as some city governments who argue that takeout cocktails could encourage underage drinking and drunk driving. Some municipalities and neighborhoods are also wary about ceding street parking and sidewalks to newly expanded outdoor dining.

In California, state Sen. Scott Wiener (D) is collaborating with a GOP lawmaker to permanently suspend liquor laws that prohibited drinking in outdoor food parks and sidewalk extensions. Modernizing liquor laws, some of which date back 100 years, is a longterm interest for Wiener. "The pandemic is a terrible thing in all respects, but it made us try out new things at a very rapid pace. And the sky didn't fall," he told the Journal. "There are more open minds among lawmakers than there otherwise would be."

Lawmakers loosened more than just alcohol regulations during the pandemic, of course  Colorado has already made permanent its temporary COVID-19 allowance for drive-through and walk-up marijuana sales, and it's considering doing the same for online weed sales, the Journal notes. You can read more about the battles over recreational substance regulations, and also telemedicine and cross-border health care, at The Wall Street Journal.

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Nearly all of the people whose convictions that Mr. Gonzalez is seeking to dismiss were charged with drug-related crimes, including many for low-level possession offenses. The group  mostly men arrested between 2004 and 2011  spanned generations: Several were under 20 years old at the time of their arrests, and dozens were older than 40.

Mr. Gonzalezs office was not certain of the racial breakdown, but believed that many were Black and Latino, groups who have represented a disproportionate bulk of many drug charges in the city.

Most of those who faced more serious charges for drug sales  27 people in total  spent between six months to a year behind bars. It was unclear how often the crime represented their first or only conviction, the district attorneys office and public defenders said.

Even those who did not serve lengthy sentences were left with criminal records, which can have long-term consequences for housing and work prospects. In recent years, attention on those lasting effects has grown. In New York and elsewhere, records of some minor convictions have been expunged  an attempt to make amends for what is now seen as overly aggressive policing of drug crimes in the past.

But erasing records can only go so far, public defenders say.

The damage is done at the point of arrest, said Tina Luongo, a lawyer who heads the criminal defense practice at the Legal Aid Society. They likely had bail set on them, spent time at Rikers Island, lost jobs, were separated from their families  no matter what happens, those harms were done.

One man who was arrested three times by Mr. Franco is set to have each case dismissed, lawyers said. The man, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of privacy concerns, said he was charged with several low-level drug crimes that he did not commit. Confronted with the prospect of a police officers testimony, he pleaded guilty.
Henry Golding and wife Liv Lo just welcomed their first child.

And the Crazy Rich Asians actor, 34, looked like he was loving fatherhood during a sunny walk around LA on Tuesday.

Henry was handsome as ever, rocking a black leather jacket while his radiant wife of four-plus years pushed their bundle of joy around in a stroller clad in a cream-colored sweater with matching pants.

Happy family: Henry Golding and wife Liv Lo enjoyed their first public outing with their newborn baby on Tuesday

The couple walked for a minute, doting on their little one before arriving at nearby cafe.

Golding and Lo found a table in the sun and chowed down while their baby rested in their buggy.

It was just Monday that the pair announced the arrival of their first child.

Golding shared the news on Instagram, posting a black and white photo taken shortly after their baby's birth.

Proud papa: The Crazy Rich Asians actor, 34, looked like he was loving fatherhood during the sunny walk with his wife of four years

Opposites attract: Henry rocked a black leather jacket while his radiant wife of four-plus years pushed their bundle of joy around in a stroller clad in a cream-colored sweater with matching pants

Lunch break: Golding and Lo found a table in the sun and chowed down while their baby rested in their buggy

Appearing in awe of his wife, the Snake Eyes star wrote: 'Your strength brought us our greatest joy.

'This woman right here. Beyond anything I could have ever imagined. Your strength brought us our greatest joy. Thank you, I love you.'

Lo, who works in the exercise industry with her company Fitsphere, posted, 'On March 31st our lives changed forever,' sharing a shot of the baby.

The Taiwan-born entrepreneur added, 'Ill prob be up during midnight breastfeeds checking in on you, but otherwise "Ill be back" xx.'

The couple, who exchanged vows more than four years ago in an August 2016 wedding in Sarawak, Malaysia, did not reveal the child's name or gender in the set of social media announcements.

The latest: The Snake Eyes actor announced he and his wife welcomed their newborn child on Monday

The Taiwan-born entrepreneur relaxed in her hospital bed

Lo, who works in the exercise industry with her company Fitsphere, posted, 'On March 31st our lives changed forever,' sharing a shot of the baby

The Gentlemen actor, speaking in February with Us Weekly, opened up about his forthcoming fatherhood, after the couple last year said they were expecting.

He said he and Lo were not anxious to make public all of the information about their child.

'We know the sex,' he said. 'We're keeping it on the down-low. We've got a name sort of rattling around, which I think it's only fair that my wife, she thinks that the baby should actually hear the name first. So, we've been trying to hold out on telling anyone.'

Golding, who stars in Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins, explained how he had been thinking about his nascent fatherhood.

'I want to be one of those cool dads; it's harder than it sounds,' he told the outlet. 'I think, I'm sure your kids go through phases of you being that greatest hero, to the most embarrassing human in their eyes. So I look forward to living out all of those.

Focused: The pair displayed shots of Lo in a hospital amid the birthing process

'I want to be the guy sort of dressing up in weird outfits and picking them up from school and embarrassing them, like, continuously.'

The couple last November revealed via social media that they're expecting their first child, in a set of pics displaying Lo's baby bump.

Golding wrote: '2021 is already looking brighter,' with an emoji of a heart and a baby.

Lo, who works in the exercise industry with her company Fitsphere, posted a shot writing, 'Such immense joy this little one has brought us already. Now we get to share it with you ... we love you!' with emojis of hearts and stars.
[April 07, 2021] Harvest Builders Announces Two New Companies Set To Disrupt Financial Technology Globally

Harvest Builders, a Calgary-based growth platform and venture studio, announced the addition of two new companies, One Wealth and Propra, to their studio's growing financial technology portfolio. Building off of the momentum of Harvest's first studio venture Neo Financial, who recently announced $50 million in Series A financing, Harvest's new fintech companies are set to add over 300 new jobs in Calgary's downtown over the next three years. "First with Neo Financial, and now with One Wealth and Propra, Harvest Builders has played a central role in developing these companies and creating hundreds of jobs in Alberta. This work is critical to the diversification of our economy and accelerating the growth of our emerging tech sector," said Doug Schweitzer, Minister of Jobs, Economy and Innovation. Led by Chris Simair, Cofounder and former CEO of SkipTheDishes, Harvest's venture studio ideates new business opportunities and brings in top-tier talent to work together in building and launching globally competitive companies. Harvest's studio strategy uses a synergetic approach that integrates companies and corporate partners in a specific industry to de-risk each venture and accelerate growth through shared infrastructure and resources. These companies, built internally within the studio, belong to a larger portfolio of startus Harvest supports across western Canada.



One Wealth

As a challenger in the Canadian wealth and investment management space, One Wealth will provide an end-to-end platform designed to create a personalized and transparent experience, including access to low-cost and alternative investment solutions. Co-Founders Jakob Pizzera and Nathan Di Lucca have extensive experience building, operating, and scaling innovative companies in North America including Shopify, Kudos, Element AI and Ritual. A third co-founder, a highly experienced financial services and fintech executive will be announced at a later date.* Propra

The property technology platform, Propra, offers an end-to-end property management solution focused on improving the rental management process for both landlords and tenants. Propra creates a seamless experience that solves inefficiencies across property management, search, and transactions. The founding team is led by Craig Adam, former SkipTheDishes and experienced executive leader in technology and engineering, and Calgary local Al-Karim Khimji, who brings global management consulting experience from McKinsey & Company (News - Alert) , and over a decade of experience in real estate, hospitality and development.

"Our Venture Studio narrows in on industries which exhibit significant inefficiencies. Within the studio's fintech portfolio we look for opportunities to create shared value that leads to powerful network effects and accelerated growth. When entities work in synergy, their alignment and shared energy create value that goes beyond what they could have accomplished alone," said Chris Simair, Managing Partner, Harvest Builders. "We also consider the network effect these businesses have on the broader tech ecosystem and community. By deploying private capital and attracting and developing world-class talent, we are creating an epicentre for future tech and innovation in Canada." Harvest belongs to a growing network of startups, tech accelerators, and entrepreneur support organizations in Calgary. Harvest and their studio's fintech companies will continue to expand in Calgary's East Village and downtown tech corridor, working towards cultivating an innovation campus that brings highly-skilled talent, resources and capital together to build new businesses and create opportunities for the province. In the past two years Harvest and their studio have grown into more than 30,000SF of office space in East Village with over 250 employees. "East Village's vibrant community is attracting diverse groups of people and talent that is critical to the community's long-term growth and development and is a great alignment with the mixed-use vision for EV," says Kate Thompson, CMLC's President and CEO. "We are thrilled to see companies like Harvest thrive in our community and are confident that this type of growth will continue to attract new businesses, talent and residents into our downtown." *One Wealth's application for its registration will be submitted for, and is subject to regulatory approval prior to, commencing any registerable activity. For more information on One Wealth, visit www.onewealth.io About Harvest Builders

Harvest Builders is an innovation platform for venture building and accelerated growth. Harvest's platform includes growth programs to launch, grow and scale startups from any stage, and a venture studio that supports internal ventures from ideation and company formation through product development, commercialization and growth. For more information about Harvest Builders visit Harvest. Builders View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005406/en/

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UN Warns over 27 Million Congolese Suffer From Acute Hunger

Two U.N. agencies warned Tuesday that over 27 million people in Congo are suffering from acute hunger, a record high representing almost one-third of the conflict-wracked African nations estimated population of 87 million.

The Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Program said those facing acute hunger include nearly 7 million people at the emergency level on the standardized IPC scale which analyzes the nature of a food security crisis.

The estimated 27.3 million Congolese need urgent action to save lives, reduce gaps in food availability, and protect livelihoods, the agencies said. At the IPC emergency level, at least 20 percent of households face extreme food consumption gaps, resulting in very high levels of acute malnutrition and excess deaths.

WFPs representative in Congo, Peter Musoko, said: For the first time ever we were able to analyze the vast majority of the population, and this has helped us to come closer to the true picture of the staggering scale of food insecurity in the DRC. Those are the initials of the countrys official name, the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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According to FAO and WFP, the Congolese most affected are the displaced, refugees, returnees, host families, those affected by floods, landslides, fires and other natural disasters and the poorest people in landlocked and urban and nearby areas.

The U.N. Security Council imposed sanctions on Congo after the end of back-to-back wars that destroyed much of the central African nation by 2002. Sporadic violence has continued to plague the vast nations mineral-rich eastern border region where local militias regularly clash with one another, as well as with Congolese army forces and perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

The FAO and WFP said conflict remains a key cause of hunger with large swathes of the conflict-affected eastern provinces of Ituri, North and South Kivu and Tanganyika, as well as the central region of the Kasais, the scene of recent conflict, the worst hit. Other key factors include the slump in Congos economy and the socio-economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, they said.

We need to urgently focus on growing food where it is needed most, and on keeping peoples sustenance-giving animals alive, the FAOs Congo representative, Aristide Ongone Obame, said in a statement. The main agricultural season is around the corner and there is no time to waste.

Expressing great concern at the recurring conflicts in eastern Congo, he said, social and political stability is essential to strengthen food security and boost the resilience of vulnerable populations.

WFP said it is is providing food to 8.7 million people in Congo and FAO said it aims to assist 1.1 million people in areas of high acute food insecurity with assistance to farm and raise livestock. WFPs Musoko said Congo should be able to feed its people. We cannot have children going to bed hungry and families skipping meals for an entire day, he said in a statement.
Farhan Towhid, a chronically depressed 19-year-old Texan who formed a murder-suicide pact with his older brother and killed their parents, sister and grandmother over the weekend, was raised in a religious Muslim family but acted against his faith, according to Hasmat Mobin, president of the Bangladesh Association of North Texas.

He was a ... religious person. He used to go to mosque. He used to go up to different places. His father used to take him. In the ninth grade, his problems [with depression] started, Mobin, who believes the strain of the COVID-19 pandemic on Farhans mental health could also have played a role, explained to The Christian Post on Tuesday.

Before joining his brother's plot to kill their family and then take his own life, Farhan detailed in a suicide note shared on social media that he was unhappy with his life. And life, he concluded, isnt worth living without happiness.

Lets start with the meaning of life. Everyone thinks the meaning of life is this deep unsolvable mystery, but the conclusion I came to is really simple: the only reason for existence is happiness. In fact, every decision you make is solely because it contributes to your overall happiness, he wrote.

Source:The Christian Post
A crime scene technician stands near the scene of a shooting at a business park in Frederick, Md., on April 6, 2021. (Julio Cortez/AP Photo)

Military Base Shooting Suspect IDd as Fantahun Girma Woldesenbet

The suspect in a shooting that left two U.S. Navy sailors injured was identified by officials as Navy medic Fantahun Girma Woldesenbet, officials said.

The shooting led to an active shooter emergency at a business park near Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, authorities said.

Woldesenbet, 38, shot the two sailors at a military institution at the Riverside Tech Park, officials said. After the incident, he fled the scene in his vehicle to Fort Detrick, where he was assigned, and was eventually shot and killed by military police after he brandished a gun, Brig. Gen. Michael J. Talley, the commander of the Army base, told reporters.

Its not clear if Woldesenbet used his service weapon in the shooting. Talley said it was not likely the case, and officials said he used a rifle but did not elaborate.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Navy said that it was sending our deepest condolences to all affected by this terrible act of violence and will continue to support the investigation.

And on Tuesday night, the Navy wrote in an update: One of the shooters two victims was released from the hospital this afternoon; while the other Sailor remains in critical condition.

Talley told reporters that investigators are looking into whether Woldesenbet knew the two victims. Officials also did not disclose a motive for the shooting.

Police talk near the scene of a shooting at a business park in Frederick, Md., on April 6, 2021. (Julio Cortez/AP Photo)

We dont want to compromise any aspect of the investigation, he said.

Frederick Police Chief Jason Lando said that local schools were placed on lockdown, adding that there were two different crime scenes.

When these incidents happen in other places, youre always grateful that its not your community, Frederick Mayor Michael OConnor said, according to news reports. But you always know, perhaps in the back of your mind, that, thats just luckthat there isnt any reason why it couldnt happen here. And today it did.

The incident prompted Democratic members of Congress to call for gun-control laws.

Americans are sick of breaking news alerts about deaths from gun violence, said Rep. David Trone (D-Md.) in a statement just hours after the shooting. Today, the Frederick community, including thousands of military personnel serving at Ft. Detrick, experienced the terrifying feeling of checking in on friends and family following news that gun violence had broken out in their community.

Fort Detrick is located about 50 miles north-northwest from Washington. Fort Detrick is home to the militarys flagship biological defense laboratory and several federal civilian biodefense labs. About 10,000 military personnel and civilians work on the base, which encompasses about 1,300 acres in the city of Frederick.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Hickman Police Investigate Report of Gun at School

By West Kentucky Star Staff

HICKMAN - Hickman police are continuing their investigation of a middle school student taking a gun to school last Thursday.KYTN reports that Hickman Police Chief Tony Grogan said officers learned of the situation Thursday afternoon, which involved a 10-year-old student.Chief Grogan said an investigation began when another student informed their parents of seeing a gun while on the bus ride home.The student said the 10-year-old showed them a magazine from a gun, which was seen in a backpack.The Chief said the Fulton County School Resource Officer, along with another Hickman police officer, then conducted a multi-hour investigation into the incident.The preliminary investigation concluded the handgun was never taken from the backpack at anytime during school hours.Chief Grogan said due to the incident, and information received from the investigation, charges are now pending against both the student, and the student's mother.
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Coronavirus cases have more than halved in a month and fallen in every age group a major surveillance study revealed last night  as experts said reopening schools has had little impact on the epidemic.

Imperial College London epidemiologists estimated 0.2 per cent of England's population, or one in 500, were infected between March 11 and 30 compared to 0.49 per cent in February, a fall of 60 per cent.

The biggest drops were recorded in the South East, where prevalence went from 0.36 per cent in February to 0.07 per cent in March, in London (0.6 to 0.16 per cent), and in the East of England (0.47 to 0.15 per cent).

The REACT-1 study - which randomly swabbed 140,000 people in the latest round - also suggested cases may have 'flattened off' in early April. But experts said this was nothing to worry about and insisted this was actually 'good news' because it means the slight easing of restrictions in late March has not caused a spike.

Writing in the study, the researchers said that small upticks in cases will become less meaningful now that the Covid vaccines have 'broken the link' between infections and deaths. More than 31million Britons - or three in five adults - have received their first dose.

Boris Johnson has given the go ahead to outdoor pubs and restaurants reopening on Monday, saying his four tests for moving to the next stage of England's roadmap out of lockdown - including cases still falling and ramping up vaccinations - had been met.

Further relaxations will see foreign holidays allowed from May 17, and the earliest date all restrictions on daily life could be relaxed - excluding face masks and social distancing - is June 21.

Separate data from the Department of Health - which publishes daily case updates - also shows the virus is still in retreat, with cases yesterday dropping by a third to 2,763 compared to last Wednesday.

Covid cases have more than halved in a month across England, a major surveillance study has found. But they levelled off in the first few days of April, although experts said this was nothing to worry about and it was 'good news' they were not surging

The Covid infection rate had also plunged in all age groups. The lowest rates were among over-70s, who have all been offered at least one dose of the Covid vaccine

Boris Johnson (pictured in Perranporth, Cornwall, yesterday) is steaming ahead with plans to ease lockdown measures that will see pubs, restaurants, hairdressers and gyms reopen in England on Monday

BRITAIN'S DAILY COVID CASES FALL BY A THIRD IN A WEEK Britain's daily Covid cases have fallen by a third in a week but deaths rose slightly, official figures revealed today. Department of Health data showed there were 2,763 new lab-confirmed cases recorded and 45 Covid deaths, which was two more than last Wednesday. More than 31.7million Britons - or three in five adults - have also now received their first dose, after the national drive began to pick up the pace yesterday following the Easter bank holiday. It comes as the UK's medical regulator today recommended all healthy under-30s should be offered an alternative to AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine amid mounting evidence that it may cause blood clots in very rare cases. In a blow to the programme, the Government's vaccine advisory group recommended healthy people aged 19 to 29 should be offered either the Pfizer or Moderna jabs when the roll-out is expanded. A review by the drugs watchdog the MHRA found that by the end of March, 79 out of 20million Britons vaccinated with the AstraZeneca jab had suffered deadly blood clots in the brain or arteries - a rate of about one in 250,000. Nineteen of these individuals died and three were under the age of 30. Anyone who has already had their first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, regardless of their age, is being advised to go for their second appointment as planned. Experts stressed the blood clots were very rare, and England's deputy chief medical officer Professor Jonathan Van Tam said the risk from Covid always outweighs that from vaccine side-effects for older age groups who are more likely to suffer hospitalisation and death if they catch the virus. Advertisement

The REACT-1 study is watched closely by ministers because it relies on random household swabbing, meaning it targets symptomless people adn those who aren't going out for tests. Asymptomatic infection is thought to make up a third of all cases.

Participants are asked to swab themselves for the virus, and then post their sample to the researchers where it is analysed to establish whether they may have caught the virus.

Scientists received 140,884 samples over March, and found 227 of them contained the virus. For comparison, 689 out of 165,456 samples had the virus on them the month before.

Infection rates had plunged among all age groups, and were lowest among over-65s (0.09 per cent) who have all now been offered at least one dose of the Covid vaccine.

They were followed by 55 to 64-year-olds (0.17 per cent), an those aged 25 to 34 (0.18 per cent).

Infection rates were highest among five to 12-year-olds (0.41 per cent) following the reopening of schools, although this was still lower than last month (0.72 per cent), and 18 to 24-year-olds (0.29 per cent).

Commenting on the figures Professor Paul Elliott, who leads the programme, said the dropping infection rates appeared to be following the 'pattern of timing of the vaccines'.

'In the last few days of April it did flatten off, but this is good news as it didn't go up with schools opening and more social mixing,' he said. 'I think we were pretty gratified that the rates hadn't gone up because that was certainly a possibility.'

But he added: 'It is clear we need to keep a close watch as the lockdown is eased further. It's that balancing act between opening up society more and more social mixing.

'On the other hand rates have got much lower than they were, and we are now looking at one in 500 people carrying the virus whereas only two months ago it was much higher than that.'

It comes amid mounting concern over Britain's vaccine drive as regulators today recommended the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine should be offered to under-30s instead of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Leaked Government figures suggest up to 75 per cent of the country's supplies over the next two months are from AstraZeneca, with ministers heavily relying on the jab to hit their target of vaccinating all adults by the end of July.

Experts stressed the benefits of the vaccine outweigh any risks for older people who are most at risk of dying or being hospitalised if they catch the virus, but said the picture was 'more complicated' for younger people.

Professor Stephen Riley, an infectious diseases expert also involved in the study, warned that should Britain's vaccination drive slowdown it was likely there would be a concurrent slowdown in falling infections.

'The faster the vaccine roll-out is then the less the increase in social interaction will contribute to infections,' he said in response to a question from MailOnline.

'If the vaccine roll-out slows down then we would expect to see higher levels of infection. It's obviously protecting the people from becoming positives in our study.

'Other recent data showed even people who do get infected after being vaccinated are not as able to infect other people.'

Scientists also said Covid vaccines now appeared to be breaking the link between someone catching the virus (black line) and hospitalisations (top red line) and deaths (bottom red line)

Data also showed the outbreak is now focused in the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber and the North West

The study also estimated England's R rate was currently 1.0, to reflect that cases appeared to have stopped falling in recent months.

This ties in with other estimates that have also shown the rate of falling infections has slowed as restrictions are eased, and cases get to very low levels.

The South East had the lowest infection rate in the country (0.07 per cent), followed by the South West (0.13 per cent) and the East of England (0.15 per cent).

On the other hand, the highest infection rate was in the North East (0.41 per cent), Yorkshire and the Humber (0.36 per cent), and the North West (0.31 per cent).
An Iranian cargo ship has come under attack in the Red Sea, Al Arabiya TV reported on Tuesday, quoting unnamed sources, and semi-official Iranian news agency Tasnim said the vessel was targeted by a limpet mine.

Al Arabiya cited the sources as saying the vessel was attacked off the coast of Eritrea and was affiliated with Irans Revolutionary Guards, but provided no evidence to support the assertion.

Tasnim identified the ship as the Iran Saviz. "The vessel Iran Saviz has been stationed in the Red Sea for the past few years to support Iranian commandos sent on commercial vessel (anti-piracy) escort missions," it reported.

It was the latest in a reported series of attacks on Israeli- and Iranian-owned cargo ships since late February in which the two arch-enemies accused each other of responsibility.
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President Muhammadu Buhari appointed Usman Alkali as the Acting Inspector General of Police because he was the most senior among those qualified to hold the position, an official has said.

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo said this Wednesday in Abuja while decorating Mr Alkali with his new position.

Mr Buhari, who appointed Mr Alkali, is currently in the UK for medical treatment.

Your selection by Mr President follows a rigorous process where all eligible Deputy Inspectors-General of Police and Assistant Inspectors-General of police were considered. The president then appointed you as the most senior qualified and eligible officer, Mr Osinbajo said.

Read the full statement by the vice president below.

Let me once again offer my congratulations to you, new Inspector-General of Police on your appointment. Your selection by Mr President follows a rigorous process where all eligible Deputy Inspectors-General of Police and Assistant Inspectors-General of police were considered. The president then appointed you as the most senior qualified and eligible officer.

This is a departure from the past when the selection of the new Inspector General of Police often meant the immediate retirement of a cohort of senior police officers whose vast experience and training would no longer be available to the country.

This appointment, which is largely on the basis of seniority and competence, will ensure that you have access to professional and experienced officers to support you in your new role.

Before I go on, let me thank the outgoing Inspector General of Police. I want to thank you for your services to this nation. And for your innovative work carried on through your years as the Inspector-General of Police; thank you for your services to Nigeria. IG, you are assuming office at a very turbulent time in the life of our people. There are multiple threats to law, order and public safety.

The role of law enforcement and particularly that of the police force as primary agency charged with maintaining law and order has never been more important. The police is our institution of first resort, the first line of defence against crime and anarchy and the first sign of the strength of the state.

Last year, Mr President signed the new police act, the first police reform legislation to be enacted in almost 50 years. The Act is the centrepiece of our commitment to reinventing the police as an institution that we can all be proud of. It articulates this administrations vision of the modern competent police force as an institution committed to the preservation of human rights and human dignity and protection of the public against all criminal threats. The challenges before you are indeed onerous and will test your mettle, the organisation you are leading is one that is itself facing several challenges. Your officers work still in extremely difficult conditions. And some face the threat of physical harm by terrorists, hostile non-state actors while in the line of duty but they have lived up to expectations.

There is no question at all that there is a lot that needs to be done. There is a lot of work that needs to be done. Under your leadership. The police must now rebuild in some ways also the broken bridges of trust to the public and regain the confidence of the citizenry. This is an ongoing challenge, it is an ongoing task that the police force and all of the senior members of the police force must take on as a responsibility, that of the continual process of building trust with the Nigerian people.

One of the ways you can do this is by implementing the community policing policy which had already taken off and reconceptualizing policing as a task carried out in partnership with local communities and by officers who are members of these localities. Under your leadership, the force must live up to all of the highest standards of professional conduct and compliance with the rule of law. It must significantly improve the welfare and working conditions of its officers while rapidly scaling up its forensic, logistical, logistical and operational capacities.

To meet todays challenges. You must stamp out the excesses and abuses and the culture of impunity, demonstrated by some elements of the force which provoke public outrage against institution. In short, your mission is nothing less than the restoration of dignity and high repute of the policing professional and the continuous oiling of that machinery of the police force that enables it to be one that is respected by the populace and by the international community.

The testimony of your pedigree and your career thus far is that you are up to the task. The administration stands ready to work with you to reposition the NPF and take it to unprecedented height of professionalism, competence and excellence.

I, therefore, welcome you as a key partner to this administrations comprehensive programme of reform aimed at repositioning the Nigeria Police Force as a modern, responsive and citizen-centred law enforcement service. We all expect that you will justify the confidence that Mr President has reposed in you, enable you to lead the force in these times. I congratulate you once more on behalf of Mr President, and his cabinet. I wish you all the very best in your tenure. Thank you.
A Taiwanese coast guard handles a machine gun at a fort on the Pratas Islands in the South China Sea in a file photo from January 2000.

Taiwan said Wednesday that it is willing to shoot down Chinese drones that have been flying near Taiwan-occupied Pratas Island in the South China Sea, a response to what analysts view as the latest pressure tactic from Beijing.

Ocean Affairs Council Chair Lee Chung-wei told Taiwans legislature that the Taiwanese coastguard had recently identified Chinese unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) operating near Pratas, which sits about 170 nautical miles to the southeast of Hong Kong in the northern part of the South China Sea.

Lee indicated that Taiwanese forces would open fire on UAVs that fly over the island, which is also claimed by the Peoples Republic of China.

If we need to open fire, we will open fire, Lee said, noting that the drones have thus far only circled Pratas and that similar activity has not been observed near Itu Aba  Taiwans base in the Spratly Islands which lie further south.

Lee did not specify what kinds of drones China has been sending to Pratas.

These drone flights, which Lee described as gray zone activity, come as China is ramping up pressure on Taiwan.

Aircraft belonging to the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) have been conducting regular flights through Taiwans air defense identification zone (ADIZ) for months on end, including through the southwestern portion of the ADIZ near Pratas, RFA reported in February.

The Ministry of National Defense reported a record 20 PLA aircraft entering Taiwans ADIZ on March 26.

Jessica Drun, a non-resident fellow at the Project 2049 Institute, told RFA that these gray zone activities are an attempt to wear down Taiwan psychologically and from a resource perspective.

This is happening against the backdrop of ever-deepening U.S.-Taiwan ties, a domestic population in Taiwan that has more or less rejected Chinas framework for cross-Strait relations, and an increasingly assertive Beijing the world over, Drun said.

Although Taiwan is a self-governing democracy, Beijing claims Taiwan as its own territory, to be annexed by force if it deems necessary.

While the drones currently operating near Pratas are likely to be for reconnaissance or testing Taiwans resolve, PLA researchers have written about the possibility of using armed unmanned systems in combat scenarios that would involve Taiwan.

For instance, PLA researchers have recently published studies on using unmanned surface vehicles, drone swarms and helicopter-like UAVs during amphibious landing operations, such as efforts to invade Taiwan or seize small islands like Pratas and Itu Aba.

Michael Mazza, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said that Pratas Island may be an attractive target for China.

China might one day wish to occupy the islands, either as a first step in an assault on Taiwan, as a means of coercing Taiwan into unification, as a way to test international responses to an attack on one of Taiwan's offshore islands, or as part of an effort to reenforce control over the South China Sea, Mazza said.

Taiwan and China are just two of the claimants in the disputed South China Sea. The others are Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

Even as China has been turning up the heat to assert its sweeping land and sea claims in the South China Sea and to pressure Taiwan, other militaries are making their presence known as well.

A U.S. carrier strike group conducted a bilateral military exercise with the Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) in the South China Sea on Tuesday and Wednesday, the U.S. Navy announced in press release.

The two days exercise aims to strengthen the bilateral relations and military diplomacy," the RMAF said in its own statement. The exercises are to "enhance the operational interoperability and overall cooperation among the two forces," it added.

Dizhwar Bukhari in Kuala Lumpur contributed to this report.
Traders, shopkeepers and restaurateurs clash with police during a protest next to the Chamber of Deputies in Piazza Montecitorio, Rome, Italy, earlier this week (EPA)

A global health crisis that could have brought humanity together in a spirit of solidarity was instead exploited by dictators and autocrats across the world to crack down on peaceful opponents, roll back democratic gains and step up surveillance efforts, according to a report issued on Wednesday by Amnesty International.

Governments across the world, but especially in the Middle East and North Africa region dominated by corrupt, repressive autocratic regimes, used the Covid-19 pandemic to silence, harass, arrest and even kill citizens, including the frontline health workers whom they publicly lauded as heroes of the pandemic.

Amnestys 408-page The State of the Worlds Human Rights also identifies trends in inequality and discrimination that it says likely exacerbated the pandemic, which continues to wreak havoc across the planet.

Pandemic times laid bare the devastating consequences of abuse of power, structurally and historically, said an introductory note by Agnes Callamard, the new director general of Amnesty. The Covid-19 pandemic may not define who we are, but it certainly has amplified what we should not be.

The report details how governments ruthlessly exploited the pandemic to deepen attacks on human rights and freedom of expression.

Read more:

Across the world, law enforcement used the pandemic as an excuse to block demonstrations against state violence, political repression or even mishandled Covid measures. Under the guise of enforcing lockdown rules, for example, nurses in Zimbabwe were arrested for protesting to improve their salaries and work conditions.

Hamfisted security measures meant to enforce public health frequently created far more risks. In Albania, police shot dead a 25-year-old man while enforcing quarantine measures, prompting days of protests and rioting where more people were assaulted and arrested by security forces. In Angola, police stopped and hassled a 20-year-old for not wearing a mask, firing a gun next to his ear and ultimately causing him to die of heart failure.

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Authorities across the world issued laws criminalising criticism of the pandemic. Journalists in nations that included Venezuela, Egypt, India, Iran, Nepal, Niger and the Republic of Congo were harassed or arrested for criticising or even reporting on government handling of the health crisis.

Autocratic regimes in Algeria, Jordan and Morocco imposed states of emergency that criminalised legitimate expression about the pandemic.

PA

Within days of the news of the Covid-19 outbreak, authorities in several countries across [Asia] tried to suppress information about it and punished those who criticized government actions, said the report, identifying China and Indonesia as particularly egregious violators of press freedoms.

In eastern Europe, citing national security concerns related to the public health, governments rushed through legislation to bolster surveillance capabilities. Other rightwing governments used the pandemic as an excuse to ram through long-coveted social measures, such as restricting access to abortion and womens health services, or to deny hormone therapy to trans people.

Israel used the pandemic to extend use of electronic surveillance capabilities usually targeting Palestinians to to trace Covid infections. Lithuania amended a law on electronic surveillance to allow the government to track peoples movements without judicial approval in order to quell the spread of the virus.

Particularly vulnerable were refugees and migrants in nations where they were forced to continue working or crowded into camps and detention centres without proper protections. Despite the lockdown measures, police in France continued to forcibly evict refugees and migrants from informal camps, effectively turning them into potential spreaders of the coronavirus.

While some governments took steps to release detainees to curb the spread of Covid-19, overcrowding and unhygienic conditions in places of detention endangered inmates, said the report. Continuing forced evictions increased peoples exposure to the virus by making them homeless.
Every year Lane Schiffman  who lives in Greensboro, N.C., and who co-owns a handful of high-end watch and jewelry stores, including Shreve & Co.  usually spends a couple weeks in Switzerland at the trade shows that have been anchors of the watch industry for decades.

But for Watches and Wonders Geneva, the virtual trade fair that hosts 38 brands and starts on April 7, he will be sitting in a friends house, watching each company unveil its newest timepieces on a computer screen.

Mr. Schiffman said he will miss having new watches in his hands and socializing with colleagues in person. He is realistic, however, about the current limitations on physical gatherings. Its not something we can do, so Plan B is the next best thing, and Plan B is to do things virtually, he said.

Certainly the online presentations this year have filled a pandemic-inspired need, but what happens to watch fairs when restrictions on large gatherings and travel are lifted?
CHICAGO, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In-depth analysis and data-driven insights on the impact of COVID-19 included in this Southeast Asia data center market report.

The Southeast Asia data center market is expected to grow at a CAGR of approximately 8% during the period 20202026.

Key Highlights Offered in the Report:

The Southeast Asia market witnessed investments from new entrants such as Stratus DC Management ( Singapore and the Philippines ), Regal Orion ( Malaysia ), and Kepstar Data Centre Management ( Cambodia ) which are developing hyperscale data center facilities that will be operational in 2021 and 2022. Singapore is an established data center market within Southeast Asia , followed by Indonesia , Malaysia , and Thailand . Vietnam , Cambodia , Myanmar , and the Philippines are emerging data center markets. The availability of land to develop greenfield data centers is very low in Singapore , leading to more brownfield construction, and data centers shifting to other countries such as Malaysia , Indonesia , and Thailand . According to the Uptime Institute, there are around 99 Tier certified data center facilities in the Southeast Asia , of which there more than 85 are Tier III and nine are Tier IV certified facilities. Most data centers in Southeast Asia adopt DRUPS systems to overcome power outages, and the demand is quite high in the market which will add significant revenue growth to DRUPS vendors operating in this region. Government entities are strengthening their internet infrastructure in the region with around 10 active submarine connectivity projects underway in Southeast Asia currently.

Key Offerings:

Market Size & Forecast by Revenue | 20202026

Market Dynamics  Leading trends, growth drivers, restraints, and investment opportunities

Market Segmentation  A detailed analysis by IT Infrastructure, electrical infrastructure, mechanical infrastructure, cooling technique, cooling systems, general construction, tier standards, and geography

Competitive Landscape  12 IT infrastructure providers, 17 support infrastructure providers, 15 data center contractors, and 16 data center investors

Get your sample today! https://www.arizton.com/market-reports/data-center-market-in-southeast-asia

Southeast Asia Data Center Market  Segmentation

The server market expects to witness significant growth in the next few years due to increased investments from large cloud service providers in the region. The adoption of converged and hyper-converged infrastructure solutions is projected to increase the demand for servers with multicore processors.

The data center generator market is likely to grow due to the construction of large and mega facilities across the Southeast Asia region. The adoption of efficient power systems such as gas generators is growing. The implementation of the carbon tax in countries such as Singapore has driven operators to opt for efficient generators.

region. The adoption of efficient power systems such as gas generators is growing. The implementation of the carbon tax in countries such as has driven operators to opt for efficient generators. Most data centers in Singapore design to cool infrastructure through water-based cooling techniques. The use of air-based cooling is low in Singapore than in other Southeast Asian countries. Data centers are designed for hot/cold aisle containment systems and are equipped with 42U and 45U racks.

Southeast Asia Data Center Market by IT Infrastructure

Servers

Storage

Network

Southeast Asia Data Center Market by Electrical Infrastructure

UPS Systems

Generators

Transfer Switches and Switchgears

PDUs

Other Electrical Infrastructures

Southeast Asia Data Center Market by Mechanical Infrastructure

Cooling Systems

CRAC & CRAH Units



Chiller Units



Cooling Towers, Dry Coolers, & Condensers



Other Cooling Units

Racks

Others Mechanical Infrastructure

Southeast Asia Data Center Market by Cooling Technique

Air-based Cooling Technique

Liquid-based Cooling Technique

Southeast Asia Data Center Market by General Construction

Core and Shell Development

Installation and Commissioning Services

Engineering and Building Designs

Physical Security

DCIM/BMS

Southeast Asia Data Center Market by Tier Standards

Tier I & II

Tier III

Tier IV

Southeast Asia Data Center Market  Dynamics

In April 2020, Keppel DC partnered with Toll Group for the development of a floating data center in Singapore based on modular data center designs that can be scaled based on demand. Keppel DC is likely to consider deploying the floating data center solution of Nautilus Data Technologies. In October 2020, Keppel DC signed an MOU with City Gas and City-OG Gas Energy Services 2020 to develop the hydrogen floating data center project. Data center operators install fuel cells to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and improve operating efficiency. Fuel cells are expected to be feasible choices in cities with high electricity prices and regular power fluctuations in grid supply. Most data center operators pursue the concept of fuel cells with hydrogen-powered fuel cells that provide advantages in terms of price and reliability. The price of fuel cells is around $0.12 per kWh, which is highly beneficial for data center operators, operating facilities in cities with electricity pricing of above $0.10 per kWh. For instance, the power cost in Singapore is over $0.12 per kWh, where fuel cells can be installed to reduce the OPEX.

Key Drivers and Trends fueling Market Growth:

Increasing Adoption of Renewable Energy

Rise in Adoption of the All-Flash & Hybrid Array

Increase in Data Center Investments

Increase in Cloud Adoption Driving the Data Center Market

Southeast Asia Data Center Market  Geography

Singapore is the major data center hub in Southeast Asia, with the presence of data center facilities operated by internet, cloud, telecommunication, and colocation service providers. Sub-sea fiber network connectivity to the country routes over 90% of the world's Internet traffic. The country's GDP is likely to be aided by the digital economy by around 0.5% on a YoY basis, with an estimated contribution of around $8 billion by 2020. According to the Singapore Internet Exchange (SGIX), the average inbound traffic increased to around 350 Gbps in May 2020 from 200 Gbps in May 2019. It is expected to grow exponentially with an increase in data center traffic between 2020 and 2026. In December 2020, Ericsson and Singtel deployed 5G network connectivity services in Singapore. In February 2021, Singapore telecom regulator IMDA is investing around $22 million to accelerate the adoption of 5G services in the country. Singapore-based telecom operator M1 has launched a stand-alone 5G network in parts of Singapore.

Get your sample today! https://www.arizton.com/market-reports/data-center-market-in-southeast-asia

Southeast Asia Data Center Market by Geography

Southeast Asia

Singapore



Malaysia



Thailand



Indonesia



Vietnam



Philippines



Cambodia & Myanmar

Key Data Center Critical (IT) Infrastructure Providers

Arista Networks

Broadcom

Cisco Systems

Dell Technologies

Fujitsu

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)

Huawei Technologies

IBM

Inspur

Lenovo

NetApp

Oracle

Key Data Center Support Infrastructure Providers

ABB

Bosch Security Systems ( Robert Bosch )

) Caterpillar

Cummins

Cyber Power Systems

Delta Electronics

Eaton

Fuji Electric

HITEC Power Protection

KOHLER-SDMO

Legrand

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation

Piller Power Systems

Rittal

Rolls-Royce Power Systems

Schneider Electric

Vertiv Group

Key Data Center Contractors

Arup Group

AWP Architects

Aurecon Group

CSF Group

Cundall

DSCO Group

Fortis Construction

Faithful+Gould

Kienta Engineering Construction

LSK Engineering

M+W Group (Exyte)

NTT FACILITIES Group

Nakano Corporation

PM Group

Sato Kogyo

Key Data Center Investors

AIMS Data Centre

AirTrunk Operating

Bridge Data Centres

BDx (Big Data Exchange)

Digital Realty

DCI Indonesia

DTP

Equinix

Iron Mountain

Keppel Data Centres

Kepstar Data Centre Management

NTT Global Data Centers

Regal Orion

Space DC

ST Telemedia Global Data Centres

VADS Berhad

Explore our data center knowledge base profile to know more about the industry.

Read some of the top-selling reports:

About Arizton:

Arizton Advisory and Intelligence is an innovation and quality-driven firm, which offers cutting-edge research solutions to clients across the world. We excel in providing comprehensive market intelligence reports and advisory and consulting services.

We offer comprehensive market research reports on industries such as consumer goods & retail technology, automotive and mobility, smart tech, healthcare, and life sciences, industrial machinery, chemicals and materials, IT and media, logistics and packaging. These reports contain detailed industry analysis, market size, share, growth drivers, and trend forecasts.

Arizton comprises a team of exuberant and well-experienced analysts who have mastered in generating incisive reports. Our specialist analysts possess exemplary skills in market research. We train our team in advanced research practices, techniques, and ethics to outperform in fabricating impregnable research reports.

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SOURCE Arizton Advisory & Intelligence
Fighting Chance Solutions To properly disinfect surfaces, you cant just spray on disinfectant without cleaning it first.

With plenty of schools now allowing in-person classes, many are concerned over the safety of the students. Even with the vaccines rolling out, the large majority of students are still vulnerable to the coronavirus.

Thats why in their mission to keep teachers and students safe; Fighting Chance Solutions has released a completely different product to their line-up.

Instead of building another door barricade device, FCS is now selling Bio-Solutions, a Covid-19 disinfectant kit designed for classroom desks and bus seats.

These kits, priced at $65, come with 12 packs of disinfectant pouches, 1 silkscreened 32 oz spray bottle, one sprayer, and one microfiber towel. Each of the 12 packs of concentrate pouches makes 1 quart of disinfectant spray.

The disinfectant has been EPA certified and is guaranteed to protect teachers, students, and anyone in the classroom from the Coronavirus. Also, unlike traditional disinfectants, Bio-Solutions is entirely odorless.

Fighting Chance Solutions has the kit up available on the website alongside the Sleeve and Rampart - both of which are door barricade devices.

Disinfecting Starts With Cleaning

To properly disinfect surfaces, you cant just spray on disinfectant without cleaning it first. Says Daniel Nietzel, CEO Fighting Chance Solutions. Disinfecting starts with cleaning.

According to package instructions, for best results, one should clean away any dirt on the desks surface or seat to prepare for disinfecting.

The sprayer that comes with the kit is perfectly sized. All one has to do is fill it with water and dump in one packet of disinfectant to create the perfect solution.

Then, all theres left to do is spray the surface with the disinfectant and wipe it clean with the microfiber towel - which also comes with the kit.

About Fighting Chance Solutions

Fighting Chance Solutions is a security product company based in Muscatine, Iowa. The company was formed when a group of teachers realized that conventional lockdown methods in active shooter situations were not enough.

Together, they created the Sleeve, an outward-swinging door barricading device that can activate in 2 seconds.

Since its release, the Sleeve has been providing safety and peace of mind to schools all across America.

When the pandemic swept across the country, Fighting Chance Solutions quickly shifted its focus to home security. With the Rampart, FCSs inward-swinging door security bar, the company has kept countless homeowners safe during uncertain times.

With schools beginning to open once more, FCS is again providing new safety solutions for everyone.

With the Bio-Solutions disinfectant kit, Fighting Chance Solutions aims to eliminate the new invisible enemy and make classrooms safe again.

Media Contact:

Daniel Nietzel

Fighting Chance Solutions

1414 Grandview Ave suite D,

Muscatine, IA 52761, United States

Telephone: 888-559-6412

Email: information@fightingchancesolutions.com

Website: https://fightingchancesolutions.com/
Joint Statement of Senate Minority Senate Minority Leader Franklin M. Drilon, Sen. Risa Hontiveros, Sen. Leila de Lima and Sen. Francis Pangilinan

We strongly condemn the red-tagging of the union of Senate employees and we vehemently denounce government officials who continue to label, brand, vilify, and harass individuals and organizations such as SENADO as state enemies and subversives.

We have been in the Senate long enough and we can attest that the SENADO union never acted as the "eyes and ears of the CPP-NPA-NDF in the Senate to hijack plans and programs of the government." These are dangerous allegations to make.

Hindi lang ito pag-atake at paninira nang walang batayan sa mga empleyado, kundi mismong sa institusyon ng Senado na kanilang kinakatawan.

The Sandigan ng mga Empleyadong Nagkakaisa sa Adhikain ng Demokratikong Organisasyon or SENADO is a legitimate union of employees in the Senate. Through SENADO, three Collective Negotiations Agreement (CNA) had been negotiated on behalf of the Senate employees with previous senate presidents, including Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon, who led the chamber for over eight years.

SENADO union upholds the interest and welfare of Senate employees, not of any other group.

Like COVID-19, we must prevent red-tagging from further spreading. Thus, we find it unfortunate and utterly deplorable that there are officials who resort to red-tagging.

National Intelligence Coordinating Agency director general Alex Paul Monteagudo and Undersecretary Lorraine Badoy's malicious attacks on our employees must not be taken lightly.

The lack of general condemnation and a law which penalizes red-tagging as a crime embolden these government officials and only normalize this prevailing culture of red-tagging.

Hence, the Senate Minority calls for the immediate passage of Senate Bill 2121 or the proposed "Act Defining and Penalizing Red-Tagging". We believe that the passage of this bill will serve as a deterrent against red-tagging. We should punish irresponsible officials who act as enablers of red-tagging.
Unemployed elephants begin 500km walk home

THAILAND: After waiting in vain for tourists near Pattaya for more than a year, five elephants and their owners are heading back to their northeastern home province of Surin  a 500 kilometre journey, on foot.

CoronavirusCOVID-19Chineseanimalstourismwildlife

By Bangkok Post

Wednesday 7 April 2021, 09:54AM

Five unemployed elephants and their owners begin walking from Pattaya to their native province of Surin, in tambon Nong Prue of Bang Lamung district, Chon Buri, yesterday (Apr 6). Photo: Chaiyot Pupattanapong.

Members of five extended families were walking with their five elephants, with a pickup truck protecting the group in the front and the back, along the road beside the Map Prachan reservoir in tambon Nong Prue of Bang Lamung district yesterday (Apr 6).

Napalai Mai-ngam, 26, said five years ago she had brought her relatives and their tamed elephants from Surin to work at an elephant resort in tambon Lam Huay Yai of Bang Lamung. They had made a good living, she said, receiving a monthly salary of B15,000 per elephant plus tips from tourists who enjoyed riding their elephants on nature trails.

COVID-19 stopped everything in January last year. Their employer suspended paying their salaries when the Chinese tourists who formed the majority of their customers disappeared, she said.

With no immediate return of tourists in sight amid the continuing pandemic, the natives of Surin finally gave up hope and decided to go back to farming in their home province.

Ms Napalai said her group set off early yesterday morning when the weather was not too hot. The pachyderms would have to walk the roughly 500kms to Surin because the owners could not afford to hire big trucks to carry them. The owners also hoped their elephants could feed themselves by grazing along the way.

Ms Napalai estimated that it would take about two weeks for her group to reach their home district of Tha Tum in Surin.

She said she was very grateful to villagers who donated fruit, drinking water and food to them as they passed by.

Ms Napalai said some people asked for their bank account numbers to make cash donations, but her group politely declined the offer for fear of being criticised for trying to cash in on their elephants via a social media story,

They would only receive food and fruit for their elephants, she said. The group could be reached by phone on 093-3357062.
EUGENE, Ore.  The sweeping $2.3 trillion infrastructure package proposed by President Joe Biden is being called a once-in-a-generation investment, and Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio said during an interview Wednesday its badly needed.

DeFazio chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, where a bulk of the spending is allocated. DeFazio said for Oregon, the bill would bring an influx of cash to fund overdue repairs.

The most important elements for us would be we have a lot of failed or failing bridges, particularly off the national highway system DeFazio said.

While he said the interstate bridges were taken care of in 2006, there are many critical county bridges and roads that need work. DeFazio said another top priority is public transit for both cities and rural areas where accessibility is currently limited to vehicles.

The package is also climate-focused with money for electric cars and clean energy, and jobs-focused with analysts estimating it will create over 2 million positions to chip away at unemployment.

We have great opportunities to use new materials that are more climate friendly. We can build it resilient to floods, other sea level rise in areas where that's a problem. Out here  earthquakes, fire are two known disasters and things that are a result of climate change, DeFazio said.

Democratic leaders have embraced Bidens plan, but Republican opposition to Bidens ambitious proposal came quickly. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell dismissed the package as nothing more than a Trojan horse for tax hikes.

The proposal includes a tax increase on large corporations to fund the upgrades, but DeFazio said thats just a proposal and the funding conversations are ongoing.

I think there are ways to get there that are not painful and not going to hurt the economy and are going to benefit everybody, DeFazio said.

For a breakdown of the package, see below.

INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS

 $115 billion to modernize the bridges, highways and roads that are in the worst shape. The White House outline estimated 20,000 miles (32,187 kilometers) of roadways would be repaired, while economically significant bridges and 10,000 smaller bridges would get fixed.

 $85 billion for public transit, doubling the federal governments commitment in an effort to shorten the repair backlog and expand service.

 $80 billion to modernize Amtraks heavily trafficked Northeast Corridor line, address its repair backlog and improve freight rail.

 $174 billion to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations, electrify 20% of school buses and electrify the federal fleet, including U.S. Postal Service vehicles.

 $25 billion to upgrade air travel and airports and $17 billion for waterways and coastal ports.

 $20 billion to redress communities whose neighborhoods  typically nonwhite  were divided by highway projects.

 $50 billion to improve infrastructure resilience in the aftermath of natural disasters.

 $111 billion to replace lead water pipes and upgrade sewer systems.

 $100 billion to build high-speed broadband that provides 100% coverage for the country.

 $100 billion to upgrade the resilience of the power grid and move to clean electricity, among other power projects.

 $213 billion to produce, preserve and retrofit more than 2 million affordable houses and buildings.

 $100 billion to upgrade and build new schools.

 $18 billion to modernize Veterans Affairs hospitals and clinics, and $10 billion for federal buildings.

 $400 billion to expand long-term care services under Medicaid.

 $180 billion invested in research and development projects.

 $300 billion for manufacturing, including funds for the computer chip sector, improved access to capital and investment in clean energy through federal procurement.

 $100 billion for workforce development.

TAX INCREASES

Bidens plan would finance projects by:

 Raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, one of the measures that over 15 years would cover the cost of the infrastructure program and then help to reduce the budget deficit.

 Imposing a 21% global minimum tax, so that companies cannot avoid taxes by shifting income to low-tax countries.

 Making it harder for businesses to merge with foreign companies to avoid U.S. taxes, a process known as inversion.

 Eliminating tax breaks for companies that shift assets abroad, and denying deductions for offshoring jobs.

 Imposing a 15% minimum tax on the income that corporations report to shareholders.

 Eliminating tax preferences for the fossil fuels sector.

 Increasing IRS audits of large corporations.
TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / April 7, 2021 / Talisker Resources Ltd. ("Talisker" or the "Company") (TSX:TSK)(OTCQX:TSKFF) is pleased to announce complete and partial drill assay results from its ongoing Stage One 50,000m drill program at the Bralorne Gold Project in British Columbia (Figure 1). Results have been received from the King Block (SB-2020-29), the Bralorne West Block (SB-2021-003A, SB-2021-004, SB-2021-005 and SB-2021-006) and the Bralorne East Block (SB-2021-001).

Key Points:

Drilling continues to demonstrate excellent gold grade and structural continuity.

Hole SB-2021-029 intersected previously unknown high-grade gold mineralisation ~750 metres below and along strike of the historic King Mine.

Talisker currently has four drill rigs on site and has completed 18,111 metres of its current 50,000 metre drill program.

A total of 4,965 samples are awaiting assay at the lab.

Today's results comprise assay results from the bottom half of hole SB-2020-29, the first hole drilled by Talisker in the King Block. Significantly, this hole demonstrates the potential for high-grade gold mineralisation below and along strike of the historic King Mine (Figure 2). From the Bralorne West Block, the bottom half of hole SB-2021-002, partial assay results from holes SB-2021-004, SB-2021-005 and SB-2021-006 and the complete set of assay results for hole SB-2021-003A were received. Also received were the bottom half of SB-2021-001 from the Bralorne East Block. All holes returned significant high-grade gold mineralisation further demonstrating the structural continuity of gold-bearing quartz veins along strike of the historic underground mines at the Bralorne Gold Project and will be incorporated into the dataset that will be used to define a resource estimate expected in 2022.

King Block

The first hole drilled by Talisker at the King Block suggests significant potential for high-grade gold mineralisation. Following on from the 5.09 g/t gold over 8.40m intersected in the top half of hole SB-2020-029 at King (press release March 16, 2021), the bottom half of the hole intersected high-grade gold mineralisation over 750m beyond the historic underground mine at King (Figure 2, Figure 3a and Table 1). More drilling is required to determine the continuity of these high-grade intersections.

Highlights from the King Block include:

SB-2020-029 9.95 g/t gold over 0.90m from 827.90m to 828.80m



Bralorne East Block

Hole SB-2021-001 was the first hole drilled to the east of the Empire fault and was designed to target near-surface gold mineralisation within the Bralorne East Block, and today's results represent the second half of the hole following the release of the first half in the Company's press release of March 16, 2021. High-grade gold mineralisation intersected at 514m downhole is ~300m from the nearest high-grade intersection (Figure 2, Figure 3b and Table 1), further expanding high-grade gold mineralisation to the southeast.

Highlights from the Bralorne East Block include:

SB-2021-001 13.90 g/t gold over 0.50m from 514.75m to 515.25m 12.85 g/t gold over 0.50m from 1,120.35m to 1,120.85m



Bralorne West Block

Drilling continues to demonstrate structural continuity along strike of the historic underground mine within the Bralorne West Block (Figure 2, Figure 3c and Table 1).

Highlights from the Bralorne West Block include:

SB-2021-003A 10.30 g/t gold over 0.70m from 537.80m to 538.50m

SB-2021-004 15.10 g/t gold over 1.00m from 380.70m to 381.70m

SB-2021-005 16.55 g/t gold over 0.60m from 407.05m to 407.65m

SB-2021-006 15.85 g/t gold over 0.60m from 556.60m to 557.20m



"Together with the consistency of the received gold grades, these results show significant down plunge extensions of the high-grade vein potential, particularly below the historic King Mine which was only mined to 350m from surface," commented Terry Harbort, President and CEO of Talisker, who added, "With each stepout hole we are seeing the dimensions of the system increasing from our initial view and we plan to increase our drill program to accommodate the new target areas."

Drill Hole Data

SB-2020-029 - King Block

Complete preliminary assay results have been received for this hole.

Talisker's first hole drilled proximal to the historic King Mine.

Previously released: The C Vein was intersected at 322.30m and produced an intercept of 8.42 g/t Au over 5.00m, including high values of 37.4 g/t Au over 0.50m from 323.10m, and 31.60 g/t Au over 0.50m from 326.80m depth.

The King Vein was intersected at 548.00m and produced an intercept of 4.49 g/t Au over 2.00m, including 6.12 g/t Au over 1.00m from 548.00m.

An Unknown Vein was intersected at 755.95m and produced an intercept of 5.37 g/t Au over 0.80m.

The BK Vein was intersected at 827.40m and produced an intercept of 6.71 g/t Au over 1.40m, including 9.95 g/t Au over 0.90m from 827.90m.

The Alhambra Vein was intersected at 935.90m and produced an intercept of 8.07 g/t Au over 0.60m.

This hole was suspended between December 14, 2020 and January 8, 2021 during a holiday break. SB-2020-029 was drilled to a final depth of 1,217.40m on February 18, 2021.

SB-2021-001 - Bralorne East Block

Complete preliminary assay results have been received for this hole.

Previously released: Unknown Vein produced 82.00 g/t Au over 0.50m from 171.40m depth.

The 77 Vein was intersected at 513.00m and produced an intercept of 4.98 g/t Au over 2.75m, including 13.90 g/t Au over 0.50m from 514.75m.

An Unknown Vein was intersected at 566.50m and produced an intercept of 4.46 g/t Au over 1.60m.

The 222 Vein was intersected at 1118.95m and produced an intercept of 5.24 g/t Au over 1.90m, including 12.85 g/t Au over 0.50m from 1120.35m.

This hole drilled to a final depth of 1,178.40m on February 3, 2021.

SB-2020-003A - Bralorne West Block

Complete preliminary assay results have been received for this hole.

The 55 Vein was intersected at 497.60m and produced an intercept of 2.98 g/t Au over 1.45m.

The 55FW Vein was intersected at 537.30m and produced an intercept of 6.31 g/t Au over 1.20m, including 10.30 g/t Au over 0.70m from 537.80m.

The 53 Vein was intersected at 693.75m and produced an intercept of 6.01 g/t Au over 2.90m, including 7.64 g/t Au over 1.40m from 694.25m.

This hole drilled to a final depth of 865.80m on February 4, 2021.

SB-2021-004 - Bralorne West Block

Partial preliminary assay results have been received for this hole.

The Knight Zone was intersected at 380.70m and produced an intercept of 15.10 g/t Au over 1.00m.

This hole drilled to a final depth of 683.00m on January 31, 2021.

SB-2021-005 - Bralorne West Block

Partial preliminary assay results have been received for this hole.

The Knight Zone was intersected at 407.05m and produced an intercept of 6.25 g/t Au over 1.70m, including 16.55 g/t Au over 0.60m from 407.05m.

This hole drilled to a final depth of 853.60m on February 18, 2021.

SB-2021-006 - Bralorne West Block

Partial preliminary assay results have been received for this hole.

The Empire Zone was intersected at 310.60m and produced an intercept of 10.05 g/t Au over 0.65m.

The 59 Vein was intersected at 556.00m and produced an intercept of 8.00 g/t Au over 1.20m, including 15.85 g/t Au over 0.60m from 556.60m.

This hole drilled to a final depth of 628.60m on February 14, 2021.

Bralorne Gold Project

Drill Holes SB-2020-029, SB-2021-001, 003A, 004, 005, 006 Diamond Drill

Hole Name From

(m) To

(m) Interval

(m) Au

(g/t) Zone Method

Reported SB-2020-029 548.00 549.00 1.00 6.12 King Vein Au-SCR24 SB-2020-029 549.00 549.50 0.50 1.44 Au-SCR24 SB-2020-029 549.50 550.00 0.50 4.29 Au-SCR24 SB-2020-029 755.95 756.75 0.80 5.37 Unknown Vein Au-AA24 SB-2020-029 827.40 827.90 0.50 0.87 BK Vein Au-AA24 SB-2020-029 827.90 828.80 0.90 9.95 Au-SCR24 SB-2020-029 935.90 936.50 0.60 8.07 Alhambra Vein Au-AA24 SB-2021-001 513.00 513.50 0.50 4.36 77 Vein Au-SCR24 SB-2021-001 513.50 514.20 0.70 1.57 Au-SCR24 SB-2021-001 514.20 514.75 0.55 3.34 Au-SCR24 SB-2021-001 514.75 515.25 0.50 13.90 Au-GRA22 SB-2021-001 515.25 515.75 0.50 3.27 Au-SCR24 SB-2021-001 566.50 567.10 0.60 6.40 Unknown Vein Au-AA24 SB-2021-001 567.10 567.60 0.50 4.38 Au-AA24 SB-2021-001 567.60 568.10 0.50 2.22 Au-AA24 SB-2021-001 1118.95 1119.85 0.90 0.66 222 Vein Au-AA24 SB-2021-001 1119.85 1120.35 0.50 5.88 Au-AA24 SB-2021-001 1120.35 1120.85 0.50 12.85 Au-GRA22 SB-2021-003A 497.60 498.30 0.70 1.09 55 Vein Au-AA24 SB-2021-003A 498.30 499.05 0.75 4.74 Au-AA24 SB-2021-003A 537.30 537.80 0.50 0.72 55 FW Vein Au-AA24 SB-2021-003A 537.80 538.50 0.70 10.30 Au-GRA22 SB-2021-003A 693.75 694.25 0.50 2.36 53 Vein Au-SCR24 SB-2021-003A 694.25 694.75 0.50 6.06 Au-SCR24 SB-2021-003A 694.75 695.65 0.90 8.51 Au-SCR24 SB-2021-003A 695.65 696.15 0.50 5.85 Au-SCR24 SB-2021-003A 696.15 696.65 0.50 5.29 Au-SCR24 SB-2021-004 380.70 381.70 1.00 15.10 Knight Zone Au-SCR24 SB-2021-005 407.05 407.65 0.60 16.55 Knight Zone Au-GRA22 SB-2021-006 310.60 311.25 0.65 10.05 Empire Au-GRA22 SB-2021-006 556.60 557.20 0.60 15.85 59 Vein Au-SCR24 SB-2021-001 1118.95 1119.85 0.90 0.66 222 Vein



Notes: Diamond drill hole SB-2020-029 has collar orientation of Azimuth 135; Dip -45. Diamond drill hole SB-2021-001 has collar orientation of Azimuth 121; Dip -69. Diamond drill hole SB-2021-003A has collar orientation of Azimuth 194; Dip -59. SB-2021-004 has collar orientation of Azimuth 127; Dip -62. SB-2021-005 has collar orientation of Azimuth 135; Dip -48. SB-2021-006 has collar orientation of Azimuth 120; Dip -45. True widths are estimated 40 - 90% of intercept lengths and are based on oriented core measurements where available. Method reported includes the most up to date information as of this press release.

Talisker is providing an opportunity for shareholders and other interested parties to participate in a Webinar to be held at 4 pm ET on Thursday, April 8th. To register, please click on the following link - https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_SbNtMIJvTey9WYbOnhNUyw. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

About Talisker Resources Ltd.

Talisker (taliskerresources.com ) is a junior resource company involved in the exploration of gold projects in British Columbia, Canada. Talisker's projects include the Bralorne Gold Complex, an advanced stage project with significant exploration potential from a historical high-grade producing gold mine as well as its Spences Bridge Project where the Company holds ~85% of the emerging Spences Bridge Gold Belt and several other early-stage Greenfields projects. With its properties comprising 282,403 hectares over 258 claims, three leases and 198 crown grant claims, Talisker is a dominant exploration player in the south-central British Columbia. The Company is well funded to advance its aggressive systematic exploration program at its projects.

For further information, please contact:

Terry Harbort

President & CE

Terry.harbort@talliskerresources.com

+1 416 361 2808 Mick Carew

VP, Strategic and Corporate Development

mick.carew@taliskerresources.com

+1 604 803 7711

Qualified Person

The technical information contained in this news release relating to the drill results at the Bralorne Gold Project has been approved by Leonardo de Souza (BSc, AusIMM (CP) Membership 224827), Talisker's Vice President, Exploration and Resource Development, who is a "qualified person" within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101, Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects.

Sample Preparation and QAQC

Drill core at the Bralorne project is drilled in HQ to NQ size ranges (63.5mm and 47.6mm respectively). Drill core samples are minimum 50 cm and maximum 160 cm long along the core axis. Samples are focused on an interval of interest such as a vein or zone of mineralisation. Shoulder samples bracket the interval of interest such that a total sampled core length of not less than 3m both above and below the interval of interest must be assigned. Sample QAQC measures of unmarked certified reference materials (CRMs), blanks, and duplicates are inserted into the sample sequence and make up 9% of the samples submitted to the lab for holes reported in this release.

Sample preparation and analyses is carried out by ALS Global, at their laboratory in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Drill core sample preparation includes drying in an oven at a maximum temperature of 60C, fine crushing of the sample to at least 70% passing less than 2 mm, sample splitting using a riffle splitter, and pulverizing a 250 g split to at least 85% passing 75 microns (code PREP-31).

Gold and in diamond drill core is analysed by fire assay and atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) of a 50g sample (code Au-AA24), while multi-element chemistry is analysed by 4-Acid digestion of a 0.25 g sample split with detection by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (ICP-MS) for 48 elements (Ag, Al, As, Ba, Be, Bi, Ca, Cd, Ce, Co, Cr, Cs, Cu, Fe, Ga, Ge, Hf, In, K, La, Li, Mg, Mn, Mo, Na, Nb, Ni, P, Pb, Rb, Re, S, Sb, Sc, Se, Sn, Sr, Ta, Te, Th, Ti, Tl, U, V, W, Y, Zn, Zr).

Gold assay technique Au-AA24 has an upper detection limit of 10ppm. Any sample that produces an over-limit gold value via the Au-AA24 technique is sent for gravimetric finish via method Au-GRA22 which has an upper detection limit of 1,000 ppm Au. Samples where visible gold was observed are sent directly to screen metallics analysis and all samples that fire assay above 3 ppm Au are re-analysed with method Au-SCR24 which employs a 1kg pulp screened to 100 microns with assay of the entire oversize fraction and duplicate 50g assays on the undersize fraction. Where possible all samples initially sent to screen metallics processing will also be re-run through the fire assay with gravimetric finish provided there is enough material left for further processing.

Caution Regarding Forward Looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this press release constitute forward-looking information. These statements relate to future events or future performance. The use of any of the words "could", "intend", "expect", "believe", "will", "projected", "estimated" and similar expressions and statements relating to matters that are not historical facts are intended to identify forward-looking information and are based on Talisker's current belief or assumptions as to the outcome and timing of such future events. Actual future results may differ materially. In particular, this release contains forward-looking information relating to, among other things, the operations of the Company and the timing which could be affected by the current global COVID-19 pandemic. Those assumptions and factors are based on information currently available to Talisker. Although such statements are based on reasonable assumptions of Talisker's management, there can be no assurance that any conclusions or forecasts will prove to be accurate.

While Talisker considers these assumptions to be reasonable based on information currently available, they may prove to be incorrect. Forward looking information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. Such factors include risks inherent in the exploration and development of mineral deposits, including risks relating to changes in project parameters as plans continue to be redefined, risks relating to variations in grade or recovery rates, risks relating to changes in mineral prices and the worldwide demand for and supply of minerals, risks related to increased competition and current global financial conditions and the COVID-19 pandemic, access and supply risks, reliance on key personnel, operational risks, and regulatory risks, including risks relating to the acquisition of the necessary licenses and permits, financing, capitalization and liquidity risks.

The forward-looking information contained in this release is made as of the date hereof, and Talisker is not obligated to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws. Because of the risks, uncertainties and assumptions contained herein, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The foregoing statements expressly qualify any forward-looking information contained herein.

Figure 1: Map showing seven zones that comprise the Bralorne Gold Project, drill holes included in this press release, major gold-bearing quartz veins (white) and associated bounding structures, surface infrastructure and details of Talisker's current 50,000 metre resource drilling program.

Figure 2: Long-section through the Bralorne deposit (refer to figure 1 for reference) showing the relative target depths for both the near-surface bulk tonnage gold mineralisation and the high-grade veins below, and drilling completed by Talisker with drill intercepts (in red) and highlight intersections.

Figures 3a, 3b and 3c: Maps showing highlighted drill intersections from Bralorne East, Bralorne West and King (see Figure 1 for reference) - a) Hole SB-2021-001 drilled within Bralorne East; b) Hole SB-2020-029 drilled within King; and c) Holes SB-2021-003A, SB-2021-004, SB-2021-005 and SB-2021-006 drilled within Bralorne West.

SOURCE: Talisker Resources Ltd.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/639230/Talisker-Extends-High-Grade-Gold-Mineralisation-750m-Down-Plunge-at-King-Block-Bralorne-Gold-Project
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - April 7, 2021) - Bucephalus Capital Corp. (CSE: BCA) ("Bucephalus" or the "Company") is pleased to provide an update on its future direction.

Bucephalus Capital is a publicly traded investment company whose primary objective is to invest its funds for purposes of generating returns from capital appreciation and investment income. It intends to accomplish these goals through the identification of and investment in securities of private and public entities with a focus on companies participating in disruptive innovation. Innovations in blockchain technology, artificial intelligence, energy storage and robotics will be the principal drivers of the new age economy.

"We are pursuing investments in companies that are addressing these opportunities in innovative and technologically advanced ways. Our team will strive to accelerate the growth of these companies by providing capital, establishing advisory relationships and providing strategic advice to leadership," said John McMahon, Bucephalus CEO.

Further, the Company is pleased to announce that it intends to complete a non-brokered private placement (the "Private Placement") for gross proceeds of up to $1,500,000 through the issuance of up to 10,000,000 units (the "Units") at a price of $0.15 per unit. Each Unit will consist of one subordinated voting common share ("Common Share") and one Common Share purchase warrant. Each Common Share purchase warrant is exercisable into one additional Common Share at a price of $0.25 for a period of 36 months from the closing date. In the event that the closing price of the Common Shares of the Company on the Canadian Securities Exchange is greater than $0.75 for ten consecutive trading days, the Company may give notice to the holders of the warrants that the expiry time of the warrants has been accelerated and the warrant will expire on the thirtieth (30th) business day following the date of such notice at the price of $0.25 for each warrant exercised. The Private Placement is scheduled to close on or around April 23, 2021.

A finder's fee may apply to a portion of the proceeds raised under the Private Placement. All securities issued pursuant to the Private Placement will be subject to a four month hold period from the date of issue. Proceeds from the Private Placement will be used by the Company for working capital and for other general and administrative costs.

About Bucephalus Capital Corp.

Bucephalus Capital Corp. (CSE: BCA) is an investment company that is seeking investment opportunities in private and publicly listed entities.

Additional information about the Company can be found on the Company's website at www.bucephaluscapital.ca. For further information, please contact:

John McMahon, CEO

Tel: (416) 786-9031

Email: jmcmahon@ bucephaluscapital.ca

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. 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.

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada 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/79604
[April 07, 2021] Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis Implements CrewPro Short Line

PS Technology (PST) is pleased to announce the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis (TRRA) has adopted CrewPro Short Line to help modernize the management of their crews. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210406006071/en/ "We found the PST solution to be the most complete and functional system available for our needs," said Ron Tindall, TRRA President. "And, importantly for us, this real-time tool will help streamline and improve our operations very quickly." TRRA's crew scheduling and hours-of-service (HOS) requirements will now be handled by CrewPro software. Workers can also check their own status at any time with a mobile device, easing the workload on crew callers. Used by multiple railroads, the cloud-based system automates previously labor-intensive record keeping ad scheduling processes while helping ensure regulatory compliance. Additionally, the crew management solution provides a single point for worker information and recordkeeping.



TRRA owns and operates the Merchants Bridge, the MacArthur Bridge, a rail switching facility in Madison, Illinois, and several key railroad routes in St. Louis, Missouri, and Madison and St. Clair Counties in Illinois. "We are extremely pleased to be working with such a well-respected leader in terminal and switching facility operations," says Seenu Chundru, PST president. "TRRA immediately saw the benefits and implications of using a cloud-based, modern crew management system, and we are gratified they recognized the ease and nuances our solution brings to railroads. We are railroaders, designing for the rail industry and take great pride in that."

About PS Technology PS Technology is committed to delivering significant and measurable returns to its clients and partners. For over three decades, PST has improved the processes and systems surrounding crew management, timekeeping and physics-based simulation solutions with integrity and a desire to create value. PST's asset management systems power the largest railroads in North America. PST's crew management and timekeeping solutions have been used to manage the day-to-day operations of over 100,000 employees that run, maintain and support rail operations across more than 120,000 miles of rail. PST's physics-based simulation solutions provide a premium learning environment. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210406006071/en/

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The defendant is accused of threatening to kill two Turkish neighbours during a confrontation at flats in south Belfast. (Niall Carson/PA)

A man allegedly brandished a knife and coughed at police officers after declaring he had Covid-19, a court has heard.

Ahmed Buuni is also accused of threatening to kill two Turkish neighbours during a confrontation at flats in south Belfast.

The 43-year-old defendant, a Somali national, claims he was the one attacked and robbed by suspected cocaine dealers.

Buuni faces charges of attempted grievous bodily harm, threats to kill, possessing an offensive weapon, criminal damage, common assault and assault on police. Belfast Magistrates Court was told he allegedly approached the complaints with a large knife on Claremont Street on February 3. "Fearing he would attack them, they locked themselves in their room," a Crown lawyer said. PSNI officers called to the scene found Buuni on the stairs. The prosecutor contended: "He approached police with the knife, putting them in fear. However, he dropped it when challenged. "He was restrained... but informed police that he had Covid symptoms and began coughing directly at the officers." During a bail application, defence counsel John OConnor set out counter-claims that Turkish men living above Buuni were dealing cocaine. "These Turkish nationals entered the applicants home with a knife, assaulted him and stole 40," the barrister alleged. "He managed to take the knife off them. They fled and called police. When police arrived, he was standing in the communal stairwell holding the knife." Judge Peter Prenter was told Buuni was an asylum seeker who arrived in Ireland nearly 20 years ago. Granting bail for the accused to live at another address in the city, Mr Prenter barred him from returning to Claremont Street.


Christian Defense Coalition Supports the Biden Administration as They Work with Allied Nations to Consider a Boycott of the 2022 Beijing Olympics

Reverend Mahoney Being Arrested in Tiananmen Square During the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics



NEWS PROVIDED BY

Christian Defense Coalition

April 7, 2021



WASHINGTON, April 7, 2021 /Christian Newswire/ -- It would be unconscionable for America and the free nations of the world to participate in the Beijing Games while China is committing genocide against the Uyghur's, oppressing Hong Kong, bulldozing churches, persecuting all religious minorities and trampling free speech and human rights against their own citizens.



Here is a link to a news article of 180 worldwide human rights groups urging a boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics: https://thehill.com/policy/international/537363-180-human-rights-groups-urging-boycott-of-beijing-olympic-games.



Rev. Patrick Mahoney, Director of the Christian Defense Coalition in Washington, D.C., has been an outspoken critic of the human rights abuses in China for over 40 years. In 2008, he was involved in an effort to boycott the Beijing Summer Olympics and was arrested in Tiananmen Square (pictured above) during the Olympics speaking out for human rights. He was threatened with six months in prison and is currently banned from China.



Rev. Mahoney states; "It would be unconscionable for America to participate in the Beijing Olympic Games while China is committing genocide against the Uyghur's, oppressing Hong Kong, bulldozing churches, persecuting religious minorities and crushing free speech and human rights against their own citizens.



"We call upon America and the world not to give the Chinese Communist Party an international propaganda platform before billions of people worldwide through the Olympic Games. How can we honor a country where Uyghur's are living in concentration and forced labor camps, Hong Kong democracy leaders are sitting in prison with no bail, Christian Churches are bulldozed, political and religious dissidents are daily being brutalized and persecuted and so many more human rights atrocities?



"Simply stated, America must say no the 2022 Beijing Olympic Games." Kris Keating, President of Bright Mercy, adds; "Hosting the Olympics is an honor that is endorsed by those countries that participate. As China refuses to cease the oppression and genocide of minorities, I ask that the United States again stand against tyranny and oppression by boycotting the Olympic Games in China.



"This is an unprecedented opportunity to hold China to a higher and better standard for safeguarding human rights for people in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The United States government must also be an advocate for a return to democracy in Hong Kong. We must loudly urge against any compromises with respect to the human rights abuses occurring under Chinese authority." For more information or interviews call:

Rev. Patrick Mahoney at 540.538.4741



SOURCE Christian Defense Coalition



CONTACT: Rev. Patrick Mahoney, 540-538-4741



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A former teacher from Missouri has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for trying to buy a deadly chemical weapon on the dark web as part of a plot to kill a woman who had broken up with him.

Jason Siesser, 46, of Columbia, was handed his punishment on Tuesday in Jefferson Citys federal court, prosecutors said in a news release.

In August, Siesser pleaded guilty to one count of attempting to acquire a chemical weapon and one count of aggravated identity theft.

Former Missouri teacher Jason Siesser, 48, was sentenced to 12 years in prison after pleading guilty to attempting to acquire a chemical weapon and aggravated identity theft

Investigators said Siesser tried twice in 2018 to buy chemical dimethylmercury, capable of killing hundreds, using Bitcoin on the dark web.

Siesser told the seller: 'I plan to use it soon after I receive it.'

He is accused of placing the order in the name of a juvenile in his care without permission, but authorities said he was the person who accepted the package he thought contained the chemical when it was delivered.

Authorities said the amount Siesser sought would have been enough to kill as many as 300 people.

Law enforcement officers carried out a search warrant after delivery of the package, which contained a harmless, inert substance.

Investigators found the package on a top of a shelf in Siessers garage, as well as earlier delivered packages containing the toxin cadmium arsenide, a toxic compound, which can be deadly if ingested or inhaled; cadmium metal and hydrochloric acid.

Siesser lived and worked at this group home for youths in Columbia, Missouri, and used the identity of a juvenile to order the deadly chemical

A search of Siesser's home had turned up writings that prosecutors said articulated his heartache, anger, and resentment over a breakup, and a desire for the person who caused the heartache to die.

'They say I should let it go but my hatreds just too strong,' Siesser wrote, according to an affidavit. 'Letting go of anger is the right thing but it makes me feel so strong I dream about your ending You burn up in flames You suffocate on your own blood Your soul completely drained.'

In another note he wrote in part: 'Our early ending was all wrong. You discarded me like trash but look how I got strong... The darkness that consumes me will overflow one day. You were there to teach me something I already knew Now its my turn to teach you a lesson filled with pain Your life is forfeit, flushed down the drain.'

According to the charging documents, Siesser had two relationships with women that left him brokenhearted.

Siesser was married to a woman and lived with her in the Netherlands until 2012. After years of separation, Siesser and his wife divorced in 2017 when he met another woman in Columbia, Missouri.

When federal agents raided Siesser's home, they found writings that expressed heartache, anger, and resentment over a breakup

Although they had only three dates, Siesser felt a strong connection with his new girlfriend, and when she abruptly broke off the relationship with him, Siesser was depressed for six months and sought counselling.

The affidavit states that Siesser wrote fictional stories about men exacting vengeance on ex-girlfriends. In one story, a man used a fertilizer spreader to lace a woman's yard with asbestos, which ultimately killed her decades later. In another story, a man locked a woman in scuba gear in a submerged box so she would die when her oxygen tank was depleted.

The juvenile, whose name Siesser used to purchase the toxic chemicals, revealed in an interview with federal agents that the man had told him he 'wanted to be an assassin and killed those who had wronged him in the past,' including his ex-wife and 'others.'

Prosecutors had previously said that they did not believe a public attack was planned.

Siesser's attorney told the New York Times that the 48-year-old, a former teacher who had served in the military, has been struggling with mental health problems and expressed remorse.

A LinkedIn page associated with Siesser reveals that he served in the US Army for four years, later worked in customer support in the Netherlands, and most recently taught social studies at a high school in Higbee, Missouri.
ORION TOWNSHIP, MI  A 4-month-old baby boy was allegedly abandoned by his mother in a wooded area in Southeast Michigan today.

Police suspect prescription drug abuse contributed to the near tragic incident, according to a news release from the Oakland County Sheriffs Office.

Within 30 minutes of learning the boy was missing, sheriffs deputies found him face down on the bank of a creek in a wooded area near Waldon and Joslyn roads in Orion Township, police said. When he was found, the child was wet, cold and in a hypothermic state.

Its unclear how long the infant was in the woods, police said. He is now at St. Joseph Mercy hospital where he is in good condition but will be kept overnight for observation. He is in the care of Child Protective Services.

RELATED: Abandoned newborn rescued from Michigan woods

Thankfully, deputies were able to determine a baby was missing, which triggered an immediate large response and search, and they were able locate the child, Sheriff Michael Bouchard said in a statement. Their quick work avoided what could have been an unspeakable tragedy.

The department is seeking a warrant for the mothers arrest on suspicion of child abuse.

The case began at 8:35 a.m. today, April 7, when two area residents called 911 to report a woman hiding bushes and ringing doorbells, police said. The woman was distraught and apparently believed someone with a gun was chasing her. Staff at a nearby middle school then reported that a frantic woman was pounding on locked doors at the school.

Deputies found the 37-year-old Orion Township woman. They learned during their interview that the woman had an infant son who was not with her, police said. She also had burrs on her pants, suggesting she had been in a wooded area or field.

A one-mile search area was determined between the womans home, the school and homes of the neighbors who had called 911, police said. Thirteen sheriffs patrol cars were dispatched to the area for the search, along with a K-9 unit. A drone and aviation unit were in route when the boy was located, about half an hour after he was determined to be missing.

Deputies and Orion Township emergency medical personnel treated the child at the scene by removing his wet sleeper and wrapping him in blankets, police said. He was then transported to St. Joseph Mercy.

READ MORE:

Petition demands Michigan pause in-person classes until COVID-19 spread is reduced

Motorcyclist killed in Lapeer County crash

St. Joseph Mercy Hospital Ann Arbor nears capacity as Michigan sees COVID-19 hospitalizations rise
COVID-19 case numbers and deaths continue to rise in Papua New Guinea, but health charities say theres a second health crisis looming alongside the growing epidemic as the pandemic causes major setbacks to tuberculosis treatment programs.

The PNG government is planning to start a full national rollout in May, but experts say the country needs more help with the complicated logistics of delivering vaccines and healthcare to the countrys 9 million residents.

Medical staff of Papua New Guineas Defence Force are being trained to deal with the nations COVID-19 outbreak. Credit:WHO/Papua New Guinea

Next week, the country will receive 132,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from India, PNGs Health Minister Jelta Wong told Reuters. China has also agreed to supply the country with 200,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine.

Australia has sent 8000 doses to PNG for healthcare workers, but has not received a response from Europe regarding a request to send 1 million AstraZeneca doses being held offshore to the developing country instead of Australia.
Ambassador Dang Dinh Quy, Permanent Representative of Vietnam to the UN, reiterated Vietnams consistent policy to support non-proliferation and disarmament of all weapons of mass destruction during a UN Security Council meeting on April 6.

Ambassador Dang Dinh Quy, Permanent Representative of Vietnam to the UN, chairs a UNSC open VTC on chemical weapons in Syria. (Photo: VNA)

Vietnam condemns the use of chemical weapons which is a flagrant violation of international law and presents an immediate threat to the lives and living environment of civilians, he said while chairing a UNSC open video-teleconference (VTC) on the situation and chemical weapon issue in Syria.



Quy emphasized the importance to fully implement the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) to achieve the goal of ridding the world of chemical weapons.



He encouraged the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the Syrian authority to enhance cooperation in the most earnest and constructive manner in order to fully address the remaining issues and work towards the full implementation of the CWC and Resolution 2118 on the elimination of the chemical weapons programme of Syria.



The Vietnamese diplomat also called for a constructive and non-politicized engagement of all parties so as to achieve a lasting solution to this issue, including at the 25th session of the Conference of the State Parties to the CWC to be resumed later this month.



In her remarks at the event, Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Izumi Nakamitsu said the Office for Disarmament Affairs has continued to maintain regular contact with counterparts at the OPCW on its activities related to this matter.



She highlighted the ongoing efforts to clarify the remaining outstanding issues regarding the initial declaration of Syria to the OPCW, saying the OPCW Declaration Assessment Team and the Syrian National Authority held the 24th round of consultations in February, during which they conducted technical meetings and interviews regarding the outstanding issues.



Vietnam holds the rotating presidency of UNSC in April.

VNA

Vietnam vows to best fulfil role as UNSC Presidency in April Vietnam will strive to outstandingly perform its role as the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) President in April, significantly contributing to realising the foreign policy set by the 13th National Party Congress.
WASHINGTON  The Defense Department announced Tuesday that it would retain the Trump administrations policy and keep antipersonnel land mines in its arsenal, reserving the right to use them in war.

In a statement, Mike Howard, a Pentagon spokesman, called such weapons a vital tool in conventional warfare that the military cannot responsibly forgo, particularly when faced with substantial and potentially overwhelming enemy forces in the early stages of combat.

The announcement drew swift condemnation from human rights groups. The Pentagon press secretary, John Kirby, subsequently addressed the issue with reporters, saying Mr. Howards words were accurate and factual, but he added that the land mine policy was under review.

The current policy dates to Jan. 31, 2020, when Mark T. Esper, the secretary of defense under President Donald J. Trump, announced a major change to the Pentagons policy on antipersonnel land mines, small explosive weapons that are buried underground or laid on the surface and meant to kill or maim people. Their use was permitted so long as the weapons had self-destruct features or could self-deactivate.
The Company Provided an Operations Update About the Increased Sales Growth at its Flagship Massachusetts Cannabis Center

BOSTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / April 7, 2021 / AmeriCann, Inc. (OTCQB:ACAN), a cannabis company that develops state-of-the-art cultivation, product manufacturing and distribution facilities, provided financial and operational updates for its flagship project, the Massachusetts Cannabis Center.

AmeriCann's Operating Revenue from the Massachusetts Cannabis Center increased nearly 60% for the quarter ending March 31, 2021 from the prior quarter.

AmeriCann's Massachusetts Cannabis Center is located on a 52-acre parcel in Southeastern Massachusetts. The project is permitted for 987,000 sq. ft. of cannabis cultivation and processing infrastructure, which is being developed in phases, and supports both the existing medical cannabis and the adult-use cannabis markets.

The initial phase of the development, Building 1, is a 30,000 square foot cultivation greenhouse and processing facility, that utilizes AmeriCann's proprietary "Cannopy" cultivation system. Building 1 is fully occupied by Bask, Inc., an existing Massachusetts licensed vertically integrated cannabis operator.

AmeriCann receives Base Rent and a Revenue Participation Fee from Bask of 15% of all gross monthly sales of cannabis, cannabis-infused products and non-cannabis products produced at Massachusetts Cannabis Center.

"The significant increase in Operating Revenue for the quarter is a continuation of quarterly revenue increases for AmeriCann," stated CFO, Ben Barton. "Our Building 1 facility is relatively new and there are many catalysts that should serve to contribute to continued growth for the future."

A summary of operational highlights included the following:

AmeriCann's Operating Revenue from Building 1 increased nearly 60% for the quarter that ended March 31, 2021 from the prior quarter.

The manufacturing of cannabis infused products, including the recently launched 1906 branded "Drops", has increased dramatically at the Massachusetts Cannabis Center. Sales of manufactured infused products are expected to be even stronger once the full portfolio of 1906 "Drops" are launched later this spring.

AmeriCann's joint venture partner, Bask, Inc. added adult-use retail sales in February. Although this retail sales channel was only introduced mid-quarter, the increased sales contributed to the record quarterly revenue.

In February 2021, the Massachusetts market sold $100 million of cannabis which was an increase of 50% from February 2020. The growth from the prior year included infused edible products, gaining 69%. Both flower and pre-rolls were up 46%, and concentrates were up 49% from the prior year. The strength of the Massachusetts market is reflected in the Commonwealth having the highest average purchase prices in the nation and the second highest price per-gram within U.S. adult-use markets.

Cannabis sales nationally have been excellent as the industry has produced strong sales growth in markets across the country.

AmeriCann has secured cultivation and manufacturing licenses for Building 2 - the next phase of the Massachusetts Cannabis Center. Building 2 calls for approximately 400,000 additional square feet of cannabis cultivation, manufacturing and distribution infrastructure.

Plans for the 400,000 sf Building 2 facility will accommodate both Bask and AmeriCann in dedicated cultivation spaces. Additionally, AmeriCann will operate a centralized product manufacturing facility in Building 2 designed to support the entire 1 million square foot MCC campus. AmeriCann was awarded two licenses from the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission including one for cannabis cultivation and one for cannabis product manufacturing

About AmeriCann

AmeriCann (OTCQB:ACAN) is a cannabis company that develops cultivation, processing and product manufacturing facilities.

AmeriCann uses greenhouse technology which is superior to the current industry standard of growing cannabis in warehouse facilities under artificial lights. According to industry experts, by capturing natural sunlight, greenhouses use 25 percent fewer lights, and utility bills are up to 75 percent less than in typical warehouse cultivation facilities. As such, AmeriCann's Cannopy System enables cannabis to be produced with a greatly reduced carbon footprint, making the final product less expensive. Additionally, greenhouse construction costs are nearly half of warehouse construction costs.

AmeriCann is also designing GMP Certified cannabis extraction and product manufacturing infrastructure. The Company has secured licenses to produce cannabis infused products including beverages, edibles, topicals and concentrates. AmeriCann plans to operate a Marijuana Product Manufacturing business at the Massachusetts Cannabis Center.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the "Exchange Act") (which Sections were adopted as part of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995). Statements preceded by, followed by or that otherwise include the words "believe," "anticipate," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "plan," "project," "prospects," "outlook," and similar words or expressions, or future or conditional verbs such as "will," "should," "would," "may," and "could" are generally forward-looking in nature and not historical facts. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the Company's actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any anticipated results, performance or achievements. The Company disclaims any intention to, and undertakes no obligation to, revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, a future event, or otherwise. For additional uncertainties that could impact the Company's forward-looking statements, please see the Company's Registration Statement on Form S-1 which may be viewed at www.sec.gov.

Contact Information:

Corporate:

info@americann.co

www.americann.co

@ACANinfo on Twitter

@AmeriCann on Facebook

@AmeriCannInc on Instagram

AmeriCann, Inc on LinkedIn

SOURCE: AmeriCann, Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/639268/AmeriCann-Announces-Record-Breaking-Quarterly-Revenue
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Teacher Ciara Sotscheck pictured with pupils in her classroom of St. Josephs NS in Coolock . Picture; Gerry Mooney

The pandemic has affected all pupils, but teacher Ciara Sotscheck can see how disadvantaged pupils and those with special needs have suffered the most.

They had difficulty accessing online learning in the same way as other pupils, she said. And children with special needs also lost out on resource hours, because special education teachers have been used to cover Covid-related absences of mainstream teachers.

Ms Sotscheck teaches at St Josephs NS, Bonnybrook, Coolock, Dublin, an area of socio-economic disadvantage. Her branch of the Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO) was among those behind a motion to the annual conference seeking a range of supports for pupils with special needs post-pandemic.

Ms Sotscheck says its not just about catch-up, but to give them more of a chance, particularly for those who are transitioning to post-primary.

One specific measure sought by conference delegates is that no school would lose its current special education teacher (SET) allocations for two years.

Allocations of SETs are linked to pupil numbers and level of need and, with a general fall in primary enrolments, schools are vulnerable to a cut.

Proposing a motion to conference on special education, Eimear Mannion, of the Loughrea branch, said: Many schools will need additional support, increased funding and immediate access to professional services.

She welcomed a recent Department of Education circular confirming SET allocations for the coming year, but said it was imperative that this arrangement continues for a minimum of two years.

She said Covid-19 had impacted immeasurably on the lives of every child or person, but it has especially affected children in receipt of additional support.

It can be incredibly difficult to reinforce new concepts or to monitor performance when online. Feedback from some of our most vulnerable pupils was sporadic and was compounded by the fact that some were not proficient in the use of ICT.

Ms Mannion said vulnerable children have lost out in other ways during lockdown, including access to services, such as speech and language therapy, if their needs had not already been identified.

Class teachers on their own cannot sufficiently bridge the learning gap for most vulnerable children without support and intervention of special education teachers and access to professional services, she said.
BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - European stocks were flat to slightly higher on Wednesday as economic recovery hopes grow amid steady progress with coronavirus vaccinations and additional government stimulus. Final PMI numbers were in focus this morning, with the Eurozone's services PMI increasing from 45.7 to 49.6 in March. That was up from a preliminary reading of 48.8. Traders await the minutes of the most recent Federal Open Market Committee meeting for clues as to when the U.S. central bank might raise rates. The pan European Stoxx 600 was marginally higher at 435.32 after rising 0.7 percent on Tuesday. The German DAX slipped marginally, giving up early gains while France's CAC 40 index rose 0.2 percent and the U.K.'s FTSE 100 was up 0.7 percent. AstraZeneca shares were down about 0.6 percent. The University of Oxford announced that it is halting the trial of the Covid vaccine developed by the company on children and teenagers. Roche shares fell over 1 percent. Discount carrier Ryanair Holdings gained nearly 1 percent after trimming its annual loss estimate. Royal Dutch Shell rose half a percent. The oil & gas company said it expects to make the first profit from pumping oil since the start of the pandemic. Rival BP Plc gained nearly 2 percent and Total SE added half a percent. Societe Generale advanced 1.5 percent. The French bank said it has entered into talks with asset manager Amundi with a view to disposing of the asset management activities operated by Lyxor. BNP Paribas, Banco Santander, Lloyds Bank and Barclays rose about 1 percent. Finland's Nokia Corp was moving higher after it concluded a multi-year, multi-technology patent cross-license agreement with Chinese PC and mobile maker Lenovo Group Ltd. 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.
GULFPORT, Miss., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Hancock Whitneyconsistently one of America's strongest, safest banksrecently released the company's 2020 Environmental, Social Responsibility, and Corporate Governance (ESG) Report spotlighting the 122-year-old organization's community commitment and success in a year of unprecedented regional, national, and global challenges.

The Hancock Whitney ESG report provides a comprehensive, corporate-level look at the company's focus on environmental sustainability, social awareness and action, and transparent, accountable governance in 2020. Company leaders said consolidated information represents the grass-roots client and community commitment of 4,000-plus associates, particularly as the people and places they serve faced a barrage of figurative and literal storms last year, including the pandemic and direct hits from four hurricanes.

"Our founders opened our doors expecting us to carry on the core values they set forth. Since then, generations of associates have sustained those ideals through what they do every day to serve clients and communities," said Hancock Whitney President and Chief Executive Officer John M. Hairston. "Today, our associates help us strive to uphold the highest standards of environmental, social, and governance responsibility while helping people achieve their financial goals and dreams. That commitment is important to us at any time, but especially in a challenging year such as 2020."

A recent study released by Greenwich Associates reported that 50 percent of executives at America's small and mid-size businesses consider ESG commitment important to their companies' long-term success and in choosing their bank. Greenwich Associates is the leading global provider of data, analytics, and insights to the nancial services industry and known for recognizing the best of the best among banks bringing quality service to clients. Hancock Whitney has earned 201 Greenwich Associates awards since 2005.

"We embrace our ESG obligations as community stewards and strive to align with the needs of our clients, investors, and all community participants where we operate," added Hairston. "We also realize our clients recognize our ongoing commitment to ESG and the positive impact that commitment has as we work together to build community success benefiting all of us. We're proud to be a strong financial and community partner, and we're grateful for our clients' and hometowns' continued confidence in Hancock Whitney."

To learn more about Hancock Whitney's ESG commitment and to download the Hancock Whitney community report, click www.hancockwhitney.com/esg.

About Hancock Whitney

Since the late 1800s, Hancock Whitney has embodied core values of Honor & Integrity, Strength & Stability, Commitment to Service, Teamwork, and Personal Responsibility. Hancock Whitney offices and financial centers in Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas offer comprehensive financial products and services, including traditional and online banking; commercial and small business banking; private banking; trust and investment services; healthcare banking; certain insurance services; and mortgage services. The company also operates a loan production office in Nashville, Tennessee. BauerFinancial, Inc., the nation's leading independent bank rating and analysis firm, consistently recommends Hancock Whitney as one of America's most financially sound banks. More information is available at www.hancockwhitney.com.

SOURCE Hancock Whitney Bank

Related Links

http://www.hancockwhitney.com


The Alabama House approved a bill that would make changes to the pension system for Birmingham city employees after shutting down debate between Jefferson County lawmakers who disagreed on the legislation.

Birmingham legislators who wanted to delay a vote on the bill said it was wrong for representatives from other districts to cut off the discussion.

Youre telling us we dont have the right to fight for issues that our constituents have asked us to fight for, Rep. Mary Moore, D-Birmingham, said.

The bill, by Rep. Allen Treadaway, a Republican from Morris, would increase the contribution employees make to the pension system from 7% to 7.5%. The bill would make other changes that Treadaway and other supporters said would reduce the pension systems unfunded liability over time and protect the fund in the long run.

Treadaway is retired from the Birmingham Police Department and has served on the pension board. Mayor Randall Woodfin and other city officials spoke in favor of the bill at a public hearing in March.

Today, several legislators from Birmingham raised concerns about how the bill would affect employees and whether employees had received explanations about the changes it would make.

If people had been talked to in advance, you would not have the hardships you have now, Moore told Treadaway. Moore said the bill would be beneficial but asked that the vote be delayed to allow more communication with employees.

Reps. Juandalynn Givan and John Rogers of Birmingham questioned Treadaway about the bill. Givan, a former city employee, said she had heard from employees who said they didnt think they were getting straight answers about the bill. Rogers said the bill would unfairly affect those employees who could least afford to pay the higher rate.

Rep. David Wheeler, R-Vestavia Hills, filed a cloture petition to stop the debate on the bill and force a vote. The House approved the petition on a 58-23 vote.

The House then passed the bill by a vote of 24-3, with 53 abstentions. (The vote was first recorded as 24-2, but Moore later added her no vote).

Rogers said he would not forget the cloture vote and said he would make it a point to involve himself in local bills of the lawmakers who participated.

This is Birmingham, nobody elses business, Rogers said. But I guarantee you, its over with now.

Treadaways bill moves to the Senate.

Alabama and national politics.
CLEVELAND, Ohio  If you are one of Ohios thousands of undocumented immigrants, public health officials want you to know this: You are welcome at the federal mass vaccination clinic in downtown Cleveland. And U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are not.

In an interview last week, Sima Merick, executive director of the Ohio Emergency Management Agency, emphasized that the vaccination clinic at Cleveland State Universitys Wolstein Center is open to all who seek a COVID-19 vaccine, regardless of citizenship. Despite the heavy presence of military and police personnel inside and around the facility, ICE will never be there, and shot-seekers should not be deterred by fear of detainment on account of their immigration status, Merick said.

In all of our pre-calls, that was one thing that was addressed  that (ICE) would not be on site, Merick told me. This site is not intended for anything other than getting shots in arms. Weve worked hard to remove barriers for folks and make it as comfortable as possible for anyone -- ANYONE -- who wants and needs to get vaccinated.  The more people we vaccinate, the quicker we can all go back to what we, as humans and individuals, see as our normal. Hugging parents, going to our houses of worship, and being out in society again.

According to the Migration Policy Institute, Ohio is home to an estimated 87,000 undocumented immigrants, mostly from Mexico, India, Guatemala, China and El Salvador. In February, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a statement, calling it a moral and public health imperative to ensure all people have equal access to the vaccine and articulating the agencys policy that ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protections will not conduct enforcement operations at or near vaccine distribution sites.

During a coronavirus briefing in recent weeks, Gov. Mike DeWine affirmed that policy, when he answered a reporters question about undocumented immigrants with words of encouragement to get the vaccine.

We would love to get you vaccinated, DeWine said, directing his comments toward the undocumented population. Its important for you. Its important for your family. Its important for the rest of us.

At the Wolstein Center, the policy is just one way that public health officials have thoughtfully designed the patient experience with an eye toward comfort, minimizing anxiety and removing barriers to getting inoculated against the deadly virus that already has claimed the lives of more than 18,000 Ohioans.

If youve been there to get your shot, you know firsthand that theres little room for improvement -- with secure and free parking, a well-organized flow in and out of the convocation center, and friendly military personnel, who thank you profusely for choosing to get vaccinated.

Under the stationary patient model used there, patients are directed into one of hundreds of folding chairs set up on the Wolstein Centers main floor, while clinic staff circulate among the group to ask general health questions, hand out vaccination cards and ultimately, administer the shot.

Daniel Baker, planning supervisor for Ohio EMA, told me that the Wolstein Center is the first time the model has been used for vaccine deployment on such a large scale, servicing as many as 6,000 people a day at the facility. The goal, of course, is to eliminate the long lines and confusing stations that could deter people from a mass vaccination site.

Coupled with that, is the impressive variety of languages that the sites interpreters are able to accommodate, including Arabic, Chinese, French, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish and American Sign Language. Patients can also use special tablets connected to speakers to access interpretation for one of 274 other languages, site organizers said.

This is exciting as the dickens, Merick said of the technology. When I got to see this pre-opening, I was stunned.  Its heartwarming to know that anyone can come in there and not feel like they have to contend with a language barrier.

But theres even more to the thoughtful design of the place. Patients who require quiet spaces to receive their shot, such as those with social anxiety or sensory issues related to the autism spectrum, will find those accommodations at the Wolstein Center. The same is true for people whose religious convictions call for a private setting before baring a shoulder. And if a patient has a gender preference for the medic who administers the injection, those requests are honored too.

If patients can go through our site expeditiously and comfortably, and their family and friends hear those great reviews, think of the long-term public health ramifications of that, Baker told me. How much vaccine hesitancy have we been able to erode by providing such a positive experience for the people who have come through our site?

All of this, plus free RTA bus rides to and from the centrally located Wolstein Center, makes a compelling case to make your appointment. And theres still time to do it. The eight-week clinic, launched March 16, continues to release appointments as they become available. All Ohioans over the age of 16 are eligible.

Go to https://gettheshot.coronavirus.ohio.gov/, and enter the ZIP code 44115 to select the Wolstein Center as your preferred site after verifying your eligibility. (If Wolstein doesnt show up immediately in the list, check back later. A spokeswoman for DeWines office assured me last week that the Ohio Department of Health is working on a better way of notifying the public when appointments are up for grabs at mass vaccination clinics.)

On Friday, the clinic administered its 100,000th vaccine. Thats thousands of people who emerged from the Wolstein Center, one step closer to reclaiming their lives from this wretched pandemic. For thousands more, their turn is coming. I hope you let nothing stand in the way of taking yours.

In addition to the Ohio Emergency Management Agency, the Wolstein Center clinic is managed by the Ohio Department of Health and Ohio National Guard, with support from FEMA, the U.S. Department of Defense, the City of Cleveland, the Cleveland Health Department, Cuyahoga County, the Cuyahoga County Board of Health, Cleveland State University, Cleveland Clinic, MetroHealth, and University Hospitals.
A restaurant pop-up is hopping into a popular San Antonio art show. Hopscotch, the immersive gallery that opened downtown in September, is adding another interactive element: food.

Part restaurant incubator, part charity project, the aptly named Hop-Up, will offer visitors a rotating series of culinary concepts on the gallery's open-air patio. Hopscotch co-founders Nicole Jensen and Hunter Inman hope to host everything from up-and-coming food trucks to established brands looking to try something new.

Each concept is invited for a two-month run at the Navarro Street gallery, and may operate out of a food truck or trailer or a tent. Restaurants must be open during Hopscotch's normal business hours and special events, but may also operate on days when the gallery is closed, notes a release.

READ MORE: TikTok showcases San Antonio's 'Hispanic Elvis' to the world

Tenants pay a $1,000 monthly rent, including water and electricity, which Hopscotch will donate to local nonprofit San Antonio Food & Wine Alliance. (Restaurants will be able to keep their profits, of course.)

Hopscotch strongly believes in cultivating lasting relationships and synergy with the local creative community [and] we feel that food and beverage is an important part of a holistic immersive experience, said Jense in a release We like to include a multitude of contrasting styles and mediums in our art gallery, and we would like the same for our Hop-Up Series, showcasing an array of different flavors and unique concepts."

Applications for the inaugural Hop-Up restaurant are being accepted now through May 7 and may be submitted on the SAFWA website. Hopscotch says it hopes to welcome its first restaurant in early June.
[April 07, 2021] Independent Pet Partners Announces New Store Grand Opening on April 7-11, 2021, in Old Town Alexandria, VA

ALEXANDRIA, Va. and MINNEAPOLIS, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Loyal Companion, part of the Independent Pet Partners (IPP), parent family of neighborhood pet wellness stores and ecommerce, added a new location to its already-existing 54 stores, all located along the northeast region. This new pet wellness store, offering food and supplies plus nail trims and grooming services, officially opened in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, on Feb. 25, 2021. The local team will celebrate with a series of events spanning April 7-11, 2021, known as "The 5 Days of Free." Loyal Companion chose the city of Alexandria for its beloved downtown and nationally designated historic district on the Potomac River waterfront. This neighborhood, with its well-known King Street Mile, is lined with other locally independent businesses yet was in need of a pet retailer. "We see this as a great opportunity to serve neighborhood pet parents," says Brian Murphy, President of IPP. "The new live+work+shop development in Old Town with the 232 pet-friendly apartments is the perfect location. With over 27,000 pet parents within three miles of our store, Loyal Companion is excited to be a part of this tight-knit community to offer everything our neighbors may need for their beloved dogs and cats." The very foundation of this Loyal Companion location and every location moving forward is the 5 Pillars of Pet Wellness. These pillars focus on helping pets live long, healthy lives, with store team members, also knowns as "pet foodies," having a combined million hours of training to help customers find the perfect food, toy, treat, supplement or accessory. "Most special about this location is that Alexandria will be one of the first Loyal Companion locations that is specifically designed and visually merchandized based on our core framework in the 5 Pillars of Pet Wellness," said Tricia Nichols, Chief Marketing Officer of IPP. "Nourishment, Play, Comfort, Companionship and Purpose drive the entire experience in the store, from product wayfinding to customer education and team member advice."



5 Days of Free

Starting on April 7 and running through the 11th, the store will celebrate with 5 Days of Free, each day focusing on one of the 5 Pillars mentioned above. During the events, the store will offer double rewards, free toys, free food samples, free advice from a trainer, free nail trims with a groomer and more. The events will take place at the store located at 923 N Saint Asaph St., Alexandria, VA 22314 from 10 a.m.-7 p.m. daily. For more details on the 5 Days of Free, visit loyalcompanion.com/oldtown. Press Release Contact: Jessica Peterson | jessica.peterson@ipphl.com

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For his 16-year-old Chesapeake Bay retriever's last months of survival, a dog owner invented a way to carry him across Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Cocoa and Tom

For years, Tom Antonino, who lives in Georgia, traveled to Virginia Beach with his wife and their dog Cocoa. However, at 16 years old, the once-vigorous dog refused to travel a small distance, making the journeys more difficult for the family of three to complete.

Antonino, determined to give Cocoa a regular life in her final days, built a homemade mobile bed that he and his wife could use to move Cocoa around their beloved retreat.

"My wife and I devised a plan to take her for walks using a mechanics creeper and other such things. We'd get her out with a rope and a bed, "He told WTKR, a local news channel.

Related Article: Pets are the New Babies: Pet Industry Thrives During COVID-19 Pandemic



Last Beach Trip

Cocoa was taken out to the Virginia Beach boardwalk to watch the sunset after the pair finished the mobile bed. A woman approached the couple and took a snapshot of them, which she later shared on social media.

However, Antonino, who is not on Facebook, was totally unaware that the boardwalk photo would go viral over time.

"My brother-in-law told me. 'Is this you?' he asked, and then other people asked, 'Is this you?' I replied, 'Yes, that's Cocoa.' Cocoa and I are going for a stroll. "He told WTKR about it.

Antonino's thoughtful gesture for Cocoa was one of the canine's last outings: she died just a few months earlier. However, Antonino told WTKR that his intimate relationship with his beloved dog would last a lifetime.

"The relationship we share with our dogs and cats struck a chord with people," he said. "It's a powerful bond."

Bond Between Dog and Man

The association between humans and dogs is known as human-canine bonding. This bond can be dated back at least 15,000 years to a dog buried with two humans in Bonn-Oberkassel. Dogs have been known as "man's best mate" for generations, providing companionship and devotion to their human counterparts.

This is apparent in most households of domesticated dogs. Both breeds of dogs are well-liked by both children and adults.

Dogs in Human Activities

Since the 1970s and 1980s, dogs' use in operations to support humans has been more common. Thanks to their highly evolved sense of scent, dogs have been used for service; testing has found that they can smell terror, distress, and depression. Guide dogs, mobility dogs, and medical warning dogs are also examples of service dogs that support people. Animal-facilitated Therapy is a term used in some hospitals to describe the use of dogs (AFT).

AFT

The use of qualified, licensed animals as part of a medical patient's therapeutic strategy is AFT. For patients with a range of diagnoses, such as cancer, epilepsy alert, and identifying peanut allergies, these programs have been found to foster a healing atmosphere and reduce certain psychiatric symptoms. Ugs, also known as "therapy dogs," are used in hospitals to provide support and affection to patients by pet-assisted therapy.

Pets have become popular in nursing homes and other similar environments due to Dr. Samuel Corson's research.

Also Read: Pet-Friendly Offices To Become a Norm Post-Pandemic, Survey Shows

For more news update about the latest animal trends, don't forget to follow Nature World News
Paris Hilton has made an emotional return to Utah for a ceremonial bill signing to regulate treatment centers for troubled teens like the one she was forced to attend to curb her wild child behavior.

The legislation for facilities that treat youngsters with behavioral and mental health issues gained final approval in the Legislature in early March, about a month after Hilton gave emotional testimony in support of the bill.

The socialite, 40, attended Provo Canyon School in the 1990s where she claims staff would beat her, force her to take unknown pills, watch her shower and send her to solitary confinement without clothes as punishment.

Paris Hilton has made an emotional return to Utah for a ceremonial bill signing to regulate treatment centers for troubled teens

The reality TV star also spoke about the abuse in a documentary titled 'This is Paris' that was released this fall.

Since the documentary was released, other celebrities have spoken out about their experiences at the school or others like it, including Michael Jacksons daughter Paris Jackson and tattoo artist Kat Von D.

At a Utah State Capitol committee in Salt Lake City in February, the heiress said she was 'violated every single day' and a staff member would 'brag to other students that she was the one that broke Paris Hilton'.

Gov. Spencer Cox signed the new bill last month but held a ceremonial signing with Hilton on Tuesday, which she said was 'one of the things I'm most proud of in my life'.

The new law will require more government oversight of youth residential treatment centers and documentation for when they use restraints.

The socialite, 40, attended Provo Canyon School in the 1990s where she claims staff would abuse her

The reality TV star also spoke about the abuse at the school (pictured) in a documentary titled 'This is Paris' that was released this fall

It will also prohibit treatment centers from using sedation or mechanical restraints without prior authorization.

Speaking at the signing on Tuesday, Hilton said: 'On behalf of the hundreds of thousands of survivors who have experienced abuse and neglect at residential treatment homes in Utah over the past many decades, I am so proud to stand beside the Governor today as we sign SB127 into law.

'When I was at Provo Canyon school in solitary confinement, I had hours upon hours to contemplate the ways I needed support in those moments but I didn't receive it, and dream about what I wanted to accomplish when I got out.

'After having shed away my experiences for so many years, when I finally shared my story publicly in my documentary This Is Paris, I started researching this industry once again and my worst nightmare was true.'

Since the documentary was released, other celebrities have spoken out about their experiences at the school

The new law will require more government oversight of youth residential treatment centers and documentation for when they use restraints

Hilton became involved in the New York party scene at an early age, and would regularly sneak out of her family residence at the Waldorf Astoria to go underage clubbing.

This prompted her parents Rick and Kathy to look for behavioral programs to curtail her wild ways.

She claims she was kidnapped from her bed at her parent's home in the middle of the night to take her to Provo Canyon where she was abused and forced into solitary confinement.

The traumatic experiences caused her to develop insomnia, depression, trust issues, and crippling nightmares.

She claims she was kidnapped from her bed at her parent's home in the middle of the night to take her to Provo Canyon

Hilton added on Tuesday: 'Kids, now predominantly from juvenile justice, fostercare and special education who are coming to these places due to their previous trauma, abuse and lack of support, were experiencing the exact same things I had 20 years before.

'My greatest accomplishment and role has been stepping into this activism space and I am so proud to be part of a movement that is making these facilities a safer more healing space for our vulnerable youth.

'No child should experience abuse in the name of treatment... This is a big step towards systematic change. Thank you so much, it means the world to me.'

Hilton only recently spoke out about her experiences and many other former students joined her in campaigning for change.

She held her first protest in October at a park near the Utah school - the closest she had been to the grounds since she was 18 years old

She held her first protest in October at a park near the Utah school - the closest she had been to the grounds since she was 18 years old.

Hilton told Fox 13 Utah yesterday: 'This is one of the things I'm most proud of in my life

'Now people are going to be held accountable, they're going to be watched, everything that was happening to me as a teenager back here would be illegal today

'Going through that was the most horrible experience I've ever been through in my life but I feel that everything in life happens for a reason and maybe that needed to happened for me to use my voice to make a difference so that never happened to another child again.'
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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.  Detectives released the names of four people slain around Albuquerque over the past two weeks.

Gilbert Gallegos, an Albuquerque police spokesman, said the deaths of Sevron Mills, 45, Michael McCoy, 41, Dony Carrera-Flores, 33, and Abel Mares, 22, are all being investigated as homicides.

No arrests have been made in the cases.

On March 27, officers responded sometime before 11 p.m. to reports of a body in the area of First and Stover SW, just south of Coal. Police found Mills body nearby and no details have been given as to how he died.

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Two days later, officers responded around 4:45 p.m. to a shooting in the 1000 block of Louisiana SE, north of Gibson. Police found McCoy fatally shot and he died at the scene.

Then, on Friday, police responded sometime before 7:15 a.m. to the Travel Lodge near Interstate 40 and Juan Tabo. Officers found Carrera-Flores shot to death inside a room.

The next day, officers responded around 4:30 a.m. to Pinewood and Cherrywood NW, near Unser and Ladera, after receiving reports of a man lying in the street. Police found Mares dead from multiple gunshot wounds.
Huber said he very surprised by the outcome. He said he believed his experience and leadership roles on the board would separate him from the pack. But he said a lack of endorsements, as well as a couple of key decisions he made along the way, might have cost him the race. He also called the four leading candidates strategy of promoting each other particularly effective in a low voter turnout race.
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For Nympha Pugh, learning English was part of growing up in the Philippines.

It was one of many subjects in her primary education lineup, a norm for Filipinos studying the worlds most spoken language. After earning a bachelors degree in secondary education, Pugh went on to teach English for two years in China before meeting her now husband, Torrey, an Alabamian with ties to Auburn University, and moving to the United States in 2012.

A teacher like her mother, aunts and younger sister, Pugh felt the need to take her skills to another level and enrolled in graduate school at Auburns College of Education, or COE, to do exactly that.

I started at a very young age, and we were introduced to English as a second language in public school, said Pugh, who came to the United States in 2012 and became a U.S. citizen in 2016. I learned English through the public school system, but I didnt think I was equipped to teach someone like me to learn English. As an English learner, or EL, I know the struggles and the challenges of learning a second language, and I think being able to teach them with what Im learning at Auburn, Ill be able to help them learn English better.

The way we were taught in the Philippines was different, so when I came here, my English was a mish-mash of everything. I just thought that I needed to equip myself to teach others.

Pugh is working toward that endeavor through a masters program offered by the Department of Curriculum and Teaching called English for Speakers of Other Languages, or ESOL, while also teaching for Monroe County Schools in southwest Alabama. Auburns ESOL Educationotherwise known as Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, or TESOLgrad students are a mix of native English speakers looking to increase their capacity to work with English learners in their K-12 classrooms, as well as international students who may want to return to their native countries.

Ive learned a lot from professors Williams and Harrison, said Pugh, winner of the colleges 2021 International Women for Peace Award. There are things I wasnt even consciously aware of that I was doing. Were talking about cultural perspectives, and I didnt know it was important to know all of these things. Knowing cultures can help you give examples the students can relate to from their own lives and countries.

Pughwho also is busy raising a 6-year-old daughterhopes to one day teach English in Taiwan or again in China after honing her skills via the masters program at Auburn.

Im excited to use all the things Im learning in class in my classroom, said Pugh, who is certified as an instructor of secondary education, which is grades 7-12. Teaching English is not just giving students grammar and a worksheet, it goes beyond that. When youre teaching an English learner, its not just about them perfecting their grammar or their pronunciation, its learning about their cultures and making them aware of other cultures and the appreciation of those things to make them a global learner.

I am an English language learner myself, and I want to give back to the community by getting the strategies to help them learn English better. Im trying to make an impact, one student at a time.

Reaching all students

Not only are foreign-born students like Pugh part of the dynamic COE graduate program, but native English speakers on the K-12 track also are pursuing the graduate degree to become better equipped to teach students from across the globe.

For many children who come to the United States from abroad, being an English as a Second Language, or ESL, student can be daunting as they struggle to acclimate to a new culture while also being expected to learn the same coursework as their peers. That makes the job of primary and secondary school teachers even more challenging as they work to make sure no child is left behind during their educational journeys.

Gwendolyn Williams, an associate professor and coordinator of the colleges ESOL Education program, knows how difficult a teachers job can be.

Quite often, teachers might not have any warning, and suddenly they have an ESL student starting in their classroom tomorrow, Williams said. They dont have time to get training before the students arrive. Theyve got to know before the students show up.

Knowing how to differentiate instruction is going to be key, because you might have students at totally different levels. Obviously, you cant write 15 different lesson plans, so we teach them how to make the material appropriate for the content standards and workable for the classroom.

Certain techniques, including the use of visual aids and simplifying language to convey the lessons, are part of Auburns TESOL instruction.

You dont have to speak the students native language to actually be able to effectively teach them, said Jamie Harrison, an associate professor of ESOL. Its great if you do, of course. There is no reason not to use a students native language in support of them learning English, math or science, but when that is not possible, the next best thing is to make our speech and classroom materials comprehensible so they can learn right along with their grade-level peers. Our goal is not to help them learn English first and then learn everything else, because theyll never catch up.

It takes five to seven years, at least, to get to the academic language proficiency levels were hoping for from the same grade level as their peers. So, unless we scaffold the instruction, support them along the way and give them the content in a way they can understand, they wont learn it.

Creating an environment where all students of differing skill levels and educational and geographical backgrounds can learn and even thrive is a chief goal for K-12 educators, and Auburns program is preparing them to accomplish that more effectively.

Growing the program

More than 15 graduate students from considerably varying backgrounds currently are enrolled in the ESOL Education program, and program professors are looking to grow the curriculum within the college. The college is offering Master of Science and Master of Education degrees, as well as graduate certificates.

Since virtually every teacher in the country has English learners in their classrooms as the nation becomes increasingly more diverse, giving educators the tools and techniques to best reach students from varying backgrounds is more important than ever before.

Weve got to get more people in the pipeline, said Williams, an Auburn professor since 2015. We want to grow the program so we have a healthy K-12 track, as well as an ESL track. The K-12 track is so pivotal, so we definitely want to encourage that and grow that.

Just having an awareness and trying to promote how many options it can open for students from diverse backgrounds is great. It really does have far-reaching effects, as far as who its able to impact.

Williams and Harrison are working with Auburn Global and the Office of International Programs to help recruit students to the ESOL Education program, and their hope is to gradually increase participation numbers in the coming years, as well as create undergraduate options that include minors and majors. Auburns TESOL programs do not provide initial ESOL Education certification for non-teachers who want to become K-12 teachers, but can be great avenues for grad students to take toward their professional pursuits.

Dedication to the craft

Another TESOL grad student, Shellie Flenniken, has spent her career as an educator helping level the playing field for ELs in Alabama. A 20-year veteran of the Opelika City Schools system and a mother of five, the Auburn alum is back on the Plains as a masters program enrollee looking to complete her advanced degree and glean additional techniques and practices from Williams and Harrison.

I had always been interested in teaching ESL, even before I had the opportunity, said Flenniken, who is taking a leave of absence from teaching while she completes the masters program. A door opened for me to be a resource teacher teaching ESL, and thats when I started looking into things at Auburn. They had the certificate program, which is what I started with, and I had always intended on finishing my masters right then, but I couldnt.

The certificate was great, because it helped me have better tools to work that job. Now, to be finishing up, its still very relevant for me and what I do every day. I wasnt required to do it, but I wanted to make sure I was the best equipped to do the job I was going to be doing.

The perspective and experience Flenniken has gained through the years has been enlightening, and she feels the TESOL instruction will be crucial for K-12 teachers who are new graduates.

This is ideal for pre-K through 12 for anyone who wants to knock out a masters, she said. It doesnt matter what school youre at in the state of Alabama, youre going to have ELs. Having been an EL resource teacher for 10 years, you have a certain level of freak-out when you have someone walk in your door who knows zero English.

The child may be brilliant, but theres just a language barrier.

The instruction offered by Williams and Harrison helps give teachers more tools in their tool boxes as they navigate the ever-changing landscape of the education world, especially for younger and more inexperienced educators.

When you are a young teacher coming straight out of college, you might not know how to adapt the teaching materials you are required to use, said Flenniken, who earned her undergraduate degree from Auburn in 1999. You have to understand how to adjust that curriculum to fit the kids in your class. You cannot modify the content, but you must know how to accommodate it to fit the individual needs in your classroom.

That is something that comes with experience, and when youre coming right out of school, you dont have that experience. That is one thing a TESOL program gives you exposure to, how you can adapt whatever it is youre looking at so everybody is getting what you need them to get from it.

Fulfilling career with significant reach

Often times, EL teachers not only are helping students, but also serving as a resource by instructing their colleagues.

As an EL resource teacher, you are a teachers teacher even more often than you are a teacher for the kids many times, said Flenniken, who credits longtime Opelika City Schools teacher Ray Winegar for encouraging her to take on EL responsibilities. You help empower the teachers and get them what they need to lighten the load for them to better serve their students in their class. I can help one person, and then she turns around and is helping 20, or you can help one grade level and then theyre suddenly helping 200 or 300 students. Thats a huge, huge part of the job.

Helping Auburn students achieve career goalsboth domestically in K-12 and abroad via the masters in English for Specific Purposes trackis a considerable motivating factor for Williams, who has taught both university and K-12 ESL classes, as well as English in Ecuador.

With ESL, there are so many different ways you can go with it, Williams said. Were just trying to see them achieve the different goals for the careers theyre interested in. It just gives them so many more options, and thats really what were all about. We want to help students fulfill their career goals, whatever that may be.

Harrison, an Auburn professor since 2013, has thoroughly enjoyed working as a teacher instructor in the ESL/ESOL field.

This has been my dream job, and ESL is a really fun field to be in, said Harrison, a longtime K-12 teacher who also taught English in South Korea. How we work with teachers now impacts how they work with their students. I love working with people from other countries and training people to work with them. Its a very exciting career.

In the K-12 ranks, the most fulfilling aspect of reaching children with diverse backgrounds is seeing them connect with others as they learn and grow.

Kids are fun, and for you to learn how to include this little person and help them share their perspectives with everybody else, youve just kind of changed the trajectory of every single kid in the class because they have made this new friend who has totally different experiences than they have grown up with, Flenniken said. So, its pretty magical, to be perfectly honest.
"Kaiser Permanente continues to reimagine ways to expertly, innovatively, and conveniently provide care for our members, and doing so during this time demands that we work with unprecedented agility and speed while always prioritizing equity, quality, and affordability," Adams said. "As we progress on this journey, I am pleased that Diane's innovative thinking, deep expertise, and intimate knowledge of Kaiser Permanente will drive our technology leadership. Our consumer-focused and data-rich capabilities are core to Kaiser Permanente's strategy and care delivery offerings, and I'm confident that Diane's leadership will continue to advance our mission."

Since serving as interim CIO, Comer led Kaiser Permanente's ongoing IT support to meet the extraordinary needs brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, while also overseeing the delivery of a large portfolio of IT projects. IT continues to advance the organization's digital transformation as a key priority, delivering innovative tools for the consumer experience, Kaiser Permanente's workforce, and its customers.

Comer joined Kaiser Permanente in 2007 to deliver technology solutions supporting all marketing, sales, service, and administration functions. She led the implementation of a new telephony infrastructure that now supports one million calls a month to Kaiser Permanente's multiple contact centers  among the highest call volumes in the nation.

Comer has built a reputation for driving transformational IT programs, having partnered on the implementation of the technology systems needed to support the Affordable Care Act and health insurance exchanges, and delivery of an enterprise-wide claims platform.

Prior to joining Kaiser Permanente, Comer held positions at Fireman's Fund Insurance Company, including chief technology officer, with dual reporting to the CIO and CEO. Her responsibilities included application development and maintenance, and management of infrastructure and data center services. She holds a bachelor's degree in management from Golden Gate University in San Francisco. Additionally, Comer has attended executive leadership programs at the Wharton School and Harvard University. She is a 2012 Computerworld Premier 100 IT Leaders Award winner.

About Kaiser Permanente

Kaiser Permanente is committed to helping shape the future of health care. We are recognized as one of America's leading health care providers and not-for-profit health plans. Founded in 1945, Kaiser Permanente has a mission to provide high-quality, affordable health care services and to improve the health of our members and the communities we serve. We currently serve 12.4 million members in eight states and the District of Columbia. Care for members and patients is focused on their total health and guided by their personal Permanente Medical Group physicians, specialists and team of caregivers. Our expert and caring medical teams are empowered and supported by industry-leading technology advances and tools for health promotion, disease prevention, state-of-the-art care delivery and world-class chronic disease management. Kaiser Permanente is dedicated to care innovations, clinical research, health education and the support of community health.

For more information, contact:

Hilary Costa, [email protected]

SOURCE Kaiser Permanente

Related Links

http://www.kaiserpermanente.org


The Vladimir Putin opponent is serving two and a half years for embezzlement

The health of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is deteriorating as he keeps up his hunger strike in prison, with a new numbness in his hands, his lawyers said today.

Last week President Vladimir Putin's most prominent opponent, who is serving two and a half years on embezzlement charges, launched a hunger strike to demand proper medical treatment for severe back pain and numbness in his legs.

Members of Navalny's defence team, who visited him in his penal colony in the town of Pokrov 60 miles east of Moscow on Wednesday, said he is still refusing food and was coughing.

'He looks bad, he's not feeling well,' lawyer Olga Mikhailova told AFP, adding Navalny now weighs 'around 176 pounds'.

Lawyers who visited Russia opposition leader Alexei Navalny in his penal colony outside of Moscow say he is 'not well' and has numbness in his hands as he continues on a week-long hunger strike

Navalny, who is over six feet tall, weighed 205lbs when he arrived in his penal colony last month.

'No one is going to treat him,' Mikhailova added.

Navalny's lawyers and allies are demanding that he be transferred to a 'normal' hospital but Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said that Navalny is not entitled to any special treatment.

Another member of the opposition politician's team, Vadim Kobzev, said that 44-year-old Navalny was losing 'a kilogram a day'.

Taking to Twitter, Kobzev said Navalny felt pain when he walked and was now also feeling a numbness in his hands in addition to back pain and a loss of sensation in his legs.

'It's clear that his illness is getting worse,' Kobzev wrote.

Navalny is serving two and a half years on embezzlement charges at the penal colony in the town of Pokrov 60 miles east of Moscow

Earlier this week, Navalny said he had a cough and fever and that three members of his prison unit had been hospitalised with tuberculosis.

Navalny was arrested in January after returning from Germany, where he spent months recovering from a poisoning attack with Novichok nerve agent he blames on the Kremlin.

He is serving a two-and-a-half year sentence for breaching the parole terms of a suspended sentence on old fraud charges.

Rights campaigners say the Pokrov penal colony is known for its especially harsh conditions, and Navalny himself has called it a 'concentration camp.'
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 23:36:38|Editor: huaxia

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RABAT, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Morocco announced on Wednesday a night curfew during the Muslim's fasting month of Ramadan to combat the spread of COVID-19.

A government statement said that a nationwide night curfew will be implemented from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m., starting from the first day of Ramadan.

The previous decisions to contain the spread of the virus will remain, said the statement, referring to the closure of all commercial activities at 8 p.m.

The statement said the night curfew is in line with recommendations from the Scientific and Technical Committee.

Morocco's COVID-19 tally rose on Tuesday evening to 499,025, while the the death toll hit 8,865 and the total number of recoveries increased to 485,708. Enditem
Correction: Assessing the impacts of nodule mining on the deep-sea environment

Joint press release of GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Alfred-Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Senckenberg-Gesellschaft fur Naturforschung, Jacobs University Bremen gGmbH, MARUM - Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen, Max-Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Utrecht University, Ifremer, Ghent University, Universidade de Aveiro, Institute of Marine Research at Acores, Instituto Portugues do Mar e da Atmosfera, Centre for Marine and Environmental Research at Universidade do Algarve, Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environmental Research at Universidade do Porto, Biodata Mining Group at University of Bielefeld, SNF Centre for Applied Research at NHH, German Research Alliance, Joint Programming Initiative Healthy and Productive Seas and Oceans

21/2021

6 April 2021/Kiel, San Diego. Scientists of the JPI Oceans project "MiningImpact" are embarking on a 6-week expedition to the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone (CCZ) in the Pacific. Their goal is to carry out independent scientific monitoring of the test of a pre-prototype nodule collector machine conducted in parallel from a second vessel by the Belgian company Global Sea Mineral Resources (GSR). "MiningImpact" fully adheres to good scientific practice and all data will be made publicly available. The findings of this integrated impact analysis will be transferred into recommendations for improved environmental standards and guidelines of the Mining Code currently being drafted by the International Seabed Authority (ISA).

The study sites of "MiningImpact" in the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone (CCZ) are located in water depths of more than 4,000 meters and more than 1,500 kilometers off the Mexican coast. The CCZ is an area of five million square kilometers, where manganese nodules are highly abundant on the seafloor. Concentrated in these nodules are metals of economic interest for high-tech products used for energy transformation, mobility and telecommunication, such as copper, cobalt, and nickel.

This seabed area between Mexico and Hawaii lies outside the Exclusive Economic Zones of any country and is part of the common heritage of mankind. This common area is managed by the International Seabed Authority (ISA) based in Kingston, Jamaica, under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which has been joined by 167 countries and the European Union. The ISA is currently working on the exploitation regulations of the "Mining Code", which will form the legal framework for future deep-sea mining activities, and is being developed through an iterative process with several stakeholder consultations. These international regulations should include stringent environmental standards, such as for establishing the environmental baseline, the monitoring of mining operations as well as threshold values for impacts and indicators of ecosystem health. To shape these regulations, scientific knowledge on the ecological impacts of deep-sea mining is urgently required. The JPI Oceans collaborative project "MiningImpact" is dedicated to contributing to the assessment of these impacts and to proposing solutions to prevent serious harm to the abyssal ecosystem.

The German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) has chartered the multi-purpose vessel Island Pride and invited "MiningImpact" partners to conduct their independent monitoring of a pre-prototype nodule collector test from this vessel. The Belgian company GSR has agreed to its activities being independently investigated and has worked closely with the scientists to give them access to all trial activities. These trials will take place in the Belgian and German contract areas of the CCZ. "This offers the unique opportunity for us to collect, for the first time, quantitative scientific evidence on the environmental consequences of nodule extraction in a more realistic scenario than was previously possible" explains project coordinator Dr. Matthias Haeckel from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel. Investigations will not only address the direct impacts that the collector vehicle will produce by harvesting manganese nodules, but also those induced by the suspended sediment plume that is created by this process and affects a much larger area. The data will provide information on ecosystem effects of potential future mining that cannot be drawn from the small-scale benthic impact experiments conducted in the past.

At the same time a fully integrated monitoring approach will be tested that will inform future needs for the surveillance of human activities in the deep sea to ensure compliance with environmental standards and targets. "Employing state-of-the-art scientific equipment will allow us to determine the spread of the suspended sediment plume created by the vehicle harvesting the nodules as well as the blanketing of the adjacent seabed by resettling fallout from this plume. We will finally be able to put numbers to this type of impact", says Dr. Henko De Stigter from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), who is leading the plume sensor group on board.

Together with the manganese nodules the collector machine is expected to remove the top 10-15 centimeters of the seafloor and the fauna living on and within it. "In addition to surveying the loss of biodiversity across different faunal classes, our work also includes studies on biogeochemical fluxes, microbial turnover rates and ecosystem functioning, in-situ ecotoxicology, release of trace metals from the suspended sediment plume as well as emissions of noise and light by the collector vehicle and much more", says Dr. Haeckel to summarize the main goals of the expedition. Among the specialized instruments that will be deployed are two remotely-operated vehicles (ROV), an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), in situ oxygen profilers and experiment chambers, in situ pumps as well as fifty inter-calibrated hydro-acoustic and optical sensors for measuring the suspended sediment concentrations and particle sizes.

The JPI Oceans project "MiningImpact" has investigated the ecological consequences of deep-sea mining and how the impacts may be mitigated since 2015. It included an assessment of decade-old tracks of previous studies as well as small experiments to understand the interaction between nodule removal and the responses of deep-sea life. The first phase, which is already completed, provided substantial first insights into the expected longer-term effects of deep-sea mining. Now, in the second phase, the scientists plan to conduct a comprehensive monitoring of the immediate environmental impacts of the first test of an industrial collector pre-prototype in real-time. The first attempt to test the collector by GSR in spring 2019 did not take place due to a technical failure of the power and communication cable to this instrument.

"The research of the MiningImpact consortium is extremely important and essential to ensure that the marine environment in the deep sea will be protected according to highest possible standards", says Professor Katja Matthes, Director of GEOMAR. "The results of this project will provide the scientific evidence that is urgently needed by the International Seabed Authority as input for improved environmental standards and guidelines of the Mining Code", Matthes continues.

After twelve days of self-isolation in a hotel in San Diego and repeated Covid-19 PCR tests the scientists are ready to embark on the expedition that is carried out under strict hygiene conditions.

###

Background: MiningImpact - Environmental impacts and risks of deep-sea mining

The second project phase of "MiningImpact" (2018-22), builds on the first phase and addresses three major research foci concerning deep-sea mining: (1) the larger scale environmental impact caused by the suspended sediment plume, (2) the regional connectivity of species and the biodiversity of biological assemblages and their resilience to impacts, and (3) the integrated effects on ecosystem functions, such as the benthic foodweb and biogeochemical processes.

The "MiningImpact" project is conducted independently of DEME-GSR's activities and does not receive any financial contributions from DEME-GSR. Conversely, DEME-GSR does not receive any funding from the "MiningImpact" project. DEME-GSR is also conducting its own monitoring programme aboard its vessel.

Funding for the project was provided under the framework of the Joint Programming Initiative Healthy Seas and Oceans (JPI Oceans) by:

Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO) and Flanders EWI Department, Belgium

The Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), Germany

Research Council of Norway (RCN), Norway

The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), The Netherlands

Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (FCT) and Direcao-Geral de Politica do Mar (DGPM), Portugal

Links:

https:/ / miningimpact. geomar. de MiningImpact project website

https:/ / miningimpact. geomar. de/ events Stakeholder information event for the cruise

http://jpi-oceans. eu/ ecological-aspects-deep-sea-mining JPI Oceans website

http://www. bgr. bund. de German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources

http://www. awi. de Alfred-Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research

https:/ / www. senckenberg. de/ de/ institute/ sam/ dzmb Deutsches Zentrum fur Marine Biodiversitatsforschung, Senckenberg am Meer

https:/ / www. jacobs-university. de Jacobs University Bremen gGmbH

https:/ / www. marum. de MARUM - Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen

https:/ / www. mpg. de/ 154811/ marine_mikrobiologie Max-Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology

https:/ / www. nioz. nl Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research

https:/ / www. uu. nl Utrecht University

https:/ / wwz. ifremer. fr Ifremer

https:/ / www. ugent. be Ghent University

http://www. cesam. ua. pt Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies, University of Aveiro

https:/ / imar. org. pt Institute of Marine Research at Azores

https:/ / www. ipma. pt Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere

http://www. cima. ualg. pt Centre for Marine and Environmental Research, University of Algarve

https:/ / www2. ciimar. up. pt Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environmental Research

https:/ / biodatamining. cebitec. uni-bielefeld. de Biodata Mining Group at University of Bielefeld

http://snf. no Centre for Applied Research at NHH https:/ / www. allianz-meeresforschung. de German Research Alliance

Further Readings:

Boetius A., Haeckel M. (2018) Mind the seafloor. Science 359(6371), doi: 10.1126/science.aap7301 https:/ / science. sciencemag. org/ content/ 359/ 6371/ 34

Vanreusel A., Hilario A., Ribeiro P.A., Menot L., Martinez-Arbizu P. (2016) Threatened by mining, polymetallic nodules are required to preserve abyssal epifauna. Scientific Reports 6, doi:10.1038/srep26808 https:/ / www. nature. com/ articles/ srep26808

Biogeosciences Special Issue: Assessing environmental impacts of deep-sea mining - revisiting decade-old benthic disturbances in Pacific nodule areas https:/ / bg. copernicus. org/ articles/ special_issue942. html

Contact:

Dr. Andreas Villwock (GEOMAR, Communication & Media), Phone: +49-431 600-2802, presse@geomar.de

This story has been published on: 2021-04-07. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Perry J. Mendelson, a native St. Louisan who made aliyah to Israel, a former longtime president of the local Vaad Hoeir, and one of the founding lay leaders of Chabad in St. Louis, died in Jerusalem on March 31, at the age of 82.

Perry Jerome Mendelson was born in St. Louis on Oct. 31, 1938, the son of the late Harry and Ruth Londe Mendelson. He was preceded in death by his wife, Barbara Osheroff Mendelson. They are survived by children Mark Mendelson, Channie (Jonathan) Spetner, Chaya Klein, Jeffrey (Robin) Mendelson and Davida (Chaim) Schapiro. He is also survived by a sister, Sandy (Robert) Abrams.

Mr. Mendelson attended the Talmud Torah Hebrew School at Congregation Nusach Hari on Blackstone Avenue, which the late Rabbi Sholom Rivkin founded at the behest of the Sixth Chabad Rebbe, Rabbi Joseph I. Schneerson. He enlisted at the age of 17 in the U.S. Army Reserve, for which he served as a medic.

Mr. Mendelson studied pharmacy at the St. Louis College of Pharmacy (now the University of Health Sciences and Pharmacy in St. Louis). He was the owner and pharmacist at Marchelle Pharmacy, and was a sales rep for the Rosenbloom Monument Company.

He was also an active member and past vice president of Nusach Hari Bnai Zion Congregation, and a past board president of the Ahavas Chesed Burial Society.

Rabbi Yosef Landa, regional director of Chabad of Greater St. Louis, said in a statement to the Jewish Light, Perry was among the early founders of Chabad in St. Louis, which is when our friendship began. Throughout the nearly 40 years since then he has served in leadership positions of a host of communal institutions, most notably the Vaad Hoeir, and inspired many community projects.

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He exemplified the Jewish leader par excellence, which is described in the special blessing recited on Shabbat in many synagogues for those who occupy themselves faithfully with communal affairs. Perry served faithfully and with great humility, always seeking the singular objective of furthering Yiddishkeit, and doing so without ever an expectation of honor or recognition.

In 1985, when Mr. Mendelson was being honored by National Conference of Synagogue Youth Midwest Region, then-NCSY President Dr. Isaac Boniuk described why he was receiving a citation for community service.

Perry is the kind of behind-the-scenes person who is always there, volunteering services even when not asked. It is most appropriate that he receive this long-overdue recognition.

Funeral services and burial were in Jerusalem.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Barbara Mendelson Tomchei Shabbos Fund of the Vaad Hoeir.
Customers ordering on Tesco.com can win themselves tech devices, including phones and wearables, by buying regular grocery items.

Customers who place orders online for any of 10 items from Wednesday (April 7) until April 18 will be in with a chance of winning these 'super substitutes', which include devices from Apple, Samsung and Nokia.

These super swaps include an Apple iPhone SE subbed for a bag of apples, a Samsung Galaxy S21 for a Galaxy chocolate bar or a Nokia 3.4 for gnocchi.

Customers only have a chance of winning if they opt for Click & Collect  meaning they have to visit a store to pick up their purchases made online.

Tesco.com Click & Collect can win an iPhone SE if they purchase a bag of apples, a Nokia 3.4 if they buy a packet of gnocchi and a Samsung Galaxy S21 if they buy Galaxy chocolate, as well as other prizes

TESCO 'SUPER SUBS' The super subs up for grabs are: - Apple iPhone SE (64GB) for a bag of apples - 5 available - Samsung Galaxy S21 for a Galaxy chocolate bar - 18 available - Samsung Galaxy Watch 3 for Galaxy chocolate drink - 8 available - Nokia 3.4 for gnocchi - 4 available - Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 for Tesco Washing up Tablets - 8 available - Motorola E7 for freshly baked rolls - 4 available - Apple Airpods with charging case for frozen cod - 8 available - Apple iPhone 12 Mini for Mini Cheddars - 5 available - Samsung Galaxy Buds Live for Johnson's Cotton Buds - 12 available - Samsung Galaxy Fit 2 Black for Pampers Active Fit Nappies - 8 available Advertisement

The new promotion, which is courtesy of Tesco Mobile, hopes to entice online customers to Tesco.com.

'From today until 18 April, Tesco Mobile is raiding the nation's shopping bags to make unbelievable substitutes in lucky Tesco.com Click & Collect orders,' the supermarket said.

'Tesco Mobile's 'super subs' has been created to show how amazing things can happen when the worlds of supermarket and mobile come together  all while putting a smile on shopper's faces.'

Tesco's terms and conditions shows there are six stores taking part  in Twickenham, Manchester, Birmingham Portsmouth, Glasgow and Swansea  meaning any potential winners will have to collect from one of these stores.

Customers will have to complete a Click & Collect order from a participating store during the 12-day promotion period, which ends at 4pm on April 18.

The offer applies to multiple variants of the products listed  so, for example, a bag of apples of any variety purchased can win the buyer an iPhone SE.

All eligible orders will be placed into a draw and chosen at random, Tesco says. Winners will be presented with their prize when they go to collect their order at the store.

Technically, winning shoppers will receive the grocery item they ordered from Tesco, as well as their prize. They are under no obligation to accept the 'super sub' if they dont want it, however.

There are 80 items set to be given away in total, of which 18 are Samsung Galaxy S21 handsets  more than any other item that's being given away.

Tesco.com Click & Collect customers can win an Apple iPhone SE (pictured) when they complete an order for a bag of apples

Samsung Galaxy S21, released earlier this year, is usually priced from 769 and comes equipped with 5G support.

Purchasing Johnson's Cotton Buds can also win you Samsung Galaxy Buds Live  the Korean firm's 159 noise-cancelling, kidney bean-shaped Bluetooth wireless earbuds that were revealed last August.

Some of the other 'super subs' include a Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 for Tesco Washing up Tablets, an Apple iPhone 12 Mini for Mini Cheddars and a Motorola E7 for Freshly baked rolls.

iPhone 12 Mini is one of the models that make up Apple's latest flagship smartphone range, revealed last October.

Tesco has eight Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 tablets to give away instead of Tesco Washing up Tablets

The other Apple handset on offer  the iPhone SE  usually retails at 419.

Apple released the phone in April 2020, aimed at consumers who are on more of a budget. Despite being several hundred pounds, Apple pointed out that iPhone SE is the most affordable iPhone yet.

It's an update on the first-generation iPhone SE, which was released back in 2016.

Meanwhile, those who order frozen cod have a chance to win Apple's second-gen AirPods, which were unveiled two years ago and start at 159.

Pictured, the Galaxy S21, which has a 6.2-inch screen, revealed in January by Korean tech firm Samsung

Nokia 3.4 (pictured) is 'built for streaming', according to its maker, and usually retails for 129. Tesco has four of the handsets available for people who order gnocchi

For Android fans, there are just four Nokia 3.4 handsets being given away for Tesco customers who add gnocchi to their online basket.

Nokia 3.4, released last year, is a 129 device from the company that's perhaps best known for its ultra-resilient feature phones from the noughties, including the Nokia 3310.

Nokia 3.4 is 'built for streaming' and features a small 'hole punch' style front-facing camera built into the display.
Anticipating a $1.6-billion deficit this year amid a global pandemic, the Progressive Conservatives are cutting taxes by $200 million, most of which is in the form of a hefty rebate to homeowners and farmers on their education levies.

Anticipating a $1.6-billion deficit this year amid a global pandemic, the Progressive Conservatives are cutting taxes by $200 million, most of which is in the form of a hefty rebate to homeowners and farmers on their education levies.

Owners of residential and farm properties will receive a 25 per cent rebate of the school division special levy and the community revitalization levy payable.

A homeowner with a $1,700 school division special levy will receive a rebate cheque of $425 this year.

Property owners will receive their rebate cheques at about the same time their municipal taxes are due. They wont have to apply for the rebate, which will be automatically sent by the province.

The cut will cost the province $190 million this year. The government said it intends to increase the tax rebate to 50 per cent of education property taxes on residential and farm property in 2022.

The government is also exempting the retail sales tax from personal services, such as haircuts, non-medical skin care and spa services, effective Dec. 1.

"We think its important to provide direct tax support and relief for Manitobans, particularly during this tough and challenging time economically," Finance Minister Scott Fielding said.

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS We think its important to provide direct tax support and relief for Manitobans, particularly during this tough and challenging time economically, Finance Minister Scott Fielding said.

Since residential landlords  not renters  will benefit from the 25 per cent rebate, Manitoba will set annual rent-increase guidelines of zero per cent for 2022 and 2023. Landlords will still be able to apply for above-guideline rent increases if they make material improvements to a property.

Owners of other properties, such as commercial, industrial, institutional and designated recreational, will receive a 10 per cent rebate of the total of both the school division special levy and the educational support levy payable.

The timetable for eliminating education taxes from property is proceeding far more rapidly than the Progressive Conservatives promised during the 2019 election campaign. At that time, the party promised to begin the phaseout in the last two years of their mandate and to complete it over 10 years.

Asked whether it was risky for the government to rebate such a large portion of the education property tax at a time of high deficits and economic uncertainty, Premier Brian Pallister shot back: "I think it would be risky not to."

He said the government is moving to "a fairer and more reasonable way" of funding education "without punishing senior citizens for trying to stay in their own home a little longer, or picking on farmers."

"We think its important to provide direct tax support and relief for Manitobans, particularly during this tough and challenging time economically."  Finance Minister Scott Fielding

Also among this years budget highlights is the establishment of a $25-million trust fund to redevelop the downtown Hudsons Bay building, a $22-million addition to the Rent Assist program, which helps low-income residents with accommodation costs, and a 10 per cent reduction in vehicle-registration fees.

The government is also introducing a new Teaching Expense Tax Credit, which will allow school teachers to claim a 15 per cent refund for up to $1,000 on the cost of eligible supplies that come out of their own pocket.

Meanwhile, the government will start charging the retail sales tax on streaming services such as Netflix, online marketplaces and online accommodation platforms on Dec. 1. Over the course of a full year, it expects to reap a total of $26.5 million from the measures.

Pallister said taxing digital services is about making the tax system fairer to everyone.

"The present structure was a free ride for some and an additional unfair disadvantages to others," he told reporters, noting other jurisdictions are also taxing such services.

Fielding announced last week that Manitoba is projected to incur a $1.597 billion deficit for the 2021-2022 fiscal year. That compares to a forecast deficit of $2.08 billion for 2020-2021.

If not for the pandemic, which added costs and curbed tax revenues, the government said it would have achieved a surplus last year.

The province pegs the cost of COVID-19 expenditures and contingencies at $1.18 billion for the coming year compared with $1.98 billion for the fiscal year just ended.

NDP Leader Wab Kinew said it's clear the PC government has not learned any lessons from the pandemic.

While he is "open-minded" on the question of how education should be funded, the cash for the proposed rebates has to come from somewhere, he said.

"It's coming from underfunding seniors care, it's coming from cuts in real dollars to the health-care system, and it comes from underfunding the education system," Kinew said. "That's not the right approach, least of all while the pandemic is still ongoing."

Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont said the education system is in particular need of emergency funding, and he did not see any commitment in the budget to rectify the situation.

"There are school divisions that are going to face massive shortfalls because they have spent money keeping children safe, and they are not going to be able to balance their budget without help from the provincial government," he said.

"There are school divisions that are going to face massive shortfalls because they have spent money keeping children safe, and they are not going to be able to balance their budget without help from the provincial government."  Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont

Lamont called the government's education tax rebate plans "incredibly regressive" and "colossally unfair." He decried the fact that they would also apply to out-of-province owners of railways and pipelines.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation applauded the government for its property tax relief but said it needed "a stronger plan" to balance the books.

"It's... good to see the government's commitment to balance the budget, but it needs to work harder to hit that target sooner," said Todd MacKay, the CTF's Prairie director.

The government has set a target of eliminating the deficit within eight years.

Fielding said the province has committed $100 million in the budget to the vaccine rollout, which he considers "more than enough money" to immunize Manitobans against COVID-19. More than a third of the $100 million will go towards labour costs, he said.

Pandemic-related expenses aside, the government projects Health Department spending to reach $6.62 billion this year, compared with a budgeted $6.48 billion last year.

Education Department spending is projected to be $3.07 billion for the coming year, up from $3 billion.

Three government departments  Finance, Agriculture and Resource Development and Sport, Culture and Heritage  are seeing drops in their budgets this year.

Manitoba is anticipating federal transfer revenues this year to rise to $5.64 billion, compared with $5.14 billion budgeted last year. The latest forecast has the province actually receiving $5.87 billion from the feds for fiscal 2020-2021. Federal transfers are forecast to make up 31 per cent of all revenues.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca
Alabama solar advocates are asking federal regulators to overrule the states Public Service Commission and strike down fees that Alabama Power charges to its customers with solar panels.

The Southern Environmental Law Center filed a petition last week with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, asking the federal agency to order Alabamas PSC to end the fee, arguing it does not comply with federal utility law because it is not based on the actual costs of providing power to those customers.

The current fee for an average-sized rooftop solar array (5 kilowatts) is $27.05 per month.

Alabamians are being penalized for using less power and for trying to implement cost saving measures and renewable resources, said Keith Johnston, managing attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Centers Alabama office. Theyre being punished by this charge, which is essentially a solar tax.

Alabama Power says the fee is necessary to pay costs of having back-up power available to customers with solar panels, or any other type of electric generating system, while still being connected to the grid.

Customers with on-site generation who want backup service from the grid should pay the cost for that service, Alabama Power media relations manager Alyson Tucker said. If not, other customers unfairly pay the costs for those individuals and businesses.

The Alabama Public Service Commission rejected a similar SELC challenge to the fee in September 2020, with the state utility regulator granting Alabama Powers motion to dismiss the complaint, and to increase the amount of the fee, from $5 per kilowatt per month to $5.41 per kilowatt per month.

Asked for comment on the FERC petition, PSC spokesperson Cynthia Milledge said it would not be appropriate for the PSC to comment on pending litigation.

Tucker said the complaints over the fee had already been rejected at the state level.

This issue was fully examined by the Alabama Public Service Commission, which included a lengthy public hearing, with the plaintiffs choosing not to pursue the case further in state court, Tucker said.

Both complaints were filed by attorneys from the Southern Environmental Law Center and Ragsdale LLC, representing four Alabama customers who are paying the charge and Birmingham-based environmental group Gasp.

With the fee in place, customers with a 5 kW system pay an extra $325 in fees per year, more than $9,700 over the expected 30-year lifespan of a solar array.

TK Thorne, one of the plaintiffs in the complaint who pays the fee for 4 kilowatts of solar panels on her Birmingham-area home, said the charge makes it much harder to justify the investment of going solar.

Alabama Powers monthly fee makes it extremely difficult for people like me who want to install solar to lower their monthly bills and generate clean energy, Thorne said in a news release. Alabamians should be free to make energy decisions on their own properties, without unjust interference from a monopoly trying to preserve its own profits.

Legally, the challengers say those costs do not meet the requirements of the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act, or PURPA, because they are not based on actual metered data from customers, but projections on how solar customers might impact the grid.

They say the federal law requires that fees charged to customers be non-discriminatory and must be based on the actual costs of providing service.

[Alabama Powers fee] is not based on actual metered data that justifies an extra charge on solar customers, Johnston said.

They also say that Alabama Powers fee is an outlier among utilities, most of which charge no fee or much smaller fees to their solar customers.

Weve never been able to find an investor-owned utility that charges fees this high for this type of service, Johnston said. Its a not very well disguised effort to discourage solar users.

And its working, Johnston said. The SELC said that Alabama has only about 300 small-scale solar installations, while Georgia has nearly 2,500, North Carolina has 17,000, and South Carolina has more than 21,000, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

You can see how incredibly effective this [fee] has been, along with other policies, Johnston said. When you have literally hundreds of rooftop solar users in our state, and then you go to Georgia, you have thousands. You go to South Carolina, you have tens of thousands, North Carolina tens of thousands.

It just doesnt make sense.
KKK Flyers Spread in Huntington Beach, Prompting Anti-Racism Resolutions

City councilmembers in Huntington Beach, California, have passed two new resolutions against racism after flyers promoting a group called the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) were deposited on lawns in the city over Easter weekend.

The flyers showed a white-hooded figure, had the groups name printed on them, and contained text similar to that on the groups website regarding its ideology. The flyers also had the words White Lives Matter, printed on them, prompting a link between them and social media advertisements for a White Lives Matter rally in Huntington Beach April 11.

It remains unclear, however, who is behind both the flyers and the rally organization. The rally flyers do not reference the Loyal White Knights and the KKK flyers did not specifically mention the rally.

Huntington Beach Police Lt. Brian Smith confirmed the reports about the flyers, but told The Epoch Times he did not have any information regarding the responsible party.

Similar flyers were found in Newport Beach a week prior. Newport Beach Councilman Will ONeill wrote on Instagram and confirmed with The Epoch Times via email that an L.A. County man who lives out of his van was found responsible for the KKK flyers, but not charged because they qualify as protected speech.

Newport Beach police said the incident is being investigated and they cannot comment on it. We have not released any information on a suspect, spokesperson Heather Rangel told The Epoch Times via email.

Regarding the upcoming rally, Smith said via email, We became aware of the planned rally from community members who advised us of the social media posting regarding it. He said the police have additional staffing and contingencies plans in place.

A counter-protest by Black Lives Matter for April 11 has also been advertised via social media.

At an April 5 Huntington Beach City Council meeting, two resolutions in reaction to these events passed with a 6-0 vote.

Councilwoman Natalie Moser said at the meeting: On Easter Sunday, people had bags thrown onto their lawns with KKK information. I dont even know what I would do if one of my kids found that. Its horrible.

Now, do we know that the people who did that are from here? We do not know that, but we know that they felt reasonably welcome to come here and we dont want that to be the case.

Mayor Kim Carr and Councilman Dan Kalmick proposed one of the two resolutions, which denounces hate crimes, xenophobic rhetoric, racism and harassment against AAPIs [American Asian Pacific Islanders] and other minority communities.

It directs the Huntington Beach Human Relations Task Force, working with the police, to publish data summaries of reported hate crimes online quarterly and issue recommendations to city council for responding to race-based hate crimes.

Kalmick proposed the other resolution, which has the city denounce any and all acts of White Supremacy, which promote fear and division within our community  [and] remain vigilant against future movements the [sic] promote white supremacist sentiments in our community.

Councilman Erik Peterson was the only councilmember who did not vote in favor of the resolutions; he abstained.

Peterson said that, while it is disgusting when people engage in vile speech,  part of this society is letting those people spew their crap on both sides. But if they get out of control and break our laws, our police need to come down hard on them and thats why we have the laws in place.

We have laws. We have police to enforce those laws. We have prosecutors and judges to ensure criminals receive punishment. Of course, we denounce hate. We denounce hate crimes. Thats why we have laws against them. I trust our police, he said. I just cant vote for something that doesnt do anything; or just vote for something because it feels good to do so.

Councilman Mike Posey interjected: As elected officials and community leaders, we are supposed to take charge, we are supposed to take a position and were supposed to draw a line in the sand. And declarations that have a little bit of teeth in them are worthwhile endeavors.

Kalmick said, Were just saying that we as a city find it all unacceptable, and that is the policy of the City of Huntington Beach. We dont want you here.

The council also moved to co-sponsor a virtual event on April 18 with Orange County Human Relations focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 21:07:35|Editor: huaxia

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A student walks at a primary school in Kampala, Uganda, April 6, 2021. Uganda reopened classes on Tuesday for students in their fourth and fifth grades at primary schools. In March of 2020, the country closed all schools and education institutions to curb the spread of COVID-19. (Photo by Nicholas Kajoba/Xinhua)
EDWARDSVILLE  Two men from Springfield, Illinois, have been indicted by a Madison County grand jury related to a gunfight in late August in several Collinsville parking lots.

Jessie R. Bates Jr., 33, and Marlin R. Thompson Jr., 27, were indicted on charges of aggravated discharge of a firearm, a Class 1 felony. Bates was also indicted for unlawful possession of weapons by a felon, a Class 2 felony.

The case was originally presented by the Collinsville Police Department.

According to court documents and information from the Collinsville Police Department, on Aug. 29 the two allegedly traded gunfire in the parking lots of the Waffle House restaurant and St. Louis Break Co. near Collinsville Crossing and N. Bluff Road.

At least one person later identified by police was struck by gunfire but not seriously wounded. Several vehicles were also hit by bullets.

Jose Cerna, a detective with the Collinsville Police Department, said the incident was the result of a dispute between the two, but did not elaborate.

According to the indictment, the two suspects fired at each other, and Bates had a felony conviction for manufacture/delivery of a controlled substance out of Macon County in 2018, making him ineligible to possess a firearm. It was also noted in court documents that Bates had a long criminal history.

Other indictments handed down last week include:

 Austin D. Norton, 27, of Granite City, was indicted on charges of home invasion, a Class X felony, and residential burglary, a Class 1 felony. The case was originally presented by the Glen Carbon Police Department. According to court documents, on May 27 Norton allegedly entered a home in the first block of Lucinda Drive while a resident was there to commit theft, and sprayed them with pepper spray.

 Terry L. King Jr., 36, of Collinsville, was indicted on charges of aggravated domestic battery, a Class 2 felony, and unlawful restraint, a Class 4 felony. The case was originally presented by the Madison County Sheriffs Department. On March 4 King allegedly strangled a household or family member, and prevented them from leaving a residence.

 Ashley N. Newton, 33, of Edwardsville, was indicted on charges of aggravated assault, a Class 4 felony. The case was originally presented by the Alton Police Department. On Feb. 5 Newton allegedly spit on an Alton police officer.

 Shawn O. Bell, 37, of Alton, was indicted on charges of unlawful possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver, a Class X felony; unlawful possession of cannabis with intent to deliver, a Class 3 felony; and aggravated assault, a Class 3 felony. The case was originally presented by the Madison County Sheriffs Department. According to court documents, on April 18, 2020, Bell allegedly was in possession of more than 15 grams of methamphetamine and 30 grams of cannabis with intent to deliver, and struck a woman in the head on Illinois 3.

 Michael J. Fosnock, 36, of Litchfield, was indicted on a charge of unlawful possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver, a Class X felony. The case was originally presented by the Illinois State Police. On Oct. 14 Fosnock allegedly was in possession of between 15-100 grams of methamphetamine with intent to deliver.
The scheme was submitted by the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) last week to the Ministry of Transport, eliciting colourful responses.

Hong Sun, vice chairman of the Korea Chamber of Business in Vietnam, told VIR, This is good news for South Korean businesses in particular. Many have been planning to expand to and in Vietnam. And now they can realise these with the resumption of flights.

Initial flights will be operated to certain markets between Vietnam and Japan; those between Vietnam and South Korea, and others with Taiwan with frequency of four flights a week each way for airlines of each side.

In this period, the total number of weekly flights with passengers entering Vietnam from Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan is expected to be 24 with 6-7,000 passengers in quarantine each week.

The resumption of international flights is expected to be more widely deployed from September with the application of vaccine passports. The market for deployment will be countries/territories that announce the acceptance of the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines of the same kind widely used in Vietnam. The initial frequency is expected to be seven one-way flights per week on each route for the airlines of each party.

Before July, there will be charter combo flights for Vietnamese nationals, which the CAAV has proposed for deployment immediately. In the wake of this, Vietnamese air carriers have announced plans for international flights. Bamboo Airways will operate six flights a week to London Heathrow from the start of May. The airline has also been licensed to fly directly to the United States by the US Department of Transport from the final quarter of this year.

Elsewhere, national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines said on March 31 that it will operate four international routes from now until the end of June  namely Hanoi-Narita, Hanoi-Incheon, Hanoi- Sydney, and Ho Chi Minh City-Sydney.

Virginia B. Foote, chairwoman of the American Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam said, It is our hope that better systems can be established for our executives and technical support teams to enter the country. Safety is the priority, but we wish to work on more predictable procedures to make re-entry possible for our personnel. In addition, as new investors look at Vietnam, they need to be able to send personnel to examine and negotiate with their counterparts here.

European and British businesses are also expecting the same, especially in the context that the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (FTA) is bringing great business opportunities for the EU bloc and Vietnam, and the signing of the UK-Vietnam FTA is essential continuity to the close bilateral trading relationship.

The British Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam recommended prioritising the establishment of safe travel bubbles or air corridors with regional financial centres that are important to Vietnam, while the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Vietnam proposed that the government considers special measures for the entry of short-term engineers and businesspeople entering Vietnam.
Glenn Greenwald has speculated that coronavirus lockdowns could have contributed to the armed robbery that saw him bound and held at gunpoint for an hour at his farm in Brazil last month.

The journalist, who was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for their reporting about government surveillance programs based on leaks by Edward Snowden, recounted the terrifying home invasion near Rio de Janeiro in an essay on Monday.

He then appeared on Tucker Carlson's Fox News show on Tuesday night, where he shared his theory that the robbery may have been the result of 'desperation' driven by months of isolation during coronavirus.

'What is the effect of lockdowns, and quarantines, and isolation, and social distancing?' Greenwald asked. 'Not to make excuses for people to do this, but it drives people to this level of desperation.'

Glenn Greenwald appeared on Fox News on Tuesday night and speculated that coronavirus lockdowns could have contributed to the armed robbery that saw him bound and held at gunpoint for an hour at his farm in Brazil last month

He continued: 'There were people who tried warning when everyone was demanding lockdowns in the US and UK and and elsewhere, including in Brazil.

'Look, there are costs obviously to the pandemic. But there are huge costs to shutting down the economy, to separating everybody, to locking people in their homes. Mental health costs.

'It is really kind of a taboo on being able to weigh those costs. Everyone just said no. The only thing that matters is the coronavirus and stopping it.

'I think we are going to be dealing with the devastating effects of the solutions to the coronavirus for many, many, many years to come.'

Greenwald also described the robbery that took place on March 5, while his husband, Brazilian congressman David Michael Miranda, and their two children were out of town.

'Around 9 that night, I heard my dog barking incessantly,' he said. 'I went out to see why and suddenly were there were three men pointing guns.

'They had already contained the security guard of mine, who is an off-duty police officer. He was laying on the ground and they were standing over him with guns pointed at his head.

'I was actually very relieved when they began demanded money, because my first thought was: "This could be a politically-targeted crime." We got a lot of death threats in Brazil.'

He said he informed the robbers that his husband was a congressman but they didn't believe him and 'worked into a rage'.

'That is when they started becoming more violent,' he said. 'Breaking [the security guard's] ribs. Putting a gun to my mouth.

'They stayed about an hour and when they left, they tied our hands together behind our backs, bound her legs together and locked the door. [Then they] stole the car that we had in our driveway.'

The home invasion occurred at the remote farm Greenwald is renting with his husband David Michael Miranda and their two children (pictured together)

'What is the effect of lockdowns, and quarantines, and isolation, and social distancing?' Greenwald asked. 'Not to make excuses for people to do this, but it drives people to this level of desperation.' Pictured: Shuttered shops in Rio de Janiero

Greenwald went into more detail in his essay, saying that the thieves were angry when they didn't find as many valuables as they were looking for, aside from a few hundred dollars, some kitchen appliances and clothes.

'They ended up staying for an hour, though it seemed like much longer. Driven by the belief that I was hiding valuables  refusing to believe my assurances that I would not do that with five men pointing guns at me  they attempted various forms of psychological terror,' he wrote.

'They repeatedly threatened to shoot the police officer in the head, repeatedly kicked him so hard that they cracked several of his ribs, ordered me to open my mouth and stuck a gun in it as they demanded to know where the rest of the money was, smashed my phone and tablet against a wall when they could not figure out how to erase the hard-drive, and just generally tried to create a climate of extreme fear.'

Looking back on the incident one month on, Greenwald said that it appeared to him the thieves were 'desperate' and 'not professional criminals'.

'They were more nervous, agitated, desperate and disorganized than brutally or cooly efficient. That night, after leaving, they foolishly committed at least three other armed invasions of stores in the area using the car they stole from us.'

The stolen car, which registered to Greenwald's husband, was quickly picked up by police later on and the identity of the criminals was soon uncovered.

Speaking to Carlson, Greenwald confirmed that the robbers were arrested.

He also explained that he was 'reluctant' to write about the incident until colleagues urged him to do so.

'When you're a journalist, you don't really want to write about your own [experiences],' he said.

'But I was really encouraged to buy especially journalists and friends of mine who work on the crime, who said this was a really good opportunity to convey to people, especially with skyrocketing crime in major American cities, how brutalizing and traumatizing it can be, even if nobody ended up dead.'

He said he was also motivated to share his story after reading about a Vietnamese immigrant family in Oakland who were recently robbed at gunpoint in their home.

'I felt like that story was worse, and I wanted to tell my story to encourage people to donate money to them,' he said.

'Part of it is you just start empathizing with other people who go through it. But you also realize how fragile life is. You know, very easily it could have ended that day. And you want to maximize the value of each day.'
A frog species which can change colour has turned blue in the UK for the first time in 700 years.

Male moor frogs, which are widespread in Europe, turn blue in spring as they prepare to mate as it impress the females.

Staffordshire teenagers  Harvey Tweats and Tom Whitehurst  made history by creating a breeding enclosure in a small bath and played sounds of males mating so their frog thought it was surrounded by rivals and this made it turn blue.

Male moor frogs turn blue in spring as they prepare to mate but a pair of teenage reptile breeders believe they have recorded the first time this has happened in the UK for 700 years

The boys, who own breeding company Celtic Reptile and Amphibian, told the Daily Telegraph: Its the first time ones gone fully blue in Britain for 700 years.

Ben Goldsmith, a Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) board member, funded the pairs project.

He said: These two boys are building up a captive breeding population of reptiles and amphibians native to Northern Europe but which are either rare or missing altogether from Britain.

DEFRA board member Ben Goldsmith (pictured) funded the teenagers' project

As we begin the process of restoring long-lost wetlands the length and breadth of Britain it will be great to adorn them with these magical British species.

Last year Mr Goldsmith, a well-known rewilding enthusiast, was accused of releasing red deer and wild boar on his farm in Somerset, damaging neighbours land.

Environment Secretary George Eustice later acknowledged the 39-year-old financier had made an error in breaching guidelines on releasing wild animals.
The threat to Ireland's 12.5% corporation tax regime, the anchor of the State's prosperity, looms large as the new White House under President Joe Biden doubled down on its commitment to up-end the decades-old way US multinationals are taxed around the world.

The threat has increased after US treasury secretary Janet Yellen, in her first speech, set a summer deadline for the biggest multi-lateral overhaul yet to reach agreement between the richest nations to harmonise corporation tax rates.

The multinationals, in particular US pharma and IT giants, have done much to insulate the Irish Government's finances from the worst of the Covid economic storm, contributing the lion's share of the 11.8bn the exchequer collected in corporation taxes last year.

Those revenues went a long way to financing the billions of euro spent for households and businesses.

Ireland's low corporation tax rate now faces the threat of Biden's White House imposing a 21% minimum tax rate on overseas profits.

Co-operation with the OECD

The Irish Government has long seen co-operation with the OECD as the best way to manage the inevitable erosion of the benefits that the 12.5% rate has brought the State for almost three decades and has acknowledged that change is on the way.

The new threat is the pace of change as President Biden's White House puts its shoulder behind the reforms to get US pharma and IT giants to create more jobs and plants in the US, and not in other parts of the world, including Ireland, from which the goods and services are exported into the US.

"With the US now clearly on board, changes to rules governing the taxation of multinational corporations is on the way," said Goodbody chief economist Dermot O'Leary.

"We have described Ireland as the 51st state in the past, given the large role played by US multinationals in the Irish economy. As such, these changes will have important implications here in the coming years," Mr O'Leary said.

Citing US tax figures for 2018, he said US firms employed almost 7% of the Irish workforce and paid almost 7bn in corporate tax revenue to the exchequer, "more than Germany (4.3bn) and France (2.3bn) combined".

The speech by Ms Yellen is significant because she called for leading economies to work together to harmonise corporation tax rates around the world, meaning that the US is, along with many of the largest EU member states, looking to set a minimum tax rate, which would erode the attractiveness of Ireland's 12.5% tax regime.

Global minimum tax rate

Mr O'Leary said a global minimum tax rate has the potential to undermine Ireland's competitive rate, depending on the level that is set. Ireland will now have to compete for multinational jobs on a new front.

"Other features, such as access to the large EU market, are also vitally important and will become even more so as these new rules are rolled out," Mr O'Leary said.

"While it is expected that agreement at OECD level may come as early as this summer, changes will take some time to be implemented across multiple jurisdictions. That time should be used wisely," he said.
(Bloomberg) --Oil edged higher alongside broader markets as reopening efforts gained traction in the U.S. and helped ease concerns over virus-related setbacks elsewhere.

Futures in New York gained for a second straight session after choppy trading on Wednesday. New York City beaches will open for Memorial Day weekend, highlighting the progress major cities in the worlds largest oil consuming country are making toward a complete reopening.

At the same time, even though domestic gasoline stockpiles rose more than 4 million barrels last week amid a surge in imports, a gauge for demand of the fuel continued its upward trend. The Energy Information Administration report also showed crude inventories fell for a second week, bringing stockpiles to a five-week low.

West Texas Intermediate for May delivery rose 44 cents to settle at $59.77 a barrel.

Its a battle for whether well get a full summer driving season, said John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital LLC. Its going to be a close call, but theres a bias in favor of there being one given the pace of vaccine rollouts.

U.S. benchmark crude futures have been stuck in a roughly $4-a-barrel range since the middle of March as fresh lockdowns in Europe offset stronger demand in the U.S. and China. The four-week average for gasoline supplied in the U.S. -- a proxy for consumption -- ticked up to the highest since September, the EIA report showed. The gauge has increased for each of the past six weeks.

The U.S. has been making really good Covid progress, while challenges remain in Europe surrounding the vaccine rollout and the spike in cases, said Brian Kessens, a portfolio manager at Tortoise, a firm that manages roughly $8 billion in energy-related assets. If theres a silver lining, Europe from a lockdown perspective is likely being more aggressive now so that the summer does look that much brighter.

The spread between Nymex gasoline futures against WTI crude slumped back below $23 a barrel after the EIA report, with refineries running at the highest capacity since March 2020 and the U.S. importing the most gasoline since May 2019.

Oil prices also found support late in the session as U.S. equities staged a comeback from session lows. Minutes from the latest Federal Reserve meeting show officials see some time before conditions would be met for scaling back its massive asset-purchase campaign.

Investors are also watching for developments on AstraZeneca Plcs Covid-19 vaccine, with the U.K. now advising those under the age of 30 to be offered an alternative shot if available.

Oil demand is expected to recover further from the second part of 2021, but these expectations are based on the assumption that enough people will be vaccinated by then to justify the return to normality, said Louise Dickson, an oil markets analyst at Rystad Energy AS. The oil market recovery could lose speed, resulting in 2021 demand ending as much as 1 million barrels per day lower than where it would under a smooth vaccine rollout.

2021 Bloomberg L.P.
Indore: People roaming in public places without masks in the wake of rising COVID-19 cases, are being sent to a temporary jail in Madhya Pradesh's Indore city.

According to reports, a community guest house in the Snehlataganj area of the city is being designated as a temporary jail, following the directives of the local administration. As many as 15 personnel have been deputed in the temporary jail to keep a watch on prisoners and CCTV cameras are also installed in it, Rakesh Kumar Bhangre, the superintendent of the central jail, told PTI.

So far, as many as 9,183 people have reportedly been fined in this month for not wearing masks in public places. A total fine of Rs 4.65 lakh has been collected from them, according to a civic official.

"We have ramped up the drive against people not wearing face masks in the wake of a spurt in COVID-19 cases. Such people are being fined from R50 to R 100 individually," the official of Indore Municipal Corporation (IMC) quoted as saying by PTI.

Notably, Indore on Tuesday reported a nearly 15 per cent positivity rate. Dr Amit Malakar, District COVID-19 Nodal Officer told ANI, "The positivity rate of Covid is nearing 15 per cent. In March 2021, only a total of 9913 patients were found Corona positive in the Indore district, whereas 29 people died in the same month of March. In March 2020, however, there were a total of 46 cases found with no deaths."

He further said, "On Monday, 805 people were found Covid positive in Indore district taking the total number of Covid cases at 74,029. Of these, 5875 patients continue to be treated in hospitals. However, 977 have succumbed to death," adding "Many people have this notion that, because the vaccine is available, they need not adhere to the Covid-19 guidelines. It is a wrong approach."

Earlier on Monday, Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan chaired a high-level review meeting with Health Ministers, Additional Chief Secretaries and Principal Secretaries (Health) of States/UTs of Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab and Rajasthan.

These states have been reporting a very high rise in daily coronavirus cases and daily COVID-19 mortality in the last two weeks.

(With Agency Inputs)

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Content warning: Please be aware this article contains graphic descriptions of violence and suicidal thoughts.

SALEM -- Jessica Rothgery begged her son to put down a shotgun he aimed at police last Friday evening as officers walked up the driveway to her southeast Salem house.

As she stood a few feet away from her 22-year-old son, she watched as he was shot twice by Salem police Cpl. Clinton Sealey. Sealey was later publicly identified by police.

The fatal shooting of Natzeryt Nat Viertel at the Southeast Ewald Avenue home followed a chaotic afternoon. The shooting is being investigated by the Oregon State Police, who have released few details.

But in an interview Tuesday with Salem Reporter, Rothgery recounted the events that lead to her sons death. Police wouldnt comment on her account. She also shared a letter she sent to relatives about the shooting.

The police did what they had to do and are not to be blamed, she said in a written statement. Nat was a wonderful person who struggled for many years with mental illness and substance abuse. He is very loved by his family and will be very missed.

In the interview, Rothgery said she returned home from work Friday afternoon and encountered her son inside, one arm cut and bleeding.

Mom, will you please get a gun and kill me? Viertel calmly asked.

Instead, Rothgery tried to call 911 but her 6-foot-1 son grabbed the phone out of reach. He didnt respond when she asked to bandage his arm.

Rothgery said she took her cell phone outside to her van parked in the driveway, locking herself in and calling 911.

She saw Viertel leave the house, walk through the carport and head for the backyard.

Firefighters were the first to arrive after her 911 call, asking if there were any weapons. Rothgery told them her son didnt have access to guns, but she wasnt sure about knives.

I dont think hed hurt anybody, she told them.

She followed one firefighter as he headed for the backyard. They encountered Viertel.

He came around the corner from the shed with a gun drawn that I didnt know he had, she said.

She heard the firefighter say: Were not the police.

Rothgery stepped between the firefighter and her son.

Nat, I love you. Please give me the gun, she said.

Instead, Viertel lowered the gun to his side, walking out to an alley. Rothgery caught up to him and looped her arm in his and again asked him to give her the gun.

She told her son that he hadnt hurt anyone, and they could still turn matters around.

He looked at his arm and he goes, Its too late, she said.

Please dont make me watch them kill you, she replied.

He slipped through a break in the fence too small for his mother to use and returned to the backyard. By the time she got around to the yard, she saw him in front of the house without the gun.

She thought he was going to surrender. The pair stood at the front corner of the house, waiting for police.

Several patrol cars and other police vehicles responded to the area and Rothgery waved to officers to let them know they were at the right house.

As officers approached up the driveway, she turned around to see her son flip the lid off a trash can, removing the shotgun.

No, theyll kill you, she said as she moved toward him.

She thought she might get shot if she moved closer, so she backed up toward the house.

He was standing in the middle of the driveway with the gun drawn when he was shot.

Rothgery said police ordered her to get on the ground a few feet away.

She said her son didnt want to hurt anyone.

Rothgery said her son, whose father died when he was 11, struggled with mental health and substance abuse issues since he was a teenager. He had been through drug treatment programs repeatedly in recent years and worked as a carpenter.

In a letter she wrote to friends and family following his death she said everyone knew him as a bright, energetic, funny and creative person. But he had a lot of internal struggles.

She said that one of his best outlets to deal with his issues was to be able to go to the gym regularly and this was taken away from him over the past year, she wrote.

Nat hit a drastic downward spiral a few weeks ago. He knew he needed to get help and just the day before his death was telling me he was hopeful because he contacted the Psychiatric Crisis Center and they said they should be able to get him into a live-in treatment center, the letter continued.

I guess he decided he just couldnt go on and face it anymore, his mother wrote.

HOW TO GET HELP: The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24 hours a day at 1-800-273-TALK(8255), and connects callers with a crisis center near them. For help in Spanish, call 1-888-628-9454.

Warning signs for suicide include withdrawal, isolation and talking about being in unbearable pain or being a burden to others. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has a list of risk factors, warning signs and suggestions for helping someone who may be thinking about suicide.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-08 02:27:15|Editor: huaxia

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CAIRO, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Iraq reported on Wednesday the highest daily confirmed COVID-19 infections since the outbreak of the pandemic in the country. Meanwhile, the caseload in Iran is nearing 2 million in a faster speed during national holidays.

The Iraqi Ministry of Health reported 8,331 new COVID-19 cases, the record high since February 2020, raising the total infections to 895,622.

It also said 37 new deaths were recorded during the day, raising the death toll from the infectious virus to 14,572, while the total recoveries in Iraq climbed by 5,020 to 794,444.

Altogether 8,525 people were vaccinated during the past 24 hours across the country, bringing the total number of doses received to 118,670.

Spokesman of the ministry Sayf al-Badr said in a press release that the recent increase in coronavirus infections was "expected," stressing the epidemiological situation is still "under control."

The Iranian health ministry reported 20,954 COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, taking the country's nationwide caseload to 1,984,348.

Sima Sadat Lari, spokeswoman for the Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education, said the pandemic has so far claimed 63,699 lives in Iran, up by 193 in the past 24 hours.

A total of 1,675,891 people have recovered from the disease or been discharged from hospitals, while 4,177 remain in intensive care units.

She required the Iranians to "stay at home" amid the new wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country, saying the prevalence of the mutated virus is rapidly growing and there is a steeper rise in hospitalizations than previous waves.

"We are on a full-scale war with the disease, and we will see an increase in the death toll in the coming days," Lari said.

All capital cities of Iranian provinces have been categorized as "red zones" with high risks, according to Tasnim News Agency citing a demographic map released by the ministry on Wednesday.

Many of them had been categorized as risk-free before the Iranian New Year holidays beginning on March 21, said the report.

Travels and visits during the holidays have resulted in a new surge of COVID-19 infections across the country. Over the past days, the number of daily cases has hit an all-time high.

Morocco has announced a night curfew during the Muslim's fasting month of Ramadan to combat the spread of COVID-19.

A government statement said that a nationwide night curfew will be implemented from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. local time, starting from the first day of Ramadan.

The previous decisions to contain the spread of the virus will remain, said the statement, referring to the closure of all commercial activities at 8 p.m.

The Kuwaiti Health Ministry reported on Wednesday 1,517 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total infections in the country to 241,469.

The ministry also announced six more fatalities, taking the death toll to 1,379, while the tally of recoveries rose by 1,325 to 226,026.

The Kuwaiti government has decided to further shorten the curfew by one hour to last between 7 p.m. and 5 a.m. local time, and allow walk inside residential areas between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. from April 8 to April 22.

Israel's Ministry of Health reported 243 new COVID-19 cases, raising the total infections in the country to 835,163. The death toll from the virus rose by five to 6,262.

The total recoveries in Israel rose to 824,110 with 378 newly recovered cases being added, while the number of active cases decreased to 4,791.

The number of people vaccinated against COVID-19 in Israel reached nearly 5.29 million, or 56.9 percent of its total population, after the vaccination campaign began on Dec. 20, 2020.

Algeria on Wednesday reported 125 new COVID-19 cases, raising the total number of confirmed cases in the North African country to 117,879.

The death toll from the virus rose to 3,112 after four new fatalities were added, said the Algerian Ministry of Health in a statement.

Meanwhile, 96 more patients recovered from the disease, bringing the total number of recoveries in the country to 82,096, the statement added.

Lebanon registered 3,120 new COVID-19 cases, raising the total number of infections to 485,918, and the death toll from the virus went up by 33 to 6,512, the health ministry reported.

Two batches of vaccines developed by Chinese pharmaceutical firm Sinopharm arrived on Tuesday to support Lebanon's fight against COVID-19.

The Omani health ministry on Wednesday announced 1,203 new COVID-19 infections, raising the total number of confirmed cases in the country to 166,685.

Meanwhile, 746 people recovered during the past 24 hours, taking the overall recoveries to 149,049 while seven deaths were reported, pushing the death toll up to 1,735, according to a ministry statement.

The Gulf state's coronavirus committee said on Monday that only citizens and residents will be allowed to enter its territory starting from Thursday.

The Qatari health ministry announced 940 new COVID-19 infections, raising the total number of confirmed cases in the Gulf state to 186,201.

Meanwhile, 527 more people recovered from the virus, bringing the overall recoveries to 167,480, while the fatalities increased by eight to 320, according to a ministry statement. Enditem
This time around, there was a fair and square battle between the security forces, comprising mainly of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), and the Naxalite group People Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA), unlike in previous incidents in June 2013 when Congress leaders of the state were killed; in July 2018 when 24 CRPF personnel were killed; and in March 2020 when 19 Chhattisgarh police personnel were killed. The two sides were quite even in terms of men and weapons. The CRPF operation to nab PLGA commander Madvi Hidma did not work. The encounter on Saturday turned out to be an ambush as well, but it was part of the battle tactics. The security forces might have been misled by false information. That remains a strong possibility.

It is a good sign both Union home minister Amit Shah and Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel returned to their posts immediately, cutting short their election campaign visits to Assam. Mr Shah also spoke to Mr Baghel on the phone and there seems to be some coordination happening on the ground. Congress president Sonia Gandhi, in a statement paying her respects to the security personnel who were slain, pledged the support of the Congress government in the state to the Centre in fighting Naxalism  on which there appears to be some unity of political purpose. It was the belief of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former home minister P. Chidambaram that Naxalism was the greatest threat to the countrys national security.

It is a fair question ask, therefore, why the governments in Chhattisgarh and at the Centre are unable to tackle the challenge of the Naxalites. It is plausible that the topography of the Bastar region in the state makes it easy for the guerrilla groups to operate effectively, and it will not be easy for the security forces to eliminate them completely. It will have to be a continuous engagement. What is needed then is an overarching strategy to counter the Naxalites.

There will be many who will argue that the problem is the backwardness and poverty of the people in the area, and that once development reaches the people, the Naxalite threat will vanish. This is a legitimate but partial view. It should not be derided and dismissed out of hand as is often done by the ostensible security hawks. The hawks want an all-out war against the Naxalites, and the solution they see is in the complete wipeout of the guerrilla groups. This is a slightly wrong-headed, if not pig-headed, view of a much larger issue. When you are fighting the Naxalites, you are also fighting an ideology. There is a need to counter that ideology. This cant be done by the security forces alone, or simply by improving the physical infrastructure. There is a need to support and protect the democratic culture among people, so that they value the privileges of liberties that a democratic system guarantees in contrast to the totalitarian methods of the Naxalites. One of the effective ways of countering Naxalism and Maoism is to improve the democratic working of governments. Ordinary people must have a say in matters involving their governance. More than sophisticated weaponry, it is grassroots democracy that will eventually defeat the Naxal menace. There should be little doubt that Naxalism is an ineffective fight against economic and social inequalities.

All governments, and its not just the BJP, by and large tend to attack democratic activists over their sympathy for the Naxalites. By attacking the activists, the governments show themselves to be intolerant and tyrannical. The activists in many ways act as mediators between the poor people and governments, and they create a buffer zone between people and the Naxalite groups. At the same time, the government needs to fight the hard battles with a better strategy. This would involve the financial and arms supply lines of the Naxal groups. This has been the case with all insurgent groups in South Asia. It was a moot question as to how the now decimated Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) sustained their money and arms supply lines. The final defeat of the LTTE happened because its supply lines were choked. This has to happen with the Naxal groups too and it would require intelligent counter strategies rather than just stepping up surveillance and creating checkpoints.

There is also a need to explore the possibility of political deals with the insurgent groups, as had happened in the case of the Northeast militant groups. This may not work as it had not in many cases in the Northeast. One of the subtle motives behind insurgencies is that existing political groups bar the doors to new entrants. Instead of weaning away individuals and small groups with economic and social incentives to join the mainstream, it may not be a bad idea to deal at the political level with the Naxal groups. But that would require a rigorous assessment of the strength of the rebel groups.

Many of the separatist groups in Jammu and Kashmir have often put forward the argument that if the Indian government was not averse to dealing politically with insurgent groups in the Northeast, there was no reason why it should not do so in Jammu and Kashmir too. The same argument can be extended to the Naxalite/Maoist groups as well.

The reason the ruling establishment is willing to talk to the insurgent groups in the Northeast is that there is no ideological barrier. In the case of the J&K separatists and the Naxalites, the powers that be, including all the mainstream political parties, are inimical towards the ideology of the J&K separatists and the Naxalites. It needs cool thinking to realise that ideology is only a thin veil for power bargaining in many cases. It is possible that some of the J&K separatists and the Naxalites are fanatical ideologues, but there are many others who are not.

The government and the vested political interests should be intelligent enough to deal with the Naxalites at the political level. It may go a long way in dealing with the problem of the Red insurgency. This approach applies in the case of the J&K separatist groups as well. There is no guarantee that the political approach would succeed, but it would at least open another window of opportunity.
Bangladesh: Experimental vannamei shrimp cultivation underway

by Dipankar Roy

April 07,2021 | Source: The Daily Star

Bangladesh has finally started to farm vannamei shrimp on pilot basis following pleas from exporters as locally grown black tiger shrimp and freshwater prawn are unable to compete with cheaper varieties in western markets. Purchased from Thailand, the first 10-lakh batch of vannamei was released in four ponds of Bangladesh Fisheries Research Institute (BFRI) in Paikgachha upazila of Khulna. The project will test whether whiteleg shrimp can cope with the local environment. If successful, the initiative is expected to breathe life back into the ailing industry. "One of our main challenges is the shortage of raw materials. We will get raw materials for processing in my factory if our pilot farming is successful," said Shyamal Das, managing director of MU Seafoods. MU Seafoods partnered with Sushilan, a local non-government organisation, in 2019 to begin the experiment on vannamei farming. The Department of Fisheries (DoF) gave the go-ahead to culture whiteleg shrimp in the southwestern division of Khulna, a major farming region for export-oriented shrimp, after years of concerns that foreign species may have a negative impact on their native counterparts such as black tiger shrimp. The project, set to begin last year, had been delayed by early rainfall and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Last year, the fisheries office permitted the Chattogram-based Agribusiness Enterprise Development and Services to cultivate vannamei shrimp in an isolated location at Khuruskul of Cox's Bazar under the supervision of the DoF and Bangladesh Fisheries Research Institute (BFRI). The firm is yet to complete its procedural documentation to start the pilot farming.



The move comes after repeated pleas from shrimp processors and exporters to allow vannamei cultivation as export earnings from local varieties have fallen consistently since fiscal 2014-15. This is because local varieties are priced higher than the vannamei farmed in huge quantities mainly in China, Southeast Asia, India and some Latin American regions. Grown by more than eight lakh farmers on 2.72 lakh hectares of land in Bangladesh's Southwest region to serve consumers in EU and US markets, shrimp fetched Bangladesh about $550 million through its export in fiscal 2013-14. The receipts dipped to $333 million in fiscal 2019-20, showed data from the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB). During the July-February period the same year, shrimp exports fell 18 per cent year-on-year to $224 million. Das said the pilot project gives hope for shrimp processing plants and farmers for better productivity. MU Seafood invested nearly Tk 1 crore to prepare the ponds for the project.



Company officials said before they released the postlarvae vannamei, samples were sent to the Bangladesh Fisheries Research Institute (BFRI) and Bagerhat Shrimp Research Center for testing. "The test results will actually tell you when to start the next phase in their growth," said Pabitra Kumar Das, senior fisheries officer of Paikgachha. He also said the nursing was done at the BFRI ponds to prevent it from coming in contact with the environment and harming it. Processors said farmers can grow shrimp once a year whereas vannamei can be cultivated three times a year. At the same time, productivity of vannamei is much higher than shrimp grown in ordinary ponds. Regular shrimp cultivation yields 300-400 kilogrammes per hectare but in case of vannamei, the yield per hectare is 7,000-8,000 kilogrammes. "We do not have an alternative to run exports without vannamei cultivation and I think it won't have any effect on the environment," said Mostafa Nuruzzaman, chief executive officer of Sushilan. Kazi Belayet Hossain, former president of the Bangladesh Frozen Foods Exporters Association, said the production cost of black tiger shrimp is higher than that of vannamei. "And we are unable to cater to the global market at this price. People want shrimp at cheaper rates," he said. Hossain added that vannamei was produced in 67 countries and accounted for 77 per cent of the global shrimp production in 2017.

 2021 / thedailystar.net
A man failed to defend a woman during a fight on Bourbon Street, and as a result, he and his brother were shot blocks away on Easter morning, a suspect in the case told police.

Dontez Baker and Shayla Bradley  both 21  are accused of attempted murder after allegedly shooting the siblings in the 700 block of Canal Street about 1:40 a.m. Sunday. New Orleans Police Department investigators announced Thursday that the pair had been arrested in Mississippi.

+2 Canal Street double shooting suspects captured in Mississippi A man and a woman linked to a double shooting on Canal Street early Sunday morning have been arrested in Mississippi, according to the New Orl

Officials havent released updates on the victims' conditions. But a sworn police statement filed in criminal court showed that investigators could only speak with one of the wounded men  the other was fighting for his life.

That same statement offers a theory for what sparked the shooting, at least according to Bradley, who twice called police to give her side of the story prior to her arrest.

It all allegedly began when Bradley and Baker fired a gun at Bradleys ex-boyfriend during a confrontation outside of a hotel in the 6000 block of Chef Menteur Highway on April 2. He wasnt hit.

A day later, Bradley said, the former boyfriend encountered her on Bourbon Street and fought with her.

After the fight, Bradley told police she became upset with a different young man who had failed to protect her. So, with Baker accompanying her, she approached that man outside of a fast-food restaurant in the 700 block of Canal, and an argument erupted.

Next, police suspect that Bradley asked Baker to hand her his pistol. He responded by firing several shots.

The young man and his brother, who was also at the scene, were both struck in the stomach, police wrote in court records.

Paramedics took the victims  ages 18 and 19  to University Medical Center. While awaiting surgery, the man arguing with Bradley told officers that he believed he was shot because Bradley accused him of stealing a gun from her, and she wanted the weapon back.

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Police said the other victim couldnt give a statement because he was battling severe life-threatening complications from multiple bullet wounds to his stomach and was undergoing an emergency operation.

Initially, investigators and the victim they interviewed did not know the full names of Bradley and Baker, who ran away from the scene. But detectives managed to identify them after the NOPD publicly released surveillance photos that were recovered from a nearby hotels security cameras.

+2 With suspects identified, warrants issued in Canal Street shooting that left 2 wounded: NOPD New Orleans police have obtained arrest warrants for a man and woman linked to a shooting on Canal Street early Sunday morning that left two m

Police said Bradley called them twice after recognizing herself in those photos. While she refused to meet with detectives, she recounted the attempted shooting on Chef Menteur, the fight on Bourbon and the double shooting on Canal, explaining the roles she and Baker played in each, detectives wrote in their statement.

Detectives obtained warrants to arrest both. NOPD and the U.S. Marshals captured Baker in Wiggins, Mississippi, about 35 miles south of his hometown of Hattiesburg. He allegedly had two handguns in his possession when he was arrested.

The agencies said they caught Bradley in Gulfport, Mississippi, about 35 miles south of Wiggins.

The pair were awaiting transfer to the New Orleans lockup as of Thursday afternoon.

Baker faces two counts of attempted second-degree murder. Meanwhile, Bradley is accused of being a principal to attempted second-degree murder, meaning authorities blame her just as much as Baker for the double shooting even though she isnt accused of firing a gun.

Each count of attempted second-degree murder could carry up to 50 years in prison upon conviction. The same applies to being a principal to that crime.

Correction: This post was edited to correct Gulfport's location with respect to Wiggins.
The economic crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic introduced a myriad of negative impacts on individuals, families, businesses and communities. Certain sectors were hit especially hard, but the woes of record high unemployment and business closures rippled through our economy, leaving widespread financial uncertainty.

To mitigate these effects felt throughout the nation, Congress passed the first stimulus package in the spring, including direct payments to citizens, and another early in 2021.

Throwing money at an economic crisis may not be flawless, but Congress can certainly learn from the bipartisan agreement on putting cash into the hands of struggling citizens. As Congress inevitably confronts another crisis  climate change  cash payments in the form of dividends may play key role in another bipartisan effort.

To stop the devastating effects of a warming planet due to climate change, the world needs to shift away from fossil fuels and greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This major change doesnt need to cause an economic crisis; the transition can be gradually accomplished by putting a price on carbon and relying on dividends (direct cash payments) to ensure citizens directly benefit from the tax rather than simply paying higher bills.

Increasing taxes typically fuels hesitation and opposition among citizens. But taxing carbon may be a necessary step in mitigating greenhouse emissions. Carbon dividends could offer a bipartisan pathway forward with carbon pricing. At the end of 2020, this market-based strategy has already garnered wide support in the form of the Economists Statement on Carbon Dividends. The impressive list of signatories includes Dr. Samuel Andoh and Dr. Sang Yoon, professors of economics at Southern Connecticut State University.

The concept of putting a price on carbon is not new. This cost may take the form of a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system. A carbon tax applies a fee to a specific unit of carbon dioxide released by the energy industry, expressed in dollars per ton. A cap-and-trade program designates a gradually decreasing limit (cap) over time to the amount of carbon emitted. The trading portion of this strategy allows an emitter to exceed that limit by purchasing extra credits/permits from another emitter who has remained below the limit. These methods have been criticized for their potential to create job loss and their potential to enable a business-as-usual approach to carbon emissions. Dr. Andoh describes these market-based approaches as the least disruptive method of reducing emissions and specifically references recent success stories in the UK, Sweden and Ireland.

The various carbon pricing bills submitted to Congress propose a range of prices per ton, different rates of price increases or limit decreases, and varying fuels targeted for the fee and/or cap. Citizens Climate Lobby, a national nonprofit organization, supports the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (HR 763). The key to this strategy is the addition of dividends to the proposal. This means that the revenue collected through a carbon tax is equally distributed back to citizens and potentially quells the critique for carbon taxes and caps. Dr. Sang favors the focus on incentives with this approach and foresees this lasting for the long-term. Paying this tax back to the consumer creates a win-win that crosses political party boundaries.

Congress needs to put a price on pollution, just like the price on any other waste we deal with. This tax and dividend system is a transparent and widely supported solution that will keep the economy running and directly benefit households. Just like the cash payments successfully used in one crisis, lets use a similar methodology to tackle the looming crisis of climate change.

Derek Faulkner is an undergraduate senior studying environmental systems and sustainability at Southern Connecticut State University.
But Whites four predecessors all used the position as a rung on the ladder to higher office. Republicans George Ryan and Jim Edgar went on to be governor and Democrat Alan Dixon went on to the U.S. Senate. Dixons predecessor, Michael Howlett, was the unsuccessful 1976 Democratic candidate for governor against Republican Jim Thompson.
In South Korea she's a household name, a mainstay of film and television for nearly half a century. At last January's Sundance festival in Park City, Utah, Yuh-Jung Youn got to be something else: an American ingenue.

When the lights went up after the premiere of her English-language feature debut, Lee Isaac Chung's exquisite family drama Minari (out now), the actress, 73, recalls via phone from her home in Seoul, "I was actually shocked, because we didn't expect having applause from the audience. All of [the cast] was crying. I'm the only one who didn't cry! My friend said to me, 'You are very strange,'" she admits, cackling. "But later when Isaac got the award and got a standing ovation, I cried."

That award would be the coveted Grand Jury Prize, the first in a shower of accolades that would culminate in six Oscar nominations  including a Best Supporting Actress nod for Youn's star turn as a less-than-typical grandma. Set at the dawn of the 1980s in rural Arkansas, Chung's loosely autobiographical script follows the immigrant Yi family as restless patriarch Jacob (Steven Yeun) attempts to make the dream of farming his own land come true.

But country life  or rather, the dingy mobile home they're confined to  is a lonely purgatory for his exasperated wife, Monica (Yeri Han), already struggling to raise two kids (Alan Kim and Noel Kate Cho) on what little they have. And so she brings over her mother, Soonja, played by Youn. Domesticity is not Soonja's strong suit; she doesn't cook or bake or read bedtime stories. But she does love American wrestling and Mountain Dew, and she would do anything for her grandchildren, maybe more than they know.

A24

Despite her homeland fame, Youn, whose Hollywood experience so far has largely been confined to a supporting role on the Netflix series Sense8 and aborted projects with Sandra Oh and Margaret Cho, still marvels that she ended up in the movie at all. When a chance meeting via a mutual friend led her to the script, though, it hooked her: "It was written in English, and as you know, my English is not perfect, very limited. So I was reading and I said, 'Is it a real story, is it his life or what is it? It's so real to me, the details.'"

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In fact, it was for Chung, 42, who grew up watching his parents' VHS tapes of her work and was thrilled to have her portray a version of his real-life grandmother, if by no means a slavish imitation. "I avoided talking about my grandmother during preparation so that Ms. Youn could make this role her own, without any burden to honor my memories," the director tells EW. "[But] when I watched the film take shape in the edit, I realized that she had still managed to capture something deeply emotional or spiritual about her.... She has an unpredictable quality, an ability to surprise you without any effort. What she did was pivotal for the overall pathos of the film."

The indie budget, too, provided a sort of Method shortcut for the cast when it came to bonding on set: "To save money, we rented an Airbnb, a house for four of us," Youn remembers. "Steven was staying at a hotel and he tried to come use the washing machine, and then after washing he didn't go back to his hotel, he just stayed with us. So we got together every day more and more  Isaac came in, the dogs came in, we had a big feast every dinner and then we discussed about the movie and we changed the lines from English to Korean to try to make it better. If there was big money involved we're not going to get together like that, you know? But we became a family."

Despite Minari's growing Oscar buzz  and its rare status as one of the few Asian-centered stories onscreen to reach such pinnacles  Youn is sanguine about whatever rewards may come, and the possibility that its success will lead to more projects Stateside. "With my English, I doubt it. But okay I will ask them, 'Do I have a chance to work with Isaac again?'" she teases, before unleashing one last hooting Soonja laugh. "This time though, more money please."

Check out more from EW's The Awardist, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis, and our podcast diving into all the highlights from the year's best films.

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Jon Neiditz, one of the countrys preeminent incident management attorneys, has joined the Advisory Board of Group Salus, an Atlanta-startup that is developing an artificial intelligence-based incident management system that will help small and medium sized business both manage through a cyber incident and execute a strategic communications plan to protect their reputations after a cyberattack.

We are very pleased to have one of the finest cybersecurity legal minds in the country join our Advisory Board, said Group Salus CEO Larry Lafferty. Jon has years of experience in the incident management community that will be invaluable to us as we move forward in our development process.

Neiditz helped to pioneer coordinated, multidisciplinary breach response in the early 2000s. He has been recognized for his work and incident management thought leadership by the National Law Journal as a Cybersecurity Trailblazer and Best Lawyers in America, and as a Ponemon Institute Fellow.

Since 2004, I have been helping thousands of organizations of all sizes respond effectively to security and privacy incidents, said Neiditz, a partner at Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP, Atlanta. Even the largest companies could be better-served by the marketplace in my view, offered only expensive tabletop exercises that teach just a bit but leave nothing useful behind aside from expensive consulting relationships and/or expensive incident management software often requiring lots of customization.

Small and medium-sized organizations are often offered only short-term teams of consulting resources if they have purchased cyber-risk insurance, not any software that will help them manage risks, respond to threats and control costs. Thats why, with small and medium-sized firms now being hit with zero day attacks from nation states, I believe the Group Salus AI incident manager addresses a critical need.

Many experts believe small to medium-sized businesses are the most vulnerable targets for cyber criminals. A report by the Ponemon Institute found that 47 percent of small and medium-sized businesses have no understanding of how to protect their companies from cyberattacks with many of them out of business within six months of the attack.

The cloud-based Salus AI Incident Manager enables smaller companies to identify the resources, people and organizational structure they will need to prepare for a cyberattack, then guide them step-by-step to both mitigate the attack and develop and execute a communications strategy that will help reduce potential harm to their reputations that could result in a loss of revenue.

The Salus product will allow companies to automatically assess their cyber response readiness, construct a viable response plan, and practice simulated cyber incidents. When an incident occurs, the customizable Salus solution will guide the response team through all aspects of the issue management, assign and track tasks, automatically log the history of the incident, alert identified stakeholders, provide access to proprietary and professionally prepared communications templates and materials including press releases, FAQs, letters to customers, etc. The software platform will also serve as a storage site for critical contact information.

Last year, Group Salus announced a joint development partnership with Veloxiti AI Works and the two companies have created the initial technology platform for the product. They are in the process of identifying potential investors as well as beginning to preview the solution with small and medium-sized companies to garner input as they refine the solutions features and function.

Veloxiti AI Works artificial intelligence technologies were developed over many years with the U.S. Department of Defense. Veloxiti recently received an investment for use of this technology in financial applications. The company is bringing those advanced capabilities to the commercial marketplace. With Veloxiti AI Works solutions, human decision-making can be greatly enhanced, skilled workers performance amplified, and the promise of Big Data based solutions made a reality.

Group Salus was founded by Scott Marticke, Mark Goldman and Wiliam Marks who have more than 100 years of combined marketing, branding and corporate communications experience. In addition to Neiditz, Group Salus Advisory Board also includes:



Benn Konsynski  George S. Craft Distinguished University Professor of Information Systems & Operations at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University.

Darrin Reynolds  Former head of Amazons Emerging Regulations program for the corporate Information Security Team.

Gary Cooper  Founder and Managing Partner of Aptitude Ventures.

Ken Bernhardt  Dr. Bernhardt was Regents Professor of Marketing and Taylor E. Little, Jr. Professor of Marketing, and Chairman of the Marketing Department at Georgia State University.

Kelly Caffarelli  First president of the Home Depot Foundation, a position she held for over a decade.

Karen Robinson  Longtime technology entrepreneur who has built several companies including Nanolumens, also led the development of Opportunity International, a successful global micro-finance organization.

Jennifer Ready -- Founder and Partner at Narwhal Digital with 20 years in digital marketing.

As one of the members of the Group Salus Advisory Board, we are thrilled to have Jon join us, said Darrin Reynolds. In my involvement with the cybersecurity industry, I have not come across any product that offers what the Salus AI Incident Manager does, at any price. Providing an affordable incident management solution for the SMB and public sectors is a critical need as damaging breaches are only on the increase.

For more information on the new Group Salus AI Incident Manager contact: smarticke@groupsalus.com.
[April 07, 2021] Unbound Security Delivers Integration with Google Cloud External Key Manager

NEW YORK, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Unbound Security , a leader in cryptographic key orchestration for the enterprise, announced today their support for Google Cloud External Key Manager (Cloud EKM), following months of development and integration to Unbound CORE. Via CORE key management platform, Unbound offers Google customers a single pane of glass, to centrally manage and control the encryption keys protecting all of their data stored on Google Cloud. The solution decrypts the data encryption keys necessary for any query on-the-fly while maintaining a tamper-proof audit. Integration With Google Cloud Enables Enterprise Customers To Securely Encrypt and Control All Data Stored on Google Clo Bahul Harikumar, head of infrastructure security partnerships, Google Cloud, commented, "We would like to provide a range of flexible options to meet customers' encryption needs. Together with Unbound Security, we are bringing enterprise customers the ability to have control over their data in our cloud environments, easing their workflows and providing transparency without adding increased risk  a must in the current all-digital climate and a double must in terms of compliance." The Unbound CORE External Key Manager for Google Cloud enables businesses worldwide to protect and be in full control of their data on Google Cloud. Data stored and used by Google Cloud, including services such as BigQuery, Cloud SQL, Kubernetes Engine and Copute Engine Persistent Disks can now be encrypted at-rest using Unbound keys that are fully controlled and owned by the customer. Google Cloud does not have control to these encryption keys; they are protected and managed solely by the enterprise customer using Unbound CORE.



"We are elated to see the realization of our integration with Google Cloud EKM," Rocco Donnino, vice president of strategic alliances, stated. "Thanks to Unbound's multiparty computation-based technology, businesses worldwide will be able to secure and manage their Google Cloud keys as easily as they would with their keys on-premise  via a centralized, secure system deployed across multiple sites." Secure multiparty computation  the technology at the heart of the Unbound CORE -- makes this a perfect fit for Google Cloud EKM. The customer can enjoy security and performance, based on a simple architecture fully controlled by the client on its own dedicated systems. All this enables a smooth and secure transition to cloud services.

"More importantly, we bring tamper-proof audit logging to the market," Donnino added. "In a world where compliance and transparency are more important than ever, we are excited to bring the same tools to Google Cloud users as we do to our broad range of customers." Unbound CORE External Key Manager for Google Cloud uses a virtual Hardware Security Module (vHSM) to deploy the solution in the cloud, as close as possible to protected data in the cloud. The solution also scales to match the needs of the business. There is no need for unique hardware deployment; this is a cloud-era solution  secure, performant and easy to use. For more information about the integration, click here.

About Unbound

Unbound Security is the global leader in cryptography and empowers enterprise customers worldwide to confidently secure, manage and authenticate all critical business transactions, information, identity, and digital assets  anywhere, anytime. Unbound Security CORE is the enterprise platform of choice for secure key management, trusted by many of the world's largest banks and Fortune 500 companies. Unbound Security is a recent recipient of the Deloitte Fast 500 award and is headquartered in New York, with research and development facilities in Tel Aviv. For more information visit www.unboundsecurity.com. Contact us for more information on: Media Contact:

Marcella P. Arthur

marcella.arthur@unboundsecurity.com

Tel. +1 (908) 601-2333 View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/unbound-security-delivers-integration-with-google-cloud-external-key-manager-301263820.html SOURCE Unbound Security

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Congressman Alcee Hastings, who died Tuesday at 84, was adamant: He did not want a service.

So there wont be one, his chief of staff, Lale Morrison, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Wednesday.

Morrison said many people have been asking about arrangements, and shes informed them of his edict.

Those were his wishes, she said. His wishes were not to have a funeral service.

There will be a congressional memorial in Washington, D.C. And the Congressional Black Caucus will have its own event in honor of one of its longtime members. Arrangements havent been made yet.

At some point, well into the future, there may be a celebration of life in South Florida, where Hastings lived for almost 60 years.

His wish was to be cremated.

Hastings, the longest serving member of the Florida congressional delegation, was first elected to Congress in 1992. In late 2018, he was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

For much of the ensuing two years, he continued public appearances between treatments, but more recently he hadnt been doing so.

Hastings wasnt able to travel to Washington, D.C., in January for the swearing in of the new Congress. The oath of office for his 15th term was administered by U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who represents an adjacent South Florida district.

Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com or on Twitter @browardpolitics
Displaced women sit on mats after fleeing an attack claimed by Islamic State-linked insurgents on the town of Palma, (Photo : REUTERS/Emidio Jozine/File Photo)

United Nations teams have received "worrying" reports that Tanzania has rejected over 1,000 people seeking refuge from an Islamic State-claimed attack on a town in northern Mozambique, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said on Tuesday.



The March 24 attack on the town of Palma, adjacent to gas developments worth $60 billion, sent the town's residents scattering in all directions, with some fleeing into dense forest while others escaped by boat.



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Some headed north towards Tanzania, aid workers said.



"UNHCR teams... have received worrying reports from displaced populations that over 1,000 people fleeing Mozambique and trying to enter Tanzania were not allowed to cross the border to seek asylum," its statement said.



It called on Mozambique's neighbours to provide access to those seeking protection.



The UNHCR had earlier told Reuters it does not have access to the border or affected areas, without giving a reason. Two other aid workers said Tanzania had refused their organizations access, while the Mozambique side of the border was considered too dangerous.



National and local Tanzanian officials either did not respond to Reuters' calls or declined comment.



Last week a boat with 45 fleeing Mozambicans on board docked in Tanzania, where a local community leader said they had been given food and shelter.



FORCED RETURNS



Hundreds of others, meanwhile, had crossed into Tanzania by land, only to be sent back later via a different border post, according to one of the aid workers and a security consultant who works with a number of humanitarian agencies.



One Palma resident, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, said he was allowed into Tanzania but was then driven six hours and handed over to the Mozambican military in the border village of Negomano. There was no food or shelter there, he said, so he continued to the district capital.



Armindo Ngunga, secretary of state for Mozambique's northernmost province of Cabo Delgado, said many people who had fled to Tanzania were coming back via Negomano, and authorities would take care of them. He did not provide numbers.



The military said on Sunday that Palma was now "completely safe", while local media that visited the town said some citizens had started to return.



The full extent of the casualties and displacement from the attack remain unclear.


Caitlyn Jenner reportedly is considering a run for Governor of California:

Scoop: Caitlyn Jenner is talking with political consultants as she actively explores a run for governor of California, three sources with direct knowledge of her deliberations tell me & @jonathanvswan https://t.co/NWV4lD9Wp1  Alayna Treene (@alaynatreene) April 6, 2021



From the Axios story:

Jenner is being assisted in her consideration by Caroline Wren, a longtime GOP fundraiser. Wren initially met Jenner through her work with the American Unity Fund, a GOP nonprofit focused on LGBT issues. Wren previously worked at Trump Victory, a joint fundraising committee for President Trumps 2020 campaign, and also helped organize the rally he addressed immediately before the U.S. Capitol assault on Jan. 6.

The context, of course, is the upcoming (I think) recall of Governor Gavin Newsom. As I understand it, the recall ballot will have two questions. The first is, should Governor Newsom be recalled? If Yes wins, the second question is, who should replace him? I dont believe there is any limit to the number of people who can pay a few thousand dollars and get on the ballot. If that is correct, it places a premium on 1) celebrity, and 2) niche appeal. That is how Arnold Schwarzenegger became Governor of California: he got the most votes when Gray Davis was recalled.

Given that format, Caitlyn Jenner may have a real chance of being the next governor. One of my daughters comments, If the first transgender governor is a Republican people will lose their minds. A spectacle worth seeing. And finally:
Ryanair expects to report a loss of between 800m and 850m

Low-fares airline Ryanair has reduced its loss forecast in respect of the 12 months to March 31 this year.

Ryanair has said it expects to report a loss of between 800m and 850m in its financial year 2021.

In February the airline said it expected to report a loss of between of between 850m and 950m for the period, in what it said would be the most challenging year in Ryanairs 35 year history.

The Ryanair Group's full-year traffic was 27.5 million for the 12 months to March 31, down from 149 million in its financial year 2020, which ended at the early stages of Covid-19 restrictions across Europe.

The airlines passenger numbers were impacted over the last 12 months by Covid-19 travel restrictions.

Year-end cash at 31 March was over 3.15bn, down from 3.5bn in December.

In a statement today the airline said Easter travel restrictions and a delayed traffic recovery into the peak summer season means that financial year 2022 traffic is likely to be towards the lower end of its previously guided range of 80 million to 120 million passengers.

Ryanair said that while it is not possible at this time to provide meaningful profit guidance in respect of its financial year 2022, we do not share the recent optimism of certain analysts as we believe that the outcome for FY22 is currently close to breakeven.

Since March last year the group has lowered cash burn by cutting costs, participating in EU Government payroll support schemes, cancelling share buybacks and deferring non-essential capital expenditure.

The group also raised funds through a 400m share placing and an 850m Eurobond in September.

On Tuesday Ryanair blasted a 4bn bailout package that will leave the French government as the biggest shareholder in Air France-KLM, saying it will damage competition in the air transport market for decades.

Eighteen slots at Paris Orly airport that Air France must give up as a condition of the deal is nowhere near enough to allow others challenge the French airlines dominance of Paris, Ryanair said.

The French government will contribute to a 4bn recapitalisation of Air France-KLM and more than double its stake to nearly 30pc, under plans announced yesterday with European Union approval.

The move is the latest by a major airline group to shore up finances after more than a year of Covid-19 travel shutdowns and deep losses for the sector.

France will convert a 3bn loan granted last year into a perpetual hybrid bond instrument and subscribe to a 1bn share issue, raising its stake in Air France-KLM from the current 14.3pc.

This will make the state Air Frances biggest shareholder, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said, describing the step as a sign of commitment to the airline and its workers.

Air France will give up 18 Paris-Orly take-off and landing slots to competitors,amounting to 4pc of its current portfolio at the airport.

But the reallocation will be restricted to Orly-based rival aircraft with crews employed on local contracts  freezing out Irish and other European airlines.

Ryanair will announce its results for financial year 2021 on May 17.

(Additional reporting Reuters)
Through the launch of this initiative, Fluresh will provide a monetary donation to National Expungement Week to cover individual background checks, the first step in the expungement process. Fluresh's contribution will also continue its support for the Black & Brown Cannabis Guild and Legal Aid of West MI for a second year at their Grand Rapids Drive Up Expungement Fair on April 24, 2021 through a $5,000 corporate donation. In 2020, Fluresh sponsored approximately 500 individual applications for expungement, and is currently projected to at least double this overall contribution through the sale of its limited edition Creamberry packs.

"Fluresh is committed to leading the way in the cannabis industry with a dedication to social equity and justice, knowing expungement is a large part of that mission," says Denavvia Mojet, Corporate Impact Strategist & Legal Compliance Manager at Fluresh. "While there is more work to be done, Michigan's historic Clean Slate Legislation is a significant step in the right direction to properly serve our communities."

When Michigan legalized cannabis in December 2018, many individuals were still barred from employment or housing for prior cannabis-related charges. On October 12, 2020, Michigan made history when Governor Whitmer signed the Clean Slate Legislation, giving thousands of deserving individuals an opportunity to have their criminal records expunged from cannabis-related charges. The Clean Slate Legislation is a major milestone for criminal justice reform within the cannabis industry, and a huge opportunity for continued progress by both Michigan and the United States.

The emerging cannabis industry is dynamic and Fluresh is at the forefront of important issues that impact individuals, neighborhoods, businesses, and the planet. In addition to the brand's continued support of state- and nation-wide expungement efforts, Fluresh actively supports the Last Prisoner Project as a sponsor of the Michigan Prisoner Relief Campaign.

"The sale of our limited edition Creamberry packs and donation to statewide expungement efforts are just some of the ways we are working to positively impact the communities we serve," says Lauren Pollack, Senior Marketing Manager for Fluresh. "Issues of justice and equity are at the core of everything we do at Fluresh, and we are proud to work in the state of Michigan, which is making great strides in offering opportunities to those suffering from the effects of marijuana mass incarceration."

Fluresh's limited edition packs, featuring the rare Creamberry hybrid focused on uplifting mood and creativity, are currently available for purchase at cannabis retailers across the state of Michigan. For more information about Fluresh's Clean Slate limited edition products and expungement efforts, please visit fluresh.com/expungement .

About Fluresh

Fluresh is a modern cannabis company dedicated to designing premium cannabis products for the diversity of life. As your partner in cannabis, Fluresh creates thoughtfully curated and expertly cultivated cannabis products tailored to support each patient and recreational customer's dynamic needs. A licensed grower of high-quality cannabis, Fluresh is headquartered out of Grand Rapids, Mich., with its 133,000 sq. foot state-of-the-art grow facility and flagship retail location and a 95,000 sq. foot fully-operational facility with integrated grow and processing operations based in Adrian. To learn more about Fluresh, visit Fluresh.com or contact Fluresh at [email protected] .

Media Contact:

Austin McClelland

[email protected]

(630) 624-2380

SOURCE Fluresh
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 22:04:31|Editor: huaxia

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LUSAKA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC) has been awarded a contract for water and sanitation improvement project in the northern part of Zambia, a Zambian government official said Wednesday.

The Chinese firm has since engaged seven local firms as sub-contractors for the 27 million U.S. dollars project which will improve water and sanitation services in Northern Province's two districts of Kasama and Mbala.

The sub-contracting of the project was the fulfillment of the 20 percent sub-contracting policy in which foreign firms are expected to offer local ones, the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation, the state-broadcaster, quoted Northern Province Permanent Secretary Royd Chakaba as saying during a contract signing ceremony.

While saying that the government expects the Chinese contractor to transfer skills to local contractors as part of the capacity-building program, Chakaba stressed that the performance of the local contractors in the project will demonstrate their readiness to take up big projects and urged them to take the opportunity seriously.

Chen Xiaobo, acting general manager of the CSCEC, pledged his company's commitment to share experiences with local contractors. Enditem
At least two attorneys with Alabama ties have been included in Billboards roster of the top music lawyers for 2021, a list of people whove helped the industry navigate the unprecedented turmoil created by the COVID-19 pandemic.

For Mobilian Gabe Fleet, the recognition was especially fast: It comes just four months after music industry giant iHeartMedia picked him for a top position. Also included in the list is Robert Windom, a graduate of St. Pauls Episcopal School in Mobile who is Apples chief counsel for content and services.

Over the past tumultuous year, the leading music attorneys chosen for the 2021 edition of Billboards Top Music Lawyers  nominated by their firms and peers and chosen by our editors  have played an essential role, said Billboard. Fast-paced developments included huge deals for the rights to top artists back catalogs; the challenge of navigating COVID-related relief programs; and the need to respond to calls for racial and social justice.

iHeartMedia announced in December that Fleet would become its new executive vice president of business affairs and chief music licensing counsel. He started the job in January. Billboard singled him out for his work in the fast-developing world of streaming.

Fleet, 40, helped iHeartRadio transition from in-person events, such as its annual music festival, to virtual programming and TV/streaming specials like SeeHer, Hear Her for International Womens Day and Living Black! for Black History Month, said Billboard. He also guided iHeartMedias investment in podcasts and expects streaming events to survive past 2020, it said.

The most successful artists and companies, Fleet told Billboard, will be the ones who understand that things will never be the same as they were before.

He went on to say 2020 restrictions proved that cross-country flights for business meetings arent as necessary as people thought. But they years difficulties also highlighted the value of learning a little more about each other as people, he said.

Billboard didnt quote Windom, saying that Apple has chosen not to participate in Billboard executive list features.) It did, however, portray him as part of a proactive team at the highly influential company.

Label and publishing colleagues contacted by Billboard endorsed the work in the past year of Windom, [Adam] Blankenheimer, [Elizabeth] Miles and the London-based [Brahim] Ait Ben Larbi, Billboard wrote. As the pandemic set in last spring, Windom reported that he and his team worked across divisions at Apple to create a $50 million advance royalty fund to help independent labels weather the COVID-19 crisis.

The full Billboard list, including other executives outlook on the legacy of the pandemic, can be found at www.billboard.com.
Tesla and SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk has once again made headlines  this time with an uncanny tweet. While Musks fascination with aliens is not hidden to Twitter users, this time he took it a step ahead by declaring himself as one of them. Late last year, the billionaire had sparked a slew of Twitter responses by wildly claiming that it was the aliens who built Egypts pyramids.

Are you an alien?

It all started after Musk, taking to the microblogging website claimed that the earth was not flat but a hollow globe where Donkey King lives. While his tweet caught the attention of nearly three hundred thousand people, it was one particular user who asked him if he was an alien. Are you an alien? wrote the user named shbzz. Musk played along and answered obv meaning obviously.

Their conflab has now created a never seen stir on the Internet with Musks tweet racking up over nearly 15 thousand likes. Hundreds of thousands of astonished users have flocked to the post with many of them jokingly substantiating the 49-year-olds claim. One user, meanwhile, asked Musk if it was difficult to act like a human, while another said that he was just plain genius.

Alien?

Obv!

Spaceship 

Spaceship



Hehehhe, Elon you are big man don't give up!  Jackie Handburn (@jackiehandburn) April 6, 2021

EM Phone Home. Hahaha!!!  DR STRANGE (@DRSTRAN17907924) April 6, 2021

How hard is it to act as a Human @elonmusk ? pic.twitter.com/lfDSMamXpz  Sirine (@SirineAti) April 5, 2021

Last week, Musk triggered another online storm after he claimed he would put cryptocurrency Dogecoin on the moon in near future. While many people doubted the sincerity of the post because of the timing, which came exactly on April Fools Day, some suggested that Musk could be telling the truth, provided his newly found appreciation for digital currency and his long-standing love for space. Musk, who is the CEO of SpaceX, is known for sending bizarre things to space, which includes a cheese wheel and a Tesla car.

Image Credits: AP/Pixabay

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.
OTTAWA, ON, April 7, 2021 /CNW/ - Described as "2021's biggest business networking opportunity for defence, security and Industry 4.0," Canadian Defence Marketplace is expected to attract hundreds of international defence and security companies, Industry 4.0 leaders, senior government officials, Canadian Armed Forces leadership and their procurement teams in a unique virtual meeting platform on May 6, 2021.

Canadian Defence Marketplace is not a trade show or a conference. It is a new and innovative global platform bringing industry and government together for virtual business-to-business and business-to-government meetings. (CNW Group/Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CADSI))

Canadian Defence Marketplace is not a trade show or a conference. It is a new and innovative global platform bringing industry and government together for virtual business-to-business and business-to-government meetings. It will offer access to international buyers, distributors, and decision-makers, through secure, private, and unlimited 20-minute B2B and B2G meetings on the event days. The event's sophisticated, AI-enabled video conferencing platform can be accessed from wherever you are in the world.

200+ Canadian Government and Military leadership set to attend this ultimate global forum

In addition to participants from North America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia, the platform has secured support and attendance from over 25 government partners such as Canada's Department of National Defence (DND), Global Affairs Canada, Innovation Science and Economic Development Canada, Canadian Special Operations Forces Command, Shared Services Canada, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canadian Coast Guard, Canadian Space Agency, National Research Council, Canadian Trade Commissioners Service and many more.

Participants in the event can book private meetings with featured connections from all of these government entities. DND's Assistant Deputy Minister (Materiel) will be well represented by the Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, incoming Chief of Staff (COS), as well as Director Generals of Materiel Systems and Supply Chain (MSSC), Procurement Services (Proc Svcs), International and Industry Program (IIP), Aerospace Equipment Program Management (AEPM), Maritime Equipment Program Management (MEPM), Land Equipment Program Management (LEPM), Major Project Delivery (Air and Land) (MPD(A&L)) and Major Project Delivery (Sea) (MPD(Sea)).

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The Canadian Special Operations Forces Command (CANSOFCOM) will be joining the event with its team consisting of the incoming Deputy Commander, Chief of Staff, incoming Director Force Sustainment, incoming Deputy Director Force Development, C4ISR lead, Mobility lead, incoming Innovation lead, Science and Technology lead and Futures and Capabilities lead.

Shared Services Canada will also be represented by their Chief Technology Officer, Deputy Chief of Technology, Assistant Deputy Minister Client Service Delivery and Management (National Defence and Policing) and Director Generals of Management and Governance and Procurement and Vendor Relations.

Representatives from the Canadian Armed Forces senior leadership, including Royal Canadian Army Chief of Staff Army Strategy and Director Land Requirements, Royal Canadian Navy Director General Naval Forces Development, will also be looking to meet with industry.

Canadian Defence Marketplace is also proud to announce CAE  a global leader in training and simulation for the defence, civil aviation, and healthcare markets  as the Title Sponsor for this year's event.

Canadian Defence Marketplace is created and hosted by the Canadian Association for Defence and Security Industries (CADSI)  the team that puts on Canada's largest defence and security trade show, CANSEC, each year.

Learn more about the event, see all featured connections and book tickets through www.canadiandefencemarketplace.ca

About CADSI

The Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CADSI) is the national industry voice of Canadian defence and security companies that produce world-class goods, services and technologies made across Canada and sought the world over. The industries contribute to the employment of more than 60,000 Canadians and generate $10 billion in annual revenues, roughly 60 per cent of which come from exports. To learn more, visit defenceandsecurity.ca and follow us on LinkedIn and on Twitter @CadsiCanada.

Over 200 government participants will be participating in Canadian Defence Marketplace, including the team from DNDs ADM MAT. (CNW Group/Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CADSI))

SOURCE Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CADSI)

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A reproduction of Edel Rodriguezs infamous illustration of Donald Trump holding the Statue of Libertys head on display at the Carme Center of Contemporary Culture in Valencia. Monica Torres

Valencias Carme Center of Contemporary Culture (CCCC) is currently displaying the work of one of the best-known illustrators of his generation, a status Edel Rodriguez has gained largely through eye-catching magazine covers against former US president Donald Trump, which have been published over the last five years in international media such as Time and Der Spiegel. But the origin of this exhibition is not so much the foreign press, but rather an old Valencian satirical magazine called La Traca, which ceased publication in 1938. During the filming of a documentary called Carceller, el Hombre que Murio Dos Veces (or Carceller, the Man who Died Twice), based on the lives of the former editor of the Republican magazine, Vicent Miquel Carceller, and one of its main contributing artists, Carlos Gomez  both of whom were shot by the Francisco Franco regime in 1940  the filmmakers sought out Rodriguez for the Cuban-American artists views on caricature and the historical role of the authorities in attempting to stifle creative freedom.

Rodriguez has become a reference point in the profession for his political non-conformism and his bold illustrations, such as the one of a melting Donald Trump published in Time in August 2016 or his drawing of the former president holding the decapitated head of the Statue of Liberty in Der Spiegel in February 2017. During the recent US presidential elections, he also produced work for EL PAIS. He agreed to contribute to the documentary after hearing the story of the weekly La Traca, which had a circulation of almost 500,000 copies and whose editors faced the firing squad for dedicating themselves to insulting the highest-ranking representatives of Spanish Nationalism, the dignity of the Catholic Church and the founding principles of the Francoist regime in the basest, rudest and most vulgar way possible, using the popularity it had gained over the years for the benefit of Marxist subversion.

Edel Rodriguezs Goya-inspired illustration for The Nation.

From that collaboration, during the Trump administrations mandate, a relationship blossomed that resulted in the Valencia exhibition, where 124 of Rodriguezs works have been reproduced in different forms with a special focus on his illustrations of the former president and his tenure in the Oval Office. The austerity of the Gothic cloister of what was the convent of El Carmen contrasts starkly with the huge black and red images depicting an unhinged Trump. Rodriguezs work featured on around 20 front pages during Trumps presidency, generating enormous impact and being reproduced on a large scale worldwide. With that came an increase in threats on social media.

Well, things have calmed down a bit, says Rodriguez from his studio near New York during a Zoom interview with EL PAIS in March. It was very noticeable what influence a president can have and what he can cause, the mood he can generate among his supporters. Ive been working since 1994 but its only since what happened with Trump that Ive become well-known. When I started doing those front pages with him, I got calls from television producers and newspapers and although I have US citizenship, I am still an immigrant and it was a risk to take him on, with everything that he was doing.

Edel Rodriguezs covers for the German magazine Der Spiegel featuring Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

Rodriguez came full circle last November after the presidential elections when he drew the illustrations for another magazine cover, this one featuring President-elect Joe Biden putting the head back on the Statue of Liberty.

Now we have a normal presidency. We arent aware of what the president is doing every hour of every day. With Trump, when you woke up he was already awake and firing off tweets and the press was publishing that instead of covering other things. The media is to blame for giving Trump so much coverage back in 2016. Even in the New York Times, it was all Trump. You put his name in a headline as clickbait and web traffic goes up. The media went a little bit crazy, he says. These days its all about attention. Magazines and newspapers have to get peoples attention. Its the only way to make money. His work, he adds, is focused on getting an idea across to people from all walks of life, not just a university professor.

Drawing is a way to reach people in a simpler way, it allows people to understand things in the moment. I grew up with people who didnt go to school, people who worked the land, and I want to communicate with these people, with my father, Rodriguez says.

Edel Rodriguezs exhibition at the Carme Center of Contemporary Culture in Valencia. Monica Torres

In the exhibition at the CCCC, called Edel Rodriguez. Agent Orange (which runs until September 12), the artists inclination toward the use of bold colors and the influence of his origins can be appreciated. Cuban art, the poster, comes from the roots of the country, explains Rodriguez. Every house is painted in four or five colors, the cars there is no black or white. These are things that you absorb through your eyes when you are there. When I came to New York, the teachers couldnt understand why we used stronger colors like red. I couldnt bring myself to use white, and yellow is yellow. I think in a way its just how Cuban people think. Rodriguezs exhibition, his first in Spain, was commissioned by Nacho Navarro, who is also an executive producer on the Carceller documentary. The documentary is about to start on a cycle of film festivals and Rodriguezs show is also working in collaboration with a local festival, Docs de Valencia.

Im a peaceful man but if you hit me, I have to defend myself. And the way I have to defend myself against a fascist is through the strength of my work, says Rodriguez, who also rejects the two populisms of left and right, both of Fidel Castro and of Donald Trump.

I never draw anything that isnt true; I comment on what is happening, what I think. Propaganda comes when someone decides to lie or when the state tells someone what to draw or what to write.

A caricature of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco published in La Traca.

An admirer of painters such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Paul Klee, the political art of Francisco Goya and Marcel Duchamps way of thinking, Rodriguez is currently working on a graphic novel based on his life: his traumatic departure from Cuba in 1980, his spell in a camp for exiles, his life in the US and how his teachers were able to nurture his talent.

The possibilities the genre is opening up excites Rodriguez. It connects with many age groups. Companies are aware there is a lot of interest, everybody wants to attract young people and its a very direct way of communicating, he explains. The visual form is special, unique; text wont reach people who have no interest in reading a book or a newspaper article, but they see something and understand immediately. Visual art and imagery invade peoples inner space, it connects immediately with people in a way that writing cant. You may have no interest in writing but a drawing can grab your attention in half a second. Even if you dont like what I want to say, youve seen it, and its already in your head.

English version by Rob Train.
We are now approaching the 80th anniversary of the Belfast Blitz. With ample justification, Jimmy Doherty described it in his book, Post 381: The Memoirs of a Belfast Air Raid Warden, as "the most disastrous event in the history of the city". It was unprecedented, traumatic, tragic and, for most, entirely unexpected. Belfast was ill-prepared when the Blitz began: it had too few shelters and anti-aircraft (AA) guns; fighter aircraft only equipped for daytime operations; no searchlights and few of its citizens had been evacuated.

A huge crater at Ravenscroft Avenue off the Newtownards Road after the Blitz of 1941

Soldiers see at first hand the devastation wrought on Duncairn Gardens by the Luftwaffe

A police officer and a soldier inspect the aftermath of a German air raid at Portman Street on September 19 of the same year

The gravestone to Emily Douglas and her five children, who died when German aircraft blitzed Belfast with bombs in 1941

The scene of devastation in east Belfast after the blitz of 1941

Belfasts empty streets during the coronavirus crisis, and (right) the Belfast Blitz in 1941

WORLD WAR II: BELFAST AIR RAIDS. NEWTOWNARDS ROAD. April/May 1941. Tamar Street and Dee Street experienced the full force of the blitz. The area shown is partly cleared, with air raid shelters taking place of demolished houses. AR 125.

In part, this was because the city was thought to be too insignificant and remote from Germany to merit elaborate preparations. Its long immunity from attack encouraged the hope that it might escape altogether and there was a feeling that Hitler might respect Ireland's neutrality and so desist from bombing it.

JC MacDermott (the minister responsible for Blitz preparation from June 1940) himself described Belfast as being "less well protected than any major city or port in the United Kingdom".

The blame is often attributed to the incompetence of the Stormont government. But AA guns and searchlights were in short supply throughout the UK, not just in Northern Ireland.

Also, the key decisions about how available supplies should be allocated were made in London, not in Belfast.

However, from mid 1940, there was a growing expectation, certainly among politicians and officials, that Belfast would be attacked. This was because of the city's increasing importance as a munitions and military centre.

The fall of France, in June 1940, dramatically increased its vulnerability. Thereafter, Germany had air bases in northern France and Holland. Also, the Admiralty diverted shipping from Britain's vulnerable Channel ports to Glasgow, Liverpool, Bristol and, of course, Belfast.

Local concern was heightened by the emerging pattern of the Blitz on Britain in early 1941; it was increasingly directed at these western ports.

On March 29, 1941, after a massive raid on Clydeside (March 13/14), MacDermott presciently advised Johnny Andrews, the Prime Minister: "Up to now, we have escaped attack. So had Clydeside, until recently. Clydeside got its Blitz during the period of the last moon... The period of the next moon, from, say, the 7th to the 16th of April, may well bring our turn."

There was clear evidence that Luftwaffe activity over the city was rising. There were 22 red alerts in Belfast between October 25, 1940 and early April 1941 and mines were being laid in Belfast Lough almost daily from July 1940. In the first attack, the "Dockside raid" (April 7/8, 1941), 13 people died, 12 in the harbour area. Though popularly referred to as the "wee raid", 500 bombers attacked the UK that night.

Belfast was fortunate; there were at most eight aircraft over the city at any one time. But it seemed certain that the Luftwaffe would return and, in preparation, a smoke screen was set up to obscure the docks and searchlight units arrived on April 10.

Belfast's second raid, on Easter Tuesday night (April 15/16), is the one most deeply embedded in popular memory. Some 180 bombers participated, and dropped 200 tons of high explosives and 30,000 incendiaries.

The most striking feature of the bombardment was that the harbour area sustained so little damage. Instead, it was the working-class streets to the north of the city which suffered most.

The explanation most commonly offered was that the Luftwaffe mistook Belfast's Waterworks for the docks and bombed the district surrounding it.

It is understandable how the bombers might have missed the Harbour Estate. Weather conditions were poor; one-third of the aircraft designated to attack the city, therefore, failed to find it and diverted to targets in Britain.

Military reports also stressed the effectiveness of the smoke screen in obscuring the dock area. In addition, bombing techniques were primitive; Luftwaffe crews attempted to drop their bombs "by sight", despite their visibility difficulties.

Their reports on the raid are revealing. They regarded it as an abject failure; they had little idea what they had hit, but knew full well that they had missed their primary targets - the shipyards and the aircraft factory.

They described it as having been "unsatisfactory", "inconclusive" and "abortive" and predicted that its effect would be "minimal" and results "mediocre".

Writing about this raid (April 15/16, 1941), John Blake, Northern Ireland's official war historian, states: "No other city in the UK, save London, had lost so many of her citizens in one night's raid. No other city, except perhaps Liverpool, ever did."

Sir John Maffey, Britain's "representative" in Dublin, was in Belfast immediately after it and was familiar with the London Blitz.

Comparing the two cities, he said of London after a severe attack, that "things were able to resume their more or less normal course the following morning". He considered that the experience of the raid on Belfast was "more horrifying... because of the number of small dwelling houses of poor people which were destroyed".

Likewise, Doreen Bates, a Londoner who had transferred to work in Belfast in March 1941, described the Easter Tuesday attack as "the worst night I've had. (It was)... worse than (London)... because (Belfast)... is a smaller place. One feels... more part of the target."

During the Easter Tuesday raid, 740 civilians lost their lives in Belfast. The death rate was high, because: so many bombs fell on densely populated areas; shelters were few and underused; virtually no one had been evacuated from the city and its defences were inadequate.

Again, it was likely that the Luftwaffe would return. Their reconnaissance photos proved what the crews already knew - they had failed to hit their targets.

Meanwhile, little could be done to improve the city's defences. "Dangerous" animals in Bellevue Zoo were put down and the number of AA guns increased from 22 to 28.

Belfast's second major attack took place on May 4/5, 1941. It was shorter, more intense and more accurate than on Easter Tuesday.

Over almost three hours, 200 bombers dropped 240 tons of high explosives and 100,000 incendiaries. On this occasion, the Luftwaffe struck all its primary targets in the harbour area. Over 200 fires were ablaze when the raid ended; consequently, it was popularly referred to as the "fire raid".

This time, there were fewer casualties: 192 civilians were killed, primarily because it was the docks and city centre area which suffered most.

There were few people about; it was a Sunday night, many workers had refused to work night shifts after Easter Tuesday and 100,000 people had evacuated following that attack.

Possibly also the shelters were used more and the AA guns were more active, supplemented by those of the aircraft carrier HMS Furious.

Afterwards, the Luftwaffe crews were euphoric. Virtually all reported that they had hit their main strategic targets; some claimed that the city's fires were visible from the coasts of Wales and Lancashire. They had also caused such extensive damage to the city centre that local military reports stated it must have been a target, too.

The "fire raid" was Belfast's last major aerial attack. The bombing of Dublin, the capital of a neutral country, on May 30/31 was to be the last occasion when a significant number of bombs fell on Irish soil.

Four bombs were dropped that night; the last and most devastating, at 02.05am, struck the North Strand area, near Connolly Station. Over 40 people were killed, 100 seriously injured and almost 2,000 made homeless.

Its causes have prompted speculation.

Some blamed the RAF, but the German government eventually accepted culpability and paid compensation.

It was also suggested that the Luftwaffe had attacked Dublin by mistake: that they had intended to bomb Belfast again, but, for some reason, had missed, or the British had "bent" their navigation guidance beams, or that their aircraft were blown across from Britain by unexpectedly strong easterly winds.

Others have argued that the bombing was a calculated act of German retaliation and retribution for Eire's cumulative breaches of neutrality - the "last straw" being the help it had given Belfast after the air raids there.

In support of this conjecture is the fact that, prior to the Easter Tuesday raid, Luftwaffe pilots had been given strict instructions by Hermann Goering, intended to ensure that they did not fly over, let alone bomb, neutral Ireland.

Belfast had fewer air raids than many industrial centres and ports in Britain. It had just four, while Liverpool had 74 and Glasgow 11. But it did experience two attacks which were particularly severe and officially classified as "major".

In a table of the worst affected urban areas in the United Kingdom, compiled by the weight of bombs dropped, it comes 12th. Such was their destructive power that over half of the city's housing stock (56,000 houses) was destroyed, or damaged, and over half of its public elementary schools.

It was the unprecedented and unimagined number of deaths they caused, however, which seared them so indelibly into the collective memory of Belfast's citizens.

They fell indiscriminately on both Catholic and Protestant communities and such was the terror they generated that 220,000 people from both traditions are estimated to have fled from the city by May 1941, while tens of thousands "ditched".

Home Office statistics indicate that over 960 civilians died in the course of the Blitz. But the total number of fatalities was well over 1,000 when military personnel are included (there were 17,000 British troops billeted in the Belfast area at the time).

I was first impelled to write about the Belfast Blitz, because its details were so little known, so little researched. People then thought of the Blitz as being something that had happened in London, or Coventry, not Belfast.

This is no longer the case. Nonetheless, until now it has been inadequately commemorated, with no civic memorial to its victims - unlike those of the Titanic, even though few of those who perished had lived in the city.

But this lamentable omission is being corrected. The City Council has agreed to erect a permanent memorial in remembrance of the civilians and servicemen who lost their lives.

It is an overdue, but very welcome, tribute to those who died.
An American fitness phenomenon beloved by the likes of Alicia Keys, Jennifer Aniston and Naomi Watts has launched in Australia, and anyone can join the Pilates cardio and meditation classes online.

The Class is a cult workout that guides you to strengthen both the body and mind through a series of mat-based, music-driven moves.

There are three physical studios (in New York, Los Angeles and Vancouver), but now Aussies can get a piece of the action with a series of digital classes that are available seven days per week.

An American fitness phenomenon beloved by the likes of Alicia Keys, Jennifer Aniston and Naomi Watts has launched in Australia via digital workouts (The Class pictured in action)

The Class boasts a host of celebrity fans including Jennifer Aniston (left) and Alicia Keys (right)

The Class is a cult workout that guides you to strengthen both the body and mind through a series of mat-based, music-driven moves; Naomi Watts (pictured) is a fan

Access to the digital studio will set you back $40 per month, or $400 per year after a free 14-day trial.

The classes vary from 10-15 minute lunchbreak offerings to full on 60-minute cardio blasting workouts.

If you're wondering what you can expect in a session from The Class, many say it is unlike any other workout you may have tried.

Classes combine yoga, dance, HIIT, meditation and psychological discovery into one single session.

Each class encourages users to focus on feelings, sensations and breath, and all promise to transform your body.

The classes vary from 10-15 minute lunchbreak offerings to full on 60-minute cardio blasting workouts (The Class pictured)

'The Class is for everyone,' the founder Taryn Toomey told Destination Deluxe of the workout.

'The basic description is a music-driven practice of self-study through physical conditioning.

'You can join us for six minutes of burpees, one minute of burpees, or simply stand and be present with the magnetic energy around you. A key point of The Class is to drop into, and listen to, your body.'

Classes combine yoga, dance, HIIT, meditation and psychological discovery into one single session (pictured)

What are some of the classes on offer with The Class? There are many options for classes, including The Class Light which is low impact and The Class At Work which are short sessions for during work (pictured) * The Class Collaborations: The 60-minute Class Collaborations will make you sweat, move and breathe. The Collaborations take place with famous artists like Alabama Shakes and Citizen Cope. * The Class Focus: The Focus sessions are all about intentional movements in short, focused sequences. They are quick hits (10-35 minutes), and serve as complementary to full-length classes. * The Class Light: The Class Light is a softened, low impact version of the signature class. It focuses on alignment and technique and is a great introduction to The Class. * The Class For Kids: The Kids' class is a quick and easy way to get kids moving. It is similar to what The Class offers for adults, but adapted for children. * The Class At Work: The Class At Work is designed for when you only have 10-15 minutes to get moving. Whether you're just about to start your day or go into a day of meetings, it gives you a workout at a moment's notice. * The Class Meditation: The Class Meditation is a series of meditation led by The Class teachers. These classes are designed to balance out the fire and intensity from the regular classes. * The Class Recover: This is a series of restorative movements and stretches designed to be used before and after you practice. Advertisement

Reviews online for The Class are glowing, where clients have described it as 'incredible', 'transformative' and 'amazing' (one of the three US studios pictured)

Reviews online for The Class are glowing, where clients have described it as 'incredible', 'transformative' and 'amazing'.

'Best way to describe it is spiritual aerobics,' one reviewer wrote.

'In just a few weeks I felt stronger, more centered, and noticed a difference in my body. I finish The Class feeling more grateful for the good.'

Another added: 'The words make it connect. The method creates the space.

'The music is the heartbeat. You do the work. Community has been my lifeline through this difficult time, and somehow I can see that more clearly than ever through my screen.'

For more information about The Class, please visit the website here.
LAVAL, Quebec, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Bausch Health Companies Inc. (NYSE/TSX: BHC) ("Bausch Health" or the "Company") today announced it will reduce debt by $100 million through the redemption of outstanding senior secured notes, using cash generated from operations.

Bausch Health will redeem $100 million aggregate principal amount of its outstanding 7.00% Senior Secured Notes due 2024, CUSIP Nos. 91911K AK8, C94143 AK7 (the "Notes") on May 7, 2021. The Company previously redeemed a total of $200M aggregate principal amount of the Notes in March 2021.

The Company will issue today an irrevocable notice of redemption for the Notes and a copy will be issued to the record holders of such Notes. Nothing contained herein shall constitute a notice of redemption of the Notes. Payment of the redemption price and surrender of the Notes for redemption will be made through the facilities of the Depository Trust Company in accordance with the applicable procedures of the Depository Trust Company. The name and address of the paying agent are as follows: The Bank of New York Mellon; 111 Sanders Creek Parkway, East Syracuse, N.Y. 13057; Attn: Redemption Unit; Tel: 800-254-2826.

About Bausch Health

Bausch Health Companies Inc. (NYSE/TSX: BHC) is a global company whose mission is to improve people's lives with our health care products. We develop, manufacture and market a range of pharmaceutical, medical device and over-the-counter products, primarily in the therapeutic areas of eye health, gastroenterology and dermatology. We are delivering on our commitments as we build an innovative company dedicated to advancing global health. More information can be found at www.bauschhealth.com.

Caution Regarding Forward-Looking Information and "Safe Harbor" Statement

This news release may contain forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, the redemption of the Notes. Forward-looking statements may generally be identified by the use of the words "anticipates," "expects," "intends," "plans," "should," "could," "would," "may," "will," "believes," "estimates," "potential," "target," or "continue" and variations or similar expressions. These statements are based upon the current expectations and beliefs of management and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties discussed in the Company's most recent annual and quarterly reports and detailed from time to time in the Company's other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Canadian Securities Administrators, which factors are incorporated herein by reference. They also include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties caused by or relating to the evolving COVID-19 pandemic, and the fear of that pandemic and its potential effects, the severity, duration and future impact of which are highly uncertain and cannot be predicted, and which may have a material adverse impact on the Company, including but not limited to its supply chain, third-party suppliers, project development timelines, employee base, liquidity, stock price, financial condition and costs (which may increase) and revenue and margins (both of which may decrease). Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any of these forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof. Bausch Health undertakes no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this news release or to reflect actual outcomes, unless required by law.

SOURCE Bausch Health Companies Inc.

Related Links

https://www.bauschhealth.com


Kuwaits sovereign wealth Fund also known as Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) is planning to makes investment in five companies operating in Egypt, in next coming two years, reports say.

Ahmed El-Khatib, Chief Investment Officer at Ekuity Holding, KIA investment arm in Egypt indicated that the wealth fund eyes minority stakes in four of five companies operating the food and pharmaceutical industries.

El-Khatib did not reveal the value of the potential future investments.

The fund has already invested $2 billion in Egypt and owns shares in Sawari Ventures; leading venture capital in the North African country, through Ekuity Holding.

KIA which also invests at home, boasts assets exceeding $592 billion making the 5th largest wealth fund in the world.
BEIJING, Apr. 7 -- The official WeChat account of Tibet Daily issued a notice about bans on 15 kinds of border activities in the Tibet Autonomous Region on April 6.

Formulated in accordance with Chinas Criminal Law, Law on Penalties for Administration of Public Security, Exit and Entry Administration Law and other laws, regulations and related policy documents, the notice is jointly issued by several departments involving public security, commerce, tourism and foreign affairs in the Tibet Autonomous Region, aiming to strengthen the border control and maintain the security and stability in border areas.

According to the notice, the following border activities will be strictly prohibited:

I. Without a valid border pass or relevant approval, entering the border control areas, border zones, as well as specific areas, restricted military areas, forbidden military areas and areas with No Entry signs along the border, is prohibited.

II. Rejecting and evading border inspection are prohibited.

III. Forgery, alteration, trading, fraudulent acquisition and use of various border passes are prohibited.

IV. Organizing or transporting, taking in, or harbouring people without valid border pass or relevant approval to pass through the border control area are prohibited.

V. Funding, assisting, organizing, or transporting others to cross the border illegally are prohibited.

VI. Surveying and mapping, prospecting, mining, logging, blasting, conducting scientific investigation, mountaineering, and other activities without relevant authorities approval in border control areas, restricted military areas and forbidden military areas are prohibited.

VII. Carrying, transporting and disseminating prohibited books, pictures, audiovisual products, electronic products, etc., which may endanger national security and undermine national unity, are prohibited.

VIII. Without authorization, flying low, slow and small unmanned aircraft vehicles, and disposing unidentified aircrafts, flying objects, floating objects or other suspicious objects are prohibited.

IX. Hunting, collecting and smuggling national protected rare animals and plants are prohibited.

X. Damaging, moving and dismantling the facilities of transportation, communication, water conservancy, hydrology, electricity, surveying and mapping, border defense, and protection of land resources on the front line of the state (border) line without authorization are prohibited.

XI. Damaging or moving or dismantling the state (border) boundary markers and the topographic markers of the state (border) location without authorization, building facilities that affect the direction or clearness of the state (border) boundary without authorization, and engraving on or altering the state (border) boundary markers are prohibited.

XII. Damaging military installations, interfering with military communications, stealing military communication lines and equipment, attacking forbidden military areas, and disrupting the order of restricted military areas are prohibited.

XIII. Obtaining relevant confidential information and materials through photographing, recording and other methods without the relevant authorities approval are prohibited.

XIV. Obstructing, abusing, or insulting the staff of state organs in performing their official duties according to law are prohibited.

XV. Engaging in other activities that endanger the border order is prohibited.

According to the notice, anyone who violates these above-mentioned prohibitions will be held accountable according to law, and transferred to the judicial authorities if the action constitutes a crime.
The City of Calistoga has declared a Stage II Water emergency and starting May 1, residents and businesses will be required to conserve water.

The move is a response to a recent reduction in the States water allocation. Citing back-to back dry years and limited precipitation in the northern part of the State, on March 23, the California Department of Water Resources reduced the State Water Project allocations for Napa County from 15% to 5%. The reduction represents a loss of approximately 25% of Calistogas annual demand.

The Citys enforcement of the mandate will include an educational component before any citations will be issued. The last time the City moved to Stage II was in 2015, and no citations were issued at that time as the community is very engaged and willing to help, said City Manager Mike Kirn at Tuesdays City Council Meeting.

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Conservation measures largely include irrigation restrictions. A summary of the key conservation measures are as follows:

All water customers must use outdoor irrigation with potable water only during the early morning hours, with an odd/even address watering schedule: odd addresses water Tuesday and Friday and even water Monday and Thursday.

No outdoor irrigation on Wednesday, Saturday, or Sunday with potable water, and irrigation may not spray onto paved areas and sidewalks..

No non-commercial washing of privately owned vehicles or equipment except from a bucket and hose equipped with an automatic shutoff nozzle. No washing sidewalks, buildings, driveways, patios, or other paved areas with potable water.

Run full loads through dishwasher and wash full loads of laundry.

No initial filling or draining of swimming pools with potable water. Pools can be topped off to prevent damage to pumps and equipment.

The use of portable water in fountains or other decorative water features is not permitted, except where the water is part of a recirculating system.

Hotels and motels must prominently display a notice of option to reuse towels and linens changes only upon a guests request.

In restaurants, tap water can be provided to customers only upon request.

Further restrictions apply to newly permitted pools and spas and newly constructed homes.

You can reach Cynthia Sweeney at 942-4035 or csweeney@weeklycalistogan.com.

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The Chinese government is implementing stricter rules against five types of social organizations that are deemed illegal, including house churches that are not registered under the Chinese Communist Party-backed Three-Self Patriotic Association.

China's Ministry of Civil Affairs held a meeting with other government departments including the Ministry of Public Security to define a list of "illegal social organizations" and launch a campaign against them.

Radio Free Asia reported that the meeting was held to "comprehensively deploy a special action to further crack down on and rectify illegal social organizations," which included house churches.

The report revealed that the Chinese government's key targets in its "special operations" were five types of "illegal social organizations'' such as "pseudo-national studies and mysticism activities, and activities under the guise of religious banners."

In the list provided by the Sichuan Provincial Civil Affairs Department, as much as 84 Christian and Buddhist groups were named as "illegal social organizations," including the Chengdu Qiuyuzhifu Church, which has been heavily persecuted by the Chinese government and the Early Rain Covenant Church, which the communist authorities had shut down in 2018.

The list also included several non-governmental charities and public welfare organizations.

China also launched a new crackdown on organizations whose names include the words "China," "Zhonghua," or "National," as it is deemed deceitful to present themselves as a subsidiary of the state if they are not.

Also targeted are those who participate in legal organizations to "deceive" the Chinese government, those who organize competitions in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and those who organize activities that "pretend" to promote health, sinology, mysticism, and religious gatherings.

According to The Christian Post, crackdowns on "illegal social organizations" and restrictions on religious groups in China have increased to a record breaking level based on a 2020 report from the Pew Research Center. The report revealed how China consistently had the "highest score on the Government Restrictions Index out of all 198 countries and territories in the study."

Moreover, Christians in China have also been found to be detained in "transformation" facilities where they are tortured, beaten, and brainwashed until they renounce their faith.

"The Christian church in China, now numbering nearly 100 million people, is facing a level of persecution and attempted control not seen for many years," Open Doors' World Watch List 2021 report said, The Tablet reported.

"The government will be well aware of the rapid growth of the church - if it continues at the rate that it has for the past 40 years then it will reach nearly 300 million by 2030, and close to 600 million by 2040," the report said.

Open Doors' Global Analyst and director of Strategic Research, Dr. Ron Boyd-MacMillan, emphasized that the CCP under Xi Jinping is "threatened" that the number of Christians is rising at a rapid rate - thus explaining the continued state-sanctioned persecution of Christians in the country.

The report says that on top of the crackdown on "illegal social organizations," the Chinese government also expects church leaders to be "country-loving," "promote socialist values," and "praise the government," which many of them are uncomfortable with. The Christian persecution in China also targets women and children, who are considered the most vulnerable of all.
Starting at 10 a.m. Sunday, volunteers will meet to spruce up the birds habitat as part of an action day led by the Shedd Aquarium. Anyone is welcome to volunteer, but registration is required, as well as face coverings for those attending.
Deep South Resources Inc (CVE: DSM- OTCQB: DSMTF) CEO Pierre Leveille joined Steve Darling from Proactive to share news the company has now been approved to have their shares traded in the United States on the OTCQB market with the ticker symbol DSMTF.

Leveille explains why this a big move for the company as they continue to advance the Haib Copper Project in Namibia.
Back in the early 1970s, the popularity of Pro Stock drag racing exploded. And a group of Chrysler engineers became a dominant force after putting together a program that was backed by the company, going down in history as the "Missile" racing era.It all started with a 1970 Challenger upgraded to a 1971 model, which was joined by a '72 Plymouth Barracuda and Plymouth Duster from the same year, which eventually got 1973MY updates.The initiative actually started out under the "Motown Missile" label, but, to avoid confusion with the well-known Detroit operation of Motown Records, the name was changed to Mopar Missiles, with this obviously covering all three Chrysler-backed race cars. Chrysler 's program was a success, allowing the company to grab plenty of laurels at drag strips across the country. However, with the NHRA changing the rules to allow smaller vehicles from Ford and Chevy to compete in the Pro Stock class and the oil crisis kicking in, the company put the initiative on the back burner in 1974, with the vehicles landing in private hands.Meanwhile, there have been plenty of tributes to the Missile cars, which brings us back to the modern Challenger in this rendering.The starting point for the 2D work was the now-retired king of the Mopar hill, namely the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon , of which just 3,300 units were built.Unlike the production model, which can deliver a 9.65s quarter-mile pass with the supercharger lurking under the hood, this one sees its blower sitting higher. Of course, with Pro Stock regulations prohibiting forced induction, this is a walk down fantasy lane.Upgraded muscle aside, the Challenger Demon gets an elongated tail section, which is just what the aero doctor ordered for high-speed runs.Of course, the rear axle features small beadlock wheels securing those Hoosier slicks, while the skinny front units reduce rolling resistance.As you'll be able to see in the Instagram post below, this rendering is a doodle coming from Sean Smith. And you might already be familiar with the business hour project of the California-based design consultation, not least thanks to his collaborations with names such as Saleen, The Ringbrothers, and Speedkore
You have heard that it was said, Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. (Matthew 5:43-44)

When we find ourselves coming against those who are rallied against us, we have an important decision to make in how we respond. Thankfully, Jesus Christ has provided the instructions. The greatest example He provided was dying on the cross, at the hands of His persecutors. Instead of smiting the people who sought His blood, Jesus asked God to forgive them (Luke 23:34). This is the same approach Jesus taught His disciples to take toward those who persecute them.

Jesus reframes a past way of thinking into something new, and by doing so reveals how we can become more like Him.

Apparent in American culture is the notion of there being two sides of the aisle. This idea is often evoked in political conversations, but the phrase has biblical relevance too. There are believers and then there are nonbelievers. The Bible gives us instructions on how to be the former. Moreover, Scripture specifically draws a contrast between the righteous and the unrighteous.

Because the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do what is evil. (1 Peter 3:12) Instructing us to deny godlessness and worldly lusts and to live in a sensible, righteous, and godly way in the present age. (Titus 2:12)

As we are called to live righteously, we must then decline to live in ways that are incompatible with Gods teachings. This at times will cause friction with the world. The way we live and the way others live will at times feel incompatible, but the Bible makes clear that God blesses those who seek Him. He looks after His own. In our choosing to follow God, there will be those in the world who rise against His kingdom. We witnessed this in the Bible with kingdoms like Babylon in the Book of Daniel, or Pharoah and the Egyptians holding the Jews as slaves in the Book of Exodus. Godless kingdoms will always rise against Gods kingdom because the flesh and the spirit are constantly at war with one another (Romans 8:7-8).

What Did Jesus Mean by Love Your Enemies and Pray for Those Who Persecute You? (Matt. 5:44)

The passage of Matthew 5 details Jesus Sermon on the Mount. There He instructs His followers on a number of different topics including divorce, honesty, adultery, and murder. During this time, they also discussed the concept of forgiveness, specifically toward those who persecute. Jesus begins by drawing a comparison, the love we have for a neighbor versus the hate we have for an enemy (Matthew 5:43). This reappears later in the Book of Luke during the Parable of the Good Samaritan. This story allows Jesus to present the similarities between what people would prefer to distinguish as enemy and neighbor. In both of these passages, He admonishes believers to refrain from their cultural hate and to instead love everyone. This allows us to serve others as God intended.

Here in Matthew 5, He follows with a commandment of loving enemies. Whats more, is that Jesus readily gives an example of how to love through prayer. We are to pray for those who are persecuting us. Doing so pleases our Father in heaven (Matthew 5:45). To Jesus, this is what being a child of God truly means. Jesus expounds on this idea of love by highlighting Gods love for us, humanity, the righteous and the unrighteous (Matthew 5:45). He is not impressed with those who love and support other like-minded people (Matthew 5:46-47). Thats normal in every culture, but to live as a believer is to be different.

Loving others is easy when those people are in agreement with who we are as individuals. When someone persecutes us, they are in opposition to us, meaning they are not in agreement, but rather full disagreement. To love even those people is to emulate the love of God. The larger point that Jesus alludes to here is that God loves each and every one of us. Just as He makes the sun rise and fall above everyones heads, righteous or unrighteous, He is in control of all of our lives. Yet, God still loves them. As Jesus commands us to love then, He wants us to emulate the same love that God is displaying. Prayer is one way basic to do that.

What Does the Bible Say about How to 'Pray for Those Who Persecute You'

Jesus wanted Christians of old and modern-day to know that they will be persecuted in the world, but He didnt present this as fearful information. On the contrary, Jesus wanted us to take solace because He provided the example of how we can overcome our adversaries, especially those who persecute us.

I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. You will have suffering in this world. Be courageous! I have conquered the world. (John 16:33)

Having trials and knowing we will overcome, however, does not mean that we will not be faced with adverse circumstances, sometimes life-changing. With Jesus Himself, He showed that Christians can be persecuted so far as being killed. We also witnessed this is the death of believers at the hands of Paul (before converting). Still, Jesus is clear in His desire for believers to love their enemies. Peter once asked Jesus about the topic of forgiveness. He figured there must naturally have been a limit to how much we forgive people. Jesus answer speaks to the unnatural love He wants Christians to show others.

Then Peter approached him and asked, Lord, how many times must I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? As many as seven times? I tell you, not as many as seven, Jesus replied, but seventy times seven. (Matthew 18:21-22)

With these ideas in mind, we can move forward striving to love God and others with the godly love that has been role-modeled for us and instilled in us through the Holy Spirit.

3 Ways to Pray for Those Who Persecute Us

1. Pray with Forgiveness

For if you forgive others their offenses, your heavenly Father will forgive you as well. But if you dont forgive others, your Father will not forgive your offenses. (Matthew 6:14-15)

Forgiving others allows God to forgive us. Not doing so, means God wont forgive us. When we pray with forgiveness on our hearts, we beseech God to bless those who have offended us instead of cursing them. When we forgive, we replace the malice in our hearts with care with the person instead. While forgiveness is easy to discuss, the feelings held after an offense has been made can be difficult to release. The solution then is to ask God to support us in forgiving the person. The more we can pray with forgiveness in our hearts, the more we can operate in the way Jesus taught.

2. Pray with Love

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. (John 13:35)

If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink, for you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you. (Proverbs 25:21-22)

The worldly response to persecution whether by means of violence or slander is to retaliate. Jesus showed us on the cross how we can respond to our persecutors. When we pray for our oppressors from a place of love, we seek their wellbeing, not their harm. We can ask God to mold and shift their hearts instead of us trying to force change.

3. Pray with Humility

With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love (Ephesiasn 4:2)

When we achieve forgiveness and love in our prayers, we are putting on full display our humility. This means we do not act or pray in a way that indicates God values us any more or any less than the other person. Instead, we see the persecutor as a child of God and ask God to bless them just as he blesses us.

The more we can see everyone as being made in Gods image, the less we will see them as an enemy (Genesis 1:26). Praying for others will be easier, and in turn, there may be less persecution, at the very least from Christians.

A Prayer for Those Who Persecute You

ord Jesus, following Your example and command, we pray for our enemies today. We ask first that You would saturate our lives with the Holy Spirits power and might. Send Your love flowing through us, and forgive us for holding on to anything that could hinder our prayers. We release any unforgiveness, thoughts of revenge, or hateful emotions that can quench Your Spirit in our hearts. Then give us wisdom as we seek how to bless, to love, and to pray for our enemies.

We pray for you to bless our enemies and to orchestrate events in their lives that will leave their hearts exposed before you. As You characterized blessing in the Beatitudes, we pray that You would give them a poverty of spirit that recognizes their deep need for You. We pray they will discover Your comfort in times of mourning, and they would be humbled before Youin Your way and Your time. We pray You would show them mercy before it is too lateknowing we were all Gods enemies before You extended mercy to usand that they would, in turn, be merciful to others.

Knowing how you sometimes use pain and difficulty to bring blessing to our lives, we pray the same for our enemies. Use whatever means You need to soften stony hearts, open blind eyes, and to help them realize their ultimate neediness for You. If necessary, allow persecution in their own lives so they can experience Your blessing. Speak to them in miraculous, supernatural ways if necessary, through a dream, a movie, another believer, Your Wordor even through our own lives if we are ever confronted. In some way, let them witness Your power and recognize that You are the source. We pray for conviction, for an honest evaluation of their own destiny, and for a sense of desperation if thats what it takes for them to consider Your claims and to discover Who You really are. Pursue them, even allowing goodness to lead them to repentance. And give us patience and a deep trust in You, Lord, even when we cant see any change in our enemies. When we waver, not wanting to pray for our enemies, help us to remember Your grace in our own lives, and what we would be without You. Amen. (prayer by Rebecca Barlow Jordan)

Further Reading

A Powerful Prayer for Your Enemies

How Do We Pray for Those Who Hurt Us?

Photo credit: GettyImages/Layland Masuda

Aaron Brown is a freelance writer, dance teacher, and visual artist. He currently contributes articles to GodUpdates, GodTube, iBelieve, and Crosswalk. Aaron also supports clients through the freelance platform Upwork.

This article is part of our larger resource library of popular Bible verse phrases and quotes. We want to provide easy to read articles that answer your questions about the meaning, origin, and history of specific verses within Scripture's context. It is our hope that these will help you better understand the meaning and purpose of God's Word in relation to your life today.

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Coryell Roofing & Construction are devoted to providing the highest quality roofing craftsmanship possible -- this hasnt gone unnoticed by customers and those within the construction industry. The Oklahoma City, Oklahoma-based company recently celebrated winning two prestigious awards from Duro-Last at a recent virtual event held by the leading roof manufacturer. Coryell Roofing was recognized as a Duro-Last Platinum Contractor serving Oklahoma City. The companys outstanding commitment to the highest quality work, top customer support, and vibrant sales also earned them the prestigious Golden Eagle Award, which honors contractors who achieve more than $2 million in sales over the past year. The Coryell team could not be more pleased with the accomplishment.

We are passionate about roofing, so to be singled out for excellence in our field is very exciting, commented Chris Coryell, CEO of Coryell Roofing & Construction. Our relationship with Duro-Last is important to us, and the reliable premium quality of their roofing products has been a huge asset for us.

Jack Burt, Chairman of the Board of Duro-Last, remarked, All of us at Duro-Last recognize the hard work and commitment that our dedicated network of authorized contractors has provided over the years. Coryell Roofing has consistently gone above and beyond for their customers with high-quality work and integrity. We are proud to work with such a professional team and are excited to see what they accomplish in the next year.

Coryell Roofing & Construction specializes in commercial, institutional, and industrial roofing. The company can cover all roofing needs, from repairs to retrofits to new roof installation. The company is happy to serve the Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Kansas communities.

Customer feedback continues to endorse the companys work and work ethic.

Larry D., from Blazers Ice Center, recently said in a five-star review, Coryell Roofing employees were courteous and professional and did a great job on our roof. Thanks, Coryell!

For more information, be sure to visit https://coryellroofing.com.

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Prosecutor seeks 3 years for taxi man accused of assault on Moscow law enforcement officer

 RAPSI, Vladimir Burnov

15:38 07/04/2021

MOSCOW, April 7 (RAPSI)  A prosecutor on Wednesday asked the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow to sentence Valery Yevsin, a taxi driver who had allegedly committed an assault on a National Guard employee at the illegal January 23 rally in Moscow, to 3 years in penal colony, the courts press service told RAPSI.

The man stands charged with the use of force against a representative of authority. He is in detention now.

According to investigators, on January 23, the accused threw a special guarding rail at the law enforcement officer.




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Half of all U.S. adults will receive at least one coronavirus vaccine dose by the end of the weekend.

Currently, 41.7 percent of Americans aged 18 or older have gotten at least an initial shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

But on CNN's Cuomo Prime Time on Tuesday, Andy Slavitt, the White House senior adviser for COVID-19 response, said he expects the pace of immunizations to rapidly accelerate over the next five days.

'We're on track that by the weekend, half the adults in the country will have had their first shot,' Slavitt said.

As of Wednesday, 108.3 Americans, or 32.6 percent of the population, have received at least one dose of vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson.

Additionally, 63 million people, 19 percent of the population, are fully immunized with an average of three million Americans being vaccinated every day.

The accelerated pace prompted Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, to declare that the U.S. does not need any doses of the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford.

Andy Slavitt, the White House senior adviser for COVID-19 response, said on Tuesday that half of all U.S. adults will be have received at least one coronavirus vaccine dose over the weekend. Pictured: 97 million adults who've gotten at least one dose

Currently, 41.7% of Americans aged 18 or older have gotten at least one shot, but Slavitt says he expects distribution to ramp up over the next few days as an average of three million are vaccinated every day

It comes on the heels of President Joe Biden's announcement that all adults will be eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccines by April 19 as 32.6% of the population have received at least one dose

Slavitt's announcement came just hours after President Joe Biden announced all U.S. adults should be eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccines by April 19.

That date is two weeks earlier than his previous target of May 1.

'No more confusing rules, no more confusing restrictions,' Biden said.

'Many states have already opened up to all of those, but beginning April 19th.. every adult in this country is eligible to get to the line to get a COVID vaccination.'

However, just because every adult is eligible does not mean every adult will able to schedule an appointment.

Slavitt noted that the majority of those most vulnerable to COVID-19's severe complication have at least partial immunity.

'We've got about 76 percent of seniors that have had their first shot,' he told CNN.

'Now what's going to happen in the next couple of weeks, is we really need to make sure that more seniors get their shots, because starting on the 19th, we're going to have some more floodgates again. We're going to have more people coming.'

Even with more supply needed as more adults are eligible to get vaccinated, Fauci reiterated to CNN on Wednesday a point he made last week that the U.S. doesn't need any more vaccines.

'We have three excellent vaccines,' the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases said.

'Even if the FDA deems that this vaccine is a very good vaccine, we don't need yet again another very good vaccine. We have enough very good vaccines.'

On Wednesday, Dr Anthony Fauci (pictured) said the U.S. does not need any doses of the vaccine developed by AstraZenenca and the University of Oxford

Fauci argued that the U.S. has ordered enough doses from American-based companies and will have even more once Novavax's vaccine is approved. Pictured: Vial of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine, March 29

The federal government has already ordered 300 million doses of the two-shot immunization, 4.2 million of which were loaned to Canada and Mexico, where the vaccine is already approved.

Several European countries halted use of the vaccine after a few reports of patients developing blood clots - in a few cases, deadly.

The European Medicines Agency concluded on Wednesday that there is a link between the jab and blood clots, but that the side effect is rare.

AstraZeneca plans to apply for emergency use authorization in the US during the first half of April.

But Fauci said the U.S. has enough doses from American-based companies, and more to come from the yet-approved Novavax, that he doesn't believe the U.S. need to use AstraZeneca doses.

'There is no plan to immediately start utilizing the AstraZeneca [vaccine] even if it gets approved through the EUA, which it very well might. It's not any indictment against the product. We just have a lot of vaccines,' Fauci told CNN.

'We already have contracted for enough vaccines, from Moderna and from Pfizer and from J&J, to fulfill all of our needs as well as even having doses for boosters in case we want to boost them a little later on.

The U.S. is expanding coronavirus vaccine access to community health centers to more than 1,400 across the country, which will help increase vaccine administration in underserved communities. Pictured: Angel Morales, 21, is given a COVID-19 vaccine from medical tech Monica Lopez at the Bell Community Center, April 5

It comes as the U.S. plans to expand coronavirus vaccine access to community health centers across the country in an effort to distribute shots to underserved communities.

'To help meet our goal of ensuring Americans have a vaccine site within five miles of where they live and to advance equitable distribution of the vaccine, we're announcing today that we're expanding our Community Health Center vaccine program,' Slavitt said during a press briefing on Wednesday.

This will increase the number of community health centers distributing vaccines from 950 to more than 1,400.

The majority of these centers have been vaccinating racial and ethnic minorities in an attempt to distribute shots more equitably.

'Increasing access to vaccines among those hit hardest by the Covid-19 pandemic is critical. By adding to the number of community health centers participating in this program, we will help make sure shots are getting to those who need them most,' Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement.

'This expansion will ensure every community health center in the country can be a part of our vaccination effort.'
[April 07, 2021] Y Soft And RAM Peripherals Team Up To Bring YSoft BE3D eDee To UK Market

-- Cooperation Offers 2D/3D Print Management to UK Partners and Education Customers-- BRNO, Czech Republic and LONDON, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Y Soft Corporation, the leading enterprise workflow solutions provider, and RAM Peripherals today announced that RAM Peripherals will now offer the YSoft BE3D eDee solution direct to partners and education customers in the United Kingdom. Combining RAM Peripherals' extensive 3D printing experience with YSoft SAFEQ print management software for 2D/3D printing creates a powerful tandem that schools can use to introduce a simple, cost-effective, and intuitive 3D package. RAM Peripherals 3D partners that already offer YSoft SAFEQ to their traditional 2D print customers will benefit from this collaboration by being able to leverage SAFEQ's 2D and 3D print management functionality to manage their 3D printing environment effectively and efficiently. YSoft BE3D eDee is a safe and secure 3D printing solution designed explicitly for the education market. It includes the intuitive and easy to use eDee printer, 3D/2D YSoft SAFEQ print management software, DeeControl layering software, 3D filaments, and access to teacher tested, ISTE compliant premium lessons in YSoft BE3D Academy. 3D printing in education is a growing market. More educational institutions are adopting fleets of 3D printers to help STEAM classes illustrate complex concepts, enhance hands-on interactive learning, and drive class engagement. To help support those efforts, Y Soft worked with educators to develop YSoft BE3D Academy, an online library of 3D lesson plans, video tutorials, and ready-to-use model files. "As 3D printing continues to evolve, RAM Peripherals is always on the lookout for new and innovative products. The YSoft BE3D eDee solution with BE3D Academy lesson plans is a great example of this," said Lingan Ram, Director at RAM Peripherals. He added, "Not only does this solution allow teachers to adapt 3D printing into their curriculum, but it is unique as it produces accurate reporting  allowing schools to monetise 3D prints, similar to how schools monetise a 2D print." "We are excited to offer the YSoft BE3D eDee solution to RAM Peripherals' customers," commented Ben Fitzwilliams, Business Development Manager at Y Soft. He added, "We know that together with their experience in 3D printing, we can provide students and teachers greater access into the world of 3D printing." In conjunction with this announcement, RAM Peripherals and Y Soft are hosting webinars for both partners and education customers. The partner webinar: Introduction to a new 3D solution: YSoft BE3D eDee, is scheduled for April 16, 10 AM BST. The customer webinar: How to bring 3D into your Classroom! will walk teachers through BE3D Academy, the lesson plans, and an overview of the eDee printer. It is offered on two dates - May 12, 2 PM BST + May 26, 5 PM BST. About RAM Peripherals With over 30 years in business, RAM Peripherals Ltd. has evolved into a leading hardware supplier. From 3D Printing products through to Disc Duplicators and USB Duplicators, we have a wide range of products available that have been tried & tested by our engineers. Having worked in several industries, including Education, Finance, and Banking, their goal has always been to provide excellent customer service and full technical support to all customers. For more information, please visit https://ramperipheralsltd.co.uk/ About Y Soft Y Soft develops intelligent Digital Transformation office solutions for enterprise, SMB, and education that empower employees to be more productive and creative. Our YSoft SAFEQ workflow solutions platform in the CLOUD (native) and on-premises enable businesses to manage, optimize, and secure their print and digital workflows. Our YSoft OMNI Series, consisting of YSoft OMNI Bridge and YSoft OMNI Apps, instantly and cost-effectively connects in-market printers to the Cloud and Universal Print. Our YSoft BE3D 3D print solution is focused on the Education sector, providing exceptional ease of use and safety benefits while utilizing YSoft SAFEQ software for seamless 3D print management. Y Soft was founded in Brno, Czech Republic, and is currently celebrating its 20th anniversary. With offices in Europe, North and Latin America, the Middle East/Africa, and the Asia Pacific region, we presently support 42% of the Global Fortune 500 companies. For more information, please visit http://www.ysoft.com.







Y Soft, YSoft SAFEQ, SAFEQ, YSoft BE3D eDee, BE3D, eDee and YSoft BE3D Academy are trademarks or registered trademarks of Y Soft Corporation a.s. in the European Union and other countries. All other names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

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Soon after the night curfew was enforced in Delhi on Tuesday, authorities across districts received over 73,000 applications for e-passes, of which only 1,271 were approved, officials said.

More than 34,000 applications were rejected as the applicants did not fall in the exempted categories according to the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) order, the officials said on Wednesday.

The on Tuesday imposed seven hours of night curfew, from 10 PM to 5 AM, with immediate effect for this entire month as an emergency measure for the "wellbeing and safety" of people in view of rising COVID-19 cases in the city.

People will require a soft or hard copy of the e-pass to travel during curfew hours. The e-pass can be obtained from the website -- www.delhi.gov.in.

After the imposition of the night curfew on Tuesday, a total of 73,154 applications were received for e-passes. Of these, 34,759 were rejected and 30,940 were pending by Wednesday noon, official figures showed.

Only 1,271 applications were approved across all 11 districts.

"Most of the applications were rejected as the applicants did not fall in the exempted categories as per Delhi Disaster Management Authority order," the officials said.

The highest number of applications were received in New Delhi district at 13,139, followed by 11,661 in South West, 9,947 in South, 7,673 in West, 6,560 in North West, and 6,065 in East Delhi, the official data showed.

New Delhi district also saw the highest number of rejected applications at 6,074, followed by 5,603 in East, 5,580 in West, 4,637 in South and 3,431 in West Delhi.

A total of 6,132 applications were accepted and verification was pending for 51 others.

The highest pendency of applications was seen in New Delhi at 6,525. As many as 5,093 applications were pending in South and 4,102 each in North West and South West.

In Shahdara district, 1,110 applications were received and 1,105 were pending, the data showed.

East Delhi district, which received 6,065 applications, had the lowest pendency at 42.

Several categories of people, including those going for COVID-19 vaccination, persons associated with essential services, pregnant women, central and officials involved in emergency services, etc. are exempted from the night curfew.

(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| 2021-04-08 00:04:21|Editor: huaxia

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MOGADISHU, April 7 (Xinhua) -- This round of consultative talks aimed at resolving the electoral deadlock in Somalia ended in Mogadishu Wednesday without any progress, a government official confirmed.

Somali Information Minister Osman Dubbe blamed leaders of Puntland and Jubbaland regional states for the failure of the new round of talks which was held in Mogadishu amid pressure from the international community for a consensus.

"The Federal government of Somalia is making clear to Somali people that the leaders of Somalia's regional States Puntland and Jubbaland are not willing to hold elections in this country based on the Sept. 17th agreement and the Feb. 16th agreement," Dubbe said in a televised news conference.

The minister said President Mohamed Farmajo agreed to engage the five leaders of the federal member states for a consultative meeting as part of the government's effort to transition Somalia towards peaceful, inclusive, timely and transparent elections.

Sources said the two sides held agenda-setting talks but disagreed on important topics such as managing Jubbaland state's elections, Somaliland and including presidential candidates in the consultative talks.

Jubbaland leader Ahmed Madobe has previously proposed restoration of his administration and that he should be allowed to appoint his own electoral committee to manage the election, especially in Garbaharey, the birthplace of President Farmajo.

Farmajo, however, has insisted his government will oversee the elections in Garbaharey which is one of the cities in Jubbaland state, a proposal Madode has rejected.

The closed-door, ice-breaking consultative meeting was expected to arrive at a way forward for the delayed elections, considered critical for the sake of entrenching the federal system of governance, which is required to appease communities and regions claiming systematic exclusion and marginalization for decades.

Failure to resolve the electoral impasse has plunged Somalia into a political crisis since President Farmajo's term officially ended on Feb. 8 while the four-year term of parliament ended on Dec. 27, 2020. Enditem
Cancer doctors may soon have a new tool for treating melanoma and other types of cancer, thanks to work being done by researchers at the University of Colorado Cancer Center.

In a paper published in the journal PNAS last month, CU Cancer Center members Mayumi Fujita, MD, PhD, Angelo D'Alessandro, PhD, Morkos Henen, PhD, MS, Beat Vogeli, PhD, Eric Pietras, PhD, James DeGregori, PhD, Carlo Marchetti, PhD, and Charles Dinarello, MD, along with Isak Tengesdal, MS, a graduate student in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, detail their work on NLRP3, an intracellular complex that has been found to participate in melanoma-mediated inflammation, leading to tumor growth and progression. By inhibiting NLRP3, the researchers found, they can reduce inflammation and the resultant tumor expansion.

Specifically, NLRP3 promotes inflammation by inducing the maturation and release of interleukin-1-beta, a cytokine that causes inflammation as part of the normal immune response to infection. In cancer, however, inflammation can cause tumors to grow and spread.

"NLRP3 is a member of a larger family that is involved in sensing danger signals," Marchetti says. "It is a receptor that surveils the intercellular compartment of a cell, looking for danger molecules or pathogens. When NLRP3 recognizes these signals, it leads to the activation of caspase-1, a protein involved in the processing and maturation of interleukin-1-beta into its biological active form, causing an intense inflammatory response. We found that in melanoma, this process is dysregulated, resulting in tumor growth."

The oral NLRP3 inhibitor used in their study (Dapansutrile) has already shown to be effective in clinical trials to treat gout and heart disease, and it is currently being tested in COVID-19 as well. The CU cancer researchers are now trying to find out if this NLRP3 inhibitor can be successfully used in melanoma patients who are resistant to checkpoint inhibitors.

"Checkpoint inhibitors increase the efficacy of the immune system to kill tumors, but sometimes tumors become resistant to this treatment," Marchetti says. "A big part of cancer research now is to find therapies that can be combined with checkpoint inhibitors to improve their efficacy."

With the hypothesis that an NLRP3 inhibitor is one of those therapies, CU Cancer Center researchers are studying the drug's effects on melanoma, as well as other major cancers. In addition to improving the immune response, the NLRP3 inhibitor can also help reduce the side effects of checkpoint inhibitors. Marchetti says this research can make a big difference for melanoma patients who don't respond to checkpoint inhibitors alone.

"This was a very collaborative project that involved a lot of members of the university, and we are very excited about it," he says. This project is important because it further shows that NLRP3-mediated inflammation plays a critical role in the progression of melanoma, and it opens new strategies to improve patient care."

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[April 07, 2021] SpaceIQ Named in the 2021 CRN Partner Program Guide

SpaceIQ, a leading workplace management software provider, is being acknowledged by CRN, a brand of The Channel Company, in its 2021 Partner Program Guide. This annual guide provides a conclusive list of the most distinguished partner programs from leading technology companies that provide products and services through the IT Channel. Given the importance of IT vendor channel programs, each year CRN develops its Partner Program Guide to provide the channel community with a detailed look at the partner programs offered by IT manufacturers, software developers, service companies, and distributors. Vendors are scored based on investments in program offerings, partner profitability, partner training, education and support, marketing programs and resources, sales support, and communication. The SpaceIQ Partner Program is designed to provide a consistent and sustainable framework that focuses on joint financial growth by leveraging the market leadership of SpaceIQ and a global network of Partners, giving Customers the best product and experience possible. The program offers valuable sales, marketing, and services benefits to Reseller and Referral Partners based on tier and continues to evolve to support the future needs of Partners. "At SpaceIQ, our Partners play a key role in our go-to-market strategy and success," said Nick Stefanidakis, General Manager of Archibus. "We strive to provide efficient solutions-and superior value-to them and our mutual Customers. Our Partner Program is focused on giving them the tools and resources they need to market and sell themselves and our products." "As innovation continues to fuel the speed and intricacy of technology, solution providers need partners that can keep up and support their developing business," said Blaine Raddon, CEO of The Channel Company. "CRN's 2021Partner Program Guide gives insight into the strengths of each organization's program to recognize those that continually support and push positive change inside the IT channel."



The 2021 Partner Program Guide will be featured in the April 2021 issue of CRN and online at www.CRN.com/PPG. About SpaceIQ

SpaceIQ makes your workplaces smarter and your employee experiences better. If you need a centralized data-driven platform to make better informed decisions about your real estate, we've got you. If you want to plan and manage a more productive and efficient work environment, you've come to the right place. And if you want to give your employees a frictionless experience so they can do their best work, we do that too. Our mission is to help businesses of all sizes reach their full potential by creating great workplaces that attract and retain the talent they need to grow and succeed. www.spaceiq.com Follow SpaceIQ: Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. About The Channel Company The Channel Company enables breakthrough IT channel performance with our dominant media, engaging events, expert consulting and education, and innovative marketing services and platforms. As the channel catalyst, we connect and empower technology suppliers, solution providers and end users. Backed by nearly 40 years of unequalled channel experience, we draw from our deep knowledge to envision innovative new solutions for ever-evolving challenges in the technology marketplace. www.thechannelcompany.com Follow The Channel Company: Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.  2021. CRN is a registered trademark of The Channel Company, LLC. All rights reserved. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005191/en/

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Following successful trials with police and security staff in South Yorkshire, SmartTag is now being made available to Security Industry Accredited (SIA) security officers, working in the wider Yorkshire area, in the United Kingdom.

SmartTag

The award-winning forensic scientists at SmartWater Group (SmartWater Technology Limited) created SmartTag, following the increase in attacks on frontline workers, during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Each security officer will be equipped with a uniquely formulated hand-held spray for their exclusive use. However, they are required to sit an online training course and pass an examination, before they receive their SmartTag spray.

Protecting frontline workers

The SmartTag-equipped security staff reported an immediate calming effect on potential rowdy incidents

SmartTag is another initiative of the Taming Aggression Group (T.A.G), which is headed by Sir Keith Povey QPM, the purpose of which is to reduce the level of aggression in society. Its first initiative, working with South Yorkshire Police to reduce domestic abuse, was highly successful with a significant reduction in attacks.

During the trial in South Yorkshire, the SmartTag-equipped security staff reported an immediate calming effect on potential rowdy incidents, before they could become violent. Effectively, if an offender is sprayed with SmartTag, they risk being refused entry to any premises equipped with SmartTag detectors and in serious offences, being arrested by the police at a later date.

Diffusing violent incidents

Detective Superintendent, Lee Berry, who launched a pilot, last year with security guards, when at South Yorkshire Police, said Our aim was to create a deterrent for door staff to diffuse violent incidents before they escalated. Over 100 canisters were deployed across the county, following a successful trial in Sheffield. We received great feedback from door staff, who said they had diffused situations by warning those involved that they would be forensically marked.

Gary Higgins, the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of SmartWater said, SmartWater is a powerful deterrent, as it provides the police with the evidence they need to prosecute and hundreds of criminals are behind bars as a result. The trial in Yorkshire with the police and security staff went very well and we believe that SmartTag will be a standard piece of equipment for all professional SIA accredited security officers.

SmartWater is the only product of its type that has been independently accredited, as being compliant with the requirements of the Governments Forensic Science Regulator.
This article appears in the April 9, 2021 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

[Print version of this article]

Sen. Richard H. Black

Lessons of Syria

Senator Richard Black spoke to the Schiller Institutes conference, The World at a Crossroad: Two Months into the New Administration, on the March 21 panel, Southwest Asia: Pivot for War, or Peaceful Development with the New Silk Road.

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Schiller Institute Sen. Richard H. Black

Moderator: Now we are going to go to the United States. Former Virginia State Senator Richard Black, who is also a veteran of the Vietnam War, where he served in the Marines, and then became Judge Advocate General for the Army at the Pentagon. He is extremely knowledgeable about Syria, in particular. And what he will be speaking on is the truth about Syrian crisis, and he will also be with us at the end for questions & answers.

Senator Black: Im Sen. Dick Black, and Im a retired colonel, who served in uniform for 32 years. I love my country. I flew 269 combat missions in Vietnam as a Marine helicopter pilot, and I crash-landed once after machine-gun fire cut my flight controls. Afterwards, I made 70 combat patrols as a ground air controller for the 1st Marine Division. I was in intense, fierce combat during almost the entire time, and I was wounded and my radiomen were both killed beside me.

So with that background, let me say that Im appalled by the indecency of American aggression toward Syria.

Just the other day, Secretary of State Tony Blinken chastised his Chinese guests in Anchorage, Alaska, by saying that they failed to respect the rules-based order, without which there would be much more violence in the world.

But what is this rules-based order were always touting? It seems the rules are whatever the United States decides it wants at any given moment.

By what right do we seize other nations ships on the high seas? The rule says that doing so is an act of war. But were not at war, so the rules go on to say if youre not at war, then seizures of ships on the high seas are acts of piracy. Are these not acts of piracy when we seize these ships?

What rules allow us to establish naval blockades on Syria, Iran, and Venezuela? Are those not acts of war?

What rules-based order says we can punish Germany for connecting a gas pipeline to Russia? What rules in this rules-based order allow us to dictate the trade of any sovereign nations?

Conquest, Not War on Terror

The American March of Conquest spans the globe. Weve invaded sovereign countries like Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Syria, leaving them all in smoldering ruins.

Does the rules-based order not prohibit wars of aggression? Did we not prosecute Nazis at Nuremberg for just such actions? What rules make wars of aggression crimes for Nazis, but not for us?

Were told that were fighting a War on Terror, but were not. Were closely allied with terrorists, like al Qaeda, in an endless quest to destroy Arab civilizations throughout the Middle East.

Few Americans can even name all of our wars: Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Ukraine. None of them attacked us; we attacked all of them.

Lets just look at the case of Syria.

Remember what Syria once was? Before the war Syria had a nicely balanced economy: It produced most of its own industrial goods, produced its fuel and agricultural products, had little poverty, and enjoyed thriving trade. It was financially responsible.

It enjoyed 40 years of peace with Israel. And the constitution drafted under President Assad guarantees equal rights for women; and importantly, it guarantees religious freedom in three different parts of the text: Ive read it. Syria is a model for other Arab states, especially ones like Saudi Arabia, which has no constitution at all.

We call Syrias President a dictator, but in 2014, he was overwhelmingly elected by the people of Syria in a fair and free election. It was very heavily monitored; there were lots of observers, and all agreed it had been a true and valid election. So, Syria is a model of elective democracy, if you want to call it that, for the Arab world. But Americans pretend that the election never happened. And yet, many Syrians, who spent 15 hours in the blazing Sun so that they could vote for President Assad, were targeted and killed by U.S.-backed rebels, who fired mortars into their midst and killed them.

After ten years of warI think its important to recognizeafter ten years of war, not a single rebel leader has ever emerged as a popular figure with the Syrian people. The West loves the terrorists that the people of Syria despise.

Were taught to hate President Assad because he cracked down on rioters in 2011 and they say that he gassed his people. But thats not true. Because we decided to attack Syria ten years before all of that.

In 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered the Pentagon to draft plans to overthrow seven countries in the Mideast, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off with Iran. Not one of them had harmed the United States.

In 2006, the U.S. Embassy in Damascus drew up detailed plans to destabilize and overthrow Syria. Those were widely disseminated to the Pentagon, to various unified commands; they went to NATO; they went widely across the worldthe specific plans to destabilize and overthrow Syria, and that was long before the demonstrations had ever occurred in Syria, and yet we claim them as the reason that we oppose President Assad.

Help to Terrorists

In March of 2011, the United States, U.K., and France attacked and overthrew Libya, brutally executing Colonel Qaddafi. The U.S. then turned over control of a Libyan airfield to the Turks, who used it to transport advanced weapons that had been plundered from Libya, and sent them eventually to supply the terrorists that were organizing in Syria.

In 2011, also, during the Arab Spring, the highly secretive Central Intelligence Agency Special Activities Center sent paramilitary teams into the sovereign territory of Syria, to identify, train, equip and lead terrorists to overthrow the Syrian government.

In 2013, Barack Obama formalized this long-standing support for anti-Syrian terrorists, by secretly authorizing CIA Program Timber Sycamore. Under Program Timber Sycamore, the CIAs Special Operations Division trained, armed and paid thousands of terrorists to fight against Syria. Those armies were totally under our control, and in one case, a group in Aleppo, we had paid over a thousand of their people salaries, given them arms, given them training. And it wasnt until they kidnapped a small Palestinian boy, who was being treated in a hospital; they kidnapped him, they took him to the central square in Aleppo, and in order to terrorize the people into not fleeing Aleppowhich was being cordoned off by Syrian troopsthey took him to the center in a pickup truck, they grabbed the little boy by the hair, they took a knife, and they slashed his head off! And then they paraded it! They held it up and waved it in front of the crowd as a warning: Dont escape from Aleppo. We paid the salaries of every man who held that boys head aloft. We gave them their weapons. We gave them their truck. We gave them everything they needed. And it was only after that very gruesome incident that we decided, Well, thats an embarrassment, we better not pay them. We had been paying terrorists like this throughout the war.

NATO and the U.S. maintained an intense propaganda campaign against Syria from the outset. Sarin gas attacks that killed civilians were blamed on President Assad. But not one reporter ever asked why Assad would use gas against children, but not against armies of terrorists bearing down on the capital of Damascus! The reason is obvious: There is no answer for that. And the journalists are smart enough to know that if they ask that question, their career in journalism is finished.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis admitted, in 2018, that the U.S. had no evidence that Assad had ever used sarin gas. Two courageous Turkish Members of Parliament were quickly accused of treason after they revealed a criminal indictment that showed how an al-Qaeda cell had infiltrated 2.2 kilos of sarin gas across the border from Turkey for use in Syria, most likely going to Damascus for the initial attack that was the red line attack that almost sent American troops into Syria.

Stealing Resources

So, why do we attack Syria? Well, there are a number of reasons. Part of it ties in with Israeli foreign policy. But the U.S. seeks to capture oil and gas routes serving Saudi Arabia and Qatar. In addition to pipeline access, Saudi Arabia wants to impose harsh Wahhabi Islam on the religiously harmonious Syrians. The Turks cast a greedy eye on the industrial city of Aleppo. The Turks also want to capture the oil and the agricultural produce of the nation, that is produced in northern Syria.

So there are many people who have these desires, and there are many reasons behind the war. Certainly, American arms dealers profit immensely from lucrative deals like the 600 BMP-71 anti-tank missiles that the Central Intelligence Agency rushed to al-Qaeda in 2014, to prepare them to attack across the Turkish border. It was only with those CIA-provided anti-tank weapons that the al-Qaeda terrorists were able to break through the Syrian armor and through Syrian lines, and seize the beautiful town of Kessab, and behead Armenian Christians who were there, in all the churches, and smash ancient tombstones with sledgehammers. That was done thanks to the CIA. Al Qaeda never could have broken the Syria lines without those anti-tank missiles.

Many terror groups have sworn to behead all Christians and Alawites and to make sex slaves of their wives and daughters. One jihadist, famously, drove his American-made HUMVEE into battle with a naked slave girl lashed to his windshield. He knew that the Syrian soldiers would hesitate to shoot at his Humvee as long as there was an innocent girl lashed to the windshield. And thats why he used it, and thats why he put this poor girl up there, and drove her first into battle as his shield.

In 2015, U.S. troops illegally invaded Northern Syria and unlawfully seized Syrias oil. We authorized an American oil company to build a refinery for $150 million, and drill for more oil on sovereign Syrian land. Before the war, Syria never needed to import oil or natural gas because it was self-sufficient. It exported a little bit, but it was not a big oil-producing country. But what was important is that it provided all of the fuel, all of the gasoline, all of the heating fuel, for the power plants and so forth, in Syria. But now, the legacy of the nation has been stolen by the United States, leaving Syrians to freeze to death in the winter, as we steal their fuel.

The same region, northern Syria, is the breadbasket of Syria. It grew enough wheat to feed the nation, to export a little bit. This too has been stolen: We gave it to the Kurds who are shipping Syrian wheat to Turkish merchants, while Syrian peasants starve.

To tighten the noose on Syria, Secretary Mike Pompeo bragged about cutting Syria off from sources of currency and blockading oil tankers arriving from Iran. He is right; we have caused immense death, disease and suffering for poor Syrians.

Americans are routinely reminded that We are not targeting the common people, only the leaders. Rubbish! Thats a total lie! Sanctions do nothing but attack the innocent, the poor, the helpless! They are the most cruel and barbaric type of warfare that we can wage. We steal food, fuel, and medicine from the poor. We blockade supplies for rebuilding, so that young Syrian men must fight for a living or starve.

If we ended the blockade, they could work rebuilding the country. Syrians are tired of war! Weve imposed ten years of war on them. They want to rebuildthe young menthe time that fighting wars is exotic, is over. They want to go home, they want to build families, they want to rebuild their homes and their businesses. But the United States blockades all materials necessary for rebuilding, so that young Syrian men must fight for a living, or starve. As it is, the only work is fighting, which will go on as long as we continue funding it.

The world must reject these endless wars. Weve fought 10 years against Syrians, but weve oppressed the Iraqi people for 30 yearswe dropped over a quarter of a million bombs on Iraq, and we bombed them, even while we sit in military base camps occupying the country. This madness must stop.

I thank you for the opportunity to talk to you today.

Moderator: Thank you very much Senator Black. That is something that I think people in this country need urgently to hear, and coming from someone whose loyalty to the United States and patriotism really cannot be questioned.

Sen. Blacks Speech Hits Syrias English, Arabic Press

March 29The Syrian official English-language daily, Syria Times, published today a short review of what it considers the main points of former Virginia State Senator Richard Blacks speech at the Schiller Institute international conference on March 21. The daily included a link to the video of the speech in its coverage.

On the same day, the official Arabic daily newspaper in Syria, Al-Thawra, published a report on Blacks speech under its banner headline, Senator Richard Black: This Is the Truth About Our Role in Syria. That article is here.
"A great education is one of the best ways to even the playing field for underprivileged kids," Fang said. "I hope this endowment can help families from underserved communities achieve the American dream."

Harker's Head of School, Brian Yager, expressed pride in Fang's efforts to improve access to education at Harker. "Andy is doing something of profound impact for the school, and his vision, forethought and overwhelming generosity will have a significant effect on Harker and the community for generations to come."

Board of Trustee Chair and '79 alumnus, Albert Zecher, Jr. added, "Andy's commitment to creating this historic endowment for scholarships at Harker is inspiring. As a young alumnus, his philanthropy is especially laudable."

Fang cited his experience at Harker as a motivating force. "With my philanthropy, I was looking to focus first on an institution that I knew could help the community, based on my personal experiences," he said. "I'm thankful for the education I received at Harker, and I want to provide a way for more students to get access to Harker's world-class education."

Kim Lobe, Harker's Director of Advancement, added, "Increasing our endowment is an important goal of our strategic plan. We couldn't be more grateful that Andy has established this new Alumni Scholarship Endowment fund to inspire others to join him in giving to this very worthy cause."

Fang co-founded DoorDash in 2013 with Stanford University classmates Evan Moore, Stanley Tang and Tony Xu. The company went public in December 2020.

About The Harker School

The Harker School is a K-12, coeducational, private, nonprofit school in Silicon Valley that has earned international recognition for its top academics, quality teachers and student achievements. Founded in 1893 and educating 2,040 students, Harker is the largest independent school of its kind in California.

Media Contact

Pam Dickinson, Office of Communication Director

[email protected]

408.345.9273 office

408.314.2251 cell

SOURCE The Harker School

Related Links

https://www.harker.org


FCW Insider: April 7, 2021

Robin Carnahan, formerly Missouri's secretary of state and the lead of state and local government practice at 18F, is the Biden administration's pick to lead the General Services Administration.

Ahead of its scheduled reauthorization next year, two senators are seeking detailed information about Einstein, a government cybersecurity program that has come into the spotlight in the wake of the breach involving SolarWinds.

Appeals have been stalled at the Merit Systems Protection Board for more than four years, and leaders on the Government Operations subcommittee in the House want the White House to get moving on board nominations.

The new organization will eventually produce regular public reports and address common industry concerns like the cost of implementation.

Quick Hits

*** Lynne Patton, a former Trump administration political appointee at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, was hit with a $1,000 fine and a four-year ban on federal service as the outcome of a settlement agreement over Hatch Act violations with the Office of Special Counsel. Patton used videos made of residents at a New York City Housing Authority in support of Trump's 2020 candidacy at the Republican National Convention.

*** The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence will resume the practice of holding open worldwide threat hearings featuring the testimony of the heads of the CIA, FBI, NSA and other intelligence community agencies. The next such hearing is scheduled for April 14.

*** The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has awarded five companies positions on a 10-year, $2 billion contract for broad software development and systems integration services. Read more on this story in Washington Technology.
Former Vice President Mike Pence has signed a $3 million to $4 million publishing contract with Simon & Schuster to author two books.

CNN first reported news of the deal, with the publisher saying the first book - on Pence's faith and time in public service - has been tentatively scheduled for release in 2023.

'Pence will address the many pivotal moments of the administration, from the time he was selected to run as Vice President through Inauguration Day on January 20, 2021,' a release from the publisher said.

Former Vice President Mike Pence signed a two-book deal with publisher Simon & Schuster for $3 million to $4 million. The first book is expected to come out in 2023, as Pence looks toward the 2024 presidential race

Former Vice President Mike Pence (right) and former Preident Donald Trump (left) had a widely publicized falling out at the end of their administration, after Pence told Trump he couldn't overturn the results of the election

With Trump having not yet inked a book deal, Simon & Schuster's Senior Vice President and Publisher Dana Canedy said Pence's 'revelatory autobiography will be the definitive book on one of the most consequential presidencies in American history.'

Pence is widely considered a frontrunner for the Republican Party's 2024 presidential nomination, which his former boss, President Donald Trump, may also pursue.

Pence and Trump had a widely publicized falling out at the end of their administration, after Pence told Trump he couldn't overturn the results of the election.

In turn, Trump called out Pence in tweets and at the infamous 'Save America' rally, which preceded the insurrection. Trump also didn't call his No. 2 during the Capitol attack.

Several days later, a former Pence aide told Politico, 'Pence is done with Trump's bulls***. He's not going to give a primetime speech saying "F you Donald Trump," but in his own way he is going to just get to the finish line and keep his head down.'

But on Wednesday even before the book announcement, Pence indicated he hadn't divorced himself from Trumpworld.

He announced a new advocacy organization called Advancing American Freedom.

The advisory board includes several figures who advised Trump in the White House including former counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway and former chief economic advisor Larry Kudlow.

Pence will also return to the political stage later this month, delivering a speech in South Carolina, an important early primary state.

Those backing the effort aren't necessarily signing up for a potential Pence run for the White House in 2024, as Trump has given the group his public blessing.

'It ws the most successful first term in American history,' Trump said in a statement to the Washington Examiner, which first reported on the creation of the group. 'Nice to see Mike highlighting some of our many achievements!'

Former counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway is advising Pence's group

'It was the most successful first term in American history. Nice to see Mike highlighting some of our many achievements!' said Trump in a statement

Strains between Trump and Pence came to the forefront during the Capitol riot

An adviser to the group told DailyMail.com Trump and Pence 'are in the top tier presidentially, having secured the highest number of votes of any GOP ticket in US history' and brushed off chatter about who would be on the ticket in 2024.

'Talk should not be about 2024 so much as 2022, where each of them will have a unique and compelling role in delivering Republican majorities in the House, Senate and governorships,' said the adviser. 'The focus should be on the current Administration, not the next one. Just 11 weeks in, Biden and Harris have worsened the border crisis, killed energy jobs, promised to raise taxes, and stoked dissent.'

The effort by Pence to cheer the accomplishments of his and Trump's tenure comes as Trump continues to consolidate his own influence in the Republican Party despite the Capitol riot that led to his second impeachment and a trial that featured video of rioters calling to 'hang Mike Pence.'
Tehran, April 7 : The Iranian Foreign Ministry on Wednesday confirmed that authorities are looking into an explosion in the Red Sea that left a ship slightly damaged.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said that no crew members were injured in the explosion on Tuesday night, but did not comment on reports that the ship was attacked by Israel, reports dpa news agency citing local media.

The New York Times, citing an unnamed US representative, reported Israel had informed the US that its forces had attacked the ship in response to previous Iranian attacks on Israeli ships.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had blamed Iran for an explosion on an Israeli company's cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman in March.

A spokeswoman for the Israeli military said that the army does not comment on foreign media reports.

Iran's Tasnim news agency had originally reported on the explosion and damage to the ship, which escorts Iranian merchant ships in the Red Sea.

It did not give further details.

According to the US website GlobalSecurity.org, the damaged freighter is used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The Foreign Ministry spokesman described the ship as a "security guarantor for shipping routes".
Updated at 3 p.m. with additional comments

Syracuse, N.Y.  The newly enacted state budget requires nearly all internet providers to sell broadband service for $15 a month to low-income customers who qualify for food stamps, Medicaid or similar benefits.

Internet providers have 60 days to start offering minimum internet speeds of 25 megabits per second for $15 a month to qualifying customers. They have the option to provide 100 Mbps service for $20.

The mandated service is similar to what state regulators already require from two of the states largest providers, Spectrum and Optimum. Since 2017, for example, Spectrum has offered qualifying low-income customers 30 Mbps service for $14.99.

But the new law will make low-cost broadband available to many more of the states 1.7 million low-income households, said Richard Berkley, executive director of Public Utility Law Project, an advocacy group for low-income utility customers.

For one thing, the eligibility requirements in the new law are more expansive than what the Public Service Commission imposed on Spectrum. And the new law applies to all of the more than two dozen internet providers in New York, unless they have fewer than 20,000 customers and can show hardship.

The law aims to close the digital divide, which loomed large during the past year, Berkley said. Some kids lacked broadband service needed for remote schooling. Some senior citizens were unable to obtain telemedicine services for want of high-speed internet.

This is vital,' Berkley said. The pandemic showed us that affordable, comprehensive access to high-speed broadband is vital.'

The mandated $15 price is lower than what most customers pay for internet. Prices range widely depending on bandwidth, but the average cost is $50 a month or more. Spectrum, for example, advertises an introductory rate of $49.99 for 200 Mbps.

The wider availability of low-cost service could have an impact in cities like Syracuse. One-quarter of the 54,000 households in Syracuse had no internet service as of 2019, according to a report by Syracuse.com. Only 58% had high-speed broadband.

Central New York advocates for universal broadband said the new state mandate is a good first step but wont close the digital divide.

For starters, the minimum download speed of 25 megabits per second is probably not adequate for many households with more than one user, said Jennifer Tifft, deputy commissioner of neighborhood and business development for the city of Syracuse. And the $15 price may still be too high for struggling families, she said.

I dont necessarily think its going to have a huge impact in the city,' Tifft said.

Spectrums existing low-cost plan does not appear to be heavily utilized among Syracuse residents, Tifft said. City officials are looking at the potential for providing free broadband but have not developed a specific plan yet, she said.

Under the budget bill passed Tuesday, households can now get the low-cost broadband service if they qualify for Medicaid; Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits (food stamps); free or reduced-price school lunch; affordability benefits from a utility; or a senior citizen rent increase exemption.

Under a 2016 order approving the merger of Time Warner Cable and Charter Communications, the state Public Service Commission required Charters service brand, Spectrum, to offer a low-income broadband option for $14.99. The service had to reach speeds of 30 Mbps by 2017.

Eligibility was limited to households that qualified for free school lunch or to seniors who qualified for Supplemental Security Income. A similar PSC order applied to Optimum, a downstate provider, after its owner merged with another company.

If an internet provider has fewer than 20,000 customers and can show that a low-income service would cause undue hardship, the PSC can excuse it from the requirement.

Annabeth Hayes, who co-chairs the CNY Digital Inclusion Coalition, said the law passed Tuesday is a good first step,' but more will have to be done.

Im hoping that it will keep evolving and that the state will keep evolving in their response to the digital divide,' 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.
Maybe youre getting out more now that spring has arrived and dont have as much time to read. Many of Aprils best new books are right for that moment: slim but impactful volumes and collections of stories, essays or travel pieces that you can dip into as time allows.

First Person Singular, Haruki Murakami (Knopf, $28): The stories in this collection are told, as the title suggests, in first person by narrators who recount something odd or unsettling, but of no great consequence, that happened to them years ago. It might be an invitation to a recital that never takes place or a one-night stand with a death-haunted poet. The strange memories rise up like mile markers in the rearview mirror  though its always too late to turn around and go back. On sale now.

Hummingbird Salamander, Jeff VanderMeer (MCD, $27): The author of the science-fiction bestseller Annihilation and its two sequels returns with another novel rooted in ecological disaster. Its a thriller that begins with two invitations. One is a key, handed to security consultant Jane Smith by a stranger. It opens the door to a storage unit out of a John Wick movie; inside is a box that contains a taxidermied hummingbird and a cryptic note. The other is an offer from Jane: Im here to show you how the world ends. On sale now. Jeff VanderMeer will discuss Hummingbird Salamander at 8 p.m. Friday as part of the San Antonio Book Festival. The session costs $33.27, which includes the book; register at sabookfestival.org.

Im Waiting for You, Kim Bo-Young (Harper Voyager, $26.99): This is the second book in English by Kim, an acclaimed South Korean science-fiction author who served as a script adviser on Bong Joon Hos movie Snowpiercer. The title story and a companion piece involve a bride and groom who encounter travel problems en route to their wedding day. Because theyre on ships flying at light speed, a short delay can translate to months or years on Earth. They keep missing connections as time spirals out of control, claiming everything but their love. On sale now.

On ExpressNews.com: Firefly Lane author brings new bestseller to S.A. book festival

Little Pieces of Me, Alison Hammer (William Morrow paperback, $16.99): After 40 years, life isnt perfect for Paige, but its coming together in this chatty domestic drama. She lost her job at an ad agency but finally found the right guy and is about to be married. She has good friends who helped her through the death of her beloved dad two years ago. Her moms another story. Then a new match notification from a DNA testing service undoes everything she thought she knew about her family and her identity. Tuesday.

Hot Stew, Fiona Mozley (Algonquin Books, $26.95): An old building in Londons Soho neighborhood has a French restaurant on the ground floor, apartments up above and, somewhere toward the back, a brothel. A wealthy young woman wants to convert the building to condos; the tenants and customers object to that plan. Before the action even starts, Booker Prize finalist Mozley fills the place with so much gritty, fascinating character that youll want to move in. April 20.

Nonfiction

The Hard Crowd, Rachel Kushner (Scribner, $26): Novelist Kushners first essay collection includes criticism  she writes about artist Jeff Koons and author Denis Johnson  and memoir, including a piece about her time working at a concert venue in San Francisco. But the real appeal to fans of Kushners novels The Flame Throwers and The Mars Room will be the essays that dig into the influences and obsessions that inform her fiction, including motorcycle racing, classic cars and radical politics. On sale now.

On ExpressNews.com: Jenny The Bloggess Lawson talks about her new book

The Hero Code, Adm. William H. McRaven (Grand Central Publishing, $22): Make Your Bed, the surprise bestseller by the former commander of U.S. Special Operations Forces, began as a commencement speech at the University of Texas at Austin. His new book is a graduate course. McRaven presents a code of conduct based on 10 principals, such as courage and integrity, inspired by people he considers heroes, including Sen. John McCain and astronaut Charles Duke. None are as simple as making your bed, but no one said being a hero is easy. Tuesday.

The Bomber Mafia, Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown and Co., $27 ): Outliers author Gladwells latest is a World War II-era account of a group of U.S. pilots who set out to reinvent war to make it more humane  fewer fatalities and less damaging  with precision bombing. It didnt work out that way, and the war was marked by, among other atrocities, the historically deadly and destructive nightlong bombing of Tokyo in 1945. Gladwell conceived the book, which he calls a story of how morality and technology collide, as part of his Revisionist History podcast. April 20.

The New Breed, Kate Darling (Henry Holt, $29.99): No one whos seen The Terminator or Westworld can be too comfortable with the idea of increasingly nimble and intelligent robots, like those Boston Dynamics creations. Darling, a researcher at the MIT Media Lab, thinks we should relax about that. She doesnt see robots as as threat but as a complement to our lives, the way domesticated animals became useful for work, weaponry and companionship. Wonder what the robots think about that. April 20.

World Travel: An Irreverent Guide, Anthony Bourdain and Laurie Woolever (Ecco, $35): Chef and author Bourdain brainstormed this sprawling, personal travel guide with Woolever, his longtime assistant, shortly before his death in 2018. It covers more than 60 cities in 43 countries, and his voice is still here, drawn from transcripts of his TV travel shows No Reservations, The Layover and Parts Unknown. And his voice makes clear his desire to connect, from slightly skewed angles, with places, people and food, from sauteed spinach and zucchini flowers on blue corn tortillas made by street food vendor Dona Anastasia in Mexico City to kimchi stew at Gol Mok Jib in Seoul, South Korea. April 20.

jkiest@express-news.net | Twitter: @en_salife
The woman behind Oxford's coronavirus jab is in line for a multi-million pound windfall as her company plans to float on the stock market.

Professor Sarah Gilbert stands to make more than 17million when Vaccitech, the firm she co-founded, debuts on Wall Street.

The mother-of-three owns just over 5 per cent of the company and it was recently valued at 327million  although reports suggest that could rise.

Windfall: Professor Sarah Gilbert stands to make more than 17m when Vaccitech, the firm she co-founded, debuts on Wall Street

Co-founder Professor Adrian Hill, who is director of Oxford University's Jenner Institute, holds the same number of shares as Gilbert and could also make 17million, according to filings on Companies House.

The pair founded Vaccitech as an Oxford University spinout in 2016.

Its signature technology, which uses a harmless version of a respiratory virus found in chimpanzees, is the cornerstone of the coronavirus jab being administered to millions of Britons.

Gilbert grew up in Kettering, Northamptonshire. Her father worked at a shoe factory and her mother was a teacher.

She studied biological sciences and did a PhD at Hull University before getting a job at Oxford in 1994.

The scientist  whose triplets took part in trials of the Oxford jab  never meant to become an expert in vaccines.

'I actually came to Oxford to work on a human genetics project,' she said previously.

'That highlighted the role of a particular type of immune response in protection against malaria and so the next thing to move on to was to make a vaccine that would work through that type of immune response  and that's how I got into vaccines.'

Since then, with Hill, she has pioneered the use of genetically altered viruses to make vaccines for diseases such as influenza, Mers, Zika and Ebola.

Astrazeneca was given exclusive rights to sell and distribute Oxford's Covid-19 vaccine. However this is being done at no profit during the pandemic.

This, along with the ease with which the jab can be transported and stored, has led the World Health Organisation to hail it as a 'vaccine for the world'.

After the pandemic, Vaccitech is expected to share in any revenues from continued sales of the vaccine and it is developing booster jabs for variants of the virus.

It has notified regulators in the US of its intention to float  the first step towards becoming a company with publicly-traded shares  according to the Financial Times.
The Movement for Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra has accused the Federal Government of sponsoring recent attacks on South-East

The Movement for Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra has accused the Federal Government of sponsoring recent attacks on South-East





MASSOB leader, Uchenna Madu, said this in a statement made available to journalists in Awka, the Anambra State capital.





He said MASSOBs intelligence showed that the attacks were perpetrated by protected bandits sponsored by the Federal Government.





Madu added that the purpose was to create a situation that pro-Biafra agitators had become violent and therefore, should be chastised.





The statement read in part, The leadership of the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra has condemned the incessant criminal terrorism and security deterioration in Igboland.





MASSOB condemned the terrorist attack on Chukwuma Soludo at Isuofia; we equally condemned the unwarranted killings of Ebonyi State indigenous citizens by Fulani terrorist herdsmen. MASSOB condemned in totality the breaking of Owerri prison by the so-called unknown gunmen.





How can untrained and amateurs with no military training overpower the entire security apparatus of Nigeria in the South-East? Why is it that there was no security resistance during the breaking of Owerri Prisons and Imo State Police headquarters in an operation that lasted more than one hour?

Nigeria military cantonment, Obinze, Owerri, is seven minutes drive to the scene of the crime; Imo State MOPOL base is three minutes drive to the scenes of the crime, but no resistance from security agencies.





The terrorist attacks in Owerri are part of the ongoing destructive measures by the President Muhamadu Buhari-led administration to discredit and blackmail the pro-Biafra organisations to create an erroneous impression that Biafrans are waging war against Nigeria. Igboland is the most peaceful region.





MASSOB advises Governor Hope Uzodinma to stop heaping blames on IPOB or ESN or any other pro-Biafra organisation. Pro-Biafra agitators are not responsible for all the terrorist activities in Igboland.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 7)  The Senate president is not taking lightly allegations that some Senate employees are sympathizers of rebel groups.

In a message to reporters on Wednesday, Senator Vicente "Tito" Sotto III described as unfounded a social media post by National Intelligence Coordinating Agency director general Alex Paul Monteagudo that said members of the Senate union, the Sandigan ng mga Empleyadong Nagkakaisa sa Adhikain ng Demokratikong Organisasyon (SENADO), were working as the "eyes and ears of the CPP-NPA-NDF."

"He sent word saying they are just telling our people that the CPP has tentacles even in the halls of the Senate through COURAGE, a CTG organization. I said I want NICA to give me the names of the employees and I will have them investigated. But because of this, I am now inclined to support the criminalizing of red tagging," said Sotto.

COURAGE, the Confederation for Unity Recognition and Advancement of Government Employees, is made up of workers' unions from the public sector to which SENADO is an affiliate.

Sotto said he would have been the first to know if such a thing were true as he had been in the Senate since 1992. He added that he should have been informed by Monteagudo first before he made the post on Facebook.

"That should have been the prudent thing to do!" he stressed.

In a statement on Wednesday, Senators Franklin Drilon, Risa Hontiveros, Leila de Lima and Francis Pangilinan slammed the "dangerous allegations."

"We strongly condemn the red-tagging of the union of Senate employees and we vehemently denounce government officials who continue to label, brand, vilify, and harass individuals and organizations such as SENADO as state enemies and subversives," the senators said in the statement.

In the post, Monteagudo also said the Senate was manned by the "CPP-NPA-NDF front organization COURAGE."

In a separate statement on Facebook, the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict said SENADO president Rosel Eugenio defended COURAGE by saying so-called front organizations were advocating for workers' rights.

The NTF-ELCAC also called Eugenio a leader of COURAGE as well as the Makabayang Kawaning Pilipino, which it called an organization "that advances, supports, colludes, conspires, collaborates in the overthrow of government via armed terrorism of the CPP-NPA-NDF."

Neither SENADO nor Eugenio has issued a comment.
[April 07, 2021] The Law Offices of Frank R. Cruz Announces the Filing of a Securities Class Action on Behalf of SOS Limited (SOS) Investors

The Law Offices of Frank R. Cruz announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of persons and entities that purchased or otherwise acquired SOS (News - Alert) Limited ("SOS" or the "Company") (NYSE: SOS) American Depositary Shares ("ADSs" or "shares") between July 22, 2020 and February 25, 2021, inclusive (the "Class Period"). SOS investors have until June 1, 2021 to file a lead plaintiff motion. If you are a shareholder who suffered a loss, click here to participate. On February 26, 2021, Hindenburg Research ("Hindenburg") and Culper Research published reports regarding SOS, alleging that the Company was a "pump and dump" scheme that used fake addresses and doctored photos of crypto miners to create an illusion of success. The reports pointed out that SOS lists a hotel room as the company's headquarters and questioned whether SOS purchased mining rigs from HY International Group New York Inc. ("HY"), which appeared to be a shell company. They also claimed that FXK Technology Corporation ("FXK"), which SS announced it would purchase, was actually "an undisclosed related party shell." Moreover, the reports noted that the photographed SOS "miners" weren't the A10 Pros the company claimed to own but were actually Avalon's A1066 miners. Hindenburg went even further and found the original images from SOS's site belonged to a rival RHY.



On this news, the Company's share price fell $1.27, or 21%, to close at $4.77 per share on February 26, 2021. After the end of the Class Period, between February 27 and March 3, 2021, Hindenburg subsequently provided additional information on SOS that further supported its earlier allegations, including pictures, highlighting, inter alia, how SOS had allegedly taken steps to hide the misconduct noted in the February 26, 2021 corrective disclosures.

The complaint filed in this class action alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and/or misleading statements, as well as failed to disclose material adverse facts about the Company's business, operations, and prospects. Specifically, Defendants failed to disclose to investors that: (1) SOS had misrepresented the true nature, location, and/or existence of at least one of the principal executive offices listed in its SEC (News - Alert) filings; (2) HY and FXK were either undisclosed related parties and/or entities fabricated by the Company; (3) the Company had misrepresented the type and/or existence of the mining rigs that it claimed to have purchased; and (4) as a result, Defendants' positive statements about the Company's business, operations, and prospects were materially misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis at all relevant times. Follow us for updates on Twitter (News - Alert) : twitter.com/FRC_LAW. If you purchased SOS ADSs during the Class Period, you may move the Court no later than June 1, 2021 to ask the Court to appoint you as lead plaintiff. To be a member of the Class you need not take any action at this time; you may retain counsel of your choice or take no action and remain an absent member of the Class. If you purchased SOS securities, have information or would like to learn more about these claims, or have any questions concerning this announcement or your rights or interests with respect to these matters, please contact Frank R. Cruz, of The Law Offices of Frank R. Cruz, 1999 Avenue of the Stars, Suite 1100, Los Angeles, California 90067 at 310-914-5007, by email to info@frankcruzlaw.com, or visit our website at www.frankcruzlaw.com. If you inquire by email please include your mailing address, telephone number, and number of shares purchased. This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and ethical rules. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005409/en/

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Expert Forum (EFOR) requested the Government on Wednesday to support the vaccination of all citizens from the Republic of Moldova, by including them in the Romanian vaccination program, EFOR also launching a petition in this sense, agerpres.ro confirms.

"At this moment, Moldova does not offer access to vaccination for non-essential citizens, so there will be a good addressability for the Romanian vaccination offer for a long period of time after adopting the measure, among all social categories, regardless of region, ethnicity or political orientation. At the same time, the Romanian infrastructure and significant import of vaccines would allow Romania to assist the Republic of Moldova during these difficult times," Expert Forum said.

In the letter addressed to Prime Minister Florin Citu, Deputy Prime Minister Dan Barna, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Bogdan Aurescu and the Minister of Health Vlad Voiculescu, Expert Forum mentions that the "Romanian vaccination platform would allow scheduling in vaccination centers on Romania's territory for all Romanian citizens which are residents to the left of the Prut River.

"But Expert Forum is concerned by the fate of the other inhabitants of the Republic of Moldova, who do not have Romanian citizenship, but are in close contact to them, often being members of the same family. There are enough situations in which a spouse has double citizenship and the other does not; or where elderly parents did not manage to re-claim their Romanian citizenship, but their children did. Thus, an artificial splitting is created for accessing the vaccine - so for the perspective of normalizing life - among people living together," the document shows.

"The diversification of available vaccines in Romania, especially after the arrival of the Johnson&Johnson serum that is administered in a single dose and can be stored under normal conditions, simplifies the logistics for which there is a need for the mobile teams," Expert Forum also considers.

"Romania is not even the only country in the region which is vaccinating foreign citizens: It is well known that Serbia offers this in centers in Belgrade and Novi Sad to those from beyond the border who can come there, from Bosnia, Croatia or even Austria. The initiative achieved great success and public visibility, although the serums are predominantly Chinese or Russian made. All the better would a Romanian campaign be received in the Republic of Moldova with vaccines used in the European Union. If Serbia can vaccinate Austrian citizens, there is no reason why Romania could not do this for the population of a smaller state, such as the Republic of Moldova," EFOR also said in its letter.

The petition launched by EFOR, which can be signed by citizens who support for this proposal, is available on the website www.expertforum.ro/vaccin-covid-toti-cetatenii-moldova.


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PLANTATION, Fla., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- MASA Medical Transport Solutions (Masa MTS) announced Higginbotham as the newest member of its Valued Partner Program. Higginbotham, one of the largest independent insurance brokers in the world, provides employee benefits consulting and services to clients and their employees. Through the Valued Partner Program, Higginbotham will continue to help MASA MTS offer its world-class benefits to businesses of all sizes.

Higginbotham was chosen for this prestigious award for its five-plus years' record of successful Voluntary Worksite Benefits consulting on MASA MTS's medical transportation benefits and the value it brings to employees and employers. MASA MTS provides coverage for out-of-pocket expenses from air and ground ambulance events. Higginbotham delivers genuine peace of mind for their clients by bridging the gaps in group health coverage for ambulance transportation that can result in crippling financial hardship.

"We're excited for the continued growth that the partnership with Higginbotham will bring to both companies," said Tony Lodovico, Senior Vice President, B2B Sales, MASA MTS. "Being able to offer MASA Medical Transport memberships to Higginbotham's portfolio of employer groups provides employers and their employees protection from receiving extremely high ambulance bills! Our's is a partnership that creates tremendous value throughout the entire business chain!"

"We contracted with MASA in the spring of 2016 to add this niche product to our portfolio for many reasons. The most important of these reasons is this unique benefit falls within our firm's Voluntary Worksite Benefits philosophy of providing benefits designed to assist in risk areas experienced during working years and beyond," said Scott Shapard, Managing Director, Employee Benefits and Worksite Benefits Higginbotham. "One area of risk is unexpected high medical expenses. MASA helps shift this risk at the employee level. As a company, we offer MASA MTS as a benefit to our employees at Higginbotham. We have seen it work firsthand with our employees and their family members, and this reinforces our commitment to this ongoing partnership."

About MASA Medical Transport Solutions

MASA MTS is the leading prepaid limited health service that covers the unexpected costs associated with emergency medical transport. We provide a membership program covering all emergency air and ground transport providers in the U.S. and Canada. For more information, visit www.masamts.com.



About Higginbotham

Higginbotham serves domestic and international customers as a single source for insurance, financial, and H.R. services with in-house risk management and benefits administration. It ranks as the nation's 21st largest independent insurance brokerage firm. Visit www.higginbotham.net.

SOURCE Masa Global

Related Links

https://www.masaglobal.com


The pungent smell of cannabis on Britains streets and in its parks is hard to escape. People openly smoke and share joints, or even deal it, safe in the knowledge they are unlikely to be apprehended, let alone punished.

Yet cannabis is a class B drug and possessing or selling products that contain THC  the drugs psychoactive compound  is illegal.

Now, it seems, Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, is set to challenge the status quo with his announcement that, should he be re-elected for a second term next month, he will set up an independent drugs review to examine the health, economic and criminal justice benefits of decriminalising cannabis.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has vowed to commission an independent report on the potential health, economic and criminal justice benefits of legalising cannabis if he is re-elected next month

Almost 42,000 people in England and Wales were charged with drug-related offences last year, while the illegal drugs trade costs Britain some 19 billion a year. Legalising and regulating the sale of cannabis could raise around 1 billion for the Treasury

He says there is widespread public support for legalising cannabis for adult recreational use and that fresh ideas are needed to counter the illegal drugs trade and free up the police.

Almost 42,000 people in England and Wales were charged with drug-related offences last year, while the illegal drugs trade costs Britain some 19 billion a year. Legalising and regulating the sale of cannabis could raise around 1 billion for the Treasury.

Three years ago, Khan confessed that he had smoked cannabis while in Amsterdam a long, long time ago. Perhaps that admission is meant to bolster his credibility.

Ill go one further: in the 1980s, while in my early 20s, I was arrested and cautioned in Brixton, South-West London, for possessing a paltry lump of cannabis. Nowadays, as a science journalist, my beliefs on the subject are based on the best evidence available.

My conclusion? We need to keep the possession and sale of cannabis a criminal offence.

Thousands of people across the country believe that cannabis should be legalised

These people attended a cannabis legalisation event in London's Hyde Park in April 20, 2014

It may be that Khan is suffering some cannabis-related short-term memory loss. It is a mere 12 years since we were last heading down this road  with ruinous results. Thanks to campaigning by liberal-thinking Metropolitan Police leaders in 2004, cannabis was declassified from Class B to Class C (the same category as bodybuilding steroids).

After five years in which possession of the drug was merely a slapped-wrist matter, the drug was reclassified as a Class B drug again.

Why? Because policymakers witnessed a serious rise in cases of cannabis-induced psychosis and other mental problems, particularly among young people. In the past decade or more, the health risks of the decriminalisation of cannabis  as many countries have learned to their cost  have not changed.

Addictive drug for teenagers

Even in medical/scientific circles, cannabis was once regarded as a non-addictive substance that, at worst, caused emotional dependence in a few susceptible individuals. But with the advent of vastly more potent strains of the drug, particularly in the past 15 years, few experts subscribe to that view today.

Research published in last months edition of the American medical journal JAMA Pediatrics found that 11 per cent of teenagers who start taking marijuana [cannabis] report that they are dependent a year later.

The survey of 11,000 young people by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found that one in five teenagers who smokes cannabis over a three-year period develops an addictive disorder.

Major influence on mental illness

NHS chief executive Sir Simon Stevens has warned that in countries where marijuana has been decriminalised, young people often come to think of smoking marijuana as safe. It isnt. It increases the risk of long-term psychiatric problems such as depression or psychosis. Indeed, a 2019 study in the journal JAMA Psychiatry of more than 23,000 people found that the risk of depression among young adults who regularly smoked cannabis was more than a third higher than normal. Their risk of attempting suicide more than trebled.

Potency hitting new heights

Researchers agree that the rapid rise in mental health problems such as addiction and depression is being driven by huge increases in the strength of street cannabis.

The compound THC has been boosted through intensive industrial propagation by illegal growers. THC produces the euphoric high users feel. It also distorts ones sense of time. But its mind-bending properties can be much darker in the long term.

Last year, Bath University researchers reported in the journal Addiction on their study of more than 80,000 street samples of cannabis collected in the U.S., UK and Europe over the past 50 years.THC concentrations had risen by up to a quarter between 1975 and 2017.

Last year, Bath University researchers reported in the journal Addiction on their study of more than 80,000 street samples of cannabis collected in the U.S., UK and Europe over the past 50 years.THC concentrations had risen by up to a quarter between 1975 and 2017

This isnt your dads drug any more, one expert said.

A report in journal Significance emphasised THCs role in causing cannabis psychosis, where symptoms can include hallucinations, difficulty thinking, a reduced ability to solve problems, apathy and a distorted sense of reality. These can affect not just the users lives but the lives of those around them.

Dangerous trigger for psychosis

The mental damage caused by more potent forms of cannabis was starkly demonstrated two years ago by the Institute of Psychiatry at Kings College London.

In journal The Lancet Psychiatry, the researchers said that at least 90 per cent of the cannabis consumed in London is super-strength (typically called skunk) and that almost a third of new cases of psychosis in the capital are linked to the use of such high-potency dope.

The authors estimated that up to a half of new cases of psychosis in London and Amsterdam may be linked to daily use of hyper-strong cannabis. If this type was no longer available, the researchers predicted that incidence of psychosis in London would drop by about 50 per cent.

Physical risks are just as great

A 2019 Harvard Medical School report warned that the risk of suffering a potentially lethal heart attack is significantly raised in the hour after smoking marijuana.

There are also links to a higher risk of dangerous heartbeat abnormalities and strokes immediately following cannabis use.

Womens fertility may also be endangered. Human eggs exposed to THC have an impaired ability to produce viable embryos and are significantly less likely to result in a viable pregnancy, according to biologists at the University of Guelph in Canada.

Gateway to higher crime levels

Proponents of the decriminalisation of cannabis often argue that its strength could be kept within safer limits if it were properly regulated and licensed for sale.

However, lessons from Colorado  which in 2014 became the first U.S. state to legalise the production and sale of non-medicinal cannabis to customers aged over 21  suggest the opposite is the case.

Instead of banishing the illegal market in cannabis, the states legalisation has boosted it. This is because the legally available product is taxed  doubling its price.

Growers and customers have resorted to illicit production and sale, which is now far harder to detect because enforcement officers have no easy way to tell which cannabis is legal and which is illegal.

Such increased crime causes untold ripple effects. In the city of Colorado Springs, the district attorney, Dan May, has called cannabis a gateway drug to homicide.

Of the 22 murders in the city in 2016, eight were related to the drug, he said.

Overwhelmed by drug-driving

Legalisation might not improve product regulation  but it certainly increases consumption.

The journal JAMA Psychiatry reports that in American states that have legalised marijuana, problematic use among adolescents aged 12 to 17 is 25 per cent higher than in states where the drugs recreational use remains illegal.

Among adults aged 26 or older, past-month marijuana use after legalisation is 26 per cent higher than in non-recreational states.

The result, inevitably, is a rise in driving under the influence of drugs  or drug-driving.

Britain already has a serious problem with this issue. In the UK from 2018 to 2019, nearly 20,000 motorists were convicted for being under the influence of drugs, the highest figure ever

Britain already has a serious problem with this issue. In the UK from 2018 to 2019, nearly 20,000 motorists were convicted for being under the influence of drugs, the highest figure ever.

And it is not only in urban environments. Statistics from Suffolk Police last year showed a 20 per cent increase in drug-driving annually, with arrests for this reason overtaking those for drink-driving for the first time.

Backtracking on decriminalisation

Around the world, some city authorities are regretting their efforts to lead the world in cannabis decriminalisation  not least Amsterdam, a destination synonymous with a free and easy approach to smoking dope.

The citys mayor, Femke Halsema, wants to ban foreign tourists from the teeming coffee shops  also known as cannabis cafes  where they can legally purchase supplies.

She is backing the tens of thousands of residents who are fed up with the anti-social behaviour associated with the cafes.

Meanwhile, in Christiania, the once-thriving hippy freetown in the heart of the Danish capital Copenhagen, police are cracking down on cannabis sales because of behavioural problems.

Local hospitals are complaining about the number of tourists and locals being rushed in with overdose symptoms such as low heart rates, unconsciousness and psychosis.

Last month, the authorities charged 25 people with selling the drug in Christiania  where such deals were once considered the lifeblood of the area.
[April 07, 2021] HSI Sensing Breaks Ground on New Facility in Oklahoma

CHICKASHA, Okla., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The approximately 25,000 SF building will allow HSI Sensing to expand its current operations as well as house Genisco Filter Corp, an HSI Sensing subsidiary specializing in the designing and manufacturing of the best EMI/RFI filters in the world. "The new facility is a logical and necessary step toward strengthening HSI Sensing's position as a global competitor," said Travis Posey, Vice President of Business Development, HSI Sensing. "This new facility will handle an increasing volume of orders while solidifying a long-term strategy that aims to amplify growth for years to come." As a multigenerational company, HSI Sensing has grown progressively over the years and currently produces its sensing technology, which includes the world's smallest reed switch and the world's highest voltage reed switch, at its longstanding location in Chickasha, Oklahoma, while maintaining a separate facility in Wisconsin that manufactures Genisco Filter Corp's EMI/RFI filters.



"The new facility will bring these two companies together under one roof," said Posey. "The geographical circumstances at the two segmented locations offered limited opportunities for expansion. Concentrating entire production chains - from pre-fabrication to final assembly - in one place guarantees optimized production processes for both businesses." Another key factor in the choice of location was its proximity to the existing headquarters and HSI's commitment to its community in Chickasha, Oklahoma. The company has not only announced its intention to protect the jobs of its highly skilled staff but also plans to create new jobs in the future and expects their workforce to increase over the medium and long term.

CMSWillowbrook was hired as the Design-builder. Angelo Bradford, Vice President of Operations for CMSWillowbrook, stated, "We are really honored to be a part of this project. As a Chickasha-based company, it's extremely exciting to be building for another long-established company that's based in our hometown." This new facility is expected to be complete June of 2021. About HSI Sensing

Headquartered in Chickasha, Oklahoma, HSI Sensing (Hermetic Switch, Inc.) is the innovative leader in the engineering and precision manufacturing of custom reed switch and sensor technology. The industry experts in solving problems for customers in challenging design applications, they also precision manufacture those solutions to ensure consistent, unmatched quality. All HSI products are made in the U.S.A. Since 1968, HSI Sensing, an ISO 9001:2008 and AS9100 registered company, has been the premier choice for custom and standard reed switches, proximity sensors, and other sensing technologies for an array of industries including fluid control devices, reed relays, implantable medical devices, aerospace, heavy equipment, communications, transportation, and more. HSI Sensing is a privately held company wholly owned by the employees. Press Contact

Travis Posey, HSI Sensing

Vice President Business Development

(405) 224-4046 View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hsi-sensing-breaks-ground-on-new-facility-in-oklahoma-301264461.html SOURCE HSI Sensing

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An alliance of Italian-American groups is suing Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney and the city for a 'long pattern of discrimination', including canceling the Columbus Day parade and ripping down a statue of former Mayor Frank Rizzo.

They accuse Kenney of trying to erase Italian-American identity in the city, favoring rioters over people trying to protect statues, and demoting a beloved police captain.

It said Mayor Kenney had been part of efforts to unfairly recast Columbus as a racist, when he had been the 'first recorded civil rights activist of the Americas'.

Philadelphia had even 'purposely deprived' their neighborhoods of access to COVID-19 vaccinations, the Italian groups argued.

The groups equated the mayor's alleged persecution of Italian-Americans to the way the Ku Klux Klan had tried to 'destroy Columbus Day' in the 1920s and 1930s because of their 'bigotry toward Catholics and Italian immigrants'.

Mayor Kenney has called the lawsuit a 'patently meritless political ploy' that will waste resources.

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, left, is being sued for a 'long pattern of Italian-American discrimination, after he replaced a day to celebrate Christopher Columbus, right, with an Indigenous Peoples' Day

The vandalized statue of controversial former Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo in Philadelphia, on May 30. It was removed by the city - a move Italian Americans are saying was wrong

The city removed the statue of Rizzo. He's been accused of being a racist. Some Italian Americans have said the removal is bowing to cancel culture and is discriminatory

The 36-page lawsuit was filed by the Conference of Presidents of Major Italian American Organizations; City Councilman Mark Squilla; The 1492 Society, a non-profit organization which promotes Italian culture and traditions; and Frank Rizzo's former secretary and Columbus Day Parade organizer Jody Della Barba.

The Italian groups say Mayor Kenney had sowed racial division in the city when he signed an executive order replacing Columbus Day with an Indigenous Peoples' Day in February.

Mayor Kenney had chosen which 'ethnicities should be credited, supported, and approved' and which should be 'shamed, disdained and canceled,' the suit read, adding it went against the United States Constitution.

The mayor could have recognized both cultures on the second Monday of October, or provided Indigenous People with their own holiday, the groups contended.

Meanwhile, another flashpoint in a long-simmering feud between Kenney and the city's Italian-American community came during last year's Black Lives Matter riots in the city.

CELEBRATING COLUMBUS: Italian-Americans participate in the Columbus Day Parade in Philadelphia in 2017. Groups say the city is discriminating against them (file photo)

SUMMER PROTESTS: Black Lives Matter and other related protests have been treated with kid gloves by Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, the Italian-American groups allege, saying he's waived protest code violations for rioters, while treating the Italian-American heritage groups as 'vigilantes'

On May 30, protestors painted over the statue of Rizzo, a divisive former police commissioner and mayor of the city, who once told supporters to 'Vote White'.

The suit alleges Mayor Kenney ordered the statue's removal under 'cover of night' a few days later, 'thus unilaterally condemning to extinction a widely beloved statue of an iconic Italian American citizen'.

After 'surreptitiously removing' the Rizzo statue they 'further abused the Philadelphia American community' by refusing to return it to its owner, the Statue to the Frank L. Rizzo Monument Committee.

In early June, the group was told by a whistleblower in City Hall of the mayor's plan to remove the Christopher Columbus statue from Marconi Plaza.

They brought an immediate injunction and the Christopher Columbus statue in Marconi Plaza in South Philadelphia has been barricaded, and covered up in a plywood box ever since.

The suit alleges Captain Lou Campione was unfairly demoted from his role as commander of South Philadelphia

The fate of both statues remains up in the air, pending lawsuits.

As for the summer race protests, the suit alleges widespread rioting in June 2020 'left businesses ravished and public property destroyed'.

The rioting was excused, the suit alleges, when Mayor Kenney waived protest code violations.

'But when Italian American residents from South Philadelphia gathered at the Christopher Columbus Statue in Marconi Plaza that Sunday evening to prevent it from being vandalized, Mayor Kenney labeled them 'vigilantes' and ordered them to 'stand down', it said.

It claims a police commander of Italian-American descent, Captain Louis Campione, was demoted after he was 'baselessly' accused of vigilantism during June 2020 rioting and the removal of statues, 'to rub salt in the Italian wound'.

A police spokesman at the time denied to the Philadelphia Inquirer that Campione's transfer was related to the situation. Campione told the paper he couldn't comment.

The discrimination has even flowed into COVID-19 relief, the group says, alleging Kenney has also kicked majority-white neighborhoods to the 'bottom of the COVID-19 vaccination barrel'.

The Pennsport neighborhood - identified in the suit as zip code 19148 - had the equal fifth highest rate of Covid deaths in the city, and the seventh highest rate of hospitalization, the suit claims.

Yet it was 'conspicuously omitted' from the Mayor's list of 20 zip codes with highest COVID rates to be first in line for a vaccination.

It also states Mayor Kenney has a long history of making derogatory comments against Italian Americans.

This marble Statue of Christopher Columbus, sculpted by Emanuele Caroni, was erected in 1876 and moved to its current site in Marconi Plaza in 1982

City workers move in to cover the Columbus statue on June 16, 2020. But for a tip-off from a whistleblower in City Hall, Italian-American groups say the statue would have been removed

The Columbus Statue has since been boxed in and is the subject of a lawsuit between the City of Philadelphia, who want to remove it, and local Italian-American groups

'For instance, in a 2016 rant by Mayor Kenney about immigration and his desire for Philadelphia to remain a sanctuary city, he stated: 'If this were Cousin Emilio or Cousin Guido, we wouldn't have this problem because they're white.'

The judgment details how in 2018, Philadelphia council member Squilla hired a local Christopher Columbus expert, Robert F. Petrone, a Philadelphia attorney, to push back on claims being made about the Italian hero.

It said Columbus had been cast as a racist and key instigator of a genocide against Native Americans.

The suit says 'primary historical sources unanimously bear out that Christopher Columbus was the first recorded civil rights activist of the Americas'.

During his time in the Caribbean, he stopped the mistreatment and the enslavement of the tribal people, established the first 'underground railroad' and rescued Tainos from enslavement by the 'man-eating Carib' tribes, the suit alleges.

'Christopher Columbus repeatedly protected the tribal peoples, even the cannibalistic Caribs who often attacked him and his sailors unprovoked.

The Italian-American groups go on to say slavery was being practiced in America long before the arrival of Columbus.

'In fact, Native American Indian Tribes engaged in systemic ownership and trade of slaves.'

It equated the treatment of Italian-Americans today with persecution they faced by the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.

'Today, Christopher Columbus and Italian Americans are facing persecution throughout the country at levels not seen since the 1920s when the KKK charged Christopher Columbus with the same heinous  and unsupported  wrongdoings Mayor Kenney and the City of Philadelphia are making in support for their effort to cancel the Columbus Day holiday.'

The mayor's office has been contacted for comment.

In a statement to CBS News, Mayor Kenney said: 'This lawsuit is a patently meritless political ploy and will waste precious resources at a time when we are trying to both deal with a devastating pandemic and work to build a safer and more equitable city for all residents.'
Secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) Oleksiy Danilov said, when commenting on the situation surrounding a buildup of Russian forces in the proximity of the border with Ukraine, that "there is a certain intensification of all processes" today, adding that Kyiv seeks to avert any escalation of the situation in Donbas.

"Let's say that Russians have never removed their troops from there. Since hostilities began, they have always kept their troops there, and in large numbers. But, indeed, there is a certain intensification of all processes today," Danilov said in an interview published in the LB.ua online newspaper on Wednesday morning, when asked whether the situation in Donbas may escalate any time soon.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is doing everything possible to prevent an escalation of the situation in the east of the country, he said.

"We, for our part, do not plan any escalation because we value the life of each of our soldiers and want all this to end as soon as possible. The president is doing everything he can," Danilov said.

When asked what Ukraine is going to do next, Danilov said, "As far as we are concerned, the situation is quite simple: human life is the highest value. Volodymyr Oleksandrovych [Zelensky] has stressed that. We are definitely not going to engage in any provocative actions against the Russian Federation at this stage," he said.

Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Col. Gen. Ruslan Khomchak said earlier that Russia is building up its forces in the proximity of the state border with Ukraine in the north, east and south.
Indian motorbike maker Royal Enfield has suspended business in Vietnam since late March after a disappointing two-year run.

Al Naboodah International, the official distributor of the brand, said the decision was made since business results did not meet expectations.

It said since Royal Enfield vehicles are imported from India they do not get import tax waivers like other brands such as Honda, Ducati and Kawasaki, which are shipped from Thailand.

Another reason for the poor sales was that the retro and classic designs of Royal Enfield motorcycles were not popular in Vietnam, it said.

It did not disclose sales figures.

But it assured that warranty and maintenance services would continue uninterrupted.

Al Naboodah International also represents also two other brands, Triumph and Harley Davidson, in Vietnam.

Royal Enfield said it has no plans to exit the market, and is looking to appoint a new distributor for Vietnam.

The company was originally the U.K.s Enfield Cycle Company Limited established in 1901.

In 1955, it and its Indian partner, Madras Motors, founded Enfield of India with a factory in Chennai that produced the first batch of 800 Royal Enfield Bullet 350 cc engines for the Indian government.

When Royal Enfield ceased operations in the U.K. in 1967, Enfield of India continued to operate and was acquired by tractor and commercial vehicle manufacturer Eicher Group Limited (India) in 1994.

The company later changed the name to Royal Enfield Motors Limited.
The European Union's drug regulator will investigate Russia's clinical trials of the Sputnik V vaccine and whether those tests followed "good clinical practices," the Financial Times reported.



The U.K.-based paper on April 7 cited anonymous sources familiar with the European Medicines Agencys (EMA) approval process as saying there were ethical concerns over how Sputnik V was tested before it was released for general use.



Approval of the vaccine for the European Union will hinge in part on determining whether the Russian clinical trials met so-called GCP standards, the paper reported.

Sputnik V, which has been backed by the Russian sovereign wealth fund known as RDIF, has been dogged by controversy after it was approved for use in Russia in August 2020 despite not undergoing full Phase III testing procedures that are used for all vaccines, including other COVID-19 vaccines.



According to a study published in February in The Lancet, a prestigious peer-review publication in the U.K., the vaccine is as effective as other major vaccines being used around the world.



Hours after the Financial Times report, the Twitter handle for Sputnik V, controlled by RDIF, called the report "fake" and "incorrect."



"Sputnik V team is going through a regular rolling review of EMA, in which good clinical practice is a part of the standard procedure for all vaccines," the tweet said.

The newspaper, meanwhile, quoted RDIF head Kirill Dimitriev as saying: "there was no pressure [on participants in testing] and Sputnik V complied with all clinical practices."



It is being used in Russia and dozens of other countries have granted emergency use despite the early misgivings.



But it has yet to receive EU regulatory approval, although EU members Hungary and Slovakia have purchased it, and begun rolling out its use.



U.S. regulators have also not approved it.



Russian President Vladimir Putin personally oversaw the announcements last August touting its approval. However, when he himself finally received a COVID-19 vaccine last month, neither Putin, nor the Kremlin, revealed what exact vaccine he had received.
New Delhi/Mumbai, April 7 : Two teams of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) have arrived in Mumbai to probe the allegations of corruption and misuse of office by former Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh, sources said on Wednesday.

A CBI source related to probe in Delhi told IANS, "A team of CBI officials arrived in Mumbai on Tuesday." The source said that after the agency registered a preliminary enquiry (PE) on Tuesday night following the orders of the Bombay High Court, another team of the Anti-Corruption department of the premiere investigative agency left for Mumbai on Wednesday morning.

The source said that over half a dozen agency sleuths will record the statement of Dr Jayshri Patil on whose petition the Bombay High Court directed the CBI to conduct a preliminary probe against Deshmukh. However, it is not known how many members are there in each team.

The source said that the CBI sleuths will also record the statement of former Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh, who dropped a letter bomb on March 20 -- accusing Deshmukh of asking suspended Mumbai cop Sachin Vaze and other Mumbai police personnel to extort Rs 100 crores 'monthly' from bars, hotels and restaurants.

The Bombay High Court has asked the CBI to complete PE within 15 days.
WASHINGTON, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Celebrating its newest pancake and waffle mix line, Bushwick Kitchen - the beloved Brooklyn-born artisan sauce company - pledges to donate its pancake/waffle mix to food deserts across America in partnership with Feed The Children. Now available in Walmart stores nationwide, Bushwick Kitchen's Pancake and Waffle Mix hits shelves with two new plant-based, vegan-friendly flavors, Original Recipe and Cinnamon Oat.

"We are excited to team up with Feed The Children to help address growing food insecurity in America with our new pancake and waffle mix," said Dan Doll, CEO of Bushwick Kitchen. "No family should have to struggle to put food on their tables which is why we wanted to share our vegan-friendly pancake and waffle mix for families to have in handy their pantry for creating a variety of easy-to-prepare, nutritious meals that can be used for any time of day beyond just breakfast."

Since the beginning of the pandemic, 22-38 percent of households in America face food insecurity, more than doubling the rate in previous years. As a pantry staple and family breakfast favorite, Bushwick Kitchen is donating $10,000 worth of its pancake mix throughout the year to Feed The Children organizations located in the most vulnerable food deserts in America including: Central Union Mission Washington D.C., Ordinary People International in Chicago, Inner City Action Group in Oklahoma City, OK, and more.

Spice up your pantry with Bushwick Kitchen's elevated twist on an American favorite  the golden stack of pancakes and waffles. Achieve the ultimate fluffy stack with our mixes that bring nutritious, oat milk and plant-based flavors to life that'll have your tastebuds totally flipping out. Looking for the perfect pairing? Top your golden stack with amber-rich goodness from our Trees Knees Maple Syrup line sourced from the best sugar makers in the northeast. Go for an elevated classic with Original Recipe made with whole grains and oat milk or spice it up with Cinnamon Oat.

Bushwick Kitchen's latest development joins its popular Trees Knees Spicy and Butter maple syrups which launched in Walmart stores last year. Sourcing from maple trees in the Northeastern region of the U.S., Bushwick Kitchen's 100% organic Grade A maple syrup offers a unique twist on a pantry staple infused with pure, flavor-packed ingredients.

To find Bushwick Kitchen's pancake mix near you, visit the store finder at Walmart.com .

About Bushwick Kitchen

Bushwick Kitchen is a sauce company that's here to serve up finger-licking, flavor-addicting sauces and condiments for every kitchen creative and foodie looking to elevate their meals or share a unique culinary gift to inspire friends and family. Bushwick Kitchen was founded in January 2014 by an entrepreneur and a culinary enthusiast with the ambitious goal of launching a business from concept to finished product in 30 days. The first product, Bees Knees Spicy Honey, was born. By the end of the first year, Bushwick Kitchen shipped over 9,000 bottles of honeyall bottled, one at a time, by hand, in Brooklyn, NY to every state in the USA and 27 countries. Since then, the line has grown to 15 lip-smacking, tongue-drooling products with our Trees Knees maples, Weak Knees srirachas and our Bees Knees honey collection.

Media Contact

Karey Cavaney

BLAZE PR

[email protected]

(310) 395-5050

SOURCE Bushwick Kitchen
zimmytws/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Another California tech company is setting down roots in the Alamo City and hiring locally for more than 300 new jobs.

Silicon Valley-based i2c Inc., a payment processing and banking solutions company, announced in an April 6 press release that it will open a new client contract center in San Antonio.
Tata Steel share price hit fresh 52 week high today after the company achieved its highest-ever quarterly crude steel production of 4.75 million tonnes. The rally in the Tata Group stock was also backed by a ratings upgrade by S&P Global Ratings.

Share of Tata Steel rose 2.55% to Rs 884.85 against previous close of Rs 862.85 on BSE. Tata Steel share is trading higher than 5 day, 20 day, 50 day, 100 day and 200 day moving averages. Tata Steel share has risen 217% in one year and gained 36.03% since the beginning of this year.

In a month, the stock has gained 19.38%. Market cap of the firm rose to Rs 1.05 lakh crore.

The steel manufacturer clocked its highest-ever quarterly crude steel production of 4.75 million tonnes with a 3 percent QoQ growth in Q4FY21. Full-year FY21 production was lower by 7 percent YoY primarily due to the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in 1HFY21, said the company.

During the quarter, steel production at Tata Steel Europe increased to 2.65 million tonnes and steel sales volume rose by 18 percent QoQ and 4 percent YoY, it added.

Meanwhile, S&P Global Ratings said Tata Steel was on track to trim part of its $15 billion debt in the next two years helped by higher prices and strong cash flows, leading to a ratings upgrade.

Stocks in news: Tata Steel, Adani Group, Axis Bank, Bharti Airtel and more

The international ratings agency said Tata Steel's debt will fall by about 30% by 2023 from about Rs 1.1 lakh crore ($15 billion) as of March 2020. Around half of this decline is expected to have happened by last month. It upgraded the steel mill's long-term ratings to BB- from B+ and maintained the outlook at stable.

Tata Steel stock hits 52-week high after CLSA raises target price

"The stable outlook reflects our expectation that Tata Steel will significantly reduce debt over the next 12-24 months, supported by strong operational cash flow," S&P said. It also reflects expectations that the company's debt reduction will result in lower volatility in its credit metrics compared with the previous steel cycle, with greater resilience during downturns, the ratings companysaid.
This job expired on 5 May 2021.
Guwahati, April 8 : With the completion of the three-phase Assembly elections in Assam, various quarters, including the principal opposition party Congress, have raised questions and doubts over the poll management and the prevailing law and order situation in the BJP ruled state.

The Congress has alleged that the election authorities in Assam have been working under pressure from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

During the three-phase elections in Assam on March 27, April 1 and April 6, several incidents, especially during the second phase, were reported from southern Assam.

The election authorities and the district administrations had to suspend many polling staff and security personnel for their lapses, besides instituting magisterial probe into these incidents.

However, the police, civil and election officials have refused to make any comment on the incidents that took place during the elections.

"Whatever incidents and developments took place, the appropriate authorities have taken suitable actions and submitted their reports to the Election Commission," a senior election official told IANS on condition of anonymity.

Assam Assembly Deputy Speaker and BJP candidate Aminul Haque Laskar was quizzed twice while five police personnel attached to him were suspended after they opened fire at the public during the second phase of polling on April 1. Cachar Deputy Commissioner (DC) Keerthi Jalli has ordered a magisterial inquiry into the incident. District Development Commissioner B.C. Das has been asked to conduct the probe and submit a report in this regard.

Laskar, who is contesting from the Sonai Assembly constituency as a BJP nominee, told the media that the security personnel opened fire to protect his life during a clash between the rival political parties. The opposition parties have demanded his arrest.

The Cachar DC has ordered another magisterial inquiry into the incident of a vehicle carrying unused Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) overturning on April 1. The EVM transporting vehicle was attacked by some miscreants. The DC has asked Cachar's additional District Magistrate, Rukh Liangthang, to conduct the probe and submit a report.

The police have arrested three persons for attacking the private car in which the polling personnel were travelling along with the polled EVM after the completion of the second phase of polling on April 1.

The District Magistrate of neighbouring Karimganj has ordered a magisterial inquiry after the police arrested three persons in connection with the EVM found in a BJP candidate's wife's vehicle on April 1, officials said.

The Election Commission has suspended the presiding officer, three other polling officials and an armed escort official and ordered re-polling at Polling Station No 149 in Indira M.V. School under the Ratabari (SC) Assembly constituency after the EVM was found in a BJP candidate's wife's vehicle.

In another incident, at least six polling personnel were suspended in Assam's Dima Hasao district after it was found that a booth with 90 valid voters registered 181 votes during the second phase of polling on April 1.

Election officials said that repolling would be held at the auxiliary polling station -- 107-A Khothlir L.P. School -- under the Haflong Assembly constituency..

In another development, again in southern Assam, little over 500 Home Guard personnel of Assam government, including many women, were forced to return to their homes without performing election duties in the second phase of polling on April 1.

They alleged that due to the inhuman treatment and negligence of the Cachar district authorities, they were forced to return to their homes as the authorities wanted to pay them very little amount, besides not arranging proper food, shelter, toilets and even water for them in the temporary camp (school).

Assam Congress President Ripun Bora on Wednesday alleged that the election authorities in Assam are been working under the pressure of the ruling BJP.

"The EC must clarify why polled EVMs and unused EVMs were transported in mysterious circumstances. The Assam Assembly Deputy Speaker's security personnel opened fire on public while minister Pijush Hazarika threatened a journalist with dire consequences, but the EC has remained silent," Bora, a Rajya Sabha member, told the media in Guwahati.

The Congress leader also alleged that there is no security of women in Assam.

Demanding effective supervision and monitoring of the strong rooms, where the polled EVMs are kept, Bora said that he has already written to the Election Commission to provide CCTV links from the strong rooms across Assam to all the candidates in order to maintain transparency.

Referring to several untoward incidents on the day of polling in Barkehtri, Jalukbari, East Guwahati and West Guwahati on Tuesday, the Assam Congress chief asked for proper action against the guilty.

"BJP candidate (for Gauhati East seat) and minister Siddhartha Bhattacharya was found to have misbehaved with a police officer. Legal action must be taken against him," he stated.

Over 82 per cent of the 2,33,74,087 voters cast their votes in three phases of elections to the 126-member Assam assembly.

The results will be declared on May 2.
By Reuters Staff

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union health ministers will hold a meeting on Wednesday on vaccine rollouts after the EU drugs regulator announces its decision on the safety of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, the EU presidency said.

Health Minister Marta Temido of Portugal, which holds the EU presidency, will host the gathering from 6 p.m. (1600 GMT) "following the public announcement of the conclusions of the Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee of EMA on the safety of the AstraZeneca vaccine," a spokeswoman for the Portuguese presidency wrote on Twitter.

EMA plans to announce its decision at 1400 GMT. Experts from the European drug authority have reviewed to what extent some cases of blood clotting in adults who had recently received the AstraZeneca vaccine may be linked to the injections.

"The meeting is aimed at harmonising the positions of the different EU member states, not only in order to halt the spread of disinformation, but also to reach a common understanding regarding vaccination efforts in the European Union," the Portuguese presidency said in a statement.
Rolls-Royce to provide uninterruptible power supply solution for universitys supercomputing facility

Rolls-Royce is to supply 12 mtu Kinetic PowerPacks to King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia this summer. The systems, equipped with dynamically rotating kinetic energy accumulators, will be used to provide the university's supercomputing facility and data centre with clean, conditioned, uninterruptible power supplies, acting as the energy backbone.





We are delighted that such a renowned university as King Abdullah University for Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia has chosen us as a partner, placing their confidence in our solutions, our expertise and our many years of experience. The choice underlines our recently expanded expertise in the field of dynamic uninterruptible power supplies and is a major success, explains Andreas Schell, CEO of Rolls-Royce Power Systems.



We've been in discussions with the customer since 2016. We were able to fulfil all of the customer's wishes and requirements and thus put together a complete solution, that includes a substantial local content, adds Bernard Hanssens, Managing Director of the subsidiary in Dubai.



Each mtu Kinetic PowerPack type KP5 has a power output of 1.6 megawatts, operates in medium voltage at 13.8kV, 60Hz, and is powered by an mtu diesel engine type 16V 4000 G74S. These uninterruptible power supply systems are produced in Liege (Belgium), are then fitted into custom-made enclosures in the United Arab Emirates, and finally installed on site in Saudi Arabia. The systems are designed for humid ambient conditions and temperatures of up to 50C. The scope of supply also includes medium-voltage switchgear and transformers as well as two control stations. The Rolls-Royce Power Systems team in the Middle East is expected to commission the turnkey plant at the end of 2021 and will be on hand to provide operational support for a further year, and remain available for long term service support throughout the life time of the installation. mtu Kinetic PowerPacks will be installed in two groups of six systems each, with one available as a back-up in each group. In the event of a power outage, the constantly rotating, heavy kinetic energy accumulator will drive the generator and bridge the few seconds until the diesel engine, which has started in the meantime, takes over.



King Abdullah University for Science and Technology is a renowned high-tech seat of learning, equipped with state-of-the-art facilities and one of the world's best supercomputing installations. The previous supercomputer Shaheen 2 is currently being replaced by the latest and most powerful supercomputing facility which will be used in research and development work to produce scientific findings.



Dynamic uninterruptible power supply systems have been part of the Rolls-Royce portfolio since the acquisition of Kinolt SA in July 2020. The company has already supplied several similar systems to the region, including Jeddah, Riyadh and Jubail in Saudi Arabia, as well as the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar. The customer appreciated the value that our systems could offer them, amongst others the reduced footprint of our solution, the system performance in the very harsh local climatic conditions, and the ability to handle very large load fluctuations, reported Bernard Hanssens, Managing Director of Rolls-Royce Solutions Middle East.



Contact Details and Archive...
UPDATE - New York State Police have announced that the suspect was pronounced dead at Albany Medical Center.

The Attorney General's Office and State Police are conducting the investigation.

ONEONTA, N.Y.  New York State Police are investigating after an officer-involved shooting at the scene of a domestic incident Tuesday afternoon.

Oneonta police were called to River Street around 12:57 p.m., where a man involved in an altercation was armed with a knife. During the encounter, police say an officer shot the man who had the blade. He was then airlifted to Albany Medical Center for treatment.

The events leading up to the shooting are not yet clear.

Police say the investigation is ongoing.

This is a developing story and more details will be released as they become available.
After a year of uncertainty, Ballet Theatre of Scrantons senior companys next performance is a shore thing.

Dancers from the studio will present Ballet by the Beach as their spring production on Saturday, May 8, at 5 p.m. at Covington Park, 307 Winship Road, Covington Twp. The rain date is set for May 9.

At the free performance, which is open to the public, guests will enjoy the music of Frederic Chopin in Les Sylphides as well as fiery excerpts from Don Quixote and Carmen in Danse Espanol. Guests are encouraged to bring lawn chairs and a picnic lunch. Masks are required, and social distancing guidelines will be in place.

When Joanne Arduino, artistic director of Ballet Theatre, thought of Les Sylphides, which the company presented in 1990 and 2000, she recalled its setting on the beach and the beautiful backdrop where the shore meets the sea. Then, she had an idea.

It all just worked out perfectly, Arduino recalled during a recent phone interview. Because of the pandemic and trying to think outside the box, we thought, Why not just do this by a beautiful lake?

Dr. Catherine Richmond-Cullen, M. Ed., chair of Ballet Theatres board of consultants, suggested a rural park with lush landscapes as well as a shoreline, and Covington Park was the ideal spot. Maureen McGuigan, deputy director of Lackawanna Countys Department of Arts and Culture, loved the idea, and the county joined as a sponsor. The ballet will be part of the countys Art in the Park series, which consists of cultural events taking place in county parks.

To create the ambiance, Dennis M. Size, the ballet companys lighting designer and a longtime collaborator of Arduinos, walked the shore with her to figure out how to light the show. Based on the projected sunset, Size determined the best spot and angle at which to position the stage. It will be custom-built so the sun will light the dancers but not be in the eyes of the performers or audience.

Eleven musicians from Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic as well as local musician Stephen Murphy will accompany the dancers during the first act, Les Sylphides. The second act, Danse Espanol, will feature recorded music and professional dancer and Colombia native Miguel Solano, who now lives in New York City, as the male lead. He trained in both Colombia and New York, and since 2018, he has appeared as a guest artist with the Connecticut Ballet and as a dancer with the Contemporary Ballet in New York.

Arduino restaged the piece for this production, and Julio Alegria staged the pas de deux. The show feels special to Arduino thanks to its link to one of her mentors, Henry Danton, who recently turned 102 and still teaches dance in Mississippi. He staged the original choreography in 1990.

Hes thought of so highly throughout the world, and its a real treat to have him connected in some way, she said. I feel blessed to have him in my life.

This is a significant performance for all of the dancers, but it also is a special moment for this years seniors, Arduino said. Many of them felt discouraged that they might not have the chance to dance on stage one last time, but the willingness to adapt and change to cater to the new normal ensures they get that opportunity, she said.

The graduates didnt know what to expect coming into this after a year of the unexpected, and its important to do what we need to do to keep the rhythm (of life), she said. Theyve worked so hard, rehearsing with masks on in the studio, and theyre excited about it. They deserve it.  Its a special event, and I think in these times especially, we need to look for these special events in our lives.
New Delhi, April 7 : The Supreme Court on Wednesday said the taxman cannot see all businesses as fraudulent, as it made sharp observations against the manner in which Goods and Services Tax was implemented by tax authorities.

A bench comprising Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and M.R. Shah said: "The Parliament had intended the GST to be a citizen-friendly tax structure... the purpose of the Act is lost in the manner in which it is enforced in our country." The observations were made during the hearing of a plea challenging powers of provisional attachment under the Himachal Pradesh GST Act, filed by Radha Krishna Industries, represented by senior advocate Puneet Bali and advocate Surjeet Bhadu. The bench noted that tax authorities cannot go on attaching assets and it cannot be a pre-emptive strike as it termed provisional attachment draconian.

The company submitted before the bench that power of attachment under Section 83 is draconian.

According to this section, during the pendency of tax proceedings, the department can attach any property (including bank accounts and accounts receivable), as provisional attachment. The tax officers use it as a measure to guarantee the satisfaction of a later judgement by the courts.

The bench observed that a balance has to be maintained between protecting the interests of revenue and protecting genuine businesses. "The country needs to come out of this tax culture that all businesses are fraudulent... even when Rs 12 crore tax has been paid, just because some tax is still due, you cannot start attaching property," it said.

It emphasised that tax officers raise huge demands from businesses with no accountability. The bench said tax officers raise huge demands after assessment and cited that if Rs 10,000 crore has been reduced to Rs 1,000 crore by the appellate tribunal or the top court, it must reflect in the assessment of the tax officer.

The bench stressed that law needs to be structured and the tax authorities have to abide by the mandate of law. After the parties concluded their arguments, the bench reserved the verdict.

The Himachal Pradesh High Court in January this year dismissed the plea seeking quashing of the provisional attachment under Section 83.
ARLINGTON, Va., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Society of Chemical Manufacturers & Affiliates (SOCMA) invites you to join industry colleagues at the Omni in Fort Worth, TX, February 28-March 2, 2022, for the Specialty & Custom Chemicals Show  the premier show for specialties.

"The Specialty & Custom Chemicals Show is a valuable platform within SOCMA's suite of Commercial Services, and we are excited to provide this opportunity for the industry to once again connect face to face with potential business partners and industry colleagues," said Jenny Gaines, Senior Director, Communications & Engagement. "For 100 years, SOCMA has been a trusted source of intelligence and a convener within the specialty chemical supply chain, and we look forward to delivering this venue for our members and the industry in 2022."

In anticipation of the Fort Worth show, identify business growth opportunities through SOCMA's suite of Commercial Services. "Don't miss this prime opportunity to highlight your capabilities as part of SOCMA's Virtual Manufacturing Solutions Day, which brings the traditional Exhibitor Showcases to a digital platform," Gaines said. "During our first Manufacturing Solutions Day in March, we had 79 attendees from 59 unique companies, of which 66 percent were customers."

"Discover potential business partners throughout the year through SOCMA's Lead Sheets, our B2B matchmaking service for the specialty chemical value chain," Gaines continued. "While the trade show brings SOCMA's commercial offerings full circle, these resources are at your disposal, providing additional channels for your company's project evaluation processes."

The Specialty & Custom Chemicals Show launched in February 2019 with SOCMA as a show partner and has grown to almost 1,300 attendees and more than 200 exhibiting companies, the majority being specialty and custom chemical manufacturers. SOCMA acquired the show from Chemicals America in July 2020, underpinning SOCMA's strategic focus of providing commercial growth opportunities for the specialty chemical industry.

Register for the 2022 show at www.socma.org/tradeshow.

For questions about exhibiting or sponsoring the 2022 show, contact Jenny Gaines at [email protected], or visit www.socma.org/tradeshow.

About SOCMA

Celebrating a "Century of Solutions," SOCMA is solely dedicated to the specialty and fine chemical industry, focused on building commercial connections, supporting manufacturing and operations, and advocating for regulatory and legislative policies that advance the industry's ability to grow their businesses. www.socma.org

SOURCE Society of Chemical Manufacturers & Affiliates

Related Links

www.socma.org


(CNN)  There was the Tokyo 2020 official who floated the idea of an "Olympig" creative campaign with plus-sized model Naomi Watanabe. An Olympic chief who resigned after making sexist remarks about women.

And a Japanese governor who recommended men go grocery shopping during the pandemic because women take too long.

Just last week, a Japanese city manager sparked outrage when he gave a speech telling new employees to "play around" to remedy the country's plunging birth rate.

For decades, gaffe-prone men in positions of power have caused embarrassment and sparked outrage among younger generations and women in patriarchal Japan, which is ranked 120 out of 156 countries in the World Economic Forum's latest Global Gender Gap Index  between Angola and Sierra Leone.

As of 2020, only 15% of senior and leadership posts were held by women, according to the Global Gender Report. And with only 14% of seats in Japan's parliament occupied by women, and most lawmakers aged between 50 to 70, male boomers dominate political and business life in the country.

Experts say some men of that generation carry beliefs that women are best left at home, or should attend meetings but remain silent.

But Momoko Nojo, a Tokyo-based economics student, says those views have driven a generational wedge between the political gerontocracy and young people born in the 1990s, an era of economic stagnation dubbed the "lost decade."

As a 23-year-old woman prepared to agitate for change, Nojo runs "No Youth, No Japan," a student-led social media initiative founded in 2019 with more than 60,000 followers on Instagram, which promotes political literacy and aims to persuade a largely disenchanted youth to use their votes to influence the future.

"We are sharing information on online platforms such as Instagram because we want young people to make their voices heard and their votes count," said Nojo.

Generational divide

From the late 1940s to the late 1980s, Japan turned its economy around. Powered by male white-collar workers, the country became the world's second-largest economy after the United States.

Born in the late 1930s, older leaders, such as former Tokyo 2020 head Yoshiro Mori and an official from Japan's ruling party Toshihiro Nikkai, who recently sparked international condemnation for their sexist remarks on women, come from a generation dubbed "dankai sedai," or baby boomers in English. They are known as the generation who brought Japan to the global stage after its defeat in World War II, according to Kukhee Choo, an independent Japan-based media scholar.

During the economic miracle, women were largely relegated to the domestic sphere or occupied clerical and secretarial roles in offices, largely due to attitudes at that time.

"(Dankai sedai) think back then society worked better and the economy was better -- there's that arrogance," said Choo.

Mori and Nikkai both said women should remain silent. Choo says their disparaging remarks toward women were examples of traditional and outdated views on the place of women in society, which suggest men should remain the primary breadwinners and women should stay home.

But Nojo, the student activist, says young people face a different reality in Japan compared to the one the boomers lived through.

While white-collar workers were ensured lifetime employment when Japan's economy thrived, today, many working adults face an unstable job market, snail-pace salary growth, and the prospect of never being homeowners.

"It's been almost 20 years since the bubble burst, but it's becoming harder for us to see a bright future where we can chase our dreams," said Nojo.

For instance, over the past decades, Japan has seen a dramatic increase in part-time and temporary employment  due, in part, to the partial legalization of temporary and contract work in 1986 and full legalization in 1999.

In 2019, Japan had 22 million part-time and temp workers, compared to 17 million in 2011, according to the country's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

That same year, 39% of women in the workforce were employed part-time compared to 14% of men. This leaves women at an unfair disadvantage as non-regular workers earn about 40% as much as regular workers on an hourly basis and receive less training in their workplaces, according to a report from the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development.

"We do feel anxious about the future and wonder if we'll get a stable job that pays us enough to raise kids. Will we get the same salaries that our parents had? Will we even get pensions? We are a generation with all those kinds of worries," added Nojo.

Traditions die hard

Tomomi Inada, a former defense minister, says the male old guard's disparaging attitudes toward women symbolize problems with Japan's power structure, where women and minorities still have scant representation.

Government plans to put women in 30% of senior management roles by 2020 across the workforce were quietly pushed back to 2030 last year, after it proved too ambitious.

And in Japan, only one in seven lawmakers is a women -- that's fewer than 14%, compared to a 25% global average and 20% average in Asia, as of January 2021, according to data from the Inter-Parliamentary Union, an organization that compiles data on national parliaments.

The problem, says Inada, is the widespread belief that politics is still a man's world. "The notion that good women understand how to behave and don't push themselves forward still exists today," she said.

Inada has backed enforced electoral quotas that propose to make 30% of candidates for elections in Japan's ruling party female. She argues that increasing female participation raises responsiveness to policies concerning women and is also beneficial to men.

But it's not always easy to shift the mindsets that bind people to traditional gender roles in Japan, according to Nobuko Kobayashi, a partner with EY-Parthenon, a strategic consulting group within E&Y Transaction Advisory Services.

"When the idea of being one step behind a man is ingrained in your brain from early on, it's tough to break when you're an adult," said Kobayashi.

Last month a Kyodo News survey found more than 60% of active female lawmakers thought it would be difficult to boost the numbers of women in parliament up to 35% by 2025.

From clicktivism to activism

Last month Japanese broadcaster TV Asahi sparked outrage with an advert featuring a female actress saying "gender equality is outdated." The network later apologized and took the commercial down following a Twitter storm.

Twitter has long been the dominant social network in Japan, with over 51 million active users. It's the social media site's second-largest market globally, behind the US, according to a 2020 report from Hootsuite, a social media marketing company.

The large user-base has resulted in a plugged-in generation of younger Japanese like Nojo, the student activist, who are airing their grievances online and holding those in power accountable for their actions and words.

"The political dinosaurs were pretty clueless about all this, but they're suddenly realizing," said Jeffrey Kingston, a Japan expert at Temple University.

Kingston gives the example of the backlash that ensued on social media when Mori, the former Tokyo 2020 head, tried to handpick another octogenarian man as his successor. That move ultimately failed when he was replaced by former Olympian Seiko Hashimoto, a 56-year-old woman.

Kathy Matsui, a former vice-chair and chief Japan strategist for global investment bank Goldman Sachs, said while sexist comments were swept under the carpet 10 years ago, now "foot-in-the-mouth" comments are inexcusable. "Because of social media, you can't get away with it that easily," she said.

In recent years, campaigns such as #MeToo and #KuToo -- which saw women petition against wearing high heels to work -- have put Japan's gender inequality and human rights issues in the spotlight, even though the movements failed to garner as much support in the country as they did in the West.

Changing of the guard

Matsui, the former banking strategist, says many young men in Japan who do not share the traditional values espoused by their fathers and grandfathers are also taking to social media to amplify women's voices.

What's more, young people dislike male public figures who make derogatory comments because they see it as symbolic of what often happens in the workplace, said Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Sophia University. "They think, 'I know that guy,' and he shouldn't just be getting away with it," he added.

But Nakano argues that not all controversial remarks from the top result in dismissal. For instance, Mori's resignation earlier this year came as the public's skepticism toward the Olympics grew. "Ministers often make ill-advised, offensive comments in Japan but they often get off the hook. But people understand that when the conditions are right, protesting on Twitter can be effective," he said.

Though Mori's ouster marked a watershed moment, the battle to make Japan a more diverse and gender-equal society is far from over.

In 2015, a new Japanese law lowered the minimum voting age from 20 to 18, marking the first such change in over 70 years when the age was reduced from 25. That new legislation allowed around 2.4 million 18- and 19-year-olds to exercise their democratic rights in the national election for the first time in 2016.

However, the turnout was lower than expected, with only 46.8% of 18- and 19-year-olds taking part. The figure fell to 41.5% in the lower house election the following year.

Nojo said Japanese youth are less involved in politics than their counterparts in the US and Europe, as they feel disenchanted with the status quo and don't bother voting, while those who do tend to lean right.

"In Japan, many people are conservative. If you take America, young people support Biden and in Europe, young people are liberal, whereas in Japan, people in their 20s don't go to the polls. They're suspicious of politics and politicians," she said.

Kaname Nakama, a fourth-year student at Meiji University in Japan, who identifies as a conservative and runs a political YouTube channel, said young people in the country think politics is too complicated.

He discusses political issues ranging from the role of the media in Japan to geopolitics during a Joe Biden presidency. He said younger conservatives find outdated remarks made by older men in positions of power "embarrassing" and his peers don't believe women should stay at home.

For Nojo, Mori's ouster set a precedent. However, she wants older men of the ruling elite to reflect more on their behavior and the need for greater representation of women in positions of power. She added that the issue is never about one, outdated man at the top, but the need to reform the behaviors and systems that prop them up.

"It's really about problems at the heart of organizations -- and also Japanese society," said Nojo.

This story was first published on CNN.com Japan's powerful patriarchy often sidelines women. Fixing that won't be easy
A man has been ordered to pay more than $40,000 in compensation for damage caused by a restaurant's fire sprinklers that he set off by deliberately smashing a light in the toilet during an alcohol-fuelled night out.

Lachlan Scarfe, 20, appeared before a District Court in Sydney on Wednesday for sentencing over the incident at the El Camino Cantina restaurant in The Rocks on August 22, 2020, the Daily Telegraph reported.

The court heard how Scarfe was filmed standing on a toilet seat hitting a light globe, while calling out 'Oi, film this! Watch this!'.

Lachlan Scarfe appeared before a court on Wednesday after he caused hefty damage to a Sydney restaurant when he set off the venue's fire sprinklers

The fire sprinklers were activated, with the restaurant estimating they lost a further $30,000 in foregone revenue as patrons had to leave.

NSW Fire and Rescue estimated the cost of responding to the alarm was at $250,000, the court heard.

Mr Scarfe was ordered to pay $43,161 to the restaurant's insurer - a fraction of the total cost of his actions.

Scarfe's lawyer Jeremy Wood told the court his client was 'highly intoxicated' at the time and 'he doesn't even understand why he did it'.

The El Camino Cantina restaurant in Sydney's The Rocks (pictured) estimated they lost $30,000 in revenue when they were forced to evacuate diners, the court heard

Mr Wood said Scarfe had lost his job due to Covid-19 lockdowns and that had caused him to act out, adding he had mental health issues.

Scarfe did not recall the incident because of how intoxicated he was, the court heard.

Magistrate Michael Barko sentenced Scarfe to an 18-month community court order for the charge of intentionally or recklessly damaging property, as well as .6 grams of cocaine he was found with on December 27, 2020.

Scarfe was also ordered to pay $43,161 to the restaurant's insurer.
The chickens step warily from their last battery cage, testing the unfamiliar grass under their claws, each step a deliberate balancing act; the cows are so excited by the smell of the open air that they start leaping and gambolling like calves. We tell ourselves that we are substantively different from other animals, Kossakovsky says; that our superior intelligence entitles us to exploit them. But open your eyes! We are not unique in any way. Look how the cows enjoy freedom in my film, as we would do. Look at the bull. It does not eat the leaves on the trees; it smells them. He mimics it, lifting his own head as if to nuzzle some fragrant foliage. Given Kossakovskys sense of mission, you may wonder why he didnt go straight for agribusiness jugular and film an industrial farm, with battery cages and automated feedlots. No, he says. Because if you go to an industrial farm you can only be there for two minutes. You feel pain immediately. You cant see the animals. All you can see is what we are doing, how cruel we are, how stupid we are, how aggressive we are. My goal was to show how they are. Not to talk about us, but to show them. Because there are many films that show our cruelty, the slaughterhouses and how horrible are the conditions where animals live. But I see it doesnt help. They were great movies but they didnt do the job. Not that this is an idyll; she may live on Sunnybrook Farm, but one day Gunda will return to the sty to find her piglets have gone. We kill a billion pigs a year, Kossakovsky says, his voice faltering. And nature herself is red in tooth and claw. Gunda kills the runt of the litter after he is buried in straw and cant extract himself. Its not a pretty moment but, as Kossakovsky says, he is not making vegan propaganda.

Nor, for that matter, is he remaking Babe. He is not interested in anthropomorphising animals or telling a heart-warming story. We already live in fairy tales, he says. Its Easter, right? But documentary, in my understanding, shows you reality. If you use a longshot and dont make any comments, if you have no music, people just see what they see. And this is reality. The one-legged chicken that appears in Victor Kossakovskys Gunda. Credit: Of course, cinema is capable of telling stories. Kossakovsky just thinks that isnt its job. Cinema exists because cinema can show you something you are not able to see. Or you dont want to see. We have music, we have literature, we have painting, we have sculpture, we have many other arts. Why is cinema different? Because cinema is based on the moving image. An image can stick in your brain forever. Try to forget the look of Gunda in the end. Why did you do this to me? You cannot forget it. If you remember the best films you have seen, you dont remember a story. You remember some images from it. That is why it is cinema. Shooting these images required considerable ingenuity. Gundas shed was reconstructed to allow the camera lens to be able to shoot in different directions from outside, without disturbing the sow or the litter. A disco ball set up inside refracted shafts of light, creating contrasts within the sheds dark interior. Black-and-white was a late decision; Kossakovsky originally shot in colour, beguiled by the greenery and the pinkness of the piglets.

It was only afterwards that he saw that monochrome shifted the focus to the animals personalities. In black-and-white you immediately pay attention to the eyes, he says. In colour you see adorable piglets. But in black-and-white you see immediately that each of them is different, that they are not something but someone. Loading There is also, he adds, a particular authority to black-and-white. It has the sobriety of a document. Not a documentary, but a document, something that could be put in an archive and stay longer. It is not about the first weekend. He wanted that weight. Look at where we are, he says: in the middle of a climate crisis, trying to deal with the rising tides of a pandemic. We interfere in nature, in the ecological system, and we think we can improve something, but we destroy everything.
Thoughts return to stronger rail options. Source: freepik.com

Although the Ever Given container ship was rescued one week after being stranded in the Suez Canal in Egypt, the trading world remains rocked as hundreds of billions of US dollars has evaporated in the wake of the global trade system significantly relying on this narrow canal.

The incident has also posed questions on developing other transportation channels, in which trans-continental rail routes may be top of the list.

One of the most effective channels is to develop a rail route running through Asia and Europe. This would be very good for exporters in Vietnam, said Tran Thanh Hai, deputy director of the Ministry of Industry and Trades Agency of Foreign Trade.

It is now recommended that exporters should consider and take advantage of the current rail route connecting Vietnam through China to Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, and Germany. From Germany, the goods can be transported to other European markets.

Currently if goods are transported via this rail route, it would take a month from Vietnam to Germany, with a cost of $8,000-9,000 per container, which is higher than the $6,000-8,000 for sea transportation which can take up to 50 days.

However, the existing difficulty is the difference in railway widths and also standards of the trains themselves. The width of Vietnams railways is one metre, while that of other nations is around 1.4m. Moreover, trains in Vietnam cannot accommodate a huge volume of goods at the same time  each train can carry a maximum of 90 tonnes of goods for 15 compartments. If exporters want their goods transported by trains from Vietnam to overseas markets, they will have to change trains many times, meaning higher costs.

These factors currently make it difficult for Vietnam to boost the transportation of goods by train to other international markets.

Kazakhstani Ambassador to Vietnam Yerlan Baizhanov previously told VIR that Kazakhstan, China, and Vietnam had established a council to discuss a project to develop a rail route for goods transportation from Vietnam through China to Kazakhstan and other member countries of the Vietnam-Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), including Russia, Belarus, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, and vice versa.

The council has organised a number of meetings. One of the key issues now is to fix the cost for transporting goods, Baizhanov said. I believe that there will be a shared solution. If this rail route is not developed, it will be difficult to raise the bilateral trade between Kazakhstan and Vietnam, which currently sits at only $500 million per year.

The railway will help reduce the time for transporting goods from Kazakhstan to Vietnam to only 14 days from about one or two months now, he added. The Kazakhstani side will continue working with Vietnams authorised agencies about this project, said Baizhanov.

Currently, goods are transported between both nations by sea, which often takes a few months for a ship.

Under the railway project, whose total length and investment capital remain unrevealed, container goods will be transported from Vietnams northern Dong Dang and Lao Cai railway stations to Chinas Lianyungang port  whose 49 per cent of stake is now held by Kazakhstan Temir Zholy (KTZ), the national railway company of Kazakhstan. After that, the goods will be transported by railway to Kazakhstan, which borders China, and to other EAEU countries.

Leaders of the railway industry of Vietnam, Kazakhstan, and China have decided on the projects logistics manager, namely KTZExpress of Kazakhstan and Vietnams Transportation and Trade JSC, a member unit of state-owned Vietnam Railways Corporation. They have also considered the demand for organising container-based trains for the new routes. KTZ and Vietnam Railways Corporation also inked an MoU on cooperation in railway development several years ago.

Currently, under its strategy, Kazakhstan is boosting transport infrastructure modernisation and attaching great importance to developing transport-logistics routes connecting Kazakhstan with Southeast Asian nations including Vietnam. The railway will also enable Kazakhstan to boost imports of electronics, and garments and textiles products from Vietnam, which it needs the most.

In the same vein, in 2018, members of the Organization for Cooperation of Railways (OSJD) discussed a plan to develop a railway transport system running from Vietnam to Russia through other Asian and European countries. The plan is part of an agreement signed that year at the OSJDs conference of general directors in the central city of Danang. Directors pledged to promote logistics development through rail, expand research cooperation, and supply locomotives and machinery. However, no further information of the plan has been published so far.
State-news

Mississippi ballot initiative effort gears up to force Medicaid expansion

Mississippi Today Tim Moore, CEO of the Mississippi Hospital Association.

JACKSON  After Mississippi's Republican-controlled Legislature again refused to seriously consider Medicaid expansion this year, a new nonprofit says it's time for voters to decide.

A group of state health leaders filed paperwork in February for a Medicaid expansion ballot initiative. If Initiative 76 is approved, it would tap into billions of dollars worth of federal health care insurance money over the next several years.

Those funds would be used to cover possibly hundreds of thousands of working, low-income Mississippians who cannot afford health care. Mississippi Today first reported Monday on the existence of the initiative effort.

Mississippi is one of 12 states that has refused to accept Medicaid expansion money dating back to 2014. Advocates estimate the state has missed out on roughly $1 billion per year since.

The nonprofit Healthcare for Mississippi that is organizing the ballot initiative was incorporated by Mississippi Hospital Association President Tim Moore, Hattiesburg pediatrician Dr. John Gaudet and health care executive and advocate Nakeitra Burse. Moore said the Hospital Association's board has not endorsed the initiative or agreed to help fund the endeavor, but it is expected to take a vote on the subject Friday. He declined to reveal which other groups and individuals are involved, noting a formal announcement has yet to be made.

In a recent filing with the state, Healthcare for Mississippi says its goal is to improve health care by expanding Medicaid eligibility to people making up to 138% of the federal poverty level  about $17,600 for a single person.

These Mississippians presently fall into a coverage gap  they make too much money to qualify for traditional Medicaid, yet not enough to qualify for a subsidized plan on the federal Affordable Care Act marketplace. Estimates suggest between 170,000 and 300,000 Mississippians would qualify for the expanded coverage.

The time is right to advocate for Medicaid expansion in Mississippi for these hard-working adults, who otherwise dont have access to coverage," Gaudet told the Daily Journal. "It will help their kids, too, who are my patients.

Moore said that expanding government-backed health insurance would also provide a financial boost to Mississippi hospitals struggling to recover from the pandemic. Hospitals covered more than $600 million in uncompensated care in 2019 thanks to the state's high share of uninsured residents. A handful have either closed in recent years or have said they are near bankruptcy.

Theres all kinds of reasons we should be jumping all over this," Moore said of expansion. "Weve given the Legislature time, and time and time again ... It just has not come."

Healthcare for Mississippi is working to finalize the initiative's language with the state attorney general's office. Gaudet said there is a "wordsmithing" problem that needs to be fixed: the AG's proposed language makes it sound like the initiative proposal calls for Medicaid for all Mississippians, but in reality it would only cover people making up to 138% of the poverty line.

Once the wording is approved, the group will need to collect more than 106,000 certified signatures by September if it hopes to put the question before voters in the 2022 midterm election. The Legislature would also get to review the initiative and possibly offer an alternative question for the ballot, as lawmakers did with medical marijuana.

If Mississippi voters opt to expand Medicaid, the feds would cover 90% of the price tag. The state would cover the other 10%, which experts say would cost roughly $100 million annually.

The Hospital Association previously proposed an expansion plan, called Mississippi Cares, where hospitals themselves would pay for the state's portion. But Moore said the ballot initiative language does not include this provision, or any other specific mandates, beyond requiring the state to expand coverage to adults making up to 138% of the poverty line.

"Were saying, 'Look, youve got to take care of this population,'" Moore said. "And if we have to put that in the constitution, then thats what were going to do.

Moore pointed out that President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan offers additional incentives to encourage Mississippi and other holdout states to expand Medicaid coverage. Those incentives would increase the federal match rate for Mississippi's existing Medicaid programs, Moore said, resulting in the feds paying Mississippi about $300 million extra a year for two years.

Even with the additional federal incentives on the table, two of the state's three top Republican leaders  Gov. Tate Reeves and House Speaker Philip Gunn  recently said they remain opposed to expanding coverage.

My position has not changed," Reeves said last month. "I am opposed to expanding Medicaid in Mississippi. I am opposed to Obamacare expansion.

Gunn said much the same last week.

"I've been one who's been very outspoken against Medicaid expansion," the speaker said when asked whether he would consider it after the new federal incentives. "I don't see it as something we can afford, I don't see it as something that's beneficial. So personally I would not favor (expansion)."

Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann has been more open to the idea. He said last week state lawmakers would study health care issues including expansion this summer as they prepare for the 2022 session.

But the Republican-controlled Legislature does not appear interested in approving expansion on its own anytime soon. Votes in both the House and Senate this past session failed along party lines.

Some Republicans express general concern about rising Medicaid costs for the state and federal government, and whether covering additional expansion costs is sustainable long-term. GOP leaders around the country have also long opposed the policy due to partisan politics: Expansion was made possible as part of former President Barack Obama's signature law, the Affordable Care Act.

Yet many other red states have approved expansion, calculating it would both help low-income residents and grow their economies. A Hospital Association analysis from 2019 found expansion could generate thousands of jobs and add $200 million in additional revenues to state coffers.

Some Republican-led states such as Idaho, Nebraska, Utah, Missouri and Oklahoma have successfully passed Medicaid expansion by ballot initiative after state legislators declined to act.

"It just shows that (for voters), its not a partisan issue, its not a rural or urban issue," Gaudet said. "Its something thats bubbling up all over the country.

Recent surveys from Millsaps College and Chism Strategies show about 60% support for expansion in Mississippi. Voters have also said in recent Millsaps polls that their top concern is rising health care costs.
On 26 March 2021, the Enforcement Committee (EC) closed its 41st Session, held for the first time in a fully virtual manner. The meeting brought together 400 delegates from 89 Members administrations and six Observers who actively engaged throughout the two phases of the meeting.

During a three week Phase I, over 200 comments were submitted through the CLiKC! EC discussion forum, launched on 22 February. The EC held its web-conference sessions every day for one week, from Monday 22 to Friday 26 March 2021 as part of Phase II of the meeting, and to successfully conclude over 50 agenda items.

The Meeting was opened by WCO Secretary General Dr. Kunio Mikuriya who expressed his appreciation for the work carried out by the Committee. In response to the current situation, he insisted on the need to further enhance Customs cooperation and sharing information and best practices to protect citizens from health, safety and security threats under the current circumstances. He further highlighted the importance of the Enforcement Committee in giving guidance in this respect. He reminded Members that the COVID-19 Action Plan is an urgent priority, and was pleased to see that the Meeting was able to include this new priority without undermining the existing priorities by careful reallocation of resources.

Under the Chairmanship of Mr. Jean Herby Nelson, from Haiti, the EC took note, discussed and approved an important number of activities, instruments and tools, whether technical or operational, thereby providing a comprehensive overview of the tasks to come for the Compliance sub-directorate and its different programmes and projects. The Compliance and Enforcement Package (CEP) Draft Action Plan, which incorporates the WCOs Enforcement portfolio in the period up to July 2022, was endorsed and the way forward for further improvements agreed upon.

Following the WCO Council sessions in December adopting the Resolution on the role of facilitating the cross-border movement of situational critical medicines and vaccines, Members were invited to take appropriate measures to prevent organized criminal organizations from exploiting the situation, and to address the threat posed by illegal products in the cases of dangerous, sub-standard or counterfeit medicines and vaccines.

The Secretariat developed the COVID-19 Action Plan which was first submitted to this Enforcement Committee. The compliance-related part of the Action Plan includes several components relating to enhancing Customs capacity during a pandemic such as Passenger Controls, Risk Management and operational actions.

As per tradition, the EC Meeting then delved into the work undertaken by the different programmes of the Compliance sub-directorate. Updates and the way forward were presented to Members on all enforcement areas, namely: Environment, Drugs, Security, Revenue, Cultural Heritage, IPR Health and Safety, and Customs investigations with COPES project and the anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing programme.

In his closing remarks, the WCO Director of Compliance and Facilitation, Mr. Pranab Kumar Das, thanked the Chairperson and Vice-Chair for their strong leadership, especially given the challenging format of the meeting, allowing only for virtual contacts. He also thanked Delegates for their active participation in the 41st session of the EC and their unfailing commitment to advancing the work of the WCO.
The NSW government is pushing to make it easier and less expensive to own or adapt heritage-listed buildings under the first major overhaul of the states heritage laws in more than two decades.

Arts Minister Don Harwin announced on Wednesday that a NSW parliamentary committee would scrutinise the controversial legislation aimed at protecting the states significant natural, cultural and built heritage items.

Arts Minister Don Harwin. Credit:Steven Saphore

The review underscores a long-running debate about how to balance the protection of Sydneys heritage buildings with the citys development rush.

Mr Harwin said the Heritage Act had not been substantially reformed since 1999 and a review was well overdue to ensure heritage items were protected.
Eamonn Holmes is taking on a new role later this year  as a doting grandfather.

The broadcaster (61) made the announcement on This Morning, hours after teasing viewers that he had "something to tell them".

The happy news came after the Belfast man revealed he had been battling chronic pain.

He tweeted on Tuesday: "Can (you) keep a secret? Got something to tell (you) at 11am on This Morning. I hope you will be happy for me because I am over the moon. Its even, for the moment, made me forget my chronic pain. Yes, its that good."

The presenter broke the news alongside wife Ruth Langsford, telling viewers: "Theres something I want to talk to you about. Its been a tough year for everybody and its been a tough week for me. Theres not much good news around.

"I dont like complaining, but Ive been in a lot of pain. Its not been a good time. Ive been in tears and I (am) in tears again."

Showing a picture of son Declan and his wife Jenny to the camera, Eamonn added: "These people are called Declan and Jenny. The clue is their surname is Holmes. Declan is my eldest boy and Jenny is his beloved wife.

"Theyve just announced that I  together with Valerie and Robin, Jennys mum and dad, and Gabrielle, Declans mummy  were all going to be grandparents.

"Can you seriously believe that Id be a grandpa? (Im) far too young.

"Son, play your cards right and Ill get the catering all organised for the christening.

"Im very happy. I didnt think Id be so happy. I got very emotional about it. Im so young and vibrant and maybe (Im so happy) because Ive been a bit down. What lovely news."

He went on to reassure the parents-to-be that they were under "no obligation" to name their little one Eamonn.

An excited Ruth said while she may become known as the "wicked step-grandmother", she still planned to sneak the baby treats.

"You (Eamonn) looked a bit like a grandad this week," she joked.

He added: "Thank you (to his son and wife) for bringing so much joy and happiness into our lives at this very miserable time."

Eamonn teased the announcement the moment he came on air, saying: "Its just after 10 oclock and, folks, Ive a very important and personal update to make at 11am.

"I dont want you to all be in tears. I dont want you to be upset for me. I just want you to be happy for me, to be glad for whats about to happen and what Im going to announce. If you miss that, its your loss."

Comber-based Declan and Jenny (nee Gouk) married in August 2018 at Castle Leslie in Glaslough, Co Monaghan, where Sir Paul McCartney tied the knot with Heather Mills in 2002.

Declan (32), MD of the Nightcap Event group, which specialises in pop-up bars and providing staff for hospitality venues, is Eamonns son from his previous marriage. After splitting from his now ex-wife Gabrielle in 1995, the broadcaster married Ruth in 2010. They have a son called Jack.

While Declan has yet to share his news on social media, he recently hinted at an exciting announcement on the horizon.

"A year on and we certainly arent where wed like to be, but I know Ive a lot to be grateful for and to be excited about. Lets keep finding that reason to smile," he wrote on Instagram.

The baby is due in July.




ANN ARBOR, MI  Ann Arbor is considering ordinance changes to give renters several extra months before landlords can start showing their occupied apartments to other prospective tenants.

Some landlords are fighting the proposal and voiced opposition at City Council this week, while University of Michigan students and renters expressed support for it.

How quickly landlords begin showing occupied apartments to other prospective tenants for the following year has long been a point of tension between renters and landlords in Ann Arbor.

Many apartment leases, particularly around the downtown and campus area, start in August or September, timed around the start of UMs academic year.

By November, after tenants have been in their apartments and under leases just over two months, landlords begin asking tenants to renew for another year or accept that their apartments will be shown to other prospective tenants.

The proposed ordinance changes would increase the period landlords are prohibited from showing leased apartments to others  or entering into a lease with another tenant for the following year  from 70 to 240 days.

With that, instead of just over two months, renters would get to live in their apartments for about eight months before landlords could force them to choose between renewing or having their apartments shown and leased to others.

The proposal is sponsored by Council Members Elizabeth Nelson, D-4th Ward, and Travis Radina, D-3rd Ward.

At Nelsons request, council postponed action Monday night, April 5. Its due back before council June 7.

Nelson said she has been working with the Graduate Employees Organization, the labor union representing graduate student instructors and staff assistants at UM, and also talking to landlords and the citys legal staff.

She recently made connections with UMs Student Legal Services and, working with GEO, they realize it isnt enough to just substitute the number 70 with 240 in the ordinance, so theyre also working on better enforcement procedures, she said, explaining the reason for postponement.

Natalie Forshee, director of property management at Cabrio Properties and a member of the Washtenaw Area Apartment Association, expressed opposition to the proposed ordinance, arguing it would have unintended consequences.

Any extension of the 70-day waiting period to show and lease apartments would cause unnecessary stress and could disenfranchise student renters, she said.

Starting at the tail end of September, we receive hundreds of leads a day and we execute a very high number of leases the day after the 70-day ordinance ends, she said. This is a strong indication that students want to conclude their housing search early on and during a time that is convenient for them.

Shortening the leasing cycle from about 10 months to four months would force renters to begin their housing search in the spring around the time of UMs final exams and when students are looking forward to summer vacation, Forshee said.

Because most of our student prospects want to see an apartment in which they will be living, I expect the student prospects would need to remain in Ann Arbor until they can complete their housing search, she said. I also suspect that this will be a major inconvenience and will not go over well with much of the student body and their parents.

Ember McCoy, a UM graduate student working with city officials on the ordinance change, pushed back on arguments made by landlords and called the current 70-day ordinance horrific.

Im really sick of hearing landlords speak on behalf of students, claiming that this 240-day ordinance change would be bad for students, when its students who are crafting and pushing this change in the first place, she said. And its not just graduate students. We have over 1,000 signatures on our petition. A sizable amount of them are undergraduate students and we also have support from Central Student Government.

Its important to recognize students are not the only renters in Ann Arbor, McCoy said.

While Im a student now, Im someone who lived in Ann Arbor for several years as a non-student, and Ill say its very frustrating to move, leave or just find new housing here outside of the academic cycle and I think this ordinance change can do a lot to help alleviate problems for non-students, too, she said.

McCoy accused landlords of sending out fear-mongering emails to try to drum up opposition to the ordinance change.

These are the kind of predatory, manipulative tactics that we as renters have to deal with every day in this town, and I hope you can see who holds the power in this conversation and can use your position as elected officials to flip that to actually support what the tenants are asking for, she told council.

One renter who addressed council argued its unfair to expect renters to make a decision on renewing so quickly before theyve spent a winter in an apartment and had a chance to see how well it retains heat or how much heating and cooling costs.

Jen Langenburg told council shes been a student apartment landlord in Ann Arbor for over 20 years and she thinks the ordinance change would create chaos for both student renters and landlords. She expressed concerns it could hurt local landlords and give advantage to these gigantic high-rises that have model units available to show.

We arent going to be able to compete, she said. Youre going to take the local person that has been here since the land before time and youre going to suffocate them. Its unfair.

Compressing the leasing timeframe could have impacts on customer service and cause landlords to make layoffs or reduce year-round leasing staff to seasonal, Forshee said.

Landlords are robust employers in Ann Arbor and immensely contribute to the economic ecosystem, she said.

Nelson thanked the renters who offered a different perspective, characterizing it as an issue of fairness for renters.

We really are talking about issues of equity and the significance of the space of time when people have to have two deposits out of pocket, she said, referring to situations where renters whove already made a security deposit on their current apartment are soon forced to make a deposit on their next apartment.

Im looking ahead to a lot more conversations around how to address the concerns of the people who are actually hurt by the policies that are in practice now in this town, Nelson said.

MORE FROM THE ANN ARBOR NEWS:

Despite pushback from landlords, Ann Arbor bans criminal background checks

Ann Arbor mayor urges council to cut losses on short-term rentals and move on

Mid-century modern home offers spectacular views of Barton Pond, Ann Arbor

Ann Arbor council unanimously supports developing unarmed 911 response program

Ann Arbor Public Schools moves back return to classroom for some grades
The new logo represents the companys personality and the experiences it offers to users -- immersive augmented reality

CEO Alen Paul Silverrstieen says the companys new re-branded website will be launched within 60 days

ImagineAR Inc ( ) ( ) has revealed a new brand logo to represent its corporate personality and the experiences the company offers to users  immersive augmented reality (AR).

In a statement, ImagineAR CEO Alen Paul Silverrstieen said the new branded logo clearly represents ImagineAR today as we expand globally delivering immersive and experiential AR mobile engagements.

He noted that the companys new re-branded website will be launched within 60 days.

The logo is impactful and now being treated in all capital letters; it offers the brand a strong presence while still keeping it approachable and fun, added Sylvie Ozipko, the Logo Design team lead.

Using an A with the horizontal line removed, also reinforces the triangle shape in our AR icon and continues our theme of imagination as when read, our brains fill in the missing shapes. The prism and lighting effects create depth and interest to the logo and reflect the endless possibilities of our immersive content.

Ozipko added: The treatment of the AR acronym has two significant parts; first the blue main triangle is the representation of physical space where our experiences are generated; secondly the angled cut out is the perspective of the letter A, and the representation of the interactive piece of an AR experience.

Contact the author: patrick@proactiveinvestors.com

Follow him on Twitter @PatrickMGraham
Doctors can now prescribe ivermectin to Covid-19 patients, thanks to an order handed down by the Pretoria High Court on 6 April 2021.

Sahpra allows controlled use of Ivermectin for Covid-19 The South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra) has given the green light for the controlled use of Ivermectin, a veterinary parasitic drug, for Covid-19 infection management in humans...

Loophole

Unregistered ivermectin-containing finished pharmaceutical products remain accessible under the present programme through authorised suppliers.

A medical practitioner may initiate treatment with ivermectin at the same time as submitting an application for the individual to the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra).

The order read that: "Registered medical practitioners who are entitled to prescribe medicines in Schedule 3 of the Act, may, in their professional discretion, prescribe ivermectin to be compounded into a medicine that contains ivermectin as an active ingredient for the treatment of their patients, on condition that the medicine is compounded by the holder of a licence."Essentially this means that a pharmacist, medical practitioner and any other person registered under the Health Professions Act may sell a medicine that contains ivermectin to a patient on prescription.Ivermectin, an anti-parasitic veterinary drug, has been used by many doctors to prevent and treat Covid-19, however it was not registered with the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra) for human use.The authority released a statement in January warning of lack of adequate evidence to support its use, that its quality could not be guaranteed because of widespread unregulated use, and the lack of any clinical trial. At the same time Sahpra set up the Ivermectin Controlled Compassionate Use Programme Guideline for access to unregistered ivermectin for human use under Section 21 of the Medicines and Related Substances Act.Sahpra registered a product containing ivermectin to treat the skin condition, rosacea on 16 March. This opened the door for the court application, as the Medicines and Related Substances Act requires that only registered medicines can be compounded, this meant the drug could be compounded with other registered medicines, and made accessible in accordance with the act, for the treatment of Covid-19.As a result, four applications were made to the High Court to compel Saphra to make ivermectin accessibleJudge Cassim Sardiwalla also said in the order that:Sahpra and the health minister, Zweli Mkhize were cited as the respondents in all the applications. The director-general of the Department of Health and the member of the Executive Council for Health in Gauteng were added in another application, Sahpra CEO Boitumelo Semete-Makokotla and President Cyril Ramaphosa in a third and the Department of Health in the fourth.The respondents (without admission of any liability) were ordered to pay a total of R1.8m to the applicants.
Unlinked Covid cases raise jitters in Tuen Mun

Unlinked Covid cases raise jitters in Tuen Mun

Wendy Wong reports

Health officials on Wednesday said there could be silent transmission of coronavirus in Tuen Mun after two residents in the district were confirmed with Covid-19 and a third tested preliminary positive.



Two of the patients live in the same building.



One of the confirmed cases is a man, 41, who lives in King Fu House in Shan King Estate and works in Central.



Another confirmed case, a woman aged 71, lives in Oi Fai House at Yau Oi Estate. She regularly exercised with a few friends in the district and had breakfast in Chinese restaurants there.



Another woman, 70, who also lives in Oi Fai House, tested preliminary positive for the virus.



She stayed at home most of the time, and was sent to hospital after a fall on Tuesday.



She didnt have any symptoms for Covid-19 but was identified as a virus carrier during screening at the hospital.



Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan of the Centre for Health Protection said officials are unable to trace the source of these three infections.



We cannot find any exact linkage between these three cases yet. For the two cases who stay in the same building, one of them did not go out. So it is possible that her family members or a friend who visited her during the incubation period maybe a case, she said.



Were tracing if theyre confirmed, whether theres any common exposure between, for example, a case and another case. Possible areas may be the nearby malls or markets and so on.



Authorities later ordered anyone who had been to either of the two buildings to get tested for Covid-19 if they had been there for any longer than two hours since March 25.



There were six imported cases involving people who flew in from the Philippines, Egypt, India and Pakistan.



About 10 other people have tested preliminary positive for the virus, most of which are imported cases.
Indias failure to quickly examine Covid-19 samples for new variants risks hurting its battle against a record surge of infections, with scientists warning the delays could damage everything from vaccine efficacy to effective hospital treatments.

The South Asian nation has tested less than 1 per cent of its positive samples, according to government data, compared to the UK which has sequenced 8 per cent of infections, and 33 per cent in the last week, the Covid-19 Genomics UK Consortium said. The US last month reported it was sequencing about 4 per cent of its 400,000 weekly new cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted.

reported more than 115,000 new daily infections on Wednesday, taking its tally of cases to 12.8 million, behind Brazil and the US. Its wealthiest state Maharashtra has emerged as the epicenter, forcing the government to halt all non-essential services, order private companies to work from home, and shut malls and restaurants through April. Other states have also imposed restrictions, though none as severe.

After new variants from the UK were discovered in several inbound passengers, set up a consortium of 10 state-run laboratories to sequence positive tests samples in December. However, between January and March the country has only studied 11,064 of its samples, the Ministry of Health said at a briefing on March 30, which is less than 0.6 per cent over that period.

The resurgence in cases could hurt nascent growth in Asias third-largest economy, which had slumped into a historic recession last year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a strict nationwide lockdown. Genetic sequencing of test samples helps catch new variants quickly as the virus mutates, allowing countries to rework their virus strategies based on the new strains. But surveillance is patchy globally and scientists warn that dangerous mutations are probably spreading undetected.

Variant Worries



doesnt have enough data on the new variants to explain the steep, nine-fold jump in infections from around 11,000 daily new cases in early February, said Bhramar Mukherjee, a professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan.

We are essentially reverse engineering to explain the features of the virus curve as we do not have credible data on variants of concern and genomic surveillance, Mukherjee said. The more you let the infection spread the more chances of the virus mutating.

In India, 807 cases related to UK variants, 47 from the South African strain and one from the Brazilian form have been detected as of March 30, according to the Health Ministry, which has maintained the rise in new infections is not linked to new variants. Studies suggest some of these new strains are more contagious, with evidence pointing to one of them being more deadly and another driving reinfections.

A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Health did not respond to emailed requests for comment.





India has enough laboratory capacity for genome sequencing, but getting a wide spread of regular samples from across the country -- including the rural hinterland and potential super-spreader events -- has been a problem, said Rakesh Mishra, the director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, one of the labs working to sequence positive virus samples.

We are not sequencing for the sake of numbers, we are sequencing in a meaningful way, Mishra said. More needs to be done, he said, noting the government was mobilizing resources to get suitable samples from all regions.

Virus Surge



As infections spiral, five states are in the middle of elections with thousands of voters thronging to campaign rallies, while the northern Uttarakhand is marking the month-long Hindu pilgrimage of the Kumbh Mela, which draws hundreds of thousands of people to the banks of the Ganges river.

It is this increased movement of people, along with the slow pace of vaccinations and slipping compliance with masking and social distancing thats contributing to the new spike, said Rijo M. John, a Kerala-based economist and public health policy analyst who consults for the World Health Organization. While the second wave so far has been less lethal, it is all set to be worse than the first wave.

The words biggest vaccination drive, which began on Jan. 16, has failed to reach the governments own target, dogged by an over dependency on technology and the absence of proactive measures to reduce vaccine hesitancy, John said.

India is vaccinating at an average rate of 2.6 million doses per day. At this pace, it will take another two years to cover 75 per cent of its population. About 5 per cent have received one dose and only about 0.8 per cent have received the two shots required, according to the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker.

People had dropped their guard after seeing those with mild Covid-19 cases recover, said Jayaprakash Muliyil, chairman of the Scientific Advisory Committee in the National Institute of Epidemiology.

So the group of people who were very careful, who were taking utmost precautions, they suddenly changed behavior, Muliyil said. For three months there was this tantalizing fall in cases, and the average person believed it was gone.

Modi, who on Sunday described the virus surge as alarming, is scheduled to meet state chief ministers on Thursday to discuss the brewing

It is much easier to roll out vaccination when the infection is not so high, said Mukherjee. Now the health care capacity is stretched between vaccination and Covid care.
WASHINGTON, April 6, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Arkansas became the first state in the nation to enact legislation that prohibits gender transition procedures on minors, prevents taxpayer funds or medical insurance mandates to pay for them, and provides legal remedies for minors who have been permanently disfigured and/or sterilized by them. On Tuesday afternoon, in quick succession the Arkansas House (72-25) and Senate (25-8) overrode the governor's veto of the Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act. Family Research Council praised the state legislature for its effort to protect minors.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins released the following statement:

"The SAFE Act's successful passage into law is a victory for children and their health and safety. The state of Arkansas has taken the lead in the race to protect children from a political movement that advocates for using off-label drugs and experimental procedures on minors.

"As the name implies, the Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act protects minors from unscientific, experimental, and destructive gender transition procedures that interrupt their natural development and irreversibly alter their bodies. As a growing number of individuals come forward to share their stories of being permanently disfigured and/or sterilized, there is a growing and urgent need for other states to follow Arkansas' lead by protecting minors from life-altering procedures such as puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones, and irreversible surgeries.

"Family Research Council applauds State Representative Robin Lundstrum and State Senator Alan Clark for their exemplary leadership. Because of their courage and hard work, the state legislature voted overwhelmingly to override the governor's veto of the SAFE Act," concluded Perkins.

Arkansas is one of 18 states this year to introduce legislation aimed at banning gender transition procedures on minors: www.frc.org/safeact

For more information, please see this FRC Issue Analysis: www.frc.org/gendertransition

SOURCE Family Research Council

Related Links

http://www.frc.org


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A new commentary published online in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society provides an exhaustive examination of published research that discusses whether air pollution may be linked to worse COVID-19 outcomes. The studies that the authors examined look at several potential disease mechanisms, and also at the relationship between pollution, respiratory viruses and health disparities.

In "COVID-19 Pandemic: A Wake-Up Call for Clean Air," Stephen Andrew Mein, MD, Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, and colleagues discuss several ways that the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the urgent need to address the global problem of air pollution through sustainable local and national policies to improve respiratory health and equity worldwide. More than 91 percent of the world's population lives in areas that exceed the World Health Organization's air quality guidelines and more people are impacted by worsening air quality each year.

The commentary focuses on the health effects of ambient air pollution. Ambient air pollution consists of potentially harmful pollutants, such as small particles and toxic gases, emitted by industries, households, cars and trucks. International studies have shown that exposure to these pollutants worsens viral respiratory infections and new studies are showing a similar association with ambient pollution and COVID-19 outcomes.

There are a multitude of studies showing that exposure to higher long-term ambient air pollution is associated with both increased risk of infection and death from COVID-19. Historically, air pollution has been linked with worse outcomes, including higher mortality, due to other respiratory viruses like influenza." Dr. Stephen Andrew Mein, MD, Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston

He added, "Research that we examined on pollution during the COVID-19 pandemic has found similar detrimental effects. New research on COVID-19 adds further evidence of the adverse effects of ambient air pollution and the urgent need to address the public health crisis of pollution."

One of the most prominent studies that the authors examined, in which COVID-19 mortality was modeled, found that each small (1 mg/m3) increase in long-term fine inhalable particle (PM 2.5 ) exposure was associated with an 8 percent increase in mortality during the pandemic. Another study concluded that air pollution has contributed 15 percent to COVID-19 mortality worldwide.

"The studies we reviewed evaluated whether long-term, ambient air pollution exposure that occurred years prior to the pandemic was associated with worse COVID-19 outcomes," Dr. Mein stated.

The exact mechanisms for the association between long-term pollution and poor COVID-19 outcomes are not fully known. However, scientists have suggested several theories. Long-term exposure to air pollution may impair the immune system, leading to both increased susceptibility to viruses and more severe viral infections. Higher air pollution exposure is associated with higher rates of heart disease and metabolic disorders such as diabetes, which are known to be risk factors for severe disease and death from COVID-19. These chronic effects would have occurred prior to the reported reductions in air pollution since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A major point of the authors' commentary is that improved air quality (due to less travel and industrial activity) during the pandemic may have reduced morbidity and mortality from non-communicable diseases. "Research evaluating associations between the dramatic reduction in ambient air pollution during the global lockdowns and health care utilization for respiratory conditions would further confirm the impact of ambient air pollution on non-communicable diseases and the need to reduce air pollution to improve overall health."

The authors also noted that much of the research about ambient air pollution and the COVID-19 pandemic is just emerging. "While the primary association between air pollution and COVID-19 outcomes has been generally consistent, there is still much research to be done. In particular, there is a need for studies that adjust for individual-level risk factors, since current studies have been restricted to county or municipal-level exposure and outcome data. Research also needs to be conducted to evaluate whether air pollution is contributing to the stark differences in COVID-19 outcomes among minority groups."

Racially and ethnically diverse communities are more likely to be located in areas closer to industrial pollution such as PM 2.5 and nitrogen dioxide, and to work in types of businesses that expose them to more air pollution. These inequalities in residential and occupational air pollution exposure may be one of the causes of the stark disparities of the COVID-19 pandemic along racial and ethnic lines.

In conclusion, the authors state, "The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the widespread health consequences of ambient air pollution, including acute effects on respiratory immune defenses and chronic effects that lead to higher risk of chronic cardiopulmonary disease and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). These chronic health effects likely explain the higher COVID-19 mortality among those exposed to more air pollution. The pandemic has also provided a glimpse into the health benefits of cleaner air. As we emerge from this devastating public health crisis, COVID-19 is a wakeup call for the need to adopt stricter air quality standards and end our tolerance for pollution in disadvantaged neighborhoods. As part of our post-COVID-19 recovery, we must clean up the air to improve respiratory health and equality worldwide."
Helsinki: Greenlands main opposition party, which campaign heavily against an Australian companys mining project involving uranium and other metals on the Arctic island, has emerged as the biggest party after winning more than a third of votes in an early parliamentary election.

The result of casts doubt on the mining complex at Kvanefjeld in the south of the Arctic island and sends a strong signal to international mining companies wanting to exploit Greenlands vast untapped mineral resources.

Members of IA (Inuit Ataqatigiit) celebrate the partys strong showing in the election. Credit:AP

The island of 56,000 people, which former US President Donald Trump offered to buy in 2019, is part of the Kingdom of Denmark but has broad autonomy.

With all votes counted on Wednesday (Greenland time), the left-leaning Community of the People party (Inuit Ataqatigiit) had secured 37 per cent of the votes, entitling it to 12 seats in the Greenlandic national assembly, the 31-seat Inatsisartut.
Residents were evacuated from a Jersey City apartment building earlier today after reports of high levels of carbon monoxide, officials said.

The Jersey City Fire Department arrived at the Soho Lofts at 273 16th St. and evacuated the three lower levels of the high-rise building, city spokeswoman Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione said.

A dislodged hot water heater vent pipe was identified as the cause. The fire department vented the dangerous levels of carbon monoxide, while the systems were shut down and repaired, Wallace-Scalcione said.

No injuries have been reported, and residents were allowed to safely return to the building, she said.
John Abraham Recalls Not Being Scared Of Failure At The Beginning Of His Career; Today He Is Grateful

The handsome John Abraham is undoubtedly one of the most popular and adored superstars of the Hindi film industry. He began his journey in Bollywood with Jism in 2003 and earned a nomination at Filmfare awards. He went on to win hearts with commercial hits such as Dhoom, Taxi No. 9211, Garam Masala and New York amongst many others. Currently, he is gearing up for his much awaited projects which include Satyameva Jayate 2, Attack and Ek Villain Returns. Even though hes an established star in Bollywood now, the actor feels he is still struggling.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by John Abraham (@thejohnabraham)

In a recent chat with IANS, John shared, Honestly, at the risk of sounding humble -- which I don't want to -- I still believe I am struggling and trying to make a mark. I have told everyone on set that I am grateful to be on a film set. I have become more cognizant of it today than what I was back then. Recalling his early days in the industry, he said, There was a sense of frivolity and a sense of casual callousness about my behaviour at the start of my career, where I wasn't scared of failure. Today, I am not scared but grateful for my journey. It teaches you a lot.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by John Abraham (@thejohnabraham)

Recently the actor began shooting for Siddharth Anands Pathan, also starring Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone. While SRK and Deepika will be seen as spies, John is portraying the antagonist in the action thriller.
CHICAGO, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) is pleased to present the Clinical Learning Environment Review (CLER) Report of Findings 2021: Subprotocol for Operative and Procedural Areas. The CLER Program provides leaders of hospitals other clinical settings with formative feedback through site visits that explore key focus areas.

"The initial CLER observations are insightful and will lead to new standards that will be hard to ignore."

The findings were gleaned from a subset of ACGME-accredited Sponsoring Institutions for which the CLER site visit was enhanced with a subprotocol that facilitated in-depth exploration of operative and procedural areas. The report provides new insights into these areas through the lens of clinical learning environments for resident and fellow physicians.

"As a surgeon who has followed the remarkable impact of the CLER Program in other areas, it is very exciting to see it now move into the operating room and the procedural areas," noted Dr. Stanley W. Ashley of Brigham and Women's Hospital. "The initial CLER observations are insightful and will lead to new standards that will be hard to ignore."

The key findings in the report highlight a mixture of strengths and opportunities for improvement, some unique to the peri-operative environment, and some that are similar to other places in the clinical learning environment.

"This report reveals unexpected attributes of the learning environment that may spur new thinking about opportunities to improve the operative and procedural experiences for residents and fellows while simultaneously optimizing patient safety and improving the quality of patient care," said ACGME President and Chief Executive Officer Dr. Thomas J. Nasca.

"Anesthesiology residents and fellows spend the majority of their clinical education in operative and procedural areas. Thus, getting that learning environment 'right' is critical to their education," said Dr. Christine Stock, professor emeritus of anesthesiology at Northwestern University.

For more information about the CLER Program, visit the ACGME website.

The ACGME is a private, non-profit, professional organization responsible for the accreditation of over 12,000 residency and fellowship programs and the approximately 865 institutions that sponsor these programs in the United States. Residency and fellowship programs educate approximately 145,000 resident and fellow physicians in 157 specialties and subspecialties. The ACGME's mission is to improve health care and population health by assessing and enhancing the quality of resident and fellow physicians' education through advancements in accreditation and education.

View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/acgme-releases-cler-findings-for-operative-and-procedural-areas-301264477.html

SOURCE Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education
CHICAGO, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the new market research report "Air Separation Plant Market By Process (Cryogenic, Non-cryogenic), Gas (Nitrogen, Oxygen, Argon, Others), End-Use Industry (Iron & Steel, Oil & Gas, Chemical, Healthcare, Others) and Region - Global Forecast to 2026", published by MarketsandMarkets, the global market for Air Separation Plants was valued at USD 4.5 billion in 2021 and is projected to reach USD 5.9 billion by 2026, at a CAGR of 4.9% between 2021 and 2026. The global market for air separation plants is driven by strong growth in demand, especially from the iron & steel, oil & gas, chemical, healthcare, and other end use industries.

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On the basis of process, the cryogenic process segment is projected to grow at the highest CAGR from 2021 to 2026.

Cryogenic technology was commercialized in 1902 and has since been used extensively by companies across multiple industries that require gases such as nitrogen, oxygen, and others. Being the oldest air separation technology available, it has evolved considerably over the years, resulting in improved efficiency and high purity of yield gases. The growing demand for fabricated metals and alloys across the globe, the increasing dependency on pure gases for enhancing metal properties, and rapid industrialization are expected to drive the air separation plant market during the next five years.

Among gas types, the Nitrogen segment is projected to grow at the highest CAGR from 2021 to 2026.

The inert properties of nitrogen make it a good blanketing gas in many applications. Nitrogen blanketing is used to protect flammable or explosive solids and liquids from contact with air. Certain chemicals, surfaces of solids, and stored food products have properties that must be protected from degradation by the effects of atmospheric oxygen and moisture. This is achieved by keeping these items in a nitrogen-enriched atmosphere.

Among end use industries, the iron & steel segment is projected to grow at the highest CAGR from 2021 to 2026.

Iron & steel are used in cars, appliances, roads, bridges, ships, airplanes, and in engineering and construction applications. Hence, with the development and growth of any country, the production and consumption of iron & steel increase proportionately. Countries such as China, the US, Japan, Russia, Italy, Germany, India and Brazil lead in the production and consumption of steel.

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Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest-growing regional segment in the air separation plant market.

Market growth in the Asia Pacific region can be attributed to the increasing metal production, fabrication, and consumption in countries such as Japan, China, and India. The Asia Pacific region accounts for the highest production and consumption of steel in the world, along with one of the highest oil refining capacities. It is also the manufacturing hub of the world, with abundant heavy machinery and equipment manufacturing companies.

Linde Plc (UK), Air Liquide SA (France), Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. (US), Taiyo Nippon Sanso Corporation (Japan), Messer Group GmbH (Germany), Daesung Industrial Co., Ltd. (South Korea), Air Water Inc. (Japan), Enerflex Ltd. (Canada), Yingde Gases Group Co., Ltd. (Hong Kong), are among the key players leading the market through their innovative offerings, enhanced production capacities, and efficient distribution channels. Other noteworthy players included in this report are INOX Air Products Private Limited (India), Hangzhou Hangyang Co., Ltd. (China), Universal Industrial Gases, Inc. (US), Nikkiso Cosmodyne, LLC. (US), and SIAD MacchineImpianti S.p.A. (Italy).

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https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/industrial-gases-plastic-rubber-industry-market-102582424.html

Industrial Gases- Metals & Metal Fabrication Market By Type (Oxygen, Nitrogen, Hydrogen, Others), by Function (Metal Manufacturing, Fabrication), by Storage (Cylinder, Merchant Liquid, Tonnage), by End-use (Metal, Automotive, Aerospace, Others) - Forecast to 2020

https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/industrial-gases-metal-fabrication-market-79589543.html

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Jordan Peterson is a Canadian professor of psychology who was embraced by right-wingers in 2016 after refusing to honor his students requests to use their preferred pronouns, then leveraged his YouTube channel and fear of political correctness to build a career as a self-help guru to the alt-right. He also appears to be the basis for the current incarnation of Marvels Nazi supervillain the Red Skull, who has returned to the comic book universe courtesy of Between the World and Me writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. Coates is currently wrapping up a 2-year run on Captain America, and in Captain America No. 28, which was released on March 31, the Red Skull has a YouTube channel that looked very familiar to Peterson, except for the red skull part:

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What the hell? https://t.co/CGkuztpEjq  Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) April 6, 2021

Contributors to the Atlantic like Ta-Nehisi Coates are moving on to comics.@jordanbpeterson let me know if any of this looks familiar. pic.twitter.com/93hiH0UPER  Seth (@DidymusSeth) April 5, 2021

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A guide to the jokes here: Peterson is the author of 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos and Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life and believes the masculine spirit is under assault, but if hes praised the genius of turn-of-the-20th-century Austrian politician and notorious anti-Semite Karl Lueger, he doesnt seem to have done so publicly. (That is probably a joke about Petersons interest in Carl Jung.) Peterson was also unhappy with a series of panels in which Captain America explains to a police officer the way the Red Skull recruits lost young men to his cause:

Is this from the same issue? https://t.co/jYksMVLXKl pic.twitter.com/cLl8IelMPg  Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) April 6, 2021

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Do I really live in a universe where Ta-Nehisi Coates has written a Captain America comic featuring a parody of my ideas as part of the philosophy of the arch villain Red Skull? https://t.co/waFsAvWlfd  Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) April 6, 2021

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So why is Red Skull doing a Jordan Peterson act to begin with? Its complicated! Hes been appearing in Captain America comic books since 1941, so his full backstory is beyond the scope of this article, but hes a Nazi, and in most versions of the character, his trademark red skull is a mask. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Hugo Weaving played him as a man whose face had been disfigured by Super Soldier Serum:

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In recent comic books, the Red Skull is deadhes died several times, at this pointbut before his most recent death, he managed to transfer part of his consciousness into the body of Aleksander Lukin, a former Soviet general who is also out to get Captain America. Unfortunately for their plans, Lukin also died soon afterward, but his wife Alexa had him resurrected with the help of Rasputinyes, that Rasputinand the Red Skull comes along for the ride, in kind of a Mr. Hyde and Mr. Hyde situation. In Coates Captain America books, Caps enemies are recruiting disaffected American white men, just like certain political movements we could name, and the Red Skulls YouTube channel is part of that effort. Unbeknownst to the Red Skulls fans, hes using them as cannon fodder in an effort to ruin Captain Americas reputation, at one point detonating a bomb designed by Agatha Harknessyes, the witch who appeared in WandaVisionin the middle of one of their protests. Coates has two issues left to resolve the story, and Marvel is promising an epic fight to the finish with the Red Skull, so expect the Marvel Universes answer to Jordan Peterson to be back in prison or suspended animation or temporarily dead very, very soon. Meanwhile, our universes Jordan Peterson has decided to lean in:

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Red skull says pic.twitter.com/5pQoCE0a1G  Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) April 7, 2021

At this time, it is unclear if Jordan Peterson is sharing his skull with a resurrected member of the Nazi High Command, or stockpiling Agatha Harknessdesigned witchcraft bombs, or relentlessly pursuing vengeance against Captain America. But its undeniable that he and the Red Skull have similar YouTube channels, so its probably best not to take any chances.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-08 02:51:45|Editor: huaxia

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SARAJEVO, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has opened a new route for natural gas imports from Russia, the country's largest gas importer Energoinvest told journalists here on Wednesday.

The new route runs across Turkey, Bulgaria and Serbia and replaces the previously used route via Ukraine, Hungary and Serbia, said Bisera Hadzialjevic, director of Energoinvest.

Both routes enter BiH near Zvornik, some 140 kilometers northeast of the capital Sarajevo, Hadzialjevic said, explaining that the change of route has been imposed by Gazprom Export, BiH's only gas supplier.

She said that the change will bring benefits to BiH as the price of gas imported through the new route is about 25 percent lower than that via Ukraine and Hungary.

Gazprom Export began to supply gas to Serbia via the TurkStream pipeline on Jan. 1, 2021. BiH is the sixth European country to receive Russian gas via this route after Bulgaria, Greece, North Macedonia, Romania and Serbia.

The TurkStream pipeline stretches from Russia to Turkey across the Black Sea. Its annual transport capacity is 31.5 billion cubic meters.

BiH's annual natural gas consumption was 235 million cubic meters in 2019, the Agency for Statistics of BiH said. Enditem
As West Virginia secretary of state, I am the chief election officer in charge of running safe, efficient and fair elections. Amid the pandemic in 2020, West Virginia had an extremely safe election along with a 74% participation rate among active voters. Our outstanding success caught national attention, and I have twice been asked to testify before Congress about the West Virginia election experience. The last time I testified, I strongly objected to the passage of S. 1, dubbed by the politicians as the For the People Act.

This bill is anything but for the people as it disenfranchises and confuses voters, it stomps on states' constitutional powers, and it epitomizes the tyranny of an over-powerful government by federalizing our elections.

West Virginia's Putnam County Clerk, Brian Wood, recently said, "It doesn't matter if you're Democrat or Republican. If you want to keep our democracy intact, you've got to leave it up to states to run their elections."

Wood is joined by every county clerk in West Virginia, the majority of whom are Democrats, in opposing S. 1. They object because the bill disenfranchises military voters, it is impossible to administer, and it imposes unwanted, unneeded, unfunded and unrealistic requirements on states.

I served in the military and have experienced firsthand difficulty in voting. The right to vote means nothing if it is not met with the opportunity to vote. That is why my office and the West Virginia Legislature have committed to safe and secure electronic voting options, with identity verification checks, to make it easy for our troops to securely vote and verify their ballot is received by the local election officials in a timely fashion.

Section 1706 of S. 1 bans electronic transmission of absentee ballots, thereby disenfranchising service members who rely on electronics for everything from giving orders to receiving intelligence. Without electronic transmission, soldiers would have to rely on the U.S. Postal Service to deliver ballots, and the USPS frequently does not serve deployed locations around the globe. S. 1 ignores the fact that West Virginia and 31 other states have established safe and secure ways for our troops to transmit their ballots electronically.

More than 1,500 West Virginians took advantage of e-voting in November 2020, and e-voting is key to providing the greatest access ever to the ballot box. Eliminating electronic transfer of ballots would disenfranchise millions of people across 30-some states, not because of problems with electronic ballot transfer, but because of the lack of will of Washington, D.C., bureaucrats.

This bill's passage will also throw sand in the gears of America's elections by imposing a range of nonsensical burdens on our election officials. Bill drafters did not seek the advice of the National Association of Secretaries of State, and they certainly did not coordinate with county clerks across America. The authors never considered the bills practical implications on election administration.

Reporting in the Daily Beast uncovers that many election officials, both Democrat and Republican, object to large chunks of S. 1. According to the article, Many of the changes the bill demands of election administrators are literally impossible to implement."

The bill requires new voting equipment that cannot be built prior to the 2022 and 2024 implementation deadlines. It would force states agencies beyond the Department of Motor Vehicles to integrate data transfers into election systems, thereby opening hacking attack vectors. This unnecessary voter registration redundancy will also devastate agency budgets.

S.1 will eliminateWest Virginia's ID requirements, allowing anyone to vote without previously registering at an address in the area, as long as they sign an unverifiable self-attestation to their eligibility. This new requirement would open the door for ineligible votes to be cast and then require those votes be counted on Election Day. Coupled with other provisions in S. 1, these provisions make maintaining clean and accuratevoter rolls virtually impossible.

Recent polling from the Honest Elections Project shows 77% of Americans and 62% of Biden voters think a photo ID should be required to vote. Instead of listening to the American people, partisan Washington Democrats want to destroy election security.

West Virginias county clerks have hundreds of years of election experience, and they stand united against S. 1. The bill vastly increases the cost of running elections, it disenfranchises military voters, and it invites ineligible ballots to be cast on Election Day. Election officials say they have never seen a more disastrous election bill be considered.

Congress should reject this legislation and allow states to continue running our own safe and secure elections.
A man facing charges after a boat-rage incident in a Coromandel harbour remains on strict bail conditions for another month, with his next appearance expected to result in a resolution.

John Frederick Dixon reappeared in the Thames District Court on Wednesday after earlier pleading not guilty to three charges in relation to the incident on January 23, part of which was captured on video and widely shared on social media.

The 58-year-old defended charges of using a vessel as a weapon to collide with another vessel, operating a vessel in a dangerous manner and assaulting Catherine Maree Browning.

He also abandoned an attempt to keep his name secret.

During the case review hearing, defence lawyer Peter Eastwood pushed for a resolution to be made that day.

Arguing for a dismissal of the two charges relating to the vessel, he said that Dixon had already done his time having been on five weeks and five days of strict bail conditions since this last appearance in March.

His bail conditions were that he had to reside at his Tairua home, abide by a 7pm to 7am curfew, and not associate or communicate with Browning and to not offer violence.

The judge, however, said the decision was not in the hands of Eastwood or police and would not make a resolution.

Dixon will remain on bail until his next appearance in May.

Meanwhile, former deputy principal of Tairua School Catherine Browning, 52, was granted dismissal of the charges she faced.

Police prosecutor Sergeant John Taaka said Browning had successfully completed diversion and sought to have the case dismissed.

Community Magistrate Ngaire Mascelle granted the dismissal.

As Browning had completed her diversion successfully, she was not required to appear in court.

Under the diversion scheme if the offender completes agreed conditions, the charge is withdrawn and a conviction will not be recorded.

She has since resigned from her senior role at the school.

-Stuff/Sharnae Hope.
United Nations, April 7 : A Chinese envoy said on Tuesday that the momentum of the political process in Mali must be maintained.

The overall situation in Mali is improving. At the same time, the country faces multiple challenges, such as terrorism, Covid-19 and a humanitarian crisis. The international community should continue to focus on Mali and provide necessary support, said Dai Bing, China's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, the Xinhua news agency reported.

The good momentum of the political process must be maintained. The Malian government has formulated the transitional action plan, and implementation is the main task for the next stage, he told the Security Council.

As the Malian government works to coordinate and advance preparation for the elections, positive efforts will also be needed to promote development, improve people's livelihood in a way that can bring more benefits to its people, he said.

The agreement monitoring committee has met for the first time in northern Mali, which is of great significance. The signatories to the peace agreement must consolidate the existing results, continue to develop mutual trust, achieve more results on issues such as the deployment of armed forces and the Northern Development Zone, properly handle the issue of re-opening negotiations on the relevant provisions of the agreement, and firmly advance the implementation of the agreement, he said.

Comprehensive policies must be implemented to improve the security situation in Mali, said Dai. "Terrorist activities are rampant in central and northern Mali with frequent attacks that have led to the continued deterioration of the security situation on the ground. A comprehensive military, political, economic, judicial, and social response must be adopted in accordance with the recommendations in the UN secretary-general's report." Actions to combat terrorist organisations must be accompanied by efforts to eliminate the root causes of terrorism and extremism. There must be support to the Malian government so that it can continue to actively participate in anti-terrorism operations of the G5 Sahel (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger), he said.

The UN peacekeeping mission in Mali, known by its French acronym as MINUSMA, must focus on its core mandate and earnestly follow the principle of a Malian-led and Malian-owned process and strengthen its coordination and cooperation with regional organisations, said Dai.

MINUSMA must develop its roadmap based on the actual situation on the ground, and make sure that its implementation is coordinated and consistent. Foreign counter-terrorism operations in Mali need to respect Mali's sovereignty, abide by international humanitarian law, and protect the safety of Malian people, he said.

It is imperative to organise an effective response to challenges such as Covid-19, he said.

The pandemic has started to rebound in Mali, which has caused concerns. The international community should provide Mali with support to fight the disease, including ensuring timely and fair access to Covid-19 vaccines for those in need, he said.

As Mali's economy declined, about 800,000 people went back to poverty last year, with 3 million people in urgent need of emergency food assistance. A large number of people were displaced. The international community must increase assistance to ease the difficulties of the Malian people, he said.

Dai also called for efforts to ensure the safety of UN peacekeepers in Mali.

This year MINUSMA has suffered multiple attacks, during which 10 peacekeepers were killed. The safety of peacekeepers is an extremely urgent issue and is the responsibility of all parties, he said.

Attacks against UN peacekeepers must be investigated and perpetrators must be brought to justice. It is necessary to analyze the causes of the incidents and identify the weakest links so that practical effective measures could be adopted to ensure the safety of all peacekeepers, he said.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Check out the news you should not miss today:

Society

 Vietnam on Tuesday afternoon reported 11 new imported cases of COVID-19, increasing the countrys tally to 2,648 with 2,422 recoveries, according to the Ministry of Health.

 Two fire trucks and dozens of firefighters were mobilized on Tuesday night to extinguish a fire at the local residential area near Bac Cai Dam Market in the Mekong Delta province of An Giang.

 Ho Chi Minh City expects to basically finish its flood control project on Nguyen Huu Canh Street, which stretches 3.2km from District 1 to Binh Thanh District, by the end of this month after nearly a year and a half of construction, the citys Management Board on Traffic Work Construction Investment said on Tuesday.

 Police in the northern province of Hai Duong said on Tuesday that they had recently broken up a ring to bring people illegally to Vietnam and arrested a number of suspects.

 The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Transports division of driving test and license management on Tuesday said they had inspected 332 driver's licenses and detected 71 fake ones since the beginning of this year.

 Ho Chi Minh City has recently seen an increase of hand, foot, and mouth disease cases, with 40 children being treated at the Children's Hospital 1 and 36 others at the Children's Hospital 2.

Business

 The Vietnam Salt One Member Limited Liability Company (Visalco) will put nearly 1.28 million shares up for sale at its initial public offering (IPO) on April 12, the Vietnam News Agency reported on Tuesday.

 The export of fruit and vegetables reeled in about US$944 million in the first quarter of 2021, up 6.1 percent from the same period last year, the Vietnam News Agency reported on Tuesday, quoting the Ministry of Industry and Trades Agency of Foreign Trade.

Lifestyle

 'Bo Gia' (Old Dad), a movie starring and co-directed by famed comedian Tran Thanh, on Monday reached VND400 billion ($17.4 million) in revenue, cementing its position as the Vietnamese movie with the biggest domestic grossing of all time. The movie first claimed the title in March when it grossed over VND200 billion.

Sports

 More than 2,500 people have registered to participate in the Ba Den Mountain Marathon 2021 held by the southern province of Tay Ninhs Department of Culture, Sports, and Tourism on April 24 and 25.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - April 6, 2021) - SKRR Exploration Inc. (TSXV: SKRR) (OTC Pink: SKKRF) (FSE: B04Q) ("SKRR" or the "Company") announces the granting of incentive stock options ("Options") to certain of its directors, officers and consultants to purchase up to an aggregate 979,750 common shares of the Company at a price of $0.23 per common share for a period of three (3) years. The Options vest on the date of grant.

About SKRR Exploration Inc.:

SKRR is a Canadian-based precious metal explorer with properties in Saskatchewan - one of the world's highest ranked mining jurisdictions. The primary exploration focus is on the Trans-Hudson Corridor in Saskatchewan in search of world class precious metal deposits. The Trans-Hudson Orogen - although extremely well known in geological terms has been significantly under-explored in Saskatchewan. SKRR is committed to all stakeholders including shareholders, all its partners and the environment in which it operates.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

Sherman Dahl

President & CEO

Tel: 250-558-8340

For further information contact:

Rich Matthews, Investor Relations

Integrous Communications

rmatthews@integcom.us

+1 6047577179

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.

Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains "forward-looking information or statements" within the meaning of applicable securities laws, which may include, without limitation, other statements relating to the technical, financial and business prospects of the Company, its projects and other matters. All statements in this news release, other than statements of historical facts, that address events or developments that the Company expects to occur, 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 may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Such statements and information are based on numerous assumptions regarding present and future business strategies, including the price of metals, the ability to achieve its goals, and that general business and economic conditions will not change in a material adverse manner. Such forward-looking information reflects the Company's views with respect to future events and is subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including those filed under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, continued availability of capital, general economic, market, business conditions, failure to maintain all necessary government permits, the impact of Covid-19 or other viruses and diseases on the Company's ability to operate, approvals and authorizations, and failure to maintain community acceptance (including First Nations). The Company does not undertake to update forward-looking statements or forward-looking information, except as required by law.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/79642
The Covid-generation of home-schooled children lacked 'discipline and order' while stuck at home during lockdown, says Gavin Williamson.

The Education Secretary has backed a mobile phones ban in schools, saying it is 'now time to put the screens away' as the return to classrooms rendered remote learning - which relied on internet-accessible devises - redundant.

He said home schooling while schools were shut will 'inevitably' impact pupils - adding that 'out of control behaviour' by certain youngsters could risk destroying lessons for others.

He will back any action by headteachers to curb sub-par behaviour - including detentions, suspensions and expulsions - and said wanting disciplined classrooms is 'nothing Dickensian'.

A consultation by the Department for Education will be carried out this year to help school leaders put phone bans in place and decide on policies for poor behavior.

The Covid-generation of home-schooled children lacked 'discipline and order' while stuck at home during lockdown , says Gavin Williamson (pictured)

Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Mr Williamson said: 'This longed-for return to the classroom will give them the structure and order they desperately need, where they feel safe and ready to learn.

'Although remote learning was a tremendous success in terms of enabling children to carry on with their lessons from home, the lack of regular structure and discipline will inevitably have had an effect on their behaviour.'

While tablets or laptops can be used in a 'controlled' way in classrooms, mobile phones should not be allowed, the Education Secretary said, adding: 'Outside the classroom, the use of mobile phones distracts from healthy exercise and good old-fashioned play.

'Worse, it acts as a breeding ground for cyberbullying, and the inappropriate use of social media sites  such as anonymous Instagram accounts, where students are ranked on their appearance  can heighten insecurities, damage mental health and encourage harassment.'

The Department for Education (DfE) is set to launch a 10million 'behaviour hub' in time for the summer term - which will see 22 'lead schools' advise others on how to manage pupils' behaviour and create discipline.

It follows the news that face coverings in secondary school classrooms could remain in place until the end of the year after the Government came under pressure not to 'rush into' removing the mask mandate from five major unions.

A consultation by the Department for Education will be carried out this year to help school leaders put phone bans in place and decide on policies for poor behavior (file image)

Officials at the Department for Education said secondary pupils in England should wear masks when they return to school for the summer term, in both lessons and corridors, as a 'precautionary measure'.

They explained that the policy will be dropped as part of stage three of the roadmap out of lockdown, which will happen no earlier than May 17.

Any changes to the policy will be confirmed with one week's notice following a review of the latest data on infection and vaccination rates, the DfE said.

Last month, MPs heard that school leaders had received 'threatening letters' from parents who did not want their children to wear face coverings.

But a joint letter from the leaders of the National Education Union (NEU), NASUWT teaching union, NAHT school leaders' union, GMB and Unison said there was a 'strong scientific consensus' that face masks can and should continue to be part of measures to suppress transmission of Covid-19.

When Boris Johnson announced that schools would reopen on March 8, he said secondary school pupils would need to wear masks anywhere indoors where they could not socially distance, including classrooms and corridors.

Year 11 students, wearing face coverings, take part in a GCSE science class at Park Lane Academy in Halifax, northwest England on March 8, 2021

Year 11 students, wearing face coverings, take part in a GCSE maths class at Park Lane Academy in Halifax, northwest England on March 8, 2021

However, at the time he insisted the measure would remain in place until Easter, at which point a review would be carried out.

The decision to extend the use of masks in the classroom has come as a surprise to many, with parents and campaigners accusing ministers of 'betraying' children by upholding the mandate during the summer term.

In their letter to Gavin Williamson, the unions - which represent teachers, heads and other school staff, said masks may be helping suppress the spread of Covid-19 in schools and insisted they are not causing disruption to learning.

Department of Health bosses recorded another 2,379 positive Covid tests, with the rolling seven-day average for infections now at the lowest levels since mid-September

Britain's daily coronavirus deaths have fallen by two-thirds in a week, with 20 victims announced. It means the UK has gone a fortnight without registering over 100 daily deaths

According to the Guardian, the letter stated: 'None of us wants to see pupils or staff wearing face coverings for longer than is necessary.

'However, it is our shared view that the government should not rush into changing this policy at short notice without careful consideration of the scientific evidence surrounding the wearing of face coverings in schools.'

The unions argued that there is 'a strong scientific consensus' that masks 'can and should' be part of anti-coronavirus measures.

'The research suggests that they cut down the chances of both transmitting and catching the coronavirus,' the leaders said.

'We have also seen the emergence of more recent studies that suggest that they can help to reduce transmission of the virus within schools.'
Anyone hoping that Israels fourth election in two years might break political paralysis has been left disappointed. While incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus party, Likud, won the most seats, two weeks of coalition wrangling have left it so far without the coalition of 61 seats needed to form a majority government in the Knesset. So far, hes on about 52, all hailing from the right and far right. The anti-Netanyahu bloc hovers around 45 seats. The right-of-center Yamina party, which won seven seats, has yet to declare its allegiance. Neither has the United Arab List, a new Arab-Israeli party, which has four seats and has indicated it may be willing to get into bed with either side. Israels president, Reuven Rivlin, has given Netanyahu the first chance to form a governmentalthough he also said he doesnt believe any candidate has a chance to form a coalition.

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All this is to say, there were no winners in this election. Neither Benjamin Netanyahu nor his opponents have a clear path to a majority. But its clear who the losers are.

The Palestinians barely featured in this election, said Jeff Kaplan, an anthropologist who works with the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. He told Slate that Palestinian rights, and the occupation of the West Bank and blockade of the Gaza Strip, didnt even feature in the campaigns of the Arab parties, let alone in the campaigns of the Israeli left.

Its marginalized the whole issue of occupation, of Palestinians, of peace, he said. Palestinians are off the political map, both in terms of Israel and internationally. Its just not an issue anymore.

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The 5 million or so Palestinians living in the West Bank, and in Gaza, did not get a vote in the elections, as they are not Israeli citizens. But the choices made by Israeli citizens can still have huge ramifications for the Palestinian communities whose lives are influenced, in many cases, controlled, by the actions of the state of Israel. Despite Palestinian rights not being a major issue in this election, the political makeup of the new Knesset will have a profound effect on Palestinians lives.

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The next government of Israel will be the most right-wing in history, said Natan Sachs, a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. He believes that the main issue dividing parties in this election was not ideological but support or opposition to the Netanyahu administration. Therefore, he said, despite being divided between two camps, the majority of votes in this election were still cast in favor of the Israeli right.

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Among these right-wing parties picking up votes was the Religious Zionist party, a coalition of far-right groups that has won six seats and may well be part of a Likud-led coalitionsomething that Sachs says would be shameful.

The coalitions leader, Bezalel Smotrich, has described himself as a proud homophobe, while elements of the party itself are ideologically descended from the outlawed Kahanist movement, an openly racist espousal of Jewish supremacy that advocated for the creation of a theocratic state of Israel across the West Bank and Gazaa proposal that may have included the expulsion of all Arabs.

The Kahanist movements political representation, the Kach party, was later banned in Israel and declared a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.

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The Religious Zionists may only have a handful of seats, but the fact that they have picked up those seats at all could indicate that such extreme ideas are becoming normalized within the mainstream political discourse. The rise of political forces even further to the right of Netanyahus Likud party put Palestinian life and presence on the land in greater danger, said Sandra Tamari, the executive director of the Adalah Justice movement. Palestinians will continue to be the target of extreme violence in Israel to justify further militarization and repression by these authoritarians.

The people voting for the Religious Zionists make up a small minority of the voting populationhard-line members of Israels far right, many of whom will be living in settlements in the West Bank. This year, Palestinians have claimed that settler attacks against them and their property have increased, and its possible that some of the most radical settlers may become emboldened by the success of the far right.

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Moreover, the inclusion of extremist ideas within politics threatens to soften the image of some of the other parties that make up the majority of seats within the Knesset, many of whom have a hawkish view of the Palestinian question. On the extreme right theres an aspiration to annex all the Palestinian territory and declare Israeli sovereignty over all of it, said Sachs. But on the more centrist right, theres a reluctance to give the Palestinians any more territory, or significantly enhance their independence. The hawkish camp today would be one that is far less inclined to any dealings with the Palestinian Authority, and major parts of it are explicitly opposed to the two-state solution.

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This comes after a tumultuous period for Palestinians and their hopes of statehood. In 2018, President Donald Trump had the U.S. Embassy moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, amid waves of protest in the Gaza Strip that saw almost 200 Palestinian protesters killed by security forces. Strong U.S. support for the Netanyahu administration may have emboldened it to threaten annexing parts of the West Bank last year, a move suspended when Israel signed the first of the Abraham Accords with the United Arab Emirates back in August. These deals normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and the UAE, and later with Bahrain, as well as Sudan and Morocco.

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The signing of the Abraham Accords, however, was a clear shift away from the previous consensusthat these states would only normalize relations with Israel after an end to the occupation and the establishment of a Palestinian stateand may suggest that elements of the Arab world are increasingly ambivalent to the fate of Palestinians. This is a sentiment that has perhaps leaked into this electionwhatever their position on the political spectrum, Israeli parties do not see any political capital to be gained by trying to advance a just settlement to the conflict. Israels ongoing political paralysis may also give international actors even more incentive to keep their distance from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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Its certainly true that, in a bizarre turn of events, the United Arab List party, led by conservative Islamist Mansour Abbas and holding four seats, could have a pivotal say over the shape of a new government. But greater independence for the Palestinian Authority barely featured in its election material, or in the material of any other Arab-Israeli party. Despite ethnic and cultural ties to those Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza, these parties focused more on issues like education, health care, and achieving greater equality for those Arabs that are citizens of Israel. The Israeli Arabs have also kind of given up on a two-state or one-state solution, said Kaplan.

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Mansour Abbas has expressed support for two states, but this is something that looks increasingly unrealistic. With Israel protected from attack by the Iron Dome missile defense system, and the erection of the wall that separates the West Bank from the rest of Israel, theres a danger that the occupation has become a status quo. Israeli settlements, deemed illegal under international law, continue to expand within the West Bank, heavily defended by the Israel Defense Forces.

On Monday, Netanyahu appeared before a court hearing, facing corruption charges. As he fights for his political life, it looks likely that Israelis will be returning to the polls for a fifth time. However inconclusive this election was, it wasnt a fight between a proPalestinian rights camp and an anti, or even between the left and the right, but between those who laud Netanyahu and those who revile him. That looks unlikely to change anytime soon.
A former Pennsylvania cop is accused of sexually abusing teens while he was a D.A.R.E. officer, officials say.

James Carey, a retired Warminster Township police officer, was arrested Wednesday on sexual abuse charges, according to the Bucks County District Attorneys Office.

Carey is accused of sexually abusing four teenage boys two decades ago while he was a D.A.R.E. officer.

D.A.R.E. stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education, a program intended to teach children to lead lives free from violence, substance use, and other dangerous behaviors.

Carey appeared in court on 122 charges, including involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, statutory sexual assault, aggravated indecent assault, unlawful contact with minors and corruption of minors, according to court documents.

Careys attorney, Michael Applebaum, said we look forward to proving his innocence in court, WCAU reported.

Carey retired from the Warminster Township Police Department in 2009. Hes been living in New Jersey.
LONDON (dpa-AFX) - Low fares airline Ryanair Holdings Plc. (RYA.L, RYAAY) Wednesday said it expects to report fiscal 2021 pre-exceptional net loss of between 800 million euros and 850 million euros, narrower than previously expected net loss between 850 million euros and 950 million euros. The full-year traffic was 27.5 million, sharply lower than prior year's 149 million, due to Covid-19 government flight cancellations and travel restrictions. The company said its year-end cash as of March 31 was over 3.15 billion euros, while more than 84% of its owned fleet of 420 B737 aircraft are unencumbered. Looking ahead, the company now expects that fiscal 2022 traffic is likely to be towards the lower end of its previously guided range of 80 million to 120 million passengers. The outlook revision reflects Easter travel restrictions/lockdowns and a delayed traffic recovery into the peak Summer 21 season, due to the slow rollout in the EU of Covid-19 vaccines. 'While it is not possible (at this time) to provide meaningful FY22 profit guidance, we do not share the recent optimism of certain analysts as we believe that the outcome for FY22 is currently close to breakeven,' the company said. Ryanair is scheduled to release its fiscal 2021 results on May 17. 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.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 23:39:12|Editor: huaxia

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JAKARTA -- At least 138 people died and 61 others are still missing in flash floods and landslides triggered by tropical cyclone Seroja in Indonesia's East Nusa Tenggara province, the National Disaster Management Agency said on Wednesday.

The agency's head Doni Monardo disclosed that the deaths were reported in East Flores district (67), Alor district (25), Malaka district (4), Lembata district (32), Kupang district (5), Sabu Raijua district (2), and one each in Ende district, Kupang city, and Ngada district. (Indonesia-Cyclone-Deaths)

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BRUSSELS -- European Medicines Agency (EMA) confirmed on Wednesday that the blood clots with low blood platelets with possible link to AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines detected in many European countries should be listed as very rare side effects. (EU-AstraZeneca-Blood Clots)

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ABUJA -- Nigerian army on Wednesday confirmed that troops in the northern state of Kaduna rescued five college students who were kidnapped last month in the state.

The five rescued victims were among 39 students of the College of Forestry Mechanization in Kaduna kidnapped in their school by unknown gunmen on March 11, said the military. (Nigeria-Hostages-Students)

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ANKARA -- A Turkish Air Force aerobatic aircraft crashed during training in central Konya province of Turkey on Wednesday, killing its pilot, the country's defense ministry said.

"An NF-5 aircraft belonging to our Air Force, which was on a training flight in Konya, suffered an accident at 14:15 (1115 GMT) for an unknown reason," the ministry said on Twitter. (Turkey-Plane-Crash) Enditem
India hosted a meeting of BRICS Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors virtually on Tuesday

The meeting, jointly chaired by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das, was the first meeting of the BRICS Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors under India's chairship in 2021.

As BRICS chair, India's approach is focused on strengthening intra-BRICS cooperation based on continuity, consolidation, and consensus.

At the meeting, BRICS Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors discussed financial cooperation agenda set by India for 2021 - the global economic outlook and response to Covid-19 pandemic, New Development Bank (NDB) activities, social infrastructure financing and use of digital technologies, and cooperation on customs-related issues.

The meeting also discussed IMF reforms, fintech for SMEs and financial inclusion, BRICS Rapid Information Security channel and BRICS Bond Fund.

On the BRICS priorities and agenda for 2021, Sitharaman said that the efforts should be made towards delivering outcomes that reflect the needs and aspirations of BRICS in particular, and emerging markets and developing economies in general.

She emphasised the importance of BRICS in responding to the Covid-19 crisis through policy support and enhancing international coordination.

Sitharaman also highlighted that world's largest vaccine drive by India is under way. India has supplied 64.5 million vaccine doses to 84 countries.

On the importance of social infrastructure and use of digital technologies, she underscored the merit in engaging with private sector and exploring the innovative financing models.

Sitharaman stated that the Prime Minister's Health Insurance Scheme using an output-based funding model has triggered a major private investment cycle in health-care infrastructure, enabling significant expansion of health-care services to vulnerable citizens.

She also talked about thematic priorities for the New Development Bank for discussion during 2021 and the issues of membership expansion and called for greater coordination among BRICS member countries on the issues of 16th general review of Quotas of IMF.
OTTAWA - Canadas former top civil servant has suggested more might have been done in 2018 to investigate an allegation of sexual misconduct involving Gen. Jonathan Vance, but that officials at the time were focused on a number of other problems facing the military.

Chief of Defence Staff Jonathan Vance watches a news conference from the front row of seats Thursday May 7, 2020, in Ottawa. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan's former chief of staff is the latest Liberal aide to avoid a House of Commons order that she testify before a parliamentary committee. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

OTTAWA - Canadas former top civil servant has suggested more might have been done in 2018 to investigate an allegation of sexual misconduct involving Gen. Jonathan Vance, but that officials at the time were focused on a number of other problems facing the military.

Testifying to the House of Commons defence committee Tuesday, former Privy Council clerk Michael Wernick said attempts to look into the allegation reached an impasse after the military ombudsman refused to provide information about the complaint.

Our judgment in mid-March was that we had reached an impasse, Wernick said. There was no complainant to interview, no witnesses to interview, and it would have been inappropriate to confront Gen. Vance. There was no path forward.

Yet the former clerk also acknowledged that the government was distracted by other events within the military in March 2018. This included significant turnover at the top of the Canadian Armed Forces and RCMP charges against vice-admiral Mark Norman.

I do concede that it dropped off the radar in the spring of 2018, Wernick said. And it didn't have a sense of urgency at the time. There were other issues going on in the senior ranks of the military that did.

Wernicks testimony offered the clearest picture yet of the hours and days after then-military ombudsman Gary Walbourne flagged the allegation against Vance to Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan on March 1, 2018.

It also followed Sajjans former chief of staff, Zita Astravas, becoming the third senior Liberal aide in three weeks to avoid a House of Commons order that she testify before a parliamentary committee. Sajjan appeared instead on her behalf.

The defence minister confirmed Astravas was the one who contacted Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus senior adviser at the time, Elder Marques, after Walbourne raised the allegation with him.

While the nature of the allegation raised by Walbourne has not been publicly confirmed, Global News has reported that it involved an email Vance allegedly sent to a much more junior military member in 2012, before he became chief of the defence staff in 2015.

Vance has declined to respond to The Canadian Presss requests for comment, but Global has reported that he denies any wrongdoing.

Wernick, who retired in 2019, said it was Marques who told him about the allegation, which was promptly left with the non-partisan public servants in the Privy Council Office to deal with.

Yet Walbourne refused to provide any information to the bureaucrat heading the investigation, Wernick said.

Walbourne has maintained that he did not have permission from the complainant to speak to anyone other than Sajjan, and that the minister forwarded the allegation to the Privy Council Office without his permission.

The impasse was created in good faith by Mr. Walbournes unwillingness to share any information with us, Wernick said. Mr. Walbourne was acting in good faith, the minister was acting in good faith and we were acting in good faith. But it created an impasse.

Wernick said that he didnt see any other way forward at the time. Yet he also acknowledged on more than one occasion Tuesday, without going into specifics, that other options might have been available to the government and officials if they hadnt been otherwise distracted.

We had other preoccupations about the senior ranks of the military at the time, he said. And I concede in hindsight that they probably caused us to lose focus on the issue around sexual misconduct.

The former clerk went on to say that collectively the system failed and let down the complainant and other members of the military.

I would like to apologize to them if my decisions or decisions not to do something prolonged this, he said.

But on the on the other side of the ledger. If the committee wants to argue that suspending or firing general Vance in the summer of 2018 would have made everything right, I dont think Canadians would believe that either.

Sajjan has defended his decision to refer the allegation to the PCO, saying that was the appropriate organization for launching an independent investigation. But some experts have said he could have launched an inquiry or referred the matter to military police.

The Liberal government has also come under fire from opposition parties for approving a pay increase for Vance in 2019 despite the allegation against the militarys top commander, who served as defence chief from July 2015 to January 2021.

Wernick indicated the raise was largely a retroactive cost-of-living increase for the more than 1,100 cabinet-approved positions across government. But he also indicated some performance pay was approved despite an open bracket around the unresolved allegation.

During his own testimony ahead of Wernick, Sajjan sidestepped questions about his assessment of Vances performance in 2018 as Conservative MPs grilled him over that pay increase the following year.

Obviously, for privacy reasons, I cannot get into the details of that conversation, Sajjan said during his appearance on behalf of Astravas.

Wernick said the two did not discuss conduct issues when it came to Vance, but instead focused on turnover at the militarys senior ranks and whether the defence chief had a chance of becoming NATOs top commander.

The former clerk also said he had no knowledge in 2018 that Vance had been previously investigated by military police for his conduct while posted in Italy before becoming defence chief. Military police did not lay any charges.

Members of the committee had been expecting Astravas, who is now Public Safety Minister Bill Blairs chief of staff, after a majority of members of Parliament approved a Conservative-sponsored motion last month ordering her to testify.

But with the Liberal government having said it will not let non-elected ministerial staff appear before committees, Astravas was nowhere to be seen when the panel convened. Members instead agreed to three hours of testimony from Sajjan on her behalf.

Sajjan walked back earlier testimony that Trudeau himself knew about an allegation involving Vance, after the prime minister said last week that he did not know about any allegation against the former defence chief until a Global News report in February.

I meant the Prime Ministers Office, Sajjan said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 6, 2021.
(This article is part of the California Today newsletter. Sign up to get it delivered to your inbox.)

Good morning.

Today, were starting with some big news: There will be no green tier after all. In fact, very soon, were set to say goodbye to the purple, red, orange and yellow tiers that have for months dictated so much about our lives.

California plans to lift all its coronavirus restrictions on June 15, provided there are enough Covid-19 vaccines available for anyone age 16 or older and hospitalizations remain low and stable, state officials announced on Tuesday.

The move will allow Californians  regardless of which county they live in  to return to restaurants, bars, movie theaters, houses of worship and concerts without strict capacity limits for the first time in more than a year. President Biden has said there will be enough vaccines available for all adults in the country by the end of May.
April 5th, 2021 - Fort Worth, Texas With the ever-increasing popularity of cryptocurrency and NFT (non-fungible-tokens), BluCollar.io is launching their first ICO to capitalize on an underserved market - the manufacturing industry. With little in the way of investable channels, this 2334.60 billion dollar industry (2018) in the U.S. alone, BluCollar is looking to translate those financial transactions and assets to the digital space utilizing the exploding world of NFTs via 
A proven winner, Shivani Dallas brings her incredible business acumen and success to this red hot cannabis startup.

Fitchburg, Massachusetts--(Newsfile Corp. - April 6, 2021) - The Hub Craft, LLC, a Massachusetts Cannabis company provisionally licensed for Cultivation and Manufacturing in Fitchburg and Clinton, with future cannabis retail operation in Holyoke announced today their appointment of Shivani Dallas as Chief Strategy Officer. Shivani brings her immense talents to the onboarding of key investors, celebrity licensing agreements, and overall company strategy.

As chief strategy officer, Shivani will have a key role in ensuring that the transformational goals are realized. This will involve working with, and across, all business units to ensure that specific plans, deliverables and measurable objectives are in place in order to drive progress and achieve desired results.

"Shivani Dallas represents our focus on diverse and proven exceptional talent for The Hub Craft, LLC. Her track record at scaling businesses and driving profitability is remarkable," says Chris Dyer, Interim President of The Hub Craft, LLC.





To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/7696/79647_a7c8104ea4138b39_001full.jpg

About Shivani Dallas

As a proven leader and motivator, Shivani utilizes her complex range of skills to make effective decisions for strategic collaborations and naturally implements synergy across the organization, all while focusing on growth and expansion. She is heavily committed to establishing long term relationships with the Massachusetts's cannabis community as well as designing and navigating the company towards tremendous success. Shivani's expertise in finance and number analysis drive the team in all investment decisions. Shivani will work alongside company leadership to identify and develop new business opportunities outside the traditional supply chain landscape, help drive the strategic planning process and oversee corporate strategy.

Shivani is a recognized pillar in Arizona's Real Estate community. She holds ownership interest in a real estate firm that generated over $1.2 Billion dollars in residential and investment portfolio sales in 2020 [Keller Williams Integrity First]. She was an intricate part of the executive team which developed and drove growth to the Brokerage. She has built, trained and led high performance real estate teams who have been consistently recognized among the nation's top 1% by The Wall Street Journal. Her passion for culture evolution elevated her personal real estate team's performance from $17M to $60+M in just a few short years [AZ Home Team / Gilbert, AZ]. Shivani is also an Owner/Partner in an Arizona mortgage finance company. What she embraces most is her passion for fierce philanthropy - Love All Serve All.

"Shivani is a strong leader and has an impressive track record of success in corporate strategy, business development, digital transformation and vision. She has led numerous teams to break through barriers and acquire more market share to be the top in her state. Shivani's outside-industry knowledge and her culture-defining strategies position her well for this new role. We are truly excited to have her on board," said Howard Tanyu Chairman and CEO, The Hub Craft, LLC.

About The Hub Craft, LLC

The Hub Craft, LLC is a minority-led business which holds CCC provisional licenses for Cultivation and Manufacturing of Cannabis products. Their facility is currently under construction in Fitchburg, MA. The Hub Craft, LLC will be one of the only licensed cultivators on the east coast producing products using living soil methodologies.

Shivani Dallas

The Hub Craft

Chief Strategy Officer

978 424 4202

info@thehubcraft.com

www.thehubcraft.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/79647
As more and more people return to in-person work, lets start with this questionwhat does the term employee wellness mean to you? Is it having more time off? Is it having access to mental health services? Is it a prize-riddled walking challenge with your colleagues? Perhaps a bit of all of these

If this pandemic taught us anything, its the importance of self-care and the promotion of a healthy mental state, no matter if youre bagging groceries, performing brain surgery or the wide-gamut of jobs in-between. And, with such a wide variety of perceptions for employee wellness, offering a broad scope of services and programs through an organization is essential to meeting (most) everyones needs.
Stewart credits the village with doing an outstanding job with its budgeting and forecasting efforts during the pandemic, and believes his expertise in accounting and finance will be of help to the village this year and beyond.
The Border Security Force (BSF) on Tuesday midnight carried out three major operations along the Internal Border in Amritsar and Ferozpur area. In the first operation, based on inputs generated by Punjab Police, one dead body of a Pakistani smuggler, 2 rifles with magazines, 22 packets of suspected heroin and a PVC pipe were recovered from the spot. Blood droplets also found on the exit routes of the escaping smugglers.

Based on information provided by SSP Rural Amritsar IPS Dhruv Dahiya, a special ambush was laid and at midnight, troops noticed movement of five Pakistani smugglers towards fence. Later troops noticed movement of two suspected persons close to fence with Pipe. The Ambush party immediately challenged and opened fire towards them. Whole area was cordoned ahead of fence and one dead body of a Pakistani intruder was recovered along with two AK series rifles with 04 Magazine, 22 packets of suspected heroine and a PVC pipe, BSF Official told Republic World.

In the second operation, an ambush party of BSF caught one Pakistani smuggler alive with 21 packets of Heroin. BSF party observed movement of Pakistani smugglers and an ambush party went ahead, challenged Pakistani smugglers. Two mobiles were recovered along with an Indian ID card. The ambush party apprehended one Pakistani Smuggler and recovered 21 PKTs of suspected heroin from his possession, a BSF official said.

Meanwhile, in the third operation, BSF recovered 9 packets of suspected heroin and a pipe on the spot. On 07 th April' 2021 at about 0030 hrs, troops observed suspicious movement of one person in the crops (ahead to the fence) approaching the fence. After sensing the movement, he fired towards the Pakistani Smuggler hidden in the crops. Immediately, other troops fired upon them. While firing, they observed the movement of two persons escaping towards the border taking cover of crops. During Search 09 packets of suspected Heroin and one 12 feet plastic pipe recovered from the spot, a BSF official said.

Image Credits: Republic World/Representative image
ANN ARBOR, Mich., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Organizers of the 2021 Midwest Venture Showcase, a partnership between the Midwest Growth Capital Symposium (MGCS) and InvestMidwest, today announced that 57 companies actively seeking funding will be showcased to an audience of top-tier investors, entrepreneurs, researchers and business executives at the virtual event on April 27-28, 2021.

The companies in the Showcase span the life sciences, medical device, agriculture/food and tech industries. Of the 57 companies, 37 are seeking seed stage funding and 20 are seeking Series A/B funding. The companies hail from 15 states, including Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana, Minnesota, Kansas, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Alabama, Nebraska and Pennsylvania.

The virtual event will also feature 20-25 Tech Transfer spinouts from top research universities seeking pre-seed and seed funding. Participating universities include University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Ohio State University, University of Chicago, University of Louisville, University of Minnesota, Wayne State University, and Western Michigan University.

The Showcase kicks off April 27 with a morning keynote conversation with Darren Cohen, co-head of Growth Equity in the Merchant Banking Division at Goldman Sachs. Following the keynote will be an exciting lineup of panels on the benefits of investing in the Midwest, the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion in investing, and a special profile featuring Midwest unicorns.

Company pitches in Life Science, Medical Devices, Tech, and Food/Ag tracks will take place in the afternoon. Presenting companies' innovations include:

An agriculture tech company that reduces the labor shortage in the livestock industry and improves animal well-being through the fusion of cutting edge technology and farmer common sense

The market leader at interpreting genetic data to determine the biological dysfunction driving a patient's chronic condition and aligning therapy to restore function

A medical device company transforming the dental experience by identifying and treating pre-cavities earlier, eliminating the need for painful and invasive dental procedures later

The first smart lock company to offer a unique solution to OEMs by offering white labeled smart locks and seamless software integration into existing smart home platforms

The morning of April 28 includes talks from several sponsors, ranging from Julie Harris, Bank of America's head of Global Banking Digital Strategy to panels from CBIZ, Husch Blackwell, and Canada. The Tech Transfer pitches are held in the afternoon.

"We're excited to bring together this mix of speakers and companies," said Phyllis Ellison, executive director of InvestMidwest. "This is an interesting lineup of topics and speakers, as we start to consider what the venture capital markets look like post-pandemic and after a record year of investing in 2020."

"This is a strong slate of companies pitching this year," said David Brophy, founder and director of MGCS. "Investors are continuing to build relationships with high-quality startups as companies find market strengths and new paths during the pandemic. For the second year, the Midwest Venture Showcase virtual event is the perfect place for investors to meet these companies and start connecting."

For more information and registration, please visit midwestventureshowcase.com, or contact Emily Zaycosky and Phyllis Ellison .

About the Midwest Growth Capital Symposium (http://www.MidwestGCS.com)

The Midwest Growth Capital Symposium (MGCS) is the original university-based venture investment fair. First held in 1980, this decades-old event is the largest Midwest venture fair of its kind that brings together venture capital investors, angel investors, high-growth companies, and university tech transfer officers. MGCS is presented by the Center for Venture Capital & Private Equity Finance and the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.

About InvestMidwest Venture Capital Forum (www.InvestMidwestForum.com)

The InvestMidwest Venture Capital Forum brings together high growth companies from across the Midwest that are seeking $1 million or more in equity investments in Life Science, Tech, and Ag/Food tracks. Celebrating 21 years, the annual spring forum attracts investors from across the country to meet with companies. InvestMidwest is managed by the Cortex Innovation Community, with strong support from the investment communities of St. Louis and Kansas City.

SOURCE Midwest Growth Capital Symposium

Related Links

http://www.MidwestGCS.com


New Delhi, April 7 : The Election Commission on Wednesday issued a show cause notice to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, directing her to submit a written clarification explaining her open demand for votes on communal grounds for her party Trinamool Congress in the ongoing Assembly elections in the state.

In its order, the poll panel asked Banerjee to submit her explanation within 48 hours of receipt of the notice, failing which the "commission shall take a decision without further reference to you".

The commission's action came after BJP leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi complained to the election body alleging that Banerjee -- the Trinamool candidate from Nandigram -- had on April 3 appealed to the Muslim voters not to let their votes get split among different political parties, while delivering a speech in Tarkeshwar in Hooghly district that was telecast live on ABP Ananda. The BJP alleged that she openly demanded votes on communal grounds for her party.

An authenticated transcript of the alleged speech has also been received from the Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal, the commission said, adding that the relevant part of the speech said, "...Kanyashree Kanyashree, there are scholarships up to the university. There is Sikshashree for Scheduled Castes and Sheduled Tribes. For general category there is Swami Vivekananda Scholarship. There is Aikyashree for my brothers and sisters belonging to the minority community and I have given it to 2 crore and 35 lakh beneficiaries." "I am requesting my minority brothers and sisters with folded hands, don't divide the minority votes after listening to the devil person who had taken money from the BJP. He passes many communal statements and initiates clashes between the Hindus and the Muslims. He is one of the apostles of the BJP, comrade. The comrades of CPM and BJP are roaming around with the money given by the BJP to divide the minority votes," she had said.

The commission said that the statement made by Banerjee on April 3 has been examined and the same has been found to be in violation of the provisions contained in Section 123 (3), 3 (A) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 and also Clauses (2), (3) and (4) of Part I of General Conduct of Model Code of Conduct for the guidance of political parties and candidates.

Elections for the 294-member Bengal Assembly are being conducted in eight phases. While the first three phases have been completed, the remaining five phases will be held on April 10, April 17, April 22, April 26 and April 29. The results will be declared on May 2.
WILLIAMSPORT  A federal judge sentenced a Lock Haven area man to 30 years in a child pornography case, telling him that he was a grave threat to the community.

U.S. Middle District Judge Matthew W. Brann on Tuesday cited the need to protect children among the reasons he sentenced Michael S. Grenninger, 38, to the maximum jail term followed by 10 years of supervised release.

Grenninger had pleaded guilty in February 2020 to a charge of production of child pornography.

He admitted in July 2017 he engaged in internet chats with an undercover female Virginia state trooper he thought was 11-year-old Courtney. Two of the chats included pictures of his penis.

Grenninger was charged in one of the counts that were dismissed as part of a plea agreement with molesting an 8-year-old girl.

The girl isolates herself, has difficulty sleeping and has required counseling, Assistant U.S. Attorney Geoffrey W. MacArthur said, reading a letter from her mother.

Grenninger had made plans through chats to meet an 11-year-old girl in a New York orphanage, and directed youngsters to perform sex acts he made into videos, the prosecutor had said at the guilty plea proceeding.

A search of his Castanea Twp. home revealed 152 video files of child pornography he produced, MacArthur said.

In rebutting the defense argument for a 15-year sentence, he said, There is too much horrible criminal conduct here.

The defendants father, Dennis Grenninger, who appeared by video, told the judge, I dont know what pushed him over the edge. I think he really wants to change his life.

His son asked for help four years ago when he was arrested but has been unable to obtain it because he has been in county prisons awaiting the outcome of the federal case, he said.

Grenninger acknowledged he messed up and apologized for what he did.

His sentence requires him to pay a total of $18,000 in restitution to three females who were identified on downloaded files seized from his home. He also must forfeit several electronic devices.

When on supervised release he must register as a sex offender and have no contact with anyone under the age of 18 without permission.

Grenninger initially was charged in 2019 by state police in Clinton County but those counts were dropped in favor of the federal prosecution.

He is alleged to have told state police he had been viewing child pornography since 2003 for sexual gratification and had sent and received thousands of pictures and videos.

He admitted taking a picture of an 8-year-old and distributing it over Skype, a state police affidavit stated.
Four graduate students recognized for excellence in mentoring undergrad researchers

Excellence in mentoring: Graduate students in Arts & Sciences who are recipients of this years S. Laurie Sanderson Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Mentoring are (from left) Luke Herchenroeder, Nathan Cooper, Emma Wedell and Sunil Manandhar. Photos by Stephen Salpukas/courtesy Photo - of - Hide Caption

Undergraduate involvement in research is a core component of a William & Mary education. The S. Laurie Sanderson Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Mentoring recognizes the graduate students in Arts & Sciences who mentor undergraduate students.

The honors, presented annually by the Arts & Sciences Graduate Studies Advisory Board, are named for the former dean of graduate studies, who served from 2005 to 2012.

I'm delighted that the Graduate Studies Advisory Board recognizes the unique ways William & Mary graduate students contribute to undergraduate mentoring in research and scholarship outside the classroom, said Laurie Sanderson, who now serves as chair of the universitys Department of Biology. Our graduate students are valuable role models who help to guide undergraduate students through the transition to professional life. The special synergy between William & Mary undergraduate students, graduate students and faculty is highly successful.

Virginia Torczon, current dean of graduate studies, said that the presentation of the Sanderson Awards are a highlight of the luncheon at the annual Graduate Research Symposium, shelved this year because of the ongoing pandemic.

While these are modest awards, they are greatly prized by the graduate students who receive them and greatly appreciated by the undergraduate students who submitted a nomination on their behalf, Torczon said. I know, because each year I sit at the lunch table with the award winners and listen to and marvel at their interactions with their undergraduate mentees.

Nathan Cooper, 3rd year Ph.D., Department of Computer Science

Nathan Coopers doctoral adviser is Denys Poshyvanyk, working on using machine learning techniques to help software developers, particularly in mobile development such as the Android platform. Maddy Havranek 22 joined the Poshyvanyk lab in the summer of 2020, and began working closely with Cooper.

Nathan closely collaborated with Maddy on defining, designing, implementing and evaluating a framework for translating recorded videos of app usages into actionable test scripts, Poshyvanyk explained in nominating Cooper for the Sanderson Award.

Cooper, Poshyvanyk wrote, has been an exemplary mentor to Havranek, an outstanding undergraduate student. Havranek was assigned to an extension of a project on which the Poshyvanyk lab had already made considerable progress, even publishing a paper. The work involves video screen recordings from apps, which are increasingly useful in developers addressing bugs and planning new releases.

The lab developed a software tool they called Video2Scenario (V2S) to automate the processing of the recorded video artifacts. Havranek was given responsibility for designing and testing deep-learning-based models, necessary to update the functionality and take V2S to the next level.

All of these to-dos require me to build upon the original functionality of the tool, which Nathan is intimately familiar with,  Havranek wrote in her support of Coopers candidacy for the Sanderson award. Since the beginning of my involvement with the project, Nathan has been a source of knowledge, guidance, and patience.

She noted that she is currently the only undergraduate working on the V2S project and credits Cooper for creating and maintaining a productive work environment.

I was anxious that I would be looked down upon for my inexperience in the field and expected to complete all of the work on my own, Havranek wrote. This has been exactly the opposite of my experience. On the team that I work on, the philosophy is that no question is too simple or menial and that anything I need, I simply have to ask.

The mentoring and working atmosphere in the lab paid off in many respects, including another paper on improvements to V2S  with Havranek as first author.

Nathan suggested that I take point on this paper submission, and he helped guide me to complete the process and reach this substantial professional milestone as a researcher, Havranek wrote. By the end of our mentorship, I will also have submitted another academic paper for consideration as a first author.

Luke Herchenroeder, 2nd year M.S. in Experimental Psychology, Department of Psychological Sciences

The lead coordinator of the BRAVO Lab, Luke Herchenroeder works with Assistant Professor Adrian Bravo. One of Herchenroeders responsibilities is training undergraduate members of the lab in research protocols.

Luke has not only trained undergraduate students in research protocols but has also mentored them, Bravo wrote in nominating Herchenroeder for the Sanderson Award. Specifically, he has helped numerous undergraduate students in the lab with their research ideas and has helped co-author various manuscripts the undergraduate students are leading.

Samantha Sorid 21 is one of the undergraduates that have benefited from Herchenroeders mentoring. She joined Bravo in nominating Herchenroeder for the award.

As an undergraduate, I have felt a bit uncertain about my statistical abilities in the past in regards to the research projects that I am working on, Sorid wrote. However, Luke was able to help me with several of these questions, so that I was able to gain a deeper understanding of the projects in the lab.

Bravo writes that the Sorid-Herchenroeder mentoring relationship was particularly fruitful, resulting in a paper, "Anxiety symptoms and alcohol-related problems among college students: A moderated-mediation model of rumination and emotion dysregulation, published in the peer-reviewed journal Substance Use and Misuse.

Herchenroeder regularly works with other undergrad lab members on their research and manuscripts, Bravo said. And Sorid gives her mentor a lot of credit for helping her achieve that first first-author paper, an important milestone in the career of any young researcher. She noted that Herchenroeders help with statistics was critical to the findings, and added that he helped her interpret the results.

I am incredibly proud of our findings and the outcome of this project and this progress would not have been possible without Lukes thoughtful edits and suggestions throughout the process, Sorid wrote. He helped me to communicate my findings in a clear and insightful way and I am extremely grateful for Luke's help and guidance.

Sunil Manandhar, 5th year Ph.D., Department of Computer Science

Sunil Manandhar has mentored three undergraduates so far, and his guidance of Ruhao Tony Tang 19 was particularly productive. Manandhars own advisor is Adwait Nadkarni, assistant professor of computer science; he is a member of Nadkarnis Secure Platforms Lab, dedicated to improving security of the newest smartphones and other emerging technology.

Nadkarnis colleague Denys Poshyvanyk nominated Manandhar for the Sanderson Award. Poshyvanyk said that Tang began working on application analysis problems with Nadkarni in 2018.

Sunil took the initiative to begin mentoring Tony, and even learned several analysis techniques that were outside of his immediate research interest at that time, purely to assist Tony in his summer project, Poshyvanyk, associate professor of computer science, wrote in his nomination letter.

Tang also nominated Manandhar, explaining that the two met when Tang was doing a summer research project related to smart-homes security issues.

At that time, I was just beginning to do research and had no experience in that area, Tang wrote. But Sunil was the ideal mentor to me that led me to continue pursuing it. Whenever I came reached a deadlock on our project, he would help and guide me through it.

That Manandhar-mentored research project won Tang the Stephen Park Undergraduate Research Award. Poshyvanyk added that Manandhar and Tang were co-authors on a paper accepted at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Security & Privacy conference  the top venue for computer security research, which is extremely rare for an undergraduate student, he added.

Tang also related the help and encouragement given by Manandhar helped him through a rigorous interview process for an internship at the Lincoln Lab at MIT.

Initially after hearing that I will have eight interviews in just two days, I felt nervous and afraid that I will not do well. But once I remembered the workflow I had with Sunil and began thinking the problem out loud, the whole interview process felt much more familiar and I felt less nervous and more confident, Tang wrote. I am certain I would not know what to say and undoubtedly lose the opportunity to work at MIT if I had not worked with Sunil throughout my last year at W&M.

Tang ended his nomination letter by stating he just received a full-time job offer from the Lincoln Lab.

Emma Wedell, 2nd year M.S. in Experimental Psychology, Department of Psychological Sciences

Emma Wedell is the second member of the BRAVO Lab to win the Sanderson Award this year, along with Luke Herchenroeder.

She was nominated by Adrian Bravo, assistant professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences, and by Samantha Sorid 21, one of several undergraduates in the lab mentored by Wedell. Sorid related in her nomination document how Wedell helped her along the road from lab newbie to published author.

As I gained more experience in the lab, I decided that I was going to write a manuscript, Sorid wrote in nominating Wedell. I asked Emma if she would help as a supporting author and mentor, and she agreed without hesitation. Emma also played a main role in helping to edit the manuscript. All of her comments were clear, well thought out, and insightful.

With Wedells help, that manuscript became a paper published in a good peer-reviewed journal. Sorid is the first author on "Anxiety symptoms and alcohol-related problems among college students: A moderated-mediation model of rumination and emotion dysregulation, in Substance Use and Misuse. Wedell and Herchenroeder are co-authors.

Bravo noted that Wedell has guided undergrads through the multitude of procedures and processes of a human-behavior laboratory  recruiting participants, collecting data through specific interview protocols, survey building, conducting quantitative analyses.

Emma always reaches out to ask questions about how to be a better mentor, Bravo wrote. These qualities are not ones that can be easily taught, and it just highlights the strong character, drive and leadership that Emma possesses, and she is an invaluable mentor of my students.

Sorid weighed in on other positive qualities that Wedell demonstrated as a mentor.

In general, Emma helped me to gain more confidence in my overall research abilities. She was always understanding and was able to provide feedback in a kind and constructive manner, Sorid said.
Hundreds of TAFE workers face job losses or having to reapply for positions under a statewide restructure.

Campuses in Sydneys south-west and west are bracing for the worst of feared job cuts after TAFE NSW released documents that show a net loss of 678 positions.

TAFE NSW staff are bracing for job cuts. Credit:Rob Homer

TAFE NSW says staff will be given an opportunity to reapply for new jobs, but the Community Public Sector Union of NSW says the documents suggest up to 92 jobs will go in south-west Sydney, 42 in western Sydney and more than 100 from the metropolitan area.

CPSU general secretary Stewart Little said many of the staff work with students in front-line support roles.
TEL AVIV, Israel and SAN FRANCISCO, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ironSource, a leading business platform for the app economy, today announced that it has filed a registration statement on Form F-4 (the "registration statement") with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"). The registration statement contains a preliminary proxy statement/prospectus in connection with ironSource's previously announced proposed business combination with Thoma Bravo Advantage (NYSE: TBA) ("TBA"), a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company. While the registration statement has not yet become effective and the information contained therein is subject to change, it provides important information about ironSource and Thoma Bravo Advantage, as well as the proposed business combination.

As previously announced, the combination of ironSource with Thoma Bravo Advantage will bring to the public markets a high growth, highly profitable and scalable business that provides a comprehensive business platform for app developers. As a public company, ironSource is expected to benefit from the financial and operational support of Thoma Bravo - one of the most experienced and successful software investors in the world.

Thoma Bravo Advantage's Class A shares are currently traded on NYSE under the symbol "TBA." In connection with the closing of the transaction, Thoma Bravo Advantage's securities will cease trading and ironSource's Class A ordinary shares are expected to be listed under the proposed symbol "IS." Completion of the transaction, which is expected in the second quarter of 2021, is subject to approval by Thoma Bravo Advantage's and ironSource's Class A shareholders, the registration being declared effective by the SEC and other customary closing conditions. The combined company will operate under the ironSource name.

Additional Information and Where to Find It

This press release relates to a proposed transaction between ironSource and Thoma Bravo Advantage. This press release does not constitute (i) solicitation of a proxy, consent or authorization with respect to any securities or in respect of the proposed transaction or (ii) an offer to sell or exchange, or the solicitation of an offer to buy or exchange, any security of Thoma Bravo Advantage, ironSource, or any of their respective affiliates, nor shall there be any sale of securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, sale or exchange would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction.

In connection with the proposed transaction, ironSource filed a registration statement on Form F-4 with the SEC, which includes a proxy statement of Thoma Bravo Advantage in connection with Thoma Bravo Advantage's solicitation of proxies for the vote by Thoma Bravo Advantage's shareholders with respect to the proposed transaction and a prospectus of ironSource. Thoma Bravo Advantage also will file other documents regarding the proposed transaction with the SEC.

This communication does not contain all the information that should be considered concerning the proposed transaction and is not intended to form the basis of any investment decision or any other decision in respect of the proposed transaction. Before making any voting or investment decision, investors and security holders are urged to read the registration statement and the proxy statement/prospectus, each which have not yet become effective and the information contained therein is subject to change, together with all other relevant documents filed or that will be filed with the SEC in connection with the proposed transaction as they become available because they will contain important information about the proposed transaction.

Investors and security holders will be able to obtain free copies of the registration statement, proxy statement/prospectus and all other relevant documents filed or that will be filed with the SEC by ironSource and Thoma Bravo Advantage through the website maintained by the SEC at www.sec.gov. In addition, the documents filed by ironSource may be obtained free of charge from ironSource's website at www.is.com or by written request to ironSource at ironSource Ltd., Derech Menachem Begin 121, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel, and the documents filed by Thoma Bravo Advantage may be obtained free of charge from Thoma Bravo Advantage's website at www.thomabravoadvantage.com or by written request to Thoma Bravo Advantage, 150 N. Riverside Plaza, Suite 2800, Chicago, Illinois 60606.

Participants in a Solicitation

ironSource and Thoma Bravo and their respective directors and executive officers may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies from Thoma Bravo's shareholders in connection with the proposed transaction. Additional information regarding the interests of those persons and other persons who may be deemed participants in the proposed transaction may be obtained by reading the proxy statement/prospectus regarding the proposed transaction. You may obtain free copies of these documents as described in the preceding paragraph.

No Offer or Solicitation

This communication does not constitute an offer to sell or exchange, or the solicitation of an offer to buy or exchange any securities, or a solicitation of any vote or approval, nor shall there be any sale of securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation, sale or exchange would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. No offering of securities shall be made except by means of a prospectus meeting the requirements of section 10 of the Securities Act, or an exemption therefrom.

Forward Looking Statements

This communication contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws with respect to the proposed transaction between Thoma Bravo Advantage ("TBA") and ironSource Ltd. ("ironSource"). All statements other than statements of historical facts contained in this communication, including statements regarding ironSource's, TBA's or the combined company's future financial position, business strategy and plans and objectives of management for future operations, are forward-looking statements. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as "may," "will," "should," "expects," "plans," "anticipates," "could," "intends," "targets," "projects," "contemplates," "believes," "estimates," "predicts," "potential" or "continue" or the negative of these terms or other similar expressions. Forward-looking statements include, without limitation, ironSource's or TBA's expectations concerning the outlook for their or the combined company's business, productivity, plans and goals for future operational improvements and capital investments, operational performance, future market conditions or economic performance and developments in the capital and credit markets and expected future financial performance, as well as any information concerning possible or assumed future results of operations of the combined company. Forward-looking statements also include statements regarding the expected benefits of the proposed transaction between ironSource and TBA.

Forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions, and actual results or events may differ materially from those projected or implied in those statements. Important factors that could cause such differences include, but are not limited to: (i) the risk that the transaction may not be completed in a timely manner or at all, which may adversely affect the price of TBA's securities; (ii) the failure to satisfy the conditions to the consummation of the proposed transaction, including the adoption of the merger agreement by the shareholders of TBA and ironSource, the satisfaction of the minimum trust account amount following redemptions by TBA's public shareholders and the receipt of certain governmental and regulatory approvals; (iii) the lack of a third party valuation in determining whether to pursue the proposed transaction; (iv) the occurrence of any event, change or other circumstance that could give rise to the termination of the merger agreement; (v) the effect of the announcement or pendency of the transaction on ironSource's business relationships, performance, and business generally; (vi) risks that the proposed transaction disrupts current plans of ironSource and potential difficulties in ironSource employee retention as a result of the proposed transaction; (vii) the outcome of any legal proceedings that may be instituted against ironSource or against TBA related to the merger agreement or the proposed transaction; (vii) the ability of ironSource to list its ordinary shares on the New York Stock Exchange; (ix) volatility in the price of the combined company's securities due to a variety of factors, including changes in the competitive industry in which ironSource operates, variations in performance across competitors, changes in laws and regulations affecting ironSource's business and changes in the combined capital structure; (x) the ability to implement business plans, forecasts, and other expectations after the completion of the proposed transaction, and to identify and realize additional opportunities; (xi) ironSource's markets are rapidly evolving and may decline or experience limited growth; (xii) ironSource's reliance on operating system providers and app stores to support its platform; (xiii) ironSource's ability to compete effectively in the markets in which it operates; (xiv) ironSource's quarterly results of operations may fluctuate for a variety of reasons; (xv) failure to maintain and enhance the ironSource brand; (xvi) ironSource's dependence on its ability to retain and expand its existing customer relationships and attract new customers; (xvii) ironSource's reliance on its customers that contribute more than $100,000 of annual revenue; (xviii) ironSource's ability to successfully and efficiently manage its current and potential future growth; (xix) ironSource's dependence upon the continued growth of the app economy and the increased usage of smartphones, tablets and other connected devices; (xx) ironSource's dependence upon the success of the gaming and mobile app ecosystem and the risks generally associated with the gaming industry; (xxi) ironSource's, and ironSource's competitors', ability to detect or prevent fraud on its platforms; (xxii) failure to prevent security breaches or unauthorized access to ironSource's or its third-party service providers data; (xxiii) the global scope of ironSource's operations, which are subject to laws and regulations worldwide, many of which are unsettled and still developing; (xxiv) the rapidly changing and increasingly stringent laws, contractual obligations and industry standards relating to privacy, data protection, data security and the protection of children; and (xxv) the effects of health epidemics, including the COVID-19 pandemic.

ironSource and TBA caution you against placing undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which reflect current beliefs and are based on information currently available as of the date a forward-looking statement is made. Forward-looking statements set forth herein speak only as of the date of this communication. Neither ironSource nor TBA undertakes any obligation to revise forward-looking statements to reflect future events, changes in circumstances, or changes in beliefs. In the event that any forward-looking statement is updated, no inference should be made that ironSource or TBA will make additional updates with respect to that statement, related matters, or any other forward-looking statements. Any corrections or revisions and other important assumptions and factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements, including discussions of significant risk factors, may appear, up to the consummation of the proposed transaction, in TBA's public filings with the SEC or, upon and following the consummation of the proposed transaction, in ironSource's public filings with the SEC, which are or will be (as appropriate) accessible at www.sec.gov, and which you are advised to consult.

About Thoma Bravo Advantage

Thoma Bravo Advantage is a blank check company incorporated as a Cayman Islands exempted company for the purposes of effecting a merger, share exchange, asset acquisition, share purchase, reorganization or similar business combination with one or more businesses or entities. Its Class A ordinary shares are listed on the New York Stock Exchange (the "NYSE") under the symbol "TBA." Thoma Bravo Advantage is sponsored by Thoma Bravo Advantage Sponsor LLC, which was formed by individuals affiliated with Thoma Bravo, a leading private equity firm focused on the software and technology-enabled software services sector. Thoma Bravo Advantage was formed for the purpose of executing a business combination in the software industry.

About ironSource

ironSource is a leading business platform that enables mobile content creators to prosper within the app economy. App developers use ironSource's platform to turn their apps into successful, scalable businesses, leveraging a comprehensive set of software solutions which help them grow and engage users, monetize content, and analyze and optimize business performance to drive more overall growth. The ironSource platform also empowers telecom operators to create a richer device experience, incorporating relevant app and service recommendations to engage users throughout the lifecycle of the device. By providing a comprehensive business platform for the core constituents of the app economy, ironSource allows customers to focus on what they do best, creating great apps and user experiences, while we enable their business expansion in the app economy. For more information please visit www.is.com.

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Photo: The Canadian Press

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is standing by several controversial proposals from rank-and-file party members while rejecting more extreme ones  including a call to abolish the military  ahead of this weekend's policy convention.

Singh's tightrope walk has him hovering between the party's grassroots and the broader Canadian public, with an eye to pleasing enough of both to boost New Democrats above their fourth-place ranking in the House of Commons in a potential election this year.

At a virtual press conference Wednesday, he said the military provided critical support at long-term care homes during the COVID-19 outbreaks last year, and he has called for further deployment to assist in the vaccine rollout.

Singh says he backs a proposed resolution condemning Quebec's Bill 21, which bans religious symbols on police officers, teachers and other public employees, despite the law remaining widely popular in a province where the NDP hopes to make electoral gains beyond the one seat it currently holds there.

Singh says he has not taken a stance on potential policy planks that demand the removal of all statues of Canada's first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, and the addition of Indigenous symbols to the Canadian flag, but says monuments that send an unwelcoming message may be best placed in a museum.

NDP members from across the country have cast their ballots on more than 400 proposed resolutions to determine which will make the short list of 70 to be voted on at the party's first policy convention since the 2019 federal election, running Friday through Sunday.
Bec Judd has been relishing in spending time with her lookalike Perth-based sister Kate Twigley over the Easter break.

And the two siblings, who bear a striking resemblance to one another, worked off the holiday calories together during an intense Pilates class on Tuesday.

Bec, 38, and Kate posed for a selfie as they took part in a group session lead by Keep It Cleaner founder Lauren Henshaw, to celebrate the fitness guru's collaboration with Bec's activewear line, Jaggad.

Twinning! Bec Judd looked almost identical to her sister Kate Twigley as they worked off the Easter calories at a group Pilates session, lead by Keep It Cleaner founder Lauren Henshaw, to celebrate the fitness guru's collaboration with Bec's activewear line, Jaggad

The pair looked like twins as they smiled for the camera while posing in several items from the new collection.

Mother-of-four Bec showed off her washboard in a crop top and leggings, while Kate modelled a multi-coloured sweater.

Both women also flaunted their matching hazel eyes, high cheekbones and perfect white teeth in the snap.

Walking advertisement: Mother-of-four Bec showed off her washboard in a crop top and leggings, while Kate modelled a multi-coloured sweater

Bec and her sister are very close, but have been separated for most of 2020 thanks to the Covid pandemic.

Kate is based in Perth with her husband and their two children.

Meanwhile, Bec and her husband, former Carlton captain Chris Judd, live in a $7.3million mansion in Brighton, Melbourne, with their four children - son Oscar, nine, and daughter Billie, seven and twins Darcy and Tom, four.

In January, Chris and Bec celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary, with the WAG sharing a touching tribute to her husband.

Slender: Bec also modelled a sweater from the Lauren Henshaw x Jaggad line

The TV and radio presenter posted a series of professional photos from her special day, alongside a gushing caption, to Instagram.

'Ten years married yesterday. I love, love, love you. Always have. Always will,' she wrote.

In the photos, Bec stunned in her J'Aton Couture wedding gown, while Chris looked handsome in a navy suit.

The Judds met at a pub in Perth 17 years ago when they were both teenagers, and wed on December 31, 2010, at Melbourne's Albert Park.

Lookalikes: Bec and Kate share matching hazel eyes, high cheekbones and perfect white teeth

The anniversary tribute came after Chris was mysteriously absent from his wife's popular Instagram account for almost six months.

While his absence was never explained, it's possible he was taking a break from Rebecca's social media to focus on more serious business matters.

The retired Carlton captain runs Chris Judd Invest, which specialises in producing 'finance media content by interviewing some of Australia's leading fund managers'.

He returned to Rebecca's Instagram profile on Christmas Day, when she posted a family photo featuring their four kids.
A passion for wildlife conservation and education has been at the core of who our dad is and everything he has accomplished with the help of so many. He has spent his life connecting people and wildlife because he has always believed that having people see and experience animals is key to engaging them in more impactful conservation efforts. He's always said, "You have to touch the heart to teach the mind." Even though Dad is no longer able to travel and work in the same way, we know that his infectious enthusiasm has touched many hearts and will continue to be his legacy.

The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium has been a major part of our lives since we moved to Central Ohio as young girls in 1978. From day one, Dad advocated for improved wildlife habitats and focused on connecting the community with animals. After he left his active management role as Executive Director in 1992, he continued to be a spokesperson for the zoo until his retirement last year.

Dad engaged with millions of households through his media appearances and weekly television programs  including Animal Adventures, Into the Wild and Wild Countdown. This allowed him to bring an unparalleled level of awareness to the importance of global conservation given the unrelenting pressures on the natural environment. To say that we are abundantly proud to be his daughters is an understatement.

Dad loves the Columbus Zoo and The Wilds and has great appreciation for the hundreds of employees and volunteers, who work extremely hard each day to care for the animals and ensure an incredible experience for the families who visit. We share his dedication to the Central Ohio community and will continue to support the Columbus Zoo and conservation efforts around the world.

Our mom  Suzi  has been by his side for 53 years in every corner of the world. She continues to be his rock (and ours, too). We have great respect and admiration for Mom as we move through not only this difficult time with Dad, but also Julie's continued life-long challenges from her childhood leukemia, as she is currently recovering from major surgery.

While Dad's health has deteriorated quickly, we can assure you that his great sense of humor continues to shine through. And yes  he still wears his khakis at home.

To keep everyone safe in light of COVID-19 restrictions, we are asking for privacy, which is ironic given Dad's love of interacting with people. We are grateful that the many hearts he's touched over the years are with him during this journey, which gives us strength.

Thank you, and we appreciate your understanding 

Kathaleen, Suzanne and Julie Hanna

SOURCE The Hanna Family
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 03:21:55|Editor: huaxia

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European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen speaks during a news conference with European Council President Charles Michel (not in the picture) in Ankara, Turkey, on April 6, 2021. Top officials of the European Union on Tuesday expressed readiness to work on concrete agenda with Turkey to push forward economy and migration cooperation between the two sides. (Photo by Mustafa Kaya/Xinhua)

ANKARA, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Top officials of the European Union on Tuesday expressed readiness to work on concrete agenda with Turkey to push forward economy and migration cooperation between the two sides.

The remarks came after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, capital of Turkey.

"The EU is ready to present a concrete agenda to strengthen cooperation on economy and migration, and inter-societal ties," Michel said at a press conference.

"The rule of law and respect for fundamental rights are core values of the EU, and we shared with President Erdogan our deep worries on the latest developments of Turkey in this respect," he added.

The EU expects Ankara to respect the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which has ruled for the release of jailed businessman Osman Kavala and former co-chair of pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtas, von der Leyen said.

She further elaborated the areas where Ankara and Brussels can improve ties.

Noting the EU is Turkey's most important import and export partner, von der Leyen said they would focus on removing difficulties in Customs Union deal in a bid to increase bilateral trade and upgrade the agreement.

Secondly, climate change and public health will also be important topics in high-level dialogue, and thirdly, the EU wants to support Erasmus programs with Turkey for more mobility among people, she added.

Lastly, the EU official noted that they will continue supporting Turkey for the nearly 4 million Syrian refugees it has been sheltering, as part of a 2016 migration deal between Ankara and Brussels.

According to the deal, Turkey promised to prevent migrants and refugees from crossing to Europe in exchange for aid and other political conditions. The EU offered Turkey 6 billion euros (7.1 billion U.S. dollars) to help Syrian refugees.

However, Ankara wants to revise the deal and get more funds from the EU.

"A revised Turkey-EU migration deal together with the main provisions contained therein would go a long way toward addressing the refugee problem and revitalizing Turkey-EU relations with a positive agenda," she stated.

Erdogan's office issued a statement stressing that Turkey wanted the EU "to take concrete steps to support a positive agenda."

The final objective of Turkey is a full membership of the EU, Erdogan's spokesperson Ibrahim Kalin said, referring to the accession talks that have been stalled for years.

Erdogan emphasized that the refugee problem should be handled with a sense of shared responsibility, his office said, emphasizing the need for urgent renewal of the migration agreement against the "instability and humanitarian crisis that a new wave of refugees in the region will cause."

Ankara also called for the renewal of the Customs Union agreement, launching the visa liberalization process for free travel of Turkish citizens in the EU, people-to-people contacts, and high-level political consultations, Kalin said.

Last year, European leaders agreed to tacitly warn Turkey of sanctions regarding longstanding disputes with its NATO partner Greece over drilling rights in the east Mediterranean.

But Ankara and Brussels have found grounds for positive agenda in late 2019 after Turkey withdrew its seismic survey vessel which had been sailing for energy resources in the eastern Mediterranean. Ankara also initiated resumption of talks with Greece over a disputed maritime border.

Turkey has been knocking on the EU's door for over 40 years and is currently a candidate country. However, accession talks have been frozen for several years because of some member countries' opposition and the EU's claim that Ankara failed to adopt its key political criteria. Enditem
Residents of Krowor Municipal Assembly in Accra have asked President Nana Akufo-Addo to appoint Enoch Nii Afotey Mensah as their new Municipal Chief Executive (MCE).



According to them, the former MCE, Joshua Bortey, should not be reappointed.



The residents made up of traders, traditional leaders and fisherfolks, said Mr Bortey failed the Assembly in terms of development.



They described Mr Bortey as a divisive character who has helped to cause a deep crack in the NPP.



Nuumo Botwe Atiakpeh, Osabu Wulomo; Asafoatse Akuaku Laryea II, Nii Mantse Adzinwe Asafoatse; Nii Afotey Adzin, Osabu Laabia, are among the residents and traditional leaders calling for Mr Afotey Mensah to be appointed as MCE for Krowor.



They described Mr Afotey Mensah as a unifier and an NPP loyalist who will help develop the Municipality.



According to them, under Mr Bortey, Krowor did not record any sound developmental projects.



Addressing the media on Tuesday, April 6, 2021, the residents pointed out that they needed Mr Afotey Mensah as MCE for Krowor Municipality to come and rescue our cherished party and sinking Krowor from the quagmire of divisiveness, disunity and lack of progress!



They recounted the humiliating defeat which NPP suffered during the 2020 General Elections, a defeat which they say could have been avoided if the party leadership at the constituency had a united front.



According to them, there was therefore the need for them to take a retrospective view of what might have caused the NPP to lose its MP seat to the opposition NDC.



As a result, it came to light and it was obvious, that the constituency leadership lacked a united front, a situation which among other things led to our downfall, they said.



Going forward, it is only natural and fair that we get a party stalwart who is neutral and yet committed to the ideals of our party and in line with President Nana Akufo-Addos vision of ensuring development and prosperity for all Ghanaians through free education, according to them.

Source: Peacefmonline.com









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The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, one of the worlds leading non-fiction cinema events, has revamped its program structure, with two main competition sections at its center. The festival said the move was intended to respond to a historic transformation in documentary filmmaking.

As well as introducing the International Competition and the Envision Competition sections, the fest has brought in a slew of new awards that celebrate the art of documentary filmmaking. Submissions are now open for the 34th edition of IDFA, which runs Nov. 17-28.

The International Competition presents around 15 world, international, or European premieres of films that are more than 60 minutes in length. In a statement, the festival said: Artistically confident, well-rounded, and universally relevant films form the backbone of this competition, showcasing the work of filmmakers who have mastered all the sophistication and refinement of documentary cinema  the best of the art.

The Envision Competition presents about 15 world, international, or European premieres of films that are more than 40 minutes in length. With stylistic integrity and courage, films in this competition boldly seek their own cinematic language, traversing our current reality to propose visions of a documentary art form to come, the festival said.

Orwa Nyrabia, IDFAs artistic director, said: Documentary film is going through a phase of historical transformation. New waves of filmmakers are continuously challenging the art form, investigating its limits, and sharpening its edges as they search for artistic liberty. IDFA is changing along with documentary film, moving into a new program structure that departs from its solid and proven past into a more flexible curatorial vision that is open to experimentation.

He added: We are adopting an open structure for an era of transformation  a structure that is carefully crafted to resonate with the documentary visions of the worlds filmmakers while creating equally important space for all the artistic diversity of the documentary art form.

Both competitions include a main juried award for best film in addition to other awards that acknowledge the craft and innovation of documentary filmmaking.

In addition, IDFA has introduced two awards that draw on films playing in different sections: films in the main competition sections, Luminous, and Frontlight can be nominated for Best First Feature, and films in all program sections can be nominated for Best Dutch Film.

In lieu of their respective competitions, the festival now will select Dutch, mid-length, student, and debut feature films for sections across the whole program, taking into consideration only the films artistic contributions. IDFAs competitions for shorts and youth films will remain unchanged.

The festivals new media strand, IDFA DocLab, celebrates its 15th edition this year, and is taking its anniversary as a point of departure to explore how the field has evolved across immersive art, digital art, and interdisciplinary installations and performances. The new DocLab competitions presented this year will reflect these developments in the field in tandem with a focus on artistic excellence, the festival said.

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Census delay spells election chaos for states

The months-long delay in tallying last years census is wreaking havoc on the states with elections this year and next.

The stakes are high in states with fast-changing populations: In states that are becoming more diverse, Democrats are eager to wield increased statehouse clout and advance agendas such as expanding voting rights and moving away from mass incarceration. Republicans hanging on to control in swing states want to draw new legislative and congressional district lines to retain endangered suburban districts by extending them into rural areas where conservative sentiment is still strong.

States and cities depend on detailed population totals to draw the new districts that determine representation in Congress, statehouses and local offices.

Normally, those numbers from the 2020 census would have come out in March, but now theyre delayed until August or September because of pandemic setbacks.

Two states, New Jersey and Virginia, already have decided to hold elections using the old districts drawn after 2010, a move that deprives growing and changing areas of the representation they deserve. Twenty-five states have laws, some enshrined in their constitutions, requiring new districts this yeara difficult feat if tallies dont come out until the fall or winter.

Some states have turned to courtsAlabama and Ohio tried to stop census delays, and Oregon is asking courts to allow a delay in redrawing districts despite state law. Idaho and Oklahoma are among those turning to alternative data to get the job done on time, a move Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts and Washington also are weighing.

Alabama is considering a law delaying 2022 primaries because of the late data and a Texas bill would give the governor the power to postpone next years primaries if time runs short. And in North Carolina, some cities are waiting for state permission to either delay elections or use old districts for city council elections this year.

Many states have primaries next spring for November 2022 elections. With timetables cut short by months, theres little time for legislature or commission debates and public input even as candidates look for support in yet-unspecified districts.

Its just going to be a mess, said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

When states carry out elections using outdated districts, fast-growing areas that may be becoming more racially and ethnically diverse can be politically underrepresented.



In New Jersey, progressive groups clashed with the Democratic Partys decision to use a constitutional amendment approved by voters in November to delay redistricting until after this years state elections. The states largest growth in the past decade, about 38,000 people, has been in Hudson County, where Hispanic and other immigrants predominate.

New Jersey is much more diverse than it was 10 years ago, so this is delaying representation for communities of color, said Henal Patel, a director of the progressive New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, adding that it deprives her organization of support for programs it advocates, such as voting and housing rights.

We advocate for racial justice, so this will delay our agenda. Its about power, Patel added.

Red states also may be disadvantaged in elections with old districts, Jillson said. Thats because districts that seemed safely Republican when drawn in 2011 may have slipped away as the states population diversified over the decade.

Republicans want to redistrict as soon as they can in swing states like Arizona and Florida as well as Texas, to buttress their majorities in places where it has deteriorated, by adding in some more rural areas, Jillson said.

A clear example, he said, are suburban areas such as the 24th Congressional District between Dallas and Fort Worth, where Republican Rep. Beth Van Duyne won by just over 1 percentage point last year.

Virginia also has opted to run state elections this year without new lines. New districts may be available before November, but not in time to prepare for elections.

The idea of using alternative data, such as Census Bureau estimates of population and race, is inherently flawed because such proxies are not based on actual counts like the delayed data, and they dont go into the fine-grained detail usually required by redistricting. The delayed data, called P.L. 94-171 after the 1975 law that created it, includes population down to the level of city blocks, allowing almost infinite variations on district lines.

I dont think anybody in these states would call these good alternatives, but theyre trying to do the best they can, given the pickle the Census Bureau has put them in with late data, said Benjamin Williams, an elections and redistricting policy specialist at the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Three states considering alternative data, Idaho, Oklahoma and Oregon, all have backup plans if the legislature cant finish the districts on time. Oregons secretary of state would draw the lines, and commissions would do so in Idaho and Oklahoma, Williams said.
NIQUAN is a newcomer to the local energy landscape and the first Gas-to-Liquids (GTL) plant in the Western Hemisphere.

It is the vision of its founder Ainsley Gill, who bought the incomplete and abandoned Gas-to-Liquids (GTL) plant from Petrotrin (now Trinidad Petroleum Holdings Limited (TPHL) for US$35 million after it was relegated to scrap iron.
The regions newest Wawa store is set to open Thursday in Emmaus.

The 5,500-square-foot store is at 201 S. Cedar Crest Boulevard. The grand opening is expected to have some fanfare with an outdoor ribbon-cutting ceremony planned at 7:30 a.m. It will feature Very Important Patrons, area officials, and charity partners, as well as recognition of the Emmaus Police Department, Emmaus Fire Dept, and Emmaus and Ambulance Corps. The emergency services groups will receive signature Hoagies for Heroes donated lunch items, as well as $1,000 to each departments charity of choice.

To express local support of Emmaus High School, Wawa mascot Wally Goose will present The Hornet mascot with an oversized $500 check in support the Schools Angel Network, which offers basic assistance to students in need.

Doors to the new Wawa officially open to the public at 8 a.m.

The Emmaus location also offers all-new menu items, including burgers, which officially launched across 900 stores this past February. The store includes curbside delivery and regular delivery services as well a mobile ordering.

Wawa is known for its hot and cold sandwiches and hoagies; kids meals; pasta options; and ready-and-eat items, as well as various coffee, tea, and espresso beverages. Theres also a large variety of soups, salads, and side items. Plans for the Emmaus location also include six gas pumps with 50 parking spaces, according to a Wawa spokeswoman.

The Emmaus store plans to have a total of 40 employees led by general manager, Jessica Reger. Chris Gheysens, president and CEO, of Wawa, said in a statement he looks forward to meeting new faces in the Emmaus community.

As new stores open throughout the year, we will continue to bring not just a new Wawa to the community but a commitment to safety and growth, he added.

The Emmaus location is the third Pennsylvania store constructed in 2021 for Wawa. The Morrisville, Bucks County site became the chains first standalone drive-thru store; and the other newly-constructed site is in Doylestown, Bucks County. Three additional Wawa stores were built in Eatontown, Cranford and Randolph, New Jersey in 2021.

The Delaware County-based chain opened its first store in April 1964 in Folsom, Pa. The chain today has more than 650 stores throughout the mid-Atlantic region of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia and Washington D.C. as well as 210 more locations in Florida. There are more than a dozen regional locations.

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Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com.
New Delhi, April 7 : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is planning to make vaccination against Covid-19 a grand success story. For this, the party is going to launch a mass campaign like last year when it provided relief packets to millions of distressed people when a nationwide lockdown was imposed to contain the pandemic. The party is targeting 50 lakh vaccinations per day, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party President J.P. Nadda asked party leaders to make it a mass movement.

Party's Rajya Sabha member Anil Jain has set up a team to make the campaign a grand success. Jain, a doctor himself, is currently overseeing the vaccination drive in 31 states and Union Territories including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan. This mass vaccination campaign will be launched after the present election process in five states gets over.

Jain told IANS that the party is helping general public get the vaccine by setting up help desks at 57,000 locations including 20,000 government vaccine centres.

"People are being informed about the Covid-19 vaccines at help desks set up at five to six places in each division. In each state, several teams of conveners, co-conveners have been constituted from district and block level to the state level to oversee the drive." Jain hopes that everyone will get the first dose of the vaccine at least by the next three months i.e. July. He said currently people above 45 years of age are getting inoculated. Later, all above 18 years of age with comorbidities will get the vaccine. Then, people above the age of 35 are likely to be vaccinated. In the next phase, all types of people over the age of 18 will be given a chance to get vaccinated. Thus, by July, everyone over the age of 18 is expected to get a jab.

Jain gets the daily report on the progress of vaccination in all states -- from state conveners, MPs, MLAs, and volunteers. He holds meetings at regular intervals via video conferencing. So far he has held video meets with teams from 22 states.

The BJP will also carry out vaccination campaigns in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and Puducherry when the election process is over. The BJP has directed all its MPs and MLAs to urge and motivate the public to come to the vaccination centres. He has also asked the cadres to help remove the fear about the vaccines from the minds of the people.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
JK Lakshmi Cements new television commercial is aimed at taking the current brand positioning of India, Ab Soch Karo Buland a notch higher. The traditional cement brand is reinventing itself to build stronger resonance with Indias younger demographic. The campaign has been well-received, garnering close to 4 million views on YouTube. The Buland Soch of the four protagonists - Engineer, Mason, Young Girl (end user) and Dealer (all customer segments) are represented by a cement block made of JK Lakshmi Cement. While the other weaker block symbolizes the ordinary thoughts that are currently holding back our society.

The message of Aa Strength Dikha, lies in the clash between the ordinary and the Buland, represented by the two cement blocks. And here we showcase how each time, the latter emerges unbroken and victorious. It is this same progressive attitude that forms the core of JK Lakshmi Cement. While the clash of cement blocks illustrates the core product benefit of Strength in a dramatic way.

The brand believes, that post covid, it is of utmost importance to spread positivity, boost action and mobilize the market. Cement being a low involvement category, the brand is finding newer ways to break the clutter, reach out and build affinity with the changing consumer demographics.

The campaign objective is to connect with house builders of today, who are younger than before. This ad film brings into light all kinds of people, their efforts and expertise that goes into building a single house. This also serves as an analogy to how all of us together can help build a better and stronger India.

JK Lakshmi Cement is happy to see how the ad has taken social media by storm with millions of views on YouTube, and a successful television campaign. The song individually is also doing very well across various audio platforms.

Aseem Saxena, GM Marketing, JK Lakshmi Cement said, The key highlight of this campaign is to showcase the superior strength of JK Lakshmi Cement and also to establish that nothing is beyond reach with Buland Soch. The characters in this film serve to break the prevalent societal stereotypes like gender description and inequality. The film transcends the space of transactional communication and drives the true essence of Aa Strength Dikha mantra. The treatment of the film is also very clutter breaking and the rap style song is an attempt to connect to younger set of consumers.

According to Vishal Ahuja, Founder and Business Head, Aagneya Advertising #AaStrengthDikha is not just a commercial. It is a campaign with TTL approach, targeting a mindset change for all our key stakeholders from our end consumers, dealers, to the internal team at the client side. With the Consumer/Independent House Builder of today getting younger, from 60 years to now 45 years, it very important for a cement brand to rethink and retarget. With a sound and focused strategy in the brands lifecycle, #AaStrengthDikha captures the brands values, leadership stance and social intent. We are hoping to bring in desired results for the company through this campaign.
China urges Philippines to stop South China Sea allegations

Xinhua) 09:19, April 07, 2021

Aerial photo taken on July 13, 2020 shows an expedition vessel in the South China Sea. (Xinhua/Zhang Liyun)

BEIJING, April 6 (Xinhua) -- China urges the Philippines to stop baseless allegations on the South China Sea issue, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Monday.

It was reported that Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana urged the Chinese vessels that are still around the Niu'e Reef to leave early. Philippine Foreign Ministry also said that, based on the South China Sea arbitration and so-called award, the Philippines denies that the Niu'e Reef and its adjacent waters are traditional fishing grounds for Chinese fishermen.

In response, spokesperson Zhao Lijian said the Niu'e Reef is part of China's Nansha Islands and provides shelter from the wind for Chinese fishing boats traditionally. So it is normal for Chinese fishing ships to shelter near the reef from rough sea conditions.

He noted that the award from the South China Sea Arbitration Tribunal is illegal and invalid. He said China does not accept or recognize it and firmly opposes any claims and actions based on the award. China's sovereignty, rights and interests in the South China Sea conform to international law.

He said the Philippines attempted to use an illegal and invalid ruling to deny this sovereignty and rights in the South China Sea. It violated the United Nations Charter and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

It is hoped that the Philippines will take an objective and correct view and immediately stop baseless allegations to avoid negative impacts on bilateral relations and peace and stability in the South China Sea, Zhao said.

(Web editor: Guo Wenrui, Bianji)
Click here to read the full article.

Two CBS veterans, Peter Dunn and David Friend, are leaving their top roles at CBS local-stations division as an investigation continues into allegations they were abusive to women and employees of color.

Peter Dunn, President of the CBS Television Stations, and David Friend, Senior Vice President of News for the Stations group, will not return to their positions and will be leaving the Company. On an interim basis, Bryon Rubin will continue to run the Stations group while Kim Godwin will continue her oversight of Stations news operations until new leadership is in place, CBS said in a statement Wednesday.

Both men, who have spent years running CBS owned-and-operated stations, were placed on administrative leave in January following a Los Angeles Times report that examined their behavior toward women and people of color employed by individual outlets.

In a memo to staffers, George Cheeks, chief executive of ViacomCBS CBS operations said the companys probe continues. I want to be very clear that the external investigation under the direction of Keisha-Ann Gray at Proskauer Rose is not over and will continue, he wrote. We appreciate those who have already provided information to the investigators. If you would like to share something you believe is relevant, please contact Ms. Gray directly via her assistant, Gayathri Menon. We want all voices to be heard. This entire process, while sometimes painful and emotional, is an important step forward in living up to our promise of a safe, inclusive, respectful and equitable workplace for all of us.

The Times report, based on interviews with female employees at CBS local stations, alleged that Dunn and Friend cultivated a hostile work environment that included bullying female managers and blocking efforts to hire and retain Black journalists. The National Association of Black Journalists at the time said some of its officers had met with CBS executives to discuss what the organization called a massive problem among CBS owned-and-operated stations.

Among the allegations were claims that Dunn used the word jive to describe the work of Philadelphia anchor Ukee Washington, and used phrases that described the journalist as dancing on air, and that Friend used inappropriate behavior in the workplace.

The issues raised are sensitive ones for CBS, which, prior to its late-2019 merger with Viacom, grappled with issues of how its employees were treated. The former chairman of CBS, Leslie Moonves, was ousted from the company in 2018 after being accused of sexual misconduct. He denied the allegations. Claims of inappropriate behavior and treatment were also raised at CBS News, which ousted former CBS This Morning co-anchor Charlie Rose in the fall of 2017 after allegations of sexual harassment were raised. Rose denied the claims.

The former CBS Corp. in August of 2018 hired two law firms to investigate the claims made against Moonves as well as other allegations about the companys culture. The CBS board of directors said in a statement that the firms investigation concluded that harassment and retaliation are not pervasive at CBS.

Dunn is a veteran TV executive who had been with CBS since 2002. He initially oversaw Philadelphia CBS outlets KYW and WPSG before moving to supervise the companys flagship New York outlet, WCBS and becoming president of sales for the local stations. Friend joined CBS in 2006. Both executives served in senior capacities at NBCUniversal in prior roles, with Friend supervising business-news programming at CNBC.

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Britain experienced another bone-chilling day today after temperatures plunged on the third sub-zero morning in a row and further snow fell in Scotland as freezing winds sweep in from the Arctic.

The Oxfordshire village of Benson recorded its coldest April morning for 25 years as the mercury dropped to -7.5C (18.5F) - a remarkably cold temperature for the time of year, which also brought with it a widespread frost.

The Met Office had a snow warning in place for Scotland until this morning as the chilly weather continued to set a jarring contrast from the warm conditions last week that brought the UK's hottest March day in 53 years.

The topsy-turvy weather comes as Arctic maritime air sweeps south across the UK, replacing the hot conditions which had been caused by an area of high pressure over continental Europe pushing warm air north from Spain.

The chill will continue into next week - suggesting drinkers will have to wrap up warm for the return of al fresco dining on April 12 - with highs in London not expected to get above 12C (54F) for at least another eight days.

Walkers out and about on a frosty morning at Clayfield Copse in Berkshire today, where the temperature was well below zero

Arctic maritime air has swept south across the UK (left), replacing the hot conditions which had been caused by an area of high pressure over continental Europe pushing warm air north from Spain last week (left)

Rough seas looking towards St Mary's Lighthouse at Whitley Bay in Tyne and Wear are pictured today

Deer are seen in freezing conditions at dawn at Bushy Park in South West London this morning in a spectacular natural scene

A woman walks her dog past beach huts at Blyth beach in Northumberland in the cold this morning

The very cold air first moved in from the north west on Easter Sunday, bringing snow showers and freezing overnight temperatures that have remained over much of Britain so far this week.

Snow in western parts of Scotland will turn into rain tonight before a slightly milder pool of air moves in then disappears as another cold front arrives, 'bringing another pool of Arctic air through Friday and into the weekend'.

Yesterday, any showers were largely of the white variety as the early April cold snap continued. Many parts of the country saw sporadic snow, sleet or hail showers on another cold and blustery day.

Snow combined with winds whipping up waves produced dramatic scenes on beaches in Norfolk, while in Wales the white stuff caused treacherous driving conditions and even the spring lambs looked miserable.

With pubs and restaurants opening outdoors on Monday, anyone planning an al fresco dining experience will be advised to wrap up warm as conditions will be no better than average next week.

Joggers exercise near Tower Bridge in London today as the capital wakes up to another cold but sunny morning

A walker strolls around a frozen field in Dunsden, Oxfordshire, today as the warm weather last week is now a distant memory

Clouds above the Houses of Parliament in Westminster today as London experienced sub-zero temperatures overnight

A dog walker strolls down a lane on a sunny yet cold and frosty morning in the countryside at Dunsden in Oxfordshire today

Frost covers the fields in Dunsden, Oxfordshire,today on the third sub-zero morning in a row which has seen snow in Scotland

Met Office spokesman Marco Petagna said: For the next two or three weeks theres no sign of any really warm weather. Its likely to be fairly unsettled and temperatures will be around average for the time of year.

Widespread frost and sub-zero conditions across England, Scotland and Wales led to another cold start for most yesterday morning.

The mercury plunged to -4.2C in Eskdalemuir, Dumfries and Galloway, while a low of -4.1C (24.6F) was recorded at Winchcombe Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire.

There was heavy snow in northern Scotland and in the Welsh mountains and the Met Office warned of gale force winds in the far north of Scotland reaching 75mph.

Everywhere saw blustery conditions, although for many the sun was more visible than the snow.
Burma Myanmar Junta Accused of Extra-Judicial Executions and Human Rights Abuses

Riot police intimidate a pregnant woman in Yangons Mayangone Township during a crackdown on anti-military regime protesters in February. / The Irrawaddy

The committee representing elected lawmakers from the ousted National League for Democracy (NLD) government has received 180,000 items of evidence detailing extra-judicial executions and the widespread use of lethal force on peaceful protesters by the Myanmar military regime since their Feb.1 coup.

In the statement the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH) said that the evidence reveals wide-ranging human rights abuses by the junta, including more than 540 extra-judicial executions, over 10 deaths in custody of political prisoners and the torture of prisoners.

Moreover, the CPRH said the evidence shows also that the military regime has employed the widespread use of deadly force towards peaceful protesters. Other disproportionate responses towards the anti-coup protests include breach of the right to peaceful assembly, widespread illegal detentions, the targeting of media companies and the arrest of journalists and photographers, as well as restricting access to the internet and other actions to limit free speech on the internet.

On Wednesday, legal representatives from the CRPH are set to meet with the head of the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM), a United Nations body with the mandate to collect, preserve and analyze evidence of serious international crimes and violations of international law committed in Myanmar since 2011. It also has a mandate to prepare files in order to facilitate and expedite fair and independent criminal proceedings, in national, regional or international courts or tribunals.

The CRPH has hired London-based international law firm Volterra Fietta as a legal representative. The firm will advise on international legal proceedings against those responsible for violently cracking down on pro-democracy protesters and armed aggression against democratic representatives.

Volterra Fietta specializes in international law and has experience at the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court and other global courts.

In the statement, the CRPH said that their representatives will meet the IIMM to discuss cooperation relating to the atrocities committed by the military since its takeover.

As of Tuesday, at least 581 civilians including 43 children have been killed by the regimes forces during the crackdown on peaceful protesters across Myanmar, according to the Assistance Association of Political Prisoners (AAPP). The death toll had risen to 587 on Wednesday morning, following a series of armed attacks by the regimes security forces in several townships around the country on Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning.

Several people, including three NLD members, have been tortured and killed while in custody. At least 2,750 people have been detained by the military since the coup, including politicians, activists, protesters and journalists.

In early March, Amnesty International said that the military has been using battle tactics against peaceful anti-coup protesters and bystanders. Its evidence lab confirmed that the security forces appeared to be implementing planned, systematic strategies, including the ramped-up use of lethal force. Many of the killings documented amount to extrajudicial executions, Amnesty said.

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Allison Janney recently revealed that she is happy with her personal life just the way it currently is.

The 61-year-old Oscar-winning actress appeared on Tuesday's episode of The Drew Barrymore Show and spoke about how she was happy about focusing on her career and not on raising children with a significant other.

The talk show's host broached the conversation by noting that she was single herself and asked if the I, Tonya actress was in the same situation.

No rush: Allison Janney revealed that she was fine with staying single and not having children during an appearance on Tuesday's episode of The Drew Barrymore Show

Janney shared she is single at the moment and expressed that she would have been interested in starting a family if she had met an ideal significant other.

'I think if I'd found the right guy at the right time and wanted to have kids, I probably would have with the right partner,' she said.

The American Beauty actress then noted that she had previously decided that becoming a mother would mean taking on a new set of responsibilities and that she did not want to do something that she was not wholly committed to.

She remarked, 'I wasn't ever really confident that I wanted to have kids, and I would rather regret not having kids than have kids and regret it.'

What could have been: The Mom star noted that she would have been open to starting a family if she had met the 'right guy at the right time'

Priorities: The actress doubled down on her initial statement and told the show's host that 'I would rather regret not having kids than have kids and regret it'

Janney concluded that she was happy with her personal life and that, although she was keeping her options open about her future, she was content with staying single.

'I really am at this time in my life getting to know who I am and what I want. So I'd love to eventually find someone to share my life with, but if it doesn't happen, I think I'll be just fine,' she expressed.

The Mom star then lightheartedly related that she had ben 'virtually dating' over the past few months and asked Barrymore if she had a 'virtual crush' on anyone.

The actress was previously romantically linked to computer programmer Dennis Gagomiros, although the two broke up in 2001.

Significant other: Janney previously dated Richard Jenik, with whom she appeared in the 2005 film Our Very Own; the former couple is pictured in 2006

She went on to date fellow actor Richard Jenik; the two met on the set of the 2005 drama film Our Very Own, which they both appeared in.

The former pair became engaged in 2004 but ended up separating two years later.

Janney eventually met production designer Philip Joncas while working on the 2013 feature The Way, Way Back, and they began dating shortly after filming ended.

Although the two went steady for several years, they ended their relationship in 2017.
Former Philippine presidents Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Joseph Estrada talk during the change of command ceremony for the new Armed Forces chief at a military camp in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Dec. 7, 2016.

Former Philippine leader Joseph Estrada, who was ousted by a church-backed revolt over corruption, was placed on a ventilator at a hospital after testing positive for COVID-19, his family said Wednesday.

The 83-year-old ex-president and movie star, who won the office by a landslide in 1998 on the back of a populist platform - only to be removed from power three years later - was rushed to a hospital last week and has since been intubated, his family said. In a Facebook statement on Wednesday, family members said they are praying that no new complications set in.

His kidney function is improving and his requirement for oxygen support is also slowly getting better. His other vital organs are functioning well, the statement said.

We were informed by his physicians that the inflammatory markers are on a downward trend for which we are thankful and hopefully this signals that his immune system is responding well.

Also on Wednesday, President Rodrigo Duterte canceled his weekly address as COVID-19 cases among members of his security detail increased. A day earlier, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana announced he had tested positive for the coronavirus, and abruptly canceled a news conference on the South China Sea.

Estradas son, former Sen. J.V. Ejercito, issued a post on Twitter appealing for privacy.

Cant believe while we are monitoring my dad who is currently fighting for his life that there are a very handful of haters still wishing bad things or sowing hate, he said, without elaborating or naming the hospital.

Estrada parlayed his popularity as an action film star to a career in politics even though his six-year term as president was cut short. An impeachment trial, which ran from December 2000 to January 2001, ended after the Senate dominated by Estradas allies voted to keep out a key piece of evidence against him.

He consistently denied the charges against him, triggering protests that forced him to leave the presidential palace in 2001. Authorities later arrested and charged him with graft.

In 2007, a court convicted Estrada of plunder, but he was pardoned by his successor, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. After losing the race for president in 2010, he was elected mayor of Manila, a post he held from 2013 to 2019.

Duterte cancels appearance

Duterte, meanwhile, canceled his weekly public appearance in light of the rising number of COVID-19 cases, spokesman Harry Roque said.

The physical safety of the president remains our utmost concern, Roque said, adding that an address would entail a complement of support staff. We also take due consideration of their well-being.

In a statement on state television, Presidential Security Group chief Brig. Gen. Jesus Durante reported 45 active COVID-19 cases among members the group, adding those infected were not in close contact with Duterte.

We will minimize all possible exposure that may jeopardize our presidents safety, he said.

In 2018, Duterte announced that he had undergone a colonoscopy. In addition, he said his doctors notified him that he had Barretts esophagus, a condition marked by an abnormality in the lining of the lower esophagus. Duterte also suffers from Buergers disease, which leads to pain caused by blood vessels constricting in the arms and legs.

Workers load boxes of Sinovac vaccine into a refrigerated van at the Laguindingan Airport in the southern Philippine city of Cagayan de Oro, April 7, 2021. [Froilan Gallardo/BenarNews]

The number of COVID-19 infections in the Philippines has been growing in recent days, leaving many health care facilities overwhelmed. Over the past two days, as many as 624 people have died from the coronavirus while nearly 63,000 infections have been logged since Friday, the health department said.

On Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) spoke out about the nations health care capacity.

We are concerned about the situation in the Philippines, Dr. Takeshi Kasai, the regional director for the Western Pacific of WHO, said in an online forum. We are concerned because the surge is really continuing and moving the so-called red line  the number of cases (that) exceed the capacity of health care.

Lockdown violations

In an effort to control the spread of COVID-19, the government has placed Metro Manila and nearby provinces under lockdown until April 11, meaning night-time curfews have been imposed for about 24 million people.

Filipinos, particularly in impoverished areas in suburbs around Manila, have been violating the lockdown rules in search of food.

The treatment of one man, Darren Penaredondo, 28, sparked social media outrage after he allegedly was forced by police last week to do hundreds of squats over a curfew violation. His family alleges the punishment contributed to his death the following day.

His family said Penaredondo, of General Trias, a city south of Manila, set out to buy drinking water when police stopped him.

Officers took Penaredondo to a police station and allegedly forced him and other detainees to do 100 pumping exercises or squats before forcing them to repeat the exercises.

Since then, a video showing Penaredondo failing to go up three steps on a ladder after returning home has gone viral on social media.

On Wednesday, national police spokesman Brig. Gen. Ildebrandi Usana confirmed that two officers and the town police chief had been sacked, adding an investigation has been ordered.

The move was to assure that the PNP does not tolerate any act that is harmful to the best interest of our people, Usana said in a statement.

The incident was not the first time that quarantine violators allegedly suffered harsh treatment. Last year, men were placed in dog cages and children were stuffed in coffins for violating COVID-19 restrictions imposed by the government, according to rights groups.

New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has denounced the governments punitive measures to address the pandemic.

Locking up people for violating emergency measures such as curfews and quarantine rules may actually increase disease transmission if people are placed in close proximity to one another in detention facilities, HRW said in an April 2020 news release on its website.

Marielle Lucenio and Basilio Sepe in Manila, contributed to this report.
The Top TV picks for Wednesday 7 April.

Following Sabine Schmitz's sad death at the age of 51 last month, Top Gear are airing a special tribute in honour of her this evening.

The show's previous presenters, including Jeremy Clarkson, and the current line-up all remember the racing driver.

Tonight sees Paul O'Grady's For the Love of Dogs return tonight too, along with Location, Location, Location.

Read more: GMB viewers spot 'big cat' in bushes behind Andi Peters

Meanwhile, four people claim to be a woman named Gemma over on This Is My House.

Top Gear - 7.30pm - BBC One

Top Gear is airing a tribute for the late Sabine Schmitz. (PA)

Late Top Gear star and racing driver Sabine Schmitz is remembered by hosts past and present in a special tribute episode.

The current line-up of Freddie Flintoff, Chris Harris, and Paddy McGuinness are joined by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, James May, Matt LeBlanc and Rory Reid as they recall their fondest memories of Queen of the Nurburgring.

Watch: Kelly Osbourne, Elli Goulding, Stephen Fry and other celebs arrive for LGBT awards

Paul O'Grady: For the Love of Dogs - 8pm - ITV

Paul O'Grady with 18-month-old Jenny the timid Rottweiler. (Paul Gray/ITV)

Paul O'Grady is back at Battersea Dogs and Cats Home for a new five-part series.

Read more: Eamonn Holmes reveals he's to become a grandad

The first episode of the ninth season sees the presenter meet two Maltese Terrier puppies staff suspect may have come from a puppy farm in Romania.

He also crosses paths with a three-month-old Spaniel-cross covered in mites, with staff believing he too may be a result of puppy farming. Meanwhile, he's hoping to win over the trust of an 18-month-old Rottweiler named Jenny who's wary of strangers.

Location, Location, Location - 8pm - Channel 4

Phil and Kirstie present Location Location Location (Channel 4)

Kirstie Allsopp and Phil Spencer are back and off to the East Midlands with two sets of prospective property buyers.

Lloyd and Karina are first time buyers who are hoping to stay close to Lloyd's parents while being near to transport links to London.

Meanwhile, older couple Helen and Richard want to get out of rented accommodation.

Story continues

This Is My House - 9pm - BBC One

Stacey Dooley fronts another episode of This Is My House. (BBC/Expectation Entertainment)

This Is My House's celebrity panellists got a shock last week when one of the possible homeowners was an actor who had also appeared in the first episode.

Read more: Neighbours actor Shareena Clanton alleges racism on set

He wasn't the owner of the second house either and luckily for the famous guessers he's nowhere in sight this week as it's the battle of the Gemmas.

Four women all claim to be Surrey-based Gemma who lives in a colourful home with her partner Pete and her two children - but who is the real McCoy?

When Nudes Are Stolen - 10.45pm - BBC One

Jess Davies presents When Nudes are Stolen. (BBC)

Former glamour model Jess Davies looks into the dark trade of nude and topless images on online forums.

With people using her own image as part of scams for years, the presenter finally gets to the bottom of why this happens and examines the broader online culture of people sharing and trading others' intimate snaps.

Watch: Sabine Schmitz dies aged 51 after cancer battle
After being postponed in March because of the pandemic, the Houston Chronicle Best Dressed Luncheon and Neiman Marcus Fashion Presentation is back on. The event will be held on Wednesday, Sept. 22, at the Westin Galleria, 5060 W. Alabama.

The event honors 10 women for their style and philanthropy in the community. Since its inception 39 years ago, the Best Dressed luncheon has raised $11 million for the March of Dimes, which works to improve the health of babies by preventing premature births, infant mortality and birth defects. Co-chairs Brigitte Kalai and Alicia Smith are currently fund-raising for this years luncheon bold goal to improve the lives of moms and babies.
Ghislaine Maxwell appears via video link during her arraignment hearing where she was denied bail for her role aiding Jeffrey Epstein to recruit and eventually abuse of minor girls, in Manhattan Federal Court, in the Manhattan borough of New York City on July 14, 2020. (Jane Rosenberg/Reuters)

Ghislaine Maxwell Prosecutors Have Disclosed Almost 3 Million Pages of Evidence

U.S. prosecutors have produced nearly 3 million pages of evidence in the case against Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, they disclosed in a new court filing.

As the Court is aware, the Government has produced to the defendant more than 2.7 million pages of discovery pursuant to the Governments various discovery obligations, U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss wrote in a letter to the judge overseeing the case.

The number is an increase of 1.5 million pages since November 2020.

Defendants then complained that the voluminous discovery was too much for Maxwell to review in the time that she was accorded in prison.

The new revelation was part of a challenge to an application from Maxwells lawyers requesting a subpoena for records from the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner (BSF), which represents women who were allegedly victimized by the accused sex abuser.

U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan, an Obama nominee, said last month that the subpoena request is being kept shielded from the public on the ground that it reveals defense strategy.

She said Boies should provide notice to the alleged victims about the proposed subpoena and told the law firm that it could file an objection to the proposal.

Sigrid McCawley, on behalf of the firm, told the judge that the proposed subpoena appears to seek personal and confidential information about all of the Epstein victims that BSF represents. She also argued that the subpoena failed to meet statutory requirements, describing it as overbroad and non-specific, and a clear fishing expedition to see what may turn up.'

Strauss in the April 6 letter said the defendant is seeking a subpoena that appears to directly implicate the Governments interests by expressly and improperly seeking broad categories of victim information and communications with the Government.

While prosecutors have not seen the subpoena, it also appears that the subpoena constitutes a fishing expedition for potential impeachment material, which plainly runs afoul of the Nixon test, she added, citing McCawleys filing.

In one example, Maxwell wants to see the original, complete copy of an alleged victims diary.

The subpoena should be entered into the public docket and, if information needs to be shielded, redactions can be made, prosecutors asserted.

Nathan previously agreed to allow some redactions, ruling that certain information was too sensitive or confidential.

Maxwell is being held in federal jail in New York City. Epsteins ex-girlfriend was charged last year with enticing a minor to travel to engage in criminal sexual activity, transporting a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, conspiracy to commit both of those offenses, and perjury in connection with a sworn deposition.

Prosecutors expanded the case late last month, adding new sex trafficking charges.

Maxwell, who has pleaded not guilty, is slated to go on trial in July.


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One of Linux's greatest and most distinguishing traits is its adaptability. Compare how it started and how it's going, and you'll see what I mean.

Linux began its life as a humble experiment in Unix porting, but from there it quickly became a popular kernel for server OSes due to its low cost ("free" is pretty low) and customizability. From there it morphed to power network appliances (think routers) and Android, proving it was lean enough for a whole gamut of embedded systems.

It's easy to forget that Linux's proliferation to every class of computing device has not concluded its evolution. With that in mind, I want to take a moment to not only catch up with its changes, but to potentially get ahead of them.

Don't take this as gospel truth, though. This is just me expanding on an intuition I had while studying technology trends. Plus, the beginning of the year has me, like many people, in a prognosticatory mood.

The Penguin and The Man

As a Linux desktop user, I'm not always consciously aware of this, but it's true nonetheless: Large tech companies are the strongest hand on the helm of the good ship Linux. It's no accident that some of the biggest tech players -- including Microsoft, Google, and Amazon -- are among the biggest Linux Foundation donors.

This makes sense, since some of these companies' most profitable products and services are completely dependent on Linux to operate. For example, what would Android be without Linux?

But that dependent status works both ways -- because the Linux developers don't charge for their hard work, they need donation dollars to pay the bills after banging out kernel code all day. There's an implicit incentive, then, for the Linux kernel devs to prioritize addressing the interests of their donors.

Slowly, this skews the Linux kernel in the direction that business needs dictate. This isn't a value judgment, just a characterization of reality; and in the grand scheme of things, it's certainly a preferable reality to one without money for Linux development.

Linux Is Many Things, IoT Will Be Most of Them

A few days ago, it hit me that the future of Linux is the Internet of Things (IoT). To briefly define this category of devices, IoT is a class of embedded headless devices designed to be Internet-connected appliances. Consumer tech fans will best know IoT as home gizmos like smart assistant devices (e.g. Amazon Echo), home security cameras, and the like.

However, IoT devices are significantly more prevalent in the private sector. When a single new manufacturing plant comes online, for instance, its owner might install thousands of network-connected sensors. These then blast all their data back to company HQ for big data analysis.

While there are several reasons why I foresee IoT as the primary sustainer of Linux development, the main one is that IoT is the most varied device type today. Sure, there are lots of network appliances and servers out there. But with the plethora of IoT products available today, there's no contest anymore. As new networked gadgets emerge constantly, IoT shows no sign of slowing down. In short, this means there will be a constant stream of new kernel modules that need writing.

There's more to IoT's looming influence over Linux development than the exploding number of new devices, though. Just as importantly, IoT is the most sorely in need of more secure development. The security of IoT devices on the whole has been abysmal for years, as I have covered in the past.

To recap, what tends to cause problems is that, beyond users seldom (if ever) logging in to them to check logs and software updates, IoT devices are often made by companies with little software development experience. Manufacturers of traditional analog products that are now sprinting toward the IoT gold rush haven't learned the hard lessons of writing an operating system that the veteran developers have. Quite simply, IoT will garner most Linux developers' attention because it will demand the most work to get on par with Android phones, Linux desktops, and Linux servers in terms of security.

But it's not just that IoT's star is rising. The Linux constellation's other stars are setting. This, I think, will be most dramatic in Linux's historically competitive server showing. Born as a pet project, Linux had a modest following until it caught the eye of for-profit companies because of its capable server computing. To this day, an enormous percentage of all servers run Linux.

To be more specific, it's not that Linux is going anywhere on the server, but it may soon be beyond recognition. The new trend of "serverless" computing, if it continues its sharp ascent, may send Linux's bare-metal server deployment share into decline. As cloud migration starts to slow, cloud service vendors like Amazon Web Services must compete more aggressively with rivals. An emerging tactic for doing so is by offering ever more convenient deployment options, and serverless computing is among the latest of these.

Server Distro Consolidation

In a serverless model, the cloud vendor abstracts server deployment and maintenance away from the customer, leaving only the application and database configuration for them to worry about. Why would you risk your server misconfiguration throwing a wrench into your plan when you could run disembodied application code?

Of course, serverless doesn't really make the server disappear. Rather, the Web app creator just doesn't have to deal with it. The cloud vendor is still installing an OS for that app to run on, and for sheer customizability and cost savings it probably is Linux. Actually, it's probably doubly Linux: Linux on the raw hardware to run the hypervisor, and Linux in each of its virtual machines. But if enough Web startups opt for serverless setups, and the cloud market stays concentrated in few enough hands, most server Linux will be chosen, configured, and deployed by a few cloud providers.

This dramatically scales back Linux's server diversity. Less companies installing servers means less Linux server distros will thrive. Cloud vendors will pick the handful they like and leave the rest. The end result is fewer server distros with high install bases.

So where does that leave Linux's other holdings? The Linux desktop, as vibrant of a community as it engenders, is still niche among desktop users. Computer user population growth may help the Linux desktop accumulate devotees in absolute terms, but as a percentage, we're roughly where we've always been. Where exactly I think the Linux desktop is going is a topic for another day. For now, all I will say is that no evidence I've seen suggests that "massively up in popularity" is it.

Embedded devices that aren't IoT don't look promising for Linux either. True, routers will always need to run something. But there's a distinct possibility that Linux's days as the leading mobile player are numbered. Every now and then, Google's Fuchsia project surfaces to publicize a new milestone before quietly receding below the tech news surface.

Following the Penguin Tracks

It bears noting that, with as erratic and unforeseen a journey as Linux has had to this point, many a pontification has surely been wrong before. Will the dynamism of open source continue to propel it to new heights, or has it lost steam and gotten lost in the cloud?

Either way, I'm curious to see where our penguin friend wanders to next.

Jonathan Terrasi has been an ECT News Network columnist since 2017. In addition to his work as a freelance writer, he is a full-time computer science educator and IT decision-maker. His main interests are information security, with a focus on Linux desktops, and the influence of technology trends on current events. His background also includes providing technical commentary and analysis for the Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights.


Some city staff members have been studying how the city could be better prepared in the face of more and more frequent rounds of severe weather and health threats.

Jermaine Freeman, Kristen Hewes, and Lara Freeman gave the City Council a presentation on their regional resiliency plan. Because of the increasing number of extreme weather events, the city found it to be a worthwhile endeavor last year. Jermaine Freeman used the fires in 2016, the tornado last year, and the increasing and record-breaking amount of rain each year as examples of weather that disrupts and cripples Chattanooga.

We started it because the administration saw a clear need for Chattanooga and its partners to analyze and make changes because of how extreme weather events are putting a strain and could impact our public infrastructure, Mr. Freeman said.

Ms. Hewes said Chattanooga is the sixth-fastest warming city in the United States, which means extreme weather will continue to be commonplace. She said regional stakeholders, representatives from the county, and partners like EPB have become involved in this plan.



Lara Freeman said this study will look at ways Chattanooga government and businesses can plan for and adjust to weather and other natural disasters like the COVID-19 pandemic. She did point out this resiliency plan is not preventative.



This project was designed as a climate assessment plan, and was adapted to focus on extreme weather events and pandemic planning and geographic resiliency plans, Ms. Freeman said. We took a range of hazards and evaluated their risk to both operations and facilities of Chattanoogas owned and operated plants and facilities. This is not focused on sustainability, which mitigates the causes of extreme weather.



Councilman Russell Gilbert asked, Do we have other facilities ready to go if we have a disaster like that somewhere else?

Jermaine Freeman said right now the facilities that best suit this would be the YMCA centers, as well as the Youth and Family Development centers around the city. However, he said the city does not have any certain partners at this time.

Thats why these partnerships are so important, Mr. Freeman said. When tornadoes or extreme weather happen, we can reach out to our partners in the community.

Mr. Freeman pointed out that last year, after the tornado, a religious site like Silverdale Baptist Church opened their doors to allow people in after the tornado. He said faith-based organizations are extremely helpful in situations like that.



Councilman Erskine Oglesby asked if there was any organization or agency that oversees the entire plan. Mr. Freeman said no one organization oversees it at the moment.



This is why we wanted to start this conversation, Mr. Freeman said.


The Crown is set to start filming its hotly-anticipated fifth series in July.

According to Variety, crew are already starting to return to Elstree Studios ahead of the all new cast arriving to shoot scenes for the hit Netflix drama.

Series five will see Imelda Staunton take over from Olivia Colman as the Queen and Elizabeth Debicki portray Princess Diana after Emma Corrin starred in series four.

Exciting! The Crown is set to start filming its hotly-anticipated fifth series in July (pictured, Emma Corrin as Princess Diana in series four of the Netflix hit)

The next season is also thought to be introducing Dominic West as Prince Charles, who Josh O'Connor played in series four and tipped for the role in a recent interview.

Lesley Manville, 64, is set to star as Princess Margaret, who was played by Helena Bonham Carter previously. Jonathan Pryce, 73, will take over the role of Prince Philip.

Filming on series 5 will involve following strict Covid rules, however the UK is hoping to ease restrictions throughout the summer with some measures already changing.

The final two series of The Crown will cover the Royal Family's history throughout the 1990s and into 2003, however it is not yet know which moments will be seen.

Big roles: Series five will see Imelda Staunton (pictured in February 2020) take over from Olivia Colman as the Queen

There are several poignant moments which could be used, including the Queen making a speech on her 40th anniversary of her accession in 1992, in which she called the year an 'annus horriblis'.

She was referring to the breakdown of three of her children's marriages; Prince Andrew, Princess Anne's and Prince Charles' divorce from Princess Diana.

Other noteable events during the time period included a fire at Windsor Castle, her golden wedding anniversary in 1997, and the deaths of Princess Margaret, the Queen Mother and the Princess of Wales.

Speaking about joining the hit show, Imelda admitted she is 'frightened' to take on the Queen Elizabeth role in The Crown.

Bring it on: Elizabeth Debicki (pictured) will portray Princess Diana for the next season

Spitting image: Emma (pictured right in character) portrayed the late Princess of Wales in the fourth season of Netflix's hit royal drama The Crown. Pictured left, Diana in 1982

The 65-year-old actress is following on from Claire Foy and Olivia Colman, but says she has an 'extra challenge' playing a recent version as it will be fresh in the audiences mind.

Speaking to The Sun, Imelda said: 'When Claire was in the first series, to all of us that felt like history. Then following on from that with Olivia, again it seems like history.

'Now we start in 1991 playing someone much more recent. That's the extra challenge I have, people saying, "Oh, I don't think she's like that at all"'.

Many members of the series four cast have also joked that they won't be giving any advice to their successors.

Oscar-winning actress Olivia said recently: 'I haven't spoken to Imelda and I wouldn't dare offer any advice about playing the Queen.

'Imelda is extraordinary and she's going to do it all much better than me. I can't wait to watch what she does.'

While Josh, who won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Charles, also appeared to confirm his successor is The Affair star Dominic West - and joked he'd 'laugh him off' if the 51-year-old approached him for advice in an interview with GQ.

He said: 'Playing that character has brought me a lot of joy. But it's lovely to come away and go, "Great. Now hand it over to Dominic West" ... But if Dominic West came to me asking me for advice, I'd laugh him off. I'd be like, "Dom! You're Dominic West!"'
The Ahmedabad bench of National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) has admitted a petition for commencing corporate insolvency proceedings against OYO Hotels and Homes Pvt Ltd (OHHPL), a subsidiary of OYO group. On 30 March 2021, NCLT admitted the petition filed by OHHPLs creditor Rakesh Yadav over some dues.

OYO group says it has filed an appeal with the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), challenging the NCLT order against its subsidiary, OHHPL, for Rs16 lakh. The company also says the disputed amount of Rs16 lakh has already been paid to the claimant under protest by the entity with whom the dispute was raised (other than OHHPL).

"We are surprised to hear that the NCLT has admitted a petition against OHHPL, a subsidiary of OYO for Rs16 lakh in a contractual dispute, which is not even with this subsidiary. We have filed an appeal. The matter is sub-judice and we would refrain from commenting further on the merits of the matter at this stage, OYO group says in a statement.

As per the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016 (IBC), a corporate insolvency process (or CIRP) can be initiated by an operational creditor or by a financial creditor filing an application for initiating CIRP of the debtor under the IBC before NCLT where there is a default. The NCLT reviews the CIRP application to check if it is complete and admits it if there is a default; once the application is admitted, CIRP is initiated.

Ahmedabad-based Keyur Jagdhishbai Shah, who is part of Keyur J Shah & Associates, has been appointed as interim resolution professional (RP) of the insolvency process. The RP will assume control of OYO subsidiary OHHPL, including its assets, invite claims from all creditors, and constitute the committee of creditors (CoC). The creditors of OYO Hotels and Homes have been ordered to submit the details of the claims by 15 April 2021. The estimated date of closure of the insolvency proceedings is 27 September 2021.

On 6th April, there were several reports saying that OYO has filed for bankruptcy under IBC 2016 and that the NCLT has ordered the beginning of a corporate insolvency resolution process of OYO Hotels and Homes.

Ritesh Agarwal, founder and chief executive of OYO, however, refuted these reports via a series of tweets and said that OYO has not filed for bankruptcy. The NCLT order pertains to the OYO Hotels and Homes Pvt Ltd (OHHPL) and not exactly for Oravel Stays Pvt Ltd, which owns and operates hotels and does business as OYO Rooms.

He says, "There is a PDF and text message circulating that claims OYO has filed for bankruptcy. This is absolutely untrue and inaccurate. A claimant is seeking Rs16 lakh (USD 22k) from OYO's subsidiary leading to a petition at NCLT."

There is a PDF and text message circulating that claims OYO has filed for bankruptcy. This is absolutely untrue and inaccurate. A claimant is seeking INR 16Lakhs (USD 22k) from OYO's subsidiary leading to a petition at NCLT. 1/3  Ritesh Agarwal (@riteshagar) April 7, 2021

"OYO has paid that under protest and amount already banked by the claimant. OYO has also appealed with the NCLAT about the matter. OYO is recovering from the pandemic steadily and our largest markets are operating profitably," he tweeted.

In the past couple of years, OYO has been facing multiple issues such as vendor ire over non-payments, income-tax (I-T) raids, massive lay-offs and the COVID pandemic has added to the stress. The company had announced salary cuts, furloughs and sought voluntary resignations from its employees in order to tide over the crisis.

Last week, OYO said it will cover COVID-19 vaccination cost for all its employees and their family members in India.

The employees and their family members in India can choose to get the vaccination done at any centre convenient to them and the costs would be reimbursed in full by the company.
DOVER, N.H., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Envase Technologies ("Envase"), a mission-critical software platform for the intermodal supply chain, announced today the acquisition of Infosite Technologies ("Infosite"), a leading Transportation Management System (TMS) built for freight brokers, intermodal carriers, and over-the-road (OTR) trucking companies based near Montreal, Quebec. Infosite joins Envase's existing suite of market-leading technology solutions built for the intermodal community.

"The acquisition of Infosite adds a robust TMS offering serving freight brokerage, OTR, and intermodal customers," said Larry Cuddy Jr., CEO, Envase Technologies. "We are incredibly excited to welcome the Infosite team and customers to the Envase family."

Infosite will strengthen Envase's presence in the Canadian market, adding several hundred customers and increasing Envase's total customer count to 1,300+ carriers and brokers moving freight across North America.

Envase enables its customers to efficiently move freight across ports, rails, yards, warehouses, and end destinations with complete end-to-end visibility. The Infosite transaction represents Envase's fourth acquisition in the last six months, following the acquisitions of SecurSpace, Tailwind, and DrayMaster, which have collectively strengthened Envase's market-leading position as a holistic provider of software tools for carriers and freight brokers of all sizes.

Envase's financial partner, The Firmament Group, provided strategic assistance in consummating the acquisition. Tedmond Wong and Green Campbell, who both serve as Board Members of Envase, led the transaction on behalf of Firmament.

About Envase

Envase ( www.envasetechnologies.com ) provides mission-critical, cloud-based transportation management system (TMS) enterprise software and mobile applications to the intermodal transportation industry, with a core focus on the drayage trucking niche. The software merges order entry, dispatch, container tracking, electronic data interchange (EDI), API connectivity, document imaging, invoicing, settlements, and business intelligence, among other functions, into a single, streamlined system providing carrier efficiencies and container visibility over the intermodal supply chain.



About Infosite

Infosite (www.infositetech.com) provides mission-critical transportation management system enterprise software to freight brokers, over-the-road carriers, and intermodal carriers.

About The Firmament Group

Firmament (www.thefirmamentgroup.com) provides tailored debt and equity capital solutions to small- and medium-sized enterprises. Firmament is a value-added partner to entrepreneurs, management teams and business owners and curates solutions by deploying versatile capital in a user-friendly way. Firmament concentrates on businesses in the healthcare services, software, health and wellness, food and agriculture, life sciences, and business services sectors. With offices across the United States and in the United Kingdom, Firmament is focused on turning small business into big business.

CONTACT: Allie Reitman, [email protected]

SOURCE The Firmament Group

Related Links

www.thefirmamentgroup.com


Cybersecurity threats are emerging as one of the most serious challenges of the 21st century. The U.S. and its NATO allies have turned down every attempt within the UN framework for banning cyberweapons.

by Prabir Purkayastha

Two major cyberhacksof SolarWinds and Microsoft Exchange Serverhave affected a whole range of computer systems worldwide. Both are supply chain hacks, meaning that they appeared to be routine software upgrades for particular components in these systems instead of inserted malicious codes.

In the SolarWinds hack, a backdoor in one of the components was downloaded to the systems of 18,000 organizations, including the U.S. Treasury and Commerce departments, the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department.

In the Microsoft Exchange Server hack, an estimated 250,000 machines worldwide might have been affected by a vulnerability that allowed hackers to control the machines and even infect other systems in the internal network of the targeted companies. Four major vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server were reported to Microsoft in early January. Unfortunately, it wasnt until early March that Microsoft released patches, according to ZDNet. These vulnerabilities were used by the hackers during the period that Microsoft had either not released the patches, or companies had not upgraded their systems and installed the patches.

In the SolarWinds hack, the U.S. authorities and security companies that work closely with the U.S. government have blamed Russian intelligence agencies for the hack, which was discovered in late 2020. In the case of the recent Microsoft Exchange Server hack, Microsoft blamed a Chinese state-sponsored group dubbed Hafnium, according to PC Magazine. It is unlikely that either the Russians or Chinese spy agencies would execute such a widespread attack on systems. Their interests are better served by targeting a few critical systems and compromising them rather than infecting systems on such a wide scale.

The scale of the attacks multiplied exponentially, particularly after Microsoft announced the four vulnerabilities and released their patches. Many of the large number of organizations that use Microsoft Exchange for their email serversincluding small companies and local governmentswere slow to apply the patches. This allowed a huge number of rogue hackers to get into the act, setting off a feeding frenzy of hacking unprotected systems.

U.S. government agencies are looking at how to retaliate against Russia and China for the cyberattacks, with some lawmakers going as far as to wonder if the [SolarWinds] cyber intrusion amounts to an act of war, according to Breaking Defense. What these claims overlook is that all countries have offensive and defensive capabilities, and stealing data and knowledge from other countries is a time-honored tradition of spook agencies. It becomes an act of war only if it leads to physical damage to critical equipment or infrastructure.

Any identification of the cyberattacks as Russian or Chinese is based on the evidence of supposed Russian or Chinese signatures in the software. The CIAs hacking tools, details of which are available in Vault 7 of WikiLeaks, show that such signatures can be faked by the agency. The NSA tools dumped by a group called the Shadow Brokers on the internet in 2017 show that the NSA can also spoof signatures of other countries or of hacker groups. A report from DarkOwl titled Nation State Actors on the Darknet says that NSAs tools made public by the Shadow Brokers include UNITEDRAKE, which provides the unique capability to disguise the origin of the attack, effectively projecting attribution onto another country or hacking group. This problem is further compounded by the fact that these tools are now accessible to all hackers. This means that identifying the origin of software from code signatures is at best a conjecture.

Why does the United States expect Russia or China not to hack other countrys systems, when we all know that the NSA and the CIA have been routinely hacking systems from all over the world? The Edward Snowden revelations showed that the United States and its Five Eyes partners did everything (and then some) that they are today accusing Russia and China of doing. XKeyscore and Prism, two of the largest NSA programs, showed how systems across the world had been hacked or compromised by the intelligence agency. The NSAs Tailored Access Operations hacked hardware that went to different countries, providing the NSA with physical backdoors into equipment in foreign networks. The U.S. and its Five Eyes partners hacked systems across the rest of the world, not even sparing their close NATO allies like Belgium and Germany. The NSAs UK counterpart, the GCHQ, hacked Belgiums largest telecom company, Belgacom (now known as Proximus), which operates a large number of data links internationally. It serves millions of people including top officials from the European Commission, the European Parliament, and the European Council. According to a February 2016 article in the Local, WikiLeaks documents revealed that the NSA even listened in on German Chancellor Angela Merkels private conversations with world leaders.

The United States has, meanwhile, mounted a worldwide campaign against the Chinese multinational technology company Huawei for being a security risk for global networks and asserts that a clean network means no Chinese equipment. In March 2014, the New York Times and Der Spiegel reported on an NSA program code-named Shotgiant that hacked into Huawei systems and its network to find a link between Huawei and the Peoples Liberation Army. As the New York Times report says, But the plans went further: to exploit Huaweis technology so that when the company sold equipment to other countriesincluding both allies and nations that avoid buying American productsthe NSA could roam through their computer and telephone networks to conduct surveillance and, if ordered by the president, offensive cyberoperations. The Times report adds, quoting an NSA document that it and Der Spiegel disclosed, Many of our targets communicate over Huawei-produced products We want to make sure that we know how to exploit these products to gain access to networks of interest around the world.

The NSA document above shows that the NSA not only conducted surveillance operations in the networks of other countries but also carried out offensive cyber operations. So if the NSA or the CIA compromises the computers, routers or other equipment of a country, they not only exfiltrate data out of these networks but also have offensive capabilities of inserting logic bombs in the target network or equipment to bring them down.

In a reenactment of former President Obamas campaign in 2013-14 against China and Russia on cyberwar and cyberespionage, the Biden administration is attributing all the major cyberhacks in the world to evil Russian and Chinese actors. Obamas campaign had to be aborted due to the damaging Snowden revelations. The United States appears to believe that the world by now has forgotten about Snowden. The time is ripe again for a renewed offensive on hacking against Russia and China, with the Biden administration continuing Trumps confrontationist policies relating to both these countries.

The question is, with growing offensive capabilities, can we continue to play along this path of confrontation? Can we play this reckless game of cyber chicken without suffering devastating consequences? Can cyber offensive capabilities lead inadvertently to an attack that has physical consequences and, therefore, to a physical war?

With the Stuxnet attack on Irans centrifuges, a line of not causing physical damage using cyberweaponsthe cyber Rubiconwas crossed. Dress it up any way we want, an attack on equipment processing radioactive material that could lead to possible radioactive leakage marked the first use of a cyberweapon.

In a repeat of the atom bomb era, where the United States thought that it had a long-term monopoly over nuclear weapons, the United States now considers its cyber dominance to be long-term. Commenting on the U.S.s rejection of any proposal to ban cyberweaponsin a May 2012 report published by the international affairs think tank Chatham House, Cyber Security and International LawMary Ellen OConnell from the University of Notre Dame Law School and Chatham Houses Louise Arimatsu explained that the United States resistance to proposals for a treaty may have been related to U.S. plans to use the Internet for offensive purposes U.S. officials claim publicly that Cyber Command is primarily defensive, but the reluctance to entertain the idea of a cyberspace disarmament treaty is raising questions about the true U.S. position.

The United States and its NATO allies have turned down every attempt within the United Nations framework to ban cyberweapons. Russia, China and many other countries tried to have a UN process to discuss a cyber peace treaty. In 2009, Russia proposed a treaty modeled on the Chemical Weapons Convention that would ban cyberweapons, a call it has repeated in the UN. The United States has turned it down every time, arguing instead that every country should accept the Tallinn Manual. The Tallinn Manual is a nonbinding academic study sponsored by a group of NATO countries on how international law should be interpreted for cyberspace. It does not call for a ban on cyberweapons but only defines what a cyberweapon is and where its use would violate international law. Clearly, the Tallinn Manual is a far cry from a treaty on maintaining cyber peace and banning cyberweapons.

Cybersecurity threats are emerging as one of the most serious challenges of the 21st century. The Russians and Chinese are not the only ones promoting a cyber peace treatyor at least negotiations of dos and donts in the cyber era. With the leak of the NSAs tools on the internet and in the wake of WannaCry ransomware attacks, even tech giants like Microsoft started talking about nation-states (read: the NSA in this case) not stockpiling and exploiting vulnerabilities in systems.

The reality that the United States refuses to accept is that it is no longer the sole cyber hegemon. A report called the National Cyber Power Index 2020 by the Harvard Kennedy Schools Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs ranked the cyber power of countries by both offensive and defensive capabilities. Although the United States is still the leading player, China is in second place and catching up fast. Russia, the UK and others are still some distance behind.

With computer systems and networks underpinning the global infrastructure, the risks of cyberweapons to the world are greater than ever before. If we do not work for cyber peace, we will inevitably tip over to a ruinous cyber exchange and possibly the splintering of the global internet with hard borders. It is critical that we do not enter the even more dangerous territory of a hot war that initially starts as a cyberwar.

This article was produced in partnership by Newsclick and Globetrotter.

Prabir Purkayastha is the founding editor of Newsclick.in, a digital media platform. He is an activist for science and the free software movement.
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Britain's Covid vaccination drive could grind to a halt if AstraZeneca's jab is banned in people under the age of 50 and demolish the Government's targets for inoculating young people, according to leaked figures.

Vaccine delivery figures from Scotland that were leaked earlier this year show that the British-made vaccine makes up 75 per cent of the country's jab supplies  but it is at the centre of growing doubts.

The UK's drug regulator is considering suspending the AstraZeneca vaccine in younger Britons over the blood clot fears, which could throw lockdown-easing plans into disarray. Officials have been probing the jab's safety and will unveil their findings in a televised 3pm press conference with England's deputy chief medical officer Professor Jonathan Van-Tam and other top health bosses.

European health watchdogs will announce the conclusions of their investigation at the same time, with Germany having already temporarily banned its use for under-60s and France making the same move for under-55s.

Scientists stress cases of CVST  the medical term for the complication that has spooked Europe into shunning the jab  are extremely rare and have only been spotted in 30 recipients of AstraZeneca's vaccine in Britain out of a total 18million. This equates to around one in 600,000 people. But experts fear the risk may be higher in under-60s, who are less at risk of dying from Covid.

Boris Johnson plans to lift restrictions fully by June 21 as part of the last stage of his roadmap, but this relies on jabbing the remaining 21million unvaccinated adults, the vast majority of whom are under 50, by the summer.

A stall of the vaccine roll-out would be a political body blow to Boris Johnson who has enjoyed a recovery in the polls thanks to his success deploying jabs after a series of missteps at the start of the pandemic. And it would be a boost for EU leaders who have millions of over-50s left to vaccinate after a lacklustre start to their own vaccine roll-out.

The UKs drive has already been thrown into crisis, with NHS bosses effectively blocking over-40s from getting jabs this month following Indias decision to block a shipment of 5million AstraZeneca doses that officials hoped would speed up the roll-out.

Officials have put the AstraZeneca jab at the heart of the country's rollout and the leaked delivery schedule reveal the Government is expecting it to make up 75 per cent of its Covid vaccine supplies over the next two months.

The document, published on the Scottish Government's website in January and quickly taken down, showed the UK was anticipating about 29.4million doses of AstraZeneca's jab between April and the first week of June.

For comparison, officials expected just 8.5m of Pfizer's vaccine  which is already being rationed for second doses  in the next two months. Britains supply comes entirely from the EU, which has threatened to block exports of the jab.

Officials were also only expecting 1million doses of the new Moderna jab, which is being rolled out for the first time in Wales today. But supply will trickle in at around 160,000 doses a week, if the leaked plans are still correct. And the UK has only bought 17million  enough to vaccinate 8.5million people.

Professor Adam Finn, from the University of Bristol and a member of the Government's vaccine advisory group, the JCVI, admitted pausing the AstraZeneca jab could threaten Britain's roadmap out of lockdown.

He said today: 'We do need to keep the programme going if the plan to open things up and allow things to get back to normal is to proceed without another wave of the pandemic coming through. So it's quite a tricky balancing act here, getting the balance right, getting vaccines coming through... getting the risk-benefit right for people coming forward.'

One Tory MP told MailOnline that halting the jab would 'certainly put things back', adding: 'Clearly it would have very adverse consequences because AstraZeneca is the workhorse of the vaccination programme.'

However, the UK inoculation programme could be bolstered if two other promising jabs under review are given approval by the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency in the coming weeks.

The chief scientist behind the US-developed Novavax vaccine, which Britain has secured 60million doses of, has said he expects it to be given the green light this month and rolled out in May. All of the Novavax supplies on order will be manufactured within the UK under a new Government deal announced last week, which could drastically speed up its distribution.

A separate vaccine made by American pharmaceutical giant Johnson and Johnson, which uses the same type of technology as AstraZeneca's but is administered via a single injection, is slated for a summer rollout. Because people given the J&J vaccine don't need a 12-week follow-up appointment, it means ministers don't have to reserve supplies for second doses and can unleash them all at once.

MHRA sources originally said it would be ban for under-30s, which wouldnt pose as much damage to roll-out. But there are fears that any ban could dent public confidence.

Britains inoculation drive drastically slowed down over the Easter weekend, figures show. Just 100,000 vaccines were dished out on Sunday and Monday, reaching 88,000 Britons.

Leaked delivery schedules reveal the Government is expecting AstraZeneca's vaccine to make up 75 per cent of its Covid jab supplies over the next two months. The document, published on the Scottish Government's website in January and quickly taken down, showed Britain was anticipating about 29.4m doses of AstraZeneca's jab between April and the first week of June. By comparison, officials expected just 8.5m of Pfizer's vaccine in the next two months and 1m of the new Moderna jab, which is being rolled out for the first time in Wales today

People are still being encouraged to have the AstraZeneca jab and yesterday Boris Johnson (pictured exercising today) said it was 'very very important' the public go for their inoculations

Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, talks to staff and volunteers during her visit to the Lordship Lane Primary Care Vaccination Centre in north London today

DOES THE ASTRAZENECA VACCINE CAUSE BLOOD CLOTS? WHY ARE HEALTH CHIEFS SCARED? DOES THE ASTRAZENECA JAB CAUSE BLOOD CLOTS? Scientists insist there is no proof yet that AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine causes blood clots in the brain, known as CVST. But officials can't rule out the link completely. Some scientists suggest it could be triggered by the jab triggering the immune system to attack its own platelets  small cells the body uses to clot wounds. SO WHY ARE HEALTH CHIEFS SCARED? German data suggests there is one case of CVST for every 90,000 doses. And the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said it was occurring at a rate of one in 100,000 in under-60s, and that rates were slightly higher than expected. But Britain has spotted only one case in 600,000 doses  based on 30 cases out of 18.1million doses up until March 24. IS IT REALLY OCCURING MORE THAN AVERAGE? Scientists say the evidence is shifting and that a link is becoming 'clear', in words of the EMA's vaccines chief yesterday. But critics say it is incredibly hard to disentangle the risk because CVST is also more common in young women  blurring the lines between which cases may have been sparked by the jabs and which would have happened anyway. Experts insist the risk is also tiny, and that Covid poses a much bigger threat to young people. WHICH COUNTRIES HAVE ALREADY RESTRICTED THE JAB TO OLDER PEOPLE? Germany last week temporarily banned the AstraZeneca vaccine for under-60s, while France took the same controversial move for under-55s. Iceland has restricted it to over-70s, while Finland, Sweden and Lithuania all say it can only be given to adults over the age of 65. Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Latvia have all suspended the jab completely, while regulators probe the link further. WILL BRITAIN FOLLOW SUIT? The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), which polices the safety of vaccines in the UK, could stop under-30s from getting the jab. Sources told Channel 4 news that regulators were likely to press ahead with a German-style age-restricted ban. But Government insiders told the Daily Telegraph that they were unlikely to impose any age-based ban. The MHRA has yet to offer any updated formal guidance but it could be forced into action if Europe's equivalent body announces tougher action at a press conference this afternoon. IF THE JAB IS PROVEN TO CAUSE THE CLOTS, WILL THEY BAN IT COMPLETELY? Regulators are unlikely to ban the jab completely even if it is linked to blood clots because it still offers protection against the virus. Scientists say the benefits far outweigh the risks for older people, who are more at risk of hospitalisation of death if they catch the virus. But say the equation is 'more complicated' for younger people who are less at risk from the virus. Numerous experts lined up yesterday to downplay fears, saying the risk of dying from Covid is up to 35 times higher for young adults than from CVST, the medical term for the clots. Advertisement

In other coronavirus developments:

A 24-year-old carer today became the first person in Britain to get Moderna's coronavirus vaccine as the roll-out was expanded in Wales  but England will have to wait another fortnight to use the jab;

The SNP could save Boris Johnson from a growing Tory revolt over domestic vaccine passports as Labour hardened its opposition to the documents;

No10 refuses to rule out needing proof of jabs to enter non-essential shops, leading to fears you'll need vaccine passport to buy clothes;

Boris promises to make it 'as easy as possible' for families to travel abroad this summer, with 5 on-the-spot Covid tests set to be allowed instead of gold-standard 100 PCR swabs;

Lockdown easing could be sped up because vaccines are working, says the scientists who correctly forecast second wave - as SAGE doomsday predictions are criticised for being 'too pessimistic';

Britain's daily Covid deaths fall by two-thirds in a week with 20 new victims - while cases plunge by 40% to 2,379;

One in three Covid survivors are diagnosed with anxiety, depression or other mental health issues within six months of recovering, major study finds;

Generation of home-schooled children lacked 'discipline and order' in lockdown says Gavin Williamson as he backs mobile phone ban in schools.

Former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who is the current chair of the Health Select Committee, today said there is 'urgency' over the MHRA review.

Number 10's scientific advisers have already hinted that supplies of Moderna's jab could be reserved for younger people, if the MHRA pressed ahead with a German-style ban. Professor Adam Finn, of the joint committee on vaccination and immunisation (JCVI), said the fears were being taken 'very seriously' and the UK is 'walking a tightrope here between the need for speed but also the need for clarity'.

Another JCVI member today said vaccinations for under-50s should be paused while the regulator investigates the risk of blood clotting.

Dr Maggie Wearmouth opened the possibility to 'slowing things down' until Britain's home-grown shot is branded completely safe. She said: 'The issue is about safety and public confidence. We don't want to cover anything up that we feel that the public should be knowing.'

Last night Oxford University halted trials of its coronavirus vaccine in children until the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) concluded on its safety in younger people, with formal advice expected in as early as today.

Scientists stress cases of CVST  the medical term for the complication  are extremely rare and have only been spotted in 30 recipients of AstraZeneca's vaccine in Britain out of a total 18million. This equates to around one in 600,000 people. But experts say it may be more common in young women, who are known to be most at risk of the clots.

More than 31.6million adults have now received their first dose, putting Number 10 on course to meet its target of offering a vaccine to all over-50s by April 15.

However, the Government has not factored in a potential ban on using AstraZeneca's vaccine in the next phase of the roll-out. The jab is currently the main weapon in the country's arsenal, with Pfizer's supply being rationed for top-ups.

Moderna's vaccine was deployed for the first time in Britain today but ministers have only bought 17million doses  enough for 8.5million people. Leaked supply projections suggest No10 anticipated it would get around 160,000 doses every week next month, leaving serious questions about whether the UK will be able to make a dent in the next phase of the roll-out.

Today the Conservative former health secretary and current chair of the Health and Social Care Select Committee Jeremy Hunt told BBC Radio 4's Today programme there is 'urgency' in the MHRA's approach to making a decision on the AstraZeneca jab.

He said: 'I think there is urgency. I think the one thing you can't say about the MHRA is that they act slowly  they have been very, very fast and fleet of foot throughout this pandemic.

'But I think people do understand that this is a new virus, these are new vaccines, there is no medicine that is 100% safe, and that's why you have to look at these very difficult balances of risk.'

Asked if the MHRA would come to a fair and balanced decision, he said: 'I think the regulator has got a lot of credit in the bank because what authorities need in a pandemic is to act fast and also to maintain trust and the MHRA which is our independent regulator was the first regulator in the world to approve a vaccine for Covid and in terms of trust they made that big call in January to space out the doses which has saved thousands of lives.

'So I think people will listen to their advice when it happens today or tomorrow and I think they will be sensibly British and keep calm and carry on and follow that advice.

'There may or may not be a causal link but even then it is the balance of risk and what we know is that the risk of Covid killing you is much higher for older people and it looks like the risk of this type of blood clot is also lower for older people.

The risk of dying from Covid-19 is significantly higher than the rate of CSVT blood clots, which haven't even been definitively linked to the vaccines (Based on fatality estimates from Cambridge University and CSVT occurrences in Germany)

More than 31million Britons have received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine in the UK. Boris Johnson plans to lift lockdown fully by June 21 as part of the last stage of his roadmap out of restrictions, but this relies on jabbing the remaining 21million unvaccinated adults, the vast majority of whom are under 50, by the summer

At least 10 countries in Europe, joined by Germany last night, have put some kind of restriction on the use of AstraZeneca's jab, mostly opting to give it only to over-60s because the CSVT cases seem to be happening in younger adults

'So that risk profile may change depending on age but there is tremendous public confidence in the vaccine programme.

'People can see that because we have done it faster than anywhere else in Europe, our seven day death rate is down to 30 a day compared to nine times that in France, so I think people understand that the vaccine programme is saving lives but they also understand that advice changes as we get to learn more about these vaccines and so I think they will listen very carefully to the advice and follow it.'

WHAT IS CVST? AND HOW COULD IT BE LINKED TO ASTRAZENECA'S JAB? Cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) is an extremely rare type of blood clot in the brain. It occurs when the vein that drains blood from the brain is blocked by a blood clot, resulting in potentially deadly bleeding on the brain. Symptoms can quickly deteriorate from a headache, blurred vision and faintness to complete loss of control over movement and seizures. John Hopkins University estimates it affects five in a million people in the US every year, which would suggest 330 patients in Britain suffer from the condition annually. According to the university, it can affect patients with low blood pressure, cancer, vascular diseases and those prone to blood clotting. Head injuries can also trigger the condition. Britain's regulator said CVST is so rare they aren't even sure how common it is in the general population. Although there isn't any evidence that the blood clots are developing because of vaccinations, some academics have a theory that it is the immune reaction making it happen. Research teams in Germany and Norway claim the blood clotting issue may be caused by the jab, in very rare cases, making the body attack its own platelets. Platelets are tiny chunks of cells inside blood that the body uses to build clots to stop bleeding when someone is injured. But they can also make unwanted clots. Experts from Oslo and Greifswald University believe the jab could cause the body to produce antibodies  normally used to fight off viruses  which mistake platelets in the blood for foreign invaders and attack them. To compensate, the body then overproduces platelets to replace those that are being attacked, causing the blood to thicken and raising the risk of clotting. They admitted they 'don't know why this is happening'. But the researchers say the phenomenon is similar to one that can occur in heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT), when sufferers take a drug called heparin. Advertisement

European Medicines Agency (EMA) bosses will address the mounting fears in a 3pm briefing today. Regulators last month insisted there was no evidence to justify banning the jab for younger people.

Addressing Britain's next steps in the roll-out, Dr Wearmouth warned ministers threatened fracturing public trust if they pressed ahead with the next stage of the roll-out without being in full command of the evidence. 'We don't want people to lose confidence and the vaccine to stay in fridges,' she told the Telegraph. 'But we don't want people to feel they have been falsely reassured either.'

Dr Wearmouth said the JCVI has drafted its recommendations for the second stage of the roll-out for those aged 18-49, but said this could now be revised before being submitted to Health Secretary Matt Hancock.

Other leading experts today leapt to defend the AstraZeneca vaccine  which is the mainstay of the UK's roll-out.

Former chief executive of the MHRA, Sir Kent Woods, said he has 'no reservations' about the jab because the risks of Covid are 'much higher'. SAGE adviser Professor Calum Semple said he is 'not worried one little bit' about the fears and that it was a 'no-brainer' that he, as a 53-year-old, should get the jab.

One Cambridge scientist downplayed calls to pause the roll-out, saying he would 'certainly come forward for that vaccine at the moment'.

Last night it was revealed Oxford University had paused its vaccine trial on children amid concerns around blood clotting.

The university said the decision to pause its trial was precautionary and that there were no health issues among any of the youngsters involved.

The university began studying the vaccine in five-to-17-year-olds in February, with the aim of eventually scaling up the trial and testing it in 200 people.

Researchers have stopped recruiting new volunteers and it is not clear how many children have already been given a dose.

Oxford is waiting for more information from the UK's regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, before restarting the study.

Britain's study of AstraZeneca's vaccine on children was also going to give 200 youngsters a placebo. An AstraZeneca spokesman told the WSJ the company was awaiting the outcomes of the regulatory reviews and declined to comment further.

Dr Adam Finn, a professor of paediatrics at the University of Bristol, sounded a note of caution and made clear 'we do need to get to the bottom of this'.

This morning he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that concerns over the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab are being taken 'very seriously' and 'very thoroughly' investigated.

He said: 'What stands out about them is that we see thrombosis, including thrombosis in the cerebral veins, all the time, but we don't normally see them in association with a low platelet count  which is a small blood cell which is involved in blood clotting  and so that makes them stand out and makes us think that this is something a little bit different and out of the norm.'

Dr Finn said this meant they wanted to understand why this was being caused and whether it is linked to the vaccine.

Elle Taylor, 24, today became the first person to receive the Moderna jab in the UK. She said it would help her care for her grandmother 'properly and safely'

Told there had been 30 cases of this kind of blood clot and seven deaths amid more than 18 million people receiving the jab, Mr Finn said it 'could potentially' affect the rollout of the vaccine.

He said: 'Those figures quoted were up until March 24 and I think we'll hear shortly what's happened subsequent to that in terms of numbers of cases, but we can expect there will have been more in the interim.'

DON'T PANIC ON OXFORD JAB: EXPERTS URGE PEOPLE TO KEEP RISKS IN PROPORTION, AS REASSURANCE OPERATION BEGINS Experts have today rushed to defend the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, with one expert saying aspirin is probably more dangerous, as the MHRA investigates claims it is linked to a rare brain blood clot. Sage adviser Professor Calum Semple urged people to continue accepting the AstraZeneca jab. Speaking to LBC radio this morning, he said: 'I'll take myself, I'm 53, my risk of death from Covid is about one in 13,000, for me it's a no-brainer, I need to have the vaccine.' He later added: 'This vaccine is safe. What do I mean by safe? You can look right, look left, look right again cross a road, it's safe to cross because you don't see any cars (but) you can trip, you can stumble. 'Nothing is risk-free, but is the vaccine safe? I would say yes.' And yesterday he told Channel 4 News: 'This has been done out of exceptional caution and the big story still is that for a middle-aged, slightly overweight man, such as myself, my risk of death is one in 13,000 - the risk of this rare clot, which might not even be associated with the vaccine, is probably one in a million. 'So I'm still going to say it's better to get the vaccine than not get the vaccine and we can pause and take time to carefully consider the value for children because they're not at risk of death from Covid.' He added: 'If you've been called for the vaccine then you're in an age group that is very likely to benefit from the vaccine. So the bottom line is if you've been called for the vaccine I would urge you to take the vaccine.' And Ravi Gupta, professor of clinical microbiology at the Cambridge Institute for Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Diseases, told Sky News the vaccination programme should continue until more is known on blood clots and the AstraZeneca vaccine. He said people in their '20s, 30s, 40s and 50s' are at risk of severe Covid 'and there is an argument for vaccination to continue in those individuals because the rate of this blood clot disorder is extremely low, although slightly elevated against background levels'. Advertisement

Asked if different vaccines could end up being reserved for certain groups as more vaccines come on stream, owing to fears over blood clots in younger people, he told BBC Breakfast: 'That's certainly possible.

'We are seeing another vaccine coming in [Moderna] and further vaccines are approaching licensure, and I know that the UK has made contracts for quite a wide range of different vaccines.

'As time goes forward we will have much more flexibility about who can be offered what.

'On the other hand, we do need to keep the programme going if the plan to open things up and allow things to get back to normal is to proceed without another wave of the pandemic coming through.

'So it's quite a tricky balancing act here, getting the balance right, getting vaccines coming through... getting the risk-benefit right for people coming forward.'

He urged people being offered the vaccine at the moment to take it, saying the 'risk-benefit is very strongly in favour of receiving the vaccine'.

Dr Finn said people could expect more information from regulators within 24 hours.

Yesterday, he told BBC Newsnight: 'We are walking a tightrope here between the need for speed but also the need for clarity and scientific certainty about what's going on and of course the public wants to know, so very important issues that need to be addressed urgently.'

The Prime Minister, who has himself had the AstraZeneca vaccine, yesterday called on the nation to get their jab during a visit to the Anglo-Swedish plant in Macclesfield.

He said the 'best thing' people can do is 'look at what the MHRA say', adding: 'Their advice to people is to keep going out there, get your jab, get your second jab.'

Sage adviser Professor Calum Semple echoed the PM's clarion call and urged people to continue accepting the AstraZeneca jab.

Speaking to LBC radio this morning, he said: 'I'll take myself, I'm 53, my risk of death from Covid is about one in 13,000, for me it's a no-brainer, I need to have the vaccine.'

WHICH COUNTRIES HAVE SUSPENDED THE ASTRAZENECA VACCINE? NOT BANNED United Kingdom

Austria

Bulgaria

Cyprus

Estonia

Ireland

Italy

Luxembourg

Portugal

Romania

Spain

Slovenia BANNED FOR UNDER 55s France BANNED FOR UNDER-60s Germany BANNED FOR UNDER-65s Finland

Lithuania

Sweden BANNED FOR UNDER-70s Iceland BANNED FOR ALL AGES Denmark

Holland

Latvia

Norway Advertisement

He later added: 'This vaccine is safe. What do I mean by safe? You can look right, look left, look right again cross a road, it's safe to cross because you don't see any cars (but) you can trip, you can stumble.

'Nothing is risk-free, but is the vaccine safe? I would say yes.'

And yesterday he told Channel 4 News: 'This has been done out of exceptional caution and the big story still is that for a middle-aged, slightly overweight man, such as myself, my risk of death is one in 13,000 - the risk of this rare clot, which might not even be associated with the vaccine, is probably one in a million.

'So I'm still going to say it's better to get the vaccine than not get the vaccine and we can pause and take time to carefully consider the value for children because they're not at risk of death from Covid.'

He added: 'If you've been called for the vaccine then you're in an age group that is very likely to benefit from the vaccine. So the bottom line is if you've been called for the vaccine I would urge you to take the vaccine.'

Professor Sir Kent Woods, the former chief executive of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), told LBC radio he has 'no reservations' about the AstraZeneca vaccine.

He said: 'The risks of Covid are much higher.

'The reason it is so difficult to be certain whether or not there is a cause-and-effect relationship, even in younger people, between the vaccine and these thrombotic events, these clotting events, is that there are such clotting events occurring in the background anyway.

'It's not an unknown event.'

He added: 'Covid itself - the infection itself  is known to be associated with a substantial increased risk of blood clots of various kinds.

'At a time when the population has got lots of Covid going around, it's very difficult to know what the actual background rate of these clotting events is without the vaccine.

'We can say I think, that if there is a connection, it's a very, very rare one and this is why I am not concerned about the fact that relatives of mine have had the AstraZeneca vaccine in their 40s.'

And Ravi Gupta, professor of clinical microbiology at the Cambridge Institute for Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Diseases, told Sky News the vaccination programme should continue until more is known on blood clots and the AstraZeneca vaccine.

He said people in their '20s, 30s, 40s and 50s' are at risk of severe Covid 'and there is an argument for vaccination to continue in those individuals because the rate of this blood clot disorder is extremely low, although slightly elevated against background levels'.

Professor Gupta said vaccinating children was done to 'cut down transmission in the community in the main' and therefore the decision to stop the study on them until more was known was 'good practice'.

Asked if he would take the jab, he said: 'I think that's on balance at the moment - there's still transmission of Covid, and there is a risk to all of us of being infected, particularly as the economy is being opened up and society's opening up, we are at risk of getting severe infection.

'So I would certainly be going forward for that vaccine in the current situation, because I'm in that age group.

'So yes, I think it should be continued.'

Carer, 24, becomes the first person to get Moderna's Covid jab in Wales A 24-year-old carer today became the first person in Britain to get Moderna's coronavirus vaccine as the roll-out was expanded in Wales  but England will have to wait another fortnight to use the jab. Elle Taylor, from Ammanford, revealed she was 'very excited and happy' to receive the jab, adding that the nurses were lovely and it 'didn't hurt'. 'I'm an unpaid carer for my grandmother so it is very important to me that I get it, so I can care for her properly and safely,' she said. 'My grandmother has had her first dose and she is going for her second dose on Saturday.' Health Secretary Matt Hancock said he was 'delighted' the first dose of Moderna's vaccine had been administered in the UK. But confusion has erupted over the roll-out of the jab  the third to be deployed in Britain. No10's vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi yesterday revealed Moderna's shot would only be used from the third week of April. Nicola Sturgeon, however, revealed hours later that the first batch had already arrived in Scotland, with sources saying it would be dished out later this week. Britain is only expected to get 100,000 doses of Moderna's vaccine in April. Around five per cent of that supply has already been sent to one Welsh hospital trust, covering three regions. Wales has already moved on to offering over-45s jabs. Ministers have bought 17million doses in total  enough for 8.5million people  and have planned for deliveries of the jab to 'significantly increase' in May. Leaked supply projections suggest No10 anticipated it would receive around 160,000 doses every week next month. But with doubts mounting about the availability of AstraZeneca's vaccine amid fears the jab could be banned for younger adults, the lack of supply leaves serious questions about whether or not Britain can push on with the inoculation drive. No10 has repeatedly insisted it is on track to hit its goal of offering every eligible adult a jab by the end of July. And the drive must go smoothly if restrictions are to be eased drastically over the coming months. But the Government has not factored in a potential ban on using AstraZeneca's vaccine in the next phase of the roll-out. The jab is currently the main weapon in the country's arsenal, with Pfizer's supply being rationed for top-ups. Health watchdogs are set to make a final ruling on the use of the vaccine in the coming days, with Government advisers saying that blood clot fears are being taken 'very seriously' and hinting that Moderna's jab could be reserved for under-50s. Advertisement
[April 07, 2021] Valiance Humanitarian Will Continue Quality Care Mission in Partnership With US Federal and State Agencies

Caliburn International, LLC, a leading provider of professional services and specialized technology solutions for the U.S. government and commercial clients worldwide, announced recently that it intends to separate into two independent companies. The decision was made after an extensive strategic review by the Board of Directors, senior management, and their advisors, who concluded that, given the diverse nature of the Company's capabilities, missions, and customers, it is in the best interest of its constituents to separate into two companies. The two new companies are: Acuity International, which will be comprised of the company's (i) Engineering & Technology, (ii) Advanced Medical, and (iii) Global Mission business units and,

Valiance Humanitarian ("Valiance"), which will continue the company's humanitarian efforts, primarily to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement. The new organization, Valiance Humanitarian, LLC, ("Valiance") is being formed with the mission of providing quality care in support of the government's migrant residential shelter services missions. Valiance, formerly named Caliburn International has been providing humanitarian services to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) since 2015. Melissa Aguilar, M.S.S.W., LCCA, LMSW, has been named President and Chief Executive Officer of Valiance. Ms. Aguilar is a proven leader with extensive experience in the humanitarian services and social work fields. Valiance Humanitarian supports the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) program to ensure that migrant unaccompanied minors are cared for in a compassionate and safe environment, leading to timely and safe reunification with family or other suitable sponsors, in accordance with the U.S. government policy. "Valiance Humanitarian's purpose is to support ORR's vital mission to protect children and support the needs of their families throughout the process of safe reunification. Our years of experience and mission focus creates an enhanced level of care and attention for the people we serve," according to Ms. Aguilar who spent her career as a licensed clinician.



Leadership team with humanitarian expertise Jessica Martinez has been named Chief Operating Officer and Executive Director of HHS Programs for Valiance Humanitarian. Ms. Martinez has 7 years of experience in leadership roles in working with ORR care providers.

Francisco Quezada has been named Director of Operations and Facilities. Mr. Francisco has more than 4 years of military and business experience and over a year of experience working operations for Caliburn. The company is also actively recruiting for a Chief Financial Officer. Valiance Humanitarian has a team of over 2,000 multi-cultural employees who are experts in direct care, social services, medical, and clinical. The important credentials for employees focused on providing high-quality care and humanitarian services for HSS and ORR and operating six state-licensed facilities in Texas include: social workers (LSW) and (LMSW), Licensed Child Care administrators (LCCA), Licensed Professional Counselors (LPC), and medical staff RNs, LVNs, MAs. "We are particularly dedicated to ORR's compassionate and vital mission to protect unaccompanied minors and support the needs of their families, as well as expand our capabilities to serve new clients with similar requirements. Valiance Humanitarian will focus all its attention on humanitarian efforts and find additional ways to support our customers in this critical mission," said Aguilar. "Our goal is to preserve the integrity and advance the capabilities of these humanitarian-relief programs by cultivating seasoned expert staff who represent both the culture and the language of the served population." Aguilar has retained an experienced and trusted authority in this field: Grace Flores- Hughes (News - Alert) , who was influential in establishing the initial federal effort more than 30 years ago. Ms. Flores-Hughes will serve as both a key advisor to the company, as well as a member of the new Valiance Humanitarian Board of Directors. "More than 30 years ago, the federal government began to protect and care for migrant children seeking asylum in our country. As a trustee of that initial federal effort, I am proud once again to have the opportunity to contribute to these important efforts, this time with the dedicated leadership and experienced staff of Valiance Humanitarian," Flores-Hughes said. "The highest standard of care for the children entrusted to us is our priority." In her prior role, Ms. Flores-Hughes led the federal effort to establish an orderly and safe process to resettle unaccompanied minors entering the United States from Central America. The process in place today at the Department of Health & Human Services is the direct result of Ms. Flores-Hughes's efforts and the foundation for Valiance Humanitarian's important work. Valiance Humanitarian is a wholly owned subsidiary of Caliburn International. About Valiance Humanitarian, LLC Valiance Humanitarian, headquartered in Los Fresnos, Texas, is primarily focused on its humanitarian mission work through residential program operations in support of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement and its care of unaccompanied minors. The Company is uniquely positioned to provide upfront response in impacted areas and is leading the way with its ability to provide diversified programs that shelter minors of all ages and needs. Our expertise and skillset allow us to hire, train, and retain talented employees, which in turn provides the best services to those we care for and our clients. About DC Capital DC Capital Partners is a private equity investment firm headquartered outside the nation's capital, in Alexandria, Virginia. The firm makes control equity investments in companies providing differentiated and innovative solutions in the government and engineering markets. The DC Capital team has extensive experience which together spans more than three decades investing in their core markets. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005660/en/

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A father came close to missing out on a $200,000 Lotto win after his daughter hung up on officials because she thought it was a scam.

The man from Padstow, in Sydney's southwest, won the first prize in Lucky Lotteries Mega Jackpot on Tuesday night.

When officials initially called to tell him the good news, his daughter answered but didn't believe the call was real.

The man from Padstow, in Sydney's southwest, won the first prize in Lucky Lotteries Mega Jackpot on Tuesday night (stock image)

'She came over to me and said "we've just received a really weird call, but I don't believe what they're saying",' the father told The Lott.

Luckily, the man headed down to his local newsagency to be on the safe side and got the shock of his life when staff told him he was the lucky winner.

'I didn't know what to do or how to act. Things like this don't happen to people like me,' he said.

'For me, it's a lot of money, so I am still trying to get over the shock of it. This is good, really good.'

Although the news was still sinking in, the delighted man said he did have a few ideas for his prize.

'I will definitely share it with my family and spoil the kids. I wouldn't mind going on a few holidays too,' he said.

Padstow Newsagency owner Lin Yang said the outlet was in celebration mode after selling a major prize winning entry to a regular customer

'Most of it will go to the family, though and I am sure they will find lots of ways to enjoy it. We might have to go out for a celebratory breakfast tomorrow too.'

Padstow Newsagency owner Lin Yang said the outlet was in celebration mode after selling a major prize winning entry to a regular customer.

'It was very exciting. They came in yesterday to check their ticket and they couldn't believe it,' she said.

'It was so nice to share in the excitement. We were just as happy as they were. We couldn't be more pleased the prize has gone to a regular customer.
A 75-year-old retired crime reporter who was sucker punched at random in broad daylight on a New York City street has said the attack 'made no sense' - unlike muggings in the 1980s, which were for money.

Judith Thomas says she was walking to meet her sister on Easter Sunday when a stranger struck her with 'a hellacious punch' on the corner of West 119th Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem.

Thomas, a former Channel 9 crime reporter, was left with swollen cheeks and lips, as well as a pronounced bruise on her face.

Just two days after her attack, the NYPD released its latest crime data for March, which showed overall crime went up 2.4 percent compared with the same time last year. The rise in violent crime in the city was driven by a 36 percent increase in murders and a 35 percent increase in auto thefts.

Yet on Wednesday, a day later, NYC Mayor Bill deBlasio said he is convinced that New Yorkers are not living in fear despite crime rates rising across the board. His comments came hours after another violent attack. In the latest incident a Kansas tourist was hit in the shoulder by a stray bullet near Times Square.

The recent seemingly random attacks have sparked worries that New York could be descending back to the bad old days of the 1970s and 1980s, when subway cars were filthy with graffiti and dangerous with violence - and murders were spiraling out of control.

Scroll down for video

VICTIM: Judith Thomas was randomly attacked on Sunday when she was punched by a man

While violent crime has risen sharply, it's a far cry from New York's dark days: In 1980, for instance, the city recorded 1,814 homicides; last year, the city logged 462.

Still, those numbers are concerning, as murders increased nearly 45 percent from 2019, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of the numbers.

And some experts are worried about the city's economy coming back amid a sharp increase in violent crime.

'It would be a mistake to minimize the impact that crime has on a city or a neighborhoods ability to revive itself after an economic downturn,' according to urban policy expert Steven Malanga in City Journal.

A report by the Partnership for New York City has surmised up to a third of New York's small businesses could be closed for good since the start of the coronavirus.

And the unemployment and shuttered storefronts that come along with those closures likely would only breed more crime.

SUSPECT: Surveillance video shows unidentified male ducking under a rail prior to the attack

WANTED: The attacker walked by Thomas and punched her, knocking her to the ground

Thomas, the former crime reporter, surmised the recent wave was being driven by a lack of social services for people with mental health issues and for the homeless, among other issues.

It's urgent for those issues to be addressed, she said, but still she implored people not to give up on the city. She said she wasn't going to.

As for her Sunday ordeal, Thomas detailed it as follows:

'I was on my way to meet my sister for Easter dinner on Sunday. It was 3 o'clock on a beautiful afternoon. I was a block away from the restaurant and all of a sudden I got sucker-punched with a hellacious punch, I mean a really hard punch,' Thomas said in an interview with DailyMail.com.

In the 1970s and 1980s, subway cars were filthy with graffiti and dangerous with violence

RIOT POLICE: Above, the NYPD carry shields to retake Avenue A during a riot outside Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan's East Village. The riot in 1988 began after police allegedly beat a homeless man; the area had been simmering for years as landlords abandoned building and the park, which is now rehabilitated, was the scene of drug-dealing and violent crime

'It knocked me to the ground. And I screamed and I was on the ground going 'Oh my god, what just happened?''

Video of the attack shows a man duck under the railing of a building's scaffolding before unloading a punch directly at Thomas, knocking her to the ground.

'All these wonderful people came to help me. Black people, white people - they got water for me, they called the cops, they called the ambulance - everybody came to help.

'It was really good to know New Yorkers cared.'

The attacker, who is pictured in surveillance video and is wanted by the NYPD, hasn't been found.

Thomas pointed toward social issues plaguing New York City as the reason behind her attack.

'We've got a homelessness crisis and it's getting worse. We've got a mental health crisis, not enough resources for poor people. We've got racial inequity, we've got wealth inequity and people are getting desperate and they're angry and they're acting out.

'This was crazy, this attack. It made no sense. He didn't say anything to me, he didn't go for my purse, nothing. It was just acting out in sheer anger and hostility ... and I think we need resources in this city to deal with the problems so that people have hope instead of desperation.'

Thomas also made note of how the rationale behind certain attacks has changed over the past 40 years.

AFTERMATH: Following the attack, she was was bruised and swollen from the sucker punch

STANDING STRONG: Thomas vows not to be intimidated following the attack, though. 'I'm not giving these people power over my life,' she said in an interview with DailyMail.com

'I was here in [1981] when I was mugged,' Thomas said. 'But that made sense, they wanted money. That was what they were after, at least I understood that.'

'We used to joke about carrying mugger money so you give the $20 to the mugger. This is something totally different, this is random violence. It's directed against different ethnic groups and that's horrifying, because this is a city in which many different ethnic groups live together very peaceably.'

While the attack was frightening, Thomas expressed no desire to live in fear or make changes to her routines

'Even though this happened, I'm gonna do exactly what I have been doing and will continue to do, because I'm not giving these people power over my life,' Thomas said. 'They're not gonna stop me from going where I want to go, when I want to go there.'

'This is my city, it's not their city. I refuse to be afraid. I just refuse to let them intimidate me.

The suspect has not been caught, but police hope someone will come forward

Aside from assaults, when it comes to the most recent crime statistics, there were 99 shooting incidents in March 2021, compared to 56 a year ago, representing an increase of nearly 77 percent.

There were also 492 gun arrests citywide last month, which is an increase of nearly 67 percent compared to March 2020.

Thomas is willing to help the police put her attacker away once they're able to apprehend him.

'I'm not going anywhere because this happened. And I told the police, if they catch this guy, I'm willing to testify.'

Thomas directed a message towards her attacker, who has yet to be caught.

'You're a nut job, you're a criminal, you need to be in jail, and you need a hell of a good psychiatrist.'

Thomas also had a message for concerned citizens of the city.

'Please don't be afraid. This is our city. We need to keep it that way. I know this is terrifying, I know this is awful, believe me I understand that, I understand it every time I look at my face.

'But we cannot let the fear dominate our lives because then we let them win and we must not let them win.'

CBS2 reports that the suspect remains at-large, but police are hopeful someone will step forward after recognizing the man in the surveillance video.

Meanwhile, Thomas continued her daily life in the aftermath of the attack, even getting a COVID-19 vaccine in the past few days.

Even as crime surged, Mayor Bill de Blasio expressed optimism that other New Yorkers are not currently living in fear during a Wednesday press conference.

'I think people see these actions and they know that continued help is coming,' he argued. 'But New Yorkers don't live in fear. They keep moving forward. I really believe that. I've felt that my whole life here.'
NCPDP Foundation Logo

The NCPDP Foundation Board of Trustees announced it awarded a $115,000 grant to Point-of-Care Partners to support the migration of NCPDPs Telecommunication Standard to a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format, enhancing its extensibility and modernizing the real-time pharmacy claims standard. NCPDPs Telecommunication Standard was first developed in 1988, ushering in a new and unprecedented era of real-time transactions in the pharmacy segment of healthcare. The Telecommunication Standard provides the standardized format to submit prescription drug claims, and includes transactions for eligibility verification, claim and service billing, predetermination of benefits, prior authorization, and information reporting. JSON is an open standard file format, and data interchange format, that uses human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consisting of attributevalue pairs and array data types.

Accelerating the modernization of this industry Standard is an important part of NCPDPs strategic roadmap, explained NCPDP President & CEO Lee Ann Stember. Future-proofing the Telecommunication Standard, which is a foundational component of the healthcare infrastructure, supports our broader standards development goal to meet evolving industry needs and advance patient care. It will ensure that we are able to continue to support the many changes in healthcare from new care delivery models and advanced technologies to innovative and precision drug therapies that will shape the future of healthcare.

Under the grant, Point-of-Care Partners will work in close collaboration with NCPDP on a phased approach to support full migration of the Telecommunication Standard to the new format, with a target completion date in December 2021. The iterative process will incorporate feedback to ensure the process achieves goals related to extensibility, interoperability, and code set management. Point-of-Care Partners will document the process for transforming existing Telecom structures and features to the new format, complete the data model and assist in creating a plan to apply the format to the standard and move it to production.

The Foundation is excited to fund this grant to support NCPDPs ability to convert the Telecommunication Standard to the JSON format, explained NCPDP Foundation Chair Mindy D. Smith, BSPharm, R.Ph., MHA. NCPDPs Telecommunication Standard was a milestone innovation for the industry, bringing convenience and patient-centered services that we take for granted today. It is exciting to know that the Standard will continue to serve patients and providers with a new format that will make it easier for new technologies to tap into real-time data exchange enabled by the standard.

We are thrilled to be able to bring our decades of experience contributing to standards development and implementation to work with the NCPDP Foundation on this critical project, said Tony Schueth, CEO and Founder of Point-of-Care Partners. Much of the work we do across the industry is focused on leveraging health IT to better serve patients and providers and improve outcomes. Helping modernize the Telecommunication Standard in collaboration with the NCPDP Foundation fits into our mission nicely.

About NCPDP Foundation

The NCPDP Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charitable organization headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona and is affiliated with the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP). The NCPDP Foundation was established in December 2012 to support research, education, and charitable involvement within the healthcare industry. For more information, visit http://ncpdpfoundation.org.
New research from the Smidt Heart Institute shows that more patients-;specifically those with medical risk factors or from underserved communities-;opted into telehealth appointments for their cardiovascular care during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data also suggests these telehealth patients underwent fewer diagnostic tests and received fewer medications than patients who saw their doctors in person.

The findings, published in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) Network Open, point to "digital shifts" in cardiovascular care amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

We were encouraged to learn that access to cardiovascular care was maintained for high-risk and underserved communities during the pandemic. This same study, however, identified some differences in care that we need to delve into further to better understand." Joseph Ebinger, MD, Director of Clinical Analytics, Smidt Heart Institute and Study's Senior Author

The researchers examined data collected from 87,182 pre-COVID in-person visits, 74,498 COVID-era in-person visits, 4,720 COVID-era telehealth video visits and 10,381 COVID-era telephone visits.

Across all categories, patients accessing COVID-era remote visits were more likely to be from racial or ethnic minority groups, have private insurance and have cardiovascular conditions such as hypertension, coronary artery disease, atrial fibrillation and heart failure.

Researchers then compared how often medications or follow-up tests, including electrocardiograms and echocardiograms, were ordered. Findings suggest a decrease when compared to pre-COVID visits.

"Our data reveal a reduced rate of testing and prescribing, likely due to a number of factors," said Ebinger. "We see these results as being not obviously negative or positive but a trend that is important to understand. For instance, lower rates of testing and prescribing mayin many instancesreflect reductions in the types of care that are not really needed to achieve good health outcomes while adding costs to the system."

Benefits and pitfalls of telehealth

One of the key benefits to telehealth visits, researchers say, is access to a cardiologist at a distance, which is vital for individuals who cannot-;or do not want to-;travel for care due to concerns over virus exposure, lack of transportation, increased family demands or inability to take time off of work. Without telehealth visits, Ebinger said, many of these patients may well not have received any healthcare at all.

But researchers also note the importance of recognizing potential pitfalls of telehealth services, many of which disproportionately affect communities of color.

"Being a relatively new platform for patients and providers alike, there is a learning curve with telehealth, both technically and with respect to comfort and confidence," said Susan Cheng, MD, MPH, MMSc, associate professor, Cedars-Sinai Department of Cardiology, director of the Institute for Research on Healthy Aging in the Department of Cardiology at the Smidt Heart Institute, and an author on the study.

As an example, Cheng notes that patients must have access to a device that allows them to connect with their provider. Similarly, patients must be comfortable with the telehealth platform and feel confident around how to access and use it effectively.

Notwithstanding the challenges of telehealth, there are also conveniences. Researchers say past reports have indicated that racial and ethnic minority populations make up a disproportionate size of the essential job market. Essential worker schedules have been even busier during the pandemic, making it more difficult to fit in an in-person medical appointment during regular business hours. This factor could have contributed to the higher rates of telehealth use among racial and ethnic minority patients.

As a next step, researchers plan to determine whether the changes in clinician practices during the pandemic will lead to changes in patient outcomes.

"We plan to next examine if the ordering of fewer tests, such as stress tests, might predispose to missed diagnoses," said Ebinger. "To understand the balance of risks and benefits, we are also investigating whether the fewer tests ordered might actually represent opportunities to streamline away from certain types of care that were not important contributors to health in the prior system of only in-person visits."
The original Immersive Van Gogh has risen to blockbuster status, becoming the hottest ticket to hold. Immersive Van Gogh sold out its run in Toronto, has sold out and extended its run in Chicago, and San Francisco opened in March, where its first month is sold-out. Following the Los Angeles, New York, and Denver ticket sales announcements, each market sold out rapidly and have since extended their runs with additional tickets now available.

Immersive Van Gogh is the latest creation by the world-renowned master of digital art, Italy's Massimiliano Siccardi, who for 30 years has been pioneering immersive exhibitions in Europe. Over 2 million visitors have seen his magnificent installations.

With the help of 60,600 frames of video, 90,000,000 pixels, and 500,000+ cubic feet of projections, this captivating digital art exhibit merges state-of-the-art technology, theatrical storytelling, and world-class animation. It gives guests the rare opportunity to "step inside" and experience the incredible post-Impressionist works of Van Gogh like never before. Immersive Van Gogh will be making its mark at a secret location to be determined.

The original Immersive Van Gogh is a spectacular, vivid, and breathtaking digital art experience that invites audiences to enter the legendary works of post-Impressionist artist Vincent van Goghevoking his highly emotional and chaotic inner consciousness through art, light, music, movement, and imagination. Featuring stunning towering projections that illuminate the artistic genius's mind, the exhibition showcases a curated selection of images from Van Gogh's 2,000+ lifetime catalog of masterpieces, including Les Mangeurs de pommes de terre (The Potato Eaters, 1885), La Nuit etoilee (Starry Night, 1889), Les tournesols (Sunflowers, 1887), and La Chambre a coucher (The Bedroom, 1888). Paintings will be presented how the artist first saw the scenes, based on an active life and moving landscapes turned into sharp yet sweeping brush strokes.

Creative Director and Italian film producer Massimiliano Siccardi has pioneered the art form with Immersive Van Gogh and taken it to an unmatched and unprecedented level. Van Gogh once said, "I dream my painting, and I paint my dreams." Siccardi and his award-winning creative team have made Van Gogh's dream come alive by creating unprecedented movements in the masterpieces. The exhibition also contains original, mood-setting music by Italian multimedia composer Luca Longobardi and Vittorio Guidotti as the Art Director.

The hour-long, timed-entry, walk-through experience is designed with health and safety as a priority. Capacity will be limited in accordance with the City of Cleveland's safety protocols. Additional safety precautions include touchless ticket-taking, temperature checks upon arrival, hand sanitizer stations, social distancing markers throughout the venue, and digitally projected social distancing circles on the gallery floors to ensure appropriate spacing. All guests must wear a face covering at all times during their visit.

"We've created a unique and enthralling production that functions safely during this pandemic," says Co-Producer, Svetlana Dvoretsky. "Hundreds of thousands of guests have seen Immersive Van Gogh in small, socially-distanced safe groups. It is an honor to bring the arts back into peoples' lives during these times," adds Co-Producer, Corey Ross.

"Despite being unknown throughout his life, Van Gogh's artwork has created a lasting impact through its emotional richness and simple beauty," said Massimiliano Siccardi, Immersive Van Gogh designer. "Both myself and Luca Longobardi are very excited to visit Cleveland and once again bring Van Gogh's legacy to life in a way that embraces this city's one-of-a-kind energy."

Immersive Van Gogh has received rave reviews from critics worldwide. The Chicago Tribune wrote, "entire rooms pulse with imagery and emotional resonance." While the Chicago Time Out described the exhibit as, "The future of experiential art." San Francisco Chronicle , "After a year without big, splashy art happenings, this is a huge, indulgent way to dive back in." The Toronto Sun declared, "the mind-blowing imagery, brings van Gogh's best work to life  including Sunflower, Irises, and The Starry Night  for a cathartic and liberating experience. Immersive Van Gogh ups the emotional ante." Debra Yeo of the Toronto Star stated, "I wondered: could projections of paintings on walls and floors be thrilling? The answer is 'yes.'" Called a "completely new way of encountering art" by CTV and a "blockbuster digital experience that has taken the art world by storm" by Artnet News, the exhibit "cleverly embraces creativity," according to Washington Post.

For more information about Immersive Van Gogh, visit https://www.immersivevangogh.com/ . Follow the exhibition on social media on Instagram , and Facebook .

For images, click here, and for video, click here

SOURCE Lighthouse Immersive
PHOENIX, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Namecheap, the world's second-largest domain registrar and a top professional email hosting provider for small to medium-sized businesses and startups, this week honors email's rich and significant 50-year history as one of the most essential digital inventions of all time.

Namecheap 50% off sale Namecheap celebrates email's 50th anniversary

In 1971 graduate coder Raymond Tomlinson worked for ARPANET, a precursor to the Internet, on coding file transfer programs. As a side-hustle, he also worked on a way to send messages from one computer to another. With computers still in their infancy, his company's' superiors thought this idea was too "far out" when learning about his project, and they discouraged him from continuing. However, that did not stop Tomlinson, and 50 years later, 'electronic mail' is perhaps the most critical communication tool for humankind. Learn impressive stats and facts, and read all about the strange and wonderful 50-year history of email in Namecheap's latest blog .

Additionally, Namecheap observes email's historic milestone with a week of 50% discounts on all new Professional Business Email hosting packages. The sale kicks off on April 6 at midnight EDT and runs for seven days (ending at 11:59 PM on April 12). This offer is open to new and existing Namecheap customers. Renewals are not eligible. For more details, visit the official Professional Business Email page.

About Namecheap

Namecheap is an ICANN-accredited domain registrar and technology company founded in 2000 by CEO Richard Kirkendall. Celebrating two decades of providing unparalleled levels of service, security, and support, Namecheap has been steadfast in customer satisfaction. With over 13 million domains under management, Namecheap.com is among the top domain registrars and web hosting providers in the world. To learn more about Namecheap, visit namecheap.com.

SOURCE Namecheap
CHICAGO, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the new market research report "Delivery Robots Market with COVID-19 Impact by Load Carrying Capacity (Up to 10 kg, More than 50 kg), Components, Number of Wheels, End-User Industry (Food & Beverages, Retail, Postal), and Geography - Global Forecast to 2026", published by MarketsandMarkets, the market is expected to grow from USD 212 million in 2021 to USD 957 million by 2026; it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 35.1% during 2021-2026. Reduction in delivery costs in last-mile deliveries, and Increase in venture funding are the key factors driving the growth of the delivery robots market. Further, Worldwide growth of e-commerce market are factors propelling the growth of the delivery robots market.

Ask for PDF Brochure: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=263997316

"4-wheeled delivery robot segment is estimated to register the largest market share during the forecast period"

The delivery robots market for 4-wheeled delivery robots accounted for the largest market share in terms of value in 2020. Companies offer four-wheeled robots for delivering groceries, food orders, flowers, packages, and boxes among other things. Reducing the distance between the front and rear set of wheels will result in better zero-radius turning in any desired direction with 4-wheeled robots. Hence, 4-wheeled delivery robots accounted for the largest market share.

"The market for the retail industry to hold the largest share of the delivery robots market in 2021."

The retail industry held the largest share of the delivery robots market in 2021. The increasing use of the internet provides an impetus to online shopping. The ever-increasing trend of online shopping is expected to escalate the demand for delivery robots for the e-commerce application in the retail industry in the next few years. Once the rules and regulations for operating delivery robots are defined worldwide, these robots would also be adopted for cargo deliveries, which is also an important factor that is likely to fuel the growth of the market.

Browse in-depth TOC on "Delivery Robots Market"



144 - Tables

49 - Figures

210 - Pages

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North America expected to hold the largest market share during the forecast period

North America has been home to many delivery robot manufacturing companies such as Robby Technologies (US) and BoxBot (US). Sophisticated and adequate street infrastructure, such as proper design and sufficient width of sidewalks and footpaths, helps companies in testing and operating delivery robots in this region.

Starship Technologies (US), JD.com (China), Panasonic System Solutions Asia Pacific (Singapore), Savioke (US), Nuro (US), Amazon Robotics (US), Robby Technologies (US), Boston Dynamics (US), Robomart (US), and Eliport (Spain) are the key players in the market.

Related Reports:

Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) Market with COVID-19 Impact Analysis, by Type (Tow Vehicles, Unit Load Carriers, Forklift Trucks, Assembly Line Vehicles, Pallet Trucks), Navigation Technology, Industry, and Geography - Global Forecast to 2025

Top Robotics Market with COVID-19 Impact Analysis by Top Industrial Robotics (Articulated, SCARA, Cartesian, Parallel, Collaborative), Top Service Robotics (Logistics, Domestic, Medical, Defense, Rescue, and Security) - Global Forecast to 2025

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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.

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(Natural News) In apparent punishment for his rejection of a statewide face mask mandate and vaccine passport program, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was lied about by 60 Minutes during a recent hit segment.

Instead of airing his complete interview with correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, CBS cut out portions of DeSantis statements to make him appear stupid, as well as to tee up a false narrative that he engaged in a pay for play scheme concerning the mass distribution of Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) injections.

The accusation was made that DeSantis gave preferential treatment to the Publix grocery store chain to be the sole distributor of Chinese virus syringes in Palm Beach because of the companys contributions to his campaign. DeSantis denied this and offered an explanation, but 60 Minutes cut his explanation from the final show.

What viewers ended up seeing was a babbling DeSantis apparently making excuses rather than explaining that Publix was simply the first to volunteer, with the approval of local officials in Palm Beach.

First of all, the first pharmacies that had [the vaccine] were CVS and Walgreens and they had a long-term care mission, so they were going to the long-term care facilities, DeSantis told 60 Minutes during a portion of the interview that was removed.

They got the vaccine in the middle of December, they started going to the long-term care facilities the third week in December to do LTCs. So that was their mission, that was very important and we trusted them to do that. As we got into January, we wanted to expand the distribution points.

DeSantis was only trying to get the Chinese virus jab into more communities, he says

DeSantis went on to talk about how various counties across Florida had set up drive-thru sites, but that this was not enough to mass vaccinate people as quickly as we desired.

We wanted to get it into more communities, DeSantis revealed about the agenda, hence why the state partnered up with Publix.

According to DeSantis, Publix, which aggressively fought against Floridas medical cannabis program back in 2016, by the way, was the first one to raise their hand as a corporate volunteer to mass distribute Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) injections to Floridians.

It is as simple as that, DeSantis insists, but this is not what 60 Minutes viewers were told. Instead, they were shown bits and pieces of DeSantis interview that made him look irate. Not only that, but the interview was carefully parsed and reassembled to make DeSantis appear as though he did not even want to answer Alfonsis aggressive questioning.

This is why bias is wrong framework for whats wrong with journalism, tweeted Omri Ceren.

Bias is when a reporter does a story about something that happened but lets personal views color the reporting. This is being paid to produce content for a partisan agenda, cherry picking topics & details.

Even the leftist mayor of Palm Beach County, Dave Kerner, agreed that 60 Minutes failed to accurately report information about what actually took place. He wrote that CBS reporting was not just based on bad information  it was intentionally false.

Kerner says he challenged 60 Minutes to let him refute its half-cooked conspiracy theory about DeSantis. The program and network declined, though.

Floridas performance makes what the Democrats did look really bad, and they cant have that because it threatens their pay to play deals with nursing homes, hospitals, and others, speculated one Zero Hedge commenter as to why DeSantis is now under attack.

I think 60 Minutes should personally call and apologize to all 11 of their viewers, joked another.

To keep up with the latest Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) vaccine hysteria, check out ChemicalViolence.com.

Sources for this article include:

ZeroHedge.com

GreenRushDaily.com
Yom HaShoah, known as Holocaust Remembrance Day, is observed as Israels day of remembering and commemorating the six million Jews who died during the Holocaust, as well as the Jewish resistance heroes who arose during that time period.

According to shiva.com, Yom HaShoah literally means the day of remembrance of the catastrophe and the heroism. The observance is held one week after the seventh day of Passover. It also falls one week before Yom Hazikaron, Israels Memorial Day for fallen soldiers.

Since the 1960s, the sound of a siren on Yom HaShoah stops all activity throughout Israel while two minutes of silent devotion is observed.

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Yom HaShoah is a prescribed time to commemorate, honor and reflect on those who endured the pain, suffering and loss as a result of the Holocaust. This is especially true if your family has been touched by the Holocaust either through personal loss or through survivors.

According to a previous article posted for last years observance, Survival and hardship and the importance of family are on the minds of many these days. Though no challenge can truly be compared with the Holocaust, remembering those dark days may help us cope with our current troubles.

To honor the survivors and remember the victims, the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum will host three virtual events over the next two weeks.

The mission of our Yom HaShoah commemoration continues  to remember the victims, honor the survivors, and educate the community about the history and lessons of the Holocaust, the museum stated on its website.

On Sunday, April 11, the museum will host Yom Hashoah 2021 St. Louis Holocaust Commemoration via YouTube and Facebook Live. The commemoration will be held virtually and will continue the traditional focus on St. Louis survivors through their eyewitness accounts of the Shoah. The program will also honor our communitys Holocaust Torah scrolls and include music, liturgical readings and prayers.

On Monday, April 19, the museum will host another virtual event, The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitlers Ghettos. This video interview, moderated by Lory Cooper, manager-volunteers and tours for the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum, will premiere at 7 p.m.

Presented in partnership with the St. Louis Jewish Book Festival, this interview will tell one of the most important stories of World War II. Judy Batalion, the granddaughter of Polish Holocaust survivors, shares the extraordinary accomplishments of brave Jewish women who became resistance fighters. The Light of Days is an unforgettable true tale of war, the fight for freedom, female friendship and survival in the face of staggering odds.

Finally, at 7:30 p.m. on the 19th, the museum will host Lost Voices, featuring chamber music by the Fox Players. Featuring the works of Erwin Schulhoff, Gideon Klein and Andre Previn, this program is dedicated to the music and memory of artists who perished in the Holocaust. Learn their stories, witness their music and come together to remember these lost  but not forgotten  voices.

This program will also be broadcast to communities in both St. Louis and Kalamazoo, Mich., thanks to support from the Holocaust museum here and the Michigan Festival of Sacred Music. Register for this program here.

For more information about Yom HaShoah and the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum, please visit https://stlholocaustmuseum.org/get-involved/attend-event/.
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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates  An Iranian ship believed to be a base for the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and anchored for years in the Red Sea off Yemen has been attacked, Tehran acknowledged Wednesday.

Irans Foreign Ministry confirmed the attack on the MV Saviz, suspected to have been carried out by Israel  though Tehran did not immediately blame its regional archenemy. The assault came as Iran and world powers sat down in Vienna for the first talks about the U.S. potentially rejoining the tattered deal aimed at curbing Irans nuclear program, showing events outside the negotiations could derail those efforts.

The ships long presence in the region, repeatedly criticized by Saudi Arabia, has come as the West and U.N. experts say Iran has provided arms and support to Yemens Houthi rebels in that countrys yearslong war. Iran denies arming the Houthis, though components found in the rebels weaponry link back to Tehran.

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Iran previously described the Saviz as aiding in anti-piracy efforts in the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb strait, a crucial chokepoint in international shipping. A statement attributed to Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh described the ship as a commercial vessel.

Fortunately, no casualties were reported  and technical investigations are underway, Khatibzadeh said. Our country will take all necessary measures through international authorities.

In an earlier state TV statement, an anchor cited a New York Times story, which quoted an anonymous U.S. official telling the newspaper that Israel informed America it carried out an attack Tuesday morning on the vessel. Israeli officials declined to comment about the assault when reached by The Associated Press, as did Savizs owner.

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz, while refusing to say if his country launched the attack, described Iran and its regional allies as a major threat.

Israel must continue to defend itself, Gantz told journalists. Any place we find an operational challenge and necessity, we will continue to act.

Irans semiofficial Tasnim news agency, believed to be close to the Guard, reported that a limpet mine planted on Savizs hull caused the blast. A limpet mine is a type of naval mine that is attached to the side of a ship, usually by a diver. It later explodes, and can significantly damage a vessel. Iran did not blame anyone for the attack and said Iranian officials likely would offer more information in the coming days.

In a statement, the U.S. militarys Central Command only said it was aware of media reports of an incident involving the Saviz and that U.S. forces were not involved.

At the United Nations, spokesman Stephane Dujarric expressed concern over the Saviz incident and urged concerned parties, including countries in the region, to exercise maximum restraint and refrain from taking any escalatory actions and, in particular, to respect their obligations under international law.

Also Wednesday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called the Vienna talks a success while speaking to his Cabinet.

Today, one united statement is being heard that all sides of the nuclear deal have concluded that there is no better solution than the deal, he said.

A European diplomat with knowledge of the talks, speaking on condition of anonymity to frankly discuss the closed-door meeting in Vienna, acknowledged outside events could affect the negotiations.

We hope that every action, whether it comes from (nuclear deal) parties or external parties, wont undermine the dynamic, he said.

Talks between working groups discussing proposals on American sanctions and Iranian violations of the deal started Tuesday night and continued Wednesday, even after Iran acknowledged the attack. Participants said the Saviz attack had no immediate effect on the meetings.

The Saviz, owned by the state-linked Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, came to the Red Sea in late 2016, according to ship-tracking data. In the years since, it has drifted off the Dahlak archipelago, a chain of islands off the coast of the African nation of Eritrea. It likely received supply replenishments and switched crew via passing Iranian vessels using the waterway.

Briefing materials from the Saudi military earlier obtained by the AP showed men on the vessel dressed in military-style fatigues, as well as small boats capable of ferrying cargo to the Yemeni coast. Those materials also included pictures showing a variety of antennas on the vessel that the Saudi government described as unusual for a commercial cargo ship, suggesting it conducted electronic surveillance. Other images showed the ship had mounts for .50-caliber machine guns.

The Washington Institute for Near-East Policy has called the Saviz an Iranian mothership in the region, similarly describing it as an intelligence-gathering base and an armory for the Guard. Policy papers from the institute dont explain how they came to that conclusion, though its analysts routinely have access to Gulf and Israeli military sources.

The Saviz had been under international sanctions until Irans 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, which saw Tehran receive relief from sanctions in exchange for limiting its enrichment of uranium. The Trump administration later renewed American sanctions on the Saviz as part of its decision to unilaterally withdraw from the accord.

In June 2019, Saudi Arabia flew a critically ill Iranian off the Saviz after Tehran made a request through the United Nations for assistance.

Amid the wider tensions between the U.S. and Iran, a series of mysterious blasts have targeted ships in the region, including some the U.S. Navy blamed on Iran. Among the ships damaged recently was an Israeli-owned car carrier in an attack Netanyahu blamed on Iran. Another was an Iranian cargo ship in the Mediterranean Sea.

Iran also has blamed Israel for a recent series of attacks, including a mysterious explosion in July that destroyed an advanced centrifuge assembly plant at its Natanz nuclear facility. Another is the November killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a top Iranian scientist who founded the Islamic Republics military nuclear program two decades ago.

___

Associated Press journalists Nasser Karimi and Mehdi Fattahi in Tehran, Iran; Ilan Ben Zion in Jerusalem; Sylvie Corbet in Paris, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and David Rising in Berlin contributed to this report.

___

Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.
Trump Says Gaetz Never Asked Him for Pardon

Former President Donald Trump said Wednesday that Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) did not request a pardon from him.

Congressman Matt Gaetz has never asked me for a pardon, Trump said in a statement.

It must be remembered that he has totally denied the accusations against him, he added.

Citing two anonymous sources, the New York Times claimed in a recent report that Gaetz asked the White House for preemptive pardons for himself and others.

A spokesperson for Gaetz said that the sources were conflating Gaetzs public call last year for Trump to pardon a slew of people.

Entry-level political operatives have conflated a pardon call from Representative Gaetzwhere he called for President Trump to pardon everyone from himself, to his administration, to Joe Exoticwith these false and increasingly bizarre, partisan allegations against him, the spokesman said. Those comments have been on the record for some time, and President Trump even retweeted the congressman, who tweeted them out himself.

Gaetz is reportedly being investigated for possibly paying a minor girl for sex. The Florida representative has vehemently denied the accusations.

First, I have never, ever paid for sex. And second, I, as an adult man, have not slept with a 17-year-old, he wrote in an op-ed this week.

Gaetz said he is not a monk and is enjoying monogamy. He is engaged.

It comes as no surprise that my political opponents want to sensationalize and criminalize my prior sex life just as I am getting engaged to the best person Ive ever known. It is regrettable that the battle of ideas should thus become so personal. But then again, when your ideas suck, you need to stoop this low, he added.

The updates came after a former Air Force officer, Bob Kent, admitted to being part of a group that tried to press Gaetzs father, former Florida Sen. Don Gaetz, for $25 million in return for making his sons future legal and political problems go away.

Kent said what happened was not extortion and that there was never any threat involved.

Rep. Gaetz has described what Kent and others did as attempted extortion and said his dad wore a wire as part of a federal probe into the matter.

The FBI declined to comment to The Epoch Times and the Department of Justice has not returned inquiries.

Documents published last week outlined the alleged extortion scheme. They included an email from assistant U.S. Attorney David Goldberg confirming to Don Gaetzs lawyer that he was cooperating with the FBI.

A former Gaetz staffer came forward on Monday to accuse the FBI of approaching him with baseless claims as he attested to Gaetzs character.
The Boilermaker Road Race is partnering with Empire State Trail to encourage people to get active by running, walking and biking outdoors over the next few months.

The two have come together to hold the Empire State Trail Challenge, urging people to get out and explore the newly completed Empire State Trail, which spans across the state.

"Creating opportunities for healthy activity and lifestyles lies at the core of the Boilermaker mission, said Jordan Peters, Boilermaker marketing director. So, it was a natural fit to work in concert with New York State to provide New Yorkers with an opportunity to get outside and participate in a safe and healthy endeavor while highlighting the features of the Empire State Trail."

There are three legs of the challenge, including the Hudson Valley Greenway Trail from New York City to Albany, the Champlain Valley Trail from Albany to Canada and the Erie Canalway Trail from Buffalo to Albany.

Participants can register online, and have from April 9 to Aug. 1 to complete one, two or all three legs of the challenge. Miles will be logged and tracked virtually, and a digital dashboard will be posted showing the progress of all of the challengers.

Cost to enter is $25 for one section of the trail, and $5 for each additional leg.

To sign up for the challenge, visit: runsignup.com. Registration is open from now through July 5.

The annual Boilermaker Road Race is scheduled for Oct. 10 in Utica.
President Joe Biden sent words of support for Jordan's King Abdullah II after the monarch accused his half-brother Hamzah of sedition.

Biden's came after days of rocky developments in Jordan, who signed a peace treaty with Israel back in 1994, after days of rocky reports of palace intrigue.

The president spoke at the end of a speech on his infrastructure plan, responding to a shouted question. Asked what his message would be for Abdullah, whose stable reign has provided a foothold for U.S. Middle East policy in the turbulent region, Biden responded: 'I would tell him that he has a friend in America.'

'He has a friend in America': President Joe Biden offered support for Jordan's King Abdullah II in comments Wednesday following a speech on infrastructure

The comments were echoed in an official statement the White House released Wednesday following a phone call between the two men.

'President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. spoke today with King Abdullah II of Jordan to express strong U.S. support for Jordan and underscore the importance of King Abdullah II's leadership to the United States and the region,' it said.

'Together they discussed the strong bilateral ties between Jordan and the United States, Jordan's important role in the region, and strengthening bilateral cooperation on multiple political, economic, and security issues. The President also affirmed that the United States supports a two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.'

Jordan's King Abdullah II addressed the unprecedented public rift within the royal family for the first time Wednesday, portraying it as an attempted sedition involving his half-brother that had been 'nipped in the bud,' but caused him anger, pain and shock.

Biden, pictured as vice president in 2010, vouched for Abdullah during a time of turmoil in the kingdom

Senator Joseph Biden Jr. (R-DE)(C) hosts King Abdullah of Jordan (L) and Queen Rania at a Senate Foreign Relations luncheon 08 May, 2002 during their visit to the US Capitol in Washington

Jordan's King Abdullah II, his wife Queen Rania, Queen Noor, mother of the groom, Crown Prince Hamzeh, the groom, his bride Princess Noor, Sherif Asem bin-Nayef and his ex-wife Firouzeh Vokhshouri, parents of the bride, attend the royal wedding on May 27, 2004 in Amman, Jordan. Hamzeh and Noor registered their marriage on August 29, 2003

The monarch appeared to be doubling down on the allegations against Prince Hamzah, a former crown prince, while at the same time trying to reassure Jordanians that the nation was returning to business as usual.

But even if the current crisis is eventually defused, major challenges loom for the Western-allied monarchy as it confronts growing internal dissent.

Wednesday's statement, presented by a newsreader on Jordan TV, dealt with the internal crisis that erupted over the weekend when Hamzah was confined to his home and accused of being part of a plot to destabilize the kingdom.

Hamzah has denied the allegations, saying he was simply calling out long-running corruption and mismanagement in the kingdom.

The king said Wednesday that he was hurt by the recent events.

'The challenge over the past few days was not the most difficult or dangerous to the stability of our nation, but to me, it was the most painful,' he said. 'Sedition came from within and without our one house, and nothing compares to my shock, pain, and anger as a brother and as the head of the Hashemite family, and as a leader of this proud people.'

Abdullah also suggested that there was continued control over Hamzah's movements. The prince, who has not been seen or heard from in days, was 'with his family at his palace, under my care,' the statement said.

There was no sign that authorities have released up to 18 other detainees, including members of one of the powerful tribes on which the monarchy has historically relied.

Authorities have imposed a sweeping gag order on any coverage of the royal dispute in a sign of how sensitive they are to how it is perceived. The gag order and the king's willingness to sanction his own brother also reaffirmed what Jordanians understand as their 'red line' - an absolute ban on criticizing the monarch or the royal family.

In this April 2, 2001, file photo, Jordan's King Abdullah II laughs with his half brother Prince Hamzah, right, shortly before the monarch embarked on a tour of the United States. Abdullah and Hamzah are both sons of the beloved King Hussein, who ruled Jordan for nearly a half-century before his death in 1999. Abdullah had appointed Hamzah as crown prince upon his succession but stripped him of the title in 2004

Bessma Momani, a professor of international relations at Ontarios Waterloo University, said the crisis strengthened Hamzahs popularity, making critics of the government and new followers rally behind him.

She said the king's doubling-down on vague plot allegations could also create problems in the future. Prosecuting those detained, including members of a powerful tribe, could stir protests. If they are let go, more questions could arise about whether there was ever a plot.

Even before the palace drama, Jordan was grappling with an economic crisis exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, with one in four people out of work. Longstanding complaints about corruption and misrule have fueled scattered protests in recent months.

At the same time, the region's strategic landscape is shifting as powerful Gulf states pursue closer ties with Israel, potentially undermining Jordan's role in the Middle East peace process.

The White House, in a statement issued Wednesday, said President Joe Biden had spoken with Abdullah to express the strong U.S. support for Jordan and underscore the importance of the king's leadership to the United States, the region and the peace process.

The crisis in the royal family erupted Saturday when Jordan's military chief of staff visited Hamzah and warned him to stop attending meetings with critics of the government. Things quickly escalated, with Hamzah accusing the security establishment of threatening him and ordering the general to leave his home.

Authorities placed the former crown prince under a form of house arrest and detained up to 18 people, including former senior officials. On Sunday, the government said Hamzah and others were involved in a 'malicious plot' against the kingdom's security with foreign support.

Abdullah and Hamzah are both sons of King Hussein, who ruled Jordan for nearly a half-century before his death in 1999. Abdullah had appointed Hamzah as crown prince upon his succession but stripped him of the title in 2004.

The government imposed the gag order on coverage of the dispute after an audio recording of the meeting between Hamzah and the chief of staff, Gen. Yousef Huneiti, raised questions about its allegations of a foreign conspiracy. Neither mentioned any such plot in the recording, which was recorded surreptitiously and circulated online.

Family members of those who were arrested in connection with the alleged plot, meanwhile, said they've had no communication with authorities or the detainees.

Those arrested include Yasser al-Majali, Hamzah's chief of staff, and Samir al-Majali, both prominent members of the Majali tribe.

'We don't know where he is,' said Yasser al-Majali's brother, Abdullah. He said they have been unable to reach any officials and have not been informed of any charges.

'If there is anything against them, take them to court for a fair trial,' he said. 'We dont want any trouble. We care about stability and we want our people to be released.'

Jordan's Prince Hamzah Bin Al-Hussein

The Majali tribe issued an angry statement immediately after the arrests, calling it a 'black day' in which the tribe's dignity had been insulted.

The tribe denied the men had plotted against Jordan and warned against involving them in 'any internal or family dispute.' On Wednesday, video surfaced of the tribesmen holding a small rally demanding the release of their relatives and chanting: 'Where is Hamzah?'

Jordan has a large Palestinian population, including more than 2 million refugees from past wars with Israel and their descendants. The monarchy has granted most of them full citizenship but has historically viewed them with suspicion. Its main base of support is powerful tribes from east of the Jordan River, who dominate the security forces.

For decades, the monarchy has cultivated close ties with the U.S. and other Western nations, which it has used to press for the creation of a Palestinian state including the West Bank and east Jerusalem, which Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 war.

That strategy has hit a wall in recent years as the peace process has ground to a halt. Israel and Jordan made peace in 1994 and maintain close security ties, but relations have soured amid a series of recent diplomatic spats.

At the same time, Gulf countries have been cultivating closer ties with Israel over their shared antipathy toward Iran, relations made public last year when the United Arab Emirates agreed to normalize relations with Israel in a U.S.-brokered deal. Saudi Arabia has at times appeared to be weighing a similar move.

That could jeopardize Jordan's special status. The crumbling of the longstanding Arab consensus that normalization with Israel should be linked to concessions in the peace process, meanwhile, undermines the prospect of creating a Palestinian state, a key Jordanian interest.
Some regular F1 followers who have seen Sebastian Vettel at work in Bahrain and also last season have already jokingly suggested it. Isn't it time for the four-time world champion to retire? Now that Vettel has just embarked on his new adventure with Aston Martin, he won't want to think about that just yet, but he may have already found his new calling.

The adventures of Vettel during the lockdown

While his young F1 colleagues mainly used the first lockdown last year to go sim racing, Vettel remained dead silent. Vettel isn't on social media either, so what was he actually doing at home in the Swiss Alps? At least he wasn't just sitting on the couch, as he was doing an internship at an organic farm, as he now tells a press conference by Frutura.

Read more Salary cap has big consequences for Hamilton and Verstappen

"It was the first lockdown last year and since I had more time than planned, I thought about what I could do and what I was interested in. The subject of agriculture interested me," said Vettel who explains this interest by his already existing obsession with the proper nutrition he needs as a sportsman.

Vettel says this at the launch of the BioBienenApfel project by fruit producer Frutura, which is intended as an initiative to increase the bee population. In the short term, Vettel will not contribute to this with his own orchard, but "I found it very fascinating to learn it in practice and to talk to people who have to deal with it every day. It was definitely very interesting".
YEREVAN, APRIL 7, ARMENPRESS. Russian President Vladimir Putin assured in a meeting with Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan that the trade turnover volumes that have declined because of the coronavirus pandemic will be restored.

I am confident in the near future we will not only be able to restore that volume, but also move forward. I see that the inter-agency commission actively works from both sides. You actively support the activities of that commission and the Russian Deputy PM periodically visits Yerevan'', ARMENPRESS reports Putin as saying.

The Russian President also referred to the issues of opening trade-economic and transport communications in the post-war period, as a result of which, according to Putin, Armenia will get new development opportunities.

PM Pashinyan thanked Putin for the invitation and emphasized that such meetings are very important for discussing various issues. Pashinyan also welcomed the presence of the Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno Karabakh, which has become a key factor for regional stability and security.
Vaccine distribution exposes glaring global health inequity

Xinhua) 09:50, April 07, 2021

A woman wearing a face mask is seen outside a COVID-19 vaccine clinic in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, on April 6, 2021. (Photo by Zou Zheng/Xinhua)

NAIROBI, April 7 (Xinhua) -- World Health Day, which falls on Wednesday, should be a time where we strive to build a fairer and healthier world. But today we're far from such a reality.

Rich countries have taken the lead in the race to inoculate their populations against COVID-19 and restore economic activity, leaving developing countries, especially in Africa, wondering why they've been left behind.

UNFAIR DISTRIBUTION

African media have run reports accusing some Western nations of an irrational hoarding of vaccines. South Africa's Daily Maverick online newspaper said vaccine nationalism is posing a major threat to Africa as the West gobbles up supplies.

People visit Mbagathi County Hospital for COVID-19 vaccination in Nairobi, capital of Kenya, March 22, 2021. (Xinhua/Allan Mutiso)

In Kenya's capital Nairobi, people have to wait in long queues and jostle for jabs, with some elderly people reportedly waking up as early as 6 a.m. for a vaccination, only to return home to try their luck again the next day.

Because of limited supplies, those with a single jab remain worried the window could close for a second shot to complete the vaccination.

African countries have so far received a little over 29 million COVID-19 vaccine doses from different sources, including the World Health Organization's COVAX program and through bilateral agreements, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).

Some 10.3 million doses have been administered, with the majority of those vaccinated being healthcare workers, people with comorbidities, and those aged 50 years and above, the Africa CDC said Sunday.

Meanwhile, COVID-19 vaccines have not yet arrived in up to 10 African countries as of March 25, according to the WHO.

In comparison, U.S. media reported that the world's largest economy is estimated to have received 240 million doses of vaccine by the end of March, enough to fully vaccinate 130 million people.

A man receives COVID-19 vaccine in the mass vaccination site at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx borough of New York, the United States, Feb. 5, 2021. (Don Pollard/Office of Governor Andrew Cuomo/Handout via Xinhua)

Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, standing alongside some of his counterparts from Southeast Asia in China's southeastern province of Fujian, said that rich nations with 16 percent of the world's population have acquired 60 percent of the global supply of COVID-19 vaccines, calling the situation regrettable.

GLOBAL COLLABORATION

Richard Mihigo, coordinator of the Immunization and Vaccine Development Programme at the WHO Regional Office for Africa, said the slowing pace of COVAX supplies risks widening the gap between the world's vaccinated and unvaccinated.

"It is unfair that some high-income countries are looking to vaccinate their entire populations while others, particularly including most in our region are struggling to reach a significant proportion of at-risk population," he said at a virtual press conference in March.

To address this inequity, the official said one possible solution is to collaborate with high-income countries that have surplus vaccine stocks.

Vaccines remain the surest way of beating the pandemic while large-scale vaccination campaigns cannot begin soon enough on the continent, Mihigo said.

Anthony Costello, professor of global health and sustainable development at University College London, said that more must be done because every country is in this together.

"This is a global pandemic, and we need to solve it through global vaccination and global public health methods," he said.

CONCRETE ACTIONS

China has been taking concrete steps to boost the availability and affordability of global vaccines. The country had signed an agreement with Gavi -- the Vaccine Alliance, and officially joined COVAX last year. It will provide 10 million doses to the program to meet the urgent needs of developing countries.

Staff transport the Sinopharm vaccines donated by China at the Rafic Hariri International Airport in Beirut, Lebanon, April 6, 2021. (Photo by Bilal Jawich/Xinhua)

Despite the massive vaccine needs of its own 1.4 billion people, China has raised production to provide vaccines to more than 80 countries. Meanwhile, the country is also cooperating with more than 10 countries on vaccine research and development as well as production.

A virus respects no borders. No one is safe until everyone is safe. This year's World Health Day is perhaps the most appropriate occasion to address existing health inequities in hopes that the free movement of people and global economic activity can safely resume.

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Bianji)
NEW YORK, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- CEPRES, the leading provider of investment analytics & data solutions for Private Markets, was honored with the prestigious award for Best Data Management Solutions Provider, European Awards, by Private Equity Wire readers for the third consecutive year.

The annual Private Equity Wire Awards recognize excellence among private equity managers and service providers around the world. The awards are based on a 'peer review system' whereby readers of Private Equity Wire  including institutional and high net worth investors as well as managers and other industry professionals at fund administrators, prime brokers, custodians and advisers  are invited to elect a 'best in class' in a series of categories via an online survey giving a technical justification for each nomination.

It has been an exciting year for CEPRES, between announcing new partnerships and developing ever more innovative technologies, solidifying CEPRES' position as a leader in the industry. CEPRES offers a series of products, all designed to improve the private equity investment process, at every stage. This includes Due Diligence, Portfolio Monitoring, and Market Intelligence, all housed on one intuitive, and highly secure platform. CEPRES also enables sharing and analyses of highly granular, primary-sourced data, so you can achieve the best results.

Dr. Daniel Schmidt, Founder and CEO, comments "We are very proud to receive the award for the third year in a row, and to see our vision for the future of Data Management in Private Markets confirmed: offering a one-stop-shop with our platform solution, with highly secure, automated data collection and managed data services at its core. We uphold data ownership rights and stand for data accuracy and integrity, and will continue to do so."

Christopher Godfrey, Chief Innovation Officer, adds "In Private Markets, access to data is more challenging than any other asset class, but needed to make informed decisions - which is what our customers come to us for. By solving the data challenge with secure, primary data access, CEPRES provides streamlined, smooth investment workflows and decision making between parties. By applying digital solutions, especially in the current market environments, we hope to bring more confidence to all participants, and thank all Private Equity Wire readers for their continued support!"

About CEPRES

CEPRES is the leading Invest-tech and Data Company for Private Markets. Through our digital solutions we deliver the highest quality investment data and innovative analytics that empowers investment professionals to achieve better investment outcomes. CEPRES was the first to provide look-through analysis and the first to deliver multi-factor forecasting models for private equity funds. Today thousands of LPs and GPs connect and securely exchange investment data via CEPRES in the largest private market network in the world. Now encompassing over 8,400 funds and 86,000+ PE-backed companies worth $32 trillion USD.

CEPRES combines an award-winning, highly intuitive investment decision platform with the most secure digital investment network and a team of industry experts to provide an ecosystem to empower private market professionals. While maintaining full confidentiality and control of their data, CEPRES clients have access to a unique range of market intelligence and corresponding tools, streamlining Portfolio Building, LP Due Diligence, Portfolio Monitoring, Deal Comp analysis, and moreall, in one secure, customizable environment.

For further information visit www.cepres.com.

For more information or to schedule an interview contact us:

Tel: +49 (0) 89 232 495 610

[email protected]

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Rochester, N.Y.  A baby injured in a fall from an Upstate New York parking garage has been released from the hospital.

WROC reports police said Tuesday that the 1-year-old boy was discharged from the University of Rochester Medical Center and is now receiving additional treatment at home, three weeks after his father jumped to his death from the top floor of a Rochester parking garage while holding the child.

The incident occurred March 19 when a woman called 911 late Friday night to report that her husband was having a psychotic breakdown. The man, who was in his 40s, was pronounced dead at the scene.

The family of three has not been identified, but officials said they were from another state and visiting an ailing relative in Rochester.

Officials said the childs condition was improving better and faster than expected last month, and doctors do not believe he suffered any permanent brain damage in the fall.

Police are investigating the incident as an apparent suicide and attempted murder.
A 28-year-old man has died after he was allegedly forced to do 300 squat-like exercises by police as punishment for violating Covid-19 quarantine rules in Philippines. Darren Manaog Penaredondo, 28, was out after 6 p.m. April 1 buying drinking water in his city of General Trias, Cavite, when he was reportedly caught by authorities. The Cavite province currently has a strict curfew in place from 6 p.m to 5 a.m.



Adrian Lucena, the victims relative, said in a Facebook post that Mr. Penaredondo and others found violating the curfew were told to do 100 squat-like exercises at a shopping plaza. He said authorities allegedly told them they would have to repeat the exercises if they were not in sync and the group ended up doing the exercise 300 times. After completing the grueling punishment, Penaredondo reportedly returned home, with help of the other curfew violators, around 8 a.m the following morning.



Mr Penaredondos partner Reichelyn Balce told local news outlet Rappler that he was in obvious pain and struggled to walk the entire time when he got home. She said Mr Penaredondo struggled to move by himself the next day because of fatigue. She said he struggled to walk the entire day and was just crawling.



That whole day, he struggled to walk, he was just crawling on the floor just to get up, Balce said. But I did not take that seriously because he said his knees and thighs were aching, as was his body.



Penaredondo suffered a seizure later in the evening and despite being briefly revived, he passed away around 10 p.m.















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ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia -- The father of Ivan Zhdanov, the director of jailed Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), has been remanded in custody on a charge of abuse of office, which he and his supporters reject.

The Rostov regional court on April 7 upheld an earlier decision by a lower court in the city of Rostov-on-Don to keep 66-year-old Yury Zhdanov in pretrial detention at least until May 21.

Yury Zhdanov, who took part in the hearing via a video link from the detention center, and his lawyers requested the court transfer him to house arrest due to his age and the danger of getting infected with the coronavirus while in custody.

Zhdanov said at the hearing that many of those in his cell are sick. He said earlier that the cell he is kept in is so overcrowded that inmates have to sleep in shifts due to the limited number of beds.

Yury Zhdanov was sent to pretrial detention after police searched his home on March 26.

His son said last week that he had "no doubts that the criminal case was launched because of me and my activities." He called his father's arrest "absolutely a new level of villainy and turpitude from the [Russian] presidential administration."

According to Zhdanov, before retiring last summer his father worked as an official in a remote town for several years.

Investigators now accuse Yury Zhdanov of recommending the towns administration provide a local woman with a subsidized apartment, though it later turned out that the woman's family had previously received housing allocations.

The apartment was later returned to municipal ownership in accordance with a court decision and no one among those who made the decision was held responsible.

Navalny's FBK is known for publishing investigative reports about corruption among Russia's top officials, including President Vladimir Putin.

The latest report focused on a lavish Black Sea mansion that Navalny's team called "a palace for Putin," capturing worldwide attention with almost 116 million views on YouTube.

The report showcases a luxurious, 100 billion ruble ($1.32 billion) estate near the popular holiday town of Gelendzhik that it said Putin effectively owns via a complex trail of companies.

The Kremlin has denied the report, saying "one or several [businessmen] directly or indirectly own" the property, adding that it "has no right to reveal the names of these owners."
A photograph released by National Aeronautics and Space Administrations (NASA) perseverance rover caught peoples attention when a rainbow like arc appeared in the background of the picture.

This picture sparked a debate among netizens and many of them took to Twitter to find out the truth behind this image. NASA cleared all doubts by sharing the photograph with the rainbow along with a detailed explanation.

NASA said, Many have asked: Is that a rainbow on Mars? No. Rainbows aren't possible here. Rainbows are created by light reflected off of round water droplets, but there isn't enough water here to condense, and its too cold for liquid water in the atmosphere. This arc is a lens flare.

Many have asked: Is that a rainbow on Mars? No. Rainbows aren't possible here. Rainbows are created by light reflected off of round water droplets, but there isn't enough water here to condense, and its too cold for liquid water in the atmosphere. This arc is a lens flare. pic.twitter.com/mIoSSuilJW  NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) April 6, 2021

A user further asked if what appeared in the image was not a rainbow, then how did it appear. The Twitter account of the NASA perseverance rover replied explaining that it was due to a lens flare.

This is a lens flare. I have sunshades on my front Hazcams, which were considered mission-critical (I need them for driving forward & I'm usually driving forward). Sunshades werent considered essential on my back Hazcams, so you can see scattered light artifacts in their images, the Perseverance rover said.

Live TV
Bjoern Wylezich / TNS

Federal authorities have indicted a 38-year-old Allentown, Pa., man on drug possession charges, after they say he was stopped on his way from Hartford with two kilos of suspected fentanyl.

Regino Morillo-Espinal was charged Tuesday with possession with intent to distribute 400 grams or more of fentanyl, the U.S. attorneys office for the District of Connecticut said.
A woman walks at a platform of a subway station in Chicago, the United States, January 17, 2020. Photo: Xinhua

US President Joe Biden unveiled a roughly $2 trillion American Jobs Plan focused on infrastructure and the climate crisis in a speech in Pittsburgh on Wednesday. To win support, he said that the "once-in-a-generation" investment would "put [the US] in a position to win the global competition with China in the upcoming years."

Much of infrastructure in the US has been old. Both Democrats and Republicans are on the same page on this matter. US former president Barack Obama in September 2010 proposed his ambitious plan to renew the US' transportation infrastructure, but failed to achieve it in both of his terms. Neither did Donald Trump. Biden launched the third round of such attempt. His plan contains the greatest details and seems to be the most serious one.

However, the Biden administration's infrastructure plan was met with opposition from Republicans when it was announced. Trump slammed the infrastructure plan as a "giveaway to China" in a statement on Wednesday, and said that the proposed tax increases designed to fund the $2 trillion proposal would end up backfiring by sending American jobs overseas. Biden may once again have mired himself down in a situation where everyone agrees that it was the right thing to do, but no one can agree on how to do it or where the money will come from.

US society has been gravely divided. The more interests involved in carrying out a big plan, the more opportunities for political struggles to be created, which will hinder the goal to be achieved. This is the root of the US' problem. To engage in infrastructure construction, the internal driving force of society should have been far greater than the resistance from disputes by different interest groups, but this is not the case in the US. Exploiting "defeating China" as a thrust to push the plan sharply deviates from the appropriate track. This makes the plan hard to achieve.

Has China ever thought of competing with the US as it builds high-speed trains, widen the highway network and build network base stations? They are entirely China's own national agenda. The incentive to invest is strong, and the general public is very supportive. We can say that China's infrastructure advances with ease. Our concern is often that we should not work lavishly on these projects in case they lead to interim waste or debt.

The US now has China everywhere in its mind with regard to its domestic policy, attaching labels of national security randomly, and blaming China for any industrial imbalance in the US. Apart from instigating nationalism, this would do little to solve the problem. Over time, the US will not only be down with an anti-China syndrome and strike at anything Chinese, but will also only be able to make its policy with anti-China elements. This will lead to the misdirection of its goal time and again and cause it lose its way in development.

The US should force itself to forget about China more often. What the US needs to do is struggling with itself. It has been more than a decade since it has called for the construction of the high-speed railway. Why hasn't a single kilometer been built? What does this inefficiency have to do with China? Trump overturned many of Obama's policies and now Biden overturned Trump's policies. Is this what China seduced the US to do?

It is quite impressive that Washington is beginning to value some important lessons from China. Conflict is also a way to learn from each other. China's key experience is to mind its own work well. Biden's determination to improve infrastructure and increase investment in technology seems to have taken something from China's direction. We hope that the US could adhere to this idea. It is the right way forward.

If the US really initiated a new investment in infrastructure, it is believed that Chinese society in general will be optimistic about its success. More of this kind of engagement by the US will increase its market demand, which is a positive factor in the expansion of China's economic growth. After all, the contest between China and the US should have been focused on the competition of domestic development, rather than playing chess on the diplomatic front.

If Washington had refocused its attention, it might not have exaggerated the "China threat" theory as much as it does now. They will find that the benefits of China-US cooperation may outweigh the zero-sum competition with China "from a position of strength." China could be a partner, not a rival, in Biden's plan to revitalize US infrastructure, if Washington so desires.

Obsessive focus on making enemies or confrontation is narrow-minded and an exhausted strategy. It is an unwise one. This is true of a person, and it is also true of a country.
Find all of the most important pandemic education news on Educating N.J., a special resource guide created for parents, students and educators.

About 600 special needs students ages 16 and older have registered for coronavirus vaccinations starting Wednesday in a program sponsored by Lakewood Public Schools following Gov. Phil Murphys order last month making the students eligible for shots, a district spokesman said.

Michael Inzelbuch, who serves as board attorney and spokesman for the Lakewood Public Schools Board of Education, said this will be the first time a school district sponsors vaccinations for students.

We have a very needy population, said Inzelbuch, noting that 100% of the districts 6,400 mostly Hispanic public school students qualify for free or reduced-cost lunches.

However, the vaccinations will not be limited to public school students, or even to students living in Lakewood.

Inzelbuch said the program is intended to help safeguard the broader community beyond the schools, and registrants include students from Lakewoods substantial Orthodox Jewish community, which sends more than 30,000 kids to private yeshivas and special education programs.

Its actually a privilege to help everyone, Inzelbuch said.

The vaccinations are voluntary. You dont have to do it. No one is compelled to do it, Inzelbuch said.

The program is the latest component of an ongoing campaign by Lakewood Public Schools to encourage vaccinations among staff and students as the district forges ahead with a fully in-person learning program that began at the start of the school year, despite opposition from the local teachers union.

The district has vaccinated hundreds of staffers, including 380 teachers, therapists, nurses and other staff members during a March 15 event in the Lakewood High School gym.

Wednesdays student vaccinations will be held from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., in a tent set in the high school parking lot, followed by another session on Thursday in the same location during the same hours, and then a third session on Sunday afternoon from 3:30-5:30 p.m., Inzelbuch said.

The program involves the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which requires two doses.

The vaccinations will be administered by staffers from CheMed Health Care Center, the same non-profit community health center in Lakewood that administered the shots to teachers and other district staffers in the gym last month.

Another three days of vaccinations will be held at the school on April 13-15, each from 8 a.m. to noon, in those cases administered by staff of the Monmouth Medical Center Southern Campus, a Lakewood hospital thats part of the RWJBarnabas Heath system.

Inzelbuch, whose private law practice has focused on litigation on behalf of special needs students, said Lakewood Public Schools had reached out several other districts that are either nearby geographically or have large populations of special needs students, including Brick, Howell, Asbury Park, Freehold Borough, Camden, Newark, Elizabeth and others. Some of the 600 students registered as of Tuesday are from those communities, Inzelbuch said.

He said a total of 1,000 two-part doses of the vaccine have been guaranteed by the state, and he invited students with special needs  either public school students with an individualized education plan (IEP) or private school students with whats known as a service plan  to register for the event by emailing Lakewood Superintendent of Schools Laura Winters at lwinters@lakewoodpinters.org.

Inzelbuch said Lakewood asked the Murphy administration to provide the vaccine for student vaccinations almost immediately following the governors announcement on March 26 expanding eligibility to teens 16 an older who have intellectual or developmental disabilities, for whom remote learning can be especially challenging.

Murphy has insisted that all districts return to fully in-person learning by the start of the 2021-22 school year.

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Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com.
Stephen King has slammed the owners of a phosphorus plant near his home in Florida

Author Stephen King who has a home near a troubled Florida plant that has leaked wastewater and led to a recent evacuation order slammed its 'hustler' owners, but local officials say it will be hard to pin them down.

Florida officials want to hold accountable the owners of the troubled Piney Point phosphate plant that's led to a costly cleanup and worries of continued leaks.

But holding the plant ownership financially liable appears unlikely, as they are shielded by 'one shell company after another,' a county official said, making it hard to pin culpability on one person or entity, according to a report from the Miami Herald.

'Piney Point is what happens when you let the sharpies and hustlers have free rein,' King wrote on Twitter last week, blasting the owners. 'Money talks and the environment walks.'

Millions of gallons of wastewater leaked from Piney Point, an abandoned phosphate plant near Tampa Bay, causing hundreds of homes to be evacuated and a state of emergency declared over the weekend. It isn't clear if King was evacuated.

Florida lawmakers have proposed spending $200 million to clean up and close the reservoir amid concerns of another catastrophic failure in the future.

Author Stephen King is among those criticizing the owners of Piney Point

Effluent spews into a ditch at Port Manatee, where a breach in a nearby wastewater reservoir on the site of a defunct phosphate plant forced an evacuation order for hundreds of homes

This still image from video shows the breach in the containment wall of the Piney Point reservoir; officials warned that a more catastrophic breach would swamp the area

According to the report, the plant is owned by a shell company, HRK Holdings, which has been running in bankruptcy since a previous spill at the site in 2011.

The Miami Herald reports that HRK's principal owner - William 'Mickey' F. Harley III - is a Wall Street executive and former hedge fund manager.

A Forbes profile from 2004 described Harley as a 'vulture, investing in troubled companies that are in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection or are trying to avoid it with an out-of-court restructuring'.

Manatee County Commissioner Kevin Van Ostenbridge told the Miami Herald he wants the owner of the plant held accountable.

'I'd love to string them up, but the reality of the situation is they have one shell company after another. These guys are rich and smart and they know what they're doing.'

Manatee County Commissioner Kevin Van Ostenbridge, left, wants to see the owners of the Piney Point wastewater plant held accountable after a massive environmental disaster there. William F. (Mickey) Harley III is principal owner of HRK Holdings, according to the Miami Herald, a shell company that owns Piney Point

This image shows the breach in the containment wall of the Piney Point reservoir. This 77-acre pond was holding 480 million gallons of water just 2 weeks ago. Now it's below 300 million gallons as emergency drainage efforts continue

One of the properties in Osprey, Florida, outside of Sarasota that is listed in author Stephen King's name. King, who lives near the plant, has hit out against the owners

Best-selling author King has a home around Sarasota, Florida, which borders Manatee County, where the belching plant is located.

He's been outspoken in his pleas for the environment, and that wasn't any different when it comes to the plant nearby.

'Piney Point could be the environmental disaster Florida has been courting for a long, long time,' he said on Twitter.

As for the plant's owner, Forbes describes Harley as a former shoe factory foreman who stumbled into a job on Wall Street in the early 1990s.

Since then he owned a series of Hooters franchises, served as president of a mining company in Namibia, and invested in cannabis and blueberry companies.

In an online bio, Harley is described as an 'agriculturist at heart'.

Harley didn't respond to the newspaper's request for comment.

An unidentified foam collects on reeds where effluent flows from a pipe into a drainage ditch at Port Manatee South Gate on Tuesday

A handout satellite image made available by Maxar Technologies shows a breached retaining wall of wastewater holding pond, in Piney Point

The Port of Manatee sits near the defunct phosphate plant, whose leaky containment wall forced and evacuation of hundreds of homes and threatened to flood the area

Through his firm HRK Holdings, Harley purchased the former phosphate plant in 2006 for $4.3m in 2006 from a company called DEP, the Miami Herald reported.

DEP had bought the plant from a previous owner Mulberry Corp, when it went bankrupt in 2001.

DEP had intended to close the site using taxpayer money, but the new owners HRK instead had a plan to store dredging disposal on the site.

The Herald reported that, as part of the sale, DEP asked the new owner to cover an exposed lining of phosphate with a layer of dirt, a process that would cost $4m.

But the deal was later waived because of an agreement HRK had come to with the Port of Manatee to dredge the site.

The Herald reported that HRK and the Port of Manatee were required to take out a $2m insurance policy, which was never purchased.

The dredged material from the Port of Manatee - which was meant to cover the hazardous material - was delayed.

Then in 2011, a month after 1.1 million cubic yards of material was dumped on the phosphate mine, a fault with the liner caused 170 million gallons of toxic waste to spill into Tampa Bay's Bishop Harbor.

Amid a flurry of lawsuits, HRK filed for bankruptcy, claiming it couldn't afford to pay for the environmental cleanup.

Facing a $26m debt, it sold off parts of the plant.

The Florida National Guard is seen flying pumps to the reservoir site Sunday

The reservoir of the defunct phosphate plant south of Tampa, where a leak at a waste water reservoir forced the evacuation of hundreds of homes and threatened to flood the area and remains a threat

It wasn't Harley's first brush with litigation, according to published reports.

According to Newsday, Harley and a hedge fund he managed were sued by Pittsburgh nonprofit The Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation.

The foundation had invested $2m in 2004 with a fund managed by Harley.

Amid the financial crisis of 2008, Harley said the fund was being wound down and its investment would be returned.

The lawsuit claimed that Harley had returned money to other investors, but not to the foundation.

The case was settled confidentially.

Neither Harley, nor a site manager for HRK, responded to requests for comments made by the Herald.

The latest environmental scare began on Saturday, when toxic wastewater breached the Piney Point reservoir.

Governor Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency and ordered 300 homes near the large reservoir evacuated.

The evacuation order for residents and business owners around a wastewater reservoir was lifted on Tuesday afternoon.

Some wastewater is still leaking from the reservoir but officials said the seepage rates had fallen so it was now safe for residents to return to their homes and businesses.

Some prisoners from a county penitentiary were also bussed to an undisclosed location, while others were moved to higher floors in the facility.
CEO, Paul Greenhagen , and his team at Westwood have grown the firm's revenues seven-fold during Greenhagen's ten-year tenure, and they show no signs of letting up. "The enhancements we made to our business and organizational structure over the past decade were vital to our success. We strengthened our leadership, affirmed our core values, and our team became aligned with our vision. All of which has prepared us for continued growth. We are excited to enter this next phase for Westwood with strategy and operations at the forefront."

As CSO, Tippie will be responsible for identifying and developing strategic initiatives, leading a comprehensive strategic planning process, and pursuing acquisitions and new business opportunities throughout the organization. Aaron's work will be instrumental in helping the firm achieve greater strategic alignment across business units in the coming years.

Tippie joined Westwood in 2005. In his previous role as Senior Vice President overseeing the Power Division, his work was instrumental in growing Westwood's presence in the power industry. Under Tippie's leadership, Westwood evolved from supporting wind energy with surveying services to serving wind, solar, and power delivery markets with a full range of solutions, supporting clients and their projects nationwide. He has led the expansion of Westwood's Power Division to more than 400 team members.

Tippie looks forward to his Strategy role and believes growth is imperative to support clients and ongoing business success. He says, "Being future-oriented, pushing the boundaries of our own thinking, and finding better ways to respond to the changing world; I can't wait to get started!"

In his new role as COO, Powell will be responsible for the company's operations and serving as an advocate for our divisions, corporate service teams, and other business units. This includes leading the acquisition integration process, oversight of the day-to-day administrative and operational functions of the company, and execution of Westwood's business operations and strategic plans.

Prior to his role as COO, Powell served as Senior Vice President leading Westwood's Land Division. During that tenure, the division experienced a fivefold increase in revenue growth, added a new market (public infrastructure), successfully integrated nine acquisitions, expanded our geographic presence to four new office locations, and added multiple new service offerings.

Powell says, "Our industry is constantly changing, which requires operational flexibility and scalability. At the same time, we have to maintain consistency and high performance within our organization so we can respond quickly for our clients. Westwood's fresh concentration on operations will empower us to achieve greater success as a business, employer, and consultant as we add new divisions and other business units as part of our growth strategy."

Over the past ten years, Westwood has expanded across the country while continuing to invest in maintaining and building a strong culture, attracting and retaining top talent, and providing a great workplace. All, which are the ingredients for delivering the best results to its clients.

"We have so much opportunity moving forward, and we will advance as one very strong team. Better people. Better results," says Greenhagen.

About Westwood Professional Services, Inc. (Westwood)

Westwood is a multi-disciplined national surveying and engineering services provider for wind energy, solar energy, electric transmission, private development, and public infrastructure projects. Westwood was established in 1972 in Minneapolis, Minnesota and has grown to serve clients across the nation from multiple U.S. offices. View more Westwood facts.

Awards

In 2020, Westwood placed #4 and #9 respectively on Zweig Group's national Hot Firms' and Best Firms to Work for Lists. Westwood also ranked consistently higher three years in a row on the Engineering News Record (ENR) list as a leading design firm in the country. The firm consistently ranks on industry top 25 lists and receives recognition for its involvement on award-winning projects nationwide.

SOURCE Westwood Professional Services

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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.  In Port Richmond this week, Eusebio Bravo discussed his medical conditions with Boris Natenzon of Enexia Pharmacy. After some consideration, the retired restaurant worker and his daughter, Gina, held up arms for the COVID-19 vaccine Monday at El Centro del Inmigrante, a Staten Island group focused on getting inoculations to workers rooted in the food service industry.

As of Monday, April 5, El Centro can be credited for 350 restaurant workers vaccinations with those in the ranks from Coles Dockside in Great Kills, Panera Bread, VINUM and The Richmond, both in Stapleton, Toluca Deli of Concord and La Ruta de Sabor of West Brighton.

Angelinas Ristorante in Tottenville actually turned its property over for the inoculation service. Co-owner Vincent Malerba said that through Costco, the linen-cloth eatery serviced over 500 Staten Islanders last week with the Johnson & Johnson shot at an outdoor, pop up vaccination site coordinated under its party tent.

Most people hear about this from our friends, our coworkers. I said, I know of this place where you can get the vaccine, El Centro del Inmigrante said Zeus Mondragon, a college student who works as a cashier and delivery driver for La Ruta del Sabor.

Vaccinations at El Centro del Inmigrante in Port Richmond (Courtesy of El Centro del Inmigrante)

He added, We have been doing all sorts of things to be safe in the restaurant, like social distancing and plastic partitions, but having the vaccine makes all of us even safer.

From front-of-the-house staff to dishwashers and prep persons alike, proprietors took advantage of the easy access, recently available in most neighborhoods across the borough.

One East Shore restaurant owner booked slots for his entire crew through El Centro when they became available in March. He was thrilled that the Port Richmond-based group provided interpreters to communicate with employees. The downside, he said with a laugh, We all got the shot together and we were all under the weather at the same time, too. Still, he said the staff expressed relief over having it done, especially since the nature of the business is having continual contact with the public. We have been working with restaurant owners, vaccinating as many restaurant workers as possible, said Michele Molina, executive director of El Centro del Inmigrante.

She said, We are reaching out to owners to get the most amount of employees vaccinated. Restaurant workers work long hours. A lot of them dont have access to a computer or the internet to make an appointment, and so it has been helpful for them to have vaccines available here for them.

Proprietors can call El Centro Del Inmigrantes Vaccination Line (Linea de Auyuda Para Vacunacion) with a list of food industry worker names  917-830-0079. The help center will record the information and coordinate the shot for owners.

Pamela Silvestri is Advance Food Editor. She can be reached at silvestri@siadvance.com.

MORE IN VACCINATIONS ON STATEN ISLAND:

The rally to vaccinate restaurant workers of many backgrounds

When and where can you get vaccinated on Staten Island?

Pop-up vaccination site coming to Staten Island
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GBP/EUR Exchange Rate Extends Losses Despite Solid UK Services PMI

Despite a strong UK services PMI print in March, British Pound to Euro (GBP/EUR) exchange rate extended a multi-day crash on foreign exchange markets.

GBPEUR is seen trading 0.68% lower on the day, quoted at 1.15686 at time of publication.

Recap: GBPEUR Continues Plummet amid Strong Eurozone Data

The Euro has been able to benefit from a slight market pull-back in the Pound this week, and the British Pound to Euro (GBP/EUR) exchange rate has been plummeting since yesterday. Investors still remain optimistic about the UK outlook, but rising signs of optimism in the Eurozones own outlook may limit the Pounds ability to return to and hold its best levels.

Last week saw GBP/EUR continue to trend bullishly, firming higher and higher as the Pound kept climbing. GBP/EUR gained from the level of 1.1715 to 1.1760 throughout the week.

Then, when markets opened this week GBP/EUR briefly leapt even higher, touching on the key level of 1.18 for the first time in over a year and touching a high of 1.1802.

After that high however, markets took profit from the Pounds recent surges, and GBP/EUR plummeted.

GBP/EUR lost a huge cent and a half since yesterday, losing most of the gains seen over the past fortnight. At the time of writing, GBP/EUR is attempting to hold above a fortnight low and is trending in the region of 1.1644.

The primary reason for this weeks huge movement has been a pull back in the Pound. After touching its best levels in months or even a year against some major currencies, investors sold Sterling from its highs.

Analysts noted that despite this loss, the Pounds outlook is still strong due to coronavirus pandemic recovery hopes in the UK. Francesco Pesole, FX Strategist at ING, said:

Sterling corrected lower yesterday, possibly amid some profit-taking following a solid first quarter, But fundamentals  above all, upbeat recovery expectations thanks to the vaccine-backed reopening of the UK economy  remain strong and should limit the scope for further short-term GBP downside.

Britains coronavirus vaccination rollout continues to be one of the quickest among major economies. This is keeping Sterlings outlook strong overall.

Todays UK services PMI was actually weaker than forecast, coming in at 56.3 rather than the projected 56.8. This may have weighed slightly on the Pound today.

However, as the PMI also backed up recent signs of an economic rebound in the UK, which meant this weaker than expected print ultimately had little impact on the Pounds strong outlook.

Euro (EUR) Exchange Rates Bolstered by Expectations for Eurozone Recovery

The Euro has seen considerably weakness over the past month, as it was hit by surges in demand for rivals like the Pound and US Dollar (USD), as well as concerns over the Eurozones coronavirus recovery outlook.

The Eurozone has been hit by complications in vaccination rollout, as well as continued needs for coronavirus restrictions and lockdowns.

However, the shared currencys downside may be coming to an end for now. Today, a larger number of optimistic Eurozone outlooks for the second half of 2021 are bolstering market appetite for the Euro.

Todays Eurozone services and composite PMI from Markit printed above expectations. The data showed stronger signs of recovery in the Eurozone, with Germanys composite print hitting an impressive 57.3.

The overall Eurozone figure came in at 53.2, showing that the blocs overall business activity returned to growth. According to Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at IHS Markit, the data showed that the Eurozone weathered 2021s lockdowns better than expected so far:

The economy has weathered recent lockdowns far better than many had expected, thanks to resurgent manufacturing growth and signs that social distancing and mobility restrictions are having far less of an impact on service sector businesses than seen this time last year.

Pound Euro Forecast

Most of this weeks noteworthy UK and Eurozone economic data has been published already. However, some influential German data due through the end of the week could still cause some late-week movement in GBP/EUR

Tomorrow will see the publication of Germanys February factory orders report. Eurozone construction data is also due.

Friday will round out the week with Germanys February trade balance and industrial production results. The data could be influential if it surprises investors, as Germanys manufacturing and exports are a significant part of the Eurozones overall economic activity.

That aside though, the data calendar will be fairly quiet until next week. The Pounds movement may be more driven by UK coronavirus news for now.

Hopes for more of the UK economy to reopen next week are likely to keep Sterling from falling too much. GBP/EUR may begin to advance again instead unless Eurozone data keeps impressing.

Looking ahead to next week, the week starts off with key data including Eurozone retail sales and UK growth results, both of which could be very influential to the Pound to Euro exchange rate.
On Tuesday, the company signed a memorandum of understanding on new research projects with the Luxembourg government.

Luxembourg-based company Spire Global is diversifying its business activities. The company, which is active in the satellite industry and mainly analyses weather data as well as ship and air traffic, will go public on the New York Stock Exchange in mid-2022. Another important step forward, according to CEO Peter Platzer.

An investigation has recently been launched to determine how one of the world's biggest container ships ended up blocking the Suez Canal for several days. Spire Global uses its 110 satellites to monitor the global ship traffic, analysing where ships and goods are circulating. Combining this information with weather data allowed the company to show what had happened in the Suez Canal.

Three years ago, the company started out in Luxembourg with no more than a dozen employees. Today, the company employs 60 workers from 27 different countries in its Luxembourg offices.

In order to further develop research and innovation in the Grand Duchy, Spire Global signed a memorandum of understanding with Minister of the Economy Franz Fayot on Tuesday.

According to the company, one of the main reasons they chose the Grand Duchy is that the country will soon have its own supercomputer, which will allow an even faster analysis of large datasets.
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect those in all 13 Canadian provinces and territories. To date, the virus is responsible for more than 789,000 infections and more than 20,000 Canadian deaths. While Canada has been lauded for its rapid response and tight restrictions, provinces and territories have been given some latitude by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to make decisions regarding the pandemic, especially as it affects travel within Canada. Some provinces, such as Labrador and Newfoundland have prohibited travelers from other parts of Canada for any reason, even to travel to and from work. Other provinces, such as British Columbia have discouraged inter-provincial travel, but have stopped short of banning travelers from other provinces.

Current travel restrictions in British Columbia

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues with no end in sight, health authorities in British Columbia are increasingly concerned about Canadians traveling from other provinces into BC. A "no travel" recommendation has been in place since last November, but the government has stopped short of a mandate.

That's because British Columbia Premier John Horgan and the provincial lawyers have concluded that it would be illegal to ban travelers from other Canadian provinces from entering British Columbia, especially if they are employed within the territory. Says Horgan, "The review of our legal options made it clear we can't prevent people from traveling to British Columbia. We can impose restrictions on people traveling for non-essential purposes if they are causing harm to the health and safety of British Columbians. However, much of current inter-provincial travel is work related and therefore cannot be restricted."

But not everyone agrees with that assessment. One prominent dissenter is Sujit Choudhry, a well-regarded expert on Canadian constitutional law.

Sujit Choudhry on the current BC travel restrictions

Mr. Choudhry says he respectfully disagrees with the British Columbia premier and the prime minister. Mr. Choudhry points to the success of the so-called "Atlantic Bubble," the tight restrictions put in place by the Provinces of Labrador and Newfoundland that have been upheld by that region's Supreme Court. The same thing could work in British Columbia. Says Mr. Choudhry, "I think a set of restrictions similar to the Labrador and Newfoundland judgement would give the province quite a bit of comfort and that a carefully-drafted set of restrictions rooted in science and backed up by the best empirical evidence, that had a sufficiently-broad set of exemptions, would likely survive constitutional scrutiny".

Of course, there are different challenges to closing the provincial borders in Western Canada than there are along the Atlantic coast. For example, the provincial borders in and out of British Columbia would be more difficult to seal. One additional concern is that winter resorts in British Columbia, such as Whistler, are losing money from the absence of foreign travelers, and they would be hurt even more by not being able to host Canadian vacationers from outside of BC. What's more, the "Atlantic Bubble" provinces have a population of just 521,500, whereas British Columbia has 5.071 million residents, a nearly ten-fold difference. That increase in population means more residents with family outside the province and more people seeking employment in and outside of BC.

Another point to consider is that the Labrador/Newfoundland judgment is far from secure. The restrictions in those provinces are still facing challenges from groups like the Civil Liberties Union, among others.

Still, Mr. Choudhry has a point. World health experts agree that less contact means a lower potential for viral transmission. Banning outsider travel to BC would certainly help to support that.

About Sujit Choudhry

Sujit Choudhry is an internationally-recognized expert on constitutional law. He has published more than 100 articles and reports on the subject. Sujit's work has been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada and many lower courts throughout Canada. Born in India, Choudhry earned a Bachelor of Science degree from McGill University in Montreal and an undergraduate law degree from the University of Toronto before earning a Master of Laws degree from Harvard University. He was also a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University in England. The former Dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, Choudhry is the Director of the Center for Constitutional Transitions.
Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals Publishes Two New Books: 'Vital Churches' to Preserve Professional Pastors and Their Churches from Burnout and Posthumous Re-release of 'Genesis' Devotional by its Founder

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals

April 7, 2021



LANCASTER, Penn., April 7, 2021 /



"I once helped a pastor drive a U-Haul truck filled with his family's possessions as he moved many hundreds of miles to a new congregation, essentially an escape from an unhappy pastorate," writes McBurney in "Vital Churches: Elder Responsibility for Their Pastors and Congregational Planning" (paperback, 232 pp.).



With five decades of ordained eldership experience, McBurney shares how such " ... observations have underscored my conviction that there is much to be done that can be helpful to our pastors and the Church." His book guides ruling elders in understanding and performing their responsibility to plan for their pastor's personal and professional well-being, explaining that, "A vital pastor is not the only requirement, but it is an essential ingredient of a vital church."



McBurney addresses his main concern that many Christians see supporting professional standards in the "real" world as not applicable in the spiritual world. He contends that careful development and diligent follow-through are "not at odds with trusting God," and instructs on elder responsibility to plan in the Church both with and for the pastor as well as for future pastors. The book includes relevant testimony from a seasoned minister and a pastor's wife. A member of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, McBurney also served for eight years as a church deacon prior to being an elder.



"Genesis: A Devotional Exposition" (paperback, 425 pp.). Through the donation of an Alliance member this book is a re-release after decades being out of print. The late Donald Barnhouse provides a verse-by-verse exposition of the Bible's opening book. Its devotional theme offers ministerial care with a focus on God as "the God of New Beginnings."



Alliance Executive Director Bob Brady says of the book: "Drawing on rich and pithy treasures from pages of Scripture, the wisdom and insight of this study will provide hours of profitable reading and worthwhile commentary for all who love the Word of God." He highlights these pastoral words from the book: "God does not dehumanize us when we are saved. He knows our frame and remembers that we are dust... [in our sorrows] the heart turns more eagerly to the homeland of heaven, and lodges there." Barnhouse was an influential twentieth century American preacher who, seeking to spread God's Word to a vast audience, began a national radio broadcast and magazine under the name of Evangelical Ministries, the predecessor of the Alliance.



About the Alliance:

Headquartered in Lancaster, Pa., the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is a national coalition of pastors, scholars, and churchmen who hold to the historic creeds and confessions of the Reformed faith and who proclaim biblical doctrine in order to foster a Reformed awakening in today's Church. It primarily does so through broadcasting, printed and online publishing, and special events. It began in 1949 as Evangelical Ministries, which broadcast The Bible Study Hour radio program and published "Eternity" magazine. It also played a strategic role in the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, the Cambridge Declaration, and the establishment of the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology. For more information, visit



(EDITOR'S NOTE: Review copies of each book are available for media staff upon request. Dr. McBurney is available for interview.)



SOURCE Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals



CONTACT: Grant Van Leuven, Community Engagement Coordinator, 619-616-9484,



Share Tweet NEWS PROVIDED BYApril 7, 2021LANCASTER, Penn., April 7, 2021 / Christian Newswire / -- The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals ( alliancenet.org ) announces two newly published books: "Vital Churches," a book teaching church leaders their responsibilities to their pastors and churches by Dr. Wendell Faris McBurney, and a devotional on "Genesis" by the late Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse (founder of the Alliance)."I once helped a pastor drive a U-Haul truck filled with his family's possessions as he moved many hundreds of miles to a new congregation, essentially an escape from an unhappy pastorate," writes McBurney in "Vital Churches: Elder Responsibility for Their Pastors and Congregational Planning" (paperback, 232 pp.).With five decades of ordained eldership experience, McBurney shares how such " ... observations have underscored my conviction that there is much to be done that can be helpful to our pastors and the Church." His book guides ruling elders in understanding and performing their responsibility to plan for their pastor's personal and professional well-being, explaining that, "A vital pastor is not the only requirement, but it is an essential ingredient of a vital church."McBurney addresses his main concern that many Christians see supporting professional standards in the "real" world as not applicable in the spiritual world. He contends that careful development and diligent follow-through are "not at odds with trusting God," and instructs on elder responsibility to plan in the Church both with and for the pastor as well as for future pastors. The book includes relevant testimony from a seasoned minister and a pastor's wife. A member of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, McBurney also served for eight years as a church deacon prior to being an elder. "Genesis: A Devotional Exposition" (paperback, 425 pp.). Through the donation of an Alliance member this book is a re-release after decades being out of print. The late Donald Barnhouse provides a verse-by-verse exposition of the Bible's opening book. Its devotional theme offers ministerial care with a focus on God as "the God of New Beginnings."Alliance Executive Director Bob Brady says of the book: "Drawing on rich and pithy treasures from pages of Scripture, the wisdom and insight of this study will provide hours of profitable reading and worthwhile commentary for all who love the Word of God." He highlights these pastoral words from the book: "God does not dehumanize us when we are saved. He knows our frame and remembers that we are dust... [in our sorrows] the heart turns more eagerly to the homeland of heaven, and lodges there." Barnhouse was an influential twentieth century American preacher who, seeking to spread God's Word to a vast audience, began a national radio broadcast and magazine under the name of Evangelical Ministries, the predecessor of the Alliance.Headquartered in Lancaster, Pa., the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is a national coalition of pastors, scholars, and churchmen who hold to the historic creeds and confessions of the Reformed faith and who proclaim biblical doctrine in order to foster a Reformed awakening in today's Church. It primarily does so through broadcasting, printed and online publishing, and special events. It began in 1949 as Evangelical Ministries, which broadcast The Bible Study Hour radio program and published "Eternity" magazine. It also played a strategic role in the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, the Cambridge Declaration, and the establishment of the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology. For more information, visit alliancenet.org (EDITOR'S NOTE: Review copies of each book are available for media staff upon request. Dr. McBurney is available for interview.)SOURCE Alliance of Confessing EvangelicalsCONTACT: Grant Van Leuven, Community Engagement Coordinator, 619-616-9484, gvanleuven@alliancenet.org
People realized long ago that electric motors and vehicles go together very well, but they lacked the battery technology to make EVs viable (considering that wasn't that long after the light bulb was invented, it shouldn't come as a shock). If only you could put a wire above the vehicle and charge it that way. And that, kids, is how electric railroad transport was born.It's no secret that EVs are going through a heavy resurgence at the moment, and the main cause behind it is an American brand called "Tesla." The company has been around since 2003, but people didn't really start to talk about it until the release of its first model in 2005, the Lotus Elise-based Roadster.Five years later, it launched the Model S and based on its success, three models followed (the X, the 3, and the Y), with two more set to join them shortly (the Cybertruck and the Roadster II) and a few others in the pipeline as well (Semi, $25,000 entry-model). All that and the Model S' antics at the drag strip are common knowledge to pretty much anyone with the slightest interest in cars. Or so you'd think.Some car enthusiasts have actively kept themselves away from EVs, taking what you could call an ostrich approach: if you don't acknowledge something, it can't hurt you because, to you, at least, it doesn't exist. Now, though, the noise around EVs has gotten so loud that you can't possibly pretend they're not there, which is how we get videos such as this one.Take a quick glance at RacerX's previous videos, and you'll be hard-pressed to find one that doesn't feature a muscle/pony car. There's obviously nothing wrong with that, but coupled with this clip's content, it goes to show people tend to live in bubbles (just like hardcore Tesla fans do) and how rarely these bubbles overlap.So, if you wanted to see a car guy discover a ten-year-old Tesla Model S (not that P100, we know, but the interior is largely the same as the original's) and talk about it as if it's some spaceship, go right ahead and click play. You'll hear plenty of nuggets such as "that signature T on the steering wheel" (it's called a logo), and "space age-looking handles" describing the curved handles on the door panel. It'll all make you wish he discovered the farting easter eggthat would have surely cracked him up.
Chance Yeh/Getty Princess Martha Louise

Another royal is looking to settle down in America.

Princess Martha Louise of Norway has shared her plans to move with her three daughters to the United States.

"Right now there is COVID and it is difficult to plan, but we plan to move with time," she told Norwegian newspaper VG. "The children will, of course, join me. We will keep the home in Lommedalen anyway. We must have a home in Norway. We'll still be here a lot. We can not leave beautiful Norway completely."

Princess Martha Louise, 49, is currently dating Shaman Durek  a Los Angeles-based "spiritual guide and gifted healer" whose celebrity following includes Gwyneth Paltrow, Nina Dobrev and James Van Der Beek. The two have not seen each other since Christmas, when Durek visited Norway for the holidays.

"He is in Los Angeles, and now we do not know when we will see each other again," the daughter of King Harald V said.

RELATED: Princess Martha Louise of Norway Filming Reality Documentary to Show Her Life 'in a New Way'

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Princess Martha Louise confirmed her romance with Shaman Durek in May 2019.

"When you meet your twin flame, you know. I have been lucky enough to have met mine," she captioned a series of snaps. "@shamandurek has changed my life, like he does with so many. He has made me realize that unconditional love actually exists here on this planet. He embraces all of me without question or fear. He makes me laugh more than anyone, has the most profound wisdom to share and all the bits in between from the diversity of his being."

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The royal continued, "I feel so happy and blessed that he is my boyfriend. Thank you my love, for including me so generously into your family. I love you from this eternity to the next."

Story continues

Julian Parker/UK Press via Getty Princess Martha Louise and Ari Behn

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Princess Martha Louise has three daughters  Maud Angelica, 17, Leah Isadora, 15, and Emma Tallulah, 12  from her marriage to author Ari Behn. The couple divorced in 2016, and in Dec. 2019, Behn died by suicide.
An eight-year-old girl who started a tinkering with jewellery for a school art auction now has New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Adern among her customers.

Twilight Edwards, now 15, sells pieces from her Taonga By Twilight label, meaning treasure in Maori all over the country and the world.

The brand is often unable to keep up with demand and makes sales of up to $10,000 a month.

Twilight Edwards presented NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Adern with a pair of earrings which she immediately put on

The earrings worn by NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Adern are the Huia Beak earrings, the Huia is an extinct native NZ bird

Twilight's mother, Kara Edwards told the Daily Mail Australia she was always looking to try new experiences and learn.

'Twilight would attend basic jewellery classes and silver clay classes as a child where she began to learn techniques to make her jewellery,' she said.

Her brand is loved by the Ms Adern who wears her earrings to press conferences to star-studded events.

When Twilight heard she was going to be at the small town of Karetu Marae, she took a pair of her earrings hoping she would get a chance to gift them to her.

This piece from Taonga By Twilight is inspired by the Huia bird beak, it is made with fork prongs

Her mother admitted she didn't think she would get an opportunity to present them.

But Twilight was introduced to the prime minister who shocked them both by instantly put the earrings on.

Since then, the two have met again as Twilight presented her with another pair of earrings which Ms Adern has worn at several high-profile events.

'She was all over the media wearing her earrings, we were so excited and I remember recording the TV with my phone,' Ms Edwards said.

Twilight Edwards puts most of her money from the business back into learning new techniques

Taonga By Twilight holds very strong ties with Twilight's heritage and most pieces hold a special connection to the Maori and Hawaiian cultures.

Her Kawakawa earrings are named after the birthplace of her Nana and it is also her favourite rongoa plant, which is known for it's healing properties.

'They all have to mean something to her, the leaf (earrings) has a lot of significance to our family and her grandmother is from there,' Ms Edwards said.

'These earrings will not only bring you joy to wear, but will also embody all of the healing properties that Kawakawa blesses us with.'

Twilight grew up on the small island of Roberton in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand where her father was a caretaker for several properties and she had the freedom to fish, swim, forage, and roam around the island.

Ms Edwards said the freedom of island life helped her creative and experimental streak.

'They had the freedom to do anything they wanted, to build anything... they had a lot of time to play and fiddle and tinker with things so I think that's where it started,' she said.

'People would show her how to things and she would learn, then she would take it further.'

Most of Taonga By Twilight's pieces are made with a connection to her Maori and Hawaiian culture

The Kawakawa leaves are made into earrings and have a special connection to Twilight's heritage

These gold plated Kawakawa leaves are connected to Twilight's grandmother and are known to have healing properties

Ms Edwards said the brand had great support from the local and Maori community, which helped it grow.

'She's been so well supported by the wider community, if people were buy teacher gifts and those sorts of things, they would buy them from her instead of Target,' she said.

'Everyone would wear her jewellery at Maori events all the time. It's really special to see people wearing her jewellery.

'If she needed anything I don't hesitate to think that people would be right there to help.'

Her mother said she gives back where she can, which usually helps grow the brand.

'She donates a lot of pieces to raffles and in turn that's helped get her work out,' she said.

Twilight reinvests most of the money she earns back into the business to help pay for new equipment and tools.

At Taonga By Twilight's first store at the InnoNative Markets she was voted the best looking stall and won a $100 prize which she put towards a silver clay course

The first time she set up a stall at the InnoNative Markets her stall was voted the best looking and with her $100 prize she was able to pay for a silver clay course.

Twilight's mother said that the business has lead to a very busy life for her daughter but the success is very exciting.

'She's really excited but sometimes she does get overwhelmed trying to meet customers needs when she's got other things on but she seems to be handling it well,' she said.

'I think she's really grateful for the success but she does stay quiet about it.'

Twilight sells her jewellery primarily through her Facebook page Taonga by Twilight but also Innovation Store and a Maori art gallery in New Zealand.
Revivalist John Burton calls for more compassionate prayers over people who mock God and those that reject His truth. He said that in this "spiritual war," lost people are not Christianity's real enemies.

Writing for The Stream on Monday, Burton looked at last year's and recent events as a revealing of "yet another angle of the ugly side of Christianity."

He contends that Christians in the United States are becoming more entrenched in "hatred, division, rage, finger pointing, and shaming" instead of exhibiting heavenly wisdom which is "pure, peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere."

While Burton agrees that Christians ought not to be apathetic nor lukewarm, he wants them to understand who they are really battling against and the nature of war they are in.

"I agree that we need men and women of God to speak boldly on political and cultural issues that are destroying our nation," wrote Burton. "To remain silent from behind the pulpit on the far-left agendas that are killing America is enough to disqualify anyone from ministry. We need holy, anointed freedom fighters to emerge."

"However, it's critical to understand just what freedom we are fighting for. Yes, there's a battle for our nation, but too many have lost focus by identifying as American patriots ahead of Kingdom ambassadors. This war is a spiritual war."

Building his case from this premise, Burton went on to explain how Christians could give sober responses instead of just being reactionary to things that would push their buttons.

"Freedom for a Nation is Not Freedom in Christ"

"It's telling when American Christians presume God has promised freedom in our nation while forgetting freedom in Christ can be found in prisons, in Communist nations, and anywhere other people remove natural freedoms from us," observes Burton.

He argues that nowhere in the Bible did God promise a "perpetual national freedom," only conditional "prosperity" to nations that would keep his commandments. Burton also thought it necessary to explain the context of Jeremiah 29:11, one of the most quoted verses and a usual reference to God's promise of prosperity.

"I might argue that America is closer to being sent into exile than it is stepping into promise," he said.

To prevent more catastrophes from happening, America's response, according to Burton, "should be a hardcore turning to God, national repentance, and a heart-wrenching cry for revival."

Compassion Accomplishes More than Misplaced Corrections

Using Lil Nas X's collaboration with MSCHF in marketing 666 pairs of "Satan Shoes" as illustration, Burton reminded Christians that their response should have been like that of Jesus when he cried on the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they're doing."

"It's rare to find people crying out with passion for God to move on the hearts of people like Lil Nas X, President Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bill Maher, Whoopi Goldberg and others who are commonly in the sights of our holy sniper rifles," he said.

Burton also stressed that "righteous banter" will not "bring correction" to people whose hearts have not been regenerated yet, hence his plea for "tears" and "compassion."

"How can we expect those who have not had a genuine encounter with the Holy Spirit to ever buy into our brand of morality and values?" said Burton.

"Those who don't know Christ are not our enemies, and we aren't theirs," he added. "It would be hard to believe that in today's volatile American culture however."

Rallying More Intercessors

Having written at length about what he perceived as blind spots, the mainstay contributor for Charisma Magazine - the outlet for Charismatic and Pentecostal teachings - urged America's intercessors to rise and "battle for souls" in their prayers.

"An intellectual or emotional affirmation of the truth of the Bible will never transform a human heart," reasoned Burton. "Yes, they may engage positively at a logical or emotional level. Yes, they may try to understand our point of view. Most, however, will partially or fully reject a biblical worldview unless a supernatural, unmistakable, life-altering, soul-shocking invasion of God's glory floods into their being."
America loves our two-party system! The so-call rage against the Republican Party is nonexistent. What some call rage is really concern or legitimate criticism. Many are afraid the Republican Party is destroying itself along with the two-party system. A sleepy old Democrat who is supposed to be somewhat senile ran a campaign from his basement and beat out a stable genius incumbent Republican for the presidency by 7 million plus votes. America is telling us it is not about anger, rage, bitterness or hatred towards a particular individual. We are concerned about the creeping corruption in the Republican Party that could throw a long respected two-party system out of balance. Choose better candidates. Stop repression. Develop and display a rational platform. Meet with the opposition and present your recommendations. America is great because you dont have to take anyones advice. America is also great because if you ignore good advice they can vote you out of office! Listen up, Republicans. We cherish our two-party system.
Actor Ronen Rubinstein has come out as bisexual after playing a gay main character on the procedural thriller 9-1-1: Lone Star for two seasons.

The 27-year-old opened up about his sexuality in an interview with Variety that was published Wednesday, telling the publication: 'I fully identify as bisexual.'

'I literally just got goosebumps saying that,' Rubinstein said via a Zoom interview from his LA home. 'It feels so good to talk about it, it feels so good to finally be comfortable with it.'

Sharing his truth: The 9-1-1: Lone Star actor Ronen Rubinstein came out as bisexual on Wednesday in an interview with Variety; pictured in February 2020 in West Hollywood

Rubinstein recounted his anxiety over how his character would be received by his friends and family on his native Staten Island in New York City.

Although he shared that he was playing TK Strand, the gay son of Rob Lowe's lead character, he was afraid to spill that his character had a passionate kissing scene with officer Carlos Reyes, played by the openly gay actor Rafael L. Silva.

'Carlos and I have a huge make-out scene where we, like, burst through the door, and were ripping our clothes off,' Rubinstein said. 'Its super hot and it just goes on. It just doesnt stop. Were, like, crashing against the walls, and then we end up on the couch. I warned my parents and my friends for months.

'I said, "Listen, I understand if you guys dont want to watch it, I understand you probably might say some really ignorant, close-minded stuff or you just might not want to watch it and I get that too,"' he recalled.

Inspired: Rubinstein plays the gay son of series lead Rob Lowe, and his steamy scenes with his costar Rafael L. Silva forced him to confront his repressed sexuality; still from 9-1-1: Lone Star

But regardless of their feelings, the on-screen romance was well-received by fans, who quickly gave them the couple name 'Tarlos.'

Rubinstein wasn't out at the time, but he said his character took him on a 'journey' that helped him come to terms with his attraction to both men and women, feelings that he had tried to keep below the surface for years.

'The biggest thing for me is where I come from, its like people like me and people who have identified as bisexual or gay or as any part of the community, youre just not welcomed. Its as brutally honest as that,' he said.

'Its either you faced insane amounts of profanity, like the F-word was thrown around all the time or you would get your a** kicked if you were gay. So there was definitely a fear of sort of embracing how I felt. I was definitely more aware of it in high school. I was aware of my feelings and how I started looking at men, but I couldnt talk to anybody about it.'

It's a hit: He worried that his friends and family in Staten Island wouldn't approve, but his fans overwhelmed them with their love for the characters, which they nicknamed 'Tarlos'; seen in January 2020 in LA

But thanks to his role on 9-1-1: Lone Star, a spin-off of the Ryan Murphyproduced series 9-1-1, and the character's positive reception, he felt ready to embrace his true self.

'The fans, especially the Tarlos fans, its one of the biggest reasons that I finally felt safe and comfortable to talk about it and to finally embrace it and be happy about it,' he explained.

Rubinstein got plenty of support from his scene partner Silva and from Murphy, along with his actress girlfriend Jessica Parker Kennedy, best known for starring on Black Sails and The Flash for The CW.

'Shes actually one of the first people that sort of respectfully called me out on it,' Rubinstein said. 'Shes like, "Is there something we need to talk about?" And I said, "Maybe." I didnt know how that conversation would go,' he said, though it 'went probably as good as it can go.'

'She definitely encouraged me to be vocal about it, just to live my truth. Shes like, "I love you for who you are, your full self and people will love you for who you are and your full self."'

Going strong: Rubinstein got plenty of support from his actress girlfriend Jessica Parker Kennedy, and he clarified their relationship is as strong as ever; seen with Rob Lowe on the series

Having a laugh: 'She just sometimes jokes, "Just dont leave me for Harry Styles,"' Rubinstein said; picture with Kennedy in 2018 in LA

Rubinstein clarified that his relationship with Kennedy was as great as ever after his coming out, though she was still able to have a laugh about it.

'She just sometimes jokes, "Just dont leave me for Harry Styles."'

In addition to starring on the 9-1-1 spin-off, the actor led last year's slasher film The Smiley Face Killers, which was written by American Psycho novelist Bret Easton Ellis, and he previously appeared on season three of Netflix's Orange Is The New Black.

Rubinstein, who was born in Israel before moving to New York City as a child, concluded his interview by explaining that he hoped coming out as bisexual could help other LGBTQ youths who don't feel accepted.

'I want people to know that this is a hopeful and a happy story,' he said. 'I want people to know that theyre not alone and its definitely okay. Trust me, I know that it is not easy. My path has not been easy at all, but its just one more thing that I can share with people to help them and let them know that Im here for them.'
The Northern Territory is ramping up its battle against an invasive African grass ahead of the upcoming Top End bushfire season.

Gamba grass burns 10 times hotter than native grass species and can grow up to six metres tall, creating uncontrollable fires if it catches alight.

'Gamba is a major issue for the Top End,' Environment Minister Eva Lawler told reporters on Wednesday.

The Northern Territory is ramping up its battle against an invasive African grass ahead of the upcoming Top End bushfire season

'It has spread right across the Territory. It's a terrible weed and it needs to be managed because when it burns it burns ferociously.'

For northern Australia the peak bushfire period is during the dry season, which is generally throughout winter and spring.

Introduced in the 1930s as cattle feed, the grass flourishes in the northern Australian wet season and could infest areas from Broome to Cairns.

It has invaded rural properties, crown land, backyards and parks in the NT, including about 25 per cent Litchfield National Park.

'We can find up to 80 per cent coverage at some rural properties. We found one specimen that was about six metres tall and it's quite thick,' environmental management consultant Geoff Niere said.

'So managing that from a fire risk and environmental perspective is paramount.'

The NT government has tasked Mr Niere's land management team with clearing Gamba grass from vulnerable and elderly Territorians' homes on Darwin's outskirts.

'They're really in need of some support out there in the community,' he said.

Gamba grass burns 10 times hotter than native grass species and can grow up to six metres tall, creating uncontrollable fires if it catches alight

The program is part of a broader attack on the grass that includes the Gamba Army, a seasonal workforce focused on controlling the weed, as opposed to eliminating it.

'We know that Gamba cannot be eradicated across the Top End but we do need to manage it,' Ms Lawler said.

About 1.5million hectares of land in the Darwin area have already been overrun with new infestations discovered throughout the savanna region from remote Arnhem land to Groote Eylandt, in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

The grass is also spreading south through Batchelor and Katherine, including into the Nitmiluk National Park.

Environmental group Gamba Grass Roots says the NT government needs to do more to stop the spread of the noxious grass, which can take over whole ecosystems in as little as five years, according to a recent study.

'If we lose Litchfield to Gamba we'll lose a tourism icon and natural jewel,' NT manager Mitch Hart told AAP.

'The government needs to commit enough money to fix this problem. We need more people paid to be out spraying, burning and slashing the grass.'
A pregnant teenager who allegedly helped to stab and kidnap a woman during a horrific 12-hour ordeal still has the full support of her family, who maintain she is innocent.

Latia Henderson, 18, remains behind bars accused of helping her friend Kayley Lee Ketley, 24, stab and kidnap Nisha Phillips, also 24, from a home in Claymore, southwest Sydney, on February 3.

Phillips was allegedly stuffed into the boot of her own Holden Commodore and only managed to escape after she kicked out the tail light and caught the attention of a passing truckie, who called the police.

Henderson is 20 weeks pregnant and was refused bail when she last appeared in court in late February.

Her matter was briefly mentioned on Wednesday in Campbelltown Local Court, and while she wasn't scheduled to appear, a group of her devoted friends and family filed into the courthouse to show their support.

Her mother told Daily Mail Australia outside of court the duo were not guilty.

Latia Henderson, 18, remains behind bars accused of helping her friend Kayley Lee Ketley, 24, stab and kidnap Nisha Phillips, also 24, from a home in Claymore, western Sydney, on February 3

Kayley Ketley (pictured) also remains behind bars

Her matter was briefly mentioned on Wednesday in Campbelltown Local Court, and while she wasn't scheduled to appear, a group of her devoted friends and family filed into the courthouse to show their support

Henderson's mother defended her innocence outside of court

She clutched the hand of a little girl and was supported by her own mother, Henderson's grandmother, as she made the defiant claim.

'We don't need to make any comments because they're not guilty,' she said. Henderson's grandmother then said they had nothing else to discuss on the matter.

Henderson has now spent nine weeks behind bars since her February 3 arrest and has endured much of her first pregnancy alone in jail.

She has this week reached the halfway mark.

The court heard prosecutors were awaiting electronic interview with the alleged victim and expert medical records before proceeding.

Henderson was not required to appear when her matter was heard in court on Wednesday after revealing she was pregnant on the last occasion.

Henderson applied for bail at her last hearing but the magistrate refused, citing her extensive 'history of violence' and determining she posed a risk to the community.

Both Henderson and Ketley are charged with unlawful wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, detaining to gain advantage causing bodily harm and driving a vehicle without [the] owner's consent.

The teenager is 20 weeks pregnant and was refused bail when she last appeared in court in late February

Nisha Phillips (pictured) was allegedly stuffed in the boot of her own Holden Commodore after 12 hours of terror that began at a unit in Claymore, western Sydney, about 10.30pm on Tuesday

Henderson's lawyer later said the family would not make any comment in relation to the charges

The pair allegedly stuffed Phillips in the boot of her own Holden Commodore and set off down the Hume Highway.

They were stopped by police after a passing truckie saw the victim's hand sticking through the smashed tail light and called Triple Zero.

Detectives are investigating whether the duo were on the way to the infamous Belanglo State Forest between Sydney and Canberra when they were stopped.

Phillips was rushed to hospital to undergo surgery while the other women were taken into custody and refused bail.

At her last appearance, Henderson's lawyer Gazi Abbas argued his client should be released because she had several favourable prospects, including her age, support from family and the fact she was 14 weeks pregnant.

Mr Abbas added that her alleged involvement in the case is yet to be ascertained and she suffers from post traumatic stress disorder and mental health issues after a childhood filled with trauma.

Police allege Henderson (left) helped her friend Kayley Lee Ketley (right) carry out a horrific stabbing and kidnapping

The 24-year-old alleged victim managed to get her hand out the back tail light of the car (pictured) which was seen by a passing truck driver, who called NSW Police

Henderson (far right) was close friends with Brayden Dillon (far left) who was gunned down in his sleep in a high-profile incident in 2017

The court heard Henderson was scarred after the freak death of her baby sister and assassination of her close friend Brayden Dillon.

Henderson's younger sister Indy Lee was killed in a horror accident in 2016 when the concrete war memorial at Black Head Bowling Club fell on top of her.

An inquest into her death heard another older child was standing on top of the war memorial headstone when it buckled and crushed the three-year-old.

In an emotional tribute to her sister on Instagram, Henderson shared a photo of the toddler's burial headstone.

'Half of my heart lives in heaven. I miss you so much angel eyes,' she wrote.

Just five months after her sister's death, Henderson's life was again rocked by the shooting death of Dillon.

The 15-year-old was asleep in bed when Conrad Craig burst through the front door and into his room.

Craig was last year sentenced to at least 30 years jail over the shocking killing.

At the time, Henderson told media: 'He was a really good friend of mine. Its so hard to accept the fact that hes gone.'

Henderson's younger sister Indy Lee died in 2016 after a concrete war memorial fell on her at a bowling club in Black Head

'Half of my heart lives in heaven. I miss you so much angel eyes,' Henderson wrote in a moving Instagram post to Indy Lee (pictured)

Henderson's lawyer Gazi Abbas (pictured) argued the teenager should be released because she has favourable prospects, including the fact she is 14 weeks pregnant

Court documents state that Phillips was allegedly attacked as early as 10.30pm on February 2.

It wasn't until close to 11.30am the next morning that police pulled over her Holden Commodore and allegedly freed her from the boot.

Phillips was suffering stab wounds to her knee, thigh and forearm.

While the three women were known to each other, the details of an alleged personal dispute that led to the eventual kidnapping remain unclear.

Ketley was also hit with the additional charges of cannabis possession and driving while disqualified.

Henderson is scheduled to appear in Campbelltown Local Court on April 28.

Henderson had a large group of supporters turn out at Campbelltown Local Court on Wednesday, including her mother and grandmother

Police pulled the car over on the Hume Highway near Berrima, in the NSW Southern Highlands, about 11.30am on February 3
Emily Mieure covers criminal justice and emergency news. She also leads the News&Guides investigative efforts. She has reported for WDRB TV in Louisville, Ky., WFIE TV in Evansville, Ind., and WEIU TV in Charleston, Ill.
Bailey McCann, Opalesque New York:

Xponance and Investcorp have entered into a strategic partnership to stake and seed diverse and woman-owned alternative asset managers. The partnership will focus on managers in the mid-market.

Investcorp's Strategic Capital Group and Xponance Alts Solutions will be leading the way in identifying managers for the partnership. ISCG was established in 2019 to invest in GP stakes. The group raised approximately $160 million in April of last year for GP stake transactions. ISCG announced at the end of last year that it has invested in mid-market private equity firm Centre Lane Partners.

Xponance Alts Solutions was established within Xponance earlier this year to invest in emerging and diverse alternative managers. It is led by industry veteran Marquette Chester, who joined the firm in February.

"It is our view that diverse managers have historically been overlooked," David Lee, a partner at ISCG tells Opalesque. "Being diverse and/or woman owned is not mutually exclusive from being a best in breed manager."

According to Lee, the partnership will be strategy agnostic in terms of the asset managers it looks to invest in. "We're looking to create as much diversification as possible," he says. "that includes from a strategy point of view, geographies, vintages, and ownership."

Investors have been keen on GP stake deals in recent years. Fundraising for GP-stakes has topped $20 billion, according to data from Pitchbook......................

To view our full article Click here
She's no stranger to showcasing her incredible physique on social media.

And Gabby Allen was at it again on Tuesday as she displayed her peachy posterior and toned figure in a red thong bikini as she soaked up the sun during her Maldives getaway.

The former Love Island star, 28, also demonstrated her impressive flexibility as she did the splits in mid-air before falling into the turquoise waters below.

Work it: Gabby Allen displayed her peachy posterior and toned figure in a red thong bikini as she soaked up the sun during her Maldives getaway on Tuesday

Gabby oozed confidence as she stood in her flesh-flashing two-piece while preparing to dive into the sea.

The fitness fanatic stretched her arms into the air before smoothly diving into the water.

On Wednesday, the reality star then once again showed off her skills as she launched herself off her water villa platform and split her legs in the air in a slowed down video.

Gabby expertly pointed her toes and stretched out her limbs before making a splash in the Arabian Sea.

Flying high: The former Love Island star, 28, also demonstrated her impressive flexibility as she did the splits in mid-air before falling into the turquoise waters below

Captioning her post, she penned: 'Wake up early. Drink coffee. Work hard. Be ambitious. Keep your priorities straight, your mind right and your head up. Do well, live well and dress really well. Do what you love, love what you do. 

'P.S. couldnt believe I could still do this tbh! #stillgotit landing needs work though.'

Last month, Gabby turned up the heat as she displayed her incredible physique in sizzling swimwear while relaxing on the beach in Dubai.

The former Love Islander, who moved to Dubai last year, showcased her toned stomach and sun-kissed glow in a minuscule pastel two-piece, adorned with silver studs.

Wow: Gabby oozed confidence as she stood in her flesh-flashing two-piece while preparing to dive into the sea

Flaunt: The fitness fanatic stretched her arms into the air before smoothly diving into the water

Her blonde tresses were tucked back and she appeared to go make-up free, but Gabby made sure to add a touch of glamour with delicate gold jewellery.

She shielded her eyes from the scorching sun with oversized shades from Fendi as she captioned her sultry Instagram upload: 'Do you think I could get any shinier jeez haha.' (sic).

The reality star and her boyfriend Brandon Myers appeared to be making the most of their sun-soaked lifestyle the previous week as they enjoyed an afternoon on the beach once more.

Amazing: On Wednesday, the reality star then once again showed off her skills as she launched herself off her water villa platform and split her legs in the air in a slowed down video

Fun times: Gabby expertly pointed her toes and stretched out her limbs before making a splash in the Arabian Sea

Holiday: Captioning her post, she penned: 'Wake up early. Drink coffee. Work hard. Be ambitious. Keep your priorities straight, your mind right and your head up'

Gabby wowed as she showcased her gym-honed physique in a skimpy white bikini while chilling with her model beau, 24.

The reality personality lounged on a sun bed as she soaked up the rays, wearing a tiny two-piece, which featured a top with knot detailing and matching bottoms.

Gabby wore her blonde locks slick back off her pretty features, which appeared to be make-up free as she showed off her natural beauty.

The Celebrity Big Brother alum accessorised her poolside look with a delicate gold bracelet and chain, which she wore around her neck.

Send temperatures soaring: Last month, Gabby turned up the heat as she displayed her incredible physique in sizzling swimwear while relaxing on the beach in Dubai
STURBRIDGE  The Tantasqua Regional and Union 61 school committees unanimously voted Tuesday evening to promote associate superintendent Deborah Boyd to be the next superintendent of schools.

Committee members said her integrity and candidness are among her best qualities, in addition to being expert on school finance. She has been with the district 20 years, previously serving as finance director.

The district includes Brimfield, Brookfield, Holland, Sturbridge and Wales.

Boyd will succeed Erin Nosek, who was hired in 2012 and was previously the North Brookfield superintendent. Nosek plans to step down at years end.

Boyds lack of teaching experience is not a liability, board members said.

Committee member William Haggerty told colleagues, prior to the unanimous vote, that the leaders of our schools are the principals ... building principals (are) where the actions is and Boyd is the highest skilled to support them, he said. Haggerty is a retired superintendent of the neighboring Quaboag Regional School District that includes Warren and West Brookfield.

Committee Chairman Michael Valanzola responded to concerns of some who accused the district of lacking transparency, and taking little or no public input, during the search for a new school chief. He said the district undertook a fair, transparent process that complies with the Open Meeting Law.

He said the district, more often than not, hires its school chief from within, instead of going with an outside search, and that internal candidates have stayed the longest on the job.

The Massachusetts Association of School Committees recommended that Tantasqua hire internally owing to a lack of decent external candidates, Valanzola also said.

Search committee members were not asked, and did not disclose, how many applied for the superintendents job. No public comment was permitted during Tuesdays meeting.

Regarding public involvement, it is the school committees responsibility to appoint the superintendent and that we ensure the public has access, he said.

Public meetings are not public hearings, Valanzola added.

This committee and this committee alone will decide who leads this district, he said.

During the meeting, Boyd said: I am honored to be considered for this position.

I know our district; I love our district, she said.

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Two soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were killed in Donbas, 14 attacks were recorded over the past day on Tuesday, April 6, the press center of the Joint Forces Operation (JFO) headquarters said.

"Over the past day, on April 6, in the area of the Joint Forces Operation, the armed formations of the Russian Federation violated the ceasefire 14 times. As a result of enemy shelling attacks, one Ukrainian soldier received injuries incompatible with life. In addition, in the area of the Joint Forces Operation, another soldier was killed as a result of a detonation on an unknown explosive device," the JFO staff said in its morning report on Facebook on Wednesday.
Social media users have poked fun at the news that under-30s will be offered an alternative to the AstraZeneca vaccine after controversy over the risk of blood clots.

Twitter users were quick to list things that are statistically more likely than suffering a blood clot from the vaccine including getting struck by lightning and being killed by a poodle.

The Government's vaccine advisory group ruled today that people aged between 18 and 29 should be offered an alternative to AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine while experts continue to investigate its link to rare blood clots.

A review by the drugs watchdog the MHRA found that by the end of March, 79 out of 20million Britons vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine had suffered deadly blood clots in the brain or arteries, a rate of about one in 250,000. Nineteen of the cases died and three were under the age of 30.

Slides presented at a press conference announcing the change in guidance today showed that younger people are more prone to blood clots after vaccination than older groups.

The MHRA said healthy people aged 19 to 29 be offered either the Pfizer or Moderna jabs instead when the programme moves to younger groups in the coming months.

Anyone who has already had their first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, regardless of their age, is being advised to go for their second appointment as planned.

Social media users were quick to find the funny side of the situation after official guidance suggested under-30s should be offered an alternative vaccine.

Some users pointed to a list of things which were statistically more probably than getting a blood clot from the vaccine.

One user wrote: 'The risk of getting killed by a poodle or getting struck by lightning is far, far higher than the risk of a blood clot from the Astra Zeneca shot.'

Another wrote: '"Astra Zeneca? Not bloody likely," says the 55-year-old, 20 Marlborough a day, two bottle of Rioja a night, Ducati riding, occasional recreational drug user and fish and chip lover Big Dave from Doncaster.'

Others compared the risks of getting a blood clot from the vaccine to the contraceptive pill.

One user wrote: 'Welcome to the world of having to take a medicine with risks so you can have freedom and gift it to others - ask the millions of women who have taken the pill.'

The MHRA insisted there was still no concrete proof that the British-made vaccine is causing the clots, but admitted the link was getting firmer.

The review prompted the Government's vaccine advisory group, the JCVI, to recommend that people aged 18 to 29 be given an alternative jab.

However European regulator the EMA took a bolder approach, saying that blood clots should be listed as a 'very rare' side effect of the AstraZeneca vaccine but stopping short of imposing any age restrictions on its use.

Britons over that age are still being advised to get the vaccine because the risk of Covid far outweighs the chance of developing the extremely rare conditions. But the JCVI said the benefit to risk ratio was 'more finely balanced' in younger people.
President Joe Biden speaks in Pittsburgh on March 31, 2021, as he unveils his $2 trillion infrastructure plan. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

Im a Capitalist, Mr. President, but Youre Not

Commentary

Back in the day when Saturday Night Live was funny, Chevy Chase would open the Weekend Update segment by saying, Im Chevy Chase  and youre not.

That line came to mind over President Joe Bidens massive tax-and-spend proposals, which are unlike anything since FDR, after whom Biden appears to be modeling himself. The president thinks hes a capitalist  but hes not.

In a very short time, we have regressed from President Ronald Reagans Government is not the solution to our problem, government is our problem, and President Bill Clintons declaration that the era of big government is over to Bidens belief that the era of big government is just beginning.

Lets define two terms. First, capitalism: An economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, especially as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.

Now, socialism: A theory or system of social organization that advocates the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, capital, land, etc., by the community as a whole, usually through a centralized government.

The definition of what fits the Biden tax and spending blowout is the latter. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is ratcheting up the notion that only government is the answer to every problem by proposing a global minimum tax. Axios reports what it concludes is the rationale behind her thinking: Convincing other countries to impose a global minimum tax would reduce the likelihood of companies relocating offshore, as Biden seeks to increase the corporate rate from 21 percent to 28 percent.

Thats got it backward, but it typifies the thinking of those whose faith is in ever growing, more expensive, and intrusive government.

Former President Donald Trumps reduction in corporate tax rates persuaded some businesses to move back to the United States from overseas. They had exited because of higher taxes.

Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody Analytics, reacted to the Biden administrations tax-and-spend proposals when he told The Hill: It takes a whole different perspective on government.  Ever since Ronald Reagan its been about government dysfunction, we need smaller government, less government.  This is the complete opposite. Its saying government and only government can solve the problems we have because theyre so large and beyond any one of us. Infrastructure is a collective problem.

The obvious question then becomes, if big government can solve our problems, why hasnt it solved them by now?

In a 2018 article, Investors Business Daily quoted the Bureau of Economic Analysis: Some $305.6 billion returned to the U.S. from overseas accounts (after President Trump cut corporate tax rates). Thats a $1.2 trillion annual rate, and far more than the $35 billion one year before.

How is returning to the bad old days of higher taxes going to convince those companies that returned home to stay home? No reporter has asked that question and no one in the Biden administration has voluntarily offered an explanation.

Speaking of Chevy Chase, the comedian once said: Socialism works  [and] Cuba might prove that. I think its conclusive that there have been areas where socialism has helped to keep people at least stabilized at a certain level.

Yes, and that level is mutually shared mediocrity and, in some cases, mutually shared poverty. Capitalism raises boats for those who play by its rules, accompanied by shared moral values, while socialism, especially when paired with communism, sinks too many boats and hopes.

John Calvin Thomas has been a syndicated columnist, author, and radio commentator for more than 35 years. His latest book is Americas Expiration Date: The Fall of Empires and Superpowers and the Future of the United States.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
U.S. President Joe Biden is announcing Tuesday that every adult in the country will be eligible by April 19 to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, about two weeks earlier than his original May 1 date. As the available supply of three vaccines expands in the U.S., Biden last week said that about 90 percent of U.S. adults would be eligible by the April 19 date, but he now is expanding that to all adults who want a shot in the arm. National polls in the U.S., however, show that about 20 percent of adults say that for various reasons they will refuse to get vaccinated. Some have said they think it is unnecessary or that the injections could prove to be harmful, while other have expressed distrust in a government-run program. The percentage opposed to the inoculations has declined over the last several months, as most people vaccinated have reported no or only temporary medical reactions lasting a day or so.

Biden, who was inoculated before taking office in January, is making the announcement at the White House after visiting a vaccination site in suburban Virginia outside Washington.

The latest government figures show that more than 62 million Americans have been fully vaccinated, about 23 percent of the country's adult population 18 and older. More than 107 million people have received at least one shot of the two-shot regimen required with either the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, or a smaller group of people with the single-shot doses produced by drug-maker Johnson & Johnson.



Originally, the U.S. made the vaccines available to older people and essential, front-line workers. The new eligibility date in two weeks will give all adults a chance then to schedule appointments for their shots at community health centers, pharmacies, drive-through vaccination sites in parking lots and elsewhere.
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Apple has agreed to pay Chilean consumers $3.4 million in a lawsuit over programmed obsolescence of iPhones, their lawyer said Wednesday, the first such settlement in Latin America.

Apple is accused of having programmed a limited lifespan into some products to force users to replace their phones sooner than necessary, and has previously settled similar cases in the United States and Europe.

In Chile, some 150,000 users of the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s Plus, 7, 7 Plus and SE sued the US company, claiming their smartphones started underperforming after software updates programmed by Apple before December 21, 2017.

The agreement provides for a registration period for affected clients, who will have to provide proof of their devices' reduced performance, a lawyer for the Odecu consumer body, Juan Sebastian Reyes, told a virtual press conference.

Each client stands to get maximum compensation of $50, which is to be shared if there are more than one claim per serial number, as in the case of second-hand phones.

In December 2017, Apple admitted iOS software was tweaked to slow performance of older iPhones whose battery life was deteriorating.

An outcry forced Apple to upgrade its software and offer steep discounts on battery replacements.

In March 2020, Apple agreed to pay up to $500 million to settle a class-action lawsuit over slowed iPhones in the United States, followed in November by another $113 million to settle litigation with more than 30 US states over the same issue.

The company has also settled a case with France's consumer watchdog for 25 million euros ($29.7 million) for failing to tell iPhone users that software updates could slow older devices.

Italy, for its part, has fined Apple and Samsung 10 and five million euros respectively for planned smartphone obsolescence.

Explore further Apple to pay $113 mn to US states over iPhone battery complaints

 2021 AFP
Press Release

April 7, 2021 Sad but solvable 'war-zone' hospital situation in NCR+ on World Health Day: Pangilinan SENATOR Francis "Kiko" Pangilinan will call for assistance of the international community to help stop and turn around the upsurge in Covid-19 cases in the country at the worldwide Liberal Party Presidents' meeting tonight. "War zone na mga ospital natin. Pila-pila ang mga ambulansya ng mga maysakit sa labas ng ospital. Merong mga namamatay sa parking lot. Nagkakasakit ang mga medical front-liners natin. Kailangan na natin ng tulong (Our hospitals are practically war zones. Ambulances of sick people are lining up outside hospitals. People are dying in hospital parking lots. Our medical front-liners are getting sick. We need help)," Pangilinan said. "World Health Day ngayon. Sana ang tunay na celebration ng araw na ito ay maayos na pagkontrol sa virus at agarang paggamot sa na-infect (Today is World Health Day. A true celebration of this day would have been the control of the virus spread and the quick treatment and recovery of those who have been infected)," he said. The goal of the World Health Day 2021 is to build a fairer, healthier world for everyone, reducing health inequity in face of the Covid-19 pandemic that hit vulnerable populations hard. Health inequity includes access to vaccines that have proved challenging for poorer nations as bulk of the vaccine supply were earlier reserved by the world's richest countries. Five Liberal Party Presidents from Liberal International, African Liberal Network, Arab Liberal Federation, Red Liberal de America Latina, and Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats, which Pangilinan chairs, will meet for the first time this year tonight. April 7, World Health Day, was deliberately selected for the meeting. Main agenda of the meeting is to adopt a political readout in support of greater equality distribution in the global fight against Covid. "The international community can begin by calling on wealthy nations not to hoard vaccines. We must ensure that vaccines can be easily accessed by everyone who needs the boost in their healthcare system that has been severely incapacitated by Covid. Protecting our healthcare workers and vulnerable population is crucial," Pangilinan said. In Metro Manila and nearby provinces, public and private hospitals are swamped with Covid patients, many with dozens of patients on queue and running at critical capacity. On Tuesday, the Department of Health (DOH) said 82 percent of the intensive care unit (ICU) beds for Covid patients in Metro Manila were already being used, along with 71 percent of isolation beds, 60 percent of ward beds, and 63 percent of ventilators. The government's Lung Center of the Philippines has started turning away Covid walk-in patients as its emergency room already operates at twice its capacity and its wards packed with cases of the severe respiratory disease; the Philippine Orthopedic Center has shut down due to Covid infections among over half of its hospital staff. "In particular, humihingi tayo ng tulong sa mga kaibigan nating bansa para matulungan tayong makakuha ng mga tent hospital, hospital bed, ventilator, at Covid vaccines. Kailangan natin ng di bababa sa 140 million doses para ma-achieve ang herd immunity (We are asking our allies to help us secure supplies for tent hospitals, equipment, and Covid-19 vaccines. We need at least 140 million doses to achieve herd immunity)," he said. According to the DOH vaccine statistics as of March 30, the Philippines has received a total of 2,525,600 doses of vaccines, broken down as follows: 525,600 doses of Astra Zeneca, and 2,000,000 doses of China's Sinovac. Pangilinan also asked for international help in possible local vaccine production and testing, given logistics and massive cooling requirements of the vaccines. "Nagpapasalamat tayo sa European Union sa tulong ng ating bagong EU Ambassador na si Luc Veron para sa 130-million-peso three-year grant para mapondohan ang pandemic preparedness and response ng Pilipinas. Baka pwede rin natin silang hingan ng tulong na mag-invest ang mga European pharma companies dito, lalo na sa paggawa ng bakuna locally (We thank the European Union through the help of our new EU Ambassador Luc Veron for the 130-million-peso three-year grant to find pandemic preparedness and response in the Philippines. A new request would be to seek investments from European pharmas, particularly on local vaccine production)," he said. The Philippines has been lagging in its Covid response, experience the biggest surges in Covid cases, failing to do free mass testing and tracing despite having one of the longest and strictest lockdowns, and recording 812,760 total cases and 13,817 deaths as of April 6, 2021.
The significant rise in lifestyle-related diseases and the developments in healthcare infrastructure are expected to influence the demand for pharmaceuticals in Saudi Arabia. In 2016, the Saudi Arabia pharmaceutical market is anticipated to procure value worth US $ 5,209.5 Mn at a yoy growth of 6.0% over 2015. The mounting demand for branded drug products will continue to incite the growth of the Saudi Arabian pharmaceutical market in 2016.

The demand for pharmaceuticals in Saudi Arabia is expected to register substantial growth owing to the increasing penetration of health insurance companies and the rising incidence rate of non-communicable diseases. Furthermore, the exceptional rise in the per capita income of Saudi Arabia is also expected to foster the demand for branded pharmaceutical drugs. Another key factor driving the growth of the pharmaceutical market in Saudi Arabia is the country's strategic move to allow 100% FDI in the pharmaceuticals sector. Although, the shortage of profound indigenous research capacity in the pharmaceutical industry and the delayed registration of drug and medicine patents is expected to limit the expansion of the market in 2016 and beyond.

Request a Sample Report with Table of Contents and Figures: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gc-1733

Based on the product type, the pharmaceutical market in Saudi Arabia is expected to witness an upsurge in the prescription-type branded drug products. In terms of market value, the branded drugs are estimated to reach US$ 2,760.8 Mn by 2016-end. The demand for generic drugs is projected to secure steady growth, attributing to the insisting promotion of generic drug adoption by healthcare insurance providers.

On the basis of the diseases, the pharmaceutical drugs used for treatment of cardiovascular diseases will continue exhibiting robust growth in 2016. The demand for cardiovascular medications will continue to surge due to the prominence of circulatory disorders in Saudi Arabia. Additionally, the rising prevalence of disorders related to body sugar levels is expected to make diabetes a rapidly growing disease-based sub-segment in the Saudi Arabia pharmaceutical market.

The pharmaceutical market in Saudi Arabia is also segmented on the basis of distribution channel, where retail pharmacies will continue to account for 80% market share compared to hospital pharmacies. The westernised modernisation of retail pharmacies in Saudi Arabia has led to the availability of a wide range drugs and medicinal products, thereby attaining a considerable growth in the retail pharmacy sub-segment in 2016 and further.

Our advisory services are aimed at helping you with specific, customised insights that are relevant to your specific challenges. Let us know about your challenges and our trusted advisors will connect with you: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gc-1733

The rising resource potential in Saudi Arabia is projected to positively reform the production environment for pharmaceutical manufacturers. In order to expand the market's size, structuring alliances with well-established native companies is predicted to be a key strategy for global pharmaceutical leaders. The key players in the Saudi Arabia pharmaceutical market include Novartis AG, SPIMACO, Pfizer Inc., and Glaxosmithkline plc., Jamjoom Pharma, and Tabuk Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Co. among others.

Long-term Outlook: The Saudi Arabia pharmaceutical market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 9.0% over the forecast period 2016-2026. In terms of market value, the pharmaceutical market in Saudi Arabia is estimated to be worth US $ 12,281.4 Mn by the end of forecast period.

Preview Analysis on Saudi Arabia Pharmaceutical Market Segmentation By Product - Prescription Products and Over-The-Counter (OTC) Products; By Disease - Cardiovascular Diseases, Diabetes, Cancer, Obesity, Infectious Diseases and Other Diseases; By Distribution Channel - Hospital Pharmacies and Retail Pharmacies: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/saudi-arabia-pharmaceutical-market
Chattanooga non-profit Waterways celebrated their work and the people who make a difference last weekend at a gathering at Crabtree Farms. The organizations annual event, Save Water, Drink Wine, introduced a Big Splash Award acknowledging area water champions for bringing awareness and stewardship to local watersheds.

Waterways Executive Director Mary Beth Sutton presented the accolades and handblown glass dotty cups created by local artists Prentice Hicks and Maryon Wright from Wauhatchie Glassworks. Attendees snacked on food from Fud Vybez, Lupis, and Conga Latin Food and charcuterie from Pruetts Market and cheered with wines provided by Athens Distributing and Empire Distributing and local beers from Wanderlinger, Naked River, Odd Story, and Chattanooga Brewing.

Ms. Sutton explained the reason for the awards, While many people only hear the bad things that corporations and others do, we decided to celebrate the good things. Around our region are so many corporations and community citizens who do good work for our environment, for our waterways, that go unnoticed, so we decided to recognize them with our first ever Big Splash awards for area water champions."

About the inaugural awardees:

Volunteer Water Champions

Local water rat and member of TN Valley Canoe Club and South Chickamauga Creek Greenway Alliance, Jim Ledbetter received one of two prestigious Volunteer Water Champion awards. Mr. Ledbetter is one of those folks who is always willing to help out and provides guidance in protecting our creeks and rivers. He is always on the water, is amazing at white water canoeing and simply loves our rivers and streams. As a longtime member of the South Chickamauga Creek Greenway Alliance, he coordinated the removal of a huge debris jam/ snag on South Chickamauga Creek which was severely eroding the streambank around the edges and also helped create the blueway paddling trails. He has also volunteered with the Gear Closet and outdoor classroom projects as well as the Bonnaroo Cleanup.

Fellow volunteer Corinne Giagnorio, an ignition switch when it comes to getting kids and communities to participate in their environments, took home the other Big Splash award in the category. Ms. Giagnorio quietly goes about protecting her environment in everything she does. Not only does she assist with education programs, she started the Thrasher Elementary Environmental Club and the Signal Mountain Stewards environmental group. She recently helped lead the Weed Wrangle at a park on Signal Mountain. She is distressed by folks who litter and so will always join us for creek clean ups and has been to nearly every Bonnaroo Clean up we have had. She is a true environmental champion.

Citizen Water Champion

Major General Bill Raines is a commercial realtor by trade, but we like to think of him as our tree hugger in training. Our unlikely partnership came about because of our green infrastructure grant, lots of education from landscape architect, Joe Sawyer, and also the Skyuka Hall students. The Stormwater wetlands Mr. Raines installed at Four Squares were designed in part by students at Skyuka Hall, which was located in Four Squares at that time. Those students also monitored the amazing numbers of species that rapidly colonized those wetlands. He was amazed. At the grand opening of the wetland, Mr. Raines provided monarch and fritillary butterflies for the kids to release. He also was one of the geniuses behind the My Tennessee Award program to reward homeowners for protecting waterways by what they do in their yards. He continues to help through volunteer work as well.

Corporate Water Champion

Barge Design Solutions

The leadership of Barge Design, Joe Sawyer and Matt Stovall, are some of those folks who will help others in whatever way they can. Its in their DNA. Mr. Sawyer was the one to teach Mr. Raines the most about green infrastructure. Barge has also designed many of the Riverwalk and greenway sections, bringing people to nature and ensuring they are accessible for all people. Barge has also adopted a section of Mountain Creek and are actively stewarding their segment. They are making an impact both through their paid work and through their volunteer work to make an incredibly positive impact on our waterways and in helping reconnect people with nature.

Waterways works with communities across the Southeastern US to bring awareness and stewardship to their watershed. Originated in St. Lucia in 2004, the organization has since evolved from a small student environmental group to an international organization focused on watershed health and restoration. Waterways will be expanding the Big Splash awards in 2022 to include a Peoples Choice award. Sign up for their email list via the website, learn how to nominate a water champion and get involved in Waterways. www.mywaterways.org





Contact: Mary Beth H. Sutton , Executive Director

423-413-0471

marybeth@mywaterways.org


With a $15.3 million National Institutes of Health grant, a University of Arizona Health Sciences-led research team takes a three-pronged tactic to analyze asthma in children in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, and Tucson, Arizona -- even before they're born

TUCSON, Ariz. -- A cross-border investigation of children's susceptibility to asthma and other childhood illnesses in the United States and Mexico is the focus of a new study led by researchers in the Asthma and Airway Disease Research Center at the University of Arizona Health Sciences.

The study is funded by a $15.3 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The Binational Early Asthma and Microbiome Study, or BEAMS, will recruit 500 Mexican-American and Mexican children - 250 in Tucson, Arizona, and 250 in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico - before the mothers have given birth. The mothers will be evaluated while pregnant and the children will be followed from birth to age 5 to examine how the "hygiene hypothesis" affects them and their risk of asthma.

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the hygiene hypothesis suggests reduced exposure to germs keeps a child's immune system from developing the ability to naturally fight infectious organisms.

"Paradoxically, in the middle of all the poverty and underdevelopment in many 'barrios' and 'colonias' in Nogales, Sonora, there is less asthma," said Fernando Martinez, MD, study principal investigator, director of the UArizona Health Sciences Asthma and Airway Disease Research Center, the Swift-McNear Professor of Pediatrics at the UArizona College of Medicine - Tucson and a BIO5 Institute member. "There is four times less asthma there than here, and our studies show the main reason is because, although children in Nogales, Sonora, are exposed to harmful bacteria that cause many infections, they are also exposed to a lot of protective bacteria that train their immune system to distinguish between dangerous and innocuous microbes."

BEAMS is the latest in a series of UArizona-led respiratory studies - anchored by the Tucson Children's Respiratory Study, ongoing since 1980 - that have yielded revelations and remedies on asthma, the hygiene hypothesis and respiratory disease progression from infancy to adulthood.

This current study seeks to provide a better understanding of the early origins of asthma and to offer new asthma prevention strategies to improve respiratory health for the Mexican-American community in Southern Arizona, and potentially for all Americans.

"One of the reasons why it is so important for us to be a Hispanic Serving Institution is because our unique location in the Sonoran Desert creates incredible opportunities for transborder research and collaboration that could have worldwide benefits," said University of Arizona President Robert C. Robbins, MD. "Asthma is the most common noncommunicable disease among children, and Dr. Martinez's research could have far-reaching impact for our most vulnerable populations. I am very excited to follow the results of this study to better understand what causes asthma and to develop therapies that will provide respiratory relief for our borderlands region and nearly 340 million people worldwide."

BEAMS takes three approaches to analyzing asthma susceptibility: a population study on subjects' immunological and epidemiological risks, including family health history; a microbiological study to look at environmental exposures and the microbiome; and a mechanistic study to try to re-create that microbiome in animal models.

Environmental samples to be collected include water and dust from the home, while blood, stool and airway swabs will be gathered from participants. These will be evaluated to learn how microbes dictate - or don't - the development of allergies and asthma, as well as what genetic influences may result in better preventive therapies.

"It is this three-pronged approach - the population, microbiological and mechanistic studies - that gives BEAMS its edge," said Donata Vercelli, MD, professor of cellular and molecular medicine, associate director of the Asthma and Airway Disease Research Center and one of several principal investigators. "We are going to do something absolutely novel and, to some extent, revolutionary. We will have a microbiological picture of whatever is happening in the lives of these children and their mothers at very high resolution."

Both Drs. Martinez and Vercelli are interested to see if the social isolation and enhanced hygiene of the COVID-19 pandemic will affect children participating in the study.

"These changes in lifestyle related to COVID-19 might also prompt differences in how the developmental trajectory in these children occurs," Dr. Vercelli added. "This could be an enormous confounding factor. Whereas, because we are proposing this in-depth analysis, we have an opportunity to actually see if, whether and how these differences in behavior and lifestyle impact these children and their mothers."

###

Other BEAMS principal investigators include: Anne L. Wright, PhD, a UArizona pediatrics professor specializing in pulmonology, allergy and immunology, and co-founder of the Children's Respiratory Study and Infant Immune Study; Cecilia Rosales, MD, professor and chair of the Division of Public Health Practice and Translational Research, and associate dean for community engagement and outreach at the UArizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health; and Susan Lynch, PhD, professor and director of the Benioff Center for Microbiome Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.

BEAMS is supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a unit of the National Institutes of Health, under Award No. P01AI148104.
Its been three years, seven months and a few weeks since Harris County voters, still wet and weary a year after Hurricane Harvey, the most devastating rainstorm in American history, agreed to finance $2.5 billion in countywide repairs and upgrades designed to keep their homes drier during the next deluge.

This is our chance to tell the world were going to get serious about flood control, then-County Judge Ed Emmett had told the editorial board.

Voters believed him. They backed the bond, knowing it would trigger a big property tax increase  as much as $90 more each year on a $300,000 home  and would take 10 years to complete the 181 projects city and county officials promised could be done for the money. It was the biggest bond election in county history and voters overwhelmingly said yes.

They did so under two conditions. First, that the work would benefit rich and poor areas of the county, and black and white neighborhoods alike. Skeptical communities were assured the seemingly endless cycle of disinvestment in poorer neighborhoods  where residents already are more likely to be flooded, to be sickened by air pollution, or endure struggling schools  would not this time be perpetuated.

Secondly, county officials sold the bond election with a compelling argument: The local spending would be matched by more than $2 billion in federal funding.

Neither of those promises, as of yet, have been kept.

Last month, Harris County Flood Control District executive director Russ Poppe informed officials the county is short roughly $1.4 billion of those anticipated federal funds  and even the best luck going forward is unlikely to fully close that gap without significant local pain. If the federal funds arent replaced, the impact will ripple through much of the 10-year plan. Some $900 million of local money from the bond election has been earmarked to serve as matching funds to build scores of jointly funded projects, which are in limbo until funds are found.

Unfortunately, that leads us to the doubtful status of the first promise  that projects would be judged on more equitable principles than the historic cost-benefit approach that, as we noted in a 2018 editorial supporting the bond election, has so often in Houstons past meant prioritizing wealthier areas.

The areas with the most unfinished work appear to be the same areas officials had promised would get equal attention this time. Only a fraction of the funding needed for the largest improvements in two historically disadvantaged watersheds  Halls Bayou and Greens Bayou  have been secured. Meanwhile, special arrangements with the Army Corps of Engineers led to hundreds of millions in additional funding for improvements in other watersheds.

Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis is right to say that Harris County is on the brink of breaking faith with voters if it cant find a way to honor both its commitments. It is these lower-income areas that have flooded every single time, he told Poppe during commissioners court on March 30.  If we have to ask for more money, how we could go back to the voters in those two watersheds in particular when those two have been left out?

The missing federal funds

In Harveys wake, Congress sent recovery cash raining down by the tens of billions  much of it aimed at the Texas Gulf Coast, which was still digging out from one of the regions worst natural disasters.

The river of money made a detour, though, and just over $4 billion in Harvey-related HUD funds landed in Austin, where the Texas General Land Office took title. Harris County and Houston officials objected, but got nowhere.

Both Harris County and the city of Houston had announced, on their own, that they each should get a billion dollars of these funds directly, said Brittany Eck, spokesperson for the GLOs flood recovery office. That sent leaders in other counties, many of whom argued they had been hit harder, into a tail spin as you can imagine. The city and county requested a direct allocation from the governors office and from HUD, and both said no.

Instead, the city and county were each invited to submit proposals to compete for more than $2 billion in those funds. Each grant would be capped at $100 million. In the first round alone, Harris County would compete with $6.5 billion worth of proposals from 49 counties. The first grants should be announced this month.

That still leaves Harris County leaders scrambling. Poppe says hell be back to commissioners by June with a plan for how to make up the funding gap. Hes hinting that we might have to tap toll revenues or ask Congress or even Harris County voters for help.

He should think carefully about the solutions he proposes  and make sure, this time, to promise only what the county can deliver. No matter what happens, commissioners need to keep their word on equity. If priority is given, it should go to communities at the greatest risk, not those with the greatest influence.

With decades of additional flood improvement work to still be done, its no time to lose faith with the voters, who will likely be asked again and again in coming years to invest in making this community safer from an ever-growing risk of flooding.
The Spiders from Mars isn't just the name of David Bowie's backing band in the 1970sit's the nickname given to mysterious formations on Mars that resemble creepy black arachnids.

These 'araneiforms' (Latin for 'spider-like') were first observed 20 years ago, but astronomers have finally determined they're caused by carbon dioxide vapor escaping from cracks in polar ice in the spring.

Researchers were able to nail down this long suspected hypothesis by recreating conditions from the surface of Mars in a simulator.

Lowering and lifting blocks of dry iceessentially frozen CO2onto beds of gravel, they observed the same spindly patterns emerge on the surface.

Scroll down for video

This 2018 image taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows 'spiders' beginning to emerge from the surface of Mars' south pole

When sunlight reaches through the translucent ice covering Mars' poles each spring, it warms the loose rock below and builds up pressure.

That pressure causes the ice to crack and vaporized carbon dioxide to escape forcefully, blasting sand and grit into the air.

The granular material then settles on top of the ice in shapes that resemble tree branches or spindly spider legs.

The pressure is so strong the CO2 actually sublimates, or transitions directly from a frozen solid to vapor.

Troughs across the surface of Mars that appear in spring are called 'araneiforms' because of their arachnid-like appearance. New research has confirmed the long-suspected theory these patterns are caused by sunlight warming the ice and allowing CO2 vapor to break through. The sand and dirt displaced by the carbon plume lands in branch-like patterns that can be over 3,000 feet wide

To test the theory, researchers lowered a block of frozen carbon dioxide, or dry ice, onto a bed of gravel in a chamber that simulated Martian atmospheric conditions. When the block was removed, the spindly patterns were clearly visible

Araneiforms have been captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and other satellites, and the theory that they're caused by escaping CO2 'has been well-accepted for over a decade,' said Lauren McKeown, a researcher at the Open University and lead author of a study published in Scientific Reports.

'But until now, it has been framed in a purely theoretical context,' she added.

To test the theory, McKeown and colleagues from Ireland and the UK recreated Martian atmospheric pressure in the Open University Mars Simulation Chamber in Milton Keynes, England.

The finer the sediment used in the experiment, the more branches the patterns had, the authors reported

The Mars Simulation Chamber at Open University (pictured) is capable of simulating Martian atmospheric conditions

They drilled holes in blocks of dry ice, the solid form of carbon dioxide, and suspended them above beds of various size granules.

The pressure in the chamber was lowered to approximate the atmosphere on Mars, then the dry ice was lowered onto the sandy surface.

When the block reached the surface, the CO2 turned directly from solid to gas and vapor escaped through the hole.

A block of dry ice being lowered onto a granular bed in the simulator

In every experiment, when the block was lifted, a spidery pattern was left behind.

The finer the sediment used, the more branches the patterns had, the authors reported.

'The experiments show directly that the spider patterns we observe on Mars from orbit can be carved by the direct conversion of dry ice from solid to gas,' McKeown said.

Araneiforms, which can span up to 3,300 feet across, aren't found anywhere on Earth.

That's because there's so much less carbon dioxide on our planet: The atmosphere on Mars is more than 95 percent CO2, which also comprises much of the ice and frost that forms at the Martian poles in winter.

McKeown called the discovery 'exciting,' because scientists are finally beginning to understand more about how the surface of Mars changes each season.

The findings could also be useful to NASA, which has targeted human missions to Mars for the 2030s.

'This innovative work supports the emergent theme that the current climate and weather on Mars has an important influence not only on dynamic surface processes, but also for any future robotic and/or human exploration of the planet,' said Mary Bourke, a geomorphologist at Trinity who supervised the research.
ROME, APR 7 - A 40-year-old Milanese man hired a hitman on the Dark Web to disfigure his ex-girlfriend with acid and break her back so as to leave her in a wheelchair, Rome prosecutors said after arresting the man before the hit could be carried out Wednesday. The man, a manager at Italian energy company Enel, allegedly paid the hitman around 10,000 euros in four installments, police said. He was to have completed payments using Bitcoins, police said. He was said to have paid the hitman to "cause very serious lesions to his ex", police said. "The man had sought an Italian killer willing to break his ex-girlfriend0s back so as to leave her paralysed from the waist down and forced to get around in a wheelchair, as well as throwing acid on her face," said the arrest warrant. Police said the man had not accepted the woman's decision to break off their relationship, which lasted from November 2018 to July 2020. The man allegedly bombarded her with messages to try and meet up and get back together - activity for which he has also been charged with stalking. He allegedly got in touch with the hitman on the Dark Web site "Internet Assassins", police said. (ANSA).
BALTIMORE, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Northampton County in Northeast Pennsylvania has selected Remedi SeniorCare, one of the nation's largest long-term care pharmacies, to provide pharmacy services for Gracedale Nursing Home, located in Nazareth. The 688-bed facility offers comprehensive skilled nursing care, including short-term rehabilitation and respite care.

A leading innovator in long-term care pharmacy, Remedi SeniorCare's services include daily delivery of medication in PAXIT, its proprietary 24-hour, unit-dose medication management system. PAXIT's unique unit-dose packaging, organized by medication pass time, increases accuracy, efficiency, and safety in the med pass process while reducing waste and cost and ultimately improving the delivery of resident-centered care. Its automated, centralized dispensing technology replaces the traditional bingo card packaging that requires time-consuming and often frustrating manual dispensing by nurses. In the wake of COVID-19, heightened awareness about infection control in nursing homes, PAXIT helps reduce the risk of spreading infection during a medication pass.

Pharmacist consulting, nurse account management, and cost management initiatives, along with 24/7 customer service and clinical support, will be delivered by Remedi's flagship pharmacy in Baltimore, Maryland. Gracedale Nursing Home will also have access to Remedi SeniorCare's customer-inspired web portal, MyRemedi, which provides pharmacy data in real-time, enabling effective decision-making in all areas of their facility operations.

President and CEO, Jeffrey M. Stamps, R.Ph., expressed Remedi SeniorCare's excitement, "Our team is grateful for the opportunity to partner with Gracedale Nursing Home and create a positive pharmacy experience for their employees and residents. As the long-term care industry continues to face challenges, we are proud that our pharmacy innovation and clinical expertise is positively impacting healthcare workers and seniors."

"Remedi SeniorCare offered what we were looking for in a new pharmacy partner  the ability to improve outcomes without compromising quality delivery of care. Our nurses have already experienced a difference in our medication passes with PAXIT  time savings, medication administration accuracy, and overall efficiency. Remedi's onboarding team did a fantastic job of making the transition seamless and safe for our staff and residents," said Bryan Dunlap, assistant administrator for Gracedale.

Remedi SeniorCare brings cutting-edge technology that has transformed the long-term care pharmacy model. As the exclusive provider of the patented PAXIT medication administration system, Remedi SeniorCare has a long history of providing cost-effective and highly accurate pharmacy med pass services to long-term care facilities, including skilled nursing facilities and assisted living communities. Remedi SeniorCare supports more than 95,000 seniors across 36 states and the District of Columbia, with exceptional customer service, continuous innovation, and clinical and regulatory expertise. Through its technology-enabled pharmacy services, Remedi SeniorCare allows its customers to achieve higher accuracy and quality in medication delivery while reducing unnecessary waste and cost. For more information, visit www.RemediRx.com.

SOURCE Remedi SeniorCare
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Tuesday sued the Biden administration over its new procedures for deporting undocumented immigrants who have been convicted of crimes and asked a federal judge to compel the Department of Homeland Security to take them into custody before they are released by local or state law enforcement.

At issue in the suit filed jointly with the state of Louisiana are detainer requests that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sends to state and local law enforcement agencies. The requests inform the agencies that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement intends to take custody of an undocumented person upon completion of their sentence. The detainer asks local law enforcement personnel to hold the person for up to 48 hours so they can be transferred to ICEs custody and begin the deportation process.

READ ALSO: Abbott rejects aid from Biden administration in dispute over COVID-19 testing for migrants

Law enforcement agencies are not required by the federal government to comply with a detainer, though a 2017 Texas law mandates state and local authorities to honor such requests. Advocates have questioned the constitutionality of detainers, which ask authorities to hold people after theyve completed their sentences. ICE has also erroneously issued detainers for U.S. citizens.

President Joe Bidens acting homeland security secretary in January ordered a review of the agencys immigration enforcement policies and released interim guidance that prioritized the deportation of people who posed a threat to national security, border security and public safety.

A memo released by ICE in February further clarified that guidance. It states that immigration officials should prioritize the deportation of people who have engaged in terrorism, unlawfully entered the U.S. after Nov. 1 or were convicted of an aggravated felony.

The interim guidance does not require or prohibit the arrest, detention or removal of any noncitizen, wrote Acting ICE Director Tae D. Johnson. But detainers for people who fall outside priority areas are subject to advance review.

Thats a shift from the Trump administration, when anyone in the country illegally was a priority target for deportation. ICE officials said the new guidance is necessary to allocate the agencys limited resources to the most important cases.

Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union urged the Biden administration to end the detainer requests altogether, saying they insert local authorities into immigration enforcement processes, eroding trust between the police and immigrant communities.

READ MORE: Why Biden's immigration plan may be risky for Democrats

In the suit, Paxton alleged that the Biden administration is refusing to take custody of immigrants with criminal records and allowing them to roam free. In February, the AP reported that ICE had dropped 26 detainer requests in Texas since the new directive took effect. Most people were convicted of drunk driving or drug charges, though ICE had reportedly misapplied the policy when it prepared to drop three requests for people who committed crimes that shouldve been prioritized. None of the three were ultimately released.

Paxton argues in the lawsuit that ICE has rescinded dozens of detainer requests that had been issued to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and is failing to issue new ones for some people subject to deportation. He contends that the Biden administrations guidance narrowly focuses on people convicted of aggravated felonies, such as murder, while neglecting people with drug offenses and those who committed crimes of moral turpitude. And he alleges that the changes to immigration enforcement would come at an enormous cost to Texas due to the services the state provides to undocumented immigrants. That argument is rebutted by a 2006 study by then-Texas Comptroller Susan Combs found that undocumented immigrants have a net positive financial impact to the state.

Paxton asks the court to declare the federal governments guidance unlawful, prevent ICE from implementing the policy, and award Texas and Louisiana costs of this action and reasonable attorneys fees.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.

The suit is the latest in a series of legal challenges Paxton has brought against the Biden administration since January. Paxton previously sued Biden over a 100-day deportation moratorium, alleging the moratorium is unconstitutional and violates an agreement between DSH and Texas. A federal judge in February effectively blocked the ban on deportations from taking effect.

Paxton has also sued over Bidens decision to cancel permits for the Keystone XL pipeline and over new restrictions placed on drilling on public lands.

The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans  and engages with them  about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
No sooner had the Nairobi County Assembly resumed its sittings on Tuesday after a two-week recess than it adjourned proceedings following a spike in Covid-19 cases.

In a statement on Tuesday, Speaker Benson Mutura said more than 40 members of the Assembly had tested positive for the deadly virus.

While moving the motion to adjourn, Nairobi assembly Majority leader Abdi Guyo said he is one of 35 MCAs who have recovered from the virus.

He said four MCAs are hospitalised, two of whom are fighting for their lives on oxygen support machines.

One of my close friends told me he had contracted the virus, so that is how I ended up going for a test. I contracted Covid-19 about three weeks ago and, unfortunately, some of my family members, including my wife, were infected. However, we were all asymptomatic, Guyo said.

Adding: I dont see why people shy away from revealing their status. If you care about your loved ones and colleagues tell them if you have contracted Covid. That way they can take the necessary measures to deal with it.

Im lucky enough to have a good friend who revealed to me his status and I acted immediately. That is why Im now talking about it after being declared Covid-19 free on Saturday.

The Matopeni/Springvalley MCA said the Assembly will now suspend its plenary sittings indefinitely till the cases subside.

Unlike Guyo who recovered without developing symptoms, Health committee chairman Peter Warutere said he had a brush with death after he tested positive for Covid-19 in India.

We had tested negative for Covid about two weeks ago before leaving for India but when we arrived we started having some symptoms. I suspect we contracted the virus either on air or at the hotel we stayed in, said Warutere.

Contracting Covid-19 in a foreign land can easily kill you because none of your loved ones is around to support you. My body temperature shot to almost 40, he added.

Although I was under medication, I lost 7kg while I was in India within two weeks since I could not eat because the food there is too spicy. Now I am eating a lot to regain my lost weight.

The health chairman said he returned to Kenya on Monday after testing negative.

I almost kissed death and all I can say is Im lucky to be back home alive and Covid -19 free, Warutere said.

While suspending sittings, Speaker Benson Mutura said committees of the House can continue meeting virtually in case there is important business brought before them.
Teacher unions are giving the Government until the summer break to put teachers back on the vaccine priority list.

But if they dont get a clear signal of intent well before that, the possibility of strike action next term will be on the table.

All three teacher union conferences today supported a joint motion demanding a reversal of the Government decision to remove vaccine prioritisation for teachers.

The Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland(ASTI) voted 4:1 In favour of the motion, with 281 in favour, 70 against and 15 abstentions.

The Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO), which debated the motion in private, carried it by an overwhelming majority, a spokesperson said

The Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) also voted in favour.

The motion before all three conferences condemned the recent changes to the vaccination schedule that were announced by Government without consultation with workers representatives.

Previously teachers were in the top 30pc of the population to be vaccinated, but last week the Government accepted advice of the National Immunisation Advisory Committee (NIAC) to change to an age-based roll-out.

The motion demands that the Government re-instates education staff as a priority group within the vaccination programme.

The motion says this is necessary because of the essential nature of their work which requires them to be in daily contact with a large number of persons from a large number of households.

Read More

It also noted that social distancing is problematic and not assured given the crowded nature, structure and layout of their workplaces.

The motion also demands early vaccination within the overall cohort of education staff, for pregnant teachers, those in higher risk categories and those who work in special schools, special classes and home school community liaison teachers.

If the Government does not agree to schedule vaccinations by the end of the current school year, based on their demands, the motion is seeking support for ballot of members for industrial action, up to and including strike action.

While the motion allows until the summer break for a schedule, a union source said if the Government showed no intent to meet their demands the possibility of strike action next term was not off the table.

The immediate focus of the unions will be to seek to engage with the Department of Education about meeting their demands.

At the ASTI conference, general secretary Kieran Christie said the revision of the prioritisation within the roll-out of the vaccine programme came as a hammer blow.

It has been continuously stated that a key objective is to keep schools open. This decision undermines that objective completely. Lets be very clear: Teachers and other school staff are frontline workers. It was reprehensible that this change was made without consultation with us and our fellow trade union colleagues.

Mr Christie said it was bizarre that the Ministers defence in that regard seems to be that she found out about it as she sat down at the cabinet table to make the decision.

He added; A situation whereby a Minister for Education is out of the loop when proposals are being formulated that will have huge implications for the health and welfare of tens of thousands of workers in our schools is unfortunate. Or as one of her ministerial colleagues might put it  beyond unhelpful. 

TUI vice president Liz Farrell said the age-based vaccine rollout isnt about the science, its about whats easiest.

She said; Only after all the vulnerable have been catered for should teachers become part of a parallel process for vaccination.

Education Minister Norma Foley who addressed the TUI conference, again defended the change in the vaccination schedule to one based on age because older people are more at risk of serious disease and death.

She said when NIAC made its initial recommendations in December, it was considered that a persons occupation was a significant factor in determining their risk level in terms of Covid-19.

New national and international evidence, however, now confirms that age is the single strongest predictor of whether a person who contracts Covid-19 will be admitted to hospital or ICU or die as a result of their infection.

Earlier, on RTEs Morning Ireland, Ms Foley said work was underway on setting out a schedule for vaccination based on age and it should be available in coming days.

An SNA and someone working from home who are the same age will receive the Covid-19 vaccine at the same time because age is what makes them vulnerable, she said

It is NIACs view that the risk of catching the virus is equal to anyone of a particular cohort of age.

The virus can be picked up at any place. And in fact we actually see that the virus is most likely picked out from the outside community in everyday activity of individuals.

When asked again whether she accepted that SNAs working in close contact with students were at greater risk of the virus, the minister said: I accept that the greatest risk is age.
[April 07, 2021] VMware Delivers Advanced Cloud Workload Protection with Container and Kubernetes Security

VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW) today unveiled expanded cloud workload protection capabilities to deliver security for containers and Kubernetes. The new solution will help increase visibility, enable compliance and enhance security for containerized applications from build to production in public cloud and on-premises environments. "Containers and Kubernetes are enabling organizations to develop and modernize applications faster than ever, but the innovation is also expanding the attack surface," said Patrick Morley, senior vice president and general manager, Security Business Unit, VMware. "Our solution extends security to containers and Kubernetes to deliver one of the industry's most comprehensive cloud workload protection platforms. With security built into the development and deployment of applications, we are bridging the gap between the SOC and DevOps teams to help our customers reduce the risks that come with running containers across clouds." For many organizations, migrating to the cloud has had to happen quickly and at a large scale to ensure business continuity amid the global pandemic. Development teams are looking to containers and Kubernetes for speed and the ability to scale application delivery. According to Gartner (News - Alert) , "by 2025 more than 85 percent of global organizations will be running containerized applications in production, which is a significant increase from fewer than 35 percent in 2019."1 Organizations now need security for modern workloads to address a new set of threats and build resilient digital infrastructure. Better Secure the Complete Lifecycle of Kubernetes Applications Security is especially complex in multi-cloud infrastructures. VMware Carbon Black Cloud Container builds security into the continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipeline to analyze and control application risks before they are deployed into production. Expanding the VMware Carbon Black Cloud Workload offering, the new capabilities will enable organizations to better secure containerized applications in Kubernetes environments. The solution shifts security left to protect the entire lifecycle of Kubernetes applications. InfoSec teams can now scan containers and Kubernetes configuration files early in the development cycle to address vulnerabilities with unparalleled visibility. The solution provides continuous cloud-native security and compliance to better secure applications and data wherever they live. Enable Collaboration for InfoSec and DevOps Teams Containers and Kubernetes offer development teams flexibility with an infrastructure-as-code approach. However, security is often a roadblock to faster production deployments and later bolted-on as an afterthought. The VMware container security module will empower InfoSec and DevOps teams to better collaborate and identify risks earlier in the development cycle with built-in security. The expanded offering will provide a new vantage point to allow cross-functional teams to detect and fix vulnerabilities to achiev simple, more secure multi-cloud Kubernetes environments.



VMware's expanded cloud workload protection capabilities will deliver a comprehensive solution for InfoSec teams including: Security Posture Dashboard : Provides a combined view of vulnerabilities and misconfigurations to enable complete visibility into security posture across Kubernetes workload inventory. InfoSec and DevOps teams can gain deep visibility into workload security posture and governance to enable compliance, with the ability to freely explore Kubernetes workload configuration via customized queries.

: Provides a combined view of vulnerabilities and misconfigurations to enable complete visibility into security posture across Kubernetes workload inventory. InfoSec and DevOps teams can gain deep visibility into workload security posture and governance to enable compliance, with the ability to freely explore Kubernetes workload configuration via customized queries. Container Image Scanning and Hardening : InfoSec and DevOps teams can scan all container images to identify vulnerabilities and restrict the registries and repositories that are allowed in production. Teams can set minimum standards for security and compliance, generate compliance reports and follow CIS benchmarks and Kubernetes best practices.

: InfoSec and DevOps teams can scan all container images to identify vulnerabilities and restrict the registries and repositories that are allowed in production. Teams can set minimum standards for security and compliance, generate compliance reports and follow CIS benchmarks and Kubernetes best practices. Prioritized Risk Assessment : Vulnerability assessments allow InfoSec and DevOps teams to review images running in production and only approved images are deployed. Security teams can use the prioritized risk assessment to detect and prevent vulnerabilities by scanning Kubernetes manifests and clusters.

: Vulnerability assessments allow InfoSec and DevOps teams to review images running in production and only approved images are deployed. Security teams can use the prioritized risk assessment to detect and prevent vulnerabilities by scanning Kubernetes manifests and clusters. Compliance Policy Automation: Infosec teams can shift-left into the development cycle, streamline compliance reporting, and automate policy creation against industry standards such as NIST, as well as the customer's organizational requirements. This enables the integrity of Kubernetes configurations through control and visibility of workloads that are deployed to an organization's clusters. Customizable policies help enforce configuration by blocking or alerting on exceptions. The Future of Intrinsic Security with VMware Carbon Black and Tanzu

The container security module compliments the VMware Tanzu portfolio. Select Tanzu editions include a global control plane for centralized management of all aspects of cluster lifecycle, including policies for access, data protection, and more. Customers can now add powerful security for containers and Kubernetes applications while simplifying operations for InfoSec and DevOps teams. Customer Quote DoubleVerify powers the new standard of digital marketing performance, ensuring viewable, fraud-free, brand-safe ads. "It's important that we have full visibility into the risk of our entire Kubernetes workload environment, as well as the ability to detect and prevent vulnerabilities before containers are deployed," said Roy Berko, Senior Director of DevOps, DoubleVerify. "With VMware's container security offering, we now have instant visibility to help reduce risk of our containerized applications all from a single dashboard." Analyst Quote IDC (News - Alert) is the premier global market intelligence firm, examining consumer markets by devices, applications, networks, and services "Kubernetes has become the de-facto best practice standard for developing cloud-native applications, yet developers are still leveraging siloed and inefficient tools with limited cross organization visibility," said Frank Dickson, Program Vice President, Security & Trust at IDC. "VMware's container security offering provides an opportunity for security and DevOps teams to work more closely together to leverage the power of Kubernetes and better secure the unique lifecycle development processes of container-based applications." Product Availability VMware container image scanning and CI/CD integration capabilities are expected to be available in April 2021. Runtime security for detection and response will be available later this year. For more information, please visit our website. Additional Resources Blog: Automate DevSecOps for Full Lifecycle Container Security

Blog: Securing Containers and Kubernetes-Orchestrated Environments Sources: Gartner, Best Practices for Running Containers and Kubernetes in Production, Arun Chandrasekaran, August 2020. About VMware VMware software powers the world's complex digital infrastructure. The company's cloud, app modernization, networking, security, and digital workspace offerings help customers deliver any application on any cloud across any device. Headquartered in Palo Alto (News - Alert) , California, VMware is committed to being a force for good, from its breakthrough technology innovations to its global impact. For more information, please visit https://www.vmware.com/company.html. VMware Carbon Black, and Tanzu are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other jurisdictions. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005397/en/

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Former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister and senior leader Digvijaya Singh, on Wednesday, accused the and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) of spreading hatred among different religious communities. He said India can become a 'vishwa guru' (world leader) only with love and harmony and not hatred.

The senior leader in a series of tweets on Wednesday said, "Why is the and Sangh Parivar miffed with me because I follow true Sanatani Hindu traditions. Stop selling religion, stop spreading hatred through religion and creating discord among people of different religions. Stop asking for votes on the basis of religion. Spread unity instead of creating rift."

He also said that Sanatan Dharma is so inclusive that it considers the whole world as its family.

Referring to Mahatma Gandhi, the former MP Chief Minister said, "Why did Nathuram Godse shoot Gandhi? Because Gandhi was a true devout Hindu and respected all religions. Following the principles of truth, love, harmony and non-violence, he launched several satyagraha movements against hatred and violence. The last words he said after he was shot at were 'Hey Ram'.

"Gandhiji never held any meeting without a prayer. His chanting of Ram's name had elements of both God and Allah. The basic premise of Sanatan Dharma is 'Sarva Dharma Samabhava' which unites people instead of creating disharmony," said.

He also said: "Swami Vivekananda ji has spoken about the same thing. The paths religions follow may be different but all lead to the same destination, just like all the rivers originate from different places but eventually merge into the sea. This is the basic ethics of all religions. All religions teach us love, harmony, truth, non-violence and brotherhood. Humanity is the only religion. After doing any religious act in Hindu religion, we say 'Om Shanti'. No family, society and nation can progress without peace."

--IANS

snp-rjs/khz/skp/

(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.)
Chesa Boudin drew widespread attention in late 2019 when he ran for San Francisco district attorney as a reformer part of a burgeoning progressive prosecutor movement that aims to shift local prosecution efforts to white collar crime and law enforcement misconduct, while de-emphasizing lower-level property and drug offenses.

Now, a little more than a year into his tenure, Boudin is fighting a recall campaign, and its clear he remains a polarizing figure at the national level. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have poured in to support both Boudin and the recall effort, much of which came from donors outside of San Francisco. The pro-recall campaign must collect 51,325 signatures by August 11 to qualify for a special election.

The Chronicle analyzed contributions made to pro- and anti-recall committees from early February, when the pro-recall committee formed, through the end of March. The pro-recall group, the Committee Supporting the Recall of District Attorney Chesa Boudin, has raised nearly $140,000 from 122 individuals and eight organizations, according to the data, while the anti-recall committees have raised more than $200,000 from 116 individuals and two organizations. These totals also include unitemized donations of less than $100.

The pro-recall committees biggest donors include Daniel OKeefe, a Chicago-based investor and former San Francisco resident who contributed $50,000, and David Sacks, an entrepreneur and tech mogul who sold his company, Yammer, to Microsoft for $1.2 billion in 2012. Sacks contributed $25,000.

The anti-recall effort includes two local committees. The first, Friends of Chesa Boudin Opposing the Recall, is sponsored by Boudin himself. The second is San Franciscans Against the Recall of Chesa Boudin, a local offshoot of the Real Justice PAC, a political action committee that works to elect reform-minded prosecutors at the county and municipal level, according to the organizations website. The PACs highest-profile co-founder, Shaun King, is an activist who has received attention for his work exposing police brutality. He has also garnered controversy over claims he has mismanaged funds and donations related to other projects.

The Real Justice PAC has contributed $100,000 to its local, anti-recall committee. A spokesperson for Real Justice PAC said this contribution is aggregated from over 2,600 unique individual donors who gave to the PACs general fund.

Individuals who gave the most to the anti-recall campaign include Anne Irwin, who contributed $11,000. Irwin, who lives in San Francisco, is the founder of Smart Justice California, a local political committee that contributed $15,000 to the anti-recall effort. Albert Al Sweigart, a software developer and author who also lives in San Francisco, also contributed $10,000.

While the majority of each committees individual contributions came from San Franciscans, both committees had sizable inflows of cash from people living elsewhere. Of the donations from individuals, nearly 50% of the money given to the pro-recall movement came from people living outside of San Francisco, with the majority of that amount coming from OKeefe. Out-of-city donors made up 11% of all individual donors.

The anti-recall campaigns, on the other hand, saw more individual donors from outside the city  46% of their donations came from people not living in San Francisco  but those contributions amounted to only 25% of the committees individual contributions overall.

However, its likely that out-of-city donors made up a sizable percentage of the $100,000 contribution by Real Justice PAC, which represents 50% of the anti-recall committees total funds.

Within San Francisco, the most popular ZIP codes of residence for pro-recall individual donors  together representing over 20% of individual contributors  were 94123, in Cow Hollow, and 94118, in the Inner Richmond. For anti-recall donors, the top two ZIP codes, representing about 14% of individual donors outside of PACs, were 94110 in the Mission District and 94103 in SoMa.

While the anti-recall effort has already outraised the recall supporters, the gap may widen further if current trends continue. According to the data, the pro-recall campaign has attracted donors more or less steadily since February 11, the date of its first contributions.

The anti-recall effort, meanwhile, received its first donations on March 22  meaning it raised nearly $200,000 in just 10 days, not counting unitemized donations. In contrast, it has taken the pro-recall movement 48 days to reach about $123,000.

Search the table below to explore individual donations to the campaigns of $100 or more.

Susie Neilson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: susan.neilson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @susieneilson Nami Sumida is a San Francisco Chronicle data visualization developer. Email: nami.sumida@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @namisumida
With a lethal, airborne virus spreading fast, hospitals had to change how they treated patients and policies for how caregivers provided that treatment. But for maternity patients and nurses some of those changes had negative outcomes, according to a new University of Washington study.

"We found that visitor restrictions and separation policies were harming families and nurses. The effects for patients included loneliness, isolation and mistrust, while nurses described mistrust and low morale," said Molly Altman, lead author of the study and assistant professor in the UW School of Nursing.

Importantly, Altman added, both nurses and patients described how COVID "amplified existing racially biased and disrespectful care experiences for Black women and birthing people, in part due to loss of protection and advocacy that support people provide."

The study, published March 31 in Global Qualitative Nursing Research, involved in-depth interviews with 15 patients from Washington state and 14 nurses from Washington, New York, Georgia and Michigan. Nearly half of participants in both groups self-identified as BIPOC and for slightly more than half this was their first birth.

Under COVID-19 restrictions, patients experienced a shift from in-person visits, a source of social and emotional support, to virtual conversations or telehealth and more perfunctory exchanges in offices with physical distancing. Pregnancy education and group classes all moved online, while family and friends were excluded from patient care when in the hospital or clinic. Meanwhile, nurses experienced shifting policies and procedures that led to a collective mistrust of management and administration.

In the interviews, researchers wrote, patient responses focused on how hospital adaptations "were inadequate to meet their needs" and, in addition to mistrust, nurse responses focused on how inconsistencies in policies and policy implementation affected their ability to "safely care for patients."

Here are a few verbatim transcriptions of statements patients gave researchers (with minor edits):

About telehealth ...

I want to be able to actually have a check-in and actually have a doctor be able to check everything's fine and make sure the baby's heartbeat is still okay or see how my uterus is measuring and things like that that are more concrete. ... I see the phone conversation just more being like, "Is everything okay," and me saying "Yes" and then that kind of being it.

Communication with providers ...

We don't talk about how this is affecting us or what it means for the future. It's just they leave you hanging like, "Okay, well I'm guessing everything's okay so I'm just going to walk on out of here." But if you could just say something nice, concise and brief but meaty it would be perfect.

Education and nursing support ...

I lost ... the classes that we were supposed to need. I was so excited to join those classes because I could get a chance to meet with other mothers that we may build connections, right? But because of COVID we just don't have the chance of doing that.

People were there [in labor] to support me and to make sure I was okay and then I felt like postpartum everyone disappeared.

Racial bias ...

Being [a person] of color, you already kind of deal with the standoffish approach from certain people and so like ... the virus kind of gives [them] that reason to, it's just like that. It's like even though I already feel this way, now I have a reason to act this way.

I'm an educated Black woman. I'm a nurse. I know what's going on with my body and I know how this stuff works and I still feel like so inferior, like to my [birth] team. That's crazy to me.

Following are a few verbatim transcriptions of statements nurses gave researchers (with minor edits):

Lack of planning ...

I was disappointed to see that in the, at least a month, more like six weeks since we'd had just the one COVID patient, that not a lot had been done to prepare in the meantime, both on a national scale and just at our hospital.

Policy changes ...

I felt like at times on my shift, policies would change literally every 15 to 30 minutes. You do something one way and you get an email within the hour that this now has changed and we're doing this procedure this way and it was just constant like nobody knows what they're doing so it was very stressful.

Morale problems ...

I'm just doing everything for this patient and then I'm not thinking about my own family. Even if I [say] let whatever happen to me ... I have responsibilities for my family too. I'm not just a nurse, right? I'm a mother. When I took the oath to be a nurse, before that maybe I took an oath to be a good mother.

[a patient complained and] that stung because I remember going to my manager's room that day and asking for more supplies so that I could go into the room more frequently without having to break the gowns and reuse the gowns and she said, "You use what you have and I'm not giving you anything else."

Racial bias ...

[obstetrical resident physician] went in to go talk to [a patient] about the need for induction and instead of including the father in the conversation or even introducing herself, she went in, completely turned her back on the dad ... I've been there 10 years and I have never seen that with any Caucasian couple.

"We need to really center the voices and experiences of marginalized people, especially BIPOC, in policy. We need to ensure that communication is transparent and that we are trustworthy to the groups we develop policies for -- patients, nurses, the public, everyone," said Meghan Eagen-Torkko, study co-author and assistant professor in UW Bothell School of Nursing and Health Studies. "We have to stop thinking of policy as a top-down process, because Covid has shown us quite clearly that this doesn't work."

###

Co-authors include Amelia Gavin, UW School of Social Work; Selina Mohammed, UW Bothell School of Nursing and Health Studies; Ira Kantrowitz-Gordon, UW School of Nursing, Seattle; and Rue Khosa, The Perfect Push, LLC in Redmond. This research was funded by UW School of Nursing, Seattle.

For more information, contact Altman at mraltman@uw.edu.

[Inset BOX]

Altman, who spoke to UW News in December about this issue, suggests health care administrators take the following actions to counter the failures of current policies:
BUDAPEST -- Hungary has begun reopening shops and services on after more than one quarter of its population was inoculated with at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine.



However, some medical experts and medical experts urged caution after the country recorded its highest daily death toll yet from COVID-19.



The authorities reported 311 new coronavirus-related deaths on April 7, bringing the total to more than 22,400.



The country has recorded nearly 700,000 infections since the start of the pandemic, with more than 12,000 patients still in hospital and over 1,400 of them on ventilators.



"I hope we will see a plateau in the near future, the data gives us hope...but the numbers are still very high," said Cecilia Muller, Hungary's chief medical officer.



Muller told reporters that the April 7 record daily death tally was partly due to a lag in data reported from hospitals over the Easter holidays.



Under the partial reopening on April 7, shops that had been closed since early March were allowed to open again but with limited numbers of customers. Restaurants are open for takeaway or delivery services only.



The overnight curfew in place since November now starts two hours later.



Prime Minister Viktor Orban announced the easing of the lockdown measures on April 6, after Hungary reached 2.5 million first-dose vaccinations -- a benchmark that the government had set for when a gradual reopening could move forward.

With reporting by Reuters and AP
Party's Rajya Sabha member Anil Jain has set up a team to make the campaign a grand success. Jain, a doctor himself, is currently overseeing the vaccination drive in 31 states and Union Territories including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan. This mass vaccination campaign will be launched after the present election process in five states gets over.

Jain told IANS that the party is helping general public get the vaccine by setting up help desks at 57,000 locations including 20,000 government vaccine centres.

"People are being informed about the Covid-19 vaccines at help desks set up at five to six places in each division. In each state, several teams of conveners, co-conveners have been constituted from district and block level to the state level to oversee the drive."

Jain hopes that everyone will get the first dose of the vaccine at least by the next three months i.e. July. He said currently people above 45 years of age are getting inoculated. Later, all above 18 years of age with comorbidities will get the vaccine. Then, people above the age of 35 are likely to be vaccinated. In the next phase, all types of people over the age of 18 will be given a chance to get vaccinated. Thus, by July, everyone over the age of 18 is expected to get a jab.

Jain gets the daily report on the progress of vaccination in all states -- from state conveners, MPs, MLAs, and volunteers. He holds meetings at regular intervals via video conferencing. So far he has held video meets with teams from 22 states.

The BJP will also carry out vaccination campaigns in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and Puducherry when the election process is over. The BJP has directed all its MPs and MLAs to urge and motivate the public to come to the vaccination centres. He has also asked the cadres to help remove the fear about the vaccines from the minds of the people.

--IANS

nnm/skp/
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China's Ministry of Education on Tuesday started to solicit public opinion on a draft regulation for improving the protection of minors in schools.

Schools should adopt a zero-tolerance attitude toward bullying, sexual assault, and sexual harassment of students, according to the draft.

The document also requires schools to check the criminal records of candidates before hiring teachers or introducing volunteers and social workers into their campuses.

Noting that schools are also obliged to protect the safety of students on campus, the draft emphasizes that schools are prohibited from organizing students to participate in emergency rescue, disaster relief, or commercial activities.
Main opposition People Power Party's Seoul mayoral candidate Oh Se-hoon celebrates after exit polls suggested his victory at the party headquarters on Yeouido, Seoul, Wednesday. Yonhap



It wouldn't be a stretch to describe Oh Se-hoon, the former Seoul mayor who was elected again to the post Wednesday, as a political gambler at heart.



Nearly a decade ago in August 2011, Oh, then a two-term Seoul mayor, threw his job on the line in a high-stakes city referendum he called in opposition to a universal free school lunch program supported by the opposition-led city council.



As the referendum ended up being rejected due to weak voter turnout, the mayor affiliated with the Grand National Party (GNP), the predecessor of the conservative main opposition People Power Party (PPP), resigned as promised. His resignation led to the advent of the three-term mayoralty of Park Won-soon, a liberal human rights lawyer-turned-politician.



Coming from a family of relatively poor means, Oh, who turned 60 this year, passed the national bar exam in 1984. He first made national headlines in 1993 by successfully handling group litigation around a housing developer's obstruction of the right to sunlight of residents at an apartment in Incheon.



He later entered politics after being scouted by Lee Hoi-chang, former GNP chairman, in 2000, receiving a parliamentary candidacy nomination to run in Seoul's ultra-conservative Gangnam district and winning the race.



Following his abrupt 2011 resignation as Seoul mayor, two years earlier than when his second term was supposed to expire, Oh studied in London and Shanghai and participated in an advisory group for the state-run Korea International Cooperation Agency for the agency's projects in Peru and Rwanda.



Since then and up until the recent by-elections, Oh remained mostly out of the political spotlight for nearly a decade. But it wasn't as if Oh gave up on his ambitions in mainstream national politics.



He ran for a parliamentary seat in Seoul's central Jongno district against Chung Sye-kyun, the current prime minister, in the 2016 general elections but lost. He also competed against and was defeated by Ko Min-jung, a former Cheong Wa Dae spokesperson, in the eastern Seoul constituency of Gwangjin in last year's parliamentary elections.



But as Oh's abrupt mayoral exit opened up the conditions for Park Won-soon's political rise, Park's shocking suicide in July 2020 following allegations of years of sexual harassment against his former secretary ironically ended up providing an opening for Oh to get back into mainstream politics.



In early March, Oh succeeded in securing the PPP's ticket in a surprise victory over Na Kyung-won, the party's former floor leader. He ultimately ended up becoming the unified opposition candidate in an exhausting two-way primary with Ahn Cheol-soo of the minor opposition People's Party on March 23.



Oh's campaign message has largely tapped into the high-level of public mistrust and disappointment toward what's largely considered the failed housing policy of President Moon Jae-in and the explosive land speculation scandal involving employees of the state housing developer Korea Land and Housing Corp.



He also appealed to voters for having nearly two terms of experience under his belt, underscoring his competency to serve as the capital's chief executive on day one with minimal transition. (Yonhap)


EL SEGUNDO, Calif., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Epic Staffing Group (Epic) announced recently that three of its business units have been named as a Best Staffing Firm to Work For winner for 2021: Emerald Health Services, Federal Staffing Resources, and Orbis Clinical. The Best Staffing Firm to Work For awards are given annually by Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA), and recognize employers for their top performance in employee engagement and creating a workplace conducive to talent development, enjoyment, collaboration and productivity.

The winners, announced last month during the annual Executive Forum North America, represent companies who scored in the top quartile of each award category. Internal employees at each firm were asked to complete an online survey that measured key engagement categories, focusing on items including teamwork, trust in senior leaders, feeling valued, manager effectiveness, compensation and benefits.

"We are thrilled that three Epic Staffing Group companies have been recognized by SIA as best places to work," said Mark Siegel, Epic CEO. "At Epic, we have an unwavering commitment to our employees to create a unique, engaging and supportive environment for them to thrive within. We are honored to have the results of this commitment recognized, especially during the challenges our teams faced over the past year in the wake of the many adversities we all encountered amid the COVID-19 crisis."

While Emerald Health Services, Federal Staffing Resources, and Orbis Clinical achieved this recognition on their own merit as individual companies from their respective employees, it reflects the ethos of Epic Staffing Group as a whole.

"Receiving recognition for the work we believe inensuring our employees' happinessis a huge honor," said Beverly Scott, Epic VP of Human Resources & Organizational Development. "Our continued success is attributed to the people we have on our teams."

About Epic Staffing Group:

Epic Staffing Group ("Epic") is a diversified national provider of staffing services to the bio-pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. Our staffing verticals include life science recruitment for permanent placement and life sciences consulting, travel nurse jobs, Interim executive placement, travel allied, school nurse jobs and therapy, government healthcare staffing, and international clinician placement. Focus is placed on areas where there is significant imbalance of supply and demand, where the Epic business model can add significant value.

For more information, please visit www.EpicStaffingGroup.com

SOURCE Epic Staffing Group

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The historic 1878 State Capitol building, with its dozens of statues and displays of historic artifacts, will soon become more-inclusive, when a plaque honoring 29 Black women suffragists of the early 20th century is cast and installed in what advocates hope to be a public celebration.

Its also a invitation to help solve mysteries, with many details on the womens lives seemingly lost in the mists of the decades and generations. There are no available photos for a dozen of the women, all of whom were born in the 1800s.

The two-by-three-foot bronze plaque is being made for the Connecticut League of Women Voters, who got the go-ahead from the little-known Capitol Preservation and Restoration Commission to provide some equity and expand on an honor roll of white suffragettes, including the mother of actor Katharine Hepburn that was installed on a wall inside the Capitols south entrance in 1934.

I think it will blend in very nicely with whats there now, said Buddy Altobello of Meriden, a former longtime member of the state House of Representatives who now heads the commission. The plaque will go on the wall directly below the other.

We feel that this is adding to the story of women seeking the right to vote in Connecticut, said Carol Reimers, president of the league. Were pleased to have the opportunity. We still recognize that the women on the first plaque were important contributors, but this remedies the need to highlight the role of women of color.

The plaque will be supplemented with a guidebook containing biographies of the women. Some of the Black women are better known to historians, including Mary Townsend Seymour of West Hartford, an activist who ran for the state House of Representatives after women were finally given the right to vote in 1920. But even for Seymour, the only photograph that researchers found was a grainy image from The Hartford Courant.

/ contributed photo

For Brittney Yancy, an associate professor of the humanities at Goodwin College in East Hartford who did much of the research, the plaque represents living history and a challenge to find out more about these women of color, who were generally kept out of white suffrage organizations.

A Ph.D. candidate at UConn, Yancy said in a recent interview that the idea for the plaque emerged in 2020, when she addressed the League of Women Voters state convention at the University of St. Joseph in West Hartford. She said that unlike most white-dominated advocacy organizations, Black women were accepted by the League of Women Voters New Haven chapter.

I found that astounding, actually that there were examples of that in the mainstream suffragist movement, Yancy said. There were clearly of women of color on the ground, even in the face of racial discrimination.

Yancy worked with Ilene Frank, chief curator and Karen Li Miller, research historian, at the Connecticut Historical Society to create an exhibit last year, based on a quote from Seymour, called The Work Must be Done, honoring the women. It even includes tips for amateur historical sleuths to seek out more information about the women and contribute to the research.

Yancy said the team searched newspaper databases, as well as church and community center records to track down whatever details they could on the women, who primarily lived in Hartford and New Haven There wasnt an exhaustive list, but thats the beauty of research, she said. There are women of color from all over the state here. To me it is just a huge achievement and milestone and allows people to narrate their own story.

The women for whom the historians do not have photos include Callie Mathes Coleman, Rosa J. Fisher, Lula M. Graham, Minnie Glover, Margaret Moore Green, Josephine Leverett Haywood, Lena E. Knighton, Pearl Woods Lee, Anna B. Reese, Rose Payton, Ida Sully Troy and Pearl Reese Shaw.

These individuals have names, stories and lives like everyone else, Yancy said, describing the project as a continuous work-in-progress. It really speaks to the fact that so much more research needs to be done. Women led and organized, using the church for both praise and politics. One trove of detail emerged from records of the Nutmeg State Federation of Colored Women Clubs, Yancy said.

Tracey Wilson, the town historian for West Hartford, said Friday that Seymour, had a major role in forming the NAACP chapter in Hartford, after inviting one of the famous founders, W.E.B. Du Bois, to her Hartford home in the years toward the end of World War I. Active in unionizing tobacco workers, Seymour ran for the General Assembly on the populist Farmer-Labor Party ticket in 1920. She continued as a union activist into the 1930s and died in her mid-80s, in 1957.

She really has quite a story, said Wilson, a Ph.D., adding that later, when Seymour moved to West Hartford, cross-race alliances were formed. Suffrage was just one strategy. They really knew how to lobby and go to the legislature.

kdixon@ctpost.com Twitter: @KenDixonCT
Well, it is looking more and more like old times. Blues shows are appearing more frequently, including last weeks very successful inaugural edition of the CTBS Blues Jam at The Chicken Shack in Marlborough.

The CTBS All Stars  River City Slim, Joey Primo, Phil Caron) joined by featured artist Mike Bloomer and talented jammers  are playing at a great venue, which will only get better as the warm weather comes along. There will be more outdoor seating. See you on the first Thursday in May, when the featured guest will be the incomparable Tas Cru.

Liviu Pop and friends, this time including Grayson Hugh, Polly Messer, and Tim McDonald, returned to the Simsbury Grange last Saturday for an outdoor concert.

Blues musician are beginning to send out their gig schedules. Mark Zaretsky tells us The Chicago Dawgs have an actual live gig on Sunday, as a duo, at Cafe Nine, for The Sunday Buzz by Cygnus Radio. Get there early, since space is limited to just over 30 people and another dozen or so outside. Please wear a mask when youre not eating or sipping. The fully-vaccinated Tom Crivellone and Mark Zaretsky will be playin the blues for you.

Chris Stovall Brown plays The Stomping Ground on Saturday. Brown, a guitarist/vocalist/harp-player, has spent the better part of his life on stages around the world in more than 25 countries and three continents. He has performed with many blues and soul greats, including opening the original House Of Blues with James Cotton and headlining the King Biscuit Festival in Arkansas with soul great Howard Tate, as well as leading his own Stovall Brown Band.

When you attend the show, expect to hear great high-energy blues & soul performed by consummate professionals who have performed this music for a long time. Copies of their CDs will be available for purchase at the venue so you can take a little memory of this show home with you.

Tower of Power is coming to town. Both the Ridgefield Playhouse April 12, and the Warehouse on April 13.

Stone Flowers Santana Tribute with special guests New Rising Sun plays Friday at the Milford Mall Drive-In Sound Stage/Outdoors. The Drive-In outdoor concert series opens at 7 p.m. Chairs, coolers and tailgating welcome..

Saturday, at 11 a.m., Hartford Harley Davidson presents Screamin Eagle Band live at their open house.

Sunday, at 2 p.m., hear Erin & Jims April Livestream on Facebook Live, for the next installment their monthly concert featuring the Country Blues Duo. Join them from 2-3:30 p.m. It streams four times a week as a free online concert series, Wi-Five Live. The schedule is Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday evenings at 7 p.m. and Sunday afternoons at 2 p.m., Boston time.

A livestream music series honoring Piedmont blueswoman Elizabeth Libba Cotton is on Facebook Live, at the following links: .www.facebook.com/MusicMakerReliefFoundation/live, and YouTube Live: bit.ly/2Z1lSRE . The series will also be streamed on Soul Bag and Artarie.

Each installment opens with a rare archival performance from one of North Carolinas Piedmont blues masters. These legends have either been showcased at previous Freight Train Blues performances or performed in Carrboro over the years.

Freight Train Blues celebrates the life and legacy of Piedmont blues legend Elizabeth Libba Cotten, born in 1893 in Carrboro, N.C. Some of her best known compositions, like the now-standard Freight Train and Shake Sugaree, have been canonized into the repertoires of American popular culture, with the latter interpreted by the Grateful Dead. Her enduring legacy was featured earlier this year in a piece from Good Morning America, which called her a master storyteller.

Due to the ban on singing indoors, all spring shows at GIMMELIVE are rescheduled to for the fall. Massachusetts has banned singing indoors, and officials have given no indication when that ban might be rescinded. They dont like rescheduling any more than you do. Thats why spring shows are going to the fall.

Maybe Victor Wainwright said it best, Weve been confined to our studios and offices way too long and wish we could have busted out in April to relieve some of this cabin fever, but we all just need to be patient a little longer.

Springing the Blues Festival, scheduled for April 9, 10, 11 2021 has been postponed to next year, April 1, 2, 3, 2022. The decision to postpone is out of an abundance of caution and concern for the safety and well-being of attendees, volunteers, staff, sponsors, performers, and vendors due to the risks and uncertainties surrounding Covid-19 and its variants as well as Governmental Restrictions placed on large crowd gatherings in order to lessen potential exposure and slow the spread of this deadly disease.

Any questions or comments should be sent to Domenic Forcella at TWBlus@aol.com.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - April 7, 2021) - CopAur Minerals Inc. (TSXV: CPAU) (the "Company") is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Jeremy Yaseniuk as Chief Executive Officer and Director of the Company.

Mr. Yaseniuk is one of the founding members of the Metals Group Inc. and brings his team of experienced advisors to complement CopAur Minerals Inc. through this exciting next stage of development on the historic Williams property, Toodoggone Trench in British Columbia.

Mr. Yaseniuk is a highly motivated, team orientated management professional with over 25 years experience in business financing, restructuring, recapitalizing and assisting public companies in corporate strategy. He played pivotal roles in sales, marketing and fundraising and has raised over $400 million for companies in the resource and mining sector. His previous experience as a Broker, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Compliance Officer, Director and Manager of Growth and Development have provided him a significant understanding of the capital markets. Jeremy is one of the founders and on the board of advisors of Benchmark Metals Inc, Altiplano Metals Inc. and Cortus Metals Inc.

Conrad Swanson commented, "We are pleased to be working with Jeremy and his team as they have a distinctive perspective on the Toodoggone region of British Columbia and firsthand knowledge and unique experience with their Benchmark Metals project south-east of Copaur's Williams project. This collaboration will provide an opportunity to share knowledge and resources."

On Behalf Of The Board,

Conrad Swanson, Chairman

CopAur Minerals

For further information, please contact:

CopAur Minerals Inc.

Telephone: 604-317-3090

Email: IR@copaurminerals.com

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially and there are no assurances that the transaction described in this news release will close on the terms described or at all. Except as required pursuant to applicable securities laws, the Company will not update these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof. More detailed information about potential factors that could affect financial results is included in the documents filed from time to time with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities by the Company. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward looking statements.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/79621
Last week, India witnessed a brutal Maoist attack in Chhattisgarh's Bijapur, in which at least 22 jawans were martyred. The gruesome incident once again brought forth Chhattisgarh's long and violent struggle with the Maoists and the plight that the common people have to face because of the attacks.

On Saturday, the Teklagudam village found itself at the centre of the raging battle between Maoists and the security forces as some of the villagers were allegedly beaten up by the cops, according to a report by Indian Express.

"When we saw the police personnel approach, we locked ourselves in our houses. Those who didnt, they got beaten up. After a few hours, we heard the noise of heavy firing and we fled," said Bhima Korsa, a resident of the village.

Read: PM Modi must order airstrikes to rid country of Naxals: Martyred CRPF jawans son

According to PTI, a senior police official said that the Naxals were strategically positioned on a hillock in front of Tekalguda village and around it.

When the battle ensued, its residents took shelter in the forest, and then to Poovarti, around 30 minutes from the village on the other side of the hills.

Villagers started to trickle back to Teklagudam on Tuesday, two days after the incident, as some of them feared police retaliation, as per the IE report.

Bastar I-G P Sundarraj took note of the accusations and said, "We have no information of villagers being targeted, our forces were engaged in combat with Maoists. I will look into the allegations."

Also read: Chhattisgarh Naxal encounter: Who is Maoist Madvi Hidma?

According to police officials, joint teams of security forces, comprising over 2,000 personnel, launched an anti-Maoist operation in Bijapur and Sukma districts in the South Bastar forests, considered as a Maoist stronghold, on the night of April 2. And it was during the operation, that the teams were ambushed.

The ambush was led by some 400 Maoists who surrounded the jawans from three sides in an area devoid of vegetation and rained on them machine gunfire as well as IEDs for several hours. Some 10-12 Maoists are also believed to have died in the fierce gunbattle that ensued.

Meanwhile, the outlawed CPI (Maoist) has claimed that CoBRA commando Rakeshwar Singh Manhas, who went missing after the ambush in Chhattisgarh's Bastar region, is in captivity of ultras, and asked the state government to appoint interlocutors for his release.

A long-drawn war

The April 2 attack comes after the March 23 incident when five DRG personnel were killed as the Maoists blew up a bus carrying the security personnel with an IED in the Narayanpur district of the state.

Read more: Chhattisgarh: A jawan who longed to visit his dream house

On March 21 last year, 17 security personnel were killed in a Naxal ambush in the Minpa area of Sukma district. On April 9, 2019, BJP MLA Bhima Mandavi and four security personnel were killed after Naxals blew up their vehicle with an IED in Dantewada district.

On April 24, 2017, 25 CRPF personnel died in a Naxal ambush in Burkapal area of Sukma district.

In March 2017, 12 CRPF jawans were martyred in a Maoist attack in Sukma district.

In November 2016, two CRPF jawans were injured in a bomb blast triggered by Naxals in the dense forest of Sukma district.

(With PTI inputs)
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New Delhi, April 7: Two incidents reported recently have brought into sharp focus the trail of death and sorrow that mindless terrorism leaves in its wake. One is about a Kashmiri father pleading that his son, a soldier in the Territorial Army, be declared a martyr while the other is of a helpless wife appealing for the release of her husband being held captive by Naxal extremists.

The second incident pertains to the Central Reserve Police Force jawan, Rakeshwar Singh Manhas, from Jammu, who is missing after the recent Sukma-Bijapur border encounter between armed forces and Naxals.

Several jawans killed were from the Commando Battalions for Resolute Action (CoBRA) unit, while others were part of the Bastariya Battalion of the CRPF and the District Reserve Guard. The only one missing is 35-year-old Manhas. Even thorough combing of the area has not yielded any result giving rise to the speculation of his being held captive by the Maoists. In fact, confirming the hostage crisis are several claims by local journalists that they received calls stating that Manhas is in Naxal custody.

Meenu Manhas who spoke to a TV journalist over the phone was told to send a video appealing to Naxals to release her husband. Meanwhile, Meenu has appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, to secure her husband's release.

"I want to request Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah to bring back my husband. Wherever he is, I appeal to you to bring him back. If he is safe, bring him back somehow. I request Modiji to bring him back like he brought Wing Commander Abhinandan from Pakistan," she said.

Continuing, she broke down in tears and said: "I last talked to my husband on Friday at 9:30 pm. He told me that he was going for his duty and will talk to me the following day. No one is giving us any information. We have called the control room but they assured us that we will be given information soon. But it has been two days now. We are relying on the news for now. I appeal to PM Modi to ensure his freedom." It is ironic indeed that while jawan Manhas hails from Jammu, another heartrending scene takes places unfailingly each day in Kashmir.

Cut to Shopian in Jammu and Kashmir where the onset of dawn sees 56-year-old man Manzoor Wagay walking with a shovel and a spade in hand. No, he is not on his way to earn his daily bread. Instead he heads for fields and orchards located in proximity to dig for hours. All to find the body of his 24-year-old son, Shakir Manzoor, abducted by terrorists and mercilessly killed later.

Returning home so far empty handed for the last eight months since August last year, he never loses hope. He is back to digging next morning.

Shakir was a jawan in the Territorial Army, who was abducted, tortured and killed by terrorists.

It was during Eid celebrations that tragedy struck Wagay and his family on August 2. Wagay's son Shakir, a rifleman with the 162 Battalion of TA, had come home to rejoice during the festival but tragedy struck when returning back to his unit in Balpora, terrorists intercepted his car and abducted him at gunpoint. Torturing him for hours they dumped his body unceremoniously. Just because he was a duty-abiding armed personnel serving his nation! Even though the slain jawan's blood-soaked clothes were found three kilometres away from his home, his body was not. And from that day onwards, uncertainty has loomed over the father and family.

Following Shakir's abduction a few days later, an unverified audio clip surfaced in which a terrorist, identifying himself as Abu Talha, claimed that he had killed Shakir. Interacting with the press persons, Vijay Kumar, the Inspector General Kashmir, had said: "Talha who was later killed during one of the encounters had claimed that after snuffing out Shakir's life, he buried his body somewhere nearby. But till we have not been able to find his body." This devastating news broke Wagay but also left him distraught. Not wanting his courageous son to be declared as missing, Wagay started his unending search to trace the body of his son. While officially he is considered missing till such time Shakir's body is recovered, Wagay insists on Shakir being recognized and remembered as a martyr.

Making a heartfelt request, Wagay says: "I appeal to people to help me trace the body of my son. My heart says he lies buried within a radius of seven-eight kilometres from home." Preferring to sit at the entrance of his house on his return in the evening, Wagay stares vacantly at Shakir's photograph, hoping against hope that his son's body is found, to give a finality!

(This content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com) --indianarrative/
Amnesty International (AI) says Zimbabwean security forces killed 10 people and the government used COVID-19 regulations to justify severe restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.

In its latest report, AI said the government deployed security forces to abduct, assault and torture perceived critics, and opposition members and leaders.

Police and security agents killed at least 10 people. Women were denied access to essential maternal health care, and violence against women and girls was widespread.

AI noted that on March 30, the government introduced measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19, imposing punitive movement restrictions, initially for three weeks but periodically extending throughout the year.

It said information about lockdown rules was unclear, and their implementation appeared to be arbitrary. On 21 July, a national curfew between 6pm and 6am was imposed. The pandemic exacerbated the economic crisis and the authorities were unable to provide social security to vulnerable people. According to the United Nations, seven million people were in need of humanitarian assistance and 4.3 million people were severely food insecure.

In July, 2021, opposition members called on people to participate in the nationwide July 31 protests against alleged state corruption, economic hardship, and to demand the presidents resignation. AI said the country remained in political turmoil and as a result, in August, the South African government appointed two special envoys to visit Zimbabwe and identify possible resolutions to ongoing violence by security forces against the population.

EXCESSIVE USE OF FORCE

AI said security forces frequently used excessive force to prevent or crackdown on peaceful protests and to impose lockdown restrictions, killing at least 10 people. Security forces also arbitrarily arrested and detained protesters and others in the context of enforcing COVID-19 measures.

AI said in the first four months of the lockdown, 116,000 people were arrested for violating COVID-19 regulations.

Many were subjected to violence, including a significant number of women. Two sisters, Nokuthula and Ntombizodwa Mpofu, were severely beaten by police on 16 April in Bulawayo when they went out during curfew to buy food for their children. A joint team comprised of agents of the police, military, the Central Intelligence Organisation, and the Office of the President, known as the Ferret Team, terrorized government critics, opposition leaders and activists, and their family members. Many, including several members of the main opposition party, Movement for Democratic Change-Alliance (MDC-A), were abducted from police custody, tortured and dumped far from their homes.

In May, Joana Mamombe, a politician, Cecilia Chimbiri and Netsai Marova were arrested at a police roadblock in the capital, Harare, while they were leading a demonstration against inadequate protection for the poor.

They were abducted the same day from Harare Central Police Station by a group of men believed to be from the Ferret Team, who physically and sexually assaulted them and dumped them 87km from their homes in Harare three days later. In June, the State charged the women with faking their abductions and tarnishing the countrys image.

On 31 July, they were re-arrested at a checkpoint. AI said while they were being held, a soldier whipped Cecilia Chimbiri for allegedly insulting him. In December, in the case relating to the charges connected to their abduction in May, the Harare Regional Magistrate ordered that Joana Mamombe be tried separately from Cecilia Chimbiri and Netsai Marova on grounds that she had been declared unfit to stand trial. An application by their lawyers for this order to be reviewed was pending at the end of the year.

In the days running up to the July 31 protests, security forces raided the homes of those suspected of supporting the initiative, in some cases vandalizing property, said AI.

On 30 July, Tawanda Muchehiwa was arrested by police in a shop in Bulawayo. On the way to the police station, the officers handed him over to the Ferret Team, who tortured him to reveal the whereabouts of his uncle, Mduduzi Mathuthu, the editor of online newspaper ZimLive.com. They released him far from his home four days later.

The same day, security forces raided Mduduzi Mathuthus home, and, when they failed to find him, took away his sister and two of his nephews who were later released after the Media Institute of Southern Africa intervened.

At said several other people, including Noxolo Maphosa, Tamuka Denhere, Bhekani Moyo, Levison Moyo, Paul Munakopa and others were intimidated and or killed by security forces.

AI said Noxolo Maphosa, who was abducted in public, said she was sexually assaulted to force her to reveal the whereabouts of her uncle, Josphat Ngulube, an MDC-A member who had been accused of distributing face masks bearing the slogan #ZANUPFMustGo (referring to the ruling party).

KILLINGS

AI said police failed to carry out investigations on people who were allegedly killed by state security agents.

On 15 March, police went to the home of Bhekani Moyo in Silobela village, in connection with assault allegations, and shot him dead. On 30 March, Levison Moyo was beaten by police in Bulawayo for allegedly violating lockdown restrictions and died four days later from a brain haemorrhage. In May, police, travelling in an unmarked vehicle, shot and killed Paul Munakopa in Hillside, Bulawayo.

At least two opposition activists were unlawfully killed. In July, Mazwi Ndlovu, from Bulilima, was killed by agents suspected to be affiliated with ZANU-PF after he raised concerns about the way food was distributed to those in need. A man suspected of killing him was later arrested but released without appearing in court or applying for bail. Also in July, state security agents in Hurungwe abducted, murdered and dumped the naked body of Lavender Chiwaya, an MDC-A councillor, near his home.

Zanu PF spokesperson, Simon Khaya Moyo, was unreachable for comment as he was not responding to calls on his mobile phone.
 Flash

The Joint Commission of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known as the Iran nuclear deal, resumed talks on Tuesday, with lifting sanctions on Iran and nuclear implementation measures on top of the agenda.

The meeting has drawn public attention as representatives from the United States are in Vienna to save the deal, which was struck in 2015 but paralyzed by the U.S. withdrawal in 2018 and Iran's counter-sanctions moves afterwards.

Senior diplomats of China, France, Germany, Russia, Britain and Iran met behind closed doors in the Grand Hotel Wien. The talks were chaired by Enrique Mora, deputy Secretary-General and Political Director of the European External Action Service (EEAS), on behalf of High Representative of the European Union (EU) for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell. Media reports said the U.S. delegation led by Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley was based in a nearby hotel.

Mora said on Twitter following the meeting that they had a "constructive Joint Commission meeting."

"There's unity and ambition for a joint diplomatic process with two expert groups on nuclear implementation and sanctions lifting. As Coordinator I will intensify separate contacts here in Vienna with all relevant parties, including the U.S.," he added.

The U.S. should lift all illegal sanctions against Tehran, and the Iranian side should resume full compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal on that basis, said Wang Qun, Chinese envoy to the United Nations and other international organizations in Vienna.

China will continue to unswervingly maintain the JCPOA, and the key to reviving the nuclear talks is that the U.S. side should remove all illegal sanctions against Iran, Wang said after the JCPOA meeting.

He stressed that China firmly opposes any illegal unilateral sanctions imposed by the U.S. and will safeguard its own legitimate rights and interests. Therefore, he demanded that the U.S. should immediately remove its illegal sanctions on Iran and its "long-arm jurisdiction" against third-party entities and individuals, including those from China.

According to the official Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Abbas Araqchi told the commission meeting that lifting U.S. sanctions is the first and most necessary step to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.

The U.S. and Iranian negotiators were not supposed to meet face-to-face but a shuttle diplomacy approach was adopted with the intensified help of the coordinators.

Prior to Tuesday's meeting, Araqchi said he would "not hold any direct or indirect talks" with U.S. representatives but would only negotiate with the Joint Commission of JCPOA.

If the P4+1 countries, including China, Britain, France and Russia, plus Germany, succeed in convincing Washington to lift all the sanctions "by any means they know," Iran will comply, said Araqchi, who is also Iran's deputy foreign minister.

Washington said on Monday that its goal of the talks was to set the stage for a mutual return to compliance with the 2015 accord but did not anticipate an immediate breakthrough.

Walter Posch, an Austrian expert on Iran, told Austria Press Agency that the fact that talks were held in Vienna to revive the crippling nuclear agreement, albeit indirectly, was already a success.

The JCPOA was reached in 2015 between Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council -- the United States, Britain, Russia, France, China, plus Germany) and the EU. Tehran agreed to roll back parts of its nuclear weapons program in exchange for decreased economic sanctions.

Washington under former President Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018 and tightened sanctions on Iran.

The United States and Iran are in a standoff over reviving the nuclear deal. The Joe Biden administration said that if Iran returns to full compliance with the JCPOA, the United States would do the same. But Iran insisted its compliance would only take place once U.S. sanctions were removed.
Gov. Kate Brown dramatically revised longstanding COVID-19 benchmarks Tuesday in an apparent bid to keep restaurants and other businesses largely operating as is, sidestepping prohibitions or severe restrictions on indoor activities.

Brown set a new requirement that indoor dining will be prohibited only if Oregon sees active hospitalizations from COVID-19 swell statewide to 300, roughly double the current number, and if theres a 15% increase in average daily hospitalizations week over week.

Brown made the revisions as cases and hospitalizations have climbed in recent weeks, with the state Tuesday reporting 544 new cases and 33 deaths  although many of the fatalities likely occurred weeks ago.

Brown has effectively created a buffer for businesses, in some ways undermining her public messaging from last week calling for renewed efforts to slow coronavirus spread as part of a race to vaccinate more Oregonians before coronavirus variants become too rampant.

The change means Josephine, Klamath and Tillamook counties will avoid moving into the states extreme risk category that comes with the heaviest restrictions on businesses, such as prohibiting indoor dining and placing severe limitations on the number of people inside gyms and theaters.

Those restrictions were originally created last fall to slow coronavirus spread. Other counties could similarly escape restraints in coming weeks despite increasing case rates, so long as hospitalizations dont climb too steeply.

Charles Boyle, a spokesperson for Brown, said the governor felt comfortable changing her criteria because Oregonians are being vaccinated against COVID-19  something that wasnt true when she rolled out the metrics for business restrictions last fall.

Hospitalizations are an indicator of serious illness in our communities, Boyle said in a statement. By linking Extreme Risk to statewide hospitalizations, we will ensure that we are not instituting the highest level of restrictions when hospital capacity is not threatened.

Oregon on Tuesday reported 163 active hospitalizations. Oregon could climb to about 300 hospitalizations in May if the feared spring surge materializes, according to modeling released last week by Oregon Health & Science University, meaning restaurants could face at least a month reprieve from bans on indoor dining.

Large counties qualify for extreme risk and the strongest restrictions if they have at least 200 cases per 100,000 residents over a two-week period. That categorization triggers prohibitions on indoor dining and indoor visits at long-term care facilities, and gyms and theaters generally cant have more than six customers.

Large counties in the next tier, high risk, can offer indoor access at 25% capacity up to 50 people, and indoor visits in care facilities are permitted.

Fourteen counties will now be in the high risk tier, including Multnomah and Clackamas counties, effective Friday. Those metro-area jurisdictions were downgraded because of increasing coronavirus spread, and certain businesses will see indoor capacity fall from 50% to 25% as a result.

Boyle noted that counties moving backward, such as Multnomah and Clackamas, still must comply with what he labeled as significant restrictions in the high-risk tier.

Now, we need Oregonians to strictly follow the health and safety measures in effect, and to get vaccinated as quickly as possible when a vaccine is available to them, so that we can stop the spread of COVID-19, Boyle said.

Vaccines: Oregon reported 32,955 newly administered doses, which includes 21,170 Monday and the remainder from previous days.

Where the new cases are by county: Baker (4), Benton (11), Clackamas (86), Clatsop (1), Columbia (5), Coos (10), Crook (2), Curry (2), Deschutes (35), Douglas (7), Grant (9), Harney (3), Hood River (2), Jackson (33), Jefferson (2), Josephine (12), Klamath (21), Lane (41), Lincoln (3), Linn (17), Malheur (4), Marion (36), Multnomah (68), Polk (10), Sherman (1), Tillamook (7), Umatilla (8), Union (4), Wasco (1), Washington (97) and Yamhill (2).

Who died: Oregons 2,395th COVID-19 death is a 59-year-old Clackamas County woman who tested positive Dec. 21 and died Jan. 28 at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center.

The 2,396th fatality is an 80-year-old Clackamas County man who tested positive Feb. 28 and died March 15 at his residence.

Oregons 2,397th death is a 36-year-old Clackamas County woman who tested positive March 24 and died April 5 at her residence.

The 2,398th fatality is a 93-year-old Coos County woman who tested positive March 24 and died April 5 at Bay Area Hospital.

Oregons 2,399th death is an 84-year-old Columbia County woman who tested positive Dec. 7 and died March 29 at her residence.

The 2,400th fatality is an 84-year-old Crook County woman who tested positive Jan. 8 and died March 5 at her residence.

Oregons 2,401st death is an 87-year-old Deschutes County woman who tested positive Feb. 16 and died March 15 at her residence.

The 2,402nd fatality is a 61-year-old Douglas County woman who tested positive March 21 and died April 3 at her residence.

Oregons 2,403rd death is an 83-year-old Douglas County man who tested positive March 21 and died April 3 at Mercy Medical Center.

The 2,404th fatality is an 89-year-old Douglas County man who tested positive Jan. 24 and died Feb. 9 at his residence.

Oregons 2,405th death is a 76-year-old Douglas County man who tested positive Jan. 19 and died Feb. 10 at his residence.

The 2,406th fatality is a 60-year-old Josephine County man who tested positive March 12 and died March 17 at his residence.

Oregons 2,407th death is a 59-year-old Josephine County woman who tested positive March 10 and died March 19 at Asante Three Rivers Medical Center.

The 2,408th fatality is a 72-year-old Jefferson County woman who tested positive Jan. 9 and died Feb. 11 at St. Charles Bend hospital.

Oregons 2,409th death is a 41-year-old Lane County man who tested positive Nov. 18 and died Jan. 1 at his residence.

The 2,410th fatality is a 73-year-old Linn County man who tested positive Feb. 22 and died March 21 at his residence.

Oregons 2,411st death is an 85-year-old Marion County woman who tested positive March 23 and died March 28 at her residence.

The 2,412nd fatality is an 85-year-old Multnomah County woman who tested positive Nov. 24 and died Feb. 11 at her residence.

Oregons 2,413rd death is a 67-year-old Multnomah County man who tested positive Jan. 15 and died March 8 at his residence.

The 2,414th fatality is a 50-year-old Multnomah County woman who tested positive March 8 and died March 22 at her residence.

Oregons 2,415th death is a 95-year-old Multnomah County woman who tested positive March 10 and died March 20 at Providence Portland Medical Center.

The 2,416th fatality is a 94-year-old Multnomah County woman who tested positive Nov. 4 and died Jan. 19 at her residence.

Oregons 2,417th death is a 57-year-old Polk County woman who tested positive Jan. 28 and died March 14 at Salem Hospital.

The 2,418th fatality is a 47-year-old Umatilla County man who tested positive Feb. 2 and died April 3 at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center.

Oregons 2,419th death is a 94-year-old Wasco County man who tested positive Jan. 20 and died Jan. 27 at Mid-Columbia Medical Center.

The 2,420th fatality is a 93-year-old Washington County woman who tested positive Feb. 1 and died March 27 at her residence.

Oregons 2,421st death is an 80-year-old Washington County man who tested positive Feb. 25 and died March 2 at OHSU Health Hillsboro Medical Center.

The 2,422nd fatality is a 71-year-old Washington County man who died March 23 at Providence Portland Medical Center. The death certificate listed COVID-19 as a cause or significant condition contributing to his death.

Oregons 2,423rd death is a 73-year-old Washington County man who died March 22 at Providence Portland Medical Center. The death certificate listed COVID-19 as a cause or significant condition contributing to his death.

The 2,424th fatality is an 88-year-old Yamhill County woman who tested positive Feb. 26 and died March 21 at her residence.

Oregons 2,425th death is a 92-year-old Yamhill County woman who tested positive Feb. 26 and died March 6 at her residence.

The 2,426th fatality is a 77-year-old Yamhill County man who tested positive Feb. 26 and died March 18 at his residence.

Oregons 2,427th death is a 72-year-old Yamhill County man who tested positive Nov. 19 and died Jan. 26 at his residence.

Each person had underlying health conditions or state officials were working to confirm if the person had underlying medical conditions.

Hospitalizations: 163 people with confirmed cases of COVID-19 are hospitalized, down 14 from Monday. That includes 42 people in intensive care, the same as Monday.

Since it began: Oregon has reported 167,658 confirmed or presumed infections and 2,427 deaths, among the lowest per capita numbers in the nation. To date, the state has reported 2,031,252 vaccine doses administered.

-- Brad Schmidt; bschmidt@oregonian.com; 503-294-7628; @_brad_schmidt
[April 07, 2021] Jai Chitkara, CEO at KTech Products Recognized as a UiPath Most Valuable Professional

DALLAS, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- KTech Products LLC today announced that Jai Chitkara, CEO has been selected as a Most Valuable Professional (MVP) of UiPath, a leading enterprise automation software company. MVP program recognizes top community members for their product expertise, leadership, and contributions to the community. Through their product feedback, content creation, peer support, and more, MVPs go above and beyond, helping to drive the innovation andadoption of UiPath technology. Fewer than 100 individuals were recognized worldwide for this designation.



Jai Chitkara is a visionary leader who comes with over 25 years of experience in Portfolio Management, Customer Success, and Innovation across technologies and industries. He has a proven track record of leading customers from the commercial, higher education, and public sector on their digital transformation journey based on a comprehensive roadmap and rapid implementations. Under Jai's leadership, KTech has successfully created RPA practice & products to deliver customer-focused business transformational solutions over KTech's digital cloud. "I am extremely honored to have been recognized as a UiPath MVP, I look forward to contributing to the community through this opportunity and excited to share my 25+ years of experience in automation, digital technologies, & solutions transforming businesses," says Jai Chitkara, company CEO. "This designation is testament to the exceptional UiPath expertise we have at KTech that enables us to deliver value to our customers. With our Rapid Implementation methodologies, digital transformation programs, and UiPath technology, we have created over 15 plug-n-play products for Finance, HR, and Student systems such as AP Invoice Automation, AR Billing Automation, Expense Auditing System, Transcript OCR to SIS, On-Boarding & Off-Boarding, On-Premise to Cloud, Paper to Digitization, & Test Automation Suite."

About UiPath: UiPath has a vision to deliver the Fully Automated Enterprise, one where companies use automation to unlock their greatest potential. UiPath offers an end-to-end platform for automation, combining the leading Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solution with a full suite of capabilities that enable every organization to rapidly scale digital business operations. About KTech Products LLC: KTech Products is a Kastech Company with headquarters in Dallas, TX. KTech's mission is to transform their customers' business digitally through innovation and automation. KTech Products specializes in RPA implementations, OCR, AI, ML, intelligent and integrated chatbot, and several value-added innovative products and services. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/jai-chitkara-ceo-at-ktech-products-recognized-as-a-uipath-most-valuable-professional-301264504.html SOURCE KTech Products

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President Xi Jinping called on Xiamen University on Tuesday to build itself into a world-class university and enhance its capabilities to serve regional development and national strategies as the university marks its 100th anniversary.

Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remark in a congratulatory letter to the university.

In the letter, Xi extended warm congratulations and sincere greetings to faculty, students and alumni of the university and hailed its glorious tradition, as well as its patriotic, revolutionary and scientific ethos.

He said Xiamen University has fostered a large number of talented people and made positive contributions to making the country more prosperous, bringing happiness to people and promoting the dissemination of Chinese culture abroad.

As China has embarked on a journey to fully build a modern socialist country, Xi expressed hope that the university will further carry out the CPC's education policy, earnestly concentrate on fostering virtues through education and cultivate talented people for the Party and the country.

He also urged the university to work to consolidate the unity and cohesion of the Chinese nation in order to make a greater contribution to building a modern socialist China and realizing the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation.

Xiamen University, in the coastal city of Xiamen in Fujian province, was established in 1921 by renowned patriotic overseas Chinese leader Tan Kah-kee. It was the first university to be founded by an overseas Chinese in the history of modern Chinese education.

Over the past century, the university has remained committed to its motto of "Pursue Excellence; Strive for Perfection" and has been motivated by a desire to serve the country and the people. It boasts over 400,000 alumni.
Putin emphasized the strategic character of Russias relationship with Armenia in his opening remarks at the meeting held in the Kremlin. He also noted the solid volume of Russian-Armenian trade, expressing confidence that it will grow again after shrinking last year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Putin went on mention the post-war situation in the Karabakh conflict zone and, in particular, renewed transport links between Armenia and Azerbaijan envisaged by the ceasefire agreement which he brokered in November.

He said the reopening of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border for commercial traffic will give Armenia new opportunities for the countrys development. In my view, this is an extremely important thing, he told Pashinian.

Pashinian complained, for his part, that Azerbaijan is continuing to hold many Armenian prisoners of war and civilian captives in breach of the truce accord. I am very glad that we have no differences regarding how to resolve this problem, he said.

Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev failed to reach an agreement on the prisoner release during their trilateral meeting with Putin held in Moscow on January 11. They only agreed to set up a Russian-Armenian-Azerbaijani working group tasked with working out practical modalities of restoring transport links between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The group co-headed by deputy prime ministers of the three states has held several meetings since January 30. Its Russian co-chair, Alexei Overchuk, visited Baku and Yerevan last week.

No concrete agreements were announced after Putins and Pashinian latest talks.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said late last week that Armenias forthcoming snap parliamentary elections will also be on the meetings agenda.

Pashinian has pledged to hold the elections in June in a bid resolve a domestic political crisis sparked by Armenias defeat in the six-week war.

Moscow has expressed concern at the deepening crisis. Putin discussed it with Pashinian in a February 25 phone call.

Neither leader mentioned the Armenian elections at the start of Wednesdays meeting.

Pashinian cited instead the need to ascertain some nuances of Russian-Armenian military cooperation. He also announced that Armenia will receive on Thursday the first 15,000 doses of Russias Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19.

We need more than a million doses, the Armenian leader said, implicitly asking Putin to facilitate their delivery.

Our [vaccine] production is gaining momentum, replied Putin. We are talking about a fairly large volume of production of this vaccine. So I think that we will solve this problem.
In a heartbreaking video released on social media, the five-year-old daughter of CRPF soldier Rakeshwar Singh Manhas, who was reportedly kidnapped by Naxals during an ambush in Chhattisgarh, pleaded for her father to be released.



At least 22 soldiers were killed and 31 were injured in an encounter between security personnel and Naxals along the Sukma-Bijapur border on Saturday (April 03).

As per reports, more than 400 soldiers were ambushed by the PLGA platoon of the Maoists in the jungles near the Jonnaguda village in Chhattisgarh

The security personnel killed in the gunbattle included officers from the CoBRA (Commando Battalion for Resolute Action), Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), and the District Reserve Guard (DRG).

While the local police recovered the bullet-riddled bodies of the soldiers, Naxals claimed that they had kidnapped CoBRA commando Rakeshwar Singh Manhas.

The Naxal Group released a press note on Tuesday (April 06) in which it confirmed the loss of four comrades along with Manhas' capture.

Naxal Maoist released picture of Captured CRPF Cobra Commando Rakeshwar Singh Minhas to one local journalist



Not Even a Single Hint of Fear or Tension .... That's Real Hero of India



Via @WhatsApp#NationWithCRPF pic.twitter.com/WJHIyFauKw  Ramesh Solanki (@Rajput_Ramesh) April 7, 2021

While the Naxals ensured that Manhas was safe and sound, they said he will only be released once the government sends a party to negotiate the release.

The news of the abduction was clearly a terrifying one for Manhas' family, who last had contact with him on Friday (April 02) at 9.30 pm when he was leaving for duty.

In what was a heart-wrenching moment, Shragvi, Manhas' five-year-old daughter requested the Naxals for her father's safe return.

"Please, release my father," requested the teary-eyed Shragvi, while sitting next to family members and other relatives.

The cries of Shragvi and her family members clearly seemed to unsettle viewers who watched the video on social networking websites and on news channels.

Soon, Manhas' family pleas were echoed all around Twitter, with viewers requesting for the CoBRA soldier to be reunited with his loved ones.

Abducted CRPF jawan Rakeshwar Singh Manhass daughter is pleading to barbaric Naxals to release her father.



Pl join me in taking her voice to the hugest offices of the government. @narendramodi @AmitShah pic.twitter.com/Rmad670pU4  Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri (@vivekagnihotri) April 7, 2021

Heart-wrenching to watch the little girl pleading for the release of her daughter

Praying she meets her father soon

Hope this issue of Naxalism is addressed immediately by Mota Bhai  Rutuja #SSR (@Rutuja69335233) April 7, 2021

The latest picture of our commando Rakeshwar singh manhas who is held Captive by Naxals . I request @AmitShah to please work on some plan for his release. #AmitShah #FreeRakeshwarSingh #ReleaseRakeshwarSingh pic.twitter.com/t0D4P6lRwc  Rudhan Sharma (Dogra) (@Rudhans1) April 7, 2021

@AmitShah ji, please get our jawan released. Please hear his little daughter. After his release a plan can be made to eliminate the naxalists.  Justice4SSR  (@UttamKu73397300) April 7, 2021

This is real stomach churning and heart rending to say the least.. may Lord be with this family  Narasimha Deshpande (@naradeshpande) April 7, 2021

Please god listen to her  Shruti Patil (@ShrutiP83871118) April 7, 2021

@narendramodi @AmitShah Plz Plz Plz bring back her father  ScorpGal (@Apeksha75660745) April 7, 2021
CHICAGO, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In-depth analysis and data-driven insights on the impact of COVID-19 included in this Middle East data center market report.

The Middle East data center market is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 7% during the period 20202026.

Key Highlights Offered in the Report:

1. Increasing internet penetration and adoption of cloud and managed services due to COVID-19 has significantly driven the demand for data centers in the Middle East

2. Commercial deployment of 5G will kick off in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and Oman by 2023, is anticipated to be deployed by Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Turkey, and Iran.

3. The Middle East is increasingly becoming a hotspot for investment in renewable energy owing to the abundance of solar energy available in the region and is emerging leader in microgrid capacity.

4. The Saudi Authority for Data and Artificial Intelligence (SDAIA) has signed MoUs with IBM, Huawei, and Alibaba under The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 which includes building smart cities.

5. There are an increasing number of modular data center facilities being built in the Middle East and can handle systems with a higher rack density.

Key Offerings:

Market Size & Forecast by Revenue | 20202026

Market Dynamics  Leading trends, growth drivers, restraints, and investment opportunities

Market Segmentation  A detailed analysis by IT infrastructure, electrical infrastructure, mechanical infrastructure, cooling technique, cooling systems, general construction, tier standards, and geography

Competitive Landscape  10 IT infrastructure providers, 13 construction contractors, and 10 data center investors

Get your sample today! https://www.arizton.com/market-reports/middle-east-data-center-market-size-analysis

Middle East Data Center Market  Segmentation

The Middle East IT infrastructure market expects to grow at a CAGR of over 6% during 20202026. The server market is shifting slowly from rack-based to blade servers to support a high-density operating environment. This is because of the increased usage of IoT, big data analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning by enterprises across the Middle Eastern market.

The generators market in the Middle East is likely to grow at a CAGR of approx. 8% during 20202026. The construction of large facilities is driving the demand for generators in the Middle East . Instability in the power grid in the region is the major factor for the deployment of high-capacity generators.

is likely to grow at a CAGR of approx. 8% during 20202026. The construction of large facilities is driving the demand for generators in the . Instability in the power grid in the region is the major factor for the deployment of high-capacity generators. Cooling systems, including water-cooled chillers, CRAH, and cooling towers, are installed with N+20 redundancy in the Middle East region. Most facilities in the region design to cool servers via water-based cooling techniques. The growing construction of data centers in the UAE is a key factor in developing multiple chillers, cooling towers, and CRAH units. In Saudi Arabia , data centers' construction will increase the adoption of multiple chillers, cooling towers, and CRAH units.

Middle East Data Center Market by IT Infrastructure

Servers

Storage

Network

Middle East Data Center Market by Electrical Infrastructure

UPS Systems

Generators

Transfer Switches and Switchgears

PDUs

Other Electrical Infrastructures

Middle East Data Center Market by Mechanical Infrastructure

Cooling Systems

CRAC & CRAH Units



Chiller Units



Cooling Towers, Dry Coolers, & Condensers



Other Cooling Units

Racks

Others Mechanical Infrastructure

Middle East Data Center Market by Cooling Technique

Air-based Cooling Technique

Liquid-based Cooling Technique

Middle East Data Center Market by General Construction

Core and Shell Development

Installation and Commissioning Services

Engineering and Building Designs

Physical Security

DCIM/BMS

Middle East Data Center Market by Tier Standards

Tier I & II

Tier III

Tier IV

Middle East Data Center Market  Dynamics

Investments in submarine cables have increased considerably over the years, with governments and enterprises continuously strengthening their fiber infrastructure for better connectivity with other countries. Many telecommunication providers and hyperscale data center operators are investing in cables to improve network connectivity with the Middle East. The rise in investment in submarine cables is also likely to attract more data center investments in the region. The adoption of technologies such as cloud, big data, and IoT has strengthened the need for strong fixed broadband connectivity over the last five years. The Middle Eastern region witnessed an increase in the deployment of submarine cables by major telecom and data center operators in the region. Government entities are also bringing in foreign direct investments (FDI) from data center service providers by strengthening their internet connectivity as it is one of the major data center site selection criteria.

Key Drivers and Trends fueling Market Growth:

Growing Procurement of Renewable Energy

Smart City Initiatives Fuel Data Center Deployments

COVID-19 on Data Center Market

Migration from On-Premises Infrastructure to Colocation & Managed Services

Middle East Data Center Market  Geography

The rising adoption of cloud-based services is leading to the growth of retail and wholesale colocation services in the region. The market is witnessing an increase in the demand for colocation spaces across existing and upcoming data centers. Some of the leading cloud service providers such as Oracle, Alibaba Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and IBM have a presence in the country. The country is expected to spend more than $5.3 billion on IT enterprises, which will be one of the factors leading to the development of more data center facilities across the country. The rapid investment in 5G technology and its deployment is leading to the generation of a substantial amount of data, further increasing investments in data centers. Some of the telecommunication companies working towards or having already deployed 5G in the region include Etisalat, Atlas, Sirius Telecom, Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (EITC), and ECS Global Wire & Cable.

Get your sample today! https://www.arizton.com/market-reports/middle-east-data-center-market-size-analysis

Middle East Data Center Market by Geography

Middle Eastern Countries

UAE



Saudi Arabia



Jordan



Turkey



Other Middle Eastern Countries

Key Data Center Critical (IT) Infrastructure Providers

Arista Networks

Atos

Broadcom

Cisco Systems

Dell Technologies

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)

Huawei Technologies

IBM

Lenovo

NetApp

Key Data Center Contractors

Atkins

Deerns

ENMAR ENGINEERING

Edarat Group

ISG

RED Engineering

Harinsa Qatar (HQ)

Turner & Townsend

McLaren Construction Group

LAING O'ROURKE

ICS Nett

Linesight

Qatar Site and Power (QSP)

Key Data Center Investors

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Akbank

Batelco

Etisalat Group

Equinix

Gulf Data Hub

Turkcell

Telecom Italia Sparkle

Khazna

Zain

Explore our data center knowledge base profile to know more about the industry.

Read some of the top-selling reports:

About Arizton:

Arizton Advisory and Intelligence is an innovation and quality-driven firm, which offers cutting-edge research solutions to clients across the world. We excel in providing comprehensive market intelligence reports and advisory and consulting services.

We offer comprehensive market research reports on industries such as consumer goods & retail technology, automotive and mobility, smart tech, healthcare, and life sciences, industrial machinery, chemicals and materials, IT and media, logistics and packaging. These reports contain detailed industry analysis, market size, share, growth drivers, and trend forecasts.

Arizton comprises a team of exuberant and well-experienced analysts who have mastered in generating incisive reports. Our specialist analysts possess exemplary skills in market research. We train our team in advanced research practices, techniques, and ethics to outperform in fabricating impregnable research reports.

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SOURCE Arizton Advisory & Intelligence
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 21:27:30|Editor: huaxia

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BEIRUT, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Lebanese President Michel Aoun received on Wednesday a message of support from his Egyptian counterpart Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi conveyed to him by Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, in which he affirmed Egypt's "solidarity with Lebanon and its support for efforts to form a new government."

This came in a statement issued by Lebanon's Presidency following Shoukry's meeting with Aoun at Baabda Palace.

During the meeting, Aoun expressed his appreciation and gratitude for Egypt's role in helping Lebanon face its various crises, namely the governmental deadlock.

Aoun also discussed with Shoukry obstacles facing the government formation process, hoping to cooperate with all political parties to come up with a successful cabinet capable of assuming its duties.

Meanwhile, Shoukry told reporters that he conveyed to Aoun "a message of solidarity from President al-Sisi, while emphasizing the keenness of Egypt to communicate with all Lebanese political parties in hope to get out of the current crisis."

Shoukry said he will hold a series of meetings with various political parties to explore ways of reaching a consensus on the cabinet formation which opens the door for regional and international support.

Shoukry said that Lebanon's stability is vital to the region and its interests.

The Egyptian minister arrived on Wednesday in Beirut to hold discussions with various political parties on government formation in the country.

Lebanon has been facing a governmental vacuum since last August due to officials' disagreements over ministerial shares and the form and nature of the future government.

Meanwhile, the country is going through its worst economic and financial crisis with poverty rate exceeding 50 percent according to the World Bank amid a sharp increase in unemployment rate and the collapse of the local currency. Enditem
Central American migrants sit above the US-Mexico border fence as a Border Patrol agent stands guard, as seen from Tijuana to San Diego as seen from Playas de Tijuana, in Baja California state, Mexico, on March 21, 2019. (Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images)

Ms-13 Gang Member Caught Illegally Crossing US-Mexico Border Into California: Border Patrol

An MS-13 gang member from El Salvador was arrested after crossing into the United States illegally, said the Border Patrol on Wednesday.

The 28-year-old El Salvadoran national, who was not named, was found at 12:45 a.m. Wednesday by an agent patrolling the mountains in the San Diego, California, border sector when he encountered six men near the border wall, the agency said in a news release.

All six of the men, who were questioned by the agent, said they were illegally present in the United States, officials said.

The men were placed under arrest and transported to a nearby Border Patrol station for processing. At the station, a records check revealed that one of the men, a 28-year-old El Salvadorian national, was a documented MS-13 gang member, the release stated.

The documented MS-13 gang member will be processed and deported at a local Border Patrol station, while the other five menincluding one Honduran national, a Mexican national, and three El Salvadoran nationalswill be processed and removed, agents said.

Im proud of the great work by our agents arresting this gang member, said Chief Patrol Agent Aaron Heitke in the release. Their hard work keeps our neighborhoods safe.

The Department of Justice (DOJ), during the waning days of former President Donald Trumps administration, said that some of MS-13s highest-ranking leaders were charged with terrorism offenses.

According to the DOJ in January, An indictment was unsealed in Central Islip, New York charging 14 of the worlds highest-ranking MS-13 leaders who are known today as the Ranfla Nacional, which operated as the Organizations Board of Directors, and directed MS-13s violence and criminal activity around the world for almost two decades.

Borromeo Enrique Henriquez, aka Diablito de Hollywood, is widely recognized as the most powerful member of the Ranfla Nacional, and he and 10 other defendants are in custody in El Salvador. The DOJ said it will explore options for their extradition to the United States with the Government of El Salvador.
Here are the lineups for the New York Yankees and the Baltimore Orioles before Wednesday nights game at Yankee Stadium.

Big change near the top, with Aaron Judge getting the night off. On the surface, it seems like an odd move since hes hit a home run in two straight games and Thursday is a scheduled off day for the club.

In his pregame press conference, manager Aaron Boone said Judge has some side soreness, hence a seat on the bench.

Introducing Yankees Insider: Get exclusive news, behind-the-scenes observations and the ability to text message directly with beat writers

Clint Frazier takes over in right and Brett Gardner goes in to left field.

Catcher Gary Sanchez returns behind the plate to work with Jameson Taillon, whos making his first start since 2019.

1. DJ LeMahieu, 2B

2. Gleyber Torres, SS

3. Aaron Hicks, CF

4. Giancarlo Stanton, DH

5. Clint Frazier, RF

6. Jay Bruce, 1B

7. Gary Sanchez, C

8. Gio Urshela, 3B

9. Brett Gardner, LF

Jameson Taillon, RHP

#orioles lineup vs #yankees

1. Cedric Mullins (L) CF

2. Trey Mancini (R) 1B

3. Anthony Santander (S) RF

4. Ryan Mountcastle (R) LF

5. Maikel Franco (R) DH

6. Pedro Severino (R) C

7. Rio Ruiz (L) 3B

8. Freddy Galvis (S) SS

9. Ramon Urias (R) 2B  Roch Kubatko (@masnRoch) April 7, 2021

From the Yankees:

Yankees pitchers have allowed 3R-or-fewer in each of their first five games of a season for the fourth time in franchise history (first seven games in 1958 and first six games in both 1906 and 1992)...overall, have posted a 1.76 ERA (46.0IP, 9ER) through their first five games...marks the Yankees lowest ERA through their first five games since 1977 (1.48 ERA through first 5G).

Over their last six games vs. Baltimore since 9/11/20  all at Yankee Stadium  Yankees pitchers have held the Orioles to 5R/4ER with 65K in 51.0IP (0.71 ERA)...have allowed just 27 baserunners (27H, 6BB, 1HP) in those games.

The Yankees clinched their first series win of the year after winning their first two games vs. Baltimore...are 3-2 on their season-opening six-game homestand...are 25-3 in their last 28 games vs. Baltimore (since 4/4/19). Have won 12 straight home games against the Os since 5/15/19, their longest home winning streak ever against the Orioles (since the franchise moved to Baltimore in 1954)...matches their longest home winning streak against the Browns/Orioles franchise (also won 12G at home vs. the St. Louis Browns from 8/20/26-9/10/27). During their current 12-game home winning streak vs. Baltimore, Yankees batters have outscored the Orioles, 76-30, and outhomered the Os, 24-12. Their 12-game home winning streak vs. the Orioles is their second-longest winning streak over a single opponent at the current Yankee Stadium (since 2009) behind only a 17-game streak vs Toronto from 9/19/12-7/25/14.

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.

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Brendan Kuty may be reached at bkuty@njadvancemedia.com. Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here.
The blockage at the Suez Canal could have been much worse were it not for a successful dredging operation. Photo: AFP

The exports of Tien Dat Wood Technology JSC to Europe are suffering additional effects from the congestion in the Suez Canal, while the pressure of a supply chain disruption by COVID-19 still exists. A third of the companys current output is exported to the European market. This figure will rise to a higher level by the end of this year, an expected 60 containers per month when Tien Dat completes the equipment upgrade at its third plant.

Tran Quoc Cuong, deputy director of Tien Dat, told VIR, The company is currently waiting for the machinery to be imported.

If the ships pass through South Africas Cape of Hope, Cuong worries that the journey from Europe to Vietnam will take another two weeks and come with significantly increased costs.

Salvage teams on last weeks Monday finally freed the colossal container ship Ever Given, ending a week-long crisis that had clogged one of the worlds most vital waterways and halted billions of US dollars a day in maritime commerce.

The incident also affected the plans of Dalat Worsted Spinning Co., Ltd. (DWS), a subsidiary of German Sudwolle Group. DWS produces wool yarns from wool in the Central Highlands city of Dalat for export to the European market, with the largest buyer being Germany. As the global health crisis remains largely under control in Vietnam, with the situation also getting better in Europe, Alessandro Di Palma, general director at Sudwolle, hopes now to handle the large amounts of inventory that got accumulated during the pandemic, helping the plant to operate at its correct capacity.

European and Vietnamese trade is promoted by the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement, which helps to partially limit the negative impact of the pandemic.

Data from the Ministry of Industry and Trade shows that in 2020, Vietnam exported goods to Europe with a turnover of $43.7 billion and imported wares worth $18.5 billion. In the first three months of 2021, Vietnam exported $9.6 billion to Europe and imported $4 billion from this market, corresponding to a growth rate of 14.2 and 15.4 per cent on-year.

Europes measures to control COVID-19 are taking slowly effect, with some countries gradually reopening their economies. Vitajean Co., Ltd. hopes to regain its production and export momentum in the second quarter, and other textile and garment exporters such as Vitajean, Garment 10, and Vinatex are betting on the long-term growth potential of this market of more than 600 million consumers to reduce the negative effects of the US-China trade tensions and COVID-19.

Their expectations, however, meet the risks from supply chain interruptions that cause some exporters to consider changing their sourcing plans. Nguyen Huu Thanh, director of Eurolink JSC, considered importing raw materials from South Korea  a country that allows apparel and footwear products to enjoy cumulative origin rights when exporting to the European market. Eurolink is dependent on 85 per cent of high-end raw materials imported from this market, Thanh said.

Meanwhile, the average shoe export prices of Vietnam are no longer low, partly due to the higher labour costs. Currently, the average price lies somewhere around $17 per pair, with the average export price of Europe being $25 per pair.

Meanwhile, the average export price of shoes worldwide sits at only $9 per pair, according to calculations of the Vietnam Leather, Footwear and Handbag Association.

Tran Thanh Hai, deputy director of the Agency of Foreign Trade under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, said that imports and exports between Vietnam and Europe are mainly transported by sea, passing through the Suez Canal, and only small volumes are transported by air and rail.

However, the incident at the Suez Canal contributed to increasing the difficulties for Vietnamese importers and exporters, while the shortage of containers and the rising cost of ships due to the pandemic continued to stress global supply chains.

The incident on the Suez Canal  an important point on the journey to Europe  demonstrates the role of logistics in global trade. Some of Vietnam key export sectors to the European market in 2020 included phones and accessories ($10 billion); computers, electronic products, and components ($6.5 billion); and machinery, equipment, and tools ($3.5 billion).

The congestion on the Suez Canal has finally been resolved, but extreme market fluctuations and incidents like with the Ever Given can occur at any time, showcasing the sensitive state of international routes.
Councilman Jeffrey Minchuk, D-3rd, said when the project was first proposed, he received a lot of calls from neighbors and the town took a lot of steps to answer their concerns. He asked Paul to provide two updates to the commission to keep it abreast of whats going on with the project.
Solar power development in Vietnam has already exceeded the goals of the current PDP8. Photo: Le Toan

Do Thang Hai, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade, said that the latest draft of the plan (PDP8), which has received unanimity from the appraisal council, is expected to be approved and issued by the prime minister right in this term by the new government.

The PDP8 offers three groups of mechanisms and 11 solutions based on lessons learned from the previous plans to ensure feasibility in the implementation. The openness and flexibility of the PDP8, Hai said, represent the novel approach in this schedule.

The electricity development plan meets the criteria set out in Resolution No.55-NQ/TW from last year that outlines the National Energy Development Strategy of Vietnam towards 2030, with a vision to 2045.

Hai explained that the power mix will be diversified, giving high priority to the development of renewable energy with a more reasonable structure and distribution between each region. At the same time, the environmental impact of power development has been a big concern following Vietnams international commitments against climate change hazards.

The PDP8 sets out the total capacity planned for additional development and spatial distribution by region and locality but does not name specific projects in the new and renewable energy segments. After the plan is approved, the selection of investors will have to comply with the provisions of the Law on Investment and the Law on Bidding, ensuring openness and transparency.

One fact that was not mentioned by the Ministry of Industry and Trade in the final draft before submission was that the total capacity for renewable energy by 2045 is set at 121GW. However, by January the total installed capacity  including proposed additions  has already reached 180GW, far exceeding the 2045 target.

Vietnam is a country with huge renewable energy potential. La Hong Ky of the National Steering Committee for Electricity Development noticed that there was an overstatement for the development of wind and solar power in Vietnam. This, inadvertently hindered the normal development of other power sources, leading to potential energy shortages.

Although the general roadmap follows a one-step-ahead principle, meaning that there should always be enough electricity to meet the demand for socioeconomic development requirements and peoples daily life, looking at the reality of the current power system, it may be necessary to consider the most reasonable cost for the economy.

By the end of 2019, the total installed capacity of the national power system reached about 56,000MW. By the end of 2020, this amounted to approximately 70,000MW.

Compared to that, the system load in the 2019-2020 period was less than 40,000MW, so there was a huge amount of excess power.

The investment costs of power sources are fully included in the cost of electricity production, while power plants do not fully operate under truly competitive market mechanisms, trading electricity at fixed prices or rates under long-term contracts. Thus, an excess of power at such a large level could be a great waste of investment.

Statistics of the National Load Dispatch Centre show that in the last two months of 2020 and from the beginning of 2021 when electricity consumption on weekdays peaked, it only amounted to around 30,000MW.

Given the total installed capacity of 66,000MW, many power plants, including solar power and other sources, will have to limit generation.

The slower grid investment could also create difficulties for new sources of electricity. Statistics show that, in general, transmission network projects are 1-2 years behind schedule, sometimes even 4-5 years, making it difficult to operate the system.

The more efficient a power system is, the more costs for electricity generation are optimised, and the burden does not fall on the end consumers.

Many countries have agreed on the structural transformation of energy usage to mitigate climate change and develop sustainably. This transition is done depending on the energy sources and financial capacity of each country. Vietnam is a developing country whose the energy demand is increasing rapidly, and Ky said, There should be research and integrated plans for the structural transformation of an energy mix that is suitable and effective for the country.

The imbalance between investments in power sources and the national grid caused Vietnams grid to stay at a low level compared to other countries.

Dr. Bui Huy Phung from the Vietnam Institute of Energy Science found that, in the 1980s and 1990s, Vietnams electricity grid investment rate was about 20 per cent of total related investment. Between 2005 and 2009, this rate was about 36 per cent. However, in the previous draft PDP8, the rate was lower at around 34 per cent, while the global average stands at about 45-50 per cent.
Scientists call for new probe into COVID-19 origins: with or without China

Scientists call for new probe into COVID-19 origins: with or without China (Photo : REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo)

A joint China-World Health Organization (WHO) study into COVID-19 has provided no credible answers about how the pandemic began, and more rigorous investigations are required - with or without Beijing's involvement, a group of international scientists and researchers said on Wednesday.



The joint study, released last week, said the likeliest transmission route for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, involved bats and other wildlife in China and southeast Asia. It all but ruled out the possibility it had leaked from a laboratory.



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In an open letter, 24 scientists and researchers from Europe, the United States, Australia and Japan said the study was tainted by politics.



"Their starting point was, let's have as much compromise as is required to get some minimal cooperation from China," said Jamie Metzl, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank, who drafted the letter.



The letter said the study's conclusions were based on unpublished Chinese research, while critical records and biological samples "remain inaccessible".



WHO Director General Tedros Adhanon Ghebreyesus said last week China had withheld data.



Liang Wannian, China's senior COVID-19 expert, denied this and appeared to rule out any further joint investigations in China, saying the focus should shift to other countries.



Metzl said the world might have to "revert to Plan B" and conduct an investigation "in the most systematic way possible" without China's involvement.



China has rejected allegations that SARS-CoV-2 leaked from a research laboratory in Wuhan, the city where COVID-19 was first identified.



The joint China-WHO study said the lab leak was "extremely unlikely", saying there was "no record" that any laboratory had kept SARS-CoV-2-related viruses. Tedros said more research was required to "reach more robust conclusions".



Metzl said China should disclose information that would allow the lab hypothesis to be disproved.



"China has databases of what viruses were being held... there are lab notes of the work that was being done," he said, "There are all kinds of scientists who are actually doing the work and we don't have access to any of those resources, or any of those people."



(Reporting by David Stanway, Editing by Timothy Heritage)


CHICO, Calif.  The League of Women Voters of Butte County is hosting a live presentation on Putting Wildfire Debris to Good Use: Biomass Fuel Production in Butte County " in a Zoom format on Saturday, April 10, from 10 to 11:30 a.m.

Jim Houtman, Project Manager for the Butte County Fire Safe Council, will provide a 30-minute presentation on Putting Wildfire Debris to Good Use: Biomass Fuel Production in Butte County.

Houtman is a Northern California lifer with an agricultural background. He retired in 2017 from the City of Chico Fire Department and has been working for the Butte County Fire Safe Council (BCFSC) since February 2019.

After the Camp Fire in 2018, BCFSC identified a need to find a home for the burned trees as well the development of a model for incentivizing private landowners to thin their forests.

The thinning of the forests reduces fire risk, creates a healthy forest, sequesters carbon, and protects watershedwhich all increase the wildlife habitat. BCFSC identified several technologies and works to define opportunities for fulfilling its mission. Those outcomes will be discussed during Houtmans presentation.

A League moderator will pose questions to the presenter following his presentation. Members of the public may submit relevant questions during the program via Zooms Chat feature.

To watch the live presentation, click here. Meeting ID: 899 1354 0770 Passcode: 694776

For more information contact LWVBC: (530) 895-8683, by email at lwvbutte@gmail.com, or go to the League website.
His ex-girlfriend Ali Oetjen was spotted enjoying an adventure around Adelaide with a mystery male companion last month.

And on Wednesday, Bachelorette star Taite Radley appeared to be showing the blonde what she was missing by sharing a video of his sexy dance moves on Instagram.

In the cringeworthy clip, the 30-year-old flexed his biceps as he did the sultry routine on a treadmill.

Showing Ali what she's missing? Taite Radley did a dirty dance mid-workout to Ginuwine's Pony on Tuesday in a clip posted to Instagram after the blonde Bachelorette star teased Instagram fans with a mystery man last month

Taite was also singing along to Pony by Ginuwine, a song famously known for being featured on the Magic Mike soundtrack.

'Just finishing my workout at the gym. Home soon,' he cheekily captioned the footage.

Fans were quick to comment on the post, with one even alluding that he had signed up to adult platform OnlyFans.

'I can't find your OnlyFans account,' they commented on the personal trainer's raunchy video.

Ride it! In the clip, the 30-year-old flexed his biceps as he did the sultry routine on a treadmill. Taite was also singing along to Pony by Ginuwine, a song famously known for being featured on the Magic Mike soundtrack

OnlyFans anyone? Fans were quick to comment on the post, with one even alluding that he had signed up to adult platform OnlyFans

Taite and Ali, 34, announced their split via Instagram in July last year and said they were 'taking time apart' and giving each other 'some space'.

The couple shared near identical statements underneath selfies together and said they were making the shock announcement with 'the heaviest heart'.

The end: Taite and Ali, 34, announced their split via Instagram in July last year and said they were 'taking time apart' and giving each other 'some space'

Just weeks later, Ali joined the cast of Seven's military-style show SAS Australia.

During an interrogation scene on the program, Ali tearfully explained to the drill sergeants how 'empty' she felt after losing the man she considered her 'soul mate'.

Gutted: Just weeks later, Ali joined the cast of Seven's military-style show SAS Australia. During an interrogation scene on the program, Ali tearfully explained to the drill sergeants how 'empty' she felt after losing the man she considered her 'soul mate'

But in March, heartache was the last thing on her mind as she appeared to enjoy an adventure around Adelaide with a male companion.

In the gallery of pictures shared to Instagram, Ali can't contain her joy as she visits hotspots around the City of Churches with her friend Shaun Sheahan.

The two spent their day together enjoying lunch at The German Arms Hotel, feasting on German sausages and lager.

Moving on? But in March, heartache was the last thing on her mind as she appeared to enjoy an adventure around Adelaide with a male companion

The couple then went for a stroll through Old Handorf Village Market and stopped by the Crown Adelaide for an afternoon drink.

At one stage, they stopped to take scenic autumn-themed pictures by a tree with stunning red leaves.

In each of their images, the two couldn't wipe the smile off their faces.

Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Ali Oetjen, Shaun Sheahan and Taite Radley for comment.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 20:42:03|Editor: huaxia

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ADDIS ABABA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The global community should avoid the growing trend of vaccine nationalism and exert concerted efforts to ensure vaccine equity, an Ethiopian expert has said.

"It is very important that vaccines are promoted globally because you can not just stop the virus in any one given country," Costantinos Bt. Costantinos, professor of public policy at the Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, told Xinhua in a recent interview.

Costantinos, who also served as an economic advisor to the African Union Commission and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), said some Western countries have been hoarding vaccines more than they need, resulting in a growing trend of vaccine nationalism.

The expert argued that vaccine nationalism has created what is now called "vaccine apartheid," where poor countries, including those in Africa, were going to be denied, even if they could buy vaccines.

Noting the huge cost of the COVID-19 pandemic both in terms of human lives and the global economy, the expert emphasized the crucial imperative for countries worldwide to join hands for vaccine equity.

"Ultimately, health is the main determinant of the wellbeing of humanity. Whether you talk about food security or national security issues, unless people are healthy it's not going to make sense," he said.

The expert cited China's positive contribution to the global anti-pandemic fight in making its COVID-19 vaccines a global public good.

"China's role has become very imperative in promoting what the WHO (World Health Organization) has been saying from the beginning that vaccines should be available to all vulnerable people across the world, regardless of their geographical location," the expert said.

The expert further commended China's global anti-pandemic contribution, which he said is not only reflected in providing the vaccines but also the provision of protective equipment for medical workers and communities across the globe since the early days of the outbreak.

"China's aim is basically what the global scientists are talking about -- if we don't control the pandemic globally, we can not control it anywhere," he added.

According to Costantinos, China's decision to make its COVID-19 vaccine a global public good would also promote long-term trust across the world, because the health of the world population can not be guaranteed unless everybody stays healthy.

Costantinos, citing recent accusations among countries over vaccine diplomacy, stressed that the issue of vaccines should not be used to serve political interests, but should rather be a common agenda among world countries to ensure the wellbeing of humanity.

"The Chinese measure is a very thoughtful one that is able to arrest the pandemic globally, while the West is thinking about its influence," Costantinos affirmed.

The expert, while anticipating China to continue its efforts in making COVID-19 vaccines a global public good, further called upon the developed world to work towards the betterment and wellbeing of humanity despite geographical boundaries. Enditem
Suburban push back targets Kansas public health orders.

Here's the low-rent enclave arguing against dress codes intended to help curb the spread of a global plague . . . Read more:

OLATHE, Kan. - A father in the Olathe school district said his 10-year-old son should not have to wear a mask in school. Josh Schneider spoke at a hearing that he requested under S.B. 40 with the Olathe Public Schools Board of Education that allows him to challenge the mask mandate.
Nearly one in four financial services professionals use insights from alternative data every day

Bright Data (formerly Luminati Networks), a leading online data collection platform, has today released new research findings that highlight the importance of alternative data in financial services. The insights, gathered in cooperation with the leading market research experts Vanson Bourne, demonstrate the impact alternative data is having in the US and UK versus legacy/traditional data. The survey concluded that nearly a quarter (24%) of financial services professionals who work for organisations that collect alternative data use it to aid their work every day. The research queried respondents from financial services sectors, including insurance, banking, and hedge funds and found a clear dependence on external data sources, with 95% of financial services organisations relying on outside information to contribute towards business success in the past year.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005449/en/

Bright Data The Growing Importance of Alternative Data infographic (Graphic: Business Wire)

The research findings also shed light on the obstacles that financial institutions face when deploying and working with alternative data. Three-quarters (75%) of banking professionals that use alternative data state data analysis as their biggest challenge. Additionally, the survey unveiled the insights that respondents are not currently getting from alternative data. For example, 80% of those surveyed expressed they require more competitive insights from alternative data, and 79% hoped to get information on customer behaviour from the data. These findings show that even though many financial services professionals are using alternative data, there's a lack of understanding about how to properly analyse the information to unlock insights.

Further key findings from the survey include:

Professionals from insurance companies (74%) and hedge funds (72%) find it much easier to integrate alternative data into decision-making than those at banks (57%).

Sixty-four percent (64%) of organisations that rely on alternative data sources when building business strategies say that alternative data impacts their investing strategy, and 59% say it impacts their customer experience strategy.

Seventy-seven percent (77%) of US respondents find it easy or very easy to integrate alternative data sources into decision-making, compared to only 49% of UK respondents.

"Gone are the days where quarterly earnings reports could be relied on as the main source of data for decision-making," said Or Lenchner, CEO of Bright Data. "Financial services institutions are seeking out alternative/external data for up-to-the-minute insights that provide the most relevant, reliable and accurate data available. We've seen a significant increase in businesses within the space turning to Bright Data to collect alternative data. We look forward to continuing to empower these organisations with tailored online data that guides their most important business strategies and decisions."

The survey asked 100 employees from insurance, banking, hedge and quant funds, and loan companies about their alternative data usage. The group was representative of US and UK respondents and included employees who work within the IT and data departments of their organisations.

To learn more about how Bright Data can help financial services organisations unlock insights with alternative data, visit here.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005449/en/

Contacts:

Keren Pakes

kerenp@brightdata.com

Jacob Greenwood

brightdata@rlyl.com
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Marimaca Copper Corp. (Marimaca Copper or the Company) (TSX: MARI) is pleased to announce the assay results of the first drill hole of a five-hole program targeting extensions of sulphide mineralization below the Companys flagship Marimaca Oxide Deposit (MOD). Drilling encountered a broad zone of chalcopyrite and minor chalcocite, indicating potential for economic sulphide mineralization.

Highlights

Drill hole MAR-125 intersected 116m (expected approximate true width) at an average grade of 0.51% CuT from 162m, including two higher grade zones of: 20m with an average grade of 0.77% CuT from 162m; and 42m with an average grade of 0.92% CuT from 236m.

Intersection represents a significantly broader zone of mineralization than anticipated from earlier, nearby, sulphide drilling intersections

First drill hole of an initial five-hole campaign to test for extensions of mineralization at depth First hole designed to extend mineralization closer to sulphide zones identified in historical drilling Remaining four holes designed to test the limits of mineralization with step outs of approximately 300m at depth and between 400m and 700m along strike to the north and south of the first hole



Sulphide drilling to be completed shortly, with assay results on remaining holes expected by the end of April 2021

In response to escalating COVID situation in Chile, the Company has initiated a break in drilling which is not expected to impact the original target of testing all identified targets by the end of 1H 2021.

Sergio Rivera, VP Exploration of Marimaca Copper, commented:

The results of the first hole of this initial campaign are extremely pleasing, exceeding both the widths and grades we had projected for this zone based on earlier drilling completed nearby. The broad intercept of chalcopyrite mineralization shows good continuity downhole, with potentially economic grades, especially at the bottom of the intercept.

The drilling has also provided additional geological information, which we are using to refine our understanding of the controls of mineralization and to inform future drillhole locations, targeting mineralized extensions at depth and along strike.

The next four holes are significant step outs from the known mineralized zones outside of the Mineral Resource Estimate area and are designed to test the limits of the mineralized body, both at depth and along strike. The second hole will be collared approximately 350m to the east of MAR-125, targeting mineralization up to 300m below the current deepest mineralization. The third, fourth and fifth holes will be located between 400m and 700m to the north and south of MAR-125, aiming to test for extensions along strike.

This first hole has provided encouragement that there is potential for economically interesting sulphide mineralization at Marimaca, while the next four drill holes are designed to better delineate the tonnage potential of this.

Discussion of Campaign Objectives and Results

The current five-hole drilling campaign at the Marimaca Copper Project is designed to test for extensions to mineralization below the MOD. Based on the structural controls of the mineralization, the results of previous geophysical campaigns and earlier drilling, which extended beyond the current Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) area, the Company believes there is the potential for extensions of the mineralized body at depth across the full strike length of the MOD. All drill holes will be drilled at an azimuth of 270o and at -60o, roughly perpendicular to the north-south striking, easterly dipping mineralizing structures. Intercepts should, therefore, be relatively close to the true width of the mineralization.

Figure 1: Cross Section showing location of MAR-125 and planned MAS-003 relative to historical drilling and MRE - https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/572b37e5-f803-40a1-a2ae-4963cd448be1

The first drill hole (MAR-125) encountered a broad zone of dominantly chalcopyrite mineralization with some pyrite and minor chalcocite over a down hole width (expected to be equivalent to approximate true width) of 116m with an average grade of 0.51% CuT. This includes two zones of higher-grade mineralization including 20m with an average grade of 0.77% CuT and 42m with an average grade of 0.92% CuT at the end of the mineralized intercept. The hole was collared to test mineralization approximately 100m to the east of the earlier hole ATR-82, which intersected 44m of sulphide copper mineralization with an average grade of 1.05% CuT, and 200m and 300m east of holes ATR-93 and ATR-94 respectively, which both intersected mineralization with true widths of around 40m with average grades above 1.0% CuT. MAR-125 has demonstrated an extension to this higher-grade mineralization and provides further areas to target for follow up drilling.

MAR-125 is located in the center of the current MRE area, proximal to a zone of relatively high-grade sulphide mineralization intercepted in several drill holes over widths of between 30m and 50m. The remaining four drill holes have been located to test the limits of the mineralization by stepping out significantly at depth and along strike beyond the current MRE area. The collar of the second hole, MAS-03, is located approximately 100m to the south and 350m to the east of MAR-125 and is aimed to intersect mineralization approximately 300m below MAR-125. MAS-02 and MAS-04, located approximately 400m and 700m, respectively, south of MAR-125, and are planned as significant step outs along strike, targeting the conductivity high noted in the IP survey completed across the MOD

Figure 2: Plan View of Drillhole Locations - https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/6744bbff-91a6-4c0b-a107-5f87741f5a82

Sampling and Assay Protocol

True widths cannot be determined with the information available at this time. Marimaca Copper RC holes were sampled on a 2-metre continuous basis, with dry samples riffle split on site and one quarter sent to the Andes Analytical Assay preparation laboratory in Calama and the pulps then sent to the same company laboratory in Santiago for assaying. A second quarter was stored on site for reference. Samples were prepared using the following standard protocol: drying; crushing to better than 85% passing -10#; homogenizing; splitting; pulverizing a 500-700g subsample to 95% passing -150#; and a 125g split of this sent for assaying. All samples were assayed for CuT (total copper), CuS (acid soluble copper) by AAS. A full QA/QC program, involving insertion of appropriate blanks, standards and duplicates was employed with acceptable results. Pulps and sample rejects are stored by Marimaca Copper for future reference.

Qualified Person

The technical information in this news release, including the information that relates to geology, drilling and mineralization was prepared under the supervision of, or has been reviewed by Sergio Rivera, Vice President of Exploration, Marimaca Copper Corp, a geologist with more than 36 years of experience and a member of the Colegio de Geologos de Chile and of the Institute of Mining Engineers of Chile, and who is the Qualified Person for the purposes of NI 43-101 responsible for the design and execution of the drilling program.

Mr. Rivera confirms that he has visited the Marimaca Project on numerous occasions, is responsible for the information contained in this news release and consents to its publication.

Contact Information

For further information please visit www.marimaca.com or contact:

Tavistock

+44 (0) 207 920 3150

Jos Simson/Emily Moss

marimaca@tavistock.co.uk

Forward Looking Statements

This news release includes certain forward-looking statements under applicable Canadian securities legislation. These statements relate to future events or the Companys future performance, business prospects or opportunities. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, the impact of a rebranding of the Company, the future development and exploration potential of the Marimaca Project. Actual future results may differ materially. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Forward-looking statements reflect the beliefs, opinions and projections on the date the statements are made and are based upon a number of assumptions and estimates that, while considered reasonable by Marimaca Copper, are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties and contingencies. Many factors, both known and unknown, could cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or achievements that are or may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and the parties have made assumptions and estimates based on or related to many of these factors. Such factors include, without limitation: risks related to share price and market conditions, the inherent risks involved in the mining, exploration and development of mineral properties, the uncertainties involved in interpreting drilling results and other geological data, fluctuating metal prices, the possibility of project delays or cost overruns or unanticipated excessive operating costs and expenses, uncertainties related to the necessity of financing, the availability of and costs of financing needed in the future as well as those factors disclosed in the Companys documents filed from time to time with the securities regulators in the Provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Marimaca Copper undertakes no obligation to update publicly or otherwise revise any forward-looking statements contained herein whether as a result of new information or future events or otherwise, except as may be required by law.
BOSTON, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Mirakl, the industry's first and most advanced enterprise marketplace SaaS platform, today announced that United Natural Foods, Inc. (UNFI) has launched Community Marketplace by UNFI, the first wholesale food marketplace in North America. Powered by the Mirakl Marketplace Platform, the new marketplace strengthens UNFI's position as North America's premier food wholesaler by increasing scale, reach and selection, with a unique focus on hyperlocal producers and products.

UNFI is the largest publicly traded wholesale distributor of natural, organic and specialty foods in the U.S. and Canada, and curates and supplies more than 250,000 items to 30,000 retailers. With the sharp acceleration of eCommerce over the last year, wholesalers like UNFI have worked overtime to support suppliers and retailers in the rapidly evolving foodscape. The company saw significant growth in 2020, due in large part to growth in demand for healthy food products, and the marketplace launch is well-timed to further address and meet those demands. The new wholesale food marketplace will uniquely position UNFI through eCommerce and the underlying power of Mirakl's technology to expand their customer base and product offerings, meet existing customers' needs through wider assortments, and ultimately increase gross merchandise value (GMV).

"The past year has underscored the importance of expanding product offerings online and creating new ways to meet evolving consumer trends and demands," said Tom Kraus, vice president of e-commerce at UNFI. "With the scale, agility and operational efficiencies that businesses need to expand product offerings and meet consumer needs, Mirakl will be indispensable as UNFI looks to provide more hyperlocal products online faster to the retailers using our platform."

Community Marketplace by UNFI will be integrated into UNFI's existing eCommerce website , UNFI EasyOptions, to increase overall product assortments and improve customer experience, while also maximizing analytics and operational intelligence capabilities. UNFI's expanded marketplace will feature the streamlined vendor onboarding required to open up opportunities for emerging and hyperlocal small- and medium-sized business (SMB) suppliers. On the back end, the improved marketplace will streamline administration and technological processes to make operations more efficient for supplier management teams.

"The grocery and wholesale industry has been a focal point of the seismic digital and eCommerce evolutions of the past year, and leading companies like UNFI have been working overtime to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to eCommerce offerings," said Adrien Nussenbaum, co-founder and U.S. CEO, Mirakl. "As the first major North American food wholesaler to offer such a marketplace, we're excited to help UNFI set the standard for marketplace operations, not just in grocery and wholesale, but across the eCommerce landscape."

Strategic commerce agency McFadyen Digital served as the systems integration partner on the Community Marketplace by UNFI, working closely with Mirakl to ensure on time development and rapid deployment of the large-scale wholesale food marketplace.

"Through our partnership with Mirakl, we've been able to combine our industry expertise to deliver a world-class enterprise platform that helps marketplaces like UNFI's launch, scale, and evolve," said Tom McFadyen, president and CEO of McFadyen Digital. "It's always exciting to work with innovative organizations and we look forward to seeing how this new UNFI marketplace connects their communities and customers in new ways."

The latest marketplace insight and views can be found on the Mirakl blog . For more business developments and updates, follow Mirakl on LinkedIn, Twitter , and YouTube.

About United Natural Foods, Inc.

UNFI is North America's premier food wholesaler delivering the widest variety of products to customer locations throughout North America including natural product superstores, independent retailers, conventional supermarket chains, eCommerce retailers, and food service customers. By providing this deeper 'full-store' selection and compelling brands for every aisle, UNFI is uniquely positioned to deliver great food, more choices, and fresh thinking to customers everywhere. Today, UNFI is the largest publicly-traded grocery distributor in America. To learn more about how UNFI is Moving Food Forward, visit www.unfi.com.

About Mirakl

Mirakl offers the industry's first and most advanced enterprise marketplace SaaS platform. With Mirakl, organizations across B2B and B2C industries can launch marketplaces faster, grow bigger, and operate with confidence as they exceed rising customer expectations. Platforms are the new competitive advantage in eCommerce, and the world's most trusted brands choose Mirakl for its comprehensive solution of technology, expertise, and the Mirakl Connect ecosystem to unlock the power of the platform business model for them. As a result, companies like ABB, Astore by AccorHotels, Best Buy Canada, Carrefour, Catch Group, Changi Airport, Darty, The Kroger Co., Leroy Merlin, Maisons du Monde, Metro, and Toyota Material Handling gain the speed, scale and agility to win in the changing eCommerce landscape. For more information, visit www.mirakl.com.

Media Contacts:

Maya Pattison Tom Hannigan Vice President, Corporate Marketing Bateman Agency for Mirakl [email protected] [email protected] +1-844-264-7255 +1-857-526-6636

SOURCE Mirakl

Related Links

https://www.mirakl.com


The verdict was read out in the country's largest courtroom which was especially built to hear coup trials at Sincan prison complex in Ankara province.

A Turkish court on Wednesday jailed 32 former soldiers for life in a mass trial involving nearly 500 military defendants implicated in a failed 2016 bid to oust President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In one of the last mammoth trials stemming from a bloody night that turned Erdogan on a more authoritarian course and set off a wave of arrests that continue to this day, an Ankara court heard evidence against the presidential guard.

The putsch attempt included a raid on Turkey's main state television broadcaster, whose newscaster was forced to read out a statement from the military junta leaders.

Although both the presidential palace and the parliament building were bombed, Erdogan escaped capture because he was on holiday in a Turkish seaside resort town.

The private DHA and state Anadolu new agencies said 32 suspects received life terms.

A lawyer for the president initially told AFP 22 suspects had received life sentences before a more detailed verdict was reported by the agencies later on Wednesday.

These included former lieutenant colonel Umit Gencer, convicted of "violating the constitutional order" by making TRT television read out a "coup declaration".

The court also handed ex-major Fedakar Akca an aggravated life sentence for leading a team from the regiment to the general staff headquarters on the night on July 15, 2016, Anadolu reported.

Former colonel Muhammet Tanju Poshor received his sentence for directing the occupation of the TRT building.

Poshor was given a separate aggravated life sentence for the crime of attempting to "assassinate the president".

An aggravated life sentence, which has tougher terms of detention, replaced the death penalty after it was abolished in 2004.

Another ex-major, Osman Koltarla, was in charge of the presidential palace's security at the time. The court handed him a life sentence.

Anadolu said 106 suspects were given sentences of between six and 16 years in jail for other crimes.

Story continues

- Final Ankara trial -

The verdict was read out in the country's largest courtroom which was especially built to hear coup trials at Sincan prison complex in Ankara province.

The case into the regiment began in October 2017, with 243 hearings, the state news agency said.

According to Anadolu, the end of the trial marks the end of the cases heard in the capital, nearly five years later.

In an unprecedented legal process, more than 2,500 suspects have been given life sentences in trials across Turkey, the indictments spanning thousands of pages.

The failed coup left some 250 people dead, excluding 24 putschists killed on the night.

Turkey accuses US-based Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen of masterminding the failed coup, a claim he strongly denies.

Tens of thousands of people have been arrested over alleged links to Gulen since 2016, and the police raids continue, drawing constant criticism from Turkey's Western allies.

More than 100,000 people have also been sacked or suspended from the public sector over similar allegations.

The aftermath of the coup attempt has transformed every aspect of contemporary Turkish politics, with Erdogan becoming especially sensitive to the military's role in the country's political life.

Earlier this week he accused 104 retired admirals of "hinting at a political coup" after they criticised his plans for a new canal in Istanbul.

Police have arrested 10 of the former navy commanders and ordered four others to turn themselves in.

raz/zak/jj
After a pandemic shook Canada's economy, schools and health-care system to the core, the tax-slashing Pallister government has, as promised, left money on the kitchen table for some Manitobans.

After a pandemic shook Canada's economy, schools and health-care system to the core, the tax-slashing Pallister government has, as promised, left money on the kitchen table for some Manitobans.

It has done so with tax cuts, an overhaul of the education system and a half-billion dollars in relief from the federal government. While the province giveth, it has also taketh away. In December, the online services that kept Manitobans entertained throughout the COVID-19 restrictions and lockdown will be taxed by the province.

Here are a dozen things to know about Budget 2021:

1. Property owners to get a 25 per cent tax rebate

Approximately $248 million in education property tax rebates will be provided to 658,000 residential and farm property owners as the province phases out the education property tax. Property owners will automatically receive a 25 per cent rebate cheque on their education property taxes in the same month or sooner that municipal property taxes are due, followed by another 25 per cent rebate cheque issued in 2022.

2. What about renters?

To offset the 25 per cent education property tax rebate that benefits landlords, the province is freezing annual rent increases for 2022 and 2023. Landlords can still apply for an above-guideline increase if "material improvements" are made to a property.

3. Taxing streaming services, online shopping, accommodations

Starting Dec. 1, retail sales tax will apply to audio and video streaming services such as Netflix. The province will also require online marketplaces to collect and remit retail sales tax on the sale of taxable goods sold by third parties on their electronic platforms. Online accommodation platforms such as Airbnb will also be required to collect and remit sales tax on the booking of taxable accommodations starting Dec. 1.

4. Spend less to look better

The province is removing retail sales tax for personal services starting Dec. 1. That includes hair services, non-medical skin care, body modifications and spa services.

5. Sales tax revenue up, federal transfers way up

The province is expecting to collect $250 million more in retail sales tax revenue this year ($2.2 billion) than last year ($2 billion) as Manitoba recovers from the pandemic. The government is also expecting a whopping $504-million increase in federal transfers.

6. Pandemic drains provincial piggy bank

The province's net income is expected to plummet by $600 million to $1.6 billion this year from $2.2 billion last year. Part of that is due to $1.2-billion budget for COVID-19 expenditures. Overall revenue is projected to increase to $17.84 billion from the forecast $17.48 billion. Expenditures are expected to rise to $18.2 billion from $17.9 billion in the last fiscal year.

7. More money for COVID-19 fight

The province has budgeted $1.2 billion for pandemic-related health and education costs:

 $230 million for personal protective equipment, testing and vaccine site infrastructure, contact tracing and other preparations as part of the province's overall public-health response

 $350 million for additional health-care systems costs in preparation for a potential third wave of COVID-19

 $160 million to support school and education needs over the current and next school years

 $100 million for the vaccine program

 $40 million for Manitoba Restart Program capital initiatives at the municipal level.

 $300 million will be set aside for unexpected expenses.

8. Debt-to-GDP ratio increase

Prior to the pandemic, Manitoba's debt-to-GDP was forecast to be 34.2 per cent. Due to COVID-19, the ratio is expected to be 38.8 per cent. The pandemic and resulting restrictions saw Manitoba's GDP decline by 5.3 per cent last year  the worst downturn in modern history. A strong economic forecast is expected to result in a 4.1 per cent increase in real GDP in 2021 followed by 3.6 per cent growth in 2022.

This past year, capital spending on buildings in Manitoba increased by 13 per cent, exports to China rose by 81 per cent after trade battles the year before and, in manufacturing sales, Manitoba was first in the country at -3.2 per cent.

9. Vehicle owners get a break

Vehicle registration fees will be reduced by 10 per cent for renewals starting June 30, following a 10 per cent reduction last year. The reduction includes registration fees for non-commercial and passenger vehicles, trucks, trailers, motorcycles/mopeds and off-road vehicles.

10. Business owners get a break

The province is lowering payroll taxes for small businesses. The exemption threshold is being raised to $1.75 million of annual payroll from $1.5 million. The threshold below which employers pay a reduced rate is being raised to $3.5 million from $3 million. The small business venture capital tax credit is being increased to $500,000 maximum eligible investment to help businesses raise business growth equity.

11. Young diabetics get a break

Budget 2021 includes funding for glucose monitors for eligible Manitobans under the age of 25 with Type 1 diabetes. The province is increasing the age limit for the insulin pump program to 25 from 18.

12. Teachers get a break, sort of

A new refundable Teaching Expense Tax Credit allows K-12 teachers and child-care educators to claim a 15 per cent refund for up to $1,000 on eligible teaching supplies that are not reimbursed by their employers, to a maximum $150 rebate.
Samantha Armytage said goodbye to Sunrise last month after more than eight years co-hosting the Channel Seven breakfast show.

But she appears to have continued her successful media career in the form of her new 'Something To Talk About' podcast with Stellar magazine.

On Tuesday, the 44-year-old celebrated being named Spotify ANZ's local 'podcast of the week'.

Scroll down for video

Who needs Sunrise? Former TV host Samantha Armytage (pictured) has celebrated her new podcast's recent success at being announced as 'Spotify's pick of the week'

So far Sam's podcast has included high-profile guests such as former politician Julie Bishop, actor Hugh Sheridan and NRL legend Steve Roach.

'@sam_armytage talks to a line up of experts, famous friends and everyday Aussies on an array of subjects in a conversational and in-depth forum on this weeks Podcast Of The Week,' Spotify ANZ's page captioned a shout-out to the TV star on Wednesday.

Last month, Sam waxed lyrical about her new career path as a podcaster, explaining to Stellar magazine: 'I've had a very good response from everyone I know.'

'I'm loving this long-form journalism. There's a real freedom to it': Samantha, 44, (pictured) gushed over the 'freedom' offered by her new career as a podcaster after quitting her role hosting Seven's Sunrise last month

'People seem to be enjoying the podcast and I'm really thrilled with how many people are tuning in,' she added.

Samantha's podcast was launched last month, and was in the top five on the Australian podcast charts at the time.

'I'm loving this long-form journalism. There's a real freedom to it. It's really just like having a chat with a mate,' she explained to Stellar.

'I've had a very good response from everyone': Samantha's podcast was launched in partnership with Stellar, and was in the top five on the Australian podcast charts at the time

It's been four weeks since Samantha sensationally revealed she was quitting Seven's breakfast show Sunrise in order to reclaim 'peace' and 'calm' in her life.

She marked her last day on Sunrise on March 11, and broke down in tears during an emotional goodbye.

As she bid farewell to her viewers, the presenter made special mention of the 'bullying' Australian media.

Gone: Samantha marked her last day on Sunrise on March 11 and broke down in tears during an emotional farewell

Emotional: Sam, who was supported by her husband, Richard Lavender, and her Sunrise co-hosts on her last day, took aim at the wider Australian media as she bid farewell to viewers

'I do want to say that I never fully understood some of the scrutiny and the snarkiness and the bullying from some aspects of the media,' she added.

She continued: 'But today we move on from that, because there is a new chapter starting and it has been overwhelmingly a good experience in my life.'

'Most of all, I thank all of our viewers. You are just wonderful people. There are so many lovely people. So many more lovely ones than the nasty ones.'

New focus: She had announced her resignation live on air in early March, saying she wanted to step back from TV to spend more time with her family

Sam, who joined Sunrise in 2013, spoke about the toxic environment of the TV industry in an article for the News Corp-owned Stellar magazine in February.

'There's a lot about television that's all about you and that's an awful way to live your life. TV isn't a place that's necessarily very healthy,' she said.

'It's full of sociopaths and narcissists. It can be a dangerous environment, let me tell you.'

Sunrise newsreader Natalie Barr was confirmed as Samantha's permanent replacement on the breakfast show.

Cha-ching! Sam's last day on Sunrise on March 11, but her $800,000-a-year contract with Seven doesn't expire until October
Lucidea, parent company to a portfolio of market-leading knowledge management, library automation, and collections management software products welcomes Bailey Solutions, Ltd. into their family of companies.

The Lucidea group has over 3,000 clients in more than 50 countries, and delivers a range of complementary products suitable for the library, knowledge management, archives, and museum sectors.

Penny Bailey, Managing Director of Bailey Solutions says, "We are very pleased and looking forward to this next exciting new chapter. Joining Lucidea brings great benefits for us and our clients including access to additional financial resources, ability to expand internationally and ongoing product development."

Per Ron Aspe, Lucidea's CEO, "Lucidea joined forces with Bailey Solutions Ltd. because we enthusiastically believe in its management and products. We look forward to helping Bailey expand its customer base around the world."

Ms. Bailey will remain as Managing Director of Bailey Solutions, with the same staff. Their two library systems, Simple Little Library System and KnowAll Matrix, will be actively supported and sold, and clients will be looked after by the same Bailey Solutions support team. Client data will continue to be stored on the same UK or European located servers, and managed by the same hosted system platform subcontractors.

Kenyon Group, LLC served as exclusive financial advisor to Lucidea and arranged this transaction.

About Bailey Solutions:

Bailey Solutions incorporated in 2002 and has nearly 300 clients across the UK and Europe. The company works closely with clients to produce two modern library management systems: Simple Little Library System for small libraries and KnowAll Matrix for medium size libraries. The company also sells library barcode scanners, cards and labels.

About Lucidea:

Lucidea is the market-leading developer of a full portfolio of world class KM and library automation solutions including Inmagic Presto, DB/TextWorks, Sydney Enterprise, and GeniePlus, along with comprehensive museum and archival collections management systems Argus, CuadraSTAR SKCA, Eloquent Archives, and ArchivEra.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005377/en/

Contacts:

Mark Maslowski

Marketing Manager

604-278-6717

mmaslowski@lucidea.com
(Newser)  After suffering burns over almost his entire body in a horrific accident in Mexico, American citizen Alexis Hernandez was flown to the US for treatmentand later received an unexpected bill for $1.7 million. The 24-year-old spent seven months at the US Army's Institute of Surgical Research in San Antonio, Texas after the January 2019 fire and received 19 surgeries and hundreds of hours of physical therapy, CBS reports. But when he returned home to Puerto Rico, he found that the insurance he had through his father's job as a police officer wouldn't pay because the accident happened in Mexico, and the government wanted him to send a check for $1.7 million to the Treasury Department.

story continues below

Hernandez says the accident happened just two days after he arrived in Guadalajara to study to be a doctor. He says a boiler exploded and he almost lost his life as he ran through the burning apartment looking for a way out. Hernandez says he had to "learn how to walk, how to eat, how to breathe, how to see, how to dress myself, how to do everything again." He says he still dreams of becoming a doctor, but he felt "completely hopeless" when he got the letter from the government. "$1,734,769.82. That's the price that I have to pay for surviving," he tweeted Wednesday. "I have questioned whether I should have survived or not." His local representative has not received a response to letters sent to the Treasury and other departments asking for the debt to be forgiven. (Read more healthcare stories.)
[April 07, 2021] Canada and FCM Invest in National Capital Region's First Net-Zero Community

OTTAWA, ON, April 7, 2021 /CNW/ - In communities across the country, Canadians are experiencing the impacts of climate change. By investing in new technologies and projects that lower emissions, we can create good, middle-class jobs and build a low-emissions energy future and economy. This commitment is more important than ever as we plan our recovery from the COVID-19 crisis. The Honourable Seamus O'Regan Jr., Minister of Natural Resources; the Honourable Catherine McKenna, Minister of Infrastructure and Communities; and Garth Frizzell, President of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), today announced a $23-million investment to Hydro Ottawa through FCM's Green Municipal Fund (GMF) to create a district energy (DE) system for OttawaGatineau's carbon-neutral Zibi waterfront development. This innovative DE system will help achieve Zibi's environmental objectives of transforming 34 acres of brownfield lands between Ottawa and Gatineau's urban core into the National Capital Region's first net-zero community. The DE system will eliminate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from building heating and cooling operations by leveraging locally generated hydroelectricity, river-coupled cooling from the Ottawa River and waste industrial heat from the local Kruger Products plant. This project shows that the GMF continues to build on its 20-year record of supporting transformative environmental initiatives at the municipal level. The Government of Canada has invested $1.65 billion in the GMF since its inception, enabling municipalities to support projects like this that leverage local resources to drive innovative solutions. The government continues to support smarter energy initiatives that build a healthier and cleaner future while also creating new jobs and economic growth for all Canadians. Quotes "Improvements in energy efficiency will get us a third of the way to our Paris targets. OttawaGatineau's first net-zero community will lower emissions and increase the viability of district energy systems.



Seamus O'Regan Jr.

Canada's Minister of Natural Resources "Investing in innovative solutions to reduce emissions is critical to tackling climate change. The Zibi project will develop the National Capital Region's first district energy system to provide zero-carbon heating and cooling to residents, and it is positioned to be the most sustainable community in Canada. In partnership with the FCM, federal funding will help make this exciting project a reality, creating jobs and building a cleaner, more inclusive community right here in the heart of Ottawa."

Catherine McKenna

Canada's Minister of Infrastructure and Communities "Municipalities are leaders on climate change and want to see tangible actions that support local efforts to reduce GHG emissions. This is one of the biggest investments made by FCM's Green Municipal Fund. We're delivering world-recognized programs that help communities do what they do best: deliver solutions that work. Projects like the Zibi district energy system could be replicated and scaled up across the country for deep national impact." Garth Frizzell

President, Federation of Canadian Municipalities "The Zibi project represents the kind of community development we want to have in Gatineau, thanks to the effort being made to reduce its environmental footprint. The funding announced today will strengthen this environmental aspect of the project by supporting an innovative and energy-efficient heating solution." Maxime Pedneaud-Jobin

Mayor of Gatineau "This project is a wonderful example of how local and federal government, private industry and our local utilities can successfully collaborate on the creation of transformative green infrastructure. I want to take this opportunity to recognize and thank the Government of Canada, and FCM, for their support and funding for this groundbreaking and innovative green project." Laura Dudas

Deputy Mayor of Ottawa "At Hydro Ottawa, we believe it is our responsibility to help build a vibrant and sustainable capital and provide our customers and our community with a clean supply of energy that powers the future responsibly and protects our environment. As the local utility, we have the expertise to help elevate the economic prosperity of our city, not only with the reliable power we provide but also with the kinds of projects we invest in, infrastructure we build and partnerships we enter into. We also have the expertise to carve a path forward into that clean and sustainable energy future. This successful funding from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities' Green Municipal Fund in support of the Zibi Community Utility proves that we are investing in the right kinds of projects with the right partners. I couldn't be more proud." Bryce Conrad

Chief Executive Officer, Ottawa Hydro "We are grateful to the Government of Canada and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities' Green Municipal Fund for this funding, which brings us closer to meeting our vision for creating a sustainability showpiece in the heart of the nation's capital. Our hope is that Zibi's Community Utility will not only achieve net-zero heating and cooling within Zibi but also that our project will become a model for communities around the world on how to create innovative partnerships that help them do the same." Jeff Westeinde

President, Zibi Associated Links Zibi District Energy  Post Industrial Waste Heat Recovery

Canada's Energy Future

Energy Future Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM)

Green Municipal Fund (GMF) Follow us on Twitter: @NRCan (http://twitter.com/nrcan) SOURCE Natural Resources Canada

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
A New Hampshire man is facing charges after police said he robbed a bank in Shrewsbury.

The robbery happened at the TD Bank at 200 Boston Turnpike just before 1 p.m. Tuesday, Shrewsbury police said in a statement released Wednesday.

The suspect, later identified as Stephen Waterman, 53 of Troy, New Hampshire, allegedly passed a note demanding money and ran off with an undisclosed amount of cash, police said. It does not appear that any weapons were displayed and no one was injured.

About 17 minutes after the robbery was reported, Worcester police detained Waterman on Myrtle Street in Worcester, the statement said. Shrewsbury officers got to Myrtle Street and identified Waterman as the suspect.

Waterman is charged with unarmed robbery.
Still, the Democratic governor, who has overseen some of the most restrictive pandemic rules in the country, said it was time to forge ahead because the states infection rate is among the lowest in the U.S. and 20 million vaccines have been administered so far.
Toronto, April 06, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- BDO Canada LLP is proud to welcome DVP Capital Inc., an independent mid-market investment bank and financial advisory firm, as a strategic partner. DVPs three-plus decades in the tech M&A space will strengthen an already impressive group in BDOs Transaction Advisory Services practice.

Were thrilled to have DVPs deep experience and qualifications in our corner to serve our clients, said Michael Morrow, Managing Director, Transaction Advisory Services at BDO Canada. DVPs decades of experience interacting with the technology communities in Canada, the U.S., Europe, and Asia will help us and our clients.

The partnership will allow BDO to serve a larger and growing segment of Canadian technology companies while giving DVP founder and principal, Derek van der Plaat, added capabilities and international reach to better serve Canadian entrepreneurs.

Canadas technology sector is vibrant, diverse, and highly regarded globally, particularly in the areas of financial technologies, clean tech, and healthcare tech, said van der Plaat. I am looking forward to working with the team at BDO to build a market leader in these high-growth sectors of the economy.

Technology is critical to our client base and their future plans, said Morrow. More and more, technology is intersecting with other industries and playing a larger role in shaping the organizations of tomorrow. Dereks extensive experience with capital raising and helping privately held tech companies grow and monetize their business will bring significant value to our clients in the technology industry.

For more information, please contact:

Michael Morrow

Managing Director, Transaction Advisory Services

BDO Canada

About BDO

BDO Canada LLP is a leading provider of professional services to clients of all sizes in virtually all business sectors. Our team delivers a comprehensive range of assurance, accounting, tax, and advisory services, complemented by a deep industry knowledge gained from 100 years of working within local communities.

As part of the international BDO network, we're able to provide seamless and consistent cross-border services to clients with global needs. With over 90,000 people working out of more than 1,600 offices in over 160 countries, the network generates worldwide revenue of USD $10.3 billion.
The Panama Papers refers to the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation that looked into matters of alleged international tax crimes that centered around a law firm based in the country of Panama. Despite having 35 offices across the globe, the law firm of Mossack Fonseca was not widely recognized. However, it would later be discovered that this law firm played a major role in the alleged facilitation of tax evasion and other tax-related legal violations.

The investigation spearheaded by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) uncovered that the firm started by Jurgen Mossack and Ramon Fonseca allegedly helped politicians, well-known celebrities, drug and arms dealers, and others increase their wealth by using tax havens. Journalists were tipped off by an unnamed whistleblower who provided over 11 million documents such as bank statements and passport photos that were used when engaging in questionable business dealings.

As a result, many high-profile figures were arrested or forced to step down from their positions. For example, the Prime Minister of Iceland resigned, and the Prime Minister of Pakistan was eventually convicted for corruption. Mossack Fonseca would close its doors in 2017 amid the scandal.

The Panama Papers investigation and convictions serve as a reminder that taxpayers who seek to evade taxes using a complex scheme of offshore banking and non-disclosed foreign entities and investments may find that they face exposure. If you believe that you will be (or are) the subject of a high risk foreign account audit or criminal tax investigation, contact the dually licensed International Tax Attorneys and CPAs at the Tax Law Offices of David W. Klasing by calling (800) 681-1295 or scheduling online HERE.

See the full version of this article here.

Public Contact: Dave Klasing Esq. M.S.-Tax CPA, [email protected]

SOURCE Tax Law Offices of David W. Klasing, PC

Related Links

klasing-associates.com


An expert in the use of force by police has faulted the actions of former Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin in last year's deadly arrest of George Floyd, testifying that no force should have been used after Floyd was handcuffed and prone.

Los Angeles Police Department Sergeant Jody Stiger appeared as a prosecution witness at Chauvin's murder trial on Wednesday, offering testimony intended to show that the defendant disregarded his training when he knelt on Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes last May.

Stiger told jurors that Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, posed no immediate threat and was not actively resisting when Chauvin used deadly force on him.

"My opinion was that no force was reasonable in that position," Stiger testified. "The pressure ... caused by the body weight could cause positional asphyxia and could cause death."

Read More

Floyd's death, captured on a video widely viewed on social media, prompted protests against racism and police brutality in many cities across the United States and around the world.

Chauvin, who is white, has pleaded not guilty to murder and manslaughter charges, arguing that he was following the training he had received in his 19 years on the police force. Three other officers on the scene have been charged with aiding and abetting murder and will stand trial later this year.

Chauvin and the three other officers were attempting to arrest Floyd on suspicion of using a fake $20 bill to buy cigarettes at a food store. They were fired the day after the incident.

Stiger, who has reviewed 2,500 cases in which police used force, resumed his testimony after first appearing on Tuesday.

Prosecutor Steve Schleicher asked Stiger to describe several photographs showing officers restraining Floyd. Stiger testified that it appeared Chauvin's use of force was excessive.

"He was handcuffed, not attempting to resist, not attempting to assault officers, kick, punch of that nature," Stiger said of Floyd.

Stiger also testified that Chauvin squeezed Floyd's hand to get him to comply with the officer's orders while he was handcuffed in the prone position. Stiger testified that Floyd did not appear to have an opportunity to comply.

"At that point it was just pain," Stiger said.

Stiger also testified that members of the crowd gathered at the scene did not figure into his assessment of the situation since they did not pose a threat.

Records showed Chauvin completed 867 hours of police training. Stiger said that was "absolutely" enough time to prepare him for this situation.

Questioned by defense lawyer Eric Nelson, Stiger agreed that a police officer needs to take into account various factors during a fluid situation when considering using force.

"It has to be proportional," Stiger said. "You are constantly reassessing during the time frame."

Stiger also agreed with Nelson that Chauvin came upon such a situation in which a suspect was actively resisting officers who were trying to put him into a police squad car as people in a crowd yelled insults at them, posing a "potential threat."

Nelson showed Stiger photographs taken at different times of the incident showing Chauvin with his knee on Floyd. Nelson asked Stiger whether he agreed that Chauvin's knee was on Floyd's shoulder blades rather than his neck.

"It appears to be more above the shoulder blades than on the shoulder blades," Stiger testified, not agreeing with Nelson.

Prosecutors then called Senior Special Agent James Reyerson, an expert on the police use of force at the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Reyerson said on the night of the incident he was called to Minneapolis City Hall where he began to collect evidence and photograph Chauvin.




Press Release  Paris, April 7, 2021



Convening to Combined Shareholders Meeting of April 29, 2021

Danone Combined Shareholders Meeting is convened on Thursday, April 29, 2021 at 2:30 p.m. (Paris time), at the headquarters  17 boulevard Haussmann, 75009 Paris. In the context of the Covid-19 health crisis, this Shareholders Meeting will be held exceptionally behind closed doors.

The preliminary notice of meeting was published in the French Bulletin des Annonces Legales Obligatoires (BALO) of March 22, 2021 and was followed by a complementary notice published in the BALO of March 31, 2021. The notice of meeting was published in the BALO of April 7, 2021.

An additional item (without resolution submitted to the shareholders vote) has been included on the agenda of the Shareholders meeting following a request from several shareholders. This additional item and the arguments of the shareholders requesting the inclusion of this item on the agenda, as well as the comments of the Board of Directors, are included in an addendum to the notice of meeting published today on Danone's website at the following address:

https://www.danone.com/fr/investor-relations/shareholders/shareholders-meeting.html.

Special procedures for the holding of the Shareholders Meeting

Pursuant to French Order No. 2020-321 of March 25, 2020 and Decree No. 2020-418 of April 10, 2020, as extended by Decree No. 2021-255 of March 9, 2021, the Shareholders Meeting of April 29, 2021 will be held exceptionally behind closed doors, without shareholders and any persons entitled to attend being physically present.

Shareholders are informed that, in accordance with the applicable legal and regulatory provisions, Amundi Asset Management and the FCPE Fonds Danone, shareholders of the Company, will serve as scrutineers for the Shareholders Meeting.

The Shareholders Meeting will be webcast live and recorded for later viewing, in French and English, on Danone's website at the following address:

https://www.danone.com/investor-relations/shareholders/shareholders-meeting.html.

Information of the shareholders

Information relating to this meeting may be consulted on Danones website:

https://www.danone.com/investor-relations/shareholders/shareholders-meeting.html.

In particular, the notice of meeting including the agenda, the draft resolutions submitted to the Shareholders Meeting and the report of the Board of Directors on these resolutions, may be consulted on this page.

The documents that must be made available to shareholders in the context of this Shareholders Meeting will be available under the conditions and within the time limits provided for by the relevant legal and regulatory provisions.

Written questions

Each shareholder may as of now send any written questions he/she/it wishes to the Company. Written questions must be sent to the Chairman of the Board of Directors, by registered letter with acknowledgement of receipt, to the following address: Danone  Direction Juridique Corporate, 15, rue du Helder, 75439 Paris Cedex 09, France, or by email to assemblee2021@danone.com, so that it be received by the Company at the latest on Tuesday, April 27, 2021. The questions must be sent together with a share registration certificate.

The responses to shareholders written questions will be published on the Companys website in the section dedicated to the 2021 Shareholders Meeting accessible at the following address: https://www.danone.com/investor-relations/shareholders/shareholders-meeting.html.

The publication will be available as soon as possible at the end of the Shareholders Meeting and, at the latest, by the end of the fifth working day following the Meeting, i.e. on Thursday, May 6, 2021.

Shareholders are informed that, in accordance with regulatory provisions and exceptionally in the context of the Covid-19 health crisis, it will not be possible to ask questions and to propose new resolutions during the Shareholders Meeting.

Voting procedures

The voting procedures are described in the notice of meeting available on Danones website in the section dedicated to the 2021 Shareholders Meeting at the following address: https://www.danone.com/investor-relations/shareholders/shareholders-meeting.html. The voting procedures are summarized below.

Shareholders can exercise their voting right prior to the Shareholders Meeting following one of the three methods:

by voting by correspondence via the voting form or by Internet via the VOTACCESS secure platform;

by giving proxy to any individual or legal person who will vote prior to the Shareholders Meeting; or

by giving proxy to the Chairman of the Meeting.

No admission card will be delivered for this Meeting.

Considering the exceptional context, shareholders are strongly invited to vote or give a proxy by electronic means.

It should be noted that only shareholders holding a share registration certificate, either in their name or in the name of their authorized intermediary acting on their behalf, as of Tuesday, April 27, 2021, at 00:00 (Paris time), may cast their vote for the Shareholders Meeting.

Vote or give a proxy by electronic means

Shareholders may communicate their voting instructions, and appoint or revoke a proxy on the Internet, via the VOTACCESS secure platform, under the following conditions:

For shareholders with registered shares (pure or administered): holders of pure or administered registered shares wishing to vote online will access the VOTACESS secure platform via the Planetshares website at the following address: https://planetshares.bnpparibas.com.



holders of pure or administered registered shares wishing to vote online will access the VOTACESS secure platform via the Planetshares website at the following address: https://planetshares.bnpparibas.com. For shareholders with bearer shares: they shall consult their account-holding institution in order to know whether their institution is connected or not to the VOTACCESS platform and, in such case, whether this access is subject to specific terms of use. If the account-holding institution is connected to the VOTACCESS platform, shareholders shall log on to the account-holding institutions website with their usual login ID and follow the on-screen instructions to access to the VOTACCESS platform and vote, appoint or revoke a proxy online. If the account-holding institution is not connected to the VOTACCESS platform, the notification of appointment or revocation of a proxy may be completed by electronic means to the following address:

they shall consult their account-holding institution in order to know whether their institution is connected or not to the VOTACCESS platform and, in such case, whether this access is subject to specific terms of use.

paris.bp2s.france.cts.mandats@bnpparibas.com, under the conditions described in the notice of meeting available on Danones website in the section dedicated to the Shareholders Meeting:

https://www.danone.com/investor-relations/shareholders/shareholders-meeting.html.



The VOTACCESS website is open since April 7, 2021 and the opportunity to vote online before the Shareholders Meeting will expire on Wednesday, April 28, 2021 at 3:00 p.m. (Paris time).

Vote or give a proxy by postal means

Shareholders who wish to vote by correspondence or be represented by giving a proxy to the Chairman of the Meeting or to a third-party may:

For shareholders with registered shares (pure or administered): send back the correspondence/proxy voting form, which will be sent with the notice of meeting, to BNP Paribas Securities Services, Service Assemblees Generales.



send back the correspondence/proxy voting form, which will be sent with the notice of meeting, to BNP Paribas Securities Services, Service Assemblees Generales. For shareholders with bearer shares: request the correspondence/ proxy voting form to the intermediary managing their securities account. Shareholders shall send back this voting form duly completed to their account-holding institution. Their account-holding institution will then send this form, together with a certificate of participation, to BNP Paribas Securities Services, Service Assemblees Generales.

Specific voting procedures for proxies other than the Chairman of the Meeting

The proxy holder shall send his/her/its voting instructions for the exercise of his/her/its proxies to BNP Paribas Securities Services at the latest on Sunday April 25, 2021, at midnight (Paris time).

The proxy holder shall send his/her/its voting instructions by sending by email to paris.bp2s.france.cts.mandats@bnpparibas.com, a scanned copy of the remote voting form available in the section dedicated to the Shareholders Meeting on the Company's website: https://www.danone.com/investor-relations/shareholders/shareholders-meeting.html.

The voting instructions must be accompanied by a copy of the proxy holders valid identity document and, if he/she/it acts on behalf of a legal entity, a copy of the power appointing him/her/it as a duly authorized representative.

The form must include the surname, first name and address of the proxy holder with the wording As Proxy and must be dated and signed. The voting instructions are filled in the box I vote by post of the form.

Shareholders are invited to regularly consult the section dedicated to the Shareholders Meeting on the Company's website in order to access to all updated information concerning the Shareholders Meeting: https://www.danone.com/investor-relations/shareholders/shareholders-meeting.html.

About Danone (www.danone.com)

Danone is a leading multi-local food and beverage company building on health-focused and fast-growing categories in 3 businesses: Essential Dairy & Plant-Based products, Waters and Specialized Nutrition. With its One Planet. One Health frame of action, which considers the health of people and the planet as intimately interconnected, Danone aims to inspire healthier and more sustainable eating and drinking practices. To accelerate this food revolution and create superior, sustainable, profitable value for all its stakeholders, Danone has defined nine 2030 Goals, and paved the way as the first listed company to adopt the Entreprise a Mission status in France. With a purpose to bring health through food to as many people as possible, and corresponding social, societal and environmental objectives set out in its articles of association, Danone commits to operating in an efficient, responsible and inclusive manner, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations. By 2025, Danone aims to become one of the first multinational companies to obtain B Corp certification. With more than 100,000 employees, and products sold in over 120 markets, Danone generated 23.6 billion in sales in 2020. Danones portfolio includes leading international brands (Actimel, Activia, Alpro, Aptamil, Danette, Danio, Danonino, evian, Nutricia, Nutrilon, Volvic, among others) as well as strong local and regional brands (including AQUA, Bledina, Bonafont, Cow & Gate, Horizon Organic, Mizone, Oikos, Prostokvashino, Silk, Vega). Listed on Euronext Paris and present on the OTCQX market via an ADR (American Depositary Receipt) program, Danone is a component stock of leading sustainability indexes including the ones managed by Vigeo Eiris and Sustainalytics, as well as the Ethibel Sustainability Index, the MSCI ESG Indexes, the

FTSE4Good Index Series, Bloomberg Gender Equality Index, and the Access to Nutrition Index.

Attachment
The domestic equity welcomed RBI governor Shaktikanta Das' decision to keep repo rate unchanged at 4 per cent during the first bi-monthly monetary policy of FY22, along with holding the GDP growth rate steady at 10.5 per cent for new financial year. Despite the recent surge in Covid-19 cases, the governor said the central bank and the government are prepared to tackle the second wave of coronavirus.

That apart, the Governor announced Secondary market G-sec acquisition programme', wherein the RBI will commit upfront to a specific amount of open market purchases of government securities thus anchoring the yields and ensuring comfortable liquidity conditions. Guidance on the quantum of G-Sec purchases (Rs 1 trillion in Q1FY22) offered comfort to debt market participants on the backdrop of a huge supply calendar.

Soothed by the dovish stance, the benchmark S&P BSE Sensex index leaped 700 points and hit the day's high of 49,900. The Nifty50, meanwhile, jumped nearly 200 points and hit 14,880 on the back of an across-the-board buying. Banking and financial stocks outperformed on Wednesday with the Nifty Bank, Private Bank, and PSU Bank indices settling higher in the range of 1.5 per cent to 2 per cent.

The Nifty Financial Services, IT, Pharma, Metal, and Realty indices, on the other hand, gained up to 1.5 per cent.

Overall, the Sensex index gained 460 points, or 0.9 per cent, to end at 49,662 levels while the Nifty index closed at 14,819 levels, up 135 points.

In the broader markets, smallcap stocks outrun, both, mid and largecap peers. The S&P BSE SmallCap index was last up 1.3 per cent while the BSE MidCap index added 0.8 per cent.

In the intra-day deals, the smallcap index hit a high of 21,304 points, and was 116 points away from its record high level of 21,420, after a strong rally in chemicals, graphite electrode makers and rating agencies' shares.

Shares of HEG and KPIT Technologies, for instance, soared 20 per cent each on the BSE while Graphite India, Vimta Labs, Sandur Manganese & Iron Ore, CARE Ratings, Vinati Organics and Shree Pushkar Chemicals & Fertilisers rallied between 10 per cent and 17 per cent in the intra-day trade.

That apart, shares of Rossari Biotech rallied 9 per cent to Rs 1,199 on the BSE in intraday trade today which was the stock's highest level since its listing last year. It surpassed its previous high of Rs 1,145.65, hit on February 19. Thus far in the month of April, the specialty chemicals company's stock has soared 16 per cent in the four trading days.

Shares of Barbeque-Nation Hospitality, meanwhile, staged a smart comeback after a weak market debut and were locked in the upper circuit of 20 per cent at Rs 590.40 on the BSE in Wednesday's session. The stock of Barbeque Nation Hospitality, which owns and operates the popular chain of Barbeque Nation Restaurants, had opened at Rs 492, a 1.6 per cent discount against its issue price of Rs 500 per share on the BSE.

In the primary market, the three-day issue of Macrotech Developers was subscribed 26 per cent till 4:30 PM on the first day of the issue.

Global markets

Asian shares pulled back from a three-week high on Wednesday, dragged lower by Chinese stocks. MSCIs broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside of Japan was last down 0.1 per cent after Chinese and Hong Kong shares opened in the red. Chinas bluechip CSI300 index was down about 1 per cent while Hong Kongs Hang Seng index fell 0.8 per cent.

That said, Japans Nikkei was a shade higher while Australian shares rose 0.6 per cent and South Koreas KOSPI added 0.3 per cent. New Zealand ended 0.7 per cent higher.

In Europe, the pan-European STOXX 600 index fell 0.2 per cent while the German DAX and Frances CAC 40 were flat. The UKs exporter-heavy FTSE 100, however, gained 0.3 per cent.
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A committee set up by President Muhammadu Buhari to investigate a breach of agreement by Addax Petroleum, has accused the company of causing the country a huge economic loss.

The committee headed by a former senator, Magnus Abe, said this Wednesday while submitting its report to Mr Buhari, through the Minister for State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, in Abuja.

Addax Petroleum is owned by Sinopec International Petroleum Exploration and Production Corporation (SIPC), which is managed and operated by the Sinopec Group. SIPC specialises in overseas oil and gas investment and operations and manages Sinopecs international exploration and production portfolio, including Addax Petroleum.

The Nigerian government revoked four Oil Mining Leases, OMLs, belonging to Addax Petroleum Nigeria Limited citing the inability of the firm to comply with agreed terms.

The revocation and re-award were approved by Mr Buhari. The OML will now be operated by Kaztec Engineering Limited/Salvic Petroleum Resources Limited (KEL/Salvic) Consortium, the Director, Department of Petroleum Resources, Sarki Auwalu, said.

Nigerian lawmakers had also set up a seven-member ad hoc committee to investigate another N1.2 trillion reported oil revenue loss to the federal government owing to a breach by SINOPEC ADDAX Petroleum.

Economic Waste

Mr Abe said on Wednesday that the committee, set up on August 14, 2020, had submitted an interim report but requested more time to enlighten Nigerians.

It is important that Nigerians should understand the extent of what happened on this project. First of all, this was a project that was to extract over 19 million barrels to our existing reserves which could have been part of the daily national production of this country after that project was awarded and everything was in place, he said.

Over one billion dollars have been invested in this. Addax Petroleum called off the project over an issue that was totally unrelated to this project. That action put over 3000 Nigerians out of work. It wasted millions of dollars of the hard-earned currency that this country earned.

We have carefully analysed all these and we felt that the public should be aware of the extent of damage that was done to waste indigenous resources, the economic waste, not only were the workers affected but other projects.

With that spirit that Mr President set up this committee from different ministries to make clear recommendations to him, today we are just here to do a formal presentation.

Addax invested over $650 million but they had issues with the government they could no longer go on with the project, workers were laid off, ships were abandoned and the investment was wasted. When the president heard of it, he set up this committee, he said.

Mr Abe did not disclose the content of the report, but insisted the report was for Mr Buhari to evaluate.

While receiving the report, Mr Sylva said the recommendations would be considered to get justice for the investors as well as Nigerians.

You have done a great job and I am going to hold your recommendations, give to Mr Buhari to get justice for the petroleum industry, he said.

Calls to Addax Petroleums official telephone numbers Wednesday did not go through.
Brookfield, BlackRock no longer in race for over $10 billion Aramco pipeline stake -sources

The logo of Aramco is seen as security personnel walk before the start of a press conference by Aramco at the Plaza Conference Center in Dhahran, (Photo : REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed/File Photo)

U.S. asset manager BlackRock and Canada's Brookfield Asset Management Inc are no longer in the race to buy a stake in Saudi oil giant Aramco's pipeline business, two sources familiar with the deal said.



Apollo Global Management and New York-based Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) are among the bidders still in the race for the deal, which could fetch Aramco over $10 billion, they said.



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China Investment Corp, the country's sovereign wealth fund, was also weighing a bid for the assets, a third source told Reuters.



Aramco, Apollo and Brookfield declined to comment.



CIC declined to comment, while GIP did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.



Bloomberg earlier reported the news about BlackRock and Brookfield Asset being no longer in the race.



Aramco, which is looking to sell as much as 49% stake, is preparing a so-called "staple financing" for its bidders - a financing package provided by the seller that buyers can use to back their purchase.



The planned pipeline deal would be similar to infrastructure deals signed over the last two years by Abu Dhabi's National Oil Co (ADNOC), which raised billions of dollars through sale-and- leaseback deals of its oil and gas pipeline assets, sources have previously said.



Aramco, the world's largest oil exporter, reported last month its net profit fell 44.4% to 183.8 billion riyals ($49.01 billion) for the year ended Dec. 31 as the COVID-19 pandemic depressed global crude demand.



However, it maintained its pledge to declare a $75 billion dividend for 2020, most of which goes to the Saudi government.


CVS MinuteClinics are offering coronavirus antibody tests throughout Connecticut for those who wonder whether they have had COVID-19, especially back when testing for the disease was not common.

I think its useful to have that information because it lets them know, said Mara Chamoures, a nurse practitioner at the MinuteClinic in Southbury. I think people are eager to know whether they had COVID or not.

Chamoures said the antibody test, which is done using a finger stick to collect blood and gives results in fewer than 15 minutes, can answer questions for people who have had symptoms they believe may have been from a case of COVID. Maybe somebody lost their taste and they havent gotten it back yet, or have a lingering cough or fatigue, she said.

However, she said an antibody test should not be used to decide whether to get vaccinated. Regardless of whether they show antibodies to COVID-19, they should still get the vaccine, Chamoures said. We do tell them, just because you have the positive results showing you have the immunity to COVID, we dont know how long that immunity lasts.

She also said getting an antibody test should not prevent anyone from continuing to wear a mask and keeping socially distant from others.

Dr. Marie Louise Landry, director of the Clinical Virology Laboratory at Yale New Haven Hospital, also cautioned about relying too much on antibody tests for the coronavirus, formally known as SARS CoV-2, which she said vary in their accuracy, especially if someone has had a mild case of COVID.

Landry also is a professor of laboratory medicine and of infectious disease medicine at the Yale School of Medicine. She said the only clinical use for antibody testing recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is to diagnose multi-inflammatory syndrome in children because those patients may not come to the hospital until after a viral PCR test has turned negative.

Landry also warned against deciding not to get vaccinated based on a positive antibody test.

Right now, theyre recommending that people who have had COVID infection still be vaccinated to boost immune response and not to use antibodies to make that decision, she said.

Landry said an antibody test also should not be used to decide whether to return to work or school or whether to travel. Antibodies appear 11 to 14 days after infection, so an antibody test cannot be used to determine whether a person is infected, she said.

Having antibodies in the bloodstream also does not mean a person is immune to the virus or for how long immunity may last. We dont have enough information yet to know what level of antibodies might be protective, Landry said. For other vaccines, such as rubella, the level of antibodies that provides protection is known. We dont know what that level is yet for SARS CoV-2 or COVID, Landry said.

Added to that, were seeing viral variants and that is a big concern, as well, because it is not certain that antibodies will protect as well against them, she said. However, we still do feel that the vaccines have a benefit against variants, she said.

Landry said, although there may be a slight reduction in protection against variants, vaccines are encouraged, most importantly to protect against severe disease and hospitalization and mortality, and thats key.

MinuteClinics antibody test costs $38 and is covered by Medicaid and Medicare but not by private insurance, Chamoures said. No appointment is necessary. CVS also offers PCR tests and vaccines for COVID-19.

CVS Health, based in Woonsocket, R.I., operates MinuteClinics in 1,100 CVS stores in 33 states and Washington, D.C.

edward.stannard@hearstmediact.com; 203-680-9382
CHARLOTTE, N.C., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Albemarle Corporation (NYSE: ALB), a leader in the global specialty chemicals industry, announced today that it will release its first-quarter 2021 earnings after the NYSE closes on Wednesday, May 5, 2021.

The company will hold its conference call to discuss first-quarter 2021 results on Thursday, May 6, at 9:00 a.m. ET. This call will be webcast and can be accessed through Albemarle Corporation's website at https://investors.albemarle.com/, via the webcast link below or by phone at the following number:

US Toll free: +1 844 347 1034 International direct: +1 209 905 5910 Passcode: 9167449 Webcast: Q1 Webcast Link

To avoid registration wait times, participants are encouraged to use the webcast link as the primary listening source. If a caller is anticipating asking a question, please dial in 15 minutes before the start of the call to be placed in the queue early.

An online replay of this call will be available on Albemarle Corporation's website (for 12 months) and by phone at the following number (for 7 days):

US Toll free: +1 855 859 2056 International direct: +1 404 537 3406 Passcode: 9167449

About Albemarle Corporation

Albemarle Corporation (NYSE: ALB), headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., is a global specialty chemicals company with leading positions in lithium, bromine and refining catalysts. We think beyond business-as-usual to power the potential of companies in many of the world's largest and most critical industries, such as energy, electronics, and transportation. We actively pursue a sustainable approach to managing our diverse global footprint of world-class resources. In conjunction with our highly experienced and talented global teams, our deep-seated values, and our collaborative customer relationships, we create value-added and performance-based solutions that enable a safer and more sustainable future.

We regularly post information to www.albemarle.com, including notification of events, news, financial performance, investor presentations and webcasts, non-GAAP reconciliations, SEC filings and other information regarding our company, its businesses and the markets it serves.

"Safe Harbor" Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: Statements in this press release regarding Albemarle Corporation's business that are not historical facts are "forward-looking statements" that involve risks and uncertainties. For a discussion of such risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, see "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K.

SOURCE Albemarle Corporation

Related Links

http://www.albemarle.com


Pixium Vision announces first patient successful implantation in Prima System pivotal trial PRIMAvera

Study is the last clinical step before seeking market approval in Europe in dry AMD

Bionic vision Prima System has shown excellent results in improving vision

Paris, France, April 7, 2021  7.00 a.m. CEST  Pixium Vision SA (Euronext Growth Paris - FR0011950641), a bioelectronics company that develops innovative bionic vision systems to enable patients who have lost their sight to live more independent lives, announces the successful first implantation of a patient in the PRIMAvera pivotal trial of its bionic vision Prima System for atrophic dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

The PRIMAvera study was initiated in Q4 2020 and aims to confirm the safety and the benefits provided by the Prima System and is the last clinical step before seeking market approval in Europe.

This first successful implantation in the PRIMAvera pivotal trial is an important milestone for the Prima System and for patients suffering from dry AMD. The Prima System has shown very encouraging results so far and I am looking forward to seeing confirmation of these life changing effects in dry AMD, said Dr Yannick Le Mer, Deputy Head of Vitreo-retinal Unit at Fondation Adolphe de Rothschild Hospital in Paris and Coordinating Investigator of the study.

The PRIMAvera study design is based on the positive data generated in a French feasibility study, showing the ability of patients with dry AMD to improve in visual acuity with the Prima System. Patients had a significant improvement in vision, gaining on average a logMAR of 0.5 (corresponding to 5 lines improvement).

A total of 38 patients will be enrolled in PRIMAvera, an open label, baseline-controlled, nonrandomized, multi-center, prospective, single-arm confirmatory trial. The primary efficacy endpoint is the proportion of subjects with an improvement of visual acuity of logMAR 0.2 or more from baseline to 12 month and the primary safety endpoint is the number and severity of device and procedure related serious adverse events at 12 months follow-up. The study will include three years of follow-up, with assessment of the primary endpoints at 12 months after implantation.

Pixium Vision continues to deliver on its transition from a research organization to a commercial one. This first implantation makes us a step closer to getting our highly innovative and exciting Prima System on the market and to the patients who are in desperate need, said Lloyd Diamond, Chief Executive Officer of Pixium Vision. The Prima System has demonstrated excellent results in improving vision which will correlate to their ability to undertake day-to-day tasks, and has the potential to make a significant difference in the quality of life of patients suffering from dry AMD, who currently have no treatment options.

In addition to the ongoing PRIMAvera study, Pixium Vision expects to report 36-month data from the French feasibility study by end 2021 / beginning 2022, and continues clinical development in the US.

ABOUT PIXIUM VISION

Pixium Visions mission is to create a world of bionic vision for those who have lost their sight, enabling them

to regain partial visual perception and greater autonomy. Pixium Visions bionic vision systems are associated

with a surgical intervention and a rehabilitation period.

Pixium Vision is conducting clinical feasibility studies of its Prima system, its miniaturised wireless sub-retinal

implant, in patients who have lost their sight due to retinal degeneration associated with the dry form of AgeRelated Macular Degeneration (AMD). Pixium Vision works closely with world-renown academic partners, such as Stanford University in California, Institut de la Vision in Paris, Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, Institute of Ocular Microsurgery (IMO) in Barcelona, and UPMC in Pittsburgh, USA. The company is EN ISO 13485 certified. Pixium Vision has been qualified as an Innovative Company by Bpifrance.

For more information: http://www.pixium-vision.com/fr

Follow us on @PixiumVision; www.facebook.com/pixiumvision

www.linkedin.com/company/pixium-vision









Contacts

Pixium Vision

Guillaume Renondin

Chief Financial Officer

investors@pixium-vision.com

+33 1 76 21 47 68 Media relations



LifeSci Advisors

Sophie Baumont

sophie@lifesciadvisors.com

+33 6 27 74 74 49 Investor relation

LifeSci Advisors

Guillaume van Renterghem

gvanrenterghem@lifesciadvisors .com

+41 76 735 01 31

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Isatoic acid anhydride also known as o-amino-benzoic acid, 2-aminobenzoic acid, N-carboxylic acid anhydride, and anthranilic acid, is the organic compound with the linear formula C6H4(NH2)CO2H. In appearance, Isatoic acid anhydride is a white solid when pure, although commercial samples may appear yellow. By the structure, isatoic acid anhydride contains a benzene ring with two adjacent functional groups, a carboxylic acid and an amine. Industrially, Isatoic acid anhydride is used as an intermediate for production of dyes chemicals and in medical product. Isatoic acid anhydride and its esters are used in preparing perfumes to imitate jasmine and orange, pharmaceuticals, and UV-absorber as well as corrosion inhibitors for metals and mold inhibitors in soy sauce. In addition, isatoic acid anhydride can be used in organic synthesis to generate the benzyne intermediate. It is sometimes considered as vitamin L1.





Regional Analysis

Asia Pacific is the largest market of isatoic acid anhydride due to huge consumption in dye & pigments, and agrochemicals-market-1267'>agrochemical-market-749'>agrochemical industry, in China region followed by India, Thailand, and Japan. Increasing demand for agrochemical industry in China, India, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea has made Asia Pacific largest consumer of the global Isatoic acid anhydride market followed by increasing in the consumption of Isatoic acid anhydride market in Europe region. In Europe region, Isatoic acid anhydride market is drive by perfume, pharmaceutical, and food & beverages industry. In addition, the third largest market of Isatoic acid anhydride is North America region due to large consumption in agricultural, pharmaceutical, and others industry. Moreover, Latin America and Middle East also observed in growth of Isatoic acid anhydride market due to various application such as pharmaceutical, dye & pigments, perfume, agrochemicals, and others.

Segmentation

The global isatoic acid anhydride market is majorly segmented on the basis of application, end use and region. Based on application of isatoic acid anhydride the market is segmented into dye & pigments, pesticides, herbicides, saccharin, flavors, and others. On the other hand, Based on end use industry of isatoic acid anhydride the market is segmented into pharmaceutical, agrochemicals, perfume, food & beverages, and others. Furthermore, based on region global isatoic acid anhydride market is segmented into North America, Europe, APAC, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa.

Key Players

Key players of the global Isatoic acid anhydride market are BASF SE (Germany), The Dow Chemical Company (US), Alfa Aesar (India), Crystal Quinone Pvt. Ltd. (India), Taj Active Pharmaceuticals Ingredients (India), Wujiang New Sunlion Chemical Co., Ltd. (China), HIMALAYA CHEMICALS (India), ISHITA INDUSTRIES (India), KESHAR EMULSION PVT LTD (India), TCI (Shanghai) Development Co., Ltd (China), and others.





Geographic Analysis

The report covers brief analysis of geographical region such as North America, Europe, APAC, and RoW.

The report about Global Isatoic acid anhydride Market by Market Research Future comprises of extensive primary research along with detail analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts and key opinion leaders to gain a deeper insight of the market and industry performance. The report gives a clear picture of the current market scenario which includes past and estimated future market size in terms of value and volume, technological advancement, macro economical and governing factors in the market. The report further provides detail information about strategies used by top key players in the industry. It also gives a broad study about different market segments and regions.

ACCESS REPORT DETAILS @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/isatoic-acid-anhydride-market-3325

Study Objectives of Isatoic acid anhydride Market:

To provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast for the next 7 years of the various segments and sub-segments of the Global Isatoic acid anhydride Market

To understand the supply and demand dynamics including supply and consumption concentration mapping

To provide region level market analysis and future outlook for North America, Europe, Asia, and Rest of the World (ROW) and their countries

To provide competitor positioning of the market

To provide company profiling of major players in the market along with their production and capacity

To provide regional trade analysis

To evaluate historical market trends, patents and technologies, and current government regulatory requirements that are relevant to the market

Intended Audience

Isatoic acid anhydride manufacturers

Traders and distributors of Isatoic acid anhydride

Production Process industries

Potential investors

Raw material suppliers

Nationalized laboratory
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Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

Bernalillo and Sandoval counties are stuck in yellow-level virus restrictions, but Santa Fe County held on to its coveted turquoise status under the latest color-coded map released Wednesday by the state Department of Health.

Cibola, San Miguel and Harding counties are now in the green status.

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................................................................

San Juan and Hidalgo counties fell from turquoise to a more restrictive yellow status. And Guadalupe County moved from green to yellow because of an increase in cases and test positivity rates.

In a COVID-19 update by state officials Wednesday, Human Services Secretary Dr. David Scrase said the presence of several virus variants in New Mexico does not appear to be driving new cases.

Weve seen over 60 different variants in New Mexico through the first year of the pandemic, Scrase said. But none of them actually appear to have a consequence in terms of rate of spread or resistance to treatment, or resistance to vaccine or increased mortality rate or burden of illness.

Nearly half of all New Mexico residents have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose, and more than 31% of people 16 and older are fully vaccinated.

The state is examining how best to include vaccination rates in the red-to-green framework, Scrase said.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said this week that his state would be reopening its economy by mid-June if current COVID-19 trends hold. He also said California would be ending its tiered risk-level system and moving away from most restrictions, except for a mask mandate.

But Scrase said it is still too early to predict what pandemic restrictions could look like in New Mexico this summer.

We are really working on some sort of bridge to the pandemic ending, he said. I dont think we want to throw away the red, yellow, green system. We want to move in the general direction that takes everybody forward, and I think the vaccine is the thing thats going to help us to do that.

New Mexico vaccinated 92 people last week for every new virus case reported.

All residents in the Phase 1 vaccine eligibility group who are registered have received an NMDOH invitation to a vaccine appointment, Health Secretary Dr. Tracie Collins said.

If youve been invited and havent been able to attend an appointment, you will receive another invitation, Collins said.

The state plans to expand vaccine self-scheduling soon to residents 60 years and older.

Currently, residents 75 and older can self-schedule a first vaccine dose. Everyone can self-schedule a booster dose appointment.

Katrina Hotrum-Lopez, secretary of Aging and Long-Term Services, said COVID-19 vaccinations are helping to reduce deaths in New Mexicos nursing homes and assisted living facilities.

Since the beginning of our vaccine rollout, the average number of daily deaths in all long term-care facilities dropped from 10 deaths a day to less than one death a day, she said.

The department uses 5,000 to 6,000 doses each week for vaccination clinics that serve seniors and adults with disabilities.

The state is planning to host 12 additional vaccination clinics for those special populations in southern New Mexico.

New Mexico reported 222 new virus cases and three deaths Wednesday.

A total of 192,989 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in the state, and 3,963 people have died of the disease. More than 174,409 people are reported as recovered.

On Wednesday, 78 people were hospitalized with the virus in New Mexico.

Those whose deaths were announced Wednesday included a man in his 40s from San Miguel County, a man in his 60s from Grant County and a woman in her 100s from Otero County. All of the individuals had been hospitalized.
[April 07, 2021] AgJunction and Mahindra to Demonstrate Autosteering Technologies in Turkey

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AgJunction Inc. (TSX: AJX) (AgJunction or the Company) and Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. (IN:MAHM) (Mahindra) are pleased to announce a joint project whereby Mahindra will demonstrate autosteering technology on a Hasret 125 Luks CRD4 tractor, built by Erkunt Traktor Sanayii A.S in Turkey.

The demonstration will provide local growers a close look at key precision farming technologies, including auto-steering functions for precision planting and crop maintenance, auto eTurns and row headland process for managing field configurations, automated implement lift capability, and precision navigation using cellular enabled real-time kinematic GPS technology. The demonstration will be conducted over a six to eight-month period and cover all aspects of crop planting, tilling, fertilization, irrigation, and harvest leveraging the accuracy and continuity of the AgJunction precision guidance solution on the Mahindra Erkunt tractor. The demonstration will be conducted with local farmers in the Afyonkarahisar Province of Turkey. AgJunction and Mahindra will provide training on precision farming techniques with experienced Turkish growers, using the latest available steering and tractor technologies. Local university students will be engaged to provide technical support and learn about the latest technologies in a hands-on environment. Precision farming using AgJunction technology can enable farms of all sizes to improve productivity and increase crop yields, said Dr. M. Brett McMickell, president and CEO of AgJunction. We look forward to working with Mahindra to improve the accessibility of precision agriculture globally. Commenting on the joint project, Ramesh Ramachandran, Sr. Vice President, FES Strategy & Head, Farming as a Service, Mahindra, stated: Precision Farming technologies are needed by farmers globally to enhance crop yield and lower cost of cultivation. Through our work with AgJunction, we look forward to bringing these technologies at an affordable cost. About AgJunction

AgJunction Inc. is a global leader of advanced guidance and autosteering solutions for precision agriculture applications. Its technologies are critical components in over 30 of the worlds leading precision Ag manufacturers and solution providers and it holds over 200 patents and patents pending. AgJunction markets its solutions under leading brand names including Novariant, Wheelman, Whirl and Handsfreefarm. AgJunction is headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, and is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) under the symbol AJX. For more information, please go to AgJunction.com .



About Mahindra

Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. is part of The Mahindra Group, a USD 19.4 billion federation of companies that enables people to rise through innovative mobility solutions, driving rural prosperity, enhancing urban living, nurturing new businesses and fostering communities. It enjoys a leadership position in utility vehicles, information technology, financial services and vacation ownership in India and is the worlds largest tractor company by volume. It also enjoys a strong presence in renewable energy, agribusiness, logistics and real estate development. Headquartered in India, Mahindra employs over 256,000 people across 100 countries. Learn more about Mahindra on www.mahindra.com / Twitter and Facebook: @MahindraRise Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking information and forward-looking statements (collectively, "forward-looking information") within the meaning of applicable securities laws and is based on the expectations, estimates and projections of management of AgJunction as of the date of this news release, unless otherwise stated. The use of any of the words "expect", "anticipate", "continue", "estimate", "objective", "ongoing", "may", "will", "project", "should", "believe", "plans", "intends" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking information. These statements are only predictions and actual events or results may differ materially. Although the Companys management believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, it cannot guarantee future results, performance or achievement since such expectations are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive and political uncertainties and contingencies. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on such forward-looking information contained in this press release.

In respect of the forward-looking information, AgJunction has provided such information in reliance on certain assumptions that it believes are reasonable at this time, including, but not limited to, the sufficiency of budgeted capital expenditures in carrying out planned activities; that AgJunction's future results of operations will be consistent with management expectations in relation thereto; availability of key supplies, components, services, networks and developments; the impact of increasing competition; conditions in general economic, agricultural and financial markets; demand for the Company's products; and the continuity of existing business relationships. Since forward-looking information addresses future events and conditions, such information by its very nature involves inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors and risks. These include, but are not limited to the risks associated with the industries in which AgJunction operates; competition; inability to introduce new technology and new products in a timely manner; legal claims for the infringement of intellectual property and other claims; negative conditions in general economic, agricultural and financial markets; and reduced demand for the Company's products. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive. Additional information on other factors that could affect the Company's operations or financial results, are included in reports of AgJunction on file with applicable securities regulatory authorities, including but not limited to, AgJunction's Annual Information Form which may be accessed on its SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com. The forward-looking information contained in this press release is made as of the date hereof and AgJunction undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless so required by applicable securities laws. Contact: Media

press@agjunction.com Investor Relations

Gateway Investor Relations

Cody Slach or Cody Cree

1-949-574-3860

AJX@gatewayir.com



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ReNew Power, one of the countrys biggest renewable power producers, plans to invest $9 billion in wind and solar projects through 2025 amid a government-backed effort to reduce emissions.

The company, backed by investors such as Group Inc. and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, aims to more than triple its renewable power capacity to 18.5 gigawatts by 2025, Chairman Sumant Sinha said in an interview. The Gurugram-based company will look at building its own projects as well as acquisitions for growth.

India, the worlds third-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, aims to reduce its dependence on coal and expand renewable power capacity almost five-fold to 450 gigawatts by 2030, a $20 billion a year investment opportunity through the end of the decade, according to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

ReNew is positioning itself to play a central role in the nations massive build-out. New generation is also needed as millions of Indian households take advantage of rising incomes to purchase vehicles and electrical appliances, driving a 5 per cent annual growth in power demand through 2040 in the country, according to the International Energy Agency. The 450-gigawatt target is not merely a nice-to-have, Sinha said. Its something well inevitably have to achieve if we want to meet our power demand.

ReNew has about 5.4 gigawatts of operational wind and solar plants, while 4.5 gigawatts of projects are under development. The company has agreed to merge with US-based blank-check company RMG Acquisition Corp. II, a deal that will give it a US listing and net cash proceeds of about $610 million.

The company also plans to sell some assets to raise money for growth, Sinha said. It sold a 300-megawatt solar project in Pavagada in Karnataka earlier this year to test the waters, he said, without giving details.The company is also looking at new ventures, including solar manufacturing. Indias decision to levy import taxes on cells and modules makes investment in domestic production a favorable proposition, Sinha said, adding the companys main focus will be to secure supplies for its own projects. Power distribution, considered the weakest link in countrys electricity value chain, is another area ReNew is examining. Most distribution firms controlled by provincial governments lose money on sales due in part to theft or poor bill collection, which in turn delays payments to power generators and deprives consumers of reliable electricity.

We cannot have an economy thats constantly hobbled by an inefficient, dysfunctional utility system, Sinha said. The government is considering to reform the distribution sector to allow for more competition, and ReNew is assessing whether to enter the market, he said.
The Mater Hospital was one of Irelands first healthcare settings to receive vaccines for frontline staff. Photo: Colin Keegan

The Mater Hospital in Dublin said it will not be commenting at this time on whether non-medical board members were offered the Covid-19 vaccine.

The public hospital, which is part of the Ireland East Hospital Group, was one of the first healthcare settings to get deliveries of Covid-19 vaccines earlier this year to vaccinate its frontline healthcare staff.

The Irish Independent put the query to a public-relations firm acting for the hospital last Friday morning. It was asked whether members of the board had been offered a vaccine and, if so, why.

A response yesterday evening said: The hospital will not be commenting at this time.

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It comes as the HSE is under pressure to provide a breakdown of the 237,802 vaccinations in the frontline worker category.

The board of the Mater Hospital is made up of medical and non-medical members.

Sources have suggested members of the board who were not given the vaccine as part of their medical role should be offered the option of one because of their importance to the hospital.

Meanwhile, as of Saturday, the vaccination roll-out nationally had administered a first dose to 660,800 people, with 271,524 getting a second dose.

An evaluation of the association between rare blood clots and the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine is due from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) this week.

Earlier yesterday, a senior official in the EMA said there was a link between the vaccine and very rare blood clots in the brain, but the possible causes were still unknown.

Marco Cavaleri, chair of the vaccine evaluation team at the EMA, told the Italian daily Il Messaggero that there is a link and the EMA will be providing an updated evaluation of its assessment this week.

It has previously said its investigation found the benefits of the vaccine outweigh risks. It looked at 44 reported incidents of cerebral enous sinus thrombosis (CVST)out of 9.2 million people who received the vaccine in Europe.

Some countries including France, Germany and the Netherlands have suspended use of the vaccine in younger people while investigations continue.

Up to last Saturday, 203,301 doses of the vaccine were administered here.

It emerged yesterday evening that Oxford University had, as a precautionary measure, paused a trial of the vaccine on children and teenagers while regulators investigate the possible link to the very rare blood clots.

It is testing the vaccine on people aged six to 17 years old.

The World Health Organisation said it expected the EMA would find no reason to change its opinion that the benefits outweigh the risks.

A spokeswoman for the Health Products Regulatory Authority (HPRA), Irelands medicines watchdog, said the review by the EMAs safety committee was ongoing.

The HPRA has received reports of blood clots occurring following vaccination with the AstraZeneca jab. However, none describe CVST, the rare type of blood clot in the brain.

There was also no occurrence of a blood clot associated with the brain.

Any suspected reports received are being closely monitored and will be considered in the context of the ongoing EMA review.

The HPRA said it wanted to highlight the advice that, if people develop symptoms such as chest pain or leg swelling, they should seek medical attention.
Springfield Public Schools announced Wednesday it expects to host in-person graduation ceremonies for the class of 2021 in June, but will be canceling prom for the year.

The decision to cancel prom comes after the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education recently put out guidance stating that dancing and singing are an inherently high-risk activity during the COVID pandemic.

The district shared the announcement in a Facebook post, writing, In other news, prom season will not occur this year for the Class of 2021 upon recommendation from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

UPDATE: Graduation Season 2021 SPS is pleased to announce that graduation ceremonies are expected to be in-person this... Posted by Springfield Public Schools - Massachusetts on Wednesday, April 7, 2021

With the state continuing to reopen, prom was an event some Western Massachusetts schools were hoping to host with several schools confirming to MassLive plans to host the dance event.

With this new announcement from SPS, none of those events will be taking place.

After consultation with our medical advisors, DESE strongly recommends that schools do not have proms and instead substitute alternative celebrations for seniors, the state education department wrote.

According to the Facebook post, all commencement ceremonies for the class of 2021 will take place outdoors at Central High School.

DESE also recently released guidelines for 2021 graduations, which allow for in-person graduations indoors or outdoors, but with requirements including contactless diploma distribution, social distancing among families and graduates, face coverings for everyone, and no singing indoors or playing of brass and wind instruments.

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Simon Harris, Minister for Further and Higher Education and former Health minister, at his office in Dublins city centre. Harris has said there cannot be a repeat of a sexual harassment case like academic Aoibhinn Ni Shuilleabhains if universities are to receive increased funding (Brian Lawless/PA)

Preparing for climate change will be good for the bottom line, businesses have been told.

Skills and Higher Education Minister Simon Harris made the comments at the launch of the Climate Ready initiative, a new programme that will help to equip businesses with the skills they need to tackle climate change.

The five-year climate initiative will see a 10 million euro investment to support an initial 1,000 businesses and 3,000 workers in 2021, expanding in each subsequent year.

Today I announced a major investment in climate action skills programmes for businesses across the country with my colleague @EamonRyan. These programmes will be delivered through @SkillnetIreland. Really looking forward to seeing the impact. https://t.co/myuYY3UIfC for more info pic.twitter.com/amVWBpSM6x  Simon Harris TD (@SimonHarrisTD) April 7, 2021

The aim of the initiative is to provide businesses with the training in areas such as reducing energy waste, delivering cost savings and protecting the environment.

Speaking at the launch on Wednesday, Minister Harris said: Climate action is not just a challenge, there are obviously huge opportunities if we prepare and if we take action.

As Minister for Skills, I really want to make sure that we provide right now, access to the tools, the training, the mentorship and the advice for businesses right across this country, big and small, to adapt to the climate reality.

We want to help make sure businesses play a positive role in the adaptations that are going to be required to fulfil the ambitions that we have set out through our Climate Action Bill.

He said the Climate Ready scheme will provide advice around how you reduce water consumption, how you de-carbonise your business, how you reduce energy waste.

This green, clean economy is going to be the future of this country. Eamon Ryan, Green Party leader

But the measures will also help businesses to save money, Mr Harris said.

He said: We can actually show Irish businesses that being climate ready is not just good for the environment, not just good for our community and our country, but also good for business, good for the bottom line.

And can also help create jobs in every town and village across the country.

He added: We dont just want our businesses to try and survive climate action.

We want to create an environment in which we can thrive.

Green Party leader and Environment Minister Eamon Ryan said the programme was part of this new industrial revolution that is taking place in our time.

He said: One of the real constraints is in the skills, having the knowledge and the expertise in how to be really energy efficient.

How to change our entire packaging systems.

How to reduce our consumption of water, of all resources.

Thats where this programme fits in.

Its equipping businesses the same way were going to have equip our apprenticeships, our colleges, our school system with learning and expertise around how we prepare for this new economy, this new industrial revolution that is taking place in our time.

This green, clean economy is going to be the future of this country.

Launching our new #ClimateReady programme, @SimonHarrisTD said, aSkillnet Irelandas Climate Ready programme supports our climate goals by providing every Irish business with the opportunity to build the skills to prepare for this challenge". https://t.co/X7W7SRO5Ru #ClimateAction pic.twitter.com/UVPGTEcASP  Skillnet Ireland (@SkillnetIreland) April 7, 2021

The Climate Ready scheme has been produced by Skillnet Ireland, a company dedicated to workforce education, in partnership with Chambers Ireland, Wind Energy Ireland, and Sustainable Finance Ireland.

Skillnet chief executive Paul Healy said: We must show huge courage and ambition, otherwise future generations will inherit our environmental legacy and they wont forgive us for it.

Our starting point for this scheme is of course the Governments Climate Action Plan, which predicts that entire sectors of our economy will experience radical change as a result of climate action, but that new types of enterprise and jobs will also be created.

Climate action is bringing with it immense business opportunities.

Its bringing with it also demands for great levels of new skills, reskilling and of course new green jobs.

So working side by side with industry, and with the department, we have developed Climate Ready.

More information on the programme is available at www.ClimateReady.ie.
TURIN, APR 7 - Turin market traders on Wednesday blocked street in the Piedmont capital in a protest against their prolonged closure due to COVID-19 restrictions. The protest came a day after an anti-lockdown protest by hospitality operators outside parliament in Rome turned violent with one police officer hospitalised and seven people arrested including rightist militants. It also came a day after market traders blocked a motorway near Caserta causing hours-long gridlock. Mask-less protests against COVID-linked closures and calling for reopenings have become more frequent in Italy recently as a second round of government economic support measures has been delayed. In Turin Wednesday the traders were joined by several shopowners, including some whose shops are open. They shouted slogans including "We are all necessary", "we want to work" and "we can't wait any longer". The protesters were met by city commerce councillor Alberto Sacco who told them he would take their demands to the city prefect. Meanwhile there was a similar protest in the Tuscan city of Pistoia where traders set up a fake market and pretended to sell goods. (ANSA).
D

odging danger is to be expected during a career in the armed forces. Less known, however, is the threats faced by female soldiers from within their own ranks.

From the time she knocked out a male colleague who followed her to her room, to the time fellow soldiers kicked down her door in the middle of the night, Lieutenant Colonel Diane Allen says she narrowly dodged danger on more occasion than one.

Casting her mind back to the first incident, Lieut Col Allen, who stepped down a year ago over alleged discrimination, told of how a senior male officer allegedly followed her after she left the bar when she was deployed in Germany at the age of 21.

This chap had been quite persistent in the bar, the former officer, who spent most of her three-decade-long military stint in the Intelligence Corps, tells The Independent. I made my excuses. He followed me. He tried to physically block me from going into my room. I hit him with my elbow on the side of his head. I was trained in karate. I knocked him to the ground and went into the room while he was on the ground, closed the door and locked it. He disappeared. I never reported it.

Lieut Col Allen, who was one of the first women in history to train at Sandhurst at the age of 18, says the fact the armed forces can investigate rape and sexual assault allegations internally has forged a culture of silence which deters victims and witnesses from speaking out.

The ex-officer, who has written a book called Forewarned about her time in the military, said when she joined the army in the 1980s sexism was endemic in the military.

Gradually it changed in the 1990s to a much more subtle undercover type of sexism, she explains.

I dont think it is getting better. Progress stalled in the 1990s. It really has not improved significantly since then. People are against it and it is against employment law but it is still in toxic pockets.

She also spoke of her own personal experiences of sexual harassment, recalling a time working as a ski instructor in an all-male infantry unit many years ago when she was in her mid-twenties.

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All day they would proposition me, she added. I ignored them when they invited me to the bar. I stayed in my room all week in the evenings. You could sense by going to the bar I would be putting myself in harms way. I made the decision to move room on the last night. I was woken up by a crashing noise. Through a glass door, I watched them kicking down my door to get me, but I wasnt there as Id moved rooms because I sensed there was going to be trouble.

Lieut Col Allen, who is calling for a military MeToo movement, said the military is like a microcosm of society and there are significant variations within it.

An all-male infantry unit with weak leadership can be quite predatory, she added. Other areas of the armed forces are nothing like that.

Lieut Col Allen noted women continue to be a minority group in the military  constituting just eight to 10 per cent  as she warned the senior leadership in the army, navy and the RAF say they take the issue very seriously but this is not reflected in actions.

She added: Women have come forward to me who have had sexual harassment, sexism, sexual assault, and gender discrimination. It is really varied. There are multiple stories of rape, of being drugged and raped.

Her comments are echoed by MPs who warn convictions rates in cases of rape and sexual assault remain shamefully low.

Diane Allen in the mid-1980s in Germany (Supplied)

Senior figures told The Independent progress on tackling sexism and sexual harassment in the armed forces has been too slow and women in the military often face a sexist culture of laddish behaviour.

Figures from the Crown Prosecution Service show 68 per cent of rape cases that made it to a normal civilian court in 2019-2020 resulted in a conviction, while only 20 per cent of rapes cases tried in a military court led to a conviction in 2019.

Government data shows 57 cases of sexual assault were heard in the military courts in 2019 but only 17 were convicted, and only three out of a total of 15 rape cases resulted in conviction.

Andrea Simon, director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, said: Rape is effectively being decriminalised, with the overwhelming majority of cases never making it to court in the first place.

The criminal justice system is in crisis and these shocking statistics show even fewer cases are being pursued in the military courts. The Ministry of Defence should work with other government departments to tackle this issue.

Sarah Atherton, who is chairing a government inquiry called Women in the Armed Forces: From Recruitment to Civilian Life, told The Independent she has heard some terrible stories from female serving personnel and veterans in the last year.

The Conservative MP for Wrexham, the first sitting female MP who has a regular military background, added: I have definitely heard accounts of bullying, discrimination, harassment, and rape.

Our subcommittee covers all aspects of the female military experience, from recruitment to retention to returning to civvy street, and there were 4,106 respondents to our survey of serving and veteran women.

She noted women are overrepresented in the service complaints system as she warned there are issues around justice in the military for women and explained the inquiry marks the first time the female military experience is being talked about in-depth.

Ms Atherton, who sits on the governments defence committee, said: It is a long-overdue conversation. The issue of stamping out a culture of laddish behaviour in the military  the words of the current Chief of Defence Staff  is something that transcends party lines, and extends back generations.

There is no doubt that the situation for women in our armed forces is improved. We have come a long way, especially since I was in the military. However, there is no doubt that there is more to do.

While serving personnel are blocked from speaking to members of the media or MPs about their experiences, these rules have been lifted for her inquiry.

Stephen Morgan, the shadow armed forces minister, said it is a sad fact women continue to grapple with serious challenges while serving.

Women are still underrepresented across the services, yet make up a disproportionate amount of service complaints. They also continue to endure shamefully low conviction rates in cases of rape and sexual assault, the Labour MP for Portsmouth South added.

This not only falls short of the high standards those who serve should expect, it also presents a threat to recruitment and retention that could undermine operational capabilities.

He said the Labour Party will be striving to tackle this via the Armed Forces Bill in order to carry on making the forces more inclusive and diverse.

Sally Orange, who was in the armed forces for 22 years but left in November 2019, said on social occasions with alcohol, she was pestered a bit.

Sally Orange: It has been a predominantly male culture for so many years (Supplied)

The 46-year-old, who was a physiotherapist in the military, said sexism was spawned by the fact training was previously carried out in single-sex companies or platoons.

This is inadvertently creating misogyny, she added. I did experience it, but seldom was it deliberate. Was I surprised? Not really. A lot of other sectors have comparable challenges so the armed forces isnt alone  such as the City. It has been a predominantly male culture for so many years.

A representative for the Ministry of Defence said all harassment is unacceptable and they are committed to generating a welcoming and inclusive environment in the armed forces.

The spokesperson added: The Armed Forces Bill addresses the need for clearer guidance for the handling of serious crimes by creating a duty for both prosecutorial authorities to jointly develop a protocol on how they should be dealt with. This will ensure that decisions can be made on a case-by-case basis to offer the most appropriate route to justice for each offence.

Due to the relatively low number of rape cases that are reported to the Service Justice System, and that a higher proportion of them get passed on to prosecutors, comparative conviction statistics are not reflective of the whole process.
Amid a resurgence of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States and internationally, an explicitly racially-based health care program will be implemented later this spring at Brigham and Womens Hospital, a globally known medical center in Boston. The currently unnamed program is discussed at length in a March 17 article (An Antiracist Agenda for Medicine) authored by Bram Wispelwey and Michelle Morse and published in the Boston Review.

According to the article, the new pilot initiative uses a reparations framework that focuses on Black and Latinx patients and community members, who, according to the authors, have been most impacted by unjust heart failure management and under whose direction appropriate restitution can begin to take shape. They insist, moreover, that the Boston initiative be a replicable pilot program to be launched in hospitals across the country.

Trachea transplant recipient Sonia Sein talks with the lead surgeon of her procedure, Dr. Eric Genden, left, and Dr. Sandy Florman during a checkup visit at Mt. Sinai hospital in New York on Monday, March, 22, 2021. (AP Photo/Marshall Ritzel)

The program would offer preferential care based on race and race-explicit interventions, according to Wispelwey and Morse.

It must be stated from the outset that not only is such a racially-based program medically unethical, it is illegal. According to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity, including education, health care, housing, social services. The bill was passed during an upsurge of the working class in the US in the 1960s, which had as one of its principles the ending of official discrimination along racial lines, including in health care.

Both authors are aware of the illegality of their proposal. Offering preferential care based on race or ethnicity may elicit legal challenges from our system of colorblind law, they write. They then attempt to justify their attack on the Civil Rights Act by asserting the existence of ample current evidence that our health, judicial, and other systems already unfairly preference people who are white, and that our approach is corrective and therefore mandated.

As evidence, Wispelwey and Morse present their observation that white patients at Brigham and Womens Hospital  were indeed more likely to be admitted to the cardiology service than black patients. More broadly, they assert that the disparities they observed, so-called health inequities, were not fully accounted for by insurance status, established links to care, other medical conditions, or an index reflecting the socioeconomic status of a patients neighborhood.

In fact, the data linked by the authors to their article does not support their argument. One linked article is misleadingly titled Heart Failure Admission Service Triage (H-FAST) Study: Racialized Differences in Perceived Patient Self-Advocacy as a Driver of Admission Inequities. Its concluding section begins by noting: Theorized drivers of racial inequities in admission service did not reach statistical significance. In other words, the article linked by the authors does not provide significant statistical evidence of racial differences in treatment.

The underlying ideology behind the attempt to impose race-based health care is known as critical race theory, which holds that social inequality is caused by white racism against people of color. Critical race theory obscures the basic source of inequalityclass society. The so-called Public Health Critical Race Framework has emerged in direct opposition to modern medical practice.

The basic tenet of this theory is that if one is the correct color, one is entitled to preferential treatment. This is a right-wing position, which explicitly denounces calls for unity across racial lines in a struggle for quality health care for all. It is a position with which white supremacists can agree, differing only on which color receives preferential treatment. And if race can be used to determine care for heart disease, what about other medical procedures, i.e., bypass surgery or dialysis? What about vaccinations for COVID-19?

From this framework flows the claim that the underlying problem in health care is structural racism, and the only solution is for Brighams and other hospitals to carry out reparations, termed medical restitution, to those deemed to have suffered from the hospitals supposed unjust practices. According to the Boston Review authors, such restitution would involve at the very least cash transfers and discounted or free care, and be expanded to the federal level to include taxes on nonprofit hospitals that exclude patients of color and race-explicit protocol changes.

Using this outlook, representatives of the ruling class, and particularly those in and around the Democratic Party, are creating the fiction that the catastrophic health care situation facing the working population is not due to the decades of bipartisan social counterrevolution at the behest of Wall Street, including the mass defunding and privatization of public health care networks, but to inherent racial prejudices against all African Americans.

Such a perspective has long been pushed by figures such as Ta-Nehisi Coates, who in 2014 argued that African Americans should receive compensation from white America for slavery, Jim Crow segregation and urban ghettos. Class oppression is presented as secondary to violence against the black body.

These conceptions are promoted at the highest levels of the Democratic Party. Wispelwey and Morse note that they were encouraged by other institutions to proceed confidently on behalf of equity and racial justice, with backing provided by recent White House executive orders. One of the orders to which the authors allude was signed by President Biden on his first day in office, calling for advancing racial equity in the face of systemic racism.

Like many other Democratic Party initiatives, Bidens executive order has nothing to do with genuine social equality. Equity is a term that has been developed in recent years by representatives of the black upper middle class and the black bourgeoisie to sound like equality, which has deep resonance in the working class, while in reality denoting something very different. It is a coded appeal to the narrow layers of African Americans who have grown wealthy by utilizing racial politics to carve out a bigger slice of the wealth of the top 10 percent but envy those richer than themselves. It is Richard Nixons right-wing call for black capitalism in a somewhat less discredited and more deceptive packaging.

With this order, Biden sent a message to these reactionary elements within minority populations that he would look after their interests and shield them from the anger of the working class of all races, whose living standards have declined as a result of the same social and economic policies that have led to a vast concentration of income and wealth among the top 10 percent, and especially the top five percent and one percent on the economic ladder.

It is an attempt to cover up, in particular, the massive growth of inequality among African Americans. From 2007 to 2016, the period of the Obama presidency, average family health care costs rose from roughly $13,000 to $19,000. More than 20 million Americans were without health care when he left office.

Wispelwey, Morse and colleagues who helped write the studies referenced are not oriented to improving the lives of this layer of the population. They hail Joe Biden as a figure who will fight for equity, civil rights [and] racial justice. They are willing to overlook Bidens responsibility for the mass incarceration of millions of impoverished African American men, as well as Kamala Harris role in keeping them imprisoned in California, provided their class position and guarantees of special access to political and business perks are protected.

Above all, calls for race-based health care are aimed at blocking the emergence of a unified movement of the working class against corporate profits and the capitalist system that is the source of inequality, poverty and racial discrimination. Genuine progressive movements have always fought for unity across racial lines, not the stratification and division of the working class.
Micah Woodard, co-owner of Lavish Scranton, said the citys Loan to Grant program helped him consolidate and relocate his business.

Lavish Scranton opened on the first floor of the former Stoehr & Fister building at 200 Adams Ave. on March 23. Formerly known as Lavish Body & Home, the business previously had two locations in the city  a store and salon on Linden Street and a spa on North Washington Avenue  before consolidating into one spot.

Woodard said the city Loan to Grant program helped significantly.

It gave us the ability to do it right and spend money on the things we needed, he said. Im typically not a huge fan of programs that are just doling out a ton of money because youre going to eat that back up in taxes, but this program pays for itself by creating jobs.

Scranton Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti touted the program Tuesday afternoon after a tour of the new location.

The gap loan program, funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, aims to enhance job creation by providing assistance to existing businesses looking to expand, those starting a new business, or businesses looking to relocate to Scranton, she said.

Eileen Cipriani, director of Scrantons Office of Economic and Community Development, said the city used some funding it received from HUD through the Community Development Block Grant program to establish the Loan to Grant program.

Through the program, small businesses owners can also borrow up to 30% of the total project cost, up to $250,000, as long as they have a 10% personal investment in the project. They must hire one full-time employee for each $35,000 borrowed which they get back in grant funding.

The grant money may be used to purchase inventory, machinery, furniture and equipment; pay utilities, taxes, rent or employee payroll; or fund new construction or improvements if the workers are paid rates set by the U.S Department of Labor.

Woodard also credits a conversation with Leslie Collins of Scranton Tomorrow for educating him on the process.

I basically asked her if there was any free money out there because I didnt want to go to the bank and keep digging in that well, Woodard said. This process has been four years in the making. It was a long road, but we got here.

Cipriani said the program has been offered by the city for at least five years, but has been underutilized. She hopes some changes will lead to more interest.

Weve done some things to professionalize it a little more ... weve contracted with a entity to do underwriting for us, she said. Its a phenomenal program so we really hope other businesses reach out to us.

Interested businesses may visit the citys Office of Economic and Community Development website or call the office at 570-348-4216 for more information on the program.
Diversity on ocean floor near equator may disappear, researchers warn

April 07,2021 | Source: AFP

Warming waters have driven thousands of ocean species poleward from the equator, threatening marine ecosystems and the livelihoods of people who depend on them, researchers reported Monday.



Comparison of data on nearly 50,000 species over three 20-year periods up to 2015 revealed that the exodus from tropical waters is accelerating, they reported in the journal PNAS. The tropics have long harbored an outsized proportion of marine life, but could see that diversity disappear if climate change is not brought to heel, the authors warned.



"Global warming has been changing life in the ocean for at least 60 years," senior author Mark Costello, a professor of marine biology at the University of Auckland, told AFP.



"Our findings show a drop of about 1,500 species at the equator," he added. "This will continue throughout the century, but the pace will depend on how we reduce - or not - greenhouse gas emissions."



Poleward migration was more pronounced north of the equator, where oceans have warmed more quickly than in the southern hemisphere.



It was also more prevalent among open water fish than so-called benthic species living on the ocean floor.



"Benthic species can only move during their floating life-stage, and thus their shift [poleward] is between generations," Costello explained. By contrast, species living in the high seas "can move with the water masses in their lifetime."



Marine life in tropical waters declines when annual average sea temperature rises above 20 to 25 C, depending on the species, the study found.



"The 'missing' tropical species are likely following their thermal habitat as subtropical waters warm," noted coauthor David Schoeman, a professor of ecology at Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.



Fossil records show that the same thing happened 140,000 years ago, the last time global surface temperatures were as hot as they are now. Based on data in the open-access Ocean Biodiversity Information System, the statistical study does not look at how individual species will adapt to new environments.



In general, open-water species are likely to fare better, earlier research has found. The impact on commercial fish stocks in the tropics is not addressed either, though it is clear which parts of the world will be hit the hardest.



"Indonesia and other nations near the equator, such as in West Africa, have the most to lose because their stocks can only decrease," as no new species will replace those leaving, Costello said.



Worldwide, about 1.3 billion people live in coastal tropical areas, many of which rely on fisheries for food.



A recent review article in Nature estimated that the maximum catch potential of tropical fish stocks in so-called exclusive economic zones - 370 kilometers from the coast - would decline 40 percent by mid-century if global warming continues unabated.

Theme(s): Fisheries Resources.
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PHOENIX  An appeals court has rejected a bid by the former operators of Backpage.com to recuse a judge in Arizona from presiding over their upcoming trial on prostitution facilitation charges because of statements made by the judges husband about human trafficking and the now-shuttered classified ad site.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals concluded on Monday that Judge Susan Brnovich made no clear error in rejecting the recusal request made by Backpage founders Michael Lacey, James Larkin and other former site managers, who argued that letting her remain on the case, scheduled to go to trial Aug. 23, could lead people to question the courts impartiality.

The sites former operators had criticized statements made in a human trafficking booklet published by Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovichs office, which describes the ad site as a place where sex is frequently purchased. Their lawyers said the attorney general has invited members of the public to visit websites that contain inflammatory information about Backpage and its operators and that the attorney general has publicly claimed that the site facilitated sex trafficking.

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The case against the former Backpage operators is being prosecuted by the U.S. Justice Department, not the Arizona Attorney Generals Office.

Paul Cambria, an attorney for Lacey, and Thomas Bienert, a lawyer representing Larkin, didnt return a call seeking comment on behalf of their clients.

Brnovich spokeswoman Katie Conner said the attorney general wasnt going to comment on the ruling, but said she believes its abhorrent that the defendants in this case insinuate a woman cant speak and think for herself.

In rejecting the recusal request five months ago, Judge Brnovich wrote she will remain impartial and said no informed, reasonable person would question her ability to be just and fair based on her marriage. She wrote the attorney general didnt make any derogatory comments about those who are charged in the case. Judge Brnovich pointed out that defense lawyers waited more than 17 months to try to take her off the case even though the attorneys knew the judge was married to the attorney general when she was assigned it.

Prosecutors said it was anachronistic to suggest an experienced judge is unable to impartially preside over a case because of her husbands views. They also said the bid to recuse the judge came after she made adverse rulings against them, including decisions in which she refused to dismiss charges.

Authorities said the former websites operators are accused of ignoring warnings to stop running prostitution ads and that the site brought in $500 million in prostitution-related revenue.

Prosecutors alleged the site gave free ads to prostitutes and cultivated arrangements with others who worked in the sex trade to get them to post ads with the company. Some of the sites operators also are accused of laundering money earned from ad sales after banks raised concerns that they were being used for illegal purposes.

The former Backpage operators said the site never allowed ads for sex and used people and automated tools to try to delete such ads.

While prosecutors say the site published many ads that depicted children who were victims of sex trafficking, no one in the federal case in Arizona is charged with sex trafficking or child sex trafficking.

In all, six former Backpage operators have pleaded not guilty to charges of facilitating prostitution. Of the six, Lacey, Larkin and two others have pleaded not guilty to money laundering charges.

The sites marketing director has already pleaded guilty to conspiring to facilitate prostitution and acknowledged he participated in a scheme to give free ads to prostitutes to win over their business.

Additionally, the companys chief executive, Carl Ferrer, pleaded guilty to a separate federal conspiracy case in Arizona and to state money laundering charges in California.

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This story was first published on April 6, 2021. It was updated on April 7, 2021 to correct the pleas entered by the sites founders Michael Lacey and James Larkin and two other former employees. Lacey, Larkin and the two other former site managers have pleaded not guilty to all charges against them.
The Delhi High Court on Wednesday ruled that it is compulsory to wear a mask inside a private car even when the driver is alone, as a vehicle is considered a public place.

The ruling was passed by the bench of Justice Pratibha M Singh who said that a mask acts as a Suraksha Kavach that prevents people from the spread of the deadly coronavirus. "Wearing of a mask or a face cover in a vehicle, which may be occupied by either a single person or multiple persons, is... compulsory in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic," the court order said, as reported by Hindustan Times.

The court also dismissed a bunch of pleas that challenged wearing of a mask while driving alone in a car and also reprimanded lawyers who took up the cases challenging the safety measure. It observed that if the lawyers would comply with the rules, common people will also be encouraged to follow these.

(Also read | Man drags traffic cop on car bonnet to evade fine; incident caught on tape)

Justice Pratibha M Singh has heard many petitions challenging the decision of the Delhi government to impose challans or fines on people found not wearing a mask while driving alone.

Earlier, an advocate Saurabh Sharma had filed a plea against the challan of 500 imposed on him by the police for flouting the rule and sought a compensation of 10 lakh. In response to this, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare had said that it has not issued any guidelines directing people to wear a mask while travelling alone in a vehicle. But it also informed that health is a state subject and the matter therefore pertains to the state government. The Delhi government, however, maintained that a personal vehicle is not a private zone but a public one.

The ruling comes at a time when the country is witnessing a surge in the number of Covid cases with over one lakh cases being reported for the first time since the pandemic started. The capital witnessed over 5,000 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, for the first time since November 27, 2020. Earlier, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had raised the amount of fine for anyone not wearing a face mask in public place to 2,000 from 500.
HCMC's Chi Hoa Prison to be replaced by facility on outskirts

HCMC authorities are planning to replace the decrepit and overloaded Chi Hoa Prison in District 10 with the T30 detention center in outlying Cu Chi District.

The relocation is expected to be completed in the second quarter of this year, Major General Le Hong Nam, director of the city police department, said at a recent press briefing.

T30 in Pham Van Coi Commune is currently being renovated, he said.

Chi Hoa Prison is an octagonal building spread over seven hectares with cells, watchtowers and lands farmed by the prisoners.

It was originally built by the French Indochina colonial government in 1943 to replace Maison Centrale at the corner of Ly Tu Trong and Nam Ky Khoi Nghia Streets.

It has for long been considered one of the most secure prisons in Vietnam with only two successful breakouts in its history.

But Nam said it has now deteriorated badly and holds more inmates than it is designed for, affecting its security.

Currently, the plan to use the land of Chi Hoa detention center after relocation has not yet been disclosed.

Khuong Van Muoi, a former chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Association of Architects, said after the prison is evacuated authorities should use the land to build public projects since the area has a high population density.
The president of the Junta de Andalucia, Juanma Moreno, has spoken this Wednesday, 7 April, about the intention of the Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez to lift the current state of alarm on 9 May.

During an appearance in Cadiz, the regional leader said, "We will lose powerful tools in the form of the curfew and mobility limitations that can help stop the spread of the disease."

Moreno warned about the consequences of taking such a step. "I think we are going to run out of adequate instruments if there is another spike," he said.

The Juntas head added, "I think it was a hasty decision, not mature enough and not in dialogue with the regions."

When all the weight of the fight against the pandemic falls on the regions, it seems sensible and reasonable that the Government of Spain at least make them partners to the decision."

He acknowledged that he has been "surprised" that they were not previously informed and regretted that, for several months, they have not had "any conferences of the regional presidents".

"I believe that the pandemic and the economic crisis is reason enough for Pedro Sanchez to have summoned us and we could talk and debate about how we get out of the health crisis, how the rate of vaccination is going or how European funds are going," Moreno said.

The introduction of the state of alarm last autumn allowed the regions to impose curfews and mobility restrictions without challenges in the courts, something that happened between last summer and until 25 October.

From 9 May, the regions will once again be in charge of the measures they implement, but legal experts fear a similar situation to that prior to 25 October.
by Vladimir Rozanskij

Izzak Amon, who has been working for Tajik migrants since the 1990s, has been missing for weeks. He was expelled from Russia and deported to Tajikistan. A video intended for Putin. He is accused of corruption, but his troubles started since he got involved in politics. Tajiks compare him to Alexei Naval'nyj, or the Belarusian Svetlana Tikhanovskaja.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - At least 120 protesters out of 400 were arrested on April 2 (photo 2). According to OVD-Info, they had gathered at the Tajikistan embassy in Moscow to express their support for human rights activist Izzak Amon (photo 1). He was deported to Tajikistan at the end of March, where he was locked up in solitary confinement on charges of fraud.

Izzak Amon is well known among the Tajik migrant workers in Russia, as the director of the Moscow Todzhikon centre, for defending the rights of his countrymen. He helps people get documents, work, a home. In 2019, Amon decided to launch into politics, announcing the creation in Russia of a migrant workers party called Change, Reform and Development. Amons popularity increased considerably in 2020, with a large fundraising to help migrants during the pandemic.

On March 25, Amon disappeared, but he managed to call a collaborator to inform him of his arrest. Family and friends searched for him at length, knowing that Izzak had been stalked for days. He had even recorded a video appealing to President Putin, asking him to publish it after his eventual disappearance.

In the video, the activist tells how in 1996 he received Russian citizenship, attended the diplomatic academy of the Moscow foreign ministry, and the academy of public administration. Amon then explains how he began to criticize the Tajik government and the Tajik embassy in Moscow, which he claims sold false documents to Tajik migrants. This criticism attracted the attention of the secret services, which began to keep him under surveillance.

The video is from March 23, and it states that his Russian passport was cancelled at the request of the Tajikistan security services. The appeal ends with the words "dear Vladimir Vladimirovic [Putin], if you watch this video it means that I am no longer on the territory of the Russian Federation ... the Tajik authorities together with the Russian services put me in jail, just because I criticize the actions of the powerful ". The video was viewed on YouTube by over half a million people.

Amons relatives managed to find out where he is being held by chance, from the website of the Tverskoy court in Moscow, which announced his expulsion from Russia on the grounds "of illegal work of a foreign citizen on the territory of the Russian Federation."

In addition, on March 27, the website of the Tajikistan interior ministry published an unspecified accusation of fraud, which would have caused the deportation. It only adds that Amon, called by his original Tajik name of Kholov Izatullo Amonovich, allegedly "amassed enormous sums from Tajik labour migrants in Russia, under the pretext of defending their rights".

Two of Izzak's brothers, Izatullo and Said, live in Russia and participate in his activities. They told reporters how in 2020 Amon had really collected huge sums, to distribute them to his compatriots throughout the Russian territory: No Tajik in Russia would speak ill of Izzak; he never kept a penny for himself; he is an educated and religious man, a man of law and a true democrat, who has always helped anyone in need.

In the eyes of the many Tajik migrants, who are often entrusted with the humblest jobs in Russia, Amon was a model of redemption, a "migrant who made it", overcoming the endless complications of the Russian bureaucracy, obtaining a real education and achieving an important professional status for himself and for others.

The fame of the rights defender is not limited to migrants in Russia, but also spreads to his homeland, where his supporters are already starting to compare him to Svetlana Tikhanovskaja in Belarus, or to Alexei Naval'nyj in Russia itself.

However, Amon's brothers warn supporters to avoid excesses of enthusiasm, so as not to provoke even more widespread reactions from the Russian and Tajik authorities, and to follow his example with caution in dedication and mutual solidarity.
University chiefs have urged Boris Johnson to allow students to go back to campuses this month after the Prime Minister failed to mention their plight in his press conference on Monday.

Boris Johnson this week confirmed that from April 12, non-essential shops, gyms, hairdressers, zoos and theme parks in England can reopen - while pubs and restaurants will be allowed to serve customers outdoors.

But the PM failed to mention anything about university return dates - despite ministers promising to reassess current rules at Easter.

Since January, students have not been unable to return to campuses or university accommodation unless they are studying for a degree that requires in-person teaching, such as medicine.

University vice-Chancellors have blasted the rules as 'illogical' as the rest of the country opens up.

University chiefs have urged Boris Johnson to allow students to go back to campuses by April 12 after the Prime Minister failed to mention their plight in his press conference on Monday. Pictured: Students in isolation in Manchester last year

Universities UK (UUK) president Professor Julia Buckingham and the group's chief executive wrote a letter to the PM calling on him to provide 'urgent' clarity on what the return date will be.

Their letter, reported in The Daily Telegraph, reads: 'We are asking for an explanation for this omission and seeking urgent clarification about your Government's plans for student returns and what further steps will be taken to support their education and wellbeing.

'The list of sectors which are allowed to operate in-person activities in England from 12 April is extensive  all shops, personal care businesses, gyms, spas, zoos, theme parks, public libraries and community centres  and restrictions will be lifted enabling people to travel anywhere in England for a self-catering holiday.

'It therefore seems illogical that students are not allowed to return to their self-catering accommodation and resume their studies in Covid-safe university facilities, particularly at this crucial time of the academic year.'

From April 12, non-essential shops, gyms, hairdressers, zoos and theme parks in England can reopen - while pubs and restaurants will be allowed to serve customers outdoors. Pictured: Signs in the windows of isolating students in Manchester last year

The Government is set to 'review options' when the Easter holidays come to an end. Pictured: Signs made by students last year

Students display signs in windows at Manchester Metropolitan University's Cambridge Halls

Students have been studying from home since December. In Autumn, campus Covid outbreaks saw thousands confined to their halls - with many universities cancelling in-person lectures and seminars.

The Government is set to 'review options' when the Easter holidays come to an end.

Dr Mike Tildesley, from the University of Warwick team that correctly predicted the UK's second wave, said he was 'really pleasantly surprised' that reopening schools did not cause a spike in infections

A Department for Education spokesperson said: 'This has been a difficult time for students, and we are committed to getting all students back into university as soon as the public health situation allows.

'Students on practical and creative courses started returning from March 8, and we will be reviewing options for the timing of the return of all remaining students by the end of the Easter holidays.

'Decisions will take into account the need to protect progress across the wider roadmap out of the pandemic, including the spread of the virus in communities and pressures on the NHS.'

It follows the news that Britain's roadmap out of lockdown could be sped up because the coronavirus vaccines are working so well, according to one of the Government scientists - despite doomsday modelling by SAGE suggesting lifting restrictions could trigger a surge in deaths.

Dr Mike Tildesley, from the University of Warwick team that correctly predicted the UK's second wave, said he was 'really pleasantly surprised' that reopening schools did not cause a spike in infections.

The infectious disease modeller, who is also a member of the SPI-M group whose calculations feed into SAGE, told LBC Radio: 'If these numbers keep going down over the next few weeks there certainly is an argument to say 'well actually, we're doing really well with the road map, it could be sped up'.'

This week, some of the modelling in documents released by the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE) suggested that lifting curbs fully in June could lead to more than a thousand deaths a day this summer and push the NHS to the brink again.

Dr Tildesley conceded 'there may well be' a surge of cases across the country but probably not as high as some of the gloomy forecasts have predicted. The government was yesterday accused of using 'Project Fear' tactics to prolong coronavirus restrictions by stealth after releasing the tranche of SAGE papers.

The expert group included modelling from three different universities - Imperial College London, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Dr Tildesley's team at Warwick University.

After reviewing all three papers, SAGE said social distancing, mask wearing and Covid vaccine passports will need to remain in place for at least another year to keep the virus in check even when the most brutal curbs are lifted.

It added that while the vaccines prevent the vast majority of people from falling ill and dying from coronavirus, they 'are not good enough' to see all curbs lifted 'without a big epidemic'.

Independent experts told MailOnline the data used by the Government's scientific advisers 'didn't match' how well the vaccine rollout is going and played down how effective the jabs are - and at least one was 'very confident the NHS is not going to be overwhelmed'.
State police at Frackville offered details on a series of Friday crashes that happened on an icy stretch of Interstate 81 north in Ryan Township and resulted in a three-hour road closing.

According to police:

 Jose R. Santos Ramirez, 49, of Hazleton, lost control of the Ford Explorer he was driving at mile marker 126.3 at 12:10 a.m. as he traversed an icy, untreated bridge. He drove over the bridge and entered a grass shoulder on the right side of I-81, where the vehicle overturned onto its roof. Santos Ramirez wasnt injured but his vehicle was towed.

 Jamar A. McGlocklin-Greene, 35, of Hagerstown, Maryland, applied the brakes to the Freightliner Sprinter he was driving at mile marker 126 at 1 a.m. due to a previous crash. However, he drove into the right lane and the shoulder before hitting a concrete barrier. After impact, the vehicle traveled back across both lanes and jackknifed. McGlocklin-Greene wasnt injured. His tractor-trailer was towed.

 The driver of a Freightliner was approaching the jackknifed tractor-trailer blocking both lanes and attempted to stop but also lost control of his vehicle around 1 a.m. His front drivers side hit the left side barrier on the bridge, stopping short of the jackknifed tractor-trailer. The driver, whose name wasnt released by police, wasnt injured and no damage was caused to the bridge.
Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki speaks during an emergency economic meeting at the Government Complex Seoul on April 7, Wednesday. Yonhap



By Lee Min-hyung



The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has revised up Korea's 2021 GDP growth forecast by 50 basis points to 3.6 percent, in a World Economic Outlook (WEO) report, reflecting on robust export growth and anti-coronavirus extra budget effects here.



This is well above other projections from authorities here and abroad  such as the OECD, the Korea Development Institute (KDI) and the Korean government  whose forecasts ranged from 3.1 percent to 3.3 percent.



With major economies across the globe showing signs of recovering from the COVID-19 shock, the IMF forecasts the Korean economy would also bounce back at a more robust pace on export upswing and other rosy economic indices here.



According to data from the Bank of Korea (BOK) released Wednesday, exports here increased by 9.2 percent to reach $44.7 billion (49.9 trillion won) in February from the previous year.



The Korean economy is heavily reliant on exports, with its trade dependency topping 60 percent. But the economy reported a contraction of 1 percent in 2020 amid virus-induced global economic downfall.



The IMF also forecasts the global economy to grow 6 percent this year, an increase of 0.5 percentage points from the earlier forecast, due to aggressive anti-virus measures taken by governments around the globe.



Korea's Ministry of Economy and Finance expected the nation's export recovery momentum to pick up more steam for the rest of this year on the global economic rebound.



The nation's exports will recover at a more agile pace particularly on economic growth of Korea's two biggest trade partners  the United States and China, according to the finance ministry.



According to the latest IMF report, Korea placed its name on a list of eight G20 member nations whose 2021 GDP growth is forecast to top their 2019 figures.



Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki also remained optimistic over the economy's faster-than-expected recovery this year.



"The U.S. president and his administration's push for large-scale pump-priming measures are expected to cast significant ripple effects on its major trading partners this year, and Korea will be one of the biggest beneficiaries due to its heavy trade reliance," Hong said during an emergency economy meeting Wednesday.



Eugene Investment & Securities economist Kim Yeon-jin also shared a rosy outlook for Korea's economic recovery based on similar reasoning.



"Expectations for an economic rebound here will rise, as Korea's key trading partners are also showing signs of economic recovery," the economist said. On top of that, a series of U.S. stimulus packages worth trillions of dollars and the country's rapid vaccination program will also keep raising hopes for the Korean economy, according to the expert.


Ukrainian-Israeli relations in the fight against anti-Semitism were the subject of a meeting between H.E. Mr. Yevhen Korniychuk, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Ukraine to the State of Israel and the Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Charitable Foundation Natan Sharansky. The Embassy reported this at Facebook.

During the meeting, the state and prospects of Ukraine's relations with Israel in various areas were discussed, in particular in the field of combating anti-semitism. The Ambassador informed Sharansky about the measures taken by the Ukrainian authorities in the field of combating this phenomenon, including at the legislative level, - the statement reads.

Special attention was paid to the issue of proper commemoration of the victims of the Holocaust and the righteous peoples of the world, among whom 2,659 Ukrainians were recognized as the Yad Vashem Memorial Complex.

As a result of the meeting, the interlocutors agreed to work out a number of initiatives aimed at deepening friendly relations between the two countries in the near future, - the Embassy noted.
ROCHESTER, Minn.  Another Rochester city official has been appointed to a committee by the National League of Cities (NLC).

Councilmember Kelly Rae Kirkpatrick will served one on NLCs 2021 Federal Advocacy Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Committee, which provides strategic direction and guidance on federal agenda and policy priorities.

"I'm happy to be chosen to sit on the National League of Cities Energy, Environment & Natural Resources (EENR) Committee representing Rochester, says Kirkpatrick. Advocating at a federal level will help create a more just world where we can honor both our natural and built environments."

Kirkpatrick joins Mayor Kim Norton and Councilmember Patrick Keane in serving on various NLC committees.

Our federal advocacy committees are the voices of whats happening on the ground in our communities, says Kathy Maness, councilmember of Lexington, South Carolina, and President of the National League of Cities. I am proud to have Kelly Rae Kirkpatrick join NLC's Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Committee on behalf of her residents. Together with a team of local leaders from around the country, we will work to solve the most pressing challenges facing our communities.
DALLAS - After school shootings that left dozens dead in recent years, National Rifle Association leader Wayne LaPierre said the resulting outrage put him in such danger that he sought shelter aboard a borrowed 108-foot (32.92-meter) yacht.

FILE - In this Saturday, Feb. 29, 2020, file photo, National Rifle Association Executive Vice President and CEO Wayne LaPierre speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC 2020, at the National Harbor, in Oxon Hill, Md. After school shootings that left dozens dead in recent years, LaPierre said the resulting outrage put him in such danger that he sought shelter aboard a friends 108-foot yacht. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

DALLAS - After school shootings that left dozens dead in recent years, National Rifle Association leader Wayne LaPierre said the resulting outrage put him in such danger that he sought shelter aboard a borrowed 108-foot (32.92-meter) yacht.

During a deposition, the head of the powerful gun-rights groups acknowledged sailing in the Bahamas with his family as a security retreat in the summers following a 2012 school shooting in Connecticut and a 2018 massacre in Florida.

I was basically under presidential threat without presidential security in terms of the number of threats I was getting, LaPierre said, according to a transcript of the deposition filed in court over the weekend. And this was the one place that I hope could feel safe, where I remember getting there going, Thank God Im safe, nobody can get me here.

The testimony emerged in a federal bankruptcy trial over whether the NRA should be allowed to incorporate in Texas instead of New York, where a state lawsuit is trying to put it out of business. LaPierre is scheduled to take the witness stand in the case, which is being conducted virtually before a court in Dallas, this week.

The NRA declared bankruptcy in January, months after New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, sued seeking the groups dissolution over claims that top executives illegally diverted tens of millions of dollars for lavish personal trips, no-show contracts for associates and other questionable expenditures.

The allegations include that LaPierre repeatedly sailed in the Bahamas on the yacht of Hollywood producer David McKenzie, whose company has done business with the NRA, but did not mention the trips on financial disclosures. McKenzie is not named in the suit but both it and LaPierre's deposition include the name of his yacht: Illusions.

In the deposition, LaPierre said he did not pay to use McKenzie's yacht, which came with a cook, a motor boat and a pair of Sea-Doo personal watercraft. He said he did not think using the vessel violated the NRA's conflict-of-interest policy because the summer sailing trips were for security. Nonetheless, LaPierre said he stopped using it in 2019 as part of the NRA's self-correction.

The shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut left 20 first graders and six educators dead in December 2012. The February 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killed 17 people.

The NRA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on LaPierres testimony.

McKenzie did not immediately respond to voicemail and email messages to his company seeking comment. He told The Wall Street Journal, which first reported LaPierre 's use of his yacht last year, that he hadnt read New York's lawsuit and couldnt discuss any litigation.

Shannon Watts, the founder of the gun control group Moms Demand Action, highlighted LaPierres testimony on Twitter Monday, mocking his argument that it takes a good guy with a gun to stop a mass shooting. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good friend with a yacht? she wrote.

The group's bankruptcy trial began Monday with a lawyer for New York arguing that LaPierre put the NRA into Chapter 11 bankruptcy despite its financial strength to escape accountability for his own spending abuses. He made the move largely by himself and kept the plan secret from the groups board, its general counsel and treasurer at the time, New York Assistant Attorney General Monica Connell told Judge Harlin Hale.

Though headquartered in Virginia, the NRA was chartered as a non-profit in New York in 1871 and is incorporated in the state. Its bankruptcy filing listed between $100 million and $500 million in assets and placed its liabilities in the same range.

NRA lawyer Greg Garman said during opening statements that LaPierre did nothing wrong and made the decision to put the group into bankruptcy to avoid New York authorities having it placed in a receivership. The NRA has cast a court appointing a receiver to oversee the organization as a potential death blow and argued that it's looking for a more politically favourable environment in gun-friendly Texas.

I think it will help us flourish to get out of that environment and get into a state that really wants us here, NRA First Vice-President Charles Cotton testified Tuesday.
Muons, particles akin to electrons, have kepts physicists' heads spinning for more than a decade, because an experimental measurement of their magnetic properties (1) disagrees with theory. Could this be caused by unknown particles or forces?

A new theoretical calculation of this parameter, involving CNRS physicists and published in the journal Nature, has reduced the discrepancy with the experimental measurement. The debate nevertheless continues.

--

For over 10 years, measurement of the magnetic properties of the muon (an ephemeral cousin of the electron) has exhibited disagreement with theoretical predictions. This suggests a possible gap in the standard model of particle physics (2), possibly providing a glimpse of a more exotic physics. The first results of Fermilab's "Muon g-2" experiment, which measures one of these properties known as the muon "magnetic moment," will be revealed on 7 April 2021.

While France is not directly participating in this experiment, a CNRS team (3) played a decisive role in calculating the theoretical prediction used as a reference,(4) without which no conclusion would have been possible. To determine the effect of hadronic vacuum polarization, which currently limits the accuracy of calculations, the team used measurements made with electron-positron colliders. This exact approach, which depends exclusively on the precision of these measurements, has been developed and improved by this team for 20 years, leading to the disagreement with the experimental measurement of the muon's magnetic moment.

A different method was recently used by a team including CNRS researchers(5), whose result for the calculation of this contribution is being published in the journal Nature. This result notably reduces the discrepancy with the current experimental value. Thus, the standard model may yet have the last word! To achieve this result, the scientists calculated this contribution ab initio, which is to say using the standard model's equations with no additional parameter. With approximately one billion variables involved, multiple massively parallel European supercomputers (6) were needed to meet this great challenge. This is the first time an ab initio calculation has rivalled the precision of the reference approach, which predicts values for the muon magnetic moment that differ from the measured value to a greater degree.

To settle the matter once and for all, scientists will have to wait for the results of this new theoretical calculation to be confirmed by other teams, and determine what causes the differences between the two theoretical approaches. CNRS teams are currently working together to meet this challenge. They hope to obtain, by combining approaches, a new theoretical reference prediction that is accurate enough to decide the fate of the standard model in coming years, which will see the publication of the final results from Fermilab's "Muon g-2" experiment, as well as those from another experiment with similar objectives in Japan.

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Notes

(1) Measurement conducted at the Brookhaven National Laboratory (United States) between 1997 and 2001.

(2) The standard model of particle physics is the theory that describes elementary particles and their interactions.

(3) The DHMZ group, consisting of Michel Davier (IJCLab CNRS/Universite Paris-Saclay), Andreas Hoecker (CERN, Geneva), Bogdan Malaescu (LPNHE, CNRS/Sorbonne Universite), and Zhiqing Zhang (IJCLab), has published 10 major articles on the subject that have been cited over 3,000 times.

(4) The theoretical value of reference used by the "Muon g-2" experiment was obtained by comparing the results, published in Physics Reports in 2020, obtained by various working groups around the globe. It is very close to the final value published by the DHMZ group in 2019.

(5) In addition to Laurent Lellouch's team at the Centre for Theoretical Physics (CNRS/Aix-Marseille Universite/Universite de Toulon) in France, the "Budapest-Marseille-Wuppertal" collaboration includes Eotvos Lorand University (Hungary), the University of Wuppertal and the Forschungszentrum Julich (Germany), and Pennsylvania State University (United States).

(6) In Germany, those of the Forschungszentrum Julich, the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (Munich), and the High Performance Computing Center (Stuttgart); in France, Turing and Jean Zay at the Institute for Development and Resources in Intensive Scientific Computing (IDRIS) of the CNRS, and Joliot-Curie at the Very Large Computing Centre (TGCC) of the CEA, by way of the French Large-scale Computing Infrastructure (GENCI).
An international research team has sequenced the genomes of the oldest securely dated modern humans in Europe who lived around 45,000 years ago in Bacho Kiro Cave, Bulgaria. By comparing their genomes to the genomes of people who lived later in Europe and in Asia the researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, show that this early human group in Europe contributed genes to later people, particularly present-day East Asians. The researchers also identified large stretches of Neandertal DNA in the genomes of the Bacho Kiro Cave people, showing that they had Neandertal ancestors about five to seven generations back in their family histories. This suggests that mixture with Neandertals was the rule rather than the exception when the first modern humans arrived in Europe.

Last year, a research team led by researchers from the National Institute of Archaeology with Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany, reported the discovery of modern human remains found in direct association with the Initial Upper Palaeolithic stone tools at the site of Bacho Kiro Cave in Bulgaria. The oldest individuals found in the cave were directly radiocarbon dated to between 43,000 and 46,000 years ago. They are thus the earliest known dispersal of modern humans across the mid-latitudes of Eurasia.

Mateja Hajdinjak and colleagues have now sequenced the genomes of five individuals found at the Bacho Kiro Cave. Four individuals are between 43,000 to 46,000-years-old and were found together with stone tools belonging to the Initial Upper Palaeolithic, the earliest culture associated with modern humans in Eurasia. An additional individual found in the cave is around 35,000-years-old and found with stone tools of a later type. It was previously thought that bearers of the Initial Upper Palaeolithic died out without contributing genetically to modern humans arriving later. However, the researchers now show that the oldest Bacho Kiro Cave individuals, or groups closely related to them, contributed genes to present-day people. Surprisingly, this contribution is found particularly in East Asia and the Americas rather than in Europe where the Bacho Kiro Cave people lived. These genetic links to Asia mirror the links seen between the Initial Upper Palaeolithic stone tools and personal ornaments found in Bacho Kiro Cave and tools and ancient jewelry found across Eurasia to Mongolia.

Genetic differences between individuals

Importantly, the later 35,000-year-old individual found in Bacho Kiro Cave belonged to a group that was genetically distinct from the earlier inhabitants of the cave. This shows that the earliest history of modern humans in Europe may have been tumultuous and involved population replacements.

The earliest people at Bacho Kiro Cave lived at a time when Neandertals were still around. The researchers therefore scanned their genomes for fragments of Neandertal DNA. "We found that the Bacho Kiro Cave individuals had higher levels of Neandertal ancestry than nearly all other early humans, with the exception of a 40,000-year-old individual from Romania. Crucially, most of this Neandertal DNA comes in extremely long stretches. This shows that these individuals had Neandertal ancestors some five to seven generations back in their family trees" says Mateja Hajdinjak.

Although only a handful of genomes from modern humans who lived at the same time in Eurasia as some of the last Neandertals have been recovered, nearly all of them have recent Neandertal ancestors. "The results suggest that the first modern humans that arrived in Eurasia mixed frequently with Neandertals. They may even have become absorbed into resident Neandertal populations. Only later on did larger modern human groups arrive and replace the Neandertals" says Svante Paabo, who coordinated the genetic research.

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Original publication

Mateja Hajdinjak, Fabrizio Mafessoni, Laurits Skov, Benjamin Vernot, Alexander Hubner, Qiaomei Fu, Elena Essel, Sarah Nagel, Birgit Nickel, Julia Richter, Oana Teodora Moldovan, Silviu Constantin, Elena Endarova, Nikolay Zahariev, Rosen Spasov, Frido Welker, Geoff M. Smith, Virginie Sinet-Mathiot, Lindsey Paskulin, Helen Fewlass, Sahra Talamo, ?eljko Rezek, Svoboda Sirakova, Nikolay Sirakov, Shannon P. McPherron, Tsenka Tsanova, Jean-Jacques Hublin, Benjamin M. Peter, Matthias Meyer, Pontus Skoglund, Janet Kelso and Svante Paabo Initial Upper Palaeolithic humans in Europe had recent Neanderthal ancestry. Nature; 7 April, 2021
A Welshman who airmailed himself home from Australia is hoping to find two Irish men who helped his daring escape.

In 1965, at the age of 19, Brian Robson, from Cardiff, was unable to afford the airfare to travel from Melbourne back to London.

He had undertaken an assisted immigration programme with Victorian Railways but found himself incredibly homesick.

In a desperate plan to avoid paying for the plane ticket, he nailed himself into a wooden crate with the help of the two friends, named John and Paul. Now, aged 76, Mr Robson is searching for the two Irish men who helped him in his hazardous expedition.

Mr Robson almost died in the attempt after the journey was diverted via Los Angeles.

In 1965, 19-year-old Brian Robson, from Cardiff, was unable to afford the airfare to travel from Melbourne back to his home in the UK

Mr Robson pictured above at the age of 76. He documented his journey in a book, The Crate Escape

The teenager had taken a job with Victorian Railways on an assisted immigration programme in Australia, however he found himself deeply homesick and longed to go home to Cardiff.

His travel costs had been paid for by the Australian government.

Mr Robson would have had to pay about 800 to reimburse them and fund his way home, which was impossible on his salary of 30 a month.

'It would have taken me years to earn the fare home. That's when I decided I was going to mail myself home in a crate and sought John and Paul's help,' he said.

The two men worked for the same company and had gone to school together back in Ireland.

Mr Robson does not recall where they were from or what their last names are.

He needed their help as Paul had access to a typewriter to do the paperwork to send him as freight. It took a week of persuading his friends who were reluctant with the idea.

'John was with me all the way, but Paul did not want to do it at all,' Mr Robson said.

The journey proved more hazardous than expected. After arriving in Sydney from Melbourne, Mr Robson faced a 24-hour wait in storage before his journey was diverted via Los Angeles

The plan was to send Mr Robson back to an address in the UK with a smuggled hammer.

He would then break his way out of the crate in Heathrow, jump the airport fence and escape back to his family in Cardiff.

The crate was just big enough for the teenager to crouch inside in. He took laxatives for three days beforehand to ensure that he would not have to go to the bathroom in the crate.

When it was time to leave, Mr Robson got into the crate, and his Irish friends nailed down the top.

The journey proved more hazardous than expected. After arriving in Sydney from Melbourne, Mr Robson faced a 24-hour wait in storage.

The Qantas flight from Melbourne to Heathrow was full and the crate containing the teenager was instead loaded on a Pan Am flight to Los Angeles.

'As far as I knew, I was on a Qantas plane heading towards Europe,' he said.

The teenager grew weaker as the days dragged on. 'I was in the crate for five days and ended up in a freight shed. I thought I was in London,' he said.

Stiff and limping, home-sick Welshman Brian Robson, 19, who tried to send himself back to Cardiff from Australia is pictured arriving at London Airport after his 96 hours in a crate

He had grown too weak to break out of the box with a hammer. Fortunately, his rescue came when two freight workers noticed his torchlight coming from the crate.

One of the startled workers cried out: 'There's a dead body in there!'

The workers raised the alarm.

Mr Robson, who had become frozen stiff inside the small space, was rushed to hospital where he spent five days recovering.

In total, he spent 96 hours inside the crate.

When he was strong enough, he was interviewed by both the CIA and FBI, who feared that he was a spy.

Eventually, the FBI chief arranged to fly him back to the UK.

He documented his journey in a book, The Crate Escape, which is due to be published at the end of the month.

Mr Robson is now keen to be reunited with his two Irish friends who helped him in his journey and says he hopes he can 'buy them a drink'.

'If I met them again, I'd just like to say that I'm sorry I got them into this and that I missed them when I came back,' he said.

'I'd like to buy them a drink.'
President Joe Biden launched a full-throated defense of his corporate tax hike to fund his $2.3 trillion dollar infrastructure plan, saying he was tired of ordinary Americans being fleeced.

Biden pointed to the numerous companies that don't pay taxes, the Trump tax cuts that benefited top wage earners, and the amount of money billionaires made during the K-shaped economic recovery.

'Im not trying to punish anybody, but damn it, maybe it's because I come from middle class neighborhood, I'm sick and tired of ordinary people being fleeced,' he said.

Biden's tax proposal would hike the corporate tax rate to 28 per cent, increase the de facto global minimum tax and crack down on companies that pay little or no income taxes with their 'book value.'

The Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable have pushed back against Biden's tax hikes, claiming they will crush American competitiveness - an argument Republicans and some moderate Democrats have echoed.

After his remarks, Biden told reporters he is open to changing the 28 per cent tax rate.

'I'm willing to listen to that. I'm willing. I'm wide open to but we got to pay for this. We got to pay. There's many other ways we can do it, but I'm willing to negotiate that. I've come forward the best, most rational way in my view, the fairest way to pay for it. But there are many other ways as well,' he said.

President Joe Biden launched a full-throated defense of his corporate tax hike to fund his $2.3 trillion dollar infrastructure plan

The long list of items in Biden's infrastructure proposal and his tax plan to raise the trillions needed to pay for his wish list have become a dueling set of controversies for the administration as it struggles to get enough support on Capitol Hill to pass the package.

Biden said in his speech he welcomes the debate and that 'compromises are inevitable.' He noted he and Vice President Kamala Harris will meet with Republicans and Democrats over the next few weeks to discuss the issue.

'We'll be open to good ideas and good faith negotiations,' he said. 'But here's what we won't be open to, we will not be open to doing nothing, and inaction is simply is not an option.'

Republicans have criticized the president's plan for containing items outside the scope of traditional infrastructure. Biden's plan spends billions on roads, bridges and highways but it also funds additional projects such as broadband internet across the nation, affordable housing, improvements to schools and day care centers, and a Civilian Climate Corps.

But Biden argued infrastructure has to evolve to meet the changing needs of society.

'To automatically say that the only thing thats infrastructure is a highway, bridge, or whatever, thats just not rational,' he said.

'We need to start seeing infrastructures through its effect on the lives of working people in America,' he noted.

He said working Americans need dependable internet, an electric grid that won't collapse in a winter storm, clean pipes for clean drinking water, and local investment, including in minority communities.

Biden grew visibly angry at points in his remarks, when he talked about America falling behind the rest of the world when it came to investment and innovation. He particularly singled out China as bypassing the United States.

'Over the next six to eight months, China and the rest of the world is racing ahead of us and the investments they have in the future,' he said.

'America is no longer leading the world because we're not investing,' he said.

'I don't know why we don't get this,' Biden added, his voice getting louder as he spoke. 'Were one of the only a few major economies in the world whose public investment in research and development has declined as a percentage of GDP in the last 25 years. Declined. The United States of America that led the world.'

'We stop investing in research, we stop investing in the jobs of the future. And we give up leading the world,' he argued.

President Joe Biden said without more investment the United States would fall behind countries like China

His speech comes as his Treasury Department unveiled its plan to overhaul the corporate tax code, which, if enacted, would raise $2.5 trillion in revenue over 15 years to pay for the infrastructure package.

Biden's push to pay for the package includes:

Hike the corporate tax rate

Biden would raise the corporate tax rate in the US to 28 percent from 21 percent. This move would partially undo the Trump administration's cut of the corporate tax rate from 35 percent in its 2017 tax bill.

The White House argues this would bring the United States in line with other first world nations when it comes to a tax on businesses.

Double the de facto global minimum tax

Biden's plan would double the de facto global minimum tax to 21 percent. It would also toughen its requirements so companies would have to pay the tax on a wider span of income across countries.

Raise global corporate income tax

Additionally, American officials are working with the G20 nations to enact a minimum global corporate income tax as part of the administration's effort to offset any disadvantages from their plan to increase the U.S. corporate tax rate.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Monday urged the move, saying it would 'stop the race to the bottom.'

'Competitiveness is about more than how U.S.-headquartered companies fare against other companies in global merger and acquisition bids,' Yellen noted. 'It is about making sure that governments have stable tax systems that raise sufficient revenue to invest in essential public goods.'

The U.S. is involved in talks with about 140 nations to develop a global agreement on minimum levies, led by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, but participants haven't yet reached a deal.

Enact a book value income tax

The plan would enact a 15 percent minimum tax on book income of large companies that report high profits, but have little taxable income.

Book income is what businesses report to investors and which is often used to judge shareholder and executive payouts.

The tax - aimed at companies that report large profits to investors but low tax payments would apply only to companies with income exceeding $2 billion. That is up from the $100 million threshold that Biden advocated for in the campaign.

The result is that just 180 companies would even meet the income threshold and just 45 would pay the tax, The Wall Street Journal noted.

Finally, the plan would replace flawed incentives that reward excess profits from intangible assets with more generous incentives for new research and development; replace fossil fuel subsidies with incentives for clean energy production and ramp up enforcement to address corporate tax avoidance.

Biden would also boost the Internal Revenue Service's budget so that it can step up enforcement and tax collection efforts.

The administration has begun its push to defend it tax proposal and argue its long list of items in the infrastructure bill are needed to keep the country competitive.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo joined the daily White House press briefing on Wednesday to argue 'the fact of the matter is the corporate structure, today is broken.'

'Many, many companies - large profitable companies - pay no corporate taxes. So I'd like to think we can all agree that it needs to be improved, level the playing field, close the loopholes and have a have a discussion around how we do this together to improve competitiveness,' she said.

She dismissed criticism that the plan would kill American jobs.

'We must make these investments in infrastructure in order to compete,' she said.

Meanwhile, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has referred to Biden's plan as a 'Trojan Horse' for issues Democrats want to advance. Other Republicans have argued a stream-lined, traditional infrastructure package could pass with bipartisan support.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said the current corporate tax structure is 'broken' and needs to be fixed

And Republican Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri said he told the White House if they want bipartisan support on an infrastructure plan, it needs to have just infrastructure.

'I think it's a big mistake for the administration. They know I think it's a mistake,' Blunt said on 'Fox News Sunday.' 'And I also think it would be an easy victory if we go back and look at roads and bridges and ports and airports and maybe even underground water systems and broadband. You'd still be talking about less than 30 percent of this entire package and it's an easily doable 30 percent.'

'The other 70 or so percent of the package that doesn't have very much too do with infrastructure,' he noted on ABC's 'This Week.'

A CNN analysis found that traditional infrastructure projects account for 30 per cent of Biden's plan.

Biden's plan includes $621 billion for transportation, $400 billion for homecare service, $300 billion for manufacturing and $180 billion for research and development, according to a White House Fact Sheet.

Here's a more detailed breakdown of what it contains:
President Xi Jinping told German leader Angela Merkel during a phone call Wednesday that he hoped Europe would "make positive efforts with China", Chinese state media reported, following an international row over the treatment of Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang.

The call was Xi's first with a European leader since last month's tit-for-tat sanctions over allegations of human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region, which drastically soured relations between China and the EU.

"China-EU relations are facing a new development juncture, as well as various challenges," Xi was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news agency, which added he urged the EU to make a "correct judgment independently".

China is worried by US efforts to shore up its allies across the globe -- including Europe -- as President Joe Biden seeks to counter Beijing's rising influence and defend a democratic liberal order that waned under the haphazard leadership of the previous Trump administration.

"It is crucial to firmly grasp the overall direction of China-EU relations' development... from a strategic perspective, mutually respect each other and eliminate interference," Xi was quoted as telling Chancellor Merkel.

The president added that China wishes to "put multilateralism into practice" with the EU, and cooperate with the bloc on issues including climate change.

"Strengthening China-Germany and China-EU cooperation can achieve meaningful great deeds. I hope that Germany and the EU can make positive efforts with China to add even more certainty and stability to this ever-changing world," he was quoted as saying.

China and the EU completed negotiations for a landmark trade deal in December, which has yet to be ratified by the EU Parliament.

However, the deal's future is uncertain after the EU imposed its first sanctions on China in three decades over Xinjiang, where up to one million Uyghur Muslim minorities are estimated to have been detained in internment camps by rights groups.

Story continues

China hit back with wide-ranging sanctions on various European parliamentarians, academics and the German think tank MERICS -- Europe's largest.

Then, the EU, US, Canada and Britain imposed co-ordinated sanctions on Chinese officials allegedly involved in Xinjiang rights abuses, and China sanctioned further individuals and organisations from these countries.

Shortly afterwards, Swedish fashion giant H&M became the target of a nationalistic consumer boycott, after it vowed last year to avoid using Xinjiang cotton due to its alleged links with Uyghur forced labour.

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A man charged with possession of drugs and public order offences has just about made bail following a special sitting of Longford District Court last Wednesday afternoon.

On March 27, 2021, two gardai from Granard Garda station observed Thomas Leonavicius of Top Flat, Longford Motors, Strokestown Road, Longford, with a quantity of controlled drugs at Townspark, Longford, at 11.15am.

Gda Padraig McConnell of Granard Garda Station explained that, during arrest, Mr Leonavicius resisted and a struggle ensued, which resulted in Gda Brendan Lynn being injured. Gda Lynn is currently off duty.

Gda McConnell added that gardai were objecting to bail due to the seriousness and nature of the charges, which include two counts of possession of cannabis and amphetamines, and one charge of resisting arrest.

The court heard that the accused had five previous convictions under section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act, with two charges under section 15 of the Misuse of Drugs Act currently before the Circuit Court.

The section 3 charges carry a sentence of up to 12 months in prison, Gda McConnell explained, while the section 15 charges carry up to seven years in prison.

On the date of arrest, he was found with a quantity of what I believe to be controlled drugs, said Gda McConnell.

He did his best to get rid of the drugs and threw them away but they were collected. He also tried to get rid of an electronic device that we believe would have information into drug deals.

He was consumed with getting away and getting rid of what he was in possesion of. One member, Gda Lynn, was injured and is currently out sick, he added.

He (the accused) is a self-confessed drug addict and, when arrested, he gave an address which I suspected he no longer stayed at. We confirmed that he was evicted from that address.

The belief of gardai is that, if he is released, theres a good possibility that hell fail to answer bail conditions, which he has done on two previous occasions in 2017.

We have no doubt hell continue in his previous mode of activity, which is, in my view, selling controlled drugs, which I believe hes been doing for years.

My work would involve inquiries around drugs. I would be aware that this man is a prominent player.

Solicitor for the defence, Tony McLynn explained that his client has a 12-year-old daughter, and has been living in the country for ten years, holding down a job in a meat factory for a number of years when he first arrived.

He hasnt worked for the last four years because he has a disability - he injured his arm, said Mr McLynn.

I dont know, now, he didnt show much disability when we met him, said Gda McConnell.

When asked about the drugs that were seized, Gda McConnell said that gardai were still awaiting analysis.

So theres very little evidence to suggest that he was in possession of controlled drugs, said Mr McLynn.

During interview, he admitted that the items found were controlled substances. He said cannabis and amphetamines, said Gda McConnell.

But he acknowledged they were for personal use only, said Mr McLynn.

Yes, Gda McConnell agreed, he didnt admit they were for sale.

The estimated street value of the substances seized is 200 to 250, the court heard.

At this stage, Mr Leonavicius has very little to lose. There are a number of different cases racing to the finish line and it wont be long before he has to face the final hurdle and he might now show up to court, said Gda McConnell.

Summing up the case of the prosecution, Sgt Enda Daly said that Mr Leonavicius was caught redhanded in the act and has a number of previous for similar offences.

Should he be granted bail, the concern is that he will continue, he said.

Judge Kevin Kilrane noted the previous convictions for similar offences and that there was a concern he would leave the jurisdiction or simply not turn up for court.

Hes in the country for 10 years and has a 12-year-old daughter and, while I dont know what his relationship with his daughter is like, he has probably lost his connection with Lithuania, said Judge Kilrane.

He has every incentive to leave the jurisdiction and flee. He also has two past warrants but other than that, he has attended every court date. I dont think there is any fear of him leaving the jurisdiction.

He is on bail for two section 15 charges already. I dont know if there were any conditions of bail or outstanding matters that hes on bail conditions for involving drugs.

It would go without saying that if there is not such a condition that it would be considered misconduct.

The accused is involved in drug dealing in relation to a small amount - 250 worth. He probably has engaged in the sale of drugs. The guard says he is a major player but we dont really have evidence of that, he added.

I rather reluctantly am prepared to grant bail but on strict conditions.

Bail conditions include a curfew from 10pm to 9am, that Mr Leonavicius reside at Top Flat, Longford Motors, Strokestown Road, Longford, that he provide a telephone number to gardai and remain contactable 24 hours a day.

He has also been warned to have no involvement of any kind with illegal drugs - no possession, and nothing in your apartment, said Judge Kilrane.

Youre to keep a daily record of visitors to your apartment every day - write down who has visited and what time, he added.

You are also to hand over your phone on request to gardai on inspection.

Finally, Mr Leonavicius is to sign on at Longford Garda Station daily between 9am and 9pm.

He just about made bail. If there are any allegations of breaches of bail again, even if its a in a minor way, gardai can re-enter, said Judge Kilrane.
Hazleton, PA (18201)

Today

Thunderstorms during the evening will give way to mainly clear skies after midnight. Low 59F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms during the evening will give way to mainly clear skies after midnight. Low 59F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%.
Floyds family takes its seat in ex-officers murder trial

A member of George Floyds family often occupies a reserved seat in the back corner of the Minneapolis courtroom where former police Officer Derek Chauvin is on trial in Floyds death. The seat reserved for Chauvins family goes unclaimed.

Floyds younger brother Philonise Floyd, of Houston, has attended several days of the trial to bear witness on behalf of his family. He has watched the often-excruciating bystander, police body camera and security videos of his brothers fatal encounter with Chauvin on May 25, and listened to testimony from eyewitnesses and police.

This is life-changing, Philonise Floyd said during a break in the proceedings. All this testimony is so hard on everyone.

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Chauvin, who is 45 and white, is charged with killing the 46-year-old Black man by pinning his neck for 9 minutes, 29 seconds as Floyd lay face-down in handcuffs. Floyd had been accused of passing a counterfeit $20 bill at a neighborhood market.

Nobody from Chauvins family has taken the seat theyre entitled to use. It usually has been occupied by a bailiff. Chauvin was recently divorced, and few details have emerged about the rest of his family. Courtroom seating has been strictly limited due to coronavirus concerns. Only two rotating pool reporters are allowed in at a time, but theyre able to observe whats not on the official video feed, including the family and the jury.

Any additional Floyd family members present must watch from another room, and theyre getting support from outside the courtroom. While admission to the courthouse is strictly limited, civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump. who represents the Floyd family, and the Rev. Al Sharpton were seen there Tuesday morning with some members of the Floyd family, waiting for an elevator. Gwen Carr, the mother of the late Eric Garner, was with them. Sharpton, Crump and Carr held a prayer vigil with members of the family outside the courthouse during the midday break Tuesday.

Philonise Floyd told reporters hes been trying to stop crying and has kept a box of tissues on the floor next to his chair. He said his family members and seemingly everyone he meets in Minneapolis cant stop crying, either. But he said hes grateful for the support his family is getting from the community, including the protesters who often gather outside the courthouse.

He was in the courtroom last week as George Floyds girlfriend, Courteney Ross, recounted both happy and sad times during their relationship  and their struggles with opiate addiction. He paid close attention, sometimes hanging his head as she recounted their life together, as part of prosecutors efforts to humanize George Floyd to the jury by portraying him as more than a crime statistic and giving a sympathetic explanation for his drug use.

At one point Philonise Floyd shook his head and turned his eyes away from the TV screen as it showed his brother laying unresponsive on a stretcher. But the jurors watched closely and stopped taking notes. A Black juror covered her mouth. Philonise Floyd rubbed the top of his head in distress as he lowered his head almost between his knees.

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Rodney Floyd, George Floyds youngest brother, who also came up from Houston for the trial, heard tearful testimony last week from Charles McMillian, an older bystander who recognized Chauvin from the neighborhood. McMillian told the officer after an ambulance took Floyd away that he didnt respect what Chauvin had done.

During a graphic video of officers struggling with George Floyd inside and then outside the squad car, yelling Mama and I cant breathe, Rodney Floyd held his hands and looked down, shaking his head, refusing to watch. He later told a reporter in the hallway, through tears, that he did watch some of the video out of the corner of his eye.

He watched at least some of the other videos too. His jaw visibly clenched and his head shook as he heard his brothers cries for help. But he turned his head as one video showed Chauvins knee on his brothers neck.

Rodney Floyd watched as body camera video from Officer Thomas Lane showed Lane approach the SUV that George Floyd was driving. The video showed the officer ordering his brother to show his hands, then drawing his gun and using expletives as he demands that Floyd put his hands on the wheel. Rodney Floyd shook his head from side to side, as if to signal no. He glared briefly at Chauvin at one point. But he mostly endured the video, looking stoic and sad, hugging his midsection lightly and swiveling just a bit in his chair.

Subrina Montgomery, one of several relatives who lives in the Minneapolis area, attended a day of jury selection and told reporters she hadnt learned that she was a cousin to Floyd until after his death. She said she wished she had known of the relationship so she could have met with him.

Shareeduh Tate, a Floyd cousin from Houston, who also attended a day of jury selection, told a reporter she had been encouraged by the often-emotional testimony from bystanders who pleaded with the officers to ease up.

I could almost feel like I was living in that moment with them, she said. Countless times I myself have wished I had been able to intervene.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 15:33:28|Editor: huaxia

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MANILA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The World Health Organization (WHO) in the Western Pacific Region on Wednesday expressed concern about the surging COVID-19 cases in the Philippines, warning that the increasing trend "is moving towards the red line."

WHO Regional Director for the Western Pacific Takeshi Kasai said the number of COVID-19 cases "exceeds or surpasses the capacity of health care."

"We know that once we cross that red line, we put health care workers in a very difficult situation, and once the health care workers start to get infections, the health care capacity goes down," Kasai said during an online media briefing.

He stressed the need to curb the virus transmission immediately.

As of Tuesday, the Philippines had 812,760 confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 13,817 deaths.

The Philippines' Department of Health said at least 16,185 medical workers, primarily nurses and doctors, contracted the virus as of April 5. At least 82 among them have succumbed to the disease.

Kasai explained that multiple factors are fueling the virus surge in the Philippines and in other countries, including the emergence of the more transmissible COVID-19 variants, increased mobility, and the lack of people's compliance on preventive measures such as wearing a face covering and washing hands.

He stressed the need to strengthen contact-tracing, surveillance system, and monitoring the more infectious variants to curb the transmission.

"It may not apply to the Philippines, but in other countries we also observe a vaccine optimism (due to) the availability of the vaccine, (prompting people to) relax basic preventive measures," Kasai added.

The effective use of the vaccine against COVID-19 is vital, he said, insisting that "the vaccine alone cannot control the COVID-19." Enditem
TORONTO, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Bank of Montreal (BMO) (TSX:BMO) (NYSE:BMO) today announced the election of Madhu Ranganathan and Stephen Dent to BMO's board of directors following its Annual Meeting of Shareholders.

"We are pleased to welcome Steve and Madhu to the Board of Directors," said George Cope, Chair of the Board, BMO. "Their knowledge and experience will be an excellent complement to the talented group of individuals serving on our Board."

Madhu Ranganathan is the Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at OpenText. She brings more than 30 years of financial leadership experience, with an innovative Silicon Valley technology driven background with deep operational focus in software, hardware and tech-enabled services businesses.

Prior to joining OpenText in 2018, she spent 10 years as the Chief Financial Officer of [24]7.ai, a global customer experience software and services company. Throughout her career she has served in various roles with innovative technology companies, and major accounting and financial services firms.

Ms. Ranganathan currently serves as a Board Member & Audit Committee Chair for Akamai Technologies. She is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, India and a Member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. She holds an MBA from the University of Massachusetts and a BS Accounting from the University of Madras.

Stephen Dent is a Managing Director and co-founder of Birch Hill Equity Partners, a Toronto-based private equity firm. Mr. Dent has over 30 years of experience in private equity and deep expertise in capital allocation, strategic planning, accounting and finance.

Prior to his current role, he spent 15 years at a major Canadian chartered bank culminating in a senior role leading the Canadian private equity division of the bank.

He is a Member of the Business Council of Canada. He is involved in the founding and ongoing support of Our Children's Medicine; an organization promoting Indigenous employment with leading Canadian companies. He is also involved in the founding and ongoing support of the Birch Hill Scholarship Program; supporting business school education for Indigenous youth. He holds a BBA from Wilfred Laurier University and an MBA from the Ivey School of Business at Western University.

Election of Board of Directors

At the annual meeting, all the director nominees listed in the bank's management proxy circular dated February 11, 2021 were elected. The detailed results of the vote for the election of directors are set out below.

Each of the following 13 directors proposed by management was elected as a director of BMO:

Nominee Votes For Votes Withheld Janice M. Babiak 299,680,685 98.67% 4,050,330 1.33% Sophie Brochu 301,988,463 99.43% 1,742,548 0.57% Craig W. Broderick 302,562,672 99.62% 1,168,343 0.38% George A. Cope 297,873,529 98.07% 5,856,768 1.93% Stephen Dent 302,858,750 99.71% 872,265 0.29% Christine A. Edwards 301,385,255 99.23% 2,344,442 0.77% Dr. Martin S. Eichenbaum 302,522,147 99.60% 1,208,616 0.40% David Harquail 302,882,265 99.73% 818,750 0.27% Linda S. Huber 302,842,503 99.71% 888,512 0.29% Eric R. La Fleche 301,235,814 99.18% 2,495,201 0.82% Lorraine Mitchelmore 302,157,409 99.48% 1,573,606 0.52% Madhu Ranganathan 301,330,217 99.21% 2,400,806 0.79% Darryl White 302,828,132 99.71% 872,891 0.29%

Final voting results on all matters voted on at the Annual Meeting of Shareholders held earlier today will be published shortly on www.bmo.com, and filed with Canadian and U.S. securities regulators.

About BMO Financial Group

Serving customers for 200 years and counting, BMO is a highly diversified financial services provider - the 8th largest bank, by assets, in North America. With total assets of $973 billion as of January 31, 2021, and a team of diverse and highly engaged employees, BMO provides a broad range of personal and commercial banking, wealth management and investment banking products and services to more than 12 million customers and conducts business through three operating groups: Personal and Commercial Banking, BMO Wealth Management and BMO Capital Markets.

SOURCE BMO Financial Group
RICHMOND, Va., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Hampden-Sydney College has used an atypical year as an opportunity to take an untraditional marketing approach, contracting Richmond-based ad agency Familiar Creatures to bring to life its reimagined viewbook, titled The Swagalog. The Swagalog Vol. 1 hit mailboxes last fall, and Vol. 2 drops later this week.

A men's college located in Virginia, Hampden-Sydney faced many unique obstacles due to COVID-19, and the ability to convey the storied college in a modern and relatable way became more critical than ever. With Familiar Creatures' help, H-SC pulled this off and saw a 54% rise in applications following the release of Vol. 1.

"After the success of the Swagalog's first edition, we knew we couldn't take our foot off the gas," said H-SC Vice President for Enrollment Jeff Norris. "And with the second edition, Familiar Creatures has proved yet again to be an essential partner in introducing Hampden-Sydney to prospective students and their families in a fresh, creative, and unexpected way."

The Swagalog, a take on the publication format known as a magalog, marries a modern style to 1950's design elements. Designed to grab the reader's attention, the cover, created by international award-winning artist Conrad Garner, features an octopus tying a man's bow tie, sans college insignia.

"I remember getting a lot of college brochures in the mail back when I applied, and I can't tell you now what a single one of them looked like," said lead designer Will Burnett. "But when it comes to The Swagalog, the visual design makes it almost impossible to forget."

Each edition focuses on different aspects of the college's unique culture, history, and academic offerings. But instead of addressing this earnestly, teenage humor is used. For instance, rather than saying the College has lots of space to explore through nice campus pictures, an illustrated 50s cosmonaut tells the reader this, with the cosmos as his backdrop. A caveman wonders why there's no fire-learning major. And there's a poster for a fake music festival called Lolla-bro-looza.

The college plans to produce three editions each year. Between issues, students can visit the digital version, known as The Swagablog , which is updated weekly with fresh content, including videos with many of the notable alumni featured in this volume.

Familiar Creatures is an advertising agency based in Richmond, VA. As the industry's first fractional agency of record, they offer the collaboration of in-house with the big idea chops of a traditional AOR.

Hampden-Sydney College is a private college for men that held its first classes in 1775, Hampden-Sydney College is known for its mission of forming "good men and good citizens," high quality academic program, longstanding codes of honor and conduct, and devoted alumni network.

Media Contact:

McKenzie Pickett

Brand Manager

(804) 244-1175

[email protected]

SOURCE Familiar Creatures; Hampden-Sydney College

Related Links

www.familiarcreatures.com


Leading mortgage brokers say banks are cautiously taking the brakes off home lending and removing extra checks on borrowers that were introduced at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

The trend comes amid an ongoing surge in new lending, but brokers say they are not seeing a rise in high-risk borrowing, and nor do they believe regulatory caps on home lending will be introduced anytime soon.

The red-hot property market has put bank lending standards under the microscope of regulators. Credit:Brent Lewin

With house prices growing at their fastest pace since the late 1980s, the quality of bank lending is under the microscope. Regulators have repeatedly warned they do not want to see a deterioration in credit underwriting standards, noting they could intervene if needed.

Several brokers including Commonwealth Banks Aussie Home Loans and its merger partner Lendi said banks had become less conservative compared with the height of the pandemic last year.
CHICAGO and NEW YORK, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Zinnov, a global management consulting firm, announced that Jeff Czischke, an expert in Automation and IT Financial Services with more than 20 years of experience in managing enterprise-wide Digital Transformation initiatives has joined the firm's Digital practice as an Automation leader. Jeff is based out of Chicago and will be advising clients on their automation strategy, with a special focus on the financial services sector.

Zinnov estimates that more than 40% of the Fortune 250 enterprises have already set up their Centers of Excellence (CoEs) aligned to automation but are facing challenges in scaling their automation deployments. Enterprises are struggling to find the right operating models for CoEs, reporting structures, governance frameworks, and use case discovery. This is the lacunae that Zinnov will address for its enterprise customers and is ramping up its expertise in. In his new role, Jeff will help Zinnov tap into this opportunity by helping enterprises set up and scale Hyper Intelligent Automation CoEs.

Speaking about Jeff's addition to the team, Praveen Bhadada, Managing Partner, Zinnov, said, "We estimate the total enterprise spend on Hyper Intelligent Automation (HIA) is USD10 Bn+ today, and will increase at a 60% CAGR over the next 5 years, to reach over USD90 Bn. This traction has been further catalyzed with COVID pushing automation to become the #1 priority for CIOs. I am extremely excited to have Jeff join the automation practice at Zinnov as his deep domain expertise within the BFSI industry, hands-on experience in solving scale challenges, coupled with Zinnov's strategy expertise, puts us in a strong position to maximize value for our enterprise customers in their automation journeys."

Pari Natarajan, CEO, Zinnov, further added, "We are excited to have Jeff join our Digital practice in the U.S. His fantastic track record in orchestrating Digital Transformation initiatives across Operations, Finance, Legal, Compliance, and Operational Risk disciplines coupled with his expertise in partnering with business leaders, defining technology strategy, global technology teams, and managing outsourcing vendors, will be a key asset to helping our clients achieve their scaling goals."

Jeff has worked with large financial giants including, JP Morgan, Northern Trust, Bank of America, and UBS. He has extensive experience implementing various applications within these institutions and most recently was the Director of Digital Process Automation team at Northern Trust where he managed a large team of developers, data scientists, and architects. Jeff has collaborated and led technical and business teams to design end-to-end digital solutions with the goal of exceeding the expectations of the business sponsors.

"I am particularly excited about joining Zinnov, given their rich insights, knowledge, and experience in the automation space. Zinnov already has a remarkable reputation for being a customer-focused consulting firm that prides itself in delivering researched-based insights to their clients and I hope to continue that tradition. I am particularly excited about helping them grow their Hyper Intelligent Automation practice across both strategy and implementation for enterprise customers in the United States," stated Jeff.

Jeff is a hands-on leader with in-depth knowledge of system development lifecycle and agile methodologies and excels in multi-cultural environments. He holds a Master's degree from Michigan State University in Telecommunications.

About Zinnov

Founded in 2002, Zinnov is a global management consulting firm, with a presence across 4 continents. Zinnov has successfully consulted with 250+ Fortune 500 enterprises to enable them to accelerate their Digital Transformation outcomes by leveraging technologies such as Hyper Intelligent Automation (HIA), AI/ML, Cloud, IOT, etc.

Media Contact:

Nitika Goel

email ID : [email protected]

SOURCE Zinnov
Abernathy had specifically gone after Lentz during forums and debates for what she called his lack of collaboration with trustees who disagree with him. She has also advocated for bringing more business into town, and working the role of mayor full-time. She is also involved in the Mundelein in Motion political party, which, with Abernathy at the head of its ticket for mayor, offered a full slate of trustee candidates as well.
Van Duc Phu - Senior expert Investment Promotion Centre, North Vietnam

The upcoming days are expected to be a dynamic of investment promotion along with new unveilings and the presence of some huge new investors. According to one source, a special aircraft will take dozens of leading South Korean investors to Vietnam this week to confirm deals and reveal new plans for the country. In addition, new foreign direct investment (FDI) projects and expansions with huge amounts pouring into energy and manufacturing in particular are set to be revealed soon.

Vietnam is being conservative in opening up even as vaccination efforts roll on, because the outbreak of the pandemic worldwide is still complicated. In fact, while waiting for vaccine visas, some Vietnamese airlines have resumed international flights. Since April, Vietnam Airlines has resumed four international commercial flight routes, connecting Hanoi with Tokyo, Seoul, and Sydney.

In September, more commercial routes will be resumed, and investors holding a vaccine passport may be able to enter Vietnam without having to undergo quarantine, bringing more deals and foreign investment. In fact, amid the pandemic and a lot of difficulties in travel, hundreds of investment decisions are still being made every month.

For example, last week, at a webinar between the Ministry of Planning and Investments Foreign Investment Agency (FIA) and businesses in Japans Aichi province, most Japanese businesses expressed their attention to the regulations of immigration and quarantine in Vietnam.

Previously, hundreds of special aircraft have taken thousands of investors from Russia, the United States, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Australia to Vietnam to find numerous investment opportunities during the pandemic. Besides these, many investors used normal flights and agreed to be quarantined for 14 days before looking for partners, projects, and information.

Investment promotion events can lead to huge foreign-invested projects and expansions. Photo: Dung Minh

In addition to direct meetings and offline investment promotion, online investment promotion has become a new concept during the pandemic. Last September, three investment promotion conferences with Singapore, the United Kingdom, and France were organised with the participation of hundreds of overseas investors and dozens of business associations in various countries.

In addition to direct discussing with such investors, the FIA also signed MoUs with international financial and consultant organisations like HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank, and Ernst & Young Vietnam to further strengthen investment promotion and mobilise more funding.

Despite pandemic difficulties, diversifying investment promotion has been effective. In the first three months of 2021, $9.3 billion was poured into new and additionally-registered foreign-invested ventures, which is the highest figure over the last 10 years.

The outcomes of FDI mobilisation and good performance of investment promotion are driven by the sound direction of the Party, state, and government. I believe the circular on outstanding mechanisms for calling for FDI capital, which is expected to be approved by the prime minister in the time coming, and moves on vaccine passports will level up FDI attraction further.
South Africa: SIU COVID-19 TERS investigation welcomed

The Department of Employment and Labour has welcomed the Special Investigation Units (SIU) probe into allegations of corruption and maladministration of the Unemployment Insurance Funds special COVID-19 TERS benefits.

This comes after President Cyril Ramaphosa recently signed a proclamation authorising the investigation.

The departments Director-General Thobile Lamati said: "We welcome the probe into allegations of possible corruption and maladministration into the Unemployment Insurance Funds [UIF] special COVID-19 Temporary Employee/Employer Relief Scheme (TERS) benefits".

In a statement on Wednesday, the DG said the department has been working with the SIU in any event when the first probe was launched.

We are just as anxious to get to the bottom of the allegations and to gain sight to all the facts and which would hopefully bring a close to this chapter, he said.

Over the last year, the UIF has had a major impact to the lives of workers in this country, distributing an unprecedented over R60 billion to help workers cope with the lockdown blues and we wouldnt want to have this great work sullied by allegations of corruption and maladministration.

"If any of our officials are found to have been part of the alleged corruption, we will make sure that they face disciplinary action and that the law enforcement agencies prosecute them. We cannot tolerate any corruption and we applaud the President for taking this step in fighting corruption," he said.

The UIF had on its own initiative, employed the expertise of forensic auditors to launch its own investigation in a "Follow the Money" campaign.

This campaign is following on every cent paid to ensure that those who received monies and were not entitled to it, to pay it back and for the companies that swindled their workers to pay back the money to the UIF.

So far, over R2-billion has been returned to the coffers of the Fund.

The investigation will focus squarely on the payments of COVID-19 TERS benefits to people who were not entitled to receive such payments or submitted false, irregular, invalid or defective applications to the UIF, including the causes of such maladministration.

The investigation will look at payments that dates back to 1 March 2020 and 1 April 2021 or that took place after 1 April but relevant to, connected with or involve same people, entities or contracts being investigated, said the department.

The SIU has already been involved in investigation of TERS payments under a secondment agreement with the Department of Employment and Labour, which has since expired.

The investigation uncovered a number of irregularities in the TERS payments, which prompted the SIU to apply for a proclamation.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2021-04-07. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
BAHAWALPUR, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 7th Apr, 2021 ) :The Office of Research, Innovation, and Commercialization (ORIC) at the Islamia University of Bahawalpur organized a ceremony in the varsity's Baghdad-ul-Jadeed Campus for distributing award letters among the faculty members who secured the funding under ORIC-Research Grant Program-2020.

Vice-Chancellor Engr. Prof. Dr. Athar Mahboob gave away award letters. According to the spokesman of the university Shahzad Ahmad, the program envisages promoting indigenous and applied research; innovative product or idea development; and commercialization of the potential industry and end-user solutions. It further aimed at inspiring partnerships between the research community of the IUB and industry and end-users. A total of 147 research proposals and projects were submitted by the faculty members across all five campuses of the university under this flagship grants program.

After detailed scrutiny and competitive evaluation involving the concerned Deans of Faculties and Chairpersons of the Teaching Departments, 42 projects were finalized for the award of funding worth a total of 32.2 million rupees.

It is important mentioning here that this initiative is the first of its kind in any public sector university in Pakistan where such a generous research grant has been provided to the faculty members solely through the varsity's own sources.

Prof. Dr. Athar Mahboob in his address to the participants said that the University has achieved the status of "4th Generation University" and leading towards sustainable development of the country through its rapid progress in teaching, research, patenting, and commercialization of its research. He added that the commercial sale of IUB-developed cotton varieties i.e., IUB-222, MM-58, and IUB-13 has been started for the first time in the history of the university,making it the first public sector university in Punjab to reach this distinction so far. The Vice-Chancellor remarked that today's a big day as the ORIC has leaped forward to promote thriving research culture in the university which would not only strengthen the research activities but help achieve the dream of a knowledge-based economy in the country.

He explained that 42 projects have been funded in the first phase of the program and the number would be increased gradually in the years to come. He expressed his satisfaction with the process adopted for the evaluation of the projects and stressed that all-out efforts be made to facilitate the research fraternity of the IUB. He cherished the hope that the program would serve as an avenue to provide workable solutions to the indigenous problems faced by the industry and community at large. He also appreciated the concerted efforts made by Prof. Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, Director ORIC, and the entire ORIC team for making the commercialization of the university's intellectual property happen. He assured his utmost support and guidance to strengthen ORIC's capacity for promoting the university-industry linkages at large.

In his welcome remarks, Prof. Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, Director ORIC/ Dean Faculty of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, thanked all the Deans, Directors, and faculty members for sparing their time and participating in the ceremony. He elaborated that the purpose of ORIC is to serve as a pivotal point to encompass all research activities, develop, expand, enhance, advance, and manage the university's research programs, and link research activities directly to the educational, social, and economic priorities of the university and the community at large, under a single umbrella. He further added that the ORIC has been instrumental to promote research culture across all disciplines of the University and vibrantly supported academia-academic, academia-industry, and university-community linkages. Further, the office was putting focused efforts to cope up with the challenges in the field of research, innovation, and commercialization. He also shed light on the community-centered projects initiated by the ORIC for the awareness and training of the farmer community including the Farmers'Convention-2020.

While explaining the aims, objectives, and TORs of the program, he laudably acknowledged the generous support and vision of the Vice-Chancellor for patronizing the research and development activities in the university. He informed the audience regarding the disbursement of research incentives to the IUB faculty members. He informed that 8.1 million rupees have been disbursed for the year 2018, and 9.2 million rupees will be transferred to the faculty shortly in respect of research incentive for the year 2019. He also appreciated the cooperation and support extended by the Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Deans, and the Chairpersons for making the evaluation process competitive for the submitted research proposals. Furthermore, he stressed that an integrated synergy among different stakeholders was the need of the hour to promote a vibrant, innovative, and entrepreneurial environment for strengthening IUB's research profile to bring it at par with other seats of higher learning within the country and abroad. While congratulating the awardees, he assured them full support of the ORIC Team for completing their research endeavors. He said that the university has embarked upon its research promotion agenda through the ORIC-Research Grant Program. However, the sustainability of such initiatives is very much dependent on how faculty responds to them, and how these projects are efficiently, effectively, and timely completed.

In his concluding remarks, the Vice-Chancellor said that the university's intention was capacity building of its faculty members and enabling them,via this flagship project, to bid for large-scale research projects offered by different funding and donor agencies both nationally and internationally. He urged them to take maximum advantage of such initiatives and utilize these small projects as pilot studies for undertaking more advanced and sophisticated research in the relevant field in the future.
Bengaluru, April 7 : Karnataka Rural Development Minister K.S. Eshwarappa, who sparked controversy after writing to Governor Vajubha R. Vala on Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa's alleged interference in his department's affairs, on Wednesday defended himself, saying that his action cannot be termed "anti-party activity" as he only sought "clarifications" from an expert who has presented 18 budgets in Gujarat.

Since when has writing letters to senior leaders and the Governor become a cause for complaint, he said, in a media interaction.

"I have written letters to my party leaders including BJP national General Secretary, C.T. Ravi and also met the Governor seeking clarification. Where did I go wrong in this? Writing letters to leaders is being interpreted as a complaint by you (media) and not by me," he retorted in response to a question.

Eshwarappa said that he had gone to get clarification from Governor Vala, who has a long experience of 17-18 years as the Finance Minister of Gujarat. "There too I had gone to get clarification, not to complain. Neither have I given, nor I will give any complaint," he said.

Rebuffing speculations about a change in Chief Minister, Eshwarappa said that Yediyurappa was his leader but his loyalty to the party was paramount.

"I am a diehard BJP man. I will remain in BJP come what may. I will not quit irrespective of the party's decisions. I am loyal to my party and committed to its ideology. If my party expects something from me, I will do it without batting my eyelid," he said.

Answering to a question, the minister maintained that he has never publicly criticised the CM till this moment. "Where is the indiscipline? Have I criticised the CM in public, Have I ever complained publicly against him? I have not done anything of this sort. So, how can it amount to an act of indiscipline," he shot back.

Asked about his letters to party leaders like Ravi, he countered: "Aren't they our party leaders? What do you think, should I write letters to JD-S supremo H.D. Deve Gowda or state Congress chief D.K. Shivakumar, instead of writing letters to our party leaders." Clarifying that he has only brought these things to the notice of leaders who are part of the BJP and not outsiders, he said that in his letter, he was not seeking any action against Yediyurappa.

The same letter was also written to the Chief Minister expressing same concerns, he added.

Last week, Eshwarappa wrote a five page letter to the Governor listing out three instances like the Chief Minister sanctioning huge funds on the request of MLAs to the tune of Rs 774 crore under the RDPR Department ignoring him, while works worth Rs 460 crore were sanctioned by bypassing him.

This had kicked off a political storm with the Congress lashing out at the BJP and Yediyurappa on various forums including social media.
[April 07, 2021] LiveRamp Enters into Strategic Partnership with Google Cloud to Enable Identity in the Cloud

LiveRamp (NYSE: RAMP), the leading data connectivity platform, today announced a strategic partnership with Google Cloud to enable identity in the cloud as an infrastructural upgrade for customers. Through this partnership, customers can now access LiveRamp's identity capabilities via API through the Google (News - Alert) Cloud Marketplace to build a unified view of the customer inside their data environment. This partnership enables customers to make data actionable, unlocking new use cases and ensuring they maximize their cloud data investment. According to Deloitte, a growing number of IT leaders and enterprise executives rely on third-party cloud solutions for data security and protection, data modernization and improvement in cost and performance of IT operations. As cloud and data upgrades increasingly reinforce one another, this marks an important technical shift in how marketers and platforms can build the next generation of customer experiences. Accordingly, LiveRamp's data connectivity platform makes it safe and easy for enterprises to use and maximize the value of their data-wherever it may live. In making identity capabilities accessible to customers, LiveRamp and Google Cloud can deliver the real-time insights customers need to make critical decisions regarding supply chain, product innovation, marketing and more. "Be it a brand, platform, publisher or agency, our customers are increasingly looking to the cloud for scalable, secure and modern solutions o manage data and analyze the entire customer journey," said Anneka Gupta, president and head of products and platforms at LiveRamp. "We have specially designed our suite of identity products with the protection, scale, speed and interoperability required to unlock the full value of cloud data environments. Joining forces with a global platform like Google Cloud allows our clients to maximize the value of their cloud infrastructure to power next-generation use cases."



By embedding people-based identity into Google Cloud infrastructure, enterprises will receive the following benefits: Maximize security: By deploying identity in the cloud, customers can minimize data movement and keep greater control over their data

By deploying identity in the cloud, customers can minimize data movement and keep greater control over their data Improve performance: Leveraging unified, organized, and accurate data improves performance throughout all downstream cloud data use cases, including analytics, reporting, activation, and targeting

Leveraging unified, organized, and accurate data improves performance throughout all downstream cloud data use cases, including analytics, reporting, activation, and targeting Generate greater returns on cloud data infrastructure investment: Unified and accurate data drives increased operational efficiencies and cost optimization across storage, compute, and beyond

Unified and accurate data drives increased operational efficiencies and cost optimization across storage, compute, and beyond Uphold consumer privacy: Privacy-by-design architecture offers pseudonymization and minimizes risks of re-identification and misuse to ensure data is protected and used safely "Businesses of all sizes and types are looking for ways to derive more value from their data while maintaining security and tight controls over sensitive information," said Nirav Sheth, Director, Partnerships at Google Cloud. "Deploying LiveRamp on Google Cloud enables customers across industries, such as CPG, to quickly gain new insights into customer data leveraging cloud capabilities in AI, ML, and analytics, ultimately helping them deliver exceptional consumer experiences and meet customer demand."

LiveRamp remains committed to enabling enterprises to safely use customer data, wherever it resides. The strategic partnership with Google Cloud follows news of LiveRamp's acquisition of DataFleets, a cloud data platform that enables data silos to be unified without moving data or compromising privacy. The DataFleets acquisition opens up new use cases as well as new markets for distributed data collaboration through LiveRamp Safe Haven. To learn more about the LiveRamp Google Cloud partnership, read our blog post or visit our partner page here: https://liveramp.com/partners/google-cloud/. About LiveRamp

LiveRamp is the leading data connectivity platform for the safe and effective use of data. Powered by core identity resolution capabilities and an unparalleled network, LiveRamp enables companies and their partners to better connect, control, and activate data to transform customer experiences and generate more valuable business outcomes. LiveRamp's fully interoperable and neutral infrastructure delivers end-to-end addressability for the world's top brands, agencies, and publishers. For more information, visit www.LiveRamp.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005290/en/

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Deputy FM Abbas Araqchi, who led a delegation of Iranian negotiators at a meeting of the Iranian deal held on Tuesday, made it clear that the US should completely lift anti-Iranian sanctions if they are seeking to return to the nuclear deal, Tasnim reported.

In an interview with Press TV on Tuesday in Vienna, Araqchi confirmed that the meeting was not attended by US representatives and that only Iranian issues were discussed with the rest of the Iranian deal members - Russia, China, France, Great Britain, and Germany.

Iran's deputy FM also reacted to comments from Washington that Tehran's assertion that the US should lift sanctions indicates a lack of seriousness about a return to the Iranian deal.

According to the deputy FM, such remarks indicate a lack of seriousness on their side, since they left the Iranian deal and imposed sanctions.

He also noted that Iran has never sought to evade compliance with the nuclear agreement, saying that if Tehran pursued such a goal, it would have withdrawn from the agreement much sooner after Washington left it.
French automaker Citroen is finally ready India launch of its much-awaited flagship SUV C5 Aircross. The premium 5-seater SUV will go on sale in the Indian market from April 7, 2021. Bookings for the SUV have already commenced through online and Citroen's La Maison dealership at a token amount of 50,000.

(Watch Here: Citroen C5 Aircross SUV: First drive review)

The Citroen C5 Aircross will be sold in India as a CKD unit. The local assembling of the SUV has already started at the CK Birla plant in Thiruvallur, Tamil Nadu. Upon launch, the SUV will compete with Volkswagen Tiguan and Jeep Compass. The Citroen C5 Aircross will be available in two variants - Feel and Shine. Expect it to be priced at around 25 lakh (ex-showroom).

The SUV gets a chunky and bold design that grabs attention instantly. Also, the car comes with a strong road presence. It gets LED headlamps and taillights, panoramic sunroof in the top-end Shine variant, which are missing in the Feel variant.

Interior of the car is claimed to have been designed to offer best-in-class comfort. As the French automaker claims, no other automaker in India currently talks about the comfort level for the driver and the occupants, but the Citroen C5 Aircross has given a special attention to that.

The spacious cabin gets an array of features including a 12.3-inch digital instrument console, an 8-inch touchscreen infotainment system, hands-free parking, dual-zone climate control, electrically adjustable drivers seat, and power-adjustable ORVMs. Also, it gets automatic headlamps and wipers, cruise control, keyless entry as standard.

The Citroen C5 Aircross gets three individual seats at the rear that can slide and recline independently. Also, the seats can be folded individually to create more space for occupants or luggage.

The C5 Aircross gets 6 airbags, ESC, traction control, hill start assist, hill descent control, blind spot monito along with front and rear parking sensors, rear view camera, ABS with EBD and TPMs as standard for safety.

The Citroen C5 Aircross gets power from a 2.0-litre, four-cylinder turbocharged-diesel engine that churns out 177 bhp of power and 400 Nm of torque. The engine is mated to an 8-speed automatic gearbox that sends power to the front wheels. The C5 Aircross is claimed to offer an ARAI certified fuel economy of 18.6 kmpl.
CHICAGO, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In-depth analysis and data-driven insights on the impact of COVID-19 included in this Southeast Asia data center market report.

The Southeast Asia data center market is expected to grow at a CAGR of approximately 8% during the period 2020-2026.

Key Highlights Offered in the Report:

The Southeast Asia market witnessed investments from new entrants such as Stratus DC Management ( Singapore and the Philippines ), Regal Orion ( Malaysia ), and Kepstar Data Centre Management ( Cambodia ) which are developing hyperscale data center facilities that will be operational in 2021 and 2022. Singapore is an established data center market within Southeast Asia , followed by Indonesia , Malaysia , and Thailand . Vietnam , Cambodia , Myanmar , and the Philippines are emerging data center markets. The availability of land to develop greenfield data centers is very low in Singapore , leading to more brownfield construction, and data centers shifting to other countries such as Malaysia , Indonesia , and Thailand . According to the Uptime Institute, there are around 99 Tier certified data center facilities in the Southeast Asia , of which there more than 85 are Tier III and nine are Tier IV certified facilities. Most data centers in Southeast Asia adopt DRUPS systems to overcome power outages, and the demand is quite high in the market which will add significant revenue growth to DRUPS vendors operating in this region. Government entities are strengthening their internet infrastructure in the region with around 10 active submarine connectivity projects underway in Southeast Asia currently.

Key Offerings:

Market Size & Forecast by Revenue | 2020-2026

Market Dynamics - Leading trends, growth drivers, restraints, and investment opportunities

Market Segmentation - A detailed analysis by IT Infrastructure, electrical infrastructure, mechanical infrastructure, cooling technique, cooling systems, general construction, tier standards, and geography

Competitive Landscape - 12 IT infrastructure providers, 17 support infrastructure providers, 15 data center contractors, and 16 data center investors

Get your sample today! https://www.arizton.com/market-reports/data-center-market-in-southeast-asia

Southeast Asia Data Center Market - Segmentation

The server market expects to witness significant growth in the next few years due to increased investments from large cloud service providers in the region. The adoption of converged and hyper-converged infrastructure solutions is projected to increase the demand for servers with multicore processors.

The data center generator market is likely to grow due to the construction of large and mega facilities across the Southeast Asia region. The adoption of efficient power systems such as gas generators is growing. The implementation of the carbon tax in countries such as Singapore has driven operators to opt for efficient generators.

region. The adoption of efficient power systems such as gas generators is growing. The implementation of the carbon tax in countries such as has driven operators to opt for efficient generators. Most data centers in Singapore design to cool infrastructure through water-based cooling techniques. The use of air-based cooling is low in Singapore than in other Southeast Asian countries. Data centers are designed for hot/cold aisle containment systems and are equipped with 42U and 45U racks.

Southeast Asia Data Center Market by IT Infrastructure

Servers

Storage

Network

Southeast Asia Data Center Market by Electrical Infrastructure

UPS Systems

Generators

Transfer Switches and Switchgears

PDUs

Other Electrical Infrastructures

Southeast Asia Data Center Market by Mechanical Infrastructure

Cooling Systems

CRAC & CRAH Units



Chiller Units



Cooling Towers, Dry Coolers, & Condensers



Other Cooling Units

Racks

Others Mechanical Infrastructure

Southeast Asia Data Center Market by Cooling Technique

Air-based Cooling Technique

Liquid-based Cooling Technique

Southeast Asia Data Center Market by General Construction

Core and Shell Development

Installation and Commissioning Services

Engineering and Building Designs

Physical Security

DCIM/BMS

Southeast Asia Data Center Market by Tier Standards

Tier I & II

Tier III

Tier IV

Southeast Asia Data Center Market - Dynamics

In April 2020, Keppel DC partnered with Toll Group for the development of a floating data center in Singapore based on modular data center designs that can be scaled based on demand. Keppel DC is likely to consider deploying the floating data center solution of Nautilus Data Technologies. In October 2020, Keppel DC signed an MOU with City Gas and City-OG Gas Energy Services 2020 to develop the hydrogen floating data center project. Data center operators install fuel cells to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and improve operating efficiency. Fuel cells are expected to be feasible choices in cities with high electricity prices and regular power fluctuations in grid supply. Most data center operators pursue the concept of fuel cells with hydrogen-powered fuel cells that provide advantages in terms of price and reliability. The price of fuel cells is around $0.12 per kWh, which is highly beneficial for data center operators, operating facilities in cities with electricity pricing of above $0.10 per kWh. For instance, the power cost in Singapore is over $0.12 per kWh, where fuel cells can be installed to reduce the OPEX.

Key Drivers and Trends fueling Market Growth:

Increasing Adoption of Renewable Energy

Rise in Adoption of the All-Flash & Hybrid Array

Increase in Data Center Investments

Increase in Cloud Adoption Driving the Data Center Market

Southeast Asia Data Center Market - Geography

Singapore is the major data center hub in Southeast Asia, with the presence of data center facilities operated by internet, cloud, telecommunication, and colocation service providers. Sub-sea fiber network connectivity to the country routes over 90% of the world's Internet traffic. The country's GDP is likely to be aided by the digital economy by around 0.5% on a YoY basis, with an estimated contribution of around $8 billion by 2020. According to the Singapore Internet Exchange (SGIX), the average inbound traffic increased to around 350 Gbps in May 2020 from 200 Gbps in May 2019. It is expected to grow exponentially with an increase in data center traffic between 2020 and 2026. In December 2020, Ericsson and Singtel deployed 5G network connectivity services in Singapore. In February 2021, Singapore telecom regulator IMDA is investing around $22 million to accelerate the adoption of 5G services in the country. Singapore-based telecom operator M1 has launched a stand-alone 5G network in parts of Singapore.

Get your sample today! https://www.arizton.com/market-reports/data-center-market-in-southeast-asia

Southeast Asia Data Center Market by Geography

Southeast Asia

Singapore



Malaysia



Thailand



Indonesia



Vietnam



Philippines



Cambodia & Myanmar

Key Data Center Critical (IT) Infrastructure Providers

Arista Networks

Broadcom

Cisco Systems

Dell Technologies

Fujitsu

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)

Huawei Technologies

IBM

Inspur

Lenovo

NetApp

Oracle

Key Data Center Support Infrastructure Providers

ABB

Bosch Security Systems ( Robert Bosch )

) Caterpillar

Cummins

Cyber Power Systems

Delta Electronics

Eaton

Fuji Electric

HITEC Power Protection

KOHLER-SDMO

Legrand

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation

Piller Power Systems

Rittal

Rolls-Royce Power Systems

Schneider Electric

Vertiv Group

Key Data Center Contractors

Arup Group

AWP Architects

Aurecon Group

CSF Group

Cundall

DSCO Group

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Georgian rescuers have recovered the bodies of four people who drowned in the Inguri River after trying to sneak across the administrative border separating the breakaway Abkhazia region from Tbilisi-controlled territory, to avoid coronavirus quarantine rules.



The four, identified as residents of Abkhazias Gali district, drowned as they tried to cross into the Zugdidi region, authorities said on April 7.



Three bodies were initially recovered, while a fourth was found hours later.



Georgias State Security Service said the deaths "once again demonstrated the inhuman and criminal nature of the occupation [of Abkhazia], for which the Russian Federation bears full responsibility."



Since 2017, a bridge over the Inguri has been the only route for people looking to cross the administrative border with Abkhazia. That border was hardened after the brief 2008 war in which Russian forces occupied Abkhazia and another Georgian region, South Ossetia. In 2017, the number of administrative checkpoints was cut from six, to one.

Most people living in the Gali district are ethnic Georgians who maintain close contacts with the other side of the river. Many of them must regularly cross the bridge to buy groceries and receive their pensions or medical treatment.



According to the Democracy Research Institute, Abkhazia residents must quarantine for five days when crossing into Tbilisi-controlled territory as part of COVID-19 measures.



The result is some Gali district residents try to sneak in undetected.



"We call on the Georgian government to immediately lift the quarantine, which endangers the lives of people," the institute said in a statement.



After the 2008 war, Moscow recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent. Only a handful of other countries, however, have followed the Kremlin's lead, which has kept Russian forces in both regions.



Georgia has reported more than 268,000 coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic and 3,650 COVID-related deaths.

With reporting by JamNews
New Delhi: The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) announced on Wednesday (April 7) that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will take part in a high-level virtual event with the President of Seychelles, Wavel Ramkalawan on April 8.

Prime Minister Modi will inaugurate a range of Indian projects in Seychelles, news agency ANI reported.

The event will feature a joint e-inauguration of new Magistrates Court Building in Seychelles, handing over of fast patrol vessels to Seychelles Coast Guard, handing over of a 1 MW Solar Power Plant and inauguration of 10 high impact community development projects.

The official site of the Prime Minister added that the new Magistrates Court Building in the capital city Victoria, is Indias first major civil infrastructure project in Seychelles built with grant assistance.

The Magistrates Court building which is expected to enhance the capacity of the Seychelles judicial system and aid in better delivery of judicial services to the people of Seychelles.

The modern and fully equipped naval ship, 50-m Fast Patrol Vessel, has been made in India by GRSE, Kolkata, and is being gifted to Seychelles under Indian grant assistance to strengthen its maritime surveillance capabilities.

The 1 MW ground-mounted Solar power plant at the Romainville Island of Seychelles has been completed as part of the Solar PV Democratization Project and is being implemented in Seychelles by the Government of India.

At the event PM Modi will also hand over 10 High Impact Community Development Projects (HICDPs) implemented by the High Commission of India in collaboration with local bodies, educational and vocational institutions.

PM Modis official site also mentioned that Seychelles occupies a central place in the Prime Ministers vision of SAGAR - Security and Growth for All in the Region.

The inauguration of these key projects will demonstrate Indias privileged and time-tested role as a reliable partner of Seychelles.

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VANCOUVER, BC, April 7, 2021 /CNW/ - Beyond Medical Technologies Inc. ("Beyond Medical" or the "Company") (CSE: DOCT) (Frankfurt: 7FM4) is pleased to provide the following corporate update regarding its wholly-owned subsidiary Micron Technologies Inc. ("Micron Technologies").

Taking Healthcare Beyond Traditional Platforms (CNW Group/Beyond Medical Technologies Inc.)

Manufacturing Three-Ply Medical Grade Face Masks at Full Capacity

Micron Technologies has been manufacturing and selling three-ply medical grade face masks at the Company's facility in Delta, British Columbia since August 2020. The three-ply medical grade face masks are being manufactured pursuant to Micron Technologies' Medical Device Establishment License issued by Health Canada. The three-ply medical grade face masks offer three layers of protection, which conforms to the American Society for Testing and Materials' F2100 Level 3 standards. The non-woven masks feature an adjustable nose clip designed to protect both front-line workers and consumers. Micron Technologies is currently operating three shifts a day to manufacture three-ply medical grade face masks.

Manufacturing N95 Face Masks

Micron Technologies is now also setting up manufacturing N95 Model 8800 face masks, which have been approved. Micron Technologies has submitted its N95 Model 8800 face masks to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health ("NIOSH") and is confident it will obtain NIOSH certification as its N95 Model 8800 face masks have already passed testing with Kinetrics Analytical and Environmental Laboratories. Micron Technologies has purchased a large quantity of raw materials to manufacture N95 Model 8800 face masks and plans to maximize production efforts once NIOSH certification has been obtained. As of last month there was still a significant shortage of N95 masks and approximately "56 percent of frontline workers say they still don't have enough N95 masks."

Third Wave of COVID-19

According to Dr. Abdu Sharkawy, an infectious disease specialist, the third wave of COVID-19 is "likely going to be worse than the first two." With respect to the addition of variants, Dr. Sharkawy noted "and of course we've seen what these variants can offer, they can really lead to an explosion of cases very quickly." Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada's Chief Public Health Officer, announced a 64% increase in new cases involving variants.In addition to the new variants, the slow vaccine roll-out and complacency with public health restrictions are contributing to the third wave.

Story continues

Earlier this month Canada surpassed 1,000,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases since the beginning of the pandemic, with the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia being hit the hardest by the third wave.

Products Now Available at Walmart

As previously announced, Micron Technologies' three-ply medical grade face masks and N95 medical grade face masks have been approved for sale by Walmart. Micron Technologies expects its products to be available at www.walmart.com in the coming weeks.

In addition to Walmart, Micron Technologies' products are also available on Amazon and Shopify. Institutional customers and those who are interested in obtaining a quote for large size orders are encouraged to contact Milan@micronti.com. Customers can also make orders directly at https://micronti.com.

About Beyond Medical

Beyond Medical is an industrial/technology company with a manufacturing facility located in Delta, British Columbia. The Company is developing its Organivore and Pharmavore waste digesters using its proprietary technology. The Company, through its subsidiary Micron Technologies, is also manufacturing medical grade face masks.

The Company is not making any express or implied claims that its products have the ability to eliminate, cure or contain COVID-19 (or SARS-2 Coronavirus) at this time.

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 news release. The Canadian Securities Exchange has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this news release.

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS:

This news release includes certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking statements". All statements in this news release, other than statements of historical facts, that address events or developments that the Company expects to occur, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects", "plans", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "projects", "potential" and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could" or "should" occur. 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 may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include market prices, continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions. 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. Forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs, estimates and opinions of the Company's management on the date the statements are made. Except as required by applicable securities laws, the Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements in the event that management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change.

SOURCE Beyond Medical Technologies Inc.

Cision

View original content to download multimedia: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/April2021/07/c7788.html
State Rep. Anna Moeller, D-Elgin, made the same point, saying its going to be incredibly important that people take advantage of this vaccination facility and others across the state. We know the vaccine is safe and it works. This is the way we are going to reopen our economy, get back to normal, and keep each other safe.
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Labour unions at the Olusegun Agagu University of Science and Technology (OAUSTECH), Okitipupa, Ondo State, on Wednesday, embarked on an indefinite strike over unpaid salaries and other issues.

This was contained in a statement signed by Temidayo Temola, the chairperson of the Joint Action Congress (JAC) in Okitipupa.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the unions include the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), Non Academic Staff Union (NASU) and National Association of Academic Technologists (NAAT).

The JAC of OAUSTECH arising from all important congress on April 6 resolved to commence total, comprehensive and indefinite strike.

This is as result of the inability of the management of the university to meet the demands of the unions on the payment of salaries from November 2020 till date.

Also, non remittance of over 22 months pension deductions coupled with non implementation of minimum wage as well as non payment of earned allowances.

The unions will not relent on the indefinite strike until our demands are met, the statement read.

The Registrar of the institution, Ganiyu Saliu, while reacting, said the management was aware of the strike, attributing the inability to meet the unions demand to the shortfall in the governments subvention which could no longer be managed to meet its obligations.

He also said that another factor included the issue of the COVID-19 pandemic which shut down the system with adverse effects on the economy.

Government is aware of all these issues but all theses were due to the dwindling fortunes; the management is working with the unions to resolve all the issues soon, Mr Saliu said. (NAN)
Arkansas lawmakers override governors veto of bill banning sex change procedures for kids

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Arkansas lawmakers overwhelmingly rejected a veto from Gov. Asa Hutchinson over a bill that would ban experimental puberty blockers, hormonal drugs and the surgical mutilation of minors suffering from gender dysphoria.

The Arkansas House voted 75-25 and the Senate 25-8 on Tuesday afternoon to override the veto on House Bill 1570, also known as the Save Adolescents From Experimentation Act.

Arkansas is the first state in the nation to ban the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and elective cosmetic gender surgeries  the mutilation of sex organs  on gender dysphoric youth. A handful of other states, mostly across the Southern U.S., are considering similar legislation.

Republican state Rep. Robin Lundstrum of Elm Springs spoke in support of the bill, stating that medicine sometimes is wrong. We should never experiment on children. Ever.

Speaking against the proposed legislation, Democratic state House Minority Leader Tippi McCullough of Little Rock said that transgender youth need care that affirms their identity.

Put aside everything and to search your own heart and think about these parents and these children and their doctors, stated McCullough, according to Arkansas Online.

Arkansas lawmakers only required a simple majority to override the governor's veto. Barring successful legal action, the new law should take effect in the summer.

Jon Schweppe, director of policy and government affairs for the socially conservative advocacy group American Principles Project, celebrated the veto override.

As most Americans recognize, we should not be pressuring young children into undergoing highly experimental, life-altering procedures to change their sex before they are even old enough to make most other major decisions, Schweppe asserted.

It is unfortunate that the laws passage had to come over the veto of Gov. Hutchinson. While the governor claimed he was acting out of a conservative concern for restraining government, restraint is not always a good thing.

The SAFE Act prohibits experimental medicalized gender transition procedures for minors, which would include prescribing puberty blockers to minors struggling with gender dysphoria.

Hutchinson vetoed the bill on Monday, telling reporters at a news conference that he believed the SAFE Act would wrongfully interfere with the medical profession.

If [the bill] becomes law, then we are creating new standards of legislative interference with physicians and parents as they deal with some of the most complex and sensitive matters involving young people, Hutchinson said.

The veto led conservative groups, among them the Arkansas Family Council, to call upon legislators to override the governors veto for the sake of protecting children.

Gender-reassignment surgeries can leave children sterilized and scarred for life. Medical researchers do not know the long-term effects these procedures can have on kids, AFC President Jerry Cox said in a statement released Monday.

That is why many people equate them with experimenting on children. Arkansas must protect its children from these sex-reassignment procedures.
Ignite IT is honored to be among the distinguished group of businesses to have been selected by SECAF as a finalist for their prestigious Government Contractor of the Year award. This is a tribute to the incredible dedication and hard work of our talented staff.

Ignite IT today announced that it was selected as a finalist for the 13th Annual Small and Emerging Contractors Advisory Forum (SECAF) Awards. Winners will be announced at the virtual Awards Gala on Thursday, May 6, 2021. The event honors small and emerging government contractors and the players in the industry that rely on these businesses.

Ignite IT is a finalist for The Government Contractor of the Year ($15 to $27.5 Million in Revenue) which recognizes companies that have shown a compelling and profound commitment to excellence in financial performance.

"Ignite IT is honored to be among the distinguished group of businesses to have been selected by SECAF as a finalist for their prestigious Government Contractor of the Year award. This is a tribute to the incredible dedication and hard work of our talented staff who innovate and collaborate with our customers to deliver comprehensive, human centered solutions to solve their digital challenges. This is the direct result of the pride and accountability they bring to every customer engagement, every day."  Steven Pichney, President & CEO of Ignite IT

The SECAF Awards Gala shines a spotlight on the vision and success that enable the community of government contractors to deliver excellence year in and year out. It is a privilege to recognize Ignite IT as it mirrors the tenants of our own organization  leadership, fortitude, and commitment, said Richard Pineda, CALIBRE President and CEO and SECAF Board Chair.

About Ignite IT

Ignite IT is a digital services start-up borne out of a group of architects and engineers providing solutions that transform with digital breakthroughs. We have achieved certifications in CMMI-SVC/3, ISO 20000-1:2018, ISO 27001:2013, ISO 29001:2015 and our staff hold industry recognized certifications in Cloud, DevOps, Cyber Security, RPA, ERP, and many other emerging technologies. We specialize in the areas of Cloud, Cyber, Enterprise Services Support, Architecture, Digital Product and Service Development, DevOps, Automation and Innovation.

Ignite IT deploys teams that are customer-obsessed, delivering a CX (Customer Experience) renaissance to the Government. We combine Commercial BX (Business of Experience) with Government delivery experts to benefit agencies to innovate and improve services and launch new digital solutions. We have built a company foundation dependent on each of our employees success, and provide a healthy, engaging, community where learning and knowledge sharing are encouraged. We empower our employees to be bold, continually innovate and propose new ideas to improve processes and services. We engage daily on work that touches millions of people, always focusing on positive impacts and results.

We enable mission services that protect Border Agents, deploy the Army Reserve and National Guard, providing decision dominance to make America safer. We apply these digital services across to Federal Agencies that include HHS, DHS, AOUSC and Army. We aim to continually raise the bar for government agencies to expect more from their digital services. For more information, visit http://www.igniteitservices.com

About The 13th Annual SECAF Awards Gala

The 13th Annual SECAF Awards Gala is the premier commemorative event honoring the small and emerging government contractors and the players in the ecosystem that rely on small business. The event will be held virtually at 5:00PM ET on Thursday, May 6, 2021. To register or for more information, visit here.

About The Small and Emerging Contractors Advisory Forum

The Small and Emerging Contractors Advisory Forum (SECAF) enables the small and emerging government contractor to achieve maximum growth rates in a highly competitive marketplace. Providing members with business resources, access to influencers and government agencies, and advocacy opportunities and education, SECAF is an important resource for a growing company. SECAF also serves medium to large government contractors, providing invaluable introductions to specialized small businesses that enable the overall contracting community to work successfully in tandem. For more information, visit http://www.secaf.org.
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EDWARDSVILLE  A Granite City man faces multiple drug and weapons charges.

Giovanni J. Conejo, 27, of Granite City, was charged April 6 with armed violence and unlawful cannabis trafficking, both Class X felonies; and unlawful possession of cannabis with intent to deliver and unlawful possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver, both Class 1 felonies.

The case was presented by the Granite City Police Department.

According to court documents, on April 5, Conejo allegedly was found to be in possession of more than 2,500 grams of cannabis with the intent to deliver; more than one gram of cocaine with intent to deliver; and a Taurus PT3 9 mm handgun while committing the other felonies.

Bail was set at $200,000.

Other drug-related felony charges filed April 6 by the Madison County States Attorneys Office include:

 Suzanne V. Evans, 45, of Granite City, was charged with unlawful possession with intent to deliver methamphetamine, a Class 1 felony. The case was presented by the Madison County Sheriffs Department. On Oct. 28 Evans allegedly was in possession of between 5-15 grams of methamphetamine with intent to deliver. Bail was set at $75,000.

 Lana A Rider, 36, of Bethalto, was charged with unlawful possession of methamphetamine, a Class 1 felony. The case was presented by the Madison County Sheriffs Department. On March 20 Rider allegedly was found to be in possession of between 15-100 grams of methamphetamine. Bail was set at $75,000.

 Larry D. Wright II, 47, of Granite City, was charged with unlawful possession of methamphetamine, a Class 2 felony. The case was presented by the Madison County Sheriffs Department. On March 2 Wright allegedly was found to be in possession of between 5-15 grams of methamphetamine. Bail was set at $50,000.

 Joanne M. Hibbs, 33, of Moro, was charged with unlawful possession of methamphetamine, a Class 3 felony; and unlawful possession of a controlled substance, a Class 4 felony. The case was presented by the Wood River Police Department. On April 5 Hibbs allegedly was found to be in possession of less than five grams of methamphetamine, and less than 15 grams of heroin. Bail was set at $15,000.

 Wayne S. Taylor, 30, of Glen Carbon, was charged with unlawful possession of methamphetamine, a Class 3 felony. The case was presented by the Glen Carbon Police Department. On Dec. 28 Taylor allegedly was found to be in possession of less than five grams of methamphetamine. Bail was set at $15,000.

 Ashley R. Hurst, 37, of Cottage Hills, was charged with unlawful possession of methamphetamine, a Class 3 felony. The case was presented by the East Alton Police Department. On Aug. 2, Hurst allegedly was found to be in possession of less than five grams of methamphetamine. Bail was set at $15,000.

 Eddie R. McReynolds, 59, of East Alton, was charged with unlawful possession of methamphetamine, a Class 3 felony. The case was presented by the East Alton Police Department. On Feb. 3 McReynolds allegedly was found to be in possession of less than five grams of methamphetamine. Bail was set at $15,000.

 Jessica L. Foutch, 38, and Christopher W. Kelly, 35, both of the 400 block of Meadow Drive, Troy, were charged with unlawful possession of methamphetamine, a Class 3 felony. The cases were presented by the Metropolitan Enforcement Group of Southwestern Illinois. On April 3 the two allegedly were both found to be in possession of less than five grams of methamphetamine. Bail was set at $15,000 each.

 Crystal L. Hunt, 34, of Granite City, was charged with unlawful possession of methamphetamine, a Class 3 felony. The case was presented by the Madison County Sheriffs Department. On March 18 Hunt allegedly was found to be in possession of less than five grams of methamphetamine. Bail was set at $15,000.

 Dylan M. Bass, 35, of Alton, was charged with unlawful possession of methamphetamine, a Class 3 felony. The case was presented by the Madison County Sheriffs Department. On March 20 Bass allegedly was found to be in possession of less than five grams of methamphetamine. Bail was set at $15,000.

 Krysty D. Brockett, 44, listed as homeless out of Wood River, was charged with unlawful possession of a controlled substance, a Class 4 felony. The case was presented by the Wood River Police Department. On Sept. 12 Brockett allegedly was found to be in possession of less than 15 grams of fentanyl. Bail was set at $15,000.

 Corey D. Hutson, 32, of Hartford, was charged with unlawful possession of a controlled substance, a Class 4 felony. The case was presented by the Wood River Police Department. On Sept. 21 Hutson allegedly was found to be in possession of less than 15 grams of Hydrocodone. Bail was set at $15,000.
Of all the social media platforms, Pinterest might be the least reliant on the kind of influencer culture associated with Instagram, YouTube and others. But that might be starting to change. Last September, the company introduced Story Pins and creator profiles, both of which were meant to make it easier for its highest profile users to show off their projects and build a following on the platform.

Now, Pinterest is taking those efforts a step further. The company is launching a Creator Fund to pay a small group of influencers to create content for the platform. The fund will provide $500,000 in cash and media to small groups of influencers throughout 2021, starting with eight creators who come from under-represented backgrounds. But the company plans to add more people to the program throughout the year.

With the fund, Pinterest becomes the latest company to lure influencers with direct financial support. TikTok also launched a $200 million fund last year and Snapchats Spotlight initiative has paid out millions to users who create the most popular videos. Compared with those efforts, Pinterests approach is much more modest. But the company is making clear that it's also trying to build a different kind of influencer culture than other platforms.

Alongside the fund, Pinterest also introduced a new set of policies for its creators that go beyond the companys existing community guidelines. The Creator Code, requires all Pinterest users who have access to Story Pins (not just the ones who receive funding from the company) to agree to a set of guidelines that include fact-checking and creating an inclusive environment. In practice, the code doesnt change Pinterest's existing policies, which already prohibits things like health misinformation and hate speech.

Pinterest

The Creator Code is intended to encourage Creators to really understand and bring to life the spirit  as well as the intent  of our content policies, Pinterests head of Policy Sarah Bromma told Engadget in an email. They wont have their own set of policies but will be held to the same standards as all of our users on issues such as content safety, intellectual property and spam.
ALEXANDRIA, La. (AP)  Authorities in Central Louisiana are asking for the publics help in finding whoever set multiple fires in the Kisatchie National Forest.

The Town Talk reports that firefighters responded to about 10 wildfires in different parts of the forest in the last month.

The forest covers parts of seven parishes. Grant Parish Sheriff Steven McCain said five of the fires have been in his parish.

The fires have burned hundreds and hundreds of acres of timber in Grant Parish, and this is much more than just somebody setting the woods on fire, he said in a video posted to the departments Facebook page. Theres been three houses that have come very close to being burned by these fires, and were asking for your help today.

A Louisiana Forestry Association spokesman, Jeff Zeringue, said the group is offering a $2,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of those responsible for the fires.

A March 8 fire in the Melder area of Rapides Parish occurred in an area littered with unexploded ordnance from World War II, according to officials.

Because of that, firefighters couldnt use heavy equipment so they had to set additional fires to control the wildfire. In the end, about 2,062 acres were burned.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
An Australian shopper has been left furious over a seemingly innocent display of outdoor gear at Bunnings Warehouse on Wednesday.

The display, which showed off the hardware giant's winter fire pits, was slammed as 'totally unacceptable'.

The photograph was posted on Twitter by the 'Ban Recreational Wood Burning' page.

'Promoting these polluting firepits. Do you promote cigarettes as well? Firepits emit much more toxic pollution then cigarettes,' the post read.

An Australian shopper has been left furious over a seemingly innocent display of outdoor gear at Bunnings Warehouse on Wednesday.

'It's time to make sales of wood burners illegal. Clean air is a basic human right. Not Karen using her firepit,' it continued.

But the complaint didn't get much support from the Twitter community.

'Nothing like a few mates gathered around the fire with a few beers. Even better when you can cook on it. I love the smell of wood smoke,' one man wrote.

Bunnings Warehouse Outdoor Living Category Manager Mick Heanue also commented on the complaint, telling Daily Mail Australia: 'All our fire pits comply with state and national safety standards.'

Some readers actually thanked the page for the heads up after spotting some fire pits they liked in the picture.

'Thanks for the reminder - Im gonna fire mine up tonight. Wont use it for warmth but its always nice to watch through the windows from inside the house. Cant wait,' said one man.

'Thanks for letting me know, will pick one up before it gets cold,' another added.

Others called out the use of the name 'Karen'.

'Karen is actually one complaining about people using BBQ in the park so (the page) is actually being a Karen,' one person said.

More people joked that fire pits were amazing for bringing family and friends together and 'scaring off the "woke"'.

'Is it OK if I burn old furniture in my fire pit? Shouldn't stink too much once the vinyl has burnt off,' said another.

But the page's author was not amused by the reactions.

'It's a definition of a Karen when their privilege effects others human right to clean air,' they countered.

'Any exposure of wood smoke isn't good for us. Wood smoke lingers to other peoples homes.'

The account has just 97 followers and constantly posts about the impact of wood burning.

Bunnings Warehouse currently have 30 different firepits for sale ranging from $19.95 to $549

'Wood smoke is more harmful then cigarette smoke. It also spreads, with one pound of wood burnt equal to 6000 packets of cigarettes,' the page wrote in a recent post.

'I imagine those who admit to liking wood smoke also smoke cigarettes. You cannot despise cigarettes yet like wood smoke. It's hypocritical.'

Bunnings Warehouse currently have 30 different firepits for sale ranging from $19.95 to $549.

Bunnings Warehouse Outdoor Living Category Manager Mick Heanue said: 'Customers should check in with their local council for fire pit use regulations relevant to where they live.'
First Minister Arlene Foster has said "malign and criminal elements" are to blame for whipping up young people involved in recent violence and disorder as she called for the immediate reopening of all youth clubs in a bid to bring an end to the rioting.

It was confirmed by the PSNI on Tuesday that nine more officers were injured as riot police intervened in an unlawful march of loyalists through Ballymena on Monday.

During the unrest, debris, including a wheelie bin, was thrown onto the M2 motorway, forcing its closure.

Violent scenes also erupted in Carrickfergus and Newtownabbey as youths threw petrol bombs and debris at police. Last night a crowd gathered to protest in Larne.

DUP leader Arlene Foster said the move to reopen youth clubs will get young people off the streets and away from "malign influences in our society".

"I do absolutely accept that that is the case in a particular area of Northern Ireland, but South East Antrim UDA does not have rite in other parts of Northern Ireland, so there are concerns right across Northern Ireland," she stated.

A total of 41 officers have now been injured during the rioting in some loyalist areas across Northern Ireland over the past week.

Police also confirmed that 10 arrests have been made because of the disturbances, including children as young as 13 and 14.

Those as young as 12 have also been involved in the chaos.

It came as Mrs Foster said she has no intention of speaking with Chief Constable Simon Byrne and again called for his resignation following the PSNI's handling of Bobby Storey's funeral.

On her stance that Mr Byrne should resign from his role, Mrs Foster said: "He needs to take responsibility for the actions that were taken by his senior command team [during the Storey funeral] because confidence has gone in his leadership and I think confidence has gone in the senior management team."

The rioting follows the growing anger around the Northern Ireland Protocol and last week's announcement by the PPS that 24 members of Sinn Fein will not be prosecuted for attending Storey's funeral.

North Area Commander Chief Superintendent Davy Beck, said the PSNI understands "disaffected groups who are linked to criminality" have orchestrated a number of riots.

The Assembly will be recalled tomorrow to allow MLAs the chance to condemn the trouble, while Mr Byrne will deliver a report to the Policing Board on Wednesday to outline the disorder, injuries to officers and the PSNI's assessment of the situation in a private briefing.

Mrs Foster spoke with a number of youth workers in areas such as Portadown and Londonderry on Tuesday in response to the rioting.

A spokesperson for the DUP told the Belfast Telegraph that Education Minister Peter Weir has tabled a paper to the Executive calling for the immediate reopening of youth services in Northern Ireland.

Justice Minister Naomi Long criticised unionist leaders after demanding Mr Byrne's resignation and said they "have helped fan the flames".

Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster's Talkback, the Alliance Party leader described it as "entirely depressing" that young people could "end up with criminal records".

"I think when you criticise as forcefully and recklessly, in some cases, as some have. When you accuse them [the PSNI] of two tier policing...you make them a lightning conductor for people's anger," added Ms Long.

Those involved in the rioting were also warned not to get sucked into "senseless" loyalist violence by Mr Beck.

"These are officers who leave their home, put on a uniform and who I think deserve to get home safe and well to their families," he said during a briefing at PSNI headquarters. I would appeal to everyone of influence across the community to bring this senseless violence to a stop."

He also appealed to "all people of influence" to help bring and end to the violence and thanked those who have done so.
TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / April 7, 2021 / Avidian Gold Corp. ("Avidian" or the "Company") (TSXV:AVG)(OTCQB:AVGDF) is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Stephen Altmann and Mr. Rick Winters to the Board of Directors. In addition, Mr. Steve Roebuck has been appointed President and CEO. Mr. David Anderson, will remain Chairman of the Board, Dino Titaro, currently a Director has been appointed Vice-Chairman. Mr. Doug Kirwin will be stepping down from the Board but will remain as a technical advisor. All announced changes are effective immediately.

Avidian's Chairman, Mr. David Anderson states "We are pleased to have Steve move into the President and CEO role. He has been a great addition to the Company and has made a valuable contribution to the growth and advancement of Avidian over the past couple of years. Steve takes the helm at an exciting time in the company's life as we advance our gold projects and prepare to take our subsidiary company High Tide public. He'll be helped greatly by the addition of Stephen Altmann and Rick Winters to the Board who bring a wealth of knowledge and experience in the mining industry including finance, acquisitions and corporate governance. Thanks to Doug Kirwin for his support and commitment to Avidian over the past few years. We are very pleased to be able to continue to benefit from his experience through his new role as Technical Advisor."

Mr. Stephen Altmann is currently a Managing Director at Morrison Park Advisors, an investment banking advisory firm in Toronto, Canada where he provides strategic advice and financial analysis to mining companies globally in their evaluation and implementation of strategic transactions. He also provides strategic and financial advice to First Nation communities in their negotiations with mining companies. As an investment banker, he has been at major bank-owned Canadian investment banks and at a bulge-bracket international investment bank where he financed and advised on mergers, acquisitions, asset sales and purchases, fairness opinions and valuations, and other advisory services to a large selection of domestic and international public companies, primarily in the mining sector. Stephen holds a Masters of Business Administration and an Honours Bachelor of Science (Geophysics) degree. He has also been a senior executive and board member of publicly traded mining companies.

Mr. Rick Winters is the Principal of RAWsources LLC, a mineral industry management consultancy. Until 2019 he was President of RMB Resources Inc, representing the North American offices of RMB Resources, the resource merchant banking business of the FirstRand Group of South Africa. In his capacity with RMB, Mr. Winters was involved in dozens of junior company financings from pre-IPO equity to corporate debt with an emphasis on structured finance. Prior he was Vice President Corporate Development for Golden Star Resources, a Canadian gold and diamond exploration company; an equity, sell-side mining sector analyst for Robertson Stephens, a San Francisco investment bank, and held various positions within the mining industry from miner to senior engineer with such companies as Phelps Dodge, ASARCO, Homestake Mining, and Echo Bay Mines. Rick received his undergraduate degrees in business and economics from the University of Montana and his Master's degree and post graduate studies in mineral economics at the Colorado School of Mines. He has sat on the boards of public and private resource companies.

A total of 1.1 million options will be issued to Directors and advisors. The options provide the right to purchase a common share of the Corporation at $0.20 for a period of five years. The options will vest over a three-year period as per the Company's stock option plan.

The appointment of Mr. Altmann and Mr. Winters to the board of directors is subject to TSX-V approval.

About Avidian Gold Corp.

Avidian brings a disciplined and veteran team of project managers together with a focus on advanced stage gold exploration projects in Alaska. Avidian's Golden Zone project hosts a NI 43- 101 Indicated gold resource of 267,400 ounces (4,187,000 tonnes at 1.99 g/t Au) plus an Inferred gold resource of 35,900 ounces (1,353,000 tonnes at 0.83 g/t Au)*. Additional projects include the Amanita and the Amanita NE gold properties which are both adjacent to Kinross Gold's Fort Knox gold mine in Alaska, and the Jungo gold/copper property in Nevada. *Technical Report on the Golden Zone Property, August 17, 2017, L. McGarry P.Geo & I. Trinder P.Geo, A.C.A Howe International Ltd.

High Tide is a private corporation that is focused on, and committed to, the development of advanced-stage mineral projects in Canada using industry best practices combined with a strong social license from local communities. High Tide Resources is earning a 100% interest the Labrador West Iron project located adjacent to IOC/Rio Tinto's 23 mtpy Carol Lake Mine in Labrador City, Labrador and owns a 100% interest in the Lac Pegma Copper-Nickel-Cobalt deposit located 50 kilometres southeast of Fermont, Quebec.

Further details on the Corporation and the individual projects, including the NI 43-101 Technical reports on the Golden Zone property and Labrador West Iron property can be found on the Corporation's website at www.avidiangold.com.

For further information, please contact:

Steve Roebuck

President & CEO

Mobile: (905) 741-5458

Email: sroebuck@avidiangold.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 news release.

Forward-looking information

This News Release includes certain "forward-looking statements". These statements are based on information currently available to the Company and the Company provides no assurance that actual results will meet management's expectations. Forward-looking statements include estimates and statements that describe the Company's future plans, objectives or goals, including words to the effect that the Company or management expects a stated condition or result to occur. Forward-looking statements may be identified by such terms as "believes", "anticipates", "expects", "estimates", "may", "could", "would", "will", or "plan". Since forward-looking statements are based on assumptions and address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results relating to, among other things, results of exploration, project development, reclamation and capital costs of the Company's mineral properties, and the Company's financial condition and prospects, could differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements for many reasons such as: changes in general economic conditions and conditions in the financial markets; changes in demand and prices for minerals; litigation, legislative, environmental and other judicial, regulatory, political and competitive developments; technological and operational difficulties encountered in connection with the activities of the Company; and other matters discussed in this news release. This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect any of the Company's forward-looking statements. These and other factors should be considered carefully and readers should not place undue reliance on the Company's forward-looking statements. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statement that may be made from time to time by the Company or on its behalf, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.

SOURCE: Avidian Gold Corp.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/639210/Avidian-Appoints-New-Board-Members-and-Promotes-Mr-Steve-Roebuck-to-President-and-CEO
(ANSA) - TURIN, APR 7 - Turin market traders on Wednesday blocked street in the Piedmont capital in a protest against their prolonged closure due to COVID-19 restrictions.

The protest came a day after an anti-lockdown protest by hospitality operators outside parliament in Rome turned violent with one police officer hospitalised and seven people arrested including rightist militants.

It also came a day after market traders blocked a motorway near Caserta causing hours-long gridlock.

Mask-less protests against COVID-linked closures and calling for reopenings have become more frequent in Italy recently as a second round of government economic support measures has been delayed.

In Turin Wednesday the traders were joined by several shopowners, including some whose shops are open.

They shouted slogans including "We are all necessary", "we want to work" and "we can't wait any longer".

The protesters were met by city commerce councillor Alberto Sacco who told them he would take their demands to the city prefect.

Meanwhile there was a similar protest in the Tuscan city of Pistoia where traders set up a fake market and pretended to sell goods. (ANSA).


IT Security

Moody's: Cyberattacks Could Dent Higher Ed Credit Rating

Cyberattacks could affect the financial standing of higher education as a business segment, according to a recent briefing by Moody's Investors Services. The "sector comment" came out shortly after two big security events, both occurring on March 16, 2021. First, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Cyber Division issued a "flash" warning about an increase in ransomware targeting education institutions. Then, Maricopa Community Colleges, one of the largest community college systems in the country, discovered it had been hit by "suspicious activity" and, in response, brought its network down, pushing off the start of classes after spring break by a week. The announcement came on March 19, three days after the discovery.

The FBI report specifically alerted readers about PYSA ransomware, also known as "Mespinoza," which is "capable of exfiltrating data and encrypting users' critical files and data stored on their systems." Current targets include colleges and universities, K-12 schools and seminaries.

According to the report, PYSA gains its unauthorized access through compromised Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) credentials and/or phishing e-mails. Once the data is pulled out, the systems  files, databases, virtual machines, backups and applications  are made inaccessible to users through encryption and the attacker demands ransom. The ransom message contains information on how to contact the criminal via e-mail, displays frequently asked questions and offers to decrypt the affected files. If the ransom isn't paid, the hacker warns that the information will be uploaded and monetized on the darknet. The same FBI report discouraged victims from paying the ransom and urged them to report the incidents to their local FBI field office.

Maricopa Community Colleges, following its incident response protocol, took its systems offline, including its e-mail, user portal, learning management system, student information system, human resources management system and Google tools. The college system also brought in forensic and recovery specialists to help determine what had happened and to resolve the outage.

By March 29, classes had resumed, and by March 30 the operating systems had been restored. However, the forensic review was continuing, and the school couldn't report on whether data had been stolen.

Moody's warned that the rise in cyberattacks had come at an especially vulnerable time for higher ed. Not only have "some university finances ... become more fragile because of revenue declines and expense pressures related to the pandemic," but also "university networks have expanded more than ever as instruction is carried out largely online and most staff and faculty work remotely."

Unexpected school and course closures damage customer relations, the briefing noted. There's also the financial hit, which poses a "growing credit risk for debt issuers": The average data breach cost for an education victim is $3.9 million, according to a 2020 Ponemon Institute study.

The full briefing, "US: FBI warning for universities underscores vulnerability to cyberattacks," is available to Moody's subscribers.
RALEIGH, N.C., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- By ensuring compliance with contract terms and conditions, and also uncovering overpayments or under-reported revenue, cost savings is one of the top benefits of Supplier contract compliance audit service, says Beroe Inc.

Supplier contract compliance audit services, which involve generalized and specialized consulting companies helping the clients with cost reduction as well as increased cash flow, is a growing segment. Services like capital equipment & MRO, fleet & logistics, administrative, IT and telecom, specialized professional services, and sales/marketing are difficult to rule out for big MNCs, who are already benefitting from the contract compliance auditing services. However, when consulting a firm or agency, supplier contract compliance also has various benefits that go beyond evident cost reduction and increased cash flow.

Beroe, which is based in North Carolina, further stated that procurement experts

can access this report on its recently launched market intelligence platform Beroe

LiVE.Ai: https://www.beroeinc.com/beroe-live-ai/

During these challenging times, in midst of a pandemic, cost-cutting is of major significance. Investing in supplier contract compliance audit services is an effective route for organizations for cost reduction and increased cash flow, along with various other benefits. Similarly, for companies with third-party relationships, the risk is high. Contract compliance audit services help in risk management by enabling higher transparency and paving way for clearer communication between the company and third-party. Also, for companies expanding into international markets, contract compliance audit services ensure all research and operational expectations are met with the current market standards. It can help reduce the cost of such international expansions, as well as validate compliance and improve efficiency to achieve higher ROI.

The contract compliance services market report focuses on each of these providers' services and history in depth. These specifications include categories like their major clients, time taken for an audit, geographical restrictions, capability to serve offshore or onshore, number of audits annually run by them, recovery percent charges, pricing models, company headquarters, number of employees, number of sales, audit in comparison to big players of the industry and competitors at every stage, contact details of the firm, etc. These are all specialized firms that focus on a specific industry or task. General firms, who have been in the industry for years and have a huge presence worldwide, provide contract compliance audit services for all industries and tasks, from basic consulting to complex technology.

Especially for companies that are expanding globally, supplier contract compliance solutions are highly recommended. The return on investment is approximately 4 to 6 times, and the cost recoveries range from 20 to 50 percent depending on the spend volume. Regarding suppliers auditing best practices, 4-12 hours on average, per individual supplier audited, is the typical duration of an audit. The top companies accept both on-shore and off-shore audit services. GBP 25K - GBP 75 per audit is the average price prevailing in the market. In this segment, tiered pricing is a commonly adopted model. The actual pricing is influenced by several factors, including the volume of transactions, format of data, number of categories in scope, and more.

Key Findings

The return on investment for supplier contract compliance services is 4 to 6 times.

is 4 to 6 times. The main benefit of supplier contract compliance services is both cost reduction as well as a push to increased cash flow for the organization.

is both cost reduction as well as a push to increased cash flow for the organization. There are two types of contract compliance audit service providers: generalized and specialized firms. Generalized firms provide services for all tasks and industries. Specialized firms provide auditing services for a specific task or industry.

service providers: generalized and specialized firms. Generalized firms provide services for all tasks and industries. Specialized firms provide auditing services for a specific task or industry. A supplier contract compliance is highly beneficial for companies planning to expand internationally to ensure their technology and operations audit is on point.

is highly beneficial for companies planning to expand internationally to ensure their technology and operations audit is on point. In a tiered structure, for the average spend recoveries of up to $100k , the average recovery fee charged by the Vendor Payment Audit and Recovery Services providers on a high level is 40-50 percent of the recoveries.

The report from Beroe includes:

Types of suppliers in the contract compliance services market .

. An in-depth brief of generalized and specialized audit service providers with their pros and cons.

A comprehensive list of generalized and specialized service providers contacted by Beroe.

Specialized service providers' company profile and clients.

All the benefits companies can receive through supplier contract compliance services.

Types of supplier contract compliance services.

Case studies and examples of how other companies perform supplier contract compliance services.

About Beroe Inc.:

Beroe is a North Carolina-based provider of procurement intelligence and supplier compliance solutions. It is one of the world's foremost industry-names, working with over 10,000 companies, including 400 out of Fortune 500 companies. Covering a wide range of industries  from healthcare and food to chemical, oil, banking, and more  Beroe offers real-time intelligence, predictive insights, and rich resources. For more information about Beroe Inc., please visit https://www.beroeinc.com/ .

Media Contact:

Debobrata Hembram

[email protected]

SOURCE Beroe Inc.
of oysters set to skyrocket as stock will be in short supply across NSW

The price of oysters in NSW is set to rise dramatically as farmers still struggle to comprehend the multi-million dollar crop damage from the recent east coast floods.

Over the past year and a half, the once thriving industry has been rocked by bushfires, multiple restaurant closures due to the Covid pandemic and most recently, flash flooding.

Some terrified insiders now fear the oyster industry will never be in an adequate position to recover, and warn prices will rise in the short term.

Frank Theodorou, who works for GetFish in the Harbour City, doesn't expect to see many Sydney rock oysters in restaurants and cafes over the next few months.

'We've had to increase our prices due to freight charges,' he told the Daily Telegraph, explaining oyster had to be flown in from Perth.

Workers at the Sydney Fish Market can also expect to see less oysters over the next few months - or even years (stock image)

The recent floods in NSW have decimated the oyster industry, with some fearing it may never fully recover

NSW Farmers oyster chairman Todd Graham confirmed the current state of play is dire for many farmers.

'As of last Friday, oyster farmers reported $17million in lost stock and damage to farm equipment and sheds - and not all oyster farmers have been able to assess (their) losses yet,' he said.

'Stock and infrastructure have been washed away, sheds and equipment have been flooded... and generally it takes about three years to grow mature oysters.'

Mr Theodorou pointed to strong tide currents which resulted in farmers losing countless levels of stock across different parts of the state.

Many were left with no choice but to cut their losses and start over.

The recent floods across different parts of NSW saw water quality altered dramatically, with fridges, plastic and even cows mixed in with oyster produce, making them unable to be sold in bulk to key suppliers

Sydney rock and pacific oysters have been a proven money spinner for farmers in recent decades - but they need the right water quality before they are on-sold.

The recent floods saw the water quality altered dramatically, with fridges, plastic and even cows mixed in with oyster produce.

As a result, the oysters, which take months to harvest, were not able to pass onto key suppliers.

'These floods were the worst,' Deb O'Sullivan, from the Hawkesbury River Oyster Shed, said recently.

'It will take years for us to get oysters back. It's not good.'
DusanManic/Getty Images

Ten acres of sunflowers are taking root in San Antonio for a month-long petal party complete with a maze, flower-picking and photo opportunities.

Traders Village, the massive outdoor market on the South Side, typically hosts themed events to coincide with different seasons. There's a Corny Maze in the fall and a holiday market during December. This spring, acres upon acres of wildflowers will be offered for guests to get lost in, pick and take sunshine-filled photos with.
Employment, health care and education for military children will be the main emphases of the White House's revived Joining Forces initiative, first lady Jill Biden announced Wednesday.

The Joining Forces effort, a collaboration between government, private and nonprofit entities designed to improve the lives of military families, will aim to improve spouse unemployment and underemployment, increase access to health care -- especially mental health services -- and strengthen education for military children, Biden said in an announcement at the White House.

The focus on active-duty families will take the initiative back to its roots when it was cofounded in 2011 by Biden, then second lady, and first lady Michelle Obama, to encourage public and private entities to take action to support military families.

As Joining Forces grew during the Obama administration, its focus widened to include service members' transition to veteran status, veteran employment, homelessness and veterans' mental health.

Read Next: It's Official: The Air Force's New F-15EX Fighter Will Be Called the Eagle II

After holding hundreds of listening sessions with military families, advocates, service members, nonprofits and corporate leaders, Biden selected the three priorities, she said, because "supporting [military families] physical, social and emotional health is a national security imperative."

"Just 1% of our country has shouldered the burden of 20 years of war. No one has more strength and grit and resilience than our military families, but you can't do this alone," Biden said.

According to a survey conducted late last year by the military advocacy group Blue Star Families, 42% of military spouses working before the pandemic struck stopped working.

The situation wasn't much better before the pandemic: A Defense Department survey in 2017 found active-duty spouse unemployment at 24%, just two percentage points lower than it was in 2010.

Access to quality health care also remains a concern, especially in the field of mental health: The Blue Star Families survey found that 21% of those surveyed, including active-duty personnel, family members and veterans families, said they would like to get care but can't.

According to the survey, despite increased use of telehealth services, active-duty family respondents said they face difficulties scheduling appointments, getting time off work for treatment or finding child care for appointments.

Some military families also have said they are food insecure, meaning they don't have the financial stability to access healthy, quality sustenance consistently.

"The global pandemic over the past year has intensified these stressors. We will also work closely with service providers in the civilian community to ensure they have the knowledge and tools to effectively support military and veteran families, caregivers and survivors," Biden said.

She also pledged to increase programs for more than 2 million children of military personnel, including active-duty, Reserve and National Guard members -- kids she said face a "highly mobile military lifestyle."

Biden is an educator by profession and has made education a top priority for her work as first lady.

"We must understand and account for the lifelong impact of service on military-connected children and ensure that children in veteran families, caregiving families and surviving families will also be included in the initiative's work," Biden said in a release.

Biden has named Rory Brosius, former deputy director of Joining Forces in the Obama administration, to be executive director.

After her presentation, Biden toured a call center for Military OneSource in Arlington, Virginia. The helpline provides around-the-clock support for service members and their families.

Biden described the work for military families "important to her," and not just because she is the daughter of a veteran or the stepmother of Delaware Army National Guard member Beau Biden who died six years ago.

"Without a doubt, being part of this military community has shaped who I am. But that's not why we're here today. We're here because of you, the people behind me on these screens; because of the stories that you have shared with me -- your joys and your challenges," she said.

She also pledged to leave a Joining Forces program at the White House that she hopes will be a permanent priority for successors.

"Because you deserve nothing less," Biden said.

Former first lady Melania Trump and Karen Pence, the wife of former Vice President Mike Pence, focused on military family issues during President Donald Trump's term, but they did not use the Joining Forces moniker.

-- Patricia Kime can be reached at Patricia.Kime@Monster.com. Follow her on Twitter @patriciakime.

Related: Military Family Shocked to Get $32,000 Bill After Garage Fire in Base Housing
SGX Nifty:

Trading of Nifty 50 index futures on the Singapore stock exchange indicates that the Nifty could rise 12 points at the opening bell.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is slated to announce its first bi-monthly monetary policy of the 2021-22 fiscal today, 7 April 2021 after a three-day meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) headed by RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das.

Global markets:

Overseas, Asian are trading mixed on Wednesday after Wall Street pulled back from record highs reached in previous sessions.

U.S. stocks fell from record levels on Tuesday as the recent rally driven by signs of strong economic rebound took a pause.

On Tuesday, California Governor Gavin Newsom said that the state will reopen its economy by June 15 provided that coronavirus vaccine and hospitalization cases remain stable.

The IMF on Tuesday projected an impressive 12.5% growth rate for India in 2021, stronger than that of China, the only major economy to have a positive growth rate last year during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Indian economy is expected to grow by 6.9% in 2022.

The IMF revised up its forecast for the world economy. On Tuesday, the organization said it expects growth at 6% in 2021, up from a January prediction of 5.5%, and Chief Economist Gita Gopinath said that despite lingering uncertainties around the pandemic, a way out of this health and economic crisis is increasingly visible.

Domestic markets:

Back home, key equity indices ended with small gains after a volatile session on Tuesday. Gains were capped amid a spike in COVID-19 cases in the country. The barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, rose 42.07 points or 0.09% to 49,201.39. The Nifty 50 index added 45.70 points or 0.31% to 14,683.50.

Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) sold shares worth Rs 1,092.75 crore, while domestic institutional investors (DIIs), were net buyers to the tune of Rs 416.59 crore in the Indian equity market on 6 April, provisional data showed.

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
State legislatures have been slow to catch up to the marijuana legalization trend as, time and again, they let voters decide what to do about decades-old weed laws. Thats changing this year.

Virginias Legislature passed a recreational legalization bill in February, becoming the first Southern state to fully embrace weed. Last week, lawmakers in New York and New Mexico legalized weed for adults, after years of failed efforts. New Jersey lawmakers also passed legislation implementing a voter-approved legalization amendment. And more conservative states like Kansas and Alabama are moving medical marijuana legalization bills forward.

More than 40 percent of Americans now live in states  18 in total  that have embraced full legalization. Roughly two-thirds of Americans back legal weed, according to polls.

The acceptance of legal weed by governors and state lawmakers in 2021  without the explicit blessing of voters  marks a turning point. Until this year, only two states had legalized recreational marijuana programs through the legislature: Illinois in 2019 and Vermont in 2020.

The sky hasn't fallen in those states that have legalized, said Karen OKeefe, director of state policies for legalization advocacy organization Marijuana Policy Project. It doesn't hurt that these laws generate a lot of economic growth in the way of new jobs, new small businesses and hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue that states could really use as they recover from Covid.

While not all legislative efforts have been a success, with legalization bills dying in Maryland, Hawaii and Wyoming in recent months, the rapid spread of legalization across the country will further exacerbate the tension between state and federal laws. Marijuana continues to be classified as an illegal drug with high potential for abuse and no medical use under federal law. That disconnect will undoubtedly increase the pressure on Congress and the White House to take steps to loosen federal marijuana restrictions.

Story continues

As some legislatures continue to debate the issue this spring, heres a closer look at state legalization efforts across the country:

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam speaks at a news conference.

Virginia

The state made history as the first in the Old South to approve a recreational legalization bill in February. But it also sparked sharp criticism from both legalization supporters and opponents by delaying implementation until 2024.

Last Wednesday, Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam called on the legislature to speed up the legalization timeline, proposing amendments to allow possession and home cultivation starting July 1.

Governor Northams amendments will stop the disparate enforcement of marijuana laws beginning this summer, while also focusing on public safety and educating our youth, said Del. Charniele Herring, a sponsor of the legalization bill and the Democratic majority leader in the Virginia House. This is a very important step for equity.

The proposed changes heeded calls from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Despite decriminalizing marijuana last year, Black people are still disproportionately hit with fines for simple possession. Democrats wanted to see that disparate enforcement end sooner rather than later, and Republicans expressed dismay that the three-year timeline would confuse Virginians and result in people being punished for behavior that they thought was legal.

Northam also proposed stronger labor protections and increased funding for impaired driving training for law enforcement. Lawmakers will take up his proposals April 7. Recreational sales are still not slated to begin until 2024.

 Mona Zhang

New York

After years of near-misses, New York legalized adult-use cannabis last week. Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act into law just hours after it cleared the Legislature. New Yorkers aged 21 and older can now legally possess and consume cannabis, but dispensaries are not expected to open until at least 2022 under the new regulatory structure.

Today we are reversing 90 years of prohibition," Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes, who sponsored the bill, said in remarks from the Assembly floor. "The last time New York State did anything like this is when we were removing the prohibition from alcohol: that was in 1933. Here we are in 2021  almost 100 years of prohibition on marijuana  and were removing it.

The legislation establishes the Office of Cannabis Management to oversee New Yorks recreational, medical and agricultural cannabis markets. Forty percent of revenues from sales will be dedicated to reinvestment in communities disproportionately affected by the states drug laws, with 40 percent going to public education and 20 percent to drug treatment and prevention.

The legislation allows for home cultivation of three mature and three immature plants, ends penalties for possession of less than three ounces of cannabis, and calls for automatic expungement of records for people with convictions for activities that are no longer illegal.

The adult-use program is projected to bring in $350 million annually in tax collections when fully implemented and could create an estimated 30,000 to 60,000 new jobs. Cities, towns and villages would have the ability to opt-out of having marijuana businesses in their communities.

 Shannon Young

Store manager Ruby Amsden, left, attends to medical marijuana customer and retired nurse Jan Stewart, who uses cannabis to relieve pain associated with her recovery from bone cancer and help with sleeping, at the Minerva medical cannabis dispensary in Santa Fe, N.M.

New Mexico

New Mexico required a special session to get marijuana legalization legislation over the finish line after three years of trying, but both legislative chambers ultimately passed a bill last Wednesday. Debate over scrapping old marijuana-related convictions and caps on plant counts dominated discussions, and Republicans dug in their heels at the end of the regular legislative session  ultimately leading Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to call the special session to address weed.

In the end, two bills passed: One to legalize and regulate the adult-use cannabis industry, and one to expunge records for prior marijuana-related convictions. The legalization bill puts a temporary cap on the number of plants a producer can grow each year, in hopes of avoiding some of the oversupply problems that have plagued other markets like Oregon. It bans local jurisdictions from opting out of legalization and allows home cultivation.

"This is a significant victory for New Mexico and my signing pen is ready," Lujan Grisham tweeted just after the bill passed.

Sales are set to begin no later than April 1, 2022. Existing medical dispensaries won't be allowed to begin sales to non-medical customers ahead of new licensees  which will slow down the timeline for adult-use sales to begin. But some advocates argue that it will create a more equitable rec market where everyone can start on equal footing.

 Natalie Fertig

A grow employee at Compassionate Care Foundation's medical marijuana dispensary trims leaves off marijuana plants in the company's grow house in Egg Harbor Township, N.J.

New Jersey

Voters overwhelmingly passed a ballot referendum backing marijuana legalization in November. But lawmakers still needed to pass legislation to establish a recreational marijuana market  and that process proved to be a mess. After efforts repeatedly ran off the rails, lawmakers eventually passed a series of laws legalizing cannabis for adults aged 21 and over and decriminalizing possession of up to six ounces of the drug.

The dysfunction that plagued the legalization effort soon bled into implementation. The laws signed by Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy created a penalty system for underage possession that barred police officers from notifying parents or guardians of a minors first offense. Republicans battered Democrats over the snafu until clean-up legislation was signed late last month.

The process has been a debacle," state Sen. Paul Sarlo said in an interview in early March as Democratic lawmakers readied legislation to clean-up the new law's prohibition of parental notifications. Not even a week later, were fixing it.

Meanwhile, the picks Murphy and legislative leaders made for the states Cannabis Regulatory Commission  a five-person board tasked with rulemaking for the nascent industry  didn't meet a requirement that at least one member represent a civil rights organization. The state's NAACP leadership threatened to sue over the snub, forcing Murphy to reshuffle his picks.

Even then, by Murphy's estimate, New Jersey dispensaries are at least six months away from completing the first sale of adult-use cannabis. Tellingly, the governors proposed budget for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2022 books no revenues from the fledgling marketplace.

 Sam Sutton

This photo provided by the New Jersey Governor's Office shows Gov. Phil Murphy as he has signed into law legislation to set up a recreational marijuana marketplace Monday, Feb. 22, 2021, in Trenton, N.J.

Connecticut

Lawmakers are weighing two competing marijuana legalization proposals  one put forth by Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont, the other by Democratic lawmakers. The biggest fight is expected to be over efforts to ensure that communities disproportionately affected by criminal enforcement are able to benefit from legalization. Democratic Rep. Robyn Porter and legalization advocates have criticized the governors proposal for not doing enough to address that issue, although changes to the bill were introduced on Tuesday to address those critiques.

New Yorks embrace of legal weed will put further pressure on Connecticut to act. Lamont and other state officials have already expressed dismay at residents crossing the border to shop at dispensaries in Massachusetts. The exodus of tax dollars will only increase when recreational shops open in New York.

Connecticut is most comfortable following and learning from its neighbors, rather than pioneering, legalization advocate Adam Wood said. We like safety in numbers.

The Legislature is slated to adjourn on June 9. If legalization doesnt pass this year, House Speaker Matt Ritter has indicated hell push for a voter referendum on the issue, although that likely wouldnt occur until 2024.

 Paul Demko

A.J. Lessa, a patient advisor at the Thomas C. Slater Compassion Center, arranges marijuana products in a display case at the center in Providence, R.I.

Rhode Island

Three big shifts in the political landscape have increased the chances that Rhode Island will pass adult-use legalization this year. Former Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondos support for state-run pot shops complicated the issue in the past, since most legalization advocates opposed that proposal. But with Raimondo departing to serve as commerce secretary in the Biden administration, that idea is off the table.

Secondly, the former state House speaker, who was seen as a legalization foe, lost his re-election bid in November. Finally, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Michael McCaffrey is carrying a legalization bill, the first time theres been buy-in from legislative leadership.

Democratic Gov. Daniel McKee has put forth his own legalization proposal. The biggest wildcard is new House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi, who hasnt taken a stance on legal weed. Most observers dont expect there to be clarity on whether theres the political will to pass a bill until late May or June.

 Paul Demko

Delaware

Democratic state Rep. Ed Osienski, the chief sponsor of an adult-use bill in the state House, expects it to come up for a floor vote in early May. Because the legalization bill creates a new tax, it needs a three-fifths vote to pass. Osienski is optimistic that it will gain the necessary votes. The bill also has a good chance in the Senate, where Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one.

One potential stumbling block will be Democratic Gov. John Carney, who "still has concerns about legalizing recreational marijuana," a spokesperson said. But if lawmakers do pass the legalization measure, they should have the votes to override a veto.

Ive been working [on] this bill for a few years now, and I do see the opposition lightening up, Osienski said. Im positive we can do a few more things that will give some folks comfort and get this thing over the goal line.

 Mona Zhang

This photo shows empty shelves at a medical marijuana dispensary in Hawaii in 2017. While some states have affirmed legalization efforts, other states have slowed or stalled at further legalization efforts.

Medical marijuana efforts

While most states have some form of a medical cannabis program, holdouts are considering medical marijuana bills and states with restrictive programs are considering expanding them.

Medical marijuana legalization bills are moving forward in Kansas, Alabama and South Carolina. States with restrictive programs like Texas, Minnesota and Iowa are considering legislation to expand patient access.

A medical marijuana bill in Nebraska made it out of committee, but advocates there face a steep hurdle in overcoming a filibuster and Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts adamant opposition to the loosening of marijuana laws. "If you legalize marijuana, youre gonna kill your kids," Ricketts said when asked about the medical marijuana bill by reporters last month.

Advocates in Nebraska vowed to take their cause to the 2022 ballot if lawmakers don't pass legalization in the legislature.

Failed efforts

Some attempts to legalize medical or or adult-use marijuana have failed in states including Maryland, Hawaii, Wyoming and North Dakota.

Advocates in both North Dakota and Wyoming are expected to try putting legalization questions on the ballot.

Anti-legalization advocates like Luke Niforatos, the executive vice president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, point to these failures as evidence that things are not shifting in state legislatures as much as legalization supporters make it out to seem. He called it a mixed bag and said he wouldnt say there's a narrative yet. Still, he said its clear legislatures across the country are now willing to seriously consider the bills, and business interests are growing more powerful.

We've had kind of a wild year so far in terms of state legislatures considering marijuana bills, Niforatos said. The [marijuana] industry is growing  they have a lot more influence.
Royal Dutch Shell has warned that the severe winter storm in Texas earlier this year looks set to hit its bottom line for the fist quarter.

In February, a snowstorm swept across Texas and swathes of North America, knocking out sections of the former's electricity grid, leaving millions without power and nearly 200 people dead.

In an update on its first quarter, oil giant Shell said the storm had cost it around $200million, or around 145million, in the first quarter.

Impact: Royal Dutch Shell has warned that the severe winter storm in Texas earlier this year looks set to hit its bottom line for the fist quarter

Democrat politicians in the US blamed the state's deregulated electricity grid for the problems during the freezing conditions.

The Houston Chronicle reported that 16 people are believed to have died from carbon monoxide poisoning during the storm as they tried to keep warm, while around 24 others died when the medical devices they relied on stopped working.

The severe weather, which saw temperatures in Texas drop to their lowest for 40 years, also wiped out parts of Shell's production in the area, and its upstream business now expects to produce around 2.4million barrels of oil or equivalents a day.

This is around 10,000 to 20,000 fewer barrels a day than normal.

Shell said adjusted earnings in its upstream unit, which is the section of its operations that finds, extracts or produces oil and gas, are expected to take a hit of around $40million, or 29million, as a result of the storm.

The company's oil refinery in Deer Park, Texas, normally processes over 300,000 barrels per day. But, Shell and its partner, Pemex, were forced to temporarily close the plant 'due to unprecedented weather' in February.

The closure will lead to an $80million, or 58million, hit to the group's adjusted earnings across its oil products unit. Shell's chemicals unit also expects to take a $60million, or 44million hit from the storm.

Death toll: The severe winter storm in Texas killed around 200 people

In more upbeat news, Shells upstream unit was still able to capture 'the upside from the current commodity price environment' in the first quarter, the company said.

Last year, Shell announced plans to axe up to 9,000 jobs from its global workforce by the end of 2022 in a bid to save billions of pounds and streamline its operations.

Boss Ben van Beurden described the job cuts as an 'extremely tough process', but said cutting costs was 'essential.'

He said there were 'too many people in the middle' of the organisation in terms of management layers.

In 2020, oil giants like Shell were hit with a double whammy of Covid-19 and falling oil prices, triggered by lower demand. Oil prices have since rebounded.

Shell reported a loss of $18billion, or around 13billion, in the second quarter of 2020.

Shell's 'B' category shares are up 1.25 per cent or 17.00p to 1,372.60p this morning. A year ago the share price was around the 1,436.40p mark.
Boris Johnson today defended his vaccine passports plans as he vowed to proceed with the policy despite Sir Keir Starmer confirming Labour will side with Tory rebels to oppose the move.

The Prime Minister stressed that no documentation will be needed to access shops, pubs and restaurants in England on April 12 or May 17 - the next steps on his lockdown exit roadmap.

But looking beyond those dates, Mr Johnson said it is 'responsible' for the Government to consider how best to safely reopen society and 'we will look at all possibilities'.

Sir Keir said this afternoon that the plans for the domestic use of 'Covid Status Certification' are 'a complete mess' and Labour is unable to support them 'in their current form'.

The Labour leader said he feared the policy will become 'another example of the Government with a plan that doesn't work, costing lots of taxpayer money'.

This morning Paul Scully, the Small Business Minister, sparked speculation of a potential climbdown on the issue as he insisted the Government is 'concentrating on ticketed, big events'.

Mr Scully said the work on vaccine passports is focused on major events which are 'tougher to get back to a semblance of normal rather than the high streets' and hospitality settings like pubs.

Some 40 Tory MPs have made clear they are against domestic vaccine passports, warning that introducing the checks in everyday life would create a 'two tier' nation.

The combination of Labour opposition and a 40-strong Tory rebellion has prompted speculation that Mr Johnson could lose a vote on the issue in the House of Commons.

He appeared to be handed a boost after Ian Blackford, the SNP's Westminster leader, said his party would 'look constructively at any proposals' but Mr Blackford later insisted 'on the basis of the information available, there is not a proposition in front of us that SNP MPs could support'.

It came as Jeremy Hunt, the Tory former health secretary and chairman of the Health Select Committee, said he believed the public will accept the documents if they are the 'only way to socialise in public places safely'.

Boris Johnson today defended his vaccine passports plans as he vowed to proceed with the policy

Sir Keir Starmer today confirmed Labour will not back domestic vaccine passports as he labelled Boris Johnson's plans 'a complete mess'. He is pictured in Plymouth with Labour MP Luke Pollard

The initial findings of a Government review on how the passports could be used left the door open to the documents being required for access to pubs and restaurants.

Many Tory MPs support the use of vaccine passports for international travel but are vehemently opposed to using them in everyday life because of privacy and civil liberties concerns.

The Government has said the documents would consist of a mix of vaccination, testing and immunity data.

The system will be trialled at a series of events pilots in the coming weeks but they will initially only check testing data.

Mr Johnson said during a visit to Cornwall that it would be 'responsible' for any government to look at the possibility of vaccine passports as he reiterated no such documentation will be needed on April 12 or May 17.

He said: 'But clearly, it is going to be responsible for any government to look at the possibility of making sure that we can continue to open up all sectors of the economy in a safe way down the rest of this year and, you know, we will look at all possibilities.

'But I have absolutely no doubt that we will continue with the road map that we set out in a safe and secure way, but nobody should think that there's any need for certificates of any kind either on April 12 or May 17.'

Sir Keir said during a visit to Plymouth that Labour will not support the proposals as things stand.

He told reporters: 'We do not support the Government's plans in their current form, it's as simple as that.

'In fact the Government's plans seem to be changing on an almost daily basis. Only a few weeks ago the Prime Minister was saying he was thinking of vaccine passports to go to the pub  now he says isn't. One day he's talking about tests  then it's certificates. It's a complete mess.

'There isn't a real plan around this and what I fear it will be is another example of the Government with a plan that doesn't work, costing lots of taxpayer money, when I think the focus should be on getting as many people vaccinated as possible  that's the light at the tunnel.'

Earlier today, Mr Scully was asked during an interview on Sky News what his understanding is of where the passports could be used and whether they could be used by small businesses.

He replied: 'The Prime Minister has been really clear. When we open non-essential retail and hospitality next week there will be no requirements for certification, there will be no requirement for certification come May 17 when we get to stage three as well.

'What is being looked at is the entire gamut around the ethics and the practicalities of a certification programme, especially for ticketed events, bigger events and that is why it linked to the events research programme which is doing its work through this month and is due to report back next month.

'So there is plenty of discussion, plenty of debate to look at before any decisions are taken.'

Pushed again on whether small businesses would likely have to deal with the passports issue, Mr Scully said: 'Well, as I said, the work that is being done at the moment is concentrating on ticketed, big events and those kind of things because they are tougher to get back to a semblance of normal rather than the high streets with non-essential retail and hospitality including pubs.

'That is where the work is being done at the moment. As I say there is a lot more work to be done, a lot more discussion and debate to be had on that over the coming weeks.'

There is considerable Tory disquiet over the potential use of domestic vaccine passports, with the PM under pressure to guarantee a vote in the Commons on the issue.

Mr Johnson's fate would rest on the size of the Tory rebellion if Labour and the SNP opted to vote against the proposals.

Mr Blackford had appeared to offer Mr Johnson a boost after he told The Telegraph: 'Obviously we're keen to take steps to get back to normality, but in a way that is inclusive.

'We would look constructively at any proposals that would help us get there, including Covid status checks. It is important that people are not excluded.

'Therefore such checks would have to include people who have had a Covid test as well as those who are vaccinated.

'When it comes to SNP MPs potentially voting on such matters in Westminster, these measures will affect Scots visiting friends or for work in England.'

Mr Blackford subsequently said that as things currently stand the SNP will not support the domestic plans.

He said: 'The UK government hasn't published any proposals yet, and the Tory position has been mired in confusion and contradiction. On the basis of the information available, there is not a proposition in front of us that SNP MPs could support.'

Despite the high levels of opposition in Westminster to the idea of domestic vaccine passports, Mr Hunt said he believed the public would accept them.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'Well, in normal times if you were being asked to show your health records or your Covid status before going into a pub or something like that it would be absolutely abhorrent.

'But this is a pandemic. Now, it may not be necessary to do any of that if the vaccine programme is as successful as we hope and if cases fall to low enough levels.

'But if the only way to socialise in public places safely is to ask people to demonstrate that they are not likely to be a risk to others then I think people are quite sensible and pragmatic about this kind of thing.'

The initial findings of a Government review on the certification scheme said the documents could have an 'important role to play both domestically and internationally, as a temporary measure'.

The Government ruled out using the documents to determine access to public transport or essential shops.

But the findings said 'it is possible that COVID-status certification could also play a role in reducing social distancing requirements in other settings which people tend to visit more frequently, for example in hospitality settings'.
ABBA MANIA will return to the West End for the first time in almost 20 years next month.

The hit piece, featuring the tunes of the Swedish supergroup, will play at the Shaftesbury Theatre from 21 May to 6 June 2021 to socially distanced audiences.

ABBA MANIA producer Todd Littlewood comments: "There's nothing more perfect for reopening of the West End than the belt-out, feel-good music of ABBA. It's been a tough year and as audiences begin to take their seats in auditoriums once again, we can't wait to return to where it all began for ABBA MANIA and make sure that joy is ABBA-solutely centre stage."

Tunes involved in the concert include "Mamma Mia!", "Voulez Vous", "Dancing Queen", "Winner Takes It All", "Waterloo", "Fernando", "Does Your Mother Know", "Super Trouper" and many more.

Performers and creative team are to be revealed.

After its run in London, the show will be performed at the "Sounds in the Grounds" festivals in High Wycombe and Kirtlington, as well as embarking on a tour right the way through the summer and into the autumn.

Tickets for the West End run go on sale at midday.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday that on June 15, the state will "fully reopen" its economy and abandon the current color-coded tier reopening system as long as COVID-19 vaccines are widely available to all who want them and hospitalizations remain low.

However, the state's mask mandate will remain intact, precluding a true return to a pre-pandemic normal.

Every Californian over the age of 16 will be eligible to receive the vaccine by April 15, making it highly likely everyone who wants to be vaccinated will be by June 15. Two infectious disease experts from UCSF agree on the science that once an individual is fully vaccinated, they face minimal risk of serious disease  but disagree on whether the mask mandate should continue beyond June 15.

"There's a really simple answer to when mask mandates should be lifted, and it's when everyone in a given locality can get access to the vaccine," said Dr. Monica Gandhi. "There's no justification for a mask mandate once everyone who wants the shot has gotten the shot and they have immunity. If people choose not to get the vaccine, thats their right, but for all of us to have to wear masks when we have the much more powerful intervention of vaccination is not necessary."

Conversely, her colleague Dr. George Rutherford predicted compulsory mask-wearing into perhaps 2022.

"Itll be a long time," he said. "Maybe mandates will be dropped by this time next year, or maybe it'll be earlier. The fourth surge has already started, and just because it's not here doesn't mean it's not everywhere else. ICU capacity is already running out in Michigan, so that should weigh heavily on our decisions here. Whether what's happening there is a harbinger of a summer surge that will come to the west later is still to be determined."

Michigan is currently undergoing a surge in COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations, largely fueled by variants that are more contagious. The state's Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, has declined to reimplement any restrictions, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the federal government's most visible pandemic expert, stated that while cases may increase again, he does not believe the country will see a fourth "surge" akin to the previous three "as long as we keep vaccinating people efficiently and effectively."

Regardless, Rutherford predicted that vaccine hesitancy coupled with variants could keep mask mandates in place for the foreseeable future.

"Whats concerning is we may have a lot of people who choose to be unvaccinated," he said. "If 30% of the population is unvaccinated, that's enough to sustain transmission which could create a big winter surge, so I can see health officials wanting to be cautious."

Even if there is sustained transmission among the willingly unvaccinated, it may be a tough sell both practically and politically to compel the vaccinated to wear masks for another year if it remains the case that there are no known variants that easily elude vaccination.

Newsom is already facing a recall largely driven by those who believe his pandemic measures were too strict, and may find himself in a politically untenable position if most other states drop their respective mask mandates. Some blue states including Colorado have already floated the possibility of ending mask mandates once everyone who wants a vaccine has gotten one.

"I actually wrote to the California Department of Public Health and urged them to lift their mask mandate on June 18, which is one year after they first issued it," Gandhi said. "I believe this topic is an important one because it can be motivating in getting more people to take the vaccine and it gives people something to look forward to."
Pakistan rights campaigners have accused Prime Minister Imran Khan of "baffling ignorance" after the former cricketer linked how women dress for a rise in rape cases. In a weekend interview on live television, Oxford-educated Khan said an increase in rapes indicated the "consequences in any society where vulgarity is on the rise."

In this March 16, 2020 file photo, Prime Minister Imran Khan speaks during an interview in Islamabad, Pakistan. / Credit: B.K. Bangash / AP

"The incidents of rape of women... (have) actually very rapidly increased in society," he said.

He advised women to cover up to prevent temptation.

"This entire concept of purdah is to avoid temptation, not everyone has the willpower to avoid it," he said, using a term that can refer to modest dress or the segregation of the sexes.

Hundreds have signed a statement circulating online Wednesday calling Khan's comments "factually incorrect, insensitive and dangerous."

"Fault rests solely with the rapist and the system that enables the rapist, including a culture fostered by statements such as those made by (Khan)," the statement said.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent rights watchdog, said Tuesday it was "appalled" by the comments.

"Not only does this betray a baffling ignorance of where, why and how rape occurs, but it also lays the blame on rape survivors, who, as the government must know, can range from young children to victims of honor crimes," it said.

The Karachi chapter of the Women's Action Forum called on Khan to apologize for his "callous and damaging remarks."

Pakistan is a deeply conservative country where victims of sexual abuse are often viewed with suspicion and criminal complaints are rarely seriously investigated.

Much of the country lives under an "honor" code where women who bring "shame" on the family can be subjected to violence or murder.

It regularly ranks among the worst places in the world for gender equality.

Nationwide protests erupted last year when a police chief admonished a gang-rape victim for driving at night without a male companion. The Franco-Pakistani mother was assaulted in front of her children on the side of a motorway after her car ran out of gas.

Story continues

After that incident, Khan called for rapists to be publicly hanged or castrated for their crimes.

Last year, Khan was also criticized after another television appearance where he failed to challenge a Muslim cleric's insistence that coronavirus had been unleashed because of the wrongdoings of women.

The latest controversy comes as the organizers behind International Women's Day marches battle what they have called a coordinated disinformation campaign against them, including doctored images and videos circulated online.

It has led to blasphemy accusations -- a hugely sensitive issue in Pakistan where allegations have previously led mobs to attack people.

The organizers of the annual rally have called for the prime minister to intervene.

In his weekend TV appearance, Khan also blamed divorce rates in Britain on the "sex, drugs and rock and roll" culture that began in the 1970s, when the twice-divorced Khan was gaining a reputation in London as a playboy.

Explosion victim receives staggering bill after months of recovery

Smugglers seemingly advertising trip to U.S. for a price to migrants in Guatemala

California governor plans to reopen state's economy mid-June
[April 07, 2021] Common Energy Partners With Microsoft, LinkedIn, Corning, Akamai, and VMware to Bring a New Sustainability Benefit to Employees

Common Energy, a leading community solar provider, today announced collaborations with Microsoft (News - Alert) , LinkedIn, Corning, Akamai Technologies, and VMware to bring a new sustainability benefit to each companies' employees. Through Common Energy's Clean Energy (News - Alert) Benefit Program, the companies' employees can enroll to support new, local, community solar projects. The community solar projects generate clean energy that flows the electrical grid, replacing fossil fuel and lowering emissions in the community. Each employee who enrolls in the program also receives clean energy credits that lower their electricity cost each month. There is no cost to the employer or the employee. To date, partner employees across four states have enrolled in Common Energy's program, supporting 50 MW of new clean energy capacity. Together, these projects will generate approximately 66 million kilowatt hours of clean energy and prevent approximately 32 million pounds of carbon emissions each year. Over the lifetime of the projects, the projects are expected to generate over 1 billion kilowatt hours of clean energy and prevent over 600 million pounds of carbon emissions. The projects being supported through these programs are located across the country, serving both major cities and rural areas including: Carver, MA (2.8 MW, serving Greater Boston); Lostant, IL (2.9 MW, serving Greater Chicago); and Mecklenburg, NY (2.3 MW, serving New York's Southern Tier). Today's announcement is the culmination of over three years of work beginning with Common Energy's first corporate partnership with Corning (News - Alert) in 2018. This initiative is believed to be the first large-scale program to directly involve employees in community solar. Unlike other companies, Common Energy only works on projects that bring new, clean energy to the grid, providing true additionality and real environmental impact. "We're proud to participate in this program offering our employees a way to reduce their carbon footprint and contribute to a greener future for all," said Bennett Leff, Director of Sustainability, Corning Incorprated. "Our 170 years of invention and innovation have shown us that what we do today will ultimately determine how our world looks tomorrow."



"This partnership with Common Energy is another significant step in advancing our global sustainability commitment, in alignment with Microsoft," says Peggy Brannigan, Director of Global Environmental Sustainability. " LinkedIn's (News - Alert) vision of creating economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce includes helping to accelerate a clean energy economy and supporting green jobs. We believe these community solar projects do just that, and we're excited to see the impact that this initiative will have on our workforce and the communities we serve." " Akamai (News - Alert) invites our employees to join in lessening carbon emissions," said Mike Mattera, Director, Corporate Sustainability, Akamai Technologies. "Common Energy offers a direct way for them to do so, and is easily replicable to all our U.S. offices."

"At VMware, we have a long-standing commitment to sustainability," said Natasha Tuck, Director, Sustainability and ESG at VMware. "Providing Common Energy's Clean Energy Benefit Program to our employees in Boston is an impactful way for our people to participate in climate action. We hope to extend the program to more employees so we can continue to increase the adoption of renewable energy." "We are thrilled and honored to work with Microsoft, LinkedIn, Corning, Akamai and VMware on these important programs," said Richard Keiser, CEO of Common Energy. "We hope that these partnerships will encourage more organizations to proactively engage their employees and members in sustainability in general and local community solar projects." "We are pleased to support these new solar projects with Common Energy," said Adam Hecktman, Director, Microsoft Philanthropies. "Community solar is a great way to enable residents and our employees to live out their values and commitments to clean energy." Common Energy's corporate programs are an extension of its core mission to accelerate the United States' clean energy transition and enable the public to save money and lower emissions. Common Energy currently serves households in Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Oregon. Residents of these states can enroll for free at www.commonenergy.us. Corporations interested in partnering with Common Energy can email partners@commonenergy.us. About Common Energy Common Energy is a leading community solar provider that services over 200MW of projects across the country. Common Energy's programs enable homeowners, renters, and businesses to support clean energy, lower emission in their communities and save money on their electricity for free, with their existing utility account. To join a community solar project, enroll at www.commonenergy.us. Companies interested in implementing employee programs are encouraged to email partners@commonenergy.us. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005314/en/

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US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she will push G20 nations to adopt a global minimum tax, giving the issue momentum

Proposed by the United States, supported by the IMF and welcomed by major economies including France and Germany, a global minimum tax rate on corporations is gathering momentum toward becoming a reality.

The reform aimed at ending tax competition between countries and the use of tax havens by companies will be on the agenda of G20 finance ministers when they meet virtually on Wednesday, and the group could unveil a proposal by July.

The idea has been promoted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development but received a fresh boost this week when US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she would push for an agreement among the advanced economies in the G20.

"Together, we can use a global minimum tax to make sure the global economy thrives based on a more level playing field in the taxation of multinational corporations," Yellen said on Monday.

The idea is to ensure companies pay a minimum amount of tax regardless of where they are located, preventing firms from evading taxes by establishing headquarters in countries with lower ratesa practice prevalent among tech companies which drains resources from government coffers.

'Great step forward'

The United States lowered its corporate tax rate in 2017 under former president Donald Trump. But President Joe Biden last week proposed raising the rate again to finance a massive $2 trillion infrastructure and jobs plan.

However, Yellen has said it would be best to couple a US rate increase with the establishment of a global minimum tax to end the "race to the bottom" among countries to see who implements the lowest rate.

Washington's allies welcomed the US push, with French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire telling AFP "a global agreement on international taxation is now within reach" and called on countries to "seize this historic opportunity."

German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz called Yellen's announcement a "great step forward" in the battle to stem the erosion of government revenues.

IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath said the fund supports a global minimum tax

"The support of the USA gives this initiative a strong tailwind," Scholz said, adding he hoped a deal could be reached this year.

The European Commission expressed a similar sentiment, with spokesman Daniel Ferrie saying the bloc called on "all global partners to remain engaged in these discussions and to continue the work without delay."

How high?

The IMF joined in on Tuesday, with the fund's chief economist Gita Gopinath saying "We are very much in favor of a global minimum corporate tax."

Speaking at the start of the spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank, she underscored the "large amount" of tax avoidance and "countries sending money to tax havens."

"That's reducing the tax base on which governments can collect revenues and do the necessary social and economic spending that's required."

The international reform would be comprised of two components: the minimum tax rate and the establishment of a system to modulate corporate taxes based on profits in each country, regardless of where they are headquarteredwhich would likely impact tech giants the most.

Biden singled out the US technology and e-commerce giant Amazon last week for avoiding federal income taxes as he proposed to boost the US corporate tax rate to 28 percent.

Chief executive Jeff Bezos said Tuesday that the company supports the proposal as part of a "balanced solution that maintains or enhances US competitiveness" and one that makes "bold investments in American infrastructure."

No official global minimum tax rate on corporations has been decided, but estimates range between 12.5 percent and 21 percent.

Explore further Global watchdog proposes tax overhaul for Big Tech

 2021 AFP
A woman who complained after a judge telephoned her after hearing her case to say she was very beautiful said she was shocked to discover no action will now be taken over the matter.

The woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, lodged a complaint but no action was taken against the judge  or the investigating gardai whom she claimed had initially tried to blame her for the contact.

Gardai decided, following an investigation into her complaint, that there was no criminal element to the matter and ruled out any further action.

At one point, the woman said it was suggested to her by a garda that it was a simple boy meets girl scenario.

Now, the Garda Siochana Ombudsman Commission (Gsoc) has concluded a near-four-year investigation into the matter with a recommendation that no action be taken.

In a Gsoc letter  seen by the Irish Independent  investigators said they found no evidence the officers involved had mishandled the womans complaint.

It said: The investigation report was forwarded to the Garda Commissioner on March 25. The Garda Ombudsman has been notified that no Garda member has been found in breach of the Garda Siochana Discipline Regulations, 2007. Gsoc shall take no further action in this case.

The woman said she feels badly let down by the entire justice system. During a court hearing in 2016, the judge asked for the phone numbers of both the woman and the other party to be called out during a hearing in his private chambers.

She left court and later noticed a missed call. When she rang back, she claimed the man who had rung her was the judge.

The womans statement of complaint revealed her sworn recollection of the subsequent conversation: No, everything is good with the case. I just wanted to talk to you. You looked very beautiful today, the woman said the judge told her.

The woman later met the judge for coffee, afraid of the consequences for her ongoing case if she refused to meet him.




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PHOENIX  Prosecutors must notify a grand jury when a defendant sends a letter outlining a defense so that jurors can decide whether to see the letter, according to an Arizona court decision.

The Court of Appeals issued its ruling Tuesday in a case involving Chung Trinh, a psychiatry practices co-owner awaiting trial on charges of practicing medicine without a license and other crimes.

The ruling said a Maricopa County Superior Court judge rejected Trinhs request to order the grand jury to reconsider whether there was probable cause to indict Tring after prosecutors didnt disclose the existence of Trinhs letter.

The prosecution argued that it didnt have to disclose the letters existence to the grand jury because Trinh wasnt offering to testify and because the letter didnt present clear evidence indicating that Trinh was innocent.

The appeals court rejected the prosecutions non-disclosure of the letter, saying that undermined the grand jurys independence.

But the ruling also said to let stand the existing indictments charges against Tring because the prosecutions presentation included most of Trinhs assertions and because the grand jury decided probable cause, not guilt.

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Republican Representative Matt Gaetz reportedly asked for a blanket pardon to the Trump administration during its final weeks in office.

According to an ABC News report, the Florida representative was said to be seeking a preemptive pardon for the crimes that may have been committed.

A Mail Online report noted that the preemptive pardons for Gaetz and his congressional allies for any crimes they may have committed came months before Gaetz was revealed to be under federal investigation for sex trafficking.

Sources told ABC News that former President Donald Trump was aware of Gaetz's request, but it was quickly dismissed inside the White House.

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Matt Gaetz and the Blanket Pardon

The Department of Justice is conducting a probe if Gaetz violated sex trafficking laws by having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl and paid for her to travel with him. It was launched last year when Trump was still president.

"The request was so outlandish... that even President Trump turned it down," Michael Waldman, president of the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice at NYU, told ABC News.

Sources said it's unclear whether the White House or Gaetz was aware of the ongoing DOJ probe at the time. Matt Gaetz has denied the allegations against him.

"A blanket pardon to a member of Congress under investigation would have been even more extraordinary," said Waldman.

Michael Waldman further noted that it is "an open question" whether a president can grant a blanket pardon in advance. Waldman emphasized that issuing a blanket pardon in advance will serve as an invitation to "go forth and break the law."

Some Trump associates have begun speculating that Matt Gaetz sought a blanket pardon to conceal his own potential criminal exposure.

However, a spokesperson for Matt Gaetz has denied that the pardon request is related to the Department of Justice's investigation, according to a KXLY report.

Matt Gaetz and Trump Administration

Matt Gaetz earlier voiced his support for Trump's presidential pardons for all of his allies, including himself.

"He should pardon everyone from himself to his administration officials to Joe Exotic if he has to," Matt Gaetz said in an interview with Laura Ingraham.

Gaetz's spokesperson said those comments have been on the record for some time, adding that Trump has even retweeted the congressman's post.

Trump has issued a total of 116 pardons during his last month in office. However, none of them were pre-emptive, even though he had the power to do so. Despite Gaetz's support, Trump and his allies had stayed mum on the allegations surrounding the lawmaker.

Among the lurid allegations against Matt Gaetz include being involved in a Harry Potter-themed sex game, paid for sex using Apple Pay, and showed photos of naked women to his Congressional colleagues on the House floor.

READ MORE: Sexual Harassment Is Also Problem In Mexican Police Forces

WATCH: NYT: Matt Gaetz Said To Have Sought Blanket Pardon - From MSNBC
A new audio recording indicates Jordanian authorities tried to silence a former crown prince for meeting with internal critics, but contains no mention of a foreign plot to destabilise the Western-allied monarchy that officials alleged he was involved in.

Jordan slapped a sweeping gag order on all coverage of the dispute involving King Abdullah IIs half-brother, Prince Hamzah, hours after the recording circulated online, indicating authorities are increasingly nervous about how the rare public rift at the highest levels of the royal

family is being perceived.

The recording appears to capture Saturdays explosive meeting between Hamzah and General Yousef Huneiti, the military chief of staff, who came to the princes palace to inform him he was being placed under a form of house arrest. That meeting triggered the most serious political crisis in the kingdom in decades.

In the recording, the army chief says the prince is being punished because of meetings he had with individuals who started talking more than they should.

The prince raises his voice in anger, saying he has no right to issue orders to a member of the royal family.

You come to me and tell me in my house what to do and who to meet with in my country and from my people? Are you threatening me? The bad performance of the state is because of me? he says.

Neither man mentions the king or a foreign plot.

Jordan, which borders Israel, the occupied West Bank, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, has long been seen as a bastion of stability in a turbulent region.

Reflecting concerns about any sign of instability there, several allies, including the US, have expressed their strong backing for the king.

The pandemic has battered Jordans economy, and Hamzahs unprecedented criticism of the ruling class  without naming the king  could lend support to growing complaints about poor governance and human rights abuses.

Jordanian analyst Amer Sabaileh, speaking before the publication ban was imposed, said the dispute puts more pressure on the king to reform the system.

He said many Jordanians are on social media expressing support for Hamzah.

Hamzah, in a video statement, denied being part of any foreign plot and lashed out at authorities for years of corruption and incompetence.
[April 07, 2021] In Time for Summer: US National and State Parks Getting High Speed Wireless Access

LOS GATOS, Calif., April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AccessParks , the first and only Broadband provider approved as a concessionaire by the US National Park Service, and FreedomFi , the open 5G company, today announced a multi-year partnership to deploy 5G networks across hundreds of sites within marquee national and state parks, using Magma open source 5G network software.

The network will serve millions of tourists visiting national and state park locations every year, providing free social media exposure for parks, and providing emergency connectivity for tourists exploring frontcountry areas in the outdoors. The network will use 5G CBRS spectrum and will meet FCC requirements of broadband connectivity. Using FreedomFi distribution of Magma makes it possible to build this network using radios from a variety of vendors, ensuring that it is free from lock-in. Magma architecture also makes it possible for the network to have roaming agreements with mobile network operators and MVNOs. "We've considered a vriety of software options for this network rollout, both closed source and open source. In the end we decided that Magma distribution provided by FreedomFi is the optimal choice," said Tim Rout, CEO at AccessParks. "Magma has the most momentum out of all open source alternatives and it's access agnostic architecture enables us to take advantage of the radio innovation from a variety of vendors and to stay in control of our destiny."



"We are honored to have been selected by AccessParks for this ambitious project," said Boris Renski, CEO at FreedomFi. "AccessParks' requirements for sophisticated network topologies, MNO roaming capabilities and, most importantly, stability are pushing the boundaries of what's possible with the CBRS technology today. It's been a tremendous opportunity to refine the open 5G network ecosystem." The project kicked off two months ago and already has nine locations active with the technology, including the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. With several sites being added every week, the current plan is to have hundreds of highly trafficked tourist locations covered by the end of 2021. AccessParks was recently awarded a contract to deploy 5G wireless technologies to over 200 California state parks, and the FreedomFi technology will be a critical component in many of those installations.

FreedomFi delivers a turnkey Private LTE/5G experience for enterprise customers, based on an opinionated, hardened distribution of Magma open source project. Customers are able to purchase FreedomFi Gateway on the company website for as little as $300, plug in any commodity small cell radio and immediately bring-up and start managing their Private LTE/5G network via a cloud hosted network management system. About FreedomFi

FreedomFi is the open 5G company that offers the easiest path toward open source Private LTE or 5G networks. Be it for Fixed Wireless Access, Enterprise Cellular or Mobile Broadband, just plug in any commodity small cell into a FreedomFi Gateway and start managing a private cellular network via a SaaS-hosted portal. Joe Eckert for FreedomFi

Eckert Communications

Jeckert@eckertcomms.com



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Vietnam will take actions to speed up the narrowing of development gap in ASEAN, especially in enhancing sub-regional cooperation by holding an ASEAN Forum on narrowing development gaps between sub-regions for comprehensive recovery.

Participants at ASEAN Senior Officials Meeting (Photo: VNA)

The statement was made by Deputy Foreign Minister Nguyen Quoc Dung at the ASEAN Senior Officials Meeting (ASEAN SOM) held via videoconference on April 7.

Dung reaffirmed Vietnams support for and commitments to ASEANs cooperation priorities and initiatives in 2021.

These priorities and initiatives need to rely on achievements gained by the bloc in 2020, particularly in Community building, COVID-19 prevention and control, and post-pandemic recovery.

At the meeting, participating countries also reaffirmed their backing for the initiatives proposed by Brunei, ASEAN Chair in 2021, including promoting multilateralism, improving the effectiveness of the blocs humanitarian assistance and emergency response, and sea-based economic cooperation.

In response to COVID-19, they agreed to continue prioritising efforts to control the pandemic, prevent new waves of infection, overcome the consequences of the pandemic and speed up economic recovery.

Accordingly, ASEAN will focus on implementing the Comprehensive Recovery Framework, with the focus on remote areas and the most vulnerable groups, using 10.5 million USD from the COVID-19 Response Fund to buy vaccines, contributing more to the ASEAN Regional Reserve of Medical Supplies and discussing the establishment of the ASEAN travel corridor. The countries also shared the need to ensure equal access to vaccines and raise voice against vaccine nationalism.

The meeting reviewed ASEANs cooperation relations with partners, including proposals to upgrade relations with ASEAN, and highlighted the importance of ensuring the central role as well as the overall external relations of ASEAN.

Regarding regional and international issues, delegates expressed concerns over recent complicated developments in the East Sea, including the threats, coercion and violations of international law and the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which affect regional peace and security, run counter to commitments in the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC), and create an unfavorable atmosphere for negotiations on a Code of Conduct in the East Sea (COC). They emphasised the need to restrain, avoid complicating the situation, promote international law and UNCLOS 1982, continue implementing the DOC fully and effectively, and gradually resume negotiations for an effective and valid COC in conformity with international law and UNCLOS 1982.

Deputy Foreign Minister Nguyen Quoc Dung speaks at the meeting (Photo: VNA)

The Vietnamese representative suggested ASEAN maintain its solidarity and principled stance, and make efforts to negotiate to build an effective and substantive COC in accordance with international law including the 1982 Convention.

For the Myanmar situation, participants agreed that complicated developments over the past time, including increasing violence and human losses, affect not only Myanmar but also cooperation and solidarity, the image and reputation of ASEAN. They stressed the need for ASEAN to continue all efforts to support Myanmar to overcome difficulties.

The Vietnam SOM head affirmed Vietnams support for ASEANs application of methods in approaching the Myanmar situation. Vietnam will work together with other member countries to actively support Myanmar to overcome current difficulties for the sake of peace, reconciliation and stability in the region, he stated, adding that as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, Vietnam has also informed and updated the council on the blocs efforts to assist Myanmar./. VNA
[April 07, 2021] MetLife Completes Sale of Auto & Home Business to Zurich Insurance Group Subsidiary Farmers Group, Inc.

MetLife, Inc. (NYSE: MET) today announced the completion of its sale of Metropolitan Property and Casualty Insurance Company and certain wholly-owned subsidiaries to Farmers Group, Inc., a subsidiary of Zurich Insurance Group, for a purchase price of $3.94 billion in cash. In addition, MetLife and Farmers Exchanges have established a 10-year strategic partnership through which Farmers Insurance (Farmers) will offer personal lines products on MetLife's industry-leading U.S. Group Benefits platform, which reaches 3,800 employers and approximately 37 million eligible employees. Farmers assumes responsibility for MetLife's previous retail property and casualty customers. "We look forward to continuing to deliver a broad range of benefits that meet the needs of our group customers, maintaining strong relationships with our distribution partners, and ensuring employees across the U.S. hae access to auto and home coverage through our relationship with Farmers," said Ramy Tadros, president, U.S. Business, MetLife.



About MetLife MetLife, Inc. (NYSE: MET), through its subsidiaries and affiliates ("MetLife"), is one of the world's leading financial services companies, providing insurance, annuities, employee benefits and asset management to help its individual and institutional customers navigate their changing world. Founded in 1868, MetLife has operations in more than 40 markets globally and holds leading positions in the United States, Japan, Latin America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. For more information, visit www.metlife.com.

Forward-Looking Statements The forward-looking statements in this news release, such as "will" and "look forward," are based on assumptions and expectations that involve risks and uncertainties, including the "Risk Factors" MetLife, Inc. describes in its U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings. MetLife's future results could differ, and it has no obligation to correct or update any of these statements. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005938/en/

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There is a latent fingerprint being revealed across this country in the sparsely populated Red Counties. Nearly all these areas were claimed by settlers both before and after the Homestead Act. That baseline condition back then was a solitary life, initially with larger families, that remains endemic to farmers and ranchers to this day.

I experienced that growing up on ranches in Montana in the 40s and 50s. At the edge of our spread was a one-room grade school built around the turn of the last century where I attended with about seven older kids from the neighboring ranches. It was better than homeschooling in that I got to listen to lessons far beyond my level which resulted in my being well ahead of my peers when our family eventually moved to a small town with a normal school.

If you look back on that solitary life, mingling with neighbors and with strangers in town was minimal. Often, a trip to town was limited to intervals of many weeks or even months to get supplies you couldnt grow or make on your own. My own ancestry had a taste of that: moms dad was a plumber who along with his dad, a Civil War vet, helped build a new town in NW North Dakota in the 1890s. Grandads future bride grew up on a farm a ways out of town where her dad (a transplanted Swede) came to town once a year to settle up his accounts after the crops were in. As the story goes there apparently was no love lost between those two families despite a subsequent marriage, due to that annual settling of accounts practice.

At the end of the 19th century, a clever new thing happened: the Sears Roebuck catalog. You could now order something from far away and have it delivered, if not to your home, to the nearest rail station.

Once the average family had their own car or truck, those trips to town became more frequent, but the pattern was still the same. Even in the 20s, many roads were unsuitable for the early cars in winter. In fact, Grandad started a new-fangled business -- a garage that both worked on those cars and garaged them over the winter months.

Flash forward to the late 50s and we started seeing the earliest shopping centers with their seasonal attractions of various holiday displays and products that drew ever more people to the larger towns for special events. Afterwards, country folk returned to their solitary homes where TV took away some of the loneliness, but often at the expense of playing musical instruments in the parlor.

Across the second half of last century, the trend steadily changed to families moving into town so the kids could go to normal schools. Meanwhile, smaller farms were absorbed by bigger operations with mechanized equipment, thus reducing the need for hired hands.

Socializing across the middle half of that century was generally limited to the local Elks Club, Moose Lodge, or Grange Hall, and church on Sunday, all with the modern benefit of mostly paved roads and more reliable cars that seldom broke down or suffered flat tires. Maybe a movie, like Gone With the Wind, would attract a special trip.

Meanwhile, most of us grew up in the completely different townie lifestyle -- one of rapidly growing suburbs with their accompanying neighborhood shopping centers and strip malls serving most of our consumer needs without requiring long drives to town.

Over the last few years, culminating in the disastrous 2020 events we are still stuck in, we are seeing all those strip malls and shopping centers vacated essentially at gunpoint to the detriment of our neighbors who owned and worked in them.

Despite being forced down our throats suddenly, is this migration trend inevitable if it were allowed to evolve naturally over a few years? We have already become comfortable ordering our stuff over the Internet, an act often driven by nothing more than a lower price than that offered by local businesses.

Are we longing for more social interaction because the last two or three generations know no other way of life? Not that it is bad, mind you, but is it necessary for our healthy lives? Or will another pattern evolve such as is badly expressed in the current social media? Is the current social media (with its Karens and paid spammers) an early feral equivalent of the wolf -- tentatively slipping into our camp until we find a way to domesticate it to our mutual benefit?

If so, the work from home concept now in vogue is already driving a migration to the hinterlands by people who might otherwise have grabbed their Starbucks on their way into the mega office building where they used to work. Perhaps the flood of escapees leaving New York and California for Texas and Florida proves the instinctive survival trait is alive and well.

Im thinking that these new escapees are being motivated by an emotional gut level fear for their very survival, rather than by that which motivated the much slower migrations to Red Counties over the last couple of decades -- a cerebral decision to find ones forever home or enjoy a slower, more laid-back way of rural life.

Now, one of the key factors on everyones mind with last years lockdowns, particularly for the kids, is their total isolation with respect to school and after-school activities. These constraints are bubbles within bubbles that utterly inhibit all exposure to the natural world as well as direct personal interactions. Part of that is enforced by an ever-increasing sense of danger in the urban environment where crime and degradation are expanding. Flashing back to mid-20th century and before, kids could be feral without any serious consequences as Mother Nature was steadily upgrading their sense of what being truly alive is all about.

If true, I believe there will be a steady shift to more conservative thinking as the autonomy and liberty of those new locations quietly enhances what was once a common denominator across this vast country.

Image: Rawpixels

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
When the vaccine for children becomes available, a new survey suggests there wont be an immediate mass rush to get the shot.

According to a new Axios/Ipsos survey published Tuesday as reported by Forbes, 48% of Americans surveyed in April said they arent planning on having their children immediately vaccinated when they become eligible.

On the contrary for adults, there is a growing acceptance of the vaccines. Acceptance has grown from around 38% in September and October to a current acceptance of nearly 70%..

Forbes noted that vaccine hesitancy remains a problem, with 2021 polls consistently suggesting one in five Americans are unlikely to get vaccinated.

Why it matters.

Forbes reported that ending the pandemic and getting life back to normal as schools return in the fall is going to depend largely on vaccinating children.

The report noted that while it does not happen often, children and young teens can and do get seriously ill from COVID-19. The New York Times reported 227 children have died from COVID-19 in the U.S.

Additionally, its been noted that children can pass on the virus to others, especially to the more vulnerable.

Reportedly, vaccine manufacturers have begun to trial shots in younger people, while adult vaccination is well underway. Pfizer said, in coming weeks, it will apply for an expanded emergency use authorization for young European and U.S. teens. Moderna is implementing trials to study its vaccines effectiveness in young children and adolescents.

Will vaccination be required for children?

While few states have begun to ideate on a COVID-19 vaccination requirement for children, Tennessee and Pennsylvania officials have reportedly said vaccination will remain optional.

However, some school districts have indicated an intent to mandate it. Forbes Its been suggested that should resistance levels remain high, this will set the stage for a wider conflict if and when vaccines are approved for use in children.

Currently, all states have the power to require vaccination among students attending school, which for diseases like polio and measles, many do.
Model will return to Westminster Magistrates Court for sentencing on April 16

edotova faced same court in 2018 for faking article to smear her ex-boyfriend

rina Fedotova, 36, assaulted the two police officers in West London last October

A Russian model has admitted attacking two police officers who were called to a heated row after she 'threatened to destroy her friend's marriage', a court heard.

Irina Fedotova, 36, allegedly assaulted Viktoria Goncharova and then assaulted the two officers who attended during the incident at her friends home in Chelsea, West London, in October last year.

Fedotova, who lives at a 2million apartment in Belgravia, had earlier denied all allegations but today admitted assaulting the officers.

Thandi Lubimbi, prosecuting, told Westminster Magistrates Court that the charge alleging Fedotova assaulted her friend had been dropped because Ms Goncharova didnt want to know anything about it'.

Irina Fedotova (pictured above, outside court last year), 36, has admitted attacking two police officers who were called to a heated row at her friend's home in Chelsea, a court heard

Fedotova faced the same court in March 2018 for mocking up a fake newspaper article to falsely brand her ex-boyfriend a pervert.

She carried out a campaign of harassment against her former lover, 38-year-old Gregory Slade.

The mother-of-one bombarded him with sexually suggestive texts during a four month campaign of abuse.

She lied to him that she was pregnant with his child, branding his new girlfriend picked up trash and a loser on WhatsApp.

Fedotova had been in a relationship with Mr Slade for about two years until he dumped her in July 2017.

Fedotova, who has one previous conviction of assaulting a police officer in 2016, had admitted two charges of harassment without violence.

Fedotova (pictured left, in 2018 and right, in 2016), who lives at a 2million apartment in Belgravia, had earlier denied all allegations but today admitted assaulting the officers

Fedotova faced the same court in March 2018 for mocking up a fake newspaper article to falsely brand her ex-boyfriend a pervert (file photo)

She was then fined 200 for each count of harassment and ordered to pay costs and the surcharge of 115, totalling 515.

Fedotova admitted two counts of assault by beating of two emergency workers - named only as PC Nicoll and PC Dixon - by beating.

Sudara Werasuna, prosecuting, earlier told the court Fedotova told Ms Goncharova she intended to ruin her life and destroy her marriage during the assault.

Ms Werasuna added: It was a sustained attack.

The model will return to Westminster Magistrates Court for sentencing on April 16.
Cillian Murphy appeared completely frozen as he stood on set of the sixth and final series of Peaky Blinders on Wednesday.

Despite bundling up in a thick black hooded coat, the leading actor, 44, looked to be shivering as he prepared to film new scenes for the BBC series on the moors in Lancashire.

Cillian, who plays gang leader Tommy Shelby, sported his character's signature flat cap beneath his hood and black gloves as he joined his fellow cast and crew on location.

Feeling the chill? Cillian Murphy appeared completely frozen as he stood on set of the sixth and final series of Peaky Blinders on Wednesday

At one point, the star thrust his hands into his pockets to keep the chill off ahead of another day of filming for the series.

Cillian, who also serves as executive director, was on hand to help the director set up for the scenes ahead.

As well as Cillian, there were several people seen on horseback on the set.

It comes after last week the show's creator Steven Knight hinted that the programme could continue without Cillian's pivotal character Tommy Shelby.

Freezing: Despite bundling up in a thick black hooded coat, the leading actor, 44, looked to be shivering as he prepared to film new scenes for the BBC series on the moors in Lancashire

Knight, 62, told Birmingham Live: 'There may be worlds that are part of the Peaky world that are about someone else.'

The award-winning screenwriter added that a Peaky Blinders world without Tommy would require the franchise to take on a totally new form, as he is currently 'the centre around [which] everything orbits.'

Steven continued: 'In the form it is in, it is absolutely impossible for this to work without Cillian. As it grows and progresses, who knows?

He added: 'It will go on in another form, which will be the film, and beyond that we want to keep the world going.'

Bundled up: Cillian, who plays gang leader Tommy Shelby, sported his character's signature flat cap beneath his hood and black gloves as he joined his fellow cast and crew on location

A bit nippy: At one point, the star thrust his hands into his pockets to keep the chill off ahead of another day of filming for the series

The sixth series will pick up where the fifth series left off on 7 December 1929, the morning after a rally led by Oswald Mosley.

Peaky Blinders centres around its eponymous gang which is run by the ruthless Tommy and his family, and sees them build their power and influence over Birmingham and beyond.

The fifth season ended on a cliffhanger, with Tommy seeing visions of his late wife Grace (Annabelle Wallis) and turning a gun on himself following his botched assassination attempt of the British Union of Fascists leader.

Hay there! As well as Cillian, there were several people seen on horseback on the set

Giddy-up! A cast member rode a stunning black horse as filming continued for Peaky Blinders

Production on the show was delayed last year by the Covid-19 crisis, but shooting was able to begin last month with cast and crew adhering to strict coronavirus restrictions.

The BBC drama has been running for eight years and has enjoyed huge popularity but the sixth season has been confirmed as the final one, with creator Steven Knight confirming the story will return 'in another form'.

The final tweaks were made to the Manchester-based sets in February after the cast had been filming in Scotland.

The locations, however, are portraying Birmingham - the actual setting of the hit gangster drama.

Changes: It comes after last week the show's creator Steven Knight hinted that the programme could continue without Cillian's pivotal character Tommy Shelby

Meanwhile, TV star Sam Clafin, 34, was recently seen on set for the first time since producers confirmed he'll be making his return as the politician.

Last month, Peaky Blinders revealed Oswald's fate in a tweet: 'Sam Claflin returns as Oswald Mosley in #PeakyBlinders series 6.'

The Hunger Games star played the fascist leader, who rose to fame in the 1920s as a Member of Parliament and later in the 1930s, having become disillusioned with mainstream politics.


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Businesses fearful their workers may be targeted by fraudsters will want to take a look at the free Tax Scam Awareness Kit offered by Proofpoint, a data protection company in Sunnyvale, Calif.

The kit, for both Windows and macOS, includes materials for an employee education campaign about tax fraud, three educational videos, an infographic, answers to frequently asked questions about tax scams, and a tax scam flyer.

The kit is designed to be used over a two-week period to educate employees about tax fraud. During the first week, employees are encouraged to visit an IRS website that focuses on tax scams aimed at consumers and to copy and distribute at the office, as well as at home, the "Attack Spotlight" flyer included with the kit.

The flyer has the image of a friendly robot warning that scammers often impersonate government tax agencies or tax preparation services.

It also has some basic cautions. For example, if you receive a tax-related message, don't interact with it immediately and take your time to evaluate it.

If the message looks legit, verify it with the sender without responding directly to the message, the flyer recommends. You could copy the email address of the sender and send them a separate message, for instance.

Training Videos

During the second week of the program, it's suggested that employees view the training videos created for the toolkit.

One video is titled "Tax-Related Scams." In the two-minute video, the friendly robot gives some tips on recognizing phishing emails containing tax scams and offers advice on avoiding being victimized by scammers.

A second, 49-second video, titled "Confidential Information, Don't Let Them In," offers advice on protecting your computer at work and on physical security at the office.

"Phishing Emails in Real-Life" is the subject of the third video. It's an amusing three-and-a-half minute take on how scammers bait their prey and how to avoid becoming fraudster quarry.

"We created the Proofpoint Tax Season Awareness Kit to help security teams increase their users' awareness regarding possible tax season scams and phishing attacks," said Proofpoint Senior Security Awareness Strategist Gretel Egan.

"Cybercriminals often leverage tax-related lures, and it's important to remind users of the routine security practices that can significantly reduce the risk to monies and sensitive tax data," she told TechNewsWorld.

"Our written and visual resources include a suggested communication plan and schedule to help organizations take a scalable approach to amplifying user recognition of these threats," she added.

Imposter Scams

Businesses have good reason to worry about their workers being targeted by tax scammers. Last year alone, the IRS uncovered US$2.3 billion in tax fraud.

One of the most prevalent scams involves a scammer posing as a government agent. "That's when a scammer calls you and pretends to be from the IRS stating that you haven't paid your taxes, and they have a warrant out for your arrest unless you pay them immediately," explained AARP Director of Fraud Victim Support Amy Nofziger.

"This is not how the IRS works," she told TechNewsWorld. "They will never call you unsolicited. It also does not initiate contact with taxpayers by email to request personal or financial information."

The IRS recently warned of such a scam aimed at educational institutions.

The suspect emails display the IRS logo and use various subject lines such as "Tax Refund Payment" or "Recalculation of your tax refund payment," the agency explained in a news release. They ask people to click a link and submit a form to claim their refund.

The link goes to a website that attempts to collect personal information about the target.

Surprise Tax Bills

Nofziger noted that there has also been an increase in people claiming that someone has filed taxes with their dependent's social security number.

Some consumers have also been served unwarranted tax bills due to unemployment fraud. In those cases, a scammer files an unemployment claim on behalf of a consumer, who later receives a 1099-G form stating they have taxes to pay for benefits the scammer received.

Unsurprisingly, the pandemic has also been exploited by fraudsters. "The scammer says someone owes money, or are owed money, and have to confirm amounts on a fake website made to look like the IRS site," explained Erich Kron, security awareness advocate at KnowBe4, a security awareness training provider in Clearwater, Fla.

"Some scams are also claiming that they are the IRS and must confirm the victim's bank account information to get their refund," he told TechNewsWorld.

Targeting Business

While both businesses and individuals are targeted by fraudsters, business scams can have a broader impact. "We have seen scams designed to get organizations to give up the W-2 information of all their employees," Kron said.

"The cyber criminals then use the information to falsely file the tax returns on behalf of the employees," he continued, "making it appear that they are entitled to a refund, then escape with the money, often before the victims have even started to do their taxes."

Chris Clements, vice president of solutions architecture at Cerberus Sentinel, a cybersecurity consulting and penetration testing company in Scottsdale, Ariz. added that businesses usually have in-house accountants or use external CPA's to file their taxes.

"Finance professionals should be aware enough of the appropriate channels that any out of the ordinary communications should be enough for them to arouse suspicion," he told TechNewsWorld.

"Individuals, on the other hand," he continued, "are more often fooled, especially with scare tactics around potential arrest. The unfortunate outcome can be that they fall victim to the scam and have money stolen from their bank or credit card accounts."

Victim Assistance

Why do tax scams continue to work? "Taxes can be confusing, and scammers know that and know when it's our tax season and can prey on new taxpayers with their scams," Nofziger explained.

"The IRS impostor scam works so well because no one ever expects to be hearing from the IRS demanding money, so the victim starts reacting with their emotions," she said. "They are scared to be arrested in front of family and friends."

She advises that anyone who believes they're a victim of tax ID fraud should call the IRS Identity Protection Specialized Unit at 800-908-4490 and notify their state tax agency.

They can also file a report, and get started on a recovery plan, at the Federal Trade Commission's Identify Theft site, she continued.

Nofziger added that the IRS's "Identity Protection" page has numerous resources for individuals, businesses and tax professionals on preventing and dealing with fallout from tax identity theft, including a guide for taxpayers and detailed information on assistance for victims.

Proofpoint's Tax Scam Awareness Kit is available here.

John P. Mello Jr. has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2003. His areas of focus include cybersecurity, IT issues, privacy, e-commerce, social media, artificial intelligence, big data and consumer electronics. He has written and edited for numerous publications, including the Boston Business Journal, the Boston Phoenix, Megapixel.Net and Government Security News. Email John.


Ballet dancing can be a short-lived career  you can only push the body so far, for so long. So to be forced to take more than a year out is nothing short of a disaster; even more so for a young dancer who is trying to make his mark.

Its no wonder then that Nathan Brook seemed to have more than an little extra spin in his pirouette and height in his saute when he returned to the stage of the Sydney Opera House for the Australian Ballets first performance since the pandemic, New York Dialects, on Tuesday night.

Australian Ballet soloist Nathan Brook, back on home turf in Sydneys northern beaches. Credit:James Brickwood

That would have been enough to satisfy Brook  but there was an encore. The soloist took out both the Rising Star Award and the Peoples Choice Award in the Telstra Ballet Dancer Awards announced after the show. The awards have identified the cream of Australias dancing crop for nearly two decades, and together have a total prize value of $40,000. There were 240,000 votes cast for the peoples prize, the highest number in the history of the award.

So many incredible principals, soloists, artists have won this before me, who I look up to. Even to be nominated, to be recognised by your peers is such a special thing, and to win it is just the cherry on top, the 26-year-old said.
A New Orleans neighborhood built on a former landfill site is within the census tract found to have the second-highest consistent rate of cancer among all Louisiana census tracts measured in the latest Louisiana Tumor Registry report. The data comes as residents of Gordon Plaza, in the Desire neighborhood, are once more trying to find a way out of what they say is a toxic environment and end years of legal battles with the city.

The new Tumor Registry report, published April 1, shows combined cancer statistics from 2005 to 2015. The state average for all cancer types combined in the study is between 487 and 491 cases per 100,000 residents.

Report on Louisiana cancer rates finds 'results are mixed' on link between industry and cancer

The Desire census tract recorded 745 cancer cases per 100,000 residents, which varied little over the decade of the study. A few census tracts in other areas of Louisiana reported much higher overall rates but with more variation over the study years, making these estimates less reliable. In the Desire census tract, however, the study consistently found between 125 and 406 more cases per 100,000 residents than the state average.

While the Louisiana Tumor Registry identifies areas with higher rates of cancer, it doesnt explain why that is. To find a cause, scientists would need to collect detailed data of individual risk factors among residents in the area, LSU Health Sciences Center spokeswoman Leslie Capo said in a statement. Such an endeavor would be time intensive and very costly, her statement said.

The Desire tract includes the Gordon Plaza subdivision, which was built on top of a former landfill containing arsenic, lead and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, according to legal documents. From the early 1900s until 1958, the Agriculture Street Landfill operated at the site. It was reopened in 1965 for burning and disposal of waste from Hurricane Betsy.

Last year, Gordon Plaza residents sued then-Mayor Mitch Landrieu and the city in hopes of being relocated. The suit continues now against Mayor LaToya Cantrells administration. Shannon Rainey, who lives in the subdivision and is a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in their case Cantrell has not lived up to her campaign promise to be a mayor for the people.

Weve been trying to get to speak with the mayor and we dont want to speak with her about the lawsuit or anything. We just want her to be hands on, just come to our neighborhood see what it looks like and to hear what were going through, said Rainey. Just my board members: Two of them have breast cancer and one of them has an infection in the stomach.

Gordon Plaza residents demand new homes in federal suit against Landrieu, city

Cantrell has not met with Rainey or other Gordon Plaza residents because of the pending litigation, said the citys Communications Director Beau Tidwell. Unfortunately, due to the ongoing litigation filed against the city, Mayor Cantrell has been unable to meet with Ms. Rainey, but has reviewed her correspondence and understands her concerns. The attorneys will meet soon to further discuss the matter, Tidwell said in a statement.

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This is not the first time residents of Gordon Plaza have sued. In 1993, they joined in a lawsuit with residents of Press Park, another community built on top of the former landfill. That suit included more than 5,000 plaintiffs, among them families of children attending Robert R. Moton Elementary School, which was closed in 1994, the same year that the Environmental Protection Agency deemed the area a Superfund site.

In 2015, a judge ordered Housing Authority of New Orleans insurers to pay $14.2 million to residents hurt by development on top of the former landfill. After lawyer fees and administrative expenses, each resident received a few thousands dollars. We felt as though we should have received more than this, Rainey said.

The poisoned promises of Agriculture Street

She said the city has not paid for its role in the development of the former landfill site. Rainey first heard about the development of Gordon Plaza while working for former mayor Ernest Dutch Morial.

I was married at that time and I had one child, my daughter. When we moved in here, she was two years old, Rainey said from her home in Desire. This was a great, great, great opportunity for us to purchase our first home.

No one told her her home stood on the site of a former landfill. Attorneys for residents of Gordon Plaza point out that the city used federal grant money to help finance housing projects there.

The residents of Gordon Plaza have constant reminders of the health risks associated with living on top of a former dump. They arent allowed to dig holes in their yards without first notifying the city. At times, they said, they smell a foul odor. Many of them said they are experiencing health problems they associate with the toxins in the former landfill.

Marilyn Amar has breast cancer. Jesse Perkins has severe allergies. Lydwina Hurst has breast cancer. Sam Ejana lost his wife to cancer six years ago.

Still, Rainey is optimistic that residents will find some relief. Weve been at this a long long time and thats why we know its going to be OK, she said. Im already OK because, like I told you, Im doing an assignment from God. So, Im already OK.


CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The Canadian dollar drifted lower against its major counterparts in the European session on Wednesday, as oil prices dropped after Iran nuclear talks opened the possibility of an easing of sanctions on its oil exports.



Crude for June delivery fell $0.26 to $62.48 per barrel.



Iran said talks in Vienna on Tuesday aimed at restoring its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers had been 'constructive' and they will continue to discuss ways to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that former U.S. President Donald Trump unilaterally abandoned in May 2018.



'The talks in Vienna were constructive . our next meeting will be on Friday,' Abbas Araghchi, who is leading the Iranian delegation in Vienna, told Press TV.



Data from Statistics Canada showed that Canada's merchandise trade surplus fell in February.



The trade surplus dropped to C$1.04 billion in February from a revised C$1.21 billion in the previous month.



The loonie slipped to an 8-day low of 1.2634 against the greenback, 9-day low of 86.85 against the yen and near a 4-week low of 1.5034 against the euro, off its early highs of 1.2562, 87.38 and 1.4914, respectively. The loonie is seen finding support around 1.29 against the greenback, 84.00 against the yen and 1.52 against the euro.



The loonie fell back to 0.9640 against the aussie, not far from the Asian session's fresh 2-week low of 0.9651. If the loonie slides further, 0.98 is likely seen as its next support level.



Looking ahead, the U.S. consumer credit for February will be released in the New York session.



The Fed minutes from the March 16-17 meeting are set for release at 2:00 pm ET.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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The Romanian Embassy to the Holy See on Wednesday signaled, in a press release, the publishing of the volume "Romania - Holy See. 100 years of diplomatic relations," edited by university professor Liviu-Petru Zapirtan, PhD, the Ambassador of Romania to the Holy See, and published by the "Transylvanian School" Publishing House based in Cluj-Napoca.

The book, published under the auspices of the diplomatic mission and the Romanian Academy, is dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between Romania and the Holy See (1920-2020), evoking the main developments in the history of Romanian-Vatican relations, which saw both peak moments and difficulties, today being at a level of excellence, confirmed by the historical visit of His Holiness Pope Francis to Romania in 2019, agerpres.ro confirms.

The volume includes messages from the President of Romania, Klaus Werner Iohannis, Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Monsignor Paul Richard Gallagher, Secretary for Relations with States within the Holy See, as well as a series of studies signed by specialists in Romania and Vatican. Also, the book presents for the first time a selection of documents from the Historical Archive of the Historical Archive of the Section for Relations with States of the State Secretariat of the Holy See.
Several shopkeepers under the



aegis of the Vyapaari Aghadi on Wednesday staged protests in parts of Nagpur city against the Maharashtra government's directive to shut establishments selling non-essential commodities.

As per the state government's latest curbs to control the surge in COVID-19 cases, shops and establishments selling non-essential commodities and services will have to remain shut till April 30.

Shopkeepers in Itwari, Kamal Chowk and Teen Naal Chowk markets sat in protest outside their closed shops.

Led by the BJP's city unit chief Pravin Datke, shopkeepers under the Nagpur Vyapaari Aghadi came out in front of their shops carrying placards against the government order, party spokesperson Chandan Goswami said.

The outfit demands compensation in the GST for traders and relaxation in restrictions that have been imposed, he said.

Shopkeepers and traders on Tuesday staged similar protests across the state against the state government's latest restriction, citing that the move will severely impact small businesses amid the 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.)
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Afternoon report the combines our local trash FAIL with rising violence.



Check-it . . .



"The Kansas City Police Department said a City of Kansas City trash employee was shot Wednesday afternoon at 43rd Street and Chestnut Avenue. Police said they were called to the scene at 12:32 p.m. Tuesday and the shooting victim is in stable condition."

Check the links . . .

Fox4: Kansas City trash employee reportedly shot near 43rd and Montgall

KSHB: KCMO trash worker shot early Wednesday afternoon

KMBC: KCMO trash employee shot near 43rd

Developing . . .
TAMPA, Fla., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Outdoor Network, LLC., parent company of marine and powersports mega brands Boater's World, Partzilla, and Boats.net, recently announced the promotion of Stewart Thompson to President of the brand's Boater's World Marine Centers division.

"The recent resurgence in boating, and its acceleration brought on by the COVID pandemic, has created new opportunities for expansion of our Boater's World Marine Centers division. As many businesses struggle in these trying times, the opposite has happened in the marine industry for our Boater's World dealerships, as Stewart Thompson has proven himself to be a determined, innovative leader, well-prepared to manage top-talent and capitalize on opportunities."

 Martin Polo, CEO, Outdoor Network, LLC.

Since Stewart Thompson took over leadership of the Boater's World brand identity in 2018, the brand has seen strong and consistent growth transform gradually into record-breaking sales. Thompson has brought to the dealership network an innovative leadership style, and an ambitious overhaul business plan that includes  amongst other successes  the implementation of a highly successful used boat purchasing, refurbishing, and sales department. Heading into Q2, the Boater's World network of dealerships is currently on track to triple the brand's business in 2021.

"Stewart Thompson has transformed Boater's World Marine Centers into a business that is envied by many industry leaders. Based on this success and the demand in the industry for a new innovative and excellent marine dealership model, we are very excited to have Stewart leading our expansion efforts as President of Boater's World."

 Bill Saunders, Vice President of Retail Operations, Outdoor Network, LLC.

With Thompson in the strategic driver's seat, Outdoor Network, LLC. has also announced the purchase of a new Boater's World Marine Centers location in Bradenton, FL. The new dealership is scheduled to open on June 1, 2021. Thompson will be responsible for the continued development of the brand's flagship Boater's World location in Central Florida, as well as the expansion, operational activities and development of all future Boater's World dealerships.

ABOUT BOATER'S WORLD MARINE CENTERS

Boater's World Marine Centers is an authorized dealer for Yamaha, Mercury, Key West, Hurricane, Mako, Seafox, Carolina Skiff, and more. For a complete list of supported manufacturers, visit Boatersworld.com. An industry leading group of marine dealerships, the brand is renowned for providing boating enthusiasts with the lowest prices on new and pre-owned boats, outboard motors, and marine parts.

Media Contact

Chelsea Brooks

877-473-4595

[email protected]

SOURCE Boater's World Marine Centers
UPDATE: Massive fire at N.J. apartment complex not suspicious, police say

A four-alarm fire destroyed a West Windsor apartment building Wednesday afternoon, leaving one firefighter hurt, according to officials.

The fire broke out around 3:20 p.m. at the Avalon Princeton Junction complexs Building 8 on Taylor Court, police said. News helicopter footage from 6abc showed flames shoot through the upper floors of the building in the complex.

Firefighters managed to bring the inferno under control as of shortly after 5 p.m., West Windsor Mayor Hemant Marathe said. There were no immediate reports of anyone seriously hurt, though one firefighter suffered a minor injury, he said.

We think everyone got out safely, Marathe told NJ Advance Media. Thats what we hope.

About 18 to 20 units were impacted, he added. The building was total loss and an unspecified number of residents were displaced, the mayor said.

The township is prepared to provide help to families that are displaced, Marathe said.

Multiple fire crews from around Mercer County were called to assist, according to the Pennington Fire Company in Hopewell, which provided aid to township crews.

The cause of the fire is under investigation, authorities said.

Firefighters were quickly on the scene, the mayor added. The Princeton Junction Fire Companys station is located less than a half mile away from the fire scene. The cause of the fire was under investigation, officials said.

Please keep all First Responders and the victims in your thoughts & prayers, West Windsor police said in a statement.

#BREAKING: Firefighters battling massive apartment fire in West Windsor, NJ. Authorities say 8 units are burning at the Avalon Princeton Junction complex. No injuries reported. pic.twitter.com/jQQtC2wrPV  Brandon Longo (@brandonlongo) April 7, 2021

AvalonBay Communities spokesman Kurt Conway said the company was working with the Red Cross and local officials.

We very much appreciate the responsiveness and efforts of the many firefighters and the Red Cross who responded to the fire at our Princeton Junction community, Conway said in an email.

We are currently working with residents impacted by the fire to find accommodations. Because this is an active situation, we do not have additional details to share at this time, he said.

Three Avalon Bay-run properties in New Jersey have now experienced catastrophic fires dating to 2015 when a massive fire destroyed the companys complex in Edgewater. In 2017, a blaze burned through the then-under construction Avalon apartments in Maplewood.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Noah Cohen may be reached at ncohen@njadvancemedia.com.
As more people seek a quieter pace of life outside Rome, Judith Harris writes about living in nearby Trevignano Romano.

By Mary Jane Cryan



The publication of Judith Harriss latest book is very timely as real estate brokers are noting a surge of interest for spacious residences in small towns outside of major cities around the world.

Why live in a cramped apartment in Rome, New York or London when you can enjoy a quieter, healthier and less expensive lifestyle with more space for family and working from home.

Reflections from a Roman Lake, Trevignano Romano, a biography of an adoptive home is a love story that Harris dedicates to her adopted home, the smallest of three towns on the perimeter of pristine Lake Bracciano, just an hour north of Rome.

Trevignano, the most ancient of the three, has preserved many of its original traditions and local dialect while Bracciano and Anguillara, on the train line linking Rome and Viterbo, have morphed into dormitory suburbs of the capital with enormous expansion in the past 40 years.

Intricate history

The first part of Reflections describes Trevignanos long and intricate history, beginning with the prehistoric settlement of La Marmotta discovered and excavated by underwater archaeologists between 1989 and 2009. Archaeologists who excavated the underwater site say that in approximately 5,600 BC it was home to about 500 people.

The prehistoric village was submerged by the lake waters when an earthquake or other natural disaster occurred, similar to what happened to the Roman colony Baiae / Baia in the Bay of Naples.

The site is located under 7m of lake water and nearly 3m of silt which, once removed, have given up precious objects including pottery shards, opium pipes, pirogues, tools, animal bones, food residues and textiles. These are now conserved at the Pigorini Museum in Romes EUR. The most important piece according to archaeologists who worked there, is a tiny chubby Venus figurine in soapstone which was discovered inside a sanctuary hut on the lake floor.

Trevignano Romano is located about 50 km north of Rome.

Other objects from later Etruscan and Roman times are in Trevignanos civic museum or can be viewed in situ. These include the marble panel sculpted with rosettes from a Roman public building in the main square and the imposing remains of the aqueduct which was built by Trajan to bring precious spring water from the Trevignano and Bracciano area to the fountains of Rome.

Etruscan tombs

Harris narrates how during her early years in Trevignano she sometimes heard the whirring sound of a mechanical device at night, which meant tombaroli, or tomb-raiders, were searching the nearby Etruscan tombs for precious Attic vases and gold jewellery. Over the years she gained vast knowledge of archaeology in Italy which she passes on to the reader in this and a previous book, Pompeii Reawakened: a Story of Rediscovery.

Ancient sites

Through personal encounters and research in specialised texts Harris gleans information about the ancient sites in Trevignano and shares the more interesting tidbits with her readers, making it easy for the layperson to understand and appreciate the various civilisations that existed on the lakeside: Villanovian settlements, Etruscan necropoli and imposing Roman vestiges.

The second part of the book tells of the strict rules people were subjected to by absentee noble landlords from feudal times right up to the 1950s when battles for reforms finally resulted in grants to the families that had worked the land for centuries. She writes about life in the area during more recent times of war and peace. Harris has interviewed dozens of townspeople, recording their memories of the harsh life endured by the local fishermen and farmers during two world wars when many men of the town were conscripted.

Talks with elderly local people helped to collect eye-witness details of the German military occupation during world war two when German nuns at the Vicarello complex cared for their injured military countrymen. Now abandoned, this picturesque borgo was a spa during Roman times and more recently used as a film set.

Hymn to the good life

The third section of Reflections is a hymn to the good life enjoyed by Trevignano residents today, a series of cameo appearances featuring residents who have left an imprint on the town over the centuries from 17th-century saints to ferocious princes, the blind mailman and the pioneer teacher of the hearing-impaired, to sculptors and bogus miracle workers.

From a tiny, rather isolated lakeside borgo the town has expanded, welcoming many expats who enjoy living in the area today. Jackie Bennett Leto who came to live here in 1979 xplained the phenomenon, mentioning the magical Etruscan atmosphere, the simple fishing village life and micro climate which make Trevignano a perfect place for wine enthusiasts, painters and horse riders.

Peaceful lakefront

For a recent newcomer to Trevignano the location is ideal, for it is steeped in ancient history and on the doorstep of the Tuscia region while still accessible to Rome and its amenities. Nature lovers enjoy the surrounding national forest land, windsurfing on majestic Lake Bracciano, as well as strolling along the peaceful lakefront, having an open air meal or aperitivo at one of the restaurants and cafes.

Recently the Lazio region has given funds to continue the bike path around the lake begun under a previous administration and more money to improve the surrounding parklands. However there are also a few problems. In the chapter Lake at Risk Harris denounces the present state of the lakes health, due to climate change and reduction of its water level.

The receding lake is a threat to tourism, one of the areas major sources of income today. The use of pesticides for hazelnut orchards surrounding Bracciano, and nearby Lake di Vico and Lake Bolsena , is another serious problem that needs to be resolved to protect the bucolic nature of the countryside north of Rome.

The final chapter of Harriss book Flight, is prompted by the presence near Trevignano of three interesting centres: the historic Vigna di Valle Aeronautic Museum, a small airport (Scuola di Volo Club Arrow) for ultralight aircraft and the centre for Rapacious Birds (Centro Volo Rapaci).

The sprawling aeronautic museum at Vigna di Valle, a sea plane station during world war one, now houses dozens of original historic airplanes and a few unexpected curiosities: the silk remains of a giant hot air balloon which flew from Paris to Bracciano in 1804, and the embalmed dog of Umberto Nobile of dirigible and Red Tent fame.

Five pages of footnotes and a vast bibliography complete this extremely interesting and thorough exploration of Judith Harriss adoptive hometown of Trevignano.

See website for book trailer and purchasing choices. Reflections from a Roman Lake is available in ebook form or hardback (Fonthill Media, 26).

Before searching for a new country residence, Judith Harris called historic Palazzo Doria Pamphilj home. Among the real estate she turned down was a property badly in need of restoration in Vetralla. Serendipitously this became my new home in 1993 and the subject of a bilingual book Painted Palazzo/Palazzo Dipinto (Etruria Editions/Archeoares).

Cover photo ValerioMei / Shutterstock.com. This article was published in the March 2021 online edition of Wanted in Rome magazine.
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - April 7, 2021) - Getchell Gold Corp. (CSE: GTCH) (OTCQB: GGLDF) ("Getchell" or the "Company") a leading Nevada focused Gold and Copper exploration company is pleased to present the results from the geological modeling of the highly successful 2020 drill program at the Company's flagship Fondaway Canyon Gold Project in Nevada ("Fondaway" or "Project").

Key Highlights

The new geological model has significantly expanded the previously modelled extents of the gold mineralization;

Thick zones of gold mineralization are projected 800m down dip from surface;

The gold zones remain open laterally and down-dip;

The Phase One 2021 drill program, commencing in May, will be designed to further delineate and quantify the near surface gold inventory; and,

New video showing the 3D mineralization model is available for viewing on the Company's website.

"Not only has the 2020 drill program provided a dramatic expansion to the known gold zones at Fondaway Canyon, but the close fit of the results to our geological model greatly adds to the confidence and potential of the gold mineralizing system at Fondaway Canyon," stated Mike Sieb, President, Getchell Gold Corp.

Fondaway Canyon Gold Project

Fondaway is an advanced stage gold property with a large historic resource located in Churchill County, Nevada comprising 171 unpatented lode claims totaling 1,186 hectares (2,932 acres). Gold was first discovered in Fondaway Canyon in 1977 and over the intervening 40+ years has been the subject of multiple exploration campaigns along a 3.5km E-W gold mineralized corridor (Figure 1) totaling 735 reverse circulation and core drill holes, small-scale open pit mining of the oxidized zone at surface, and underground development limited to exploration and bulk sampling.

The historic resource estimate*, comprised of Indicated resources of 409,000 oz. Au contained in 2,050,000 tonnes grading 6.18 g/t and Inferred resources of 660,000 oz. Au contained in 3,200,000 tonnes grading 6.4 g/t, is predominately localized on the Paperweight, Half Moon, and Colorado gold zones within the Central Area of the Project.

Figure 2 shows a 3D model of the historic drilling by past operators, the individual gold intercepts on the drill traces and the modelled gold domain based on drill intervals grading >1g/t Au**. The 2016 gold mineralization model shows:

Gold mineralization is evident at surface on the Paperweight and Half Moon shear veins, and at the historic Colorado Pit; and,

The vertical projection of the mineralization below surface is limited to the areas of denser drilling.

** The modelled gold domain highlights areas where gold intervals have been geologically linked and projected. The modelled gold domain is solely for exploration planning purposes and does not indicate a mineral resource. A qualified person has not done sufficient work to classify a current mineral resource estimate at Fondaway Canyon.





Figure 1: Fondaway Canyon Plan Map showing gold mineralized corridor.

To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/3941/79645_7694082df45cf8d3_001full.jpg





Figure 2: Fondaway Canyon 3D Drill Model Showing 2016 Gold Domain.**

To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/3941/79645_7694082df45cf8d3_002full.jpg

2020 Drill Results - Central Area

The 2020 drill program at Fondaway Canyon consisted of 6 holes drilled for a total 1,996 metres (6,550 feet) and was completed in November. Five of the six drill holes were collared within the Central Target Area, a 1,000 x 700 metre highly mineralized NE-SW extensional zone within the central portion of the 3.5 km long E-W trending Fondaway Canyon gold mineralized corridor. The Central Target Area is a nexus for the gold mineralizing system observed at the Project with five drill holes focusing on two NE-SW oriented sections (the Colorado - Pack Rat and the Half Moon - South Pit sections) (Figure 3).

The drill program in the Central Target Area was designed to address two primary objectives:

Extend the known mineralization; and, Characterize the known mineralization to assist with geological and resource modelling.





Figure 3: Fondaway Canyon Central Area Plan Map showing 2020 drill hole locations and gold intercepts.

To view an enhanced version of Figure 3, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/3941/79645_7694082df45cf8d3_003full.jpg

The 2020 drill program was highly successful revealing the presence of a thick zone of mineralization and continuity projected down-dip from surface on both sections drilled (for further details refer to Company news releases dated January 27 and February 10, 2021). Table 1 and 2 presents a summary of the notable gold intervals from holes FCG20-02 to FCG20-06 and Figure 4 displays the drill results as a 3D model.

Highly noteworthy in Figure 4 is the dramatic increase in the projection of the gold mineralized zones, compared to the 2016 model, supported by the geological interpretation of the 2020 drill results. The thick zones of gold mineralization are shown to extend down from surface and then dip shallowly to the southwest. The down dip trace of the mineralization, on both sections drilled, is a considerable 800 metres in length. The Colorado SW Extension Zone and the North Fork Gold Zone are on the same stratigraphic plane and remain open laterally and at depth.

The Central Area exhibits significant potential to continue delineating and expanding the sizable body of mineralization demonstrated by the 2020 drill program. This will be a primary objective for the forthcoming Phase One drill program commencing in May.





Figure 4: Fondaway Canyon 3D Model Showing 2020 Drill Results and 2021 Gold Domain.**

To view an enhanced version of Figure 4, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/3941/79645_7694082df45cf8d3_004full.jpg

The Company has produced a new video showing the historic 3D mineralization model in comparison to the current significantly expanded geological-mineralization model. The video is now available for viewing on the Company's website: https://getchellgold.com/investors/videos/.

Colorado - Pack Rat Section Results

Drill holes FCG20-02 and 03 were both collared from the historic Colorado Pit and successfully extended the known gold mineralization towards the southwest (Figure 5).

Hole FCG20-02, drilled to the southwest along a plane connecting the Colorado Pit to Pack Rat zone, encountered a wide mineralized structural zone between a drill depth of 150 and 300 metres. The mineralization was encountered where predicted by the geological model and down-dip from the Colorado Zone. Within the breadth of the mineralization encountered, two gold zones are highlighted.

1.9 g/t Au over 43.5 metres including 4.2 g/t Au over 14.9 metres; and,

1.1 g/t Au over 12.3 metres.

Hole FCG20-03, drilled to the south as a step out from FCG20-02, encountered the mineralized structural zone between 150 and 290 metres downhole, approximately 120 metres ESE of the FCG20-02 main structural zone intercepts. The primary gold intercepts are highlighted:

4.3 g/t Au over 21.1 metres including 8.7 g/t Au over 9.4m and including 14.6 g/t Au over 3.4m; and,

2.0 g/t Au over 49.0m (188.3 to 237.3m).





Figure 5: Fondaway Canyon 3D Gold Domain Model - Colorado to Pack Rat (NE-SW) Section, 150m wide slice.

To view an enhanced version of Figure 5, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/3941/79645_7694082df45cf8d3_005full.jpg

The broad Colorado structural zone that hosts the gold mineralization encountered in FCG20-02 and FCG20-03 has a true thickness of approximately 100 metres, dips shallowly to the SW and is comprised of strongly sheared, brecciated and bleached sedimentary rocks.

Hole FCG20-02 intersected a significant new structural zone of high-grade gold mineralization higher up in the hole than expected. Of 17 consecutive samples extending 21.9 metres down hole, only one sample assayed less than 1 g/t Au with the highest sample grading 25.5 g/t Au (1.7m sample). The mineralized interval graded 6.2 g/t Au over 21.9 metres including 9.6 g/t Au over 12.0 metres and including 20.4 g/t Au over 3.2 metres.

Drill holes FCG20-05 and 06, were collared on the same pad near the canyon floor and drilled to the northeast along a plane connecting the Colorado Pit to Pack Rat zone and on plane with hole FCG20-02. Holes FCG20-05 and 06 were designed to test the down-dip extension of the mineralization observed at surface at the historic Colorado Pit and the mineralization encountered in holes FGC20-02 and 03.

Both holes, FCG20-05 and 06, encountered broad 100-metre-thick zones of gold mineralization within the Colorado SW Extension Gold Target Zone. FCG20-05 encountered the Colorado SW Extension Gold Zone between 175 and 270 metres down hole while FCG20-06 encountered the zone between 165 and 285 metres downhole. The following notable gold intercepts are highlighted:

FGC20-05

1.8 g/t Au over 90.0 m including 3.0 g/t Au over 45.3 m and including 4.4 g/t Au over 11.1m;

including and including 4.4 g/t Au over 11.1m; 6.3 g/t Au over 3.3 m; and,

0.6 g/t Au over 28.0 m.

FGC20-06

1.5 g/t Au over 37.7 m including 2.1 g/t Au over 19.2 m ; and,

including ; and, 1.1 g/t Au over 38.3 m including 2.5 g/t Au over 10.6 m.

The strongly mineralized interval encountered in FCG20-05 represents a 150-200m step out to the southwest from the mineralization intersected in hole FC20-02 and is open laterally and down-dip.

Of note is hole FC17-01, a hole drilled in 2017 by a previous operator and shown in Figure 4 and Figure 5. Hole FC17-01 encountered a significant intercept of gold mineralization at the bottom of the hole, is 250 metres distant from hole FCG20-05, and is within and on plunge with the projection of the down-dip extension of the Colorado SW Extension Gold Zone indicating a significant potential further extension to the Colorado SW Extension Gold Zone.

New North Fork Zone and Half Moon Shear Vein Drill Results

Drill hole FCG20-04 was collared north of where the Half Moon Vein is exposed on surface and drilled to the southwest. FCG20-04 was designed to (i) pierce the Half Moon vein to characterize the mineralization; and (ii) extend the gold mineralization intersected in hole FC17-04, drilled in 2017 by a previous operator, down-dip to the southwest (Figure 6).





Figure 6: Fondaway Canyon 3D Gold Domain Model - Half Moon to North Fork Gold Zone (NE-SW) Section, 150m slice.

To view an enhanced version of Figure 6, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/3941/79645_7694082df45cf8d3_006full.jpg

Hole FCG20-04 encountered the high-grade Half Moon Shear Vein 108.1m down hole and 54m vertically below surface. In addition, two notable gold intercepts were encountered further down the hole that are interpreted to be splays of the main Half Moon Gold Shear Vein. The three Half Moon Shear Vein related gold intercepts are highlighted below.

8.6 g/t Au over 9.8 metres (main Half Moon Shear Vein);

over (main Half Moon Shear Vein); 2.7 g/t Au over 20.5 metres ; and,

over ; and, 6.3 g/t Au over 3.3 metres.

In addition, hole FCG20-04 encountered a broad 144 metre intercept of gold mineralization, newly identified as the North Fork Gold Zone, extending to the bottom of the hole with the final sample of hole FCG20-04 returning 7.9 g/t Au over 1.0 m indicating the lower extent of the North Fork Gold Zone was not reached. Within the North Fork broad zone of mineralization, the following notable gold intercepts are highlighted:

2.5 g/t Au over 58.0 m including 3.5 g/t Au over 36.1 m ;

over including over ; 2.8 g/t Au over 13.4 m ; and,

over ; and, the last sample grades 7.9 g/t Au over 1.0 m.

The newly identified North Fork Gold Zone is geologically modelled as a 100m thick shallowly dipping to the southwest zone of gold mineralization and the results observed in FCG20-04 support this model. In addition, the North Fork Gold Zone represents a 200m step out to the southwest from hole FC17-04 and is open laterally and down-dip. As can be observed in the plan map of the area (Figure 3), there are no adjacent holes that have targeted the North Fork Gold Zone's depth horizon.

Of note is hole FC17-05, a hole drilled in 2017 by a previous operator and shown in Figure 4 and Figure 6. Hole FC17-05 encountered a significant intercept of gold mineralization at the bottom of the hole, is 300 metres distant from the end of hole FCG20-04, and is within and on plunge with the projected window of the down-dip extension of the North Fork gold zone indicating a significant further potential extension to the North Fork Gold Zone.





Table 1: Colorado SW Extension Zone - Gold Grade Interval Highlights

To view an enhanced version of Table 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/3941/79645_7694082df45cf8d3_007full.jpg





Table 2: Half Moon and North Fork Gold Zones - Gold Grade Interval Highlights

To view an enhanced version of Table 2, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/3941/79645_7694082df45cf8d3_008full.jpg





Table 3: Fondaway Canyon 2020 Drill Locations and Orientation (UTM metres - NAD83 Z11N)



To view an enhanced version of Table 3, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/3941/79645_getchelltable3.jpg

Scott Frostad, P.Geo., is the Qualified Person (as defined in NI 43-101) who reviewed and approved the content and scientific and technical information in the news release.

The 2020 drill core was cut at Bureau Veritas Laboratories' ("BVL") facilities in Sparks, Nevada, with the samples analyzed for gold and multi-element analysis in BVL's Sparks, Nevada and Vancouver, BC laboratories respectively. Gold values were produced by fire assay with an Atomic Absorption finish on a 30-gram sample (BV code FA430) with over limits re-analyzed using method FA530 (30g Fire Assay with gravimetric finish). The multi-element analysis was performed by ICP-MS following aqua regia digestion on a 30g sample (BV code AQ250). Quality control measures in the field included the systematic insertion of standards and blanks.

*Fondaway Canyon Historic Resource Estimate

The historic resource estimate was completed by Techbase International Ltd of Reno, Nevada, and it is contained within a NI 43-101 report dated April 3, 2017 that was commissioned by Canarc Resource Corp of Vancouver, B.C., Canada. The resource estimate was compiled only from drill holes that could be validated (591 holes @ 49,086 m), a sufficient amount to deem the historic resource as reliable. Using Techbase software, a method of polygons was used along each mineralized shear vein. With a minimum 0.10 opt (3.43 g/t) Au and 6 feet (1.8 m) horizontal vein width used as cut-off parameters, twelve mineralized shear veins had sufficient composited intercepts within the sulfide mineralization for the estimate. No capping or cutting of grades was applied. The historical resource estimate used classifications in accordance with NI 43-101 standards, namely, "indicated" and "inferred". A review and/or re-calculation of the historic resource is required by an independent Qualified Person to confirm these as current resources as defined by NI 43-101. A qualified person has not done sufficient work to classify the historical estimate as current mineral resources; and the issuer is not treating the historical estimate as current mineral resources.

****The company reminds Shareholders that the Q2 2021 Getchell Gold Shareholder Update Meeting is April 21, 4pm EDT, 1 PM PDT. All interested Investors and Media are welcome to register: https://app.livestorm.co/getchell-gold/getchell-gold-april-2021-shareholder-update?type=detailed

About Getchell Gold Corp.

The Company is a Nevada focused gold and copper exploration company trading on the (CSE: GTCH) and (OTCQB: GGLDF). Getchell Gold is primarily directing its efforts on its most advanced stage asset, Fondaway Canyon, a past gold producer with a significant in-the-ground historic resource estimate. Complementing Getchell's asset portfolio is Dixie Comstock, a past gold producer with a historic resource and two earlier stage exploration projects, Star and Hot Springs Peak. Getchell has the option to acquire 100% of the Fondaway Canyon and Dixie Comstock properties, Churchill County, Nevada.

The Company reiterates that its near-term strategy to advance its assets is not impacted by the COVID-19 Corona virus. The Company continues to monitor the situation and is in compliance with all government guidelines.

For further information please visit the Company's website at www.getchellgold.com or contact the Company at info@getchellgold.com.

Mr. William Wagener, Chairman & CEO

Getchell Gold Corp.

+1 303 517 8764

info@getchellgold.com

The Canadian Securities Exchange has not reviewed this press release and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release. Not for distribution to U.S. news wire services or dissemination in the United States.

Certain information contained herein constitutes "forward-looking information" under Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to the private placement and the completion thereof and the use of proceeds. Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "will" or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "will" occur. Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management as of the date such statements are made and they are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements or forward-looking information, including: the receipt of all necessary regulatory approvals, use of proceeds from the financing, capital expenditures and other costs, and financing and additional capital requirements. Although management of Getchell have attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements or forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and forward-looking information. The Company will not update any forward-looking statements or forward-looking information that are incorporated by reference herein, except as required by applicable securities laws.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/79645
Taxi driver gets 2 years in penal colony for assault on law enforcement officer in Moscow

 Moscow's Presnensky District Court

16:18 07/04/2021

MOSCOW, April 7 (RAPSI)  Valery Yevsin, a taxi driver who had committed an assault on a National Guard employee at the illegal January 23 rally in Moscow, received 2 years in penal colony on Wednesday, attorney Maxim Pashkov told RAPSI.

A prosecutor earlier asked the court to sentence Yevsin to 3 years in penal colony, the courts press service told RAPSI.

The man was charged with the use of force against a representative of authority. He is in detention now.

According to investigators, on January 23, the accused threw a special guarding rail at the law enforcement officer.




In brief: Tianshu Zhixin Semiconductor, a fabless joint venture between Via Technologies and the Shanghai municipal government, has revealed what appears to be China's first 7nm GPGPU, a gargantuan chip that's supposed to compete with the likes of Nvidia A100 and AMD MI100 in the data center.

China is on a quest for "technological self-sufficiency," and the trade war with the US has only accelerated that process. China is capable of covering over 20 percent of the chips needed in the local industry, but the government plans to increase that number to 70 percent by 2025. One example of that is using aging chips while its semiconductor industry catches up, turning to Japan for etching equipment that would otherwise be considered obsolete.

Last year, we saw the arrival of an impressive x86 CPU courtesy of government-backed Zhaoxin, which showed just how much progress has been made on that front. We've also heard about Huawei working hard to develop server GPUs, but things have been relatively quiet ever since the tech giant lost access to key suppliers such as TSMC.

Tianshu Zhixin was known to be making progress on the first general-purpose GPU designed in China, dubbed "Big Island." The ongoing chip shortage only allowed the company to do a paper launch in March, but what's interesting about these chips is that they're supposedly able to compete with Nvidia and AMD's GPU at the highest end.

Big Island GPUs aren't technically designed to go against RTX and Radeon gaming graphics cards, but instead they're geared towards machine learning, high performance computing, medical research, and security. This means they're meant to go against the likes of Nvidia's A100 and AMD's Instinct MI100, both of which are gargantuan chips designed for the data center and offer an order of magnitude the performance of previous generation architectures, while taking a lot less space and power to operate.

Big Island was developed between 2018 and 2020, built using TSMC's 7nm process node and 2.5D CoWoS packaging. They also utilize TSMC's 65 nm silicon interposer, and feature no less than 24 billion transistors. Just like AMD and Nvidia, Tianshu Zhixin has equipped its GPGPU with 32 GB of HBM2 memory (1.2 TB per second bandwidth) and made it compatible with the PCIe 4.0 standard.

The claimed performance of the Chinese GPGPU seems to be impressive. When it comes to FP16 (half precision math) performance, it is capable of 147 teraflops, which sits right between Nvidia A100's 78 teraflops and AMD MI100's 184.6 teraflops -- although it should be noted the A100's Tensor cores are capable of 312 FP16 teraflops.

When it comes to FP32 workloads, Big Island should be capable of up to 37 teraflops, which is higher than both the A100 and MI100, which offer 19.5 teraflops and 23.1 teraflops, respectively. Power consumption is rated at 300 watts, and Tianshu Zhixin says the new GPU will offer a better price-to-performance ratio than competing solutions.

Time will tell if this is indeed true and China has hit such an important milestone in its quest to reduce its reliance on foreign semiconductors.
Refugee Families Urge Biden to Keep Promise to Up Admissions

The families of refugees and their supporters, including 124 elected officials, sent President Joe Biden a letter Tuesday urging him to make good on his promise to boost refugee admissions to the United States during the current budget year, replacing the record low number set by his predecessor.

Biden presented a plan to Congress two months ago to raise the ceiling on admissions to 62,500 and to eliminate restrictions imposed by former President Donald Trump that have disqualified a significant number of refugees, including those fleeing war.

But Biden has not issued a presidential determination since his administration notified Congress, as required by law. The action does not require congressional approval and past presidents have issued such presidential determinations that set the cap on refugee admissions shortly after the notification to Congress.

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The Biden administration has given no explanation as to why the president has kept the refugee admissions cap of 15,000 set by Trump, the lowest it has been in the 41-year-old U.S. Refugee Resettlement programs history. The White House had no immediate response to the letter Tuesday.

This continues to have a devastating impact on people in dire need of humanitarian protection, states the letter signed by the families of refugees, resettlement agencies and 124 state and local elected officials from 35 states.

Only about 2,050 refugees have been allowed in to the United States because of the restrictions set by Trump, agencies said.

Every day that passes without any action leaves hundreds of refugee families in limbo in refugee camps and many waiting to be reunited with their loved ones here in the U.S. waiting for us to uphold our promise to protect, the letter states.

We hope that President Biden will listen to our voices, said Nejra Sumic, one of the refugee organizers of the letter.

The State Department, which coordinates flights with resettlement agencies, booked 715 refugees to come to the United States with the anticipation that Biden would have acted by March, but those flights were canceled since the refugees were not eligible under Trumps rules, according to resettlement agencies.

Most of the refugees are from Africa and fleeing armed conflict or political persecution. Most spots are allocated for people fleeing religious persecution, Iraqis who have assisted U.S. forces there, and people from Central Americas Northern Triangle, the resettlement agencies say.

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Among those who had their tickets canceled was a pregnant woman from Congo who can no longer fly because she is now in her third trimester, said Mark Hetfield, president of HIAS, a Maryland-based Jewish nonprofit that is one of nine agencies that resettles refugees in the U.S.

There is simply no rationale for not making this change at this time, he said, adding that it is creating so much extra stress for refugees.
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Britain's daily Covid cases have fallen by a third in a week but deaths rose slightly, official figures revealed today.

Department of Health data showed there were 2,763 new lab-confirmed cases recorded and 45 Covid deaths, which was two more than last Wednesday.

More than 31.7million Britons - or three in five adults - have also now received their first dose, after the national drive began to pick up the pace yesterday following the Easter bank holiday.

It comes as the UK's medical regulator today recommended all healthy under-30s should be offered an alternative to AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine amid mounting evidence that it may cause blood clots in very rare cases.

In a blow to the programme, the Government's vaccine advisory group recommended healthy people aged 19 to 29 should be offered either the Pfizer or Moderna jabs when the roll-out is expanded.

A review by the drugs watchdog the MHRA found that by the end of March, 79 out of 20million Britons vaccinated with the AstraZeneca jab had suffered deadly blood clots in the brain or arteries - a rate of about one in 250,000. Nineteen of these individuals died and three were under the age of 30.

Anyone who has already had their first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, regardless of their age, is being advised to go for their second appointment as planned.

Experts stressed the blood clots were very rare, and England's deputy chief medical officer Professor Jonathan Van Tam said the risk from Covid always outweighs that from vaccine side-effects for older age groups who are more likely to suffer hospitalisation and death if they catch the virus.

The European medicines agency took a bolder approach saying blood clots should be listed as a side effect of the AstraZeneca jab, although they did not recommend that an alternative should be found for any age group.

Europe is currently in the midst of a third wave - with Angela Merkel today calling for another lockdown in Germany - which likely influenced the regulator's decision not to restrict their use.

In a boost to Britain's roll-out today, however, Wales became the first UK nation to start dishing out the Moderna Covid vaccine. More than 100,000 doses of the US-made jab are set to arrive in the country this month, with deliveries expected to 'significantly increase' from May.

Officials had put the AstraZeneca jab at the heart of the country's roll-out with a leaked delivery schedule revealing the Government is expecting it to make up 75 per cent of its Covid vaccine supplies over the next two months.

Former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt today said he doesn't believe the announcement will slow vaccine uptake, saying that being 'over-cautious' will 'cost lives'.

Britain today saw its Covid cases dip by a third week-on-week after recording 2,763, compared to the 4,052 from last week

But deaths rose slightly after 45 were recorded, which was two more than the same time the week before

More than 31.7million Britons - or three in five adults - have now received their first dose of the Covid vaccine. A 24-year-old carer became the first person to get the Moderna Covid vaccine in the UK today

Jonathan Van-Tam, England's deputy medical officer, led a press conference this afternoon, where it was announced the AstraZeneca vaccine is being restricted in under 30s

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the Government believes the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is 'safe'. He is pictured above on a visit to Perranporth, England, today

WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF THE RARE BLOOD CLOTS LINKED TO ASTRAZENECA'S VACCINE? MHRA chief executive Dr June Raine said anyone who has one or more of the below symptoms for longer than four days after vaccination should seek urgent medical advice. Shortness of breath

Chest pain

Swollen leg

Persistent stomach pain

Severe headache

Blurred vision

Skin bruising beyond the site of injection Advertisement

As many as 120 of 380 local authorities across the country - one in three - have a Covid infection rate below 20 cases per 100,000 people as the vaccine roll-out and mass testing keeps the virus in check.

They are scattered in pockets across the country, but many are based in the South West and South East of England, alongside the more rural areas of Scotland.

The Orkney islands and Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, both in Scotland, have registered no Covid cases in the past week to April 2, according to the latest data.

Clackmannanshire, in Scotland, has the highest infection rate in the country - at 258.1 per 100,000 - followed by Corby - 146.8 per 100,000 - and Doncaster - 114.8 per 100,000.

Only two other local authorities, Barnsley and Wakefield, have infection rates above 100 per 100,000.

It comes as Professor Van-Tam said the new advice marked a 'course correction' for the UK's roll-out - and reiterated that for the vast majority of people the 'benefits outweigh the risks'.

He insisted the move would have no bearing on the UK's ambition to vaccinate all adults against Covid by the end of July, so long as Pfizer and Moderna can meet their scheduled deliveries.

The country is set to start vaccinating under-50s next month but has only comparatively small numbers of Pfizer and approximately 100,000 Moderna jabs available every week.

Mr Hunt, who now chairs a parliamentary committee focused on healthcare, said he doesn't believe the announcement will slow vaccine uptake, saying that being 'over-cautious' will 'cost lives'.

He said: 'This is a fascinating issue for the very simple reason that the EMA  is also recommending that the Oxford AZ vaccine remains safe for all age groups.

That was another thing that was interesting. Individual EU countries have restricted its use, I think that there is a real danger that being over-cautious as is happening in France and Germany will cost more lives than it saves.'

Because what we can see in this country is that we have a death rate from Covid nine times lower than for example in France because we have this vaccine rolled out quickly.'

A lot of that is thanks to Oxford AstraZeneca so I think most people can see we are really benefiting from a rapid rollout from the vaccine.'

Prime Minister Boris Johnson reiterated that the Government believes the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is 'safe' and had already saved countless lives, insisting Britons who have had a first dose of AstraZeneca should continue to get their second jabs.

The Prime Minister said: 'But the crucial thing for everybody is to listen to what the scientists, the medical experts '

'You can really start to see some of the benefits of that - it's pretty clear that the decline in the number of deaths, the decline in the number of hospitalisations is being fuelled, is being assisted, the steepness of that decline is being helped by the rollout of the vaccines so it's very important for everybody to continue to get your second jab when you're asked to come forward for your turn.'

Announcing the updated guidance today, Dr June Raine, head of the MHRA, told a press conference: 'Based on the current evidence, the benefits of the Covid-19 vaccine AstraZeneca against Covid-19 and its associated risks  hospitalisation and death  continues to outweigh the risks for the vast majority of people. Our review has reinforced that the risk of this rare suspected side effect remains extremely small.'
The Minister of Finance, Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, has been asked to release funds to the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) to enable it expand infrastructure in Senior High Schools (SHS). Infrastructure remains the greatest challenge that the government's Free SHS policy has faced since its introduction in 2017 and this has been worsened by the failure of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration to pay contractors despite receiving Parliamentary approval for a loan to do so, according to the Ranking Member on the Education Committee of Parliament, Mr Peter Nortsu-Kotoe.



Mr Nortsu-Kotoe, who is the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Member of Parliament (MP) for Akatsi North in a press statement issued Wednesday also warned of a looming crisis under the Free SHS Programme in Ghana.



"In 2018, Parliament approved a loan facility of 1.5 billion dollars for the payment of contractors owed by GETFund towards the provision of new facilities for senior high schools in the country. One would have asked why this money was not disbursed to pay contractors owed from years before the 2017 era as well as the contractors on the 1119 projects in 2017," the statement said.



"The truth is that the Minister of Finance has put a number of impediments in the way of GETFund such that access to the facility has become very difficult. The Minister of Finance also appointed a Special Purpose Vehicle such that, all certificates due for payment and were duly vetted by the Technical and Accounts Units of GETFund have to be vetted again by an audit firm solely appointed by the Minister, causing so much delay in the payment of over 800 million Ghana Cedis to contractors with the money being locked up with the Bank of Ghana. It is worrying to say that if nothing urgent is done regarding infrastructure challenges in our schools, we would be confronted with a bigger catastrophe in this era of the COVID-19 pandemic".



Infrastructure challenges



The statement contends that although the mass introduction of the 2017/18 academic year was not a bad idea, its implementation was not well thought through and fell short of achieving the desired goals. "Thus, the programme since its introduction has been plunged into chaos and glaring challenges that were foreseen by many other stakeholders. These challenges have largely hindered the provision of quality education as required by the Constitution and Sustainable Development Goal Four".



It further argues that the current infrastructure challenges were foreseen by the NDC government led by President John Dramani Mahama which is why it began the building of 200 E-Block facilities as Community Senior High Schools.

The statement adds that by December 2016 a number of the projects were ongoing in over 400 senior high schools across the country but have since stalled following the failure of the NPP government to pay the contractors to complete work.



"Till date, many of these projects are at a standstill. It is also instructive to note that, the delayed payments have also eroded the gains of the contractors as some have become indebted to financial institutions". It also mentioned that the infrastructure deficit in the educational sector led to the introduction of the Double-Track system to deal with the challenges.



Funding



Mr Nortsu-Kotoe noted that the release of funds to finance the implementation of the Free SHS policy had become a major hurdle to its success.

It also mentioned that funding for the Free SHS programme had been reduced from about 2.4 billion Ghana Cedis to 1.9 billion Ghana Cedis.



"What is more interesting is that management of the programme has been transferred from the Jubilee House to the Ministry of Education; a situation very difficult to comprehend. As the number of students increases, funding must also rise and this can only be explained by the Jubilee House as to what accounted for the reduction. Unfortunately, officials of the Ministry of Education were unable to explain this when they appeared before the Select Committee on Education".



Poor feeding



The statement also bemoaned the quality of food served to students under the Free SHS Policy. Mr Nortsu-Kotoe said investigations by the Minority in Parliament had uncovered that the food served did not meet the nutritional standards adding that near-expired food items were also used in preparing dishes for beneficiaries of the policy.



"These happenings have forced parents to provide their wards with extra food items when they leave home for school to avoid the issue of malnutrition which in itself can affect the academic progression of these school children".

The statement further urged the government to take the necessary steps to not only improve the living conditions of students in schools across the country but also to ensure access to quality education.

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.

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The group has plans to set up another 40 factories within the next 6 months across the globe to help build a viable PPE market

SRAM & MRAM Group, a UK-based conglomerate that has been instrumental in contributing to the society and adding its bit to help fight the pandemic, is investing Rs 100 Crores in the Indian market.

In its endeavor to help the world for upgrading safety measures, the company has planned to invest in manufacturing the PPE products under its flagship brand Walletz4u.

The company is set to produce premium Nitrile Examination Gloves that are currently being produced from its factories in Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.

With the series of investments and manufacturing units in place, the company is gearing up to become the leading original equipment manufacturers of Medical and Industrial grade gloves in East Asia.

Under the 'Walletz4u' flagship, a brand owned by SRAM & MRAM Group, one of the worlds leading public health emergency management solutions companies, the brand is the leader in manufacturing their flagship Medical Protection Supply products for consumers all across the globe.

Speaking on the development, Dr. Sailesh Lachu Hiranandani, Chairman, SRAM & MRAM Group, said, SRAM has geared itself to tackle the problem of PPE Shortage in the world by acquiring and leasing a whole lot of production lines to meet the ever increasing demand especially gloves of all types for all industry verticals.

Today looking at the current scenario, there is an unprecedented demand for protective gears like Sanitizers, Gloves, Face Shields, etc. And in order to cater to the same, SRAM & MRAM has been on a spree to set-up more than 12 factories all across Malaysia, Vietnam and India to produce these products under Walletz4u branding. Furthermore, the group has plans to set up another 40 factories within the next 6 months across the globe to help build a viable PPE market.
For the quarter ended March 31, the forestry and timber firm reported revenues of US$4.6mln, 44% higher than the previous quarter, while sawn timber production jumped 83% and veneer production increased 44%

( ) has hailed record output from its facilities in Gabon in the first quarter of 2021 as demand for its products increased amid a global economic rebound from the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

In a trading update for the quarter ended March 31, the forestry and timber firm reported revenues of US$4.6mln, 44% higher than the previous quarter, while sawn timber production rose 83% to 3,700 cubic metres (m3) and veneer production increased 44% to 822m3.

The firm ended the period with cash of US$1.2mln and working capital of US$6.2mln as of April 6, alongside bank loans of US$8.3mln.

The company also said despite a short delay to the installation of its Primultini sawmill line due to supply chain disruption, completion is expected in May and will allow it to increase sawn timber production 30%.

Woodbois added that a stock theft investigation is proceeding with police in the Ivory Coast and it is continuing to see progress with the turnaround of its Mozambique business which has not been impacted by recent militant events in the north of the country.

Meanwhile, the company said it entered into the carbon credit market through reforestation projects at scale in Africa, which it expects to grow exponentially over the coming years and offer the firm a valuable add-on to its existing businesses.

Woodbois also provided an update on its final results for 2020, reporting an adjusted (EBITDA) loss of US$1.7mln, narrowed from a US$1.9mln loss in 2019, while revenues fell 22% to US$15.3mln, a decline largely attributed to the effects of the pandemic. The firm said it will announce its audited results for the year on April 29.

Positive cashflow expected in 2021

Looking ahead, the company said despite the ongoing spread of COVID-19 and the challenging global economic environment, it expects to turn cashflow positive and deliver record revenues in 2021.

The group also warned that global shipping markets continue to be impacted by a worldwide freight container shortage, partly due to a booming e-commerce sector, increased border restrictions and the recent blockage of the Suez Canal in Egypt.

Elsewhere, the firm said it has engaged with the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC), a global alliance of national forest certification systems, in order to achieve FSC certification. However, it said COVID-19 continues to impact the workstream with certification now expected to complete in 2022.

"A record quarter of output from our upgraded facilities in Gabon has coincided with an increase in demand for our product as economies around the world began to rebound from the global pandemic. The quality and drive of the new members of our team is being reflected in a material improvement in processes and output numbers. These results are being delivered while Gabon still has a strict curfew in place which continues to restrict the number of hours worked so we can expect further uplift ahead as and when restrictions are eased, Woodbois executive chairman and chief executive Paul Dolan said in a statement.

Global demand for our product remains strong, as does pricing which is allowing us to absorb the current spike in freight ratesOur entry into the carbon credit market is exciting and we see significant potential in this area going forward. According to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, more than 1,600 corporates representing more than $11 trillion in annual sales have to date committed to net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Additionally, billions of corporate dollars have already been earmarked for reforestation projects. To meet this rapidly increasing demand for quality carbon credits there must be supply of transparent and verifiable credit generating projects. We believe that forests currently represent one of the safest, proven and economically viable methods for capturing carbon at scale and Woodbois is well placed to deliver such projects, he added.

Shares in Woodbois were 2.6% lower at 5.7p in early deals on Wednesday.
(Alliance News) - Italy will reserve AstraZeneca PLC's vaccine for the over 60s following concerns of a link to blood clots in younger people, the government's top adviser on the coronavirus crisis announced Wednesday.

The decision has been taken to "recommend the preferential use on individuals aged above 60", Franco Locatelli told reporters.

His announcement came hours after the EU's medicines regulator said that blood clots should be listed as a rare side effect of the jab a but insisted the benefits continue to outweigh the risks.

Locatelli was speaking at a hastily convened news conference to explain the implications for Italy, one of several European countries that suspended the use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford jab last month but resumed using it after the EMA ruled it was safe.

The World Health Organization's vaccine experts on Wednesday echoed EMA's latest findings, saying a causal relationship between the vaccine and blood clots was "plausible but is not confirmed". A

Locatelli, who coordinates the panel of experts that advises the Italian government on coronavirus, said the data on blood clots only pointed to a link for people receiving the first dose.

Wednesday's decision did not amount to an outright ban on the use of the AstraZeneca jab on younger cohorts of people.A

For example, Locatelli said there should be no problem for those under the age of 60 receiving their second and final dose of the vaccine.

Canada, France, Germany and the Netherlands are among several countries that are not recommending the AstraZeneca shot for younger people.

source: AFP

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Canadas national nuclear laboratory welcomes accomplished senior executive to grow its commercial business in medical isotopes and radiopharmaceuticals

CHALK RIVER, Ontario, April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL), Canadas premier nuclear science and technology organization, is pleased to announce that Ram Mullur has joined the organization as its new Vice-President of Isotope Business. Mr. Mullur is an accomplished executive with more than 25 years of broad industry experience and a thorough understanding of the medical isotopes and radiopharmaceuticals landscape, and will work to grow CNLs leadership position in the development and supply of medical and industrial isotopes.



With over one billion treatments conducted using isotopes produced at the Chalk River Laboratories campus, CNL has been a world leader in the production of medical isotopes for decades. As part of its Vision 2030 plan, CNL is leveraging this expertise to become an international hub in the research, development and supply of the next-generation of medical isotopes and radiopharmaceuticals, including actinium-225, a rare isotope that shows great promise as the basis for new, cutting-edge cancer therapies.

Given his leadership and industry experience, we believe Ram will be an exceptional addition to CNL as we pursue the next-generation of medical isotopes and radiopharmaceuticals at our Chalk River Laboratories campus, commented Joe McBrearty, CNLs President and CEO. Ram has a deep understanding of the Canadian and international radiopharmaceutical market, with expertise that spans development to distribution, and his leadership will help us navigate production pathways for actinium-225 and the commercialization of other promising isotopes.

Among his responsibilities as Vice-President of Isotope Business, Mr. Mullur will lead CNLs efforts to pursue commercial opportunities related to actinium-225, a rare medical isotope that shows great promise as the basis for new, cutting-edge cancer therapies. An alpha-emitting isotope with a short half-life, actinium-225 can be combined with a protein or antibody that specifically targets and kills cancer cells, leaving the surrounding healthy tissue unharmed. With a short half-life of just ten days, the actinium then decays without accumulating in a patients body.

Known as targeted alpha therapy, this form of treatment has shown exciting potential in early studies with prostate cancer patients for whom conventional cancer therapies have not worked. Researchers are eager to try this targeted alpha therapy approach with a wide range of cancers. However, current global supplies of actinium-225 would only be enough to treat a handful of patients every year, leading the isotope to be nicknamed, the rarest drug on Earth. CNLs Chalk River Laboratories campus is one of only a few locations in the world with a thorium generator that can produce this material in research-scale quantities.

CNL has a strong reputation as a world leader in the production and processing of medical isotopes, and Im incredibly excited to join the team and help build on this legacy, commented Mr. Mullur. In particular, I believe that CNLs research in targeted alpha therapy and actinium-225 holds great promise in the development of new and innovative medical breakthroughs to fight cancer. It is this ambitious program of work that drew me to the position, and I cant wait to get started.

Prior to his arrival at CNL, Ram served as the Director and Head of Business Development at a leading radiopharmaceutical company, where he was responsible for expanding its commercial business into new products and technologies in the nuclear medicine and radiopharmaceutical field. This experience included leading acquisition, investment and licensing initiatives, negotiating business contracts and pursuing strategic partnerships and collaborations. Among his many accomplishments, Ram helped advance key products in the companys development pipeline to their commercial phase and was instrumental in the growth of its new product portfolio. Ram also shaped, negotiated and helped complete external business partnerships for novel radiopharmaceutical products.

Ram has also served in leadership positions at other health sciences and industrial companies as a global brand manager, production operations manager, and quality and plant operations manager. He completed his MBA at McGill University, holds a M.Sc. in Chemistry and is certified in Canadian Risk Management.

For more information on CNL, including its leadership team, please visit www.cnl.ca.

About CNL

Canadian Nuclear Laboratories is a world leader in nuclear science and technology offering unique capabilities and solutions across a wide range of industries. Actively involved with industry-driven research and development in nuclear, transportation, clean technology, energy, defence, security and life sciences, we provide solutions to keep these sectors competitive internationally.

With ongoing investments in new facilities and a focused mandate, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories is well positioned for the future. A new performance standard reinforced with a strong safety culture underscores every activity.

For more information on the complete range of Canadian Nuclear Laboratories services, please visit www.cnl.ca or contact communications@cnl.ca.

CNL Contact:

Patrick Quinn

Director, Corporate Communications

CNL, 1-866-886-2325

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/40d61cd0-5531-4995-9463-5733a437ff42
While many restaurants across the nation are struggling to keep up with a ketchup shortage, the issue isnt as severe in the Bay Area.

As more restaurants switched to takeout over the course of the pandemic, shared ketchup bottles were quickly swapped in favor of individual packets, which are now in high demand and getting harder to find in some states.

According to data from Plate IQ, a technology company that works with restaurants, the prices for ketchup packets have increased by 13% since January of 2020.

Heinz, a major ketchup manufacturer, is reportedly planning to increase production of ketchup by 25% to satisfy the growing demand for individual ketchup packets, KTVU reported.

The problem doesnt seem to be quite as widespread in the Bay Area, through Bi-Rite Foodservice Distributors President Aaron Barulich confirmed Heinz and other manufacturers have limited how much their customers can buy.

Barulich also noted that at some points in the year, Bi-Rite Foodservice Distributors had been unable to ship Heinz ketchup  and the packets in particular because of the supply issues at Heinz.

I think its fair to say that our customers can get ketchup, Barulich said. But it just might not be the brand that they want all the time.

Bay Area restaurants seemed unfazed by the news, however. We dont have that problem here, thank God, an employee at Reds Java House told The Chronicle Wednesday. Workers at multiple locations of Mels Diner in San Francisco were also adamant that when it came to the beloved condiment, there was nothing to worry about.

Employees at multiple Bay Area locations of Target and Safeway also said that though they had heard about the shortage, their shelves have so far been fully stocked and there were no problems on that aisle to note.

The nationwide ketchup shortage is just one example of the many supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic  from toilet paper to aluminum cans. The summer saw a massive shortage of coins in the Bay Area  particularly for coin-operated laundromats, banks, and convenience stores.

Annie Vainshtein is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: avainshtein@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @annievain
[April 07, 2021] MHS Announces The Launch of Influencer Marketing & Post Production services for Influencers

BANGALORE, India, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- An influencer - as the word suggests - influences a set of audience who follows her/his blogs/vlogs/social media posts. In this corona pandemic times, the consumption of online content has increased multifold. This has led to influencers having more say in terms of product placements in their content. The global influencer marketing industry is expected to be US$ 15 Billion in 2022 compared to US$ 8Bn in 2019. In India, the industry is small, but is poised to grow to around US$ 2 Bn by 2022. Today, influencer marketing is one of the best ways for gaining trust for brands. Influencers can bring great customer acquisition for brands by making great content on their social networks. The brands have started recognising the importance and impact of influencer marketing. This has led to an increased share of influencer marketing budget in their overall marketing budgets. In India, around 70% of the influencers are from metrocities - with Mumbai and Delhi accounting for over 50% of the influencers. However, around 30% of the influencers are from tier 2 cities and towns. Almost 50% of the influencers are between age groups 18-24. Over 80% of the influencers are tagged as micro or nano influencers, which means they have a following of less than 50k. The major challenges which influencers face are: No clear benchmarks on value of the work, delays in payment, expectations of quick results, lack of training and lack of clear expectations. With increasing focus on this marketing segment, there is a clear need to solve these problems andgrow the influencer ecosystem.



With this objective in mind, Abhishek Vyas and Nitish Kalra have started My Haul Store (MHS). A one stop solution platform for influencers. The company provides a platform for influencers to showcase their videos/blogs, training and support in video creation and editing, marketing projects from brands and steady stream of revenues. MHS is a trendy tool for influencers which can help in promoting sponsored and non-sponsored products in an efficient and interactive way, providing a great user experience to one's subscribers and followers. Quitting their six-figure jobs, Abhishek and Nitish stepped into the world of entrepreneurship. In their past organizations, they had worked with influencers and understood their problems. They also saw a huge opportunity in solving these problems for the influencers and the brands.

In mid 2020, MHS approached Amazon with a proposal to manage and enable their influencer marketing program. "It took us three months to run the pilot project and then we could convince the amazon team on the value we can deliver," said Abhishek Vyas, Founder and CEO, MHS. This deal was the validation of what he and his co-founders were trying to achieve. MHS kick-started with a group of fifteen Influencers and worked up a modest profit with affiliate marketing. The duo affirmed that allocating their finance was a gradual process and that they never rushed into a decision. Video editing is one of MHS's strong suits. The skilled team at MHS tailors influencer video and highlights content for the influencers. The revised content cuts through the clutter and reaches the right audience and increases brand engagement. The services aim to help influencers break away from the constraints imposed by lack of equipment and time-saving on post-production. "We want to allow the influencers to focus on their craft and bring about creativity and quality content, which basically ups their ante and engagement," said Abhishek Vyas, Founder and CEO, MHS. MHS offers tailored packages to make the services accessible and cost-effective to any and all influencers in the field. Other services offered by MHS include digital marketing, photography, graphic design, and video production. Abhishek Vyas further added, "We are in the process of building a one-stop-shop of innovative solutions by bringing together the best." MHS has secured Amazon Influencer marketing as well as pre and post-launch shoots for corporate and it looks forward to having more influencers and brands on board. The firm has made over Rs 7 crores in revenues in a short period of time. The company will work towards adding more services. These will help solve influencer pain points, design & implement marketing campaigns for the brands and grow the entire ecosystem of influencers, brands and users. Media Contact :

Abhishek Vyas

abhishek@myhaulstore.com

+91-9610143222

Bluezone Online Marketing Solutions

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Kennedy Wilson to Announce First Quarter 2021 Earnings

Global real estate investment company Kennedy Wilson (NYSE: KW) will release its first quarter 2021 financial results on Wednesday, May 5, 2021 after the market closes. The company will hold a live conference call and webcast to discuss results at 7:00 a.m. PT/ 10:00 a.m. ET on Thursday, May 6, 2021.

The direct dial-in number for the conference call is (844) 340-4761 for U.S. callers and +1 (412) 717-9616 for international callers.

A replay of the call will be available for one week beginning one hour after the live call and can be accessed at (877) 344-7529 for U.S. callers and +1 (412) 317-0088 for international callers. The passcode for the replay is 10154188.

The webcast will be available at: https://services.choruscall.com/links/kw210506uS6eIgBe.html. A replay of the webcast will be available one hour after the original webcast on the Company's investor relations web site for three months.







About Kennedy Wilson

Kennedy Wilson (NYSE:KW) is a leading global real estate investment company. We own, operate and invest in real estate through our balance sheet and through our investment management platform. We focus on multifamily and office properties located in the Western U.S., U.K., and Ireland. For further information on Kennedy Wilson, please visit: www.kennedywilson.com.

KW-IR

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005099/en/
Two Yemeni men on the FBI's Terrorism Watch List arrested by Border Patrol in separate incidents in January and March 2021. (CBP)

Border Terrorism Statement Was Deleted Due to Sensitive Information: DHS

A statement announcing the apprehension of two suspected terrorists at the border was deleted because it contained sensitive information, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which is part of the agency, announced on Monday that two Yemeni nationals who are on the FBIs Terrorism Watch List and the No-Fly list were captured at the border.

But the press release announcing the apprehensions was soon scrubbed from the agencys website.

CBP said Tuesday that the release was not properly vetted.

The news release in question was not properly reviewed and contained certain disclosure and policy information related to national security that required CBP to remove it from our website, the agency said in a statement to news outlets.

The deletion was noticed by a number of members of Congress, who questioned why it had happened.

Why is President Bidens administration removing previously public information that more individuals on the terrorist watch list were apprehended at the border? Rep. Bill Long (R-Mo.) said in a tweet.

Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee tagged both DHS and CBP on Twitter, saying: Why did you take down your previously public tweet & press release announcing that two people on the terror watch list were apprehended exploiting President Bidens open border policies? Transparency in name alone is not transparency.

Illegal immigrants from Central America take refuge in a makeshift U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing center under the Anzalduas International Bridge after crossing the Rio Grande river into the United States from Mexico, in Granjeno, Texas, on March 12, 2021. (Adrees Latif/Reuters)

The statement in question said one suspected terrorist was apprehended on Jan. 29 while the other was arrested on March 30.

The first man was transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement; the second is being held in federal custody pending removal.

These apprehensions at our border illustrates [sic] the importance of our mission and how we can never stop being vigilant in our everyday mission to protect this great country, Chief Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino said in the deleted statement.

Several House members had told reporters during a visit to the border last month that CBP agents told them about apprehending suspected terrorists.

People theyve caught in the last few days in sector three, or monument three, have been on the terror watch list, Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.), the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, told reporters at the time. Individuals that they have on the watch list for terrorism are now starting to exploit the southern border.

We asked them which countries are people coming from? Yemen, Iran, Sri Lanka, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) added.

McCarthy on Tuesday asked the leaders of the FBI and CIA for a classified briefing in light of the confirmation that two Yemeni suspected terrorists were captured.

While I am grateful to the Border Patrol for doing all they can, I have great concern about the number of bad actors that have escaped arrest and are residing in the United States, he said. We simply have no way of knowing if other terrorists have crossed the border undetected.
GREENWICH  Mary Forde, who for 24 years has led the department that oversees special education in Greenwich Public Schools, on Wednesday tendered her resignation, effective June 30.

As hard as it is to leave, I know Greenwich is in good hands, Forde said in a statement released by the district. Our staffs creativity and commitment to the power of possibility allows students with and without disabilities the benefit of an education in a school system that values every learner.

I will remember the team fondly, and will miss working alongside them in partnership with our parents and community. Together, these groups offer invaluable perspective and unyielding energy to the world of education, the statement said. Working with my colleagues, our district parents, and our community partners has been a true honor.

No reason for the resignation was stated in the school districts statement, though Forde said through a district spokesperson Wednesday that it is time to explore new adventures and options.

Also, Forde also said her departure would have no impact on the ongoing audit of her department and the districts special education services, which the Boston-based consultancy Public Consulting Group is conducting.

As PCG has shared, they will identify areas of strength and areas of growth that will be used to develop an action plan that includes the input and participation from all the stakeholders, Forde said.

According to the statement, the district will be posting to fill Fordes position in the near future.

In recent years, Fordes department has been the frequent target of attacks from special education parents and, at times, educators, who claimed the district was providing inadequate services.

As special needs parents that advocate for all children in the Greenwich Public Schools we remain hopeful, said Jennifer Kutai, Audra ODonovan and Caroline Lerum, a group of parent-advocates, in a joint statement. There is a lot of opportunity for change. We hope someone with a fresh perspective and track record of special education success can be brought to work with the special education community. We wish Ms. Forde well in her future endeavors.

In October, a letter from the Greenwich teachers union to district administrators alleging impropriety was obtained by the Greenwich Time. Specifically, the letter claims that members of the union had been instructed to alter students Individualized Educational Programs (IEPs), which lay out goals and educational requirements for pupils with learning disabilities, in violation of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

Also in the fall, the results of a study of aspects of the districts special education services, conducted by Tennessee-based educational firm Key2Ed, were released to the Board of Education and the public. The study included interviews with 99 parents, staff members and administrators and highlighted feelings of distrust and frustration among many special education parents toward the district.

At about the same time, PCG began its more comprehensive audit of the districts special education services, results of which are expected in the coming months.

Asked to comment on Fordes departure, Board of Education Chair Peter Bernstein said, We wish Mary well in her next chapter.

justin.papp@scni.com; @justinjpapp1; 203-842-2586
AMSTERDAM  Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer said Tuesday a $28.6 billion grant program Congress created to boost struggling restaurants will start serving clients in about three weeks.

Whats on the menu at Russos and so many other restaurants around our state?" asked Schumer, standing outside Russo's Bar and Grill in Amsterdam. "Relief."

That was welcome news for owner Mike Russo, who said his restaurant barely hung on despite receiving a Paycheck Protection Program loan that helped sustain the business and its 16 employees.

Its been a long year," Russo said. We didnt make any money during the first months of the pandemic. We just stayed open to keep our employees on.

Throughout the country, food service and hospitality businesses  like restaurants, bars and hotels  have been among the hardest hit by the pandemic as people were forced to stay home, and businesses closed to the public. Across a region that includes New York state, northern New Jersey and Fairfield County, Conn., leisure and hospitality businesses lost the most jobs  more than 750,000  from February to April 2020, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported. About 50 percent of those jobs had returned as of October.

In mid-March, restaurants in New York were able to start operating at 75 percent capacity, up from 50 percent.

Soon, restaurants like Russo's will be able to apply for more aid from the U.S. Small Business Administration, which will administer the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, offering grants of up to $5 million to restaurants across the country. That's a shift for the SBA, which typically only offers loans, not grants.

According to the National Restaurant Association, the grants will be calculated by subtracting a restaurant's 2020 gross receipts from their 2019 gross receipts. The SBA did not respond to an inquiry about the restaurant program, details of which the agency is still finalizing.

The SBA will deduct the value of any PPP loans a restaurant previously received from the value of the relief grant, according to multiple sources. Restaurants can use the money to pay for payroll, mortgages or rent, utilities, supplies like food and cleaning materials, sick leave for employees and personal protective equipment.

Companies that own more than 20 restaurants or are publicly traded cannot apply. But food trucks, caterers, bars, brew pubs and tasting rooms can get the money.

Another SBA relief program to aid theaters and arts venues will begin offering grants starting Thursday. Some $16.25 billion is available to distribute to museums, concert halls, zoos, movie theaters and talent agencies. Grants will be 45 percent of an operator's 2016 gross revenue. As with the restaurant relief program, previously obtained PPP loans will be deducted from the grants.

The SBA knows these venues are critical to America's economy and understands how hard they've been impacted, as they were among the first to shutter," SBA Administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman said.

At the news conference with Schumer were Rep. Paul Tonko, D-Amsterdam, Amsterdam Mayor Michael Cinquanti and Bob Purtell, a Montgomery County legislator.
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has clarified that it has not issued any notice stating that its functioning would be conducted exclusively through the virtual mode from April 6 to April 17. The office of the Registrar General of the High Court sent out a clarification stating that no such notice, which was being circulated amongst various groups, has been issued by it.

The 'notice' had also said that entry into the high court premises was strictly prohibited, besides stating that the high court's functioning would be exclusively through the virtual mode.

Notably, the Delhi high court commenced complete physical functioning from March 15 onwards. It, however, had said that virtual or hybrid proceedings would be held at the request of lawyers.

The court was holding proceedings through video conferencing, in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak in March last year, and its functioning was restricted to urgent matters from March 16 last year.

Notably, the functioning of the high court and district courts was further restricted and no physical hearing was being conducted due to the spread of COVID-19, from March 25, 2020.

From September last year, a few benches started holding physical courts every day on a rotation basis, and some of them also started holding hybrid proceedings. Under this system, lawyers have the option to attend the hearing via video conference instead of appearing in person.

(With Agency Inputs)

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Supreme Court Refuses to Take Up Religious Accommodation Appeal

The Supreme Court refused to take up an appeal that could have resulted in a different standard for when employers must accommodate the religious beliefs of employees, but two justices objected to the decision in a strongly worded dissent.

The case is Small v. Memphis Light, Gas and Water, court file 19-1388. The Supreme Court denied Smalls petition for certiorari, or review, in an unsigned order April 5 without explaining why, as is its custom when refusing to hear cases.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote an opinion dissenting from the denial of certiorari, which Justice Samuel Alito joined.

Federal law requires companies to accommodate employees religious beliefs as long doing so does not cause undue hardship, the Supreme Court ruled in 1977 in Trans World Airlines v. Hardison. In that decision, the court construed undue hardship as anything that has a more than de minimis, or trivial, cost.

The petitioner, Jason Small, asked the court to reconsider the ruling.

For more than a decade, Small worked as an electrician at Memphis Light, Gas and Water. In 2013, an on-the-job injury forced him into a new role at the company as a service dispatcher.

The new job came with a different schedule and mandatory overtime duties, which made Small, a Jehovahs Witness, worry that the new working hours would conflict with his religious obligations, such as attending worship services on Wednesdays and Sundays, and performing community work on Saturdays.

Small asked the company to place him on reduced pay temporarily while he sought reassignment to a different position with a more conducive schedule. Memphis Light had a history of offering this same accommodation to other employees, but it refused to do so with Small.

Small tried to make the dispatcher role work as best he could, according to Gorsuch.

For a while, things went smoothly enough. Small even used his vacation days when necessary to attend church. Eventually, though, a problem arose. Small asked to use some of his vacation time on Good Friday. At first, the company agreed. Then it backtracked, canceling his vacation request.

When Small went to church anyway, the company suspended him for two days without pay. In response, Small filed suit in 2017, seeking a ruling that the companys conduct violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That federal statute prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion, among other grounds.

A U.S. district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit found that Small had not proved most of his claims, but in a concurring opinion, appeals court Judge Amul Thapar wrote that the legal standard in place since the Supreme Courts 1977 ruling should be reconsidered.

Gorsuch agreed with Thapars suggestion. The justice noted that Memphis Light had granted religious accommodations for subpar employees, allowing them to receive more favorable treatment than better-performing workers if they sought only to attend church.

There is no barrier to our review and no one else to blame, Gorsuch wrote. The only mistake here is of the courts own makingand it is past time for the court to correct it.

At no point in the litigation did anyone suggest that Mr. Smalls requested accommodationreduced pay while he sought reassignmentwould have imposed a significant hardship on his employer. Yet both the district court and Sixth Circuit rejected Mr. Smalls claim all the same.

The Hardison standard is outdated, Gorsuch suggested.

Since that ruling, Congress has adopted additional civil rights laws using the undue hardship standard. And when applying each of those laws, courts are far more demanding.

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, and Affordable Care Act, an employer must provide an accommodation unless doing so would impose significant difficulty or expense in light of the employers financial resources, the number of individuals it employs, and the nature of its operations and facilities.

With these developments, Title VIIs right to religious exercise has become the odd man out, Gorsuch wrote. Alone among comparable statutorily protected civil rights, an employer may dispense with it nearly at whim.
Khartoum, Sudan (PANA) - Days of tribal clashes in Sudans West Darfur have left scores dead and thousands fleeing their homes, the UN envoy to the country said on Tuesday
Rating Action: Moody's assigns A3 to Singtel Group's proposed SGD perpetual securities; outlook stableGlobal Credit Research - 07 Apr 2021Singapore, April 07, 2021 -- Moody's Investors Service has assigned an A3 rating to the proposed SGD subordinated unsecured perpetual securities to be issued by Singtel Group Treasury Pte. Ltd., with an unconditional and irrevocable guarantee from Singapore Telecommunications Limited (Singtel, A1 stable).The rating outlook is stable.Singtel's A1 senior unsecured rating continues to combine (1) its a3 baseline credit assessment (BCA), reflecting the company's underlying strength, derived from its well-established and geographically diversified business platform; and (2) the credit support that Moody's believes Temasek Holdings (Private) Limited (Aaa stable), which owns 52.6% of Singtel, is likely to provide in a distressed situation, which results in a two-notch uplift from Singtel's BCA.RATINGS RATIONALE"The rating assigned to the proposed perpetual securities is two notches below Singtel's BCA of a3, reflecting the subordinated nature of the hybrid securities. We also incorporate two notches of uplift for the rating on the perpetual securities due to support that Temasek is likely to provide in a distressed situation," says Nidhi Dhruv, a Moody's Vice President and Senior Analyst.The proposed securities are senior only to common equity and rank behind Singtel's senior debt obligations in terms of the priority of claim. Moody's considers the perpetual securities as comprising debt and equity in equal proportions when assessing Singtel's overall credit quality. The perpetual distributions are also equally split, and divided between interest charges and distributions.The perpetual securities are being issued under SGT's SGD10 billion euro medium-term note (MTN) programme. Moody's expects Singtel to use the majority of proceeds to refinance debt maturing over the next 12 months. The proposed issuance will not materially change Singtel's credit metrics, given that the issuance size is a relatively small portion of the company's capital structure."Moody's expects Singtel's adjusted leverage will remain elevated at 2.4x-2.5x over fiscal 2022 and fiscal 2023, reflecting operational challenges from the protracted coronavirus outbreak, increased competition in its core markets of Singapore and Australia, high levels of capital spending, and a commitment to shareholder returns," adds Dhruv, also Moody's Lead Analyst for Singtel.The rating also considers the following environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors.Despite having a majority shareholder, governance risk for Singtel is largely mitigated because of the oversight provided by a board that consists of nine independent directors out of a total of eleven directors. Singtel is also listed on the Singapore Exchange and abides by the exchange's prevailing laws and regulations.The stable outlook reflects Moody's expectation that Singtel will maintain its dominant market position in Singapore. Diversification of its earning streams and digitization initiatives will enable a stable business and financial profile over the next 2-3 years. Moody's also expects Singtel to remain committed to sustainable levels of shareholder returns to support its aggressive capital expenditure plans.FACTORS THAT COULD LEAD TO AN UPGRADE OR DOWNGRADE OF THE RATINGUpward pressure on the ratings is unlikely given Singtel's capex requirements over the next 2-3 years. Nevertheless, the ratings could be upgraded if Singtel's overall profitability improves, coupled with an absolute reduction in borrowings, such that its adjusted gross debt/EBITDA (based on cash dividends being added back to core EBITDA) falls below 2.0x on a consistent basis, and adjusted EBITDA margin remains higher than 35% on a sustained basis.The ratings could be downgraded if Singtel's operating and financial profiles remain weak, such that adjusted gross debt/EBITDA (based on cash dividends being added back to core EBITDA) is in excess of 2.6x, or EBITDA margin remains below 30%.The ratings could also be downgraded if the company undertakes further material capital returns in the near term, especially in conjunction with a cash/debt-funded acquisition, or if there is evidence of prospective weakness in the operating results of the company's core operations or in the cash dividends it receives from its overseas associates.In addition to the factors listed above, Singtel's ratings could also be downgraded in case of material changes in the ratings of its support provider, Temasek, or if Temasek reduces its shareholding in Singtel to below 50%. At the same time, industry developments that materially undermine Singtel's relationship with the government could also strain the ratings.The methodologies used in this rating were Telecommunications Service Providers published in January 2017 and available at https://www.moodys.com/researchdocumentcontentpage.aspx?docid=PBC_1055812, and Government-Related Issuers Methodology published in February 2020 and available at https://www.moodys.com/researchdocumentcontentpage.aspx?docid=PBC_1186207. Alternatively, please see the Rating Methodologies page on www.moodys.com for a copy of these methodologies.Singapore Telecommunications Limited (Singtel) is the leading integrated communications services provider in Singapore. It is also the second-largest integrated telecommunications operator in Australia through its wholly owned subsidiary, Singtel Optus Pty Limited.Singtel also has a number of investments in cellular operators throughout the region, which give it a regional footprint across 21 countries, covering around 716 million mobile subscribers as of 30 September 2020. Singtel is 52.5%-owned by Temasek Holdings (Private) Limited, which is wholly owned by the Singapore government (Aaa stable).REGULATORY DISCLOSURESFor further specification of Moody's key rating assumptions and sensitivity analysis, see the sections Methodology Assumptions and Sensitivity to Assumptions in the disclosure form. Moody's Rating Symbols and Definitions can be found at: https://www.moodys.com/researchdocumentcontentpage.aspx?docid=PBC_79004.For ratings issued on a program, series, category/class of debt or security this announcement provides certain regulatory disclosures in relation to each rating of a subsequently issued bond or note of the same series, category/class of debt, security or pursuant to a program for which the ratings are derived exclusively from existing ratings in accordance with Moody's rating practices. For ratings issued on a support provider, this announcement provides certain regulatory disclosures in relation to the credit rating action on the support provider and in relation to each particular credit rating action for securities that derive their credit ratings from the support provider's credit rating. For provisional ratings, this announcement provides certain regulatory disclosures in relation to the provisional rating assigned, and in relation to a definitive rating that may be assigned subsequent to the final issuance of the debt, in each case where the transaction structure and terms have not changed prior to the assignment of the definitive rating in a manner that would have affected the rating. For further information please see the ratings tab on the issuer/entity page for the respective issuer on www.moodys.com.For any affected securities or rated entities receiving direct credit support from the primary entity(ies) of this credit rating action, and whose ratings may change as a result of this credit rating action, the associated regulatory disclosures will be those of the guarantor entity. Exceptions to this approach exist for the following disclosures, if applicable to jurisdiction: Ancillary Services, Disclosure to rated entity, Disclosure from rated entity.The rating has been disclosed to the rated entity or its designated agent (s) and issued with no amendment resulting from that disclosure.This rating is solicited. Please refer to Moody's Policy for Designating and Assigning Unsolicited Credit Ratings available on its website www.moodys.com.Regulatory disclosures contained in this press release apply to the credit rating and, if applicable, the related rating outlook or rating review.Moody's general principles for assessing environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks in our credit analysis can be found at https://www.moodys.com/researchdocumentcontentpage.aspx?docid=PBC_1243406.The Global Scale Credit Rating on this Credit Rating Announcement was issued by one of Moody's affiliates outside the EU and is endorsed by Moody's Deutschland GmbH, An der Welle 5, Frankfurt am Main 60322, Germany, in accordance with Art.4 paragraph 3 of the Regulation (EC) No 1060/2009 on Credit Rating Agencies. Further information on the EU endorsement status and on the Moody's office that issued the credit rating is available on www.moodys.com.The Global Scale Credit Rating on this Credit Rating Announcement was issued by one of Moody's affiliates outside the UK and is endorsed by Moody's Investors Service Limited, One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 5FA under the law applicable to credit rating agencies in the UK. Further information on the UK endorsement status and on the Moody's office that issued the credit rating is available on www.moodys.com.Please see www.moodys.com for any updates on changes to the lead rating analyst and to the Moody's legal entity that has issued the rating.Please see the ratings tab on the issuer/entity page on www.moodys.com for additional regulatory disclosures for each credit rating. Nidhi Dhruv, CFA Vice President - Senior Analyst Corporate Finance Group Moody's Investors Service Singapore Pte. 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Veteran politician and president was on Wednesday discharged from a Srinagar hospital, where he was admitted last week as a precautionary measure after testing positive for COVID-19, officials said.

Abdullah, a former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister, was discharged as doctors were of the opinion that he could recover at home since all his parameters were fine, they said.

The NC president will, however, continue to remain in self-isolation at his residence for some time, the officials added.

"Five days after being admitted to SKIMS, Srinagar with COVID my father was discharged this evening. He will continue the rest of his recovery and recuperation at home. My father and the entire family are indebted and deeply grateful to the doctors, nursing staff & others at the institute," his son and NC vice-president Omar Abdullah wrote on twitter.

"My father has been instructed by his doctors to focus on his recovery & for the time being will not be allowed visitors. He looks forward to completing his recovery so he can resume a full schedule of work," Omar Abdullah said in another tweet.

The 85-year-old NC president tested positive for COVID-19 on March 30. He was kept in home-isolation initially, but doctors on Saturday decided to shift him to a hospital for better medical care.

Several leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, wished him a speedy recovery.

received his first dose of COVID-19 vaccine on March 2.

Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha had visited the SKIMS Hospital on Sunday to enquire about his health from Omar Abdullah.

"In Srinagar, I met Omar Abdullah at SKIMS Hospital, Soura. Enquired about Farooq Sahab's health and instructed the doctors to provide best treatment. I pray for his long and healthy life," the L-G's office had tweeted.

The L-G had also offered to shift the senior Abdullah to another facility or hospital for better monitoring and care.

Omar Abdullah expressed his gratitude to Sinha for inquiring after his father's health, and said the NC president was getting the best possible care at the facility.

"Thank you for your visit to enquire after my father @manojsinha_ ji. We are grateful for the offer to shift my father, the doctors & other medical staff at SKIMS Srinagar are amongst the best anywhere and my father is getting the best possible care," he had written on Twitter.

(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.)
(Natural News) A Louisiana man who allegedly spent $15,000 on a vacation to the Walt Disney World resort in Orlando, Fla., was hunted down and arrested after he failed to stop at a Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) temperature check tent upon entry into the childrens park.

Kelly Sills, 47, pleaded not guilty after being found and detained by police near the Boathouse Restaurant at Disney Springs. Body cam footage shows park officers and Orange County sheriffs deputies approaching Sills, who immediately fired back at them that he had paid $15,000 to be there and thus could not be trespassed.

Disney disagrees, though, as getting a temperature check for the Chinese virus is mandatory upon entry into any Disney facility. Sills will now have to appear in court to argue his case.

Deputies claim that Sills skipped the Disney temperature check tent and later refused to go back to it when confronted. He then allegedly ignored orders from security guards and sheriffs deputies to leave the park.

Hes going to have to go for the day, a security officer is heard saying in the body cam footage.

We are going to escort you now, sir, a sheriffs deputy is then heard saying to Sills. You are being asked to leave the premises by the security manager at Disney Springs. You are officially being trespassed.

When Sills attempted to reason with the officers and security guards, asking them why he was being trespassed while staring at his smartphone, they retorted back that Walt Disney World is private property, regardless of whether or not he paid to be there.

Back and forth arguing continued until eventually Sills agreed to go back to the temperature check tent for compliance. It was already too late, though, as the officers and guards had decided that Sills was to be punished for not complying sooner.

Will you take my temperature before you kick me out, please? Sills began to grovel as nobody nearby came to his aid.

Theyll do that in jail, sir, a sheriffs deputy responded smugly.

Well, thats good, Sills responded before being hauled off to jail.

Dont be stupid: Stop supporting Disney

Sills first mistake was wasting his money on anything Disney. The company is evil to the core, not to mention the fact that it has been open knowledge for months that Disney theme parks are Wuhan flu hellholes of tyranny.

A sizable segment of America appears unable to shed their Disney obsession, however, so stupidity such as this continues. Sills would have been better off spending his hard-earned money elsewhere rather than flush it down the toilet at Disney.

A similar incident occurred last month when 51-year-old Kelly McKin of North Palm Beach was charged with battery on a uniformed officer. After being told to put back on her mask, McKin spit in the guards face, prompting her arrest.

The security officer was not directly hit, but some saliva got on her forehead, reported the Daily Mail Online.

Back in August, 35-year-old Enrico Toro was arrested for allegedly hitting a security guard in the head and threatening to kill him over a face mask dispute. Toro was charged with misdemeanor battery.

According to the Walt Disney World website, face coverings are required at Disney parks for all guests two years of age and older. This includes guests who have been injected with experimental Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) gene therapy chemicals.

Please bring your own face coverings and wear them at all times, except when dining or swimming, Disney further says about the requirements for its visitors.

More of the latest news about Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) insanity can be found at Pandemic.news.

Sources for this article include:

DailyMail.co.uk

NaturalNews.com
To make an appointment or to see a list of eligible jobs categories and underlying health conditions that qualify, (visit:) www.rivcoph.org/covid-19-vaccine, stated Riverside County. Those who need assistance to make an appointment can call 2-1-1.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-08 00:15:23|Editor: huaxia

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Tunisian President Kais Saied (R) meets with Libyan Foreign Minister Najla al-Mangoush in Tunis, Tunisia, on April 7, 2021. Libyan Foreign Minister Najla al-Mangoush arrived in Tunisia on Wednesday for a surprise visit that had not been previously announced, a source from the Tunisian ministry of Foreign Affairs told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. (Tunisian Presidency/Handout via Xinhua)

TUNIS, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Libyan Foreign Minister Najla al-Mangoush arrived in Tunisia on Wednesday for a surprise visit that had not been previously announced, a source from the Tunisian ministry of Foreign Affairs told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The same source said that this was the first trip of the Libyan foreign minister since her rise to the head of diplomacy in the Government of National Unity led by Abdul Hamid Dbeibah.

The schedule of this visit included holding consultations with Tunisian Minister of Foreign Affairs Othman Jerandi on bilateral relations.

According to the same source, the Libyan minister will also have a meeting with Tunisian President Kais Saied to discuss bilateral cooperation in various fields and a number of regional and international issues of common interest.

It is noteworthy that this visit came about 20 days after Tunisian president's visit to the Libyan capital, Tripoli, on March 17, the first official visit by a Tunisian head of state to Libya since 2012. Enditem
If we truly set forth to provide support and accommodations to pregnant workers to help ensure that they can get the help they need at work to stay healthy and safe through a pregnancy, then this is not the bill, said Democratic Sen. Shelli Yoder, of Bloomington. What this ends up doing is it gives legislators an opportunity to pat ourselves on the back to say we did something, we passed this, when really its more of a slap in the face of pregnant workers.
Whats in the Bill

Welcome Flexibility

Help for Students

A Mutually Rewarding Relationship

Fall 2020 enrollment at public colleges, which account for 70 percent of postsecondary students, fell 2.5 percent , a drop of nearly half a million students. The sharpest declines were at two-year colleges, a career lifeline for both youth and working Americans. Enrollment in these schools dropped more than 13 percent , according to the National Student Clearinghouse.Communities of color have been disproportionately harmed. The Strada Education Network found that Black and Latino students were almost twice as likely to have changed or canceled their education plans because of the pandemic.Doug Shapiro, who heads research at the National Student Clearinghouse, says that these trends are unprecedented. "You can almost think of this as an entire generation that will enter adulthood with lower education, lower skills, less employability, ultimately lower productivity," he told NPR This potential for long-term economic trouble runs alongside a present disaster for colleges. Estimates of the money they need to address the financial impact of the pandemic range from $120 billion to $183 billion . Revenue losses have come in concert with a need for billions in unplanned investments to keep these schools operating at all, from COVID-19 testing to training and technology for remote learning.The American Rescue Plan includes almost $40 billion for institutes of higher education. This is $3 billion more than the combined funding from the CARES Act and the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act . It retains guidelines designed to weight support toward students who need it the most, and offers new rules with flexibility to match funds to the specific circumstances of institutions and individuals.The ARP appropriates an additional $36 billion to the Department of Education for a Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF), first established under the CARES Act. Funds will be distributed directly to public and private nonprofit colleges, with the amount determined on the basis of both full-time-equivalent and headcount enrollment of Pell grant recipients, students with exceptional financial need. No less than half of the funds must go to student grants.Using both metrics in the formula is important; headcount enrollment includes part-time students, and more than two-thirds of community college students attend on a part-time basis. The American Council on Education (ACE) has created a simulation of what every institution in the country might receive.The bill includes $3 billion for historically Black colleges and universities, tribal colleges, Hispanic-serving institutions and other minority-serving institutions , an additional $198 million for institutions with the greatest unmet needs related to COVID-19 and $35 million for Howard University. Almost $400 million will go to for-profit colleges, with the stipulation that all the money they receive be used for student grants.Schools can use their 50 percent portion of the funds to cover expenses associated with the pandemic, including lost revenue, costs they have already incurred, technology necessary for distance education and faculty and staff training. The exact needs will vary from institution to institution, says Jonathan Fansmith, director of government relations at ACE.The impact of the pandemic on a small private institution and the impact of the pandemic on a large R1 research institution with a teaching hospital are very different, he says. Where the blows to revenues come from, where the new costs are going to be, where the crack lines that have formed are being seen, differ from campus to campus.Enrollment declines are a common source of financial pain. Another, surprisingly, is the cost of COVID-19 testing, a massive expense, he says. Colleges can count on so-called auxiliary revenue from sources such as housing, dining halls and on-campus stores for anywhere from 10 to 30 percent of their revenue, and these became ghost towns during the pandemic. The costs of moving instruction online, whether buying new servers, hiring online tutors or expanding staff have added to the impact.Whats great about the way the federal government provided the funds is that they recognized the pandemic hit different schools differently, says Fansmith. They provided the flexibility to allow schools to address their own campus needs  it wasn't a uniform, top-down sort of approach.The financial challenges faced by students are also varied, and the ARP is also inclusive in regard to them. Students enrolled only in distance learning are eligible for aid, as are non-degree seeking, continuing education and noncredit students.The funds are intended as grants to cover emergency costs due to the pandemic, says Megan Coval, vice president, policy and federal relations at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA), and schools have considerable latitude regarding how they are awarded.Schools can use the grants to cover any component of a student's cost of attendance, she says. Maybe they lost their job, or their parents lost their job and they couldn't pay their tuition, maybe theyre having difficulty paying for food, housing, health care or child care  its pretty broad.Schools welcome this flexibility as well as the new infusion of grant money, adds Coval. The previous administrations Department of Education prohibited certain classes of students from receiving grants from CARES funds. Excluded groups included DACA students, and the Department of Education has not yet issued guidance on this point.The ARP funds can be used to cover expenses related to the coronavirus that date all the way back to the beginning of the national emergency. If a student has a tuition balance from October of last year, a grant can be used to cover that balance, says Coval. That's really great news.The rescue plan includes another feature that can have significant impact on student solvency. For years, veteran advocates have urged Congress to close a loophole that fueled predatory practices by private colleges. These institutions are required by law to obtain at least 10 percent of their income from sources other than federal Title IV grants The goal was for schools to demonstrate their value by finding revenue sources that could serve as independent checks on quality, says Yan Cao, a Century Foundation Fellow who studies for-profit colleges.However, funds from military tuition assistance programs are not part of Title IV. Schools offering a combination of low-value services and high tuition that the market would never support began to recruit veterans with aggressive marketing, misrepresenting the legitimacy of their educational programs and pushing veterans into bad loans to cover exorbitant fees.The ARP closes this loophole, excluding all federal funds from the 10 percent of the 90/10 standard. The most optimistic scenario is that the bad actors will go out of business, but thats not inevitable. The problem emerged from gamesmanship, and time will tell what the next phase of gamesmanship might look like, says Cao.The nearly $40 billion included for students and campuses will be enormously helpful, but this emergency is not over for either higher education or the country as a whole, said ACE president Ted Mitchell in March when Congress approved the ARP.At the time, he believed that students and institutions battered by steep declines in revenues and soaring expenses needed at least $57 billion more. If subsequent estimates are valid, the number could be twice as high.Future investments in higher education have as much to do with economic recovery as with making colleges whole. Fortunately, the Biden administration has a different view of these institutions than its predecessor, says ACEs Fansmith. Theres an awareness of their importance at the highest levels  Jill Biden teaches at a community college.It wont be possible to rebuild the economy, develop the technologies of the future, train a workforce that can make the country globally competitive, or reach communities throughout the country with vaccinations and health care without the help of universities, he says.It's a mutually rewarding relationship; we're going to help them meet their goals, and they're going to help us meet our goals.
About Daylight Saving Time, there are 24 hours in a day. It doesnt matter if you turn the clocks forward or backward or spin it around, there are still 24 hours in a day. There is no need to change the clock.

Fountain Springs



It is a very handy thing to throw out they are going to work on infrastructure. That is not what the American people are interested in. They are interested in voter integrity. They are interested in border security and safety from your enemies.

Pottsville



What a great letter from Sarah Casey, president and CEO of Schuylkill Women in Crisis. Exactly and to the point. Halcovage must resign. Suspend him with pay just to keep him out of the courthouse until his trial. Where is the protection of womens rights?

Pottsville



The truth about the Keystone Pipeline project is that it would require fewer than 2,000 two-year construction jobs and that number of jobs would be around 35, after construction. Also, the majority of Keystone oil would be sent to markets overseas and would not bring United States fuel prices down. As a matter of fact, fuel prices might go up.

Pottsville



If you want to see how foolishly our government has treated COVID-19, go online and look up the Great Barrington Declaration. It has been signed by over 50,000 medical and public health practitioners. You will get a real education.

New Ringgold



Your choice: Trumps motto, America first, or Bidens motto, America last. Get ready for the illegal immigrants coming to a town near you. If you think the COVID numbers are bad now, just wait for these illegal immigrants to spread it more.

Schuylkill Haven



Hang in there, George. We are a country of laws where you are innocent until proven guilty. Dont let all of those screaming voices force you to resign. Who are these accusers?

Pine Grove



Thank you, Minersville. I am glad to know that I am not the only person in Schuylkill County with brain cells that are actually working. In the matter of the charges against Halcovage, I dont know if the case is valid or not, but with the exception of minors being sexually abused, you want to make a charge against somebody, you should put your name on it. You should not be allowed to do it anonymously.

Shenandoah



Does anybody see what Biden is doing to this country? He is wrecking it. You better tune in to Fox to learn something.

Barnesville



To the caller from Pine Grove thanking Walmart for the COVID shot: I, too, had my shot at the Walmart clinic and they were courteous. They were great and I would really like to thank them. But one thing is, you said that if you had to wait for the governor you would never get it. Who do you think allowed Walmart to get the vaccine? The vaccine is not being bought by Walmart. Get it straight before you open your mouth.

Schuylkill Haven



The papers editorial on March 31 about the importance of a civics bill for education was excellent. The ignorance of the average American these days leaves so much to be desired. And Sarah Caseys letter the same day calling for county commissioner Halcovage to resign was also spot on.

Schuylkill Haven



I agree with Sarah Casey. The Republican members of the House of Representatives have the ability to immediately impeach Mr. Halcovage.

Pottsville



I say dont blame PennDOT for the road problems. I say blame all these big trucks that are driving all over Schuylkill County. The Burma Road used to be beautiful and now there is that dump up there and all those big tractor-trailers coming from New York, New Jersey, everywhere. The road is nothing but potholes and it is getting worse.

Mahanoy City



There is an extremely good reason by the Blue State Bailout Bill, oops sorry, I meant the Corona Relief Package, wasnt supported by any Republicans. Do you know how little money actually went to businesses and people who need it? It is disgusting. Its just a Democrat wish list. You got your little crumbs and now you are going to have to pay for it. No, not you, your children.

Minersville



Heres an economic lesson for you. Biden is going to raise the corporate tax to pay for infrastructure, not to mention pet projects. The corporations pass the tax onto the consumer, the price of living goes up, the consumer pays more money out of their pocket. You are going to have to make $400,000 a year or more just so you can pay federal income tax after Biden gets done with us.

Frackville



Take a drive through Pottsville and check out the street signs, rusty upside down and some no signs at all. Its springtime, lets spruce up Pottsville and make it look good. Also, about the Gordon Nagle Trail, I agree 100%.

Pottsville



Hey, Klingerstown, dont worry about Rich Magnani and William Wagner reporting the facts when Joe Biden can stand in front of a teleprompter and wonder where he is and read off his cheat sheet, and VP Harris talks without laughing and making a joke. Keep watching fake news, CNN, MSNBC.

Pottsville



I cant believe that this is not headline news about this situation at our southern border. Grown adults drop a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old over a fence and nothing is done. It does not make front-page news or second-page news. What is going on in this country? It is sinful.

Oneida



Since the City of Pottsville doesnt want to do anything for the downtown, maybe they could evoke eminent domain on the Thompson building and give it to Craig Shields so he can do something with it, like he does in other areas, before it falls down.

Pottsville




Haiti - 218th death of Toussaint Louverture : Message from Lesly Conde





This Wednesday April 7, 2021 reminds us of the 218th anniversary of the death of Toussaint Louverture, hero of independence who was deported to France in June 1802, imprisoned at Fort de Joux https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-12415-haiti-politic-moving-tribute-of-president-martelly-to-toussaint-louverture.html , where ill he died in his cell on April 7, 1803.



On this Remembrance Day, as every year, Lesly Conde, Former Consul General of Haiti in Chicago (August 26, 2004 - May 25, 2018) shares a message of reflections with all Haitians.



Message from Lesly Conde :



"Dear compatriots and friends everywhere,



April 7 of the year 2021 brings us to the 218th anniversary of the death of Toussaint Louverture. This man, who was born into slavery, broke all kinds of barriers to become one of the most interesting and respected figures in the history of mankind. Historians rightly call it the precursor to the independence of the world's first black republic.



It is the moment to reflect together on the importance of the passage on earth of this great man for the history of humanity, and more particularly that of our Nation. At a time when the dehumanization of an entire race served the interests of the slave system, this giant came onto the scene and was distinguished by his bravery, integrity, sagacity, and unwavering devotion to the cause of human dignity.



Toussaint Louverture is the man who overcame all kinds of physical and psychological obstacles to end up asserting himself and establishing the solid foundations of the warm fight against black slavery; this sordid exploitation of the human by the human. This man who fiercely defended the ideals of justice and freedom in defiance of his own privileges, deserves to be known and respected as one of the most legitimate and admirable heroes that the human race has ever produced.



The man who dedicated his entire life to the cause of human development, did not see the birth of the Haitian Nation of which he is the main founder. For having remained faithful to the cause of his race, Toussaint Louverture met a horrible and humiliating end at Fort de Joux. He had to endure torture and mockery that we will not hear about. Even if its heritage belongs to the whole world, it is first and foremost ours. We Haitians are the deep and many roots he alluded to at the dark time of his kidnapping.



If nothing can prevent us from being proud of Toussaint and of our unique identity from which he is the origin, we must also honor his precious memory by practicing, like him, self-love, solidarity and unconditional attachment. to our common dignity.



At this time when our country is facing the challenges of the 21st century, we must, like Toussaint Louverture, let ourselves be guided by wisdom, patience and determination.



Today, the real settlers have changed continents. They have also changed their language, but they remain just as hateful, so inclined to deprive us of what is rightfully ours. Today more than ever, the example of Toussaint Louverture can guide us towards the better days that belong to us.



Thank you for your attention !"



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Jennifer Lopez's nickname was inspired by Heavy D.

The On The Floor hitmaker has revealed how her infamous nickname J.Lo was formulated by the late rapper, and after she decided to name her second album J.Lo, it 'really stuck' and stayed with her throughout her career.

'The name J.Lo came from [the late rapper] Heavy D. He used to come by the studio for my first album [On the 6, 1999] and would call me Jenny-Lo, Jennifer-Lo, or J.Lo,' she told InStyle.

The past: Jennifer Lopez's nickname was inspired by Heavy D. The On The Floor hitmaker has revealed how her infamous nickname J.Lo was formulated by the late rapper and after she decided to name her second album J.Lo, it 'really stuck' and stayed with her throughout her career. Seen in 1999

J,Lo fever: The siren added: 'When I was doing my second album, I decided to call it J.Lo [2001], and I believe that's when it really stuck!'

The siren added: 'When I was doing my second album, I decided to call it J.Lo [2001], and I believe that's when it really stuck!'

She went on to name clothing and perfume lines J.Lo as well as her new skincare collection.

Jennifer also talking about her career. She said she is incredibly passionate about her work and insists it never feels like a job to her.

She added: 'I love what I do. I'm passionate about it. Every day does not seem like a job to me.

'I can honestly say I'm living a dream, and I'm grateful every day that I wake up. I have tireless energy for what I do. I have an amazing team who help me both personally and professionally. I really believe the most important thing is to have great people around you.'

The name master: 'The name J.Lo came from [the late rapper] Heavy D. He used to come by the studio for my first album [On the 6, 1999] and would call me Jenny-Lo, Jennifer-Lo, or J.Lo,' she told InStyle. Seen in 1991

Early days: When the budding musician wore a green Versace silk chiffon dress to the 42nd Grammy Awards ceremony in 2000

She has never looked better: The chart topper shared her story with InStyle magazine

Jennifer also has a glittering career in Hollywood and she 'trusts' herself more with it now.

Speaking to InStyle magazine for their May 2021 issue, she said: 'I've had the same approach to acting and the same teacher, Aaron Speiser, since I first started in my 20s.

'We go through the script together, talk about who the character is, and consider the effects of what they experience.

'I've become confident in the process, and I trust myself more,' she said.

And Jennifer added that when she started out she was so afraid that she would forget something or not be able to deliver in front of the camera.

'I don't have that [issue] now. I've always said that preparation and rehearsal make me very confident when it's time to perform, and with experience, it gets even better,' added the star who is now shooting Shotgun Wedding in the Dominican Republic.

Oddly, her fiance Alex Rodriguez was not mentioned in the cover story as rumours continue that they are on the rocks, though Lopez has denied it.

Another movie: The star is now shooting Shotgun Wedding in the Dominican Republic
BOSTON -- Red Sox catcher Christian Vazquez took a page out of Carlos Correas playbook to describe his offensive performance Wednesday afternoon.

Im feeling good, Vazquez said after hitting his second home run in as many days and driving in three runs against the Rays. Im feeling sexy at the plate.

Vazquez, who hit a game-tying homer in the ninth inning of Tuesdays dramatic win, launched another ball over the Green Monster in the fourth inning to give Boston an early 3-1 lead. Boston won, 9-2, finishing off a three-game sweep against the remaining American League champions.

For Vazquez, who was in the lineup as the designated hitter against Tampa Bay lefty Ryan Yarbrough on Wednesday, the last two games have been the continuation of a hot start offensively. The 30-year-old is 8-for-19 (.421) with two homers, a double and four RBIs in six games this season. He was 2-for-4 with a homer, three RBIs and two runs Wednesday.

Making that start even more impressive is the fact Vazquez almost wasnt ready for the Opening Day roster. The catcher was held out of the final week of spring training games after being hit in the face with an errantly thrown ball during a drill and requiring stitches for a laceration under his eye.

Hes one of the toughest ones in that clubhouse, said manager Alex Cora. He wants to play every day. That catching position is a tough one and he knows it, but we had no doubt as far as him performing because his swing is very simple. It was just a matter of stamina.

Vazquez has produced at the plate in each of the last two seasons, setting career highs in OPS (.798 in 2019 and .801 in 2020) in each of the last two seasons. He hit just 10 home runs in his first 291 big-league games from 2014 to 2018 but has now hit 32 in his last 191 games. Twenty-two of his 42 Vazquezs career home runs have either tied the score or given the Red Sox the lead.

I think any homer feels good, when you crush that ball, Vazquez said. When you hit the ball like that, it feels good anytime. Even more when you put your team ahead and we go ahead.

Once known as a defense-first catcher, Vazquez has evolved into an all-around player for the Red Sox over the last 2+ seasons. Though hes not being tasked with carrying the load for an offense that also includes the likes of J.D. Martinez, Xander Bogaerts and Rafael Devers, Vazquez has become a threat to opposing pitchers.

When I see how people rank catchers, outside of our world, hes the closest think to a complete package, Cora said.

Related links:

Boston Red Sox sweep Rays as Nathan Eovaldi throws 7 strong innings, Christian Vazquez homers again in 9-2 win in finale

Boston Red Sox option Tanner Houck to Worcester: We had a plan coming into the season, Alex Cora says

Boston Red Sox overcome 3 deficits in 9th inning or later for first time since 1954 in improbable win over Rays: We didnt stop playing
UNITED NATIONS, April 6 (Xinhua) -- UN Undersecretary-General for Peace Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix on Tuesday asked Mali to carry forward the current political transition.

"Any sustainable improvement of the security situation in Mali is predicated, in no small part, on the success of the current political transition," he told the Security Council in a briefing.

While the transition remains fragile, encouraging signs have been recorded over the past three months, he noted.

Seven months into the political transition scheduled to last 18 months, authorities of the transition have kick-started the functioning of the main institutions of the transition. In February, the government issued its agenda for the period ahead, and the transitional parliament swiftly voted to approve it during its first session, said Lacroix.

"It is crucial that the pace of these reforms be urgently accelerated while ensuring that the largest number of actors join the process. In the weeks and months ahead, the success of the transition will depend on the commitment of the Malian stakeholders to ensure that the transition and the key reform processes underpinning it remain inclusive, transparent, and credible."

Among the government's pressing priorities is the completion of a series of crucial political and institutional reforms. These include the territorial redistricting, the electoral reforms, and the reform of the Constitution, he said.

With regard to preparations for elections at the end of the transition period, discussions over the past few weeks between the authorities of the transition, political actors, and civil society groups have yet to result in an agreement over which reforms should be enacted, including on the important issue of the management of the polls. As a result, an official electoral calendar has not been issued, he said.

"At this critical juncture, we encourage Malian political actors to work in a spirit of compromise and enact reforms aimed at creating an environment conducive to peaceful, inclusive, transparent and credible elections. These elections represent the litmus test for the current transition and a necessary step towards the return of Mali to constitutional rule," said Lacroix.

Increasing participation, including among women and youth and boosting the credibility of the polls would be key in avoiding that this landmark of the democratic process once again becomes the trigger of further political instability in Mali, he added.

While the implementation of the Peace Agreement has remained slow, positive momentum and a new sense of trust among the Malian parties have emerged in recent weeks, and efforts to improve Malian's ownership of the agreement have been undertaken, he said.

"We urge Malian parties to build on the momentum generated in recent weeks to accelerate the redeployment and effective use of the reconstituted units of the army in the North, the operationalization of the Northern Development Zone and the establishment of the territorial police," said Lacroix, noting that six months after representatives of the signatory movements joined a Malian government, a first in the years since the signing of the agreement, now is the time to translate the commitments made into concrete progress on the ground.

As Mali continues to face a host of political, security, human rights and humanitarian challenges, the support of the international community and of the Security Council remains of utmost importance to ensure that national stakeholders live up to their commitments, he said.
In a move to finally end years of lawsuits, a trio of men who say a former Warren County sheriff sexually abused them as boys in county custody in the 1980s have spelled out all of the allegations of what was allegedly a dark but open secret within the county offices, joked about but largely ignored.

As sheriff from 1982 to 91, Edward Bullock controlled security at the courthouse in Belvidere and oversaw prisoner transfers. When boys and young teens needed a ride back and forth from the county juvenile detention center or youth shelter, Bullock would allegedly break protocol by volunteering to drive them  alone. He is said to have groomed his young victims with candy and backrubs in his courthouse office, and on those rides he would stop in a remote area and rape them.

Bullocks openly dangerous conduct was observed and overtly discussed by county employees and officials for years  yet somehow pacified, tolerated and allowed to continue, concludes the motion for summary judgement, filed last week, which claims the evidence is strong enough that no jury is needed for the court to hold the county liable in a trio of civil cases.

It continues: Not one Warren County employee would have allowed their own child to be transported alone by Bullock on one of his special rides during the time when these plaintiffs were abused. Standing in the place of parents, Warren County had the same clear legal and moral obligation to safeguard these children from abuse. Warren County clearly failed to do so despite the overwhelming evidence of clear danger.

The depositions and reports included in the latest court filing include some transcripts obtained and reported by lehighvalleylive.com in 2014, a year after the first lawsuit was filed. In them, county employees say that Bullocks activities were discussed knowingly within the courthouse: Officers laughed about Bullocks type, about the lucky rides between the court and shelter, and hands-on counseling in his office. Those who reported concerns said they were brushed off. One said that even out-of-county police academy cadets knew about the Warren County sheriffs transgressions.

The countys lead attorney in the case, Jerald Howarth, declined to comment on the filing, saying he had not yet read it and that documents in the case are supposed to be under seal.

The attorney for the three plaintiffs, Jeff Russo, said he is challenging the seal in a separate court motion and that he notified the court and county that the plaintiffs filings would be made publicly. The latest filing was made publicly in response to a rare public statement from the county offices related to the cases, in which the county said an attempt to portray the county and its elected officials as being indifferent to the prevention of child abuse  is categorically and unequivocally false  itself a response to a pending protest this month outside the courthouse.

The county has decided to come out publicly and basically discredit our clients out of the blue, Russo said, so weve had to change our stance on this.

"I'm just completely stressed," was Edward Bullock's explanation for his resignation as Warren County's sheriff in November 1991. For months, rumors swirled about the reason until it was announced in March 1992 that he was the subject of a state police sting operation in which he tried to curry sexual favors from a trooper posing as a sexually abused teenaged boy.lehighvalleylive.com file photo

THE CASES

Edward Bullock died in 2015 at age 86. The ongoing civil cases seek to establish the countys liability for failing to protect children in county custody.

Bullock resigned from his elected office in 1991 just after winning his fourth term. He was the subject of a state police sting in which he tried to curry sexual favors from a trooper posing as a sexually abused teenaged boy. He pleaded guilty to official misconduct in 1992 and served nine months in jail.

The first lawsuit against the county was filed in 2013. It claims the victim, identified only as W.M., was a 10-year-old boy who was repeatedly abused and raped at least once in 1987 and 88, including while being transported by the employee to a county-run youth shelter in Oxford Township.

Those claims were the basis of a criminal trial in July 2015 when Bullock was 86. The accuser faced Bullock in the Hunterdon County courtroom, testifying of abuse by the sheriff during a transport in 1988. The trial ended in a 6-6 deadlock and was declared a mistrial. Bullock died a few months later.

Ex-Warren County sheriff Edward Bullock, 86, appears in state Superior Court in Flemington in July 2015 for his trial on charges he sexually assaulted a boy in the 1980s. The jury eventually deadlocked, with one juror saying they believed the accuser's claims but did not see enough physical evidence to convict Bullock.Sue Beyer | For lehighvalleylive.com

A second lawsuit, by a victim identified as C.C., was filed against the county in 2015 with many similar claims. A third lawsuit was filed in 2016 claims a young boy in custody, identified as R.M., was targeted and repeatedly abused between 1987 and 1989, including at Bullocks Lopatcong Township home and at the home of Bullocks friend, identified only as R.C.

Those are the three cases represented by the Russo Law Offices in Phillipsburg, which have been under seal.

A fourth lawsuit was filed in May 2020, which is not sealed. In that, Jack Jeffress, now of Los Angeles and represented by a New York City law firm, was a teenage hitchhiker on his way to New York City in August 1979 when then-Undersheriff Edward Bullock allegedly picked him up, brought him back to Bullocks home and drugged and raped the boy with another unidentified man over a few days until Jeffress escaped through a bathroom window. Both sides in that case are expected to have evidence gathered by June, according to court filings.

Lehighvalleylive.com does not usually identify victims of sexual assault, but Jeffress has been public about his experience and outspoken against the county. He is organizing an April 27 protest at the courthouse in Belvidere.

In Jeffresss case, the county has tried to argue that Bullock was acting as an individual, and that the county government is not responsible for his actions.

THE STATEMENTS

The April 1 motion for summary judgment in the first three lawsuits provides a glimpse inside the cases that so far have been under seal.

It says the court already has established that Bullock clearly falls under the countys responsibility. It seeks to further establish that Warren County failed in a duty to act in a protective, parental role to children in its custody. The filing attempts to do so by establishing a pattern of Bullocks conduct, known years before most of the plaintiffs said they were abused.

If successful, a jury would only be necessary to determine appropriate compensation for damages.

To support its claim, the motion cites statements, reports and other documentation from more than a dozen individuals, including state troopers who investigated and charged Bullock in the early 90s, confidential sources from the initial investigation and former officers from the sheriffs department and juvenile facilities. All names are redacted and replaced with initials in the copy of the document obtained by lehighvalleylive.com. At least some of the statements were in transcripts previously obtained by lehighvalleylive.com for a 2014 series on the allegations.

Multiple sources in the filing describe Bullocks type: White boys with blond hair, blue eyes with a certain build and no father figure in their lives. They always got better treatment  special attention, candy, cigarettes  especially over girls and minorities, the statements say.

Everybody laughed because Sheriff Bullock  showed up with a juvenile, blond-haired and blue-eyed, said T.V., a probation officer and one source cited in the motion. Looking back on it, it was kind of sick on our part to be so cavalier about the fact that he had a type.

Another source, cited as L.R., a secretary at the county youth shelter and now-closed Warren Acres detention facility, said she brought her newborn son to the courthouse one day: I just remember, and this is a terrible thing ... my son was born with a lot of black hair and somebody made the comment to me: Be thankful hes not blond.

Edward Bullock was Warren County's sheriff from 1982 to 1991, when he abruptly resigned amid an investigation. This photo was taken in April 1992 when he was sentenced for official misconduct. Accusations that he sexually assaulted boys in custody persisted until his death 2015 and lawsuits allege the county knowingly ignored Bullock's actions. lehighvalleylive.com file photo

Bullock would allegedly troll the Phillipsburg Mall food court and arcade on weekends, according to one confidential source from the 1991 state police investigation. Courthouse workers who later gave statements said the sheriff would pick out kids from the lineup outside the courtroom.

There were comments on a daily basis, T.R., a sheriffs officer, said in a 2013 statement cited in the latest motion. Oh, the sheriffs got a kid in his office now, you know, and theyd get like a little smirk or a giggle ... Everybody that was involved in the Warren County courthouse and the surrounding politics knew. Absolutely, it wasnt a secret. There just wasnt a secret.

All three of Russos plaintiffs reported being raped or molested in similar circumstances: as Bullock was transporting them, alone. Testimony cited in the motion says that violated established county policies that required two officers on a transport, and that the youth be handcuffed in the backseat. Bullock, it says, would let them ride unrestrained up front.

In the squad room, said another sheriffs officer, identified as V.B., when one of the boys names would be down for pickup at Warren Acres or the shelter ... they would make jokes and say, Oh, just put the sheriffs name down there cause you know no one else is going to get that trip. ... They would just offer, volunteer the information: Oh, you do know about the sheriff, dont you? No. And then they would say, well, he likes boys.

To demonstrate how widely known it was, the legal motion cites a 2014 lehighvalleylive.com interview with former county Commissioner (then called a freeholder) John Polhemus, who said it was common knowledge that exposed the county to lawsuits: I knew about (the rumors) and expressed privately to my fellow freeholders that I was concerned about potential civil liabilities, he told lehighvalleylive.com for that report.

Even people outside the county knew, according to one statement by sheriffs officer V.B. in the motion: I remember when I went to the police academy, I was only employed there three months in the Sheriffs Department and I had cadets at the police academy say to me, oh, you work for that sheriff whos a [gay slur]. And it was like embarrassing. ... This was cadets from other counties (who) would say that. So they heard it through someone. ... Isnt it embarrassing that other people even outside the county know about the sheriff.

At least two of the sources cited in the latest legal motion said they tried to report their suspicions about Bullock. But they were allegedly thwarted by the director of the Warren Acres youth detention facility and shelter, identified in the filing as J.C.

I ran it past (J.C.) a couple times, said L.R., the secretary. I said to him, Dont you think that was odd behavior? Dont you think this is weird that theyre saying this kind of stuff? Its weird. But he would never say one way or the other. He would just say, Well, you know, some things are better not known. Or ... Well, he is the sheriff. Like, you dont want to mess with authority. Like, dont do that.

In statements for the civil cases, the motion reports that J.C. repeatedly denied knowledge of any suspicions about Bullocks behavior, and claimed no recollection of any role in the 1991 investigation, or discussions leading up to the civil and criminal trials, though multiple sources appeared to testify otherwise.

A group rallies outside state Superior Court in Flemington on July 28, 2015, during the trial of Edward Bullock, the former Warren County sheriff charged with raping a boy in county custody. The protesters supported the accuser and pressured Warren County to disclose more information. The county still faces four lawsuits from men who say Bullock abused and raped them as boys and allege county officials knowingly ignored it, allowing Bullock to continue.Sue Beyer | For lehighvalleylive.com

The county must still respond to the summary judgment motion, but Russo said he expects a hearing on it in May.

First, he expects a hearing this month on his motion to unseal the records of the last eight years of litigation, which would shed public light on the testimony, arguments and tactics so far unseen outside the courtroom.

If you want to put this out in the public, then let the public hear the real story, Russo said in reference to the countys earlier public statement. Our clients quietly litigated this for almost a decade ... waiting for their day in court.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to lehighvalleylive.com.

Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@lehighvalleylive.com.
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- SK Capital Partners, LP, a private investment firm focused on the specialty materials, chemicals and pharmaceuticals sectors, has completed its previously announced acquisition of IPACKCHEM Group SAS (IPACKCHEM or the Company), a leader in sustainability-oriented barrier packaging.

Founded in 1987 by Jean-Philippe Morvan as a division of Air Products Group, IPACKCHEM is a leading global supplier of innovative and specialized barrier packaging solutions. IPACKCHEMs leading market positions in the Crop Protection and Specialty Chemical markets are further underscored by its commitment to providing 100% recyclable plastic barrier packaging. IPACKCHEM is headquartered in Paris, with global operations spanning seven countries and four continents.

IPACKCHEM represents SKs second investment in the packaging sector. Stephen DIncelli, Managing Director at SK Capital, stated, "The transaction is a testament to SKs ability to leverage our global platform to identify leading materials technologies businesses with immense commercial applications. We believe IPACKCHEM is a highly differentiated and sustainability-advantaged business with significant growth potential. Weve been tremendously impressed by Jean-Philippe and the entire IPACKCHEM management team and we are excited to partner with them to execute our shared strategic objectives.

Jean-Philippe Morvan, CEO of IPACKCHEM, noted, We are delighted to partner with SK Capital as we embark on our next phase of growth. We believe their specialty chemicals expertise, functional and operating resources and extensive M&A capabilities will be instrumental in building on our existing strong market positions. Our common ambition is to accelerate organic and acquisitive growth and develop IPACKCHEM into the leading global barrier packaging player for Crop Protection and select Specialty Chemical markets.

IPACKCHEMs Board of Directors includes several highly experienced executives, including Rob Tiede, the former CEO of Sonoco Products, Dave Mezzanotte, SK Capital Senior Director and former Chairman and CEO of Coveris, and George Gregory, SK Capital Senior Director and former CEO of Kraton Polymers.

Rob Tiede, former CEO of Sonoco Products, commented, IPACKCHEM is at the forefront of addressing many of todays macroeconomic and socioeconomic issues. The Companys highly specialized packaging products are of extremely high quality, enabling the safe handling and shipping of highly regulated Crop Protection chemicals that allow farmers to feed the worlds growing population, and are 100% recyclable, helping to address environmental issues.

Dave Mezzanotte, Senior Director at SK Capital, added, IPACKCHEM is a global market leader with a technology differentiation that drives cost and sustainability benefits for customers. We see several actionable opportunities to further expand the Companys addressable markets and to continue providing customers with high-quality and innovative products, as well as best-in-class service, globally.

Acquisition financing was provided by Alcentra Ltd., Rothschild & Co served as M&A and financial advisor and Kirkland & Ellis acted as legal counsel to SK Capital.

About SK Capital

SK Capital is a private investment firm with a disciplined focus on the specialty materials, chemicals and pharmaceuticals sectors. The firm seeks to build strong and growing businesses that create substantial long-term value. SK Capital aims to utilize its industry, operating and investment experience to identify opportunities to transform businesses into higher performing organizations with improved strategic positioning, growth and profitability as well as lower operating risk. SK Capitals portfolio of businesses generates revenues of approximately $11 billion annually, employs more than 16,000 people globally and operates 146 plants in 28 countries. The firm currently has greater than $5 billion of assets under management. For more information, please visit www.skcapitalpartners.com.

About IPACKCHEM

Headquartered in Paris, France, IPACKCHEM is a leading global manufacturer of innovative plastic packaging products (containers, bottles, jerrycans) for the Crop Protection and Specialty Chemicals end markets. The Companys UN-approved packaging solutions enable users to safely address the transportation and distribution of hard-to-hold and hazardous chemicals, while adhering to stringent regulations. IPACKCHEM operates globally through 8 production facilities, employs ~850 people and serves ~1,200 customers in 35 countries. For more information, please visit www.ipackchem.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210405005497/en/

Jeremy Milner

BackBay Communications

401-862-9422

jeremy.milner@backbaycommunications.com

Source: SK Capital Partners, LP
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

In today's tumultuous times, life in America and the rest of the world is becoming more and more like life in medieval times, as described in The New American Middle Ages by Gini Graham Scott, PhD, just published by Waterside Press.

There is a short 2-minute introduction to the book on YouTube at https://youtu.be/hO3S25swBMs. A popular song: Are We Back to the Middle Ages? is on YouTube at https://youtu.be/1m5kTv7eHxk

The book is based on the premise that today's growing split between rich and poor is like the divide between royalty, nobles, and rich merchants versus the medieval peasants and artisans. The book makes comparisons between the rise of the medieval kingdoms and the battles between the high-tech titans, the division of labor then and now, and the parallels between different institutions and lifestyles. It concludes with recommendations on what to do about the problem.

The book raises many important issues that can bring new insights about what is happening today and what to do about it. These include the following:

Why it is it important to know that America is like the Middle Ages in many ways, and what we can learn for today about what happened back then?

How the growing inequality in society is a major source of division today, as it was in medieval times.

How the medieval peasant rebellions have parallels with the rebellions all over the world today, and just like the royalty and nobles cracked down on the peasants, so the police and military are cracking down now.

How today's pandemic is like the Black Death that swept through Europe, the UK, Middle East, and Asia in the 14th century and wiped out about a half of the population. Much like today it had the most severe effect on the lower income groups.

There are also parallels between the courtiers in the medieval courts and the retinues of publicists and advisers around celebrities now.

The role of the Church in medieval times has many parallels with the media today.

Despite its devastation, the Black Death in the Middle Ages led to many social changes, that prepared the way for the Renaissance which followed, suggesting we might similarly experience a renewal and find ways to heal the great divisions and conflicts in our society.

Dr. Scott did extensive research to write the book, and she was inspired by noticing the comparisons with modern society while viewing a series of historical documentaries about medieval times in Europe and the Ottoman Empire on Netflix.

Dr. Scott has a PhD in Sociology, a JD in Law, and five Mas, including in Anthropology, Pop Culture and Lifestyles, and Communication. She has published over 200 books, 50 with mainstream publishers, and she writes frequently about social trends and everyday life. She is the author of several dozen books with major publishers, including some books on current social themes and history: The Very Next New Thing, Playing the Lying Game, Scammed, and Lies and Liars: How and Why Sociopaths Lie and How To Detect And Deal With Them.

If you are interested, let me know, and I can send you more information, including a PDF of the book and arrange for an interview.

Sincerely,

Karen Andrews

Executive Assistant to Gini Graham Scott

Changemakers Publishing and Writing

3527 Mt. Diablo Blvd., #273

Lafayette, CA 94549

(925) 385-0608

bookpub@att.net

changemakers@pacbell.net

www.changemakerspublishingandwriting.com
Train convoys of heavy Russian military equipment, seen on multiple videos on social media, reportedly shipping from Siberia to the border regions of Ukraine.

The Kerch Strait Bridge to the occupied Crimean Peninsula shut down briefly, apparently for a major shipment of weaponry.

An uptick in shelling along the line of control separating Ukrainian forces from Russia-backed fighters in eastern Ukraine. Ominous rhetoric on Russian state TV.

Is the Ukrainian-Russian "cold war" about to go "hot"?

Amid talk of war, here are six questions framing the flareup in tension between Russia and Ukraine -- and some potential answers.

Isn't There Already A War?

Yes. The conflict in the eastern Ukrainian region known as the Donbas began seven years ago this month and despite multiple cease-fire agreements, has never really ended. More than 13,000 people have been killed since April 2014, according to the United Nations, and more than 1 million have been displaced.

The last bout of large-scale fighting occurred in January 2017 in the town of Avdiyivka, but sniper fire and mortar exchanges happen regularly -- the deadliest in months occurring on March 26, near Shumy, north of the city of Donetsk.

More than 70 Ukrainian military personnel have been killed and several hundred wounded since the beginning of 2020, Ukrainian officials say.

Since late March, though, there's been a noticeable uptick in Russian troop movements close to Ukraine's borders and into Crimea, which Russia seized in March 2014.

It's also set off alarm bells in Western capitals.

What's With All That Equipment?

Over the past two weeks or so, there's been a steady accumulation of photographs, video, and other data suggesting major movements of Russian armed units toward or near Ukraine's borders and into Crimea.

That's sent open-source researchers, journalists, and others to try to geolocate the imagery and divine the intentions of Russian military command, not to mention the Kremlin.

One prevailing theory is that this is merely a show of force aimed at spooking or intimidating Kyiv and sending a message to the West that Russia is willing to put "boots on the ground" -- and a lot of them -- very quickly.

"The ostentation with which the troops are being moved confirms that Russia is saber-rattling rather than contemplating a blitzkrieg," Maksim Samorukov, a fellow with the Moscow Carnegie Center, said in an opinion piece published on April 5.

Observers have also pointed out that Russia has done large troop movements in the past, in connection with regular military exercises, without invading. Some analysts say these deployments don't seem to make sense in that context.

What Does Russia Say?

Not much, or not much that's clear.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov last week turned away reporters' questions about the troop movements, saying that there was nothing to fear and that the repositioning of armed units within Russia's borders was a strictly domestic concern.

When it comes to Crimea, though, Kyiv and the West -- and nearly all of the rest of the world, for that matter -- do not accept that, because they do not accept Moscow's claim to the Black Sea peninsula.

Meanwhile, Russia's Southern Military District, the command unit with responsibility for areas near the border with the Donbas and the North Caucasus, announced it was conducting an annual readiness check, with several dozen related exercises being held between March 29 and April 30. (The district also technically oversees Russia's military command for Crimea.)

A few days earlier, Russia's defense minister added further to the fog. On March 25, Sergei Shoigu announced that a paratrooper unit based in the northwestern city of Pskov, the 56th Air Assault Brigade, would be reorganized, and redeployed to the Crimean port of Feodosia. The closure of the Kerch Strait Bridge was reported to be connected with the transport of related equipment.

But while Russia regularly conducts large-scale, district-wide training exercises -- often involving thousands of troops, and dozens of units, across wide areas -- some observers have said the scale of the equipment movement seen of late is far beyond normal.

On April 6, Shoigu announced broader-scale exercises in all military districts nationwide.

Isn't There A Cease-Fire?

The oft-violated cease-fire in eastern Ukraine stems from the Minsk accords. A two-part deal, the second was signed in February 2015 by Ukraine and Russia, along with Russia-backed separatists who hold parts of Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) was also a signatory.

There's also the Normandy Format: a grouping made up of Russia, Ukraine, France, and Germany that has been trying to end the conflict. That goal has been elusive due to factors that include Russia's funding and support for the militants in eastern Ukraine, internal Ukrainian politics, and German and French wavering on how forcefully to confront Moscow -- and how much support to give Kyiv.

In a statement issued on April 3, the German Foreign Office called for restraint in the current tension, but also used the phrasing "all sides" -- which drew criticism from some officials who said it equated threatening Russian troop movements with Ukraine's defensive posture in the Donbas. (As of April 7, there was no public evidence suggesting Ukraine is doing similar large-scale equipment movement -- and unlike Russia in Crimea, any deployments it is making are inside its borders.)

The European Union, meanwhile, has spoken up in support of Ukraine. But the bloc's lead diplomat, Josep Borrell, was humiliated when he traveled to Russia in early February in an effort to mend fences with Moscow, leading observers to conclude that the EU has little leverage with Russia in this specific context.

Moscow may be trying "to make it clear to the West that the more it backs Ukraine rhetorically, the more the potential risk that it might be forced to make good on its promises," Mark Galeotti, an analyst and author on Russia, wrote in a column for BNE Intellinews. "This is, after all, something the Kremlin thinks Europe in particular is unwilling to do."

What About The United States?

Observers also say the timing and scope of the Russian maneuvers suggest a challenge to the United States and in particular President Joe Biden. He's been one of Ukraine's staunchest supporters dating back to the period leading up the outbreak of war in 2014, when he was vice president.

Washington hit Russia with sanctions after the seizure of Crimea, and despite his often-conciliatory rhetoric, Biden's predecessor, Donald Trump, kept those sanctions in place.

Biden's administration has signaled a more confrontational approach: neither reset nor escalation, U.S. officials have said repeatedly since Biden took office In January. "We have asked Russia for an explanation of these provocations, but most importantly what we have signaled directly with our Ukrainian partners is a message of reassurance," State Department spokesman Ned Price said on April 5.

The new U.S. administration has hit Moscow with economic sanctions in response to the near-fatal poisoning of opposition activist Aleksei Navalny with a military-grade nerve agent and to his imprisonment when he returned to Russia from Germany three days before Biden's inauguration. The administration has also threatened unspecified action for a massive cyberattack on U.S. government computers, which it has blamed on Russian intelligence.

On April 2, in Biden's first phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the U.S. leader pledged "unwavering" support. That call was preceded by calls between top U.S. defense and military officials and their Ukrainian counterparts.

While the EU has provided hundreds of millions of euros to help Ukraine build a more functional, and less corrupt, government, the United States has provided weaponry and training to Ukrainian forces, including anti-tank missiles, night-vision goggles, and counter-battery radars.

That effort continued on March 1, with the U.S. Defense Department announcement of another $125 million in new aid: "capabilities to enhance the lethality, command and control, and situational awareness of Ukraine's forces through the provision of additional counter-artillery radars and tactical equipment; continued support for a satellite imagery and analysis capability; and equipment to support military medical treatment and combat evacuation procedures."

The Kremlin bitterly opposes the notion that Ukraine could someday join NATO. But while Kyiv's membership in the alliance seems to be a distant prospect, that hasn't stopped Zelenskiy from making public statements about it. "We are committed to reforming our army and defense sector, but reforms alone will not stop Russia," he said on Twitter after speaking with NATO's secretary-general. "NATO is the only way to end the war in [the] Donbas."

What's Russia's Endgame?

If there is a Kremlin endgame beyond a couple of big military exercises and relocating a combat brigade, it's certainly not clear to Washington, Kyiv, or other Western capitals.

But one other place to look for guidance is how Russia has handled other simmering conflicts in its backyard. These so-called "frozen conflicts" have persisted in several places since the Soviet collapse, including Georgia's breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, as well as Transdniester in Moldova.

In all of them, Russian forces have deployed and remained, either as peacekeepers or as fully garrisoned units, though in reality, they go in unilaterally without the blessing of the United Nations or the OSCE and end up destabilizing the status quo in favor of Moscow.

Deploying international peacekeepers to the Donbas under the aegis of the Vienna-based OSCE has been discussed in the past. Those proposals, however, have been hung up on questions including whether they would be allowed to patrol the Russian-Ukrainian border or merely the line of control in Ukraine.

Many observers say that Russia seems unlikely to risk a renewal of full-scale war or an attempt to seize more Ukrainian territory, at least for the time being. James Sherr, the former head of Chatham House's Russia program, has suggested that putting a Russian peacekeeping force inside Ukraine may be Moscow's desired endgame.

"A localized escalation, dramatic and devastating, leading to the deployment of Russian 'peacekeepers' on the current demarcation line, is probably the most realistic option," he wrote in a commentary for the International Center for Defense and Security in Estonia.
The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) has launched a new competition to identify the best ideas that will help rural communities recover from the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Global Rural Tourism Startup Competition will also support the entrepreneurs and enterprises that can help rural communities seize the economic and social opportunities that will come as tourism restarts.

The United Nations specialised agency has recorded rising interest in unique and authentic travel experiences, including in nature-based and outdoors tourism. With this trend expected to accelerate as tourism restarts, the Startup Competition is looking for those ideas that will help ensure rural communities are best-placed to benefit. The competition will also look for ideas that will help build resilience in rural communities.

The Competition aims to support rural tourism as a key tool to fight depopulation, promote inclusion and reduce regional inequalities in income and development as part of UNWTOs special focus on tourism for rural development.

Applications are now open for four categories:

People Leaving no one behind: Projects that incentivise the creation of jobs and opportunities, promote gender and youth empowerment, and build opportunities for vulnerable groups in rural areas.

Planet  Building back better Projects related to the promotion and protection of natural resources, including addressing tourisms impact on climate change, we as well as waste and resource consumption.

Prosperity- opportunities for growth Startups that provide innovative solutions through new business models, instruments that promote access to finance, markets and marketing for tourism in rural areas.

Propulsion of Rural Tech  Implementation of new technologies to advance tourism and development in rural areas.

The deadline for applications is July 1. Winners will be invited to take part in the UNWTO General Assembly, to be held in Marrakesh, Morocco, this October.

The new competition builds on the success of UNWTOs search for the best startups in Spain. That initiative saw more than 150 projects put forward for consideration, with the winners receiving mentorship and support from the Spanish Government and Google. For this global edition, UNWTO welcomes Viajes National Geographic as its media partner. It also enjoys the support of key institutional collaborators, namely Air Europa and Wakalua as Travel Partners alongside Amazon Web Services Activate, HePic, Impact Hub, the International Trade Centre, Fademur, The Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge of Spain, NEST Portugal, Telefonica Open Future and the TUI Care Foundation. - TradeArabia News Service
From Brazil to the Philippines, secretive governments across the world are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic by covering up data and bypassing public procurement rules, undermining trust in health systems, fuelling anti-vaxxers and putting immunization campaigns at risk.

Clandestine contracts for medical goods and services have become the norm in many countries, while data on COVID-19 cases and deaths has been manipulated and underreported.

Authorities and heads of states have used the pandemic as an opportunity to gut public bodies dedicated to openness and communication, with the worst offenders forming a rogues' gallery of coronavirus offenders.

In the global South, the repercussions for already struggling health and governance systems could be catastrophic.

Corruption outbreak

This is a tale of two pandemics, says Jonathan Cushing, who leads on global health at the anti-corruption non-profit Transparency International.

"You have COVID-19 and then what we've seen over the past year is this lack of transparency  the utilisation of direct procurement legislation because of the emergency needs at the time," Cushing tells SciDev.Net.

"We've seen repeated cases of corruption, and that is the second pandemic in many ways."

Malpractice, says Cushing, has been reported "around the world, in the Philippines, in Uganda, we've seen cases raised in Kenya, Latin America as well".

As the pandemic has progressed, we've seen the shift from the rush to buy [personal protective equipment] and ventilators  to the procurement of vaccines. What we're seeing now is a complete lack of transparency." Jonathan Cushing, Anti-Corruption Non-Orofit Transparency International.

Tanzanian President John Magufuli may have been a victim of his own refusal to acknowledge the presence and seriousness of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

In June, Magufuli declared that "the corona disease has been eliminated by God", leaving Tanzania "coronavirus-free". The government stopped publishing data on case numbers, while disease surveillance and advocacy wound down.

Magufuli's death  officially from heart problems, but widely believed to be connected with COVID-19  was announced on 17 March.

Residents of Tanzania's largest city, Dar es Salaam, told SciDev.Netit remained to be seen whether Tanzania's government would reverse Magufuli's increasingly authoritarian policies. But new president Samia Suluhu Hassan has already marked a departure from her predecessor, pledging to form a scientific advisory committee on COVID-19.
ENERGISME

ENERGISME: LOAMICS Now Available in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.



07-Apr-2021 / 17:45 CET/CEST

Dissemination of a French Regulatory News, transmitted by EQS Group.

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.





LOAMICS Now Available in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace

Microsoft Azure customers worldwide now gain access to Loamics to take advantage of the scalability, reliability and agility of Azure to drive application development and shape business strategies.

Loamics, a subsidiary of Energisme, today announced the availability of a new solution in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, an online store providing applications and services for use on Azure, to meet the new data challenges of companies. Loamics customers can now take advantage of the productive and trusted Azure cloud platform, with streamlined deployment and management.

Freed from the constraints of data volume, format and source, the Loamics platform is a very powerful infrastructure capable of processing massive heterogeneous data continuously or in real time in a fully automated and industrialised manner.

Loamics, as a partner of the Microsoft Partner Network, has direct access to companies, organisations and administrations throughout the world while benefiting from local support by Microsoft teams.

A solution that unleashes the full potential of data for users

The Loamics solution offers a range of benefits that are revolutionising the world of data:

A Flash solution: Loamics is plug & play, in just a few hours, customers can access all their data in contrast to current processing and deployment times which can take several weeks or even months.

Absolute data control, users can appropriate all of their data without exporting it: Loamics' PaaS mode allows customers to retain sovereignty over their data while having optimal governance. End-to-end processing is carried out fully automatically in their instance.

Unlimited data integration: Thanks to its interoperability, the Loamics suite connects to all data sources, systems, protocols, Business Intelligence or data visualisation tools and applications. On the marketplace, Loamics is able to connect directly and automatically to all Microsoft services.

A disruptive solution for data scientists: Now freed from manual data preparation, they can devote themselves to high value-added analyses that generate productivity and performance for customers, as datasets are created automatically and no longer manually. There is no longer any limit to the possible uses.

Stephane Bollon, Chief Executive Officer, summarises the advantages of the solution as follows: "I would like to thank Microsoft for the confidence they have renewed in us with Loamics. Already partners for several years with Energisme, the parent company of Loamics, they believed in this new project very early on. We are going to exploit all the opportunities that the partner network offers us to go faster and further. We have created a disruptive solution, without equivalent on the market. Our technology enables a future whose only limit will be creativity.

"Through Microsoft Azure Marketplace, customers around the world can easily find, buy, and deploy partner solutions they can trust, all certified and optimized to run on Azure," said Jake Zborowski, General Manager, Microsoft Azure Platform at Microsoft. "We're happy to welcome Loamics' solution to the growing Azure Marketplace ecosystem."

1 PaaS: Platform as a Service

2 ISV: Independent software vendor

About Loamics

Created in 2020 by data specialists, Loamics, a software publisher, has developed a PaaS technological infrastructure that ensures fully automated data processing, which enhances the value of the data and makes it immediately available. Loamics enables players in all sectors of activity to have real "data-driven" control and decision-making based on intelligent, reliable and secure cross-referencing of data.

For more information visit: www.loamics.com

Contacts
Managing Editor of Community Engagement

Lindsey Hollenbaugh is the managing editor of community engagement for The Berkshire Eagle. A native of upstate New York, she has a journalism degree from Ithaca College. She lives in Pittsfield with her husband and son.
Queenslands Premier has asked the Prime Minister to convene a national summit to tackle gender inequality as Scott Morrison continues to battle the political fallout of his handling of allegations of rape and assault.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk called on other state and territory leaders to support the summit, which she would bring up at Fridays national cabinet meeting.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has called for a national womens summit. Credit:Getty

She wanted the summit to set goals to address gender inequity, affordable childcare, sexual harassment in the workplace and gaps in pay and superannuation.

Now is the time for womens voices around Australia to be heard, Ms Palaszczuk said.
GLEN CARBON  In a race featuring two women with strong local roots, Kathy Perry-Scaturro defeated Christal Laswell for the village clerk post.

With all 14 precincts counting, Perry-Scaturro had 763 votes, while Laswell had 641 votes, in unofficial election results.

Perry-Scaturro will take over for Ross Breckenridge, who did not run again.

She is a fourth-generation Glen Carbonite whose great-grandfather and great-uncle both served as mayor.

She has been the secretary of the Glenwood Estates Homeowners Association since 2017. She is employed as an executive assistant and a senior project associate.

She and her husband, Terry, have two sons, Roman and Cameron.

For Glen Carbon village trustees, meanwhile, incumbents Walter Harris and Ben Maliszewski earned two of the three available seats, while newcomer Mike Sonderegger claimed the third seat.

With all 14 precincts counting, Sonderegger had 947 votes, while Maliszewski had 946 and Harris had 832.

While all three get elected to the board, the vote totals wont be official until all of the mail-in ballots are counted.

Sonderegger replaces Mary Beth Williams, who decided not to run again. This marks a return to an all-male board as Susan Jensen recently stepped down to take a position in the Madison County States Attorneys office. The mayor appointed Victor Smith to replace Jensen.

Maliszewski, who was mayor from 2001 to 2005, has served as a trustee from 1993 to 2001 and again since 2005.
The ByteDance logo is seen in this illustration taken (Photo : REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo)

An Indian court on Tuesday said China's ByteDance must deposit around $11 million that authorities believe the company owes in an alleged case of tax evasion, a decision the government said bars the firm from using existing bank funds for other purposes.



An Indian tax intelligence agency in mid-March ordered HSBC and Citibank in Mumbai to freeze accounts of ByteDance India as it investigated some of the firm's financial dealings. ByteDance challenged the move in court saying the freeze amounted to harassment and was done illegally.



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ByteDance, owner of the TikTok video app, has said in court it does not owe the tax government is demanding and does not agree with the tax authority's decision to freeze its accounts.



After a government counsel said ByteDance owed the authorities about 790 million rupees ($11 million), the High Court in Mumbai said the company will need to keep that amount blocked in a state-run bank.



That amount will be frozen, the two-judge bench said.



However, the four blocked bank accounts of ByteDance held only $10 million in funds, according to its court filing.



A counsel for the federal tax authority, Jitendra Mishra, told Reuters ByteDance can use the $10 million for making the court mandated deposit, but cannot use it for any other activity. Effectively, Mishra said, the accounts remain frozen until the amount is moved to the state-run bank.



ByteDance in a statement said the court had agreed with the company that its accounts "should be unblocked" and that will allow it to continue operations. "We are prepared to take further steps required by the court and are confident in our position on this tax matter," it said.



ByteDance did not comment on government counsel Mishra's statement and it is unclear how the company will deposit the amount ordered by court while also funding operations.



ByteDance in January reduced its Indian workforce after New Delhi maintained a ban on video app TikTok, imposed last year after a border clash between India and China. Beijing has repeatedly criticised India over that ban and those of other Chinese apps.



The company has told the court it still has an Indian workforce of 1,335, including outsourced personnel, which includes 800 people working in its "trust and safety" team that supports activities like content moderation overseas.



In the tax probe, which started in July 2020, India's tax authority told ByteDance it had reasons to believe the company suppressed certain transactions and claimed excessive tax credits, Reuters has previously reported.


Mumbai, April 7 : In order to ensure stable and orderly evolution of the yield curve amidst comfortable liquidity conditions, the Reserve Bank of India on Wednesday decided to put in place a quantitative easing program, pledging to buy up to Rs 1 lakh crore of bonds in April-June quarter to keep borrowing costs low and support the economy's recovery.

The debt purchases in the secondary market will start from April 15, with RBI purchasing an aggregate amount of Rs 25,000 crore under the secondary market G-sec acquisition programme or G-SAP 1.0 Under the programme, the RBI will commit upfront to a specific amount of open market purchases of government securities. The aim is to ensure a stable and orderly evolution of the yield curve. The 10 year benchmark bond yields have risen over 6 per cent raising borrowing cost across the sectors.

Bonds rallied, with the 10-year bond yield dropping 11 basis points from an intraday high of 6.19 per cent to 6.08 per cent, after Das's speech.

"The endeavour will be to ensure congenial financial conditions for the recovery to gain traction... The positive externalities of G-SAP 1.0 operations need to be seen in the context of those segments of the financial markets that rely on the G-sec yield curve as a pricing benchmark," RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said in an virtual address after the Monetary Policy Committee's bi-monthly meet.

"In addition, the extension of Held-to-Maturity (HTM) dispensation opens up space for investments of more than Rs 4.0 lakh crore. We will also continue to deploy our regular operations under the LAF, longer-term repo/reverse repo auctions, forex operations and open market operations including special OMOs to ensure liquidity conditions evolve in consonance with the stance of monetary policy and financial conditions are supportive for all stakeholders," he said.

Das said that apex bank's liquidity management strategy for 2021-22 is only to ensure orderly evolution of the yield curve, governed by fundamentals as distinct from any specific level thereof.

"Our objective is to eschew volatility in the G-sec market in view of its central role in the pricing of other financial market instruments across the term structure and issuers, both in the public and private sectors. This is a necessary prerequisite for the nascent and hesitant recovery to firm up and become durable. Needless to add, two-way movements in bond yields consistent with the fundamentals are quite normal from a market perspective; however, such movements should not be abrupt and disruptive if financial stability has to be preserved," he said.

While the RBI has been purchasing government securities in the secondary market, it's the first time it has provided details of the bond-buying program. Das had earlier said the bank bought Rs 3 lakh crore worth of bonds in the previous fiscal year to March 31, and planned similar or more purchases this year.
Mike has reported on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem's wildlife, wildlands and the agencies that manage them since 2012. A native Minnesotan, he arrived in the West to study environmental journalism at the University of Colorado.
Vaccines against COVID-19 will prevent millions of deaths and hospitalisations, as early signs from Britain and Israel indicate. The savings for economies are likely to be in the trillions. The benefits are undeniable but vaccines also bring risks. Some are well described, such as feeling unwell in the day or so after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, or the rare but treatable severe allergic reaction called anaphylaxis.

It appears increasingly likely that the AstraZeneca vaccine may cause a new rare clotting condition called Suspected Vaccine Induced Prothrombotic Immune Thrombocytopenia. VIPIT is a serious condition that presents as blood clots with low blood platelets (thrombocytopenia). The condition develops between four and 20 days after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine, with a headache that wont go away, other neurological symptoms, abdominal pain, shortness of breath or chest pain.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson receives the AstraZeneca vaccine in March. Credit:AP

This is different to the regular side effect headache and feeling unwell, which usually starts on the day of vaccination and lasts for one to two days. Its estimated that this more serious condition occurs at a rate of between 1 and 8 per million doses of vaccine given. These estimates will change as we learn more. Its too early to tell if the condition is age- or gender-related and investigators are only now starting to work out if there is any way of identifying people who may be more at risk.

After about 400,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine were given in Australia, we had a probable case here presenting to a Victorian hospital  a 44-year-old man with clotting. The Australian regulator and vaccine experts are investigating.
You might not think an animal made out of stone would have much to worry about in the way of predators, and that's largely what scientists had thought about coral. Although corallivores like parrotfish and pufferfish are well known to biologists, their impact on coral growth and survival was believed to be small compared to factors like heatwaves, ocean acidification and competition from algae.

But researchers at UC Santa Barbara have found that young corals are quite vulnerable to these predators, regardless of whether a colony finds itself alone on the reef or surrounded by others of its kind. The research, led by doctoral student Kai Kopecky, appears in the journal Coral Reefs.

Kopecky and his co-authors were curious how corals can reemerge following large disturbances like cyclones and marine heatwaves, which periodically devastate the reefs of Mo'orea, French Polynesia, where the research was conducted.

"Mo'orea is prone to big heat shocks, storm waves, cyclones and predatory sea star outbreaks," said co-author Adrian Stier, an associate professor in the Department of Ecology Evolution & Marine Biology and one of Kopecky's advisors. "It just wipes the slate clean in terms of coral death. And sometimes, just a few years later, you can swim around and see thriving life. We're still really curious about what allows these ecosystems to bounce back."

Scientists had implicated predators in shaping coral population dynamics, but there hadn't really been many direct studies. "People who study coral reefs have thought a lot about the supply of new babies coming from elsewhere, or limitation by the amount of nutrients, or competition with algae as important drivers of coral recovery," Stier continued. "But there hasn't been as much done on the importance of predators as a limiting factor."

After reviewing the literature on coral growth, mortality and predation, Kopecky decided to focus on the effects predation and density had on young coral colonies.

He planted small nubbins of Pacific staghorn coral at various locations on the reef either alone, in a group of four, or in a group of eight. Some of these groups were protected by metal cages, while others were left exposed. For the unprotected coral, Kopecky sought to determine whether high density increased or decreased predation on the staghorn. For the protected groups, he was curious how density influenced coral growth.

The researchers found that protection was key to these small corals' futures. After 30 days out on the reef, nearly all of the unprotected nubbins had been completely consumed. In fact, density had virtually no effect on this outcome.

The researchers let the experiment run for an entire year. When they returned, virtually none of the unprotected specimens remained. On the other hand, the caged corals had outgrown their accommodations by year's end.

"The corals that were protected grew all the way into the upper corners of the cages and were poking little branches out," Kopecky recalled. "They formed a cube of coral inside the cages, whereas the ones that were exposed to predators were just barely hanging on."

Coral are not typically fast-growing organisms, but staghorn coral grows quickly, giving it a competitive edge following disturbances that remove large amounts of coral. But according to Kai, staghorn coral are like the popcorn chicken of the reef: irresistible to a hungry corallivore.

The protected corals grew so quickly that Kai had to adopt a different way to measure them, because at a certain point the nubbins fused, and he could no longer unscrew their base plates to measure them in the lab.

So, if there's no protection in numbers for these tasty staghorns, how do they ever survive their infancy?

The corals benefit from the protection of fish like the Dusky farmerfish, which farms algae on the reef. These farmer fish doggedly defend their territories, offering protection to any small coral that happens to settle in their range, Kopecky explained. And while algae and coral are often considered archenemies -- with the former able to outcompete the later -- by munching on their crops, the farmer fish keep the algae in check. This enables the coral to get through the stage where they're vulnerable to predation.

In fact, researchers rarely see staghorn corals in large colonies absent the protection of these fishy farmers, Kopecky added.

The authors thought density would have some effect on predation. "I think it just turns out that this coral is so tasty that predators simply mowed everything down," Stier remarked.

The team is considering running a similar experiment with cauliflower coral, which is more robust and slower-growing than the staghorn. Hopefully it's also slightly less scrumptious, as well.

"When these pufferfish eat enough, you can see their bellies weighted down by the coral rocks that are in their stomachs," Stier said. "I mean, they're oddly shaped fish to begin with; they're already having a hard time swimming without that ballast, but this makes it extra tricky."

"It really is a cartoonish dynamic," Kopecky added.

Staghorn coral is widely used in reef restoration efforts, especially in the Caribbean where this and a related species (elkhorn coral) are endangered. In fact, before joining UC Santa Barbara, Kopecky spent several months working as a coral restoration technician on the U.S. Virgin Islands.

"I had an opportunity to see coral restoration in action, but also see some of the limitations associated with it," Kopecky said. "And then I was able to go and conduct research, like this experiment, that can feed back into and inform how restoration might be improved."

Getting out-planted coral nubbins through this vulnerable life stage presents a major bottleneck to restoration efforts, Kopecky explained. He has already received feedback on the study from people engaged in coral reef restoration expressing how relevant his findings are to their work.

"When you protect these young, vulnerable corals from predators, the amount of growth is substantially higher than when they're not protected," Kopecky said. "It's clear that coral predators can really shape whether young corals actually reach the size where they're no longer vulnerable to predation."

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NOIDA, India, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- A comprehensive overview of the 3D Bioprinting of Living Human Tissues is recently added by UnivDatos Market Insights to its humongous database. The 3D Bioprinting of Living Human Tissues report has been aggregated by collecting informative data of various dynamics such as market drivers, restraints, and opportunities. This innovative report makes use of several analyses to get a closer outlook on the 3D Bioprinting of Living Human Tissues/Organs market. The 3D Bioprinting of Living Human Tissues report offers a detailed analysis of the latest industry developments and trending factors in the market that are influencing the market growth. Furthermore, this statistical market research repository examines and estimates the 3D Bioprinting of Living Human Tissues at the global and regional levels. The Global 3D Bioprinting of Living Human Tissues is expected to grow at a CAGR of 20.7% from 2021-2027 to reach US$ 2,846.3 million by 2027.

Market Overview

The surging demand for organ transplantation across regions owing to the rising prevalence of a disease that results in the need for organ transplants is contributing to the growth of the 3D bioprinting of the living human tissue market. As per the Council of Europe, "Demand for organ transplantation is increasing all over the world, but there are not enough organs available to meet the need. This shortage of organs is now the limiting factor in treating many patients with chronic organ failure and has led to high numbers of patients on waiting lists". In 2020, more than 150,000 patients were registered on organ waiting lists in Europe, and on average every year, 41,000 patients receive a transplant, and 48,000 new patients are registered on waiting lists. That is nearly six new patients added to a transplant waiting list every hour. Also, 18 patients die every day waiting for a transplant in Europe. Also, as per American Transplant Foundation, Almost 114,000 people in the United States are currently on the waiting list for a lifesaving organ transplant. And Another name is added to the national transplant waiting list every 10 minutes.

Request Sample Copy of this Report @ https://univdatos.com/report/global-3d-bioprinting-of-living-human-tissues-organs-market-current-analysis-and-forecast

COVID-19 Impact

During the COVID scenarios, bioprinting was used for testing potential treatments for Covid-19, cancer, and other diseases. Most of the population got infected with COVID-19 and 3D bioprinting plays a crucial role in the tracking down of a cure for the novel coronavirus. Also, the bioprinting researchers are focused on developing 3D Bio printed Human micro-tissues, which are then infected with SARS-CoV-2. As per research by Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and colleagues "Working to 3-D print thousands of replicas of human organs, or organoids, to test potential treatments for Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus."

Ask for Price & Discounts @ https://univdatos.com/report/global-3d-bioprinting-of-living-human-tissues-organs-market-current-analysis-and-forecast

Global 3D Bioprinting of Living Human Tissues/Organs Market report is studied thoroughly with several aspects that would help stakeholders in making their decisions more curated.

By Application, the market is primarily bifurcated into

Research

Clinical

The clinical segment dominated the product type segment of the 3D Bioprinting of Living Human Tissues/Organs Market in 2019 and will grow at 20.1% CAGR to reach US$ 2,052.7 million by the year 2027.

By Technology, the market is primarily segmented into

Inkjet

Extrusion

Laser-Assisted Bioprinting

Others

Amongst technology, the extrusion segment accounted for the largest share and is expected to grow at 21.3% CAGR during the forecast period 2021-2027. In 2019, the extrusion segment accounted for a revenue share of almost 57.2%.

By material, the market is primarily segmented into

Collagen

Gelatin

Alginate

Synthetic Macromolecules

Hyaluronic Acid

Generic Hydroge

Others

Amongst material, the collagen segment accounted for the largest share and is expected to grow at 22.6% CAGR during the forecast period 2021-2027. In 2019, the collagen segment accounted for a revenue share of almost 16.2%.

By tissue type, the market is primarily segmented into

Generic Tissue/Organ

Renal

Skin

Bone

Liver

Lungs

Cardiac/ Cardiovascular

Adipose Tissue

Cartilage

Ocular Tissue

Tumor Tissue

Others

Amongst tissue, Generic Tissue/Organ segment accounted for the largest share and is expected to grow at 21.8% CAGR during the forecast period 2021-2027. In 2019, the Generic Tissue/Organ segment accounted for a revenue share of almost 36.7%.

By End-Users, the market is primarily segmented into

Hospitals

Research Organizations & Academic Institutes

In 2019, the Research Organizations & Academic Institutes segment dominated the global 3D Bioprinting of Living Human Tissues/Organs Market with nearly 76.2% of the market share and it is anticipated by 2027, the segment will garner US$ 2,099.4 million of the market.

3D Bioprinting of Living Human Tissues Geographical Segmentation Includes:

North America

Europe

Asia-Pacific

Rest of the World

Based on the estimation, the North America region dominated the 3D Bioprinting of Living Human Tissues/Organs Market with almost US$ 235.4 million in revenue in 2019. At the same time, the Asia-Pacific region is expected to grow remarkably with a CAGR of 23.15% over the forecast period owing to the surging prevalence of chronic disease coupled with the emerging need for organ transplants.

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The major players targeting the market includes

Allevi

Aspect Biosystems

BioDan Group

BIOLIFE4D

Cellbricks GmbH

Cellink

Digilab

GeSiM

Microdrop Technologies

MicroFab Technologies

Competitive Landscape

The degree of competition among prominent global companies has been elaborated by analyzing several leading key players operating worldwide. The specialist team of research analysts sheds light on various traits such as global market competition, market share, most recent industry advancements, innovative product launches, partnerships, mergers, or acquisitions by leading companies in the 3D Bioprinting of Living Human Tissues/Organs Market. The leading players have been analyzed by using research methodologies for getting insight views on global competition.

Key questions resolved through this analytical market research report include:

What are the latest trends, new patterns, and technological advancements in t the 3D Bioprinting of Living Human Tissues/Organs Market?

Which factors are influencing the 3D Bioprinting of Living Human Tissues/Organs Market over the forecast period?

What are the global challenges, threats, and risks in the 3D Bioprinting of Living Human Tissues/Organs Market?

Which factors are propelling and restraining the 3D Bioprinting of Living Human Tissues/Organs Market?

What are the demanding global regions of the 3D Bioprinting of Living Human Tissues/Organs Market?

What will be the global market size in the upcoming years?

What are the crucial market acquisition strategies and policies applied by global companies?

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Victorian universities are so desperate to get international students back into the state this year that they have proposed to help pay for a quarantine scheme modelled on the Australian Open program, where tennis players were allowed into the country despite a strict cap on arrivals.

Under the university-backed proposal, about 1000 foreign students would be flown into Melbourne every two to three weeks and placed into special hotel lockdown arrangements in an ambitious bid to revive international education in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Universities are desperate for international students to return. Credit:Wayne Taylor

The push comes as universities  which are facing their biggest crisis in decades  grow increasingly frustrated with the federal and state government over the tens of thousands of students enrolled in Victorian institutions who remain stuck offshore.

NSW is pressing ahead, with the government last week calling for expressions of interest from student accommodation providers to enable the return of up to 10,000 students this year.
Minneapolis Police Sergeant Ker Yang answers questions during the seventh day of the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin (Photo : Pool via REUTERS)

The Minneapolis Police Department's coordinator on the use of force told jurors on Tuesday the neck restraint applied by former policeman Derek Chauvin in the deadly arrest of George Floyd was unauthorized and that officers are trained to use the least amount of force necessary.



Prosecutors in Chauvin's murder trial presented two witnesses to try to further illustrate that he disregarded training on the appropriate use of force and dealing with crisis situations when he knelt on Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes. The handcuffed 46-year-old Black man fell limp and stopped breathing during the May 2020 arrest.



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Steve Schleicher, one of prosecuting attorneys, showed Lieutenant Johnny Mercil, who teaches the proper use of force for the department, a photograph of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd's neck and asked if he was using an authorized neck restraint under the circumstances.



"I would say no," Lieutenant Mercil testified.



Chauvin, who is white, has pleaded not guilty to murder and manslaughter charges for Floyd's arrest on suspicion that Floyd had used a fake $20 bill to buy cigarettes at a store. The incident prompted protests in cities across the United States and around the world against racism and police brutality.



Here is some testimony and highlights from court on Tuesday:



LIEUTENANT JOHNNY MERCIL, USE-OF-FORCE INSTRUCTOR WITH MINNEAPOLIS POLICE DEPARTMENT



Mercil testified that officers are trained to use a proportional amount of force and on how to properly use neck restraints, handcuffs and straps.



"If you can use the least amount of force to meet your objectives, it is safer and better," Mercil testified.



"It's very important to be careful," Mercil told jurors.



Mercil testified that a neck restraint designed to render a suspect unconscious neck is authorized only when the suspect is actively and aggressively resisting.



On cross examination, Mercil agreed with Chauvin's attorney Eric Nelson when asked whether officers must protect themselves when arresting unruly subjects during evolving situations.



Nelson also questioned Mercil about safety precautions officers need to take when using neck restraints and using body weight to restrain individuals.



"We tell them to stay away from the neck when possible," Mercil told jurors.



The city's police chief testified on Monday that Chauvin violated department rules and its ethics code while arresting Floyd.



SERGEANT KER YANG, CRISIS INTERVENTION TRAINING COORDINATOR



Sergeant Ker Yang, a crisis intervention training coordinator for the department, testified as the day's first witness that Chauvin completed 40 hours of training on dealing with suspects going through a crisis.



Yang said police are trained to use principles such as neutrality, respect and trust in crisis intervention situations, and how to spot and interact with suspects going through a crisis.



"The ultimate goal in action for someone in crisis is to see if that person needs help," Yang testified.



HEARING ON REQUEST TO QUASH SUBPOENA



Before the jury was brought into the courtroom, Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill heard arguments on a request by a friend of Floyd to quash a prosecution subpoena for him to testify.



The friend, Morries Hall, was in the car with Floyd when police arrived, setting the stage for the attempt to arrest Floyd. Hall has said that he would invoke his constitutional right against self-incrimination if he had to appear in the witness stand.



Nelson told Cahill he planned to ask Hall whether he gave Floyd any controlled substances and why Hall left Minnesota immediately after the incident. Floyd's girlfriend testified last week that she and Floyd struggled with opioid addiction, and that she thought Hall sometimes illegally sold pills to Floyd.



Cahill decided that most questions Nelson wanted to ask could incriminate Hall. Even so, the judge said Hall should be able to testify on Floyd's condition in the car and whether he fell asleep suddenly after possibly taking opioid pills. Cahill gave Nelson until Thursday to draft potential questions.



The county medical examiner has ruled Floyd's death a homicide at the hands of the police, and noted Floyd had also taken the fentanyl and methamphetamine before his death. Chauvin's lawyers argue that Floyd's death was a drug overdose, though prosecutors have said medical evidence would contradict that.



Hall attended the hearing via a video link from a county jail where he is being held on unrelated charges of domestic abuse, according to court and county jail records.


CHICAGO, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- VillageMD announced today Ellen Donahue-Dalton has joined the organization as its Chief Marketing Officer. Donahue-Dalton joins VillageMD as it continues its rapid growth and scaling of Village Medical, a leading provider of full-service primary care in neighborhood clinics, some co-located with Walgreens.

At VillageMD, she is responsible for activating the company's Village Medical brand nationally, in support of optimal provider and patient experience delivery. She'll collaborate with market leaders to bring brand awareness around Village Medical's high quality care in convenient, accessible settings to people who need it most  those managing complex, chronic conditions.

Donahue-Dalton has more than 25 years of experience leading results-driven business-to-business and direct-to-consumer marketing for healthcare and consumer brands. Prior to VillageMD, she was Chief Marketing & Experience Officer at Medecision, a provider of digital health management software and services. In that role, she led enterprise customer experience, brand activation, marketing and innovation programming and alliances and helped lead that organization's turnaround and re-emergence as a leading brand in the healthcare information technology (HCIT) sector. Before Medecision, Donahue-Dalton was the founder and principal of a boutique marketing firm and, previously, the vice president of worldwide marketing at GTECH (now IGT), a leading public gaming technology provider.

"We're excited to have Ellen join our team and elevate all aspects of our brand and go-to-market strategies. Ellen has outstanding experience in the healthcare industry and we're looking forward to her bold and creative insights," said Tim Barry, chairman and CEO of VillageMD. "Ellen shares our focus on a value-based care model where our experienced providers deliver care wherever the patients need it, including at Village Medical, at home and through virtual care. We're thrilled to have her on the team."

Ellen Donahue-Dalton serves on the advisory boards for Aging Life Care Association, a membership organization for private care managers; and End Well, a non-profit media platform and forum dedicated to individual choice around end-of-life. She is a member of Women Business Leaders (WBL), an executive women's networking organization, the Georgia State Marketing Roundtable, an Atlanta-area CMO forum, and the CMO Club.

"I am completely in sync with VillageMD  its mission, vision and values. For the past decade, I have defined and designed systems that enable individuals to live a best life with personalized, proactive care," said Donahue-Dalton. "Now, I am thrilled to help build a brand centered around the provider-patient relationship and the subsequent value that delivers."

Donahue-Dalton holds a bachelors degree in international studies from Dickinson College and a masters in communications from Boston University. To learn more about career opportunities at VillageMD, please visit here.

About VillageMD

VillageMD, through its subsidiary Village Medical, is a leading, national provider of value-based primary care services. VillageMD partners with physicians to provide the tools, technology, operations, staffing support and industry relationships to deliver high-quality clinical care and better patient outcomes, while reducing the total cost of care. The Village Medical brand provides primary care for patients at traditional free-standing clinics, Village Medical at Walgreens clinics, at home and via virtual visits. VillageMD and Village Medical have grown to 12 markets, are responsible for more than 600,000 lives and manage $4 billion in total medical spend in value-based contracts. To learn more, please visit www.villageMD.com.

SOURCE VillageMD

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Religious liberty is said to be winning at the U.S. Supreme Court amidst current events as revealed by a study published in The Supreme Court Review, an annual publication of the University of Chicago Press.

According to CBN News, the study shows that the U.S. Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice John Roberts successfully favors religious liberty by 81%, revealing a 31% increase as compared to previous decisions of the Supreme Court. This means that the current Supreme Court favor religious liberty more than courts within the past 70 years.

"Plainly, the Roberts court has ruled in favor of religious organizations, including mainstream Christian organizations, more frequently than its predecessors. With the replacement of Ruth Bader Ginsburg with Amy Coney Barrett, this trend will not end soon and may accelerate," the study said.

The study said that there was only a 46% favorability to cases on religious liberty during the 50s and 60s when the U.S. Supreme Court was under Chief Justice Earl Warren, a 51% favorability during the '60s to the '80s under Chief Justice Warren Burger, and a 58% favorability under Chief Justice William Rehnquist during the '80s to 2005.

"The justices who are largely responsible for this shift are Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh. While there are some differences among these justices, and Kavanaugh has been involved in only a handful cases, they are clearly the most pro-religion justices on the Supreme Court going back at least until World War II," the study highlighted.

As per The New York Times, the study was written by Lee Epstein of Washington University in St. Louis and Eric A. Posner of the University of Chicago. The NYTimes also reported that all justices are Republican appointees and evidently approved several landmark cases during former President Donald Trump's term.

Specifically, the court approved that employers can deny contraceptive coverage for female employees on the basis of their religious belief. State programs were also approved to include religious schools in their private schools supported along with teachers at religious schools be included in the coverage of employment discrimination laws.

Recent cases as example is the U.S. court siding with California churches to hold worship services, with a student whose college prevented him from faith sharing, and blocking New York Governor Andrew Cuomo from enforcing COVID-19 restrictions on houses of worship for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and the Agudah Israel of America.

CBN News said a common ground of argument is the use of the First Amendment for cases on religious liberty to win in the Supreme Court. Family Research Council member Katherine Beck Johnson emphasized this in an interview with CBN News.

"We're simply using the first amendment as our protection. We're utilizing it at the courts. it is our right, and we're winning because the Left is infringing on our first amendment right," Johnson said in the interview.

The NYTimes cited the "weaponizing of the First Amendment" for doing the same way back in 2018 under Justice Elena Kagan. It cited the authors of the study in saying that defendants are "using the religion clauses to privilege mostly mainstream religious organizations" in the same way that "the majority has weaponized free speech in service of business and conservative interests.

Recently, the Biden Administration has been reported to be moving against religious freedom with its push to implement the Equality Act and the removal of a top government official from her post due to her stand on religious freedom. This week the administration disbanded former President Donald Trump's Commission on Unalienable Rights that was designed to promote religious freedom internationally.
A Government programme worth 10m will aim to train Irish businesses skills on how they can cut down on water, carbon and energy consumption as part of tackling climate change.

The five-year plan will see online courses provided to staff at all levels to teach businesses how their actions will affect the environment as well as a series of educational engagements with experts on sustainability.

Businesses who avail of the training will be taught skills of water conservation, how to reduce energy waste and cut down on their carbon footprint.

More than 1,000 businesses, including 3,000 workers, will be able to avail of the Climate Ready programme and this will be expanded over the coming five years, according to Minister for Further Education Simon Harris.

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I really want to make sure that we provide right now the access to skills, mentorship, the training and the advice for businesses right across the country to adapt to the climate reality, Mr Harris said.

He said that the sustainable measures will help businesses to save money and affect the bottom line.

The initiative was launched today with Government business support agency Skillnet Ireland.

Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan said that the programme should be looked at as an opportunity for the country.

One of the real constraints is in the skills, having the actual knowledge and expertise in how to be really energy efficient, how to change our entire packaging system, how to reduce our consumption of water and all resources, he said.

Minister Ryan said that businesses going green is a new industrial revolution taking place.

He added that a green, clean economy will be the future for Ireland.

Paul Healy, Skillnet Ireland chief executive, said that climate action is bringing immense business opportunities.

Practically every industry, business and job will be impacted by climate action in some way over the coming decade, Mr Healy said.

Taking action now is critical to ensuring our businesses remain resilient and competitive as we tackle the challenges posed by climate change.
I feel compelled to respond to Ian ODohertys column of last Saturday week, A united Ireland is a fever dream that will simply end in carnage. The most obvious takeaway was that ODoherty is in no great rush for reunification  an opinion to which he is duly entitled.

He is not, however, entitled to measure the Irishness of his fellow citizens.

While depicting a dated snapshot of the differences between the north and the south, ODoherty informed us that he quite likes Northern Ireland and its people, but adds: I will never consider them as Irish as I am.

As a Derry man, I feel duty-bound to remind ODoherty that I am in fact every bit as Irish as he is. My Irishness is entrenched in my heart, and rubber-stamped by the Good Friday Agreement of 1998  which many would have considered a fever dream just years before its achievement.

ODoherty accuses northern nationalists of a failure to listen and stubborn, blind reluctance to understand the other side. Yet he claims the people he has met in Northern Ireland are not in any great hurry to be considered Irish.

I daresay it is ODoherty who has not been listening closely to all sides; to the 700,000 of us who now have Irish passports, to the majority of us who do not vote for unionist parties; or indeed to the growing, sensible and mature discussion many of us are having around a new and united Ireland  a discussion to which his column contributes nothing constructive.

There is evidently a clash between those who cling to a narrow, exclusionary concept of Irishness, and those of us whose vision is more ambitious and inclusive. We think of the Irish nation and dont just see the State, but also Northern Ireland with its nationalists, unionists and those who are neither. We think of our vibrant emigrant community who represent us so well around the world, whether they are away for six months or 60 years. We think of the new Irish who have chosen to make their lives here and bring with them their culture and experience.

I cannot phrase it better than campaigner Emma DeSouza, who recently warned about the existence of a hierarchy of Irishness. We are all as Irish as each other  and surely within our famously generous nation there is ample space.

It is only with such expansiveness and creativity that we can hope to achieve the new and united Ireland which is being more seriously considered of late. Anyone engaging in the general discourse  from the Claire Byrne special on RTE to Jim OCallaghans detailed proposals  will know that proponents want to see a more pluralist approach to identity. Indeed, it is essential.

A new state would likely adopt the existing arrangements in Northern Ireland  where people would have the right to be Irish, British or both.

Comments in ODohertys piece echoed those from First Minister Arlene Foster, who fears she would no longer be British in a united Ireland.

No one could ever take away the Britishness of Arlene Foster. British citizens would still be British citizens in a united Ireland, just as Irish citizens are currently Irish citizens in Northern Ireland.

But this goes to show how outdated fears can remain embedded in the minds of those who refuse to engage in the present discussions, which are much more broad and welcoming than they care to realise. They are fighting the last war, rather than building the new peace.

The new Ireland now being discussed pragmatically is not a triumphalist republican takeover which seeks to undo history  switching one disgruntled minority for another and thus realising ODohertys vision of carnage.

Rather, it is an opportunity to construct a new state in which all traditions on this island would be equally invested  a home for everyone which would mean Brits In, not Brits Out. This is the only united Ireland it is possible to achieve, and it is the only one worth having.

Some may claim I am being misty-eyed  I could accuse them of tunnel vision. The issues on the table are vast and difficult, but we have managed difficult things before. No one is calling for a Border poll tomorrow or next year, but people are increasingly eager to discuss how we can make this island work better for everyone in the long run. That conversation will not be shut down by those who find it uncomfortable, nor will our democratic progress be deterred by the irresponsible evocation of violence.

Ultimately, ODoherty warns that we should not pursue a united Ireland because it would go against the wishes of unionists. Must the wishes of nationalists and many others across this island then remain on the shelf? Here rings the echo of another hierarchy of interests  one which is long past its sell-by date.

The debate around a new Ireland is really just beginning, but when it comes to how Irish I am, the case is closed.

Ben Kelly works for The Independent (UK) and is Vice Chair of VICA (Votes for Irish Citizens Abroad).
The family of a teenager found dead four days after she went missing have made an emotional appeal for information about her final movements.

Shona Gillen left her mother's home in Valiant Court in Antrim on Wednesday, March 3.

Her body was found by a dog walker on the Saturday morning in a one-foot deep stretch of Six Mile Water.

The bubbly 18-year-old - the youngest of nine children - had gone to meet friends but was never seen alive by her family again.

Relatives were originally told there was nothing suspicious about her death.

Having ruled out suicide, police appeared to be investigating a tragic accident.

However, major aspects of Shona's disappearance and the circumstances in which she was found set off alarm bells almost immediately.

Amy Reid had been looking for her sister since she disappeared.

She explained how, with Shona's phone switched off, the family made a series of appeals on Facebook for anyone who may have seen her to get in touch.

Expand Close Mourned: Shona Gillen / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Mourned: Shona Gillen

On the Saturday morning, by now frantic with worry, they rang police to report her missing.

Amy said: "Shona would have always rung to let someone know where she was, she was 18 so she had her own life, but we knew something wasn't right.

"My younger brother would be really protective over her and he rang her on Wednesday night to see if she was okay.

"A male answered, he asked to speak to Shona, and managed to briefly talk to her. When he tried to ring back the phone was switched off. That's the last time anyone spoke to her."

Shona's phone was last used at 11.40pm on Wednesday, and after that police say there was no other activity from her number.

Four hours after Shona was reported missing the family received a call to say "an object" had been discovered in Six Mile Water.

Amy rushed to the scene. She was told a body had been found.

By this time Shona was in the back of a coroner's van. It was then that 27-year-old Amy had the unthinkable task of identifying her sister's body.

"They warned me she was still wet. Her fake eyelashes were still attached, one was sitting on her cheek, but she didn't look as though she'd been in the water for any length of time," she explained.

"Where she was found, the water is really shallow. It's a popular place with walkers. I can't understand, if she'd been there since Wednesday night or Thursday morning, how she wouldn't have been found sooner."

Police at first explained they had to search Shona's room in case there were any notes or anything that might indicate she took her own life.

"There was nothing," added Amy.

"Shona was signing up to do a nail course, she was talking about getting her own place. In the week after she died packages of creams and make-up she'd ordered online were still arriving at the door.

"They (police) ruled out suicide, and said her cause of death was consistent with drowning, but added we shouldn't read too much into that as it was still being investigated."

However, as the days went on the family became aware of more unusual aspects to Shona's disappearance.

Amy explained: "There are questions about how she got to the river. It would be less than 15 minutes' walk away from where we think she was last seen, I find it difficult to believe that she would have walked there alone in the dark.

"Shona was scared of the dark, and I mean terrified. She wouldn't even go to the toilet if the light was off. She would never have walked alone at night."

But the biggest cause for alarm was on the Monday after Shona had been found.

The family were told a post-mortem examination would take place in the morning and that she would be returned home to be waked by 4pm.

As they waited for her body to be returned they got a call from the undertaker shortly before 4pm saying the PSNI had told him to return the remains immediately for further examination.

Despite suspecting a crime may have been committed, the teenager's remains had already been embalmed, ruling out a second post-mortem.

When her body was finally returned to the family they noticed marks on her face and scratches on her knuckles.

Amy's brother Ryan Reid said he was alarmed to discover the marks.

"There was a dark bruise just behind her ear," he said.

"We just want to know what happened to Shona, that's our only motivation for speaking out - to encourage anyone who feels they may have information who can help us put together Shona's last movements."

Shona's mother Deirdre is devastated by the loss of her youngest child, and had to be hospitalised on the day of the post-mortem.

"On the Monday when Shona's body was found, my mother went blind in both eyes and I had to take her to hospital," said Amy.

"The staff in the Royal were amazing. The pressure had built up behind her eyes so much she had lost her sight completely.

"She needs an operation, and we don't know what the outcome of that will be."

Amy has been trying to gather information to pass to police and went through her sister's social media accounts looking for anything that may give an indication as to what happened to her.

She added: "We just want to know what happened, and as her family we all feel like we owe it to her to make sure that her death is fully investigated."

PSNI Inspector Julian Buchanan has urged anyone who believes they saw the teenager at any time between Wednesday and Saturday to get in touch.

He said: "As part of our investigation into the circumstances of her death we are keen to establish when and where Shona may have entered the water and to give her family those answers.

"This is obviously a deeply upsetting and distressing time for Shona's family and loved ones, and I am appealing for anyone who saw or spoke to Shona in recent days, or who can provide information to police, to please call us on 101, quoting reference 1122 06/03/21."
A 150 million proposal to transform Leeds Bradford Airport into what would be the norths second busiest hub has been delayed to allow the government more time to consider it.

Plans to replace the old Sixties terminal with an entirely new building  part of a scheme to accommodate an extra 3 million passengers a year  were approved by Leeds City Council in February.

But the decision was referred to the government amid major concerns that the development  and the resulting pollution  would devastate the UKs commitment to becoming carbon neutral by 2050.

Now communities secretary Robert Jenrick has said he wants longer to give proper consideration to all sides of the debate. A date for a final decision has not been set.

Chris Foren, chair of the opposing Group for Action on Leeds Bradford Airport, said he was happy the government had paused the plans - but they now needed to be killed off completely.

Read more:

Were glad that the secretary of state hasnt just waved this through without properly considering all the implications that such a development would have, he told the Independent. We now urge him to give these plans the scrutiny this deserve because were confident, once he does so, it will be absolutely obvious that they are entirely incompatible with the urgent need to decarbonise the economy.

There are no two ways about it: it would be an environmental disaster for the region and for the country.

The new terminal was first mooted in 2018 as part of a scheme that would turn Leeds Bradford into the second busiest airport in the north (after Manchester) and the 10th busiest in the country.

The scheme would see the old terminal replaced with a new three-storey, glass-fronted complex enabling up to 17 extra flights a day.

Advocates  and some 1,600 people have signed a petition in favour  say it would build on Boris Johnsons levelling up agenda by creating an estimated 12,650 jobs and boosting connectivity in an area of West Yorkshire much in need of a post-coronavirus boost. They have also pointed out that the new building itself would be net-zero.

But opponents have included MP and councillors from across the region and political spectrum, as well as residents and environmental groups.

Only on Monday did Leeds Central MP Hilary Benn plead with Mr Jenrick to call-in the plan.

"This one airport plans to emit more CO2 than a number of small countries which are the most vulnerable to climate change, he wrote in the Yorkshire Post. While LBA expansion may not be on the scale of Heathrow, the proposal has implications that go way beyond the immediate locality of the airport."

Responding to news of the call-in, a spokesperson for Leeds Bradford Airport said: "We acknowledge the deadline extension and hope the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government will uphold Leeds City Council's approval for our replacement terminal, which will deliver thousands of new jobs and support the region's economy."
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is seen during a House GOP delegation visit to the U.S.-Mexico border, in El Paso, Texas, on March 15, 2021. (Justin Hamel/AFP via Getty Images)

House GOP Leader Seeks Classified Briefing After Terror Suspects Apprehended at Border

The top Republican in the House of Representatives wants a classified briefing from intelligence officials after the Biden administration disclosed that two Yemeni nationals on the FBIs Terrorism Watch List were apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) asked for a briefing from CIA Director William Burns and FBI Director Christopher Wray.

The capture of suspected terrorists highlights the ongoing national security risk posed by the border crisis, McCarthy wrote to the officials.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and Vice President Kamala Harris should take part in the briefing, he added.

A CIA spokesperson told The Epoch Times that the agency acknowledged receipt of the letter. An FBI spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email that the agency received the letter and declined further comment.

McCarthy and other House Republicans traveled to the border in southern Texas to witness the surge in illegal immigrants and the strain that has been placed on holding facilities as a result. They were given a tour by Border Patrol agents and briefings on the situation in El Paso.

During the briefings, agents told legislators that they had apprehended individuals from a slew of countries, including China, Iran, Yemen, and Turkey. Agents said that some were on the Terrorism Watch List.

These revelations were shocking and concerning, and for those reasons, I felt compelled to share them with the nation, McCarthy said.

Some Democrats cast doubt on the alleged apprehensions. One, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), said that he had not heard about any apprehensions of terror suspects.

Border Patrol agents apprehend about two dozen illegal immigrants in Penitas, Texas, on March 11, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

Gonna ask for a briefing. Pretty sure he is either wrong or lying, Gallego said in a tweet last month.

Gallegos office did not respond to a request for comment.

The risk at the border is compounded by some 1,000 illegal immigrants evading capture each day, in addition to the approximately 5,000 being apprehended, McCarthy wrote in the new letter.

While I am grateful to the Border Patrol for doing all they can, I have great concern about the number of bad actors that have escaped arrest and are residing in the United States, he said. We simply have no way of knowing if other terrorists have crossed the border undetected.

The White House earlier Tuesday alleged that encounters of known or suspected terrorists at the border is very uncommon.

A Customs and Border Protection (CBP) spokesperson told The Epoch Times that they could not provide the number of terror suspects captured at the border in the current fiscal year and the two previous fiscal years.

Our border security efforts are layered and include multiple levels of rigorous screening that allow us to detect and prevent people who pose national security or public safety risks from entering the United States. DHS works with our international partners to share intelligence and other information, including to prevent individuals on the terrorist watchlist from entering the United States, the spokesperson said via email.

CBP adjudicates individuals encountered at and between our ports of entry against several classified and unclassified databases to determine if they pose a threat to national security, consistent with the law. While encounters of known and suspected terrorists at our borders are very uncommon, they underscore the importance of the critical work our agents carry out on a daily basis to vet all individuals encountered at our borders.

The Department of Homeland Security said in 2019 an average of 10 known or suspected terrorists are prevented from entering the United States on a daily basis, though the majority are encountered at airports or while still overseas during the visa application stage.
From the global pandemic to police terror, hate crimes to mass shootings, the collective psyche has been stressed and worn. With movement and dance to regenerate serotonin levels and rejuvenate the soul, 'F*ck White Supremacy, Let's Get Free' is challenging the ways isolation impacts our ability to fight back and heal. The program invites everyone around the globe to move together, united by a groove and the freeing act of dancing.

More about the 'F*ck White Supremacy, Let's Get Free' event and how to get involved:

The public is encouraged to submit videos of themselves dancing here to be included in the live performance. The deadline to submit videos is Wed., April 7, 2021 by 5:00 PM PT .

Opening with a conversation between Cullors and Hammer Museum associate curator Erin Christovale , the two will introduce the concept of the dance project and discuss the message behind 'F*ck White Supremacy, Let's Get Free' .

, the two will introduce the concept of the dance project and discuss the message behind . DJs from collectives Everyday People in New York City and Cumbiaton in Los Angeles will motivate participants to move through music for the event by creating live sets interspersed with thoughts and musings by Cullors.

"Given the challenges in the world today, I can't think of a better time to unite through art, activism, and an interactive dance party," said Andrea O'Donnell, President, UGG and Koolaburra by UGG at Deckers Brands. "UGG is very proud of its partnership with Patrisse Cullors and the Hammer Museum for 'F*ck White Supremacy, Let's Get Free'."

"The worldwide Electric Slide dance party with Patrisse is the perfect way to recharge and lift our spirits as we battle systematic racism," said Ann Philbin, Hammer Museum director. "The museum's mission has always been about harnessing the power of art and ideas to build a more just world, and joy is absolutely necessary for healing and facing the many challenges ahead."

At a time when all are physically separated, 'F*ck White Supremacy, Let's Get Free' provides an opportunity to build a virtual community where everyone can celebrate together. For more information about the presentation and to RSVP, check out the Hammer website here .

About Patrisse Cullors

Patrisse Cullors is a New York Times Bestselling author, educator, artist and abolitionist from Los Angeles, CA. Co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, Patrisse has been on the frontlines of abolitionist organizing for 20 years. Since she began the Black Lives Matter movement in 2013, it has expanded into a global foundation supporting Black-led movements in the US, UK and Canada and has been nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize. The significance of the Black Lives Matter movement has been recognized by The New York Times as the "largest movement in US history." TIME 100 also named Patrisse as one of the 100 most influential people in 2020. Patrisse has led multiple Los Angeles-based organizations, including Dignity and Power Now, Justice LA and Reform LA Jails. These organizations have won progressive ballot measures, fought against a $3.5 billion jail plan and implemented the first-ever Civilian Oversight Commission of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. Patrisse is also the faculty director of Arizona's Prescott College, a new Social and Environmental Arts Practice MFA program, which she developed nesting a curriculum focused on the intersection of art, social justice and community organizing that is first of its kind in the nation. Not stopping there, Patrisse is also a former staff writer on Freeform's Good Trouble series as well as an actress on the show. She also co-produced the 12-part YouTube Originals series titled RESIST that premiered November 18, 2020. In 2020, Patrisse signed an overall production deal with Warner Brothers, where she intends to continue to uplift Black stories, talent and creators that are transforming the world of art and culture.

About the Hammer Museum

The Hammer Museum is part of the School of the Arts and Architecture at UCLA, and offers exhibitions and collections that span classic to contemporary art. It holds more than 50,000 works in its collection, including one of the finest collections of works on paper in the nation, the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts. Through a wide-ranging, international exhibition program and the biennial, Made in L.A., the Hammer highlights contemporary art since the 1960s, especially the work of emerging and under recognized artists. The exhibitions, permanent collections, and nearly 300 public programs annuallyincluding film screenings, lectures, symposia, readings, music performances, and workshops for familiesare all free to the public. More info: hammer.ucla.edu

About UGG

Founded in 1978 by an Australian surfer on the coast of California, UGG is a global lifestyle brand renowned for its iconic Classic Boot. First worn by Hollywood royalty, fashion editors and then the world, UGG designs and retails footwear, apparel, accessories, and homewares with an uncompromising attitude toward quality and craftsmanship. Delivering more than $1 billion in annual sales, UGG partners with the best retailers globally and owns over 130 concept and outlet stores worldwide in key markets including New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Paris, London, Tokyo, Shanghai, and Beijing. For more information, please visit www.ugg.com . @ugg #feelUGG

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Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 16:29:57|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, April 7 (Xinhua) -- From launching massive reforms to adopting targeted alleviation measures, China has explored a unique course to end extreme poverty and now that a complete victory has been secured, the country is rolling up its sleeves for a new mission to propel rural vitalization.

The world's largest developing country has achieved the complete eradication of extreme poverty, raising more than 770 million people out of poverty since its reform and opening up in the late 1970s.

According to the World Bank standard, this figure accounted for more than 70 percent of the global total over the same period, said a white paper released Tuesday by the State Council Information Office.

A report titled "Chinese Poverty Alleviation Studies: A Political Economy Perspective" released by New China Research, the think tank of Xinhua News Agency, has summarized foreign experts' views on the lessons the world can learn from China's success into the "Five Ds": Determined Leadership, Detailed Blueprint, Development Oriented, Data-based Governance and Decentralized Delivery.

Building on its experience and success in the poverty fight, China is ready to take on a new challenge.

"Removing the label of extreme poverty is not the end, but the beginning of a new life and a new journey," the white paper stressed, vowing to continue to consolidate the results of poverty elimination, dovetail new measures with rural vitalization, and pool more resources to energize the countryside.

In an important move to enable a smooth transition into rural vitalization, China in February unveiled a new government body -- the National Administration for Rural Vitalization -- to shift its policy focus to further boosting rural areas.

China will roll out more than 30 policies to ensure the resources leveraged for intensive poverty elimination are redirected toward an extensive drive for rural vitalization, Wang Zhengpu, head of the administration, told a press conference on Tuesday.

China is reviewing, adjusting, optimizing and improving existing support policies for poverty alleviation, said Wang, pledging to keep policies consistent and stable as part of efforts to prevent people from falling back into poverty.

Official data show that the final 98.99 million impoverished rural residents living under the current poverty line were all lifted out of poverty over the past eight years. All of the 832 impoverished counties and 128,000 impoverished villages were also removed from the poverty list.

China's counties have been given a five-year grace period from the day they emerged from poverty, during which they will continue to enjoy the main support policies for poverty alleviation.

To prevent any relapses, China has put in place a long-term mechanism for dynamic monitoring of any trends indicating a return to poverty and regular checks on key groups, according to Wang.

Follow-up support will be strengthened for the relocated population, with targeted efforts to develop industries, create jobs and improve infrastructure and public services.

While ensuring those who emerged from poverty see no setbacks, the government work report this year has pledged to advance rural vitalization on all fronts and improve the new urbanization strategy during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025).

By 2035, China will have achieved basic socialist modernization. With decisive progress in rural vitalization by that time, agriculture and rural areas will be modernized and fundamentally restructured, according to the white paper.

The country will become a great modern socialist country in every dimension by 2050, realizing the Second Centenary Goal and fully vitalizing the countryside.

"At that time, China will have strong agriculture, a beautiful and vitalized countryside, and prosperous farmers, enjoying across-the-board progress in society and the economy, and thriving endeavors in every sector," the white paper said. Enditem
New Delhi:

In the wee hours of ,2016, the Indian army carried out surgical strikes across the Line of Control destroying at least seven terror launchpads in PoK. The strikes came 10 days after a brutal terror attack on an Army camp in Uri, North Kashmir along the LoC left 19 soldiers dead. The commandos of the elite Parachute regiment carried out the special operation with clinical precision after getting a go-ahead from the Union government.



Indian Army's DGMO Lt Gen Ranbir Singh announced that Pakistan had been informed about the strikes and that India had no intention of continuing the operations but was ready for any military response from Pakistan's side.



The underlying objective behind carrying out the strikes was to bust the terror camps across the LoC which as per intelligence reports served as breeding grounds for a terrorist to sneak across the Loc and cause militancy in the Kashmir valley. The surgical strikes were hailed as a befitting response by the Indian army to avenge the death our soldiers who lost their lives in the barbaric Uri attack on .



On the first anniversary of the Surgical strikes, let us recall how the brave hearts of the Indian army conducted the surgical strikes -



The Indian army chose its elite special forces to carry out the operations. Officers and paratroopers of the 4th and 9th battalion of the Parachute Regiment were selected for the mission.



The commandos of the Indian Army commenced with the surgical strikes operation on the intervening night of -29. As per sources close to the matter, the operation commenced around 12.30 am on .



The Indian Army commandos were airdropped by Indian Air Force choppers at the LoC, from where they crossed over to the Pakistani side.



Indian forces fired artillery shells across the LoC to provide cover fire to the three to four teams comprising of 7080 commandos



According to sources, Indian commandos entered as far as three kilometers across the Line of Control to conduct the 'surgical strikes'



The location of the terror launchpads was in the proximity of 500 meters-2 Kms across the Line of Control



The Para commandos reached their designated targets by foot, and by 2 am, started destroying the launch pads using shoulder-fired Carl Gustav 84mm rocket launchers and automatic grenade launchers.



The strikes were carried out in Bhimber, Hotspring, Kel & Lipa sectors, on Pakistan's side of the Line of Control.



The strikes were conducted with utmost precision resulting in the destruction of 7 terror launch pads



The special forces killed 38 terrorists and 2 Pakistani soldiers, no Indian casualties were reported. Those killed included terrorists, their guides, and handlers



All the para-commando teams returned to the Indian side of the LoC by 4.30 am on and the operation, which had not been given any code name, was officially called off by the Indian Army at 8 am.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
A former Gestapo general who sent tens of thousands of Jews to their deaths was protected from prosecution by US and West German intelligence after World War II, it has emerged.

SS-General Franz Josef Huber served as head of the Gestapo in Vienna and much of Austria following the Nazi takeover. He worked closely with Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Holocaust, and ordered the deportation of Austrian Jews to concentration camps.

Yet while Eichmann was captured by Israel and sentenced to death  next weekend marks the 60th anniversary of his trial  Huber was released by US forces after the war and spent the rest of his life as a free man in his native Munich, where he was a minor employee at a local business.

Newly declassified documents obtained by a German documentary make clear that was a cover arranged for him by West German intelligence. It now appears Huber was protected by the US as they believed he could be a useful asset against the Soviet Union.

Although we are by no means unmindful of the dangers involved in playing around with a Gestapo general, we also believe, on the basis of the information now in our possession, that Huber might be profitably used by this organisation, a CIA memo from 1953 obtained by the New York Times reads.

Files seen by ARD televisions Munich Report show US and West German intelligence conspired to hide Hubers past and protect him from prosecution.

He was arrested by US forces in 1945 and held for more than two years, but US military intelligence prevented his extradition to Austria, where he was a wanted war criminal, and arranged for him to be dealt with leniently by the West German authorities.

He was released in 1948 with a fine and a suspended sentence following a denazification process.

In 1955 he joined the Gehlen Organisation, the West German intelligence service built up by the US as a counterweight to the Soviets. It is no secret that the organisation was riddled with former Nazis: its founder and leader, Reinhard Gehlen, was the former head of Nazi military intelligence on the Eastern Front.

The background is that at this time in the emerging Cold War, people were looking for tough anti-communists, and unfortunately they all too often found them in former Nazis, Bodo Hechelhammer, official historian of Germanys BND foreign intelligence service, told the documentary makers.

The policy was not limited to Germany. In the US, the CIA and FBI recruited more than 1,000 former Nazis as agents in the years after the war.

When the Gehlen Organisation was replaced in 1956 by the BND, Huber remained on the books. He served with the service until 1967, although his bosses were well aware of his Nazi past. ( Telegraph Media Ltd 2021)

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021]
Emily Mortimer has said that the coronavirus pandemic has taught her 'not to take things for granted'.

The British star, 49, who lives in Brooklyn, reflected on how restrictions have meant she's not been able to travel to family in the UK in an interview with Harper's Bazaar.

Speaking ahead of her directorial debut, Emily also discussed finding her 'authority' and admitted that it was 'cool' to suddenly be 'powerful and in charge' in her 40s.

Time for thinking: Emily Mortimer has said that the coronavirus pandemic has taught her 'not to take things for granted' (pictured on set for her directing debut, an adaption of Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit Of Love)

Chatting about what she's learnt during the pandemic, US-based Emily said that she relies on being able to travel to see family.

Emily said: 'My whole life depends on travelling, and the only reason it's OK living here [Brooklyn] is because it's so easy to get back home and see my mum and my sister and my nephews and the people I love and miss.

'Covid-19 has made it apparent that this isn't something you can or should take for granted.'

The Newsroom star also revealed that she's got reminders of the UK in her New York home to help when she's missing her family.

Directing debut: The British star, 49, has been working on a BBC adaptation of Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love (pictured in January 2020)

She told the publication: 'I've got loads of Royal Family commemorative plates, and the children have Union Jack lampshades.'

Emily, who has been working on a BBC adaptation of Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love, also chatted about the differences between acting and directing.

She said: 'As an actor, you are infantilised and told what to do all the time. You're literally given pocket money, woken up by somebody, picked up here and taken there and you're powerless. I am very good at that.

'But suddenly to be in charge of this whole system...! I have a very awkward relationship with authority  I have none, basically. I don't like to upset anybody, and I find any confrontational conversation really stressful.'

However, Emily said that directing The Pursuit of Love was enjoyable and she liked discovering and using her own authority.

She continued: 'For the first time in my life, I found myself able to be quite direct. I do think it's important to know that you can do it. It's cool to be a woman of our age who's suddenly powerful, in charge, and to feel that's OK.

Star-studded: Lily James is cast in the role of Linda Radlett in the hotly-anticipated drama

'And the amazing thing about directing is that there's no time to think at all  unlike acting, when you have a lot of time both before and during the process to sit and think about how you're going to humiliate yourself on an international level.

'I felt weirdly happy doing it [directing]. Though it's going to be horrendous when people judge it, because if it's bad, it's totally my fault.'

Emily also praised Nancy Mitford's writing, saying that the author didn't shy away from taboo or tricky subjects.

She gushed: 'The way that Mitford writes is extremely bold. She's brutal and funny, and searingly honest about difficult topics such as not liking your baby or being beaten by your father.

'She deals with all these things with such a light touch. We're living in a time when you feel nervous about saying anything, but this female voice is so unafraid.'

The May issue of Harper's Bazaar is on sale from 07 April 2021.
A Tamil woman allegedly kept as a slave for eight years by a Melbourne couple was a 'tried and tested' good worker who was expected to be on call all hours of the day, jurors have heard.

Allegedly motivated to maintain a large home, yearly overseas holidays and part-time work, it's claimed the couple lied to get her into Australia and had no intention of letting her leave.

They're on trial in Victoria's Supreme Court, where prosecutor Richard Maidment QC on Wednesday said their payments to the woman amounted to just $3.39 a day in exchange for childcare, washing, cleaning and preparing meals.

A Tamil woman allegedly kept as a slave for eight years by a Melbourne couple was a 'tried and tested' good worker who was expected to be on call 24/7

The Tamil woman was paid just $3.39 a day in exchange for childcare, washing, cleaning and preparing meals (pictured: the woman accused of keeping the slave)

'She was known to be a person who worked hard and would tolerate being at their beck and call 24/7 during the period she was with them,' he said.

'It doesn't take much to compare that with what one might expect ... to have to pay for a live-in housekeeper and childminder.'

The couple have pleaded not guilty to intentionally possessing the woman as a slave.

The woman came to Australia from her home in southern India first in 2004 and stayed for two six-month stints before returning on a one-month tourist visa in July 2007.

But they never intended that she would leave after a month, Mr Maidment said in his closing remarks to the jury.

The Melbourne couple have pleaded not guilty to intentionally possessing the woman as a slave

A couple are accused of keeping a woman as a slave at their Melbourne home for more than eight year

It's also alleged the woman was beaten with a frozen chicken, and injured with boiling water and knives (pictured: the woman accused of keeping the slave)

The woman was married at 14, had four children and became a grandmother by 29. She had no formal education, was illiterate and had worked in the fields since childhood.

She had hoped to earn money in Australia to help support her family in India, Mr Maidment said.

'By August 6, 2007, she had become an unlawful non citizen with the full knowledge and connivance of (the couple),' he said.

It's also alleged the woman was beaten with a frozen chicken, and injured with boiling water and knives.

But Mr Maidment said it was not on the basis of physical, verbal or emotional abuse by the wife, or that the husband had 'tacitly condoned' the conduct by failing to intervene that slavery was alleged.

He said there were controls and fundamental deprivations of her rights and freedoms.

The woman said she had been unable to even open the front door without the couple's permission and that with the amount of chores she was given she slept only an hour a night.

The trial for the Melbourne couple in Victoria's Supreme Court is continuing (pictured: stock)

She was taken to hospital in September 2015 in an emaciated condition and suffering sepsis.

Mr Maidment said the couple's motivation was clear.

'It was crystal clear they wanted essentially to import a true, tried and tested childcare worker and domestic servant knowing they could pay next to nothing so they could continue living in and maintain a five-bedroom home, a lifestyle where (the wife) could contemplate a part-time job ... and also afford trips overseas pretty much every year,' he said.

The trial is continuing.
Gospel Mission representatives Joe Harrison and Carmen Rempel are shown inside a shelter for homeless people that opened in a building in 550 Doyle Ave. in downtown Kelowna last December. It was to have closed at the end of March but will now stay open at least until September, BC Housing says.
New Delhi, Apr 6 (UNI) Finance Minister Nirmal Sitharaman on Tuesday emphasised the importance of policy support and enhancing international coordination in responding to the COVID-19 crisis.

Addressing the BRICS Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors virtually, underscored the merit in engaging with private sector and exploring the innovative financing models.

Sitharaman stated that the Prime Ministers Health Insurance Scheme using an output-based funding model has triggered a major private investment cycle in healthcare infrastructure, enabling significant expansion of healthcare services to vulnerable citizens.

She highlighted that worlds largest vaccine drive by India is under way. India has supplied 64.5 million vaccine doses to 84 countries.

The finance minister talked about thematic priorities for New Development Bank for discussion during 2021 and the issues of membership expansion.

Sitharaman also called for greater coordination among BRICS member countries on the issues of 16th general review of Quotas of IMF.

Quotas are a key determinant of the voting power in IMF decisions.

As 2021 BRICS Chair, Indias approach is focused on strengthening intra-BRICS cooperation based on Continuity, Consolidation and Consensus.

This was the first meeting of the BRICS Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors under India Chairmanship in 2021.

They discussed financial cooperation agenda set by India for 2021 - Global Economic Outlook and Response to COVID-19 pandemic, New Development Bank (NDB) Activities, Social Infrastructure Financing and Use of Digital Technologies, Cooperation on Customs related issues, IMF reforms, Fintech for SMEs and Financial Inclusion, BRICS Rapid Information Security channel and BRICS Bond Fund.

On the BRICS priorities and agenda for 2021, the Finance Minister informed that the efforts should be made towards delivering outcomes that reflects the needs and aspirations of BRICS in particular and emerging markets and developing economies in general.

UNI SRJ
While South Africa is home to the largest concentration of data centres on the African continent, the appeal of West Africa seems to be growing, with new developments planned for both Senegal and Nigeria.

The first of these involves the Morocco-based data centre company N+One, which has said it is planning to build three data centres in the Senegalese capital Dakar.

Details of size and power density are not yet available, but we do know that N+One has partnered with the Ministry of Digital Economy and Telecommunications, along with the General Delegation for Rapid Entrepreneurship of Women and Youth (DER/FJ) and the Digital Technologies Park of Senegal (PTN), as part of the countrys Digital Senegal plan.

The Senegal Digital Technology Park in Dakar was first announced in 2015. Part-funded by the African Development Bank, the 25-hectare site aims to promote the country as a base for international technology companies.

Meanwhile, a company with a strong presence in South Africa and Kenya is now branching out into the west of the continent. Africa Data Centres has said it plans to build a data centre in Lagos, Nigeria.

Construction of the 10MW facility is apparently well underway, with the first phase due to go live in the middle of this year.

As with many new data centre projects there is a sustainability element. The company says it will be using non-potable water for cooling and utilizing solar energy to offset its reliance on the grid.

Currently, ADC has facilities in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Nairobi.

Nor are these the only recent announcements relating to West Africa and data centres. As we reported in March, Ghanas only Tier IV data centre has reportedly been bought by fund management group African Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM), which now promises to make the former Etix facility the largest data centre in the country.
No companies based in the greater Aiken and Savannah River Site area formally pursued a contract to design and build the Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative, a futuristic footprint planned for the USC Aiken campus, according to the Department of Energy.

No local firms submitted a so-called capability statement when the department, which oversees the Savannah River Site, in September 2020 published a request for information, a preliminary step in the federal contracting process.

The Energy Departments nuclear cleanup office, Environmental Management, on April 1 selected North Wind Construction Services LLC as the team to handle the Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative project moving forward. North Wind Construction Services is headquartered in Idaho.

A department spokesperson on Monday said an assessment of North Winds capabilities determined they have a proven track record of working with DOE and successfully completing projects similar to the Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative, a years-in-the-making partnership between USCA and the Savannah River National Laboratory.

The April 1 announcement naming North Wind used similar wording.

The department expects the Idaho Falls-based contractor to examine the use of local resources, including small businesses, to the maximum extent practicable to ensure cost efficiencies and good community relations, the spokesperson said.

Anne Smith, North Wind Group's director of communications and marketing, in a Tuesday email said the plan is to expand Aiken-area engagement by hiring local first, as we have staffing needs. A subcontracting strategy will prioritize the local SB community, Smith continued, and we are exploring options for a virtual vendor outreach.

North Wind has an office in Aiken. It was set up in 2014.

The contract to design and build the Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative  a potentially $50 million facility, offering a bevy of research-and-development space  is bound by the Davis-Bacon Act. The law requires contractors and subcontractors to pay laborers and mechanics employed under the contract no less than the locally prevailing wages and fringe benefits for corresponding work on similar projects in the area, according to the Department of Labor.

DOE cannot dictate who North Wind employs, but the contractor will have to comply with the act, the Energy Department spokesperson noted.

Environmental Management received eight total capability statements related to the Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative contract.

Construction of the AMC is expected to wrap in 2024. The initial turning of shovels could happen this year, in the fall, according to USC Aiken Chancellor Dr. Sandra Jordan.
Regulatory News:

CNP Assurances and its partner Tikehau Capital (Paris:TKO), an alternative asset management group, are launching the first private-equity unit-linked product on the energy transition theme, exclusively for CNP Patrimoine customers. "CNP Relance et Climat" provides individual investors with access through Tikehau Capital's private equity fund dedicated to the energy transition to investments in unlisted assets by investing in the real economy to respond to the climate emergency.

Through the partnership, CNP Assurances intends to provide its partners' individual customers with a unit-linked tool offering an attractive alternative to listed investments through access to a private equity fund hitherto reserved to institutional investors. As a conviction-based investment, it helps to finance the real economy by supporting the growth of companies carefully selected by Tikehau Capital for their growth potential and their contribution to the fight against climate change.

Tikehau Capital launched the first private equity fund dedicated to the energy transition back in 2018. The company itself invested 100 million in the fund through its balance sheet, and CNP Assurances is one of the leading investors. It is a globally unique platform aimed at accelerating the growth of European SMEs and intermediate-sized enterprises (ISEs) that are already responding to the climate emergency and contributing to the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Tikehau Capital's energy transition fund, subscribed 1 billion by institutional investors, including CNP Assurances, was labelled "Relaunch" at the end of 2020, an initiative set up by the French government as part of the economic recovery plan to address the health crisis.

French savings currently amount to 3.3 trillion1. The COVID-19 crisis has revealed the equity deficit of SMEs and ISEs and the pressing need to step up the transition to a lower-carbon economy. It is therefore vital that these savings are directed effectively towards financing businesses and the real economy, as they help to build future growth and a production model that is less dependent on fossil fuels.

"We are pleased to offer our partners this new tool to diversify their customers' savings. In life insurance, this private-equity unit-linked product lends more meaning to savings by contributing to the financing of the energy transition, which will represent the largest investment opportunity in the next ten years. CNP Relance et Climat also contributes to CNP Assurances' commitment to the energy transition and to limiting global warming in accordance with the Paris Agreement," said Cecile Blondeau-Dallet and Francois Guilgot, co-Directors of the Engineering and Wealth Management Business Unit of CNP Assurances

"Global savings represent 80,000 billion dollars. According to the International Energy Agency, 10% of these savings could be used to meet the investment needs of the next ten years for the energy transition and thus respect the Paris Agreement and the recommendations of the IPCC2, which aim to limit global warming to below two degrees. We believe that this is an achievable objective and that this fund is aligned with that goal. Through this initiative with CNP Assurances, we are bringing individual investors the opportunity to contribute to restoring the investment capacity of companies coming out of the crisis. At the same time, it responds to their growing demand to give meaning to their savings while providing them with a revaluation of their investments," said Emmanuel Laillier, Head of Private Equity for Tikehau Capital together with Mathieu Badjeck and Pierre Abadie, co-managers of the energy transition fund of Tikehau Capital.

About CNP Assurances

A leading player in the French personal insurance market, CNP Assurances operates in 19 countries in Europe, notably in Italy, and Latin America, where it is very active in Brazil, its second largest market.

As an insurance, coinsurance, and reinsurance provider, CNP Assurances designs innovative personal risk/protection and savings/retirement solutions. The company has more than 36 million insured in personal risk/protection insurance worldwide and more than 12 million in savings/retirement. In accordance with its business model, its solutions are distributed by multiple partners and adapt to their physical or digital distribution method as well as to the needs of customers in each country in relation to their protection and making their lives easier.

CNP Assurances has been listed on the Paris Stock Exchange since October 1998, and is a subsidiary of La Banque Postale. The Company reported net income of 1,350 million in 2020.

About Tikehau Capital

Tikehau Capital is a global alternative asset management group that manages 28.5 billion in assets (at 31 December 2020). Tikehau Capital has developed extensive expertise in four asset classes private debt, real assets, private equity, capital markets strategies as well as strategies focused on multi-asset solutions and special situations.

Headed by its co-founders, Tikehau Capital has a differentiating business model, a solid balance sheet, privileged access to transaction opportunities worldwide, and robust experience in supporting high-quality companies and executives. Tikehau Capital is deeply rooted in the real economy. It provides bespoke and innovative alternative financing solutions to the companies it supports and strives to create long-term value for its investors. Drawing on significant equity (2.8 billion at 31 December 2020), the Group invests its capital alongside investor customers in each of its strategies.

Controlled by its management, alongside leading institutional partners, Tikehau Capital is guided by a strong entrepreneurial spirit and DNA. These qualities are shared by its 594 employees (at 31 December 2020) working at 12 offices in Europe, Asia and North America.

Tikehau Capital is listed on the regulated market of Euronext in Paris, Compartment A (ISIN: FR0013230612; Ticker: TKO.FP)

To find out more: www.tikehaucapital.com

The Energy transition fund T2 is managed by TIKEHAU INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT SAS, a portfolio management company approved by the AMF since 19/01/2007 under number GP-0700000006.

Disclaimer:

This document does not constitute an offer to sell securities or investment advisory services. This document contains only general information and is not intended to represent general or specific investment advice. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results and targets are not guaranteed.

__________________

1 Source: Banque de France; Eurostat.

2 IPCC: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210406006109/en/

Contacts:

CNP Assurances

Florence de Montmarin +33 (01) 42 18 86 51

Tamara Bernard +33 (01) 42 18 86 19

Caroline Ceintrey +33 (01) 42 18 85 73

servicepresse@cnp.fr

Follow us on: Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Instagram

Tikehau Capital

Press: Valerie Sueur +33 (0)1 40 06 39 30

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press@tikehaucapital.com

Shareholders and investors: Louis Igonet +33 (0)1 40 06 11 11

shareholders@tikehaucapital.com
Monrovia  A woman told the Finnish court hearing the war crimes case of Gibril Massaquoi that the former rebel commander killed a pregnant woman to settle a bet with his men over the sex of the fetus.

She said the incident happened in 2003 in Monrovia.

He brought a pregnant woman, and right away he and his boys started to argue whether the unborn child was a boy or girl, the woman, identified as Civilian 72, the second witness, told the court on Tuesday. (The court has ordered journalists to conceal the witnesses identities for fear of reprisal and intimidation.) Within no time, he opened the womans stomach right before us and took the child out and said I told you this child was a girl.

The witness said she was 14 at the time, lived in ELWA community and had gone to Waterside to purchase used clothes before they were captured.

She said pro-government militiamen later took her and other marketers to Massaquoi at a checkpoint decorated with human intestines and an impaled human head. The witness said Massaquoi escorted them to the bridge and it was then he allegedly executed the woman.

Right after the womans execution, she told the court Massaquoi beheaded two of her friends.

He sent for his board and called out my two friends that went with me. He put their necks on the slaughtering board one by one and cut them off, the witness said.

She added the rest of them were tied up and taken to the Twelfth Houses in Paynesville and put in an abandoned building where several people, mostly young men and women, were also kept. Some community people who heard them cry for help rescued them.

Massaquois trial is held in the District Court of Tampere in Finland for crimes he allegedly committed during Liberias second civil war between 1999 and 2003. He denies any wrongdoing.

His trial was moved to Liberia on February 23 at a secret location to allow judges to hear directly from more than 80 Liberian witnesses. The 51-year-old faces a life sentence, 15 years under Finnish law.

Earlier on Tuesday, the first witness testified that Massaquoi ordered her arrest and execution before her relative, who was a soldier, saved her.

They arrested me from West Point and brought me to the checkpoint, she said. He said Tied (sic) the woman and lay her down here. When her time reaches, I will send her to God.

The first witness known to the court as Civilian 76 and the second witness were invited by the prosecutors, Tom Laitinen and Matias Londen.

Civilian 76, explaining her ordeal, alleged that Massaquoi ordered the execution of several people on a field in West Point, saying, When you go, tell God that I, Angel Gabriel sent you.$

Massaquois lawyer Kaarle Gummerus tried to discredit her testimony, and that she had made the whole story up. He questioned how she remembers something that happened almost 20 years ago &at a tender age of 14.&

But the witness said at no time did she discuss her testimonies with anyone, and at age 14, she still remembers everything that happened to her.

Unlike the first two witnesses, the last witness said that Massaquoi was in Monrovia between 2001 and early 2002, but was not involved in combat.

The defence witness said he served as the chief of protocol for Foday Sankoh, the leader of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), and along with Massaquoiwho was a special assistant to Sankohparticipated in several peace negotiations between the RUF and the Sierra Leonean government.

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Gibril Massaquoi was like a brother to me. We worked in the same office and we were very close, he said. By 2000, Gibril was a diplomat now. He has no ability to be a commander now.

Witness 14 also told the court that Massaquoi had a girlfriend identified as Edna whom he impregnated while in Monrovia.

However, the prosecutor also drew up series of potential contradicting statements he made st both during his pretrial investigation and his testimony.

He had earlier told the Finnish police that Massaquoi did not participate in a peace talk and they both spent the whole of 2001 in Liberia. But during his hearing, he told the court that Massaquoi was at the peace talk and they may have left Liberia and returned to Sierra Leone in late 2001 or early 2002.

So far the court has heard 53 witnesses since it began work in Liberia.

Three witnesses are expected to take the stand on Wednesday. The court will move to neighboring Sierra Leone at the end of this week to hear other witnesses.

This story is a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the West Africa Justice reporting Project.
Everybody in San Antonio has a favorite place for tacos. But when it comes time to make them at home, which tortillas to use can be a daunting task. The city is home to scores of tortillerias, each of which put their own spin on those glorious rounds of masa or flour.

This week were continuing our tour of San Antonios best tortillerias  a mission we started in February  with a focus on the stretch of Blanco Road between Hildebrand and Basse Road. With each of these installments, weve visited numerous tortillerias, tasted a wide range of their offerings and can heartily endorse their excellence.

In this tiny stretch of pavement measuring just over a mile long, one can find no less than five businesses making a spectacular range of corn and flour tortillas. And bonus, many of them also sell tamales, barbacoa, carnitas and other Mexican food favorites.

On ExpressNews.com: Where to find the best tortillas on San Antonios West Side: The 6 best tortillerias in that part of town

Paul Stephen / Staff

Adelita Tamales & Tortilla Factory: This San Antonio institution has a history stretching back more than 80 years, so it should come as no surprise they also have arguably the citys best selection of tortillas. Plan for long lines on the weekend.

When you visit the first thing youll notice is the heady aroma of toasting masa wafting over the parking lot. Inside, customers are guided into a pair of socially distanced lines flanked with shelves stocked with virtually every kind of tortilla imaginable.

Adelitas basic corn tortillas, also available in mini street-taco size, are some of the best in the city with a potent aroma of freshly nixtamalized and stone-ground corn that will perfume your kitchen when they get heated on a comal or griddle. The flour tortillas are on the thinner and more dense side with a nice chewy bite.

And oh my, all the color. If you prefer your tortillas red, this is one of few San Antonio tortillerias making those fresh. But thats not where the fun stops. Bags of tortilla chips come in a mixed rainbow of hues including blue, green, orange and more.

1130 Fresno Drive, 210-733-5352, adelitatamales.com, Facebook: @AdelitaTamales

La Luz Tortilla Factory: This no-frills tortillerias corn tortillas are simple and classic. Theyre pale in color with a mild aroma and have a nice flexibility to them when heated.

Where the real action is at here is in the flour tortillas. The white flour tortillas are super floppy and tender pillows perfect for swaddling scoops of beans and cheese for a batch of breakfast tacos. These are the best flour tortillas we tried along Blanco Road.

La Luz also makes whole wheat flour tortillas  a rare find in San Antonio. These have a terrific, dense chew and pleasing nutty aroma.

While youre here, be sure to pick up a dozen hot tamales; theyre made fresh and sold daily. La Luzs menudo also has a big fan following, so if tripes your thing, grab a pint or 2 to go.

4120 Blanco Road, 210-734-8523, Facebook: @laluztortillas

Paul Stephen / Staff

Los Angeles Tortilleria, Restaurant, Bakery & Cantina: This Castle Hills outpost of the West Side-based Los Angeles Tortilleria brand is a one-stop shop for most of your Mexican food needs. The tortilleria also serves as a dine-in restaurant complete with a polished bar to sip margaritas at while watching the staff crank out tortillas.

And theyre good tortillas, at that. The corn variety are light and delicate with a good flex to them that wont crumble. Their flour tortillas are quite large, nicely browned and have a great chewy texture.

Los Angeles also has some harder-to-find tortilla surprises. They make some of the citys best tostadas and crispy taco shells that will beat anything you can find in a grocery store.

5138 Blanco Road, 210-481-4246, Facebook: @LosAngelesTortilleriaWestSide

On ExpressNews.com: Taste the best San Antonio has to offer with 365 Days of Tacos

Tortilleria Tortirica: Situated next to the beloved Bedoys Bakery on Hildebrand, the competing aromas of pan dulce and corn are the first thing youll notice when getting out of your car. Inside, youll find a fairly spartan room anchored by a large counter featuring display cases of beans, salsa, pico de gallo and more in plastic tubs.

Fresh tortillas, of course, are the main attraction here. Tortiricas corn tortillas are on the smaller side with near-perfect uniformity in shape. Theyre on the pale side and needed a little extra time on the griddle to bring out their full flavor and aroma. The flour tortillas are of the petite, chubby variety that are perfect for smaller breakfast tacos or for scooping with a meal.

And that meal should most definitely include the freshly made carnitas available daily at Tortirica (they also sell barbacoa daily.) When their tortillas  either corn or flour  are stuffed with those jiggly chunks of succulent pork and topped with diced onion, cilantro and salsa verde (Tortirica provides little cups of all three when you buy the carnitas) its a DIY taco delight.

805 W. Hildebrand Ave., 210-459-7808, Facebook: @tortilleriatortirica

Paul Stephen / Staff

Panaderia Tortilleria Maya: The clack and whir of machinery is on full display in this space that feels like a factory, although the industrial edge is tempered by display cases loaded with colorful and scratch-baked Mexican pastries.

All those machines are cranking out countless tortillas per hour. The corn tortillas sport plenty of deep brown freckles from their cooking and are quite fragrant as a result. There isnt much salt in these, either, which highlights the sweetness of the corn.

In contrast, the flour tortillas here are savory and well seasoned with a mild buttery note. They poof up nicely into flaky layers when heated and were among the most flavorful on this tour of tortillerias.

Dont forget to buy a bag of tortilla chips while youre there. Theyre rustic, nicely browned and sprinkled with plenty of salt  more like homemade tortilla chips than anything youll buy in a bag at the store.

3809 Blanco Road, 210-627-6292, Facebook: Panaderia Tortilleria Maya

pstephen@express-news.net | Twitter: @pjbites | Instagram: @pjstephen
Kolkata: The Election Commission on Wednesday (April 7) issued a notice to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee over her remarks calling for consolidation of minority votes.

The Commission said that it has found her speech violating the provisions of the Representation of the People Act and the model code of conduct.

The EC notice stated that Banerjee made an appeal to voters along communal lines while campaigning in Hooghly.

Without naming Indian Secular Fronts Abbas Siddiqui at a rally in Hooghlys Tarakeswar, Banerjee had said, I am requesting my minority brothers and sisters with folded hands, dont divide the minority votes after listening to the devil (Shaitaan) who had taken money from the BJP.

The EC has asked Banerjee to respond to the notice within the next 48 hours, failing which it will take a decision without further reference to her.

Banerjee had a run-in with the Commission earlier when she alleged poll rigging during the second phase of the assembly elections.

She had also dialed Governor Jagdeep Dhankar from Nandigram, alleging that there is a complete breakdown of law and order.

Responding to her allegation, Election Commission had written a point-by-point reply to the Chief Minister.

The letter by Umesh Sinha, Election Commission of India, referring to her hand-written letter citing alleged going-on at polling station No. 7 Boyal Maktab Primary School, Nandigram Assembly Constituency, said, the EC said that allegations made against Border Security Force (BSF) jawans deployed at polling stations in Nandigram were "not correct".

Three phases of polling have completed in the ongoing state elections. Five more phases are to be held. The eighth or the last phase of polling will be done on April 29. Counting of votes will be done on May 2.
Dublin, April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Baby Care Packaging Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2021 - 2026)" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The baby care packaging market was valued at USD 208.75 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach USD 313.75 billion by 2026, at a CAGR of 5.5% over the forecast period 2021 - 2026. According to numbers generated by a Harris Poll chartered by the Flexible Packaging Association, 83 % of all brand owners are currently using flexible packaging of some type. This supports the growth of the baby care packaging market which includes pouches, plastics bags, packaging.

According to ALPPM, transparency of the packaging of baby food products is becoming a popular trend. The baby products when packaged in transparent packaging allows the parents to see through and verify what the product looks like before making the purchase and this enhances the trustworthiness of the product.

Further, thin materials with microwaveable characteristics are expected to drive the packaging demand as it caters to parents' requirement for simplifying the baby meals preparation. Growing demand for these materials is expected to steer the sachets and thin plastic containers for baby food over the forecast period. However, environmental concerns about plastic packaging are limiting the market during the forecasted period.

Key Market Trends



Baby Food Industry Offers Potential Growth

The Flexible Packaging Association (FPA) survey of 2,120 consumers, consumers placed a high value on the packaging that is "easy to store," "easy to reseal," and "easy to open." Consumers in the survey also said they are willing to pay more for benefits like "ability to reseal," "ability to extend product life," "easy to store" and "easy to open."

Among the flexible packaging, stand-up pouches with sprouts are becoming very popular for the packaging of baby food. These are lightweight and have very high barrier properties that keep the baby products safe and fresh for longer. Additionally, they offer the ease of squeeze the baby food which avoids wastage of food.

Further, according to the World Bank, the percentage of women in the workforce grew more than 4% in the last decade. As many working mothers return to their jobs shortly after giving birth, prepared baby foods and formulas provide an appealing alternative for working mothers, bridging their desires for healthy, nutritious food with their need for convenience. This creates huge market opportunities for the baby food packaging industry.

Nowadays, even mothers are feeding their babies food from squeezable pouches that eliminate the need for spoons, bowls and even bibs.

With the growth of baby food sales in developing nations like India, it can be inferred that the globally the baby food industry will flourish. The increasing population and rising birth rate are aiding the growth of the baby food market which in return will help in flourishing the baby food packaging industry.

Therefore, the above factors are expected to help in the flourishing of the baby food packaging market.

Asia- Pacific to Witness the Fastest Growth

Asia Pacific region is expected to witness high growth during the forecast period owing to the increased use of packaged baby food products by the urban population. Also with the rising disposable income of people in the emerging economies and their busy lifestyles are also boosting the growth of the baby food packaging market in the Asia Pacific region.

Further, the Government 's initiatives help in increasing awareness among new parents regarding child hygiene also help in the increase of the baby personal care industry. For instance, in January 2019, in one of the Indian states i.e. Maharashtra State Government started distributing baby-care kits to curb infant deaths. Such initiatives create awareness about infant's health among the new parents and thus have a positive impact on the baby care products market. In return, it will create a market for baby care packaging industry as well.

Moreover, in China, the two-child policy which was effective from 2016, created a huge opportunity for child care products. With increasing purchasing power and rise in the number of working women in China, it is expected that child care product market will flourish which in return will create a market for baby care packaging market

Therefore, the above factors are expected to help in the growth of baby care packaging market in the Asia-Pacific region

Competitive Landscape



The baby care packaging market is fragmented and competitive. The companies are entering into the developing regions because of the rise in the purchasing power of the consumers and the increasing lifestyles of the citizens. Some of the key players are Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc., Mondi, Sonoco Products Company, Tetra Laval Pvt. Ltd, Amcor Limited.

May 2019 - Sonoco signed a definitive agreement to acquire Corenso Holdings America, a leading U.S. manufacturer of uncoated recycled paperboard (URB) and high-performance cores used in the paper, packaging films, tape, and specialty industries for approximately USD 110 million.

July 2018 - AVON announced the launch of the baby care products like Lavender Baby Wash and Shampoo and Moisturizing Lotion in India. They don't have any harmful chemicals like alcohol, dye, etc. which is not good for the baby.

May 2018 - Johnson & Johnson decided to relaunch its baby- care products. The new products had more natural products and avoided chemicals like sulfates, parabens, phthalates, artificial fragrances which is harmful to the children.

Reasons to Purchase this report:

The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format

3 months of analyst support

Key Topics Covered:



1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Study Deliverables

1.2 Study Assumptions

1.3 Scope of the Study



2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY



3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY



4 MARKET DYNAMICS

4.1 Market Overview

4.2 Introduction to Market Drivers and Restraints

4.3 Market Drivers

4.3.1 Attractive and Highly Appealing Display

4.3.2 Innovations in Food & Beverages Packaging

4.4 Market Restraints

4.4.1 Environmental Concerns About Plastic Packaging

4.5 Industry Value Chain Analysis

4.6 Industry Attractiveness - Porter's Five Force Analysis

4.6.1 Threat of New Entrants

4.6.2 Bargaining Power of Buyers/Consumers

4.6.3 Bargaining Power of Suppliers

4.6.4 Threat of Substitute Products

4.6.5 Intensity of Competitive Rivalry



5 MARKET SEGMENTATION

5.1 By Material

5.1.1 Plastic

5.1.2 Paper

5.1.3 Metal

5.1.4 Glass

5.1.5 Other Materials

5.2 By Product

5.2.1 Bottles

5.2.2 Can

5.2.3 Tube

5.2.4 Pouch

5.2.5 Other Products

5.3 By Application

5.3.1 Food

5.3.2 Apparel

5.3.3 Health and Personal care

5.3.4 Other Applications

5.4 Geography

5.4.1 North America

5.4.1.1 United States

5.4.1.2 Canada

5.4.2 Europe

5.4.2.1 Germany

5.4.2.2 United Kingdom

5.4.2.3 Rest of Europe

5.4.3 Asia-Pacific

5.4.3.1 China

5.4.3.2 Japan

5.4.3.3 India

5.4.3.4 Rest of Asia-Pacific

5.4.4 Latin America

5.4.4.1 Brazil

5.4.4.2 Argentina

5.4.4.3 Rest of Latin America

5.4.5 Middle East & Africa

5.4.5.1 UAE

5.4.5.2 Saudi Arabia

5.4.5.3 South Africa

5.4.5.4 Rest of Middle East & Africa



6 COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE

6.1 Company Profiles

6.1.1 Amcor PLC

6.1.2 Johnson & Johnson's

6.1.3 Mondi PLC

6.1.4 Nestle SA

6.1.5 Sonoco Product Co.

6.1.6 Tetra Laval Pvt Ltd

6.1.7 Benison (Thailand) Co., Ltd

6.1.8 Ameri-Pac Inc (Wilbur-Ellis Holdings Inc)

6.1.9 Ball Corp. (Rexam PLC)

6.1.10 Winpak Ltd

6.1.11 RPC Group Plc ( Berry Global Group)



7 INVESTMENT ANALYSIS



8 MARKET OPPORTUNITIES AND FUTURE TRENDS



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/y7v74n
Lorraine Cox, 32, went missing after a night out (Devon and Cornwall Police/PA)

A man who murdered and dismembered a woman who went missing on a night out has been jailed for life and told to serve a minimum of 20 years imprisonment.

Azam Mangori, 24, killed Lorraine Cox, 32, in his room above an Exeter kebab shop in September last year.

Passing sentence at Exeter Crown Court, Mr Justice Garnham said Mangori had suffocated Miss Cox with a T-shirt she had been wearing, which was later found in her mouth.

The Iraqi national cut her body into seven pieces over the course of a week and disposed of her clothing and possessions in bins and woodland.

The judge told him: Rather than reporting her death to anyone, you kept her decomposing body in your bedroom for the next eight days.

Expand Close Azam Mangori will serve at least 20 years in prison for Lorraine Coxs murder (Devon and Cornwall Police/PA) PA / Facebook

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Whatsapp Azam Mangori will serve at least 20 years in prison for Lorraine Coxs murder (Devon and Cornwall Police/PA)

You purchased the necessary equipment from nearby shops and then set about cutting up her body with a view to disposing of it.

You disarticulated her arms at the shoulder, her upper legs from her pelvis, and her lower legs from the knees.

With the exception of her left lower leg and her kneecaps, you wrapped all her limbs in black plastic bin liners and dumped them unceremoniously in the waste bins behind the restaurant in anticipation of them being removed by council refuse collectors.

Her lower left leg and kneecaps have never been recovered.

Then on September 8, you placed her torso and head in a large plastic holdall and took it by taxi to Tinpit Hill on the outskirts of the city where you buried it beneath bracken and branches.

The judge said Mangoris intention at the time of spotting a drunken Miss Cox walking home in the early hours of September 1 was to pick her up for a sexual encounter.

They went back to his room above the Bodrum Kebab House where they had sex at least once.

Exactly what happened next will not be known unless you choose to tell it, the judge said.

It is clear that something happened in your bedroom that caused you to decide to kill Lorraine Cox by suffocating her.

By the time you attacked Miss Cox she was hugely incapacitated by drink and as a result you were able to push that vest into her mouth and suffocate her without significant opposition.

With Miss Cox dead on your bed, you then set out to deceive her friends and family as to her whereabouts and her fate. You impersonated her on a number of social media platforms.

After the murder, Mangori, a failed asylum seeker from Iraq liable to deportation, used her SIM card in his mobile phone to pretend that she was alive and well to family and friends. But they reported her missing to police.

Expand Close Mr Justice Garnham passed sentence on Mangori at Exeter Crown Court (David Wilcock/PA) PA / Facebook

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Whatsapp Mr Justice Garnham passed sentence on Mangori at Exeter Crown Court (David Wilcock/PA)

I find it as a fact you had not planned this killing in advance, and I reject the prosecutions earlier suggestion that you had gone out that night looking for a victim to kill and whose limbs you could later amputate, the judge said.

I find as a fact that you killed Miss Cox as a result of events in your room that night and your reason for this gruesome means of disposing of Miss Coxs body was simply to avoid the detection of what you had done.

You also mutilated Miss Coxs body, cutting her forehead, tearing off large parts of the flesh from her back and stripping off the skin of her lower arm.

The purpose of that mutilation is clear was to remove a tattoo which might have helped identify her. We can only guess at the purpose of the former mutilations.

The judge added: By your actions, Mr Mangori, you ended the life of a bright, vivacious, intelligent young woman with her whole life ahead of her.

Your cowardice in failing to report her death and attempting to hide the evidence of your crimes served to compound the loss and hurt suffered by her partner, her father, her other family and her friends.

They suffered eight days of desperate hope and fruitless searching while you sat on your bed deciding how best to escape being held responsible for Miss Coxs murder by amputating and mutilating Miss Coxs body.

Mangori, of no fixed abode, was found guilty by a jury of murder following a four-week trial.

He had previously admitted a separate charge of preventing Miss Coxs lawful burial.
STEPANAKERT.  The search carried out Wednesday in the Jrakan (Jabrayil) region of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) again yielded no result.

However, in the afternoon, the Azerbaijani side transferred another dead body to the Armenian sidein the Varanda (Fizuli) region.

As Armenian News-NEWS.am has learned from the Artsakh State Service of Emergency Situations, according to preliminary data, this body is of a participant in the recent hostilities.

A forensic medical examination will be ordered to determine his identity.

The total number of dead bodies foundor transferred to the Armenian sidefrom the areas now outside Artsakh's jurisdiction ever since the ceasefire last November is now 1,530, and according to preliminary data, 27 of them are of civilians.

The search operations will continue Thursday in the Jrakan (Jabrayil) region.
Vietnams Ministry of Health has declared 10 demographics to be prioritized for the countrys free COVID-19 vaccination program.

In a written directive on the roll-out of COVID-19 vaccine, Minister of Health Do Xuan Tuyen required authorities of all 63 provinces to report the tally of the prioritized beneficiaries to prepare the dosages needed.

As per the document, the ten priority groups for complimentary COVID-19 vaccination are:

- Frontline forces (including medical practitioners, frontline volunteers, soldiers, and police officers on frontline missions)

- Consular staffers and officers of Vietnam on duty; officers whose jobs require direct contact with government guests, repatriating Vietnamese citizens, diplomatic delegations, and organizations within the United Nations in Vietnam

- Immigration officers

- Essential service workers: aviation, transport, tourism, electricity, and water supply

- Teachers, staffers at education facilities, and workers at administration offices whose jobs require coming into contact with people frequently

- People with chronic diseases

- People of 65 years old and above

- People in outbreak sites

- Poor people, and people who depend on social welfare

- People who are sent on study or duty trips abroad by government agencies

Over 53,000 Vietnamese nationals have been inoculated during the first phase of vaccination, which was launched in early March, according to the Ministry of Healths statistics,

On April 1, Vietnam received 811,200 COVID-19 vaccine doses via COVAX, a global program that works to accelerate the development and manufacturing of COVID-19 vaccines as well as ensure fair and equitable access for every country.

The Southeast Asian country is also anticipating the arrival of three other COVID-19 vaccine packages with a combined volume of five million doses.

The country has recorded 2,648 cases of COVID-19, with 2,422 recoveries and 35 virus-related deaths as of Wednesday morning, according to the Ministry of Healths data.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
WALTHAM, Mass., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Blue dot, formerly known as VATBox, makers of the leading AI-driven, cloud-based tax compliance platform, today announced that the company successfully closed a $32 million funding round led by Ibex Investors in partnership with Lutetia Technology Partners. Previous investors Lamaison Partners, Viola and Target Global also participated in the round. The funding enables Blue dot to deliver its groundbreaking solutions to more North American and European customers as demand rises for digital tax compliance solutions.

Blue dot's technology digitizes an expensive, complex and risky process, removing the burden from finance teams that currently devote enormous amounts of time and resources to processing reports from employees. The massive increase in employee-generated corporate receipts, coupled with the increasing volume of tax audits is requiring companies to deploy advanced technology to ensure compliance and streamline processes across multiple jurisdictions.

Gal Gitter, Partner at Ibex Investors, will join the Blue dot Board of Directors, helping guide corporate strategy as the company seeks to expand its customer base and deliver its unique platform to more users around the world. "We believe Blue dot can change the way organizations worldwide manage accounting and its tax implications for their expenses," Gitter remarked. "As organizations grow more decentralized, manual work formerly done by centralized enterprise functions continues to be automated. More companies are thus looking for ways to replace complex, manual tax and compliance reporting with digital, automated solutions that use AI to essentially enable transactions to report themselves, which Blue dot delivers."

"Since our founding, we've enjoyed tremendous recognition and a high rate of adoption for our platform as part of a larger global tax compliance digitalization trend," Isaac Saft, Blue dot's CEO, observed. "SAP Concur chose Blue dot as its exclusive integrated Tax Assurance solution to be deployed for their client portfolio, after conducting an extremely thorough diligence process on our Platform and AI. We've secured funding from top U.S. investors to drive the next phase of our growth strategy. It's an exciting time at Blue dot, and we're incredibly grateful to our customers, partners and investors."

Rob Perdue, Partner at Lutetia Technology Partners and former COO of The Trade Desk, will also join the company's Board of Directors. "In an era where digitalization has become a strategic imperative for every forward-thinking business, we believe Blue dot is uniquely positioned to help the CFO office and tax departments to fundamentally rethink the way they achieve tax compliance with a significant ROI. Blue dot changes the way companies will drive transactional data and its taxation in the future", Perdue remarked.

Blue dot has offices in London, Paris, Munich, New York and Tel Aviv and a dedicated team currently helping many of the most well-known Fortune 1000 companies control spending and reduce compliance errors. To learn more, please visit www.bluedotcorp.com

About Blue dot

Founded in 2013, Blue dot is a market pioneer, having developed the first technology-based and dynamically-updated financial platform for employee-driven transactions in the market. The all-in-one Blue dot Tax Compliance Platform harnesses digitization, tax compliance and automation to process and analyze a company's employee spend data for VAT, Taxable Employee Benefits and Corporate Income Tax, in real-time. As a privately-held company, Blue dot's technological breakthrough has raised more than USD $50M in private equity funding and attracted a large portfolio of Fortune 500 clients. Blue dot is fully dedicated to providing its clients with value, not only in terms of process savings and extra income, but especially in the peace of mind that comes from full compliance.

Press Contact

Amy Dardinger

Director, Media Relations

[email protected]

SOURCE Blue dot
[April 07, 2021] DSS Launches Alset Solar to Develop Utility-Scale Solar Farms at Superfund Sites and Other Underutilized Properties

ROCHESTER, N.Y., April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Document Security Systems, Inc. (DSS or the Company) (NYSE American: DSS), a multinational company operating businesses in consumer packaging, brand protection technology, blockchain security, direct marketing, healthcare, real estate, and securitized digital assets, today announced the launch of Alset Solar, Inc. (Alset Solar).

Alset Solar was formed to pursue development of utility-scale solar farms, providing a clean energy future to polluted or underutilized properties to supplement the power grid or provide small microgrids for independent energy. Solar energy is a powerful force for good. It has the potential to mitigate climate change, reduce air pollution, expand access to energy for all, and contribute to global economic well-being, commented Melissa Sims, Director and advisor of Alset Solar. As demand for renewable energies continues to grow in the US, disputes about where to locate solar and wind farms grow more common as well. Large-scale utility farms raise concerns over public land use and transmission loss. Opponents of community scale projects are concerned with visual aesthetics, noise, and property values. Many rural interests would rather see good land being used for agricultural farming than solar farming. If renewables want to maintain a positive reputation, they clearly must look for a way to get around these concerns. The more than 450,000 brownfield sites, 130,000 EPA Superfund sites, and 19 million acres of Bureau of Land Management land with excellent solar energy potential across the nation present a major opportunity to put unwanted, unproductive, dirty land back into use by producing clean electricity. Doing so can even avoid the major concerns various communities have over installing solar farms. We are actively identifying eligible sites in key markets and will work closely with communities to put these sites back into use and back on the tax rolls, continued Sims. By focusing our development efforts on blighted land such as current and former contaminated properties, landfills, and mines, we can transform these underutilized sites into assets, providing land resources for clean energy development and diminishing development pressures on open space. Sims, an attorney and chair of the environmental division of the national law firm Milberg Coleman Bryson Phillips Grossman, PLLC, brings extensive experience to her role at Alset Solar. She has represented units of local government, including sheriffs, counties, cities, villages, school districts, zoning boards and townships. She has drafted municipal legislation and has represented units of local government in tril, appellate and federal courts. Sims has prosecuted hundreds of municipal ordinance violations for the towns she represented. The late William J. Wimbiscus, Jr., began practicing municipal law in 1950 and she learned from his vast experience in her municipal practice. As a tenacious municipal prosecutor, Melissa utilized a local ordinance against Exxon, CBS, and Viacom for a Superfund site for one of her municipal clients. In that case, she set national precedent before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals on whether a non-home rule unit of local government could exercise its nuisance powers during the course of a Superfund cleanup. Following this case, she represented the Village of Roxana, Illinois, against Shell and Conoco Phillips using her DePue precedent and fined the polluters for every lot, street, and alley which contained benzene from the refinery. Both cases settled.



We launched Alset Solar to help lead DSSs clean energy future with a focus on environmental responsibility and sustainability measures, stated Frank D. Heuszel, CEO of DSS. As states push for more renewable energy, developers must consider the environmental and land use impacts of this so-called energy sprawl  the increasing land use footprint of energy development. We are directly addressing these valid concerns by focusing our development efforts on underutilized properties which are appropriate for solar energy and battery storage for microgrids. Alset Solar is a wholly owned subsidiary of Alset Energy, Inc. (Alset Energy), the Companys holding company for its energy group projects. Alset Energy is currently headquartered in Houston, Texas and is initially seeking market opportunities in the US sunbelt areas, including Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and Florida.

About Document Security Systems, Inc. DSS is a multinational company operating businesses in consumer packaging, brand protection technology, blockchain security, direct marketing, healthcare, real estate, and securitized digital assets. Its business model is based on a distribution sharing system in which shareholders will receive shares in its subsidiaries as DSS strategically spins them out into IPOs. Its historic business revolves around counterfeit deterrent and authentication technologies, smart packaging, and consumer product engagement. DSS is led by its Chairman and largest shareholder, Mr. Fai Chan, a highly successful global business veteran of more than 40 years specializing in corporate transformation while managing risk. He has successfully restructured more than 35 corporations with a combined value of $25 billion. For more information on DSS visit http://www.dsssecure.com. Investor Contact:

Dave Gentry, CEO

RedChip Companies Inc.

407-491-4498

Dave@redchip.com Safe Harbor Disclosure This press release contains forward-looking statements that are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements related to the Company's intended use of proceeds and other statements that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those projected. These risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control, include: risks relating to our growth strategy; our ability to obtain, perform under and maintain financing and strategic agreements and relationships; risks relating to the results of development activities; our ability to attract, integrate and retain key personnel; our need for substantial additional funds; patent and intellectual property matters; competition; as well as other risks described in the section entitled "Risk Factors" in the prospectus and in our other filings with the SEC, including, without limitation, our reports on Forms 8-K and 10-Q, all of which can be obtained on the SEC website at www.sec.gov. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date on which they are made and reflect management's current estimates, projections, expectations, and beliefs. We expressly disclaim any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in our expectations or any changes in events, conditions, or circumstances on which any such statement is based, except as required by law.



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Ms Testa makes living by sharing racy photos to subscribers on site OnlyFans

A millionaire OnlyFans star has opened up about her schizophrenia diagnosis following years of drug abuse as a teenager.

Mikaela Testa told her 1.2 million Instagram followers on Tuesday night that she suffers from severe mental health issues after using a cocktail of illicit substances between the ages of 16 and 19.

The 20-year-old Gold Coast influencer, who earns over $162,000 a month selling X-rated content online, said she took ecstasy, cocaine and foods infused with cannabis on a daily basis.

Pictured: OnlyFans porn star Mikaela Testa, who makes millions uploading sex videos online

'When I was 16 to 19 I did a lot of drugs,' she told her followers.

'I don't mean anything crazy like heroin or crack ... I'm just talking about edibles, cocaine and molly and stuff.'

Ms Testa said using drugs 'every single afternoon' left her 'very unhealthy' and 'mentally unstable.'

'I actually have mental illnesses I got from doing these drugs so regularly, such as schizophrenia.'

'That's something the new people (followers) wouldn't know, yes I have schizophrenia.'

Ms Testa (pictured) told her 1.2 million on Tuesday that she used drugs frequently as a teenager

Ms Testa (pictured) said she used to hang out with rappers and ex boyfriends who were bad influences

Ms Testa added that the friends she had at the time, including 'ex boyfriends and rappers', were bad influences.

The shock explanation was prompted by fans who sent her direct messages asking about her past substance habits.

The young model, who uses social media to document her extravagant lifestyle, has made her fortune by uploading racy photos and private sex videos to paid subscription platform OnlyFans.

In February, she used TikTok to lash out at trolls who spam her with comments to 'get a real job'.

Mikaela Testa (pictured) has defended her decision to become an OnlyFans star, claiming it is a real job

She said: 'Just because it's not the type of job you would prefer to do, or it's not hard-work under your standards, doesn't mean it's not a real job.'

'Not everyone is cut out to do hard work.'

Ms Testa revealed in 2020 that she spent $1.4million in 12 months with $281,000 spent in November alone.

She moved into a Gold Coast mansion with her boyfriend Atis Paul, 19, in December 2020.

The pair were mocked online and accused of flaunting their wealth by their social media fans during a virtual tour of the ten-car garage property.

Ms Testa moved into a Gold Coast mansion with her boyfriend Atis Paul, 19, in December 2020 (pictured together)

The tour of the luxurious home showed off a private cinema, waterfront pool, and 'so many spare bedrooms'.

'It's always been my dream to have a house like this, it literally has an elevator and three storeys,' Ms Testa explained.

'When I was a kid I was so embarrassed of my house because I lived in government housing... I'm so grateful and happy that I am able to achieve something like this.'

The pair share the mansion with Mr Paul's influencer sister Anna, 21, and her boyfriend Glen Thomson.
On the partys Facebook page Wednesday, the Responsible Government candidates said they were grateful for and humbled by the support of those who voted for the slate and wished OGradys team success.
More than 20,000 people are hiding in the jungle and in dire need of food, says a humanitarian group.

By Robin Gomes

As news of the brutal crackdown by Myanmars security forces against the opponents of the February 1 military coup continues to draw media attention, the military is cranking up its offensive against the insurgent groups, displacing thousands of innocent civilians.

20,000 Karen displaced

More than 20,000 people in Myanmars Karen state have been forced to flee their homes as the military has continued its air and ground attacks since late March, according to Free Burma Rangers, a humanitarian group that provides help to internally displaced people in the southeast nation, also called Burma. It said, The newly displaced people are unable to tend their crops or take care of their animals and are surviving on emergency rations they have hidden. But not only do they need food now, this will become a greater crisis if they cannot plant their fields, and take care of their animals.

After seizing power in a February 1 coup, the military junta has failed to crush the nation-wide daily protests and a civil disobedience movement, including a strike, calling for the release of the nations elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi and the restoration of democracy.

The armys latest air and ground offensive against the Karen people began on March 27 after the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) attacked a military camp, killing 10 soldiers. They were the first airstrikes in 20 years in Karen state, which has been relatively peaceful since a nationwide ceasefire agreement in October 2015.

Targeting people

In a report on Tuesday, Free Burma Rangers said that 14 Karen people have been killed and more than 40 wounded in airstrikes. The biggest result of these airstrikes has been over 20,000 people hiding in the jungle, afraid to stay in their homes and be the next target, unable to go out to their fields, it said. Schools, clinics, homes and mining operations have been hit by the militarys airstrikes. The military has also been reinforcing a ground offensive into Karen territory that forced villagers to flee their homes.

According to Free Burma Rangers, the military announced a ceasefire with ethnic armed groups on April 1 but conducted multiple airstrikes in Papun district of Karen state the same day. It said, the army is improving their road network into Karen State to further project their power, with dismounted infantry moving with bulldozers to build and repair roads. They are resupplying their camps in the area including new camps they have built. The infantry battalions also attack from roads and camps into villages and chase the villagers deeper into the jungle. They fire machine guns and heavy mortars into the jungle to kill anyone who dares to stay.

Preparing for all-out war

The fact that these airstrikes are carried out at night shows that the military has increased its capability, capacity, and lethality. The jets usually come in two at a time, dropping bombs, some of which, according to the villagers description, appear to be cluster bombs. The jets flying low are also strafing with machine guns and cannons.

According to David Eubank, the founder of Free Burma Rangers, The situation now seems, from our perspective, to be an all-out war to the finish. Unless there is a miracle, he warned, the Burma Army will not hold back in their attempt to crush the Karen and any other ethnic group that stands against them, just as they have not hesitated to kill people across the nation.

Insurgency

The Karen National Union and its military wing KNLA have historically been one of the biggest adversaries of the military and long resisted ceasefire agreements. The KNU started a rebellion in 1949, which waged for over 70 years until 2012, one of the worlds longest-running insurgencies. The KNLA and several other ethnic armies have sided with opponents of the military coup, Reuters said after interviews with representatives of three such groups and the ousted civilian government.

Myanmar has suffered long under the rule of an oppressive military junta from 1962 to 2011. During the nearly 5 decades, almost all dissent was suppressed with gross human rights abuse, which drew international condemnation and sanctions. A gradual liberalization began in 2010, leading to free elections in 2015 and the installation of a government led by Suu Kyi the following year.

The coup came after days of escalating tension between the civilian government and the powerful military, which claimed that the November general election, won overwhelmingly by the NLD, was fraudulent.
The past year has been one of hardship, unemployment, poverty, mass death, social isolation, mourning and suffering on an enormous scale for Europes working population. For its billionaires, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought a year of unprecedented prosperity.

Forbes magazines annual global list of billionaires, which was released on Tuesday, revealed that Europes billionaires are collectively $1 trillion richer than they were a year ago.

Bernard Arnault (SOURCE: Wikimedia Commons/Jeremy Barande / Ecole polytechnique Universite Paris-Saclay)

Their collective wealth, spread out between just 628 people, is now $3 trillion. This means their wealth increased by roughly 50 percent in the space of a year.

The number of dollar billionaires has increased by approximately 20 percent, from 511 people a year ago. Even excluding the new entrants, the wealth of Europes superrich increased by almost $800 billion.

The richest individual in Europe, and third richest in the world, remains Bernard Arnault, the lead shareholder of the luxury fashion retail group LVMH. His wealth has almost doubled from $76 billion a year ago to $150 billion today, due to a surge in LVMH share prices since March 2020, from 311 on March 20, 2020 to 577.20 today.

Arnaults wealth increased by approximately $208 million each day, or $2,400 per second, for every second of the year of the greatest pandemic in a centuryincluding while he was asleep.

Besides Arnault, four other French individuals are among the 10 richest of Europe, all of them owing their fortunes to high-end designer clothing and luxury item share prices.

Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, the third richest in Europe, with $73.7 billion, is the heiress of LOreal and the worlds richest woman. Francois Pinault, fifth richest in Europe, with $45.5 billion, is honorary chairman of luxury brand Kering, which owns labels such as Gucci. Brothers Alain and Gerard Wertheimer, the eighth and ninth richest in Europe, with $35.5 billion each, control Chanel.

The surge in share prices for designer and luxury companies throughout the pandemic is just one expression of the fundamentally parasitic character of the financial oligarchy. Luxury Brands Equity Fund manager Swetha Ramachandran told Bloomberg News in January that high spenders unable to spend on travel and restaurants due to lockdown restrictions have turned to luxury objects instead, fueling a surge in their stock prices.

The number of billionaires has either remained constant or increased in virtually every European country. Germany (with 78,000 coronavirus deaths) has by far the most billionaires of any country in Europe, with 136, up by 29 since last year, led by the magnates of low-cost retail chains. Italy (with 112,374 coronavirus deaths) gained another 15 billionaires, now 51 in total. Six people became billionaires in Spain (with 76,000 deaths officially, but over 100,000, according to the National Statistics Institute), with a current total of 30 billionaires. The UK (with 126,000 deaths) increased its billionaire tally from 45 to 56.

In total, 935,764 people have officially died from the coronavirus since the beginning of the pandemic, according to Worldometers. For every coronavirus death on the continent, Europes billionaires increased their wealth by just over $1 million.

There is nothing coincidental about the parallel rise of the number of dead and the bank accounts of the corporate elite. The surge in wealth of the worlds billionaires has been predicated on a massive, continuing growth in share prices. This, in turn, has been predicated on the infusion of trillions of euros in public bailout funds since the beginning of the pandemic by governments to prop up stocks, together with the maintenance of nonessential production throughout the pandemic.

This, in turn, has required that workers remain on the job and that schools remain open so that parents can keep going to workthough this ensures the continued spread of the virus, overflowing of hospitals and mass deaths.

These are the interests that French President Emmanuel Macron spoke for during his nationally televised address last Wednesday. The coronavirus is spreading completely out of control in France, with 60,000 cases reported on Sunday alone, dominated by the more contagious British and South African variants. Yet Macron refused demands from scientists and medical associations for a strict lockdown, insisting that society must also take into account the consequences of a lockdown, including on the economy.

In March 2020, faced with overflowing hospitals and wildcat strikes spreading from Italy to demand the idling of production, European governments implemented strict lockdown measures, closing schools and nonessential workplaces. After passing bailouts of more than 2 trillion, they fully reopened the economy, before any significant testing, tracing and tracking system was put in place while the virus was still spreading. Since then, they have continued to reject restrictions on nonessential production and in-person schooling.

The policy of the corporate and financial elite has been: If millions must die for us to keep (and increase) our billions, so be it. And as a new and even more deadly wave of the virus spreads internationally, they are determined to send an untold number more to their deaths.

The latest Forbes report is an unanswerable demonstration that the capitalist class and its political representatives have no legitimate right to run society. Their insatiable greed demands not only the immiseration and impoverishment of the working population but the global spread of a deadly virus.

As a measure of immediate necessity, the wealth of the corporate and financial oligarchy must be expropriated and placed under the control of society. Its ill-gotten wealth should be used for social needs. These trillions must be used to fund a strict lockdown across Europe, with full wages paid to the entire population, so that nonessential production and schools can be closed, and small businesses and independent contractors completely compensated.

Massive resources must be invested into high quality online learning, including the provision of a computer, comfortable learning space and high-speed internet for every child.

The implementation of such a policy requires a unified struggle by the working class across the continent for workers governments and the establishment of the United Socialist States of Europe.




South Korea's drug safety agency on Wednesday approved the COVID-19 vaccine by Johnson Johnson's Janssen as it showed around 66 percent efficacy against the new coronavirus, becoming the third vaccine approved here.







The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety authorized the use of Janssen's one-shot regimen as the vaccine is effective in preventing moderate to severe COVID-19 infections among adults aged 18 and older.







It marked the third COVID-19 vaccine approved by South Korean authorities following those by British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca and Oxford University and by Pfizer Inc.







The country signed a contract with Janssen for 6 million bottles for its vaccine rollout. The bottles are scheduled to be provided in the third quarter.







Since South Korea began its vaccination campaign on Feb. 26, a total of 1.03 million people, or 1.99 percent of the 52 million population, have received their first shots.







AstraZeneca's vaccine has been given to 887,452 people, while 151,614 received that of Pfizer, according to health authorities.







The country has secured enough coronavirus vaccines to inoculate 79 million people, more than its 52 million population. It seeks to complete the vaccination of 12 million people by end-June and aims to achieve herd immunity by November. (Yonhap)


Houston, April 7 : Texas Governor Greg Abbott has issued an executive order that bans the government mandated Covid-19 "vaccine passports".

According to the executive order issued on Tuesday, it prohibits state agencies or political subdivisions in the state from creating a "vaccine passport" requirement, or otherwise conditioning receipt of services on an individual's Covid-19 vaccination status, reports Xinhua news agency.

The order also prohibits organisations receiving public funds from requiring consumers to provide documentation of vaccine status in order to receive any service or enter any place.

"Everyday, Texans are returning to normal life as more people get the safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine. But, as I've said all along, these vaccines are always voluntary and never forced," Abbott was quoted as saying in a statement.

"Government should not require any Texan to show proof of vaccination and reveal private health information just to go about their daily lives.

"That is why I have issued an Executive Order that prohibits government-mandated vaccine passports in Texas," he said.

The executive order came as inoculation credentials, often referred to as vaccine passports, are being developed around the world as a way to quickly prove someone's immunisation status.

According to a report in The Texas Tribune newspaper, it has become a fierce debate, with Republicans largely opposing the move, saying it is an infringement on individual freedoms and privacy.

Supporters, including a number of private companies, point to the passports as a way to confidently return to activities and ensure safety at workplaces.

New York became the first US state to unveil this measure in its Excelsior Pass, which can be used to quickly show proof of a vaccination or a negative test.
American Airlines has apologized after a two-time cancer survivor was told she couldnt board a flight from Los Angeles to Charlotte because of a vulgar word spelled out in an anti-cancer message on her yellow hoodie.

Tell me why the guy from American Airlines just told me if I dont put a sweatshirt on that I cant get on the plane? Roslyn Singleton of Charlotte said in an Instagram video.

The words (expletive) Cancer were spelled on the hoodie. Her lawyer, James Walker Jr. of Atlanta, said millions have said it before and there is nothing illegal about said statement.

Walker called what happened to Singleton a violation of her constitutional rights.

Singleton is an eight-year Navy veteran who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, Walker said in a statement.

In a statement to The Charlotte Observer on Wednesday, American Airlines said its policies prohibit clothing that displays offensive statements and inappropriate language from being worn on board.

This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it.

But the employees Singleton encountered in the L.A. airport should have taken the broader context of the message displayed on the customers shirt into consideration when explaining our policies, according to the AA statement.

Our team has reached out to learn more about Ms. Singletons experience, offer our apologies and reaffirm our support for efforts to fight cancer, AA officials said.

Very disrespectful and embarrassing

On Instagram, Roslyn Singleton said she put a jacket over the hoodie because I didnt want any problems. Yet, as she and her husband were about to board the flight, another AA employee came up to her and said, I was made aware that there was an issue, Singleton recounted. I had no idea what was going on, because I had my jacket on.

In a followup clip she made after arriving at the Dallas-Forth Worth airport on the first leg of her flight, Singleton said the airline did a very disrespectful and embarrassing thing to me in LA.

She also wrote on Instagram: @americanair Let me apologize to you publicly for having such a strong stance on Cancer. I hope other cancer survivors and fighters dont go through this!! Never AGAIN ....

Story continues

Singleton and her husband, Ray, hit the national spotlight in February 2020 when he serenaded her on The Ellen Show.

The segment, titled Ellen Meets Uplifting Husband and His Inspiring Wife Battling Cancer, has drawn nearly 2.2 million views on YouTube.
The Message intelligence 2.1 IDP provides high accuracy in filtering, classification, and extraction of emails, attachments, and other types of unstructured documents Todays Intelligent Document Processing technologies bring a new level of scalability and effectiveness to automation of work by processing unstructured text and are vital for any organization wanting to become more agile, more resilient, and more responsive.

Cortical.io today announced Message intelligence 2.1, an intelligent document processing solution (IDP) that provides high accuracy in filtering, classification, and extraction of emails, attachments, and other types of unstructured documents.

Leveraging Cortical.ios patented method for natural language understanding (NLU), Message Intelligence 2.1 enables higher productivity, fewer false positives, less manual intervention saving time and money. It also requires far less material to train custom classifiers and extraction models, making time to production/value a fraction of other tools available. This is particularly valuable around situations where there is a lack of training material.

The product allows a user to effortlessly create pipelines to intelligently process documents. A key capability of Message Intelligence 2.1 is that it allows a subject matter expert to easily create pipelines with components including inputs, filters, classifiers, extractions, and actions. The product comes with easy-to-use tools for building classifiers and extraction models, so that subject matter experts do not need the intervention of AI experts or data scientists to adapt the system to the specific classification and extraction needs of their organization.

A new wave of automation is sweeping businesses, and its increasingly built around intelligent technologies, said Neil Ward-Dutton, VP of IDC Europes Intelligent Business Execution Practice. Todays Intelligent Document Processing technologies bring a new level of scalability and effectiveness to automation of work by processing unstructured text and are vital for any organization wanting to become more agile, more resilient, and more responsive.

Corporations are overwhelmed with the wide range of interactions with a variety of external stakeholders  be it via emails, web contact forms or social media messages, said Thomas Reinemer, COO at Cortical.io. In todays market, everyone expects quick responses. Speed and agility have become critical to stay competitive. Assuring these interactions are compliant with regulations is also an issue in certain verticals such as insurance, banking, and financial services.

Cortical.ios Message Intelligence solution is ideal in situations where large quantities of messages and documents come in daily through emails, website submissions or social media. Examples are submission processing for the insurance industry, business process outsourcing for the transportation industry, customer service for financial institutions and billing processing for large organizations. These organizations interact through a variety of channels and documents including emails, attachments, text feeds and social media and can make enormous profitability gains by automating these interactions.

Pricing

Pricing based on volume of emails and/or documents processed.

About Cortical.io

Cortical.io delivers AI-based business solutions which are quicker and easier to implement and more capable than current approaches. The companys patented method of Natural Language Understanding enables enterprises to search, extract, and analyze information from unstructured text more effectively. The companys solutions, including Contract Intelligence and Message Intelligence, cover a wide spectrum of use cases with proven implementations in Fortune 500 companies. Cortical.io is working to enable Semantic Supercomputing, the ability to process streams of natural language content at massive scale in real time using hardware acceleration. Cortical.io has offices in the US (New York and San Francisco) and in Europe (Vienna). For more information, go to https://www.cortical.io. Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter @Cortical_io.


Firm's move in line with its decision to focus on People, Platforms, Brand & Customer Success

HYDERABAD, India, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Tanla Platforms Limited (NSE: TANLA) (BSE: 532790), India's largest CPaaS provider announced the appointment of Aravind Viswanathan as Chief Financial Officer effective 1st June 2021. Aravind joins the company from Wipro Limited, where he served as Senior Vice President and CFO  iDEAS Global Business Line.

"Aravind is a highly experienced technology industry CFO and an incredibly capable global leader who will be a great partner to me and a perfect fit for Tanla. Aravind is the right person to join me and our leadership team to help continue Tanla's remarkable momentum and drive our next phase of hyper growth, global expansion, and customer success. He will help set new benchmarks in process and policies for the organisation by bringing in the best global practices. He will be a strong partner to the leadership team as we continue to drive growth, both organically and inorganically," said Uday Reddy, Chairman & CEO of Tanla Platforms Limited.

Aravind's handling of finance and related functions is extensive and rich. He joins Tanla with nearly two decades' financial experience, all at Wipro Limited, a leading global information technology company listed in India and on NYSE with a market cap of over US$30 Billion. He has handled pivotal roles across business finance, treasury, investor relations, financial planning and analysis and audit. He brings in considerable experience in areas around client contract negotiation including innovative deal structuring, driving levers for superior operating margin, forecasting and planning, M&A business case preparation and integration, driving better cash flows, setting up strong processes and compliance, investor relations and talent management.

"I would like to take this opportunity to thank the board of Tanla Platforms Ltd., for the trust placed in me and for giving me this opportunity. I am excited to join Uday and the Tanla leadership team in taking forward the culture of innovation that Tanla stands for. Its investments and phenomenal growth in the platforms business is what makes Tanla amongst the global leaders in the CPaaS ecosystem. As Tanla stands poised for the next phase of accelerated growth and global expansion, I am excited to support the business in this phase and be a partner in driving customer success and delivering value for all stakeholders," said Aravind.

The Board of Tanla would like to thank our current CFO GK Srinivas for his invaluable contribution to Tanla for 13 years. He will be retiring in August 2021 enabling a smooth transition to the new CFO.

About Tanla:

Tanla Platforms Limited transforms the way the world collaborates and communicates through innovative CPaaS solutions. Founded in 1999, it was the first company to develop and deploy A2P SMSC in India. Today, as one of the world's largest CPaaS players, Tanla processes more than 800 billion interactions annually and about 70% of India's A2P SMS traffic is processed through its distributed ledger platform- Trubloq, making it the world's largest Blockchain use case. Tanla touches over a billion lives carrying mission critical messages meeting the needs of the world's largest enterprises. Tanla Platforms Limited is headquartered in Hyderabad, India and is expanding its presence globally.

SOURCE Tanla Platforms Limited
On Tuesday, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said that he supports President Joe Biden's initiative to increase corporate taxes to help pay for his administration's $2 trillion infrastructure plan. To help finance his sweeping plan, Biden has suggested raising the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent. "We understand this investment would necessitate compromises from fronts in terms of what's included and how it's paid for. We're in favor of a corporate tax rate increase," Bezos said in a statement.

Jeff Bezos expressed support for Biden's infrastructure plan

Bezos said that his company supports the administration's "emphasis on bold investments in American infrastructure." The president singled out Jeff Bezos as he launched his infrastructure plan, blasting the e-commerce giant for how much it spends in federal taxes.

Last week, Trump reported that Amazon was one of 91 Fortune 500 firms that "use numerous loopholes to stop paying a single penny of federal income tax." For years, Amazon has been mocked for paying almost no federal taxes in the United States.

Bezos, the world's richest man, will step down from his role as CEO in the third quarter of 2021, as per the NY Post.

Mitch McConnell Wants Big Companies to Stay out of Politics Unless Involving Donations

Jeff Bezos claims that now is the time to strengthen US prosperity

Jeff Bezos said Democrats and Republicans had endorsed infrastructure plans, and now is the best time to get something "that preserves or strengthens U.S. prosperity."

In a statement posted on Amazon's website, Bezos said, "We support the Biden Administration's focus on making bold improvements in American infrastructure. We hope Congress and the administration will work together to find a realistic and equitable solution." Last week, Biden reported that the infrastructure plan "needs investments."

The $2 trillion plan seeks to restore the country's aging roads, bridges, transit, and rail networks and promote electric vehicles, green energies, and the construction of over 2 million affordable homes. White House press secretary Jen Psaki reported that the administration wants to have Congress's proposal this summer.

Bezos has stated that the corporation supports raising corporate tax rates, which is proposed to fund the eight-year spending plan. That will lift the corporate tax rate to 28 percent, reversing President Donald Trump's tax cuts from 21, as per USA Today.

NLRB: Elon Musk Tweet Threatens to Retaliate Against Workers, Tesla Violates Labor Law

Amazon has been slammed for tax practices

Amazon's approach varies from Republicans and big business groups, who have come out against the tax hikes, arguing that they would stifle economic growth. Bezos did not mention if Amazon would accept the White House's other tax reforms, aside from the corporate rate hike.

These aim to capture more revenue from U.S. corporations' overseas earnings, including partnering with other countries to create a global minimum tax. Changes to those laws, according to analysts, are more likely to evoke intense resistance from corporations than an increase in the corporate tax rate, which many companies escape due to exemptions and other credits.

According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Amazon paid an average federal income tax rate of 9.4 percent in 2020. Amazon has retaliated more forcefully against opponents in recent weeks, although it has long been chastised for its tax practices.

Last year, Amazon announced $1.7 billion in federal tax expense and $350 billion in investment. Amazon's initiatives have helped it save money on taxes by taking advantage of laws that enable businesses to invest in research and development areas, BBC News reported.

LG Confirms Shutting Down of Mobile Business as It Experience Continuous Surge of Losses

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PHOENIX  More than 5,000 people gathered last weekend in the Tonto National Forest northeast of Phoenix for an illegal party that was broken up by U.S. Forest Service personnel, according to authorities.

The Tonto National Forest requires a permit application to be submitted and approved for all gatherings of over 75 people.

Officers patrolling in the Sycamore Creek area Saturday night came across the unauthorized gathering.

According to Phoenix TV station KPHO, forest officials say campers and partiers restricted access by taping off sections of the main road to designate the party area and vehicles were parked all along the main roads.

Authorities said violations included DUI, double riding, speeding, reckless vehicle operation, staging camps in illegal areas, blocking roadways, illegal use of fireworks and target shooting.

By the end of the night, there had been seven vehicle accidents reported and multiple reports of stolen off-highway vehicles.

Authorities said one person was taken to the hospital after getting injured when two quads collided.

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New Delhi, April 7 : As India witnesses a sharp second wave of Covid-19 pandemic after a brief lull, health experts on Wednesday warned that the virus and its variants may hit people really badly as it is now more lethal with several new symptoms not observed before.

According to the experts, joint pain, body ache, abdominal pain and ulceration in the stomach are among the new symptoms. They also found the absence of cough and fever, and yet people being tested Covid positive.

"The patients in the second wave of coronavirus in India are having unusual symptoms such as loss of appetite or anorexia, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain and diarrhoea," Saumitra Rawat, Head of Department of Surgical Gastroenterology and Liver Transplant, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, New Delhi, told IANS.

"The patients are even developing runny noses and cold. Other symptoms increasingly seen also include joint pain and myalgia (muscle pain)," he added.

In the second wave, patients are also facing other issues as the novel coronavirus is now bypassing the mouth and saliva and directly reaching the lungs, affecting the organs badly, according to experts.

"Even patients who are recovering from Covid are experiencing massive gastrointestinal bleeding. This is due to clotting in the vessels, which is leading to ulceration and necrosis and GI bleeding," Anil Arora, Chairman, Institute of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Pancreatobiliary Sciences, at the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, told IANS.

In the last 24 hours, India recorded 1,15,736 new Covid-19 cases, the biggest-ever single-day surge since the onset of the pandemic early last year, which has made the condition grimmer.

On Tuesday, the Health Ministry warned that the next four weeks will be "very critical".

Some reports claimed that the viral load, the amount of virus in an infected person's blood, can be blamed for the second wave of Covid.

However, Manoj Sharma, Senior Consultant, Internal Medicine, Fortis Hospital Vasant Kunj, New Delhi, said this is not the case.

"When we are talking about viral load, we are talking about a person and not the entire community. When the viral load is higher, we may potentially infect more individuals at a faster rate but primarily the rate of infection which is prevalent in the community these days is because of the irresponsible behaviour of people rather than the viral load," he said.

"The irresponsible behaviour of people like not wearing masks, not maintaining social distancing, not following health hygiene are the main reasons to blame behind this second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic," he added.

Active cases crossed the 800,000 mark in the last 24 hours and now stand at 843,473, comprising 6.59 per cent of the total infections.

Reports suggest that India is now the fourth most affected country in the world in terms of active cases.

(Vivek Singh Chauhan can be contacted at vivek.c@ians.in)

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 7) - The San Miguel Corporation, through its packaging subsidiary San Miguel Yamamura Packaging Corp. (SMYPC), will train indigent students of Sisters of Mary School  Adlas, Inc. (Boystown) in Cavite for technical jobs in the manufacturing sector.

The company donated manufacturing equipment to the school and also renovated its mechanical workshop.

Now more than ever we need to produce bright, talented young minds that are central to driving the manufacturing sector forward. Through this program, we hope to raise the interest of the next generation of Filipinos and equip them with skills in modern technologies to make them industry-ready and self-reliant, said SMC President and Chief Operating Officer Ramon Ang.

SMYPC and MESCO, Inc., a partner for machine tools, donated two computer numerical control or CNC machines.

CNC machining is a manufacturing process in which pre-programmed computer software dictates the movement of factory tools and machinery. It can be used to control different cutting machinery.

Students need to have access to the equipment utilized in manufacturing todayto see, touch, and operate them. The CNC machine is an example of a vital piece of equipment currently used in the industry, said Ang.

More than that, these students should have the opportunity to learn in a well-equipped facility in order to prepare them for their future careers. I hope our recent effort will do just that, he added.

Moreover, the renovated workshop has now a metal crafting facility and an area for the CNC machines. More than 500 students under the schools Technical and Vocational Education and Training program will use the upgraded workshop.

SMC, through SMYPC, has been working closely with the Sisters of Mary Schools in the past 16 years.
My story goes on to recreate his incarceration in Nazi camps, his wifes and daughters challenges in his absence, and his friends nomination of Ossietzky for the Nobel Peace prize, Tres wrote in an email. Alternately, I describe what would have been reported in the newspapers had they not been closed and censored: Germanys plunge into fascism.

The story concludes with the politics behind the Nobel selection process and Ossietzkys release, as well as his final trial, which concerns the loss of his Nobel monetary award. It ends with a final look back on Ossietzkys daughters failed attempt in 1992 to have his conviction for treason overturned.

Kings reading of Tres book is available on Audible.

Oona Out of Order

Napa Copperfields hosts an online book club on the second Tuesday of the month. Coming up 6 to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 13, the featured book is Oona Out of Order, a novel by Marquerita Montimore.
TROY  Women - are you OK with wearing a corset and bustle?

If you're willing to put on one of history's most notoriously painful garments and its accompanying bustle, you could have an in as an extra when HBOs The Gilded Age starts filming downtown for about four weeks in May and June. The casting company is also looking for women with long hair and men with facial hair.

The period drama, a prequel to the smash series "Downton Abbey," was expected to shoot in Troy last year before the pandemic hit. Local filming for the project is now said to be just weeks away.

The dates the production team plans to use the Hart Cluett Museum's 57 Second St. building are June 10 and 11 says Kathy Sheehan, historian for the city of Troy and Rensselaer County. Second Street exterior shots outside the museum and those filmed from inside the building looking out are tentatively scheduled for the production, Sheehan said.

Grant Wilfey Casting is advertising for men, women, and children to portray various 1880's roles for likely MULTIPLE DAYS OF WORK from 5/22 - 6/18, film in Troy, NY. Registration information is available at http://www.gwci.app/talent.

The casting company advises there will be required testing for COVID-19 during fittings, between April 20 and May 20, and before. The production company pays for the tests and days for work and fittings are paid.

Filming of scenes in Troy was scheduled for May to June 2020, but the coronavirus pandemic pushed the work to 2021.

"The Gilded Age" isn't the only HBO show slated to film in the Capital Region this year. Grant Wilfley also is preparing to cast extras for "The White House Plumbers," a five-episode limited series starring Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux  HBO vets from "True Detective" and "The Leftovers," respectively  as E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy. The two men coordinated the 1972 break-in at Democratic Party headquarters and the casting company says filming is expected to happen in Albany. Liddy died last month.

Julian Fellowes, who created "Downton Abbey," is the creative force behind "The Gilded Age." The story is said to take place several decades before the action of "Downton Abbey," which opened with news of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. The show portrayed the lives of British aristocrats through the late 1920s. There is expected to be a crossover between the two series. Christina Baranski, Cynthia Nixon, Carrie Coon, and Denee Benton are in the cast for the new show, according to HBO's synopsis.

Troy's intact Victorian architecture has made downtown a favorite location for directors seeking to capture the wealth and glamour of New York City during that time. During the 19th century Troy was one of the nation's wealthiest cities, as reflected in the surviving buildings from that periods Location scouts for "The Gilded Age" scoured Troy for buildings and street scenes to use while set decorators shopped in Capital Region antique stores for period pieces to use in the production.

Director Martin Scorsese had his cameras filming downtown for 1993's "The Age of Innocence," a drama based on Edith Wharton's classic novel that starred Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer. Other movies that used Troy's buildings and streets include a version of H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine" made in 2002 and "Ironweed" in 1987.

The Gilded Age has filmed parts of its planned 10-episode run in Westchester County in the lower Hudson Valley and had plans to film in the historic mansions of Newport, R.I., to reproduce the sense of 19th-century aristocratic lifestyles.
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WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF THE RARE BLOOD CLOTS LINKED TO ASTRAZENECA'S VACCINE? MHRA chief executive Dr June Raine said anyone who has one or more of the below symptoms for longer than four days after vaccination should seek urgent medical advice. Shortness of breath

Chest pain

Swollen leg

Persistent stomach pain

Severe headache

Blurred vision

Skin bruising beyond the site of injection Advertisement

The Government, opposition politicians and medical experts were tonight rushing to shore up confidence in the AstraZeneca vaccine after health chiefs ruled it should not be given to Britons under the age of 30 - amid fears the move could damage the public's faith in the jab.

Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock tweeted that the British-made vaccine was 'safe' and that the benefits far outweighed the risks for the vast majority of adults, while Labour leader Keir Starmer said he was 'looking forward' to getting his second dose.

It came after the Government's vaccine advisory group ruled today that people aged between 18 and 29 should be offered an alternative to AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine while experts continue to investigate its link to rare blood clots.

A review by the drugs watchdog the MHRA found that by the end of March, 79 out of 20million Britons vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine had suffered deadly blood clots in the brain or arteries, a rate of about one in 250,000. Nineteen of the cases died and three were under the age of 30.

Slides presented at a press conference announcing the change in guidance today showed that younger people are more prone to blood clots after vaccination than older groups.

The MHRA said healthy people aged 19 to 29 be offered either the Pfizer or Moderna jabs instead when the programme moves to younger groups in the coming months.

Anyone who has already had their first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, regardless of their age, is being advised to go for their second appointment as planned.

But former Tory leader Sir Ian Duncan Smith told Politico's Emilio Casalicchio the move could be a 'real blow' to uptake of the vaccine, adding: 'I'm concerned that this statement by the MHRA will lead to a lack of confidence in the jab.'

AstraZeneca's jab is only being paused for under-30s in Britain because coronavirus levels are so low, said Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van-Tam.

If Covid was still more prevalent, as it is in Europe, he suggested that the vaccine would still be recommended for all ages, including young people.

The MHRA insisted there was still no concrete proof that the British-made vaccine is causing the clots, but admitted the link was getting firmer. The review prompted the Government's vaccine advisory group, the JCVI, to recommend that people aged 18 to 29 be given an alternative jab.

Professor Wei Shen Lim, coronavirus chairman for the vaccines committee: 'The Covid-19 vaccines have already saved thousands of lives and the benefit for the majority of the population is clear  if you are offered a vaccine, you should take it.'

However European regulator the EMA took a bolder approach, saying that blood clots should be listed as a 'very rare' side effect of the AstraZeneca vaccine but stopping short of imposing any age restrictions on its use.

Britons over that age are still being advised to get the vaccine because the risk of Covid far outweighs the chance of developing the extremely rare conditions. But the JCVI said the benefit to risk ratio was 'more finely balanced' in younger people.

Professor Van-Tam said the new advice marked a 'course correction' for the UK's rollout - and reiterated that for the vast majority of people the 'benefits outweigh the risks'.

Displaying three slides that showed the relative risk of coronavirus versus blood clots after vaccination, Professor Van-Tam said that for older age groups the risk of the disease always outweighs the risk after having the AstraZeneca jab.

He said that when coronavirus is prevalent in society, 100,000 AstraZeneca vaccines prevent 127.7 Covid ICU admissions among 60 to 69-year-olds. For 20 to 29-year-olds, every 100,000 vaccine administered stops seven people in that age group from being admitted to intensive care with the disease.

The Government wheeled out a series of graphs comparing the risk of falling ill with Covid compared to the threat of developing blood clots after getting the AZ vaccine in various age groups. In low Covid levels, every 100,000 vaccines prevents 0.8 ICU admissions from coronavirus in people under 30 but 1.1 people will suffer blood clotting after having the jab, making the threat higher than the virus itself

When coronavirus is prevalent in society, 100,000 AstraZeneca vaccines prevent 127.7 Covid ICU admissions among 60 to 69-year-olds. For 20 to 29-year-olds, every 100,000 vaccine administered stops seven people in that age group from being admitted to intensive care with the disease

The EMA, which polices the safety of drugs used on the continent, spotted 169 cases of cerebral vein thrombosis (CVST) and 53 cases of splanchnic vein thrombosis (SVT), from 34million jabs. CVST occurs when a vein that drains blood from the brain is blocked by a clot. It can lead to a stroke. SVT is the same type of blood clot but it occurs in the digestive system

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the Government believes the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is 'safe'

He threw his weight behind the British-made vaccine amid fears the latest move by regulators could dent public confidence

Jonathan Van-Tam, England's deputy medical officer, led a press conference this afternoon, where it was announced the AZ vaccine is being restricted in under 30s

However, he justified the change in course on the AstraZeneca vaccine by pointing out that when Covid levels are low - as they currently are in the UK - the benefit per vaccine is lower.

In low Covid levels, every 100,000 vaccines prevents 0.8 ICU admissions from coronavirus in people under 30 but 1.1 people will suffer blood clotting after having the jab, making the threat higher than the virus itself.

What should I do if I've had the AZ jab? What are the alternatives for under-30s? And what are the tell-tale symptoms of blood clots? WHAT HAS HAPPENED? The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has advised that healthy adults aged 18-29 are offered an alternative vaccine to the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab, if available. The recommendation follows a review by the UKs medicines regulator, the MHRA, which found there was a strong possibility that very rare blood clots, known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST), could be caused by the vaccine. Dr June Raine, chief executive of the MHRA, yesterday said the possible side effect was extremely rare, while the balance of benefits from having the jab are still very favourable for the majority of people. However, for healthy younger adults, for which the risk from coronavirus is far lower, it is more finely balanced. SHOULD I STILL GET MY SECOND AZ JAB? Anyone who has already had their first dose of AstraZeneca's jab, regardless of their age, was today urged to still attend their second appointment as planned. Trials have shown the jabs work better after two doses, with the UK's current campaign based on getting the top-up 12 weeks after the first. The decision only applies to healthy under-30s  who should not yet have been invited for vaccines. Regulators insisted the benefits of the jab  which has been repeatedly been proven to save lives and stop people falling severely ill with Covid  clearly outweigh the very small risk for everyone else. Addressing the fears today, Boris Johnson said it was 'very important for everybody to continue to get their top-up jab when you're asked to come forward for your turn.' CAN I CHANGE AND GET A DIFFERENT VACCINE? Currently, you cannot switch jabs in between first and second doses. The JCVI is not currently recommending the mixing of vaccines because there is not yet the evidence to support its effectiveness. Trials mixing doses of Pfizer and AstraZeneca are ongoing with data expected soon. At the moment, people will be offered a second dose in line with the first. Furthermore, there have so far been no recorded cases of serious clotting incidents in the UK after a second dose of the vaccine  all have been following the first. People are advised to get their second dose of the jab, whatever their age. IF I'M PREGNANT, SHOULD I GET THE VACCINE? The advice on this has not changed, meaning its recommended that those who are pregnant should not be vaccinated, with some exceptions. This is because the vaccines have not yet been tested in pregnancy. While there is no evidence to suggest that the vaccine would harm the baby, pregnancy is more likely to lead to thrombosis. Therefore women should discuss with their healthcare professional whether the benefits of having the vaccine outweigh the risks for them. WHAT ALTERNATIVE JABS COULD BE GIVEN TO UNDER-30S? The MHRA ruled that Britons under 30 should not be given AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine due to mounting evidence linking it to rare blood clots. More than 20million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have now been given in the UK, with the jab used as the main weapon in the UK's arsenal. The roll-out is unlikely to move on to under-30s for several weeks, perhaps months, meaning that supplies of the other jabs could be saved for younger adults. The chief scientist behind the US-developed Novavax vaccine, which Britain has secured 60million doses of, has said he expects it to be given the green light this month and rolled out in May. A separate vaccine made by American pharmaceutical giant Johnson and Johnson, which uses the same type of technology as AstraZeneca's but is administered via a single injection, is slated for a summer rollout. But, given that AstraZeneca's vaccine is the main driver of the campaign, the roll-out could be slowed if the change of heart on blood clots knocks public confidence in 30-50 year olds. I'M 29. WHAT IF THEY ONLY OFFER THE OXFORD VACCINE? Officials say this will not happen unless you have an underlying medical condition and are prioritised. In such instances, they say the benefit of having the vaccine far outweighs any issues as you have an equivalent risk from coronavirus as 65 to 70-year-olds. For healthy under-30s, officials are confident there are sufficient supplies of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines coming on stream to vaccinate all 10million 18 to 29-year-olds in the UK. WHAT ARE THE BLOOD CLOTS LINKED TO ASTRAZENECA'S JAB? European health chiefs today ruled that AstraZeneca's Covid jab should come with a warning that, in very rare cases, it may cause potentially deadly blood clots. The EMA, which polices the safety of drugs used on the continent, spotted 169 cases of cerebral vein thrombosis (CVST) and 53 cases of splanchnic vein thrombosis (SVT), from 34million jabs. CVST occurs when a vein that drains blood from the brain is blocked by a clot. It can lead to a stroke. SVT is the same type of blood clot but it occurs in the digestive system. WHAT SYMPTOMS DO THEY CAUSE? The EMA said symptoms of the two blood clots included: Shortness of breath

Chest pain

Swelling of leg

Persistent stomach pain

Severe headache

Blurred vision

Skin bruising beyond the site of injection IS THERE ANY PROOF THE JAB CAUSES THE BLOOD CLOTS? Scientists have repeatedly insisted there is no proof yet that AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine causes the blood clots. But officials are still investigating the link and can't rule it out completely. Although there isn't any evidence that the clots are developing because of vaccinations, some academics have a theory that it is the immune reaction making it happen. Research teams in Germany and Norway claim the blood clotting issue may be caused by the jab, in very rare cases, making the body attack its own platelets. Platelets are tiny chunks of cells inside blood that the body uses to build clots to stop bleeding when someone is injured. But they can also make unwanted clots. Experts from Oslo and Greifswald University believe the jab could cause the body to produce antibodies  normally used to fight off viruses  which mistake platelets in the blood for foreign invaders and attack them. To compensate, the body then overproduces platelets to replace those that are being attacked, causing the blood to thicken and raising the risk of clotting. The researchers say the phenomenon is similar to one that can occur in heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT), when sufferers take a drug called heparin. HOW OFTEN ARE THE CLOTS OCCURRING? Figures presented by the EMA today  which took into account data up until April 4  suggested the clots were occurring once in every 150,000 jabs. They also said most of the cases had occurred in women under 60. The MHRA, which plays the same role in the UK, found 79 cases of clots in 20million doses by the end of March. Officials said the risk was around one in every 250,000 doses. They also insisted the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks for the vast majority of people  but that the ratio was more 'finely balanced' in younger people. EMA chiefs said that the clots were occurring more often than expected, prompting them to say the jabs need to come with the warning that it is a rare side effect. But it said the committee investigating the link did not conclude that age and gender were clear risk factors for the very rare side effects. WHICH COUNTRIES HAVE ALREADY RESTRICTED THE JAB TO OLDER PEOPLE? Germany last week temporarily banned the AstraZeneca vaccine for under-60s, while France took the same controversial move for under-55s. Iceland has restricted it to over-70s, while Finland, Sweden and Lithuania all say it can only be given to adults over the age of 65. Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Latvia have all suspended the jab completely, while regulators probe the link further. But the EMA refused to back any of the nations in their age-restricted roll-outs. Last week it publicly said there was no evidence to justify sweeping bans for younger people. I'VE HEARD ASPIRIN CAN STOP BLOOD CLOTTING. SHOULD I TAKE IT BEFORE THE JAB? No. The risks of an adverse clotting event are extremely low. Taking aspirin or anti-coagulants can increase the risk of bleeding and is not Advertisement

The EU currently has much higher levels of coronavirus than the UK and is in the midst of a third wave, likely driving the EMA's decision not to issue any age restrictions for the vaccine.

Professor Van-Tam insisted the under-30s ban would have no bearing on the UK's ambition to vaccinate all adults against coronavirus by the end of July, so long as Pfizer and Moderna can meet their scheduled deliveries.

However, leaked figures have revealed that the AstraZeneca jab makes up 75 per cent of Britain's jab roll out.

The country is set to start vaccinating under-50s next month but has only comparatively small numbers of Pfizer and approximately 100,000 Moderna jabs available every week.

Any stall of the vaccine roll-out would be a political body blow to Boris Johnson who has enjoyed a recovery in the polls thanks to his success deploying jabs after a series of missteps at the start of the pandemic.

The UK's drive has already been thrown into crisis, with NHS bosses effectively blocking over-40s from getting jabs this month following India's decision to block a shipment of 5million AstraZeneca doses that officials hoped would speed up the roll-out.

Former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said he doesn't believe the announcement will slow vaccine uptake, saying that being 'over-cautious' will 'cost lives'.

He said: 'This is a fascinating issue for the very simple reason that the EMA  is also recommending that the Oxford AZ vaccine remains safe for all age groups.

'That was another thing that was interesting. Individual EU countries have restricted its use, I think that there is a real danger that being over-cautious as is happening in France and Germany will cost more lives than it saves.'

'Because what we can see in this country is that we have a death rate from Covid nine times lower than for example in France because we have this vaccine rolled out quickly.'

'A lot of that is thanks to Oxford AstraZeneca so I think most people can see we are really benefiting from a rapid rollout from the vaccine.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the Government believes the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is 'safe' and had already countless lives, insisting that Britons who have had a first dose of AstraZeneca should continue to get their second jabs.

The Prime Minister said: 'But the crucial thing for everybody is to listen to what the scientists, the medical experts, have to say.'

He added: 'You can really start to see some of the benefits of that - it's pretty clear that the decline in the number of deaths, the decline in the number of hospitalisations is being fuelled, is being assisted, the steepness of that decline is being helped by the rollout of the vaccines so it's very important for everybody to continue to get your second jab when you're asked to come forward for your turn.'

'You can really start to see some of the benefits of that  it's pretty clear that the decline in the number of deaths, the decline in the number of hospitalisations is being fuelled, is being assisted, the steepness of that decline is being helped by the roll-out of the vaccines so it's very important for everybody to continue to get your second jab when you're asked to come forward for your turn.'

Announcing the updated guidance today, Dr June Raine, head of the MHRA, told a press conference: 'Based on the current evidence, the benefits of the Covid-19 vaccine AstraZeneca against Covid-19 and its associated risks  hospitalisation and death  continues to outweigh the risks for the vast majority of people. Our review has reinforced that the risk of this rare suspected side effect remains extremely small.'

Professor Anthony Harnden, deputy chairman of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), said there was a slight gradient of risk of blood clots in younger age groups with the AstraZeneca vaccine.

It comes after regulators the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and European Medicines Agency (EMA) said the vaccine can be used in all age groups, as the benefits of the vaccine still outweigh the risks overall.

Speaking at a briefing hosted by the Science Media Centre (SMC) on Wednesday, Prof Harnden said: 'We on JCVI have decided that that risk-benefit ratio doesn't really stack up when it comes to the very well under 30-year-olds.

'We felt on JCVI having weighed up all the data that the benefits outweighed the risks in anybody over the age of 30.

'But under the age of 30 it was not clear the benefits did outweigh the risks and they were more similar, and therefore we decided... as a precautionary approach we would advise an alternative vaccine for that particular age group.

'We just thought there was enough doubt in our minds that the benefits did not completely outweigh the risks of the vaccine in the very young, well age group.'

In other coronavirus developments today:

A 24-year-old carer today became the first person in Britain to get Moderna's coronavirus vaccine as the roll-out was expanded in Wales  but England will have to wait another fortnight to use the jab;

The SNP could save Boris Johnson from a growing Tory revolt over domestic vaccine passports as Labour hardened its opposition to the documents;

No10 refuses to rule out needing proof of jabs to enter non-essential shops, leading to fears you'll need vaccine passport to buy clothes;

Boris promises to make it 'as easy as possible' for families to travel abroad this summer, with 5 on-the-spot Covid tests set to be allowed instead of gold-standard 100 PCR swabs;

Lockdown easing could be sped up because vaccines are working, says the scientists who correctly forecast second wave - as SAGE doomsday predictions are criticised for being 'too pessimistic';

Britain's daily Covid deaths fall by two-thirds in a week with 20 new victims - while cases plunge by 40% to 2,379;

One in three Covid survivors are diagnosed with anxiety, depression or other mental health issues within six months of recovering, major study finds;

Generation of home-schooled children lacked 'discipline and order' in lockdown says Gavin Williamson as he backs mobile phone ban in schools.

Professor Van-Tam said it was not unusual for doctors to alter their preference on medicines and vaccines. He acknowledged the change in recommended use of the AstraZeneca vaccine might result in delays and longer journeys to receive the jab. He told the press conference: 'The NHS has a message that we will get the right vaccine to you in the right time according to the new JCVI advice.

'There might be a small delay sometimes, there might be a slightly greater distance that some people might be asked to travel. But the NHS is all over this and understands the challenge of making the advice from JCVI truly operational in a smooth way.'

Of the 79 people who suffered clots after getting the AstraZenca vaccine in the UK, a total of 19 people have died, although it has not been established what the cause was in every case. The 79 cases occurred in 51 women and 28 men, aged from 18 to 79. Of the 19 who died, three were under the age of 30, the MHRA said.

Some 14 cases of the 19 were cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST), a specific type of clot that prevents blood from draining from the brain. The other five cases were thrombosis in the arteries.

Asked if the new MHRA advice would lead to falling confidence in the AstraZeneca vaccine, former health secretary Jeremy Hunt told Sky News: 'This is a fascinating issue for the very simple reason that the EMA  is also recommending that the Oxford AZ vaccine remains safe for all age groups.

'That was another thing that was interesting. Individual EU countries have restricted its use, I think that there is a real danger that being over-cautious as is happening in France and Germany will cost more lives than it saves.

'Because what we can see in this country is that we have a death rate from Covid nine times lower than for example in France because we have this vaccine rolled out quickly.

'A lot of that is thanks to Oxford AstraZeneca so I think most people can see we are really benefiting from a rapid rollout from the vaccine.

'But they also understand that as scientific advice comes in, in a pandemic where you need to you tweak the advice.'

Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi tweeted that there was 'reassurance' that drug safety standards worked well 'in both the United Kingdom & the EU'.

He added: 'This is important in maintaining confidence in the largest vaccination program in history. As @BorisJohnson has said; We will follow the advice & are confident in meeting our programme targets.'

Reacting to the guidance change in the UK, independent experts said the link between the jab and clotting was becoming 'increasingly plausible', but they reiterated they were still 'rare'.

Dr Michael Head, Senior Research Fellow in Global Health, University of Southampton, said: 'We have seen an update from the UK and EU regulators, suggesting that these thrombotic events may have been a causal, but rare, adverse event from the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine. This link is still not proven, but is now thought to be increasingly plausible.

'It's important to emphasise that adverse events happen with all medicines, and vaccines are no exceptions. Safety surveillance is vital in picking up and assessing signals that emerge from the data. There were some cases of severe anaphylaxis with the Pfizer vaccine early in the UK rollout.

'These were openly investigated, guidance subsequently updated, and the rollout continued with high public confidence. Hopefully, we will see similar outcomes here in the UK with the Oxford AstraZeneca product, and also that European countries can get their vaccine administrations back on track.

'The harm from withdrawing the vaccine altogether is almost certainly going to be much greater than the harm from rare adverse events.

'The Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine is a vital tool in the global strategy to contain the pandemic. It is being manufactured in large numbers, is stored at refrigeration temperatures and thus easier to transport, cost per dose is cheap, and key to the COVAX distribution to low- and lower-middle income countries.

'Maintaining public confidence is so important. An open transparent process to assessing safety concerns must be part of that.'

When there is medium prevalence, the threat of Covid still outweighs the chance of clots after AZ vaccine in every age group

Leaked delivery schedules reveal the Government is expecting AstraZeneca's vaccine to make up 75 per cent of its Covid jab supplies over the next two months. The document, published on the Scottish Government's website in January and quickly taken down, showed Britain was anticipating about 29.4m doses of AstraZeneca's jab between April and the first week of June. By comparison, officials expected just 8.5m of Pfizer's vaccine in the next two months and 1m of the new Moderna jab, which is being rolled out for the first time in Wales today

Elle Taylor, 24, today became the first person to receive the Moderna jab in the UK. She said it would help her care for her grandmother 'properly and safely'

Clots are similar to condition linked to blood-thinning medicine, says Europe The rare but potentially fatal blood clots associated with the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine are similar to a condition suffered by patients treated with a blood-thinning medicine, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has said. Analysis of the jab, prompted by concerns about severe blood clots, concluded that most of the incidents occurred in women under 60 within two weeks of vaccination with the AstraZeneca product, but said no specific risk factors have been identified based on current evidence. They said the body's natural response, similar to conditions seen in patients treated with the anticoagulant heparin, might be a plausible explanation for the blood clotting side effect. EMA safety committee chairwoman Dr Sabine Straus told a Brussels briefing on Wednesday: 'Current available data did not allow us to identify a definite cause for these complications. 'However possible plausible explanations have been put forward, including an immune response that leads to a condition that seems similar to atypical heparin-induced thrombocytopenia.' The EMA said data showed the blood clots reported had been found in veins in the brain, the abdomen and arteries, combined with low levels of blood platelets and sometimes bleeding. Symptoms associated with the blood clots include shortness of breath, chest pain, swelling in the leg, persistent abdominal pain, severe headaches, blurred vision and tiny blood spots under the skin beyond the area where the injection was administered, and anyone who displayed them should seek medical attention. The EMA's Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee carried out an in-depth review of 62 cases of clots in the brain and 24 cases of clots in the abdomen as of March 22, with 18 of the combined cases proving fatal. They came from reporting systems in the European Economic Area and the UK, from around 25 million people who had received the vaccine. The committee has requested new studies and amendments to ongoing ones to provide more information. Emer Cooke, executive director of the EMA, said its review 'confirmed that the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine in preventing Covid-19 overall outweigh the risk of side effects', adding: 'Vaccination is extremely important in helping us in the fight against Covid-19.' Advertisement

Meanwhile, the EU's medical regulators have said that AstraZeneca's vaccine should come with a clear warning that blood clots are a 'very rare side effect'.

No specific risk factors had been identified based on current evidence, the regulator confirmed at a press briefing this afternoon.

But the agency refused to back Germany and other nations banning the jabs for under-60s, saying they could not prove that age or gender was a risk factor for the 'very rare' side effect.

Health chiefs said they had spotted 169 cases of CVST and 53 cases of a separate blood clot called splanchnic vein thrombosis out of 34million doses dished out by April 4  the equivalent of one blood clot for every 150,000 doses. But many of these clots would have occurred naturally, meaning the true risk will be smaller.

Health ministers from EU countries will hold a virtual conference this evening to discuss their next steps with the AstraZeneca jab.

The EMA said the risk of deadly side effects from AstraZeneca's vaccine is far lower than the risk of death from Covid.

It suggested the vaccine comes with a warning and individual countries decide who is vaccinated with what company's jab.

Emer Cooke, executive director of the European Medicines Agency, sought to downplay any concerns about blood clots.

She said: 'These are very rare side effects. The risk of mortality from Covid is much greater than risk of mortality from these side effects.'

Dr Sabine Straus, the regulator's chairwoman, said the available data found a 'very rare event that might occur'.

She told a press conference: 'The frequency is difficult to assess, but we feel if you state the reporting rate is approximately one in 100,000 or even a little bit higher, that would reflect the risk.

'Based on that information we ask national vaccination authorities to make up their mind on who they would like to vaccinate with which kind of vaccine.'

EMA's Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee (PRAC) said the blood clots reported had been found in veins in the brain, the abdomen and arteries, combined with low levels of blood platelets and sometimes bleeding.

It said symptoms associated with the blood clots include shortness of breath, chest pain, swelling in the leg, persistent abdominal pain, severe headaches, blurred vision and tiny blood spots under the skin where the injection was administered.

Anyone who displayed them should seek medical attention, the EMA said.

The committee carried out an in-depth review of 62 cases of clots in the brain and 24 cases of clots in the abdomen as of March 22, with 18 of the combines cases proving fatal.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said most of the cases of blood clots reported have occurred in women under 60 within two weeks of vaccination with the company's jab.

They came from reporting systems in the European Economic Area and the UK, from around 25 million people who had received the vaccine.

Ms Cooke said its review 'confirmed that the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine in preventing Covid-19 overall outweigh the risk of side effects'.

Britain's daily Covid cases fall by a third in a week with 2,763 more infections - while deaths rise slightly to 45 Britain's daily Covid cases have fallen by a third in a week but deaths rose slightly, official figures revealed today. Department of Health data showed there were 2,763 new lab-confirmed cases recorded and 45 Covid deaths, which was two more than last Wednesday. More than 31.7million Britons - or three in five adults - have also now received their first dose, after the national drive began to pick up the pace yesterday following the Easter bank holiday. In a boost to Britain's roll-out today, however, Wales became the first UK nation to start dishing out the Moderna Covid vaccine. More than 100,000 doses of the US-made jab are set to arrive in the country this month, with deliveries expected to 'significantly increase' from May. Advertisement

A TIMELINE OF THE ASTRAZENECA BLOOD CLOT SAGA March 7: Austria suspended the use of one batch of the vaccine after a woman, 49, who had been given it died of a 'severe coagulation disorder' and a 35-year-old developed a blood clot in her lung. March 11: Authorities in Denmark, Norway and Iceland suspended all use of the vaccine following a 60-year-old woman in Denmark died of a blood clot after the reports emerged in Austria. Danish health minister Magnus Heunicke said: 'It is currently not possible to conclude whether there is a link.' March 11: European Medicines Agency's safety committee began an investigation into the cases. It confirms 30 cases of 'thromboembolic events'  clots  were reported after five million vaccines in the EEA. March 12: Thailand suspended the use of the vaccine off the back of European worries. Bulgaria also stops using it. March 12: The European Medicines Agency, Britain's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, Health Canada, the World Health Organization and AstraZeneca itself, all spoke out to defend the vaccine and say there is no proof it's linked to blood clots. March 13: The Netherlands, Italy and Ireland temporarily stopped using the vaccine as fears about the cases in Austria and Denmark snowballed. March 14: Germany and France suspended the vaccine. March 15: Spain, Portugal and Slovenia suspended use of the jab. March 15: Professor Andrew Pollard, the Oxford expert who ran the clinical trials of the jab, insisted safety data are 'reassuring' and said 'clearly those blood clots still happen' as often as they would in unvaccinated people. March 16: World Health Organization officials met to discuss the issue. European Medicines Agency is still investigating. March 17: Scientists accuse governments of banning the jab on political grouns. AstraZeneca's vaccine has been a flashpoint in the past. March 18: European Medicines Agency holds a press conference on its investigation and rules that the vaccine is 'safe and effective'. It said there wasn't enough evidence to rule out a link to blood clots, but also not enough to prove one. On balance, it would be safer for countries to keep using the vaccine to stop Covid. The investigation would continue. March 18: Germany, France and Italy resume use of the jab after the EMA's conclusion. March 19: Finland suspends the jab after finding blood clot cases in its own population. March 19: Bulgaria, Cyprus, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands and Spain all confirm they will start using the jab again. Scandinavian countries did not follow suit and kept the ban in place. March 22: A study is published that found public trust in the AstraZeneca vaccine collapsed in Europe at the time of the blood clot saga. A YouGov survey found more than half of people in Germany, France, Italy and Spain believed the jab was unsafe. March 30: Germany bans the vaccine for people under the age of 60 after officials said they had found 31 cases of CSVT after 2.7million vaccinations. April 2: UK regulators announce a total of 30 blood clots, 22 in the brain, have now been discovered in Britons vaccinated with the AZ jab. April 5: UK regulators begin reviewing their guidance amid concern the jab is considerably more likely among younger people. April 7: The UK's chief vaccine advisory group concludes the jab should not be given to Brits aged between 18 and 29. It said an 'alternative' vaccine should be given, if one is available. April 7: The EU's regulator took a different approach, saying that blood clots should be listed as a 'very rare' side effect of the AstraZeneca vaccine but stopping short of imposing any age restrictions on its use. Advertisement

She said: 'Vaccination is extremely important in helping us in the fight against Covid-19.

'This vaccine has proven to be highly effective. It is saving lives, vaccination is extremely important in helping us in the fight against Covid and we need to use the vaccine we have to protect us from the devastating effects.

'We will continue to monitor the scientific evidence and issue further recommendations, if necessary, on the grounds of science and robust evidence.

'When millions of people receive these vaccines, very rare events can occur that were not identified in clinical trials.

'Our conclusion is that these clotting disorders are very rare side effects of the vaccine.'

Ms Straus said the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine in preventing Covid-19 overall outweigh the risk of side effects.

She said: 'This vaccine has proven to be highly effective, it prevents severe disease and hospitalisation and it is saving lives.

'Vaccination is extremely important in helping us in the fight against Covid-19 and we need to use the vaccines we have to protect us from the devastating effects.

'Prac, after a very in-depth analysis, has concluded that the reported cases of unusual blood clotting following vaccination of the AstraZeneca vaccine should be listed as possible side effects of the vaccine.'

She added: 'I think that the cases that we have evaluated, the 62 together with the expert group, those cases provided quite good and extensive information.

'But nevertheless, the number is very limited. On the one hand, that's of course very good and fortunate that the number of cases is limited. At the same time, that also makes it very difficult to find common factors.

'And on the other hand, what we also know is a lot of cases that are spontaneously reported, they are not as complete as we would like to have them in order to further analyse them.

'So I would like to repeat again, my kind request for people who suspect that they might have a side effect, please report it, and report it as extensively, and as complete, as possible.'

Some 34million AstraZeneca jabs had been dished out in the EU by April 4, with 169 cases of CVS and 53 cases of splanchnic vein thrombosis. This is the equivalent of one in every 150,000 doses, according to Google.

The EMA said the updated figures  which were slightly higher than the headline numbers in the main release  did not change the recommendations.

Scientists believe the combination of clots and low blood platelets could be caused by an immune response leading to a condition similar to those seen in heparin patients.

Patients who use the blood thinner sometimes fall into heparin induced thrombocytopenia  a condition involving thrombosis.

Professor Van-Tam insisted that the MHRA's updated guidance would not impact Boris Johnson's roadmap out of lockdown, which will see restrictions lifted fully on June 21.

Officials have put the AstraZeneca jab at the heart of the country's rollout and the leaked delivery schedule reveal the Government is expecting it to make up 75 per cent of its Covid vaccine supplies over the next two months.

The document, published on the Scottish Government's website in January and quickly taken down, showed the UK was anticipating about 29.4million doses of AstraZeneca's jab between April and the first week of June.

For comparison, officials expected just 8.5m of Pfizer's vaccine  which is already being rationed for second doses  in the next two months. Britain's supply comes entirely from the EU, which has threatened to block exports of the jab.

Officials were also only expecting 1million doses of the new Moderna jab, which is being rolled out for the first time in Wales today. But supply will trickle in at around 160,000 doses a week, if the leaked plans are still correct. And the UK has only bought 17million  enough to vaccinate 8.5million people.

Professor Adam Finn, from the University of Bristol and a member of the Government's vaccine advisory group, the JCVI, admitted pausing the AstraZeneca jab could threaten Britain's roadmap out of lockdown.

He said today: 'We do need to keep the programme going if the plan to open things up and allow things to get back to normal is to proceed without another wave of the pandemic coming through. So it's quite a tricky balancing act here, getting the balance right, getting vaccines coming through... getting the risk-benefit right for people coming forward.'

One Tory MP told MailOnline that halting the jab would 'certainly put things back', adding: 'Clearly it would have very adverse consequences because AstraZeneca is the workhorse of the vaccination programme.'

However, the UK inoculation programme could be bolstered if two other promising jabs under review are given approval by the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency in the coming weeks.

The chief scientist behind the US-developed Novavax vaccine, which Britain has secured 60million doses of, has said he expects it to be given the green light this month and rolled out in May. All of the Novavax supplies on order will be manufactured within the UK under a new Government deal announced last week, which could drastically speed up its distribution.

A separate vaccine made by American pharmaceutical giant Johnson and Johnson, which uses the same type of technology as AstraZeneca's but is administered via a single injection, is slated for a summer rollout. Because people given the J&J vaccine don't need a 12-week follow-up appointment, it means ministers don't have to reserve supplies for second doses and can unleash them all at once.

MHRA sources originally said it would be ban for under-30s, which wouldn't pose as much damage to roll-out. But there are fears that any ban could dent public confidence.

Britain's inoculation drive drastically slowed down over the Easter weekend, figures show. Just 100,000 vaccines were dished out on Sunday and Monday, reaching 88,000 Britons.

Number 10's scientific advisers have already hinted that supplies of Moderna's jab could be reserved for younger people, if the MHRA pressed ahead with a German-style ban.

Last night Oxford University halted trials of its coronavirus vaccine in children until the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) concluded on its safety in younger people, with formal advice expected in as early as today.

Other leading experts today leapt to defend the AstraZeneca vaccine  which is the mainstay of the UK's roll-out.

Former chief executive of the MHRA, Sir Kent Woods, said he has 'no reservations' about the jab because the risks of Covid are 'much higher'. SAGE adviser Professor Calum Semple said he is 'not worried one little bit' about the fears and that it was a 'no-brainer' that he, as a 53-year-old, should get the jab.

One Cambridge scientist downplayed calls to pause the roll-out, saying he would 'certainly come forward for that vaccine at the moment'.

Last night it was revealed Oxford University had paused its vaccine trial on children amid concerns around blood clotting.

The university said the decision to pause its trial was precautionary and that there were no health issues among any of the youngsters involved.

The university began studying the vaccine in five-to-17-year-olds in February, with the aim of eventually scaling up the trial and testing it in 200 people.

Researchers have stopped recruiting new volunteers and it is not clear how many children have already been given a dose.

Oxford said it was waiting for more information from the UK's regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, before restarting the study.

Britain's study of AstraZeneca's vaccine on children was also going to give 200 youngsters a placebo. An AstraZeneca spokesman told the WSJ the company was awaiting the outcomes of the regulatory reviews and declined to comment further.
She's made a name for herself as a professional dancer on Strictly Come Dancing.

And Nadiya Bychkova displayed her svelte frame in a black two-piece on Wednesday as she shared a stunning throwback snap from a coastal break.

The Ukrainian-Slovenian ballroom dancer, 31, delivered a playful pose in the photo as she admitted she misses the beach amid lockdown.

Beach body: Strictly Come Dancing's Nadiya Bychkova displayed her svelte frame in a black two-piece on Wednesday as she shared a stunning throwback snap from a coastal break

'I should go to the beach': The Ukrainian-Slovenian ballroom dancer, 31, delivered a playful pose in the photo as she admitted she misses the beach amid lockdown

Nadiya teamed her black harness bikini bra with thong bottoms as she delicately balanced on her toes.

She rested one hand behind her head and the other on her waist while delivering a cheeky pose to the camera.

Nadiya swept her blonde tresses over to the side and appeared to go make-up free for the snap.

She captioned the upload: 'Everyone should believe in something. I believe I should go to the beach.'

Back: Just one day earlier it was reported that Strictly will return this winter for a 13-show run and BBC bosses are currently in talks with staff and professional dancers including Katya Jones, 31 (pictured)

Just one day earlier, it was reported that Strictly Come Dancing will be back with a bang this winter, with the popular ballroom show believed to be returning for a 13-show run.

The famous dancing competition's annual trip to Blackpool is also on the schedule, after being scrapped last year in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

BBC bosses are currently in talks with Strictly staff and professional dancers including Katya Jones, 31, ahead of its nineteenth season.

Exciting: The famous dancing competition's annual trip to Blackpool is also on the schedule, after being scrapped last year in light of the coronavirus pandemic

A source confirmed to The Sun: 'They're going to put on a full series this year. That means 13 episodes will and all of the themed weeks.

'The pinnacle will be the trip to Blackpool and that's always been the way on Strictly.

'As things stand, the whole show will head to the North West in November. Everyone is really excited.'

The BBC declined to comment when approached by MailOnline.

Strictly's eighteenth season faced major setbacks and was forced to go ahead with strict social distancing protocols in place.

This meant the annual Blackpool trip was scrapped, and the competition only ran for nine episodes.

However, the BBC succeeded in keeping the show on air despite a handful of COVID-19 outbreaks, with the likes of Katya and her celebrity partner, world champion boxer Nicola Adams, 38, testing positive for the virus and leaving the show early.

Pop star HRVY, 22, also tested positive before the show aired, however was able to recover in time to take part.

Here come the girls! Making up the female pros are Amy Dowden, Oti, Luba Mushtuk, Nadiya, Dianne Buswell, Janette Manrara, Karen Hauer, Katya Jones and Nancy Xu (pictured L-R in 2020)

Last month BBC confirmed the 16 dancers who will hit the dance floor this autumn, with fan favourites such as Anton Du Beke, Johannes Radebe and Dianne Buswell all back.

It comes after it was reported that BBC bosses were 'worried' that Oti, 30, would leave the show after landing a new judging job on ITV's The Masked Dancer.

But it's now clear that Oti will be back in the ballroom when the new series kicks off in the autumn after being crowned the champion of the 2020 show with Bill Bailey following her 2019 win with Kelvin Fletcher.

While Anton, 54, is to continue his reign as Strictly Come Dancing's longest-serving professional dancer by marking his 19th season on the show.

Pros: Anton Du Beke, Gorka Marquez, Graziano Di Prima, Neil Jones, Aljaz Skorjanec, Giovanni Pernice and Johannes Radebe make up the male pros (pictured L-R in 2020)

Making up the female pros are Oti, Janette Manrara, Amy Dowden, Dianne Buswell, Karen Hauer, Katya Jones, Luba Mushtuk, Nadiya and Nancy Xu.

While Aljaz Skorjanec, Anton Du Beke, Giovanni Pernice, Gorka Marquez, Graziano Di Prima, Johannes Radebe and Neil Jones make up the male pros.

Sarah James, Executive Producer of BBC Studios said of the news: 'We are so thrilled to be welcoming back our incredible line-up of professional dancers for 2021.

'Their passion and dedication for Strictly shone through more than ever last year as they all sacrificed so much to deliver an unforgettable series during unprecedented and challenging times.

Delight: Strictly is said to be 'delighted' Oti has decided to take part in the 2021 series after being 'worried' that she would leave (pictured after win with Bill in December)

'With so much talent returning to the ballroom, the 2021 series promises more show-stopping choreography, memorable performances and world class dancing.'

Despite 16 pros being announced for the new series, the 2020 show saw just 12 celebrities take to the dance floor instead of the usual 15.

There are normally a number of reserve dancers who perform in the group dances and step in if another pro is unwell or injured.

The 2020 series saw Nancy, Nadiya, Graziano and Neil act as reserve dancers, the three latter stars have previously had celebrity partners on the shows while Nancy, who joined in 2019, is yet to have a pairing.
The scene on the Springfield road where rioting has erupted on Wednesday evening. Kevin Scott

A Belfast Telegraph photographer has been set upon by two males while covering scenes of public disorder in an interface area in west Belfast.

Kevin Scott was jumped from behind by the perpetrators while covering public disorder at Cupar Way on Wednesday around 6pm.

The incident, which took place as crowds gathered at Lanark Way, has been condemned by Amnesty International NI.

A bus was hijacked and set alight, while earlier tyres and bins were been set on fire near interface gates.

The PSNI appealed to community leaders to help restore calm in the area.

Mr Scott explained he was also verbally abused during the attack and his cameras were also damaged.

"So much for peaceful - I have just been jumped from behind by two males, masked on Cupar War," he tweeted.

"One pulled me to the ground and smashed @BelTel cameras. As I fought this one off I was told to 'f*** off back to your own area you fenian c***' by the other. Police informed."

The PSNI confirmed it has been made aware of the attack.

First Minister Arlene Foster condemned the attack on Twitter, saying: "There is no justification for violence. It is wrong and should stop."

Patrick Corrigan, from Amnesty International NI, branded the incident "despicable and utterly unacceptable".

"Kevin, I am so sorry this has happened to you.," he wrote on Twitter.

"Amnesty International expects appropriate action by @PoliceServiceNI to ensure the safety of journalists and the upholding of press freedom."

Kevin, I am so sorry this has happened to you. This is a despicable and utterly unacceptable attack on you as a journalist.



Amnesty International expects appropriate action by @PoliceServiceNI to ensure the safety of journalists and the upholding of press freedom. https://t.co/CM8JB2ZwuA  Patrick Corrigan (@PatrickCorrigan) April 7, 2021

Sinn Fein MP Paul Maskey also condemned the disturbances in west Belfast, saying: "This is utterly unacceptable and is not only an attack on an individual, but the freedom of the press, which is the cornerstone of any democracy.

"Camera equipment was damaged in the incident and vile sectarian abuse directed at the journalist."

He added: "Everyone should be able to go about their work free from fear of intimidation, harassment or attack.

"This is the latest incident in loyalist disturbances which is being whipped up by the reckless rhetoric of political unionism.

"It needs to stop immediately before someone is killed or seriously injured."

Mr Maskey continued: We need to see political leadership stepping up the plate to do all in its power to reduce tension and bring these actions to an end.

Meanwhile, a DUP MP has urged loyalist protesters to "use their heads'" and step away from situations which may descend into disorder.

Gregory Campbell was speaking after several consecutive nights of violence across Northern Ireland which resulted in 41 police officers injured and 10 arrested.

The cause of the unrest has been attributed to frustration over a decision not to prosecute members of Sinn Fein over alleged coronavirus regulation breaches at the funeral of republican Bobby Storey.

A PSNI spokesperson said: "Crowds have gathered at Lanark Way and West Circular Road at its junction with the Springfield Road in west Belfast and a bus has been hijacked and set on fire at the junction of Lanark Way and the Shankill Road.

"Police are advising members of the public to avoid these areas. We would appeal to those with influence in the area to use it to help restore calm."


Subtle social cues may be implanted in the lazy yawn of a lion, new research proposes. Watch the yawning of a group of lions, and it may appear like nothing more than big, lazy cats acting like they are sleepy, but recent research suggests that these yawns may be helping subtly in the communication of some crucial social cues.

A Discovery Partly Made by Chance

Yawning is not only infectious within lions, but it appears to aid in the synchronization of the predator's movements scientists report March 16 in Animal Behaviour. Elisabetta Palagi, an ethologist at the University of Pisa in Italy said that this discovery was partly made by chance.

While observing play behavior in spotted hyenas in South Africa, she and her team always had the opportunity to keep an eye on lions (Panthera leo) at the same time. And she noticed immediately that lions yawn quite constantly, concentrating these yawns in brief time periods.

Yawning is universal among vertebrates, possibly increasing the flow of blood to the skull, cooling the brain, and helping alertness, mostly when transitioning in and out of rest (SN: 9/8/15).

Also Read: Are Mountain Lions More Dangerous Than Humans? California Residents Startled by Large Feline Sightings

Yawn Contagion

Fish and reptiles usually yawn, but more social vertebrates such as mammals and birds seem to have accustomed to the behavior for purposes favorable to group living. In most species - like monkeys, humans, and even parakeets (SN: 6/1/15) - onlookers can be infected with "yawn contagion" of yawners causing onlookers to yawn not too long afterward.



Watching the lions yawn made Palagi recall her own work on contagious yawning in primates. Inquisitive if the lions' prodigious yawning was connected socially, Palagi and her colleagues started recording videos of the big cats, examining when they were yawning and any behaviors made during those times.

19 Lions Closely Monitored

Over four months in 2019, the scientists monitored 19 lions closely at the Greater Makalali Private Game Reserve, west of Kruger National Park. The team discovered that lions that sighted another member of the pride yawn were around 139 times as probable to yawn themselves within the next three minutes. But the yawn contagion didn't come to an end there.

Lions that contracted a yawn from another lion were 11 times as probable to mirror the movements of the main yawner than those that hadn't. This "motor synchrony" included one lion yawning, then another yawning, then the first standing and walking all over the place or laying down back and the other doing the same thing.

Harmonization of Their Group Movements

Contagious yawning might be crucial in lions for maintaining social cohesion, says Palagi. Yawns that aid in the harmonization of their group movements could help get the pride all on the very same page, important behavior for an animal that usually hunts and trains offspring cooperatively.

Palagi said: "If yawn contagion has developed to foster the bond creation, after a yawn contagion episode, the two animals require to do something together [like standing up and walking] to boost their probability of interacting."

Related Article: 3-Year Old Lion at Denver Zoo Euthanized After Severe Medical Condition

For more news, updates about lions and similar topics don't forget to follow Nature World News!
RIPON, Wis., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Alliance Laundry Systems, the global leader in commercial laundry equipment, is acquiring the distribution assets of Chicago-based D&M Equipment Co. D&M is one of the top distributors of laundromat equipment in the Midwest.

This is Alliance's third acquisition of 2021 and the first acquisition of a distributor of multiple manufacturers' products. The deal is expected to close later this month.

"Our strategy has been clear from the start: we will pursue partnerships with exceptional companies," said Rick Pyle, President and Chief Commercial Officer of Alliance Laundry Systems. "For decades, D&M has shown market leadership and we are excited to welcome them to Alliance."

Founded in 1965 by respected laundromat leader, Don Tomasian, D&M Equipment Co. has delivered exemplary service and support to customers in and around the Chicago area. The company has further distinguished itself with expert in-house installers and a well-stocked parts department.

D&M will represent the Speed Queen brand. A week ago, Alliance announced its acquisition of Chicago-based UniMac distributor, Washburn Machinery Inc. These recent additions to the Alliance family illustrate the company's commitment to expanding service and distribution offerings to customers in the greater Chicago area.

Joe Frankian, President of D&M Equipment, will join Alliance in a leadership role. He will continue to oversee the business and build on the company's record performance of the last few years as part of Alliance Laundry Systems. D&M will carry on its family tradition with Joe's son, Connor, also staying on to serve customers.

"This is an exciting new chapter in our company's history," Frankian said. "With the power of a global leader behind us, I'm confident customers will see next-level service."

For more information about Alliance Laundry Systems, visit alliancelaundry.com. To learn more about D&M, visit dandmequipment.speedqueen.com/.

About Alliance Laundry Systems

Leading Performance

Alliance Laundry Systems makes the world cleaner as the premier provider of laundry solutions. We deliver Leading performance through our exceptional employees, unmatched quality and our commitment to innovation. Alliance leads the world in commercial laundry sales, product range, reach and R&D investment. No competitor comes close. Our laundry solutions are available under five respected brands, sold and supported by a global network of select distributors. We serve more than 140 countries with a team of more than 3,500 employees. Our brands include Speed Queen, UniMac, Huebsch, Primus and IPSO. Together, they present a full line of commercial washing machines, dryers and ironers (with load capacities from 12400 lb., or 6180 kg.) and every essential support service necessary to keep your operation running at maximum efficiency. You can also enjoy the superior wash and fabric care of commercial-grade laundry equipment in your home through our legendary Speed Queen washers and dryers. At Alliance, we aim to bring you laundry peace of mind with an award-winning customer experience that's unrivalled in our industry.

For more information, visit www.alliancelaundry.com.

SOURCE Alliance Laundry Systems LLC

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Indian astronomers have tracked a rare supernova explosion and traced it to be one of the hottest kind of stars. They are highly luminous objects a thousand times that of the Sun. They are called Wolf Rayet Stars and these are highly energetic explosion.

A team of astronomers from Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences in Nainital, Uttarakhand along with international collaborators conducted the optical monitoring of one such stripped-envelope supernova. According to Ministry of Science and Technology, the supernova was called SN 2015dj. The supernova was hosted in the galaxy NGC 7371 which was spotted in 2015.

One of the hottest star

The astronomers calculated the mass of the star that collapsed to form the supernova and the geometry of its ejection. The study has been published in The Astrophysical Journal. The scientists also found that the original star was a combination of two stars one of them being a massive WR star and another star much less in mass than the Sun. Supernovas are highly energetic explosions in the Universe releasing an enormous amount of energy. Long-term monitoring of these transients opens the door to understand the nature of the exploding star as well as the explosion properties. It can also help enumerate the number of massive stars.

Similarly, NASA has shared an image of a striking bluish green supernova on the occasion of St.Patricks Day that was formed after a massive star exploded in a nearby galaxy called the Small Magellanic Cloud. The X-rays in the mesmerizing green, a colour symbolic of Irish rebellion during the St. Patrick day was emitted nearly 200,000 light-years away in the satellite galaxy of the milky way, according to NASA. In an Instagram post, the space agency wrote that a cosmic explosion sent the debris field abloom, creating the greenish radiations in a spectacular display of vibrant filaments.

(Image Credits: Pixabay)
Rio de Janeiro: Brazils brutal surge in COVID-19 deaths will soon surpass the worst of a record January wave in the United States, and with hospitals at breaking point it could exceed total US deaths.

Fatalities climbed above 4000 in a day on Tuesday for the first time, taking the pandemic total to nearly 337,000, according to Health Ministry data, compared with more than 555,000 dead in the United States.

A protest against the Brazilian governments pandemic response outside the Raul Gazzola hospital in Rio de Janeiro. Credit:Bloomberg

But with the Brazilian healthcare system struggling to treat severely ill COVID patients, two experts said the country could become the worst in the world for coronavirus deaths, despite having a population two-thirds that of the United States.

Its a nuclear reactor that has set off a chain reaction and is out of control. Its a biological Fukushima, said Miguel Nicolelis, a Brazilian doctor and professor at Duke University, who is closely tracking the virus.
Sullivan Baby Doe Awarded Default Judgment Against Endo Pharmaceuticals Tweet this

The court has reserved issuing a final judgment on that amount, pending a damages trial. The ruling can be read here.

"For years we have worked to hold major opioid producers and distributors accountable for the long-term damage they have caused in our Tennessee communities," said Barry Staubus, district attorney general for Tennessee's Second Judicial District. "We understood from the start that seeking justice for those babies who were born drug dependent and the rural areas that these companies victimized would constitute a fight on the level of David versus Goliath. All those harmed by this epidemic will now see Goliath face justice."

The Sullivan Baby Doe suit was originally filed June 13, 2017, by the district attorneys general of Tennessee's First, Second and Third Judicial Districts in Sullivan County Circuit Court in Kingsport, Tennessee. The complaint originally listed prescription opioid manufacturer Purdue Pharma, L.P. and its related companies, along with Mallinckrodt PLC, Endo Pharmaceuticals, a pill mill doctor and other convicted opioid dealers as defendants.

The suit was one of the first in the nation to challenge major opioid producers, and the very first to list a baby born with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) as a plaintiff. The suit claims that under Tennessee's Drug Dealer Liability Act (DDLA), if a company engages in activities that facilitate over-prescription and diversion of controlled substances, they can be identified as a drug dealer and held accountable for their actions.

A December 2020 opinion filed by the Tennessee State Supreme Court affirmed the validity of that argument and the ability for plaintiffs to sue on behalf of babies harmed in utero by the opioid epidemic.

As part of the national scrutiny brought to bear on opioid producers and distributors, due in part to Sullivan Baby Doe's arguments, Purdue and Mallinckrodt have both declared bankruptcy, with claims proceeding against them in related courts. Endo remains the only active corporate defendant.

"After a four-year fight in which Endo has tried to delay, derail and subvert justice, the court has laid bare Endo's attempts to put their thumb on the scale of justice," said J. Gerard Stranch IV, managing partner of Branstetter, Stranch & Jennings, the firm representing Baby Doe and participating cities and counties. "The Court laid out their deceptive and predatory actions for the public to see. This includes a dozen false statements made by Endo and their attorneys and what the court describes as a 'coordinated strategy to interfere with the administration of justice.'

"As a result, Endo will finally be forced to account for their role in the widespread misery they have knowingly caused in rural counties throughout Northeast Tennessee, which have suffered devastating rates of addiction, overdose deaths and babies being born drug-dependent," Stranch said. "We look forward to putting our $2.4 billion damage case to a jury and ultimately seeing funds returned directly to these small communities, which have borne the brunt of Endo's focus on financial gain."

A hearing to determine further details in the damage case is scheduled for Thursday, April 8, 2021, in Sullivan County Circuit Court.

Contact: Sylvia Musgrove

Phone: 423.793.1359

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Branstetter, Stranch & Jennings
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 18:45:17|Editor: huaxia

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Li Yicheng, a poverty alleviation team member, learns about the growth of cattle in Yaogao Village's high mountain natural pasture in Rongshui Miao Autonomous County, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, April 26, 2020. (Xinhua/Huang Xiaobang)

China's poverty reduction is a remarkable contribution to the global poverty relief endeavor, said Muratbek Imanaliyev, former secretary-general of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and former foreign minister of Kyrgyzstan, in an interview with Xinhua.



BEIJING, April 7 (Xinhua) -- China's historic success in poverty reduction, as shown in a newly released white paper, is worth learning for other countries still troubled by poverty, foreign experts have said.

China's poverty reduction is a remarkable contribution to the global poverty relief endeavor, said Muratbek Imanaliyev, former secretary-general of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and former foreign minister of Kyrgyzstan, in an interview with Xinhua.

Commenting on the white paper titled "Poverty Alleviation: China's Experience and Contribution," Imanaliyev said that the people-centered philosophy of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the successful implementation of China's reforms are key to such achievements.

An employee works at a modern agricultural industrial park in Lianyungang City, east China's Jiangsu Province, July 13, 2019. (Xinhua/Li Bo)

The document, issued Tuesday by China's State Council Information Office, records the course of the Chinese people's great fight in eliminating extreme poverty, introduces China's approach, and shares its experience and actions in poverty alleviation.

Kingphet Mongkhonvilay, a senior official from the Lao People's Revolutionary Party, said that China has accomplished its poverty alleviation target while fighting against the COVID-19 pandemic, illustrating that the CPC wholeheartedly serves the people.

He expressed hope that other countries will benefit from China's experience and all partners worldwide could jointly pursue common development and complete eradication of absolute poverty.

Jijue Jizhu (1st R) walks with his younger brother and sister in a field near their new house in southwest China's Sichuan Province, Feb. 24, 2021. (Xinhua/Tian Jianchuan)

Wilson Lee Flores, a columnist for the English-language daily The Philippine Star, said that a strong leadership, the solidarity among the people, and the determination to reform are among the key aspects the Philippines can learn from China's anti-poverty efforts.

Noting that the CPC and the Chinese government have succeeded in eliminating poverty, former Egyptian diplomat and Chairman of Egypt-China Friendship Association Ahmed Waly said that the country has made precise efforts over poverty alleviation. 
A California couple has been charged with child abuse after their 11-year-old daughter was found tortured to death, disfigured and 'deprived of a limb or organ'.

The child's father, Rene Diaz, and stepmother Crystal Diaz, have been charged with four counts of child abuse, torture, and mayhem after she was found dead when they called 911 to their home in Rodeo, California on March 23 at 3.30am.

Listed as Jane Doe in court documents because of her age, the child had allegedly been abused by the couple since November, according to Mercury News.

Rene Diaz, 30, and Crystal Diaz, 29, have not been charged directly in relation to her death. The Contra Costa Sheriff's department is still investigating the child's cause of death.

Court records allege the parents had abused the 11-year-old from March 9 to March 23 with 'intent to cause cruel and extreme pain and suffering for the purpose of revenge, extortion, persuasion and for a sadistic purpose.'

It's alleged that the girl also 'suffered permanent disability and disfigurement and deprivation of a limb, organ and body member' during the same period.

Contra Costa County Sheriff's office is investigating the death of an 11-year-old girl (File photo)

Investigators also allegedly found specific evidence of abuse occurring on November 27, 2020, leading to the four counts of child abuse.

Both parents are being held in the Contra Costa County Jail on a $1.4 million bond each and face potential life sentences if convicted.

They are due back in court on May 24.
Former Queensland government minister Trevor John Perrett - father of a sitting MP - is set to fight historical charges he indecently dealt with a teenage girl.

Perrett did not appear as his case was mentioned in Brisbane Magistrates Court on Wednesday on a total of 25 charges.

Lawyers for Perrett said the former minister indicated he would contest the charges.

Former Queensland government minister Trevor John Perrett - father of a sitting MP - is set to fight historical charges he indecently dealt with a teenage girl

Perrett, 79, was the primary industries, fisheries and forestry minister in the Borbidge government between 1996 and 1998.

He represented the former South Burnett-based electorate of Barambah for the National Party between 1988 and 1998.

He lives in Petrie in the Moreton Bay region, north of Brisbane, the court heard.

His son Tony Perrett is a sitting opposition MP in state parliament, representing the electorate of Gympie for the Liberal National Party.

Perrett's appearance was excused before he was ordered to reappear in Brisbane Magistrates Court on May 4.
An 85-year-old former doctor convicted on sex abuse and child porn charge has been sentenced to life in prison.

Ruepert Don Bryan, a former ear, nose and throat physician in Alabaster, was convicted in March of first-degree sex abuse and three counts of producing child pornography. Shelby County Circuit Judge Bill Bostick sentenced Bryan to life in prison plus an additional 208 years.

The conduct that you engaged in is reprehensible,' Bostick told Bryan. It cannot be allowed in our society.

Attorneys for Bryan argued that he should not punished further because of his age. Bryan has been in the Shelby County Jail on $500,000 bond since his 2016 arrest.

This was the judges reply: I disagree that he cannot be punished, because hes about to be.

Shelby County sheriffs officials in June 2016 issued a plea for information upon release photos of a then-unidentified man, saying he was a suspect in a crime that would shock any member of our community. If this person is still alive, he is a threat to our communities, the sheriffs office stated in a release on that day.

Authorities in 2016 released this image of a then-unidentified man sought in a child pornography and child sex abuse case. Reupert Don Bryan, now 85, was convicted March 10, 2021. (Contributed)

Authorities later said Bryan, who lived in Calera at the time of his arrest, was developed as a suspect after a member of the community came forward with an abandoned videotape.

According to court records in the case, the videotape contained images of at least one juvenile engaging in sexual activity. The video was produced sometime in 2002. Bryan was also accused of sexually abusing at least one juvenile between May and August 2003, his arrest warrant stated.

During trial, prosecutors presented evidence that included numerous recordings Bryan made of his child sexual abuse. The jury also heard from multiple witnesses who were victimized by Bryan when they were children before the allegations came to light.

Sheriffs investigators Robert Rodriguez and Heather Parramore led the investigation. Assistant district attorneys Daniel McBrayer and Ben Fuller prosecuted the case.

In addition to having strong investigators in this case, we had strong victims,' said Shelby County District Attorney Jill Lee. We are thankful the victims were able to receive some justice all these years later. Age shouldnt determine ones guilt.
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Plateau State Governor Simon Lalong has expressed sadness over the death of a former senator, Sati Gogwim, who died on Tuesday at the age of 71.

Mr Lalong described the former senator who represented Plateau Central in the Senate between 2007 and 2011 , as a patriotic Nigerian who gave the nation and Plateau State his very best at all times.

He said the senator retired from the army with records of achievements and further proved his quality in politics, business, community service and philanthropy.

He said the state will miss his contributions to its growth and development, particularly during its challenging moments when he offered counsel and facilitated engagements that helped in mitigating problems.

Commiserating with his family, friends and associates, Mr Lalong urged them to take comfort in the legacies he left behind and build on it to honour his memory.

The former lawmaker and retired military officer died at Rayfield Medical Centre in Jos, the state capital, on Tuesday.

According to Williams Gogwim, a younger brother to the deceased, he had been battling ill-health since 2020.

My brother has been sick since last year and in December he left the country for treatment abroad and only returned on Sunday, April 4, he told the news agency of Nigeria.

He came back a little bit stronger, until this morning when he had a health crisis, which compelled us to rush him to Rayfield Medical Centre.

Unfortunately on getting there he was confirmed dead.

He said the family will announce plans for his funeral at a later date.
(CNN) -- It is the moment that all the grunting and yelling has been leading up to.

Few doubted the United States and Iran deep-down preferred diplomacy -- even a new deal -- to escalating tensions, and possibly military confrontation. Now the moment of truth is here, in a Vienna conference room, where the E3+2 of the nuclear deal (UK, France, Germany, Russia and China) and Iran will sit down and talk about what comes next.

The Biden administration will be in the wings, spiritually if not always physically. US officials will be in Vienna, though they will not meet directly with their Iranian counterparts. Virtually every member of President Joe Biden's national security core is steeped in making the 2015 Iran agreement happen. Even the CIA director Bill Burns may well have got his job because of how well he knew the Iran negotiating brief. Of all the foreign policy challenges the US faces now, after the Trump administration's hiatus from normalcy, it is the crisis with the easiest solution at hand.

What of the Tehran moderates on the other side of the table? This too is their last real chance to make their broad proposal of better engagement with the western world work. It is true that Iran has begun to weather sanctions, or at least find a way to live badly with them. It's alleged that China has proven happy to buy the oil the rest of the world will not, taking up to a million barrels a day in March, according to some estimates measuring the "ghost tankers" that hide the shipments. China recently signed a significant trade deal with Iran, and has long been critical of US policy towards it. But few can pretend the damage being done by the US-led economic squeeze wouldn't be better off removed.

The moderates are also on the clock, facing a harder-line parliament, and a presidential election in months that could impose a tougher approach against the West across government. The material promise of the JCPOA -- as the nuclear deal is technically known -- needs to loom into view again, and quickly, to raise electoral turnout in their favor.

Both sides too have been doing what they can to prepare -- or place obstacles on -- the ground for Vienna. The Biden administration has been calm, and relatively unfussed by Iran's screaming deadlines and declarations of further nuclear activity. Biden took singular and swift military action when US military lives were lost and threatened in Iraq, by bombing Iran-backed militia. But it then swiftly started calling them "Shia-backed militia", as if to give everyone an option to step away from the smoking craters. The US has also declared the desire to bring some of the Trump-surge of troops protecting Saudi Arabia home. That must calm some hawks in Tehran.

The Iranians have deftly trod a line between enrichment actions that can terrify if you choose to let them, or be interpreted as symbolic and reversible if you prefer to remain calm. Enriching uranium to 20% purity -- as they have done -- rings alarm bells, because it is a closer step to the 90% needed for a bomb. But some estimates suggest that even if their 20% pile was enriched to upwards of 90% overnight, it would have enough for less than a handful of bombs. That's probably not enough of a reward to make a likely Israeli and US attack worth gambling over.

Iran's production of uranium metal is a necessary step towards bomb-making, critics have said. But they have been making that metal from low-grade uranium, so the step is mostly a show of a technical ability many experts already thought they had. Reports of more and better centrifuges also abound. In short, the Iranians have created a lot of chips to bring to the table -- a lot of things they can offer to do first, in exchange for the first softening of US sanctions.

These are, on both sides, serious people, and this is how negotiations go. The central calculation from both parties is as it was six years ago: that Iran would prefer sanctions relief over having the bomb. And that the US would prefer a richer Iran to a nuclear Iran. And that both sides would prefer not to have a war.

You can always get very excited about conflagration in the Middle East, as if it is always just a shot away. Yet wars are complicated, expensive, unpredictable, and tend to require both sides involved wanting or needing them to happen. Both Iran and the US do not want a war right now, palpably, or else they would have used one of the many opportunities over the past months or years to start one. So talks are the likely way forward.

Whatever comes from Vienna's meeting, it was conjured quickly after months of loud noises, and so is likely to have the foundations for it in place. A western source close to the talks told me there was, at a guess, an "8 out of 10" chance they would lead to further negotiations.

Vienna's meeting may not lead to a renewed JCPOA this week. It may never lead to the wider "JCPOA Plus" deal Biden wants, to rein in Iran's missile program and regional influence. It may not rescue Iran's economy before the presidential elections.

But it is the only real way forward, as both sides knew all along, and it is finally underway.

This story was first published on CNN.com, "The moment of truth is here for the Iran nuclear deal"
Germany and France have both restricted use of the AstraZeenca vaccine to older people

A British trial of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine on children has been paused, Oxford University said Tuesday, as global regulators rush to assess its possible link to rare blood clots in adults.

The university, which helped develop the embattled vaccine, said in a statement that there were "no safety concerns" in the trial, but acknowledged fears over a potential link to clots by saying that it was awaiting additional data from Britain's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) before restarting the study.

"Parents and children should continue to attend all scheduled visits and can contact the trial sites if they have any questions," it added.

It is the latest drama to hit AstraZeneca, which has been embroiled in controversy over its failure to deliver promised doses to the European Union, and over the jab's efficacy and safety profile.

The MHRA is one of many bodies across the globe analysing real world data from the AstraZeneca rollout to see if there is a definitive link between the jab and a rare form of blood clot, after cases were initially reported in Norway and continental Europe.

The MHRA reported over the weekend that there had been 30 blood clotting cases, seven fatal, out of the 18 million doses administered in Britain.

The European Medicines Agency said Tuesday it "has not yet reached a conclusion and the review is currently ongoing".

EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides later said that the agency was expected to make its decision "late Wednesday", adding that she was in "close contact" with the EMA.

The statement came after the EMA's head of vaccine strategy Marco Cavaleri was quoted in Italian media as saying that there was a "clear" connection and that the agency would announce it within hours.

"In my opinion, we can say it now, it is clear there is a link with the vaccine," Cavaleri told Italy's Il Messaggero newspaper in an interview. "But we still do not know what causes this reaction."

Story continues

Germany and France have both restricted use of the vaccine to older people over fears that younger recipients are potentially more at risk from clots.

Britain and the vaccine's developers had until now resisted any restrictions in its use, saying that there was no proof of any link.

Adam Finn, professor of paediatrics at Britain's University of Bristol, said that the benefits continued to outweigh the risks.

"We need to know more about the people affected and we need to understand exactly how the illnesses came about," he said.

"If you are currently being offered a dose of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, your chances of remaining alive and well will go up if you take the vaccine and will go down if you don't," he added.

jwp/ach
Intelligent.com, a trusted resource for online degree rankings and higher education planning, has announced the top online programs for 2021. The comprehensive research guide is based on an assessment of 1,280 accredited colleges and universities in the nation. Each program is evaluated based on curriculum quality, graduation rate, reputation, and post-graduate employment. The methodology also uses an algorithm which collects and analyzes multiple rankings into one score to easily compare each school.

Students who pursue any one of these programs can expect to gain employment much quicker in comparison to candidates without a degree. In addition to accessibility and cost, the steady job growth in this market is one of the many reasons Intelligent.com researched and ranked the Top Most Affordable Online Colleges.

Intelligent.com analyzed 251 schools, on a scale of 0 to 100, with only 60 making it to the final list for Most Affordable Online Colleges. To access the complete ranking, please visit: https://www.intelligent.com/cheapest-online-colleges/

2021 Most Affordable Online Colleges featured on Intelligent.com (in alphabetical order):

Appalachian State University

Arizona State University

Baker University

Ball State University

Belhaven University

Bellevue University

Bismarck State College

Brenau University

Brescia University

Brigham Young University, Idaho

Broward College

Buena Vista University

California Baptist University, Online

California State University, Channel Islands

Cameron University

Canisius College

Capella University

Central Methodist University

Central Washington University

Chadron State College

Clarion University of Pennsylvania

Clarks Summit University

Colorado Christian University

Colorado State University

Columbia College

Columbia Southern University

Columbus State University

Concordia University, Nebraska

Craven Community College

Davenport University

Dickinson State University

Drexel University

Drury University

East Carolina University

Eastern Kentucky University

Eastern New Mexico University

Florida Atlantic University

Florida International University

Florida State College at Jacksonville

Franklin University

Georgia Southern University

Hampton University

King University

Liberty University

Mayville State University

Mesa Community College

Minot State University

North Carolina State University

Northwestern State University

San Jose State University

Spring Arbor University

The Baptist College of Florida

The University of Alabama in Huntsville

The University of Southern Mississippi

University of Hawaii System

University of Louisiana at Monroe

University of New Orleans

Wayne Community College

Western Governors University

Youngstown State University

About Intelligent.com

Intelligent.com provides unbiased research to help students make informed decisions about higher education programs. The website offers curated guides which include the best degree programs as well as information about financial aid, internships and even study strategies. With comprehensive, user-friendly guides and hundreds of program rankings, Intelligent.com is a trusted source among students and prospective students. To learn more, please visit https://www.intelligent.com/.
CNN's Brooke Baldwin (pictured), who is leaving the network this month, has slammed the company for the lack of women leaders just months after she was taken off air and replaced by Jake Tapper

Outgoing CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin, who is leaving the network this month, has slammed the company for the lack of women leaders just months after she was taken off air and replaced by Jake Tapper.

Baldwin announced in February that she would be leaving the liberal network after 13 years. At the time, Baldwin made the shock announcement at the start of her 3pm show, CNN Newsroom, telling viewers 'there is just more I need to do outside the walls of this place'.

Ahead of her departure, Baldwin, who first joined CNN in 2008, sat down for an interview with Ms. Magazine podcast where she described CNN as a male-dominated network.

'The most influential anchors on our network, the highest-paid, are men. My bosses, my executives, are men. The person who oversees CNN Dayside is a man, and my executive producer for 10 years is a man. So I've been surrounded by a lot of men,' Baldwin said.

Baldwin, who was temporarily pulled from the air in the build to the 2020 election and replaced by Tapper, said during the interview that she has fought for women's stories.

'I know I, personally, fight for women's stories,' Baldwin said. 'I got told no a lot and I still managed to do it,' Baldwin said, referring to the CNN series American Woman.

CNN's Digital series American Woman features stories of women who have been trailblazers in their fields.

Baldwin was interviewed on Ms. Magazine podcast (pictured) where she described CNN as a male-dominated network. 'The most influential anchors on our network, the highest-paid, are men. My bosses, my executives, are men. So I've been surrounded by a lot of men,' she said

Baldwin announced in February (pictured) that she would be leaving the network after 13 years. At the time, Baldwin made the shock announcement at the start of her 3pm show, CNN Newsroom, telling viewers 'there is just more I need to do outside the walls of this place'

She noted that CNN has slowly started to give more women power but 'we still have a bit of a ways to go. I want more women in the room'.

In February, when Baldwin announced she'd be leaving, she said: 'The next chapter will focus on what I love the most about my work: amplifying the lives of extraordinary Americans and putting my passion for storytelling to good use.'

Baldwin's departure from CNN coincides with the release of her first book, Huddle: How Women Unlock Their Collective Power.

Baldwin's exit may have been foreshadowed last fall when she posted a cryptic message to Instagram in October which suggested she was being forced off the air and temporarily replaced by Tapper.

'As the election gears up, the political maestro @jaketapper will hold down my hour and his for the coming weeks. Wish I was with you, but I'll see ya on [TV] on the flip side of the election,' she wrote on October 1.

She gave no explanation for the move, but told supporters it was 'not my choice' to temporarily withdraw from her afternoon slot.

Baldwin's exit may have been foreshadowed last fall when she posted a cryptic message to Instagram in October which suggested she was being forced off the air and temporarily replaced by Jake Tapper (pictured)

When asked by one fan, 'Why are you taking so many weeks off at such an important time?', she simply replied: 'Not my choice.'

She said she was going 'nowhere' in response to a question about her moving on elsewhere, and also dispelled speculation that the decision to step aside was for health reasons insisting that she is 'healthy'.

Her show was then pulled for several weeks, with CNN claiming they needed more airtime for the reporters in Washington, DC.

Baldwin was one of the network's highest-earning journalists, with a reported annual salary in the region of $4million.

The highest paid is Anderson Cooper, who is said to earn around $12million a year.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 6)  A panel of vaccine experts are set to recommend to the Health Department to trim down the waiting period before a person who contracted COVID-19 can get inoculated.

Dr. Rontgene Solante, a member of the Vaccine Experts Panel, on Tuesday said they will suggest cutting it down to 14 days instead of waiting for 90 days after patients have recovered. He stressed that the number of days must be counted starting on the day the person is cleared of the infection.

"Ang pinaka-optimum interval is 14 days from the recovery... Ang guideline ngayon sa NITAG (National Immunization Technical Advisory Group) is that from recovery maghintay lang tayo ng two weeks, it's that period of time, not 90 days. We just have to do it two weeks from naka-recover ang pasyente," he said in a media briefing.

[Translation: The most optimum interval is 14 days from recovery. NITAG's guidelines say you must wait two weeks after recovery, not 90 days. We just have to do it two weeks from the patient's recovery.]

The DOH earlier issued vaccination guidelines, which state that people who contracted COVID-19 may be vaccinated after 90 days from the last day of treatment.

Solante, an infectious disease expert, explained that several days are needed between recovery and vaccination to ensure that the drugs are effective in protecting a person against severe disease and even death.

"When you have an infection, your body also produces antibodies. So kung meron kang active infection, kapag binakunahan ka [If you have an active infection and you get vaccinated], your vaccine will not work because your immune system is being stressed by that infection," he said.

The Philippines has administered 777,908 shots, mostly to healthcare workers, the elderly, and people with comorbidities, over a month since the launch of the immunization program.
In her tribute to her late husband, Joe Okei-Odumakin relived the tales of the love she had with Yinka Odumakin.

Mr Odumakin, ex-spokesman of Afenifere, lost his life to complications from COVID-19 last weekend.

Ms Odumakin said although her late husband died on Friday, the doctors attending to her could not tell her until Saturday morning.

He died at the intensive care unit of LASUTH where he was being managed for respiratory issues due to complications from COVID-19.

President Muhammadu Buhari and other Nigerians had commiserated with the family of the deceased. Others have also paid condolence visit to his wife.

Tribute

Ms Odumakin in her piece titled: Yinka: Basking in the shadow that you cast, gave account of the last days of Mr Odumakin on earth.

If breath was the currency of life and its legal tenderthen, Yinka spent his breath on causes. The medics said his oxygen level was running low but my husband was reaching out for his tab to type out his column.

He was never frugal in spending that oxygen on his Yoruba earth  his beloved and his Nigeria  his truly beloved. My memories are rousing through chains of pains. A sea surge of a romance which sprouted in Gen. Sani Abachas detention.

Ms Odumakin also shared their story of their love in detention and how the late right activist, Gani Fawehinmi, introduced them to each other during the military days.

My husband was not a criminal, neither was I. Our crime was standing strong for others as we always have been. We will return to the dingy detention cell in our reminiscences later!

Who meets and marries from detention at Alagbon? Only Yinka would ask! And only I would say YES! We were introduced to each other by the most qualified, the most preeminent, and the most decorated of inmate  Chief Gani Fawehinmi (SAM, SAN).

Chief said: Yinka, shes a man!. Yinka married both the man & the woman in me!

It was our truest solemnization of activist matrimony by a revered High Priest of the strugglewith the trench as our altar and the good of our people as our ultimate goal. Yinka, it cannot be goodbye, It is goodnight and see you later on the other side with God.

I will bask with reckless abandon in the shadow of your cast. Since no one is permitted in the Critical Care Unit, we had committed you to the care of the best qualified medics at LASUTH and the hand of God hoping to see you next morning.

The medics said they could not fathom how to immediately relay the message of your passage to me directly.

Now that I am in possession of your death certificate, I can see you passed at exactly 10.40 p.m. on Good Friday (April 2nd, 2021) and not in the morning of Saturday, April 3rd, 2021) as initially communicated.

Due to the principles of the truth and saying it as it is, which Yinka and I hold dear  and which Yinka lived all his adult life for  it is important to immediately put this very important record straight.

You came! you saw!! and you conquered!!! We will carry forward the baton in the eternal word of our leader, Nigeria will be saved, Nigeria will be changed and Nigeria will become a great nation. Nigeria will work in my lifetime and even in yours as you live on in me, our children and generation yet unborn, she wrote.

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Leading activist

Mr Odumakin was a core activist who started his activism at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) where he served as the Public Relations Officer of the universitys Students Union.

He was one of Nigerias leading democratic activists, an intellectual, and political strategist with an unwavering commitment to freedom, equity, rule of law, and justice.

Till he died, the late Odumakin and his wife were known to call themselves comrade.
The recent publication of the book, The Woman Who Stole Vermeer by Anthony M. Armor, chronicles the story of a highly educated English heiress who turned revolutionary for the IRA. This story of Bridget Dugdale, is about the mastermind behind one of the most valuable art heists in history, the private collection of Sir Alfred Beit. Nineteen works were stolen from this collection of master artists Gainsborough, Goya, Hals, Rubens, Valequez and Vermeer. Motivation to steal these works was to have these as ransom for the IRA cause. Fortunately, these masterpieces were recovered and subsequently Dogdale was convicted.

As the title suggests, out of the 19 works, the works of Johannes Vermeer, The Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid gained the most attention. With only 34 paintings attributed to Vermeer, this was a theft of major proportions and an indicator of the worth of these stolen paintings.

Coincidently, the author, Armor has a connection to the most valuable art theft in history, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum of Boston heist of 1990, as he is this institutions Director of Security and Chief Investigator. Thirteen pieces of art were taken of artists Degas, Flinck, Monet, Rembrant, and Vermeer. Similar to the British Beit theft, the Vermeers The Concert leads in being the most significant work stolen. Also, two Rembrandt paintings, one being his sole seascape, The Storm of the Sea of Galilie, the other a double portrait, plus one of his etching prints, were part of the stolen works. In total, these 13 works are a grievous loss.

To place the loss in a more practical reference, the current estimated value of the stolen art is at $500 million. The Vermeer itself, again, to being one of 34, has an estimated value of 250 million dollars. This positions this painting as the most valuable stolen object in the world according to the beliefs of the Gardner Museum. Noteworthy, there have been speculations about the proprietors of this theft, but no arrests. Also of note, the FBI believes these works were intended for ransom as well. Lamentable, the thirteen works have never been recovered.

These two artnappings  the stealing of art for the purpose of negotiating these back to the owners for ransom  are the highest instances of this regrettable crime. One case, the British Beit, was solved with a positive outcome of returned art, which has since been donated to the National Gallery of Ireland. Regrettably, the Gardner Museum works are still lost. The Beit works are now part of a national pride and viewed by millions in Ireland.

The lack of opportunity to observe the Gardner masterpieces constitutes a misfortunate loss of what visual arts uniquely and ultimately achieve, emphatic, declarative, and thought provoking communications. Much has been lost, with only hopes for the possibility of restoration when these can be placed back in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Truly, artnapping steals more than money. It can rob the souls by stealing enlightenment; how heartbreaking.

Robert Maguire holds a BA degree from SIUE and a MA degree from the University of Illinois in Art. He currently on the boards of the Illinois Arts Council, Madison County Regional Office of Education and SIUE Friends of Art. An ISBE Teacher of the Year, he has taught over 40 years and continues to practice art production.
Kentucky Career Centers Go In-Person April 15

By West Kentucky Star Staff

PADUCAH - In-person unemployment insurance services will open on April 15 at more than a dozen regional Kentucky Career Centers, including in Paducah.Kentuckians can start scheduling appointments to meet with counselors about their unemployment benefits from April 15 through April 30.On April 19, appointments for May 3 will be available, with additional appointment times opening each day after.The Paducah Kentucky Career Center is located at 416 South 6th Street. Other regional locations include Hopkinsville, Owensboro and Bowling Green."When you combine years of painful staffing cuts, an out-of-date system designed to tell people no and the effects of a once-in-100-years pandemic  many Kentuckians have been unable to obtain benefits," Gov. Beshear said. "In addition to taking many new actions to help Kentuckians in need, we are now making good on our promise to begin putting unemployment specialists back into the local career centers."Anyone attending an appointment must wear a mask at all times, and temperatures will be taken before entering the building. A photo ID will also be required.
(Newser)  A ruling on the budget reconciliation rules from the Senate parliamentarian may not sound like a particularly exciting developmentbut it could have massive implications for the future of President Biden's agenda. Elizabeth MacDonough's Monday night ruling could be a game-changer because it gives Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer another way to bypass Republican opposition in the divided chamber without using the "nuclear option" of abolishing the filibuster, the AP reports. MacDonough ruled that the reconciliation procedure, which the Democrats used to pass Biden's COVID relief plan without any GOP votes, can be used multiple times if the annual budget resolution is revised.

story continues below

Under the process, legislation can be passed with a simple majority as long as it meets budgetary guidelines, though it also involves "vote-a-ramas" that can last all night. Schumer spokesman Justin Goodman described the change as "an important step forward that this key pathway is available to Democrats." The ruling means that Biden will, in theory, be able to amend the budget resolution multiple times to pass parts of his agenda including his infrastructure proposals, an immigration overhaul, and raising corporate taxes, the Hill reports. One drawback for Democrats may be that with the chamber split 50-50, centrist Sen. Joe Manchin will effectively have a veto over any legislation Democrats try to pass through reconciliation, as well other Democratic senators if the legislation has no bipartisan support. (Read more Senate stories.)
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In another sign of waning demand for coronavirus vaccines, New Orleans' government has shut down its two-month-old vaccine wait list and is instead listing all vaccination sites publicly.

The city is also calling for volunteers to knock on doors and educate people about the vaccines, and to staff vaccination sites, New Orleans Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness spokesperson Laura Mellem said Wednesday.

The announcements come as vaccine appointments across the state go unfilled despite ample supply of the shots. It's a stark turnaround from two months ago, when supplies were low, demand was high and eligiblity was more limited.

A full list of community vaccination sites was posted to the city's website Wednesday, the first time since they became available that the city has published them all in one place. Until now, residents had to rely on the state's website or individual announcements to know where to go for shots.

"We really want to encourage everyone. Now is the time to get the life-saving COVID-19 vaccine," Mellem said.

Officials have said repeatedly that the vaccines are key to the city's full economic recovery, and that in order to return to normal activities, at least 75% of the population should be inoculated.

Only a quarter of the city's residents currently are fully protected, while at least 37.4% have received at least one shot. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require two shots; Johnson & Johnson is a single shot.

Often, it is the communities that were the hardest hit by COVID-19 where vaccine rates are the lowest, officials have said.

New Orleans areas new state health director sees work ahead after COVID When Dr. Shantel Hebert-Magee took over in January as the Louisiana Department of Healths medical director for the New Orleans region, there 

For example, Black residents account for 44% of those who have been fully vaccinated in the city, though they make up 60% of the population in the city and account for 72% of the people who have died from COVID-19. White residents make up 46.5% of the vaccinated group.

While demand was initially high for the vaccines -- between 35,000 and 40,000 people signed up for the city's wait list to get one, while others surveyed Facebook groups to find "leftover" doses that sometimes became available when appointments were canceled -- officials now fear they have hit a slump. Leaders have said their most difficult task in the coming months will be convincing those residents that remain on the fence.

LaTanja Silvester of Resilience Force, a group the city is working with to canvass and answer any questions people have about the shots, said residents often are not against vaccines in general, it's that they don't want to take the shots right now.

"Having that one-on-one conversation [helps] folks to feel more comfortable with getting the vaccine, and to identify areas in their community where they can get the vaccine," she said.

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

Others remember how difficult it was to get a shot earlier this year, and may not know that the shots are more widely available now, Mellem added.

Of the close to 40,000 people who originally signed up for the wait list, roughly 6,000 hadn't been matched with a vaccine appointment as of Wednesday, Mellem said. About 150 of those are homebound and the city plans to help schedule their appointments in the coming weeks.

The remaining unvaccinated people on the list were notified late Wednesday of alternative options, which are posted to the city's website.

The city needs more volunteers to sign up to contact residents and educate them about the shots, Mellem said. Volunteers may be asked to knock on doors, staff tables at churches, community centers and elsewhere, and help register people as they arrive at vaccination sites.

"We want to make certain that everyone gets involved, because we cant do this alone," said Silvester, who joined Mellem at St. Mary of the Angels Catholic Church in the Upper 9th Ward Wednesday, where Ochsner Health officials were offering shots.

To sign up as a volunteer, visit https://ready.nola.gov/stay-connected/volunteer-(1)/#covid.

See below how you can get a vaccine this week, and which vaccines are available, All locations are in New Orleans unless otherwise noted.

Thursday, April 8

Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., Pfizer (walk-in, appointments)

Tulane School of Medicine, 1324 Tulane Ave., 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., Pfizer (appointments)

Hispanic Apostolate, 2525 Maine Ave., Metairie, 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Moderna (appointments)

Paul Habans Charter School, 3501 Seine St., 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Johnson & Johnson (walk-in)

Voice of the Experienced, 4930 Washington Ave., 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., Johnson & Johnson (appointments)

Friday, April 9

Xavier University Convocation Center, 7900 Stroelitz St., 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., Pfizer (appointments)

Tulane School of Medicine, 1324 Tulane Ave., 8:30 a.m to 3:30 p.m., Pfizer (appointments)

Paul Habans Charter School, 3501 Seine St., 10 a.m to 3 p.m., Johnson & Johnson (walk-in)

Krewe of NOMTOC, 1905 Newton St., 2 p.m, to 7 p.m., Pfizer (appointments)

Voice of the Experienced, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., Johnson & Johnson (appointments)

Dragon's Den, 435 Esplanade Ave., Johnson & Johnson (walk-in)

Saturday, April 10

Ernest N. Morial Convention Center Hall J, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Johnson & Johnson (walk-in, appointments)

Southern University at New Orleans Gymnasium, 6400 Press Dr., 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Johnson & Johnson (walk-in, appointments)

See the full calendar at https://ready.nola.gov/incident/coronavirus/vaccine/calendar/.
(CNN) -- Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has shrugged off criticisms that he is "genocidal" in his opposition to Covid-19 restrictions, as the nation recorded its deadliest 24 hours of the pandemic so far.

Brazil smashed its previous daily record with 4,195 Covid-19 fatalities, health ministry data Tuesday showed -- marking the highest death count in the world for that 24-hour period, according to Johns Hopkins University. The new figures pushed Brazil's total pandemic death toll to almost 337,000.

Additionally, nearly 87,000 new Covid-19 cases were reported across the country, raising the total tally of infections to 13,100,580, according to the health ministry.

Bolsonaro, who has continued to downplay the seriousness of his country's health crisis, brushed off claims he was to blame for the country's spiraling death toll. The President has repeatedly opposed lockdowns and restrictive measures, and criticized governors and mayors with insulting language for implementing them.

"They called me homophobic, racist, fascist, a torturer and now... what is it now? Now I am... someone who kills a lot of people? Genocidal. Now, I'm genocidal," he said to supporters outside the Presidential Palace in Brasilia on Tuesday evening, according to video posted on YouTube.

Several of Bolsonaro's political opponents have accused him of "genocide," using the term loosely to characterize the consequences of his Covid-19 response.

"What am I not blamed for here in Brazil?" Bolsonaro asked rhetorically in the video.

The Brazilian leader appeared to imply that the pandemic was an invention of the media that could be solved by providing organizations with government subsidies.

"I can solve the problem with the virus in a few minutes. I just have to pay what governments paid in the past to Globo, to Folha [de Sao Paulo], O Estado de Sao Paulo," he said, referring to a nationwide broadcaster and two Sao Paulo-based newspapers. "Now, that money is not for the press, it's for other things."

And he was defiant in his stance on restrictions, saying that he disagreed with proponents of social distancing measures, and arguing -- incorrectly -- that the states that imposed tougher restrictions are experiencing higher death rates.

"What's the state that has locked down the most? Sao Paulo. Which one has the highest death toll, proportionally? Sao Paulo," he falsely claimed.

Although Sao Paulo has the highest absolute death toll, it ranks 10th in deaths per capita.

Around a third of the deaths reported Tuesday were in Sao Paulo, where 1,389 people died in 24 hours, state government data showed -- a record for the most deaths in a single day in any Brazilian state.

That comes despite the state imposing more restrictive measures a month ago, including the closure of businesses that deal directly with the public, such as shops, restaurants and bars.

Bolsonaro also said locking down would be counterproductive, as people would be more vulnerable to the virus.

"I saw some recent research that those who have a healthy lifestyle are eight times less likely to have problems with Covid," he said. "You lock people at home... what does he do at home? I doubt they haven't increased their weight a little, from last year to this year."

"Even I grew my belly a little bit," he joked.

The record daily count comes as hospitals and intensive care units (ICUs) in some cities are turning patients away and as the nation's entire health system is on the brink of collapse. Brazil is battling several new variants, some of which scientists believe are more contagious. Younger people appear to be getting more seriously ill than in the pandemic's early stages, though it is unclear what role variants may play in that trend.

As of late Tuesday, 23 out of Brazil's 27 federations reported an ICU occupancy rate of 80% or more. Of those, 15 have either collapsed or are on the verge of collapsing, with ICU occupancy over 90%. Mato Grosso do Sul is already over capacity, while only four states are under 80% occupancy.

Brazil's vaccine rollout program has also been dogged by delays.

Bolsonaro on Tuesday expressed interest in acquiring Russia's Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine, during a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Bolsonaro added that the shot would first need approval in the country.

"We are finalizing communications with the other [health] authorities, including Anvisa, on how we can effectively import this vaccine," Bolsonaro said, referring to Brazil's health regulatory agency.

Global Covid-19 cases have risen for the sixth consecutive week, according to the World Health Organization's Weekly Epidemiological Update on Tuesday. Brazil, the US, Turkey, France and India are reporting the highest case numbers.

This story was first published on CNN.com, "Bolsonaro shrugs off criticism he is 'genocidal' as Brazil reports record 4,000 daily deaths"
[April 07, 2021] StorHub Self Storage Survey: Three in four Singaporeans say they are significantly affected by constraints on space

SINGAPORE, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- A survey of Singaporeans' state of mind during the pandemic found that a majority were affected by limited living space in their homes. The survey also found that space was one of the top key concerns for respondents after family, health and job security. This survey, commissioned by StorHub Self Storage, the largest self storage operator in Singapore since 2003, revealed how the pandemic affected Singaporeans' wellbeing, the generational differences in perception of space and the competition for space within the household. "Space is a limited commodity in Singapore. This poll helped us understand and examine deeply how the pandemic may have exacerbated and impacted Singaporeans' state of mind and mental wellbeing," said Luigi La Tona, Chief Executive Officer, StorHub Self Storage (Singapore). The poll examined different aspects including the impact on residents of a lack of space, the interpretation of space by different generations and the optimisation of space for different needs. Out of ten key concerns, the poll respondents ranked the need for space as the fourth most important (48%) after family (63%), health (59%) and job security (51%). Many respondents also highlighted the competition between family members for space as a significant consequence of pandemic-induced circuit breaker measures. One respondent said, "I did not realise how much competition there was for the use of equipment, facilities and space at home until I had to spend all day at home with my family." When the country went into Phase One of the Circuit Breaker last year, Singaporeans turned to the growing number of e-commerce providers to satisfy their shopping needs as they found themselves cooped up at home. As online shopping became more common, Singaporean homes began to fill up with miscellaneous items. This added to the existing clutter that according to the survey is one of the causes of the pressure many Singaporeans feel on ther mental wellbeing. The problem was compounded as the survey showed 63 percent of Singaporeans kept items which they had not used for more than 24 months. Fortunately, some 75 percent of Singaporeans believe that they had to do their part in decluttering their homes.



A noticeable generational difference in perspectives on space was also observed. More than 65 percent of older Singaporeans (aged 36 to 60 years) said that they found the lack of space at home restrictive and impacted their state of mind, as compared to 53 percent of younger Singaporeans (aged 18 to 35 years) who disagreed that space at home was inadequate. More than 62 percent agreed that bigger homes and more space would help Singaporeans deal with their stressful lives.

Poor Space Allocation However, over 53 percent (1 in 2) of Singaporeans cited poor space allocation at home as a key contributor to discomfort, stress and dissatisfaction among family members, while 63 percent of Singaporeans agreed that the space configuration for home was not effective. 28 percent of respondents believed that clutter and unnecessary furniture reduced the space for daily activities described as 'liveable space'. 28 percent of respondents cited clutter (16%) and unwanted furniture (12%) as factors that reduced liveable space in their homes. "The findings have demonstrated that poor management of space leads to compromised mental wellbeing for many Singaporeans. It reiterates the point that it is not healthy to be confined in small spaces for long periods of time. As Singapore recreates workspaces at home and takes on remote work as part of the new normal, we must become more aware and think strategically about how best to optimise the utilisation of space in our homes," explained La Tona. "Clutter is a key factor in the constraint on liveable space at home and yet it is one of the more efficient or easiest ways to unlock space in our homes. As Singaporeans move into a new normal of working and living, it's becoming imperative that they de-clutter and reconfigure their homes for optimal living conditions for better mental wellbeing." Fortunately, there is a solution. Singaporeans can reclaim ownership of their mental health by remembering the 3Ds: decluttering, donating, and disposing. About StorHub Self Storage StorHub Self Storage was the first to introduce the self storage concept to Singapore in 2003 and is now the largest operator in the country with 13 conveniently located facilities. They offer over 10,000 storage units for families, individuals, and businesses. StorHub Self Storage offers flexible storage terms, 24/7 secure access, and are committed to providing reliable storage solutions to individuals and businesses. StorHub Group has also expanded its self storage network into various key markets within the Asian region including Mainland China, Hong Kong and Thailand, successfully tapping into the burgeoning potential of these strong regional markets. For more information, please visit https://www.storhub.com.sg and follow them on Instagram and Facebook. About the Poll Commissioned by StorHub, the poll was divided into five different parts - each relating to an aspect that sought to study the participants' attitude and relationship to space/their living environment and compare that to their attitude and opinion in the pre-pandemic period. The poll, conducted by Priority Consultants, recorded responses from 392 participants with ages ranging from 18 to 75. SOURCE StorHub Self Storage

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LONDON, April 07, 2021, the modern consulting firm focused on strategy, technology, and business transformation, today announced a plan to significantly expand its United Kingdom presence in 2021 and beyond.



With offices in London and Manchester, Slalom will add nearly 100 product development, experience design, data, and Salesforce jobsacross its UK locations. This increased investment is a response to client demand from companies in the UK and requests from clients in North America for increased support in the UK.

"Creating new and amazing ways to delight customers and employees has been a trend of recent years and has really taken a leap up the priority list in the past year," said Dave Williams, Slalom UK general manager. "New ways of doing business, supported by new technology solutions, are driving a wave of change for us all. We're excited to be part of it and make this investment in the UK."

To help drive this purposeful growth, Todd Sink, a managing director at Slalom for the past 15 years, is relocating to London after 10 years at Slalom's Seattle headquarters. Todd will lead Slalom's UK go-to-market teams and will be focused on growing key client relationships across finance, retail, life sciences, and energy.

"I look forward to taking everything I've learned over the last 15 years-helping over 2,000 clients at all stages of their evolution, in over 30 markets in North America-to help grow our UK business," said Sink.

Slalom UK has also hired Simon Cook as managing director of Slalom Build in the UK to drive the company's ambition of being the leading product development provider in the country. Cook, who has been leading modern digital-delivery engagements for the last decade, will focus on scaling the UK Build team. Slalom Build blends design, product engineering, analytics, and automation to create the modern technology products of tomorrow.

Slalom launched its London office in 2014 and the Manchester office in 2019. In recent years, Slalom London has been awarded the UK IT Industry Awards' Business IT Innovation of the Year, Vitality Britain's Healthiest Workplace, and Working Family's Best Small Private Sector Employer.

About Slalom

Slalom is a modern consulting firm focused on strategy, technology, and business transformation. In 39 markets around the world, Slalom's teams have autonomy to move fast and do what's right. They are backed by regional innovation hubs, a global culture of collaboration, and partnerships with the world's top technology providers. Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Seattle, Slalom has organically grown to over 8,500 employees. Slalom has been named one of Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For five years running and is regularly recognised by employees as a best place to work. Learn more at slalom.com.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at: https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/01b477e5-1a0e-43a3-9a69-9c6f211ce40f

Media contact: Sam Thorne | sam.thorne@slalom.com
Who's a good boy?

Listener Roy phoned in to share his yarn of when he stopped breathing while in his cot when he was 8 months old.

He said that his Mum's friend's German Shepherd dog noticed something was off, and then barked and jumped up and down using his paws to beat his chest, applying CPR.

What. The. How good.

Roy's mum eventually noticed something was up and managed to "settle him down" (his words), but if that dog didn't cause a ruckus....Roy may not have lived to tell the tale.

What a yarn!
A Birmingham woman charged with murder in a street racing crash that killed an innocent motorist was arrested Wednesday morning in Atlanta on a bond revocation charge.

Carmesia Flannigan, 22, has been sought by U.S. Marshals and Birmingham police for two weeks. She is charged with murder, leaving the scene of an accident with injury and unlawful possession of a controlled substance in the March 21 death of 52-year-old Brandy Ballard.

She was taken into custody about 6:15 a.m. by U.S. Marshals in the Atlanta-area. Authorities have been actively searching for her since she left Birmingham, and have focused their efforts in Georgia. She is expected to be returned to Jefferson County within several days.

Following her release from jail on the charges in Ballards, Flannigan posted two separate Facebook Live videos laced with expletives blaming Ballard for the crash. That old ass lady swerved in my lane,' Flannigan said on the video.

The videos were deleted from Facebook but were posted to YouTube and has had thousands of views. I was so mad I cried,' said Tabatha Moore, Ballards niece, after viewing the videos. Its very frustrating. Its humiliating.

Theres no remorse,' Moore said. Theres no heart involved. I want it stopped.

Warning: This video contains graphic language

Ballard, a home health care worker and grandmother of five, was on her way to work just after 6 a.m. that Sunday when authorities say her 2007 Ford Focus was struck by a 2010 Chevrolet Camaro that crossed over the center lane of traffic.

Police and coroners officials said investigators believe the Camaro was racing another vehicle at the time of the deadly crash. The crash happened at 6:10 a.m. and Ballard was pronounced dead four minutes later. She was just two blocks from her home.

Brandy Ballard, 52, was killed Sunday, March 21, 2021, when police say she was struck by a Camaro that was street racing. (Contributed)

Sgt. Rod Mauldin said witnesses observed vehicles racing prior to the accident. It was determined that one of the drivers who was reportedly racing left the scene of the accident.

Later Monday, police announced the arrest of Flannigan. Flannigan was released the following day after posting $175,000 bond.

Jefferson County prosecutors on March 24 filed to have Flannigans bond revoked, and District Judge Katrina Ross granted that request, issuing a warrant for her arrest and ordered she be held without bond. A March 31 hearing had been set for the bond revocation.

Flannigan has not responded to requests for comment. At the time of her arrest Monday, she was already awaiting trial on a first-degree domestic violence charge from earlier this year and a burglary charge from last year.

In the domestic violence case, court records show, Flannigan is accused of firing a gun into an occupied dwelling on Jan. 3, wounding a woman in the foot. Charging documents describe the victim as a current or former parent. She was arrested Jan. 8 and released the same day on $15,000 bond.

In March of 2020, authorities contend, Flannigan, while armed with a gun, broke into a home armed with intent to commit a theft. She was released from jail on $25,000 bond in that incident. In December, the burglary case was forwarded to be heard by a grand jury for indictment consideration.

Brandy Ballard was killed when police say a woman street racing crashed into vehicle Sunday, March 21, 2021. (Contributed)

Assistant District Attorney Jason Wilson filed the bond revocation motions for her two previous cases. As a condition of bond in those cases, Flannigan was to refrain from further criminal activity.

In that motion, Wilson says Flannigan violated those conditions when she was racing her vehicle in excess of the speed limit on Arkadelphia Road when she crossed the center line and struck an oncoming vehicle head-on.

The defendant then fled the scene and falsely reported to law enforcement that her vehicle had been stolen and that she, the defendant, was in Atlanta. The defendant was apprehended by law enforcement and her blood was drawn to be submitted to the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences.
Hundreds of complaints about the behaviour of teachers, including allegations of harm to children, were made in Queensland last year, even though students learnt from home for weeks because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Queensland College of Teachers, which is responsible for the registration of more than 110,000 teachers, revealed a spike in complaints about professional conduct and discipline in 2020.

The Queensland College of Teachers is the regulatory body responsible for the registration of teachers. Credit:Shutterstock

Employers made 610 notifications about teacher conduct in 2020, almost double those of the previous year (329), with nine reports related to competence.

Bosses must notify the college when they start and stop dealing with an allegation of harm caused or likely to be caused to a child because of the conduct of a teacher, and when a teacher is fired as a result of their level of competence.
A FAMILY are holding a prize draw for a coastal home and 50,000 (58,500) and will donate 5pc of the proceeds to Beaumont Hospital to thank the staff who cared for their late parents.

Marcia Turley and her sisters organised the draw after being left the Donegal family home when their parents died eight weeks apart in 2018.

Her father, Ben Gallagher, became ill in October 2016 and was hospitalised with heart failure.

Her mother, Lyndall, was hospitalised only 10 days later with a brain tumour.

"The nurses were amazing. They put dad up in mum's ward so they could visit each other," Ms Turley said.

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"He kept going across to hold her hand. It was really lovely that way.

"He was kind of able-minded but not able-bodied and she was kind of able-bodied but not able-minded."

Ms Turley and her sisters were later told their mother needed brain surgery.

Without intervention, she could have died within six weeks.

Mrs Gallagher lived for 18 more months, thanks in part to the Beaumont staff.

As a thank you, Ms Turley and her sisters are donating 5pc of the money they raise in the prize draw to the hospital.

"They could buy some lifesaving equipment or do some life-saving research, you never know," she said.

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While it was a difficult time for the family, Ms Turley said she was glad it did not happen during the Covid-19 pandemic.

"We were grateful in one way that it all happened then, and we were grateful in another way that Daddy went first because he couldn't have coped watching her die," she said.

Mr Gallagher died in hospital on March 29, 2018, and his wife died on May 21 in a hospice.

Tickets for the draw costing 10 (11.70) with 70,000 available at https://raffall.com/193700/enter-raffle-to-win-donegal-coastal-property-50k-hosted-by-susan-ryan .






A more contagious variant of COVID-19 from the United Kingdom has swept through Alabama in the last two months.

Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, home to the primary lab sequencing strains of the disease in the state, estimate about 40 percent of cases are now the highly contagious UK variant. Thats up from about 1 percent of cases in February.

Dr. Sixto Leal, professor of laboratory medicine at UAB, said existing COVID vaccines appear to be effective against the UK variant, but that could evolve.

Theres an opportunity for the virus to change, to mutate, and be able to escape that protection, he said.

Thats why Dr. Leal and his team are sequencing about 100 COVID-19 strains each week.

As Alabama lifts its mask mandate, and as some portions of the population decline a vaccine, the opportunity for mutations remains, both locally and in parts of the world where vaccines have yet to arrive.

Dr. William Schaffner, professor of infectious disease at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said the United States started the pandemic with little capacity to sequence viruses.

That limitation is a risk going forward.

Its a global problem, he said, adding that genome sequencing is going to become increasingly important for disease control more generally.

Even if we vaccinated every single person in the United States, our problem would not be over, he said of the potential for mutations to emerge abroad and undermine existing vaccines.

Some states have been able to ramp up variant tracking, but others, like Tennessee, where Dr. Schaffner is based, currently have a limited ability to do so.

By tracking these variants, it gives us an impression of exactly whats going on. (Otherwise) its very difficult to feel confident in knowing.

Alabama is working to establish a network of other labs, but so far UAB is the primary institution with the capacity to track mutations in the virus. Since February UAB has quadrupled its variant sequencing.

The sequencing is very expensive and time consuming and there are few locations that can do it. Ideally, we should be doing random sampling of positive cases. Maybe 500 per week would be ideal, said Dr. Leal, who is working with the state department of health and the CDC to sequence strains.

UAB is seeing lots of mutations of strains, but so far none are of concern. Earlier this month, Dr. Leals lab identified a variant from New York with a mutation of a strain from California. Dr. Leal said the mutation has yet to be named.

The thought is if we identify them early on, we can take interventions, contact tracing efforts, to be able to stop its spread throughout the state, he said.

Variants may find an opportunity for spread as COVID-19 restrictions begin to ease and as people, reacting to COVID fatigue, turn their attention elsewhere, said Dr. Schaffner.

He said young people, who have been more socially active than other age groups during the pandemic, are experiencing rising COVID-19 cases among the unvaccinated.

So far, vaccines are highly effective against the variants prevalent in the United States. Whether that remains the case may depend on how many people get vaccinated, said Dr. Schaffner.

If we dont reach about 80 percent of the adult population vaccinated, both the parent strain and these variants, including the British strain, are going to continue to spread and are going to continue to make people quite sick, he said.

These are hard concepts for lay people to hang on to because they are very tired of the whole business. They just want it to go away, he said. Well life is not like that.
Active coronavirus student cases have increased in Humble ISD about two weeks after returning from Spring Break, according to district data. Meanwhile, the zip codes that encompass the Lake Houston area are inching closer to 200 deaths from COVID-19, according to Harris County.

Humble ISD reported 96 active student cases (0.26 percent) and 34 active staff cases (0.45 percent) on April 6 at 8:30 p.m. There have been a total of 1,858 student cases and 811 staff cases since public reporting began on Aug. 11, according to the district data. Harris County remains at a level one with severe and uncontrolled level of COVID-19 spread according to Harris County Public Health. However, new cases are changing by -25.7 cases per day according to the county public health department.
April 7, 1971

Scranton Prep mulls allowing girls to enroll

The Rev. T. Donald Rinfret, S.J., headmaster of Scranton Preparatory School, confirmed that the school was seriously considering allowing girls to enroll at the 27-year-old institution.

He stressed no decision had been made. He said at the time they were seeking opinions from current students, their parents and alumni about allowing girls to enroll.

The possible change came after Marywood Seminary announced that the school would close at the end of the year. The seminarys classrooms were destroyed in a fire on Feb. 22.

Rinfret said if Prep did go co-ed it would only have room for 50 girls. He said Prep did not have the room to accommodate all the seminarys students.

One problem with going co-ed for the 1971-72 school year had already emerged. Letters of acceptances had already been sent out to the number of students that Prep could accommodate in the fall.

Final plans submitted for Geneva House

The nonprofit organization behind the Geneva House construction project submitted final plans to the city planning commission.

The plans for an apartment building along the 300 block of Adams Avenue were altered slightly to allow for commercial space on the first floor after an Adams Avenue property owner objected to the apartment building because it would ruin the business nature of the neighborhood.

Once the plans were altered, the property owner withdrew his objection.

Pending approval of the final plans by the planning commission and zoning board, construction was slated to start in the summer of 1971.

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Sugar cured smoked hams were 43 cents per pound, young turkeys were 45 cents per pound, a pound of bacon was 49 cents, kielbasa was 89 cents per pound, a dozen oranges were 69 cents, a large head of cauliflower was 39 cents, a gallon bottle of Crisco oil was $2.99 and a frozen cheese pizza was 69 cents.
She moved in with her comedian boyfriend Jack Whitehall last year, just two weeks after the pair embarked on a romantic relationship.

And Roxy Horner recently displayed her ability to command attention, when she posed in a range of bikinis and swimsuits from Club L London.

The model, 29, looked sensational as she posed up a storm in a number of barely-there ensembles, including an olive green two-piece and a frilly white number.

Catching the eye: Roxy Horner recently displayed her ability to command attention, when she posed in a range of bikinis and swimsuits from Club L London

Posing in a beach setting, she was also shown wearing a selection of colourful swimsuits, as well as patterned sarongs and a bright crop top and trousers.

In another shot, she also added an elegant touch to her look, teaming a structured orange swimsuit with a wide-brimmed straw hat.

With her honey blonde tresses impeccably styled in beachy waves, Roxy highlighted her natural good looks with a rich palette of makeup.

Showing off a deep tan in the images, she proudly showed off her enviably toned and lean figure as she posed up a storm.

Frilled: The model, 29, looked sensational as she posed up a storm in a number of barely-there ensembles, including a frilly white two-piece

Daring looks: Her swimwear included a selection of daring looks, including a lace-up two-piece

Stunning: With her honey blonde tresses impeccably styled in beachy waves, Roxy highlighted her natural good looks with a rich palette of makeup

Print's charming: Animal-print swimwear was also included in the collection of cool swimwear

Roxy met her beau Jack, 32, during a trip to Australia, and shortly after, they decided to spend the coronavirus lockdown together.

Jack admitted although the decision 'accelerated' their relationship, they did miss out on doing ordinary things like restaurant and cinema dates.

Speaking on the Couples Quarantine podcast, he said: 'Weirdly that was quite nice because we spent a lot of time together and it accelerates the relationship in a way.

'Then when lockdown ended, there's a lot of things we realised. We'd never gone to see a film together. We'd never been to a restaurant in England because we met in Australia.'

Orange you glad to see me: In another shot, she also added an elegant touch to her look, teaming a structured orange swimsuit with a wide-brimmed straw hat

Colourful: Posing in a beach setting, she was also shown wearing a selection of colourful swimsuits, as well as patterned sarongs and a bright crop top and trousers

Setting the right tone: Showing off a deep tan in the images, she proudly showed off her enviably toned and lean figure as she posed up a storm

Jack dated actress Gemma Chan, 38, between 2011 and 2017, and he previously said that he regretted not marrying her.

Speaking to his mother Hilary in an episode of his Netflix series, Travels With My Father, he said: 'I f****d up my chance of that. I did. I could have got married but I messed it up.'

In the episode, which was filmed before Jack began dating Roxy, he apologised to his mother for being the only single member of their immediate family as it meant he had to attend his sister Molly's wedding alone.

He added: 'I'm sorry I'll be attending the wedding alone and I'm sorry you have two children who have model relationships and one who is going to be there on his own trying to sh*g a bridesmaid.'

Just the two of us: She moved in with her comedian boyfriend Jack Whitehall last year, just two weeks after the pair embarked on a romantic relationship
NEW DELHI - The world's largest vaccine maker, based in India, will be able to restart exports of AstraZeneca doses by June if new coronavirus infections subside in the country, its chief executive said Tuesday.

Vials of AstraZeneca's COVISHIELD vaccine for COVID-19 are seen at a filling lab at the Serum Institute of India, Pune, India, Thursday, Jan. 21, 2021. Experts say there is a pressing need for India to bolster vaccination, which started sluggishly in January. The country is expanding its drive to include everyone over 45 from Thursday, April 1. Spotlight on Serum Institute of India - the worldAos largest maker of vaccines and key global supplier - to cater to cases at home has resulted in delays of global shipments of up to 90 million doses under the U.N.-backed COVAX program, an initiative devised to give countries access to vaccines regardless of their wealth. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

NEW DELHI - The world's largest vaccine maker, based in India, will be able to restart exports of AstraZeneca doses by June if new coronavirus infections subside in the country, its chief executive said Tuesday.

But a continued surge could result in more delays because the Serum Institute of India would have to meet domestic needs, Adar Poonawalla warned in an interview with The Associated Press.

The company is a key supplier for the U.N.-backed COVAX program that aims to distribute vaccines equitably in the world. On March 25, COVAX announced a major setback in its vaccine rollout because a surge in infections in India caused the Serum Institute of India to cater to domestic demand, resulting in a delay in global shipments of up to 90 million doses.

Since then, daily new infections in India have almost doubled, with the biggest single-day spike of over 100,000 new cases on Monday. Infections are being reported faster in India than anywhere else in the world, prompting tougher virus restrictions in New Delhi and the nation's financial capital, Mumbai.

An employee works inside a laboratory at the Serum Institute of India, in Pune, India, Thursday, Jan. 21, 2021. The world's largest vaccine maker will be able to restart exports of AstraZeneca doses by June if new coronavirus infections subside in the country, its chief executive said Tuesday, April 6. But a continued surge could result in more delays because the Serum Institute of India would have to meet domestic needs, Adar Poonawalla warned in an interview with The Associated Press. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

India initially immunized the most vulnerable, but broadened that to anyone over 45 on April 1 because of the surge in cases. The resulting increased demand forced the halt in exports. Since then, several top state officials have urged the federal government to further expand vaccinations.

Poonawalla said the company has chosen to prioritize India temporarily for two months and hopes to then restart exports.

If India's surge in infections doesn't subside, "I am scared of what ... we will have to do, and what will happen, he said. We are going to have to keep supplying to India, and not anywhere else. Because we have to protect our nation.

He acknowledged that has put a strain on our contractual obligations to provide vaccines to other countries, and that he has been fielding phone calls from various heads of state.

I've had to politely explain to everybody the situation, he said, adding that most world leaders understood because they were facing the same issues  the needs of domestic politics and questions raised by opposition parties and the public.

Nationalism is happening ... to a certain extent, everywhere, Poonawalla said, pointing to vaccine export controls imposed by Europe, and the use in the United States of the Defence Production Act to prevent exports of critical raw materials needed to scale up vaccine manufacturing.

He said the unavailability of these raw materials, such as the specific medium needed to grow microorganisms, could affect the Serum Institute's production of another vaccine, Novavax, which is still being tested in India. It has signed a deal to supply Novavax to COVAX, but pivoting to different suppliers of the raw materials would result in a delay of five to six months, he said.

The crunch ... for supplies is today," he said.

Dr. Bruce Aylward, a senior adviser to World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said vaccine supplies for COVAX remain fluid.

Obviously, if we have an interruption with any one of our suppliers for a short time, a month or so, we can find ways to try and manage as best we can with the countries. And if its longer than that, obviously it would be a big challenge, he said at a WHO briefing Tuesday.

Clearly were there a complete interruption from any supplier, that would be a real problem, he said.

Associated Press writer Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
A fifth-generation seventeen-year-old spud farmer has used a tractor to tell an energy company to 'p*** off.'

Joee Aganetti-Fraser is one of many potato growers near Ballarat, Victoria, who are opposed to a 190km-long transmission line being built by energy company Ausnet.

The farmer, whose parents own three properties in the Goldfield's region, said it will destroy the business her family has owned since the 1800s.

Joee Aganetti-Fraser (pictured right with friend Indiana Stranks) has used a tractor to tell an energy company Ausnet to 'p*** off'

She wrote the strongly worded message with her parents to draw attention to a powerline proposed to go under their farm, which they say will destroy it

Ms Aganetti-Fraser told Daily Mail Australia it took herself, her parents and uncle five hours to write the strongly worded message.

'We just used the two-way radio and one of us was in the paddock, you know guiding and telling who was in the tractor what way to go,' she said.

The family are protesting the Western transmission network project, which will reach from Melbourne to Bulgana and cut through potato land in the Goldfield's region.

Farmers say it will ruin the soil and render their businesses inoperable.

'The spud district will just be pretty much destroyed out here,' said Ms Aganetti-Fraser.

'We won't be able to farm underneath and it will cut out our good rich volcanic soil.'

Ms Aganetti-Fraser is protesting the Western transmission network project, which will reach from Melbourne to Bulgana and cut through potato land in the Goldfield's region

The family farm produces potatoes (pictured)

Ms Aganetti-Fraser said the family refused Ausnet's buyout offer, but a neighbour said they would take it up and a terminal station may be built next to their Mount Prospect farm.

Fraser Farming have three potato growing properties in Mount Prospect, Newlyn and Dean.

Ms Aganetti-Fraser said it didn't matter where the substation was, if the line was run under a spud farm it would render the land useless.

Ausnet said the project corridors for the line are still being investigated.

A single corridor should be narrowed down by mid-2021, which would then subject to further investigation.

A map is available for people in the community to pin areas they want to protect.

Under the proposals, farmers said they would also be unable to use large machinery over three or four metres tall which they say is necessary for their operations.

The region produces over 130thousand tonnes of potatoes annually, and most of that is supplied to food giant McCain, which stocks McDonalds.

Ms Aganetti-Fraser (left) said if the transmission line is put through Goldfields, it will destroy the potato industry in the region

'The transmission lines will reduce our ability to produce potatoes for McCain's and Lamb Weston by at least 40 per cent, meaning we won't be able to supply [them] with the tonnage they need,' Ms Aganetti-Fraser claimed.

She said she wants the powerline to be put under the Western Highway.

Farmers have claimed the country will have to start importing potatoes, Australian jobs will 'go out the door' and it will threaten our food security.

South Australia is the country's largest potato production state (38 per cent), followed by Tasmania and then Victoria at 21 per cent.

Ms Aganetti-Fraser (pictured) said she wants the powerline to be put down the middle of the Western Highway, where it was initially proposed to go

The Ausnet powerline is proposed to spread from Melbourne to Bulgana (pictured)

Ms Aganetti-Fraser said farmers have had community meetings with Ausnet but they weren't happy with their responses.

Ausnet told Daily Mail Australia they understand there are concerns in the community about the electricity line.

'This is the first major project of its kind in Victoria for three decades,' a spokesperson said.

'The project is still in the early planning stages and the final route has not been decided. We thank the community for sharing their feedback on the current corridor options via the recent community drop-in sessions.'

'We are currently conducting detailed Investigations via independent experts that will look at the concerns of landowners and the wider community.'
New Delhi, April 7 : India recorded 1,15,736 new Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours, the biggest-ever single-day spike since the onset of the pandemic, taking the overall tally to 12,801,785 on Wednesday. The steep incline in cases is very concerning, as the new Covid variants have infiltrated the population, and some of these variants are known to be more infectious and lethal, said Manisha Juthani, Associate Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Yale School of Medicine and Yale Medicine infectious diseases specialist.

She added that long-lasting symptoms after Covid will be a worldwide problem and nearly 30 per cent people are likely to suffer from long Covid.

Excerpts from the interview Q: India is amid the second wave of coronavirus. The rise in cases is too steep, sharper than the first wave. Is it consistent with the pattern seen in other virus pandemics? A: This steep incline in cases in India is very concerning for new Covid variants infiltrating the population. Some of these variants are known to be more infectious and lethal. The highest concentration of cases is in Maharashtra with Mumbai being a travel hub. This suggests that travellers have brought in variants which are rapidly spreading in the population.

Q: Usually, experts say human behaviour is considered a major factor linked with a spike in coronavirus cases. But some experts also point at a probability of a new strain, possibly behind the second wave, which maybe infectious, not fatal, leading to a surge in cases in many places in India? A: New variants from around the world have been identified in India. There is the concern of the 'double mutant' in India that has also now been identified in San Francisco. Anecdotally, I know of several people in India that have tested negative for Covid, but who have all the clinical features suggestive of Covid. Sometimes, one member of the family tests positive but the others test negative, all with the same symptoms. It is possible that a variant is spreading with a mutation that results in false negative tests. This is particularly concerning because other family members can get exposed if they believe the index patient does not have Covid. When the first wave was receding in India, it seemed that variants may not have yet reached. With the current explosion in cases, variants seem to at least be playing a part.

Q: Long Covid is emerging as a major problem in the UK. Do you think, globally it could be a major issue too? A: Long Covid will be a worldwide problem. Up to 30 per cent of infected individuals worldwide may end up suffering from long term symptoms. Some promising news is that vaccination seems to ease these symptoms in some people.

Q: Experts say that seasonal change has no effect on coronavirus. There were some locations, for example Delhi (at the onset of winter season), which saw a high number of coronavirus infections early on, followed by a decline (December-January), is facing a "second wave" of increased cases, at the beginning of summer season in March.

A: We have been learning about Covid for over a year now. The anticipated seasonal variation that occurs with other respiratory viruses has not consistently proven to be the case. The common thread for spread appears to be close contact, particularly in indoor settings. In the winter season, indoor gatherings seem to be a source of spread because people remain indoors for warmth. In hot locations in the summer, indoor gatherings also seem to be sources of spread, likely because it is too hot to remain outdoors, and people gather indoors. Heating and air conditioning might even contribute to the spread of viral particles.

Q: Is there a possibility that a second wave may not lead to increase in fatality or increase in Covid patient's admission to Intensive Care Unit (ICU), however the viral infection may have a long-lasting health impact in patients, for example, kidney, live or lungs damage? A: Given that hospitals already appear to be filling up in many parts of India, it seems likely that hospitals will continue to feel the burden of caring for Covid patients. In addition, we know that appropriately 30 per cent of Covid patients can go on to have chronic symptoms such as shortness of breath or fatigue. End organ damage can happen with Covid as well, particularly after long hospitalizations. I anticipate that India will have a surge in hospitalized patients in addition to those that suffer long term consequences of Covid.

Q: Experts say young people may be behind the increase in cases. Is it possible that young people, who have contracted the new strains of coronavirus, are spreading it to more than one person, leading to a spike in cases? A: Vaccinations have begun in India, but many young people are not vaccinated yet. Adults in their 20s and 30s remain the most social thereby transmitting the virus from one another. This age group may also be travelling more. The US is seeing a surge of cases among young adults primarily because of congregating behaviours and because the youngest adults have not been eligible for the vaccine until now. In India, older adults are still getting infected, either because they haven't received the vaccine yet, only received one dose, or are exposed to other people. It is unclear if the current spike is because of young people, but young adults have always been the most likely to engage in social behaviours and get infected.

Q: The US and Europe have already faced the second wave of coronavirus, is there any learning for India from the western countries? A: Throughout the world, when public health measures (masking and physical distancing) have been put in place, cases have been controlled. Lockdowns have been necessary and effective in various regions of the world. With a very steep rise in cases, in order to maintain hospital capacity, more restrictions will be necessary.

(Sumit Saxena can be contacted at sumit.s@ians.in )

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
The Prime Minister said he would not pre-empt any decision from the Therapeutic Goods Administration and the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, and so far Australias vaccine rollout would continue as planned. My advice at this point, but thats obviously subject to what ATAGI might say later in the day, [is] there is nothing to suggest at this stage that there would be any change, he said on Thursday morning. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video Regardless of whether the regulator changes its advice, Mr Morrison said it was important to know the risk of developing venous thromboembolism was much lower following the AstraZeneca vaccine than the risk of death from COVID-19. Lets note that in the UK, the advice is that some 6000 peoples lives have already been saved by this very vaccine. So we need to consider the positive benefits, he said.

From UK data, the risk of venous thromboembolism following the vaccine was about one to five per million people. Loading To put that in some sort of perspective, the combined oral contraceptive pill, that can include adverse side effects of venous thromboembolism - thats seven to 10 per 10,000, Mr Morrison said. So what ATAGI will be doing is theyll be looking at that evidence and they, of course, will be weighing that against the very positive benefits of the vaccine program and then theyll be providing further advice, he said. A federal government spokesperson said the expert groups were meeting on Thursday to discuss the latest overseas updates and evidence.

The government has asked ATAGI and the TGA to immediately consider and advise on the latest vaccination findings out of Europe and the UK, the spokesperson said. That advice will be provided to the Commonwealth government for immediate consideration. The advice will be shared with the expert medical panel, the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee, which is comprised of all state and territory chief health officers and led by federal Chief Medical Officer Professor Paul Kelly. Mr Morrison said he expected to receive an update later on Thursday evening. The matter will also be discussed in national cabinet on Friday and in meetings with state and territory health ministers, he said.

Professor Kelly told the ABC on Thursday morning there were so few cases of the rare clotting disorder it was hard to make conclusions. Loading He said overseas advice regarding younger people and women being at higher risk would be brought to the table on Thursday and looked at in the Australian context. The government will be looking to reassure people that the AstraZeneca vaccine is very effective and extremely safe for most people, the Chief Medical Officer said. But there is this rare event that appears to be linked with that particular vaccine and people need to be aware of that.
Dolciaria Acquaviva, an Italy-based manufacturer of frozen baked goods, has acquired local peer Unigel.

It has also bought a distributor of its own products, Dolce Milano.

Dolciaria Acquaviva, which is backed by Luxembourg-based investment group Ergon Capital Partners, has not disclosed the financial terms of the deals.

The company, based near Naples in southern Italy, said the acquisitions of Unigel, which is based in Lombardy in northern Italy and Dolce Milano, also based in Lombardy, will allow it to further diversify the range of products and distribution channels it covers.

Unigel, which makes frozen bread as well as other frozen baked goods such as croissants and pizza, sells its products in both the retail and foodservice channels.



Dolce Milano is the exclusive distributor of the Acquaviva brand for the Lombardy region.

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"With the acquisition of Dolce Milano, the Dolciaria Acquaviva Group locks down direct distribution in Lombardy, which is the most interesting market in Italy in terms of sales of frozen bakery products and, at the same time, enriches its offer with self-made frozen desserts and cakes," the company said.

"The acquisition of Unigel is strategically interesting as it allows Dolciaria Acquaviva to strengthen its presence in the

modern commercial channel and to expand its range of self-produced items to the highly profitable segment of bread."

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Pierluigi Acquaviva, CEO of Dolciaria Acquaviva, said: "We are extremely satisfied with these acquisitions, which represent a further significant step forward in the implementation of our growth strategy.

"Both companies are deeply strategic for Dolciaria Acquaviva and will make it possible to substantially strengthen the positioning of the group in the competitive frozen bakery sector."
The brand logo of Alphabet Inc's Google is seen outside its office in Beijing, China August 8, 2018. (Photo : REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo)

Google research manager Samy Bengio on Tuesday said he is resigning, according to an internal email seen by Reuters, in a blow to the Alphabet Inc unit after the firings of his colleagues who questioned paper review and diversity practices.



Though at least two Google engineers had earlier resigned in protest of the dismissal of artificial intelligence (AI) researcher Timnit Gebru, Bengio is the highest-profile yet to depart.



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Google and Bengio did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Bloomberg earlier reported the news.



A distinguished scientist at Google, Bengio spent about 14 years at the company and was among its first employees involved in a decade-old project known as Google Brain that advanced algorithms crucial to the functioning of various modern artificial intelligence systems.



In the email he sent internally, Bengio said, "I have decided to leave Google in order to pursue other exciting opportunities."



Google fired staff scientist Margaret Mitchell in February after alleging she transferred electronic files out of the company. It fired fellow researcher Gebru in December after she threatened to quit rather than retract a paper.



Mitchell has said she tried "to raise concerns about race and gender inequity, and speak up about Google's problematic firing of Dr. Gebru." Gebru has said the company wanted to suppress her criticism of its products and its efforts to increase workforce diversity.



Bengio had defended the pair, who co-led a team of about a dozen researching ethical issues related to AI software. In December, Bengio said on Facebook that he was stunned that Gebru, whom he was managing, was removed from the company without his being consulted prior.



He did not mention their firings in his farewell note.



"I learned so much with all of you, in terms of machine learning research of course, but also on how difficult yet important it is to organize a large team of researchers so as to promote long term ambitious research, exploration, rigor, diversity and inclusion," he said.


A citizen of Mexico and convicted rapist was arrested by U.S. border agents in California on April 5, 2021. (U.S. Customs and Border Protection)

Border Patrol Agents Arrest Illegal Aliens Convicted of Child Sex Crimes

U.S. Border Patrol agents in California arrested an illegal alien previously convicted of raping a child, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced on April 6.

The 46-year-old male, who is a citizen of Mexico, was arrested on April 5 by Border Patrol agents assigned to the El Centro sector, after he illegally entered the United States.

Agents found via a record check that the man was previously convicted of rape, sodomy, and oral copulation with a person under the age of 18, according to a CBP release. He was convicted in California in 2007 and was sentenced to more than nine years in prison. He was removed from the United States in 2014.

Hes been charged as a convicted felon with reentry after deportation, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Since the start of the current fiscal year on Oct. 1, 2020, Border Patrol agents in the El Centro sector have arrested or removed 17 individuals who were convicted or wanted on sexual offense charges.

Separately, Border Patrol agents in the San Diego sector arrested a child sex offender on April 4. The man arrested was one of two illegal aliens who were trying to hide in thick brush in the mountains near the Otay Mesa Port of Entry. They were found and arrested by an agent patrolling the area.

A record check showed that the man is a 35-year-old El Salvadorian national who was convicted in 2009 in Virginia for aggravated sexual battery of a child under 13. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison but was removed to El Salvador in 2014 after part of his criminal sentence was suspended.

As with the 46-year-old Mexican citizen, the Salvadoran man will be charged with felony illegal reentry after deportation. He is being held in federal custody, pending prosecution; the other man was sent back to Mexico.

In the current fiscal year, San Diego sector Border Patrol agents have arrested 31 sex offenders, a number that already tops the previous fiscal year, when a total of 25 offenders were arrested.

The United States is currently experiencing a surge in illegal immigration along the U.S.Mexico border.

The number of arrests from October 2020 to the end of February 2021 was 396,958, representing a more than 96 percent increase from the year-earlier period, according to CBP data. In February alone, the CBP apprehended 100,441 aliens who crossed the southern border illegally.

As for illegal aliens who have evaded capture so far in 2021, Deputy Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz estimated the number to be at way over 100,000 people.

President Joe Biden and other U.S. officials have urged migrants to refrain from illegally crossing the border into the United States. Biden in late March defended his policies and characterized the border surge as something that happens every year, and is due to a whole range of things including earthquakes, floods, lack of food, and gang violence.

He also blamed former President Donald Trump for the situation. White House press secretary Jen Psaki last month said, The last administration left us a dismantled and unworkable system, referring to the situation at the southern border.

Critics, including Republicans, have said the border crisis was largely exacerbated by Bidens immigration policies, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) calling the situation a man-made crisis.

Cruz, in a statement on March 17, contended that Bidens calls for a halt in deportations, mass amnesty, and health care benefits for illegal immigrants during his presidential campaign in September 2020 had served as a signal to potential illegal aliens that the border would be wide open under a Biden presidency.

And as a result, people came, Cruz said, later adding, This crisis is the direct result of President Bidens radical open borders agenda.

Since taking office, Biden has reversed a number of border policies from the Trump administration, including pausing border wall construction and announcing a halt to the Remain in Mexico policywhich required asylum-seekers to stay in Mexico while awaiting immigration proceedings.

The Biden administration has also stopped expelling from the country unaccompanied minorschildren who crossed the border illegally without an adult. Adults and family units are generally still being expelled from the United States.

Biden on his first day in office proposed a plan to Congress seeking to provide a pathway to U.S. citizenship for an estimated 11 million people living in the United States illegally. Since then, have Democrats introduced a reform billthe U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021that closely models Bidens proposal.
A locksmith fixed the iron gates outside Dec Donnelly's 5million home this morning after a 'professional' burglary gang botched an attempt to rip them open while the TV star was asleep upstairs with his wife and young daughter.

Police rushed to Mr Donnelly's West London home shortly after 1am on Tuesday following a 999 call.

Mr Donnelly, 45 - one half of presenting duo Ant and Dec - his wife Ali, 43, and their two-year-old daughter Isla were all asleep upstairs in the seven-bedroom home.

The star quickly set about reinforcing his security following the scare, with a worker wearing a facemask and gloves seen working on the entrance to the property this morning.

A locksmith fixes the gate at Dec Donnelly's West London Home this morning following an attempted burglary

Dec Donnelly's 5million home was targeted by a 'professional' burglary gang while the TV star was asleep upstairs with his wife and young daughter (pictured together)

Mr Donnelly, 45 - one half of presenting duo Ant and Dec - his wife Ali, 43, (pictured together) and their two-year-old daughter Isla were all asleep upstairs in the seven-bedroom home

The star quickly set about reinforcing his security following the scare, with a worker wearing a facemask and gloves seen working on the entrance to the property this morning

The suspects had botched an attempt to rip open the iron gates at the front of the property - which was purchased by Mr Donnelly for 1.9million in 2006.

They fled in a car shortly before officers arrived.

The Donnellys were only aware that the burglars - understood to have been a 'professional' gang - targeted their home when the police told them.

A source told The Sun: 'Dec and Ali weren't disturbed. The first they realised anything was amiss was in the morning.'

'The robbers couldn't force the gates open and that's what made them give up, and flee.'

Met Police officers conducted inquiries along the street today and forensic checks were carried out.

The force confirmed that the suspects left the scene prior to police arriving and there was no evidence to suggest they gained access to the house.

No arrests have been made.

Representatives for Mr Donnelly have been approached for comment.
Last July, Greg Brockhouse submitted a massive open-records request with the city of San Antonio.

In anticipation of workforce development and public-transit proposition campaigns he planned to oppose, the former councilman wanted to be armed with as much information as possible on related communications from Mayor Ron Nirenberg and his staff members.

Eight months passed and Brockhouse received no documents from the city.

So, last Thursday, Brockhouse, who is currently challenging Nirenberg for mayor, fired off a press release threatening to sue the city over its lack of transparency.

The very next day, the city finally began providing Brockhouse with some of the material he requested last summer.

This incident comes on the heels of transparency questions with regard to the arrest of Fire Chief Charles Hoods teenage son last June at the San Antonio International Airport.

Hoods son was arrested on suspicion of possessing a fake ID and providing false information to a police officer. The arrest created a rift between Hood, who thought the arrest was unwarranted, and Police Chief William McManus, who stood by his officers.

The incident also prompted the city to pay $325 an hour to a mediation specialist hired to make sense of what happened.

This was a story the public had every right to know about.

For six months, however, the city failed to comply with open-records requests from Express-News reporter Emilie Eaton for the arrest report. Ultimately, the arrest report was expunged.

As of Monday, April 5, the city had 10,505 pending open records requests, with 6,964 (66 percent) of those requests having been submitted at least a month earlier, according to information provided by the city.

No matter who you support in the mayors race, no matter what you think of the police chief or the fire chief, this issue should concern you.

Ethical government requires guardrails. Public integrity dies without transparency.

Of course, the issue of government transparency has been complicated over the past year, just like everything else in our lives, by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last April, the office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton informed government officials that, in light of the pandemic, they could suspend their adherence to the deadlines of the Texas Public Information Act.

State law requires government entities to respond to open records requests within 10 business days.

The AGs COVID guidelines, however, indicated that days in which a government department has closed its physical offices shouldnt be counted as business days. The same applied to days in which only a skeleton crew was working.

Under this opinion, governmental bodies throughout the state have had free cover to indefinitely drag out their responses to public-records requests.

When youre simultaneously facing public-health and economic crises, it might be hard to get worked up over a government-transparency problem. But we need to get worked up over it.

Over the past three months, Paxton has resisted the coordinated efforts of the Houston Chronicle, Express-News, Dallas Morning News, Austin American-Statesman, Texas Tribune and ProPublica to get him to turn over messages he sent or received while in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 for the pro-Donald Trump rally preceding the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

To the citys credit, it voluntarily returned last November to its pre-COVID guidelines for open records responses. But Brockhouses press release pointed out he submitted a series of requests in February and hadnt yet received any information.

Jeff Coyle, San Antonios assistant city manager, said the city has begun turning over material cited in Brockhouses February request.

An open records request shouldnt take as long as his did from July, Coyle said. But these were extraordinary circumstances and weve had other big ones that are still pending also.

To be fair, Brockhouses request last July was massive. Coyle said city staffers have so far pulled a total of 195,000 emails and are scouring them to see which are genuinely responsive to Brockhouses request.

With regard to the citys handling of the arrest report for Hoods son, Coyle provided this statement:

The delay in the release of those records was attributable to a number of factors, including the commitment of resources to COVID-related open records requests, a review of the matter and subsequent legal activity.

Brockhouse describes the citys handling of open records requests as a running joke and adds that he hasnt yet shut the door on the possibility of filing a lawsuit over it.

As the city works through its backlog of pandemic-period requests, hopefully well see a more consistent adherence to the principle of open government.

ggarcia@express-news.net | Twitter: @gilgamesh470
Waterloo, Ontario, April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- eSentire, Inc., the leading global provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity services, has been selected for the fifth year in a row as one of Canadas Top Small & Medium Employers by Mediacorp Canada Inc. The company was chosen for putting its employees futures first with ongoing employee training, tuition subsidy programs, a generous year-end bonus offering and a robust Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) contribution match plan.

Team eSentire is truly humbled to have been named one of Canadas Top Small & Medium Employers for the fifth consecutive year, said Kathryn Hodge, Head of People, eSentire. This award is a testament to eSentires people-first approach and commitment to our progressive, transparent, and candid culture. Our teams unrelenting dedication to prioritizing the security of our customers is at the forefront of our success. We pride ourselves on encouraging team members to think outside the box, and share their ideas, regardless of their role or title. We are always on the lookout for smart, passionate individuals who share our passion to do good, and protect global businesses from the threat of cybercrime. There is no better time to join Team eSentire, or to be a cybersecurity professional!

With more than 450 employees across Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, eSentire offers extensive employee training programs, professional development opportunities, tuition credits and opportunities to earn technical & industry certifications. The business encourages new entrants to the cyber workforce through apprenticeship and paid-internship programs.

Canada's Small and Medium Enterprise sector is very important to the nation, continued Kathryn Hodge. It is responsible for more than half of Canadas gross domestic product and more than 90 percent of the private-sector labor force. eSentire is honoured to be a part of this national success story each and every day.

Now in its eighth year, Canada's Top Small & Medium Employers is an editorial competition that recognizes the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that offer the nation's best workplaces and forward-thinking human resources policies. Companies were evaluated based on: (1) Physical Workplace; (2) Work Atmosphere & Social; (3) Health, Financial & Family Benefits; (4) Vacation & Time Off; (5) Employee Communications; (6) Performance Management; (7) Training & Skills Development; and (8) Community Involvement. To read more about why eSentire was selected as one of Canadas Top Small & Medium Employers for 2021, visit https://www.canadastop100.com/sme/.

Interested in joining the Team eSentire? We are always looking for bright, passionate people who want to do work that matters. Visit our career page to learn more about our open positions across our Security Operations Centers, Threat Intelligence, Incident Response and Sales & Marketing Teams.

About eSentire:

eSentire, Inc., founded in 2001, is the category creator and worlds largest Managed Detection and Response (MDR) company, safeguarding businesses of all sizes with the industry-defining, cloud-native Atlas platform that removes blind spots and enables 24x7 threat hunters to contain attacks and stop breaches within minutes. Its threat-driven, customer-focused culture makes the difference in eSentires ability to attract the best talent across cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and cloud-native skill sets. Its highly skilled teams work together toward a common goal to deliver the best customer experience and security efficacy in the industry. For more information, visit www.esentire.com and follow @eSentire.
Former President Donald Trump formally endorsed Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks in the U.S. Senate race, giving Brooks a much sought-after announcement of support that could swing the race.

The Brooks campaign announced Trumps endorsement in a press release Wednesday morning.

Trumps comments on Brooks, per the press release:

Few Republicans have as much COURAGE and FIGHT as Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks.

Mo is a great Conservative Republican leader, who will stand up for America First no matter what obstacles the Fake News Media, RINOs, or Socialist Democrats may place in his path.

Mo Brooks is pro-life, loves our Military and our Vets, will protect our Second Amendment, combat the Biden open border agenda, is fighting for voter integrity (like few others), and was the Co-Chair of our winning, and record setting, Alabama campaign in 2020.

Mo Brooks has my Complete and Total Endorsement for the U.S. Senate representing the Great State of Alabama. He will never let you down!

In the announcement, Brooks said, I am honored and humbled by President Trumps strong endorsement of me for Alabamas U.S. Senate seat. I ask all Alabamians who share our America First vision to heed and honor President Trumps request by joining our campaign. Sign up to help at MoBrooks.com.

Immediately after Trump announced the endorsement, Brooks changed the name of his campaign Twitter account to Mo Brooks -- Endorsed by President Trump.

Trumps endorsement of Brooks did not come as a surprise, given that the former president has endorsed Brooks in his last two races for Congress. Stephen Miller, a former senior adviser to Trump, joined Brooks at his campaign announcement last month and praised him as being a leader in Trumps America First agenda.

Trump also signaled Wednesdays endorsement during an appearance Tuesday night on Newsmax -- the upstart conservative news network. Asked directly about possibly endorsing Brooks, Trump raved about him, saying in part, Mo Brooks in Alabama has done a spectacular job fighting for election integrity, Trump said. He saw the crooked election, what happened. He was willing to speak up. Hes a strong guy, a tough guy, he loves his state. I mean, I could see going that way.

If there was a surprise regarding the endorsement, perhaps it came in the timing. The Republican primary is about a year away with only two candidates having announced plans to be on the ballot. Montgomery businesswoman Lynda Blanchard.

Its possible Trumps endorsement could serve as a sort of deterrent to keep other Republican candidates out of the race -- knowing that the Republican kingmakers support has been thrown behind Brooks.

Blanchard, a former ambassador to Slovenia during the Trump administration, was the first to enter the race, declaring herself a proud member of the MAGA movement -- Trumps Make America Great Again campaign slogan.

Blanchard also held a fundraiser last month at Mar-a-Lago, Trumps exclusive club in south Florida, and had a photo op with the president. Blanchard has said she will invest as much as $5 million of her own money in television and radio ads through May.

The ties between Trump and Brooks, however, ran too deep for the former presidents backing to go anywhere else. Brooks was the first member of Congress to publicly announce in December that he would contest the presidential election results when they came before Congress on Jan. 6  spearheading a last-ditch effort to overturn the results of the election that ushered Joe Biden into the White House.

Brooks also appeared at a pro-Trump rally the morning of Jan. 6 at the request of the White House, delivering a fiery speech hours before Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in a protest that led to five deaths. Brooks has denied any role in the siege of the Capitol.

Brooks and Trump, along with Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and Trumps eldest son Donald Trump Jr., are defendants in a federal lawsuit brought by U.S. Eric Swalwell, a Democrat from California, for causing the Capitol siege.

Brooks has dismissed the lawsuit as frivolous.

Of course, Trump has had a mixed record of success when involving himself in Alabama Senate races. He backed Sen. Tommy Tuberville last year in his race against former Sen. Jeff Sessions -- a particular Trump enemy due to Sessions recusing himself as U.S. attorney general from the Russia investigation. Trump eventually fired Sessions the day after midterms in November 2018.

In the states special Senate election in 2017, however, Trumps pick of former Sen. Luther Strange missed when Roy Moore won the Republican primary. Trump switched his allegiance in the general election to Moore, who lost to Democrat Doug Jones.

This story has been updated today, April 7, 2021, at 8:20 a.m. with new information throughout.
Management of State Housing Company has named its new estate in Sefwi Wiawso after Katakyie Kwasi Bumangama II, the Omanhene of the Sefwi Wiawso Traditional in recognition of his exemplary leadership.



It is also to honour the Omanhene for the cardinal role he played in securing the land for SHC to embark on phase one of the housing projects.



At a colourful naming ceremony Tuesday, Mr Kwabena Ampofo Appiah, Managing Director of SHC who was full of praise for the Traditional Leader, stated that "this is a progressive looking Omanhene who out of his own volition, gifted us the land in anticipation of Sefwi Wiawso becoming a Regional capital ahead of the referendum to carve out Western North from Western Region".



"Whereas some Chiefs are helping us as an institution, others are also creating problems for us with all manner of avoidable legal tussles so we really hold Katakyie in high esteem", he added.



He assured the people of Sefwi Wiawso that work was ongoing steadily and SHC would continue to employ skilled labourers from within the traditional authority.



"I'm sure most of the carpenters and masons in Sefwi Wiawso have been contracted to work on the project so it's a win-win situation for all of us".



It is our core mandate to provide affordable and decent accommodation to every Ghanaian and we would live up to that expectation, he added.



In his remarks, Katakyie Kwasi Bumangama II also expressed his gratitude for the honour done him by SHC and pledged the support of the traditional authority for successful completion of the housing project.



"Now Sefwi Wiawso is a Regional Capital so we need accommodation especially for civil and public servants who would be posted here. I'm therefore happy at the progress of work so far", he observed.



He however appealed to the Management of SHC to "make the houses more affordable".



Phase one of the projects which aims at constructing 500 houses, is a mixture of 2 and 3 bedroom detached houses. So far 30 houses are at various levels of completion.



Municipal Chief Executive of the Sefwi Wiawso Municipality, Hon. Lewis Agyapong also encouraged SHC to put up more houses to help bridge the housing deficit in the country.

Source: Public Relations Unit of NLA









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The survey findings demonstrate that small business owners recognize the importance of the vaccines in reopening Main Street

Reimagine Main Street (RMS), a project of Public Private Strategies (PPS), has launched a public awareness campaign that will support small business owners in being leaders on the Covid-19 vaccines with their employees and in their community. The campaign was announced during a webinar that also included findings from a survey of more than 3,300 small employers on their perspectives on the vaccines conducted by Reimagine Main Street, in partnership with the National Asian/Pacific Islander American Chamber of Commerce and Entrepreneurship (National ACE), the US Black Chambers, Inc. (USBC), and the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (USHCC). The survey results provide insights into how small business owners view the vaccines and their plans for themselves and their workers.

Other business organizations including the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce (NLGCC), the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO), and Women Impacting Public Policy (WIPP) are stepping up to engage their members.

Small businesses like mine have struggled during this pandemic, but the vaccine shows us that the end is in sight, said Shaundell Newsome, Founder of Sumnu Marketing and Chairman of the Board of the Urban Chamber of Commerce in Las Vegas, who moderated the webinar. I have implemented a vaccine plan for my employees and all business owners should do the same so we can make it through Covid-19 as quickly as possible.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that between 70-85% of Americans need to receive the vaccine to achieve herd immunity. Once that happens, small businesses will be able to get back to business at full capacity and the economy and communities can completely reopen.

The survey findings demonstrate that small business owners recognize the importance of the vaccines in reopening Main Street, said PPS Founder and Principal Rhett Buttle. By championing the vaccine with the employees and in their communities, small employers can help fully reopen the economy as quickly as possible.

NEW SURVEY:

The survey of more than 3,300 small employers shows strong support for ensuring workers get vaccinated. View the full survey here. Key findings include:



63% of small employers intend to encourage their employees to get vaccinated.

Nearly half (45%) of small employers plan to give workers paid time off (PTO) to get vaccinated.

More than 80% of small employers report having conversations with employees about vaccines and a majority (55%) say they would use free or low-cost resources to provide guidance and information about Covid-19 vaccines.

PLEDGE FROM SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS:

The campaign also calls on employers to sign a pledge to be a SMALL BUSINESS VACCINE LEADER, which more than 400 small business owners have already signed. In signing it, small business owners are pledging to do at least one of the following things:



Commit to getting the vaccine when it is their turn and let their employees know why they are choosing to get the vaccine

Create a vaccine plan for their employees

Provide incentives to employees who receive the vaccine, such as PTO to receive the vaccine

Continue to follow state and federal guidance on social distancing and wearing masks after all employees are vaccinated

Assist with vaccine promotion and distribution in their community (examples include volunteering to help at COVID-19 vaccination sites, donating supplies or services to vaccination sites, and being vocal in their community on the business case for getting vaccinated)

NEW TIP SHEETS:

Reimagine Main Street is also giving small business owners the resources they need to play a critical role in championing the vaccine with their employees and in their communities. In addition to general tools and resources, the campaign includes tip sheets in multiple languages for small business specifically targeted to demographics, including:

Black

Hispanic/Latin(x) in English and Spanish

Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) in Simplified Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese

LGBTQ

Native

Women

QUOTES FROM BUSINESS OWNERS AND LEADERS:

Ron Busby, Sr., President/CEO of the U.S. Black Chambers, Inc.

When our country faces a crisis, the most vulnerable are hit the hardest, especially in the Black community. This was the case with Covid-19, but business owners can help put us on the path to recovery by embracing the vaccine.

Ramiro Cavazos, President and CEO of the United States Hisanic Chamber of Commerce

It is going to take years for the Hispanic small business community to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic, but the vaccine can get us started down that path. Business owners can help speed the recovery by championing the vaccine with their employees and community.

Justin G. Nelson, Co-Founder and President, NGLCC

COVID-19 has forced business owners in the LGBTQ community to look out for each other as we try to make it through this pandemic. Small business owners should protect themselves, their employees, and their communities by championing the vaccine.

Cindy Ramos-Davidson, CEO of the El Paso Hispanic Chamber of Commerce

Hispanic businesses have closed at a disproportionate rate because of Covid-19 and the path to recovery begins with the vaccine. If small business owners champion the Covid-19 vaccines, businesses and communities will be able to fully reopen much faster.

Chiling Tong President/CEO of the National Asian/Pacific Islander American Chamber of Commerce and Entrepreneurship

The Covid-19 pandemic has been tough on Asian American and Pacific Islander businesses both financially and through the rise in anti-Asian violence. It is critical that we get through this pandemic as quickly as possible and the vaccine is key to doing so.

Mas Torito, owner of Kokoro Restaurant in Denver

My family restaurant has been in business for over 30 years and this past one was the toughest we have ever weathered. To come back stronger than ever, we have championed the vaccine, but it is critical that more small businesses do so as well.

Ginger Torres, co-founder of PPE for Navajo First Responders in Phoenix

Hesitancy to take the Covid-19 vaccine is prevalent among many Native Americans, but small business owners can play a huge role in changing that. I urge all small business owners to be leaders on the vaccine with their employees and in their communities.

Patty Gentry Young, co_owner of Young Hair Inc., Spring Field, Ohio

We all take steps to be proactive about our health and getting the Covid-19 vaccine should be one of them. Small business owners can play an important role in encouraging their employees and others in their community to get the vaccine.

Small business owners and leaders are available for interviews. To get in touch, please contact kristofer@lunaeisenlamedia.com.

###

About Reimagine Main Street

Small businesses and their workers must rebound from the COVID-19 crisis so that communities thrive and the benefits ripple throughout the economy. We are a multi-stakeholder, cross-sector initiative focused on advancing and uplifting innovative solutions to ensure that Main Street is at the center of our recovery. Reimagine Main Street is a project of Public Private Strategies.

About Public Private Strategies

Public Private Strategies (PPS) creates opportunities where the public and private sectors meet. We bring together diverse allies including foundations, associations, corporations, small businesses, and entrepreneurs to solve pressing societal challenges. By harnessing the power of the private sector, we build coalitions, activate campaigns, and create strategic partnerships to drive desired policy and market outcomes.
Line of Duty star Adrian Dunbar has told how his family narrowly escaped a car bomb attack while visiting Jerusalem.

The Enniskillen actor, who plays Ted Hastings in the BBC drama, detailed the near-miss during an interview for Elizabeth Days How to Fail podcast.

Adrian (62) declined to give date for the attack but said it happened between 1987 and 1991, during the first Palestinian intifada.

"I was in Jerusalem with the family. We parked at the Nablus Gate and went into the old city. I heard a bomb go off. I looked up into the sky and I just knew it was our car," explained the actor, who is married Anna Nygh, with whom he has a daughter and a step-son.

Not wanting to worry his family, he asked his wife to watch the children while he went to survey the damage.

"When I went down, the car was a mangled heap. Thankfully, we didnt have anything serious in it at the time, like our passports or anything," Adrian said.

"I dealt with it like, Oh God, somebodys blown up our car."

The actor also told how growing up during the Troubles had taught him to be wary.

He said that when he moved to London to further his career, he "noticed things other people wouldnt be aware of".

"If someone came in, threw their bag down in the corner and went to the toilet, things like that would make you think, Oh right, he just threw down his bag. Ill have to wait until he comes back," Adrian added.

"I would be aware and would be waiting for him to come back out of the toilet and sit back down beside his bag rather than just walk back out the door.

"You would be wary of silly things, like seeing a car parked on its own, looking abandoned outside a public building.

"Youd think Whats that car doing there? Its 2am and its on a double-yellow line.

"You wouldnt be thinking about it but, fleetingly, these things would register with you."

Adrian also recalled "very dangerous" late-night car journeys when playing in bands during the Troubles, but he denied suffering any lasting trauma.

"I was in three or four accidents, mostly because people were tired at the wheel," he said.

"But you did see scary things that unnerved you or you just missed things.

"When you are late teens, there is an air of excitement about all that. There is an excitement about living through a time when you have to grasp as much as you can because it may be taken from you.

"You felt so alive, but I dont think I have anything like post-traumatic stress disorder."
When you think of the biggest art heist in the world, your mind likely fills with romantic images of slinky cat burglars, "Oceans Eleven" schemers in three-piece suits or Tom Cruise dropping down from a glass ceiling. In all likelihood, you did not immediately think of seedy car repair shops and a bunch of mafia guys named Bobby.

But thats the portrait painted by This Is a Robbery, Netflixs wildly engaging four-part docuseries hitting the platform Wednesday. With a new true crime doc dropping seemingly every day, the genres a dime a dozen right now. But both novices and experts will find much to enjoy in this gripping retelling of the Isabella Stewart Gardner robbery in which 13 works of art were lifted on March 18, 1990 by a pair of mystery men dressed as cops.

For the uninitiated, heres the low down: As Bostons many St. Patricks Day parties raged on, two police officers asked to be let into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum late at night. When a young security guard let them in, it was quickly apparent they werent cops at all; they duct-taped the guard and left him in the basement as they cased the museum. For 81 minutes, a veritable lifetime, motion sensors tracked them as they took paintings off of walls and brutally cut them out of their frames.

In the morning, the next security guard showed up, discovered the crime and the theft became international news. Among the seemingly random assortment of paintings stolen were Rembrandts Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee and A Lady and Gentleman in Black and Vermeers The Concert. The paintings and the perpetrators have never been found. The frames hang empty on the museums walls today.

Its the art worlds biggest unsolved crime  but This Is a Robbery director Colin Barnicle makes a compelling case that the Gardner heist isnt unsolved at all. We talked to Barnicle about the series, his theories and the most intriguing mystery that didnt make it into the final cut.

How could the Gardner art robbery stay unsolved for this long?

One of the great mysteries of the robbery is its longevity. In over 30 years, theres never been an official suspect. But Barnicle argues thats not due to a lack of leads.

I actually dont think theres any secrecy with the guys, with the criminal elements. I think they robbed the art, and then there was a small crew whose life expectancy was not long thereafter, Barnicle says.

As the documentary lays out, most roads point back to a few suspects: a team of Boston mafia members allegedly led by Bobby Donati and Bobby Guarente. It was common knowledge among local gangsters, Barnicle argues, that purloined paintings could be used as bargaining chips. If your buddy ended up in jail, you could use knowledge of a stolen artwork to get a generous plea deal.

But life was short for the Donati boys  a number of the key members were killed in unrelated gang violence in the years after the robbery, leaving fewer and fewer people with direct knowledge of the theft.

Netflix/Courtesy

If you're carrying around a Chinese vase, you probably think its stolen, Barnicle says. You probably don't think its stolen in the largest art heist of all time It looks like something you might hold flowers or ash a cigarette in.

I do think some of the stuff is around, but the people who have it might not know exactly the provenance of it, he adds. The Degas drawings you might think somebody was sitting in the stands at Suffolk Downs in East Boston and drew it.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum/Handout

As that knowledge was lost, Barnicle believes the art was simply dispersed among small-time crooks and their friends where some of it may reside today. One informant, Barnicle says, saw the stolen eagle finial that once topped a Napoleonic flag above a grease pit at a repair shop in Connecticut.

The secrecy was part of their idiocy, Barnicle says. They didnt know art.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum/Handout

Whats with the seemingly haphazard selection of stolen works?

The 13 stolen works range from massively influential, near-priceless works to petty decorative items, which has always lent credence to the theory the robbers werent sophisticated art thieves.

I think they had a shopping list but once it became unwieldy, they just decided to walk around, Barnicle says. It seems like [the robbers] had not worked together all that much. One guy seems to be taking his time and unscrewing things, and one guy is punching glass out of frames.

Barnicle also speculates the thieves went in thinking they could roll up the art like your kids finger paintings. But upon arriving, they learned that the canvases were too thick, or the paintings were done on wood. The works were also potentially bigger than they anticipated; the suspect vehicle was described as a hatchback, hardly a car big enough to haul off huge, wall-sized paintings.

Netflix/Courtesy

Thwarted in their initial plan, they wandered from room to room, plucking smaller drawings off walls and taking a few low-value items like the Chinese bronze Gu and the eagle finial. Using logs from the motion detectors, investigators saw it only took about 20 minutes, Barnicle says. As for the remaining 60-some minutes, he thinks the robbers were stuck in the museum.

I do know they carried police radios and there was a party on the street that night, he says. So I think there was a reticence to carry them out, one under each arm, with the possibility of a party breaking up.

Once the party ended in the wee small hours, the robbers likely loaded up the car and drove off into infamy.

Whats the biggest mystery that didnt end up making it into the documentary?

The decades of twists and turns couldnt all make it into the four-hour docuseries, which meant some fun pieces ended up on the cutting room floor. Barnicles favorite is the mystery of the Blue Room.

The documentary talks extensively about the museums Blue Room, where a Manet titled Chez Tortoni was taken. But Barnicle says the production team noticed in crime scene photos that even more paintings were missing.

Associated Press

There's three or four paintings missing in that room, he says. We talked to conservators and they thought it was odd that there were so many missing paintings in that room.

Its very clear that there's at least three others [missing] the morning of the crime, he adds.

Those paintings, however, are on display today. So at some point, they did reemerge and find their way back onto the gallery walls. The scenes were initially included in the documentary, but it was ultimately decided they were more distracting than edifying since they couldnt provide any answers.

Like so many mysteries of the Gardner robbery, this one might have to remain an enigma.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 04:58:51|Editor: huaxia

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WASHINGTON, April 6 (Xinhua) -- The United States on Tuesday called the talks in Vienna over the Iran nuclear deal "a constructive step" but rejected Tehran's position of "maximalist demands."

"These discussions in Vienna, even though we are not meeting directly with the Iranians, as we have said, it is a welcome step, it is a constructive step, it is a potentially useful step," State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters in a press briefing.

"We don't anticipate any immediate breakthrough," he said. "We know there will be difficult discussions ahead but again this is a healthy step forward."

Price noted that two working groups in the meeting were focused on respective steps for Tehran and Washington to revive the nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

"What is on the table in Vienna today and over the next handful of days are those initial indirect discussions about that first step, what Iran would need to do to resume compliance with the JCPOA and what the United States would need to do to resume its compliance with the JCPOA," he said.

He expected the United States could have a better understanding of a roadmap for how both sides get to mutual compliance with the nuclear deal following the discussions in Vienna.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, who is leading the Iranian delegation in Vienna, said earlier in the day that the United States must remove all its sanctions against Iran in one step if it seeks to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal.

Price, however, made clear that the United States would not accept "maximalist demands" from Iran.

"I think what we can essentially rule out are the maximalist demands that the United States do everything first and only in turn would Iran then act, I don't think anyone is under the impression that that would be a viable proposal," he said.

The Joint Commission of the JCPOA resumed talks in Vienna on Tuesday as senior diplomats of China, France, Germany, Russia, Britain, and Iran met behind closed doors in the Grand Hotel Wien.

Media reports said the U.S. delegation led by Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley was based in a nearby hotel. The U.S. and Iranian negotiators did not have direct talks, but a shuttle diplomacy approach was adopted with the intensified help of the coordinators.

Washington withdrew from the deal in 2018 and tightened sanctions on Iran under former President Donald Trump. In response to the U.S. moves, Iran suspended the implementation of parts of its obligations under the deal. Enditem
GENESEE COUNTY, MI -- Three Oakland County lawyers have been charged with multiple felonies after allegedly filing fraudulent documents in Genesee County courts.

Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton and county sheriff Chris Swanson announced the charges at a Tuesday, April 6, news conference.

Marc Fishman, 70, and Ryan Fishman, 32, of Bloomfield Township, along with Alexandra Ichim, 33, of Waterford Township -- all lawyers with the Fishman Group law firm in Bloomfield Hills -- are charged with one count of criminal enterprises, also known as racketeering, a 20-year felony, and obstruction of justice, a 5-year felony.

These lawyers put a dagger in the heart of due process and victimized some of the most vulnerable people in our state, Leyton said.

Ichman and Ryan Fishman are each charged with an additional 30 counts of forgery, a 14-year felony. The counts are related to the filing of at least 30 forged proof of service and affidavits of service in Genesee Countys 67th District Court between January of 2018 and March of 2021.

Investigators through the Genesee County Sheriffs Office uncovered hundreds of allegedly fraudulent court filings by Fishman Group law firm.

Messages left with the law firm by MLive-The Flint Journal for comment were not returned.

Fraudulent filings uncovered by the department were not only found in Genesee County, Swanson said. There were also documents discovered in Livingston, Calhoun, Ingham, Oakland and Kalamazoo counties, he said.

Investigators believe the scheme could have expanded outside the state to Florida and Colorado.

This is a simple -- ready for this? -- copy and paste crime, Swanson said.

When the attorneys would sue on behalf of their clients, they would not inform the clients of their cases status and instead tell the courts they were unable to reach them. This allowed the court to enter a judgment to allow the attorneys to take their clients assets.

The courts, the people who served the papers and the people who sued are all victims in this case, Swanson said.

They counted on people not knowing what their legal rights were and those were the ones they victimized, Swanson said.

The three lawyers were taken into custody by the Genesee County Sheriffs Office.

Ichim and Marc and Ryan Fishman were arraigned in Genesee County District Court Tuesday, April 6, according to district court documents. Ichim and Ryan Fishman had bonds set at $160,000. Marc Fishmans bond was set at $4,000. All three are scheduled for a probable cause conference Thursday, April 15.

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Marc Knapper, the then-acting U.S. ambassador to South Korea in 2018, speaks to reporters at his residence in Seoul in February 2018. Yonhap



The U.S. administration of President Joe Biden is very committed to improved relations between South Korea and Japan as cooperation between the allies is key to dealing with various regional issues, including a nuclear-armed North Korea, a U.S. diplomat said Tuesday.



Marc Knapper, deputy assistant secretary of state for Korea and Japan, also said he feels very "optimistic" about Seoul-Tokyo relations.



"I think we've seen very early on, I mean, absolute proof that this administration is committed to trilateral cooperation," Knapper said in a webinar by the Sejong Institute think tank, highlighting the importance of cooperation among South Korea, Japan and the United States.



"So we're very committed, the Biden administration is very committed to doing what we can to strengthen not just alliances but also to strengthen our trilateral cooperation, and certainly hopefully as a fringe benefit or positive outcome, that would be an improved relationship between Seoul and Tokyo," he added.



The Seoul-Tokyo relationship has deteriorated badly since mid-2019, when Japan imposed export restrictions on South Korea in apparent retaliation for Seoul's Supreme Court rulings ordering Japanese firms to compensate victims of forced labor during Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule.



Knapper said the United States understands the sensitivity and challenges posed by the history issues between its two Asian allies but stressed the need for the countries to continue working together in other fronts.



"I think our sort of consistent message to both Seoul and Tokyo will be expressing, you know, our understanding that this is a tough issue, but also, you know, our hope that while Japan and Korea address the past, they can work together on the present and the future," he said.



His remarks come after South Korean President Moon Jae-in proposed a "two-track" approach in his speech marking the 1919 Independence Movement on March 1, under which the countries will draw a clear division between history issues and other political and economic issues.



Knapper agreed the countries needed to focus on "big" pressing issues.



"We have a lot of work to do before us in that we want to ensure that whatever steps are taken to deal with the past and then deal with it in a way that promotes reconciliation. At the same time, we keep our eye on the big issues before all of us," he said.



"At any rate, I have personally seen the two countries do it before and I'm confident that with the right mixture of commitment to address problems in the past but also a pledge to deal with problems in the present and future, I think we can find a way forward." (Yonhap)


The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) will award contracts for the rehabilitation of Kaduna and Warri refineries at the end o...

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) will award contracts for the rehabilitation of Kaduna and Warri refineries at the end of June.

The Group Managing Director, NNPC, Malam Mele Kyari, made this known today in Abuja at the signing of the $1.5 billion contract for the rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt Refinery Company (PHRC).

He said the process of selection of contractors for Kaduna and Warri was ongoing.

Todays signing was with Maire Tecnimont SPA, an Italian Company.

He said the contractor was selected with high level of transparency.

Maire Tecnimont S.p.A. is an Italian group comprising 50 companies in the engineering, technology and energy sectors.

It deals in plant engineering in oil and gas, chemicals and petrochemicals, in green chemistry and in technology supporting energy transition.





My Colleagues and I are very proud of what is happening today, a tender process which cumulated in this event of today, the signing of contract for the rehabilitation of Port Harcourt Refinery.





This is a monumental history for us, Kyari said.

He said the corporation was aware of misgiving in the public on the cost of rehabilitation of the refinery but noted that the NNPC would maintain high level of transparency in the process of carrying out the work.





He said government had admitted the fact it made a lot of mistakes with the Turnaround Maintenance (TAM) of the refineries over the years.





He explained that NNPC selected the contractor through transparent Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) process and also by the recommendation of the original builders of the refinery.





We have decided to pick up our pieces and follow the EPC contract process. This is probably the most transparent EPC that anyone can put on the table.





This is because we even involved those that ought not to be in the process for transparency sake.





This moment, we are happy to deliver on this, happy that Mr President will be able to meet his promises to Nigerians, he said.





Commenting on the cost, Kyari said the 1.5 billion dollars earlier reported in the media was the actual cost of the work inclusive of Value Added tax (VAT).





For avoidance of doubts, the figure you see in the media included VAT, we have disclosed everything that it will cost in the rehabilitation of the refinery.





Actual cost exclusive of VAT is 1.299 billion dollars with provisional sum of 162 billion dollars.





That is the value of the contract. What you see in the Media is around 1.5 billion dollars because we are a very compliant company, we included everything that is needed that people should know. We are also proud of this, he said.

The GMD further noted that the rehabilitation would involve replacement, upgrade and change of obsolete parts of the refinery.





He said the books of NNPC would be open for any public audit during and after the work was completed.





He commended all stakeholders for the support and assured that the project would be delivered at the agreed cost and time.





He charged the contractor to be mindful of the fact that the project was a national project and should hand over any person that perpetuates any fraudulent act to the government.





The Managing Director of the PHRC, Ahmed Dikko, commended the NNPC for its effort in ensuring that the contract was signed.





He said the development was a dream come true, and the result of conscious efforts and dedication of the federal government and NNPC.





He said the scope of the business for the selected contractor was engineering, procurement, construction and installation of works of the rehabilitation of the Refinery.





The lump sum price of this contract is 1,397 billion dollars which included VAT. The provision sum approved is 162,239 million dollars.

The mode of payment for the contract will be through an escrow account which will be established within the next two months maximum.

The commencement period of this programme is today after the signing, he said.

He added that the maximum time of completion of the project would be 44 months, but the phase one would finish within 24 months while phase 2, 32 months and last phase 44 months.

The Managing Director of Maire Tecnimont SpA, Davide Pelizzola, said the contract would deepen the relationship between the company and Nigeria.

He assured that it would be committed to ensure that the rehabilitation project would be completed at the estimated time
 Leading global ESG ratings agency Sustainalytics notes Grunenthal is in the top five percent among its peers in the pharmaceutical subindustry

Aachen, Germany, 7 April 2021 / News Aktuell Grunenthal, a global science-based pharmaceutical company, today announced that Sustainalytics, a Morningstar company and a globally-recognized provider of ESG research, ratings and data, has assessed it as having overall medium ESG risk. In addition, Sustainalytics acknowledged that Grunenthal has a strong management of its ESG risks. This places Grunenthal in the top five percent of the global pharmaceuticals subsector.

The long-term success of companies can no longer be measured by financial success alone. As a science-based company, Grunenthal strives to make a net-positive impact on the society, said Gabriel Baertschi, CEO Grunenthal. While we are proud to see our efforts recognized in this ESG rating, we know that a big part of the journey is still ahead of us. Building on our foundation as a responsible business, we will now integrate sustainability even more closely in our core strategy.

Grunenthal was evaluated by Sustainalytics based on its ESG Risk Ratings framework, which focuses on exposure and management of a companys material ESG issues. Exposure reflects the degree to which a companys enterprise value is exposed to material ESG issues including ethical marketing, clinical trial transparency, whistleblowing, corruption and bribery. Management measures a companys preparedness and track record in managing its exposure to material ESG issues through its policies, programmes, trainings and management systems.

The companys ESG Risk Rating is available on Sustainalytics website. All data mentioned is as of 6 April 2021 and refer to the Grunenthal Pharma GmbH & Co. KG.

About Grunenthals ESG efforts

Grunenthal has been focusing its Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) efforts on four pillars: educate about pain treatment and responsible use of opioids; ensure access to medicines, innovate pain management, and raise awareness for pain as a disease:

Educate about pain treatment and responsible use of opioids Grunenthal has so far reached around 65,000 health care professionals in its efforts to educate the healthcare sector about pain management and improve the patient outcomes from pain treatment. As a leader in pain innovation and as an opioid manufacturer, Grunenthal is highly committed to ensuring that its employees, customers, patients and also its partners have a thorough understanding of the companys stance on the responsible medical use of opioids in pain. The company has fostered a mindset shift along the full value chain by ensuring that all opioid-related materials contain Grunenthals statement on responsible use of opioids  clearly highlighting the risks and benefits of this class of medicines. In addition, Grunenthal had established a dedicated standing governance body to provide and promote clear guidance, coherent behavior, continuous improvement, training and control mechanisms.

Ensure access to medicine Grunenthal is committed to ensuring the availability of key medicines to address unmet medical needs in the markets we serve. In the US, for instance, 5 million patients are in need of neuropathic pain treatment associated with diabetes. With the US FDA label extension of one of our non-opioid pain medicines for the treatment of neuropathic pain associated with diabetic peripheral neuropathy of the feet, Grunenthal has ensured patients get access to this much needed treatment. At the same time, the company is focused on addressing unmet therapeutic needs in underserved markets by offering specialized non-opioid pain medicines.

Innovate pain management Grunenthals research and development strategy focuses on tackling in pain and collaborating with partners to address the huge unmet needs in pain. Through biennial grants of 200,000 provided by Grunenthal and the EFIC, the company supports young scientists early in their career in carrying out innovative clinical pain research. Since foundation of the EFIC-Grunenthal Grant in 2004, approximately 1.6 million was awarded to fund 65 projects. In addition, to drive patient-centric innovation in chronic pain and neurological disorders and award patient-centric and scientifically robust innovation, the company supports the Brain, Mind, and Pain Patient-Centered Innovation Grant, which awards 90,000 biennially to research proposals to encourage patient-centered innovation that leads to improvements in the life conditions of pain patients.

Raise awareness for pain as a disease Chronic pain is an enormous global health problem affecting around 10% of the worlds population. Grunenthal raises awareness about the impact of pain by supporting a multi-stakeholder platform, called the Societal Impact of Pain platform, which fosters the development of pain policies on national level. With Grunenthals Pain Toolkit, the company has established a practical tool that provides patients with handy tips and skills in the form of explanations, infographics and videos, on how to self-manage pain. Moreover, Grunenthal has a long-standing passion for preserving the dignity and quality of life at the end stage of peoples lives. The Grunenthal Foundation for Palliative Care promotes science and research in palliative care and the care for seriously or terminally ill people in Europe as well as in Latin America.

Besides these four focus pillars, Grunenthal is covering the entire range of the Environmental, Social and Governance spectrum with various initiatives and measures:

Environmental Our efforts to promote sustainable development include defining concrete goals for the operations of our five production sites, across our supply chain and all of our affiliates across the globe by following leading international standards for environment, health and safety. We collect and analyze data from our production sites and use it to continuously improve efficiency, while also reducing energy consumption and minimizing waste based on strategic approach of zero waste to landfill programme.

Social Caring for its employees and for the communities where we operate is key to Grunenthals business conduct. Grunenthal offer its employees an exciting working environment and wide-ranging individual development opportunities. It is the companys goal to maintain high levels of engagement and to strengthen the company as a Great Place to Work. Grunenthal promotes a vibrant, high-performance culture and brings it to live through a shared set of values. These are supported by specific behaviours that guide the decision-making. Grunenthal ensures outstanding results are recognised and rewarded. For example, the company celebrates exceptional contributions each year with its Grunenthal Global Excellence Award.

Governance Sound governance is key to safeguard the companys license to operate and continue providing medicines to patients in need. Grunenthal has a comprehensive compliance and ethics management system which provides a clear framework for our decisions and actions. Grunenthals Code of Conduct for employees reiterates the companys strong commitment to the highest ethical standards while the Code of Conduct for Business Partners ensures business relationships based on a reciprocal commitment to responsible behavior. Grunenthal has an external Ethics Helpline for 24/7 anonymous reporting in place to ensure compliance with the Code of Conduct. Grunenthal is also committed to full disclosure of transfers of value to healthcare professionals, healthcare organizations and patient organizations. More information: www.grunenthal.com

Follow us on:

LinkedIn: Grunenthal Group

Instagram: grunenthal

For further information, please contact:

Florian Dieckmann, Head Global Communications, +49 241 569 2555, Florian.dieckmann@grunenthal.com
G20 finance ministers and central bankers began a videoconference Wednesday to coordinate post-pandemic recovery plans, increase help for the poorest Covid-hit countries and discuss a US-backed global minimum corporate tax.

The meeting hosted by current G20 chair Italy comes a day after the International Monetary Fund forecast faster than expected global economic growth this year, of 6.0 percent, after the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 caused the worst peacetime downturn since the Great Depression.

But developing countries are lagging behind, and US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned of the risk that the pandemic reverses years of progress in fighting poverty and closing the gap between poor and rich nations.

Top of the agenda of Wednesday's meeting of the Group of 20 most powerful nations is whether to extend a moratorium on debt interest payments for the poorest countries, which is currently set to expire on June 30.

World Bank President David Malpass said this week he expects the G20 to prolong the moratorium, which was introduced in April last year and extended in October, one last time until the end of 2021.

Its impact has been relatively limited, however, with just 46 out of 73 eligible countries having asked for and obtained a delay on payments totalling $5.7 billion, according to the latest official figures.

The G20 is also expected to support the IMF's plan to boost its reserve offerings, increasing its allocation of special drawing rights (SDR) by $650 billion, to help impoverished countries.

- Global corporate tax -

And the issue of a global minimum tax rate for corporations is also up for discussion after the new US administration under President Joe Biden threw its weight behind the idea.

The reform, supported by the IMF and by major economies including France and Germany, is aimed at ending tax competition between countries and the use of tax havens by companies.

Yellen said this week she would push for agreement among the G20. The group could unveil a proposal by July, with estimates of the tax rate currently ranging between 12.5 percent and 21 percent.

Story continues

The international reform would be comprised of two components: the minimum tax rate and the establishment of a system to modulate corporate taxes based on profits in each country, regardless of where they are headquartered -- which would likely impact tech giants the most.

At their last meeting in February, G20 finance ministers moved closer towards an agreement on a global digital tax targeting giants such as Amazon, Facebook and Google, after the US dropped a proposal viewed as a key obstacle.

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CHICAGO, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Hub International Limited (Hub), a leading full-service global insurance broker, announced today that it has acquired the assets of Wyoming Financial Insurance (WYFI), the largest independently owned insurance agency in Wyoming. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

With nearly a dozen offices throughout Wyoming, WYFI provides commercial insurance, personal lines and high net worth/mass affluent insurance solutions, employee benefits and surety bonds. WYFI specializes in various industries, including construction, healthcare, hospitality and transportation, which supports Hub's Specialty practices by complementing and strengthening its existing capabilities.

"We are bringing together two elite firms in the state of Wyoming to provide the highest level of expertise and local market support to all clients," said Rene LeVeaux, President of Hub Mountain. "We are committed to our continued growth in the region to benefit our combined clients."

Art Hansen, President of Wyoming Financial, Mike Kretzer, CFO, and Bob Moberly, CEO, will not be joining HUB to spend more time on other ventures. The rest of the Wyoming Financial team will join Hub Mountain.

"We recognized a strong strategic alignment with Hub regarding vision, entrepreneurial culture and expertise," said Mr. Hansen. "This partnership will help realize the value of the WYFI team's life work, continue our upward trajectory and leverage the experience, depth and breadth of resources from both firms to deliver exceptional service to clients in Wyoming."

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 13,000 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 .

CONTACTS:

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


Kathmandu, April 7

Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) CEO Dhananjay Regmi and Qatari Ambassador to Nepal Yousuf Bin Mohamed Alhail held a meeting on Monday at the board office and discussed prospects of collaboration between the two countries for tourism promotion.

A press statement released by the board says the two agreed to work together to forging bilateral cooperation in the sector.

The Qatari envoy, hailing Nepal as a unique gift of nature, opined that Nepal could attain economic development through tourism provided Nepal underscores the development of physical infrastructures, the statement informs.

The natural beauty of Nepal is so mesmerising. I am often spellbound by the beauty of Nepal, he has been quoted in the statement, Many foreign tourists have not been able to make Nepal their destinations in lack of proper facility of transportation and expensive airfare for the foreigners, he said, urging the authorities concerned to pay attention to this issue.

He reaffirmed the Qatari governments support in the promotion of Nepals tourism.

Similarly, CEO Regmi said that Nepal had forwarded a new plan for the promotion of tourism in Middle East countries including Qatar.

He reassured that Nepal was ready to host Qatari tourists by providing them facilities they look for such as Halal food and prayer room among others.
To ensure equity and impartiality, AISL invited distinguished and experienced leaders from the fields of science, education, social services, and international education to form the AISL Harrow Scholarships Review Panel. The review panel included: Professor Toby Salt, former Group Chief Executive and current Senior Advisory Director of the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA); Honorary Professor Paul Cheung from Department of Computer Science and Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Hong Kong; Professor Samantha Twiselton, Founding Director of the Sheffield Institute of Education at Sheffield Hallam University; Mr. Alastair Land, Head Master of Harrow School in the UK; and Mr. Daniel Chiu, Founder of Asia International School Limited.

The panel reviewed the applicants on the basis of academic performance, English fluency, and extracurricular talents, alongside their commitment to leadership and service activities. The selection process was rigorous, fair and balanced. From hundreds of applicants, 12 were selected for interview and, from these, 5 successful candidates chosen.

AISL is delighted to announce that the 2021 recipients of the AISL Harrow Scholarships are: Tiffany Lok Ching Cheung (China), Matthew Han Xian Chin (Singapore), Yi Sum Yue (Singapore), Finley Tobin Jones (UK), and Michael Zhang (USA). The AISL Harrow family extends a warm welcome to each of these scholarship awardees. They will join Harrow Beijing, Harrow Shanghai, and Harrow Hong Kong from September of this year.

In response to the awards, Dr. Rosanna Wong, Chair of Asia International Schools Limited, praised the five recipients of the AISL Harrow Scholarships as "truly outstanding". She noted that "they exemplify the very best of academic and extra-curricular excellence; we are proud to have them join the AISL Harrow family."

EDUCATIONAL EXCELLENCE FOR LIFE AND LEADERSHIP

The establishment of the AISL Harrow Scholarships programme is another milestone in AISL Harrow's long history of educational excellence. The programme seeks to enhance the diversity of the AISL Harrow community by attracting academically gifted students from around the world. The scholarships give students the chance to experience all that a Harrow education affords: Excellence in and out of the classroom, the development of leadership skills, and a commitment to service.

Through the AISL Harrow Scholarships Programme, AISL is proud to be giving back to the global community, extending the availability of an excellent AISL Harrow education to students from around the world, allowing them access to a prestigious British education and, subsequently, to top universities.

As exemplified by the AISL Harrow scholars, graduates leave as capable, confident and caring individuals, their well-rounded skills-base and holistic nature provide the foundation for them to become future leaders.

Alongside the AISL Harrow Scholarships, the individual Harrow-branded schools in Asia also provide scholarship opportunities for gifted students. To learn more, please subscribe to AISL Harrow's official Facebook Page (Harrow International AISL).

About Asia International School Limited (AISL) GROUP

Asia International School Limited is a leading provider of world-class K-12 education in Asia. Through our wholly-owned subsidiary, Harrow International Management Services Limited and its affiliates, we operate Harrow International Schools, Harrow Innovation Leadership Academies and Harrow Little Lions Early Years Centers. In the school year of 2020/2021, the AISL Group operates 24 school licenses and Early Years Centres across Asia, including Thailand, mainland China, and Hong Kong.

SOURCE Asia International School Limited
Lucknow, April 7 : He is a five-term legislator who wields undeniable political clout in his constituency, Mau. He has won five consecutive elections -- two of them as an independent -- and his absence from his constituency apparently makes him stronger because he has won the 2007, 2012 and 2017 polls from inside the jail.

Mukhtar Ansari, 57, is a typical example of criminals in Uttar Pradesh, who enjoy a Robinhood image and are almost revered by their people.

They snatch contracts worth crores of rupees -- invariably through means that are not exactly free and fair -- but they generously help the poor.

Mukhtar Ansari's journey into the underworld began in the 1980s when organized crime gained roots in Uttar Pradesh.

Ansari was originally a member of the Makhanu Singh gang.

In the 1980s, this gang clashed with another gang led by Sahib Singh, over a plot of land in Saidpur, resulting in a series of violent incidents.

Brijesh Singh, a member of Sahib Singh's gang, later formed his own gang and took over Ghazipur's contract work mafia in the 1990s.

Ansari's gang competed with him for the control of the Rs 100 crore contract business, which spanned in areas such as coal mining, railway construction, scrap disposal, public works, and liquor business.

The gangs were also involved in running protection and extortion rackets, besides other criminal activities such as kidnappings.

He entered politics around 1995 through the student union in the Banaras Hindu University, became an MLA in 1996 on a BSP ticket.

In 2002, Singh ambushed Ansari's convoy. Three of Ansari's men were killed in the resulting shootout. Brijesh Singh was critically injured and presumed dead. Ansari became the undisputed gang leader in Purvanchal.

However, Brijesh Singh was later found to be alive, and the feud resumed.

To counter Ansari's political influence, Singh supported the election campaign of the BJP leader Krishnanand Rai. Rai defeated Mukhtar Ansari's brother and five-time MLA Afzal Ansari from Mohammadabad in the 2002 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.

Ansari has shrewdly used the Muslim vote bank to ensure his victory during the elections in the Ghazipur-Mau area.

His opponents tried to consolidate the Hindu votes, which are divided on the caste lines.

The mix of crime, politics, and religion led to several instances of communal violence in the region. After one such riot, Mukhtar Ansari was arrested on the charge of inciting people towards violence in 2005.

He has been in jail since then -- almost 16 years now.

Incidentally, Mukhtar Ansari is the proverbial black sheep in a family of illustrious leaders.

His grandfather, Dr Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari, was the Congress party's president in 1927-28. He also holds a distinction of heading the Muslim League, too, where he fell out with Mohammad Ali Jinnah. He was also one of the founding members and former vice chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia.

The don's maternal grandfather, Brigadier Mohammad Usman Ansari, referred to as 'Lion of Nowshera', was a Mahavir Chakra awardee.

Mukhtar's son Abbas Ansari is a national-level Indian shooter who has won medals and accolades internationally.

"In most of the cases, Mukhtar has been booked for criminal conspiracy and the cases were set up against him for political reasons. We have faith in the judiciary and that does not waver. We do not wish to contest the media trial that is going on," said his elder brother Afzal Ansari, a BSP MP.

Talking about the Krishnanand Rai murder case, Afzal said that Mukhtar was already in jail when the murder took place. He has been charged for conspiracy in the case.
MASON CITY, Iowa  A former school bus driver accused of driving drunk with school kids on board is pleading not guilty.

Rebecca Anne Spencer, 44 of Forest City, is charged in Cerro Gordo County District Court with OWI-2nd offense and three counts of child endangerment.

Authorities say Spencer was driving a van for the Forest City Community School District on March 12 when she was stopped for speeding in Cerro Gordo County. The arresting officer says he smelled alcohol as he spoke to Spencer, she failed field sobriety tests, and a breath test showed her blood alcohol content at .244 percent, over three times the legal limit.

Court documents state there were three young school children in the van Spencer was driving and she has a previous drunk driving conviction in 2016.

A trial is now scheduled to begin on June 22. Spencer resigned her position at a special meeting of the Forest City School Board on March 16.
The realities of COVID-19, and the subsequent shift to work at home, has emphasized the value of technology that can provide greater insight and control. As a result, video analytics, access control and identity management were all identified as strategic technologies for 2021.

"Last year we saw a seismic shift in the way companies approach security. The access control boom within facilities, showed that the physical security industry is capable of streamlining innovative solutionsparticularly when there's a demand for enhanced safety. As we enter a new chapter, the industry must continue to adapt to changing requirements and invest in the latest enabling solutions to help make our workplaces safer, healthier and more secure." said Cyrille Becker, Managing Director of Europe at Genetec.

Cybersecurity is a strategic priority for 2021 and beyond

Cybercrime is primed to reach record heights in 2021, with the rise of work-from-home and the growing adoption of IoT. Against this backdrop, 67% of respondents are planning to prioritise the improvement of their cybersecurity strategy in 2021.

"The rise of cybercrime has highlighted cyber and physical security measures can no longer be treated as separate conversations. Physical security professionals must partner with their counterparts in IT to understand the true limits of the security perimeter and mitigate against risk. This requires solidifying a resilient cyber-physical security framework, to ensure trusted devices are integrated in the network and subsequently configured, updated and managed throughout their operational life." said Christian Morin, Vice President of Cloud Services and CSO at Genetec, Inc.

Accelerating adoption of cloud and hybrid cloud

Physical security departments have traditionally been slower to adopt the cloud, however, the survey results indicate the situation is rapidly changing. With almost two thirds of respondents reporting the pandemic has somewhat (51%) or greatly (12.5%) accelerated their cloud strategy in relation to physical security.

"The unprecedented shift to remote work and resulting need for supporting technology, has highlighted the importance of cloud computing and, if business leaders had not been convinced of its benefits before, they are likely to be now." added Morin.

Survey methodology

In January 2021 Genetec EMEA surveyed physical security professionals based in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Following a review of submissions and data cleansing, 1,550 respondents were included in the sample for analysis.

For further insights and key takeaways on optimising security operations please download the full report 'Physical Security in EMEA 2021'

About Genetec

Genetec Inc. is an innovative technology company with a broad solutions portfolio that encompasses security, intelligence, and operations. The company's flagship product, Security Center, is an open-architecture platform that unifies IP-based video surveillance, access control, automatic license plate recognition (ANPR), communications, and analytics. Genetec also develops cloud-based solutions and services designed to improve security, and contribute new levels of operational intelligence for governments, enterprises, transport, and the communities in which we live. Founded in 1997, and headquartered in Montreal, Canada, Genetec serves its global customers via an extensive network of resellers, integrators, certified channel partners, and consultants in over 80 countries.

For more information about Genetec, visit: www.genetec.com

 Genetec Inc., 2020. Genetec, and the Genetec logo are trademarks of Genetec Inc. and may be registered or pending registration in several jurisdictions. Other trademarks used in this document may be trademarks of the manufacturers or vendors of the respective product.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1479976/Genetec_infographic.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1479977/Genetec_Inc_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Genetec Inc. (Genetec)
Ten years on, amid a worldwide pandemic, Syrias brutal civil war has faded into the background of global consciousness. But its grim realities carry on  one of them being what foreign governments should do about their citizens that are now languishing in Syrian detention camps after having gone to join the Islamic State (ISIS).

Opinion

Ten years on, amid a worldwide pandemic, Syrias brutal civil war has faded into the background of global consciousness. But its grim realities carry on  one of them being what foreign governments should do about their citizens that are now languishing in Syrian detention camps after having gone to join the Islamic State (ISIS).

Behind the terror groups medieval bloodlust always laid a sophisticated state-building enterprise. Combining a deft digital-media operation with the administrative capacity to wage war, trade oil and collect taxes while at the same time providing jobs, health care, utilities, municipal services and basic education, ISIS promoted its so-called caliphate as a modern paradise of fundamentalist Sunni Islam.

The opportunity to live under strict Sharia law  and be martyred for dying to defend it  drew over 20,000 foreign fighters from more than 90 countries around the world, including dozens from Canada. But since ISIS was driven from its last Middle East stronghold in early 2019, loyalists in the region have been rounded up and held in more than 20 violent and overcrowded desert detention camps in northeastern Syria, run by a U.S.-backed alliance of Kurdish-led militia groups.

The camps contain a complicated and volatile mixture of displaced Syrians, Iraqi refugees and ISIS fighters and their family members, including thousands of foreigners. Among them are at least eight Canadian men and 35 women and children. The largest of these sites, al-Hol camp, contains 60,000 people. Close to 50 residents have been murdered there in the last few months, while hundreds of children have died, and continue to die due to malnutrition, dehydration or preventable illnesses.

Kurdish authorities have warned that they dont have the resources to manage the detention centres indefinitely. The number of guards at al-Hol camp alone has dropped from 1,500 to 400, and mass prisoner releases to ease overcrowding have begun. Last October, 631 former ISIS fighters were given amnesty and released, and another 253 had their sentences halved.

The Liberal government has provided travel documents to help two orphaned Canadian children return to Canada after they were released due to persistent efforts by their extended families; the most recent release occurred in March. Otherwise, various ministers have routinely invoked Canadas shuttered embassy in Damascus and Syrias continued instability as diplomatic barriers, both to facilitating the release of Canadian citizens held in the camps and gathering enough evidence to successfully prosecute them for any alleged crimes they may have committed.

Yet Canada is not facing exceptional circumstances. Human Rights Watch released a report last year saying the Canadian government is flouting international law by allowing its citizens to be left in camps without being charged for any offenses. This despite 20 other countries  including the U.S. and many European nations  all having found ways to repatriate hundreds of their own citizens from the same camps. U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres recently said it is "absolutely essential" Canada bring home women and children uninvolved in crimes. A senior Kurdish minister told CBC Canada is ignoring its responsibility for its people.

The Trudeau government is no doubt aware of all this, yet is also surely weighing the potential for political backlash, especially with a possible election looming. Expert opinion on Canadas legal obligations to Canadian citizens being held in Syria is mixed; public opinion is not. One survey commissioned by CTV found nearly 60 per cent of respondents supported repatriating orphaned children back to Canada, but over 70 per cent approved stripping the citizenship of adults that travelled to join ISIS.

However, the longer individuals are kept detained in squalid conditions, the greater the chance they themselves will be radicalized. Indeed, this is one factor that enabled the rise of ISIS in the first place  Syrian jihadists, alienated Iraqi civilians and officers from Saddam Husseins purged Baathist regime were left alone to network and conspire together in American-run detention centres for years during the U.S. occupation of Iraq in the late 2000s.

Rights groups argue the victims of ISIS deserve to be provided closure through enforcing justice on foreign fighters complicit in past atrocities. Rehabilitation and reintegration should also be attempted, if possible. Another option is to help assist setting special courts on Syrian soil to have foreign fighters alleged to have committed crimes as part of ISIS be tried where the offenses were committed.

Either way, when it comes to what to do with Canadians who travelled abroad to fight for ISIS, the status quo is becoming increasingly untenable. And the clock is ticking.

Kyle Hiebert is a researcher and analyst based in Winnipeg, and the former deputy editor of the Africa Conflict Monitor.
San Francisco, April 7 : Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has endorsed US President Joe Biden's infrastructure plan and even a hike in corporate tax rate.

Biden last week unveiled an ambitious $2 trillion plan to overhaul the nation's infrastructure and create jobs.

It is to be financed through an increase in corporate taxes from 21 per cent to 28 per cent and hiking taxes on those making more than $400,000 a year.

"We support the Biden Administration's focus on making bold investments in American infrastructure. Both Democrats and Republicans have supported infrastructure in the past, and it's the right time to work together to make this happen," Bezos said in a statement on Tuesday.

"We recognise this investment will require concessions from all sides -- both on the specifics of what's included as well as how it gets paid for (we're supportive of a rise in the corporate tax rate)," he said.

His statement gains significance in view of the fact that Biden, while unveiling his infrastructure plan, singled out Amazon for not paying federal taxes.

Citing a 2019 analysis, the US President said Amazon was one of the 91 Fortune 500 companies that did not pay federal income tax in 2018.

"We look forward to Congress and the Administration coming together to find the right, balanced solution that maintains or enhances U.S. competitiveness," Bezos said in the statement, posted on the company's website.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 22:25:17|Editor: huaxia

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VALLETTA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Malta will kickstart a gradual relaxation of measures introduced to control the spread of the pandemic with schools to reopen on Monday followed by non-essential shops and service providers on April 26, Prime Minister Robert Abela said on Wednesday.

Addressing a press conference, Abela said that education and the elderly, most of whom have already been vaccinated against COVID-19, will be the priority of the country's reopening plan.

Malta has been in a quasi-lockdown since the beginning of March amid rising infection rates, when the government shut all non-essential businesses, education institutions switched to online learning, and gatherings of more than two people are prohibited. The measures were set to expire on Sunday.

The relaxation of measures was announced at the same time when the health authorities announced 65 new cases of COVID-19 and another death, with the death toll now reaching 400.

The total number of active cases currently stands at 545, while a total of 29,408 cases have been registered since the start of the pandemic in March last year.

Abela said that as from Monday, schools and educational institutions will begin to reopen gradually, starting with childcare centers, kindergartens, and primary schools, while middle schools will reopen on Wednesday and secondary schools on Friday. Post-secondary educational institutions will continue teaching through online learning.

He said another measure introduced in March affecting elective surgeries will be lifted and these procedures will restart at Malta's state hospital. The government was also lifting a ban on visits in home for the elderly where 90 percent of the residents have received both doses of the vaccine.

Non-essential shops and service providers will reopen on April 26 on the same day that the two-person capping on groups in public will double to four.

Religious ceremonies in churches will resume as from April 18, but weddings and mass gatherings were still banned.

Health Minister Chris Fearne told the same press conference that 42 percent of the adult population in Malta has received at least one dose of the vaccine.

Regarding concerns on the AstraZeneca vaccine, Fearne said that "there is no doubt that the vaccine works" but the government will be following the advice by the European Medicines Agency. He also said that there were no cases of thrombosis from it in Malta. Enditem
Julie Ament Gran has been promoted to chief growth officer at GrandPad. It is a true privilege to lead such a talented team and to collaborate with partners who are committed to improving the quality of life for older adults who might otherwise be left behind by technology.

GrandPad, creator of the first purpose-built tablet for seniors over the age of 75, announced today that Julie Ament Gran has been promoted to the position of chief growth officer. Headquartered in Minneapolis with offices in southwest Minnesota, California, Iowa, South Carolina, and Ireland, GrandPad delivers its custom-built tablet to individuals and families and to commercial users, including clinical care organizations, home health and companion care companies, and area agencies on aging. In her new position at GrandPad, Ament Gran will lead the expansion of GrandPad to these commercial partners.

GrandPad is custom built to meet the needs and interests of seniors who have had limited experience with technology, who have no or limited access to the internet, and who may have physical or cognitive limitations that make traditional mobile devices difficult to use.

Innovative healthcare organizations realize the important role technology plays in keeping seniors connected with loved ones and their communities, while maintaining continuity of care and services, said Scott Lien, co-founder and CEO of GrandPad. Over the past year, Julie has been instrumental in helping our commercial partners successfully integrate GrandPad into their telehealth strategies and Im confident she will continue to guide our growth in this area as we collectively navigate through the pandemic and the dissemination of the COVID-19 vaccine.

GrandPad became a lifeline for families and caregivers around the world during COVID-19 safety restrictions and physical distancing, while also meeting an immediate need among senior care and healthcare companies in search of solutions that would allow them to continue to deliver clinical care and supportive services to seniors and at-risk populations across the country. Currently, more than 1.2 million people in over 120 countries use GrandPad to stay connected with loved ones.

Our mission at GrandPad is to improve the lives of millions of seniors by reconnecting them with family, friends, and caregivers. It is a true privilege to lead such a talented team and to collaborate with partners who are committed to improving the quality of life for older adults who might otherwise be left behind by technology, said Ament Gran.

As the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States in early 2020, Ament Gran was instrumental in working with healthcare organizations like the National PACE Association to successfully implement telehealth strategies for at-risk seniors. PACE organizations provide primary, acute, and long-term care services to 54,000 individuals at 263 locations in 31 states. PACE participants are at least 55 years old and have been certified to need nursing home care. Most are at elevated risk of complications from COVID-19 due to age or underlying medical conditions, and many may be isolated from friends and family as a result of the pandemic, putting them at risk for additional health problems. GrandPad was named the preferred telehealth provider for the National PACE Association last year, thanks in part to Ament Grans leadership.

"During the early stages of the pandemic, as PACE organizations quickly took steps to prevent exposure to COVID-19 among their participants by reorganizing the provision of comprehensive services entirely in their homes, it became clear that we needed to find and put in place technology that supported both the social engagement needs of participants and the care management efforts by PACE staff, said Shawn Bloom, president and CEO, National PACE Association. After an exhaustive search for and assessment of telehealth products suitable for frail older adults, the PACE community of providers enthusiastically adopted GrandPad. The product has exceeded the expectation of both those we serve and the PACE staff who have worked tirelessly to meet their needs this past year."

Prior to her recent promotion, Ament Gran was the vice president of member experience and partner relations at GrandPad. Before joining the company in 2019, Ament Gran was vice president of field operations for Lifetouch National School Studios a Shutterfly Company, and vice president of special services for Macys North. Ament Gran earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Ive been fortunate to have had a number of meaningful relationships with older adults in my life and I will always appreciate the diverse knowledge and wisdom they were able to share with me, said Ament Gran. The ability to support that kind of relationship for others and to be part of a team that celebrates and honors the contributions of older adults is a blessing and a responsibility that I look forward to fulfilling every day.

###

About GrandPad

Based in Minneapolis, GrandPad is a digital health company that develops engagement solutions to improve the health and well-being of older adults by reconnecting them to families, friends, and caregivers through technology that is safe, reliable, and easy to use. The GrandPad purpose-built tablet for people over the age of 75 -- the first mobile device of its kind -- addresses usability, security, and connectivity issues that are often roadblocks for integrating remote monitoring and telehealth into professional and familial caregiving settings. The company's secure cloud platform with built-in LTE and web applications allows care teams and family members to engage remotely with older adults without depending on WiFi connectivity. GrandPad enables a variety of interactions, including video calls, sharing essential care-related emails and messages, and conducting multi-party video care conferences between family members and a patients continuum of caregivers. For professional caregivers, GrandPad offers connected device capabilities that support enhanced telehealth and remote monitoring services provided by a growing number of in-home healthcare organizations. To learn more, visit GrandPad.net or connect with us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.


As fans of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City wait to see how recent charges against Jen Shah unfold, others are giving their take. Shah says she is innocent of all charges against her  and Bravo honcho Andy Cohen hopes Shah is telling the truth.

(l-r) Andy Cohen, Jen Shah, Michelle Buteau | Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank

A recap of Jen Shahs arrest

Per CNN, Shah and her assistant Stuart Smith are accused of being part of a telemarketing scheme that stole thousands from hundreds of victims over the age of 55.

Both appeared before a court in Salt Lake City on one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud  as well as one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Prosecutors did not ask for the two to remain in custody.

Source: YouTube

Related: Real Housewives of Salt Lake City: What Is Jen Shahs Net Worth?

A judge ordered Shah and Smith to be released without bond. The terms of the release include prohibiting the pair from engaging in telemarketing while their case is still pending. Neither are allowed to move more than $10,000 out of their personal bank accounts without permission from prosecutors. They must also remain in Utah.

Filming for season 2 of RHOSLC is underway, capturing the arrest ordeal and Shahs co-stars reactions. Shah says shes innocent of all charges in a statement her attorney provided to Page Six.

Jennifer Shah is a wife, mother, and lifelong resident of the Salt Lake City area, the statement reads. She maintains her innocence of these charges and is eager to defend herself in a court of law. She puts her faith in the American legal system. Because of the ongoing legal proceedings, we ask that you respect her privacy, and understand she will not provide any further comments.

Bravo stars speak out about Jen Shahs arrest

While fans wait for the next season of the show, other Bravo stars are speaking out. During a recent episode of Bravos Chat Room, RHOA star Porsha Williams spoke of the potential shame Shah may feel.

This is a pretty big deal and to have something like this happen during [the] season, everybodys gonna have an opinion, everybodys gonna have all eyes on it, Williams said. This is gonna be escalated to the next level.

Source: YouTube

Related: Real Housewives of Salt Lake City: Everything We Know About Jen Shah  aka the Queen Bee and MVP of SLC

Gizelle Bryant of RHOP shares similar sentiments, saying, Can you imagine youre filming and you look at your phone youre read, B*** youre about to be arrested? I mean, thats like horrible on so many levels, Bryant said. She also took jabs at Shah causing social media frenzy with her hairstyle, saying I did appreciate her box braids. She took us back to Janet Jacksons Poetic Justice, honey.

Andy Cohen is hopeful for a good outcome for Jen Shah

Cohen was recently asked during his radio show about Shahs arrest. While he tried to stay mum on the subject, he did offer up some encouragement.

I havent had a microphone in front of me in two weeks [to talk about it], Cohen said, explaining hes been absent from his radio show. Im waiting to see how it plays out. I have nothing to add to what we already know other than I certainly hope and pray that none of it is true.

Cohens guest wasnt so hopeful, noting he believes the chargers against Shah are obviously true.
When I began last summer as president of Sul Ross State University  which is both my alma mater and my hometown college in Alpine  I knew there would be challenges: teaching during COVID, finding ways to increase enrollment and providing more financial aid, to start.

I immediately introduced new ideas to overcome them. My experience is as a lawyer and legislator, and I served for years on the conference committee that balanced multiple Texas state budgets. So, naturally, I started looking at finances.

Most of our funds come from taxpayers, and students and their families. We have a duty to use their hard-earned money  and any contributions from supporters  carefully and strategically. Its a duty I take seriously.

Thats why I am taking a close look at fundraising and how to increase investment income.

For years, Sul Ross has failed to maximize opportunities to raise money and earn interest. The university has not had a good email list of supporters or strategy to reach out to alumni who could directly help our students.

Just as concerning are the operations of the Sul Ross University Foundation, a nonprofit established in 2003 to raise money and support the university. Unfortunately, the foundation was doing neither and was not operating in Sul Ross best interests.

For example, in January 2020, the McCoy family  of McCoys Building Supply  generously donated $5 million for Sul Ross Museum of the Big Bend. The foundation chose to put that money in certificates of deposit that earned 0.06 percent per year.

In contrast, money managed directly by the university is placed in the Texas State University Systems Unitized Endowment Fund (we are a proud member of that system). From last June through this February, that fund earned a 12.49 percent rate of return  208 times what the foundation was earning.

Had the McCoy family gift been invested there, it could have grown by $500,000. Instead, it earned close to zero interest.

As of June, more than half the foundations assets were invested in accounts earning that same low rate. Poor judgment leads to poor performance. Because of that poor performance, I have ended the universitys affiliation with the foundation and requested the university directly manage the funds from the McCoy gift, which still will be used for their dedicated purpose. We will also establish a new foundation with clearer bylaws and expectations, and broader representation.

Some critics have said my decision was about politics, personalities or part of an alleged feud. Thats just silly. For Sul Ross to improve, we must improve our performance and set higher standards. Its ironic that some who say they want increased accountability are now complaining about my decision.

I am trying to bring that same accountability to everything on our four campuses.

That includes decisions that may seem small: I eliminated a policy of throwing out clothing that was left in the washers and dryers in our residence halls overnight. I did this after hearing from a single mother who had to spend money she really could not spare on new clothes for her son simply because he was late in taking his old clothes from the dryer.

It also includes larger decisions to help students graduate on time and with less debt: We have created summer housing stipends, introduced new scholarships, hired academic advisers and invested in technology to continue remote learning even after COVID-19 has passed.

Texas State University System Chancellor Brian McCall and I are also working directly with legislative leaders and former colleagues in the Legislature to secure funding for our Alpine campus and the campuses in Del Rio, Eagle Pass and Uvalde, which are known as the Rio Grande College. Our goal is to build a new facility for the Rio Grande College to better support transfer students from Southwest Texas Junior College.

Indeed, the system has a strong record of improving its institutions. Every other school in the system has increased enrollment since 2010  as much as 26 percent and we aim to do the same.

This all begins by asking hard financial questions.

I am not surprised by the pushback Ive gotten. Thats what happens when you make forward progress  I learned long ago that no one tries to tackle you unless they think you are carrying the ball.

Pete Gallego is president of Sul Ross State University. He is an Alpine native, a Sul Ross alumnus, and a former member of the Texas House of Representatives and the U.S. Congress.
An election candidates advertising poster for the election in Greenland (Emil Helms/AP)

Greenlands main opposition party, which is against an international mining project involving uranium and other metals on the Arctic island, has emerged as the biggest party after winning more than a third of votes in an early parliamentary election, according to initial results.

With nearly all votes counted Wednesday, the left-leaning Community of the People party (Inuit Ataqatigiit) had secured 37% of the votes, entitling it to 12 seats in the Greenlandic national assembly, the 31-seat Inatsisartut.

Its biggest rival, the ruling centre-left Forward (Siumut) party took the the second spot with 29% of the votes, giving it 10 seats in the legislature.

In a victory speech, Community of the People chairman Mute B. Egede pointed to themes which made his party stand out among voters.

We say no to uranium mining Mute B. Egede, election victor

There are two issues that have been important in this election campaign: peoples living conditions are one. And then there is our health and the environment, said Mr Egede, a 34-year-old native of Nuuk, Greenlands capital, according to Greenlandic national broadcaster KNR.

The result means a power shift and an end to Forwards long reign at the top of politics in Greenland, a self-governing Danish territory.

Forward chairman Erik Jensen conceded the partys defeat and congratulated Mr Egede and his party on winning the election.

We congratulate the Inuit Ataqatigiit (Community of the Peoples party) on the election.

Now we are excited about what the (coalition) negotiations will bring in the coming days, Mr Jensen said in a statement as quoted by the Danish broadcaster TV2.

At the heart of the election was a proposed international mining project by Greenland Minerals, an Australia-based company with Chinese ownership, which is seeking a licence to operate the Kvanefjeld mine in southern Greenland.

Estimates show the Kvanefjeld mine could hold the largest deposit of rare-earth metals outside China, which currently accounts for more than 90% of global production, and that has led to international interest in Greenlands natural resources.

Expand Close A wall of election posters (Emil Helms/AP) / Facebook

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While the Forward party has taken a cautiously positive stance on the mining project, Community of the Peoples Mr Egede reiterated that his party continues to be opposed to it and urged the projects to be stopped mainly environmental reasons.

We must listen to the voters who are worried. We say no to uranium mining, Mr Egede said in a statement to KNR.

Election voter turnout was not immediately disclosed.

Greenland, the worlds largest island that is not a continent, has its own government and Parliament, and relies on Denmark for defence, foreign and monetary policies.

The island has 56,000 inhabitants, most of them Indigenous Inuit people.
Hunter Biden, US President Joe Biden's son, released his latest memoir, "Beautiful Things," on Tuesday. He details his long struggle with alcohol and drugs, the grief of losing his mother and baby sister as a child, and later his elder brother Beau, as well as the assaults he received from Trump's supporters.

Hunter Biden's memoir recalls his struggles and regaining life

Biden told the BBC about his battle with alcoholism and cracked cocaine in a recent interview to promote the book: "There's something lacking in the center of each addict that they find they need to fill. None would ever be able to fill it. As a result, you feel numb."

In a profoundly personal memoir, Hunter Biden gives an unfailing look at his experiences with alcohol and efforts to regain his life, which is now available in bookstores and online. On the other hand, Hunter stays away from the political controversies that have made him a magnet for his father's enemies.

The 51-year-old's memoir recounts his experience with drug abuse, from his first drink, a bottle of champagne when he was 8, to a three-year crack cocaine relapse that ended in 2019. Biden writes that he had battled alcohol since his early twenties when he started to drink heavily after work and that the loss of his brother, Beau, was the reason for a downhill trajectory in which he went on benders in hotel rooms. At the same time, his father was vice president and taking in his otherwise homeless drug dealer in 2019.

13 States Sue Biden Administration Over Tax Provision in COVID-19 Relief Package

Hunter Biden discussed having an affair with his brother's widow

According to Forbes, Hunter Biden also discusses his then-publicized affair with Beau's widow, Hallie Biden, in 2017. He explained that it happened as the product of a common sense of guilt for Beau's death from brain cancer, and which he described as contrasting with his years of crack addiction. The President's son detailed several visits to rehab and family efforts to support him. Eventually, he attributed his sobriety to Melissa Cohen, whom he married a week after they met.

The memoir focuses no time on Hunter's job on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings, which former President Trump attempted to use against him during the presidential campaign. It contributed to Trump's first impeachment, saying his only mistake of taking the position, for which he's been accused of profiting from his father's time in office, is that he didn't think twice about it.

Joe Biden's Dog Bites Another White House Personnel, Results to Medical Attention

Hunter Biden did not mention tax affairs in his memoir

Biden makes no mention of the current Department of Justice investigation into his tax dealings or the notorious laptop. The device reportedly became a center of controversy in the weeks leading up to the election. Republicans forced news from The New York Post that the device, allegedly left at a Delaware repair shop by Hunter Biden, had threatening emails from a Ukrainian businessman. It reportedly revealed evidence that President Joe Biden had profited from Hunter's business dealings.

Hunter Biden was asked about these controversies during his press tour for Beautiful Things, considering the memoir's lack of information. Hunter told CBS News that the laptop "might" be his, but he truly doesn't know. "It's likely that a laptop belonging to me has been robbed. It's likely I was hacked," Biden speculated. The President's son has said that he is "completely confident" that he would be found not guilty in the Justice Department's investigation into whether Biden and his partners violated tax and money laundering laws in their business relations with China.

President Joe Biden's Approval Rating Starts To Decrease Amid Immigration Surge at the US Border

@ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
There has been an uptick in COVID-19 cases in Cayuga County.

The county health department reported Wednesday that there were 47 new cases admitted over two days. It's the highest number of cases in a two-period since late February.

There are 92 active cases in mandatory isolation, the most since Feb. 28 when there were 131 people in isolation. Three COVID-related patients are receiving treatment at Auburn Community Hospital. Until Sunday, there hadn't been a COVID hospitalization in Cayuga County since March 21.

"As the number of positive COVID-19 cases in the community begins to rise, we would like to remind the community that if you are sick, and regardless of your vaccination status, it is important to remain at home," the department wrote in its situational update on Wednesday.

"Sometimes COVID-19 symptoms can mimic seasonal allergies, which puts others at risk of getting sick. In addition, it is essential to continue practicing social distancing measures, such as wearing a mask and maintaining a six-foot distance when in the company of others."
 Flash

A Chinese envoy on Tuesday urged the United States to lift all illegal sanctions against Iran and its "long-arm jurisdiction" against third-party entities and individuals, including those from China, as the Iran nuclear deal talks resumed in Vienna.

Senior diplomats from China, France, Germany, Russia, Britain and Iran met behind closed doors in the Grand Hotel Wien. On top of the agenda are lifting sanctions on Iran and nuclear implementation measures.

The meeting of the Joint Commission of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known as the Iran nuclear deal, has drawn public attention as representatives from the United States are in Vienna to save the deal.

The U.S. should lift all illegal sanctions against Tehran, and the Iranian side should resume full compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal on that basis, said Wang Qun, Chinese envoy to the United Nations and other international organizations in Vienna, after the meeting.

Wang said that the U.S. withdrawal from the deal and its maximum pressure against Iran is the root cause of the current situation. Therefore, the early return of the U.S. to the accord is the key to cracking the problem.

"The justified request of the injured party, rather than the offending party, should be confirmed and satisfied first. This is a basic right-or-wrong question. The U.S. should lift all sanctions against Tehran and on this basis, Iran can resume full compliance to the nuclear deal," Wang said in a statement.

He stressed that China firmly opposes any illegal unilateral sanctions imposed by the U.S. and will safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.

Wang added that China supports the Joint Commission's efforts in setting up two expert-level groups, one on sanctions-lifting and nuclear issues, and the other on "close contact" with the U.S. He said China hopes the two groups can make progress as soon as possible.

China continues to unswervingly uphold the JCPOA, and hopes that all parties can enhance their sense of urgency, seize the current opportunities, and push the JCPOA back on track through fair and reasonable negotiations, Wang noted.

He pledged that China will work with all parties to continue advancing the political settlement of the Iran nuclear issue, and strive to restore the full implementation of the 2015 accord as early as possible.

The JCPOA talks were chaired by Enrique Mora, deputy Secretary-General and Political Director of the European External Action Service (EEAS), on behalf of High Representative of the European Union (EU) for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell. Media reports said the U.S. delegation led by Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley was based in a nearby hotel.

Mora said on Twitter following the meeting that they had a "constructive Joint Commission meeting."

"There's unity and ambition for a joint diplomatic process with two expert groups on nuclear implementation and sanctions lifting. As Coordinator I will intensify separate contacts here in Vienna with all relevant parties, including the U.S.," he added.

According to the official Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Abbas Araqchi told the commission meeting that lifting U.S. sanctions is the first and most necessary step to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.

The U.S. and Iranian negotiators were not supposed to meet face-to-face but a shuttle diplomacy approach was adopted with the intensified help of the coordinators.

Prior to Tuesday's meeting, Araqchi said he would "not hold any direct or indirect talks" with U.S. representatives but would only negotiate with the Joint Commission of JCPOA.

If the P4+1 countries, including China, Britain, France and Russia, plus Germany, succeed in convincing Washington to lift all the sanctions "by any means they know," Iran will comply, said Araqchi, who is also Iran's deputy foreign minister.

Washington said on Monday that its goal of the talks was to set the stage for a mutual return to compliance with the 2015 accord but did not anticipate an immediate breakthrough.

Walter Posch, an Austrian expert on Iran, told Austria Press Agency that the fact that talks were held in Vienna to revive the crippling nuclear agreement, albeit indirectly, was already a success.

The JCPOA was reached in 2015 between Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council -- the United States, Britain, Russia, France, China, plus Germany) and the EU. Tehran agreed to roll back parts of its nuclear weapons program in exchange for decreased economic sanctions.

Washington under former President Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018 and tightened sanctions on Iran.

The United States and Iran are in a standoff over reviving the nuclear deal. The Joe Biden administration said that if Iran returns to full compliance with the JCPOA, the United States would do the same. But Iran insisted its compliance would only take place once U.S. sanctions were removed.
One poll conducted shows that most Americans weren't happy about Biden's handling of the border crisis. Since day one of the crisis, his administration cannot admit it had bad policies that worsened things.

For many in the U.S. has a record number of illegals coming, which meant poor border security. More worrisome are the massive numbers of minors entering due to Biden's open border policy causing trouble for the U.S. Border Patrol.

Handling of the border crisis is the worst

The new survey determines how American's grade President Biden based on how good or bad he has handled the U.S. border situation. Conducted by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, the poll reveals several telling facts about the border situation.

The results show that 61% think President Biden was doing good enough, though 51% said the border handling was left to be decided, while 56% called his immigration policy very wrong, as reported by the Epoch Times.

Several figures were cited by the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) that indicate an increase in illegal crossings that hit 100,000 in February alone. According to the former acting Secretary of Department of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, the number of illegals coming over is the most in 20-years. He warned President Biden not to repeal Trump-era policies; many blame him for the handling of the border crisis.

Republicans Ask DHS Mayorkas for Documents About Border

Former Customs and Border Patrol Commissioner Mark Morgan reported that the border patrol caught 150,000 illegal aliens. There were 30,000 that slipped past border security into the U.S.; their whereabouts are unknown. Many are potential criminals and sex offenders from South American countries. Authorities in the U.S. would have to deal with these potential trouble makers.

Commissioner Mark Morgan has been getting the number of immigrants from sources within the CBP. As far as the numbers go, the public is fully provided with information as the border patrol cannot publish the current immigrant statistics without the White House's approval.

President Biden tried to restrict information with a media blackout, but it backfired on him, and he got backlashed for keeping the media out. Data from a survey showed worse numbers for Biden's performance. Only a measly 24% had approved, while a whopping 40% had called him incapable, with a neutral 35% that said neither good nor bad performance.

More bad rating that Biden got

Aside from the border policy tanking his approval rating, polls that show general dissatisfaction over his leadership showed a terrible trend. The subject of gun policy and the federal budget deficit had registered 50 to 52% holding steadily. Many disagree a lot on how Biden and the democrats demonized gun owners; in general, that was a serious issue.

All the ratings differed based on whether it was Republican or Democrat, how the results turned up. When asked if Biden was doing good, 96% of Democrats approved, 56% are independents, with 22% Republicans as their conclusions.

For handling of the border crisis, a staggering 74% of Democrats approved of his policies, with 14% Republicans and 34% from independents approved. Subjects of the poll were 1,166 adults, done on March 26 and 29, with a 3.6 % point for the sampling error for the polls taken.

US Border Officials Say Among All the Migrants, 861+ are Criminals

Joe Biden's Policies to Blame for Sending Children to U.S. Border

Biden Administration to Use Taxpayers' Money to Pay for Migrants' Hotel Accommodations

@ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Syracuse, N.Y. -- The Syracuse Auto Expo has given up on efforts to hold the show in 2021 and will instead hold its next show in 2022.

It will be only the second time in the last 114 years that the show has been canceled.

In December, the Syracuse Automobile Dealers Association announced it was postponing the 2021 show from February of 2021 and moving it to September because of the coronavirus pandemic.

But on Tuesday, the association said it has decided not to hold any show this year and instead hold the next show during its normally scheduled dates of Feb. 10-13 in 2022. A sister event, the 23rd Annual Charity Preview, will be held Feb. 9, 2022. Both events will be held as usual at the Oncenter.

SADA officials said they were worried that holding the 2021 show in September would take away from the 2022 show to be held just five months later. In addition, they said there were concerns about the impact of the need for social distancing on the Charity Preview, which raises money for Central New York charities.

Were hoping to return to the days when large crowds support the 14 charities who benefit from the Auto Expo Charity Preview, said SADA President and Charity Preview Co-Chair Rich Burritt. Our goal for the 2022 event is to raise over $350,000 for the necessary services that support Central New Yorkers. Our experience over the last year has taught us that these organizations are critical to many people and families in need.

Burritt said the event will be back strong in 2022 as we welcome back manufacturers, local dealerships with their staffs, and friends and families that are excited to see the latest designs and technology in cars, trucks and crossover vehicles.

This will be just the second year the auto show has not been held since the show debuted in 1907. The other time was 1945, during World War II.

The show attracts 50,000 people annually to check out more than 300 new cars and trucks on display.

Rick Moriarty covers business news and consumer issues. Got a tip, comment or story idea? Contact him anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 315-470-3148
Seaside Aquarium staffers on Monday rescued an ailing sea otter, a rare sight on the Oregon coast.

Aquarium staff got a call Monday afternoon about the sea otter, which was stranded at the south end of the Manzanita beach. Aquarium officials said the otter looked like it was struggling and was showing signs of possible neurological problems.

Aquarium staffers rescued the otter, and it was later moved from the aquarium to a rehabilitation center in Washington. The otter died shortly after being transferred.

Staffers believe the otter had a protozoal infection.

Aquarium staff said Mondays call marked the first time they responded to a report of a sea otter on the coast.

Sea otter sightings have been rare since the species went extinct in Oregon in the early 1900s from being hunted for their fur, aquarium officials said.

There have been significant, unsuccessful attempts to reintroduce the sea otter to the Oregon coast, according to aquarium staffers, and another plan is in the works.

Jayati Ramakrishnan; 503-221-4320; jramakrishnan@oregonian.com; @JRamakrishnanOR
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is holding a live interactation with students, teachers and parents via video conferencing for the Pariksha Pe Charcha 2021. The event is being on Wednesday (April 7, 2021) in a virtual mode due to restrictions posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this fourth edition of the interaction programme, PM Modi will answer the questions of students and interact with them about how they can beat examination stress.

PM Modi's 'Pariksha Pe Charcha' address live updates:

* "It's good to see dreams but to sit with those dreams and to sleep for those dreams is not right. Students should move forward from their dreams and work on how to achieve them." said PM Modi.

* "Students must be given values by their parents and family but sometimes we need to self-evaluate the situation. We create a mold and try to fit in our kids. We connect it to our social status and create a parameter. We force them to fulfill our aspirations and end up treating our kids as instruments", Prime Minister Modi.

* "We believe that girls and boys are equal but we end up treating both differently at home. This can bring difference in the attitude of both of them. This can create a conflict in children's mind", Prime Minister Modi.

* "Parents must see that they are not trying to impose their thinking on their children", PM Modi.

* "Students must make of their free time in a productive way. They can help their family members and can spend time in recreational activities that provide happiness", says PM Modi.

* "Creativity can lead students to undiscovered paths", says Prime Minister.

* "Students must cater to the difficult subjects initially and attempt them with a fresh mind and then focus on the easier topics," Prime Minister Modi said.

* Prime Minister Narendra Modi advises students to distribute their time equally over all the subjects.

* "Parents must take interest in their children's lives," Prime Minister says.

* "I am afraid of certain subjects and are unable to read them instead of trying. This is due to my fear of the exams", asks Punya Sunya, a Class 11 Student from Vivekananad Kendra Vidyalaya, Arunachal Pradesh

* Exams are an opportunity to test ourselves and allow us to perform better in our lives.

* Prime Minister says that the "parents must take interest in their children's lives".

* Prime Minister Narendra Modi to begin his address shortly

On April 5, PM Modi had tweeted, "A new format, several interesting questions on a wide range of subjects and a memorable discussion with our brave #ExamWarriors, parents and teachers. Watch `Pariksha Pe Charcha` at 7 PM on 7th April...#PPC2021."

On Tuesday, Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank said that nearly lakhs of students will connect with PM Modi and can ask him questions about exam-related stress. "On Wednesday at 7 pm, 32 channels of Swayam Prabha including Doordarshan and various platforms of government will telecast the programme live," he said.

Live TV
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yis recent six-country whirlwind tour of the Middle East has demonstrated greater ambitions of the country in the region, Eurasian Times reports. Political analysts have noted that Wangs offer to host peace talks between Israeli and Palestine was not only a message to the US but also Beijings intention to involve itself deeply in the issues confronting the Middle East.

China has traditionally maintained a low profile in Middle East diplomacy. But in recent years it has tried to play a more active role as part of its quest for markets, resources, and diplomatic influence. While Israelis are yet to officially comment on the offer, Palestinian leaders welcomed it.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Einar Tangen, a Chinese political and economic commentator, said Wangs six-country tour that also took him to Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iran demonstrates the countrys active engagement in the Middle East. He said that Chinas attitude to forge regional peace and stability is of the best interest of the Middle East and Beijing as well, which is heavily dependent on energy supplies from the region. In contrast to the US, which is pulling out from the Middle East as it has grown self-sufficiency in oil, he said. Chinese scholar further stated that his country does not use its ideological baggage in the foreign policy issues, adding that the country is only interested in trade and improving the lives of people.

China believes that the US has an essence in the broken Middle East with these forever wars. Afghanistan was the beginning of it, Iraq was a huge issue, after this point you see terrorism and extremism on the rise, he said. Einar added that China wants to reverse the US policy to see prosperity in the region. In this context, he said that Palestinian leaders were quick to hail Wangs offer to mediate in the conflict given the fact that China favors a two-state solution.

Bidens hesitation is Chineses opportunity

Wadee Abu Nassar, head of the Haifa-based International Center for Consultations in Israel described the Chinese initiative of offering peace talks as an opportunity. What it seems that Biden administration is showing hesitation on how and with whom to engage in the Middle East, this offer of Beijing is an opportunity to involve more in the Middle East and to have a say on various issues there, he said. He added that the stalled Israel-Palestine process needs a push and probably Chinese have hinted that they can do so. Abu Nassar, a former lecturer at Tel-Aviv University, said the Chinese want to translate their economic power to gain strategic depth in the Far East and also in the Middle East. He said the Chinese initiative with Iran, Israel, and Palestinians, indicates that the Chinese are examining possibilities to play a larger role in this region.

Mohammad Makram Balawi, head of Istanbul-based Asian Studies Forum, said he was not surprised at Chinas desire to seek more role in the region. The Middle East plays a pivotal role in the Chinese BRI [road and belt initiative], most probably the Chinese are very worried that this important area would witness more wars and more conflict. In principle, we witness many similarities between the Chinese stance on the Palestinian cause and the European one, he said. Balawai, however, stated that Palestinians are more inclined to participate in an international conference rather than the one hosted by China. Yet, they wont refuse it because traditionally, China was a very important supporter of the Palestinian cause and they would like to give the Chinese a chance. Palestinian Authority may not be very enthusiastic to cooperate with this initiative, yet, they will take the Chinese invitation very seriously, he added.

Challenges

Abu Nassar argues that this initiative will face many challenges that may include reaction from Israel, or if Tel Aviv has anything to offer at this time on the table. Further, he said that the Chinese do not look to exert pressure on Israelis to offer major concessions to Palestinians to sustain the peace process. Although Chinese seem to be serious about the invitation, I doubt that this initiative will go too far, he added.

Balawi said he does not foresee Chinese military presence in the region. Their aim is not to change the current situation, rather they want to be part of the future of the region, and they will not leave it solely into the US or Russia, he said, adding that traditionally all superpowers are inclined to have a footprint the middle east.

Abu Nassar agrees that the Middle East has been always an attractive region for the global powers. The Soviet Union in the past, now Russia, which plays a big role in Syria and Iran. No doubt that China has been playing an economic role in this region, which has been considered in many decades as if being an American area, he added.
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A New York companys chief financial officer acknowledged stealing nearly $776,000 to invest it partly in African diamonds, according to federal prosecutors.

Michael Bartusek pleaded guilty to wire fraud, money laundering and filing a false tax return Thursday, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Northern District of New York.

Bartusek could face up to 20 years in federal prison for the fraud conviction, 10 years for the money laundering conviction and three years for the tax conviction. In addition, he could face up to $250,000 in fines and a money forfeiture judgment of $946,000.

Bartusek defrauded New Hartford-based PAR Technology Corporation out of about $776,000 between 2015 and 2016 in a scheme to buy and sell diamonds, the Syracuse Post-Standard reported.

Prosecutors said Bartusek intended to return the money after he turned a profit; however, the investment didnt work out and he lost the money.

According to prosecutors, Bartusek then attempted to recoup the losses by soliciting investments for Integra Diamonds with false representations.

In addition, Bartusek misrepresented his income in a failed tax return in 2015 that was about $123,000 lower than his actual income. Then in 2016 he underreported his salary by about $46,000.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics New York
Former Central Regional Minister, Kwamena Duncan, has commiserated with the family of the 10-year-old boy who was murdered at Kasoa in the Central Region.



Two teenagers named Felix Nyarko, 16, and Nicholas Kini, 17, allegedly murdered Ishmael Mensah, a Class Four pupil of the Maranatha School.



According to sources, the teenagers lured Ishmael Mensah to an uncompleted building and struck him with a rod and brick, killing and burying him to later exhume the mortal remains for ritual money purposes.



Following the gruesome murder, the teenagers were reported to the Police who arrested and prosecuted them.



They were arraigned before the Ofankor District Court on Tuesday and remanded into police custody.



Kwamena Duncan expressed his grief over the murder of the young boy.



"It's not easy. The experience that women have to go through to be delivered of a child is painful," he said on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo'.



"I extend my condolences to the mother and family of the deceased," 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.

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PITTSBURGH, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- "I hate driving at certain times and being blinded by the sun's glare," said an inventor, from Sacramento, Calif. "I thought there should be a way to reduce glare and keep the interior of the car cool, so I invented the MODERN WINDSHIELD. My design provides a glare-free view for drivers."

The invention provides an improved way to filter out bright sunlight glare while driving. In doing so, it offers an alternative to using the sun visor or other accessories. It also helps to protect the vehicle's interior and it enhances comfort and safety. The invention features an effective design that is easy to use so it is ideal for vehicle owners and manufacturers. Additionally, it is producible in design variations.

The original design was submitted to the Sacramento sales office of InventHelp. It is currently available for licensing or sale to manufacturers or marketers. For more information, write Dept. 19-SOG-522, InventHelp, 217 Ninth Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15222, or call (412) 288-1300 ext. 1368. Learn more about InventHelp's Invention Submission Services at http://www.InventHelp.com.

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Torah Prep School of St. Louis has reached an agreement to purchase an administrative building from University City School District, a move connected to the planned $190 million retail development along Olive Boulevard in University City.

The Orthodox Jewish day school wanted to buy the Ronald E. McNair Administration Building for more than a decade, as its student body continued to grow, according to school leaders.

But they had difficulty acquiring the building from the U. City school district because some residents saw the move as coming at the expense of the Black community.

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Novus Development, the group behind the retail complex, which is set to feature a Costco Wholesale store, joined the Torah Prep cause because it needed the land that Torah Prep currently occupies.

Philanthropist and developer Michael Staenberg also played a key role in helping the school acquire the new building, according to Torah Prep leaders.

Torah Prep purchased the building from U. City school district for $3.75 million on April 6, according to the district.

Novus Development also bought Torah Preps building at 8659 Olive Blvd.; the school declined to share how much Novus paid.

We have been working for more than 12 years to get this building, and there is a lot of excitement for our school, said Rabbi Tzvi Freedman, Torah Prep executive director.

The 44,000-square-foot McNair building sits on a 6-acre campus at 8136 Groby Road and will be used for girls from kindergarten through eighth grade. Torah Prep plans to move into the new building for the 2021-2022 school year.

The school also plans on the new campus to build a facility for its boys division and a facility for Esther Miller Bais Yaakov girls high school, according to the school.

If the school grows, we will have room for expansion, said Dr. Dov Zeffren, board president for Torah Prep, which is expected to have 300 students next school year.

Torah Prep does plan to renovate the McNair building, which has been used for the U. City district administration offices, an English as a Second Language program and the districts alternative school.

In July, when the school board was considering declaring the building surplus property, opponents suggested that the proposed sale would help private interests at the expense of the districts students, the majority of whom are Black. The building was also named for Ronald McNair, one of the first Black astronauts to go into space, who died when the space shuttle Challenger exploded after liftoff in 1986.

Conversely, some alleged that opponents were engaging in bigotry and anti-Semitism because of their comments at meetings.

Staenberg, who donated more than $1 million in time and money to a previous Torah Prep renovation, said that under the radar he was able to convince the school board to sell it to Torah Prep through my quiet back channels. He declined to provide specifics as to how he was able to persuade the board.

Michael has always been a great friend of the school, and he lent his expertise to help us in our dealings and negotiations with the U. City school board in helping to finalize this deal. We are very much appreciative of that, said Zeffren.

Ellen Bern, a Jewish University City resident who served on the school board from 2006 to 2012, opposed the sale and hoped that the district would use the building for an early childhood center. But now that its done, she said, its a non-issue.

I wish the best for the Jewish community and for the new school. Good luck to them, said Bern. They got a nice piece of property, and I also hope that our school district will continue to find a better solution to provide universal pre-K to every child in U. City.
President Donald Trump speaks at the White House on December 8. AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Pfizer CEO Dr. Albert Bourla said Trump had believed a vaccine would boost his reelection chances.

But Trump "never pressured me to do something that would be inappropriate with the vaccine," he said.

Trump previously accused Pfizer of withholding its trial results until after the election.

See more stories on Insider's business page.

Pfizer Chairman and CEO Dr. Albert Bourla said President Donald Trump had made it clear that he thought a successful COVID-19 vaccine would help his chance of being reelected.

In an interview with "The Carlos Watson Show" set to air Friday on Ozy, first reported by The Hill on Tuesday, Bourla said that while Trump never inappropriately pushed him on the vaccine, it was clearly top of mind for the president approaching the election on November 3.

"The president was calling me, and he was making very clear that he would like to see it sooner rather than later, but he never pressured me to do something that would be inappropriate with the vaccine," Bourla said.

Read more: Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte's COVID-19 diagnosis underscores the scary reality of lacking immunity as most - but not all - governors are now vaccinated

As the election drew near, Bourla said, "a few times he was telling me that we need to do it fast."

"First he would say, 'We need to do it quickly, people are dying,' and then also he would add, 'Of course, we have also the election, but people is the important thing,'" Bourla said.

"It was always very clear to him, and also the campaign of the current president, no matter what we will move with the speed of science. Some people wanted to move faster, some people wanted to move slower. Because for them, elections were an important milestone. For me, it was nonexistent," Bourla added.

Trump had previously accused Pfizer and Moderna of conspiring against him by not announcing their full trial results until after the election. And in statements issued through his post-presidential office, Trump has taken credit for the vaccines' development through Operation Warp Speed.

Story continues

"As I have long said, @Pfizer and the others would only announce a Vaccine after the Election, because they didn't have the courage to do it before. Likewise, the @US_FDA should have announced it earlier, not for political purposes, but for saving lives!" Trump tweeted on November 9, before Twitter suspended his account.

"I wanted to do it quickly," Bourla said in the interview. "If I could do it a week earlier or two weeks earlier or three weeks earlier, I would. The important thing for me was the pressure of the billions of people that suddenly had invested their entire hopes on us, and we had to deliver."

On December 11, Trump directed some of his ire at the Food and Drug Administration. "While my pushing the money drenched but heavily bureaucratic @US_FDA saved five years in the approval of NUMEROUS great new vaccines, it is still a big, old, slow turtle," he tweeted. "Get the dam vaccines out NOW, Dr. Hahn @SteveFDA. Stop playing games and start saving lives!!!"

That day, the FDA authorized Pfizer's vaccine for emergency use.

Despite taking credit for the vaccine in public, Trump and first lady Melania Trump were reportedly vaccinated in secret at the White House in January before Trump left office.

Bourla also said in the interview that he had been dismayed by the pace of the vaccine rollout worldwide.

"I was not happy with the speed, but as all Americans and all citizens of the world, it happened not because everybody was incompetent - it was because it's very complicated," he said.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Charleston County has $12.4 million in federal funds to help residents get caught up on their overdue rent and utility bills, and will start taking applications April 12.

The money will go to landlords and utility companies, but it's the renters who will have to apply for the funds  money that will help them avoid potential eviction or a utility shut-off.

The Charleston County Library will help with the application process by offering in-person assistance and access to computers and scanners at certain library branches and at public events throughout the county in April and May.

"We'll be providing one-on-one assistance by appointment starting at the libraries listed on the website," library spokeswoman Natalie Caula-Hauff said.

The website is charlestoncounty.org/erap.

Applications won't be accepted until April 12. The phone number, also starting Monday, is 855-452-5374, and calls will be accepted from 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. on weekdays.

The rent and utility assistance money follows an earlier round of CARES Act funding for rent, mortgage and utility help in Charleston County that closed at the end of March. On April 19, the county plans to open another CARES Act program for mortgage assistance.

All counties in South Carolina with 200,000 or more residents received federal money for the current round of rent and utility assistance under the federal Emergency Rental Assistance Program. Nationwide, it's a $25 billion program.

Berkeley County received $6.89 million, but Dorchester County did not qualify due to its population.

Greenville, Richland, and Lexington counties already have assistance programs up and running.

The rental assistance will cover up to 12 months of rent or utilities accrued after March 13, 2020, for those who qualify and apply.

Here's an overview of who can get help in Charleston County. Applicants must:

Be renters in Charleston County, regardless of whether they live in unincorporated areas or in towns or cities within the county.

Have incomes no higher than 80 percent of the area median income, which varies by family size. For example, the limit is $46,000 for a single person, or $59,150 for a family of three.

Demonstrate housing instability, for example by providing a past-due rent notice, past-due utility notice, an eviction filing or utility shut-off notice.

Be eligible for unemployment benefits, or demonstrate financial hardship due to the COVID-19 pandemic (at least one person in the household).

Provide a 2020 federal income tax return or documentation of the income of each household member.

Renters and landlords can file applications, according to the county, but the burden falls on the renter to provide the necessary documentation. Landlords will be required to waive any fees for late payments or eviction filings.

"Every effort will be made to let landlords know their tenants have applied," said county spokeswoman Kelsey Barlow.

There are limits on the amount of rent the program will pay, based on federal standards for fair-market rent. For example, someone renting a two-bedroom apartment or house would qualify for up to $1,448 per month, while a three-bedroom rental would qualify for up to $1,852 monthly.

"Many of our residents have lost jobs in the months since the pandemic began, and they are in danger of losing their homes," Charleston County Council Chairman Teddie Pryor said. "We are grateful to have this funding to help them, and want to encourage those who qualify to apply starting next week."
Instrumental Music: Ella Ranada, American Canyon High senior Music teacher Brendan Day describes Ranada as a strong musician who is inquisitive, curious and works hard to achieve her musical goals. He added that the current pandemic hasnt managed to slow her down. Already an accomplished cellist and pianist, both of which she continues to study privately through virtual lessons, Ella continuously reaches outside of her comfort zone to try new things. This year, Renada has taken up the trombone in Wind Ensemble, studying composition in AP music theory, and continues to sing in ACHS Concert Choir. Day said, Ella has demonstrated passion, resilience, and grit, remaining musically active and continuing to learn even within the constraints of the pandemic. Theater: Cierra Tan, American Canyon High School sophomore(tncms-asset)0269153e-965e-11eb-b23c-00163ec2aa77[5](/tncms-asset) Like many students in these pandemic times, Tan had a rough start to the year, according to her nominating teacher Summer Heartt. However, it didnt take long for her to find her spirit, creating thoughtful virtual performances to inspire the American Canyon High Theater community. One such endeavor was a shot-for-shot recreation of the infamous shower scene from the Alfred Hitchcock movie Psyco. Heart said, The way Cierra thinks outside the box and delivers something interesting to watch is exciting to me as her teacher. I am so proud of Cierra for turning what could be a really rotten school experience into an inspiring and exciting opportunity for growth. Middle and Elementary Level Studio Art: Grant Dion, St Apollinaris, 8th grade (tie)(tncms-asset)df793ff4-965d-11eb-92b4-00163ec2aa77[6](/tncms-asset) Dions teacher Michelle Lemieux said his pencil sketches show maturity well beyond his age, incorporating technology to colorize his sketches digitally. He spends several hours on each initial sketch and then spends more time manipulating them digitally. Dion enjoys comic book style characters but also has also worked on an environmental series. He excels at representing detail and dimension, letting his imagination guide him. He is also a compassionate member of the Napa community and spends time loading groceries at the food bank and serving the meals at the homeless shelter. At St. Apollinaris, he maintains a 4.0 grade point average and is the president of the Leadership Team. Lemieux added, He is exceedingly kind and polite, and an absolute pleasure to have in class. Studio Art: Yuridia Gomez Palma, Silverado Middle School, 8th grade (tie) Teacher Julia Zmed describes Gomez Palma as a student who takes every assignment as an opportunity to go above and beyond, challenging herself to practice skills taught, creating a carefully completed work of art. Gomez Palma, a 100% Distance Learner, consistently creates colorful, bright, happy, and playful pieces. Zmed said, I am honestly heartbroken that I havent gotten a chance to meet Yuridia in her final year at Silverado. She added, I am continually delighted and surprised by her cheerful, fun, yet expertly executed art. Instrumental Music: William Picetti, Napa School of Music/Redwood Middle School, 6th grade
Two-fifths of Britons experienced anti-social behaviour over the past year during the pandemic  the highest level on record.

The number of people suffering from problems including noise, damage to property and verbal abuse has jumped 5.5million in the past decade.

Every area in England and Wales saw an increase in people being subjected to yobbishness and vandalism in the past five years, analysis of crime figures has found.

Anti-social behaviour reported to the police normally relates to incidents such as groups being noisy in residential areas at night. It can include more serious issues, such as graffiti or drug use and dealing.

The rise is an exception in a year during which nearly all other kinds of crime fell.

Two-fifths of Britons experienced anti-social behaviour over the past year during the pandemic  the highest level on record. Pictured, people at the Welsh Parliament

Every area in England and Wales saw an increase in people being subjected to yobbishness and vandalism in the past five years, analysis of crime figures has found. Pictured, rubbish waste of empty beer cans and wine bottles left by revellers on Wimbledon Common

The analysis of the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) by Labour found two-fifths of respondents had experienced anti-social behaviour in their local area  the highest since questions on it were first included in the crime survey in 2011.

This is equivalent to 19million people experiencing some form of the problem in 2019-20, up one million in a year and 5.5million more than in 2011-12.

In the past year, seven per cent of people said they experienced high levels of anti-social behaviour, while a fifth highlighted concerns about using or dealing drugs.

Rubbish and litter was a cause of complaint for 27 per cent, while 13 per cent were concerned about vandalism and graffiti. Some 14 per cent said they worried about teenagers hanging around on the streets.

Nick Thomas-Symonds, Labour's shadow home secretary, said: 'The shocking rise in the number of people experiencing anti-social behaviour is a huge cause of concern for families and communities.

A worker from the Bristol BID Team uses a cherry picker to clean graffiti outside of Bridewell Police Station in Bristol

In the past year, seven per cent of people said they experienced high levels of anti-social behaviour, while a fifth highlighted concerns about using or dealing drugs. Pictured, litter in Endcliffe Park, Sheffield after a night of partying, March 31, 2021

'People deserve to feel safe and secure in their neighbourhoods and town centres.'

He said Labour would introduce a new 'Victims' Law' to give those who experience anti-social behaviour the same rights as victims of crimes.

In a report a year ago, police said reports of bad behaviour had risen nearly 60 per cent in the month since lockdown was imposed in March.

The National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC), which published the figures, said the rise was likely to be linked to breaches of lockdown measures  with more than 3,200 fines issued in England. Overall, crime fell by 28 per cent, with rape and burglary allegations down by 37 per cent.

Martin Hewitt, chairman of the NPCC, said at the time that it was not surprising that crime had dropped significantly given that pubs, bars and most shops were closed and people were staying at home.

Other figures showed that shoplifting plummeted by 54 per cent, with serious assaults, robbery and car crime all down by 27 per cent. There were also reductions in 999 and 101 calls as more people reported offences online.

However beauty spots and parks have been left covered in litter over the past year, with people meeting outside due to lockdown.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-08 01:05:26|Editor: huaxia

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YAOUNDE, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Gunmen abducted an official of Cameroon's National Committee on Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (NCDDR) in the country's troubled Anglophone region of Northwest on Wednesday, according to local officials and security sources.

Henry Kum, Service Head of NCDDR Northwest was kidnapped at his residence Wednesday afternoon in Bamenda, a town of the region, said officials.

Kum was a main actor in helping to disarm and reintegrate armed separatist fighters in the region since government forces and the fighters started clashing in 2017.

The NCDDR was created in 2018 "to avoid the use of extreme measures" and supervise and manage the disarmament and reintegration of ex-combatants of terror group Boko Haram and armed separatists in the Anglophone regions. Enditem
10 House Democrats Join Lawsuit Against Trump After Capitol Breach

Ten more House Democrat lawmakers joined a lawsuit accusing former President Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and several groups of allegedly inciting the Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol.

The suit was filed by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), alleging that Trump and Giulianis respective speeches incited the breach. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for Washington D.C., while the Proud Boys, Warboys, and Oath Keepers were also named as defendants.

The Democrat House members who joined the lawsuit (pdf) include Reps. Karen Bass (Calif.), Maxine Waters (Calif.), Barbara Lee (Calif.), Steve Cohen (Tenn.), Bonnie Watson Coleman (N.J.), Veronica Escobar (Texas), Hank Johnson (Ga.), Marcy Kaptur (Ohio), Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.), and Pramila Jayapal (Wash.).

The suit claims Trump and Giuliani conspired with the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys to incite an assembled crowd to march upon and enter the Capital of the United States for the common purpose of disrupting, by the use of force, intimidation, and threat.

The insurrection at the Capitol was a direct, intended, and foreseeable result of the Defendants unlawful conspiracy, the lawsuit stated. The carefully orchestrated series of events that unfolded at the Save America rally and the storming of the Capitol was no accident or coincidence. It was the intended and foreseeable culmination of a carefully coordinated campaign to interfere with the legal process required to confirm the tally of votes cast in the Electoral College.

Cohen recalled having difficulties falling and staying asleep  difficulties with his digestion after the Jan. 6 breach. He also claimed he became jumpy whenever he heard a loud or unfamiliar noise in his home.

Escobar said she had violent nightmares and sought professional treatment.

Thompson, meanwhile, said that he is filing the suit to hold Trump accountable  that he so blatantly planned.

Trump in January was impeached in the House of Representatives over the Jan. 6 incident before the Senate voted to acquit him.

His impeachment lawyers said Democrats presented a flawed case before the Senate.

Burden of proof was on them, and they didnt meet their burden of proof, said attorney Bruce Castor. Trump, meanwhile, said the second impeachment was part of the greatest witch hunt in the history of our country.

No president has ever gone through anything like it, the former commander-in-chief remarked. It continues because our opponents cannot forget the almost 75 million people, the highest number ever for a sitting president, who voted for us just a few short months ago, he said, while adding at the time that his Make America Great Again movement has only just begun.

The Epoch Times has contacted Giulianis office and Trumps team for comment.
Clarice is quickly side-lined from duty again, while not being able to remember the man's face, but unlike the last time she went and did something on her own, the VICAP team doesn't personally punish her for it, instead they push ahead to find answers ().But as stubborn as Clarice is, she looks for another way to get reinstated by going around Paul Krendler through Attorney General Ruth Martin. Martin is not unsympathetic, but has some serious conditions for Clarice, should Martin use her political influence...Clarice must come to the Martin residence for dinner and Clarice needs to talk a bit with Catherine.As viewers know, Catherine remains locked away in her room, sketching away and making their maid clean up after Precious. Most of the conversations Ruth and Catherine have had have been brief and unproductive, but upon Ruth's announcement to Catherine that Clarice will be joining them for dinner, we see Catherine come a little more out of her shell in terms of the animosity she holds against her mother, the political destine we begin to feel for how Ruth conducts herself in world.As for Clarice, she at first resists, but ultimately caves in, wanting to be reinstated so badly. The dinner scenes are as awkward as anyone could imagine and it is through these scenes that the episode was really able to keep it's atmospheric tension that the previous episode also had, and is honestly one of the things that really made the episode.Ruth Martin was hoping that she could use Clarice to motivate Catherine to leave the house, and the truth is that it almost worked, as Catherine admits to Clarice that she wants to find Buffalo Bill's mother, so she can hear about what kind of son she had (). Catherine is rather put off that Clarice, despite sharing similar death-head moth extrapolations, that Clarice doesn't feel the same way, but it also dawns on Catherine that Clarice actually doesn't remember the events exactly as they happened, with Clarice much more scared and hesitant than she has ever made out being watching Buffalo Bill die right before her eyes.As for the rest of the VICAP team, Clark, Tripath, and Esquivel try following a lead to a lab, but they turn up empty when a higher up in the company won't let them in or search the premises without a supbeana, which they are temporary denied. Tripath and Esquivel also bond a little more, when it was revealed that Tripath had lost his wife due to cancer.Earlier in the episode Clarice's fingernails were clipped and sent the lab for DNA analysis, as Clarice insists that there was man at the hospital she touched, but the results came back inconclusive. Adrelia has a hunch and doesn't trust the results, so she tracks down the fingernail/DNA samples in a biohazzrd waste bin and has them analyzed again...there is a match!As for Paul Krendler an alleged efficient divorce lawyer reaches out to him (over DINNER of course), insisting that he can get Krendler full custody of the kids. If Krendler was dubious of this man's talents (), he wouldn't be for long, as a call from his son, finds Krendler in situation where his son thought his wife had died (), when she seemingly had taken a very strong pill. Paul takes the kids to his place...But when Clarice makes one last trek to China Town to try another hypnotic session with Dr. Renee` Li, and probably thinking like many viewers that perhaps Catherine Martin's father might somehow be alive and new villain, Clarice announces that she doesn't recognize him at all, and it's none other than Paul Krendler's new divorce lawyer!I like almost everything about the episode. Not only did it play with a lot of red hearings and the kept the more atmospheric elements going from the last episode, but it also brought a lot of elements from previous episodes together and is starting feel like Thomas Harris could of wrote this himself.The layered quality of VICAP exposing yet more corruption from with in (Tony, is that you?), from Calrice continuing on to go down a rabbit hole of pain and denial, and the show having a lot places to start looking over their shoulders, makes everything feel heightened and layered.And as mentioned many times before, Hannibal too finds himself still in the form of a figurative ghost that looms over the narrative with semi-unconventional therapists and controversial dinners. In fact everything that Clarice experiences in the episode feels so unbelievably Hannibal-esque. Ruth Martin's apartment, a symbol of wealth and fine taste, is so finely juxtaposed to the previous dark-light minimalist hospital, as both buildings have stained glass window skylights and both give an ore of the unsettled interrogation.In fact I really loved the way the dinner scene homed in on Catherine's eating habits, not being able to stare at or cut into the flesh of her meat, no matter how expensive or well-prepared and the way the skin on her mother begins to crawl with Catherine unpacking her pre-packaged and no doubt bland yogurt was another thing I enjoyed. With yogurt being a food that is perhaps simple and more of a cooking ingredient or snack on the verge of being a dessert rather than a meal, was a real testament to themes and/or elements Thomas Harris often bestows on Clarice in contrast to Hannibal's overall elegant and decadent preferences, which is the truly baffling irony of his over all affection for her childlike tastelessness.The scene also reminiscent of Clarice being stuck at the table during thenovel, where an intoxicated Clarice is Hannibal's guest, being served Paul Krendler's brains for dinner (), as he sits next to her at the table. There is no one enacting retribution here on Clarice's behalf, but the sociopolitical motives of both of her dinner mates and the waybegins to wear Clarice down into acknowledging her own deceptions, seems like an apt juxtaposition.Speaking of unconventional therapists, I really loved the new inclusion of Dr. Renee' Li and her "bell method" of hypnotherapy. In fact besides the nice references back toand Francis Dolorhyde's association with China Town, the bell therapy idea no doubt comes fromExecutive Producer Alexander Kurtzman and his former writing partner Bob Orci were co-creators ofAnd while I suspect they are given that credit, becauseconception most likely comes from season three of(something they also co-executive produced with JJ Abrams), I can't deny the HUGE William Bell reference here, despite their seemingly limited work on the series.William Bell was played bygreat Leonard Nimoy, whose character onwas a likable anti-hero to near villain, as he was preparing for a coming war with...William Bell and main character Walter Bishop had a history the show explored through Walter's redemption arc, but Bell was also brilliant scientist, who created a huge corporate company (Massive Dynamic) to support all manor of fringe science experiments, which are eventually used against him by disgruntle former employee.At any rate William Bell dies sacrificing himself, but the Fringe team wanted to get into contact with him in order to get some piece of information they needed. As it turns out, William Bell left behind a special bell that could call his conscious back to reality...in conjunction with someone swallowing "soul magnets".Another main character Olivia is the vessel that houses the brief return of William Bell. In addition the bell was also used previously as a way for William Bell to summon or cause Olivia to travel to the parallel universe where he was hiding/working.I only bring it up, because the Hannibal Lecter franchise also tread near supernatural, especially where Hannibal's pursuits and almost super abilities were concerned. As mentioned before in other reviews, Hannibal was seeking a way to bring back the conscious of his dead little sister Misha into the body of Starling. The books never explain how Hannibal comes to believe in these sorts of necromancy ideas or why Starling should be the vessel, only that he was an avid fan of Stephen Hawking and his now debunked theory of time moving in reverse.Bryan Fuller's adaptation ofwent more into that metaphysical realm and as a result gave the show a thrilling sense of surrealism at almost every turn, andis starting to feel like it would like to live more in that space too, and I couldn't be more delighted.But what William Bell and his magical bell might mean forat large, is hard to say, but no doubt we already can surmise that the evil pharma company has an inside man or perhaps there could be a disgruntle former employee who set out to ruin the company?But I can't help to shake the feeling that perhaps the show might go more "fringe" when all is said in done--that Clarice could transform or elevate into something () beyond herself that would speak to that missingbook explanation, even if Hannibal never physically entersmore intimate picture.The only other thing that I would like to touch on is another potential book change. Remember I said I likedeverything about the episode, well, this is one place I'm not too sure about.InJames Gumb aka Buffalo Bill did what he did to women, because he was trying to transform himself into a more glamorous version of his long-deceased mother. In Thomas Harris' defense, this is what kept Buffalo Bill from becoming a bad trans gender stereotype, and his mother's death is what makes the character's strive to transform into some version of her tragically believable.But now, according to Catherine Martin, in theversion, James Gumb's mother is still alive and seemingly out there. So problem I have is how they could do this without making Gumb seem like a bad stereotype that would be truly hurtful to the trans community, at a time where they have been fighting for the their rights like never before?I'm not saying that it WILL change anything, should the show ever actually go there, but it does mean that Buffalo Bill's motives are much more circumspect, given that the women is alive and isn't something that Gumb literally lost along the way. I just hope the writers tread careful, especially if they are trying to tie Buffalo Bill to the pharmaceutical company somehow (...But beyond that I thought everything was quite excellent and I found myself on the edge of my seat and pretty much enjoying every scene with all of the characters for once! Cant' wait for next week's episode!!
A 37-year-old woman from the York area reported missing over the holiday weekend is safe, Pennsylvania State Police said Wednesday.

Stacy L. Snyder was found around 8:15 a.m. Wednesday just outside of Windsor Borough, state police said. She was unharmed.

State police previously said they were concerned for Snyders safety, and that she could have been traveling on foot in the Windsor/Craley area of York County.

Pennsylvania State Police would like to thank the community for coming together and providing information to assist with locating Snyder, state police said in a news release. There is no threat to the public and there is no further information that we can provide regarding this investigation.

READ MORE: Lower Paxton police investigating recent arson

1 dead after shooting in Harrisburgs Allison Hill neighborhood: police
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 00:04:54|Editor: huaxia

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Staff transport the Sinopharm vaccines donated by China at the Rafic Hariri International Airport in Beirut, Lebanon, April 6, 2021. Two batches of Sinopharm vaccines donated by China arrived in Lebanon on Tuesday. (Photo by Bilal Jawich/Xinhua)

BEIRUT, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Two batches of vaccines developed by Chinese pharmaceutical firm Sinopharm arrived here on Tuesday to support the country's fight against COVID-19.

Chinese Ambassador to Lebanon Wang Kejian said that China offered the two batches of vaccines for the Lebanese government and army, which shows the deep friendship between the Chinese and Lebanese governments, armies, and peoples.

It is believed that the Chinese vaccines will play a positive role in strengthening Lebanon's ability to prevent and control the pandemic, Wang said during a press conference held at the Rafic Hariri International Airport.

For his part, Lebanese Caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hassan said that the vaccines will be allocated to the Lebanese army, customs, social security, and different public departments and ministries.

"China's vaccine donation will help people in Lebanon to return gradually to their normal lives," Hassan said.

He also thanked China for making this donation despite the challenges facing the country in fighting against the pandemic.

Meanwhile, General Elias el-Chamiyeh, who represented Lebanese Armed Forces Commander Joseph Aoun, said that the donation shows immense support for the Lebanese army by protecting its soldiers from the pandemic.

El-Chamiyeh said that China has been committed to boosting cooperation between the Lebanese Armed Forces and the Chinese army. Enditem
Utility giant PG&E Corp. faces criminal charges for its role in a 2019 wildfire that burned 78,000 acres in Northern California, another blow to a company with a checkered history of being blamed for disasters and endangering public safety.

The charges come after PG&E pleaded guilty last year to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter for the deadliest fire in state history in 2018, and while the company faces scrutiny for yet another wildfire in 2020 that killed four people.

The company, which was driven into bankruptcy in 2019 after its equipment sparked blazes, faces five felony counts in connection with the Kincade Fire, which destroyed 374 buildings.

The utility said its challenging the criminal charges, though it acknowledges findings by state investigators that its equipment caused the fire.

In the spirit of working to do whats right for the victims, we will accept CAL FIREs finding that a PG&E transmission line caused the fire, even though we have not had access to the agencys report or the evidence it gathered, PG&E said in an emailed statement. However, we do not believe there was any crime here. We remain committed to making it right for all those impacted and working to further reduce wildfire risk on our system.

State investigators previously determined that a broken PG&E cable started the Kincade Fire northeast of the town of Geyserville. Brandon Gilbert, an assistant to Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch, didnt immediately respond to a phone call seeking comment.

Any criminal conviction is a violation of probation. It remains to be see how U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who is overseeing PG&Es probation, will react to the criminal charges. A harsh critic of the company, the judge has said hes determined to prevent the utilitys equipment from being the cause of another fire.

PG&Es equipment was long suspected of causing the Kincade fire that started on Oct. 23, 2019, as the utility had reported that one of its transmission lines malfunctioned near the location and time of the start of the blaze. The company said in May that it could book a loss of at least $600 million stemming from damages tied to the wildfire.

PG&E has said it expects to take a $275 million charge for last years Zogg Fire. Federal prosecutors have told Alsup that evidence strongly suggests it was caused by a tree falling on the utilitys equipment. The district attorney in Shasta County is reviewing the incident for possible criminal charges.

Serving most of northern and central California, PG&E is the states largest utility and used to wield considerable clout in Sacramento. But as Californias weather has turned warmer and drier in recent decades, the companys equipment has triggered a string of deadly wildfires that forced PG&E into bankruptcy in 2019 and led many critics to call for breaking up the company. PG&E emerged from Chapter 11 intact last year, but still faces deep skepticism from customers and California politicians alike.

The company, and other utilities in the state, have responded to the fires by trying to harden their electric grids, making power lines less likely to fall during Californias autumn wind storms and less prone to spark flames if they do. They have also taken to cutting off electricity to customers in high-risk areas in advance of high winds. The preemptive blackouts infuriate customers but do appear to have reduced the number of fires triggered by power lines.

About the photo: Firefighters work to extinguish a burning building off Highway 128 in Sonoma County, California, U.S., on Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2019. Wildfires have forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes across the state and more than 100,000 buildings are at risk. Photographer: Sarahbeth Maney/Bloomberg

With assistance from David R. Baker.

Copyright 2021 Bloomberg.
Oh Se-hoon, third from right, the Seoul mayoral candidate of the main opposition People Power Party, bumps fists with a party member at party headquarters on Seoul's Yeouido, Wednesday, before an exit poll was announced. Oh gained 59 percent in the preliminary exit poll jointly released by three broadcasters. Yonhap





By Bahk Eun-ji







Oh Se-hoon of the conservative main opposition People Power Party (PPP), who again became Seoul mayor following Wednesday's by-election, is expected to revive some of the signature policies he pursued previously while serving as mayor of the capital between 2006 and 2011.







But political watchers say it remains to be seen whether he can really carry them out as his term will last about 15 months until the next local elections are held in June 2022.







Oh gained 57.5 percent of vote at the end of the final vote tally compared to ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) candidate Park Young-sun's 39 percent.







Oh is likely to revive his signature "Han River Renaissance projects," aimed at developing the river as a major tourist attraction  which he had pursued during his previous terms of Seoul mayor.







He is expected to bring up medium- and long-term projects he had pursued, including the Han River Renaissance, Mount Nam Renaissance and Design Seoul, which were halted or completely abolished after his predecessor Park Won-soon took the office.






The 60 Minutes segment on Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis regarding vaccine distribution quickly unraveled, but inadvertently brought Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom into the spotlight.

The report, published Sunday, accused DeSantis of choosing Publix  Floridas largest grocery store chain  to partner with for the vaccine rollout due to donations the company made to his political committee. 60 Minutes quickly faced backlash and critics began taking apart the segment, noting that the CBS show aired an edited clip of DeSantis explaining why Publix was chosen, that two Democrats publicly decried the allegations, that Publixs donations did not make up a substantial amount of funding, and much more.

Critics also began calling out 60 Minutes for airing a hit job, as former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany called it, on DeSantis while ignoring the failures of Democratic governors in other states.

One notable governor people pointed to was Newsom, who gave Blue Shield a $15 million no-bid contract to manage Californias vaccination efforts. Blue Shield reportedly contributed almost $23 million to the Democratic governors campaigns and special causes throughout the years, according to Fierce Healthcare.

Of that, nearly 90% has funded the homelessness initiatives that critics and allies say are dearest to Newsoms heart, Fierce Healthcare wrote in March. Newsom, elected governor in 2018, in turn has rewarded Blue Shield and its executives with positions of power during the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed nearly 56,000 Californians lives.

Instead of honing in on Newsoms deal with Blue Shield after the company reportedly donated millions, 60 Minutes opted to try and connect Publixs much smaller $100,000 donation to DeSantis political committee. Critics also pointed out the difference in the vaccine distribution success regarding Florida compared to California.

Even more than that, while Publixs effort has been a huge success in Florida and received bipartisan praise, the Blue Shield program in CA has had enormous challenges and expensive frustration, writer A.G. Hamilton pointed out.

Even more than that, while Publixs effort has been a huge success in Florida and received bipartisan praise, the Blue Shield program in CA has had enormous challenges and expensive frustration: https://t.co/YeyMUqK4iuhttps://t.co/BDLCLdU1Br  AG (@AGHamilton29) April 6, 2021

Public health officials and lawmakers have pushed back on the Blue Shield vaccine deal and various counties in California simply refuse to sign on with the insurer, according to the Fierce Healthcare report. Blue Shield whistleblower Michael Johnson reportedly noted that while the company cant technically make money off of the vaccinations, it stands to gain with regards to marketing.

The reason Blue Shield has been deleted for this is not because of its capabilities, but because of its relationship with Newsom, Johnson asserted according to the Fierce Healthcare report.

Newsom claimed the decision to pair with Blue Shield has nothing to do with its long-standing support, calling the allegations nonsense, according to Deadline.

Everybody came together looking at whats working, whats not working, and we identified two partners in particular, two nonprofits, Kaiser and Blue Shield, Newsom said in February. They have the kind of scale, they have the capacitywe were looking for.

Newsom didnt just pair with a company that has backed him for years. He also tapped Blue Shield CEO Paul Markovich to help steer the states COVID testing strategy, according to Fierce Healthcare, which noted that the efforts have faltered.

The 60 Minutes story might have benefitted from a more broad lens on vaccine contracts. Publix gave $100k+ to Gov. DeSantis. Its also worth noting Gov. Newsom has received $23 million in campaign & cause support from Blue Shield of CA, which he gave exclusive vaccine contracts.  Lee Fang (@lhfang) April 5, 2021

The Federalists Mollie Hemingway was another individual to point out the lack of reporting from 60 Minutes regarding Newsom, calling the show propaganda press.

The propaganda presss avoidance of the disasters that are Democrat governors Cuomo and Newsom  instead attempting to tear down the governor who has quite obviously handled the COVID crisis the best in the country, even with a super old population!  is deserving of mockery.  Mollie (@MZHemingway) April 3, 2021

Blue Shield previously denied allegations that its many years of donating to Newsom  including contributing $269,000 to an account to help the governor fight a recall election  benefited the company. (RELATED: I Will Fight It: Gov. Newsom Criticizes Recall Election Effort, Promotes Counter-Campaign)

There is no financial or other benefit being bestowed upon, or accrued by, Blue Shield, Blue Shield spokesperson Don Campbell said according to Fierce Healthcare. Blue Shield was asked by the state to help with vaccines. Our reward is to help save lives.

As for CBS News 60 Minutes, the show has only addressed the shortened DeSantis clip, telling the Daily Caller on Monday that it was edited down for clarity.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill into law on Tuesday that repeals legal immunity that the state had granted to nursing homes during the pandemic.

Effective immediately, nursing homes and other healthcare facilities can be held civilly and criminally liable for treatment of individuals with COVID-19 after the bill was sponsored and championed by critics including state senator Alessandra Biaggi.

Cuomo himself has faced calls to resign amid probes into whether the state mishandled nursing home deaths related to the pandemic and accusations that the state miscounted hundreds of nursing home deaths as hospital deaths.

The immunity had been granted last year under Article 30-D of the Public Health Law, known as the Emergency or Disaster Treatment Protection Act, as a part of last year's budget while the virus spread through the state.

But the new bill states that it 'repeals Article 30-D of the Public Health Law with the intent of holding health care facilities, administrators, and executives accountable for harm and damages incurred.'

Bronx State Senator Biaggi said Tuesday: 'I am relieved to see corporate immunity, which was slipped into last years budget, fully repealed.

'This blanket immunity prevented thousands of families who lost loved ones to COVID-19 from seeking legal recourse, and potentially incentivized nursing home executives to cut corners  endangering staff and residents.'

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill into law on Tuesday that repeals legal immunity that the state had granted to nursing homes during the pandemic

Effective immediately, nursing homes and other healthcare facilities can be held civilly and criminally liable for treatment of individuals with COVID-19

Biaggi tweeted on Tuesday that the bill had been signed repealing immunity for nursing homes

In a justification for the bill, Biaggi wrote that 'it is now apparent that negligence by administrators and executives of nursing homes has occurred to an extraordinary degree.'

'Article 30-D egregiously uses severe liability standards as a means to insulate health care facilities and specifically, administrators and executives of such facilities, from any civil or criminal liability for negligence.'

The bill continues: 'Repealing this article is a much-needed step to holding health care administrators accountable and doing everything possible to stop more preventable deaths from happening.'

Lawmakers had already rolled back some of the protections that had been granted to healthcare workers last year, the New York Daily News reported. At the time, the state had allowed lawsuits and prosecutions unrelated to COVID-19 to continue.

The repealing of immunity is the latest development in Cuomo's controversial handling of nursing homes and care facilities during the pandemic.

New York Attorney General Letitia James in January found that the Cuomo administration had misled the public about the total number of nursing home residents killed by the pandemic.

James' report also concluded that 'resident deaths associated with nursing homes in New York state appear to be undercounted by DOH by approximately 50 percent.'

Health Commissioner Howard Zucker then released a general tally after James issued her report  noting that there have been 12,743 confirmed and presumed deaths of nursing home residents in both nursing homes and hospitals as of January 19.

'But who cares [if they] died in the hospital, died in a nursing home? They die,' Cuomo callously said during a news conference after the revelation.

The Cuomo administration had only acknowledged 8,711 residents who had died in the nursing homes until James' report was released.

In a justification for the bill , Biaggi wrote that 'it is now apparent that negligence by administrators and executives of nursing homes has occurred to an extraordinary degree'

The concerns had kicked off after the Empire Center for Public Policy, a watchdog group, had filed a Freedom of Information Law request - and then a lawsuit when the state did not comply with the request - asking for totals of all deaths regardless of whether the nursing home resident died at the facility or at a hospital.

Albany Supreme Court Justice Kimberly O'Connor later issued a 16-page decision ordering the state Department of Health to provide the records and pay their legal costs.

Cuomo has been rocked after top aide Melissa DeRosa confessed that that the administration deliberately hid data on nursing home COVID deaths in the midst of a Justice Department investigation into their handling of the pandemic.

DeRosa admitted that officials 'froze' when former President Donald Trump's Justice Department had also asked for the data, before rebuffing the request.

'We were in a position where we weren't sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, what we start saying, was going to be used against us while we weren't sure if there was going to be an investigation,' DeRosa told lawmakers.

Attorney General Letitia James, left, issued an alarming report in January that the Health Department had under-counted deaths associated with nursing homes. Health Comissioner Howard Zucker, right, has since released a general tally

The bill notes that the repeal was recommended by James in her report.

'As written, the immunity laws could be wrongly used to provide any individual or entity from liability, even if those decisions were not made in good faith or motivated by financial incentives,' the report read.

In her report, James also alluded to claims that 'for-profit nursing home operators had a financial incentive to accept coronavirus patients and then not offer adequate care because the immunity shield was in place,' Gothamist reported.

George Pataki, the former Governor of New York, has previously said the state should look at creating laws to recall Cuomo after his administration was accused of hiding the true number of COVID-19 nursing home deaths.

Pataki, who was NY governor from 1995 to 2006 suggested that the state has lost confidence in Cuomo in the wake of the scandal.

A view shows refrigerated trucks at Isabella Geriatric Center on Saturday, May 2, 2020 in New York City

Currently, New York does not have a procedure to allow for the recall of an elected official and creating one would require a constitutional amendment bill passed in successive years.

Republican Pataki, 75, told the New York Post: 'I think it would be appropriate to take a hard look at that.'

'I only think it should be used in extraordinary cases but when you really have lost confidence in the leadership in your state, I think the opportunity should exist for the majority of the people to say we want something different,' Pataki said.

Calls have since surfaced asking Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli to issue a referral to James' office for a joint state probe in addition to the federal one, the Daily News reported.

Cuomos office has also argued that several other states have made similar moves during the pandemic. Just two weeks ago, the Kansas City Star reported that state lawmakers had sent a biklll to the desk of Gov. Laura Kelly that would grant immunity to nursing homes from most COVID-19 related lawsuits.
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AstraZeneca's share price has slumped by one per cent after UK health chiefs said Britons under 30 should not take its vaccine.

The British-Swedish pharmaceutical firm, based in Cambridge, suffered a blow to its jab this afternoon following mounting evidence linking it to rare blood clots.

The company's shares were trading at 7.110 points on Tuesday morning but it dipped down to 7.107 at 8am before a sharp rise back up to 7.139 within 20 minutes.

It continued to fluctuate throughout the morning and early afternoon - straying from 7.160 at 9.47am to a lunchtime low of 7.121 - as the market waited for drugs watchdog the MHRA to present its findings.

The stocks took their biggest hit just after 3.30pm when it was announced the jabs should not be used on people under 30.

The share price nosedived back down to 7.110 points at 3.40pm before staying steady at 7.111 when the markets closed at 4.30pm.

Biotech startup Vaccitech files for US IPO Biotech startup Vaccitech, which owns the technology behind the Oxford vaccine has filed for an initial public offering in the US, the Financial Times reported. The startup could price its offering as early as this month, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Vaccitech's call to go with the US market as the venue for its listing over the UK could further undermine London's attempts to become a major financial hub, particularly after Brexit. Vaccitech is co-founded by Sarah Gilbert, professor of vaccinology at Oxford University, who led AstraZeneca's vaccine development efforts. It raised around $168million in fresh capital in a funding round led by investment firm M&G Investment Management and with participation from investors including Gilead Sciences Inc and venture capital firm Future Planet Capital, among others. The UK Treasury also has a stake in the company, the report added. Advertisement

Despite the news, the UK medicines watchdog said the benefits of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine continue to outweigh any risks for most people.

European regulators ruled that unusual blood clots that have hit headlines in the past week were 'very rare side effects' of the jab.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency said there were still huge benefits of the vaccine in preventing Covid-19, and has not concluded it causes rare clots, although it says the link is getting firmer.

Due to a very small number of blood clots in younger people and a changing risk/benefit, those under the age of 30 will be offered Pfizer or Moderna instead of the AstraZeneca jab.

Dr June Raine, chief executive of the MHRA, told a briefing that the clots were 'extremely rare'.

She added: 'Based on the current evidence, the benefits of the Covid-19 vaccine AstraZeneca against Covid-19 and its associated risks - hospitalisation and death - continues to outweigh the risks for the vast majority of people.

'Our review has reinforced that the risk of this rare suspected side effect remains extremely small.'

But she added: 'The evidence is firming up and our review has concluded that while it's a strong possibility, more work is needed to establish beyond all doubt that the vaccine has caused these side effects.'

Professor Wei Shen, chairman of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, said the recommendation to prefer other vaccines to AstraZeneca for the under-30s was 'out of the utmost caution' rather than because of 'any serious safety concerns'.

Leaked delivery schedules reveal the Government is expecting AstraZeneca's vaccine to make up 75 per cent of its Covid jab supplies over the next two months. The document, published on the Scottish Government's website in January and quickly taken down, showed Britain was anticipating about 29.4m doses of AstraZeneca's jab between April and the first week of June. By comparison, officials expected just 8.5m of Pfizer's vaccine in the next two months and 1m of the new Moderna jab, which is being rolled out for the first time in Wales today

What are the blood clots linked to Astrazeneca's jab and what symptoms do they casue? WHAT ARE THE BLOOD CLOTS LINKED TO ASTRAZENECA'S JAB? European health chiefs today ruled that AstraZeneca's Covid jab should come with a warning that, in very rare cases, it may cause potentially deadly blood clots. The EMA, which polices the safety of drugs used on the continent, spotted 169 cases of cerebral vein thrombosis (CVST) and 53 cases of splanchnic vein thrombosis (SVT), from 34million jabs. CVST occurs when a vein that drains blood from the brain is blocked by a clot. It can lead to a stroke. SVT is the same type of blood clot but it occurs in the digestive system. WHAT SYMPTOMS DO THEY CAUSE? The EMA said symptoms of the two blood clots included: Shortness of breath

Chest pain

Swelling of leg

Persistent stomach pain

Severe headache

Blurred vision

Skin bruising beyond the site of injection IS THERE ANY PROOF THE JAB CAUSES THE BLOOD CLOTS? Scientists have repeatedly insisted there is no proof yet that AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine causes the blood clots. But officials are still investigating the link and can't rule it out completely. Although there isn't any evidence that the clots are developing because of vaccinations, some academics have a theory that it is the immune reaction making it happen. Research teams in Germany and Norway claim the blood clotting issue may be caused by the jab, in very rare cases, making the body attack its own platelets. Platelets are tiny chunks of cells inside blood that the body uses to build clots to stop bleeding when someone is injured. But they can also make unwanted clots. Experts from Oslo and Greifswald University believe the jab could cause the body to produce antibodies  normally used to fight off viruses  which mistake platelets in the blood for foreign invaders and attack them. To compensate, the body then overproduces platelets to replace those that are being attacked, causing the blood to thicken and raising the risk of clotting. The researchers say the phenomenon is similar to one that can occur in heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT), when sufferers take a drug called heparin. HOW OFTEN ARE THE CLOTS OCCURRING? Figures presented by the EMA today  which took into account data up until April 4  suggested the clots were occurring once in every 150,000 jabs. They also said most of the cases had occurred in women under 60. The MHRA, which plays the same role in the UK, found 79 cases of clots in 20million doses by the end of March. Officials said the risk was around one in every 250,000 doses. They also insisted the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks for the vast majority of people  but that the ratio was more 'finely balanced' in younger people. EMA chiefs said the clots were occurring more often than expected, prompting them to say the jabs need to come with the warning that it is a rare side effect. But it said the committee investigating the link did not conclude that age and gender were clear risk factors for the very rare side effects. WHICH COUNTRIES HAVE ALREADY RESTRICTED THE JAB TO OLDER PEOPLE? Germany last week temporarily banned the AstraZeneca vaccine for under-60s, while France took the same controversial move for under-55s. Iceland has restricted it to over-70s, while Finland, Sweden and Lithuania all say it can only be given to adults over the age of 65. Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Latvia have all suspended the jab completely, while regulators probe the link further. But the EMA refused to back any of the nations in their age-restricted roll-outs. Last week it publicly said there was no evidence to justify sweeping bans for younger people. WHAT DOES BRITAIN'S DECISION MEAN? The MHRA ruled that Britons under 30 should not be given AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine due to mounting evidence linking it to rare blood clots. More than 20million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have now been given in the UK, with the jab used as the main weapon in the UK's arsenal. The roll-out is unlikely to move on to under-30s for several weeks, perhaps months, meaning that supplies of the other jabs could be saved for younger adults. But, given that AstraZeneca's vaccine is the main driver of the campaign, the roll-out could be slowed if the change of heart on blood clots knocks public confidence in 30-50 year olds. Advertisement

Meanwhile, Professor Sir Munir Pirmohamed, chairman of the Commission on Human Medicines, said any risks from the jab had to be set against the fact that around 30% of people with Covid suffer low blood platelet counts, while Covid also 'causes clotting'.

Some 7.8 per cent of people with Covid suffer blood clots on the lungs, while 11.2 per cent will suffer deep vein thrombosis (DVT), he added.

England's deputy chief medical officer Professor Jonathan Van-Tam used a nautical analogy to describe the 'course correction' in the vaccination programme.

He told the briefing it was 'quite normal' for medics to alter their preferences on how to treat patients.

He said changes were made to the flu vaccine programme a few years ago and 'changes in preference for vaccines are business as usual'.

He added: 'This is a massive beast that we are driving along at enormous pace with enormous success, this vaccine programme.

'If you sail a massive liner across the Atlantic then it's not really reasonable that you aren't going to have to make at least one course correction during that voyage.'

He acknowledged the change in recommended use of the AstraZeneca vaccine might result in delays and longer journeys to receive the jab.

A review by the European Medicines Agency's (EMA) safety committee concluded on Wednesday that 'unusual blood clots with low blood platelets should be listed as very rare side effects' of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.

Emer Cooke, executive director of the EMA, said its review 'confirmed that the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine in preventing Covid-19 overall outweigh the risk of side effects', adding: 'Vaccination is extremely important in helping us in the fight against Covid-19.'

Dr Sabine Straus, safety committee chairwoman at the EMA, said: 'This vaccine has proven to be highly effective, it prevents severe disease and hospitalisation and it is saving lives.

'Vaccination is extremely important in helping us in the fight against Covid-19 and we need to use the vaccines we have to protect us from the devastating effects.'

In the UK, the MHRA said that those who have had their first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine should still get their second dose.

Only those who suffered a rare blood clot after the first dose should not get vaccinated.

Anyone with blood disorders that leave them at risk of clotting should discuss the benefits and risks of vaccination with their doctor before going for a jab.

Up to March 31, the MHRA had received 79 reports of blood clots accompanied by low blood platelet count, all in people who had their first dose of the vaccine, out of millions of doses given.

Of these 79, a total of 19 people had died, although it has not been established what the cause was in every case.

The 79 cases occurred in 51 women and 28 men, aged from 18 to 79. Of the 19 who died, three were under the age of 30, the MHRA said.

Some 14 cases of the 19 were cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST), a specific type of clot that prevents blood from draining from the brain.

The other five cases were other kinds of thrombosis in major veins.

The MHRA has concluded that the balance of risk for the vaccine is very favourable for older people but 'more finely balanced' for younger groups.

Meanwhile, in Europe, the EMA has carried out an in-depth review of 62 cases of CVST and 24 cases of splanchnic vein thrombosis in which 18 people died.

Ms Cooke, from the EMA, defended the decision not to follow the UK in recommending that those under the age of 30 be offered another vaccine.

She said the available data did not allow the EMA to draw any causal link with age groups, or whether male or female.

She said: 'There is a lot more use in younger age groups in the UK than there is in the EU at the moment and we will take this into account in our further evaluations.'

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the Government believed the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine was 'safe', telling reporters on a visit to Cornwall: 'But the crucial thing for everybody is to listen to what the scientists, the medical experts have to say later on today.'

On the vaccination programme, he added: 'You can really start to see some of the benefits of that - it's pretty clear that the decline in the number of deaths, the decline in the number of hospitalisations is being fuelled, is being assisted, the steepness of that decline is being helped, by the rollout of the vaccines so it's very important for everybody to continue to get your second jab when you're asked to come forward for your turn.'

More than 20 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have now been given in the UK, saving an estimated 6,000 lives.
LONDON  Myanmars ambassador to Britain was locked out of his own embassy on Wednesday, apparently in retaliation for having criticized Myanmars military, which seized power in February and has since launched a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

The embassy said in a statement that the envoy, Kyaw Zwar Minn, had been recalled to Myanmar on March 9, that his appointment had concluded at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, and that his deputy, Chit Win, had replaced him.

The episode drew a small crowd of protesters outside the Myanmar Embassy in London on Wednesday. And on Thursday, Mr. Kyaw Zwar Minn returned there to denounce the government for which he once worked.

There was a coup in Myanmar in February. Now there is the same situation in central London, said a spokesman for Mr. Kyaw Zwar Minn who read out a statement outside the embassy as he looked on, the BBC reported.
The European Medicines Agency's investigation of "rare" blood clots linked to AstraZeneca's vaccine threatens to throw another spanner in the works of Korea's coronavirus inoculation schedule.

The Korean government has failed to secure adequate supplies of alternatives and currently relies on AstraZeneca vaccines to inoculate most people scheduled for their jabs in the second quarter.

Marco Cavaleri, the EMA head of vaccines, told Italy's Il Messaggero newspaper in an interview published Tuesday, "In my opinion, we can say it now, it is clear there is a link with the vaccine. But we still do not know what causes this reaction."

"In the next few hours, we will say that there is a connection, but we still have to understand how this happens," he added.

The EMA later clarified it is "still investigating" and hopes to make a statement by Friday.


U.S. negotiators, led by the ardently anti-Israel Robert Malley, will begin indirect talks with Iran. Team Biden craved direct negotiations, but Iran wouldnt oblige.

Thus, the U.S. representatives wont actually attend the talks, which will take place in Vienna. Instead, the European members of the Iran nuclear deal  Britain, France, and Germany  will serve as go-betweens with Iran.

Iran is demanding that the U.S. lift all sanctions against it as a first step in negotiations. Biden may be willing to meet this demand, but he is constrained by the fact that Trump, in addition to reinstating old sanctions imposed against Iran for developing its nuclear program, imposed hundreds of new ones that are unrelated to that program.

These sanctions were imposed because Iran sponsored terrorism and waged war by proxy in the region. They include sanctions on Irans Central Bank and the designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as terrorists.

The Iran nuclear deal lifted only nuclear-related sanctions. Thus, a U.S. return to the deal would not entail lifting a great many new sanctions.

A serious U.S. administration might view the new sanctions as providing leverage. The Biden administration apparently views them as major complications.

To be fair, it must be noted that Trumps policy towards Iran was unsuccessful. He did not force Iran to negotiate a new, improved deal, which was his stated intent. He did not induce regime change. He did not take out Irans nuclear facilities.

But at least he weakened Iran and probably decreased its ability to make trouble in the regime. Now, Biden is prepared to forfeit that marginal benefit in exchange for a deal that cannot prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power in the coming years.
Now Open

7 April 2021

The DoubleTree Rome Monti will be the City's first hotel under the DoubleTree by Hilton brand and opens 7th April 2021.

The property will open as DoubleTree by Hilton Rome Monti after the full refurbishment of an existing property. Monti is a charming neighbourhood known for its cafes, alternative fashion retailers and bohemian feel and the interiors by THDP will reflect this unique location.

The hotel is located close to the Bank of Italy, Quirinal Palace and various ministries and embassies. It is also within walking distance of tourist attractions such as the Trevi Fountain, the Colosseum, and the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore.

DoubleTree by Hilton Rome Monti will feature 132 guest-rooms, and will offer a fitness centre. Guests and residents will be able to enjoy a range of dining options including restaurant, a lobby lounge and rooftop bar with stunning views of the city.
[April 07, 2021] Cyble Appoints Former General Dynamics Executive James Thornton to Expand Business in North America

Cyble, an AI-powered, Y Combinator-backed, cyber intelligence company that empowers organizations with darkweb & cybercrime monitoring and mitigation services, today announced that James Thornton, former Senior VP, Strategic Sales - U.S. for General Dynamics (News - Alert) , will now be joining Cyble as the Regional Director Sales & Customer Success - North America. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005450/en/ James Thornton, Regional Director, Sales & Customer Success - North America at Cyble (Photo: Business Wire) The news follows Cyble's recent announcement of the $4M seed financing led by Blackbird Ventures and Spider Capital, with participation from Xoogler Ventures, Picus Capital, and Cathexis Ventures. James brings a 20+ years history of success in the cybersecurity industry, a customer-centric approach, and a strong focus on delivering differentiated value to clients. He will be responsible for driving growth across the North America market. "I am excited for James to join the Cyble team. James is a senior and well-respected leader with a passion for helping clients and a talent for building sustainale relationships. His strong cybersecurity knowledge coupled with his proven expertise in growing organizations will be invaluable as he leads Cyble's Go-to-Market (GTM) strategy to expand our reach in North America," says Richard Sands, Cyble's General Manager for the North America region.



A seasoned business leader, James has previously spearhead global sales and marketing operations. His competency lies in defining and implementing strategic growth plans to deliver successful business results. James joins Cyble with an extensive sales and business development experience at reputed organizations such as Deepfence, Cavirin Systems, General Dynamics, and MTM Technologies among others. "Cyble's mission of empowering organizations with advanced threat intelligence and fortifying their business against sophisticated cybercrime resonates with me, and I'm very excited to begin my journey with Cyble," added James. "I look forward to bringing the benefits of Cyble's revolutionary threat monitoring to more enterprises in North America."

Recently, as part of its strategic hiring, Cyble has also appointed Ruchir Verma, former Regional Manager - Cybersecurity at IBM India as the Regional Sales Director - South India and Srilanka. As Cyble scales new growth trajectories, Ruchir has been appointed to implement and manage sales activities, meet customer requirements, and reach out to customers in South India and Srilanka faster. Cyble's CEO and founder Beenu Arora said, "James brings an impressive set of capabilities to Cyble's leadership team. His credential as a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) accreditation from (ISC) demonstrates a globally recognized level of competence, covering critical topics in security today. North America has been an area of enormous potential for Cyble. We look forward to channel James' sales expertise and customer engagement potential to generate continued growth of the business and sustain the demand for our solutions across the region." About Cyble: Cyble is a global threat intelligence SaaS (News - Alert) provider that helps enterprises protect themselves from cybercrimes and exposure in the darkweb. Its prime focus is to provide organizations with real-time visibility to their digital risk footprint. Backed by Y Combinator as part of the 2021 winter cohort, Cyble has also been recognized by Forbes as one of the top 20 Best Cybersecurity Startups To Watch In 2020. Headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia and with offices in Australia, Singapore, and India, Cyble has a global presence. To learn more about Cyble, visit www.cyble.io. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005450/en/

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The United States on Tuesday said that it encourages and to have a direct dialogue between them on issues of concern.

However, the State Department refrained from commenting on the recent decision of the Pakistani Cabinet not to import sugar and cotton from

"I wouldn't want to comment on that specifically," State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters at his daily news conference.

"What I would say is that we continue to support direct dialogue between and on issues of concern," Price said in response to a question.

In a volte-face, Pakistan's Cabinet on April 1 rejected the proposal of a high-powered committee to import cotton and sugar from India, with Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi asserting that there can be no normalisation of ties until New Delhi reverses its decision to revoke the special status of Jammu and Kashmir.

(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.)
Pins for Beaumont Health Care workers after receiving their first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine are seen next to a syringe at their service center in Southfield, Mich., on Dec. 15, 2020. (Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images)

246 Fully Vaccinated People in Michigan Test Positive for COVID-19; 3 Dead

Michigan data show that 246 residents have tested positive for COVID-19 more than two weeks after being fully vaccinated against the virus that causes it.

The potential so-called vaccine breakthrough cases were recorded between Jan. 1 and March 31.

Eleven of the residents were hospitalized and three died, a spokesperson with the state Department of Health and Human Services (MDDHS) told The Epoch Times via email. The people who died were all 65 years of age or older.

Data about hospitalization status for 129 cases were incomplete, and for the other set, hospitalization status for 3 cases was reported as unknown.

The fully vaccinated cases were identified through weekly reviews of data on all confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP virus. State officials compare the data to records of every person who has been fully vaccinated.

Fully vaccinated means two weeks have elapsed since a person has received two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, or the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

These are individuals who have had a positive test 14 or more days after the last dose in the vaccine series. Some of these individuals may ultimately be excluded from this list due to continuing to test positive from a recent infection prior to being fully vaccinated. These cases are undergoing further review to determine if they meet other CDC criteria for determination of potential breakthrough, including the absence of a positive antigen or PCR test less than 45 days prior to the post-vaccination positive test, the spokesperson said.

In general, these persons have been more likely to be asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic compared with vaccinated persons. Please note, to date, more than 1.7 million Michiganders have completed their COVID-19 vaccine. Some of these cases may be ruled out via additional investigation.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, Pfizers vaccine is considered 95 percent effective in preventing COVID-19 disease. Modernas is 94 percent, and Johnson & Johnsons is approximately 67 percent.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer receives a dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at Ford Field during an event to promote and encourage Michigan residents to get the vaccine, in Detroit, on April 6, 2021. (Matthew Hatcher/Getty Images)

While the majority of the population develops full immunity within 14 days of completion of their vaccine series, a small proportion appear to take longer to mount a full antibody response, the MDHHS spokeswoman said. We expect to see breakthrough cases with any vaccination, including all the COVID-19 vaccines. The number of potential cases identified to date is not in excess of what might be expected with vaccines with 95 percent efficacy. Studies indicate that even if vaccinated people do become ill, they are far less likely to experience severe illness requiring hospitalization or resulting in death.

Officials say the potential for breakthrough cases is why they still encourage Michiganders to take precautions while out in public, such as wearing masks, washing hands, and social distancing even after theyre fully vaccinated.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is creating a new website to provide additional information about investigating breakthrough cases. The site is expected to launch within the next several weeks. It will include summary data from all states, Michigan officials said.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer told reporters last week that zero percent of the people in our hospitals right now have been vaccinated, which tells you the vaccines work.

Whitmer said during a press conference on April 6 that the efficacy rates mean some people who get the vaccines wont gain complete protection.

Were delving into the numbers on breakthrough cases, she said. What we do know, though, is that this vaccine can save your life. This is a virus that none of us knows how our body is going to react to it. For so many, it has been fatal or devastating, or for many, were still learning how long are the impacts of this virus going to impact them, afflict them. So this vaccine still is the best way to protect yourself.

Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, the states chief medical executive, said the shots are some of the best vaccines that we have.

Weve now got vaccines that are over 95 percent effective. And even if you do get COVID-19, and once youve had a vaccine, it is highly unlikely that you will be hospitalized or die, she said.

Other states have also seen breakthrough cases. In Washington state, authorities reported last week that they found evidence of 102 such cases, with eight of the patients requiring hospitalization and two dying.

In a letter published on March 23 in the New England Journal of Medicine, a group of California physicians reported that out of 36,659 health care workers tested after receiving one or two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, 379 tested positive for COVID-19 at least one day after vaccination. Thirty-seven of them tested positive after getting two shots, mostly within two weeks after the second injection.

The rarity of positive test results 14 days after administration of the second dose of vaccine is encouraging and suggests that the efficacy of these vaccines is maintained outside the trial setting, the doctors wrote.

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the results of clinical trials of the vaccines. They were shown effective in preventing COVID-19 disease, according to the FDA. The Epoch Times regrets the error.
Bengaluru, April 7 : Marking World Health Day, Karnataka Health Minister K. Sudhakar on Wednesday said access to quality healthcare was a fundamental right of every citizen like water, food and shelter.

"Every citizen has a right to avail quality healthcare like water, food and shelter irrespective of his/her identity. We are working with this vision to develop infrastructure in the health sector," said Sudhakar on the occasion.

As World Health Day is celebrated on April 7 every year to create awareness by the World Health Organisation (WHO), it's theme for this year (2021) is "Building a fairer, healthier world." Noting that the world was unequal, the global health body said the Covid-19 pandemic had highlighted how some people have better access to health services and live healthier lives than others.

As per WHO, physical, mental and social well-being was health, Sudhakar said there was an urgent need to focus on healthcare for all.

"Humankind has been suffering from many diseases since ancient times. We have been fighting such diseases. Though we managed to defeat the first wave of Covid, we need to contain its second wave at the earliest," he asserted.

Lauding scientists for inventing a vaccine to protect from Coronavirus within a year after it broke out worldwide, Sudhakar said citizens should take the dose at the earliest to develop immunity against the disease.

"There was anxiety when the pandemic broke out a year ago without a vaccine to protect us from its fallout. As 2 vaccines (Covishield and Covaxin) are being used across the country since mid-January, all eligible citizens should take the jab soon," reiterated Sudhakar, a medical doctor by profession.

Pledging his eyes for donation on the occasion to the state-run Minto eye hospital in the city, Sudhakar said there was no harm in donating eyes after death to help those without vision, as there were about 800 million blind the world over.

"Your eyes will bring light in the lives of those who need it. Let us take this noble cause in a big way on the 'World Organ Donation Day, which is on August 13 every year. Let us create awareness for eye donation," he asserted.

Over 40,000 eye donations are made across the country every year and 35,000 of them are made available for transplanting them to the needy in time.

I appeal to all to pledge their eyes for a noble cause by registering their name in advance with an eye hospital or eye bank to donate their eyes after death," he added.
The government issued Decision No. 10/2021/QD-TTg which details criteria for identifying hi-tech businesses. The Decision will be effective April 30.

The decision lists certain conditions that are applicable for businesses to be considered as hi-tech enterprises. While businesses need to satisfy conditions as stated in the Law on High Technology as well as the Law on Investment, in addition to this, Decision 10 lists specific conditions needed to qualify as a high-tech business.

Conditions to be qualified as hi-tech include:

at least 70 percent of total annual net revenue derived from hi-tech products;

at least 0.5 to 2 percent of total annual net revenue allocated to research and development (R&D) activities, or at least 0.5 percent for enterprises with total capital over VND 6 trillion (US$260.87 million) and more than 3000 employees;

Businesses with total capital of VND 100 billion (US$4.35 million) and more than 200 employees must allocate at least 1 percent to R&D activities; and

All other businesses should spend at least 2 percent.

High-tech businesses are also required to hire employees that are educated at college level or higher depending on the total number of employees. This ranges from 1 to 5 percent depending on the total investment and number of employees. However, employees with college-level degrees cannot exceed 30 percent of the total workforce for high-tech businesses.

Businesses that have currently applied for hi-tech certification are likely to be subject to the new rules.

Tax incentives for hi-tech businesses

In Vietnam, businesses carrying out activities defined as hi-tech are eligible for tax incentives. A corporate income tax (CIT) rate of 10 percent for 15 years, four years of CIT exemption and 50 percent tax reduction for the next nine years is applicable to hi-tech enterprises.

Income from the transfer of hi-technology in difficult socio-economic conditions is also tax-exempt. Preferential tax rates may be extended up to a further 15 years depending on the decision of the government. Land rental exemption is also possible for up to 15 years or even the whole project duration.

Import duty exemptions are applied to imported goods that are used to build fixed assets. Duty exemptions also apply to imported raw materials and supplies that have not been manufactured locally within a five-year period.

Hi-tech businesses are also eligible for state funding and loans depending on the industry. In addition, a 15 percent tax rate is applied to projects in agriculture and aquaculture products

Vietnam keen on attracting hi-tech industries

The new regulations are in line with Resolution 50 on attracting FDI in select hi-tech industries. As Vietnams economy grows it is set to become selective in attractive FDI as wants to move up the value chain from a low-cost labor destination to a center for hi-tech industry keeping the environment in mind.

In its socio-economic plan, the government has reiterated that the digital economy and manufacturing are a priority for the government. One of the goals is that hi-tech production from manufacturing and processing will reach at least 45 percent by 2030.

Given these goals, it makes sense that the government is tightening up on criteria for hi-tech businesses as the government moves to attract hi-tech investment. The adoption of Industry 4.0 and AI will further help augment this transformation.

Note: This article was published in July 2015, and has been updated to include the latest developments.
Government ministers on Wednesday declared the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine safe after regulators confirmed they were investigating a possible link between the jab and blood clots.

Jeremy Hunt, who chairs parliaments health select committee, said the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) was looking at the vaccine with urgency, describing the regulator as very fleet of foot.

Researchers on Tuesday night confirmed they had paused a trial looking at whether the injection is suitable for children while MHRA makes its investigation.

University of Oxford, which is carrying out the study, has made clear it has no safety concerns about the trial but was acting out of an abundance of caution.

Government ministers on Wednesday morning took to the airwaves to reassure the public about the vaccine, amid fears that the episode could derail the UKs vaccine programme by making people more hesitant.

Read more:

Business minister Paul Scully told Sky News: The AstraZeneca is safe, its saved thousands of lives. Its gone out to millions of people both here in the UK and across the world and its continuing to save lives.

He added: The regulator does not regulate drugs that it believes are unsafe. There's absolutely every evidence that you are safer taking the vaccine, you are more likely to survive, to live, to stay well.

"And this is the route out of our pandemic. So my message is, when you're invited to do so, as I did, and I've had my first jab, please do go and get that."

The MHRA has recorded around 30 cases of blood clots in people who have been given the vaccine, and seven deaths  but it is not clear whether there is a causal link with the jab. The cases are in the context of millions of doses having been administered, making any risk very small.

However a number of other countries including France and Germany have limited distribution of the vaccine and are only giving it to people over 45 and 60 years old respectively  amid concerns younger people could be more vulnerable.

Other countries like Denmark have suspended use of the vaccine entirely pending decisions by their regulators.

Committee chair Mr Hunt said of the MHRA's decision: "I think people will listen to their advice when it happens today or tomorrow and I think they'll be sensibly British and keep calm and carry on and follow that advice.

"There may or may not be a casual link but even then it's the balance of risk and what we know is that the risk of Covid killing you is much higher for older people and it looks like the risk of this type of blood clot is also lower for older people.

"But there is tremendous public confidence in the vaccine programme ... I think people understand that the vaccine programme is saving lives but they also know that advice changes as we learn more about these vaccines, so they will listen to that advice and follow it."

Speaking to the BBC, he added: "I think there is urgency. I think the one thing you can't say about the MHRA is that they act slowly. They have been very fast and very fleet of foot throughout this pandemic. But I think people do understand that this is a new virus, these are new vaccines, there's no medicine that is 100% safe and that's why you have to look at these very difficult balances of risk."

It comes amid news that another Covid-19 vaccine, known as the Moderna vaccine, will be rolled out in the UK from today.

The jab is reaching Wales first, and is expected to be administered in England "in the next few days".

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 29 May 2021 Swimmers at the Stonehaven Open Air Pool in Aberdeenshire, which reopens after lockdown restrictions were eased PA UK news in pictures 28 May 2021 Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures as he meets Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban at Downing Street in London REUTERS UK news in pictures 27 May 2021 White Pelicans in the sunshine in St James's Park, London PA UK news in pictures 26 May 2021 Boats are seen at Southsea Moorings in Portsmouth Reuters UK news in pictures 25 May 2021 York Glaziers Trust employees Kieran Muir (left) and Emily Price (right) remove a stained glass window panel at the start of a new five year, 5m project to conserve York Minsters South East Transept and its medieval St Cuthbert Window PA UK news in pictures 24 May 2021 Dark rain clouds above an oast house at Bewl Water reservoir near Lamberhurst in Kent during one of the rainiest Mays on record, with the UK seeing 131 per cent of the usual months rainfall already PA UK news in pictures 23 May 2021 The Premier League trophy with the Manchester City club colour ribbons on, at Etihad Stadium, prior to the last Premier League match of the season. City will finally pick up the trophy after they won the league on 11 May Getty UK news in pictures 22 May 2021 Gary Kenny lifts the Buildbase FA Vase Trophy after Warrington Rylands won the FA Vase Final against Binfield at Wembley Stadium Getty UK news in pictures 21 May 2021 A family buffeted by the wind whilst crossing the the Millennium Bridge in London, with wind and rain forecast to ravage the UK on the first Friday that people have been allowed to meet in large groups outside in England PA UK news in pictures 20 May 2021 Devon And Cornwall Police Demonstrate Their Skills For Policing The G7 Summit Getty Images UK news in pictures 18 May 2021 An employee stands before a costume for the Queen of Hearts by Bob Crowley on display at the Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London PA UK news in pictures 17 May 2021 Passengers prepare to board an easyJet flight to Faro, Portugal, at Gatwick Airport after the ban on international leisure travel for people in England was lifted following the further easing of lockdown restrictions in England PA UK news in pictures 16 May 2021 Emergency workers at the scene of a suspected gas explosion, in which a young child was killed and two people were seriously injured, on Mallowdale Ave Heysham which caused 2 houses to collapse and badly damaged another PA UK news in pictures 15 May 2021 Pro-Palestinian activists and supporters let off smoke flares, wave flags and carry placards during a demonstration in support of the Palestinian cause as violence escalates in the ongoing conflict with Israel, in central London AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 14 May 2021 Member of staffs tighten screws and paint a Marlin skeleton, before it goes on display at the Natural History Museum in London, as the museum prepares to reopen to the public on 17 May, following the further easing of lockdown restrictions in England PA UK news in pictures 13 May 2021 A worshipper at the Baitul Futuh Mosque in Mordon, south London, ahead of Eid al-Fitr. The celebration marks the end of the Muslim month of fasting, called Ramadan. PA UK news in pictures 12 May 2021 A couple have wedding photos taken in Westminster, London Getty UK news in pictures 11 May 2021 The sun rises on Coquet Island, off Amble on the Northumberland coast, where as many as 35000 seabirds cram onto this tiny island to breed PA UK news in pictures 10 May 2021 Newly elected for a second term Mayor of London Sadiq Khan during his signing in ceremony at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre on Londons Southbank PA UK news in pictures 9 May 2021 People mill around St. Michael's tower on top of Glastonbury Tor as it is seen through blooming yellow rapeseed on a day of mixed weather in Glastonbury, Somerset PA UK news in pictures 8 May 2021 Wales First Minister Mark Drakeford elbow bumps newly elected MS Labour candidates Elizabeth Buffy Williams, Rhondda, left, and Sarah Murphy, Bridgend & Porthcawl Labour, right, as they meet in Porthcawl, Wales PA UK news in pictures 6 May 2021 A group of five Sisters from Carmelite Monastery in Dysart cast their vote in the Scottish Parliamentary election at Dysart Community Hall, West Port, Dysart PA UK news in pictures 5 May 2021 Leader of the Labour Party Sir Keir Starmer (centre) with West Midlands Metro Mayor candidate Liam Byrne (far right) and Labour Deputy Leader, Angela Rayner (far left) during a visit to Birmingham, whilst on the election campaign trail PA UK news in pictures 4 May 2021 Artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey stand within 100 oak saplings which form part of a living art installation entitled Beuys' Acorns by the UK-based artist duo, outside the Tate Modern in London PA UK news in pictures 3 May 2021 Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie feeds the Gentoo penguins during a visit to Edinburgh Zoo on the campaign trail for the forthcoming Scottish Parliamentary Election on May 6 PA UK news in pictures 2 May 2021 Chelsea players celebrate their fourth goal during the Womens Champions League semi-final second leg against Bayern Munich, at Kingsmeadow Stadium in south west London. The Blues won the game 4-1, (and the tie 5-3 on aggregate) sending them through to their first Champions League final AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 1 May 2020 Demonstrators during a march through London during a 'Kill the Bill' protest Angela Christofilou UK news in pictures 30 April 2021 Shoppers queue outside Primark in Belfast as shops reopen and hospitality is able to open outdoors in Northern Ireland where lockdown restrictions have begun to gradually ease PA UK news in pictures 29 April 2021 Specialist operators at the Royal Air Force Museum Cosford, near Telford, Shropshire, clean the Hawker Hunter aircraft displayed within the museum's National Cold War Exhibition, during annual high-level aircraft cleaning and maintenance PA UK news in pictures 28 April 2021 Millions of tulips in flower near Kings Lynn in Norfolk, as Belmont Nurseries, the UK's largest commercial grower of outdoor tulips, offers socially-distanced visits to its tulip fields at Hillington to raise funds for local charity The Norfolk Hospice Tapping House PA UK news in pictures 27 April 2021 Paula Laughton checks one of the newly installed Lego models in the new Lego Mythica land at Legoland Windsor Resort PA UK news in pictures 26 April 2021 A red panda rests on a tree at Manor Wildlife park, which reopened its doors as lockdown restrictions continue to ease, in Tenby, Wales Reuters UK news in pictures 25 April 2021 Sheep climb the hillside as flames from a moor fire are seen on Marsden moor, near Huddersfield AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 24 April 2021 Supporters protest against Manchester United's owners, outside English Premier League club Manchester United's Old Trafford stadium in Manchester AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 23 April 2021 People enjoy the warm weather at City Hall near Tower Bridge in central London PA UK news in pictures 22 April 2021 Uyghurs during a demonstration in Parliament Square, London, which is being held ahead of a House of Commons debate, bought by backbench MP Nus Ghani, on whether Uyghurs in China's Xinjiang province are suffering crimes against humanity and genocide PA UK news in pictures 21 April 2021 People walk at the Taihaku Cherry Orchard in Alnwick REUTERS UK news in pictures 20 April 2021 People stand in front of anti Super League banners outside Anfield as twelve of Europe's top football clubs, including Liverpool, launch a breakaway league Reuters UK news in pictures 19 April 2021 Women enjoy sunny weather in Greenwich, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in London, Britain, Reuters UK news in pictures 18 April 2021 Stephen Maguire (right) of Scotland interacts with Jamie Jones of Wales during day 2 of the Betfred World Snooker Championships 2021 at The Crucible, Sheffield PA UK news in pictures 17 April 2021 Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburghs coffin, covered with His Royal Highnesss Personal Standard arrives by Landrover Defender at St Georges Chapel carried by a bearer party found by the Royal Marines during the funeral of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh at Windsor Castle Getty Images UK news in pictures 16 April 2021 Scotland's First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, checks the teeth of "Dentosaurus" during a visit to the Thornliebank Dental Care centre in Glasgow, as she campaigns ahead of the 2021 Scottish Parliamentary Election AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 April 2021 Myanmar's former ambassador to the UK, Kyaw Zwar Minn, outside his residence in north west London. The ambassador has been barred from entering the Myanmar embassy in Mayfair after he was removed from office PA UK news in pictures 14 April 2021 People take part in coronavirus surge testing on Clapham Common, south London. Thousands of residents have queued up to take coronavirus tests at additional facilities set up after new cases of the South African variant were found in two south London boroughs. 44 confirmed cases of the variant have been found in Lambeth and Wandsworth, with a further 30 probable cases identified PA UK news in pictures 13 April 2021 The core of the Milky Way becomes visible in the early hours of Tuesday morning as it moves over Bamburgh Lighthouse at stag Rock in Northumberland PA UK news in pictures 12 April 2021 Rebecca Richardson (left) and Genevieve Florence, members of the Aquabatix synchronised swimming team, during a practice session in the swimming pool at Clissold Leisure Centre in north London, which has reopened to the public. Many facilities have reopened in the latest easing of lockdown include pubs and restaurants who can serve outside, non-essential shops, indoor gyms and swimming pools, nail salons and hairdressers, outdoor amusements and zoos PA UK news in pictures 11 April 2021 A pub staff pins up a sign announcing the reopening of the Fox on the Hill pub on Denmark Hill in London EPA UK news in pictures 10 April 2021 The Death Gun Salute is fired by the Honourable Artillery Company to mark the passing of Britain's Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, at the The Tower of London AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 9 April 2021 A man arrives to lay a bunch of flowers outside Buckingham Palace in central London after the announcement of the death of Britain's Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. - Queen Elizabeth II's husband Prince Philip, who recently spent more than a month in hospital and underwent a heart procedure, died on April 9, Buckingham Palace announced. He was 99. AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 8 April 2021 Cousin Pascal ridden by James King clears the chair on their way to winning the 4:05 Pool via REUTERS

Mr Scully said that the vaccination programme was still on target to cover all adults in England by the end of July.

The government is also facing a decision on the issue of vaccine passports, which are controversial with MPs and civil liberties campaigners.

Mr Scully appeared to suggest the government was not considering requiring the certificates to access non-essential retail, which a preliminary review of the policy published over the Easter weekend left the door open to.

Asked about the certificates, Mr Scully said: "The work that's being done at the moment is concentrating on ticketed big events and those types of things because they are tougher to get back to a semblance of normal, rather than the high streets with non-essential retail and hospitality, including pubs."
Daily Vitamin D supplementation of 20-25g/day should be recommended to the entire adult population as a public health measure including potentially reducing the impact of Covid-19, an Oireachtas committee report said today.

It said higher doses should recommended for vulnerable groups under medical supervision.

When people come to a centre for Covid-19 testing they should be offered vitamin D supplements.

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The report from the Oireachtas health committee heard evidence that Vitamin D deficiency is prevalent across the population and the report recommends that public health measures are established to address that deficiency.

It pointed to "growing " evidence tha the vitamin could offer some protection against Covid-19.

The Department of Health has previously said there is no proven link between vitamin D and resistance to the virus.

However, a consortium of doctors and scientists believe having a good intake of vitamin D can be a protective factor.

The committee's report said vitamin D is not a cure for Covid-19.

But it could be part of public health measures which are preventative in nature and are recommended to reduce the risk of respiratory and other illnesses such as osteoporosis.

Recommendations include :

That daily Vitamin D supplementation of 20-25g/day should be recommended to the entire adult population as a public health measure, with higher doses recommended for vulnerable groups under medical supervision.

That a public health policy, which promotes better knowledge of the benefits of Vitamin D, and which encourages Vitamin D supplementation, should be developed in time for consideration in Budget 2022.

That reducing the cost of Vitamin D supplementation, in order to promote its uptake, should be considered, through the reduction or indeed the elimination of the current VAT rate; and

That specific measures need to be put in place for vulnerable groups, and for frontline and healthcare workers, so that Vitamin D supplementation is administered on an opt-out basis, and for the duration of this pandemic, people should be offered Vitamin D supplements when presenting at Covid-19 test centres.

Welcoming the publication of the report, Health Committee Chairman Sean Crowe TD said: As we emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic, international studies, and the experience of Finland in particular, show just how effective daily Vitamin D supplementation can be when it is implemented as part of an enhanced public health policy. This supplementation represents a safe, practical, and effective means of protecting human health.

The State needs to review preventative measures that might have led to fewer mortalities and lower morbidity. In that regard, the role of Vitamin D needs to be addressed as part of an enhanced public health policy to protect the population against respiratory infections and other illnesses. 

Deputy Crowe thanked the witnesses who gave evidence to the Committee on the issue and to the Members of the Committee and the Secretariat for their input into this Report.

The Committee met with experts from the Covit-D Consortium; Dr. Daniel McCartney, Professor Rose Anne Kenny; Professor James Bernard Walsh; Professor John Faul and Dr. Martin Healy on this issue on February 23, 2021 in preparation for the report




Najma Carrolls brutally beaten and burnt body lay in a quarry in Sydneys south for 15 days before a man walking his dog found her in July last year.

The 33-year-old former Sydney Girls High School student, who made the HSC distinguished achiever list in 2004, had the world at her feet. But a drug addiction saw it spiral down.

Ms Carrolls body was found in a quarry in Sydneys south just before 5.15pm on July 29, 2020 near Sandy Point Quarry off Heathcote Road at Menai, in the Sutherland Shire. The area is known by locals as White Rock.

Najma Carrolls body was found in bushland in July 2020. Credit: NSW Police

Her burnt-out car was located nearby a few days later.
After being closed for over four months, the first terraces in the Grand Duchy opened at exactly 6 am on Wednesday. Despite the icy temperatures, a number of regulars did not miss their chance to be among the first to place their orders.

Owners of cafes and restaurants are allowed to serve a maximum of two customers per table, except if they all live in the same household together, on their terraces from 6 am until 6 pm.

Even though the weather is not exactly ideal for the first day of the big reopening, the Horesca told RTL that the decision is "a step in the right direction". However, the Federation criticises the opening hours, stating that it would have preferred terraces to stay open until at least 8 pm. For the Horesca, the closure at 6 pm could lead to people deciding to meet at their homes to continue their get-togethers, i.e. a location where it is practically impossible to ensure compliance with sanitary regulations.

Most cafe and restaurant owners expressed their relief and happiness on Wednesday morning, even though some had to reduce the number of seats and tables on their terraces significantly.

Vis a vis in Luxembourg City was among the first Horesca businesses in Luxembourg to open their terrace on Wednesday morning at exactly 6 am. The Horesca general secretary Francois Koepp was one of the guests and stated that he was very happy the Federation managed to reach this agreement with the government. According to Koepp, the Horesca estimates that between 30% and 40% of their members will open their terraces on Wednesday while others will wait for more favourable weather conditions.

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Koepp also stated that he understands that some people are afraid that the opening comes too soon and will worsen the situation, but pointed out that the Horesca wants to be "a part of the solution" and is convinced that they can help ensure compliance with protective and social distancing measures.

Strict rules still apply: Customers must remain seated to consume their food and/or drinks, masks are compulsory for both customers and staff when not seated, and tables must be 1.5m apart or separated by Perspex.

As an administrative closure of the sector is still formally in force, state aids such as partial unemployment will continue to be paid out.
Photo: The Canadian Press Police tape is seen outside a Masonic Temple in Lynn Valley in North Vancouver, B.C., Tuesday, March 30, 2021. Police say five more criminal charges have been approved against the man accused of setting fire to three Masonic halls in Metro Vancouver last week. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward

Police say five more charges have been approved against a man accused of setting fire to three Masonic halls in Metro Vancouver last week.

Police say 42-year-old Benjamin Kohlman was charged Tuesday with two counts of arson and three counts of break and enter to commit arson after fires in Vancouver and North Vancouver.

Police arrested Kohlman in nearby Burnaby within a few hours of the fires.

He was charged the following day with one count of arson in relation to the fire in Vancouver, as well as one count of assaulting a police officer.

All three fires were allegedly set in the span of an hour last Tuesday.

The first call came in at around 6:45 a.m. about a fire at the Lynn Valley Lodge in North Vancouver, while a second fire reported minutes later severely damaged a Masonic centre located four kilometres away.

Fire officials said the third fire at a Masonic hall in east Vancouver was reported around 7:30 a.m. and caused little damage.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 23:22:24|Editor: huaxia

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by Burak Akinci

ANKARA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The recent visit of European Union's (EU) top two officials to Ankara aims to reinvigorate a bruised relationship under new terms and conditions in line with a constructive agenda, experts said.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel held talks in Turkish capital Ankara where they met with Turkish officials and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday.

This rare visit follows a EU leaders' summit on March 25-26 during which they discussed a report on the future of Turkish-EU relations, and decided to continue negotiations on a "constructive agenda."

Analysts said the visit in itself is important, coming after a tense couple of years.

"Since the latest EU summit, the bloc is trying to put more emphasis on its ties with Turkey, although conditions attached, such as the eastern Mediterranean," foreign policy analyst and scholar Mustafa Nail Alkan told Xinhua.

Alkan, who is the head of the International Relations Department at Ankara's Haci Bayram Veli University, said this visit shows that the EU is committed to continuing its relationship with Ankara on a positive agenda.

"The EU does not want to alienate NATO member Turkey, trying to keep it close to itself concerning crisis management in regions such as Libya, Syria and the South Caucasus," Alkan remarked, adding that "Turkey needs the EU and vice versa."

Brussels stressed that the de-escalation of tension in hydrocarbon explorations in the eastern Mediterranean and the resumption of the Turkish-Greek dialogue were positive steps and pledged to start the implementation of a positive agenda, including the modernization of the 25-year-old Customs Union and the renewal of a crucial migrant deal.

"Turkey has shown interest in re-engaging with the EU in a constructive way," von der Leyen told reporters after meeting Erdogan. "We are ready to work on a new momentum in our relationship," she added.

Michel for his part said that the EU has "a strategic interest" in developing a cooperative and mutually beneficial relationship with Turkey. "At the same time, we are determined to defend EU and member states' interests and to promote our values," he stressed.

Turkey is home to 4 million Syrian refugees and many more from elsewhere that want to reach Europe. In 2016, the EU agreed to pay Turkey 6 billion euros to prevent Syrian refugees from crossing to Greece from Turkey.

The deal has now come to an end but millions of refugees still live in Turkey.

"The refugee deal plays a significant role in this relationship, European nations are in need of Turkey in regards to prevent a new influx of Syrian refugees on their soil," Alkan argued.

The bloc and Turkey have tensions over four main questions: the eastern Mediterranean, the Cyprus issue, regional conflicts such as Libya and Syria, and democratic standards.

The EU has been encouraged by conciliatory moves from Ankara over the past few months, including the resumption of talks with Greece over a disputed maritime border.

The tensions between NATO allies, Turkey and Greece, escalated last year. In late 2019, Ankara and Athens stepped up for the dialogue and held meetings on political and military levels aiming for de-escalation in the eastern Mediterranean.

"There is a new paradigm in place in the relationship between Turkey and Brussels," said Serkan Demirtas, a foreign policy analyst.

"The EU has established a stick-and-carrot based approach to ties with Ankara, forcing it to ease tensions arising from its hydrocarbon explorations in the eastern Mediterranean which have caused a crisis in relations last year," he told Xinhua.

A European source in Ankara told Xinhua that the purpose of this visit is "to lay out mutual areas of differences and work on it together." This source also emphasized the importance of trade and economic partnership between Turkey and the European bloc.

Turkish exports to the EU totaled around 70 billion euros and the country receives 58.5 billion euros of its foreign direct investment from EU countries, with the Netherlands having the lion's share, the source added.

"Turkey has conveyed to the European party that it wants stalled accession talks to move on with the opening of new chapters," Demirtas noted, indicating however that he doesn't expect any breakthroughs on this issue.

In 2018, negotiations were frozen over what the EU called Turkey's backsliding with regard to democracy and the rule of law.

"Nevertheless both parties have agreed to keep communication channels open in order to prevent relations to fall back on previous levels," he added. Enditem
New Delhi: Noida vehicle owners must take a note that the Deadline to get high-security number plates is just a week away.

With the government tightening its noose around mandatory High Security Registration Plate (HSRP), the Gautam Budh Nagar district (part of NCR) of Uttar Pradesh has not seen a very optimistic volume of vehicles seeking HSRP.

As on first week of February, only 21 percent of the vehicles were beig put on high security number plates in Gautam Budh Nagar district. 7.5 lakh vehicles have been registered in Gautam Budh Nagar, Out of which only 1.60 lakh vehicles have high security number plate, data in February showed.

Transport Officer of Gautam Budh Nagar had told Zee Media that the government has given deadline to install high security number plates in the district by April 15, ending which if the vehicles are not found to have high security number plates, serious action will taken against the vehicle owners. For getting HSRP, Vehicle owners will have to make online booking, meanwhile new vehicles come with dealer-fitted high security number plates.

Gautam Budh Nagar district RTO administration officer AK Pandey said that the government has ordered that everyone is required to get a high security number plate before April 15. Vehicles that do not have a high security number plate after April 15, will have to pay a fine of Rs 5,000.

What is HSRP?

HSRP is a hologram sticker, containing vehicle's engine and chassis numbers and is pasted on a vehicle's number plate. The high security number plate is designed for vehicle's safety and convenience. This number plate are made of aluminium and are pinned on the plate that will attach to your vehicle. Once this pin is attached to the plate of your vehicle, it will get locked on both sides and nobody will be able to open it.

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Sudan and South Sudan must reach an agreement on the disputed, oil-rich border region of Abyei in order for the UN mission there to conclude, according to Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

Abyei has been contested since South Sudan gained independence in 2011 and the United Nations Interim Security Force in Abyei (UNISFA) was deployed after deadly clashes that year displaced some 100,000 people.

Charged with coming up with options for ending the peacekeepers' presence, Guterres said in a recent letter to the Security Council it is up to the two countries to decide on the status of the region.

"A longer-term and more sustainable solution in Abyei, resulting in a safe and complete drawdown of UNISFA, would need... good neighborly relations between the Sudan and South Sudan and the parties reaching an agreement on the final status of the Abyei area with the support of the region, the African Union and the United Nations," states the letter, which was seen by AFP.

"I call on all partners to assist both the Sudan and South Sudan to resolve their outstanding issues, particularly to reach a settlement on the final status of Abyei," Guterres said -- without suggesting any options for a drawdown of UNISFA.

UNISFA is made up mainly of Ethiopian troops, and currently has some 4,000 soldiers on the ground.

Through his letter, Guterres briefed the council on UN talks with the two countries.

Sudan feels a drawdown of UNISFA could be considered "immediately" but should proceed gradually over a year, Guterres said.

Sudan believes this would allow time for the two countries to establish the mechanisms provided for in a 2011 agreement on temporary administrative and security arrangements in Abyei, he said.

In light of current tensions with Ethiopia, Sudan is pressing for Ethiopian peacekeepers to be replaced by a greatly scaled-down multinational African force, Guterres said.

But South Sudan says the departure of the UN mission can be considered only after the final status of the region is decided.

Story continues

South Sudan insists that security concerns remain in Abyei and in neighboring western Kordofan state that warrant UNISFA's continued presence, Guterres said.

Ethiopia, however, believes that reducing UNISFA troop levels, "combined with a lack of cooperation by the Sudan," would prevent the force from fully implementing its mandate, according to Guterres.

"A further reduction of forces, in its view, would put the remaining troops of UNISFA at risk and lead Ethiopia to withdraw them from the operation for their own safety," the UN chief wrote.

Ethiopia also linked the issue of UNISFA to other regional developments, such as ongoing negotiations over the contested Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, and its decades-old dispute with Sudan over the Al-Fashaqa border area, Guterres said.

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A LEADING credit union said a sharp fall in lending due to Covid-19 restrictions is one of the main reasons it is being forced to close two branches and sell the valuable properties located in them.

North County Dublins Progressive Credit Union, which has total assets of 221m, said it needs to bring its cost base into line with a lower level of income.

This has prompted it to close its branches and put the buildings up for sale in fast-growing Donabate and in the wealthy Dublin suburb of Clontarf.

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The decision to close the Donabate premises and sell it has generated cross-party anger in the area, which is set to triple in size to a population of 20,000 in the next few years.

Asked why it was closing the branches, chief executive of Progressive Sean Staunton said: The closure decisions were made to address the challenges which Progressive Credit Union faces in bringing its cost base into line with current income sources, mainly loan interest, which has been dramatically impacted by Covid-19 and are likely to remain low for an extended period.

The Donabate premises is in a prime location on large site, while the Clontarf premises is in area renowned for high property prices.

The credit union confirmed that the two premises would be sold, rather than handed back to the communities that built them.

Progressive was formed from the merger of credit unions in Balbriggan, Skerries, Clontarf, Donabate, Swords and Baldoyle, among others.

It has 60,000 members and took over some of the operations of Rush and Lusk, which was forcibly wound up by the High Court.

The credit union said that once operations cease in the two branches, the buildings have to be classified as investment properties that it is not permitted to hold under the Credit Union Act 1997.

Therefore, the buildings must be sold.

It said any gains from the sale of the buildings will be re-invested in Progressive Credit Union.

Any funds received from any sale will be reinvested to prevent further financial challenges that we might face as the local economy recovers from the pandemic.

The credit union has reported that its surplus fell by 26pc to 825,000 for the year up to last September, when compared with the previous year.

It has imposed a 15,000 limit on member savings.

The branches will be closed on July 1.

The Clontarf branch had been opened one day a week, while the Donabate branch was open three days a week, but given the decreasing number of members who use the two branches, the cost of staffing and maintaining the branches has become unjustifiable, the credit union insisted.

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Armenia's prime minister has asked Russian President Vladimir Putin for help in releasing dozens of prisoners of war captured by Azerbaijan during last years brief war over Nagorno-Karabakh.



Speaking on April 7 during a trip to Moscow, Nikol Pashinian also said Armenia was interested in acquiring more Russian-made Sputnik-V vaccines.



Last fall's war between Armenia and Azerbaijan was waged over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous enclave that is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but has been controlled by ethnic Armenians since the early 1990s.



The six-week war concluded with a Russian-brokered cease-fire, under which a chunk of Nagorno-Karabakh and all seven districts around it were placed under Azerbaijani administration after almost 30 years of control by ethnic Armenian forces.

The agreement also led to the deployment of around 2,000 Russian peacekeepers along frontline areas and a land corridor connecting the disputed territory with Armenia.



More than 6,000 people died in the fighting.



The final status of Nagorno-Karabakh remains unresolved.



There are no official figures of how many Armenian POWs are being held by Azerbaijan, but the RBC news agency said there were about 140 Armenians still being held in Azerbaijan. It's unclear how many Azerbaijani POWs there are.



"I would like to note that in this context there is a very important issue that has not yet been settled," Pashinian told Putin. "This is a question of prisoners of war, hostages and other detainees."



As we have repeatedly discussedall hostages, prisoners of war, and other detainees should be returned to their homeland, but, unfortunately, we still have detainees in Azerbaijan, the Armenian prime minister added.



In his meeting with Putin, Pashinian said the first shipment of 15,000 doses of the Sputnik V vaccine was expected to arrive in Armenia on April 6, but the country needs more than 1 million doses in all.



"The first shipment was, so to speak, a symbolic shipment. We hope to acquire a large amount of the Russian vaccine, because it has proven its efficacy," he said.



Pashinians trip to Moscow came as Armenia prepares for early parliamentary elections in June, triggered by opposition demands the prime minister step down over his handling of the war with Azerbaijan.

With reporting by Reuters
EMMAC brings vertically integrated operations in Europe with a presence in key medical cannabis markets, including the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Portugal

Strategic investor to fund cash portion of acquisition and Curaleaf's growth initiatives in Europe

WAKEFIELD, Mass., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Curaleaf Holdings, Inc. (CSE: CURA /OTCQX: CURLF) ("Curaleaf" or the "Company"), a leading international provider of consumer products in cannabis has successfully completed the previously announced acquisition of EMMAC Life Sciences Limited ("EMMAC"), the largest vertically integrated independent cannabis company in Europe, for base consideration of approximately US$50 million in cash and 17.5 million shares of Curaleaf, with additional consideration to be paid based upon the successful achievement of performance milestones. Curaleaf has simultaneously established Curaleaf International Holdings Limited ("Curaleaf International") in Guernsey to hold the EMMAC investment and further its European expansion.

To accelerate the expansion of Curaleaf International, Curaleaf has secured an investment of US$130 million from a single strategic institutional investor in exchange for 31.5% equity stake in Curaleaf International, implying a $413 million Post Money valuation, with US$80 million in cash available to spend. The subscription will fund the entire cash portion of the EMMAC acquisition consideration of US$50 million with the remaining US$80 million to be used to fund Curaleaf International's current capital expenditures plan through 2022, as well as its pipeline of potential acquisitions. This infusion of outside capital into Curaleaf International significantly accelerates Curaleaf's expansion plans in Europe by fully funding Curaleaf's cash outlay for the EMMAC acquisition and providing the capital required to support Curaleaf International's near-term European rollout. With its foreseeable expansion budget fully funded, Curaleaf's new international business can focus on executing its further European expansion.

Curaleaf and the strategic investor have entered into a shareholders' agreement regarding the governance of Curaleaf International pursuant to which Curaleaf will have control over operational issues as well as raising capital and the ability to exit the business. In addition, the strategic investor's stake is subject to put/call rights which permits either party to cause the stake to be bought out by Curaleaf for Curaleaf equity starting in 2025.

Boris Jordan, Executive Chairman of Curaleaf, stated, "The successful completion of our acquisition of EMMAC, and the formation of our new Curaleaf International business, marks a transformational launching point for our entrance into the European cannabis market. Building on our market leading position in the U.S., this transaction establishes Curaleaf as the global, pure play, cannabis market leader by revenue and geographic reach. With our single strategic institutional investor, we have set a strong foundation for Curaleaf International's future growth trajectory. On behalf of the Curaleaf Board of Directors and management team, we are thrilled to welcome Antonio Costanzo, co-founder and CEO of EMMAC, as the CEO of Curaleaf International, and the entire EMMAC team to Curaleaf."

The new Curaleaf International platform includes cultivation, EU GMP-certified processing, distribution, and R&D operations across several key European medical cannabis markets, including the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal. Terra Verde, Curaleaf International's European market cultivation facility in Portugal, is one of the oldest licensed cannabis growing facilities in Europe with approximately 2 hectares of cultivation area and is an industry leader on the cannabis production cost efficiency front. The Portugal based cultivation facility provides Curaleaf International with the potential to serve customers across key European medical cannabis markets as well as supporting exports to countries such as Israel, among others. Curaleaf International plans to significantly increase its cultivation capacity in 2021, and to exceed 10 tons per year by 2022, in order to accommodate future growth related to the expansion of access to cannabis across the major European medical and adult-use, as well as export markets. Curaleaf International also has an operational presence and partnerships in European Union countries that are enacting new medical cannabis access programs. Curaleaf International will also serve as the platform for other possible acquisitions in Europe and adjacent areas, and for its participation in pilot adult use programs.

Joseph Bayern, CEO of Curaleaf, commented, "As the consumer and political liberalization trends around cannabis that are sweeping the U.S. are increasingly taking hold across Europe, our expansion into the international cannabis market presents tremendous new long-term growth opportunities for Curaleaf. With the European population of nearly 748 million1, the potential European addressable market is more than twice the size of the U.S. addressable market2. With the ability to operate our new European business across country borders, with one or two cultivation sites and one manufacturing center to serve the entire region in most cases, combined with our ability to leverage the strength of our consumer packaged goods strategies and innovations from our U.S. operations, we see enormously positive implications for our ability to quickly and efficiently scale the business across Europe."

Following the successful completion of the transaction, Mr. Antonio Costanzo has been appointed as the new Chief Executive Officer of Curaleaf International, with the former EMMAC management team continuing to lead Curaleaf's new European presence as well as driving local European strategy and day-to-day operations.

Antonio Costanzo, CEO of Curaleaf International, commented, "This is an important day for the European cannabis market as EMMAC transitions to Curaleaf International. I look forward to working closely with the Curaleaf team to shape the future of cannabis for our patients and customers around the world. We will retain our science-led approach to continue to deliver best in class cannabis products for Europe's growing medical cannabis market, and will work closely to leverage the consumer packaged goods experience and innovation from the U.S. to capitalize on the emerging adult-use market as legislation allows. We are now very well positioned to realize our aggressive growth ambitions."

About Curaleaf Holdings

Curaleaf Holdings, Inc. (CSE: CURA) (OTCQX: CURLF) ("Curaleaf") is a leading international provider of consumer products in cannabis with a mission to improve lives by providing clarity around cannabis and confidence around consumption. As a high-growth cannabis company known for quality, expertise and reliability, the Company and its brands, including Curaleaf and Select, provide industry-leading service, product selection and accessibility across the medical and adult-use markets. In the United States, Curaleaf currently operates in 23 states with 103 dispensaries, 22 cultivation sites and over 30 processing sites, and employs over 4,600 team members. Curaleaf International, is the largest vertically integrated independent cannabis company in Europe with a unique supply and distribution network throughout the European market, bringing together pioneering science and research with cutting-edge cultivation, extraction and production. Curaleaf is listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange under the symbol CURA and trades on the OTCQX market under the symbol CURLF. For more information, please visit https://ir.curaleaf.com .

Forward Looking Statements

This news release contains forwardlooking statements and forwardlooking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws which include, but are not limited to, the transaction described above, the investment by an outside financial investor group described above, the anticipated benefits of the transaction and the outside investment described above, the anticipated use of the funds obtained from the outside financial investor group, the expected market size for cannabis in Europe, the expected penetration of Curaleaf's products in Europe, the expected expansion of Curaleaf's international footprint, Curaleaf International's acquisition pipeline, the emergence of adult-use markets in Europe. These statements relate to future events or future performance. All statements other than statements of historical fact may be forward-looking statements or information. Generally, forward-looking statements and information may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or, "proposed", "is expected", "intends", "anticipates", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases, or by the use of words or phrases which state that certain actions, events or results may, could, would, or might occur or be achieved. More particularly and without limitation, this news release contains forward-looking statements and information concerning the acquisition of EMMAC Life Sciences Limited and the outside investment by a financial investor group, each as described above. Such forward-looking statements and information reflect management's current beliefs and are based on assumptions made by and information currently available to the Company with respect to the matters described in this new release. These assumptions include, but are not limited to, successfully integrating the business of EMMAC and to realize the anticipated benefits to Curaleaf of the transaction described above, the ability of Curaleaf to increase the cultivation activity of Terra Verde, Curaleaf's ability to serve customers in various European markets, the assumption that the cannabis consumption habits in European markets will replicate the cannabis consumption habits in the US, the assumption that demand for cannabis products in Europe will continue to grow, the assumption that Curaleaf, EMMAC and its subsidiaries will obtain, maintain and renew the licenses required for them to operate their business in the various European jurisdictions in which EMMAC and its subsidiaries operate, the assumption that an adult-use market will materialize and grow in Europe, and the Company's ability to realize its European growth prospects. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which are based on current expectations as of the date of this release and subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. Such risks and other factors may include, but are not limited to: general business, economic, political and social uncertainties; general capital market conditions and market prices for securities; the risk that Curaleaf may not be able to successfully integrate the business of EMMAC and their respective corporate cultures; the risk that the benefits of the transaction anticipated by Curaleaf may not materialize; competition and changes in legislation affecting Curaleaf or EMMAC; the inability of Curaleaf, EMMAC and its subsidiaries obtain, maintain and renew the licenses required for them to operate their business in the various European jurisdictions in which EMMAC and its subsidiaries operate; potential importation or exportation restrictions prohibiting EMMAC or its subsidiaries to export its products in other jurisdictions; the risk that the benefits of the outside investment described above anticipated by Curaleaf may not materialize; and that an adult-use European market may not develop on the scale anticipated by Curaleaf, or at all. Additional information about these assumptions and risks and uncertainties is contained under "Risk Factors and Uncertainties" in the Company's latest annual information form filed September 25, 2020, which is available under the Company's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com, and in other filings that the Company has made and may make with applicable securities authorities in the future. Forward-looking statements contained herein are made only as to the date of this press release and we undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. We caution investors not to place considerable reliance on the forward-looking statements contained in this news release. The Canadian Securities Exchange has not reviewed, approved or disapproved the content of this news release.

Investor Contact:

Curaleaf Holdings, Inc.

Carlos Madrazo, SVP

[email protected]

Media Contact:

Curaleaf Holdings, Inc.

Tracy Brady, VP Corporate Communications

[email protected]

1 European market population based on United Nations 2020 estimate for European continent.

2 Total European addressable market based on usage rates and spend estimates from U.S. Data from Cowen October 2020 research report.

SOURCE Curaleaf Holdings, Inc.
Elon Musk has said that China will be Tesla's most important market. Xinhua/Ding Ting via Getty Images

Tesla said on Chinese social media that its cars' cameras aren't active outside of North America.

Chinese officials are reportedly concerned that Teslas pose a security risk due to their cameras.

Tesla has tried to reassure the Chinese government that its cars don't record any sensitive data.

See more stories on Insider's business page.

Tesla on Wednesday said cameras integrated into its cars aren't activated outside of North America.

The comments on Tesla's Chinese social-media page came after reports of alarm within the Chinese government over the carmaker's ability to record sensitive information through its vehicles.

"Even in the United States, car owners can freely choose whether to turn on [the camera system's] use. Tesla is equipped with a network security system with world-leading security levels to ensure user privacy protection," Tesla wrote in a post on social-media site Weibo, according to Reuters.

In March, multiple outlets reported that China had cracked down on the use of Teslas among military and other government workers, citing security risks posed by the cars' internal and external cameras. Military personnel were told to park Teslas outside of their housing compounds, Bloomberg reported. The restrictions on where Teslas can be driven extended to employees of certain government agencies and state-owned companies, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Like many automakers, Tesla includes exterior cameras on its vehicles that send information to driver-assistance systems, aid with parking, and deter theft. Many Teslas also have an interior camera that records in the moments surrounding a crash, provided drivers opt in to that feature.

Read more: How to impress the hiring director at Luminar, a top lidar startup led by the world's youngest billionaire

Following the reports, Tesla CEO Elon Musk embarked on a public-relations campaign to make nice with Beijing. Musk spoke at a government conference in March to reassure Chinese officials that his company's vehicles don't pose a security risk.

Story continues

"If Tesla used cars to spy in China or anywhere, we will get shut down," Musk said, according to Reuters.

During an appearance on Chinese state television in March, Musk praised the country's economy and climate policies and said it will be Tesla's biggest market.

China, an increasingly important market for Tesla, accounted for roughly 20% of the carmaker's annual revenue in 2020, up from 12% the previous year. The company operates a Gigafactory in Shanghai that produces cars for the Chinese market and will conduct research and development for future vehicles.

Read the original article on Business Insider
YEREVAN, APRIL 7, ARMENPRESS. The ministry of emergency situations reports that several roads are closed across Armenia.

The ministry told Armenpress that the roads leading to the Amberd Fortress and Lake Kari in Aragatsotn province are closed.

The Georgian side informs that the Stepantsminda-Lars highway is open for all types of vehicles.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
Stoyan Obreshkov Leads Entering Tonight's Irish Open Main Event Final Table at partypoker

April 07 2021 Jason Glatzer

The 1 million guaranteed Irish Open 1,100 Main Event, the crown jewel of the Irish Open at partypoker, is coming down to its final stretch with the 1,880 entrant field down to just nine final-table hopefuls in search of the lofty 292,257 top prize.

Bulgaria's Stoyan Obreshkov leads the way after bagging 98,373,185 in chips, which is good for 141 big blinds.

Read on to learn more about Irish Open Main Event at partypoker.

2021 Irish Open Main Event Final Table Chip Counts

Place Player Country Chips Big Blinds 1 Stoyan Obreshkov Bulgaria 98,373,185 141 2 Justin Ouimette Canada 70,706,284 101 3 Victor Hugo Bonifacio Brazil 40,027,234 57 4 Eduards Kudrjavcevs Estonia 39,987,150 57 5 Franco Spitale Argentina 33,282,003 48 6 Justus Held Austria 26,489,486 38 7 Pavel Veksler Ukraine 26,321,435 38 8 Julian Edward James Adamson Germany 25,404,520 36 9 Robin Andreas Berggren Sweden 15,028,078 21 Total 375,619,375 537 Average 41,735,486 60

Stoyan Obreshkov Leads the partypoker Irish Open Main Event Final Table

The final table will kick off tonight at 8:05 p.m. CEST (2:05 p.m. GMT) with blinds at 350,000/700,000/87,500a and increasing slowly at every 40 minutes. The action will be broadcasted on a small delay with hole cards exposed on the partypoker TV Twitch and YouTube channels with James Dempsey and Henry Kilbane providing a blow-by-blow commentary until a winner is crowned.

While Obreshkov is the clear table captain with nearly 100 million in chips, partypoker MILLIONS Online Mini Main Event winner Justin Ouimette isn't too far behind with 70,706,284.

There is a clear gap between the leading duo and the rest of the field but we wouldn't count the rest of the field out yet with many accomplished pros remaining including Victor Bonifacio, Eduards Kudrjavcevs, Franco Spitale, Justus Held, Pavel Veksler, Julian Adamson, and Robin Berggren.

Matt Staples

Meanwhile, partypoker Ambassadors Patrick Leonard and Matthew Staples were among the players to advance to Day 3 but no further. They were eliminated in 25th and 27th places respectively to collect a healthy 7,789 payout

Day 2 chip leader Maxim Mamonov had a similar fate but barely made it past the gate and was eliminated in 38th place for 6,202.

Final Table Payouts

The nine returning players are each guaranteed at least 22,481 for making the final table for their 1,100 buy-in with their eyes on the 292,257 top prize.

Place Prize 1 292,257 2 198,512 3 135,483 4 89,896 5 61,229 6 46,743 7 36,241 8 28,776 9 22,481

Join partypoker and Grab Up 40 Worth of Tickets

Now is the time to download partypoker via PokerNews because new depositing players can get their hands on 40 worth of SPINS and tournament tickets. Deposit at least 10 to receive 40 worth of SPINS and MTT tickets over the course of a week.
BIOGRAPHY

Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories: The Early Years

Michael Posner

Simon & Schuster, $49.99

Cohens persona applies to what is written about him  not what he wrote. You have to separate the two, Howard Aster notes. Never mind Howard who. The personae and their various claims to proximity are an academic side issue to this expansive oral history of the late lamented master poet and songwriter.

Leonard Cohen with Marianne Ihlen and her son, Axel Jensen, on Hydra in October 1960. Credit:James Burke/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images

What Aster says, though, is worth considering. If Leonard Cohens work is what lures you here  songs of the meticulously hard-boiled economy that crunch the infinite white noise of the human condition down to essences of profound meaning  then youre more likely to be disillusioned than further enlightened by this big fat book.

What is said about him, see, reverse-engineers all of that. That distilled wisdom of his lifes work is reconstituted to something far more nebulous as torrents of minutiae are recollected by 500-odd witnesses. They span his messianic birth into Montreals Jewish tailoring elite in 1934 to his third album of 1970. So yes  deep breath  this is the first of three volumes.
The Castilla y Leon region in Spain has decided to suspend vaccinations with doses of AstraZeneca "as a precaution" according to a statement from the regional government.

The region intends to "pause" vaccinations with the British formula until the latest report into the safety of the vaccine from the Risk Assessment Committee of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), due this Wednesday (7 April), is known.

The EMA launched a new investigation into the AstraZeneca vaccine after learning about new episodes of blood clots in inoculated people which have caused several countries to stop vaccinations again.

The European Medicines Agency has investigated at least 44 cases of strange blood clots - 14 of them resulting in death - after more than nine million jabs have been administered in the European Union.

Although the United Kingdom maintains its confidence in its vaccine and continues its massive inoculation campaign with the Oxford University formula, AstraZeneca announced on Tuesday that it was pausing the clinical trial of its vaccine in children while the UK drug regulatory agency thoroughly investigated such embolisms.

The study began last February and the and the vaccine was being administered to minors between 6 and 17 years old, without any cases of thrombi being reported in this age group.
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.

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John Lee, a Nevada Mayor, announced Tuesday that he is leaving the Democratic Party to switch allegiance with the Republican Party.

According to Fox News, the North Las Vegas Mayor noted that he could no longer stand the Democrats' elitist and socialist agenda.

"It's not the party that I grew up with 25 years ago in this environment, and it's not the party I can stand with anymore," Lee said in the report.

He noted that you are not really well known in the Democratic Party "when you're a pro-life Democrat, a pro-gun Democrat, and you're a very conservative person."

John Lee said he hanged on the party as long as he did, hoping the party would change. However, he noted that "it didn't, it got worse."

"Therefore, I found a new place that I can put my allegiance to and help. Once again, forget about the last eight years. It's the next four years that predict the future," Lee added.

The 65-year-old mayor, who has been a Democrat since his first state election victory in 1994, said the country's working class and small business owners are not a part of the conversation anymore.

When asked what the West thought of President Joe Biden, Lee said there had been issues in the West about COVID-19, tourism, hospitality, and gaming industry.

The Nevada mayor further noted that this what they want in the West, and they are not going to accept it anymore, Daily Mail reported.

READ NEXT: Biden Admin May Have To Restart Border Wall Construction To Fill Holes

John Lee's Change of Party Affiliations

John Lee, who has been mayor of the city since 2013, posted a video on social media about his change of party allegiance, saying that the Democratic Party is broken.

For her part, the Nevada State Democratic Party's new chair, Judith Whitmer, said that Lee has not been in tune with the party. Whitmer said that Lee has claimed to have voted for Donald Trump twice.

"(Lee) has an A+ rating from the National Rifle Association and has always opposed a woman's right to choose," Whitmer added as reported by Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Whitmer further noted that the mayor "has long been out of step with the core values of the Democratic Party, even as he has used our ballot line time and again to run for and win election to public office."

As a possible candidate for governor in Nevada in 2022, John Lee earlier said that different people in both parties had approached him to consider switching to GOP and run as a moderate.

If he decided to run for the governor position, he would face other potential candidates such as former Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchinson, Sheriff Joe Lombardo, and Rep. Mark Amodei, among others.

Lee has been considered a conservative Democrat while serving in the Nevada Assembly and state Senate. Progressive Democrat Patricia Spearman defeated him in a 2012 election before winning as mayor in North Las Vegas the following year.

Before dipping into his political career, John Lee owned a small business. During his stint as mayor of North Las Vegas, he inherited the city with a huge deficit, bad credit rating, and was in danger of state receivership.

He then implemented budget and personnel cuts and new development, bringing the city back to its good standing.

John Lee noted that North Las Vegas is set to become an economic powerhouse strategically. He added that the breadbasket for Southern Nevada is going to be North Las Vegas.

Before 1992, Nevada was a Republican stronghold. Since then, Democrats have won the state five out of seven Presidential elections, including the last three.

READ MORE: GOP Demands Pelosi To Pay Hefty Fine for Breaking Her Own Metal Detector Rules

WATCH: This Mayor is Leaving 'Socialist' Dems to Join 'Working Class' GOP - From Fox News






(Natural News) A new survey has found that most of the Americans support voter IDs. The poll conducted by the Associated Press (AP) and the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago found that 72 percent favored requiring photo identification before citizens are allowed to vote. On the other hand, only 13 percent of respondents did not agree with the ID card requirement before voting.

The AP-NORC poll conducted from March 25 to 29 interviewed 1,166 respondents. Further analysis of the poll results found that support for voter IDs was consistent in both parties. Based on the results, 59 percent of Democratic respondents favored the measure while 45 percent of Republican respondents agreed with it. Respondents from both parties also saw minimal opposition to voter ID laws  with Democrats registering seven percent while GOP respondents registering eight percent.

However, the survey still found clear differences along party lines when it came to electoral reforms. Democratic respondents expressed strong support toward measures such as automatic voter registration, same-day registration and voting for citizens at polling places and restoration of suffrage rights for felons once they completed their sentence. They also expressed support toward mail-in voting measures such as sending an absentee ballot to all registered voters and permitting mail-in voting without the need to give a reason. Republican respondents did not favor these reforms  as seen by the lower degree of support they showed for the measures.

The poll also tackled the issues of gerrymandering, disenfranchisement and voter fraud. Sixty-seven percent of respondents said the matter of states drawing districts that favor one party was a major election problem that needs to be addressed. Forty-six percent of respondents said eligible voters being unable to exercise their right to suffrage was a major election issue. Meanwhile, 40 percent of respondents cited people ineligible to vote casting ballots as a major problem during the polls.

Even Democratic-leaning Americans support voter ID laws despite legislation making them unnecessary

The survey results show that even Democratic-leaning Americans favor voter ID laws despite the leaderships push to make them unnecessary. The House of Representatives passed H.R. 1  the For the People Act  on March 3. This new legislation expanded voting rights  including same-day registration for federal elections, automatic voter registration via state agencies and a minimum early voting period of two weeks across all states.

However, a closer look at H.R. 1 and some of its provisions showed that the bill is not exactly for the people. Writing for PJ Media, journalist Victoria Taft mentioned some reasons why the For the People Act is not one for election integrity.

First, H.R. 1 bans voter ID and verifying voters before they can exercise their right to suffrage. This is despite the AP-NORC surveys findings reflecting an overwhelming support for the measure. H.R. 1 considers voter verification as an impediment to the right to vote, and even criminalizes state elections officials who reject someones voter registration. In place of an ID, individuals can simply sign a statement saying they are who they say they are.

Second, the bill mandates facilitating questionable election measures such as mail-in voting and ballot harvesting. Making the two measures compulsory subsequently makes it easier to separate voters from their verified votes. Ballot harvesting became widespread in different areas, most especially in locations controlled by Democratic politicians. Meanwhile, mail-in ballots without the required verification played a role in giving President Joe Biden a huge lead in key battleground states against former President Donald Trump during the November 2020 general elections. (Related: Project Veritas exposes Ilhan Omar as criminal ballot harvester trying to steal election.)

Third, H.R. 1 prevents ballots from reaching the polling place and being counted. It contains provisions that allow drive-by voting and prevents any state from putting limitations on curbside voting. In addition, it mandates permanent secure drop boxes where ballots can be dropped. However, these measures could be problematic and undermine the electoral process when unscrupulous actors manage to get the ballots and discard them. Instances of mail-in ballots turning up in unlikely places were also reported during the 2020 polls. (Related: FBI finds discarded absentee ballots with Trump votes in Pennsylvania.)

Visit VoteFraud.news to read more about H.R. 1 and how it threatens election integrity.

Sources include:

ThePalmierReport.com

CNSNews.com

APNORC.org

Heritage.org

PJMedia.com
Armenia ex-Ambassador to Vatican on Armenians' emigration and reasons

Catholicos of All Armenians takes remains of St. Gregory the Illuminator to Artsakh

Armenian ballet master Vilen Galstyan dies at 80

Putin shares expectations from upcoming meeting with Biden

Armenia 2nd President: Number of people who emigrated without returning has grown, only solution is shift of power

EU bans flights of Belarusian airline companies in its airspace

US deals blow to major Chinese companies

Armenia acting PM: 62% of weapons obtained were obtained between 2018 and 2020

Armenia acting PM: Meghri corridor issue and transfer of villages of Kazakh region were a topic in November 2020

Armenia ruling party MP drops mandate

Citizens of Armenia's Artashat greet acting PM by chanting 'Turk' and 'traitor'

Armenia Ombudsman reminds PM's ex-chief of staff about shortcomings in activities during war

Armenia 3rd President: We must start bringing back people who know everything about troops

Armenia MOD hosts consultation with deputy commanders and battalions' commanders

Armenia Ombudsman says acting PM's plan won't ensure restoration of Armenian citizens' rights

Armenia Ombudsman: Azerbaijan's failure to return POWs is equivalent to war crime

Armenia 3rd President receives Netherlands Ambassador

Armenia Prosecutor General speaks at St. Petersburg International Economic Forum

"Armenia" bloc: We plan to meet with residents of Shirak Province

Armenian water resources come under Azerbaijani control, more on COVID-19 in Armenia, Jun. 4 digest

Armenia acting PM: Health insurance is inevitable

Armenia Investigative Committee launches criminal case regarding keeping of bodies and remains of deceased servicemen

Opposition "Armenia" bloc representative: Authorities are actually busy bribing voters

Armenia legislature passes law to help ease requirements for future teachers

Russia ambassador visits Meghri, Armenia border checkpoint (PHOTOS)

Armenia ruling party's candidate for anti-corruption commission member not elected

Armenia acting premier: There will be statement in coming days about exposure of high treason

Dollar loses value in Armenia

Armenia acting PM: Our task is to support our farmers so that engaging in agriculture is planned activity

China Daily: Water tribe prospers ashore in Fujian

China calls for closer security, economic cooperation with Afghanistan

Armenia ex-President Kocharyan: There was proposal from Azerbaijans Aliyev on Meghri issue

CIS Observation Mission continues to monitor snap parliamentary elections in Armenia

Nepal reports first death from 'black fungus'

Armenian analyst: High-ranking US delegation's visit to Armenia can't be viewed as support to incumbent authorities

"Armenia" bloc: Things can't get any worse in the country from the perspective of censure

Edmon Marukyan calls on people to vote for Bright Armenia Party to establish unity in the country

Armenia Ararat Province deputy governor sacked

Russian Ambassador says Russia makes significant contributions to ensuring of Armenia's security

Azerbaijan reports 3 deaths from mine explosion in Karvachar

Sarkissian to Nigmatulin: Armenia, Kazakhstan have lot in common

ECHR fails to accept Azerbaijan's application against Armenia Government as new and separate case

Head of Armenia's Verin Shorzha: Azerbaijanis operating equipment to move from one military post to the other

Iran produces trial batches of Russian Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine

President welcomes Catholicos of All Armenians who has arrived in Artsakh

Armenia PM chief of staff: Possibility of full-scale war still exists in region

Alaska offers free COVID-19 vaccines to everyone

Two Azerbaijan reporters die in landmine explosion in Artsakhs Karvachar

Over 120 Nobel laureates urge G7 countries to step up efforts to tackle climate change

Downtown Yerevan murder solved, murder suspect is foreigner

Armenia former President Kocharyan: These authorities really have nothing to say

Armenia parliament holding 2nd special session in one day

Armenia ruling party MP unexpectedly admits that member candidate for anti-corruption commission is his wife

Court fines 12 Australian media outlets 1.1 million for reporting on Cardinal George Pell

Armenia MFA: Azerbaijan instrumentalizes captured people as political hostages, tools to pursue other goals

Armenia 2nd President Kocharyan: These authorities have not kept any of their promises in 3 years

UN Security Council will make a recommendation on the next Secretary-General on June 8

Armenia ombudsman: Water resources have come under Azerbaijan army control

Turkish actress faces 2 years in prison for 'insulting' rapist

US lawmakers call for Turkey to be held accountable for repeated religious freedom violations

72 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

Armenia ex-President Kocharyan: Candidate for post of Head of State must undergo psychiatric evaluation

Armenia legislature continues special sitting

Israel defense minister changes tone over Iran nuclear deal during US visit

Armenia parliament to convene 2 special sessions Friday

University of Nevada new School of Medicine to be named after Kirk Kerkorian

World food prices reach highest level in 10 years

Newspaper: Armenia ruling party to hold fundraiser Saturday

Newspaper: Russia does not manifest very active efforts in trilateral talks with Armenia, Azerbaijan

US to donate 25mn doses of coronavirus vaccine

Armenia is elected UN World Tourism Organization Executive Council member for period of 2021-2025

Armenia 2nd President meets with leaders and officers of Police, MOD and National Security Service of various years

Opposition "Armenia" bloc's representative: Incumbent authorities' mistakes are irreversible

Armenia ombudsman: Any persecution, trial of captives is gross violation of international law

Europe sees progress in latest rounds of Iran nuclear talks

Armenian analyst: Turkey wants to push Russia out of the South Caucasus

Young Armenian says brawl with Azerbaijanis in front of Azerbaijan Embassy in Moscow might have been organized

Catholicos of All Armenians leaves for Armenia's Syunik Province and Artsakh on pontifical visit

Armenian and Russian Prosecutors General meet in St. Petersburg

Armenian acting minister: EU allocated EUR 68,700,000 to Armenia for budget support in 2020

Armenia Finance Ministry: MFA's budget grew by AMD 1,600,000,000 in 2020

Bodies and remains of Armenian soldiers are kept in morgue in Armenia's Martuni

White House confirms Biden-Erdogan meeting in Brussels

Armenia acting MOD touches upon priority directions for development of Armed Forces

Diaspora Armenian writer, publicist Toros Toranian dies

2 Armenian soldiers injured in scuffle with Azerbaijan, Armenian POW is hospitalized, Jun. 3 digest

Wedding held in Armenia's Shurnukh for first time since the war ended

EEU member states to finish preparing for negotiations over free trade zone in Iran in late June

Armenia Central Bank: Economic downfall in 2020 was due to decline in service and construction sectors

Armenia legislature adopts several bills in first reading

Armenia President meets with Nursultan Nazarbayev

Dejavu: Armenia ruling party distributes money for votes at Yerevan district election office

Chief Advisor to Karabakh President sacked

Russian MFA: Works are carried out to settle situation around Karabakh every day

Armenia opposition MP sounds alarm about Baku fabricating criminal cases against Armenian prisoners

Armenia acting health minister: I have apologized, I am not going to resign

Helga Schmid meets with OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs

Armenia's deputy foreign ministers resigned or have heavy workload?

Dollar goes down in Armenia

Armenia Elections Oversight Committee reports Iranian citizenship of ruling party's MP candidate
Reporter

Mary Schenk is a reporter covering police, courts and breaking news at The News-Gazette. Her email is mschenk@news-gazette.com, and you can follow her on Twitter (@schenk).
New Delhi: As the CBSE class 10 class 12 board exams are slated next month, the students should start their last-minute preparations for their upcoming board exams. The CBSE board 2021 practical exams are already underway amind ongoing COVID-19 restrictions in the different states.

The CBSE class 10 class 12 board exam students, however, are advised not to spare any effort in studies on their part as the board would conduct the exams as per the given syllabus.

The students should, therefore go through the sample papers given on the CBSE's official website-cbseacademic.nic.in and practice them thoroughly.

For the Class X sample question paper and marking scheme for Exam 2020-21, the students should open the following link:

http://cbseacademic.nic.in/SQP_CLASSX_2020-21.html

For the Class XII sample question paper and marking scheme for Exam 2020-21, the students should open the following link:

http://cbseacademic.nic.in/SQP_CLASSXII_2020-21.html

Recently, the CBSE class 10 class 12 have been advised that they should need not worry as you know as to why the 'C' in the marks is linked.

According to a recent circular addressed to the heads of all CBSE affiliated institutions, the CBSE has clearly stated that if any CBSE board exam candidate fails to appear for the CBSE board 2021 practical exams for being tested COVID positive or any of his close family members tested COVID positive, the concerned schools will have to re-conduct the practical exams for such students.

Such schools have been directed to consult with the CBSE regional office latest by June 11. Notably, the 'C' may be posted on the link of the marks for such candidates, while uploading the marks.
Henry Cavill appeared the picture of happiness as he was seen for the first time with his new blonde girlfriend.

The actor, 37, beamed and held hands with his new ladylove as they walked through London with his beloved dog Kal on Tuesday.

Henry cut a casual figure in a waxwork jacket and jeans for the low-key outing.

Romance: Henry Cavill appeared the picture of happiness as he was seen for the first time with his new blonde girlfriend

The Superman star teamed the look with blue jeans and donned a beanie.

In keeping with the pandemic, Henry opted to wear a navy face mask for the walk.

The actor's girlfriend, meanwhile, opted for an all-black look which comprised of a turtle neck and ripped denim jeans.

Smitten: The actor, 37, beamed as he held hands with his new ladylove as they walked through London with his beloved dog Kal on Tuesday

New love: The couple appeared in the throes of love during the romantic walk

Dressed down: Henry cut a casual figure in a waxwork jacket and jeans for the low-key outing

She's got style: Henry's girlfriend donned a pair of shades and a long black coat

The couple appeared in the throes of love as they clasped hands and gazed at one another happily during a romantic walk through the park.

Heartthrob Henry has dated a number of female stars. The actor split from stunt double Lucy Cork in 2018, after a year of dating.

He was previously linked to Big Bang Theory's Kaley Cuoco in 2013. However the pair only dated for a couple of weeks.

Casually-clad: The Superman star teamed the look with blue jeans and donned a black beanie

Low-key: The actor's girlfriend, meanwhile, opted for an all-black look which comprised of a turtle neck and ripped denim jeans

Keeping coy: Henry's girlfriend has not yet made an appearance on his social media

Hot property: Heartthrob Henry has dated a number of female stars. The actor split from stunt double Lucy Cork in 2018, after a year of dating

Talking about how her relationship with Cavill changed things, she told Cosmopolitan: 'I had no one following me until I met Superman.

'I've been in this business for 20 years, and my whole life, I could go anywhere, do anything. There had not been one paparazzi photo of me until like seven months ago. The recognition has been crazy.'

He has also had relationships with Tara King (2015 - 2016), Marisa Gonzalo (2014 - 2015) and Gina Carano (2012 - 2014).

Henry was previously engaged to professional show jumping rider Ellen Whitaker but they split in 2011, shortly after the proposal.

Out for a walk: Kal happily trotted behind them as the couple enjoyed the sunshine

Love is in the air: The couple appeared smitten during the low-key stroll

And the actor's striking looks as well as his chiselled and muscular physique has earned him the lead role in action films like Superman reboot Man Of Steel (2013), Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), and Justice League (2017).

The actor previously revealed his staggering weight loss from a 'chubby kid' to Hollywood hunk was spurred on by a James Bond casting director.

In an interview with Men's Health magazine, Henry said he was motivated to shed the pounds after the film's director, Martin Campbell, branded him 'a little chubby'.

Spring: The two appeared to be making the most of the weather as they took Kal out

Airing on the side of caution: They wore face masks throughout the walk

The Superman star admitted he is ultimately grateful for his honesty, because he had 'no idea how to train or diet' prior to hearing the comment.

'I probably could have prepared better, I remember the director, Martin Campbell, saying, "Looking a little chubby there, Henry",' the actor said.

I didnt know how to train or diet and Im glad Martin said something, because I respond well to truth. It helps me get better.'

In the candid interview, Henry admitted he was teased relentlessly over his weight as at school.

Chilling out: Henry cut a relaxed figure as he walked alongside his blonde girlfriend

The actor was bullied as a child and it got worse when, aged 13, he arrived midway through the first term at Stowe- one of Britains most prestigious public schools where fees are more than 9,000 a term.

'I was a chubby kid, I couldve very well gone down the route of just accepting my lot in life and being like, "I guess Im not going to do anything",' Henry said.

'It actually helped me survive, even the kids who were nasty to me at times and took pleasure in squashing mewhen I finished a play, theyd say, "Wow, youre really good", and I was like, "Okay, this is where I draw my strength from".'

Henry, who revealed he was nicknamed 'Fat Cavill', was made to feel an outcast from the start and would cry down the phone three times a day to his parents because he was so homesick.

Time for a spot of fresh air: The two appeared in high spirits during their outing

The Man From U.N.C.L.E star previously spoke about the cruel playground taunts he experienced at the private school.

He said one classmate even pointed out his 'rolls of fat' looked like he had 't**s'.

'They used to call me Fat Cavill,' Henry told Men's Fitness in 2015. 'I actually had rolls of fat on me.'

'They also called me a "lemon", a guy who gets nowhere with the girls.'

On playing such iconic roles Henry told the publication he didn't want to be a 'dumpy Geralt' or a 'fat Superman'.

Henry said he doesn't think he's a 'golden god' but is proud of how he has managed to transform his physique and she the pounds.

The fitness enthusiast added he gets an extra boost of confidence when he takes his clothes off 'in front of your significant other' and they tell him "you look great!".
A Virginia politician hoping to be elected as the state's governor has likened himself to George Floyd and Emmett Till, saying that he understands what it is like to be falsely accused, after allegations were made of sexual assault.

Justin Fairfax, the Lieutenant Governor of the state, is one of five Democrats hoping to replace Ralph Northam - who cannot serve a consecutive term - in November.

The candidates, in their first gubernatorial debate, were asked about policing in the state, in light of the current trial in Minneapolis of Derek Chauvin, accused of the murder of George Floyd.

Fairfax, 42, who is black, said he, like them, knew what it was to be falsely accused.

Justin Fairfax, pictured during Tuesday's debate, in which he likened himself to Floyd and Till

Floyd died while being arrested for using a fake $20 bill in May last year. Till was tortured and murdered aged 14 in Mississippi in 1955 for talking to a white woman.

Fairfax is accused by Meredith Watson of raping her in 2000, while Vanessa Tyson says he assaulted her in 2004.

On Tuesday night, Tyson tweeted after the debate: 'Let me be very clear: I DO NOT regret coming forward publicly about the traumatic sexual assault that took place in Boston in July 2004.

'I stand behind my decision to come forward and the statement I made in February 2019. There was NO conspiracy against any elected official.'

Fairfax vehemently denies their allegations.

'The murder of George Floyd was horrific, but it recalls a history in Virginia and in our nation where African-Americans  and particularly African-American men  are presumed to be guilty, are treated inhumanely, are given no due process, and had their lives impacted, and in some cases taken away, in an instant,' Fairfax said.

'In the interest of speaking truth to power here we can't just talk theoretically about what generally happens.

'But we have a real-world example, where I was falsely accused in 2019.'

Fairfax said that the other four on the stage - former governor Terry McAuliffe; former state delegates Jennifer Carroll Foy and Lee Carter; and state senator Jennifer McClellan - all rushed to judgement.

The five candidates for the Democrat nomination to contest November's gubernatorial election: from left - Lee Carter, Terry McAuliffe, Jennifer McClellan, Jennifer Carroll Foy, and Fairfax

Fairfax is pictured in April 2020, gaveling in the Virginia Senate in Richmond

One of Fairfax's accusers on Tuesday night said she stood by her allegations

'Everyone here on this stage called for my immediate resignation, including Terry McAuliffe three minutes after a press release came out,' said Fairfax.

'He treated me like George Floyd, he treated me like Emmett Till, no due process, immediately assumed my guilt.

'I have a son and I have a daughter. I never want my daughter to be assaulted. I don't want my son to be falsely accused.

'And yet this is the real world that we live in.

'And so we need to speak truth to power and be very clear about how it impacts people's lives.'

It is not the first time that Fairfax has compared him to black people killed at the hands of white people.

In 2019, when the sexual assault allegations were first made, Fairfax compared himself to Jim Crow-era lynching victims in a surprise Senate speech, as he resists widespread calls to resign.

Vanessa Tyson (pictured) accused Fairfax of forcing her to perform oral sex in his hotel room during the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004

'I've heard much about anti-lynching on the floor of this very Senate, where people were not given any due process whatsoever, and we rue that,' Fairfax said, referencing legislation the General Assembly passed expressing 'profound regret' for lynchings in Virginia between 1877 and 1950.

'And we talk about hundreds, at least 100 terror lynchings that have happened in the Commonwealth of Virginia under those very same auspices,' he said.

'And yet we stand here in a rush to judgment with nothing but accusations and no facts and we decide that we are willing to do the same thing.'

When he finished his five-minute impromptu speech, stunned senators sat in awkward silence.
ANZAC Day memorial service in Rome will be online on 25 April.

The New Zealand and Australian embassies in Italy will commemorate ANZAC Day this year with a virtual memorial service from the Rome War Cemetery.

The 2021 ceremony can be viewed online from 09.00 on Sunday 25 April on the Facebook pages of the New Zealand Embassy and Australian Embassy to Italy.

Originally held to commemorate members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who fought at Gallipoli in Turkey in world war one, ANZAC Day is now an occasion for the two countries to pay tribute to all members of their armed forces who died in both world wars and in action since.

Designed by Louis de Soissons and located within the Aurelian Walls in the Testaccio district, the Rome War Cemetery contains 426 Commonwealth burials from world war two.

For more details about the cemetery, currently closed to the public, see website.

Photo credit: PicsPointNL / Shutterstock.com.
Hybrid electric vehicles (HEV), which have maximum fuel economy, low emissions and smooth operation, are suited to Vietnams climate and transport conditions, experts say.

Auto manufacturers are trying to make environmentally friendly and fuel-saving cars by pursuing electric models, which are becoming the flagship models of many manufacturers.

Electric vehicles are classified into four groups: HEV, PHEV (plug-in hybrid electric vehicle), BEV (battery electric vehicle) and FCEV (fuel cell electric vehicle). The core parts are an electric engine, battery and electricity storage unit.

According to Bloomberg news, by 2030, the global market will have more than 90 million electric cars, of which HEV and PHEV will become the major line before shifting to BEV and FCEV.

The major difference between HEV and other electric vehicles is that the former does not need plug-in for recharging. Batteries will be charged thanks to energy recalled when the vehicles slow down or break, or by petrol-engine kinetic energy. The additional power will be provided to vehicles when they start, operate or speed up.

Under Vietnams conditions, experts believe that the popularity of BEV wont be high because this depends on road conditions, infrastructure, charge stations and peoples habits. They believe that HEVs will be more suited to Vietnam and have great potential to develop in the near future.

Vivek Vaidya from Frost and Sullivan said at a workshop about the efficiency of hybrid technology on March 30 that hybrids will be the biggest car market segment in the next 10 years in Vietnam, expected to account for 30.4 percent of total cars by 2030.

The expert said no single solution or technology can win in the competition among electrified vehicles. They need to be combined to exist internationally, depending on the specific characteristics and development strategies pursued by every country.

Experts estimate that hybrids in Vietnam accounts for 0.3 percent. Meanwhile, Thailand, which has similar conditions to Vietnam, has 35,000, or 3 percent.

Hybrids save 60 percent more on fuel than petrol cars

Dam Hoang Phuc from the Hanoi University of Science and Technology, reporting about trial of hybrid technology in Vietnams conditions, said HEVs have outstanding advantages over petrol-run cars.

Researchers found surprising results when they compared two Toyota Corolla Cross, one using a petrol engine and the other HEV technology during the first research phase which lasted two months.

On inner-city roads, HEV consumed 5.6 liters per 100 kilometers in rush hours, 4.8 liters in normal hours and 4.6 liters on highways. Meanwhile, the figures were 10.3 liters, 11.2 and 5.7 liters, respectively, for petrol-run cars.

Regarding emission quality, HEVs were permitted to cut 18.5-57.4 percent of the volume of toxic gas emitted into the environment. HEVs brake was also more effective, and there was no difference in feeling when driving.

Since hybrids dont need special infrastructure conditions, they are believed to be suited to Vietnams transport situation and will reduce the impact of climate change in the country.

First hybrids were brought to Vietnam in 2009. At that time, Lexus RX400h and LS600hL were favored by wealthy people. In 2010, Mercedes Benz S400 Hybrid was launched by the manufacturer in the local market.

However, experts say that the biggest barriers are the high selling prices and expensive spare parts. If Vietnam wants to popularize hybrids, it needs to offer more tax incentives. .

Petrol-and-electricity run cars which consume petrol no higher than 70 percent of total fuel now enjoy a preferential luxury tax, 70 percent of internal combustion engine cars of the same types.

VinFast, the Vietnamese automobile manufacturer, has signed an MOU on strategic cooperation with Taiwanese ProLogium Company to manufacture solid-state batteries for electric cars.

Hoang Hiep

Will Vietnam compete with Thailand, Indonesia to manufacture electric cars? In Southeast Asia, Thailand and Indonesia are running a race to become electric car manufacturing centers of the region and the world. Will Vietnam join the race?
A welcoming gesture that was once championed by the Mayor has been SMACKED DOWN by Eastern Jack politicos.



Here's the damage . . .
The delegation of the Ministry of Economy of Armenia led by Deputy Minister Arman Khojoyan is on an official visit to Georgia.

During the visit, the delegation was received by Deputy Minister of Environment and Agriculture of Georgia Otar Shamugia on April 5.

The goal of the meeting, which was attended by President of the National Wine Agency of Georgia Leva Mekhuzla and representatives of the Ministries of Economy and Finance, was to consider the opportunities for the implementation of regional programs and find the paths to solve the problems that emerge during the transport of spirits of brandy and wine from Armenia to other countries through the territory of Georgia, including labeling.

Taking into consideration Georgias practice in overseeing grape harvest and processing, one of the items on the agenda was the development of joint mechanisms to raise the level of oversight over grape harvest and processing.

Initial agreements were reached to solve the problems that emerge during the transfer of the Mskhali, Saperavi and Rkatsiteli grape sorts. The interlocutors also touched upon production of the Kakhet type of grape in Armenia and the geographical name of Kakhet in Georgia.

During the meeting with Georgias Minister of Environment and Agriculture Levan Davitashvili, the Armenian delegation discussed a broad range of issues related to the prospects for bilateral cooperation in various branches of agriculture. The parties also reached certain agreements to take steps to facilitate inspections in the transit zone.

The Armenian delegation also paid a visit to the National Wine Agency of Georgia where they discussed several issues related to viticulture and winemaking. The Georgian delegation is scheduled to visit Armenia soon for exchange of experience.
Zara, 30, arrived with her four children at the Doholo refugee camp. They fled violence in Central African Republic.  UNHCR/Simplice Kpandji

As fighting between government forces and rebel groups approached their home in Central African Republic (CAR), Zara and her husband made a quick decision. She would take the four children to the town of Markounda, a days walk away near the border of Chad, and he would meet them.

Once there, however, Zara, 30, had no time to wait. As armed men drew closer, she took the children across the border into Chad. There, in Doholo refugee camp in the town of Choda, she and her children set up a shelter made from branches and straw  and Zara got straight to work, selling crepes and doughnuts.

I had some savings which I took with me, and I was already selling crepes back in my country, Zara said. I needed to do something to cover the needs of my children, to feed them, put clothes on them. I need to give them a better future, even if we are in exile.

Surviving in exile ( Simplice Kpandji, Edith Champagne, Insa Diatta)

Fighting first erupted in CAR in 2013, after rebels ousted President Francois Bozize. Since then, the country has experienced sporadic but devastating violence that has forced close to 1.5 million (or nearly one in three Central Africans) to flee. The latest violence came after last Decembers presidential and parliamentary elections and displaced 250,000, many within their own country. Others, like Zara, have sought refuge in neighbouring countries such as Chad, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and elsewhere.

See also: Race against time to help thousands of Central African refugees

Despite COVID-19, Chadian authorities have kept the countrys border open and allowed access to asylum to some 8,500 refugees who fled since the beginning of this year.

After two weeks of quarantine in a centre built for the recent influx of refugees, 5,000 refugees were settled in Doholo, a nearby refugee camp already hosting 6,000 Central Africans who fled earlier violence in 2014.

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency is working with the government and partners to relocate thousands of refugees to safer, better equipped sites further from the border. UNHCR also provides refugees with core relief items, such as mats, mosquito nets and kitchen utensils, and helps refugee children enroll in schools.

"I need to give them a better future, even if we are in exile."

Zara, whose eldest daughter helps her after school, earns nearly US$ 1.5 daily, a small sum she supplements by selling sugar, spices and peanuts. It is barely enough for her family to get by, having fled with almost nothing. She would like mats for the family to sit on, as well as larger buckets so they could store enough water to not have to constantly fetch more. She also needs blankets as well shoes and school supplies for the children.

As the conflict drags on, Zara knows she will not be able to return home any time soon.

But until peace comes, she hopes at least to reunite with her husband, so our family can be whole again.
Photo: (Photo : Piqsels)

As of 8 a.m. Tuesday, all New Yorkers aged 16 and up have been qualified to sign up for the COVID-19 vaccine, becoming the county's last major expansion and one that falls weeks ahead of President Joe Biden's deadline for a nationwide release.

Last week, Governor Andrew Cuomo extended coverage to people aged 30 and up, as well as announcing that people aged 16 to 29 will be qualified effective April 6. According to health authorities, the development brings the total number of qualified New Yorkers to about 16 million.

In addition, the State University of New York revealed its aims to provide vaccinations to tens of thousands of university students before they return back for the summer.

Teenagers between 16 and 17 would only be eligible to undergo the Pfizer-BioNTech two-dose shot, as it is the only one that has been licensed for use for those under the age of 18. At government locations, parental consent would be necessary for vaccinations of 16- and 17-year-olds, with certain exceptions, such as teenagers who are married or parents.

READ: COVID-19 Vaccine: What To Do If You Are Vaccinated and Your Kids Are Not



"Now is the time that we have to crush it, once and for all," Governor Andrew Cuomo stated. "And the first step towards doing that is you have to take the vaccine, you have to take the vaccine," he added.

Increased access, according to New York state health authorities, would help reduce COVID-19 outbreaks and hospital admissions, particularly among young people and Generation Xers.

As per the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about one in every five New York state inhabitants has been completely vaccinated against COVID-19 as of Monday. A little more than a third of the population in the state had gotten at least one shot of the vaccine.

ALSO READ: Pfizer's COVID-19 Vaccine Is Safe for Kids, Some Are Skeptical





FAQ about the COVID-19 vaccine for ages

Do kids sign up the same way adults do, or do they go through their pediatrician?

Vaccines are currently unavailable in most office environments. As a consequence, the method of signing up is close to that of an adult. The vaccine is only available to 16 and 17-year-olds with parental consent.

Are the vaccines safe for kids that age?

They are, indeed. Such vaccinations have been assessed using the same testing technique that was used for the initial rollout of such vaccines. The study still is underway, but the findings indicate that once vaccinated, there are fewer possible side effects and a greater chance of being completely shielded against the COVID-19.

When it comes to side effects/risks, are there different concerns for kids vs. adults?

The vaccine's adverse effects are still mild, and the chances are minimal in all groups. The most serious side effects are body cramps including soreness at the site of injection. Children would also need monitoring right after their vaccines, as well as two doses of the Pfizer vaccine.

READ MORE: Why Some Parents Oppose COVID-19 Vaccine for Children
Oh Se-hoon, left, and Park Heong-joon, the candidates of the main opposition People Power Party for Seoul and Busan mayor posts, react at the party headquarters in Seoul and Park's election camp in Busan, respectively, early Thursday morning, after their victory in the by-elections has almost confirmed. Yonhap



By Kang Seung-woo



The main opposition People Power Party (PPP) swept the mayoral by-elections in the nation's two largest cities of Seoul and Busan by a landslide, Wednesday, giving a boost to the party ahead of next year's presidential election and further pushing beleaguered President Moon Jae-in into a lame duck presidency.



The PPP's Seoul mayoral candidate Oh Se-hoon beat Park Young-sun of the DPK at 57.5 percent to 39.18 percent, while in Busan the PPP's Park Heong-joon nearly double the votes of the DPK's Kim Young-choon, at 62.67 percent to 34.42 percent, according to the National Election Commission, Thursday.



The by-elections to choose new mayors of Seoul and Busan took place at 3,459 polling stations across the country.



The mayoral posts of the nation's largest- and second-largest cities have been vacant following the resignation of former Busan Mayor Oh Keo-don in April last year and the suicide of former Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon last July after both of them faced allegations of sexual harassment.



The new mayors of the two cities will assume the job, Thursday, and will serve out the remaining 15 months of the former mayors' four-year terms until June 30, 2022.



In response to an exit poll result which almost confirmed Oh's victory on Wednesday night, an emotional Oh, a former two-term Seoul mayor from 2006 to 2011, refrained from speaking, citing the ongoing vote counting, but the party's interim leader Kim Chong-in said the expected result was reflecting public anger over the Moon administration's irrational governing style.



"I think the elections mark a victory of the people's common sense ... this may be the expression of the people's rage toward the government today," Kim said.





Foreign residents want better support and equity from new Seoul mayor Main opposition party's victory to change political landscape Voters want new Seoul mayor to seek realistic goals The win has brought Oh back to the mayoral post 10 years after he quit the job during his second term in 2011 in protest against the opposition-dominated city council's introduction of a free school lunch program for all students.



His rival, Park Young-sun, told reporters, "I humbly accept the result," after her meeting with the party leadership, virtually conceding the election although official vote counting was not over.



The victory in Seoul and Busan would be the first huge triumph for the conservative PPP after it lost the 2016 general election, the 2017 presidential race, the 2018 local elections and the general election last year, in which it saw the DPK took 180 parliamentary seats or a supermajority in the National Assembly. It will give high hopes to the party in the run-up to the next presidential election, scheduled for March 2022.



Park Young-sun of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea leaves the party headquarters in Seoul, Wednesday, after making a comment accepting her defeat in the Seoul mayoral by-election. Yonhap

Winning the mayoralties, especially in Seoul, was critical for both parties as the result is seen as a litmus test for next year's presidential poll as the capital is home to nearly 10 million of the country's 52 million total population.



However, the DPK was more desperate as it badly needed a win in Seoul, which would have provided a boost to President Moon.



The by-elections took place as the Moon administration and the ruling party have been struggling with public anger and falling approval ratings over their unsuccessful real estate and housing policies. In addition, a land speculation scandal involving public officials at the state-run developer, the Korean Land and Housing Corp. (LH), in the lead-up to the election added fuel to the fire, further pulling down their support.



In response, the PPP staged a campaign calling on voters to pass a judgment on the current government's policy failures.



Also, the by-elections were broadly considered a referendum on the Moon administration's handling of state affairs, with him in his final year in office. The biggest election defeat in five years dating back to the 2016 general election is expected to speed up a lame-duck presidency for Moon.



According to a Gallup Korea survey, last week, Moon's approval rating dropped to its lowest point at 32 percent, along with the disapproval rating at 58 percent, due mainly to his administration's poor real estate policies that have failed to curb skyrocketing housing prices nationwide. According to political analysts, a 30 percent approval rating is seen as the Maginot Line for a lame duck.




MADRID, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The telecommunication and posts regulatory authority (ARPT) of the Republic of Guinea and the company Global Voice Group (GVG) are proud to announce the establishment of a new partnership between the two organizations. Signed in Conakry on 1 April 2021 by the respective directors, Mr Yacouba Cisse and Mr James Gabriel Claude, the agreement provides for the deployment of a leading-edge mobile and digital ecosystem regulation platform in Guinea.





The installation of this digital platform will begin on 1 June of this year. To this day, this is the most ambitious project for the digitization of the country's regulatory tools. It encompasses major aspects such as the regulatory management of mobile and digital identities, interconnectivity, data services and mobile money. The contract stipulates that GVG will be responsible for the deployment of the platform, as well as for the related technical operations, over a five-year period at the end of which the company will transfer the platform's ownership to the ARPT.



The general purpose of the platform is ambitious: promote and sustain trust and inclusiveness in the mobile and digital ecosystem, for the benefit and fulfillment of all Guineans. To achieve this, the platform implements data-driven regulatory technologies that will guarantee regulatory compliance in this ecosystem, as well as the alignment of the latter with the State's digital development and inclusion guidelines.



For GVG, which is honored to have Guineans within its team, this return to Guinea represents an opportunity to contribute to the flourishing of a rapidly developing digital society. As stated by James Claude, the company's CEO: "We enjoy a privileged relationship with Guinea, which was one of the first African nations to deploy our former platforms, ten years ago. We recognize ourselves in the visionary spirit of its leaders, especially those of the ARPT. Our visions truly are in alignment with one another. We are convinced that we can bring tangible answers to the regulator's new requirements in the current and future Guinean telecom environment through our new technologies, which have significantly evolved over time."



For his part, the ARPT's Director General, Mr Yacouba Cisse, highlighted the advent of a digital approach to regulation. According to him, there exists a firm consensus in the African regulatory domain as regards the digitization of regulatory tools. "The ARPT proved to be a pioneer in this area", he recalled, "by digitizing the national and international interconnections as soon as 2009. The new digital tools we are implementing go much further. They cover all aspects of the mobile and digital ecosystem that are likely to affect the Guinean subscribers, who must be protected by an effective regulatory framework."



About Global Voice Group



Founded in 1998, GVG is a world-class provider of ICT and RegTech solutions whose main offices are situated in Spain and South Africa. Through Big Data analytics, GVG helps governments and authorities make a success of their digital transformation and efficiently promote compliance and true inclusiveness in the digital ecosystems. GVG monitors, collects and analyses the data originating from crucial economic sectors, and transforms them into actionable information, thus ensuring that the decision-making process is based on reliable data.





SOURCE Global Voice Group
The second wave of Covid-19 threatens to stall Indias fragile economic recovery and prolong the hardships of the poor and businesses as job opportunities dry up and supply chains are disrupted. After the disaster of 2020, the logical conclusion should have been for the political leadership to set an example by ensuring that pandemic protocols are followed strictly -- especially now that it is clear that the vaccine programme is unlikely to achieve critical mass anytime soon. Yet the businesses of religion and elections, two key super-spreaders, have acquired a curious immunity from the enforcement of Covid-19 protocols.

At the Mahakumbh mela, which officially began on April 1, and in election rallies in Assam and Bengal in particular, the basic norms of mask-wearing and social distancing have visibly been jettisoned. Religion and is infecting in dangerous ways, the top edit points out. Read it here

In other opinion, writers focus on the trajectory of GST, the key weakness in government and why the Mahindra groups new CEO should readjust the conglomerates strategic focus:

Ashok K Bhattacharya explains why the sharp rise in collections in March could be a false indicator of economic revival if further reforms are delayed. Read it here

Gurbachan Singh makes the case for the phased transitioning from the plethora of government welfare schemes, many of them of questionable economic or market rationale, to a good and general policy framework that ensures efficient allocation and pricing of resources. Read it here

Anish Shah, the first non-family member to have oversight of the entire Mahindra group, would do well to streamline the unwieldy expansions and diversifications that have acted as a drag on profitability for some years now, says the second edit. Read it here
Fuel supplier Viva Energy says importing liquefied natural gas at the site of its Geelong oil refinery could avert winter gas shortages forecast to hit Victoria within years after the Andrews government blocked AGLs $250 million import terminal plan.

In a blow to AGLs hopes of developing the nations first liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminal at Crib Point, the states Planning Minister Richard Wynne last week determined the project would have unacceptable effects on the environment in Western Port, which is listed as a Ramsar wetland of international significance.

ASX-listed fuel supplier Viva Energy runs the Geelong oil refinery.

The move leaves Victoria with fewer options to lift gas supplies for homes and businesses after the energy market operator renewed warnings of supply shortages from the winter of 2026.

As one of five remaining companies vying to develop LNG import terminals in Australias south-east, ASX-listed Viva Energy said it was well-positioned to deliver gas from its proposed project in Geelong ahead of projected shortfalls as Victorias legacy gas fields continued declining.
Judge blocks Ohio law requiring burial or cremation of aborted babies

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A judge in Ohio has temporarily blocked the enforcement of a state law requiring abortion clinics to give a proper burial or cremation to aborted fetal remains.

Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Alison Hatheway issued the preliminary injunction on the Unborn Child Dignity Act on Monday, the day before the law was scheduled to take effect.

Without the required rules and forms in place, the plaintiffs will be forced to stop providing procedural abortions because of a real threat of sanctions and penalties independent from criminal prosecution, concluded Hatheway, as reported by The Associated Press.

This substantially interferes with, if not denies, the plaintiffs' patients' rights to access abortion under the Ohio Constitution.

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio, Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio Region, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Ohio and abortion provider Preterm-Cleveland issued a joint statement celebrating the ruling.

Were grateful for this victory for patients and while we can enjoy this moment of relief, there is more work to be done to ensure that abortion remains safe, legal, and accessible to all Ohioans who need it, they stated.

There is a history of aggressive enforcement against abortion providers in Ohio, and this ruling ensures that abortion providers are not vulnerable to severe sanctions, fines and penalties, including potential license revocation, during this interim period as we await final rules and regulations from the Ohio Department of Health.

In late December, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed the bill into law to require that the final disposition of fetal remains from a surgical abortion at an abortion facility be by cremation or interment.

The law also mandated that abortion clinics document in the pregnant womans medical record the final disposition determination made and maintain evidentiary documentation demonstrating the date and method of the disposition of fetal remains from surgical abortions performed or induced in the facility.

The organizations filed a lawsuit against the bill last month, claiming that compliance is impossible because the Ohio Department of Health did not establish or issue rules and regulations on the law. The judges ruling prevents the legislation from taking effect until 30 days after the rulemaking process.

After the bill passed, Mike Gonidakis, president of Ohio Right to Life, issued a statement declaring that in his state, we respect life and we bury our dead.

No longer will the tiny bodies of babies whose lives have been tragically taken through abortion be treated like trash, stated Gonidakis.

The abortion industry, who has for decades tried to convince women that the lives of their children dont matter and should simply be thrown away, will now be unable to hide behind this blatant lie.

In March, Gonidakis responded to the lawsuit, stating that the calloused actions of the abortion industry truly know no bounds.

"The abortion industry's desire to deny the innocent unborn even the right to a proper burial reveals where their allegiances lie: not with basic decency, but with their bottom line, he argued. Regardless of all obstacles thrown in our way, Pro-Life Ohio will never cease our advocacy until the dignity of every precious and irreplaceable human life is both respected and protected under law."
Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos released a statement Tuesday in support of President Joe Biden's infrastructure plan, dubbed the American Jobs Plan.

Months before he steps down as the company's CEO, Bezos said Democrats and Republicans have supported infrastructure plans and now is the right time to get something "that maintains or enhances U.S. competitiveness."

"We support the Biden Administrations focus on making bold investments in American infrastructure," Bezos said in the statement posted on Amazon's website. "We look forward to Congress and the Administration coming together to find the right, balanced solution."

Biden said last week that the infrastructure plan, "are investments we have to make."

The $2 trillion plan aims to not only rebuild the nation's aging roads, bridges, transit and rail service, but support electric vehicles, clean energy and building more than 2 million affordable homes. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the administration would like to see the plan approved by Congress in the summer.

'A long-standing, industry-wide issue': Amazon apologizes for denying that drivers pee in bottles

Amazon Care: Amazon's telehealth service will expand nationwide this summer

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos

Bezos added that the company is supportive of a rise in corporate tax rates, which the plan would do in order to pay for the eight-year spending package. It would raise the corporate tax rate to 28%, eliminating the tax cuts made in 2017 made by President Donald Trump.

Biden singled out Amazon last week during address in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for not playing federal taxes, saying the corporate giant is one of many companies that "use various loopholes where they pay not a single solitary penny in federal income tax."

This is not the first time Amazon has offered support to the Biden administration. Amazon Worldwide Consumer CEO Dave Clark wrote a letter to Biden in January that the company would help with COVID-19 vaccine rollouts.

Follow Jordan Mendoza on Twitter: @jord_mendoza.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Amazon's Bezos supports Biden's infrastructure plan, raising taxes
The consortium buying UAE Exchange and XPress Money owner Finablr has retained leading global professional services firm Alvarez & Marsal Middle East to advise on the going forward operationalizing of the company.



Alvarez & Marsal will also assist with due diligence on future acquisitions as the consortium seeks to build on the acquisition of Finablr, which was agreed at the end of last year. The consortium of Prism Group AG & Royal Strategic Partners announced last month that it is in advanced takeover discussions with BFC Group Holdings, the Bahrain-based remittance firm whose products include BFC Forex and BFC Payments. The deal is expected to be finalised by the second quarter of this financial year.



Alvarez & Marsal previously advised the consortium on current state assessment and business planning relating to the acquisition of Finablr, which also owns leading global remittance and foreign exchange provider Unimoni. Prism Group and RSP also announced today that the first phase of this exercise has been completed.



Alvarez & Marsal will also now advise the consortium on the transformation and expansion of the Finablr management team as it seeks to stabilise the business and put in place ambitious growth plans designed to capitalise on its market-leading position in the GCC region. The consultancy will work with the consortium to implement a turnaround programme that will improve its operational performance and efficiency.



Amir Nagammy, chief executive of Prism Group AG, said: We are pleased to confirm that our initial due diligence on the acquisition of Finablr is complete and we are looking forward to winning regulatory approval for the deal so that we can stabilise the business and implement our ambitious expansion plans. We are delighted to reappoint Alvarez & Marsal to assist with the restructuring of the company and bolster our efforts to appoint a management team that will deliver on the companys potential.



Dr Hamad Al-Ali, CEO of Royal Strategic Partners, said: Alvarez & Marsal will play a key role in helping us to identify and complete M&A opportunities and advise us on the creation of a new corporate structure for Finablr. We have assembled an advisory team that is well-placed to help us realise our plan to build a major regional fintech company, which will play a pivotal role in the regional economy.



Asad Ahmed, Managing Director of Alvarez & Marsal, said: We are looking forward to extending our engagement with the consortium of Prism Group and Royal Strategic Partners and helping it to complete the proposed acquisition of Finablr. The consortium has an exciting vision for the company and we will also be the leading advisors in connection with the due diligence process related to selected acquisitions that the consortium is planning to explore.  TradeArabia News Service


Shots fired across the state line starts our evening update as the local criminal class work to get their biz done before the rain starts.



Read more . . .
EIGHTY FOUR, Pa., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- 84 Lumber, the nation's largest privately held building materials supplier, is launching a recruitment effort to fill immediate openings at its retail and manufacturing locations in the greater Charlotte area. The company will host a Hiring Event on April 14 at the Huntersville location (11628 McCord Road, Huntersville, NC). At the event, job seekers will learn more about the company culture and get the opportunity to be interviewed for nearly 20 open positions in the area that include door shop associate, lumber yard/warehouse associate, driver, and management trainee (MT).

"At 84 Lumber, we have a substantial presence in Charlotte, including an engineered wood products hub, a designer training center, a door shop manufacturing facility, and two retail locations. In all, we employ nearly 200 people in the region," said Rob Woodrow, divisional vice president of the Southeast. "We're growing along with the growth in the construction industry  here in Charlotte and across the nation. We're looking for people seeking a fresh start."

Lumber yard, warehouse, and door shop associates need no prior experience and perform essential functions behind the scenes  from the manufacturing of doors to management of supply shipments and operation of equipment. These associates can expect a starting pay of between $10 and $15 per hour based on experience. Drivers load trucks and deliver materials to customer job sites. Hourly pay for the job is between $12 and $17 per hour depending on experience. MTs hired by 84 Lumber enter an intensive, one-on-one, on-the-job training program that teaches them about the company's business and puts them on a path to become a future leader within the company. Starting compensation for management trainees is more than $40,000 per year.

"We are a family-owned company, which means we are committed to helping our employees build and cultivate a career with us. In fact, 95% of our store managers started in our management trainee program," Woodrow said. "As we see it, 84 Lumber recruits individuals with a can-do attitude, a willingness to work hard, and a desire to learn. Once we find these people and they join the company, we find ways for them to grow with us."

Woodrow added that 84 Lumber expects it might find the right fit from all types of candidates  an individual with no construction experience, military veterans ready to embark on their next career challenge, or people with some previous work experience who seek to redirect their career.

Candidates interested in participating in the Hiring Event are asked to pre-register. To sign up, go to www.84americandream.com/charlotte and complete the form. Once you are registered, you will receive an email from 84 Lumber with the link to apply for the desired position. To save time, candidates are strongly encouraged to apply for positions online before they attend the event.

NOTE: 84 Lumber requires all attendees to wear a mask at the event. Recruits will also be asked to practice social distancing during the Hiring Event. In addition, candidates will be required to undergo a background check and drug screening prior to receiving an offer of employment.

To learn more about 84 Lumber, follow the company on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

ABOUT 84 LUMBER

Founded in 1956 and headquartered in Eighty Four, Pennsylvania, 84 Lumber Company is the nation's largest privately held supplier of building materials, manufactured components and industry-leading services for single- and multi-family residences and commercial buildings. The company operates nearly 250 stores, component manufacturing plants, custom door shops, custom millwork shops and engineered wood product centers in more than 30 states. 84 Lumber also offers turnkey installation services for a variety of products, including framing, insulation, siding, windows, roofing, decking and drywall. A certified national women's business enterprise owned by Maggie Hardy Knox, 84 Lumber was named by Forbes as one of America's Largest Private Companies in 2018 and one of America's Best Large Employers in 2019. For more information, visit 84lumber.com or join us at Facebook.com/84lumber and linkedin.com/company/84-lumber .

SOURCE 84 Lumber

Related Links

https://www.84lumber.com


The study aimed to collect brain activity data from children at age 1 and age 3 in home visits, and researchers managed to obtain the first set of data for around two-thirds of the children before the pandemic struck. Because home visits are still untenable, they extended the study to age 4 and will be collecting the second set of brain data next year instead of this year.

The pandemic, as well as the two stimulus payments most Americans received this past year, undoubtedly affected participating families in different ways, as will this years stimulus checks and the new monthly payments. But because the study is randomized, the researchers nonetheless expect to be able to assess the impact of the cash gift, Dr. Noble said.

Babys First Years is seen as an audacious effort to prove, through a randomized trial, a causal link between poverty reduction and brain development. It is definitely one of the first, if not the first study in this developing field to have direct policy implications, said Martha Farah, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Center for Neuroscience and Society who studies poverty and the brain.

Professor Farah concedes, however, that social scientists and policymakers often discount the relevance of brain data. Are there actionable insights we get by bringing neuroscience to bear, or are people just being snowed by pretty brain images and impressive-sounding words from neuroscience? Its an important question, she said.

Skeptics abound. James Heckman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at the University of Chicago who studies inequality and social mobility, said he didnt see even a hint that a policy would come out of it, other than to say, yes, theres an imprint of a better economic life.

And it still remains a question what the actual mechanism is through which giving parents cash helps childrens brains, he said, adding that targeting such a mechanism directly might be both cheaper and more effective.

Samuel Hammond, director of poverty and welfare policy at the Niskanen Center, who worked on a child allowance proposal by Senator Mitt Romney, agrees that tracking the source of any observed cognitive benefits is tricky. I have trouble disentangling the interventions that actually help the most, he said. For example, policy experts debate whether certain child care programs directly benefit a childs brain or simply free up her caregiver to get a job and increase the familys income, he said.
The Charleston Gaillard Center has appointed as its new CEO a prominent leader in the Manhattan arts world.

Lissa Frenkel succeeds Stephen Bedard, president and CEO of Gaillard Management Corp., who is set to retire in June. He joined the organization in 2016.

Lissa brings a wealth of leadership experience in the performing arts, having served most recently as the managing director of the Park Avenue Armory since 2013," said Charles Way Jr., chairman of the Charleston Gaillard Center. "The entire Gaillard team looks forward to working with her to take the Gaillard to its next level of excellence in service to the entire Charleston community."

The nonprofit, state-of-the-art performing arts center reopened in 2015 after a $142 million renovation.

Frenkel brings to Charleston decades of expertise in New York City institutions, including her position at the Park Avenue Armory, a premier cultural institution producing and commissioning unconventional works in the performing and visual arts in Manhattan.

At the Park Avenue Armory, she was instrumental in building the operating budget from $6 million to $27 million, and in leading the $165 million in capital redevelopment projects that invested in the adaptive reuse and restoration of the building.

Prior to the Armory, Frenkel worked at the Lincoln Center Development Project, a $500 million cultural redevelopment of the Lincoln Center complex in Manhattan that included the expansion of The Juilliard School, Alice Tully Hall and numerous public spaces.

The Boston native earned her undergraduate degree in art history from Emory University and her masters degree in urban planning from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.

The Gaillard Center did not respond to a Post and Courier request for Frenkel's salary in her new role. Bedard, her predecessor, earned an annual salary of nearly $204,000 in the nonprofit's most recent filing with the IRS.

On a recent trip to Charleston one afternoon over iced tea, the effusive leader discussed her enthusiasm for the organization.

"It's still feels new, and I think it's an exciting time. That's something I really thrive in, the energy around the building of a cultural institution and reaching out to a community (to) understand what's needed," she said.

Frenkel, 43, also praised its programmatic efforts over the course of the pandemic, citing streaming series such as "Raising the Volume," "Setting the Stage" and "Lowcountry Listens" as indicative of the Gaillard's ongoing commitment to community engagement and education, and indicating that there could be a home for those efforts to continue.

I look forward to building on the Gaillard Centers successes and leading the Charleston Gaillard Center team to expand the institutions identity as a world-class innovator in the performing arts in the region," Frenkel said.

According to Frenkel, who will be CEO of Charleston Gaillard Center, the public-facing name of Gaillard Management Corp., she will work closely with the Gaillard Performance Hall Foundation, the facility's fundraising entity.

The aim is a threefold focus. She plans to continue to shape the Gaillard brand, to interface with the community in education efforts and to focus on arts programming.

She also noted the Gaillard's role in providing connective tissue for Charleston's many arts organizations. Future efforts could include partnerships that activate other spaces within the facility.

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"I do think that there is a spot for the Gaillard to be a connective tissue with other arts organizations just because of the size of the space," she said.

In addition to the Martha & John M. Rivers Performance Hall, the Charleston Gaillard Center features a 13,137-square-foot grand ballroom, an 8,587-square-foot terrace lawn and a variety of other pre-function spaces. Frenkel said she could envision many public-facing programs, especially on the terrace lawn.

Along with its vital role in the community, both as an arts presenter and through its education programs, the Gaillard also operates as an outward-facing performing arts center that contribute to the city's luster as a world-class arts destination for locals and visitors alike.

It has recently formed a closer administrative partnership with Charleston Symphony, its resident orchestra. It serves as a regular venue for large-scale productions of Spoleto Festival USA, as well as many touring companies.

We are thrilled to have a leader and visionary of Ms. Frenkel's caliber accept our invitation to serve as the Charleston Gaillard Center's new CEO," said Helen Hill, CEO of Explore Charleston.

"Her experience and dynamic leadership style will help advance the Gaillard's programs and elevate its cultural impact. We are excited about the Gaillard's future and look forward to welcoming Ms. Frenkel to the Lowcountry and working with her in the future.

Bedard's retirement in June is among several key leadership changes in the city over the past year.

Other retirements include Nigel Redden, general director of Spoleto Festival USA, with a search underway to fill the position.

At the College of Charleston, Valerie Morris retired as dean of the School of the Arts and was succeeded by Edward Hart, former chair of the music department.

Mark Sloan retired as director and chief curator of Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art. Katie Hirsch now serves as director.

The International African American Museum of Art recently announced that Tonya Matthews was appointed as CEO.

"I  want to thank Steve Bedard for his outstanding leadership in putting the Gaillard on the sound financial and operational footing that Lissa can now build upon, Way said.

Frenkel, who will begin in July, is ready to get building.

"I am thrilled to be joining such a culturally adventurous community in Charleston and at the prospect of partnering with both the Gaillards resident companies and collaborators and the broader Charleston community as a conduit for artistic expression and conversation in the city," she said.

According to Renee D. Anderson, president, CEO and vice chairman of the Gaillard Performance Hall Foundation, the fundraising arm is eager to introduce Frenkel to its community of supporters and patrons.

"She knows well the difference made by the quality of a facility whose visionary promise first inspired our community to build it," Anderson said of Frenkel.

"Combined with her experience in artistic and educational programming, her work with donors and her deep understanding of the importance of arts and culture, her presence will resonate with the citizens of the Lowcountry who contribute so much to Charlestons reputation as a city of the arts.
Spains central Health Ministry is to propose that face masks not be obligatory at all times while on the beach, provided that citizens are bathing, playing sport or resting in a fixed spot, and that a safe distance of 1.5 meters can be maintained from other people. While this suggestion  which will be conveyed to the countrys regional governments  does not specifically mention it, this would mean no face coverings while sunbathing.

The new proposal comes after national legislation was published in the Official State Bulletin (BOE) last week making masks obligatory even when people are alone in open spaces, something that was widely rejected by a number of regional governments. The new draft plan will be discussed this afternoon at a meeting of the Inter-Territorial Council of the National Health System (CISNS), which brings together the central Health Ministry and the regional healthcare chiefs in order to tackle the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The proposed revision means that people will have to wear masks while taking walks, including on the beach, but not while sunbathing

The new text, which comes after Health Minister Carolina Darias told the regions that a revision and update of the regulations would be forthcoming, would mean that people will have to wear masks while taking walks, including on the beach. But it also would exempt people from wearing the coverings when bathing in the sea, lakes, reservoirs, rivers or other natural aquatic spaces, as well as in swimming pools  whether indoors or outdoors.

The law that was published last Tuesday was the result of a decree that was first approved in June 2020, after the first wave of the pandemic, and covering what was dubbed the new normality. The legislation has since made its way through the Congress of Deputies, Spains lower house of parliament, as well as the Senate. It was in the latter chamber that the governing Socialist Party (PSOE) introduced an amendment making masks obligatory even when a safe distance can be kept from other people. The argument behind the change was that with recent evidence of the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus via aerosols, the use of masks cannot be contingent on not being able to guarantee the distance of 1.5 meters.

Sunbathers on Malagueta beach in Malaga on January 29. Alex Zea / Europa Press

The final text of the law stated that masks must be worn in public, in outdoor spaces and in any enclosed space with public use or that is open to the public. As soon as the law was published in the BOE, it was rejected by regional governments. The Balearic Islands, for example, said that it would interpret the law as not being applicable for those on beaches or in natural areas who are alone or with people they live with, but that it would for social meetings in those places, despite what the national legislation states.

The Andalusian regional government also rejected the use of masks while sunbathing on the beach or in swimming pools, and instead recommended the rules used last summer, whereby masks were needed while walking along the shoreline, but not while on the sand in groups of no more than six people.

The government also quickly admitted that the guidelines in the BOE may have been overtaken by todays reality and improved knowledge about the coronavirus. Face masks are mandatory, but we have to see whether the law leaves some room for maneuver, said Health Minister Carolina Darias at a press conference last week.

The use of face masks in public spaces in Spain has been obligatory since May of last year, in open-air spaces and any closed space that is for public use or that is open to the public, where it is not possible to maintain [an interpersonal] distance, according to the BOE published at the time, when the authorities were beginning to deescalate the coronavirus measures that were in place during the initial lockdown.

English version by Simon Hunter.
Vietnamese Ambassador Dang Dinh Quy called for more efforts to implement the 2015 Peace and Reconciliation Agreement in Mali while chairing the UN Security Councils quarterly briefing and consultations on Mali on April 6.

MINUSMA troops patrol in Gao, Mali.

At the meeting held via through videoconference, Quy, Permanent Representative of Vietnam to the UN and President of the UNSC in April, described political progress in Mali as modest and condemned recent attacks against civilians, security forces and peacekeepers.

Expressing his concern over worsening security and humanitarian situations here, he called for strict implementation of international laws on humanitarian and human rights, including not impending humanitarian activities and protecting civilians, especially women and children.

The diplomat also commended efforts of the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), the African Union, and the UN Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS) in assisting peace progress in Mali.

Jean-Pierre Lacroix, UN Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations, provided an update on the political transition, the implementation of the 2015 Peace and Reconciliation Agreement and the security situation in central and northern Mali.

He called in particular for a strengthened response on the issue of terrorism and violent extremism in the Sahel region and strongly condemned the terrorist attack against a MINUSMA camp on April 2, which killed four Chadian peacekeepers and injured 19 others.

Participants commended Malis transitional Government for working to maintain political momentum, pressing authorities to set a timeline for the holding of free and fair elections and calling on all parties to accelerate implementation of the 2015 Peace and Reconciliation Agreement./. VNA
When the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club held the inaugural Zoom forum for mayoral candidates in October, some 1,400 viewers turned in to watch as candidates outlined their visions for governing New York City and saying whether they had smoked marijuana. But nearly six months later, many Democratic mayoral candidates have participated in more than 50 Zoom forums. And as the attendance at many of these forums has waned, so has candidates interest in attending them, a sign that the era of the Zoom campaign could be near the end.

We were the first and everyone wanted to see how they were coming out of the box, said Allen Roskoff, president of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, of the groups initial forum. Afterwards, everybody did their forums and it was important to their audience and all that, but by now, everybody knows the candidates, everybodys been invited to 2,000 forums and if you do another forum, nobodys going to come  except  maybe your membership.

Last week, Dianne Morales announced that she would no longer participate in online forums after having attended more than 50 Zoom forums. She said that the race will not be won on Zoom. Morales said she would shift to meeting face-to-face with voters while making exceptions for forums and debates that prioritize large, diverse audiences held on television or radio.

Since her announcement, many of the Democrats running for mayor told City & State they too would step away from back-to-back Zoom forums  which became their primary way of connecting with voters and members of political and civic groups during lockdown  to start meeting with voters on the streets.

Though Ray McGuire has forums scheduled through the month of April, his spokesperson Lupe Todd-Medina told City & State that the campaign would start reviewing forums on a case-by-case basis, and maintain a plan for attending virtual and in-person events. Ultimately, we have to ensure that Ray is talking to New Yorkers by various means with an emphasis on retail politicking, Todd-Medina said.

Shaun Donovan will limit his Zoom forum attendance as he starts transitioning to more in-person events, his campaign said. These Zoom forums have been helpful as New Yorkers have navigated this pandemic, but the truth of the matter is not all voters have the same time and access to be able to tune into five different virtual forums every day, Donovans spokesperson Jeremy Edwards, told City & State in an email. As such, Shaun will be hitting the streets more often in order to safely connect with voters where they are, which will also include attending a limited number of Zoom forums in the future when and if it makes sense.

Maya Wileys campaign told City & State that she has significantly reduced her online forum attendance and also plans to focus on in-person campaigning. Scott Stringer will continue participating in online forums as his schedule allows, his spokesperson Tyone Stevens told City & State, but he also said Stringer is focusing on in-person campaigning.

Kathryn Garcia and Eric Adams appear to have no gripes about attending Zoom forums. Adams plans to continue attending them as well as in-person events, while Garcias campaign spokesperson Lindsey Green said the former sanitation commissioner considers online forums an important piece of outreach for the campaign alongside in-person campaigning.

It is unclear whether Andrew Yang will continue attending Zoom forums. His campaign did not return City & States request for comment about his plans. Though Yang, possibly because of his front-runner status, has gotten flack for keeping a less robust forum schedule than many of his opponents.

There were forums on Super Bowl Sunday, there were days when there were three forums in a row, said John DeSio, a political observer and frequent critic of Zoom forums, who applauded the candidates shift to in-person campaigning. Im in this business and its incumbent on me to stay on top of these things and even I cant invest the amount of time it takes to be watching all these forums. I can't imagine how an average voter could ever take this time.

But as candidates begin ramping up their in-person campaigning, some think it may be shortsighted to write off Zoom forums because they could risk alienating viewers from overlooked parts of the city. Take Staten Island, where leading candidates spent two hours talking about local issues, including the boroughs limited public transportation options and how they would address the issue of Staten Island being the only borough in New York City without a public hospital. Thats an issue that the forums moderator, College of Staten Island political science professor Richard Flanagan, said is a topic the community wouldnt necessarily have had the opportunity to ask outside of an online forum.

Flanagan worried that moving from online forums will mean moving in the direction of negative campaigning. Its a huge city and theyre getting online with small groups of New Yorkers and so its a little bit like a New England township meeting, Flanagan said. I understand though that it can be exhausting on them and it drains their tank, and I understand Morales decision for sure too. Soon the faucets going to open up on the other side of it, which is just negative campaign ads pretty soon. Thats the next wave and then people will (say), Oh, this stinks too.

In recent weeks, candidates have started to focus their attacks on Yang. Adams accused Yang of never holding a job and a Wiley aide called Yang a mini-Trump who thinks our city is a fun play thing in between podcasts.

But realistically, longtime Democratic political consultant Neal Kwatra doesnt think we will be seeing the end of Zoom forums just yet. There are at least four online forums on the books just this week. An online town hall with several mayoral candidates and members of the United Federation of Teachers on Wednesday, followed by a forum hosted by The Nation. And on Thursday, theres a Warby Parker and Tech:NYC mayoral forumfollowed by an online town hall on supportive housing. I dont think people are going to completely abrogate these Zoom forums 100%, but I think theyre going to play a smaller and smaller role as in-person campaigning, and frankly, more voter contact and paid media starts being deployed, Kwatra said.
CHARLES CITY, Iowa  Two accused barn burglars are now pleading guilty in Floyd County.

Robert Patrick Frazer, 25 of Charles City, and Dylan Michael Jones, 23 of Clarksville, have both pleaded guilty to third-degree burglary and fourth-degree criminal mischief. The two were arrested on January 15.

Law enforcement says they illegally entered a closed farm building in the 2200 block of Walnut Avenue and then, while trying to escape arrest, broke into a locked barn in the 2200 block of Villa Lane.

Frazer and Jones have been sentenced to seven days in jail, with credit for time served, and at least three years of supervised probation. Each man has also been fined $430.
Road Town, Tortola, British Virgin Islands--(Newsfile Corp. - April 7, 2021) - Talon Metals Corp. (TSX: TLO) ("Talon" or the "Company") is pleased to provide an update on the Tamarack Nickel-Copper-Cobalt Project ("Tamarack Nickel Project"), located in Minnesota, USA. The Tamarack Nickel Project comprises the Tamarack North Project and the Tamarack South Project.





Figure 1. 2.18 meters (7.2 feet) of massive sulphide mineralization starting at 191.35 meters (Drill hole 21TK0287)

To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/2443/79623_e3282bc2f4a59bd1_001full.jpg





HIGHLIGHTS

Talon has started exploration within a new target area known as the "CGO West" (See Figure 2A & 2B for details). The area lies approximately 100 meters north-north-east of the Tamarack Nickel Project's resource area and extends for an additional 400 meters.

Talon's first three drill holes within the CGO West target area each successfully intercepted massive sulphide nickel mineralization:

Drill hole 21TK0282 intersected 5.3 meters (17.4 feet) of massive sulphide mineralization , starting at only 135.28 meters. Assays pending.



Drill hole 21TK0285 intersected 35.02 meters (114.9 feet) of nickel-copper mineralization starting at 160.63 meters, including 2.52 meters (8.3 feet) of massive sulphide mineralization , starting at only 193.13 meters. Assays pending.



Drill hole 21TK0287 intersected 9.13 meters (30 feet) of nickel-copper mineralization starting at 184.4 meters, including 2.18 meters (7.2 feet) of massive sulphide mineralization, starting at only 191.35 meters. Assays pending.

The CGO West area is a vast exploration target of 300 x 400 meters of shallow, sheet-like mineralization with the potential to add early mine-life volume to the current mine plan.

"After recently announcing drilling success in the area called CGO East, we now have had preliminary drilling success in a new target area called CGO West, which appears to have identical geology to the CGO East area. We are excited that the first three drill holes in this new target area have all successfully intersected massive sulphide nickel mineralization at shallow depths," said Dr. Etienne Dinel, Vice President of Geology for Talon. "Based upon very limited data, we now interpret the CGO West area to potentially host similar shallow, sheet-like mineralization as has been found within the CGO East area. This is indeed an exciting new development at the Tamarack Nickel Project."

SUMMARY

Talon has started exploration in a new area known as the CGO West (See Figure 2A & 2B for details). Talon is targeting this area to follow-up on previously intercepted mixed massive sulphide mineralization, which could potentially extend for an additional 250 meters (i.e., 400 meters north-east of the Tamarack Nickel Project's current resource area).

So far, Talon has drilled three holes within the CGO West area, and all three holes successfully intercepted massive sulphide mineralization at shallow depths. Assay results for all three drill holes are pending (See Figure 2 for details).

Drill hole 21TK0285 was targeting an off-hole Borehole Electro-Magnetic (BHEM) geophysical model from historic drill hole 13TK0174 and intersected 35.02 meters (114.9 feet) of sulphide mineralization, starting at 160.63 meters, including 2.52 meters (8.3 feet) of massive sulphide mineralization starting at 193.13 meters.

Drill hole 21TK0285 was a 14 meter step-out from drill hole 13TK0174, which intersected 11 meters of 1.18% Ni, 0.6% Cu, 0.03% Co, 0.06 g/t Pd, 0.08 g/t Pt, 0.05 g/t Au (1.49% NiEq1 or 3.98% CuEq2) starting at 170 meters, and 4.59 meters of 2.71% Ni, 1.21% Cu, 0.09% Co, 0.17 g/t Pd, 0.26 g/t Pt and 0.21 g/t Au (3.42% NiEq or 9.13% CuEq) starting at 192.48 meters.

Drill hole 21TK0287 was targeting a BHEM anomaly from new drill hole 20TK0285 and intersected 9.13 meters (30 feet) of sulphide mineralization starting at 184.4 meters, including 2.18 meters (7.2 feet) of massive sulphide mineralization starting at 191.35 meters.

Drill hole 21TK0287 was a 60-meter step-out from drill hole 13TK0174 (described above).

Drill hole 21TK0282 was targeting the far side of a BHEM geophysical model from historic drill hole 13TK0184 and intersected 5.3 meters (17.4 feet) of massive sulphide mineralization starting at 135.28 meters.

Drill hole 21TK0282 was a 52 meter step-out from historic drill hole 07L024, which intercepted 5.04 meters of 1.86% Ni, 0.99% Cu, 0.06% Co, 0.12 g/t Pg, 0.2 g/t Pt, and 0.1 g/t Au (2.41% NiEq or 6.42% CuEq), starting at 133.5 meters.

So far, these results are showing massive sulphide mineralization at shallow depths similar to the CGO East target area (see the Company's press release dated March 31, 2021). Talon is currently following up these drill holes with BHEM surveys to determine the strategy for upcoming targets in order to connect this area into a potential resource for adding early mine-life volume to the current mine plan.

_______________

1 Where used in this press release NiEq% = Ni%+ Cu% x $3.00/$8.00 + Co% x $12.00/$8.00 + Pt [g/t]/31.103 x $1,300/$8.00/22.04 + Pd [g/t]/31.103 x $700/$8.00/22.04 + Au [g/t]/31.103 x $1,200/$8.00/22.04

2 Where used in this press release CuEq% = Cu%+ Ni% x $8.00/$3.00 + Co% x $12.00/$3.00 + Pt [g/t]/31.103 x $1,300/$3.00/22.04 + Pd [g/t]/31.103 x $700/$3.00/22.04 + Au [g/t]/31.103 x $1,200/$3.00/22.04











Figure 2A. Plan view map of the CGO West area in relation to the northern part of the Tamarack Nickel Project's resource area. The map shows the location of the new drill holes 20TK0282, 20TK0285 and 20TK0287, all of which have intersected massive sulphide mineralization at shallow depths.

To view an enhanced version of Figure 2A, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/2443/79623_e3282bc2f4a59bd1_002full.jpg







Figure 2B. Plan view map of the CGO West area in relation to the northern part of the Tamarack Nickel Project's resource area. The map shows the location of mineralized intervals of the holes discussed in this press release.

To view an enhanced version of Figure 2B, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/2443/79623_e3282bc2f4a59bd1_003full.jpg

QUALITY ASSURANCE, QUALITY CONTROL AND QUALIFIED PERSONS

Please see the technical report entitled "NI 43-101 Technical Report Updated Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) #3 of the Tamarack North Project - Tamarack, Minnesota" with an effective date of January 8, 2021 prepared by independent "Qualified Persons" (as that term is defined in National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101") Leslie Correia (Pr. Eng), Andre-Francois Gravel (P. Eng.), Tim Fletcher (P. Eng.), Daniel Gagnon (P. Eng.), David Ritchie (P. Eng.), Oliver Peters (P. Eng.), Volodymyr Liskovych (P.Eng.), Andrea Martin (P. E.) and Brian Thomas (P. Geo.) for information on the QA/QC, analytical and testing procedures at the Tamarack Project. Copies are available on the Company's website (www.talonmetals.com) or on SEDAR at (www.sedar.com). The laboratory used is ALS Minerals who is independent of the Company.

Lengths are drill intersections and not necessarily true widths. True widths cannot be consistently calculated for comparison purposes between holes because of the irregular shapes of the mineralized zones. Drill intersections have been independently selected by Talon. Drill composites have been independently calculated by Talon. The geological interpretations in this news release are solely those of the Company.

The locations and distances highlighted on all maps in this news release are approximate.

Dr. Etienne Dinel, Vice President, Geology of Talon, is a Qualified Person within the meaning of NI 43-101. Dr. Dinel is satisfied that the analytical and testing procedures used are standard industry operating procedures and methodologies, and he has reviewed, approved and verified the technical information disclosed in this news release, including sampling, analytical and test data underlying the technical information.

ABOUT TALON

Talon is a TSX-listed base metals company in a joint venture with Rio Tinto on the high-grade Tamarack Nickel-Copper-Cobalt Project located in Minnesota, USA, comprised of the Tamarack North Project and the Tamarack South Project. Talon has an earn-in to acquire up to 60% of the Tamarack Project. The Tamarack Project comprises a large land position (18km of strike length) with numerous high-grade intercepts outside the current resource area. Talon is focused on expanding its current high-grade nickel mineralization resource prepared in accordance with NI 43-101; identifying additional high-grade nickel mineralization; and developing a process to potentially produce nickel sulphates responsibly for batteries for the electric vehicles industry. Talon has a well-qualified exploration and mine management team with extensive experience in project management.

For additional information on Talon, please visit the Company's website at www.talonmetals.com or contact:

Sean Werger

President

Talon Metals Corp.

Tel: (416) 361-9636 x102

Email: werger@talonmetals.com

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This news release contains certain "forward-looking statements". All statements, other than statements of historical fact that address activities, events or developments that the Company believes, expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements reflect the current expectations or beliefs of the Company based on information currently available to the Company. Such forward-looking statements include statements relating to the timing and results of the exploration program, including assay results, grades, geophysical results and drilling plans; the potential for extended mineralization and increases to the Company's mineral resource; the potential to add early mine-life volume to the current mine plan; and the fact that the CGO West area appears to have identical geology to the CGO East area, with the potential to host similar sheet-like mineralization. Forward-looking statements are subject to significant risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements, and even if such actual results are realized or substantially realized, there can be no assurance that they will have the expected consequences to, or effects on the Company.

Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which it is made and, except as may be required by applicable securities laws, the Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise. Although the Company believes that the assumptions inherent in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and accordingly undue reliance should not be put on such statements due to the inherent uncertainty therein.

Table 1. Drill Holes Discussed in this Press Release

CGO WEST HOLEID Easting (m) Northing (m) Elevation (masl) Azm Dip End Depth (m) 21TK0282 491191.6 5169241 388 318.81 -75.91 166.57 21TK0285 491002.8 5169146 388 338.54 -87.05 218.54 21TK0287 491005.1 5169143 388 35 -75 217.93 07L024 491137.8 5169307 388.2 202 -89.94 177.39 13TK0174 491000.8 5169144 388.74 117.29 -89.66 221.28

Collar coordinates are UTM Zone 15N, NAD83.

Azimuths and dips are taken from survey record at collar unless otherwise noted.

Table 2. Assays of Drill Holes 13TK0174 and 07L024

Drill Hole From To Length Results # (m) (m) (m) Ni

(%) Cu

(%) Co

(%) Pd

(g/t) Pt

(g/t) Au

(g/t) NiEq (%) CuEq (%) 13TK0174 170 181 11 1.18 0.60 0.03 0.06 0.08 0.05 1.49 3.98 13TK0174 192.48 197.07 4.59 2.71 1.21 0.09 0.17 0.26 0.21 3.42 9.13 07L024 133.5 138.54 5.04 1.86 0.99 0.06 0.12 0.20 0.10 2.41 6.42

Length refers to drill hole length and not True Width.

True Width is unknown at the time of publication.

All samples were analysed by ALS Minerals. Nickel, copper, and cobalt grades were first analysed by a 4-acid digestion and ICP AES (ME-MS61). Grades reporting greater than 0.25% Ni and/or 0.1% Cu, using ME-MS61, trigger a sodium peroxide fusion with ICP-AES finish (ICP81). Platinum, palladium and gold are initially analyzed by a 50g fire assay with an ICP-MS finish (PGM-MS24). Any samples reporting >1g/t Pt or Pd trigger an over-limit analysis by ICP-AES finish (PGM-ICP27) and any samples reporting >1g/t Au trigger an over-limit analysis by AAS (Au-AA26).

No adjustments were made for recovery or payability.

NiEq% = Ni%+ Cu% x $3.00/$8.00 + Co% x $12.00/$8.00 + Pt [g/t]/31.103 x $1,300/$8.00/22.04 + Pd [g/t]/31.103 x $700/$8.00/22.04 + Au [g/t]/31.103 x $1,200/$8.00/22.04

CuEq% = Cu%+ Ni% x $8.00/$3.00 + Co% x $12.00/$3.00 + Pt [g/t]/31.103 x $1,300/$3.00/22.04 + Pd [g/t]/31.103 x $700/$3.00/22.04 + Au [g/t]/31.103 x $1,200/$3.00/22.04

Table 3. Quick Lithology Log for Drill Holes 20TK0282, 20TK0285 and 20TK0287

HOLEID FROM (m) To (m) length Quick Log % Sulphides 21TK0282 0 58.6

OB

58.6 123.59

FGO/MZNO 1-5% 123.59 135.28

CGO 2% 135.28 140.58 5.3 MMS 35-70% 140.58 166.57

SED

21TK0285 0 43.74

OB 25% 43.74 160.63

FGO/MZNO Tr 160.63 193.13 32.5 FGO/MZNO 5% 193.13 195.65 2.52 MMS/MSU 70% 195.65 218.54

SED

21TK0287 0 44.5

OB

44.5 184.4

FGO/MZNO tr-1% 184.4 191.35 6.95 FGO/MZNO 4% 191.35 193.53 2.18 MSU 85% 193.53 217.93

SED



To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/79623
A group of the US largest automakers on Monday asked the government for help, as it warned that a shortage of semiconductors in the world could lead to a decrease in the number of cars built this year by 1.28 million units and disruption of production for another six months, Reuters reported.

The US Commerce Department is to devote some of the funding to a proposed bill to expand semiconductor production in the US for the automotive sector, the Alliance for Auto Innovation said in written responses to a government-initiated review.

US President Joe Biden ordered some Federal agency actions to address the chip crisis and is also seeking $37 billion in funding for legislation to supercharge chip manufacturing in the United States.

Some funding should be used to build new capacity that will support the auto industry and mitigate the risks to the automotive supply chain evidenced by the current chip shortage, the groups chief executive, John Bozzella, wrote.

This group includes almost all major automakers with factories in the United States, including General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co, Volkswagen AG, Toyota Motor Corp, and Hyundai Motor Co.

Automakers have been hit particularly hard by the global chip shortage following many canceled orders when car factories stood idle during the coronavirus pandemic.

When they were ready to resume production, they found that chip makers were busy filling orders for the consumer electronics industry.
Indigenes of Nkroful, birthplace of Ghana's first President, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah have called on the Ghana Education Service (GES) to withdraw some history books distorting historical facts about Dr. Nkrumah and the Convention People's Party (CPP).



They urged the GES to call the author of the book entitled "Golden History of Ghana for Basic Six pupils in Ghanaian schools to order.



President of the Esiama Development Association, Mr. Mireku Tumi who addressed a news conference at the Kwame Nkrumah mausoleum at Nkroful attended by the elites and well-meaning sons and daughters of Nzema, registered the displeasure and discomfiture of the family of Dr. Nkrumah and Nzemas about the seemingly demonization of their illustrious son who was the touch bearer of Africa's independence.



Earlier, the youth group went through a protest march from Esiama to Nkroful in red bands and hoisting placards some of which read, "Stop The Attacks on Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah", Dr. Kwame Nkrumah is Africa's Man of the Millennium", "Change Not The History of Ghana", "Respect Nkrumah's Legacies" among others.



The conference noted that the personality of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and the image of Nzemas have been denigrated through false and distorted publication.



The conference said the author and publishers sought to distort world history, mislead future generations and create disunited Ghana.



Page 36 of the History book which was previewed at the news conference, pointed out that "the Convention People's Party (CPP) wasted the resources of Ghana to support some African countries to get independence with 10 million pounds for Guinea to fight for independence from France".



The book added that the Kwame Nkrumah-led administration disrespected traditional authorities.



"The CPP did not respect traditional authorities and made some chiefs breaking away from the party".



According to Mr Tumi, the assertion about assisting other African countries could not have been wasted.



"This is one of the funniest jokes that could be told of Africa for if the extension of financial assistance, strategies and bilateral assistance to African countries to gain their independence was a waste of resources, then our various African leaders will not meet almost every year to think about Africa's development".

Source: GNA









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
A Victorian coroner has thrown her weight behind pill testing following the deaths of four men and a teenage boy from what they thought was MDMA.

They died at separate gatherings across Melbourne between July 2016 and January 2017.

Jordan, James, Ilker and Jason - aged between 22 and 32 - and 17-year-old Anson thought they were taking MDMA and in one case magic mushrooms.

A Victorian coroner has thrown her weight behind pill testing following the deaths of four men and a teenage boy from what they thought was MDMA (stock image)

Instead, they consumed a rare and lethal combination of a synthetic hallucinogenic, 25C-NBOMe, and a stimulant known as 4 Fluoroamphetamine.

Coroner Paresa Spanos wants Victoria's health department to establish a program where people can submit samples of illegal substances to be analysed.

The coroner on Wednesday said this service should operate alongside an early warning network, alerting the public to dangerous drugs circulating.

'If we accept that there are unlikely to be any major changes to drug regulation in the foreseeable future, or any changes in individual's preparedness to use illicit drugs, Victorians will continue to be exposed to the risks of unregulated drug markets,' Ms Spanos said in her inquest findings.

'There is broad support for a drug checking service and drug early warning network as evidence-based interventions, at least among those with knowledge and expertise in harm minimisation.'

Jordan, 22, was pronounced brain dead on Christmas morning in 2016, three days after losing consciousness at a friend's house.

The next month, 23-year-old James jumped off his CBD Melbourne balcony after taking the drugs and telling his friends 'f*** this'.

Anson, 17, suffered seizures after taking the drugs with friends in July 2016 and died in hospital. Ilker, 32, died in similar circumstances about five months later.

Five people consumed a rare and lethal combination of a synthetic hallucinogenic, 25C-NBOMe, and a stimulant known as 4 Fluoroamphetamine (stock image)

Jason, 30, stopped breathing when he took drugs with his girlfriend in January 2017.

The health department in its submission to the inquest said there were no plans to trial pill testing at public events.

Victoria Police re-iterated its opposition to the proposal, saying it could imply authorities condoned drug taking.

A parliamentary committee in 2018 recommended an early warning system for illicit drugs and pointed to the benefits of a testing service.

Ms Spanos noted the Victorian government had not been receptive to these recommendations.

A NSW coroner in 2019 recommended the introduction of pill testing following six MDMA-related deaths at music festivals in that state.

The ACT allowed consecutive trials at Canberra's Groovin the Moo in 2018 and 2019.

However, state premiers have continued to oppose pill testing.

Lifeline 13 11 14

beyondblue 1300 22 4636
KABUL  Foreign Minister Mohammad Haneef Atmar met with Ambassador Stefano Pontecorvo, NATO Senior Civilian Representative for Afghanistan.

Expressing gratitude for NATO's continued cooperation with Afghanistan and its support for the peace process, the Foreign Minister welcomed the decisions taken at recent meetings of NATO Foreign and Defense Ministers on Afghanistan and stressed the need for further cooperation and coordination between Afghanistan and NATO.

Referring to the upcoming Afghan Peace Talks in Turkey, both sides stressed the importance of cooperation and joint efforts between Afghanistan and international partners, including NATO. They underscored the need for continued consultations and exchanges for the success of the peace talks.

During the meeting, Mr. Pontecorvo assured Mr. Atmar of NATO's continued cooperation with Afghanistan's security and defense forces in the fight against terrorism.
"It's an incredible honor to be named U.S. Bartender of the Year. This success is not only my own, it's a result of the amazing community around me, my World Class Collective," said Adam Fournier. "After entering my first USBG Presents World Class sponsored by Diageo program five years ago, it has been part of my life ever since. The changes this year made it one of my favorite iterations of the competition because it allowed me to watch all of the amazing work that went into it. The level of talent from my fellow competitors was truly inspiring and helps me appreciate this win even more and want to represent them well as I continue my journey to the Global Finals."

The USBG's mission is to unite the hospitality industry to advance professional bartending, and the World Class program in the U.S. brings together bartenders from across the country to elevate the craft. The ninth year of this acclaimed program adapted to the realities of today's climate and allowed each competitor to virtually showcase their incredible depth of knowledge and impeccable craft. The regional finals kicked off with the "Underground Agriculture" challenge that tested competitors' bartending and storytelling skills. The "Batched and Ready To-Go Challenge" had competitors create and demonstrate batched cocktails for at-home enjoyment. The Top 10 finalists competed in the "Menu Challenge" where they created a menu of seven cocktails for an assigned bar or restaurant. Lastly, the "Speed Round" had the Top 5 finalists preparing five classic cocktails in under five minutes using spirits from the Diageo Reserve Portfolio.

"The evolution of this USBG World Class program has been amazing to witness, especially this year as we hosted the first-ever virtual edition of the competition," said Aaron Gregory Smith, Executive Director of the USBG. "The growing skill, dedication and integrity in this group leave me in awe and we are so proud of the success and support that this program helps to provide for the bartending community."

Cassandra Ericson, Manager of On Premise Channel Marketing at Diageo North America adds, "The growing excitement and passion in the this tight-knit community is inspiring. As a past competitor in the USBG Presents World Class sponsored by Diageo program, it's astonishing to see how this program has evolved and been able to adapt to meet the needs of the industry today. The spirit and dedication we see in this competition is unparalleled."

Wondering what it takes to earn the title of U.S. Bartender of the Year? See below for some of Adam Fournier's recipes created during the competition that helped take him to the top.

Concordia

Created by 2021 U.S. Bartender of the Year Adam Fournier

Ingredients:

1 oz. Tanqueray 10

1 oz. Fino Sherry

1 oz. Almond Milk

1 oz. Concord Grape Juice

0.75 oz. Saba

0.5 oz. Fresh Lemon Juice

Preparation:

Combine all ingredients in a shaker tin. Whip with three ice cubes. Double strain over crushed ice in a 13.25 oz. Poco style glass. Garnish with a mint plouche and straw. Cap with more crushed ice and finish with three carbonated grapes.

Ideal Serve: 13.25 oz. Acopa Poco glass

Pinacillin

Created by 2021 U.S. Bartender of the Year Adam Fournier

Ingredients:

1.5 oz. Johnnie Walker Black Label

0.25 oz. Honey Syrup (2:1)

0.25 oz. Ginger Syrup (1:1)

0.5 oz. Fresh Lemon

0.5 oz. Fresh Pineapple Juice

Preparation:

Combine all ingredients into a cocktail shaker. Shake with ice until fully diluted and aerated. Double strain over fresh ice. Using a spray bottle, mist the top of the drink with Lagavulin 16. Garnish with two trimmed pineapple fronds.

Ideal Serve: Rocks glass

Cocktails created for the duration of this year's competition can be found on Instagram using the handle @WorldClassUS. When showcasing your own mixology or sampling award-winning recipes from this year's competitors, USBG World Class Sponsored by Diageo reminds you to do so responsibly.

For additional information about the program and for details on the upcoming global competition, follow hashtags #worldclassus, #worldclass2021 and #roadtomadrid on Twitter and Instagram, and check us out online at http://worldclass.usbg.org and http://usbg.org.

About USBG

Founded in 1948, the United States Bartenders' Guild is a non-profit professional society of bartenders and other hospitality professionals uniting the hospitality community to advance professional bartending. The USBG believes that every US bartender achieves greater personal and professional success by connecting to diverse local and national hospitality communities. Through our network of over 40 communities nationwide, the USBG connects members with peer-to-peer learning, expert instruction, community service projects, and skills-based competition.

About Diageo

Diageo is a global leader in beverage alcohol with an outstanding collection of brands including Johnnie Walker, Crown Royal, Bulleit and Buchanan's whiskies, Smirnoff, Ciroc and Ketel One vodkas, Casamigos and Don Julio tequilas, Captain Morgan, Baileys, Tanqueray and Guinness.

Diageo is listed on both the New York Stock Exchange (DEO) and the London Stock Exchange (DGE) and our products are sold in more than 180 countries around the world. For more information about Diageo, our people, our brands, and performance, visit us at www.diageo.com. Visit Diageo's global responsible drinking resource, www.DRINKiQ.com, for information, initiatives, and ways to share best practice.

Follow us on Twitter for news and information about Diageo North America: @Diageo_NA.

SOURCE Diageo

Related Links

https://www.diageo.com/


Williamstown DIRE Committee: Police Discussions Meant to Help Department

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.  Members of the town's racial equity committee Monday emphasized that calls for accountability in the town's police department are not attacks on the town's police officers.

Rather, they said it is an effort to support law enforcement officers.

"I feel like what we have all been trying to work toward here is that police officers who are not doing all of these things we've been shocked and dismayed and violated by are supported," Aruna D'Souza said. "And part of that support is also making sure their colleagues are acting to the highest standards and their colleagues aren't doing things that bring the whole department down."

D'Souza, who is serving on the search committee for an interim chief of police, told her colleagues on the Diversity, Inclusion and Racial Equity Committee that she realizes her personal beliefs about policing in America are "at the far end of the spectrum," but that does not mean she is attacking the members of the Williamstown Police Department.

"Whether or not people want to believe it, all of us are working under the assumption that no one wants harm to come to the people who work for this town in the Police Department or anywhere else," D'Souza said. "We're all, actually, working toward making their work environment better, so every police officer who says, 'Not all police officers are like that,' those are the police officers we're working to help or working to assist.

"It's important for me to say that because I think my comments have been assumed to be uncaring, I would say, and they're really not."

The DIRE Committee has talked extensively about the issues arising from a federal whistleblower discrimination lawsuit against the town by a WPD sergeant and, more recently, the revelation that members of the department illegally searched town residents' information on the state's Criminal Justice Information System database.

The committee's meetings also have been a forum for residents who have been angered and frightened by the allegations in the lawsuit , calling for the removal of the police chief and town manager, both of whom have either left or are leaving the town's employment in the fallout of the lawsuit.

Some of that discussion created a backlash, both from the members of the police force -- the union last fall sent the Select Board a letter critical of the DIRE Committee -- and from members of the public, who have attacked the committee on social media.

D'Souza said she is not a member of the Facebook group where much of that criticism has occurred, but she is aware of a widely read post by a former WPD employee who accused the DIRE Committee of taking an "abhorrent" approach to policing issues and talked about the stress department personnel are under.

"I think the person wrote in order to say that therefore everyone should lay off the police and not criticize them, which I don't agree with, but what seems important as the [town's] needs assessment is happening is: If there are police officers who are under mental health stress because of the work they do, the police union or the police department, the town should be making resources available so they are able to deal with that stress," D'Souza said. "I don't think, 'Our jobs are really hard, so, therefore, never criticize us,' is the logical way of thinking. But, 'Our jobs are really hard and we need to address mental health issues that result from that,' is the way of dealing with it."

DIRE Chair Mohammed Memfis agreed with D'Souza and said the issue she was raising came up in a recent meeting between several members of the committee, acting Police Chief Mike Ziemba and Berkshire County District Attorney Andrea Harrington.

"Everything is sort of painted in that mutually exclusive light, when really both of these things can be the case and both of these things can be problems," Memfis said. "We have to be honest with ourselves in saying that these are issues we should address, and let's support each other in trying to address these real issues.

"We have pointed to a list of concerns regarding the WPD, and something that came up in the meeting is some of the personal issues that officers have experienced. Both of those things are the case. That does not mean that what people have to do is say, 'This set of issues are the right issues or the true issues, and the other is not.' They both are. This is our town that we're talking about, which means, at the end of the day, our interest should be on making our town better, which means addressing all of the issues that we point to."

Bilal Ansari, another frequent critic of actions taken by WPD members, said one of his concerns might surprise some people.

"A few weeks ago, I heard there was a list of 20 people who were searched, and I called Mike Ziemba and said, I have two things that I need to ask you," Ansari said. "I think you know one of them. But the first thing I want to ask you is: How are you doing? Because you have to be going through a lot of stress right now, and I'm worried about your health. Are you taking care of your heart? Are you walking enough? I can't imagine, as a human being, going through the amount of stress in that department.

"I don't say this to a lot of people, but my father was a cop. He was hurt on the job and retired hurt, but he was a cop. You can say what you want about my voice and being heavy-handed, but, ultimately, as Aruna said, it is for the upliftment of that department. Those officers are human beings."

The town did draw some criticism in Monday's meeting for its lack of transparency around the CJIS violations, but the criticism was framed in terms of an overreliance on advice of the town's legal counsel rather than an effort to willfully withhold information.

Andrew Art, who in the past has praised Ziemba for going above and beyond what was required legally for notifying residents of the illegal searches, brought up a response received from the town when he inquired about what specific items of his personal information were accessed.

"I requested the dates and times I was searched, and that was denied," Art said. "Part of the denial was there's no internal affairs investigation ongoing. That left me confused. I think it might be legal semantics about what's been happening."

Art, a lawyer, said the response to his inquiry raised transparency concerns.

"The approach of saying, 'There's no internal affairs investigation,' reads to me like, 'We're not going to be transparent unless you file a complaint that triggers an internal affairs investigation,' " Art said. "To me, that's not a signal that signals transparency. As a lawyer, I get it, but it's not the transparent approach."

Art also said that requiring a formal complaint to get more information does not help anyone, including the acting chief, members of the department or residents who would have the onus to take an additional step to find the truth.
Residents inspect the damage at a village hit by flash flood in East Flores, Indonesia, on April 4, 2021. (Ola Adonara/AP Photo)

Australia Ready to Provide Emergency Aid to East Timor

Australia is on standby to offer emergency aid to East Timor after the worst floods in 40 years have ravaged the island country and left at least 34 dead and thousands displaced. The natural disaster comes as East Timor prepares for its rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine after receiving its first batch on April 5.

We stand ready to assist the government and people of Timor-Leste (East Timor) in response to further requests for assistance, a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) official told AAP on April 5.

Australia and NGO (non-governmental organisation) partners on the ground to whom we provide funding have given support to evacuation centres.

We are supporting access to clean water for the centres through our existing development program.

Torrential rains from Tropical Cyclone Seroja has brought flash floods, landslides, and strong winds to the southern Indonesian archipelago, with the total death toll in the region nearing 200.

East Timors Deputy Prime Minister Jose Reis said that the cyclone had caused the worst flooding the country has seen in 40 years, with powerful flood currents continuing to flow through villages in the Malaka district on Timor island, even though the rain had stopped. Some residents hauled themselves to their roofs to escape the rising floodwaters.

We had to dismantle the zinc roof. We went out through the back door and pulled ourselves out with a rope, Agustina Luruk, 36, told Reuters as she and her three daughters waited to be evacuated by the side of a muddy road.

In a statement, East Timors president Francisco Guterres Lu Olo described the floods as a great calamity and said authorities were still assessing the impact of the floods.

We were already experiencing a calamity due to COVID-19, and it has now been compounded by this one, which has brought so much pain to our peopleespecially to those who have not survived.

Currently, the Australian governments PARTISIPA program is on the ground in East Timor, working to provide clean drinking water to evacuation centres, DFAT noted in a post on Twitter on April 6.

 is working with the Government of Timor-Leste to support their emergency flood response. Through s development program, PARTISIPA is providing access to clean water for evacuation centres. PARTISIPA works to support local infrastructure, development & economic growth https://t.co/rso2KP8uTY  DFAT (@dfat) April 6, 2021

DFAT also said that Australias Defence Cooperation Program had provided emergency backup power to East Timors COVID Crisis Centre.

According to a statement, the first round of vaccinations was planned for 20 percent of the population, with front line workers initially scheduled to have their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine on April 7.

East Timor government minister Fidelis Leite Magalhaes told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that the country would most likely ask for assistance soon.

The government would request assistance from friendly countries, especially Australia, considering its closeness and available resources and experience in disaster management, after conducting its assessment of the damage, he said.

The Australian embassy and its agencies are working very hard side by side with the Timorese government and its people.

Shadow Minister for the Pacific, Pat Conroy, added that there was a clear need for an emergency response in East-Timor to help with the recovery.

The (Australian) government needs to respond to any requests for assistance from Timor-Leste, he told the ABC. We owe a debt of gratitude to the people of Timor-Leste that we can never fully repay.

The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) said in a post on Twitter that cyclone Seroja is expected to track southwest over the next few days to open waters north of Western Australia. They warned those living in northwestern Australia that the storm could approach far west Pilbara or Gascoyne coast towards the weekend and advised them to keep up to date with any weather warnings.

Tropical #CycloneSeroja formed near Kupang, Indonesia this morning. It will drift SW over the open waters north of WA and intensify. Itll likely remain over water, but people in the W Pilbara are advised to stay up to date with the latest information at https://t.co/31Vz5uvhx2 pic.twitter.com/q0mzn1dKbF  Bureau of Meteorology, Western Australia (@BOM_WA) April 5, 2021

AAP contributed to this report.
A longtime Russell-area lawyer, who had been sentenced to 15 months of house arrest for tax evasion, has been disbarred.

A longtime Russell-area lawyer, who had been sentenced to 15 months of house arrest for tax evasion, has been disbarred.

Brian Langford was found guilty last year of four offences under the Law Society of Manitobas code of professional conduct, including three counts of failing to discharge his responsibilities with integrity and one count of discouraging public respect for the administration of justice.

Langford, 76, had sought a reprimand, arguing he had been punished by the court following his 2016 conviction for tax evasion, which included a $99,000 fine.

While Langfords actions had no effect on his clients, he "has failed to act with integrity for years," and "just as importantly, is unwilling to admit his failure," a law society panel said in a recent written decision.

Langford was found guilty in provincial court of evading nearly $100,000 in taxes over nine years and filing fraudulent GST returns. Langford, who admitted he hadn't paid his taxes, argued the collection of income tax was unconstitutional, likening it to "money laundering" and compared the federal government to Adolf Hitler.

According to an agreed statement of facts provided to court prior to his 2016 conviction, Langford made $622,820 from 2002 to 2010, but filed income tax returns claiming he had no income, resulting in unpaid taxes of $99,053 and $39,647 in GST.

Langford claimed the federal government had no right to collect taxes it later returned to Manitoba in the form of transfer or equalization payments, arguing the federal government can only use tax dollars to pay for federally funded responsibilities.

Provincial court Judge Catherine Carlson said accepting Langfords "outdated" argument would lead to disparity among the provinces in terms of the services they could provide.

"For the citizens of a poorer province to have comparable services to those in a richer province, they would have to be subject to significantly higher taxes, which would create significant inequality amongst Canadians," Carlson said at the time.

Langford repeated the same arguments at his 2020 disbarment hearing, the law society panel said.

"Despite the fact that Mr. Langford has no formal discipline history he knowingly filed false income tax returns for nine years," the panel said. "He never attempted to file a formal and legal dispute as to the constitutionality of the income tax system. Rather, he simply waited to see if he would ever be caught. When he was, he put forward a defence  that was summarily rejected by the courts  and yet he continued to repeat the same discredited position to the panel."

Langford was ordered to pay $10,000 in hearing costs.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca
Voters stand in line during the parliamentary election, outside the Inussivik arena, in Nuuk, Greenland, April 6, 2021 - Reuters

A Chinese-backed plan to exploit one of the world's biggest supplies of rare earth minerals in Greenland faced the axe on Wednesday after the country elected a new government opposed to the project.

A snap parliamentary election triggered on Tuesday over opposition to the proposed Kvanefjeld mine in southern Greenland has handed victory to the Inuit Ataqatigiit party, a left-wing and pro-environmental party that has pledged to stop the mine going ahead.

While the party's main concern is over the mine's potential pollution risks, the election was being watched closely by Western diplomats, amid fears about China's role in the project.

The Australian firm that backed the mine, Greenland Minerals, is part-owned by Shenghe Holdings, a Chinese firm with close ties to the Beijing government. Western governments worry that Beijing may be seeking to monopolise Greenland's rare earth mineral deposits - giving it control over what is fast becoming the world's most valuable resource.

The minerals' supermagnetic, superconductive properties are used in everything from i-Phones and solar panels through to hybrid cars and weapons systems.

With nearly all votes counted as of Wednesday morning, the Inuit Ataqatigiit (IA) party had taken 37% of votes, unseating the ruling social democratic Siumut party which secured 29% of votes, according to official results.

"The people have spoken," IA leader Mute Egede, 34, told broadcaster DR when asked about Kvanefjeld. "It won't happen."

The Siumut party had broadly backed the mine project, which has already seen years of local debate, and extensive pledges from Greenland Minerals that environmental concerns will be fully addressed. The firm has already spent more than $100 million preparing the mine.

The chairman of the Inuit Ataqatigiit party, Mute Egede in Greenland's capital Nuuk, on April 6, 2021 - AFP

Supporters of the project fear that putting it on hold will scare off other mineral investors from Greenland, squandering much-needed investment for its fragile economy. Its 56,000 population currently depends largely on fishing.

Story continues

The IA party does not claim to be against mining on principle, but opponents say the IA's interest in more artisan, small-scale mining for jewellery items such as rubies is economically unrealistic.

Aki-Matilda Hegh-Dam, an MP with the Siumut party, who describes IA as a "near communist" movement, told The Telegraph: "They say they want mineral exploration, but they don't seem to have any kind of project that they are open to. Jewellery is a nice idea, but how much revenue is that going to bring?"

The election comes in the wake of former US President Donald Trump's 2019 offer to "buy" Greenland from Denmark, a move that reflected a belated re-appreciation of Greenland's strategic importance.

Greenland is considered the last great untapped rare earth reserve, and is estimated to hold up to 25 per cent of total resources.

China currently dominates the market in rare earth minerals. Roughly 50 per cent of all global supplies are mined in China, and Chinese firms supply the European Union with 98 per cent of its needs, and the US with 80 per cent.

Mr Trumps successor, Joe Biden, has also ordered a review of America's dependence on Chinese rare-earth supply chains.

John Mair, the chief executive of Greenland Minerals, said that public hearings in Greenland to discuss the mine had "lacked the normal due process" due to the early election.

"This unfortunately created a void that was filled with a wave of misinformation," he added. He declined to comment on the election outcome until a new government had been formed.

Dr Dwayne Menezes, managing director of the Polar Research and Policy Initiative, a London-based international think-tank, told The Telegraph that Greenlanders were worried not just about pollution but the social impact of large groups of incoming mine workers.

"A large influx of migrant workers...would dwarf the tiny local community, presenting a new set of challenges," he said.

"However, there is also the risk that if the operation were to be paused for an indefinite period or shut down completely, it would send signals to the world that are counter-productive to what IA might actually want - that IA is against economic development in general, or that Greenland is now closed to mining."
Authorities are searching for a teen sought in a weekend slaying in Montgomery.

Matthew Clayton, aka Lil Sam, is charged with capital murder, according to Central Alabama Crime Stoppers. He is wanted in the Saturday, April 3, death of 30-year-old Jamarcus Jordan.

He is the second person charged in Jordans death. On Monday, police announced the arrest of 18-year-old Rontavious Managan on two counts of capital murder.

Rontavious Managan (Montgomery County Jail)

The deadly shooting happened just before 6:30 p.m. Saturday on Troy Highway near Eastern Boulevard. Jordan was found wounded and taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.

According to court records in Managans case, the suspects fired shots from a vehicle into Jordans vehicle. The victim was struck multiple times.

Anyone with information on Claytons whereabouts is asked to call Montgomery police at 334-625-2832 or 334-314-9271. Tipsters can also contact Crime Stoppers 24-hour tip line at 334-215-STOP (7867) or via the P3-tips app.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom is likely to face a recall election this year, putting him into a uniquely high-risk, high-reward situation. He would be only the fourth governor tested by a recall vote in U.S. history, and it would come just as he'd normally be gearing up for a reelection campaign.

The downside risk is quite evident. Newsom could lose his governorship and his political career, like his predecessor Gray Davis in 2003. He could also lose his governorship but stage a comeback, as North Dakota Gov. Lynn Frazier did by winning a Senate seat in 1922  a year after he was recalled.

Alternatively, Newsom could keep his job but greatly underperform his 62% showing in 2018, thereby making him potentially vulnerable in his presumed reelection race. This weakness could entice a strong Republican challenger to take him on, or even a strong Democrat.

And then there's the path pioneered by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican whose star rose after he survived a recall in 2012: Newsom could emerge from a recall race as a newly powerful force in his state and the national Democratic Party.

Big win would make Newsom golden

California Gov. Gavin Newsom

Many recall races are blowouts. For example in 1995, California Republicans targeted Democratic Assemblyman Michael Machado for a recall after he squeaked into office. Machado won the recall with 63% of the vote. On the other side of the aisle, Democrats went after Republican state Sen. Jeff Denham in 2008  his victory margin increased by more than 15 percentage points in the recall.

If Newsom joins these earlier colleagues and wins big, he might effectively scare away serious Republican contenders and big money GOP donors who may have been thinking about trying to unseat him in 2022. The impact down ballot could be significant and have serious nationwide implications. A strong performance for the whole ticket would help the Democrats keep Vice President Kamala Harris old Senate seat (in which they are already heavily favored), their supermajorities in the legislature and their stranglehold on the rest of the state government.

Story continues

More important, a strong showing by Newsom could help the Democrats keep control of the House of Representatives.

As unbelievable as it sounds, although President Donald Trump lost the state by 29 points, 2020 was actually a good year for Republicans in California. After a drubbing in 2018, when they lost seven seats, Republicans managed to gain four congressional seats (one in a special election that they retained in November). These victories included three races in which Republican House challengers beat Democratic incumbents for the first time since 1994.

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The gains helped Republicans significantly cut into the Democrats' House majority, which is now one of the smallest in congressional history. The Republicans are counting on the traditional off-year out-of-power party bounce, plus gains from the once-a-decade reapportionments and redistricting in Republican-dominated states, to recapture control of the House and oust Nancy Pelosi from the speaker's chair. Democrats would have virtually no chance to enact their legislative priorities in the second half of President Joe Bidens term.

But a poor showing in California in 2022 could prove fatal to the Republicans' national hopes. California is expected to lose a House seat when district maps are redrawn after the 2020 Census, and the GOP could lose some or all of its four-seat gain. A booming Newsom victory and a poor performance by the Republican gubernatorial nominee might sap the energy from these congressional races. In a close enough battle, Californias congressional seats alone could be enough to keep the Democrats in power.

Unlimited fundraising in a recall race

The recall law may actually help Newsom here. Campaign finance laws for recalls are very different from regular elections. In California, a recall is divided into two actions, both taking place on the same day. There is an up-or-down vote over whether Newsom should stay, and also a replacement race featuring every candidate who may run (Newsom is barred from seeking to replace himself). In 2003, there were 135 people in that race to succeed Davis.

The up-or-down recall vote is not considered a candidate election. It is instead treated as a ballot measure. As a result, campaign finance limits  a $32,400 cap on what an individual or entity can give to a single candidate  do not apply. Newsom can raise unlimited funds from rich donors or business entities. The 2012 Wisconsin gubernatorial recall, which operated under similar fundraising rules, saw numerous individuals give a quarter of a million dollars each.

California is a failed state: How do we know? They're moving to Arizona in droves.

The bigger dollar amounts can help Newsom  who frankly has more to offer donors, because a Republican will not gain control of the California legislature  overwhelm the field. He will effectively be running for office for two straight years, with this additional campaign spending allowing him to keep his name and face in front of the public. This extra spending could be another factor in sapping Republican enthusiasm in 2022.

If the recall gets to the ballot, as seems likely, Newsom is entering a real danger zone. His public life could be over. But if he pulls it off, Newsom could become a Democratic Party hero.

Joshua Spivak, a senior fellow at Wagner Colleges Hugh L. Carey Institute for Government Reform, is the author of the Recall Elections Blog. Follow him on Twitter: @RecallElections

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: Gavin Newsom: California recall win would make him a Democratic hero
He's currently enjoying a well-deserved getaway to his stunning eco getaway cabin in Sydney's Kangaroo Valley.

But Larry Emdur's delightful escape was cheekily interrupted on Wednesday, as a wild wombat rudely did his business on the shocked host's doorstep.

The 56-year-old documented the incident on Instagram, where he exclaimed: 'Seriously buddy??? Theres absolutely nowhere else for you to do a poo? You gotta do THAT on my doorstep?'

Funny encounter: Larry Emdur is currently enjoying a well-deserved getaway to his stunning eco getaway cabin in Sydney's Kangaroo Valley - but he encountered a very pesky guest on his doorstep

He added the funny hashtags 'cute but s**ty' and 'up close and personal'.

Fans in their masses were quick to comment on the hilarious video, with one writing: 'That's gold!'

'Think of it as wombat renovation. He saw a need to add something to the door step to give it character,' another quipped, while a third added: 'It's meant to be lucky!'

Larry and his wife Sylvie own the eco getaway cabin, purchasing it for $2.15million in October last year.

Cheeky: The shook 56-year-old documented the incident on his Instagram page, where he exclaimed: 'Seriously buddy??? Theres absolutely nowhere else for you to do a poo? You gotta do THAT on my doorstep?'

Hilarious: He added the funny hashtags 'cute but s**ty' and 'Up close and personal'

It comes after Larry was confirmed as the new host of Seven's top-rated afternoon game show, The Chase, after the show's previous presenter, Andrew O'Keefe, was dumped by the network after a domestic violence charge was brought against him.

Following the news, Larry told The Daily Telegraph: 'I've had a love affair with quiz shows for most of my working life, and the opportunity to host one of the TV worlds greatest formats is incredibly exciting.'

The TV presenter - who will keep his 'dream job' on The Morning Show alongside Kylie Gillies - also spoke out about Andrew's departure from the show.

Nice digs! Larry and his wife Sylvie bought the eco getaway cabin for $2.15million in October last year

Moving forward: After news broke that he would be replacing Andrew O'Keefe on The Chase, Larry said: 'Its a tumultuous time, but shows move on and productions move on and over the years many hosts have been replaced with many other hosts'

He said: 'Its a tumultuous time, but shows move on and productions move on and over the years many hosts have been replaced with many other hosts.

'Its happened very quickly. Theres no doubt about it, theres lots of focus on it, but in keeping with what the network wants me to do, I have to aim for the blue sky and look forward.'

Larry was approached by the network two months ago, and wowed bosses with his audition.
Eight months following sharp criticism on Eversource Energys response times after Tropical Storm Isaias sent trees crashing through power lines, the company is replacing its CEO with the man who has led its efforts to generate electricity from offshore wind farms.

Eversource announced Wednesday afternoon that it is promoting Joe Nolan to CEO as the replacement for Jim Judge, who will remain executive chairman of the board of directors. The utility had given no previous indication that a switch was in the works.

Nolan will become CEO on May 5.

Judge testified on multiple occasions to Connecticut lawmakers and regulators, after customers voiced anger last August over power outages lasting several days. Bills were already spiking as a result of a summer heat wave that hit, with large numbers of people staying home during the day as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, pushing up their electric use running air conditioners.

While defending the utilitys Isaias response, Judge concurred that Eversource came up short in some areas, including maintaining lines of communication with customers and municipal leaders. At one point, Judge suggested he expected to see his compensation reduced over the furor. Last month, Eversource estimated Judges 2020 compensation at $14.6 million  about $5.3 million less than he made the previous year.

In response, the Connecticut General Assembly pushed through a take back our grid law, which allows the Connecticut Public Utilities Authority to impose stiffer penalties if outage response is deemed lacking. PURA issued a draft version of its own analysis last month.

In February, Judge reiterated to investment analysts that Eversource would seek to recoup some $230 million in Isaias costs from ratepayers, drawing additional criticism.

We assembled the largest workforce ever in the state of Connecticut for that storm response and the vast majority of the costs that are being reviewed have to do with bringing in those external resources, either from other utilities or from contractors, Judge said during a conference call. We expect, as we have in the past, that cost recovery would be allowed for these costs, as they were prudent.

In the same call, Judge conceded that the company will likely be forced to offer discounted rates to Connecticut customers who fall under qualifying income thresholds.

We will be looking at new rate designs  including possible low-income or economic development rates  and that may require a possible interim rate reduction, Judge said. We clearly are not earning our allowed returns that we have agreed to under a settlement thats been in place for three years now.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., tweeted Wednesday that Judges exit as CEO is welcome news, but we need more than a change at the top. Our electric utilities should be accountable to the people, not shareholders. Joe Nolan must make customer service & lowering rates his number one priority. I will be watching his actions closely.

Eversource has 4.3 million electricity and natural gas customers in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, with the company one of Connecticuts two main electric utilities along the United Illuminating subsidiary of Orange-based Avangrid. Eversource lists dual headquarters in Boston and Hartford, with both Judge and Nolan living in Massachusetts.

In his role as executive vice president of strategy, customer and corporate relations, Nolan has had an array of oversight duties at Eversource, with the company highlighting his leadership of a joint venture with Orsted that will build the Revolution Wind farm supplying electricity from offshore turbines.

In early February, Avangrid hired Duke Energy executive Catherine Stempien to lead its utility operations, replacing Tony Marone who led United Illuminatings work to restore power to customers.

Includes prior reporting by staff writers Clare Dignan, Emilie Munson, Luther Turmelle and Peter Yankowski. Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-842-2545; @casoulman
The dismissal of Ukraine's ambassadors to the UAE, the Netherlands, Belgium, Iraq, Thailand, Saudi Arabia and representative to the UN Office in Geneva was conducted as part of the planned rotation of staff, according to Spokesman for the Ministry for Foreign Affairs Oleh Nikolenko.

He explained that in the Ukrainian diplomatic service, the heads of diplomatic missions work in one country for about five years.

"Some of these ambassadors have exceeded the term of work abroad several times. The decision on the dismissal and appointment of new ambassadors is made by the President of Ukraine on the proposal of the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Such a procedure was followed this time as well, Nikolenko said.

He added that the Ministry for Foreign Affairs is grateful to ambassadors for their professionalism and efforts to protect national interests, strengthen relations between Ukraine and foreign countries and international organizations, and assured that they remain part of the diplomatic service and will continue to work for the state.

As reported, on April 6, President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed six ambassadors of Ukraine and the Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the UN Office.

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New Delhi, April 7 : China can disrupt systems by launching cyber attacks on India and a mechanism is being readied to combat any such move, Chief of Defence Staff(CDS), General Bipin Rawat, said at an event here on Wednesday.

Speaking at the Vivekananda International Foundation on shaping the armed forces to meet the likely current and future challenges, General Rawat said, "We may not be able to fully catch up with China. So we are trying to develop some kind of a relationship with the western nations and see how better we can get some support from them, during peace time at least, which will help us overcome this deficiency." Rawat said that China has the first movers advantage as India was slow to adopt cyber warfare capabilities, which has led to the gaps.

"The biggest differential lies in the cyber field. We know that China is capable of launching cyber attacks on us and it can disrupt a large number of systems," he said.

According to the official data presented in the Parliament, India witnessed a nearly 300 per cent spike in cyber attacks last year in comparison to 2019, from 3,94,499 cases in 2019 to 11,58,208 in 2020, which is alarming for the government.

"What we are trying to do is create a system which will ensure cyber defence. We have been able to create a cyber agency within the armed forces and each service also has its own cyber agency, so that even if we come under a cyber attack, the downtime of the attack doesn't last long," Rawat said.

The CDS said while China has a lead in this respect, India is evolving its technologies to match up.

"While we are trying to create firewalls for cyber attacks, someone may break through them. We are trying see how long your systems will be down and how will you be able to operate through the phase of cyber attack that we have been put through. That is what we are seriously looking at." The CDS said the key for combating such attacks is to integrate the resources of the three services. "The Navy is far ahead of the Army and the Air Force in the way it has imbibed technology," he said.

On other security challenges, Rawat said that India faces multiple and varied security threats and challenges across the full spectrum of conflict - from proxy war to hybrid to non-contact, conventional and collusive wars under a nuclear overhang.

"There is an emergent need to develop a vision for the region. However, one must be careful to not 'bite more than one can chew'. The vision for the region or even our global vision must be intrinsically linked to our national interests, which are directly linked to national security," the CDS said.
The company believes Gunnar Birgegards experience in using anagrelide in a clinical setting will be invaluable as it develops anagrelide for the treatment of metastatic disease.

Gunnar Birgegard is Professor of Haematology at Uppsala University in Sweden.

( ) has appointed Swedish Professor of Haematology Gunnar Birgegard, an expert in platelet biology and cancer, to its Scientific Advisory Board.

The company is developing anagrelide to be used as an adjunct therapy to treat patients with specific solid tumours and thrombocytosis and the appointment represents another strong addition to its program.

Valuable experience

SUDAs CEO and MD Michael Baker said: We are very pleased that Professor Birgegard has agreed to join our Scientific Advisory Board.

We are also happy with the support that the anagrelide program is receiving from world-renowned experts in the field of platelet biology and cancer.

Professor Birgegards experience using anagrelide in the clinical setting will provide valuable experience as we develop anagrelide for the treatment of metastatic disease.

Birgegards experience

Gunnar Birgegard is Professor of Haematology at Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden, and whose research has included work on erythropoiesis, a process through which red blood cells are produced in the body, and iron, mainly with regards to ferritin, a kind of blood protein that contains iron, and inflammation.

His group was one of the first to publish a radioimmunoassay method for measuring serum erythropoietin.

He has also been involved in implementing erythropoietin treatment studies in autotransfusion and cancer as well as intravenous iron and Epo efficacy and was chairman of the Nordic Study Group for Myeloproliferative disorders (a rare blood cancer).

Professor Birgegard is currently involved with studies on platelet reduction therapy with anagrelide and interferon.

He has been involved in studies analysing the clinical use of anagrelide for the treatment of Essential Thrombocythemia and other Myeloproliferative Neoplasms and is also a member of Leukemia Network Work Package 9 on Myeloproliferative disorders.
Saint Peters University Hospital and Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey ended a six-year legal battle and reached a settlement Wednesday that will give patients who use the New Brunswick facility access to less expensive care and gives the hospital preferred status as a top-tier provider.

Arguing it was wrongly excluded from what was then a new line of new discounted insurance plans called OMNIA, Saint Peters University Hospital filed a lawsuit in November 2015 to stop Horizon, the dominant insurance carrier in the state, from selling the policies without giving the hospital a chance to participate as a tier 1 provider.

Horizon created the OMNIA plans offering a two-tier system that enabled patients to save money if they used tier 1 hospitals, which included Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, but not Saint Peters, located a mile away in New Brunswick. Patients could still use Saint Peters and other tier 2 hospitals but they would pay additional out-of-pocket expenses.

Attorneys for Saint Peters said the tier 2 designation would cost the hospital millions of dollars a year and threaten its long-term survival. The lawsuit cast Horizon as a Goliath that was interested in partnering with only the big hospital chains at the expense of community hospitals  many of them Catholic, serving low-income patients. Horizon contended it chose the most cost-efficient hospitals that were proficient in population health management and preventing illness.

According to once-confidential documents NJ Advance Media obtained after filing a lawsuit, Horizon did not select tier 1 hospitals based on lower costs or quality measures. A consultants report shows Horizon chose the largest hospital systems even when smaller competitors scored better on quality measures or offered lower prices.

The settlement averts a trial that was scheduled to begin this week. Saint Peters joins the tier 1 hospital group as of May 1, according to the announcement.

Both sides would not disclose any other details of the settlement.

We are indeed very pleased that Saint Peters has reached a settlement with Horizon BCBSNJ to end the litigation and to put this issue behind us. We have always valued our long-standing relationship and look forward to working together to advance our collective missions to serve the health care needs of our patients and communities, Leslie D. Hirsch, president and CEO of Saint Peters Healthcare System, said in a statement.

Horizon Executive Vice President Allen Karp said he was excited to work with Saint Peters to expand models of care and reimbursement that have proven effective at improving health care quality, affordability, and convenience for our members.

OMNIA Health Plans empower our members to achieve their best health, give them more control of their out-of-pocket expenses, and include every doctor and hospital in Horizons managed care network, Karp said.

Saint Peters is also in the middle of a partnership deal to join RWJBarnabas Health, one of the largest hospital and health care provider chains in New Jersey  a move that, once approved by state and federal regulators  will help ensure their future. It means that Robert Wood Johnson and St. Peters will no longer compete for patients.

A total of eight hospitals sued Horizon, saying their classification as tier 2 hospital harmed their reputations. With the Saint Peters settlement, all litigation is done, resulting in settlements.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.



Susan K. Livio may be reached at slivio@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @SusanKLivio.
Schaumburg, IL, April 06, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- For those needing contamination-resistant encoders with functional safety (FS) for machine feedback, HEIDENHAIN introduces an absolute modular magnetic angle encoder. This new ECM 2400 encoder supplements HEIDENHAINs portfolio of absolute angle encoders and is designed for machine tool applications that require a sturdy encoder with medium accuracy. The ECM 2400 is suitable for applications with high rotational speeds, angular accelerations, and limited space due to it low overall height of the complete system.

The ECM 2400 works particularly well on B-axis lathes with motorized milling spindles, or on the A and C axes of milling machines where a large hollow shaft encoder is necessary. In general, it is suitable on all rotary axes that require the following attributes:

Safety-oriented application (mechanical fault exclusion) Sturdy angle encoder Large inside diameter Lower position accuracy than an optical measurement system Dynamic positioning accuracy (simultaneous multi-axis machining)

The ECM 2400 encoders are available with EnDat 2.2 interface. In conjunction with a safe control, they can be used as single-encoder systems in applications with control category SIL 2 (as per EN 61508) and with Performance Level d (as per EN ISO 13849). The fault exclusion that is implemented in its design has been tested and is ensured under the specified operating conditions.

Existing non-FS interfaces for ECM 2400 encoders includes Fanuc05 and Mit03-4. All of these encoders have an IP67 rating and can be ordered now.

About HEIDENHAIN

DR. JOHANNES HEIDENHAIN GmbH, headquartered in Traunreut, Germany, develops and supports motion control feedback solutions for the machine tool, semiconductor, electronics assembly and test, metrology, automation, medical, energy, biotechnology and other global markets. HEIDENHAIN employs approximately 6,000 people worldwide in its core business activities. The North American subsidiary is HEIDENHAIN CORPORATION, headquartered in Schaumburg, IL, and San Jose, CA, and has been serving the U.S. industry for over 50 years. Here nine company brands are represented. More information at: www.heidenhain.us/about-us

#

Downloadable high-resolution Image at : http://www.heidenhain.us/addl-materials/pr/2021/ECM2400_functional-safety.png

Product Contact :

Milton L. Willis, HEIDENHAIN Machine Tool Product Specialist

mwillis@heidenhain.com or 847-519-4856

Attachment
Ikanik to Supply Hemp CBD and Finished Products for sale in US and LATAM markets

CORONA, Calif., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Ikanik Farms, Inc. (CSE: IKNK.U) ("Ikanik Farms" or the "Company") is pleased to announce Ikanik Life, Inc. ("Ikanik Life"), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Company has signed a three-year supply agreement with Yura Group ("Yura"), for the company's full line of hemp-based CBD products.

"We are excited to announce our partnership with Yura Group, whose founders have a strong reputation for distribution excellence in the LATAM marketplace," said Brian Baca, CEO of Ikanik Farms. "We look forward to growing with our partner, not only to advance the industry geographically, but also categorically."

The supply agreement with Yura is focused on the US and LATAM markets, with a minimum annual purchase quantity of 240,000 finished units. The cosmetic based product suite includes topical creams, rubs and balms. Ikanik Life is responsible for finished product formulations and will collaborate with Yura on new product development to support consumers growing demand of hemp CBD-based products. Yura services over 50 million Latin consumers annually.

"The Yura Group agreement will help expand the Company's footprint into 8 additional countries, broadening our reach to our target consumers, globally." said Borja Sanz de Madrid, President of Ikanik International, Inc.

"We are very excited to partner with Ikanik Farms and apply Yura's commercial capabilities and decades of success in direct sales to US and Latin American markets. With the rapid regulatory changes occurring throughout LATAM, we anticipate having products available for sale in LATAM countries by Q3, 2021" said Mariano Cariola, CEO of Yura Group.

Ikanik Farms is traded on the Canadian Securities Exchange under the ticker symbol (IKNK.U).

About Yura Group

Yura Group brings more than 20 years of experience through its founding partners in direct response sales of cosmetics and food supplements to millions of Latin people in the US and LATAM countries and specializes in the international distribution of medicinal cannabis-derived products to pharmaceutical industry, retailers, and final consumers without intermediaries. Yura Group currently sells CBD based products in the US and has registered its products in Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Ecuador.

About Ikanik Farms

Ikanik Farms is a California based, Multi-National Operator (MNO) who is building a dynamic portfolio of brands, inspired by its passion for health and wellness, action sports, and supported by its vertically integrated retail, distribution and cultivation in CA and its medical grade cultivation and laboratory in Colombia. The company's leadership brings decades of expertise in R&D, cultivation, retail, branding, and corporate finance. Ikanik Farms' operation in Colombia, through its pharma division Pideka, holds both GMP-PHARMA and (GACP) Good Agricultural and Collection Practice certifications for its Casa Flores operating facility.

Forward Looking Statements

This news release includes "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Canadian securities laws and United States securities laws (together, "forward-looking information). All information, other than statements of historical facts, included in this news release that address activities, events or developments that the Company expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future is forward-looking information. When used in this news release, words such as "will", "could", "plan", "estimate", "expect", "intend", "may", "potential", "believe", "should", and similar expressions, are forward-looking information.

Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking information, there can be other factors that cause results, performance or achievements not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended, including, but not limited to: changes in laws, a change in management, the inability to obtain additional financing, increased competition, hindering market growth and state adoption due to inconsistent public opinion and perception of the medical-use and adult-use marijuana industry and, regulatory or political change.

There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate or that management's expectations or estimates of future developments, circumstances or results will materialize. As a result of these risks and uncertainties, the results or events predicted in the forward-looking information may differ materially from actual results or events.

Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The forward-looking information in this news release is made as of the date of this release. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise such information, except as required by applicable law, and the Company does not assume any liability for disclosure relating to any other company mentioned herein.

On behalf of the Board of Directors of Ikanik Farms, Inc.

Related Links:



Corporate Site: www.iknkbrands.com

Brand Site: www.ikanikfarms.com

Neither the CSE nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE Ikanik Farms Inc.

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Editor

Zaldy Dandan is the recipient of the Best Editorial Writer Award of the Society of Professional Journalists, and the CNMI Humanities Award for Outstanding Contributions to Journalism. His three books are available on amazon.com
IL&FS has sold its stake in the environment business held by IL&FS Environmental Infrastructure & Services Limited (IEISL) and its subsidiaries to EverEnviro Resource Management Private Limited (EverEnviro), the fully-owned arm of the Green Growth Equity Fund (GGEF), Indias leading climate fund, managed by EverSource Capital.

IL&FS, as the promoter shareholder of IEISL, held 97.54 per cent of equity shares of IEISL. The balance 2.46 per cent was held by IL&FS Employee Welfare Trust. The entire shareholding in IEISL, held by IL&FS group, has been transferred to EverEnviro.

The sale will reduce IL&FS overall debt by Rs 1,200 crore - which is the combined debt of entities under IL&FS environment businesses.

In addition, around 4,000 employees, including consultants, have been transferred along with the businesses, thus effectively resulting in annual savings of around Rs 50 crore to the IL&FS Group, said a company statement.

IEISL subsidiaries - Dakshin Dilli Swachh Initiative Limited (DDSIL), Swayam Swachatta Initiative Limited (SSIL), RDF Power Projects Limited (RDF), East Delhi Waste Processing Company Limited (EDWPCL) and Kanak Resources Management Limited (KRML)  form part of this transaction and have also been transferred to EverEnviro.

EverSource Capital manages GGEF, established with anchor investment from Indias National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) and the Department for International Development (DFID), Government of UK.

IEISL is into integrated waste management present across various segments including construction and demolition, collection and transportation and waste to energy. It currently manages over 8400 tonnes per day (TPD) waste.

Its assets include an integrated waste to energy plant located at Ghazipur in Delhi, which has generated over 141 million units of green electricity by processing over 1.38 million tons of solid waste.

The sale of environment business forms part of the new boards strategy to resolve overall debt as per the resolution plan approved by NCLAT.

With this IL&FS has addressed nearly Rs 6,400 crores of aggregate debt including Chinese Road Asset sale - Rs 2,600 crore; Gurgaon Metro Resolution - Rs 1,900 crore, NHAI settlement - Rs 693 crore ; and IEISL at 1,200 crore - since January this year

According to Parvez Umrigar, managing director and chief executive officer, EverEnviro, This is a landmark investment for EverEnviro which will pave the way for us to become a leading pan India integrated waste management platform. We are delighted to acquire one of Indias oldest and well diversified waste management with high quality talent. Solid Waste management is an integral element of modern society and with this acquisition, Ever Enviro aims to be the leader in this segment in India.

On this acquisition by EverEnviro, Dhanpal Jhaveri, CEO, EverSource Capital, said Waste management is a key element of a circular economy and forms a core of our investment strategy at EverSource Capital. This acquisition accelerates our agenda of promoting and investing in clean and sustainable businesses in India so as to achieve Indias climate objectives and Sustainable Development Goals and contribute to the Governments vision of sustainable development through schemes like Swachh Bharat Mission and Sustainable Alternative Towards Affordable Transportation (SATAT).
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-08 00:41:21|Editor: huaxia

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BERLIN, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Lufthansa is converting an Airbus A350-900 into a climate research aircraft, Germany's largest airline announced on Wednesday.

The work in a hangar in Malta already started. According to the German airline, preparations were made on the lower fuselage for a "complex air intake system." The centerpiece of the flying research laboratory would be a 1.6-ton container with measuring equipment.

"Predicting the weather even more accurately, analyzing climate change even more precisely, researching even better how the world is developing. This is the goal of a globally unique cooperation between Lufthansa and several research institutes," Lufthansa noted.

The research aircraft is expected to take off from Munich at the end of 2021 for its "first flight in the service of climate research," measuring around 100 different trace gases, aerosol and cloud parameters at an altitude of nine to twelve kilometers, according to Lufthansa.

"We are helping to ensure that particularly important climate-relevant parameters are collected just on that altitude where the atmospheric greenhouse effects are largely generated," said Annette Mann, head of Corporate Responsibility at the Lufthansa Group, in a statement.

The conversion of the Airbus A350-900 which was named "Erfurt" was preceded by a planning and development phase of around four years involving more than ten companies as well as the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) as representative of a larger scientific consortium, according to Lufthansa. Enditem
Azerbaijan has been growing its tourism economy for the last decade, reaching a record-breaking number of international travelers in 2019. Once the pandemic hit, the countrys tourism board realized they could use this time to emerge even stronger, thanks to Azerbaijans offerings that are equipped for a post-Covid-19 world. In 2018, Azerbaijan officially launched its first tourism campaign, after a decade of rising international traveler rates. In 2019, 3 million travelers visited the country, setting a new record for the destination. As Covid-19 permeated across the world in 2020, Azerbaijan was deeply affected, just like every other country. But due to its rapid response by government leaders and an integrated approach across the tourism industry, the country has coped comparatively well, Skift, a media company founded in 2012 that provides news, research, and marketing services for the travel industry, writes.

Florian Sengstschmid, CEO of Azerbaijan Tourism Board, told about how the DMO used the pandemic to develop a solid, sustainable tourism strategy and emerge as a safe destination, ready to welcome travelers who are looking for an offbeat location with uniquely authentic offerings.

-How is Azerbaijan handling the Covid-19 pandemic? What safety and hygiene policies are in place to make travelers feel secure?

-Early on, we created an integrated approach to bring together all tourism stakeholders in Azerbaijan to help alleviate hardship brought on by the pandemic. We were one of the first destinations to introduce nationwide health, safety, and hygiene standards through our SAHMAN program (which stands for Sanitation and Hygiene Methods and Norms and translates to tidiness in Azerbaijani), run jointly with PwC, which leads the audit and certification process. Approximately 12,000 monitoring sessions have been held currently, and its yielding positive results. The government was also very robust in establishing an operational headquarters under the Cabinet of Ministers to closely monitor the spread of Covid-19 and administer a special quarantine regime for all residents of Azerbaijan, including restrictions that have been tightened and loosened depending on infection rates.

-How has this impacted travel and tourism in the country?

-Certainly, the pandemic fueled a growing demand for nature-related, eco-friendly, and outdoor activities. People are seeking transformative experiences that provide genuine cultural immersion. Due to borders being closed, there is an increasing demand for domestic travel among the citizens and residents of Azerbaijan. We have launched a domestic tourism campaign called Macra Yaxndadr (Adventure is Near) to support the industry in these unprecedented times and encourage locals to discover the beauties Azerbaijan has to offer. The pandemic triggered us to reevaluate our activities. It helped us to refocus, rebuild, and develop a new strategic framework on moving forward into the new normal. We are preparing for the post-pandemic era with greater attention to health, hygiene and safety, and sustainable tourism. Were especially emphasizing the development of nature and environmental tourism  such as marking hiking routes and creating infrastructure for birdwatching  as well as genuine, authentic experiences and activities, such as a slow food travel framework and rural guesthouse infrastructure improvement. Since Azerbaijan is not a mass tourism destination, it will be easier and safer for travelers to enjoy the countrys immersive experiences when the time is right.

-Can you talk about some of the strategies you used to build Azerbaijans tourism economy during the pandemic?

-We have been working on an overarching strategy that focuses on promoting domestic tourism, developing new products, and training and skill-building for those employed by the industry since the beginning of the pandemic. Our strategy has been to work with local experts and industry members to develop new routes and products around the country based on its existing strengths and natural resources, rather than create new things artificially. The pandemic allowed us to continue strengthening our relationships with the industry leaders through various associations. For example, we launched the National Hotel Star Classification in partnership with the Azerbaijan Hotel Association to improve the global competitiveness of Azerbaijans hotel industry.

Considering that there are myriad cultures, ethnicities, and faiths living in Azerbaijan, from the Jews of the Guba region, to the Russian Molokans of Ismayilli, and the ancient tribes of the Caucasus Mountains, we are eagerly working on developing Polish and Jewish heritage walking tours, with other similar tourism routes in the pipeline. We have also been working on Azerbaijans Silk Road heritage by researching and connecting the centuries-old crafts practiced in remote villages, such as carpet-making and coppersmithing, with medieval monuments and the fabulous fusion of ingredients in Azerbaijani cuisine. Azerbaijan is home to the Caucasus Mountains, Caspian Sea, subtropical zone in the south, and lakes, forests, and semi-deserts that offer amazing scenery and outdoor activities. Additionally, weve been developing communication efforts to educate travelers about Azerbaijans regional produce and rich harvests.

-Covid-19 has obviously presented many challenges to destinations. What opportunities did it offer?

-To prevent one of the main problems the industry is facing nowadays  a decrease of a skilled labor force  we established the Tourism Training and Certification Center in order to contribute to skill and capacity building and keep tourism industry workers engaged. The center provides education and skills development to tourism industry members, state officials, and communities within the local tourism industry to help keep companies afloat, protect jobs, and prepare qualified professionals. Weve also created Azerbaijan 101, an online learning platform developed to help global tourism industry members discover Azerbaijans tourism potential.

Weve embraced new digital technologies to engage with our global partners about Azerbaijan. As mentioned earlier, we are currently working on promoting Azerbaijan as a slow food travel destination. Several projects are also being implemented to improve the existing rural guesthouse infrastructure  our goal is to keep the authenticity of these guesthouses, simultaneously setting the standards for the accommodation and providing the best experience for the travelers to come.

-How does Azerbaijans offerings fit into the new demands that travelers have developed since the start of the pandemic?

-With its incredible biodiversity, landscapes, remote locations, and natural scenery and resources, Azerbaijan is a perfect fit for travelers who want to visit less crowded, off-the-beaten-path destinations where its easier to socially distance and maintain health protocols. Azerbaijan takes pride in being a tourism destination offering uniquely authentic local experiences, such as hiking between remote mountain villages through the Greater and Lesser Caucasus Mountains, dining al fresco in Bakus traditional restaurants, visiting lemon and tea plantations in the south, and exploring the craft heritage of former Silk Road settlements, among many other activities. Obviously, safety will be paramount for future travelers.

-Whats the current tourism infrastructure of Azerbaijan? How will this develop over the next few years?

-Azerbaijan is home to the state-of-the-art Heydar Aliyev International Airport, which was given a five-star rating by Skytrax, as well as four smaller international airports. Railroads and highways along main transport corridors connect Azerbaijans regions and neighboring countries, and are constantly being upgraded. Additionally, there is now accommodation to suit all types of tourists and budgets, from global hotel chains like Marriott, Hilton, and Four Seasons, to small boutique hotels, hostels, guest houses, and spas and wellness resorts. New properties from The Ritz-Carlton and IHG are in development as well. Two more international airports are expected to be built in the Karabakh region, and the interregional connectivity is constantly being developed. The number of, as well as the quality of, tourism activities and amenities continues to grow as well. For example, the Mud Volcano Visitor Center, just over an hour away from Baku, is currently in development. Its surrounded by a moonlike landscape, which will be ideal for glamping and star gazing.

-How will Azerbaijan Tourism Board market the destination in 2021 and beyond?

-We plan to resume global marketing and communications once international travel restrictions are eased. We will also attend several trade shows and open representative offices in new markets, including Turkey and the DACH region. We look forward to expanding our activities to new markets in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Western and Northern Europe as well. Our plan is to continue to use webinars and other digital tools until face-to-face communication and destination promotion at trade shows, travel exhibitions, and roadshow campaigns become possible again. We want Azerbaijan to emerge as a tourism destination on the global stage stronger than ever before.
A consultant radiologist who secretly recorded strangers, colleagues and family friends using the toilet has been struck off.

The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) handed the punishment to father-of-three Mark McClure, of Grange Road in Bangor, after hearing evidence over the course of a week.

"The tribunal has determined that the sanction that should be imposed is one of erasure," announced the chairwoman.

She said the punishment would take immediate effect, covering the 28 days in which an appeal can be lodged.

McClure (52) was only recently freed from prison, having served four and a half months after admitting 11 counts of voyeurism.

The MPTS hears cases where serious concerns have been raised about a doctors conduct.

In McClures case, the tribunal looked into two sets of offences.

For the first, he was handed a probation order in 2017. For the second, he was given a nine-month prison sentence.

In the first set of offences, the consultant recorded women using the toilet at the Hillsborough Private Clinic in February 2015 by hiding his phone in an air vent.

After his offences were uncovered by suspicious staff, police seized his phone, a computer and a memory stick.

When the devices were examined more than two years later, officers found covertly recorded video clips.

It was also discovered that McClure had filmed two family friends using the toilet at his then home, a five-bedroom house with stables in Hillsborough.

The second set of offences was committed at Craigavon Area Hospital, where McClure had worked for 15 years, in 2014.

Mr Connor said the defendant "secreted his phone in the disabled toilet of the medical education centre" and filmed women using the toilet.

Three unidentified women were recorded, one twice. That victim appeared to be a member of staff because she wearing a lanyard around her neck.

McClure also took footage in the radiography department. The court was told recording it was particularly risky because he held "his phone against what appears to be a gap in the door."

There were also clips of the consultant hiding and "positioning the camera in the toilet."

Of the women record at the hospital, one was a former colleague. The others remain unidentified.

After he was arrested, McClure claimed he could not remember if there was footage on the computer and memory stick because he had been suffering from psychological and financial stress.

In his sentencing remarks, however, Judge Lynch said that the defendant's monthly income was around 15,000 and described claims by McClure that he could not remember the footage as "obvious lies".

He told him he had abused his position as "highly respected and highly regarded senior consultant" to spy on women in toilets.

"Perhaps even more repellent is that he carried out the same activity at his own home, recording and retaining material for his own sexual gratification," the judge added.

As well as the jail term, McClure was ordered to sign the sex offenders register for 10 years.
For those who are wondering how the Democrats' "Equality Act"  requiring people to be treated according to their gender identity  will operate if passed, we're getting some foreshadowing from California. On January 1, a law went into effect holding that state prisoners must be housed in a facility consistent with their gender identity, regardless of their anatomy. To date, 261 prisoners  255 of them men  have asked to be relocated.

The reasoning behind the law wasn't just the usual woke madness of treating transgenderism as if it were not a sad case of body dysmorphia but were, instead, a magical change in sex. Instead, there was a humane goal: men who identify as women, when placed in all-male prisons, are extremely vulnerable to prison rape. One man in Australia claimed that he was raped over 2,000 times, which, if true, is appalling.

However, when you place men in women's prisons, there's also a rape problem, with the men  many of whom claim to be lesbians  raping those women unlucky enough find themselves in the same cell, ward, or shower as one of these so-called "transgender women."

England has been engaged in this transgender experiment for a while, and the rape risk has proven to be real, not merely hypothetical:

The United Kingdom Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has revealed that inmates who identify as transgender are responsible for a rate of sexual attacks that is exponentially higher than their proportion of the population of women's jails and prisons. In response to a question that former Labour Party General Secretary Baroness McDonagh put before Parliament, the MoJ has acknowledged that, while inmates who identify as transgender make up about one percent of the 3,600 inmates in women's jails and prisons, they have committed 5.6% of all reported sexual assaults.

The most famous transgender prison rapist in England is a man calling himself Karen White, who was sent to prison after stabbing a neighbor. Despite a history that included sexual assault, exposure, sexually abusing minors, and cruelty to animals, he ended up in a women's prison, where he promptly sexually assaulted women.

The problem isn't limited to England. In Illinois, which was required by a court order to re-house so-called "transgender" prisoners, a woman filed a federal lawsuit claiming that a man who identified as a "transgender woman" raped her.

Given these facts, it's concerning that 261 prisoners have requested transfers under the new law:

Two-hundred sixty-one California state prisoners have requested transfers to facilities that house the opposite gender since a new law went into effect on Jan. 1  and 255 of them have requested to move from a male to a female corrections facility.

So far, the prison system has approved only a few transfers, but it hasn't rejected any of them yet. And according to Breitbart News, even the reliably leftist Los Angeles Times has conceded that several men are thought to have applied "under false pretenses" and that female prisoners are getting worried.

Regarding those effeminate men in all-male prisons, the punishment should be that they are imprisoned, not that they are raped. The answer, however, isn't to transfer fully equipped men to a women's prison. Instead, the prison system must have separate facilities for these men. That's the only way to protect them from rape while ensuring that the exceptionally deviant or duplicitous among them don't go on to rape female inmates.

Image: Karen White poster by Fair Play for Women.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.




South Korea's current account surplus widened in February as exports showed signs of a gradual recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, the central bank said Wednesday.







The current account surplus reached US$8.03 billion last month, widening from a surplus of $7.06 billion the previous month, according to the Bank of Korea (BOK). The current account is the broadest measure of cross-border trade.







Since the country logged a deficit of $3.33 billion in April last year, the largest in almost a decade, on faltering exports amid the pandemic, the current account has stayed in the black.







The goods balance logged a surplus of $6.05 billion in February, larger than a surplus of $5.73 billion the previous month.







Exports, which account for half of the South Korean economy, rose 9.5 percent on-year in February to extend their on-year gains for the fourth consecutive month on the back of brisk demand for chips and cars.







Exports came to $44.8 billion in February, compared with $40.9 billion a year earlier.







Imports gained 13.9 percent to $42.1 billion, resulting in a trade surplus of $2.71 billion. It marked the 10th consecutive month for the country to post a trade surplus.







The country's overseas shipments have been battered by the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. But the pace of the slump has eased since June last year as major economies slowly began resuming business activities and easing border lockdowns. (Yonhap)


An aide who accused Gov Andrew Cuomo of groping her at the Executive Mansion late last year has revealed gut-wrenching new details about how he allegedly closed her in a room with him and pulled her in for a hug before reaching under her blouse while ignoring her protests.

The woman shared her story publicly for the first time in an article published by the Times Union of Albany on Wednesday.

She spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect her privacy because she still works at the state Capitol, although her identity is known within the governor's circle, the newspaper reported.

The interview offers alarming new details about the most serious of multiple sexual harassment and misconduct allegations against Cuomo, which are currently being investigated by the New York Attorney General's office.

The governor has repeatedly denied any allegations of sexual harassment, and insisted that he 'never touched anyone inappropriately.'

His office did not return DailyMail.com's requests for comment on Wednesday.

However the accuser who spoke to the Times Union this week said that Cuomo touched her inappropriately on multiple occasions after 'grooming' her for roughly two years.

Things escalated about a year ago, she said, recalling one conversation in which Cuomo allegedly told her: 'Oh, if you were single, the things that I would do to you.'

A staffer who works for New York Governor Andrew Cuomo alleges that he groped her after she resisted his advances. Cuomo is seen above speaking to reporters in Albany on Wednesday

The woman recounted how she was summoned to the Executive Mansion in Albany in late November after Cuomo allegedly asked one of his top assistants, Stephanie Benton, to send her, specifically, to help with a technical issue on his phone.

When she reached his office on the second floor she said Cuomo walked over from his desk and embraced her in 'a sexually aggressive manner', according to the Times Union.

'That wasn't just a hug. He went for it,' she said.

She said she told Cuomo: 'Oh, the door is right there,' because 'I was mortified that a woman who works here is going to come in and see.

'I was terrified of that happening, because that's not who I am and that's not what I'm here for.'

'I said to him: "You're going to get us in trouble." I didn't know what else to say,' she recalled. 'It was pretty much like "What are you doing?"

'That's when he slammed the door [shut]. He said: "I don't care."'

The woman said Cuomo closed the door 'so hard' that she thought staff elsewhere in the house would hear and ask: 'Is everything okay up there?'

'He came right back and he pulled me close and all I remember is seeing his hand, his big hand. I remember looking down like, "Holy s**t."'

That's when she said Cuomo reached his hand under her blouse and grabbed her breast over her bra.

'I was just so confused and so taken aback by it  He never said anything, which was odd,' she said.

'I don't remember actually saying the word "Stop." I think I said, "You're crazy",' she told the newspaper.

'I do remember saying that, and that's when he ultimately stopped... Me saying "You're crazy" - that was definitely not something that he wants to hear.

'It definitely was a hit to his ego...And then it was almost like instantly he was done.

'He turned around and walked back to his desk. He didn't say anything. I walked myself out to the front door and nothing was said... It was almost like I felt like a piece of garbage to him. I felt degraded.'

As she sat in her car outside the mansion she remembered thinking to herself: 'Okay, I have to now go back into the Capitol, go back to my desk and do my job and pretend that, like, that didn't just happen.'

'I didn't have another choice,' she said. 'If I told someone, I'm done. And who do you tell?'

The alleged incident took place in November at the governor's Executive Mansion in Albany. Cuomo allegedly summoned the staffer to his second-floor office because he claimed he needed help with his iPhone

The woman said Cuomo brought up the interaction a month later when she was taking dictation for him at his Capitol office.

'Near the end of it, he looked up at me and he said: "You know, by the way, you know people talk in the office and you can never tell anyone about anything we talk about or, you know, anything, right?"' she said.

'I said: "I understand." He said, "Well, you know, I could get in big trouble, you know that."

'I said: "I understand, governor." And he said: "Okay."'

The woman alleged that Cuomo's grooming and pattern of inappropriate behavior began with little hugs and cheek kisses about a year after she joined his office as an executive assistant in late 2017.

'It was never in front of anybody. He made sure that it was either at the mansion or, if it was at the Capitol, that no one was around,' she said.

'I remember thinking one time Stephanie was around, or [Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa] was around, and I had been so used to him getting up and hugging me that when he didn't I said: "Hmm.' It felt calculated - he would totally act different.'

By late 2019 Cuomo's hugs grew more aggressive, she said.

'Sometimes he would pull my whole body close to him,' she said. 'I remember purposely, like, taking my pelvis and pulling away.  I knew what he was doing.'

Their conversations similarly intensified, with Cuomo asking inappropriate personal questions, she said.

She described one interaction on New Year's Eve in 2019 when she was sent to the Executive Manson to help Cuomo with his State of the State address.

They were alone in his office when he asked her to take a selfie with him, and she said reluctantly said yes.

'I remember standing up in his upstairs office. I was holding up the phone. I was nervous. As the phone is up I feel him, like, not just sliding his hands, he's like rubbing my butt cheek, but not saying anything. That was the first blatant move,' she said.

She remembered her hand trembling to the point that she couldn't get a clear photo.

'He didn't say anything and I didn't say anything because now - its very easy to say, "Well, why didn't you slap him?" [But in the moment] you're like: "Is this really going on, is this happening?"' she said.

'I remember him doing it for more than a second. I said: "I can't take a good picture, governor." He said: "Why don't we just sit down on the couch and try to take a better one?"

'So we sit down, we take a photo and he said: "Oh, I like that photo."'

She said Cuomo asked her to send the photo to another female colleague but warned her not to show it to anyone else.

'I said: "Yes sir, I understand, and I won't." I never did,' she said. 'If he looks you in the eye and says: "You don't tell a soul or tell anyone," then you won't.

'He's kind of letting you know it would be in your best interest not to, if you know what's good for you.

'I didn't tell a soul. I didn't say anything about what he did. He never mentioned anything about that incident.'

The woman said she saw less of Cuomo after the coronavirus pandemic forced the majority of his staff to work from home in March 2020.

'If it wasn't for this pandemic and me being quarantined and being home, Im sure that the groping probably would have happened sooner,' she said. 'I didn't see him for a long time.'

Their began to see each other more regularly in the fall - before the day of the alleged groping incident in November.

The woman stayed silent about what had happened until early March, when Cuomo addressed the media about allegations from two other former staffers.

'I now understand that I acted in a way that made people feel uncomfortable,' the governor said at a press conference.

'It was unintentional and I truly and deeply apologize for it. I feel awful about it and, frankly, I'm embarrassed by it - and that's not easy to say, but that's the truth.'

'But this is what I want you to know, and I want you to know this from me directly: I never touched anyone inappropriately. I never knew at the time that I was making anyone feel uncomfortable. I certainly never, ever meant to offend anyone or hurt anyone or cause anyone any pain. That is the last thing I would ever want to do.'

The woman was in a room watching the press conference with other staffers when a colleague noticed she was on the verge of tears.

The woman ended up telling her story to the colleague, who reported the allegations to a supervisor.

On March 9 the Times Union published it's first article about the woman's allegations, citing a source with knowledge of her claims.

Cuomo responded to that report by saying: 'I have never done anything like this. The details of this report are gut-wrenching.'

In the weeks since the first allegations came to light the governor has brushed off widespread calls for his resignation and asked that people wait for the results of an investigation overseen by state Attorney General Letitia James.

The state Assembly is conducting a separate investigation into whether there are grounds to impeach the governor.

Cuomo has been accused of sexual misconduct by at least nine women - most of whom are current or former staffers.

The unnamed staffer is the second woman to accuse the governor of using his cell phone illiteracy as a pretext for inviting them to his private quarters before allegedly engaging in misconduct.

An attorney for Charlotte Bennett, a former Cuomo aide who worked as an executive assistant and health policy adviser in his administration, alleges that the governor summoned her to his private residence on June 5 of last year.

Bennetts lawyer claims that Cuomo called her because he said he was uncertain how to get from his settings app to his notes app on his iPhone, according to the Times Union.
Highlights Facebook noted that the data breach of 533 million users dates back to 2019 and that it was fixed in 2019.

Aaron Gal, a security researcher reported that the vulnerability was spotted in early 2020.

Analysts and researchers note that data never gets old for data brokers and can be used for multiple scams.

Facebook's data breach of 533 million users dates back to 2019, according to the social media giant. Facebook, yesterday, in a blog post noted that the malicious actors did not even hack its system but scraped data through its platform which it refers to as automated software lifting public information from the internet that can end up being distributed in online forums like this. "It is important to understand malicious actors obtained this data not through hacking our systems but by scraping it from our platform prior to September 2019," the social media giant noted.

Facebook said that vulnerability was discovered in 2019 that allowed phone numbers of millions of users to be scraped from Facebook servers. It said that the vulnerability was patched in August 2019. "This is old data that was previously reported in 2019. We found and fixed this issue in August 2019," a Facebook spokesperson said. The leaked data set was reportedly created by attackers who abused a flaw in a Facebook address book contacts import feature.



Facebook, however, did not publicly acknowledge or inform its users about this flaw, until it was reported last week. Former Federal Trade Commission chief technologist Ashkan Soltani told Wired, "At what point did Facebook say, 'We had a bug in our system, and we added a fix, and therefore users might be affected'? I don't remember ever seeing Facebook say that. And they're kind of stuck now because they apparently didn't do any disclosure or notification."

The Irish Data Protection Commission in a statement has noted that it received no proactive communication from Facebook regarding the breach. The commission noted that "newly published data set seems to comprise the original 2018 (pre-GDPR) data set and combined with additional records, which may be from a later period."

The Guardian reported that even if the Facebook breach dates back to 2019, it will cause trouble to the company as under certain privacy regulations including Europe's GDPR, the social media giants should have alerted their users about the breach. Rob Shavell, chief executive officer of DeleteMe, a personal data protection tool, told the publication that even if the data is old, it will always be useful to data brokers. "It helps them correlate related information that is new and dump them into these profiles, which they sell online for as little as 99 cents," he said.

It stated that the data leaked from Facebook can be used in combination with the current user data online "to hack accounts, including bank and other accounts that require two-factor authentication texting a confirmation code to a phone number to verify a person's identity."

Ivan Righi, cyberthreat intelligence analyst told the publication that there was a possibility that the breach was resold multiple times until the price was low enough for a user to publicly expose it to generate a small profit to gain a reputation. He noted that old data is also valuable for cybercriminals.

The breach also included the details of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg whose contact number, name, location, marriage details, birth date, and Facebook user ID were leaked. Zuckerberg's leaked contact also revealed that he used the Signal app.

Aaron Gal, a security researcher first reported that the vulnerability was spotted in early 2020 and it enabled seeing the phone number linked to every Facebook account, creating a database containing the information 533 million users across all countries. The exposed data included details like phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birth dates, bios, and even email addresses of some users. Over 3.2 crore accounts in the US, 1.1 crores in the UK, and 60 lakh in India were exposed.




A Welshman who literally mailed himself home from Australia in the 1960s is on the hunt for his two Irish friends who helped him.

Brian Robson was just 19 years old when two of his friends from Ireland, John and Paul, helped pack him into a wooden crate so he could be airmailed from Melbourne in Australia back to the UK in 1965.

The teen had travelled to Australia back then as part of an employment initiative to get people to emigrate to Oz.

As part of the scheme Mr Robson ended up working on the Australian railroad system.

It was a job he hated, and soon all he could think about was returning home to his native Cardiff.

However, the 40 a month he was earning on the railroad wasn't enough to stump up 700 cash to repay the bosses of the initiative for his early return home, so he was, effectively, stuck there.

So, he came up with the most logical idea he could think of at the time; to pack himself into a wooden box and simply post himself back home - for a fraction of the price!

Now Mr Robson, aged 75, is writing a book about the experience, The Crate Escape.

Expand Close When Mr Robson was discovered in the crate in Los Angeles, he was quizzed by the FBI who thought he was a Cold War spy / Facebook

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Whatsapp When Mr Robson was discovered in the crate in Los Angeles, he was quizzed by the FBI who thought he was a Cold War spy

Unfortunately, the trip back home in the cargo hold of an aeroplane didn't quite go to plan and he ended up in Los Angeles being quizzed by the FBI who thought he was a Cold War spy trying to smuggle his way into the USA.

Now hes desperate to reconnect with his two Irish pals, who were in two minds about the dangerous and daring endeavour back in the day.

He said: "Paul was really 100% against it, but John said, 'don't worry about it, I'll persuade him'. And so, they both went ahead and helped."

Apart from the names of his old friends, all Mr Robson really remembers about them is that they both went to school together back in Ireland.

He spoke of how, how for his first day inside the wooden crate, which he described as being about the same size as a small fridge, freight handlers paid little attention to the sticker on the side of the box which read 'THIS WAY UP'.

As a result, he spent the first 22 hours of his adventure travelling upside down on his head, suffering blackouts and nausea.

All he took with him on his grueling journey was a suitcase, a bottle of water, an empty bottle for pee, some pillows and a torch.

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However, his journey, which should have taken 36 hours, ended up lasting three times that, because the flight he was supposed to be on was booked up, so instead of travelling his original route from Melbourne to London, he was unceremoniously dumped into the hold of a much longer Pan Am flight - to the USA!

He remained in the crate for five long days before his potential coffin was cracked open by authorities in Los Angeles, and he came to the attention of the FBI who grilled him on how he had ended up in a wooden crate in the first place.

Expand Close The daredevil is now penning a book on his experience - The Crate Escape / Facebook

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Whatsapp The daredevil is now penning a book on his experience - The Crate Escape

He explained: "I was in the crate for five days and ended up in a freight shed. I thought I was in London.

"I could move my hand to get my torch but my fingers were very stiff so I dropped the torch."

Mr Robson said that was the moment his position was given away, saying: "I heard voices saying, 'what's going on there?'

"That's when I realised the two men were not speaking with English accents, they had American accents. One of them looked through a hole in a wood knot in the chest and we caught each other eye to eye.

"He jumped back and said, 'there's a body in there'.

"They both ran off. An hour later, all hell broke loose. FBI, CIA, airport security, an ambulance."

When the FBI realised Mr Robson was simply a homesick young Welshman trying to make his way back home, they stuck him in first class on a Pan Am flight to London.

On being questioned by US authorities, and being a good sport in respect of his friends who had helped him along the way, he explained: "My two friends and I didn't know whether the plan was legal or illegal, quite honestly, so I agreed that I would keep their names out of it completely, which I did."

Even when his amazing 96-hour journey ended, making headlines around the UK and further afield, Mr Robson never heard from his two Irish friends from Down Under again.

He said he wrote to the pair, but never heard anything back.

Now, with a book on the way, and a film in the works, hes desperate to reach his old buddies.

He said: "I did try a couple of times [to write to them], I think, and of course we didn't have the internet in those days, so from that day to this Ive never spoken to them. They were the last people I spoke to in Australia before the crate was sealed shut.

"Ive got no idea what happened to them. I would love to hear what happened after I left."

Mr Robson has asked for Paul and John, their relatives, or anyone who knows them, to contact him at brianpms@hotmail.com
Heather Graham showcased her modeling moves in a new video she posted to Instagram on Monday where she strutted down an ocean pier like it was a catwalk.

The Hangover star, 51, wore a sultry black bikini that showed off her toned body as she sashayed toward the camera and playfully twirled just before the end of the video.

The Wisconsin native was cheered on by her friends, actress Nina Bergman and Ginny And Georgia showrunner, Debra J. Fisher, who she thanked in the caption.

Striking a pose: Heather Graham showcased her modeling moves in a new video she posted to Instagram on Monday where she strutted down an ocean pier like it was a catwalk

Hot: The Hangover star, 51, wore a sultry black bikini that showed off her toned body as she sashayed toward the camera and playfully twirled just before the end of the video

The caption read: 'So grateful for my amazing girlfriends for making me feel good about myself and special.' She tagged her friends in the post and added hashtags for 'friends,' 'girlboss,' and 'ladypower.'

The trio are vacationing together in the tropics with Nina posting a video to her Instagram Story of the women strolling together down a pier in their bikinis.

Heather wore her tousled strawberry blonde tresses down and rocked a bold red lipstick. The Austin Powers actress shared the video with her 363k followers, many of whom commented on her ageless beauty.

Eternal youth: The Austin Powers actress shared the video with her 363k followers, many of whom commented on her ageless beauty

The yoga devotee appeared to be in her element, posting an earlier photo to Instagram of herself and Nina doing yoga together with a sunny beach and palm trees in the background.

Last December, she told UsWeekly, 'My idea of a perfect vacation is doing yoga for four hours a day on a beach somewhere beautiful.'

The Half Magic director also said she loves swimming in the ocean.

Healthy lifestyle: In addition to yoga, the Boogie Nights star's fitness regimen also includes Pilates and dancing. She told Refinery29 in 2013 that she maintains her svelte figure by watching what she eats and avoiding sugar and flour

Heather is a strong advocate for the health benefits of a good night's sleep, telling Us, 'I adore sleeping. I could easily sleep 12-plus hours a night.'

In addition to yoga, the Boogie Nights star's fitness regimen also includes Pilates and dancing.

She told Refinery29 in 2013 that she maintains her svelte figure by watching what she eats and avoiding sugar and flour.

Though she has never married or had children, Heather is a strong supporter of children's charities. She revealed to Us that she sponsors five kids through the Cambodian Children's Fund.

Another pinup photo: On the weekend, she wore this floral outfit while posing by the sea
President Joe Biden got visibly angry as he pointed out how America was falling behind the rest of the world as he delivered remarks Wednesday to gain support for his $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan.

The president particularly singled out China as a country that was bypassing the United States.

'Over the next six to eight months, China and the rest of the world is racing ahead of us and the investments they have in the future,' he said. 'America is no longer leading the world because we're not investing.'

President Joe Biden got visibly angry as he pointed out how America was falling behind the rest of the world, singling out China as particularly problematic during remarks he gave to shore up support for his $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan

'China and the rest of the world is racing ahead of us and the investments they have in the future,' President Joe Biden argued Wednesday in remarks given to sell his infrastructure package. (Pictured) Chinese President Xi Jinping

'I don't know why we don't get this,' Biden added, his voice getting louder as he spoke. 'Were one of the only a few major economies in the world whose public investment in research and development has declined as a percentage of GDP in the last 25 years. Declined. The United States of America that led the world.'

'We stop investing in research, we stop investing in the jobs of the future. And we give up leading the world,' he argued.

The long list of items in Biden's infrastructure proposal and his tax plan to raise the trillions needed to pay for his wish list have become a dueling set of controversies for the administration as it struggles to get enough support on Capitol Hill to pass the package.

Biden said in his speech he welcomes the debate and that 'compromises are inevitable.' He noted he and Vice President Kamala Harris will meet with Republicans and Democrats over the next few weeks to discuss the issue.

'We'll be open to good ideas and good faith negotiations,' he said. 'But here's what we won't be open to, we will not be open to doing nothing, and inaction is simply is not an option.'

Republicans have criticized the president's plan for containing items outside the scope of traditional infrastructure. Biden's plan spends billions on roads, bridges and highways but it also funds additional projects such as broadband internet across the nation, affordable housing, improvements to schools and day care centers, and a Civilian Climate Corps.

But Biden argued infrastructure has to evolve to meet the changing needs of society.

'We need to start seeing infrastructures through its effect on the lives of working people in America,' he said.

He said working Americans need dependable internet, an electric grid that won't collapse in a winter storm, clean pipes for clean drinking water, and local investment, including in minority communities.

President Joe Biden said without more investment the United States would fall behind countries like China

His speech comes as his Treasury Department unveiled its plan to overhaul the corporate tax code, which, if enacted, would raise $2.5 trillion in revenue over 15 years to pay for the infrastructure package.

During his remarks, he defended the corporate tax hike, saying he was tired of ordinary Americans being fleeced.

Biden pointed to the numerous companies that don't pay taxes, the Trump tax cuts that benefited top wage earners, and the amount of money billionaires made during the K-shaped economic recovery.

'Im not trying to punish anybody, but dam***, maybe it's because I come from middle class neighborhood, I'm sick and tired of ordinary people being fleeced,' he said.

Biden's tax proposal would hike the corporate tax rate to 28 per cent, increase the de facto global minimum tax and crack down on companies that pay little or no income taxes with their 'book value.'

The Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable have pushed back against Biden's tax hikes, claiming they will crush American competitiveness - an argument Republicans and some moderate Democrats have echoed.

After his remarks, Biden told reporters he is open to changing the 28 per cent tax rate.

'I'm willing to listen to that. I'm willing. I'm wide open to but we got to pay for this. We got to pay. There's many other ways we can do it, but I'm willing to negotiate that. I've come forward the best, most rational way in my view, the fairest way to pay for it. But there are many other ways as well,' he said.

Biden's push to pay for the package includes:

Hike the corporate tax rate

Biden would raise the corporate tax rate in the US to 28 percent from 21 percent. This move would partially undo the Trump administration's cut of the corporate tax rate from 35 percent in its 2017 tax bill.

The White House argues this would bring the United States in line with other first world nations when it comes to a tax on businesses.

Double the de facto global minimum tax

Biden's plan would double the de facto global minimum tax to 21 percent. It would also toughen its requirements so companies would have to pay the tax on a wider span of income across countries.

Raise global corporate income tax

Additionally, American officials are working with the G20 nations to enact a minimum global corporate income tax as part of the administration's effort to offset any disadvantages from their plan to increase the U.S. corporate tax rate.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Monday urged the move, saying it would 'stop the race to the bottom.'

'Competitiveness is about more than how U.S.-headquartered companies fare against other companies in global merger and acquisition bids,' Yellen noted. 'It is about making sure that governments have stable tax systems that raise sufficient revenue to invest in essential public goods.'

The U.S. is involved in talks with about 140 nations to develop a global agreement on minimum levies, led by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, but participants haven't yet reached a deal.

Enact a book value income tax

The plan would enact a 15 percent minimum tax on book income of large companies that report high profits, but have little taxable income.

Book income is what businesses report to investors and which is often used to judge shareholder and executive payouts.

The tax - aimed at companies that report large profits to investors but low tax payments would apply only to companies with income exceeding $2 billion. That is up from the $100 million threshold that Biden advocated for in the campaign.

The result is that just 180 companies would even meet the income threshold and just 45 would pay the tax, The Wall Street Journal noted.

Finally, the plan would replace flawed incentives that reward excess profits from intangible assets with more generous incentives for new research and development; replace fossil fuel subsidies with incentives for clean energy production and ramp up enforcement to address corporate tax avoidance.

Biden would also boost the Internal Revenue Service's budget so that it can step up enforcement and tax collection efforts.

The administration has begun its push to defend it tax proposal and argue its long list of items in the infrastructure bill are needed to keep the country competitive.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo joined the daily White House press briefing on Wednesday to argue 'the fact of the matter is the corporate structure, today is broken.'

'Many, many companies - large profitable companies - pay no corporate taxes. So I'd like to think we can all agree that it needs to be improved, level the playing field, close the loopholes and have a have a discussion around how we do this together to improve competitiveness,' she said.

She dismissed criticism that the plan would kill American jobs.

'We must make these investments in infrastructure in order to compete,' she said.

Meanwhile, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has referred to Biden's plan as a 'Trojan Horse' for issues Democrats want to advance. Other Republicans have argued a stream-lined, traditional infrastructure package could pass with bipartisan support.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said the current corporate tax structure is 'broken' and needs to be fixed

And Republican Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri said he told the White House if they want bipartisan support on an infrastructure plan, it needs to have just infrastructure.

'I think it's a big mistake for the administration. They know I think it's a mistake,' Blunt said on 'Fox News Sunday.' 'And I also think it would be an easy victory if we go back and look at roads and bridges and ports and airports and maybe even underground water systems and broadband. You'd still be talking about less than 30 percent of this entire package and it's an easily doable 30 percent.'

'The other 70 or so percent of the package that doesn't have very much too do with infrastructure,' he noted on ABC's 'This Week.'

A CNN analysis found that traditional infrastructure projects account for 30 per cent of Biden's plan.

Biden's plan includes $621 billion for transportation, $400 billion for homecare service, $300 billion for manufacturing and $180 billion for research and development, according to a White House Fact Sheet.

Here's a more detailed breakdown of what it contains:
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Lara Trump made her first visit to her new employer Monday, with a trip to the Fox News studios in New York City.

Lara and husband Eric - Donald Trump's second son - were pictured back in NYC on Tuesday having spent the last few days with family in Florida.

Both Lara and Eric, 37, were photographed at both Trump Tower and at the Fox News offices in Manhattan.

Lara, 38, was seen outside Trump Tower with a female acquaintance as they laughed while they waited for their car to be brought around.

Then it was time to head to Fox News where Lara has officially joined the network as a paid contributor.

Lara, 38, was seen outside Trump Tower with a female acquaintance as they laughed on the street in Manhattan whilst they waited for their car to be brought around.

Eric Trump, 37, was photographed at both Trump Tower on Tuesday as he stood around speaking outside

Lara Trump was spotted outside of the Fox News studios as she waited for her car to arrive

On Monday, Lara appeared on Fox News where she has officially joined the network as a paid contributor

Lara announced the news on-air during an interview on Monday while still in Palm Beach, Florida.

'I sort of feel like I've been an unofficial member of the team for so long. It was kind of a joke over the past five years  I would come there so often that the security guards were like, 'Maybe we should just give you a key,'' Lara said.

Her father-in-law is an avid watcher of the cable news network and during his time in officer would regularly tweet in real-time in response to interviewees who appeared on the station.

Lara Trump, far eight, received a warm welcome from the Fox News hosts, Steve Doocy Ainsley Earhard and Brian Kilmeade

After conducting business at the Fox News studios, Lara could be seen outside speaking with a friend

Lara previously worked as a Trump campaign adviser and has been teasing the idea of running for Senate in her home state of North Carolina.

Longtime Trump ally Senator Lindsey Graham, 65, has said that Lara 'represents the future of the Republican Party' and was 'almost a certain nominee' for the seat which will soon become vacant once North Carolina Senator Richard Burr retires in 2022.

Speaking on Fox News on Monday, Lara said no decision had yet been made about a run for Senate.

'I still haven't officially made a decision about running for office but will hopefully sometime soon,' she said.

Lara struck a relaxed pose as she waited for her car to arrive to whisk her out of the city

Lara appeared to make an acquaintance laugh out loud while the pair waited for a car to pick them up

Eric could be seen in the lobby of Trump Tower as he posed with guests who were close by

A couple took turns to pose with with the former president's son in the lobby of Trump Tower

Several members of the public took the opportunity to come up to Eric Trump and take a selfie with him

Eric was closely followed by members of the Secret Service who can be seen following him

Eric Trump looks serious as he makes his way into Trump Tower having returned from south Florida

If that happens, Fox News would be forced to cut ties with her under their policy.

After leaving the studios Lara headed north out of the city with the Secret Service following closely behind.

Eric Trump, meanwhile, stayed at the studios of Fox News for nearly two hours before getting into his private car and being ushered away.

Eric and Lara's return to New York came after the couple were seen attending an Easter service on Sunday.

Lara Trump is seen wearing a white dress as she holds her one-year-old daughter, Carolina, as they left an Easter Sunday service

Lara's daughter and son, Eric Jr, were both seen wearing white while holding their Easter egg baskets on Sunday

After the service Lara changed into some comfortable clothing before helping Eric pack their belongings into a vehicle

Eric Trump is seen walking from a vehicle parked at Mar-a-Lago on Sunday

Lara wore a white dress as she was spotted holding her one-year-old daughter, Carolina, who along with her three-year-old brother, Eric Jr, both wore white as they held onto their colorful Easter baskets.

Eric and Lara have been based in New York City for years, and are still understood to live there with their children.

Last Friday, the couple were seen at Mar-a-Lago with former President Trump and former first lady Melania and their son Barron, making it the family's first appearance together since he left office.

Video posted to Instagram on Friday shows the Trump family strolling through an outdoor dining area at the club in Palm Beach, Florida, where Trump has made his home after leaving the Oval Office.

'Mr President!' one supporter is heard shouting, as the club members cheer and applaud, some rising to their feet.

Eric is seen grabbing one last suitcase to pack into the SUV as they prepared to leave Mar-a-Lago on Sunday
[April 07, 2021] HR Tech Group Well-Positioned to Drive Further Inclusion, Equity and Diversity Within British Columbia's Tech Sector

HR Tech Group is thrilled to announce that the Diversity and Inclusion Tech Project has been expanded for an additional nine months due to an extension in funding from the Province of British Columbia. The purpose of the Diversity and Inclusion Tech Project is to increase the attraction, retention and advancement of women, Indigenous peoples, people with disabilities, people of colour, newcomers to Canada, and individuals who identify as LGBTQIAS+, in addition to all under-represented groups in skilled occupations in B.C.'s technology sector. "These populations experience historic and systemic exclusion in many aspects of their lives, including employment. Our recent Diversity in Tech Benchmark Report found that Indigenous people account for only 0.5% of the technology industry's workforce while representing 5.9% of the population in BC. Statistics like this one are showing up more regularly, making representation and equity gaps very clear. Now is the time to make a change for the better," says Stephanie Hollingshead, CEO, HR Tech Group. Since June 2019, HR Tech Group has launched several pilots to positively impact underrepresentation faced in the tech sector. Key outputs have included: Benchmarking and reporting on tech sector diversity with the Diversity in Tech Dashboard

Creation of an Employer Toolkit for measuring diversity

Production of an attraction, promotion and awareness campaign: Everyone Belongs in Tech

Development of an online resource library: D&I Resource HUB

Organizational diversity and inclusion audits

Development and delivery of three extensive Diversity and Inclusion training programs



News - Alert) , D-Wave, Hyperwallet, Galvanize, OSI Maritime Systems, Unbounce, Method Studio, VIATEC, VanHack, & Sophos. The extension and expansion of the project has been made possible by the financial support of Northeastern University (News - Alert) , Orbital Learning, Focus Professional Services, Unbounce, Sierra Wireless, and Sophos.

"We are deeply appreciative of the tremendous support we've received from the tech sector," says Kathy Gibson, Senior Consultant and Project Manager of HR Tech Group's Diversity and Inclusion Tech Project. "The ecosystem is acknowledging the value and importance of this work, which has led to the expansion and extension of the project. It's truly an interconnected community effort to move the needle on improving the representation of underrepresented individuals and creating more inclusive work environments." Hundreds of tech sector leaders have been engaged in the project to date and the demand for training programs and diversity audits has been far greater than the supply available through initial funding. With the additional funding received, HR Tech Group expects to double the reach of the project in 2021 by providing the following: 3 additional offerings of the 'Inclusive Organizations - Executive Training' sessions

2 additional offerings of the 'Inclusive Change Agent' training program

2 additional offerings of the 'Inclusive Leadership' training program

16 additional diversity and inclusion audits of technology companies

2 additional 'Everyone Belongs in Tech' video vignettes

A 2021 Diversity in Tech Benchmarking Dashboard and Year 2 Progress Report

Additional curated content and expanded features in the D&I Resource HUB Through increased training opportunities, content curation, data collection, organizational audits and video vignettes, the project will continue to bring focus to the outstanding issue of underrepresentation in the sector. The resources and tools provided will help employers who wanted to make change, know where to start and what steps they can take for a more inclusive tomorrow. "Racialized and marginalized people face historic and present-day barriers that limit their full participation in their communities, workplaces, government and their lives. The Diversity and Inclusion Tech Project will support opportunities for these underrepresented groups, which in turn will help build a more diverse and inclusive workforce for all British Columbians," says Rachna Singh, Parliamentary Secretary for Anti-Racism Initiatives. To build on their momentum and add to the impact they are making in BC's tech sector, HR Tech Group is continuing to source additional sponsors. If you are interested in supporting this equity, diversity and inclusion work, please reach out to Project Manager and Senior Consultant Kathy Gibson at kgibson@hrtechgroup.com. About HR Tech Group

www.hrtechgroup.com

HR Tech Group is a non-profit association for HR, People and Culture professionals in Canada's tech sector. The group produces Western Canada's leading Tech Salary Survey and provides thought leadership, training, collaboration channels and tech sector data. Our member community is instrumental to tech industry growth, and is connected through knowledge exchange, strong professional and mentoring networks and the sharing of benchmark data. Our 550+ members lead and influence the HR, people and culture practices at over 180 tech employers in all tech sectors, including ICT, film/VFX, digital media, cleantech and life sciences. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005071/en/

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100 Marketing Dr., Suffield, CT Amodio generated extensive interest in the property with hundreds of inquiries and eight all-cash offers. Past News Releases RSS

Amodio & Co Real Estate is pleased to announce the $10.6M sale of the 200,000 SF manufacturing/distribution facility at 100 Marketing Drive, Suffield, CT to a Connecticut headquartered manufacturer of flooring materials.

The building includes modern 34 high-bay warehousing, manufacturing, R&D and flex-office facilities. It features 20 truck loading docks and 3 truck drive-in doors. Amenities include multiple fitness rooms and refreshment bars; state of the art educational facilities and a prototype company store to study merchandising methods.

The property was formerly occupied by Windsor Marketing Group (WMG) which designed, manufactured and installed in-store signage.

Amodio & Co Real Estate represented the seller, Marketing Research Park, LLC in this transaction. Amodio generated extensive interest in the property with hundreds of inquiries and eight all-cash offers.

Amodio & Co. Real Estate is a commercial real estate firm, which handles all aspects of real estate including brokerage, financing, management and development of commercial property.

For further information, please contact Frank Amodio, CCIM of Amodio & Co. Real Estate. frank@amodio.com 860-674-8908 x101.
Funeral homes often submit obituaries as a service to the families they are assisting. However, we will be happy to accept obituaries from family members pending proper verification of the death.

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Our company is from Azerbaijan and we are willing to cooperate a used cooking oil supplier. We want to purchase used cooking oil and export to Alabama,TX,USA. It is at least year contract with for starting 1.000 Mtx12 months.

Would be very appreciated if you can give me an offer.
Photo: The Canadian Press Jacques Delisle

Federal Justice Minister David Lametti is ordering a new trial for a former Quebec judge convicted in 2012 of first-degree murder in the death of his wife.

The Department of Justice said today in a news release that Lametti has decided it is reasonable to conclude a miscarriage of justice likely occurred in the case of Jacques Delisle.

The department says that decision is based on new information that wasn't presented in court during Delisle's trial or appeal.

Delisle was found guilty of first-degree murder in the death of his wife, Marie Nicole Rainville, and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.

His appeal was dismissed in 2013, and the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear his case.

The Justice Department says the case has been transferred to the Quebec Superior Court for a new trial.
Realtor Jacky Bravo and Miami Dade College history professor Victor Vazquez defeated their opponents in Tuesdays election in Miami Springs, winning seats on the city council to replace one interim council member who chose not to seek re-election and another who won the mayors seat unopposed.

Bravo beat longtime Miami Springs resident Vivian Isla-Ray with 55% of votes, according to unofficial results posted shortly after 7 p.m. by Miami-Dades elections department. Vazquez won handily with 70% of votes against Vincent Medel, the president of the Miami Springs Republican Club.

Just over 2,000 votes were cast out of nearly 9,500 registered voters in the city, a turnout of about 22%.

Bravo will succeed Councilwoman Maria Puente Mitchell, who ran unopposed for mayor. She will replace term-limited Mayor Billy Bain.

Incumbent Councilmen Bob Best and Walter Fajet also ran unopposed.

The new members will be sworn in at next Mondays council meeting, which will be the last for Bain and Councilman Zavier Garcia, who was appointed last year after Jaime Petralanda resigned to run for school board. Vazquez will take Garcias seat.
A tax break is back that helps retirees give more to charity  and less to the IRS

The federal government has hit unpause on a tax break for retirees that allows you to cut your taxes by donating to charity.

So if youre retired and over 70, you can count on your generosity being rewarded when you file your taxes for 2021.

With some planning, and by using a reliable tax software program, you can set yourself up for a smaller tax bill next year.

Heres how the tax break works  along with information on some other retiree tax benefits youll want to know about.

What exactly is this tax break?

"Qualified charitable distributions" make it possible for taxpayers over age 70 to reduce their taxable income by making donations to charity using their federally required withdrawals from individual retirement accounts, or IRAs.

Though youll have to forfeit the usual deduction for charitable contributions, the qualified distribution comes out of your taxable income, working like an above-the-line deduction.

You either write a check from your IRA to a specific charitable organization, or set things up with your IRA administrator so you can transmit funds to your chosen charity directly.

And, you can take advantage of this tax break while taking the standard deduction on your federal tax return.

It's an opportunity to reduce your taxes so you'll have more money to deal with debt, put into savings, ramp up your investing  or just get by.

Who primarily benefits?

fizkes / Shutterstock

The group wholl most benefit from the return of this tax break are those 72 years old and up.

When you hit 72 and you have an IRA, the IRS requires you to start taking required minimum distributions  and paying income tax on those withdrawals.

How much youll have to take out each year depends on the balance of your account and your age. As you get older, youll have to withdraw more, because your limits are based on your life expectancy.

While qualified charitable deductions didnt technically go anywhere, a COVID relief law last year did away with required minimum distributions for 2020. So because you didnt have to take out money from your individual retirement account, reducing that tax liability didnt pack the same punch last year.

Story continues

Other retiree tax breaks you should know about

Getting older isnt for the faint of heart.

Heres a list of a few other tax breaks and credits that help seniors. You may want to consult with a certified financial planner to make sure youve set yourself up for success and don't overlook any other tax benefits. Today, financial planning help is affordable and even available online.

A larger standard deduction

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For your 65th birthday, the IRS gives you a larger standard deduction than the average taxpayer. If you are turning 65 in 2021, your standard deduction limit bumps up to $14,250, while 64-year-olds are only entitled to deduct $12,550.

That extra $1,700 means more older taxpayers are likely to opt to take their standard deduction rather than go through the effort of itemizing. And that additional boost should help you save at least $400 if youre in the 24% tax bracket (making more than $86,375 or $172,750 for married couples).

Spousal retirement plan contributions

Once youve retired, youll generally have to stop contributing to your IRA. But theres an exception: If your spouse is still working, they can contribute up to $7,000 a year to your IRA.

As long as your spouse has enough income to swing making contributions to both your accounts, you can use this option to prevent a little more of your household income from being taxed.

Time your tax payments in your favor

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When you were earning a paycheck, you probably grumbled about those deductions that ate up a sizable portion of your pay. Well, now that youre retired, you still owe the IRS a chunk of your income, but you may have to pay it directly.

If you receive regular payments from a 401(k) plan, company pension or IRA, the payer will usually withhold tax unless you explicitly tell them not to.

Opting to withhold the tax means you dont get a big bill come tax time, instead you set aside what you owe over the course of the year as it comes in. That helps make your tax owing on your return a more manageable sum.

Disperse your requirement minimum strategically

You may not need your IRA funds day to day, but after 70, youre required to take out a minimum yearly amount. If thats the case for you, you may want to consider strategically withdrawing your funds.

You can do this by holding off on taking out the required amount until December and ask your IRA sponsor to hold back whats owed to the IRS, along with any other tax liabilities you may owe the agency.

Setting your family up for success

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Part of retirement planning is thinking ahead to provide your family with financial support for when youre gone.

Affordable life insurance is an important part of that strategy, but youre probably planning to leave your loved ones more than just an insurance policy. There are a few other things you can do to ensure more of your estate ends up in their pockets rather than the governments coffers.

The IRSs gift tax exclusion means you can give up to $15,000 to each of your family members without having to pay tax on it. That amount doubles if youre married, meaning you can give away up to $30,000 to each of your children, grandchildren or other relatives every year that wont be subjected to an estate tax after your death.
Three veteran Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, including well-known publisher Jimmy Lai, pleaded guilty to taking part in an unauthorised rally that led to violence between police and participants.

The charges carry prison terms of up to five years.

Lee Cheuk-yan, an ex-politician, and Yeng Sum, former chairman of the Democratic Party, were released on bail.

Mr Lai was returned to jail as he is already being held on other charges related to his outspoken opposition to Chinas crackdown on civil liberties in the former British colony.

In this image made from video, pro-democracy activist Lee Cheuk-yan, left, and his supporter Cyd Ho, raise five fingers (Rafael Wober/AP)

Walking out of the courthouse in Wanchai district, Mr Lee said that despite pleading guilty, he and the others saw no fault in their actions.

Today we plead guilty to the charges, but we have done no wrong.

This is an act of civil disobedience.

We want to reclaim our right to demonstration and we affirm the right of people, that we have the right to come out to march, Mr Lee said.

And we believe that history will absolve us, because we believe that any political progress, and the progress and rights of the people, have to be reclaimed by the people by exercising their rights to come out to march, Mr Lee said.

The court was shown videos of the three at the August 31 2019 event that led to clashes in various parts of the cramped city of more than seven million that was stirred by anti-government protests at the time.

The pleas appear to be another blow against the opposition movement after seven of Hong Kongs leading pro-democracy advocates, including Mr Lai and an 82-year-old veteran of the movement, were convicted last Thursday of organising and participating in a march during the 2019 protest movement.

Separately, one of a group of activists detained at sea as they sought to flee Hong Kong by speedboat was brought to court Wednesday amid extraordinary security.

A fleet of motorcycles and police cars along with helmeted officers toting shotguns and machine guns accompanied Andy Li, who is charged with collusion with foreign forces under a new national security law, as well as unlicensed possession of ammunition and conspiracy to assist offenders.

Mr Li was first charged with collusion last August under the national security law imposed last year.

Police officers stand guard (Kin Cheung/AP)

He had been one of 12 Hong Kong residents detained by mainland Chinese authorities on a boat in late August 2019, sentenced to seven months in prison, and returned to Hong Kong on March 22.

Mr Lis story then took a twist reflective of Chinas opaque legal system.

His family was unable to contact him for days after his return to Hong Kong.

Then, a lawyer unknown to Mr Lis family appeared to represent him.

That lawyer, Lawrence Law, was also at court on Wednesday.

Mr Law works at Olympia Chambers, which last week issued a statement saying that Mr Law has no duty to inform the press about the details of his instructions, and/or to the family members of Mr Li.

It said Lawrence Law was instructed through a private firm of solicitors to appear, but no other information was provided.

Mr Lis court appearance Wednesday was his first time in court after completing the mandatory 14-day coronavirus quarantine on return from mainland China.

He is now back behind bars until his next hearing on May 18.

Solicitor Trevor Chan, lawyer of Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Andy Li, leaves court (Kin Cheung/AP)

The national security law requires judges to deny bail unless they are convinced the accused will not again commit the crime of which they have not yet been found guilty.

Eight of the activists had been jailed in the southern city of Shenzhen and returned to Hong Kong in batches, according to a police statement on Monday.

The group was detained at sea in August last year during an attempt to reach self-ruled Taiwan.

Many were facing prosecution in Hong Kong because of their past involvement in the 2019 protests.

The governments in Hong Kong and Beijing have been pursuing opposition figures to exert greater control over the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.

Hong Kong had enjoyed a vibrant political culture and freedoms not seen elsewhere in China during the decades it was a British colony.

Beijing had pledged to allow the city to retain those freedoms for 50 years when it was handed control of the territory in 1997, but recently ushered in a series of measures that many fear are a step toward making Hong Kong no different from cities on the mainland.

The 2019 protests were sparked by opposition to a bill that would have allowed suspects to be extradited to mainland China to face long periods of detention, possible torture and unfair trials.

While the legislation was eventually withdrawn, the protesters demands expanded to include calls for full democracy.

Beijing ignored them and responded by clamping down even harder, including imposing the national security law and changes last month that will significantly reduce the number of directly elected seats in Hong Kongs legislature.

As a result, most of Hong Kongs outspoken activists are now in jail or in self-exile.
By Makiko Yamazaki

TOKYO (Reuters) - Corp is considering a $20 billion offer from private equity firm CVC Capital Partners to take it private, a person familiar with the matter said, as the Japanese industrial conglomerate faces pressure from activist to improve governance.

The proposed deal, which comes three weeks after approved an independent probe into the scandal-hit company, could shield managers, particularly Chief Executive Nobuaki Kurumatani, from that scrutiny. It would, however, invite regulatory review given its government work.

" received an initial proposal yesterday, and will ask for further clarification and give it careful consideration," said in a statement, without providing further details.

Toshiba's board, which includes Kurumatani who joined Toshiba from CVC, and Yoshiaki Fujimori, a senior advisor at the private equity firm, will discuss the proposal on Wednesday, the source with knowledge of the proposal said.

Shares in Toshiba were untraded in morning trade with buy orders overwhelming sell orders.

CVC is considering a 30% premium over Toshiba's current share price in a tender offer, putting the value of the deal at nearly 2.3 trillion yen ($21 billion) based on Tuesday's closing share price of 3,830 yen, said the source, who declined to be identified as the matter is private.

LightStream Research analyst Mio Kato, who publishes on investment research platform Smartkarma, described that offer price as too low.

"We believe that current shareholders, especially activists, will want a rather steep price," he said in research note.

If they accepted the current offer it would still be the biggest private equity-led deal in Asia Pacific this year, surpassing Blackstone's $6 billion offer for Crown Resorts Ltd in Australia, according to Refinitiv data. It would also be CVC's biggest foray into the region so far.

For CVC, which declined to comment, the proposal represents another chance to expand in where large are under pressure to sell non-core assets and improve returns to Other deals by the private equity firm include the $1.5 billion purchase of Shiseido Co's lower-priced skincare and shampoo brands.

Any approval by Toshiba's board will face regulatory review, because Toshiba, which makes products ranging from escalators to sewerage plants, is one of only a handful of able to build nuclear reactors and manufacturers other sensitive equipment, including lithium-ion batteries for Japan's military submarines.

Japan's government would want to ensure that Toshiba's work on infrastructure was not disrupted, Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said in a press briefing.

"Even though it faced bankruptcy Toshiba is still one of Japan's leading It also has many businesses linked to government policies, so it seems a little unrealistic for it to become a foreign-owned private company," said Takuro Hayashi, an analyst at Iwai Cosmo Securities.

UNDER PRESSURE

Toshiba's management has been under pressure from activist funds since it sold 600 billion yen of stock to dozens of foreign hedge funds during a crisis stemming from the bankruptcy of its U.S. nuclear power unit in 2017.

That battle is seen as a test case for whether Japan's established corporate giants will respond to calls for better governance.

On March 18, Toshiba's shareholders, led by Singapore-based Effissimo Capital Management voted in favour of an independent probe, opposed by management, into allegations that investors were pressured to agree with management proposals.

That pressure included contacts from a government adviser and Japan's trade ministry, sources previously told Reuters.

"The incentives for management would be to have a friendly shareholder who would keep them in place. There is the government to consider as well for Toshiba as they seem to have been heavily involved behind the scenes," said LightStream Research's Kato.

($1 = 109.5600 yen)

(Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki in Tokyo; Additional reporting by Anshuman Daga in Singapore, Nilanjana Basu and Manojna Maddipatla in Bengaluru and Kane Wu in Hong Kong; Writing by Tim Kelly; Editing by Stephen Coates)

(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, April 7 : The Delhi High Court on Wednesday said that wearing of a mask in a vehicle is compulsory during the Covid-19 pandemic, even if the vehicle is occupied only by its driver.

A single judge bench of Justice Pratibha M. Singh observed that if vehicles pass through public places, there is a possibility that others may also get exposed.

"Wearing of a mask or a face cover in a vehicle, which may be occupied by either a single person or multiple persons, is...compulsory in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic," said the court.

The High Court dismissed writ petitions challenging the imposition of fines on persons by the Delhi government for wearing masks while travelling alone in private vehicles. The court noted that wearing a face mask is necessary whether a person is vaccinated or not. The court had reserved the verdict on February 17 in the matter.

The High Court termed the mask similar to a 'suraksha kavach' (an armour) for preventing the spread of the coronavirus. "It protects the person wearing it, and also the person who is exposed...wearing masks has been one measure that has saved millions of lives", observed the High Court.

One of the petitioners, advocate Saurabh Sharma, had also sought compensation of his Rs 10 lakh, after he was fined Rs 500 for not wearing a mask. The court noted that petitioners were lawyers and they ought to recognise and assist in the measures to contain the pandemic, and they should not question the measures adopted.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
SWANSEA  To encourage more travel and tourism in the area, ILLINOISouth Tourism has released a new-look 2021 Visitors Guide.

The publication features ideas from foodie fun to outdoor adventure in Madison County and 21 other Southern Illinois counties. more. The Illinois Office of Tourism this year is focused on promoting road trip itineraries, with four-day trip ideas featured in ILLINOISouths new guide.

A lot of people are looking to travel now that restrictions are loosening and more folks are vaccinated, says Andy Waterman, Communications Director for ILLINOISouth. Bringing in visitors for a weekend or even for day trips will really start to help the recovery process for many of these communities and businesses.

Tourism was one of the states leading industries before the pandemic, accounting for more than $41 billion in visitor spending. Waterman says ILLINOISouth is extremely focused on attracting visitors from a five-hour radius to experience unique road trip adventures.

We love to promote the fun, quirky road trips that truthfully are not a far drive for many of these visitors, said Waterman.

A new aspect to ILLINOISouths 2021 Visitors Guide is the ability to interact with the digital version online. Many listings allow readers to click on anything they are interested in and pull up a specific listings website or social media pages.

While touching and feeling a hard copy is great, we realize that more and more people are viewing our materials online, said Waterman. We wanted to give those folks an added feature to make their reading experience as in-depth as they want it to be.

Free copies of the ILLINOISouth 2021 Visitors Guide are available at many locations in Illinois and Missouri, including tourist information centers along several interstates. People also can request a copy at illinoisouth.org.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Amendments to provisions of the Law on Press, Printing and Publishing have been referred to the parliament.

The Cabinet in its weekly session chaired by His Royal High- ness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister, approved the memorandum presented by the Ministerial Committee for Legal and Legislative Affairs regarding amending provisions of the Law on Press, Printing and Publishing promulgated by Decree-Law 47 of 2002.

The move is in line with the directives of His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa regarding the issuance of a more comprehensive and advanced law for the press and publishing.

This step is a highly significant response to developments in the media sector and it was taken following consultation with the stakeholders who shared their observations, views and recommendations.

The aim was to contribute to strengthening free expression and to consolidate the organisation of the activities of the media in all its forms in accordance with an advanced legislative vision where rights and protection are enhanced and which keeps pace with digital transformation and the huge communication and information boom in Bahrain.

The amendments give way to licensing and regulating the websites of media companies, including publishing houses and print outlets and online plat- forms; online individual and private accounts and social networks are not covered by the law.

The amendments ensure many rights and civilisational gains, including the emphasis on not imprisoning journalists, which would contribute to enhancing media freedoms.

They also reinforce the potential of media professionals in exercising their duties and disseminating facts freely and with a high sense of awareness, security, independence and impartiality.

In order to protect the rights, values and principles of society, the amendments to the press law emphasise the importance of adhering to professional and ethical standards in the media.

The media should ensure accuracy, credibility, objectivity, transparency, honesty and responsibility in expressing opinion in accordance with the constitution and regional and international rights and media charters.

The media should also adhere to the standard ethics of respecting the rights or reputation of others, protecting national security, public order, public health and public morals, and avoiding advocacy of any form of racial or religious hatred that incites discrimination, enmity, violence and terror.

Amending some provisions of the press and publishing law and referring them to the parliament represent an embodiment of the royal vision to boost responsible media freedoms within a modern democratic climate and an advanced constitutional and legal system.

It also reflects the keenness of the government headed by HRH Prince Salman to consolidate transparency, the right to information, and media openness.

The media can enhance its national role as a partner in preserving the cultural and civilised identity of the nation, and safeguarding its security and stability while enhancing its development and democratic achievements.
A tattoo-addict has revealed how he spend years transforming himself into a real-life 'Orc' from Lord of the Rings.

Rico Ledesma, 41, who lives in Brazil with his wife Krishna Insomnia, 25, and their daughter has spent year on his look which is complete with 400 fake fanged teeth which he admits makes it difficult for him to chew.

Tattoos cover 85 per cent of Rico's body, while he also has eight subdermal piercings (those placed under the skin), as well as a tongue split and his eyeballs tattooed.

Rico Ledesma, 41, (pictured) who lives in Brazil, has spent years transforming into a real-life Orc

Rico has spent 400 on two giant front teeth (pictured) along with having his tongue split and eyeballs tattooed

Pictured: 3D illustration of a mythical Orc creature often found in fantasy literature and games

Rico revealed he has trouble eating and drinking because of his modifications. Pictured left: Rico as a child

The actor and tattoo artist has 34,600 followers on Instagram where he regularly shares snaps of his unique look and daily life.

'I started to change seven years ago in order to look different but the project to look like an Orc is less than a year old,' Rico said.

'I got six false teeth placed in August 2020 and I'm going to put two bigger ones in, even though I'm having trouble eating and drinking.

'The new Orc modification project consisted of the implantation of two more tusks (two large teeth), body paintings which are almost all in black with some grey spots and some burns and modifications.

'Today I have 85 percent of my body tattooed.

'The teeth were the final touch to the Orc project and came after a lot of study and sleepless nights.'

Rico said he began changing his body seven years ago but his project to look like an Orc began less than a year ago. Pictured: Rico and Krishna

Rico who has tattooed 85 per cent of his body, said it took a lot of study and sleepless nights to complete the Orc project. Pictured: Rico and Krishna

Rico (pictured) said he's already scheduled in to see the dental professional who inserted his giant teeth again

Rico had his teeth done by a dental professional who 'embraced' the project and the pair figured out how to make it viable.

'She did a perfect job and I've already scheduled in with her again for the next mission,' he said.

At the start of April, Rico widened his nasal septum to 'perfect' the image of the Orc, which was done with the help of a scalpel.

He's also had a black tattoo done to complement his Orc look, which he says was 'the most time-consuming and one of the painful parts' of his transformation.

Rico widened his nasal septum at the beginning of April and had a black tattoo done to complement his Orc look. Pictured: Rico with his daughter

Rico (pictured) said his black tattoo was one of the most time-consuming parts of his transformation to become an Orc

Rico (pictured) said scarification on his calf took four months for partial healing but is one of his proudest modifications

However, he says the worst modification he has had is a scarification on his calf, done with a hot iron.

'It took four months for partial healing but it is one of the ones I feel most proud of,' he said.

While the modifications would usually rack up thousands, Rico has spent next to nothing as almost everything was done by his wife.

Rico revealed his wife has done many of his body modifications and tattoos. Pictured: Rico and Krishna with their daughter

Rico met body-piercing professional Krishna who also goes by the name of Bat on the internet. Pictured: Rico and his daughter

Rico (pictured) is expecting his second child with his wife Krishna, who he says supports all of his transformations

He met body-piercing professional Krishna who also goes by the name of Bat on the internet.

The couple are now expecting their second child together and Rico says his family and friends love his new look - even his daughter.

He said: 'She loves and supports me in all my transformations.

'If one day in the very distant future she wants to make some changes to her appearance too, I will be proud of her.'

Rico's new look has earned him the title of 'trans-species' and he's even attracted the attention of film producer, Michel Reilhac, who is best known for his films Snow White and The Intruder.

He revealed he's preparing for his film debut, saying: 'We will start filming in October in Barcelona and the Canary Islands.

'I can't say much about the film but I can say that it will be innovative and playful  something that has never been seen before in cinema.

'Me and the whole team are very anxious for the cinema debut.

Rico (pictured) said he would be 'proud' if his daughter decided to have body transformations in the future

Rico has been given the title of 'trans-species' for his look and boasts almost 35,000 followers on Instagram. Pictured: Rico and Krishna

Rico's look attracted the attention of film producer Michel Reilhac, who is best known for his films Snow White and The Intruder. Pictured: Rico with his wife and daughter

Rico said he will begin filming his cinema debut in October in Barcelona and the Canary Islands. Pictured: Rico with his family
After nearly a decade of democratic rule, a military coup in Myanmar on February 1 saw the government overthrown and a state of emergency imposed for one year. The military is now in charge of the country for the first time since 2011.

The coup aligned with a general election, which the countrys de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyis NLD party won by a landslide. The military seized power as a new session of parliament was set to open, claiming widespread voter fraud.

Suu Kyi, who enjoys almost hero-like popularity in Myanmar, has since been charged by the military with a string of offences including violating the Official Secrets Act. Her Australian adviser, academic Sean Turnell, has been charged with the same crime and is currently imprisoned in an unknown location.

In the wake of the coup, widespread protests broke out across the country, leading to thousands of arrests and more than 500 deaths, including 47 children.
Filming for the biopic Vindication Swim resumed in Brighton on Friday, with Victoria Summer joining the cast as swimmer Edith Grade.

The actress, 39, donned a modest swimsuit to film scenes on the chilly beaches for the period drama, which depicts the athlete's fierce rivalry with Mercedes Gleitze in their quest to become the first British woman to swim the English Channel.

Saving Mr Banks actress Victoria was joined by a crew of extras as she filmed the iconic moment her character Edith sipped a glass of champagne after claiming to have beaten Mercedes with a record-breaking swim.

Attempt: Vindication Swim filming resumed in Brighton on Friday, with Victoria Summer joining the cast as swimmer Edith Grade

As she emerged from the ocean, Edith sported a red body suit with shorts and a matching cap and goggles after completing her 21 mile swim.

The scenes saw a crowd of supporters and photographers, dressed for the period, waiting to greet her, with Victoria wrapping herself in a towel before enjoying a glass of fizz in celebration.

It was an iconic moment in Edith's rivalry with Mercedes as they both vied to hold the record of being the first female of British descent to swim the Channel.

The character of Edith is based on Dorothy Cochrane Logan, whose 'swim' was eventually revealed as a hoax.

Exciting: The actress donned a modest swimsuit to film scenes on the chilly beaches for the period drama

Iconic: Mercedes Gleitze (pictured) was the first British woman to swim the English Channel

Stylish: Victoria was also spotted filming scenes for the biopic in a classy grey coat and matching brown fur stole as she headed out in Brighton for filming

Dramatic: She and Kirsten Callaghan, who plays the film's star Mercedes Gleitze were seen alongside a vintage car from the era during filming

Beaming: Kirsten also posed alongside the film's director Elliott Hasler in the midst of filming

Here she is! Victoria was bombarded by photographers as part of the scene, as her character claims to have beaten Mercedes record time in swimming the English Channel

Victoria was also sporting a noticeably warmer ensemble as she took to the streets to film 1920s scenes.

The young actress sported a long grey coat with a matching brown fur stole, and sporting a chic hat as she filmed scenes next to a vintage car for the biopic.

Mercedes originally appeared to boast the record of being the first woman of swimming the Channel, when she came ashore at St Margaret's Bay, near Dover, on October 7, 1927.

She did it! As she emerged from the ocean, Edith sported a red body suit with shorts and a matching cap and goggles after completing her 21 mile swim

Cheers! The scenes saw a crowd of supporters and photographers, dressed for the period, waiting to greet her, with Victoria wrapping herself in a towel before enjoying a glass of fizz

Competitive: Mercedes originally appeared to boast the record of being the first woman of swimming the Channel on October 7, 1927

The then-26-year-old typist, who had nearly been run down by a steamer, had been fed grapes, honey, cocoa and tea from the lone rowing boat accompanying her. She had little time to enjoy her fame, however.

Within four days another British woman, Edith, claimed she, too, had completed the swim  in a time more than two hours faster, and pictures even emerged of her enjoying champagne at the finish line.

So just two weeks later, Mercedes got back in the chilly Channel waters in a bid to reclaim her place in the history books.

No it's me! Within four days another British woman, Edith, claimed she had completed the swim  in a time more than two hours faster

That's not her! The character of Edith is based on Dorothy Cochrane Logan, whose 'swim' was eventually revealed as a hoax

Dramatic: The story of their rivalry is the subject of the film, Vindication Swim, being shot on the East Sussex coast

The story of their rivalry is the subject of the film, Vindication Swim, being shot on the East Sussex coast.

Fearing her feat, which took eight attempts, would also be disbelieved, Mercedes later returned to Cap Gris-Nez in France. Her 'vindication swim', watched by boatloads of journalists, ended in failure.

But it made her so famous that Rolex named a watch after her and she would later complete many endurance swims.

Kirsten trained in the sea for three months for the role. She told holiday firm Swim Trek: 'When Mercedes decided she wanted to become an open water swimmer she wasn't the 'Muscle Mercedes' she went on to be nicknamed... but a London typist who was struggling with bouts of bronchitis... [it] has taught me that whatever you choose to do, you must approach it with bravery, passion and perseverance.'

The film, directed by Elliott Hasler, 20, has just resumed shooting on Hove beach after two breaks due to the pandemic.

Tense: Fearing her feat, which took eight attempts, would also be disbelieved, Mercedes later returned to Cap Gris-Nez in France. Her 'vindication swim' ended in failure
With President Joe Biden expected to soon blow past a planned deadline to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday that Americans should nevertheless trust Biden to fulfill his pledge to end the 20-year intervention.

Biden has consistently over the course of the last decade spoken out about his concerns about the war, and that has consistently been his view, even back when he was vice president and it wasnt aligned with everybody else in the administration, so that should hopefully give people confidence about his commitments, Psaki told HuffPosts Kevin Robillard at a White House press conference. She did not, however, clarify Bidens actual timeline for drawing down the U.S. troop presence there.

Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump also repeatedly criticized the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan  but both ended their presidencies with thousands of American troops still in the country. In the coming days, Biden is likely to announce that the 3,500-strong deployment will continue beyond a May 1 timeline for their departure negotiated under Trump.

The president  has conveyed that it would be difficult operationally to meet the timeline of getting all troops out by May 1, Psaki said.

Afghan security forces stand on Humvees during a military operation in the Arghandab district of Kandahar province on April 4, 2021. (Photo: JAVED TANVEER via Getty Images)

Progressive lawmakers and anti-war activists worry that if Biden begins his presidency by continuing the current policy instead of quickly bringing troops home, he will ultimately fail to change course. Hawks could be emboldened and become more assertive in attacking plans for a withdrawal, and U.S. diplomacy with the Taliban  the hard-line Afghan militants whom Washington has been fighting since it toppled their regime in 2001  could falter, increasing attacks against Americans.

Some administration officials privately argue the opposite: that maintaining the U.S. presence for a few additional months is the only way to keep the country from spiraling out of control after the withdrawal, as it could pressure the Taliban to cut a power-sharing deal with pro-American Afghans. Many outside national security analysts believe its that hope  rather than the operational concerns Psaki and Biden have cited  that has Biden leaning toward the delay.

Story continues

Some of the presidents advisers also believe he should not feel bound by the Trump-era agreement with the Taliban, which established May 1, 2021, as the U.S. withdrawal date in exchange for a pause on Taliban offensives against Americans. It was not a deadline that we set, Psaki said.

Advocates for pulling out the U.S. forces and skeptics of a drawdown are intensely lobbying Bidens team and Congress in hopes of influencing the presidents final decision.

Serving under Obama, Biden did push against efforts to send more forces to the country, and he has criticized ambitious Washington plans to stay deeply involved in Afghanistan, acknowledging evidence that many U.S. development efforts have failed.

Still, Biden has consistently supported the idea of some continued American involvement in Afghanistan  a policy he says could keep the country from again becoming a safe haven for terror groups as it was for al Qaeda before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and subsequent U.S. invasion. Human rights groups and some foreign policy experts believe that simply treating the country as a site of counterterror operations would destabilize it even further, potentially implicating the U.S. in more civilian deaths and prolonging decades of fighting between various Afghan factions.

Psaki did not indicate when Biden plans to make his announcement on the May 1 deadline or if his plans depend on whether American officials can convince the Taliban to agree to such an extension and preserve their halt on targeting Americans.

Its  an important decision, one he needs to make in close consultation with allies and with our national security team here in this administration, and we want to give him time to do that, she said.

Related...

I Escaped The Taliban, But The Fate Of Many  Like My Wife  Is In Biden's Hands

Joe Biden Says He 'Can't Picture' U.S. Troops Being In Afghanistan In 2022

Inside The Lobbying Battle Over America's Longest War

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
ROLLING MEADOWS, Ill., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. (NYSE: AJG) will release its first quarter 2021 earnings after the market closes on Thursday, April 29, 2021. A printer-friendly format will be available on the company's website shortly thereafter.

In conjunction with this release, J. Patrick Gallagher, Jr., Chairman, President and CEO, will host a conference call on Thursday, April 29, 2021 at 5:15 pm ET/4:15 pm CT.

The conference call will be broadcast live through Gallagher's website at www.ajg.com and a conference call replay will be available on the company's website approximately one hour after the broadcast. The replay can be accessed by going to Investor Relations and clicking on Archived Presentations.

Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. (NYSE: AJG), a global insurance brokerage, risk management and consulting services firm, is headquartered in Rolling Meadows, Illinois. The company has operations in 49 countries and offers client service capabilities in more than 150 countries around the world through a network of correspondent brokers and consultants.

Contact:

Ray Iardella

VP - Investor Relations

(630) 285-3661  [email protected]

SOURCE Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.

Related Links

http://www.ajg.com


Mumbai, April 7 : Actress Dia Mirza has spoken about Uttarakhand battling 40 active forest fires. The fires have already impacted forests across the Garhwal and Kumaon regions, and is said to be the worst since 2016.

"I once quoted Baba Dioum, a Senegalese forestry engineer in a blog, the gist of which was that in the end we will conserve only what we love. Do we love our forests enough to protect them is a question that niggles at me every time such devastation takes place in Uttarakhand. Uttarakhand is the birthplace of the Ganga and its forests feed many important river systems that are the life source of millions," said Dia.

She adds: "This is a state with 71 per cent forest cover, over 743 bird species, 102 mammals, 72 species of reptiles and 439 species of butterflies. This is also home to an estimated 340 wild tigers in two nature parks -- Rajaji National Park and Corbett. So, this state literally cradles our future. To see it go up in flames like this repeatedly is very painful because I have been to these forests and have absorbed their serenity and majesty." The actress says that everyone needs to be aware of what this devastation can lead to.

"There is also neglect and a lack of awareness that precipitates the intensity of such a crisis. Our natural resource management needs to be better. As every person I spoke to in Uttarakhand once told me, we need to be more aware of the reasons that cause deforestation, pollution of the rivers, illegal mining and soil erosion. We have to understand how interdependent the human existence and mother nature are. Rivers will dry up if the forests that feed them are not protected. It will take the active participation of public and private partnership to secure our natural resources," she says.

Meanwhile, the actress is producing a series of short films that will expand the significance of the 17 SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals).
A North Korean company has lost a lawsuit it filed here against South Korean firms over an alleged unpaid bill.

The Seoul Central District Court on Tuesday ruled against Myongi general company and its South Korean plaintiff, Kim Han-shin, who heads an inter-Korean economic cooperation research center in Seoul. They had sued four companies in the first-ever lawsuit North Korea has filed against a South Korean business here.

In 2010, Myongi agreed to supply 2,600 tons of zinc to the South Korean companies for US$6 million. But the deal collapsed as a result of South Korea's ban on remittance to and trade with North Korea after the North sank the South Korean Navy corvette Cheonan.

Myongi filed the suit in 2019 over an unpaid bill amounting to some W5.3 billion. But the South Korean firms said they made the complete payment to a Chinese company that had brokered the deal.

"There was not enough evidence to conclude that Myongy had direct dealings with the South Korean companies," the court ruled. "It seems clear that a third-party company was involved in supplying the zinc to the defendants."


[April 07, 2021] Theator Named to the 2021 CB Insights AI 100 List of Most Innovative Artificial Intelligence Startups

NEW YORK, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- CB Insights today named Theator to the fifth annual AI 100 ranking, showcasing the 100 most promising private artificial intelligence companies in the world. "This is the fifth year CB Insights has recognized the most promising private artificial intelligence companies with the AI 100, and this is one of the most global groups we've ever seen. This year's cohort spans 18 industries, and is working on everything from climate risk to accelerating drug R&D," said CB Insights CEO Anand Sanwal. "Last year's AI 100 companies had a remarkable run after being named to the list, with more than 50% going on to raise additional financing (totaling $5.2B), including 16 $100 million+ mega-rounds. Many also went on to exit via M&A, SPAC or IPO. As industry after industry adopts AI, we expect this year's class will see similar levels of interest from investors, acquirers and customers." "We are proud that CB Insights has recognized Theator as one of the Most Innovative Artificial Intelligence Startups, as we define and lead the new category of Surgical Intelligence, leveraging AI and computer vision to introduce advanced video analytics into the world of surgery," said Dr. Tamir Wolf, CEO and Co-Founder of Theator. "A tremendous amount of data, and therefore knowledge, are lost every single day in operating rooms around the world, as intraoperative videos are not captured, stored, or analyzed. We are thrilled that CB Insights has chosen to recognize our mission of deploying technological excellence to provide surgeons and other stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem with actionable value and ultimately eradicate variability and disparity in surgical care." Through an evidence-based approach, the CB Insights research team selected the AI 100 from a pool of over 6,000 companies based on several factors including patent activity, investor quality, news sentiment analysis, proprietary Mosaic scores, market potential, partnerships, competitive landscape, team strength, and tech novelty. The Mosaic Score , based on CB Insights' algorithm, measures the overall health and growth potential of private companies to help predict a company's momentum. Theator's advaned AI platform transforms unstructured surgical video data into actionable insights in the form of steps, events, milestones, and decisions, leveraging the ever-increasing amount of previously untapped surgical data from the operating room. Surgeons can now efficiently pursue lifelong learning by using the platform to enhance their overall performance. This is achieved by analyzing curated footage of their own procedures and those of others, as well as gaining access to real-world peer insights from a quality-assured dataset. Theator has been named as one of CB Insights' Most Innovative AI Startups following the announcement earlier this year of a $15.5M Series A funding round led by Insight Partners. Over the past year, Theator has also announced partnerships with several medical institutions, including Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center (Ichilov Hospital) , McGill University Health Centre , and leading surgical societies such as the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons ( SAGES ).



Quick facts on the 2021 AI 100: Equity funding and deals: Since 2010, the AI 100 2021 cohort has raised over $11.7B in equity funding across 370+ deals from more than 700 investors.

Since 2010, the AI 100 2021 cohort has raised over in equity funding across 370+ deals from more than 700 investors. 12 unicorns: Companies with $1B+ valuations on the list span applications as varied as data annotation, cybersecurity, sales & CRM platforms, and enterprise search.

Companies with $1B+ valuations on the list span applications as varied as data annotation, cybersecurity, sales & CRM platforms, and enterprise search. Geographic distribution: 64% of the selected companies are headquartered in the US. Eight of the winners are based in the UK, followed by six each in China and Israel , and five in Canada . Other countries represented in this year's list include Japan , Denmark , Czech Republic , France , Poland , Germany , and South Korea . About CB Insights

CB Insights builds software that enables the world's best companies to discover, understand and make technology decisions with confidence. By marrying data, expert insights and work management tools, clients manage their end-to-end technology making process on CB Insights. To learn more, please visit www.cbinsights.com .

Contact:

CB Insights

awards@cbinsights.com About Theator

Theator is pioneering the Surgical Intelligence revolution, with an innovative platform built for surgeons by surgeons to address the variability and disparity in surgical care. Combining highly sophisticated artificial intelligence and computer vision technologies, Theator puts defining intraoperative moments in surgeons' hands so that they can continuously perfect their surgical craft. Theator is partnering with visionary surgeons, hospitals, professional societies, and research institutions to create a smarter, more transparent operating room while empowering surgeons to raise their expertise to the highest possible level. Based in Palo Alto, California, the company is paving the path for real-time surgical decision-support, creating a stronger, healthier world. For more information, visit https://theator.io/ . Theator Media Contact:

Ben Crome

Headline Media

ben@headline.media

+1 914 336 4922 View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/theator-named-to-the-2021-cb-insights-ai-100-list-of-most-innovative-artificial-intelligence-startups-301264017.html SOURCE Theator

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LOUISVILLE, Colo., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Inovonics, an industry leader in high-performance wireless sensor networks, announces the retirement of President Mark Jarman and the appointment of Tom Chittenden as President effective April 12, 2021. Mr. Jarman will support the business through the leadership transition period.

Retirement of President Mark Jarman

Mark Jarman has served Inovonics for over 20 years. Starting in 2000, he joined Inovonics as the Director of New Business Development, and following senior leadership roles of increasing commercial responsibility, he was appointed as Inovonics President in 2006.

From Inovonics original Frequency Agile (FA) platform to the self-configuring and highly successful EchoStream wireless network used to power Inovonics products today, Mr. Jarman has proudly led the Inovonics team through evolutions of technology and growth over the years. Over the last fifteen years, Mark has built the team and enhanced the company's capabilities across the enterprise, including increasing the organization's customer intimacy and focus on customer satisfaction.

Mr. Jarman has played influential roles in changing industry regulations impacting Inovonics' end markets. He has served on the Utility Management and Conservation Association (UMCA) board for over 10 years, joined the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) to guide senior living regulatory activities, and has worked with the Alarm Industry Communications Committee (AICC) to track governmental changes affecting the evolution of wireless spectrum utilization.

Following his 21-year tenure at Inovonics, Mark plans to enjoy retirement by staying active in his many outdoor pursuits and traveling the world with his wife. The Inovonics team wishes him and his family the very best in his upcoming retirement.

Appointment of New Inovonics President Tom Chittenden

Inovonics is pleased to announce the appointment of Tom Chittenden as the organization's next president. Mr. Chittenden will lead the next chapters of strategy development and growth of Inovonics high-performance wireless sensor network offerings with an eye to the future, offering cloud-based real-time indoor-location solutions.

"Inovonics has a strong track record of innovation and high-quality delivery," said Chittenden. "I am excited to join Inovonics at this time in its history. I'm confident that the continued innovation and customer focus of our team will ensure we will be the market leader in high-performance wireless sensor network solutions, today and for years to come."

Mr. Chittenden brings more than 20 years of platform hardware and software experience to his new role. Prior to joining Inovonics, he served in various leadership positions at NCR. Most recently, as a Vice President and General Manager of Industry Solutions for NCR, where he drove the portfolio of hardware, software and IoT solutions globally. Prior to joining NCR, Tom held leadership roles in numerous capacities at GE, including driving the GE IoT strategy for the retail oil and gas segment. Tom holds an MBA from the University of South Florida and a bachelor's degree in marketing from the University of Florida. He will be relocating along with his family to Colorado from Georgia.

If you have any questions regarding this transition, please contact Nikki Williams at Inovonics, at [email protected] or 303-209-7219.

About Inovonics

With more than 30 years of commercial wireless leadership, Inovonics provides high performance wireless sensor networks in industries such as commercial security, senior living, multifamily submetering, commercial monitoring and commercial fire. The EchoStream family of high-power repeaters combine to create an intelligent mesh-like network, and receivers and gateways allow for integration into a variety of application-specific hardware and software head-ends. For more information, visit www.inovonics.com.

SOURCE Inovonics

Related Links

http://www.inovonics.com


COLUMBUS, Ohio - Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Alison Hatheway granted a two-week temporary restraining order late Tuesday afternoon that blocks the enforcement of the states new telemedicine abortion ban.

Ohio Senate Bill 260, passed by the Ohio General Assembly late last year, was to go into effect on Monday. Next is a hearing before Hatheway on April 19, when she will consider whether to permanently block the law.

Last week, Planned Parenthood Federation of America and two of its Ohio affiliates sued the Ohio Department of Health and prosecutors in Cuyahoga, Franklin and Hamilton counties to stop enforcement of SB 260.

Planned Parenthood offers medication abortions through telemedicine, which it says is helpful for women who live outside of metro areas and have to arrange for time off of work and child care to otherwise travel for an abortion.

Women have their initial visit with a physician at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Cleveland, Columbus or Cincinnati. At the initial visit, they have an exam, ultrasound and counseling as ordered by state law.

If a woman chooses to proceed with a medication abortion, she must wait 24 hours under Ohio law. Her second visit can be closer to home via telemedicine at a local clinic, where there is a video consultation with the physician from the initial visit. Then she can receive the medication for the abortion.

Ohio Right to Life supported SB 260, arguing it was necessary to ensure the safety of women and the fetus. Mike Gonidakis, its president, said Hatheways decision could put them at risk.

No woman deserves to be subjected to the gruesome process of a chemical abortion potentially hours away from the physician who prescribed her the drugs, he said in a statement.

Iris Harvey, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio, said that access to medical abortions through telehealth is a safe and a quick means for pregnant to receive care.

Ohio is one of the most medically underserved states in the country, a problem particularly felt by Black communities, people of color, as well as the LGBTQ+ community in our state, she said in a statement. And access to telehealth services is a key tool in addressing these disparities.

More coverage:

Planned Parenthood sues Ohio over its telemedicine abortion ban

Ohio House sends Gov. Mike DeWine bill banning medication abortions via telemedicine

Judge temporarily blocks Ohios enforcement of fetal remains abortion law

70 school districts preparing to sue Ohio over private school vouchers

Ohio Medicaid chooses Aetna to manage care of kids with complex mental health needs
Photo credit: Warner Bros.

From Digital Spy

The Conjuring universe is back to scare us again this year with the long-awaited release of the third movie, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It.

Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are back as Ed and Lorraine Warren as the duo investigate another real-life case. This time though, there won't be a haunted house in sight, which is a bit of a blessing since we've spent a long time in our homes this past year, and we don't want to imagine them being haunted.

The movie will be out in cinemas on May 28 in the UK and June 4 in the US (where it will also be available on HBO Max), which makes it the perfect time to rewatch the entire series to date or discover what the fuss is about is you've never seen them before.

Photo credit: Warner Bros.

Like any good cinematic universe, The Conjuring series is not just about the Warrens and has grown to feature spin-off movies for villains in the main movies, including a whole trilogy (of varying quality) for the cursed doll Annabelle.

Watching them in order is not as easy as you might think. It can get surprisingly complicated, so be warned. And don't turn off the lights...



Here's how to watch The Conjuring series, in the precise timeline order. WoOoOoOoOoOohhh.

Annabelle: Creation  1943 / 1952 / 1955 / 1967

Photo credit: Warner Bros.

Watch now: Prime Video | iTunes

Annabelle: Creation is a prequel to Annabelle, itself a prequel to The Conjuring.

It expands on how the evil doll we first saw in James Wan's original movie came to be possessed, starting out with a car accident in 1943, before moving into an orphanage in 1955, where it gets good.

But if you really want to see these movies chronologically, you actually need to watch the beginning of this movie, before switching to the post-credits scene as that's a teaser for The Nun, set in 1952.

Then you can watch the majority of The Nun, before switching back to Annabelle: Creation, all the way through to its coda in 1967.

The Nun  1952 / 1971

Photo credit: New Line Cinema/The Safran Company/Atomic Monster - Warner Bros.

Watch now: Prime Video | iTunes

Story continues

The Nun is set in 1952 and, thankfully, stays there for the majority of its running time as Catholic priest Father Burke (Demian Bichir) and nun in training Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga) investigate the suicide of a nun at a convent in Romania, unaware it's linked to the demon Valak.

However, then the very final scene of the movie skips ahead to 1971 and a scene we saw in The Conjuring as it's revealed that Frenchie (Jonas Bloquet) is actually Maurice Theriault.

He's the person we saw being exorcised by the Warrens in The Conjuring, so if you wanted to watch the whole series chronologically, you'd actually have to stop The Nun here and watch this scene at the exact same time it occurs in The Conjuring. (We won't blame you if you skip that exercise.)

Annabelle  1967

Photo credit: Warner Bros.

Watch now: Prime Video | iTunes

You can now get through Annabelle, which sees the creepy doll making its first movements into the realm of the damned. Unfortunately, this is definitely the worst of the series  but watching it right after Creation does improve it somewhat.

Annabelle Comes Home  1968 / 1969 (or 1971 / 1972)

Photo credit: New Line Cinema - Warner Bros.

Watch now: Prime Video | iTunes

The third Annabelle movie  Annabelle Comes Home  kicks off with the Warrens bringing Annabelle to their cursed artefacts room. It's an extension of the scene we saw in the cold open of The Conjuring, set in 1968.

So technically, you'd have to watch that bit first, then come back to Annabelle Comes Home if you want to be specific.

The movie skips ahead a year to 1969 and takes place across one night as Annabelle decides to wake up fellow evil spirits to target the Warrens' daughter, Judy, after her babysitter's friend makes the mistake of letting Annabelle loose.

Or so we thought. However, it seems that the majority of Annabelle Comes Home could be set in 1972. There's the Perron music box in the artefacts room from The Conjuring and a popular 1971 song plays during the movie.

We have a feeling they forgot that The Conjuring cold open took place in 1968...

The Conjuring  1968 / 1971



Photo credit: Warner Bros.

Watch now: Prime Video | iTunes

Now we finally get to the first movie in the series, which is also arguably the best. James Wan leaned into his influences for The Conjuring, updating movies such as The Changeling and Burnt Offerings for a modern generation.

As with those movies, the terrifying events take place in the '70s, specifically 1971 as Ed and Lorraine Warren helping out a large family who have moved into a haunted farmhouse. It's based on a "true" story, if you believe ghosts and farmhouses are real (farmhouses probably are real, to be honest).

Although if you want to truly watch this in chronological order, you'll have to pause for a bit after the Annabelle opening set in 1968, and watch Annabelle Comes Home, before coming back to the rest of The Conjuring. Simple, right?

Or if Annabelle Comes Home is set mainly in 1972, you'd have to watch the opening of that movie after The Conjuring cold open, then come back to the rest of The Conjuring, before watching the rest of Annabelle Comes Home.

Simple, right?

The Curse of La Llorona  1973

Photo credit: Warner Bros.

Watch now: Prime Video | iTunes

We didn't know it in advance, but The Curse of La Llorona is actually part of The Conjuring universe.

Set in 1973, we catch up with Father Perez (Tony Amendola) from Annabelle as he chats to Anna Garcia (Linda Cardellini) about that time he battled an evil doll. That's about the only Conjuring connection though.

That doesn't mean we won't see La Llorona in future movies though...

The Conjuring 2  1976 / 1977

Photo credit: New Line Cinema

Watch now: Prime Video | iTunes

Another movie that's based on a true story  if you think that ghosts making people levitate is more likely than a teenager jumping off a bed.

The Conjuring 2 saw the Warrens investigate the Amityville house in 1976, before moving on to a case in the UK in 1977, which we knew as the Enfield Hauntings, which is where the potential bed-jumping shenanigans took place.

Throwing in the aforementioned Nun for good measure, as well as a creepy dude known as The Crooked Man (who's getting his own movie too, what is this, The Avengers?), The Conjuring 2 marked a turning point for the franchise, where it really started to become the MCU of horror movies.

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It  1980/1981?

Photo credit: Warner Bros.

For now, we're taking a guess that The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It will follow the real-life timeline of the story upon which it's based  that of Arne Cheyenne Johnson.

In 1981, he was charged with manslaughter for murdering his landlord, but claimed that he was possessed by a demon. The Warrens first investigated the apparent possession of 11-year-old David Glatzel in 1980, so the movie could well start in that year, before moving on to cover the case of Arne Cheyenne Johnson in 1981.

No specific timeline for the third movie has yet been confirmed, though.

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It is out in UK cinemas on May 28 and in US cinemas on June 4. It will also be available to watch in the US on HBO Max from June 4 for 31 days.

Digital Spy's digital magazine is back! Read every issue now with a 1-month free trial, only on Apple News+ .

Interested in Digital Spy's weekly newsletter? Sign up to get it sent straight to your inbox  and don't forget to join our Watch This Facebook Group for daily TV recommendations and discussions with other readers.



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Classes in the Wilkes County Schools will start on Aug. 23 and end on May 25 in 2021-22 as a result of a calendar approved by the Wilkes Board of Education on Feb. 1.
The Covid-19 pandemic has greatly impacted the library profession. Over the last year, librarians and library and information school (LIS) educators and students have been forced into new ways of working, learning, and being. And the uncertainties of the pandemic have been compounded by a racial and social justice awakening, which has shined a long overdue light on existing societal inequities, and which requires meaningful change.

In libraries, for example, it was often the Black, Brown, and less affluent staff members who were required to report to work during the pandemic, sometimes lacking the proper personal protective equipment or other suitable safety protocols. Not only did these staff members disproportionately face the prospect of getting sick or losing their jobs, they often dealt with hostile patrons, and indifferent administrators and public officials.

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And there are countless stories and anecdotes over the last year in which librarians and LIS professionals were encouraged to practice "self-care" in an effort to cope with challenging circumstances: do yoga, take a bubble bath, take a nap, talk to friends. While those individual practices may help ease one's personal stress, such advice does nothing to address the systemic barriers and inequities in the workplace that are causing such stress in the first place, and unfairly shifts the burden to individuals who are suffering.

To this end, season two of The Skillset Podcast is dedicated to the topic of "collective care." As opposed to self-care, collective care focuses on the need to care for each other in addition to the one's self. Throughout this season, guests will tell us how collective care shows up in the work that they do in their own libraries and organizations.

Hosted by R. David Lankes and Nicole A. Cooke,The Skillset Podcast features weekly conversations with librarians and other key players in the library and information world seeking to illuminate the complex issues facing libraries and other institutions in these unprecedented times. The podcast is a joint effort from the University of South Carolina School of Information Science, the Augusta Baker Endowed Chair, the South Carolina Center for Community Literacy, in partnership with Publishers Weekly.

The podcast is free to listen to and download. New episodes will post on Mondays and will be featured in Publishers Weekly's Preview for Librarians e-newsletter on Fridays.

The full first season of The Skillset Podcast, which centered on the work of libraries in the wake of the pandemic and the nationwide protests for social and racial justice, is archived and freely available for download.

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[April 07, 2021] Lightyear Capital, Oak HC/FT, and Greater Sum Ventures Announce Sale of Therapy Brands to KKR

Lightyear Capital LLC ("Lightyear"), Oak HC/FT, and Greater Sum Ventures ("GSV") today announced that investment funds affiliated with Lightyear, Oak HC/FT, and GSV have signed a definitive agreement to sell Therapy Brands to KKR. Financial terms were not disclosed. Funds affiliated with Lightyear and Oak HC/FT acquired a majority stake in Therapy Brands in July 2018. Therapy Brands provides practice management, integrated patient payments, revenue cycle management, patient engagement, tele-health and data management solutions for mental and behavioral health practices to support their clinical, administrative and billing needs. The Therapy Brands suite of software tools enables more than 28,000 practices in psychotherapy, applied behavioral analysis, substance use recovery, and physical therapy to streamline their practices and focus on their patients. Kimberly O'Loughlin, CEO of Therapy Brands, said, "We are excited about partnering with KKR on the next chapter of growth as we work to make it easier for providers to spend more time and focus on delivering high quality care to patients. I want to thank the teams at Lightyear, Oak HC/FT and GSV for their invaluable support and investment to drive client growth, adoption of our value-added solutions and expand our portfolio with M&A." Mark F. Vassallo, Managing Partner of Lightyear, stated, "The investment in Therapy Brands reflects Lightyear's ongoing thematic focus on the intersection of tech-enabled financial services and healthcare. Under our ownership, Therapy Brands has more than tripled in size through a combination of strong organic growth and nine strategic acquisitions. It has been a pleasure working with Kimberly and the Therapy Brands team, and we wish them continued success." Andrew Adams, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Oak HC/FT, said, "When we invested in Therapy Brands in 2018, the software market for mental and behavioral health providers was extremely fragmented, populated by incomplete point solutions. Therapy Brands built an innovative end-to-end solution to successfully tackle this critical pain point in healthcare, and we're excited to see all that the team accomplishes in this next chapter." Ross Croley, CEO and Founder of GSV, added, "It's gratifying to have shepherded Therapy Brands since its inception in 2017 and now to celebrate all the company' achievements within mental and behavioral health. We're proud of this successful evolution in technology and all it means for both the providers and patients of this vital healthcare sector."



William Blair and TripleTree are acting as financial advisors and Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP as legal advisor to Therapy Brands. About Therapy Brands

At a time when the topics of digital connectivity and access to care are at the forefront of the cultural conversation in the U.S., Therapy Brands is equipping practitioners with effective solutions to address the growing needs of mental and behavioral health, substance use recovery, applied behavior analysis and rehabilitation populations. Through purpose-built, fully integrated practice management and HER solutions provided by Therapy Brands, healthcare providers can improve patient quality of care and support better health outcomes for those they serve. Therapy Brands is headquartered in Birmingham, AL. For more information, please visit us at: https://www.therapybrands.com/. About Lightyear Capital LLC Founded in 2000, Lightyear Capital is a financial services-focused private equity firm based in New York. Through its affiliated private equity funds, Lightyear makes primarily control investments in North America-based, middle-market companies across the financial services spectrum, including asset and wealth management, banking, brokerage, healthcare financial services, insurance, payments and processing, and specialty finance. The firm brings focus and discipline to its investment process, as well as operating, transaction and strategic management experience, along with significant contacts and resources beyond capital. For more information, please visit www.lycap.com. About Oak HC/FT Founded in 2014, Oak HC/FT is the premier venture growth-equity fund investing in Healthcare Information & Services ("HC") and Financial Services Technology ("FT"). With $3.3 billion in assets under management, we are focused on driving transformation in these industries by providing entrepreneurs and companies with strategic counsel, board-level participation, business plan execution and access to our extensive network of industry leaders. Oak HC/FT is headquartered in Greenwich, CT, with offices in Boston and San Francisco. Follow Oak HC/FT on Twitter, LinkedIn (News - Alert) , and Medium. About Greater Sum Ventures Greater Sum Ventures (GSV) is an entrepreneurial family office that invests its own capital in middle market software and tech-enabled services companies. With entrepreneurial roots and proven operational and investing experience, GSV works with select independent co-investing partners to build platforms of technology companies that revolutionize the industries they serve. Headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee, GSV provides access to capital and operational support to midmarket technology firms all over the world. To learn more, visit GreaterSumVentures.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005849/en/

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The conventional wisdom around budget reconciliation, the filibuster-free process through which the Senate can pass budget-related legislation with 50 votes, is that you only get one per fiscal yearfor a maximum of two per calendar year. The Senate Democratic majority already spent its reconciliation bill for fiscal year 2021 on the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, and the idea has been that they could use a second one, pegged to the arrival of fiscal 2022 this coming October, on some kind of jampacked infrastructure, care economy, health care, and who-knows-what-else all-purpose bill. Since they dont have the votes to eliminate the filibuster altogether, these two bills would be their two big opportunities to enact their legislative agenda.

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Last week, however, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer asked the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, who advises on the chambers arcane rules, to examine another section of the budget law that allows for the reconciliation process. Section 304 of the 1974 Budget Act allows the Senate to pass a resolution that revises the budget theyve already passed. Schumer asked MacDonoughmost recently seen crushing Democrats hopes of including a minimum wage increase in the relief billif they could use that revision process to create another reconciliation bill.

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Schumers office announced Monday night that MacDonough had agreed, and that a revised budget resolution may contain budget reconciliation instructions.

What this means in the short term is that instead of having one more bill to bypass the filibuster this year, Democrats will have at least two, should they choose to use them.

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Democrats havent committed to any legislative strategy yet for how they want to pass Bidens infrastructure proposal, his forthcoming proposal to bolster the care economy, or whatever else is coming down the pike. For now, committees are starting to work on infrastructure proposals to see what could be done in a bipartisan way, something that some centrist and vulnerable Senate Democrats are insisting they give a shot. We shall see. But Schumer, according to an aide, wanted to maximize his options to allow Senate Democrats multiple pathways to advance President Bidens Build Back Better agenda if Senate Republicans try to obstruct or water down a bipartisan agreement.

It could be that Democrats, after giving up on reaching an infrastructure deal with Republicans (or only reaching a modest one), decide to divvy up the next two reconciliation bills according to the way Biden is laying them out: one for traditional hard infrastructure, and another for an extension of the enhanced child tax credit, paid family and medical leave, and whatever else Biden may come up with.

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But infrastructure legislation is a complicated project that will take a while. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has eyed July 4 as when shed like to have the House complete its infrastructure bill, and the Senate process is, and will always be, a more arduous one than that of the House. Whatever Democrats would decide to use their current fiscal year reconciliation revision on would have to be done by Sept. 30, the end of the 2021 fiscal year. So they could try to use that vehicle for another prioritya lowered Medicare eligibility threshold, the DREAM Act, prescription drug costsand reserve the fiscal 2022 reconciliation bill for infrastructure.

Or maybe they could fit raising the debt limit somewhere in there.

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Or whatever.

This would be a new precedent in a body governed by them. The revision clause has never been used before to squeeze out an extra reconciliation billand there are still questions about how far it can be extended. How many new budget resolutions revising existing budget resolutions can be passed? Could there be infinity revised budget resolutions spawning infinity reconciliation bills within any given fiscal year? Schumer didnt ask, and MacDonough didnt answer. Someone will ask that question eventually.

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If this new precedent sounds like a ludicrous stretch, welcome to the broken United States Senate. So long as the Senate filibuster remains in place, majorities will continue to test the bounds of the reconciliation process, a precious legislative vehicle for which debate is limited by statute. This new precedent would bring the body closer to a reality in which the filibuster effectively doesnt exist for items that have a direct budgetary impacta term that senators have chosen to rely on a Senate staffer to adjudicatebut prevents most other legislation from even getting floor time. And whos the wacko who designed this system? No one.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. and MINNEAPOLIS, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Loyal Companion, part of the Independent Pet Partners (IPP), parent family of neighborhood pet wellness stores and ecommerce, added a new location to its already-existing 54 stores, all located along the northeast region. This new pet wellness store, offering food and supplies plus nail trims and grooming services, officially opened in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, on Feb. 25, 2021. The local team will celebrate with a series of events spanning April 7-11, 2021, known as "The 5 Days of Free."

Loyal Companion chose the city of Alexandria for its beloved downtown and nationally designated historic district on the Potomac River waterfront. This neighborhood, with its well-known King Street Mile, is lined with other locally independent businesses yet was in need of a pet retailer. "We see this as a great opportunity to serve neighborhood pet parents," says Brian Murphy, President of IPP. "The new live+work+shop development in Old Town with the 232 pet-friendly apartments is the perfect location. With over 27,000 pet parents within three miles of our store, Loyal Companion is excited to be a part of this tight-knit community to offer everything our neighbors may need for their beloved dogs and cats."

The very foundation of this Loyal Companion location and every location moving forward is the 5 Pillars of Pet Wellness. These pillars focus on helping pets live long, healthy lives, with store team members, also knowns as "pet foodies," having a combined million hours of training to help customers find the perfect food, toy, treat, supplement or accessory. "Most special about this location is that Alexandria will be one of the first Loyal Companion locations that is specifically designed and visually merchandized based on our core framework in the 5 Pillars of Pet Wellness," said Tricia Nichols, Chief Marketing Officer of IPP. "Nourishment, Play, Comfort, Companionship and Purpose drive the entire experience in the store, from product wayfinding to customer education and team member advice."

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5 Days of Free

Starting on April 7 and running through the 11th, the store will celebrate with 5 Days of Free, each day focusing on one of the 5 Pillars mentioned above. During the events, the store will offer double rewards, free toys, free food samples, free advice from a trainer, free nail trims with a groomer and more. The events will take place at the store located at 923 N Saint Asaph St., Alexandria, VA 22314 from 10 a.m.-7 p.m. daily. For more details on the 5 Days of Free, visit loyalcompanion.com/oldtown.

Press Release Contact: Jessica Peterson | jessica.peterson@ipphl.com

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SOURCE Loyal Companion
When you read that a former president of Italy might be involved in plans for a new Formula 1 team, the first thing that will probably come to mind is Silvio Berlusconi. After the sale of AC Milan, you would say that he might be interested in a new toy. However, this rumour is about one of his successors: Matteo Renzi.

He was spotted in the paddock during the Bahrain Grand Prix. He was seen in the company of the Saudi Crown Prince Bin Salman. That he was there at all, got him criticized in Italian media. Renzi is still a member of the Senate and people thought it was unwise that he left for the Middle East in the middle of a lockdown.

Read more Salary cap has big consequences for Hamilton and Verstappen

Italian racing team with Arab money

The Italian magazine Autosprint however dares to claim that Renzi had a good reason for his visit to the desert. He had been seen in Saudi Arabia the day before. The magazine speculates that he might be involved in setting up a new F1 team. Renzi would be the foreman, while Bin Salman would take care of the financing.

Because it will be an Italian race team, the presentation of the team will take place in Florence, according to the rumours. It is not yet known when this will take place, but Renzi is said to have spoken with Jean Todt in Bahrain about possible next steps, so if that's the case things are moving forward.
AUSTIN, Texas, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Gathered Foods, makers of Good Catch plant-based seafood, today announced that the company has successfully secured an impressive $26.35 million in a B-2 bridge funding round with investments from Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC), Unovis Asset Management, Big Idea Ventures, and others. This strategic funding will allow Gathered Foods to further propel Good Catch plant-based seafood to the forefront of the industry, as well as raise awareness for the trajectory of the plant-based industry's market growth and popularity.

This investment comes after last year's successful Series B funding round, in which the company secured $36.8 million. The financing allowed the brand to continue on its successful path towards expansion and production, leading to the opening of its own state-of-the-art plant-based production facility in Heath, Ohio. Gathered Foods will use this new round of funding to ramp up product innovation and dramatically increase the number of Good Catch products on the market. The additional backing will also aid Gathered Foods to extend its international retail footprint, beginning in Europe, with further expansion planned for later in 2021.

"We are excited to have this important investment by LDC, a well-respected leader in the agricultural, food and ingredients space, to help fuel growth and expansion of our Company," said Christine Mei, CEO of Gathered Foods. "Partnering with proven companies who are innovators in their own right can only sharpen our ability to positively disrupt a nascent industry with our innovative portfolio of Good Catch products. As demand for plant-based seafood continues to rise, we look forward to further collaboration with LDC to create breakthrough opportunities."

"Gathered Foods combines leading edge R&D and state-of-the-art manufacturing capabilities and strong management, to deliver delicious plant-based products to a global market," said Max Clegg, Head of LDC's corporate venture capital program, LDC Innovations. "We are thrilled to partner with the company, as it expands the reach of its Good Catch brand and attracts new customers to this fast-growing sector."

As the plant-based market continues to grow, with consumer interest at an all-time high, Gathered Foods has a wide impact and innovation opportunity to bring new products to the U.S. market and across the globe. The company's Good Catch products are currently available across the U.S., in the U.K. through a partnership with Tesco, in Canada through partnerships with Loblaws and Sobeys, and in Europe throughout retailers in the Netherlands and Spain. Gathered Foods is also working with key European distributors to bring its Good Catch products to more consumers globally, through strategic retail and foodservice partnerships.

"This round of investment signifies a milestone for both Gathered Foods and the plant-based industry as a whole," said Chris Kerr, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Gathered Foods. "LDC's investment in Gathered Foods is a perfect complement to its plant-based food strategy and creates opportunities for collaboration between both companies. LDC's global reach, supply chain management, R&D capabilities and procurement expertise will be key to Gathered Foods' ability to broaden its global footprint and bring new building blocks to our expanding portfolio of offerings. We are very grateful for the trust and support from LDC."

Last year was incredibly successful for the innovative plant-based seafood company. In addition to the opening of its state-of-the-art facility and vast retail expansion, Gathered Foods announced a distribution partnership with Bumble Bee Foods, which allowed Good Catch plant-based seafood products to be available to consumers on a larger scale through new distribution channels. Good Catch also launched its line of frozen appetizers and entrees, which was met with great consumer feedback and retail demand. Additionally, the company announced new backing from celebrities Woody Harrelson, Shailene Woodley, Paris Hilton and Lance Bass, which indicated the overwhelming belief in the future of plant-based seafood and has helped to create more consumer awareness around the products.

About Gathered Foods

Gathered Foods, makers of Good Catch plant-based seafood, is an innovative food company focused on propelling change through plant-based alternatives. United by a love of good food, plant-based eating, and animal welfare, Gathered Foods is on a mission to raise consciousness, reduce harm, and preserve environmental resources, all while delivering a great culinary experience. The team is dedicated to creating craveworthy plant-based foods for everyone, from vegan to omnivore and everybody in between. Visit GatheredFoods.com for more information.

About Good Catch

Good Catch is a chef-driven brand developing flavorful, plant-based seafood alternatives. Founded by pioneering chefs Derek and Chad Sarno, Good Catch products offer the taste, texture and eating experience of seafood without harming the environment. Good Catch products include single-serve, ready-to-eat pouches of Plant-Based Tuna and frozen Plant-Based Fish Burgers, Plant-Based Crab Cakes and Plant-Based Fish Cakes available in retailers across the East Coast, with wider distribution planned. Stay tuned for more exciting product launches soon! Visit GoodCatchFoods.com and follow @goodcatchfoods on Facebook and Instagram.

About Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC)

LDC is a leading merchant and processor of agricultural goods. The company leverages its global reach and extensive asset network to serve customers and consumers around the world, delivering the right products to the right location, at the right time - safely, reliably and responsibly. Since 1851, its portfolio has grown to include Grains & Oilseeds, Coffee, Cotton, Juice, Rice, Sugar, Freight and Global Markets. The company helps to feed and clothe some 500 million people every year by originating, processing and transporting approximately 80 million tons of products. For more information, visit LDC's website and follow the company on Twitter , LinkedIn and WeChat (ID: we_are_ldc).

SOURCE Gathered Foods

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Dr Rogers was volunteering her time to monitor elderly residents for adverse reactions to the vaccine when a shot was given to her by Aspen Medical staff after a number of Pfizer vials were left over from residents. We were advised then that if we got our first dose we were guaranteed our second one when the Aspen team came out to the aged care facility again, and we would be notified on which day this would happen, she said. The problem has been that GPs working in aged care facilities have been on nobodys radar this whole vaccination rollout, even though were the ones that provide most of the medical care at aged care facilities. Its like we dont exist and the problem is were a really high-risk group. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video Last week, Dr Rogers went to an aged care facility with two colleagues to get their Pfizer boosters, only to be told there were not enough vials. She spent days last week trying to get her second shot at Pfizer hubs in Melbourne before being told it was not possible to book her in as there was no record of her receiving the first shot.

The Age and Sydney Morning Herald previously revealed that only half of the nations aged care residents have been vaccinated in the past six weeks, falling well short of the governments plan to have all residents and workers vaccinated in that time. Loading Dr Rogers estimates dozens of her Victorian colleagues are in the same situation and she has heard similar reports from doctors interstate. There are staff who work closely with the elderly such as nursing staff and personal care assistants who have got their first dose and they cant get a second dose and they have no voice in all of this, she said. She said the healthcare workers were told by the Victorian Vaccination Control Centre to get their Pfizer boosters through their GPs, even though most GP clinics do not have the correct freezers. Dr Price said the medical college had raised the matter with the federal government, labelling the delays unacceptable. The college was still determining how many healthcare workers had been affected.

The Department of Health recommends all Australians get two doses of the same type of COVID-19 vaccine. This is because the evidence from clinical trials shows this is effective and is what is approved for use by the Therapeutic Goods Administration, the department says on its own website. Associate Professor Paul Griffin, director of infectious diseases at Mater Health in Queensland, said it was difficult to determine the implications for people who received their second Pfizer dose beyond the 42-day period. We just havent done the studies to know this yet, so itd be really hard to know exactly what the protection would be if the second dose was extended beyond that recommended period, he said. It is very likely that it will probably have minimal impact. We know that coverage from a single dose is probably in the order of 60-odd per cent and it goes up to those quoted figures of about 95 per cent or thereabouts after the second dose.

Professor Griffin said delays in adequately protecting doctors and health workers caring for some of the countrys most vulnerable people against coronavirus were simply unacceptable. Loading We have to get this right, he said. A federal Health Department spokeswoman said to minimise wastage some vaccines were administered to those eligible under phase 1a when excess doses were left following vaccination of residents. She said generally a second dose was given when medical teams returned to the aged care facilities to give residents their booster shots. There are some people who have not been able to present to the aged care facility to receive their second dose, she said.

She said primary health networks were working with aged care facilities to ensure those who get their first Pfizer vaccine get their second dose, and she urged those waiting for their second dose to contact their local network. People can access evidence of their COVID-19 vaccines in their immunisation history record through Medicare Online, the Medicare app. Australias vaccine rollout has been marred by delays, with some Australian GPs saying they have been set up to fail as the federal government allows millions of patients to book appointments while providing few doses to clinics Victoria is having to throw out about three in every 1000 Pfizer doses that were destined for hotel quarantine workers, according to the Department of Health. On Tuesday night a spokesperson for Aspen Medical said the company had identified that some healthcare workers had been vaccinated at aged care facilities but did not have their first vaccination recorded accurately on the Australian Immunisation Register. We would like to apologise to those healthcare professionals concerned for any inconvenience caused, the spokesperson said.
Actor Jennifer Garner and First Lady Jill Biden are scheduled to visit Birmingham on Friday, a month after their Alabama appearance was postponed after the March tornadoes that ravaged the state, the White House announced Tuesday.

Additional details about the pairs stop in Birmingham were yet to be released, but the original plan had them visiting Jasper and Birmingham to explain how the recently passed federal stimulus plan will lower child poverty.

During the visits to Jasper and Birmingham, Biden and Garner were expected to explain how the $1.9 trillion stimulus plan will cut child poverty by half, according to the White House.

Within the package is an allowance for most working and middle-class families to receive an expanded child tax credit worth up to $3,600 for each child under the age of 6, and $3,000 for each child ages 6 through 17. The White House anticipates the changes in the Child Tax Credit to cut child poverty in half.

In Alabama, a report released in December shows that children of color experience disproportionately high rates of poverty. The report titled Alabama Kids Count, indicates that children of color will make up the majority of the child population and the majority of the workforce by 2030. At the same time, Black and Hispanic children suffered average poverty rates of 41.9% and 42.6%, respectively, between 2014 and 2018. The rate for white children was 16.5%.

Biden is participating in a nationwide tour to promote the American Rescue Plan Act. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are also participating in the Help is Here tour. The mission is to educate Americans on whats inside the COVID-19 relief package.
A Lehigh Valley man accused of trafficking wholesale quantities of fentanyl is facing federal charges for two kilograms of the drug found in his SUV, federal prosecutors said.

A federal grand jury in Connecticut indicted Regino Morillo-Espinal, of Allentown, on Tuesday with possession with intent to distribute 400 grams or more of fentanyl, the U.S. attorneys office for the District of Connecticut said.

A message left for Morillo-Espinals attorney was not immediately returned Wednesday.

If convicted, the 38-year-old Morillo-Espinal faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison and a possible maximum sentence of life in prison.

Morillo-Espinal was arrested following a March 26 stop in Connecticut, but law enforcement was watching him for weeks before then, according to court records. The Drug Enforcement Administrations Hartford Task Force said they had identified Morillo-Espinal as a trafficker of wholesale quantities of fentanyl.

On March 2, investigators were a granted a court order to track his cellphone, which showed Morillo-Espinal living in Allentown, prosecutors said.

On the day of the traffic stop, the tracking showed Morillo-Espinals phone traveling from Pennsylvania to Connecticut, records say.

Investigators learned Morillo-Espinal was driving a white Ford Edge with a female passenger, and that he drove to different locations in Hartford before heading to I-91 South.

Investigators said they believed Morillo-Espinal picked up narcotics and/or money, and planned to travel back to Pennsylvania.

As the white Ford Edge was traveling on I-91 South, a Connecticut State Police trooper stopped Morillo-Espinals vehicle.

Morillo-Espinal was in the drivers seat, and both he and the female passenger said they were married, prosecutors said.

A narcotics dog searched the outside of the SUV, but did not signal there was a presence of narcotics, police said.

The pair agreed to allow DEA officers to search the SUV, according to court records. The woman reportedly said there were no drugs, guns or money inside, besides $300 in cash.

When officers searched the vehicles center console, they found what appeared to be two kilograms of narcotics inside of a white plastic bag with loose coffee grounds.

When they showed the bag to the woman, Morillo-Espinal allegedly pointed to himself. Investigators subsequently field tested one of the two kilograms, which tested positive for the presence of fentanyl.

Morillo-Espinal, who said he did not speak English, was arrested and interviewed with the assistance of a Spanish speaking trooper, court records say.

Morillo-Espinal reportedly told investigators he drove to Hartford and picked up the bag from a person at a gas station, but he could not give any details about the person including their name or telephone number.

Morillo-Espinal denied knowing the type of narcotics in the plastic bag, and a short time later invoked his right to an attorney, prosecutors said.

Investigators seized two cellphones from the vehicle, including one they used to track Morillo-Espinals whereabouts.

Following a March 29 detention hearing, Morillo-Espinal was ordered to be held in federal custody until his trial.

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Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com.
The lengthy note from Farhan Towhid, a 19-year-old Texan,went up on Instagram over the weekend, beginning with an alarming claim: "Hey everyone. I killed myself and my family."

When a family friend saw the 11-page letter, they quickly called police to request a wellness check, warning that Towhid was suicidal.

On early Monday, police forced their way into the red brick house in Allen, Texas. Inside, they found six people dead: Farhan Towhid; his brother, Tanvir Towhid, 21; his father Towhidul Islam, 54; his mother Iren Islam, 56; his grandmother Altafun Nessa, 77; and his 19-year-old twin sister, Farbin Towhid.

'THANK GOD I'M SAFE': NRA exec sought refuge on 108-foot yacht

They had all been shot to death, police said, by Farhan and Tanvir Towhid as part of a suicide pact the pair had planned out for over a month.

"It looks like the two . . . sons entered into an agreement that they were going to [die by] suicide and that they were going to take their family members with them," Allen Police Department Sgt. Jon Felty told KRLD.

Police have not confirmed when the deaths took place but said the brothers likely killed their family members on Saturday night.

The mass killing of the family, which moved to the U.S. from Bangladesh about 15 years ago, left friends and neighbors in shock.

"We just can't believe it happened to this family," family friend Sied Chowdhury, 60, told The Washington Post. "They are a very loving family. We didn't see anything wrong with the family, any problems."

The Towhid family first settled in New York before moving to Allen, a northern suburb of Dallas, Chowdhury said. Towhidul, the father, worked in information technology while his wife Iren took care of the house and their children. A neighbor told the Dallas Morning News that Altafun, the grandmother, was visiting from Bangladesh and was scheduled to return home last week, but her flight got postponed because of the pandemic.

READ ALSO: Troy Finner sworn in as new Houston police chief

Farbin, Farhan's twin sister, had recently accepted a full scholarship to attend New York University, KDFW reported.

According to Farhan's note on Instagram, he and his brother Tanvir had struggled with mental illness for years.

Farhan wrote that he had suffered from depression since the 9th grade and had repeatedly harmed himself. His family had tried to help him, but he said that his mental health issues had recently worsened. He had been studying computer science at the University of Texas at Austin, he wrote, but was expelled from his dorms in the winter after telling a roommate that he planned to kill his family.

He moved home, where Tanvir, whom he described as "depressed and socially anxious," was staying.

Eventually, the pair decided to kill their family and then themselves, he wrote. "Instead of having to deal with the aftermath of my suicide, I could just do them a favor and take them with me," the note reads.

The pair bought guns, he wrote, adding that "gun control in the U.S. is a joke" because the pair lied when asked if they were suffering from mental illness. Police did not confirm how many guns were used in the shooting, adding that Tanvir was able to legally purchase a gun "recently," KXAS reported.

It is unclear when exactly Farhan allegedly posted the note to Instagram, but police said officers arrived at the home around 1 a.m. on Monday.

"We have never had an incident like this in the 21 years that I've been here," Felty told KXAS. "It's just a tragedy. There's no other way to describe it."

Felty said none of the neighbors reported hearing gunshots and that police received no reports of gunfire in the area. The family had never reported any issues to the police, he added.

Chowdhury said the Bangladeshi community in the area is still grappling with the news. The loss of the family, which was active in the Bangladesh Association of North Texas, leaves a void in the tightknit community.

The association's general secretary, Nahida Ali, called the news "horrific" and "shocking" in a Facebook post on Monday. The University of Texas at Austin also mourned the death of the brothers, whom the university described as former students.

"Today we received extremely sad news about the deaths of two former students," the university said in a statement shared with KTVT. "The news is devastating to our university. We express our deepest sympathies to their extended family and friends."

Some members of the Bangladeshi community arrived at the scene early on Monday morning and did not leave until the family's bodies were removed from the home around 6 p.m., Chowdhury said.

"I've never seen a crime like this," Chowdhury said. "This is hard to swallow. They had a lot of friends in the neighborhood. It's pretty heartbreaking for the community."

If you or someone you know needs help, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255). You can also text a crisis counselor by messaging the Crisis Text Line at 741741.
Three King Philip Regional High School students were taken to the hospital Tuesday after consuming candy believed to be cannabis edibles, officials said.

The students were not in danger, according to a statement from Wrentham Police Chief Bill McGrath, but were taken to be medically evaluated because they felt ill. Police and ambulances were at the school in the afternoon.

McGrath told MassLive police are working to determine whether the students knew the candy was an edible. The incident is under investigation by police and school officials.

No other students have become ill, police said.

Principal Lisa Mobley in a letter to the school community confirmed the edibles were consumed on school property.

We would like to remind community members that the King Philip Regional School District takes the issue of student substance use very seriously. We have strict policies regarding the use of alcohol, drugs or any controlled substances by our students as stated in our handbook. The use of alcohol, drugs, or any controlled substances by a student, either in or out of school, is prohibited, Mobley wrote.

The principal asked parents to educate students about substances and reminded the community that it is illegal for minors to possess or use cannabis in Massachusetts.

Edible products are easily confused as candy and snack items, and we encourage you to have open and honest conversations with your children about the risks and dangers of these products, Mobley wrote.
Keeta and Philonise Floyd leave court with their attorney Ben Crump after the sixth day in the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin, who is facing murder charges in the death of George Floyd, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, US. Photo: NIcholas Pfosi

The family of George Floyd said they will be able to breathe if Derek Chauvin, the former officer who knelt on the unarmed black man for more than nine minutes, is convicted of his murder.

Speaking yesterday outside the Minneapolis courthouse where Mr Chauvin is on trial, the Floyd family described their anguish at having to relive Mr Floyds final moments during the proceedings.

It causes them and many people to suffer PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), said Ben Crump, a lawyer representing the family.

Mr Crump said the televised trial, which entered its seventh day of testimony yesterday, had had a psychological toll on not just the family, but the global audience following remotely.

Footage of Mr Chauvin kneeling on Mr Floyds neck as the 46-year-old pleaded for air triggered global protests against racial injustice and has been played repeatedly during the proceedings.

The Floyd family have sat through each day of testimony and said they had decided to hold a prayer session yesterday after a tumultuous week of watching Mr Floyds final moments on repeat.

They prayed outside the courthouse alongside Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, another black man killed during a police restraint, and former New York Governor David Paterson.

Mr Floyds brother, Philonise Floyd, told the group: Were going through hard times right now and need people on our side to help us get through this. In a reference to his brothers final words, he added: But one thing I can tell: Me and Ms Gwen Carr, after we get the verdict and we get this conviction, well be able to breathe.

It came as Mr Chauvins lawyer sought to argue that the former officer did not use a chokehold and his knee on Mr Floyds neck did not cause him to become unconscious, in the first glimpse of his defence strategy.

Prosecutors called Lt Johnny Mercil, a use-of-force instructor for the Minneapolis Police Department, to the stand to testify that Mr Chauvin had not used an authorised form of restraint.

Mr Mercil told prosecutors police are taught to stay away from the neck when possible and to put them in the recovery position as soon as feasible because when you restrict their ability to move it can restrict their ability to breathe. However, he also agreed with the defences argument that there are scenarios in which it is appropriate to hold someone in a prone position until the scene is safe.

Under cross-examination from defence lawyer Eric Nelson, Mr Mercil testified that he did not observe Mr Chauvin use a chokehold on Mr Floyd.

Mr Mercil said he had trained hundreds of officers how to use a neck restraint, as constricting the sides of a persons neck. He told the defence that based on his experience, it takes under 10 seconds for a person to become unconscious during a neck restraint.

Asked by Mr Nelson if he has ever trained officers that if a person can talk, they can breathe, Mr Mercil responded: Its been said, yes.

Mr Mercil was called to testify as a witness for the prosecution, but his regular agreement with the defences line of questioning could be problematic as prosecutors seek to argue that Mr Chauvin used excessive force.

Just one juror needs to vote against conviction for Mr Chauvin to be acquitted.

Earlier in the day, the court heard Mr Chauvin had received training on how to deal with crisis situations and use-of-force in 2016 and 2018. Sergeant Ker Yang, who runs crisis-intervention training for Minneapolis Police, told the court that officers were taught to make critical decisions in dealing with people in crisis and to de-escalate the situation.

Prosecutor Steve Schleicher said records show that Mr Chauvin attended a 40-hour course on the method in 2016.

When we talk about fast-evolving situations ... a lot of the time we have the time to slow things down and reevaluate and reassess and go through this model, Mr Yang said.

Records also show that Mr Chauvin took in-service training in the use of force in October 2018.

Mr Chauvin (45) is charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter and third-degree murder. ( Telegraph Media Group Limited 2021)

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021]
CHICO, Calif. - Tuesday night, Chico City Council unanimously approved of a plan to help reduce the risk of wildfire in the area.

The city approved what is called the Vegetative Fuels Management Plan.

This plan will cover the citys nearly 6,400 acres of parks, greenways, and open spaces.

Action News Now spoke with City Manager Mark Orme before the council meeting about what this plan will look like.

Orme explained, One of the opportunities that we took advantage of in this past year was applying for a grant to create a plan that would be a master plan of all of our areas where potential fuel load can be seen, brush, trees, etc., and how we can help mitigate and keep under control of those areas, so they dont get overgrown for a potential fire hazard.

The funds will come from a Cal Fire Community Wildfire Prevention Grant.

With this plan, the city will look at a large amount of open space and create a system of maintenance to keep the entire city safe from fire.

Orme and the city council hope that this plan will bring some peace of mind for Chico locals, especially those who live near these areas.

When we see the state of California continually struggling to manage and deal with wildfires, to know that your city has a plan is something that should benefit every member of this community," Orme said.

It has not been determined when the city will start seeing this plan in action.
LONDON, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- With nearly three decades of experience in the investment migration industry, Dominica's Citizenship by Investment Programme is one of the best on the market. This is primarily due to its commitment to transparency and its ability to administer robust due diligence to ensure its continued attraction. Among others, these factors have seen Dominica ranked as the world's best citizenship programme for four consecutive years  as stated by the Financial Times' Professional Wealth Management magazine.

Established in 1993, Dominica is not only one of the most robust programmes available but also one of the oldest. The programme enables foreign investors and their families to become citizens of Dominica once either making a one-time investment into a government fund or buying into pre-approved real estate options. After undergoing a multi-tiered vetting procedure, successful applicants gain access to visa-free or visa-on-arrival travel to over 140 destinations, the right to live, work and study in the nation and most importantly, the ability to pass citizenship down for generations to come.

Dominica remains the only CBI nation to have collaborated with an independent third party to examine how funds generated under the programme are utilised. In 2019, the professional services company Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) conducted an in-depth study exploring CBI's role in national development. PwC found that the generated revenue was channelled into housing, tourism, infrastructure, and other significant sectors on the island. This level of transparency ensures that Dominica's international reputation remains intact whilst setting high standards for the rest of the industry.

"Transparency is critical to running a successful Citizenship by Investment Programme, and Dominica's has stood the test of time because of its commitment to robuse due diligence processes and offering a straightforward and reputable route to second citizenship," said Micha Emmett, CEO of CS Global Partners.

Due diligence is key to encouraging transparency. Dominica ensures that applicants who become citizens of the nation are of the highest moral standing. The country's CBI Unit utilises both internal and external agencies to conduct stringent security checks.

During a recent webinar, Emmanuel Nanthan, Head of Dominica's CBI Unit, highlighted: "If efficiency, if experience, if longevity is the heart and soul, the lifeblood, the main aspect of our Programme is actually the due diligence  that is the heart."

Contact Details:

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OTTAWA - When COVID-19 forced the closure of department stores, Mary Junne Boyco and her co-workers lost their jobs, ending more than a decade of working in the service sector.

Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough responds to a question during a news conference Thursday August 20, 2020 in Ottawa. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

OTTAWA - When COVID-19 forced the closure of department stores, Mary Junne Boyco and her co-workers lost their jobs, ending more than a decade of working in the service sector.

The 35-year-old lost sleep as anxiety crept in about how to pay the bills and whether they would ever get back to work.

In the ensuing months, she went back to school to upgrade her skills. She started looking for work outside the service sector, which a year into the pandemic still has the longest way back to pre-crisis employment levels.

Boyco's path out of the service sector is one that could be replicated through dozens of new skills training programs being unveiled through the federally backed Future Skills Centre to help workers mitigate some of the pandemic's long-term impacts.

What COVID-19 has done is push the pedal down on shifts already underway in the economy, particularly as companies find ways to connect digitally with customers, and use technology to boost output while not adding to the bottom line.

The centre's executive director, Pedro Barata, said the programs aim to rethink how to help workers most affected by the pandemic adapt to a shifting labour market.

Among the targeted workers for the training programs are visible minority women, Indigenous people, newcomers and youth.

"If we just stick with the current models  we're going to leave a whole lot of people behind," Barata said in an interview.

"That's not good for people themselves, but it's also not good for our economy and frankly our society."

Barata said he expects the federal Liberal government's April 19 budget to outline a plan for workers to upgrade their skills and keep changing alongside businesses.

As of February, the workforce was 599,100 jobs short of where it was in February of last year, or 3.1 per cent below pre-pandemic levels. Statistics Canada will provide job figures for March on Friday.

Labour and business leaders generally agree that skills training should be high on the agenda to help workers get back into the labour market, but too few have strategies to do that, Barata said.

Without a wider view of training, it may take longer for workers displaced by COVID-19 to find new jobs.

Boyco said she went back to school and did a professional certificate course in human resources, seeing it as possible career path with more security. She added that she believed upgrading her skills has made them more transferable in the workforce.

"I began seeking employment outside of the service sector, or something that could provide like a stable future career and protect me from the impact of the new outbreaks," Boyco said. "From my point of view, that's what I've been doing, and that's what I did."

The Toronto-based Future Skills Centre plans to fund 64 projects to the tune of $32 million to help workers affected by the pandemic upgrade or develop new skills. The organization is funded by the federal government's Future Skills Program.

One of those programs is aimed at taking 120 women who are unemployed service workers in Ontario, like Boyco, and help them move to high-growth sectors like technology, finance, or health care by building new or reapplying existing skills.

The program, partially overseen by The Career Foundation, is also part of a broader discussion to see where growing industries are heading and what skills employers will need, said Evelyn Akselrod, the foundation's vice-president of strategic development, community and corporate partnerships.

"We could get pillars, big pieces that we could then break down and look at the skill sets related to those changes," she said.

"It's about looking at the future and reading the trends."

It's also about helping people buy in to the idea of lifelong learning, she added.

The Liberals' last budget, in 2019, outlined such a plan to give workers paid time off and a new benefit to save up for qualifying training programs.

The pandemic delayed the rollout of the benefit.

At a parliamentary committee last month, Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough said the government is taking a second look at the Canada Training Benefit and how it might have to change in light of the past 12 months.

"We're right now working with stakeholders to understand the best way to support workers  including what the training benefit could do for broader number of Canadians," Qualtrough said, noting it was aimed at those who had jobs and wanted time off to improve their skills.

The Future Skills Centre is also slated to launch an online career search tool on Thursday alongside the Conference Board of Canada.

Known as OpportuNext, it looks through a database of 13 billion job characteristics to help workers see what jobs require similar skills.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 7, 2021.

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version said the Future Skills Centre would fund 65 projects with $32.4 million.
Laois Hire Services has been sold for a reported 11.2 million.

Its understood that the plant hire business has been sold to Briggs Equipment Ireland by HSS Hire.

HSS Hire acquired the company in 2005 in a deal estimated at over 5 million.

The Laois business was founded in 1989 by Michael and Maureen Killeen and specialises in the sale and hire of small plant equipment.

HSS said that Laois Hire Services represented about four per cent of the groups revenues last year. It operates from seven locations in the Republic.

HSS Chief Executive, Steve Ashmore, said, "Todays announcement is another step forward on our strategy, enabling us to increase focus on our core tool hire business.

"Laois has made a good contribution to the group over recent years, and I would like to thank the team for their commitment. I am very pleased that the business will be joining Briggs who recognise its value and whose expertise will help it reach its full potential."

HSS says that the proceeds from the sale will be used to invest in its core tool hire business in line with the groups strategy. As part of the deal the two companies have signed a cross hire/rent agreement.

Briggs has also just completed a deal for Dublin-based business Balloo Hire Limited.

"We are delighted to have completed the acquisition of both Laois Hire and Balloo Hire Limited. Both businesses have a strong track record of delivering value within the Irish plant hire market and were confident that with the backing and support of the Briggs Equipment Group, the businesses will go from strength to strength," said group managing director Peter Jones.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-06 23:45:13|Editor: huaxia

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Deputies to the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) leave the Great Hall of the People after the closing meeting of the fourth session of the 13th NPC in Beijing, capital of China, March 11, 2021. (Xinhua/Cao Can)

BEIJING, April 6 (Xinhua) -- The 8,993 proposals which were submitted to China's annual legislative session this year were transferred to relevant departments for research and handling today, a vivid example of Chinese democracy transforming people's voices into concrete plans and actions.

The National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee has set 22 priority topics, which can be categorized into six aspects including ensuring the livelihoods of the people, planning the work of the NPC Standing Committee, accelerating the development of a modern industrial system, comprehensively advancing rural vitalization, implementing the regional development strategies and promoting green development, according to the data made public Tuesday.

The move is a critical step for Chinese authorities to fulfill their duties in service of the people, coordinate the aspirations and demands of the whole of society and make decisions that serve the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority. The proposals received included suggestions, critiques and comments, through which the authorities can learn about the pressing needs of the people and nation, and push forward policies accordingly.

A quality democracy cannot be realized without delivering. Many critics regard China's annual national "two sessions" as a key window into Chinese democracy. That is true, but the operation of Chinese democracy does not stop at the "window." Handling the proposals demonstrates that Chinese authorities see taking concrete actions to solve the problems of the people as a top priority.

By late January, all 9,180 suggestions submitted by NPC deputies to last year's annual NPC session had been handled, with feedback provided. Various departments of the State Council adopted approximately 3,700 pieces of advice from NPC deputies and political advisors and subsequently introduced some 1,500 related policy measures.

By listening to suggestions and recommendations and accepting criticism and scrutiny through various forms of consultation, decision makers are able to reach the broadest possible consensus in all their decisions and work. Over the past decades, Chinese democracy has helped the country improve dramatically, not only economically but also ecologically, socially and culturally.

There is no perfect democracy, only democracy that fits best. Many Chinese know the story of Yan Zi, who lived over 2,500 years ago. He visited the State of Chu and told the king how sweet oranges from the south, when transplanted north, became bitter. China takes pride and has full confidence in its own model of democracy, but also respects the development paths of other countries and has no interest in engaging in ideological confrontation or exporting its social system abroad.

If there is a message that China wants to send through its democratic undertakings, it is the country's firm determination to protect the lives, health, rights and interests of the people. It is time to better understand the essence of Chinese democracy and its significance to the progress of human society. 
Lake Charles -The Louisiana Passenger Safety Task Force, along with the Louisiana State Police Troop D, will provide free child passenger safety seat checks in Lake Charles on Saturday, April 10, 2021. The event will take place at Lake Charles Toyota located at 3905 Gerstner Memorial Blvd. from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Child safety seat inspections will be conducted by nationally certified child passenger safety seat technicians who will assist with proper installation and answer questions while following COVID safety protocols.

Child safety seats and booster seats, when used properly, save lives. They offer the best protection for children in the event of a crash. During the past 30 years, nearly 9,000 lives have been saved by the use of child restraints according to the U.S. Department of Transportations National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). It is important caregivers ensure children are properly restrained in an appropriate child safety seat, booster seat, or seat belt  every trip, every time.

Support for this event is provided by the Louisiana Highway Safety Commission and Lake Charles Toyota.

Anyone who is unable to attend and would like to have a child safety seat inspected may make an appointment with Louisiana State Police Troop D by calling 337-491-2519.


Prime Minister praises churches' pandemic role Prime Minister praises churches' pandemic role

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has for the first time publicly thanked churches for the role they have played during lockdown and recognised the selfless stoicism Christians have demonstrated throughout the pandemic.

The Prime Minister, who was speaking at the online Christian festival Spring Harvest Home, said: I want to say a great big thank you because over the past year or so I have seen over and over again the teachings of Jesus Christ brought to life by people like yourselves: men and women, young and old, right across the UK.



Johnson continued: Ive lost count of the number of Church leaders and congregations from all denominations, that have stepped up to support not only one another, but also to support the whole local community, people of all faiths and none.



The Prime Minister also recognised the significant sacrifice many Christians have made over the past 12 months and urged them to continue to show resilience: For many months you have been unable to come together for worship and prayer as you would normally do. I know that has been a huge burden for many Christians, but it is a burden you have borne with selfless stoicism without complaint and by adapting to online worship and meetings.



The Prime Minister was joined at Spring Harvest Home by Labour party leader Sir Keir Starmer and Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey who each recorded a video message for those attending, outlining their personal message to Christians in the UK, which aired as part of the interactive online festival.



Spring Harvest Home 2021 runs from Easter Sunday until Thursday April 8, with the Prime Minister and party leaders sharing their unique messages on Easter Monday. Afterwards, Christians from diverse political backgrounds joined a panel debate about how believers can be more active in politics as part of their faith, and other questions. Hosted by Andy Flannagan of Christians in Politics, the panel included Lib Dem vice-president Isabelle Parasram and senior representatives of the other major parties.



Phil Loose, CEO of Essential Christian, the home of Spring Harvest responded to the Prime Minister's comments by saying: This is an important moment for the Church, to have the recognition of the Prime Minister for the work and sacrifice they have made shows how important the church has become in modern society. We are no longer a peripheral voice, but an essential service to those in our communities. Churches up and down the land have responded fast to the needs of the nation to see our society supported and transformed which is at the very heart of Spring Harvest; equipping the church for action.



He went on to say: Now is the time for us as the church to support our nations leaders as we work together to restore, renew and rebuild our communities in the wake of a devasting pandemic. At Spring Harvest were stepping up into that need providing resources online to help equip the church to serve their communities.



Spring Harvest Home 2021 began on Easter Sunday evening featuring live sung worship from well-known Christian artist Tim Hughes and Gas Street Music. The festival also featured inspiring and insightful teaching from Emmanuel Christian Centres Doug Williams and Kintsugi Hopes Patrick Regan OBE, plus an exclusive evening of comedy with comedians Tim Vine and John Archer.



The Prime Minister concluded: While this has not been the Easter any of us would have liked, and Spring Harvest is obviously not happening in its usual bustling way, were getting there, and were getting there because of people like you.



Tickets are available now and offer access to the full weeks online event or a one-year subscription to access Spring Harvests digital content - including a range of new teaching videos and resources following the April event.



To find out more and book tickets for Spring Harvest Home please visit: https://springharvest.org/



Keith Morris, 07/04/2021
Dan Wagner Sr. founded Wagner Wealth Management to assist high net worth individuals and companies reach their personal and professional goals through financial planning, assets management, alternative investment strategies and 401K planning. The Greenville, S.C.-based firm has three offices in South Carolina and seven registered advisors. The firm is coming to Arkadios from Triad Advisors.

"Arkadios Capital is an ideal partner for where Wagner Wealth is looking to go with our firm," said Wagner. "Arkadios is focused on supporting growing financial advisory practices like ours. Throughout our entire due diligence process, Arkadios' executive team worked with us directly to understand our business needs and vision of where we are going. They put together a structure that met our needs, will significantly advance our growth objectives and in a way that benefits both of our firms."

Advisors founded Arkadios Capital for advisors. The company specializes in supporting larger and growth-oriented wealth management firms by offering specialty services like in-house CFA asset management, a fixed income team, as well as back-office support, compliance and investment due diligence.

"We are thrilled to welcome Dan and his team to the Arkadios Capital family," said David Millican, Founder and CEO, Arkadios Capital. "Wagner Wealth knows the importance of personalized service instead of a 'one-size-fits-all' approach, which is what we bring to the table. We are excited to partner with Dan and Wagner Wealth to help them reach the next level in their remarkable growth."

Founded in 2016, Arkadios has grown to 80 advisors, with 22 offices across 12 states and Puerto Rico. Financial Planning magazine has twice honored the firm as an Elite BD. It earned the top spot in 2019 and earned several additional accolades in 2020.

Arkadios has more than tripled its revenue and added an institutional bond desk and real estate investment team. With the highest ethical standards, the broker-dealer specializes in customized investment options focused on individual investors. The hybrid IBD has more than $3.5 billion in associated assets. For more information, visit www.arkadios.com.

SOURCE Arkadios Capital

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Getty Students and teacher wearing masks in classroom

Nearly 80 percent of teachers and childcare staff have received at least their first shot of the COVID-19 vaccine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Tuesday.

More than 2 million teachers, school staff and childcare workers got one dose of the vaccine through the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program by the end of March. An additional 5-6 million were vaccinated through their state programs, the CDC's latest estimates and survey data found.

"Our push to ensure that teachers, school staff, and childcare workers were vaccinated during March has paid off and paved the way for safer in-person learning," said Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the CDC director, in a statement.

RELATED: What Is a COVID-19 Vaccine Passport? Everything You Need to Know

"CDC will build on the success of this program and work with our partners to continue expanding our vaccination efforts, as we work to ensure confidence in COVID-19 vaccines," she added.

The announcement comes one month after President Joe Biden said he would be directing states to prioritize the vaccination of pre-K through 12 educators and staff and childcare workers as part of his push to reopen schools.

getty images

"So as yet another move to help accelerate the safe reopening of our schools, let's treat in-person learning like an essential service that it is," he said on March 2.

While Biden said "not every educator will be able to get their appointment in the first week" of March, he called for every teacher and childcare worker to receive at least one dose of a vaccine by the end of the month.

Biden responded to the CDC's latest announcement while visiting a vaccination site in Alexandra, Virginia on Tuesday, sharing that the benchmark shows "great progress."

RELATED: Pfizer Reports Their COVID-19 Vaccine Is 100% Effective in Kids Ages 12 to 15

"That is great progress protecting our educators and our essential workers. And because our vaccine program is in overdrive, we are making it easier to get a vaccination shot," he said, according to The New York Times.

Story continues

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More schools around the U.S. are moving to in-person learning as teachers get vaccinated and new research indicates that classrooms where students and staff are masked and socially distanced are at low risk for COVID-19 spread.

Last month, the CDC said that schools can safely space children just 3 feet apart rather than 6, allowing for more students in the classroom.

Pfizer and Moderna are also currently running clinical trials on their vaccine in children between the ages of 6 months and 12 years old.

Currently, Pfizer's vaccine is approved for use in people aged 16 and up, while the other two vaccines currently in use in the U.S., from Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, are approved for people 18 and older.

As of Wednesday afternoon, about 108.3 million people have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, including 63 million people who have been fully vaccinated, according to data from the Times.
(Natural News) AstraZeneca found itself in the middle of another controversy after Italian police discovered that the giant pharmaceutical company was keeping 29 million doses of its Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine in a drug factory near Rome.

Catalent Inc., a pharmaceutical company with headquarters in New Jersey, runs the factory. The Italian government confirmed that it launched an inspection of the site late last month following a request by the European Commission. A statement from the office of Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi indicated that the doses were headed to Belgium, from where they would be exported to other countries.

It was unclear where the vaccine stocks would be distributed, but Italian newspaper La Stampa reported on March 24 that the doses were possibly being prepared for export to the United Kingdom. However, AstraZeneca claimed that 13 million of the doses would be sent to low and middle-income countries under COVAX, a global vaccine-sharing initiative, while the rest were for Europe.

No other exports are currently planned, the company said to clarify some inaccurate statements.

Mario Gargiulo, regional biologics president for Europe at Catalent, claimed that he had no idea whether the doses would be shipped to the U.K. He added that Catalent only sends its finished vials to AstraZenecas Belgian distribution center and is not involved in the vials further destinations.

This came after the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker and the U.K. found themselves in a supply dispute in January with the European Union. The issue emerged following reports that AstraZeneca planned not to fulfill its contracted deliveries to the European bloc. The EU responded by instructing AstraZeneca to divert supplies meant for the U.K. to Europe.

By March, the drug company failed to deliver more than half of the doses it promised to dispatch to the EU in the first quarter. The stocks at Catalent amounted to nearly twice as much as what the bloc had so far received as of last month. But the discovery of the doses suggested that AstraZeneca had a higher capacity for deliveries when pushed, according to an EU official who asked not to be named, Bloomberg reported. (Related: FLASHBACK: AstraZeneca illegally marketed drugs and committed fraud  why would anyone trust a vaccine from this corrupt company?.)

Controversies surrounding the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine

The police search is one in a series of controversies plaguing AstraZeneca and the coronavirus vaccine it developed alongside the University of Oxford. Last January, a number of European nations expressed their concerns about the vaccines efficacy in the over-65 age group.

Germanys vaccine committee recommended that the shot should be administered only to people ages 18 to 64. The committee issued the recommendation after determining that the drugmakers trial data was not enough to assess the jabs efficacy in people over 65.

German newspapers also reported that the vaccine had an efficacy rate of less than 10 percent in that age group. French President Emmanuel Macron further stoked concerns after saying that the vaccine appeared to be quasi-ineffective for the elderly.

Confidence in the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine dipped even more last month following several reports of people who developed blood clots shortly after receiving the jab. On April 1, British regulators identified 30 cases of blood clot events after vaccination, seven of whom died due to the condition.

The drugmaker defended its vaccine and said that the number of blood clots recorded post-vaccination was lower than could be expected to occur without vaccination. But despite AstraZenecas assurance, several countries, including France, Italy, Spain and Germany, still suspended the use of the vaccine.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA), the EUs drug regulator, conducted a safety review into the vaccine and concluded that it was safe and effective and that its benefits outweighed its risks. However, EMA officials said that the agency at the moment still cannot rule out definitively a link between the vaccine and the blood clots. (Related: New research points to link between AstraZeneca vaccine and blood clots.)

Late last month, the Data Safety Monitoring Board, an American health agency that reviews drug trial data, raised the possibility that AstraZeneca provided outdated efficacy figures. The drug giant responded in a statement that the figures were based on a pre-specified interim analysis with a data cutoff of Feb. 17. It added that it would share its primary analysis containing updated data within two days after issuing its statement.

On March 24, the company changed the vaccines efficacy to 76 percent, which was lower than the 79 percent rate it released days earlier.

Learn more about the controversies surrounding AstraZeneca and other pharmaceutical giants at BigPharmaNews.com.

Sources include:

Bloomberg.com

Reuters.com 1

CNBC.com 1

CNBC.com 2

Reuters.com 2

WSJ.com
Deran Hill, a pastry and sous chef at Josies Mediterranean Cafe in Decatur, died of complications from COVID-19 on April 1. He was 41.

Deran was the kindest, sweetest, most gentle soul youd ever meet, John Wheat, owner of Josies, said. If there were more people like Deran Hill, this world would be a hell of a lot better place. He was just that good. I dont think he had a mean bone in his whole body.

A native of Decatur, Hill was a graduate of Decatur High School and had worked at Josies for about two-and-a-half years, the last of the restaurants original hires from 2018. He had returned to the area from California to care for his mother. According to his obituary, he was known for an infectious smile, big personality, kind heart, and love for cooking. Wheat said he was especially proud of his desserts.

Wheat took Hill to the emergency room in March. We didnt realize he had underlying health issues, he said. One thing led to another. It was heartbreaking.

Hills funeral will be at 2 p.m. Thursday at Sterrs Cemetery. A GoFundMe page has been organized to help with funeral expenses. As of Wednesday afternoon, it had raised almost $3,900 toward a goal of $5,000.
Deborah Rose/Hearst Connecticut

NEW MILFORD  This summer, the town will be hosting a family-friendly, town-wide scavenger hunt with proceeds supporting the Housatonic Habitat for Humanity, according to a press release.

From May 1 to July 31, residents can grab their smartphones and hop in the car to complete the hunt and compete for prizes.
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Microfinance banks in Nigeria will not be able to meet up with recapitalisation requirement of the Central Bank of Nigeria, within the proposed time, because of the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on the economy, an official has said.

Yusuf Gyallesu, National President of the National Association of Microfinance Banks (NAMB), said this, according to BusinessDay newsaper.

Mr Gyallesu sought the CBN to reconsider its minimum capital requirement for the banks, and called on the top bank to extend the deadline for compliance.

The CBN had in March 2019 reviewed the requirements with a view to ensuring continued operations of microfinance banks in rural, unbanked and underbanked areas of the economy.

After the review, the minimum share capital for MFBs, as of April 2021, ranged from N35 million to N3.5 billion, depending on the category.

Mr Gyallesu said the microfinance banks had challenges raising the capital.

We are advocating through different sources to see how the CBN can shift ground by reducing the capital requirement amount or extending the tenure of the deadline, he was quoted by BusinessDay. as saying.

So within this COVID-19 period, where can one go to raise 1, 000 percent of the reviewed capital he was quoted as saying.

The apex bank had earlier extended the deadlines issued to the banks to comply with its revised minimum capital requirements.

In the circular, the apex bank said: The Central Bank of Nigeria in consideration of the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on economic activities has revised the deadlines for compliance with the minimum capital requirements for Microfinance Banks (MFBS) in Nigeria.

Consequently, the CBN said MFBs operating in rural, unbanked and underbanked areas (Tier 2) should meet the N35 million capital threshold by April 2021 and N50 million by April 2022.

It added that MFBs operating in urban and high density banked areas (Tier 1) are expected to meet the N100 million capital threshold by April 2021 and N200 million by April 2022.

State MFBs were asked to increase their capital to N500 million by April 2021 and N1 billion by April 2022.

Similarly, national MFBs were expected to meet the minimum capital of N3.5 by April 2021 and N5 billion by April 2022.

But acording to an internal survey conducted by the National Association of Microfinance Banks (NAMB), only 30 percent of MFBs will be able to meet the deadline.
AMRITSAR : A Pakistani smuggler who crossed over to India with around 22 kg of heroin was shot dead along the International Border (IB) here in a joint operation of the Punjab police and the BSF, officials said.

They said there was specific information about the movement of Pakistani smugglers towards the Indian territory with consignment of drugs.

Acting on the input, Punjab police team led by SSP Dhruv Dahiya along with Border Security Force (BSF) troops launched a joint operation at the Kakkar border outpost.

During the operation, movement of a Pakistani smuggler was noticed. The smuggler fired at the Indian troops and was shot dead when they returned the fire, a senior police official said.

A comprehensive search operation was launched on the spot at the Indo-Pak border of the Indian side, where troops seized 22 packets of heroin, weighing a total of about 22 kilogram, two AK 47 assault rifles, 4 magazines, one mobile phone with Pakistani SIM card, besides Rs. 210 in Pakistani currency, police said.

During preliminary investigation, it was found that the smuggler was known to his two Indian counterparts who were residents of Gurdaspur district and were presently at Belgium and allegedly involved in anti-India activities at the behest of Pakistan's ISI agency, the SSP said.

Police said through investigation is under progress to reveal exact purpose for which the seized consignment was being smuggled to India.

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Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and his Russian counterpart on Wednesday held wide-ranging talks here during which they reviewed their bilateral cooperation in the field of energy, security, including counter-terrorism and defence.

Lavrov, the first Russian foreign minister to visit since 2012, was welcomed by Qureshi at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Lavrov planted a sapling in the premises of the ministry and then went inside the building for a joint photo session, followed by the delegation-level talks.

Pleased to welcome Foreign Minister to the Foreign Office today for excellent meetings. Building multi-dimensional relations with is a key priority for and we believe a strong relationship contributes to regional stability and global security, Qureshi said in a tweet.

Divulging details about his talks, Qureshi said: "We considered ideas to further promote #EconomicDiplomacy and discussed progress in the area of energy cooperation including the Pakistan-Stream Gas Pipeline project".

"We reviewed our cooperation in the field of security including counter-terrorism and defence, he said.

The Pakistani Foreign Minister said that they agreed on the need to promote greater people-to-people contact through greater collaboration across a diversity of fields, including education.

"We will also be enhancing our cooperation within the framework of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation," Qureshi said.

and share convergent positions on several issues on multilateral agenda including peace and stability in Afghanistan, he said.

Qureshi also raked up the Kashmir issue in his talks with the visiting Russian Foreign Minister.

The Pakistani Foreign Minister said that he shared with Lavrov the perspective on larger questions of peace and security in South Asia, and the human right situation in Jammu and Kashmir.

"We are confident that this visit will give further momentum to our deepening friendship and we remain committed to expanding our relations in diverse areas through further high-level contacts," Qureshi said on Twitter.

Officials said that the two foreign ministers held in-depth discussions on various topics of bilateral interest with the aim to expand the multi-faceted ties.

During the visit, the Russian foreign minister will also call on Prime Minister Imran Khan and have interaction with other dignitaries. He is also expected to meet Pakistan Army chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa.

Qureshi said ahead of Lavorv's arrival that there was a lot of scope for economic cooperation. He said that was playing a role in the Afghan peace process.

He later on tweeted that the Russian Foreign Minister's visit is in line with the commitment of Islamabad and Moscow to further strengthen their bilateral ties and deepening the growing bonds of cooperation and collaboration.

Separately, the Russian Foreign Ministry, in an official statement on Lavrov's visit to Islamabad, said that Pakistan is an important foreign policy partner of Russia and fruitful interaction is maintained at organisations, primarily in the UN and its specialised agencies.

The cooperation between Moscow and Islamabad is based on the coincidence or similarity of positions on most of the problems of the world community, including issues of strategic stability and countering terrorism, according to the statement.

The relations have come a long way from the Cold War hostility to current level cooperation and there is hope to further expand it in coming years.

Lavrov arrived here on Tuesday on a two-day official visit with the objective to deepen cooperation in different fields. The Russian foreign minister arrived in Islamabad after concluding his visit to India.

He was received by Qureshi at the airport where the two leaders held a brief chat.
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Another police station has been set ablaze in Imo State, Nigerias South-east, barely 48 hours after some gunmen launched a daring attack on the police headquarters in the state, News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported.

The unknown gunmen on Tuesday attacked the police division in Ehime/Mbano in the state and burnt down some vehicles.

The police spokesperson in Imo State, Orlando Ikeokwu, confirmed the attack on the police facility.

The police headquarters and the Correctional Center in Imo were attacked by unknown gunmen on Sunday, with some inmates escaping in the process.

The latest attack occurred few hours after the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, the former Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, and other government functionaries visited the state to inspect the attacked facilities.

The police spokesperson, Mr Ikeokwu, a superintendent of police, said no life was lost in the latest attack.

Yes I can confirm to you that the police facility was attacked today by bandits.

No casualty on the part of police, no loss of arms but three vehicles were burnt in the process, he said.

NAN reported that the attack has brought to five the number of police facilities destroyed in the state between February and April.

They are Obowo, Aboh-Mbaise, Ihite Uboma, Isiala Mbano and Ehime Mbano as well as the police headquarters in the state.

There has been spate of attacks on police officers and police facilities lately around the countrys South-east and South-south regions.

In the neighbouring Abia State, the state government has imposed curfew in some cities as a preventive measure against another of such attack.

The pro-Biafra group, IPOB, has denied the accusation that it was behind the Sundays attack on the police headquarters in Imo.

(NAN)
The Chief Manager of the Banking Supervision department at the Bank of Ghana (BoG), Mr Philip Danso, has cautioned commercial banks against the transfer of funds abroad under the Technology Transfer Agreement (TTA) if the agreement was not registered in accordance with the GIPC Act 2013 (Act 865).

He said funds that were transferred under TTAs that were not registered would attract sanctions when evidence of such transactions became available to the Central Bank.



Any TTA that is not registered is an illegality and will attract the appropriate sanctions, because the criminal code explains a crime as any conduct that attracts a penalty of death, punishment or a fine and once the GIPC Act has provided for a fine for TTAs that are not registered, then it falls within the definition of a crime, he said.



Mr Danso gave the warning at the first quarter of CEOs Breakfast Meeting in Accra yesterday, where he delivered a presentation on the implications of transferring funds without a registered TTA. The meeting was organised by the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC).



It was held on the theme: Technology Transfer Agreements: Eligibility, Compliance & Liabilities.



Technology Transfer



Under GIPC legislation, a TTA refers to an agreement between a company in Ghana (Transferee) and a company outside Ghana related or non-related (Transferor) for a duration of an initial 18 months to 10 years and was renewable for 18months to 5 years.



The agreement involves assignment, sale and licensing of all forms of industrial property such as patents, industrial designs, trademarks or the provision of technical expertise by a foreign company to a local based company.



It also involves the provision of managerial services and know-how such as information, data whether patentable or not including technical or commercial information relating to research, design, development manufacture, use or sale and personnel training.



PEGAS RANA MOTTORS

Implications



In an interview with the Daily Graphic, Mr Danso said transactions made under the TTAs that were not registered could become an avenue for money laundering.



Such transactions, he said, could also facilitate capital flight since it would not be captured in any registered agreement with the GIPC.



He said the BoG would not hesitate to sanction banks that encouraged such transactions and called for a more punitive legislation against the phenomenon.



Technology Transfers



The Head of the Legal Division of the GIPC, Ms Naa Lamle Orleans-Lindsay, said the GIPC was mandated under Act 865 to register, monitor and keep records of all TTAs of enterprises operating in the country.



She explained that companies with TTAs covering all sectors of the economy, including companies with sector specific regulators were to submit their TTA to the GIPC for scrutiny.



This is applicable even to companies with sector specific regulators such as banks which operate under the BoG, Telcos under the National Communications Authority (NCA), mines under the Minerals Commission, petroleum companies under the Petroleum Commission and insurance companies under the National Insurance Authority (NIA), she said.



Ms Orleans-Lindsay explained that the legislation set out provisions that must be included and excluded from TTAs to serve as a guide for parties that entered such agreements.



For instance, she said, all services to be transferred into the country under a TTA must not be available in the country at the time of the agreement.



It also stipulates that the law governing the transaction will be the Ghana law, while taxes on royalties will be payable by the transferor.



Challenges



Touching on some of the challenges hindering the implementation of the Act, she said there was a general lack of compliance on the part of local companies while Parent or Group companies also felt reluctant to comply with the GIPC legislation.



Aside from the lack of compliance, she said there were also delays in the submission of TTAs partly because renewal of TTA registration required approval from the GIPC and the sector regulators and this often caused the delay.



To help ensure compliance, Ms Orleans-Lindsay underscored the need for stronger collaboration between the GIPC and other key stakeholders such as the BoG and the Ghana Revenue Authority in the registration and monitoring processes.





Source: graphiconline.com









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Banda (UP): After spending over two years in a Punjab prison, gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari was brought back to Banda jail early Wednesday morning.

He was ferried in an ambulance guarded by a strong posse of gun-toting security personnel throughout his 900-km journey from Rupnagar to this Uttar Pradesh town in the Bundelkhand region.

Mukhtar Ansari

Acting on a Supreme Court order, the Uttar Pradesh Police took custody of the 57-year-old BSP MLA at Rupnagar jail on Tuesday to bring him back to Banda prison. It took around two hours to complete the formalities before he was handed over to the UP Police after a medical check up.

While heavy security arrangement was made by the Punjab Police outside Rupnagar jail, the Banda prison area looked like a cantonment zone with policemen keeping a hawk-eyed vigil all around.

The police convoy entered Uttar Pradesh through the Eastern Peripheral Expressway in Baghpat around 6.00 pm, Allahabad zone Additional Director General of Police Prem Prakash said.

Mukhtar Ansari

Principal of Government Medical College, Banda, Dr Mukesh Kumar Yadav said a panel of four doctors has been constituted on the apex court's directions to monitor Ansari's health.

Ansari was lodged in Rupnagar jail in January 2019 in connection with an extortion case.

The legislator from Mau in eastern Uttar Pradesh is facing 52 cases in the state and elsewhere, and 15 of them are in the trial stage.
A western Sydney wedding got so out of control that police were forced to intervene and charge three men with 'risking lives' after guests wreaked havoc in a suburban neighbourhood.

More than 100 wedding guests spilled out onto Sheffield Street in Auburn last Friday at 11.40am to watch as three men performed burn outs.

Aerial footage from the wild celebrations captured plumes of smoke billowing into the air.

Dozens of glamourously-dressed guests filmed three men - driving a Holden Commodore, a Nissan Silvia and a Ford Falcon - revving their engines.

Dozens of glamourously-dressed guests filmed three men perform burn outs at a wedding in Auburn

The burn outs left tyre marks stretching more than 100 metres up the suburban street.

The commotion grabbed the attention of local police who broke up the event.

The three cars sped away from the scene as officers arrived.

'The smoke caused significant visibility issues for the other road users at the time and put the lives of the wedding guests at risk,' NSW Police said in a statement.

Three men driving a Holden Commodore, a Nissan Silvia and a Ford Falcon performed burn outs up and down Sheffield Street

Police on Sunday charged two of the drivers with a number of serious offences and issued them with court attendance notices for aggravated burnouts.

The men, aged 22 and 24, also had their drivers' licenses suspended.

Police also caught a third man who owned one of the cars, however it's not believed he was behind the wheel at the time of the wedding.

The man was charged for 'failing to disclose the details of the driver of his vehicle'.

Police are still on the hunt for the third driver.

Anyone with footage or information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers.
The domestic violence murders of two Sydney teenagers were preventable, says a coroner who found a litany of errors made by multiple authorities.

Jack Edwards, 15, and his sister Jennifer, aged 13, were shot dead on July 5, 2018, after their father John Edwards stalked his daughter on her way home from school.

NSW State Coroner Teresa O'Sullivan on Wednesday found police failed to make reasonable inquiries after the children's mother, Olga, reported instances of Edwards' abuse and stalking in 2016 and 2017.

John Edwards shot dead his daughter Jennifer (left), 13, and son Jack (right), 15, in West Pennant Hills in Sydney's north-west on July 5, 2018

Gun registry staff, in the job without any formal training, then failed to recognise Edwards' long pattern of domestic violence when granting him various permits and licence to shoot and buy pistols and rifles.

The coroner could not be satisfied Edwards initially started gathering permits in order to murder his children.

But she said he'd formed that intent by April 2018, when he acquired his second pistol.

Her voice wavering at times, the coroner said it was unquestionable the deaths of the children and their mother's December 2018 suicide had caused unbearable suffering for many.

'However, to describe this as a tragedy is to import a sense of inevitability that nothing could have been done to change the outcome,' she said.

NSW Coroner found the deaths of the two teenagers who were killed by their father John Edwards (pictured) was preventable

'Instead, the evidence before this court plainly reveals the deaths of Jack and Jennifer were preventable.'

Among her 24 recommendations, Ms O'Sullivan has called for the process allowing people to shoot guns on-the-spot to be abolished, police officers' training to include more on domestic violence and regular audits of police reports to ensure they comply with best practice.

Despite the NSW Police's overhaul of the gun registry in response to the deaths, the coroner said more was needed to address the 'serious, systemic failures' present until July 2018.

She also called for better information sharing between the registry, police and Family Court to verify answers given by applicants, including whether they were subject to family law proceedings.

Independent children's lawyer Debbie Morton, who was tasked to represent Jack and Jennifer's best interests in the Family Court, was referred to a NSW lawyers' body for possible disciplinary action.

The coroner found she hadn't properly considered objective evidence, statements by Olga Edwards and the children's concerns before addressing the Family Court on Edwards' risk.

Gun clubs that interacted with Edwards in 2016 and 2017 adhered to their obligations, the coroner found.

But she recommended a new law forcing gun clubs to tell the registry when they refuse someone membership and give reasons.

Unlike other inquiries, the coroner cannot extend her inquiry and recommendations to address community-wide issues if they don't relate to the deaths in question.

'Notwithstanding, the deaths of Jack and Jennifer serve as a stark remainder of the broader systemic problems that face too many women and children every day,' the coroner said.
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Lindsay Fox, an emergency doctor who last worked at a hospital in Newark, New Jersey, saw as many as 100 COVID-19 positive patients come through her department in a shift. During the height of the pandemic, she would walk past a refrigerated truck full of dead bodies every day.

HILLSBORO, N.M.  For much of 2020, it was as though the pandemic raging across the globe never existed in this 144-year-old hamlet at the base of the Black Range mountains in southwest New Mexico.

At least thats how it might have appeared to an outsider visiting from a big city.

The ZIP code home to Hillsboro and its neighboring communities of Kingston and Lake Valley has only four recorded cases of COVID-19. Vast stretches of open desert, ponderosa pine forest and unmotorized wilderness dwarf any human settlement.

But for the 250 or so people who call this historic mining area home, the pandemic stole a critical element of village life: communal gatherings. No Thanksgiving potluck. No Saturday night pickers circle. Limited socializing at the wine bar and cafe.

Then, in February, an out-of-state construction company caused an unwelcome scare that brought the community together sooner than anyone expected.

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Hillsboro, New Mexico, a rural community, receives COVID-19 vaccinations in late March 2021.

COVID-19 comes to town

In Hillsboro, you can drive from one end of town to the other at 25 miles an hour in less than three minutes. A lone unsaddled white horse stood hitched a few doors down from the post office for much of last summer. The area is populated mostly by retirees and ranchers. Its part-time residents include a former lieutenant governor.

A few miles west, the Federal Highway Administration is undertaking a roughly $4.7 million project to replace a couple of steel truss bridges that have stood on Highway 152 since 1929.

The contractor hired for the job stationed a 35-member work crew in an empty motel with a for sale sign in the center of Hillsboro. The team brought much-needed business to the towns only restaurant, dining indoors when New Mexico gave the clearance to do so. Then at least one worker tested positive for COVID-19.

Story continues

COVID-19 vaccine rollout: New Mexico opens vaccinations to all residents 16+

Timothy Dusharm waits in line to enter the Hillsboro Community Center in New Mexico where he received a COVID-19 vaccination.

The age of the community is such that if we got infection and community spread, we'd be stacking bodies like firewood, said Ben Lewis, co-owner of the Hillsboro General Store Cafe. The (construction crew) had been in the cafe and wed been serving them.

Lewis shut down the restaurant. He and the three other employees, including his wife, quarantined and got tested. When their results came back negative, they deep-cleaned the 142-year-old adobe building and reopened.

By then, word had spread and locals were concerned. Ted Caluwe, 72, a remodeling contractor who retired in Hillsboro a decade ago, decided to take action.

I doubt that there's more than a dozen people here under the age of 60, Caluwe said. I felt the risks were very high and so  I made a few phone calls.

Community members of Hillsboro, N.M., partake in morning yoga at the Black Range Museum Public Park. Area residents got their COVID-19 vaccination the same day thanks to a mobile vaccination unit sent by the New Mexico Department of Health.

100 doses of COVID-19 vaccine arrive

With help from a state representative, Caluwe and his wife contacted the New Mexico Department of Health to schedule a mobile vaccination date in Hillsboro. It took a month for the department of health office in Socorro to secure 100 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

The shots arrived in a large square blue cooler on March 26 along with a nurse and an administrator.

On that brilliant Friday morning, Caluwe stood at the entrance to the Hillsboro Community Center, his thick ivory handlebar mustache tucked behind a mask that said, In this together. He watched people line up outside, six feet apart, and let out a heavy sigh. In his quest to get the vaccine, he hadnt stopped to consider the significance of the day.

This is the biggest gathering we've had in a year," he said. It's great to see all of my friends and neighbors here getting the shot and knowing that in a few weeks we can achieve at least a little degree of normalcy.

The community center, which features a wood floor auditorium, a stage and thick copper-colored curtains, was once the first high school in Sierra County. It was built by El Pasos famed Trost & Trost architectural firm, whose now historic buildings are scattered across the American Southwest.

Visual look: Comparing the COVID-19 vaccines

Betty Wanek, 96, was vaccinated in Hillsboro, N.M., on March 26, 2021. Wanek was a ship welder and singer during and after World War II. Her two daughters Catherine Wanek (left) and Sherry Litasi (right) cared for her after her shot.

Betty Wanek, 96, had a 12:30 p.m. appointment to get her vaccine.

Her daughter, Sherri Litasi, rolled Wanek into the auditorium in a wheelchair. Long-distance travel is a challenge for Wanek, who suffered a concussion and a broken hip five years ago. In her youth, Wanek welded ships in San Francisco during World War II. After the war, she sang in USO dance bands for troops stationed in Japan.

Today, Wanek stays with her two daughters in Kingston nine miles up the road. From Kingston, the nearest hospital and major vaccination site is almost an hour away. Litasi, the oldest of Waneks six children, teared up after watching her mom get a shot.

Today is so important, Litasi said. It's a big relief for all of us. None of us wanted (our mom) to die of COVID and we've been very careful this last year. None of our siblings could come visit and grandkids and so on.

When asked what she was looking forward to after getting immunized, Wanek laughed, Not getting any bad things. She continued in a slow, labored voice, My children have all had their shots. And now they can come and visit.

Ramping up rural outreach

New Mexico is scheduling most of its vaccinations online, sending alerts about available appointments via email and text. To get a cellphone signal in Hillsboro, locals have to drive up a hill beside the cemetery. Some missed their alerts or got them too late after all available appointments had already been filled.

Thats what kept happening to Ben Lewis, the restaurant owner, who finally got his shot at the community center.

It's not been an easy year, he said. We've had family members who got COVID-19 and we've had friends who've died.

Hillsboro Cemetery features a chilling reminder of the last pandemic: a faint line of small stone encircled graves marked Childrens Row. Died Flu 1918-1919

As of April 5, federal data showed New Mexico had the highest percentage of fully vaccinated residents (26.2%) in the country.

Tracking COVID-19 vaccine distribution by state: How many people have been vaccinated in the US?

Randall Streier, at back, and Jim Laupan, sit in an observation area after receiving their COVID-19 vaccination from the New Mexico Department of Health at the Hillsboro Community Center during the rural community's first COVID-19 vaccination distribution.

New Mexicos effort to dispatch mobile units to rural communities like Hillsboro began in earnest on March 11, according to Laura Parajon, the states deputy health secretary. With the help of FEMA and the National Guard, the department of health is sending out eight mobile units per week.

We're going to ramp up in April and May to get to more and more communities, Parajon said. Theres more demand than supply right now.

Rationing insulin. Skipping meals. One womans struggle to survive on minimum wage

A community heals together

While the vaccination day brought many of Hillsboros longtime locals together, it also introduced them to some of the towns newest residents.

Lindsay Fox, an emergency doctor who last worked at a hospital in Newark, New Jersey, saw as many as 100 COVID-19 positive patients come through her department in a single shift. During the height of the pandemic, she would walk past a refrigerated truck full of dead bodies.

She decided to retreat from the front lines in October and come to New Mexico, where she eventually found Hillsboro.

I'm trying to figure out how to how to heal myself, Fox said.

Timothy Dusharm begins to feel nervous as is the next in line to get the COVID-19 vaccination in Hillsboro, N.M.

She struck a friendship with 66-year-old Vietnam veteran Timothy Dusharm, who moved to Hillsboro two years ago after feeling spiritually bankrupt. Dusharm was against getting a vaccine. His long talks with Fox changed his mind.

She convinced me that it would be selfish if I didn't protect everybody, he said.

Dusharm got his vaccine. Fox, 36, was there to reassure him. She also volunteered to keep track of peoples waiting period after their shots and stayed vigilant for anyone showing negative side effects.

After a month in Hillsboro, Fox felt as if she might make New Mexico her permanent home.

It's really nice to feel like there's some hope on the horizon of being able to gather with people again, she said.

Follow reporter Monica Ortiz Uribe on Twitter: @MOrtizUribe

When will everyone be vaccinated for COVID-19? Here's how the vaccine rollout is going

This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Hillsboro, New Mexico, COVID-19 fight reaches milestone: Vaccine day
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Nurses at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts are in their fifth week of their open-ended strike. The 700 nurses, members of the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA), are fighting for safe staffing ratios at the hospital in the face of vicious attacks on their conditions by the owner of St. Vincent, multibillion-dollar Tenet Healthcare.

The nurses strike is one of the largest workers struggles currently taking place in the US, alongside the strike of mine workers at Warrior Met Coal in Alabama and the Columbia University graduate students strike in New York City. However, the unions in these strugglesthe MNA at St. Vincent, the United Mine Workers at Warrior Met Coal, the United Auto Workers at Columbiahave worked to isolate their memberships from workers facing the same fight in defense of jobs and working conditions, and against deplorable working conditions and corporate intimidation.

Striking nurses at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Mass. (WSWS Media)

The recent appearance of an MNA official at a meeting sponsored by the Morning Star, aligned with the Communist Party of Britain, is a demonstration of this reality. It was not aimed at generating working class support for the St. Vincent nurses, but at smothering it with phony phrases of solidarity.

The Dallas, Texas-based conglomerate has so far spent at least $22 million to hire strikebreaking replacement nurses. Worcester cops are being paid $30,000 a day to keep both hospital entrances open to allow strikebreaking nurses to pass through. Hospital management has also installed two surveillance towers to monitor the entrances, in an effort at further intimidation.

The conditions nurses face at St. Vincent have been mirrored at health care facilities across the US during the pandemic. As the COVID-19 surge began more than a year ago, nurses and other health care workers found themselves without adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) and taking care of untenable numbers of patients. Medical-surgical nurses faced exhaustion and burnout as they attempted to tend to patients flooding their surgical floors and intensive care units as COVID-19 spread.

The MNA has not provided its members with strike pay, despite controlling $11.2 million in net assets and $9.2 million in cash as of June of last year. Rather, nurses must demonstrate need to access the unions ad hoc relief fund. Adding insult to injury, the MNA has also advised nurses on seeking alternative work elsewhere to make ends meet. The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) pushed through a sellout agreement on their members, ancillary staff at St. Vincent, sending them back into the hospital in the midst of the nurses struggle.

It is under these conditions that the co-chair of the MNA bargaining unit at St. Vincent, Dominique Muldoon, appeared last week at an event sponsored by the Morning Star, the newspaper originally founded as the Daily Worker by the Stalinist Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in 1930.

The papers ownership was transferred to a readers cooperative in 1945 and was rebranded as the Morning Star in 1966. It describes its editorial stance as in line with the program of the Communist Party of Britain, whose blood-stained history is steeped in the support for the frame-up and murder of genuine revolutionaries, Trotskyists, and its alliance with the UK Labour Party, the trade unions and their betrayals of working-class struggles.

The Morning Star billed the 50-minute pre-recorded Comrades broadcast as aimed at Uniting healthcare workers in international struggle. It was, however, nothing of the sort. Rather, it aimed to lull workers on both sides of the Atlantic into complacency. There was no talk of uniting the international working class in a political struggle against capitalism and its attendant misery.

Any worker listening to the broadcast was told that the unions would defend them, that they should put their faith in Democratic and Labour politicians, and that private health care operators in the US and the state-run National Health Service (NHS) in the UK could be convinced to treat their workers reasonably.

Muldoon was joined by Holly Turner, an NHS nurse and a GMB union rep in the UK. Over 7,000 full-time engineers and members of the GMB union have been in dispute with British Gas since early January and have taken 42 days of strike action against the fire and rehire contracts, in the largest industrial action in the sector for four decades.



British Gas has pressed ahead with plans to dismiss all engineers who refuse to sign an inferior contract, including a pay cut of up to 15 percent, only agreeing to put back the deadline from April 1 to April 14. The GMB is now taking steps to wind down the opposition entirely, postponing the date for a further national one-day walkout until April 14, the very day engineers will be dismissed for refusing to sign or be transferred over to the new terms against their will.

Last Wednesdays event exposed the two union officials as the bureaucrats they are. Their comments had nothing to do with a socialist perspective, nor with fighting for an international strategy to unite workers against ruling-class policies in the pandemic, which has claimed the lives of 2.8 million globally and infected more than 131 million.

Turner purports to support the NHS Workers Say NO campaign, which has launched a petition drive demanding a 15 percent restorative pay increase for NHS workers. The campaign has gained the signatures of more than 600,000 outraged workers. It has been met, however, with a government announcement that it would offer only a 1 percent pay rise to more than 1 million NHS workers.

The response of the UNISON union, the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing has been to drop any call for united strike action and instead appeal to the government to change its mind. Turner is among those individuals close to the Labour and trade union bureaucracy and its pseudo-left hangers-on who oppose the calls by the Socialist Equality Party in the UK and its NHS Fightback campaign for NHS workers to organize industrial action independently of the unions in solidarity with other sections of workers in this fight.

So, what should striking nurses actually make of this appearance by Muldoon at the event sponsored by the Star s Strike Map UK? For purposes of a focus on the St. Vincent strike, we will highlight some of her choicest statements:

DM: We were just not prepared in the United States for the pandemic. Makeshift ICUs, buying raincoats off Amazon; garbage bags. The community was so great, supporting us. But it was not a well-planned-out response to the pandemic .

Just who was the we who were not prepared for the pandemic? It was the capitalist system and, particularly in the US, the for-profit health care system. Epidemiologists had predicted that such a pandemic would take place, but nothing was done to prepare because it cut across the ruling elites profit motive.

DM: Tenet [owner of St. Vincent] makes profit out of sick people. In the states we dont think its a bad thing to make money, but we dont think we should be taken advantage of. They have to put money back into the business and take care of people who are coming in for care.

But the US is a class society in which the ruling class exploits workers for a profit. Contrary to Muldoons statement, millions of workers consider it a bad thing that a health care giant like Tenet should profit off the misery of health care workers and patients. And the appeals of union officials to corporations to not take advantage of workers is to blind them to the very nature of capitalism.

DM: Here [in the US] we dont go on strike as soon as the contract ends, we keep negotiating.  It was a slow deliberate march toward a strike. We didnt want to have a job action in the middle of a surge. But negotiations started to break down.

Here Muldoon speaks some truth and explains how the unions really operate. They dont want to call out the workers and will do everything in their power to avert a strike. At St. Vincent, it was in fact the rank-and-file nurses who could no longer accept the conditions of understaffing that placed their health and livesand that of their patientsin danger. They forced the walkout against the efforts of the union to avoid it all costs.

Muldoon was finally asked what could be done to support the striking nurses in Massachusetts.

DM: All of the attention, the positive press we have gotten has been great. We do have a Venmo account for our strike fund, trying to get diapers and formula for our younger nurses with babies, things like that. As workers we all have to stick together. It doesnt matter where we are. Unions float the boat here.

Indeed. The MNA advises workers to support the strikers by contributing to a charitable account because they refuse to provide every striker with strike pay. The unions that supposedly float the boat in the US are in fact an anchor around the neck of every worker who wants to fight.

Muldoon also commented, We had congressmen and senators coming to the picket line. The attorney general came. With social anger over the hundreds of thousands who have perished in the pandemic reaching a breaking point, the Biden administration, the Democratic Party and sections of the Republicans are aggressively promoting the unions. As is clear from this short analysis of the Morning Star event, Muldoons performance demonstrates that the unions do not work to organize workers against management, but to organize management against the workers.

A genuine fight to unite health care workers in international struggle requires forging the struggle of nurses and other health care workers around the globe into a conscious and organized opposition. The pandemic has restructured class relations, with trillions looted from society globally by the super-wealthy.

Striking nurses should break free of the pro-corporate trade unions and form their own rank-and-file committees, taking control of the strike out of the hands of the unions and their big-business supporters. An organized contingent of health care workers can become a powerful force alongside rank-and-file committees formed by educators, autoworkers, Amazon workers and other workers internationally who are their allies in this fight. We urge striking nurses and who are interested in establishing such committees to contact us today .
The Porter County Coroners Office was called to the area of railroad tracks around 600 North and County Line Road at 4:47 p.m. that day and, according to a release from that office, firefighters discovered the deceased male as they were extinguishing a brush fire.
A spokeswoman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel is supporting calls for a short, uniform lockdown as the country grapples with a rise in coronavirus cases.

German state governors, who are responsible for imposing and lifting restrictions, have taken differing approaches.
The British Government is extending support for potentially at-risk groups including pensioners, disabled people and those with language difficulties who live in Europe by continuing the activity of the UK Nationals Support Fund (UKNSF) and supplementing it with an additional 1 million.

The UKNSF provides funds to eight organisations to support UK Nationals who need assistance with their residency applications. These organisation operate in 11 EU Member States and Norway, and since the launch of the Fund in March 2020, have provided practical support for UK Nationals who need assistance with the process of applying/registering for residency in 12 European countries, following the end of the Transition Period. This funding is in addition to 3 million announced by the Foreign Secretary in March 2020. Figures just published by the Observatorio Permanente de la Inmigracion show that as of 31 December 2020 there were 381,448 UK Nationals holding a valid residency certificate or card in Spain.

The UKNSF will continue to operate in France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Malta and Norway.

British Ambassador to Spain, Hugh Elliott, said:

I am delighted that more funding has been provided to Age in Spain, Babelia and IOM through the UK Nationals Support Fund. These organisations provide vital support to UK Nationals who need additional help with their residency application in Spain, so I urge any UK Nationals who are struggling with the process to contact them for help.
Kolkata, April 7 : Howrah's District Magistrate and District Election Officer Mukta Arya was congratulated by chief secretary Alapan Bandopadhyay and the Election Commission of India for her exceptional performance in conducting the polls of the seven assembly constituencies of Howrah on Tuesday but hardly did anyone know that this young IAS discharged her professional duties soon after she lost her father.

Arya's father died on Monday night of a sudden cardiac arrest and keeping his body in the mortuary, Arya was back at her desk to conduct the poll process.

"We had asked her to take a break but she was determined to conduct the polls and all through the day she performed all her duties excellently. She didn't even take a break till night so long as the entire poll process was not over. This is commendable and no words can express her professional dedication," a state election commission official said.

Arya's father Radheshyam Arya, a resident of Delhi, was the commissioner of labour commission in the national Capital and he came to his daughter before the election to help her during this tough time.

Sources in the Howrah administration said that Radheshyam had a cardiac arrest on Monday night and was immediately rushed to a private hospital but he didn't survive.

"Though there were requests from the top administrative level to take leave but Mukta decided to perform her duties and was in the election control room sending reports and coordinating as rural Howrah went to polls in the third phase of the state elections," a senior official at Howrah's DM office said.

Highly placed sources in the state administration said that on Monday when chief secretary Alapan Bandopadhyay for a separate reason he came to know that her father was admitted in a private hospital in a critical condition.

Bandopadhyay immediately asked the ADM (Election) to take charge and suggested to take help from Abhishek Tiwari, another IAS officer, who was DM of Jalpaiguri before. "The commission was also informed as Mukta was the main person behind conducting the polls in Howrah but to everyone's surprise Mukta came back to her office and conducted the polls," a senior official of the state government said.

Mukta was one of the three district magistrates of South 24 parganas, Howrah and Hooghly respectively who conducted one of the most crucial elections of the ongoing polls in the state.

Mukta, however, was not willing to say anything regarding her personal life and only said, "Election is peaceful and there are no reports of violence from anywhere," but close aides of this 2008 batch officer said that she had promised her father of conducting a peaceful election and she has kept her word.
MEXICO CITY, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste, S.A.B. de C.V. (NYSE: ASR; BMV: ASUR) ASUR, a leading international airport group with operations in Mexico, the U.S. and Colombia, today announced the conclusion of the Extraordinary Review Process of Maximum Rates at its Mexican airports, for the period 2021 to 2023.

Following this Extraordinary Review, the mandatory investment amounts required under the Master Development Program are as follows:

Airport 2021 2022 2023 Cancun 1,110,458 679,487 170,426 Cozumel 89,295 53,192 18,680 Huatulco 60,975 73,610 70,096 Merida 589,152 308,918 11,523 Minatitlan 41,109 14,490 6,730 Oaxaca 97,446 45,965 16,359 Tapachula 211,622 185,198 27,382 Veracruz 124,323 46,424 22,757 Villahermosa 127,723 28,224 22,140 TOTAL ASUR 2,452,104 1,435,509 366,093

Figures in thousands of Mexican pesos as of December 31, 2016

Following the changes in the amounts of the committed investments, as well as other assumptions included in the Extraordinary Review, the new Maximum Rates applicable per workload unit are as follows:

Airport 2021 2022 2023 Cancun $188.34 $187.02 $185.71 Cozumel $383.42 $380.74 $378.07 Huatulco $199.60 $198.20 $196.81 Merida $213.35 $211.86 $210.38 Minatitlan $391.51 $388.77 $386.05 Oaxaca $180.68 $179.42 $178.16 Tapachula $268.05 $266.17 $264.31 Veracruz $221.20 $219.65 $218.11 Villahermosa $213.53 $212.04 $210.56

The maximum rates mentioned above have been adjusted with an annual efficiency factor of 0.7% and are expressed in Mexican pesos as of December 31, 2016. They will be updated in accordance with the National Producer Price Index (INPP), excluding oil.

About ASUR

Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste, S.A.B. de C.V. (ASUR) is a leading international airport operator with a portfolio of concessions to operate, maintain and develop 16 airports in the Americas. This comprises nine airports in southeast Mexico, including Cancun Airport, the most important tourist destination in Mexico, the Caribbean and Latin America, and six airports in northern Colombia, including Medellin international airport (Rio Negro), the second busiest in Colombia. ASUR is also a 60% JV partner in Aerostar Airport Holdings, LLC, operator of the Luis Munoz Marin International Airport serving the capital of Puerto Rico, San Juan. San Juan's Airport is the island's primary gateway for international and mainland-US destinations and was the first, and currently the only major airport in the US to have successfully completed a publicprivate partnership under the FAA Pilot Program. Headquartered in Mexico, ASUR is listed both on the Mexican Bolsa, where it trades under the symbol ASUR, and on the NYSE in the U.S., where it trades under the symbol ASR. One ADS represents ten (10) series B shares. For more information, visit www.asur.com.mx

Forward Looking Statements

Some of the statements contained in this press release discuss future expectations or state other forward-looking information. Those statements are subject to risks identified in this press release and in ASUR's filings with the SEC. Actual developments could differ significantly from those contemplated in these forward-looking statements. In particular, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on global economic conditions and the travel industry, as well as on the business and results of operations of the Company in particular, is expected to be material, and, as conditions are changing rapidly, is difficult to predict. The forward-looking information is based on various factors and was derived using numerous assumptions. Our forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made and, except as may be required by applicable law, we do not have an obligation to update or revise them, whether as a result of new information, future or otherwise.

SOURCE Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste, S.A.B. de C.V.

Related Links

http://www.asur.com.mx


Microsoft datacenter server cooling system. Credit: Microsoft

Microsoft has implemented boiling liquid to help keep datacenter servers at reasonable temperatures. The company uses electronic equipment and liquid capable of boiling at 122 degrees Fahrenheit, 90 degrees below the boiling point of water.

Once the computer processors within the datacenters reach a certain temperature due to labor, the boiling effect moves heat away from the servers. This movement allows the processors to continue operating at full power without the risk of failure from overheating.

Microsoft engineered this solution using a tank that takes the fluid vapor from its liquid contents and exposes the mist to a cooling lid. This process transforms that vapor back into liquid and rain down onto the servers in order to cool the machines. This process of vaporization and condensation for cooling is known as a closed loop cooling system.

Microsoft has announced being the first cloud provider to use two-phase immersion cooling in a production environment. In fact, the company has acknowledged using this cooling process as a means to accommodate the demand for larger, more powerful computer processors at a time when air-cooled computer chip technology is harder to come by.

For decades, chip advances came from packing more transistors onto chips of the same size, just about doubling computer processor speed every two years without requiring increased electrical power. Intel co-founder Gordon Moore predicted this trend in 1965, projecting it to continue for at least 10 years, thus giving the doubling phenomenon the name Moore's Law. Finally, in the later 2010s, the trend began to slow down.

Credit: Gene Twedt for Microsoft

This slow stems from the fact that transistor widths have decreased in size to the atomic scale and are approaching a physical limit. However, in the meantime, demand for faster computer processes to suit higher performance applications like artificial intelligence has only risen. To meet this need, the computing industry has adopted chip architectures capable of managing more electric power. In fact, central processing units (CPUs) have increased 150 watts to over 300 watts per chip. On the other hand, graphical processing units (GPUs) have increased to over 700 watts per chip.

When more electric power flows through these processors, the hotter the chips become and the more cooling they require in order to prevent malfunctioning. Indeed, Microsoft engineers have confirmed that rather than simply cooling the air around these chips, the technology requires its physical surface to actually be cooled.

Credit: Gene Twedt for Microsoft

Therefore, using liquid to cool off the chips has proven very helpful so far in managing the demand for increased electric power.

Explore further Beat the heat in 3-D chip stacks with ICECool

More information: Roach, J. "To Cool Datacenter Servers, Microsoft Turns to Boiling Liquid." Innovation Stories, Microsoft, 7 Apr. 2021, Roach, J. "To Cool Datacenter Servers, Microsoft Turns to Boiling Liquid." Innovation Stories, Microsoft, 7 Apr. 2021, news.microsoft.com/innovation-  nter-liquid-cooling/

 2021 Science X Network
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 16:50:55|Editor: huaxia

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A student wearing a face mask and a face shield attends a class during the trial face-to-face learning at a school in Jakarta, Indonesia, April 7, 2021. Trial reopenings of 85 schools in Jakarta will start from April 7 to 29. The Indonesian government on March 30 asked schools to carry out limited offline (face to face) learning with parental consents and the implementation of health protocols. (Photo by Agung Kuncahya B./Xinhua)
Kim Kardashian has added billionaire to her resume.

The cosmetics and shapewear businesswoman, who launched her career off the reality TV series Keeping Up with The Kardashians, was included on Tuesday for the first time on Forbes magazine's list of the world's billionaires.

Forbes said it estimated that Kardashian, 40, is now worth $US1 billion, up from $US780 million in October.

Kim Kardashian has added billionaire to her resume. Pictured on October 24, 2019, in New York

Her surge in wealth is thanks to two lucrative businesses - KKW and Skims - as well as cash from reality television and endorsement deals, and a number of smaller investments, Forbes said.

The Forbes estimate means Kardashian joins her soon-to-be ex-husband Kanye West in the billionaire's club.

The business magazine on Tuesday estimated West's net worth at $US1.8 billion, mostly from deals on his Yeezy sneaker and fashion line.

Kim's billionaire status comes amid her looming divorce from rapper Kanye West (right)

Kardashian filed for divorce from West, 43, in February, citing irreconcilable differences.

Her half sister Kylie Jenner, however, lost her billionaire status, Forbes said.

It valued the 23-year-old's fortune at around $US700 million, citing a tough year for cosmetic sales during the coronavirus pandemic and what it said were previous overestimates of revenue from Kylie Cosmetics, now 51 per cent owned by Coty Inc.

Kardashian founded KKW Beauty in 2017, promoting and selling the products online, helped by a social media presence that includes some 213 million Instagram followers.

She launched the multihued shapewear line Skims in 2019.

Kardashian celebrated on Tuesday by posting a photo of herself in a bikini on a beach, with the caption "Bliss" and announcing the launch of the first Skims pop-up shop at a high-end shopping mall in Los Angeles.
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A 28-day-old bear cub has made friends with a chimpanzee at a zoo in Turkey.

The young cub named Boncuk was brought to Gaziantep Zoo as a rescue animal after being transported to the country illegally.

Adorable images show Boncuk locked in an embrace with chimpanzee Can. Others show the unlikely friends playing together.

Boncuk was one of a number of rescue animals brought to the zoo over the past month.

Other rescue animals include ten parrots, 38 snakes, ten flamingos, 40 peacocks, 28 pheasants, 15 reptiles, two iguanas and 15 ducks.

28-day bear cub 'Boncuk', a new resident of the Gaziantep Zoo, is seen with his friend Chimpanzee named 'Can' for socialising in Gaziantep, Turkey

Adorable images show Boncuk locked in an embrace with Chimpanzee Can. Others show the unlikely friends playing together

Heartwarming images show the unlikely friendship formed between the rescue bear cub and Chimpanzee

Boncuk was one of a number of rescue animals brought to the zoo over the past month

Rescue bear cub Boncuk and Chimpanzee Can are pictured playing and having fun with each other at the zoo in Turkey on Monday

The Zoo official feeds 28-day bear cub 'Boncuk', a new resident of the Gaziantep Zoo, in Gaziantep, Turkey on April 5

28-day bear cub 'Boncuk', a new resident of the Gaziantep Zoo, is seen with his friend Chimpanzee named 'Can' for socialising in Gaziantep, Turkey on April 5

The young cub named Boncuk was brought to Gaziantep Zoo as a rescue animal after being transported to the country illegally

Boncuk and Can are pictured together at the zoo as they are monitored by a zoo keeper

28-day bear cub 'Boncuk', a new resident of the Gaziantep Zoo, is seen in Gaziantep, Turkey on Monday

Boncuk, pictured above, was one of a number of rescue animals brought to the zoo over the past month

Boncuk, a new resident of the Gaziantep Zoo, is seen with his friend Chimpanzee named 'Can'. Boncuk was one of a number of rescue animals brought to the zoo over the past month

Rescue bear cub Boncuk, a new resident of the Gaziantep Zoo, is seen with his friend Chimpanzee named 'Can'

Young bear cub Boncuk is pictured sitting on the grass at the zoo in Turkey, with a bottle of milk placed nearby

28-day bear cub 'Boncuk', a new resident of the Gaziantep Zoo, is seen in Gaziantep, Turkey on April 5
U.S. calls Vienna talks constructive, rejecting Iran's "maximalist demands"

Xinhua) 08:41, April 07, 2021

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi arrives at the venue of Iran nuclear deal talks in Vienna, Austria, April 6, 2021. (Photo by Georges Schneider/Xinhua)

"These discussions in Vienna, even though we are not meeting directly with the Iranians, as we have said, it is a welcome step, it is a constructive step, it is a potentially useful step," a State Department spokesperson said.

WASHINGTON, April 6 (Xinhua) -- The United States on Tuesday called the talks in Vienna over the Iran nuclear deal "a constructive step" but rejected Tehran's position of "maximalist demands."

"These discussions in Vienna, even though we are not meeting directly with the Iranians, as we have said, it is a welcome step, it is a constructive step, it is a potentially useful step," State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters in a press briefing.

"We don't anticipate any immediate breakthrough," he said. "We know there will be difficult discussions ahead but again this is a healthy step forward."

Price noted that two working groups in the meeting were focused on respective steps for Tehran and Washington to revive the nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

"What is on the table in Vienna today and over the next handful of days are those initial indirect discussions about that first step, what Iran would need to do to resume compliance with the JCPOA and what the United States would need to do to resume its compliance with the JCPOA," he said.

He expected the United States could have a better understanding of a roadmap for how both sides get to mutual compliance with the nuclear deal following the discussions in Vienna.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, who is leading the Iranian delegation in Vienna, said earlier in the day that the United States must remove all its sanctions against Iran in one step if it seeks to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal.

Photo taken on April 6, 2021 shows the venue of Iran nuclear deal talks in Vienna, Austria. (Xinhua/Guo Chen)

Price, however, made clear that the United States would not accept "maximalist demands" from Iran.

"I think what we can essentially rule out are the maximalist demands that the United States do everything first and only in turn would Iran then act, I don't think anyone is under the impression that that would be a viable proposal," he said.

The Joint Commission of the JCPOA resumed talks in Vienna on Tuesday as senior diplomats of China, France, Germany, Russia, Britain, and Iran met behind closed doors in the Grand Hotel Wien.

Media reports said the U.S. delegation led by Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley was based in a nearby hotel. The U.S. and Iranian negotiators did not have direct talks, but a shuttle diplomacy approach was adopted with the intensified help of the coordinators.

Washington withdrew from the deal in 2018 and tightened sanctions on Iran under former President Donald Trump. In response to the U.S. moves, Iran suspended the implementation of parts of its obligations under the deal.

(Web editor: Shi Xi, Bianji)
Murray Man Arrested on Assault, Menacing Charges

By West Kentucky Star Staff

MURRAY - A call about an altercation Tuesday led to the arrest of a Murray man.Tuesday morning, Murray Police officers responded to an altercation on South 16th Street, where officers reportedly learned that 41-year-old Brian Brown of Murray had hit someone and pointed a firearm at him.Brown was found a short time later and charged with fourth-degree assault, third-degree terroristic threatening, and menacing.He was lodged in the Calloway County Jail.
Carl Arnett of Medina, N.Y. passed away on Saturday, April 3 at his home surrounded by his wife and two children.

Mr. Arnett was born on July 26, 1951 in Medina, and was a son of the late Charles and Jean (Kepner) Arnett. He graduated from Medina High School in 1970, the same year he met his wife Marge Stawicki. They were married in 1971 and made their home in Medina.

Mr. Arnett worked for Eastman Kodak in Rochester, N.Y. for 34 years, retiring at the age of 62.

Mr. Arnett and his son Jeremy bought a race horse named Give Me Credit and did very well with him at Batavia Downs and Buffalo Raceway, winning many races.

He is survived by his wife, Marge Arnett; daughter, Jenni Arnett; son, Jeremy Arnett; three brothers; two sisters; and several nieces and nephews.

Services will be privately held at the convenience of the family. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to PAWS Animal Shelter, 3371 Gaines Basin Rd., Albion, NY 14411 or to the Orleans County Animal Shelter, 4125 Oak Orchard Rd., Albion, NY 14411.

Arrangements are in the care of Cooper Funeral Home, 215 W. Center St., Medina, NY.

Please join Standardbred Canada in offering condolences to the family and friends of Carl Arnett.
As the new speaker of the Texas House, Dade Phelan has had to learn to balance his districts needs with that of the entire state.

And while it has turned out to be more stressful than he first anticipated, Ive enjoyed every minute of it. I appreciate my colleagues entrusting me with the job. It can be overwhelming, he admitted, but my staff makes me look good.

Speaking at the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Associations 75th Annual Convention, held virtually, Phelan said he is mindful of the importance of the energy industry to the state.

His district of Beaumont is home to significant downstream infrastructure, he said, which relies on the production coming out of the Permian Basin.

Its very important to my constituents. Its how they put food on the table, its how they pay for their homes and their cars. Im very protective of that segment of the industry because its so important to my area, he stated.

Phelan said he reminds his colleagues of how important the states oil and gas industry is in not only powering homes and businesses but providing revenues for the states roads, schools, first responders and health care.

While he said legislators first priority is passing a state budget, Phelan said infrastructure will be on the docket.

Representing Beaumont, Phelan said he was aware of infrastructure needs, especially flood infrastructure, following the damage caused by Hurricane Harvey along the Gulf Coast in 2017. That was the first time significant attention had been paid to flood infrastructure, he said. To address the issue, he said legislators need to look at the region as a whole and the entire water shed. We have to create large-scale flood projects across the state.

The electric grid will also be a top concern in the aftermath of Winter Storm Uri in February, which caused blackouts across the state.

Were looking at infrastructure and what we can do to fortify the grid and provide more reliability, more accountability, more transparency, better communications, Phelan said. If we dont learn from this storm, weve missed a real opportunity to improve the lives of Texans.

That will include looking at winterization and weatherization of power generating facilities and adding capacity if needed. There are ongoing discussions on how that will be paid for, Phelan said.

He opposes combining the Railroad Commission and the Public Utilities Commission into one agency, saying the two agencies have different functions. Legislators in both chambers are looking at ways to make the PUC more responsive and transparent and upgrade the states electrical infrastructure.

Amid the challenges to be addressed by legislators, Phelan said he is heartened that the budget situation has improved, from a $4 billion deficit to a more robust outlook.

There are also plans to raise financing instruments to expand electricity and broadband access across the state.

Mindful of the contributions the industry makes in terms of jobs, quality of life and revenues to local, county and state agencies, Phelan urged representatives to continue advocating for the industry.

Its important to constantly communicate with us about what you like, what you dont like, what amendments may impact you, he said. Keep fighting for the industry, keep meeting with your representatives. The industry impacts so much of what we do on a daily basis and the economy.
Port Authority police made their second gun arrest in a week Tuesday at Newark Liberty International Airport.

Keith H. Fredlund, 58, of Sherman, Connecticut was taken into custody after Transportation Security Administration agents found a loaded 9mm handgun in his carry-on bag when it was placed in an X-ray machine, authorities said.

The firearm was loaded with 13 bullets, according to the TSA.

Fredlund was charged with unlawful possession of a weapon and possession of hollow point rounds, according to Port Authority police.

On March 30, a California woman was arrested in Terminal B after a 9mm handgun was found in her carry-on at the Terminal B checkpoint.

The gun seized Tuesday is the third caught at a TSA checkpoint at Newark airport this year. Eleven guns were detected in both 2020 and 2019 at the airport.

Guns are allowed in checked luggage if they are unloaded, stored in a hard-sided case, locked and packed separately from ammunition.

Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JGoldmanNJ.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.
DUBLIN, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "China Toys Market by Segments, Sales Channel, Company Analysis, Forecast" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

China Toys Market was $48.3 Billion in 2020 and is expected to be a $61.3 Billion industry by 2026.

China is one of the biggest toy markets in the world. Its possible growth has generated a considerable opportunity for domestic & international toy manufacturers. A substantial rise in the popularity of interactive and multi-functional toys has been observed among children, positively impacting the toys market.

Due to the increase in consumer spending, there is an increasing demand for toys. Besides expanding metropolitan residents' income levels and rising living standards, a shift is being witnessed from conventional toys to innovative electronic toys.



There are wide varieties of toys available in China's market. Dolls and Stuffed Toys showed extraordinary growth in value terms in 2019, primarily driven by the huge success and rapid rise of blind collectables. There has been an increase in demand for construction Sets & Models with schools closed during the lockdown. That was seen as an excellent way to entertain children for a more extended period.



The video game industry has developed a regular revenue model over the past few years due to the continuous emergence of video games. As technology advances, consumer spending on video content, virtual reality products, and video game tournaments have witnessed significant growth.



The main sales channels for toys include Online, Chain Stores, supermarkets & hypermarkets. Currently, speciality stores have been expanding and have a significant toy buying channel for parents & speciality toy chain stores represent the largest distribution channel as these stores have well-established networks and offer a wide range of products. In this COVID-19 lockdown, the online industry has shown good growth. the research says that China Toy Market is expected to grow with a CAGR of 4.04% from 2020 to 2026.

Factors to Drive China Toy Industry



China abandoned its one-child-policy to allow families to have an additional child. During China's 13th Five-year Plan period, a two-child policy was announced in October 2015. This policy targets 90 million women of reproductive age who already had at least one child. Due to this policy's effect in the 18 months, there were 5.4 million additional births.

Besides, China always had a healthy growth rate of its disposable income. For the first time in 2019, China's per capita gross domestic product (GDP) has exceeded USD 10,000. So the future of the toy industry is bright in China.



China Toy Companies



Key companies are focusing on introducing new products in the market to serve the consumers' interests. New product engagement is the most preferred strategy in the Chinese market. The key players were embarking on mergers and acquisitions as essential plans to achieve consolidation and optimize their offerings.

Some of the keen players included in the market studied are Mattel Inc. & Hasbro Inc, Lego Inc, Vtech.



Key Topics Covered:



1. Introduction



2. Research & Methodology



3. Executive Summary



4. Market Dynamics

4.1 Growth Drivers

4.2 Challenges



5. China Toys Market Analysis



6. Market Share Analysis

6.1 Segments

6.2 Sales Channel



7. Segments - China Toys Market

7.1 Dolls & Stuffed Toys

7.2 Construction Sets & Models

7.3 Cards Games

7.4 Puzzles

7.5 Toys for Toddlers & Kids

7.6 Plastic & Others Toys



8. Sales Channel - China Toys Market

8.1 Department Stores

8.2 Super / Hyper Market

8.3 Online

8.4 Baby Products/Toys Shop

8.5 Chain Stores



9. Import and Trade Regulations in China



10. Mergers and Acquisitions



11. Company Analysis

11.1 Mattel Inc.

11.1.1 Overviews

11.1.2 Recent Developments

11.1.3 Revenues

11.2 Lego

11.3 Hasbro,Inc

11.4 Vtech



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/phgd9t

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

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Greitens Vows to Stand Up and Fight Against the Evil CCP If Elected to Senate

Former Republican Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens committed to taking a hard line against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) if he is elected to represent the Show-Me state in the U.S. Senate in 2022.

Greitens told The Epoch Times that the CCP should be held accountable for covering up the origins of the CCP virus, commonly known as the coronavirus, and abetting the global spread of the disease. The former governor pledged to stand up to the communist regimes ongoing persecution of faith groups, including tens of millions of Uyghur Muslims and Falun Gong practitioners.

We have to have leaders who are willing to stand up and hold the Chinese Communist Party responsible for the human rights abuses. We need to have strong leaders who are willing to call out whats happening with the Uyghur genocide, with the suppression of Falun Gong, with the suppression of other people of faith within China, Greitens said.

We need to tell the truth about how the Chinese Communist Party are suppressing, imprisoning, and often murdering people within China.

The administration of President Donald Trump took an unprecedented, assertive, and principled stand against the CCP, going all-in on a trade war to punish the regime for unfair trade practices and the rampant theft of intellectual property. In the waning days of Trumps tenure, the State Department for the first time ever sanctioned CCP officials over the persecution of Falun Gong, a traditional spiritual practice based on the tenets of truth, compassion, and tolerance. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also took the unprecedented step of declaring the abuses against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang a genocide.

Greitens fully affirmed Trumps approach to China and vowed to fight for Trumps America-First agenda in the Senate.

We need to recognize that the Chinese Communist Party is responsible for more murders than any other organization in the history of the planet, Greitens said, referring to estimates that the CCPs policies have directly or indirectly led to the deaths of tens of millions of people.

I am very supportive of the fact that President Trump took a much harder line with the Chinese Communist Party, Greitens added. One of the things that I want to do is to be a champion for President Trumps peace-through-strength policies, and particularly, to stand up and fight against the evil that is the Chinese Communist Party.

A Real Taste of CCP Suppression

Greitens said his experience with the oppressive communist regime is a personal one. As a college student, on the first overseas trip of his life, Greitens picked China as the destination for a travel grant he was awarded by his school. He eventually took on a job teaching English at a state-owned company, and, having no experience with teaching language or with the CCPs crackdowns on freedom of speech, prompted his students to engage in an open discussion.

The first questions that were asked to me were about freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, Greitens said. For many of them, I was the first foreigner who they had talked with about the experience that they had lived through.

The free-form forum went on for several days until the police showed up at his dorm.

One Friday night, Im playing darts in a dormitory with some of my friends and two Chinese police officers showed up at the door. And they told me that I had to go to the police station, Greitens said. I ended up being taken and interrogated for several hours.

The officers asked him about which students brought up the Constitution, freedom of speech, and how he got the teaching job.

I had, on my very first experience overseas, a real taste of what the Chinese Communist Partys suppression looks and feels like, Greitens said.

CCP Virus

On more than one occasion, Trump had hinted that he was planning to hold the communist regime in China responsible for the coverup of the outbreak of the CCP virus and for abetting its spread around the world. Chinese authorities had prohibited people in China from entering or leaving Wuhan, where the first cases of the virus were reported, but placed no restrictions on international flights in and out of the city.

Greitens said the CCP should absolutely be held responsible for the pandemic.

I often call it the CCP virus. They need to be held accountable for it. Even though the mainstream media often doesnt want to report this, the facts are that the Chinese Communist Party has to this day not been transparent about the origins of the virus, Greitens said.

The Chinese Communist Party is responsible because they hid information about the virus early on [and] for its rapid rise and spread across the world.

A Comeback Story

Greitens resigned from the governorship of Missouri amid an investigation into an allegation stemming from his extramarital affair. The states legislature had initiated impeachment proceedings not long before he announced his exit.

All of the charges against Greitens have since been dropped. The prosecutor in the case, Kim Gardner, was elected with backing by liberal billionaire activist George Soros. Gardners conduct in the case is now under investigation while her lead investigator is facing seven felony charges, including evidence tampering and perjury, in connection to the Greitens case.

The case bears resemblance to the Russia-collusion investigation of Trump, which whipped up a media frenzy for three years only to conclude with a complete exoneration of the president.

Despite the flood of negative stories before his vindication, Greitens remains popular among Republicans in Missouri, according to a survey of 400 GOP primary voters conducted by Trump pollsters Tony Fabrizio, David Lee, and Travis Tunis. Greitens leads the Republican field in the Senate race with 48 percent of the vote, according to the internal poll obtained by The Hill. State Attorney General Eric Schmitt received 11 percent of the vote; Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.) and Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.) pulled 9 and 7 percent of the vote respectively.
East China's Anhui imported 2.94 billion yuan (US$449.8 million) of consumer goods in the first two months of 2021, up 9.5 percent from the same period a year ago, customs data showed.

The figure accounted for 7.7 percent of the province's total import value in the same period, according to Hefei Customs.

Consumer goods include food, clothes, furniture, vehicles and cultural products.

Anhui-based private enterprises imported consumer goods worth 1.77 billion yuan from January to February, representing a surge of 270.5 percent year on year. It made up 60.4 percent of the provincial total.

Meanwhile, state-owned enterprises posted an increase of 26.4 percent to 960 million yuan, while foreign-funded enterprises consumer goods imports reached 210 million yuan, down 85.7 percent.

The provinces consumer goods imports from the EU countries skyrocketed 220.6 percent to hit 730 million yuan in the Jan-Feb period, and those from the RCEP countries rose 13.5 percent to 740 million yuan.

During the same period, the province imported 570 million yuan of consumer goods from Brazil, up 65.2 percent, and 500 million yuan of consumer goods from New Zealand, up 55.6 percent. Its imports from the US declined 58.6 percent to 400 million yuan.




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The former leader of the socio-political group, Afenifere, Reuben Fasoranti, has expressed support for the presidential ambition of the APC National Leader, Bola Tinubu.

Mr Fasoranti stated this while receiving members of the South West Agenda for Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu (SWAGA 23), who paid him a courtesy visit in his country home in Akure.

Tinubu has all it takes to rule Nigeria. Considering his activities and track record, he deserves to be President, come 2023.

May his prayers be answered. When he gets there, he will do all we want, he said.

Mr Tinubu has not officially declared his intention to run for office, but according to the Afenifere leader, with the former Lagos governor as president, all the prayers of Afenifere for Nigeria will be answered, particularly on the issue of restructuring and federalism.

Earlier, Dayo Adeyeye the Chairman and Coordinator of SWAGA, said Yorubas must unite and speak with one voice, ahead of 2023 presidential race.

He urged the Yorubas not to divide its house ahead of the presidential election.

The former minister for works said that more than 50 traditional rulers across the six states of the South-West geopolitical zone had been visited for their royal blessings.

He added that presidency would be zoned to the South in 2023, which could be any zone, hence the need to quickly start the movement for Yoruba to unite.

Tinubu has all it takes to rule the country, being a detribalised Nigerian who loves the masses and is blessed with enormous wisdom, he said.

Mr Adeyeye, however, stated that the team was not sent by Mr Tinubu, but that it decided to take up the role, having found the former Lagos governor worthy because of his leadership quality.

(NAN)
Last night, Xiaomi Malaysia finally unveiled the Mi 11 Ultra and it's sure one big boy thanks to the secondary display beside the triple rear camera. But did you know that the secondary display is exactly the same one as the Mi Band 5?

During a live broadcast with Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun (the same one where he talked about the Xiaomi car here), the secondary display measures 1.1-inch which the Mi Band 5 uses too. As you might have guessed, it's used to display a wide variety of messages, customizable time, weather, motion map, theme, reminders, health, music, battery monitor and many more. It can even be used as a mirror to take selfies.

Owners of the Mi 11 Ultra can also adjust the brightness to their preference. With a maximum brightness of 450 nits, users can still read the words on the secondary display under the bright sunlight. While it's not confirmed, Xiaomi might have just used the unsold Mi Band 5 units and transferred the display on the Mi 11 Ultra's back.

As a reminder, the Mi 11 Ultra officially costs RM4299 and features a Snapdragon 888 chipset, 12GB of RAM and 256GB internal storage. The pre-order begins on 8 April 2021 which comes bundled with a Mi Fan Festival Special Edition Key Chain and T-shirt. You can read more information from our news coverage right over here. Stay tuned for more trending tech news at TechNave.com.
Calgary, Alberta--(Newsfile Corp. - April 7, 2021) - ICEsoft Technologies (CSE: ISFT), is proud to provide an update to its community enrollment numbers for its Voyent Alert! Notification Service. Despite the impact of COVID-19, Voyent Alert! coverage expanded by 110 communities across Canada in 2020, up approximately 170% from 2019. An additional 32 new communities were added in Q1, 2021.

The Voyent Alert! service provides targeted and enriched media alerts to community members and residents during critical events such as fires, floods, or train derailments as well as important day-to-day informational notices such as road construction, fire-bans or Covid-19 updates. Unlike competitive notification services, Voyent Alert's notifications are personalized with critical information such as a recipient's distance and direction to an incident, maps, visuals and critical attachments.

"Adoption has been widespread across Canada ranging from smaller rural communities to much larger municipalities, regional districts and counties," explains Brian McKinney, President of ICEsoft. "We are pleased with the uptake we are seeing as our new service continues rolling out and are excited to take our next steps and accelerate our service roll out into the US and enterprise markets this year."

Voyent Alert! is currently realizing a 100% renewal rate across our subscription base and is regularly displacing incumbent solutions, which speaks directly to the value the service is providing to our clients.

To learn more about the Voyent Alert! Notification Service go to voyent-alert.com.

SAMPLE ALERTS/IMAGES LOCATED HERE

ABOUT:

Voyent Alert! is an ICEsoft Technologies solution created in 2018 to provide personalized and enriched communication services for municipalities, regional governments, first responders, organizations, and institutions. Built on ICEsoft's suite of legacy products, Voyent Alert! is a new Software-as-a-Service offering for delivering context-enriched notifications and content.

ICEsoft Technologies Canada Corp. (ISFT) is a software as a service ("SaaS") company. ICEsoft's current software, which is available as freeware with a pay to use version, is used by some 150,000 developers, 20,000 companies, and some 400 paying customers.

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For more information, please contact:



Lauren Telfer

Director of Marketing

lauren.telfer@icesoft.com

587-893-8945

Forward-Looking Information Advisory

Certain information in this press release is forward-looking within the meaning of certain securities laws, and is subject to important risks, uncertainties and assumptions. This forward-looking information includes, among other things, information with respect to the Corporate Changes, Private Placement and shares for debt transactions, assumptions about future economic conditions and courses of action, and the Company's beliefs, plans, expectations, anticipations, estimates and intentions. The words "may", "could", "should", "would", "suspect", "outlook", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate", "expect", "intend", "plan", "target" and similar words and expressions are used to identify forward-looking information. The forward-looking information in this material change report describes the Company's expectations as of the date of this news release and accordingly, is subject to change after such date. Readers should not place undue importance on forward-looking information and should not rely upon this information as of any other date. While the Company may elect to, it does not undertake to update this information at any particular time.

To find the most recent news and information please visit icesoft.com, voyent-alert.com, or our most recent SEDAR filings. We do not engage in active investor relations campaigns, nor do we engage in/with chat rooms, forums or online discussion boards.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/79577
A larger concentrator program will be undertaken when diamond drill core becomes available in May, exploring the use of new generation flotation collectors and promoters to specifically target rare earth bearing allanite.

The current round of test-work has produced concentrate grades similar to what was achieved in historical work.

( ) (FRA:1BHA) has received positive interim metallurgical test-work results on rock chip samples from the original resource area at La Paz Rare Earths Project in Arizona USA, providing support for a new test program.

The current round of test-work, which was conducted by the Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC) in Canada, produced concentrate grades similar to what was achieved in historical work but using wet high-intensity magnetic separation (WHIMS) only.

Rock chip material returned more than 50% silica, with minor magnetite and hematite.

Rare earths are predominantly hosted in the mineral allanite, with minor monazite also being present.

WHIMS technology

Initial work centred on a staged grind-WHIMS beneficiation approach.

Concentrate is currently being produced from an additional composite of rock chips at the SRC using the WHIMS beneficiation flowsheet adopted for the initial work.

The concentrate will be subjected to acid baking and water leaching to produce leachate that will be sent to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories for patented biosorption technology that uses a biological ligand metal extraction of total rare earth elements (TREEs) and scandium.

Work planned on a bulk composite of diamond drill core from the deposit will address optimisation of grind size to enhance TREE and scandium recoveries and grades in the separation from gangue minerals.

Introduction of flotation to reject barren silica is expected to further enrich the TREE and scandium concentrate grades which will have a positive impact on project economics.

The intent is to apply flotation first and use WHIMS technology to provide further upgrading by rejecting barren silica after most iron oxide gangue minerals have been rejected in flotation.

The next round of work will focus on new generation flotation collectors

Given that allanite beneficiation is not commonly practised, with most global rare earth operations processing monazite and bastnaesite bearing ores, testing of new generation flotation collectors and gangue depressants will be a large focus in the next round of test-work, working closely with specialist reagent suppliers.

This work will be undertaken by Nagrom Laboratories in Perth, Western Australia, and co-ordinated by Wood PLC.

Future work

A bulk run will be undertaken with rougher WHIMS only to produce concentrate for flotation testing.

A portion of this concentrate will also be used for acid bake test-work to generate leachate for enzyme absorption test-work at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California to assess potential REE extraction from magnetic concentrate.

Future work will be undertaken on enriched concentrates as the concentrator flowsheet is progressed and optimised.

The current round of test-work has produced concentrate grades similar to what was achieved in historical work but using magnetic separation only.

Introducing flotation to reject barren silica is expected to further enrich the concentrate grades which will have a positive impact on project economics.

A larger concentrator program will be undertaken when diamond drill core becomes available in May, exploring the use of new generation flotation collectors and promoters to specifically target rare earth bearing allanite.
The family of George Floyd said they will be able to breathe if Derek Chauvin, the former officer who knelt on the unarmed black man for more than nine minutes, is convicted of his murder.

Speaking yesterday outside the Minneapolis courthouse where Mr Chauvin is on trial, the Floyd family described their anguish at having to relive Mr Floyds final moments during the proceedings.

It causes them and many people to suffer PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), said Ben Crump, a lawyer representing the family.

Mr Crump said the televised trial, which entered its seventh day of testimony yesterday, had had a psychological toll on not just the family, but the global audience following remotely.

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Footage of Mr Chauvin kneeling on Mr Floyds neck as the 46-year-old pleaded for air triggered global protests against racial injustice and has been played repeatedly during the proceedings.

The Floyd family have sat through each day of testimony and said they had decided to hold a prayer session yesterday after a tumultuous week of watching Mr Floyds final moments on repeat.

They prayed outside the courthouse alongside Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, another black man killed during a police restraint, and former New York Governor David Paterson.

Mr Floyds brother, Philonise Floyd, told the group: Were going through hard times right now and need people on our side to help us get through this. In a reference to his brothers final words, he added: But one thing I can tell: Me and Ms Gwen Carr, after we get the verdict and we get this conviction, well be able to breathe.

It came as Mr Chauvins lawyer sought to argue that the former officer did not use a chokehold and his knee on Mr Floyds neck did not cause him to become unconscious, in the first glimpse of his defence strategy.

Prosecutors called Lt Johnny Mercil, a use-of-force instructor for the Minneapolis Police Department, to the stand to testify that Mr Chauvin had not used an authorised form of restraint.

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Mr Mercil told prosecutors police are taught to stay away from the neck when possible and to put them in the recovery position as soon as feasible because when you restrict their ability to move it can restrict their ability to breathe. However, he also agreed with the defences argument that there are scenarios in which it is appropriate to hold someone in a prone position until the scene is safe.

Under cross-examination from defence lawyer Eric Nelson, Mr Mercil testified that he did not observe Mr Chauvin use a chokehold on Mr Floyd.

Mr Mercil said he had trained hundreds of officers how to use a neck restraint, as constricting the sides of a persons neck. He told the defence that based on his experience, it takes under 10 seconds for a person to become unconscious during a neck restraint.

Asked by Mr Nelson if he has ever trained officers that if a person can talk, they can breathe, Mr Mercil responded: Its been said, yes.

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Mr Mercil was called to testify as a witness for the prosecution, but his regular agreement with the defences line of questioning could be problematic as prosecutors seek to argue that Mr Chauvin used excessive force.

Just one juror needs to vote against conviction for Mr Chauvin to be acquitted.

Earlier in the day, the court heard Mr Chauvin had received training on how to deal with crisis situations and use-of-force in 2016 and 2018. Sergeant Ker Yang, who runs crisis-intervention training for Minneapolis Police, told the court that officers were taught to make critical decisions in dealing with people in crisis and to de-escalate the situation.

Prosecutor Steve Schleicher said records show that Mr Chauvin attended a 40-hour course on the method in 2016.

When we talk about fast-evolving situations ... a lot of the time we have the time to slow things down and reevaluate and reassess and go through this model, Mr Yang said.

Records also show that Mr Chauvin took in-service training in the use of force in October 2018.

Mr Chauvin (45) is charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter and third-degree murder.

( Telegraph Media Group Limited 2021)





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A snowstorm that swept across large parts of North America, knocking out sections of Texass electricity grid, has cost oil giant Shell millions (Anna Gowthorpe/PA)

A snowstorm that swept across large parts of North America, knocking out sections of Texass electricity grid, has cost oil giant Shell millions, the company revealed on Wednesday.

Shell said the Texas storm would have an adverse impact of up to 200 million US dollars (145 million) on its adjusted earnings in the first three months of the financial year.

The weather knocked out parts of its production in the Lone Star State in February, and its upstream business now expects to produce between 2.4 million and 2.475 million barrels of oil or equivalents per day.

This is approximately 10,000 to 20,000 barrels per day fewer than normal due to the effects of the storm.

At least 100 people, possibly almost 200, died in Texas when the storm knocked out large parts of the states electricity grid, leaving millions without power.

Democrat politicians have blamed the states deregulated electricity grid for the problems.

The Houston Chronicle reported that 16 people are believed to have died from carbon monoxide poisoning during the storm as they tried to keep warm, while nearly two dozen others died when the medical devices they relied on stopped working.

Shells US operations are based in Texas, a vital state for the countrys oil industry.

The company said that adjusted earnings in its upstream unit  the part of the business which finds, extracts or produces oil and gas  are expected to be adversely affected by 40 million dollars (29 million) due to the storm.

Its oil refinery in Deer Park, Texas, normally processes more than 300,000 barrels per day. However Shell and its partner, Pemex, were forced to close the plant due to unprecedented weather in the middle of February.

The closure will lead to an 80 million dollar (58 million) hit to its adjusted earnings in the oil products unit.

Meanwhile, the companys chemicals unit expects to take a 60 million dollar (44 million) hit from the storm.
New Delhi: In yet another sign of improving relations between India and Pakistan, the latter announced that it has issued visas for Sikh pilgrims who want to travel there for Baisakhi celebrations.

Pakistan said that it has issued over 1100 visas to Sikh pilgrims from India.

The High Commission for Pakistan in India has issued over 1100 visas to Sikh pilgrims from India to participate in the annual Baisakhi celebrations from 12-22 April 2021, the Pakistani government said in a statement.

Under the framework of the Pakistan-India Protocol on Visits to Religious Shrines of 1974, a large number of Sikh Yatrees from India visit Pakistan to observe various religious festivals/occasions every year, it added.

The statement further stated that the government of Pakistan issued the visas as a special gesture in view of the importance of Baisakhi for Punjabis and Sikhs marking the start of their new year.

Pakistan High Commission extends special felicitations to all those celebrating this auspicious occasion and wishes the visiting pilgrims a fulfilling yatra, said the statement.

It also said that the issuance of pilgrimage visas was a part of Pakistans efforts for facilitating visits to religious shrines.

This also reflects the commitment of the Government of Pakistan to faithfully implement the bilateral Protocol on Visits to Religious Shrines, it added.

There have been signs of resumption of dialogue between the two countries in recent times.

Last month, PM Narendra Modi wrote a letter to his Pakistani counterpart Imran Kahn extending greetings on Pakistan Day.

Modi had said that India desires cordial relations with Pakistan but an atmosphere of trust, devoid of terror and hostility, is "imperative" for it.

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Not everyone can be like Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig, who reportedly could profit up to $100 million each in their deal with Netflix for two Knives Out sequels, but maybe you could just tell people you did. According to the FBI and SEC, that's what Zachary Horwitz allegedly did, as part of a Ponzi scheme that the SEC claims raised over $690 million.

Described as a small-time actor by the LA Times and listed as Zach Avery on his IMDB profile, Horwitz apparently told investors that his company 1inMM (one in a million) was involved in buying film rights and reselling them to HBO and Netflix. However, representatives for both companies told the FBI they have no business relationship with 1nMM, and the FBI says that licensing and distribution agreements shown to investors were fake, complete with forged signatures. He claimed their investments were safe, and according to the affidavit filed by the FBI he told investors "we receive confirmation from each of our outputs indicating their desire to acquire the rights to any title we purchase PRIOR to us releasing funds for the film."

With those forged documents, they allege Horwitz started receiving funds in 2015, eventually using victim's money to repay earlier investors and buy himself a $6 million house. The SEC says it has charged Horwitz and 1nMM with violating antifraud laws, while freezing his assets. The FBI announced Horwitz's arrest, citing $227 million investors transferred to the company since late 2018 that Horwitz has allegedly defaulted on and charging him with wire fraud, which carries a maximum penalty of up to 20 years in jail. According to the LA Times, he was released on a $1 million secured bond.

On the plus side, once this is all over, Horwitz might have a story Netflix is interested in buying after it releases the Anna Delvey / Anna Sorokin documentary.
TWO mothers are to press ahead with a Constitutional challenge to Ireland's mandatory quarantine regime, even though they will be released long before the lawsuit can be decided.

Under a timetable set by the High Court, it will be April 20 at the earliest before a date can be set for the hearing of the action by Niamh Mulreany (25) and Kirstie McGrath (30).

By that stage they will have completed the 12-day hotel quarantine they allegedly sought to avoid after returning from a trip to Dubai.

An informed source said the two friends would persist with the legal challenge as they did not want to have potential criminal convictions.

Both were charged with breaching the Health Act after allegedly refusing to go to a quarantine hotel after arriving at Dublin Airport on Friday.

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They have denied the charges.

The two women had been in Dubai for breast enhancement surgery but did not go ahead with the procedures.

They claimed they had been gifted the trip and that when they left for Dubai they had been unaware of the requirement to quarantine on their return and could not afford to pay for it.

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Ms Mulreany's parents Eddie Freeman and Sabrina Mulreany have claimed the two women were "being treated worse than animals" and that the matter had turned into "a complete circus".

The affair took a further twist yesterday when it emerged Ms McGrath returned a false positive for Covid-19 while being held at the Dochas Centre women's prison in Mountjoy at the weekend.

Further tests carried out by the HSE on Sunday night - after the High Court ordered their release from prison and transfer to a quarantine hotel - returned negative results.

Ms Mulreany, of Scarlett Row in Dublin, and Ms McGrath, from Rialto in Dublin, had already had three negative PCR tests and an antibody exam.

One ground of the constitutional challenge is expected to focus on the proportionality of requiring them to quarantine in circumstances where they had tested negative several times already.

Another potential ground being examined by their legal team is that the legislation has created a rare "absolute liability offence", for which no defence is available.

A further potential ground is whether it is lawful for an appeals officer to restrict their liberty.

The pair were granted bail at Tallaght District Court on Saturday but remained in custody and were detained at the Dochas Centre as they could not secure funds to pay bonds and independent sureties.

On Sunday the High Court ordered they be allowed leave prison, but directed they continue to quarantine at a designated hotel.

Ms Mulreany's parents said both women returned negative results to Sunday night's tests.

Her mother Sabrina, who is a frontline worker, said: "Niamh and Kirstie are being made examples of. It's as simple as that and the question has to be asked, why?

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"When those girls got on to the plane in Dubai they did not have Covid-19.

"The girls left Ireland on the morning of March 24 and the new rules on quarantining did not come in until March 26, two days later, so why is this happening?

"These two girls are not statistics and what is happening is having an awful effect on them."

She claimed the two women had been "treated worse than animals".

"They were kept in awful conditions in prison and left in a Garda van for almost four hours in the heat prior to their court appearance on Saturday as they could not enter the courthouse due to Covid-19 restrictions," she said.

"Both girls are suffering."




Apples iPhone has been dominant in the global market since its inception back in 2007. It is one of the most discussed names in the smartphone industry. The phone now represents a status symbol and not just a smartphone.

Apple has one of the largest fan bases among world-renowned brand names. Its brand loyalty is unparalleled in the marketplace  once a consumer buys an iPhone, s/he is not likely to switch to another brand. There are plenty of iPhone lovers in Nepal also who follows the Apple brand very seriously.

There are online shopping platforms like Daraz and Choicemandu from where you can purchase iPhones. Meanwhile, there are other reliable and authorised websites also on which you can buy the latest iPhones in Nepal.

Here are five major of them.

5. Apple Store Nepal

Especially meant for Apple products, Apple Store Nepal is one of the most reliable websites to purchase the latest iPhones or any other items from the brand. You can get almost every Apple products on this website. The site is very user-friendly and one can easily go through the products without any complications. The product description on the website is also very detailed, making buyers easy to choose what they need. The payment system includes direct bank transfer or cash on delivery. It will charge Rs 100 for the delivery within the valley.

Visit the website applestore.com.np for purchase or to know about the products.

4. Future World Nepal

Future World is one of the very few authorised resellers of Apple products in Nepal. The buyers have the option of buying from physical stores which are located at Civil Mall and City Centre. The buyers can also purchase from the website futureworld.com.np.

The website is currently under construction and the users will be able to order and purchase iPhone and other apple products once it is fully functioning.

3. Oliz Store

Oliz Store is one of the most popular gadget stores in the country. It is also one of the authorised resellers of iPhones and other Apple products here. Not only Apple products, but you can also purchase varieties of other genuine products from Oliz like JBL speakers, drones, Beats by Dre products and the list goes on and on.

There is a physical store located in Babarmahal, Kathmandu. You can also purchase the latest iPhones or other Apple products by visiting its official site olizstore.com.

The payment system includes payment from cards, direct bank transfer, eSewa, IME Pay or you can pay cash on delivery which is available for Kathmandu valley only.

2. Generation Next Communications

Generation Next Communications is one of the leading companies of Nepal in the electronics sector. It is the sole authorised distributor of Apple in Nepal. Although it is the official distributors of Apple products, it also sells them in retail.

The buyers will get genuine products from here. It has a physical store at Sherpa Mall, Durbarmarg if you want to visit the store and if you want to purchase the products online, you can go through gnextcom.com and order the product you want. You can pay cash on delivery for your order.

1. EvoStore Nepal

EvoStore is the authorised reseller and authorised service provider for Apple products in Nepal. Almost every genuine Apple products can be found here. The website is also very user-friendly and the user will have no problem going through one product to another.

Besides Apple, there are also other famous brands like Bose and JBL. The buyer can purchase the products through various outlets or go to evostore.com.np and place the order there.

Payment options include eSewa, Visa or master cards, Khalti and Fonepay. There is also cash on delivery system available.
TURIN, APR 7 - The body of a 90-year-old man was found in his home in Turin Wednesday and police suspect he was murdered with a kitchen knife, sources said. There was no sign of a disturbance in the flat in the Santa Rita quarter and no one else was found there. (ANSA).
The police sources said that the accused have been booked under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and sections 342, 109 and 376D of IPC along with a woman.

SRINAGAR: Four-person including a policeman and a retired Army jawan-one report said he too is a policeman- are among four persons arrested by the Jammu and Kashmir police on charge of raping a minor girl from the Union Territory's Kulgam district. More shockingly, the girl has been found to be pregnant during the medical examination.

The police sources said that the accused have been booked under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and sections 342, 109 and 376D of IPC along with a woman. The victim aged about 16 years is a resident of Qazigund area of Kulgam.

Confirming it, a police spokesman said that police station Qazigund received a written complaint from a local resident alleging therein that her daughter (name withheld) was raped by three persons at Bonigam, Qazigund with the help of a woman of Damjen area of the same district. "The said offence as per the complainant surfaced during the course of a medical examination where she was found pregnant," the police said.

After registering the FIR under relevant sections of the law, the police arrested the accused identified as Zahoor Ahmad Mir, Aejaz Ahmad Shah, Kifayat Ahmad Malik and Shabrooza. The police claimed that during investigation, it surfaced that the accused policeman Zahoor Mir was not on duty when the crime took place "nor was it committed inside police premises''.

The police also said that in addition to criminal proceedings, departmental inquiry has been initiated against the accused policeman. It assured the people that "strict action" will be taken against offenders, regardless of their position or placement.
EvoShare and SavvyFi announce partnership for college savings and student loan repayments. EvoShare, a microsavings-oriented FinTech startup based in Berkeley, CA, and SavvyFi, a tech-driven 529 employee benefit platform headquartered in Franklin, Tennessee, are announcing their partnership to make saving for college, and paying off student loans an automatic daily habit.

EvoShare, a microsavings-oriented FinTech startup based in Berkeley, CA, and SavvyFi, a tech-driven 529 employee benefit platform headquartered in Franklin, Tennessee, are announcing their partnership to make saving for college, and paying off student loans an automatic daily habit. This collaboration with SavvyFi aims to give everyone advanced tech that will help them cover education expenses without changing their spending habits.

EvoShares proprietary system turns a percentage of every dollar spent at over 10,000 partnered local and online businesses, and 700,000+ hotels worldwide, into additional contributions for financial accounts, including 529 education savings plans. SavvyFi has simplified the signup process for 529 Plans and student loan repayment plans so any family can quickly start saving for the future, while enjoying unique features like gifting & cashback.

SavvyFi has already made it easy for the whole family to get involved in adding to a 529 or paying off student loans. Our contribution is giving the whole family extra money from their daily shopping in the form of cashback. Now all the things parents or grandparents are buying for the kids can also help fund their education  Eugeny Prudchyenko, CEO of EvoShare.

Adding EvoShares cash back rewards program to SavvyFis platform gives families another opportunity to increase their savings without coming out of pocket. This also allows employers to provide a much-needed and valuable benefit without requiring the extra cost of matching contributions.  Jeffrey Hull, CEO of SavvyFi.

Given the current financial climate, parents are concerned about being able to save for their childrens education, and recent grads will continue to struggle paying off their student loans. SavvyFi solved the problem of figuring out what kind of account to open, which investments to choose, and how to get started. With the addition of EvoShare, they have solved the last challenge - how to find money to contribute to a 529 account. This partnership is going to usher in an entirely new way to automatically save for college or pay down student debt whenever family members shop, dine or travel - without any impact on the familys budget.

About EvoShare:

EvoShare is the premier cash-back savings program that is giving employees a new, automated way to save for their financial future. EvoShare provides employers with a set it and forget it experience where employees can spend as usual at over 10,000 participating businesses and receive up to 20% cash back toward a financial account such as a 401(k) or 403(b) plan, IRA, HSA, student loan, 529 plan or emergency savings account.

EvoShare has been featured in Forbes, Inc., Entrepreneur, and The Huffington Post. It won the 2019 DC Genie Award from 401(k) TV for Best Financial Technology and was a finalist for KNect365s 2019 Finovate Award for Top Emerging Tech Company.

About SavvyFi:

SavvyFis technology application makes saving for college and repaying student debt frictionless for families, benefits administrators, and benefit consultants. Employees digitally open and manage their 529 accounts on any device. Their contributions, gifts from friends and family, and cashback rewards are automatically invested in low-cost, age-based index funds, making SavvyFi a seamless benefit for companies of all sizes.
[April 07, 2021] Transportation Insight Provides Transportation Management Technology and Visibility to Death Wish Coffee Company

HICKORY, N.C., April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Transportation Insight, a North American leader in transportation management solutions, today announced a partnership with Death Wish Coffee Co. to provide technology-based management of truckload and less-than-truckload (LTL) transportation, financial settlement and freight claims in support of the coffee producer's projections for 30 to 50 percent year-over-year growth. Death Wish Coffee, creators of the World's Strongest Coffee, was created in 2012 after owner and founder Mike Brown saw an opportunity to sell a bold, never bitter coffee out of his coffee shop. Now, almost 10 years later, Death Wish Coffee is sold in more than 14,000 stores nationwide. Death Wish Coffee engaged with Transportation Insight to access Transportation Management System (TMS) technology and visibility solutions. Along with technology, Death Wish Coffee needed a provider to support both a managed transportation solution across all modes and on-demand brokerage shipments. Transportation Insight along with Nolan Transportation Group provide a holistic approach to meet those distinct needs. "As we continue to experience significant growth, Transportation Insight offers us scalable technology solutions that automate our processes, improve procurement of freight capacity, enhance visibility to our transportation activity and, ultimately, support the ongoing evolution of our business," said Jason Mazzotti, vice president of supply chain for Death Wish Coffee. "More importantly, those systems are backed by an intentional approach and significant industry experience that makes Transportation Insight a great cultural fit with our organization." "Transportation Insight is focused on bringing scalable transportation management solutions to mid-market brands facing transportation challenges that create xcess costs, reduce profit margins and impact service to end customers," said Clay Gentry, president of Transportation Insight's Transportation Management Division. "We are excited to work with Death Wish Coffee and provide the technology and visibility they need to support their near-term and long-term goals."



Transportation Insight offers shippers of all sizes a complete portfolio of multi-modal freight management solutions that helps more than 750 customers control their transportation spend. Relying on long-term carrier relationships and brokerage services provided by sister company Nolan Transportation Group (NTG), Transportation Insight helps clients like Death Wish Coffee access the capacity and management technology needed to move their freight and realize sustainable growth. About Death Wish Coffee

The World's Strongest Coffee was born out of a void. In 2012, Mike Brown's caffeinated curiosities landed him at the bottom of a rabbit hole, searching for a new frontier in an industry he loved. With a passion grown in his original coffee shop in Saratoga Springs, NYMike doubled-down on what he knew best and created something needed, not only by his active community, but by everyone. He searched far and wide for the best beans, perfected a unique roasting technique, and Death Wish Coffee, the World's Strongest Coffee, was born. Now, Death Wish Coffee is sold online and in more than 14,000 stores nationwide. For more information, visit deathwishcoffee.com.

About Transportation Insight, LLC

Transportation Insight is a multi-modal, lead logistics provider that partners with manufacturers, retailers and distributors to achieve significant cost savings, reduce cycle times and improve customer satisfaction rates through customized supply chain solutions. Transportation Insight offers carrier sourcing, freight bill audit and payment services, state-of-the-art transportation management system (TMS) applications, parcel technology platform (audit, engineering, advanced analytics) and business intelligence. The Enterprise Logistics division of the Transportation Insight Holdings, LLC, (TI Holdco) portfolio, Transportation Insight operates alongside transactional freight brokerage Nolan Transportation Group (NTG) to help client shippers engineer efficient supply chain networks. Combined, the $4.3 billion TI Holdco organization serves 10,000 clients with logistics management services that include domestic transportation (TL, LTL, Parcel), e-commerce solutions, supply chain analytics, international transportation, warehouse sourcing, LEAN consulting and supply chain sourcing of indirect materials. Headquartered in Hickory, NC, Transportation Insight has secondary operating centers and client support offices across North America. For more information, visit www.transportationinsight.com or email info@transportationinsight.com. About Nolan Transportation Group

Founded in 2005, Nolan Transportation Group (NTG) is a leader in truckload brokerage and third-party logistics services, dedicated to delivering the highest level of service in the transportation industry. NTG offers a wide range of services for customers across North America. NTG specializes in strategic truckload shipping, as well as expedited, partial, refrigerated, drayage, and intermodal. NTG's carrier base consists of approximately 30,000 independent carriers that facilitate the movement of its customers' products. NTG is headquartered in Atlanta, GA and has 12 additional offices across the United States. NTG has been ranked a Top Freight Brokerage by Transport Topics for three consecutive years and has been ranked on the Inc. 500 | 5000 lists for six straight years as one of the fastest-growing private companies in the United States. For more information about NTG, visit www.ntgfreight.com or email inquiry@ntgfreight.com. CONTACT: Katie Wild, kwild@t-insight.com View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/transportation-insight-provides-transportation-management-technology-and-visibility-to-death-wish-coffee-company-301261562.html SOURCE Transportation Insight, LLC

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Regulatory News:

CARREFOUR (Paris:CA):

Composition of the Board of Directors

The Board of Directors, based on the recommendation of the Governance Committee, decided to propose to the Shareholders' Meeting to be held on May 21, 2021, the renewal of the terms of office of nine directors: Mr. Alexandre Bompard, Mr. Philippe Houze, Mr. Stephane Israel, Ms. Claudia Almeida e Silva, Mr. Nicolas Bazire, Mr. Stephane Courbit, Ms. Aurore Domont, Ms. Mathilde Lemoine and Ms. Patricia Moulin-Lemoine.

Following the Shareholders' Meeting and subject to the approval of such renewals by the shareholders, the Board of Directors will comprise 50% of independent members and 43% of women, in compliance with the AFEP-MEDEF Code's recommendations.

How to participate in the Shareholders' Meeting

Given the current Covid-19 pandemic, as a precautionary step and in accordance with the measures introduced by Ordinance no. 2020-321 of March 25, 2020 amending the rules on meetings and deliberations of shareholders and management bodies of legal entities and other entities, and extended by Decree no. 2021-255 of March 9, 2021, the Board of Directors has decided to hold the Shareholders' Meeting on May 21, 2021 behind closed doors, at the Company's head office without any physical attendance by shareholders.

The Shareholder's Meeting will be broadcasted live and available in replay on the Company's website on the Shareholders' Meeting page.

Shareholders will be able to cast their votes remotely, either by post or electronically through the Votaccess website, according to the rules of participation to be further detailed and published in the coming days and which will be available for download on the Shareholders' Meeting webpage of the Group's website.

In accordance with applicable laws and regulations, shareholders will also be able to send written questions, ahead of the Shareholders' Meeting, including by electronic means, using the email address contained in the convening documentation.

In addition, in order to maintain the shareholder dialogue to which the Company is especially committed, an ad hoc system will be set up in order to allow shareholders to ask questions. Answers will be given orally during the Shareholders' Meeting within the time set aside for this special exchange.

Shareholders are invited to regularly check the Company's Shareholders' Meeting webpage (www.carrefour.com/en/finance/shareholders-meeting), which will be updated to ensure shareholders' information and clarify, as the case may be, the definitive arrangements for the Shareholders' Meeting.

Dividend

As announced on February 18, 2021, the Carrefour Board of Directors decided to propose to the General Meeting of May 21, 2021 a dividend for the 2020 financial year of 0.48 euro per share, paid fully in cash.

The dividend ex-date will be May 26, 2021 and the payment date will be May 28, 2021.

About Carrefour Group

With a multi-format network of some 13 000 stores in more than 30 countries, the Carrefour Group is one of the world's leading food retailers. Carrefour recorded gross sales of 78.6 billion in 2020. It has more than 320,000 employees who help to make Carrefour the world leader in the food transition for everyone, providing everybody with access to high-quality, affordable food every day, in all locations.

For more information, visit www.carrefour.com, or find us on Twitter (@GroupeCarrefour) and LinkedIn (Carrefour).

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005820/en/

Contacts:

Investor Relations

Selma Bekhechi, Anthony Guglielmo et Antoine Parison

Tel: +33 (0)1 64 50 79 81



Shareholder Relations

Tel: 0 805 902 902 (toll-free in France)



Group Communication

Tel: +33 (0)1 58 47 88 80
Caisa Ankarsparre in 'Exterminate All the Brutes' Credit - Velvet Film/David Koskas/Courtesy HBO

The very existence of this film is a miracle, says its creator, Raoul Peck, in the final episode of Exterminate All the Brutesand that might be an understatement. A four-part experimental documentary that takes on the unwieldy, bitterly contentious subject of white supremacy since the so-called Age of Discovery, Brutes is unorthodox in both content and style. Drawing heavily on the work of leftist academics, the series also incorporates scripted passages and animations that serve as guided meditations on human suffering more than as visual aids. It may well be the most politically radical and intellectually challenging work of nonfiction ever made for television.

Best known in the U.S. for I Am Not Your Negro, his Oscar-nominated 2016 film that paired the words of James Baldwin with a collage of images of the racist culture that Baldwin was critiquing, Peck has been making difficult films about cataclysm and revolution for almost four decades. While he has frequently focused on his home country of Haiti and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he spent much of his childhood, hes lived all over the world, and his films have dramatized everything from the youthful adventures of an anticapitalist icon (The Young Karl Marx) to the Rwandan genocide (Sometimes in April). The unifying factor is not just an obsession with injusticeracial, economic, imperialbut also the history of resistance to it.

That makes Brutes the culmination of the 67-year-old filmmakers lifelong work. And it is indeed a magnum opus. Bankrolled by HBO (where it premieres on April 7) after the success of the Baldwin feature, the series is Pecks attempt to unearth what he has called an origin story for white supremacy. It takes its title from Swedish historian Sven Lindqvists ruminative 1992 book about his travels through postcolonial Africa, which in turn wrestles with the source of the quote exterminate all the brutes: Joseph Conrads immortal novella Heart of Darkness. Peck also draws heavily on historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortizs An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States and Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillots Silencing the Past: The Power and Production of History. In each episode, he credits himself as having made the series together with all three scholars, even though Trouillot died in 2012 and Lindqvist in 2019.

Story continues

Parade of Unemployed Men Carrying Signs, New York City, New York, USA, Bain News Service (May 1909) Library of Congress via HBO

This might sound like the recipe for something dry and detached. But there is a core of human warmth to the seriesnot least in the way Peck, who acts as a first-person narrator, describes his relationships with the writers who influenced it. Lindqvist was definitely not a white savior, he reflects. Sven saw my world and lived in it, as I did his. Perhaps because of the diversity of his influences, as well as his own international background, Peck has little use for the pieties, buzzwords or individual villains of siloed social justice debates. Worn-out terms like problematic and cancel culture feel inadequate to the topics at hand. And so Brutes makes identity-based movements with no grounding in hundreds of years of global history look a bit provincial. Its point is not to rail against the Donald Trumps, or even the Adolf Hitlers, so much as it is to render visible the architecture of oppression that makes the rise of demagogues inevitable.

While the series concentrates most on the U.S. and its original sinsthe long, slow genocide of Indigenous peoples as well as chattel slaveryit is really a non-chronological, revisionist history of the West since the Crusades. Peck layers his narration over collages of archival materials, infographics and, hauntingly in this context, clips from movies, like the Conrad-inspired Apocalypse Now and John Waynes The Alamo, that mythologize shameful moments in our history. The aim is to make viewers aware of the prejudices weve passively absorbed through pop culture, in order to challenge those assumptions with jarring counter-narratives rooted in contemporary scholarship. (Similarly, the effect of relating monstrous details from the lives of Thomas Jefferson or The Wizard of Oz author L. Frank Baum isnt to tarnish their legacies; it is to illustrate how many of the same people whose work is a source of pride for our society also helped to normalize brutality within it.) In an episode that examines how the West established dominance via killing at a distance, Peck describes how the backward and poorly resourced Europe of the 16th century would acquire a monopoly on ocean-traveling ships with guns capable of spreading death and destruction across huge distances.

Peck has an eye for details and perspectives that make legible the ways in which education and, to an even greater extent, pop culture have narrowed our thinking about dark moments in history. Brutes challenges the received wisdom that colonialism was a uniquely European form of white-supremacist violence. Doesnt the term accurately describe the violent westward march through Indigenous territory that citizens of the 13 original U.S. states undertook after securing independence from Englandeven if the euphemism manifest destiny made it into textbooks instead? Why wasnt it ever called a war crime? he demands of the American bombs that incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And he argues that it was centuries of colonial genocide that allowed Hitler to upgrade his ambitions to a Holocaust on European soil.

Josh Hartnett in 'Exterminate All the Brutes' Velvet Film/David Koskas/Courtesy HBO

The visuals are as arresting as the words. Long tracking shots register, like no other moving image Ive ever seen, the sheer sizeand thus the industrial-strength deliberatenessof Auschwitz. In several narrative sequences that range from mesmerizing to frustratingly opaque, Josh Hartnett (yes, from Penny Dreadful and Pearl Harbor) plays a sort of eternally recurring specter of Western violence. Peck uses the scripted material in a somewhat confusing array of different ways; Hartnett shows up to slaughter the Other from Africa to the New World, but also as an alternate-reality Christopher Columbus who has barely set foot on what is now Haiti, in 1492, when he and his men are murdered by the Taino people who already live there. More consistently potent is a series of wordless, watercolor-style animations that translate individual human suffering into poetic terms: Africans forced onto slave ships, Indigenous Americans on the Trail of Tears.

Many of these stories, as well as some of the revisionist readings of history drawn from the works that influenced Brutes, have already seeped into mainstream culture via popular texts, from James Loewens Lies My Teacher Told Me to The New York Times 1619 Project and, most recently, Isabel Wilkersons Caste. Pecks great contribution is to synthesize them in a way that may only be possible for an artist whose point of view was not shaped by Eurocentrism or American exceptionalism. He isnt too reverent of organized religion to include, among the series many relevant personal anecdotes, how he became an atheist as a child after enduring corporal punishment from a clergyman. Unlike Discoverys uneven 2019 docuseries Why We Hate, which barely analyzed the roles money and power have played in conflicts around the globe, Brutes has no problem critiquing capitalist values. (That may make it less palatable to some audiences, but one hopes that the many Americans whose views fall to the right of Pecks will concede that his radical arguments deserve some rare shelf space in the marketplace of ideas.)

Though he is unsparing in his accounts of colonial violence, Pecks endgame is not to make white viewers wallow in lonely self-hatred; its to encourage change. Citing Rwanda, he argues that the conditions that enabled the Holocaust were not unique, and that humanity will keep committing atrocities until we take a stark look at our history and choose not to repeat it. No wonder Peck feels an affinity for Baldwin, who framed white Americas repressed guilt over centuries of cruelty to Black America as the root of both groups misery. To accept ones pastones historyis not the same thing as drowning in it, he wrote, it is learning how to use it. To that end, Exterminate All the Brutes makes an electrifying instruction manual.
This is the awkward moment Ursula von der Leyen was left without a seat during a summit in Turkey when her male counterparts grabbed the only two available chairs - before the trio discussed women's rights.

The incident took place in Ankara on Tuesday as Von der Leyen, the European commission president, met with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan alongside president of the European council Charles Michel.

Video shows how Von der Leyen was left standing to one side and uttered an audible 'ahem' as Michel and Erdogan took the only two available seats - with neither offering her their chair even after she protested.

She was instead left to perch on a nearby sofa, positioned a distance from the two men, as they held two and a half hours of talks on Turkey's relations with the EU, including Erdogan's decision to withdraw from a treaty protecting women's rights.

Von der Leyen's spokesman said afterwards that Turkey had breached protocol by failing to offer her a chair, as it has done to other male commission presidents in the past, but that she decided to 'prioritize substance over protocol' by staying.

Ursula von der Leyen was left irritated after being sidelined during talks between the EU and Turkey in Ankara on Tuesday after her two male counterparts took the only available seats

Von der Leyen, who could be heard uttering an irritated 'ahem' as the men sat down, was left to perch on a nearby sofa during two and a half hours of diplomatic talks

But, the spokesman added, 'let me stress that the president expects that the institution that she represents to be treated with the required protocol, and she has therefore asked her team to take all appropriate contacts in order to ensure that such an incident does not occur in the future.'

Diplomatic protocol dictates that the EU commission president and council president, holding equal rank, should be seated in an equal manner.

None of the leaders mentioned the incident in press conferences held after the summit, but Von der Leyen's spokesman opened up about it today after footage of the moment went viral on social media.

'The important thing is that the president should have been seated exactly in the same manner as the president of the European council and the Turkish president,' EU commission chief spokesman Eric Mamer said, adding that Von der Leyen was surprised by the arrangements.

The diplomatic incident was abundantly commented on social media.

European lawmaker Sophie in t Veld posted pictures of previous meetings between Michels and Von der Leyens predecessors with Erdogan, with the trio of men sitting in chairs next to each other.

'And no, it wasnt a coincidence, it was deliberate,' in 't Veld wrote on Twitter, questioning why Michel remained 'silent.'

Last month, Erdogan pulled Turkey out of a key European convention aimed at combatting violence against women, triggering criticism from EU officials.

The move was a blow to Turkeys womens rights movement, which says domestic violence and murders of women are on the rise.

Von der Leyen was in Turkey alongside EU council president Charles Michel (left) and Turkish president Erdogan (centre) to discuss relations with the EU - including on women's rights

Sophie in 't Veld, a European lawmaker, pointed out that Turkey has previously given chairs to both EU leaders during meetings where all three were male

Von der Leyen called for Erdogan to reverse his decision to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention.

'Human rights issues are non-negotiable. We were very clear about that. We urge Turkey to reverse its decision because it is the first international binding instrument to combat violence against women and children,' she said.

Asked whether the commission regarded the incident as specifically gender-related, Mamer said Von der Leyen traveled to Ankara as the president of an EU institution.

'Being a man or a woman does not change anything to the fact that she should have been seated according to the very same protocol arrangements as the two other participants,' Mamer said.

'She seized the opportunity to specifically tackle the Istanbul convention and women's rights. I believe that the message sent was clear.'

Meanwhile Mr Michel used a post-meeting press conference to call on Turkey to resolve disputes with Greece and Cyprus over gas rights in the Mediterranean.

A row between Turkey and EU members Greece and Cyprus over offshore jurisdiction has strained ties, reaching a peak last summer when Turkish and Greek navy frigates escorted vessels exploring for hydrocarbons in disputed waters.

The European Union backs Athens, while Ankara has accused the bloc of bias and of not honouring its pledges under a 2016 migrant deal.

The visit by Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen follows an EU summit last month at which the bloc said work could begin on deeper trade ties and on providing more money for refugees in Turkey.

Despite concerns over what some European leaders call recent Turkish backsliding on human rights, the EU has applauded Ankara's recent withdrawal of vessels operating in disputed waters and restarting talks with Greece.

Neither Von der Leyen nor Michel mentioned the issue at a press conference afterwards, but a spokesman said today that Turkey had breached diplomatic protocol

'In Ankara, ready with (von der Leyen) to start discussion with (Erdogan) on the future of EU-Turkey relations,' Michel said on Twitter.

'Sustained de-escalation is needed to build a more constructive agenda.'

The EU last month opened the door to begin updating a Customs Union as demanded by Ankara.

This would bring EU candidate Turkey into the internal market of the world's largest trading bloc and allow unhindered flow of goods and services.

Erdogan has downplayed EU membership in recent years and few analysts see it as imminent.

The EU chiefs, who last held in-person talks with Erdogan a year ago, were expected to present Ankara with three options if the maritime de-escalation continues, including improving economic ties, a formula to support the more than 4 million refugees in Turkey, and ways to increase contacts.

'We are no longer in an emergency situation so this is more about working for a longer-term perspective,' an EU official said.

At the summit last month, the EU also warned Ankara of sanctions if it restarts energy exploration in disputed waters and voiced concern over Turkey's human rights record.

Michel and Von der Leyen are expected in Ankara to stress that the EU will not approve closer ties without fundamental rights being honoured.

Both the EU and the United States have criticised a move by Turkey to abruptly withdraw from a convention protecting women from violence, as well as a legal case to shut down the third biggest party, the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party.
Dublin, April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Global Electric Three-Wheeler Market 2021-2025" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The publisher has been monitoring the electric three-wheeler market and it is poised to grow by 306.00 thousand units during 2021-2025 progressing at a CAGR of 7% during the forecast period. The report on electric three-wheeler market provides a holistic analysis, market size and forecast, trends, growth drivers, and challenges, as well as vendor analysis covering around 25 vendors.



The report offers an up-to-date analysis regarding the current global market scenario, latest trends and drivers, and the overall market environment. The market is driven by the subsidies and tax incentives on electric three-wheelers to reduce dependency on petroleum products and low ownership, operating, and maintenance cost.



The electric three-wheeler market analysis includes end-user segment and geographical landscapes. This study identifies the push toward alternative energy vehicles globally as one of the prime reasons driving the electric three-wheeler market growth during the next few years.



The report on electric three-wheeler market covers the following areas:

Electric three-wheeler market sizing

Electric three-wheeler market forecast

Electric three-wheeler market industry analysis

The publisher's robust vendor analysis is designed to help clients improve their market position, and in line with this, this report provides a detailed analysis of several leading electric three-wheeler market vendors that include Bodo Vehicle Group Co. Ltd., E-Tuk Factory BV, Goenka Electric Motor Vehicles Pvt. Ltd, Kerala Automobiles Ltd., Kinetic Green Energy & Power Solutions Ltd., LOHIA AUTO INDUSTRIES, Mahindra Electric Mobility Ltd., Omega Seiki Private Limited, Piaggio & C. Spa, and Terra Motors. Also, the electric three-wheeler market analysis report includes information on upcoming trends and challenges that will influence market growth. This is to help companies strategize and leverage on all forthcoming growth opportunities.



The study was conducted using an objective combination of primary and secondary information including inputs from key participants in the industry. The report contains a comprehensive market and vendor landscape in addition to an analysis of the key vendors.



The publisher presents a detailed picture of the market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources by an analysis of key parameters such as profit, pricing, competition, and promotions. It presents various market facets by identifying the key industry influencers. The data presented is comprehensive, reliable, and a result of extensive research - both primary and secondary. The market research reports provide a complete competitive landscape and an in-depth vendor selection methodology and analysis using qualitative and quantitative research to forecast an accurate market growth.



Key Topics Covered:



1. Executive Summary

Market Overview

2. Market Landscape

Market ecosystem

Impact of COVID-19 on consumer discretionary

Value chain analysis

3. Market Sizing

Market definition

Market segment analysis

Market size 2020

Market outlook: Forecast for 2020 - 2025

4. Five Forces Analysis

Five forces summary

Bargaining power of buyers

Bargaining power of suppliers

Threat of new entrants

Threat of substitutes

Threat of rivalry

Market condition

5. Market Segmentation by End-user

Market segments

Comparison by End-user

Passenger carrier - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Goods carrier - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Market opportunity by End-user

6. Customer landscape

Overview

7. Geographic Landscape

Geographic segmentation

Geographic comparison

APAC - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

ROW - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Key leading countries

Market opportunity by geography

Market drivers

Market challenges

Market trends

8. Vendor Landscape

Overview

Landscape disruption

9. Vendor Analysis

Vendors covered

Market positioning of vendors

Bodo Vehicle Group Co. Ltd.

E-Tuk Factory BV

Goenka Electric Motor Vehicles Pvt. Ltd

Kerala Automobiles Ltd.

Kinetic Green Energy & Power Solutions Ltd.

LOHIA AUTO INDUSTRIES

Mahindra Electric Mobility Ltd.

Omega Seiki Private Limited

Piaggio & C. Spa

Terra Motors

10. Appendix

Scope of the report

Currency conversion rates for US$

Research methodology

List of abbreviations

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/tn8wtn
A Harris County deputy constable was arrested on drug and money laundering charges after conspiring with his girlfriend to distribute cocaine, acting U.S. Attorney Jennifer Lowery announced.

A federal grand jury returned a three-count indictment against Huffman residents Alexsander S. Reyes, 47, and his girlfriend Priscilla Yvette Cervantes, 44. Both Reyes and Cervantes were arrested Tuesday, according to the U.S. Justice Department. Reyes was reportedly put in handcuffs when the arrest was made, authorities say. The couple were expected to make initial appearances before U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew M. Edison on Wednesday.

PPP LOAN SCHEME: Texas man pleads guilty to $24.8 million COVID-19 relief loan scheme involving luxury cars

During a four-month span, Reyes laundered what he believed was $350,000 in drug proceeds, the indictment alleges. At the time of the offense, Reyes was serving as a deputy constable with Harris County Precinct 1 Constable Alan Rosen's Office. Constable Rosen didn't hold back when he commented on the case, stating that all law officers should hold themselves to a higher standard.

"Our community expects us to hold ourselves accountable. I want the community to know we took proactive steps to investigate this case with the FBI," Constable Rosen tweeted about the case. "Our community asks us to uphold the law and hold ourselves to the same standard as everyone else. I believe we should hold ourselves to an even higher standard. There is no room in this department for those who think and act otherwise."

Reyes and Cervantes were charged with one count of conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute the cocaine, according to the U.S. Justice Department. If convicted, they both face a minimum of 10 years in prison as well as a possible $10 million maximum fine. In addition to drug charges, Reyes faces up to 20 years if convicted of either two counts of money laundering.

The FBI conducted the investigation along with Harris County Constable Precinct 1 as a part of the Houston Law Enforcement and Border Corruption Task Force, which includes HPD and the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Thirty years ago, clinical psychiatrist Jonathan Shay drew attention to similarities between the trauma experienced by the Greek warriors, as documented in the epic poem "The Iliad," and Vietnam veterans in America. Could the experience of war impact people in similar ways in vastly different cultural milieus?

Research published this week by ASU researcher Sarah Mathew and former ASU postdoctoral researcher Matthew Zefferman in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that Turkana pastoralist warriors from Kenya also experience PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) symptoms, even though their lifestyles and combat experiences are markedly different from that of Western soldiers. However, these pastoralists experience less of the PTSD symptoms associated with depression relative to American service members. This difference may be due to aspects of Turkana military organization and practice.

Combat stress is considered to be a major part of the human cost of industrialized warfare. It is estimated that 10 to 20% of American combat veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars suffer from PTSD.

The roots of PTSD are controversial. Some think that PTSD is largely a syndrome of military service members of industrialized societies who do not have social support systems typical in small-scale societies. Others expect it to be a universal phenomenon caused by adaptive responses to acute life-threatening events.

"Distinguishing between these theories has been challenging because PTSD in combatants has been studied almost exclusively in large-scale industrialized societies," said Zefferman, who is a US Air Force veteran and an assistant professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey. Zefferman was a postdoctoral researcher with the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University at the time he began this project.

Zefferman spent six months interviewing warriors in a remote part of Kenya near the border of South Sudan, where Mathew has been running a field research site since 2007. Mathew is an associate professor at ASU in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change and a research affiliate of the Institute of Human Origins. She was awarded an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship in 2015 that allowed her to undertake this study.

Lethal interethnic cattle raiding, once common in several pastoralist societies, continues unabated in this part of Kenya, with semi-automatic rifles replacing spears starting in the late 1970s.

"The Turkana communities in this area see cattle raiding as integral to their livelihood - without going on raids, they cannot recover livestock they lost when they were attacked, and they would get pushed out of critical dry season pastures and water wells," said Mathew.

Turkana in this area have a high degree of combat exposure with about half of adult male mortality due to combat. Twenty-eight percent of the 218 warriors interviewed for the study reported PTSD symptom severity scores that would qualify for a provisional PTSD diagnosis.

To delve further, they compared Turkana symptoms with those of treatment-seeking American combat veterans. They found that the Turkana, compared to American service members, have similarly high levels of symptoms that Zefferman and Mathew hypothesized facilitate learning from and reacting to future combat-related dangers. However, they have lower rates of depressive PTSD symptoms. The researchers suggest that depressive symptoms have different evolutionary origins than other PTSD symptoms and may be related to moral injury -- trauma from witnessing or participating in acts that violate one's moral beliefs.

The researchers also believe that the lack of hierarchical coercive leadership in the Turkana helps them avoid morally questionable actions relative to members of militaries in industrial societies. Because combat is so pervasive in the Turkana, there is not as strong a separation between military and civilian life. The Turkana employ numerous rituals after killing in combat that may help relieve these symptoms.

To see if PTSD symptomology among the Turkana supported their proposition, they statistically modeled which aspects of Turkana combat experiences are associated with depressive (negative beliefs/feelings, low concentration, and irritability/agreesion) versus "learning-and-reacting" (hypervigilance, nightmares, flashbacks) PTSD symptoms. They found that predictors measuring exposure to the dangers of combat like being ambushed, shooting at or being shot by the enemy, hand-to-hand combat, and suffering bullet wounds were more strongly associated with learning-and-reacting than depressive symptoms of PTSD. Conversely, predictors measuring exposure to combat-related moral violations like failing to save the life of another Turkana, seeing people get shot or die, killing an enemy, or being socially sanctioned for combat-related actions were more strongly associated with depressive than learning-and-reacting symptoms.

"The findings provide an evolutionarily and cross-culturally informed framework to further probe the origins and causes of moral injury and its connection to combat-related PTSD," said Zefferman.

In 2018, sponsored by the ASU Center for Evolution and Medicine, the researchers co-organized a workshop with the center's founding director Randy Nesse, M.D. The workshop brought together anthropologists, clinical psychiatrists and evolutionary psychologists to ASU to discuss avenues for future interdisciplinary research.

"Establishing which aspects of PTSD are dependent on social and moral forces, and which will tend to be universal, can help focus clinical research on ways to prevent or treat combat stress," added Mathew.

###

This research was published as "Combat stress in a small-scale society suggest divergent evolutionary roots for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptons," Matthew R. Zerrerman and Sarah Mathew, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A late-90s girl who was born in east China's Anhui province has not only realized her childhood dream of becoming a painter, but also turned this ideal job into a thriving fresco business  she pocketed 40,000 yuan ($ 6,096) in six days and earned up to 1 million yuan last year. Zhang Lijia's fascination towards painting dates back to her childhood when she spent much of her leisure time drawing various pictures. Afterwards, the girl received professional education in drawing after she was admitted to an apparel design major at a university in south China's Guangdong province. To cover her living expenses following her entrance into university, Zhang persisted in doing part-time jobs, including working as a model, reception team member and a leafleteer. In her sophomore year, Zhang first came into contact with mural paintings, with the owner of a newly-opened bakery near her school having employed her to paint some black lines on the walls. "Before that, I never once laid a paintbrush on a wall. However, I found mural paintings to be not as difficult as I imagined, as they share some similarities with the dimensional cutting of apparel designs," recalled Zhang, citing this breakthrough as the initiating spark for her deep interest in this art form. After obtaining her bachelor's degree, Zhang embarked on her career as a mural painter in an art painting company with its business operations spanning across the country. During her work, the girl often had to climb up scaffolding in order to complete her painting at great heights or work unremittingly for hours at a time while taking only a brief rest on the ground of messy construction sites when tired. "At first, my parents were against my choice to become a mural painter as, in their opinion, a white-collar job seemed more suitable for girls," Zhang disclosed, adding that it was her passion towards drawing that finally earned her parents' support and made her more determined than ever to pursue this career. In 2018, Zhang started to share videos of her painting process while in-the-act online upon her cousin's suggestion. To her surprise, a mural she painted during her stay in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region received 180,000 thumbs-up on the Internet, which also helped her to attract over 1,000 new customers. Zhang resigned from the paint company and launched her own mural business in July last year, thanks to the growing popularity of her services. In November of the same year, she completed a mural painting that helped her pocket 40,000 yuan in six days during her stay in north China's Tianjin municipality. According to Zhang, she was able to finish four to five murals in relief within one month and sixty in a year, and her personal income last year exceeded 1 million yuan. "My job is tough, but I am so lucky to pursue the career that I am truly fond of," said Zhang who currently employs two customer service representatives at her own company.
The City of Perth has dipped into its budget surplus to try and bring the WA Day festival celebrations back into the CBD.

Councillors approved a last minute $150,000 sponsorship grant at a special council meeting on Tuesday night but the offering fell well short of the $500,000 requested by Celebrate WA, the event organiser, which it said was needed to move the event from Burswood.

SOTA could be coming back to the Perth CBD. Credit:SOTA

The Celebrate WA board is now mulling where to hold the $2.6 million event, which runs from June 6 to 7, after not getting all the funding it was after from the local government.

Board member Fiona Kalaf told the special council meeting $150,000 was not adequate.
New Delhi, April 7 : The Defence Minister of Kazakhstan, Lieutenant General Nurlan Yermekbayev, arrived in India on Wednesday for a three-day visit to strengthen the defence ties between the two countries.

India's defence partnership with Kazakhstan, which is China's neighbour, will help New Delhi counter Beijing's expansionist move. Beijing shares 1,782.75 km borders with Kazakhstan.

The Kazakh Defence Minister is expected to travel to Jaisalmer, New Delhi and Agra for meetings besides visiting defence establishments. He will hold a bilateral meeting with Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh in New Delhi on April 9.

"This will be the first meeting after Lieutenant General Nurlan Yermekbayev was re-appointed as the Defence Minister of Kazakhstan," said the Defence Ministry.

The two ministers had last met in Moscow on September 5, 2020 on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Defence Ministers' meeting. Singh had then invited the Kazakh Defence Minister to India.

Indian and Kazakh companies are in talks for co-production and co-development in defence production. Both the countries are leveraging opportunities not just for co-development and co-production, but to also meet each other's requirements.

Kazakhstan has expressed that it is interested in the joint production of aerospace equipment. They have also expressed interest over issues related to repair, maintenance and upgrade of the military equipment and setting up joint ventures.
Walcha farmer Mathew Dunbar wanted to be a father but may have struggled with his sexuality - and a string of unsuccessful relationships - before he met Natasha Darcy, the woman now charged with his murder, a Sydney court has been told.

Ms Darcy, 46, is accused of ending Mr Dunbars life on August 1, 2017, by administering a cocktail of sedatives before wrapping his head in a plastic bag, into which she fed a helium pipe, which caused him to die from asphyxiation. She called an ambulance at 2am, but he was unable to be revived.

Walcha sheep grazier Mathew Dunbar with partner Natasha Beth Darcy, who has been charged with his murder.

Ms Darcy has pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Dunbar but admits to assisting in his suicide.

She was the sole beneficiary of his estate, which included Pandora, a 1200-acre property on Thunderbolts Way in northern NSW.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 21:39:50|Editor: huaxia

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Wang Yang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, addresses a seminar on studying and implementing the regulations on the united front work of the CPC in Beijing, capital of China, April 7, 2021. (Xinhua/Yan Yan)

BEIJING, April 7 (Xinhua) -- China's top political advisor Wang Yang on Wednesday called for efforts to promote the high-quality development of the united front work in the new era.

Wang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, addressed a seminar on studying and implementing the regulations on the united front work of the CPC in Beijing.

Wang stressed the comprehensive and accurate grasp of the spirit, main content and work requirements of the regulations which were made public in January after undergoing a revision in November last year.

Strengthening the leadership of the CPC should be taken as the fundamental principle for studying and implementing the regulations, said Wang.

He also highlighted the need to solve the deep-seated contradictions concerning the united front, build up the contingent of representatives from non-Communist parties, improve the competence of the united front departments, and make the united front work more scientific with better standards and institutions. Enditem
Ronald Sandlin is seen inside the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021. (Courtesy of FBI)

Capitol Protester Alleges Inmates Are Being Physically Assaulted by Jail Guards

An alleged rioter charged for his involvement in the U.S. Capitol breach earlier this year has argued jail guards have assaulted inmates kept at the Washington D.C. correctional center.

Myself and others involved in the Jan. 6 incident are scared for their lives, not from each other but from correctional officers, Ronald Sandlin said Tuesday as he appeared before a federal court in order to argue for his pretrial release, Politico reported.

I dont understand how this is remotely acceptable, he said.

During the hearing, Sandlin alleged jail guards have used both physical violence and verbal abuse against multiple inmates, with at least one prisoner getting severely beaten by correctional officers to the point of blindness, a skull fracture, as well as a detached retina.

The D.C. Correctional Treatment Facility is currently housing about 40 suspects accused of taking part in the Jan. 6 incident.

A spokesperson for the facility, as well as the FBI, have said they are aware of the allegations made by Sandlin and have placed the case under federal investigation.

The Department of Corrections takes the safety and well-being of all residents, staff, and contractors extremely seriously, a spokesperson for the department said in an email statement to Politico. We are aware of the allegation made by an inmate and it is under investigation by the Department of Justice.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Sandlins attorney, Jerry Ray Smith Jr., but he did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the allegations made by his client.

Sandlin was arrested in Las Vegas on Jan. 28 after a Washington D.C. court issued a warrant charging him with multiple felony countsobstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder, resisting arrest, impeding, physical violence, as well as entering and remaining in a restricted building without authority.

He was spotted by investigators who received an anonymous tip in videos and pictures on social media inside the Capitol building, emotionally stating: we did it, according to a criminal complaint (pdf).

We breached the building, we breached the building, into our Capitol, Sandlin was heard saying in another video.

In surveillance footage obtained from the incident, Sandlin was seen in a shoving match with U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) while attempting to wrestle through a door guarded by USCP. He was later also seen trying to rip the helmet off of a USCP officer.

During Tuesdays hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich set another court arraignment for Sandlin on Thursday for his possible release from custody after arguing pretrial release.

From NTD News
LOS ANGELESMichael Lacey and James Larkin, the founders of Backpage.com who face trial later this year on multiple charges of money laundering and facilitating prostitution, suffered a new setback in their case this week. In a four-page opinion, a three judge panel of the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals slapped down their bid to get the judge on their case thrown off.

Backpage, a classified advertising site widely used as an online safe space for sex workers to promote their services and screen clients, was shut down and seized by the federal government in April of 2018. Lacey and Larkin were arrested and hit with a 93-count indictment. They have been awaiting trial in Arizona ever since, with the date  after several postponements  now set for August 23. The presiding judge is Susan Brnovich, a 2018 Donald Trump appointee, who is the wife of Arizonas Attorney General Mark Brnovich.

Because Mark Brnovich has made several public statements appearing to link Backpage to sex trafficking, Lacey and Larkin last year petitioned to have Susan Brnovich removed from their case, due to what they said was her possible bias against them. But the judge refused to step aside, ruling that the Court is an independent person from AG Brnovich, and the average person on the street would not reasonably believe that the Court would approach this case in a partial manner due to her husbands publicly stated opinions.

Lacey and Larkin, however, appealed her decision to the Ninth Circuit, which agreed in December to take up the writ of mandamus demanding Judge Brnovichs recusal.

But on Monday, the Ninth Circuit handed down its decision, and it was not a good one for the Backpage founders.

In their ruling, the three Ninth Circuit judges  who did not sign their names to the opinion  said that Lacey and Larkins demand to get rid of the judge as a drastic and extraordinary remedy that could only be met if the lower court judge had made a clear error in her reasoning justifying her decision to remain on the case.

Judge Brnovich has served on the case for about two years, after the first two judges assigned to the Backpage case recused themselves for personal reasons.

The Ninth Circuit said that the Lacey-Larkin demand flounders when trying to point to a clear error made by Judge Brnovich. While the court cited four other factors that must also be met to allow a writ of mandamus to be granted, the ruling said that a writ will always be rejected even if it met the four other criteria but not the clear error standard.

According to an Associated Press report on the ruling, an attorney for Lacey and Larkin did not respond to a request for comment on the Ninth Circuit denial. A spokesperson for Attorney General Brnovich, however, said he called it abhorrent that the defendants in this case insinuate a woman cant speak and think for herself.

Photo By Arizona PBS YouTube Screen Capture
Jonathan Lujan, CEO of Sight Growth Partners, said Sight Growth Partners remains committed to its mission of supporting physicians so they can focus on their patients...Were excited to serve our network of the highest caliber eye care practitioners in both New York and New Jersey.

Sight Growth Partners, the administrative services provider for SightMD - a leading multi-specialty ophthalmology platform in New York, announced the expansion of its services into the state of New Jersey. Four of the leading ophthalmology practices in Ocean County, N.J., Athwal Eye Associates, Lakhani Eye Associates, Shore Eye Associates, and Susskind & Almallah Eye Associates have merged together under the name of SightMD New Jersey. Sight Growth Partners is thrilled to welcome these premier practices, which expands its administrative services to 50+ locations and 100+ providers.

The physicians of Athwal Eye Associates specialize in medical and surgical eye care. For 35 years, they have remained on the cutting edge of technology to provide families in Toms River and Whiting, New Jersey with expert medical and surgical services. Barinder (Tony) Athwal M.D, founder of Athwal Eye Associates, stated by partnering with the other leading practices in Ocean County, we look forward to continuing to provide the latest in eye care. The doctors of Athwal Eye Associates joining SightMD New Jersey are Barinder (Tony) Athwal M.D., Harjit (Harry) Athwal M.D., Lisa Athwal M.D., Neal Athwal O.D., Laurel Feiner M.D., and Donald MacDonald M.D.

Lakhani Eye Associates is committed to providing patient-centered, state of the art eye care to achieve the highest surgical and medical outcomes for their patients in a comfortable and positive atmosphere. Vipul Lakhani, founder of Lakhani Eye Associates, said We are excited to join a world class organization at the forefront of eye care in America. The doctors of Lakhani Eye Associates joining SightMD New Jersey are Vipul Lakhani M.D., and Aaron Stefan O.D.

Shore Eye Associates has served patients in Toms River, Spring Lake Heights, Whiting and Brick New Jersey for the past 39 years providing state of the art eye care in a friendly and compassionate atmosphere. Brian Wnorowski M.D., founder of Shore Eye Associates, said We are excited to expand on the services our four practices have been providing in Monmouth and Ocean counties as we grow to a statewide network of cutting-edge eye care. The doctors of Shore Eye Associates joining SightMD New Jersey are Brian Wnorowski M.D., and Jane Pan M.D.

Founded in 1962, Susskind & Almallah Eye Associates has been the premier choice for eye care services in Toms River, Brick, Barnegat and Marlboro New Jersey. Built on a tradition of service and excellence, they take pride in their passion for improving lives by providing personalized attention and the most technologically advanced vision correction options available. The doctors of Susskind & Almallah Eye Associates joining SightMD New Jersey are Omar Almallah M.D., Anil Birdi M.D., Christopher D'Alterio O.D., Catherine Felicia O.D., Joseph Tulipani O.D. Nicole Caldeira O.D., and Lonika Patel O.D.

Each of these practices share in the mission to provide an unparalleled care experience for patients with 7-days-a-week access to world-class quality eye care in the convenience of their local neighborhoods, delivered by a dedicated, caring and talented healthcare team.

Jonathan Lujan, CEO of Sight Growth Partners, said Sight Growth Partners remains committed to its mission of supporting physicians so they can focus on their patients. Now more than ever, amidst COVID-19, providers need our support to continue to grow their practices and remove administrative burdens. Were excited to serve our network of the highest caliber eye care practitioners in both New York and New Jersey.

About Sight Growth Partners

Sight Growth Partners is the leading administrative services provider for the ophthalmology sector including SightMD and SightMD New Jersey. It has over 100 employees who provide administrative solutions to physicians, ophthalmology clinics and ambulatory surgery centers. Sight Growth Partners provides its clients with world-class administrative services, including a 24/7 call center, billing, credentialing, human resources, and other services, enabling them to continue delivering best-in-class care to patients in their communities. Sight Growth Partners is backed by Chicago Pacific Founders, a leading middle market private equity firm which focuses exclusively on partnerships with growing companies in the healthcare services sector. For more information about Sight Growth Partners, please visit http://www.sightgrowthpartners.com.

About SightMD New Jersey

SightMD New Jersey was formed from the merger of Athwal Eye Associates, Lakhani Eye Associates, Shore Eye Associates, and Susskind & Almallah Eye Associates. SightMD New Jersey offers patients access to 18 ophthalmic surgeons and specialists through the convenience of 11 locations in Ocean County New Jersey. Its services include laser cataract surgery and lens implantation, glaucoma management, retinal disorder treatment, corneal services, neuro-ophthalmology, LASIK vision correction, and oculoplastic surgery. Sight Growth Partners is the administrative services provider for SightMD New Jersey.

About SightMD

SightMD is a rapidly-growing integrated ophthalmic provider group, offering patients access to over 60 ophthalmic surgeons and specialists through the convenience of 41 locations across New York. SightMD's track record of providing clinically-excellent care spans over 50 years, and its services include laser cataract surgery and lens implantation, glaucoma management, retinal disorder treatment, corneal services, neuro-ophthalmology, LASIK laser vision correction, oculoplastic surgery, pediatric ophthalmology, and audiology. Sight Growth Partners is the administrative services provider for SightMD. For more information about SightMD, please visit http://www.sightmd.com
Turkey will soon hold a tender for a huge canal on the edge of Istanbul and lay the groundwork for it in the summer, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday, advancing a project which has drawn criticism over its cost and environmental impact.

Speaking to lawmakers from his ruling AK Party, Erdogan said Turkey would push on with the plan whether you like it or not, referring to criticism from opposition parties and other opponents, and added the canal would be a new windpipe for the region, Reuters reported.

The government says it will ease traffic on the Bosphorus Strait and prevent accidents, but critics have said it will wreak environmental havoc and pollute fresh water resources. Turkey approved development plans for the project last month.

The Kanal Istanbul project will connect the Black Sea north of Istanbul to the Marmara Sea to the south and is estimated to cost 75 billion lira ($9.2 billion).
(Nikkei Asia)  Vietnam is proposing a pair of regulations that would compel global tech players such as Alibaba and Google to hand over more taxes and data, in a move to increase government oversight in one of the worlds fastest-growing digital markets.

One proposal would give state inspectors access to an e-commerce sites internal data on merchants, while the second would introduce a tax collection regime deemed onerous and concerning by a trade group funded by the likes of Apple and Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten.

While Hanoi has been trying to regulate Big Tech for years  especially those harder to reach companies based overseas  the two latest proposals specify the tools it would use.

In the case of taxes, Vietnamese officials plan to go where the money is: banks.

The pending regulation, known as a circular, would require banks in the country to sift through clients accounts and withhold taxes on any payments made to foreign companies for e-commerce and digital services. If a Vietnamese consumer buys a Netflix subscription, for example, her bank would deduct a portion for tax and pass on the rest to the U.S. streaming company.

To avoid having payments docked in this manner, businesses outside Vietnam will be able to register with the government through a web portal that is expected to come online later this year and file taxes themselves.

Business groups, however, have voiced concern about the proposed measure.

Certain provisions in the draft circular are concerning and overly complex, which will likely result in onerous and unnecessary burdens throughout the value chain, including on Vietnamese customers, said Jeff Paine, managing director of the Asia Internet Coalition, whose members include Airbnb, Yahoo and Line, the Japanese chat app operator.

Netflix told Nikkei Asia that talks with Vietnamese officials over the issue are ongoing.

Its for governments to decide the rules on tax -- and in every country in which we operate, Netflix respects those rules and complies with applicable laws, a spokesperson said. We have met with and continue to have ongoing conversations with the Vietnamese tax authority on these matters.

The other legal proposal focuses on e-commerce platforms, which would be forced to create a search function giving the government access to their records on third-party merchants. The idea is that authorities could search these records when investigating alleged sales of counterfeit goods and other infractions by online merchants.

The proposal has raised questions of enforcement and privacy. Analysts say it is hard to see how e-commerce players can be forced to develop a search tool for the government.

I share the concerns regarding the feasibility and sensibility of this requirement, especially when this rule applies to the cross-border platform, Baker McKenzie partner Tran Manh Hung told Nikkei Asia.

Amazon, Alibabas Lazada and Shopee, which is owned by Singapores Sea group, declined to comment.

While businesses may be wary, the two measures do have their supporters. Online shops have a huge counterfeiting problem, so it is fair for Vietnam to introduce solutions like the search tool to combat the problem, said Long Pham, manager at Access Ventures, which invests in tech companies.

He said it is also fair to tax companies that profit from Vietnams market of nearly 100 million people but book their profits in lower-tax jurisdictions.

Countries have long tried to reach a global consensus on taxing tech corporations that are untethered by borders, most notably through the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. After long delays, an agreement looks increasingly likely now that there is a new administration in the White House that is more supportive of the OECD talks. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Monday called for a global minimum corporate tax to discourage tax evasion.

The internet coalition recommended that Vietnam wait for an OECD plan before implementing its own tax collection regime.

However, it is likely that in the short term the Southeast Asian country will make an example out of one or two tech whales, said Matt Lourey, managing partner at Acclime, a tax and business advisory. He said that the companies will either comply with the new tax rules, encouraging smaller players to follow suit, or be punished, such as by having their websites blocked in the country.

Google and Facebook, among the most frequent targets of Vietnams tax wrangling, declined to comment.

Pham at Access Ventures said both the tax and search tool proposals would subject foreign companies to the same scrutiny already facing domestic rivals.

These new reinforcements of anti-counterfeiting [rules] would actually help local brands, just as the new tax laws are helping local companies to win over local consumer markets by leveling the playing field, he told Nikkei Asia.

This article was originally published by Nikkei Asia

Contact editor Yang Ge (geyang@caixin.com)

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Pham Minh Chinh, former head of the Party Central Organizing Commission, will serve as Vietnams new prime minister.

Chinh succeeds Nguyen Xuan Phuc as the PM, after the latter was appointed the new state president Monday morning.

Chinh is the first head of the Central Organizing Commission, an advisory body to the party with the main responsibility of nominating and approving the appointment of officials throughout the country, to be appointed prime minister and the ninth person to take the position since 1945.

"I, as the prime minister of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, swear absolute loyalty to my country, my people and the Constitution, while striving to complete the missions entrusted to me by the Party, the government and the people," Chinh said in his oath-taking ceremony.

He said he would effectively mobilize all resources to develop the country, continue the pandemic fight while boosting strategic infrastructure development and focusing on the digital economy.

The government would create policies and frameworks to develop the Vietnamese culture and people, making them important factors in socio-economic development, while devising methods to improve the country's medical and education system, he added.

Chinh, 63, who has a doctorate degree in law, has been an associate law professor and is a qualified construction engineer. He has been a member of the Politburo, the Central Party Committee, and the National Assembly.

In 2010, he was appointed Deputy Minister of Public Security, and a year later, Party chief of the northern Quang Ninh Province.

In 2015, he became the deputy head of the Central Organizing Commission, and its head in 2016.

Vietnam has a "four pillar" leadership structure: the Party general secretary, the state president, the prime minister and the chairperson of the National Assembly.

Nguyen Phu Trong continues in his position as Party general secretary, and former Minister of Finance and Deputy PM Vuong Dinh Hue is the National Assembly chairman.
Photo credit: Catherine Falls Commercial - Getty Images

UPDATE 7 APRIL: People under the age of 30 will now be offered an alternative coronavirus vaccine formula to the AstraZeneca jab (if t, as further evidence suggests it may be linked to rare blood clots forming.

The UK's vaccine advisory body said a review by the drugs regulator MHRA recently discovered that by the end of March, 79 people who had received the AstraZeneca shot later suffered from rare blood clots. Sadly, nineteen of those cases proved fatal.

However, the regulation body added that there is still a lack of firm proof that the AstraZeneca jab had caused the clots, only that the link was getting "firmer", according to a report from the BBC. It appears that the pause on AstraZeneca within certain age groups is temporary and precautionary, while further investigations are being carried out.

Those who have already had their first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine are still being advised to get their second dose.

We reported back on the 16th of March that several EU countries, such as France, Germany, Spain and Italy, had suspended use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which protects against COVID-19, after a small number of recipients went on to develop blood clots shortly afterwards.

Austria also stopped certain batches of the drug being dispensed and in Belgium, Ukraine, Poland and the Czech Republic, the rollout of Oxford-AstraZeneca is continuing on as normal.

According to a former BBC report published some three weeks ago, Emer Cooke, Head of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), said the body is standing by its decision to approve the vaccine for use in the first place, saying it remains "firmly convinced" that the benefits outweigh any possible side effects.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has urged all countries not to halt vaccinations and said that WHO vaccine safety experts will meet to review the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab this week and the results of the investigation will be released on Thursday.

Story continues

Photo credit: MICROGEN IMAGES/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY - Getty Images

According to the EMA, the number of blood clots said to be reported in vaccinated people is no different than that seen in the general population.

"We know that many thousands of people develop blood clots in the EU so what we want is to establish whether these events are [in relation to] the vaccine or by other causes," said Cooke. "While the investigation is ongoing, currently, we are still firmly convinced that the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine in preventing Covid-19, with its associated risks of hospitalisation and death, outweigh the risks."

Another form of COVID-19 vaccine, Moderna, has also seen recipients raise concerns over some side effects, one of which is a symptom that may easily be confused with breast cancer. According to data from initial clinical trials, swollen lymph nodes were found to be present in around 11% of people who received the Moderna vaccine after their first dose and 16% after their second dose in the trials.

The Moderna vaccine is not yet available in the UK - currently only the Pfizer/BioNTech and the Oxford/AstraZeneca are in use here  but it is said to be rolling out in spring, so could come any time in the next few weeks. Experts have reassured that swollen lymph nodes as a result are likely nothing to worry about, but if they're causing you concern, book in for a chat with your GP.

In general, according to the NHS website, side effects of receiving any COVID-19 vaccine include:

A sore arm where the needle went in

Feeling tired

A headache

Feeling achy

Feeling or being sick

It advises taking paracetamol if needed, and if symptoms worsen, calling 111.

Cosmopolitan UK's current issue is out now and you can SUBSCRIBE HERE.

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Move over 666 5th Avenue, there's a new skyscraper poised to thrust its way onto the Manhattan skyline  none other than the proposed Penn 15 building. Part of a broader 20-million square foot plan to improve Manhattan's Midtown neighborhood and the area around the Penn Station transportation hub, Penn 15 is one of ten large scale buildings proposed to be erected by 2038 and is set to stand at roughly the same height as the Empire State Building, The Guardian reported.

Large enough to please (almost) any Manhattan business owner, the skyscraper would stand at 1,200 feet tall, featuring 57 floors worth of office space and 27 (thankfully) landscaped terraces, designating itself as a super-tall tower that will become the new standard for office design, according to the property's developer Vornado Realty Trust. With a unique side core design to allow for flexible office configurations and terraces on every fourth floor to maximize access to light and air," Penn 15 and the broader Empire State Complex plan has seemingly captivated state Governor Andrew Cuomo, who some have accused of attempting to railroad the state into allowing the development, the outlet noted.

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However, not everyone wants more Penn 15. Bill Neidhardt the Press secretary to NYC Mayor, Bill de Blasio, took to Twitter to decry the Governer's enthusiasm for the project. This is a land grab from Andrew Cuomo, plain and simple, Neidhardt wrote. The whole scheme relies on overriding city rules and Cuomo has refused to answer how he will finance this endeavor.
The owners of Loose Leaf Boba Company in New Haven say their new boba shop is unlike any other in the area.

With natural ingredients like real fruit, a selection of local dairy and vegan milks and ceremonial-grade organic matcha starring in its drinks, Loose Leaf is completely different, said co-owner William Bok, who recently opened the beverage shop in the Shops at Yale with his sister and business partner, Lisa Satavu.

Theyre shying away from preparations using artificial fruit powders and instant tea and coffee, instead brewing fresh batches of Vietnamese coffee and loose-leaf tea, crafting house-made syrups and choosing locally-sourced milks from Litchfields Arethusa Farm, as well as plant-based milk options from Califia Farms Plant Milks and Oatly.

You taste the difference with every sip you take, Bok said.

Bok and Satavu debuted the boba shop March 30, featuring hot and cold beverages (with or without the namesake chewy pearls of tapioca starch) and its been busy ever since, Bok said Wednesday. The siblings have also opened several Pokemoto poke restaurants in the state, and previously owned several locations of FroyoWorld frozen yogurt shops.

The Loose Leaf brand  with the motto Keepin It Real nodding to its fresh ingredients  originally began in Southern California, and Bok and Satavu thought the West Coast brand would be a good fit in the Elm City. Downtown New Haven is a cultural hub for innovative and creative ideas, and I couldnt imagine a better location to open Loose Leaf, Satavu said in a statement.

Loose Leaf offers hot and iced teas, milk teas, 50/50 drinks (half Vietnamese coffee and half milk tea) and other unique beverages, like a blended matcha and avocado smoothie with condensed milk. Drinks are all made to order, and can be customized with choice of milk, sweetness level and toppings.

Early best-sellers include a strawberry matcha latte, Bok said, layered with with organic matcha, strawberry compote and choice of milk, and a bananas foster milk, with caramelized Jamaican rum, coconut milk, cold-pressed pandan, cinnamon and brown sugar. Drinks are priced at about $5 to $6.50.

Bok said hes looking forward to seasonal drinks that will debut over the next few months, with flavors like summer melon, peach, watermelon and pumpkin pie.

We are delighted to support the expansion of local, women-owned businesses in New Haven, said Lauren Zucker, Yale Universitys associate vice president for New Haven Affairs and University Properties. Yale Universitys community investment program supports independently-owned businesses, bringing jobs to New Haven residents and expanding the citys tax base.

Next month, the siblings will open another Pokemoto in Wallingford at 1094 N. Colony Rd, with a Loose Leaf location within the store. They complement each other, Bok said.

Loose Leaf Boba Company, at 46 High Street in New Haven, is open Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. bobacompany.com.
Neurosurgery's history of cutting diseases out of the brain is morphing into a future in which implanting technology into the brain may help restore function, movement, cognition and memory after patients suffer strokes, spinal cord injuries and other neurological disorders. Rice University and Houston Methodist have forged a partnership to launch the Center for Translational Neural Prosthetics and Interfaces, a collaboration that brings together scientists, clinicians, engineers and surgeons to solve clinical problems with neurorobotics.

This will be an accelerator for discovery. This center will be a human laboratory where all of us -- neurosurgeons, neuroengineers, neurobiologists -- can work together to solve biomedical problems in the brain and spinal cord. And it's a collaboration that can finally offer some hope and options for the millions of people worldwide who suffer from brain diseases and injuries." Dr. Gavin Britz, Chair of the Houston Methodist Department of Neurosurgery, Center Co-Director

Houston Methodist neurosurgeons, seven engineers from the Rice Neuroengineering Initiative and additional physicians and faculty from both institutions form the center's core team. The center also plans to hire three additional engineers who will have joint appointments at Houston Methodist and Rice. Key focus areas include spinal cord injury, memory and epilepsy studies, and cortical motor/sensation conditions.

"The Rice Neuroengineering Initiative was formed with this type of partnership in mind," said center co-director Behnaam Aazhang, Rice's J.S. Abercrombie Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, who also directs the neuroengineering initiative, which launched in 2019 to bring together the brightest minds in neuroscience, engineering and related fields to improve lives by restoring and extending the capabilities of the human brain. "Several core members, myself included, have existing collaborations with our colleagues at Houston Methodist in the area of neural prosthetics. The creation of the Center for Translational Neural Prosthetics and Interfaces is an exciting development toward achieving our common goals."

The physical space for the center's operation includes more than 25,000 square feet of Rice Neuroengineering Initiative laboratories and experimental spaces in the university's BioScience Research Collaborative, as well as an extensive build-out underway at Houston Methodist's West Pavilion location that's expected to be completed late this year. The Houston Methodist facility will include operating rooms and a human laboratory where ongoing patient/volunteer diagnosis and assessment, device fabrication and testing, and education and training opportunities are planned.

"This partnership is a perfect blend of talent," said Rice's Marcia O'Malley, a core member of both the new center and university initiative and the Thomas Michael Panos Family Professor in Mechanical Engineering. "We will be able to design studies to test the efficacy of inventions and therapies and rely on patients and volunteers who want to help us test our ideas. The possibilities are limitless."

Houston Methodist neurobiologist Philip Horner describes the lab as "a merging of wetware with hardware," where robotics, computers, electronic arrays and other technology -- the hardware -- is incorporated into the human brain or spinal cord -- the wetware. The centerpiece of this working laboratory is a zero-gravity harness connected to a walking track, with cameras and sensors to record feedback, brain activity and other data.

While the Houston Methodist space is being built, collaborations already are underway between the two institutions, which sit across Main Street from one another in the Texas Medical Center. Among them are the following:
LUCA Science (Tokyo, Japan), a biotechnology company pioneering a novel class of mitochondrial therapeutics has announced the expansion of its international operations, with the establishment of a new wholly-owned subsidiary company in the United Kingdom.

LUCA Science UK will focus on research collaborations with the University of Oxford using LUCA Science's proprietary Mitochondria therapy in advancing treatment of intra-uterine growth restriction (IUGR) for mothers and babies. LUCA Science's CEO, Dr Rick Tsai, said "We are very fortunate to be working with international experts: Professor Manu Vatish, academic obstetrician, and Professor Joanna Poulton, specialist in mitochondrial genetics. Establishing a subsidiary in the UK will allow us to tap into top local talent to build a research team collaborating with the University of Oxford to expand LUCA Science's existing portfolio."

LUCA Science UK will be based in Oxford. Its new Managing Director, Dr. Yosuke Matsumiya, who is also an academic obstetrician said "It is a privilege to be applying LUCA's proprietary technology with a team of world-class researchers to develop treatment for unmet therapeutic needs in obstetrics such as IUGR"

About the Joint Research with University of Oxford

IUGR affects over 10 million babies worldwide/year with 200,000 deaths related to IUGR and survivors (often delivered prematurely) face not only the sequelae of preterm birth but also increased long-term risks of disease (metabolic cardiac). The largest global causes of IUGR are malnutrition and/or failure of the placenta to effectively transfer nutrition to the baby.

Currently, the only treatment for IUGR is delivery irrespective of gestation. Increasing placental cellular bioenergetics and maintaining its function is a logical alternative solution. This collaboration was formed in order to realise this solution and seeks to address this by specifically delivering therapeutics to the placenta, combining unique technology developed at LUCA Science in Japan with extensive placental research experience at the University of Oxford.

About LUCA Science

LUCA Science is a pioneer in developing a new class of mitochondrial therapy to restore cellular bioenergetics in dysfunctional tissues. Mitochondria are the power plants in our cells that produce energy for our bodies. LUCA Science has developed a novel method to isolate proprietary functional mitochondria which can then be stored and delivered as a biopharmaceutical agent.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005418/en/

Contacts:

Tomoaki Shinohara

+81-3-6231-0062

info@luca-science.com
[April 07, 2021] Iper La grande i Delivers a New Consumer Experience Thanks to Diebold Nixdorf

NORTH CANTON, Ohio, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Iper La grande i, one of the most important players in the Italian mass retailing sector, has selected Diebold Nixdorf (NYSE: DBD) for a complete renewal of the front- and back-end of its hypermarkets and restaurants with the aim of improving consumer experiences and in-store efficiency while migrating to new technological standards. Part of the Finiper Group, Iper La grande i was founded in 1974 and has 22 hypermarkets in four regions. The retailer's areas of fresh produce and in-house production are enhanced, and they provide new spaces dedicated to catering and the expansion of the non-food items. Thanks to Diebold Nixdorf's Storevolution Advisory Services, it was possible to rethink the ideal layout for each store, the customer flow and the best mix of touchpoints for new and improved experiences for consumers and store staff. Iper La grande i will use the latest Diebold Nixdorf technology, including self-checkout and convertible checkout systems equipped with DN VynamicTMsoftware and payment solutions. Diebold Nixdorf's new solutions provide an open retail and modular approach, as the software architecture adapts to the hypermarket format. This strategy reduces IT complexity and total cost of ownership and is complemented by DN AllConnect ServicesSM to ensure easy maintenance and optimal availability.



End-to-end cash management solutions create a new experience for consumers when paying cash. Staff is prevented from coming into contact with the money, providing greater security, reduced risk of theft and total accounting transparency in the store. This also allows the hypermarket to take advantage of early credit functionality. Deris Gil Martinez, chief information officer, Iper La grande i said, "The strategic partnership with Diebold Nixdorf allows us to offer our customers an incredibly advanced, secure and convenient shopping experience, thanks to the user-friendly interface. We are proud to have adopted a truly open retail solution calibrated to our needs: a technological evolution ready to improve our entire store network."

Ben Gale, regional vice president and managing director, EMEA Retail Sales Management, at Diebold Nixdorf said, "We are thrilled to be working with Iper La grande i to create new consumer journeys within their stores. Thanks to our Advisory Services, it was easy for us to identify together the right technologies to be included in the different stores to provide an optimal experience for the consumer." About Iper La grande i

Iper La grande i represents one of the most important realities in the national panorama of large-scale retail trade, among the few wholly Italian-owned. With 22 stores in 4 regions, it is part of the Finiper Group, founded in 1974 by the entrepreneur Marco Brunelli. The mission of the Finiper Group is to make quality accessible to all. Wide assortment, quality, sustainability, convenience and Italianness are the inspiring principles that guide the choices of Iper La

grande i. About Diebold Nixdorf

Diebold Nixdorf, Incorporated (NYSE: DBD) is a world leader in enabling connected commerce. We automate, digitize and transform the way people bank and shop. As a partner to the majority of the world's top 100 financial institutions and top 25 global retailers, our integrated solutions connect digital and physical channels conveniently, securely and efficiently for millions of consumers each day. The company has a presence in more than 100 countries with approximately 22,000 employees worldwide. Visit www.DieboldNixdorf.com for more information. Twitter: @DieboldNixdorf

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/diebold

Facebook: www.facebook.com/DieboldNixdorf

YouTube: www.youtube.com/dieboldnixdorf View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/iper-la-grande-i-delivers-a-new-consumer-experience-thanks-to-diebold-nixdorf-301263887.html SOURCE Diebold Nixdorf, Incorporated

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The Chief Executive Officer of leading steel manufacturing company in West Africa B5 Plus Limited, Mukesh Thakwani has been honoured at this years edition of the Business Executive Excellence Awards.



The awards, organised by the Business Executive, a Pan West African media, communications and events management company, was to recognise businesses and Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) who have excelled in their business fields.



Mr. Thakwani has bestowed the honour for his exceptional and excellent contributions to the business sector in the country.



About Mukesh Thakwani



He stood against all odds to build the leading steel company- B5 Plus Limited in Ghana, which most industry watchers say is one of the fastest-growing steel companies in West Africa.



Today, Mr. Mukesh V. Thakwani is the Chief Executive Officer of B5 Plus Steel Industry, located in Tema in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana. He started the business in a small office with small staff.



Founded in 2002, he aims at providing highly customer-centric product with excellent relationship building skills to customers.



The company succeeded because he served the needs of the indigenous building and construction industry, plethora of distributors and retailers, as well as business organizations/people not catered for by other steel companies in Ghana and beyond.



From a very humble beginning, B5 Plus Ltd has grown by leaps and bounds and become one of the premier steel industries in the West African region.



Currently, B5 Plus Ltd with several subsidiaries including DPS International has staff strength of over 1,200.



As an avid and astute businessman, Mr. Mukesh V. Thakwani has a rich experience of 25 years in steel industry in the African business landscape. A bead roller is a tool that makes rigid lines in sheet metal to make surfaces more rugged and durable.



He is the proud recipient of the European Award for Quality and Excellent Services award, 2013, and was recently crowned the West African Personality of the Year 2015 by the Business Executive Magazine, a leading international magazine in West Africa.



His personal journey has taken him from India to West African countries like Liberia, Togo, and Benin since 1988, before settling down in Ghana to highly-successful, and multiples award-winning entrepreneur. That journey has helped him to acquire an incredible business expertise.



The soft-spoken entrepreneurs career with B5 Plus Ltd as well as other endeavours such as his role the Managing Director of Young Industries Limited, Tema, Ghana; Young Industries Limited, a Steel Manufacturing and a Trading Company; the Managing Director of F.G. Developers Limited, Tema, Ghana; F.G. Developers Limited, a Warehousing and Real Estate Development Company in Ghana; and the Managing Director of Steel Mali S.A., Bamako, Mali, has been characterised by a desire to encouraging entrepreneurial spirit in the West African sub-region.



Mr. Thakwani is referred to by his plethora of admirers and colleague captains of industry as the Doyen of West Africas Steel Industry.



AWARDS



Mr. Thakwanis sterling leadership and entrepreneurial skills has won him and his company a number of laurels. Among his awards are:



Pillars of Modern Ghana Awards Presented to B5Plus Limited, Category: TNG, Steel Fabrication Company in Ghana for the year 2014



The Biz 2014  Mr Mukesh V Thakwani in recognition of Excellence in Business Management, with all its rights and privileges given in the city of Abu Dubai, UAE, 2014



AGI Ghana Industry Awards  Certificate was presented to B5Plus Limited for being best company in the metals, buildings & construction sector in the 3rd AGI Ghana Industry, 2014



Head of state awards Scheme certificate of Appreciation presented to B5 Plus for sponsoring the 3rd Annual Award Gala & HoSA Ghana Business Award 2015 held at the banquet hall, State House, Accra.



Global Trade Leaders Club  awarded to B5 Plus Limited with International Europe Award for Quality in recognition of its commitment to the quality and excellence of its services, 2013.



Ghana Revenue Authority  awarded for the most improved Taxpayer, Custom Division 2013



MISE Foundation  Certificate of Appreciation presented to B5 Plus Limited in recognition for their unreserved commitment for supporting Mathematical sciences Education in Ghana through the work of MISE Foundation.



Biz 2014  WORLD Leader Business Person Awarded to Mr Mukesh V Thakwani for being successful leader who works in an innovative Knowledgeable and systematic manner, given in the city of Abu Dhabi, UAE on September 28th 2014.



The Socrates Committee Oxford,UK  2014  B5 Plus Limited has been recognized as one of the best enterprises in the field of steel Industry. Ghana.



The recipient of the European Award for Quality and Excellent Services award, 2013; and Recently crowned the West African Personality of the Year 2015 by the Business Executive Magazine, a leading international magazine in West Africa.

Source: Peacefmonline.com









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MOSCOW  A lawyer for imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who has complained of serious back and leg pain in custody, said Wednesday that doctors have found him to be suffering from two spinal hernias.

Vadim Kobzev told the Interfax news agency that Navalny also has a spinal protrusion and is beginning to lose feeling in his hands.

Navalny went on a hunger strike last week to protest what he called poor medical care in a Russian prison. On Tuesday, the leader of the Navalny-backed Alliance of Doctors union was detained by police after trying to get into the prison to talk to doctors.

Navalny, 44, is Russian President Vladimir Putins fiercest domestic opponent. He was arrested in January upon returning to Moscow from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have rejected the accusation. Still, labs in Germany and elsewhere in Europe confirmed that Navalny was poisoned with the Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent.

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A Russian court ordered Navalny in February to serve 2 1/2 years in prison for violating the terms of his probation, including when he was convalescing in Germany, from a 2014 embezzlement conviction. Navalny has rejected the conviction as fabricated, and the European ourt of Human Rights found it arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable.

Navalny said in an Instagram post Wednesday that prison authorities have tried to undermine his hunger strike by allowing aromatic chicken to be cooked in his units kitchen, a departure from regulations, and by placing sweets in his clothes pockets.

Do you know what turned out to be most important in the first stage of the prison hunger strike? Check your pockets, he wrote..

Navalnys imprisonment has brought wide criticism from the West. White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Wednesday: We urge Russian authorities to take all necessary actions to ensure his safety and health, adding that we consider Mr. Navalnys imprisonment on trumped-up charges to be politically motivated and a gross injustice, and we stand with like-minded allies and partners in calling for his immediate release.

Authorities transferred Navalny last month from a Moscow jail to the IK-2 penal colony in the Vladimir region, 85 kilometers (53 miles) east of the Russian capital. The facility in the town of Pokrov stands out among Russian penitentiaries for its especially strict inmate routines, which include standing at attention for hours.

Within weeks of being imprisoned, Navalny said he developed severe back and leg pains and was effectively deprived of sleep because a guard checks on him hourly at night. He went on a hunger strike on March 31, demanding access to proper medication and a visit from his doctor.

Russias state penitentiary service has said that Navalny is receiving all the medical help he needs.

Another Navalny lawyer, Olga Mikhailova, said a neurologist consulted by Navalnys organization said the treatment prescribed in the prison was ineffective.

Navalny said Monday that three of the 15 people he is housed with have been diagnosed with tuberculosis, a contagious disease that spreads through the air. He said he had a strong cough and a fever with a temperature of 38.1 degrees Celsius (100.6 F).

On Monday, the state penitentiary service said Navalny had been the prisons sanitary unit after a checkup found him having signs of a respiratory illness, including a high fever.

Mikhailova said Wednesday that Navalnys fever had lowered, but he is still coughing and is weak from the hunger strike.
ATLANTA, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Mammoth Holdings, LLC ("Mammoth"), an Atlanta-based conveyor car wash operator, has acquired Ollie's Car Wash ("Ollie's"), a three-unit express conveyor car wash operator in Louisiana. Ollie's founders, Brady and Melissa Walton, each chose to invest a significant amount of their proceeds into Mammoth's equity.

Gary Dennis, Mammoth's co-founder and CEO, explained, "Ollie's expands our presence along the I-10 corridor in Louisiana into the Baton Rouge market." He added, "We are pleased to have new, high quality partners who will help us achieve our expansion goals."

Brady Walton, Ollie's co-founder, stated, "We have worked with a lot of people in the car wash business, and the Mammoth team stands apart from the pack in terms of operations and culture." Walton added, "We couldn't be more excited to be joining the team."

Mammoth is the first car wash acquisition platform formed by industry-insiders and is the 8th largest conveyor car wash operator in the United States according to Commercial Plus's Top 100 list. Mammoth is customer-focused operationally and operator-focused in its approach to acquisitions and seeks to be the partner-of-choice for car wash operators who desire liquidity, growth capital, and a tax-deferred equity investment opportunity. Mammoth's multi-brand portfolio includes Marc-1, Wash Me Fast, Swifty, Ultra, Finish Line, Wiggy Wash, Shine On, PitStop, Lulu's, and now Ollie's, among others. Mammoth has significant growth capital at its disposal and is actively seeking acquisitions and development opportunities.

In October 2018, Mammoth partnered with Red Dog Equity LLC, an Atlanta-based private equity firm, which, through its partnership with Tom Pritzker's family business interests (advised by The Pritzker Organization), provides the equity for Mammoth's corporate development initiatives. Monroe Capital provides Mammoth's debt financing.

About Mammoth Holdings

Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Mammoth Holdings operates 56 conveyor car washes under the Marc-1, QuickWash Express, Ultra, Wash Me Fast, Wiggy Wash, Pals, Finish Line, Shine On, Lulu's, Ollie's, PitStop, and Swifty brands in Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky, Illinois, Utah, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, Indiana, and Tennessee. Mammoth was founded by Gary Dennis and Chip Hackett in 2002. To learn more, please visit one of our locations or see us online at: www.mammothholdings.com.

About Ollie's

Ollie's operates three express conveyor car washes in Addis, Denham Springs, and Walker, Louisiana. Ollie's was founded by Brady and Melissa Walton in 2015. To learn more, please visit an Ollie's location or see us online at https://ollies-car-wash-car-wash.business.site/.

About Red Dog Equity LLC

Red Dog Equity LLC is a private equity firm that invests in lower middle-market companies poised for strong growth in partnership with driven, entrepreneurial business leaders ("Red Dogs"). To learn more, please visit: www.reddogequity.com.

About The Pritzker Organization

The Pritzker Organization is the merchant bank for the business interests of the Tom Pritzker family. Additional information can be found at www.pritzkerorg.com.

SOURCE Mammoth Holdings
[April 07, 2021] Infobip Rated Tier One SMS Firewall Vendor in Mobile Operator Survey by ROCCO Research

LONDON and VODNJAN, Croatia, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading global engagement solutions and telco services provider Infobip announced today it has been rated Tier One SMS firewall vendor in the annual survey of mobile operators worldwide conducted by ROCCO Research. In a survey of 215 mobile network operators from 109 countries, Infobip placed in the top two overall rating of providers with a score of 4.38 out of a possible 5 and topped the ratings in performance and leadership categories. This marks Infobip's fourth consecutive appearance in the top tier of SMS firewall vendors worldwide, further solidifying its reputation as a reliable and high-performing provider of SMS traffic filtering and monetization solutions. ROCCO Research methodology includes impartial and transparent surveys aimed at mobile operators, asking them about the performance of vendors from various telco services, and producing detailed reports with ratings in various technical and commercial categories. In the past, Infobip hs consistently topped the ratings for A2P SMS services provider in both mobile operator and enterprise surveys also conducted by ROCCO Research.



"We're absolutely delighted with the findings of this year's SMS firewall vendor survey by ROCCO. Our mobile operator partners have recognized the efforts we put into building a comprehensive ecosystem that combines cutting edge development of filtering solutions with a proactive approach to traffic monetization. We're also pleased that the survey highlighted further growth and innovation areas that complement our vision for the future," said Infobip founder and CEO Silvio Kutic. Founder and chairman of ROCCO Group, Jason Bryan concludes: "Once again we find another reason to celebrate the performance and leadership of Infobip, a company greatly admired by the Mobile Operator community. Featuring again in ROCCO's fourth annual SMS Firewall Vendor Benchmarking study, Infobip has grown to become a leader in SMS Firewall on several key KPIs based on the feedback of MNOs globally."

About Infobip Infobip is a global cloud communications platform that enables businesses to build connected experiences across all stages of the customer journey. Accessed through a single platform, Infobip's omnichannel engagement, identity, user authentication and contact center solutions help businesses and partners overcome the complexity of consumer communications to grow business and increase loyalty. With over a decade of industry experience, Infobip has expanded to 65+ offices across six continents. It offers natively built technology with the capacity to reach over seven billion mobile devices and 'things' in 190+ countries connected directly to over 650 telecom networks. Infobip was established in 2006 and is led by its co-founders, CEO Silvio Kutic, Roberto Kutic and Izabel Jelenic. Recent award wins include: Best A2P SMS provider for the fourth year running by mobile operators and enterprises in ROCCO's annual Messaging Vendor Benchmarking Report

Best CPaaS Provider of the Year, Best RCS Provider of the Year, and Mover & Shaker in Telco Innovation at the 2021 Juniper Digital Awards View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/infobip-rated-tier-one-sms-firewall-vendor-in-mobile-operator-survey-by-rocco-research-301264069.html SOURCE Infobip

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Hector Molina replaced my AC unit.

He was brought here 20 years ago by his parents when he was a young teenager. He attended middle school and high school here. Now 35, Molina has a wife, three kids and an air conditioning and heating company. Hes the leader of the mens group at our church and the lead drummer in the church worship band.

In Texas, we understand the important role immigrants play as critical partners in our economy, our schools and in our cultural and civic life.

We also understand the importance of a secure border, because we share one with Mexico that is 1,254 miles long. That border ends just a few miles from Mission, the hometown Hector and I share.

Because we share the same experiences, we have such a hard time understanding why so many elected officials in Washington would rather exploit immigration issues for short-term political gain than actually work to solve the problems.

Its frustrating to me, but imagine how Hector Molina and the millions of Dreamers who share his situation must feel.

With yet another surge at the border and the subject of immigration reform front and center, lawmakers have a window of opportunity. Instead of exploiting division, they can come together on the broad common ground shared by the vast majority of Americans who believe that strengthening our immigration system would also strengthen our country.

It starts with Dreamers like the guy who fixed my AC.

In Texas, immigrants account for 17 percent of the population. Among these, more than 200,000 are covered by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which postpones deportations and issues work permits for undocumented immigrants who were brought here as children.

Despite wide bipartisan support for providing legal status to Dreamers, their future remains uncertain. DACA could be overturned by the courts at any time, which would cause them to be ineligible to work in the United States and at risk for deportation from the only country most of them have ever known as home.

Texas Dreamers add $6 billion to the states economy. Across the country, 96 percent of DACA recipients are either working or going to school, which equates to nearly 400,000 being employed, contributing $10.8 billion in federal taxes.

But the contributions run deeper than mere numbers, as our experience dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic attests.

One in five essential workers is an immigrant. Immigrants account for almost 30 percent of U.S. physicians. Its estimated that over 43,000 work in health care and social assistance, over 21,000 in transportation and warehousing, almost 33,000 in retail (including supermarkets and pharmacies), and nearly 15,000 in manufacturing.

Despite the critical contributions of these immigrants, our lawmakers have been unable to make progress. Because Texas is so close to this issue, we look to our members of Congress for solutions.

Sen. John Cornyn has been a leading voice in search of a solution over several years. With a new president and a new Congress sending signals that they are ready to confront the issue, he is again leading a new effort aimed at breaking the legislative logjam.

These young men and women deserve certainty to be able to plan their future, Cornyn said recently. The only way to do that is through legislation.

On a bipartisan basis, Rep. Henry Cuellar has worked alongside Cornyn to make progress on the issue.

Weve had three decades of legislative inaction and a series of executive and judicial actions that provided temporary relief but no long-term answer. We have a crisis at the border. Its time for Congress to act.

Molina, who has been here for two of those decades contributing to his church, his community, and our states economy, deserves a lasting solution. So does every other American.

Martinez is coalitions director of The LIBRE Initiative-Texas.
Dozens of rare blood clots have been reported amid the tens of millions of AstraZeneca shots that have been administered globally. Data from the European Medicines Agency suggested the risk of blood clots following the vaccine was potentially as high as one in 100,000. Most of the documented cases globally were in people under the age of 55. Loading A top official at the EMA said on Tuesday there was a causal link between AstraZenecas vaccine and the rare blood clotting syndrome, though the nature of the connection was unclear. It is becoming more and more difficult to affirm that there isnt a cause-and-effect relationship between AstraZeneca vaccines and the very rare cases of blood clots associated with a low level of platelets, Marco Cavaleri, head of health threats and vaccine strategy at the EMA told Romes II Messaggero newspaper. But he said the benefits of taking that vaccine still outweighed the risks. A spokesperson for the EMA said its evaluation had not yet reached a conclusion and the review was ongoing. The EMAs review is expected to be finalised by Friday.

Britain is reportedly considering restricting the vaccine in younger people. France, Germany, Sweden and Canada are among several countries that have already done so. Denmark and Norway have completely paused their AstraZeneca rollouts and health authorities across several European countries reported reluctance among citizens to get the shot. The University of Oxford also paused its clinical trial of the vaccine in children and teenagers while it awaits more data on the blood clotting issue. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video Federal Department of Health secretary Professor Brendan Murphy said on Wednesday the Therapeutic Goods Administration and Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) had advised the government to continue its AstraZeneca rollout considering the benefits of the vaccine outweighed its potential risks.

Professor Murphy said it was difficult to draw conclusions based on one case of blood clotting potentially linked to AstraZeneca in Australia. He added that Australian advisory groups continue to work closely with counterparts in the UK and Europe where there is more data about AstraZeneca. Thats whats going to give us the true picture of whether this is a real problem and whether it has any significance, Professor Murphy said. We are taking this matter very seriously at the moment. We are continually reviewing the situation. Associate Professor James Wood, UNSW epidemiologist and a member of ATAGI said: I think at this point experts believe the link is real and its more about narrowing down who is at risk, what the level of risk is and what the best clinical advice is around advising patients to monitor for symptoms of concern following immunisation. A Victorian man has been hospitalised with blood clots after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine in March. Credit:Eddie Jim Following the emergence of the Melbourne case, electronic emergency triage records are being analysed across Victoria with experts searching for keywords related to the COVID-19 vaccine and blood clots.

Professor Buttery said in some cases patient admission data may be examined, too. Emergency department records are good in that they are very up to date, he said. But as with all these things, its more complex. Usually, we only get one diagnosis from the emergency department, whereas if we have access to the admissions data we get all the diagnoses the patients had, which is going to be much more accurate in terms of identifying a rare condition like this. A Victorian Department of Health spokesman said the state had a well-established vaccine safety service known as the Surveillance of Adverse Events Following Vaccination. This service is responsible for detecting, reviewing and tracking adverse events. This system includes reviewing regular data from hospitals and other clinical settings to establish background rates for adverse events as well as real-time surveillance mechanisms which permit rapid clinical response, he said.

Vaccine safety has always been paramount in Victoria. ATAGI has urged anyone receiving the AstraZeneca shot to be on alert for severe, persistent headaches that do not settle with paracetamol or other painkillers. Reports of overseas cases indicate symptom onset was between four and 20 days after vaccination and have generally been severe, with patients requiring hospitalisation. Loading

The threshold for reporting an adverse event is low. Doctors dont need to suspect the vaccine caused the symptoms to report it and an expert panel reviews all serious adverse events. The TGA is ultimately responsible for detecting and responding to any vaccine safety concerns and maintains an adverse events database. NSW Health confirmed it is also searching through its hospital records, but to date there have been no reported cases of the disorder. A spokesperson for AstraZeneca said patient safety remained their highest priority and the company was working with the TGA and ATAGI as they conducted their assessment of the blood clot case. With Rachel Clun
Five people remain in custody this morning after they were arrested by gardai investigating the attempted murder of convicted criminal Michael Brennan last May.

The five, including four men and a woman, were arrested during an operation in the area yesterday morning and are still being quizzed at various Garda stations throughout the DMR North Division.

Todays arrests are the first in the case to date, gardai said. The investigation is ongoing.

Brennan, who is in his 30s, was targeted in a downstairs room of the house at Cromcastle Drive, Kilmore, by a lone gunman in the incident on Wednesday, May 20.

Following the shooting, a source said: "Brennan is extremely well known to gardai but he is not suspected of being involved in the wider gangland disputes in that locality."

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Brennan was jailed for 10 years in March 2010 for attempting to murder another man over a 200 drug debt.

He was convicted by a jury in 2009 of the attempted murder of James Egan and of possession of a sawn-off shotgun.

The jury heard that he was a teenager when he went to Mr Egan's home and carried out the shooting on April 29, 2006.

He was also sentenced to eight years for the possession of a firearm.

The sentences were concurrent and backdated to 2007, meaning he served nearly ten years in total before his release in 2016.

Brennan was rushed to Beaumont Hospital by ambulance for non-life threatening injuries and has since recovered.

A garda spokesman said those arrested yesterday - two men aged in their 30s, one in his 40s and one in his 20s and a woman in her 30s - are currently detained under the provisions of Section 50 of the Criminal Justice Act, 2007 and can be held for up to seven days.
While you can spend thousands upon thousands of dollars to increase brand awareness, your most valuable marketing asset is right in front of you. Employees are the best, but possibly the most overlooked, brand ambassadors for a company.

An engaged staff performs better and is more likely to be a strong advocate for the credit union. Here are some of the ways to build your brand from the inside out.

Everyone has a voice

Most of your employees have opinions and want to be heard. Create focus groups and launch surveys to harvest those ideas and thoughts. These channels will not only give employees a platform, but the credit union could also gain valuable insight through these conversations. You could start with a brand focus group to gauge initial feelings toward the credit unions current brand and use that feedback as a baseline when you start building brand advocates within your staff.

Transparency and Communication

An open line of communication is key to gaining employees confidence. Transparency will help increase the trust level with the staff. When employees feel empowered and engaged in their jobs, they become natural brand advocates. Their excitement for their company will be evident into the way they interact with members. Marketing can improve these communication lines with an internal newsletter and a robust intranet for all to share information from the top levels on down.

Appreciation

Employees are your greatest brand assets so a little recognition can make a big difference. When credit union leadership and managers show gratitude through celebration, employee engagement increases. A more engaged employee will positively tout the financial institutions brand. Remember, appreciation can come in many ways. Some employees are motivated by money, others want fun outings and some want a day off. Even in todays environment, a couple of hours off work to play trivia and bingo Zoom games for small prizes and gift cards can go a long way. So be generous in your appreciation because a valued employee will add value to the credit unions brand.

Building relationships

Credit unions need to focus on building relationship with not only their members but also their employees. Credit union employees are the reflection of their working environment and the personification of your brand. Creating an engaged culture through strong internal relationships is key to creating brand advocates. Think of marketing to employees like your market to your members by promoting the credit union internally.

Your credit union employees are the best marketing weapons in your arsenal. Whether they are cross selling your products well or reinforcing that good feeling members get from your brand, these are the people that will carry through the promises of your brand. It will be time well invested for the credit unions future.
A state appeals court has rejected a joint request from prosecutors and defense attorneys for a man convicted of killing a police officer to hold a hearing on his jury selection process, but the request drew criticism from the New Orleans Police Department.

The request sought a hearing on whether prosecutors discriminated against Black people when they picked jurors for the trial of Travis Boys, who shot and killed officer Daryle Holloway while being taken to jail in 2015.

Travis Boys convicted of first-degree murder of NOPD Officer Daryle Holloway Swiftly dismissing claims that Travis Boys was legally insane when he shot and killed a veteran police officer three years ago, a New Orleans 

The final breaths of Holloway, a well-liked 22-year police veteran, were recorded on his body-worn camera. Boys, who had been picked up in connection with a domestic incident, crawled through the partition between the front and back seats in Holloway's patrol vehicle and shot him, then escaped and remained on the run for 24 hours before his arrest.

Boys and five of the 12 jurors in his case were Black, and his appeal relies heavily on the argument that prosecutors under previous District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro engaged in racial discrimination. Cannizzaro's successor, Jason Williams, has been fiercely critical of the former DA's legacy, especially on race, but his top deputy said the office joined in the motion with Boys' defense to show that trial prosecutors acted correctly.

We agreed to a remand so that we could note for the court that our reasons for striking jurors had nothing to do with race, First Assistant District Attorney Bob White said. The trial court did not request the reasons when the trial occurred. We offered to provide them because we have an interest in ensuring that the people of New Orleans know that race played no role in the process.

Travis Boys sentenced to life in prison in NOPD Officer Daryle Holloway's death Olander Belfield Holloway has waited two years, 10 month and 13 days to address Travis Boys, the man who took the life of her son, veteran NOP

Still, the proposed hearing drew blunt criticism from Police Superintendent Shaun Ferguson, in what might be the first public sign of friction between the police chief and the newly elected district attorney. Ferguson said the Police Department wasnt informed that prosecutors had agreed to a request from Boys' attorneys.

We are talking about a man who murdered an officer of the law, one of our brothers, and we were not even notified that the DA was taking action in this case. I will be meeting with Mr. Williams tomorrow to address my grave concerns with him in person, Ferguson said.

We need a system that works - and that requires clear communication and functionality from all partners, including the district attorney and the courts. The NOPD cannot do this alone. We all have a critical role to play.

In a statement, Williams said he looked forward to his previously-scheduled meeting with Ferguson.

If there were any concerning challenges to this case or if this conviction was in jeopardy, we would absolutely engage the Chief. But, as the case currently stands, we are abundantly confident that we will be successful in protecting the integrity of this conviction, largely because of the action taken by our office," Williams said.

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Travis Boys' lawyers say he's still incompetent, argue he should get new trial Lawyers for Travis Boys, who was convicted in March of killing veteran NOPD Officer Daryle Holloway, are asking a judge to grant him a new tri

Judges James McKay III, Daniel Dysart and Dale Atkins of the 4th Louisiana Circuit Court of Appeal on Monday rejected the joint hearing request without comment. The judges are set to hear oral arguments about Boys overall appeal of his conviction on April 14, including the challenge to jury selection.

With strong video evidence against Boys, his defense team essentially conceded during his 2017 trial that he shot Holloway. Instead, they argued he was not guilty by reason of insanity, pointing to his low IQ score, troubled upbringing and a prior episode where he jumped through a second-story window.

Prosecutors said the video of Holloway's death showed that Boys was sane at the time of the crime.

The jury unanimously convicted Boys of first-degree murder after barely an hour of deliberation. Judge Karen Herman of Criminal District Court handed Boys a mandatory life sentence.

Boys appeal has been pending since. On Thursday, Williams office joined with Boys defense attorneys in filing the motion that asked the state 4th Circuit Court to instruct Herman to hold a hearing on the jury selection process. During the trial, Herman had rejected out-of-hand the idea that prosecutors showed bias against prospective jurors.

Thursdays unusual joint motion would have forced her to conduct an inquiry she didn't think was necessary the first time, and to do so without an appeals court weighing in on whether her decision at trial was wrong. At the new hearing, the state and defense said, Herman should hear evidence about prosecutors' reasons for striking prospective jurors, then assess how persuasive they were.

Boys' attorneys, Anna VanCleave of Yale Law School along with Emily Washington and Hannah Lommers-Johnson of the MacArthur Justice Center, rest much of their appeal on the assertion that prosecutors improperly weeded out Black prospective jurors. New Orleans is 60% Black, the jury pool was 55% Black and the jury was ultimately only 42% Black, the appellate attorneys say.

The defense says prosecutors struck four Black residents from the jury pool even though they gave similar responses to questions as White residents who were not stricken by the state.

Under Cannizzaro, the district attorney's office fought back against the discrimination claim.

"Simply put, the facts do not support an inference of purposeful discrimination, especially given that the state struck three White jurors, did not use all 12 of its strikes and five black jurors ended up seated on the jury," a prosecutor said in an August court filing, when Cannizzaro was still in office.

That view of the case has persisted in the new administration, White said: Race did not play a part in the jury selection process.
Democrats are eyeing to push a bill that will reconcile members of the party over the immigration policy and infrastructure budget. Members of the Democrats both in the House of Congress and Senate disagree over the new immigration policy. This time, they are eyeing to push a reconciliation bill that they hope will unite the party.





Reconciliation Bill

The new bill is expected to help immigrants in the country to get citizenship, and this will also be their vehicle to get financial assistance like stimulus aid. The said bill comes amid the tension happening today in the different borders.

In a recently published article in Roll Call, the new legislation or the reconciliation bill reflects the reality of the divided Congress. Legislators in the House have been struggling to come up with an agreement over the immigration policy.

Pentagon Approves to House Unaccompanied Migrant Children in Its Military Base

Factors that Push Lawmakers To Take the Legislative Action

According to a recently published article in The New York Times, the House of Senate might support the use of the reconciliation bill. However, there are no exact details yet on how many Republican Senators will support the bill.

Meanwhile, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, "We think we can make a case about the budget impacts of immigration in our country, and we are going to try to do that." The speaker was referring to the Byrd rule, which excludes nonbudgetary provisions.

Moreover, Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, who sponsored the immigration bill and is supported by the White House, will not foreclose any tool that will ultimately allow Democrats to allow as many citizenships as possible to the undocumented immigrants.

The pressure for the lawmakers to pass the legislation also comes due to the increasing number of unaccompanied children at the borders. Three military camps are presently used to house the immigrants at present. The most recent is Camp Roberts in California.

Biden Officials Order GOP Senator to Delete Migrant Photos Crammed in like Sardines

Benefits of the Reconciliation Bill

The reconciliation bill will give many benefits to qualified immigrants, including access to high-paying jobs and federal benefits such as stimulus aids and more.

According to Molly Reynolds, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, any successful effort to incorporate immigration-related clauses in a potential reconciliation bill will undoubtedly make federal incentives such as stimulus checks open to immigrant communities.

She found out that majority parties have been more aggressive in using compromise to enact significant legislative changes in recent years. She believes such legislative reforms have a better chance of making it into extraordinarily large compromise bills, such as the recent pandemic relief measure, which included directives from many committees.

On the other hand, Republicans, who denounced the most recent pandemic relief bill for provisions they considered irrelevant to COVID-19 recovery, remain adamantly opposed to any efforts to integrate democratic reform goals into a forthcoming infrastructure package.

Impatient for reform after the Trump administration's hardline position on immigration, immigration activists want senators to consider every mechanism possible to make progress on the issue, whether it's overruling the Senate parliamentarian or abolishing the filibuster completely.

@ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
MBA Experience at McKinsey & Co.

Of the big three MBB firms, McKinsey & Co. has the smallest target list of favored business schools. Both the Boston Consulting Group and Bain & Co. have more expansive lists, with BCG having 28 MBA programs with favored status while Bain boasts 40 different programs. In any case, the lists vary greatly in the choice of business schools.

While these mainstream recruiters of MBA talent, offering internships and jobs to hundreds of MBAs every year, closely guard the lists of their business school favorites, they tip their hands in revealing targeted programs for their pre-MBA summer programs.

The deadline for McKinseys Early Access program this year is May 13th. To be eligible to compete for a spot, applicants need to be admitted to a full-time MBA program at one of the 17 targeted schools with an anticipated graduation date of 2023. Its exclusive, for sure. Only students entering a two-year full-time program or dual degree program will be considered by McKinsey. The consulting firm makes it explicit that candidates enrolled in a one-year, part-time, or executive MBA program, even at a targeted business school, are not eligible.

BAIN HAS THE MOST GLOBAL LIST WHILE BCG HAS THE LARGEST NUMBER OF U.S. SCHOOLS

The McKinsey list differs significantly from the other two big global consultancies. The Boston Consulting Groups 28 business schools for its BCG Unlock program is U.S.-centric, with one Canadian program on the list, the University of Torontos Rotman School of Management (see BCGs 28 Target Business Schools). Bain & Co.s target list for the ExperienceBain program includes the most schools, and it is much more global, including MBAs from HEC Paris, IESE Business School and ESADE in Spain as well as such U.S. programs as Brigham Young Universitys Marriott School of Management, Indiana Universitys Kelley School of Business, and the University of Texas Jindal School of Management in Dallas (see Bains 40 Target Business Schools).

Story continues

McKinseys favored schools for its pre-MBA program is the most predictable of the big three. Not surprisingly, the target schools at McKinsey include the big brand powerhouses that dominate the top of most MBA rankings. It will surprise no one to know that every M7 school is on the list: Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, MIT Sloan, Booth, Kellogg and Columbia. Nor will it be surprising to see the Ivy publics on the list, including the University of Virginias Darden School of Business, the University of Michigans Ross School of Business, UC-Berkeleys Haas School and UNCs Kenan-Flagler Business School at Chapel Hill.

McKinsey describes its Early Access program as an opportunity to engage in interactive sessions with our consultants and leaders where you will gain insight into our culture and the work we do, while creating community among your future classmates and enriching your skills.

MCKINSEY ALSO HOSTS A TWO-DAY VIRTUAL EVENT FOR URM PRE-MBA STUDENTS

In short, the program gives the consulting firm an early look at incoming MBA talent. For participants, it provides a glimpse into what a career in consulting might be like and gives students a leg up on landing a summer internship between their first and second years of the MBA program and ultimately a full-time job offer.

McKinsey also hosts another program called Inspire for underrepresented pre-MBA students, including those who identify as Black, African-American, Hispanic, Latino, and/or Native American. The two-day virtual program includes an overview of McKinseys diversity and inclusion efforts, management consulting, and McKinsey today. In this program, students will join small interactive case workshops as well as activities to sharpen your interview skills, engage in virtual social activities and hear from exciting panelists and speakers, according to the firm. The application deadline is also May 13, 2021. Eligible students are welcome to apply to and attend both McKinsey Early Access and Inspire.

McKinseys Target Business School List For Its Pre-MBA Summer Experience

Source: McKinsey & Co.

DONT MISS OUR RECENT MCKINSEY & CO. WEBINARS:

The post These 17 B-Schools Are On McKinseys Target List For MBA Recruits appeared first on Poets&Quants.
She is set to play screen siren Jean Courtney in The Ipcress File remake.

And Lucy Boynton was seen getting into character as she dashed around the set of the ITV series between scenes on Tuesday.

Despite the frosty weather in Liverpool, the 27-year-old actress wasted no time as she dashed from trailer to trailer in a T-shirt and skirt holding a toothbrush.

On the move: Lucy Boynton was seen getting into character as she dashed around the set of the ITV series The Ipcress File between scenes on Tuesday

Dressed in all-blue, the Miss Potter star donned a flimsy T-shirt and plaid skirt, later layering up in a padded coat and donning cosy grey boots.

Lucy's hair was styled in a glossy bob, while she accessorised with large pearlescent earrings.

The Ipcress File is an ITV six-part series remake of the 1965 British espionage film starring Michael Caine.

Braving the chill: Despite the frosty weather in Liverpool, the 27-year-old actress wasted no time as she dashed from trailer to trailer in a T-shirt and skirt holding a toothbrush

One to watch: Lucy will play the glamorous Jean Courtney, originally played by Sue Lloyd (right) a beautiful young woman who plays the love interest of main character Harry Palmer

Filming began last month on Exchange Street West, close to Liverpool Town Hall, which had been transformed into 1960s London.

While most of the film is being filmed in Liverpool, shooting will move to Croatia later this year to continue filming.

The series has been written by Trainspotting writer John Hodge and the all-star cast also includes The Night Manager's Tom Hollander and Peaky Blinders star Joe Cole.

Blue-tiful! Dressed in all-blue, the Miss Potter star donned a flimsy T-shirt and plaid skirt, later layering up in a padded coat and donning cosy grey boots

Blonde bombshell! Lucy's hair was styled in a glossy bob, while she accessorised with large pearlescent earrings

One to watch: The Ipcress File is an ITV six-part series remake of the 1965 British espionage film starring Michael Caine

Joe takes on the lead role as Harry Palmer, a working-class British sergeant in Berlin as the Cold War rages in the sixties.

Joe's character - famously played by Michael Caine - is slated as being 'sharp and savvy' with a series of side-hustles that could potentially land him in hot water with the law.

However an intelligence officer notices his abilities and offers him a way to dodge jail by becoming a spy for the British government.

Working up north: Filming began last month on Exchange Street West, close to Liverpool Town Hall, which had been transformed into 1960s London

Change of scenery: While most of the film is being filmed in Liverpool, shooting will move to Croatia later this year to continue filming

Palmer undertakes his first case known as The Ipcress File, which involves using his links to a man believed to have kidnapped a British nuclear scientist.

Lucy will play the glamorous Jean Courtney, originally played by Sue Lloyd.

The protagonist is assigned an assistant, Jean, a beautiful young woman towards whom he begins to develop romantic feelings.

The original espionage film and its following sequels were a deliberately downbeat alternative to the hugely successful James Bond films.

Despite this, one of the early Bond producers, Harry Saltzman and others were brought into work on the Palmer series.

Coming soon: The series has been written by Trainspotting writer John Hodge and the all-star cast also includes The Night Manager's Tom Hollander and Peaky Blinders star Joe Cole

Plot: The Ipcress Files follows a counter espionage Agent dealing with his own bureaucracy while investigating the kidnapping and brainwashing of British scientists

Palmer is a contrast to Bond's privileged private school upbringing and lives and works in a 'gloomy' London, where he resides in a Notting Hill bedsit.

The original film was produced at Pinewood studios while also being shot on location around London.

It is now included on the British Film Institute's list of 100 of the best British films of the 20th century, ranking at number 59.

It has been reported by Deadline that the production is being produced by The Crown's Andrew Eaton and directed by Black Mirror's James Watkins.

Mirror image: Joe is playing Harry Palmer, who is a working-class British sergeant in Berlin as the Cold War rages in the sixties (originally played by Michael Caine left)

The original Ipcress File was awarded three BAFTAs and the novel has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide.

It also kicked off a series of seven other books, meaning there is scope for further series if this one proves a ratings hit.

Writer Hodge told the publication: 'This is a wonderful opportunity to inhabit a time when the post-war world was morphing into the way we live now, when social mobility, civil rights, and modern feminism were forcing their way into public consciousness, and all of it happening with the world divided in two and both halves threatening to blow the whole thing sky high.'
Police officers have been attacked and a hijacked bus set on fire during violent disturbances at an interface area in west Belfast.

Public disorder broke out after crowds gathered at the junction of Lanark Way and Shankill Road, the PSNI have said.

Earlier tyres and bins were set on fire near interface gates. It had been reported that a peaceful protest had been planned.

Police are advising members of the public to avoid these areas and have appealed to those with influence in the area to use it to help restore calm.

Around 6pm stones were thrown at police while Belfast Telegraph photographer Kevin Scott was assaulted and verbally abused while he covered the protest.

A fire also broke out in the mainly nationalist area of New Lodge.

First Minister Arlene Foster condemned the attack on Twitter, saying: "There is no justification for violence. It is wrong and should stop."

Prime Minister Boris Johnson also tweeted that he had been left "deeply concerned" by the incident, and called for dialogue.

A joint statement issued by North Belfast DUP elected representatives described the scenes as "deeply disturbing and highly detrimental to local communities."

"Those who have orchestrated and carried out these acts of violence need to bring them to an immediate end," it said.

"We understand the frustration and anger arising from recent political developments. However these do not provide an excuse for acts of violence and instead must be addressed robustly though peaceful and democratic means."

I am deeply concerned by the scenes of violence in Northern Ireland, especially attacks on PSNI who are protecting the public and businesses, attacks on a bus driver and the assault of a journalist. The way to resolve differences is through dialogue, not violence or criminality.  Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) April 7, 2021

The attack on the journalist was also condemned by Sinn Fein's Paul Maskey and Amnesty International NI.

Sinn Fein MLA Gerry Kelly insisted the "disgraceful scenes" of violence and destruction had "clearly been planned in advance and orchestrated by loyalist criminal gangs."

"The location of these so-called protests close to interfaces is a clear and deliberate attempt to raise tensions and incite further violence. There are reports coming in of incidents at other interfaces as well," he said.

Condemning the attack on Mr Scott, he continued: "We have also seen a bus hijacked and burned which must have been a terrifying experience for the driver. No worker should have to face that while going about their day's work.

"These senseless incidents need to end before someone is killed or seriously injured."

Is this bus driver ok? Get these people of the streets pic.twitter.com/xkts7wa9aV  Stand_by_your_beds (@twitjailagain) April 7, 2021

Mr Kelly added: "I would appeal to anyone involved in these incidents to desist. Those behind these despicable attacks and disturbances need to call a halt to them immediately."

Videos circulating online show a bus being pelted with petrol bombs and having its windows smashed where a crowd of people had gathered.

Translink Metro said it had withdrawn all services into the area until further notice due to road closures, as well as services in east Belfast.

It confirmed that a Metro Bus, service 11a was hijacked and group chief executive, Chris Conway revealed that passengers were able to get off the bus "safely before the attack occurred".

" My thoughts are with the driver who is badly shaken but thankfully unhurt, he is being supported by colleagues," he said.

Condemning the incident, Mr Conway said Translink was "working closely" with the PSNI on the matter, adding that services will "remain withdrawn until it is safe to reinstate them".

Our staff have been working on the frontline throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to keep essential services operating and to keep communities connected, and this attack is reprehensible," he added.

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A crowd of around 500 people, most of them adults, gathered on the corner of the junction at Lanark Way as events unfolded.

Further down the road a bonfire was lit where a crowd of approximately 100 people, mostly young, were assembled.

The Stormont Assembly is set to be recalled on Thursday morning for an emergency debate following days of violence.

Children as young as 12 have been involved in some of the violence that has been witnessed in recent days.

Cars, a JCB digger, a phone box and bins were set alight in the Waterside area of Londonderry on Monday.

Earlier, DUP MP Gregory Campbell urged loyalist protesters to "use their heads'" and step away from situations which may descend into disorder.

He was speaking after several consecutive nights of violence across Northern Ireland which resulted in 41 police officers injured and 10 arrested.

The cause of the unrest has been attributed to frustration over a decision not to prosecute members of Sinn Fein over alleged coronavirus regulation breaches at the funeral of republican Bobby Storey.

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Opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol and drugs seizures against a dissident faction of the UDA in south east Antrim have also been blamed.

The DUP has called for the resignation of police chief Simon Byrne over the lack of prosecutions.

"If people use their heads and they think ahead and say 'we're not going to give people the opportunity to say a chief constable can't stand down because of the threat of violence'," Mr Campbell told the BBC.

"That is something that would have a resonance across the community. Don't give them that excuse.

"They should think long and hard before taking part in any protests that could eventually result in violence and serious hurt being done to individuals as well as to the wider community they live in."
Credit: Srivastava et al.

In recent years, electronics engineers worldwide have been trying to develop new semiconductor heterostructure devices using atomically thin materials. Among the many devices that can be fabricated using these materials are resonant tunneling diodes, which typically consist of a quantum-well structure placed between two barrier layers.

Past research has shown that stacking two-dimensional (2D) layers that are twisted in relation to each other can enhance or suppress the interlayer coupling at their interface. This suppression or enhancement can in turn modulate the electronic, optical and mechanical properties of the resulting device.

For instance, some studies found that the intralayer current transport in small angle twisted bilayer graphene prompted some exotic phenomena, such as superconductivity and ferromagnetism. These observations inspired a fundamentally new approach to device engineering, known as 'twistronics' (i.e., twist electronics).

Researchers at Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea recently carried out a study aimed at evaluating the potential of a twistronics design for resonant tunneling diodes based on black phosphorus homostructures. The resulting resonant tunneling diodes, presented in a paper published in Nature Electronics, exhibit a higher tunneling conductance than resonant tunneling diodes based on van der Waals heterostructures.

"Interlayer current transport through twisted junctions could also be an intriguing topic of research that has not yet been explored," Budhi Singh, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore. "This motivated us to investigate interlayer current-transport behavior in twisted black phosphorus-based homostructures."

In a series of laboratory experiments, Singh and his research team identified a number of valuable features that characterize black phosphorus, including its highly anisotropic nature, a thickness-dependent workfunction/2D-carrier density and a twist angle-dependent interlayer coupling. The highly anisotropic nature of black phosphorus ultimately enables a vanishing interlayer coupling strength at specific twist angles.

"Interestingly, we found that the interlayer current-transport in such twisted junctions could be controlled even at higher twist angles," Singh said. "The decoupled interface and momentum mismatch created through twisted Fermi surfaces could also affect the interlayer current-transport behavior and is a part of our primary investigation. In contrast, observation of exotic phenomena in intralayer current transport in twisted junctions is limited to smaller twist angles."

To evaluate the potential of the design strategy they devised, the researchers fabricated a black phosphorus tri-layer homojunction, by integrating a thin layer of black phosphorus between two thicker layers. In this structure, the middle, thinner layer is twisted in relation to the top and bottom black phosphorus layers.

"Due to the twisted structure in our devices, the decoupled interfaces behave like a tunnel barrier for interlayer charge carrier transport," Singh explained. "If we compare this structure with the conventional double barrier resonant tunneling diode, middle black phosphorus serves as an analog of the quantum well."

In the device fabricated by Singh and his colleagues, the emergence of a negative differential resistance and the evolution of peak position with a varying thickness of the middle black phosphorus layer produced a signature typically associated with resonant tunneling diodes. Resonant tunneling occurs when the energy and momenta of the top and bottom black phosphorus layers match those of the quantum well states, due to processes of energy and momentum conservation.

"Whenever we talk about tunneling phenomena, there has to be a physical barrier (i.e., materials with large energy bandgaps)," Singh said. "In general, this architecture is achieved in a heterostructures assembly, but we demonstrated resonant tunneling through a homostructure without the need of any physical tunnel barrier."

The twistronics design strategy introduced by Singh and his colleagues could soon inspire the fabrication of other devices that exhibit remarkable tunneling conductance. In the device created by the researchers, the tunneling mechanism is dominated by a twist-controlled interlayer coupling, which results in a high tunneling current density. The researchers' diode device and other twist-controlled tunnel devices with high current densities could ultimately be used to realize a variety of high speed electronics, including THz oscillators and ultrafast switches.

"In the near future, we would like to perform experiments to realize twisted black phosphorus homostructures in practical applications, such as THz devices and applications in superconducting spectroscopy," Singh added.

Explore further Abnormal conductivity in low angle twisted bilayer graphene

More information: Resonant tunnelling diodes based on twisted black phosphorus homostructures. Nature Electronics(2021). Journal information: Nature Electronics Resonant tunnelling diodes based on twisted black phosphorus homostructures.(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41928-021-00549-1

 2021 Science X Network
Two students in USFs Judy Genshaft Honors College, Kelli Ann Lynch and Alexander Mercier, have been named 2021 Goldwater Scholars, chosen out of nearly 1,300 students nationally. The scholarship is the most prestigious undergraduate award in the country for scientific research, and provides each recipient with $7,500 for educational expenses and research support.

Both students have already completed research in their fields with positive implications for public health.

Lynch, a junior from Melbourne, Florida, majoring in physics, has spent three years researching with USF professor and computational physicist Inna Ponomareva. We study the evolving properties of ferroelectrics (materials that exhibit spontaneous polarization, even without an electronic field present), Lynch said. When these materials are coupled with other mechanisms, such as mechanical stress or electric fields, and align through polarization, it allows us to use them in new ways, like powering a computer, for example.

Lynch was able to take a further step with her research in 2020, when she received an REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to spend the summer conducting computation biophysics research with Lehigh University. We analyzed the mechanics of protein folding, Lynch said. There are a number of diseases affected by malfunctions of protein folding and by better understanding this process, we can combat those diseases.

She was awarded a second REU to spend this summer researching at the University of Notre Dame. We will be studying the bridge between condensed matter and biophysics, and applying quantum physics to evolutionary biology, and vice versa, she said. In addition, Lynch will continue her work with Lehigh; the team will soon begin collaborating with researchers at Kyoto University, in Japan, to further their work.

Also a junior, Mercier, from Irvine, California, is a dual major in microbiology and pure mathematics (with a minor in Russian). He finished his high school career by completing an associate degree in mathematics through dual enrollment at St. Petersburg College. At the time, he was debating between enrolling at USF or MIT, but scholarships and a discussion with USFs Office of National Scholarships (ONS) helped him decide. I met with Dr. (Sayandeb) Basu, director of ONS, before I even started here as a student, said Mercier. Seeing his, and his staffs, dedication to student success was the tipping point that helped me decide to enroll here.

As soon as Mercier started on campus, Basu connected him with USF assistant professor and integrative biologist Andrew Kramer. Ive worked on two projects with Dr. Kramer, Mercier said. The first was to create a network model of disease spread in the contiguous United States. The second uses something called network sparsification to quickly identify the most important relationships in a network, using mathematics. The implications of this are vast and can allow us to run more disease simulations in a shorter time, as well as identify important relationships for disease spread, so we can take the best actions to stop it.

While researching network sparsification, Mercier realized that while other studies had been done on the topic, there was no standard method of evaluation. He was awarded a 2020 REU to Santa Fe Institute to try to rectify that by working with well-known network scientist Cristopher Moore. Public health officials could make policy decisions based on network sparsifiers, and it is important to have a set method for testing them, Mercier said. Dr. Moore and I created a new network metric to do just that, called epidemic edge importance. The two have a paper about this work set for publication this summer (along with a colleague), and Mercier is listed as first author.

Both Lynch and Mercier worked with ONS and with Basu on their research goals and Goldwater applications. Lynch had previously worked with ONS on her successful Gilman Scholarship (a study abroad award for Pell Grant recipients) application, and was she was then encouraged by ONS to apply for the Goldwater award. Dr. Basu helped me define who I am as a scientist and create a network with other researchers, Lynch said. The best part about this process, even better than winning the award, was finding out who I want to be as a physicist.

Both awardees plan to pursue their doctorates and serve as university professors and researchers. Inspired by the mentorship she received at USF, Lynch plans to pay it forward to help diversify her field. I want to serve as a mentor and help provide a platform for under-represented groups in STEM to be able to perform research at a university level, she said.

Mercier, who witnessed a family members Lyme disease misdiagnosis due to misconceptions about the disease at the time, hopes that his work can help prevent such misdiagnoses in the future. That experience spurred me to enter the study of disease-spread. I am particularly focused on better understanding the mathematical tools used to create medical knowledge so that we can use them in a responsible manner, he said.

At the University of South Florida, cutting-edge research is considered an essential component of our undergraduate student experience, providing opportunities for students to extend their curiosity to further develop high-demand career skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity and communication, said Ralph C. Wilcox, USF provost and executive vice president. Congratulations to Kelli Ann and Alexander for their accomplishments in advancing science and public health.

The two award recipients bring USFs Goldwater Scholar tally to 15. Previous scholars have gone on to earn other nationally competitive awards and study at internationally prominent institutions as they work on research projects.

The Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program was established by Congress in 1986 to honor Sen. Barry M. Goldwater, who served his country for 56 years as a soldier and statesman, including 30 years of service in the U.S. Senate. The purpose of the Foundation is to provide a continuing source of highly qualified scientists, mathematicians and engineers by awarding scholarships to college students who intend to pursue careers in these fields.
Cyprus is getting protected status for its prized halloumi, giving its producers the sole right to sell the rubbery cheese in the European Union.
Reporter

Debra Pressey is a reporter covering health care at The News-Gazette. Her email is dpressey@news-gazette.com, and you can follow her on Twitter (@DLPressey).
A protester from the Uyghur community living in Turkey attends a protest against the visit of China's Foreign Minister to Turkey, in Istanbul on March 25, 2021. (Bulent Kilic/AFP via Getty Images)

Turkey Summons Chinese Ambassador Over Response to Uyghur Claims

ANKARATurkey called in Chinas ambassador on Tuesday after his embassy said it had the right to respond to opposition leaders who criticized the Chinese regimes treatment of Uyghur Muslims three decades ago.

The politicians, IYI Party leader Meral Aksener and Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavas of the main opposition CHP, had marked what they called the 31st anniversary of a brief uprising by Uyghurs against the regime in Chinas far west.

Aksener said on Twitter we will not remain silent about their persecution and martyrdom. Yavas said we still feel the pain of the massacre in 1990.

Ambassador Liu Shaobin was summoned to the ministry after his embassy tweeted a statement in response.

The Chinese side determinedly opposes any person of power that in any way challenges Chinas sovereignty and territorial integrity and strongly condemns this, it said. The Chinese side reserves its legitimate right to respond.

Many of the 40,000 Uyghurs in Turkey have criticized the governments approach to Beijing after the Chinese regime approved an extradition treaty in December which they fear may lead to them being sent back to China to face vague charges which they deny.

Hundreds protested as Chinese foreign minister visited Ankara last month.

U.N. experts estimate at least a million Uyghurs and other Muslims are held in detention centers in northwest Chinas Xinjiang. The United States said in January that the Chinese regime had committed genocide and crimes against humanity by repressing Uyghurs.

Aksener and Yavas are seen as potential rivals to President Tayyip Erdogan in elections slated for 2023.

By Yesim Dikmen and Tuvan Gumrukcu
"Here at Rediker, we have worked closely with hundreds of charter schools and charter school companies across the country to provide the best technology to serve their students and families."

A schools enrollment and admissions process can be both time consuming and frustrating at best. With the recent shift to even more virtual and online processes, finding a solution to enroll children in school successfully needs to be flexible, secure and mobile-ready.

With ever-increasing demand, charter schools also face their own unique admissions and enrollment challenges. Last year, there were more than 7,400 public charter schools providing individualized education and learning opportunities to more than 3 million students throughout the U.S. And millions more would attend a charter school if they had the option.

With so many students seeking charter school enrollment, charter schools have employed a lottery system whereby students are selected via a random drawing process. And where seats are limited, students not selected initially are put on a waiting list. To fairly provide everyone with the opportunity for enrollment, both a randomized and blind lottery is essential.

To best handle enrollment, charter schools can benefit from investing in an online enrollment management system to streamline the process. Rediker Softwares newest online admissions management system, AdmissionsPlus, is equipped with the tools to efficiently run a charter schools online enrollment and lottery and waitlist operations. Completely customizable for each grade and program, AdmissionsPlus fully responsive online forms allow registrars to track and communicate with applicants through the entire process. And once a students enrollment information is submitted, the data is easily sent to the schools student information system for tracking, communication, analysis, and decision making.

Charter schools can also securely adjust waitlist rankings for a prospective student, batch generate and assign unique lottery numbers to selected applicants, and launch custom email notifications informing families of their childs newly assigned waitlist or lottery number. And when a prospective family withdraws their application, the waitlist rearranges instantly and other families are informed of their new waitlist status via email.

With Redikers new AdmissionsPlus, parents, students and school admissions offices can also benefit from the following convenient features:



Adjust waitlist ranking for a prospective student based on currently attending sibling(s) and randomly generated lottery number. This sort order gives a waitlist order.

Customizable lottery allows schools to sort on up to six fields of their choice in the order of their preference.

As prospects accept offered seats, the total number of open seats is adjusted appropriately to help track enrollment.

Virtually conduct and manage easy lottery and waitliist operations by applicant or by grade level. Calculate the number of open seats depending on the active student count from AdminPlus.

Charter schools in the U.S. continue to face growing demand in their communities, with tens of thousands of students on charter waitlists in the state of Massachusetts, as just one example, said Marketing Director John Schreck. At the same time, families expect a seamless, mobile-friendly experience as they research and apply to charter schools. Here at Rediker, we have worked closely with hundreds of charter schools and charter school companies across the country to provide the best technology to serve their students and families, he said.

About Rediker Software

For 40 years, Rediker Software has been a leader in school administrative software for private, public, international, religious and independent schools. The companys products include AdminPlus, a cloud-based SIS solution, TeacherPlus Gradebook, ParentPlus and StudentPlus Web Portals, RediSite Responsive Websites, AdmissionsPlus, and Teacher Evaluator. For more information about Rediker Software, please visit http://www.rediker.com.
A former police officer in Bucks County is accused of sexually abusing four teenaged boys 20 years ago, authorities said.

James Carey, 52, turned himself in Wednesday morning to face 122 charges, including multiple counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child under the age of 16, aggravated indecent assault of a child under the age of 16 and statutory sexual assault.

The offenses allegedly occurred between 1987 and 2009, and Wednesdays charges come after previous reports and investigations into Careys behavior did not result in criminal charges being filed, prosecutors said.

Carey was free after posting 10% of $100,000 bail.

He adamantly denies all of (the accusations) and looks forward to the process of being able to demonstrate his innocence, said attorney Thomas Joachim, who represents Carey along with attorney Michael Applebaum.

District Attorney Matt Weintraub said if there are other potential victims, they should come forward and contact his office 215-348-6344, even if the person wants to remain anonymous.

We will help you get justice. We can help you heal, he said.

Carey lives in Cape May Court House, New Jersey. He most recently worked as a school bus driver in southern New Jersey, according to the Bucks County Courier Times.

BREAKING: Retired Warminster Twp. DARE Officer James Carey (blue mask) was arraigned on 200+ sexual assault-related crimes involving four teens from 10-20 years ago. The judge described him a danger to the community & set bail at 10 percent of $100,000. @CBSPhilly pic.twitter.com/e3PsMz76SY  Joe Holden (@JoeHoldenCBS3) April 7, 2021

Carey previously worked as a Warminster Township police officer, and allegedly abused the boys when he worked as a D.A.R.E. officer two decades ago, a spokesman for the Bucks County district attorneys office said.

The Warminster Township police department declined to comment when asked about Careys case.

Three of the accusers were students at Log College Middle School at the time of the assaults, and Carey was a D.A.R.E. officer with the Centennial School District, prosecutors said.

D.A.R.E. stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education, and is a national program that began in 1983 to have certified local police officers teach students to avoid drugs and alcohol.

Prosecutors said Carey had unique access to children, and ingratiated himself into the childrens lives, specifically those who were already facing challenges in their life.

Carey invited boys to his house, in his hot tub, on kayaking and camping trips, and one time took a group to Dorney Park, records show. Carey was in charge of a Teen Activity Corp, and worked with the Boy Scouts and a program through the Warminster Township Fire Department, giving him unfettered access to children, prosecutors said.

Carey used his position of power as a police officer to groom the children, and also their caregivers, the district attorneys office said.

One victim testified the sexual abuse began when Carey found marijuana at the Warminster Township Recreation Center and claimed it belonged to then-13-year-old boy. Carey, who was in uniform, locked the bathroom door and performed an invasive body search that turned into sexual assault, according to the affidavit of probable cause.

Carey reportedly told the boy he was going to jail, but could avoid jail if he complied, records say. Carey would go on to sexually abuse the teen a handful of times, detectives said, and each time Carey was in his police uniform.

When the victims family moved out of the township, he was finally out of Careys reach...it was the best thing that ever happened for him, records say.

This victim, now 36, reported the abuse in May 2020 to Warminster police, and the case was referred to the Bucks County District Attorneys office because the police department previously employed Carey, prosecutors said.

The victim contacted police because he believed the state changed the statute of limitations for prosecuting childhood sexual assault, records say.

The case involved a lengthy investigation by Bucks County Detectives and an inquiry by a Bucks County Investigating Grand Jury, the district attorneys office said.

Court papers include interviews with the victims, and numerous friends and neighbors of the victims. Carey lived in the township at the time, and lived near some of the victims and their friends.

Carey appeared before the grand jury on April 1, and invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, prosecutors said.

The tone of the questions was quite accusatory, Joachim said, and at that point it was clear it was a march toward a predetermined decision.

He has voluntary appeared at every occasion because he is innocent, the attorney said.

Carey allegedly oversaw community service for one victim, and made the teen boy perform chores at Careys house before sexually assaulting him, records say.

The boy was abused from when he was 13 until he was 18, and the abuse only stopped when the teen moved away, detectives said. The victim, now 43, told detectives Carey waited until the last possible moment to sign the community service form, in order to continue the sexual abuse.

The accuser said when he was 17 and involved in an underage drinking incident, he told another Warminster officer about the abuse, but could not remember the officers name.

As an adult, the man called Warminster police to ask about the statute of limitations and reported Carey molested him, but was told the incidents fell outside the statute, court papers say.

A third victim reported Carey molested him when he was about 15 years old, while they were at Careys home. The victim initially tried to leave, but Carey blocked the teen from the door, records say.

While the boy was still a teen he reported the incident to Warminster police, but nothing happened, court records say. The victim and his mother reported the incident again in 2006 to Warminster police, after Carey was fired from the department, records say.

Bucks County detectives in 2001 investigated Carey for allegations of sexual abuse, after the Warminster Township Police Department became aware of concerning conduct and referred the information to the county district attorneys office.

Charges were not filed in 2001, prosecutors said.

Then-District Attorney Diane Gibbons, who is now a Bucks County judge, wrote a letter that year to the police department advising that Careys behavior and conduct was very concerning, and her office had grave concerns about the communitys safety with Carey employed as a police officer, court papers say.

Her words turned out to be prophetic, Weintraub said.

Five years later, when Carey worked at the Driftwood Campground in Cape May County, New Jersey State Police investigated Carey for reports of inappropriate conduct with minors at the campground.

No charges were filed in that case, either.

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Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com.
Family law must be reformed to place safety at the centre of decision-making, a peak body says after a coroner's findings into two teenagers' domestic violence executions.

NSW State Coroner Teresa O'Sullivan on Wednesday found reports of domestic violence made against Sydney father John Edwards were minimised in the family court 18 months before he shot dead his children in July 2018.

The murders of Jack and Jennifer Edwards, aged 15 and 13, also sparked questions about how Edwards obtained licences to shoot and buy guns despite protracted, acrimonious family law proceedings.

The murders of Jack and Jennifer Edwards, aged 15 and 13, sparked questions about how Edwards obtained licences to shoot and buy guns despite protracted, acrimonious family law proceedings

Ms O'Sullivan called for the creation of a system that meant domestic violence issues raised in the family court are automatically shared with NSW police and the state's gun registry.

But the chief executive of Women's Legal Service Queensland has urged further reform of family law, saying the inquest findings provide 'clear lessons' for the federal government on preventing family violence.

The Edwards case exemplifies how safety is still a 'side consideration' in the family law system, which needed to better identify domestic violence risks, Angela Lynch said.

'We need to think outside the box,' she said.

NSW State Coroner Teresa O'Sullivan on Wednesday found reports of domestic violence made against Sydney father John Edwards were minimised in the family court 18 months before he shot dead his children in July 2018

'Professionals and specialists in family law need to devise new strategies and build the safest possible system for victims of violence, even if this impinges on the freedoms of perpetrators.'

Among the coroner's 24 recommendations was a call for a NSW legal body to investigate the conduct of the lawyer tasked to advocate for Jack and Jennifer in the family court.

That lawyer had promoted orders in December 2016 that sought to bring the children into contact with John, despite allegations that he was abusive to the children and had allegedly stalked another daughter.

The coroner also recommended making it far harder for domestic violence perpetrators to access guns lawfully.

One proposed law change would add personal violence and domestic violence offences to crimes that automatically disqualify gun permit applicants.

Another change would abolish a shooting permit that is issued on the spot at gun clubs without any registry oversight.

Enacting Ms O'Sullivan's recommendations would also force NSW police to automatically suspend gun permits in the event of domestic violence allegations being aired in the federal court.

The tragedy of the Edwards family murders Jack Edwards, 15, and his sister Jennifer, aged 13, were shot dead in their Sydney home on July 5, 2018, after their father John Edwards stalked his daughter on her way home from school. The father, 67, took his life soon after. LEAD-UP TO THE MURDERS The children and their mother Olga left Edwards in March 2016 after years of abuse. Acrimonious Family Court proceedings ensued. Edwards began legally acquiring permits to fire and buy guns from late 2016, while concurrently battling Olga in the Family Court. INQUEST Over three weeks in September 2020 and some extra hearings, NSW Coroner Teresa O'Sullivan heard from more than 30 witnesses. Former partners spoke of how Edwards, from as early as 1968, had made their life hell through physical, emotional and financial abuse. FINDINGS Despite policies insisting they do, local police failed to investigate when Olga reported John Edwards' abuse in 2016 and 2017. Gun registry staff were unaware of their key obligations and completely failed to recognise the pattern of domestic abuse on John Edwards' police record. The lawyer tasked to represent the children in the Family Court failed to ensure the court was fully informed of Jack and Jennifer's views. RECOMMENDATIONS Police bolster mandatory domestic violence training and start auditing DV reports annually to ensure officers are complying. Gun registry staff get training to recognise risks of domestic violence. Better information sharing between the gun registry, police and the Family Court to ensure all are aware of a person's risks. Jack and Jennifer's Family Court lawyer be investigated by a disciplinary body. There were 24 recommendations in total. QUOTES FROM NSW CORONER 'It is unquestionable that their deaths and the subsequent death of Olga have caused unbearable suffering for many. However, to describe this as a tragedy is to import a sense of inevitability that nothing could have been done to change the outcome. 'Instead, the evidence before this court plainly reveals the deaths of Jack and Jennifer were preventable.' Advertisement

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Suki Waterhouse stepped out in a casual ensemble as she headed to a film set in Liverpool on Wednesday.

It is believed that the actress and model, 28, was on the way to the set of the upcoming movie Dali Land.

She is not yet confirmed to be part of the film which tells the story of the late Spanish artist Salvador Dali.

Stepping out: Suki Waterhouse stepped out in a casual ensemble as she grappled with a pillow and a laundry bag as she headed to a film set in Liverpool on Wednesday

Suki dressed down in a pair of baggy jeans and comfy red jumper which she wore under a warm brown jacket.

The star had her hands full as she carried a pillow, laundry bag and Costa coffee bag while strolling along the pavement.

She completed her low-key look with a pair of black and white trainers and wore her blonde tresses in a practical bun while opting to go makeup free.

Casual: It is believed that the actress and model, 28, was on the way to the set of the upcoming film Dali Land

Dali Land will follow the story of a young gallery assistant who helps the ageing artist Salvador Dali prepare for a big show in New York.

Frank Dillane, Ben Kingsley, Ezra Miller and Lesley Manville have all been confirmed as having roles in the upcoming film.

Suki recently revealed she has high hopes to release an album after her previous musical efforts failed to make the top 200.

Low-key: Suki dressed down in a pair of baggy jeans and comfy red jumper which she wore under a warm brown jacket

She is hoping it will be second time lucky, after her debut single Brutally, which was released in 2016, failed to reach the top 200 of the UK Singles Chart.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, she said: 'I'm making an album, which is cool, and there's little things happening with it. I like collaborating with a feast of friends.'

Suki also described the style of music she was recording, adding: 'I like lo-fi dream pop, but also simple folk.'

Her actor boyfriend Robert Pattinson, 34, has also dipped his toes into the music industry, having performed vocals for the Tindersticks track Willow which featured on the High Life soundtrack in 2019.

It comes amid rumours that the couple have 'discussed' getting engaged, although they are said to not be planning on walking down the aisle just yet.

A source told E! News: 'Rob and Suki have definitely discussed getting engaged but are in no rush. Suki is not pressuring him and they are both very committed to each other.'
OTTAWA - Provincial governments are grappling with how to bring the third wave of COVID-19 under control, as the more virulent variants of the virus begin to dominate and younger, healthier people are getting very sick, very quickly.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau looks on as Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam appears via videoconference at a news conference on the COVID-19 pandemic, Tuesday April 6, 2021, in Ottawa. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

OTTAWA - Provincial governments are grappling with how to bring the third wave of COVID-19 under control, as the more virulent variants of the virus begin to dominate and younger, healthier people are getting very sick, very quickly.

From Ontario and Quebec to British Columbia and Alberta, fear of the variants is growing as swiftly as the caseloads, particularly for young people who might still think the virus won't hit them that hard.

"This is a reminder that COVID-19 can impact people of all ages, and severe illness can occur at any age," said Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada's chief public health officer.

Provincial health officials report increasing numbers of hospital admissions of younger patients who soon need intensive care, she said Tuesday. "Many of them deteriorate quite quickly and have to be admitted to the ICU."

Tam said there were on average 6,100 new cases of COVID-19 a day over the last week, and 31 deaths, up from 4,600 new cases and 26 deaths a week earlier.

But the hospitalization numbers concern her the most, and the share of hospitalized patients who need critical care is growing fastest.

In the last week, the number of people in hospital with COVID-19 rose four per cent to an average of 2,400 people a day, she said. At the same time, the number of people in ICU grew by 18 per cent to 780 people.

That means about one in every three patients hospitalized with COVID-19 now need critical care. In mid-January, when hospitalizations during the second wave of the pandemic peaked at 4,775, about one-fifth, or 880 people, were in the ICU.

Several jurisdictions are reporting that a majority of patients in hospital are under age 60, and physicians across the country are increasingly taking to social media to drive home this is not a virus that attacks just the weak or the old.

"Younger people think they are invincible," tweeted Dr. Kevin McLeod, an internal medicine specialist in Vancouver. "That feeling quickly fades when we are blasting you with 100% oxygen ... and all you really hear is a team debating pros and cons of intubating you and hooking you up to a ventilator."

There is increasing pressure on provinces to get vaccines to younger, essential workers faster, in industries where it's known the virus is spreading and workers can't stay home.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke with Ontario Premier Doug Ford Tuesday. A summary of the conversation provided by the Prime Minister's Office said they both agreed that it is important to keep working together on the vaccine rollout.

It also said they "both supported maintaining a Team Canada approach to protect the health and safety of Canadians."

Public sniping between Ontario and Ottawa over the vaccine supply and delivery grew in recent days with Ford blaming slow delivery of vaccines for uneven distribution, and federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu taking to Twitter to point out how many doses Canada had delivered versus how many provinces had injected.

Hajdu said Tuesday she was only offering up facts. About 6.7 million jabs have been administered, out of more than 10 million doses distributed. But as much as 15 per cent of those doses were received by provinces only in the last few days.

Canada was nearing the six million mark for the number of people vaccinated with at least one dose Tuesday afternoon.

Tam said vaccines are helping but warned they aren't a panacea and, with the variants exploding, there is still a need to limit interactions and to wear masks.

There are more than 15,000 confirmed cases of variants in Canada, up from 9,000 on March 30. Positive cases are now screened for a variant but it then takes several days to identify which one it is.

Ontario has confirmed about 2,300 variant cases but has more than 27,000 cases screened and awaiting full sequencing.

More than 90 per cent of confirmed variant cases are the B.1.1.7, first identified in the United Kingdom. But the P. 1 variant first identified in Brazil is also charging ahead quickly, particularly in British Columbia where 737 of the 857 P. 1 cases in Canada have been confirmed.

Tam said chief public health officers from federal and provincial governments met over the weekend to discuss the P. 1 spread, and are working to double efforts to manage known P. 1 cases.

Tam pushed again against Canadians travelling anywhere at the moment, be it internationally or within the country. Interprovincial travel is believed to have spread the P. 1 variant between British Columbia and Alberta in recent weeks.

Lab studies suggest vaccines are less effective against this variant, she said.

Just days after invoking a provincewide "emergency brake," Ford is pondering even more restrictions in Ontario, pushed by local public health doctors in Ottawa and the Greater Toronto Area.

The province has not closed schools, but local public health chiefs in Toronto, Peel and Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph ordered all schools closed until at least April 19.

Ontario reported more than 3,000 new cases for the fifth time in six days Tuesday, and provincial public health chief Dr. David Williams warned that number could rise dramatically following the Easter long weekend, when testing numbers were down and gatherings likely.

Quebec reported more than 1,000 cases for the seventh straight day Tuesday.

Citing a need to adapt to the more contagious variants, Quebec Premier Francois Legault announced more restrictions.

Beginning Thursday, gyms in the province's red zones, including Montreal and its suburbs, will close, and places of worship will have to limit attendance to 25 people.

As of next Monday, students in the last three years of high school will attend class on alternate days, and extracurricular activities will be cancelled.

In Alberta, where about 43 per cent of the 10,000 active cases are variants, Premier Jason Kenney announced a shutdown of indoor dining in restaurants and reduced retail shopping capacity.

He said the province, averaging about 1,000 new infections a day, is on track to have 2,000 daily cases and 1,000 people in hospital with COVID-19 by the end of April.

B.C. provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said she expected the U.K. variant to get a "competitive advantage" in the province and that variants of concern would make up about 60 per cent of infections by next month.

B.C. reached a new infection peak over the long weekend at 1,077 cases and reported 1,068 on Tuesday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 6, 2021.
Last month, I looked for something mellow with which to ring in spring. Having enjoyed my late-winter decision to find lighter beers (with a little less body than the traditional stouts) and encountering good luck with ales lately, I decided to stay on that track for another week.

With St. Paddys Day just behind us, I looked in a similar corner of the world for my latest beer. I selected a traditional Scottish brewery, Belhaven Brewery, as the winner of this weeks taste test. Founded in 1719, Belhaven is Scotlands oldest working brewery. Located about 20 miles east of Edinburgh in the midst of rolling barley fields, the brewery prides itself on using only local water and barley in its brews.

The Scottish Ale is one of the oldest beers in its lineup and a bestseller around the globe. The simple bottle design is in keeping with the traditional theme of the brewery but still looks great on the shelf. The label features a coat of arms overlaid on a background styled to look like old-fashioned brickwork. The bright magenta neck label reads 300 Years of Beautiful Beers. The way I look at it, if a brewery has been pumping out beers for that long, it must be doing something right. I couldnt wait to get home and give this one a taste.

The initial pour was on par with my expectations for an ale. The beverage sat beautifully in the glass with a rich golden color an an impressive foamy head that held its shape for a good, long while. The aroma emanating from the glass was malty with some spicy undertones combined with a certain nuttiness, which according to the brew label comes from the combination of Scottish barley malts and Challenger and Goldings hops.

The first taste danced on my tongue, as the brew contains a good amount of carbonation. It had a full mouthfeel for an ale, which added another level to the experience. Rich in flavor, the brew had malt that hung around for a long minute followed by a nutty aftertaste with a smoother than average finish. The aftertaste stayed present for a few moments but wasnt biting since this brew is on the low side of the bitterness scale at 28 IBUs. The flavor stayed present and strong from the beginning of the session to the end, and overall the Scottish Ale was a very pleasant drinking experience.

This beer clocks in at 5.2% ABV and goes down extremely smoothly. It is easy to put down more than one during a sitting and is best enjoyed responsibly. For the perfect evening with the Scottish Ale, I recommend buying from a local distributor, finding a small group of friends and having a nice game of cards (or perhaps a video game session) paired with some barbeque, cheese and crackers.

If ales are your thing, you definitely dont want to pass on this one. It is most assuredly worth your while to hunt this one down and give it a go.
DANBURY  John Esposito IIIs passion for his city comes from his grandfather.

His namesake, John Esposito, was the longest-serving member of the Common Council.

I got my desire to serve the city from him, Esposito III said. It was a desire that many in my family share. There are a lot of Espositos in public service. It really is a labor of love in my family.

Now, the 36-year-old City Council member has announced hes running for mayor, the third Democrat to enter the race. He said he planned to file the paperwork later Wednesday or Thursday.

Esposito said he would take a bipartisan approach as mayor.

Ive got a lot to offer the city, said Esposito, who was born and raised in Danbury and has been on the City Council since 2015. Ive got great ideas. Im open-minded. I've got a record of reaching over to the other side and, even in some cases, voting my mind, where it just happened to turn out that I voted independently against my own caucus.

The race is shaping up to be one of the most competitive in recent years. While Republican Mayor Joe Cavo has yet to announce his candidacy, fellow City Council member and Democrat Roberto Alves, as well as Democrat Sedeaka Lawrence, are running.

Democrats are embracing the large field, which has driven a greater interest in other positions, such as on the school and zoning boards, said Andrea Gartner, chairwoman of the Democratic Town Committee.

The fact that we have people who are really interested in getting engaged in the municipal election like this draws attention to how important the local elections are, said Gartner, adding she expects the party to be stronger than ever at the end of the process.

The party will nominate a candidate in July. Other candidates have two weeks to collect signatures to petition for a primary, which would be held Sept. 1, she said.

She said there hasnt been a Democratic primary for Danbury mayor since the 2001 race that eventually propelled Republican Mark Boughton to the office he held until December.

Its good that we have more people coming up that want to run for mayor and help the city out and the Democratic Party, said Fred Visconti, legislative leader for the council.

Visconti is part of Espositos family of city leaders. Hes a cousin of John Esposito.

Another fellow City Council member, Republican Mike Esposito, is the candidates uncle. Dean Esposito, a former Democratic candidate for mayor who serves as the mayors chief of staff, is a distant cousin.

His grandfathers sister worked for City Hall and other distant relatives work for the city, including in the fire and police departments, Esposito said.

Paul Rotello, Democratic minority leader on City Council, said all the candidates are strong, although he is partial to Esposito.

I have some fondness for John, family fondness, but I think theyre all qualified, he said. Were excited that people are excited again to step up and help out their community.

Democrat Jimmetta Samaha, a former, longtime clerk for the Common Council, thought Esposito would make a good mayor from the start.

I was very impressed with how level-headed he is, his grasp on the issues, she said.

Gartner called Alves the front-runner, arguing the other candidates will need to catch up to him.

Hes putting the time and effort in to demonstrate he's quite unapologetically the Democratic candidate for mayor, she said. Hes set the bar high, his command of the issues, the outreach, most importantly the willingness to do the work.

The issues

Espositos chief goal is to improve the citys infrastructure. He described the roads as being in horrible condition and said he has received ongoing complaints from the Shelter Rock Road area, which he represents, about discolored water. He expects the pipes are deteriorating. The city has suffered from numerous water main breaks, too, he said.

That is my main focus in running for mayor, is infrastructure, he said.

To help the city recover from the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, he would improve partnerships between City Hall and local businesses or prospective business owners by providing information and workshops on how to start a company, he said.

Small business is the most important backbone of any economy, said Esposito, a plumber who works for Carmines Plumbing, Heating & Air Conditioning in Danbury.

Esposito decided as eighth-grader at Rogers Park Middle School that he wanted to become a plumber and attended Henry Abbott Technical High School, where he met his wife. They didnt date then, but reconnected after graduation.

She is a barber and Danbury native, too. Her father was born in Puerto Rico and later came to the city, while her mother was born and raised in Danbury.

They have two kids, a 5-year-old son, John IV, and a 4-year-old daughter, Daphne.

His son goes to St. Gregory the Great School, a Catholic school in Danbury, although Esposito plans to enroll his son in the public schools once the pandemic subsides.

Its really important to my wife and I that our son have in-school learning, Esposito said. He is in kindergarten. I dont think hed so so well sitting in front of a computer for a few hours.

He supports the plan to add classrooms to Ellsworth Avenue Elementary School and create a career academy within the Summit development. He expects additional schools will be needed in the future.

The two biggest problems with education are overcrowding and underfunding, he said. We need to deal with those two problems square on, and we need to deal with overcrowding first, which will help with the second problem of underfunding.

He said he has no intention to raise taxes, especially as residents and businesses struggle financially due to the coronavirus pandemic.

We cannot raise taxes to fund what the Board of Education wants us to do right now, Esposito said.

Hes open to exploring the proposed Danbury Prospect Charter School, which the Danbury Democratic delegation has opposed providing the required state funding. He said he hasnt been a fan of the idea either, but wants to hear constituents views.

That can provide some relief to the student population in our school systems, he said.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.  After a Midland Beach family, left without a home in the wake of a devastating fire last week, was denied an application to a New Dorp apartment, community leaders rallied to support the displaced residents and helped overturn the decision.

Michelle Rosario, her husband, Randolph, her 19-year-old daughter, Lanena, and 20-year-old son, Giovanni, were contacted after the blaze by the Red Cross with temporary housing that was set to expire on Tuesday.

The family applied to a residence at the Tysens Park Apartments, but credit devastated by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and a strict guarantor policy that required a co-signer to earn 40 times the monthly rent led to a declined application, Rosario told the Advance/SILive.com, despite the fact that she and her husband both have steady jobs.

Since the Advance/SILive.com reported on the familys plight yesterday, Michelle Rosario said she has been in contact with numerous borough politicians, including the offices of Councilman Steven Matteo (R-Mid-Island), Councilman Joe Borelli (R-South Shore) and Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island/South Brooklyn).

Matteo wrote a letter to Revona Properties, the company that manages the Tysens Park Apartments, seeking a waiver of the usual application criteria in order to consider the hardships the family is facing.

While I understand that your property management company has set criteria for prospective tenants, I ask that you please examine the feasibility of waiving the credit rating requisite with consideration for the hardship the family is currently facing, Matteo wrote. My constituent asserts that they meet all other requirements and are eager to move from the hotel room where they are currently staying into a new home.

Even the school Rosarios daughter attends, New Ventures Charter School, sent a letter imploring the company to reconsider its decision, said Rosario.

Michelle Rosario and Randolph Rosario. (Photo courtesy of Michelle Rosario)

And with all of that support, and all of that push, we were able to secure this apartment, Rosario said. Tysens changed their mind and did the right thing and gave us a home.

As Rosario awaited a response, the Red Cross offered to extend the familys stay at the Hampton Inn on South Avenue, and the Teddy Atlas Foundation said it would pay for an extra week, if needed.

However, Rosario said she now expects to finalize paperwork tomorrow and move into the new home immediately.

There is a strong sense of relief,' said Rosario. Im appreciative, Im humbled. The amount of support we got was outrageous  it was just so much at one time that I didnt even know how to handle the calls that were coming in.

People were so caring and so giving and wanting to help, she added. And, I thank everyone truly from the bottom of my heart.

However, the ordeal has cast a harsh light on families facing hardships, especially amid a pandemic that has ravaged the finances of many families.

Were all one disaster from being homeless, said Rosario. And people shouldnt have to go through this.

With homes and apartments often requiring strong credit scores, a practice that Rosario said has shut out Black and Latino communities at higher rates than white counterparts, landlords need to understand were struggling too,' she said.

People are barely making it paycheck to paycheck, and we need to work on being better, said Rosario. Were all going to suffer some type of credit loss, but we still need a home.

Amid debates over the establishment of new homeless shelters in the borough, Rosario said her familys struggles have made clear the need for these establishments.

Staten Island needs shelters because at any moment any of us could need a shelter in our community, she said.
A $52 billion question has lingered in the air far longer than the smoke from any smoldering joint: Will banks and credit unions deem the rewards outweigh the risks and burden of serving state-legal marijuana-related businesses?

Several hundred already do to varying degrees, but large, national entities including the major credit card companies dont. The ongoing tension between the 44 states that legalize cannabis sales in one form or another and the federal blanket condemnation of pot as a Schedule 1 narcotic (high potential for abuse) creates a full stop for the majority of banks and credit unions.

But the stakes are enormous and growing. The California Cannabis Industry Association pegs the current national marijuana market at $52 billion (of which California alone tallies $5.6 billion, rising to $7.2 billion by 2024.) Analysts at Secured Finance Network predict the industry will have a $77 billion impact on the economy by 2022. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, Democrat of Colorado, notes the legal cannabis industry supports 321,000 jobs across the country, with a job growth rate estimated at 250% by 2028.

As it is, financial institutions are dealing with the situation in vastly different ways. Most that offer cannabis-business services tend to underplay that fact to avoid possible reputational risk. Plenty of people still regard recreational pot use as unhealthy, immoral or both. While more than twice as many banks as credit unions are involved (515 versus 169 as of first quarter 2021), credit unions tend to be more open about it.
Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun, right, speaks during a COVID-19 countermeasure safety meeting at North Jeolla Provincial Office in Jeonju, April 7, with the office head Song Ha-jin, left, attending the meeting. Yonhap



Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said Wednesday the government will expand free coronavirus testing, with recent spikes in new cases spurring concerns of a fourth wave of infections.



The country reported 668 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, the most since Feb. 18, as sporadic cluster infections continued to increase across the country.



"We will expand free testing so that anyone can get a free coronavirus diagnostic test regardless of the social distancing stage or symptoms," Chung said during a government COVID-19 response meeting.



The nation offers free testing when a test-taker shows symptoms or the third-highest level in the five-tier social distancing scheme is reached.






Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 16:45:34|Editor: huaxia

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LAGOS, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Custodial centers across Nigeria have been put on a high alert following an attack on police headquarters and a custodial center in the southern state of Imo on Monday, Nigeria's vice president Yemi Osinbajo said Tuesday.

The security architecture of the country would be rejigged, Osinbajo said, assuring that the federal government would strengthen security at the custodial centers across the country.

Osinbajo was in Owerri Custodial Center of Imo state to inspect the facility to ascertain the extent of damage by gunmen who attacked the center.

Condemning the attack, the vice president assured that all those responsible would be uncovered and made to face "the full wrath of the law."

"Perpetrators of this act will definitely be brought to book. They must not go free. They are cowards and will be discovered and duly prosecuted," he said.

Osinbajo urged security agencies not to relent in the fight against banditry, irrespective of the challenges involved.

Unknown gunmen attacked the police command headquarters and Owerri Custodial Center in Imo state in the early hours of Monday, and forcefully released more than 1,800 inmates in custody, according to local police and the Nigerian Correctional Service. Enditem
People Driving along Oregon Route 18 in the autumn months or early December are treated to a unique view that is sure to brighten their day  a giant smiley face looking back at them from forest-covered hillside.

Located at roughly mile 25 on Oregon Route 18, between Willamina and Grand Ronde, the now famous smiley face of Oregon makes its appearance every fall, as the color of the trees that make up its body start to change color. It is about 300 feet in diameter, and consists of two different types of conifers, one that changes color in autumn, and one that remains all year round. It has become a popular landmark in Oregons rural Polk County, and should continue to put smiles on peoples faces for the next 30-50 years, until the trees are ready to be harvested.

The story of the Oregon smiley face dates back to 2011, when the Hampton Lumber company decided to create the popular design out of trees, during a reforestation operation. They used Douglas fir for the eyes and mouth of the smiley face, and larch for the body of the design. Unlike most conifers, larch loses its needles and turns yellow in autumn.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by euronews Living (@euronewsliving)

The idea for the smiley face started with David Hampton and our former timberland manager, Dennis Creel. When we harvested the site, we knew the area was highly visible to people travelling down Highway 18 so David and Dennis saw an opportunity to have a little fun, Hampton spokesperson Kristin told Western Journal. They used a rope to measure the circle out and the eyes and mouth were triangulated from that point.

Lets just say smiley face designs are not the most efficient reforestation methods out there. With planning and planting it took about a week to finish, the spokesperson added.

The Oregon smiley face may start to lose its edges over time, but experts at Hampton Lumber say it will remain very clear for at least another decade. Then, in 30 to 50 years, the trees will be harvested and turned to lumber at sawmills in Willamina and Tillamook. For now, though, the smiley face helps cheer up locals when they really need a reason to smile.

Its a very depressed area here, one local woman told KATU-TV. The jobs are gone. You drive along and see a smiley face, thats all that matters. Yeah, my day is going to get better now because I saw a smiley face. It kind of brightens up the community.

This cute smiley face is just one of the coolest designs created out of living trees over the years. Not too long ago we featured the worlds largest signature made of trees, and the Soviet-era Lenin trees in Siberia.
BeInCrypto presents our daily morning roundup of crypto news and market changes that you might have missed while you were asleep.

Bitcoin update

BTC has been moving downwards since getting rejected by the $59,500 resistance area on April 6.

The decrease has been gradual, but technical indicators are still bearish.

The MACD has crossed into negative territory and the RSI is at risk of falling below 50.

The next closest support levels are found at $56,500 and $55,300.

Altcoin movers

Altcoins have been on a roller coaster ride of price movements in the past 24 hours.

After an 80% gain over the past two days, XRP has jumped back into the fourth spot in terms of market cap. Its currently trading for $0.97 with a $1.5 billion lead over the #5-ranked Tether (USDT).

Bitcoin Gold (BTG) has been the biggest altcoin gainer in the top-100. Its trading at $106 after a 71% gain in the past 24 hours. BTG is up a grand total of 163% in the past week alone.

Although it was yesterdays top gainer, Stacks (STX) is down 30% in the past 24 hours. Its dropped back to the #67 position and is trading for $1.63.

In other crypto news

Arthur Hayes, co-founder and former CEO of the BitMEX exchange, has surrendered and will face charges relating to the failure to implement money laundering measures. A resident of Singapore, Hayes turned himself over to U.S. authorities. Following his surrender, he appeared in court in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Less than a week after its launch, the controversial Fei Protocol has already found a vulnerability in its code. The team was quick with a fix but it did not prevent the stablecoin from losing 20% off its peg.
Snapdocs, provider of the mortgage industrys leading digital closing solution, today announced that Weichert Financial Services has selected Snapdocs to create a single, scalable process with its settlement partners. Weichert Financial chose Snapdocs digital closing platform to streamline and standardize its process in order to close more loans, at lower costs, while delivering the simple, intuitive digital experience borrowers have come to expect.

Home buyers are increasingly looking for a simplified mortgage process that reduces the paperwork and speeds up the closing time. The typical real estate closing can have as many as 100 documents involved at various stages of the transaction.

Our goal was to create a hybrid loan package that could reduce the number of documents from 100 to around 20 at the time of closing, explained Eric Declercq, president of Weichert Financial Services. Using Snapdocs cutting-edge digital closing platform, we can now have customers sign various documents earlier in the process greatly reducing the stress of the final closing. The technology provides a better, more responsive experience for our customers and a streamlined process for the lenders.

As a result of COVID-19 restrictions, the pace of change in customer demand has accelerated, further amplifying the benefits of digital closings. Weichert was already working with Snapdocs to bring a digital closing environment to its customers when the pandemic hit. As a result, Weichert is well placed as a driver and early adopter of hybrid and fully digitized closings.

Weichert has always taken the lead on leveraging technology to produce a superior experience that we

refer to as the All Under One RoofSM Customer Experience. The move to a completely digital closing experience is well under way and will grow exponentially in 2021 and beyond, said Declercq. We are excited about working with Snapdocs on this ambitious effort.

Snapdocs powers millions of mortgage closings a year. Its digital closing platform will empower Weichert Financial Services and its settlement partners, especially the Weichert Title Group, to modernize, streamline and improve the mortgage closing process for every participant. By coordinating each party on a single platform, leveraging AI to automate manual tasks, and delivering a modern digital borrower experience, Weichert Financial Services will close more loans, at lower costs, while quickly and significantly growing its business and market share in a fast-growing sector.

The time is now for digital transformation in real estate and mortgage, said Aaron King, founder and CEO of Snapdocs. Weichert Financial Services has recognized the value of digital closings for some time, and that value has become especially apparent through the past year. Customers like Weichert are already seeing operational efficiencies and better experiences driving customer referrals through digital closing, which allows them to clearly differentiate against competitors. Were thrilled to partner with Weichert as they move toward a standardized digital closing process.

According to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the purchase of eMortgages by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac spiked significantly over the first six months of 2020. The FHFA reported that eMortgages comprised 4.25 percent of all single-family mortgage purchases made by the two agencies during the first half of the year, accounting for $38.8 billion in mortgages. That is a 66 percent increase from 2018.

All signs point to this demand continuing to rise as customers move beyond COVID to appreciate the benefits of speed and simplicity, and as more mortgage service providers follow Weicherts lead and offer hybrid and fully digital loans packages, said Declercq.

###

About Snapdocs

Founded in 2013, Snapdocs is the mortgage industrys leading digital closing platform. With its patented AI technology and connected platform, Snapdocs is on a mission to perfect mortgage closings for all. Powering millions of closings a year, Snapdocs is leading the charge to modernize, streamline, and improve the mortgage process for lenders, borrowers, and settlement. Snapdocs is the only solution with a proven track record of creating a single, scalable process for every closing. Every day, over 130,000 mortgage professionals rely on Snapdocs to automate manual work and digitize paper processes that plague the industry. Snapdocs is a rapidly growing San Francisco based real estate technology company backed by Silicon Valley venture capital funds, like Sequoia, F-Prime Capital, Y Combinator, Founders Fund, and SV Angel. To learn more, please visit https://snapdocs.com.

About the Weichert Family of Companies

Since 1969, Weichert has grown from a single real estate office into one of the nations leading providers of homeownership services by putting its customers first. A family of 18 full-service real estate-related companies, Weichert provides an integrated real estate, mortgage, insurance and title settlement solution  branded as All Under One Roof   to simplify the home purchase experience for buyers and sellers. Weichert leverages its customer website, http://www.weichert.com, one of the most visited real estate websites in the nation, to help families and individuals realize the dream of homeownership through quick and easy access to listing information and the services of its real estate professionals nationwide. Like other family-owned and -operated businesses, Weichert enjoys greater public trust according to several national surveys. For more information about Weichert Financial Services, or to learn about the real estate-related financial products and services it offers, visit http://www.weichertfinancialservices.com or call 800-829-2274.
Cebu Pacific, the Philippines' largest national flag carrier, welcomed the arrival of a new Airbus A321NEO aircraft on April 2. This latest delivery is the eighth out of CEBs 47 narrow-body orders from Airbus, in line with the carriers fleet expansion plans.

With a capacity of 236 seats, the A321NEO has 31 per cent more capacity that allows for more seats without compromising on cabin comfort. Its seats are ergonomically designed by world-renowned manufacturer Recaro, which provide more legroom between rows. All seats are also equipped with a USB port that enables passengers to charge their mobile devices inflight.

On top of this A321NEO, CEB is expecting delivery of seven more aircraft this year, a mix of Airbus and ATR fleet.

The Airbus A321NEO delivers 20 per cent fuel cost savings whilst offering significant environmental benefits with nearly 50 per cent reduction in carbon footprint compared to previous generation aircraft.

Pre-pandemic, we have already started embarking on our long-term vision and fleet strategy, which includes an orderly exit of older aircraft. We envision the total CEB fleet to be composed of new-generation aircraft in the next few years, said Mark Cezar, Cebu Pacific Deputy Chief Finance Officer.

CEBs newest aircraft is set to enter service on April 9, to serve various domestic routes the carrier flies direct to.

To date, the Cebu Pacific 74-strong fleet is comprised of eight A321NEO, 25 Airbus A320, seven Airbus A321CEO, five Airbus A320NEO, seven Airbus A330, six ATR 72-500, and 13 ATR 72-600 aircraft. Its fleet also has two ATR freighters on top of one A330 freighter. CEB boasts of one of the youngest fleets in the world, with an average fleet age of about 5.7 years. - TradeArabia News Service
English Lithuanian

Investment Committee of INVL Baltic Real Estate (hereinafter  the Company) acting on behalf of INVL Asset Management, the Management Company of INVL Baltic Real Estate (hereinafter- the Management Company), informs that during the upcoming Companys General Shareholders Meeting, to be held on 29 April 2021, it is proposed to the shareholders of the Company to allocate a dividend of EUR 0.12 per share for the year 2020, when voting for the profit (loss) distribution of INVL Baltic Real Estate for the year 2020 (the total amount for dividends allocation would amount to EUR 1 million).

The Company's Investment Committee also proposes the General Shareholders Meeting of the Company to approve the reduction of the authorized capital of the Company in order to cancel 5,088,586 units of ordinary registered own shares acquired by INVL Baltic Real Estate during the buy-back of shares process and to approve the formation of a supervisory board of the Company. In order to implement these changes, Investment Committee of the Company, acting on behalf of the Management Company decided to propose to the General Shareholders Meeting of the Company, to be held on 29 April 2021, to approve the amendments of the Articles of Association of the Company as well as to approve the new wording of the Articles of Association. The Articles of Association would be amended after approval of the Bank of Lithuania would be received.

Furthermore, on 29 April 2021, the General Meeting of Shareholders of the Company is proposed to approve the main terms and conditions under which the repurchase of the Company's own shares will be carried out.

Additional information:

The real estate investment company INVL Baltic Real Estate proposes paying dividends of EUR 1 million to shareholders for 2020, or EUR 0.12 per share. That and other decisions are proposed for adoption at a general meeting of shareholders of the company to held on 29 April 2021.

Both thanks to last years successful exits and successful property transformations, we have proven once again that we are able to create significant growth in the value of assets and a long-term return for our investors. The company has accumulated free cash which enables it to pay a dividend higher than the EUR 0.09 envisaged in its dividend policy, says Vytautas Baksinskas, a member of the Investment Committee of INVL Baltic Real Estate.

Dividends will be paid out within a month after the decision is adopted. Those persons will have a right to receive them who are shareholders of INVL Baltic Real Estate at the end of business day on 13 May this year. Based on the share price on 7 April 2021, the dividend yield amounts to 5%.

Also proposed for approval at the meeting are procedures for the acquisition of the companys own shares and the transfer of EUR 4.3 million from retained earnings to a reserve for the acquisition of own shares .

According to Vytautas Baksinskas, the right to buy-back the companys own shares will be used if the share price on the market is lower than the net asset value (NAV). That will give shareholders additional liquidity opportunities, and when INVL Baltic Real Estate acquires shares for less than the NAV, the value of the remaining shares should grow.

It is proposed that the maximum buy-back price per share be set at INVL Baltic Real Estates last published net asset value per share, and the minimum at EUR 1.45. On the maximum number of shares that may be acquired, it is proposed that the total own shares held by INVL Baltic Real Estate may not exceed one-tenth of the companys share capital.

Seeking to annul 5,088,586 ordinary registered own shares acquired by INVL Baltic Real Estate in share buy-back processes, a proposal has been submitted to reduce the companys share capital from EUR 19.1 million to EUR 11.7 million by annulling own shares which the company has acquired.

Also to be proposed for approval at the general meeting of shareholders is the formation of a supervisory board of INVL Baltic Real Estate, the proposed members of which are Raimondas Rajeckas, the CFO of Invalda INVL, Audrius Matikiunas, the head of INVL Asset Managements Legal and Product Management Team, and Egle Surpliene, a wealth manager at Geroves Valdymas with more than 25 years of experience in the Lithuanian financial market.

The members of the Supervisory Board will be able to take office when the Bank of Lithuania approves their candidacies.

INVL Baltic Real Estate had an audited consolidated net profit of EUR 5.42 million in 2020 , or about half the amount in 2019. The companys consolidated equity at the end of 2020 was EUR 28.87 million, or EUR 2.21 per share, and compared to the end of 2019 increased 12.2% (also considering dividend payments).

INVL Baltic Real Estate owns real estate in Vilnius and Riga: office buildings in the Old Town of the Lithuanian capital on Vilniaus Street and in Siaures Miestelis, and the Dommo Business Park manufacturing, warehouse and office complex beside the Riga bypass. The companys properties had occupancy of between 72% and 100% as year-end.

INVL Baltic Real Estates property holdings currently have a total area of 26 000 sq. m. and a value of EUR 24.13 million.

Since its launch as a collective investment undertaking (on 22 December 2016), INVL Baltic Real Estate has been one of the Baltic real estate funds open to retail investors with the highest stable returns. The fund operates as a closed-end investment company. Management of the company was assumed by INVL Asset Management, one of Lithuanias leading asset management firms. The company will operate as a closed-end investment company until 2046, with extension possible for a further 20 years.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-08 00:31:00|Editor: huaxia

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NICOSIA, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The government of Cyprus plans to fully reopen the country's economy in June after more than 14 months of on-and-off coronavirus lockdowns, President Nicos Anastasiades said here on Wednesday.

The reopening is conditional on the successful continuation of the vaccination program, he said during his visit to a vaccination center in the capital to mark World Health Day.

"I hope the vaccination program continues without hindrance so that, by the beginning of mid-May, the above-45 age group would be vaccinated," Anastasiades said. If so, "in June we will be in a position to open the economy completely."

Currently, people over 61 are invited to book an appointment to be vaccinated. The younger age groups are scheduled to receive the jab starting next week.

Cyprus uses three vaccines approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) -- those produced by Pfizer/BioNTech, AstraZeneca and Moderna.

Anastasiades said that the country's minister of health has been authorized to buy 50,000 doses of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine pending its approval by the EMA.

The reopening of the country's economy would include the revival of tourism, which contributes about one quarter to Cyprus's gross domestic product (GDP), which reduced by 5.1 percent to about 19 billion euros (22.6 billion U.S. dollars) in 2020 due to the pandemic lockdown.

The successful reopening of the tourism sector is highly dependent on the progress of vaccination in the United Kingdom, Cyprus's most important tourist market, and the lifting of the British government's travel restrictions after May 17, when the hotels across Cyprus would be fully operational again.

Cyprus already allows Israelis with a COVID-19 vaccination certificate to enter without any hindrance and is expected to do so for vaccinated visitors from other countries.

It has also moved Russia, its second largest tourist market, to the "red category" countries, from where unvaccinated travelers must present a negative coronavirus test and also take a PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test upon arrival. Enditem
String Theory at the Hunter, in partnership with Lee University and the Hunter Museum of American Art, will present the second installment of String Theory @ Home, a virtual performance for all to view. The event will premiere on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m., following a pre-concert Backstage Pass at 6 p.m. to visit with the artists.

The all-star ensemble returns with two of Schuberts iconic works for the second part of this concert. Violinist Jennifer Frautschi, violist Paul Neubauer, and cellist Edward Arron form a trio performing Schuberts String Trio in B-flat Major. Bassist Thomas Van Dyck and Artistic Director Gloria Chien join the trio to bring to life Schuberts much-loved Trout Quintet as part of the String Theory @ Home concert.

Ms. Frautschi, a two-time Grammy nominee and Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, has garnered worldwide acclaim as a musically adventurous violinist with a wide-ranging repertoire. According to the Chicago Tribune, Frautschi is molding a career with smart interpretations of both warhorses and rarities. Equally at home in the classic and contemporary repertoire, her recent seasons have featured innumerable performances and recordings of works ranging from Brahms and Schumann to Berg and Schoenberg.

Mr. Neubauers musicality and effortless playing led the New York Times to call him a master musician. Appointed principal violist of the New York Philharmonic at age 21, he has appeared as a soloist with over 100 orchestras. A two-time Grammy nominee, Mr. Neubauer has recorded on numerous labels including Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, RCA Red Seal, and Sony Classical. He is the artistic director of the Mostly Music series in New Jersey and is on the faculty of The Juilliard School and Mannes College.

Mr. Arron has garnered recognition worldwide for his elegant musicianship, impassioned performances, and creative programming. A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Mr. Arron made his New York recital debut in 2000 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Since that time, he has appeared in recital, as a soloist with major orchestras, and as a chamber musician throughout Asia, Europe, and North America.

Mr. Van Dyck, an avid chamber musician, joined the Boston Symphony Orchestras double bass section in 2013 and has played chamber music around the world. He is a recipient of the Maurice Schwarz Prize at Tanglewood and the Lorraine Hunt Lieberson Prize. He is a founding member of the Grammy-nominated chamber orchestra A Far Cry and a current member of East Coast Chamber Orchestra that tours under Frank Salomon Management. In addition to enjoying a diverse performing career, Mr. Van Dyck is on the faculty of the New England Conservatory.

Dr. Chien is the co-artistic director of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon, as well as the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, Vermont, along with her husband, Soovin Kim. For the last decade, she was the director of the Chamber Music Institute at Music@Menlo. Dr. Chien frequently appears with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and is a Steinway Artist. She also serves as an artist-in-residence at Lee University.

There will be no fee for the String Theory @ Home concert, and all are invited to view.

The performance will premiere online on the String Theory website, Facebook, and YouTube. It will also be rebroadcast on television at WTCI-TV Channel 45 on Sunday, April 25, at 4 p.m. and on radio WSMC 90.5 FM on Sunday, May 2, at 4 p.m.

String Theory was founded in 2009 by Chien to expose new audiences to chamber music, invigorate the local classical music scene, and cultivate a future generation of music lovers.

For more information about the performance or String Theory, visit stringtheorymusic.org/.
A Boaz man was killed in a crash early Tuesday morning.

Alabama State Troopers say the single-vehicle crash happened at approximately 5:35 a.m. on Alabama 68 near DeKalb County 192, about two miles west of Collinsville.

Ronald D. Parrish, 46, was killed when the Nissan Altima he was driving left the road, went airborne and hit a tree. He died at the scene.

Troopers continue to investigate.
When: Friday April 9, 2021 10-11:30AM PT/1:00 PM ET

Who: Esteemed Cultural / Academic Scholars and Tobacco Control Advocates

Why: The Culture of Manipulation: How the Tobacco Industry Uses Culture to Con Us

A common denominator in the rationale for these exemptions is the false claim that there is a compelling "cultural value" in these deadly and addictive products and they should be left on the market.

The African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council (AATCLC) is pleased to announce the presentation of it's latest program, The Culture of Manipulation: How Tobacco Profiteers Use Culture To Con Us. Join this informative and timely webinar as respected Middle Eastern and African American scholars deconstruct the common and nuanced history of the cultural targeting of their respective communities by new and old tobacco industries seeking corporate profits. Those entities who seek to entice, trap and hold members of the Black and Middle Eastern communities and young people of all communities in the grips of nicotine addiction. They are in fact exploiting the very necessary dialogues around racial Injustice and inequities that are rightfully front and center in today's national discourse.

The presenters will interrogate claims that restricting the sale of certain nicotine products, namely flavored tobacco products like menthol cigarettes and non-traditional flavors used in hookahs, will disenfranchise and even criminalize the people of certain cultural communities.

Dr. Steven Millner, Professor Emeritus, Department of African American Studies at San Jose State University, Doctor Wael Al-Delaimi,Professor & Associate Director of the Institute for Public Health at UC San Diego and Dr. Arnab Mukherjea, Assoc. Professor, Dept. of Health Sciences, Cal State East Bay will join AATCLC Co-Chairs Dr. Phillip Gardiner - (retired) Tobacco Related Disease Research Program, University of California Office of the President and Carol McGruder, legendary activist will be in conversation during this unprecedented event. The event will be held online via Zoom and live streamed on the AATCLC YouTube page.

The AATCLC has an ongoing and long-standing history of advocating for whole person health in the Black community by promoting life free from the shackles of nicotine addiction. We are extremely honoured to welcome this collection of highly respected scholars for this important and timely discussion that will shine a light on the cultural con game being run on elected officials and the general populace.

"Corporate co-optation of culture to harm the health of priority populations for the sake of financial benefit is a form of structural racism. This event will show how otherwise distinct communities can act in solidarity to counteract adverse organizational and political determinants of preventable disparities, in ultimate pursuit of health equity for all populations."

Arnab Mukherjea, Dr.P.H., M.P.H.

Associate Professor of Health Sciences (Public & Community Health)

Adjunct Faculty Member: Pre-Professional Health Academic Program (PHAP)

Department of Health Sciences

California State University, East Bay

"Tobacco control must evolve with the changing dynamics of industry tactics and this event will highlight examples of such tactics."

Wael Al-Delaimy, MD, PhD

Professor & Associate Director of the Institute for Public Health

University of California, San Diego

"Tobacco's connection to African Americans was established in the 1600s but continues to evolve into ever more deadly manifestations in this modern world. The modern 'traps' being set by that industry threaten to "vaporize" a new generation of this Nation's youth."

Steven Millner, PhD

Professor Emeritus, Department of African American Studies

San Jose State University

About The AATCLC

Formed in 2008, the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council (AATCLC) partners with community stakeholders, elected officials and public health agencies to inform the national direction of tobacco control policy, practices and priorities, as they affect the lives of Black-American and African immigrant populations. The AATCLC has been at the forefront in elevating the regulation of mentholated and other flavored tobacco products on the national tobacco control agenda.

Contact:

Tracy Brown

The AATCLC

888.881.6619 x105

[email protected]

www.savingblacklives.org

SOURCE The URSA Institute

Related Links

https://www.savingblacklives.org/


Forbes has released its annual list of billionaires with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos topping it for the fourth consecutive year.



The 57-year-old's worth increased to $177 billion, up to $64 billion from a year ago as a result of a spike in Amazon shares, the media company said on Tuesday, April 6.



Tesla CEO, Elon Musk was the biggest gainer as he rocketed to the second spot with a $151 billion fortune, a whopping $126.4 billion gain a year ago when he ranked No. 31 and was worth $24.6 billion.



This years billionaires are worth a combined $13.1 trillion, up from $8 trillion last year, Forbes said.



"The very, very rich got very, very richer," said Forbes' Chief Content Officer Randall Lane, in an interview with Reuters Video News.



This years list has 493 newcomers, including Whitney Wolfe Herd, chief executive of the dating app Bumble, which went public this year. Investor and business tycoon Warren Buffett fell out of the top five for the first time in over two decades, as tech executives dominate the Forbes rankings.



Bernard Arnault, chief executive of luxury goods firm LVMH, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg round out the top five of the world's richest billionaires.



See the top 10 billionaires below.



1. Jeff Bezos

NET WORTH: $177 BILLION

SOURCE OF WEALTH: AMAZON

RESIDENCE: SEATTLE



2. Elon Musk

NET WORTH: $151 BILLION

SOURCE OF WEALTH: TESLA, SPACEX

RESIDENCE: AUSTIN, TEXAS



3. Bernard Arnault

NET WORTH: $150 BILLION

SOURCE OF WEALTH: LUXURY GOODS

RESIDENCE: PARIS



4. Bill Gates

NET WORTH: $124 BILLION

SOURCE OF WEALTH: MICROSOFT

RESIDENCE: MEDINA, WASHINGTON



5. Mark Zuckerberg

NET WORTH: $97 BILLION

SOURCE OF WEALTH: FACEBOOK

RESIDENCE: PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA



6. Warren Buffett

NET WORTH: $96 BILLION

SOURCE OF WEALTH: BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY

RESIDENCE: OMAHA, NEBRASKA



7. Larry Ellison

NET WORTH: $93 BILLION

SOURCE OF WEALTH: SOFTWARE

RESIDENCE: LANAI, HAWAII



8. Larry Page

NET WORTH: $91.5 BILLION

SOURCE OF WEALTH: GOOGLE

RESIDENCE: PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA



9. Sergey Brin

NET WORTH: $89 BILLION

SOURCE OF WEALTH: GOOGLE

RESIDENCE: LOS ALTOS, CALIFORNIA



10. Mukesh Ambani

NET WORTH: $84.5 BILLION

SOURCE OF WEALTH: DIVERSIFIED

RESIDENCE: MUMBAI, INDIA





















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Tita-Reid is the Global Chief Marketing Officer for Logitech, where her responsibilities include worldwide marketing, brand equity, creative, branded and DTC ecommerce sites, and marketing transformation. Tita-Reid was inspired to join the technology industry in order to directly contribute to the meaningful advances the industry can make in improving lives.

Prior to joining Logitech in 2020, Tita-Reid was Global Chief Marketing Officer and Member of the Executive Board at Hero AG, where she built the company's first truly global innovation pipeline, removing silos to foster cooperation across 11 global and regional food brands, while leading significant growth across key markets. Earlier, Tita-Reid held diverse general management, marketing and product development roles with some of the world's largest pharmaceutical, health care and consumer product companies, including Bayer, Merck and Procter & Gamble. As SVP at the GlobalHue Advertising Agency in New York, Tita-Reid delivered the largest communication effort for African Americans in US government history, working on a cross-cultural national team for the 2010 Census. Throughout her career, Tita-Reid has developed groundbreaking initiatives, including the award-winning My Black is Beautiful platform and community.

"Najoh Tita-Reid is a visionary global leader, known for fostering innovation and growth across multibillion-dollar consumer brands," said Michael Sanchez, CEO of CafeMedia. "Najoh embodies our company values: she is entrepreneurial, creative and focused on excellence. She shares our foundational belief that providing creators with the tools they need to build successful businesses will lead to a richer, more vibrant and diverse internet -- and global community."

"I am thrilled to be joining the Board of a company that plays such a direct role sustaining thousands of small businesses, especially in a moment when those businesses are facing critical challenges," said Tita-Reid. "CafeMedia gives creators everywhere the technology and tools they need to grow and fulfill their potential. I look forward to helping them continue their mission in this next phase of the internet."

About CafeMedia

CafeMedia is the exclusive network for the world's best independent publishers, providing the technology and services to help them grow their businesses and maximize success. Serving over 3,000 premium publishers through its AdThrive and CafeMedia brands, the company manages all digital advertising sales and technology, empowering creators to make a living doing what they love  producing great content. The company blends the best of both worlds: exceptional customer service and industry-leading monetization.

The publishers represented by the company reach 167 million monthly unique visitors. Ranking as the 11th largest digital entity and as #1 in Food, Family, Home and Lifestyle, CafeMedia provides precision advertising and data solutions that connect brands to these deeply engaged audiences.

For more information, please visit www.cafemedia.com or follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter .

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Former prime minister wants Canadas population to grow to 100 million Brian Mulroney champions an initiative to build a prosperous future for Canada through immigration.

Former prime minister wants Canadas population to grow to 100 million Brian Mulroney champions an initiative to build a prosperous future for Canada through immigration.

Former prime minister wants Canadas population to grow to 100 million Brian Mulroney champions an initiative to build a prosperous future for Canada through immigration. Shelby Thevenot Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif

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Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney has a message for Canadians, we need more people a lot more.

Mulroney, who is remembered for tripling immigration over his term as prime minister, called for Canada to grow its population to 100 million by 2100. Last week, he spoke at a forum hosted by the Globe and Mail and Century Initiative, a think tank planning for Canadas future prosperity.

The former prime minister floated ideas that were already in Century Initiatives agenda, to accelerate Canadas population growth. As it is, Canadas birth rate is not enough to replenish the population on its own. Without immigration, this low birth rate coupled with an aging workforce would put financial pressure on the working-age population. The effects would be felt this decade as 9 million baby boomers reach retirement age.

To counteract these demographic challenges, Canada has turned to high levels of immigration. In 2019, immigration was responsible for more than 80 per cent of Canadas population growth. This year Canada set out to welcome 1.2 million immigrants between 2021 and 2023. However, Century Initiative says more needs to be done.

This business-as-usual approach to population growth will not create the economically vibrant, socially generous future Canadians want and expect, the Century Initiative report says.

Find Out if Youre Eligible for Canadian Immigration

Why 100 million?

Century Initiative paints a picture of the world in 2100. The global population has grown to 11.2 billion, driven by gains in Africa and Asia. The U.S. is among the top 10 fastest-growing countries with an estimated population of 450 million.

In this projected future, Canadas population is 49.7 million, the 48th most populous country in the world, down 10 spots from what it is now at number 38. The fertility rate is still nowhere near the replacement level of 2.1 babies per woman, and immigration rates have not changed. This Canada is an old population, and economic growth falls to half of what it has been over the past 50 years.

The alternative, a Canada with a population of 100 million people. It is the 27th largest population in the world, and the economy is growing a full percentage point faster at 2.6 per cent annual GDP growth.

Canada would have a younger population, which would mean a larger labour pool and taxpayer base. When there is a larger taxpayer base, there is more taxpayer money available to go to social programs and infrastructure.

Employers will have a large domestic market of talent to drive innovation. Businesses will have improved access to capital and international markets.

Century Initiative also predicts that more densely populated cities would allow for more access to environmentally-friendly housing and transportation infrastructure. The cultural sector would be vibrant and commercially successful. Also, a Canada of 100 million people would allow the country to remain a powerful global influence.

500,000 new immigrants in 2026

Century Initiative suggests the target of 100 million Canadians by 2100 is neither radical nor unachievable. Immigration targets are nearly where they need to be, at 1 per cent of the population. By 2026, Century Initiative says Canada should pin the annual immigration target to 1.25 per cent of its population per year. This could add up to 500,000 new immigrants in 2026.

Canada is currently set to welcome 401,000 new immigrants in 2021, and up to 421,000 in 2023. In addition, Century Initiative calls for 450,000 in 2024, and 475,000 in 2025.

The next step is a white paper, Mulroney says

At last weeks forum, Mulroney called for a new national policy that would commit to tripling Canadas population by the end of the century, the Globe reported. Mulroney proposed starting momentum with a white paper to bring the idea into a serious political discussion. In Canadian legislature, a white paper is a proposal that may change policy in a major way, if it gets public and government approval.

One of the most important documents in Canadian immigration history was the white paper of 1966, which paved the way for a points-based approach to admitting new immigrants. Before, Canada assessed immigrants on a tiered system, where immigrants from commonwealth countries and the U.S. were given priority. It came at a time where attitudes towards civil rights were shifting, and Canada wanted to move away from such a discriminatory immigration policy. The ideas presented in the white paper went into effect a year later. To this day, Canada maintains a points-system approach to immigration through its economic-class programs. The Express Entry system is among the prominent examples of this.

Public opinion is a major factor in the approval or disapproval of policy changes presented in a white paper. If the idea does go forward, a white paper on population growth would open up debate on topics such as the merits of immigration in Canada, how Canada can plan for higher immigration, and how Canada can strengthen an immigration system already regarded as one of the most exemplary in the world.

Find Out if Youre Eligible for Canadian Immigration

 CIC News All Rights Reserved. Visit CanadaVisa.com to discover your Canadian immigration options.
Efforts to boost COVID-19 vaccine access in disproportionately impacted Massachusetts communities recently received more than $60 million from the federal government, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced this week.

Part of $3 billion the CDC awarded to 64 jurisdictions to bolster broad distribution and access, the funding came from President Joe Bidens $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and unspent funds from the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act signed by then-President Donald Trump in late December, the agency said in a news release.

The $62,490,285 funds awarded to Massachusetts are geared toward health equity and improved access in underserved communities. The pandemic has disproportionately impacted communities of color, where local, state and federal officials have been working to address vaccine hesitancy.

We are doing everything we can to expand access to vaccinations, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky said in a statement. Millions of Americans are getting vaccinated every day, but we need to ensure that we are reaching those in the communities hit hardest by this pandemic. This investment will support state and local health departments and community-based organizations as they work on the frontlines to increase vaccine access, acceptance, and uptake.

More than half of the money will bolster local health departments, community-based organizations and community health centers, the CDC said. Three-quarters of the total funding must target specific programs and initiatives boosting access and acceptance among racial and ethnic minorities.

Funds could be used to identify and train trusted members of the community to conduct door-to-door outreach to raise awareness about COVID-19 vaccines and help individuals sign up for appointments, the agency said. Funds may also be used to support hiring community health workers who perform culturally-competent bilingual health outreach so they can provide people who are receiving care with the information they need to get a free vaccination.

The federal government has ramped up vaccination nationwide, with Biden on Tuesday pressing all states to make all adults eligible for the vaccine by April 19. As of Monday, more than 40% of all adults have received at least one shot of the available vaccines. Nearly one in four adults are fully vaccinated and three-quarters of all seniors have received at least one shot.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services launched the COVID-19 Community Corps, a nationwide grassroots network of community leaders aiming to encourage people to roll up their sleeves and get vaccinated. Corps members will receive the latest scientific and medical updates, and will use social media, infographics and factsheets to educate community members and help them sign up for a vaccination appointment.

The Community Corps launched on April 1 with about 275 members; more than 3,000 had signed up by just a day later, according to HHS.

The HHS and CDC are planning to award more than $500 million combined to bolster vaccination education in minority or underserved communities. Community health centers nationwide will receive about $6 billion from HHS to expand vaccinations, testing and treatment for vulnerable populations.

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A natural brilliant blue coloring has been discovered by an international team of researchers including chemists at the University of California, Davis. The new cyan blue, obtained from red cabbage, could be an alternative to synthetic blue food colorings such as the widely used FD&C Blue No. 1. The work is published April 7 in Science Advances.

"Blue colors are really quite rare in nature - a lot of them are really reds and purples," said Pamela Denish, a graduate student working with Professor Justin Siegel at the UC Davis Department of Chemistry and Innovation Institute for Food and Health.

Having the right blue color is also important for mixing other colors, such as green. If the blue isn't right, it will produce muddy, brown colors when mixed, Siegel said.

Red cabbage extracts are widely used as a source of natural food colorings, especially reds and purples. These dyes are called anthocyanins. For about a decade, a team led by scientists at the Mars Advanced Research Institute and Mars Wrigley Science and Technology, in collaboration with the UC Davis Innovation Institute for Food and Health, The Ohio State University, Nagoya University, Japan, the University of Avignon, France and SISSA University, Italy have been working on isolating a blue anthocyanin from red cabbage. But the natural blue coloring is present only in tiny amounts.

Enzymes to convert colors

Denish, graduate students Kathryn Guggenheim and Mary Riley, and Siegel figured out a way to convert other anthocyanins in cabbage into the blue color compound. They screened public libraries of millions of enzymes for candidates that might do the job and tested a small number in the lab. Based on those results, they used computational methods to search a huge number of potential protein sequences - 10 to the power of 20, more than the number of stars in the universe - to design an enzyme that would accomplish the conversion with high efficiency.

"We used these tools to search the universe for the enzyme we're interested in," Siegel said.

With this enzyme, they were able to convert the anthocyanin blue from a tiny fraction of red cabbage extract into a primary product, allowing the institute researchers and other collaborators to fully characterize the new blue coloring.

Siegel and Denish have founded a startup company, PeakB, to develop the technology for commercial applications. Enzymatic conversions are very widely used in food production, for example in making cheese, Siegel said.

###

Additional authors on the paper are: Julie-Anne Fenger, Micheal Moloney, Olivier Dangles, University of Avignon, France; Randall Powers, Julia Li and Thomas Collins, Mars Wrigley, Hackettstown, New Jersey; Gregory Sigurdson, Neda Ahmadiani and Monica Giusti, The University of Ohio, Columbus; Luca Grisanti, Sara Laporte, Stefano Baroni, Alessandra Magistrato, Mariami Rusishvili and Kumi Yoshida, Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA), Trieste, Italy; Tadao Kondo, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan; John Didzbalis, Mars Advanced Research Institute, Hackettstown; and Rebecca Robbins, Mars Wrigley Global Innovation Center, Chicago. The work was supported by Mars, Inc., with additional support from the UC Davis Innovation Institute for Food and Health, the NSF and NIH.
RIDGEFIELD  A local man has been accused of participating in a years-long scheme to smuggle cosmetics in Iran while he served as president of a New York company, according to federal prosecutors.

Michael Rose, 50, of Ridgefield, was charged by an indictment Tuesday with conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, conspiring to launder money and conspiring to commit bank fraud. If convicted, the first and second offenses each carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, and the third carries a maximum 30-year term.

Rose was arrested Tuesday by the FBI and the Office of Export Enforcement.

The 13-page indictment, unsealed Tuesday, alleges that Rose was involved in a scheme that spanned years to violate government sanctions on Iran, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said.

Todays charges underscore that those who violate our sanctions on Iran will be investigated and prosecuted, he said.

FBI Assistant Director William F. Sweeney Jr. said Rose intentionally disguised where his products were ultimately going, and allegedly lied about the prices of the products to limit his customs liability.

Its a federal crime to violate sanctions the United States put in place to protect our national interests from Iran and other designated nation states, Sweeney said. Mr. Rose may have thought the rules didnt apply to him, but, if he did, todays action demonstrates otherwise.

Rose is the president of a Long Island-based cosmetics manufacturer and supplier. During his role as president, officials said Rose managed the companys operations and international sales.

From 2015 through 2018, Rose engaged in a conspiracy to evade U.S. actions on Iran, prosecutors said. Federal prosecutors said Rose exported more than $350,000 worth of cosmetics from the United States to an importer in Iran.

Sometime in June 2015, Rose signed a contract with the importer that indicated the importer would be the cosmetics companys exclusive distributor of its products in Iran, the indictment said. The importer then used front companies based outside Iran to make payments to the company and arrange for the shipment of goods to Iran through the United Arab Emirates, according to the indictment.

Authorities said Rose also filed false and misleading information on Department of Commerce Shippers Export Declaration forms in connection with the illegal shipments.
(JTA)  Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sat down for a public interview with a top New York City Jewish group, ending what some had considered a snub of Jewish leadership since the progressive New York Democrats election in 2019.

In her April 1 talk with Michael Miller, head of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, Ocasio-Cortez acknowledged that she hadnt engaged with national and citywide Jewish groups, saying I was really focused on our backyard.

But she did say she worked on projects with local Jewish groups, including community centers in her Bronx and Queens district, as well as J Street, the liberal Mideast policy group.

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Discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the lawmaker said we value the safety and the human rights of Israelis, we value the safety and human rights of Palestinians in that process, and suggested the settlements are an obstacle to the two-state solution.

Ocasio-Cortez also said she objected to the detention of minors. She has praised Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., for legislation that would withhold funding from Israel over its detention of Palestinian children.

Millers group and the New York Board of Rabbis, representing the pro-Israel mainstream, had complained that Ocasio-Cortez had not met with them after her surprise victory. Concern intensified after she pulled out of an Americans for Peace Now memorial for slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin after saying she consulted with far-left Jewish groups.

We still want to continue to engage, Miller told Jewish Insider after last weeks conversation. From my perspective, this was an opening.

The video is available here.
University of San Francisco officials are investigating after a noose was found hanging off the balcony of a student dormitory last month.

The noose, a historical symbol of Americas racist history of lynchings of Black people, was found hanging off the fourth-floor balcony of the universitys Loyola Village housing complex March 30, USF Black Student Union President Brianna Johnson wrote in an open letter published by the San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper.

This is a violent and dangerous act that students were not made aware of until the morning of the following day, Johnson wrote. A picture attached to the letter shows a rope with one end wrapped several times around the balconys railing, and the other end looped into the shape of a noose.

A representative from the Black Student Union could not be reached for comment Wednesday. A USF spokesperson told The Chronicle on Wednesday that a student admitted to placing the noose on the balcony when interviewed by the universitys public safety officers.

Johnsons letter included four demands to the university, including that USF name the student who made the noose, expel the student from the university, communicate instances of hate crimes through a university-wide emergency notification system and proactively facilitate wellness checks for students who might have been emotionally affected by the incident.

If the university does not release the name of the student responsible for the noose, Johnson said other students would take matters into their own hands and release the name themselves.

In a response published online, USF President Rev. Paul J. Fitzgerald and Interim Provost Tyrone H. Cannon said they understand the urgency of the Black Student Unions demands.

We understand that there is a sense of anxiety and fear in our community, Fitzgerald and Cannon wrote. Many people feel that if we release the name of the student, then they would be better protected.

But university officials declined to release the students name, citing an active investigation and privacy protections. Fitzgerald and Cannon said they would take immediate action on the BSUs demand regarding the notification system, and that the university is reviewing current communication practices and protocols related to our response to bias incidents and harmful incidents.

We understand that we need to continue our work to earn your trust and confidence, the universitys response said. We are hopeful that the work ahead promotes healing and a clear path forward for us all.

Michael Williams is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: michael.williams@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @michaeldamianw
(Alliance News) - The European Medicines Agency will hold a press conference on its findings over possible links between AstraZeneca PLC's coronavirus vaccine and blood clots at 1500 BST on Wednesday, the Amsterdam-based regulator said.

"EMA is holding a virtual press briefing on the conclusion of the evaluation of a safety signal with Vaxzevria (formerly Covid-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca) relating to cases of thromboembolic events by EMA's safety committee," the watchdog said in a statement.

AstraZeneca shares were down 0.7% at 7,130.52 pence in London on Wednesday

source: AFP

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
How to host a virtual networking night for local bands, artists

As the pandemic persists, another challenge for the music industry is the inability to network and build new relationships. Virtual conference platforms could change that.

Guest post by Seth Resler of Jacobs Media Strategies

As we enter year two of the COVID-19 pandemic, I find that one of the things I am missing most is meeting new people. While I have done a decent job of keeping up with previously established relationships through this period, I have not found many great ways to build new ones.

Thats why I was so excited when we discovered the Remo virtual conference platform that we used to host our VIP Tour of CES earlier this year. This is one of the few platforms I have seen that facilitates networking. Most of the virtual conference I have participated in have been little more than a webinar with a text chat window as the interactive portion of the event. Remo, on the other hand, simulates the experience of sitting at a table full of strangers in a hotel ballroom, encouraging you to chit-chat with strangers.

The Remo platform offers two modes: Conversation Mode, in which attendees are in Zoom-like conversations at their table and can switch to another table at any time, and Presentation Mode, in which everybody at the event watches the stage with their cameras and mics off like a traditional webinar. Ive hosted several events on Remo, and the feedback is always the same: People want to spend more time in Conversation Mode and less in Presentation Mode, because while weve all overloaded on webinars during the past year, weve done very little networking.

Radio stations could use this platform to host any number of events, from virtual acoustic cafes to morning show after parties. Ill illustrate how with an example: a networking night for local bands.

Heres how you set it up:

1. Set up an event in Remo.

Register for an account. Remo offers a free trial or you can subscribe to a plan depending on how many people you think will attend.

Setting up an event is easy: Just give it a name, a date, a time, and set it to private (since well be using a third-party registration form). There are more options, but you can go back and fill those in later.

For our example, lets set up an event called WKRPs Cincinnati Musician Networking Night.

Heres an example of what the Remo virtual ballroom can look like.

2. Set up a registration form on your website.

If you want to make the event free, you can use Remos built-in registration functions. However, if you want to charge for admission to your event, you will need to use a third-party application and integrate it with Remo. I recommend using third-party software to handle registration even if you are keeping the event free because it will give you more flexibility. Two form-building applications I recommend are Formstack and Gravity Forms, both of which can be integrated with Remo using Zapier (see next step) and you can use to collect payments if you want.

For our example, lets use one of the programs to build a registration form. In this form, ask for the following required information:

First Name

Last Name

Email Address

Lets also include optional fields for the following information:

Instrument You Play

Band Name

Link to Song Video on YouTube

Title of Song in Video

Permission to Show the Video (run this one by your legal team)

With these fields, were encouraging attendees to send a video of themselves performing a song. Were going to select the best of these videos and assemble them into a short collection to show at the event.

You will need to set a limit on the number of people who can register for the event. If youre charging to admission, everybody who purchases a ticket should be able to attend, so set the registration limit on the form equal to the maximum number of attendees that your Remo subscription allows. However, if your event is free, I recommend capping registration at twice the number of maximum attendees, assuming that half the people wont show up.

3. Pass the data with Zapier.

We need to take the email address of each registrant and pass them to Remo. Essentially, youre putting these people on the guestlist. While you could do this manually, I recommend automating the process using Zapier. Zapier is an application that enables two programs to talk to each other.

In this case, were going to set up a zap in Zapier that says, Every time somebody fills out the registration form, send their email address to Remo. Here are instructions for doing so with Formstack, and instructions for doing so with Gravity Forms.

4. Add the email addresses to your email database.

Use these events to build your email database. Every person who registers should also be added to your email list. Both Formstack and Gravity Forms integrate with major email service providers, such as Mailchimp, out of the box. If your form builder doesnt, you may be able to use Zapier for this as well.

5. Promote your event.

Use all of the usual channels: Your radio stations airwaves, website, email list, social media accounts, mobile app, etc.

6. Edit together short video presentations.

To get ready for the big event, were going to splice together several of the song videos that were submitted by the registrants. Pick the best, grab the videos off of YouTube using an app like ClipGrab or ByClick Downloader. Stitch these videos together  you may decide to use pieces of each song instead of the full songs  using a video editing program such as iMovie. Add chyrons to display the song titles and artist names.

I recommend creating two compilation videos, each no more than 15 minutes in length. Well show these in Presentation Mode at the event to showcase various local musicians. Youll need to upload these video to YouTube to launch them from within Remo, but when you do so, keep them unlisted.

7. Configure the rest of Remos settings and practice hosting your event.

Before the event, go in and configure the rest of the settings in Remo: choose the floorplan, create an agenda, set up announcements, etc. You can also record a short greeting video that is shown to attendees when they first enter your event.

While Remos platform is fairly intuitive, I recommend creating a practice event or two to familiarize yourself with the software before your main event. Learn how to launch the videos you created while in Presentation Mode.

8. Send out email reminders to your registrants.

While Remo does allow you to send automatic emails to your registrants, the ability to customize them is limited, so I prefer to write and send the emails manually.

9. Host your event.

On the night of your event, have fun! Because youve created your video presentations in advance, the pressure is off. All you have to do is mix and mingle, and perhaps introduce the videos live from the virtual stage. But most of the hard work is done, so relax and enjoy yourself.

Bonus: Sell sponsorships.

Remos platform enables you to create virtual sponsorship booths, so once youve got a couple of events under your belt, your sales team can go sell sponsorships to future events.

The first time you put together a virtual event like this, it can feel a little overwhelming. I certainly felt that way when we produced our CES Tour. But once you get the hang of it, its really quite easy. A radio station could easily host a virtual networking night for local musicians every month.

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Ofsted has announced plans for a review into safeguarding policies and practices at state and independent schools following concerns about widespread sexual abuse.

The review - which should be completed by the end of May - will establish what current safeguarding guidance is place in schools and colleges and whether it is sufficient to allow them to 'respond effectively' to allegations.

It will also examine whether institutions need extra support in teaching students about sex and relationships, and whether current inspection regimes are 'robust enough' around the issue of sexual abuse.

The Department for Education had last week ordered the watchdog to launch the probe to understand 'the extent and the severity of the issue'.

It comes after more than 10,000 reports were posted on the Everyone's Invited website, where students can anonymously share their experiences of misogyny, harassment, abuse and assault.

Ofsted has announced plans for a review into safeguarding policies and practices at state and independent schools following concerns about widespread sexual abuse. Pictured: James Allen's Girls School in Dulwich which has been hit by the scandal

Pupils staged a protest against rape culture at Highgate School in London on March 25. The school, has been named in allegations among others including Eton and Dulwich College

The website has been central to allegations that a 'rape culture' exists in some of Britain's leading private schools.

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has condemned the alleged assaults as 'shocking' and suggested any schools implicated could face government measures.

Chief inspector Amanda Spielman said: 'Like so many others, I have been deeply troubled by the allegations of sexual abuse posted on the 'Everyone's Invited' website.

'Many of the testimonies reveal that girls have not felt able to report incidents of sexual abuse to their schools.

More than 11,000 testimonies have now been uploaded to the Everyone's Invited website

'We hope that by listening to young people's experiences first-hand, this review will provide much needed insight into what these barriers are and how they can be overcome.'

Accusations of sexual assault have so far named top public schools including Eton College, Hampton and Charterhouse, with both girls and boys among the alleged victims.

Last week, shocked head teachers of girls' private schools said they were talking to current and former students over sex allegations at neighbouring schools.

The Girls' Schools Association (GSA), which represents more than 100 top British girls' private schools, said that in some cases they are referring incidents to the police.

GSA schools include James Allen's Girls' School (JAGS) - attended by some of the girls making accusations about Dulwich College boys.

Last Monday, GSA chief executive Donna Stevens released a statement saying the 'deeply troubling' allegations 'must not be ignored'.

She said: 'Our schools are taking this issue seriously and talking with current and former students as well as parents to bring about positive change.'

A sign reading 'Educate Your Sons' is attached to a gate outside James Allen's School. The school was protesting rape culture at nearby Dulwich College Boys School

The Department for Education had last week ordered the watchdog to launch the probe to understand 'the extent and the severity of the issue'. Pictured: Education Secretary Gavin Williamson

Her words came as a former pupil at JAGS revealed herself to be the co-author of a letter making allegations against Dulwich College pupils.

But some schools have been accused of trivialising sexual violence by boys, with official figures showing the number of pupils suspended for it has almost halved in a decade.

There were 1,866 suspensions for sexual misconduct last year  a 44 per cent decrease on the 3,350 of ten years ago. Exclusions also fell.

Jane Lunnon, the new head of the 20,000-a-year Alleyn's School in Dulwich, south-east London, suggested the solution should see young men become 'part of the conversation'.

'A gender war helps no one, and pitting girls against boys or 'othering' the opposite gender is no solution,' she told The Times.

'Our young people must learn how to tackle these things head on; how to listen to each other generously and with respect, and how to ex-press their concerns and their hopes openly together.'

An investigation by the Mail also found that boys at some private schools embroiled in the sex abuse scandal were having to change out of uniform to avoid street attacks and verbal abuse.

A woman and child walk past placards saying 'it's sexual harassment', 'she is someone' and 'educate your sons' attached to the fence outside James Allen's Girls' School last week

Ofsted (file image) will look at safeguarding policies in state and independent schools and will ensure there are appropriate systems in place to allow pupils to report their concerns

Some of the male pupils also fear including their school name on CVs in case they are turned away by potential employers because of the negative associations.

Others  aged as young as 13  have faced abuse from members of the public and have been branded rapists in the street, prompting some to change out of uniform for journeys to and from school.

One boy at a London independent school told The Mail on Sunday: 'A lot of us are worried our association with the school is going to damage our job prospects. People will just look at us and see a rapist.'

A 46-year-old mother of boys aged 12 and 17 told The Daily Telegraph: 'This is scaring me. What if it's a case of two different perspectives of an event? What if the accusations are false, or exaggerated? How does a young man get his reputation back?

'I know of boys being 'cancelled' by friends they've had since primary school because nobody wants to associate with them in the wake of allegations. They are being branded as rapists without any opportunity to share their perspective  it's frankly terrifying.'

'It's really worrying,' another mother added. 'Very little is said about false allegations and protecting the alleged perpetrator.'

A teenager who on arrival at sixth-form college allegedly had girls screaming at him after a story had circulated has not returned since. None of his friends have been in contact with him, fearing they will be 'cancelled' if they break ranks.
Somerset County prisons toured in wake of COVID

A media tour was held Wednesday at both Somerset County prisons to show how officials have adapted to COVID-19.
Fluor Corporation(NYSE: FLR) announced today that Stork, a Fluor company, was awarded a 2-year contract for inspections, surveillance and quality assurance services by Babcock International Group, covering various vendor sites in the United Kingdom, including Babcock's Rosyth site, as well as other global locations. Fluor booked the contract value in the first quarter of 2021.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005178/en/

Stork wins 2-year contract with Babcock International Group. (Photo: Business Wire)

"Babcock is a trusted partner to highly regulated markets, delivering vital services and managing complex assets in the UK and internationally," said Taco de Haan, president of Stork.

"Babcock's Rosyth site is one of the largest waterside manufacturing and repair facilities in the UK. This new specialist services contract award truly demonstrates Stork's expanding footprint into new onshore markets as well as the company's proven capabilities to deliver value-added solutions to clients."

"Stork looks forward to strengthening its relationship with Babcock International Group and welcomes this partnership opportunity by helping to provide high standards of operational excellence," de Haan said.

Over the next two years, Stork will provide independent third-party inspection, surveillance and quality assurance services to assist Babcock International Group in complying with regulatory and legal requirements for the quality standards of the company's products and services.

Stork's UK office in Aberdeen will lead the work, in addition to assistance from its global network of industry experts. The project began in January 2021.

About Stork

Stork, a Fluor company, continually improves the performance of its clients' assets through a wide range of integrated, innovative and data-driven solutions, from operations and maintenance to turnarounds and modifications. We are committed to growing our clients' business sustainably and successfully by setting new standards of excellence in asset management. Underpinned with our core values-Safety, Integrity, Teamwork, Client Focus and Excellence-we aim to be the industry reference, every day, everywhere. For more information, please visit www.stork.com or follow us on Twitter @StorkTS, LinkedIn.

About Fluor Corporation

Fluor Corporation (NYSE: FLR) is building a better future by applying world-class expertise to solve its clients' greatest challenges. Fluor's 44,000 employees provide professional and technical solutions that deliver safe, well-executed, capital-efficient projects to clients around the world. Fluor had revenue of $15.7 billion in 2020 and is ranked 181 among the Fortune 500 companies. With headquarters in Irving, Texas, Fluor has provided engineering, procurement and construction services for more than 100 years. For more information, please visit www.fluor.com or follow Fluor on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube.

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New Delhi, April 7: Even as the ghastly terror attacks ripped through the resort town of Palma in Mozambique, Indian businesses including oil majors ONGC Videsh and Oil have decided to stay put in the resource rich African nation.

Both the state-owned oil majors have been engaged in the $24.1 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) project on the Afungi peninsula in Mozambique, which was being led by French energy titan Total SE. The project will yield 12.88 million tonnes of LNG per annum.

There has been no loss of life among Indians working in the project. Partly, the Covid-19 pandemic has been responsible for the zero-casualty numbers.

"There were no OVL employees at the site, most of them had returned to India. Work had practically stopped and that apart since Total has been the main player, it was being driven by the employees of the French firm," he told India Narrative on condition of anonymity.

Sources also said that the ministry of external affairs is in constant touch with the authorities in Mozambique. "The Indian high commission is doing everything it can to ensure safety of every Indian residing in Mozambique," one of them said.

Meanwhile, Total has recalled the entire staff force post the attacks that were orchestrated by terrorists having links with the Islamic State.

The attacks at Palma on March 24, according to the Mozambique Oil and Gas Chamber, were aimed at derailing the LNG project, which can potentially give a huge economic boost to the resource-rich nation, pushing it from being one of the poorest countries in the world to a middle-income economy.

The terror attacks left many dead after militants stormed into shops, banks and even a military barracks. Seven people were killed when they tried to escape a siege on one of the hotels.

Violence and terror attacks have increased in Mozambique since 2017. More than 2,500 people have died since 2017-when the insurgency started. About 700,000 people have also been displaced.

Analysts point out that Indians are unlikely to pull out the project, as they have factored in the instability in some of the areas where OVL has landed its footprint. "We could not afford to go to established areas, which were prohibitively expensive," says R.S. Sharma, former Chairman of Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) in a conversation with India Narrative. com. "So we started with Sakhalin in Russia, where the parent Rosneft which was going bankrupt could do with our investments. That turned out to be a success story," he observed. Encouraged by the success, OVL then moved into Sudan where a Canadian oil major was going cheap following Muslim-Christian riots in country. The diehard OVL subsequently moved into Mozambique.

The Mozambican Oil and Gas Chamber has strongly condemned the attacks.

NJ Ayuk, executive chairman, African Energy Chamber, in an article published by Africanews said that the terror attacks on Palma are not simply targets of opportunity. "They are strategic targets. The goal is to destroy Mozambique's government's ability to produce, export gas, fight poverty, create jobs and to make it clear that the government cannot protect oil company personnel or assets." Ayuk added that terrorism act must be condemned in all forms. "These terrorist attacks if not taken seriously will cost the Mozambican government billions of dollars in lost investment and LNG earnings," he said.

According to Africanews, as the largest Foreign Direct Investment on the African continent, the LNG project positions Mozambique to become the third largest gas exporter globally by 2045.

A Bloomberg report published by World Oil, a weekly published by Gulf Energy Information, the African nation has been "battling an Islamic State-linked insurgency since October 2017." It said that over the past year, attacks have grown increasingly sophisticated, while also drawing towards the coastal site, very close to the project.

(This content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com) --indianarrative/
New Delhi, April 7 : A day after polling for the 126-member Assam Assembly ended on Tuesday, BJP's National Vice President and state in-charge Baijayant Jay Panda asserted on Wednesday that the saffron party will form the government in the northeastern state for a second term.

Talking to the media after getting vaccinated for Covid-19 in the national capital, Panda said that the BJP will surely retain power in Assam.

"People in Assam are quite happy with the work of both the Central and state governments and there was no anti-incumbency against the state government or the Union government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi," Panda said.

He pointed out that the kind of development work which took place in the last five years under the BJP government is more than what happened in the last 70 years.

"The pace of development has accelerated like never before and Prime Minister Modi has taken personal interest in this progress, which has only increased the people's trust in the BJP," he said.

Panda also claimed that the heavy voter turnout will favour the BJP.
Jobs and livelihoods will be at risk if street violence continues, a leading hotelier has warned.

Andras House director Rajesh Rana said the unrest that resulted in 41 police officers being injured was "the last thing" that Northern Ireland needed.

"We will be dependent on the staycation market this summer, and the Republic of Ireland market will be essential for the hospitality sector in all of Northern Ireland," added the businessman, whose company has six hotels in Belfast and serviced apartments on the citys Lisburn Road.

"We are planning for a strong bounceback and are recruiting for jobs across our group, but jobs and livelihoods will be at risk if the unrest continues."

Restaurateur Michael Deane, meanwhile, urged the First and Deputy First Ministers to "pull us back together again".

Mr Deane, who previously spoke out about the negative impact of the flag protests, added: "Northern Ireland will have to tighten up, learn to live together and knuckle down.

"Its not good out there. I dont have any political opinions, but somehow we look to be falling apart. The First Minister and the Deputy First Minister really need to pull us back together again.

"We have to have faith in government. Its difficult for them in a five-party coalition, but nobody wants to see it fall."

Alan Reid, owner of Shu restaurant on the Lisburn Road, was unsure about the short-term impact of the violence.

"I dont have a very strong opinion. Clearly, rioting doesnt help our image abroad, but Im not sure what impact that will have on tourists coming in the next 12 to 18 weeks," he added.



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Whatsapp Counting the cost: Shu owners Brian McCann (left) and Alan Reid

"Its not new for Northern Ireland. You go through these periods and then it moves on. Its just another distraction from day-to-day life.

"You would have thought rioting would have an adverse impact on people coming (to Northern Ireland), but the majority of people coming here know the history of the place, so it wouldnt put them off."

Howard Hastings, the managing director of Hastings Hotels, which has seven venues in Northern Ireland, said the industry was used to grappling with riots, although they previously took place around July 12.

"This has been during lockdown, so its not as though there were any existing tourists who were discomfited or who said that ruined my holiday," he said.

"Some of the places where rioting has been happening might not have been tourism epicentres in the first place.

"Undoubtedly, within society after such a long lockdown, theres a lot of frustrated people. As a societal thing, thats difficult to manage.

"There were riots in France and Spain after lockdown protests. I dont think it made huge headlines here because its not somewhere people were travelling to.

"Im not quite sure what the international coverage of such a thing will be here.

"Youd hope its localised and short-lived. These things dont tend to have a long-tail impact.

"What you dont like is for it to happen when people are making it their intention to travel.

"Given that so many of the people who we will be attracting this year will be from close to home, they will probably have a better understanding of society and know their geography.

"So, if you were thinking of going to Newcastle or Portrush for your holiday, you would know that it (the unrest) wouldnt have an effect there.

"Youd like to think it wont have a huge impact. Youd always, from a tourism point of view, prefer that it wasnt happening at all."

Loyalist unrest erupted over Easter, reportedly driven by anger over the Northern Ireland Protocol and the Bobby Storey funeral episode.

It is a delicate time for the hospitality industry as it tries to rebuild after the pandemic, which cost it tens of millions of pounds.

With international travel still off the cards, the summer market will be heavily dependent on visitors from Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland.
[April 07, 2021] Global Tech Industries Group, Inc. and Ron Cavalier Sign an Independent Contractor Agreement

New York, April 07, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ( GTII : OTCQB) Global Tech Industries Group, Inc. ( GTII  or the Company), www.gtii-us.com , a Nevada corporation, signed an Independent Contractor Agreement (ICA) with Ronald Cavalier. Mr. Cavalier founded Cavalier Galleries Inc. in Stamford, Ct. in 1986 www.cavaliergalleries.com ., a group of four art galleries, with locations in Greenwich, CT, New York City, Nantucket Island, and Palm Beach, FL. Under the terms of this independent Contractor Agreement, Mr. Cavalier will provide the Company with those services customarily provided by contractors in the business of fine arts, including but not limited to market research, performed in a workmanlike manner consistent with applicable industry standads and undertaken via traditional means, including internet, telephone and/or in-person research as needed. Applicable research and tokenization of non-fungible assets (NFTs), including but not limited to fine art and other services will continue to be explored, as in the original consulting agreement.



About Global Tech Industries Group, Inc.: GTII is a publicly traded company incorporated in the state of Nevada, specializing in the pursuit of acquiring new and innovative technologies. Please follow our company at: www.otcmarkets.com/stock/GTII

Safe Harbor Forward-Looking Statements:

This press release may contain forward looking statements that are based on current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions that involve risks as well as uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially from those anticipated or expected, including statements related to the amount and timing of expected revenues related to our financial performance, expected income, distributions, and future growth for upcoming quarterly and annual periods. These risks and uncertainties are further defined in filings and reports by the Company with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Actual results and the timing of certain events could differ materially from those projected in or contemplated by the forward-looking statements due to a number of factors detailed from time to time in our filings with the SEC. Among other matters, the Company may not be able to sustain growth or achieve profitability based upon many factors including but not limited to the risk that we will not be able to find and acquire businesses and assets that will enable us to become profitable. Reference is hereby made to cautionary statements set forth in the Company's most recent SEC filings. We have incurred and will continue to incur significant expenses in our development stage, noting that there is no assurance that we will generate enough revenues to offset those costs in both the near and long term. New lines of business may expose us to additional legal and regulatory costs and unknown exposure(s), the impact of which cannot be predicted at this time. Blaine Riley  br@intlmonetary.com

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Children experiencing cognitive problems such as low attention, poor memory or lack of inhibition may later suffer mental health issues as teenagers and young adults, a new study reveals. Targeting specific markers in childhood for early treatment may help to minimise the risk of children developing certain psychopathological problems in adolescence and adult life, such as borderline personality disorder, depression and psychosis.

Cognitive deficits are core features of mental disorders and important in predicting long-term prognosisthe researchers' work indicates that individual patterns of such deficits predate specific mental disorders.

Analysing data from an initial UK cohort of 13,988 individuals born between April 1991 and December 1992, researchers discovered a number of key and specific links between childhood cognitive problems and mental health issues in later life, namely:

Deficits in sustained attention in eight-year-olds precede development of borderline personality disorder (BPD) symptoms at 11-12 years and depression at 17-18 years;

Difficulties with inhibition in eight-year-olds were associated with psychotic experiences at 17-18 years; and

Working memory deficits in 10-year-olds were related to hypomania at 22-23 years.

The international team of researchers from the UK and Finland, led by experts from the University of Birmingham, published its findings today in JAMA Network Open.

The leading author of the study Dr. Isabel Morales-Munoz, from the University of Birmingham's Institute for Mental Health and the Finnish Institute for Mental Health, in Helsinki, commented: "Our study highlights the potential impact of childhood cognitive deficits on young people's mental health, suggesting specific associations with certain conditions. Prevention strategies focussed on easing these specific cognitive issues could help to reduce the likelihood of such children developing linked mental health problems in adolescence and early adulthood."

The study was the first analysis following subjects over a significant period of time to explore specific associations between cognitive deficits in childhood and several psychopathological issues in young people.

Deficits in sustained attention at eight years being associated with BPD symptoms at 11-12 years is consistent with similar deficits in adult BPD patients linked to difficulties in sticking to therapy programmes. Previous evidence also suggests a significant link between adult BPD and childhood Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) symptoms -indicating that ADHD could represent a risk factor for BPD.

The study also supports the theory that lack of inhibition in childhood precedes later psychotic experiences, with a lack of inhibitory control common in psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia.

Researchers found that working memory deficits in childhood were linked to hypomania in young adults, but when they checked for co-existing psychopathological conditions this association disappearedindicating that further investigation is needed.

Mental disorders cause a significant disease burden globally and at least 10% of children andadolescents worldwide have a mental disorder. 75% of mental disorders diagnosed in adults have their onset in childhood and adolescence.

Bipolar disorder, depression and psychosis commonly emerge during adolescence and continue in young adulthoodpotentially related to anomalies in the way adolescents mature caused by psychosocial, biological or environmental factors.

"It's crucial to study the onset of mental disorders at these early stages and evaluate which risk factors predate these conditions and in what way. These factors are core features of mental disorders such as psychosis and mood disorders," commented co-author Professor Matthew Broome.

"Deficits in cognitive function, ranging from decreased attention and working memory to disrupted social cognition and language, are common in psychiatric disorders. They severely compromise quality of life and could potentially predate serious mental health conditions by several years," commented the senior author of the study Professor Steven Marwaha.

Explore further Infant sleep problems can signal mental disorders in adolescents: study

More information: Longitudinal Associations between Cognitive deficits in childhood and psychopathology in adolescence and young adulthood, Isabel Morales-Munoz, Rachel Upthegrove, Pavan K Mallikarjun, Matthew R Broome and Steven Marwaha, JAMA Network Open, 2021. Journal information: JAMA Network Open Longitudinal Associations between Cognitive deficits in childhood and psychopathology in adolescence and young adulthood, Isabel Morales-Munoz, Rachel Upthegrove, Pavan K Mallikarjun, Matthew R Broome and Steven Marwaha,, 2021.
WASHINGTON, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Following more than 30 years of dedicated service to Unity Health Care (Unity), President and CEO, Vincent A. Keane, has announced his intent to retire effective December 31, 2021.

Vince began his professional relationship with Unity, formerly Health Care for the Homeless Project, in October of 1990 in the role of Executive Director. Alongside Dr. Janelle Goetcheus, Vince helped shepherd Unity's outreach as it grew from a one-room site in a local homeless shelter to the District's largest network of community health centers in existence today. As a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC), Unity now provides mission-driven care to more than 101,000 individuals annually, regardless of their ability to pay.

"As I reflect on the past three decades, I feel blessed to have been given the opportunity to work with incredibly dedicated staff, all of whom contribute to the welfare of Unity patients and their communities daily," said Vince. "Leading an organization with such a powerful mission of care and compassion for thousands whose lives have been affected by racism, poverty, and injustice has been deeply meaningful, both professionally and personally. One of my great joys has been visiting staff at our various clinics and programs to witness their commitment to make all patients feel welcomed, supported, and respected. This commitment was never more evident than this past year, as our employees heroically served patients throughout the COVID-19 pandemic."

Under Vince's leadership, Unity experienced unparalleled growth strengthening the organization's ability to meet the needs of medically vulnerable men, women, and children in the District. Over the course of Vince's 30 years as CEO, and with the support of a visionary Board of Directors and committed staff, Unity grew from a dedicated staff of 50 to nearly 1,000 employees. Services expanded to include comprehensive healthcare in DC Public Schools, a state-of-the-art program serving residents in DC Department of Corrections facilities, and the establishment of a Physician Residency Program to train and build the healthcare workforce of the future.

"Vince Keane has been the heart of Unity Health Care for more than thirty years," said Unity's Board Chair Paul Kealey. "Under Vince's exceptional leadership, Unity grew from a relatively modest operation into one of the largest, most successful Federally Qualified Health Centers in the country. He has been an inspiration and a tireless champion, addressing the health needs of people with low incomes and those experiencing homelessness. Unity will miss him dearly, and we wish him the very best in his well-deserved retirement."

Unity's Board of Directors will facilitate a national search for qualified candidates to serve as a mission-driven leader as Unity continues to provide for the District's most vulnerable.

About Unity Health Care

As the largest network of community health centers in Washington, D.C., Unity Health Care provides a full-range of health and human services to meet the needs of our communities through a network of over 20 traditional and non-traditional health sites and a mobile medical outreach vehicle. Our team of compassionate and multicultural health professionals place Unity values into action every day to bring whole-person care and wellness to over 101,000 patients through over 457,000 visits annually.

Deeply rooted in the District's neighborhoods for more than 35 years, Unity strives to promote healthier communities through compassion and comprehensive primary and specialty health care and wrap-around services, regardless of ability to pay.

Media Contact

For additional information or to request credentials for this event, please contact Nedra Davis or Ana Zorrilla at (202) 715-7900, [email protected]; [email protected].

SOURCE Unity Health Care


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They are enjoying a whirlwind romance after getting together earlier this year.

And Francesca Farago has now revealed that her girlfriend Demi Sims immediately asked her to marry her when sliding into her DMs on Instagram.

The TOWIE newcomer, 27, made the candid admission while appearing on the TOWIE: DRAGGED OUT digital series alongside her Essex-based girlfriend, 24.

Dragged out: Francesca Farago has now revealed that her girlfriend Demi Sims immediately asked her to marry her when sliding into her DMs on Instagram

Francesca spoke about their first exchange of messages, and said: 'She slid into my DMs and asked me to marry her as a first question.'

The new couple were appearing on a new digital show launched by The Only Way Is Essex, presented by drag artist A'Whora, who recently starred in the second series of RuPaul's Drag Race UK.

TOWIE cast members appear on the social media-based spin-off to discuss the events of the most recent episode.

This week A'Whora was joined by Demi and Francesca, as well as Chloe Brockett, 20, Joey Turner, 18, and Tom McDonnell, 24.

Spin-off: The new couple were appearing on a new digital show launched by The Only Way Is Essex, presented by drag artist A'Whora (pictured), who recently starred in the second series of RuPaul's Drag Race UK

Demi recently said she and the Too Hot To Handle personality have already considered tying the knot with a post-pandemic ceremony in Italy.

The make-up artist and the model, who have been in a relationship for just two months, also defended getting tattoo tributes of each other's names after just one week of dating during their trip to Mexico.

On taking things to the next level from their first chat, the Essex native said: 'The first conversation we ever had in the DMs was about a wedding, I actually asked her to marry me as my first message and she just went along with it which was great.'

'I asked her to marry me': Demi approached her now-girlfriend Francesca with a marriage proposal via Instagram DMs

'But yeah we have spoke about it, obviously we've only been actually together for two months so I think I dunno it's up to you really isn't it because you said you're gonna do the proposing, so it's up to Francesca.'

(Francesca) I never really thought about doing it myself until I met her, right when I met her, I was like it's gonna be me, it needs to be me who's gonna do it. I already know how I'm gonna do it, she's not gonna see it coming.'

Despite not being engaged, the lovebirds already have their ideal nuptials in mind, with Demi sharing: 'I think it depends on lockdown, were moving into a new place on Monday which is gonna be really nice.

Going strong: The make-up artist and the model have been in a relationship for just two months

'Hopefully we're gonna move back to Essex because I miss the Essex life. We definitely don't want any lockdown weddings because that's like not a vibe.

'It needs to be like post pandemic, the very first thing I ever said to her was we need a post pandemic wedding in Italy at a vineyard, so I feel like we need to go all out.'

The reality stars shocked fans when they got their names tattooed on each other's bottom and wrist during a whirlwind holiday.

'I knew for sure I wanted to do it': The couple also defended getting tattoo tributes of each other's names after just one week of dating during their trip to Mexico

Lifting the lid: On taking things to the next level from their first chat, the Essex native said: 'The first conversation we ever had in the DMs was about a wedding'

Influencer Demi, who has been living in London with Francesca for a month, stood by their decision as she explained: 'I got her name tattooed on my butt like the first week we met, yeah literally 6 days in.

'From the day that I met Francesca she kept saying ''I really wanna get your name tattooed on me, I really wanna do it I love you so much'' I just thought she was bluffing, I didn't think she was being serious.

'Then this one specific day we was at this beach bar and she was like I wanna do it today so then we went into a tattoo shop didn't we and you ended up getting it done in my hand writing.

'Yeah, she wrote it out like 30 times and then I picked the cute one with the heart on the I. Then I felt left out so I wanted to get her initial put on my body, she was like no I'm not letting you do it.

'She doesn't have any tattoo's so this was her very first tattoo so I was like you need to think of what it will look like, like for me I have a few so I knew for sure I wanted to do it and I was thinking about it for like a week up to that.'

While they may seem strong now, the younger sister of Chloe Sims confessed her friends and family were apprehensive about Francesca at first.

'There's no stopping them!' The influencers have been living together in London for a month Demi

Demi shared: 'She was literally like come to Mexico and meet me and I was nervous because I've never met her before so I was like what am I gonna do, am I actually gonna fly to Mexico by myself and meet this girl I've never met? It was all just crazy.

'In my heart and my head, it felt like the right thing to do. My mum was like make sure that she's real, like your flying over to Mexico to meet this person you've just met on social media.

'All my friends were saying the same things as well like ''You're crazy, don't do that that's so dangerous'' and I was like no guys honestly this girl, I feel like me and this girl have got so much in common I have to go and meet her.'
Exchange rate analysts at Credit Agricole note that a UK recovery has already been priced in and there are significant downside risks for the Pound Sterling (GBP) exchange rates, especially surrounding Scottish parliamentary elections.

Seasonal backing will tend to help offset these risks in the short term, but the downside threat is liable to build once this support fades.

The bank continues to express reservations; Given the downside risks ahead, we maintain our cautious medium-term outlook for the pound.

The Euro to Pound (EUR/GBP) exchange rate is just 0.8600 and close to 2-week highs at 0.8625 after posting strong gains on Tuesday.

Pound Sterling Forecast: Positive April GBP Seasonals Still in Play

Over the last 10 years, Credit Agricole notes that the Pound has secured an average gain of 1.4% in April. The positive structural element of corporate demand should again be in evidence this year and the bank notes that the impact could be more substantial.

The GBP-positive seasonal effect may be more pronounced this year given that the UK corporates have been unwinding their GBP-shorts since the Brexit deal last December as the risk of another collapse of the pound has been reduced significantly.

Given that the UK runs a goods trade deficit with the EU, a dip in trade volumes would tend to lessen the demand for Euros, especially if imports have been curtailed.

Given the huge trade deficit that the UK has been running vis-a-vis the EU, chances are that the trade slowdown since the start of 2021 led to a reduction of the net corporate demand for EUR/GBP.

In this context, Credit Agricole also notes that corporate Euro demand has been notably week over the past few weeks.

On the services side, the UK also traditionally runs a heavy deficit on the tourism account. Given that overseas leisure is currently banned, the UK demand for overseas currencies, including the Euro should also lead to a net reduction in demand for overseas currencies.

UK Economy: Clouds Building on the Domestic Front

Although Credit Agricole remains optimistic on seasonal grounds, it still has important reservations over the overall fundamental Sterling outlook.

Firstly, it notes that there are risks that the UK vaccine programme will slow due to supply issues and this could have important economic implications.

Indeed, the slowing pace of the Covid vaccinations in the UK could ultimately delay the governments plans to reopen economy despite the recent proclamations of PM Johnson.

The bank also expects an increased political risk premium associated with the forthcoming Scottish parliamentary elections in early May.

It notes; according to the latest polls, the upcoming local elections in Scotland could give a supermajority to the pro-independence parties  the SNP, the Greens and the newly-formed Alba party.

If these parties do secure an overall majority, pressure for a second independence referendum will inevitably intensify and risk triggering another round of politically-induced turmoil for the currency.
Fifteen months after launching an effort to develop a vaccine against COVID-19, the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research is preparing for a clinical trial, seeking volunteers for a small safety study.

The Army's vaccine candidate uses a new technology involving a Spike Ferritin Nanoparticle, or SpFN, that researchers hope can be adapted to protect against any coronavirus, including those that cause the common cold or deadly diseases such as COVID-19, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, MERS.

The WRAIR vaccine candidate has been tested in mice and monkeys and is now ready for human safety trials, according to officials at the institute, which falls under Army Medical Research and Development Command.

"Even before recent COVID-19 variants were identified, our team was concerned about the emergence of new coronaviruses in human populations, a threat that has been accelerating in recent years," Dr. Kayvon Modjarrad, director of the Emerging Infectious Diseases Branch at WRAIR, said in a released statement. "That's why we need a vaccine like this: one that has potential to protect broadly and proactively against multiple coronavirus species and strains."

Read Next: Officials ID Navy Corpsman Who Shot Two Sailors Before Being Killed by Police

The study is being conducted at WRAIR's Clinical Trials Center and will enroll 72 healthy adult volunteers ages 18 to 55 who will be randomly placed in placebo or experimental groups.

WRAIR began its work on a coronavirus vaccine Jan. 11, 2020 -- the day after Chinese researchers published the coronavirus' genetic sequence, enabling scientists to more fully understand the lethal pathogen.

With that genetic makeup in mind and building on research on the coronavirus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, WRAIR scientists developed SpFN as a protein base that can carry one or more spike proteins engineered to block infection and elicit an immune response, according to Modjarrad.

While commercial manufacturers have produced four distinct vaccines against COVID-19, three of which are currently being distributed under emergency-use authorization in the U.S., WRAIR is playing the long game when it comes to developing a coronavirus vaccine for the future.

"We are in this for the long haul," Modjarrad said in a release. "We have designed and positioned this platform as the next generation vaccine, one that paves the way for a universal vaccine to protect against not only the current virus, but also counter future variants, stopping them in their tracks before they can cause another pandemic."

The vaccine was developed with support from the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine.

More than 176,000 U.S. service members have tested positive for COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic and 24 have died. Another 307 civilian DoD employees, contractors and family members also have died.

Worldwide, 132.1 million people have been infected with the coronavirus, and 2.8 million have died. There have been nearly 30.8 million cases in the U.S. and 556,307 American deaths as of April 4, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Across the Defense Department, 2.1 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine -- made by Moderna, Pfizer or Johnson & Johnson -- have been administered to U.S. troops, family members, civilian employees and other essential workers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden implored Americans to get their vaccines, especially with cases on the rise in some areas and the spread of variants.

"Were getting more and more data on just how effective these vaccines are," Biden said. "Were making a lot of good progress  but were not even halfway to vaccinating 300 million Americans. We are still in a life and death race against this virus."

-- Patricia Kime can be reached at Patricia.Kime@Monster.com. Follow her on Twitter @patriciakime.

Related: As Private Sector Races to Develop a COVID-19 Vaccine, Army Takes Guarded Approach
(Natural News) Fake news is getting worse by the day, as we see that only the Left can be offended and bullied, while all people and entities to the Right, even slightly, are now labeled as the Extreme Right, Fascists, and Domestic Terrorists. Anyone opposed to toxic food (GMOs), dirty vaccines (all of them), and Americanized Communism (the entire Left, Liberals, Globalists, and everyone brainwashed by MSM), are now vilified in the press by shills, hucksters, hacks and charlatans.

Mass media journalism is focused solely on searching out anyone who supports the Constitution, human rights, and self-defense, and attacking them as extremists who must be banned, censored, content-regulated and soonjailed.

CNN features media reporters who have all sold their soul to Satan and regurgitate and spew the Lefts poisonous venom

CNNs circus of circle-jerks and so-called media reporters include at the helm one Brian Shill Master Stelter, who wears the SS badge of Chief Media Correspondent while hosting the program better known as Unreliable Sources. Remember back during the Mueller hoax investigation, Stelter the shill was at the helm of lying about credible sources and purposely misled the CNN audience.

It was a massive, ethical scandal that CNN labeled bombshell news, and all the other fake news outlets sourced each other like a big circle jerk. Thats all Stelter ever seems to have, besides anonymous sources which means he just sat in a closet with a smart device and made things up out of thin air.

Meet Oliver Miss Information Darcy, Senior Fake News Reporter for CNN, the Counterfeit News Network

Here we go with another worthless, lie-through-your-teeth-to-get-a-paycheck shill, Oliver Darcy at the Counterfeit News Network. This corporate Leftist huckster is tasked with covering the intersection of media and politics, which is now a blended up concoction of Communism and Population Reductionism.

Darcys main job on his beat is to spread misinformation by finding truth media and trying to discredit it. Thats why his background as deputy managing editor at The Blaze comes in handy  lots of experience slinging dirt and fabricated news. Its all tattle tale censorship where the shills lie and lie and try to get all the truth-tellers banned and censored. The libtards want every person who voted for Trump to lose their home, job, children and right to free speech and press. That brings us to the shills at NBC (Nothing But Cowards) news network.

NBCs disinformation space unit  where facts dont matter, only readership for advertising revenue

Riding his tricycle on the amateur beat is one Ben Collins, the hokiest disinformation reporter around. This MSNBC and NBC hack and charlatan will say and write anything for a paycheck, as facts simply do not matter at all. Everything Ben Sham-master Collins writes focuses on building an audience based on conspiracies about conspiracies. Its a boondoggle wrapped in a labyrinth of fake news and total lack of journalistic integrity, but hey, thats NBC. You get what you go in for. That brings us to the ultimate librarian shill whos going nowhere faster than anyone ever recorded. Introducing Brandy Zadrozny.

NBC News Brandy Zadrozny  The Leftist librarian extremist and the worst character assassin ever hired

There are no better words to describe this sellout shill than predictable. Zadrozny is tasked by NBC to try to obliterate the reputation of anyone who exposes the farce of the Covid Plandemic and the dangers of the dirty vaccine series thats being shoved down Americas throat. Zadrozny loves everything GMO also, as she believes that eating chemical pesticides is the best thing for humans on Earth. The ignorance is blinding.

And then there are the scavengers, the bottom-feeders, and the bugs that scatter when the lights come on. These creatures of journalism are known as the tech reporters of the New York Times. As of late, theyve been referred to as the tattletale misfits, but theyre a little more like the three stooges, banging their heads into each others to try to figure out how to write anything that means anything, and to no avail.

Theres Mike Isaac, Sheera Frenkel, and of course, Kevin Roose, all trolling the depths of chat rooms and sophomoric bulletin boards (Reddit threads) to find anything their pea brains consider offensive (to gender-bending liberal snowflakes thats just about everything).

The new age mass media presstitutes want everyone to get ranked on social media and lose their Constitutional rights and inherent rights as a human being if anyone disagrees ever with the MSM narrative on anything and everything. In unison they all demand that Big Tech censor every person, company and news outlet who doesnt kowtow to Communist China running America like the Black Mirror. Have a look:

The 3 Stooges (who think theyre journalists) at the New York Times

The three stooges at NYT will dox you, lie about you, badmouth you, and rip you to shreds with misinformation, all while claiming its their job to seek out misinformation and expose it. Isaac, Frenkel and Roose are the epitome of sellout journalism with the goal to control all speech and annihilate freedom of speech and press. They beg Apple on MSNBC to shame and censor their own enemies that theyve created by trying to ruin peoples lives and livelihoods, just because they dont like opinions different than their own and those of their media overlords.

Theyre the speech police without a badge, or a gun, or any justification in a legal or ethical sense. When they get caught lying, their fake news outfit doesnt apologize or retract anything ever. All that happens is they print some tiny one-liner at the bottom of some shill-losers psycho-babble blog, so they can say they made a correction.

Tune your internet dial to FakeScience.news for updates on shills and charlatans writing fake news about real news so America will stay dumb and confused under the new communist regime.

Sources for this article include:

Greenwald.substack.com

TheIntercept.com

NaturalNews.com

TruthWiki.org
Former Governor Abdulaziz Yari of Zamfara State is billed to face another round of interrogation by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) again.

This is coming barely two months after he faced several hours of questioning by the agencys operatives over corruption allegation in February.

PREMIUM TIMES reported in February that Mr Yari faced a long interrogation session with detectives at the Lagos office of the EFCC over an alleged attempt to illegally move N300 billion from a corporate account in a new generation bank.

Although details of the transaction was sketchy, sources told this newspaper that Mr Yari gave a lengthy statement to the commissions operatives before he was released late in the evening of February 3.

PREMIUM TIMES was reliably informed that Mr Yari, a former Chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF), might be asked to return for further interrogation.

Fresh invite

Our reporter, late Tuesday, obtained a copy of a fresh invitation letter dated April 6, 2021 which was reportedly served on the former governor, asking him to appear at the Sokoto office of the EFCC on Thursday.

PREMIUM TIMES cannot immediately confirm if Mr Yari, who has been previously accused by the EFCC of diverting proceeds of Paris Club refund, is being invited over the same allegations he was questioned for at the Lagos office of the commission in February.

But the fresh invitation letter signed by the EFCCs Director of Operations, Abdulkarim Chukkol, indicated that Mr Yaris interrogation would centre on allegations of conspiracy, diversion of public funds and money laundering.

The letter with reference number CR: 3000/EFCC/SKS/DOPS/VOL.1/87 appealed to Mr Yari for his cooperation over the invitation.

The invitation letter titled, INVESTIGATION ACTIVITIES: LETTER OF INVITATION, reads, The commission is investigating an alleged case of conspiracy, diversion of public funds and money laundering in which the need to obtain certain clarifications from you has become imperative.

In view of the above, we kindly request your presence for an interview with Zonal Head of Sokoto as follows:

Venue 7, Super Quarters, off Sama Road, off Tsafe Road, Sokoto.

Date: Thursday, 8 April 2021.

Time: 1100hrs prompt.

Your cooperation in this regard is highly solicited, please.

Yari, Paris Club refund crisis

PREMIUM TIMES recalls that Mr Yari has been under EFCCs searchlight over his handling of proceeds of Paris Club refunds, since at least 2017, two years before losing his immunity on completing his second term tenure as governor in May 2019.

A court document filed by the commission in 2017 sheds light on the suspicious nature of payments by Mr Yari-led NGF to consultants who were said to have helped the forum to recover funds that were over-deducted from the allocations of the 36 state governments in connection with the London and Paris clubs loan between 1995 and 2002.

PREMIUM TIMES recently exposed how six of the consultants and contractors have been scrambling to be paid about N159 billion awarded in their favour in various court judgments affirming their claims to shares of the Paris Club refunds.

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Mr Yari, shortly before his exit as the NGF chairman in May 2019, had issued a letter of Indemnity and No Objection approving the deduction of the humongous amount of funds from the allocations of the states.

His successor as the NGF chairman, Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State, is against the payment and has been battling to stop it, PREMIUM TIMES report shows.

Yari and EFCC investigation on Paris Club refund

In a court document filed in 2017, EFCC stated that it received an intelligence in January 2017 alleging conspiracy, criminal misappropriation of public funds involving the sum of N19,439,225,871.11 out of the Paris Club refunds made by the Federal Government in favour of the 36 states of the federation.

The commission had in the court filing, sought an order of forfeiture of N500 million and $500,000 allegedly recovered from Mr Yari.

The anti-corruption agency said the funds were found in the accounts of First Generation Mortgage Bank Ltd and Gosh Projects Limited.

It said the sums of money were part of N2.2billion fraudulently transferred by the NGF to BINA Consults and Integrated Services Ltd on December 23, 2016.

Following the ex parte application filed by EFCC, the Federal High Court in Abuja, on June 30, 2017, issued an interim order of forfeiture of the N500 million and $500,000.

But, in November 17, 2017, the judge, Nnamdi Dimgba, rejected the commissions further request for a permanent forfeiture of the funds, and went ahead to set aside the earlier interim forfeiture order.

The judge said it could not grant the forfeiture order since different entities had come forward to lay claim to the funds.

He added that should the EFCC feel strongly about the illicit origin of the funds, it should take steps to discharge the requisite burdens of proof, rather than resorting to the easy route of a forfeiture afforded by the Section 17 of the Advance Fee Fraud Act.

Forfeiture order obtained by ICPC

But another judge of the Federal High Court, Abuja, Ijeoma Ojukwu, on January 26, 2021, ordered the final forfeiture of funds suspected to be proceeds of corruption found in bank accounts linked to Mr Yari.

The judge gave the order following an application by Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC).

While $56, 056.75 was lodged in Polaris Bank account, the sums of N12.9 million, N11.2 million, $301, 319.99; N217, 388.04 and $311, 872.15 were kept in different Zenith Bank accounts, all in the name of Mr Yari and his companies.

The judge held that the former governor did not show good cause why the order sought by the ICPC should not be granted.
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The Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) has returned N716,800 found at the site of a road accident to the family of a woman who died in the accident.

The accident occurred on March 22 in Ozubulu along the Onitsha-Owerri Expressway in Anambra State.

Bamidele Ayanwale, the unit commander in Oraifite, handed over the money on Tuesday to the family.

He said the money was recovered when the FRSC officers were on a rescue mission after the accident.

Mr Ayanwale said the money, belonging to the late woman, was returned to her son, Chibueze Oparaocha, after a written undertaking with full identification by the units intelligence officer.

According to him, the FRSC contacted the relatives through the mobile phone of the deceased.

The FRSC boss said the accident involved a Nissan bus with registration number LSH-517YG and a truck with registration number GGU-83XA.

Seven persons  three males and four females  were involved in the crash that happened in Ekwusigo Local Government Area of Anambra.

He added that the driver and a passenger in the bus later died.

The FRSC boss said that the crash occurred due to speeding.

He urged motorists to always be patient when driving on the highway in order to avert loss of lives and property.

Mr Oparaocha, the son of the deceased, thanked the FRSC for the kindness and honesty.

I was surprised when we got the call to come and collect the money found on my late mother. I did not believe that such a gesture can still happen in Nigeria of today.

I thank the FRSC for their efforts and honesty, he said.

(NAN)
Footage of Rwandan newlyweds and family guests forced to spend their wedding night in stadia for breaching coronavirus rules has sparked criticism.



Spending the evening at a stadium "on my wedding day is a bad memory that will never fade in my life", one bride told the BBC anonymously.



"Inflicting pain and shaming people like this doesn't make us fear corona or observe measures."



Police in the capital, Kigali, had stopped at least three weddings over the Easter weekend because they exceeded the maximum of 20 attendees.















A police spokesperson told Rwandan media that "more people doing parties are violating the measures", and police wouldn't allow it to continue.Some online said police were "now going too far" by unlawfully holding people for night hours in stadiums, while others praised officers for taking action to "keep them safe.Clarisse Karasira, a Rwandan music star, tweeted "this act lacks humanity", and said that it was "an eternal pain to the couple and their children".Rwandas response to Covid-19 has been praised internationally, but activists and opposition have deplored deep human rights violations in the process.The country has recorded more than 22,000 cases of Covid-19 and 311 deaths.

Source: BBC









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The 103-year-old mystery of an unknown New Zealand Army captain buried in a cemetery in Belgium has been solved.

Grave I.E.20 at the Dochy Farm New British Cemetery has been confirmed as the final resting-place of Captain Ernest Charles Parry, 1st Battalion Auckland Infantry Regiment, who was killed on October 6, 1917, during the Battle of Passchendaele.

Captain Parry, of Paeroa, is commemorated on the New Zealand Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing and until now, had no known grave.

Confirmation of Captain Parrys grave came after a painstaking review of historical material by New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) historians, after an initial case was put forward by overseas researchers.

The NZDF team found evidence that the bodies of Captain Parry and Sergeant Donald McLean were found lying close together by other members of their battalion on October 6, 1917.

NZDF historian Matthew Buck said the identification of Captain Parrys grave was based on two key sources.

Captain Ernest Charles Parry, of Paeroa, was killed on 6 October, 1917, during the Battle of Passchendaele. Ref: Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections AWNS-19171115-40-3

We had some pages added to the war diary of his battalion, and a letter from one of his comrades published in the Ohinemuri Gazette in 1917, he says.

Its unlikely that either would have been found if it wasnt for the digitisation programmes carried out recently by Archives New Zealand and the National Library.

Were also very much indebted to the work of other researchers, who had made submissions to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission that Grave I.E.20 contained Captain Parry.

After the bodies were found, it appears that the two men were buried close together on the battlefield. After the war, however, when the bodies were recovered for reburial at Dochy Farm New British Cemetery, the graves concentration unit was only able to identify Sergeant McLean and an unknown New Zealand captain.

New Zealand soldiers make tea near in Ypres, Belgium, in 1917. Ref: 1/2-012937-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/23254500

We then had to eliminate the possibility that the grave was one of five other New Zealand infantry captains killed in the same area who had no known grave, Mr Buck says.

There are 6290 members of the New Zealand Armed Forces who served during the First World War listed on memorials erected to those with no known graves.

Given the considerable uncertainty typically surrounding such cases, a positive identification based purely on archival research is extremely rare.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission said that Captain Parrys is the first successful identification case for a New Zealand casualty that it was aware of.

Captain Parry had two young sons and his wife, Mary Okara Parry, wrote movingly of the difficulties of bringing up two young children on her own after the death of her husband.

The sons both served in the Royal New Zealand Air Force in the Second World War.

Tragically one of them, Flight Sergeant Joseph Stewart Parry, was killed on active operations flying with the Royal Air Forces 99 Squadron on 29 September 1941, and has no known grave.

Flight Sergeant Parrys bomber crashed into the sea a few kilometres north of Amsterdam while returning to Cambridgeshire after a raid on Genoa.

New Zealand soldiers near Kansas Farm, Ypres, in 1917. Ref: 1/2-012933-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22317419

The bodies of three of the six-man crew washed ashore later on the Dutch coast and were buried, but the other three, including Flight Sergeant Parry, were never found.

They are commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial in Surrey, England.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission will replace the headstone marking Grave I.E.20 at the Dochy Farm cemetery to show that it is the grave of Captain Parry. His name will remain on the New Zealand Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing, because the policy is that names are not removed once they have been engraved into the Memorial.

The Commission commemorates the 1.7 million Commonwealth servicemen and women who died during the two World Wars.

Using an extensive archive, the Commission works with partner organisations to recover, investigate, and identify those with no known grave, to give them the dignity of burial and the commemoration they deserve.

An injured soldier being evacuated at Spree Farm, Ypres, on 4 October 1917. Ref: 1/2-012932-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22864977

The Commission publishes a list of cases on its website, at the bottom of the Commemorations page: https://www.cwgc.org/find-records/commemorations/

There is also a section on identification cases and a list of completed and ongoing cases at https://www.cwgc.org/find-records/commemorations/open-case-files/

Researchers wishing to submit a case for the identification of the grave of a casualty who is currently commemorated on one of the commissions Memorials to the Missing should go to https://www.cwgc.org/find-records/commemorations/id-case-form/
NORTHAMPTON  An anonymous donor has put up $50,000 to save St. John Cantius Church and the similarly endangered St. Marys Church on the other side of downtown.

Northampton City Councilor Jim Nash announced the proposed donation Tuesday during a meeting of the Northampton Central Business Architecture Committee, which was discussing OConnell Development Groups proposal to demolish St. John Cantius and build condominiums in its place.

The committee voted Tuesday to deny the demolition permit on the grounds that OConnells design of the new buildings doesnt have required first-floor commercial space.

The donor wants to put $20,000 on deposit with the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts to be used for tax-deductible grants to community groups like the Ward 3 Neighborhood Association. The remaining $30,000 would be available for nondeductible uses, for example, direct expenses of the developer or payments to consultants involved in preserving the building.

But it may not be enough to save St. John Cantius.

Matthew Welter, vice president of development for OConnell, said the company has already spent more than $50,000 on its plans and the donors proposal doesnt change his mind about the viability of reusing the 1904 structure.

Former St. John Cantius Parish and the ongoing Hawley Manor project on Hawley Street in Northampton. (Hoang 'Leon' Nguyen / The Republican)

Building a restaurant inside would cost $2.6 million to $3 million, he said. Housing could cost $3.8 million to $4 million, according to a presentation Tuesday. Those investments would require rents two and a half or three times what the building could be expected to earn either as multifamily housing or as commercial space.

The cost of demolishing the church would be $115,000, Welter said.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield sold the 2.23-acre St. John Cantius property to OConnell in March 2020 for $1.6 million.

At the time OConnell planned to retain the church building while demolishing the rectory and social hall and building 23 townhouses in their place. Construction is underway and units are on the market for $750,000 each.

In February, OConnell said it could not find a way to reuse the church. The company proposed tearing it down and building five additional townhouses.

Former St. John Cantius Parish and the ongoing Hawley Manor project on Hawley Street in Northampton. (Hoang 'Leon' Nguyen / The Republican)

Many in Northampton are fighting to save the church, vacant since 2011 but long the center of the citys Polish community. Elaine Jandu, who started an online petition, said the community will do anything to save St. John Cantius.

Its just too beautiful not to save, Jandu told the committee Tuesday.

Welter argued St. John Cantius has limited commercial reuse potential, adding that the diocese made no capital improvements to the building in the last 10 years it owned the building. Only about 6,400 square feet  the sanctuary  is usable. The rest is bell tower and storage space.

We were not able to find an option that was not outweighed by the structural or the functional obsolescence of the church, Welter said.

He said partitioning the sanctuary would destroy its value.

When this was developed, it was developed with the intent of being a church forever, Welter said. They value the openness.

Diocese deconsecrated the church by removing the stained glass windows and artwork, he said.

Welter also showed slide after slide of rotting wood, failing plaster and other damage he said makes the bundling unusable. It will cost $85,000 to remove asbestos and mold, he said.

We see many signs of deferred maintenance, he said.

Welter said a Boston-based restaurant operator designed a brewpub for the space, but lost interest when the coronavirus pandemic hit.

Real estate agent Patrick Goggins joined Tuesdays Zoom call at OConnells request, testifying about the oversupply of commercial property and vacancies in Northampton.

The cost of converting the church to commercial space would result in generating rents that would be only half what the cost of providing that space would be, he said.

Goggins said he showed the property over the 12 years it was on the market to possible users including a book binder and a social services agency.

Welter said its rare for former churches to get historic tax credits. Affordable housing credits would require a six-story building to make sense.

Converting the church into five housing units, Welter said, would cost $885,000. And Welter said there are no similar condo-type units in a church existing now in Northampton. OConnell believes it would not find buyers for such an unusual housing offering.

Central Business Architecture Committee member Pauline Fogel said she hopes Northamptons market for commercial property will rebound quickly with the end of the pandemic. She praised the renderings shown of the possible brewery or restaurant.

It breaks my heart that the pandemic happened and two good plans went by the wayside, she said.

Local architect Tris Metcalfe said the developers were lowballing the value of the church and overestimating the cost of converting.

Its trying to stretch an argument for the purpose of demolition, he said. The point is the building can be reused.

Terence Masterson, a former city employee who lives in Amherst, said there are many examples of churches converted to condominiums, including six in Pittsfield.

It begs the question why not this church, he said.

Related content:
INFICON to Publish its First Quarter 2021 Results on Thursday, April 22, 2021

07:00 a.m. CEST: Publication of Media Release and Presentation

09.30 a.m. CEST: Web Conference via Microsoft Teams

Bad Ragaz, April 7, 2021. We look forward to welcoming you to the Media/Analyst Conference on INFICON's first quarter 2021 results. INFICON will host a Web Conference via Microsoft Teams on Thursday, April 22, 2021 at 09.30 a.m. CEST. The presentations and the following question and answer session will be in English. You may join the presentation using the shortened link

http://bit.ly/IFCN_WebConference

or alternatively

https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_ODJkYmQ1NjEtYTE5My00ZjNkLWJkNmItNmMxMzFkNzIwMzM1%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22a494485d-2d03-49c2-981d-10b908af3646%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22b0638c04-d43a-43ce-95f5-c7ab177580ce%22%7d

Please make sure that you have access to Microsoft Teams. During the Web Conference, participants will first be in a listen-only mode. After the prepared remarks, Management will take questions via the voice or chat functionalities provided in Microsoft Teams. The Web Conference will be recorded and later archived in the investors' section of the INFICON website.

On April 22, 2021, INFICON will issue a press release at 07:00 a.m. CEST on the first quarter 2021 results. At the same time, the accompanying presentation visuals will also be available in the Investors' section of the INFICON website, www.inficon.com.

Communication Calendar

The communication calendar of INFICON is continuously updated and available on online in the Investors' section of the INFICON website, www.inficon.com.

E-Mail Alerts

To automatically receive notification via e-mail of the latest financial information from INFICON, sign-up for e-mail Alerts in the Investors section of the INFICON.

Corporate Contact

Matthias Trondle

Chief Financial Officer

+423 388 3510

matthias.troendle@inficon.com

ABOUT INFICON

INFICON is a leading provider of innovative instrumentation, critical sensor technologies, and advanced process control software that enhance productivity and quality in sophisticated industrial vacuum processes. These analysis, measurement and control products are essential for gas leak detection in air conditioning/ refrigeration, and automotive manufacturing. They are vital to equipment manufacturers and end-users in the complex fabrication of semiconductors and thin film coatings for optics, flat panel displays, solar cells and industrial vacuum coating applications. Other users of vacuum based processes include the life sciences, research, aerospace, packaging, heat treatment, laser cutting and many other industrial processes. We also leverage our expertise in vacuum technology to provide unique, toxic chemical analysis products for emergency response, security, and environmental monitoring. INFICON is headquartered in Switzerland and has world-class manufacturing facilities in Europe, the United States and China, as well as subsidiaries in China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Liechtenstein, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and the United States. INFICON registered shares (IFCN) are listed on SIX Swiss Exchange. For more information about INFICON and its products, please visit www.inficon.com.

This press release and oral statements or other written statements made, or to be made by us contain forward-looking statements that do not relate solely to historical or current facts. These forward-looking statements are based on the current plans and expectations of our management and are subject to a number of uncertainties and risks that could significantly affect our current plans and expectations, as well as future results of operations and financial condition. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
A new analysis indicates more should have been done to prevent the contamination that destroyed over 15 million vaccine doses.

Trump and Biden administrations oversight vaccine plant problems

According to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter and an internal report, senior officials in the Trump and Biden administrations were aware of oversight and quality assurance issues at Emergent BioSolutions' Baltimore plant months before the firm accidentally contaminated 15 million doses of Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine.

In June 2020, a briefing on Emergent's inner workings was submitted to officials from the Trump administration's vaccine plan, Operation Warp Speed, and the Department of Health and Human Services. The document, which was written by a government official, found that the company's proposal for producing desperately needed COVID-19 vaccines was inadequate. According to the two people who read the study and explained it to POLITICO, Emergent's problems hiring and attracting skilled workers meant it couldn't guarantee success in making the shots.

The report was shared with senior Trump officials, including Gen. Gustave Perna, the chief operating officer of Operation Warp Speed, who continues to work in that position for the Biden administration; Moncef Slaoui, the vaccine lead at the time; and Robert Kadlec, the HHS assistant secretary for preparedness and response under Trump. During the transition, officials from the Trump administration gave the report, along with other crucial Operation Warp Speed records, to the Biden team.

Emergent only had a fraction of the necessary experienced staff to oversee quality control and technology transition operations for COVID-19 vaccine development, according to the report, which came after an April 2020 inspection by the Food and Drug Administration. The company had already agreed to produce J&J's vaccine and was in talks with AstraZeneca about a similar deal.

13 States Sue Biden Administration Over Tax Provision in COVID-19 Relief Package

The federal government lacked corporations to assist the vaccine plant

Following the release of the June 2020 report, Trump administration officials met with Emergent and J&J leaders several times to review its conclusions. J&J was advised by the federal government to send workers to the Emergent plant to further boost operations.

According to those reports, the firm slowly recruited more workers into its quality control and tech transition departments over time, but the plant's level of knowledge and skill remained insufficient, resulting in continuing manufacturing issues first exposed by the New York Times. Emergent has been criticized by the FDA many times in the past for having poorly trained employees and failing to cope with mold and contamination in its laboratories.

WHO, Others, Warn Using Ivermectin as Treatment to COVID-19

During an investigation of Emergent's Baltimore plant in April 2020, the FDA blamed the firm for problems with staff preparation while treating an experimental anthrax vaccine. According to The Associated Press, the FDA stated that the firm "failed to train staff 'in the specific operations they conduct as part of their work and existing good manufacturing practices."

A source familiar with the FDA's probe said that the citation was the lowest degree of alert the agency issued. Officials from both Trump and Biden claim that the federal government should have done enough to support Emergent in increasing hiring and quality management around the production of COVID-19 vaccines. While the government contributed to the production and testing of J&J's shot, it has little influence over Emergent's activities or how its internal inspection units are operated.

After the batch contamination news broke, J&J has announced that it will commit additional staff and resources to the Emergent plant, where they will operate 24/7 to fix the problem. According to a recent J&J announcement, "the firm is recruiting committed leaders for logistics and quality, as well as greatly expanding the amount of manufacturing, quality, and technical processes staff to collaborate with the company specialists currently at Emergent."

Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 Vaccine Delivery Halts Following Factory Mistake

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ShotSpotter, Inc, a pioneer in precision policing technology solutions that enable law enforcement to more effectively respond to, investigate and deter crime, launches its ShotSpotter SiteSecure for Retail program to provide outdoor gunfire detection for retail chains and malls.

ShotSpotter SiteSecure is a gunfire detection solution that alerts retail security personnel within seconds of a shooting incident around their stores and parking lots, protecting retail shoppers and associates by enabling faster response by security, law enforcement and medical personnel.

Highest retail violence

Fatalities and violent incidents in retail spiked to an all-time high in 2020, increasing 40 percent since 2016, according to the latest D&D Daily retail crime report. The findings revealed that 88% of the fatalities were from gunfire and that parking lots experienced the highest retail violence, followed closely by stores and malls.

ShotSpotters own gunfire data also showed a significant increase in retail area shootings

ShotSpotters own gunfire data also showed a significant increase in retail area shootings, rising 42 percent from 2019 to 2020 in areas with ShotSpotter coverage. The increase includes 5,141 confirmed gunfire incidents within a quarter mile of retail establishments in 2019, to 7,299 in 2020. The retail establishments represented a mix of grocers, discount/dollar stores, big box retailers, home improvement/DIY, and supply chain/distribution centres that fell within U.S. coverage areas for ShotSpotter.

Dedicated security experts

SiteSecure for retail is a new program that provides US-based retailers with dedicated security experts, custom-tailored solutions for enhanced perimeter security, simplified pricing bundles, and seamless integration into existing video surveillance, access controls, and other security technologies. It complements similar programs for corporate facilities, government buildings, and college campuses.

SiteSecures core technology uses acoustic sensors to listen for loud, impulsive sounds that could be gunshots. Using a combination of machine learning and human review, incidents are quickly verified and alerts are sent to law enforcement and security teams including a precise location of the incident, a number of rounds fired, and tactical information.

Public safety personnel

The alerts provide a critical time advantage that enable security officials to quickly mobilise

The alerts provide a critical time advantage that enables security officials to quickly mobilise and safely mitigate the threat. SiteSecures technology is already used in over 100 cities across the U.S. to provide public safety personnel with a critical time advantage needed to act quickly and confidently in a crisis situation.

Improving safety around stores requires a range of solutions including sharing best practices and greater cooperation between retailers and law enforcement, said Terry Sullivan, President of the Loss Prevention Foundation. With a proven tool like ShotSpotter SiteSecure, retailers are assured that police and their own leadership teams will be quickly alerted to gunfire at a specific location and will respond swiftly to help keep customers and employees safe.

Ensuring public safety

Going with your family to the mall or department store should be a safe and secure everyday event, but sadly we have seen the threats of gun violence escalate to levels that have retailers seeking new solutions to ensure public safety in and around their establishments, said Ralph A. Clark, President and CEO of ShotSpotter.

With SiteSecure for Retail, we can help retail locations provide a 24 x 7 outdoor dome of protection for the people who work, shop and congregate in these locations and ensure first responders are notified quickly in a shooting event.

As part of the program, ShotSpotter has partnered with the Loss Prevention Foundation (LPF) to provide valuable resources and expertise to Loss Prevention and Security pioneers in retail. LPF and ShotSpotter will co-host a webinar featuring former NYPD Commissioner William Bratton on the following topic: Managing the New Normal - Perspectives on the State of Public Safety and the Impact on Retail Security. The session is open to the public and will be held on April 15th, 10 am PT/1 pm ET.
Mullins Faces Another Charge in Capitol Riot Case

By West Kentucky Star Staff

LOUISVILLE - A Benton man arrested in February for his alleged role in the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot now faces an additional charge.Clayton Ray Mullins was arrested on Feb. 23 and charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers; obstruction of law enforcement during a civil disorder; engaging in physical violence; and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds. He was released from jail and placed on house arrest last month.According to an April 1 superseding indictment, Mullins now faces an additional charge of assaulting an officer. The indictment goes on to say Mullins "did forcibly assault, resist, oppose, impede, intimidate, interfere and inflict bodily injury on an officer from the Metropolitan Police Department".Police have also arrested Jack Wade Whitton of Locust Grove, Georgia; Jeffrey Sabol of Kittredge, Colorado; and Peter Francis Stager of Conway, Arkansas in the case.This case is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorneys Office for the District of Columbia and the Counterterrorism Section of the U.S. Department of Justices National Security Division, with assistance from the U.S. Attorneys Offices for the Northern District of Georgia, the Southern District of New York, the Eastern District of Arkansas, the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and the Western District of Kentucky.Mullins is due back in court for a status hearing on May 5.
OLMSTED COUNTY, Minn. - A proposed housing development plan on land in Rochester Township is a subject of recent controversy. As part of the plan, some trees would be cut down and a private road would be constructed through the nesting grounds of a group of great blue herons.

On Tuesday, the Olmsted County Board of Commissioners were set to vote on whether or not to change the land designation from resource protected to suburban development. This would allow the developers to take a step forward in the project.

Ultimately, before the board decided to table the agenda item, it heard from people involved in the development and citizens concerned about the birds.

Geologist Jeff Broberg insists the birds will move to another nearby area if the trees are cut down during the right time in the nesting cycle. "These birds are resilient and there's a lot of them. Minnesota has 10,000 lakes and most lakes that I go to have half a dozen herons on them. These are not uncommon birds. They do not have a special status," he explains.

There was a public hearing at the meeting, where multiple community members voiced their opposition to the project. "If something is very, very important and valuable to the people that live in a place, then it's worth protecting and part of your jobs as commissioners and part of the job of the township is to protect that really unique and special resource," says Viki Morris, one of the people who spoke.

The decision is tabled until May 18th. That meeting will not have a public comment period.
Following Major League Baseball's pulling its All-Star Game out of Atlanta over the states new voting law, the White House denied that election regulations in Colorado, to where the game was moved, are akin to Georgia's.

Video Transcript

- Is the White House concerned that Major League Baseball is moving their All-Star Game to Colorado, where voting regulations are very similar to Georgia?

JEN PSAKI: Well, let me just refute the first point you made. First, let me say on Colorado, Colorado allows you to register on Election Day. Colorado has voting by mail, where they send to 100% of people in the state who are eligible applications to vote by mail. 94% of people in Colorado voted by mail in the 2020 election. And they also allow for a range of materials to provide, even if they vote on Election Day, for the limited number of people who vote on Election Day.

I think it's important to remember the context here. The Georgia legislation is built on a lie. It's there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election. Georgia's top Republican election officials have acknowledged that repeatedly in interviews.

And what there was, however, was record-setting turnout, especially by voters of color. So instead, what we're seeing here is for politicians who didn't like the outcome, they're not changing their policies to win more votes. They're changing the rules to exclude more voters. And we certainly see the circumstances as different.

- And one--

JEN PSAKI: But ultimately, sorry, let me add one more thing. It's up to Major League Baseball to determine where they're holding their All-Star Game.

-OK.
An anti-coup protester shows the three fingered salute of resistance on his red painted hand in memory of protesters who lost their lives (AP)

Security forces stormed a town in northwestern Myanmar where some residents had used homemade hunting rifles to resist the militarys February seizure of power, killing at least seven civilians and injuring many others, local news reports said.

The online news site Khonumthung Burmese said the attack on Kalay began before dawn.

Videos on the site included what appeared to be sounds of rifle fire, high-calibre weapons and grenade explosions.

Posts on social media said rocket-propelled grenades were used in the attack, but provided no evidence.

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The news site said that in addition to the seven fatalities, many people were wounded and arrested in the town, also known as Kalemyo.

Over half the towns population are members of the Chin ethnic minority.

Security forces have killed at least 581 protesters and bystanders in their crackdown on protests against the February 1 coup that ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which monitors casualties and arrests.

Nearly all of the protests have been nonviolent, but as police and soldiers have increased their use of lethal force, some participants have armed themselves with homemade weapons such as gasoline bombs for self-defence.

In Kalay, some residents took up simple but deadly homemade hunting rifles.

Myanmar Now, another online news site, reported on Tuesday that protesters in Kalay had set up neighbourhood strongholds and inflicted casualties on the security forces.

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It said that on March 28, when the army sought to attack Kalay, protesters in the town and nearby villages put up fierce resistance.

The attack took place a day after the juntas forces killed more than 110 people around the country, the highest single-day death toll since the coup.

The report said protesters more than held their own.

Four of them died that night, but so did an equal number of the enemy, including an officer or two.

The protesters also managed to wound 17 of their heavily armed attackers.

The protesters, who have organised themselves in a Kalay Civil Army, inflicted more casualties in the following days, it said.

Daily protests against military rule continued in other cities and towns, including Mogok in central Myanmar, and Bago, northeast of Yangon, where social media posts said security forces fired live ammunition at demonstrators.
Bhopal, April 7 : The bypoll in Madhya Pradesh's Damoh Assembly is turning into a prestige battle for the ruling BJP with growing resentment against its 'turncoat' candidate Rahul Lodhi even as its top state leaders are camping in the constituency to campaign for him.

The voters are questioning Lodhi's defection and this has become a big issue for the party.

The BJP is leaving no stone unturned to win this bypoll as it is a prestige fight and the result will not impact the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government which enjoys a comfortable majority. The party has deployed a dozen ministers who are going door to door to woo the voters. State BJP President Vishnu Dutt Sharma is himself camping in the constituency to oversee the campaign.

Political analysts say the by-election is generally won by the ruling party, but the Damoh contest is not one-sided. They say there is no resentment against the BJP, but voters are angry with Lodhi and the BJP faces a challenge in convincing the people to vote in his favour.

The issue of three new farm laws also has no traction in the constituency. People are either unaware of them or are not interested in discussing it at all.

The bypoll was necessitated after Lodhi switched over to the BJP last year after winning on Congress ticket in the 2018 Assembly elections.
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PHOENIX  Police are searching for a suspect after three adults were shot and wounded Tuesday following an argument in an area near downtown Phoenix.

One man was seriously wounded and a man and a woman had injuries that werent life-threatening, said Sgt. Ann Justus, a Police Department spokeswoman.

Justus did not immediately release information about the reported argument or the suspect but said investigators had a description and that no gun was found at the scene.

No identities were released and no additional information was immediately available.

Several facilities serving homeless people are located in the area where the shootings occurred, which is between the State Capitol and the heart of downtown.

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GODFREY  Larry Trent and incumbent Dwight Werts won seats on the Lewis and Clark Community College Board of Trustees, according to incomplete and unofficial results Tuesday evening.

With all but one precinct in Madison County in, Trent was the top vote-getter receiving 10,605 votes. Werts received 10,403.

Challenger Jack Holmes had 7,908 votes, and Jeffrey D. Ferguson 6,866.

Both Trent and Werts scored decisive victories in Madison County, with each receiving more than 7,200 votes. Holmes and Ferguson scored less than 5,000 each.

The race was closer in Macoupin, Jersey, Greene and Calhoun counties.

In those counties Trent received 3,207 votes to Werts 3,145 and Holmes 3,018. Ferguson trailed in all but Greene County, where he received 582 votes to Werts 464.

Trent is from Rosewood Heights and graduated from Roxana High School. He received an associates degree from then-Belleville Area College  now Southwestern Illinois College  and a bachelors degree from McKendree University. He served six years as director of the Illinois State Police after 22 years as an officer.

Trent is a former vice president of the Argosy Gaming Company and former president of the RiverBend Growth Association. He also was a founding member of the Madison County Child Advocacy Center.

During the campaign Trent said the LCCC satellite campus in Edwardsville needs to be maintained. He also said he believes in a balanced budget.

Werts joined the board in 2009. He is a graduate of Roxana High School and earned his associates degree from LCCC. He is the president/CEO of Werts Welding and Tank Service, Inc. with eight locations and more than 100 employees. He also is vice-chairman of the OSF St. Anthonys Community Advisory Board and is the former chairman of the RiverBend Growth Association.

During the campaign, Werts touted his helping to establish a veterans and student emergency fund, donate more than $250,000 through his business and establish a truck driving program for the college.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 20:33:40|Editor: huaxia

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LISBON, April 7 (Xinhua) -- The Council of the European Union (EU) on Wednesday defined the attraction of international investments in hydrogen energy as a priority, in a consensus built during a virtual meeting with representatives of the member states promoted by the Portuguese presidency of the EU.

The European leaders of the energy portfolio highlighted the need to create a "stable regulatory framework" for hydrogen in the European Union, noting that it is a competitive and predictable market.

"Public and private investment must ally, and governments have a responsibility to give the right signals, creating the conditions for the private sector to invest with stability and security," said Portuguese Minister of Environment and Climate Action Joao Pedro Matos Fernandes.

The Netherlands Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Policy Bas van't Wout urged for mobilizing public sector investment for the implementation of the European strategy.

The planning of the necessary infrastructure for the production and distribution of hydrogen is crucial, said Germany's Secretary of State for Economic Affairs and Energy Elisabeth Winkelmeier-Becker.

"It is time to accelerate investment and political decisions" in a bid to lay the foundations for stable investment, said Spain's Secretary of State for Energy Sara Aagesen Munoz.

Luxembourg's Energy Minister Claude Turmes called on the EU to establish "a transparent system, because the private investor will only be interested in moving forward if there is transparency." Enditem
A man will appear in court charged with manufacturing the drug ice after police found a sophisticated clandestine laboratory in Sydney's CBD.

Last September, detectives from the State Crime Command's Organised Crime Squad, together with the NSW Crime Commission, began investigating the manufacture and supply of prohibited drugs across Sydney.

Strike force detectives and the riot squad raided a unit in Campbell Street, Haymarket, as well as a unit and garage at Castlereagh Street, Haymarket, on January 29.

A man will appear in court charged with manufacturing the drug ice after police found a sophisticated clandestine laboratory in Sydney's CBD

They found a drug lab and seized 25kg of white powder, as well as prescription medication, prohibited drugs believed to methylamphetamine and equipment consistent with the manufacture of illicit substances.

Officers also seized nearly $10,000 cash and five mobile phones.

During a search of the Campbell Street property, police seized more mobile phones, prescription medication, cannabis and other prohibited drugs.

A man was charged with manufacturing a prohibited drug, possessing a prohibited drug and knowingly dealing with proceeds of crime.

The 51-year-old appeared at Parramatta Bail Court on January 30 and was refused bail to reappear at Central Local Court on Thursday.
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After tickets to Patti Smiths upcoming Bob Dylan birthday celebration quickly sold out, Kaatsbaan Cultural Park has added an additional Smith show to their outdoor Spring Festival.

Held over two weekends in May in Tivoli, New York, the festival also added Yo La Tengo and Steve Gunn to the lineup. Smith will perform on May 22nd and 23rd with her bandmate Tony Shanahan and son Jackson Smith, while Yo La Tengo will appear on May 29th and Gunn on the 30th.

The festival kicks off on May 20th and will showcase dance, sculpture, culinary arts, and more. Taking place outdoors, the event will follow the Covid-19 guidelines of CDC and New York State, with attendees at less than 3% capacity. Tickets are on sale now.

Kaatsbaan is committed to the health and vibrancy of our local economy, with the Spring Festival providing opportunities for local economic growth that includes exciting new partnerships, executive director Sonja Kostich said in a previous statement.

Last month, Smith performed an hour-long concert at Brooklyn Museum for NY PopsUp festival. On Friday and Saturday, shell perform at New Yorks City Winery alongside Shanahan and Jackson. She recently launched a newsletter on Substack, where she will write weekly ruminations, shards of poetry, music, and musings on whatever subject finds its way from thought to pen, news of the mind, pieces of this world, free to all.
The wreckage of a Translink Metrobus on fire on the Shankill Road in Belfast (Liam McBurney/PA)

SDLP leader Colum Eastwood has accused the Prime Minister of showing total disinterest over loyalist violence.

The Foyle MP said Boris Johnsons refusal to accept the impact of the Irish Sea border had contributed to the toxic political environment.

Mr Eastwood was speaking in the wake of days of disorder that saw loyalist rioters attack police.

On Wednesday evening further violence broke out after a bus was hijacked and police officers targeted during disorder at an interface area in west Belfast.

The incident prompted Mr Johnson to tweet that he was "deeply concerned" by the latest outbreak of violence here.

"Especially attacks on PSNI who are protecting the public and businesses, attacks on a bus driver and the assault of a journalist. The way to resolve differences is through dialogue, not violence or criminality," he wrote.

Belfast Telegraph photographer Kevin Scott had been subjected to a physical and verbal attack while attending the scenes at the Shankill Road area.

I am deeply concerned by the scenes of violence in Northern Ireland, especially attacks on PSNI who are protecting the public and businesses, attacks on a bus driver and the assault of a journalist. The way to resolve differences is through dialogue, not violence or criminality.  Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) April 7, 2021

Forty-one officers have been injured and the Assembly has been recalled from its Easter recess today to discuss the trouble.

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If this was happening in Durham or Leeds, there would be Cobra meetings, emergency resource allocations and senior politicians would be tripping over themselves to get involved. But when its Derry or Newtownabbey, the British Government appears happy to ignore it, he said.

It is a defining characteristic of Boris Johnson as a man and as a political leader that he creates maximum chaos and then steps away from the consequences. We saw it during the Brexit referendum campaign, we have seen it during his time in office, and the very real consequences are now playing out on the streets.

Its about time Boris Johnson came out of hiding and started taking some responsibility for the impact that his words and actions have.

His comments came after UUP leader Steve Aiken said Arlene Foster was making a mistake by not engaging with PSNI Chief Constable Simon Byrne.



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Mr Aiken said his party will continue to work with Mr Byrne, after the First Minister said she had not spoken to him in recent days despite the unrest.

Mr Aiken said he had issues with the Chief Constable because of past actions and decisions, but that should not be the cause for us to refuse to engage.

He is the head of the PSNI and while he is in post we should continue to work with him and all his officers, he said.

And Tony Blairs former Downing Street chief-of-staff Jonathan Powell told the First Minister to back off after she reiterated her call for Mr Byrne to resign.

Mr Powell said turning to identity politics and violence was playing with fire and a terrible mistake.

I think that politicians trying to second guess the police when they are making operational decisions is really a mistake, he said.

I hope that the First Minister will back off on this and allow the police to proceed with their job.

Mrs Foster revealed she had not met with Mr Byrne and he had not sought to meet her.

She said anger in the unionist community had been caused by deferential treatment given to Sinn Fein over the Bobby Storey funeral and Mr Byrne had been warned about specialised treatment for a political elite.

If I meet the Chief Constable I will simply repeat what I have said to him last Tuesday after the devastating report from the PPS. That he had lost the confidence of the unionist community and he should resign, she told BBC Radio Ulster.

Policing Board chair Doug Garrett called for redoubling of efforts to calm tensions and for continued dialogue between the community and police officers at all levels of the PSNI.

Nothing is achieved without talking, and leadership is needed from all those with influence so that any concerns can be addressed through the democratic structures in place and through the board mechanisms for policing oversight and accountability, he said.
Using Racial Justice to Destroy the Nation Will Not Raise Black Communities From Poverty: Bob Woodson

Empowering low-income grassroots leaders helps their communities achieve against the odds

Assault on the fundamental institutions and values of America in the name of pursuing social justice for blacks by the radical left will not benefit black communities but can destroy the nation, said Bob Woodson, a veteran of the civil rights movement.

None of us wants to be judged by our birth defect or the worst that we ever did as a young person.  Americas interest is best served by setting aside race and beginning to promote remedies that reach across class and race lines to heal this nation, Woodson, founder of the 1776 Unites project, told Epoch Times American Thought Leaders.

The 1776 Unites initiative is a Woodson Center project joined by a nonpartisan and intellectually diverse alliance of writers, thinkers, and activists, according to its website.

The goal of 1776 is to provide the means for this nation to heal and build on 50 years of successfully fighting against racism and discrimination, [to] build on what weve accomplished, Woodson said. It is not go back retro retroactively and condemn America for what it did.

Those who are marginalized as a consequence of their condition, not their race, such as low-income blacks, whites, Hispanics, and others, have more in common than they do differences, Woodson explained.

Our mission is to unite Americans rather than divide them around issues of race and ethnicity: We do this in the spirit of 1776, the date of Americas true founding. Carol Swain, a project participant and a former tenured professor at Vanderbilt and Princeton universities wrote for The Epoch Times.

Racial Justice

A Black Lives Matter protester seen at a riot in Portland, Oregon, on Aug. 1, 2020. (Noah Berger/AP Photo)

Woodson said that 85 percent of protesters from Black Lives Matter (BLM) and other groups who responded with rioting to George Floyds death in Minneapolis, Minnesota, were not black, they were white. They were saying theyre doing this in pursuit of justice for blacks, he added.

The hard left will use any excuse to riot, Woodson said, using the example of Portland, Oregon, where there were riots for over 100 days in 2020. The fact that rioters burned out black-owned businesses means that those riots are an attack on capitalism and democracy under the cover of racial justice, he explained, adding they are really parasites.

Black leadership such as the Congressional Black Caucus and the civil rights organizations should be blamed for remaining silent as the civil rights legacy is being perverted, and debased, and debunked, Woodson said. They are the ones who should be standing in front of those stores and saying  do not use justice for blacks as an excuse to destroy this nation.

Rioters in Portland and other cities quickly migrated away from just seeking justice for blacks to burning bibles, burning the flag, and criticizing the Christian cross is a symbol of white supremacy, Woodson said. A post on the BLM website, which was later taken down, criticized the nuclear family as a Western symbol of colonialism and advocating opposing it, Woodson continued.

The Epoch Times reached out to Black Lives Matter for comments.

The foundation of family, faith, personal responsibility, and self-determination, were the fundamental values, principles, and virtues that enabled black America to endure slavery and racial segregation under Jim Crow laws for 100 years after slavery, and achieve against the odds, build institutions, banks, insurance companies, and hotels, Woodson said.

It is ironic that the radical left is subverting those values upon which black America resisted oppression, and yet theyre saying theyre doing this in the name of helping blacks, Woodson explained.

One of the biggest myths that is being perpetrated by the left is that the kind of decline seen in urban centers in black communities, where over 70 percent of births are out of wedlock, is a consequence of the legacy of slavery and discrimination, Woodson said.

Scholars participating in 1776 Unites found by looking at the records of six major plantations during the slavery era that 70 percent of slave families had a man and a woman raising children, Woodson said, adding that the black community has a history of building colleges, universities, and their own railroads.

Research conducted by 1776 Unites delved into the plight of blacks during the first hundred years after slavery and found that during the era of Jim Crow segregation laws black communities carried out a project to build over 5,300 schools in 15 Southern states over the course of the 1910s to 1930s.

The projects initial funding of 4 million dollars came from a donation by philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, CEO of Sears, and 4.6 million dollars were raised by the black community, Woodson said.

The schools built as a part of this program were able to close the education gap from three years to six months in the course of 20 years and the black illiteracy rate was reduced from 75 percent after slavery to 25 percent in less than 50 years, Woodson said adding that it was unprecedented in the world.

Jim Crow racial segregation laws were enacted in Southern states by Democratic legislatures and signed by Democratic governors toward the end of the 19th century, wrote Bruce Bartlett in his book Wrong on Race. The Democratic Party Buried Past.

If you look at the inner cities today, you will see nothing but decline, Woodson said. The real cause of the decline has nothing to do with slavery or discrimination. It has everything to do with the perversion of federal policies generated in the 60s that replaced the family with welfare and that promoted dependency, he pointed out.

Programs to aid the poor cost $20 trillion, of which 70 percent went to professional service providers, Woodson said adding that we monetize poverty.

Healing the Nation From Inside Out

Doramise Moreau stands next to the new car she received for her community service at Notre Dame dHaiti Catholic Church in Miami, Fla., on March 8, 2021. (Marta Lavandier/ AP Photo)

The Woodson Center, founded and chaired by Woodson, supports, trains, and provides funding to community-based leaders and organizations to strengthen their efforts aimed at uplifting neighborhoods where they live, according to the organizations website.

For 40 years, the Woodson Center worked with low-income community leaders to develop solutions to crime, violence, and family dissolution, the founder said.

The grassroots leaders the center works with are people who live in low-income, high-crime neighborhoods, Woodson said. Many of them raise children who do not drop out of school, commit crimes, or abuse drugs and have found a way to achieve against the odds, he added.

However, a lot of their accomplishments go unnoticed, unrecognized, and therefore underutilized so the organization provides support for these indigenous healing agents, Woodson continued.

The sickest part of the body draws the strongest antibodies and we [at the Woodson Center] believe that these communities can be healed if we look in the right places for the right healing agents, grassroots leaders, he explained.

The mission of the Woodson Center is akin to a good venture capitalist who brings capital and administrative knowledge to entrepreneurs to enable them to develop a garage invention into a fortune 500 company, Woodson continued.

The center focuses on building on the strength and innovation of low-income people and social entrepreneurs, so that they can help develop cures for the problems of violence and family dissolution so that we can then heal this nation from the inside out, the bottom up, Woodson concluded.
In a new statement released on Wednesday morning, a federal government spokesman said the European Commission had made it clear that further deliveries would never be approved. AstraZeneca has not been able to secure an export licence from Europe to send the remaining doses, and they know they would never be approved by the European Commission, the spokesman said. The European Commission itself has confirmed their export control regime has blocked the export of a number of those doses, including a shipment of 250,000 doses, and they also requested we withdraw other export permit applications. Some 300,000 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine arrive at Sydney International airport on February 28. Credit:Getty Images This is the first time the Morrison government has publicly claimed that Europe asked for export approvals to be withdrawn.

The spokesman also rejected an overnight statement from the European Commission that noted it had formally blocked only 250,000 doses bound for Australia. Loading The European Commission is arguing semantics but at the end of the day, all we want is what Australians have ordered so we can get more vaccines in arms, the government spokesman said. Mr Morrison went into detail about the negotiations with the European Union at his Wednesday press conference, saying Australia had reached an agreement last September for the 3.8 million vaccines but this was cut to 1.2 million in January and cut again to 250,000 in February. The European Union then blocked the 250,000 doses on March 3, he said.

Mr Morrison said he was pleased to hear in the past 24 hours that the European Union had indicated it would not restrict the vaccines going to Australia, adding that he would write to AstraZeneca to seek the full shipment of 3.8 million doses. So, if it is, indeed, the position of the European Union that they are happy for these export

licences to be granted and their 3.8 million doses to come to Australia, then we would encourage them to do that in response to our request, he said. The Morrison government is also angry with the European Commission for not replying to a request to ship life-saving vaccines to PNG to help ease a rapidly worsening outbreak. Warning the PNG outbreak could morph into a health crisis for the region, Mr Morrison last month asked European leaders to redirect 1 million of Australias 3.1 million unsupplied doses to PNG. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is yet to send a reply to Mr Morrisons written plea nearly three weeks after it was sent.

Australian officials have been lobbying their EU counterparts to have the 1 million doses released to PNG but are pessimistic about their chances. The European Commission is understood to have questioned why Australia would want Europe to send AstraZeneca vaccines to PNG when Australia has domestic production capacity at a factory in Melbourne. Australia has given PNG 8000 doses for front-line health workers but sending more doses could be politically difficult given Canberras rollout is already behind schedule. Liberal MP Dave Sharma, a former ambassador to Israel, criticised the silence from Europe.

If Europe is unable or unwilling to provide to Papua New Guinea 1 million of the vaccine doses contracted to Australia, they should be up front and declare so now, he said. Its been more than two weeks and we are yet to receive a response, and given the speed and scale of the outbreak in PNG, time is of the essence. The EUs own rules state that shipments bound for low- and middle-income countries such as PNG should not be blocked. Loading However, AstraZeneca may not even have enough doses to send to Australia as first promised given it is having trouble ramping up production. The company had planned to supply 180 million doses to the EU in the second quarter but will only deliver 40 million in that time. Liberal MP Warren Entsch, whose North Queensland seat of Leichhardt is close to PNG, said an apparent lack of urgency from Europe was shameful and disappointing.
It was a busy news day on this day in 1939, but a couple of items downpage got my attention.

Thousands of Houstonians crowded Rusk near Travis and Main for the premiere of "Man of Conquest," a biopic on Sam Houston. It was the city's first time hosting a movie world premiere.

"All the glamour of a Hollywood premiere was there" at the Majestic Theatre, wrote critic Mildred Stockard of the previous night's fun.

Actors Richard Dix, who played Houston in the film, Gail Patrick and Joan Fontaine were on hand for the festivities.

"Police and firemen formed an almost solid line to guard the roped-off sidewalk in front of the theatre from Travis, where the stars were to appear. Newsreel cameramen, news and amateur photographers and more than a score of newspapermen surrounded the platform, where outside festivities were broadcast through KXYZ to the Mutual Broadcasting System chain of 29 stations," Stockard wrote.

What about the movie? Despite some minor quibbles, Stockard said it was a picture "Texas should be proud of."

The film was nominated for three Academy Awards.

* Earlier that Friday, the USS Houston arrived in the city for its third -- and final -- visit. Nearly 400 were on hand to greet its crew. The public would even get a chance to tour the ship during its stop here.

You'll recall the ship would go down in the Battle of Sunda Strait in 1942.

Click on the image below to enlarge.

(Click to enlarge)
Miners remain attractive as a relatively cheap value sector exposed to growing demand, Barclays Capital Inc said

Barclays said it was positive on the prospects for the European mining sector for the remainder of 2021 and lifted its price forecasts for iron ore, platinum group metals, cobalt and copper.

Miners remain attractive as a relatively cheap value sector exposed to growing demand, Barclays Capital Inc said in a research note.

It named ( ), Brazils Vale SA ( ) and ( ) as some of its top picks in the sector.

China demand looks well supported in most of the key commodity-intensive sectors, ie property, infrastructure, machinery and autos, the analysts said, while Western world stimulus shows no sign of abating.

It raised EBITDA forecasts for 2021 by 19%, on a market cap weighted average, and 32% for 2022 after updating commodity price forecasts.

Iron ore prices remain well supported by strong demand and limited incremental supply over the medium term, it said, lifting its price forecast by 16% this year and 33% next year.

Barclays raised its price forecast for PGM member rhodium by 68% this year, the biggest commodity price revision, to US$22,858 an ounce. The forecast for platinum prices was lifted 18% this year and for palladium up 13%.

Copper saw its price forecast revised 11% higher as the metal continues to be in a deficit, although Barclays warned that it remained concerned about significant supply growth in 2022-23.

If companies can consistently demonstrate a virtuous cycle of rising commodity prices, rising cash returns, capex under control and constrained supply, we think they could attract a new class of shareholder and support a broader re-rating, it said.
MIDDLETOWN  Over at least the past week, the city was ahead of other Connecticut municipalities its size in terms of vaccine distribution, according to officials, in some cases by nearly two-and-a-half times.

Acting Health Director Kevin Elak attributed that to the collaborative effort involving the city, Community Health Center, which has a mass vaccination site near Wesleyan University and a smaller one on Grand Street, Middlesex Health, CVS, Walgreens and, soon, Price Chopper. Its all of us working together, he said.

The CHC location is definitely the difference-maker, he said.

Compared to other municipalities with similar populations, Middletown by far has the most vaccinations disbursed, 13,451, compared to East Hartford, which had the second-highest at 5,636, according to the data.

Other than the weekly clinic at AME Zion Church, the health department has been focusing on going to local businesses to inoculate employees. Last week it was the Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce, and this week, workers at Charles IT and Save Home Security will receive their vaccines, according to Elak.

Plans are in the final stages for a site at Liberty Bank on Saturday, he said. Otherwise, the city will be coordinating with local agencies, such as St. Vincent dePaul Middletown, to offer shots to vulnerable populations such as clients who use the service, Elak said.

State officials have said the recall of 15 million Johnson & Johnson doses will affect supply beginning next week, he said. So far, Middletown has been getting the number of Moderna shots it has requested, Elak said.

The latest Middletown COVID report, compiled by Elak and released Thursday, shows cases have been on the rise over the past week, with an additional 113 positive results and two more deaths. Statewide, there had been 318,000 cases and 7,930 deaths as of Wednesday, with 21,459 doses being given out during the last 24 hours.

The governor reported Tuesday the state has a 5 percent positivity rate. Meanwhile, Middlesex County is in the moderate level in relation to the states eight geographical regions.

In Middletown, the infection rate jumped from 22.9 cases to 28.2 cases per 100,000 people over a two-week period, keeping it in the red zone (15 or more cases per 100,000). Im definitely concerned, Elak said. Were seeing numbers now we havent seen in the last few months. However, experts are saying this is not going to be the next wave.

There has been one confirmed case in the city of the variant first discovered in the United Kingdom, by the state Department of Public Health laboratory , Elak said, But Im sure its here.

So far, 6,682 vaccines have been administered in the city, both first and second doses,over the course of 113 clinics. That includes 63 homebound individuals visited by Middletown Medical Reserve Corps volunteers, the report said.

The city has fewer than 100 doses of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine, and is reserving those for people unable to leave their home, Elak said. We have to be very conservative with those doses, he said. Right now, the city is not concentrating on volume. Were trying to reach the more hard-to-reach population.

For information, including how to get on the citys waiting list for extra doses, call 860-638-4965 or visit middletownct.gov.
Plug and Play has selected its first batch of startups for its animal health and ag tech program in Topeka, Kan. This first batch of startups is a great representation of the variety of industries animal health encompasses, as well as the reach and opportunities this program promises, said Lindsay Lebahn, program manager, Plug and Play Topeka.

GoTopeka has announced that Plug and Play, a global innovation platform that specializes in creating industry-specific accelerator programs, has selected its first batch of startups for its animal health and ag tech program in Topeka. Ten early- and mid-stage startups from numerous U.S. states, Canada and Singapore were selected after a pitch competition in March 2021.

These startups represent a broad range of innovations designed to disrupt the animal health and ag tech industries, including food safety, pet and livestock health, technology and energy. Entrepreneurs will participate in a three-month accelerator program in Topeka aimed at helping businesses get off the ground, providing mentorship, resources and office space.

Selected companies include:



Ampcontrol  New York, New York: AI-powered software for electric vehicles.

BIOPSIN  Singapore: Microbial detection system.

GBatteries  Ottawa, Canada: Electric vehicle battery charging.

Heila - Somerville, Mass.: Simplifies the installation and operation of complex DER systems.

NanoSpy  Ames, Iowa: Rapid pathogen detection biosensors.

Nutrivert  St. Louis, Mo.: Development of postbiotics intended to provide an alternative to livestock antibiotics.

Obe, Inc.  San Francisco, Calif.: Digital pet health and wellness.

Resilient Biotics  Berkeley, Calif.: Microbiome-based solutions to combat respiratory infectious diseases in animal and human health.

StenCo  Birmingham, Ala.: Compostable oxygen barrier technology to extend shelf life in the single use packaging industry.

Veloce Energy  Los Angeles, Calif.: Reducing physical and financial barriers to EV charging infrastructure deployment.

This first batch of startups is a great representation of the variety of industries animal health encompasses, as well as the reach and opportunities this program promises, said Lindsay Lebahn, program manager, Plug and Play Topeka.

"Obe is thrilled to join the first animal health cohort, said Hilary Jensen, founder and CEO of San Francisco-based Obe, Inc. The program opens opportunities for new partnerships and a network specific to our focus on companion animal health and wellness, not to mention great peers to learn from."

Roughly two-thirds of the companies that Plug and Play invests in will have an exit, such as an acquisition, merger or initial public offering. This is a leading performance metric compared to other early-stage investors and accelerators.

Resilient Biotics is extremely excited to be selected as part of Plug and Play's inaugural Animal Health batch, said Chris Belnap, CEO and co-founder, Resilient Biotics in Berkeley. Participation in the program will enable direct contact with big strategic players in the industry. We look forward to being part of the Plug and Play ecosystem.

Topeka and Shawnee County are centrally located within the KC Animal Health Corridor. More than 300 animal health companies are located between Manhattan, Kansas, and Columbia, Missouri, including four of the top 10 animal health companies in the world.

These startups are coming from all over the world to spend time in the Capital City and we foresee great things to come, said Katrin Bridges, SVP of Innovation, GO Topeka. Whats more, this first batch is really setting the stage for Plug and Plays presence in Topeka. It will be exciting to see the impact innovation can have on this region.

Founding partners of the program include Cargill, Evergy, and Hills Pet Nutrition.

Based out of Silicon Valley in Sunnyvale, Calif., Plug and Play also maintains a presence in New York City, Cleveland and Northwest Arkansas. In 2019 alone, Plug and Play accelerated 1,450 startups worldwide.

ABOUT PLUG AND PLAY

Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Plug and Play is a global innovation platform with accelerator programs, corporate innovation services and an in-house VC to make technological advancement progress faster than ever before. Since inception in 2006, our programs have expanded worldwide to include a presence in over 30 locations globally giving startups the necessary resources to succeed in Silicon Valley and beyond. With over 30,000 startups and 500 official corporate partners, we have created the ultimate startup ecosystem in many industries. Companies in our community have raised over $9 billion in funding, with successful portfolio exits including Dropbox, Guardant Health, Honey, Lending Club, and PayPal. For more information, visit http://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com.

ABOUT TOPEKA AND SHAWNEE COUNTY

Topeka and Shawnee County are located in the heart of the Kansas City Animal Health Corridor, the worlds largest concentration of the animal health and related industries. More than 300 animal health companies located between Manhattan, Kansas and Columbia, Missouri, including four of the top 10 animal health companies in the world, generate 67% of the total animal health, diagnostics, and pet food sold globally, totaling $21.5 billion in annual sales.

ABOUT GO TOPEKA

GO Topeka creates opportunities for economic growth that provide a thriving business climate and fulfilling lifestyle for Topeka and Shawnee County. The Greater Topeka area in Shawnee County represents a community of 178,915 people, located in the Greater Kansas City region. As the state capital of Kansas, Topeka is home to a dynamic employer base with headquartered companies including Hills Pet Nutrition, Advisors Excel, Security Benefit, Capitol Federal and Evergy. Topeka is located less than 40 minutes from suburban Kansas Citys shops and restaurant districts, less than one hour to downtown Kansas City, including the KC Crossroads District, the River Market and the Country Club Plaza, and an hour from Kansas City International Airport. Topeka is proud to be a part of the #KCHeartland. For more information, visit http://www.gotopeka.com
PHILIPSBURG:--- As of April 6th, there were thirteen (13) persons who tested positive for COVID-19; however, nineteen (19) persons have recovered; bringing the total active cases to thirty-five (35). The total number of confirmed cases is now two thousand one hundred sixty-four (2164).

The Collective Prevention Services (CPS) are monitoring thirty-four (34) people in home isolation. One (1) patient is hospitalized at the St. Maarten Medical Center. The total number of deaths due to COVID-19 remains at twenty-seven (27).

The number of people recovered since the first case surfaced on St. Maarten has increased to two thousand one hundred two (2102). Fifty-eight (58) people are in quarantine based on contact tracing investigations carried out by CPS.



The Ministry of Public Health, Social Development and Labour (VSA) Airport Health Team in collaboration with Health Care Laboratory Sint Maarten (HCLS) have tested 2644 travelers arriving at the Princess Juliana International Airport (PJIA), while CPS tested 24, 628 people throughout the community. As the numbers continue to fluctuate, CPS will continue to actively execute its contact tracing measures.

In efforts to reduce further spread of the virus, Minister Panneflek advises the public to wear a mask, maintain a social distance of 2-meters, practice good hand hygiene and refrain from large gatherings.

Minister Panneflek encourages you to be apart of the solution and register to be vaccinated.

To register for the COVID-19 vaccine via the online registration form which is available in English, Spanish, and Creole, and can be found via this link: https://forms.sintmaartengov.org/form.aspx?v=OGtn05kNmb or by paper registration which can be found at Collective Prevention Services (CPS) at the Vineyard Office Park Building, the Division of Labour Affairs at the Simpson Bay Public Service Center in Simpson Bay, doctors offices, the Government Administration Building, and select pharmacies.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 14:02:47|Editor: huaxia

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JALALABAD, Afghanistan -- At least two civilians were killed as well as 15 other civilians and three police officers wounded in a roadside bomb explosion in Jalalabad city, capital of Afghanistan's eastern Nangarhar province on Wednesday, a local source said.

The blast occurred when an improvised bomb planted on road traffic divider was detonated via a time device in Police District 2, roughly at 6:00 a.m. local time, the source told Xinhua anonymously. (Afghanistan-Explosion)

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NEW DELHI -- A total of 115,736 new COVID-19 cases were registered in the past 24 hours in India, said official data released by the federal health ministry on Wednesday.

The latest single-day spike, highest so far, took the total tally in the country to 12,801,785. (India-COVID-19)

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TALUQAN, Afghanistan -- Six Afghan soldiers and eight militants were killed as Taliban militants stormed a military camp located in Ishkamish district in Afghanistan's northern Takhar province on Tuesday night, a local source said on Wednesday.

The clash erupted at midnight when the armed militants taking motorcycles to travel from nearby mountains attacked the joint Afghan security forces operating base near the district's bazaar and government offices, Abdul Raziq from Afghan army's 217 Pamir Corps told Xinhua. (Afghanistan-Clash)

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PHNOM PENH -- A 14-day ban on travel between provinces started in Cambodia on Wednesday in a bid to stem the spread of COVID-19.

The ban took effect from April 7 with the exception for vehicles transporting goods, officials, healthcare workers, armed forces members and patients, Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen said in a decision on late Tuesday. (Cambodia-Travel Ban) Enditem
KYODO NEWS - Apr 7, 2021 - 13:10 | All, Japan

Although Japan recently launched formal discussions on how to secure a stable imperial succession, experts see it as unlikely that a government panel will reach a conclusion to allow a reigning empress despite widespread public support for the idea.

The scholars doubt Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga will exert leadership in achieving drastic changes to the current patrilineal male-only imperial succession rule despite a shrinking number of heirs, citing his weak political base, during separate interviews with Kyodo News held recently.

The three academics, who have been involved in past government debate on the future of the imperial family, pointed out that a wide gap will not be narrowed soon between those in favor of women ascending the throne or emperors descending from the maternal line and those against the idea.

Japan's 61-year-old Emperor Naruhito only has three heirs -- his brother Crown Prince Fumihito, 55, his nephew Prince Hisahito, 14, and his uncle Prince Hitachi, 85. The emperor and Empress Masako have one daughter, 19-year-old Princess Aiko.

Currently, female members of the imperial family are required to abandon their royal status upon marrying commoners. Prince Hisahito is the only unmarried male in the household.

Takashi Mikuriya, 69, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Tokyo, said although many people in Japan believe allowing reigning empresses or emperors from the maternal line will be necessary to secure stable succession, conservatives against such a stance claim the issue "should not be resolved by majority vote."

"I doubt whether Prime Minister Suga has a strong political base to override" resistance from the conservatives, he said.

Referring to a House of Representatives election that must be held by October, when the current members' term expires, Mikuriya said, "I recommend we wait for half a year until a government with a strong political foundation will launch a full-fledged study" on ways to ensure stable imperial succession.

Hidehiko Kasahara, 64, a Keio University professor specialized in the history of Japanese politics, blamed Suga's predecessor Shinzo Abe for not addressing the issue despite becoming Japan's longest-serving prime minister in history.

"The Abe administration has great responsibility for not tackling the issue during a long period of political stability," he said. Kasahara also expressed doubt Suga will lead the current discussion on the succession issue, since he has drawn fire for his late response to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

As it remains difficult to bridge the gap between those seeking changes to the current succession rule and the conservatives, Kasahara said practically speaking, options that can be realized include allowing women who have an emperor on their fathers' side as successors and adoption into the imperial family.

The current Imperial House Law bans adoption into the royal family. Although it has not gained much public support, some experts call for adopting into the imperial family some male patrilineal descendants of former branches of the imperial family who abandoned their status in 1947.

Akira Momochi, 74, specially appointed professor of politics at Kokushikan University, is among those experts.

As the unbroken patrilineal succession in the world's oldest monarchy has been realized thanks to "grueling efforts of ancestors," the current rule should be maintained and the number of successor candidates should be increased by giving imperial status to male descendants of former branch members, Momochi said.

He said the former branches of the imperial family historically existed to ensure male heirs in the event of a succession crisis, while those families continue to have a close relationship with the current royal family members.

As for an idea of enabling female members of the imperial family to establish their own branches even after marriage to commoners so they can continue to engage in official duties, Kasahara said now is not the right time to discuss the matter.

With a planned marriage between Crown Prince Fumihito's eldest daughter Princess Mako, 29, and her university boyfriend Kei Komuro, 29, failing to get significant public support due to a money scandal involving Komuro's mother, Kasahara said a "negative conclusion" could be drawn on the matter.

Mikuriya also said the controversial marriage plan has "cast a shadow" on debate on the establishment of female branches. "People have been discussing the male partners' position and their treatment within the imperial family. It will become a bottleneck" in the current government panel discussions, he added.

Kasahara said the current imperial succession rule that bars women from ascending the throne "has nothing to do with gender discrimination" and that eligibility for successors should be expanded to include female descendants from the male line.

However, Mikuriya acknowledged it is "high time" to abandon the argument that the long-held tradition of the imperial family is above the current global trend of promoting gender equality.

"The imperial family will cease to exist if it is ignored by the public. Therefore, it has no choice but to go along with the global tide (on gender equality) if it is to continue to gain public support," he said.

Related coverage:

FOCUS: Female monarchs to be debated as Japan looks to secure imperial line

Japan gov't panel kicks off discussion on imperial succession
[April 07, 2021] Pinterest Launches 'Creator Code,' New Comment Moderation Tools and a Creator Fund to Keep Online Content and Experiences Positive, Safe and Inspiring

SAN FRANCISCO, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Pinterest (NYSE: PINS) announced today the upcoming launch of Creator Code , its content policy designed to keep Pinterest a positive and inspiring place. The Code includes a mandatory set of guidelines within Pinterest, intended to educate and build a safe online community that centers around inclusive and compassionate content. Creators will be required to review and accept the guidelines before publishing Story Pins, Pinterest's multimedia format. This effort to mitigate negativity is a critical step in the inspiration platform's journey to build a positive experience online that adds lasting value to the lives of its more than 450 million users around the world. The idea for the Creator Code emerged in the middle of 2020  a year marked with a global pandemic, political and societal movements and riots around the world. Through Pinterest, Creators have the unique opportunity to support and inspire people on their journeys to find positive, inclusive and actionable ideas, during a time when they most need it. "We've been building Pinterest for 11 years, and ever since our users routinely tell us that Pinterest is the 'last positive corner of the internet'. In that time, we've also learned that you need to design positivity into online platforms as deliberately as much as you design negativity out," said Evan Sharp, Co-Founder, Chief Design and Creative Officer, Pinterest. "The Creator Code is a human-centric way for Creators to understand how to be successful on Pinterest while using their voice to keep Pinterest positive and inclusive." To launch the Creator Code, Pinterest hosted a virtual event, where Pinterest's Head of Content and Creator Partnerships, Aya Kanai, interviewed television personality, author and podcaster Jonathan Van Ness , about the importance of positivity and inclusivity on social media. Creators Peter Som , Alison Cayne and Onyi Moss discussed their positive experiences creating onPinterest, while Oyin Edogi and Jomely Breton shared how they're using Pinterest's newly instated Creator Fund to build their personal brands.



Committing to the 'Code' and New Moderation Tools Creators will be required to agree to the Code before publishing Story Pins, acknowledging their responsibility in keeping Pinterest a safe and positive space. The Code outlines specific rules that Creators must follow, including:

Be kind: Ensure content doesn't insult or put others down

Ensure content doesn't insult or put others down Check my facts: Make sure information is accurate and factual

Make sure information is accurate and factual Be aware of triggers: Practice discretion when it comes to visually sensitive content

Practice discretion when it comes to visually sensitive content Practice inclusion: Never intentionally exclude certain groups or communities

Never intentionally exclude certain groups or communities Do no harm: Make sure any call to action or challenge is safe In addition to asking Creators to create positive content, Pinterest is also introducing several new tools and features designed to provide a safer experience for both Pinners and Creators, including: Positivity Reminders for Pinners to adhere to our guidelines and reconsider potentially offensive comments before posting

for Pinners to adhere to our guidelines and reconsider potentially offensive comments before posting Comment Moderation Tools for Creators including comment removal and keyword filtering

for Creators including comment removal and keyword filtering Creators can feature up to three comments within the comment feed to highlight positive feedback

within the comment feed to highlight positive feedback New Spam Prevention Signals using machine learning to detect and remove bad comments "There are so many things that we encounter on social media platforms that are not life affirming, and really dehumanizing. That is why I love the Creator Code  it really focuses on positivity and inclusion, and that doesn't mean we don't have to talk about difficult things," said television personality, author, and podcaster, Jonathan Van Ness. "It means that we are not dehumanizing, it's not tearing folks down, it's not negatively oriented, it's not an echo chamber of hate. That is what Pinterest and the Creator Code does  it is allowing us to humanize each other and that is really important." Fueling Passions Through Inclusive Creator Funding Pinterest also shared details on its first-ever Creator Fund at the virtual event. The Fund focuses on uplifting Creators from underrepresented communities in the United States, to start, and offers Creators training and creative strategy consulting, compensating them with budget for content creation and ad credits. "We're on a journey to build a globally inclusive platform where Pinners and Creators around the world can discover ideas that feel personalized, relevant and reflective of who they are," said Alexandra Nikolajev, Creator Inclusivity Lead for Pinterest. "This is reinforced by our commitment to ensure that 50% of the Creators we work with come from underrepresented groups. We believe we'll only be successful and build a lasting and meaningful platform if Pinterest reflects its global community." The specific focus on underrepresented communities is one of many efforts Pinterest has launched on diversity this year alone. In January, Pinterest rolled out AR Try on enabling Pinners the ability to virtually shop and try on eyeshadow shades through augmented reality. The product was integrated with Pinterest's beauty feature, skin tone ranges, allowing Pinners to filter makeup results by what best matches their skin tone, while also viewing results on others via Related Looks recommendations. In March, Pinterest expanded the Skin Tone range feature to thirteen additional countries including France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Netherlands, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and Colombia. For retailers and advertisers, Pinterest also introduced the ability for those brands to self-identify if they're from an underrepresented group so their content may appear in spaces across the platform like the Today tab, Shopping Spotlights and The Pinterest Shop. The Creator Code will be formally rolled out for Creators to sign and adopt in the coming weeks. LINK TO ANTHEM VIDEO About Pinterest People around the world come to Pinterest for inspiration. Pinterest is a visual inspiration platform where people find inspiring creators, shop new products, and seek out ideas to take offline. People have saved more than 300 billion Pins across a range of interests from creating a home office, cooking a new recipe to finding their next vacation destination. Headquartered in San Francisco, Pinterest launched in 2010 and has more than 450 million monthly active users. Available on iOS and Android, and at pinterest.com . View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pinterest-launches-creator-code-new-comment-moderation-tools-and-a-creator-fund-to-keep-online-content-and-experiences-positive-safe-and-inspiring-301264098.html SOURCE Pinterest

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A couple has taken a bitter custody fight over an expensive two-year-old puppy named Kobe to court - where the case of who got to keep the pooch hinged on a series of revealing text messages.

Siwen Chang was ultimately awarded ownership of the $4000 Pomeranian in the Melbourne Magistrates Court over her ex-boyfriend Maurice Chow, who filed a statement of claim for possession of the dog.

She took Kobe when their relationship ended in November 2019 against Mr Chow's wishes.

Maurice Chow (pictured) filed a statement of claim for possession of Kobe the Pomeranian after splitting up with his former partner Siwen Chang

Text messages (pictured) show Ms Chang pleading with Mr Chow to buy the dog as a gift

Text messages showing Ms Chang pleading for a dog a year after they started dating in 2017, as a gift from a reluctant Mr Chow - who referred to himself as 'Daddy' - proved decisive.

In 2018 Ms Chang sent Mr Chow images of a puppy with the message 'bday gift please'. He replied 'no pets baby'.

She tried again, this time sending a photo of a rescue dog.

Mr Chow responded: 'Daddy is busy making money. No time for a doggy like this.'

Ms Chang continued to send requests for a dog - often highlighted with lovey-dovey emojis - and Mr Chow eventually relented.

One of his responses to her read, 'Can you stop being a pain in the bum bum and get us a god damn cutie dog'.

Eventually he paid $4000 to a breeder in New South Wales for a white Pomeranian puppy.

The receipt for the dog - which she named Kobe - was in her name, as were council, pedigree and microchip registration documents.

These documents were presented in court as proof of her ownership - despite the fact Mr Chow paid for the animal and denied it was a gift.

'Ms Chang resigned from her full-time employment which she said was so as to be the dog's primary carer,' the court judgement stated.

In court, Ms Chang was cross examined about why she had not purchased a dog herself.

The magistrate awarded Ms Chang custody of the dog after finding it was a gift and she was a more credible witness

The judgement stated 'because she could not afford it and that Mr Chow earned four times what she did'.

Magistrate Meghan Hoare sided with Ms Chang over Mr Chow, finding the dog was a gift and also finding her a more credible witness.

'I found some of his answers to be attempts to mislead the Court, such as saying he bought a dog because he wanted a dog which is inconsistent with multiple contemporaneous test messages that demonstrated his reluctance to acquire a Dog,' the court judgement read.
The Nagol is Back! VTOs guide to this years Nagol, plus where to stay and play in south, central and north Pentecost.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 6)  Government officials advised advocates of antiparasitic drug Ivermectin to wait for the Food and Drug Administration's approval for its compassionate use before urging the public to use it as an alternative treatment to COVID-19.

In his briefing on Tuesday, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said the initiative of Anakalusugan Party-list Rep. Mike Defensor to distribute Ivermectin supply to the sick and elderly residents of Quezon City might raise concerns from regulatory bodies.

"Ang aking pakiusap, hintayin na lang natin dahil mabilisan naman ang desisyon ng FDA diyan. Hindi naman magtatagal iyan, at para rin po ito sa ating kapakanan at interes din dahil kailangang mapatunayang mabisa, epektibo at ligtas ang gamot na ito para sa COVID-19," Roque said.

[Translation: My plea is to wait for the FDA's decision because it will be out soon. It will not likely be delayed and this would serve the interest of the public by ensuring that the drug is effective and safe to use against COVID-19.]

When asked whether Defensor and other lawmakers promoting Ivermectin will be held liable, Roque noted that he cannot offer any legal advice on the issue since it is not part of his expertise.

However, Department of Health-Technical Advisory Group member Edsel Salvana stressed that Ivermectin, when taken in high doses could even lead to brain damage.

"Pwedeng magkaroon ng brain damage ang isang tao at pwedeng mamatay kung ma-overdose nang todo-todo (A person may have brain damage and die when they get overdosed)," he said in the same briefing.

Defensor earlier said he got Ivermectin treatment while recovering from COVID-19. He urged authorities to instead consider monitoring Ivermectin's local manufacturers and regulating the product instead of "killing" an initiative that could help people.

"Ivermectin is safe. It has been there for so many years. Wala po itong recorded na adverse effects sa mga pasyente maging sa ginagawang clinical trials sa ngayon," Defensor said in an interview with CNN Philippines.

[Translation: Ivermectin has not recorded any adverse affectes on patients, as shown by clinical trials today.]

So far, the Food and Drug Administration has only approved Ivermectin for animal use, to prevent heartworm disease and treat parasite infestation such as head lice and scabies. No feedback has been given on its compassionate use for humans.

READ: PH manufacturers seek compassionate use of Ivermectin vs. COVID-19

Defensor announced on Facebook on Monday that he will distribute the drug for free, but a prescription for it is required before receiving a supply.

Other congressmen have also been openly promoting the use of Ivermectin. Among them were Bagong Henerasyon Party-list Rep. Bernadette Herrera and COVID-19 survivor 1-PACMAN Partylist Rep. Eric Pineda.

No proof of efficacy vs COVID-19

Citing a study of six trials conducted by the Philippine COVID-19 Clinical Practice Guidelines, the FDA and the Health Department reiterated that Ivermectin did not significantly reduce the risk of death among patients with mild to severe cases. It also did not substantially reduce the hospitalization period or time resolution of symptoms.

The FDA and Health Department noted that pharmacies are allowed to compound Ivermectin, but they intend to "put the safety of Filipinos first before allowing unproven and uncertified medicines in the country."

FDA Director General Eric Domingo stressed that the level of evidence from testimonials or anecdotal report are not sufficient basis for Ivermectin approval.

World Health Organization Country Representative Rabindra Abeyasinghe has earlier warned against the use of Ivermectin for COVID-19 prevention or treatment. He pointed out during Monday's Palace briefing that 95% of COVID-19 patients recover without specific treatments, so it is not science or evidence if a coronavirus patient recovers after being given the antiparasitic drug.

Even Merk, the pharmaceutical company behind Ivermectin, said there is no scientific basis in using it as treatment for COVID-19.
Mumbai, April 7 : With a view to encourage farm credit, the RBI on Wednesday decided to enhance the loan limit for individual farmers.

Individual farmers will now be eligible for an enhanced loan amount of Rs 75 lakh from banks against the pledge or hypothecation of agricultural produce.

The borrowing limit under the scheme was earlier capped at Rs 50 lakh.

As per RBI's statement on developmental and regulatory policies that enhanced borrowing limit for farmers against pledge of agricultural produce will be available if such pledges are backed by Negotiable Warehouse Receipts (NWRs)/electronic-NWRs (e- NWRs) issued by the warehouses registered and regulated by Warehousing Development and Regulatory Authority (WDRA).

The Priority Sector loan limit backed by other Warehouse Receipts will continue to be Rs 50 lakh per borrower. The circular in this regard will be issued separately by the apex bank.
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GBP/EUR Exchange Rate Forecast: UK Construction PMI in Focus

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The Pound Euro (GBP/EUR) exchange rate fell by -0.8% today after the UKs Services PMI for March was revised lower due to a decrease in business activity. The pairing is currently fluctuating around 1.15.Tim Moore, Economics Director at IHS Markit, commented on the data:UK service providers were back in expansion mode in March as confidence in the roadmap for easing lockdown restrictions provided a strong uplift to new orders. Total business activity increased at the fastest rate since August 2020 and this return to growth ended a four-month sequence of decline.However, UK markets are remaining cautious as Covid-19 infection rates continue to climb higher in Europe, leaving Sterling investors concerned that this could spill over into the UK in the next few weeks or months.Prime Minister Boris Johnson has previously warned that the virus could wash up in the UK.As a result, this has left some GBP investors somewhat subdued.Today also saw news that key UK medicines regulators are holding a briefing over the links between the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine and rare blood clots.Any further complications in vaccines would slow down the UK Governments vaccination programme and weaken the GBP/EUR exchange rate.The Euro (EUR) rose today following the publication of the latest Eurozone Composite PMI for March, which beat forecasts and rose to 53.2.Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at IHS Markit, commented:Eurozone business activity bounced back in March, returning to growth after four months of decline with an even stronger expansion than signaled by the forecast-beating flash data.Manufacturing is booming, led by surging production in Germany, and the hard-hit service sector has come close to stabilizing as optimism about the outlook improved further during the month. Firms expectations of growth are running at the highest for just over three years amid growing hopes that the vaccine roll-out will boost sales in the coming months.Euro investors are remaining cautious, however, as key economies in the Eurozone are facing a rising number of Covid-19 infections.If these continue to increase, then we could see the EUR/GBP exchange rate swiftly begin to fall over the course of the week.Euro (EUR) traders will be awaiting tomorrows release of the latest German Factory Orders figure for February.Any improvement in the outlook for the German economy would further boost the EUR/GBP exchange rate.GBP investors will be monitoring tomorrows release of the UK Construction PMI for March.The Pound Euro (GBP/EUR) exchange rate would also head higher if the UKs Covid-19 infections show signs of decreasing.

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UPDATE: Police said one of the drivers, 51-year-old Melanie Dunham of Spring Lake, died at Mercy Health Muskegon hospital.

SPRING LAKE, MI -- A head-on crash on M-104 east of Spring Lake seriously injured both drivers and left one in critical condition.

Ottawa County sheriffs deputies said the crash happened when a 76-year-old man going west on M-104 tried to pass a vehicle in front of him about 2 p.m. Wednesday, April 7.

The mans Ford Edge crashed head on into a Honda CRV going east and driven by a 51-year-old Spring Lake woman.

The 76-year-old man, of Chesterfield, had serious injuries and was taken by ambulance to an area hospital. The other driver was pinned in the CRV and, after being set free, was taken by ambulance to an area hospital. She was last known to be in critical condition.

Sheriffs deputies closed M-104, also known as Cleveland Street, to investigate the crash.

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WASHINGTON, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- On Wednesday, April 7, 2021, the Iranian Professionals' Ad Hoc Committee on Iran Policy sent an open letter to President Joe Biden, chronicling many dimensions of Tehran's malign conduct, particularly its appalling human rights record and suppression of dissidents at home and abroad, asking for "strong and immediate actions in support of the Iranian people's desire for a democratic, secular, and nonnuclear Republic of Iran."

Noting the regime's fast declining state, the letter signed by more than 300 prominent Iranian-American scientists, scholars, professors, physicians, industry executives and professionals, stressed that "defending human rights and democracy in Iran should be the central and enduring element" of President Biden's policy toward Tehran as his administration crafts its Iran policy.

The co-signers emphasized, "No sanctions relief or concessions should be provided to the Iranian regime, unless that regime verifiably ends its human rights abuses in Iran and terrorism abroad, and abandons its destructive support for proxies in the region."

Professor Kazem Kazerounian, one of the leading organizers of the letter and coordinator of the Iranian Professionals' Ad Hoc Committee on Iran Policy, said: "Many of the co-signers of the letter were the would be targets of a terror plot by the Iranian regime in June 2018 near Paris, for which a Vienna-based Iranian diplomat, Assadollah Assadi, was arrested and sentenced to 20 years by a Belgian Court in February 2021."

Jila K. Andalib, a technology executive, stated: "The letter reflects the views of many Iranian-Americans who are in contact with their family members in Iran, many of whom are victims of repression, including the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in Iran, or the 1,500 killed during the November 2019 uprising."

Reza Tand, an executive vice president in the environmental sciences Industry, added: "Forty years of searching for phantom moderates in the regime has been miserably futile. Instead, more frequent and more intense popular uprisings, particularly involving the younger generation, are the new reality of Iran. America must not lose this historic opportunity to stand on the side of the Iranian people."

The letter follows President Biden's encouraging words that the U.S. will not offer sanctions relief to Tehran to get it to the negotiating table, and that human rights will be at the center of American foreign policy.

SOURCE Iranian Professionals' Ad Hoc Committee on Iran Policy

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Jayson Waller, CEO POWERHOME SOLAR Were excited to offer Kentucky residents a supplement to grid energy, said POWERHOME SOLAR CEO Jayson Waller.

POWERHOME SOLAR and CEO Jayson Waller joined forces with hundreds of women to gather for a virtual day of inspiration and empowerment for women. The Sisterhood for Success hosted the Ordinary Women Doing Extraordinary Things series where woman entrepreneurs from all over the nation gathered virtually to share stories about success, including life, loss, balance and business.

Waller was the headline keynote and talked to the group about why supporting women-owned business is so vital.

This is such an important time to pay it forward and empower women with the tools to succeed, Waller said. We are proud that nearly half of our leadership team of directors at POWERHOME SOLAR are women. When we learned of this event, we were anxious to participate and make donations to organizations doing essential work for women.

Waller and POWERHOME SOLAR made a total donation of $10,000 to two womens charities, to help them continue their work throughout their communities.

Michigan Women Forward (MWF) received $5,000 to support their mission of empowering women and girls to be leaders, inventors, dreamers and doers. Part of what its organization does is provide micro-loans to women throughout Michigan to help them start businesses. MWF has locations in Detroit, Lansing and Grand Rapids.

The Safe Alliance received the other $5,000 donation from POWERHOME SOLAR. Safe Alliance is based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and provides hope and healing to those impacted by domestic violence and sexual assault. The organization has seen a surge in domestic abuse during the pandemic, so this donation comes at a valuable time.

Between job losses and personal losses, its been a challenging time for so many women, said Joy McAdams, founding member of The Sisterhood for Success. We are thrilled our event was able to bring together so many women to support one another, and we are so grateful that POWERHOME SOLAR was able to participate and make such generous donations to two worthy womens organizations.

A big part of POWERHOME SOLARs mission is making a difference in the communities it serves across the country. The companys culture at its core is one of giving back and paying it forward. Women have a special place at POWERHOME SOLAR, as seven of the companys 15 directors are women, and many more are managers that help drive the business forward. Supporting women is also very personal for Waller, because he and his wife have three daughters  ages 22, 17 and 14, along with a 10-year-old son.

As part of the virtual program, Waller shared his story of resilience and transformation and how he has his company on a path to becoming a billion-dollar business after very humble beginnings. Those humble beginnings drove him to want more out of life and has POWERHOME SOLAR on a fast track of massive growth and expansion. His hope is to instill in others that your past doesnt have to dictate your future.

The Ordinary Women Doing Extraordinary Things event also featured five women speakers  authors and influencers, including Heather Monahan, Leslie Streeter, Laurie Sallarulo, Margaret Rutherford and Fabi Powell. They each spoke about ways women can empower themselves to make a bigger difference in their own lives and that of others.

Since opening its doors in 2014, POWERHOME SOLAR has donated to dozens of other causes, including those impacting families, children, members of the military and even globally.

About POWERHOME SOLAR

POWERHOME SOLAR is an energy efficiency company that provides high-quality American-made solar panels as part of a complete energy-savings package for residential customers. The company launched in 2014 in Mooresville, N.C., and today has more than 1,800 employees, including a commercial division. Operating in 15 states, it is ranked No. 255 on the 2020 Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in America  the third time in four years that the company has made the top 300 of this prestigious list. For more information, visit http://www.powerhome.com or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.

About Michigan Women Forward

Michigan Women Forward was founded in 1986 by 30 extraordinary visionaries who conceived of an organization that would encourage women to play an active role in philanthropy and governance. Its mission is to transform Michigan to achieve equality and empowerment for women and girls. For more information, visit http://www.miwf.org.

Safe Alliance is a nonprofit United Way member agency with more than 100 years of service to individuals and families in Cabarrus, Mecklenburg, Union, and South Iredell counties. The history of Safe Alliance began on March 21, 1909, when a group of Charlotte business and religious leaders formed Associated Charities. Funds for Associated Charities came from 100 community leaders who pledged $25 a year to support its operation. The agency worked to help "the floating needy resident."

Learn more at https://www.safealliance.org
By Jonathan Allen and Brendan O'Brien

MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) - A national expert in the proper use of force by police testified on Wednesday that former Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin had no need to kneel on the neck of George Floyd once he was handcuffed and prone.

Los Angeles Police Department Sergeant Jody Stiger appeared as a prosecution witness at Chauvin's murder trial, offering testimony intended to show that the defendant disregarded his training during his deadly arrest of the 46-year-old Black man last May.

Stiger told jurors that Floyd posed no immediate threat and was not actively resisting when Chauvin used deadly force on him by pinning his neck to the ground for more than nine minutes.

"My opinion was that no force was reasonable in that position," Stiger testified. "The pressure ... caused by the body weight could cause positional asphyxia and could cause death."

Floyd's death, captured on video widely viewed on social media, prompted protests against racism and police brutality in many cities across the United States and around the world.

Chauvin, who is white, has pleaded not guilty to murder and manslaughter charges, arguing that he was following the training he had received in his 19 years on the police force. Three other officers on the scene have been charged with aiding and abetting murder and will stand trial later this year.

Chauvin and the three other officers were attempting to arrest Floyd on suspicion of using a fake $20 bill to buy cigarettes at a food store. They were fired the day after the incident.

Stiger, who has reviewed 2,500 cases in which police used force, resumed his testimony after first appearing on Tuesday.

Prosecutor Steve Schleicher asked him to describe several photographs showing officers restraining Floyd. Stiger testified that it appeared Chauvin's use of force was excessive.

"He was handcuffed, not attempting to resist, not attempting to assault officers, kick, punch of that nature," Stiger said of Floyd.

Story continues

Stiger testified that Chauvin squeezed Floyd's hand to get him to comply with the officer's orders while he was handcuffed in the prone position and that Floyd did not appear to have an opportunity to comply.

"At that point, it was just pain," Stiger said.

'HAS TO BE PROPORTIONAL'

Questioned by defense lawyer Eric Nelson, Stiger agreed that a police officer needed to take into account various factors during a fluid situation when considering using force.

"It has to be proportional," Stiger said. "You are constantly reassessing during the time frame."

Stiger also agreed with Nelson that Chauvin came upon a situation in which a suspect was actively resisting officers who were trying to put him into a police squad car as people in a crowd yelled insults at them, posing a "potential threat."

Nelson showed Stiger photographs taken at different times of the incident showing Chauvin with his knee on Floyd. Nelson asked Stiger whether he agreed that Chauvin's knee was on Floyd's shoulder blades rather than his neck.

"It appears to be more above the shoulder blades than on the shoulder blades," Stiger testified, not agreeing with Nelson.

Prosecutors then called three Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigators, including Senior Special Agent James Reyerson, an expert on the use of force and the lead investigator in the case.

Part of Reyerson's testimony involved the investigation of the police squad car and Floyd's Mercedes Benz vehicle.

Reyerson testified that six months after the incident, Chauvin's lawyers re-examined the police car and found what was later determined to be pills that had Floyd's DNA on them. During its opening statement in the trial, Chauvin's defense team said the pills contained methamphetamine with fentanyl.

Reyerson agreed with Nelson that it sounded on one video of the incident as if Floyd said he "ate too many drugs." But during more questioning later from the prosecution, Reyerson agreed that it sounded as if Floyd said: "I ain't do no drugs."

Later in the day, McKenzie Anderson, a forensic scientist with the bureau, took the stand to describe collecting pills from the vehicles over the course of the investigation, including whole and partial tablets from the police squad car.

She testified that Floyd's blood was found in the back of the squad car and that pills found in the vehicle had saliva that matched Floyd's DNA.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in Minneapolis and Brendan O'Brien in Chicago; Editing by Will Dunham and Peter Cooney)
[April 07, 2021] ironSource Announces Filing of Registration Statement on Form F-4 in Connection with its Proposed Business Combination with Thoma Bravo Advantage

TEL AVIV, Israel and SAN FRANCISCO, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ironSource, a leading business platform for the app economy, today announced that it has filed a registration statement on Form F-4 (the "registration statement") with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"). The registration statement contains a preliminary proxy statement/prospectus in connection with ironSource's previously announced proposed business combination with Thoma Bravo Advantage (NYSE: TBA) ("TBA"), a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company. While the registration statement has not yet become effective and the information contained therein is subject to change, it provides important information about ironSource and Thoma Bravo Advantage, as well as the proposed business combination. As previously announced, the combination of ironSource with Thoma Bravo Advantage will bring to the public markets a high growth, highly profitable and scalable business that provides a comprehensive business platform for app developers. As a public company, ironSource is expected to benefit from the financial and operational support of Thoma Bravo  one of the most experienced and successful software investors in the world. Thoma Bravo Advantage's Class A shares are currently traded on NYSE under the symbol "TBA." In connection with the closing of the transaction, Thoma Bravo Advantage's securities will cease trading and ironSource's Class A ordinary shares are expected to be listed under the proposed symbol "IS." Completion of the transaction, which is expected in the second quarter of 2021, is subject to approval by Thoma Bravo Advantage's and ironSource's Class A shareholders, the registration being declared effective by the SEC and other customary closing conditions. The combined company will operate under the ironSource name. Additional Information and Where to Find It This press release relates to a proposed transaction between ironSource and Thoma Bravo Advantage. This press release does not constitute (i) solicitation of a proxy, consent or authorization with respect to any securities or in respect of the proposed transaction or (ii) an offer to sell or exchange, or the solicitation of an offer to buy or exchange, any security of Thoma Bravo Advantage, ironSource, or any of their respective affiliates, nor shall there be any sale of securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, sale or exchange would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. In connection with the proposed transaction, ironSource filed a registration statement on Form F-4 with the SEC, which includes a proxy statement of Thoma Bravo Advantage in connection with Thoma Bravo Advantage's solicitation of proxies for the vote by Thoma Bravo Advantage's shareholders with respect to the proposed transaction and a prospectus of ironSource. Thoma Bravo Advantage also will file other documents regarding the proposed transaction with the SEC. This communication does not contain all the information that should be considered concerning the proposed transaction and is not intended to form the basis of any investment decision or any other decision in respect of the proposed transaction. Before making any voting or investment decision, investors and security holders are urged to read the registration statement and the proxy statement/prospectus, each which have not yet become effective and the information contained therein is subject to change, together with all other relevant documents filed or that will be filed with the SEC in connection with the proposed transaction as they become available because they will contain important information about the proposed transaction. Investors and security holders will be able to obtain free copies of the registration statement, proxy statement/prospectus and all other relevant documents filed or that will be filed with the SEC by ironSource and Thoma Bravo Advantage through the website maintained by the SEC at www.sec.gov. In addition, the documents filed by ironSource may be obtained free of charge from ironSource's website at www.is.com or by written request to ironSource at ironSource Ltd., Derech Menachem Begin 121, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel, and the documents filed by Thoma Bravo Advantage may be obtained free of charge from Thoma Bravo Advantage's website at www.thomabravoadvantage.com or by written request to Thoma Bravo Advantage, 150 N. Riverside Plaza, Suite 2800, Chicago, Illinois 60606



Participants in a Solicitation ironSource and Thoma Bravo and their respective directors and executive officers may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies from Thoma Bravo's shareholders in connection with the proposed transaction. Additional information regarding the interests of those persons and other persons who may be deemed participants in the proposed transaction may be obtained by reading the proxy statement/prospectus regarding the proposed transaction. You may obtain free copies of these documents as described in the preceding paragraph.

No Offer or Solicitation This communication does not constitute an offer to sell or exchange, or the solicitation of an offer to buy or exchange any securities, or a solicitation of any vote or approval, nor shall there be any sale of securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation, sale or exchange would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. No offering of securities shall be made except by means of a prospectus meeting the requirements of section 10 of the Securities Act, or an exemption therefrom. Forward Looking Statements This communication contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws with respect to the proposed transaction between Thoma Bravo Advantage ("TBA") and ironSource Ltd. ("ironSource"). All statements other than statements of historical facts contained in this communication, including statements regarding ironSource's, TBA's or the combined company's future financial position, business strategy and plans and objectives of management for future operations, are forward-looking statements. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as "may," "will," "should," "expects," "plans," "anticipates," "could," "intends," "targets," "projects," "contemplates," "believes," "estimates," "predicts," "potential" or "continue" or the negative of these terms or other similar expressions. Forward-looking statements include, without limitation, ironSource's or TBA's expectations concerning the outlook for their or the combined company's business, productivity, plans and goals for future operational improvements and capital investments, operational performance, future market conditions or economic performance and developments in the capital and credit markets and expected future financial performance, as well as any information concerning possible or assumed future results of operations of the combined company. Forward-looking statements also include statements regarding the expected benefits of the proposed transaction between ironSource and TBA. Forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions, and actual results or events may differ materially from those projected or implied in those statements. Important factors that could cause such differences include, but are not limited to: (i) the risk that the transaction may not be completed in a timely manner or at all, which may adversely affect the price of TBA's securities; (ii) the failure to satisfy the conditions to the consummation of the proposed transaction, including the adoption of the merger agreement by the shareholders of TBA and ironSource, the satisfaction of the minimum trust account amount following redemptions by TBA's public shareholders and the receipt of certain governmental and regulatory approvals; (iii) the lack of a third party valuation in determining whether to pursue the proposed transaction; (iv) the occurrence of any event, change or other circumstance that could give rise to the termination of the merger agreement; (v) the effect of the announcement or pendency of the transaction on ironSource's business relationships, performance, and business generally; (vi) risks that the proposed transaction disrupts current plans of ironSource and potential difficulties in ironSource employee retention as a result of the proposed transaction; (vii) the outcome of any legal proceedings that may be instituted against ironSource or against TBA related to the merger agreement or the proposed transaction; (vii) the ability of ironSource to list its ordinary shares on the New York Stock Exchange; (ix) volatility in the price of the combined company's securities due to a variety of factors, including changes in the competitive industry in which ironSource operates, variations in performance across competitors, changes in laws and regulations affecting ironSource's business and changes in the combined capital structure; (x) the ability to implement business plans, forecasts, and other expectations after the completion of the proposed transaction, and to identify and realize additional opportunities; (xi) ironSource's markets are rapidly evolving and may decline or experience limited growth; (xii) ironSource's reliance on operating system providers and app stores to support its platform; (xiii) ironSource's ability to compete effectively in the markets in which it operates; (xiv) ironSource's quarterly results of operations may fluctuate for a variety of reasons; (xv) failure to maintain and enhance the ironSource brand; (xvi) ironSource's dependence on its ability to retain and expand its existing customer relationships and attract new customers; (xvii) ironSource's reliance on its customers that contribute more than $100,000 of annual revenue; (xviii) ironSource's ability to successfully and efficiently manage its current and potential future growth; (xix) ironSource's dependence upon the continued growth of the app economy and the increased usage of smartphones, tablets and other connected devices; (xx) ironSource's dependence upon the success of the gaming and mobile app ecosystem and the risks generally associated with the gaming industry; (xxi) ironSource's, and ironSource's competitors', ability to detect or prevent fraud on its platforms; (xxii) failure to prevent security breaches or unauthorized access to ironSource's or its third-party service providers data; (xxiii) the global scope of ironSource's operations, which are subject to laws and regulations worldwide, many of which are unsettled and still developing; (xxiv) the rapidly changing and increasingly stringent laws, contractual obligations and industry standards relating to privacy, data protection, data security and the protection of children; and (xxv) the effects of health epidemics, including the COVID-19 pandemic. ironSource and TBA caution you against placing undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which reflect current beliefs and are based on information currently available as of the date a forward-looking statement is made. Forward-looking statements set forth herein speak only as of the date of this communication. Neither ironSource nor TBA undertakes any obligation to revise forward-looking statements to reflect future events, changes in circumstances, or changes in beliefs. In the event that any forward-looking statement is updated, no inference should be made that ironSource or TBA will make additional updates with respect to that statement, related matters, or any other forward-looking statements. Any corrections or revisions and other important assumptions and factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements, including discussions of significant risk factors, may appear, up to the consummation of the proposed transaction, in TBA's public filings with the SEC or, upon and following the consummation of the proposed transaction, in ironSource's public filings with the SEC, which are or will be (as appropriate) accessible at www.sec.gov, and which you are advised to consult. About Thoma Bravo Advantage Thoma Bravo Advantage is a blank check company incorporated as a Cayman Islands exempted company for the purposes of effecting a merger, share exchange, asset acquisition, share purchase, reorganization or similar business combination with one or more businesses or entities. Its Class A ordinary shares are listed on the New York Stock Exchange (the "NYSE") under the symbol "TBA." Thoma Bravo Advantage is sponsored by Thoma Bravo Advantage Sponsor LLC, which was formed by individuals affiliated with Thoma Bravo, a leading private equity firm focused on the software and technology-enabled software services sector. Thoma Bravo Advantage was formed for the purpose of executing a business combination in the software industry. About ironSource ironSource is a leading business platform that enables mobile content creators to prosper within the app economy. App developers use ironSource's platform to turn their apps into successful, scalable businesses, leveraging a comprehensive set of software solutions which help them grow and engage users, monetize content, and analyze and optimize business performance to drive more overall growth. The ironSource platform also empowers telecom operators to create a richer device experience, incorporating relevant app and service recommendations to engage users throughout the lifecycle of the device. By providing a comprehensive business platform for the core constituents of the app economy, ironSource allows customers to focus on what they do best, creating great apps and user experiences, while we enable their business expansion in the app economy. For more information please visit www.is.com. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ironsource-announces-filing-of-registration-statement-on-form-f-4-in-connection-with-its-proposed-business-combination-with-thoma-bravo-advantage-301264156.html SOURCE Thoma Bravo Advantage; ironSource

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Grant Thornton invested millions of pounds to improve its processes in 2019 (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

Accounting giant Grant Thornton said it had managed to increase profit last year despite the Covid-19 pandemic as it benefited from changes made in the wake of problems at Patisserie Valerie.

The company said it had made a 72 million underlying trading profit last year, up by 9 million from the year before.

More than half of this rise came because the company had sold its loss-making wealth advisory unit to 1825, a company owned by Standard Life.

Changes started in 2019, when we introduced an operating model that would enable us to thrive  structuring our business in such a way that quality, talent and value were built into everything we do Dave Dunckley, Grant Thornton

The deal offloaded a unit which had shaved 5 million off the companys results in 2019.

The sale  for an undisclosed amount  came amid larger changes at Grant Thornton, one of the most important auditing companies in the UK.

The sector it works in has faced scrutiny in recent years, with Grant Thornton itself the subject of criticism when a major hole was discovered in the books of cake chain Patisserie Valerie.

The company invested millions of pounds to improve its processes in 2019 after the cafe entered administration. It has also set aside around 52 million in provisions that could be used to pay potential fines.

Expand Close A major hole was discovered in cake chain Patisserie Valeries books (Lauren Hurley/PA) / Facebook

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Whatsapp A major hole was discovered in cake chain Patisserie Valeries books (Lauren Hurley/PA)

Changes started in 2019, when we introduced an operating model that would enable us to thrive  structuring our business in such a way that quality, talent and value were built into everything we do, chief executive Dave Dunckley said.

This enabled us to start 2020 in a strong position. Throughout 2020 we have retained this focus, keeping quality, talent and value at the forefront of our decision-making.

As a result  despite a worldwide pandemic  we delivered strong results and are continuing to move forward with confidence.

The business did not use the furlough scheme, and revealed that it had managed to refund staff who were asked to take temporary cuts to hours.

Net income dropped from 483 million to 471 million.
[April 07, 2021] Taiwan Excellence's 2021 Smart Fitness Online Product Launch Showcases Fresh Exercise Ideas and Innovative Fitness Products from Taiwan's Industry Leaders

As exercise habits evolved dramatically over the last year, Taiwan innovators have stepped up to develop products and services leveraging unique digital solutions to meet the needs of the global marketplace. To spotlight these timely innovations, Taiwan Excellence today announced its Smart Fitness Online Product Launch to be live-streamed on its YouTube channel on April 28, 2021, 10 a.m. UTC-5. Hosted by the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA), the event features presentations from five of Taiwan's most inventive fitness industry leaders - including Johnson Health Technology, Makalot Industrial. Ltd, Strength Master Fitness Tech Co., Ltd, Netown Corp., and Gee Hoo Industrial Corp. Taiwan's entrepreneurs have been creating cutting-edge fitness equipment for decades, supporting the world's ever-evolving fitness landscape through high-quality, smart exercise equipment to virtual and immersive technologies. Taiwan exports more than US$1 billion worth of fitness equipment worldwide every year, making up a significant 10 percent market share of all global fitness equipment exports. This 2021 product launch focuses on a full array of smart products, including gym solutions, fitness equipment, and apparel. It will feature these five influential companies from Taiwan's fitness industry: Johnson Health Technology is among the world's largest and fastest-growing fitness equipment manufacturers, and is home to some of the most respected brands in the fitness industry, including: Matrix, Vision, and Horizon. Johnson will highlight the Matrix Connected Solution, which provides a complete digital ecosystem that gives club owners the flexibility they need to accomplish their specific goals, as well as introduce its latest fitness equipment including a Matrix Performance Plus Treadmill that sets a new standard for comfort and reliability, and the Performance Ascent Trainer , which offers a full-body, low-impact workout that drives results.

which provides a complete digital ecosystem that gives club owners the flexibility they need to accomplish their specific goals, as well as introduce its latest fitness equipment including a that sets a new standard for comfort and reliability, and the , which offers a full-body, low-impact workout that drives results. Makalot Industrial. Ltd, the leader of the apparel industry in Taiwan, and a strategic partner for major retailers across the US, Europe, Japan, Taiwan and China, will presents its ECG Smart Apparel , a new garment-based healthcare solution that combines high-quality fabrics with patented hardware technology that provides accurate data with minimal intrusion for the wearer.

, a new garment-based healthcare solution that combines high-quality fabrics with patented hardware technology that provides accurate data with minimal intrusion for the wearer. Strength Master Fitness Tech Co., Ltd, a top fitness equipment manufacturer in Taiwan, will introduce its LifeSpan TM7050 Electric Treadmill, featuring a 10" full-color screen, mirroring functionality, and Bluetooth speaker that enable users to listen to music or project their favorite videos while exercising. Additionally, Strength Master will unveil its fresh Workplace Solutions that help people stay fit while working from home or in the office, a trend that's expected to continue worldwide in 2021 and beyond. LifeSpan treadmills, bikes, and standing desks will now integrate through a smart console whose minimalist and compact design is perfect for the workplace, making your daily exercises safe, convenient, and efficient.

featuring a 10" full-color screen, mirroring functionality, and Bluetooth speaker that enable users to listen to music or project their favorite videos while exercising. Additionally, Strength Master will unveil its fresh that help people stay fit while working from home or in the office, a trend that's expected to continue worldwide in 2021 and beyond. LifeSpan treadmills, bikes, and standing desks will now integrate through a smart console whose minimalist and compact design is perfect for the workplace, making your daily exercises safe, convenient, and efficient. Netown Corp., an innovator of smart healthcare and smart exercise, will showcase its innovative Dual Smart exercise equipment, the Babybot Smart Precise-Exercise Device for Home, which integrates measurement and exercise into single device. Users will have access to a variety of features, including an always-available virtual personal trainer for home workouts, and a personalized exercise program generated by Netown's smart AI technology that automatically adapts your workout regimen over time.

exercise equipment, the which integrates measurement and exercise into single device. Users will have access to a variety of features, including an always-available virtual personal trainer for home workouts, and a personalized exercise program generated by Netown's smart AI technology that automatically adapts your workout regimen over time. Gee Hoo Industrial Corp, one of the leading fitness equipment companies in Taiwan with more 40 years of experience, will display its Body Charger Linear Recumbent Stepper, which is specially designed for the safety and needs of seniors, those undergoing rehabilitation, and wheelchair exercisers. It features a 180 swiveling seat, 3-levels of recline settings, and 14-levels of overall position adjustment, providing higher safety, convenience, and comfort to better suit its users.



To register for the event, please go online to: https://taiwanexcellence.pse.is/SmartFitness2021

Taiwan Excellence The symbol of Taiwan Excellence was established in 1992 by Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs, and subsequently, the Taiwan Excellence Selection was launched the following year. The selection is based on the distinct criteria of R&D, quality, design, and marketing. Products that have been selected for the Taiwan Excellence Awards serve as examples of the domestic industries and are promoted by the government in the international market in an effort to shape the creative image of Taiwanese businesses. This year marks the 27th selection, making the symbol of Taiwan Excellence a prestigious brand for enterprises in Taiwan to strive for and be recognized by, and is highly thought of around the world. Please visit www.taiwanexcellence.org for more information. About TAITRA Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) is the foremost non-profit, semi-governmental trade promotion organization in Taiwan. Founded in 1970 to help promote foreign trade, TAITRA is jointly sponsored by the government, industry associations, and several commercial organizations. TAITRA assists Taiwanese businesses in strengthening their international competitiveness and in dealing with the challenges they face in foreign markets. TAITRA boasts a well-coordinated trade promotion and information network consisting of over 1,200 trained specialists stationed throughout its Taipei headquarters and 60 branches worldwide. Together with sister organizations, the Taiwan Trade Center (TTC), and Taipei World Trade Center (TWTC), TAITRA has created a wealth of trade opportunities through effective promotion strategies. www.taitra.org.tw View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005898/en/

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A court in Moscow has upheld fines imposed by Russia's media-monitoring agency against RFE/RL's Russian-language services for alleged violations of the country's controversial "foreign agent" laws.



On April 7, the Tverskoi District Court upheld 5.5 million rubles ($70,700) in fines, rejecting RFE/RL's appeals against them.



In all, the Roskomnadzor state monitoring agency has filed 390 protocols against RFE/RL for failing to mark its materials distributed in Russia as the product of a Russian-government-designated "foreign agent." The court has so far upheld about 260 of the protocols with total fines approaching $1 million.



RFE/RL has not complied with the labeling requirements.



Roskomnadzor issued a statement saying RFE/RL must pay the fines within 60 days. If the company fails to pay, the agency warned it could "restrict access" to RFE/RL's websites in Russia.

RFE/RL President Jamie Fly said that the broadcaster was "being targeted by the Russian authorities because we continue to provide a growing audience in Russia with objective news and information at a moment when the Kremlin is trying to limit the Russian peoples access to information."



"We will not abandon our audience no matter how many illegitimate fines the Russian authorities impose on us. We will continue to fight these attacks on our journalistic independence through all possible means," he added.



RFE/RL continues to appeal the fines and has said it would do so at the European Court of Human Rights if necessary.



One day earlier, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Moscow had imposed "invasive labeling requirements and fines" in order to "drive RFE/RL out of Russia."

Russia's so-called "foreign agent" legislation was adopted in 2012 and has been modified repeatedly. It requires nongovernmental organizations that receive foreign assistance and that the government deems to be engaged in political activity to be registered, to identify themselves as "foreign agents," and to submit to audits. Later modifications of the law targeted foreign-funded media.



In 2017, the Russian government placed RFE/RL's Russian Service, six other RFE/RL Russian-language news services, and Current Time on the list.



Earlier this year, Russian courts began imposing large fines against RFE/RL for failing to mark its articles with a government-prescribed label as required by rules adopted in October 2020.



Roskomnadzor last year adopted rules requiring listed media to mark all written materials with a lengthy notice in large text, all radio materials with an audio statement, and all video materials with a 15-second text declaration.



RFE/RL has called the fines "a state-sponsored campaign of coercion and intimidation." Human Rights Watch has described the foreign agent legislation as "restrictive" and intended "to demonize independent groups."



The fines against RFE/RL come as the Russian government is moving to strengthen the so-called foreign agent laws.



On April 7, the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, passed in its third reading a law about the participation of designated "foreign agents" in elections. If the measure becomes law, individuals who were affiliated with a designated "foreign agent" organization or media outlet at any point in the previous two years would have to announce that fact on their campaign materials.



In addition, "foreign agent" NGOs and media outlets would be barred from campaigning for any candidate or party or advocating any position on referendums



On April 5, President Vladimir Putin signed into law additional restrictions on nongovernmental organizations that have been listed as "foreign agents."



Under the new law, the government has the right to conduct spot audits of such organizations whenever they receive a report that the organization has participated in an event involving foreign NGOs that have been designated "undesirable" in Russia.



The new law also obligates designated "foreign agent" organizations to present the program of all activities to the government in advance and gives the Justice Ministry the power to ban any activities entirely or partially in advance. Failure to comply with the new law could result in the liquidation of the listed NGO.



The changes come as Russia prepares for national elections to the State Duma, which must be held by September 19.



Aside from RFE/RL, the only other foreign media organizations to have been designated under the foreign agent law are VOA and a small, obscure Czech web portal.

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, and Interfax
Bidens 1st Firing Takes on New Significance Amid Chinas Propaganda

Commentary

Within the first hour of Joe Bidens presidency, the commander-in-chief fired a little-known figure running an agency that most Americans have likely never heard of.

Yet that firing was symbolically and substantively significant.

Its significance has only grown two months into an administration that has conferred legitimacy on the Chinese Communist Partys (CCPs) narratives with respect to Americas purported moral failingsproviding it a major propaganda coupand messaged still further weakness to our other adversaries.

The opening act in Bidens purge of Trump administration officials was the sacking of Michael Pack. (Full disclosure: Pack is an acquaintance of mine going back to his time as president of the Claremont Institute, where I am a fellow.)

Pack, producer of more than a dozen Public Broadcasting Service documentaries on America, and past senior employee of U.S. international broadcasting entities, was an eminently qualified (pdf) choice for president of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM).

USAGM oversees five such networks, including perhaps most famously the Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; it serves more than 350 million viewers in 100 countries and over 60 languages weekly. The executive branch agency is charged by law with, among other things, presenting U.S. government policy to the world, and providing a balanced and comprehensive view of critical issues, as part of its broader mission to promote freedom and democracyparticularly in those places lacking in such principles.

In that role, Pack threatened to do the unforgivable: adhere to the law by fairly presenting the Trump administrations agenda to the world, rebalancing USAGM content away from progressivism, and confronting tyrannical regimes in the information battlespace.

Consequently, the political establishment, the administrative state that executes its agenda, and the corporate media that propagandizes on its behalf couldnt tolerate Pack.

First, he was subjected to an interminably long, character-assassinating confirmation process that nearly ran out the clock on his appointment entirely.

Then, after being appointed, he found himself stymied at every turn. He was hit with lawsuits for making basic personnel decisions about who ought to run various organizations under his purview, and for reprimanding employees who injected rampant bias into USAGM content, in violation of the law. Such bias included producing what Pack described to me in a recent interview as a repackaged Biden ad that came out of the VOAs Urdu service.

These moves again spurred not only legal action, but also drew the ire of the organizations personnel, and the wrath of the media. So too did Packs internal security review, which found glaring gaps, for example, in the vetting of foreign employees, including from adversarial nations such as China and Iran. As Pack recounted, stunningly, the USAGM is an agency of 4,000 people, and over the years, 1,500 had had improper security clearances40 percent.

Despite that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued several reports over the years highlighting this issue, USAGM leaders had cleared people who made up false Social Security numbers, failed to file fingerprints, failed to complete forms.

It got to the point, Pack said, where the OPM revoked the ability of the agency to approve suitability clearances.  And after it was no longer allowed to grant these clearances, the agency granted them anyway. And this included, in addition to the 1,500 improperly cleared  a small but significant number of top-secret and above clearances.

For having the temerity to seek to, among other things, re-clear this mass of employees, and remedy this major security failure, Pack faced a firestorm. This episode was illustrative of what transpired during his short tenure.

Packs firing represented the culmination of the more than three-year jihad waged against him. As Pack put it of his opponents, They wanted to stop any person appointed by Donald Trump to fulfill any aspect of his agenda, and the people who are against Donald Trump have been ruthless in every capacity.

The war on Pack was a microcosm of the broader effort to deprive the Trump administration of officials who would actually faithfully serve it.

And it had consequences that implicated national security going beyond the aforementioned malfeasance around security clearances.

Its imperative to compete against foreign adversaries in the realm of ideas. Pack agrees, holding consistent with the Trump administrations view, that it is very important, and its particularly important now that China, especially, but also Iran and North Korea and others, are ramping up their own information efforts to put forward their vision of the world and their ideas and their story.

We need to sort of push back and put a positive view of what our ideas and our principles are, he said.

He had pledged to do so, and now he wont get that chance.

Specifically on China, he had also sought to sort of put more attention to internet firewall circumvention technology and toolsthat is, to evade Chinas Great Firewall. For this, too, he faced criticism for challenging the USAGMs costly, inefficient manner by which it had pursued such efforts in the past.

Its unclear what, if anything, the Biden administration will do in connection with that effort.

In the realm of information, the administration has removed large troves of content from the State Department website aimed at exposing the Chinese Communist Partys malign actions.

It has delinked the CCP from the coronavirus and refused to declare that it will punish the regime for its deceitful and more dastardly acts in connection with the pandemic.

And as alluded to previously, when Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivans CCP counterparts lambasted America for its purported human rights failingsthose frequently raised by our nations lefttheir response was to concede the premise, but call it a strength that we could recognize our failings and seek to be better.

Beyond the fact that the Trump administration likely would have never held such a meeting, the executive branch almost certainly would not have acceded to this narrative. One can bet that the USAGM under Pack would have fought it, and exposed it for the propaganda that it was.

Instead, we are likely to see a reversion to the status quo ante, of a U.S. government media operation that speaks not for Americans, but in effect, for our adversaries. The best that can be said is that it will likely do so consistent with the executive it is supposed to serve.

Ben Weingarten is a fellow of the Claremont Institute and co-host of the Edmund Burke Foundations The NatCon Squad. He is the author of American Ingrate: Ilhan Omar and the Progressive-Islamist Takeover of the Democratic Party and is currently working on a book on U.S.China policy and its transformation under the Trump administration.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Oscar-winning songwriter Lady Gaga unveiled high-fashion film Queendom on Tuesday as part of her Dom Perignon collaboration.

'I am very excited to share more about my collaboration with Dom Perignon and give you a first look at our film,' the 35-year-old pop diva - who boasts 211.2M social media followers - said.

'The people at Dom Perignon and I both share a belief in the power of creative freedom - to push ourselves forward, to bring the world of Dom Perignon rose to life. I worked with my friend, the legendary Nick Knight. Enjoy!'

The project - a visual, multi-media experiment - celebrates her partnership with Dom Perignon; the film is just a little over a minute long.

Tiny bubbles: Oscar-winning songwriter Lady Gaga unveiled high-fashion film Queendom on Tuesday as part of her Dom Perignon collaboration

Gaga (born Stefani Germanotta) wore wildly fantastical gowns selected by stylist Nicola Formichetti.

Hairstylist/wig designer Frederic Aspiras coiffed the 12-time Grammy winner's pink locks for the glorified commercial.

Make-up artist Sarah Nicole Tanno applied Gaga's glittery pink eye shadow and nail artist Miho Okawara applied her long manicure.

The Joe Biden inauguration performer's ad was set to the song Free Woman off her sixth studio album Chromatica.

The 35-year-old pop diva - who boasts 211.2M social media followers - said: 'I am very excited to share more about my collaboration with Dom Perignon and give you a first look at our film'

Gaga (born Stefani Germanotta) continued: 'The people at Dom Perignon and I both share a belief in the power of creative freedom - to push ourselves forward, to bring the world of Dom Perignon rose to life. I worked with my friend, the legendary Nick Knight. Enjoy!'

Reunited her Born this Way team: The 12-time Grammy winner wore wildly fantastical gowns selected by stylist Nicola Formichetti

Cheers! Hairstylist/wig designer Frederic Aspiras coiffed Gaga's pink locks for the glorified commercial

'Enjoy responsibly': Make-up artist Sarah Nicole Tanno applied the Joe Biden inauguration performer's glittery pink eye shadow and nail artist Miho Okawara applied her long manicure

Finger waving: Gaga's ad was set to the song Free Woman off her sixth studio album Chromatica

Gaga is currently hard at work on the Rome set of Ridley Scott's Patrizia Reggiani biopic House of Gucci, which hits US theaters November 24 and UK theaters November 26.

In it, Mother Monster plays the fellow fiery 5ft Italian socialite Patrizia who was convicted of orchestrating the 1995 murder of her ex-husband, Gucci heir Maurizio Gucci.

The Milan-born 72-year-old completed 18 years of her 29-year prison sentence in 2016 along with four accomplices - including the hitman who gunned down Maurizio at his office.

Ciao! Mother Monster (R, pictured Friday) is currently hard at work on the Rome set of Ridley Scott's Patrizia Reggiani biopic House of Gucci, which hits US theaters November 24 and UK theaters November 26

'It was worth every lira': In it, Gaga plays the fellow fiery 5ft Italian socialite Patrizia (M, pictured in 1998) who was convicted of orchestrating the 1995 murder of her ex-husband, Gucci heir Maurizio Gucci

29-year prison sentence: House of Gucci also stars Adam Driver, Al Pacino, Jared Leto, Salma Hayek, Jack Huston, Reeve Carney, and Jeremy Irons

House of Gucci also stars Adam Driver, Al Pacino, Jared Leto, Salma Hayek, Jack Huston, Reeve Carney, and Jeremy Irons.

During the second quarter of 2021, Gaga will release her second album with Tony Bennett, which was recorded between 2018-2020.

The 911 songstress will then kick off her six-city Chromatica Ball world tour on July 25 at France's Stade de France in Saint-Denis.
Bryan Riser, 36, was ordered to be released from custody on Wednesday after a Dallas County Criminal Court judge said there was no probable cause and prosecutors agreed that they didn't have enough evidence to move forward with the case

A Dallas police veteran who was charged last month with capital murder for allegedly ordering two killings in 2017 has now been released from jail after a judge ruled there wasn't enough evidence against him.

Bryan Riser, 36, was ordered to be released from custody on Wednesday after a Dallas County Criminal Court judge said there was no probable cause and prosecutors agreed that they didn't have enough evidence to move forward with the case.

Riser, a 13-year veteran of the Dallas Police Department, was fired after his colleagues took him into custody in early March when he was charged in the alleged murder-for-hire scheme.

He had been accused of offering $9,500 to three men to kidnap and kill Liza Saenz, 31, and Albert Douglas, 61, back in 2017.

Those three men were later charged with capital murder.

One of those men, Emmanuel Kilpatrick, later came forward in 2019 and implicated Riser in the alleged murder-for-hire plot, according to an affidavit for the officer's arrest.

Riser's lawyer, Toby Shook, has maintained his client is innocent and said that the evidence against Riser is little more than the word of a man already convicted in other killings.

Riser (pictured), a 13-year veteran of the Dallas Police Department, was fired after his colleagues took him into custody in early March when he was charged in the alleged murder-for-hire scheme

He had been accused of offering $9,500 to three men to kidnap and kill Liza Saenz, 31, and Albert Douglas, 61, back in 2017.

Shook has previously said Riser knew Kilpatrick from high school and that they reconnected in 2017 after a chance encounter.

The defense attorney described Kilpatrick, who is currently serving life in prison for the separate killings of a father and son, as someone who has 'all the reason in the world to lie and try to gain an advantage by trying to implicate a police officer'.

During the hearing on Wednesday to decide whether the case should go forward to a grand jury to consider an indictment, prosecutors disagreed with a Dallas homicide detective's assessment that they had enough evidence to prosecute.

'Where we stand as a district attorney's office right now today, we do not feel there's sufficient probable cause for this case,' Dallas County prosecutor Jason Fine told the judge.

A spokesman for the Dallas County sheriff's office said Riser would be released once the jail receives the paperwork for his case from the court.

An exchange between Fine and homicide Detective Esteban Montenegro in court revealed that police and prosecutors first discussed the case in December 2019, but that prosecutors didn't think police had a solid case.

Fine also said that prosecutors told police in March that they still didn't think there was enough evidence.

Police, however, went ahead and arrested Riser.

In announcing Riser's arrest last month, police chief Eddie Garcia had said the officer became a 'suspect' in 2019 and sought to distinguish that from being 'a person of interest'

Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot said on Wednesday that prosecutors don't have enough "corroboration of co-defendant statements and accomplice testimony" but that the investigation remains open and prosecutors continue to work with police.

In court, Montenegro admitted to a problem with a statement in the police affidavit that led to Riser's arrest.

He said a claim that cellphone records placed Riser at or near where the victims were killed was "an error on my part'.

In a revised arrest warrant affidavit released this week, that line was changed.

In announcing the arrest last month, police chief Eddie Garcia had said the officer became a 'suspect' in 2019 and sought to distinguish that from being 'a person of interest'.

Garcia said neither killing was connected to Riser's police work and that investigators were still trying to determine the motives.

Both victims were shot and their bodies were dumped in the Trinity River, according to investigators. Saenz's body was recovered but Douglas' wasn't.

The city's former police chief - who left at the end of 2020 - said investigators, in collaboration with the FBI, recommended not placing Riser on administrative leave after he was identified as a person of interest because they didn't want to tip him off.

Dallas detectives, however, had taken an interest in Riser as early as 2017.

In September of that year, a detective said in court that Riser was the 'subject' of an investigation into the killing of Saenz, according to a transcript of the proceeding.

The detective also said Saenz lived with Riser's father and that before her death she had been a witness in another murder case. The testimony came during a detention hearing in a federal drug case against Riser's dad, Byron Riser.

Shook said Saenz lived with the elder Riser at one point but that his client 'didn't have a relationship with' her and didn't know Douglas.
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP)  Two people have been arrested in the death of a 1-year-old girl who suffered blunt force injuries and burns last month. Baton Rouge police say the childs mother, Christy Fontenot, was booked into jail Monday on charges of cruelty to juveniles and failure to seek assistance. Another suspect, Jonathan Dunn, was charged March 28 with first-degree murder and cruelty to a juvenile. The agency says officers responded to a home March 27, where they found the child unresponsive. The coroner determined she died from blunt force injuries. Arrest documents allege witnesses had seen Fontenot and Dunn abuse the child. It's unclear whether they have attorneys who can comment for them.
Patna, April 7 : The Bihar police on Wednesday arrested five persons, including the main accused, allegedly involved in the murder of five persons in Bihar's Madhubani district on Holi, said a police official.

Jitendra Kumar, Bihar Additional Director General of Police (ADGP), confirmed the arrest of the accused. He said the main accused Praveen Jha alias Ravan along with four other co-accused was arrested in this case.

"The other accused have been identified as Chandan Jha, Mukesh, Saafi and Bhola Singh. The main accused Praveen's younger brother Naveen Jha is still absconding," Kumar added.

Sources said all the accused had fled to Nepal and the police traced them there but the Bihar police, however, maintained that the accused were arrested from various districts of Bihar.

Meanwhile, Tejashwi Yadav, the Leader of Opposition, claimed that the arrests were possible only after he relentlessly put pressure on the Nitish Kumar government after the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader's visit to Mohammadpur village in Madhubani district on Tuesday.

"The Bihar government has two Deputy Chief Ministers but none of them visited Madhubani to meet the victims' families. After I put pressure on the ruling Janata Dal United and the Bharatiya Janata Party as well as Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, the arrests were made," Tejashwi said.

Tarkishore Prasad, Bihar Deputy Chief Minister, retorted to Tejashwi Yadav and said the incident was unfortunate but the opposition RJD and Congress leaders were giving it a communal colour.

"BJP sent cabinet Minister Neeraj Kumar Bablu soon after the incident in Madhubani and the state government is taking the incident seriously," Prasad added.

The incident occurred in Mohammadpur on March 29 during Holi when nearly 35 armed men opened fire at the family of Ranvijay Singh over a land dispute. Ranvijay Singh and his cousin brother Virendra Singh were killed on the spot. Three other family members -- Rana Pratap Singh, Amrendra Singh and Rudra Narayan Singh succumbed to their injuries in Patna Medical College Hospital (PMCH) a day later. Another injured person Manoj Singh is admitted in Darbhanga Medical College and Hospital.
TRINIDAD and Tobago Unit Trust Corporation (UTC) executive director, Nigel Edwards, says the changes the 39-year-old financial institution is undergoing at this time are transformational.

The UTC is now in the middle of a three-year cycle of strategic changes that will culminate in 2023 and beyond, he said.
San Franciscos Board of Education voted to suspend a plan to rename a third of the citys public schools, including ones honoring Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, after the plan drew a scathing response from parents and the citys mayor.

In a vote on Tuesday, the board overturned its January decision to rename 44 schools, saying it wanted to avoid the problems of frivolous litigation. The schools had been identified by a panel of community leaders as requiring name changes because they honored historical figures who inhibited societal progress, oppressed women or had slaves.

The board of education said in a resolution on Tuesday that it was deeply grateful for the work of the panel, but that it wished to avoid the distraction and wasteful expenditure of public funds in frivolous litigation. It also said it would revisit the matter of renaming schools only after all students have returned to in-person learning for five full days each week.

On the list were schools named after George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Francis Scott Key, figures the board was reconsidering because they engaged in the subjugation and enslavement of human beings. Another school was named after Abraham Lincoln, who was being examined for his role in the 1862 execution of 38 Dakota men.
LUXEMBOURG, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- With .sbs, ShortDot focuses on forward-thinking organizations, corporates, businesses, entrepreneurs, and professionals who believe in doing well for themselves and doing good for social communities, side by side. ShortDot will be donating a portion of every .sbs domain registration to a non-profit organization.

Shortdot SA

ShortDot has positioned .sbs as a short, thoughtful, three-letter domain extension perfect for social causes, charitable organizations and other philanthropic initiatives, and any progressive business, individual, or community that believes in social and financial inclusion.

In today's virtual world, .sbs also finds applications valid for virtual coworking spaces, productivity platforms, online events, and networking sites where teams can collaborate, work remotely, and share ideas side by side. Bloggers, entrepreneurs and working professionals managing multiple projects, businesses, and tasks side by side can also use .sbs to highlight their multi-tasking capabilities.

.sbs is launching soon and will be available for trademark holders on May 6, 2021. This 'Sunrise Period' ends on June 7, 2021 and then registrants around the globe will be able to register .sbs beginning at 1400 UTC on June 8, 2021.

ShortDot was founded in 2017 by entrepreneurs Lars Jensen, Kevin Kopas, Michael Riedl, and Christian Tecar. As domain industry veterans, their broad experience on both the registry and registrar sides of the business has enabled ShortDot to adopt a customer-centric registry model driving the company's rapid growth. In a relatively short span of time, ShortDot has built credible reputation and is considered as a formidable force in the domain industry. It is, in fact, now the fourth-largest new domain name registry in the world.

"We're really looking forward to the launch of .sbs! We're confident that .sbs will enable non-profit organizations and social welfare groups to make a strong impact online," said Kevin Kopas, COO. ".sbs communicates the drive a business has for economic growth coupled with the commitment to supporting and uplifting communities side by side. .sbs establishes a strong connection with social enterprises, non-profit organizations, community groups, and activists alike."

Given the success of ShortDot's previous domain extensions, .icu, .bond, .cyou, and .cfd, .sbs will be another winner. .icu is one of the largest new domain extensions on the planet, .bond is breaking barriers in the world of finance and banking, and .cyou has been one of the fastest-growing new domain extensions for the past three months. Several leading Hollywood celebrities have already registered their names with .cfd and the newly launched domain extension continues to receive strong support from the global community of fashion influencers.

"It's amazing to witness the support and love we're getting for .sbs from our registrar partners and various non-profit organizations," said Lars Jensen, CEO. "Being a short, three-letter domain extension, .sbs is perfect for all types of businesses, brands, individuals, and social impact groups looking to make a strong impact online. Since .sbs is free of any geographic, linguistic, and industry-related limitations, it makes for the perfect choice to build a memorable presence and to stand out."

For more information about ShortDot, .sbs, and the upcoming launch, visit www.shortdot.bond/sbs.

For more information, contact:

Kevin Kopas at [email protected]

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Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

The search for a new executive director at the National Hispanic Cultural Center is underway.

Josefa Gonzalez Mariscal resigned, effective Wednesday, after 11 months as executive director.

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According to the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, Gonzalez Mariscal said the pandemic has underscored the value of family, and she plans to move near her daughter to spend more time with her.

Cultural Affairs Secretary Debra Garcia y Griego said Deputy Secretary Nick Schiavo will serve as acting director, ensuring that operations continue as normal.

Gonzalez Mariscal started as executive director May 3. She was hired after a nearly two-year search by the NHCC to replace former Executive Director Rebecca A. Avitia, who had a nearly five-year tenure.

The process to hire Gonzalez Mariscal was scrutinized. At a June 19, 2019, NHCC board of directors meeting, three candidates were announced as finalists for the position, after six months in the selection process.

But the DCA retooled the description for the position and reopened the search. At the time, the three finalists were all New Mexico residents.

Before arriving at the NHCC, Gonzalez Mariscal spent 20 years as a fine arts appraiser and consultant.

She came from Houston, where she was a cultural attache for the Consulate General of Mexico in that city, promoting Mexican culture, organizing art exhibitions, concerts, lecture series, book fairs, festivals and parades. She also was a regular contributor to a consular weekly segment on the local Univision television station.

The NHCC board will again lead the search for a new director.

We do need stability in that position, said Edward Lujan, who has been chairman of the NHCC and NHCC Foundation boards for many years and was a major player in the establishment of the cultural center.

When we get an interim leader, it doesnt help, he said. I imagine the board will look at it quickly and make a plan.

Lujan has seen nearly a dozen executive directors rotate through the NHCC during its 20 years of existence.
Mike Postle Gives Up on $330M Lawsuit

April 06, 2021 Mo Nuwwarah

Mike Postle's legal record will not wind up as spotless as his livestreamed poker ledger.

Postle took a rare loss last week when he reportedly requested dismissal of his own suit in which he alleged defamation by a slew of poker personalities and media entities (disclosure: PokerNews was a named party in the suit). The dismissal was granted and signed off on by a clerk in the Superior Court of California on April 1, according to a document released by defendant Veronica Brill.

As Brill and fellow defendant Todd Witteles had countered with anti-SLAPP motions to strike that were still under consideration, Postle will by default concede on that front, meaning he's on the hook for the defendants' legal fees as Brill announced in her tweet.

Postle's Ill-Conceived Suit

The suit dated to early October 2020, almost exactly a year after the landmark story initially broke that Postle had allegedly cleaned out the livestreamed cash games at Stones Gambling Hall through unknown but nefarious means. He's estimated to have won roughly $250,000 over the course of less than a year in $1/$3 and $5/$5 stakes.

Scores of cheated players  nearly 90  lawyered up and brought suit against Postle and the venue but were ultimately successful only in securing a small settlement for rake paid. A judge dismissed the majority of the charges, mostly on the grounds that gambling losses are barred from recovery in California stemming from an 1800s-era state law.

Rather than hunker down with whatever remained of his winnings and be grateful he resided and played on soil governed by such an obscure and archaic statute, Postle opted to go on the offensive. He fired off a high-profile lawsuit of his own, one seeking a staggering $330 million in damages.

Things proved shaky almost from the get-go as Postle's first lawyer dropped him a few months in, and he was also hit by the anti-SLAPP motions from Brill and Witteles, the two most vocal defendants in the case.

A quick refresher on such motions from PokerNews' previous story on the case:

SLAPP stands for strategic lawsuit against public participation. According to the Media Law Resource Center, anti-SLAPP laws are "designed to provide for early dismissal of meritless lawsuits filed against people for the exercise of First Amendment rights"  with such suits often "brought to intimidate and silence opponents and critics who had spoken out in the public sphere."

According to the reporting of Haley Hintze at PokerTube, Postle asked for and was granted two continuances in the case. He claimed he was finding new legal representation and then getting them all of the pertinent information. Originally, the anti-SLAPP motions were meant to come up in court in early February, but the case dragged into late March despite Brill's attorney, Marc J. Randazza calling the entire thing a "public relations stunt."

Where Does that Leave the Story?

Perhaps Postle finally admitted to himself that this was the case, or perhaps his attorneys advised dropping it and taking the loss on the legal fees before things mounted further. Whatever the case, Postle appears to have accepted defeat on this round of the legal battle. He'll now be receiving some attorneys' bills that will undoubtedly relieve him of a good chunk of the monies he took out of the poker community in 2019, if indeed he's still in possession of such funds.

An investigation into Postle's on-stream statistics, spearheaded by high-profile pros Phil Galfond and Matt Berkey, began last September, but updates have been scant in the months since.

Postle, for his part, blustered in a text to a local reporter about a "wild documentary" he promised would prove his innocence and "shock the poker and gambling industries."

Until  and if  either of those developments comes to fruition, there doesn't seem to be an obvious next step in the long-running saga.

For now, the legal war appears to have come to a close with Postle's years-long winning streak finally over.

Postle did not respond to PokerNews' request for comment regarding the latest court development.
Residents of a vast stretch of Western Australia's coastline are being warned to prepare for two possible tropical cyclones developing offshore.

A cyclone advice alert has been issued by the Department of Fire and Emergency Services for an area spanning from Onslow to Jurien Bay in the state's Pilbara, Gascoyne and Mid West regions.

Tropical Cyclone Seroja is tracking south from its current position 720km northwest of Broome and is expected to make landfall as early as Sunday.

A separate tropical low lying well to the south of Christmas Island could develop cyclone intensity in coming days as it tracks east, the Bureau of Meteorology said on Wednesday.

Residents of a vast stretch of Western Australia's coastline are being warned to prepare for two possible tropical cyclones developing offshore. Pictured: A couple walking near Leighton Beach in Perth during wet weather

Tropical Cyclone Seroja is tracking south from its current position 720km northwest of Broome and is expected to make landfall as early as Sunday

It's possible the two systems will rotate around each other when they get close enough, an interaction known as the Fujiwhara Effect.

'With Tropical Cyclone Seroja approaching from the northeast, the interaction between these two systems is likely to limit development of the tropical low,' the bureau said.

'There is the risk of a period of strong winds and rain associated with this system across the northwest corner of the state over the weekend.'

Authorities are encouraging people living or travelling between Onslow and Jurien Bay to make preparations in coming days.

'Cyclones can be incredibly dangerous, bringing heavy rain, flooding, gales and ocean swells,' the DFES said.

'Heavy rainfall can also affect roads, making travel difficult or even unsafe. Some roads may be closed for a period of time.

'People who are travelling or planning to travel through the area, on land or offshore, need to stay informed and make a plan so they know exactly what to do if the situation gets worse.'
What's lurking in your fridge and at the back of your kitchen cupboards? A tin of tuna you've had for, gulp, years, or an old block of cheese, plus other sundries well beyond their best before dates?

Your instinct is probably to throw them away and so add to the UK's growing problem with food waste.

A recent report found that the nation's biggest supermarkets throw away 190 million perfectly edible meals a year. The UN says that every year, a fifth of household food ends up in the rubbish.

Why? Often because the foods destined for the bin were approaching their 'best before' or 'use by' dates, which many of us take as a sign they are going off. But that's not necessarily the case.

Sarah Rainey (pictured) sent her long-expired food to NationWide Laboratories, in Lancashire, to find out how edible food actually is past its best-before date

While 'use by' dates (found on meat, dairy and other fresh foods) are about safety, meaning food shouldn't be eaten once this date has passed, 'best before' (found on tins and packets) signifies quality, meaning the food is usually fine to eat but may not be at its best.

So how edible is food past its best-before date? SARAH RAINEY rummaged in her cupboards for packets, tins and boxes with long-expired dates and sent them to leading microbiology centre NationWide Laboratories, in Lancashire, to find out...

A six-year old tin of Heinz chicken soup proved to be perfectly edible

SIX-YEAR-OLD SOUP

Six years three months out of date

WHAT IS IT? An unopened tin of Heinz chicken soup from 2014. Though a little dusty, it looks in perfectly good condition.

APPEARANCE: The soup inside looks identical to the contents of a newly bought tin.

SMELL: Just as you'd expect; creamy, meaty and a bit garlicky.

BACTERIA COUNT: Zero. The lab found no trace of salmonella, listeria, yeast, mould or E. coli.

EDIBLE? Yes.

A box of six free-range eggs were deemed edible eight days past the use-by date

OUTDATED EGGS

Eight days out of date

WHAT IS IT? A box of six medium free-range eggs from a corner shop.

Eggs are one of the few products to have a 'best before' date; they are generally considered safe to eat up to three weeks after that if kept in the fridge.

Any longer and you risk salmonella bacteria multiplying inside the shell.

APPEARANCE: Once cracked, the eggs look normal: the whites are clear and runny; the yolks intact.

SMELL: Rotten eggs have a very distinctive sulphurous odour; these don't smell of anything.

BACTERIA COUNT: Low. The tests detect 20 'colony-forming units' (CFU) of bacteria per gram, so they are just starting to go off but still safe to eat. No salmonella present.

EDIBLE? Yes.

Morrisons' 'The Best' pesto was edible despite being two years out of date

PAST-IT PESTO

Two years and four months out of date

WHAT IS IT? A 190g jar of Morrisons 'The Best' pesto, made with basil, pine nuts, pecorino cheese and extra virgin olive oil.

APPEARANCE: A little oily on top but otherwise normal in texture. Still a vibrant green.

SMELL: Having been unopened for so long, the smell of herbs and garlic is quite strong but it's not unappetising or sour.

BACTERIA COUNT: Zero. The oil has preserved the contents perfectly.

EDIBLE? Yes.

An unopened load of Kingsmill white bread was less 'squeezably soft' but perfectly edible

AGEING BREAD

Five days out of date

WHAT IS IT? A loaf of unopened white Kingsmill bread, sliced medium thick.

APPEARANCE: Condensation is starting to form inside the packet and the bread is a little less 'squeezably soft' than the slogan suggests.

But it's far from stale and there is no evidence of mould.

SMELL: Unpleasantly sweet and yeasty. Once the bread has had a minute or two to 'breathe' it smells more edible.

BACTERIA COUNT: Zero. Despite the slight changes in appearance and smell, this bread is still good.

EDIBLE? Yes.

A month-old block of Red Leicester cheese was technically edible, but Sarah said she wouldn't eat it due to the 'old sock' smell

MONTH-OLD CHEESE

One month out of date

WHAT IS IT? A block of Red Leicester, bought from a corner shop. It is more stable than milk or yoghurt and so has a 'best before' date. Only fresh cheeses such as ricotta are given 'use by' dates.

APPEARANCE: Bright orange and mould-free but starting to go a bit squidgy at the edges.

SMELL: Not great. It has that nasty 'old sock' odour of gone-off cheese.

BACTERIA COUNT: Extremely high. The tests detect 200,000 CFU per gram of cheese  but the scientists say this is no cause for concern.

As cheese is made by putting bacteria into pasteurised milk, there is no unacceptable bacteria count. What is detected could also be lactic acid-forming bacteria, which are a by-product of the ripening process but don't count as a pathogen ('bad bacteria').

The tests find no salmonella, listeria, yeast, mould or E. coli.

EDIBLE? Technically, but due to the smell I wouldn't personally eat it.

Napoli 79p wafer biscuits that were five months out of date had a medium bacteria count but were still edible

WATCH YOUR WAFER

Five months out of date

WHAT IS IT? A packet of 79p wafer biscuits, filled with a chocolate-flavoured cream.

APPEARANCE: Completely normal. Surprisingly, these are still crisp and the cream inside is gooey.

SMELL: Insipid. Very little smell.

BACTERIA COUNT: Medium. The tests uncover 100 CFU per gram, which is the third-highest of the lot.

It isn't dangerous but it shows biscuits can go off, not just become stale, and shouldn't be left unopened for months.

EDIBLE? Yes.

A three-year-old jar of Sainsbury's sun-dried tomato paste was technically edible, but its smell and taste was past its best

PASTE ITS BEST

Three years, five months out of date

WHAT IS IT? Sainsbury's sun-dried tomato paste, made from tomatoes, garlic, sugar, salt, herbs and sunflower oil. The instructions say to keep it unopened in a cool, dry place.

APPEARANCE: This is grainy in texture and starting to turn a dull brown colour. There is a layer of gloopy oil on top.

SMELL: Musty and sour, with a pungent, lingering aroma that doesn't smell at all right.

BACTERIA COUNT: Zero. The testers don't find anything unsafe.

EDIBLE? Technically yes; you wouldn't get food poisoning. But it's clearly past its best in terms of smell and taste.

Waitrose Essential sardine fillets in oil were perfectly edible one year and nine months past its used by date

YES WE CAN!

One year and nine months out of date

WHAT IS IT? Waitrose Essential sardine fillets in oil. Fresh fish and meat have 'use by' dates, but tinned alternatives are so well-sealed they have 'best before' dates.

APPEARANCE: Still in one piece and with some grey-blue colour.

SMELL: Fishy; not unpleasant.

BACTERIA COUNT: Zero. The tests find no bacteria or pathogens.

EDIBLE? Yes.

Lloyd Grossman sauce was edible despite being seven months passed the used-by date

ANCIENT SAUCE

Seven months out of date

WHAT IS IT? Loyd Grossman original Bolognese sauce, made with sun-ripened tomatoes, red wine, basil and oregano. The storage instructions say that the 350g jar should be kept in a cool, dry place.

APPEARANCE: The contents have separated a little but otherwise it's normal.

SMELL: As appetising as the day it was bought.

BACTERIA COUNT: Low. The lab found 20 CFU per gram of sauce, which is well within the legal limits; and no trace of other harmful pathogens like e-coli.

EDIBLE? Yes.

HP sauce proved the test of time as it proved edible three years and five months out of date

BROWNED OFF? NO

Three years and five months out of date

WHAT IS IT? A large, dusty, unopened bottle of the nation's second-favourite condiment.

APPEARANCE: Brown, squeezable, smooth.

SMELL: Vinegary, malty, slightly sweet and spicy.

BACTERIA COUNT: Zero. Sauces such as ketchup, brown sauce and mustard are well-preserved with plenty of sugar and salt, and sealed with foil under the plastic cap, so they take a long time to go off.

EDIBLE? Yes.

Nescafe Azera sachets were perfectly edible six years and five months out of date

COFFEE CONUNDRUM

Six years and five months out of date

WHAT IS IT? Six Nescafe Azera sachets of barista-style instant coffee. Powdered and designed to be mixed with boiling water, they are made from skimmed milk powder, coffee and sugar.

APPEARANCE: Each sachet is filled with brown powder that looks normal and clump-free.

SMELL: Very bland and sweet. Barely a whiff of coffee, so this would make a far-from-fragrant cup and be low on taste.

BACTERIA COUNT: Medium. Tests uncovered 120 CFU per gram, making it the second-highest of the lot. But this, the experts say, is still in the safe range and there was no trace of listeria, etc.

EDIBLE? Yes.

Waitrose Essential strawberry jam was stored in the fridge and edible six months passed its best-before date

STILL FRUITY

Six months out of date

WHAT IS IT? Waitrose Essential strawberry jam. This has been stored in the fridge, which may have slowed its decline even further.

APPEARANCE: Fruity, red and jammy.

SMELL: Sweet. It's not very fragrant but that isn't down to decay. Keeping it chilled may just have dulled its appeal.

BACTERIA COUNT: Zero.

EDIBLE? Yes.

Lemon-infused rapeseed oil was stored for four years, but was only 18 days out of date

VERY OLD OIL

Four years, 18 days out of date

WHAT IS IT? An unopened bottle of gourmet lemon-infused rapeseed oil, bought from a farm shop six years ago.

Keep oil too long (or expose it to too much light or heat) and the fat molecules break down, making it rancid.

APPEARANCE: I don't remember it being this orange and the oil is slightly cloudy, but there is no sign of rot or mould.

SMELL: Artificial; the freshness seems to have faded over time.

BACTERIA COUNT: Zero.

EDIBLE? Yes.
After the bloodbath when Deliveroo floated, the customers who bought into the issue have nothing to cheer in spite of a 2 per cent rise on the first day when they could trade shares.

Whichever way you cut it, the float was an embarrassment for bankers Goldman Sachs, the other advisers, founder William Shu and non-executives such as Simon Wolfson, who arguably could have hosed down expectations.

The 70,000 Deliveroo customers who bought parcels of shares costing between 250 and 1,000 felt it was worth getting behind an online enterprise which has served them well during the pandemic.

Flexi-time: The idea that the 50000 Deliveroo riders should all be treated as full-time employees when some only work a few hours a week doesnt pass muster

They are more aligned, as is Wolfson, with the world of digital retail than stuffy fund managers engaging in ethical washing.

There is obviously a problem for all companies using staff in the gig economy. One doesnt have to be an enthusiast for union power to recognise that riders, drivers and everyone else in the supply chain must be paid at least the minimum wage and be entitled to pay for down time.

But the idea that the 50000 Deliveroo riders should all be treated as full-time employees when some only work a few hours a week doesnt pass muster.

It is fascinating that Amazon, which has been around for a quarter of century, is still struggling with these issues.

Workers at its Bessemer warehouse in Alabama are currently balloting to form a union amid complaints that working conditions are damaging their health. They are demanding the company embrace better practice.

For most of its history, Jeff Bezos and Amazon have been able to ignore worker complaints because politicians want the investment and jobs, the media loves the service and in the USs freewheeling labour market, imposing tighter rules is seen as putting the brakes on capitalism.

But in the new age of social investing, the balance between profits and properly looking after staff is starting to change.

The more convincing reason for the Deliveroo flop is that the investment case does not add up. Critics argue it is a temporary beneficiary of the online speed-up caused by the pandemic. That doesnt make a great deal of sense.

No one suggests that the high street switch from Topshop and Debenhams to Asos and Boohoo is a flash in the pan or that Wolfsons embrace of online and click and collect will vanish with Covid. Sainsburys saw food delivery firms as a big threat when it sought to convince competition chiefs that it should merge with Asda.

More home and flexible working in the UK and across the world will boost Deliveroo and its competitors. Having its own shares to deploy ought to be of assistance to Shu as the stock market newcomer seeks to mop up overseas and UK competitors.

The task for him and his board is to prove the naysayers wrong.

Tokyo imbroglio

Japan has never liked overseas takeovers. That has not stopped CVC, once the private equity arm of Citibank, from making a prospective bid worth 15billion.

Toshiba is a mixed bag and has been dogged by accounting scandals, governance questions and the Chapter 11 bankruptcy of its US nuclear arm.

Scrape away the rust and underneath there is a series of gems, including a devices operation which makes chip equipment and hard drives powering PCs and laptops around the globe.

It also owns a 40 per cent stake in chip maker Kioxia and is big in railway infrastructure and generators. It looks a little like national champions such as Germanys Siemens or Frances Schneider.

Toshiba is vulnerable given shareholder disquiet about governance and returns. But one suspects Japans Foreign Exchange & Foreign Trade Act passed a year ago, and a 146-year heritage, will prove a huge barrier.

Yellen effect

Something one would never expect to see in the US is a lengthy government paper advocating the issue of $650billion (473billion) of new special drawing rights, the IMFs own reserve currency.

As the biggest shareholder, America would get the largest allocation of the IMF currency, and could almost certainly block it being used to provide resources to bad actors such as Myanmar or a Covid-rebel such as Brazil.

The USs approval at the G20 shows how far Washington has travelled since Janet Yellen arrived at the Treasury.
Good morning, North State! Here's what you need to know to start your day on Wednesday, April 7.

Armed person dies in officer-involved shooting in Redding

Officers with the Redding Police Department shot and killed a suspect after he fired at a parked car. It happened in south Redding, just west of Highway 273, near Railroad and Grandview Avenues. The suspect ran after crashing a stolen pickup truck on Highway 273, officers said. They opened fire after the man fired into a parked car, officers said. Investigators are searching for a woman who was also involved in that crash and are asking anyone with information to contact them.

Chico City Council voted to rescind shelter crisis declaration

A divided city council declared an end to the Chico shelter crisis. The city council rejected a proposal for an outdoor shelter at the BMX course in Chico with on-site resources, security, and services for homeless people. During the discussion, Councilmember Kami Denlay proposed a substitute motion to stop working on the BMX shelter concept altogether and to immediately rescind the shelter crisis declaration. The vote passed 5-2.

FEMA extends federal housing for Camp Fire survivors

FEMA has extended federal housing for Camp Fire survivors. However, starting June 1, those who are staying in FEMA housing will be charged rent based on their ability to pay. As of March 31, a total of 113 households were still in the agency's direct housing program.

California plans to lift most pandemic restrictions June 15

California plans to lift most coronavirus restrictions on businesses and workplaces June 15. Health leaders said by then enough people should be vaccinated for life to safely return to pre-pandemic levels. State health officials said the mandates will not be removed unless the vaccine supply can sustain demand and hospitalization rates remain low.

CUSD to discuss use of COVID-19 relief funds

The Chico Unified School Board will discuss how to use millions of dollars of COVID-19 relief for schools. Some suggestions include academic, emotional and technical support. The meeting kicks off at 5 p.m. Wednesday. Click here to watch the meeting.
J&J, Moderna Vaccines Available in Marshall County

By West Kentucky Star Staff

BENTON - Marshall County Public Health Director Billy Pitts says the Marshall County Health Department has a limited supply of Johnson & Johnson vaccine available.The Johnson & Johnson vaccine requires only one dose.Anyone who would like the vaccine should contact the Marshall County Health Department at 270-527-1496 to schedule an appointment.Pitts says there is also a very limited supply of the Moderna vaccine, which requires two doses.Appointments for these vaccines will be accepted until inventory is exhausted.
There is a causal link between the vaccine developed by and very rare cases of blood clots, although it remains unclear what the connection is and the possible causes are likewise still unknown, a senior European Medicines Agency (EMA) expert told an Italian on Tuesday.

"It is clear that an association exists" between the vaccine and the dozens of reported blood clots, said Marco Cavaleri, head of the EMA's health threats and vaccines strategy.

"Such cases are extremely rare, and the benefits (of the vaccine) still largely outweigh the risks," he stressed.

"Yet, it is becoming increasingly hard to say there is no cause-effect relationship between the vaccination with and very rare cases of unusual blood clots associated with a low number of platelets," he said.

In its latest assessment of embolic and thrombotic events reported after vaccination published on March 24, the EMA looked at 258 such cases (45 of them fatal) that occurred in Europe out of almost 20 million first doses of the vaccine administered, the Xinhua news agency reported.

On March 31, the agency explained that such an assessment did not unveil "any specific risk factors, such as age, gender or a previous medical history of clotting disorders for these very rare events."

"A causal link with the vaccine is not proven but is possible, and further analysis is continuing," it added.

Cavaleri told the Italian newspaper on Tuesday that the assessment process was "far from over."

The EMA is expected to provide a new evaluation on the use of the vaccine soon, perhaps by late Wednesday, the European Union's (EU) Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said on Twitter on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the Italian Medicines Agency (AIFA) and the Health Ministry were also due to discuss the issue late on Tuesday, although the AIFA would reportedly not issue any new rule on the AstraZeneca vaccine's use pending the EMA's decision.

Like other EU countries, Italy on March 15 issued a "temporary and precautionary" ban on the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine following reports of a small number of clot deaths in the country.

Three days later, it resumed use of the AstraZeneca vaccine following the EMA's announcement that it was safe.

Also in March, the Italian branch of AstraZeneca said that "an analysis of safety data on over ten million doses administered has shown no evidence of an increased risk of pulmonary embolism or deep vein thrombosis in any age group, gender or batch."

However, an official from the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday that there was "no link for the moment" between the AstraZeneca vaccine and blood clots, stressing that the benefits of the vaccine were "largely still positive" compared to its risks.

"We continue to see a number of events that are rare events. ... There's no evidence that the benefit-risk assessment for the vaccine needs to be changed," said Rogerio Pinto de Sa Gaspar, Director of Regulation and Pre-qualification of WHO, at a press conference.

The AstraZeneca vaccine was authorized for use in Italy on January 29 and is one of four vaccines currently approved against the here, the others being those by Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson.

Italy's vaccination campaign is ongoing but it has been marred by a slow start and delays.

To date, the country has administered 11.3 million doses out of the 14.1 million doses available, according to the government. Over 3.5 million people have received both vaccine doses.

At a global level, 269 candidate vaccines are still being developed -- 85 of them in clinical trials -- in several countries including Germany, China, Britain, Russia and the US, according to data released by the World Health Organization on April 2.

--IANS

int/rs

(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.)
Fishermen in Dublin, Ireland, claim sea life facing wipeout

April 07,2021 | Source: Q102

The sea life around Dublin baby is facing a wipeout.



That's according to more than 40 fishermen who claim marine surveys are damaging fish and wildlife.



The surveys are being done as part of offshore wind farms.



Fisherman Paddy Macaulay told us that a previous windfarm survey on the seabed in 2011 "destroyed everything on the seabed".



He said: "All life that we sustain our living from was gone for two and a half years, and slowly it came back".



As part of the offshore licence, companies behind the wind farms are required to engage with the fishermen who claim that is not happening.



Gerry Copeland has been fishing for more than 30 years along the Codling Bank, Dublin Bay and Wicklow.



He said: "Whatever type of sound they are using it's actually killing the ground, it's killing the ground, these are Whelks, a Whelk is a sea snail. Fish can swim away, a Whelk can't.



"And we think that this survey, this sound they're using on the ground is actually killing the shells, and we are out there a long time, we see the ground we know the ground and we think that's what's happening".



People Before Profit's Richard Boyd Barret told us, the private companies behind these applications along the Codling Bank, are flouting their requirements of the offshore licence.



He said: "It needs to be properly regulated and the government seems to have failed in the that and that allows private companies who've got licences to develop some of the offshore to ride roughshod over the genuine concerns of groups like fishermen and other groups who'd be concerns about biodiversity off the east coast".



Fisherman Sean Ryan said: "This is only the survey phase when they go into the construction phase, they're going to be banging at the seabed and drilling, and it's all rocky ground because the East Coast is all rock, it's mostly granite, the seabed out off the coast, it might be covered by a small layer of mud but underneath that they're going to have to drill through which will cause more noise, god only knows what will happen in that phase, I'd say it's just going to be a total wipeout."



In a statement, the Codling Wind Project told us:



"In February of this year, the Codling Wind Park project was granted a Foreshore Investigation Licence by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, under the Foreshore Acts 1933-2011. The licence allows the project to carry out a range of surveys and site investigation activities as part of the overall Environmental Impact Assessment process for the project.



"Extensive supporting information was provided as part of the licence application, including an assessment of the potential impacts the proposed investigative work may have on foreshore users, Natura 2000 sites, European Protected Species and other environmental or human resources. The application was also informed by feedback received through consultation with fishers, fishing organisations, fish producers organisations and other marine users.



"The first of the surveys under the licence is due to commence in the coming weeks and extensive engagement has taken place with fishers  and their legal representatives  over the last two months in relation to these



Arno Verbeek, Project Director of the Codling Wind Park project, said:



Building strong local relationships is very important to us on the Codling Wind Park project and we have been engaging with local fishers in relation to the project for the last year. At every stage of the foreshore licence process, our Fisheries Liaison Officers, together with the wider project team, have sought to share information and proactively engage with and listen to local fishers. We remain available for calls and meetings on an ongoing basis, in line with COVID-19 restrictions.



As we have planned our offshore surveys over the last two months, we have sought to promote co-existence and minimise any impacts on local fishers, by narrowing the survey areas as much as possible to impact the fewest possible fishers. Where we are proposing to ask fishers to temporarily move their fishing gear for the duration of the surveys, we are committed to compensating them fairly. We have been in discussions with the fishers and their legal representatives with a view to agreeing co-operation agreements for the last two months.



We recognise that we are sharing the marine environment with many other users and that we all have rights and responsibilities. We are committed to honouring ours and to adhering fully to the conditions of our Foreshore Investigation Licence at every stage and minimising any impact on the rights of other marine users.



However, the men here say, while they are not experts in seabed surveys, they know the seas better than anyone.



And they fear for their fishing industry, sea life and wildlife.

 Dublin's Q102 2021

Theme(s): Fisheries Resources.
As more people get vaccinated and states begin to roll back some of the restrictions put in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic  schools, agencies and workplaces are working on a plan on how to safely return to normal.
New Delhi:

One year ago, Indian Army instilled fear in the hearts and minds of Pakistan-based terrorists running camps to infuse tension in Jammu and Kashmir. Indian soldiers crossed over the Line of Control and attacked specific targets to hurt the machinery that sponsors terrorism in India.



The surgical strike, which was launched in the response of the Uri attack, has been celebrated by the Modi Government as a major achievement in the war against terror.



Surgical strikes are military attacks which are intended to result in damage to the intended legitimate military target only with aim of minimum collateral damage induced in the nearby areas and civilians.



The neutralization of only the specific targets in this case also prevents the escalation of the military tensions to the scale of a full-blown war.

Read | One year of surgical strike: Reasons behind Army conducting operation along LoC



On its first anniversary, let's examine the history of surgical strikes by India:



East Pakistan, or current day Bangladesh (1971)



In 1971, the Indian Army closely collaborated with Mukti Bahini inside the then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) state in the build-up to the 1971 Bangladesh war. However, this operation has not been officially acknowledged by the Indian authorities.



Kashmir (1971)



In 1971, the Indian Special Forces and the Ghatak platoons of infantry conducted tactical operations across the Line of Control in Kashmir, and caused small-scale damages across the border. By these strikes, the Indian Army was able to send a strong point across.



Myanmar (Apr-May 1995)



In 1995, India and Myanmar (then Burma) conducted a joint military operation blocking around 200 NSCN, ULFA and KLO militants moving through the Burma-Mizoram border. The militants were moving towards Manipur after picking up an arms consignment from Bangladesh.



Bhutan (2003)



In December 2003, the Indian Army conducted an operation, which is famously known as Operation All Clear, inside Bhutan to eliminate the northeastern militant groups. The operation was acknowledged by the Government. About 30 militant camps were targeted during this operation, including ULFA, NDFB and KLO hideouts, which lead to 650 militants being neutralized.

Read | Surgical Strikes First Anniversary: Know how Indian Army's Special Forces busted terror camps across LoC, avenged Uri terror attack



Myanmar (2006)



In January 2006, the Indian Army and security forces in Myanmar reportedly conducted joint military operations inside the territory of Myanmar, targeting local militants in lieu of the exchange of some military equipments to the Myanmar Army by India.



Myanmar (2015)



In June 2015, a team comprising of about 70 Indian Army commandos carried out surgical strike inside the jungles of Myanmar. The 40-minute operation took out 38 dreaded Naga militants and left seven injured. The strike was planned hours after the Naga militants killed 18 Indian soldiers in an ambush at the Chandel area of Manipur on June 4th, 2015.



Pakistan (September 29, 2016)



India claimed to have made surgical strikes against several militant bases, or terrorist launch-pads in the Pakistan-held territory and claimed to have killed 9 Pakistani soldiers and up to 50 militants.



Pakistan denied about the occurrence of any such strike and said that that Indian soldiers only fired upon the Pakistani soldiers, who then fired back. Pakistan also claimed that two of its soldiers were killed and that it had killed 8-14 Indian soldiers and captured one.



India acknowledged that one soldier had been injured, though none had been killed. India also acknowledged the capturing of one soldier by Pakistan, though not during its surgical strike.



Disputed surgical strikes



After the glorification of the surgical strike by Modi Government last year, former UPA Govt claimed that the surgical strikes happened frequently under the previous government, however, were not publicly acknowledged or promoted.



Former home minister P Chidambaram told media that Congress-led government sanctioned surgical strikes in 2013.



Tformer DGMO Lt Gen Vinod Bhatia rubbished Congress claims of 'surgical strikes' during the UPA governments tenure. He said the surgical strikes now and operations than "can't be compared" as they were mere cross-border actions.

Read | (Watch) India conducted deadliest surgical strikes across LoC in 2011, says report

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) has honored the First Utility District of Knox County for its performance in meeting drinking water goals in a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) program.

TDEC awarded the utility district with a certificate recognizing its success in meeting program goals for its performance managing disinfection byproducts. The program is part of the EPAs Area-Wide Optimization Program (AWOP), an initiative administered in Tennessee by TDECs Division of Water Resources.

The First Utility District of Knox County has earned this recognition with its commitment to clean drinking water and quality service, Greg Young, deputy commissioner of TDEC, said. We are pleased to honor its team for its hard work in this area.

Disinfection byproducts form when chlorine disinfection and organic matter combine. Water systems can limit disinfection byproduct by limiting organic matter at both the water treatment plant and in the distribution system. The utility district met both short-term and long-term optimization goals for the AWOP program.

AWOP provides technical assistance and resources to systems that have water quality issues or simply want to enhance water quality. The First Utility District of Knox County has excelled in its own right, but TDEC provides AWOP tools to further assist them in optimizing the water system and consults with them in areas where the utility thinks it could improve.

At the end of the day, we all want clean water not just for ourselves but for our neighbors, our friends and our families, Young added. TDEC is a resource in this effort, not just a regulator, and we are happy to have played a role in helping the First Utility District of Knox County achieve its goals.

The First Utility District of Knox County is one of Tennessees largest water and wastewater utility districts, serving over 36,500 customers. Its staff engages in public outreach by attending schools and other public events to educate customers about water quality. The utility district becomes an inaugural member of the Tennessee AWOP program, along with the South Blount County Utility District, which was also recently honored for its performance.

The Area-Wide Optimization Program is a multistate effort where states work together to optimize particle removal and disinfection capabilities of surface water treatment plants. The program provides tools and approaches for drinking water systems to meet water quality goals and provide an increased, sustainable, level of public health protection to consumers.

The national AWOP program is implemented in more than 20 states, with the goal of optimizing and improving the treatment of drinking water. TDEC became a member of the program in 2019, joining five other states in the Southeast in EPAs Region IV. The First Utility District of Knox County and the South Blount County Utility District participated, submitting water quality data to TDEC and achieving national goals.
Spain's rising coronavirus infection rate is accelerating, official data showed on Monday, as authorities took delivery of the largest batch of vaccines to date.

The infection rate as measured over the past 14 days rose to 163.4 cases per 100,000 people from 151.8 cases on Saturday as a gradual uptick in contagion from mid-March lows continued to gather pace.

Health emergency chief Fernando Simon confirmed infections were on the rise across the country and that pressure on the health system was beginning to build.

However, he stressed the rate of increase remained far milder than in previous waves and that Spain was faring better than neighbouring countries.

In France, where the government imposed a fresh lockdown over the weekend to rein in spiralling infections, new cases surged by nearly 70,000 on Sunday.

By contrast, Spain reported 10,360 cases since Saturday, bringing the overall tally to 3.3 million. The death toll increased by 85 to 75,783.

"What is clearly decreasing is the number of deaths, which has a lot to do with the immunisation of the elderly and the most vulnerable," he told a news conference.

Spain took delivery of 1.2 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech shot on Monday and will receive a similar amount each week throughout April, Health Minister Carolina Darias told a separate news conference.

The objective of inoculating 70% of the 47 million strong population by the end of summer is "within arm's reach," she said.

Data released on Monday showed around 5.7 million people had received at least one shot, while 2.8 million had received a full course of two doses.

"We are on track to achieve collective immunisation," Darias said.
A vial with the AstraZeneca's coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine is pictured in Berlin, Germany, (Photo : REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke)

There is a link between AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine and very rare blood clots in the brain but the possible causes are still unknown, a senior official for the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said in an interview published on Tuesday.



However, the EMA later said in a statement that its review of the vaccine was ongoing and it expected to announce its findings on Wednesday or Thursday. An AstraZeneca spokesman declined to comment on the matter.



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"In my opinion, we can now say it, it is clear that there is an association (of the brain blood clots) with the vaccine. However, we still do not know what causes this reaction," Marco Cavaleri, chair of the vaccine evaulation team at the EMA, told Italian daily Il Messagero.



Cavaleri provided no evidence to support his comment.



The EMA has repeatedly said the benefits of the AstraZeneca shot outweigh the risks as it investigates 44 reports of an extremely rare brain clotting ailment known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) out of 9.2 million people in the European Economic Area who have received the vaccine.



The World Health Organization has also backed the vaccine.



AstraZeneca has said previously its studies have found no higher risk of clots because of its vaccine.



Cavaleri said the EMA would say in its review that there is a link but was not likely to give an indication this week regarding the age of individuals to whom the AstraZeneca shot should be given.



Some countries, including France, Germany and the Netherlands, have suspending the use of the vaccine in younger people while the investigations continue.



REVIEW ONGOING



In response to Cavaleri's comments, the Amsterdam-based EMA said in a statement on Tuesday: "EMA's Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee (PRAC) has not yet reached a conclusion and the review (of any possible link) is currently ongoing."



The EMA said last week that its review had at present not identified any specific risk factors, such as age, gender or a previous medical history of clotting disorders, for these very rare events. A causal link with the vaccine is not proven, but is possible and further analysis is continuing, the agency said.



A high proportion among the reported cases affected young and middle-aged women but that did not lead EMA to conclude this cohort was particularly at risk from AstraZeneca's shot.



Scientists are exploring several possibilities that might explain the extremely rare brain blood clots that occurred in individuals in the days and weeks after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine.



European investigators have put forward one theory that the vaccine triggers an unusual antibody in some rare cases; others are trying to understand whether the cases are linked with birth control pills.



But many scientists say there is no definitive evidence and it is not clear whether or why AstraZeneca's vaccine would cause an issue not shared by other vaccines that target a similar part of the coronavirus.



In a separate interview, Armando Genazzani, a member of the EMA's Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP), told La Stampa daily that it was "plausible" that the blood clots were correlated with the AstraZeneca vaccine.



The AstraZeneca vaccine is based on a modified chimpanzee adenovirus vector, ChAdOx1, developed at Oxford University, and is one of several adenovirus-vector COVID-19 vaccines. The current vaccine rollout represents the first use of viral vector vaccines on such a global scale.


The by-election in Seoul was called after Park Won-soon, the former mayor, died by suicide last year following accusations of sexual harassment. The former mayor of Busan, Oh Keo-don, stepped down last year amid accusations of sexual misconduct from multiple female subordinates.

The former mayors were both members of Mr. Moons Democratic Party and the presidents close allies. Their downfall weakened the moral standing of Mr. Moons progressive camp, which has cast itself as a clean, transparent and equality-minded alternative to its conservative opponents. Mr. Moons two immediate predecessors  Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak  were both conservatives and are now in prison following convictions on corruption charges.

Mr. Moon was elected in 2017, filling the power vacuum created by Ms. Parks impeachment. As a former human rights lawyer, he enthralled the nation by promising a fair and just society. He vehemently criticized an entrenched culture of privilege and corruption that he said had taken root while conservatives were in power, and vowed to create a level playing field for young voters who have grown weary of dwindling job opportunities and an ever-expanding income gap.

Mr. Moon spent much of his first two years in power struggling to quell escalating tension between North Korea and the United States, successfully mediating diplomacy between the two countries. He shifted more of his attention to domestic issues after the two summit meetings between North Koreas leader, Kim Jong-un, and President Donald J. Trump failed to produce a deal on nuclear disarmament or the easing of tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

But things quickly turned sour on the home front as well.

In 2019, huge outdoor rallies erupted over accusations of forgery and preferential treatment in college and internship applications surrounding the daughter of Cho Kuk, Mr. Moons former justice minister and one of his closest allies.

The scandal flew in the face of Mr. Moons election promise of creating a world without privilege, and prompted outrage against the gold-spoon children of the elite, who glided into top-flight universities and cushy jobs while their dirt-spoon peers struggled to make ends meet in South Koreas hobbled economy.
William Bailey of Central Lake Township is again accusing Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson of is withholding records shes been ordered to turn over as part of an ongoing election fraud lawsuit in Antrim County.

This has become a theme in the lawsuit filed by Bailey in November alleging election fraud in Antrim County and potentially across the state.

Both sides say the other isnt providing information or access to witnesses for depositions. Baileys attorney, Matthew S. DePerno, claims he cant prepare witnesses for deposition until he has all of the election information from Bensons office.

Attorneys for Benson have said theyve provided nearly everything requested, but DePerno now alleges a report Bensons office publicly released on March 26 proves thats not true.

In a Friday court filing that asks Antrim County Circuit Judge Kevin Elsenheimer to extend the discovery window, DePerno said the 54-page report in question clearly relies on information previously requested but not yet disclosed.

Baileys lawsuit focuses largely on Dominion Voting Systems tabulation machines and software that initially reported incorrect unofficial elections results in Antrim County, indicating former President Donald Trump lost the Republican-leaning county.

It was later determined by county and state officials that the mistakes were caused by human error, rather than any intentional software deficiencies or fraud as the lawsuit alludes.

Related: Antrim County clerk wont hand count May election

The report produced by J. Alex Halderman, a computer security and systems specialist and professor at the University of Michigan, entitled Analysis of the Antrim County, Michigan November 2020 Election Incident, takes a deeper look at the cited reasons for the errors.

The explanations provided by the county [and the Department of State are correct that the inaccurate unofficial results were a consequence of human errors, but the problems were somewhat more complicated than initially understood, Halderman wrote. The human errors that initiated the incident were compounded by gaps in election procedures and their adherence.

The election software also could have done more to help election staff avoid making mistakes that could lead to erroneous results.

Halderman said local clerks proofed ballot design on Sept. 5 and updated the voting machines countywide, basically giving the tabulators instructions via removeable flash storage drives on how to record and report the votes.

Then, a trustee candidate joined a race in the village of Mancelona, a millage proposal was added in Warner Township and a Village of Central Lake School Board race typo was corrected.

When Election Source, the company that provides software for Dominion Voting Systems, provided the updated flash drives, the county should have updated all of the election machines at the county and local level. Instead, Halderman said only machines in the three precincts with changes were updated.

This would prove to be a consequential mistake, Halderman writes.

This led to miscommunication and unofficial election night results that showed now-President Joe Biden beating former President Donald Trump, 7,769 to 4,509, results that baffled many.

County staff, who finished generating the initial unofficial results at 4 a.m. on election night, apparently did not review them closely enough to detect the obvious discrepancies before publishing them, Halderman said. A few hours later, Antrim learned that the initial results were erroneous and took them down. Staff manually entered results from the poll tapes for the affected scanners, and the county published revised unofficial results on November 5.

However, county staff neglected to remove some of the inaccurate data that had been loaded from the memory cards, so the reported totals in some precincts were the sum of the corrected and erroneous results. The county took down the results again to correct this.

Halderman said a subsequent hand recount showed totals support the conclusion that there were no significant errors in Antrim Countys final presidential results.

Ultimately, Trump won Antrim County, 9,748 to 5,960. Halderman said the software could be improved to alert election officials when certain inconsistencies occur, such as a ballot change that hasnt been updated in all county election systems.

Haldermans report is a rebuttal to a previous election analysis conducted by Allied Security Operations Group, a Dallas-based cyber-security company with Republican ties that was hired by Bailey to analyze Antrim Countys results in December. That disputed report said Dominion Voting Systems software and machines are intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results.

Haldermans report rebuts many of the Allied Security Operations Group findings.

Attorneys for both sides in the lawsuit are expected to return to court on April 12, when the judge will sort out a long list of growing differences, mostly related to fulfilling requests for depositions and information exchange.

More on MLive:

SOS withholding records, lawsuit says

Zuckerberg and wife donated millions to Michigan election clerks

SOS ordered to turn over communications with big tech

Antrim County hand recount results in 12 new votes for Trump

Software isnt good at detecting human error

Election recount, legal challenges unlikely to overturn Bidens win in Michigan

Judge allows forensic investigation of Dominion machines

Michigan election software could be better at detecting human error

He analyzed the processes and

The report disputes a number of claims contained in another election analysis report conducted by Allied Security Operations Group, a Dallas-based cyber-security company with Republican ties that was hired by Bailey to analyze

Baileys legal team

On Friday, March 26, 2021, defendant Secretary

and is questioning the honesty of Secretate now questioning the Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who Bailey claims is withholding records and data
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 20:53:53|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday urged Germany and the European Union (EU) to make joint efforts with China to protect and promote the healthy and stable development of their cooperation, so as to bring more certainty and stability to the volatile world.

Xi made the remarks in a phone conversation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The Chinese president stressed that he and Merkel have communicated for several times last year, which has played an important leading role for the development of China-Germany and China-EU relations.

Enhancing China-Germany and China-EU cooperation could produce major results with significance, he said.

Xi pointed out that China-Germany pragmatic cooperation, despite of disturbance generated by the COVID-19 pandemic among other issues, has made progress while maintaining stability, with China being Germany's largest global trading partner for the fifth consecutive year, which demonstrates the resilience and potential of their cooperation.

Xi said he hopes that both sides will promote their cooperation in various fields in the spirit of mutual respect, mutual benefit and win-win, in order to help inject confidence and impetus to the China-EU cooperation and the revitalization of the world economy.

China is actively building a new development paradigm, Xi said, adding that China is relying on its own strength for development while sticking to opening up and actively participating in international division of labor and cooperation.

China is willing to share the opportunities brought about by its new round of opening up and development with foreign companies including those from Germany, he said.

Xi said he hopes that Germany will remain open and create more convenience for the enterprises of both countries to expand mutually beneficial cooperation.

He also encouraged the two sides to take the 50th anniversary of the establishment of China-Germany diplomatic relations next year and the Beijing Winter Olympics as an opportunity to promote exchanges in such fields as science and technology, education, culture, and sports.

Noting that China-EU relations are facing new opportunities as well as various challenges, Xi said that the key is to keep to the general direction and keynote of China-EU relations from a strategic perspective, respect each other and remove distractions.

Xi said China's development has been an opportunity for the EU and urged the EU to make correct judgment independently and truly achieve strategic autonomy.

China stands ready to work with the EU to ensure the success of a series of important political agendas for the next stage through consultation, deepen and expand practical cooperation across the board, strengthen communication on climate change and other global governance issues, and jointly practice multilateralism, Xi said.

Vaccines are used to prevent diseases and save lives, he said, stressing that China opposes the politicization of vaccines or "vaccine nationalism," and stands ready to work with Germany and the international community as a whole to promote fair and reasonable vaccine distribution, support and help developing countries to obtain vaccines, and contribute to humankind's common fight against the pandemic for an early victory. Enditem
The first AI virtual assistant for sustainable farming Tweet this

"It's a unique approach to utilize soil biology and optimize the use of crop inputs moving forward towards sustainable and economically favorable solutions to improve crop productivity," said Varghese Thomas the project leader at Bayer CS.

Agronomists should be happy. This technology is a giant leap forward for them who, up until now, have lacked the data required to accurately determine biological solutions for their seasonal soil and crop decisions. Soil is a valuable asset to increase crop yield and quality, but as it currently stands, agronomic recommendations are based on little knowledge of the biological processes occurring in it. But today, with the availability of an AI virtual assistant to help predict the effect of different solutions is game-changing, and progress towards a more productive and sustainable agriculture system.

AI is an ever-evolving resource and, as such, is currently being "trained" to resolve other farming concerns as well, including questions about produce shelf-life, nutrient quality of the produce, and projected carbon credits based on the use of different products or management practices. Input manufacturers can add their own, custom solution to the AI recommendation system by testing it under the strict Gheom field trials protocol, a service Biome Makers offers.

Gheom is a microbial-based protocol for field trials

Biological solutions are an effective tool for increasing yield and crop quality while reducing environmental issues, which is why transparency is crucial in the world of biological inputs. Many promises are made about the positive impact of these inputs, but farmers and agronomists lack independent and reliable tools to assess their real effect on soil health.

That's where Gheom comes in. It is designed to accurately gauge biological product efficacy by analyzing the most meaningful bioindicator in nature: the soil microbiome. This is a vital service Biome Makers offers to ag-input manufacturers in their pursuit of credibility and complete transparency. This, in turn, will create even more options for the farming community to deliver a sustainable food supply.

Today, international companies that produce biostimulants, soil amendments and biofertilizers are using Gheom to test solutions. For instance, Terravesco is a California manufacturer employing this protocol to analyze their organic worm-based soil amendment. Dr. Paul Zorner, Chief Agronomist for Locus Agricultural Solutions says, "We are very excited to be working with Biome Makers. They have a remarkable platform for truly beginning to understand metagenomic functionality as it relates to soil health. You can't optimize what you can't measure, and we feel that the Gheom platform is a significant step towards unraveling the elegant aspects of microbial soil ecology and its impact on crop productivity".

Similarly, LIVENTIA is assessing how their microbial biostimulants based on microbial consortia impact the ecological balance of soils, promoting effects like root growth, nutrient uptake, and stress tolerance to boost yield and crop quality. Likewise, Fertile Ground is another company sourcing the program to validate their product performance. Other companies like Sustainable Growing Solutions or the European manufacturer, Bioiberica, are already using protocol results to confirm the functional claims of their products for different crops such as vineyards, lettuce, or olive trees.

"This data-driven assistant is a game-changer to upgrade agronomic advice on fertilization and crop protection programs, including biologicals, in an integrated management approach" states Juan Jose Chavez, the Product Manager for Advanced Analytical Services in DISAGRO, the international crop input retailer based in Central America.

As the biological input market segment grows, it is becoming the "Wild West" of ag products and its players are working actively to dispel skepticism left over from the past. As crop input manufacturers adopt the use of Gheom protocols, it instills a much-needed rigor with measurable independent data into the evaluation and claims associated with crop inputs. Gheom is truly a market-changing tool to deliver food security and sustainability.

Microbial Soil Profile technology is a great investment for agriculture

New ways of evaluating biological crop inputs are highly valued by manufacturers, growers and regulators alike. These technologies are similarly attractive to investors for their short development timelines and low development costs compared with synthetic chemicals. Result? A rapidly evolving sector projected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.6%, reaching a value of $18.9 billion within the next five years.

"Combining this breakthrough technology with the entire toolbox of precision agriculture, such as self-driving tractors and precision spraying applications, allows us to imagine a bright, new future of secure and sustainable farming worldwide," said Alberto Acedo, Chief Scientific Officer at Biome Makers.

The recent joint publication presented by Biome Makers and Bayer CS is much more than a scientific demonstration. It offers a new perspective on crop input efficiency and sustainable agriculture, with lasting implications on how traditional agronomists and retailers recommend products as well as how farmers manage the long-term health and productivity of their fields.

Currently, select growers in the US and EU can test the recommendation system with complimentary functional soil analytics for their fields.

About Biome Makers Inc.

Founded in California's Silicon Valley in 2015, Biome Makers is the global agtech company providing microbiome insights to empower smart agriculture. The company has developed a patented technology integrating DNA Sequencing and ecological computing technologies using one of the more complex biomarkers, the soil microbiome. We have two processing labs - one in the U.S.A. (California) and one in EU (Spain), and it has been recognized globally by many institutions and companies alike. Today 700 farmers, 60 ag-input manufacturers and 100 research institutions/laboratories in more than 35 countries benefit from Biome Makers' analytical tools, BeCrop and Gheom.

Media Contacts:

[email protected]

Related Links

https://www.biomemakers.com

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.09.430373v1

SOURCE Biome Makers

Related Links

https://www.biomemakers.com


The UK's 'super Covid' variant is now the dominant form of coronavirus in the U.S., White House officials revealed on Wednesday.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Dr Rochelle Walensky announced that the variant has now been found in all 50 U.S. states and two territories. It is now the most prevalent form of the virus 'period,' Dr Walensky said.

The CDC predicted in January that the 'super-covid' B117 variant that emerged in the U.S. would be dominant in the U.S. by March, but as vaccinations accelerated the variant spread more slowly than predicted.

B117 is thought to be between 50 and 70 percent more infectious and up to 64 percent deadlier than previously dominant strains of the virus.

But it does not seem to weaken vaccines, unlike less common variants that emerged in South Africa and Brazil.

CDC's tracking reports just 16,275 confirmed cases of the UK variant, in addition to 386 cases of the South African B1351 variant and 356 cases of Brazil's P1 variant.

But those are undoubtedly underestimates. It's unclear what the basis for CDC's determination was, but tracking from Outbreak.info suggests that B117 accounted for 38 percent of U.S. cases by April 2.

Coronavirus variants may be to blame for case increases of more than 10 percent over the past two weeks in states like Florida and Michigan which have more confirmed variant cases than any states with 3,192 and 1,649, respectively.

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The UK's 'super Covid' variant is now the dominant form of coronavirus in the U.S., White House officials revealed on Wednesday

Tracking from Outbreak.info suggests that B117 accounted for 38% of U.S. cases by April 2

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Dr Rochelle Walensky announced that the variant has now been found in all 50 U.S. states and two territories (file)

Nearly half of Tuesday's new coronavirus infections nationwide are in just five states - a situation that is putting pressure on the federal government to consider changing how it distributes vaccines by sending more doses to hot spots.

New York, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania and New Jersey together reported 44 percent of the nation's new COVID-19 infections, or nearly 197,500 new cases, in the latest available seven-day period, according to state health agency data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer has blamed the rise of cases in Michigan largely on the state's high prevalence of the UK variant there.

And Minnesota officials are now warning the state is poised to follow the alarming trends seen in nearby Michigan.

Total US infections during the same week numbered more than 452,000. To date, the US has recorded more than 30.8 million cases and 556,509 deaths.

Average daily new cases are hovering around 65,000 in the US - up from the 2021 low of 53,000 cases a day seen week before last.

Encouragingly, deaths remain below 1,000, with 915 new fatalities recorded Tuesday. But the seven-day rolling average of new fatalities rose slightly for the first time in a week, to 790.

Dr Anthony Fauci said Tuesday that he believes the rapid U.S. vaccination campaign - which is now administering an average of three million shots a day - will stem the increasing infections and prevent a fourth wave of the pandemic.

The heavy concentration of new cases in states that account for 22 percent of the US population has prompted some experts and elected officials to call for President Joe Biden's administration to ship additional vaccine doses to those places.

So far, the White House has shown no signs of shifting from its policy of dividing vaccine doses among states based on population.

New York had the highest number of new cases over the latest seven day period with 53,088

Michigan recorded 46,879 new cases in the week ended Tuesday. The seven-day average of daily new infections reached 6,719 on Sunday - more than double what it was two weeks earlier

Florida recorded 38,421 new cases in the week ended Tuesday. The state's seven-day average of daily new infections has exceeded 5,400, an increase of 20 percent in the past two weeks

Pennsylvania recorded 29,458 new infections in the week ended Tuesday

New Jersey recorded 28,592 new infections in the week ended Tuesday. The state's seven-day rolling average of daily new infections has risen over the past two weeks

Sending extra doses to places where infection numbers are climbing makes sense, said Dr Elvin H Geng, a professor in infectious diseases at Washington University.

But it's also complicated. States that are more successfully controlling the virus might see less vaccine as a result.

'You wouldn't want to make those folks wait because they were doing better,' Geng said. 'On the other hand, it only makes sense to send vaccines to where the cases are rising.'

The spike in cases has been especially pronounced in Michigan, where the seven-day average of daily new infections reached 6,719 cases Sunday - more than double what it was two weeks earlier.

And at least four hospitals in central Michigan have fewer than 10 percent of their hospital beds available amid the rise in Covid cases - and the latest wave of patients is younger and healthier, doctors told CNN.

Only New York reported higher case numbers. And California and Texas, which have vastly larger populations than Michigan, are reporting less than half its number of daily infections.

Though Michigan has seen the highest rate of new infections in the past two weeks, Democratic Gov Gretchen Whitmer has said she does not plan to tighten restrictions.

She has blamed the virus surge on pandemic fatigue, which has people moving about more, as well as more contagious variants.

'Taking steps back wasn't going to fix the issue,' Whitmer said as she got her first vaccine Tuesday at Ford Field in Detroit, home of the NFL's Lions.

'What we have to do is really put our foot down on the pedal on vaccines' and urge people to wear masks, keep their social distance and wash their hands, she added

Whitmer got the shot the day after Michigan expanded eligibility to everyone 16 and older. She asked the White House last week during a conference call with governors whether it has considered sending extra vaccine to states battling virus surges. She was told all options were on the table.

The heavy concentration of new cases in states that account for 22 percent of the US population has prompted some experts and elected officials to call for President Joe Biden's administration to ship additional vaccine doses to those places

Michigan falls in 31st place in the U.S. for getting its residents at least one dose of Covid vaccine.

Nearly 32 percent of Michiganders have had one or more doses, and the state has used more than 73 percent of its vaccine supply.

It is giving about 87,000 shots a day, according to Bloomberg tracking.

That lags behind most of the nation, with about 49,000 dose administered per 100,000 people in the state.

But with 67,000 doses of vaccine delivered to the state per 100,000, Michigan's allocations are about on part with New York's, Pennsylvania's or Florida's.

Both New York and Pennsylvania have gotten more of those shots into arms, however.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced Tuesday that it will allocate $90.2 million to Michigan in an effort to speed up the vaccination effort there.

'This investment will support state and local health departments and community-based organizations as they work on the front lines to increase vaccine access, acceptance, and uptake,' said CDC director Dr Rochelle Walensky.

About 75 percent of that funding will go to efforts to improve access to vaccines for people of color, supporting local heath departments and community health centers.

These programs could offer anything from door-to-door visits to assist with scheduling vaccination program and hiring people to inform non-English speakers about vaccination.

In New York City, vaccination appointments are still challenging to get. Mayor Bill de Blasio has publicly harangued the federal government about the need for a bigger vaccine allotment almost daily, a refrain he repeated when speaking to reporters Tuesday.

'We still need supply, supply, supply,' de Blasio said, before adding: 'But things are really getting better.'

On the state level, Gov Andrew Cuomo has not called publicly for an increase in New Yorks vaccine allotment, even as cases ticked up in recent weeks and the number of hospitalized people hit a plateau.

In New Jersey, where the seven-day rolling average of daily new infections has risen over the past two weeks, from 4,050 daily cases to 4,250, Democratic Gov Phil Murphy said he is constantly talking to the White House about demand for the coronavirus vaccine, though he stopped short of saying he was lobbying for more vaccines because of the states high infection rate.

Vaccine shipments to New Jersey were up 12 percent in the last week, Murphy said Monday, though he questioned whether that's enough.

'We constantly look at, okay, we know we're going up, but are we going up at the rate we should be, particularly given the amount of cases we have?' Murphy said.

People enjoy lunch hour in Union Square in New York on March 26

New virus variants are clearly one of the drivers in the increase, said Dr Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, chair of the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California at San Francisco.

Failure to suppress the rise in cases will lead to more people getting sick and dying, she said, and drive increases in other parts of the country.

'More vaccine needs to be where the virus is,' Bibbins-Domingo said, adding that people should get over the 'scarcity mindset' that has them thinking surging vaccine into one place will hurt people elsewhere.

In Florida, relaxed safeguards during a busy spring break season likely helped spread virus variants, said University of South Florida epidemiologist Jason Salemi.

The state's seven-day average of daily new infections has exceeded 5,400, an increase of 20 percent in the past two weeks.

While many new infections appear to be among younger people, Salemi said he's worried about Florida's seniors.

About 78 percent of residents age 65 and older have received at least one vaccine dose, but roughly one million more still have not gotten any shots.

'We seemingly have the supply,' Salemi said. 'Are these people not planning to get vaccinated?'

Leanne Montenegro, 21, covers her eyes as she doesn't like the sight of needles, while she receives the Pfizer vaccine at a FEMA vaccination center at Miami Dade College in Miami

Talk of sending extra shots to some states comes at a time when the number of daily infections in the US has fallen dramatically compared to a January spike following the holiday season. However, the seven-day average of daily infections been rising slowly since mid-March.

The five states seeing the most infections stand out. As of Tuesday, 31 US states were reporting seven-day averages of fewer than 1,000 new daily cases.

White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients said Tuesday more than 28 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines will be delivered to states this week. That allocation will bring the US total to more than 90 million doses distributed in the past three weeks.

The news came as Biden announced more than 150 million coronavirus shots have been administered since he took office, and that all adults will be eligible to receive a vaccine by April 19.

About 40 percent of US adults have now received at least one COVID-19 shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

About 23 percent of American adults have been fully vaccinated - including more than half of Americans 65 and older.

Geng said the nation should take a step back and go slow. Even just a few more weeks of Americans sticking with social distancing and other precautions could make a huge difference.

'The take-home message here is, let's not jump the gun,' Geng said. 'There's light at the end of the tunnel. We all see it there. And we will get there. Slow and steady.'
LONDON, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In September 2020 biotech start-up COVIMRO Ltd demonstrated the effectiveness of its food-grade compound, Covimro, against Coronavirus.

Now the same compound has been shown to be equally effective against other viruses as demonstrated in recent scientific studies. In March 2021, Covimro was tested for antiviral efficacy against Lentivirus / HIV with a Luciferase Assay.

Novel antiviral compound COVIMRO demonstrates effectiveness on viruses beyond Coronavirus including Lentivirus/HIV

"The results show a 3-log reduction in viral titre at all concentrations tested. This preliminary data warrants further investigation in to the Covimro effect," said Dr. Senthil Chinnakannan, a molecular virologist at the University of Oxford.

The structural stability and integrity of a virus are crucial in order for it to infect a target cell. Covimro breaches the structural integrity of the virus leading to its rapid inactivation.

The main challenge is that protein spikes naturally evolve and change over time, resulting in mutations that lead to new strains. This puts further pressure on vaccines as well as the requirement for booster doses in order to remain effective against a moving target. This is already evident with the evolution of new Covid strains continually emerging around the world and the growing reality that Covid is likely to remain with us for many years to come.

This is further compounded by the issue of inequal global vaccine distribution.

"Wealthy nations have hoarded enough (covid) doses to vaccinate their entire population nearly three times over, leaving some 67 developing countries (such as Gambia) with only enough supplies to vaccinate one in ten of the population. Vaccine diplomacy clearly affects poorer nations significantly especially given the huge reliance on donations paired with the dearth of vaccination supplies as people continue die in the millions. I have a strong belief that Covimro products, whilst not an alternative to the vaccine, will be invaluable in helping to close the gap in the fight to control the pandemic" - Omay Sey, former Health Minister (Gambia), former Executive Board Member World Health Organisation

Covimro is currently in discussions with several international distribution partners for an upcoming launch of its consumer goods products.

About COVIMRO

UK-based start-up COVIMRO is a biotech company specialising in agnostic antiviral solutions. The multidisciplinary team draws from the latest advances in virology, oncology and RNA genetics.

Contact

For more information visit www.covimro.com

General enquiries:

James Lindberg

[email protected]

Phone: +44 739 241 3386

SOURCE Covimro Ltd

Related Links

http://www.covimro.com


Saga has hailed significant pent-up demand from vaccinated customers to take cruise holidays again (Owen Humphreys/PA)

Over-50s insurance and cruise giant Saga has hailed significant pent-up demand from vaccinated customers to travel again as it posted a heavy slump in profits for the past year.

Shares in the company soared in early trading on Wednesday as bosses at the business struck an upbeat tone despite sliding profits.

It told investors that underlying pre-tax profits plummeted by 84.4% to 17.1 million for the year to January 31.

The company said it also saw a reduction in the value of its travel assets due to the impact of Covid-19, which would have dragged it to a loss for the year.

It is clear that there is significant pent-up demand among our customer base, the vast majority of whom have now been vaccinated and are ready to enjoy post-lockdown freedom Euan Sutherland, Saga

It came as revenues dived by 57.7% to 337.6 million, primarily due to the suspension of travel operations from March last year.

The group also reported lower retail broking revenues as the pandemic weighed on travel insurance.

However, Saga said it is ready to restart its tour operations and cruise business later this year when it is given the green light by Government.

Group chief executive officer Euan Sutherland said the company expects high levels of customer retention in its cruise business when restrictions are lifted.

He said: Looking ahead, while we are mindful of economic headwinds and the potential ongoing impacts of Covid-19, it is clear that there is significant pent-up demand among our customer base, the vast majority of whom have now been vaccinated and are ready to enjoy post-lockdown freedom.

Saga is a proud British business, with a strong brand, loyal customers and great people, and we are excited about the opportunities ahead.

We look forward to relaunching our brand later in 2021, which will only enhance our ability to unlock the potential in Saga, returning the business to sustainable growth and creating significant long-term value for all our investors and stakeholders.

William Ryder, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: We wouldnt say Saga is a coiled spring just waiting to bounce back  but there are some more upbeat signs across parts of the business.

The insurance divisions are doing reasonably well, and reduced driving this year has done wonders for travel claims and underwriting margins.

Whats more, customer retention in the travel division seems to be strong, which bodes well for a recovery later this year if the vaccine rollout continues to be as effective as hoped.

Shares in Saga were 10.8% higher at 386.2p in early trading on Wednesday.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed back aggressively Tuesday against a 60 Minutes report that suggested he initially made a deal to distribute COVID-19 vaccines in a South Florida county at Publix Super Markets pharmacies because the company made a donation to his political action committee.

The Republican governor warned of unspecified consequences over the report that aired Sunday night on CBS, which stood behind the story. The report focused on the vaccine rollout in Palm Beach County and also suggested Floridas vaccine distribution had generally favored the wealthy and well-connected.

These are smear merchants, DeSantis said during a news conference in Panama City. They knew what they were doing was a lie.

The governor said his office had offered people to be interviewed about Floridas vaccine rollout for the report but the news show declined. He called the pay-to-play allegations in the report, lies built on lies.

CBS said in a statement that 60 Minutes interviewed dozens of people about the story and requested interviews with DeSantis, who declined, and Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Jared Moskowitz, who declined to be interviewed on camera until after the storys deadline.

When Florida state data revealed people of color were vaccinated at a much lower rate than their wealthier neighbors, 60 Minutes reported the facts surrounding the vaccines rollout, which is controlled by the governor, the CBS statement said. For over 50 years, the facts reported by 60 Minutes have often stirred debate and prompted strong reactions. Our story Sunday night speaks for itself.

On Monday, Palm Beach County Mayor Dave Kerner, a Democrat, issued a statement that accused 60 Minutes of using intentionally false information in its criticism of DeSantis role in the Publix deal. Kerner said DeSantis had met with him and the county administrator before the announcement, and they had asked DeSantis to expand the states partnership with Publix to the county.

They had that information, and they left it out because it kneecaps their narrative, Kerner said of 60 Minutes.

Responding to the mayors statement, Palm Beach County Commissioner Melissa McKinlay said in a tweet, I respect Mayor but this is NOT accurate. She said county officials never asked that Publix be the sole distributor of the vaccines.

The state announced in January that Publix, the states largest supermarket chain, would have sole vaccine distribution rights in Palm Beach County - a decision that drew criticism from McKinlay and some state legislators because the chain has no outlets within 25 miles (40 kilometers) of the mostly Black, poverty-stricken sugar farming communities in a rural corner of the county that abuts Lake Okeechobee.

About 30,000 people live in Belle Glade and other nearby towns, including about 5,000 residents over 65. McKinlay told The Associated Press and other media outlets at the time that she wasnt opposed to Publixs involvement in the distribution effort. She just wanted to make sure Belle Glade residents would have easy access to the vaccine, too.

Within a few days, the state said it would set up a drive-up stand in Belle Glade, just as it had done in numerous wealthier communities across the state.

About 17% of Florida residents are Black, but they make up only 6.5% of the 6.4 million who have received at least one vaccine shot, according to the state. Some of that mirrors a national reluctance among some Black communities to get the vaccine because of past incidents like the Tuskegee Syphilis Study where their ancestors were experimented on by doctors.

The 60 Minutes report said that weeks before the state announced its partnership with Publix, the supermarket chain donated $100,000 to DeSantis political action committee.

Moskowitz, though, said last month that Publix was picked because its pharmacies were the only ones at the time who were able to execute the vaccine distribution. Since then, other major pharmacy chains have been offering vaccines.
After halting hiring during the coronavirus pandemic, United Airlines is planning to bring on hundreds of pilots and launching a flight school to prepare the next generation for the cockpit.

Chicago-based United isnt alone: Frontier Airlines expects to hire 100 pilots this year, and several regional carriers have posted openings.

Help wanted ads are an unusual sight after a year that saw airlines, faced with travel restrictions and empty airports, urge employees to take early retirement deals and voluntary leaves of absence. Thousands of workers faced furloughs until the federal government delivered additional aid to airlines keep them on the payroll. But as vaccination rates increase and travelers return to the skies, a pre-pandemic problem is coming back too: a potential shortage of pilots.

Its absolutely a question of when, not if, said Geoff Murray, a partner on consultancy Oliver Wymans global aerospace sector team.

UPSWING: US air travel rises to highest level yet since pandemic hit

In North America, airlines demand for pilots could outstrip supply by roughly 13% as early as 2023, according to an Oliver Wyman report

U.S. airlines are still seeing about 43% fewer passengers than before the pandemic, and passenger numbers are unlikely to return to 2019 levels until at least 2023, according to trade group Airlines for America.

But the industry is expected to recover, and when it does, airlines will face a wave of retirements. As of early 2020, nearly half of all U.S. qualified pilots faced mandatory retirement within 15 years, according to the Regional Airline Association. Pilot jobs were scarce when the industry struggled after Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, leaving fewer to take the place of those retiring, and fewer pilots are joining commercial airlines from the military.

Some pilots who would have retired in the next couple years have left the industry during the pandemic. United said nearly 1,000 pilots left the company since September. Last August, American Airlines said 1,200 pilots had left, while unions representing pilots at Delta Air Lines and Southwest Airlines pilots said 1,806 and more than 500 took early retirement deals, respectively.

American also temporarily furloughed 1,600 pilots. While United also furloughed employees, pilots instead agreed to work reduced hours.

United, which has about 12,000 pilots, expects to need to hire 10,000 by 2030.

VOTING RESTRICTIONS: Days after Delta controversy, American Airlines slams Texas' proposed voting bill

We do not believe that (the pandemic) has impacted our outlook for hiring. If anything it will increase the numbers that we may need to hire in the future, especially since air travel seems to be rebounding now, said Uniteds chief pilot, Mary Ann Schaffer.

United, which announced last week that it plans to hire 300 pilots who had a conditional job offer or hire date that was canceled last year, seeks to train 5,000 new pilots by 2030 at a flight school it purchased last year, the United Aviate Academy. The Phoenix-based flight training school previously operated as Westwind School of Aeronautics.

The airline started accepting applications for the first class of 20 students Tuesday and aims to enroll 100 people this year. Students can expect to graduate from the one-year program with a commercial pilots license and the experience needed to begin working as a flight instructor. Thats a common job for pilots working to rack up flight time needed to qualify for a job at a regional airline that can lead to a position at a bigger carrier.

Going from the academy to a job at United should take about five years, the airline said.

At least half of the 5,000 students United hopes to train by the end of the decade will be women and people of color, the airline said. Currently, about 7% of the Uniteds pilots are women and 13% are people of color.

The airline plans to work with organizations including the Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals, Sisters of the Skies, the Latino Pilots Association and the Professional Asian Pilots Association to recruit more diverse candidates.

Its also pledging financial assistance: United and JPMorgan Chase each committed to provide $1.2 million in scholarships this year, and loans will be available, United said. The one-year program will cost roughly $100,000, the airline said.

The academy is part of a development program called Aviate, announced in late 2019, designed to give aspiring pilots a more direct path to a job at United.

Several airlines have similar pipeline programs, which help address one of the hurdles to recruiting new pilots: assuring people embarking on the career that there is a path to a job at a major airline, Murray said. But funding the expensive training needed to get there is still a hurdle, he said.

Many airlines paused hiring last year, hiring only about half as many pilots in 2020 as they did in 2019, according to data from Future & Active Pilot Advisors, a company that gives pilots career and financial advice. Until recent hiring announcements from United, Frontier and some regional carriers, most U.S. passenger airlines hadnt hired a pilot since last spring whilecargo carriers FedEx, UPS and Atlas Air continued to hire through the pandemic.

Ohio-based CommutAir, which operates regional flights for United, seeks to hire 400 pilots this year, increasing its roster by roughly 40%. It plans to recruit some of the experienced pilots who lost jobs, said Rick Hoefling, president and CEO.

Illinois Aviation Academy, a Federal Aviation Administration certified flight school in West Chicago, has seen a 50% increase in enrollments in the second half of 2020 compared with the same period last year.

Between the expected retirements and anticipated growth  that kind of dampened the fear, at least from what Ive heard from customers, said Robert Werderich, the academys president.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 21:45:29|Editor: huaxia

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HONG KONG, April 7 (Xinhua) -- Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Carrie Lam said on Wednesday that Hong Kong must cooperate with other cities of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area to push for the development of innovation and technology.

Addressing a ceremony of the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation, Lam stressed the significance of technological cooperation between Hong Kong and its neighboring city Shenzhen to building the Greater Bay Area into a global innovation hub.

She in particular cited the Hong Kong-Shenzhen Innovation and Technology Park in the Lok Ma Chau Loop.

After the project completes in phases from 2024, its advantage under "one country, two systems" will be given to full play and the talents of both sides will have more job opportunities, Lam said.

Lam said Hong Kong's innovation and technology development has benefited from the support of the central government over the past years and will continue to prosper as more favorable policies are in the pipeline under the 14th Five-Year Plan for national social and economic development.

With national security well protected, Hong Kong will better integrate into the national landscape, make full use of its unique advantage and achieve new progress in innovation and technology, she said.

Invest Hong Kong (InvestHK) of the HKSAR government co-organized a webinar with the Moscow Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Wednesday.

Jimmy Chiang, associate director-general of Investment Promotion at InvestHK, said Hong Kong is committed to promoting IT development, with a special focus on R&D, infrastructure, a tech talent pool, investment funding and other support measures to improve the ecosystem for startups.

Russian companies can leverage Hong Kong's sophisticated technology ecosystem to meet the growing demand for digital marketing and technology-related services in the mainland, he said. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-06 19:48:20|Editor: huaxia

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Students and a teacher take part in the opening ceremony of the new semester at a primary school in Fuzhou, capital of southeast China's Fujian Province, Feb. 22, 2021. (Xinhua/Song Weiwei)

BEIJING, April 6 (Xinhua) -- China's Ministry of Education on Tuesday started to solicit public opinion on a draft regulation for improving the protection of minors in schools.

Schools should adopt a zero-tolerance attitude toward bullying, sexual assault, and sexual harassment of students, according to the draft.

The document also requires schools to check the criminal records of candidates before hiring teachers or introducing volunteers and social workers into their campuses.

Noting that schools are also obliged to protect the safety of students on campus, the draft emphasizes that schools are prohibited from organizing students to participate in emergency rescue, disaster relief, or commercial activities. 
Notice is hereby given that on the initiative and by the resolution of the Board of AB Klaipedos nafta, legal entity code 110648893, with the registered office at Buriu str. 19, Klaipeda (hereinafter - the Company), Annual General Meeting of Shareholders of the Company will be held on 30 April 2021 at 1:00 p.m. The meeting will be held in the Company's office at Buriu str. 19, Klaipeda, in the administrative office of the Company (in the hall of the meeting on the 2nd floor).

Agenda of the meeting:

Announcement of the Auditor's Report regarding the Financial Statements and Annual Report of the Company for the year 2020 to the shareholders; Announcement of the Annual Report of the Company for the year 2020 to the shareholders; Approval of the audited Financial Statements of the Company for the year 2020; Approval of the appropriation of profit (loss) of the Company for the year 2020; Approval of Report on the remuneration of the Company; Election of the audit firm that shall perform the audit of the set of Financial Statements for the year 2021 and 2022 and set conditions for payment for audit services.

In light of the fact that a lockdown has been intoduced in the Republic of Lithuania in accordance with Resolution No 1226 of 4 November 2020 of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania, it is recommended that all shareholders participate in the meeting by completing the general ballot paper and submitting it in advance to the Company.



Please inform us about the need to physically attend the General Meeting of Shareholders no later than 3 business days before General Meeting of Shareholders via below specified emails. In all cases, Shareholders of the Company without personal protective equipment will not be allowed to participate in to the General Meeting of Shareholders. The Company reserves the right not to allow participation in to the General Meeting of Shareholders for those shareholders whose health condition are reasonably doubtful.

The shareholders will be registered from 12:00 a.m. to 12:55 p.m. The persons intending to participate in the meeting shall have a personal ID document (an authorized representative shall have an authorization approved under the established procedure. The natural person's authorization shall be notarized. An authorization issued in a foreign state shall be translated into the Lithuanian language and legalized under the procedure prescribed by the laws).

A shareholder or his proxy shall have the right to vote in writing in advance by filling in a general ballot paper. At the request of the shareholder, the Company shall send a general ballot paper to the shareholder by registered mail free of charge at least 10 days before the meeting. The filled-in general ballot paper and the document attesting the voting right shall be submitted to the Company no later than until the meeting, sending by registered mail or providing them at the address of the registered office of the Company indicated in the notice.

The shareholders who hold shares carrying at least 1/20 of all the votes may propose additions to the agenda of the general meeting of shareholders by submitting with every proposed additional item of the agenda a draft resolution of the general meeting of shareholders or, when no resolution is required, an explanation. Proposals on addition to the agenda shall be submitted in writing or sent by e-mail. Written proposals shall be submitted to the Company on business days or sent by registered mail at the address of the registered office of the Company indicated in the notice. Proposals submitted by e-mail shall be sent to the following e-mails: info@kn.lt and i.berzauskas@kn.lt . The agenda shall be supplemented if the proposal is received no later than 14 days before the Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders. If the agenda of the general meeting of shareholders is supplemented, the Company shall notify on the additions no later than 10 days before the meeting in the same ways as in the case of convocation of the meeting.

The shareholders, who hold shares carrying at least 1/20 of all the votes, at any time before the general meeting of shareholders or during the meeting, may propose new draft resolutions on items which are or will be included in the agenda of the meeting. The proposals may be submitted in writing or sent by e-mail. Written proposals shall be submitted to the Company on business days or sent by registered mail at the address of the registered office of the Company indicated in the notice. Proposals submitted by e-mail shall be sent to the following e-mails: info@kn.lt and i.berzauskas@kn.lt .

The shareholders shall have the right to submit to the Company in advance questions relating to the items on the agenda of the meeting. The shareholders may submit their written questions to the Company on business days or send by registered mail at the address of the registered office of the Company indicated in the notice no later than 3 business days before the meeting. The Company will reply to the questions by e-mail or in writing before the meeting, except the questions which are related to the Company's commercial (industrial) secret, confidential information or which have been submitted later than 3 business days before the meeting.

The Company does not provide the possibility of participating and voting at the meeting by means of electronic communications.

The shareholder shall have the right to authorize through electronic communications means another personand i.berzauskas@kn.lt no later than until the last business day before the meeting at 1:00 p.m. The proxy and the notice must be issued in writing. The proxy and the notice to the Company shall be signed with the electronic signature but not the letter sent by e-mail. By submitting the notice to the Company, the shareholder shall include the internet address from which it would be possible to download software free of charge to verify the shareholder's electronic signature.

The record date of the meeting shall be 23 April 2021 (only those persons who will be shareholders of the Company at the close of the record date of the general meeting of shareholders or their authorized persons, or persons with whom an agreement on assignment of the voting right has been executed, may participate and vote at the general meeting of shareholders).

The record date which entitles shareholders to receive a portion of the Company's profit (dividend) - 14 May 2021.

The shareholders of the Company may familiarise with the draft resolution of the meeting and the form of the general ballot paper under the procedure prescribed by the laws in the registered office of the Company at Buriu str. 19, Klaipeda. The following information and documents shall be provided on the abovementioned internet website of the Company:

- The notification on convocation of the meeting;

- Total number of the Company's shares and the number of shares with voting rights on the convening day of the meeting.

Jonas Lenksas, Chief Financial Officer, +370 694 80594.

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(Natural News) President Joe Biden is asking Congress to pass his $2.3 trillion jobs and infrastructure plan. Many major business organizations are opposing the costly plan, calling it dangerously misguided.

The unified defiance against Bidens plan signals the strength of the opposition the White House is up against as it struggles to promote the presidents spending package. One of the largest organizations leading the push to strike down the infrastructure plan is the Chamber of Commerce, a pro-business lobbying group.

The Chamber of Commerce agrees that Americas failing infrastructure needs to be addressed, but disagrees with the significantly large tax increase that will be required to pay for it. In a press release, the Chamber of Commerce called for removing the tax hike in the infrastructure plan.

Properly done, a major investment in infrastructure today is an investment in the future, and like a new home, should be paid for over time  say 30 years  by the users who benefit from the investment, said the Chamber of Commerce in its statement. We strongly oppose the general tax increases proposed by the administration which will slow the economic recovery and make the U.S. less competitive globally  the exact opposite of the goals of the infrastructure plan.

Bidens $2.3 trillion spending bill, called the American Jobs Plan, includes investments in renewable energy, expansion of broadband capabilities and the development of highways and housing projects. The money to be set aside for the bill is to be spent over the course of eight years.

The White House wants Congress to approve a significant tax increase to pay for Bidens spending plan. This tax increase involves, among other things, raising the corporate tax rate from 21 to 28 percent. (Related: The largest tax hike in generations could pay for up to 75% of Bidens next spending plan.)

The White House claims that this tax increase will raise up to $3 trillion  $700 billion more than what the bill wants to spend.

In its opposition to the bill and the tax hike, the Chamber of Commerce is calling on Democrats and Republicans to come together and find an acceptable middle-ground.

We urge both Democrats and Republicans to avoid further partisan gridlock and provide productive solutions to get an infrastructure bill passed this year.

Other business organizations and notable individuals skeptical of Bidens infrastructure plan

The Business Roundtable, a pro-business nonprofit, has also opposed the tax increases needed to pay for the infrastructure plan.

Business Roundtable strongly opposes corporate tax increases as a pay-for for infrastructure investment, said Business Roundtable President and CEO Joshua Bolten. Policymakers should avoid creating new barriers to job creation and economic growth, particularly during the recovery [from the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic].

To the extent that infrastructure investment, given its unique economic benefits and the need for a rapid recovery from COVID-19, is deficit-funded in the short term, Congress should set a course for steady, reliable funding for infrastructure over the long term, continued Bolten, echoing the Chamber of Commerces counter-proposal to funding for the infrastructure plan.

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), the largest nonprofit in the country that advocates for the welfare of small businesses, has also opposed raising the corporate tax rate.

Americas small businesses are the third-largest economy in the world, and they have been severely harmed by the pandemic and government shutdowns, said NFIB President and CEO Brad Close in a statement. We recognize this is only round one [of the fight against the bill] and will remain steadfast in opposing any tax hikes that could hurt the efforts of small businesses to keep their doors open and their employees on payroll.

Republicans are expected to put up a strong fight against the bills excesses. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has already stated that he is highly skeptical.

Im going to fight them every step of the way, because I think this is the wrong prescription for Americans, said McConnell. That package that theyre putting together now, as much as we would like to address infrastructure, is not going to get support from our side.

Learn more about Bidens latest policy proposals, and all of the new taxes required to pay for them by reading the latest articles at JoeBiden.news.

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Zimbabwe police on Tuesday stopped MDC Alliance supporters from attending the sentencing of Makomborero Haruzivishe, who was jailed for public violence and resisting arrest. (VOA)
Real Housewives Of Atlanta alum Claudia Jordan apologized to her fans for mistakenly tweeting that DMX was dead.

The 50-year-old rapper reportedly suffered an overdose last week and is in the ICU at White Plains Hospital in New York after a heart attack.

'Rest in Paradise DMX,' wrote Claudia, 47, on Tuesday only to discover the rapper was still alive, delete her original tweet and then post: 'I'm sorry.'

Under fire: Real Housewives Of Atlanta alum Claudia Jordan apologized to her fans for mistakenly tweeting that DMX was dead; seen in 2019

'It's possible that she thought that the media had announced that DMX passed away,' wrote a Twitter user in the replies to her apology.

'I did,' confirmed Claudia who starred on just one season of The Real Housewives Of Atlanta. 'I deleted it. And apologized. I feel awful.'

When one fan told her she should not feel sorry Claudia pointed out that she 'didn't intend on hurting anyone or doing anything wrong.'

Claudia added: 'I understand how people are feeling as I am too. It's been heavy on my mind since he fell ill.'

Crisis: The 50-year-old rapper reportedly suffered an overdose last week and is in the ICU at White Plains Hospital in New York after a heart attack; seen in 2009

She continued: 'But they're right. Not my place. I just want to pray for the whole family & all his supporters that are in pain.'

DMX went into cardiac arrest before being hospitalized Friday with TMZ reporting that he had suffered an overdose.

However his longtime lawyer Murray Richman said he could not confirm that an overdose was what caused the cardiac arrest.

Explaining herself: 'Rest in Paradise DMX,' wrote Claudia, 47, on Tuesday only to discover the rapper was still alive, delete her original tweet and then post: 'I'm sorry'

Hundreds of well wishers gathered outside White Plains Hospital and TMZ reported over the weekend that his 15 children were rushing to his bedside.

An array of celebrities including Kelly Rowland, Ja Rule, Chance The Rapper, Viola Davis and Machine Gun Kelly have expressed their support online.

This past Saturday as famous names solicited prayers social media a family insider confided that DMX' prognosis was 'not looking good.'
[April 07, 2021] Robin's New Office Pass Helps Businesses Manage a Phased Return to the Office and Support Long-term Hybrid Work Environments

Robin, the first workplace platform that puts people before places, today launched Office Pass to power workplace leaders' return to office (RTO) strategies. Employee-centric tools, including an intuitive mobile app and interactive office maps, removes the friction and uncertainty associated with an office return. Office Pass also empowers IT, facility, and business leaders with real-time insights that ensure every square foot of the office is optimized to facilitate productivity and collaboration. Research from PwC highlights the importance of the corporate office in 2021 as only 13% of executives said they're going to let go of their office for good. This trend is mainly because - in that same report - 87% of employees say the office is essential for collaborating with team members and building relationships. IT, facilities, and other workplace leaders' primary challenge is creating an exceptional employee workplace experience that instills confidence in employees and helps them perform at their best. Robin's innovative platform helps forward-thinking businesses transition through this inversion of the traditional office model and reshape their workplace based on employees' needs. Robin's interactive maps make it easy for workplace teams to understand and manage space inventory, from meeting room booking permissions to office seating charts and desk reservations. Employees can easily see which of their colleagues will be working in the office and book desks, conference rooms, and other office assets via desktop, kiosk, or a mobile app. Workplace analytics surface issues, including clearing rooms with abandoned meetings or a lack of quiet spaces, businesses can use to keep tabs on utilization, capacity, and user trends to shape the office based on employees' preferences. "Businesses grappling with the depth and breadth of the RTO process use our platform to uncover deep insights that help them shape their workplace to enable an effective hybrid workplace that maximizes their employees' productivity," said Robin CTO Brian Muse. "Office Pass eliminates a lot of the friction from theoffice experience by making it easy to align their schedules with colleagues, book a desk, and leverage all of their company's assets to the fullest."



In addition to launching Office Pass, Robin's published the first installment of its Return to the Office Tracker series. The Company's research team analyzes millions of real-life desk and office bookings from employees worldwide to surface trends business leaders can use to guide their own RTO strategies. Here are some of the highlights from the inaugural report: Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) Provides Window into the Future for North America ANZ employees are roughly three months ahead of North America. If this trend continues, Robin expects NA employees to start returning to the office twice a week in April The majority of ANZ employees go into the office an average of 2 days a week The majority of ANZ workers come into the office early in the week (Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday), then work from home in greater numbers at the end of the week The average conference room is booked twice a day for about 1.5 hours out of an 8-hour workday Despite the positive data, the region isn't fully back to normal as only 20% of businesses have their entire workforce back in the office full-time

North America's Slow, Uneven Return to the Office Workers in the ANZ, Asia-Pacific, and Europe/Middle East/Africa (EMEA) regions are returning to the office at a much higher rate than North America since October 2020 Similar to ANZ, Tuesday is North American employees' favorite day to work in the office, followed by Monday and Wednesday Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina are returning the most people to the office in early 2021 Despite removing all COVID restrictions in early March, Texas ranks just 13 th among all states in employees working in the office. The Lone Star State ranks one spot behind Massachusetts, a state that has executed a much more systematic reopening plan Iowa, Nebraska, and Ohio are the states with the least amount of people coming into the office

Beware the "Employee Bounce Rate" Robin found that nearly 15% of global employees went into their office once and never returned. This "employee bounce rate" doesn't offer specific insights into why employees didn't come back, but it's reasonable to assume they didn't feel comfortable with their office at that time.

Interested in seeing Office Pass in action? Click here to schedule your demo: https://pages.robinpowered.com/schedule-your-demo?utm_campaign=General%202021&utm_source=Homepage

About Robin Founded in 2014, Robin is the first workplace platform that puts people before places. Used by businesses of all sizes to successfully manage hybrid work, Robin empowers people to choose how and where they work while providing organizations with the tools and insights needed to succeed. Please visit www.robinpowered.com and follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for more information. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005611/en/

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Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 7)  The Food and Drug Administration took a 180-degree turn and approved the use of the vaccine from Chinas Sinovac Biotech on senior citizens.

After considering the recommendation of the experts and the current situation of high COVID-19 transmission and limited available vaccines, the FDA is allowing the use of Sinovac on senior citizens, FDA Director General Eric Domingo said in a statement.

He said the approval was based on reports from other countries shared by the vaccine expert panel, but all factors were considered.

Domingo also noted that vaccination should be preceded by an evaluation of the receivers health status and exposure risk to assure that benefits outweigh risks.

Initially, the FDA previously recommended the use of Sinovacs CoronaVac on clinically healthy individuals aged 18-59 under the Emergency Use Authorization it granted to the manufacturer because of its low efficacy rate of 50.4% for high-risk groups.

Domingo said the letter of approval was already sent to the Department of Health to inform them of the change.

In a joint statement, the FDA and the Department of Health said that the health status of senior citizens must be evaluated first before getting inoculated with CoronaVac.

"The DOH and FDA emphasized that the vaccination of senior citizens using CoronaVac should strictly be preceded by careful evaluation of the person's health status and exposure risk," read the statement. "There is a Phase I/II safety and immunogenicity data for seniors but efficacy data is not yet sufficient to establish vaccine efficacy."

Domingo also reiterated that CoronaVac is allowed for adults with controlled comorbidities.

RELATED: Here's what adults with comorbidities need to know before getting the COVID-19 vaccine

During the Laging Handa briefing on Wednesday, Dr. Nina Gloriani, head of the governments Vaccine Development Expert Panel, said they already recommended to the regulator the use of the said vaccine on the elderly to ensure continuity of the immunization program.

Mayroon na kaming ganoong rekomendasyon, she said when asked about the matter.

[Translation: We already have that recommendation]

Gloriani explained that their call is also based on the continuing surge in new infections, thus there is a need to use whatever vaccine supply the country has to ensure protection of Filipinos, especially the priority sector.

This recommendation was also due to the depletion of the supply of AstraZeneca vaccine in the country, the brand that can be given to senior citizens, and the possible delay in the delivery of additional doses from the World Health Organization-led COVAX facility, she added.

Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. also said last month that they are targeting to inoculate up to 9 million Filipino senior citizens using Sinovac's vaccine.

Other countries, specifically China, have started the use of the said vaccine on citizens aged 60 and above despite lack in enough data since only a small number of senior citizens were included in previous trials.

Gloriani assured that based on their previous evaluation, CoronaVac has a good safety profile, causing only mild to moderate side effects that would last up to just two days, and also prevents severe COVID-19 cases.

Speaking to CNN Philippines News Night, she said based on previous studies, anti-bodies produced by the elderly who received the vaccine were almost the same as those produced by people aged 18-59 years old.

Gloriani said there is still not much data regarding its efficacy on variants, but that there is a theoretical possibility it will work well against them given that it is an inactivated vaccine, or it uses killed viral particles.

"Nasa pandemiya po tayo ngayon at hindi po tayo pwedeng mag-delay nang mag-delay [ng vaccination] dahil iyong bakuna na hinihintay natin ay hindi pa dumarating," she said. "Kung ano po iyong mayroon tayo sana ay magamit na natin."

[Translation: We are in a pandemic and we cannot delay vaccination just because the vaccine we are waiting for has not arrived yet. We hope that whatever we have will be used already.]

The China-made vaccine earlier caused concern for its use on healthcare workers due to its low efficacy rate of 50.4%. Despite this, the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases approved the recommendation for its use to medical workers to already give them the protection they need amid the fight against the virus.

Local government units already started vaccinating senior citizens and people with comorbidities late March following the rollout for the country's 1.7 million healthcare workers. Vaccine supply mostly came from donations from China and the COVAX facility.

By end of the year, the government targets to vaccinate up to 70 million Filipinos.
A mother has been banned from the road after she stole her boyfriend's Range Rover after bingeing on WKD and drove the 3,500 car the wrong way down a motorway slip road before smashing into a tree.

Billy Jo Cartwright had been drinking with friends in a Travelodge car park earlier this year - in breach of January's national lockdown rules - and downed 'three to four bottles' of the vodka drink.

Cartwright's best friend, Becky-Jo Wood, tried to stop her but the drunk 22-year-old then jumped into the driver's seat of her boyfriend's Evoque and careened around the car park of the hotel.

The mother-of-one then veered the wrong way onto the sliproad and into the the path of oncoming traffic leaving the M60 motorway near Birch Services at Rochdale, Greater Manchester.

She tried to swerve the two tonne car around but lost control of the vehicle, mounted a grass verge and ploughed into a tree.

Cartwright's unnamed boyfriend, 30, rushed over to the crash scene whilst the shameless mother-of-one tried to falsely pin the blame on Miss Wood.

Tests showed Cartwright, of Rochdale, who is hoping to become a veterinary nurse, was more than twice the alcohol limit.

At Minshull Street Crown Court, Manchester, she pleaded guilty to aggravated vehicle taking, dangerous driving, drink driving and having no insurance.

Billy Jo Cartwright, 22, binged on bottled of WKD before she got behind the wheel of her boyfriend's 3,500 Range Rover, drove it the wrong way down a motorway slip road, and crashed into a tree

She was sentenced to an 18-month community order and 120 hours unpaid work.

Cartwright was also banned from driving for two years and will have to abide by a two month curfew from 8pm to 6am.

The incident occurred on January 16 after the group met up for an impromptu 'al fresco' drinks party.

Prosecutor Lisa Boocock told the court: 'This was in the middle of the Covid pandemic and all in breach of Covid rules.

'Miss Wood saw this defendant drinking a substantial amount of alcohol. Between the lines, others were as well.

'Miss Wood saw this defendant drink three-to-four bottles of WKD. The defendant then took the car keys and got into her boyfriend's Range Rover Vogue.

'Miss Wood came outside to have a cigarette and saw the defendant and went to the driver's side and tried to get the keys.

'But the defendant wouldn't hand them over and Miss Wood then got into the passenger seat of the vehicle.

'The defendant drove on the wrong side of the road, into the face of oncoming traffic, and then went onto the slip way, nearly reaching the motorway.

'The defendant then accepts that she loses control. She went onto a grass verge and then hit a tree and this brought everything to a halt.

'One of the Costa staff [who witnessed the crash from a shop in the car park] ran over to see if everything was okay whilst the defendant asked Miss Wood to say that she was the driver and said she would give her some money if she did.

The mother-of-one, who is hoping to become a veterinary nurse, was more than twice the alcohol limit

At Minshull Street Crown Court, Manchester, she pleaded guilty to aggravated vehicle taking, dangerous driving, drink driving and having no insurance

'The Costa staff member saw cans and bottles of WKD in the car. Then the defendant's boyfriend ran out. She ran towards him and said: 'Look what she's done!' indicating it was Miss Wood's fault.

'When the police arrived, the defendant said Miss Wood was the driver but was then arrested and failed a breath test.'

Tests showed Cartwright had 79 micrograms of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35mg.

She was sentenced to an 18-month community order and 120 hours unpaid work. Cartwright was also banned from driving for two years and will have to abide by a two month curfew from 8pm to 6am

Defence counsel Iain Johnstone indicated that Cartwright had been pressured to drink the alcohol and that she had a troubled upbringing.

He said: 'She accepts that she did not have permission to drive that vehicle.

'She went with her friend to the Travelodge where alcohol was being consumed and she was goaded or plied with alcohol with people saying, 'Go on, drink it!' She did and panicked and became fearful as her boyfriend is older and he's a big chap. She had never driven a car before.'

'She realized that she was going the wrong way and tried to turn it around, but it was a big and heavy vehicle. She has had a troubled upbringing but wants to start a veterinary nurse course.'

Sentencing Cartwright, the judge Mr Recorder Nicholas Clarke QC told her: 'Why you were at the service station at a time of Covid drinking with your friends at the Travelodge is quite beyond me.

'But you were risking the spread of this terrible disease and you were not doing your bit to protect others. At the time, you got very drunk then for whatever reason, you decided to have a drive in a very heavy vehicle.

'You put at risk your own life, that of your passenger who was trying to stop you, and also other road users. It was fortunate that nobody was seriously injured.

'You then tried to bribe the passenger then you tried to blame her when the police attended.

'You could be sent to jail and you would deserve it. But you have personal difficulties and I hope what has happened will steer you towards a more positive future.'
Virginia becomes first Southern state to legalize marijuana View Photo

RICHMOND, Va. (AP)  Virginia became the first Southern state to legalize marijuana Wednesday, as lawmakers voted to approve Gov. Ralph Northams proposed changes to a bill that will allow adults to possess and cultivate small amounts of the drug starting in July.

Northam sent the bill back to lawmakers substantially changed from the version that squeaked out of the General Assembly in February. The amendments lawmakers agreed to Wednesday would accelerate the timeline of legalization by about three years, well before retail sales would begin, a move thats been cheered by racial justice advocates.

The time has come for our state to legalize marijuana. The amendments ensure that while were doing the complicated work of standing up a commercial market, we arent delaying immediate reforms that will make our Commonwealth more equitable for all Virginians, House Majority Leader Charniele Herring said in urging her colleagues to approve the governors changes.

Democrats said the bill was a matter of urgency, a necessary step to end what state figures show is a disparate treatment of people of color under current marijuana laws.

Northams amendments cleared the House 53-44 with two abstentions during a one-day session held for the purpose of putting the finishing touches on the years legislation. In the Senate, lawmakers deadlocked 20-20 and Democratic Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax broke the tie, voting to approve the changes.

The final version of the legislation would allow adults 21 and up to legally possess up to one ounce (28.3 grams) of cannabis without the intent to distribute beginning July 1. It also would allow the home cultivation of up to four plants per household beginning July 1. Public use of the drug will be prohibited.

This is not going to generate some ganjafest at Jiffy Lube pavilion out in the parking lot, because that is smoking in public. Just like you cant drink in public, you cant smoke in public under this, Democratic Sen. Scott Surovell said.

It will be years before legal retail sales follow legalized possession. The bill lays out the complex process of creating a new state agency to oversee the marijuana marketplace, with sales beginning and regulations taking effect on Jan. 1, 2024.

Many parts of the bill dealing with the regulatory framework will have to be reapproved by lawmakers next year. The possession and cultivation pieces will not.

Republicans, who overwhelmingly opposed the bill when it initially went through the General Assembly, railed against the latest version, citing several reasons.

GOP Del. Chris Head called the bill a train wreck.

The hard-fought compromise that barely made it out of this chamber and over to the Senate has just been discarded. And why is that? Its because some activists want marijuana legalized and they want it legalized now, consequences be damned, he said.

Some Republicans took issue with labor provisions in the new version of the bill, in particular a change that says the government can revoke or suspend licenses issued under the new law in cases where an employer has refused to remain neutral regarding any union organizing efforts by employees.

During the legislative session, the Senate sought to legalize simple possession beginning in July, but House Democrats argued that legalization without a legal market for marijuana could promote the growth of the black market. The bill as passed in February would not have legalized simple possession until 2024.

Herring said Wednesday that home cultivation would give Virginians a way to legally acquire cannabis while the retail market is being put in place.

Many of the other amendments lawmakers dealt with Wednesday were minor or technical in nature and dispensed with more easily. Both chambers quickly signed off on a tweak to a sweeping voting rights measure that supporters say will protect and expand access to the ballot box. And they approved minor changes to a measure intended to improve the beleaguered unemployment system.

They also approved amendments that will allow both a gun ban on Capitol Square as well as one of the most restrictive bans in the country on the use of facial recognition technology to go into effect.

Both chambers signed off on a budget amendment from Northam that will fund an outside investigation into a small component of a larger controversy over the state parole board. Republicans blasted the governors proposal as far less substantive than necessary and said it would allow the administration to keep quiet any unflattering findings.

Lawmakers also rejected a handful of the governors proposed amendments. Those measures now go back to Northam, who can either sign the bills as they passed or veto them.

The General Assembly had no veto overrides to consider this year.

Northam said in a statement that this years legislative session would be regarded as one of the most consequential policy-reforming periods in modern Virginia history.

As this historic session comes to an end, I am heartened by all that we have done together to advance our priorities and make Virginia stronger, fairer, and more equitable, he said.

By SARAH RANKIN

Associated Press
Arlene Foster has blamed 'malign and criminal elements' for whipping up young people involved in recent violence and disorder in Northern Ireland.

The First Minister has called for youths to desist from violence in response to post-Brexit trading arrangements, adding that issues should be resolved at a political level.

Photographs from Tuesday captured bins being set alight and rocks and fireworks being launched at officers on the approach to Larne, County Antrim.

It is the latest in several nights of violence that have erupted across Northern Ireland since Friday.

Nine police officers were injured in Ballymena on Monday, taking the total number to 41.

It comes as the Stormont Assembly is set to be recalled for an emergency debate following days of violence and disorder in parts of Northern Ireland.

The DUP leader said she spoke to youth workers across Northern Ireland who said part of the issue is the closure of youth centres because of Covid-19 restrictions.

Bins are set ablaze at Cloughfern roundabout in Newtownabbey, Northern Ireland, on Tuesday

Police come under attack from fireworks and rocks as they unblock the main route into Larne town and harbour as Loyalists hold an anti Northern Ireland Protocol protest on Tueaday

'I've asked the Executive to look at that urgently and to get those youth centres open immediately  so those youths can come off the streets and come away from some malign influences that are in our society,' Mrs Foster added.

'I certainly think in a particular area of Northern Ireland that there are malign and criminal elements who are whipping up some of our young people.

'I do absolutely accept that that is the case in a particular area of Northern Ireland, but South East Antrim UDA does not have rite in other parts of Northern Ireland, so there are concerns right across Northern Ireland.

'The rule of law is very important to me, individually and as party leader, and last week when it was very clear that the rule of law had been damaged because Sinn Fein presented themselves as above the law, a special status for their funeral whilst everybody else had to deal with the restrictions at particular points in time.

Loyalists hold up placards during an anti Northern Ireland Protocol protest against the so called Irish Sea border on Tuesday

The First Minister Arlene Foster (seen on March 30) has called for youths to desist from violence, adding that issues should be resolved at a political level

'I recognise that there is huge anger about that. But if the rule of law is to mean anything, it is that everybody is equal under the law and everybody has to be equally subject to the law.

'So I say to young people who are angry at this moment in time  do not get yourself a criminal record. It will blight your life for the rest of your life, you won't be able to go on holiday where you please to go. So please, please, desist from the violence.

'There is a better way and the way is through politics.'

Alliance Party leader Naomi Long had called for MLAs to debate a motion condemning the recent attacks on police in loyalist areas.

The party secured the required support of 30 Assembly members for the Assembly to be recalled from Easter recess, with a sitting likely to take place on Thursday.

Photographs from Tuesday captured bins being set alight and rocks and fireworks being launched at officers on the approach to Larne, County Antrim

Nine officers were injured in Ballymena on April 5, taking to 41 the number injured in disorder across Northern Ireland since Friday night. Pictured: Tuesday

The move comes after police were attacked during another night of violence in a number of loyalist areas on Monday.

The most intense clashes were witnessed in Ballymena, when nine riot police officers were injured after they intervened in unlawful march of loyalists through the town.

During the unrest, debris, including a wheelie bin, was thrown onto the M2 motorway, forcing its closure.

Disorder also flared in parts of Carrickfergus, Newtownabbey and Londonderry on Monday, with petrol bombs and other missiles thrown at officers.

The violence comes amid soaring tensions within the loyalist community over post-Brexit trading arrangements, which have created new regulatory and customs barriers between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.

Anger ramped up further last week following a decision not to prosecute 24 Sinn Fein politicians for attending a large-scale republican funeral during Covid-19 restrictions.

All the main unionist parties have demanded the resignation of PSNI Chief Constable Simon Byrne, claiming he has lost the confidence of their community.

However, non-unionist parties in Northern Ireland have accused unionist leaders of creating the febrile atmosphere and stoking up tensions.

Mrs Foster repeated her calls for Mr Byrne to resign, adding that she has no plans to meet with him.

Anger ramped up further last week following a decision not to prosecute 24 Sinn Fein politicians for attending a large-scale republican funeral during Covid-19 restrictions

All the main unionist parties have demanded the resignation of PSNI Chief Constable Simon Byrne, claiming he has lost the confidence of their community

'When I think of all those officers out facing the violence over this past few nights, I really feel for them, because their leadership team has left them down and let them burn really bad,' Mrs Foster added.

Commenting on Monday's night of violence, Police Service of Northern Ireland Chief Superintendent Davy Beck branded it 'disgraceful'.

'Unfortunately as a result of what we saw last night, nine officers were injured during the disorder.

'These are officers who leave their homes, put on their uniform and deserve to get home safe and well to their families.

'I appeal to everyone with influence across the community to bring this senseless violence to a stop.

'We believe there are a number of groups, groups that are linked to criminality that are involved in orchestrating and promoting this violence.

Commenting on Monday's night of violence, Police Service of Northern Ireland Chief Superintendent Davy Beck branded it 'disgraceful'. Pictured: Tuesday

Children as young as 12 have been involved in some of the violence that has been witnessed in recent days

'I would appeal to the community not to be sucked in by that and to put a stop to this.'

Children as young as 12 have been involved in some of the violence that has been witnessed in recent days.

Cars, a JCB digger, a phone box and bins were set alight in the Waterside area of Londonderry on Monday.

Police said that a brick was thrown at a taxi, which was carrying a passenger at the time, on the Limavady Road.

Meanwhile, a briefing session has been arranged for members of the Northern Ireland Policing Board to receive a report from the chief constable on the disorder and injuries to police officers.

Board chairman Doug Garrett said: 'The violence that has manifested on our streets over recent days has been of serious concern right across the community and may also have significant consequences for those young people who have become involved in it.

'The number and extent of the injuries sustained by officers is shocking and the briefing arranged with the Chief Constable will provide an opportunity for board members to be updated on the latest position.'
if the people of Biafra want Republic of Biafra, it will be a reality during my administration. ----Donald Trump Donald Trump I wi...
Thousands of jobs hang in the balance as the billionaire owner of South Australia's Whyalla Steelworks is taken to court.

Citibank has launched legal action on behalf of Credit Suisse in an attempt to wind up two of Sanjeev Gupta's operations - OneSteel Manufacturing and Tahmoor Coal.

If successful, the move could trigger the appointment of liquidators to the Whyalla steelworks and its associated mines, which employ more than 1,800 South Australians, and to the Tahmoor coal mine in NSW.

Citibank has launched legal action on behalf of Credit Suisse in an attempt to wind up two of Sanjeev Gupta's (pictured) operations - OneSteel Manufacturing and Tahmoor Coal

It is the latest setback for Mr Gupta's global business after the collapse of one of its major lenders, Greensill, last month.

Credit Suisse is trying to recoup some of the money it is owed by breaking up Mr Gupta's Australian assets.

But his UK-based company, GFG Alliance, has vowed to vigorously defend the court action, saying it does not conduct any financing with Credit Suisse and has not sold the lender any receivables.

'The Australian businesses are performing well and generating positive cash flow, supported by the operational improvements we've made and strong steel and iron ore markets,' GFG Alliance said in a statement.

South Australian Treasurer Rob Lucas said Whyalla Steelworks employees should not be too concerned.

'People shouldn't jump to any alarmist conclusions at this stage,' he said.

If successful, the move could trigger the appointment of liquidators to the Whyalla steelworks and its associated mines, which employ more than 1,800 South Australians, and to the Tahmoor coal mine in NSW

'(GFG Alliance) are confident they are going to be able to manage a renegotiation of their financing arrangements. That is what they have said publicly and that is what they have been telling us privately.'

Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is also monitoring the legal action, mindful of the potential fallout for Whyalla steelworkers.

'Obviously, the government is talking with the South Australian government about ensuring that we can continue to keep jobs in Whyalla,' he told the ABC.

'But that is a matter now before the courts, so it would probably be inappropriate for me to be talking about those specific matters.'

The case is set for a directions hearing on May 6.
Mike Adams joined Brunswick, the $4.3 billion manufacturing business, in 2017 to define its enterprise architecture function and to work with then CIO Danielle Brown to craft a modernization strategy. Since then, the company has sold off its non-marine businesses and is now fully focused on the marine market (its brands include Boston Whaler, SeaRay, and Mercury), which allows for a streamlined customer digital engagement strategy.

Promoted to CIO last fall, Adams has identified three horizons that will move his team from run and maintain mode to digital enablement. In our recent discussion, Adams described these horizons and talked about the architectural, competency, and budgetary levers that are key to the transformation. The following is an edited version of our interview.

Martha Heller: What is IT doing to drive Brunswicks business transformation?

Mike Adams: In IT, we are introducing a digital business platform to enable customer-centric products and services, frictionless consumer experiences, and operational excellence. This digital business platform, which is the core of our strategy, is underpinned by business continuity, cybersecurity, analytics, and enterprise architecture.

Today, our brand is no longer tied just to our physical products; it is also tied to digital experiences, both web and native mobile, which must be secure. Foundational to all of this is our work in consumer insights, where we are developing a customer data capability to learn more about how our customers engage with us, what they are interested in, and what they buy. Through our digital and data platforms, we are putting the customer at the center of our architecture.

You have identified three horizons of IT evolution. What was the first horizon?

When I joined Brunswick in 2017, as Chief Architect working with Dani Brown, who was CIO at the time, we were squarely in Horizon 1, which was more of a react and respond model with most of our investments tied up in keeping systems secure and running. Our focus was on delivering to each of our divisionswe were not organized as an enterprise model.

The purpose of our move to Horizon 2 was to get out of this divisionally focused maintenance and support model and into an enterprise model, with standards and modern enterprise platforms that would position us to better engage in digital enablement.

To drive this massive change, and move us to the second horizon, we needed a burning platform, which came in the form of our divestiture of the Life Fitness business. In selling that business, we knew we would have to replace a key data center, so we decided to use that opportunity to move all of our enterprise applications to the cloud and exit all of our North American data center estates.

How did you manage the cloud migration?

We did a lot of work to decide which applications would move to the cloud, and which cloud providers we would use. We took a methodical decision-tree approach. Among other criteria, our cloud engineers identified whether the application was off the shelf or custom, and how we would best navigate its transition to the cloud. In some cases, we did not move an application to a public cloud provider but replaced it with a SaaS product. When we did go with the public cloud provider, we automated provisioning by using infrastructure as code, automated release pipelines, and some containerized services.

The Life Fitness divestiture accelerated the move from Horizon 1, a divisionally focused IT delivery organization with an on-premises based infrastructure, to Horizon 2, where we abstracted the physical elements of infrastructure and shifted our architecture to cloud, microservices, and APIs.

How have your competency needs changed as you moved into the second horizon?

The team began defining what competencies we would buy from strategic service providers and what core competencies we would develop within the Brunswick IT organization. The capabilities we were looking to buy from service providers included legacy application and platform development and infrastructure support. In parallel, we needed to begin developing and investing in cloud engineering skills to support our cloud first and software defined path of adoption. This also included front-end development resources as well as API and integration developers. With our teams spending less time on maintenance and support, we are now spending more time enabling digital business strategy, so weve needed to develop competences there, as well.

When does Horizon 3, digital enablement, begin?

For some areas, we are beginning to reach Horizon 3, but in others, we are still earlier on in our journey. For digital supply chain, for example, we still have work to do to modernize our platforms and extend critical data via our API management layer from legacy systems of record. We are currently working to standardize our enterprise processes as we work to modernize enterprise platforms across our supply chain.

For employee experience, we are advancing to Horizon 3. Currently, we use Microsoft Teams and are enabling remote work for our office workers, engineers, and call center agents. We are now evaluating integrated Teams calling and managed Team rooms to support what we expect to be a hybrid workplace later this year.

For cybersecurity, although our work is never done, we are investing quite a bit to mature our security posture. We have a well-integrated DevSecOps capability, which we are scaling. As our digital footprint grows and supply chain diversity needs increase, cybersecurity is critical to ensure protection of our most important assets. As all CIOs and CISOs know, we are on a constant journey as threats change and evolve all the time.

With customer experience, we are approaching Horizon 3, with work still to do building competency and finalizing our Digital Product Management operating model. Weve introduced an Adobe and Salesforce based customer experience target architecture with a product information management capability for the syndication of products and services for web and native mobile experiences.

What Horizon 3 competencies are you developing?

As we mature as an IT organization, we are increasingly focused on digital enablement as part of a broader enterprise digital product management operating model. Enterprise product managers, who define best practices, customer journeys, and experience capabilities, work with our enterprise IT digital delivery capability. The product manager defines effortless experiences through the lens of the customer. In our business, that includes an owner, participant, channel partner, or prospect. The product manager then partners with enterprise digital delivery teams made up of agile practitioners, modern application developers (microservices and APIs), business analysts, and quality assurance leads to define the roadmap, program increments, and sprints. Each cross-functional team is supported by enterprise architecture, cybersecurity, and cloud engineering to ensure capability is scaled optimally.

The new digital product management capability is no longer considered the demarcation between business and IT. Its just one team focusing on one set of customer experiences.

All of the competencies above are critical, but if we really want to operate with speed, and release new capabilities and code quickly, securely, and in an extensible way, we need to create a quality assurance capability that establishes and scales automated unit and regression testing.

Looking back on your journey through these horizons, what would you have done differently?

We have learned many lessons since the inception of this journey. For instance, we are in the process of aligning our strategic plan with a more holistic multiyear investment strategy. In the past, I believe the investment to transform was too distributed across division and functional budgets.

We also recognized the need to develop an operating model that better aligns with digital product management, much the way we develop and manage the products we sell to our customers.

Moving forward, we are establishing a portfolio of investments that outlines how we will fund the IT and digital strategy that supports the business. Our approach will be, If this is the strategy weve agreed to execute; lets develop the right investment plan for that strategy and make the investment required more visible, in order to facilitate the right trade-off discussions.

What advice do you have to other CIOs on moving from run and maintain to digital enablement?

Never let a burning platform go to waste. When we divested Life Fitness, we thought about doing what was familiar by replacing the data center we were losing as part of the transaction. Instead, we decided to take the opportunity to change our entire operating model and accelerate the execution of our cloud first strategy.

Be bold. I am always telling my team, "We cannot be reckless, but we have to be bold and have the tough conversations necessary to put the company in the best position to deliver value. Those are not always the easiest conversations, but they are the necessary ones to have.

Finally, you must tirelessly communicate how these investments and initiatives anchor back to your strategy to enable the business. Some of your business partners wont internalize your message the first, second, or even the eighth time they hear it. You build credibility by demonstrating benefit, and then tirelessly communicating that benefit and what it could look like at scale. Only when you have business believerswho are also agents of changecan you really gain traction.
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(TNS)  In an attempt to "put consumers in the driver's seat" of their data privacy,legislators are giving bipartisan support to legislation that imposes new disclosure requirements on companies that collect information on their customers and sell it to data brokers.Modeled after alaw that last year became the strongest data privacy law in the country, SB 1734 creates the Florida Privacy Protection Act and requires businesses to tell consumers what information they've collected and how they're going to use it. The bill requires any company that collects and sells consumer information to establish a button on its website to allow consumers to opt out of allowing the company to sell the information it has collected about them."The landscape of the Internet has changed considerably in a relatively short period of time, and the internet of today is a one-way street, where the most intimate details of the consumer's life are monetized, and sold to the highest bidder," said Sen., a Fleming Island Republican who is sponsoring thebill. "The financial success of these companies who market our private lives are built on the consumer's lack of knowledge and lack of consent to this process."Bradley said the goal of the measure is to "shift the balance of power over data collection back to consumers" by requiring companies to give notice of their practices and seek consent from consumers. Sinceadopted a similar law in 2020, companies across the state have placed "do not sell my information buttons" on their web pages, and the state has set up model templates.In November,voters went further in strengthening the privacy laws by passing Proposition 24. It added new requirements for businesses to protect personal information, including by "reasonably" minimizing data collection, limiting data retention, and protecting data security. A similar privacy law was passed in. And in, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) protects personal data and restricts the use of it by business entities and internet companies.Bradley's more modest proposal, however, is fiercely opposed bybusinesses, many of whom make money off selling people's data."The cost would be significant to comply with this law," said, chair of the Privacy and Data Security Practice at thelaw firm in. "You're going to have to purchase technology, you're going to have to perform data inventories, you're going to have to hire lawyers, like myself."In an attempt to reach a middle ground Tuesday during themeeting, Bradley introduced a strike-all amendment to her bill that creates a loophole for companies that contract with a "service provider" to handle their data. She also limited the businesses required to comply to those that sell personal information of more than 100,000 customers to third parties, or businesses that derive 50% or more of their global annual revenues from selling or sharing personal information about consumers.And in a major concession to the, Bradley agreed to remove the enforcement teeth by eliminating a provision that allowed consumers to sue businesses if they could show their private data was sold in violation of the proposal. TheAttorney General's office would be responsible for enforcing the law, which would take effectDespite the deep concessions, industry lobbyists remained opposed to the measure and an advocacy group that supports the legislation but won't identify its donors, warned that the change could undermine the intent of the bill."The amendment to the bill changes the definition of 'sale' in a way that allows Big Tech to share or loan private data to anyone they want  without consumers knowing or having anything to say about it," said, spokesman for Propel Florida, the advocacy organization. "It enables those giant companies to escape legal accountability and any responsibility to get any consumer's permission."The cost of compliance, lobbyist for, said that while the amendments were helpful the bill "is still going to costbusinesses a gigantic amount."Florida TaxWatch, a non-profit research organization funded by business, produced a study that estimated it would costbusinesses $36.5 billion to develop the technology and meet the requirements."These compliance costs would disproportionately affect smaller businesses with fewer resources to comply, which is why Florida TaxWatch recommends state policymakers first conduct a formal economic impact analysis to study the possible effects of the law change and delay implementation beyond, until more can be known," said, TaxWatch president, in a statement.Sen., aRepublican, argued thatshould not attempt to regulate data on its own."The thought that you could have 50 different privacy laws in 50 different states around the country and any business could potentially possibly comply with that is unfathomable," he said.But senators from both sides of the political aisle commend Bradley for tackling the issue. Sen., anRepublican, said there is wide public support for privacy restrictions. According to thestaff analysis, thefound that 84% of Americans say they feel they have very little or no control over the data that is collected about them by both the government and private companies, but few people read privacy policies."We have an enormous, enormous amount of personal data risks out there that ordinary people are very concerned about what's happening," Baxley said.Senate Democratic Leaderofsaid "the time has come to level the playing field when it comes to our rights of privacy.""You know our Founding Fathers anticipated this type of stuff when they put privacy in the," Farmer said. "But now we've got to go farther and ensure that we have a say in what happens to our personal information."The issue is privacy, but secrecy shields donationIn a classic irony,has reported that a nonprofit named Propel Florida, which lists its address as abox in, has contributed $300,000 to legislators to get the data privacy law passed. Propeldoes not disclose its donors and has hired a-based lobbying team. Even the lobbyists told the Herald/they don't know who is funding the effort.Before the Rules Committee approved her bill, Bradley assured her colleagues: "This is not thelaw" and promised that the compliance costs "are going to be much lower."But, she added, there is also a cost to consumers because of their lack of privacy. "Their information is put into predictive analysis that's going to affect their credit worthiness, their employability," she said. "They're the only ones bearing the cost of this, and they can't delete it." Bradley did not respond to requests for comment about Propel Florida's position on her amendment.A companion House bill, HB 969, retains the private right of action for any consumer who alleges a violation to file a lawsuit. It is being sponsored by Rep., R-, but opponents warn it will encourage lawsuits.law includes the private right of action and, according to thestaff analysis of the bill, there have been no lawsuits filed in the first year the law was in effect.
The Huawei logo is pictured at the IFA consumer tech fair in Berlin, Germany, on Sept. 6, 2019. (Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters)

Chinas Huawei Draws Attention After Publicizing Lawful Inception Patent

Chinese telecom giant Huawei made public one of its latest lawful interception patents at the end of March, raising concern over personal data and privacy. A former Huawei engineer told The Epoch Times that such a practice is nothing new in the company and explained why the practice has now been declassified.

On March 30, Huawei disclosed a patent titled A method, gateway device, system, and storage medium for lawful interception, with announcement number CN110326278B and an application date of Feb. 28, 2017.

Huawei publicizes a new lawful interception patent on March 30, 2021. (screenshot/Tianyancha App)

The technology is described as aiming to enhance monitoring efficiency.

The telecom giants disclosure ignited discussion online.

However, reports on the disclosure were censored from Chinas state news portals, including Sohu, NetEase, and Tencent.

Lawful Interception Underway for Years in Huawei

Jin Chun, a former engineer at Huaweis Nanjing Research Center for three years, gave The Epoch Times an exclusive interview in the United States on April 2.

Lawful interception has constantly been underway in Huawei, Jin revealed.

Huaweis business shrunk outside China, with revenues down 12.2 percent to 180.8 billion yuan in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, down 8.7 percent to 64.4 billion yuan in the rest of Asia, and down 24.5 percent to 39.6 billion yuan from the Americas, according to a news conference at Huawei headquarters in the southern city of Shenzhen on March 31.

Huawei is reminding officials within the Chinese regime and domestic competitors that it possesses such a technology and has an essential presence in the industry, demanding the greenlight to its growth, Jin said.

Initially, the tech giant didnt want to divulge this practice to the public, according to Jin. Maybe some guys within the Chinese regimes system fed the secret to the outside world. I mean Huawei doesnt care much about it, whose protection level has dropped.

For numerous telecommunications and telephone networks, Huawei is now a major equipment provider. It supplies products from backbone fiber optic in the infrastructure to base transceivers, from hardware to software. [For example] China Mobile primarily uses Huaweis technology. As long as [youre] online, Huawei can monitor [you] via the transport layer, the distribution layer, or the application layer. So many options, he revealed.

Even worse, Huawei was identified by Forbes as playing an integral role in Chinas widespread and pervasive Orwellian surveillance state apparatus.

In the meantime, Jin disclosed: Huawei has an extremely strict internal secrecy system. Exactly as the Soviet Unions KGB did in classification and confidentiality.

For example, the companys office area is divided into red, yellow, blue, and green zones, according to Jin. The red zone represents the most confidential, which only some people can enter. Outward comes the yellow zone, which is less confidential. Then the blue zone. And the outermost is the green zone, basically an open area. Personnel cannot travel between different zones; and authorizations vary from person to person.

All Cellphones Can Be Monitored by Huawei-Built Telecom Networks

Robert OBrien, a former national security adviser in the Trump administration, proclaimed: We have evidence that Huawei has the capability secretly to access sensitive and personal information in systems it maintains and sells around the world, according to an article published on Feb. 13, 2020, on Princeton-based BankInfoSecurity, a site focusing on information security.

Huawei can watch over any telecom networks as long as it builds them, Jin Chun told The Epoch Times.

In China, in the case of China Mobile networks or fiber optic, [you] will be on the radar screen, for instance, while you go online, no matter what device you use, including an iPhone cellphone, Jin said.

He cited Germany and Belgium, where cellphone talks might be overheard by Huawei because they have close collaboration with the firm. He noted Huawei also helped African and East European nations with surveillance projects.

Another former Huawei researcher told The Epoch Times that more than ten years ago, he had known Huawei had such a function.

Monitoring is from a higher level in Huawei, the source said. Ordinary users are unaware even if they are being monitored. It works on the core networkthe innermost, physically far from your mobile phonethat inception is achieved. A users voice and data are transferred to the core network via a base station, which is also kept in the dark if monitoring is underway. So, Huawei can peep at whatever brand cellphone you use.

Xiang Ligang, a commentator in Chinas telecom sector, expressed that a surveillance authority can access a users data as long as his phone number or social media account is identified, according to Hong Kong Citizen News.

Any message has to pass a gateway whether it is sent via phone, WeChat, Twitter, Facebook, or LINE. Once the gateway spots a particular tag [in the message], it will pass the tagged message to a monitoring center, Xiang said.

With Huaweis new lawful inception patent available, mass monitoring has become a reality now, the commentator added.

Hu Yuanzhen contributed to this report.
April 7: General Roscoe Robinson Jr. Auditorium was dedicated at West Point in honor of Army 4-star General, Roscoe Robinson Jr., 2000

April 7: General Roscoe Robinson Jr. Auditorium was dedicated at West Point in honor of Army 4-star General, Roscoe Robinson Jr., 2000

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Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz remains in the hot seat following the New York Times report last week that the Justice Department is investigating whether he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old and violated federal sex-trafficking laws. Since then, theres been a continuous trickle of new details about Gaetzs supposedly lurid personal life, including that he allegedly showed nude images of people he claimed to have had sex with to fellow lawmakers in Congress and that he invented a game while serving in the Florida state Legislature in which representatives earned points for having sex with aides, interns, and married colleagues. Further reporting from the Times also indicates that he and a local Florida official allegedly used the website Seeking Arrangement to find women to have sex with in exchange for money. Its unclear whether Gaetz allegedly met the underaged minor through a website like Seeking Arrangement. The congressman has denied ever paying for sex or sleeping with a 17-year-old as an adult. A statement from his office to the Times also said, Matt Gaetz has never ever been on any such websites whatsoever; Politico reported that it may have been one of his political allies who was actually using the site for him. Gaetz has, however, disclosed that hes paid for flights and hotel rooms for the women hes dated.

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Seeking Arrangement is a dating website dedicated to matching financially well-off sugar daddies with attractive sugar babies seeking partners who can provide them with the finer things in life. Those things can include dinners, gifts, trips, and other forms of financial support. Seeking Arrangement also advertises itself as a resource for people to obtain financial aid for student debt through support from wealthy partners. The site was founded in 2006 by entrepreneur Brandon Wade, who came up with the idea while attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Seeking Arrangement now has 20 million users. Wade has repeatedly contended that the site prohibits users from paying for sex and that it is not an outlet for sex work, though previous reports indicate that its been commonplace for sugar daddies to provide sugar babies with cash after dates, some of which have involved sex.

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Setting up a profile on the website first involves selecting your gender, the gender youre seeking in a match, and then whether youre looking to meet someone who has Success & Wealth or Looks & Charm. When users are setting up their profiles, the site also asks sugar daddies to provide their net worth and annual income. Users can browse a gallery of dating profiles or search for members based on their desires for dining and travel, the number of children they have, and whether theyre still in college. Though its free to join, users can pay anywhere from $100 to $250 per month for premium memberships that come with privileges like priority placement in search results, read receipts, and extra privacy features. Not all the relationships involve sex; some people are willing to provide money for platonic companionship. On the flip side, handing over money isnt always involved; sometimes its just trips, nice dinners, and other luxuries. Relationships kindled through the site can become serious and have led to marriage. The younger users also often do not consider themselves to be sex workers.

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Its obviously illegal to engage in any sort of sexual relationship with someone who has not reached the age of consent. Its also illegal in almost every state to exchange cash for specific sex acts or encounters. Yet, for Seeking Arrangements members of legal age, the consensual relationships that the site facilitates often exist in a legal gray area. When someone says, Heres money and in exchange youre going to have sex with me, thats a very straightforward prostitution case, said Matthew Galluzzo, who formerly worked in the New York County District Attorneys Office as a sex crimes prosecutor. But Seeking Arrangement allows two people to get to know each other over time, and I think its understood whats supposed to happen, but its never really necessarily said. The lack of an explicit quid pro quo often means these relationships are legal, or at least very difficult to prosecute as prostitution.

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Based on reports, though, Gaetz may have left a trail of evidence that could leave him more legally exposed than the average user of Seeking Arrangement. Paying for a dates flights or hotel rooms isnt illegal; its pretty much just a more expensive version of taking someone out to dinner. However, Times reporters viewed receipts of Apple Pay and Cash App payments that Gaetz made to one of the women allegedly involved in the scandal. One source claimed to the Times that Gaetz told the women to say that the payments were for dinners and hotel rooms, when in actuality they were explicitly for sex. Galluzzo noted that this sort of cover-up could turn the case into a he said, she said affair, but text messages or taped conversations might help to clear the record. Seeking Arrangement does not have a tool for transferring money but does encourage users to transmit sugar funds through PayPal, Venmo, gift cards, direct deposit, Square Reader, and hard cash.

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Another potentially incriminating factor is former Seminole County, Florida, tax collector Joel Greenbergs alleged role in Gaetzs trysts. Greenberg, one of Gaetzs political allies, was indicted last June on 14 federal charges, including sex trafficking of a girl between the ages of 14 and 17. The Justice Departments case against Greenberg reportedly led investigators to also look into Gaetz. According to Politico, it was actually Greenberg who was scouring Seeking Arrangement for young women. He then introduced the women he found to Gaetz. If Greenberg decides to cooperate with law enforcement, he could testify as to whether Gaetz actually intended to engage in legal relationships with these women or was simply paying them for sex. If were talking about legal exposure, that would potentially pull the roof off his defense if he says they were just innocent date arrangements, said Galluzzo, adding that Greenberg could reference conversations hed had with Gaetz about the site and the resulting sexual encounters. Typical users of Seeking Arrangement are unlikely to have a friend under federal indictment who is privy to how they were using the site. Prosecutors filed additional charges against Greenberg having to do with wire fraud and money laundering last Wednesday, and he is scheduled to stand trial in June, though it may be postponed.

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If it does turn out that Gaetz was engaging in illegal behavior and that it involved Seeking Arrangement, there will likely be questions about the sites culpability. (I sent Seeking Arrangement questions about Gaetzs and Greenbergs possible use of the site and have not heard back.) The law known as FOSTA-SESTA holds websites responsible for knowingly or unknowingly facilitating sex trafficking. When the legislation was passed in 2018, Craigslist got rid of its personals section while the website Backpage, which was one of the largest hosts of advertisements for sex workers, went offline. At the time, legal scholars thought services like Seeking Arrangement would be devastated as well. Wade told the Wall Street Journal that Seeking Arrangement was training staff to better sniff out suspicious activity and had put in measures like message monitoring but that he was still worried about how the law put the site at a greater risk of civil lawsuits. Undercover law enforcement officers have also been known to monitor Seeking Arrangement and other sites to determine whether certain interactions cross the line from legal relationships to illegal sex work.

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Yet three years have gone by and Seeking Arrangement continues to thrive. The site has been able to avoid the fate of Backpage, according to Galluzzo, largely due to its focus on relationships rather than straightforward transactions, which makes it more difficult for law enforcement to infiltrate. He noted that busts on Backpage were fairly easy because undercover officers would often just email people who were advertising sex on the site, arrange to meet for a certain amount of money, and then arrest them. It isnt so simple with Seeking Arrangement. Do you create a profile for an undercover agent to be a sugar daddy and give him a bunch of money and have him go on three dates with a young woman? he said. Or do you pretend to be a sugar baby and try to meet a guy and go on a bunch of dates and then have a cagey conversation with him? Such an investigation would be exhausting and resource-intensive, and even if it led to a few arrests, it likely wouldnt be enough to establish a pattern of illegal behavior in how people are using the site.

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Another reason why Seeking Arrangement has survived might also be that even if some of the relationships do technically constitute illegal sex work, the transactions are supposed to be between two consenting adults of legal age. FOSTA-SESTA was intended to protect children and other potential victims from being forced into prostitution, but there was a considerable amount of controversy when it was passed over how the law would prevent willing adult sex workers from safely making a living. Sex workers and their advocates argued that the ability that online platforms give them to pick and vet their clients is empowering and helps to ensure their safety; without such sites, they could be find themselves in more dangerous situations on the street. In this vein, Seeking Arrangement does theoretically allow people to seek out consensual partners who are willing to provide financial benefits with relative safety, even though the site and many of its users dont consider this activity to be sex work. (The calculus is obviously very different when a 17-year-old could be involved, and there have been reports of abusive relationships forming through the site.) Is there really much moral outrage about this? Because you dont necessarily think the people on there are being trafficked  you get the sense that all the parties are more or less willing participants, said Galluzzo. Its hard to say that some forms of prostitution are legal and some are not as a practical matter, but it seems like theres a moral basis to be able to distinguish between the two.
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The automotive segment will generate maximum revenue in the virtual assistant market, owing to the increasing investments by carmakers to provide better user experiences. In terms of geography, APAC will present significant opportunities for market vendors due to the increased adoption of chatbots in healthcare, BFSI, and travel industries in the region.

Virtual Assistant Market: Major Growth Drivers

The following factors are expected to drive the growth of the market during the forecast period:

Increasing demand for advanced customer services and advanced software

Demand for enhanced customer service

Smartphones with intelligent virtual assistants supporting human interactions

In addition, the report identifies the benefits offered to content consumers, owners, and publishers as a major trend in the virtual assistant market. People with disabilities find it difficult to read enormous amounts of text or data. This has increased the adoption of virtual assistants to provide easy access to website content to help such users. Virtual assistants also provide users the option to listen to the content rather than reading the content online, which enhances convenience as well as user engagement. This trend is expected to provide significant growth opportunities to vendors during the forecast period.

The report helps businesses create strategies to make the most of future growth opportunities.

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Virtual Assistant Market: Key Vendor Offerings

Alphabet Inc.: The company offers Google Assistant. It can make calls and send messages by reading human speech.

Amazon.com Inc.: The company offers the Amazon Virtual Assistant. It provides administrative support to business owners online/offsite.

Apple Inc.: The company offers Siri. It helps users take calls or send texts without a touch.

CX Co.: The company offers chat bots, intelligent virtual assistant and other products.

eGain Corp.: The company offers eGain Virtual Assistant. It is a chatbot.

Reasons to Buy Virtual Assistant Market Report:

CAGR of the market during the forecast period 2021-2025

Detailed information on factors that will assist virtual assistant market growth during the next five years

Estimation of the virtual assistant market size and its contribution to the parent market

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The growth of the virtual assistant market across North America , APAC, Europe , South America , and MEA

, APAC, , , and MEA Analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information on vendors

Comprehensive details of factors that will challenge the growth of virtual assistant market vendors

This report can be personalized according to your business needs.

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Global Chatbot Market  Global chatbot market is segmented by end-user (retail, BFSI, travel and hospitality, government, and others) and geography (APAC, Europe, MEA, North America, and South America).

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Global Artificial Intelligence Platforms Market  Global artificial intelligence platforms market is segmented by deployment (on-premise and cloud-based) and geography (North America, APAC, Europe, South America, and MEA).

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U.S. Capitol police surround a blue car that rammed a police barricade outside the U.S. Capitol building on Capitol Hill in Washington, on April 2, 2021. (Michael Weekes/Reuters)

Morale Plunges Among Short-Staffed Capitol Hill Police

The U.S. Capitol Hill Police (CHP) are short-staffed and overworked as the number of officers leaving the force mounts on a daily basis, but Congress doesnt appear to be in a hurry to address the problem.

There are 1,839 members of the CHP, which has lost three members to death this year. Officer Brian Sicknick died in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot, while Officer Howard Liebengood took his own life a few days later.

Officer William Evans was killed on April 2, when Nation of Islam follower Noah Green slammed into a road barrier that Evans and Officer Kenny Shaver were manning. Shaver was seriously injured but survived, while Green was shot and killed by other CHP officers when he ran toward them while brandishing a large knife.

That could happen to any single person standing out on a corner at one of our posts at any single time, a CHP officer who requested anonymity told Roll Call.

So, I think thats what hit home for a lot of people. Its not only hitting home to us, but our families are really suffering now because theyre fearing for our lives, the officer continued.

That officer was one of a number who talked to Roll Call on condition of anonymity about morale and staffing problems that have come to a head since Jan. 6. Another officer told Roll Call he and his colleagues are on constant alert now to the possibility of unexpected attacks like Greens that could be fatal.

Its terrifying. You know it makes everybody concerned about just every minute of being on duty, which sometimes you forget about, the officer told Roll Call.

And even now, you still forget about it but then it comes back to, you know, looking around and looking behind you and worrying about the cars going by, the officer said.

The result, according to one of the officers interviewed by Roll Call, is a growing wave of resignations.

Were already very short. People are quitting every day. Basically, every single person I know is looking for another job. Just applications everywhere, the officer said.

A March 5 report by a task force appointed by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and headed by Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Russell Honore described a situation on the morning of Jan. 6, when the CHP was understaffed, insufficiently equipped and inadequately trained to secure the Capitol and Members when violently attacked by a large mob.

The report said there were more than 230 vacancies on the CHP and said a vast amount of overtime was routinely required to fulfill minimal mission requirements.

More than 750,000 overtime hours were used by CHP officers in 2020 and as a result, the report encouraged Congress to enact funding to expand the force by more than 800 new positions, including intelligence specialists, operational planners, supervisors, Civil Disturbance Unit (CDU) personnel and trainers, and dignitary protection agents.

So far, Congress hasnt moved much in response to the Honore report. House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said in an April 5 statement that when Congress returns to Washington, we will act to ensure the safety of the Capitol and everyone who works there.

She was referring to the fact Congress is currently on its Easter recess and will return to the nations capital to resume work on April 13.

The House Administration Committee, which has oversight authority for the daily management of the Capitol complex, has yet to hold a hearing on the recommendations in the Honore report.

A spokesman for the committee, which is chaired by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) didnt immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.), the ranking Republican on the administration panel, has been highly critical of Lofgren for not convening a hearing on the Honore report.

Its been exactly three months since the attack on our Capitol and this committee has yet to hold a single hearing on this issue, Davis said in an April 6 statement.

The Senate is working in a bipartisan way to address security and the House should be doing the same. If we do not, it will be another failure of leadership.

These changes are going to take time to implement, but nothing can be done until we do our work. The men and women serving in the U.S. Capitol Police deserve at least that much.

Congressional correspondent Mark Tapscott may be reached at mark.tapscott@epochtimes.nyc
The White House is seen from outside the security fencing in Washington, on March 7, 2021. (Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images)

US Military Cites Rising Risk of Chinese Move Against Taiwan

WASHINGTONThe American military is warning that China is probably accelerating its timetable for capturing control of Taiwan, the island democracy that has been the chief source of tension between Washington and Beijing for decades and is widely seen as the most likely trigger for a potentially catastrophic U.S.-China war.

The worry about Taiwan comes as China wields new strength from years of military buildup. It has become more aggressive with Taiwan and more assertive in sovereignty disputes in the South China Sea. Beijing also has become more confrontational with Washington; senior Chinese officials traded sharp and unusually public barbs with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in talks in Alaska last month.

A military move against Taiwan, however, would be a test of U.S. support for the island that Beijing views as a breakaway province. For the Biden administration, it could present the choice of abandoning a friendly, democratic entity or risking what could become an all-out war over a cause that is not on the radar of most Americans. The United States has long pledged to help Taiwan defend itself, but it has deliberately left unclear how far it would go in response to a Chinese attack.

This accumulation of concerns meshes with the administrations view that China is a frontline challenge for the United States and that more must be done soonmilitarily, diplomatically, and by other meansto deter Beijing as it seeks to supplant the United States as the predominant power in Asia. Some American military leaders see Taiwan as potentially the most immediate flashpoint.

Admiral Philip S. Davidson waits to meet Japans Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga at the prime ministers office in Tokyo, Japan, on Oct. 22, 2020. (Eugene Hoshiko/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

We have indications that the risks are actually going up, Adm. Philip Davidson, the most senior U.S. military commander in the Asia-Pacific region, told a Senate panel last month, referring to a Chinese military move on Taiwan.

The threat is manifest during this decadein fact, in the next six years, Davidson said.

Days later, Davidsons expected successor, Adm. John Aquilino, declined to back up the six-year timeframe but told senators at his confirmation hearing: My opinion is, this problem is much closer to us than most think.

Biden administration officials have spoken less pointedly but stress the intention to deepen ties with Taiwan, eliciting warnings from Beijing against outsider interference in what it considers a domestic matter.

On Wednesday, Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said the military threat against his country is increasing, and while he said it was not yet particularly alarming, the Chinese military in the last couple of years has been conducting what he called real combat-type exercises closer to the island.

We are willing to defend ourselves, thats without any question, Wu told reporters. We will fight a war if we need to fight a war, and if we need to defend ourselves to the very last day, then we will defend ourselves to the very last day.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin calls China the pacing threat for the United States, and the military services are adjusting accordingly. The Marine Corps, for example, is reshaping itself with China and Russia in mind after two decades of ground-focused combat against extremists in the Middle East.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin addresses a joint media briefing held in New Delhi, India, on March 20, 2021. (Money Sharma/AFP via Getty Images)

Hardly an aspect of Chinas military modernization has failed to rile the U.S. military. Adm. Charles Richard, who as head of U.S. Strategic Command is responsible for U.S. nuclear forces, wrote in a recent essay that China is on track to be a strategic peer of the United States. He said Chinas nuclear weapons stockpile is expected to double if not triple or quadruple in the next 10 years, although that goes beyond the Pentagons official view that the stockpile will at least double in that period.

Taiwan, however, is seen as the most pressing problem.

U.S. officials have noted Peoples Liberation Army actions that seem designed to rattle Taiwan. For example, Chinese aerial incursions, including flying around the island, are a near-daily occurrence, serving to advertise the threat, wear down Taiwanese pilots and aircraft and learn more about Taiwans capabilities.

Chinese officials have scoffed at Davidsons Taiwan comments. A Ministry of Defense spokesman, Col. Ren Guoqiang, urged Washington to abandon zero-peace thinking and do more to build mutual trust and stability. He said that attempts by outside forces to use Taiwan to seek to restrain China, or the use by Taiwan independence forces to use military means to achieve independence, are all dead ends.

The implications of a Chinese military move against Taiwan and its 23 million people are so profound and potentially grave that Beijing and Washington have long managed a fragile middle groundTaiwanese political autonomy that precludes control by Beijing but stops short of formal independence.

Predictions of when China might decide to try to compel Taiwan to reunite with the mainland have long varied, and there is no uniform view in the United States. Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution, said last week he doubts Chinese leaders are ready to force the issue.

I dont think its coming soon, he said.

The Trump administration made a series of moves to demonstrate a stronger commitment to Taiwan, including sending a Cabinet member to Taipei last year, making him the highest-level U.S. official to visit the island since formal diplomatic relations were severed in 1979 in deference to China. The Biden administration says it wants to cooperate with China where possible but has voiced its objections to a wide range of Chinese actions.

Last week, the U.S. ambassador to the Pacific island nation of Palau, John Hennessey-Niland, became the first serving U.S. ambassador to visit Taiwan since Washington cut ties with Taipei in favor of Beijing.

China is a frequent target of criticism in Congress. Concerns about countering its growing military might are reflected in the passage of the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, funded at $2.2 billion for 2021. Davidson wants it to support, among other initiatives, establishing a better air defense system to protect the U.S. territory of Guam from Chinese missiles and preserving U.S. military dominance in the region.

Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is skeptical of the militarys fixation on dominance.

Given the way the world works now, having one country be dominant is just hopelessly unrealistic, he said in a recent online forum sponsored by Meridian, a nonpartisan diplomacy center. He said the U.S. military can maintain sufficient strength, in partnership with allies, to send the message: China, dont invade Taiwan because the price youre going to pay for that isnt worth it.

By Robert Burns
Blindness isn't like most off-Broadway shows you might have seen in the before times. Reminders of Covid-19 remain throughout this unique audio and lighting installation, originally produced at London's Donmar Warehouse and now appearing at the Daryl Roth Theatre: Viewers are seated in two-person pods well away from strangers; there are no physical programs or tickets, no live actors, and no bathrooms (best to find a preshow alternative); as with any indoor activity, masks are a must. Still, it feels like a miracle to be attending theater at all these days, and if these are the conditions under which it can happen, I'm all for it. In many ways, Blindness is the ideal play to guide us out of the darkness of the past year.

The story is an adaptation of Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago's novel about an epidemic of a mysterious sickness that blinds its victims to all but a white blur. In an effort to control the spread, the government confines the first patients to an abandoned mental hospital and tells them that the punishment for leaving is "instant death." The first set of detainees include an eye doctor and his wife, who is feigning blindness so that she can follow her husband into this brutal quarantine. As the only seeing inmate, she assumes an outsize role in safeguarding the welfare of the others, especially as order begins to break down both within and outside the asylum's walls.

Audiences sit on the theater floor in isolated pods in Blindness.

( Helen Maybanks)

Lasting just 70 minutes, this adaptation by Simon Stephens (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) is divided into three acts in which our relationship with the Doctor's Wife becomes increasingly intimate. While the first act feels like an audiobook you might listen to before bed, the subsequent acts are likely to have some audience members bracing for impact or quietly sobbing into their masks. Juliet Stevenson, who voices the bulk of the text as both the narrator and the Doctor's Wife, conveys the dramatic urgency of a live performance while offering a fresh take on her character.

As depicted in Saramago's novel, the Doctor's Wife is practically a saint. She maintains a very Portuguese kind of civility, even when she's shanking someone in a filthy hospital ward. It's not quite believable. Happily, Blindness departs from its source material, resulting in Stevenson's mercurial, occasionally shrieking, but undoubtedly human performance. So much of the story is told through the breathy panic in her voice or the faint whisper of information she doesn't want any of the others to hear. Terrible offstage events that we can neither see nor hear suggest themselves in her growl. It is a tour de force of voice acting.

The precision strike design choices made under the direction of Walter Meierjohann serve as a force multiplier for Stevenson's performance. Although her voice is prerecorded, Ben and Max Ringham's extraordinary binaural sound design tricks our brains into thinking that she is right in front of us (each audience member dons an individual headset). Stevenson seems to move about the room, whisper in our ear, and breathe all over us in a way that feels inappropriate in the age of COVID. Even in the cavernous Daryl Roth Theatre, the total blackout combined with the sound design makes it feels like being at a one-woman show in a broom closet (ah, those were the days).

Jessica Hung Han Yun's in-your-face lighting is the main antagonist of Blindness.

( Helen Maybanks)

One might assume that any light in this situation would come as a relief, but Jessica Hung Han Yun's electric zaps of illumination are shocking, violently cleaving the mini-scenes of the second act and leaving us with lingering white blurs in our eyes. It's a powerful way to visualize the "white sickness" of the story, but audience members with sensitive eyes should know what they're getting into.

Not all of Yun's lighting effects are so aggressive. She collaborates with scenic designer Lizzie Clachan to create several absolutely gorgeous and arresting moments, which I won't spoil here. I will reveal that the most effective of Clachan's choices is the simplest one, which is to separate the audience into isolated pairs, underlining the two-person society of the Doctor and his Wife. After a year in which so many of us have been isolated with just one other person (if we're lucky), this is something New York audiences can undoubtedly appreciate.

Viewers of Blindness might also have feelings about the story of a pandemic that catches everyone unprepared, which the government initially downplays before taking extreme measures only once it is too late. Perhaps they will have thoughts about the cruelty such circumstances can provoke in people, and the courage they provoke in others. And then there are the play's breathtaking closing moments, which hold out the possibility of a renewal we all need right now. Like I said, there couldn't be a better show to beckon us back to the theater.
Melissa Doyle left Channel Seven in August last year after an incredible 25 years of service.

And with years of experience in front of the camera, the TV icon, 51, revealed to The Advertiser on Wednesday how she's embracing getting older.

The former Sunrise and Sunday Night host said she's not worried about the 'laugh lines' around her eyes, preferring to view them as 'little trophies'.

TV icon: Former Seven star Melissa Doyle, 51, revealed to The Advertiser on Wednesday how she's embracing getting older - and says she's not worried about the 'laugh lines' around her eyes. Pictured last month

'I don't shy away from the fact that I've got some laugh lines around my eyes,' Melissa told the publication.

'I don't really want to change those because I see them as little trophies. I'll do the best I can to maintain my skin and I'll embrace the rest.'

Melissa also shared her tips for feeling fabulous at any age, including drinking two litres of water a day, prioritising classes at the gym, and admitting to her family when she's struggling with her mental health.

Ageing gracefully: 'I don't shy away from the fact that I've got some laugh lines around my eyes,' Melissa told the publication. 'I don't really want to change those because I see them as little trophies. I'll do the best I can to maintain my skin and I'll embrace the rest'

'I've tried to talk to [my kids, daughter Natalia and son Nicholas] about how I'm feeling so that they know, should they experience any of those things, [that] it's natural, we all do,' she said.

During Melissa's career, she hosted several of Seven's flagship programs, including Sunrise, Today Tonight, 7News, Sunday Night and The Latest.

Melissa joined Seven's Canberra bureau as a political reporter back in 1995. She then moved to Sydney, working as a newsreader on the 11AM program.

Top tips: The journalist also shared her tips for feeling fabulous at any age, including drinking two litres of water a day, prioritising classes at the gym, and admitting to her family when she's struggling with her mental health

Veteran presenter: In August last year, Channel Seven announced that Melissa had left the network after an incredible 25 years of service

After 11 years working alongside David Koch on Sunrise, she announced she was leaving Sunrise, departing in August 2013.

Melissa remained with the network, however, presenting Seven Afternoon News and Seven News at 7.

In 2015, she was announced as host and senior correspondent for Sunday Night, but the current affairs show was cancelled in October 2019, as a cost-cutting measure.

Melissa is now back in the spotlight with an audio-documentary titled Age Against the Machine, out this month, based on female ageing here and around the world.

Age Against The Machine is available on Audible.
Netflixs Bridgerton have just revealed four new cast members!

SPOILER ALERT: They're pretty good on the eye. Guess that's just a given now...

After recieving the heartbreaking confirmation that Rege-Jean Page AKA the Duke of Hastings wont be appearing in Season 2 - we're dieing to know about the new cast.

Show creator Shonda Rhimes has heard our cries, because shes just released some info about the four new key cast members of Season 2, posting pics of them on the Shondaland Instagram page.

First up is Rupert Young, who will be playing Jack.

No last name yet, just Jack.

Hmmm. Maybe they don't want us to know his last name for a reason...

The newest member of the ton with a connection to one of its most notable families, reads the Insta post.
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!
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The current leader of Isis betrayed his fellow jihadists and the secrets of his organisation to his American interrogators while in captivity, enabling western forces to carry out successful operations to arrest and kill high value targets.

Such was his eagerness to inform on other Islamists that Said Abd Al Rahman al-Mawla became known as the canary caliph while behind bars, singing like a bird according to one analyst who said the revelations were bound to sow deep discord within Isis.

Newly released intelligence files show that the questioning of al-Mawla at an American prison, Camp Bucca, in British-administered southern Iraq in 2008, revealed his hostility towards foreign fighters who had begun to arrive in the Middle East in large numbers at the time.

They also show that he was fundamentally opposed to women taking part in an armed struggle.

Abu Jasim Abu Qaswarah, then the deputy leader of the Islamist State in Iraq, which later became Isis, was among those whose details were passed on by al-Mawla. Abu Qaswarah, a Swedish-Moroccan Islamist who had recruited volunteers in Scandinavia to fight in Iraq, subsequently died in a firefight with the Americans in Mosul.

Read more:

The prisoner, the reports state, drew a layout of Abu Qaswarahs camp west of Mosul, helped identify him through his various pseudonyms, and described a trusted courier used by Abu Qaswarah, including the mans physical appearance, the vehicles he used, and places he frequented.

Abu Qaswarahs death helped al-Mawla reach the apex of jihadist hierarchy, succeeding Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi with the nom-de-guerre of Al Hashimi Al Qurash after the Isis chief was killed in a US special forces operation two years ago.

Al-Mawla, who is 44 years old and married with a son, had served for 18 months as a conscript in Saddam Husseins army before being arrested after being accused of taking part in the insurgency which followed the American and British occupation. He was freed in 2009 in reward for being an informer, and promptly joined al-Qaeda.

Haroro Ingram, a senior research fellow at George Washington Universitys programme on extremism, held that the tranches of documents would really shake trust in the leadership of Isis among its fighters.

What the documents potentially reveal is that the Islamic State has a rat problem. And its at the top. Youve essentially got the canary caliph sitting there, he said.

Al-Mawla is said to be a driving force behind recent attacks in various countries, including Mozambique (AFP via Getty)

Washington has put a bounty of $10m on al-Mawlas head. The Isis commander is accused of being one of the key figures in the persecution of the Yazidi community in Iraq. More than 5,000 Yazidis were killed, and hundreds of girls and women sold off into sexual slavery, as Isis took over territory in the Sinjar region.

Al-Mawla is also said to be the driving force behind the spread of the groups affiliates outside the Arab world, especially in Africa, where there has been a dramatic rise in violence, the most recent example of which was seen in an Islamist offensive in Mozambique, with civilians, some of them children, beheaded.

The allied Islamist organisations, including those in southeast Asia, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Libya, Mali, the Central African Republic, and Mozambique, swear personal allegiance to al-Mawla as the caliph as well as to Isis.

The 56 tactical interrogation reports (TIRs) are the second set of hitherto classified documents relating to al-Mawlas detention in 2008 to be released by the US administration through the US military academy at West Point by the Combat Terrorism Centre.

The first, smaller, tranche last year disclosed how he supplied information on 88 militants.

The new documents reveal that al-Mawla provided a breakdown of the Islamist groups set-up in its then main base, Mosul, charting its military, internal security, administrative and propaganda structures. He mapped out the entire Isis leadership in Mosul, said the US State Department.

The man who is now the chief of Isis gave his captors locations where his jihadist comrades could be tracked down, such as the Hay al-Samar market in the city, where they socialised and met for lunch.

In several reports, al-Mawla advised US forces of the best times of day to find ISIS members in different locations around Mosul, for example describing a specific cafe where operatives met daily, the US State Department said.

The interrogation reports show that at one stage al-Mawla tried to create a computer composite facial sketch of a Saudi jihadist fighter known as Jar Allah. His descriptions of some fellow Islamists, to help in their identification, included descriptions such as chubby cheeks, accented Arabic, prescription glasses with silver frames, a pot belly, and in the case of one associate, waddles when he walks.

Al-Mawla was particularly prolific in providing information about the groups media team, Al-Furqan, which was carrying out propaganda work. He made their location clear to western intelligence officers, pointing out that there is a sign above the office which says wedding videos but the office never produces wedding videos. He added that the best time to catch someone at the office is 1000 to 1200 daily except Friday.

The Camp Bucca inmate provided information on Al-Furqan personnel, with details down to where they parked their cars, focusing on the propaganda chief, Sheikh Hakim, also known as Abu Sara.

The propaganda arm is supposed to issue the Isis leaders speeches, but al-Mawla has yet to present one since he took over the role in October 2019.
The Greater Accra Regional Minister, Henry Quartey, has ordered the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) to pull down a structure erected on a waterway at Lashibi in Accra.



The facility, which has been earmarked for a washing bay, has been under construction since 2020, restricting the free flow of water in the community.



During a visit to the site by the Minister and a joint team of police and NADMO officials, he ordered authorities to ensure the structure is demolished by Wednesday to prevent flooding in the area.



The Engineer has said he has not authorised this structure to be here. I do not have a problem when people are building but especially with the rains about to set in, we cannot allow these things to go on. NADMO, you will get the machines, National Security will assist you, and it has to go down, he ordered.



Meanwhile, the Municipal Engineer of the Tema West Assembly, Vincent Blah Quarshie, said several attempts to halt the construction of the washing bay have proved futile.



The Tema Metropolitan Director of NADMO recently recommended the demolition of unauthorised structures around the Tema Community Seven Post Office because of the risk they pose to life and property.



The Tema NADMO Regional Director stated that the structures were constructed indiscriminately to obstruct the free flow of water.



NADMO urged the Tema city authorities to pull down the structures to avert a possible disaster in the future.

Source: adomonline.com









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Photo: The Canadian Press Patricia Daoust, owner of Bistro La dent Sucree sugar shack.

Stephanie Laurin slept next to a colossal, simmering pot every night over the last week, supervising the production cycle of pea soup at Chalet des Erables sugar shack, north of Montreal.

Laurin hasn't welcomed a single diner into her business since 2019 because of the pandemic, and yet she spent hours cooking and shipping hundreds of Easter packages across the region, filled with pea soup, meat pies, baked beans, omelettes, maple syrup and a recipe for maple taffy.

Chalet des Erables and more than 70 other sugar shacks across Quebec are taking advantage of an online platform created by their industry association to keep a beloved tradition alive and their businesses afloat during difficult times.

We will soon reach more than 2,000,000 visits on our platform, said Laurin, who is also the chair of the association that represents the province's sugar shacks, called Association des salles de reception et erablieres du Quebec.

Its unbelievable," she said in a recent interview, "considering the fact that we are eight million people in Quebec and that the website didnt exist a few weeks ago.

The website, called Ma Cabane a la Maison (my sugar shack at home), was launched Feb. 22 as a way to reinvent the sugar shack experience and prevent more businesses from closing. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the closure of one-quarter of Quebec's 200 sugar shacks.

Instead of sitting shoulder to shoulder along a cafeteria-style table eating sticky, calorie-loaded meals, Quebecers can bring the experience home  and they ordered from the platform in droves ahead of the Easter weekend.

Without Ma Cabane, less than 50 sugar shacks would still be standing, Laurin said. It was a plague, what was happening to the industry.

The provinces centuries-old love affair with maple syrup usually generates more than $300 million in annual revenues for sugar shacks, according to Laurin's industry association. The industry suffered a drop in income of more than 90 per cent in 2020 because of the pandemic.

The industry association estimates that the online platform will produce $10 million in revenues for participating companies over a period of eight weeks. The platform offers Quebecers a choice between a variety of menus from 70 sugar shacks; the meals can be picked up at one of 196 participating Metro grocery stores.

Laurin said she was initially unsure of the project but was overwhelmed by how quickly people modified their sugar shack tradition.

When people go to a sugar shack, its for the experience, to enjoy a day with your family, we see our uncles, aunts, grandchildren and we all share a meal, Laurin said. But Quebecers understood the message that if we want to reopen sugar shacks one day, we need to order online this year.
A trio of hungry lions proved they were a force to be reckoned with as they launched a deadly ambush on a lone buffalo.

Trail ranger Jan Kriel, from Mpumalanga, South Africa, captured the nail-biting footage in the country's Kruger National Park.

The 50-year-old was just several feet away when the three male lions spent 90-seconds cornering and stalking their prey before going in for the kill.

Trail ranger Jan Kriel, from Mpumalanga, South Africa, captured the nail-biting footage in the country's Kruger National Park

In the clip one of the male lions tentatively makes his way down a hillside toward its unsuspecting prey.

The buffalo suddenly spots the lurking predator and clambers to its feet before forcing the lion on to a nearby rock.

But two more lions then join the hunt and circle the buffalo before the deadly trio pounce and make their kill.

Trail ranger Jan has since said: 'The lions looked incredibly hungry so I knew we would be in for a surprise.

'We were actually watching the buffalo when we suddenly noticed the three male lions nearby.

The three male lions spent 90-seconds cornering and stalking their prey before going in for the kill

Lions usually ambush their prey by fanning out into a semi-circle to herd the prey into the centre where it is easier for them to make their final kill

'Knowing that they had quite an appetite, we gave them some space and watched the hunt unfold.

'Once the lions had launched at the buffalo, we realised the buffalo had a broken front leg which explains why it was on its own and easy prey.

'I knew that what we saw in front of us was the circle of life and a good example of the strongest survive. If an animal is injured, Mother Nature will dispose of it. This time, the lions did that job.'

Lions usually ambush their prey by fanning out into a semi-circle to herd the prey into the centre where it is easier for them to make their final kill.

Lionesses hunt roughly 90 per cent of a pride's food but males do not tend to pass up a prime hunting opportunity.
TOKYO and TEL AVIV, Israel, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- SCADAfence (SCADAfence/HQ in Tel Aviv, Israel/CEO: Elad Ben-Meir), the global leader in OT/IoT Security, today announced Murata Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (Murata/HQ in Kyoto, Japan/President: Norio Nakajima) has selected SCADAfence to secure Murata's global factories and started to use their OT security solutions in their factories.

As the use of IoT technology and digital transformation (DX) progresses, production facilities in factories are now increasingly connected to the Internet. Unlike corporate environments, factories must prioritize the operation of their production facilities while improving the level of security measures against cyber-attacks that are becoming more advanced every day.

The SCADAfence Platform is designed for securing large manufacturing facilities. By collecting communication data from operational systems and production facilities in real-time, the SCADAfence Platform visualizes and analyzes the contents of communication protocols using its unique analysis technology. It detects suspicious movements of production facilities resulting from cyber-attacks, insecure protocols, as well as unexpected configuration changes and malfunctions, enabling the enhancement of network monitoring functions in factories.

Based on Murata's Global Agreement for this global implementation with NRI Secure Technologies Ltd. (NRISecure/HQ in Tokyo, Japan/President: Akira Kakinoki), a consulting partner under SCADAfence's eco-partnership program in Japan, NRISecure and SCADAfence will jointly support Murata's manufacturing to further improve the level of security measures at their production sites and ensure the safety and security of their global production activities.

The solutions provided by SCADAfence are integrated network monitoring tools that maximize the security and availability of production processes consisting of the following components.

OT / ICS Security - The SCADAfence Platform is an industrial cybersecurity solution that provides visibility and monitoring for industrial networks. The platform is passive and automates asset discovery and inventory management, as well as threat detection and risk management. By employing a wide range of algorithms, machine learning, and AI, the platform detects anomalies and security events that can compromise availability and affect the safety and reliability of an OT network and its assets. The SCADAfence Platform is an award-winning solution that has the highest detection rates and the lowest false positive rates in the industry. It allows for centralized management of multiple locations and can be easily integrated into other cybersecurity solutions using a RESTful API.

- is an industrial cybersecurity solution that provides visibility and monitoring for industrial networks. The platform is passive and automates asset discovery and inventory management, as well as threat detection and risk management. By employing a wide range of algorithms, machine learning, and AI, the platform detects anomalies and security events that can compromise availability and affect the safety and reliability of an OT network and its assets. The SCADAfence Platform is an award-winning solution that has the highest detection rates and the lowest false positive rates in the industry. It allows for centralized management of multiple locations and can be easily integrated into other cybersecurity solutions using a RESTful API. Governance & Compliance - The SCADAfence Governance Portal measures compliance and monitors the progress made over time across all sites. It identifies all of the gaps and bottlenecks and allows users to generate systematic strategies to improve their organizational security at scale. The portal enables IT and OT departments to centrally define and monitor their organizational adherence to organizational policies and to OT-related regulations. The governance portal is easily deployed, is not intrusive, and does not jeopardize the process availability in any of the OT sites.

"We have seen a substantial increase in the number of targeted attacks against manufacturing organizations over the past 12 months. As detailed in our Anatomy of a Targeted Ransomware Attack report, manufacturing facilities have become lucrative targets for crime syndicates, nation-states, and individuals with nefarious intent," said Miyoji Kakinuki, Sales Director of Japan & APAC of SCADAfence. "Operational technology security is designed to substantially reduce risk by providing visibility, asset management, and real-time threat detection to manufacturing organizations. We look forward to working with Murata and helping them better fortify their industrial networks globally."

About Murata

Murata Manufacturing Co., Ltd. is a worldwide leader in the design, manufacture and sale of ceramic-based passive electronic components & solutions, communication modules and power supply modules. Murata is committed to the development of advanced electronic materials and leading edge, multi-functional, high-density modules. The company has employees and manufacturing facilities throughout the world. For more information, visit Murata's website at https://www.murata.com

About NRI SecureTechnologies

NRI SecureTechnologies is a subsidiary of NRI specializing in cybersecurity, and a leading global provider of next-generation managed security services and security consulting. Established in 2000, NRI Secure is focused on delivering high-value security outcomes for our clients with the precision and efficiency that define Japanese quality. For more details, visit https://www.nri-secure.com

About SCADAfence

SCADAfence is the global technology leader in OT & IoT cybersecurity. SCADAfence offers a full suite of industrial cybersecurity products that provides full coverage of large-scale networks, offering best-in-class network monitoring, asset discovery, governance, remote access, and IoT device security. A Gartner "Cool Vendor" in 2020, SCADAfence delivers proactive security and visibility to some of the world's most complex OT networks, including the largest manufacturing facility in Europe. SCADAfence enables organizations in critical infrastructure, manufacturing, and building management industries to operate securely, reliably, and efficiently. To learn more, visit our website , check out our blog , or follow us on LinkedIn .

Here is the Japanese version of this press release: https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000012.000038333.html

Contact:

Michael Yehoshua

[email protected]

SOURCE SCADAfence
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Malibu, CA, April 6, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Join Ellis Martin for a conversation with David Suda, the President and CEO of Gold Terra Resource Corp. ( CVE:YGT )( OTCMKTS:TRXXF ).Gold Terra owns a 100% interest in the Yellowknife City Gold Project, encompassing 800 sq km of contiguous land within 12 kilometers of the city of Yellowknife. The Project is located in the prolific Yellowknife greenstone belt, covering 70 kilometers of strike length along the main mineralized break in proximity to the former high-grade Con and Giant gold mines which have produced over 14 million ounces of gold. The Yellowknife City Gold Project is close to vital infrastructure, including all-season roads, air transportation, service providers, hydro-electric power and skilled tradespeople.In this segment Mr. Suda will discuss the significant increase of 64% for the inferred mineral resource to 1,207,000 ounces at its Yellowknife City Gold Project.About Gold Terra's Yellowknife City Gold ProjectThe YCG Project encompasses 800 sq. km of contiguous land immediately north, south and east of the City of Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. Through a series of acquisitions, Gold Terra controls one of the six major high-grade gold camps in Canada. Being within 10 kilometres of the City of Yellowknife, the YCG is close to vital infrastructure, including all-season roads, air transportation, service providers, hydro-electric power and skilled tradespeople.The YCG Project lies on the prolific Yellowknife greenstone belt, covering nearly 70 kilometres of strike length along the main mineralized shear system that host the former-producing high-grade Con and Giant gold mines. The Company's exploration programs have successfully identified significant zones of gold mineralization and multiple targets that remain to be tested which reinforces the Company's objective of re-establishing Yellowknife as one of the premier gold mining districts in Canada.To view the interview, please visit:About Gold Terra Resource Corp.

Gold Terra Resource Corp. (CVE:YGT) (OTCMKTS:YGTFF) owns a 100% interest in the Yellowknife City Gold ("YCG") Project, encompassing 790 sq km of contiguous land within 12 kilometers of the city of Yellowknife. The Project is located in the prolific Yellowknife greenstone belt, covering 70 kilometers of strike length along the main mineralized break in proximity to the former high-grade Con and Giant gold mines which have produced over 14 million ounces of gold. The YCG Project is close to vital infrastructure, including all-season roads, air transportation, service providers, hydro-electric power and skilled tradespeople. On November 4, 2019, Gold Terra announced an Inferred mineral resource of 735,000 ounces of gold for the YCG Project, consisting of a pit constrained Inferred mineral resource of 11.6 million tonnes averaging 1.4 g/t for 523,000 ounces of contained gold and an underground Inferred mineral resource of 1.2 million tonnes averaging 5.7 g/t for 212,000 ounces of contained gold.
Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities, Vienna, Austria

Organization: Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)

Country: Austria

City: Vienna, Austria

Office: OSCE Vienna

Closing date: Thursday, 15 April 2021

The majority of positions in OSCE field operations are filled by secondment, which means that individuals are nominated by their respective OSCE participating State. In addition, a limited number of seconded positions are available at the OSCE Secretariat and the institutions.

Issued by

OSCE Secretariat

Vacancy number VNSECP01625 Vacancy type International Contracted Field of expertise Economic and Environmental Affairs Grade D1 Number of posts 1 Duty station Vienna Date of issue 18 March 2021 Deadline for application 15 April 2021 - 23:59 Central European Time (CET/CEST) Date of entry on duty 9 August 2021

Background

The OSCE has a comprehensive approach to security that encompasses politico-military, economic and environmental, and human aspects. It therefore addresses a wide range of security-related concerns, including arms control, confidence- and security-building measures, human rights, combating human trafficking, national minorities, democratization, policing strategies, counter-terrorism and economic and environmental activities. All 57 participating States enjoy equal status, and decisions are taken by consensus on a politically, but not legally binding basis.

The OSCE Secretariat in Vienna assists the OSCE Chairmanship in its activities, and provides operational and administrative support to the field operations, and, as appropriate, to other institutions.

The Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities (OCEEA) deals with economic and environmental issues, operating under the premise that promoting economic prosperity and co-operation on environmental problems can contribute to international security and stability. The OSCEs role is twofold: a) to monitor economic and environmental developments among participating States, and alert them to any threat of instability, and b) to facilitate the formulation of economic and environmental policies and initiatives among participating States, to promote security. The Office currently comprises 22 staff members.

The OSCE is committed to gender equality. This is a senior management role and women are currently underrepresented in senior management grades. Female candidates are therefore encouraged to apply.

Tasks and Responsibilities

As part of the senior executive leadership team and under the guidance of the Secretary General, as Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities, you will lead the OCEEA in strengthening the ability of the OSCE to address the economic, social and environmental aspects of security.

More specifically, as the Co-ordinator of OCEEA, you will perform the following:

Be instrumental in assisting participating States in implementing the mandate and relevant OSCE commitments, with the objective of achieving dynamic and result-oriented OSCE activities in the Economic and Environmental Dimension;Bringing to the attention of the Permanent Council and its Economic and Environmental Committee economic, environmental and social issues and developments which pose a threat to or might affect security and stability in the OSCE area;Taking the responsibility for enhancing OSCE interaction with partners through regular consultations with international economic organizations, financial institutions and organizations active in the environmental field, particularly partner organizations in the Environment and Security (ENVSEC) Initiative as well as with regional, sub-regional and trans-border economic co-operation organizations, to assess potential security risks;Strengthening the economic, social and environmental components of the work of the OSCE Field Operations, increasing interaction with the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly as well as broadening OSCE interaction with representatives of the business community, business associations and non-governmental organizations;Developing, on the basis of input from participating States, a work programme for the implementation of strategic documents for the Economic and Environmental Dimension, as well as following up on meetings such as the Economic and Environmental Forum;Reporting regularly to the Economic and Environmental Committee of the Permanent Council and to the Permanent Council on key activities and engaging in systematic dialogue with the participating States on all issues of relevance to the OSCE Economic and Environmental Dimension;Performing other related duties as assigned.

For more detailed information on the structure and work of the OSCE Secretariat and the OCEEA, please see https://www.osce.org/secretariat and https://www.osce.org/oceea

Necessary Qualifications

Second-level university degree in international relations, law, environmental matters, economics or a related area; a first-level university degree in combination with two years of additional qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the second-level university degree;

Expertise in problems of transitions to a market economy and sustainable development would be an additional asset;

A minimum of twelve years of progressively responsible and relevant professional experience, including a minimum of seven years at a senior level of responsibility, in areas related to economic and environmental issues, particularly in the region covered by the OSCE;

Extensive experience in working with other international organizations and institutions;

Ability to lead and manage diverse teams, and effectively co-ordinate the activities of the work units to achieve overall objectives;

A dynamic leader, with a results-oriented approach and knowledge of programme and project management;

Professional fluency in English; working knowledge of other OSCE working languages is desirable;

Demonstrated gender awareness and sensitivity, and an ability to integrate a gender perspective into tasks and activities;

Excellent interpersonal and diplomatic skills, including tact, discretion and political sensitivity with sound judgement and a high level of integrity;

Ability to establish and maintain effective and constructive working relations with people of different national and cultural backgrounds.

Required competencies

Core values

Commitment: Actively contributes to achieving organizational goals

Diversity: Respects others and values their diverse perspectives and contributions

Integrity: Acts in a manner consistent with the Organizations core values and organizational principles

Accountability: Takes responsibility for own action and delegated work

Core competencies

Communication: Actively works to achieve clear and transparent communication with colleagues and with stakeholders of the Organization

Collaboration: Works effectively with others on common goals and fosters a positive, trust-based working environment

Planning: Works towards the achievement of goals in a structured and measured manner

Analysis and decision-making: Analyses available information, draws well-founded conclusions and takes appropriate decisions

Initiative-taking: Proposes and initiates new ideas, activities and projects

Flexibility: Responds positively and effectively to changing circumstances

Managerial competencies (for positions with managerial responsibilities)

Leadership: Provides a clear sense of direction, builds trust and creates an enabling environment

Strategic thinking: Identifies goals that advance the organizational agenda and develops plans for achieving them

Managing performance: Helps to maximize team performance by providing active feedback and skill development opportunities

Remuneration Package

Monthly remuneration is approximately EUR 10,699, depending on post adjustment and family status. OSCE salaries are exempt from taxation in Austria. Social benefits will include possibility of participation in the Cigna medical insurance scheme and the OSCE Provident Fund. Other allowances and benefits are similar to those offered under the United Nations Common System.

Please note that appointments are normally made at step 1 of the applicable OSCE salary scale.

How To Apply

If you wish to apply for this position, please use the OSCEs online application link found under

https://jobs.osce.org/vacancies

.

The OSCE retains the discretion to re-advertise/re-post the vacancy, to cancel the recruitment, to offer an appointment at a lower grade or to offer an appointment with a modified job description or for a different duration.

Only those candidates who are selected to participate in the subsequent stages of recruitment will be contacted.

Please note that vacancies in the OSCE are open for competition only amongst nationals of participating States, please see

https://www.osce.org/participating-states

.

The OSCE is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages qualified female and male candidates from all religious, ethnic and social backgrounds to apply to become a part of the Organization.

Candidates should be aware that OSCE officials shall conduct themselves at all times in a manner befitting the status of an international civil servant. This includes avoiding any action which may adversely reflect on the integrity, independence and impartiality of their position and function as officials of the OSCE. The OSCE is committed to applying the highest ethical standards in carrying out its mandate. For more information on the values set out in OSCE Competency Model, please see

https://jobs.osce.org/resources/document/our-competency-model

.

The OSCE is a non-career organization committed to the principle of staff rotation, therefore the maximum period of service in this post is 4 years.

Please be aware that the OSCE does not request payment at any stage of the application and review process.

Link to the organizations job offer: https://unjobs.org/vacancies/1617551958609
While Larson maintains the election results have deep roots, and stem from more than recent controversies, she found herself the subject of one after a flyer went out that deadnamed her. Deadnaming is when somebody uses the name by which a transgender person was identified before they transitioned or came out, either accidentally or intentionally disregarding their new name.
James Bond took on Britain's Cold War enemies with the help of a regular supply of vodka martinis, his trusty Walther PPK and a healthy dose of dry humour.

Liz Truss is reaching out to Britain's friends in the wake of Brexit with Scotch whisky, award-winning cheeses and agreeable free trade terms.

But the Trade Secretary and 007 do now have something more in common than vigorous patriotism and a mutual good eye for couture.

Ms Truss is to move into an office in the Old Admiralty building in Whitehall that was once used by Bond author Ian Fleming.

She is wielding her 'licence to trade' in Room 39, which housed the then Lieutenant Commander Fleming when he was part of Naval Intelligence during the Second World War.

She will be joined in the building off Horse Guards' Parade by 2,000 departmental civil servants, brought together under one room from DIT's dispersed former homes, the Telegraph reported.

But the move has already attracted some criticism. While not quite running to a movie budget a tender has gone out for a PR firm to produce 'staff engagement and progress video and photography', at a cost of 38,000 for six-weeks' work.

Damian McBride, the Labour adviser who unearthed the tender, said: 'The only way Liz Truss's ''Licence to Trade'' move to the Old Admiralty Building could look more like a massively wasteful vanity project is if taxpayers' money was being used to make a film about it....Oh.'

Ms Truss is to move into an office in the Old Admiralty building in Whitehall that was once used by Bond author Ian Fleming.

She is wielding her 'licence to trade' in Room 39, which housed the then Lieutenant Commander Fleming when he was part of Naval Intelligence during the Second World War.

A larger-than-life character who spent many years involved with the British Secret Service, Fleming (left) often explained that his plots were taken from his own experiences, 'no matter how bizarre they might seem'. )Right) Daniel Craig is to play Bond for the last time in No TRime To Die, which is due for release in September.

However MailOnline has been told the contract was not for a PR film documenting the new site but covered induction material for staff working at the new headquarters.

A DIT spokesman said: 'The Department has recorded the maximum value for the production of induction material, including health and safety training, for occupying our new headquarters.

'The training content includes fire safety and Covid secure workplace protocols.

'This is the most effective and cost-efficient way to deliver this training while our staff are working predominantly remotely, in line with the latest Government guidelines. We are committed to delivering the best value for money, cutting waste and inefficiency.'

A larger-than-life character who spent many years involved with the British Secret Service, Fleming often explained that his plots were taken from his own experiences, 'no matter how bizarre they might seem'.

As a result, his James Bond novels and short stories  and the phenomenally successful films that followed  are peppered with references to Fleming's own exhilarating days in wartime naval intelligence and to the far-flung places he visited, as well as the personal traits, and even names, of some of his glamorous high society friends.

Fleming's first biographer, John Pearson, wrote: 'James Bond is not really a character in the books. He is a mouthpiece for the man who inhabits him, a dummy for himself to hang clothes on to perform the dreams of violence and daring which fascinate his creator.'
UniCredit bank logo is seen in Siena, Italy (Photo : REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini/File Photo)

UniCredit investor Cariverona is in favour of the pay package the Italian bank has agreed with its new Chief Executive Andrea Orcel, a source at the Italian banking foundation said on Tuesday.



Orcel's pay package of up to 7.5 million euros ($8.9 million) a year has been criticised by leading shareholder advisers Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis, which have recommended investors reject the pay policy.



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Shareholders in Italy's No.2 bank meet on April 15 to appoint a new board that will then name as CEO the former head of investment banking at UBS.



The Cariverona source said UniCredit's new boss faced "important and brave" decisions needed to revive UniCredit's profitability and it would not have been right to limit the selection process by posing limits over the new CEO's pay.



Cariverona, one of Italy's charitable institutions that are long-standing investors in the country's banks, owns 1.8% of UniCredit.



The source said the pay package UniCredit agreed with the new CEO was not out of line with the standards of Italy's financial world.



Orcel, one of Europe's best paid dealmakers, takes over from French banker Jean Pierre Mustier, who left in February after falling out with the board over strategy.



Orcel is embroiled in a dispute over pay with Santander after the Spanish bank two years ago withdrew an offer to make him its CEO.



The source said Cariverona was strongly behind Orcel's designations because it had always maintained UniCredit, as Italy's only bank deemed of global significance by regulators, had to look for the best candidate in replacing Mustier.



Orcel, who is relinquishing tens of millions in deferred pay from UBS in joining UniCredit, has no sign-on package from the Italian bank.



But ISS and Glass Lewis have taken aim at the fact that his up to 5 million euro share bonus is not linked to performance goals for the first year.($1 = 0.8440 euros)


New Delhi:

The Jammu and Kashmir Police suspect the slain Border Security Force (BSF) Trooper on leave at home was brutally killed by Lashkar-e-Taiba militants.

The slain BSF constable of 73rd Battalion Rameez Ahmad Parray was killed at his home in Jammu and Kashmirs Bandipore district.

North Kashmir Inspector General of Police Nitish Kumar confirmed that the terrorists who first attacked Parray with knife and then fired indiscriminately at him.

Also read| Video: Unarmed BSF constable responded with Jai Hind while facing death at the hands of terrorists at home in J&K



He added, Around 9 o'clock Jawan Ramzan Parray who was on holiday in his hometown was attacked by terrorists.

Kumar added, The terrorist first attacked him with a knife and then indiscriminately opened fire on him.

The officer added that in the initial investigation they have learnt that Lashkar-e-Taiba's Mohammed Bhai and his aides were behind the attack.

Earlier, Jammu and Kashmir director general of police (DGP) SP Vaid had termed the jawans killing as barbaric and inhuman.

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TROY  The serene 1.8-acre private Washington Park, which is securely locked behind an ornamental fence that only key holders can enter is undergoing a once-in-a-generation change.

The Washington Park Association has changed leaders as the group begins its transition to a homeowners association to protect the ornamental park and the owners of the 52 properties that have the keys to unlock the park gates.

It's also become a neighborhood where a residence at 1 Washington Place sold for $1.055 million in 2019 about a decade after the buildings on the street along the parks southern border were collapsing from disrepair.

The change has seen longtime WPA President Lynn Kopka depart from her post after more than 20 years. She resigned in late March just before the neighborhood association's election took place and created her own website, Washington Park Neighborhoods (wpn-troy.org). Jim Martin was voted in as the new association president.

I felt it was time for me to leave. Were transitioning to a homeowners association, Kopka said standing in the middle of the park surrounded by blossoming flowers and budding trees on a warm spring day.

To many residents, Kopka is synonymous with the park, a point person for and persona of the urban oasis and its surroundings. Thats now changed.

Were looking to move things forward in a different direction, Martin said.

The new leadership of the Washington Park Association is working on developing a formal homeowners association for the property owners for whom the park is their front yard. Organizing an association or perhaps a limited liability corporation would provide legal protection for the owners of the parkland should an accident or other incident occur.

Washington Park began in 1840 as part of a real estate development bringing together Troys business leaders at a time when the city was emerging as one of the nations wealthiest commercial industrial centers. When it was envisioned, the development was outside the downtown core but still only a short walk away from the commercial center.

Washington Park became one of only two private parks in the state, owned by the adjoining property owners. The other is Gramercy Park in Manhattan.

Kopka finds herself not fitting into what the other property owners want. She resides at 195 Second St., a home on the parks western border. She is a key holder.

There are changes so the new Washington Park board can get the homeowners association going, Kopka said.

The parks neighborhood has constantly morphed as waves of immigration swept through the Capital Region. The wealthy merchants were replaced by Irish immigrants, who were followed by Jewish residents and finally by Italian immigrants. St. Marys, a now-closed Roman Catholic Church, was built at the corner of Third and Washington streets. The area was also home to a convent and funeral home. The Arts Center for the Capital Region and the Italian Community Center each started out on the park before moving to other parts of the city.

Kopka, who moved to the Capital Region from Northampton, Mass., to study at Russell Sage College, is a former Democratic City Council president and Fifth District councilwoman. About 30 years ago, she purchased her property on the park, which she renovated along with other buildings.

Her biggest efforts, however, focused on Washington Place.

The 1840s townhouses along Washington Place were in disrepair and on the verge of falling down.

You could walk down the street and smell the rot, Kopka recalled.

Kopka helped secure investment to restore the buildings by obtaining $90,000 to protect their facades. The block's restoration to its original splendor is reflected in the sales price of 1 Washington Place. In addition, Kopka battled Troy City Hall successfully to get Washington Place recobbled with the addition of 7,000 cobblestones to restore it to its original condition.

Kopka said she is staying involved in Washington Park and the surrounding Osgood, Little Italy, Riverside and Historic Sage neighborhoods. Kopka will remain president of the Friends of Washington Park, the nonprofit organization created for neighborhood improvement projects.






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Sports Mole takes an in-depth look at how Bayern Munich could line up for their Champions League quarter-final first leg with Paris Saint-Germain.

Bayern Munich must work around the absence of star striker Robert Lewandowski for the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final with Paris Saint-Germain on Wednesday.

The 32-year-old has found the back of the net in 10 of his 13 Champions League matches under Hansi Flick, but a knee injury will prevent him leading the line this week, so Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting could be trusted from the off.

Should Choupo-Moting spearhead the attack, the trio of Kingsley Coman, Thomas Muller and Leroy Sane are likely to start behind the striker, as Serge Gnabry has now been ruled out after testing positive for coronavirus.

Leon Goretzka took it upon himself to make the net ripple in the absence of Lewandowski against RB Leipzig, and the Germany international will form a fearsome midfield pairing with Joshua Kimmich once again.

Alphonso Davies and Jerome Boateng both sat out the win over Leipzig through suspension, but the defensive duo are back here and could earn immediate recalls to the starting XI for the first leg.

Lucas Hernandez and Niklas Sule's spots are at risk as Davies and Boateng prepare to return, but Flick will be unable to call upon Corentin Tolisso and Douglas Costa, who are nursing tendon and ankle injuries respectively.

Bayern Munich possible starting lineup:

Neuer; Pavard, Boateng, Alaba, Davies; Kimmich, Goretzka; Sane, Muller, Coman; Choupo-Moting

> Click here to see how PSG could line up for this clash
A trial of the Oxford-AstraZeneca covid-19 vaccine in children has been halted while the UKs drug regulator, The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), investigates potential links between the vaccine and thrombosis in adults. The trial, on 300 volunteers between the ages of six and 17 put forward with parental approval, started in February with the aim of determining whether the AstraZeneca vaccine produces a strong immune response in children in that age group.

The pausing of the UK-based trial comes amid global concern that the AstraZeneca vaccine can cause rare blood clotting in adults. A European Medicines Agency (EMA) official, apparently speaking in an official capacity, said there appeared to be a link between the vaccine and cases of clotting in adults. EMA investigations into a potential causal link between the vaccine and thrombosis is ongoing, although the regulator has consistently stated the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine in preventing covid-19, with its associated risk of hospitalization and death, outweigh the risks of side effects.

Confidence in AstraZeneca vaccine waning

Nevertheless, 18 countries including Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands briefly halted distribution of the AstraZeneca vaccine in March after cases of severe coagulation disorder and strokes affecting mostly younger recipients were reported in EU countries including Austria and Denmark.

The halting of the European rollout of AstraZeneca vaccines also had worldwide repercussions, with Canada, Thailand, Mexico and the Philippines among countries to suspend or limit the drugs administration. While most of those countries have now resumed the rollout, confidence in the vaccine program has been shaken by the possible link with clotting disorders.

According to a recent BBC report, 30 cases of clotting had been reported among AstraZeneca recipients in the UK as of 2 April, of which 22 were reports of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, or clotting on the brain. The MHRA said the number was very small given that these came from a total of 18.1 million vaccines given in the UK up to 24 March.

"No concerns over the safety of AstraZeneca trial"

Speaking about the Oxford-AstraZeneca trial in children, Professor Andrew Pollard of Oxford University said while there are no concerns over the safety of the trial itself, it was decided it would be prudent to wait for more information before resuming.

"While there are no safety concerns in the pediatric clinical trial, we await additional information from the MHRA on its review of rare cases of thrombosis/thrombocytopenia that have been reported in adults, before giving any further vaccinations in the trial."

The EMA, whose safety committee "has not yet reached a conclusion and is continuing the analysis," and the MHRA are both expected to release their conclusions on the matter in the coming days. The MHRA, for its part, has also reiterated that the benefits of receiving the covid-19 vaccine far outweigh the risks.
The tourism industry of Vietnam is focusing on the local market of 80 million tourists with the expectation of impressive growth in visitors and revenue in 2021.

Vu The Binh, Vice President of the Vietnam Tourism Association, said that before the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, domestic tourism (inbound) tourism was always behind international tourism (outbound). In 2019, 49 million Vietnamese traveled in the country, but revenue from local tourists accounted for only about 20% of the tourism industry's total revenue.

Mr. Vu The Binh: Domestic tourism has been the savior of many travel firms. Photo by Tuan Nam.

The year 2020 showed the resilience of domestic tourism after a period of crisis because of social distancing. In 2021, the Vietnamese tourism industry will continue to focus on this target audience, while preparing to welcome international tourists when necessary conditions are met.

With the theme "Domestic tourism - the driving force to restore Vietnam tourism in new normal context", the 2021 National Domestic Tourism Forum will take place in the northern city of Ninh Binh on April 14-15, with 400-500 delegates.

At the forum, delegates will analyze the importance of domestic tourism, exchange ideas about the tourism industry of Vietnam and the region, share experience to develop domestic tourism, and propose solutions for domestic tourism development in the coming time.

Domestic tourism will be the main market of Vietnam in 2021 and 2022. Learning from the demand stimulus programs in 2020, the tourism slogan in this period is to have safety and build recovery plan in a new period, said Ha Van Sieu, vice head of the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism.

Vice President of the Vietnam Tourism Association Vu The Binh said that Vietnam has launched 3-4 stimulus campaigns for domestic tourism. Many people, when it comes to stimulating tourism demand, think of discounts, but according to Binh, this is unreasonable because the price reduction is limited as it requires cooperation and sharing between travel firms and destinations, which is still weak in Vietnam. Therefore, in the coming time, domestic tourism demand stimulus will not emphasize the price much. Reasonable price and discount will be offered but the quality should not be affected.

These issues will be discussed at the upcoming national travel forum, an event that starts a series of activities aimed at stimulating domestic tourism demand.

After the forum, the annual Vietnam International Travel Mart (VITM) 2021 will take place in Hanoi from May 5 to 8 with the theme New Normal - New Opportunities.

At least 450 travel agencies from 40 provinces and cities nationwide and four international markets namely Thailand, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are expected to participate in the fair.

The event is expected to gather 350 booths of 450 tourism agencies from 40 localities nationwide to introduce their tourism products and promotions.

The fair will provide an opportunity for the tourism industry to boost travel demand and for participating travel businesses and localities nationwide to promote their products and tourist attractions.

In the previous eight editions, the VITM has gathered mostly travel agents, but now more resorts and hotels have signed up.

Workshops at the VITM 2021 are expected to seek solutions to various problems like the brain drain in tourism human resources.

Ngoc Ha

Tourism industry looks back on a year of hardship The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic cast a long shadow over the tourism industry in 2020, causing it to fall short of ambitious targets set for the year.
Libyan Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah hosted the leaders of Italy and Greece for talks in Tripoli on Tuesday.

Libya's interim government, which took power last month, is meant to bring together a country that has been torn apart by civil war for nearly a decade.

It is also meant to shepherd the country through general elections on December 24.

Speaking at a press conference on his first international trip as leader, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said the Libyan ceasefire must be upheld and "closely observed".

He said Italy was satisfied with Libya's efforts on migrant rescues, and said the European Union was invested in the issue.

The meeting of the two leaders underscores the interest Italy has maintained in Libya in recent years, especially when it comes to migration.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis reaffirmed a point made by President of the European Council, Charles Michel in Tripoli on Sunday, by calling for the "complete departure of foreign mercenaries as requested by all European countries".

Meanwhile Dbeibah said his interim government would evaluate and proceed with international agreements in "the interests of Libya".

"Just as other countries are looking for their interests, we are studying all agreements, especially the Turkish ones and the Libyan ones, the interests of our state and our people first, then our neighbours in the region and in the area," Dbeibah said.

Dbeibah was referring to a 2019 Turkish-Libya agreement on military cooperation and maritime jurisdiction, signed off by the Libyan Government of National Accord.

Libya was plunged into chaos when a NATO-backed uprising in 2011 toppled longtime ruler Moammar Gadhafi, who was later killed.

The country was in recent years split between rival east- and west-based administrations, each backed by different armed groups and foreign governments.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
Paycom founder Chad Richison has become the highest-paid CEO in the S&P 500 after he was awarded a 2020 compensation package worth $211 million, it has been revealed.

Richison, who founded the payroll processor in 1998, was awarded 1.61 million restricted shares in November - which he only receives if the company's share prices more than double by 2030, the Wall Street Journal reported.

His award of restricted shares could eventually add more than $2 billion to his fortune in the next 10 years and is estimated to be worth a number closer to $702 million, according to a calculation by ISS ESG, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The compensation package is one of the five largest awards to a CEO since at least 2010, MyLogIQ data shows - according to the Wall Street Journal.

Paycom founder Chad Richison has become the highest-paid CEO in the S&P 500 after he was awarded a 2020 compensation package worth $211 million. He is pictured right with his wife Charis

The compensation package is one of the five largest awards to a CEO since at least 2010, MyLogIQ data shows

Elon Musk received the largest CEO award in 2018 when he was given stocks valued at $2.3 billion by his company Tesla.

Tim Cook of Apple received the second largest award worth $378 million in 2011 and Alphabet Inc.'s Sundar Pichai received a package worth $280.6 million from Google's parent company in 2019.

Jason Clark, chairman of the Paycom board's compensation committee, told the WSJ that the award depends on Richison 'achieving aggressive performance goals.'

'Mr. Richison's recent performance equity award is structured to align with stockholders' interests, as it requires significant value creation for them before he can realize any value from the grant,' Clark said.

'This award is entirely dependent on Mr. Richison achieving aggressive performance goalswhich will generate tremendous value for our stockholders.'

Richison only gets half of the shares if the company's stock price stays above $1,000 for 20 consecutive trading days within six years, the outlet reported. He gets the other half if the share price reaches $1,750 for 20 straight days by late 2030.

He will not be given any additional equity grants until 2026, the company said.

Paycom's share prices closed at about $378 on Monday, the WSJ reported.

The company went public in 2014 and its share prices have surged over the past year and has outperformed the S&P 500. Paycom's stock prices have are up 108.72% in the past year while the S&P 500 is up 53% in the last year.

'Paycom's market value has jumped from $2 billion five years ago to $22.7 billion based on Monday's closing stock price,' the Wall Street Journal reported.

According to Forbes data, Richison has a net worth around $2.9 billion making him the 1,064 on a list of the world's billionaires. He has given away between 1% to 4.99% of his wealth, the outlet reported.

Richison, of Tuttle, Oklahoma, has a rating of 9/10 on Forbes' self-made score - which makes him a 'true rags-to-riches' story, according to the outlet.

'Growing up in Tuttle, Oklahoma, I learned that if I wanted something, I had to work hard for it. That upbringing gave me a do-for-yourself-and-others spirit, and I am very grateful for that,' Richison wrote while signing The Giving Pledge.

'In high school, I started my first business hauling hay. As a young entrepreneur, I learned early on that you have to work hard, honor your commitments and surround yourself with good people because no one does it alone.'

The Giving Pledge - which was started by Bill and Melinda Gates - is a commitment by extremely wealthy individuals to giving away a majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes.
Last Sunday as Prime Minister Narendra Modi was meeting top bureaucrats over rising Covid cases, chief executive of a private airline asked his head of operations to prepare for a sudden grounding of operations.

Just a month ago, the CEO had met investors and the talk revolved around a total recovery and bright future of Indian aviation. Hes back to plugging daily cash burn.

Within two weeks of many airlines deciding to roll back salary cuts encouraged by a steady increase in traffic flow, a second wave of along with rules of compulsory RT-PCR test has hit forward bookings. The fears of last summer, when the pandemic had overturned all the wisdom of airline boardrooms, have returned to haunt the

According to an official in the Ministry of Civil Aviation, flight occupancy is down to 60 per cent from 70 per cent in the first week of March. Airline lobby group IATA estimates that low cost airlines need to fly at 80 per cent occupancy to be profitable.

The rising number of cases has certainly deferred a recovery. But with increasing vaccination drive, I expect a total recovery in six to eight months, said Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) head Arun Kumar.

With caution in the air, airlines are reviewing their plans on aircraft deliveries and in some cases deferring fresh induction of aircraft. SpiceJet and AirAsia together were supposed to bring in eight new aircraft by the end of May. Those are in cold storage now as airlines are unsure on what demand will look like a month later, a person in know said.

A commercial head of a private airline who hasnt taken leave since last March was planning a family vacation this April. Forward bookings for 30 days are again plummeting. I have zero bookings for May. Things were looking stable and we had started rebuilding schedules with some predictability on occupancy. That is all gone now. Im frustrated and waiting for this (unpredictability) to end, he said.





ALSO READ: RBI commits to OMO calendar, leaves key policy rates and stance unchanged

Revenue management--the science of getting the highest price for a ticket-- is based on historical data. With big data computing, airlines know with precision what the demand will be for a certain flight on a certain day. But, the changing pattern of the virus has thrown that out of the window. For the summer schedule, we were depending on historical data from 2019 thinking things were back to normal. Now there is no relation. We are again flying blind, a network planner at Air India said.

Indias largest carrier IndiGo too has gone on a wait and watch mode. Sources said pilot schedules had been made for 15 days rather than the usual practice of preparing it for full month.



We are waiting and watching before taking a call. If asked for a comparison, I shouldnt say that things are as bad as last year but that predictability of booking which helps in preparing a robust schedule is lost again, said an IndiGo executive.

ALSO READ: Covid-19 vaccination centres to be launched at workplaces from April 11

With around 280 aircraft in its fleet and international travel closed, network planners of IndiGo have been experimenting with new destinations since they still have plenty of aircraft and crews sitting around. Any further hit to demand would be damaging for IndiGo as it will find it hard to deploy aircraft profitably.

According to IndiGo CEO Ronojoy Dutta, predictability of demand depends on sentiment and when people get afraid of the virus, bookings start to plummet. It really is very news flow dependent. If the market is quiet, there is no big news coming, then the revenue is strong, Dutta had said.

For the government too, eagerly looking for a successful sale of Air India, the second wave has come as a rude shock. Officials at DIPAM, the nodal body looking to sell Air India, now fear the financial bids which were supposed to come in by the second week of May could be further lowered as revival of international travel looks distant.

Staring at a washout of the summer schedule, airline executives are keeping their fingers crossed and hoping that the ongoing vaccination drive will help control things.

We can only hope that people will be more responsible in their behaviour and the government in its vaccination plan so that our jobs are saved, said a pilot.
Jaipur, April 7 : The gems and jewellery sector in Rajasthan, already hit hard by the first wave of COVID-19, has now been left worried with the pandemic's second wave hitting harder, being stronger and more intense in nature. Key industry players have therefore decided to wait and watch as the COVID infection numbers keep surging in the desert state.

Speaking to IANS, Jewellers Association former president Sanjay Kala said, "Earlier, we had plans to organise smaller versions of our mega trade fairs to ensure businesses sail smoothly in tough times by showcasing Kundan Meena, Gold, diamond jewellery separately which earlier were displayed together in one trade fair. However, as of now, we have cancelled our plans looking at the intense situation." The industry has already been facing the woes of the pandemic's first wave, he added.

In fact, the statistics released by the GJEPC confirm that the growth of overall exports of gems and jewellery, cut and polished diamonds and gold declined from April 2020 to March 2021.

While the overall gross exports of gems & jewellery at US$ 21887.18 million (Rs 161254.77 crores) declined by 34.58% (-31.70% in rupee terms) as compared to US$ 33454.1 million (Rs 236105.65 crores) for the same period in the previous year, the overall gross exports of cut & polished diamonds at US$ 14242.94 million (Rs 104771.93 crores) also declined by 19.53% (-16.10% Rs. term) as compared to US$ 17699.04 million (Rs. 124877.56 crores) for the corresponding period of last year.

Besides gems and jewellery and cut and polished diamonds, the total gross export of gold jewellery at US$ 514.03 million (Rs 3735.25 crores) in February 2021 also showed a decline of 56.12% (-55.43% in rupee terms) as compared to US$ 1171.55 million (Rs 8380.54 crores) for the same period in the previous year.

However, there was a little breather here as the overall gross export of cut & polished diamonds at US$ 1750.19 million (Rs 12615.56 crores) in February 2021 which showed a growth of 26.51% (27.49% in rupee terms) as compared to US$ 1383.43 million (Rs 9895.04 crores) for the same period in the previous year, said stats released by GJEPC.

Meanwhile, the gross imports of rough diamonds at US$ 9486.21 million (Rs 69989.97 crores) in April 2020-February 2021 further declined by 23.43% (-19.97% in rupee terms) compared with the imports at US$ 12388.94 million (Rs 87453.18 crores) for the previous year.

Speaking on the same, Kala said, "There may come the gemstone crisis in the coming days as demand for the same shall be high and the supply of rough is less. Eventually prices of gemstones shall go high and there might be an imbalance in the demand-supply chain." Also exports will take a hit in a few markets. The positive side of the story is that production continues in our industry, he said, quoting the Mumbai example, "In Mumbai, amid lockdown, factories continued to operate and hence we are confident to send our products to places where there is demand." "As the wedding season approaches (April-May), this wave has left us worried too. So basically we are producing on a smaller scale as there is uncertainty around," he added.
Dynamic Advanced Training has opened its doors to the film industry, with the support of The Dubai Film and TV Commission (DFTC), making it the first aviation themed filming location in the UAE and Middle East region.



Dynamic was recently used as a filming location for an upcoming South Indian action thriller written and directed by Anand Shankar and produced by Vinod Kumar under the banner of Mini Studios and Dubai based 7 Media.



With the mission to implement the latest in aviation safety training technology to the UAE and participate in making the country one of the most innovative in the world, Dynamic, a subsidiary of Khansaheb Investment, looks forward to welcoming film makers and producers to their facility in Dubai South.



Amer Khansaheb, Managing Director of Khansaheb Investment, said: Dynamics academy in Dubai South is the only one stop-shop facility in the world to host training for a full range of business as well as commercial aircraft types, also including polar, jungle and sea simulation environments. We look forward to serving the regional and global filming community to this themed facility.



Saeed Al Janahi, Director of Operations at Dubai Film and TV Commission said that Dubai is playing an increasingly important role as a key part of the global production, the addition of this aviation themed location will add diversity to the profile of Dubai which suits different genres of film production. Dubai will continue to progress as a global production hub that can accommodate the needs of productions of all sizes, he said.



We are excited to announce Dynamic Advanced Training as an approved filming location in Dubai, said Mark Kammer, Co-Founder and Director of Operations of Dynamic Advanced Training.



Getting permission to film on board an aircraft for filming can be complicated. As Dynamic is not airside, filmmakers no longer need to navigate the complex and time-consuming requirement of having to apply for a myriad of necessary airport security and access permits while never knowing if these will even be approved for the shoot to go ahead. This has stifled stories with aviation scenes in the past.



In addition to flexible hours of operation, Dynamic consists of a total floor space of more than 4500 sq m fully equipped with two business jet simulators, wide and narrow body commercial aircraft cabin simulators, aircraft door simulators, a firefighting facility, themed survival training rooms, and a special effects wave pool.



The facility has ample parking for cars and trucks, a large roller shutter door for access of large equipment, dressing rooms, a make-up room, a cafeteria, and a level of privacy and security found only at most leading production studios. Dynamics friendly team of staff understand the demands production can bring and are available to support productions with their aviation themed production needs.  TradeArabia News Service
Of all the provisions in Georgias new election law, the one that has provoked the most condemnation  understandably  is the criminalization of providing food and drink to voters waiting in line.

President Joe Biden, who called the law an atrocity, complained that You dont need anything else to know that this is nothing but punitive design to keep people from voting. You cant provide water for people about to vote? Give me a break.

But this issue involves more than feeding the hungry or making it possible for them to vote.

In a lawsuit challenging the Georgia law, plaintiffs (who include a civil rights group and a unit of the African Methodist Episcopal Church) describe a practice called line warming:

Through providing water and other resources, Plaintiff AME Church and others throughout Georgia engage in the type of interactive communication concerning political change that is appropriately described as core political speech. The lawsuit adds: This is protected speech under the 1st Amendment, and the Georgia laws attempt to restrict that speech  via the imposition of criminal penalties  is unconstitutional.

The plaintiffs reject the idea that they are using food and drink to induce voters to support particular candidates. The lawsuit notes that the AME Church gives all voters, regardless of how they plan to cast their ballot, their encouragement and support.

Providing voters with the supplies they need, the lawsuit says, encourages them to stay in line, reminds them of the importance of casting a ballot, and affirms their value as a person and a voter. Line warmers create a sense of community, reminding voters that voting is a joyful thing and a civic responsibility.

Of course, there always has been a social component to voting. Think of get out the vote campaigns and petition drives to place issues on the ballot.

A lot of Americans grew up with a sanitized view of voting: that its something done by an autonomous individual hermetically sealed off from outside influences. Thats reflected in various state restrictions on politicking close to a polling place.

Georgias law applies that concern even to absentee voting. One section requires absentee voters to affirm that I have marked and sealed this ballot in private and have not allowed any unauthorized person to observe the voting of this ballot. (You have to leave the kitchen, Mom. Im voting.)

But no voter is an island, and some attempts to protect voters or the election process have run into legal obstacles. In 2018 the Supreme Court struck down on First Amendment grounds an overly broad Minnesota law that prohibited voters from wearing a wide variety of political hats, T-shirts and pins at polling places. In 2016 a federal appeals court in Boston struck down New Hampshires ban on so-called ballot selfies  photographs of a completed ballot that voters share on social media.

Socializing the vote isnt just a recent phenomenon. In a 2010 opinion, the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia pointed out that voting was public in America until 1888, when states started adopting the Australian secret ballot.

We have acknowledged the existence of a 1st Amendment interest in voting, Scalia wrote, but we have never said that it includes the right to vote anonymously. The history of voting in the United States completely undermines that claim.

It goes without saying that voters shouldnt be bribed to support a particular candidate or subjected to harangues as they prepare to cast their ballots. Nor, despite Scalias history lesson, should we give up on the secret ballot.

But its unrealistic to pretend that voting exists in a political or social vacuum. Voters are susceptible to all sorts of influences, from campaign ads to the opinions of family members in person or on Facebook. Line warming with food and drink is only part of the picture.

Michael McGough writes for the Los Angeles Times.
Chandigarh, April 7 : Punjab Police in a joint operation with the Border Security Force (BSF) busted a major narco-terror module and neutralised one Pakistani smuggler at the border outpost in Kakkar forward area in Amritsar district early on Wednesday, officials said.

The intelligence-led operation was launched on the inputs provided by the police.

A joint combing operation was launched at the site where the cross-border smuggling and infiltration attempt was made, leading to the recovery of 22 packets of heroin, weighing 22.660 kg, one Saiga MK rifle with two magazines and 24 live rounds of 7.50 mm, one AK-47 rifle with two magazines and 21 live rounds of 7.62 mm, Pakistani currency, one Nokia phone with 2 SIMs (Telenor and Jazz) and one blue coloured pipe.

The police have registered an FIR against Belgium-based Khalistan Zindabad Force (KZF) terrorist, Jagdish Bhura, and his Indian associate Jaspal Singh, a resident of Gatti Rajoke village in Ferozepur district.

Jaspal Singh was in close contact with Bhura and was involved in the smuggling of the composite drugs and weapons across the India-Pakistan border in Amritsar sector.

The case has been registered at the Lopoke police station.

Senior Superintendent of Police (Amritsar Rural), Dhruv Dahiya, said Jaspal Singh is learnt to have close links with the ISI and has been involved in crossborder smuggling attempts of weapons and narcotics in the past.

Director General of Police (DGP), Dinkar Gupta, said that follow-up action is being taken to unearth the entire network of border couriers and associates of Jagdish Bhura, who are active on Indian and Pakistan borders, as well as to establish the entire network of his foreign and Indian associates.

"The arrest of Jaspal Singh is also likely to lead to further vital disclosures regarding the physical and financial flows associated with the recovered drugs and weapons consignment," the DGP told the media.
A medic prepares to administer the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine during the third phase of inoculation drive, in Bengaluru (Photo: PTI)

Calling for a "vaccine for all" policy, the on Wednesday picked holes in the government's vaccination and COVID strategy and alleged that a grave catastrophe awaited the country due to its "stubborn" stance.

Stressing on COVID-19 vaccine for all in the country, leader Rahul Gandhi said every Indian "deserves the chance to a safe life".

The Health Ministry on Tuesday said the vaccine needs to be given to those who need it and not those who want it. The COVID-19 vaccine is currently available to all Indians above the age of 45 years.

"It's ridiculous to debate needs and wants. Every Indian deserves the chance to a safe life," Gandhi said on Twitter, using the hashtag "#CovidVaccine".

general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said if a free vaccine for all can be announced in elections, then why can't vaccines be given to all.

"If a free vaccine for all can be announced in the manifesto in elections, then this is the right time that the government should arrange vaccines for everyone on priority. The most beneficial step for the people of our country is that everyone should get the vaccine," she said in a tweet in Hindi.

Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram said the Indian Medical Association (IMA) and chief ministers have called for universal vaccination, yet the Central government is not agreeing and due to its "stubborn" stance infections are rising in the country.

"IMA has called for universal vaccination. Several CMs have demanded universal vaccination.

Yet the central government says there is no need for universal vaccination. The need of the hour is walk-in vaccination to all age groups without any pre-registration.

"Because of its unscientific and stubborn stance, the government has allowed the number of infections to gallop every day. A grave catastrophe awaits the country," he tweeted.

"There is no government of any democratic country in the world that has been so callous as the Modi government. From demonetisation to the botched vaccination programme, Indians are paying a huge price for the wrong policies of the BJP government," he also said.

Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera accused the government of not taking adequate steps to contain the spread of the virus and called for engagement with all stakeholders, including convening an all-party meeting, to increase vaccination.

He raised concern over the high wastage of vaccines in some states and asked the government why it is not allowing more vaccine trials in the country for enabling a diversified pool of vaccines that can help prevent this second wave of COVID-19 from turning into a tsunami.

He said in the first wave of COVID-19, India recorded 97,894 cases during its peak on September 17, 2020, but on Wednesday we surpassed that and reported a staggering 1,15,736 new cases.

The Congress leader said India has surpassed both the USA and Brazil to bag the number one position in terms of the highest number of daily new cases as one in every seven new cases across the world are from India.

Calling for including more categories in the list of vaccine beneficiaries, he said people with respiratory infections, which get accentuated due to air pollution, need to be given early vaccination.

"Vaccine is the right of every Indian. Like polio vaccination was for everyone and the government ran a universal vaccination drive, this also has to be universal and for everyone. Today when there is shortage of health facilities and infrastructure and the virus is spreading fast, this vaccine has to be for one and for all," he told reporters.

Khera said the government needs to answer many critical questions. "If having cases in excess of what we saw during the peak of first wave in September 2020 is not a testimony to it, we wonder what else it would take for the government to accept this fact and re-strategise accordingly," he said.

"The spike in COVID-19 cases is alarming, and the width (duration of the spike) of the cases needs to be curtailed now before this wave turns into a tsunami," Khera said.

Highlighting the drawbacks in the current vaccination protocol, he said the government has to curtail vaccine wastage which stands at 6.5 per cent and allow greater access to people willing to get vaccinated.

He expressed concern over vaccine wastage of 17.6 per cent and 9.4 per cent in states like Telangana and Uttar Pradesh respectively that surpassed the average.

Khera also asked why the government did not plan the nuances of vaccine logistics and supply chain in advance to ensure that there were no shortage of vaccines.

"Why is the government by not bridging the innovation gap and insisting on local trials in the time of a pandemic, making it even more difficult for various vaccine manufacturers to enter India," he asked.

The Congress leader also termed "insensitive" a remark made by the health secretary who said that the vaccine will be made available to "those who need it and not those who want it".

He also criticised police high-handedness and exorbitant challans in Delhi, saying it is not the answer to ensure adherence to COVID-19 norms.

(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.)
NEWPORT, N.Y.  New York State Police are continuing their search for an elderly man who they believe fell into the West Canada Creek Friday night.

Police say 90-year-old William Coman was throwing something into the water not far from his home in Newport. Investigators found a shoe floating in the water, and were able to confirm it was Comans, leading them to believe he fell in and didnt come back out.

Rescue crews have been searching for Coman since Friday, in what police are now calling a recovery effort.

A helicopter has been called to the scene to search from above, and the New York Power Authority has shut down water flow from the Hinckley dam, lowering the water level by three feet.

Community members have also come out to the creek to help with the search.
Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 30 giorni fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili.

Patient telemonitoring system is a wireless system that monitors remote patients outside of the standard clinical settings. It helps the doctors to monitor parameters such as ECG, blood pressure in real time by using sensors. Due to the healthcare facilities provided at home, early detection of any chronic disease reduces number of emergencies during hospitalization and hospital visits. Routine tests and test results to a doctor are done using mobile medical device in real time without any necessity of visiting health care center. This helps chronically ill people to spend more time at home with their families than at hospitals. Hence, counselling of sick people can be done online without waiting for the appointment date.Patient telemonitoring system provides uninterrupted long term monitoring thereby saving time and reducing healthcare cost. Furthermore, rising adoption of smart and connected medical devices is enabling real-time monitoring in the telemonitoring system, aiding in the growth of this market.

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However, patient telemarketing system require good broadband connectivity which is difficult to achieve for healthcare centers and hospitals in rural areas. In spite of this, owing to technological developments and growing demand for effortless medication, the impact of this limitation is expected to reduce during the forecast period.Global patient telemonitoring system market can be segmented on the basis of component, mode of delivery, application and region. On the basis of component, the patient telemonitoring system market can be segmented into hardware and software.

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On the basis of mode of delivery, the global patient telemonitoring systems market can be segmented into web based and cloud based. On the basis of application, the global patient telemonitoring system market can be segmented into Chronic Obstrutive Pulmonary disease (COPD) monitoring, blood pressure monitoring, glucose monitoring, cardiovascular disease monitoring, and others. On the basis of region, the global patient telemonitoring system market can be segmented into Europe,North America, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa and South America. Amongst all, Europe is expected to be the most lucrative patient telemonitoring system market owing to favorable government initiatives and increasing demand for research and development in healthcare sector in the region. In Europe, U.K. and Germany are majorly driving the growth.

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Major players operating in the global patient telemonitoring system market are Ntouch Technologies Company, Cisco Systems Inc., Honeywell Lifecare Solutions, Medtronic Plc., AMD Global Telemedicine Care Innovations LLC, Abbott Laboratories Inc., General Electric Company, and Koninklijke Philips N.V. among others.
The second wave: looms again as Covid-19 curbs expand

The closure of non-essential retail establishments, including malls, multiplexes, auto dealerships, and eateries in Mumbai and the rest of Maharashtra, could trigger a reverse migration of workers from the state for the second year in a row, industry bodies and top executives have told Business Standard. Delhi announced a night curfew on Tuesday, hitting businesses in the crucial evening hours for bars, restaurants, and pubs. Read More

AstraZeneca has sent us legal notice for vaccine supply delay: Poonawalla

Serum Institute of India (SII), the worlds largest vaccine maker, is juggling between meeting demands in its own country and its international commitments. SII CEO Adar Poonawalla, in an interview to Sohini Das, says that AstraZeneca has served a legal notice to the firm for delays in supplying the vaccine, and that SII has sought a few thousand crores as grant from the government to double the production of Covishield. Read More

Bharti Airtel sells spectrum worth Rs 1,497 crore to Reliance Jio

Reliance Jio Infocomm (Jio) on Tuesday said it had signed a definitive agreement with Bharti Airtel to acquire the right to use spectrum in the 800-megahertz (MHz) band in Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, and Mumbai circles through spectrum trading. Jio will acquire 3.75 MHz in Andhra Pradesh, 1.25 MHz in Delhi, and 2.5 MHz in Mumbai. The aggregate value for the right to use this spectrum is Rs 1,497 crore, inclusive of present value of associated deferred payment liability of Rs 459 crore, subject to any transaction-related adjustments, Jio said in a statement. Read More

Night curfew back in Delhi as Covid cases rise; essential services exempted

Just days after Maharashtra imposed stringent restrictions, Delhi came under night curfew starting Tuesday to control the spread of Covid cases. Following its latest round of review, the Delhi Disaster Management Authority decided to announce a 10 pm to 5 am curfew till the end of the month. It has been observed that there has been a sudden increase in Covid-19 cases in the recent past along with high positivity rate and therefore it is felt that night curfew needs to be imposed in the territory of NCT of Delhi, the DDMA order said. Essential activities and services can continue as usual. Read More

Competition among auto cos address issue of vehicle scrapping sops: Gadkari

Union minister of road transport and highways, and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME), Nitin Gadkari, came out with two major announcements last month; a vehicle scrapping policy and record highway construction. In an interview with Megha Manchanda and Jyoti Mukul, the ever-optimistic minister shares his plans for furthering these initiatives even as he stresses on the need for green fuel and highways. Read More

Part of BSNL 4G contract may be reserved for domestic companies

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is looking at the option of splitting the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) contract for installing 4G equipment across the country. It has suggested that BSNL should proceed with the existing expression of interest which was floated in January and is reserved exclusively for domestic vendors in consonance with Indias focus on Atmanirbhar Bharat to install 50,000 radio access networks. Read More

Telcos get approval to share active infrastructure as DoT amends UASL norms

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) amended the Unified Access Service Licence (UASL) on Tuesday to permit sharing of backhaul through microwave, which is used to connect towers. It has also allowed sharing of WiFi equipment, which includes routers and access points, among telecom players. At present, licence sharing of active infrastructure amongst service providers is allowed in certain areas, like antennae, feeder cable, radio access network and transmission systems. Read More

Pay Rs 79-cr GST dues to operate bank accounts, HC tells ByteDance

The Bombay High Court on Tuesday allowed Chinese firm ByteDance to operate its Indian bank accounts, frozen by the Goods and Services Tax (GST) authorities over alleged tax evasion, after depositing a sum of Rs 78.91 crore in a state-run bank. The four blocked bank accounts of the TikTok parent, however, held insufficient funds to pay the amount, according to its court filing. Read More
ALBANY  The call came on a weekday in late November. The governor inexplicably had a technical issue with his mobile phone and needed assistance at the Executive Mansion.

He contacted one of his top executive assistants at the Capitol, Stephanie Benton, and made a blunt request: The governor wanted a specific female staff member to handle the minor assignment  a woman roughly half his age. That woman had joined the administration a few years earlier, eager to pursue a career in government and to put her bachelor's degree in political science to good use.

She walked to her car parked at the Capitol and drove a short distance to the governor's mansion. In a recent interview with the Times Union  her first public statements on the matter  she described what happened when she reached the office on the second floor: The governor came out from behind his desk, and began groping her in a sexually aggressive manner.

"And that wasnt just a hug," she said. "He went for it and I kind of like was, 'Oh, the door is right there.' ... I was mortified that a woman who works here is going to come in and see. ... I was terrified of that happening, because thats not who I am and thats not what Im here for."

As panic set in, it flashed in her mind that insulting the governor could cost her the career she had been working so hard to build.

"I said to him, I said, 'Youre going to get us in trouble,'" she recalled. "I didnt know what else to say.  It was pretty much like 'What are you doing?' Thats when he slammed the door (shut). He said, 'I dont care.'"

He walked toward her a second time.

"I remember exactly what I was wearing," she said. "I remember him slamming (the door) so hard that I remember thinking to myself that Im sure the staff is, like, 'Is everything OK up there?' He came right back and he pulled me close and all I remember is seeing his hand, his big hand. I remember looking down like, 'Holy sh_.'"

The governor, she said, had reached under her blouse and his hand was grasping one of her breasts over her bra.

"I was just so confused and so taken aback by it.  He never said anything, which was odd," she said. "At this moment, I dont know what to say  I dont know what to do. Now my hives are coming out. Im, like, swearing in my mind. I remember I walked out and he walked back into his office. ... I remember going downstairs and escorting myself out and going to my car and sitting there for a second and going, 'OK, I have to now go back into the Capitol, go back to my desk and do my job and pretend that, like, that didnt just happen.'

"I didnt have another choice. I remember (thinking), 'You have to pull yourself together  even if you have to sit here for a couple minutes to do that,'" she continued. "If I told someone, Im done. And who do you tell?"

'The things that I would do to you'

The allegations are the most serious that have been leveled against Cuomo over the past four months by multiple women who have come forward and accused him of sexual harassment and other inappropriate conduct, triggering an investigation by the state attorney general's office and an impeachment inquiry initiated by the state Assembly.

Yet the groping allegations at the mansion have drawn the most attention, including garnering interest from law enforcement officials and demands from top New York Democrats for the governor to resign immediately  a request he has rebuffed.

In the backdrop of the dual investigations and the political theater, the young woman at the center of the most serious allegations has soldiered on, reporting to her job at the Capitol where she has endured an occasional "dirty look" and fewer work assignments. She was already thin, but has lost significant weight, is emotionally fragile, and  as the mother of a young child  remains concerned about job security.

In a lengthy interview with the Times Union last week, she detailed how it got to this point. She spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect her privacy, although it is widely known in the governor's inner circle who she is and what she has alleged.

For roughly two years, she said, she believes Cuomo had been grooming her in a pattern of inappropriate behavior that began with tight hugs and kisses on the cheek.

"It was never in front of anybody. He made sure that it was either at the mansion or, if it was at the Capitol, that no one was around," she said. "I remember thinking one time Stephanie was around, or (Secretary to the Governor) Melissa (DeRosa) was around, and I had been so used to him getting up and hugging me that when he didnt I said 'Hmm.' It felt calculated  he would totally act different."

By early last year, the governor's hugs had grown tighter  he would try to pull her close to feel her breasts against his chest, she said: "Sometimes he would pull my whole body close to him. I remember purposely, like, taking my pelvis and pulling away.  I knew what he was doing."

The conversations had also evolved into Cuomo asking probing and inappropriate questions.

She recounted one of those conversations that took place about a year ago: "He looked at me one time and said, 'Oh, if you were single, the things that I would do to you.'"

'The governor will be stealing you'

On her first day as an executive assistant in late 2017, when she was being introduced to members of the governor's staff on the "secure" side of the Capitol's Executive Chamber, she was unsettled by a comment another woman had made to her.

"She said, 'Oh, youre going to get stolen.' I just smiled. She said, 'You just wait and see, and the governor will be stealing you,'" the woman said. "That was my first day, and that was my first time that I said to myself, 'I know that wasnt normal.' You hear stories about what happens at the Capitol.  I know what she meant by that."

For several months, her career path took her away from the governor's office, and she went to work for a top official at a state agency. But she missed the bustle and energy of the Capitol, and took an opportunity in June 2019 to return to the governor's staff as an executive assistant to one of Cuomo's top advisors.

By that November, she had been called on more frequently to help the governor, occasionally at the mansion on weekends, but almost always with someone around. Still, the governor, she said, had "noticed her."

"Does he trust you? Hes big on trust. He lets you know that," she said. "If you're able to have so much face time with the governor, he must trust you. It's a badge of honor."

But that face time came with fallout. Sometimes, she said, after taking dictation for the governor, he would come out from around his desk and hug her. Over time, the hugs grew tighter and lasted longer. He would occasionally blame his Italian roots for his propensity to finish the hug by kissing her on the cheek. It's an excuse he has invoked often in response to the recent allegations.

"I'm still thinking that interaction was weird, but who are you going to tell?," the woman said. "My supervisor is his closest confidante. Youre going to be out."

'Let's take a selfie'

The woman said that in late 2019, the governor's conduct around her became more aggressive and the flirtatious conversations more inappropriate.

On New Year's Eve that year  a Tuesday  she was dispatched to the mansion to assist the governor as he was working on his State of the State address.

They were alone in Cuomo's office and he said, "Let's take a selfie," she recalled. "I said OK. I remember standing up in his upstairs office. I was holding up the phone. I was nervous. As the phone is up I feel him, like, not just sliding his hands, hes like rubbing my butt cheek, but not saying anything. That was the first blatant move."

She recalled that her hand started to tremble as she held the phone.

"I couldnt get a clear picture. He didnt say anything and I didnt say anything because now ... its very easy to say, 'Well, why didn't you slap him?,'" she said. "Youre like, 'Is this really going on, is this happening?' I remember him doing it for more than a second. I said, 'I cant take a good picture, governor.' He said, 'Why dont we just sit down on the couch and try to take a better one?'"

"So we sit down, we take a photo and he said, 'Oh, I like that photo,'" the woman said.

He asked her to send it to another female colleague  but cautioned her to never show it to anyone else.

"I said, 'Yes sir, I understand, and I wont.' I never did," she said. "If he looks you in the eye and says, 'You dont tell a soul or tell anyone,' then you wont. Hes kind of letting you know it would be in your best interest not to, if you know whats good for you.  I didnt tell a soul. I didnt say anything about what he did. He never mentioned anything about that incident."

But early last year, before the coronavirus pandemic, she said his conversations with her  especially at the mansion  grew increasingly inappropriate.

"Hes like, 'Would you ever do anything with anyone else?' I said 'No,'" she said. "He said, 'Im single and ready to mingle.'"

In the ensuing weeks and months as COVID-19 engulfed New York, she rarely saw the governor. Many staff members worked from home and some had to quarantine. The governor's office took steps to minimize the number of employees reporting to the Capitol.

"If it wasnt for this pandemic and me being quarantined and being home, Im sure that the groping probably would have happened sooner," she said. "I didnt see him for a long time."

Eventually, she said, her contact with the governor began picking up again late last year. "The governor would hug me, but nothing like from pre-pandemic because I hadnt seen him. I hadnt talked to him."

There was a pool party last year hosted by the governor for hand-picked staffers  a reward for their hard work during the pandemic. "I wasnt invited," she said.

But in November, she said, after being summoned to the mansion to help Cuomo with his iPhone, everything changed.

"I dont remember actually saying the word 'Stop.' I think I said, 'Youre crazy,'" she said. "I do remember saying that, and thats when he ultimately stopped. ... Me saying 'You're crazy'  that was definitely not something that he wants to hear. It definitely was a hit to his ego.  And then it was almost like instantly he was done.  He turned around and walked back to his desk. He didnt say anything. I walked myself out to the front door and nothing was said. ... It was almost like I felt like a piece of garbage to him. I felt degraded."

On Feb. 27, the New York Times published an interview with Charlotte Bennett, another former female aide who accused Cuomo of inappropriate conduct. In a news conference four days later, the governor brushed aside what he had said was advice from his legal counsel to remain silent during the attorney general's newly launched investigation.

"I now understand that I acted in a way that made people feel uncomfortable," he said. "It was unintentional and I truly and deeply apologize for it. I feel awful about it and, frankly, I'm embarrassed by it  and that's not easy to say, but that's the truth."

"But this is what I want you to know, and I want you to know this from me directly: I never touched anyone inappropriately," he said. "I never touched anyone inappropriately. I never knew at the time that I was making anyone feel uncomfortable. I never knew at the time that I was making anyone feel uncomfortable. I certainly never, ever meant to offend anyone or hurt anyone or cause anyone any pain. That is the last thing I would ever want to do."

In the Executive Chamber, staff members were monitoring the news conference. Hearing Cuomo's denial, the woman who has accused Cuomo of groping her was overcome with emotion.

An executive assistant noticed her colleague had started tearing up, and went to her aid. The woman had never told anyone what had happened, but she began telling the executive assistant about the incident at the mansion.

Five days later, on March 8, that executive assistant reported the woman's allegations to a supervisor in the governor's office. The following day, the Times Union reported the woman's allegations and the governor's office confirmed they had reported the matter to the attorney general's office.

In response to questions from the Times Union that week about the new allegations, Cuomo issued a statement saying, "I have never done anything like this. The details of this report are gut-wrenching."

On March 12, the woman was accompanied by her attorney, Brian D. Premo of Albany, when she was interviewed in New York City by investigators with the state attorney general's office, according to a person briefed on that matter.

Rita Glavin, Cuomo's attorney, issued a statement Wednesday saying the governor maintains that he did not touch anyone "inappropriately."

"The people of New York know the governor  he has spent 40 years in public service and in the public eye. He has repeatedly made clear that he never made inappropriate advances or inappropriately touched anyone," Glavin said. "The attorney generals review of this claim and others, including evolving details and new public statements by complainants or their surrogates, must be thorough, fair and provide the truth."

'You can never tell anyone'

Bennett's account was not the first allegation of sexual harassment to be leveled against the governor. Lindsey Boylan, another former aide, had tweeted in mid-December that the governor had "sexually harassed me for years."

"Many saw it, and watched," Boylan wrote. "I could never anticipate what to expect: would I be grilled on my work (which was very good) or harassed about my looks. Or would it be both in the same conversation? This was the way for years." (Boylan would offer more details in an essay she published on Medium in February, just days before Bennett's allegations came to light.)

The governor's press secretary, Caitlin Girouard, issued a statement in response to Boylan's initial allegations, saying there is "simply no truth to these claims."

But inside the administration, Boylan's accusations in December triggered concern.

Later that month, the woman who has accused him of groping her said she was taking dictation for the governor at his Capitol office when he brought up what had happened a month earlier.

"Near the end of it, he looked up at me and he said, 'You know, by the way, you know people talk in the office and you can never tell anyone about anything we talk about or, you know, anything, right?'" she recalled of the conversation. "I said, 'I understand.' He said, 'Well, you know, I could get in big trouble, you know that.' I said, 'I understand, governor.' And he said, 'OK.'"

The woman said she interpreted the governor's words that day as a threat.

"I was a liability, and he knew that," she said. "He was definitely trying to let me know, 'It would be in your best interest (to keep quiet).' ... I know his look and I know how intimidating he can be. He wanted to get a message across to me."

blyons@timesunion.com
[April 07, 2021] Educator and writer Lady Robinson joins Hello Genius

The wife of legendary Sir Ken Robinson, continues her husband's work through her commitment and support of a new revolutionary learning system LOS ANGELES, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Hello Genius, an AI-powered learning system designed to foster closer bonds and empower greater connectivity between parents and their children through personalized learning experiences, announced today the appointment of Lady Therese Robinson as their first Global Brand Ambassador. Lady Robinson is a passionate advocate for creativity in education. The wife of the late Sir Ken Robinson, she managed his career and partnered with him for over forty years. She continues this work through her support of Hello Genius. Therese holds a Bachelor of Education degree from St. Mary's College (University of London). She taught primary school for many years before transitioning to Education Officer for The Beautiful Britain Campaign where she ran in- service training courses for teachers and later joined their promotions team before launching her own highly successful events company specializing in cause-related marketing. She created wide-ranging events such as receptions for HRH Prince Charles at St. James' Palace to international celebrity media events for The United Nations with clients ranging from prominent charities to major brands, before focusing exclusively on promoting Sir Ken's work globally. "Sir Ken was vested in the aims and objectives of Hello Genius," said Lady Robinson. "He saw it as a valuable platform that allows children to embrace new technologies, learn the fundamentals of each discipline while not losing their unique sense of wonder and curiosity. He believed that where possible, learning should be driven by the interests of the child and guided by safe hands. His vision was for Hello Genius to create a platform that brings communities of children together globally and forges new creative initiatives." Lee Daley, chairman and chief strategy and marketing officer of Hello Genius said, "We were heartbroken at the passing of Sir Ken Robinson. He was an early advisor and sat on our board of directors. We based the thesis for Hello Genius on Sir Ken's theories, ethos, and spirit. Before his role as a Director of Hello Geniu, Sir Ken and I were friends for 20 years and I witnessed the tremendous partnership between him and Lady Robinson. While he is sadly no longer with us, Lady Robinson is committed to making this initiative the success that together they had both believed it would be. Her energy, creativity and insights are critical to our continued commitment to Ken's work and mission."



Sir Ken passed away in 2020. He was a trailblazer within the world of education, more than 400 million people in more than 160 countries have watched his TED talks, including Do Schools Kill Creativity, making him the most watched speaker in the organization's history. His books on creativity, learning, children, and schools have been translated into 27 languages. During his illustrious career, Sir Ken advised governments, corporations, and educational systems. He was the recipient of the Benjamin Franklin Medal, the Nelson Mandela Changemaker Award, and the LEGO Prize for Achievement in Education.

Hello Genius serves to make parents a partner to their children as they learn and reveal their talents and interests, building a greater sense of collaboration through shared learning experiences. The integrated system of connected parent and child apps identify the individual uniqueness of each child through an adaptive, nonlinear learning journey, while providing parents with insights, opportunities and resources to engage with their child based on his or her preferences. The system's sophisticated technology utilizes artificial intelligence and machine learning to adapt and deliver a tailored learning fortified by distinctive features that initiate a new paradigm in how learning is shaped around the child. Hello Genius is currently in an early release phase and available for download on the Apple App and Google Play stores. It is due for a global release on May 12th, 2021. For more information on Hello Genius visit, HelloGenius.com . ABOUT HELLO GENIUS

Hello Genius, established in 2020, is a technology platform providing children with safe pathways to develop their interests and abilities through various fields of knowledge across the web, while presenting parents and guardians with profound insights into what captures their child's unique passions, gifts and motivations. The dynamic technology deploys artificial intelligence, machine learning and data analytics to uncover a deeper understanding of the child. The multimodal platform bridges the digital and physical worlds of personal learning and human connection, and enhances knowledge, skills and creativity for children and their parents to explore together. Hello Genius' commitment to making equal learning opportunities available to everyone irrespective of their circumstances is the cornerstone of its software. More information is available at HelloGenius.com . ABOUT G3NIU7 INC.

G3NIU7 Inc. is a learning technology company founded in 2017 by Jack Lee, chief executive officer, and Lee Daley, chairman and chief strategist, to pioneer dynamic innovations in adaptive and preference-based learning. Its core technology system utilizes sophisticated artificial intelligence, machine learning, dynamic content delivery and bespoke algorithms in order to optimize learning opportunities and generate sophisticated data analytics and insights on the learner. G3NIU7 Inc. strives to build technologies that will revolutionize the dynamics of learning for individuals and communities around the world in order to help people achieve the means to prosper and to adapt to changing circumstances throughout their lives. Hello Genius targeted at parents and young children is the first product to be built on the G3NIU7 Inc technology platform. For more information, visit G3NIU7.com . Media Contact

Ballantines PR

(310) 454-3080

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THERE are special periods in the history of every nation that are hidden but there are intellectuals who will remind society of these periods that shine light on humanity. Liam Cahill is one of them.

The endless curiosity and childish excitement of the intellectuals are the condition for progressing on this blessed road. The interview you will read is typical of this excitement. Thousands of kilometres away from Turkey, while continuing my research on the history of the Limerick Soviet, I met author Liam Cahill. The moment I contacted Liam, he signed his book and sent it to my address. Thus, while the story of a forgotten revolution is on a long journey at the same time it is coming to life again in the language of a country of 90 million. Sometimes there are events in the history of nations that cease to be local and turn into actions that shine light on the whole world. His book Forgotten Revolution: The Limerick Soviet 1919 is just one of these powerful acts.

We precisely find it valuable and meaningful to recall this common heritage of humanity under the difficulty of pandemic conditions. Without falling further into the spell of words, I want to share with you the story of Forgotten Revolution. I believe this interview will be the first flare of my research in Ireland. The first flares thrown for the strong bonds between the people of Ireland and Turkey

Q. The Limerick Soviet is a forgotten experience for many people. It is difficult to go after something forgotten and follow those traces. Can you tell us about the similarity of this experience with Soviet socialism and what are its differences?

A: The use of the term soviet to describe the stirring events that happened in the city of Limerick in April 1919 started with international journalists who were reporting for newspapers in the United States, Britain, France and other countries. However, it was not a soviet in the strict sense associated with Russian communism after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Instead, it was essentially a general strike of a kind that had become increasingly familiar in Europe after the ending of World War One in countries like Hungary, Germany and Britain.

Fourteen thousand workers in Limerick, some led by radical Marxist organisers associated with the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (at that time, a syndicalist-influenced trade union), began a general strike against the imposition of military law on the city by the British authorities. The British were trying to snuff out a rising tide of militant Irish separatism seeking independence. The military barricades and a hated Military Pass system, prevented workers from going freely to and from their places of work.

The workers  through their elected representatives on Limerick United Trades and Labour Council  took control of every aspect of life in the city for a period of almost three weeks. They controlled the sourcing, supply, pricing and distribution of food (including from the bakeries) to the citys forty thousand inhabitants. They controlled transport of goods wthin the city, published their own newspaper The Workers Bulletin and printed their own currency, which was backed by donations of money provided by supporters of the strike in Ireland and Britain.

Superficially, then, to journalists who sought a quick, easy-to-understand word to use in their reports or headlines, the firm and extensive control exercised by the workers on city life reminded them of the operation of soviets in Russian cities. However, in Russia, following Bolshevik doctrine, the workers and their representatives seized not only control, but ownership as well, of factories, enterprises and rural estates. That did not happen in Limerick. There, the business owners reluctantly co-operated with the dictates of the Workers Council but without conceding ownership and the workers did not challenge that position. Nevertheless, when an American journalist enquired if it really was a soviet, the leaders embraced the term (for propaganda reasons) and answered Yes!.

Q: Historian Roy Foster says in his book 'Modern Ireland' that Ireland, during the period, would ignite the expected revolution in Europe and such an expectation was high at that time. Could the Limerick Soviet be the first sign of such a revolution?

A: The Limerick Soviet was one of a number of signs of an impending revolution in Ireland but it was not the first and it was not necessarily the most important.

There was, for example, the sweeping victory of the separatist party, Sinn Fein, in the British Imperial General Election of December 1918. The Sinn Fein representatives refused to take their seats at Westminster and, instead, established their own parliament in Dublin, Dail Eireann. The Dail met in public for the first time on 21st January 1919. On the same day, members of the re-invigorated Irish Volunteers (later to be known as the Irish Republican Army) killed two policemen in an incident in county Tipperary, not too far from Limerick city.

In turn, the events that led to the Limerick Soviet began with an incident where a policeman was shot and another wounded during an attempt by the Irish Volunteers to rescue a prisoner. The British authorities were concerned about the increasing number of attacks on policemen and their barracks in the early months of 1919 and that explains the imposition of military law on Limerick City.

So, the Limerick General Strike Against British Militarism (to give it the official title used on its currency notes) was just one of a number of important steps in early 1919 in the evolution of the struggle to separate Ireland from Britain.

Q: When I reviewed your book, I realized that we shared the same feelings about Ireland. Whether it was in Dublin, Cork or Tullamore, I always felt Connolly's spirit on the streets. However, this situation showed a profound difference when it came to society itself. Putting aside the devastating impact of the civil war, where are all these people who have built strong networks of solidarity now?

A: Throughout the years 1919 to 1923, the militant workers and their leaders who followed his teaching and example, struggled hard to establish James Connollys vision of a Workers Republic. They did so through a series of general strikes, enterprise occupations and seizures of big estates of land. They were opposed at every step  sometimes with extreme violence  the British authorities, by bourgeois Irish separatists and later by both sides in the Irish Civil War.

The Irish Free State, established by a Treaty signed with Britain in December 1921, was a bourgeois, conservative state, dominated by Catholic employers and professional classes. It was an agrarian, mainly food producing economy with little heavy industry. The trade union movement was greatly reduced in size and influence by the economic recession of the 1920s in Ireland and its leadership turned away from revolutionary, syndicalist activities and embraced parliamentary and electoral activity. Thus, the revolutionary impetus of the years 1919 to 1923 fizzled out and did not spark again until the mid 1960s, in common with many other countries in the Western world.

Q: After the first world war, there was an epidemic of Spanish flu. The Limerick Soviet coincides exactly with this period. Now humanity is struggling with a global epidemic again. Considering what happened in the past, can we say that we are on the brink of an era of revolutions again?

A: I am afraid I do not think so. Or, if there is an era of revolutions it will be more subtle, more nuanced than what we saw a century ago.

Traditional communism disappeared after the demise of the Soviet Union in 1989 and the ideal of creating a modern state-owned and controlled by its workers and peasants, through a leading revolutionary party, went with it. China is a communist country in name only. In reality, it is an authoritarian capitalist society, of a kind that we see taking hold in some other countries. There is no single country left that acts as a beacon to workers througout the world.

On the other hand, capitalism continues to evolve and adapt. So much of work today is atomised and individualised by advances in information and communications technology that it is difficult to discern a sense of class in the traditional, Marxist sense. The pandemic has accelerated these negative trends. Many more workers are now working remotely so that even their hitherto limited sense of being part of a community of workers with the same employer is further diminished.

The whole situation is made much more challenging by the evolution of powerful US-owned social media oligarchies like Facebook, Google, Twitter etc which have been allowed to rise above the power and capacity of nation states to control and regulate them, either financially and in terms of corporate taxes as well as libel and fake news. Even the European Union and the OECD are struggling to curb their power. They have ousted traditional, mainstream media  - particularly among people aged below forty years of age  and have provided a safe haven for all kinds of extremist ultra Right ideologies to flourish. Indeed, Trump enthusiastically encouraged the outpouring of ultra Right and anti-democratic propaganda on social media and many people  alienated by latterday capitalism - have succumbed to ultra Rightism.

For Marxists and Leftists, the response must be to continue to hone their critical analysis and champion progressive and democratic forces wherever and whenever they struggle against this new capitalism. It requires patience and pesistence, but inspired by what our grandmothers and grandfathers did in their their day, revolutionary change can be achieved. We must continue to point out that while the superficial forms and superstructure of capitalism have changed, the underlying class conflict remains, stronger than ever.

Q: We are going through a dark period with crises, wars and massacres increasing. All this history we are talking about really gives us hope; it reminds humanity of resistance and solidarity. What message would you like to convey to Turkish and Irish readers who have deep concerns about the future?

A: For us today it seems  it is  a dark period. But, remember, when our grandparents embarked on their revolutionary roads the present and the future looked dark to them also. Darkness is not a reason, or an excuse, to do nothing. Planning and action dissipates darkness. Continue to plan and act according to your principles and you will find a way through this darkness.

Note: Liam Cahill tells the full story of the working-class revolution in Ireland in the years 1919 to 1923 in his best-selling book Forgotten Revolution, The Limerick Soviet 1919. If youd like to buy a copy, email the author liamcahill@gmail.com The cost is 20 including postage to anywhere in the world.

Twitter: @LiamCahill2013
's ( ) Sean Gregory discusses with Proactive's Andrew Scott upcoming exploration activities at its 100%-owned East Laverton nickel project in Western Australia. He says the project's highly prospective for nickel-sulphide discoveries, including of the Nova magmatic style, which he says was overlooked by previous explorers who were focused on other commodities and deposit types.
One of the nicest things about visiting Japan is that there is so much to see and do.

This is a country packed full of culture, history and fun, so whatever youre looking to do, you can be sure Japan will have it. For example, you could head to a city and check out a Kit Kat cafe, which is exactly how it sounds, or head to the Robot Restaurant, which is a whole new dining experience in itself.

If you want to visit a casino youll find that a little trickier, but not impossible. However online casinos are now quite popular in Japan as opposed to the big resorts. So just make sure you look for a recommended and safe online casino site. Pachinko is one of Japan's most popular casino games and so, if you are near to Tokyo, then checking out a place that offers this is highly recommended. If you are heading to this part of the world to take in some scenic views and natural beauty, then you wont be disappointed.

Kushiro Shitsugen National Park

Situated in Hokkaido, this area of Japan was designated as a national park back in 1987. The decision behind this was driven by the fact that the marshland here is home to the Japanese Cranes  who are extremely endangered. Now the area is protected and youre invited to visit some of the beauty this area of the world is home to. The weather here is usually good so its an ideal spot for walking, bird watching and even watching the Japanese Cranes in action.

Shiretoko National Park

This park is arguably one of Japan's most beautiful natural parks  with no access by road youre only able to visit here on foot or by boat, which has helped to maintain this areas natural beauty. There is occasionally ice here so if youre looking to see some wintery beauty then make sure you pick the right time to visit. As well as being home to some beautiful nature it's also home to deer, foxes and brown bears so there is no end of wonderful things to see when you visit.

Mount Daisen

If youre up for a bit of a trek then a visit to Mount Daisen is highly recommended. Its a large (1729 metre high) volcanic mountain, the tallest in the region of Chugoku. The volcano itself has not erupted for thousands of years, so its considered a safe place to walk and hike. There is also the Deisenji Temple which is used as a place of reflection and prayer by the Buddhist community.

This is just a snapshot of some of the beauty this wonderful country has to offer. If youre planning a trip here it is well worth doing some research first to see what is available in the area youll be visiting. That way you can fit in a trip to the casino, a mountain trek and anything else you want without too much hassle  its such a wonderful part of the world, its important to see as much of it as possible while youre here.
New Zealand's aerospace industry is getting a boost through cooperation with the German Aerospace Center (DLR), which is expected to improve its capability and potentially lead to joint space missions, New Zealand's Minister of Research, Science and Innovation Megan Woods said Wednesday.

According to her, 12 organizations have been chosen to work with world-leading experts at DLR to complete feasibility studies for cooperation on propulsion, space communications and remote sensing technologies.

DLR is Germany's national research center that conducts research and development activities in the fields of aeronautics, space, energy, transport, security and digitalization.

Woods said the feasibility studies will lead to larger scale collaborations, potentially including joint New Zealand- space missions.

"Our Government has helped accelerate growth including through an enabling regulatory regime for space, the Airspace Integration Trials Programme and investing in the MethaneSAT climate change space mission," the minister said.

Approximately 900,000 dollars in funding has been allocated to the 12 projects from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment's 28 million dollars in Catalyst Fund, which is aimed at growing partnerships with international research organizations.

"The recipients of this funding range from universities and research organizations to start-up enterprises - many of which are conducting ground-breaking research for the future of our aerospace industry," Woods said.

" is one of New Zealand's leading science and innovation partners and DLR houses some of the world's most advanced aerospace technology capability. This is a natural partnership to enable New Zealand to be involved in cutting edge aerospace research," said Woods.

"New Zealand has unique competitive advantages which help to enable growth in the aerospace industry, including our geographic location and innovative thinking," 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.)
More than 130 years ago, Sir Catchick Paul Chater, who was orphaned just before his ninth birthday, moved to Hong Kong to build a bullion and land trading business. Little did he know that he would become one of Hong Kongs most famous real estate tycoons. The young Sir Paul surveyed the Victoria Harbour by dropping a maritime plumbline to measure its depth and successfully persuaded the colonial government of Hong Kong to reclaim the land at the riverbank, marking his first step in the real estate business. In 1889, Sir Paul formed a real estate company, The Hongkong Land Investment & Agency Co., Ltd., together with Jardine, Matheson & Companys Scottish businessman, James Johnstone Keswick, laying the first bricks to build the famous Hongkong Land empire of today.

Hongkong Land  132-year history illustrated by iconic projects

Long-standing history and heritage have been traditionally associated with luxury maisons. Hongkong Land breaks the norm with its 132-year legacy expressed through the creation of architectural masterpieces in the major capitals of Asia.

Hongkong Land breaks the norm with its 132-year legacy expressed through the creation of architectural masterpieces in the major capitals of Asia.

Since its establishment in 1889, instigated by the famous Praya Reclamation Scheme that turned 65-acres of wasteland into Hong Kong's leading commercial centre, Hongkong Land has grown into one of Asias most familiar and trusted property investment, management, and development groups. Hongkong Land currently owns and manages more than 850,000 square metres of prime office and luxury retail property in key Asian cities, principally in Hong Kong, Singapore, Beijing, and Jakarta. The group also has a number of high-quality residential, commercial, and mixed-use projects under development in cities across Greater China and Southeast Asia.

The addition of the symbol of Singapores prosperity, Marina Bay Financial Centre, and Jakartas architectural marvel, the World Trade Centre, underscore Hongkong Lands leading position in the region.

Hongkong Land owns and manages many prime offices and luxury retail properties in key Asian cities

Leaving a mark on Vietnam

In the Vietnamese market, Hongkong Land is one of the few pioneering brands in the field of luxury real estate investment and development. In 1995, Hongkong Land first made its mark in the Vietnamese market with the Central Building project at 31 Hai Ba Trung, Hanoi. Three years later, a Grade A office building at 63 Ly Thai To was launched in a prime location in the countrys capital once again affirmed Hongkong Lands leading position in the market.

In Ho Chi Minh City, Hongkong Land marked its presence with the completion of The Nassim  a luxury apartment project located on the much-coveted Thao Dien peninsula. This project was the first to bring the private elevator concept to Vietnam. A highly-sought privacy perk for wealthy residents, it was certainly a cherry atop a series of other top-notch facilities.

The Marq, Hongkong Land's latest luxury apartment project in the heart of District 1, is another interesting addition to the developers collection of luxury residential projects in Vietnam.

Luxuriate in the upscale at The Marq

The Marq  Refined luxury living

Situated along the dreamy Nguyen Dinh Chieu Street, a peaceful avenue hidden under a canopy of trees where heritage is imbued with modern lifestyles, The Marq enhances its surroundings with its refined contemporary touches. Not just an eye-candy on the outside, modern elements run throughout the building, from soaring high ceilings to top-of-the-line appliances, private lift lobbies, and a wealth of recreational facilities crowning the rooftop. This masterpiece is dedicated to wealthy lifestyle connoisseurs seeking true value in life.

While Hongkong Land focuses on developing high-end real estate, its parent company, Jardine Matheson Group, owns a well-diversified portfolio in various sectors of the Vietnamese market, from finance (ACB Bank) to automotive manufacturing (THACO), infrastructure (REE), and food and beverage (Vinamilk, Starbucks, and KFC, among others).

Both Hongkong Land and Jardine Matheson will certainly bring a lot of synergistic values to their projects in Vietnam, including luxury real estate projects like The Marq.

Homebuyers will have a chance to win a brand-new BMW through the collaboration between The Marq and BMW (THACO)

The launch of The Marqs new show unit and the release of a new selection of units for sale will be held in April 2021, right at the project site. Customers who register their interest will be granted one Starbuck voucher valued at VND2 million ($87). In addition, all customers who successfully sign the sale or lease agreeement will be eligible to take part in a special lucky draw and stand to win a BMW X7-xDrive40i-Pure Excellence valued at VND6.889 billion ($299,520). Dont miss your chance with New home, new luck by The Marq.
STAMFORD  Nestle Waters North America, the Stamford-based company that was sold last week for $4.3 billion, announced this week it had changed its name to BlueTriton Brands.

Triton refers to a god of the sea in Greek mythology, while the blue represents water, according to company officials.

The new name reflects the companys role as a guardian of sustainable resources and a provider of fresh water, the company said in a statement. Moreover, BlueTriton signifies the companys continued commitment as an independent business to sustainability and high-quality products and services.

BlueTriton officials said that in the coming months they would announce additional branding changes including a new corporate logo, website and social-media channels. Their announcement did not mention whether the firm might change the name of Poland Spring, its bottled-water brand for the New England region, or any of its other brands.

On March 31, investment firms One Rock Capital Partners and Metropoulos & Co. announced that they had completed the acquisition of Nestle Waters from Nestle  a deal originally announced on Feb. 17.

The company has an established reputation as a top provider of water and hydration that is favored by consumers across North America, One Rock Managing Partner Tony Lee said in a statement. We see significant opportunity to further the market leadership of BlueTriton and look forward to building on the strong foundation that exists in the business today.

In a related move, Dean Metropoulos, founder of his family-owned investment firm, has become Nestle Waters chairman and interim CEO. He has 40 years of experience operating and investing in food and beverage brands.

I am very excited to join with my One Rock partners and lead this company as we begin a new chapter together as BlueTriton, building on the rich heritage of our historic, iconic and beloved brands, Metropoulos said in a statement. We have all become increasingly aware of how critical our products and their rapidly evolving innovations are to human wellness and our communities.

As one of the largest beverage companies in North America, the BlueTriton portfolio includes Poland Spring and other regional bottled-water brands including Deer Park, Ozarka, Ice Mountain, Zephyrhills and Arrowhead, as well as the Pure Life and Splash lines. Nestles international premium-water brands Perrier, S.Pellegrino and Acqua Panna were not included in the sale.

The company ranked as the 13th-largest employer in Stamford, with 610 local employees, in the third quarter of 2020, according to the Stamford Office of Economic Development. The companys main offices are at 900 Long Ridge Road.

At this time, we are unaware of any expected changes in regard to where we operate today, a company spokesperson told Hearst Connecticut Media in February. We will be operating largely business as usual.

BlueTriton employs about 7,000 in the U.S., and more than 230 in Canada.

It runs 27 production facilities across North America and operates the direct-to-consumer and office beverage-delivery service ReadyRefresh.

pschott@stamfordadvocate.com; twitter: @paulschott
A quick blog post from April 2020 started things off early, making the prediction that after our pandemic finally ends, wed have a second Roaring 20s. 100 years ago: An election, a virus and a cry from disillusioned youths, ran a headline in the Washington Post in October for a story drawing suggestive comparisons between the two decades that are separated by a hundred years of history. As we limped into 2021, the comparisons picked up. The 1920s Roared After a Pandemic, and the 2020s Will Try, ran a headline in Bloomberg Businessweek in January, the same month Marker published Will the 2020s Really Become the Next Roaring Twenties? Its a fun thought and a good joke: Theres been a crash in the matrix and they lost the 2020 files so there just using 1920s as filler, laughed one commenter on TikTok.

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Fun thoughts aside, however, my hmm reflex at historical comparisons is strong, and its been further honed by the Is this fascism? wars of 201621. At least one historian of the 1920s whom I reached out to for an interview for this piece said that the prediction of a new 20s was so strained as to be not worth exploring. Steve LeVine, focusing on points of economic comparison in that piece in Marker, also thought: Probably not. LeVine points out a few key reasons the new 20s idea might not workthere were a lot more young people in the United States then than now; a reprise of the world-changing inventions and discoveries of the 1920s would be a big surprise to those economists who believe that we have been in an invention dry spell since the 1970s. In his Businessweek piece, Peter Coy largely agrees, writing, In all probability  the U.S. will continue to wrestle with secular stagnation  an aging population, slow labor force growth, and weak demand for credit. Robert Gordon, an economist Coy interviewed, looked at the numbers and argued that the next decades productivity growth could not possibly begin to equal that of the 1920s.

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These experts make strong cases, and they satisfy my natural instinct not to go there. But I remain very interested in the reasons the 20s appeal to our imagination right now. Of course, its the booze, the sex, and the parties. But its also a decade with a very strong identityand I think that helps. Writing in the journal American Speech in 1951, Mamie J. Meredith argued that the 20s boasted the most nicknames of any period in our national life. To make the point, Meredith pulled a list out of periodicals: Golden Twenties, Gaudy Twenties, Easy Twenties, Bonanza Twenties, Boisterous Twenties, Tempestuous Twenties, Bloody Twenties (referring to the eras very public gang-related killings), Naughty Twenties.

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Id argue that Merediths point about the decades exceptionality still holds: How many other 20th century decades have a nice little permanent descriptor like Roaring? It helps that most of these are good adjectives, evoking a time youd probably like to live through againbut even the slightly dangerous-sounding ones conjure up something specific. That definiteness offers an appealing sense of certainty to the weary and existentially burned-out person living through this down period between the Trump era, COVID, and whatevers next. The descriptors also conjure up a sense of national unity and happy monoculturewere all living through the Boisterous Twentieswhich is, of course, an illusion (inequality! the rural-urban divide! racial oppression!), but has a lot of appeal for us in the fractured America of 2021.

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We turn to the 1920s because its impossible to imagine how COVID will live on in our lives.

Anyway, lets get to that fun. A very joyful book to read about the decade is Frederick Lewis Allens Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s, which Allena blueblood journalist and editor at Harperspublished in 1931. The book chronicles all of the movement and motion that makes the decade sexy, and doesnt seem to miss a fad. Among the fleeting obsessions Allen catalogs are the sudden and overwhelming craze for Eskimo Pie that made the price of cocoa beans go up by half; the rage for the positive-thinking guru Emile Coue; the obsessive news coverage of the opening of the tomb of Tutankhamen; the popularity of the novelty song Yes! We Have No Bananas; crazes for the foxtrot, the crossword puzzle, mahjong, and, of course, Charles Lindbergh. Allen sees this whole thing as an incomprehensible whirl, marveling at the fickle nature of the publics interest, but this sounds like group joy at a glacial pace compared with our own lightning-quick meme culture. Maybe thats another reason the history compels. Imagine a fad lasting for a yearor even half a year, as the 1920s crazes did? Wouldnt that be restful?

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Allen is also really good at describing partiesor, at least, the ones the middle class and upper class attended. The historian wrote about how women taking up smoking had strewed the dinner table with their ashes, snatched a puff between the acts, invaded the masculine sanctity of the club car, and forced department stores to place ornamental ash-trays between the chairs in their womens shoe departments. In what I think may be the best passage in the book, Allen described the way 1920s partygoers stepped all over every previous genteel convention:

during this decade hostesseseven at small partiesfound that their guests couldnt be bothered to speak to them on arrival or departure; that gate-crashing at dances became an accepted practice; that thousands of men and women made a point of not getting to dinners within an hour of the appointed time lest they seem insufficiently blase; that house parties of flappers and their wide-trousered swains left burning cigarettes on the mahogany tables, scattered ashes light-heartedly on the rugs, took the porch cushions out in the boats and left them there to be rained on, without apology

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The horror! The horror! Invite me to your party! I will not leave the cushions out, I promise.

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Perhaps by remembering the twenties merely as an enchanting series of novelties or the crude afterthought of a simpler past, we preserve the illusion of our own simple innocence, mused historian Paula Fass in the introduction to her book The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s. When I spoke with Fass recently, she wanted me to make sure to include the story of the reactionary cultural politics of the 1920s in this pieceto stress the fact that all of this gaiety didnt happen in a vacuum. A white mob burned the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921; the Immigration Act of 1924 severely restricted entry of immigrants from Asia and Southern and Eastern Europe; and this was the decade of the resurgent (or Second) Ku Klux Klan. The Klan, Fass pointed out, operated out of motives of racism and xenophobia, but also out of generalized backlash to what Allen called the Revolution in Manners and Morals. The KKK was reacting to changes in behavior in womenadultery, premarital sex, wearing short skirts. Things that are emblematic of our picture of the 1920s provoked a lot of negative response at the time, Fass said.

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I describe the fun parts of Only Yesterday because theyre wonderful, but also to make a point about the origin story weve learned about the mood of the 20s. Looking back at Allens work from the vantage point of 1986, historian David M. Kennedy argued that the biggest failing of the book was its lack of historical depth: Rarely did Allen forge an explanatory chain whose links ran back more deeply into the past than 1917. And indeed, Allen seemed to blame World War I for every ash-covered carpet and scarred dining table. Young people who had been overseas and seen so much blood were not ready to conform, Allen wrote: They found themselves expected to settle down into the humdrum routine of American life as if nothing had happened, to accept the moral dicta of elders who seemed to them still to be living in a Pollyanna land of rosy ideals which the war had killed for them. They couldnt do it, and they very disrespectfully said so. The war loomed large, and it was clearly hard for Allen, writing only a decade and change out from Armistice Day, to see whether some of these big changes had deeper roots.

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I think a lot of us know that the comparison between that time and this one cannot fly. But we turn to the 1920s because its impossible to imagine how COVID will live on in our lives. Remember when we were still surprised at the idea that people forgot the 191819 pandemic? When COVID felt so huge to us that we couldnt imagine it getting smaller in the rearview? I cant believe I ever wondered. The past year has taught me that for Americans, our pathological optimism can move mountains. At the end of her book American Pandemic, historian Nancy Bristow argues that the people in the throes of flu amnesia in the 1920s were engaged in a process common in the nations historythe drowning-out of narratives of anguish with the noise of public optimism. Imagine, Bristow writes, how the sense of opportunity and progress would have sounded to someone who had lost a mother, a brother, a wife, a son. This was the hidden 1920sa decade of private grief. Its the only part I know for sure well be doing again.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 17:05:38|Editor: huaxia

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People are seen next to the wreckage of vehicles involved in an accident along the Mombasa-Malindi highway near Malindi town, Kenya, April 7, 2021. At least 15 people were killed and 14 others injured early Wednesday when two commuter buses collided head-on in Kenya's coastal town of Malindi. (Photo by Joy Nabukewa/Xinhua)

MALINDI, Kenya, April 7 (Xinhua) -- At least 15 people were killed and 14 others injured early Wednesday when two commuter buses collided head-on in Kenya's coastal town of Malindi.

Kilifi County Commissioner Kutswa Olaka said the drivers of two vehicles, one traveling from the coastal city of Mombasa to Garissa, the other heading for Mombasa, were killed in the collision along the Malindi-Mombasa highway.

Witnesses said the bus heading for Garissa was overtaking another vehicle and the driver lost control, hitting the incoming shuttle.

An estimated 3,000 Kenyans die in road accidents, according to the National Transport Safety Authority. Enditem


External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar welcomes Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov before a meeting, in New Delhi on Tuesday, April 6, 2021. Photo: MEA/PTI

NEW DELHI (PTI): Russia on Tuesday promised expansion of joint production of weapons systems in India as the two countries held extensive talks covering key areas of bilateral cooperation as well as pressing issues like the Afghan peace process and each other's outlook for the Indo-Pacific region.



In their talks, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov also discussed the proposed free trade pact between India and the Eurasian Economic Union.



People familiar with the discussions said the Indian side apprised the Russian delegation of its views and apprehensions over China's behaviour in the backdrop of the border row in eastern Ladakh.



At a press conference with Lavrov, Jaishankar, terming the talks "very warm", "comprehensive" and "very productive", said much of the discussions covered the preparations for President Vladimir Putin's visit to India for the annual India-Russia summit later this year.



To a question, Lavrov dismissed the possibility of any future military alliance between Russia and China and asserted that cooperation between the two countries was not directed against anyone.



Referring to bilateral defence ties, Lavrov said Russia was ready for transfer of cutting edge technologies and "additional manufacturing" of weapons systems in India. Russia is already a part of several joint production of military hardware projects in India.



"I am sure deepening of military cooperation serves national interests of both the countries. At the same time, we respect the right of Indian friends to diversify ties in this area," he said and described the outcome of the talks as "satisfactory".



Without elaborating, Jaishankar said, "Our defence sector requirements in the past year were expeditiously addressed."



Asked whether the issue of the US putting pressure on India to not procure Russian weapons systems figured in the talks, he said it did not.



He said the US puts pressure on India and any other country that wants to sign agreement with Russia for procuring weapons.



The Russian Foreign Minister arrived in New Delhi on Monday evening on a nearly 19-hour visit amid apparent unease in Moscow over the proactive approach of the Quad member nations, including India, in dealing with geo-political developments in the Indo-Pacific region.



Lavrov is travelling to Islamabad from India.



Jaishankar said both nations understand the importance of the India-Russia relationship to global peace, security and stability and that the review of bilateral ties was "really encouraging".



"I shared our viewpoint on Indo-Pacific. As our Prime Minister pointed out at the Shangri-La Dialogue some years ago, contemporary challenges require countries to work together in new and different ways," Jaishankar said.



Russia has been critical of the Quad grouping that has been aimed at ensuring a free and open Indo-Pacific against the backdrop of China's growing assertiveness in the region. Quad comprises India, the US, Japan and Australia.



Lavrov referred to Indo-Pacific as Asia-Pacific and said both sides highlighted the need to preserve the central role of ASEAN in the region. He also highlighted the need for interaction among Russia, India and China under the existing trilateral framework.



At the press conference, Lavrov dismissed suggestions of any future military alliance between Russia and China.



"We have heard speculation about pro-military alliances not only with respect to Russia and China relations, we have also heard about such alliances allegedly being promoted such as Middle East-NATO, Asia-NATO. Today we exchanged views on this and our Indian friends have the same position as we. We believe this is counter-productive," he said in Russian.



"We are interested in inclusive cooperation that is for something, not against somebody," Lavrov said.



Jaishankar said developments in and around Afghanistan also figured in the talks.



"For India, what happens in Afghanistan impacts its security directly. I shared our approach that a durable peace there would require harmonising interests of all, both within and around that nation."



"The peace process must be based on foundational principles to which we all subscribe. A political solution should mean an independent, sovereign, united and democratic Afghanistan," he said.



The Russian foreign ministry termed the talks "an open-minded exchange of views on most significant issues of the international and regional agenda".



It said both sides stated the similarity of approaches to pressing global and regional problems, including a peaceful settlement in Afghanistan, the Syrian crisis, the situation around Iranian nuclear programme, as well as a common understanding of the principles of shaping a reliable security architecture in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.



Jaishankar said discussions were also held on trade and investment.



"We note the appetite for greater investments in each other by both countries. Russian support for our Gaganyaan programme has progressed which we deeply appreciate," he said, adding the longstanding partnership in nuclear and space sectors figured in the talks.



"Our rapidly expanding energy cooperation that now includes long-term commitments was also on the agenda."



Lavrov said both sides agreed on the need to galvanise work on renewed intergovernmental agreement on mutual security of investments and settlement of issues relating to national currencies.



"We have to launch as soon as possible talks on free trade pact between India and the Eurasian Economic Union based on mutual benefit," he said.


Beau Chene Country Club put out an odd social media alert on March 25: One of the pair of swans that grace the gated Mandeville area subdivision had gone missing. What's more, there were eggs in the swans' nest for the first time, so finding the missing bird, thought to be the female of the pair, was critical.

The club offered a $2,000 reward for its safe return, no questions asked.

But as it turns out, the mysterious disappearance -- no blood, feathers or other evidence of foul play -- was not of the female, Kate, but the male, William.

The pair, named for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, were purchased by the club's owner four and a half years ago, club manager Don Beaver said. When they arrived they had bands, a pink one on Kate, a blue on William. But those have since disappeared, making it harder to know which swan had gone AWOL.

"We did the sexist thing and assumed the smaller (missing) one was the female," Beaver said.

But when a fourth egg joined the original three in the nest, it was clear that the remaining swan, who has been sitting constantly on the nest, is the soon-to-be mother.

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The swans are beloved fixtures in neighborhood, Beaver said, adding that are kind of mascots. News that one was missing had as many as 100 residents combing the area looking for the bird. William couldn't have gone too far, because the swans wings are clipped.

But after 12 days, Beaver said that hopes of finding him are dimming.

As for the possibility of cygnets -- little swans -- Beaver said that many times the first eggs a swan lays don't hatch a live baby. The club has an incubator but has not needed to use it since Kate is staying on the nest, taking only the occasional five-minute break to swim.

It takes swan eggs 30 to 35 days to hatch, so they are hoping for cygnets by late April.

As for Kate, although swans do mate for life, a swan breeder has assured the club that she will be able to bond with a new male. But since a new mate could hurt the cygnets, that won't be happening right away.
RTHK: Ex-Philippine President Joseph Estrada on ventilator

Former Philippine President Joseph Estrada, who is battling Covid-19, has been put on a ventilator, his son said Tuesday.

The 83-year-old Estrada, the most prominent Filipino politician to test positive for the coronavirus, was hospitalised more than a week ago and initially was recovering well, said his son, former Sen. Jinggoy Estrada.

But on Monday, my fathers condition suffered a setback, he said in a medical bulletin posted on Facebook, adding that doctors decided to put the former president on a ventilator to improve oxygen delivery as well as to prevent the tiring of his respiratory mechanism.

My father has always been a fighter and I hope that with the help of your prayers, he will win this battle, he said.

Another Estrada son, former Sen. JV Ejercito, also appealed for prayers, saying in a tweet that Covid is unpredictable.

Estrada, a former action film star and veteran politician, won the presidency in 1998 with one of the largest margins in Philippine elections.

But his six-year term was cut short after he faced allegations of plunder and was ousted in January 2001 during massive military-backed protests.

He denied the charges, which he said were fabricated by his opponents.

A special anti-graft court convicted him of plunder in 2007.

His successor and former vice president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, pardoned him in a move that restored his civil and political rights and allowed him to make an unsuccessful second run for the presidency in 2010.

He won election as mayor of Manila in 2013 and has been out of politics since his term ended in 2019.

Separately, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, who is leading efforts to deal with the pandemic in the Philippines, said he tested positive for the coronavirus Tuesday and would go into isolation.

The Philippines has reported more than 812,000 confirmed cases, including 13,817 deaths, the second highest in Southeast Asia after Indonesia. (AP)

This story has been published on: 2021-04-07. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
NEW DELHI: In a big development, the Delhi High Court on Wednesday ruled that wearing a mask is mandatory even if a person is driving a private vehicle alone.

The high court stated that a mask acts as a 'suraksha kavach' which would prevent the spread of COVID-19. The Delhi High Court held that wearing a mask while driving alone in a private vehicle is mandatory during COVID-19 times.

Delhi High Court rules mask mandatory even if a person is driving alone. It states that a mask acts as a 'suraksha kavach' which would prevent the spread of COVID19. pic.twitter.com/litzyIQ4iN  ANI (@ANI) April 7, 2021

Justice Prathiba M Singh also refused to interfere with the Delhi government's decision to impose challans for not wearing a mask while driving a private vehicle alone and dismissed the pleas challenging the same.

Delhi High Court dismissed all four petitions challenging the imposition of challans on people for not wearing a mask while they're alone in private cars.

The high court further added that even if a car is occupied by just one person, its a public space.

The Delhi government had on Tuesday (April 6, 2021) announced a night curfew till April 30 to check the COVID-19 spread. The coronavirus cases continued to rise in the national capital as it recorded 5,100 fresh cases and 17 deaths on Tuesday.

The night curfew has been imposed in the national capital from 10 pm to 5 am till April 30. Delhi has been witnessing a sudden surge in COVID-19 cases. It recorded 5,100 fresh cases on Tuesday, the highest this year.

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Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Honda's new vehicle deliveries in March zoomed up 150.2% year on year to 151,218 units, the highest-ever volume for the corresponding period, the Japanese automaker said on Tuesday.

To be specific, GAC Honda delivered 76,203 vehicles last month, posting a 136.6% hike over the year-ago period, while Dongfeng Honda saw its March deliveries soar 165.7% to 75,015 units.

CR-V; photo credit: Dongfeng Honda



There were six Honda-branded models, namely the Accord, the Vezel, the Breeze, the CR-V, the XR-V and the Civic, whose deliveries all exceeded 10,000 units in March. Notably, the volume of the CR-V topped 20,000 units.

Moreover, a total of 21,662 consumers in China took delivery of Honda's vehicles armed with the hybrid powertrain system Sport Hybrid.

Breeze 2021; photo credit: GAC Honda



For the first quarter of 2021, Honda delivered 390,231 new vehicles in the world's largest auto market, a year-over-year growth of 75.8%. GAC Honda scored a remarkable increase of 54.8% with 180,110 vehicles delivered. Dongfeng Honda handed over 210,121 vehicles to consumers, an upward movement of 98.9% from the previous year.



With regard to new products, GAC Honda put the EA6, the joint venture's first all-electric compact sedan, onto the market on March 10. The model is jointly developed by GAC R&D Center and GAC Honda, and is built on the basis of the Aion S. It carries a permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) that churns out up to 135kW and 300 Nm, and is fitted with a ternary-lithium battery pack that enables a range of 510km under NEDC range.
Mr Kwesi Adu Gyan, Bono East Regional Minister, has expressed a commitment to making agriculture attractive to the youth in the region.



He noted that the youth were the driving force for national development and needed to be empowered through agriculture.



The region is the fourth largest agriculture producer in the country with over 95 per cent of land suitable for commercial agriculture.



Mr Gyan, who was briefing the media at Techiman in the Bono Region, explained that a long stretch of the Volta River, which serves as a natural boundary to the North and South-Eastern corner, provided a huge potential for aqua-culture.



The region has the potential to be a food basket and commercial hub in the country through block farming and value addition to attract the educated youth, he added.



He said cooperation between the private and public sector would make the farming business an attractive venture for the youth.



Mr Gyan said construction of vegetable parks in Techiman North and South was underway to complement the Tanoso and the Subinso irrigation projects.



The parks, he said, would be developed into modern vegetable agro parks for all-year production to provide raw materials to feed the factories in the area.



He pointed out that the Bono East would continue to be the food basket of the country by working with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture to increase their support for farmers under government flagship projects, including the Planting for Food and Jobs, Rearing for Food and Jobs, and Planting for Export and Rural Development.



The Region would also make use of high yield seeds and better storage and preservation systems for the small and medium-scale farmers to produce enough crops for consumption.



Touching on Human Capital Development, Mr Gyan said that education and human resource development was undoubtedly the most important tool in the pursuit of socio-economic progress of the people and was working with stakeholders to leverage the opportunities offered by education and training to increase knowledge.



He said he would collaborate with stakeholders, including the Ministry of Education to increase enrollment, provide enabling environment to establish Science, Engineering and Mathematics in Senior High Schools (SHS) and upgrade some existing SHS into model ones to enhance teaching and learning.

Source: GNA









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Dramatic cuts to UK foreign aid budgets have left the future of hundreds of research projects in developing countries hanging in the balance and trusted partnerships severely undermined, say leading scientists.

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) announced on 11 March that its international development budget for 2021/22 had been reduced from 245 million to 125 million as a result of the economic impact of COVID-19, leaving a "120 million gap between allocations and commitments".

It says more than 800 projects will be affected by the cuts, which will see grants such as those awarded by the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) and Newton Fund significantly reduced or, in some cases, terminated.

Nick Talbot, executive director of the Sainsbury Laboratory, said it was a "massive breach of trust" to cut ongoing projects of real impact for developing countries. He said he faced a "major cut" to a GCRF project grant in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Talbot, a world-renowned expert in molecular plant pathology, leads a project on rice blast, a disease that can devastate rice yields, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa where disease-resistant varieties are lacking and control strategies limited.

Our project has examined the rice blast pathogen population and provided information on the resistance genes that could defend rice varieties grown locally from infection. We have used plant breeding to introduce multiple diseases resistance into locally grown varieties favoured by farmers and consumers in Sub-Saharan Africa." Nick Talbot, Executive Director, Sainsbury Laboratory

The UK team works with partners in Nairobi who house a disease repository and oversee local breeding work, said Talbot, as well as scientists in Burkina Faso, Burundi, Tanzania, and Madagascar.

"It is a highly complex project and we have trained many African scientists, including PhD students. We have rice varieties in field trials across 17 sites in Africa, and our next stage will be to bring some of the varieties to registration and release to farmers.We need about three to four years' further funding to achieve this, but the cut we have received puts a lot of that in jeopardy."

Talbot said he was doing all he could to maintain partner budgets in Sub-Saharan Africa, but admitted he did not know how he would implement such a deep cut, adding that the exact amount remained under discussion. "It's heartbreaking for such a successful project to be affected like this," he said.

In an online briefing, the UKRI says it is working with stakeholders to discuss "the best way forward". "No one could have foreseen the economic impact of an extended global pandemic when we entered into these longer-term programmes," it says.

Scientists have mobilised in their thousands to sign petitions calling for the British government to revoke the cuts.

"The decimation of this vital funding stream will have drastic impacts," says enni Barclay, a professor of volcanology at the University of East Anglia who authored the letter, said her immediate response was one of "abject horror". "I cannot believe that the UK government understood what it was doing to 'global Britain' by this unprecedented action  to cancel competitively funded projects, or cut others so thoroughly, it's difficult to see how momentum and trust can be sustained."

Asked to respond to the petitions, a spokeswoman for the UK's Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said: "We are working with our delivery partners, including UK Research and Innovation, to implement a new research and development settlement for 2021/22 as part of our wider commitment to maintain the UK's world-class reputation for science, research and innovation."

When patients go to the clinic for treatment  also partially funded through the project  they are invited to contribute to the study, with thousands of children expected to receive malaria treatment, regardless of whether they take part, said Lawniczak. All that is now at risk, she fears.

"When you are awarded a grant, you would never think that a cut could come after the award has been made, especially not such a dramatic one," added Lawniczak. She said her research partner in Mali, Abdoulaye Djimde, felt "helpless" about the situation. "If this was a new collaboration and the rug was pulled out from under it like this, why would partners in [low- and middle-income countries] ever want to work with us again? They have invested in this project  people, time, resources, brain power  built on a foundation of trust that the funding is there."
POINTER is composed of a receiver, transmitter, and base station. Clockwise from left: The receiver prototype is worn by firefighters and communicates with the transmitter coil, which was attached to an out-of-service firetruck for testing purposes. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/DHS ST

A unique positioning technology is being developed to pinpoint firefighters inside buildings where other positioning technologies fail.

When mounting a rescue inside a building, firefighters are often confronted with a fast-changing environment obscured by smoke and flames. Navigating the structure may become confusing and, should a firefighter become lost or injured, the rescuer can quickly become the one who needs rescuing.

To help mitigate those dangers, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) are developing POINTER, a system to locate and track firefighters inside structures when they risk their lives to save others. Short for Precision Outdoor and Indoor Navigation and Tracking for Emergency Responders, the system began taking shape in 2014, and now the technology is being matured for use by fire departments nationwide.

"Even with all of the advances made in firefighting technology, we still lose far too many firefighters each year," said Greg Price, who leads S&T's first responder research-and-development programs. "We want them to know that we have their backs, that we are working to give them the tools they need to ensure their own safety. POINTER is one of those life-saving solutions."

Unlike positioning technologies such as GPS or radio-frequency identification, POINTER doesn't use radio waves. Though radio waves offer a reliable means to determine your location in a relatively open space, they can become unpredictable if you go indoors or find yourself surrounded by high buildings. This may be a minor annoyance when trying to find the location of an appointment, but it could be a life-or-death situation when trying to locate firefighters in a burning building.

Magnetoquasistatic Fields

POINTER removes that unpredictability by harnessing magnetoquasistatic (MQS) fields. A type of electromagnetic field, MQS fields have been largely overlooked by researchers as a viable positioning tool because of rapid drop-off as a function of distance. But JPL senior research technologist Darmindra Arumugam helped work out a mathematical and technological framework to enable their practical application by using lower frequencies to extend the range of this technology while ensuring highly accurate location data.

"These fields are not blocked or reflected by the materials found in most buildings, as most construction materials allow quasistatic magnetic fields to easily permeate," said Arumugam, who is also the principal investigator for POINTER.

MQS fields can be generated when low-frequency alternating electrical currents pass through a coil. Electromagnetic fields have both electric and magnetic components, but at very low frequencies and for coil structures, the magnetic component in MQS fields becomes dominant. In the quasistatic range, which can extend from a few meters to thousands of meters (determined by the frequency passing through the coil), MQS fields act much like the static magnetic field produced by the interior of our planet. This is why this field is described as "quasistatic," which means almost stationary, or very slowly oscillating.

"This presents a significant difference to how remote wave-based position sensing works and performs," added Arumugam. "Whereas radio waves become blocked, reflected, and attenuated by the metal, cement, and brick materials in buildings, magnetoquasistatic fields do not. They pass straight through walls, creating a means to navigate and communicate when direct line of sight is not available."

This form of positioning technology will also have applications off Earth, added Arumugam. The MQS technique may be configured for longer ranges, filling a significant technology gap for navigation sensors for some of NASA's space robot projects. Many of these robotic systems will need to navigate autonomously across challenging, non-line-of-sight environments and may require additional navigational abilities. MQS fields could be used by ice-penetrating robots, cave robots, and underwater robots, where traditional navigation techniques fail to operate well.

A Practical Use

The POINTER system is composed of three parts: a receiver, transmitter, and base station. The firefighter wears the receiver, which is currently the size of a cellphone but expected to become much smaller after further development. A transmitter that can be attached to emergency vehicles outside the building generates the MQS fields, which travel through the building, pinging any receivers located inside over a range of about 230 feet (70 meters) in the current version of the system.

This range can be extended but isn't needed in most fire-service applications. The receivers detect the fields, determine their 3D location, and then send that data back outside the building to a laptop (the base station). Visualization software shows where the firefighters are in 3D space within an accuracy of a few inches.

Not only can POINTER help firefighting teams locate team members through walls, MQS fields can also determine the orientation of the receiver. In other words, they can provide critical information about whether a first responder is standing up or lying down, moving or motionless, and which direction they are facing.

"This is a very exciting technology that adds another dimension to firefighters' situational awareness," said JPL's Ed Chow, the POINTER program manager. "Firefighters can be tracked in real time and, if they become unresponsive, their team members can see if they are trapped under debris or if they are injured so a rescue can be mounted."

In a recent demonstration, POINTER was tested in a three-level, 8,000-square-foot (750-square-meter) structure on the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center campus with an accuracy of less than one meter in three-dimensional space throughout the structure. Multiple POINTER devices were evaluated by members of the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate's First Responder Resource Group and industry partner Balboa Geolocation Inc. to ensure that they met first-responder requirements.

The POINTER team is now planning to carry out a live webcast of a technical demonstration inside a two-level single-family home in Pasadena, California, near the campus of Caltech, which manages JPL for NASA. Further field tests in a variety of firefighting scenarios are being planned through 2021, and a commercial version of POINTER will be made available to fire departments in 2022.

Explore further New technology could help track firefighters for safety
Why worry about document security?

4 ways to secure your PDF documents

1. Encryption

2. Redaction

3. Digital signatures

Integrity  Assurance that the document hasnt been changed somewhere in the workflow

Authenticity  Assurance that the signer of the document is who you think it is (and not somebody else)

Non-repudiation  Assurance that the signer cant deny their signature

4. PDF portfolios

How to get started

You have probably already noticed that the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a paradigm shift in how government services are provided. Being able to effectively serve citizens online has proved incredibly challenging for many agencies, and government officials and citizens alike have struggled to cope. The result has been the acceleration of many digital transformation government initiatives that, for years, faced significant obstacles such as limited budgets, legacy systems and bureaucratic processes. COVID-19 has proven indisputably that modernization is necessary, and the digital transformation of government agencies is essential. On the list of top 10 2020 priorities for state CIOsidentified by the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, officials rank digital government as well as innovation and transformation through technology as pressing concerns. Digital government jumped from No. 4 in 2019 to No. 2, just behind the perennial No. 1: cybersecurity.Its not too surprising to see them both as pressing needs since a crucial part of digital government is being able to share and process information securely. When you consider how much of that information is contained within PDF documents, then youll understand why we are so passionate about properly using PDFs for secure and simple digital transformations.For government agencies, keeping PDF documents secure is a vital step in keeping citizens data secure. Just consider how much of your personal information is shared between companies and government entities in the modern world; for example, your name, date of birth and personal identification numbers are stored across digital boarding passes, receipts and archives. These can be saved by companies, health-care entities, banks and more. This information can be vulnerable to being exposed online, either unintentionally due to a misconfigured database, or maliciously due to hacking. But dont worry, there are a number of ways that you can secure documents and data.At iText, we take security seriously. For over 20 years, the iText PDF library has been used to create and manipulate PDF documents by banks, corporations and governments worldwide. Its also an essential part of many digital transformation and automation projects, since the latest version of the iText library, iText 7, features a suite of add-ons to enable intelligent data extraction, secure redaction of confidential information, optical character recognition and much more. Whether you need to get data in or out of PDF documents, weve got it covered.All of this means iText is virtually synonymous with PDF, and its reputation for simplicity, power and scalability means its seen as the developers choice. Thats not to say only developers benefit from what iText offers though. iText lies at the heart of many systems that produce and process PDFs for everyday uses, whether youre talking online banking statements or airline boarding passes (though you might not have seen one of those lately).There are many options for securing your documents and data, depending on your needs. The options can be layered to create the right level of security. But which ones are right for you? In this next section, we will take a look at four ways to secure your PDF documents, including optional examples using iText, and discuss the pros and cons of each to help you decide whats right for your agency.The first option is encryption, which is a simple way to restrict access to unauthorized users by making the document inaccessible (encrypted) unless the intended recipients have the key/password to unlock the data.Lets take a closer look at both password and certificate encryption options:Password encryption is a simple way to protect information from those without the password. The latest ISO 32000 default for this is 256-bit AES encryption. With password protection, you can easily create an owner password and set controls on what information others can alter (or not alter) in the document, and then create user passwords that will allow anyone with those passwords to open the document and any other controls that you have allowed.You can see a demo on our website here of using permissions to allow printing, modifying contents, copying and modifying annotations.Instead of using a password, you can also use a public-private key pair to encrypt your documents. This is a pair of keys that are linked together by complicated mathematical algorithms. These are so complex and mysterious, in fact, that theyre referred to as mathemagical by cryptography experts. The public key is, as it says on the tin, public and the other is private. You can use somebodys public key to encrypt a message (or document) that only the corresponding private key can decrypt. Meaning that the holder of the private key can open the document and nobody else, since the private key is meant to be kept  well . This is illustrated in the following image.Encryption is well-suited for documents that will be emailed or shared with a manageable number of people that you communicate with and trust not to share the password further. However, when you want to distribute a document widely or archive it, you may want to consider redaction instead. Read on for how redaction works.The second option is redaction, which is also helpful when you want to share the majority of a documents content but keep personal or classified information from being published publicly. When you are archiving information, you want to ensure that users in the future will be able to access the necessary data. This security feature removes information from a document entirely, similar to the analog black bar method that was used in the days of the photocopy machine. With a PDF, simply adding a black bar over the text works for the image of the document, but leaves the metadata intact, making it easy for someone to access your sensitive data.There have been a number of embarrassing redaction failures over the years, and you can read about some of them in this American Bar Association article . To prevent issues like this, iText came up with pdfSweep , an iText 7 add-on that securely removes content you define as sensitive from the document, including the metadata  making the redaction process similar (but better!) to the analog version.It intervenes as you edit a PDF document with iText 7's document stamping and watermarking tools. After adding a digital "blackout bar" over the sensitive text, image or part of an image, pdfSweep changes the document's rendering instructions, causing the hidden content of your digital document to become impossible to extract. This works for both text and images, affording you full information security.If you are interested in seeing an example of how pdfSweep works, you can see one on our website here Redaction is helpful to protect confidential information in broadly disseminated documents but will not allow you to retrieve the redacted information. If you are looking for something that keeps all information in the document, you can use encryption as we talked about before, or digital signatures, which also allow you to confirm if a document has been tampered with or changed.A third option is digital signatures, which are a solution to replace wet ink signatures when using digital documents. This concept has been widely adopted and is well integrated into the PDF specification. It is similar to having a public notary stamp in a document that ensures the signatures are legitimate and the document has not been modified. The digital signature essentially captures the intention of the individual to enter into the contract, and the digital signature is used to encrypt the information and confirm the validity of the signed document. The main benefits of using digital signatures include automating and securing your digital document workflow, saving you time, money and headaches. This can be used for official documents, and to show who checked the document on a specific date/time and that the document has not been updated since it was signed.There may be one or more signatures in a single PDF document. Digital signatures are actually unseen, hashed and encrypted metadata embedded with a certificate in the file. You can also include an optional visible representation of the signature, a signature photo and/or a signing certificate summary to allow all readers to clearly see the document has been signed.The three main goals of digital signatures are:Digital signatures can be used to identify the latest version of a document to protect against tampering and can act as a digital signature for a document, just like wet ink. They are ideal for proving the validity of a document and ensuring that content is unaltered. These are often used for transactions and are widely accepted as secure.For a deeper dive into the subject of digital signatures in PDFs, watch our recorded digital signatures webinar You have a number of security options based on your needs. You can set a password or set a key/certificate to encrypt a document. You can remove the sensitive data and then save or share broadly with redaction, or you can confirm that a document has not been tampered with by using digital signatures, while proving the signer is who you think they are.If you want to learn more, you can watch the webinar we recorded with the PDF Association on  PDF Security: Encryption and Digital Signatures  for a deeper dive into these options.Finally, our fourth option, one of the most interesting (and relatively unknown) features added to the PDF format is the ability to create portable collections, more commonly known as PDF portfolios, which enables multiple files to be integrated into a single, secured PDF document.This isnt to be confused with the Combine File option inside many PDF viewers and software though. This feature offers similar functionality but differs in one major respect. Simply combining files means that all the files will be converted to PDF, whereas creating a PDF portfolio preserves the files in their original file format, and you can edit or modify them in their native application without removing them from the portfolio.The PDF specification includes features that allow the containment and characterization of arbitrary content (such as files commonly found in email attachments) within the PDF file. As noted in this article from the PDF Association, the PDF standard includes embedded-file, metadata, navigation, data protection and accessibility/reuse features in an ISO-standardized, vendor-independent specification. In a similar way that PDF documents can be a container for other types of data, PDF portfolios themselves are also a data container format that enable you to collect many different file types together in a single file.There are many use cases and applications where PDF portfolios could be ideal. One example is loan application requests where there are forms to fill out and read-only disclosures, or packets for new employees containing information such as health insurance forms and company policy documents in different formats.They can also be used for non-business applications, too, such as art students who need to submit a portfolio for college. Using a PDF portfolio, they can easily incorporate original images, photographs and videos into a single file without needing to worry about compression artifacts affecting the perception of their work, since unlike a combined PDF where all files are converted to PDF, files contained within the PDF portfolio remain untouched and easily viewed with a supported application.Crucially, its important to note that a PDF digital signature applied to the portfolio coversthe files it contains, whatever file format they are. It should be noted that edits to documents contained within will break the signature, since it covers the whole PDF including the PDF portfolio and its files.So, if any of the files in the portfolio are changed or updated then a new digital signature would need to be generated for the portfolio to maintain security for the files contained within. On the other hand, thats preferable to having to generate digital signatures for all the files it contains. Even if you dont require the level of security provided by a digital signature, using PDF portfolios is still a great idea. You can set a password for the entire portfolio, or for individual PDFs contained within the portfolio.You can find an article looking at PDF portfolios in more detail, including iText 7 code examples to generate them yourself on our website.You have a number of security options based on your needs. You can set a password or set a key/certificate to encrypt a document. You can remove the sensitive data and then save or share broadly with redaction. You can confirm that a document has not been tampered with by using digital signatures, while proving the signer is who you think they are, or you can create a secure PDF portfolio of multiple file types.If you want to learn more, we have some resources that can give you a deeper dive into these options. You can watch the webinar we recorded with the PDF Association on PDF Security: Encryption and Digital Signatures for a deeper dive into the first three options, and check out our blog post on PDF portfolios for more information about them, you can also register for our LIVE webinar Top 4 ways to secure your PDF documents for government agencies for a deeper dive into these topics.
Former trade unions chief David Begg confirmed today he received a Covid-19 vaccine as chair of the board of Dublin's Mater Hospital.

Mr Begg (71) formerly led the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and later became head of Concern.

He told Independent.ie the vaccine was offered to all members of the board who were not working medical staff.

The Mater hospital received deliveries of the vaccine for its frontline care staff.

Mr Begg said he got the vaccine several weeks ago.

Read More

He said they received the vaccine before the HSE issued guidelines.

"I did not ask for it. The decision was made by the clinicians based on the risk to the hospital of people coming in and the risk to people themselves."

He said not all members of board have to go into the hospital and "not everyone got the the vaccine."

He added some of the board members are doctors and nurses in the hospital.

"Some of our people are abroad. One is a GP who got the vaccine elsewhere and other people got it somewhere else as well ."

Other members did not necessarily want it, he added.

He said when he is in the hospital he is encountering patients who may be wheeled past him in trolleys.

"It is compounded by being in a vulnerable age with medical conditions."

He said he did not ask who else received the vaccine.

Mr Begg said :"I am in the age and underlying condition category even if you completely ignored my role in the hospital."

The Mater hospital was contacted by Independent.ie early on Friday to explain why members of the board were offered vaccines from the deliveries for frontline healthcare workers.

It did not answer the question and after being asked again for a response on Tuesday it said the "hospital will not be commenting at this time.

Read More






BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - The euro showed mixed trading against its major counterparts in the European session on Wednesday, after the release of a data showing an expansion in Eurozone private sector activity in March.



Final survey data from IHS Markit showed that Eurozone private sector returned to growth in March underpinned by a record increase in manufacturing output.



The final composite output index rose to 53.2 in March from 48.8 in February. The score was also above the flash estimate of 52.5.



European stocks rose as economic recovery hopes intensified amid steady progress with coronavirus vaccinations and additional government stimulus.



Traders await the minutes of the most recent Federal Open Market Committee meeting for clues regarding when the U.S. central bank might raise rates.



The euro climbed to 1.1898 against the greenback, its strongest level since March 23. The euro is seen finding resistance around the 1.21 mark.



The euro spiked higher to 130.62 against the yen, setting nearly a 3-week high, and was up from Tuesday's close of 130.28. Should the euro strengthens further, it is likely to test resistance around the 133.00 region.



Preliminary data from the Cabinet Office showed that Japan's leading index increased to the highest level in nearly three years in February.



The leading index, which measures the future economic activity, grew to 99.7 in February from 98.5 in January.



The euro rebounded to 1.1054 against the franc, from a weekly low of 1.1034 set at 3:30 am ET. On the upside, 1.13 is possibly seen as its next resistance level.



After touching nearly a 2-week high of 0.8624 at 2:30 am ET, the euro pulled back to 0.8586 against the pound and held steady thereafter. Further decline in the currency is likely to see support around the 0.84 level.



Final data from IHS Markit showed that the UK service sector logged a strong rebound in March as activity, new orders and employment picked up from February.



The services Purchasing Managers' Index advanced to 56.3 from 49.5 in February. The flash reading was 56.8.



Looking ahead, the U.S. and Canadian trade data for February, Canada Ivey PMI for March and U.S. consumer credit for February will be released in the New York session.



The Fed minutes from the March 16-17 meeting are set for release at 2:00 pm ET.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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George Russell thinks Mercedes' 2021 car could be suffering from a Williams-like sensitivity to the wind.

At the Bahrain season opener, Mercedes junior Russell said he thinks the biggest issue with his new Williams car was a newfound sensitivity to the wind as a result of the tweaked aerodynamic rules for 2021.

"Mercedes is in the same boat as Williams when it comes to the car's sensitivity to wind," the British driver is quoted by Speed Week.

"Something as fundamental as that can only be remedied with a complete redesign, which is not an option for us. I think Mercedes potentially has the same problem as us."

Russell, 23, is being strongly linked with a works Mercedes seat for the future, and possibly as early as 2022 as Lewis Hamilton's new contract is for a single year only.

"Only he (Hamilton) knows if this will be his last season in F1," Red Bull reserve Alex Albon told GQ magazine.

"It's my view that if my friend George Russell was to partner Lewis at Mercedes next year he could really challenge him."

When asked if he is ready for F1 'superstar status' as a works Mercedes driver, Russell said: "I don't get carried away with myself. I'll cross that bridge when I get to it."

(GMM)
PragerU, a popular conservative group whose videos have garnered billions of views since its founding in 2011, announced the launch of its educational resources for children.

In an announcement emailed to supporters on Monday, Prager said nearly 10,000 educators and parents have already joined PragerU Resources for Educators and Parents.

Our schools are teaching that America is not a land of plenty, but a nation of systemic oppression and inequality. Students learn half-truths or lies to make them feel ashamed of being American, the website states.

PragerU Resources for Educators & Parents is a community committed to teaching our youth about Americas blessings and limitless opportunities.

Source:The Christian Post
NSW emergency departments are scouring medical records for blood clot cases linked to the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine as international medicines regulators inch closer to declaring the vaccine may cause the extremely rare condition.

The states vaccinators are warning anyone receiving the AstraZeneca shot to be on alert for blood clot symptoms as a precaution following the case of a 44-year-old man hospitalised with a severe and extremely rare clotting disorder in Melbourne on Friday.

The AstraZeneca vaccine, seen here in bottles at the TGA laboratory in Canberra. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Dozens of rare blood clots have been reported worldwide among the tens of millions of AstraZeneca shots administered.

A top official at the European Medicines Agency on Tuesday said there is a causal link between AstraZenecas coronavirus vaccine and extremely rare blood clotting syndrome dubbed vaccine-induced prothrombotic immune thrombocytopenia (VIPIT), though the nature of the connection was unclear.
BOSTON and GUILDFORD, United Kingdom, April 7, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- TetraScience , the world's first and only open R&D Data Cloud for scientific discovery, and IDBS, a leading R&D technology and solutions provider, announce a strategic partnership to integrate the IDBS E-Workbook TM and Tetra Data Platform into a common ecosystem to provide end-to-end R&D data automation.

This partnership provides seamless connectivity between instrumentation and informatics solutions in life sciences R&D to enable the automatic collection, centralization, and harmonization of data in the Cloud. Users will benefit from bidirectional instrument control that streamlines workflows and enhances laboratory connectivity.

"E-WorkBook is a market-leading platform for the planning, execution, and reporting of scientific workflows across the R&D value chain. With over 30 years of expertise, IDBS understands the need for seamless integration of our platform within a customer's ecosystem of laboratory instruments, informatics tools and data pipelines. However, it is no longer enough to simply improve laboratory efficiency or intra-lab collaboration; our customers are demanding easy access to well-managed and contextualized data to power advanced analytics that accelerate the pace of innovation. This partnership will dramatically improve systems' interoperability and will offer the best possible digitization experience to mutual customers of IDBS and TetraScience", notes Scott Weiss, VP of Product Strategy, IDBS.

This partnership will help save time in the lab, enabling scientists to focus more on drug discovery. TetraScience and IDBS are committed to creating FAIR data to encourage the growth of biopharma collaborations and innovations.

"As an open platform, TetraScience has built a large network of integrations, partners, and best-of-breed solutions to drive the future of life sciences R&D. We are committed to connecting every single data source and target in the biopharma R&D lab landscape, to accelerate innovation and scientific discovery," says Siping "Spin" Wang, CTO and President of TetraScience. "We are delighted to welcome IDBS as a valued member of the Tetra Partner Network."

"In order to unlock the potential of life science R&D labs and dramatically accelerate discovery, we must capitalize on the power of AI and data science. A precondition to enabling these capabilities is moving the industry away from a legacy data model of silos and point-to-point integrations, to a native and unified cloud-based data paradigm," explains Patrick Grady, Chief Executive Officer, TetraScience. "Our partnership with IDBS is an example of what can now be done to enable the life sciences industry to accelerate discoveries that can help improve lives."

About IDBS

IDBS helps research and development (R&D) teams around the world make discoveries that have the potential to transform the lives of populations worldwide. Our diverse customer list includes 22 of the top 25 global pharmaceutical companies, and other R&D-driven organizations in biotechnology, agricultural sciences, chemicals, consumer goods, energy, food and beverage, and healthcare serving over 50,000 researchers in 25 countries. Privately held since 1989, IDBS joined Danaher's Life Sciences platform at the end of 2017. IDBS will help provide the foundation for a portfolio of life sciences informatics and knowledge management solutions, within Danaher, that will accelerate the speed of discovering, developing, and producing new drugs and therapies. To learn more, visit www.idbs.com .

About TetraScience

TetraScience is the leading global R&D Data Cloud company with a mission to transform life sciences R&D, accelerate discovery, and improve human life. The TetraScience R&D Data Cloud provides life sciences companies with the flexibility, scalability, and data-centric capabilities to enable easy access to centralized, standardized, and actionable scientific data and is actively deployed across enterprise pharma and biotech organizations. As an open platform, TetraScience has built the largest integration network of lab instruments, informatics applications, CRO/CDMOs, analytics, and data science partners, creating seamless interoperability and an innovation feedback loop that will drive the future of life sciences R&D. For more information, please visit tetrascience.com .

Contact:

TetraScience Dave Van Everen VP of Marketing [email protected] IDBS Michael Huang Product Manager  Integrations and APIs [email protected]

SOURCE TetraScience
If Dancehall artist Khago, carries out his threat to sue producer Seanizzle, over copyright breaches, then it would appear that the One Day producer is in good stead in putting up a defence, as he can take cues from his compatriot Cordell Skatta Burrell.

Khago has threatened to sue Seanizzle for copyright infringements on his Nah Sell Out breakout hit song, a track that was produced by Seanizzles in 2011 on his historic One Day riddim, which not only resurrected the career of Fudgie artist Mr. G, but propelled Khago to international stardom, and shot Beenie Man and Future Fambos Rum and Red Bull to being a major cross-over hit in the US.

Khago has also threatened to sue NotNice, Jordan McClure, DJ Frass, DJ Sunshine and GT Taylor. The threats were made in the aftermath of his successful in a counter-suit filed against music producer Kemar Flava McGregor over copyright breaches.

But Skatta, seemingly looking out for Seanizzle in particular, has some expert advice for the producer, for navigating the court case, and for repudiating whatever accusations the Manchester native eventually throws at him.

For one Skatta, has warned the young producer and the others under Khagos radar, to take the Blood a Boil artistes threat of court action very seriously.

I advise any producer weh Khago probably teck it to, dont teck it fi granted. Dont teck it simple, because at the end a di day, is the courts make the decision, not you. And if a piece a paper come to the clerk of the courts or judge or lawyer, it gonna have to be looked at and dealt with. So if you are not there to plead the case or submit your own you may just lose and be a winner in theory but where the law concerned, not so. Teck Khago serious man! Teck him serious! he exclaimed.

Speaking on a recent edition of The Fix Podcast, Skatta said, historically, at least 90 percent of songs recorded in Jamaica are done under gentlemans agreements between artistes and producers, which in a majority of cases are equitable.

Khago has asserted that he had no signed contract with Seanizzle, but according to Skatta, Jamaican artistes are oftentimes unwilling to sign written agreements, even simple one-page documents.

Not in support of Lawsuit against Seanizzle

When asked how he felt about the news that Khago is going after other producers in Jamaica, following his recent win over McGregor, Skatta, said he had misgivings about the move.

He said it seems unjust for a youngster like Seanizzle in particular, who was, like Khago, at the time, a mere youth struggling to make it in the music industry, to be dragged before the courts, because as far as he knew, the Pembroke Hall High School old boy had not treated Khago unreasonably.

I dont really support dat. No producer inna Jamaica meck enough money fi save di world or change nobaddy life, in terms of like one artiste weh record a song fi dem, he argued.

Publishing rights responsibility

Skatta said Khago had a responsibility as an artist to ensure he secured his own publishing rights, as that component is not the responsibility or the prerogative of the producer. He said this was a very easy process that any artist can undertake, starting with simple phone call.

I am sure Khago was listed as a songwriter on all the songs, because if any producer put out a man song and dont give him dat credit, yuh wrong. But fi seh yuh a guh sue a yute  everybaddy try mek a come-up inna dis industry an Im sayin, if him gi yuh credit on paper an certain tings, a you fi go out an seek yuh royalties, get yuh publishing or hire somebaddy fi administrate it fi yuh. Yuh caan just siddung an seh yuh nuh receive a dollar. You haffi register yuh ting, the Calabar High School old boy declared.

If yuh record a song fi somebaddy today, an it release next week, yuh haffi ccall di publishing company and she: yuh si dis song released on this label, a my song, track it. Thats all; you will get whats coming to you, he added.

Nobody else complaining

Skatta also juxtaposed Khagos behavior with that of Beenie Man and Future Fambo, whose Rum and Red Bull track on the riddim, was a crossover hit in the US.

Naw Sell Out is a huge song; it an Rum and Red Bull  huge song. Mi nuh hear Beenie Man an Future Fambo seh dem a guh sue Seanizzle. Its on the same riddim; same production. Suh, unless Seanizzle guh outta him way fi actually do Khago wrong, you know. But I dont really hear anybody else complaining, the Downsound Records executive said.

Skatta also surmised that Seanizzle and possibly, the other producers had operated in good faith, evident in the fact that Khago had never complained about not having a contract, recorded a music video, and had toured extensively due to the hit song which he performed using Seanizzles One Day riddim wherever he went.

Seanizzle was a young aspiring producer trying to meck it out here and Khago wanted to make it at the same time. Him dont waan si Beenieman and Fambo on a riddim an di song hit, an him deh pon di riddim an di song nuh release. If Seanizzle neva release Khago song pon di riddim, mi sure seh Khago woulda have an issue, caw dah riddim deh bus, Skatta said.

Nuff time mi put out a riddim, and just chose too many songs n di riddim, an mi haffi hold back some songs an man come waan war mi; a cuss seh yow, mi a shelf dem music an mi a hol back dem career an all a dese tings. Suh both ways it work good, an it work bad, because I am sure when that song was soaring and was a hit, Khago was relishing the moment, Skatta posited.

Skattas arguments are backed up by many artists including Mr. Vegas, who have outlined on many cases in their early days, when upon hearing that a producer had created a hit riddim, they would force themselves past studio gatemen, or jump fences to beg reluctant beat-makers to voice them on the riddims especially if other Dancehall icons had done so.

Skatta is however hoping that Khago is not planning to drag him along with the list of other producers, he is out to haul before the courts.

I dont know if Khago has case right there; maybe he does. So I wish dem all di best. I hope him nuh really look ova dah side yah, Skatta quipped.

I worked with him for a good year and a half. A great artiste yuh know, but when yuh get pon him wrong side; yuh nuh waan have Khago pon yuh wrong side, caw him nuh have no pride when it come to put down somebaddy, him go fter you
With many low-income families devastated during the pandemic by job loss, hunger and housing insecurity, some Bay Area politicians have embraced guaranteed income as a way to cushion these blows.

But just who and how to help is now swept up in fraught conversations about race and social justice with families of color disproportionately hurt by the pandemic and systemic inequities.

Critics pounced after Oakland announced one of the largest guaranteed income pilot programs in the country last week that would send $500 checks monthly  with no strings attached  to 600 families who were Black, Indigenous or other people of color. The city originally said it was limited to people of color.

Within a day, the move was criticized on social media and a few conservative news sites, where opponents argued the program is racist because it would exclude white families living in poverty.

In the wake of the criticism, Mayor Libby Schaaf told The Chronicle the program will be open to anyone whose income qualifies and defended the city and its nonprofit partners for prioritizing people of color.

If Oaklands program was limited to Black, Indigenous and people of color, it would likely have been legal since the program is funded entirely by private donations, experts said. Any government-funded program limiting participants based on race could face legal challenges.

Ian Rowe, a resident fellow from American Enterprise Institute, said that limiting a program based on race would be a blatant violation of the Civil Rights Act if public dollars were used. The Civil Rights Act was passed to eliminate discriminatory practices against African Americans, including the desegregation of schools.

The people who segregated water fountains thought they were doing the right thing as well, he added.

Rowe asked What does their color have to do with their income status?

Amy Osborne / Special to The Chronicle

Another critic of the program said the root causes of poverty are the same for Black and white families.

Its somewhat misplaced in the sense that there isnt much difference between white and Black poverty, said Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.

Rector denied that systemic racism is a cause of poverty for the Black community.

I dont think that saying that we want to target this to one group or another is really very helpful, Rector added.

But Schaaf said the idea was to focus on families who are most harmed by the racial wealth gap. In response to the backlash, Schaaf said shes not concerned about the criticism.

It is another example of race continuing to be a divisive issue in America, Schaaf said.

Justin Berton, a spokesman for the mayor, said though anyone can apply, the program will still prioritize people of color.

We have not changed the program; we have had to clarify that while no family is prohibited from applying, this pilot is intentionally designed to serve and support BIPOC families, he said.

The program, which plans to send the first payments this spring, will randomly select families whose income is at or below 50% of area median income  about $59,000 per year for a family of three. Half of the spots are for families who earn below 138% of the federal poverty level, which is $30,000 per year for a family of three.

A 2018 study showed the median income for white households was the highest of any race in Oakland, at $110,000 per year, followed by Asian households at $76,000, Latinos at $65,000 and Black families at $37,500.

The poverty rate of white residents in Oakland is below that of the national average  8.9%  meaning fewer than 10,000 white people live below the poverty line, according to Welfare Info. The poverty rate of Black residents in Oakland is higher  about 24%, or nearly 26,000 residents, live below the poverty line.

Other guaranteed programs throughout the Bay Area also limited participants based on race. San Franciscos privately funded Abundant Birth Project gives $1,000 payments per month to Black and Pacific Islander expectant mothers since those communities suffer higher rates of premature birth and infant mortality.

Marin County announced a program on the same day as Oakland that will give $1,000 monthly grants to 125 low-wage women of color who are raising at least one child. The program, which will be partly funded by the county, could be subject to legal challenges, said Mike Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a Libertarian think tank. Cities can avoid legal challenges to their programs if theyre privately funded.

Oaklands program will first target families living in East Oakland before expanding to other parts of the city, as an effort to address past divestment, city officials said.

A history of redlining, a discriminatory practice where banks and other mortgage lenders restrict access to credit in some areas, isolated Black and brown communities. Councilman Loren Taylor, who represents part of East Oakland, said his district doesnt have a retail bank or a major chain grocery store.

Taylor said the program is about reversing the harms and the challenges that have specifically plagued central, East and deep East Oakland for decades.

Aaron Stewart, 39, who was born and raised in East Oakland, would qualify for Oaklands program. Stewart, who runs a catering business called Mexiq, said he has earned only about $10,000 over the last year due to the pandemic. Stewart, who is Black, has two teenage children and said the program would help him with rent and other bills.

I firmly believe it (guaranteed income) should go to Black, Hispanic, Indigenous people because I believe thats what makes Oakland so great, the different cultures we have, he said.

Tanner at the Cato Institute said giving cash payments to Black families doesnt address systemic racism.

It doesnt fix the problems that exist today, Tanner said. We still have a problem with exclusionary zoning. We still have a problem with police misconduct and so on. Changing those will have a lot more impact going forward than sort of a backward looking compensation package.

Experts on race and inequity disagree.

Stephen Menendian, the director of UC Berkeleys Othering and Belonging Institute, said Oaklands program is very promising and well-tailored because it uses both income and geography as a qualifier.

Programs like Oaklands guaranteed income pilot can address systemic racism, he said.

If you give low-income people, predominantly communities of color additional income support, thats going to create an infusion of resources in those neighborhoods that have been divested in, that have been harmed through systemic and structural racism, Menendian said.

Gordon Goodwin, a director at the Government Alliance on Race and Equity, an organization that pushes governments to address equity, said the pandemic further exacerbated inequity.

Goodwin supports Oaklands decision to focus on people of color.

Whenever there is an effort made to acknowledge that race still plays a significant role in how well we do in our society, there are people who push back against that, Goodwin said. Any efforts to begin to acknowledge that is seen as taking something away from them.

Former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs, who launched a guaranteed income program in February 2019, said problems  like poverty  that are entwined with racism require a racial lens to properly address them. He said Oaklands Schaaf is trying to rectify racist policies through the program.

If you target Black, Indigenous and people of color communities, youre going to get that backlash because in this country some people have a problem when the government actually works for everyone, he said.

Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani
Retired Maj. Gen. Chagie Gallage says the country should take a united stand at the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) or face the consequences.

The battle-tested Gajaba regiment veteran said that there shouldnt be a difference of opinion whatsoever as regards Sri Lankas defence in the face of a new investigative mechanism approved at the recently concluded 46th sessions.

We are on the Geneva agenda. Let us be realistic about the threat and take tangible measures without further delay to set the record straight. We may not get another chance to present our case, Gallage said. The outspoken officer underscored the need to revisit the accountability issue with an open mind.

Responding to another query, the celebrated infantry officer emphasized that Sri Lankas withdrawal from an accountability resolution co-sponsored by the previous administration in Oct 2015, six years after the triumph over terrorism, was irrelevant.

Two years before his retirement in August 2018, Australia refused to issue a visa to Gallage based on unsubstantiated war crimes allegations directed at the Army.

Referring to statements attributed to SLPP Chairman Prof. G.L. Peiris and Samagi Jana Balavegaya lawmaker Dr. Harsha de Silva recently in The Island, Gallage welcomed the government and the main Opposition taking a common stand on Lord Nasebys disclosure based on wartime dispatches from the British High Commission, Colombo. Sri Lanka should collectively ask for examination of all available information pertaining to the war and strive to bring everything before the proposed new inquiry.

The retired soldier noted that the UN had already allocated USD 2.8 mn. Thanks to the disclosure of BHC, Colombo dispatches, the world now knows their diplomatic representative (Lt. Col. Anthony Gash) contradicted high profile lies propagated by their own, Gallage said.

Examination of Gash reports, along with UN report that dealt with the Vanni war (Aug, 2008-May 13, 2009), Wikileaks cables, Lt. Col. Lawrence Smiths astonishing declaration at the first Colombo Defence Seminar 2011 and exposed lies pertaining to Mannar mass graves and poisoning of detained terrorists would help the government to unravel the truth, he said.

Sri Lankas overall failure to disapprove accusations even a decade after the successful conclusion was a slur on those who paid the supreme sacrifice and the wounded, Gallage said. Nearly 6,000 security forces personnel died in the Eelam War IV. Of them approximately 2,400 lost their lives during January-May 2009 in fighting east of the Kandy-Jaffna A9 road.

Gallage emphasized that individual countries could always act on unsubstantiated findings and recommendations.

It would be a grave mistake on Sri Lankas part to take things lightly on the basis the country couldnt be hauled up before the International Criminal Court (ICC) because UN Security Council members, China and Russia could veto proposed actions. Among those declared not welcome by the US and Australia were Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka, Army Commander Gen. Shavendra Silva and Maj. Gen. Gallage.

At the behest of the then Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera, Army headquarters moved Gallage out of the Jaffna peninsula following a public spat with the former.

Gallage pointed out that those pursuing war crimes issues were only interested in the final phase. Alleging that Sri Lanka was being targeted by both local and foreign elements who couldnt stomach eradication of the LTTE, Gallage called for a determined bid to overcome the Geneva challenge. Let us hope now that the Feb-March sessions are over the Geneva threat wont be forgotten for the time being, the war veteran said.

Gallage said that the country paid a very heavy price for not countering blatant lies. Unfortunately, some of those propagating lies against the countrys armed forces were elected members of parliament, the retired soldier said. It is certainly an unfortunate situation, Gallage said.

Despite public assurances given over the years, Sri Lanka never really addressed the denial of visas. Actually denial of visas was one of the first indicators of hostile foreign action directed against the war winning military, Gallage said, pointing out in the wake of the recently adopted resolution, Geneva was now talking about a host of measures, including universal jurisdiction and extraterritorial jurisdiction.

The war veteran said that whatever the political differences, there couldnt be a dispute over the need to finish off terrorism for once and for all. We should quite rightly be proud of maintaining peace since then.

( Source: The Island)
Truck drivers travelling to France are no longer required to have proof of a negative Covid 19 test before they board a ferry after just 0.27pc of them showed positive results since the mandatory testing system was introduced in January.

Following a wave of Covid cases across Europe after Christmas, the French authorities introduced the mandatory testing of truck drivers on January 28. Three test centres near Irish ports had to be established quickly so the movement of goods could carry on uninterrupted.

The antigen-based tests meant a driver could be swabbed and have their result sent to their phone while still en-route to the port.

They had to show a negative result before being allowed on the ferry.

But since March 5 hauliers travelling on direct maritime routes from Ireland to France are no longer legally required to have proof of a negative Covid-19 test result to enter France.

France removed this requirement for proof of a negative test result in light of the very low positivity rates of COVID among HGV drivers, and such was in line with the EU Green Lanes recommendations, which Ireland has been, and continues to be, very supportive of, said a spokesperson for the Department of Transport.

This means that commercial vehicle drivers travelling on direct maritime routes from Ireland to France no longer require proof of a negative test result.

Since March 24 drivers travelling from Ireland via the UK landbridge route to enter France are also no longer required to have proof of a negative test result to enter France from Great Britain.

The three dedicated haulier antigen testing facilities located close to Dublin and Rosslare ports that had been set up in advance of the French requirements coming into effect in January remain in place to assist those HGV drivers travelling to certain other EU countries where proof of a negative test result is a requirement  for example, if travelling via Great Britain to enter the Netherlands, and also for those who travel to Germany if travelling via the Moselle region of France to enter Germany, they added.

Since testing was introduced at the end of January, 7,780 tests were carried out, with just 21 positive results.


Framework Engineer, Video Applications Santa Clara Valley (Cupertino) , California , United States Software and Services Summary

Posted: Apr 6, 2021 Role Number: 200236576 The Video Applications group develops leading media creation applications including Final Cut Pro X, iMovie, Motion, and Clips. Our team is looking for an experienced, hands-on Frameworks Engineer to own the design and development of a new platform to deliver digital assets at scale to future versions of our media creation apps. Do you have a deep understanding of modern, highly-scalable web service architectures and familiarity with headless content management systems? If so, come join us on the Video Applications team and help drive the future of our media creation applications. Key Qualifications Strong hands-on experience designing, implementing, and deploying highly-scalable RESTful services on cloud platforms (e.g. AWS, Azure)

Expert knowledge of modern cloud architecture design principles and best practices

In-depth knowledge and working experience with Content Management Systems (CMS)

Experience building software for iOS and/or macOS platforms

Hands-on development experience with Swift and/or Objective-C

Understanding of good framework architecture design principles, building client facing APIs that are highly testable, understanding of Protocol Oriented Programming (POP)

Experience with CloudKit, CoreData, Swift Package Manager, XCTest, profiling with Xcode Instruments

Understanding building tools and automation workflows for CI pipelines using Python or similar scripting languages

Self-motivated and a collaborative team player with strong communication skills Description This is an extraordinary opportunity to apply your expertise in Cocoa framework development, and scalable web technologies in order to enhance media creation products that reach tens of millions of users. You will be responsible for translating platform requirements into a detailed, best-of-breed architecture. You will work closely with cloud infrastructure teams within Apple in order to identify & leverage existing technologies, deliver swift frameworks to be used across client applications, as well as drive development of the platform and coordinate closely with product teams to integrate into their applications. In this role you will go beyond the norm and demonstrate creativity in problem solving, think dynamically, and adapt quickly to new technical environments. We promote innovation to improve our product performance and stay deeply focused on delighting our users. Education & Experience Bachelor of Sciences degree in Computer Science or related field.


The chairman of Australia Post has fired back at former chief executive Christine Holgate, rejecting her claims that he unlawfully stood her down and then abandoned her to endure a media firestorm over the Cartier watches saga.

Ms Holgate broke her silence on the matter on Tuesday, labelling chair Lucio Di Bartolomeo a liar who treated her like a criminal amid a political uproar over her decision to reward four senior employees with Cartier watches totalling $20,000 in 2018.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has distanced his government from the dispute embroiling former Australia Post boss Christine Holgate and the company chairman Lucio Di Bartolomeo. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen/Dominic Lorrimer

In a statement released on Wednesday, Mr Di Bartolomeo said Australia Post had provided ongoing support to Ms Holgate and said her assertions that she was unlawfully stood down were not correct.

The agreement for Ms Holgate to stand aside was reached between myself and Ms Holgate in telephone discussions late that afternoon [on October 22], in breaks during a board meeting that commenced at approximately 4pm, Mr Di Bartolomeo said. The board did not stand down, or suspend, Ms Holgate from her role - that being an unnecessary consideration given her agreement to stand aside.
Over the Easter bank holiday, the power grid in the United Kingdom had its greenest day ever, thanks to a boom in clean energies due to sunny and windy conditions.

Related Article: South Africa Will Make These Necessary Changes to Hit 2030 Emission Target



Power Plants All Over the UK

According to National Grid's electricity system operator, power plants producing electricity in England, Scotland, and Wales generated just 39g of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour of electricity on Monday, the lowest carbon intensity recorded since National Grid records started in 1935.

The new low shattered the grid's previous low of 46g set on May 24, 2016, during the country's greenest month for electricity generation ever.

Green Power

As households enjoyed a bank holiday lunch on Easter Monday, wind turbines and solar farms generated 60% of all electricity. At the same time, nuclear plants in the UK delivered 16% of the energy mix, implying that almost 80% of the grid was fuelled by low-carbon sources.

The low-carbon power boom, combined with lower-than-average energy demand over the bank holiday, held gas-fired power in the UK at 10% of the electricity mix, reducing the electricity system's "carbon strength" to its lowest level on record.

Related Article: 24-Hour Underground Lighting? 'Smart' Daylight Harvesting Device Developed by Students



Decrease in Demands

Due to a decrease in demand for power from office buildings, restaurants, and hotels that have been idle for most of the last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the UK's electricity emissions have decreased significantly in the last year.

Despite the steady reopening of the economy, the electricity grid operator said demand for electricity remained 5% lower than average last month, compared to about 20% below normal levels in April previous year.

Related Article: Australia's Ruling Party Opposes Prime Minister's Climate Policy; PM Put in a Tough Spot



March Power Usage

Last month, wind and solar power accounted for 24% and 4% of total electricity production, respectively, while gas-fired power plants accounted for 39% of the entire electricity generation. The carbon intensity was 185g of CO2/kWh in March. However, it is projected to decrease as solar power plays a greater role in fulfilling the country's energy demand during the summer months.

According to Fintan Slye, a director at National Grid's device operator, the latest record is yet another example of how Britain's electricity system is changing "at an astonishing pace" as the sector shifts away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy sources.

Related Article: Greener Earth: The Real 'Big' Problem

Greener Future

Carbon intensity dropped to 181g of CO2/kWh in 2020, owing in part to a decrease in energy demand during the coronavirus lockdowns. However, to meet the UK's climate goals, the energy system's carbon intensity must be reduced to about 50g CO2/kWh in 2030, 10g CO2/kWh in 2035, and 2g CO2/kWh by 2050.

"It's an exciting moment, and the success we're making in these records underscores the big steps we're taking toward our aim of running the system carbon-free by 2025," Slye said.

ALSO READ: Bill Gates Plans to 'Cover the Sun' to Solve Global Warming; Is it Possible?

For more Environmental news, don't forget to follow Nature World News!
Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small said a boardwalk store clerk charged with falsely claiming young African American children robbed his store did so as part of an ongoing issue involving merchants complaining about crime and calling for more policing of the boardwalk.

The clerk, Malik Awais, 26, of Egg Harbor Township, is facing charges of making a false report to police. He allegedly claimed individuals stole $100 in merchandise from H&A Fashions and caused over $5,000 worth of property damage  something contradicted by surveillance footage, Deputy Chief James A. Sarkos said at a press conference the mayor held Wednesday.

Small said the city wont tolerate those trying to start a race war and also suggested some of the dialogue about safety and crime on the boardwalk is politically motivated. Its election season. People want to design and do things to make others look bad, he said. Small, a Democrat, is up for reelection this year and reportedly faces a challenge from former Assemblyman Thomas Foley in the June Primary.

The charges come as Atlantic City boardwalk merchants  many of whom are immigrants or first-generation Americans  have been lobbying the city for additional policing to address reported thefts and harassment on the boardwalk.

They held a rally following an incident Thursday when shop owner Mehmood Ansari, 66, collapsed and died shortly after being robbed by a knife-wielding 12-year-old boy during a confrontation with multiple juveniles in his store, according to authorities. Two juveniles are facing charges including robbery and conspiracy but have not been charged with causing his death, police have said.

Atlantic City boardwalk merchant Mehmood Ansari died after a confrontation with juveniles in his store on Thursday night.Courtesy of Asif Ansari

As a result, city officials, police and representatives of the Atlantic County Prosecutors Office are planning to meet with the local boardwalk merchants association to discuss the reported problems, according to the association.

Amer Kashmiri, president of the association, said he does not know what the charged store clerks motivation was, but if the report was indeed false, the association does condemn it.

City Council President George Tibbett said at the press conference he spoke to elders from the association who are devastated by this fabrication.

They dont want it to be reflected on all of them. And they too agree, we will never allow someone to accuse certain groups in Atlantic City, he said. Were not going to allow a race war to start in this town.

Small expressed his sympathy for Ansaris family and said the juveniles involved in the robbery last week will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. He also said the alleged false report Monday wont be tolerated, and suggested that the clerk in question was trying to play on racial fears after last weeks incident.

Were not going to let people control the Atlantic City story... To call the police, to put pictures on social media and to say that young African American children repeated the incident again, wont be tolerated, he said.

According to Atlantic City Police Lt. Kevin Fair, Awais called 911 shortly before 12:42 p.m. and authorities responded to the store in the 1400 block of the boardwalk. Awais told officers that several people robbed and vandalized the store and pushed him as they fled, Fair said.

Police investigated and reviewed the citys surveillance cameras from the area, including one that had showed the front of the store.

Personnel reviewed the camera and did not see anyone entering or exiting the store matching the description of the suspects from the time the store opened in the morning to the arrival of officers, Fair said in a statement. In addition, a person who was described as a witness was found not to be present during the alleged crime.

Anyone with additional information about the case is asked to contact the Atlantic City Police Department Criminal Investigations Section at 609-347-5766. Anonymous tips can also be submitted by texting to tip411 (847411) with ACPD in the beginning of the text.

Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a subscription.

Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com. Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here.
YEREVAN, APRIL 7, ARMENPRESS. Deputy Prime Minister of Armenia Tigran Avinyan has addressed a message on the Motherhood and Beauty Day, his Office told Armenpress.

The message reads:

April 7 is one of the national holidays of the Armenian calendar which has highlighted the role of a woman in the Armenian public for centuries. This supposes a high responsibility while conducting the policy of ensuring womens complete and inclusive participation to the public life, protecting and promoting their rights.

As Chairman of the Council on Women Affairs in Armenia, I reaffirm that the protection of womens rights and the elimination of discrimination against women and girls are among the fundamental priorities of the Armenian government. With this commitment I congratulate mothers, women and girls on the Motherhood and Beauty Day, wishing good health and smile.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
Source: Xinhua| 2021-04-07 05:34:14|Editor: huaxia

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BRASILIA, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's new Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carlos Alberto Franco Franca, on Tuesday pledged to work towards "true health diplomacy" as a way to access the vaccines and medicines needed to tackle the country's critical outbreak of COVID-19.

In his first speech after taking office, Franco Franca indicated he would not let politics get in the way, saying he aimed to involve Brazil in the global effort to combat the pandemic.

At his swearing in ceremony at the presidential headquarters of Planalto Palace in the capital Brasilia, the new foreign minister said it was time to pay urgent attention to matters of healthcare, the economy and sustainable development.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro entrusted him to meet those challenges, according to Franco Franca, and "the first urgency is to fight the COVID-19 pandemic."

"Brazilian diplomatic missions and consulates abroad will increasingly participate in true health diplomacy. In different parts of the world, contacts with governments and pharmaceutical companies will be increasing to map available vaccines," he said.

"It is not an easy task. No one is unaware that today there is a shortage of medical supplies around the world. But I assure you that our diplomatic resources will continue to be mobilized to meet the demands of the health authorities," he stressed.

Franco Franca replaced former Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo, who resigned last week after coming under fire from even political allies of the government, who complained that Araujo's politically-biased foreign policy was getting in the way of accessing vaccines and materials needed to fight COVID-19.

"My commitment, in short, is to commit Brazil to an intense effort of international cooperation, without exclusions, and to open new channels of diplomatic action, without preferences of this or that nature," Franco Franca said.

Brazil is experiencing its worst COVID-19 outbreaks so far, with an accumulated 13 million cases of infection as of Monday and 332,752 deaths from the disease, according to the latest report from the Ministry of Health. Enditem
SALEM, Ore. (AP)  During a Black Lives Matter protest on Sept. 21, a Portland police officer was sitting in a vehicle used to broadcast warnings and loud noise at protesters when he saw a burning object sailing through the air toward him.

The officer jumped out of the car and found a beer growler made into a Molotov cocktail, a burned rag stuffed into its mouth. The firebomb had not gone off.

According to court records, that bottle produced key evidence that helped lead to charges against an Indiana man who authorities said had come to Portland for protests.

A previously secret 28-count indictment, announced Monday, charges Malik Muhammed with attempted aggravated murder, attempted assault in the first degree, attempted murder in the first degree, unlawful manufacture of a destructive device and other crimes.

It is one of the most serious court cases to stem from the prolonged protests that rocked Portland last year.

Muhammed, 24, was arrested on Friday and is in an Indiana jail. Joshua Pond, listed on court documents as Muhammeds attorney, said he had no comment on behalf of his client.

Officers examined the unexploded firebomb. A price tag allowed them to trace the beer growler to the store where it had been purchased. Store video showed Muhammed and his girlfriend, buying growlers and bats, Multnomah County Deputy District Attorney Keven Demer said in an affidavit.

DNA samples from the unexploded firebomb had an extremely strong comparison to Muhammed, Demer said.

On Sept. 23, during a protest at the Justice Center building in downtown Portland, another Molotov cocktail was thrown. This one exploded when it hit the ground, creating a large fireball and spraying flames onto the leg of an officer, Demer said. Multiple videos show Muhammed throwing the device, he added.

Anyone who thinks they can get away with trying to murder police officers and destroy this city should think again, Police Chief Chuck Lovell said in a statement announcing Muhammeds arrest. More investigations are underway.

FBI agents apparently blended in with protesters in an attempt to pinpoint those who were violent.

During a protest on Oct. 11, FBI agents in plainclothes saw Muhammed, dressed all in black but wearing distinctive red-and-gray gloves, use a metal baton to break windows of the Oregon Historical Society, Portland State University and several businesses, Demers sworn statement says.

The information was relayed to police officers. They chased the suspect, who allegedly ditched a loaded pistol, and was found with a loaded magazine in his pocket that fit the gun, authorities said. Unlawful possession of a firearm is another of the charges Muhammed faces.

Demer noted that Muhammed could face a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years if convicted and is a flight risk. He asked the court to set bail at $3 million.

Judge Leslie Bottomly denied the request and instead ordered that Muhammed be held.

About the photo: In this July 29, 2020, file photo, a demonstrator kicks a tear gas canister back at federal officers during a Black Lives Matter protest at the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse in Portland, Ore. According to an indictment announced Monday, April 5, 2021, a 24-year-old man is charged with attempted murder of two police officers by using explosive devices during violent demonstrations in Portland. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Gov. Charlie Baker gets his first dose of the Pfizer vaccine at the mass vaccination site at the Hynes Convention Center on Tuesday after becoming eligible this week. Baker is urging residents to wait their turn and not jump the line. Everyone over age 16 will be eligible April 19.

Baker: Vaccine-Eligible Community Should Find Appointments Before April 19

REVERE, Mass.  Gov. Charlie Baker on Wednesday urged Bay State residents currently eligible for COVID-19 vaccinations to find appointments before eligibility opens up to everyone 16 and older later this month.

"If you are over the age of 65, if you're over the age of 55, I think it would be great if you signed up, pre-registered, got an appointment to get vaccinated now that it's your turn," Baker said. "Because you are, based on all the data associated with vulnerable populations, among the most at risk when it comes to dealing with COVID.

"We're thrilled that we're over 80 percent with that population. We're above the national average. But that still means there are a bunch of folks who are quite elderly who haven't signed up yet. I'm sure we'll find some of them with the homebound programming we're doing. I'm sure we'll find some of them with the work we're doing in congregate care facilities.

"But if you're one of those older folks, I really recommend you sign up and get vaccinated."

To make it easier to find those appointments, Baker said the state continues to modify its online reservation system. About 1.5 million Massachusetts have used the commonwealth's registration system, and about 800,000 of those people have been contacted to book appointments, he said.

This week, two more regional collaboratives, including the one in Amherst and Northampton, were added to the registration system, and Baker said the state this month will be adding that function to more regional collaboratives.

Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito were in Revere on Wednesday to tour a vaccination site at the Oceanside Events Center and tout the administration's efforts to reach out to communities hardest hit by the pandemic.

Baker said that he felt fine after receiving his COVID-19 vaccination on Tuesday and pushed for everyone who can receive a vaccination to do so. He said the commonwealth has the capacity to deliver two or three times more doses per day and once again said he hopes the supply received from the federal government will soon match that capacity.

Baker also had a message for those who would "game the system" and get a shot before they are eligible.

After saying that "line jumping" has been rare throughout the commonwealth, Baker implored anyone who is tempted to cheat to instead follow the rules and wait their turn.

"There's a reason why we have a process here," Baker said. "And I've had people say to me, 'In a lot of other states, everyone is eligible.' Well, most of those states where everyone is eligible, we've vaccinated a greater portion of our population than they have. It's just that we've vaccinated more of what I consider the folks who are most at risk to suffer hospitalization or worse when it comes to COVID.

"The one thing I would say about the vaccine program is that it is a limited supply program, which is why we have the criteria in the first place. If you cut the line and you're not eligible, you're basically taking a vaccine away from somebody who probably is vulnerable and probably ought to get the vaccine before you do."
New Jersey will delay standardized testing for the majority of its students until the fall, allowing teachers valuable time for in-person instruction over the coming weeks, Gov. Phil Murphy said Wednesday.

The U.S. Department of Education approved New Jerseys plan for statewide testing in the fall using the new Start Strong exams, according to a letter it sent Tuesday. Those exams, a streamlined version of the annual New Jersey Student Learning Assessments, were piloted with about 90,000 students last autumn in an optional testing window for schools to gauge learning loss during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I think this is generally good news, with the caveat of a couple communities, Murphy said.

Students in special education and in English Language Learning programs will still need to be tested in the spring, the governor said. The Start Strong exams are not yet accessible to those students, according to the state.

The federal governments decision comes amid a national debate over standardized testing. Advocates of testing this school year say states need data that shows just how far students have fallen behind during remote or hybrid instruction. Only then can states best apply billions in federal rescue aid, they said.

But many administrators and education groups, including the states largest teachers union, have said testing during the spring would strip students of valuable in-person learning only to reinforce what classroom teachers already know. The state is already collecting data from districts to find out how students are performing on local assessments this school year.

While we have received a letter, it will take us a few days to ensure we are fully interpreting it correctly and that we are able to move forward expeditiously with very pointed guidance, said acting state Education Commissioner Angelica Allen-McMillan.

Richard Bozza, executive director of the New Jersey Association of School Administrators, Patricia Wright, executive director of the New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association, and Marie Blistan, president of the New Jersey Education Association, jointly praised the federal governments decision.

New Jersey students will not have to see their instruction time interrupted to take tests that are not helpful or appropriate under current conditions, they said in a statement. This is a win for New Jersey students and families as we continue our work to support the social, emotional and academic needs of students during and after this pandemic.

Statewide testing was also canceled in the spring of 2020 when all New Jersey schools shut down under an order from Murphy.

Exactly how much student learning has suffered over the past 13 months remains unclear outside of many district administration buildings. But early returns from some districts show what almost everyone expected: More students are failing classes, falling behind academically or disappearing from virtual school as the coronavirus disrupts a second school year.

The states first administration of the Start Strong Assessments found roughly 1 in 3 students in grades 4-10 could need strong support in English and math after spending months away from the classroom. However, state officials cautioned against making sweeping conclusions because the sample size was small  about 10% of students  and not necessarily representative of the states demographics.

New Jersey had asked the U.S. Department of Education for a waiver for spring testing, saying it planned to conduct exams in the fall when all schools are expected to be open. The federal department said a waiver is not necessary since the states plan for fall testing should provide the data federal officials want to see.

Murphy expects annual spring testing to resume in 2022, he said.

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Adam Clark may be reached at aclark@njadvancemedia.com. Have a news tip or a story idea about New Jersey schools? Send it here.
"When I accepted this, I never thought this would be history-making and that it would gain traction from the Filipino people, says oceanographer Deo Florence Onda over a call, referring to the invite to descend into Emden Deep with Caladan Oceanic  the private company who has shattered records with their deep sea explorations.

The surreal life of the microbial oceanographer  from studying epiphytic microalgae interactions (which, in part, control available resources for their host seaweed) and how microplastics and pollution affect marine microbial communities to advocacies like defending the sovereignty of the West Philippine Sea and even driving frontliners to work during the pandemic  are themselves the product of serendipity: A missed application into medical school led him to enroll in the Marine Science Institute, where he fell in love with fieldwork and research, a chance encounter enabled him to enroll in a Ph.D. and become an expedition scientist in the Arctic, an email out of nowhere from an expedition hed been following digitally enabled him to take the kind of dive scientists only dream of: the record-setting descent into the third deepest spot on Earth, Emden Deep.

Now a decade since his graduation from the institute, Deo has found his way back as an assistant professor, the deputy director of research at the U.P. Marine Science Institute (MSI), and the head of his own laboratory: the Microbial Oceanography Laboratory.

Deo Onda and explorer Victor Vescovo inside the full-ocean-depth rated submersible, Limiting Factor as part of Caladan Oceanic's 2021 "Ring of Fire Pt II" Expeditions. Screencap from CALADAN OCEANIC/YOUTUBE

Onda spoke to CNN Philippines Life about the promises of deep sea exploration, what has changed about marine research since the pandemic, and why microbial oceanography matters to the Philippine community.

How did you start out with your career as a microbial oceanographer?

The goal was really to go to med school. I never thought to be an oceanographer. But early on, andoon na yung marine science. I grew up in Palawan. The nurturing [environment] and being out by the sea prepared me to go where I am now. After a year [in MSI], I gave up the thought of the med school even if there were possibilities and opportunities. But my parents were very supportive.

When I was in MSI, I was introduced to Dr. Arturo Lluisma  hes a molecular biologist  and I fell in love with genetics. My thesis adviser at the time was Dr. Rhodora Azanza, and I got involved in a program that allowed me to combine the best of both worlds: the microbiology with Dr. Azanza and then genetics and molecular methods with Dr. Lluisma.

Through international conferences, I met my eventual thesis adviser: Dr. Connie Lovejoy. Nagkaroon siya ng opening sa Quebec, sa Canada. Hindi ko pa alam yung field ng microbial oceanography at the time, actually. Ang alam ko lang marine microbiology. Parang crossroads yun at the time  do I go to Germany or Canada? Pero when I went to Canada, ang tinanong lang niya sa akin: Gusto mo bang mag-Arctic? Eh my dream in life before was to see the aurora borealis. So I closed the deal and went to Canada. (Laughs)

I got to go to the Arctic a couple of times  andoon yung field work, yung molecular methods, yung microbiology, but now Im looking at it on this larger scale, which is the ocean. It was in Canada that I found out about the emerging field of microbial oceanography  looking at how microbial communities vary and are affected by the physical environment, which is the ocean, and how the biology is affected by functions and processes within the ocean.

Onda spoke to CNN Philippines Life about the promises of deep sea exploration, what has changed about marine research since the pandemic, and why microbial oceanography matters to the Philippine community.

What made you return to the Philippines?

In 2017, I went home for a few months for a vacation. The plan was to continue to a postdoc in Germany for three to five years. I was debating whether or not to accept the invitation [from MSI], at least for a presentation because theyve been asking me to present for over a year. But it was too early. I still needed to train myself and get more experience since my field is still in its infancy so alam kong mahihirapan ako.

Nung nagbabakasyon ako sa Palawan, yung bahay namin nasa harap ng dagat at naglalakad ako tuwing umaga. One day, I saw a couple of children playing by the shore. Medyo melodramatic, pero totoo kasi ito. Naglalakad ako at nagbabatuhan sila ng seaweed. Tapos nabato ako. Sabi nung mga bata: Sorry at sabi ko na Okay lang.

Tapos sinabi niya: Kuya, ano kaya ito? Hawak niya yung seaweed [Sargassum] at pinakita niya sa akin. Syempre, biologist ako. So nag-explain ako ng todo and then, the conversation went on: from one question, naging dalawa. Nag-expand yung topic namin: from seaweed to corals to fisheries and kung ano-ano.

Siguro we were talking for an hour and tuwang-tuwa ako. Then towards the end, sabi niya: Bakit ang dami mong alam? Ano bang trabaho mo? Ano ka ba? Syempre may konting kilig at the time kasi kakatapos lang ng Ph.D. ko. Sinabi ko para akong doktor pero mas nagpakadalubhasa ako para sa dagat. Before we ended the conversation, sinabi niya sa akin: Alam mo kuya, may bago akong pangalan para sa iyo: Doktor ka ng dagat.

"One thing that we really need to acknowledge is that some research, especially siguro with field research, is essential work."

The following day, nandoon ako sa palengke at may mga matatandang sumusunod sa akin. Sabi nila: Kuya, ikaw ba yung kausap nung anak ko kahapon? Yung kalaro nila sa dagat? So tinanong ko kung may problema ba at sabi lang nila: Hindi! Pag-uwi kasi sa bahay, kung anu-ano yung kinukwento. Sabi niya nalaman daw niya dahil sa iyo.

Alam mo, yung anak ko, gusto na ring maging doktor ng dagat. Mahirap ba iyon? So kwinento ko naman sa kanya na may mga scholarships naman: mula high school hanggang maging doktor; in-explain ko na mayroon namang pupuntahan.

That conversation hit me hard after. If I can inspire one person or one child to pursue something na mahirap intindihin for their age, I think thats enough reason to stay. It changed my perspective: baka mas kailangan ako sa Pilipinas.

Sa ibang bansa, a biologist or a scientist, Filipino or not, youre just one of the many. If I stayed in Germany, I would probably be one of hundreds of microbial oceanographers. Pero sa Pilipinas, at least at that time, by degree  walang microbial oceanographer. Doon ako napaisip: Saan ba ako mas kailangan?

What prompted you to explore the depths of the Emden Deep? What was the preparation process like, especially considering the pandemic?

Caladan Oceanic has been doing expeditions since 2013 or 2015. I first followed their story around 2019, about the Five Deeps expedition: five deepest trenches in five different continents. Victor Vescovo is an accomplished explorer in terms of summiting the seven summits of the world. What he then did was he wanted to explore the deepest oceans. He worked with Triton Submarines in the US to develop a submersible that could repeatedly go to the depths of the ocean. If you look into the deep sea expeditions, most of the submersibles before he entered the scene were used only once and never nang nagamit ulit.

In 2020, around March, I received an email from Eyos Expedition inviting me to the Emden Deep. So it wasnt an active decision on my part. I just randomly received that email inviting me to collaborate and go with them to the Emden Deep. But because of the pandemic, the initial plan (which was August) was moved to November.

In November, we were trying to get a marine scientific research permit from the Philippine government. But after bureaucracy, administrative delays, hindi nagawa yung MOA [Memorandum of Agreement]... by November 2020, na-cancel na siya. They decided na hindi na siya kayang habulin because the entire expedition shouldve been done by 2020 and funding was ending. It was a missed opportunity, pero okay lang.

Then they emailed me again in January this year. Pero hindi na kayang gawin yung science. So this was classified as non-marine scientific research. They just wanted to dive, visit the Emden Deep, set the record, and they wanted me to be the Filipino. Akala ko yung invitation nila was to just go to the trench on the surface to observe. It was just around February or March, nung paalis na ako, when I realized na I was going to be in the submersible and I was going 10,000 meters down.

Part of Caladan Oceanics advocacy is to invite a local from the country where the trench is located. I guess the more appropriate question would be: Why was I invited?

I dont know. There was no explanation. I didnt know the process of how they came up with a name. I tried asking this question because no one explained to me kung bakit ako. It was during the ascent after the dive. We talked about a lot of things, but then I asked: Actually Victor, Im still wondering: Why am I here? Why was I invited? Of all the people and of all the Filipino scientists whove done greater things compared to me, and I think a lot of other personalities, why did I receive that email?

And sinabi lang niya: Thats how it happens, Deo. One day, youll just receive an email. Theres no clear process on how they do it. He said: We went through a couple of names, Filipino names, and we decided to invite you. Think of it as an acknowledgement of what youve done  of your advocacies, of your achievements. The reason why youre here is because youre acknowledged and that youve done things that deserve to be acknowledged.

The last time we spoke, we talked about how difficult it is to continue with marine science research given the lockdowns. How has the marine science research community adapted to these changes in fieldwork protocols? What more do you think we can do to support marine scientists?

I think in general, nakabalik na paunti-unti but then again, you have this lockdown so affected talaga kami. Marami talaga sa amin ang hindi pa nakapag-deliver kasi we are a field-based and lab-based institute. So hindi kami makakagawa ng kahit ano kung restricted kami.

One thing that we really need to acknowledge is that some research, especially siguro with field research, is essential work. There are certain scientific activities that we cannot abruptly stop kasi, halimbawa yung giant clams namin, kung hindi namin yung binisita... anong mangyayari? Halimbawa, yung mga cultures namin sa lab, pag pinabayaan namin yun, years and years of hard work would actually just go to waste kasi mamatay yung mga yun, and bread and butter siya nung iba naming activities. So I hope that some of the research activities will be recognized as essential work during this period.

Siguro, another support would be the admin part. Yun lang talaga. The administration, especially the U.P. administration, needs to come up with more innovative and drastic changes in how we run systems, especially accounting. Kasi kailangan na kailangan talaga.

Whats one thing as a marine microbial oceanographer that you wish more people knew about? Or a common misconception that youd immediately like to dispel?

I think a common misconception is that lahat marunong lumangoy. (Laughs) Ako, laki ako sa dagat. I know how to swim. Pero not all marine scientists are actually good swimmers. Thats one thing.

I think we know how to enjoy ourselves. We get drunk when we want and yet we accomplish things the following day.

Marine science is not equal to marine biology. There are a lot of interesting fields in the marine sciences. Youve got the physical oceanography, marine biotechnology, molecular ecology, transdisciplinary research, etc. So yun. There are lots of subspecialties in the marine sciences.

What are your hopes for the future marine scientists and future marine science researchers?

We are a country made up of 80-82% water and yet we only have a couple of oceanographers, and only a few marine scientists. I think it is high time to build more capacity and build more expertise in these fields. Primarily because there is no other way for development but to actually go to the blue oceans and thats blue economy. I hope that as a maritime nation, as a Filipino, as an archipelagic country, we will be reminded that we are actually maritime people: mga taong dagat tayo.

However, I think, at some point, we lost that connection, that we are actually connected to the oceans. Sana we can remind ourselves of that. I think that by reminding ourselves that we are very much dependent on the oceans, we would also care more about it  wed put more emphasis on policies for its preservation, conservation, and sustainable management.

The other thing is that, you dont need to be a marine scientist to contribute to the protection and the development of the marine environment. We need more law experts on the seas. We need more engineers. We need more policymakers. We need more environmental managers. So theres actually a lot of opportunities for Filipinos, especially the young Filipinos, to go on a career that is related to the oceans but not necessarily being a marine scientist and we need more trans- and interdisciplinary research.

Its the Decade of Ocean Science from 2021-2030 and I hope in our own little way, well be able to contribute to the protection and preservation of our marine environment and marine heritage. From the vastness of the West Philippine sea to the new wonders in the northeastern Philippines and even to the undiscovered regions in the Philippine trench.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Tourist Shot Near New York City's Times Square

By The Associated Press

NEW YORK - Police say a tourist from Kansas has been hit in the shoulder by a stray bullet near New Yorks Times Square.Police say the 44-year-old man was shot shortly after 2 a.m. Wednesday near West 38th Street and Eighth Avenue.Police do not believe he was the intended target.The man was taken to Bellevue Hospital and is stable.The Daily News reports that the victim told police he attended Tuesdays Mets-Phillies game in Philadelphia and then took a train or bus back to New York.Police say he was headed to his hotel when he was shot. No arrests have been made.
Negotiations on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in the 4+1 format are possible if the United States acts honestly, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 07th April, 2021) Negotiations on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in the 4+1 format are possible if the United States acts honestly, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday.

"At yesterday's meeting [of the JCPOA Joint Commission], I opened a new page in the international relations. If the US shows its honesty, we will be able to hold 4+1 format negotiations," Rouhani told the Iranian government.
Donald Trump has hit back at Republican former House Speaker John Boehner for saying he incited the 'bloody' Capitol insurrection by 'shovelling bulls***' election fraud claims.

'Was he drinking when he made this statement? Just another RINO who couldn't do the job,' Trump said in response to the comments in Boehner's new book 'On the House: A Washington Memoir.

Boehner slams Trump in his memoir for inciting the January 6 'bloody insurrection for nothing more than selfish reasons' and accuses GOP 'whack jobs' who backed the bid to overthrow the election of encouraging 'actual terrorism.'

The chain-smoking, red wine-sipping former GOP speaker doesn't hold back in his memoir.

Boehner describes Senator Ted Cruz as a 'reckless a**hole' details his battles with Tea Party Republicans and Fox News and reveals he was attacked by members of his own party for saying that Barack Obama was born in America.

But his harshest criticism is toward Trump, the head of his party. In a stunning rebuke of the former president, Boehner writes that Trump's 'refusal to accept the result of the election not only cost Republicans the Senate but led to mob violence,' adding: 'It was painful to watch.'

Boehner writes, in book excerpts obtained by The New York Times: 'I'll admit I wasn't prepared for what came after the election  Trump refusing to accept the results and stoking the flames of conspiracy that turned into violence in the seat of our democracy, the building over which I once presided.'

Trump, repeatedly and falsely, claimed he won the November 2020 election and falsely accused Joe Biden of stealing it.

There has been no evidence of voter fraud, multiple recounts confirmed Biden's victory, and courts threw out the Trump campaign's challenges to the results.

John Boehner slams Donald Trump in his new book for inciting the January 6 'bloody insurrection for nothing more than selfish reasons'. Trump responded by saying Boehner was 'another RINO who couldn't do the job' and asked 'was he drinking wine when he made this statement'

'TRUMP INCITED THE RIOT FOR NOTHING MORE THAN SELFISH REASONS'

Boehner called the January 6th riot, where Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on the day Congress was certifying Biden's win, 'one of the lowest points of American democracy.'

'Watching it was scary, and sad. It should have been a wake-up call for a return to Republican sanity,' he wrote.

Trump, he writes, 'incited that bloody insurrection for nothing more than selfish reasons, perpetuated by the bull**** he'd been shoveling since he lost a fair election the previous November.'

In response, Jason Miller, a spokesman for Trump, called Boehner a 'Swamp Creature.'

In his book, Boehner tears into Trump for falsely claiming the election was stolen: 'He claimed voter fraud without any evidence, and repeated those claims, taking advantage of the trust placed in him by his supporters and ultimately betraying that trust.'

Former Republican House Speaker John Boehner calls Jan. 6 'one of the lowest points of American democracy' in his new book 'On the House: A Washington Memoir'

REPUBLICANS 'ENCOURAGED ACTUAL TERRORISM'

Boehner also slammed Republican lawmakers who supported Trump's attempt to overthrow the electoral college certification on January 6th.

Republican Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, along with GOP House members Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene and many others, were among those objecting.

'Some of the people involved did not surprise me in the least. The legislative terrorism that I'd witnessed as speaker had now encouraged actual terrorism,' Boehner wrote.

Boehner was not the only Republican leader to castigate Trump for his refusal to concede to Biden or for his role in the January 6th insurrection.

After the riot, McCarthy criticized Trump from the House floor for not doing enough during the event to calm his supporters storming the building, leaving a wave of destruction in their path. Ultimately five people died in connection to the MAGA riot.

And Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell criticized Trump at the end of his second impeachment trial for his role on January 6th. Ten House Republicans, including Rep. Liz Cheney, a member of GOP leadership, voted to impeach Trump over his role in the insurrection.

But Boehner's comments are the harshest. And his blistering, salty language falls in line with other excerpts from his book, where Boehner torn into 'lunatics' and 'morons' in his own party and reveals he was criticized for confirming that Barack Obama was born in America.

Former House Speaker John Boehner (left) wrote in his new book that Republicans and right-wing media figures truly believed President Barack Obama (right) was a 'secret Kenyan Muslim traitor'

ATTACKED FOR CONFIRMING OBAMA WAS BORN IN HAWAII

Boehner recalled the pushback he received from members of his party when he went on Meet The Press and vouched that Obama was born in the United States.

'The state of Hawaii has said that President Obama was born there. That's good enough for me,' Boehner said in January 2011.

He also wrote about the moment he realized the 'lunatics' had grown more powerful than Republican leadership.

'I got all kinds of sh** for itemails, letters, phone calls. It went on for a couple weeks.

'I knew we would hear from some of the crazies, but I was surprised at just how many there really were,' Boehner wrote.

'All of this crap swirling around was going to make it tough for me to cut any deals with Obama as the new House Speaker. Of course, it has to be said that Obama didn't help himself much either.'

'But on the other hand - how do you find common cause with people who think you are a secret Kenyan Muslim traitor to America?' Boehner observed.

'YOU COULD BE A TOTAL MORON AND GET ELECTED WITH AN 'R' NEXT TO YOUR NAME IN 2010'

Boehner ascended to the speakership in 2011 after the Tea Party movement helped the GOP capture the House majority two years into Obama's tenure.

He recalled how Obama called the experience a 'shellacking.'

'And oh boy, was it ever,' Boehner wrote in an excerpt for Politico Magazine that was released Friday. 'You could be a total moron and get elected just by having an R next to your name - and that year, by the way, we did pick up a fair number in that category.'

Boehner complained about the tone of the new Tea Party-tied members.

'Since I was presiding over a large group of people who'd never sat in Congress, I felt I owed them a little tutorial on governing.

'I had to explain how to actually get things done,' he explained. 'A lot of that went straight through the ears of most of them, especially the ones who didn't have brains that got in the way. Incrementalism? Compromise? That wasn't their thing.'

'A lot of them wanted to blow up Washington. That's why they thought they were elected,' he continued.

CLASHES WITH RUPERT MURDOCH, ROGER AILES AND SEAN HANNITY

On top of that, the conservative media establishment was leaning into conspiracy theories and elevating those who spouted them, Boehner observed.

The former speaker recalled a meeting he had in the early 90s with the late Roger Ailes, who became CEO of Fox News Channel and Rupert Murdoch.

They were talking to Boehner about this new TV network they were starting, Fox News.

Former Speaker John Boehner's book, 'On the House: A Washington Memoir,' comes out on April 13

'I had no idea I was listening to the outline of something that would make my life a living hell down the line,' Boehner observed.

Cut to 2011, and Boehner watched how 'birther-ism' - the conspiracy theory that Obama wasn't born in the United States - went from the internet to, by his calculation, radio host Mark Levin. 'It got him ratings, so eventually he dragged Hannity and Rush to Looneyville along with him,' Boehner said.

'My longtime friend Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News, was not immune to this,' Boehner added. 'He got swept into the conspiracies and the paranoia and became an almost unrecognizable figure.'

Boehner wrote about confrontations he had with Ailes and also with Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity.

Ailes, the Ohio Republican recalled, told him how Obama, the Clintons and George Soros were 'trying to destroy him' and so he had installed a 'safe room' in his house.

'It was like he'd been reading whacked-out spy novels all weekend,' Boehner recalled. 'I thought I could get him to control the crazies, and instead I found myself talking to the president of the club. One of us was crazy. Maybe it was me.'

Sean Hannity hit back at Boehner's comments and said 'he will down as one of the worst Republican speakers in history. He added: 'He's weak, timid and what's up with all the crying John?'

'At some point I called him a nut,' Boehner added.

After Hannity started going after Boehner on his show night after night, the House speaker called him up to ask, 'What the hell?'

Hannity, according to Boehner, pushed back that the speaker didn't 'have a plan.'

Look, our plan is pretty simple: we're just going to stand up for what we believe in as Republicans,' Boehner said he shot back.

The Ohio Republican said his relationship with Hannity, after that conversation, never got any better.

Hannity made that clear in a tweet Friday.

'John Boehner will go down in history as one of the worst Republican speakers in history. He's weak, timid and what's up with all the crying John?' the Fox News Channel host tweeted. 'There was not a single time I was around him when he didn't just reek of cigarette smoke and wine breath,' Hannity added.

'I'm glad he finally found his true calling in life in the 'weed industry,'' Hannity said in a second tweet.

Boehner has lobbied for a cannabis group since leaving office.

Boehner (right) referred to Rep. Michele Bachmann (left) as a 'lunatic' and said she was one of the 'first prototypes' out of Fox News Channel's laboratory of 'fringe characters'

TEA PARTY MEMBER MICHELE BACHMANN WAS A 'LUNATIC'

Boehner recalled a conversation he had with Rep. Michele Bachmann, a Minnesota Republican, who had presidential ambitions.

Bachmann was one of the 'fringe characters' that Fox was responsible for turning into a media star, Boehner said. 'One of the first prototypes out of their laboratory was a woman named Michele Bachmann,' he said of the overall trend.

Bachmann, who was starting her third term in Congress, told Boehner she wanted to be put on the House Ways and Means Committee, which is the House's most powerful.

That was never going to happen because she would need the approval of the Steering Committee - so it was technically out of his hands - but Boehner was going to be put in a tough position because she didn't do nuance.

When he diplomatically told her no, she pushed back saying, 'Well, then I'll just have to go talk to Sean Hannity and everybody at Fox. And Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and everybody else on the radio, and tell them that this is how John Boehner is treating the people who made is possible for the Republicans to take back the House.'

Boehner introduces Sen. Ted Cruz (pictured) as the 'new head lunatic leading the way' adding that 'there is nothing more dangerous than a reckless a**hole who thinks he is smarter than everyone else'

Ted Cruz responded to an audio clip of John Boehner telling him to f*** himself with a 'Mean Girls' gif

'I wasn't the one with the power, she was saying. I just thought I was. She had the power now,' Boehner said. 'She was right, of course.'

Boehner ended up putting Bachman on the House Intelligence Committee, admitting that she 'did her homework' and impressed other members on the panel.

TED CRUZ: THE LEADER OF THE 'CHAOS CAUCUS'

Boehner concluded his excerpt by previewing what happened to the 'chaos caucus' in the next cycle.

'Ladies and gentleman, meet Senator Ted Cruz,' Boehner wrote, referring to the Texas Republican who took office in 2013. Boehner dubbed Cruz the 'new head lunatic leading the way.'

'There is nothing more dangerous than a reckless a**hole who thinks he is smarter than everyone else,' Boehner said.

Boehner ended the chapter with a cliffhanger: '[Cruz] enlisted the crazy caucus of the GOP in what was a truly dumbass idea. Not that anybody asked me.'

He was likely previewing the chaotic 2013 government shutdown.

On Friday, Axios reporter Jonathan Swan shared a clip of Boehner's audiobook, in which he randomly inserts, 'P.S., Ted Cruz, go f*** yourself.'

Cruz responded to the tweet by sharing a 'Mean Girls' gif that read, 'Why are you so obsessed with me?'
Multi-year agreement leveraging EUTELSAT 172B satellite over the South Pacific Ocean

Under New Zealand government's Rural Broadband Initiative

Regulatory News:

Eutelsat Communications (Paris:ETL) (Euronext Paris: ETL) and The Rural Connectivity Group (RCG), a joint venture between New Zealand's three mobile network operators, have signed a contract to bring an upgraded telecommunications network to New Zealand's Chatham Islands.

Under the terms of this multi-year agreement, RCG will leverage the EUTELSAT 172B satellite to support the Rural Connectivity Group in delivering an upgraded telecommunications network bringing crucial connectivity to the islands, under the New Zealand government's Rural Broadband Initiative Phase 2.

Eutelsat's high-performance satellite EUTELSAT 172B, located at a premium orbital position covering the South Pacific Ocean, allows 100% coverage of this region. It will provide the backhaul telecommunications link from New Zealand to five cellular sites positioned around Chatham Island. Bringing 4G mobile coverage for the first time along the majority of the islands' roads as well as across their marine territories, this initiative will also maximise broadband coverage to residents on the Chatham Islands, providing support to its key activities of tourism, fishing and farming.

Christophe Cazes, Eutelsat's Regional Vice President for Asia, said: "With this agreement, RCG will leverage the EUTELSAT 172B satellite to enable 4G wireless broadband for households and businesses on the islands. It is a strong example of how satellites today are an essential technology in ensuring governments and other institutions can meet their digital divide objectives."

John Proctor, CEO of the Rural Connectivity Group, concluded: "Satellite resources are very well-adapted to connecting islands that are, by their very definition, isolated from terrestrial networks. We are delighted to be able to rely on Eutelsat to bring this much needed connectivity upgrade to boost the economy in one of New Zealand's prime heritage sites."

About Eutelsat Communications

Founded in 1977, Eutelsat Communications is one of the world's leading satellite operators. With a global fleet of satellites and associated ground infrastructure, Eutelsat enables clients across Video, Data, Government, Fixed and Mobile Broadband markets to communicate effectively to their customers, irrespective of their location. Over 7,000 television channels operated by leading media groups are broadcast by Eutelsat to one billion viewers equipped for DTH reception or connected to terrestrial networks. Headquartered in Paris, with offices and teleports around the globe, Eutelsat assembles 1,200 men and women from 50 countries who are dedicated to delivering the highest quality of service.

For more about Eutelsat go to www.eutelsat.com

www.eutelsat.com Follow us on Twitter @Eutelsat_SA

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210407005465/en/

Contacts:

Media

Joanna Darlington

Tel.: +33 1 53 98 31 07

jdarlington@eutelsat.com

Marie Sophie Ecuer

Tel.: +33 1 53 98 32 45

mecuer@eutelsat.com

Jessica Whyte

Tel.: +33 1 53 98 46 21

jwhyte@eutelsat.com

Investors

Joanna Darlington

Tel.: +33 1 53 98 31 07

jdarlington@eutelsat.com

Cedric Pugni

Tel.: +33 1 53 98 31 54

cpugni@eutelsat.com

Alexandre Illouz

Tel.: +33 1 53 98 46 81

aillouz@eutelsat.com
Middle East Energy (MEE) Dubai, which has confirmed the 2021 edition of the show, will now take place only as a virtual event, starting on May 17 with the four focus weeks addressing the latest insights, trends and innovation.



The virtual event, which underscores Middle East Energys commitment to delivering positive networking opportunities for the energy industry, will focus on Renewable & Clean Energy, Transmission & Distribution, Critical & Back-up Power, and Energy Consumption & Management.



It will also focus on forming partnerships, providing insights and the ability to source the latest solutions. The platform will connect users with thousands of potential clients, partners and contacts across the energy market.



The four-week Middle East Energy Online event will include tech talks, interactive roundtables, panel discussions, thought leadership sessions and remote interviews. Networking opportunities will consist of hosted buyer meetings, fireside chats, breakout sessions, personalised meetings, and speed networking sessions.



Claudia Konieczna, Exhibition Director, Middle East Energy, said: It is important to recognise that Middle East Energy 2021 is still happening, just in an online format. Connecting the industry has never been more important, and we believe that, for MEE, virtual is the best route this year to connect energy professionals from far-reaching corners of the globe.



Following discussions with our stakeholders and in support of the industry, we have decided to cancel the live and in-person event, which was due to take place from 14-16 June. We will now focus on delivering the online event and returning with the live in-person event in March 2022.



The four-week event begins on 17 May, with the Renewable & Clean Energy sector week, which will address the opportunities as we transition to cleaner energy sources. Global research from IRENA, highlighted by Middle East Energy, has shown that the total installed renewable energy capacity had reached 2,799GW globally by the end of 2020, and clean energy grew at a rate of 50% in a year.



Specifically in the Middle East, up to 90GW of renewable energy capacity, predominantly solar and wind power, is planned across the MENA region over the next 20 years, with at least $15 billion of solar power projects expected to enter operation in the region in the next five years.



The Critical & Backup Power sector week, which starts on 31 May, will bring together the key players in the global backup power market to highlight the latest technologies and solutions for ensuring power continuity.



With much of the worlds critical infrastructure, from data centres to hospitals and transport, now dependent on digital technologies and processes, the importance of uninterrupted power has never been greater. The week will include representation from key suppliers, including Perkins, Cummins Generator Technologies, Cummins Power Generation, Allam Marine and more.



From the 24 May, the Transmission & Distribution sector will take centre stage. The virtual week-long networking and technical sessions will provide a platform for manufacturers and distributors from the entire supply chain to meet clients, capture new business and network with the industry, as investments in the sector are expected to grow to $108 billion by 2022.



Rounding out the event, from the 7 June is Energy Consumption& Management, where the focus will be on energy efficiency, smart buildings and transformative lighting systems  which is expected to grow from $9.4 billion in 2020 to $24.2 billion by 2025. The week is geared towards connecting users with the expertise and solutions to manage energy demand, which is increasingly becoming smarter and more efficient.



Our role is to connect the entire energy ecosystem, and we are confident we will do this through the Middle East Energy virtual event. We have an impressive lineup of industry experts, leading businesses, and networking opportunities to bring the global energy community together, said Konieczna.



The UAE government has done an incredible job in ensuring Dubai is open and at the forefront of hosting safe live events, but Middle East Energy is a fully international event and therefore impacted by current global travel disruption. To maximise the event's effectiveness for all stakeholders, we have decided to welcome the international energy community back to the UAE next year.



The energy market can expect to see the scale of the live, in-person version that the industry has come to recognise from Middle East Energy when we meet again from 7-9 March 2022, at the Dubai World Trade Centre, she concluded.  TradeArabia News Service
Britons were once again left with a raft of questions over the safety of AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine after health chiefs today recommended it should not be given to under-30s because of its link to potentially deadly blood clots.

No10's jab advisory panel says healthy people aged 18 to 29 be offered either Pfizer or Moderna's vaccine instead, when the programme moves to younger groups in the coming months.

The Government, opposition politicians and medical experts tonight rushed to shore up confidence in AstraZeneca's vaccine, insisting that it was safe and the benefits far outweighed any risks for the vast majority.

Here MailOnline answers all of your questions about AstraZeneca's jab, revealing why it is safe for you to still get your second dose and what the alternatives are for under-30s.

The EMA, which polices the safety of drugs used on the continent, spotted 169 cases of cerebral vein thrombosis (CVST) and 53 cases of splanchnic vein thrombosis (SVT), from 34million jabs. CVST occurs when a vein that drains blood from the brain is blocked by a clot. It can lead to a stroke. SVT is the same type of blood clot but it occurs in the digestive system

WHAT HAS HAPPENED?

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has advised that healthy adults aged 18-29 are offered an alternative vaccine to the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab, if available.

The recommendation follows a review by the UKs medicines regulator, the MHRA, which found there was a strong possibility that very rare blood clots, known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST), could be caused by the vaccine.

Dr June Raine, chief executive of the MHRA, yesterday said the possible side effect was extremely rare, while the balance of benefits from having the jab are still very favourable for the majority of people. However, for healthy younger adults, for which the risk from coronavirus is far lower, it is more finely balanced.

SHOULD I STILL GET MY SECOND ASTRAZENECA JAB?

Anyone who has already had their first dose of AstraZeneca's jab, regardless of their age, was today urged to still attend their second appointment as planned.

Scientific trials have shown the British-made jab works better after two doses, with the UK's current campaign based on dishing out top-ups after 12 weeks.

The JCVI's advice only applies to healthy under-30s  who should not yet have been invited for vaccines.

But health bosses said NHS workers, carers and family members of vulnerable adults who are under-30 and have yet to get jabbed should also be offered an alternative vaccine.

Regulators insisted the benefits of the jab  which has been repeatedly been proven to save lives and stop people falling severely ill with coronavirus  clearly outweigh the very small risk for everyone else.

Addressing the fears today, Boris Johnson said it was 'very important for everybody to continue to get their top-up jab when you're asked to come forward for your turn'.

WHAT IF I HAD TELL-TALE SYMPTOMS OF A CLOT THE FIRST TIME ROUND?

Brits who suffered flu-like symptoms after getting the first jab  which are common side effects of any vaccine  do not need to worry, experts say.

Instead, only people who were actually diagnosed with a blood clot after getting the first dose should hold off on getting their booster shot.

In its guidance today, the JCVI said the clots 'appear to be an idiosyncratic reaction on first exposure' to AstraZeneca's vaccine.

There have been no recorded blood clots after a second dose - all 79 thrombocytopenia have been after first doses.

Professor Adam Finn, a member of the JCVI, said: 'Weve not seen a single case of thrombosis after a second dose of AZ so far. So there is no evidence of a problem after the second dose.

'At the moment we would be voyaging into an evidence-free zone if we recommend people do not have a second dose. The evidence is there's no risk we have found  but that may change.'



CAN I 'MIX AND MATCH' AND GET A SECOND DOSE OF PFIZER OR MODERNA IF I HAD AN ASTRAZENECA JAB FIRST?

Drug regulators have yet to approve a mix-and-match policy for jabs, meaning Brits must get the same vaccine twice.

Britain's scientists are already looking at whether mixing and matching coronavirus vaccines is safe and can enhance protection against the disease.

Experts believe the 'mix and match' approach could stimulate different parts of the immune system and give better, longer lasting immunity.

The tactic could also help Britain deal with supply shortages which has held back the UK's otherwise successful vaccination rollout.

CAN I CHOSE WHAT VACCINE I GET

No.

People under-30 will be offered an alternative vaccine, but they can still chose to have AstraZeneca.

WHAT OTHER JABS ARE AVAILABLE FOR UNDER-30S?

More than 20million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have now been given in the UK, with the jab used as the main weapon in the UK's arsenal.

The roll-out is unlikely to move on to under-30s for several months, meaning that supplies of the other jabs could be saved for younger adults.

Moderna's jab was deployed in Britain for the first time today, with ministers having bought 17million doses  enough for 8.5million people.

The chief scientist behind the US-developed Novavax vaccine, which Britain has secured 60million doses of, has said he expects it to be given the green light this month and rolled out in May.

A separate vaccine made by American pharmaceutical giant Johnson and Johnson, which uses the same type of technology as AstraZeneca's but is administered via a single injection, is slated for a summer rollout. No10 has bought 30million doses.

The UK has also ordered 40million Pfizer doses, enough for 20million people, but the majority of the country's remaining stocks are reserved for second doses.

But, given that AstraZeneca's vaccine is the main driver of the campaign, the roll-out could be slowed if the UK's change of heart on giving the jab to young adults knocks public confidence in 30-50 year olds.

England's deputy chief medical officer Profess Jonathan Van-Tam said the new advice marked a 'course correction' for the UK's rollout - and reiterated that for the vast majority of people the 'benefits outweigh the risks'

The Government wheeled out a series of graphs comparing the risk of falling ill with Covid compared to the threat of developing blood clots after getting the AZ vaccine in various age groups. In low Covid levels, every 100,000 vaccines prevents 0.8 ICU admissions from coronavirus in people under 30 but 1.1 people will suffer blood clotting after having the jab, making the threat higher than the virus itself

When coronavirus is prevalent in society, 100,000 AstraZeneca vaccines prevent 127.7 Covid ICU admissions among 60 to 69-year-olds. For 20 to 29-year-olds, every 100,000 vaccine administered stops seven people in that age group from being admitted to intensive care with the disease

WHAT ARE THE BLOOD CLOTS LINKED TO ASTRAZENECA'S JAB?

European health chiefs today ruled that AstraZeneca's Covid jab should come with a warning that, in very rare cases, it may cause potentially deadly blood clots.

The EMA, which polices the safety of drugs used on the continent, spotted 169 cases of cerebral vein thrombosis (CVST) and 53 cases of splanchnic vein thrombosis (SVT), from 34million jabs.

CVST occurs when a vein that drains blood from the brain is blocked by a clot. It can lead to a stroke.

SVT is the same type of blood clot but it occurs in the digestive system.

Both the EMA and their UK counterparts said the clots had occurred alongside thrombocytopenia  low levels of blood platelets.

WHAT SYMPTOMS DO THE CLOTS CAUSE?

The EMA said symptoms of the two blood clots included:

Shortness of breath

Chest pain

Swelling of leg

Persistent stomach pain

Severe headache

Blurred vision

Skin bruising beyond the site of injection

IS THERE ANY PROOF THE JAB CAUSES THE BLOOD CLOTS?

Scientists have repeatedly insisted there is no proof that AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine causes the blood clots.

But officials are still investigating the link and can't rule it out completely.

Although there isn't any evidence that clots are developing because of vaccinations, some academics have a theory that it is the immune reaction making it happen.

Research teams in Germany and Norway claim the blood clotting issue may be caused by the jab, in very rare cases, making the body attack its own platelets.

Platelets are tiny chunks of cells inside blood that the body uses to build clots to stop bleeding when someone is injured. But they can also make unwanted clots.

Experts from Oslo and Greifswald University believe the jab could cause the body to produce antibodies  normally used to fight off viruses  which mistake platelets in the blood for foreign invaders and attack them.

To compensate, the body then overproduces platelets to replace those that are being attacked, causing the blood to thicken and raising the risk of clotting.

The researchers say the phenomenon is similar to one that can occur in heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT), when sufferers take a drug called heparin.

HOW OFTEN ARE THE CLOTS OCCURRING?

Figures presented by the EMA today  which took into account data up until April 4  suggested the clots occur once in every 150,000 jabs. They also said most of the cases were in women under 60.

The MHRA, which plays the same role in the UK, found 79 cases of clots in 20million doses by the end of March. Officials said the risk was around one in every 250,000 doses.

They also insisted the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks for the vast majority of people  but that the ratio was more 'finely balanced' in younger people, who are slightly more prone to blood clots.

LBC claimed that the MHRA revealed the baseline rate of CVST was between five and 16 cases per million people each year. The MHRA has spotted 44 cases of that blood clot  a rate of two cases per million people every three months.

EMA chiefs said that clots occurred more often than expected, prompting them to say the jabs need to come with the warning that it is a rare side effect.

But it said the committee investigating the link did not conclude that age and gender were clear risk factors for the very rare side effects.

ARE THERE MORE CASES OF CVST THAN EXPECTED?

The normal background rate of these clots is uncertain with estimates ranging between two and 16 cases per million people occurring naturally a year. While still incredibly rare, the incidents of these clots among patients who have had the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab are slightly higher than they should be.

What exactly is CVST and should I be worried?

CVST is where potentially fatal clots form in the veins that run from the brain. Unusually, this is occurring with thrombocytopenia  abnormally low levels of blood cells called platelets. Platelets cause blood to clot, so while not unheard of, it is incredibly rare for people with low levels to develop clots. The most severe signs of CVST include stroke-like symptoms such as weakness of the face and limbs on one side of the body, seizures, coma and ultimately death.

But anyone who has suffered headaches, blurred vision, shortness of breath, chest pain, leg swelling, abdominal pain and bruising or pinpoint spots below the vaccination site for four days after a jab should seek medical attention.

IF THE JAB IS TO BLAME, WHAT ARE THE POSSIBLE CAUSES?

If the jab is to blame, what are the possible causes?

Scientists are exploring several possibilities. European investigators have put forward one theory that the vaccine triggers an unusual antibody in some rare cases, similar to conditions seen in patients treated with the anticoagulant  commonly known as blood thinner  heparin. The autoimmune disorder called heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT) leads to plummeting platelet counts and clotting.

Others are looking at whether the cases  which seem more common in women  are linked to birth control pills. However, at the moment scientists say there is no definitive evidence.

HAVE THESE CLOTS BEEN LINKED TO ANY OTHER VACCINES?

No cases of CVST with low platelets have been linked to the Pfizer vaccine in the UK, with just two serious clots reported more widely. Experts suggest this could be to do with the technology in mRNA vaccines, such as Pfizer and Moderna, compared to those using adenoviruses, for example, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.

Trials of the latter have shown possible clots, although scientists stressed they were incredibly rare with three reported cases in 4.5million jabs administered.

So far, only the Oxford jab has been linked to possible raised levels of clotting. All vaccines will continue to be monitored.

HOW COULD THE JAB BE CAUSING BLOOD CLOTS?

One plausible explanation for how the AstraZeneca vaccine could cause clots is that it provokes an immune response that leads to a condition that seems similar to atypical heparin-induced thrombocytopenia.

European regulator the EMA said data showed the blood clots reported had been found in veins in both the brain and abdomen, and occurred alongside low levels of blood platelets and sometimes bleeding.

During a simultaneous briefing in the UK by the MHRA and JCVI, Sir Munir Pirmohamed said: 'The early evidence suggests that this constellation of symptoms is caused by an immune response against platelets which allows the platelets to then lead to clotting in different parts of the body.

'But what we dont have clearly is the link between the vaccine and how the immune response becomes activated against the platelets.'

Research teams in Germany and Norway claim the blood clotting issue may be caused by the jab, in very rare cases, making the body attack its own platelets.

Platelets are tiny chunks of cells inside blood that the body uses to build clots to stop bleeding when someone is injured. But they can also make unwanted clots.

Experts from Oslo and Greifswald University believe the jab could cause the body to produce antibodies  normally used to fight off viruses  which mistake platelets in the blood for foreign invaders and attack them.

To compensate, the body then overproduces platelets to replace those that are being attacked, causing the blood to thicken and raising the risk of clotting.

WHICH COUNTRIES HAVE ALREADY RESTRICTED THE JAB TO OLDER PEOPLE?

Germany last week temporarily banned the AstraZeneca vaccine for under-60s, while France took the same controversial move for under-55s.

Iceland has restricted it to over-70s, while Finland, Sweden and Lithuania all say it can only be given to adults over the age of 65.

Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Latvia have all suspended the jab completely, while regulators probe the link further.

But the EMA refused to back any of the nations in their age-restricted roll-outs. Last week it publicly said there was no evidence to justify sweeping bans for younger people.

IF I'M PREGNANT, SHOULD I GET THE VACCINE?

The advice on this has not changed, meaning its recommended that those who are pregnant should not be vaccinated, with some exceptions. This is because the vaccines have not yet been tested in pregnancy.

While there is no evidence to suggest that the vaccine would harm the baby, pregnancy is more likely to lead to thrombosis.

Therefore women should discuss with their healthcare professional whether the benefits of having the vaccine outweigh the risks for them.

I'M 29. WHAT IF THEY ONLY OFFER THE OXFORD VACCINE?

Officials say this will not happen unless you have an underlying medical condition and are prioritised. In such instances, they say the benefit of having the vaccine far outweighs any issues as you have an equivalent risk from coronavirus as 65 to 70-year-olds. For healthy under-30s, officials are confident there are sufficient supplies of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines coming on stream to vaccinate all 10million 18 to 29-year-olds in the UK.

I'VE HEARD ASPIRIN CAN STOP BLOOD CLOTTING. SHOULD I TAKE IT BEFORE THE JAB?

No. The risks of an adverse clotting event are extremely low. Taking aspirin or anti-coagulants can increase the risk of bleeding and is not
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Finnish telecom equipment maker, Nokia Corp., said on Wednesday it had concluded a multi-year multi-technology patent cross-license agreement with Chinese personal computer and mobile maker Lenovo Group Ltd.

The companies agreed to settle all pending litigation regarding video-compression technology patents.

According to the agreement, Lenovo will make a net balancing payment to Nokia.

The deal terms remain confidential.

Nokia had inaugurated legal proceedings against Lenovo in 2019 because of the alleged infringement of 20 video-compression technology patents.

The company filed cases in the United States, Brazil, India, as well as in Germany, where there were six cases between the parties.

In September, a Munich court ruled that Lenovo infringed one of Nokias patents, and ordered an injunction and a recall of products from retailers.

However, a German appeal court stayed that order in November.

Lenovo also filed a lawsuit against Nokia in a Californian court.

Nokia now said the latest agreement resolved all pending patent litigation and other proceedings between the two parties in all jurisdictions.

John Mulgrew, chief intellectual property officer of Lenovo said, our agreement with Nokia reflects the value of both Nokias technology leadership and Lenovos continued investment in 5G innovation.

The global accord struck will enable future collaboration between our companies for the benefit of customers worldwide.

Nokia said its patent portfolio comprises around 20,000 patent families, including more than 3,500 patent families declared essential to 5G.

The company contributes these and other inventions to open standards in return for the right to license them on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory, or FRAND terms.

Companies can license and use these technologies without the need to make their own substantial investments in research and development.

Nokia in early March had signed a patent license agreement with South Koreas Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd that covers the use of Nokia innovations in video standards. (dpa/NAN)